Tag: book

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“When Time Was New” (1964) by Robert F. Young

Robert F. Young (1915-1986) was a prolific science-fiction writer whose 200-odd stories were published in all of the leading s-f magazines of his day as well as in Colliers, The Saturday Evening Post and Playboy. Although many of his stories were also published in book form, they are today almost all out of print and are unfortunately very hard to find, even in second-hand bookstores, on the Internet or elsewhere.

This charming and very inventive tale first appeared as the cover story of the December 1964 issue of Worlds of IF magazine.

It recounts with humor and brio, the adventures of a time-travelling explorer, and had me hooked from the beginning, had me smiling and chuckling throughout, and left me with a most agreeable warm feeling about having so well spent my reading time.

As an added bonus, the story solves a long-standing literary mystery as to the identity of the visitor who interrupted Coleridge in 1797 while the poet was writing down his masterpiece Kubla Khan, which he had just composed in his sleep. The visitor had hung around for an hour, and afterwards Coleridge hadn’t been able to remember the rest of the poem, which has thus remained unfinished. Now we know why!

It is I dare to say a fine example of the quality of the writing of an author of humble origins (science-fiction fans were astonished to learn, towards the end of his life, that he had been a full-time janitor in a Buffalo public school during most of his writing career) who is well worth discovering or rediscovering.

“When Time Was New” (1964) by Robert F. Young

The stegosaurus standing beneath the ginkgo tree didn’t surprise Carpenter, but the two kids sitting in the branches did. He had expected to meet up with a stegosaurus sooner or later, but he hadn’t expected to meet up with a boy and a girl. What in the name of all that was Mesozoic were they doing in the upper Cretaceous Period!

Maybe, he reflected, leaning forward in the driver’s seat of his battery-powered triceratank, they were tied in in some way with the anachronistic fossil he had come back to the Age of Dinosaurs to investigate. Certainly the fact that Miss Sands, his chief assistant who had cased the place-time on the tirnescope, had said nothing about a couple of kids, meant nothing. Timescopes registered only the general lay of the land. They seldom showed anything smaller than a medium-sized mountain.

The stego nudged the trunk of the ginkgo with a hip as high as a hill. The tree gave such a convulsive shudder that the two children nearly fell off the branch they were sitting on and came tumbling down upon the serrated ridge of the monster’s back. Their faces were as white as the line of cliffs that showed distantly beyond the scatterings of dogwoods and magnolias and live oaks, and the stands of willows and laurels and fan palms, that patterned the prehistoric plain.

Carpenter braced himself in the driver’s seat. “Come on, Sam,” he said, addressing the triceratank by nickname. “Let’s go get it!”

Since leaving the entry area several hours ago, he had been moving along in low gear in order not to miss any potential clues that might point the way to the anachronistic fossil’s place of origin – a locale which, as was usually the case with unidentifiable anachronisms, the paleontological society that employed him had been able to pinpoint much more accurately in time than in space. Now, he threw Sam into second and focused the three horn-howitzers jutting from the reptivehicle’s facial regions on the sacral ganglion of the offending ornithischian. Plugg! Plugg! Plugg! went the three stun charges as they struck home, and down went the a posteriori section of the stego. The anterior section, apprised by the pea-sized brain that something had gone haywire, twisted far enough around for one of the little eyes in the pint-sized head to take in the approaching triceratank, whereupon the stubby forelegs immediately began the herculean task of dragging the ten-ton, humpbacked body out of the theater of operations.

Carpenter grinned. “Take it easy, old mountainsides,” he said. “You’ll be on all four feet again in less time than it takes to say ’Tyrannosaurus rex’.”
After bringing Sam to a halt a dozen yards from the base of the ginko, he looked up at the two terrified children through the one-way transparency of the reptivehicle’s skullnacelle. If anything, their faces were even whiter than they had been before. Small wonder. Sam looked more like a triceratops than most real triceratops did. Raising the nacelle, Carpenter recoiled a little from the sudden contrast between the humid heat of the midsummer’s day and Sam’s air-conditioned interior. He stood up in the driver’s compartment and showed himself. “Come on down, you two,” he called. “Nobody’s going to eat you.”

Two pairs of the widest and bluest eyes that he had ever seen came to rest upon his face. In neither pair, however, was there the faintest gleam of understanding. “I said come on down,” he repeated. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
The boy turned to the girl, and the two of them began jabbering back and forth in a sing-song tongue that resembled Chinese, but only as the mist resembles the rain.

It had no more in common with modern American than its speakers had with their surroundings. Clearly they hadn’t understood a word he had said. But, equally as clearly, they must have found reassurance in his plain and honest face, or perhaps in the gentle tone of his voice. After talking the matter over for a few moments, they left their aerie and shinned down the trunk, the boy going first and helping the girl over the rough spots. He was about nine; she was about eleven.

Carpenter stepped out of the compartment, vaulted down from Sam’s steel snout and went over to where they were standing. By this time, the stego had recovered the use of its hind legs and was high-tailing – or rather, high-backing it over the plain. The boy was wearing a loose, apricot-colored blouse which was considerably stained and disheveled from his recent arboreal activities, a pair of apricot-colored slacks which were similarly stained and disheveled and which terminated at his thin calves and a pair of open-toe sandals. The girl’s outfit was identical, save that it was azure in hue and somewhat less stained and disheveled. She was about an inch taller than the boy, but no less thin. Both of them had delicate features, and hair the color of buttercups, and both of them wore expressions so solemn as to be almost ludicrous. It was virtually a sure bet that they were brother and sister.

Gazing earnestly up into Carpenter’s gray eyes, the girl gave voice a series of sing-song phrases, each of them, judging from the nuances of pronunciation, representative of a different language.

When she finished, Carpenter shook his head. “I just don’t dig you, pumpkin,” he said. Then, just to make sure, he repeated the remark in Anglo-Saxon, Aeolic Greek, lower Cro-magnonese, upper-Acheulian, middle English, Iroquoian and Hyannis-Portese, smatterings of which tongues and dialects he had picked up during his various sojourns in the past. No dice. Every word he spoke was just plain Greek to the girl and the boy.

Suddenly the girl’s eyes sparkled with excitement, and, plunging her hand into a plastic reticule that hung from the belt that supported her slacks, she withdrew what appeared to be three pairs of earrings. She handed one pair to Carpenter, one to the boy, and kept one for herself; then she and the boy proceeded to affix the objects to their ear lobes, motioning to Carpenter to do the same. Complying, he discovered that the tiny disks which he had taken for pendants were in reality tiny diaphragms of some kind. Once the minute clamps were tightened into place, they fitted just within the ear openings. The girl regarded his handiwork critically for a moment, then, standing on tiptoe, reached up and adjusted each disk with deft fingers. Satisfied, she stepped back. “Now,” she said, in perfect idiomatic English, “we can get through to each other and find out what’s what.”
Carpenter stared at her. “Well I must say, you caught on to my language awful fast!”

“Oh, we didn’t learn it,” the boy said. “Those are microtranslators – hearrings. With them on, whatever we say sounds to you the way you would say it, and whatever you say sounds to us the way we would say it.”

“I forgot I had them with me,” said the girl. “They’re standard travelers’ equipment, but, not being a traveler in the strict sense of the word, I wouldn’t have happened to have them. Only I’d just got back from foreign-activities class when the kidnapers grabbed me. Now,” she went on, again gazing earnestly up into Carpenter’s eyes, “I think it will be best if we take care of the amenities first, don’t you? My name is Marcy, this is my brother Skip, and we are from Greater Mars. What is your name, and where are you from, kind sir?”

It wasn’t easy, but Carpenter managed to keep his voice matter-of-fact. It was no more than fair that he should have. If anything, what he had to say was even more incredible that what he had just heard. “I’m Howard Carpenter, and I’m from Earth, A.D. 2156. That’s 79,062,156 years from now.” He pointed to the triceratank. “Sam over there is my time machine – among other things. When powered from an outside source, there’s practically no limit to his field of operations.”

The girl blinked once, and so did the boy. But that was all. “Well,” Marcy said presently, “that much is taken care of: you’re from Earth Future and we’re from Mars Present.” She paused, looking at Carpenter curiously. “Is there something you don’t understand, Mr. Carpenter?”

Carpenter took a deep breath. He exhaled it. “In point of fact, yes. For one thing, there’s the little matter of the difference in gravity between the two planets. Here on Earth you weigh more than twice as much as you weigh on Mars, and I can’t quite figure out how you can move around so effortlessly, to say nothing of how you could have shinned up the trunk of that ginkgo tree.”

“Oh, I see what you mean, Mr. Carpenter,” Marcy said. “And it’s a very good point, too. But obviously you’re using Mars Future as a criterion, and just as obviously Mars Future is no longer quite the same as Mars Present. I – I guess a lot can happen in 79,062,156 years. Well, anyway, Mr. Carpenter,” she continued, “the Mars of Skip’s and my day has a gravity that approximates this planet’s. Centuries ago, you see, our engineers artificially increased the existent gravity in order that no more of our atmosphere could escape into space, and successive generations had adapted themselves to the stronger pull. Does that clarify matters for you, Mr. Carpenter?”

He had to admit that it did. “Do you kids have a last name?” he asked.
“No, we don’t, Mr. Carpenter. At one time it was the custom for Martians to have last names, but when desentimentalization was introduced, the custom was abolished. Before we proceed any further, Mr. Carpenter, I would like to thank you for saving our lives. It – it was very noble of you.”

“You’re most welcome,” Carpenter said, “but I’m afraid if we go on standing here in the open like this, I’m going to have to save them all over again, and my own to boot. So let’s the three of us get inside Sam where it’s safe. All right?”

Leading the way over to the triceratank, he vaulted up on the snout and reached down for the girl’s hand. After pulling her up beside him, he helped her into the driver’s compartment. “There’s a small doorway behind the driver’s seat,” he told her. “Crawl through it and make yourself at home in the cabin just beyond. You’ll find a table and chairs and a bunk, plus a cupboard filled with good things to eat. All the comforts of home.”

Before she could comply, a weird whistling sound came from above the plain. She glanced at the sky, and her face went dead-white. “It’s them!” she gasped. “They’ve found us already!”

Carpenter saw the dark winged-shapes of the pteranodons then. There were two of them, and they were homing in on the triceratank like a pair of prehistoric dive-bombers. Seizing Skip’s hand, he pulled the boy up on the snout, set him in the compartment beside his sister, and told them to get into the cabin fast. Then he jumped into the driver’s seat and slammed down the nacelle.

Just in time: the first pteranodon came so close that its right aileron scraped against Sam’s frilled head-shield, and the second came so close that its ventral fuselage brushed Sam’s back. Their twin tailjets left two double wakes of bluish smoke.

Carpenter sat up straight in the driver’s seat. Ailerons? Fuselage? Tailjets?
Pteranodons?

He activated Sam’s shield-field and extended it to a distance of two feet beyond the armor-plating, then he threw the reptivehicle into gear. The pteranoclons were circling high overhead. “Marcy,” he called, “come forward a minute, will you?”

Her buttercup-colored hair tickled his cheek as she leaned over his shoulder. “Yes, Mr. Carpenter?”

“When you saw the pteranodons, you said, ’They’ve found us already!’ What did you mean by that?”

“They’re not pteranodons, Mr. Carpenter. Whatever pteranadons are. They’re kidnapers, piloting military-surplus flyabouts that probably look like pteranodons. They abducted Skip and me from the preparatory school of the Greater Martian Technological Apotheosization Institute and are holding us for ransom. Earth is their hideout. There are three of them altogether – Roul and Fritad and Holmer. One of them is probably back in the spaceship.”

Carpenter was silent for several moments. The Mars of A.D. 2156 was a desolate place of rubble, sand and wind inhabited by a few thousand diehard colonists from Earth and a few hundred thousand diehard Martians, the former living beneath atmosphere-domes and the latter, save for the few who had intermarried with the colonists, living in deep caves where oxygen could still be obtained. But twenty- second century excavations by the Extraterrestrial Archaeological Society had unearthed unquestionable evidence to the effect that an ultra-technological civilization similar to that of Earth Present had existed on the planet over 70,000,000 years ago. Surely it was no more than reasonable to assume that such a civilization had had space travel.

That being the case, Earth, during her uppermost Mesozoic Era, must have presented an ideal hideout for Martian criminals, kidnappers included. Certainly such a theory threw considerable light on the anachronisms that kept cropping up in Cretaceous strata. There was of course another way to explain Marcy’s and Skip’s presence in the Age of Dinosaurs: they could be A.D. 2156 Earth children, and they could have come back via time machine the same as he had. Or they could have been abducted by twenty-second century kidnappers, for that matter, and have been brought back. But, that being so, why should they lie about it?
“Tell me, Marcy,” Carpenter said, “do you believe I came from the future?”

“0h, of course, Mr. Carpenter. And I’m sure Skip does, too. It’s – it’s kind of hard to believe, but I know that someone as nice as you wouldn’t tell a fib – especially such a big one.”

“Thank you,” Carpenter said. “And I believe you came from Greater Mars, which, I imagine, is the planet’s largest and most powerful country. Tell me something about your civilization.

“It’s a magnificent civilization, Mr. Carpenter. Every day we progress by leaps and bounds, and now that we’ve licked the instability factor, we’ll progress even faster.”

” ’The instability factor’? ”

“Human emotion. It held us back for years, but it can’t any more. Now, when a boy reaches his thirteenth birthday and a girl reaches her fifteenth, they are desentimentalized. And after that, they are able to make calm cool decisions strictly in keeping with pure logic. That way they can achieve maximum efficiency. At the Institute preparatory school, Skip and I are going through what is known as the ’pre-desentimentalization process.’ After four more years we’ll begin receiving dosages of the desentimentalization drug. Then —”

SKRRRREEEEEEEEEEK! went one of the pteranodons it sideswiped the shield-field.

Carpenter watched it as it wobbled wildly for a moment, and before it shot skyward he caught a glimpse of its occupant. All he saw was an expressionless face, but from its forward location he deduced that the man was lying in a prone position between the two twelve-foot wings.

Marcy was trembling. “I – I think they’re out to kill us, Mr. Carpenter,” she said. “They threatened to if we tried to escape. Now that they’ve got our voices on the ransom tape, they probably figure they don’t need us any more.”

He reached back and patted her hand where it lay lightly on his shoulder. “It’s all right, pumpkin. With old Sam here protecting you, you haven’t got a thing to worry about.”

“Is – is that really his name?”

“It sure is. Sam Triceratops, Esquire. Sam, this is Marcy. You take good care of her and her brother – do you hear me?” He turned his head and looked into the girl’s wide blue eyes. “He says he will. I’ll bet you haven’t got anybody like him on Mars, have you?”

She shook her head – as standard a Martian gesture, apparently, as it was a terrestrial – and for a moment he thought that a tremulous smile was going to break upon her lips. It didn’t, though – not quite. “Indeed we haven’t, Mr. Carpenter.”

He squinted up through the nacelle at the circling pteranodons (he still thought of them as pteranodons, even though he knew they were not). “Where’s this spaceship of theirs, Marcy? Is it far from here?”

She pointed to the left. “Over there. You come to a river, and then a swamp. Skip and I escaped this morning when Fritad, who was guarding the lock, fell asleep. They’re a bunch of sleepyheads, always falling asleep when it’s their turn to stand guard. Eventually the Greater Martian Space Police will track the ship here; we thought we could hide out until they got here. We crept through the swamp and floated across the river on a log. It – it was awful, with big snakes on legs chasing us, and – and – ”

His shoulder informed him that she was trembling again. “Look, I’ll tell you what, pumpkin,” he said. “You go back to the cabin and fix yourself and Skip something to eat. I don’t know what kind of food you’re accustomed to, but it can’t be too different from what Sam’s got in stock. You’ll find some square vacuum-containers in the cupboard – they contain sandwiches. On the refrigerator-shelf just above, you’ll find some tall bottles with circlets of little stars – they contain pop. Open some of each, and dig in. Come to think of it, I’m hungry myself, so while you’re at it, fix me something, too.”

Again, she almost smiled. “All right, Mr. Carpenter. I’ll fix you something special.”

Alone in the driver’s compartment, he surveyed the Cretaceous landscape through the front, lateral and rear viewscopes. A range of young mountains showed far to the left. To the right was the distant line of cliffs. The rear viewscope framed scattered stands of willows, fan palms and dwarf magnolias, beyond which the forested uplands, wherein lay his entry area, began. Far ahead, volcanos smoked with Mesozoic abandon.

79,061,889 years from now, this territory would be part of the state of Montana. 79,062,156 years from now, a group of paleontologists digging somewhere in the vastly changed terrain would unearth the fossil of a modern man who had died 79,062,156 years before his disinterment

Would the fossil turn out to be his own?

Carpenter grinned, and looked up at the sky to where the two pteranodons still circled. It could have been the fossil of a Martian.

He turned the triceratank around and started off in the opposite direction. “Come on, Sam,” he said. “Let’s see if we can’t find a good hiding place where we can lay over for the night. Maybe by morning I’ll be able to figure out what to do. Who’d ever have thought we’d wind up playing rescue-team to a couple of kids?”

Sam grunted deep in his gear box and made tracks for the forested uplands.

The trouble with going back in time to investigate anachronisms was that frequently you found yourself the author of the anachronism in question. Take the classic instance of Professor Archibald Quigley.

Whether the story was true or not, no one could say for certain, but, true or not, it pointed up the irony of time travel as nothing else could. A staunch Coleridge admirer, Professor Quigley had been curious for years – or so the story went – as to the identity of the visitor who had called at the farmhouse in Nether Stowey in the county of Somersetshire, England in the year 1797 and interrupted Coleridge while the poet was writing down a poem which he had just composed in his sleep. The visitor had hung around for an hour, and afterward Coleridge hadn’t been able to remember the rest of the poem. As a result, Kubla Khan was never finished. Eventually, Professor Quigley’s curiosity grew to such proportions that he could no longer endure it, and he applied at the Bureau of Time Travel for permission to return to the place-time in order that he might set his mind at ease. His request was granted, whereupon he handed over half his life-savings without a qualm in exchange for a trip back to the morning in question. Emerging near the farmhouse, he hid in a clump of bushes, watching the front door; then, growing impatient when no one showed up, he went to the door himself, and knocked. Coleridge answered the knock personally, and even though he asked the professor in, the dark look that he gave his visitor was something which the professor never forgot to the end of his days.

Recalling the story, Carpenter chuckled. It wasn’t really anything for him to be chuckling about, though, because what had happened to the professor could very well happen to him. Whether he liked it or not, there was a good chance that the fossil which the North American Paleontological Society had sent him back to the Mesozoic Era to investigate might turn out to be his own.

Nevertheless, he refused to let the possibility bother him. For one thing, the minute he found himself in a jam, all he had to do was contact his two assistants, Miss Sands and Peter Detritus, and they would come flying to his aid in Edith the therapod or one of the other reptivehicles which NAPS kept on hand. For another, he had already learned that outside forces were at work in the Cretaceous Period. He wasn’t the only candidate for fossildom. Anyway, worrying about such matters was a waste of time: what was going to happen had already happened, and that was all there was to it.

Skip crawled out of the cabin and leaned over the back of the driver’s seat. “Marcy sent you up a sandwich and a bottle of pop, Mr. Carpenter,” he said, handing over both items. And then, “Can I sit beside you, sir?”

“Sure thing,” Carpenter said, moving over.

The boy climbed over the backrest and slid down into the seat. No sooner had he done so than another buttercup- colored head appeared. “Would – would it be all right, Mr.. Carpenter, if – if -”

“Move over and make room for her in the middle, Skip.”

Sam’s head was a good five feet wide, hence the driver’s compartment was by no means a small one. But the seat itself was only three feet wide, and accommodating two half-grown kids and a man the size of Carpenter was no small accomplishment, especially in view of the fact that all three of them were eating sandwiches and drinking pop. Carpenter felt like an indulgent parent taking his offspring on an excursion through a zoo.

And such a zoo! They were in the forest now, and around them Cretaceous oaks and laurels stood; there were willows, too, and screw pines and ginkgos galore, and now and then they passed through incongruous stands of fan palms.

hrough the undergrowth they glimpsed a huge and lumbering creature that looked like a horse in front and a kangaroo in back. Carpenter identified it as an anatosaurus. In a clearing they came upon a struthiomimus and startled the ostrich-like creature half out of its wits. A spike-backed ankylosaurus glowered at them from behind a clump of sedges, but discreetly refrained from questioning Sam’s right of way. Glancing into a treetop, Carpenter saw his first archaeopteryx. Raising his eyes still higher, he saw the circling pteranodons.
He had hoped to lose them after entering the forest, and to this end he held Sam on an erratic course. Obviously, however, they were equipped with matter detectors. A more sophisticated subterfuge would be necessary. There was a chance that he might bring them down with a barrage of stun-charges, but it was a slim one and he decided not to try it in any event. The kidnappers undoubtedly deserved to die for what they had done, but he was not their judge. He would kill them if he had to, but he refused to do it as long as he had an ace up his sleeve.
Turning toward the two children, he saw that they had lost interest in their sandwiches and were looking apprehensively upward. Catching their eye, he winked. “I think it’s high time we gave them the slip, don’t you? ”

“But how, Mr. Carpenter?” Skip asked. “They’re locked right on us with their detector-beams. We’re just lucky ordinary Martians like them can’t buy super Martian weapons. They’ve got melters, which are a form of iridescers: but if they had real iridescers, we’d be goners.”

“We can shake them easy, merely by jumping a little ways back in time. Come on, you two – finish your sandwiches and stop worrying.”

Their apprehension vanished, and excitement took its place. “Let’s jump back six days,” Marcy said. “They’ll never find us then because we won’t be here yet.”
“Can’t do it, pumpkin – it would take too much starch out of Sam. Time-jumping requires a tremendous amount of power. In order for a part-time time-machine like Sam to jump any great distance, its power has to be supplemented by the power of a regular time station. The station propels the reptivehicle back to a pre-established entry area, and the time-traveler drives out of the area and goes about his business. The only way he can get back to the present is by driving back into the area, contacting the station and tapping its power-supply again, or by sending back a distress signal and having someone come to get him in another reptivehicle. At the most, Sam could make about a four-day round trip under his own power but it would burn him out. Once that happened, even the station couldn’t pull him back. I think we’d better settle for an hour.”

Ironically, the smaller the temporal distance you had to deal with, the more figuring you had to do. After directing the triceratank via the liaison-ring on his right index finger to continue on its present erratic course, Carpenter got busy with pad and pencil, and presently he began punching out arithmetical brain-twisters on the compact computer that was built into the control panel.

Marcy leaned forward, watching him intently. “If it will expedite matters, Mr. Carpenter,” she said, “I can do simple sums, such as those you’re writing down, in my head. For instance, 828,464,280 times 4,692,438,921 equals 3,887,518,032,130,241,880.”

“It may very well at that, pumpkin, but I think we’d better check and make sure, don’t you?” He punched out the first two sets of numerals on the calculator, and depressed the multiplication button. 3,887,518,032,130,241,880, the answer panel said. He nearly dropped the pencil.

“She’s a mathematical genius,” Skip said. “I’m a mechanical genius myself. That’s how come we were kidnaped. Our government values geniuses highly. They’ll pay a lot of money to get us back.”

“Your government? I thought kidnappers preyed on parents, not governments.”
“Oh, but our parents aren’t responsible for us any more, Marcy explained. “In fact, they’ve probably forgotten all about us. After the age of six, children become the property of the state. Modern Martian parents are desentimentalized, you see, and don’t in the least mind getting rid of – giving up their children.”

Carpenter regarded the two solemn faces for some time. “Yes,” he said, “I do see at that.”

With Marcy’s help, he completed the rest of his calculations; then he fed the final set of figures into Sam’s frontal ganglion. “Here we go, you two!” he said, and threw the jumpback switch. There was a brief shimmering effect and an almost imperceptible jar. So smoothly did the transition take place that Sam did not even pause in his lumbering walk.

Carpenter turned his wristwatch back from 4:16 P.M. to 3:16 P.M. “Take a look at the sky now, kids. See any more pteranodons?”

They peered up through the foliage. “Not a one, Mr. Carpenter,” Marcy said, her eyes warm with admiration. “Not a single one!”

“Say, you’ve got our scientists beat forty different ways from Sunday!” Skip said. “They think they’re pretty smart, but I’ll bet they’ve never even thought of trying to travel in time. . . How far can you jump into the future, Mr. Carpenter – in a regular time-machine, I mean?”

“Given sufficient power, to the end of time – if time does have an end. But traveling beyond one’s own present is forbidden by law. The powers-that-be in 2156 consider it bad for a race of people to find out what’s going to happen to them before it actually happens, and for once I’m inclined to think that the powers-that-be are right.”

He discontinued liaison control, took over manually and set Sam on a course at right angles to their present direction. At length they broke free from the forest onto the plain. In the distance the line of cliffs that he had noticed earlier showed whitely against the blue and hazy sky. “How’d you kids like to camp out for the night?” he asked.

Skip’s eyes went round. “Camp out, Mr. Carpenter?”

“Sure. We’ll build a fire, cook our food over it, spread our blankets on the ground – regular American Indian style. Maybe we can even find a cave in the cliffs. Think you’d like that?”

Both pairs of eyes were round now. “What’s ’American Indian style,’ Mr. Carpenter?” Marcy asked.

He told them about the Arapahoes and the Cheyennes and the Crows and the Apaches, and about the buffalo and the great plains and Custer’s last stand, and the Conestogas and the frontiersmen (the old ones, not the “new”), and about Geronimo and Sitting Bull and Cochise, and all the while he talked their eyes remained fastened on his face as though it were the sun and they had never before seen day. When he finished telling them about the settling of the west, he told them about the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln and Generals Grant and Lee and the Gettysburg Address and the Battle of Bull Run and the surrender at Appomattox.

He had never talked so much in all his life. He wondered what had come over him, why he felt so carefree and gay all of a sudden and why nothing seemed to matter except the haze-ridden Cretaceous afternoon and the two round-eyed children sitting beside him. But he did not waste much time wondering. He went on to tell them about the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, and about what a wonderful dream the founding fathers had had and about how much better it would have turned out if opportunistic men had not used it to further their own selfish end and about how relatively wonderful it had turned out anyway, despite the many crimes that had been committed in its name. By the time he finished, evening was on hand. The white cliffs rose up before them, shouldering the darkening sky.

At the base of the cliffs they found a jim-dandy of an untenanted cave, large enough to accommodate both Sam and themselves and with enough room left over to build a campfire. Carpenter drove the reptivehicle inside and parked it in the rear; then he extended the shield-field till it included the cave, the side of the cliff and a large semicircular area at the base of the cliff. After checking the “front yard” and finding that it contained no reptiles except several small and harmless lizards, he put the two children to work gathering firewood.

eanwhile, he generated a one-way illusion-field just within the mouth of the cave. By this time Skip, at least, had shed his reserve. “Can I help build the fire, Mr. Carpenter?” he cried, jumping up and down. “Can I – can I – can I?”

“Skip!” Marcy said.
“It’s all right, pumpkin,” Carpenter told her. “You can help, too, if you like.”

The walls of the cave turned red, then rosy, as young flames grew into full-fledged ones.

Carpenter opened three packages of frankfurters and three packages of rolls and showed his charges how to spear the frankfurters on the end of pointed sticks and roast them over the fire. Afterward he demonstrated how to place a frankfurter in a roll and smother it with mustard, pickle relish, and chopped onions. It was as though he had flung wide magic casements opening on enchanted lands that the two children had not dreamed existed. The last vestiges of solemnity departed from their faces, and during the next half hour they created and consumed six hot dogs apiece. Skip got so excited that he nearly fell into the fire, and the smile that had been trying all afternoon to break upon Marcy’s lips at last came through, teaching the flames to burn bright.

Carpenter had made a pot of cocoa in Sam’s kitchenette, and nothing more was needed to round out the cookout except marshmallows. Was it remotely possible, he wondered, that his efficient chief assistant had included such nostalgic delicacies among the various supplies in Sam’s tail-compartment? It was doubtful at best, but he took a look anyway. To his delight, he found a whole box of them.
Again, he performed a demonstration, while the two children looked on in open-mouthed awe. When the two marshmallows which he had speared on his stick turned golden brown he thought for a moment that Skip’s eyes were going to fall out of his head. As for Marcy, she just stood there and stared as though Carpenter had said, “Let there be light!” and the first day had come into being.

Laughing, he removed the marshmallows and handed one to each of them. “Skip!” Marcy said when the boy popped his into his mouth and dispatched it with a single gulp. “Where are your manners?” She ate hers daintily.

After the marshmallow roast, he went outside and cut enough laurel and dogwood branches for three mattresses. He showed the children how to arrange the branches on the cavern floor and how to cover them with the blankets which he took out of Sam’s tail-compartment. Skip needed no further invitation to turn in: exhausted from his enthusiastic activities and becalmed by his full stomach, he collapsed upon his blanket as soon as he had it in place. Carpenter got three more blankets, covered him with one of them and turned to Marcy. “You look tired, too, pumpkin.”

“Oh, but I’m not, Mr. Carpenter. Not in the least bit. I’m two years older than Skip, you know. He’s just a kid.”

He folded the remaining two blankets into impromptu pillows and placed them a few feet from the fire. He sat down on one of them; she sat down on the other. All evening, grunts and growls and groans had been coming sporadically from beyond the shield-field; now they were supplanted by an awesome noise that brought to mind a gigantic road-repair machine breaking up old pavement. The cavern floor trembled, and the firelight flickered wildly on the wall. “Sounds like old tyrannosaurus,” Carpenter said. “Probably out looking for a midnight snack in the form of a struthiomimus or two.”

“’Tyrannosaurus,’ Mr. Carpenter?”

He described the ferocious theropod for her. She nodded after he had finished, and a shudder shook her. “Yes,” she said, “Skip and I saw one. It was a little while after we crossed the river. We – we hid in a clump of bushes till he passed. What terrible creatures you have here on Earth, Mr. Carpenter!”

“They no longer exist in my day and age,” Carpenter said. “We have terrible ’creatures’ of another order – ’creatures’ that would send old tyrannosaurus high-tailing it for the hills like a flushed rabbit. I shouldn’t be complaining, though. Our technological debauchery left us with a cold-war hangover – sure; but it paid off in quite a number of things. Time travel, for one. Interplanetary travel, for another.” At this point, the road-repair machine struck a bad stretch of pavement, and, judging from the ungodly series of sounds that ensued, blew a rod to boot. The girl moved closer to him. “Take it easy, pumpkin. There’s nothing to worry about. An army of theropods couldn’t break through that shield-field.”
“Why do you call me ’pumpkin,’ Mr. Carpenter? On Mars, a pumpkin is an unpleasant squashy vegetable that grows in swamps and midden-marshes.”

He laughed. The sounds from beyond the shield-field diminished, then faded away, as the theropod thundered off in another direction. “On Earth, a pumpkin is quite a nice vegetable – or maybe it’s a fruit. Whichever, it’s quite respectable. But that’s beside the point. ’Pumpkin’ is what a man calls a girl when he likes her.”

There was a silence. Then, “Do you have a real girl, Mr. Carpenter?”

“Not actually, Marcy. You might say that figuratively speaking I worship one from afar.”

“That doesn’t sound like very much fun. Who is she?”

“She’s my chief assistant at the North American Paleontological Society where I work – Miss Sands. Her first name is ’Elaine,’ but I never call her by it. She sees to it that I don’t forget anything when I retro-travel, and she cases the placetimes over a time-scope before I start out. Then she and my other assistant, Peter Detritus, stand by, ready to come to the rescue if I should send back a can of chicken soup. You see, a can of chicken soup is our distress signal. It’s about as big an object as a paleontologivehicle can handle in most cases, and the word ’chicken’ in our language connotes fear.”

“But why do you worship her from afar, Mr. Carpenter?”

“Well you see,” Carpenter said, “Miss Sands isn’t just an ordinary run-of-the-mill girl. She’s the cool, aloof type – a goddess, if you know what I mean. Although I don’t see how you possibly could. Anyway, you simply don’t treat goddesses the way you treat mere girls – you keep your distance and worship them from afar and humbly wait for them to bestow favors upon you. I – I worship her so much, in fact, that every time I’m near her I get so frustrated that I can hardly say anything. Maybe after I get to know her better it’ll be different. So far, I’ve known her three months.”

He fell silent. Marcy’s hearrings twinkled in the firelight as she turned and looked gently up into his face. “What’s the matter, Mr. Carpenter – cat got your tongue?”

“I was just thinking,” Carpenter said. “Three months is quite a long time at that – long enough for a man to tell whether a girl is ever going to like him or not. And Miss Sands isn’t ever going to like me – I can see that now. Why, she doesn’t even look at me unless she absolutely has to, and she won’t say two words to me if she can possibly avoid it. So you see, even if I did stop worshipping her from afar and got up enough nerve to tell her that I love her, she would probably only be annoyed and tell me to get lost.”

Marcy was indignant. “She must be out of her mind, Mr. Carpenter – just plain out of her mind. She should be ashamed of herself!”

“No, Marcy – you’ve got her all wrong. You can’t expect a girl as beautiful as she is to go for a good-for-nothing time-bum like me.”

“A good-for-nothing time-bum indeed! You know, Mr. Carpenter, I don’t think you understand women very well. Why, I’ll bet if you told her you love her, she’d throw herself into your arms!”

“You’re a romantic, Marcy. In real life, such things don’t happen.” He stood up. “Well, young lady, I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. Shall we call it a day?”
“If you wish to, Mr. Carpenter.”

She was asleep by the time he pulled her blanket up to her chin. As he stood there looking down at her, she turned on her side, and the firelight caught the buttercup-hue fuzz on the back of her neck, where her hair had been cut too short, and tinted it red-gold. All he could think of were buttercup-clad meadows in spring, and the warm clean sun rising and ushering in the dew-jeweled day . . .
After checking to see if Skip was all right, he went over and stood in the cave mouth and stared out into the darkness. With tyrannosaurus’ departure, the lesser Cretaceous creatures had come out of their hiding places and were making their presence known again. He glimpsed the grotesque shapes of several ornithopods; he saw an ankylosaurus standing immobile by a coppice of fan palms; he heard lizards scurrying both inside and outside the shield-field. A moon subtly different from the one he was most accustomed to was climbing into the prehistoric heavens. The difference lay in the number of meteorite craters. There were far fewer of them now than there would be 79,062,156 years in the future.

He realized presently that although he was still looking at the moon he was no longer seeing it. He was seeing the campfire instead, and the girl and the boy enthusiastically roasting marshmallows. Why hadn’t he gotten married and had children? he wondered suddenly. Why had he passed up all the pretty girls he had ever known, only to fall hopelessly in love at the age of thirty-two with a beautiful goddess who preferred not to know he was alive? What had given him the notion that the thrill derived from adventure was somehow superior to the contentment derived from loving and being loved? – that getting the bugs out of historical and pre-historical times was more important than getting the bugs out of his own life? That a lonely room in a boarding house was a man’s castle and that drinks drunk in dim-lit bars with fun-girls he could no longer remember the next day spelled “freedom”?

What treasure had he expected to find in the past that could equal the treasures he had passed up in the future?

The night had grown chill. Before lying down to sleep he added more wood to the fire. He listened to the flames crackle and watched their pale ffickerings on the cavern walls. A lizard regarded him with golden eyes out of prehistoric shadows. In the distance, an omithopod went Waroompf! Beside him in the Mesozoic night the two children breathed softly in their green-bough beds. Presently he slept.

The next morning, Carpenter wasted no time in getting the show on the road.
Marcy and Skip were all for remaining in the cave indefinitely, but he explained to them that, were they to stay in one place, the kidnappers would find them that much sooner, and that therefore it would be better if they kept on the move. Thus far, everything he had told them had rung a bell in their language just as everything they had told him had rung a bell in his, but this time, for some reason, he had a hard time getting through to them. Either that, or they just plain didn’t want to leave the cave. Leave it they did however – after ablutions performed in Sam’s compact lavatory and a breakfast of bacon and eggs cooked in Sam’s kitchenette – when he made it clear to them that he was still the boss.
He hadn’t as yet decided on a definite plan of action. While trying to make up his mind, he let the triceratank pick its own course over the plain – a feat for which its hypersensitive terrainometer more than qualified.

Actually, he had only two choices: (1) – continue to play big brother to the two children and elude the kidnappers until they gave up or until the cavalry, in the form of the Greater Martian Space Police, arrived on the scene, or (2) – return to the entry-area and signal Miss Sands and Peter Detritus to bring the triceratank back to the present. The second choice was by far the safer course of action. He would have settled for it without hesitation if it had not been for two things: (a) Marcy and Skip, while they undoubtedly would be able to adapt to a civilization as similar to their own as twenty-second century terrestrial civilization was, might never feel completely at home in it, and (b) sooner or later, they would come face to face with the demoralizing information that their own civilization of 79,062,156 years ago had long since turned to dust and that the technological dreams which they had been taught to regard as gospel had come to nothing. A possible third choice lay in taking them back to Earth Present, keeping them there until such time as the kidnappers gave up and left or until the Space Police showed up, and then returning them to Earth Past; but such a procedure would involve several round trips to the Cretaceous Period. Carpenter knew without having to ask that, owing to the fantastic expense involved, NAPS’ budget couldn’t support even one such non-paleontological round trip, to say nothing of several.

Pondering the problem, he became aware that someone was tugging on his sleeve. It was Skip, who had come forward and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Can I steer him, Mr. Carpenter? Can I?”

Carpenter surveyed the plain through the front, lateral, and rear viewscopes; then he raised Sam’s head and took a long look at the sky through the nacelle. A dark speck hovered high above the line of cliffs they had left less than an hour ago. As he watched, it was joined by two others. “Later on, Skip. Right now, I think we’ve got company.”

Skip’s eyes had found the specks, too. “The pteranodons again, Mr. Carpenter?”
“I’m afraid so.”

The specks grew rapidly larger, resolved into winged shapes with narrow, pointed heads. Marcy had come forward, and her gaze, too, was directed at the sky. This time, she didn’t seem to be in the least bit frightened, and neither did Skip. “Are we going to jump back in time again, Mr. Carpenter?” she asked.
“We’ll see, pumpkin,” he said.

The pteranodons were clearly visible now. There was no question but what they were interested in Sam. Whether they would try attacking him again was another matter. In any event, Carpenter decided that, even though the triceratank’s shield-field was in operation, his best bet would be to head for the nearest stand of trees. It was a stand of palmettos, and about half a mile distant. He threw Sam into high, and took over the controls again. “Come on, Sam,” he said, to keep the kids’ morale from faltering, “show Marcy and Skip what you can do!”
Sam took off like a twentieth-century locomotive, his flexible steel legs moving rhythmically, his alloy-hoofs pounding the ground in a thunderous cadence. Nevertheless, he was no match for the pteranodons, and they overtook him easily. The foremost one swooped down a hundred yards Lead, released what looked like a big metal egg and soared skyward.

The metal egg turned out to be a bomb. The crater that it created was so wide that it took all of Carpenter’s skill to guide Sam around it without rolling the reptivehicle over. Instantly he revved up the engine and shifted into second. “They’re not going to get us that way, are they, old timer?” he said.
“URRRRRRRR!” Sam grunted.

Carpenter glanced at the sky. All of the pteranodons were directly overhead now. Circling. One, two, three, he counted. Three . . . yesterday there had been only two. “Marcy,” he said, suddenly excited, “how many kidnappers did you say there were?”

“Three, Mr. Carpenter. Roul and Fritad and Holmer.”

“Then they’re all up there. That means the ship is unguarded – unless there’s a crew.”

“No, Mr. Carpenter – there’s no crew. They did the piloting themselves.”

He lowered his gaze from the circling pteranodons. “Do you kids think you could get inside?”

“Easy,” Skip said. “It’s a military-surplus flyabout-carrier with standard locks, and standard locks are simple for someone with a little mechanical ability to disengage. That’s how come Marcy and I were able to escape in the first place. You just leave everything to me, Mr. Carpenter.”

“Good,” Carpenter said. “We’ll be there waiting for them when they come back.”

With Marcy doing the figuring, retro co-ordinate calculus was a breeze. Sam was ready for jump-back in a matter of seconds.

Carpenter waited till they were in the stand of palmettos, then he threw the switch. Again, there was a shimmering effect and a slight jar, and daylight gave way to pre-dawn darkness. Behind them in a cave at the base of the cliffs, another triceratank stood, and another Carpenter and another Marcy and Skip still slept soundly in their green- bough beds.

“How far did we jump back this time, Mr. Carpenter?” Skip asked.

Carpenter turned on Sam’s headlights and began guiding him out of the stand of palmettos. “Four hours. That should give us plenty of time to reach the ship and get set before our friends return. We may even reach it before they start out – assuming of course that they haven’t been searching for us round the clock.”
“But suppose they spot us in this time-phase?” Marcy objected. “Won’t we be in the same pickle we just got out of?”

“It’s a possibility, pumpkin. But the odds have it overwhelmingly that they didn’t spot us. Otherwise they wouldn’t have gone on searching for us – right?”
She gazed at him admiringly. “You know something, Mr. Carpenter? You’re pretty smart.”

Coming from someone who could multiply 4,692,438,921 by 828,464,280 in her head, it was quite a compliment. However, Carpenter managed to take it in his stride. “I hope you kids can find the ship now,” he said.

“We’re already on the right course,” Skip said. “I know, because I’ve got a perfect sense of direction. It’s camouflaged as a big tree.”

For the second time that morning, the sun came up. As had been the case yesterday, Sam’s size and mien cowed the various Cretaceous creatures they met although whether tyrannosaurus would have been similarly cowed had they come upon him was a moot question at best. In any case, they didn’t come upon him. By eight o’clock they were moving over the same terrain that Carpenter had come to not long after leaving the forested uplands the day before. “Look!” Marcy exclaimed presently. “There’s the tree we climbed when the humpbacked monster chased us!”

“It sure is,” Skip said. “Boy were we scared!”

Carpenter grinned. “He probably thought you were some species of flora he hadn’t tried yet. Good thing for his digestive system that I happened along when I did.”

They looked at him blankly for a moment, and at first he thought that the barriers of two different languages and two different thought worlds had been too high for his little joke to surmount. Such, however, did not prove to be the case. First Marcy burst out laughing, and then Skip.

“Mr. Carpenter, if you aren’t the darndest!” Marcy cried.

They went on. The landscape grew more and more open, with coppices of palmettos and clusters of fan palms constituting most of the major plant-life. Far to the right, smoking volcanos added their discolored breath to the hazy atmosphere. In the distances ahead, mountains showed, their heads lost in the Mesozoic smog. The humidity was so high that large globules of moisture kept condensing on Sam’s nacelle and rolling down like raindrops. Tortoises, lizards, and snakes abounded, and once a real pteranodon glided swiftly by overhead.
At length they came to the river which Marcy had mentioned and which the increasing softness of the ground had been heralding for some time. Looking downstream, Carpenter saw his first brontosaurus.

He pointed it out to the kids, and they stared at it bug-eyed. It was wallowing in the middle of the sluggish stream. Only its small head, its long neck, and the upper part of its back were visible. The neck brought to mind a lofty rubbery tower, but the illusion was marred by the frequency with which the head kept dipping down to the ferns and horse tails that lined the river bank. The poor creature was so enormous that it virtually had to keep eating day and night in order to stay alive.

Carpenter found a shallows and guided Sam across the stream to the opposite bank. The ground was somewhat firmer here, but the firmness was deceiving, for the reptivehicle’s terrainometer registered an even higher frequency of bogs. (Lord! Carpenter thought. Suppose the two kids had blundered into one!) Ferns grew in abundance, and there were thick carpets of sassafras and sedges. Palmettos and fan palms were still the rule, but there were occasional ginkgos scattered here and there. One of them was a veritable giant of a tree, towering to a height of over one hundred and fifty feet.

Carpenter stared at it. Cretaceous Period ginkgos generally grew on high ground, not low, but a ginkgo the size of this one had no business growing in the Cretaceous Period at all. Moreover, the huge tree was incongruous in other first respects. Its trunk was far too thick, for one thing. For another, the lower part of it up to a height of about twenty feet consisted of three slender subtrunks, forming a sort of tripod on which the rest of the tree rested.

At this point, Carpenter became aware that his two charges were pointing excitedly at the object of his curiosity. “That’s it!” Skip exclaimed. “That’s the ship!”

“Well, no wonder it caught my eye,” Carpenter said. “They didn’t do a very good job of camouflaging it. I can even see one of the fly-about-bays.”

Marcy said, “They weren’t particularly concerned about how it looks from the ground. It’s how it looks from above that counts. Of course, if the Space Police get here in time they’ll pick it up sooner or later on their detector-beams, but it will fool them for a while at least.”

“You talk as though you don’t expect them to get here in time.”

“I don’t. Oh, they’ll get here eventually, Mr. Carpenter, but not for weeks, and maybe even months. It takes a long time for their radar-intelligence department to track a ship, besides which it’s a sure bet that they don’t even know we’ve been kidnaped yet. In all previous cases where Institute children have been abducted, the government has paid the ransom first and then notified the Space Police. Of course, even after the ransom has been paid and the children have been returned, the Space Police still launch a search for the kidnappers, and eventually they find their hideout; but naturally the kidnapers are long gone by then.”

“I think,” Carpenter said, “that it’s high time a precedent was established, don’t you?”

After parking Sam out of sight in a nearby coppice of palmettos and deactivating the shield-field, he reached in under the driver’s seat and pulled out the only hand weapon the triceratank contained – a lightweight but powerful stun-rifle specially designed by NAPS for the protection of time-travel personnel. Slinging it on his shoulder, he threw open the nacelle, stepped out onto Sam’s snout and helped the two children down to the ground. The trio approached the ship.
Skip shinned up one of the landing jacks, climbed some distance up the trunk and had the locks open in a matter of seconds. He lowered an aluminum ladder. “Everything’s all set, Mr. Carpenter.”

Marcy glanced over her shoulder at the palmetto coppice. “Will – will Sam be all right do you think?”

“Of course he will, pumpkin,” Carpenter said. “Up with you now.”

The ship’s air-conditioned interior had a temperature that paralleled Sam’s, the lighting was cool, subdued. Beyond the inner lock, a brief corridor led to a spiral steel stairway that gave access to the decks above and to the engine rooms below. Glancing at his watch, which he had set four hours back, Carpenter saw that the time was 8:24. In a few minmutes, the pteranodons would be closing in on the Sam and Carpenter and Marcy and Skip of the “previous” timephase. Even assuming that the three kidnappers headed straight for the ship afterward, there was still time to spare – time enough, certainly, to send a certain message before laying the trap he had in mind. True, he could send the message after Roul and Fritad and Holmer were safely locked in their cabins, but in the event that something went wrong he might not be able to send it at all, so it was better to send it right now. “Okay, you kids,” he said, “close the locks and then lead the way to the communications-room.”

They obeyed the first order with alacrity, but hedged on the second. Marcy lingered in the corridor, Skip just behind her.

“Why do you want to go to the communications-room, Mr. Carpenter?” she asked.
“So you kids can radio our position to the Space Police and tell them to get here in a hurry. You do know how, I hope.”

Skip looked at Marcy. Marcy looked at Skip. After a moment, both of them shook their heads. “Now see here,” Carpenter said, annoyed, “you know perfectly well you know how. Why are you pretending you don’t?”

Skip looked at the deck. “We – we don’t want to go home, Mr. Carpenter.”

Carpenter regarded first one solemn face and then the other. “But you’ve got to be home! Where else can you go?”

Neither of them answered. Neither of them looked at him. “It boils down to this,” he proceeded presently. “If we succeed in capturing Roul and Fritad and Holmer, fine and dandy. We’ll sit tight, and when the Space Police get here we’ll turn them over. But if something goes wrong and we don’t capture them, we’ll at least have an ace up our sleeve in the form of the message you’re going to send. Now I’m familiar with the length of time it takes to get from Mars to Earth in the spaceships of my day, but I don’t of course know how long your spaceships take. So maybe you two can give me some idea of the length of time that will elapse between the Space Police’s receipt of our message and their arrival here on Earth,” he asked.

“With the two planets in their present position, just over four days,” Marcy said. “If you like, Mr. Carpenter, I can figure it out for you right down to a fraction of a – “
“That’s close enough, pumpkin. Now, up the stairs with you and you too, Skip. Time’s a-wasting!”

They complied glumly. The communications-room was on the second deck. Some of the equipment was vaguely familiar to Carpenter, but most of it was Greek. A wide, deck-to-ceiling viewport looked out over the Cretaceous plain, and, glancing down through the ersatz foliage, he found that he could see the palmetto coppice in which Sam was hidden. He scanned the sky for signs of the returning pteranodons. The sky was empty. Turning away from the viewport, he noticed that a fourth party had entered the room. He unslung his stun-rifle and managed to get it halfway to his shoulder; then, ZZZZZZTTT! a metal tube in the fourth party’s hand went, and the stun-rifle was no more.
He looked incredulously down at his hand.

The fourth party was a tall, muscular man clad in clothing similar to Marcy’s and Skip’s, but of a much richer material. The expression on his narrow face contained about as much feeling as a dried fig, and the metal tube in his hand was now directed at the center of Carpenter’s forehead. Carpenter didn’t need to be told that if he moved so much as one iota he would suffer a fate similar to that suffered by his rifle, but the man vouchsafed the information anyway. “If you move, you melt,” he said.

“No, Holmer!” Marcy cried. “Don’t you dare harm him. He only helped us because he felt sorry for us.”

“I thought you said there were only three of them, pumpkin,” Carpenter said, not taking his eyes from Holmer’s face.

“That is all there are, Mr. Carpenter. Honest! The third pteranodon must have been a drone. They tricked us!”

Holmer should have grinned, but he didn’t. There should have been triumph in his tone of voice when he addressed Carpenter, but there wasn’t.

“You had to be from the future, friend,” he said. “Me and my buddies cased this place some time ago, and we knew you couldn’t be from now. That being so, it wasn’t hard for us to figure out that when that tank of yours disappeared yesterday you either jumped ahead in time or jumped back in it, and the odds were two to one that you jumped back. So we gambled on it, figured you’d try the same thing again if you were forced into it, and rigged up a little trap for you, which we figured you’d be smart enough to fall for. You were. The only reason I don’t melt you now is because Roul and Fritad aren’t back yet. I want them to get a look at you first. I’ll melt you then but good. And the brats, too. We don’t need them any more.”

Carpenter recoiled. The dictates of pure logic had much in common with the dictates of pure vindictiveness. Probably the pteranodons had been trying to “melt” Marcy, Skip, and himself almost from the beginning, and if it hadn’t been for Sam’s shield-field, they undoubtedly would have succeeded. Oh well, Carpenter thought, logic was a two-edged blade, and two could wield it as well as one.

“How soon will your buddies be back, Holmer?”

The Martian regarded him blankly. Carpenter tumbled to the fact that the man wasn’t wearing hearrings then.

He said to Marcy: “Tell me, pumpkin, if this ship were to fall on its side, would either the change in its position or its impact with the ground be liable to set off an explosion? Answer me with a ’yes’ or a ’no’ so that our friend here won’t know what we’re talking about.”

“No, Mr. Carpenter.”

“And is the structure of the ship sturdy enough to prevent bulkheads from caving in on us?”

“Yes, Mr. Carpenter.”

“How about the equipment in this room? Is it bolted securely enough to prevent its being torn loose?”

“Yes, Mr. Carpenter.”

“Good. Now, as surreptitiously as you can, you and Skip start sidling over to that steel supporting pillar in the center deck. When the ship starts to topple, you hold on for dear life.”

“What’s he saying to you, kid?” Holmer demanded.

Marcy stuck her tongue out at him “Wouldn’t you like to know!” she retorted.
Obviously, the ability to make calm, cool decisions strictly in keeping with pure logic did not demand a concomitant ability to think fast, for it was not until that moment that the desentimentalized Martian realized that he alone of the four persons present was not wearing hearrings.

Reaching into the small pouch that hung at his side, he withdrew a pair. Then, keeping his melter directed at Carpenter’s forehead with one hand, he began attaching them to his ears with the other. Meanwhile, Carpenter ran his right thumb over the tiny, graduated nodules of the liaison-ring on his right index finger, and when he found the ones he wanted, he pressed them in their proper sequence. On the plain below, Sam stuck his snout out of the palmetto coppice.
Carpenter concentrated, his thoughts riding the tele-circuit that now connected his mind with Sam’s sacral ganglion: Retract your horn-howitzers and raise your nacelle-shield, Sam. Sam did so. Now, back off, and get a good run, charge the landing-jack on your right, and knock it out. Then get the hell out of the way!

Sam came out of the coppice, turned and trotted a hunched yards out on the plain. There he turned again, aligning himself for the forthcoming encounter. He started out slowly, geared himself into second. The sound of his hoofbeats climbed into a thunderous crescendo and penetrated the bulkhead of the communications-room, and Holmer, who had finally gotten his hearrings into place, gave a start and stepped over to the viewport.

By this time Sam was streaking toward the ship like an ornithischian battering-ram. No one with an IQ in excess of 75 could have failed to foresee what was shortly going to happen.

Holmer had an IQ considerably in excess of 75, but sometimes having a few brains is just as dangerous as having a little knowledge. It was so now. Forgetting Carpenter completely, the Martian threw a small lever to the right of the viewscope, causing the thick, unbreakable glass to retract into the bulkhead; then he leaned out through the resultant aperture and directed his melter toward the ground. Simultaneously, Sam made contact with the landing jack, and Holmer went flying through the aperture like a jet-propelled Darius Green.

The two kids were already clinging to the supporting pillar. With a leap, Carpenter joined them. “Hang on, you two!” he shouted, and proceeded to practice what he preached. The downward journey was slow at first, but it rapidly picked up momentum. Somebody should have yelled, ’TIMBER!” Nobody did, but that didn’t dissuade the ginkgo from fulfilling its destiny. Lizards scampered, tortoises scrabbled and sauropods gaped for miles around. KRRRERRUUUUUUMMMP! The impact tore both Carpenter and the children from the pillar, but he managed to grab them and cushion their fall with his body. His back struck the bulkhead, and his breath blasted from his lungs. Somebody turned out the lights.

At length, somebody turned them back on again. He saw Marcy’s face hovering like a small pale moon above his own. Her eyes were like autumn asters after the first frost.

She had loosened his collar and she was patting his cheeks and she was crying. He grinned up at her, got gingerly to his feet and looked around. The communications-room hadn’t changed any, but it looked different. That was because he was standing on the bulkhead instead of the deck. It was also because he was still dazed.

Marcy, tears running down her cheeks, wailed, “I was afraid you were dead, Mr. Carpenter!”

He rumpled her buttercup-colored hair. “Fooled you, didn’t I?”

At this point, Skip entered the room through the now horizontal doorway, a small container clutched in his hand. His face lit up when he saw Carpenter. “I went after some recuperative gas, but I guess you don’t need it after all. Gee, I’m glad you’re all right, Mr. Carpenter!”

“I take it you kids are, too,” Carpenter said.

He was relieved when both of them said they were. Still somewhat dazed, he clambered up the concave bulkhead to the viewport and looked out. Sam was nowhere to be seen. Remembering that he was still in tele-circuit contact, he ordered the triceratank to home in, after which he climbed through the viewport, lowered himself to the ground and began looking for Holmer’s body. When he failed to find it he thought at first that the man had survived the fall and had made off into the surrounding scenery.

Then he came to one of the bogs with which the area infested, and saw its roiled surface. He shuddered. Well anyway, he knew who the fossil was.

Or rather, who the fossil had been.

Sam came trotting up, circumventing the bog in response to the Terrainometer’s stimuli. Carpenter patted the reptivehicle’s head, which was not in the least damaged from its recent collision with the landing-jack; then he broke off liaison and returned to the ship. Marcy and Skip were standing in the viewport, staring at the sky. Turning, Carpenter stared at the sky, too. There were three specks in it.
His mind cleared completely then, and he lifted the two children down to the ground. “Run for Sam!” he said. “Hurry!”

He set out after them. They easily outmatched his longer but far-slower strides, gaining the reptivehicle and clambering into the driver’s compartment before he had covered half the distance. The pteranodons were close now, and he could see their shadows rushing toward him across the ground. Unfortunately, however, he failed to see the small tortoise that was trying frantically to get out of his way. He tripped over it and went sprawling on his face.

Glancing up, he saw that Marcy and Skip had closed Sam’s nacelle. A moment later, to his consternation the triceratank disappeared.

Suddenly another shadow crept across the land, a shadow so vast that it swallowed those cast by the pteranodons.

Turning on his side, Carpenter saw the ship. It was settling down on the plain like an extraterrestrial Empire State Building, and, as he watched, three rainbow-beams of light shot forth from its upper section and the three pteranodons went PFFFFFFTTT! PFFFFFFTT! PFFFFFFTTT! and were no more.

The Empire State Building came solidly to rest, opened its street doors and extended a gangplank the width of a Fifth Avenue sidewalk. Through the doors and down the sidewalk came the cavalry. Looking in the other direction, Carpenter saw that Sam had reappeared in exactly the same spot from which he had vanished. His nacelle had reopened, and Marcy and Skip were climbing out of the driver’s compartment in the midst of a cloud of bluish smoke. Carpenter understood what had happened then, and he kissed the twenty-second century good-by.

The two kids came running up just as the commander of the cavalry stepped to the forefront of his troops. Actually, the troops were six tall Martians wearing deep-purple togas and stern expressions and carrying melters, while the commander was an even taller Martian wearing an even purpler toga and an even sterner expression and carrying what looked like a fairy godmother’s wand. The dirty look which he accorded Carpenter was duplicated a moment later by the dirty look which he accorded the two children.

They were helping Carpenter to his feet. Not that he needed help in a physical sense. It was just that he was so overwhelmed by the rapid turn of events that he couldn’t quite get his bearings back. Marcy was sobbing.

“We didn’t want to burn Sam out, Mr. Carpenter,” she said, all in a rush, “but jumping back four days, two hours, sixteen minutes and three and three-quarter seconds and sneaking on board the kidnapper’s ship and sending a message to Space Police Headquarters was the only way we could get them here in time to save your life. I told them what a pickle you’d be in, and to have their iridescers ready. Then, just as we were about to come back to the present Sam’s time-travel unit broke down and Skip had to fix it, and then Sam went and burned out anyway, and oh, Mr. Carpenter, I’m so sorry! Now, you’ll never be able to go back to the year 79,062,156 again and see Miss Sands, and—”

Carpenter patted her on the shoulder. “It’s all right, pumpkin. It’s all right. You did the right thing, and I’m proud of you for it.” He shook his head in admiration. “You sure computed it to a T, didn’t you?”

A smile broke through the rain of tears, and the rain went away. “I’m – I’m pretty good at computations, Mr. Carpenter.”

“But I threw the switch,” Skip said. “And I fixed Sam’s time-travel unit when it broke down.”

Carpenter grinned. “I know you did, Skip. I think the two of you are just wonderful.” He faced the tall Martian with the fairy-godmother wand, noted that the man already had a pair of hearrings attached to his ears. “I guess I’m almost as beholden to you as I am to Marcy and Skip,” Carpenter said, “and I’m duly grateful. And now I’m afraid I’m going to impose on your good will still further and ask you to take me to Mars with you. My reptivehicle’s burned out and can’t possibly be repaired by anyone except a group of technological specialists working in an ultra-modern machine shop with all the trimmings, which means I have no way either of contacting the era from which I came, or of getting back to it.”

“My name is Hautor,” the tall Martian said. He turned to Marcy. “Recount to me, with the maximum degree of conciseness of which you are capable, the events beginning with your arrival on this planet and leading up to the present moment.”

Marcy did so. “So you see, sir,” she concluded, “in helping Skip and me, Mr. Carpenter has got himself in quite a pickle. He can’t return to his own era, and he can’t survive in this one. We simply have to take him back to Mars with us, and that’s all there is to it!”

Hautor made no comment. Almost casually, he raised his fairy-godmother wand, pointed it toward the kidnappers’ prostrate ship and did something to the handle that caused the wand proper to glow in brilliant greens and blues. Presently a rainbow beam of light flashed forth from the Empire State Building, struck the kidnappers’ ship and relegated it to the same fate as that suffered by the three pteranodons. Turning, Hautor faced two of his men.

“Put the children on board the police cruiser and see to it that they are suitably cared for.” Finally, he turned back to Carpenter. “The government of Greater Mars is grateful for the services you have rendered it in the preserving of the lives of two of its most valuable citizens-to-be. I thank you in its behalf. And now, Mr. Carpenter, good-by.”

Hautor started to turn away. Instantly Marcy and Skip ran to his side. “You can’t leave him here!” Marcy cried. “He’ll die!”

Hautor signaled to the two Martians whom he had spoken to a moment ago. They leaped forward, seized the two children and began dragging them toward the Empire State Building. “Look,” Carpenter said, somewhat staggered by the new turn of events, but still on his feet, “I’m not begging for my life, but I can do you people some good if you’ll make room for me in your society. I can give you time travel, for one thing. For another—”

“Mr. Carpenter, if we had wanted time travel, we would have devised it long ago. Time travel is the pursuit of fools. The pattern of the past is set, and cannot be changed; and in it that has not already been done. Why try? And as for the future, who but an imbecile would want to know what tomorrow will bring?”
“All right,” Carpenter said. “I won’t invent time travel then, I’ll keep my mouth shut and settle down and be good solid citizen.”

“You wouldn’t and you know it, Mr. Carpenter – unless we desentimentalized you. And I can tell from the expression on your face that you would never voluntarily submit to such a solution. You would rather remain here in your prehistoric past and die.”

“Now that you mentioned it, I would at that,” Carpenter said. “Compared to you people, Tyrannosaurus rex is a Salvation Army worker, and all the other dinosaurs, saurischians and ornithischians alike, have hearts of purest gold. But it seems to me that there is one simple thing which you could do in my behalf without severely affecting your desentimentalized equilibrium. You could give me a weapon to replace the one that Holmer disintegrated.”

Hautor shook his head. “That is one thing I cannot do, Mr. Carpenter, because a weapon could conceivably become a fossil, and thereby make me responsible for an anachronism. I am already potentially responsible for one in the form of Holmer’s irretrievable body, and I refuse to risk being responsible for any more. Why do you think I iridesced the kidnappers’ ship?”

“Mr. Carpenter,” Skip called from the gangplank, up which two Martians were dragging him and his sister, maybe Sam’s not completely burned out. Maybe you can rev up enough juice to at least send back a can of chicken soup.”

“I’m afraid not, Skip,” Carpenter called back. “But it’s all right, you kids,” he went on. “Don’t you worry about me – I’ll get along okay. Animals have always liked me, so why shouldn’t reptiles! They’re animals, too.”

“Oh, Mr. Carpenter!” Marcy cried. “I’m so sorry this happened! Why didn’t you take us back to 79,062,156 with you? We wanted you to all along, but we were afraid to say so.”

“I wish I had, pumpkin – I wish I had.” Suddenly, he couldn’t see very well, and he turned away. When he looked back, the two Martians were dragging Marcy and Skip through the locks. He waved. “Good-by, you kids,” he called. I’ll never forget you.”

Marcy made a last desperate effort to free herself. She almost, but not quite, succeeded. The autumn asters of her eyes were twinkling with tears like morning dew. “I love you, Mr. Carpenter!” she cried, just before she and Skip were dragged out of sight. “I’ll love you for the rest of my life!”

With two deft movements, Hautor flicked the hearrings from Carpenter’s ears; then he and the rest of the cavalry climbed the gangplank and entered the ship. Some cavalry! Carpenter thought. He watched the street doors close, saw the Empire State Building quiver.

Presently it lifted and hovered majestically, stabbed into the sky just above the ground on a wash of blinding light. It rose, effortlessly, and became a star. It wasn’t a falling star, but he wished upon it anyway. “I wish both of you happiness,” he said, “and I wish that they never take your hearts away, because your hearts are one of the nicest things about you.”

The star faded then, and winked out. He stood all alone on the vast plain.
The ground trembled. Turning, he caught a great dark movement to the right of a trio of fan palms. A moment later, he made out the huge head and the massive, upright body. He recoiled as two rows of saberlike teeth glittered in the sun.
Tyrannosaurus!

A burned-out reptivehicle was better than no reptivehicle at all. Carpenter made tracks for Sam.

In the driver’s compartment, with the nacelle tightly closed, he watched the theropod’s approach. There was no question but what it had seen him, and no question but what it was headed straight for Sam. Marcy and Skip had retracted the nacelle-shield, which left Carpenter pretty much of a sitting duck; however, he didn’t retreat to Sam’s cabin just yet, for they had also re-projected the horn-howitzers.

Although the howitzers were no longer maneuverable, they were still operable. If the tyrannosaurus came within their fixed range it could be put temporarily out of action with a volley of stun-charges. Right now, it was approaching Sam at right angles to the direction in which the howitzers were pointing, but there was a chance that it might pass in front of them before closing in. Carpenter considered it a chance worth taking.

He crouched low in the driver’s seat, his right hand within easy reaching distance of the triggers. With the air-conditioning unit no longer functioning, the interior of the triceratank was hot and stuffy. To add to his discomfort, the air was permeated with the acrid smell of burnt wiring. He shut his mind to both annoyances, and concentrated on the task at hand.

The theropod was so close now that he could see its atrophied forelegs. They dangled down from the neck-width shoulders like the wizened legs of a creature one tenth its size. Over them, a full twenty-five feet above the ground Rod attached to a neck the girth of a tree trunk, loomed the huge head; below them, the grotesque torso swelled out and down to the hind legs. The mighty tail dragged over the landscape, adding the cracking and splitting noises of crushed shrubbery to the thunder thrown forth each time the enormous bird-claw feet came into contact with the terrain. Carpenter should have been terrified. He was at a loss to understand why he wasn’t.

Several yards from the triceratank, the tyrannosaurus came to a halt and its partially opened jaws began opening wider.

The foot-and-a-half-high teeth with which they were equipped could grind through Sam’s nacelle as though it was made of tissue paper, and from all indications, that was just what they were going to do. Carpenter prepared himself for a hasty retreat into Sam’s cabin; then just when things looked blackest, the therodon, as though dissatisfied with its present angle of attack, moved around in front of the reptivehicle, providing him with the opportunity he had been hoping for. His fingers leaped to the first of the trio of triggers, touched, but did not squeeze it. Why wasn’t he afraid?

He looked up through the nacelle at the horrendous head. The huge jaws had continued to part, and now the whole top of the skull was raising into a vertical position. As he stared, a pretty head of quite another nature appeared over the lower row of teeth and two bright blue a eves peered down at him.
“Miss Sands!” he gasped, and nearly fell out of the driver’s seat.

Recovering himself, he threw open the nacelle, stepped out on Sam’s snout and gave the tyrannosaurus an affectionate pat on the stomach. “Edith,” he said. “Edith, you doll, you!”

“Are you all right, Mr. Carpenter?” Miss Sands called down.

“Just fine,” Carpenter said. “Am I glad to see you, Miss Sands!”

Another head appeared beside Miss Sands. The familiar chestnut haired head of Peter Detritus. “Are you glad to see me too, Mr. Carpenter?”

“Well, I guess, Pete old buddy!”

Miss Sands lowered Edith’s lip ladder, and the two of them climbed down, Peter Detritus was carrying a tow cable, and presently he proceeded to affix it to Sam’s snout and Edith’s tail respectively. Carpenter lent a hand. “How’d you know I was in a pickle?” he asked. “I didn’t send back any soup.”

“We had a hunch,” Peter Detritus said. He turned to Miss Sands. “There, she’s all set, Sandy.”

“Well, let’s be on our way then,” Miss Sands said, She looked at Carpenter, then looked quickly away. “If, of course, your mission is completed, Mr. Carpenter.”
Now that the excitement was over he was finding her presence just as disconcerting as he usually found it. “It’s completed all right, Miss Sands,” he said to the left pocket of her field blouse. “You’ll never believe how it turned out, either.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Sometimes the most unbelievable things of all turn out to be the most believable ones. I’ll fix you something to eat, Mr. Carpenter.”

She climbed agilely up the ladder. Carpenter followed, and Peter Detritus brought up the rear. “I’ll take the controls, Mr. Carpenter,” the latter said, pulling the ladder. “You look bushed.”

“I am,” Carpenter said.

In Edith’s cabin, he collapsed on the bunk. Miss Sands went over to the kitchenette and put water on to boil for coffee and took a boiled ham down from the refrigerator-shelf. Up in the driver’s compartment, Peter Detritus closed the nacelle and threw Edith into gear.

He was a good driver, Peter Detritus was, and he would rather drive than eat. Not only that, he could take a paleontologivehicle apart and put it back together again blind-folded. Funny, why he and Miss Sands had never gone for each other. They were both so attractive, you’d have thought they would have fallen in love long ago. Carpenter was glad that they hadn’t of course – not that it was ever going to do him any good.

He wondered why they had made no mention of the Space Police ship. Surely, they must have seen it when it blasted off . . .

Edith was moving over the plain in the direction of the uplands now, and through the cabin viewport he could see Sam shambling along behind on motion-provoked legs. In the kitchenette, Miss Sands was slicing ham. Carpenter concentrated on her, trying to drive away the sadness he felt over his parting with Marcy and Skip. His eyes touched her slender shapely legs, her slender waist, rose to her cupreous head, lingering for a moment on the silken fuzz that grew charmingly on the back of her neck where her hair had been cut too short. Strange, how people’s hair got darker when they grew older –
Carpenter lay motionlessly on the bunk. “Miss Sands,” said suddenly, “how much is 499,999,991 times 8,003,432,111?”

“400,171,598,369,111,001,” Miss Sands answered.

Abruptly she gave a start. Then she went on slicing ham.

Slowly, Carpenter sat up. He lowered his feet to the floor. A tightness took over in his chest and he could barely breathe. Take a pair of lonely kids. One of them a mathematical genius, the other a mechanical genius. A pair of lonely kids who have never known what it is like to be loved in all their lonely lives. Now, transport them to another planet and put them in a reptivehicle that for all its practicability is still a huge and delightful toy, and treat them to an impromptu Cretaceous camping trip, and show them the first affection they have ever known. Finally, take these things away from them and simultaneously provide them with a supreme motivation for getting them back – the need to save a human life – and include in that motivation the inbuilt possibility that by saving that life they can – in another but no less real sense – save their own.
But 79,062,156 years! 49,000,000 miles! It couldn’t be!

Why couldn’t it?

They could have built the machine in secret at the preparatory school, all the while pretending to go along with the “pre-desentimentalization process”; then, just before they were scheduled to begin receiving doses of the desentitalization drug, they could have entered the machine and time-jumped far into the future.
Granted, such a time-jump would have required a vast amount of power. And granted, the Martian landscape they would have emerged on would have given them the shock of their lives. But they were resourceful kids, easily resourceful enough to have tapped the nearest major power source, and certainly resourceful enough to have endured the climate and the atmosphere of Mars Present until they located one of the Martian oxygen caves. The Martians would have taken care of them and have taught them all they needed to know to pass themselves off as terrestrials in one of the domed colonies. As for the colonists, they wouldn’t have asked too many questions because they would have been overjoyed to add two newcomers to their underpopulated community. After that, it would merely have been a matter of the two children’s biding their time till they grew old enough to work and earn their passage to Earth. Once on Earth, it would merely have been a matter of acquiring the necessary education to equip them for paleontological work.

Sure, it would have taken them years to accomplish such a mission, but they would have anticipated that, and have time-jumped to a point in time far enough in advance of the year A.D. 2156 to have enabled them to do what they had to do. They had played it pretty close at that, though. Miss Sands had only been with NAPS for three months, and as for Peter Detritus, he had been hired a month later. On Miss Sands’ recommendation, of course.

They had simply come the long way around – that was all. Traveled 49,000,000 miles to Mars Past, 79,062,100 years to Mars Present, 49,000,000 miles to Earth Present, and 79,062,156 years to Earth Past.

Carpenter sat there, stunned.

Had they known they were going to turn out to be Miss Sands and Peter Detritus? he wondered. They must have – or, if not, they must have gambled on it and taken the names when they joined the colonists. All of which created something of a paradox. But it was a minor one at best, not worth worrying about. In any event, the names certainly fitted them.

But why had they passed themselves off as strangers? Well, they had been strangers, hadn’t they? And if they had told him the truth, would he have believed them?

Of course he wouldn’t have.

None of which explained why Miss Sands disliked him.

But did she dislike him? Maybe her reaction to him resulted from the same cause that was responsible for his reaction to her. Maybe she worshipped him as much as he worshipped her, and became as tongue-tied in his presence as he did in hers. Maybe the reason she had never looked at him any longer than was absolutely necessary was that she had been afraid of betraying the way she felt before he learned the truth about her.

He found it suddenly hard to see.

The smooth purring of Edith’s battery-powered motor filled the cabin. For quite some time now there had been no other sound.

“What’s the matter?” Miss Sands said suddenly out of clear blue sky. “Cat got your tongue, Mr. Carpenter?” He stood up then. She had turned, and was facing him. Her eyes were misted, and she was looking at him gently, adoringly . . . the way she had looked at him last night, in one sense, and 79,062,156 years ago in another, by a Mesozoic campfire in an upper Cretaceous cave. Why I’ll bet if you told her you loved her, she’d throw herself into your arms!

“I love you, pumpkin,” Carpenter said.

And Miss Sands did.

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The Fascinating Sketchbook Of Russian Artist Elena Limkina

The young Russian artist Elena Limkina reveals the inside of her fascinating sketchbook, where each page contains beautiful drawings in ink or watercolor. A wandering into the world of the artist through her creative diary, where she experiments styles and techniques, moving from architectural drawing to animal or floral illustration.

More info: Elena Limkina, Instagram, Behance, Facebook, Shop (h/t: ufunk)

Throughout my life, I have maintained my own MM sketchbooks. Being both an artist, an engineer, and a scientist, having a well documented record of my thoughts was important. And like this artist, my books were very similar to these works.

I would use ink, pencil, and blue pencil in the journals. The light blue pencil was used to outline the shapes, and then I would use an ink pen to illustrate. I preferred to use a light green, or light tan notebook with lines. And for highlighting, I would use a white pencil.

On some notebooks, I would use a light wash of watercolor. This helped me add depth to my sketches.

However, many of my notes also incorporated formula, calculations, part numbers, addresses and the like. So I would often use a red pen, a blue pen, and sometimes other colored pens to highlight specific information.

I would use a yellow highlighter for passwords and access codes. And many of my notebooks used tape to hold in various photos, documents and other items that I wished to include in my journals.

One of the things that I was doing, up until I was incarcerated for my “retirement” was to print out photos on adhesive-backed paper. I would then cut out the paper, and place it nicely and tightly in the journal.

This included photos of new friends that I would make during my trips to China and the KTV establishments, maps, schedules and photos of projects.

Often, people would see me writing in my books and would want to take a look, and they would really love to go page by page through it. I am sure that it was meaningless to them, but they really seemed to like the mixture of sketches and thoughts.

Honestly, it looked a lot like the notebook that the Saint used in the movie of the same name. With sketches, and papers, and photographs.

I always instructed my engineers, designers, and interns to take up the habit of using and engineering notebook and using it in a more or less traditional manner. I also insisted that they do this religiously, as all it takes is one computer melt down to wipe away years of hard work.

The younger “kids” don’t understand as they believe that once in the “could” the data is forever safe. I don’t believe that that is true at all.

But having a journal is more than that. You can write down your dreams and monitor your personal non-physical life. You can include your affirmations. You can internally debate your wishes and dreams in your journal, and you can write down things in one place so that you would never forget about them. Whether it is a recipe, or some notes, you will always know where to find the information.

Most people, in modern society, do not understand the concept of privacy. Especially Americans, I am sad to say. Even though the Bill of Rights authorize “security and privacy in one’s personal papers and documents”, that hasn’t been functionally true for centuries.

I am one to tell you that AS A FACT.

In fact, it was my journals that were used against me when I was “retired”. Ah. Any excuse serves a tyrant.

But privacy is a natural need. We all require time alone. Whether it is to gather our thoughts, take a dump in the toilet, say our affirmations, pray, or masturbate. We, as humans, require privacy. Anyone who cannot recognize that basic need is an evil, selfish, and self-centered busybody.

Run away from them as fast as you can.

My first wife maintained dream journals, and as she gradually lost her mind (she had a mental illness), her journaling became an obsession. She would wake up and spend five hours writing down her dreams. Which was obviously unhealthy.

My brother maintained magick journals for his studies, incantations, and other projects that he worked on. He loved to use these thick, soft leather-bound books with a strap to hold everything tight and in place. While I really used a spiral bound lined notebook that I would buy in packs of ten.

Notebooks offer a person, such as myself, a canvas to illustrate our thoughts and concepts. It was when I was in prison that I cluttered up my notebooks (well, actually, there were just tablets of paper. We were unable to own notebooks in the ADC.) with sketches of the MWI and world-line travel.

Long time readers of MM will be able to imagine the kinds of sketches and drawings that I made regarding souls, consciousness, and travel on the MWI. As well as thoughts on the teleportation device, and the mathematics behind it’s operation.

I would place my personal thoughts and concepts there in my journals. While in prison, I used a kind of pencil known as a “golf pencil” because of its diminutive size, and I sharpened it with sandpaper that I could get from the commissary store. We were also permitted a small pen. I would use that to ink my sketches.

All was very crude, but it served its purpose. Yes, there were others while in prison that maintained a sketchbook where they practiced their art. But most of the people int eh ADC were illiterate. Often what we would call “urban youth”, “trailer park trash”, and “gang members. Folk like myself were a minority.

Of course, most of my sketch books, journals, and writings occurred while I was working as an inventor, designer, engineer, and scientist for the US government, large technical corporations and the like. And when they would let me go (i.e. fire me / downsize me / lay me off) they would demand to retain my journals and notebooks, often claiming that they contained company secrets.

These notebooks shown here are obviously not mine, but they have well been mine. The look, the feel, and the drawings are all similar.

I seriously encourage everyone to have their own journal or notebook. I do not suggest that they rely on electronic media, no matter how seductive it appears, and I have had multiple bad experiences in using these software programs.

Aside from the computer dying and a hard-drive death meant the end of everything that I wrote and collected, but other things happened as well. For instance, I once used an electronic diary. It was nice and worked really well. Then it suddenly stopped working.

As it turned out, the diary was only configured to work for five years, then you had to ask for an upgrade for a small fee of course. So when it stopped working, I called the company and discovered that they went out of business and all of my writings and documents were unable to be recovered.

And don’t get me started on Microsoft. You are typing away, and suddenly MS wants you to register, and pay for yearly updates. And when you don’t pay, you are locked out of your documents. It wouldn’t be all that bad, but last year they demanded $350 from me.

It’s one of the reasons why I switched to Lunix.

And forget about freeware. Or donationware. My experience with them have been hit or miss. You have to have one that is directly configured for your needs. Right now I have three folders (on my Lunix computer) each one containing a separate group of files unique to that particular program. All of which are not available in Lunix format.

Now, of course, there are benefits to using electronic media. For instance, you can lock it with a password. That makes it safe so that only you or the NSA can open it up. Passwords are transparent to the American government. If you don’t believe me, read my story about how I was retired.

But there are some disadvantages to putting things in journals. For one, they take up space. Unless you have a lot of room, and don’t mind hauling them around, it could be a problem. Another thing is many people, notably your spouse and the United States government, have no respect for boundaries, personal space, privacy or secrecy.

If you don’t want anyone to access them, you must either write in code, not write at all, or use symbology that only you understand.

This woman does a nice job in her artistic renderings and I find her work noteworthy. It’s a joy to look at, and takes and carries me away to an other place and other thoughts. I start to muse and dream. All very good things.

What ever your desires are, I urge you all to start sketching and journaling.

Of course, I no longer have my notebooks.

When I was retired, the police seized many of my notebooks as evidence of my devious character. They were subsequently “lost”. The remaining notebooks were acquired by my father, desirous of protecting me, promptly burned them.

Those sketches and notes, that I made while in prison, were often confiscated and misplaced. I never got them back. Of the few that I was working on at the time of my departure from prison, were in my luggage that was misplaced and ended up in the lost-luggage section in Newark, NJ.

I started anew. A “blank slate” as they say. And married a woman who respects my privacy, my confidentiality and my space. If you don’t have that, perhaps you should reconsider your relationships and what kind of life that you have.

Do you want more?

I have more articles like this one in my Art Index here…

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“Uncommon Sense” (1945) by Hal Clement

This is a great science fiction story. This interesting tale of conflict and survival in a hostile and unknown land was first published in the September 1945 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, with the striking illustrations by Williams that we have reproduced here.

Its author Hal Clement (1922-2003) was a trained astrophysicist who brought an emphasis on the “science” part of science-fiction that was particularly effective, interesting and convincing in this quite perfect little story that has so well passed the test of time.

He was serving as a pilot in the US Air Force at the time of publication of this story, and had flown dozens of combat missions during the war in Europe. He later retired with the rank of Colonel.

“Uncommon Sense” (1945) by Hal Clement

“So you’ve left us, Mr. Cunningham!” Malmeson’s voice sounded rougher than usual, even allowing for headphone distortion and the ever-present Denebian static. “Now, that’s too bad. If you’d chosen to stick around, we would have put you off on some world where you could live, at least. Now you can stay here and fry. And I hope you live long enough to watch us take off—without you!”

Laird Cunningham did not bother to reply. The ship’s radio compass should still be in working order, and it was just possible that his erstwhile assistants might start hunting for him, if they were given some idea of the proper direction to begin a search. Cunningham was too satisfied with his present shelter to be very anxious for a change. He was scarcely half a mile from the grounded ship, in a cavern deep enough to afford shelter from Deneb’s rays when it rose, and located in the side of a small hill, so that he could watch the activities of Malmeson and his companion without exposing himself to their view.

In a way, of course, the villain was right. If Cunningham permitted the ship to take off without him, he might as well open his face plate; for, while he had food and oxygen for several days’ normal consumption, a planet scarcely larger than Luna, baked in rays of one of the fiercest radiating bodies in the galaxy, was most unlikely to provide further supplies when these ran out. He wondered how long it would take the men to discover the damage he had done to the drive units in the few minutes that had elapsed between the crash landing and their breaking through the control room door, which Cunningham had welded shut when he had discovered their intentions. They might not notice it at all; he had severed a number of inconspicuous connections at odd points. Perhaps they would not even test the drivers until they had completed repairs to the cracked hull. If they didn’t, so much the better.

Cunningham crawled to the mouth of his cave and looked out across the shallow valley in which the ship lay. It was barely visible in the starlight, and there was no sign of artificial luminosity to suggest that Malmeson might have started repairs at night. Cunningham had not expected that they would, but it was well to be sure. Nothing more had come over his suit-radio since the initial outburst, when the men had discovered his departure; he decided that they must be waiting for sunrise, to enable them to take more accurate stock of the damage suffered by the hull.

He spent the next few minutes looking at the stars, trying to arrange them into patterns he could remember. He had no watch, and it would help to have some warning of approaching sunrise on succeeding nights. It would not do to be caught away from his cave, with the flimsy protection his suit could afford from Deneb’s radiation. He wished he could have filched one of the heavier work suits; but they were kept in a compartment forward of the control room, from which he had barred himself when he had sealed the door of the latter chamber.

He remained at the cave mouth, lying motionless and watching alternately the sky and the ship. Once or twice he may have dozed; but he was awake and alert when the low hills beyond the ship’s hull caught the first rays of the rising sun. For a minute or two they seemed to hang detached in a black void, while the flood of blue-white light crept down their slopes; then, one by one, their bases merged with each other and the ground below to form a connected landscape. The silvery hull gleamed brilliantly, the reflection from it lighting the cave behind Cunningham and making his eyes water when he tried to watch for the opening of the air lock.

He was forced to keep his eyes elsewhere most of the time, and look only in brief glimpses at the dazzling metal; and in consequence, he paid more attention to the details of his environment than he might otherwise have done. At the time, this circumstance annoyed him; he has since been heard to bless it fervently and frequently.

Although the planet had much in common with Luna as regarded size, mass, and airlessness, its landscape was extremely different. The daily terrific heatings which it underwent, followed by abrupt and equally intense temperature drops each night, had formed an excellent substitute for weather; and elevations that might at one time have rivaled the Lunar ranges were now mere rounded hillocks, like that containing Cunningham’s cave. As on the Earth’s moon, the products of the age-long spalling had taken the form of fine dust, which lay in drifts everywhere. What could have drifted it, on an airless and consequently windless planet, struck Cunningham as a puzzle of the first magnitude; and it bothered him for some time until his attention was taken by certain other objects upon and between the drifts. These he had thought at first to be outcroppings of rock; but he was at last convinced that they were specimens of vegetable life—miserable, lichenous specimens, but nevertheless vegetation. He wondered what liquid they contained, in an environment at a temperature well above the melting point of lead.

The discovery of animal life—medium-sized, crablike things, covered with jet-black integument, that began to dig their way out of the drifts as the sun warmed them—completed the job of dragging Cunningham’s attention from his immediate problems. He was not a zoologist by training, but the subject had fascinated for years; and he had always had money enough to indulge his hobby. He had spent years wandering the Galaxy in search of bizarre life forms—proof, if any were needed, of a lack of scientific training—and terrestrial museums had always been more than glad to accept the collections that resulted from each trip and usually to send scientists of their own in his footsteps. He had been in physical danger often enough, but it had always been from the life he studied or from the forces which make up the interstellar traveler’s regular diet, until he had overheard the conversation which informed him that his two assistants were planning to do away with him and appropriate the ship for unspecified purposes of their own. He liked to think that the promptness of his action following the discovery at least indicated that he was not growing old.

But he did let his attention wander to the Denebian life forms.

Several of the creatures were emerging from the dust mounds within twenty or thirty yards of Cunningham’s hiding place, giving rise to the hope that they would come near enough for a close examination. At that distance, they were more crablike than ever, with round, flat bodies twelve to eighteen inches across, and several pairs of legs. They scuttled rapidly about, stopping at first one of the lichenous plants and then another, apparently taking a few tentative nibbles from each, as though they had delicate tastes which needed pampering. Once or twice there were fights when the same tidbit attracted the attention of more than one claimant; but little apparent damage was done on either side, and the victor spent no more time on the meal he won than on that which came uncontested.
Cunningham became deeply absorbed in watching the antics of the little creatures, and completely forgot for a time his own rather precarious situation. He was recalled to it by the sound of Malmeson’s voice in his headphones.
“Don’t look up, you fool; the shields will save your skin, but not your eyes. Get under the shadow of the hull, and we’ll look over the damage.”

Cunningham instantly transferred his attention to the ship. The air lock on the side toward him—the port—was open, and the bulky figures of his two ex-assistants were visible standing on the ground beneath it. They were clad in the heavy utility suits which Cunningham had regretted leaving, and appeared to be suffering little or no inconvenience from the heat, though they were still standing full in Deneb’s light when he looked. He knew that hard radiation burns would not appear for some time, but he held little hope of Deneb’s more deadly output coming to his assistance: for the suits were supposed to afford protection against this danger as well. Between heat insulation, cooling equipment, radiation shielding, and plain mechanical armor, the garments were so heavy and bulky as to be an almost insufferable burden on any major planet. They were more often used in performing exterior repairs in space.

Cunningham watched and listened carefully as the men stooped under the lower curve of the hull to make an inspection of the damage. It seemed, from their conversation, to consist of a dent about three yards long and half as wide, about which nothing could be done, and a series of radially arranged cracks in the metal around it. These represented a definite threat to the solidity of the ship, and would have to be welded along their full lengths before it would be safe to apply the stresses incident to second-order flight. Malmeson was too good an engineer not to realize this fact, and Cunningham heard him lay plans for bringing power lines outside for the welder and jacking up the hull to permit access to the lower portions of the cracks. The latter operation was carried out immediately, with an efficiency which did not in the least surprise the hidden watcher. After all, he had hired the men.

Every few minutes, to Cunningham’s annoyance, one of the men would carefully examine the landscape; first on the side on which he was working, and then walking around the ship to repeat the performance. Even in the low gravity, Cunningham knew he could not cross the half mile that lay between him and that inviting air lock, between two of those examinations; and even if he could, his leaping figure, clad in the gleaming metal suit, would be sure to catch even an eye not directed at it. It would not do to make the attempt unless success were certain; for his unshielded suit would heat in a minute or two to an unbearable temperature, and the only place in which it was possible either to remove or cool it was on board the ship. He finally decided, to his annoyance, that the watch would not slacken so long as the air lock of the ship remained open. It would be necessary to find some means to distract or—an unpleasant alternative for a civilized man—disable the opposition while Cunningham got aboard, locked the others out, and located a weapon or other factor which would put him in a position to give them orders. At that, he reflected, a weapon would scarcely be necessary; there was a perfectly good medium transmitter on board, if the men had not destroyed or discharged it, and he need merely call for help and keep the men outside until it arrived.

This, of course, presupposed some solution to the problem of getting aboard unaccompanied. He would, he decided, have to examine the ship more closely after sunset. He knew the vessel as well as his own home—he had spent more time on her than in any other home— and knew that there was no means of entry except through the two main locks forward of the control room, and the two smaller, emergency locks near the stern, one of which he had employed on his departure. All these could be clogged shut from within; and offhand he was unable to conceive a plan for forcing any of the normal entrances. The view ports were too small to admit a man in a spacesuit, even if the panes could be broken; and there was literally no other way into the ship so long as the hull remained intact. Malmeson would not have talked so glibly of welding them sufficiently well to stand flight, if any of the cracks incurred on the landing had been big enough to admit a human body—or even that of a respectably healthy garter snake.

Cunningham gave a mental shrug of the shoulders as these thoughts crossed his mind, and reiterated his decision to take a scouting sortie after dark. For the rest of the day he divided his attention between the working men and the equally busy life forms that scuttled here and there in front of his cave; and he would have been the first to admit that he found the latter more interesting.

He still hoped that one would approach the cave closely enough to permit a really good examination, but for a long time he remained unsatisfied. Once, one of the creatures came within a dozen yards and stood “on tiptoe”—rising more than a foot from the ground on its slender legs, while a pair of antennae terminating in knobs the size of human eyeballs extended themselves several inches from the black carapace and waved slowly in all directions. Cunningham thought that the knobs probably did serve as eyes, though from his distance he could see only a featureless black sphere. The antennae eventually waved in his direction, and after a few seconds spent, apparently in assimilating the presence of the cave mouth, the creature settled back to its former low-swung carriage and scuttled away. Cunningham wondered if it had been frightened at his presence; but he felt reasonably sure that no eye adapted to Denebian daylight could see past the darkness of his threshold, and he had remained motionless while the creature was conducting its inspection. More probably it had some reason to fear caves, or merely darkness.

That it had reason to fear something was shown when another creature, also of crustacean aspect but considerably larger than those Cunningham had seen to date, appeared from among the dunes and attacked one of the latter. The fight took place too far from the cave for Cunningham to make out many details, but the larger animal quickly overcame its victim. It then apparently dismembered the vanquished, and either devoured the softer flesh inside the black integument or sucked the body fluids from it. Then the carnivore disappeared again, presumably in search of new victims. It had scarcely gone when another being, designed along the lines of a centipede and fully forty feet in length, appeared on the scene with the graceful flowing motion of its terrestrial counterpart.

For a few moments the newcomer nosed around the remains of the carnivore’s feast, and devoured the larger fragments. Then it appeared to look around as though for more, evidently saw the cave, and came rippling toward it, to Cunningham’s pardonable alarm. He was totally unarmed, and while the centipede had just showed itself not to be above eating carrion, it looked quite able to kill its own food if necessary. It stopped, as the other investigator had, a dozen yards from the cave mouth; and like the other, elevated itself as though to get a better look. The baseball-sized black “eyes” seemed for several seconds to stare into Cunning-ham’s more orthodox optics; then, like its predecessor, and to the man’s intense relief, it doubled back along its own length and glided out of sight.

Cunningham again wondered whether it had detected his presence, or whether caves or darkness in general spelled danger to these odd life forms.

It suddenly occurred to him that, if the latter were not the case, there might be some traces of previous occupants of the cave; and he set about examining the place more closely, after a last glance which showed him the two men still at work jacking up the hull.

There was drifted dust even here, he discovered, particularly close to the walls and in the corners. The place was bright enough, owing to the light reflected from outside objects, to permit a good examination—shadows on airless worlds are not so black as many people believe—and almost at once Cunningham found marks in the dust that could easily have been made by some of the creatures he had seen. There were enough of them to suggest that the cave was a well-frequented neighborhood; and it began to look as though the animals were staying away now because of the man’s presence.

Near the rear wall he found the empty integument that had once covered a four-jointed leg. It was light, and he saw that the flesh had either been eaten or decayed out, though it seemed odd to think of decay in an airless environment suffering such extremes of temperature—though the cave was less subject to this affect than the outer world. Cunningham wondered whether the leg had been carried in by its rightful owner, or as a separate item on the menu of something else. If the former, there might be more relics about.

There were. A few minutes’ excavation in the deeper layers of dust produced the complete exoskeleton of one of the smaller crab-like creatures; and Cunningham carried the remains over to the cave mouth, so as to examine them and watch the ship at the same time.

The knobs he had taken for eyes were his first concern. A close examination of their surfaces revealed nothing, so he carefully tried to detach one from its stem. It finally cracked raggedly away, and proved, as he had expected, to be hollow. There was no trace of a retina inside, but there was no flesh in any of the other pieces of shell, so that proved nothing. As a sudden thought struck him, Cunningham held the front part of the delicate black bit of shell in front of his eyes; and sure enough, when he looked in the direction of the brightly gleaming hull of the spaceship, a spark of light showed through an almost microscopic hole. The sphere was an eye, constructed on the pinhole principle—quite an adequate design on a world furnished with such an overwhelming luminary. It would be useless at night, of course, but so would most other visual organs here; and Cunningham was once again faced with the problem of how any of the creatures had detected his presence in the cave—his original belief, that no eye adjusted to meet Deneb’s glare could look into its relatively total darkness, seemed to be sound.

He pondered the question, as he examined the rest of the skeleton in a half-hearted fashion. Sight seemed to be out, as a result of his examination; smell and hearing were ruled out by the lack of atmosphere; taste and touch could not even be considered under the circumstances. He hated to fall back on such a time-honored refuge for ignorance as “extrasensory perception”, but he was unable to see any way around it.

It may seem unbelievable that a man in the position Laird Cunningham occupied could let his mind become so utterly absorbed in a problem unconnected with his personal survival. Such individuals do exist, however; most people know someone who has shown some trace of such a trait; and Cunningham was a well-developed example. He had a single-track mind, and had intentionally shelved his personal problem for the moment.

His musings were interrupted, before he finished dissecting his specimen, by the appearance of one of the carnivorous creatures at what appeared to constitute a marked distance—a dozen yards from his cave mouth, where it rose up on the ends of its thin legs and goggled around at the landscape. Cunningham, half in humor and half in honest curiosity, tossed one of the dismembered legs from the skeleton in his hands at the creature. It obviously saw the flying limb; but it made no effort to pursue or devour it. Instead, it turned its eyes in Cunningham’s direction, and proceeded with great baste to put one of the drifts between it and what it evidently considered a dangerous neighborhood.

It seemed to have no memory to speak of, however; for a minute or two later Cunningham saw it creep into view again, stalking one of the smaller creatures which still swarmed everywhere, nibbling at the plants. He was able to get a better view of the fight and the feast that followed than on the previous occasion, for they took place much nearer to his position; but this time there was a rather different ending. The giant centipede, or another of its kind, appeared on the scene while the carnivore was still at its meal, and came flowing at a truly surprising rate over the dunes to fall on victor and vanquished alike. The former had no inkling of its approach until much too late; and both black bodies disappeared into the maw of the creature Cunningham had hoped was merely a scavenger.

What made the whole episode of interest to the man was the fact that in its charge, the centipede loped unheeding almost directly through a group of the plant-eaters; and these, by common consent, broke and ran at top speed directly toward the cave. At first he thought they would swerve aside when they saw what lay ahead; but evidently he was the lesser of two evils, for they scuttled past and even over him as he lay in the cave mouth, and began to bury themselves in the deepest dust they could find. Cunningham watched with pleasure, as an excellent group of specimens thus collected themselves for his convenience.

As the last of them disappeared under the dust, he turned back to the scene outside. The centipede was just finishing its meal. This time, instead of immediately wandering out of sight, it oozed quickly to the top of one of the larger dunes, in full sight of the cave, and deposited its length in the form of a watch spring, with the head resting above the coils. Cunningham realized that it was able, in this position, to look in nearly all directions and, owing to the height of its position, to a considerable distance.

With the centipede apparently settled for a time, and the men still working in full view, Cunningham determined to inspect one of his specimens. Going to the nearest wall, he bent down and groped cautiously in the dust. He encountered a subject almost at once, and dragged a squirming black crab into the light. He found that if he held it upside down on one hand, none of its legs could get a purchase on anything; and he was able to examine the underparts in detail in spite of the wildly thrashing limbs. The jaws, now opening and closing futilely on a vacuum, were equipped with a set of crushers that suggested curious things about the plants on which it fed; they looked capable of flattening the metal finger of Cunningham’s spacesuit, and he kept his hand well out of their reach.
He became curious as to the internal mechanism that permitted it to exist without air, and was faced with the problem of killing the thing without doing it too much mechanical damage. It was obviously able to survive a good many hours without the direct radiation of Deneb, which was the most obvious source of energy, although its body temperature was high enough to be causing the man some discomfort through the glove of his suit; so “drowning” in darkness was impractical. There might, however, he some part of its body on which a blow would either stun or kill it ; and he looked around for a suitable weapon.

There were several deep cracks in the stone at the cave mouth, caused presumably by thermal expansion and contraction; and with a little effort he was able to break loose a pointed, fairly heavy fragment. With this in his right hand, he laid the creature on its back on the ground, and hoped it had something corresponding to a solar plexus.

It was too quick for him. The legs, which had been unable to reach his hand when it was in the center of the creature’s carapace, proved supple enough to get a purchase on the ground; and before he could strike, it was right side up and departing with a haste that put to shame its previous efforts to escape from the centipede.

Cunningham shrugged, and dug out another specimen. This time he held it in his hand while he drove the point of his rock against its plastron. There was no apparent effect; he had not dared to strike too hard, for fear of crushing the shell. He struck several more times, with identical results and increasing impatience; and at last there occurred the result he had feared. The black armor gave way, and the point penetrated deeply enough to insure the damage of most of the interior organs. The legs gave a final twitch or two, and ceased moving, and Cunningham gave an exclamation of annoyance.

On hope, he removed the broken bits of shell, for a moment looked in surprise at the liquid which seemed to have filled the body cavities. It was silvery, even metallic in color; it might have been mercury, except that it wet the organs bathed in it and was probably at a temperature above the boiling point of that metal. Cunningham had just grasped this fact when he was violently bowled over, and the dead creature snatched from his grasp. He made a complete somersault, bringing up against the rear wall of the cave; and as he came upright he saw to his horror that the assailant was none other than the giant centipede.
It was disposing with great thoroughness of his specimen, leaving at last only a few fragments of shell that had formed the extreme tips of the legs; and as the last of these fell to the ground, it raised the fore part of its body from the ground, as the man had seen it do before, and turned the invisible pinpoints of its pupils on the space-suited human figure.

Cunningham drew a deep breath, and took a firm hold of his pointed rock, though he had little hope of overcoming the creature. The jaws he had just seen at work had seemed even more efficient than those of the plant-eater, and they were large enough to take in a human leg.

For perhaps five seconds both beings faced each other without motion; then, to the man’s inexpressible relief, the centipede reached the same conclusion to which its previous examination of humanity had led it, and departed in evident haste. This time it did not remain in sight, but was still moving rapidly when it reached the limit of Cunningham’s vision.

The naturalist returned somewhat shakily to the cave mouth, seated himself where he could watch his ship, and began to ponder deeply. A number of points seemed interesting on first thought, and on further cerebration became positively fascinating. The centipede had not seen, or at least had not pursued, the plant-eater that had escaped from Cunningham and run from the cave.

Looking back, he realized that the only times he had seen the creature attack was after “blood” had been already shed —twice by one of the carnivorous animals, the third time by Cunningham himself. It had apparently made no difference where the victims had been—two in full sunlight, one in the darkness of the cave.

More proof, if any were needed, that the creatures could see in both grades of illumination. It was not strictly a carrion eater, however; Cunningham remembered that carnivore that had accompanied its victim into the centipede’s jaws. It was obviously capable of overcoming the man, but had twice retreated precipitately when it had excellent opportunities to attack him. What was it, then, that drew the creature to scenes of combat and bloodshed, but frightened it away from a man; that frightened, indeed, all of these creatures?

On any planet that had a respectable atmosphere, Cunningham would have taken one answer for granted—scent. In his mind, however, organs of smell were associated with breathing apparatus, which these creatures obviously lacked.

Don’t ask why he took so long. You may think that the terrific adaptability evidenced by those strange eyes would be clue enough: or perhaps you may be in a mood to excuse him. Columbus probably excused those of his friends who failed to solve the egg problem.

Of course, he got it at last, and was properly annoyed with himself for taking so long about it. An eye, to us, is an organ for forming images of the source of such radiation as may fall on it; and a nose is a gadget that tells its owner of the presence of molecules. He needs his imagination to picture the source of the latter. But what would you call an organ that forms a picture of the source of smell?

For that was just what those “eyes” did. In the nearly perfect vacuum of this little world’s surface, gases diffused at high speed—and their molecules traveled in practically straight lines. There was nothing wrong with the idea of a pinhole camera eye, whose retina was composed of olfactory nerve endings rather than the rods and cones of photosensitive organs.

That seemed to account for everything. Of course the creatures were indifferent to the amount of light reflected from the object they examined. The glare of the open spaces under Deneb’s rays, and the relative blackness of a cave, were all one to them—provided something were diffusing molecules in the neighborhood. And what doesn’t? Every substance, solid or liquid, has its vapor pressure; under Deneb’s rays even some rather unlikely materials probably evaporated enough to affect the organs of these life forms—metals, particularly. The life fluid of the creatures was obviously metal—probably lead, tin, bismuth, or some similar metals, or still more probably, several of them in a mixture that carried the substances vital to the life of their body cells. Probably much of the makeup of those cells was in the form of colloidal metals.

But that was the business of the biochemists. Cunningham amused himself for a time by imagining the analogy between smell and color which must exist here; light gases, such as oxygen and nitrogen, must be rare, and the tiny quantities that leaked from his suit would be absolutely new to the creatures that intercepted them. He must have affected their nervous systems the way fire did those of terrestrial wild animals. No wonder even the centipede had thought discretion the better part of valor!

With his less essential problem solved for the nonce, Cunningham turned his attention to that of his own survival; and he had not pondered many moments when he realized that this, as well, might be solved. He began slowly to smile, as the discrete fragments of an idea began to sort themselves out and fit properly together in his mind—an idea that involved the vapor pressure of metallic blood, the leaking qualities of the utility suits worn by his erstwhile assistants, and the bloodthirstiness of his many-legged acquaintances of the day; and he had few doubts about any of those qualities. The plan became complete, to his satisfaction; and with a smile on his face, he settled himself to watch until sunset.
Deneb had already crossed a considerable arc of the sky. Cunningham did not know just how long he had, as he lacked a watch; and it was soon borne in on him that time passes much more slowly when there is nothing to occupy it. As the afternoon drew on, he was forced away from the cave mouth; for the descending star was beginning to shine in. Just before sunset, he was crowded against one side; for Deneb’s fierce rays shone straight through the entrance and onto the opposite wall, leaving very little space not directly illuminated. Cunningham drew a sigh of relief for more reasons than one when the upper limb of the deadly luminary finally disappeared.

His specimens had long since recovered from their fright, and left the cavern; he had not tried to stop them. Now, however, he emerged from the low entryway and went directly to the nearest dust dune, which was barely visible in the starlight. A few moment’s search was rewarded with one of the squirming plant-eaters, which he carried back into the shelter; then, illuminating the scene carefully with the small torch that was clipped to the waist of his suit, he made a fair-sized pile of dust, gouged a long groove in the top with his toe, with the aid of the same stone he had used before, he killed the plant-eater and poured its “blood” into the dust mold.

The fluid was metallic, all right; it cooled quickly, and in two or three minutes Cunningham had a silvery rod about as thick as a pencil and five or six inches long. He had been a little worried about the centipede at first; but the creature was either not in line to “see” into the cave, or had dug in for the night like its victims.

Cunningham took the rod, which was about as pliable as a strip of solder of the same dimensions, and, extinguishing the torch, made his way in a series of short, careful leaps to the stranded spaceship. There was no sign of the men, and they had taken their welding equipment inside with them—that is, if they had ever had it out; Cunningham had not been able to watch them for the last hour of daylight. The hull was still jacked up, however; and the naturalist eased himself under it and began to examine the damage, once more using the torch. It was about as he had deduced from the conversation of the men; and with a smile, he took the little metal stick and went to work. He was busy for some time under the hull, and once he emerged, found another plant-eater, and went back underneath. After he had finished, he walked once around the ship, checking each of the air locks and finding them sealed, as he had expected.
He showed neither surprise nor disappointment at this; and without further ceremony he made his way back to the cave, which he had a little trouble finding in the starlight. He made a large pile of the dust, for insulation rather than bedding, lay down on it, and tried to sleep. He had very little success, as he might have expected.

Night, in consequence, seemed unbearably long; and he almost regretted his star study of the previous darkness, for now he was able to see that sunrise was still distant, rather than bolster his morale with the hope that Deneb would be in the sky the next time he opened his eyes. The time finally came, however, when the hilltops across the valley leaped one by one into brilliance as the sunlight caught them; and Cunningham rose and stretched himself. He was stiff and cramped, for a spacesuit makes a poor sleeping costume even on a better bed than a stone floor.

As the light reached the spaceship and turned it into a blazing silvery spindle, the air lock opened. Cunningham had been sure that the men were in a hurry to finish their task, and were probably awaiting the sun almost as eagerly as he in order to work efficiently; he had planned on this basis.

Malmeson was the first to leap to the ground, judging by their conversation, which came clearly through Cunningham’s phones. He turned back, and his companion handed down to him the bulky diode welder and a stack of filler rods. Then both men made their way forward to the dent where they were to work. Apparently they failed to notice the bits of loose metal lying on the scene—perhaps they had done some filing themselves the day before. At any rate, there was no mention of it as Malmeson lay down and slid under the hull, and the other began handing equipment in to him.

Plant-eaters were beginning to struggle out of their dust beds as the connections were completed, and the torch started to flame. Cunningham nodded in pleasure as he noted this; things could scarcely have been timed better had the men been consciously co-operating. He actually emerged from the cave, keeping in the shadow of the hillock, to increase his field of view; but for several minutes nothing but plant-eaters could be seen moving.

He was beginning to fear that his invited guests were too distant to receive their call, when his eye caught a glimpse of a long, black body slipping silently over the dunes toward the ship. He smiled in satisfaction; and then his eyebrows suddenly rose as he saw a second snaky form following the tracks of the first.

He looked quickly across his full field of view, and was rewarded by the sight of four more of the monsters—all heading at breakneck speed straight for the spaceship. The beacon he had lighted had reached more eyes than he had expected. He was sure that the men were armed, and had never intended that they actually be overcome by the creatures; he had counted on a temporary distraction that would let him reach the air lock unopposed.

He stood up, and braced himself for the dash, as Malmeson’s helper saw the first of the charging centipedes and called the welder from his work. Malmeson barely had time to gain his feet when the first pair of attackers reached them; and at the same instant Cunningham emerged into the sunlight, putting every ounce of his strength into the leaps that were carrying him toward the only shelter that now existed for him.

He could feel the ardor of Deneb’s rays the instant they struck him; and before he had covered a third of the distance the back of his suit was painfully hot. Things were hot for his ex-crew as well; fully ten of the black monsters had reacted to the burst of—to them—overpoweringly attractive odor—or gorgeous color?—that had resulted when Malmeson had turned his welder on the metal where Cunningham had applied the frozen blood of their natural prey; and more of the same substance was now vaporizing under Deneb’s influence as Malmeson, who had been lying in fragments of it stood fighting off the attackers. He had a flame pistol, but it was slow to take effect on creatures whose very blood was molten metal; and his companion, wielding the diode unit on those who got too close, was no better off. They were practically swamped under wriggling bodies as they worked their way toward the air lock; and neither man saw Cunningham as, staggering even under the feeble gravity that was present, and fumbling with eye shield misted with sweat, he reached the same goal and disappeared within.
Being a humane person, he left the outer door open; but he closed and clogged the inner one before proceeding with a more even step to the control room. Here he unhurriedly removed his spacesuit, stopping only to open the switch of the power socket that was feeding the diode unit as he heard the outer lock door close. The flame pistol would make no impression on the alloy of the hull, and he felt no qualms about the security of the inner door. The men were safe, from every point of view.

With the welder removed from the list of active menaces, he finished removing his suit, turned to the medium transmitter, and coolly broadcast a call for help and his position in space. Then he turned on a radio transmitter, so that the rescuers could find him on the planet; and only then did he contact the prisoners on the small set that was tuned to the suit radios, and tell them what he had done.

“I didn’t mean to do you any harm,” Malmeson’s voice came back. “I just wanted the ship. I know you paid us pretty good, but when I thought of the money that could be made on some of those worlds if we looked for something besides crazy animals and plants, I couldn’t help myself. You can let us out now; I swear we won’t try anything more—the ship won’t fly, and you say a Guard flyer is on the way. How about that?”

“I’m sorry you don’t like my hobby,” said Cunningham. “I find it entertaining; and there have been times when it was even useful, though I won’t hurt your feelings by telling you about the last one. I think I shall feel happier if the two of you stay right there in the air lock; the rescue ship should be here before many hours, and you’re fools if you haven’t food and water in your suits.”

“I guess you win, in that case,” said Malmeson.

“I think so, too,” replied Cunningham, and switched off.

THE END

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Chapter 2, Part 5, of the 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene titled “Avoid groupthink: Command-and-control”

This is a full reprint in HTML of the fifth chapter (Chapter 5) of the second part (Part II) of the massive volume titled "The 33 Strategies of War". Written by Robert Greene (with emotional support from his cats). I read this book while in prison, and found much of what was written to be interesting, enjoyable, and pertinent to things going on in my life. I think that you will as well.

People naturally have their own agendas in the groups you lead. If you’re too authoritarian they will resent you, and if you’re too lax they will revert doing their own interests. You need a chain of command where people buy into your vision and follow your lead naturally. The overall strategic vision must come from you and you alone. But make the group feel involved in the decision making. Take their good ideas, deflect the bad ones and if necessary make minor changes to appease the most political ones.

Part II

Chapter 5 AVOID THE SNARES OF GROUPTHINK

Avoid groupthink: Command-and-control

The problem in leading any group is that people inevitably have their own agendas. If you are too authoritarian, they will resent you and rebel in silent ways. If you are too easygoing, they will revert to their natural selfishness and you will lose control. You have to create a chain of command in which people do not feel constrained by your influence yet follow your lead. Put the right people in place--people who will enact the spirit of your ideas without being automatons. 

Make your commands clear and inspiring, focusing attention on the team, not the leader. Create a sense of participation, but do not fall into Groupthink--the irrationality of collective decision making. Make yourself look like a paragon of fairness, but never relinquish unity of command.

How very different is the cohesion between that of an army rallying around one flag carried into battle at the personal command of one general and that of an allied military force extending 50 or 100 leagues, or even on different sides of the theater! In the first case, cohesion is at its strongest and unity at its closest. In the second case, the unity is very remote, often consisting of no more than a shared political intention, and therefore only scanty and imperfect, while the cohesion of the parts is mostly weak and often no more than an illusion.

ON WAR, CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, 1780-1831

THE BROKEN CHAIN

World War I began in August 1914, and by the end of that year, all along the Western Front, the British and French were caught in a deadly stalemate with the Germans. Meanwhile, though, on the Eastern Front, Germany was badly beating the Russians, allies of Britain and France. Britain’s military leaders had to try a new strategy, and their plan, backed by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill and others, was to stage an attack on Gallipoli, a peninsula on Turkey’s
Dardanelles Strait. Turkey was an ally of Germany’s, and the Dardanelles was the gateway to Constantinople, the Turkish capital (present-day Istanbul). If the Allies could take Gallipoli, Constantinople would follow, and Turkey would have to leave the war. In addition, using bases in Turkey and the Balkans, the Allies could attack Germany from the southeast, dividing its armies and weakening its ability to fight on the Western Front. They would also have a clear supply line to Russia. Victory at Gallipoli would change the course of the war.

The plan was approved, and in March 1915, General Sir Ian Hamilton was named to lead the campaign. Hamilton, at sixty-two, was an able strategist and an experienced commander. He and Churchill felt certain that their forces, including Australians and New Zealanders, would out-match the Turks.

Churchill’s orders were simple: take Constantinople. He left the details to the general.

Hamilton’s plan was to land at three points on the southwestern tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, secure the beaches, and sweep north. The landings took place on April 27. From the beginning almost everything went wrong: the army’s maps were inaccurate, its troops landed in the wrong places, the beaches were much narrower than expected. Worst of all, the Turks fought back unexpectedly fiercely and well. At the end of the first day, most of the Allies’ 70,000 men had landed, but they were unable to advance beyond the beaches, where the Turks would hold them pinned down for several weeks. It was another stalemate; Gallipoli had become a disaster.

All seemed lost, but in June, Churchill convinced the government to send more troops and Hamilton devised a new plan. He would land 20,000 men at Suvla Bay, some twenty miles to the north. Suvla was a vulnerable target: it had a large harbor, the terrain was low-lying and easy, and it was defended by only a handful of Turks. An invasion here would force the Turks to divide their forces,
freeing up the Allied armies to the south. The stalemate would be broken, and Gallipoli would fall.

To command the Suvla operation Hamilton was forced to accept the most senior Englishman available for the job, Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stopford. Under him, Major General Frederick Hammersley would lead the Eleventh Division. Neither of these men was Hamilton’s first choice.

Stopford, a sixty-one-year-old military teacher, had never led troops in war and saw artillery bombardment as the only way to win a battle; he was also in poor health. Hammersley, for his part, had suffered a nervous breakdown the previous year.

In war it is not men, but the man, that counts.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769-1821

Hamilton’s style was to tell his officers the purpose of an upcoming battle but leave it to them how to bring it about. He was a gentleman, never blunt or forceful. At one of their first meetings, for example, Stop-ford requested changes in the landing plans to reduce risk. Hamilton politely deferred to him.

Hamilton did have one request. Once the Turks knew of the landings at Suvla, they would rush in reinforcements. As soon as the Allies were ashore, then, Hamilton wanted them to advance immediately to a range of hills four miles inland, called Tekke Tepe, and to get there before the Turks. From Tekke Tepe the Allies would dominate the peninsula. The order was simple enough, but
Hamilton, so as not to offend his subordinate, expressed it in the most general terms. Most crucially, he specified no time frame. He was sufficiently vague that Stopford completely misinterpreted him: instead of trying to reach Tekke Tepe “as soon as possible,” Stopford thought he should advance to the hills “if possible.” That was the order he gave Hammersley. And as Hammersley, nervous about the whole campaign, passed it down to his colonels, the order became less
urgent and vaguer still.

Also, despite his deference to Stopford, Hamilton overruled the lieutenant general in one respect: he denied a request for more artillery bombardments to loosen up the Turks. Stopford’s troops would outnumber the Turks at Suvla ten to one, Hamilton replied; more artillery was superfluous.

The attack began in the early morning of August 7. Once again much turned bad: Stopford’s changes in the landing plans made a mess. As his officers came ashore, they began to argue, uncertain about their positions and objectives. They sent messengers to ask their next step: Advance? Consolidate?

Hammersley had no answers. Stopford had stayed on a boat offshore, from which to control the battlefield–but on that boat he was impossible to reach quickly enough to get prompt orders from him. Hamilton was on an island still farther away. The day was frittered away in argument and the endless relaying of messages.

The next morning Hamilton began to sense that something had gone very wrong. From reconnaissance aircraft he knew that the flat land around Suvla was essentially empty and undefended; the way to Tekke Tepe was open–the troops had only to march–but they were staying where they were. Hamilton decided to visit the front himself. Reaching Stopford’s boat late that afternoon, he found the general in a self-congratulatory mood: all 20,000 men had gotten ashore.

No, he had not yet ordered the troops to advance to the hills; without artillery he was afraid the Turks might counterattack, and he needed the day to consolidate his positions and to land supplies.

Hamilton strained to control himself: he had heard an hour earlier that Turkish reinforcements had been seen hurrying toward Suvla. The Allies would have to secure Tekke Tepe this evening, he said–but Stopford was against a night march. Too dangerous. Hamilton retained his cool and politely excused himself.

Any army is like a horse, in that it reflects the temper and the spirit of its rider. If there is an uneasiness and an uncertainty, it transmits itself through the reins, and the horse feels uneasy and uncertain.

LONE STAR PREACHER, COLONEL JOHN W. THOMASON, JR., 1941

In near panic, Hamilton decided to visit Hammersley at Suvla. Much to his dismay, he found the army lounging on the beach as if it were a bank holiday. He finally located Hammersley–he was at the far end of the bay, busily supervising the building of his temporary headquarters. Asked why he had failed to secure the hills, Hammersley replied that he had sent several brigades for the purpose,
but they had encountered Turkish artillery and his colonels had told him they could not advance without more instructions. Communications between Hammersley, Stopford, and the colonels in the field were taking forever, and when Stopford had finally been reached, he had sent the message back
to Hammersley to proceed cautiously, rest his men, and wait to advance until the next day. Hamilton could control himself no longer: a handful of Turks with a few guns were holding up an army of 20,000 men from marching a mere four miles!

Tomorrow morning would be too late; the Turkish reinforcements were on their way.

Although it was already night, Hamilton ordered Hammersley to send a brigade immediately to Tekke Tepe. It would be a race to the finish.

Hamilton returned to a boat in the harbor to monitor the situation. At sunrise the next morning, he watched the battlefield through binoculars–and saw, to his horror, the Allied troops in headlong retreat to Suvla. A large Turkish force had arrived at Tekke Tepe thirty minutes before them.

In the next few days, the Turks managed to regain the flats around Suvla and to pin Hamilton’s army on the beach. Some four months later, the Allies gave up their attack on Gallipoli and evacuated their troops.

Interpretation

In planning the invasion at Suvla, Hamilton thought of everything. He understood the need for surprise, deceiving the Turks about the landing site. He mastered the logistical details of a complex amphibious assault. Locating the key point–Tekke Tepe–from which the Allies could break the stalemate in Gallipoli, he crafted an excellent strategy to get there.

He even tried to prepare for the kind of unexpected contingencies that can always happen in battle. But he ignored the one thing closest to him: the chain of command, and the circuit of communications by which orders, information, and decisions would circulate back and forth. He was dependent on that circuit to give him control of the situation and allow him to execute his strategy.

The first links in the chain of command were Stopford and Hammersley. Both men were terrified of risk, and Hamilton failed to adapt himself to their weakness: his order to reach Tekke Tepe was polite, civilized, and unforceful, and Stopford and Hammersley interpreted it according to their fears. They saw Tekke Tepe as a possible goal to aim for once the beaches were secured.

The next links in the chain were the colonels who were to lead the assault on Tekke Tepe. They had no contact with Hamilton on his island or with Stopford on his boat, and Hammersley was too overwhelmed to lead them. They themselves were terrified of acting on their own and maybe messing up a plan they had never understood; they hesitated at every step. Below the colonels were officers
and soldiers who, without leadership, were left wandering on the beach like lost ants. Vagueness at the top turned into confusion and lethargy at the bottom. Success depended on the speed with which information could pass in both directions along the chain of command, so that Hamilton could understand what was happening and adapt faster than the enemy. The chain was broken, and Gallipoli was lost.

When a failure like this happens, when a golden opportunity slips through your fingers, you naturally look for a cause.

Maybe you blame your incompetent officers, your faulty technology, your flawed intelligence. But that is to look at the world backward; it ensures more failure.

The truth is that everything starts from the top.

What determines your failure or success is your style of leadership and the chain of command that you design. If your orders are vague and halfhearted, by the time they reach the field they will be meaningless. Let people work unsupervised and they will revert to their natural selfishness: they will see in your orders what they want to see, and their behavior will promote their own interests.

Unless you adapt your leadership style to the weaknesses of the people in your group, you will almost certainly end up with a break in the chain of command. Information in the field will reach you too slowly. A proper chain of command, and the control it brings you, is not an accident; it is your creation, a work of art that requires constant attention and care. Ignore it at your peril.

For what the leaders are, that, as a rule, will the men below them be.

--Xenophon (430?-355? B.C.)

REMOTE CONTROL

In the late 1930s, U.S. Brigadier General George C. Marshall (1880-1958) preached the need for major military reform. The army had too few soldiers, they were badly trained, current doctrine was ill suited to modern technology–the list of problems went on.

In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to select his next army chief of staff. The appointment was critical: World War II had begun in Europe, and Roosevelt believed that the United States was sure to get involved. He understood the need for military reform, so he bypassed generals with more seniority and experience and chose Marshall for the job.

The appointment was a curse in disguise, for the War Department was hopelessly dysfunctional.

Many of its generals had monstrous egos and the power to impose their way of doing things. Senior officers, instead of retiring, took jobs in the department, amassing power bases and fiefdoms that they did everything they could to protect. A place of feuds, waste, communication breakdowns, and
overlapping jobs, the department was a mess. How could Marshall revamp the army for global war if he could not control it? How could he create order and efficiency?

What must be the result of an operation which is but partially understood by the commander, since it is not his own conception? I have undergone a pitiable experience as prompter at head- quarters, and no one has a better appreciation of the value of such services than myself; and it is particularly in a council of war that such a part is absurd. The greater the number and the higher the rank of the military officers who compose the council, the more difficult will it be to accomplish the triumph of truth and reason, however small be the amount of dissent. What would have been the action of a council of war to which Napoleon proposed the movement of Arcola, the crossing of the Saint-Bernard, the maneuver at Ulm, or that at Gera and Jena? The timid would have regarded them as rash, even to madness, others would have seen a thousand difficulties of execution, and all would have concurred in rejecting them; and if, on the contrary, they had been adopted, and had been executed by any one but Napoleon, would they not certainly have proved failures?

BARON ANTOINE-HENRI DE JOMINI, 1779-1869

Some ten years earlier, Marshall had served as the assistant commander of the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he had trained many officers.

Throughout his time there, he had kept a notebook in which he recorded the names of promising young men.

Soon after becoming chief of staff, Marshall began to retire the older officers in the War Department and replace them with these younger men whom he had personally trained. These officers were ambitious, they shared his desire for reform, and he encouraged them to speak their minds and show initiative.

They included men like Omar Bradley and Mark Clark, who would be crucial in World War II, but no one was more important than the protege Marshall spent the most time on: Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The relationship began a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when Marshall asked Eisenhower, then a colonel, to prepare a report on what should be done in the Far East. The report showed Marshall that Eisenhower shared his ideas on how to run the war.

For the next few months, he kept Eisenhower in the War Plans Division and watched him closely: the two men met every day, and in that time Eisenhower soaked up Marshall’s style of leadership, his way of getting things done.

Marshall tested Eisenhower’s patience by indicating that he planned to keep him in Washington instead of giving him the field assignment that he desperately wanted.

The colonel passed the test.

Much like Marshall himself, he got along well with other officers yet was quietly forceful. In July 1942, as the Americans prepared to enter the war by fighting alongside the British in North Africa, Marshall surprised one and all by naming Eisenhower commander in the European Theater of Operations.

Eisenhower was by this time a lieutenant general but was still relatively unknown, and in his first few months in the job, as the Americans fared poorly in North Africa, the British clamored for a replacement. But Marshall stood by his man, offering him advice and encouragement.

One key suggestion was for Eisenhower to develop a protege, much as Marshall had with him–a kind of roving deputy who thought the way he did and would act as his go-between with subordinates.

Marshall’s suggestion for the post was Major General Bradley, a man he knew well; Eisenhower accepted the idea, essentially duplicating the staff structure that Marshall had created in the War Department.

With Bradley in place, Marshall left Eisenhower alone.

Marshall positioned his proteges throughout the War Department, where they quietly spread his way of doing things. To make the task easier, he cut the waste in the department with utter ruthlessness, reducing from sixty to six the number of deputies who reported to him.

Marshall hated excess; his reports to Roosevelt made him famous for his ability to summarize a complex situation in a few pages.

The six men who reported to him found that any report that lasted a page too long simply went unread. He would listen to their oral presentations with rapt attention, but the minute they wandered from the topic or said something not thought through, he would look away, bored, uninterested.

It was an expression they dreaded: without saying a word, he had made it known that they had displeased him and it was time for them to leave.

Marshall’s six deputies began to think like him and to demand from those who reported to them the efficiency and streamlined communications style he demanded of them. The speed of the information flow up and down the line was now quadrupled.

"Do you think every Greek here can be a king? It's no good having a carload of commanders. We need One commander, one king, the one to whom Zeus, Son of Cronus the crooked, has given the staff And the right to make decisions for his people." And so Odysseus mastered the army. The men all Streamed back from their ships and huts and assembled With a roar.

THE ILIAD, HOMER, CIRCA NINTH CENTURY B.C.

Marshall exuded authority but never yelled and never challenged men frontally. He had a knack for communicating his wishes indirectly–a skill that was all the more effective since it made his officers think about what he meant.

Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, the military director of the project to develop the atom bomb, once came to Marshall’s office to get him to sign off on $100 million in expenditures. Finding the chief of staff engrossed in paperwork, he waited while Marshall diligently compared documents and made notes.

Finally Marshall put down his pen, examined the $100 million request, signed it, and returned it to Groves without a word. The general thanked him and was turning to leave when Marshall finally spoke: “It may interest you to know what I was doing: I was writing the check for $3.52 for grass seed for my lawn.”

The thousands who worked under Marshall, whether in the War Department or abroad in the field, did not have to see him personally to feel his presence.

They felt it in the terse but insightful reports that reached them from his deputies, in the speed of the responses to their questions and requests, in the department’s efficiency and team spirit. They felt it in the leadership style of men like Eisenhower, who had absorbed Marshall’s diplomatic yet forceful way of doing things. In a few short years, Marshall transformed the War Department and the U.S. Army.

Few really understood how he had done it.

Interpretation

When Marshall became chief of staff, he knew that he would have to hold himself back. The temptation was to do combat with everyone in every problem area: the recalcitrance of the generals, the political feuds, the layers of waste. But Marshall was too smart to give in to that temptation.

First, there were too many battles to fight, and they would exhaust him. He’d get frustrated, lose time, and probably give himself a heart attack. Second, by trying to micromanage the department, he would become embroiled in petty entanglements and lose sight of the larger picture. And finally he would come across as a bully. The only way to slay this many-headed monster, Marshall knew, was to step back.

He had to rule indirectly through others, controlling with such a light touch that no one would realize how thoroughly he dominated.

Reports gathered and presented by the General Staff, on the one hand, and by the Statistical Bureau, on the other, thus constituted the most important sources of information at Napoleon's disposal. 

Climbing through the chain of command, however, such reports tend to become less and less specific; the more numerous the stages through which they pass and the more standardized the form in which they are presented, the greater the danger that they will become so heavily profiled (and possibly sugar-coated or merely distorted by the many summaries) as to become almost meaningless. 

To guard against this danger and to keep subordinates on their toes, a commander needs to have in addition a kind of directed telescope--the metaphor is an apt one--which he can direct, at will, at any part of the enemy's forces, the terrain, or his own army in order to bring in information that is not only less structured than that passed on by the normal channels but also tailored to meet his momentary (and specific) needs. Ideally, the regular reporting system should tell the commander which questions to ask, and the directed telescope should enable him to answer those questions. 

It was the two systems together, cutting across each other and wielded by Napoleon's masterful hand, which made the revolution in command possible.

COMMAND IN WAR, MARTIN VAN CREVELD, 1985

The key to Marshall’s strategy was his selection, grooming, and placement of his proteges. He metaphorically cloned himself in these men, who enacted the spirit of his reforms on his behalf, saving him time and making him appear not as a manipulator but as a delegator.

His cutting of waste was heavy-handed at first, but once he put his stamp on the department, it began to run efficiently on its own–fewer people to deal with, fewer irrelevant reports to read, less wasted time on every level.

This streamlining achieved, Marshall could guide the machine with a lighter touch. The political types who were clogging the chain of command were either retired or joined in the team spirit he infused.

His indirect style of communicating amused some of his staff, but it was actually a highly effective way of asserting his authority. An officer might go home chuckling about finding Marshall fussing over a gardening bill, but it would slowly dawn on him that if he wasted a penny, his boss would know.

Like the War Department that Marshall inherited, today’s world is complex and chaotic. It is harder than ever to exercise control through a chain of command. You cannot supervise everything yourself; you cannot keep your eye on everyone.

Being seen as a dictator will do you harm, but if you submit to complexity and let go of the chain of command, chaos will consume you.

The solution is to do as Marshall did: operate through a kind of remote control. Hire deputies who share your vision but can think on their own, acting as you would in their place.

Instead of wasting time negotiating with every difficult person, work on spreading a spirit of camaraderie and efficiency that becomes self-policing.

Streamline the organization, cutting out waste–in staff, in the irrelevant reports on your desk, in pointless meetings. The less attention you spend on petty details, the more time you will have for the larger picture, for asserting your authority generally and indirectly. People will follow your lead without feeling bullied. That is the ultimate in control.

Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups.

--Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

KEYS TO WARFARE

Now more than ever, effective leadership requires a deft and subtle touch.

The reason is simple: we have grown more distrustful of authority. At the same time, almost all of us imagine ourselves as authorities in our own right–officers, not foot soldiers.

Feeling the need to assert themselves, people today put their own interests before the team.

Group unity is fragile and can easily crack.

These trends affect leaders in ways they barely know. The tendency is to give more power to the group: wanting to seem democratic, leaders poll the whole staff for opinions, let the group make decisions, give subordinates input into the crafting of an overall strategy.

Without realizing it, these leaders are letting the politics of the day seduce them into violating one of the most important rules of warfare and leadership: unity of command. Before it is too late, learn the lessons of war: divided leadership is a recipe for disaster, the cause of the greatest military defeats in history.

Among the foremost of these defeats was the Battle of Cannae, in 216 B.C., between the Romans and the Carthaginians led by Hannibal. The Romans outnumbered the Carthaginians two to one but were virtually annihilated in a perfectly executed strategic envelopment.

Hannibal, of course, was a military genius, but the Romans take much of the blame for their own defeat: they had a faulty command system, with two tribunes sharing leadership of the army.

Disagreeing over how to fight Hannibal, these men fought each other as much as they fought him, and they made a mess of things.

Nearly two thousand years later, Frederick the Great, king of Prussia and leader of its army, outfought and outlasted the five great powers aligned against him in the Seven Years’ War partly because he made decisions so much faster than the alliance generals, who had to consult each other in every move they made.

In World War II, General Marshall was well aware of the dangers of divided
leadership and insisted that one supreme commander should lead the Allied armies.

Without his victory in this battle, Eisenhower could not have succeeded in Europe. In the Vietnam War, the unity of command enjoyed by the North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap gave him a tremendous advantage over the Americans, whose strategy was crafted by a crowd of politicians and generals.

Divided leadership is dangerous because people in groups often think and act in ways that are illogical and ineffective–call it Groupthink.

People in groups are political: they say and do things that they think will help their image within the group. They aim to please others, to promote themselves, rather than to see things dispassionately. Where an individual can be bold and creative, a group is often afraid of risk. The need to find a compromise among all the different egos kills creativity. The group has a mind of its own, and that mind is cautious, slow to decide, unimaginative, and sometimes downright irrational.

This is the game you must play: Do whatever you can to preserve unity of command.

Keep the strings to be pulled in your hands; the over-arching strategic vision must come from you and you alone.

At the same time, hide your tracks.

Work behind the scenes; make the group feel involved in your decisions. Seek their advice, incorporating their good ideas, politely deflecting their bad ones.

If necessary, make minor, cosmetic strategy changes to assuage the insecure political animals in the group, but ultimately trust your own vision. Remember the dangers of group decision making. The first rule of effective leadership is never to relinquish your unity of command.

Tomorrow at dawn you depart [from St. Cloud] and travel to Worms, cross the Rhine there, and make sure that all preparations for the crossing of the river by my guard are being made there.

You will then proceed to Kassel and make sure that the place is being put in a state of defense and provisioned. Taking due security precautions, you will visit the fortress of Hanau. Can it be secured by a coup de main?

If necessary, you will visit the citadel of Marburg too. You will then travel on to Kassel and report to me by way of my charge d'affaires at that place, making sure that he is in fact there.

The voyage from Frankfurt to Kassel is not to take place by night, for you are to observe anything that might interest me. From Kassel you are to travel, also by day, by the shortest way to Koln. The land between Wesel, Mainz, Kassel, and Koln is to be reconnoitered.

What roads and good communications exist there? Gather information about communications between Kassel and Paderborn. What is the significance of Kassel? Is the place armed and capable of resistance?

Evaluate the forces of the Prince Elector in regard to their present state, their artillery, militia, strong places. From Koln you will travel to meet me at Mainz; you are to keep to the right bank on the Rhine and submit a short appreciation of the country around Dusseldorf, Wesel, and Kassel.

I shall be at Mainz on the 29th in order to receive your report.

You can see for yourself how important it is for the beginning of the campaign and its progress that you should have the country well imprinted on your memory.

NAPOLEON'S WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS TO FIELD GENERAL, QUOTED IN COMMAND IN WAR, MARTIN VAN CREVELD, 1985

Control is an elusive phenomenon. Often, the harder you tug at people, the less control you have over them. Leadership is more than just barking out orders; it takes subtlety.

Early in his career, the great Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman was often overwhelmed with frustration.

He had visions of the films he wanted to make, but the work of being a director was so taxing and the pressure so immense that he would lash out at his cast and crew, shouting orders and attacking them for not giving him what he wanted. Some would stew with resentment at his dictatorial ways, others became obedient automatons.

With almost every new film, Bergman would have to start again with a new cast and crew, which only made things worse.

But eventually he put together a team of the finest cinematographers, editors, art directors, and actors in Sweden, people who shared his high standards and whom he trusted.

That let him loosen the reins of command; with actors like Max von Sydow, he could just suggest what he had in mind and watch as the great actor brought his ideas to life. Greater control could now come from letting go.

A critical step in creating an efficient chain of command is assembling a skilled team that shares your goals and values.

That team gives you many advantages: spirited, motivated people who can think on their own; an image as a delegator, a fair and democratic leader; and a saving in your own valuable energy, which you can redirect toward the larger picture.

In creating this team, you are looking for people who make up for your deficiencies, who have the skills you lack.

In the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln had a strategy for defeating the South, but he had no military background and was disdained by his generals. What good was a strategy if he could not realize it? But Lincoln soon found his teammate in General Ulysses S. Grant, who shared his belief in offensive warfare and who did not have an oversize ego.

Once Lincoln discovered Grant, he latched on to him, put him in command, and let him run the war as he saw fit.

Be careful in assembling this team that you are not seduced by expertise and intelligence. Character, the ability to work under you and with the rest of the team, and the capacity to accept responsibility and think independently are equally key. That is why Marshall tested Eisenhower for so long. You may not have as much time to spare, but never choose a man merely by his glittering
resume. Look beyond his skills to his psychological makeup.

Rely on the team you have assembled, but do not be its prisoner or give it undue influence.Franklin D. Roosevelt had his infamous “brain trust,” the advisers and cabinet members on whom he depended for their ideas and opinions, but he never let them in on the actual decision making, and he kept them from building up their own power base within the administration.

He saw them simply as tools, extending his own abilities and saving him valuable time. He understood unity of command and was never seduced into violating it.

A key function of any chain of command is to supply information rapidly from the trenches, letting you adapt fast to circumstances. The shorter and more streamlined the chain of command, the better for the flow of information. Even so, information is often diluted as it passes up the chain: the telling details that reveal so much become standardized and general as they are filtered through formal channels.

Some on the chain, too, will interpret the information for you, filtering what you hear. To get more direct knowledge, you might occasionally want to visit the field yourself.

Marshall would sometimes drop in on an army base incognito to see with his own eyes how his reforms were taking effect; he would also read letters from soldiers. But in these days of increasing complexity, this can consume far too much of your time.

What you need is what the military historian Martin van Creveld calls “a directed telescope”: people in various parts of the chain, and elsewhere, to give you instant information from the battlefield.

These people–an informal network of friends, allies, and spies–let you bypass the slow- moving chain. The master of this game was Napoleon, who created a kind of shadow brigade of younger officers in all areas of the military, men chosen for their loyalty, energy, and intelligence.

At a moment’s notice, he would send one of these men to a far-off front or garrison, or even to enemy headquarters (ostensibly as a diplomatic envoy), with secret instructions to gather the kind of information he could not get fast enough through normal channels. In general, it is important to cultivate these directed telescopes and plant them throughout the group.

They give you flexibility in the chain, room to maneuver in a generally rigid environment. The single greatest risk to your chain of command comes from the political animals in the group.

People like this are inescapable; they spring up like weeds in any organization.

Not only are they out for themselves, but they build factions to further their own agendas and fracture the cohesion you have built. Interpreting your commands for their own purposes, finding loopholes in any ambiguity, they create invisible breaks in the chain.

Try to weed them out before they arrive. In hiring your team, look at the candidates’ histories: Are they restless? Do they often move from place to place? That is a sign of the kind of ambition that will keep them from fitting in. When people seem to share your ideas exactly, be wary: they are probably mirroring them to charm you.

The court of Queen Elizabeth I of England was full of political types.

Elizabeth’s solution was to keep her opinions quiet; on any issue, no one outside
her inner circle knew where she stood. That made it hard for people to mirror her, to disguise their intentions behind a front of perfect agreement. Hers was a wise strategy.

Another solution is to isolate the political moles–to give them no room to maneuver within the organization. Marshall accomplished this by infusing the group with his spirit of efficiency; disrupters of that spirit stood out and could quickly be isolated. In any event, do not be naive.

Once you identify the moles in the group, you must act fast to stop them from building a power base from which to destroy your authority.

Finally, pay attention to the orders themselves–their form as well as their substance. Vague orders are worthless. As they pass from person to person, they are hopelessly altered, and your staff comes to see them as symbolizing uncertainty and indecision.

It is critical that you yourself be clear about what you want before issuing your orders. On the other hand, if your commands are too specific and too narrow, you will encourage people to behave like automatons and stop thinking for themselves–which they must do when the situation requires it. Erring in neither direction is an art.

Here, as in so much else, Napoleon was the master. His orders were full of juicy details, which gave his officers a feel for how his mind worked while also allowing them interpretive leeway.

He would often spell out possible contingencies, suggesting ways the officer could adapt his instructions if necessary. Most important, he made his orders inspiring. His language communicated the spirit of his desires.

A beautifully worded order has extra power; instead of feeling like a minion, there only to execute the wishes of a distant emperor, the recipient becomes a participant in a great cause. Bland, bureaucratic orders filter down into listless activity and imprecise execution.

Clear, concise, inspiring orders make officers feel in control and fill troops with fighting spirit.

Authority: Better one bad general than two good ones.
--Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

REVERSAL

No good can ever come of divided leadership. If you are ever offered a position in which you will have to share command, turn it down, for the enterprise will fail and you will be held responsible.

Better to take a lower position and let the other person have the job.

It is always wise, however, to take advantage of your opponent’s faulty command structure. Never be intimidated by an alliance of forces against you: if they share leadership, if they are ruled by committee, your advantage is more than enough. In fact, do as Napoleon did and seek out enemies with that kind of command structure. You cannot fail to win.

Conclusion

There’s some great advice in this chapter for the manager and supervisor. When you are in a role, you must show leadership, no matter what style you possess. And make sure that everyone is following your lead in what ever actions you take.

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Chapter 1, Part 4, of the 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene titled “Create a sense of urgency and desperation; The Death Ground Strategy”

This is a full reprint in HTML of the fourth chapter (Chapter 4) of the first part (Part I) of the massive volume titled "The 33 Strategies of War". Written by Robert Greene (with emotional support from his cats). I read this book while in prison, and found much of what was written to be interesting, enjoyable, and pertinent to things going on in my life. I think that you will as well.

You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. Cut your ties to the past; enter unknown territory. Place yourself on “death ground,” where your back is against the wall and you have to fight like hell to get out alive.

Part I

Chapter 4 Create a sense of urgency and desperation; The Death Ground Strategy

You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. Since nothing seems urgent to you, you are only half involved in what you do. The only way to change is through action and outside pressure. Put yourself in situations where you have too much at stake to waste time or resources–if you cannot afford to lose, you won’t. Cut your ties to the past; enter unknown territory where you must depend on your wits and energy to see you through. Place yourself on “death ground,” where your back is against the wall and you have to fight like hell to get out alive.

Cortes ran all that aground with the ten ships. Cuba, to be sure, was still there, in the blue sea, with its farms, its cows and its tame Indians; but the way to Cuba was no longer through sunny blue waves, rocked in soft idleness, oblivious of danger and endeavor; it was through Motecucuma's court, which had to be conquered by ruse, by force, or by both; through a sea of warlike Indians who ate their prisoners and donned their skins as trophies; at the stroke of their chief's masterly hand, the five hundred men had lost that flow of vital memories and hopes which linked up their souls with their mother-island; at one stroke, their backs had been withered and had lost all sense of life. Henceforward, for them, all life was ahead, towards those forbidding peaks which rose gigantically on the horizon as if to bar all access to what was now not merely their ambition, but their only possible aim--Mexico, mysterious and powerful behind the conflicting tribes. 

- HERNAN CORTES: CONQUEROR OF MEXICO, SALVADOR DE MADARIAGA, 1942

THE NO-RETURN TACTIC

In 1504 an ambitious nineteen-year-old Spaniard named Hernan Cortes gave up his studies in law and sailed for his country’s colonies in the New World. Stopping first in Santo Domingo (the island today comprising Haiti and the Dominican Republic), then in Cuba, he soon heard about a land to the west called Mexico–an empire teeming with gold and dominated by the Aztecs, with their magnificent highland capital of Tenochtitlan. From then on, Cortes had just one thought: someday he would conquer and settle the land of Mexico.

Over the next ten years, Cortes slowly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming secretary to the Spanish governor of Cuba and then the king’s treasurer for the island. In his own mind, though, he was merely biding his time. He waited patiently while Spain sent other men to Mexico, many of them never to return.

Finally, in 1518, the governor of Cuba, Diego de Velazquez, made Cortes the leader of an expedition to discover what had happened to these earlier explorers, find gold, and lay the groundwork for the country’s conquest. Velazquez wanted to make that future conquest himself, however, so for this expedition he wanted a man he could control, and he soon developed doubts about Cortes–the man was clever, perhaps too much so. Word reached Cortes that the governor was having second thoughts about sending him to Mexico. Deciding to give Velazquez no time to nurse his misgivings, he managed to slip out of Cuba in the middle of the night with eleven ships. He would explain himself to the governor later.

The expedition landed on Mexico’s east coast in March 1519. Over the next few months, Cortes put his plans to work–founding the town of Veracruz, forging alliances with local tribes who hated the Aztecs, and making initial contact with the Aztec emperor, whose capital lay some 250 miles to the west. But one problem plagued the conquistador: among the 500 soldiers who had sailed with him from Cuba were a handful who had been placed there by Velazquez to act as spies and make trouble for him if he exceeded his authority. These Velazquez loyalists accused Cortes of mismanaging the gold that he was collecting, and when it became clear that he intended to conquer Mexico, they spread rumors that he was insane–an all-too-convincing accusation to make about a man planning to lead 500 men against half a million Aztecs, fierce warriors known to eat their prisoners’ flesh and wear the skins as trophies. A rational man would take the gold they had, return to Cuba, and come back later with an army. Why stay in this forbidding land, with its diseases and its lack of creature comforts, when they were so heavily outnumbered? Why not sail for Cuba, back home where their farms, their wives, and the good life awaited them?

Cortes did what he could with these troublemakers, bribing some, keeping a close eye on others. Meanwhile he worked to build a strong enough rapport with the rest of his men that the grumblers could do no harm. All seemed well until the night of July 30, when Cortes was awoken by a Spanish sailor who, begging for mercy, confessed that he had joined in a plot to steal a ship and return that very evening to Cuba, where the conspirators would tell Velazquez about Cortes’s goal of conquering Mexico on his own.

Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, bring struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead. 

- HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI, YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO, 1659-1720

Cortes sensed that this was the decisive moment of the expedition. He could easily squash the conspiracy, but there would be others. His men were a rough lot, and their minds were on gold, Cuba, their families–anything but fighting the Aztecs. He could not conquer an empire with men so divided and untrustworthy, but how to fill them with the energy and focus for the immense task he faced?Thinking this through, he decided to take swift action. He seized the conspirators and had the two ringleaders hanged. Next, he bribed his pilots to bore holes in all of the ships and then announce that worms had eaten through the boards of the vessels, making them unseaworthy.

Pretending to be upset at the news, Cortes ordered what was salvageable from the ships to be taken ashore and then the hulls to be sunk. The pilots complied, but not enough holes had been bored, and only five of the ships went down. The story of the worms was plausible enough, and the soldiers accepted the news of the five ships with equanimity. But when a few days later more ships were run aground and only one was left afloat, it was clear to them that Cortes had arranged the whole thing. When he called a meeting, their mood was mutinous and murderous.

This was no time for subtlety. Cortes addressed his men: he was responsible for the disaster, he admitted; he had ordered it done, but now there was no turning back. They could hang him, but they were surrounded by hostile Indians and had no ships; divided and leaderless, they would perish. The only alternative was to follow him to Tenochtitlan. Only by conquering the Aztecs, by becoming lords of Mexico, could they get back to Cuba alive. To reach Tenochtitlan they would have to fight with utter intensity. They would have to be unified; any dissension would lead to defeat and a terrible death. The situation was desperate, but if the men fought desperately in turn, Cortes guaranteed that he would lead them to victory. Since the army was so small in number, the glory and riches would be all the greater. Any cowards not up to the challenge could sail the one remaining ship home.

There is something in war that drives so deeply into you that death ceases to be the enemy, merely another participant in a game you don't wish to end. 

- PHANTOM OVER VIETNAM, JOHN TROTTI, USMC, 1984

No one accepted the offer, and the last ship was run aground. Over the next months, Cortes kept his army away from Veracruz and the coast. Their attention was focused on Tenochtitlan, the heart of the Aztec empire. The grumbling, the self-interest, and the greed all disappeared. Understanding the danger of their situation, the conquistadors fought ruthlessly. Some two years after the destruction of the Spanish ships, and with the help of their Indian allies, Cortes’s army laid siege to Tenochtitlan and conquered the Aztec empire.

You don't have time for this display, you fool," he said in a severe tone. "This, whatever you're doing now, may be your last act on earth. It may very well be your last battle. There is no power which could guarantee that you are going to live one more minute...." "...Acts have power," he said, "Especially when the person acting knows that those acts are his last battle. There is a strange consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever one is doing may very well be one's last act on earth. I recommend that you reconsider your life and bring your acts into that light.... Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying. Focus your attention on the fact you don't have time and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power. Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man." "Is it so terrible to be a timid man?" "No. It isn't if you are going to be immortal, but if you are going to die there is not time for timidity, simply because timidity makes you cling to something that exists only in your thoughts. It soothes you while everything is at a lull, but then the awesome, mysterious world will open its mouth for you, as it will open for every one of us, and then you will realize that your sure ways were not sure at all. Being timid prevents us from examining and exploiting our lot as men."

-JOURNEY TO IXTLAN: THE LESSONS OF DON JUAN, CARLOS CASTANEDA, 1972

Interpretation

On the night of the conspiracy, Cortes had to think fast. What was the root of the problem he faced? It was not Velazquez’s spies, or the hostile Aztecs, or the incredible odds against him. The root of the problem was his own men and the ships in the harbor. His soldiers were divided in heart and mind. They were thinking about the wrong things–their wives, their dreams of gold, their plans for the future. And in the backs of their minds there was always an escape route: if this conquest business went badly, they could go home. Those ships in the harbor were more than just transportation; they represented Cuba, the freedom to leave, the ability to send for reinforcements–so many possibilities.

For the soldiers the ships were a crutch, something to fall back on if things got ugly. Once Cortes had identified the problem, the solution was simple: destroy the ships. By putting his men in a desperate place, he would make them fight with utmost intensity.

A sense of urgency comes from a powerful connection to the present. Instead of dreaming of rescue or hoping for a better future, you have to face the issue at hand. Fail and you perish. People who involve themselves completely in the immediate problem are intimidating; because they are focusing so intensely, they seem more powerful than they are. Their sense of urgency multiplies their strength and gives them momentum. Instead of five hundred men, Cortes suddenly had the weight of a much larger army at his back.

Like Cortes you must locate the root of your problem. It is not the people around you; it is yourself, and the spirit with which you face the world. In the back of your mind, you keep an escape route, a crutch, something to turn to if things go bad. Maybe it is some wealthy relative you can count on to buy your way out; maybe it is some grand opportunity on the horizon, the endless vistas of time that seem to be before you; maybe it is a familiar job or a comfortable relationship that is always there if you fail. Just as Cortes’s men saw their ships as insurance, you may see this fallback as a blessing–but in fact it is a curse. It divides you. Because you think you have options, you never involve yourself deeply enough in one thing to do it thoroughly, and you never quite get what you want. Sometimes you need to run your ships aground, burn them, and leave yourself just one option: succeed or go down. Make the burning of your ships as real as possible–get rid of your safety net. Sometimes you have to become a little desperate to get anywhere.

The ancient commanders of armies, who well knew the powerful influence of necessity, and how it inspired the soldiers with the most desperate courage, neglected nothing to subject their men to such a pressure. 

- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

THE DEATH-AT-YOUR-HEELS TACTIC

In 1845 the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, then twenty-four, shook the Russian literary world with the publication of his first novel, Poor Folk. He became the toast of St. Petersburg society. But something about his early fame seemed empty to him. He drifted into the fringes of left-wing politics, attending meetings of various socialist and radical groups. One of these groups centered on the charismatic Mikhail Petrashevsky.

Three years later, in 1848, revolution broke out all across Europe. Inspired by what was happening in the West, Russian radical groups like Petrashevsky’s talked of following suit. But agents of Czar Nicholas I had infiltrated many of these groups, and reports were written about the wild things being discussed at Petrashevsky’s house, including talk of inciting peasant revolts. Dostoyevsky was fervent about freeing the serfs, and on April 23, 1849, he and twenty-three other members of the Petrashevsky group were arrested.

After eight months of languishing in jail, the prisoners were awakened one cold morning and told that today they would finally hear their sentences. A few months’ exile was the usual punishment for their crime; soon, they thought, their ordeal would be over.

They were bundled into carriages and driven through the icy streets of St. Petersburg. Emerging from the carriages into Semyonovsky Square, they were greeted by a priest; behind him they could see rows of soldiers and, behind the soldiers, thousands of spectators. They were led toward a scaffold covered in black cloth at the center of the square. In front of the scaffold were three posts, and to the side was a line of carts laden with coffins.

Lord Naoshige said, "The Way of the Samurai is in desperateness. Ten men or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate." 

- HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI, YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO, 1659-1720

Dostoyevsky could not believe what he saw. “It’s not possible that they mean to execute us,” he whispered to his neighbor. They were marched to the scaffold and placed in two lines. It was an unbelievably cold day, and the prisoners were wearing the light clothes they’d been arrested in back in April. A drumroll sounded. An officer came forward to read their sentences: “All of the accused are guilty as charged of intending to overthrow the national order, and are therefore condemned to death before a firing squad.” The prisoners were too stunned to speak.

As the officer read out the individual charges and sentences, Dostoyevsky found himself staring at the golden spire of a nearby church and at the sunlight bouncing off it. The gleams of light disappeared as a cloud passed overhead, and the thought occurred to him that he was about to pass into darkness just as quickly, and forever. Suddenly he had another thought: If I do not die, if I am not killed, my life will suddenly seem endless, a whole eternity, each minute a century. I will take account of everything that passes–I will not waste a second of life again.

The prisoners were given hooded shirts. The priest came forward to read them their last rites and hear their confessions. They said good-bye to one another. The first three to be shot were tied to the posts, and the hoods were pulled over their faces. Dostoyevsky stood in the front, in the next group to go. The soldiers raised their rifles, took aim–and suddenly a carriage came galloping into the square. A man got out with an envelope. At the last second, the czar had commuted their death sentences.

It had long been known, of course, that a man who, through disciplined training, had relinquished any desire or hope for survival and had only one goal--the destruction of his enemy--could be a redoubtable opponent and a truly formidable fighter who neither asked nor offered any quarter once his weapon had been unsheathed. In this way, a seemingly ordinary man who, by the force of circumstances rather than by profession, had been placed in the position of having to make a desperate choice, could prove dangerous, even to a skilled fencing master. One famous episode, for example, concerns a teacher of swordsmanship who was asked by a superior to surrender a servant guilty of an offense punishable by death. This teacher, wishing to test a theory of his concerning the power of that condition we would call "desperation," challenged the doomed man to a duel. Knowing full well the irrevocability of his sentence, the servant was beyond caring one way or the other, and the ensuing duel proved that even a skilled fencer and teacher of the art could find himself in great difficulty when confronted by a man who, because of his acceptance of imminent death, could go to the limit (and even beyond) in his strategy, without a single hesitation or distracting consideration. The servant, in fact, fought like a man possessed, forcing his master to retreat until his back was almost to the wall. At last the teacher had to cut him down in a final effort, wherein the master's own desperation brought about the fullest coordination of his courage, skill, and determination. 

- SECRETS OF THE SAMURAI, OSCAR RATTI AND ADELE WESTBROOK, 1973

Later that morning, Dostoyevsky was told his new sentence: four years hard labor in Siberia, to be followed by a stint in the army. Barely affected, he wrote that day to his brother, “When I look back at the past and think of all the time I squandered in error and idleness,…then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift…every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If youth only knew! Now my life will change; now I will be reborn.”

A few days later, ten-pound shackles were put on Dostoyevsky’s arms and legs–they would stay there for the length of his prison term–and he was carted off to Siberia. For the next four years, he endured the most abysmal prison conditions. Granted no writing privileges, he wrote novels in his head, memorized them. Finally, in 1857, still serving the army period of his sentence, he was allowed to start publishing his work. Where before he would torture himself over a page, spend half a day idling it away in thought, now he wrote and wrote. Friends would see him walking the streets of St. Petersburg mumbling bits of dialogue to himself, lost in his characters and plots. His new motto was “Try to get as much done as possible in the shortest time.”

Some pitied Dostoyevsky his time in prison. That made him angry; he was grateful for the experience and felt no bitterness. But for that December day in 1849, he felt, he would have wasted his life. Right up until his death, in 1881, he continued writing at a frantic pace, churning out novel after novel–Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov–as if each one were his last.

Interpretation

Czar Nicholas had decided to sentence the Petrashevsky radicals to hard labor soon after their arrest. But he wanted to teach them a harsher lesson as well, so he dreamed up the cruel theater of the death sentence, with its careful details–the priest, the hoods, the coffins, the last-second pardon. This, he thought, would really humble and humiliate them. In fact, some of the prisoners were driven insane by the events of that day. But the effect on Dostoyevsky was different: he had been afflicted for years with a sense of wandering, of feeling lost, of not knowing what to do with his time. An extremely sensitive man, that day he literally felt his own death deep in his bones. And he experienced his “pardon” as a rebirth.

The effect was permanent. For the rest of his life, Dostoyevsky would consciously bring himself back to that day, remembering his pledge never to waste another moment. Or, if he felt he had grown too comfortable and complacent, he would go to a casino and gamble away all his money. Poverty and debt were for him a kind of symbolic death, throwing him back on the possible nothingness of his life. In either case he would have to write, and not the way other novelists wrote–as if it were a pleasant little artistic career, with all its attendant delights of salons, lectures, and other frills. Dostoyevsky wrote as if his life were at stake, with an intense feeling of urgency and seriousness.

Death is impossible for us to fathom: it is so immense, so frightening, that we will do almost anything to avoid thinking about it. Society is organized to make death invisible, to keep it several steps removed. That distance may seem necessary for our comfort, but it comes with a terrible price: the illusion of limitless time, and a consequent lack of seriousness about daily life. We are running away from the one reality that faces us all.

As a warrior in life, you must turn this dynamic around: make the thought of death something not to escape but to embrace. Your days are numbered. Will you pass them half awake and halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency? Cruel theaters staged by a czar are unnecessary; death will come to you without them. Imagine it pressing in on you, leaving you no escape–for there is no escape. Feeling death at your heels will make all your actions more certain, more forceful. This could be your last throw of the dice: make it count.

While knowing that we will die someday, we think that all the others will die before us and that we will be the last to go. Death seems a long way off. Is this not shallow thinking? It is worthless and is only a joke within a dream.... In sofar as death is always at one's door, one should make sufficient effort and act quickly.

--Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1720)

KEYS TO WARFARE

Quite often we feel somewhat lost in our actions. We could do this or that–we have many options, but none of them seem quite necessary. Our freedom is a burden–what do we do today, where do we go?Our daily patterns and routines help us to avoid feeling directionless, but there is always the niggling thought that we could accomplish so much more. We waste so much time. Upon occasion all of us have felt a sense of urgency. Most often it is imposed from outside: we fall behind in our work, we inadvertently take on more than we can handle, responsibility for something is thrust into our hands. Now everything changes; no more freedom. We have to do this, we have to fix that. The surprise is always how much more spirited and more alive this makes us feel; now everything we do seems necessary. But eventually we go back to our normal patterns. And when that sense of urgency goes, we really do not know how to get it back.

Leaders of armies have thought about this subject since armies existed: how can soldiers be motivated, be made more aggressive, more desperate? Some generals have relied on fiery oratory, and those particularly good at it have had some success. But over two thousand years ago, the Chinese strategist Sun-tzu came to believe that listening to speeches, no matter how rousing, was too passive an experience to have an enduring effect. Instead Sun-tzu talked of a “death ground”–a place where an army is backed up against some geographical feature like a mountain, a river, or a forest and has no escape route. Without a way to retreat, Sun-tzu argued, an army fights with double or triple the spirit it would have on open terrain, because death is viscerally present. Sun-tzu advocated deliberately stationing soldiers on death ground to give them the desperate edge that makes men fight like the devil. That is what Cortes did in Mexico, and it is the only sure way to create a real fire in the belly. The world is ruled by necessity: People change their behavior only if they have to. They will feel urgency only if their lives depend on it.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, they began to question Han Hsin. "According to The Art of War , when one fights he should keep the hills to his right or rear, and bodies of water in front of him or to the left," they said. "Yet today you ordered us on the contrary to draw up ranks with our backs to the river, saying 'We shall defeat Chao and feast together!' We were opposed to the idea, and yet it has ended in victory. What sort of strategy is this?" "This is in The Art of War too," replied Han Hsin. "It is just that you have failed to notice it! Does it not say in The Art of War : 'Drive them into a fatal position and they will come out alive; place them in a hopeless spot and they will survive'? Moreover, I did not have at my disposal troops that I had trained and led from past times, but was forced, as the saying goes, to round up men from the market place and use them to fight with. Under such circumstances, if I had not placed them in a desperate situation where each man was obliged to fight for his own life, but had allowed them to remain in a safe place, they would have all run away. Then what good would they have been to me?" "Indeed!" his generals exclaimed in admiration. "We would never have thought of that." 

-RECORDS OF THE HISTORIAN, SZUMA CHIEN, CIRCA 145 B.C.-CIRCA 86 B.C.

Death ground is a psychological phenomenon that goes well beyond the battlefield: it is any set of circumstances in which you feel enclosed and without options. There is very real pressure at your back, and you cannot retreat. Time is running out. Failure–a form of psychic death–is staring you in the face. You must act or suffer the consequences.

Understand: we are creatures who are intimately tied to our environment–we respond viscerally to our circumstances and to the people around us. If our situation is easy and relaxed, if people are friendly and warm, our natural tension unwinds. We may even grow bored and tired; our environment is failing to challenge us, although we may not realize it. But put yourself in a high-stakes situation–a psychological death ground–and the dynamic changes. Your body responds to danger with a surge of energy; your mind focuses. Urgency is forced on you; you are compelled to waste no more time.

The trick is to use this effect deliberately from time to time, to practice it on yourself as a kind of wake-up call. The following five actions are designed to put you on a psychological death ground. Reading and thinking about them won’t work; you must put them into effect. They are forms of pressure to apply to yourself. Depending on whether you want a low-intensity jolt for regular use or a real shock, you can turn the level up or down. The scale is up to you.

Stake everything on a single throw. In 1937 the twenty-eight-year-old Lyndon B. Johnson–at the time the Texas director of the National Youth Administration–faced a dilemma. The Texas congressman James Buchanan had suddenly died. Since loyal Texan voters tended to return incumbents to office, a Texan congressional seat generally came available only every ten or twenty years–and Johnson wanted to be in Congress by the time he was thirty; he did not have ten years to wait. But he was very young and was virtually unknown in Buchanan’s old district, the tenth. He would be facing political heavyweights whom voters would heavily favor. Why try something that seemed doomed to failure? Not only would the race be a waste of money, but the humiliation, if Johnson lost badly, could derail his long-term ambitions.

Unlimited possibilities are not suited to man; if they existed, his life would only dissolve in the boundless. To become strong, a man's life needs the limitations ordained by duty and voluntarily accepted. The individual attains significance as a free spirit only by surrounding himself with these limitations and by determining for himself what his duty is. 

-THE I CHING, CHINA, CIRCA EIGHTH CENTURY B.C.

Johnson considered all this–then decided to run. Over the next few weeks, he campaigned intensely, visiting the district’s every backwater village and town, shaking the poorest farmer’s hand, sitting in drugstores to meet people who had never come close to talking to a candidate before. He pulled every trick in the book–old-style rallies and barbecues, newfangled radio ads. He worked night and day–and hard. By the time the race was over, Johnson was in a hospital, being treated for exhaustion and appendicitis. But, in one of the great upsets in American political history, he had won.

By staking his future on one throw, Johnson put himself in a death-ground situation. His body and spirit responded with the energy he needed. Often we try too many things at one time, thinking that one of them will bring us success–but in these situations our minds are diffused, our efforts halfhearted. It is better to take on one daunting challenge, even one that others think foolish. Our future is at stake; we cannot afford to lose. So we don’t.

Act before you are ready. In 49 B.C. a group of Roman senators, allied with Pompey and fearing the growing power of Julius Caesar, ordered the great general to disband his army or be considered a traitor to the Republic. When Caesar received this decree, he was in southern Gaul (modern-day France) with only five thousand men; the rest of his legions were far to the north, where he had been campaigning. He had no intention of obeying the decree–that would have been suicide–but it would be weeks before the bulk of his army could join him. Unwilling to wait, Caesar told his captains, “Let the die be cast,” and he and his five thousand men crossed the Rubicon, the river marking the border between Gaul and Italy. Leading troops onto Italian soil meant war with Rome. Now there was no turning back; it was fight or die. Caesar was compelled to concentrate his forces, to not waste a single man, to act with speed, and to be as creative as possible. He marched on Rome. By seizing the initiative, he frightened the senators, forcing Pompey to flee.

Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die every day 

-NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769-1821

When danger is greatest.--It is rare to break one's leg when in the course of life one is toiling upwards--it happens much more often when one starts to take things easy and to choose the easy paths. 

-FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, 1844-1900

We often wait too long to act, particularly when we face no outside pressure. It is sometimes better to act before you think you are ready–to force the issue and cross the Rubicon. Not only will you take your opponents by surprise, you will also have to make the most of your resources. You have committed yourself and cannot turn back. Under pressure your creativity will flourish. Do this often and you will develop your ability to think and act fast.

Enter new waters. The Hollywood studio MGM had been good to Joan Crawford: it had discovered her, made her a star, crafted her image. By the early 1940s, though, Crawford had had enough. It was all too comfortable; MGM kept casting her in the same kinds of roles, none of them a challenge. So, in 1943, Crawford did the unthinkable and asked out of her contract.

Be absolute for death; either death or life Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences, That dost this habituation, where thou keep'st, Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble; For all the accommodations that thou bear'st Are nursed by baseness. Thou'rt by no means valiant; For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provokest; yet grossly fear'st Thy death, which is no more. 

-MEASURE FOR MEASURE, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 1564-1616

The consequences for Crawford could have been terrible; to challenge the studio system was considered highly unwise. Indeed, when she then signed up with Warner Brothers, predictably enough she was offered the same mediocre sorts of scripts. She turned them down. On the verge of being fired, she finally found the part she had been looking for: the title role in Mildred Pierce, which, however, she was not offered. Setting to work on the director, Michael Curtiz, she managed to change his mind and land the role. She gave the performance of her life, won her only Best Actress Oscar, and resurrected her career.

In leaving MGM, Crawford was taking a big chance. If she failed to succeed at Warner Brothers, and quickly, her career would be over. But Crawford thrived on risk. When she was challenged, when she felt on edge, she burst with energy and was at her best. Like Crawford, you sometimes have to force yourself onto death ground–leaving stale relationships and comfortable situations behind, cutting your ties to the past. If you give yourself no way out, you will have to make your new endeavor work. Leaving the past for unknown terrain is like a death–and feeling this finality will snap you back to life.

Make it “you against the world.” Compared to sports like football, baseball is slow and has few outlets for aggression. This was a problem for the hitter Ted Williams, who played best when he was angry–when he felt that it was him against the world. Creating this mood on the field was difficult for Williams, but early on, he discovered a secret weapon: the press. He got into the habit of insulting sportswriters, whether just by refusing to cooperate with them or by verbally abusing them. The reporters returned the favor, writing scathing articles on his character, questioning his talent, trumpeting the slightest drop in his batting average. It was when Williams was hammered by the press, though, that he played best. He would go on a hitting tear, as if to prove them wrong. In 1957, when he carried on a yearlong feud with the papers, he played perhaps his greatest season and won the batting title at what for a baseball player is the advanced age of forty. As one journalist wrote, “Hate seems to activate his reflexes like adrenaline stimulates the heart. Animosity is his fuel!”

For Williams the animosity of the press and, with the press, of the public, was a kind of constant pressure that he could read, hear, and feel. They hated him, they doubted him, they wanted to see him fail; he would show them. And he did. A fighting spirit needs a little edge, some anger and hatred to fuel it. So do not sit back and wait for people to get aggressive; irritate and infuriate them deliberately. Feeling cornered by a multitude of people who dislike you, you will fight like hell. Hatred is a powerful emotion. Remember: in any battle you are putting your name and reputation on the line; your enemies will relish your failure. Use that pressure to make yourself fight harder.

Keep yourself restless and unsatisfied. Napoleon had many qualities that made him perhaps history’s greatest general, but the one that raised him to the heights and kept him there was his boundless energy. During campaigns he worked eighteen to twenty-hour days. If necessary, he would go without sleep for several days, yet sleeplessness rarely reduced his capacities. He would work in the bath, at the theater, during a dinner party. Keeping his eye on every detail of the war, he would ride endless miles on horseback without tiring or complaining.

O gentlemen, the time of life is short! To spend that shortness basely were too long, If life did ride upon a dial's point, Still ending at the arrival of an hour. An if we live, we live to tread on kings; If die, brave death, when princes die with us! 

-KING HENRY IV, PART I, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 1564-1616

Certainly Napoleon had extraordinary endurance, but there was more to it than that: he never let himself rest, was never satisfied. In 1796, in his first real position of command, he led the French to a remarkable victory in Italy, then immediately went on another campaign, this time in Egypt. There, unhappy with the way the war was going and with a lack of political power that he felt was cutting into his control over military affairs, he returned to France and conspired to become first consul. This achieved, he immediately set out on his second Italian campaign. And on he went, immersing himself in new wars, new challenges, that required him to call on his limitless energy. If he did not meet the crisis, he would perish.

When we are tired, it is often because we are bored. When no real challenge faces us, a mental and physical lethargy sets in. “Sometimes death only comes from a lack of energy,” Napoleon once said, and lack of energy comes from a lack of challenges, comes when we have taken on less than we are capable of. Take a risk and your body and mind will respond with a rush of energy. Make risk a constant practice; never let yourself settle down. Soon living on death ground will become a kind of addiction–you won’t be able to do without it. When soldiers survive a brush with death, they often feel an exhilaration that they want to have again. Life has more meaning in the face of death. The risks you keep taking, the challenges you keep overcoming, are like symbolic deaths that sharpen your appreciation of life.

Authority: When you will survive if you fight quickly and perish if you do not, this is called [death] ground.... Put them in a spot where they have no place to go, and they will die before fleeing. If they are to die there, what can they not do? Warriors exert their full strength. When warriors are in great danger, then they have no fear. When there is nowhere to go, they are firm, when they are deeply involved, they stick to it. If they have no choice, they will fight. 

-The Art of War, Sun-tzu (fourth century B.C.)

REVERSAL

If the feeling of having nothing to lose can propel you forward, it can do the same for others. You must avoid any conflict with people in this position. Maybe they are living in terrible conditions or, for whatever reason, are suicidal; in any case they are desperate, and desperate people will risk everything in a fight. This gives them a huge advantage. Already defeated by circumstances, they have nothing to lose. You do. Leave them alone.

Conversely, attacking enemies when their morale is low gives you the advantage. Maybe they are fighting for a cause they know is unjust or for a leader they do not respect. Find a way to lower their spirits even further. Troops with low morale are discouraged by the slightest setback. A show of force will crush their fighting spirit.

Always try to lower the other side’s sense of urgency. Make your enemies think they have all the time in the world; when you suddenly appear at their border, they are in a slumbering state, and you will easily overrun them. While you are sharpening your fighting spirit, always do what you can to blunt theirs.

Conclusion

The world is in the midst of World War III right now. It is being fought with things that are strange and unusual, and it is not being reported. In fact, the “news” is instead sending everyone off on “wild goose chases” down “rabbit holes”. No one actually knows what is going on.

It is critically important that you secure yourself and your family, and maintain a calm head through all of this. Let those around you make rash, foolish decisions, panic, and worry. That is not for you.

Recognize who you are, and where you are. Then, steely and calmly conduct your affirmation campaigns to wrest control of the reality that surrounds you and bend it to your will. You have this ability. Make it so.

Do you want more?

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Chapter 1, Part 3, of the 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene titled “Do not lose your presence of mind”

This is a full reprint in HTML of the third chapter (Chapter 3) of the first part (Part I) of the massive volume titled "The 33 Strategies of War". Written by Robert Greene (with emotional support from his cats). I read this book while in prison, and found much of what was written to be interesting, enjoyable, and pertinent to things going on in my life. I think that you will as well.

AMIDST THE TURMOIL OF EVENTS, DO NOT LOSE YOUR PRESENCE OF MIND

THE COUNTERBALANCE STRATEGY

In the heat of battle, the mind tends to lose its balance. Too many things confront you at the same time—unexpected setbacks, doubts and criticisms from your own allies. There’s a danger of responding emotionally, with fear, depression, or frustration.

It is vital to keep your presence of mind, maintaining your mental powers whatever the circumstances.

You must actively resist the emotional pull of the moment—staying decisive, confident, and aggressive no matter what hits you. Make the mind tougher by exposing it to adversity. Learn to detach yourself from the chaos of the battlefield. Let others lose their heads; your presence of mind will steer you clear of their influence and keep you on course.

[Presence of mind] must play a great role in war, the domain of the unexpected, since it is nothing but an increased capacity of dealing with the unexpected. We admire presence of mind in an apt repartee, as we admire  quick thinking in the  face of danger.... The  expression "presence of mind" precisely conveys the speed and immediacy of the help provided by the intellect.

ON WAR, CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, 1780-1831

THE HYPERAGGRESSIVE TACTIC

Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) had been through it all. He had lost his right eye in the siege of Calvi and his right arm in the Battle of Tenerife. He had defeated the Spanish at Cape St. Vincent in 1797 and had thwarted Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign by defeating his navy at the Battle of the Nile the following year. But none of his tribulations and triumphs prepared him for the problems he faced from his own colleagues in the British navy as they prepared to go to war against Denmark in February 1801.

Nelson, England’s most glorious war hero, was the obvious choice to lead the fleet. Instead the Admiralty chose Sir Hyde Parker, with Nelson his second-in-command. This war was a delicate business; it was intended to force the disobedient Danes to comply with a British-led embargo on the shipping of military goods to France. The fiery Nelson was prone to lose his cool. He hated Napoleon, and if he went too far against the Danes, he would produce a diplomatic fiasco. Sir Hyde was an older, more stable, even-tempered man who would do the job and nothing more.

Nelson swallowed his pride and took the assignment, but he saw trouble ahead. He knew that time was of the essence: the faster the navy sailed, the less chance the Danes would have to build up their defenses. The ships were ready to sail, but Parker’s motto was “Everything in good order.” It wasn’t his style to hurry. Nelson hated his casualness and burned for action: he reviewed intelligence reports, studied maps, and came up with a detailed plan for fighting the Danes. He wrote to Parker urging him to seize the initiative. Parker ignored him.

More life may trickle out of men through thought than through a gaping wound.

THOMAS HARDY, 1840-1928

At last, on March 11, the British fleet set sail. Instead of heading for Copenhagen, however, Parker anchored well to the north of the city’s harbor and called a meeting of his captains. According to intelligence reports, he explained, the Danes had prepared elaborate defenses for Copenhagen. Boats anchored in the harbor, forts to the north and south, and mobile artillery batteries could blast the British out of the water. How to fight this artillery without terrible losses? Also, pilots who knew the waters around Copenhagen reported that they were treacherous, places of sandbars and tricky winds. Navigating these dangers under bombardment would be harrowing. With all of these difficulties, perhaps it was best to wait for the Danes to leave harbor and then fight them in open sea.

Nelson struggled to control himself. Finally he let loose, pacing the room, the stub of his lost arm jerking as he spoke. No war, he said, had ever been won by waiting. The Danish defenses looked formidable “to those who are children at war,” but he had worked out a strategy weeks earlier: he would attack from the south, the easier approach, while Parker and a reserve force would stay to the city’s north. Nelson would use his mobility to take out the Danish guns. He had studied the maps: sandbars were no threat. As for the wind, aggressive action was more important than fretting over wind.

Nelson’s speech energized Parker’s captains. He was by far their most successful leader, and his confidence was catching. Even Sir Hyde was impressed, and the plan was approved.

So Grant was alone; his most trusted subordinates besought him to change his plans, while his superiors were astounded at his temerity and strove to interfere. 

Soldiers of reputation and civilians in high places condemned, in advance, a campaign that seemed to them as hopeless as it was unprecedented. 

If he failed, the country would concur with the Government and the Generals. 

Grant knew all this, and appreciated his danger, but was as invulnerable to the apprehensions of ambition as to the entreaties of friendship, or the anxieties even of patriotism. 

That quiet confidence in himself which never forsook him, and which amounted indeed almost to a feeling of fate, was uninterrupted. Having once determined in a matter that required irreversible decision, he never reversed, nor even misgave, but was steadily loyal to himself and his plans. 

This absolute and implicit faith was, however, as far as possible from conceit or enthusiasm; it was simply a consciousness or conviction, rather, which brought the  very strength it believed in; which was itself strength, and which inspired others with a trust in him, because he was able thus to trust himself.

MILITARY HISTORY OF ULYSSES S. GRANT, ADAM BADEAU, 1868

The next morning Nelson’s line of ships advanced on Copenhagen, and the battle began. The Danish guns, firing on the British at close range, took a fierce toll. Nelson paced the deck of his flagship, HMS Elephant, urging his men on. He was in an excited, almost ecstatic state. A shot through the mainmast nearly hit him: “It is warm work, and this day may be the last to any of us at any moment,” he told a colonel, a little shaken up by the blast, “but mark you, I would not be elsewhere for thousands.”

Parker followed the battle from his position to the north. He now regretted agreeing to Nelson’s plan; he was responsible for the campaign, and a defeat here could ruin his career. After four hours of back-and-forth bombardment, he had seen enough: the fleet had taken a beating and had gained no advantage. Nelson never knew when to quit. Parker decided it was time to hoist signal flag 39, the order to withdraw. The first ships to see it were to acknowledge it and pass the signal on down the line. Once acknowledged there was nothing else to do but retreat.

The battle was over.

On board the Elephant, a lieutenant told Nelson about the signal. The vice-admiral ignored it. Continuing to pound the Danish defenses, he eventually called to an officer, “Is number sixteen still hoisted?” Number 16 was his own flag; it meant “Engage the enemy more closely.” The officer confirmed that the flag was still flying. “Mind you keep it so,” Nelson told him.

A few minutes later, Parker’s signal still flapping in the breeze, Nelson turned to his flag captain: “You know, Foley, I have only one eye–I have a right to be blind sometimes.” And raising his telescope to his blind eye, he calmly remarked, “I really do not see the signal.”

Torn between obeying Parker and obeying Nelson, the fleet captains chose Nelson. They would risk their careers along with his. But soon the Danish defenses started to crack; some of the ships anchored in the harbor surrendered, and the firing of the guns began to slow. Less than an hour after Parker’s signal to stop the battle, the Danes surrendered.

The next day Parker perfunctorily congratulated Nelson on the victory. He did not mention his subordinate’s disobedience. He was hoping the whole affair, including his own lack of courage, would be quietly forgotten.

Interpretation

When the Admiralty put its faith in Sir Hyde, it made a classical military error: it entrusted the waging of a war to a man who was careful and methodical. Such men may seem calm, even strong, in times of peace, but their self-control often hides weakness: the reason they think things through so carefully is that they are terrified of making a mistake and of what that might mean for them and their career.

This doesn’t come out until they are tested in battle: suddenly they cannot make a decision. They see problems everywhere and defeat in the smallest setback. They hang back not out of patience but out of fear. Often these moments of hesitation spell their doom.

There was once a man who may be called the "generalissimo" of robbers and who went by the name of Hakamadare.

He had a strong mind and a powerful build. He was swift of foot, quick with his hands, wise in thinking and plotting. Altogether there was no one who could compare with him.

His business was to rob people of their possessions when they were off guard.

Once, around the tenth month of a year, he needed clothing and decided to get hold of some.

He went to prospective spots and walked about, looking.

About midnight when people had gone to sleep and were quiet, under a somewhat blurry moon he saw a man dressed in abundant clothes sauntering about on a boulevard. The man, with his trouser-skirt tucked up with strings perhaps and in a formal hunting robe which gently covered his body, was playing the flute, alone, apparently in no hurry to go to any particular place.

Wow, here's a fellow who's shown up just to give me his clothes, Hakamadare thought.

Normally he would have gleefully run up and beaten his quarry down and robbed him of his clothes. But this time, unaccountably, he felt something fearsome about the man, so he followed him for a couple of hundred yards.

The man himself didn't seem to think, Somebody's following me. On the contrary, he continued to play the flute with what appeared to be greater calm.

Give him a try, Hakamadare said to himself, and ran up close to the man, making as much clatter as he could with his feet.

The man, however, looked not the least disturbed. He simply turned to look, still playing the flute. It wasn't possible to jump on him. Hakamadare ran off.

Hakamadare tried similar approaches a number of times, but the man remained utterly unperturbed. Hakamadare realized he was dealing with an unusual fellow. When they had covered about a thousand yards, though, Hakamadare decided he couldn't continue like this, drew his sword, and ran up to him.

This time the man stopped playing the flute and, turning, said, "What in the world are you doing?" Hakamadare couldn't have been struck with greater fear even if a demon or a god had run up to attack him when he was walking alone.

For some unaccountable reason he lost both heart and courage.

Overcome with deathly fear and despite himself, he fell on his knees and hands. "What are you doing?" the man repeated.

Hakamadare felt he couldn't escape even if he tried. "I'm trying to rob you," he blurted out. "My name is Hakamadare." "

I've heard there's a man about with that name, yes. A dangerous, unusual fellow, I'm told," the man said.

Then he simply said to Hakamadare, "Come with me," and continued on his way, playing the flute again.

Terrified that he was dealing with no ordinary human being, and as if possessed by a demon or a god, Hakamadare followed the man, completely mystified. Eventually the man walked into a gate behind which was a large house.

He stepped inside from the verandah after removing his shoes. While Hakamadare was thinking, He must be the master of the house, the man came back and summoned him.

As he gave him a robe made of thick cotton cloth, he said, "If you need something like this in the future, just come and tell me. If you jump on somebody who doesn't know your intentions, you may get hurt."

Afterward it occurred to Hakamadare that the house belonged to Governor of Settsu Fujiwara no Yasumasa.

Later, when he was arrested, he is known to have observed, "He was such an unusually weird, terrifying man!"

Yasumasa was not a warrior by family tradition because he was a son of Munetada. Yet he was not the least inferior to anyone who was a warrior by family tradition.

He had a strong mind, was quick with his hands, and had tremendous strength.

He was also subtle in thinking and plotting. So even the imperial court did not feel insecure in employing him in the way of the warrior. As a result, the whole world greatly feared him and was intimidated by him.

LEGENDS OF THE SAMURAI, HIROAKI SATO, 1995

Lord Nelson operated according to the opposite principle. Slight of build, with a delicate constitution, he compensated for his physical weakness with fierce determination. He forced himself to be more resolute than anyone around him. The moment he entered battle, he ratcheted up his aggressive impulses.

Where other sea lords worried about casualties, the wind, changes in the enemy’s formation, he concentrated on his plan. Before battle no one strategized or studied his opponent more thoroughly. (That knowledge helped Nelson to sense when the enemy was ready to crumble.) But once the engagement began, hesitation and carefulness were dropped.

Presence of mind is a kind of counterbalance to mental weakness, to our tendency to get emotional and lose perspective in the heat of battle.

Our greatest weakness is losing heart, doubting ourselves, becoming unnecessarily cautious.

Being more careful is not what we need; that is just a screen for our fear of conflict and of making a mistake. What we need is double the resolve–an intensification of confidence. That will serve as a counterbalance.

In moments of turmoil and trouble, you must force yourself to be more determined. Call up the aggressive energy you need to overcome caution and inertia. Any mistakes you make, you can rectify with more energetic action still. Save your carefulness for the hours of preparation, but once the fighting begins, empty your mind of doubts. Ignore those who quail at any setback and call for retreat. Find joy in attack mode. Momentum will carry you through.

The senses make a more vivid impression on the mind than systematic thought.... Even the man who planned the operation and now sees it being carried out may well lose confidence in his earlier judgment.... War has a way of masking the stage with scenery crudely daubed with fearsome apparitions. Once this is cleared away, and the horizon becomes unobstructed, developments will confirm his earlier convictions--this is one of the great chasms between planning and execution.

--Carl von Clausewitz, ON WAR (1780-1831)

THE DETACHED-BUDDHA TACTIC

Watching the movie director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) at work on a film set was often quite a surprise to those seeing it for the first time. Most filmmakers are wound-up balls of energy, yelling at the crew and barking out orders, but Hitchcock would sit in his chair, sometimes dozing, or at least with his eyes half closed.

On the set of Strangers on a Train, made in 1951, the actor Farley Granger thought Hitchcock’s behavior meant he was angry or upset and asked him if anything was wrong. “Oh,” Hitchcock replied sleepily, “I’m so bored.” The crew’s complaints, an actor’s tantrums–nothing fazed him; he would just yawn, shift in his chair, and ignore the problem. “Hitchcock…didn’t seem to direct us at all,” said the actress Margaret Lockwood. “He was a dozing, nodding Buddha with an enigmatic smile on his face.”

It was hard for Hitchcock’s colleagues to understand how a man doing such stressful work could stay so calm and detached. Some thought it was part of his character–that there was something inherently cold-blooded about him. Others thought it a gimmick, a put-on.

Few suspected the truth: before the filmmaking had even begun, Hitchcock would have prepared for it with such intense attention to detail that nothing could go wrong.

He was completely in control; no temperamental actress, no panicky art director, no meddling producer could upset him or interfere with his plans. Feeling such absolute security in what he had set up, he could afford to lie back and fall asleep.

Hitchcock’s process began with a story-line, whether from a novel or an idea of his own. As if he had a movie projector in his head, he would begin to visualize the film. Next, he would start meeting with a writer, who would soon realize that this job was unlike any other. Instead of taking some producer’s half-baked idea and turning it into a screenplay, the writer was simply there to put on paper the dream trapped in Hitchcock’s mind.

He or she would add flesh and bones to the characters and would of course write the dialog, but not much else.

When Hitchcock sat down with the writer Samuel Taylor for the first script meeting on the movie Vertigo (1958), his descriptions of several scenes were so vivid, so intense, that the experiences seemed almost to have been real, or maybe something he had dreamed. This completeness of vision foreclosed creative conflict. As Taylor soon realized, although he was writing the script, it would remain a Hitchcock creation.

Once the screenplay was finished, Hitchcock would transform it into an elaborate shooting script.

Blocking, camera positions, lighting, and set dimensions were spelled out in detailed notes. Most directors leave themselves some latitude, shooting scenes from several angles, for example, to give the film editor options to work with later on. Not Hitchcock: he essentially edited the entire film in the shooting script. He knew exactly what he wanted and wrote it down. If a producer or actor tried to add or change a scene, Hitchcock was outwardly pleasant–he could afford to pretend to listen–but inside he was totally unmoved.

Nothing was left to chance. For the building of the sets (quite elaborate in a movie like Rear Window), Hitchcock would present the production designer with precise blueprints, floor plans, incredibly detailed lists of props. He supervised every aspect of set construction.

He was particularly attentive to the clothes of his leading actresses: according to Edith Head, costumer on many Hitchcock movies, including Dial M for Murder in 1954, “There was a reason for every color, every style, and he was absolutely certain about everything he settled on. For one scene he saw [Grace Kelly] in pale green, for another in white chiffon, for another in gold. He was really putting a dream together in the studio.” When the actress Kim Novak refused to wear a gray suit in Vertigo because she felt it made her look washed out, Hitchcock told her he wanted her to look like a woman of mystery who had just stepped out of the San Francisco fog. How could she argue with that?

She wore the suit.

Hitchcock’s actors found working with him strange yet pleasant. Some of Hollywood’s best– Joseph Cotten, Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman–said that he was the easiest director to work for: his nonchalance was catching, and since his films were so carefully staged as not to depend on the actor’s performance in any particular scene, they could relax.

Everything went like clockwork.

As James Stewart told the cast of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), “We’re in the hands of an expert here. You can lean on him. Just do everything he tells you and the whole thing will be okay.”

As Hitchcock sat calmly on the set, apparently half asleep, the cast and crew could see only the small part each one played. They had no idea how everything fit into his vision. When Taylor saw Vertigo for the first time, it was like seeing another man’s dream. The film neatly duplicated the vision Hitchcock had expressed to him many months before.

Interpretation

The first film Hitchcock directed was The Pleasure Garden, a silent he made in 1925. The production went wrong in every conceivable way.

Hitchcock hated chaos and disorder; unexpected events, panicky crew members, and any loss of control made him miserable.

From that point on, he decided, he would treat filmmaking like a military operation.

He would give his producers, actors, and crew no room to mess up what he wanted to create. He taught himself every aspect of film production: set design, lighting, the technicalities of cameras and lenses, editing, sound. He ran every stage of the film’s making. No shadow could fall between the planning and the execution.

Establishing control in advance the way Hitchcock did might not seem like presence of mind, but it actually takes that quality to its zenith. It means entering battle (in Hitchcock’s case a film shoot) feeling calm and ready.

Setbacks may come, but you will have foreseen them and thought of alternatives, and you are ready to respond.

Your mind will never go blank when it is that well prepared. When your colleagues barrage you with doubts, anxious questions, and slipshod ideas, you may nod and pretend to listen, but really you’re ignoring them–you’ve out-thought them in advance. And your relaxed manner will prove contagious to other people, making them easier to manage in turn.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by everything that faces you in battle, where so many people are asking or telling you what to do. So many vital matters press in on you that you can lose sight of your goals and plans; suddenly you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Understand: presence of mind is the ability to detach yourself from all that, to see the whole battlefield, the whole picture, with clarity. All great generals have this quality. And what gives you that mental distance is preparation, mastering the details beforehand. Let people think your Buddha-like detachment comes from some mysterious source. The less they understand you the better.

For the love of God, pull yourself together and do not look at things so darkly: the first step backward makes a poor impression in the army, the second step is dangerous, and the third becomes fatal.

--Frederick the Great (1712-86), letter to a general

KEYS TO WARFARE

We humans like to see ourselves as rational creatures. We imagine that what separates us from animals is the ability to think and reason. But that is only partly true: what distinguishes us from animals just as much is our capacity to laugh, to cry, to feel a range of emotions. We are in fact emotional creatures as well as rational ones, and although we like to think we govern our actions through reason and thought, what most often dictates our behavior is the emotion we feel in the moment.

We maintain the illusion that we are rational through the routine of our daily affairs, which helps us to keep things calm and apparently controlled. Our minds seem rather strong when we’re following our routines. But place any of us in an adverse situation and our rationality vanishes; we react to pressure by growing fearful, impatient, confused. Such moments reveal us for the emotional creatures we are: under attack, whether by a known enemy or unpredictably by a colleague, our response is dominated by feelings of anger, sadness, betrayal. Only with great effort can we reason our way through these periods and respond rationally–and our rationality rarely lasts past the next attack.

Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity–precisely the time when you need strength. What best equips you to cope with the heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness.

No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it. Like any discipline, it can come only through practice, experience, even a little suffering. The first step in building up presence of mind is to see the need for it–to want it badly enough to be willing to work for it. Historical figures who stand out for their presence of mind–Alexander the Great, Ulysses S. Grant, Winston Churchill–acquired it through adversity, through trial and error. They were in positions of responsibility in which they had to develop this quality or sink. Although these men may have been blessed with an unusual amount of personal fortitude, they had to work hard to strengthen this into presence of mind.

The first quality of a General-in-Chief is to have a cool head which receives exact impressions of things, which never gets heated, which never allows itself to be dazzled, or intoxicated, by good or bad news. 

The successive simultaneous sensations which he receives in the course of a day must be classified, and must occupy the correct places they merit to fill, because common sense and reason are the results of the comparison of a number of sensations each equally well considered. 

There are certain men who, on account of their moral and physical constitution, paint mental pictures out of everything: however exalted be their reason, their will, their courage, and whatever good qualities they may possess, nature has not fitted them to command armies, nor to direct great operations of war.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769-1821

The ideas that follow are based on their experience and hard-won victories. Think of these ideas as exercises, ways to toughen your mind, each a kind of counterbalance to emotion’s overpowering pull.

Expose yourself to conflict. George S. Patton came from one of America’s most distinguished military families–his ancestors included generals and colonels who had fought and died in the American Revolution and the Civil War. Raised on stories of their heroism, he followed in their footsteps and chose a career in the military. But Patton was also a sensitive young man, and he had one deep fear: that in battle he would turn coward and disgrace the family name.

Patton had his first real taste of battle in 1918, at the age of thirty-two, during the Allied offensive on the Argonne during World War I. He commanded a tank division. At one point during the battle, Patton managed to lead some American infantrymen to a position on a hilltop overlooking a key strategic town, but German fire forced them to take cover. Soon it became clear that they were trapped: if they retreated, they would come under fire from positions on the sides of the hill; if they advanced, they would run right into a battery of German machine guns. If they were all to die, as it seemed to Patton, better to die advancing. At the moment he was to lead the troops in the charge, however, Patton was stricken by intense fear. His body trembled, and his legs turned to jelly. In a confirmation of his deepest fears, he had lost his nerve.

At that instant, looking into the clouds beyond the German batteries, Patton had a vision: he saw his illustrious military ancestors, all in their uniforms, staring sternly down at him. They seemed to be inviting him to join their company–the company of dead war heroes. Paradoxically, the sight of these men had a calming effect on the young Patton: calling for volunteers to follow him, he yelled, “It is time for another Patton to die!” The strength had returned to his legs; he stood up and charged toward the German guns. Seconds later he fell, hit in the thigh. But he survived the battle.

From that moment on, even after he became a general, Patton made a point of visiting the front lines, exposing himself needlessly to danger. He tested himself again and again. His vision of his ancestors remained a constant stimulus–a challenge to his honor. Each time it became easier to face down his fears. It seemed to his fellow generals, and to his own men, that no one had more presence of mind than Patton. They did not know how much of his strength was an effort of will.

The story of Patton teaches us two things. First, it is better to confront your fears, let them come to the surface, than to ignore them or tamp them down. Fear is the most destructive emotion for presence of mind, but it thrives on the unknown, which lets our imaginations run wild. By deliberately putting yourself in situations where you have to face fear, you familiarize yourself with it and your anxiety grows less acute. The sensation of overcoming a deep-rooted fear in turn gives you confidence and presence of mind. The more conflicts and difficult situations you put yourself through, the more battle-tested your mind will be.

There was a fox who had never seen a lion. But one day he happened to meet one of these beasts face to face. On this first occasion he was so terrified that he felt he would die of fear. He encountered him again, and this time he was also frightened, but not so much as the first time. But on the third occasion when he saw him, he actually plucked up the courage to approach him and began to chat. This fable shows that familiarity soothes our fears.

FABLES, AESOP, SIXTH CENTURY B.C.

Second, Patton’s experience demonstrates the motivating power of a sense of honor and dignity. In giving in to fear, in losing your presence of mind, you disgrace not only yourself, your self-image, and your reputation but your company, your family, your group. You bring down the communal spirit. Being a leader of even the smallest group gives you something to live up to: people are watching you, judging you, depending on you. To lose your composure would make it hard for you to live with yourself.

Be self-reliant. There is nothing worse than feeling dependent on other people. Dependency makes you vulnerable to all kinds of emotions–betrayal, disappointment, frustration–that play havoc with your mental balance.

Early in the American Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant, eventual commander in chief of the Northern armies, felt his authority slipping. His subordinates would pass along inaccurate information on the terrain he was marching through; his captains would fail to follow through on his orders; his generals were criticizing his plans. Grant was stoical by nature, but his diminished control over his troops led to a diminished control over himself and drove him to drink.

In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths. Lord Takanobu said, "If discrimination is long, it will spoil." Lord Naoshige said, "When matters are done leisurely, seven out of ten will turn out badly. 

A warrior is a person who does things quickly." When your mind is going hither and thither, discrimination will never be brought to a conclusion. With an intense, fresh and unde-laying spirit, one will make his judgments within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through to the other side.

HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI, YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO, 1659-1720

Grant had learned his lesson by the time of the Vicksburg campaign, in 1862-63. He rode the terrain himself, studying it firsthand. He reviewed intelligence reports himself. He honed the precision of his orders, making it harder for his captains to flout them. And once he had made a decision, he would ignore his fellow generals’ doubts and trust his convictions. To get things done, he came to rely on himself. His feelings of helplessness dissolved, and with them all of the attendant emotions that had ruined his presence of mind.

Being self-reliant is critical. To make yourself less dependent on others and so-called experts, you need to expand your repertoire of skills. And you need to feel more confident in your own judgment. Understand: we tend to overestimate other people’s abilities–after all, they’re trying hard to make it look as if they knew what they were doing–and we tend to underestimate our own. You must compensate for this by trusting yourself more and others less.

It is important to remember, though, that being self-reliant does not mean burdening yourself with petty details. You must be able to distinguish between small matters that are best left to others and larger issues that require your attention and care.

Suffer fools gladly. John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, is one of history’s most successful generals. A genius of tactics and strategy, he had tremendous presence of mind. In the early eighteenth century, Churchill was often the leader of an alliance of English, Dutch, and German armies against the mighty forces of France. His fellow generals were timid, indecisive, narrow-minded men. They balked at the duke’s bold plans, saw dangers everywhere, were discouraged at the slightest setback, and promoted their own country’s interests at the expense of the alliance. They had no vision, no patience: they were fools.

On a famous occasion during the civil war, Caesar tripped when disembarking from a ship on the shores of Africa and fell flat on his face. With his talent for improvisation, he spread out his arms and embraced the earth as a symbol of conquest. By quick thinking he turned a terrible omen of failure into one of victory.

CICERO: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROME'S GREATEST POLITICIAN, ANTHONY EVERITT, 2001

The duke, an experienced and subtle courtier, never confronted his colleagues directly; he did not force his opinions on them. Instead he treated them like children, indulging them in their fears while cutting them out of his plans.

Occasionally he threw them a bone, doing some minor thing they had suggested or pretending to worry about a danger they had imagined.

But he never let himself get angry or frustrated; that would have ruined his presence of mind, undermining his ability to lead the campaign. He forced himself to stay patient and cheerful. He knew how to suffer fools gladly.

We mean the ability to keep one's head at times of exceptional stress and violent emotion.... But it might be closer to the truth to assume that the faculty known as self-control--the gift of keeping calm even under the greatest stress--is rooted in temperament. 

It is itself an emotion which serves to balance the passionate feelings in strong characters without destroying them, and it is this balance alone that assures the dominance of the intellect. 

The counter-weight we mean is simply the sense of human dignity, the noblest pride and deepest need of all: the urge to act rationally at all times. Therefore we would argue that a strong character is one that will not be unbalanced by the most powerful emotions.

ON WAR, CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, 1780-1831

Understand: you cannot be everywhere or fight everyone. Your time and energy are limited, and you must learn how to preserve them. Exhaustion and frustration can ruin your presence of mind. The world is full of fools–people who cannot wait to get results, who change with the wind, who can’t see past their noses. You encounter them everywhere: the indecisive boss, the rash colleague, the hysterical subordinate. When working alongside fools, do not fight them. Instead think of them the way you think of children, or pets, not important enough to affect your mental balance. Detach yourself emotionally. And while you’re inwardly laughing at their foolishness, indulge them in one of their more harmless ideas. The ability to stay cheerful in the face of fools is an important skill.

Crowd out feelings of panic by focusing on simple tasks. Lord Yamanouchi, an aristocrat of eighteenth-century Japan, once asked his tea master to accompany him on a visit to Edo (later Tokyo), where he was to stay for a while. He wanted to show off to his fellow courtiers his retainer’s skill in the rituals of the tea ceremony. Now, the tea master knew everything there was to know about the tea ceremony, but little else; he was a peaceful man. He dressed, however, like a samurai, as his high position required.

One day, as the tea master was walking in the big city, he was accosted by a samurai who challenged him to a duel. The tea master was not a swordsman and tried to explain this to the samurai, but the man refused to listen. To turn the challenge down would disgrace both the tea master’s family and Lord Yamanouchi. He had to accept, though that meant certain death. And accept he did, requesting only that the duel be put off to the next day. His wish was granted.

In panic, the tea master hurried to the nearest fencing school. If he were to die, he wanted to learn how to die honorably. To see the fencing master ordinarily required letters of introduction, but the tea master was so insistent, and so clearly terrified, that at last he was given an interview. The fencing master listened to his story.

However, he perceived now that it did not greatly matter what kind of soldiers he was going to fight, so long as they fought, which fact no one disputed. There was a more serious problem.

He lay in his bunk pondering upon it.

He tried to mathematically prove to himself that he would not run from a battle.... A little panic-fear grew in his mind. As his imagination went forward to a fight, he saw hideous possibilities.

He contemplated the lurking menaces of the future, and failed in an effort to see himself standing stoutly in the midst of them. He recalled his visions of broken-bladed glory, but in the shadow of the impending tumult he suspected them to be impossible pictures.

He sprang from the bunk and began to pace nervously to and fro. "Good Lord, what's th' matter with me?" he said aloud.

He felt that in this crisis his laws of life were useless. Whatever he had learned of himself was here of no avail. He was an unknown quantity. He saw that he would again be obliged to experiment as he had in early youth. He must accumulate information of himself, and meanwhile he resolved to remain close upon his guard lest those qualities of which he knew nothing should everlastingly disgrace him.

"Good Lord!" he repeated in dismay.... For days he made ceaseless calculations, but they were all wondrously unsatisfactory. He found that he could establish nothing.

He finally concluded that the only way to prove himself was to go into the blaze, and then figuratively to watch his legs to discover their merits and faults. He reluctantly admitted that he could not sit still and with a mental slate and pencil derive an answer. To gain it, he must have blaze, blood, and danger, even as a chemist requires this, that, and the other. So he fretted for an opportunity.

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, STEPHEN CRANE, 1871-1900

The swordsman was sympathetic: he would teach the poor visitor the art of dying, but first he wanted to be served some tea. The tea master proceeded to perform the ritual, his manner calm, his concentration perfect.

Finally the fencing master yelled out in excitement, “No need for you to learn the art of death! The state of mind you’re in now is enough for you to face any samurai. When you see your challenger, imagine you’re about to serve tea to a guest. Take off your coat, fold it up carefully, and lay your fan on it just as you do at work.” This ritual completed, the tea master was to raise his sword in the same alert spirit. Then he would be ready to die.

The tea master agreed to do as his teacher said. The next day he went to meet the samurai, who could not help but notice the completely calm and dignified expression on his opponent’s face as he took off his coat. Perhaps, the samurai thought, this fumbling tea master is actually a skilled swordsman. He bowed, begged pardon for his behavior the day before, and hurried away.

When circumstances scare us, our imagination tends to take over, filling our minds with endless anxieties.

You need to gain control of your imagination, something easier said than done. Often the best way to calm down and give yourself such control is to force the mind to concentrate on something relatively simple–a calming ritual, a repetitive task that you are good at. You are creating the kind of composure you naturally have when your mind is absorbed in a problem. A focused mind has no room for anxiety or for the effects of an overactive imagination. Once you have regained your mental balance, you can then face the problem at hand. At the first sign of any kind of fear, practice this technique until it becomes a habit. Being able to control your imagination at intense moments is a crucial skill.

Unintimidate yourself. Intimidation will always threaten your presence of mind. And it is a hard feeling to combat.

During World War II, the composer Dmitry Shostakovich and several of his colleagues were called into a meeting with the Russian ruler Joseph Stalin, who had commissioned them to write a new national anthem. Meetings with Stalin were terrifying; one misstep could lead you into a very dark alley. He would stare you down until you felt your throat tighten. And, as meetings with Stalin often did, this one took a bad turn: the ruler began to criticize one of the composers for his poor arrangement of his anthem. Scared silly, the man admitted he had used an arranger who had done a bad job. Here he was digging several graves: Clearly the poor arranger could be called to task. The composer was responsible for the hire, and he, too, could pay for the mistake. And what of the other composers, including Shostakovich? Stalin could be relentless once he smelled fear.

Shostakovich had heard enough: it was foolish, he said, to blame the arranger, who was mostly following orders. He then subtly redirected the conversation to a different subject–whether a composer should do his own orchestrations. What did Stalin think on the matter? Always eager to prove his expertise, Stalin swallowed the bait. The dangerous moment passed.

Shostakovich maintained his presence of mind in several ways. First, instead of letting Stalin intimidate him, he forced himself to see the man as he was: short, fat, ugly, unimaginative. The dictator’s famous piercing gaze was just a trick, a sign of his own insecurity. Second, Shostakovich faced up to Stalin, talking to him normally and straightforwardly. By his actions and tone of voice, the composer showed that he was not intimidated. Stalin fed off fear. If, without being aggressive or brazen, you showed no fear, he would generally leave you alone.

The key to staying unintimidated is to convince yourself that the person you’re facing is a mere mortal, no different from you–which is in fact the truth. See the person, not the myth. Imagine him or her as a child, as someone riddled with insecurities. Cutting the other person down to size will help you to keep your mental balance.

Develop your Fingerspitzengefuhl (fingertip feel). Presence of mind depends not only on your mind’s ability to come to your aid in difficult situations but also on the speed with which this happens. Waiting until the next day to think of the right action to take does you no good at all. “Speed” here means responding to circumstances with rapidity and making lightning-quick decisions. This power is often read as a kind of intuition, what the Germans call “Fingerspitzengefuhl” (fingertip feel).

Erwin Rommel, who led the German tank campaign in North Africa during World War II, had great fingertip feel. He could sense when the Allies would attack and from what direction. In choosing a line of advance, he had an uncanny feel for his enemy’s weakness; at the start of a battle, he could intuit his enemy’s strategy before it unfolded.

To Rommel’s men their general seemed to have a genius for war, and he did possess a quicker mind than most. But Rommel also did things to enhance his quickness, things that reinforced his feel for battle.

First, he devoured information about the enemy–from details about its weaponry to the psychological traits of the opposing general.

Second, he made himself an expert in tank technology, so that he could get the most out of his equipment.

Third, he not only memorized maps of the North African desert but would fly over it, at great risk, to get a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield.

Finally, he personalized his relationship with his men. He always had a sense of their morale and knew exactly what he could expect from them.

Rommel didn’t just study his men, his tanks, the terrain, and the enemy–he got inside their skin, understood the spirit that animated them, what made them tick. Having felt his way into these things, in battle he entered a state of mind in which he did not have to think consciously of the situation. The totality of what was going on was in his blood, at his fingertips.

He had Fingerspitzengefuhl.

Whether or not you have the mind of a Rommel, there are things you can do to help you respond faster and bring out that intuitive feel that all animals possess. Deep knowledge of the terrain will let you process information faster than your enemy, a tremendous advantage. Getting a feel for the spirit of men and material, thinking your way into them instead of looking at them from outside, will help to put you in a different frame of mind, less conscious and forced, more unconscious and intuitive. Get your mind into the habit of making lightning-quick decisions, trusting your fingertip feel. Your mind will advance in a kind of mental blitzkrieg, moving past your opponents before they realize what has hit them.

Finally, do not think of presence of mind as a quality useful only in periods of adversity, something to switch on and off as you need it. Cultivate it as an everyday condition. Confidence, fearlessness, and self-reliance are as crucial in times of peace as in times of war. Franklin Delano Roosevelt showed his tremendous mental toughness and grace under pressure not only during the crises of the Depression and World War II but in everyday situations–in his dealings with his family, his cabinet, his own polio-racked body. The better you get at the game of war, the more your warrior frame of mind will do for you in daily life. When a crisis does come, your mind will already be calm and prepared. Once presence of mind becomes a habit, it will never abandon you.

The man with centre has calm, unprejudiced judgment. He knows what is important, what unimportant. He meets realilty serenely and with detachment keeping his sense of proportion. The Hara no aru hito [man with centre] faces life calmly, is tranquil, ready for anything.... Nothing upsets him.

If suddenly fire breaks out and people begin to shout in wild confusion [he] does the right thing immediately and quietly, he ascertains the direction of the wind, rescues what is most important, fetches water, and behaves unhesitatingly in the way the emergency demands.

The Hara no nai hito is the opposite of all this.

The Hara no nai hito applies to the man without calm judgment. He lacks the measure which should be second nature. Therefore he reacts haphazardly and subectively, arbitrarily and capriciously. He cannot distinguish between important and unimportant, essential and unessential.

His judgment is not based upon facts but on temporary conditions and rests on subjective foundations, such as moods, whims, "nerves."

The Hara no nai hito is easily startled, is nervous, not because he is particularly sensitive but because he lacks that inner axis which would prevent his being thrown off centre and which would enable him to deal with situations realistically....

Hara [centre, belly] is only in slight measure innate. It is above all the result of persistent self-training and discipline, in fact the fruit of responsible, individual development.

That is what the Japanese means when he speaks of the Hara no dekita hito , the man who has accomplished or finished his belly, that is, himself: for he is mature. If this development does not take place, we have the Hara no dekita inai hito, someone who has not developed, who has remained immature, who is too young in the psychological sense. The Japanese also say Hara no dekita inai hito wa hito no ue ni tatsu koto ga dekinai: the man who has not finished his belly cannot stand above others (is not fit for leadership).

HARA: THE VITAL CENTRE, KARLFRIED GRAF VON DURCKHEIM, 1962

Authority: A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)

REVERSAL

It is never good to lose your presence of mind, but you can use those moments when it is under threat to know how to act in the future. You must find a way to put yourself in the thick of battle, then watch yourself in action. Look for your own weaknesses, and think about how to compensate for them. People who have never lost their presence of mind are actually in danger: someday they will be taken by surprise, and the fall will be harsh. All great generals, from Julius Caesar to Patton, have at some point lost their nerve and then have been the stronger for winning it back. The more you have lost your balance, the more you will know about how to right yourself.

You do not want to lose your presence of mind in key situations, but it is a wise course to find a way to make your enemies lose theirs. Take what throws you off balance and impose it on them. Make them act before they are ready. Surprise them–nothing is more unsettling than the unexpected need to act. Find their weakness, what makes them emotional, and give them a double dose of it. The more emotional you can make them, the farther you will push them off course.

Conclusion

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Chapter 1, Part 2, of the 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene titled “Do not fight the last war: Embrace Change”

This is a full reprint in HTML of the second chapter (Chapter 2) of the first part (Part I) of the massive volume titled "The 33 Strategies of War". Written by Robert Greene (with emotional support from his cats). I read this book while in prison, and found much of what was written to be interesting, enjoyable, and pertinent to things going on in my life. I think that you will as well.

PART I

2. DO NOT FIGHT THE LAST WAR

THE GUERRILLA-WAR-OF-THE-MIND STRATEGY

What most often weighs you down and brings you misery is the past, in the form of unnecessary attachments, repetitions of tired formulas, and the memory of old victories and defeats. You must consciously wage war against the past and force yourself to react to the present moment. Be ruthless on yourself; do not repeat the same tired methods. Sometimes you must force yourself to strike out in new directions, even if they involve risk. What you may lose in comfort and security, you will gain in surprise, making it harder for your enemies to tell what you will do. Wage guerrilla war on your mind, allowing no static lines of defense, no exposed citadels—make everything fluid and mobile.

Theory cannot equip the mind with formulas for solving problems, nor can it mark the narrow path on which the sole solution is supposed to lie by planting a hedge of principles on either side. But it can give the mind insight into the great mass of phenomena and of their relationships, then leave it free to rise into the higher realms of action. There the mind can use its innate talents to capacity, combining them all so as to seize on what is right and true as though this were a single idea formed by their concentrated pressure--as though it were a response to the immediate challenge rather than a product of thought.

ON WAR, CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, 1780-1831

THE LAST WAR

No one has risen to power faster than Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). In 1793 he went from captain in the French revolutionary army to brigadier general. In 1796 he became the leader of the French force in Italy fighting the Austrians, whom he crushed that year and again three years later. He became first consul of France in 1801, emperor in 1804. In 1805 he humiliated the Austrian and Russian armies at the Battle of Austerlitz.

For many, Napoleon was more than a great general; he was a genius, a god of war. Not everyone was impressed, though: there were Prussian generals who thought he had merely been lucky. Where Napoleon was rash and aggressive, they believed, his opponents had been timid and weak. If he ever faced the Prussians, he would be revealed as a great fake.

Among these Prussian generals was Friedrich Ludwig, prince of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen (1746- 1818). Hohenlohe came from one of Germany’s oldest aristocratic families, one with an illustrious military record. He had begun his career young, serving under Frederick the Great (1712-86) himself, the man who had single-handedly made Prussia a great power. Hohenlohe had risen through the ranks, becoming a general at fifty–young by Prussian standards.

To Hohenlohe success in war depended on organization, discipline, and the use of superior strategies developed by trained military minds. The Prussians exemplified all of these virtues. Prussian soldiers drilled relentlessly until they could perform elaborate maneuvers as precisely as a machine. Prussian generals intensely studied the victories of Frederick the Great; war for them was a mathematical affair, the application of timeless principles. To the generals Napoleon was a Corsican hothead leading an unruly citizens’ army. Superior in knowledge and skill, they would out-strategize him. The French would panic and crumble in the face of the disciplined Prussians; the Napoleonic myth would lie in ruins, and Europe could return to its old ways.

In August 1806, Hohenlohe and his fellow generals finally got what they wanted: King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, tired of Napoleon’s broken promises, decided to declare war on him in six weeks. In the meantime he asked his generals to come up with a plan to crush the French.

Hohenlohe was ecstatic.

This campaign would be the climax of his career. He had been thinking for years about how to beat Napoleon, and he presented his plan at the generals’ first strategy session: precise marches would place the army at the perfect angle from which to attack the French as they advanced through southern Prussia. An attack in oblique formation–Frederick the Great’s favorite tactic–would deliver a devastating blow. The other generals, all in their sixties and seventies, presented their own plans, but these too were merely variants on the tactics of Frederick the Great. Discussion turned into argument; several weeks went by. Finally the king had to step in and create a compromise strategy that would satisfy all of his generals.

He [Baron Antoine-Henri de Jomini] --often quite arbitrarily--presses [the deeds of Napoleon] into a system which he foists on Napoleon, and, in doing so, completely fails to see what, above all, really constitutes the greatness of this captain--namely, the reckless boldness of his operations, where, scoffing at all theory, he always tried to do what suited each occasion best.

FRIEDRICH VON BERNHARDI, 1849-1930

A feeling of exuberance swept the country, which would soon relive the glory years of Frederick the Great. The generals realized that Napoleon knew about their plans–he had excellent spies–but the Prussians had a head start, and once their war machine started to move, nothing could stop it.

On October 5, a few days before the king was to declare war, disturbing news reached the generals.

A reconnaissance mission revealed that divisions of Napoleon’s army, which they had believed was dispersed, had marched east, merged, and was massing deep in southern Prussia. The captain who had led the scouting mission reported that the French soldiers were marching with packs on their backs: where the Prussians used slow-moving wagons to provision their troops, the French carried their own supplies and moved with astonishing speed and mobility.

Before the generals had time to adjust their plans, Napoleon’s army suddenly wheeled north, heading straight for Berlin, the heart of Prussia. The generals argued and dithered, moving their troops here and there, trying to decide where to attack. A mood of panic set in. Finally the king ordered a retreat: the troops would reassemble to the north and attack Napoleon’s flank as he advanced toward Berlin. Hohenlohe was in charge of the rear guard, protecting the Prussians’ retreat.

On October 14, near the town of Jena, Napoleon caught up with Hohenlohe, who finally faced the battle he had wanted so desperately. The numbers on both sides were equal, but while the French were an unruly force, fighting pell-mell and on the run, Hohenlohe kept his troops in tight order, orchestrating them like a corps de ballet. The fighting went back and forth until finally the French captured the village of Vierzehnheiligen.

Hohenlohe ordered his troops to retake the village. In a ritual dating back to Frederick the Great, a drum major beat out a cadence and the Prussian soldiers, their colors flying, re-formed their positions in perfect parade order, preparing to advance. They were in an open plain, though, and Napoleon’s men were behind garden walls and on the house roofs. The Prussians fell like ninepins to the French marksmen. Confused, Hohenlohe ordered his soldiers to halt and change formation. The drums beat again, the Prussians marched with magnificent precision, always a sight to behold–but the French kept shooting, decimating the Prussian line.

Never had Hohenlohe seen such an army. The French soldiers were like demons. Unlike his disciplined soldiers, they moved on their own, yet there was method to their madness. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, they rushed forward on both sides, threatening to surround the Prussians. The prince ordered a retreat. The Battle of Jena was over.

Like a house of cards, the Prussians quickly crumbled, one fortress falling after another. The king fled east. In a matter of days, virtually nothing remained of the once mighty Prussian army.

THE BAT AND THE HOUSE-FERRETS

A bat fell to the ground and was caught by a house-ferret. Realizing that she was on the point of being killed, she begged for her life. The house-ferret said to her that she couldn't let her go, for ferrets were supposed to be natural enemies to all birds. The bat replied that she herself was not a bird, but a mouse. She managed to extricate herself from her danger by this means. Eventually, falling a second time, the bat was caught by another house-ferret. Again she pleaded to the ferret not to eat her. The second ferret declared that she absolutely detested all mice. But the bat positively affirmed that she was not a mouse but a bat. And so she was released again. And that was how she saved herself from death twice by a mere change of name. This fable shows that it is not always necessary to confine ourselves to the same tactics. But, on the contrary, if we are adaptable to circumstances we can better escape danger.

FABLES, AESOP, SIXTH CENTURY B.C.

Interpretation

The reality facing the Prussians in 1806 was simple: they had fallen fifty years behind the times. Their generals were old, and instead of responding to present circumstances, they were repeating formulas that had worked in the past.

Their army moved slowly, and their soldiers were automatons on parade. The Prussian generals had many signs to warn them of disaster: their army had not performed well in its recent engagements, a number of Prussian officers had preached reform, and, last but not least, they had had ten years to study Napoleon–his innovative strategies and the speed and fluidity with which his armies converged on the enemy. Reality was staring them in the face, yet they chose to ignore it. Indeed, they told themselves that Napoleon was the one who was doomed.

You might find the Prussian army just an interesting historical example, but in fact you are likely marching in the same direction yourself. What limits individuals as well as nations is the inability to confront reality, to see things for what they are. As we grow older, we become more rooted in the past. Habit takes over. Something that has worked for us before becomes a doctrine, a shell to protect us from reality. Repetition replaces creativity. We rarely realize we’re doing this, because it is almost impossible for us to see it happening in our own minds. Then suddenly a young Napoleon crosses our path, a person who does not respect tradition, who fights in a new way. Only then do we see that our ways of thinking and responding have fallen behind the times.

Never take it for granted that your past successes will continue into the future. Actually, your past successes are your biggest obstacle: every battle, every war, is different, and you cannot assume that what worked before will work today. You must cut yourself loose from the past and open your eyes to the present. Your tendency to fight the last war may lead to your final war.

When in 1806 the Prussian generals...plunged into the open jaws of disaster by using Frederick the Great's oblique order of battle, it was not just a case of a style that had outlived its usefulness but the most extreme poverty of the imagination to which routine has ever led. The result was that the Prussian army under Hohenlohe was ruined more completely than any army has ever been ruined on the battlefield.

--Carl von Clausewitz, ON WAR (1780-1831)

THE PRESENT WAR

In 1605, Miyamoto Musashi, a samurai who had made a name for himself as a swordsman at the young age of twenty-one, was challenged to a duel. The challenger, a young man named Matashichiro, came from the Yoshioka family, a clan itself renowned for swordsmanship. Earlier that year Musashi had defeated Matashichiro’s father, Genzaemon, in a duel. Days later he had killed Genzaemon’s younger brother in another duel. The Yoshioka family wanted revenge.

I never read any treatises on strategy.... When we fight, we do not take any books with us.

MAO TSE-TUNG, 1893-1976

Musashi’s friends smelled a trap in Matashichiro’s challenge and offered to accompany him to the duel, but Musashi went alone. In his earlier fights with the Yoshiokas, he had angered them by showing up hours late; this time, though, he came early and hid in the trees. Matashichiro arrived with a small army.

Musashi would “arrive way behind schedule as usual,” one of them said, “but that trick won’t work with us anymore!” Confident in their ambush, Matashichiro’s men lay down and hid in the grass. Suddenly Musashi leaped out from behind his tree and shouted, “I’ve been waiting long enough. Draw your sword!”

In one swift stroke, he killed Matashichiro, then took a position at an angle to the other men. All of them jumped to their feet, but they were caught off guard and startled, and instead of surrounding him, they stood in a broken line. Musashi simply ran down the line, killing the dazed men one after another in a matter of seconds.

Musashi’s victory sealed his reputation as one of Japan’s greatest swordsmen. He now roamed the country looking for suitable challenges. In one town he heard of an undefeated warrior named Baiken whose weapons were a sickle and a long chain with a steel ball at the end of it. Musashi wanted to see these weapons in action, but Baiken refused: the only way he could see them work, Baiken said, was by fighting a duel.

REFRESHING THE MIND When you and your opponent are engaged in combat which is dragging on with no end in sight, it is crucial that you should come up with a completely different technique. By refreshing your mind and techniques as you continue to fight your opponent, you will find an appropriate rhythm-timing with which to defeat him. Whenever you and your opponent become stagnant, you must immediately employ a different method of dealing with him in order to overcome him.

THE BOOK OF FIVE RINGS, MIYAMOTO MUSASHI, 1584-1645

Once again Musashi’s friends chose the safe route: they urged him to walk away. No one had come close to defeating Baiken, whose weapons were unbeatable: swinging his ball in the air to build up momentum, he would force his victim backward with a relentless charge, then hurl the ball at the man’s face. His opponent would have to fend off the ball and chain, and while his sword arm was occupied, in that brief instant Baiken would slash him with the sickle across his neck.

Ignoring the warnings of his friends, Musashi challenged Baiken and showed up at the man’s tent with two swords, one long, one short. Baiken had never seen someone fight with two swords. Also, instead of letting Baiken charge him, Musashi charged first, pushing his foe back on his heels. Baiken hesitated to throw the ball, for Musashi could parry it with one sword and strike him with the other. As he looked for an opening, Musashi suddenly knocked him off balance with a blow of the short sword and then, in a split second, followed with a thrust of the long one, stabbing him through and killing the once undefeated master Baiken.

A few years later, Musashi heard about a great samurai named Sasaki Ganryu, who fought with a very long sword–a startlingly beautiful weapon, which seemed possessed of some warlike spirit. This fight would be Musashi’s ultimate test. Ganryu accepted his challenge; the duel would take place on a little island near the samurai’s home.

It is a disease to be obsessed by the thought of winning. It is also a disease to be obsessed by the thought of employing your swordsmanship. So it is to be obsessed by the thought of using everything you have learned, and to be obsessed by the thought of attacking. It is also a disease to be obsessed and stuck with the thought of ridding yourself of any of these diseases. A disease here is an obsessed mind that dwells on one thing. Because all these diseases are in your mind, you must get rid of them to put your mind in order.

TAKUAN, JAPAN, 1573-1645

On the morning of the duel, the island was packed. A fight between such warriors was unprecedented. Ganryu arrived on time, but Musashi was late, very late. An hour went by, then two; Ganryu was furious.

Finally a boat was spotted approaching the island. Its passenger was lying down, half asleep, it seemed, whittling at a long wooden oar. It was Musashi. He seemed lost in thought, staring into the clouds. When the boat came to shore, he tied a dirty towel around his head and jumped out of the boat, brandishing the long oar–longer than Ganryu’s famous sword. This strange man had come to the biggest fight of his life with an oar for a sword and a towel for a headband.

Ganryu called out angrily, “Are you so frightened of me that you have broken your promise to be here by eight?” Musashi said nothing but stepped closer. Ganryu drew his magnificent sword and threw the sheath onto the sand. Musashi smiled: “Sasaki, you have just sealed your doom.” “Me? Defeated? Impossible!” “What victor on earth,” replied Musashi, “would abandon his sheath to the sea?” This enigmatic remark only made Ganryu angrier.

Then Musashi charged, aiming his sharpened oar straight for his enemy’s eyes. Ganryu quickly raised his sword and struck at Musashi’s head but missed, only cutting the towel headband in two. He had never missed before. In almost the same instant, Musashi brought down his wooden sword, knocking Ganryu off his feet. The spectators gasped. As Ganryu struggled up, Musashi killed him with a blow to the head. Then, after bowing politely to the men officiating over the duel, he got back into the boat and left as calmly as he had arrived.

From that moment on, Musashi was considered a swordsman without peer.

Anyone can plan a campaign, but few are capable of waging war, because only a true military genius can handle the developments and circumstances.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769-1821

Interpretation

Miyamoto Musashi, author of The Book of Five Rings, won all his duels for one reason: in each instance he adapted his strategy to his opponent and to the circumstances of the moment.

With Matashichiro he decided it was time to arrive early, which he hadn’t done in his previous fights. Victory against superior numbers depended on surprise, so he leaped up when his opponents lay down; then, once he had killed their leader, he set himself at an angle that invited them to charge at him instead of surrounding him, which would have been much more dangerous for him.

With Baiken it was simply a matter of using two swords and then crowding his space, giving him no time to react intelligently to this novelty.

With Ganryu he set out to infuriate and humiliate his haughty opponent– the wooden sword, the nonchalant attitude, the dirty-towel headband, the enigmatic remark, the charge at the eyes.

Musashi’s opponents depended on brilliant technique, flashy swords, and unorthodox weapons. That is the same as fighting the last war: instead of responding to the moment, they relied on training, technology, and what had worked before.

Musashi, who had grasped the essence of strategy when he was still very young, turned their rigidity into their downfall. His first thought was of the gambit that would take this particular opponent most by surprise. Then he would anchor himself in the moment: having set his opponent off balance with something unexpected, he would watch carefully, then respond with another action, usually improvised, that would turn mere disequilibrium into defeat and death.

Thunder and wind: the image of DURATION. Thus the superior man stands firm And does not change his direction. Thunder rolls, and the wind blows; both are examples of extreme mobility and so are seemingly the very opposite of duration, but the laws governing their appearance and subsidence, their coming and going, endure. In the same way the independence of the superior man is not based on rigidity and immobility of character. He always keeps abreast of the time and changes with it. What endures is the unswerving directive, the inner law of his being, which determines all his actions.

THE I CHING, CHINA, CIRCA EIGHTH CENTURY B.C.

In preparing yourself for war, you must rid yourself of myths and misconceptions. Strategy is not a question of learning a series of moves or ideas to follow like a recipe; victory has no magic formula. Ideas are merely nutrients for the soil: they lie in your brain as possibilities, so that in the heat of the moment they can inspire a direction, an appropriate and creative response. Let go of all fetishes–books, techniques, formulas, flashy weapons–and learn to become your own strategist.

Thus one's victories in battle cannot be repeated--they take their form in response to inexhaustibly changing circumstances.

--Sun-tzu (fourth century B.C.)

KEYS TO WARFARE

In looking back on an unpleasant or disagreeable experience, the thought inevitably occurs to us: if only we had said or done x instead of y, if only we could do it over.

Many a general has lost his head in the heat of battle and then, looking back, has thought of the one tactic, the one maneuver, that would have changed it all.

Even Prince Hohenlohe, years later, could see how he had botched the retaking of Vierzehnheiligen.

The problem, though, is not that we think of the solution only when it is too late. The problem is that we imagine that knowledge is what was lacking: if only we had known more, if only we had thought it through more thoroughly.

That is precisely the wrong approach.

What makes us go astray in the first place is that we are unattuned to the present moment, insensitive to the circumstances. We are listening to our own thoughts, reacting to things that happened in the past, applying theories and ideas that we digested long ago but that have nothing to do with our predicament in the present. More books, theories, and thinking only make the problem worse.

My policy is to have no policy.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1809-1865

Understand: the greatest generals, the most creative strategists, stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment. That is how creativity is sparked and opportunities are seized. Knowledge, experience, and theory have limitations: no amount of thinking in advance can prepare you for the chaos of life, for the infinite possibilities of the moment. The great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz called this “friction”: the difference between our plans and what actually happens. Since friction is inevitable, our minds have to be capable of keeping up with change and adapting to the unexpected. The better we can adapt our thoughts to changing circumstances, the more realistic our responses to them will be. The more we lose ourselves in predigested theories and past experiences, the more inappropriate and delusional our response.

It can be valuable to analyze what went wrong in the past, but it is far more important to develop the capacity to think in the moment. In that way you will make far fewer mistakes to analyze.

If you put an empty gourd on the water and touch it, it will slip to one side. No matter how you try, it won't stay in one spot. The mind of someone who has reached the ultimate state does not stay with anything, even for a second. It is like an empty gourd on the water that is pushed around.

TAKUAN, JAPAN, 1573-1645

Think of the mind as a river: the faster it flows, the better it keeps up with the present and responds to change. The faster it flows, also the more it refreshes itself and the greater its energy. Obsessional thoughts, past experiences (whether traumas or successes), and preconceived notions are like boulders or mud in this river, settling and hardening there and damming it up. The river stops moving; stagnation sets in. You must wage constant war on this tendency in the mind.

The first step is simply to be aware of the process and of the need to fight it. The second is to adopt a few tactics that might help you to restore the mind’s natural flow.

Reexamine all your cherished beliefs and principles. When Napoleon was asked what principles of war he followed, he replied that he followed none. His genius was his ability to respond to circumstances, to make the most of what he was given–he was the supreme opportunist. Your only principle, similarly, should be to have no principles. To believe that strategy has inexorable laws or timeless rules is to take up a rigid, static position that will be your undoing. Of course the study of history and theory can broaden your vision of the world, but you have to combat theory’s tendency to harden into dogma. Be brutal with the past, with tradition, with the old ways of doing things. Declare war on sacred cows and voices of convention in your own head.

Our education is often a problem. During World War II, the British fighting the Germans in the deserts of North Africa were well trained in tank warfare; you might say they were indoctrinated with theories about it. Later in the campaign, they were joined by American troops who were much less educated in these tactics. Soon, though, the Americans began to fight in a way that was equal if not superior to the British style; they adapted to the mobility of this new kind of desert combat. According to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel himself, the leader of the German army in North Africa,

"The Americans...profited far more than the British from their experience in Africa, thus confirming the axiom that education is easier than reeducation."

What Rommel meant was that education tends to burn precepts into the mind that are hard to shake. In the midst of combat, the trained mind may fall a step behind–focusing more on learned rules than on the changing circumstances of battle.

When you are faced with a new situation, it is often best to imagine that you know nothing and that you need to start learning all over again. Clearing your head of everything you thought you knew, even your most cherished ideas, will give you the mental space to be educated by your present experience–the best school of all. You will develop your own strategic muscles instead of depending on other people’s theories and books.

Erase the memory of the last war. The last war you fought is a danger, even if you won it. It is fresh in your mind. If you were victorious, you will tend to repeat the strategies you just used, for success makes us lazy and complacent; if you lost, you may be skittish and indecisive.

Do not think about the last war; you do not have the distance or the detachment. Instead do whatever you can to blot it from your mind. During the Vietnam War, the great North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap had a simple rule of thumb: after a successful campaign, he would convince himself that it had actually been a failure. As a result he never got drunk on his success, and he never repeated the same strategy in the next battle. Rather he had to think through each situation anew.

Ted Williams, perhaps baseball’s greatest pure hitter, made a point of always trying to forget his last at-bat. Whether he’d gotten a home run or a strikeout, he put it behind him. No two at-bats are the same, even against the same pitcher, and Williams wanted an open mind. He would not wait for the next at-bat to start forgetting: the minute he got back to the dugout, he started focusing on what was happening in the game taking place. Attention to the details of the present is by far the best way to crowd out the past and forget the last war.

Keep the mind moving. When we were children, our minds never stopped. We were open to new experiences and absorbed as much of them as possible. We learned fast, because the world around us excited us. When we felt frustrated or upset, we would find some creative way to get what we wanted and then quickly forget the problem as something new crossed our path.

All the greatest strategists–Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Musashi–were childlike in this respect. Sometimes, in fact, they even acted like children.

The reason is simple: superior strategists see things as they are. They are highly sensitive to dangers and opportunities. Nothing stays the same in life, and keeping up with circumstances as they change requires a great deal of mental fluidity. Great strategists do not act according to preconceived ideas; they respond to the moment, like children. Their minds are always moving, and they are always excited and curious. They quickly forget the past–the present is much too interesting.

Defeat is bitter. Bitter to the common soldier, but trebly bitter to his general. The soldier may comfort himself with the thought that, whatever the result, he has done his duty faithfully and steadfastly, but the commander has failed in his duty if he has not won victory--for that is his duty. 

He has no other comparable to it. He will go over in his mind the events of the campaign. "Here," he will think, "I went wrong; here I took counsel of my fears when I should have been bold; there I should have waited to gather strength, not struck piecemeal; at such a moment I failed to grasp opportunity when it was presented to me." He will remember the soldiers whom he sent into the attack that failed and who did not come back. 

He will recall the look in the eyes of men who trusted him. "I have failed them," he will say to himself, "and failed my country!" He will see himself for what he is--a defeated general. 

In a dark hour he will turn in upon himself and question the very foundations of his leadership and manhood. And then he must stop! For if he is ever to command in battle again, he must shake off these regrets, and stamp on them, as they claw at his will and his self-confidence. He must beat off these attacks he delivers against himself, and cast out the doubts born of failure. 

Forget them, and remember only the lessons to be learned from defeat--they are more than from victory.

DEFEAT INTO VICTORY, WILLIAM SLIM, 1897-1970

The Greek thinker Aristotle thought that life was defined by movement. What does not move is dead. What has speed and mobility has more possibilities, more life. We all start off with the mobile mind of a Napoleon, but as we get older, we tend to become more like the Prussians. You may think that what you’d like to recapture from your youth is your looks, your physical fitness, your simple pleasures, but what you really need is the fluidity of mind you once possessed.

Whenever you find your thoughts revolving around a particular subject or idea–an obsession, a resentment–force them past it. Distract yourself with something else. Like a child, find something new to be absorbed by, something worthy of concentrated attention. Do not waste time on things you cannot change or influence. Just keep moving.

Absorb the spirit of the times. Throughout the history of warfare, there have been classic battles in which the past has confronted the future in a hopeless mismatch. It happened in the seventh century, when the Persians and Byzantines confronted the invincible armies of Islam, with their new form of desert fighting; or in the first half of the thirteenth century, when the Mongols used relentless mobility to overwhelm the heavy armies of the Russians and Europeans; or in 1806, when Napoleon crushed the Prussians at Jena.

In each case the conquering army developed a way of fighting that maximized a new form of technology or a new social order.

You can reproduce this effect on a smaller scale by attuning yourself to the spirit of the times. Developing antennae for the trends that have yet to crest takes work and study, as well as the flexibility to adapt to those trends.

As you get older, it is best to periodically alter your style.

In the golden age of Hollywood, most actresses had very short careers. But Joan Crawford fought the studio system and managed to have a remarkably long career by constantly changing her style, going from siren to noir heroine to cult queen.

Instead of staying sentimentally attached to some fashion of days gone by, she was able to sense a rising trend and go with it. By constantly adapting and changing your style, you will avoid the pitfalls of your previous wars. Just when people feel they know you, you will change.

Reverse course. The great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky suffered from epilepsy. Just before a seizure, he would experience a moment of intense ecstasy, which he described as a feeling of being suddenly flooded with reality, a momentary vision of the world exactly as it is.

Later he would find himself getting depressed, as this vision was crowded out by the habits and routines of daily life. During these depressions, wanting to feel that closeness to reality again, he would go to the nearest casino and gamble away all his money.

There reality would overwhelm him; comfort and routine would be gone, stale patterns broken. Having to rethink everything, he would get his creative energy back. This was the closest he could deliberately come to the sense of ecstasy he got through epilepsy.

Dostoyevsky’s method was a little extreme, but sometimes you have to shake yourself up, break free from the hold of the past.

This can take the form of reversing your course, doing the opposite of what you would normally do in any given situation, putting yourself in some unusual circumstance, or literally starting over. In those situations the mind has to deal with a new reality, and it snaps to life. The change may be alarming, but it is also refreshing–even exhilarating.

To know that one is in a certain condition, in a certain state, is already a process of liberation; but a man who is not aware of his condition, of his struggle, tries to be something other than he is, which brings about habit. So, then, let us keep in mind that we want to examine what is, to observe and be aware of exactly what is the actual, without giving it any slant, without giving it an interpretation. It needs an extraordinarily astute mind, an extraordinarily pliable heart, to be aware of and to follow what is; because what is is constantly moving, constantly undergoing a transformation, and if the mind is tethered to belief, to knowledge, it ceases to pursue, it ceases to follow the swift movement of what is. What is is not static, surely--it is constantly moving, as you will see if you observe it very closely. To follow it, you need a very swift mind and a pliable heart--which are denied when the mind is static, fixed in a belief, in a prejudice, in an identification; and a mind and heart that are dry cannot follow easily, swiftly, that which is.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI, 1895-1986

Relationships often develop a certain tiresome predictability. You do what you usually do, other people respond the way they usually do, and around it goes. If you reverse course, act in a novel manner, you alter the entire dynamic. Do this every so often to break up the relationship’s stale patterns and open it to new possibilities.

Think of your mind as an army.

Armies must adapt to the complexity and chaos of modern war by becoming more fluid and maneuverable. The ultimate extension of this evolution is guerrilla warfare, which exploits chaos by making disorder and unpredictability a strategy.

The guerrilla army never stops to defend a particular place or town; it wins by always moving, staying one step ahead. By following no set pattern, it gives the enemy no target.

The guerrilla army never repeats the same tactic. It responds to the situation, the moment, the terrain where it happens to find itself. There is no front, no concrete line of communication or supply, no slow-moving wagon.

The guerrilla army is pure mobility.

That is the model for your new way of thinking. Apply no tactic rigidly; do not let your mind settle into static positions, defending any particular place or idea, repeating the same lifeless maneuvers. Attack problems from new angles, adapting to the landscape and to what you’re given. By staying in constant motion you show your enemies no target to aim at. You exploit the chaos of the world instead of succumbing to it.

REVERSAL

There is never any value in fighting the last war. But while you’re eliminating that pernicious tendency, you must imagine that your enemy is trying to do the same–trying to learn from and adapt to the present.

Some of history’s worst military disasters have come not out of fighting the last war but out of assuming that that’s what your opponent will do.

When Saddam Hussein of Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, he thought the United States had yet to recover from “Vietnam syndrome”–the fear of casualties and loss that had been so traumatic during the Vietnam period–and that it would either avoid war altogether or would fight in the same way it had, trying to win the fight from the air instead of on the ground.

He did not realize that the American military was ready for a new kind of war.

Remember: the loser in any battle may be too traumatized to fight again but may also learn from the experience and move on. Err on the side of caution; be ready. Never let your enemy surprise you in war.

Conclusion

My latest article (prior to this one) underlines this entire strategy. Which is WHY all the American Generals and Admirals are telling the politicians and neocons in Washington DC to “Stand Down”. They, those on K-street in Washington DC want to fight against China or Russia. But the generals strongly advise against it.

You can read about it here…

Pentagon Leaders are starting to shout-down the neocon war-hawks on K-street in Washington DC

Personally, the United States is in need of a shake-up, and maybe it’s time for a serious “house cleaning” in Washington DC as well. Maybe it would be a good thing to see Washington DC erased from the map. I am sure that the world would be a much calmer and nicer world.

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my 33 Strategies of War index here..

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Chapter 1, Part I, of the 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene titled “Self-directed Warfare”

This is a full reprint in HTML of the first chapter (Chapter 1) of the first part (Part I) of the massive volume titled "The 33 Strategies of War". Written by Robert Greene (with emotional support from his cats). I read this book while in prison, and found much of what was written to be interesting, enjoyable, and pertinent to things going on in my life. I think that you will as well.

PART I

SELF-DIRECTED WARFARE

War, or any kind of conflict, is waged and won through strategy. Think of strategy as a series of lines and arrows aimed at a goal: at getting you to a certain point in the world, at helping you to attack a problem in your path, at figuring out how to encircle and destroy your enemy. Before directing these arrows at your enemies, however, you must first direct them at yourself.

Your mind is the starting point of all war and all strategy. A mind that is easily overwhelmed by emotion, that is rooted in the past instead of the present, that cannot see the world with clarity and urgency, will create strategies that will always miss the mark.

To become a true strategist, you must take three steps.

First, become aware of the weakness and illness that can take hold of the mind, warping its strategic powers. Second, declare a kind of war on yourself to make yourself move forward. Third, wage ruthless and continual battle on the enemies within you by applying certain strategies.

The following four chapters are designed to make you aware of the disorders that are probably flourishing in your mind right now and to arm you with specific strategies for eliminating them.

These chapters are arrows to aim at yourself. Once you have absorbed them through thought and practice, they will serve as a self-corrective device in all your future battles, freeing the grand strategist within you.

DECLARE WAR ON YOUR ENEMIES

THE POLARITY STRATEGY

Life is endless battle and conflict, and you cannot fight effectively unless you can identify your enemies. People are subtle and evasive, disguising their intentions, pretending to be on your side.

You need clarity. Learn to smoke out your enemies, to spot them by the signs and patterns that reveal hostility. Then, once you have them in your sights, inwardly declare war. As the opposite poles of a magnet create motion, your enemies–your opposites–can fill you with purpose and direction. As people who stand in your way, who represent what you loathe, people to react against, they are a source of energy. Do not be naive: with some enemies there can be no compromise, no
middle ground.

Then [Xenophon] got up, and first called together the under-officers of Proxenos.

When they were collected he said:

"Gentlemen, I cannot sleep and I don't think you can; and I can't lie here when I see what a plight we are in.

It is clear that the enemy did not show us open war until they thought they had everything well prepared; and no-one among us takes the pains to make the best possible resistance.

"Yet if we give way, and fall into the king's power, what do we expect our fate will be?

When his own half-brother was dead, the man cut off his head and cut off his hand and stuck them up on a pole.

We have no-one to plead for us, and we marched here to make the king a slave or to kill him if we could, and what do you think our fate will be?

Would he not go to all extremes of torture to make the whole world afraid of making war on him?

Why, we must do anything to keep out of his power!

While the truce lasted, I never ceased pitying ourselves, I never ceased congratulating the king and his army.

What a vast country I saw, how large, what endless provisions, what crowds of servants, how many cattle and sheep, what gold, what raiment!

But when I thought of these our soldiers--we had no share in all these good things unless we bought them, and few had anything left to buy with; and to procure anything without buying was debarred by our oaths.

While I reasoned like this, I sometimes feared the truce more than the war now.

"However, now they have broken the truce, there is an end both to their insolence and to our suspicion.

There lie all these good things before us, prizes for whichever side prove the better men; the gods are the judges of the contest, and they will be with us, naturally.... "

When you have appointed as many commanders as are wanted, assemble all the other soldiers and encourage them; that will be just what they want now.

Perhaps you have noticed yourselves how crestfallen they were when they came into camp, how crestfallen they went on guard; in such a state I don't know what you could do with them....

But if someone could turn their minds from wondering what will happen to them, and make them wonder what they could do, they will be much more cheerful.

You know, I am sure, that not numbers or strength brings victory in war; but whichever army goes into battle stronger in soul, their enemies generally cannot withstand them."

-ANABASIS: THE MARCH UP COUNTRY, XENOPHON, 430?-355? B.C.

THE INNER ENEMY

In the spring of 401 B.C., Xenophon, a thirty-year-old country gentleman who lived outside Athens, received an intriguing invitation: a friend was recruiting Greek soldiers to fight as mercenaries for Cyrus, brother of the Persian king Ataxerxes, and asked him to go along.

The request was somewhat unusual: the Greeks and the Persians had long been bitter enemies. Some eighty years earlier, in fact, Persia had tried to conquer Greece.

But the Greeks, renowned fighters, had begun to offer their services to the highest bidder, and within the Persian Empire there were rebellious
cities that Cyrus wanted to punish.

Greek mercenaries would be the perfect reinforcements in his large army.

Xenophon was not a soldier. In fact, he had led a coddled life, raising dogs and horses, traveling into Athens to talk philosophy with his good friend Socrates, living off his inheritance.

He wanted adventure, though, and here he had a chance to meet the great Cyrus, learn war, see Persia. Perhaps when it was all over, he would write a book. He would go not as a mercenary (he was too wealthy for that) but as a philosopher and historian.

After consulting the oracle at Delphi, he accepted the invitation.

Some 10,000 Greek soldiers joined Cyrus’s punitive expedition. The mercenaries were a motley crew from all over Greece, there for the money and the adventure.

They had a good time of it for a while, but a few months into the job, after leading them deep into Persia, Cyrus admitted his true purpose: he was marching on Babylon, mounting a civil war to unseat his brother and make himself
king.

Unhappy to be deceived, the Greeks argued and complained, but Cyrus offered them more money, and that quieted them.

The armies of Cyrus and Ataxerxes met on the plains of Cunaxa, not far from Babylon. Early in the battle, Cyrus was killed, putting a quick end to the war.

Now the Greeks’ position was suddenly precarious: having fought on the wrong side of a civil war, they were far from home and surrounded by hostile Persians.

They were soon told, however, that Ataxerxes had no quarrel with them.

His only desire was that they leave Persia as quickly as possible. He even sent them an envoy, the Persian commander Tissaphernes, to provision them and escort them back to Greece.

And so, guided by Tissaphernes and the Persian army, the mercenaries began the long trek home–some fifteen hundred miles.

A few days into the march, the Greeks had new fears: their supplies from the Persians were insufficient, and the route that Tissaphernes had chosen for them was problematic.

Could they trust these Persians?

They started to argue among themselves.

The Greek commander Clearchus expressed his soldiers’ concerns to Tissaphernes, who was sympathetic: Clearchus should bring his captains to a meeting at a neutral site, the Greeks would voice their grievances, and the two sides would come to an understanding.

Clearchus agreed and appeared the next day with his officers at the appointed time and place–where, however, a large contingent of Persians surrounded and arrested them.

They were beheaded that same day.

One man managed to escape and warn the Greeks of the Persian treachery.

That evening the Greek camp was a desolate place. Some men argued and accused; others slumped drunk to the ground. A few considered flight, but with their leaders dead, they felt doomed.

That night Xenophon, who had stayed mostly on the sidelines during the expedition, had a dream: a lightning bolt from Zeus set fire to his father’s house.

He woke up in a sweat.

It suddenly struck him: death was staring the Greeks in the face, yet they lay around moaning, despairing, arguing.

The problem was in their heads.

Fighting for money rather than for a purpose or cause, unable to distinguish between friend and foe, they had gotten lost.

The barrier between them and home was not rivers or mountains or the Persian army but their own muddled state of mind.

Xenophon didn’t want to die in this disgraceful way.

He was no military man, but he knew philosophy and the way men think, and he believed that if the Greeks concentrated on the enemies who wanted to kill them, they would become alert and creative.

If they focused on the vile treachery of the Persians, they would grow angry, and their anger would motivate them.

They had to stop being confused mercenaries and go back to being Greeks, the polar opposite of the faithless Persians.

What they needed was clarity and direction.

Xenophon decided to be Zeus’s lightning bolt, waking the men up and illuminating their way. He called a meeting of all the surviving officers and stated his plan:

We will declare war without parley on the Persians–no more thoughts of bargaining or debate.

We will waste no more time on argument or accusation among ourselves; every ounce of our energy will be spent on the Persians.

We will be as inventive and inspired as our ancestors at Marathon, who fought off a vastly larger Persian army.

We will burn our wagons, live off the land, move fast. We will not for one second lay down our arms or forget the dangers around us.

It is us or them, life or death, good or evil.

Should any man try to confuse us with clever talk or with vague ideas of appeasement, we will declare him too stupid and cowardly to be on our side and we will drive him away.

Let the Persians make us merciless.

We must be consumed with one idea: getting home alive.

The officers knew that Xenophon was right.

The next day a Persian officer came to see them, offering to act as an ambassador between them and Ataxerxes; following Xenophon’s counsel, he was quickly and rudely driven away.

It was now war and nothing else.

Roused to action, the Greeks elected leaders, Xenophon among them, and began the march home.

Forced to depend on their wits, they quickly learned to adapt to the terrain, to avoid battle, to move at night.

They successfully eluded the Persians, beating them to a key mountain pass and moving through it before they could be caught.

Although many enemy tribes still lay between them and Greece, the dreaded Persian army was now behind them.

It took several years, but almost all of them returned to Greece alive.

Political thought and political instinct prove themselves theoretically and practically in the ability to distinguish friend and enemy. The high points of politics are simultaneously the moments in which the enemy is, in concrete clarity, recognized as the enemy.

CARL SCHMITT, 1888-1985

Interpretation

Life is battle and struggle, and you will constantly find yourself facing bad situations, destructive relationships, dangerous engagements.

How you confront these difficulties will determine your fate.

As Xenophon said, your obstacles are not rivers or mountains or other people;
your obstacle is yourself.

If you feel lost and confused, if you lose your sense of direction, if you cannot tell the difference between friend and foe, you have only yourself to blame.

Think of yourself as always about to go into battle. Everything depends on your frame of mind and on how you look at the world.

A shift of perspective can transform you from a passive and confused mercenary into a motivated and creative fighter.

We are defined by our relationship to other people.

As children we develop an identity by differentiating ourselves from others, even to the point of pushing them away, rejecting them, rebelling.

The more clearly you recognize who you do not want to be, then, the clearer your sense of identity and purpose will be.

Without a sense of that polarity, without an enemy to react against, you are as lost as the Greek mercenaries.

Duped by other people’s treachery, you hesitate at the fatal moment and descend into whining and argument.

Focus on an enemy.

It can be someone who blocks your path or sabotages you, whether subtly or
obviously;

It can be someone who has hurt you or someone who has fought you unfairly;

It can be a value or an idea that you loathe and that you see in an individual or group.

It can be an abstraction: stupidity, smugness, vulgar materialism.

Do not listen to people who say that the distinction between friend and enemy is primitive and passe.

They are just disguising their fear of conflict behind a front of false warmth.

They are trying to push you off course, to infect you with the vagueness that inflicts them.

Once you feel clear and motivated, you will have space for true friendship and true compromise.

Your enemy is the polar star that guides you.

Given that direction, you can enter battle.

He that is not with me is against me.

--Luke 11:23

THE OUTER ENEMY

In the early 1970s, the British political system had settled into a comfortable pattern: the Labour Party would win an election, and then, the next time around, the Conservatives would win.

Back and forth the power went, all fairly genteel and civilized.

In fact, the two parties had come to resemble one another.

But when the Conservatives lost in 1974, some of them had had enough. Wanting
to shake things up, they proposed Margaret Thatcher as their leader. The party was divided that year, and Thatcher took advantage of the split and won the nomination.

I am by nature warlike.

To attack is among my instincts.

To be able to be an enemy, to be an enemy--that presupposes a strong nature, it is in any event a condition of every strong nature.

It needs resistances, consequently it seeks resistances....

The strength of one who attacks has in the opposition he needs a kind of gauge; every growth reveals itself in the seeking out of a powerful opponent--or problem: for a philosopher who is warlike also challenges problems to a duel.

The undertaking is to master, not any resistances that happen to present themselves, but those against which one has to bring all one's strength, suppleness and mastery of weapons--to master equal opponents.

-FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, 1844-1900

No one had ever seen a politician quite like Thatcher.

A woman in a world run by men, she was also proudly middle class–the daughter of a grocer–in the traditional party of the aristocracy.

Her clothes were prim, more like a housewife’s than a politician’s.

She had not been a player in the Conservative Party; in fact, she was on its right-wing fringes.

Most striking of all was her style: where other politicians were smooth and conciliatory, she confronted her opponents, attacking them directly. She had an appetite for battle.

Most politicians saw Thatcher’s election as a fluke and didn’t expect her to last. And in her first few years leading the party, when Labour was in power, she did little to change their opinion.

She railed against the socialist system, which in her mind had choked all initiative and was largely responsible for the decline of the British economy.

She criticized the Soviet Union at a time of detente.

Then, in the winter of 1978-79, several public-sector unions decided to strike.

Thatcher went on the warpath, linking the strikes to the Labour Party and Prime Minister James Callaghan.

This was bold, divisive talk, good for making the evening news–but not for winning elections.

You had to be gentle with the voters, reassure them, not frighten them. At least that was the conventional wisdom.

In 1979 the Labour Party called a general election.

Thatcher kept on the attack, categorizing the election as a crusade against socialism and as Great Britain’s last chance to modernize.

Callaghan was the epitome of the genteel politician, but Thatcher got under his skin.

He had nothing but disdain for this housewife-turned-politician, and he returned her fire: he agreed that the election was a watershed, for if Thatcher won, she would send the economy into shock.

The strategy seemed partly to work; Thatcher scared many voters, and the polls that tracked personal popularity showed that her numbers had fallen well below Callaghan’s.

At the same time, though, her rhetoric, and Callaghan’s response to it, polarized the electorate, which could finally see a sharp difference between the parties.

Dividing the public into left and right, she charged into the breach, sucking
in attention and attracting the undecided. She won a sizable victory.

Thatcher had bowled over the voters, but now, as prime minister, she would have to moderate her tone, heal the wounds–according to the polls, at any rate, that was what the public wanted.

But Thatcher as usual did the opposite, enacting budget cuts that went even deeper than she had proposed during the campaign.

As her policies played out, the economy did indeed go into shock, as
Callaghan had said it would, and unemployment soared.

Men in her own party, many of whom had by that point been resenting her treatment of them for years, began publicly to question her
abilities.

These men, whom she called the “wets,” were the most respected members of the
Conservative Party, and they were in a panic: she was leading the country into an economic disaster that they were afraid they would pay for with their careers.

Thatcher’s response was to purge them from her cabinet.

She seemed bent on pushing everyone away; her legion of enemies was growing, her poll numbers slipping still lower.

Surely the next election would be her last.

[Salvador Dali] had no time for those who did not agree with his principles, and took the war into the enemy camp by writing insulting letters to many of the friends he had made in the Residencia, calling them pigs. 

He happily compared himself to a clever bull avoiding the cowboys and generally had a great deal of fun stirring up and scandalizing almost every Catalan intellectual worthy of the name. Dali was beginning to burn his bridges with the zeal of an arsonist.... 

"We [Dali and the filmmaker Luis Bunuel] had resolved to send a poison pen letter to one of the great celebrities of Spain," 

Dali later told his biographer Alain Bosquet. 

"Our goal was pure subversion.... Both of us were strongly influenced by Nietzsche.... 

We hit upon two names: Manuel de Falla, the composer, and Juan Ramon Jimenez, the poet. We drew straws and Jimenez won.... 

So we composed a frenzied and nasty letter of incomparable violence and addressed it to Juan Ramon Jimenez. 

It read: 'Our Distinguished Friend: We believe it is our duty to inform you--disinterestedly--that your work is deeply repugnant to us because of its immorality, its hysteria, its arbitrary quality....' It caused Jimenez great pain...."

THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY: A BIOGRAPHY OF DALI, MEREDITH ETHERINGTON- SMITH, 1992

Then, in 1982, on the other side of the Atlantic, the military junta that ruled Argentina, needing a cause to distract the country from its many problems, invaded the Falkland Islands, a British possession to which, however, Argentina had a historical claim.

The officers of the junta felt certain that the British would abandon these islands, barren and remote.

But Thatcher did not hesitate: despite the distance–eight thousand miles–she sent a naval task force to the Falklands.

Labour leaders attacked her for this pointless and costly war.

Many in her own party were terrified; if the attempt to retake the islands failed, the party would be ruined.

Thatcher was more alone than ever.

But much of the public now saw her qualities, which had seemed so irritating, in a new light: her obstinacy became courage, nobility.

Compared to the dithering, pantywaisted, careerist men around her, Thatcher seemed resolute and confident.

The British successfully won back the Falklands, and Thatcher stood taller than ever. Suddenly the country’s economic and social problems were forgotten.

Thatcher now dominated the scene, and in the next two elections she crushed Labour.

Interpretation

Margaret Thatcher came to power as an outsider: a middle-class woman, a right-wing radical. The first instinct of most outsiders who attain power is to become insiders–life on the outside is hard–but in doing so they lose their identity, their difference, the thing that makes them stand out in the public eye.

If Thatcher had become like the men around her, she would simply have been
replaced by yet another man.

Her instinct was to stay an outsider.

In fact, she pushed being an outsider as far as it could go: she set herself up as one woman against an army of men.

At every step of the way, to give her the contrast she needed, Thatcher marked out an opponent: the socialists, the wets, the Argentineans.

These enemies helped to define her image as determined, powerful, self-sacrificing.

Thatcher was not seduced by popularity, which is ephemeral and superficial.

Pundits might obsess over popularity numbers, but in the mind of the voter–which, for a politician, is the field of battle–a dominating presence has more pull than does likability. Let some of the public hate you; you cannot please everyone.

Your enemies, those you stand sharply against, will help you to forge a support base that will not desert you.

Do not crowd into the center, where everyone else is; there is no room to fight in a crowd.

Polarize people, drive some of them away, and create a space for battle.

Everything in life conspires to push you into the center, and not just politically.

The center is the realm of compromise.

Getting along with other people is an important skill to have, but it comes with a danger: by always seeking the path of least resistance, the path of conciliation, you forget who you are, and you sink into the center with everyone else. Instead see yourself as a fighter, an outsider surrounded by enemies.

Constant battle will keep you strong and alert. It will help to define what you believe in, both for yourself and for others.

Do not worry about antagonizing people; without antagonism there is no battle, and without battle, there is no chance of victory.

Do not be lured by the need to be liked: better to be respected, even feared.

Victory over your enemies will bring you a more lasting popularity.

The opposition of a member to an associate is no purely negative social factor, if only because such opposition is often the only means for making life with actually unbearable people at least possible.

If we did not even have the power and the right to rebel against tyranny, arbitrariness, moodiness, tactlessness, we could not bear to have any relation to people from whose characters we thus suffer.

We would feel pushed to take desperate steps–and these, indeed, would end the
relation but do not, perhaps, constitute “conflict.”

Not only because of the fact that…oppression usually increases if it is suffered calmly and without protest, but also because opposition gives us inner satisfaction, distraction, relief…

Our opposition makes us feel that we are not completely victims of the circumstances.

GEORG SIMMEL, 1858-1918

Don't depend on the enemy not coming; depend rather on being ready for him.

--Sun-tzu, The Art of War (fourth century B.C.)

KEYS TO WARFARE

We live in an era in which people are seldom directly hostile.

The rules of engagement–social, political, military–have changed, and so must your notion of the enemy.

An up-front enemy is rare now and is actually a blessing.

People hardly ever attack you openly anymore, showing their intentions, their desire to destroy you; instead they are political and indirect.

Although the world is more competitive than ever, outward aggression is discouraged, so people have learned to go underground, to attack unpredictably and craftily.

Many use friendship as a way to mask aggressive desires: they come close to you to do more harm. (A friend knows best how to hurt you.)

Or, without actually being friends, they offer assistance and alliance: they may seem supportive, but in the end they’re advancing their own interests at your expense.

Then there are those who master moral warfare, playing the victim, making you feel guilty for something unspecified you’ve done.

The battlefield is full of these warriors, slippery, evasive, and clever.

Understand: the word “enemy”–from the Latin inimicus, “not a friend”–has been demonized and politicized.

Your first task as a strategist is to widen your concept of the enemy, to include in
that group those who are working against you, thwarting you, even in subtle ways.

(Sometimes indifference and neglect are better weapons than aggression, because you can’t see the hostility they hide.)

Without getting paranoid, you need to realize that there are people who wish you ill and operate indirectly.

Identify them and you’ll suddenly have room to maneuver.

You can stand back and wait and see or you can take action, whether aggressive or just evasive, to avoid the worst.

You can even work to turn this enemy into a friend.

But whatever you do, do not be the naive victim.

Do not find yourself constantly retreating, reacting to your enemies’ maneuvers.

Arm yourself with prudence, and never completely lay down your arms, not even for friends.

As one travels up any one of the large rivers [of Borneo], one meets with tribes that are successively more warlike. 

In the coast regions are peaceful communities which never fight save in self-defense, and then with but poor success, whereas in the central regions, where the rivers take their rise, are a number of extremely warlike tribes whose raids have been a constant source of terror to the communities settled in the lower reaches of the rivers.... 

It might be supposed that the peaceful coast people would be found to be superior in moral qualities to their more warlike neighbors, but the contrary is the case. 

In almost all respects the advantage lies with the warlike tribes. 

Their houses are better built, larger, and cleaner; their domestic morality is superior; they are physically stronger, are braver, and physically and mentally more active and in general are more trustworthy. 

But, above all, their social organization is firmer and more efficient because their respect for and obedience to their chiefs and their loyalty to their community are much greater; each man identifies himself with the whole community and accepts and loyally performs the social duties laid upon him.

WILLIAM MCDOUGALL, 1871-1938

People are usually good at hiding their hostility, but often they unconsciously give off signals showing that all is not what it seems.

One of the closest friends and advisers of the Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Tse-tung was Lin Biao, a high-ranking member of the Politburo and possible successor to the chairman.

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, though, Mao detected a change in Lin: he had become effusively friendly.

Everyone praised Mao, but Lin’s praise was embarrassingly fervent.

To Mao this meant that something was wrong.

He watched Lin closely and decided that the man was plotting a takeover, or at the very least positioning himself for the top spot.

And Mao was right: Lin was plotting busily.

The point is not to mistrust all friendly gestures but to notice them.

Register any change in the emotional temperature: unusual chumminess, a new desire to exchange confidences, excessive praise of you to third parties, the desire for an alliance that may make more sense for the other person than for you.

Trust your instincts: if someone’s behavior seems suspicious, it probably is.

It may turn out to be benign, but in the meantime it is best to be on your guard.

You can sit back and read the signs or you can actively work to uncover your enemies–beat the grass to startle the snakes, as the Chinese say.

In the Bible we read of David’s suspicion that his father-in-law, King Saul, secretly wanted him dead.

How could David find out?

He confided his suspicion to Saul’s son Jonathan, his close friend. Jonathan refused to believe it, so David suggested a test.

He was expected at court for a feast.

He would not go; Jonathan would attend and pass along David’s excuse, which would be adequate but not urgent.

Sure enough, the excuse enraged Saul, who exclaimed, “Send at once and fetch him unto me–he deserves to die!”

David’s test succeeded because it was ambiguous.

His excuse for missing the feast could be read in more than one way: if Saul meant well toward David, he would have seen his son-in-law’s absence as
no more than selfish at worst, but because he secretly hated David, he saw it as effrontery, and it pushed him over the edge.

Follow David’s example: say or do something that can be read in more than
one way, that may be superficially polite but that could also indicate a slight coolness on your part or be seen as a subtle insult. A friend may wonder but will let it pass. The secret enemy, though, will react with anger. Any strong emotion and you will know that there’s something boiling under the surface.

Often the best way to get people to reveal themselves is to provoke tension and argument.

The Hollywood producer Harry Cohn, president of Universal Pictures, frequently used this strategy to ferret out the real position of people in the studio who refused to show what side they were on: he would suddenly attack their work or take an extreme position, even an offensive one, in an argument. His provoked directors and writers would drop their usual caution and show their real beliefs.

Understand: people tend to be vague and slippery because it is safer than outwardly committing to something. If you are the boss, they will mimic your ideas. Their agreement is often pure courtiership. Get them emotional; people are usually more sincere when they argue. If you pick an argument with someone and he keeps on mimicking your ideas, you may be dealing with a chameleon, a particularly dangerous type. Beware of people who hide behind a facade of vague abstractions and impartiality: no one is impartial. A sharply worded question, an opinion designed to offend, will make them react and take sides.

Man exists only in so far as he is opposed.

GEORG HEGEL, 1770-1831

Sometimes it is better to take a less direct approach with your potential enemies–to be as subtle and conniving as they are.

In 1519, Hernan Cortes arrived in Mexico with his band of adventurers.

Among these five hundred men were some whose loyalty was dubious.

Throughout the expedition, whenever any of Cortes’s soldiers did something he saw as suspicious, he never got angry or accusatory. Instead he pretended to go along with them, accepting and approving what they had done.

Thinking Cortes weak, or thinking he was on their side, they would take another step. Now he had what he wanted: a clear sign, to himself and others, that they were traitors. Now he could isolate and destroy them.

Adopt the method of Cortes: if friends or followers whom you suspect of ulterior motives suggest something subtly hostile, or against your interests, or simply odd, avoid the temptation to react, to say no, to get angry, or even to ask questions. Go along, or seem to turn a blind eye: your enemies will soon go further, showing more of their hand. Now you have them in sight, and you can attack.

An enemy is often large and hard to pinpoint–an organization, or a person hidden behind some complicated network. What you want to do is take aim at one part of the group–a leader, a spokesman, a key member of the inner circle.

That is how the activist Saul Alinsky tackled corporations and bureaucracies.

In his 1960s campaign to desegregate Chicago’s public-school system, he focused on the superintendent of schools, knowing full well that this man would try to
shift the blame upward.

By taking repeated hits at the superintendent, he was able to publicize his
struggle, and it became impossible for the man to hide.

Eventually those behind him had to come to his aid, exposing themselves in the process.

Like Alinsky, never aim at a vague, abstract enemy.

It is hard to drum up the emotions to fight such a bloodless battle, which in any case leaves your enemy invisible.

Personalize the fight, eyeball to eyeball.

Danger is everywhere.

There are always hostile people and destructive relationships.

The only way to break out of a negative dynamic is to confront it.

Repressing your anger, avoiding the person threatening you, always looking to conciliate–these common strategies spell ruin.

Avoidance of conflict becomes a habit, and you lose the taste for battle.

Feeling guilty is pointless; it is not your fault you have enemies.

Feeling wronged or victimized is equally futile. In both cases you are looking inward, concentrating on yourself and your feelings.

Instead of internalizing a bad situation, externalize it and face your enemy.

It is the only way out.

The frequent hearing of my mistress reading the bible--for she often read aloud when her husband was absent--soon awakened my curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading, and roused in me the desire to learn. Having no fear of my kind mistress before my eyes, (she had given me no reason to
fear,) I frankly asked her to teach me to read; and without hesitation, the dear woman began the task, and very soon, by her assistance, I was master of the alphabet, and could spell words of three or four letters...Master Hugh was amazed at the simplicity of his spouse, and, probably for the first time, he unfolded to her the true philosophy of slavery, and the peculiar rules necessary to be observed by masters and mistresses, in the management of their human chattels. Mr. Auld promptly forbade the continuance of her [reading] instruction; telling her, in the first place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also unsafe, and could only lead to mischief....

Mrs. Auld evidently felt the force of his remarks; and, like an obedient wife, began to shape her course in the direction indicated by her husband. The effect of his words, on me, was neither slight nor transitory. His iron sentences--cold and harsh--sunk deep into my heart, and stirred up
not only my feelings into a sort of rebellion, but awakened within me a slumbering train of vital thought. It was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery, against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit: the white man's power to
perpetuate the enslavement of the black man. "Very well," thought I; "knowledge unfits a child to be a slave."

I instinctively assented to the proposition; and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom. This was just what I needed; and got it at a time, and from a source, whence I least expected it.... Wise as Mr. Auld was, he evidently underrated my comprehension, and had little idea of the use to which I was capable of putting the impressive lesson he was giving to his wife.... That which he most loved I
most hated; and the very determination which he expressed to keep me in ignorance, only rendered me the more resolute in seeking intelligence.

MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM, FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1818-1895

The child psychologist Jean Piaget saw conflict as a critical part of mental development. Through battles with peers and then parents, children learn to adapt to the world and develop strategies for dealing with problems. Those children who seek to avoid conflict at all cost, or those who have overprotective parents, end up handicapped socially and mentally.

The same is true of adults: it is through your battles with others that you learn what works, what doesn’t, and how to protect yourself. Instead of shrinking from the idea of having enemies, then, embrace it. Conflict is therapeutic.

Enemies bring many gifts.

For one thing, they motivate you and focus your beliefs.

The artist Salvador Dali found early on that there were many qualities he could not stand in people: conformity, romanticism, piety.

At every stage of his life, he found someone he thought embodied these anti- ideals–an enemy to vent on. First it was the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who wrote romantic poetry; then it was Andre Breton, the heavy-handed leader of the surrealist movement.

Having such enemies to rebel against made Dali feel confident and inspired.

Enemies also give you a standard by which to judge yourself, both personally and socially.

The samurai of Japan had no gauge of their excellence unless they fought the best swordsmen; it took Joe Frazier to make Muhammad Ali a truly great fighter.

A tough opponent will bring out the best in you.

And the bigger the opponent, the greater your reward, even in defeat.

It is better to lose to a worthy opponent than to squash some harmless foe.

You will gain sympathy and respect, building support for your next fight.

Being attacked is a sign that you are important enough to be a target.

You should relish the attention and the chance to prove yourself.

We all have aggressive impulses that we are forced to repress; an enemy supplies you with an outlet for these drives. At last you have someone on whom to
unleash your aggression without feeling guilty.

Leaders have always found it useful to have an enemy at their gates in times of trouble, distracting the public from their difficulties.

In using your enemies to rally your troops, polarize them as far as possible: they will fight the more fiercely when they feel a little hatred.

So exaggerate the differences between you and the enemy–draw the lines clearly.

Xenophon made no effort to be fair; he did not say that the Persians weren’t really such a bad lot and had done much to advance civilization. He called them barbarians, the antithesis of the Greeks.

He described their recent treachery and said they were an evil culture that could find no favor with the gods.

And so it is with you: victory is your goal, not fairness and balance. Use the rhetoric of war to heighten the stakes and stimulate the spirit.

What you want in warfare is room to maneuver.

Tight corners spell death.

Having enemies gives you options.

You can play them off against each other, make one a friend as a way of attacking the other, on and on.

Without enemies you will not know how or where to maneuver, and you will lose a sense of your limits, of how far you can go.

Early on, Julius Caesar identified Pompey as his enemy. Measuring his actions and calculating carefully, he did only those things that left him in a solid position in relation to Pompey.

When war finally broke out between the two men, Caesar was at his best.

But once he defeated Pompey and had no more such rivals, he lost all sense of
proportion–in fact, he fancied himself a god.

His defeat of Pompey was his own undoing.

Your enemies force on you a sense of realism and humility.

Remember: there are always people out there who are more aggressive, more devious, more ruthless than you are, and it is inevitable that some of them will cross your path.

You will have a tendency to want to conciliate and compromise with them.

The reason is that such types are often brilliant deceivers who see the strategic value in charm or in seeming to allow you plenty of space, but actually their desires have no limit, and they are simply trying to disarm you.

With some people you have to harden yourself, to recognize that there is no middle ground, no hope of conciliation.

For your opponent your desire to compromise is a weapon to use against you.

Know these dangerous enemies by their past: look for quick power grabs, sudden rises in fortune, previous acts of treachery. Once you suspect you are dealing with a Napoleon, do not lay down your arms or entrust them to someone else. You are the last line of your own defense.

Authority: If you count on safety and do not think of danger, if you do not know enough to be wary when enemies arrive, this is called a sparrow nesting on a tent, a fish swimming in a cauldron–they won’t last the day.–Chuko Liang (A.D. 181-234 )

REVERSAL

Always keep the search for and use of enemies under control. It is clarity you want, not paranoia.

It is the downfall of many tyrants to see an enemy in everyone.

They lose their grip on reality and become hopelessly embroiled in the emotions their paranoia churns up.

By keeping an eye on possible enemies, you are simply being prudent and cautious.

Keep your suspicions to yourself, so that if you’re wrong, no one will know. Also, beware of polarizing people so completely that you cannot back off.

Margaret Thatcher, usually brilliant at the polarizing game, eventually lost control of it: she created too many enemies and kept repeating the same tactic, even in situations that called for retreat. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a master polarizer, always looking to draw a line between himself and his enemies. Once he had made that line clear enough, though, he backed off, which made him look like a conciliator, a man of peace who occasionally went to war.

Even if that impression was false, it was the height of wisdom to create it.

Conclusion

Reading this, I cannot help but understand why Trump and his crew of dinosaurs were so rabidly inclined to label the biggest trading partner as an enemy. This article describes why.

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The Past Through Tomorrow (full text) by Robert A Heinlein (free)

Heinlein almost never showed up in anthologies. Sometimes editors would apologize for omitting him, admitting (with some frustration) that they just couldn’t get the rights to the Heinlein tales they wanted. The problem was that by the mid-70s Heinlein was a star, the top-selling author in the field, and his entire short fiction catalog was locked up in his own bestselling collections.

I read collections, of course. Lots of them. But the seminal Heinlein collection, the one containing virtually all of his really important short work — including classics like “The Roads Must Roll,” “Blowups Happen,” “The Man Who Sold the Moon,” “Gentlemen, Be Seated,” “The Green Hills of Earth,” “Logic of Empire,” “The Menace from Earth,” “If This Goes On —”, and the short novel Methuselah’s Children — was the massive The Past Through Tomorrow.

I picked up on The Past Through Tomorrow recently, and I was impressed all over again at just how many true SF classics are packed within its pages. I can almost forgive its length, given that it contains 21 stories, three novellas (“The Man Who Sold the Moon,” “Logic of Empire,” and “Coventry”) and a complete novel, Methuselah’s Children. The stories within were published across four decades, from 1939 to 1962, first in John W. Campbell’s Astounding and later in places like Argosy, Blue Book, The Saturday Evening Post, and Scientific American.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

Introduction by Damon Knight
“Life-Line” (Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1939)
“The Roads Must Roll” (Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1940)
“Blowups Happen” (Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1940)
“The Man Who Sold the Moon” (The Man Who Sold the Moon, 1950)
“Delilah and the Space-Rigger” (The Blue Book Magazine, December 1949)
“Space Jockey” (The Saturday Evening Post, April 26, 1947)
“Requiem” (Astounding Science-Fiction, January 1940)
“The Long Watch” (The American Legion Magazine, December 1949)
“Gentlemen, Be Seated” (Argosy Magazine, May 1948)
“The Black Pits of Luna” (The Saturday Evening Post, January 10, 1948)
“It’s Great to Be Back!” (The Saturday Evening Post, July 26, 1947)
“—We Also Walk Dogs” (Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1941)
“Searchlight” (Scientific American, August 1962)
“Ordeal in Space” (Town & Country, May 1948)
“The Green Hills of Earth” (The Saturday Evening Post, February 8, 1947)
“Logic of Empire” (Astounding Science-Fiction, March 1941)
“The Menace from Earth” (Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1957)
“If This Goes On —” (Astounding Science-Fiction, February 1940)
“Coventry” (Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1940)
“Misfit” (Astounding Science-Fiction, November 1939)
Methuselah’s Children (Astounding Science-Fiction, July-August 1941)

Robert A. Heinlein was one of Campbell’s most famous discoveries, and certainly the one that Campbell was most proud of. Alec Nevala-Lee, when discussing his groundbreaking non-fiction book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, said, “Heinlein was the author Campbell was waiting for,” and I think that’s precisely right. Heinlein’s first published story was “Life-Line” in the August 1939 issue of Astounding; more rapidly followed and within a year Campbell was lauding Heinlein in his editorials as “a major science fiction writer.”

The Past Through Tomorrow was published in hardcover by Putnam in 1967, and reprinted in paperback by Berkley Medallion in 1975. The paperback version is 830 pages, priced at $1.50. The cover artist is uncredited.

The Book

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Defending your Life

There’s a great movie from the 1990’s titled “Defending your life”. It’s a fantasy movie about what it is like when you die, and you have to justify the kind of life that you had when you were alive. It’s a fun movie, a lite comedy romance. It’s fun. But I want to look at it from are more serious angle. And that is what we are going to do here.

Advertising executive Daniel Miller dies in an auto accident and finds himself in Judgment City. He is taken to a hotel to rest, and the next day he takes a tram downtown to meet his lawyer, Bob Diamond (Rip Torn). Diamond informs him that there is to be a five-day examination of his life to decide whether he has overcome fear. At a comedy club he meets Julia and they fall in love. But as their trials progress, it becomes clear Julia has overcome fear and is moving on, while Daniel seems doomed to go back to Earth.

—Diana Barahona

Roger Elbert writes…

It is Albert Brooks‘ notion in this film that after death we pass on to a sort of heavenly way station where we are given the opportunity to defend our actions during our most recent lifetime.

The process is like an American courtroom, with a prosecutor, defense attorney and judge, but the charges against us are never quite spelled out. The basic question seems to be, are we sure we did our best, given our opportunities?

In the movie, Brooks plays Dan Miller, a successful exec who takes delivery on a new BMW and plows it into a bus while trying to adjust the CD player. He awakens in a place named Judgment City, which resembles those blandly modern office and hotel complexes around big airports. He’s given a room in a clean but spartan place that looks franchised by Motel 6.

At first Dan is understandably dazed at finding himself dead, but the staff takes good care of him. He’s dressed in a flowing gown, whisked around the property on a bus, and told he can eat all he wants in the cafeteria (where the food is delicious but contains no calories).

Then he meets his genial, avuncular defense attorney (Rip Torn), and his hard-edged prosecutor (Lee Grant). It’s time for the courtroom, in which we see flashbacks to Dan’s life as he tries to explain himself.

… (and) he falls in love with another sojourner in Judgment City.

She is a sweet, open-faced, serene young woman named Julia and played, of course, by Meryl Streep, who is the only actress capable of providing the character’s Streepian qualities. They fall into like with one another.

Dan visits her hotel and is dismayed to discover that she has much better facilities than he does – Four Seasons instead of Motel 6 – and he wonders if maybe your hotel assignment is a clue about how well you lived your past life. But nobody in Judgment City will give him a straight answer to a question like that.

The best thing about the movie, I think, is the notion of Judgment City itself. Doesn’t it make sense that heaven, for each society, would be a place much like the Earth that it knows? We’re still stuck with images of angels playing harps, which worked fine for Renaissance painters. But isn’t our modern world ready for images in which the angels look like Rotarians and CEOs?

The movie is funny in a warm, fuzzy way, and it has a splendidly satisfactory ending.

MM Thoughts

The movie is a fiction.

But it does get a number of things right.

Review Process. There is always a review process once you exit the physical reality and return to the non-physical reality.
Judgement of your Actions. Yes, you are judged by your actions. There is no escape from that.
No Golden Harps. Forget the notions of golden harps, big diamonds and all those other images that are so conventional regarding the non-physical reality. There are other “things” in the non-physical reality, and you might be surprised how “futuristic”, and yet “conventional” they actually are. As well as the enormous scale of them.
Not immediately returned via reincarnation. Certainly the narrative from “Alien Interview” cautions that consciousness is immediately processed and thrown back to the physical Earth reality, without memories, but that is not my experience. Nor is that the experience of Dr. Newton.
Planning is required. A return back to the earth physical reality requires work, planning, and coordination. The only way that consciousness can return back and enter a new born body quickly is if the consciousness is being “punished” in some way. Like for attempting suicide or something like that.

How do I know all this? Well, as I have stated that there are channels, and to continue my ELF interactions it is (was) with another entity and that provided me insight. Not to mention that the EBP provides <redacted>.

I strongly urge people to watch this movie.

Because there are so many things in the non-physical world that resemble what we have in the physical world that you would be astounded.

Also you all need to recognize that the overall sequence is obtain experiences, die, review, map out more experiences, and repeat.

The general human on Earth sequence

Birth in a body
Obtain experiences.
Die.
Life review.
Map out what is next.
If Earth as a human, then…
Repeat.

Alien Interview

I have discussed the book “Alien Interview” elsewhere. I personally believe that it is exactly what it says it is.

I believe [1] the back-story that the documents were actual transcripts of an interrogation with a type-1 grey extraterrestrial in 1947. I also [2] believe that everything that was recorded and written down are what the extraterrestrial said, and further, [3]I believe that it was mostly truthful and [4] saying things truthfully based on it’s understanding in 1947. All in a way or manner that [5] would be understood by the post world-war II generals and leaders gathered at the Roswell military base.

However, as I parsed the book in great detail, I came to realize the there were some elements within the statements that could easily be misunderstood.

…

Earth as a “Prison Planet” and us convicts and felons within it, are immediately recycled back to Earth upon death, over and over and there is no escape…

…however, it listed numerous people who have actually managed to escape this environment. One has total recall and made great contributions to this region and was reassigned elsewhere in the universe.

So, obviously there ARE avenues of egress.

…

Further, this “Alien Interview” event spawned the creation of MAJestic shortly afterwards, and it enlisted folk like myself (MM) and we were tasked with “participating in events that were bigger than any government, and that mattered to the entire human species”.

For the period from the creation of MAJestic to today, the type-1 greys (and a number of other species) have been working with MAJestic towards certain objectives, goals, and directives.

I cannot help but believe that there has been some substantial changes in the situation of 1947 to today in 2021. And these changes have manifested in many ways. Such as [1] the ability to map out the topography of Heaven like Dr. Newton has (HERE), and [2] the recovery of memories of reincarnation that we see from time to time, and [3] the growth of the “new age” movements.

…

Whether the “constructions”, “arrangements” and the extensive geography of the non-physical reality is a [1] fabrication designed to entrap us earth-bound prisoners, or actually [2] the non-physical reality that surrounds the earth is unknown.

My personal belief is that the non-physical reality is exactly that. And the systems that force earth humans to immediately return to earth is broken. It no longer exists. However, what does exist is a massive non-physical infrastructure that is dedicated to humans experiencing and obtaining physical experiences. These experiences are all recorded in memories and still exist and are not erased. At least I can access them, and I very convinced that others can as well.

…

My constant entanglement with the EBP, as well as how my ELF probes worked before I was “retired” clearly indicate that there is a vibrant and active non-physical world all around us. Older and more advanced species enter and leave this reality at will.

It is complex, active, vibrant, and substantive. You not need to fear it, or to remember one time when you were “put under anesthesia” before an operation and blanked out with no memories. That was not death. That was something different. You should never believe that being put under by drugs is the same experience that you would have upon death.

…

This is a fun movie, but it reminds us that our actions as we live all have consequences. You can believe that it is “karma”. You can call it cycling through “reincarnations”. You can believe that it is “quantum associations”, or that “like thoughts attract like actions”. You can believe what ever seems most comfortable with you.

But I will definitively tell you that there is a community that exists outside of our reality, and it is populated with humans (and a lot of other “stuff”). And if you want to (as they say in the movie “move on to bigger and better things”) make this life a good one.

Make this life a great one.

Make a difference in this world. Help others. Do great things. Perform great works. Smile. Be the sunshine that helps others. Do not be the dark pit of blackness that takes and takes from others. Don’t do that.

Be kind and be helpful.

In the non-physical reality you will glow like a big beacon or torch. And others of similar beliefs will be attracted to you. Be great. You will be wonderful.

Watch the movie, and tell me what you all think.

USA Streaming Access to the movie…

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MOVIES

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The Mad Scientists of Mammoth Falls

I am more than a bit “burnt out” on all the Geo-political bullshit. When I read an article about “containing China”, and how “America is roaring back” I just exit the browser tab. I’ve have enough. I am “toast”.

America is so full-on crazy right now, and they treat us “citizens” as slaves, and dumbed down nincompoops. It’s just an insult to see what constitutes “news” these days.

Instead, what I want to do do is relive a simpler time when I was a boy. And for me, that meant chilling out with my dog, and my cat in my tree house. It meant riding all over town and going on “hikes” and all-day-long “bike rides” and exploring old abandoned bridges, trestles, tunnels, and long abandoned rural homes. It meant lazying around eating home-made sandwiches, and sprawling out upon the couch as I read one of my hundreds of boyhood paperback books.

And one of the books that I loved then, and still love today, is the “Mad Scientist’s Club” series of short stories.

I still remember the book fair as one of the highlights of my elementary school year. For a half hour or so the teacher would take us down the long hall to the multipurpose room. I lived in rural Western Pennsylvania, and my school was too small to have a separate gym. Though it did have a basement cafeteria and a library on the nearby High School. There, in the gym where table after table had been set up with stacks of books arranged by interest and age level.

I loved books as a kid and I always looked forward to the event.

As a boy, I used to hang out in the tree house with my cat and read. But other times my friends would come up and we would read comic books together, and do other things that kids are forbidden to do.

Some of the books I purchased there would shape my reading habits for the rest of my life. I still remember taking the two dollars my mom gave me for the fair and investing it in Chariots of the Gods. It was astounding to me, and I found it impossible to put down.

Since then I have collected a small mountain of paperbacks. With science fiction and history being my favorites. I also had some war literature, some “how to” books, and Marmaduke comics paperbacks.

Another book fair introduced me to yet another author: Bertrand R. Brinley.

Few of you will recognize his name, though some will fondly remember series he authored: The Mad Scientists’ Club (referred to as MSC among fans).

His initial work consisted of two volumes of short stories and a novel. A second novel written by Brinley but not really published until after his death completes the set. In my opinion his stories rank as one of the best young people’s reading series ever created.

I mean…

…the BEST.

Dinky Poore didn't really mean to start the story about the huge sea monster in Strawberry Lake. He was only telling a fib because he had to have an excuse for getting home late for supper. So he told his folks he'd been running around the lake trying to get a closer look at a huge, snakelike thing he'd seen in the water, and the first thing he knew he was too far from home to get back in time.

His mother and father greeted the tale with some skepticism. But Dinky's two sisters were more impressionable, and that's how the story really got out. They kept pestering him for so many details about the monster that he had to invent a fantastic tale to satisfy them.

That's one of the troubles with a lie. You've got to keep adding to it to make it believable to people.

It didn't take long for the story to get around town, and pretty soon Dinky Poore was a celebrity in Mammoth Falls. He even had his picture in the paper, together with an "artists conception" of the thing he'd seen. It was gruesome-looking -- something like a dinosaur, but with a scaly, saw-toothed back like a dragon. Dinky was never short on imagination, and he was able to give the artist plenty of details.

It was the artists' sketch in the newspaper that got Henry Mulligan all excited. Henry is First Vice President and also Chief of Research for the Mad Scientists' Club and is noted for his brainstorms. Neither Henry nor anyone else in the club actually believed Dinky had seen a real monster, but we were all willing to play along with the gag -- especially when Henry suggested that we could build a monster just like the one shown in the newspaper ...

Bertrand R. Brinley

Bertrand Brinley was born in Hudson, New York, in 1917. As a child he moved with his family from place to place, eventually living in West Newbury, Massachusetts as a teenager where he graduated from the local high school.

West Newbury, Massachusetts. Small town America.

He worked at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in California as a systems analyst during the early years of World War II and joined the army in 1944. His tour with the army allowed him to see much of the world.

He left the army for a short time, then reentered it during the Korean War.

Much of his work with the army involved public relations and in the late 50’s, right after the Sputnik launch, he was put in charge of a program to instruct amateur rocketeers in safety.

This lead to his first book published in 1960, Rocket Manual for Amateurs.

This book taught young boys, and maybe High School teenagers, how to make their own rockets from scratch. Not just the shape; nose cones, and fins, but also how to make solid rocket propellant motors, firing systems, and parachute escape and retrieval devices.

Sigh.

You would never see that today.

This is ancient history – even to me – but the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957 sent the United States into a crisis.

The successful orbiting of a satellite by America’s rival after the failure of several of our own rockets created the impression of a scientific gap between the two countries.

In 1958 the U.S. would orbit its own satellite, Vanguard, but by then the idea that America was behind the USSR in science and technology was firmly planted in the public’s mind.

To close this supposed “gap,” money was poured into education for the next decade or so. Not just funding for schools, and extra courses, but real STEM courses for everyone.

Everyone, all over America, were training to be engineers, designers, and scientists.

The introduction of new curriculum – such as the so-called New Math designed to promote engineering and science-was common. While it is doubtful that New Math really turned ten-year-olds into rocket engineers, it is indisputable that these events had Americans thinking about science and technology.

Elementary textbooks for fourth through six grade doesn’t resemble anything being taught in America today.

It was in this atmosphere that Brinley conceived his stories.

In 1961 the first of Brinley’s tales was published in Boy’s Life. Boy’s Life was, and remains, the official magazine of the Boy Scouts.

The story, The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake, told of a group of small-town teenagers whose genius for technology gets them both into and out of trouble when they build a fake sea serpent.

The story of the club was continued in two more stories that year in Boy’s Life. In 1965 the first seven of the short stories were gathered into book form and published under the title The Mad Scientists Club. It was a paperback copy of this I came across and purchased at a book fair several years later.

The crew in their tree-house. Plotting and scheming.

To say that I liked this book would be quite an understatement.

I read the seven tales contained in it over and over again.

Each, while involving the same characters and setting, were very different and engaging.

My personal favorite is The Secret of the Old Cannon, where the club probes the mystery of what is in the breech of a giant civil war cannon in the local park.

Mammoth Falls

A strange sea monster appears on the lake...a fortune is unearthed from an old cannon ...a valuable dinosaur egg is stolen. 

Watch out as the Mad Scientists turn Mammoth Falls upside down! 

Take seven, lively, "normal" boys -- one an inventive genius -- give them a clubhouse for cooking up ideas, an electronics lab above the town hardware store, and a good supply of Army surplus equipment, and you, dear reader, have a boyhood dream come true and a situation that bears watching. 

In the hands of an author whose own work involved technological pioneering, the proceedings are well worth undivided attention, as the boys explore every conceivable possibility for high and happy adventure in the neighborhood of Mammoth Falls. 

To the unutterable confusion of the local dignitaries -- and the unalloyed delight of Bertrand Brinley's fans -- the young heroes not only outwit their insidious rival, Harmon Muldoon, but emerge as town heroes.

The stories were told in first person by character Charlie Finckledinck (who didn’t have a last name until the first novel came out) but clearly the club’s most prominent member was the bespeckled teenager Henry Mulligan.

Henry, the group’s resident science genius, was just as likely to come up with some outlandish prank as a legitimate experiment or invention.

Other MSC members included Jeff Crocker, the president (by virtue of the club meeting in his father’s barn), Homer Snodgrass and Mortimer Dalrymple (experts in electronics and radio).

The club membership was rounded out by Freddy Mulldoon and Dinky Poore, the group’s Mutt and Jeff pair.

A couple of points about the characters: Freddy Muldoon was originally called Fatso Brown, and his cousin, the notorious Harmon Muldoon, Skinny Brown, in The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake. My father changed the names in the version that was published in Boys' Life and subsequently in The Mad Scientists' Club. Charlie Finckledinck, the narrator, did not have a last name until The Big Kerplop!

-The Mad Scientists Club

The adults of the mythical town of Mammoth Falls where the stories were set found themselves forever involved in some scheme or prank the club had thought up.

These, for example, took the forms of a fake monster in the local lake, an electronically-haunted house at the city limits and a mad balloonist in the town square.

When the boys weren’t giving Mayor Scragg, Police Chief Putney or Constable Billy Dahr problems, they often found themselves at odds with a rival gang formed by Harmon Mulldoon who had been a MSC member but had been thrown out for activity unbecoming of a scientist.

It always amazed me how the characters in the books were so clearly and finely drawn. Unfortunately Bertrand Brinley is no longer with us, but his son, Sheridan Brinley, explained how his father had come up with the characters.

Like many authors, Bertrand Brinley’s own personality found its ways into the people he created. “Henry is my father through and through,” said Sheridan. “A guy who thinks before he speaks, has an unusual perspective on things, has a vivid imagination, secretly feeds the dog at the table, is late to dinner because he is thinking about something, etc., etc.”

“Dinky Poore, I have always thought, was in part me, as I was small and skinny as a child and a bit of a whiner,” said Sheridan. “The Poore name is a family name in Westbury, Massachusetts, which is the source of a number of the names and places in the stories. For example, Billy Dahr is based on the constable in West Newbury in the ’30s. He was a bumbling sort of cop, as is Dahr.”

At least some of the events in the stories were inspired by real incidents that would have appeared in the news at the time. The accidental loss of a nuclear device off the coast of Spain in 1966 surely provided inspiration for the first novel, The Big Kerplop!, where an atomic bomb splashes into Mammoth Fall’s Strawberry Lake.

The Air Force’s Project Blue Book, which investigated UFO sightings, may have also been material for Brinley’s imagination to chew on. “The Unidentified Flying Man of Mammoth Falls was, I think, a parody of the Air Force program spending taxpayers’ dollars to trace down UFO sightings,” muses Sheridan.

“What a great joke: create a flying mannequin that makes fools of the town elders and police and scrambles the planes from the nearby Air Force base. Some of the same stuff is in The Flying Sorcerer.“

Engineers and Scientists

I’ve heard a lot of stories over the years about how the original Star Trek TV show in the 60’s influenced people to become scientists and engineers, and as a longtime Treker myself, I believe it is true.

However, I think there may quite a few people who made their career choices based on Brinley’s work. A gentleman named Mark Maxham runs a MSC tribute site and has collected some quotes from anonymous fans including this one:

I have had at least 5 copies of the Mad Scientist's Club over the years. I just gave away my only duplicate set. [...] They too were my favorites when I was younger. I am now a spacecraft flight engineer (worked with NASA controlling the Magellan Spacecraft to Venus) thanks in part to those books.

I suspect that this sentiment is widespread. There aren’t as many MSC fans around as Trekers, but those that exist seem to cherish their memories of the stories just as much as episodes of that seminal TV series.

I even suspect that my own choice of career as an Aerospace engineer hearkens back to Brinley’s tales of crazed boys tinkering around with electronics, rockets, and machinery. Sure there were many other influences. But only Brinley translated that love for gadgetry and messing around with machines that I so very love today.

Like all my books, I eventually lost my old tattered book. My best guess is that it lies at the bottom of some landfill in San Luis Obispo California.

By the way, do you know what I could use right now?

I could use a thin-crust cheese pizza with a goodly amount of salt on it. Maybe with a icy Coke. Not a beer. My doctor is telling me that my beer-drinking days are over. Beer is a “cold” food. I can only drink “warm” foods; like red wine and 53% alcohol. Sigh.

Anyways. For some reason, when I would plop myself and read these books, it was always with either sandwiches or pizza. I guess that I am just that kind of a silly guy. Eh?

What I liked about the thin crust pizza was that you could fold it up, and eat it like a gooey taco. I would plop myself down on this big sprawling 1940’s chair inherited from my grandparents, or our La-Z-boy and chill out. Smunching on a pizza, book about other kids like you, a nice breeze though the window, and a television or radio playing softly in the other room was what my boyhood was like.

Anyways, I had two books. They actually had a second volume that I had bought. It was titled The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists’ Club. I thought that it was even better than the first!

Unfortunately a novel entitled The Big Kerplop! Came out that I was unaware of, and so I never had the opportunity to read it.

Trying to get all these books has been a herculean task over the years. Not only due to the lack of availability, but also to the fact that I am in China. And obscure books in English are not readily available.

Unfortunately all of them had been out of print for many years and were almost impossible to find. This was bad news as I desperately wanted to get a hold of them for both myself and all the kids.

Purple House Press Reprints

Sheridan Brinley had been trying to get his father’s works republished for a number of years without success.

No publisher wanted to risk the money necessary to run off several thousand copies of the books no matter how ardent the small fan base might be.

Fortunately, Brinley came in contact with Purple House Press (PHP), a new publisher formed by a woman named Jill Morgan. Morgan had been locating and collecting out-of-print children books and had come to realize the cost of these original volumes were being driven through the roof.

Parents who wanted to share their favorite children’s books with their own kids were priced out of the market.This is that profit-greed based society that I always lament about. People in America do not care about society. They care about themselves; as a nation driven by psychopathic personalities, those of us with a different value system are often left out in the cold.

Morgan started contacting authors and their heirs and arranging for these works to be reprinted in small volumes. The company now has thirty-two books in its catalog including the original Mad Scientists’ Club, The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists’ Club and The Big Kerplop!

In fact for MSC fans there was perhaps an unexpected bonus from this alliance with PHP. Bertrand Brinley had written a second MSC novel, but it had never been published in the United States. After some editing, The Big Chunk of Ice – the story of the Mad Scientists entangled in a mystery in Austria – became available for readers for what was probably the first time.

I truly believe that one of the secrets of getting your kids to be great readers is not just to read to them, but to read to them stories you yourself are in love with.

The kind of excitement you radiate can’t be faked and kids pick up on it. That is one of the reasons why I am so happy to see efforts like Purple House Press succeed.

As a Rufus I’ve had the opportunity to not only share MSC stories with my kids, but my nieces and nephews as well.

From a technical point of view the stories show some signs of age – the radios, model rockets and remote controls the MSC kids used aren’t exactly cutting edge technology anymore (one can only wonder what trouble Henry and friends could get into using computers, the Internet and various wireless devices), but the stories are still great and worth sharing with a new generation.

Author’s Legacy

Bertrand Brinley died in 1994, but not without having left a significant mark in a lot of people’s lives.

I still can’t see more than two hot air balloons together without thinking of The Great Gas Bag Race.

I was ecstatic a few decades ago when I visited Fort McHenry in Baltimore and found they had a 15-inch Rodman cannon (the same one featured in The Secret of the Old Cannon).

I stood there pondering, could Homer Snodgrass really have wiggled his way down that barrel to find out what was inside?

In a way I like to think of this website, The Museum of UnNatural Mystery, as partly a tribute to Brinley’s work. I’m sure his stories inspired my interest in weird science.

I’d like to think that the halls of the museum are a place where the spirits of Henry Mulligan and Jeff Crocker, embodied into the children of today, can still find some adventure, or at least some mischief, to get into that would vex Mayor Scragg and the citizens of Mammoth Falls.

The Mad Scientist’s Club Series

The Mad Scientists’ Club – Seven Short Stories

– The Strange Sea Monster of Strawberry Lake – The club decides to shake up the town with a fake lake monster, but things go frather than they ever envisioned.

– The Big Egg – The kids find a dinosaur egg and it hatches, or does it?

– The Secret of the Old Cannon – What is hidden in an old civil war cannon up on Memorial Point?

-The Unidentified Flying Man of Mammoth Falls – A mad ballooner upsets the town’s Founder’s Day celebration.

– The Great Gas Bag Race – The club enters a balloon in the annual race and find themselves up against their old rival, Harmon Mulldoon.

– The Voice in the Chimney – The old house on Blueberry Hill is haunted, or is it just peoples’ imagination?

– Night Rescue – The club tries to rescue a downed jet pilot.

The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists’ Club – Five Short Stories

– The Telltale Transmitter – The club goes up against bank robbers.

– The Cool Cavern – The kids try to rescue Harmon’s gang from a cave in.

– Big Chief Rainmaker – The club tries to bring an end to a devastating drought.

– The Flying Sorcerer – A UFO seems to be visiting Mammoth Falls.

– The Great Confrontation – Harmon Mulldoon’s rival gang goes too far.

The Big Kerplop! – A full length novel that tells the story of the formation of the club during a scare when an atomic bomb is lost in Strawberry Lake.

The Big Chunk of Ice – A full length novel that tells the story of the club as it goes on a scientific expedition to Austria and gets entangled in the mystery of a lost diamond.

Do you want more?

You can go through the index page and explore. A lot of gems there. Have fun.

You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
You can find out more about the author HERE.
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If you want to make a donation, you can go HERE.

Law 1 of the 48 laws of Power by Robert Greene. Never Outshine the Master

Fearless (2006)

Fearless, as Jet Li's Fearless in the United Kingdom and in the United States, is a 2006 Chinese-Hong Kong martial arts film. It is loosely based on the life of Huo Yuanjia, a Chinese martial artist who challenged foreign fighters in highly publicised events, restoring pride and nationalism to China at a time when Western imperialism and Japanese manipulation were eroding the country in the final years of the Qing Dynasty before the birth of the Republic of China.

Lesson One.

This is one of the most important points that Robert Greene has taught us. Once a student, always a student until the day your mentor leaves. For a true master is a great ally, but an even worst foe. Be constantly on guard for your actions, and beware of your environment, least you damage something that has developed to be part of your very being.

LAW 1

NEVER OUTSHINE THE MASTER

JUDGMENT

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please and impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite—inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.

TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW

Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s finance minister in the first years of his reign, was a generous man who loved lavish parties, pretty women, and poetry. He also loved money, for he led an extravagant lifestyle.

Fouquet was clever and very much indispensable to the king, so when the prime minister, Jules Mazarin, died, in 1661, the finance minister expected to be named the successor. Instead, the king decided to abolish the position.

This and other signs made Fouquet suspect that he was falling out of favor, and so he decided to ingratiate himself with the king by staging the most spectacular party the world had ever seen. The party’s ostensible purpose would be to commemorate the completion of Fouquet’s château, Vaux-le- Vicomte, but its real function was to pay tribute to the king, the guest of honor.

The most brilliant nobility of Europe and some of the greatest minds of the time—La Fontaine, La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Sévigné attended the party. Molière wrote a play for the occasion, in which he himself was to perform at the evening’s conclusion. The party began with a lavish seven- course dinner, featuring foods from the Orient never before tasted in France, as well as new dishes created especially for the night. The meal was accompanied with music commissioned by Fouquet to honor the king.

After dinner there was a promenade through the château’s gardens. The grounds and fountains of Vaux-le-Vicomte were to be the inspiration for Versailles.

Fouquet personally accompanied the young king through the geometrically aligned arrangements of shrubbery and flower beds.

Arriving at the gardens’ canals, they witnessed a fireworks display, which was followed by the performance of Molière’s play.

The party ran well into the night and everyone agreed it was the most amazing affair they had ever attended.

The next day, Fouquet was arrested by the king’s head musketeer, D’Artagnan. Three months later he went on trial for stealing from the country’s treasury. (Actually, most of the stealing he was accused of he had done on the king’s behalf and with the king’s permission.)

Fouquet was found guilty and sent to the most isolated prison in France, high in the Pyrenees Mountains, where he spent the last twenty years of his life in solitary confinement.

Interpretation

Louis XIV, the Sun King, was a proud and arrogant man who wanted to be the center of attention at all times; he could not countenance being outdone in lavishness by anyone, and certainly not his finance minister.

To succeed Fouquet, Louis chose Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a man famous for his parsimony and for giving the dullest parties in Paris. Colbert made sure that any money liberated from the treasury went straight into Louis’s hands.

With the money, Louis built a palace even more magnificent than Fouquet’s —the glorious palace of Versailles. He used the same architects, decorators, and garden designer. And at Versailles, Louis hosted parties even more extravagant than the one that cost Fouquet his freedom.

Let us examine the situation.

The evening of the party, as Fouquet presented spectacle on spectacle to Louis, each more magnificent than the one before, he imagined the affair as demonstrating his loyalty and devotion to the king.

Not only did he think the party would put him back in the king’s favor, he thought it would show his good taste, his connections, and his popularity, making him indispensable to the king and demonstrating that he would make an excellent prime minister.

Instead, however, each new spectacle, each appreciative smile bestowed by the guests on Fouquet, made it seem to Louis that his own friends and subjects were more charmed by the finance minister than by the king himself, and that Fouquet was actually flaunting his wealth and power.

Rather than flattering Louis XIV, Fouquet’s elaborate party offended the king’s vanity.

Louis would not admit this to anyone, of course—instead, he found a convenient excuse to rid himself of a man who had inadvertently made him feel insecure.

Such is the fate, in some form or other, of all those who unbalance the master’s sense of self, poke holes in his vanity, or make him doubt his pre- eminence.

When the evening began, Fouquet was at the top of the world.

By the time it had ended, he was at the bottom.

Voltaire, 1694-1778

OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW

In the early 1600s, the Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo found himself in a precarious position.

He depended on the generosity of great rulers to support his research, and so, like all Renaissance scientists, he would sometimes make gifts of his inventions and discoveries to the leading patrons of the time.

Once, for instance, he presented a military compass he had invented to the Duke of Gonzaga.

Then he dedicated a book explaining the use of the compass to the Medicis.

Both rulers were grateful, and through them Galileo was able to find more students to teach.

No matter how great the discovery, however, his patrons usually paid him with gifts, not cash.

This made for a life of constant insecurity and dependence. There must be an easier way, he thought.

Galileo hit on a new strategy in 1610, when he discovered the moons of Jupiter. Instead of dividing the discovery among his patrons—giving one the telescope he had used, dedicating a book to another, and so on—as he had done in the past, he decided to focus exclusively on the Medicis.

He chose the Medicis for one reason: Shortly after Cosimo I had established the Medici dynasty, in 1540, he had made Jupiter, the mightiest of the gods, the Medici symbol—a symbol of a power that went beyond politics and banking, one linked to ancient Rome and its divinities.

Galileo turned his discovery of Jupiter’s moons into a cosmic event honoring the Medicis’ greatness.

Shortly after the discovery, he announced that “the bright stars [the moons of Jupiter] offered themselves in the heavens” to his telescope at the same time as Cosimo II’s enthronement.

He said that the number of the moons—four—harmonized with the number of the Medicis (Cosimo II had three brothers) and that the moons orbited Jupiter as these four sons revolved around Cosimo I, the dynasty’s founder.

More than coincidence, this showed that the heavens themselves reflected the ascendancy of the Medici family.

After he dedicated the discovery to the Medicis, Galileo commissioned an emblem representing Jupiter sitting on a cloud with the four stars circling about him, and presented this to Cosimo II as a symbol of his link to the stars.

In 1610 Cosimo II made Galileo his official court philosopher and mathematician, with a full salary. For a scientist this was the coup of a lifetime.

The days of begging for patronage were over.

Interpretation

In one stroke, Galileo gained more with his new strategy than he had in years of begging.

The reason is simple: All masters want to appear more brilliant than other people.

They do not care about science or empirical truth or the latest invention ; they care about their name and their glory.

Galileo gave the Medicis infinitely more glory by linking their name with cosmic forces than he had by making them the patrons of some new scientific gadget or discovery.

Scientists are not spared the vagaries of court life and patronage.

They too must serve masters who hold the purse strings. And their great intellectual powers can make the master feel insecure, as if he were only there to supply the funds—an ugly, ignoble job.

The producer of a great work wants to feel he is more than just the provider of the financing. He wants to appear creative and powerful, and also more important than the work produced in his name.

Instead of insecurity you must give him glory. Galileo did not challenge the intellectual authority of the Medicis with his discovery, or make them feel inferior in any way; by literally aligning them with the stars, he made them shine brilliantly among the courts of Italy.

He did not outshine the master, he made the master outshine all others.

KEYS TO POWER

Everyone has insecurities.

When you show yourself in the world and display your talents, you naturally stir up all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity. This is to be expected.

You cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others.

With those above you, however, you must take a different approach: When it comes to power, outshining the master is perhaps the worst mistake of all.

Do not fool yourself into thinking that life has changed much since the days of Louis XIV and the Medicis.

Those who attain high standing in life are like kings and queens: They want to feel secure in their positions, and superior to those around them in intelligence, wit, and charm.

It is a deadly but common misperception to believe that by displaying and vaunting your gifts and talents, you are winning the master’s affection.

He may feign appreciation, but at his first opportunity he will replace you with someone less intelligent, less attractive, less threatening, just as Louis XIV replaced the sparkling Fouquet with the bland Colbert. And as with Louis, he will not admit the truth, but will find an excuse to rid himself of your presence.

This Law involves two rules that you must realize. First, you can inadvertently outshine a master simply by being yourself. There are masters who are more insecure than others, monstrously insecure; you may naturally outshine them by your charm and grace.

No one had more natural talents than Astorre Manfredi, prince of Faenza.

The most handsome of all the young princes of Italy, he captivated his subjects with his generosity and open spirit.

In the year 1500, Cesare Borgia laid siege to Faenza.

When the city surrendered, the citizens expected the worst from the cruel Borgia, who, however, decided to spare the town: He simply occupied its fortress, executed none of its citizens, and allowed Prince Manfredi, eighteen at the time, to remain with his court, in complete freedom.

A few weeks later, though, soldiers hauled Astorre Manfredi away to a Roman prison.

A year after that, his body was fished out of the River Tiber, a stone tied around his neck.

Borgia justified the horrible deed with some sort of trumped-up charge of treason and conspiracy, but the real problem was that he was notoriously vain and insecure.

The young man was outshining him without even trying.

Given Manfredi’s natural talents, the prince’s mere presence made Borgia seem less attractive and charismatic.

The lesson is simple: If you cannot help being charming and superior, you must learn to avoid such monsters of vanity.

Either that, or find a way to mute your good qualities when in the company of a Cesare Borgia.

Second, never imagine that because the master loves you, you can do anything you want.

Entire books could be written about favorites who fell out of favor by taking their status for granted, for daring to outshine.

In late- sixteenth-century Japan, the favorite of Emperor Hideyoshi was a man called Sen no Rikyu.

The premier artist of the tea ceremony, which had become an obsession with the nobility, he was one of Hideyoshi’s most trusted advisers, had his own apartment in the palace, and was honored throughout Japan.

Yet in 1591, Hideyoshi had him arrested and sentenced to death.

Rikyu took his own life, instead.

The cause for his sudden change of fortune was discovered later: It seems that Rikyu, former peasant and later court favorite, had had a wooden statue made of himself wearing sandals (a sign of nobility) and posing loftily. He had had this statue placed in the most important temple inside the palace gates, in clear sight of the royalty who often would pass by.

To Hideyoshi this signified that Rikyu had no sense of limits. Presuming that he had the same rights as those of the highest nobility, he had forgotten that his position depended on the emperor, and had come to believe that he had earned it on his own.

This was an unforgivable miscalculation of his own importance and he paid for it with his life.

Remember the following: Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.

Knowing the dangers of outshining your master, you can turn this Law to your advantage.

First you must flatter and puff up your master.

Overt flattery can be effective but has its limits; it is too direct and obvious, and looks bad to other courtiers.

Discreet flattery is much more powerful. If you are more intelligent than your master, for example, seem the opposite: Make him appear more intelligent than you. Act naive. Make it seem that you need his expertise. Commit harmless mistakes that will not hurt you in the long run but will give you the chance to ask for his help. Masters adore such requests. A master who cannot bestow on you the gifts of his experience may direct rancor and ill will at you instead.

If your ideas are more creative than your master’s, ascribe them to him, in as public a manner as possible.

Make it clear that your advice is merely an echo of his advice.

If you surpass your master in wit, it is okay to play the role of the court jester, but do not make him appear cold and surly by comparison.

Tone down your humor if necessary, and find ways to make him seem the dispenser of amusement and good cheer.

If you are naturally more sociable and generous than your master, be careful not to be the cloud that blocks his radiance from others.

He must appear as the sun around which everyone revolves, radiating power and brilliance, the center of attention.

If you are thrust into the position of entertaining him, a display of your limited means may win you his sympathy. Any attempt to impress him with your grace and generosity can prove fatal: Learn from Fouquet or pay the price.

In all of these cases it is not a weakness to disguise your strengths if in the end they lead to power.

By letting others outshine you, you remain in control, instead of being a victim of their insecurity.

This will all come in handy the day you decide to rise above your inferior status.

If, like Galileo, you can make your master shine even more in the eyes of others, then you are a godsend and you will be instantly promoted.

Image:

The Stars in the Sky. There can be only one sun at a time. Never obscure the sunlight, or rival the sun’s brilliance; rather, fade into the sky and find ways to heighten the master star’s intensity.

Authority:

Avoid outshining the master. All superiority is odious, but the superiority of a subject over his prince is not only stupid, it is fatal. This is a lesson that the stars in the sky teach us—they may be related to the sun, and just as brilliant, but they never appear in her company. 

(Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)

REVERSAL

You cannot worry about upsetting every person you come across, but you must be selectively cruel.

If your superior is a falling star, there is nothing to fear from outshining him.

Do not be merciful—your master had no such scruples in his own cold-blooded climb to the top.

Gauge his strength.

If he is weak, discreetly hasten his downfall: Outdo, outcharm, outsmart him at key moments.

If he is very weak and ready to fall, let nature take its course.

Do not risk outshining a feeble superior—it might appear cruel or spiteful. But if your master is firm in his position, yet you know yourself to be the more capable, bide your time and be patient.

It is the natural course of things that power eventually fades and weakens. Your master will fall someday, and if you play it right, you will outlive and someday outshine him.

Conclusion

We are often nothing if we act alone, but we can achieve greatness if we form a bond with a group of people.

Within those people are those of great skill, knowledge, experience and ability. You can use their talents for the greater good of the group. You can also learn from them and then in tern become proficient as they.

However, when you are in a group, you must never outshine anyone. You must fit within the group and all praises o to the group, not to the individual stars. Once a group of hard-working individuals are ignored by a singular member, the negative emotions of human greet, envy, lust and others start to corrupt the group. It can harm everyone.

Be careful of what you do, and be humble in your assigned position in life.

Do you want more?

I have more posts in my “48 Laws of Power” Index here…

The 48 Laws

Articles & Links

You can start reading the articles by going HERE.
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The latest Jumanji movies are a respectful nod to Doc Savage; The Man of Bronze

When I was growing up, I had a complete collection of Doc Savage paperbacks and I devoured them completely, When it was time for me to grow out of them, my younger brother took over, and he too was hooked. And he, as well, read every single book.

As a long time reader of Doc Savage, I cannot help but compare the latest two Jumanji movies with the adventure pulps that I read as a boy. And to this end, I want to wax ecstatic about them.

Dr. Clark Savage Jr. was raised from birth to be a man of superhuman strength and protean genius! With his five scrappy aides -- the greatest brains ever assembled in one group -- and a vast Mayan wealth at his disposal, he has dedicated his life to the destruction of evil doers the world over!!

Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze is the hero of 181 novels which ran in his own pulp magazine from 1933 to 1949, and were reprinted as paperback books from 1964 to 1990. First time around, author Lester Dent practically invented the first “super” hero. The second time around Bantam Books invented the numbered men’s adventure series. These high adventures have spawned Doc Savage comic books, radio shows, a movie, new novels — even a biography.

My argument that while Jumanji is not a Doc Savage remake, it’s not a Jumanji remake either. I like to believe; or want to believe that the latest Jumanji movies take the best elements from both venues and create a completely wonderful new reality. A reality that we want to visit.

The Doc

Let’s consider Doc “smolder” Bravestone.

In many ways his character is derived from Doc (Clark) Savage, Jr.

Both have a “skull cap” style hair cut (what ever that actually is). Both like to walk around in torn or distressed khaki shirts. Both have bronze skin. Both are strong, brave and take the world on head-first. And both have their own peculiar traits.

Doc Bravestone has his “smoldering intensity”, and Doc Savage has his “animated “twinkle” in his eye”.

I know, I know. My premise has a lot of holes in it.

However, we do know that prior to the 2017 Jumanji; Welcome to the Jungle, that the lead character Dwayne Johnson (who played Spenser) was in negotiation regarding remakes of Doc Savage pulp stories.

It’s Official: Dwayne the Rock Johnson is ‘DOC SAVAGE’

“It’s OFFICIAL: For all comic book fans you already know the world’s first superhero (pre-dating Superman) is the “Man of Bronze” himself Clark “Doc” Savage.

Want to thank my bud director/writer Shane Black and his writing team Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry for flying in from LA and sitting with me and our @sevenbucksprod’s producer @hhgarcia41 on this Memorial Day weekend to chop up creative and break story on this very cool project.

Comic book fans around the world know that the cool thing about “Doc” Savage is that he’s the inspiration for Superman. First name Clark, called “Man of Bronze”, retreats to his “Fortress of Solitude” in the Arctic etc etc.

Doc was physically and mentally trained from birth by his father and a team of scientists to become the perfect human specimen with a genius level intellect. His heightened senses are beyond comprehension. He can even identify a women’s perfume from half a mile away. He is literally the master of everything.

But here’s the #1 reason I’m excited to become Doc Savage.. HE’S A F*CKING HILARIOUS WEIRDO!

Confidently, yet innocently he has zero social graces whatsoever due to his upbringing so every interaction he has with someone is direct, odd, often uncomfortable and amazingly hilarious.

After speaking for hours w/ Shane Black I can see why the creator of Superman took only the best parts of Doc Savage and leaving the “weirdo” part behind. But to us, it’s that “weirdo” part that makes Clark “Doc” Savage dope! Can’t wait to sink my teeth into this one of a kind character.

#ItsOfficial #WorldsFirstSuperhero #GeniusIntellect #PhysicalSpecimen #FnLoveableWeirdo #DocSavage”

So you have this “Doc Savage” character who has zero social graces and is like a child in a hero’s body. Isn’t that exactly like what is portrayed in the movie? Can we forget the kissing scene between Ruby Roundhouse; the Killer of Men, and Doc “Smolder” Bravestone?

Yeah. I want to forget it too. LOL.

Yeah. It’s a hoot.

Doc Savage is also a perfect role for Johnson as an actor. The character is not only an outlet for Johnson’s action hero bona fides, but also his comedic chops; raised by scientists, Savage has a world-class education but “no social skills,” as Johnson put it. A darling of action, fantasy and science fiction cinema, Johnson has been left wanting for a superhero role at a time when superhero movies are the genre of choice. And what better part could there be for a star of the Rock’s stature than what he himself has appropriately dubbed the #World’sFirstSuperhero?

-The Mary Sue

Anyways, I like to believe that the Doc Savage band of brothers has been reconstituted into the Jumanji characters.

Surprised how entertaining it was
19 December 2019 | by comps-784-38265 – See all my reviews

I took one look at the trailer and was certain it would be rubbish

Finally watched it on TV and was surprised that it's good solid family entertainment.

Not outstanding but a respectable 7 stars.

The Band of Brothers

Although Doc Savage appeared first and most often in prose novels, it’s fair to say that the character is best known by comic book fans. A brilliant scientist with super strength, Doc Savage was the blueprint for countless tropes that would become staples of superhero comics. The character has been eclipsed in the public memory by his pop cultural descendants, but Doc’s legacy is formidable. Time magazine called him not only “the natural father of Superman,” but of James Bond as well.

Not only was Doc known as “the Man of Bronze” and the owner of a “Fortress of Solitude” years before Superman’s debut, he also travelled the world in style and boasted an arsenal of high tech gadgets. That’s not even all of Savage’s most obvious contributions to pop culture: His entourage was even called “the Fabulous Five.”

Doc Savage had five companions that dedicated their lives, the same as Doc, to traveling around the world to do justice.

Lt. Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, who is better known as Monk to his friends. Monk is an industrial chemist.
Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks, Ham, is a lawyer, considered to be one of the best Harvard has ever turned out.
Colonel John Renwick, Renny, a construction engineer. He prided himself on his ability to knock down any door with his fists.
Major Thomas J. Roberts, Long Tom, the electrical wizard of the group.
William Harper Littlejohn, Johnny to his friends. He is an archaeologist and geologist of great renown.

These men made up the team of aides that Doc relied on throughout the series. Known as the “Fabulous Five” on the back cover of the Bantam Books editions, they were never called such in the actual series.

Doc’s cousin, Patricia Savage, introduced in the novel Brand of the Werewolf, frequently appeared in Doc Savage as well.

And no, these EXACT characters do not appear in the Jumanji movies. But aspects of their characters do.

Ah but enough of all that.

What does it matter, unless people enjoy the movie, and have a little escapist entertainment in the process, eh?

A Most Enjoyable Film Which Endlessly Pulls at the Corners of Your Face Her-Excellency7 April 2018

Who would have thought that the sequel to a much-loved classic would, in my opinion, turn into such a stand-alone powerhouse!?!

Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle, does just that. 

Not only is it a virtual non-stop ride of hilarity and laugh-out-loud moments, and it is, but the chemistry among the adult cast members is practically flawless and lends to the easy banter and overflowing, genius, COMEDIC DIALOGUE which just SHINES. Every look, every gesture, every note from The Rock, Kevin Hart and Jack Black are perfection in that at no time do you doubt they are who they are supposed to be. Karen Gillan is adorable and gorgeous at the same time. The obvious fun they are having, despite what I imagine to be uncomfortable filming locales, is palpable, and as an audience member, _if you allow yourself to be_, you WILL be swept up and transported by it.

So, why ANY low ratings?

While the first Jumanji was 'fun', underneath the fun, there were dark layers. There is none of that here and perhaps, this is where some of the disconnect from its detractors comes from. Unlike the original Jumanji, Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle is a fun, and funny, film throughout.

You're Going to Need a SEATBELT ThmellyAthole8 April 2018

I used to have an IMDB account when I was a teen - or at least thought I did, but couldn't log on. In any case, I think I've visited here maybe twice in the last five years. Today though, after just getting back from watching this with my almost-grown kids, I had to make an account just to leave this review.

To begin, I'll never understand people. I can't believe the negative reviews. How could anyone not have laughed like hell while watching this and still have a pulse? I didn't go in expecting much, but I came out with a smile on my face. The girl is hot, Jack Black "owns it", I've never been overly enthused about Kevin Hart, but he was fantastic. and The Rock just knocked it out of the park. 

I saw one review which reads: "not a wrestling fan ever so to see 'the rock' in movies, instantly puts me off!" Does anyone else want to vomit at the inanity, irony and ludicrousness of that statement? Then you have the user who out of 40+ titles he/she has reviewed in the past has only ever rated TWO above three stars. Seriously, if you don't enjoy films and find them so terrible, find a new hobby already. You've got one guy saying the shirt one of the kids wore was outdated. So, I'm guessing one can only wear clothing depicting the current year? Then you have the reviewers who maybe didn't understand the dialogue since they can barely communicate correctly themselves (such gems - I kid you not - as: 'averege'; 'what so ever'; 'family fair' (fare); 'are just wasn't'; 'due to it has'; 'all of there' {their); 'coz it is boring story'; 'no compare with'). Finally, you have the maybe half dozen reviewers who are so caught up in their bigotry that they can't relax and enjoy a film if it isn't whitewashed and who complain about the "Hollywood liberal agenda of diversity". Leave the politics at the door, man. In short, Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle was a fantastic hour or more of rip-riding fun and laughs.

Except for one very funny moment, Dwayne Johnson retires his wrestling persona for this film and instead, provides a smoldering and intense performance, riddled with good-natured hilarity as the lead in this film. Gillan was great in Doctor Who, and although I thought she was the weakest of both characters and actors in this film, she still held her own and looked fantastic doing so. She has one of those faces you can't help but love. Kevin Hart was fantastic as the diminutive valet and looking back, I think he was somehow involved in every funny moment in which I laughed the hardest. Finally, the master, the maestro (though I never really was a fan prior to this), Jack Black plays the teen beauty queen with 100% commitment and to perfection.

10/10 and definitely a film I will be purchasing right after I click "Submit". You can never have enough laughter in life, and Jumanji, Welcome to the Jungle delivers barrels-full.

Let’s talk a little about the characters in the old Doc Savage pulps.

Theodore Marley “Ham” Brooks

Theodore Marley “Ham” Brooks is an attorney and member of Doc Savage‘s Fabulous five.

Ham was considered one of the best-dressed men in the world, and as part of his attire, carried a sword cane whose blade is coated in a fast-acting anesthetic.

He first encountered Doc Savage while serving in the military, where he attained the rank of Brigadier General.

His nickname was acquired when Monk, in retaliation for his guardhouse incarceration, framed Brooks on a charge of stealing hams from the commissary. In the only case which Ham ever lost, he was convicted of stealing the hams. He acquired a pet ape which he named Chemistry.

In The Mystic Mullah he shows he is fluent in the Tibetan language.

Seriously, we don’t see anyone with these characteristics in either of the two Jumanji movies. But, we do see the aviator character who is looked upon as a knowledgeable resource for the game.

Jefferson “Seaplane” McDonough: Seaplane McGonough is a game character that plays a young pilot.

Alex Vreeke was the name of the human player who selected the avatar of Jefferson “Seaplane” McDonough and became trapped in the game for two decades. At the end of the movie, Alex is returned to his time and grows up to be an adult played by Colin Hanks.

All in all, it’s a fasinating twist of pulp fiction, Jumanji, and modern computer games.

The various plot lines are wide open. And this is very exciting.

No idea why it took me 2 years to watch it danielmanson23 November 2019

It's good. I had no idea what to expect in all honest. I am not huge fans of other movies by these actors, but this really worked. You could see the great chemistry between them all and it paid off.

What I liked: I enjoyed how it didn't dither about at the beginning and got right into the action. Jack Black especially was brilliant and hilarious! All the actors/actresses were great but Jack Black stood out. Good mix of action and comedy throughout. I was on the edge of my seat (metaphorically) wanting them to escape the game.

Let’s look at this next Doc Savage character…

Andrew Blodgett (Monk) Mayfair

Andrew Blodgett Mayfair, more commoly known as Monk Mayfair is among the principle members of the The Fabulous Five.

He received the name Monk because his long muscular arms and his low forehead make him resemble a monkey. Like several of Savage’s companions he served in the military, holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Monk currently works as an industrial chemist. He possesses incredible strength, rivaling Doc Savage and can effortlessly bend pennies between his fingers.

Monk personally trained his pet pig, Habeas Corpus, to help serve Doc on his missions.

Monk has a friendly rivalry with Ham, and the two often needle each other. A mutual affection has been shown between them, with one risking life to save the other.

In the Black, Black Witch he is capable of speaking flawless German without a trace of an accent.

He was played by Michael Miller in the film Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze

I will tell you that my personal opinion is that this role is Franklin “Mouse” Finbar. In the Jumanji movie he is one of the five selectable playable character in the video game version of “JUMANJI”.

In “Welcome to the Jungle”, he was the chosen avatar of Anthony “Fridge” Johnson.

In “The Next Level”, he was given to Milo Walker, instead of Fridge (who was forcefully given Shelly Oberon instead), but Finbar is later given back to Frdige.

Actually, there is a little bit of Monk in a number of characters.

But let’s not quibble with my nonsense. I’m just throwing out some thoughts that could be wildly wrong or (alternatively) right on track accurate.

John “Renny” Renwick

John “Renny” Renwick is a member of The Fabulous Five, Doc Savage’s main helpers and friends.

He is a Construction Engineer and a member of the military, holding the rank of Colonel.

Renny is notable for his gloomy personality and his physical stature. His fists are gigantic and he is known to like to punch his way through solid doors.

Thomas J. (Long Tom) Roberts

Thomas J. Roberts, or as hes more commonly referred, Long Tom Roberts, is one of Doc’s assistants and a member of “The Fabulous Five“.

In the 1975 movie, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, Long Tom is played by Paul Gleason.

The character is presented as an electrical engineer, holding the military rank of Major, and a pilot.

He and Doc Savage first met while he was serving in World War I. The explanation of his nickname is given as a result of an event during the war where he helped defend a small European village using an ancient cannon known as a “Long Tom“.

In The Man of Bronze he is described as “the physical weakling of the crowd, thin, not very tall, and with a none-too-healthy-appearing skin“.

**Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon** is one of the five selectable playable character in the Video Game version of “JUMANJI”, that appears in “Welcome to the Jungle”, as the chosen avatar of Bethany Walker, and in “The Next Level” as the avatar of Anthony “Fridge” Johnson, but Bethany was later able to become Oberon again.

William Harper “Johnny” Littlejohn

William Harper “Johnny” Littlejohn is a member of The Fabulous Five, Doc Savage’s main helpers and friends.

Johnny is an archeologist and geologist, known for his exotic vocabulary with long words.

Johnny was initially blind of one eye, using a monocle that he kept even after going through corrective surgery that restored his vision. His military rank, if any, has never been revealed.

I cannot help but think that he was the inspiration for Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon.

Patricia Savage

She had a wealth of bronze hair–hair very closely akin in hue to that of Doc Savage.

She was tall; her form was molded along lines that left nothing to be desired. Her features were as perfect as though a magazine-cover artist had designed them.

She wore high-laced boots, breeches, and a serviceable gray shirt. from Brand of the Werewolf by Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson.

Patricia “Pat” Savage, joins Doc Savage on many of his adventures beginning with her first appearance in “Brand of the Werewolf“. She is the daughter of Alex Savage, Doc’s uncle who lives in Canada.

Pat is described as being 18 years of age and shares many of Doc’s physical characteristics: bronze skin and hair, golden eyes. She also shares Doc’s sense of adventure, thus making her another of Doc’s companions.

Doc Savage makes attempts to restrain is young cousin in order to keep her out of harm’s way.

Pat typically carries a Pat’s SAA Revolver. It was handed down from her grandfather and is often carried in her purse.

Pat Savage appears in 39 Doc Savage adventures:

New Characters

It's all fun and games.

-Level up. Pjtaylor-96-1380448 December 2019

Even though its central concept seems ever-so-slightly more strained this time, ‘Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)’ is about as good as its predecessor. In fact, it’s sometimes even better.

Basically, the flick is just fun.

The crowd-pleasing body-swapping is amped up to eleven, shaking things up just enough so that they feel fresh. The main actors continue to properly impress in their chameleon-like roles, joined by a few extra treats that perform far better than you'd perhaps expect.

Indeed, these new players are probably its biggest asset; a couple of them thoroughly perforate the entire experience despite only having a rather small amount of screen-time.

The picture is often funny - though, never hilarious - and is oddly endearing, to boot. It isn't particularly deep or, even, memorable but it doesn't need to be. It's a good time at the movies; what more do you need?

Obviously some better theming and, perhaps, a tad of nuance wouldn't go amiss, but it's just not that kind of film really and that's perfectly fine. Even if it doesn't impact you as much as some of the year's best, it'll certainly make you smile and keep you entertained for a couple of hours.

Besides, its inciting incident is driven purely by character and it even manages to squeeze some genuine emotional connection, via a well-drawn dynamic between DeVito and Glover, into its otherwise otherworldly proceedings. Its acting is also deceptively simple but decidedly fantastic, fully immersing you in the idea that these major stars are actually four teenagers and two old men.

And nothing to take seriously.

But I do love the refreshing juxtaposition of the Jumanji franchise that Robin Williams stared in and started, along with the wonderful Doc Savage pulp fiction to create this 'new" and refreshingly vibrant world that is the perfect mixture of fun, laughs and adventure for the whole family.

If you all haven’t seen it yet, then please do so. It’s fun.

It’s great entertainment.

And at that, I’ll close.

This is a great movie to chill out with your friends and family. Drink some alcoholic beverages, have a good time. After the movie, you will all be in a good mood. It’s all great

And those are the best kind of movies.

Just a good old fashioned fun movie gluonpaul7 December 2019

There are not many franchises which have been renewed recently which I have actually thought turned out well. Most have been done badly but I have to say that Jumanji stands out as an exception.

This movie does not have a heavy deep story, doesnt try to be anything more than it is, this movie makes you laugh, keeps you entertained and ensures you leave the theater feeling happier than you went in.

It wont win oscars but it will win your heart, definitely a movie to go and enjoy at this time of year.

Oh and guess what?

And get ready because another movie is in the works; Jumanji 4. And this one will have some surprises.

One of the biggest twists in The Next Level involves the villain Jurgen the Brutal (Game of Thrones‘ Rory McCann), who’s revealed to have strengths and weaknesses much like the heroic avatars in the Jumanji video game. In a social media post from late last year, Johnson confirmed Jurgen is also a playable avatar and teased Jumanji 4 will reveal who’s been playing him in the real world.
Kasdan further alluded to the idea during his interview with Collider, saying he “would love to” reveal The Next Level’s hidden villain in the next installment.
In addition, The Next Level’s credits scene suggested Jumanji 4 will take place in the real world, much like the original Jumanji movie did. If so, it opens the door to all sorts of possibilities, not least of which is the Jumanji video game avatars and series’ young heroes meeting face to face.

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The Dragon by Ray Bradbury (Full Text)

Here's a nice short story to provide some brief moments of pleasure. I do hope that you enjoy it as much as I have. - MM

THE DRAGON
By Ray Bradbury

The night blew in the short grass on the moor; there was no other motion. It had been years since a single bird had flown by in the great blind shell of sky.

Long ago a few small stones had simulated life when they crumbled and fell into dust. Now only the night moved in the souls of the two men bent by their lonely fire in the wilderness; darkness pumped quietly in their veins and ticked silently in their temples and their wrists.

Firelight fled up and down their wild faces and welled in their eyes in orange tatters. They listened to each other’s faint, cool breathing and the lizard blink of their eyelids. At last, one man poked the fire with his sword.

“Don’t idiot; you’ll give us away!”

“No matter,” said the second man, “The dragon can smell us miles off anyway. God’s breath, it’s cold. I wish I was back at the castle.”

“It’s death, not sleep, we’re after…”

“Why? Why? The dragon never sets foot in the town!”

“Quiet, fool! He eats men traveling alone from our town to the next!”

“Let them be eaten and let us get home!”

“Wait now; listen!”

The two men froze.

They waited a long time, but there was only the shake of their horses’ nervous skin like black velvet tambourines jingling the silver stirrup buckles, softly, softly.
“Ah.” The second man sighed. “What a land of nightmares. Everything happens here. Someone blows out the sun; it’s night. And then, and then, oh, God, listen! This dragon, they say his eyes are fire. His breath a white gas; you can see him burn across the dark lands. He runs with sulfur and thunder and kindles the grass. Sheep panic and die insane. Women deliver forth monsters. The dragon’s fury is such that tower walls shake back to dust. His victims, at sunrise, are strewn hither thither on the hills. How many knights, I ask, have gone for this monster and failed, even as we shall fail?”

“Enough of that!”

“More than enough! Out here in this desolation I cannot tell what year this is!”

“Nine hundred years since the Nativity.”

“No, no,” whispered the second man, eyes shut, “On this moor is no Time, is only Forever. I feel if I ran back on the road the town would be gone, the people yet unborn, things changed, the castles unquarried from the rocks, the timbers still uncut from the forests; don’t ask how I know; the moor knows and tells me. And here we sit alone in the land of the fire dragon, God save us!”

“Be you afraid, then gird on your armor!”

“What use? The dragon runs from nowhere; we cannot guess its home. It vanishes in fog; we know not where it goes. Aye, on with our armor, we’ll die well dressed.”

Half into his silver corselet, the second man stopped again and turned his head.

Across the dim country, full of night and nothingness from the heart of the moor itself, the wind sprang full of dust from clocks that used dust for telling time. There were black suns burning in the heart of this new wind and a million burnt leaves shaken from some autumn tree be- yond the horizon. This wind melted landscapes, lengthened bones like white wax, made the blood roil and thicken to a muddy deposit in the brain. The wind was a thousand souls dying and all time confused and in transit. It was a fog inside of a mist inside of a darkness, and this place was no man’s place and there was no year or hour at all, but only these men in a faceless emptiness of sudden frost, storm and white thunder which
moved behind the great falling pane of green glass that was the lightning. A squall of rain drenched the turf; all faded away until there was unbreathing hush and the two men waiting alone with their warmth in a cool season.

“There,” whispered the first man. “Oh, there…”

Miles off, rushing with a great chant and a roar – the dragon.

In silence the men buckled on their armor and mounted their horses. The midnight wilderness was split by a monstrous gushing as the dragon roared nearer, nearer; its flashing yellow glare spurted above a hill and then, fold on fold of dark body, distantly seen, therefore indistinct, flowed over that hill and plunged vanishing into a valley.

“Quick!”

They spurred their horses forward to a small hollow.

“This is where it passes!”

They seized their lances with mailed fists and blinded their horses by flipping the visors down over their eyes.

“Lord!”

“Yes, let us use His name.”

On the instant, the dragon rounded a hill. Its monstrous amber eye fed on them, fired their armor in red glints and glitters, With a terrible wailing cry and a grinding rush it flung itself forward.

“Mercy, God!”

The lance struck under the unlidded yellow eye, buckled, tossed the man through the air. The dragon hit, spilled him over, down, ground him under. Passing, the black brunt of its shoulder smashed the remaining horse and rider a hundred feet against the side of a boulder, wailing, wailing, the dragon shrieking, the fire all about, around, under it, a pink, yellow, orange sun-fire with great soft plumes of blinding smoke.

…

“Did you see it?” cried a voice. “Just like I told you!”

“The same! The same! A knight in armor, by the Lord Harry! We hit him!”

“You goin’ to stop?”

“Did once; found nothing. Don’t like to stop on this moor. I get the willies. Got a feel, it has.”

“But we hit something!”

“Gave him plenty of whistle; chap wouldn’t budge!”

A steaming blast cut the mist aside.

“We’ll make Stokely on time. More coal, eh, Fred?”

Another whistle shook dew from the empty sky. The night train, in fire and fury, shot through a gully, up a rise, and vanished away over cold earth toward the north, leaving black smoke and steam to dissolve in the numbed air minutes after it had passed and gone forever.

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Law 12 from The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene; Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim (Full Text)

I do not advocate following this law, but you all should be made well aware of it. When you are outside of your friends and family you enter a zone of questionable trust. You do need to be somewhat guarded in your public dealings as not everyone is a friend. No matter what they say. The world is filled with all kinds of people, all involved with all kinds of agendas.

Please take note that there are others that prefer to use this technique. Be wary.

LAW 12

USE SELECTIVE HONESTY AND GENEROSITY TO DISARM YOUR VICTIM

JUDGMENT

One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift— a Trojan horse—will serve the same purpose.

OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW

Sometime in 1926, a tall, dapperly dressed man paid a visit to Al Capone, the most feared gangster of his time.

Speaking with an elegant Continental accent, the man introduced himself as Count Victor Lustig.

He promised that if Capone gave him $50,000 he could double it.

Capone had more than enough funds to cover the “investment,” but he wasn’t in the habit of entrusting large sums to total strangers.

He looked the count over: Something about the man was different—his classy style, his manner—and so Capone decided to play along.

He counted out the bills personally and handed them to Lustig. “Okay, Count,” said Capone. “Double it in sixty days like you said.”

Lustig left with the money, put it in a safe-deposit box in Chicago, then headed to New York, where he had several other money- making schemes in progress.

The $50,000 remained in the bank box untouched.

Lustig made no effort to double it.

Two months later he returned to Chicago, took the money from the box, and paid Capone another visit.

He looked at the gangster’s stony- faced bodyguards, smiled apologetically, and said,

“Please accept my profound regrets, Mr. Capone. I’m sorry to report that the plan failed... I failed.”

Capone slowly stood up.

He glowered at Lustig, debating which part of the river to throw him in.

But the count reached into his coat pocket, withdrew the $50,000, and placed it on the desk.

“Here, sir, is your money, to the penny. Again, my sincere apologies. This is most embarrassing. Things didn’t work out the way I thought they would. I would have loved to have doubled your money for you and for myself—Lord knows I need it— but the plan just didn’t materialize.”

Capone sagged back into his chair, confused. “I know you’re a con man, Count,” said Capone.

“I knew it the moment you walked in here. I expected either one hundred thousand dollars or nothing. But this... getting my  money back ... well.”

“Again my apologies, Mr. Capone,” said Lustig, as he picked up his hat and began to leave. “

My God! You’re honest!” yelled Capone.

“If you’re on the spot, here’s five to help you along.”

He counted out five one-thousand-dollar bills out of the $50,000. The count seemed stunned, bowed deeply, mumbled his thanks, and left, taking the money.

The $5,000 was what Lustig had been after all along.

FRANCESCO BORRI. COURTIER CHARLATAN

Francesco Giuseppe Borri of Milan, whose death in 1695 fell just within the seventeenth century ... was a forerunner of that special type of charlatanical adventurer, the courtier or “cavalier” impostor.... 

His real period of glory began after he moved to Amsterdam. 

There he assumed the title of Medico Universale, maintained a great retinue, and drove about in a coach with six horses.... Patients streamed to him, and some invalids had themselves carried in sedan chairs all the way from Paris to his place in Amsterdam. 

Borri took no payment for his consultations: He distributed great sums among the poor and was never known to receive any money through the post or bills of exchange. 

As he continued to live with such splendor, nevertheless, it was presumed that he possessed the philosophers’ stone. 

Suddenly this benefactor disappeared from Amsterdam. Then it was discovered that he had taken with him money and diamonds that had been placed in his charge.







THE POWER OF THE CHARLATAN, GRETE DE FRANCESCO, 1939

Interpretation

Count Victor Lustig, a man who spoke several languages and prided himself on his refinement and culture, was one of the great con artists of modem times.

He was known for his audacity, his fearlessness, and, most important, his knowledge of human psychology.

He could size up a man in minutes, discovering his weaknesses, and he had radar for suckers.

Lustig knew that most men build up defenses against crooks and other troublemakers.

The con artist’s job is to bring those defenses down.

One sure way to do this is through an act of apparent sincerity and honesty.

Who will distrust a person literally caught in the act of being honest?

Lustig used selective honesty many times, but with Capone he went a step further.

No normal con man would have dared such a con; he would have chosen his suckers for their meekness, for that look about them that says they will take their medicine without complaint.

Con Capone and you would spend the rest of your life (whatever remained of it) afraid.

But Lustig understood that a man like Capone spends his life mistrusting others.

No one around him is honest or generous, and being so much in the company of wolves is exhausting, even depressing.

A man like Capone yearns to be the recipient of an honest or generous gesture, to feel that not everyone has an angle or is out to rob him.

Lustig’s act of selective honesty disarmed Capone because it was so unexpected.

A con artist loves conflicting emotions like these, since the person caught up in them is so easily distracted and deceived.

Do not shy away from practicing this law on the Capones of the world.

With a well-timed gesture of honesty or generosity, you will have the most brutal and cynical beast in the kingdom eating out of your hand.

Everything turns gray when I don’t have at least one mark on the horizon. Life then seems empty and depressing. I cannot understand honest men. They lead desperate lives, full of boredom.



Count Victor Lustig, 1890-1947

KEYS TO POWER

The essence of deception is distraction.

Distracting the people you want to deceive gives you the time and space to do something they won’t notice.

An act of kindness, generosity, or honesty is often the most powerful form of distraction because it disarms other people’s suspicions.

It turns them into children, eagerly lapping up any kind of affectionate gesture.

In ancient China this was called “giving before you take”—the giving makes it hard for the other person to notice the taking.

It is a device with infinite practical uses.

Brazenly taking something from someone is dangerous, even for the powerful.

The victim will plot revenge.

It is also dangerous simply to ask for what you need, no matter how politely:

Unless the other person sees some gain for themselves, they may come to resent your neediness.

Learn to give before you take.

It softens the ground, takes the bite out of a future request, or simply creates a distraction.

And the giving can take many forms: an actual gift, a generous act, a kind favor, an “honest” admission—whatever it takes.

Selective honesty is best employed on your first encounter with someone.

We are all creatures of habit, and our first impressions last a long time.

If someone believes you are honest at the start of your relationship it takes a lot to convince them otherwise.

This gives you room to maneuver.

…

Jay Gould, like Al Capone, was a man who distrusted everyone.

By the time he was thirty-three he was already a multimillionaire, mostly through deception and strong-arming.

In the late 1860s, Gould invested heavily in the Erie Railroad, then discovered that the market had been flooded with a vast amount of phony stock certificates for the company.

He stood to lose a fortune and to suffer a lot of embarrassment.

In the midst of this crisis, a man named Lord John Gordon-Gordon offered to help.

Gordon-Gordon, a Scottish lord, had apparently made a small fortune investing in railroads.

By hiring some handwriting experts Gordon-Gordon was able to prove to Gould that the culprits for the phony stock certificates were actually several top executives with the Erie Railroad itself.

Gould was grateful.

Gordon- Gordon then proposed that he and Gould join forces to buy up a controlling interest in Erie.

Gould agreed.

For a while the venture appeared to prosper.

The two men were now good friends, and every time Gordon-Gordon came to Gould asking for money to buy more stock, Gould gave it to him.

In 1873, however, Gordon-Gordon suddenly dumped all of his stock, making a fortune but drastically lowering the value of Gould’s own holdings.

Then he disappeared from sight.

Upon investigation, Gould found out that Gordon-Gordon’s real name was John Crowningsfield, and that he was the bastard son of a merchant seaman and a London barmaid.

There had been many clues before then that Gordon-Gordon was a con man, but his initial act of honesty and support had so blinded Gould that it took the loss of millions for him to see through the scheme.

A single act of honesty is often not enough.

What is required is a reputation for honesty, built on a series of acts—but these can be quite inconsequential.

Once this reputation is established, as with first impressions, it is hard to shake.

…

In ancient China, Duke Wu of Chêng decided it was time to take over the increasingly powerful kingdom of Hu.

Telling no one of his plan, he married his daughter to Hu’s ruler.

He then called a council and asked his ministers,

“I am considering a military campaign. Which country should we invade?”

As he had expected, one of his ministers replied, “Hu should be invaded.”

The duke seemed angry, and said,

“Hu is a sister state now. Why do you suggest invading her?”

He had the minister executed for his impolitic remark.

The ruler of Hu heard about this, and considering other tokens of Wu’s honesty and the marriage with his daughter, he took no precautions to defend himself from Cheng.

A few weeks later, Chêng forces swept through Hu and took the country, never to relinquish it.

…

Honesty is one of the best ways to disarm the wary, but it is not the only one.

Any kind of noble, apparently selfless act will serve.

Perhaps the best such act, though, is one of generosity.

Few people can resist a gift, even from the most hardened enemy, which is why it is often the perfect way to disarm people.

A gift brings out the child in us, instantly lowering our defenses.

Although we often view other people’s actions in the most cynical light, we rarely see the Machiavellian element of a gift, which quite often hides ulterior motives.

A gift is the perfect object in which to hide a deceptive move.

…

Over three thousand years ago the ancient Greeks traveled across the sea to recapture the beautiful Helen, stolen away from them by Paris, and to destroy Paris’s city, Troy.

The siege lasted ten years, many heroes died, yet neither side had come close to victory.

One day, the prophet Calchas assembled the Greeks.

Image: The Trojan Horse. Your guile is hidden inside a magnificent gift that proves irresistible to your opponent. The walls open. Once inside, wreak havoc.

“Stop battering away at these walls!” he told them. “You must find some other way, some ruse. We cannot take Troy by force alone. We must find some cunning stratagem.”

The cunning Greek leader Odysseus then came up with the idea of building a giant wooden horse, hiding soldiers inside it, then offering it to the Trojans as a gift.

Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, was disgusted with this idea; it was unmanly.

Better for thousands to die on the battlefield than to gain victory so deceitfully.

But the soldiers, faced with a choice between another ten years of manliness, honor, and death, on the one hand and a quick victory on the other, chose the horse, which was promptly built.

The trick was successful and Troy fell.

One gift did more for the Greek cause than ten years of fighting.

…

Selective kindness should also be part of your arsenal of deception.

For years the ancient Romans had besieged the city of the Faliscans, always unsuccessfully.

One day, however, when the Roman general Camillus was encamped outside the city, he suddenly saw a man leading some children toward him.

The man was a Faliscan teacher, and the children, it turned out, were the sons and daughters of the noblest and wealthiest citizens of the town.

On the pretense of taking these children out for a walk, he had led them straight to the Romans, offering them as hostages in hopes of ingratiating himself with Camillus, the city’s enemy.

Camillus did not take the children hostage.

He stripped the teacher, tied his hands behind his back, gave each child a rod, and let them whip him all the way back to the city.

The gesture had an immediate effect on the Faliscans.

Had Camillus used the children as hostages, some in the city would have voted to surrender.

And even if the Faliscans had gone on fighting, their resistance would have been halfhearted.

Camillus’s refusal to take advantage of the situation broke down the Faliscans’ resistance, and they surrendered.

The general had calculated correctly.

And in any case he had had nothing to lose: He knew that the hostage ploy would not have ended the war, at least not right away.

By turning the situation around, he earned his enemy’s trust and respect, disarming them.

Selective kindness will often break down even the most stubborn foe: Aiming right for the heart, it corrodes the will to fight back.

Remember: By playing on people’s emotions, calculated acts of kindness can turn a Capone into a gullible child. As with any emotional approach, the tactic must be practiced with caution: If people see through it, their disappointed feelings of gratitude and warmth will become the most violent hatred and distrust. Unless you can make the gesture seem sincere and heartfelt, do not play with fire.

Authority:

When Duke Hsien of Chin was about to raid Yü, he presented to them a jade and a team of horses. When Earl Chih was about to raid Ch’ou- yu, he presented to them grand chariots. Hence the saying: “When you are about to take, you should give.” 

(Han-fei-tzu, Chinese philosopher, third century B.C.)

REVERSAL

When you have a history of deceit behind you, no amount of honesty, generosity, or kindness will fool people.

In fact it will only call attention to itself.

Once people have come to see you as deceitful, to act honest all of a sudden is simply suspicious.

In these cases it is better to play the rogue.

…

Count Lustig, pulling the biggest con of his career, was about to sell the Eiffel Tower to an unsuspecting industrialist who believed the government was auctioning it off for scrap metal.

The industrialist was prepared to hand over a huge sum of money to Lustig, who had successfully impersonated a government official.

At the last minute, however, the mark was suspicious.

Something about Lustig bothered him.

At the meeting in which he was to hand over the money, Lustig sensed his sudden distrust.

Leaning over to the industrialist, Lustig explained, in a low whisper, how low his salary was, how difficult his finances were, on and on.

After a few minutes of this, the industrialist realized that Lustig was asking for a bribe.

For the first time he relaxed.

Now he knew he could trust Lustig: Since all government officials were dishonest, Lustig had to be real.

The man forked over the money.

By acting dishonest, Lustig seemed the real McCoy.

In this case selective honesty would have had the opposite effect.

…

As the French diplomat Talleyrand grew older, his reputation as a master liar and deceiver spread.

At the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), he would spin fabulous stories and make impossible remarks to people who knew he had to be lying.

His dishonesty had no purpose except to cloak the moments when he really was deceiving them.

One day, for example, among friends, Talleyrand said with apparent sincerity, “In business one ought to show one’s hand.”

No one who heard him could believe their ears: A man who never once in his life had shown his cards was telling other people to show theirs.

Tactics like this made it impossible to distinguish Talleyrand’s real deceptions from his fake ones.

By embracing his reputation for dishonesty, he preserved his ability to deceive.

Nothing in the realm of power is set in stone.

Overt deceptiveness will sometimes cover your tracks, even making you admired for the honesty of your dishonesty.

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Conversations with God (full text) and free

The following are the three volumes of the book(s) titled “Conversations with God” by Neale Donald Walsch. All three volumes are provided in PDF format. They are presented here free and in full PDF text for your learning, enjoyment and understanding. Just click on the link and read.

It’s that simple.

No need to enter a credit card number to prove that you are a human, or to register. You don’t need to do anything. This is a service as these books are getting harder and harder to obtain. Overseas, at least. And everyone is just trying to make a buck or two.

So relax, and enjoy.

The books

These books were brought to my attention by an influencer who recommended them to me.

I find their take a little different from mine, but many of the basic ideas are pretty much the same. Certainly the terms are different, but that is to be expected.

It’s a good read, and there are some differences in belief and understanding between these works and mine. It doesn’t mean that I am right and they are wrong or vice versa, it just means that there are different ways to interpret the same thing.

Hmmm, Ive read all 3 books. Some terrific insights, granted. But “God’s” description of the soul as firmly encased in the body–physically– doesn’t jive with Mr Man’s or my notion/sense of the soul being most definitely elsewhere and connected to the body via consciousness.

So, the author IMHO isn’t really speaking to God at all. But he’s quite the imagination. And the explanation given for the soul in these books is quite detailed. But again, unlike our understanding.
Caveat emptor, I guess. As usual.

-Ultan

Never the less, they are a good read, and I recommend them for the searcher.

About the Trilogy “Conversations with God”

“Conversations with God” is a book trilogy in which the author transcripts the dialog he had with God (the meaning of God is discussed in the book) through the process of automatic writing or channeling.

With over 7 million copies sold worldwide, this extraordinary dialog was a huge hit in the New Age bookstores due to its groundbreaking and hopeful testimonial on spirituality. Accused of blasphemy and wanting to reinvent Christianism, Neale Donald Walsch didn’t make everyone happy when publishing his books. He denies that this transcription has been built on spiritual frustration or on an attempt to get absolution from his past mistakes in his life. He was just laying down questions in his notepad and would get answers filled with wisdom directly through his writing. Friends and family then pushed him to publish his transcripts publicly t o share his experience.

Highly criticized, the author’s statements put the human experience and free will at the heart of the spiritual experience on earth. He also suggests a new definition of God, more like a best friend than a taciturn father figure whose love would come under certain conditions.

With a casual and sometimes humoristic style, these books often bring up questions that we all once asked ourselves: life, love, purpose of life, the Good, the Evil, guilt, Heaven, Hell, power, health, joy, pain, marriage, money, death …

Introduction

During Easter 1992, the Author was having a huge existential crisis. On a personal, professional and emotional standpoint, his life seemed to him like a complete failure.

Accustomed through the years to write down his frustrations in letters (that he would almost never send), he grabbed his old notepad and started pouring in there all his misfortune and decided to address this letter to his biggest bully that was causing all of his problems: God.

Filled with pain and passion, Neale Donald Walsch wrote down his questions, doubts and confusion: “What did I do to deserve this life of constant battle?”

To his surprise, while scribbling the last of his bitter questions, his pen remained floating above the note pad, like an invisible force holding it back. Suddenly, it started moving on its own and answering his questions like it was dictated. In shock but inspired, the author took advantage of the situation and started asking all the questions he had on his mind and took note of every answers given by God by thoughts or feelings, in a very clear and intelligible way…

In the first paragraph of the book, there is a cute anecdote about a Small Candle which helps us understand what is a soul and why it incarnates itself.

The Small Candle anecdote

There was a time when a soul knew it was light. As it was a new soul, it was excited to experiment. “I am the light, it said. I am the light”

But as it knew and said it was light, it wasn’t like experiencing it. In the kingdom where it appeared, there was only life. Each soul was big, each soul was beautiful and each soul was shining an intense light. So, the tiny soul was like a candle in the sun. Amongst the brightest light (from which it belonged), it couldn’t see itself, experience Who and What It Really Was.

So this soul committed to know itself more and more. So committed that one day I told her: “Do you know, little one, what you need to do to fulfil your aspiration ?”

“What, God? What ? I would do anything” said the little soul.
“You have to separate yourself from us, I answered, then you must invoke obscurity upon you”
“What is obscurity, O Almighty ?” asked the little soul.
“It is what you are not” I replied and the soul understood.

So, that is what the soul did: it separated itself from everything and went to another kingdom. In this kingdom, the soul could invoke in its experience any kind of obscurity. That’s what it did.

But amongst all this obscurity she cried out :”Father, Father, why did you abandoned me?”

(then reaching out to Neale Donald Walsch): “As you once did yourself, in your darkest hours. But i haven’t abandoned you. I am eternally faithful, ready to remind you who you truly are, ready, always ready, to bring you back where you belong”

Thus, be the light in the obscurity and don’t damn it.

And don’t forget who you are when surrounded by what you are not. Bless the Creation when you are looking to change it.

And do know that what you will do in the face of your biggest challenge might be your biggest triumph. Because the experience you create is the affirmation of who you are and you want to be.

“Conversations with God” is broken down in 3 volumes:

The first one is focused on personal topics but also on challenges and opportunities one can face in its life.
The second one talks about global matters, geopolitical and metaphysical life on this planet but also on the current challenges it has to face.
The third one deals with the universal truths of the highest order, the challenges and opportunities of the soul after its terrestrial experience.

The Downloads

Click on the picture to download or open up the PDF in your browser. It’s usually pretty fast, though if you are still using a “dial up” modem, it might take a while.

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The Star by Arthur C Clarke (full text)

This is a nice short story by Arthur C. Clarke. It is titled “The Star”. It’s actually wonderful. It’s the reason why many of us started reading science fiction short stories in the first place.

The Star

From The Nine Billion Names of God: The Best Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke

It is three thousand light-years to the Vatican. Once, I believed that space could have no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared the glory of God’s handwork. Now I have seen that handiwork, and my faith is sorely troubled. I stare at the crucifix that hangs on the cabin wall above the Mark VI Computer, and for the first time in my life I wonder if it is no more than an empty symbol.

I have told no one yet, but the truth cannot be concealed. The facts are there for all to read, recorded on the countless miles of magnetic tape and the thousands of photographs we are carrying back to Earth. Other scientists can interpret them as easily as I can, and I am not one who would condone that tampering with the truth which often gave my order a bad name in the olden days.

The crew were already sufficiently depressed: I wonder how they will take this ultimate irony. Few of them have any religious faith, yet they will not relish using this final weapon in their campaign against me—that private, good-natured, but fundamentally serious war which lasted all the way from Earth. It amused them to have a Jesuit as chief astrophysicist: Dr. Chandler, for instance, could never get over it. (Why are medical men such notorious atheists?) Sometimes he would meet me on the observation deck, where the lights are always low so that the stars shine with undiminished glory. He would come up to me in the gloom and stand staring out of the great oval port, while the heavens crawled slowly around us as the ship turned over and over with the residual spin we had never bothered to correct.

“Well, Father,” he would say at last, “it goes on forever and forever, and perhaps Something made it. But how you can believe that Something has a special interest in us and our miserable little world—that just beats me.” Then the argument would start, while the stars and nebulae would swing around us in silent, endless arcs beyond the flawlessly clear plastic of the observation port.

It was, I think, the apparent incongruity of my position that cause most amusement among the crew. In vain I pointed to my three papers in the Astrophysical Journal, my five in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. I would remind them that my order has long been famous for its scientific works. We may be few now, but ever since the eighteenth century we have made contributions to astronomy and geophysics out of all proportion to our numbers. Will my report on the Phoenix Nebula end our thousand years of history? It will end, I fear, much more than that.

I do not know who gave the nebula its name, which seems to me a very bad one. If it contains a prophecy, it is one that cannot be verified for several billion years. Even the word “nebula” is misleading; this is a far smaller object than those stupendous clouds of mist—the stuff of unborn stars—that are scattered throughout the length of the Milky Way. On the cosmic scale, indeed, the Phoenix Nebula is a tiny thing—a tenuous shell of gas surrounding a single star.

Or what is left of a star. . .

The Rubens engraving of Loyola seems to mock me as it hangs there above the spectrophotometer tracings. What would you, Father, have made of this knowledge that has come into my keeping, so far from the little world that was all the Universe you knew? Would your faith have risen to the challenge, as mine has failed to do?

You gaze into the distance, Father, but I have traveled a distance beyond any that you could have imagined when you founded our order a thousand years ago. No other survey ship has been so far from Earth: we are at the very frontiers of the explored Universe. We set out to reach the Phoenix Nebula, we succeeded, and we are homeward bound with our burden of knowledge. I wish I could lift that burden from my shoulders, but I call to you in vain across the centuries and the light-years that lie between us.

On the book you are holding the words are plain to read. AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM, the message runs, but it is a message I can no longer believe. Would you still believe it, if you could see what we have found?

We knew, of course, what the Phoenix Nebula was. Every year, in our Galaxy alone, more than a hundred stars explode, blazing for a few hours or days with hundreds of times their normal brilliance until they sink back into death and obscurity. Such are the ordinary novas—the commonplace disasters of the Universe. I have recorded the spectrograms and light curves of dozens since I started working at the Lunar Observatory.

But three or four times in every thousand years occurs something beside which even a nova pales into total insignificance.

When a star becomes a supernova, it may for a little while outshine all the massed suns of the Galaxy. The Chinese astronomers watched this happen in A.D. 1054, not knowing what it was they saw. Five centuries later, in 1572, a supernova blazed in Cassiopeia so brilliantly that it was visible in the daylight sky. There have been three more in the thousand years that have passed since then.

Our mission was to visit the remnants of such a catastrophe, to reconstruct the events that led up to it, and, if possible, to learn its cause. We came slowly in through the concentric shells of gas that had been blasted out six thousand years before, yet were expanding still. They were immensely hot, radiating even now with a fierce violet light, but were far too tenuous to do us any damage. When the star had exploded, its outer layers had been driven upward with such speed that they had escaped completely from its gravitational field. Now they formed a hollow shell large enough to engulf a thousand solar systems, and at its center burned the tiny, fantastic object which the star had now become—a White Dwarf, smaller than earth, yet weighing a million times as much.

The glowing gas shells were all around us, banishing the normal night of interstellar space. We were flying into the center of the cosmic bomb that had detonated millennia ago and whose incandescent fragments were still hurtling apart. The immense scale of the explosion, and the fact that the debris already covered a volume of space many millions of miles across, robbed the scene of any visible movement. It would take decades before the unaided eye could detect any motion in these tortured wisps and eddies of gas, yet the sense of turbulent expansion was overwhelming.

We had checked our primary drive hours before, and were drifting slowly toward the fierce little star ahead. Once it had been a sun like our own, but it had squandered in a few hours the energy that should have kept it shining for a million years. Now it was a shrunken miser, hoarding its resources as if trying to make amends for its prodigal youth.

No one seriously expected to find planets. If there had been any before the explosion, they would have been boiled into puffs of vapor, and their substance lost in the greater wreckage of the star itself. But we made the automatic search, as we always do when approaching an unknown sun, and presently we found a single small world circling the star at an immense distance. It must have been the Pluto of this vanished Solar System, orbiting on the frontiers of the night. Too far from the central sun ever to have known life, its remoteness had saved it from the fate of all its lost companions.

The passing fires had seared its rocks and burned away the mantle of frozen gas that must have covered it in the days before the disaster. We landed, and we found the Vault.

Its builders had made sure that we should. The monolithic marker that stood above the entrance was now a fused stump, but even the first long-range photographs told us that here was the work of intelligence. A little later we detected the continent-wide pattern of radioactivity that had been buried in the rock. Even if the pylon above the Vault had been destroyed, this would have remained, an immovable and all-but eternal beacon calling to the stars. Our ship fell toward this gigantic bull’s eye like an arrow into its target.

The pylon must have been a mile high when it was built, but now it looked like a candle that had melted down into a puddle of wax. It took us a week to drill through the fused rock, since we did not have the proper tools for a task like this. We were astronomers, not archaeologists, but we could improvise. Our original purpose was forgotten: this lonely monument, reared with such labor at the greatest possible distance from the doomed sun, could have only one meaning. A civilization that knew it was about to die had made its last bid for immortality.

It will take us generations to examine all the treasures that were placed in the Vault. They had plenty of time to prepare, for their sun must have given its first warnings many years before the final detonation. Everything that they wished to preserve, all the fruits of their genius, they brought here to this distant world in the days before the end, hoping that some other race would find it and that they would not be utterly forgotten. Would we have done as well, or would we have been too lost in our own misery to give thought to a future we could never see or share?

If only they had had a little more time! They could travel freely enough between the planets of their own sun, but they had not yet learned to cross the interstellar gulfs, and the nearest Solar System was a hundred light-years away. Yet even had they possessed the secret of the Transfinite Drive, no more than a few millions could have been saved. Perhaps it was better thus.

Even if they had not been so disturbingly human as their sculpture shows, we could not have helped admiring them and grieving for their fate. They left thousands of visual records and the machines for projecting them, together with elaborate pictorial instructions from which it will not be difficult to learn their written language. We have examined many of these records, and brought to life for the first time in six thousand years the warmth and beauty of a civilization that in many ways must have been superior to our own. Perhaps they only showed us the best, and one can hardly blame them. But their worlds were very lovely, and their cities were built with a grace that matches anything of man’s. We have watched them at work and play, and listened to their musical speech sounding across the centuries. One scene is still before my eyes—a group of children on a beach of strange blue sand, playing in the waves as children play on Earth. Curious whiplike trees line the shore, and some very large animal is wading in the shallows, yet attracting no attention at all.

And sinking into the sea, still warm and friendly and life-giving, is the sun that will soon turn traitor and obliterate all this innocent happiness.

Perhaps if we had not been so far from home and so vulnerable to loneliness, we should not have been so deeply moved. Many of us had seen the ruins of ancient civilizations on other worlds, but they had never affected us so profoundly. This tragedy was unique. It is one thing for a race to fail and die, as nations and cultures have done on Earth. But to be destroyed so completely in the full flower of its achievement, leaving no survivors—how could that be reconciled with the mercy of God?

My colleagues have asked me that, and I have given what answers I can. Perhaps you could have done better, Father Loyola, but I have found nothing in the Exercitia Spiritualia that helps me here. They were not an evil people: I do not know what gods they worshiped, if indeed they worshiped any. But I have looked back at them across the centuries, and have watched while the loveliness they used their last strength to preserve was brought forth again into the light of their shrunken sun. They could have taught us much: why were they destroyed?

I know the answers that my colleagues will give when they get back to Earth. They will say that the Universe has no purpose and no plan, that since a hundred suns explode every year in our Galaxy, at this very moment some race is dying in the depths of space. Whether that race has done good or evil during its lifetime will make no difference in the end: there is no divine justice, for there is no God.

Yet, of course, what we have seen proves nothing of the sort. Anyone who argues thus is being swayed by emotion, not logic. God has no need to justify His actions to man. He who built the Universe can destroy it when He chooses. It is arrogance—it is perilously near blasphemy—for us to say what He may or may not do.

This I could have accepted, hard though it is to look upon whole worlds and peoples thrown into the furnace. But there comes a point when even the deepest faith must falter, and now, as I look at the calculations lying before me, I have reached that point at last.

We could not tell, before we reached the nebula, how long ago the explosion took place. Now, from the astronomical evidence and the record in the rocks of that one surviving planet, I have been able to date it very exactly. I know in what year the light of this colossal conflagration reached the Earth. I know how brilliantly the supernova whose corpse now dwindles behind our speeding ship once shone in terrestrial skies. I know how it must have blazed low in the east before sunrise, like a beacon in that oriental dawn.

There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?

The End

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Rescue Party by Arthur C. Clarke (Full Text)

This is a nice rainy-day read. It’s a classic science fiction story about a “rescue party” that encounters the remains of a civilization. It’s a nice read, and will keep your mind occupied. It is reprinted in full, with no registration, need to provide your credit card (oh, to check to see if you are human; LOL) or CAPTCHA bullshit. If English is not your native language, you can translate it using the buttons on the side. Enjoy.

Rescue Party

by Arthur C. Clarke

Preface by Eric Flint

I'm certain this wasn't the first science fiction story I ever read, because I still remember those vividly. Three novels, all read when I was twelve years old and living in the small town of Shaver Lake (pop. 500) in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California: Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy, Tom Godwin's The Survivors and Andre Norton's Star Rangers.

I must have started reading Arthur C. Clarke soon thereafter, though. The two stories that introduced me to him as I remember, anyway were this one and "Jupiter V," and those two stories fixed Clarke permanently as one of the central triad in my own personal pantheon of SF's great writers. (The other two being Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton.)

We chose this one, rather than "Jupiter V," at my request. I wanted this one because, of all the stories ever written in science fiction, this is the one which first demonstrated to me that science fiction could be inspirational as well as fascinating. So I thought at the age of twelve or possibly thirteen. More than four decades have now gone by, and I haven't changed my mind at all.

Who was to blame? For three days Alveron’s thoughts had come back to that question, and still he had found no answer. A creature of a less civilized or a less sensitive race would never have let it torture his mind, and would have satisfied himself with the assurance that no one could be responsible for the working of fate. But Alveron and his kind had been lords of the Universe since the dawn of history, since that far distant age when the Time Barrier had been folded round the cosmos by the unknown powers that lay beyond the Beginning. To them had been given all knowledge and with infinite knowledge went infinite responsibility. If there were mistakes and errors in the administration of the galaxy, the fault lay on the heads of Alveron and his people. And this was no mere mistake: it was one of the greatest tragedies in history.

The crew still knew nothing. Even Rugon, his closest friend and the ship’s deputy captain, had been told only part of the truth. But now the doomed worlds lay less than a billion miles ahead. In a few hours, they would be landing on the third planet.

Once again Alveron read the message from Base; then, with a flick of a tentacle that no human eye could have followed, he pressed the “General Attention” button. Throughout the mile-long cylinder that was the Galactic Survey Ship S9000, creatures of many races laid down their work to listen to the words of their captain.

“I know you have all been wondering,” began Alveron, “why we were ordered to abandon our survey and to proceed at such an acceleration to this region of space. Some of you may realize what this acceleration means. Our ship is on its last voyage: the generators have already been running for sixty hours at Ultimate Overload. We will be very lucky if we return to Base under our own power.

“We are approaching a sun which is about to become a Nova. Detonation will occur in seven hours, with an uncertainty of one hour, leaving us a maximum of only four hours for exploration. There are ten planets in the system about to be destroyed and there is a civilization on the third. That fact was discovered only a few days ago. It is our tragic mission to contact that doomed race and if possible to save some of its members. I know that there is little we can do in so short a time with this single ship. No other machine can possibly reach the system before detonation occurs.”

There was a long pause during which there could have been no sound or movement in the whole of the mighty ship as it sped silently toward the worlds ahead. Alveron knew what his companions were thinking and he tried to answer their unspoken question.

“You will wonder how such a disaster, the greatest of which we have any record, has been allowed to occur. On one point I can reassure you. The fault does not lie with the Survey.

“As you know, with our present fleet of under twelve thousand ships, it is possible to re-examine each of the eight thousand million solar systems in the Galaxy at intervals of about a million years. Most worlds change very little in so short a time as that.

“Less than four hundred thousand years ago, the survey ship S5060 examined the planets of the system we are approaching. It found intelligence on none of them, though the third planet was teeming with animal life and two other worlds had once been inhabited. The usual report was submitted and the system is due for its next examination in six hundred thousand years.

“It now appears that in the incredibly short period since the last survey, intelligent life has appeared in the system. The first intimation of this occurred when unknown radio signals were detected on the planet Kulath in the system X29.35, Y34.76, Z27.93. Bearings were taken on them; they were coming from the system ahead.

“Kulath is two hundred light-years from here, so those radio waves had been on their way for two centuries. Thus for at least that period of time a civilization has existed on one of these worlds a civilization that can generate electromagnetic waves and all that that implies.

“An immediate telescopic examination of the system was made and it was then found that the sun was in the unstable pre-nova stage. Detonation might occur at any moment, and indeed might have done so while the light waves were on their way to Kulath.

“There was a slight delay while the supervelocity scanners on Kulath II were focused on to the system. They showed that the explosion had not yet occurred but was only a few hours away. If Kulath had been a fraction of a light-year further from this sun, we should never have known of its civilization until it had ceased to exist.

“The Administrator of Kulath contacted the Sector Base immediately, and I was ordered to proceed to the system at once. Our object is to save what members we can of the doomed race, if indeed there are any left. But we have assumed that a civilization possessing radio could have protected itself against any rise of temperature that may have already occurred.

“This ship and the two tenders will each explore a section of the planet. Commander Torkalee will take Number One, Commander Orostron Number Two. They will have just under four hours in which to explore this world. At the end of that time, they must be back in the ship. It will be leaving then, with or without them. I will give the two commanders detailed instructions in the control room immediately.

“That is all. We enter atmosphere in two hours.” * * *

On the world once known as Earth the fires were dying out: there was nothing left to burn. The great forests that had swept across the planet like a tidal wave with the passing of the cities were now no more than glowing charcoal and the smoke of their funeral pyres still stained the sky. But the last hours were still to come, for the surface rocks had not yet begun to flow. The continents were dimly visible through the haze, but their outlines meant nothing to the watchers in the approaching ship. The charts they possessed were out of date by a dozen Ice Ages and more deluges than one.

The S9000 had driven past Jupiter and seen at once that no life could exist in those half-gaseous oceans of compressed hydrocarbons, now erupting furiously under the sun’s abnormal heat. Mars and the outer planets they had missed, and Alveron realized that the worlds nearer the sun than Earth would be already melting. It was more than likely, he thought sadly, that the tragedy of this unknown race was already finished. Deep in his heart, he thought it might be better so. The ship could only have carried a few hundred survivors, and the problem of selection had been haunting his mind.

Rugon, Chief of Communications and Deputy Captain, came into the control room. For the last hour he had been striving to detect radiation from Earth, but in vain.

“We’re too late,” he announced gloomily. “I’ve monitored the whole spectrum and the ether’s dead except for our own stations and some two-hundred-year-old programs from Kulath. Nothing in this system is radiating any more.”

He moved toward the giant vision screen with a graceful flowing motion that no mere biped could ever hope to imitate. Alveron said nothing; he had been expecting this news.

One entire wall of the control room was taken up by the screen, a great black rectangle that gave an impression of almost infinite depth. Three of Rugon’s slender control tentacles, useless for heavy work but incredibly swift at all manipulation, flickered over the selector dials and the screen lit up with a thousand points of light. The star field flowed swiftly past as Rugon adjusted the controls, bringing the projector to bear upon the sun itself.

No man of Earth would have recognized the monstrous shape that filled the screen. The sun’s light was white no longer: great violet-blue clouds covered half its surface and from them long streamers of flame were erupting into space. At one point an enormous prominence had reared itself out of the photosphere, far out even into the flickering veils of the corona. It was as though a tree of fire had taken root in the surface of the sun a tree that stood half a million miles high and whose branches were rivers of flame sweeping through space at hundreds of miles a second.

“I suppose,” said Rugon presently, “that you are quite satisfied about the astronomers’ calculations. After all “

“Oh, we’re perfectly safe,” said Alveron confidently. “I’ve spoken to Kulath Observatory and they have been making some additional checks through our own instruments. That uncertainty of an hour includes a private safety margin which they won’t tell me in case I feel tempted to stay any longer.”

He glanced at the instrument board.

“The pilot should have brought us to the atmosphere now. Switch the screen back to the planet, please. Ah, there they go!”

There was a sudden tremor underfoot and a raucous clanging of alarms, instantly stilled. Across the vision screen two slim projectiles dived toward the looming mass of Earth. For a few miles they traveled together, then they separated, one vanishing abruptly as it entered the shadow of the planet.

Slowly the huge mother ship, with its thousand times greater mass, descended after them into the raging storms that already were tearing down the deserted cities of Man. * * *

It was night in the hemisphere over which Orostron drove his tiny command. Like Torkalee, his mission was to photograph and record, and to report progress to the mother ship. The little scout had no room for specimens or passengers. If contact was made with the inhabitants of this world, the S9000 would come at once. There would be no time for parleying. If there was any trouble the rescue would be by force and the explanations could come later.

The ruined land beneath was bathed with an eerie, flickering light, for a great auroral display was raging over half the world. But the image on the vision screen was independent of external light, and it showed clearly a waste of barren rock that seemed never to have known any form of life. Presumably this desert land must come to an end somewhere. Orostron increased his speed to the highest value he dared risk in so dense an atmosphere.

The machine fled on through the storm, and presently the desert of rock began to climb toward the sky. A great mountain range lay ahead, its peaks lost in the smoke-laden clouds. Orostron directed the scanners toward the horizon, and on the vision screen the line of mountains seemed suddenly very close and menacing. He started to climb rapidly. It was difficult to imagine a more unpromising land in which to find civilization and he wondered if it would be wise to change course. He decided against it. Five minutes later, he had his reward.

Miles below lay a decapitated mountain, the whole of its summit sheared away by some tremendous feat of engineering. Rising out of the rock and straddling the artificial plateau was an intricate structure of metal girders, supporting masses of machinery. Orostron brought his ship to a halt and spiraled down toward the mountain.

The slight Doppler blur had now vanished, and the picture on the screen was clear-cut. The latticework was supporting some scores of great metal mirrors, pointing skyward at an angle of forty-five degrees to the horizontal. They were slightly concave, and each had some complicated mechanism at its focus. There seemed something impressive and purposeful about the great array; every mirror was aimed at precisely the same spot in the sky or beyond.

Orostron turned to his colleagues.

“It looks like some kind of observatory to me,” he said. “Have you ever seen anything like it before?”

Klarten, a multitentacled, tripedal creature from a globular cluster at the edge of the Milky Way, had a different theory.

“That’s communication equipment. Those reflectors are for focusing electromagnetic beams. I’ve seen the same kind of installation on a hundred worlds before. It may even be the station that Kulath picked up though that’s rather unlikely, for the beams would be very narrow from mirrors that size.”

“That would explain why Rugon could detect no radiation before we landed,” added Hansur II, one of the twin beings from the planet Thargon.

Orostron did not agree at all.

“If that is a radio station, it must be built for interplanetary communication. Look at the way the mirrors are pointed. I don’t believe that a race which has only had radio for two centuries can have crossed space. It took my people six thousand years to do it.”

“We managed it in three,” said Hansur II mildly, speaking a few seconds ahead of his twin. Before the inevitable argument could develop, Klarten began to wave his tentacles with excitement. While the others had been talking, he had started the automatic monitor.

“Here it is! Listen!”

He threw a switch, and the little room was filled with a raucous whining sound, continually changing in pitch but nevertheless retaining certain characteristics that were difficult to define.

The four explorers listened intently for a minute; then Orostron said, “Surely that can’t be any form of speech! No creature could produce sounds as quickly as that!”

Hansur I had come to the same conclusion. “That’s a television program. Don’t you think so, Klarten?”

The other agreed.

“Yes, and each of those mirrors seems to be radiating a different program. I wonder where they’re going? If I’m correct, one of the other planets in the system must lie along those beams. We can soon check that.”

Orostron called the S9000 and reported the discovery. Both Rugon and Alveron were greatly excited, and made a quick check of the astronomical records.

The result was surprising and disappointing. None of the other nine planets lay anywhere near the line of transmission. The great mirrors appeared to be pointing blindly into space.

There seemed only one conclusion to be drawn, and Klarten was the first to voice it.

“They had interplanetary communication,” he said. “But the station must be deserted now, and the transmitters no longer controlled. They haven’t been switched off, and are just pointing where they were left.”

“Well, we’ll soon find out,” said Orostron. “I’m going to land.”

He brought the machine slowly down to the level of the great metal mirrors, and past them until it came to rest on the mountain rock. A hundred yards away, a white stone building crouched beneath the maze of steel girders. It was windowless, but there were several doors in the wall facing them.

Orostron watched his companions climb into their protective suits and wished he could follow. But someone had to stay in the machine to keep in touch with the mother ship. Those were Alveron’s instructions, and they were very wise. One never knew what would happen on a world that was being explored for the first time, especially under conditions such as these.

Very cautiously, the three explorers stepped out of the airlock and adjusted the antigravity field of their suits. Then, each with the mode of locomotion peculiar to his race, the little party went toward the building, the Hansur twins leading and Klarten following close behind. His gravity control was apparently giving trouble, for he suddenly fell to the ground, rather to the amusement of his colleagues. Orostron saw them pause for a moment at the nearest door then it opened slowly and they disappeared from sight.

So Orostron waited, with what patience he could, while the storm rose around him and the light of the aurora grew even brighter in the sky. At the agreed times he called the mother ship and received brief acknowledgments from Rugon. He wondered how Torkalee was faring, halfway round the planet, but he could not contact him through the crash and thunder of solar interference.

It did not take Klarten and the Hansurs long to discover that their theories were largely correct. The building was a radio station, and it was utterly deserted. It consisted of one tremendous room with a few small offices leading from it. In the main chamber, row after row of electrical equipment stretched into the distance; lights flickered and winked on hundreds of control panels, and a dull glow came from the elements in a great avenue of vacuum tubes.

But Klarten was not impressed. The first radio sets his race had built were now fossilized in strata a thousand million years old. Man, who had possessed electrical machines for only a few centuries, could not compete with those who had known them for half the lifetime of the Earth.

Nevertheless, the party kept their recorders running as they explored the building. There was still one problem to be solved. The deserted station was broadcasting programs, but where were they coming from? The central switchboard had been quickly located. It was designed to handle scores of programs simultaneously, but the source of those programs was lost in a maze of cables that vanished underground. Back in the S9000, Rugon was trying to analyze the broadcasts and perhaps his researches would reveal their origin. It was impossible to trace cables that might lead across continents.

The party wasted little time at the deserted station. There was nothing they could learn from it, and they were seeking life rather than scientific information. A few minutes later the little ship rose swiftly from the plateau and headed toward the plains that must lie beyond the mountains. Less than three hours were still left to them.

As the array of enigmatic mirrors dropped out of sight, Orostron was struck by a sudden thought. Was it imagination, or had they all moved through a small angle while he had been waiting, as if they were still compensating for the rotation of the Earth? He could not be sure, and he dismissed the matter as unimportant. It would only mean that the directing mechanism was still working, after a fashion.

They discovered the city fifteen minutes later. It was a great, sprawling metropolis, built around a river that had disappeared leaving an ugly scar winding its way among the great buildings and beneath bridges that looked very incongruous now.

Even from the air, the city looked deserted. But only two and a half hours were left there was no time for further exploration. Orostron made his decision, and landed near the largest structure he could see. It seemed reasonable to suppose that some creatures would have sought shelter in the strongest buildings, where they would be safe until the very end.

The deepest caves in the heart of the planet itself would give no protection when the final cataclysm came. Even if this race had reached the outer planets, its doom would only be delayed by the few hours it would take for the ravening wavefronts to cross the Solar System.

Orostron could not know that the city had been deserted not for a few days or weeks, but for over a century. For the culture of cities, which had outlasted so many civilizations had been doomed at last when the helicopter brought universal transportation. Within a few generations the great masses of mankind, knowing that they could reach any part of the globe in a matter of hours, had gone back to the fields and forests for which they had always longed. The new civilization had machines and resources of which earlier ages had never dreamed, but it was essentially rural and no longer bound to the steel and concrete warrens that had dominated the centuries before. Such cities as still remained were specialized centers of research, administration or entertainment; the others had been allowed to decay, where it was too much trouble to destroy them. The dozen or so greatest of all cities, and the ancient university towns, had scarcely changed and would have lasted for many generations to come. But the cities that had been founded on steam and iron and surface transportation had passed with the industries that had nourished them.

And so while Orostron waited in the tender, his colleagues raced through endless empty corridors and deserted halls, taking -innumerable photographs but learning nothing of the creatures who had used these buildings. There were libraries, meeting places, council rooms, thousands of offices all were empty and deep with dust. If they had not seen the radio station on its mountain eyrie, the explorers could well have believed that this world had known no life for centuries.

Through the long minutes of waiting, Orostron tried to imagine where this race could have vanished. Perhaps they had killed themselves knowing that escape was impossible; perhaps they had built great shelters in the bowels of the planet, and even now were cowering in their millions beneath his feet, waiting for the end. He began to fear that he would never know.

It was almost a relief when at last he had to give the order for the return. Soon he would know if Torkalee’s party had been more fortunate. And he was anxious to get back to the mother ship, for as the minutes passed the suspense had become more and more acute. There had always been the thought in his mind: What if the astronomers of Kulath have made a mistake? He would begin to feel happy when the walls of the S9000 were around him. He would be happier still when they were out in space and this ominous sun was shrinking far astern.

As soon as his colleagues had entered the airlock, Orostron hurled his tiny machine into the sky and set the controls to home on the S9000. Then he turned to his friends.

“Well, what have you found?” he asked.

Klarten produced a large roll of canvas and spread it out on the floor.

“This is what they were like,” he said quietly. “Bipeds, with only two arms. They seem to have managed well, in spite of that handicap. Only two eyes as well, unless there are others in the back. We were lucky to find this; it’s about the only thing they left behind.”

The ancient oil painting stared stonily back at the three creatures regarding it so intently. By the irony of fate, its complete worthlessness had saved it from oblivion. When the city had been evacuated, no one had bothered to move Alderman John Richards, 1909-1974. For a century and a half he had been gathering dust while far away from the old cities the new civilization had been rising to heights no earlier culture had ever known.

“That was almost all we found,” said Klarten. “The city must have been deserted for years. I’m afraid our expedition has been a failure. If there are any living beings on this world, they’ve hidden themselves too well for us to find them.”

His commander was forced to agree.

“It was an almost impossible task,” he said. “If we’d had weeks instead of hours we might have succeeded. For all we know, they may even have built shelters under the sea. No one seems to have thought of that.”

He glanced quickly at the indicators and corrected the course.

“We’ll be there in five minutes. Alveron seems to be moving rather quickly. I wonder if Torkalee has found anything.”

The S9000 was hanging a few miles above the seaboard of a blazing continent when Orostron homed upon it. The danger line was thirty minutes away and there was no time to lose. Skillfully, he maneuvered the little ship into its launching tube and the party stepped out of the airlock.

There was a small crowd waiting for them. That was to be expected, but Orostron could see at once that something more than curiosity had brought his friends here. Even before a word was spoken, he knew that something was wrong.

“Torkalee hasn’t returned. He’s lost his party and we’re going to the rescue. Come along to the control room at once.” * * *

From the beginning, Torkalee had been luckier than Orostron. He had followed the zone of twilight, keeping away from the intolerable glare of the sun, until he came to the shores of an inland sea. It was a very recent sea, one of the latest of Man’s works, for the land it covered had been desert less than a century before. In a few hours it would be desert again, for the water was boiling and clouds of steam were rising to the skies. But they could not veil the loveliness of the great white city that overlooked the tideless sea.

Flying machines were still parked neatly round the square in which Torkalee landed. They were disappointingly primitive, though beautifully finished, and depended on rotating airfoils for support. Nowhere was there any sign of life, but the place gave the impression that its inhabitants were not very far away. Lights were still shining from some of the windows.

Torkalee’s three companions lost no time in leaving the machine. Leader of the party, by seniority of rank and race was T’sinadree, who like Alveron himself had been born on one of the ancient planets of the Central Suns. Next came Alarkane, from a race which was one of the youngest in the Universe and took a perverse pride in the fact. Last came one of the strange beings from the system of Palador. It was nameless, like all its kind, for it possessed no identity of its own, being merely a mobile but still dependent cell in the consciousness of its race. Though it and its fellows had long been scattered over the galaxy in the exploration of countless worlds, some unknown link still bound them together as inexorably as the living cells in a human body.

When a creature of Palador spoke, the pronoun it used was always “We.” There was not, nor could there ever be, any first person singular in the language of Palador.

The great doors of the splendid building baffled the explorers, though any human child would have known their secret. T’sinadree wasted no time on them but called Torkalee on his personal transmitter. Then the three hurried aside while their commander maneuvered his machine into the best position. There was a brief burst of intolerable flame; the massive steelwork flickered once at the edge of the visible spectrum and was gone. The stones were still glowing when the eager party hurried into the building, the beams of their light projectors fanning before them.

The torches were not needed. Before them lay a great hall, glowing with light from lines of tubes along the ceiling. On either side, the hall opened out into long corridors, while straight ahead a massive stairway swept majestically toward the upper floors.

For a moment T’sinadree hesitated. Then, since one way was as good as another, he led his companions down the first corridor.

The feeling that life was near had now become very strong. At any moment, it seemed, they might be confronted by the creatures of this world. If they showed hostility and they could scarcely be blamed if they did the paralyzers would be used at once.

The tension was very great as the party entered the first room, and only relaxed when they saw that it held nothing but machines row after row of them, now stilled and silent. Lining the enormous room were thousands of metal filing cabinets, forming a continuous wall as far as the eye could reach. And that was all; there was no furniture, nothing but the cabinets and the mysterious machines.

Alarkane, always the quickest of the three, was already examining the cabinets. Each held many thousand sheets of tough, thin material, perforated with innumerable holes and slots. The Paladorian appropriated one of the cards and Alarkane recorded the scene together with some close-ups of the machines. Then they left. The great room, which had been one of the marvels of the world, meant nothing to them. No living eye would ever again see that wonderful battery of almost human Hollerith analyzers and the five thousand million punched cards holding all that could be recorded on each man, woman and child on the planet.

It was clear that this building had been used very recently. With growing excitement, the explorers hurried on to the next room. This they found to be an enormous library, for millions of books lay all around them on miles and miles of shelving. Here, though the explorers could not know it, were the records of all the laws that Man had ever passed, and all the speeches that had ever been made in his council chambers.

T’sinadree was deciding his plan of action, when Alarkane drew his attention to one of the racks a hundred yards away. It was half empty, unlike all the others. Around it books lay in a tumbled heap on the floor, as if knocked down by someone in frantic haste. The signs were unmistakable. Not long ago, other creatures had been this way. Faint wheel marks were clearly visible on the floor to the acute sense of Alarkane, though the others could see nothing. Alarkane could even detect footprints, but knowing nothing of the creatures that had formed them he could not say which way they led.

The sense of nearness was stronger than ever now, but it was nearness in time, not in space. Alarkane voiced the thoughts of the party.

“Those books must have been valuable, and someone has come to rescue them rather as an afterthought, I should say. That means there must be a place of refuge, possibly not very far away. Perhaps we may be able to find some other clues that will lead us to it.”

T’sinadree agreed; the Paladorian wasn’t enthusiastic.

“That may be so,” it said, “but the refuge may be anywhere on the planet, and we have just two hours left. Let us waste no more time if we hope to rescue these people.”

The party hurried forward once more, pausing only to collect a few books that might be useful to the scientists at Base though it was doubtful if they could ever be translated. They soon found that the great building was composed largely of small rooms, all showing signs of recent occupation. Most of them were in a neat and tidy condition, but one or two were very much the reverse. The explorers were particularly puzzled by one room clearly an office of some kind that appeared to have been completely wrecked. The floor was littered with papers, the furniture had been smashed, and smoke was pouring through the broken windows from the fires outside.

T’sinadree was rather alarmed.

“Surely no dangerous animal could have got into a place like this!” he exclaimed, fingering his paralyzer nervously.

Alarkane did not answer. He began to make that annoying sound which his race called “laughter.” It was several minutes before he would explain what had amused him.

“I don’t think any animal has done it,” he said. “In fact, the explanation is very simple. Suppose you had been working all your life in this room, dealing with endless papers, year after year. And suddenly, you are told that you will never see it again, that your work is finished, and that you can leave it forever. More than that no one will come after you. Everything is finished. How would you make your exit, T’sinadree?”

The other thought for a moment.

“Well, I suppose I’d just tidy things up and leave. That’s what seems to have happened in all the other rooms.”

Alarkane laughed again.

“I’m quite sure you would. But some individuals have a different psychology. I think I should have liked the creature that used this room.”

He did not explain himself further, and his two colleagues puzzled over his words for quite a while before they gave it up.

It came as something of a shock when Torkalee gave the order to return. They had gathered a great deal of information, but had found no clue that might lead them to the missing inhabitants of this world. That problem was as baffling as ever, and now it seemed that it would never be solved. There were only forty minutes left before the S9000 would be departing.

They were halfway back to the tender when they saw the semicircular passage leading down into the depths of the building. Its architectural style was quite different from that used elsewhere, and the gently sloping floor was an irresistible attraction to creatures whose many legs had grown weary of the marble staircases which only bipeds could have built in such profusion. T’sinadree had been the worst sufferer, for he normally employed twelve legs and could use twenty when he was in a hurry, though no one had ever seen him perform this feat.

The party stopped dead and looked down the passageway with a single thought. A tunnel, leading down into the depths of Earth! At its end, they might yet find the people of this world and rescue some of them from their fate. For there was still time to call the mother ship if the need arose.

T’sinadree signaled to his commander and Torkalee brought the little machine immediately overhead. There might not be time for the party to retrace its footsteps through the maze of passages, so meticulously recorded in the Paladorian mind that there was no possibility of going astray. If speed was necessary, Torkalee could blast his way through the dozen floors above their head. In any case, it should not take long to find what lay at the end of the passage.

It took only thirty seconds. The tunnel ended quite abruptly in a very curious cylindrical room with magnificently padded seats along the walls. There was no way out save that by which they had come and it was several seconds before the purpose of the chamber dawned on Alarkane’s mind. It was a pity, he thought, that they would never have time to use this. The thought was suddenly interrupted by a cry from T’sinadree. Alarkane wheeled around, and saw that the entrance had closed silently behind them.

Even in that first moment of panic, Alarkane found himself thinking with some admiration: Whoever they were, they knew how to build automatic machinery!

The Paladorian was the first to speak. It waved one of its tentacles toward the seats.

“We think it would be best to be seated,” it said. The multiplex mind of Palador had already analyzed the situation and knew what was coming.

They did not have long to wait before a low-pitched hum came from a grill overhead, and for the very last time in history a human, even if lifeless, voice was heard on Earth. The words were meaningless, though the trapped explorers could guess their message clearly enough.

“Choose your stations, please, and be seated.”

Simultaneously, a wall panel at one end of the compartment glowed with light. On it was a simple map, consisting of a series of a dozen circles connected by a line. Each of the circles had writing alongside it, and beside the writing were two buttons of different colors.

Alarkane looked questioningly at his leader.

“Don’t touch them,” said T’sinadree. “If we leave the controls alone, the doors may open again.”

He was wrong. The engineers who had designed the automatic subway had assumed that anyone who entered it would naturally wish to go somewhere. If they selected no intermediate station, their destination could only be the end of the line.

There was another pause while the relays and thyratrons waited for their orders. In those thirty seconds, if they had known what to do, the party could have opened the doors and left the subway. But they did not know, and the machines geared to a human psychology acted for them.

The surge of acceleration was not very great; the lavish upholstery was a luxury, not a necessity. Only an almost imperceptible vibration told of the speed at which they were traveling through the bowels of the earth, on a journey the duration of which they could not even guess. And in thirty minutes, the S9000 would be leaving the Solar System.

There was a long silence in the speeding machine. T’sinadree and Alarkane were thinking rapidly. So was the Paladorian, though in a different fashion. The conception of personal death was meaningless to it, for the destruction of a single unit meant no more to the group mind than the loss of a nail-paring to a man. But it could, though with great difficulty, appreciate the plight of individual intelligences such as Alarkane and T’sinadree, and it was anxious to help them if it could.

Alarkane had managed to contact Torkalee with his personal transmitter, though the signal was very weak and seemed to be fading quickly. Rapidly he explained the situation, and almost at once the signals became clearer. Torkalee was following the path of the machine, flying above the ground under which they were speeding to their unknown destination. That was the first indication they had of the fact that they were traveling at nearly a thousand miles an hour, and very soon after that Torkalee was able to give the still more disturbing news that they were rapidly approaching the sea. While they were beneath the land, there was a hope, though a slender one, that they might stop the machine and escape. But under the ocean not all the brains and the machinery in the great mother ship could save them. No one could have devised a more perfect trap.

T’sinadree had been examining the wall map with great attention. Its meaning was obvious, and along the line connecting the circles a tiny spot of light was crawling. It was already halfway to the first of the stations marked.

“I’m going to press one of those buttons,” said T’sinadree at last. “It won’t do any harm, and we may learn something.”

“I agree. Which will you try first?”

“There are only two kinds, and it won’t matter if we try the wrong one first. I suppose one is to start the machine and the other is to stop it.”

Alarkane was not very hopeful.

“It started without any button pressing,” he said. “I think it’s completely automatic and we can’t control it from here at all.”

T’sinadree could not agree.

“These buttons are clearly associated with the stations, and there’s no point in having them unless you can use them to stop yourself. The only question is, which is the right one?”

His analysis was perfectly correct. The machine could be stopped at any intermediate station. They had only been on their way ten minutes, and if they could leave now, no harm would have been done. It was just bad luck that T’sinadree’s first choice was the wrong button.

The little light on the map crawled slowly through the illuminated circle without checking its speed. And at the same time Torkalee called from the ship overhead.

“You have just passed underneath a city and are heading out to sea. There cannot be another stop for nearly a thousand miles.” * * *

Alveron had given up all hope of finding life on this world. The S9000 had roamed over half the planet, never staying long in one place, descending ever and again in an effort to attract attention. There had been no response; Earth seemed utterly dead. If any of its inhabitants were still alive, thought Alveron, they must have hidden themselves in its depths where no help could reach them, though their doom would be nonetheless certain.

Rugon brought news of the disaster. The great ship ceased its fruitless searching and fled back through the storm to the ocean above which Torkalee’s little tender was still following the track of the buried machine.

The scene was truly terrifying. Not since the days when Earth was born had there been such seas as this. Mountains of water were racing before the storm which had now reached velocities of many hundred miles an hour. Even at this distance from the mainland the air was full of flying debris trees, fragments of houses, sheets of metal, anything that had not been anchored to the ground. No airborne machine could have lived for a moment in such a gale. And ever and again even the roar of the wind was drowned as the vast water-mountains met head-on with a crash that seemed to shake the sky.

Fortunately, there had been no serious earthquakes yet. Far beneath the bed of the ocean, the wonderful piece of engineering which had been the World President’s private vacuum-subway was still working perfectly, unaffected by the tumult and destruction above. It would continue to work until the last minute of the Earth’s existence, which, if the astronomers were right, was not much more than fifteen minutes away though precisely how much more Alveron would have given a great deal to know. It would be nearly an hour before the trapped party could reach land and even the slightest hope of rescue.

Alveron’s instructions had been precise, though even without them he would never have dreamed of taking any risks with the great machine that had been entrusted to his care. Had he been human, the decision to abandon the trapped members of his crew would have been desperately hard to make. But he came of a race far more sensitive than Man, a race that so loved the things of the spirit that long ago, and with infinite reluctance, it had taken over control of the Universe since only thus could it be sure that justice was being done. Alveron would need all his superhuman gifts to carry him through the next few hours.

Meanwhile, a mile below the bed of the ocean Alarkane and T’sinadree were very busy indeed with their private communicators. Fifteen minutes is not a long time in which to wind up the affairs of a lifetime. It is indeed, scarcely long enough to dictate more than a few of those farewell messages which at such moments are so much more important than all other matters.

All the while the Paladorian had remained silent and motionless, saying not a word. The other two, resigned to their fate and engrossed in their personal affairs, had given it no thought. They were startled when suddenly it began to address them in its peculiarly passionless voice.

“We perceive that you are making certain arrangements concerning your anticipated destruction. That will probably be unnecessary. Captain Alveron hopes to rescue us if we can stop this machine when we reach land again.”

Both T’sinadree and Alarkane were too surprised to say anything for a moment. Then the latter gasped, “How do you know?”

It was a foolish question, for he remembered at once that there were several Paladorians if one could use the phrase in the S9000, and consequently their companion knew everything that was happening in the mother ship. So he did not wait for an answer but continued, “Alveron can’t do that! He daren’t take such a risk!”

“There will be no risk,” said the Paladorian. “We have told him what to do. It is really very simple.”

Alarkane and T’sinadree looked at their companion with something approaching awe, realizing now what must have happened. In moments of crisis, the single units comprising the Paladorian mind could link together in an organization no less close than that of any physical brain. At such moments they formed an intellect more powerful than any other in the Universe. All ordinary problems could be solved by a few hundred or thousand units. Very rarely, millions would be needed, and on two historic occasions the billions of cells of the entire Paladorian consciousness had been welded together to deal with emergencies that threatened the race. The mind of Palador was one of the greatest mental resources of the Universe; its full force was seldom required, but the knowledge that it was available was supremely comforting to other races. Alarkane wondered how many cells had coordinated to deal with this particular emergency. He also wondered how so trivial an incident had ever come to its attention.

To that question he was never to know the answer, though he might have guessed it had he known that the chillingly remote Paladorian mind possessed an almost human streak of vanity. Long ago, Alarkane had written a book trying to prove that eventually all intelligent races would sacrifice individual consciousness and that one day only group-minds would remain in the Universe. Palador, he had said, was the first of those ultimate intellects, and the vast, dispersed mind had not been displeased.

They had no time to ask any further questions before Alveron himself began to speak through their communicators.

“Alveron calling! We’re staying on this planet until the detonation waves reach it, so we may be able to rescue you. You’re heading toward a city on the coast which you’ll reach in forty minutes at your present speed. If you cannot stop yourselves then, we’re going to blast the tunnel behind and ahead of you to cut off your power. Then we’ll sink a shaft to get you out the chief engineer says he can do it in five minutes with the main projectors. So you should be safe within an hour, unless the sun blows up before.”

“And if that happens, you’ll be destroyed as well! You mustn’t take such a risk!”

“Don’t let that worry you; we’re perfectly safe. When the sun detonates, the explosion wave will take several minutes to rise to its maximum. But apart from that, we’re on the night side of the planet, behind an eight-thousand-mile screen of rock. When the first warning of the explosion comes, we will accelerate out of the Solar System, keeping in the shadow of the planet. Under our maximum drive, we will reach the velocity of light before leaving the cone of shadow, and the sun cannot harm us then.”

T’sinadree was still afraid to hope. Another objection came at once into his mind.

“Yes, but how will you get any warning, here on the night side of the planet?”

“Very easily,” replied Alveron. “This world has a moon which is now visible from this hemisphere. We have telescopes trained on it. If it shows any sudden increase in brilliance, our main drive goes on automatically and we’ll be thrown out of the system.”

The logic was flawless. Alveron, cautious as ever, was taking no chances. It would be many minutes before the eight-thousand-mile shield of rock and metal could be destroyed by the fires of the exploding sun. In that time, the S9000 could have reached the safety of the velocity of light.

Alarkane pressed the second button when they were still several miles from the coast. He did not expect anything to happen then, assuming that the machine could not stop between stations. It seemed too good to be true when, a few minutes later, the machine’s slight vibration died away and they came to a halt.

The doors slid silently apart. Even before they were fully open, the three had left the compartment. They were taking no more chances. Before them a long tunnel stretched into the distance, rising slowly out of sight. They were starting along it when suddenly Alveron’s voice called from the communicators.

“Stay where you are! We’re going to blast!”

The ground shuddered once, and far ahead there came the rumble of falling rock. Again the earth shook and a hundred yards ahead the passageway vanished abruptly. A tremendous vertical shaft had been cut clean through it.

The party hurried forward again until they came to the end of the corridor and stood waiting on its lip. The shaft in which it ended was a full thousand feet across and descended into the earth as far as the torches could throw their beams. Overhead, the storm clouds fled beneath a moon that no man would have recognized, so luridly brilliant was its disk. And, most glorious of all sights, the S9000 floated high above, the great projectors that had drilled this enormous pit still glowing cherry red.

A dark shape detached itself from the mother ship and dropped swiftly toward the ground. Torkalee was returning to collect his friends. A little later, Alveron greeted them in the control room. He waved to the great vision screen and said quietly, “See, we were barely in time.”

The continent below them was slowly settling beneath the mile-high waves that were attacking its coasts. The last that anyone was ever to see of Earth was a great plain, bathed with the silver light of the abnormally brilliant moon. Across its face the waters were pouring in a glittering flood toward a distant range of mountains. The sea had won its final victory, but its triumph would be short-lived for soon sea and land would be no more. Even as the silent party in the control room watched the destruction below, the infinitely greater catastrophe to which this was only the prelude came swiftly upon them.

It was as though dawn had broken suddenly over this moonlit landscape. But it was not dawn: it was only the moon, shining with the brilliance of a second sun. For perhaps thirty seconds that awesome, unnatural light burnt fiercely on the doomed land beneath. Then there came a sudden flashing of indicator lights across the control board. The main drive was on. For a second Alveron glanced at the indicators and checked their information. When he looked again at the screen, Earth was gone.

The magnificent, desperately overstrained generators quietly died when the S9000 was passing the orbit of Persephone. It did not matter, the sun could never harm them now, and although the ship was speeding helplessly out into the lonely night of interstellar space, it would only be a matter of days before rescue came.

There was irony in that. A day ago, they had been the rescuers, going to the aid of a race that now no longer existed. Not for the first time Alveron wondered about the world that had just perished. He tried, in vain, to picture it as it had been in its glory, the streets of its cities thronged with life. Primitive though its people had been, they might have offered much to the Universe. If only they could have made contact! Regret was useless; long before their coming, the people of this world must have buried themselves in its iron heart. And now they and their civilization would remain a mystery for the rest of time.

Alveron was glad when his thoughts were interrupted by Rugon’s entrance. The chief of communications had been very busy ever since the take-off, trying to analyze the programs radiated by the transmitter Orostron had discovered. The problem was not a difficult one, but it demanded the construction of special equipment, and that had taken time.

“Well, what have you found?” asked Alveron.

“Quite a lot,” replied his friend. “There’s something mysterious here, and I don’t understand it.

“It didn’t take long to find how the vision transmissions were built up, and we’ve been able to convert them to suit our own equipment. It seems that there were cameras all over the planet, surveying points of interest. Some of them were apparently in cities, on the tops of very high buildings. The cameras were rotating continuously to give panoramic views. In the programs we’ve recorded there are about twenty different scenes.

“In addition, there are a number of transmissions of a different kind, neither sound nor vision. They seem to be purely scientific possibly instrument readings or something of that sort. All these programs were going out simultaneously on different frequency bands.

“Now there must be a reason for all this. Orostron still thinks that the station simply wasn’t switched off when it was deserted. But these aren’t the sort of programs such a station would normally radiate at all. It was certainly used for interplanetary -relaying Klarten was quite right there. So these people must have crossed space, since none of the other planets had any life at the time of the last survey. Don’t you agree?”

Alveron was following intently.

“Yes, that seems reasonable enough. But it’s also certain that the beam was pointing to none of the other planets. I checked that myself.”

“I know,” said Rugon. “What I want to discover is why a giant interplanetary relay station is busily transmitting pictures of a world about to be destroyed pictures that would be of immense interest to scientists and astronomers. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to arrange all those panoramic cameras. I am convinced that those beams were going somewhere.”

Alveron started up.

“Do you imagine that there might be an outer planet that hasn’t been reported?” he asked. “If so, your theory’s certainly wrong. The beam wasn’t even pointing in the plane of the Solar System. And even if it were just look at this.”

He switched on the vision screen and adjusted the controls. Against the velvet curtain of space was hanging a blue-white sphere, apparently composed of many concentric shells of incandescent gas. Even though its immense distance made all movement invisible, it was clearly expanding at an enormous rate. At its center was a blinding point of light the white dwarf star that the sun had now become.

“You probably don’t realize just how big that sphere is,” said Alveron. “Look at this.”

He increased the magnification until only the center portion of the nova was visible. Close to its heart were two minute condensations, one on either side of the nucleus.

“Those are the two giant planets of the system. They have still managed to retain their existence after a fashion. And they were several hundred million miles from the sun. The nova is still expanding but it’s already twice the size of the Solar System.”

Rugon was silent for a moment.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, rather grudgingly. “You’ve disposed of my first theory. But you still haven’t satisfied me.”

He made several swift circuits of the room before speaking again. Alveron waited patiently. He knew the almost intuitive powers of his friend, who could often solve a problem when mere logic seemed insufficient.

Then, rather slowly, Rugon began to speak again.

“What do you think of this?” he said. “Suppose we’ve completely underestimated this people? Orostron did it once he thought they could never have crossed space, since they’d only known radio for two centuries. Hansur II told me that. Well, Orostron was quite wrong. Perhaps we’re all wrong. I’ve had a look at the material that Klarten brought back from the transmitter. He wasn’t impressed by what he found, but it’s a marvelous achievement for so short a time. There were devices in that station that belonged to civilizations thousands of years older. Alveron, can we follow that beam to see where it leads?”

Alveron said nothing for a full minute. He had been more than half expecting the question, but it was not an easy one to answer. The main generators had gone completely. There was no point in trying to repair them. But there was still power available, and while there was power, anything could be done in time. It would mean a lot of improvisation, and some difficult maneuvers, for the ship still had its enormous initial velocity. Yes, it could be done, and the activity would keep the crew from becoming further depressed, now that the reaction caused by the mission’s failure had started to set in. The news that the nearest heavy repair ship could not reach them for three weeks had also caused a slump in morale.

The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible. Very slowly, over many hours, the great ship began to discard the speed its main drive had given it in as many minutes. In a tremendous curve, millions of miles in radius, the S9000 changed its course and the star fields shifted round it.

The maneuver took three days, but at the end of that time the ship was limping along a course parallel to the beam that had once come from Earth. They were heading out into emptiness, the blazing sphere that had been the sun dwindling slowly behind them. By the standards of interstellar flight, they were almost stationary.

For hours Rugon strained over his instruments, driving his detector beams far ahead into space. There were certainly no planets within many light-years; there was no doubt of that. From time to time Alveron came to see him and always he had to give the same reply: “Nothing to report.” About a fifth of the time Rugon’s intuition let him down badly; he began to wonder if this was such an occasion.

Not until a week later did the needles of the mass-detectors quiver feebly at the ends of their scales. But Rugon said nothing, not even to his captain. He waited until he was sure, and he went on waiting until even the short-range scanners began to react, and to build up the first faint pictures on the vision screen. Still he waited patiently until he could interpret the images. Then, when he knew that his wildest fancy was even less than the truth, he called his colleagues into the control room.

The picture on the vision screen was the familiar one of endless star fields, sun beyond sun to the very limits of the Universe. Near the center of the screen a distant nebula made a patch of haze that was difficult for the eye to grasp.

Rugon increased the magnification. The stars flowed out of the field; the little nebula expanded until it filled the screen and then it was a nebula no longer. A simultaneous gasp of amazement came from all the company at the sight that lay before them.

Lying across league after league of space, ranged in a vast three-dimensional array of rows and columns with the precision of a marching army, were thousands of tiny pencils of light. They were moving swiftly; the whole immense lattice holding its shape as a single unit. Even as Alveron and his comrades watched, the formation began to drift off the screen and Rugon had to recenter the controls.

After a long pause, Rugon started to speak.

“This is the race,” he said softly, “that has known radio for only two centuries the race that we believed had crept to die in the heart of its planet. I have examined those images under the highest possible magnification.

“That is the greatest fleet of which there has ever been a record. Each of those points of light represents a ship larger than our own. Of course, they are very primitive what you see on the screen are the jets of their rockets. Yes, they dared to use rockets to bridge interstellar space! You realize what that means. It would take them centuries to reach the nearest star. The whole race must have embarked on this journey in the hope that its descendants would complete it, generations later.

“To measure the extent of their accomplishment, think of the ages it took us to conquer space, and the longer ages still before we attempted to reach the stars. Even if we were threatened with annihilation, could we have done so much in so short a time? Remember, this is the youngest civilization in the Universe. Four hundred thousand years ago it did not even exist. What will it be a million years from now?”

An hour later, Orostron left the crippled mother ship to make contact with the great fleet ahead. As the little torpedo disappeared among the stars, Alveron turned to his friend and made a remark that Rugon was often to remember in the years ahead.

“I wonder what they’ll be like?” he mused. “Will they be nothing but wonderful engineers, with no art or philosophy? They’re going to have such a surprise when Orostron reaches them I expect it will be rather a blow to their pride. It’s funny how all isolated races think they’re the only people in the Universe. But they should be grateful to us; we’re going to save them a good many hundred years of travel.”

Alveron glanced at the Milky Way, lying like a veil of silver mist across the vision screen. He waved toward it with a sweep of a tentacle that embraced the whole circle of the galaxy, from the Central Planets to the lonely suns of the Rim.

“You know,” he said to Rugon, “I feel rather afraid of these people. Suppose they don’t like our little Federation?” He waved once more toward the star-clouds that lay massed across the screen, glowing with the light of their countless suns.

“Something tells me they’ll be very determined people,” he added. “We had better be polite to them. After all, we only outnumber them about a thousand million to one.”

Rugon laughed at his captain’s little joke.

Twenty years afterward, the remark didn’t seem funny.

The End

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Just some artwork that I painted that is now lost forever.

I have discussed in previous posts that I had a studio and that I painted in oils. I like to think that I was “good”, but not great. Never the less, it was a love of mine, and when I was “retired”, I lost everything. Here in this post / article, I preserve for eternity (well, at least for a while) some photos of my life prior to my “retirement”. Just some photos of my studio, and some of my paintings in various stages of creation. Sorry, but I really do not have any completed and finished paintings that I can show.

I dredged up these photos from an old email account.

I was surprised that they still existed. And in them I saw photos of family members now dead, and friends now dead, and my beloved pets as well. Now all dead. I saw pictures of my furniture, my homes, my cars, and my belongings. Now all long gone. I saw pictures of my art. Important to me. Now, forever discarded or sold off to others somewhere.

Please enjoy.

Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues.

This first photo is of my den / office.

Most of these pictures come from my life in Erie Pennsylvania rather than my house in Arkansas. I wasn't in Arkansas long enough to acquire enough photographs. I was only there for a few months.

The strange thing about my entire retirement was that I had lived in Pennsylvania for years, then met a girl. Got a job in Arkansas. Moved there, and then six months later, I was arrested, imprisoned, lost everything and retired in the ADC Pine Bluff Diagnostic facility by some MAJestic staff out of Washington DC. It all happened in a short period of time. Months really.

But that's how it works. The "retirement" happens in an incarceration-friendly state. It was critical to get me out of the "mid-West" or East, and down to the hard "Bible Belt" where they could do what they wished without thought or opposition.

My study. Yes. It was horribly cluttered with books. All gone now. Sold off to used book sellers at pennies by the ton. At that time in my life, prior to my “retirement”, I had a rather well comfortable nest of sorts, with books, art, and brick a brack that appealed to me.

Of course, today, my life is much more minimalist. Spartan, actually. I don’t have any books really. Just what I read on the internet.

But in those days, I had amassed an enormous volume of books. I had books upon books, upon books. And I loved every single one of them.

Books and books. — I had book, and books, and books. I’ll tell you what. I literally wall-papered my house in books. I had read every single one of them too. Some, especially the fictional ones, over and over and then over again.

Here’s a picture of one of my last works prior to my arrest and incarceration. I really liked it, and I planned to leave this under-paining and then begin with the glazes. Adding color and depth to the painting. Typically this period would take months. The first thing I would do is make up a sketch.

This could be in a book, or more often than not using pencil or charcoal on the canvas. Then I might experiment with some oils. Kind of roughing out the image that was developing on the canvas. I called this a pre- pre-under-painting. Then from that, I would lay out the under-painting.

This next picture is a of a under-painting before I began the real painting.

My studio and a under painting. — My studio was just as cluttered as my study. I had a big ol’ easel that dominated the well-lit room, and my pallet. It smelled like turpentine, linseed oil and all sorts of the joys that an artist studio would smell like. Here is an under painting. Under-painting were doing in black and white and shades of grey. Then you apply thin transparent lays of paint over the images that you lay out.

You can see my pallet on the lower edge of the image, and my brushes and oils.

I really wish that I could have been allowed to finish this painting before it was destroyed. It spoke to me.

Here’s a clearer view…

Bobble head hello kitty. — It’s funny the things that you miss. On the far right is my bobble-head hello kitty. When the light would hit the photo sensor the head would start to gently move side by side. A nice slow relaxing pace. On the wall is one of my first nudes. So very amateurish. But was meaningful to me.

It’s not that I want to relive the past, but I have gotten some emails from jack-asses that think that I make up everything that I write about. They say things like “no one can be doing all the things that you claim to have done”, and other nonsensical insults along those lines.

Life is what you make of it.

My love was art, literature and poetry. My background has always been technology and the sciences. And my dream has always been directed to space and working with extraterrestrials. I lived that reality.

What’s so hard to believe about that?

Sadly few of my art work survives. All I have are a precious few photos. Here’s another one. Also an under painting. As most of my surviving photos just (by coincidence) are of my under painting efforts.

Unfortunately I have no photos of any of my finished paintings.

Painting 2 — Not so good. I just wish that I was able to complete this. There was so much that I wanted to do with the folds on the bed, and the layout of the cats and the gal really appealed to me. I think that this work had some great potential. I intended to have them looking out of a window and i was going to paint a nice guardian scene there.

Life is funny. My life now does not resemble anything at all like what it used to be. Still… but still, I do really miss painting.

Here is another under-painting. Yes. I did paint in color. It’s only that all my photos are of the under paintings.

The distressed woman. — One of my nude figurative works. it’s paintings like these that ended up getting me labeled as a sex predator, and an “evil threat to society”. When I discussed this issue with my attorney he told me that the DA would “roast me alive”. the folk of Arkansas would not give me a “fair shake”, it wasn’t like Boston, or Chicago or California. They would “hang me”, maybe even literally. He strongly, most strongly suggested that I accept the plea deal offered by the DA.

When I remember the police telling me that “you could paint houses”, not seeing that my strength was in the figurative forms, it just showed a callous disregard to my inclinations and talents. But they didn’t care. Their job was to get a conviction, and who cared what happened to me. Right?

A long as the world is safe from people like me.

People, you see my life, and what I did. Where in God’s name could I possibly squeeze in the time to be a sick predatory fuck like I was accused of being?

My hobbies took time. They were all consuming. They were my life.

Another view of the painting from an angle. That easel cost about $2000 when I got it. Solid oak. You all might be interested to know that it was torn down and used to make a dog house for one of the neighbors’ pit bull dogs that was chained outside.

Life. You know. Life.

I look at my life today, and I am happy. I eat well, I have a generally low stress life (aside from the HATE CHINA bullshit that saturates the American “news” media) and what I do and how I live my life. Going through my old photos was a glance into what I was and in many cases, I no longer can relate to it. I look much different. In fact, I look older than I am today. I more resemble photos taken thirty years ago than those taken twenty. The life in the USA was not good to me.

It really wasn’t. And when I tried to live a quiet and unassuming life, sure as shit, someone or something would have to do something about it. An artist! A Painter! A rocket scientist! Nope. Not on my watch!

American "leadership". — American Leadership today.

The PTB, or the oligarchy have constructed a massive concentration camp. Everything is all about money, and if you are not contributing to make THEM richer, then you are threat to them. This is a top-down leadership.

Look around you.

Really look.

If you compare your life inside the United States with the life outside it, you can see. You can really see, just how “wonderful” you life actually is. Today, we have Federal, State, and Local governments that Americans must deal with. In addition there are County government, and an enormous number of Federal agencies, from ABC to ZZZ that you must deal with. Billions of dollars fund these minions whose sole purpose is to squeeze every last cent from you.

As one commenter stated so clearly, it’s all top driven. While the wealthy run off with handfuls of cash and bales of money, those under them end grab every iota of power and money…

…the crumbs that remain. Soon, it will be the lowest janitors and street sweepers taking the pencils, and paperclips out of the offices. It’s every man for himself.

It’s a free-for-all.

That is America today.

Evening. — Off the bedroom leading towards the study. You can see my bust of the upper male torso, one of my two lava lamps, a vase full of coins and change, and my umbrella rack with my large umbrella. The large oval mirror was my favorite, and when the sun set, and twilight would start to bathe the land in coolness, I would go out to the porch and drink an evening tea, coffee, or beer.

These photos are just old dusty memories of a time that was seized from me. It’s like a room that I lived in before I walked down the hallway to another room. If I get the inclination, I will once again, pick up a brush and start painting again. Just as long as I am not accused of being an “evil predator” for my depictions of “devil worship“.

The following is a conceptual sketch.

I used to make up conceptional sketches before I would work out my under-paintings. Then I would flush out the painting using layers of semi-transparent glaze. This work (for reasons that I am unable to fathom) was considered to be a “classic example of the manifestation of the devil and his demons”.

I think (personally that it is a stretch, and I wasn’t thinking anything about demons or Satan when I was painting it. Instead I was thinking of higher callings, relationships, and the spiritual side of our beings.

I only wish that I could provide pictures of fully completed paintings. But let it be known that I am a so-so artist, but not an expert or a professional at it. Each painting would take perhaps 400 hours of work. And it was an enjoyment and a pastime that I loved.

When I dug up these pictures I found long lost images of my dad right before he died, and my mother right before she died. I also found pictures of my cat Coco before he died.

When I was seized and hauled off to Jail to wait until my trial (it took two years), “friends” took care of my belongings. My father tried his best, but he made many mistakes. Friends took care of the rest. And after I exited Prison, nothing was found of my belongings except a WTF suitcase full of WTF items.

Anyways, I found some pictures of my cat.

When I was seized and taken to jail, a friend took care of him. He did well, and he told me that Coco was “concerned” for me.

Four months after I was arrested, my friend was taken to the hospital with a brain tumor and died within a week. Coco disappeared. I assumed that he died. If he’s still alive, he would be a very ancient kitty indeed.

My cat Coco. — Coco chilling out after a heavy busy day of catting about.

He was a little different cat compared to all the other kitties that I had. Instead of cuddling up with me, he thought he was a dog. He liked to play, He would play fetch, and those stop and action games you play with dogs. He would also roll over and let me rub his belly. He like to hang out on the porch and laze about.

Being a black cat and all, of course the Police and DA associated him with Witchcraft. When in truth I could care less what color he was. It wasn’t his fault that he was black.

He used to go out and go out bird hunting. he would always come back with birds and mice that he would put on the porch for us to be proud of. He was one heck of a hunting-cat. he was a great mouser. That’s for certain. He was a warrior kitty. Maybe I should have gotten him a suit of armor.

What do you think?

Suit of armor 1 — A Genghis Khan themed Mongol suit of armor for a kitty cat.

Or maybe this…

Suit of armor 2 — A more European Suit of Armor for a kitty cat.

But alas that never materialized. Coco went off, I believe to Kitty Heaven, and my dog Buddy…

Well, he was carted off to the doggie slammer.

He was sent to the local shelter; kennel because my friend(s) didn’t have any room for him. (!) I guess I can sort of understand if you are renting a place and it is against your lease to have pets, or if you are so poor that a bag of Puppy-Crunchies might cause you to go into bankruptcy.

Anyways I don’t know what became of the dog. Maybe he ended up as some kind of Frankenstein’s Monster like a frankenpuppy.

I have been told by others, often well-meaning, that I should not get all caught up and concerned about my pets. “They are only animals” I am told. That I am better off with out them. That I don’t need their problems, their expense, and their hassles. Instead I should devote all my energies to rebuilding my life (at 60!) and making money.

Don’t you know…

So I think that they are wrong. These little guys were just great and a significant part of my life. And I just wish that nothing bad came of them. And when I was in Prison and I mentioned my concerns about them, most people understood. But there were some… some really sick fucks… who took my weakness and remorse to poke at me and fill my mind with “what if” horrors that they could have gone through…

…frankenpuppy.

Of course, I really doubt that anything bad or unusual happened to them. There is about a 50/50 chance that Buddy was readopted. He was a real charmer. And Coco, well, he probably expired on one of his hunting expeditions.

Anyways, one of the last paintings that I was working on prior to my arrest and jailing was this paining of this gal in a tub. When I started this under painting, I felt that I was finally “entering my stride”. I had already some great ideas about how I was going to pattern the drapes, and the glazes that I would use on the skin for tones and shading.

Of course, you can argue that my work was still very amateurish, but I think that I was on the verge of creating some very nice works.

My last painting. — My last in-process painting prior to my arrest and incarceration. Still it’s an under-painting, and very simplistic. The fabric needs to be worked on and completed and the surroundings need work. But as simplistic and amateurish as it appears, I enjoyed painting and the thought that this was used as part of the neighbors dog house is repugnant to me.

Anyways, this a photographic record of the few remaining photographs of my life prior to my retirement.

I believe that we all have stories to tell. And while it might seem interesting or boring to you, you have to realize that everyone has a story to tell. That everyone has adventures in their lives and that if we find out the real and true story; the whole story, then we would have a much better understanding about how our world works and what powers this reality of ours.

I wish that I spent time with my grandparents and sat down and listened to their stories. I did manage to listen to some family stories from my parents, and they were interesting object lessons and curious adventures of what can happen in certain situations. I think we owe it to each other to listen. Just listen to others. And learn.

Learn.

Things are not that simplistic black and white narrative that we read about on the internet. It’s actually very complex and multi-faceted. It is up to us to learn the whole and entire story before we make judgements on others. Listen to others.

Learn from them.

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The Wishes We Make (full text) by E. Mayne Hull

A genie suddenly appears before a condemned man in his death cell and offers him not just one wish but six – what is the problem? you might ask. Well, avoiding one’s destiny is not as easy as it sounds, as this quite brilliant and very amusing golden-age tale with the most sombre of overtones, first published in the June 1943 issue of Unknown Worlds, shows us.

“The Wishes We Make” (1943) by E. Mayne Hull

THE WISHES WE MAKE

“I THEREFORE SENTENCE YOU, WILLIAM KENNIJAHN — two months from this date — to be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul.”
For a month and three weeks now, Kennijahn had poured an almost unceasing stream of vituperation at the walls of the death cell, at any turnkeys who came near him, at the judge who had delivered the sentence, at the whole human race.
“You’ve run into one of those miserable periods,” his lawyer, Clissold, told him, “when the people are on a moral warpath. The bare suggestion of commutation made in the press the other day brought a thousand howling letters about a law for the rich and a law for the poor. It’s unfortunate that the State proved so conclusively that you murdered your partner, Harmsworth, when he threatened to expose that stock swindle.”
The lawyer shrugged helplessly. “I’ve been offering money right and left, vainly. And when a politician is cold to money, it’s like the end of the world. Frankly, Bill, you’re sunk. I’ll keep on trying to the last hour, but there’s an inevitability about it all now that’s final.” He stood up. “I don’t think I’ll come to see you again unless I have something to report. Good-bye.”
Kennijahn was only dimly aware of the tall, thin figure being escorted out. Nine days, he was thinking, nine short days! His mind twisted off into uncontrollable fury. When the passion finally wearied him, he looked up—the creature was standing before him.
The creature regarded him intently from its one gleaming red eve, its fantastic black body twisted curiously, as if that half-human shape was but a part of its form, the remaining portion being somehow out of sight.
Kennijahn blinked at it. He was not afraid, only astounded. He expected it to go away if he shut his eyes, then opened them rapidly. He thought of it as a mind distortion that had somehow synchronized into his vision. After a moment, however, it was still there. Amazingly, then, it said:
“Oh ! You didn’t call me purposely. You don’t know the method. Very well—have your wishes and release me.”
Kennijahn’s mind was away in the rear. “Call you!” he said. “Call you!” A spasm of horror jerked him erect on his bunk. “Get away from me,” he yelled. “What in hell’s name are you? What—” He stopped, horror fading before the matter-of-fact way the creature was regarding him.
“Certainly, you called me,” it said. “You shaped a thought pattern—apparently, you didn’t know what it was or how to do it again. But it created a strain in space, and plummetted me into your presence. By the ancient Hyernetic law, I must give you your wishes, whereupon I will be released to return whence I came.”
For a long second, Kennijahn’s mind held hard on the idea of the thought pattern that could have produced such a monstrosity. He shivered a little with the memory of his fury, but nothing came clear. He gave it up and, because his mind was basically quick on the uptake, his own black destiny receded fractionally from the forefront of his thoughts, and yielded to the tremendous meaning of one word.
“Wishes!” he said. “You mean, I can wish?”
“One is the principle,” said the monster, “two is the word. The monad is Bohas; the duad is Jakin. The triad is formed by union, which is doubled by ignorance to become a sesad.” The thing finished, “Six wishes.”

"One is the principle, two is the word. The monad is Bohas; the duad is Jakin. The triad is formed by union, which is doubled by ignorance to become a sesad. Six wishes."

“Six wishes?” Kennijahn echoed, his voice sounding crazily queer in his own ears. He almost whispered, “About—anything?”
“Within the limits set by the Fates, of course. So have your wishes and—”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Kennijahn put up his hand as if he would ward off the words. “You’re not doing this because you want to do it. You have to.”
The thing nodded a little curtly. “Have to.”
“You’re a demon?” Kennijahn spoke with gathering interest.
“I’m a Drdr.”
“A what?” The thing only looked at him. Kennijahn went on, “You say, take my wishes. Do you mean I’ve got to take six wishes all at once?”
The Drdr looked almost sullen. “No.”
“It makes no difference how long I take?”
“No difference. But if you hurry, I can return from whence I came.”
“Thanks for the information.” Kennijahn spoke dryly. Then he frowned. He said sharply, “What do you mean, limits set by the Fates?”
“Your destiny cannot be changed.”
Some of the high hope trickled out of Kennijahn. “Destiny?” he echoed hollowly.
“Every man,” said the creature, “has his predestined fate. It is inexorable, and in your case the situation is that wishes will do you no good. You are doomed to die by hanging.”
Kennijahn took the tremendous shock of the words with scarcely more than a shudder. He said incredulously, “Suppose I were to wish myself in Buenos Aires, a prosperous-looking American businessman from the States. You mean to tell me that I will hang here in this prison next week regardless?”
“Not necessarily here, or next week. Is that your first wish?”
“You can actually do it?”
The great, blazing eye stared at him unwinkingly; and suddenly the ultimate thrill of this opportunity came to Kennijahn, that this was real, no nightmare, no phantasmagoria, nothing but wondrous truth. Six wishes! Good God, six! Why with six wishes he could grab the whole earth. And what did it matter if a hundred years hence his destiny caught up with him? First of all, then, get out of this hell hole. And where else but Buenos Aires, where he had salted away money under the name of Peter Claremont? He had almost escaped there before after the ruinous fight with that fool, Harmsworth.
“Let’s go!” he cried wildly. “Get me out of here … out of here—”
There was blackness.

…

“The señor has his papers?”
The polite voice of the bank clerk sounded like a knell of doom. Kennijahn looked across the shiny desk at the dark, oily face of the clerk.
“Papers?” He attempted a smile. “Oh, you mean you want my signature so that you can compare it with the one I have on file?”
“No, señor.” The man was firm. “Your passport and documents relating to entry into the Argentine. The government regulations have become very strict.”
“Oh, yes, those papers !” In truth he had forgotten. Kennijahn explained clumsily, “I left them at the hotel, of course. I shall go and get them.”
“If you will be so kind, señor.”
It was hot out in the street, a dense, suffocating heat that grew as the morning lengthened. Kennijahn thought furiously: Damned if he’d waste a wish on getting out of this silly jam. After all, he had his false papers. Or rather, Nina had them. He’d cable her, and she could take a Pan-American plane, and be here in whatever short time it took. She had her papers ready, too. He thought about Nina with a rising excitement. Thank God, the police had never found out about her.
The cable was off before another thought occurred to him. He phoned the bank, and asked for the clerk who had served him.
“This is Peter Claremont speaking.”
“Si, Señor Claremont.”
“When I arrived back at my hotel, I found some urgent business awaiting my attention. I will come in to see you tomorrow, or the day after.”
“Si, Señor.”
Kennijahn hung up with a complacent smile. Nothing like gathering up all the threads.
The wire from Nina that came two hours later said:

ARRIVING THURSDAY. IF I DO NOT HEAR FROM YOU TO CONTRARY WILL EXPECT YOU TO MEET ME AT AIRPORT.

The only thing wrong with that was that he spent the next two nights in the main jailhouse. The officers who had come to the hotel to arrest him were polite and cold:
“You are to be held, señor, for the American police, who, it seems, intercepted a telegram from you to your señora.”
So that was that, Kennijahn thought grayly. It was all perfectly natural; and the mistake was in assuming the reason the police had never mentioned Nina was because they didn’t know about her. His impulse, the moment he was behind bars, was to call Drdr, but he decided against that. His next wish was going to be planned; and his best bet by far was to make a dramatic disappearance from the plane taking him back to America.
The roar of the big plane was a soft throb against the background of Kennijahn’s thoughts. He could see dark splotches of forest below, dimly visible in the bright moonlight. At last, far ahead, a vast brightness showed. The ocean gleamed and sparkled. The moon made a path of dazzling light toward an horizon that, at this height, was so remote that it seemed an infinite distance away. Kennijahn said in a low tone:
“Drdr.”
He started in spite of himself as the black caricature of human shape jerked into sight beside him. The enormous single eye of the creature peered at him, a scant two feet from his own face. The thing said:
“Do not worry about your guards. They can neither see me, nor hear any conversation between us. You desire your second wish?”
Kennijahn nodded, a little numbly. The chill of that abrupt materialization was still upon him, and he felt amazed that even his pre-knowledge hadn’t helped him. There was something about the monstrous little devil-thing that did things to his insides; and knowledge that it was harmless made no difference. He shook himself finally and said:
“I want to find out the exact limitations of a wish. When I arrived in Buenos Aires, I found myself on the street with five hundred dollars in my pocket. Is that your idea of how much a prosperous business man would be carrying? But never mind that. What I want to know is this: Suppose I had said to you: Put me into Buenos Aires in a swanky hotel suite with all my papers for entry into the Argentine on me, and a million dollars in a trunk—would that all have been one wish?”
“I can only give you about seven hundred thousand dollars,” was the flat-voiced reply. “A set value was fixed by universal law long ago; I can only transpose it into your type of wealth.”
“All right, all right, seven hundred thousand dollars,” Kennijahn said testily. And then he stopped. “Good God!” he gasped. “Anything that I can think of at one time is one wish.”
The creature nodded. “Within the limits set by the Fates, as I have said. Is your second wish, then, to go back to Buenos Aires as you described?”
“To hell with that. I don’t want to live in no damned foreign country. I’m an American. And I’ve got a better idea. You said any wish—anything?”
“Within the limits—” began the Drdr, but Kennijahn interrupted roughly:
Can you put me back into the past before the murder took place?” He grinned at the jet-black monstrosity. “See what I’m getting at: No swindle, no murder, no destiny.”
“No one,” came the calm reply, “can escape his destiny.” Kennijahn made an impatient chut of sound with his tongue.
“But you can do what I want?”
The thing’s hideous mouth twisted sullenly. “I can, but would prefer not to. Because Drdr cannot go back to give you wishes in the past. Before you could have your third wish, you would have to return to the period after you called me. And if you should get into trouble—”
“Trouble!” Kennijahn echoed. “Listen, I’m going to live the life of an angel.” He paused, frowning. “But I see your point. It wouldn’t do to go too far back. And that’s all right. I didn’t really begin to get involved financially until five months ago, and it all happened so damned fast— Make it six months. There wasn’t a cloud on the horizon six months ago. So shoot me back into time—”

…

The next second he was in the death cell.
Kennijahn stared around him with a gathering horror. The gray walls seemed to close in on him. The bunk felt hard and uncomfortable underneath him. Beyond the door, electric lights glowed dimly, but the cell itself was in darkness. It took nearly a minute before he made out Drdr sitting on the floor in one corner. Simultaneously, the thing’s great, blazing eye, which must have been closed, opened and regarded him redly.
A black rage twisted through Kennijahn. “You scum,” he roared. “What the devil have you done?”
The red eye glowed at him expressionlessly out of the darkness, an unnatural sphere of light. The thing’s voice said unemotionally, “Gave you your second wish, naturally.”
“You liar!” Kennijahn shouted. And stopped. He had a sudden, horrible sinking sensation that he was the victim of some subtle, incomprehensible hoax. “I don’t remember a thing,” he finished weakly.
“You didn’t ask for memory,” the thing replied calmly. “Accordingly, you went back into time, re-enacted the murder and the trial, and here you are, facing your inevitable destiny.”
Kennijahn burst out, “Why you miserable scoundrel. You knew I wanted memory.”
“I did not. You never mentioned it, or even thought of it.”
“But it was obvious.”
The monstrosity was staring at him. “I tell you and give you everything you ask for. Nothing more. And the sooner you have your wishes, the quicker I can return to the place from where I came.”
Kennijahn caught his fury into a tight, grim thought. So that was it. He had been so intent on his own problem that he had dismissed too readily the fact that the creature also had a purpose. He said, “Where did you come from, anyway, that you’re so anxious to get back?”
Drdr was placid. “Is that question a wish?”
“No, of course not.” Kennijahn spoke hastily. But his rage was cooling rapidly. With thoughtful eyes, he studied the shadow shape in the darkness on the floor. He’d have to watch out, plan more carefully, leave no loopholes.
“So I did it all over again a second time?” he said slowly. “In other words, my character got me into the same mess. That settles it. Change my character. Put me back six months, with memory, but in addition, make me more honest, strong, mind you, and—” He thought of Nina; he added, “No nonsense about women, of course. I want no change in my outlook there. Is that clear?”
“I don’t understand.” The creature sounded puzzled. “Change your character? You mean, give you a different body, perhaps better looking?”
“No, my character!” said Kennijahn. He paused helplessly. It struck him suddenly that this creature had marked limits of understanding. “You know—my character. Me!”
“You! Change the essence that is you. Why, that is impossible. You are you, a definite pattern in the universe, with an assigned role. You cannot be different. The Fates made you as you are.”
Kennijahn shrugged impatiently. “0. K. I get it. I am what I am. Perhaps it’s just as well. After all, I know my situation. If I were different I might develop some screwy religious notion about accepting my fate. I guess I can handle this best as myself. All right, then, put me back six months with complete memory of you. Get that—and wait! This is only my third wish. You didn’t put anything over on me that I can’t remember?”
“This is your third wish,” agreed the thing. “After this, you will have three more. But I warn you. I cannot help you in the past.”
“Let’s go!” said Kennijahn curtly.

…

He was sitting at his desk in his private office. A brilliant sun touched the edge of the great window behind him; but he was still too taut, too cold from his brief sojourn in the death cell. He went to the door leading to the outer office, opened it, and said to the nearest clerk, “What day is it … what date?”
“July 7th, Wednesday,” said the girl.
He was so intent that he forgot to thank her. He closed the door, his mind dark with calculation. Slowly, then, he brightened. It was true. Six months to the day. He sat down before his desk and picked up the cradle phone. A moment later, the familiar voice was sounding in his ear.
“’Lo, Nina,” he said; then, “Nina, will you marry me?”
“The devil!” Nina said, “Have you gone crazy?”
Kennijahn grinned. He pictured the lithe, svelte Nina stretched out slinkily on her living-room chesterfield, her eyes narrowed around the idea that he was trying to get a rise out of her. Trust Nina not to go out on a limb.
“I mean it,” he said. “I’m thinking of retiring to a country estate—within half an hour’s drive of town, of course,” he added hastily as swift memory came of Nina’s utter boredom the time he had taken her to a mountain resort. He went on, “We’ll raise a couple of kids, and live a merry life generally.”
Her laughter trilled on the phone. “Kids—you! Don’t make me laugh. Besides, I’m not the mother type.”
“O. K., we’ll skip the kids. How about it?”
The woman laughed again. “My dear,” she said, “tonight you bring around the most expensive engagement ring you can find, and I’ll begin to believe you.”
“It’s a deal,” said Kennijahn. “Good-bye, dear.”
He hung up, smiling. That was the first break from character. He stood up, opened the connecting door between his office and Harrnsworth’s. It was the sight of the man sitting there alive that did it. Kennijahn swayed. Then he licked dry lips. Finally, with a terrible effort, he caught himself and stood blinking at the man he had once murdered. God, he thought, this business was enough to give anybody the creeps. He managed to say finally:
“Hello, Andy.” And he was himself again. Swiftly, then, he made his demand.

“But you can’t draw out now,” Harmsworth gasped when Kennijahn had finished. The man’s thin face was flushed. He looked, Kennijahn thought in annoyance, on the verge of becoming vastly excited. He blazed on, “Why, if you pull out without apparent reason people will think it strange, think that you’re getting out from under before a crash. You’ve got a reputation for that, you know. Damn it, how did I ever get mixed up with a shyster like you.” He was beet red now. He fumbled at a drawer. His hand came out, holding a revolver. His voice shrilled, “I won’t let you do this. I won’t, do you hear?”
Kennijahn ignored the revolver. After all, he thought coolly, a man who was born to be hanged wasn’t going to be killed by a bullet from a chap who was scheduled to be murdered. With a vicious amazement, he cut the thought off. What the devil was he thinking, he whose whole present existence was based on the conviction that destiny was not inevitable? Abruptly, he was startled by the rapid turn of events. He said hurriedly:
“Put away that gun, you fool, before you hurt somebody.”
“I want you to promise,” Harmsworth said wildly, “that you’ll give me at least six months to get our customers used to the idea of your leaving.”
Six months! Why, that would take him deep into the period where—formerly—the murder and the trial had taken place. ’Nothing doing,” Kennijahn said flatly. “I’m making a complete break now, this week.”
The first shot struck the door jamb behind Kennijahn. And then he had rushed in, grabbing at the gun, roaring in his bass voice:
“You idiot. I’ll—”
The second shot came as he twisted the gun free from the other’s fingers. Gun in hand, he stepped back. He felt a vague amazement and horror as Harmsworth fell like a log to the floor and lay there. Even more vaguely, he was aware that a door had burst open, and that a girl was standing there, her mouth opening and shutting, making sounds. Then the door slammed. He heard a frantic dialing, and a high-pitched girl’s voice screaming something about police.
With a gasp, Kennijahn dropped the gun and sank into a chair. For a moment, he was taut and cold. Finally, the realization penetrated that the police were due in minutes. Instantly, his mind cleared. He snatched the phone on Harmsworth’s desk, dialed Clissold’s number, and described tersely to the lawyer what had happened.
Clissold said in his barking voice, “Bill, frankly, I don’t think that’s such a good story. You retiring at thirty-eight. Who else knew about your decision?”
“For Heaven’s sake!” Kennijahn rasped. “Does anybody have to know? It’s a common enough decision, isn’t it?”
“Not for you, Bill. Don’t take this personal, but you have a reputation for grabbing all you can get. I repeat, did anybody know you had decided to retire?”
Kennijahn thought of Nina, and a bead of sweat trickled down his cheek. “Only Nina,” he said finally, heavily.
“Worthless,” said Clissold succinctly. “We’ll have to change that story, Bill.”
“Look here,” Kennijahn began. “Are you trying to tell me—”
“I’m not trying anything,” the lawyer barked. “But now, what about that stenographer who barged in while you were still struggling with Harmsworth—what did she see?”
“How the devil do I know?” Kennijahn groaned. He felt suddenly hopeless. It was the swiftness of it that brought the paralyzing realization of how this thing might be twisted against him He snapped, “Clissold, get over here and shut that girl up, and make her think she saw what we want.”
“Now, don’t get excited,” the lawyer’s voice soothed. “I’m just checking up all the angles. After all, the big thing in your favor is that it’s Harmsworth’s gun.”
“Eh!” said Kennijahn, and his brain seemed to twist crazily. He had a mind’s-eye picture of himself explaining why he had turned his gun over to Harmsworth more than a year before because the coward was an alarmist who was always seeing bandits stalking into the office. It was such a natural thing for a man of Kennijahn’s size and physical confidence to hand over a gun that—that no one would ever believe it. And six months would have to pass before he could get in touch with Drdr. Six months of warding off the rope, six months of—hell.
There were black days when he thought that it couldn’t be done. The trial court reached the point where it denied further stays, and rejected motions based on technicalities. And then the court of first appeal had a small agenda and took his appeal in four days straight within a month of his first conviction. Finally, the supreme court of the United States refused an application for a further appeal on the grounds that new evidence was not being offered. It found, in addition, that the lower courts had handled the trial in exemplary fashion.
The sentence was due to be carried out one month before the end of the six months. With a final, desperate cunning, Kennijahn applied through Clissold for a three-month stay of execution, using the full weight of four hundred thousand dollars in bribes, his entire liquid assets. Not even the governor could see why that much money couldn’t be gotten hold of, somehow, for the party, of course, especially when it was not an attempt to break the sentence. But they were all very moral about it. Three months was too long. The public wouldn’t like three months. They could make it—well, six weeks.
Six weeks it was.

…

In its proper time, the Drdr flashed darkly into his cell. Kennijahn stared at the thing wanly, said finally, wearily, “How could a miscarriage of justice like that happen? What is the matter with the world?”
The creature stood up easily on the shadowed cement floor, its flat face expressionless. “Nothing is the matter. Everything is taking place as fated. Innocent men have been hung before, and afterwards people wonder how it could have happened, how they could have supported the crime. But it was simply the victim’s destiny.” The thing shrugged. “No matter how you plan your wishes, it will always be like that. So have them please, and release me.”
Kennijahn sat for a long, stolid moment, letting that sink in. Abruptly, his head throbbed with reaction, and he was afraid, desperately, horribly, ultimately afraid. He said shakily, “What kind of a hellish universe is this? Why should I be fated to hang? It’s not fair.”
“You don’t understand.” The black shape spoke calmly. “Your death is part of a pattern. No matter what you do, the pattern resumes its shape, new threads covering the places where you have tried to break through. It is all necessary to a cosmic balance of forces.”
Kennijahn swallowed hard, then he scowled. “O. K. If this body’s got to hang, that’s all right with me. I’ve had six month’s to think of wishes, and believe me, I’ve got a good one.” He paused to gather his thoughts, then:
“Listen, can you transfer me, with my thoughts, my memories—me—into the body of Henry Pearsall, the millionaire ?”
“Yes.”
Kennijahn almost slobbered in his joy. His whole body shook with horrendous relief. He gasped at last, triumphantly, “Well, what do you think of it? My destiny is fulfilled. Kennijahn hangs at the appointed hour; and I, in the body of Pearsall, go on.” The red eye fixed on him unwinkingly. “Only one thing is wrong: Pearsall is not destined to hang.”
“But this way he won’t—don’t you see? Pearsall’s body goes on.”
The thing said simply, “This then is your fourth wish?”
It was the quietness of the question that got Kennijahn He thought in a stark dismay: Three wishes gone, and three to go. Three gone. And he had expected to be sitting on top of the world after his first. The fourth wish coming up, and he wasn’t even out of jail yet. Of course, there was that wretched business of a wasted wish. That wouldn’t happen again. Slowly, his mind steadied. Courage, the sheer physical courage that had enabled him to smash his way ruthlessly to the top, came back. Three wishes left, and actually that was good. Surely, with all his faculties about him, and the experience he’d had, he should be able to hold off that damnable destiny for years.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s my fourth wish, but don’t rush me. I want to get everything straight. You know the Henry Pearsall I mean. He lives on Oriole Parkway Drive.”
“I know the one.”
Kennijahn persisted. “The one with that absolutely gorgeous wife; her name is Edith. She’s about twenty-eight. He’s thirty-four and worth about seventeen million. You’ve got that clear?”
The creature looked at him without speaking, and Kennijahn remembered that it had refused once before to answer a question the second time. He said:
“All right, all right, don’t get mad. You can’t blame me for checking up after what’s happened. One last question—” His hard, steel-gray eyes stared straight at the thing. “Have you any faintest idea of what could go wrong with my wish?”
“None. Something will, of course. Don’t know what.” Kennijahn smiled grimly. “I’ll take my chances. Let’s go.”

…

He had arrived home from the office rather late. Even with the memory of the real Henry Pearsall to help him, it was difficult to pick up the threads of another man’s life and work. But he would get it. A matter of time was involved. In the meantime, let people think him a little off par.
“The madam,” the butler had said, “has gone out for dinner. She left this note for you.”
Pearsall-Kennijahn read the note with a pleasant expansiveness. It was full of little affectionate phrases, and ended with:

… darling, going out tonight was a “must”. You know I’d rather be with you, particularly these last ten days since you’ve taken such a renewed interest in your loving but once sadly neglected wife. I feel as if we’re on a second honeymoon. All my heart.

Edith.

Kennijahn folded the note with a tolerant smile, and put it in his pocket. What a life, getting the pure, full-blossomed love of another man’s lovely wife without having to do any preliminary spadework. There had been a little worry in his mind that she would acquire one of those instinctive dislikes for him that you read about in stories. But that fear was past now.
It was while he was eating his dinner that thought of Nina came. He frowned. He’d have to get acquainted with her somehow, perhaps if necessary through his fifth wish. Nina would mourn him, he knew, but not for long. And if she was going to be faithless to his memory, the lucky man might as well be Henry Pearsall. Funny, how the bare thought of Nina got him going.
From the dining room he went into the spacious study, with its hunting lodge, overhead-beam construction, and its shelf on shelf of books. Some day, he would read a few of those books just to see what were the springs that moved the real Pearsall’s being. He settled himself cozily under a reading lamp, picked up the evening paper and glanced idly at the headlines. The two-inch caption that topped the page was about a ship explosion. Underneath, in smaller type was:

BROKER ESCAPES FROM DEATH HOUSE

“Huh!” gasped Pearsall-Kennijahn. And there was such a dizzy feeling all over him that he grasped at the arm of the chair. The wild sensation came that he was on the edge of an abyss. With a titanic effort, he slowed his whirling mind and read on:

William J Kennijahn, former stock broker, sentenced to hang three days from today, made a daring escape from the death house late this afternoon. The ex-broker, who was recently convicted of murdering his partner, Andrew Harmsworth, is physically an enormously strong man, and, while authorities have as yet issued no statement as to the method of escape, it is believed that this strength enabled him to—

It was the sound of a door opening that tore Pearsall-Kennijahn’s gaze from the horrifying and fascinating account. The paper slipped from his grasp, and slid to the floor with a dull thump. It was the queerest, most terrible thing in the world to sit there staring at himself. Pearsall had somehow squeezed the larger body into one of—Pearsall’s—suits. It made a tight fit that looked unnatural.
“And now, you devil from hell,” the familiar bass voice lashed at him, “you’re going to get yours. I don’t know what in Satan’s name you’ve done to me, but you’re going to pay for it.”
Kennijahn opened his lips to scream for help, but the sound shattered to a gulp in his throat as his former two-hundred-pound body smashed at the hundred and sixty pounds of flesh and bone that was now his human form. It wasn’t even a fight. He struggled, breathing hoarsely, and then a fist of sledge-hammer potency connected with his jaw.
When he came to, there was a cruel gag in his mouth, and his hands were bound behind his back with cords so tight that he winced from the cutting pain. And then he saw what his captor was doing.
The man was chuckling under his breath; an inhuman sound. He had already flung the rope over one of the overhead beams, with the dangling noose neatly tied. Still chuckling, he came to the bound man.
“We mustn’t waste any time,” he giggled. “We’ll just fit your head into the rope, and then I’ll do the pulling. Come, come, now—no shrinking. Fixed it up myself while I was waiting for you. And I know your neck size. Fifteen inches, isn’t it? It’ll be a little tighter than that, actually, in the final issue, but—”
Kennijahn was thinking so hard, so piercingly of Drdr that, in addition to all his other pains, his head began to ache agonizingly from the appalling effort. But the seconds passed, and there was no Drdr. He thought despairingly: The gag, the damnable gag was preventing him from calling the creature.

…

He was under the rope when it happened. There was blackness, and then he was lying on his back. It took a long moment to grasp that he was stretched out on the hard bunk of a prison cell.
He lay there, and gradually grew conscious of an incongruous fact—the fact that he was sighing with relief at being in the death cell again. He was trembling. His fingers shook as he took a package of cigarettes out of his pocket and went to the “foolproof” electric lighter on the wall. The cigarette nearly fell to the floor. Abruptly, his knees felt so weak that he had to sit down. The creature said from the corner:
“I saved you just in time. It is important to me that you have all your wishes, so that I may return to my abode.”
So that was it. For its own selfish reasons, the Drdr had pulled him out of a nasty mess. Well, the reason didn’t matter. Here he was, four wishes gone, and his destiny still to beat. Destiny. The ague came back. For he believed. His body shook, and his face felt hot and feverish. He believed. The whole, hellish thing was true. He was born to be hanged, and each time now, each wish that had seemed so sure-fire, so normally bound to produce the desired results, had brought him closer to his black doom. The time for normal wishes was past.
“Look,” he said breathlessly, “isn’t there anybody who has ever escaped their destiny? Are there no exceptions? Does the pattern always run true?” He saw that the creature was hesitating, its eyes narrowed. With a roar, Kennijahn clutched at the straw.
“There is something. Tell me. Quick!”
“There are always exceptions,” came the slow answer. “It is not a good thing to talk about the failures, or even call them failures. Sooner or later, they fulfill their destiny. It is only a matter of time.”
“A matter of time,” Kennijahn shouted. “You fool, what do you think I’m fighting for? Time, time—anything to hold off the rope. What kind of people are these exceptions?”
“Usually wealthy men who have slid off into some bypath. Or who accidentally received money as the result of some involved plan that was not originally intended to include them.”
“Oh!” Kennijahn sat intent. His mind clenched; his voice sounded unnormal in his ears, as he said finally, “Is there any young, reasonably good-looking, wealthy man among them whose destiny is to die by hanging?”
“There is.”
Kennijahn sagged, so great was the reaction. He lay there on the bunk, breathing heavily, the black doubts raging through his mind. Slowly, he roused himself, and quavered:
“After all, I’ve still got wishes five and six. If anything should go wrong—but I can see now, this is the best bet: Taking the body of a man who is destined to hang but who has been missed in the shuffle. There won’t be any escaping from jail for him, the way Pearsall did.”
Thought of Pearsall sent a cold shiver down his spine. Then a wave of anger came. He snarled, “I’ve a good mind to wait until the night before the hanging, and try that wish again. After all, he couldn’t escape a second time.” Something in the creature’s gaze made him say sharply, “Or can he?”
The thing shrugged, said, “A man not fated to hang will not hang. Has it occurred to you to wonder how he succeeded in escaping from his cell in the first place?”
“What do you mean?”
“For a while he was simply stunned. Then he grew desperate and made his attempt—and no bars could hold him If they had tried to hang him, the rope would have slipped from his neck. It has happened, you know, several times.”
Kennijahn shuddered. He managed finally, “You know what I want. So put me into that body before the Fates grow impatient and send a mob to lynch me.”

…

There was a blinding, choking, terrible pain. A long moment of that sustained, racking agony, and then came the most awful realization that had ever pierced his brain: He was hanging by his neck.
He couldn’t see, he couldn’t breathe. Dimly, in a blaze of horror, he was conscious that his hands were tied behind him; and there was a stark memory, the other man’s memory, of a determination that life was not worth living, and that suicide was the answer.
Drdr had put him in the body of a man in the act of committing suicide by hanging.
Drdr, you scum, you betrayer, what about the sixth wish? Get hands—free hands. Man must have tied his own hands—couldn’t do that perfectly.
His hands were free for long seconds before realization came that they were fumbling at the rope around his throat, fighting for easement. With a final, all-out effort, he grabbed the rope above his head, and hoisted himself like a man chinning a bar. The deadly, cutting, choking horror on his neck relaxed.
Desperately, then, he clung there, conscious of the utter physical weakness of this body, the inability of this man’s muscles to maintain for any time his present position. But after a moment his vision came blurrily back. He saw distortedly a great room full of packing cases and, through a window, the top of a tree. An attic. He was in the attic of the millionaire would-be-suicide’s home. His voice came back. It was a harsh, raspy voice that kept catching, as if hooks were snagging it. But he managed to scream:
“Drdr!”
The sound of that scratchy voice echoed hollowly as he repeated the name shrilly; and then, there was the black, the loathsome, the treacherous beast. The demonlike thing stood on the floor below him and looked curiously up at him from its enormous red eye.
“Get me down from here,” Kennijahn croaked. “Get me down safely. My … sixth … wish. Hurry, hurry. .. , I can’t hold on much longer; and I haven’t … the strength … to climb up farther and … untie the rope. I—”
The enormous casualness of the other’s manner struck him momentarily dumb. Then he raged:
“Hurry … my sixth wish. I tell you, you’ve got to … you can’t get out of it. You said so yourself.”
The little monster stared up at him with unblinking eye. “You’ve had your sixth wish,” it said coolly. “This is your sixth wish.”
Kennijahn had the curious feeling that his nerves were shattering into a million pieces. There was something in the manner of the creature, a casual positivity that—
“Whaddaya mean?” he gasped. “You said I had two more. You said—”
“If you will remember,” came the precise reply, “it was you who said that you had two more. And as you did not actually ask if it were so, naturally I was not compelled to volunteer the information.
“Where you went astray was in assuming that I only answered wishes that were spoken. When I released you from Henry Peersall’s body, it was in response to the strongest wish that had ever been in your mind, but it was a thought-wish. I am not accountable for your assumptions, though I must satisfy you that I have fulfilled all your wishes. This is now done, and I am free.”
He whisked out of sight; and Kennijahn clung there with a queer, fascinated awareness that he could hold on for only seconds longer.

William J. Kennijahn was alone with his destiny.

The End

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Law 17 from The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene; Keep others in suspended terror: cultivate an air of unpredictability (Full Text)

I just cannot help but see this as the primary driver behind the Donald Trump Presidency from 2017 through 2020. Indeed, I think that (aside from his hard-core, die-hard, followers) most people want a (much desired) break from the endless series of unpredictable tweets, policy directions, and just general leadership pronouncements. It doesn’t matter if it is banning cat videos on Tiktok, or firing the National Defense council, Donald Trump has been a one-man wrecking-ball. Just look at the shambles of international global trade in his wake.

As Trump so succinctly summarized it himself during a foreign policy speech in April 2016: “We have to be unpredictable.” Call it a “doctrine of unpredictability”, if you like.

-Donald Trump's doctrine of unpredictability has the world ...

Indeed. You can see this technique in use all the time, but typically by the truly crafty and truly evil.

First, to understand the 48 laws of power, you must know two key ideas

1. you CAN NOT escape the power game. thinking you can "not participate" is as foolish as thinking that you could somehow escape gravity or make the sun stand still. Robert Greene explains why in the intro with some excellent examples

2. the 48 laws of power are neither good nor evil; they are just LAWS. If someone pushed a man off a cliff would you blame gravity for for his demise? This is the mindset you must adopt in order to learn a lot from this book.

Things I Liked

-NEW PARADIGM
after reading the 48 laws, you will never see the world the same way again. once you understand some of these laws you will see many underlying currents and motives you did not see before.

-INCREASES POWER
one of the main reasons to buy the book. you wil become exponentially more powerful by knowing and understanding these laws

-CRYSTAL CLEAR
every law is clearly outlined with "transgression" of the law, "observance" of the law, keys to power, and a "reversal"

-GREAT STORIES
the 48 laws are packed with mind-blowing and sometimes humorous stories of people in history practicing these laws. this is helpful as some of the concepts are quite abstract.

What I didn't like

-RISKY
an old proverb says " A man who plays with snakes will eventually be bitten". If you begin to use the 48 Laws improperly, you could get yourself in some dangerous situations, lose friends, piss off a lot a people, and destroy relationships

-REQUIRES DISCERNMENT
if you you are looking for a highly concrete book that the says "do xyz and you will accomplish vyx" look elsewhere. the Laws require good judgement and and and prospecting nature to practice and apply

-NOT FOR EVERYONE
If you are aghast at the idea of manipulation and deceit then read with caution.

OVERALL: If you want to have more power or a better understanding of why different situations turn out the the way they do, you should definitely read the 48 laws of power by Robert Greene. If you want to be naive, easily manipulated, weak, you should ignore this book and go watch some netfilx.

-J.S. Bach

LAW 17

KEEP OTHERS IN SUSPENDED TERROR: CULTIVATE AN AIR OF UNPREDICTABILITY

JUDGMENT

Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize.

OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW

In May of 1972, chess champion Boris Spassky anxiously awaited his rival Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik, Iceland. The two men had been scheduled to meet for the World Championship of Chess, but Fischer had not arrived on time and the match was on hold. Fischer had problems with the size of the prize money, problems with the way the money was to be distributed, problems with the logistics of holding the match in Iceland. He might back out at any moment.

Spassky tried to be patient. His Russian bosses felt that Fischer was humiliating him and told him to walk away, but Spassky wanted this match. He knew he could destroy Fischer, and nothing was going to spoil the greatest victory of his career. “So it seems that all our work may come to nothing,” Spassky told a comrade. “But what can we do? It is Bobby’s move. If he comes, we play. If he does not come, we do not play. A man who is willing to commit suicide has the initiative.”

Fischer finally arrived in Reykjavik, but the problems, and the threat of cancellation, continued. He disliked the hall where the match was to be fought, he criticized the lighting, he complained about the noise of the cameras, he even hated the chairs in which he and Spassky were to sit. Now the Soviet Union took the initiative and threatened to withdraw their man.

The bluff apparently worked: After all the weeks of waiting, the endless and infuriating negotiations, Fischer agreed to play. Everyone was relieved, no one more than Spassky. But on the day of the official introductions, Fischer arrived very late, and on the day when the “Match of the Century” was to begin, he was late again. This time, however, the consequences would be dire: If he showed up too late he would forfeit the first game. What was going on? Was he playing some sort of mind game? Or was Bobby Fischer perhaps afraid of Boris Spassky? It seemed to the assembled grand masters, and to Spassky, that this young kid from Brooklyn had a terrible case of the jitters. At 5:09 Fischer showed up, exactly one minute before the match was to be canceled.

The first game of a chess tournament is critical, since it sets the tone for the months to come. It is often a slow and quiet struggle, with the two players preparing themselves for the war and trying to read each other’s strategies. This game was different. Fischer made a terrible move early on, perhaps the worst of his career, and when Spassky had him on the ropes, he seemed to give up. Yet Spassky knew that Fischer never gave up. Even when facing checkmate, he fought to the bitter end, wearing the opponent down. This time, though, he seemed resigned. Then suddenly he broke out a bold move that put the room in a buzz. The move shocked Spassky, but he recovered and managed to win the game. But no one could figure out what Fischer was up to. Had he lost deliberately? Or was he rattled? Unsettled? Even, as some thought, insane?

After his defeat in the first game, Fischer complained all the more loudly about the room, the cameras, and everything else. He also failed to show up on time for the second game. This time the organizers had had enough: He was given a forfeit. Now he was down two games to none, a position from which no one had ever come back to win a chess championship. Fischer was clearly unhinged. Yet in the third game, as all those who witnessed it remember, he had a ferocious look in his eye, a look that clearly bothered Spassky. And despite the hole he had dug for himself, he seemed supremely confident. He did make what appeared to be another blunder, as he had in the first game—but his cocky air made Spassky smell a trap. Yet despite the Russian’s suspicions, he could not figure out the trap, and before he knew it Fischer had checkmated him. In fact Fischer’s unorthodox tactics had completely unnerved his opponent. At the end of the game, Fischer leaped up and rushed out, yelling to his confederates as he smashed a fist into his palm, “I’m crushing him with brute force!”

In the next games Fischer pulled moves that no one had seen from him before, moves that were not his style. Now Spassky started to make blunders. After losing the sixth game, he started to cry. One grand master said, “After this, Spassky’s got to ask himself if it’s safe to go back to Russia.” After the eighth game Spassky decided he knew what was happening: Bobby Fischer was hypnotizing him. He decided not to look Fischer in the eye; he lost anyway.

After the fourteenth game he called a staff conference and announced, “An attempt is being made to control my mind.” He wondered whether the orange juice they drank at the chess table could have been drugged. Maybe chemicals were being blown into the air. Finally Spassky went public, accusing the Fischer team of putting something in the chairs that was altering Spassky’s mind. The KGB went on alert: Boris Spassky was embarrassing the Soviet Union!

The chairs were taken apart and X-rayed. A chemist found nothing unusual in them. The only things anyone found anywhere, in fact, were two dead flies in a lighting fixture. Spassky began to complain of hallucinations. He tried to keep playing, but his mind was unraveling. He could not go on. On September 2, he resigned. Although still relatively young, he never recovered from this defeat.

Interpretation

In previous games between Fischer and Spassky, Fischer had not fared well. Spassky had an uncanny ability to read his opponent’s strategy and use it against him. Adaptable and patient, he would build attacks that would defeat not in seven moves but in seventy. He defeated Fischer every time they played because he saw much further ahead, and because he was a brilliant psychologist who never lost control. One master said, “He doesn’t just look for the best move. He looks for the move that will disturb the man he is playing.”

Fischer, however, finally understood that this was one of the keys to Spassky’s success: He played on your predictability, defeated you at your own game. Everything Fischer did for the championship match was an attempt to put the initiative on his side and to keep Spassky off-balance. Clearly the endless waiting had an effect on Spassky’s psyche. Most powerful of all, though, were Fischer’s deliberate blunders and his appearance of having no clear strategy. In fact, he was doing everything he could to scramble his old patterns, even if it meant losing the first match and forfeiting the second.

Spassky was known for his sangfroid and levelheadedness, but for the first time in his life he could not figure out his opponent. He slowly melted down, until at the end he was the one who seemed insane.

Chess contains the concentrated essence of life: First, because to win you have to be supremely patient and farseeing; and second, because the game

is built on patterns, whole sequences of moves that have been played before and will be played again, with slight alterations, in any one match. Your opponent analyzes the patterns you are playing and uses them to try to foresee your moves. Allowing him nothing predictable to base his strategy on gives you a big advantage. In chess as in life, when people cannot figure out what you are doing, they are kept in a state of terror—waiting, uncertain, confused.

Life at court is a serious, melancholy game of chess, which requires us to draw up our pieces and batteries, form a plan, pursue it, parry that of our adversary. Sometimes, however, it is better to take risks and play the most capricious, unpredictable move. 

-Jean de La Bruyère, 1645-1696

KEYS TO POWER

Nothing is more terrifying than the sudden and unpredictable. That is why we are so frightened by earthquakes and tornadoes: We do not know when they will strike. After one has occurred, we wait in terror for the next one. To a lesser degree, this is the effect that unpredictable human behavior has on us.

Animals behave in set patterns, which is why we are able to hunt and kill them. Only man has the capacity to consciously alter his behavior, to improvise and overcome the weight of routine and habit. Yet most men do not realize this power. They prefer the comforts of routine, of giving in to the animal nature that has them repeating the same compulsive actions time and time again.

They do this because it requires no effort, and because they mistakenly believé that if they do not unsettle others, they will be left alone.

Understand: A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initiative on his side. You sometimes need to strike without warning, to make others tremble when they least expect it. It is a device that the powerful have used for centuries.

Filippo Maria, the last of the Visconti dukes of Milan in fifteenth-century Italy, consciously did the opposite of what everyone expected of him. For instance, he might suddenly shower a courtier with attention, and then, once the man had come to expect a promotion to higher office, would suddenly start treating him with the utmost disdain. Confused, the man might leave the court, when the duke would suddenly recall him and start treating him well again. Doubly confused, the courtier would wonder whether his assumption that he would be promoted had become obvious, and offensive, to the duke, and would start to behave as if he no longer expected such honor. The duke would rebuke him for his lack of ambition and would send him away.

The secret of dealing with Filippo was simple: Do not presume to know what he wants. Do not try to guess what will please him. Never inject your will; just surrender to his will. Then wait to see what happens. Amidst the confusion and uncertainty he created, the duke ruled supreme, unchallenged and at peace.

Unpredictability is most often the tactic of the master, but the underdog too can use it to great effect. If you find yourself outnumbered or cornered, throw in a series of unpredictable moves. Your enemies will be so confused that they will pull back or make a tactical blunder.

In the spring of 1862, during the American Civil War, General Stonewall Jackson and a force of 4,600 Confederate soldiers were tormenting the larger Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley. Meanwhile, not far away, General George Brinton McClellan, heading a force of 90,000 Union soldiers, was marching south from Washington, D.C., to lay siege to Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital. As the weeks of the campaign went by, Jackson repeatedly led his soldiers out of the Shenandoah Valley, then back to it.

His movements made no sense. Was he preparing to help defend Richmond? Was he marching on Washington, now that McClellan’s absence had left it unprotected? Was he heading north to wreak havoc up there? Why was his small force moving in circles?

Jackson’s inexplicable moves made the Union generals delay the march on Richmond as they waited to figure out what he was up to. Meanwhile, the South was able to pour reinforcements into the town. A battle that could have crushed the Confederacy turned into a stalemate. Jackson used this tactic time and again when facing numerically superior forces. “Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible,” he said, “… such tactics will win every time and a small army may thus destroy a large one.”

This law applies not only to war but to everyday situations. People are always trying to read the motives behind your actions and to use your predictability against you. Throw in a completely inexplicable move and you put them on the defensive. Because they do not understand you, they are unnerved, and in such a state you can easily intimidate them.

Pablo Picasso once remarked,

“The best calculation is the absence of calculation. Once you have attained a certain level of recognition, others generally figure that when you do something, it’s for an intelligent reason. So it’s really foolish to plot out your movements too carefully in advance. You’re better off acting capriciously.”

For a while, Picasso worked with the art dealer Paul Rosenberg. At first he allowed him a fair amount of latitude in handling his paintings, then one day, for no apparent reason, he told the man he would no longer give him any work to sell. As Picasso explained, “Rosenberg would spend the next forty-eight hours trying to figure out why. Was I reserving things for some other dealer? I’d go on working and sleeping and Rosenberg would spend his time figuring. In two days he’d come back, nerves jangled, anxious, saying, ‘After all, dear friend, you wouldn’t turn me down if I offered you this much [naming a substantially higher figure] for those paintings rather than the price I’ve been accustomed to paying you, would you?”’

Unpredictability is not only a weapon of terror: Scrambling your patterns on a day-to-day basis will cause a stir around you and stimulate interest. People will talk about you, ascribe motives and explanations that have nothing to do with the truth, but that keep you constantly in their minds. In the end, the more capricious you appear, the more respect you will garner. Only the terminally subordinate act in a predictable manner.

Image: The Cyclone. A wind that cannot be fore seen. Sudden shifts in the barometer, in explicable changes in direction and velocity. There is no defense: A cyclone sows terror and confusion.

Authority: The enlightened ruler is so mysterious that he seems to dwell nowhere, so inexplicable that no one can seek him. He reposes in nonaction above, and his ministers tremble below. (Han-fei-tzu, Chinese philosopher, third century B.C.)

REVERSAL

Sometimes predictability can work in your favor: By creating a pattern for people to be familiar and comfortable with, you can lull them to sleep. They have prepared everything according to their preconceived notions about you. You can use this in several ways:

First, it sets up a smoke screen, a comfortable front behind which you can carry on deceptive actions.

Second, it allows you on rare occasions to do something completely against the pattern, unsettling your opponent so deeply he will fall to the ground without being pushed.

In 1974 Muhammad Ali and George Foreman were scheduled to fight for the world heavyweight boxing championship. Everyone knew what would happen: Big George Foreman would try to land a knockout punch while Ali would dance around him, wearing him out. That was Ali’s way of fighting, his pattern, and he had not changed it in more than ten years.

But in this case it seemed to give Foreman the advantage: He had a devastating punch, and if he waited, sooner or later Ali would have to come to him. Ali, the master strategist, had other plans: In press conferences before the big fight, he said he was going to change his style and punch it out with Foreman.

No one, least of all Foreman, believed this for a second. That plan would be suicide on Ali’s part; he was playing the comedian, as usual. Then, before the fight, Ali’s trainer loosened the ropes around the ring, something a trainer would do if his boxer were intending to slug it out. But no one believed this ploy; it had to be a setup.

To everyone’s amazement, Ali did exactly what he had said he would do. As Foreman waited for him to dance around, Ali went right up to him and slugged it out. He completely upset his opponent’s strategy. At a loss, Foreman ended up wearing himself out, not by chasing Ali but by throwing punches wildly, and taking more and more counterpunches. Finally, Ali landed a dramatic right cross that knocked out Foreman.

The habit of assuming that a person’s behavior will fit its previous patterns is so strong that not even Ali’s announcement of a strategy change was enough to upset it. Foreman walked into a trap—the trap he had been told to expect.

A warning: Unpredictability can work against you sometimes, especially if you are in a subordinate position. There are times when it is better to let people feel comfortable and settled around you than to disturb them. Too much unpredictability will be seen as a sign of indecisiveness, or even of some more serious psychic problem. Patterns are powerful, and you can terrify people by disrupting them. Such power should only be used judiciously.

Conclusion

I can offer all kinds of examples on the unpredictability of President Trump. Is this strategic or the actions of a mad man. Only you can decide.

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The great danger of electronic books. Heed this warning.

One of the “givens” that I pretty much have come to accept as normal is the belief that if you bought something, you owned it. If you bought a pair of shoes, it was yours and you could do what ever you wanted with it. If you bought a pack of cigarettes, you could smoke them or throw them away. It was your possession and you could do what you wanted with it. Unfortunately, this is no longer true in the United States.

It all began with housing. The days of full-ownership of a house in America are long, long over. And I am not talking about a mortgage either. I am talking about taxes, and regulations, and fees and requirements. If you have to ask permission, then you don’t own it. If you have to pay more money on it, you don’t own it. If someone can change it or alter it without your permission you don’t own it.

Ownership is the bedrock of freedom.

Unfortunately it no longer exists in the United States.

And what is much sadder is that all Americans don’t realize this loss; this loss in the ability to own things, and to use them as you feel fit. They see it as normal. “Of course, you need to ask the local Home Owners Association permission to remodel your house.” “Of course, you cannot smoke cigarettes in a restaurant, or on the street or in a park…” “Of course, you need to pay the upgrade fee on your software program. You don’t really own it, don’t you know.”

This encroachment is sickening to me.

People! If you cannot own things, you are not free. Do you know who else cannot own things?

Slaves.

That’s who.

Back in the day, I had a library of books. No, I am not exaggerating. I had my walls plastered floor to ceiling with books, and my entire house was cluttered with my tomes and books. I loved those things, and I lost them. This story of how they came to disappear is noteworthy in-itself, but, let’s not get sidetracked. With the advent of computerized software, you can have entire libraries that can fit inside an object no bigger than the palm of your hand. Great huh?

Maybe not so.

I once had a iPod with perhaps 10,000 songs on it. I had collected music from all over the internet, mostly “Limewire”, but I also used other services. Then one day, the system reset for a software update. It erased my entire collection! Why? Why in God’s name did this happen?

I will tell you why.

I did not buy the songs from iTunes. (Which is the monopoly that Apple has constructed around it’s iPod platform.)

Was the iPod my property?

Apparently not.

Now the purist might say that I needed to read the fine print in my purchaser’s agreement. And to that I must counter… with this…

You do not own anything that requires that you read “fine print” that defines how you must use that object.

Ah. Let that sink in.

Remember that personal ownership is a fundamental pillar of freedom. If you cannot own things, free and clear, you are just renting them on loan.

And it’s not just me speaking. The United States government and the courts have reinforced this belief. You don’t own much of anything. In fact, it is even against the law to collect rainwater! I mean there is something seriously wrong if you cannot own the rain that falls on you from the skies above.

Let’s talk about books.

Paper Books Can’t Be Shut Off from Afar

“The idea that the books I buy can be relegated to some kind of fucking software license is the most grotesque and awful thing I can imagine,” Doctorow said.

This is a reprint of the great article titled “Paper Books Can’t Be Shut Off from Afar”. Published on Jun 30, 2019 12:00PM EDT Maria Bustillos. All credit to the author.

Private ownership—in particular the private ownership of books, software, music and other cultural information—is the linchpin of a free society. Having many copies of works of art, music and literature distributed widely (e.g., many copies of the same book among many private owners, or many copies of the same audio files, torrents or blockchain ledger entries on many private computers) protects a culture against corruption and censorship. Decentralization strategies like these help to preserve press freedom, and individual freedom. The widespread private ownership of cultural artifacts guarantees civil liberties, and draws people into their culture immanently, persistently, giving it life and power.

Cory Doctorow’s comment on Friday at BoingBoing regarding private ownership of books is well worth reading; he wrote it because Microsoft is shutting down its e-books service, and all the DRM books people bought from them will thus vanish into thin air. Microsoft will provide refunds to those affected, but that isn’t remotely the point. The point is that all their users’ books are to be shut off with a single poof! on Microsoft’s say-so. That is a button that nobody, no corporation and no government agency, should be ever permitted to have.

“The idea that the books I buy can be relegated to some kind of fucking software license is the most grotesque and awful thing I can imagine,” Doctorow said.

At this very moment, governments are forbidding millions of people, Chinese people, Cubans, Belarusians and Egyptians and Hungarians and many, many others all over this world, from reading whatever they want.

So if there is to be a fear of the increasing adoption of e-books such as those offered by Microsoft, and to a far greater degree, Amazon, that’s by far the scariest thing about it. Because if you were to keep all your books in a remotely controlled place, some villain really could come along one day and pretty much flip the switch and take them all away — and not just yours but everyone’s, all at once. What if we had some species of Trump deciding to take action against the despicable, dangerous pointy-heads he is forever railing against?

Boom! Nothing left to read but The Art of the Deal.

I don’t intend on shutting up about this ever, and I’m sure Doctorow won’t either, bless him.

In 2010, techno-utopianism was in full swing, with e.g. Nick Negroponte going around saying that physical books would be mass-produced for only maybe another five years (yeah, sorry guy). His reasoning seems to have had something to do with the fact that books are hard to send to Africa.

Anyway my husband gave me a Kindle for my birthday that year, and I loved it a lot. Thousands and thousands of books fit on this pretty, if potentially sinister, little machine. I’d just go over to Project Gutenberg and vacuum stuff up every which way, because I have no literary discernment whatsoever and will gladly spend the afternoon reading Agatha Christie or really, literally almost anything.

Project Gutenberg is now up to more than 59,500 free e-books, all out of copyright and so classics, mostly. And no need to feel the least bit guilty as you might even at a thrift shop, where whatever you buy, it’s going to take up room on bookshelves that you know you don’t have; these books took up no extra room at all.

I bet you will be surprised to hear when Project Gutenberg first started. 1971 (!) is the true answer, and could they ever destroy every Final Jeopardy contestant with that one, I bet.

Its founder, Michael Hart, was a most unusual and interesting man. The ultimate anti-corporatist. Like Yoda, Mr. Hart doesn’t appear to have possessed much glamour or power on the outside, but he was brimming with these and other virtues on the inside.

He didn’t care two pins about money, wouldn’t take a salary for years and years, and acquired the few bits of stuff he seemed to need at garage sales.

In the 1970s, nobody knew that computers would eventually be used for the mass storage of culture. It hadn’t occurred to anyone yet that the computer would be useful for anything aside from just computation. It was so shockingly, incredibly good at that! There was such a lot of computation that needed doing, so computation was first in line.

Now it is clear as day that whoever controls computer storage will effectively control the media commons.

There are a lot of champions in this fight, but Michael Hart saw it all coming about half a century ago and started typing his fool head off, dozens and dozens of whole books, long before OCR was a gleam in a programmer’s eye.

Hart did more to secure the future of the public domain than anyone else in the world, I believe. Project Gutenberg’s widely distributed books cannot be taken away—and when they’re downloaded and stored on private devices and media, it’s like insurance for Western Civ.

My first few times on Project Gutenberg I downloaded a lot of rare early Wodehouse (highly recommended: The Swoop! or, How Clarence Saved England) and also a lot of Thackeray, Gibbon, pretty much all of Mrs. Gaskell and, just by accident, Émile Gaboriau’s La Vie Infernale — the fruitiest, most marvelous 19th-c. French melodrama (in two parts: The Count’s Millions and Baron Trigault’s Vengeance. I just love those.) Plus Shakespeare and the King James Bible and that sort of stuff.

I am no fan of Amazon, and even back then I resisted spending money there, but I did buy an e-book copy of Infinite Jest, which is far and away my favorite modern novel.

A few days later, I was having a little dispute with my husband over whether or not Wallace misuses the word “ilk” in that book, which with the Kindle’s search feature took about twenty seconds to settle (A: not really; the solecism appears just once, in the quoted speech of Madame Psychosis.)

It’s all thrillingly searchable, and browsable, plus once you get a book on your Kindle (or Nook, or equiv.) you can highlight things and also make your own notes. By now scholars, researchers, historians and journalists will want both a searchable ebook copy and a paper copy, I would think, of anything they’re really interested in.

I also learned that having an e-reader meant that one might quite easily wind up buying more books than before, if anything, because the getting of books was on one’s mind more.

So all that is the upside of owning e-books.

But my Fahrenheit-451-paranoia was fanned into a giant flaming ball of fear-napalm when I looked into the personal ownership of the files and books on my own Kindle. And things have only gotten a lot worse since then.

Almost exactly ten years ago, you may remember, Amazon came stealthily along and deleted e-copies of 1984 (no seriously, they did) and Animal Farm from people’s Kindles — copies they’d already paid for and downloaded — because it turned out that there was a rights problem with the e-publisher.

Jeff Bezos wound up apologizing all over himself and taking it all back and promising never to do that ever again, but the fact remains that Amazon has some kind of access to your Kindle files and can literally remove them, if they feel like it, which is downright creepy, and if it were your computer you would not like it one little bit.

Having learned this, I went along and had a closer look at the then-current Kindle License Agreement.

There was some simply petrifying stuff on there. For starters, then as now, you don’t “own” Kindle books, you’re basically renting them. (“Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider.”)

Amazon’s current terms of use now specify explicitly that they can look over your shoulder while you read. Check this out!

Information Provided to Amazon. The Kindle Application will provide Amazon with information about use of your Kindle Application and its interaction with Kindle Content and the Service (such as last page read, content archiving, available memory, up-time, log files, and signal strength).

They can change the software on you whenever they like, or just shut it down completely, without so much as a by your leave:

Changes to Service; Amendments. We may change, suspend, or discontinue the Service, in whole or in part, including adding or removing Subscription Content from a Service, at any time without notice.

That is how a totalitarian state might go about confiscating books, if they wanted to. There is nothing in this agreement to stop Amazon from modifying the Kindle software to make it impossible for you to read any of your own files on the device.

Such a step is not forbidden to Amazon by this agreement; they are under no apparent obligation to protect any data you might be storing. That’s not to say that there aren’t laws, at least in some states, that might allow you to sue for damages; I don’t know. I’m just saying, this agreement doesn’t require Amazon to protect your data.

A bad government could just grab the controls from them and have at it.

Changes to Service; Amendments.We may change, suspend, or discontinue the Service, in whole or in part, including adding or removing Subscription Content from a Service, at any time without notice. We may amend any of this Agreement’s terms at our sole discretion by posting the revised terms on the Amazon.com website.

Or they might decide to shut just your account down:

Termination. Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Service, and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service without refund of any fees.

Keep in mind these are your books that you bought or collected. Can you imagine a bookseller or publisher asserting rights over the contents of your bookshelves in your house? That’s basically what we’re talking about, here.

After reading all this back in 2010, I rang the (excellent, and very polite) Kindle customer service up to learn more, especially about privacy issues. One thing I wanted to know was exactly how much access Amazon had to my private, personal Kindle files (such as .txt and .pdf files that I’d made myself.) But after being bumped up through a couple of layers of supervisors, I didn’t get very clear answers. For instance, on the question of Amazon’s remote access to my personal stuff. “We don’t have access to your files,” I was first told. But can you see my personal files? And if you wanted to delete my personal files, as was done with the Orwell books, could you do it?

“We don’t do that.”

Eight or nine years down the road, we can be pretty sure that if a tech behemoth suddenly feels like doing something horrible, they just will do it. Please buy paper books.

A portion of this piece appeared in somewhat different form in 2010 at The Awl.

Conclusion

I used to have an account on Tumblr. I enjoyed it for the strange and beautiful pictures that I would collect there, and when people started to use it to distribute some high quality porn, I collected those images as well. I really liked that webpage and social network.

Then it was bought up or sold to Yahoo!. Every assurance was made that promised that nothing would ever change and that the private collections of pictures would remain intact.

Then came the war on porn. Yahoo! suddenly, yes after saying that they wouldn’t, decided to wholesale delete images, accounts, data and histories. And all my lovely photos about America in the 1930’s, pictures of military conflicts, fantastic and unusual works of art, and yes my on-line porn collection was vaporized in a nanosecond.

Foolish me.

I believed that when a company promised to do something that they would at least try to keep their word.

Three years ago, was my twenty year anniversary of my membership on the Free Republic website. Over the twenty years that I was a member I was one of the most prolific posters with over 10,000 articles that I had posted (and which readied me for the role that this Metallicman venue provides). And then, one of my articles did not meet the desires of one of their censors, and without notice, and any kind of appreciation they deleted my entire account. Jim Robinson probably didn’t have any idea that they did it. But there it was. All my FR contacts, my notes, my articles (no backups either) and my opinions and comments, all deleted.

Poof.

Gone.

Look. I get it. I’m a “big boy”. I should have known better than to put my trust and faith in others. I should have made complete hard-paper backups, and had electronic versions in portable storage media. I was naive.

And when I was “retired” and saw what happened to my life, my possessions and my histories, I saw that I was a “big nothing”. I only existed at the pleasure of others. I only lived in whatever lifestyle that I could scrounge up at the pleasure of others, and what I owned, down to my underwear was all at the mercy of what others might decide to do.

The only way to change this course that the United States is on is to terminate it’s existence catastrophically. It needs to be sudden, and abrupt and a replacement government needs to take it’s place. This sounds so awful, but it need not be.

I advocate that the Federal government be abolished. And the individual states regain their original roles, and maintain their original existence as it was initially intended prior to 1776.

We can let the individual citizens of any given state decide what limits that they want to place on the ownership of property. Not those in California, or Washington DC. And people would no longer be citizens of the United States of America, but would be the sovereign citizen of Pennsylvania, or of Maryland, or of Colorado, or of Wyoming.

The sovereign citizen movement is a loose grouping of American litigants, commentators, tax protesters, and financial-scheme promoters. 

Self-described "sovereign citizens" see themselves as answerable only to their particular interpretations of the common law and as not subject to any government statutes or proceedings. 

In the United States, they do not recognize U.S. currency and maintain that they are "free of any legal constraints". They especially reject most forms of taxation as illegitimate. 

Participants in the movement argue this concept in opposition to the idea of "federal citizens", who, they say, have unknowingly forfeited their rights by accepting some aspect of federal law. The doctrines of the movement resemble those of the freemen on the land movement more commonly found in the Commonwealth, such as Australia and Canada.

-Wikipedia

So says Wikipedia.

For now.

Then they will arbitrarily change it yet again.

But, you know, it’s so easy to be misunderstood. And for me, it’s better not to “fight city hall”, or “beat a dead horse”. You live life to the best of your ability, and if you find that you are not able to live life to your satisfaction then you “move to greener pastures”.

Which is what I did.

I live in China, and I do own my houses. I don’t rent them. I don’t have mortgages on them. I never pay taxes on them, and I am not subject to any rules or regulations regarding them. Nor do I need to ask permission to renovate them.

That is what freedom is.

Stop.

Take a realistic appraisal of what you really own. Do not include anything that requires payments, fees, regulations that you must abide by, or that is subject to inspections, or random investigations. If you are an American you will discover that you actually own very little.

You own, functionally, just about the same as what a Roman slave would own.

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Law 32 (full text) Play to peoples fantasies from the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

Or, in other words, tell people what they want to hear.

Indeed, the greatest and most effective propaganda is that which we WANT to believe.

Which pretty much explains the United States anti-China propaganda spewing forth today from the Trump / Pompeo administration…

America is great. China is a shit-hole.
America can invent. China only copies.
America has freedom. China is enslaved.
America is a shining city on a hill. China is a filthy wet market.

And when you go to another nation, if you say… “well, we do things better than you do.” And “you don’t know how to do things right“. If you constantly make fun of their laws, their food, their styles or the way they do business…

You will not be liked. You will be classified as the “Ugly American” and shunned.

But…

Politics aside, this applies everywhere.

Consider dating websites like match.com. The most popular profiles are those that do not say too much. That instead provide some areas open to interpretation, where the interested person would be able to “fill in the blanks” and make assumptions as to whom you are and what is so desirable about you.

The key is always to play upon people’s desires…

LAW 32

PLAY TO PEOPLE’S FANTASIES

JUDGMENT

The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant.

Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes from disenchantment.

Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them.

There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.

THE FUNERAL OF THE LIONESS

The lion having suddenly lost his queen, every one hastened to show allegiance to the monarch, by offering consolation.

These compliments, alas, served but to increase the widower’s affliction.

Due notice was given throughout the kingdom that the funeral would be performed at a certain time and place; the lion’s officers were ordered to be in attendance, to regulate the ceremony, and place the company according to their respective rank.

One may well judge no one absented himself.

The monarch gave way to his grief, and the whole cave, lions having no other temples, resounded with his cries. After his example, all the courtiers roared in their different tones.

A court is the sort of place where everyone is either sorrowful, gay, or indifferent to everything, just as the reigning prince may think fit; or if any one is not actually, he at least tries to appear so; each endeavors to mimic the master.

It is truly said that one mind animates a thousand bodies, clearly showing that human beings are mere machines.

But let us return to our subject.

The stag alone shed no tears.

How could he, forsooth?

The death of the queen avenged him; she had formerly strangled his wife and son. A courtier thought fit to inform the bereaved monarch, and even affirmed that he had seen the stag laugh.

The rage of a king, says Solomon, is terrible, and especially that of a lion-king.

“Pitiful forester!” he exclaimed, “darest thou laugh when all around are dissolved in tears? We will not soil our royal claws with thy profane blood! Do thou, brave wolf, avenge our queen, by immolating this traitor to her august manes. ”

Hereupon the stag replied:

“Sire, the time for weeping is passed; grief is here superfluous. Your revered spouse appeared to me but now, reposing on a bed of roses; I instantly recognized her. ‘Friend,’ said she to me, ‘have done with this funereal pomp, cease these useless tears. I have tasted a thousand delights in the Elysian fields, conversing with those who are saints like myself. Let the king’s despair remain for some time unchecked, it gratifies me.’”

Scarcely had he spoken, when every one shouted: “A miracle! a miracle!”

The stag, instead of being punished, received a handsome gift. Do but entertain a king with dreams, flatter him, and tell him a few pleasant fantastic lies: whatever his indignation against you may be, he will swallow the bait, and make you his dearest friend.

-FABLES, JEAN DE LA FONTAINE, 1621-1695

OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW

The city-state of Venice was prosperous for so long that its citizens felt their small republic had destiny on its side.

In the Middle Ages and High Renaissance, its virtual monopoly on trade to the east made it the wealthiest city in Europe. Under a beneficent republican government, Venetians enjoyed liberties that few other Italians had ever known.

Yet in the sixteenth century their fortunes suddenly changed. The opening of the New World transferred power to the Atlantic side of Europe—to the Spanish and Portuguese, and later the Dutch and English. Venice could not compete economically and its empire gradually dwindled. The final blow was the devastating loss of a prized Mediterranean possession, the island of Cyprus, captured from Venice by the Turks in 1570.

Now noble families went broke in Venice, and banks began to fold.

A kind of gloom and depression settled over the citizens. They had known a glittering past—had either lived through it or heard stories about it from their elders. The closeness of the glory years was humiliating.

The Venetians half believed that the goddess Fortune was only playing a joke on them, and that the old days would soon return. For the time being, though, what could they do?

In 1589 rumors began to swirl around Venice of the arrival not far away of a mysterious man called “Il Bragadino,” a master of alchemy, a man who had won incredible wealth through his ability, it was said, to multiply gold through the use of a secret substance.

The rumor spread quickly because a few years earlier, a Venetian nobleman passing through Poland had heard a learned man prophesy that Venice would recover her past glory and power if she could find a man who understood the alchemic art of manufacturing gold.

And so, as word reached Venice of the gold this Bragadino possessed—he clinked gold coins continuously in his hands, and golden objects filled his palace—some began to dream: Through him, their city would prosper again.

Members of Venice’s most important noble families accordingly went together to Brescia, where Bragadino lived.

They toured his palace and watched in awe as he demonstrated his gold-making abilities, taking a pinch of seemingly worthless minerals and transforming it into several ounces of gold dust.

The Venetian senate prepared to debate the idea of extending an official invitation to Bragadino to stay in Venice at the city’s expense, when word suddenly reached them that they were competing with the Duke of Mantua for his services.

They heard of a magnificent party in Bragadino’s palace for the duke, featuring garments with golden buttons, gold watches, gold plates, and on and on.

Worried they might lose Bragadino to Mantua, the senate voted almost unanimously to invite him to Venice, promising him the mountain of money he would need to continue living in his luxurious style—but only if he came right away.

Late that year the mysterious Bragadino arrived in Venice.

With his piercing dark eyes under thick brows, and the two enormous black mastiffs that accompanied him everywhere, he was forbidding and impressive.

He took up residence in a sumptuous palace on the island of the Giudecca, with the republic funding his banquets, his expensive clothes, and all his other whims.

A kind of alchemy fever spread through Venice.

On street corners, hawkers would sell coal, distilling apparatus, bellows, how-to books on the subject. Everyone began to practice alchemy—everyone except Bragadino.

The alchemist seemed to be in no hurry to begin manufacturing the gold that would save Venice from ruin.

Strangely enough this only increased his popularity and following; people thronged from all over Europe, even Asia, to meet this remarkable man.

Months went by, with gifts pouring in to Bragadino from all sides.

Still he gave no sign of the miracle that the Venetians confidently expected him to produce.

Eventually the citizens began to grow impatient, wondering if he would wait forever. At first the senators warned them not to hurry him—he was a capricious devil, who needed to be cajoled.

Finally, though, the nobility began to wonder too, and the senate came under pressure to show a return on the city’s ballooning investment.

Bragadino had only scorn for the doubters, but he responded to them.

He had, he said, already deposited in the city’s mint the mysterious substance with which he multiplied gold.

He could use this substance up all at once, and produce double the gold, but the more slowly the process took place, the more it would yield. If left alone for seven years, sealed in a casket, the substance would multiply the gold in the mint thirty times over.

Most of the senators agreed to wait to reap the gold mine Bragadino promised.

Others, however, were angry: seven more years of this man living royally at the public trough! And many of the common citizens of Venice echoed these sentiments.

Finally the alchemist’s enemies demanded he produce a proof of his skills: a substantial amount of gold, and soon.

Lofty, apparently devoted to his art, Bragadino responded that Venice, in its impatience, had betrayed him, and would therefore lose his services. He left town, going first to nearby Padua, then, in 1590, to Munich, at the invitation of the Duke of Bavaria, who, like the entire city of Venice, had known great wealth but had fallen into bankruptcy through his own profligacy, and hoped to regain his fortune through the famous alchemist’s services.

And so Bragadino resumed the comfortable arrangement he had known in Venice, and the same pattern repeated itself.

Interpretation

The young Cypriot Mamugna had lived in Venice for several years before reincarnating himself as the alchemist Bragadino.

He saw how gloom had settled on the city, how everyone was hoping for a redemption from some indefinite source. While other charlatans mastered everyday cons based on sleight of hand, Mamugnà mastered human nature.

With Venice as his target from the start, he traveled abroad, made some money through his alchemy scams, and then returned to Italy, setting up shop in Brescia.

There he created a reputation that he knew would spread to Venice. From a distance, in fact, his aura of power would be all the more impressive.

At first Mamugna did not use vulgar demonstrations to convince people of his alchemic skill. His sumptuous palace, his opulent garments, the clink of gold in his hands, all these provided a superior argument to anything rational.

And these established the cycle that kept him going: His obvious wealth confirmed his reputation as an alchemist, so that patrons like the Duke of Mantua gave him money, which allowed him to live in wealth, which reinforced his reputation as an alchemist, and so on.

Only once this reputation was established, and dukes and senators were fighting over him, did he resort to the trifling necessity of a demonstration.

By then, however, people were easy to deceive: They wanted to believe.

The Venetian senators who watched him multiply gold wanted to believe so badly that they failed to notice the glass pipe up his sleeve, from which he slipped gold dust into his pinches of minerals. Brilliant and capricious, he was the alchemist of their fantasies—and once he had created an aura like this, no one noticed his simple deceptions.

Such is the power of the fantasies that take root in us, especially in times of scarcity and decline.

People rarely believe that their problems arise from their own misdeeds and stupidity. Someone or something out there is to blame—the other, the world, the gods—and so salvation comes from the outside as well.

Had Bragadino arrived in Venice armed with a detailed analysis of the reasons behind the city’s economic decline, and of the hard-nosed steps that it could take to turn things around, he would have been scorned.

The reality was too ugly and the solution too painful—mostly the kind of hard work that the citizens’ ancestors had mustered to create an empire. Fantasy, on the other hand—in this case the romance of alchemy—was easy to understand and infinitely more palatable.

To gain power, you must be a source of pleasure for those around you—and pleasure comes from playing to people’s fantasies. Never promise a gradual improvement through hard work; rather, promise the moon, the great and sudden transformation, the pot of gold.

No man need despair of gaining converts to the most extravagant
hypothesis who has art enough to represent it in favorable colors.

-David Hume, 1711-1776

If you want to tell lies that will be believed, don’t tell the truth that won’t.

-EMPEROR TOKUGAWA IEYASU OF JAPAN, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

KEYS TO POWER

Fantasy can never operate alone.

It requires the backdrop of the humdrum and the mundane. It is the oppressiveness of reality that allows fantasy to take root and bloom.

In sixteenth-century Venice, the reality was one of decline and loss of prestige. The corresponding fantasy described a sudden recovery of past glories through the miracle of alchemy.

While the reality only got worse, the Venetians inhabited a happy dream world in which their city restored its fabulous wealth and power overnight, turning dust into gold.

The person who can spin a fantasy out of an oppressive reality has access to untold power.

As you search for the fantasy that will take hold of the masses, then, keep your eye on the banal truths that weigh heavily on us all. Never be distracted by people’s glamorous portraits of themselves and their lives; search and dig for what really imprisons them. Once you find that, you have the magical key that will put great power in your hands.

Although times and people change, let us examine a few of the oppressive realities that endure, and the opportunities for power they provide:

The Reality: Change is slow and gradual. It requires hard work, a bit of luck, a fair amount of self-sacrifice, and a lot of patience.

The Fantasy: A sudden transformation will bring a total change in one’s fortunes, bypassing work, luck, self-sacrifice, and time in one fantastic stroke.

This is of course the fantasy par excellence of the charlatans who prowl among us to this day, and was the key to Bragadino’s success.

Promise a great and total change—from poor to rich, sickness to health, misery to ecstasy—and you will have followers.

How did the great sixteenth-century German quack Leonhard Thurneisser become the court physician for the Elector of Brandenburg without ever studying medicine?

Instead of offering amputations, leeches, and foul-tasting purgatives (the medicaments of the time), Thurneisser offered sweet-tasting elixirs and promised instant recovery.

Fashionable courtiers especially wanted his solution of “drinkable gold,” which cost a fortune.

If some inexplicable illness assailed you, Thurneisser would consult a horoscope and prescribe a talisman. Who could resist such a fantasy—health and well-being without sacrifice and pain!

The Reality: The social realm has hard-set codes and boundaries. We understand these limits and know that we have to move within the same familiar circles, day in and day out.

The Fantasy: We can enter a totally new world with different codes and the promise of adventure.

In the early 1700s, all London was abuzz with talk of a mysterious stranger, a young man named George Psalmanazar.

He had arrived from what was to most Englishmen a fantastical land: the island of Formosa (now Taiwan), off the coast of China.

Oxford University engaged Psalmanazar to teach the island’s language; a few years later he translated the Bible into Formosan, then wrote a book—an immediate best-seller—on Formosa’s history and geography. English royalty wined and dined the young man, and everywhere he went he entertained his hosts with wondrous stories of his homeland, and its bizarre customs.

After Psalmanazar died, however, his will revealed that he was in fact merely a Frenchman with a rich imagination.

Everything he had said about Formosa—its alphabet, its language, its literature, its entire culture—he had invented.

He had built on the English public’s ignorance of the place to concoct an elaborate story that fulfilled their desire for the exotic and strange. British culture’s rigid control of people’s dangerous dreams gave him the perfect opportunity to exploit their fantasy.

The fantasy of the exotic, of course, can also skirt the sexual.

It must not come too close, though, for the physical hinders the power of fantasy; it can be seen, grasped, and then tired of—the fate of most courtesans. The bodily charms of the mistress only whet the master’s appetite for more and different pleasures, a new beauty to adore. To bring power, fantasy must remain to some degree unrealized, literally unreal.

The dancer Mata Hari, for instance, who rose to public prominence in Paris before World War I, had quite ordinary looks. Her power came from the fantasy she created of being strange and exotic, unknowable and indecipherable. The taboo she worked with was less sex itself than the breaking of social codes.

Another form of the fantasy of the exotic is simply the hope for relief from boredom.

Con artists love to play on the oppressiveness of the working world, its lack of adventure. Their cons might involve, say, the recovery of lost Spanish treasure, with the possible participation of an alluring Mexican señorita and a connection to the president of a South American country—anything offering release from the humdrum.

The Reality: Society is fragmented and full of conflict.

The Fantasy: People can come together in a mystical union of souls.

In the 1920s the con man Oscar Hartzell made a quick fortune out of the age-old Sir Francis Drake swindle—basically promising any sucker who happened to be surnamed “Drake” a substantial share of the long-lost “Drake treasure,” to which Hartzell had access.

Thousands across the Midwest fell for the scam, which Hartzell cleverly turned into a crusade against the government and everyone else who was trying to keep the Drake fortune out of the rightful hands of its heirs.

There developed a mystical union of the oppressed Drakes, with emotional rallies and meetings.

Promise such a union and you can gain much power, but it is a dangerous power that can easily turn against you. This is a fantasy for demagogues to play on.

The Reality: Death. The dead cannot be brought back, the past cannot be changed.

The Fantasy: A sudden reversal of this intolerable fact.

This con has many variations, but requires great skill and subtlety.

The beauty and importance of the art of Vermeer have long been recognized, but his paintings are small in number, and are extremely rare.

In the 1930s, though, Vermeers began to appear on the art market.

Experts were called on to verify them, and pronounced them real.

Possession of these new Vermeers would crown a collector’s career. It was like the resurrection of Lazarus: In a strange way, Vermeer had been brought back to life. The past had been changed.

Only later did it come out that the new Vermeers were the work of a middle-aged Dutch forger named Han van Meegeren.

And he had chosen Vermeer for his scam because he understood fantasy: The paintings would seem real precisely because the public, and the experts as well, so desperately wanted to believe they were.

Remember: The key to fantasy is distance. 

The distant has allure and promise, seems simple and problem free. What you are offering, then, should be ungraspable. 

Never let it become oppressively familiar; it is the mirage in the distance, withdrawing as the sucker approaches. Never be too direct in describing the fantasy—keep it vague. As a forger of fantasies, let your victim come close enough to see and be tempted, but keep him far away enough that he stays dreaming and desiring.

Image: The
Moon. Unattainable,
always changing shape,
disappearing and reappear
ing. We look at it, imagine,
wonder, and pine—never fa
miliar, continuous provoker
of dreams. Do not offer
the obvious. Promise
the moon.

Authority: A lie is an allurement, a fabrication, that can be embellished into a fantasy. 

It can be clothed in the raiments of a mystic conception. Truth is cold, sober fact, not so comfortable to absorb. A lie is more palatable. The most detested person in the world is the one who always tells the truth, who never romances.... I found it far more interesting and profitable to romance than to tell the truth. (Joseph Weil, a.k.a. “The Yellow Kid,” 1875-1976)

REVERSAL

If there is power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses, there is also danger.

Fantasy usually contains an element of play—the public half realizes it is being duped, but it keeps the dream alive anyway, relishing the entertainment and the temporary diversion from the everyday that you are providing.

So keep it light—never come too close to the place where you are actually expected to produce results.

That place may prove extremely hazardous.

After Bragadino established himself in Munich, he found that the sober-minded Bavarians had far less faith in alchemy than the temperamental Venetians.

Only the duke really believed in it, for he needed it desperately to rescue him from the hopeless mess he was in.

As Bragadino played his familiar waiting game, accepting gifts and expecting patience, the public grew angry. Money was being spent and was yielding no results.

In 1592 the Bavarians demanded justice, and eventually Bragadino found himself swinging from the gallows.

As before, he had promised and had not delivered, but this time he had misjudged the forbearance of his hosts, and his inability to fulfill their fantasy proved fatal.

One last thing: Never make the mistake of imagining that fantasy is always fantastical. 

It certainly contrasts with reality, but reality itself is sometimes so theatrical and stylized that fantasy becomes a desire for simple things. The image Abraham Lincoln created of himself, for example, as a homespun country lawyer with a beard, made him the common man’s president.

P. T. Barnum created a successful act with Tom Thumb, a dwarf who dressed up as famous leaders of the past, such as Napoleon, and lampooned them wickedly.

The show delighted everyone, right up to Queen Victoria, by appealing to the fantasy of the time: Enough of the vainglorious rulers of history, the common man knows best. Tom Thumb reversed the familiar pattern of fantasy in which the strange and unknown becomes the ideal.

But the act still obeyed the Law, for underlying it was the fantasy that the simple man is without problems, and is happier than the powerful and the rich.

Both Lincoln and Tom Thumb played the commoner but carefully maintained their distance.

Should you play with such a fantasy, you too must carefully cultivate distance and not allow your “common” persona to become too familiar or it will not project as fantasy.

Conclusion

Today, any glimpse of the political situation in the United States can clearly illustrate this law. We see that the news is filled with lies and fantasies. All of which are designed to manipulate for personal gain.

Consider the 2021 election. Doesn’t the candidates involved appeal to their followers fantasies?

First black woman on party ticket!

I do not advise a person use this technique, but I do advise you all to be aware that it is in constant use by others.

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The man who sold the moon (full text) by Robert Heinlein

The primary story is based on a character who’s goal in life is to first visit the moon (being the first human) and then setting up a colony on the moon. Harriman (the character) uses is past business successes and his business savvy to convince his friends, his company, and complete nations of children to help back his venture, which is of the goal to fulfill a childhood fantasy instead of make money.

The Man Who Sold The Moon is one of Heinlein’s best works and that alone says a lot! Having been a Heinlein fan since Jr. High, I have to replace some of my favorites over the years because I reread them quite often. This I have replaced several times because paperbacks tend to wear out when they are read repeatedly. You don’t want to miss this story, whether you’re a fan or new to Heinlein, this book is great sci-fi!

Heinlein uses his fiction to tell the reader things, not just a story, but to communicate political, social and technical ideas and to share his technological prognostications. The perspective is complex.

All of these stories have as their underlying themes the conflict between profit and social and technological progress and how morally-neutral or amoral economic interests can come into conflict with human-scale interests and a common understanding of right and wrong.

The Man Who Sold The Moon, is about a rich industrialist called D. D. Harriman. Harriman has a dream, which is to go to the Moon and found a colony there. To achieve this dream, he adopts a single-mindedness that leads him to compromise business ethics and even break the law.

Heinlein captures well here several themes about modern business, including its complexity: Harriman, as a successful industrialist of international note, must have a very expert grasp of law and corporate structures, finance and accounting, politics and international relations, and a degree of technical literacy in the enterprise itself. Heinlein also shows how there is often a thin line between a successful business and fraud, and the qualities required are virtually the same.

Harriman represents perfectly the morally-neutral capitalist who puts up or finds the money for a project and dominates and motivates those around him, even though he lacks detailed technical know-how himself. Harriman as a businessman is happy to abide by the letter of an agreement when this works in his favour, but not when it does not.

The price of success, therefore, can often be lapses of integrity and incidences of personal moral abasement. Eventually Harriman is outmanoeuvred by one of his investors, who makes clear he cannot go to the Moon until the venture is in profit and could be managed by somebody else in the event of his demise.

The Man who Sold the Moon

THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON

CHAPTER ONE

“YOU’VE GOT TO BE ABELIEVER!”

George Strong snorted at his partner’s declaration. “Delos, why don’t you give up? You’ve been singing this tune for years. Maybe someday men will get to the Moon, though I doubt it. In any case, you and I will never live to see it. The loss of the power satellite washes the matter up for our generation.”

D. D. Harriman grunted. “We won’t see it if we sit on our fat behinds and don’t do anything to make it happen. But we can make it happen.” “Question number one: how? Question number two: why?”

“‘Why?’ The man asks ‘why.’ George, isn’t there anything in your soul but discounts, and dividends? Didn’t you ever sit with a girl on a soft summer night and stare up at the Moon and wonder what was there?”

“Yeah, I did once. I caught a cold.”

Harriman asked the Almighty why he had been delivered into the hands of the Philistines. He then turned back to his partner. “I could tell you why, the real ‘why,’ but you wouldn’t understand me. You want to know why in terms of cash, don’t you? You want to know how Harriman & Strong and Harriman Enterprises can show a profit, don’t you?”

“Yes,” admitted Strong, “and don’t give me any guff about tourist trade and fabulous lunar jewels. I’ve had it.”

“You ask me to show figures on a brand-new type of enterprise, knowing I can’t. It’s like asking the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk to estimate how much money Curtiss-Wright Corporation would someday make out of building airplanes. I’ll put it another way, You didn’t want us to go into plastic houses, did you? If you had had your way we would still be back in Kansas City, subdividing cow pastures and showing rentals.”

Strong shrugged.

“How much has New World Homes made to date?”

Strong looked absent-minded while exercising the talent he brought to the partnership. “Uh … $172,946,004.62, after taxes, to the end of the last fiscal year. The running estimate to date is—”

“Never mind. What was our share in the take?”

“Well, uh, the partnership, exclusive of the piece you took personally and then sold to me later, has benefited from New World Homes during the same period by $1 3,010,437.20, ahead of personal taxes. Delos, this double taxation has got to stop. Penalizing thrift is a sure way to run this country straight into—”

“Forget it, forget it! How much have we made out of Skyblast Freight and Antipodes Transways?” Strong told him.

“And yet I had to threaten you with bodily harm to get you to put up a dime to buy control of the injector patent. You said rockets were a passing fad.”

“We were lucky,” objected Strong. “You had no way of knowing that there would be a big uranium strike in Australia. Without it, the Skyways group would have left us in the red. For that matter New World Homes would have failed, too, if the roadtowns hadn’t come along and given us a market out from under local building codes.”

“Nuts on both points. Fast transportation will pay; it always has. As for New World, when ten million families need new houses and we can sell ‘em cheap, they’ll buy. They won’t let building codes stop them, not permanently. We gambled on a certainty. Think back, George: what ventures have we lost money on and what ones have paid off? Everyone of my crack- brain ideas has made money, hasn’t it? And the only times we’ve lost our ante was on conservative, blue-chip investments.”

“But we’ve made money on some conservative deals, too,” protested Strong.

“Not enough to pay for your yacht. Be fair about it, George; the Andes Development Company, the integrating pantograph patent, every one of my wildcat schemes I’ve had to drag you into

—and every one of them paid.”

“I’ve had to sweat blood to make them pay,” Strong grumbled.

“That’s why we are partners. I get a wildcat by the tail; you harness him and put him to work. Now we go to the Moon—and you’ll make it pay.” “Speak for yourself. I’m not going to the Moon.”

“I am.”

“Hummph! Delos, granting that we have gotten rich by speculating on your hunches, it’s a steel-clad fact that if you keep on gambling you lose your shirt. There’s an old saw about the pitcher that went once too often to the well.”

“Damn it, George—I’m going to the Moon! If you won’t back me up, let’s liquidate and I’ll do it alone.” Strong drummed on his desk top. “Now, Delos, nobody said anything about not backing you up.” “Fish or cut bait. Now is the opportunity and my mind’s made up. I’m going to be the Man in the Moon.” “Well … let’s get going. We’ll be late to the meeting.”

As they left their joint office, Strong, always penny conscious, was careful to switch off the light. Harriman had seen him do so a thousand times; this time he commented. “George, how about a light switch that turns off automatically when you leave a room?”

“Hmm—but suppose someone were left in the room?”

“Well… hitch it to stay on only when someone was in the room—key the switch to the human body’s heat radiation, maybe.” “Too expensive and too complicated.”

“Needn’t be. I’ll turn the idea over to Ferguson to fiddle with. It should be no larger than the present light switch and cheap enough so that the power saved in a year will pay for it.” “How would it work?” asked Strong.

“How should I know? I’m no engineer; that’s for Ferguson and the other educated laddies.”

Strong objected, “It’s no good commercially. Switching off a light when you leave a room is a matter of temperament. I’ve got it; you haven’t. If a man hasn’t got it, you can’t interest him in such a switch.”

“You can if power continues to be rationed. There is a power shortage now; and there will be a bigger one.” “Just temporary. This meeting will straighten it out.”

“George, there is nothing in this world so permanent as a temporary emergency. The switch will sell.” Strong took out a notebook and stylus. “I’ll call Ferguson in about it tomorrow.”

Harriman forgot the matter, never to think of it again. They had reached the roof; he waved to a taxi, then turned to Strong. “How much could we realize if we unloaded our holdings in

Roadways and in Belt Transport Corporation—yes, and in New World Homes?”

“Huh? Have you gone crazy?”

“Probably. But I’m going to need all the cash you can shake loose for me. Roadways and Belt Transport are no good anyhow; we should have unloaded earlier.” “You are crazy! It’s the one really conservative venture you’ve sponsored.”

“But it wasn’t conservative when I sponsored it. Believe me, George, roadtowns are on their way out. They are growing moribund, just as the railroads did. In a hundred years there won’t be a one left on the continent. What’s the formula for making money, George?”

“Buy low and sell high.”

“That’s only half of it… your half. We’ve got to guess which way things are moving, give them a boost, and see that we are cut in on the ground floor. Liquidate that stuff, George; I’ll need money to operate.” The taxi landed; they got in and took off.

The taxi delivered them to the roof of the Hemisphere Power Building they went to the power syndicate’s board room, as far below ground as the landing platform was above—in those days, despite years of peace, tycoons habitually came to rest at spots relatively immune to atom bombs. The room did not seem like a bomb shelter; it appeared to be a chamber in a luxurious penthouse, for a “view window” back of the chairman’s end of the table looked out high above the city, in convincing, live stereo, relayed from the roof.

The other directors were there before them. Dixon nodded as they came in, glanced at his watch finger and said, “Well, gentlemen, our bad boy is here, we may as well begin.” He took the chairman’s seat and rapped for order.

“The minutes of the last meeting are on your pads as usual. Signal when ready.” Harriman glanced at the summary before him and at once flipped a switch on the table top; a small green light flashed on at his place. Most of the directors did the same.

“Who’s holding up the procession?” inquired Harriman, looking around. “Oh—you, George. Get a move on.”

“I like to check the figures,” his partner answered testily, then flipped his own switch. Alarger green light showed in front of Chainnan Dixon, who then pressed a button; a transparency, sticking an inch or two above the table top in front of him lit up with the word RECORDING.

“Operations report,” said Dixon and touched another switch. Afemale voice came out from nowhere. Harriman followed the report from the next sheet of paper at his place. Thirteen Curie-type power piles were now in operation, up five from the last meeting. The Susquehanna and Charleston piles had taken over the load previously borrowed from Atlantic Roadcity and the roadways of that city were now up to normal speed. It was expected that the Chicago-Angeles road could be restored to speed during the next fortnight. Power would continue to be rationed but the crisis was over.

All very interesting but of no direct interest to Harriman. The power crisis that had been caused by the explosion of the power satellite was being satisfactorily met—very good, but Harriman’s interest in it lay in the fact that the cause of interplanetary travel had thereby received a setback from which it might not recover.

When the Harper-Erickson isotopic artificial fuels had been developed three years before it had seemed that, in addition to solving the dilemma of an impossibly dangerous power source which was also utterly necessary to the economic life of the continent, an easy means had been found to achieve interplanetary travel.

The Arizona power pile had been installed in one of the largest of the Antipodes rockets, the rocket powered with isotopic fuel created in the power pile itself, and the whole thing was placed in an orbit around the Earth. Amuch smaller rocket had shuttled between satellite and Earth, carrying supplies to the staff of the power pile, bringing back synthetic radioactive fuel for the power-hungry technology of Earth.

As a director of the power syndicate Harriman had backed the power satellite—with a private ax to grind: he expected to power a Moon ship with fuel manufactured in the power satellite and thus to achieve the first trip to the Moon almost at once. He had not even attempted to stir the Department of Defense out of its sleep; he wanted no government subsidy—the job was a cinch; anybody could do it—and Harriman would do it. He had the ship; shortly he would have the fuel.

The ship had been a freighter of his own Antipodes line, her chem-fuel motors replaced, her wings removed. She still waited, ready for fuel—the recommissioned Santa Maria, nee City of Brisbane.

But the fuel was slow in coming. Fuel had to be eannarked for the shuttle rocket; the power needs of a rationed continent came next—and those needs grew faster than the power satellite could turn out fuel. Far from being ready to supply him for a “useless” Moon trip, the syndicate had seized on the safe but less efficient low temperature uranium-salts and heavy water, Curie-type power piles as a means of using uranium directly to meet the ever growing need for power, rather than build and launch more satellites.

Unfortunately the Curie piles did not provide the fierce star-interior conditions necessary to breeding the isotopic fuels needed for an atomic-powered rocket. Harriman had reluctantly come around to the notion that he would have to use political pressure to squeeze the necessary priority for the fuels he wanted for the Santa Maria.

Then the power satellite had blown up.

Harriman was stirred out of his brown study by Dixon’s voice. “The operations report seems satisfactory, gentlemen. If there is no objection, it will be recorded as accepted. You will note that in the next ninety days we will be back up to the power level which existed before we were forced to close down the Arizona pile.”

“But with no provision for future needs,” pointed out Harriman. “There have been a lot of babies born while we have been sitting here.” “Is that an objection to accepting the report, D.D.?”

“No.”

“Very well. Now the public relations report—let me call attention to the first item, gentlemen. The vice-president in charge recommends a schedule of annuities, benefits, scholarships and so forth for dependents of the staff of the power satellite and of the pilot of the Charon: see appendix ‘C’.”

Adirector across from Harriman—Phineas Morgan, chairman of the food trust, Cuisine, Incorporated—protested, “What is this, Ed? Too bad they were killed of course, but we paid them skyhigh wages and carried their insurance to boot. Why the charity?”

Harriman grunted. “Pay it—I so move. It’s peanuts. ‘Do not bind the mouths of the kine who tread the grain.’” “I wouldn’t call better than nine hundred thousand ‘peanuts,’” protested Morgan.

“Just a minute, gentlemen—” It was the vice-president in charge of public relations, himself a director. “If you’ll look at the breakdown, Mr. Morgan, you will see that eighty-five percent of the appropriation will be used to publicize the gifts.”

Morgan squinted at the figures. “Oh—why didn’t you say so? Well, I suppose the gifts can be considered unavoidable overhead, but it’s a bad precedent.” “Without them we have nothing to publicize.”

“Yes, but—”

Dixon rapped smartly. “Mr. Harriman has moved acceptance. Please signal your desires.” The tally board glowed green; even Morgan, after hesitation, okayed the allotment. “We have a related item next,” said Dixon. “AMrs.—uh, Garfield, through her attorneys, alleges that we are responsible for the congenital crippled condition of her fourth child. The putative facts are that her child was being born just as the satellite exploded and that Mrs. Garfield was then on the meridian underneath the satellite. She wants the court to award her half a million.”

Morgan looked at Harriman. “Delos, I suppose that you will say to settle out of court.” “Don’t be silly. We fight it.”

Dixon looked around, surprised. “Why, D.D.? It’s my guess we could settle for ten or fifteen thousand—and that was what I was about to recommend. I’m surprised that the legal department referred it to publicity.”

“It’s obvious why; it’s loaded with high explosive. But we should fight, regardless of bad publicity. It’s not like the last case; Mrs. Garfield and her brat are not our people. And any dumb

fool knows you can’t mark a baby by radioactivity at birth; you have to get at the germ plasm of the previous generation at least. In the third place, if we let this get by, we’ll be sued for every double-yolked egg that’s laid from now on. This calls for an open allotment for defense and not one damned cent for compromise.”

“It might be very expensive,” observed Dixon.

“It’ll be more expensive not to fight. If we have to, we should buy the judge.”

The public relations chief whispered to Dixon, then announced, “I support Mr. Harriman’s view. That’s my department’s recommendation.”

It was approved. “The next item,” Dixon went on, “is a whole sheaf of suits arising out of slowing down the roadcities to divert power during the crisis. They alleged loss of business, loss of time, loss of this and that, but they are all based on the same issue. The most touchy, perhaps, is a stockholder’s suit which claims that Roadways and this company are so interlocked that the decision to divert the power was not done in the interests of the stockholders of Roadways. Delos, this is your pidgin; want to speak on it?”

“Forget it.” “Why?”

“Those are shotgun suits. This corporation is not responsible; I saw to it that Roadways volunteered to sell the power because I anticipated this. And the directorates don’t interlock; not on paper, they don’t. That’s why dummies were born. Forget it—for every suit you’ve got there, Roadways has a dozen. We’ll beat them.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Well—” Harriman lounged back and hung a knee over the arm of his chair. “—a good many years ago I was a Western Union messenger boy. While waiting around the office I read everything I could lay hands on, including the contract on the back of the telegram forms. Remember those? They used to come in big pads of yellow paper; by writing a message on the face of the form you accepted the contract in the fine print on the backT only most people didn’t realize that. Do you know what that contract obhgated the company to do?”

“Send a telegram, I suppose.”

“It didn’t promise a durn thing. The company offered to attempt to deliver the message, by camel caravan or snail back, or some equally streamlined method, if convenient, but in event of failure, the company was not responsible. I read that fine print until I knew it by heart. It was the loveliest piece of prose I had ever seen. Since then all my contracts have been worded on the same principle. Anybody who sues Roadways will find that Roadways can’t be sued on the element of time, because time is not of the essence. In the event of complete non- performance—which hasn’t happened yet— Roadways is financially responsible only for freight charges or the price of the personal transportation tickets. So forget it.”

Morgan sat up. “D.D., suppose I decided to run up to my country place tonight, by the roadway, and there was a failure of some sort so that I didn’t get there until tomorrow? You mean to say Roadways is not liable?”

Harriman grinned. “Roadways is not liable even if you starve to death on the trip. Better use your copter.” He turned back to Dixon. “I move that we stall these suits and let Roadways carry the ball for us.”

“The regular agenda being completed,” Dixon announced later, “time is allotted for our colleague, Mr. Harriman, to speak on a subject of his own choosing. He has not listed a subject in advance, but we will listen until it is your pleasure to adjourn.”

Morgan looked sourly at Harriman. “I move we adjourn.”

Harriman grinned. “For two cents I’d second that and let you die of curiosity.” The motion failed for want of a second. Harriman stood up. “Mr. Chairman, friends—” He then looked at Morgan. “—and associates. As you know, I am interested in space travel.” Dixon looked at him sharply. “Not that again, Delos! If I weren’t in the chair, I’d move to adjourn myself.”

“‘That again’,” agreed Harriman. “Now and forever. Hear me out. Three years ago, when we were crowded into moving the Arizona power pile out into space, it looked as if we had a bonus in the shape of interplanetary travel. Some of you here joined with me in forming Spaceways, Incorporated, for experimentation, exploration—and exploitation.

“Space was conquered; rockets that could establish orbits around the globe could be modified to get to the Moon—and from there, anywhere! It was just a matter of doing it. The problems remaining were financial—and political.

“In fact, the real engineering problems of space travel have been solved since World World II. Conquering space has long been a matter of money and politics. But it did seem that the Harper-Erickson process, with its concomitant of a round-the-globe rocket and a practical economical rocket fuel, had at last made it a very present thing, so close indeed that I did not object when the early allotments of fuel from the satellite were earmarked for industrial power.”

He looked around. “I shouldn’t have kept quiet. I should have squawked and brought pressure and made a hairy nuisance of myself until you allotted fuel to get rid of me. For now we have missed our best chance. The satellite is gone; the source of fuel is gone. Even the shuttle rocket is gone. We are back where we were in 19 50. Therefore—”

He paused again. “Therefore—I propose that we build a space ship and send it to the Moon!” Dixon broke the silence. “Delos, have you come unzipped? You just said that it was no longer possible. Now you say to build one.”

“I didn’t say it was impossible; I said we had missed our best chance. The time is overripe for space travel. This globe grows more crowded every day. In spite of technical advances the daily food intake on this planet is lower than it was thirty years ago—and we get 46 new babies every minute, 6;,ooo every day, 25,ooo,ooo every year. Our race is about to burst forth to the planets; if we’ve got the initiative Cod promised an oyster we will help it along!

“Yes, we missed our best chance-but the engineering details can be solved. The real question is who’s going to foot the bill? That is why I address you gentlemen, for right here in this room is the financial capital of this planet.”

Morgan stood up. “Mr. Chairman, if all company business is finished, I ask to be excused.”

Dixon nodded. Harriman said, “So long, Phineas. Don’t let me keep you. Now, as I was saying, it’s a money problem and here is where the money is. I move we finance a trip to the Moon.”

The proposal produced no special excitement; these men knew Harriman. Presently Dixon said, “Is there a second to D.D.’s proposal?”

“Just a minute, Mr. Chairman—” It was Jack Entenza, president of Two-Continents Amusement Corporation. “I want to ask Delos some questions.” He turned to Harriman. “D.D., you know I strung along when you set up Spaceways. It seemed like a cheap venture and possibly profitable in educational and scientific values—I never did fall for space liners plying between planets; that’s fantastic. I don’t mind playing along with your dreams to a moderate extent, but how do you propose to get to the Moon? As you say, you are fresh out of fuel.”

Harriman was still grinning. “Don’t kid me, Jack, I know why you came along. You weren’t interested in science; you’ve never contributed a dime to science. You expected a monopoly on pix and television for your chain. Well, you’ll get ‘em, if you stick with me—otherwise I’ll sign up ‘Recreations, Unlimited’; they’ll pay just to have you in the eye.”

Entenza looked at him suspiciously. “What will it cost me?”

“Your other shirt, your eye teeth, and your wife’s wedding ring—unless ‘Recreations’ will pay more.” “Damn you, Delos, you’re crookeder than a dog’s hind leg.”

“From you, Jack, that’s a compliment. We’ll do business. Now as to how I’m going to get to the Moon, that’s a silly question. There’s not a man in here who can cope with anything more complicated in the way of machinery than a knife and fork. You can’t tell a left-handed monkey wrench from a reaction engine, yet you ask me for blue prints of a space ship.

“Well, I’ll tell you how I’ll get to the Moon. I’ll hire the proper brain boys, give them everything they want, see to it that they have all the money they can use, sweet talk them into long hours

—then stand back and watch them produce. I’ll run it like the Manhattan Project—most of you remember the A-bomb job; shucks, some of you can remember the Mississippi Bubble. The

chap that headed up the Manhattan Project didn’t know a neutron from Uncle George—but he got results. They solved that trick four ways. That’s why I’m not worried about fuel; we’ll get a fuel. We’ll get several fuels.”

Dixon said, “Suppose it works? Seems to me you’re asking us to bankrupt the company for an exploit with no real value, aside from pure science, and a one-shot entertainment exploitation. I’m not against you—I wouldn’t mind putting in ten, fifteen thousand to support a worthy venture—but I can’t see the thing as a business proposition.”

Harriman leaned on his fingertips and stared down the long table. “Ten or fifteen thousand gum drops! Dan, I mean to get into you for a couple of megabucks at least—and before we’re through you’ll be hollering for more stock. This is the greatest real estate venture since the Pope carved up the New World. Don’t ask me what we’ll make a profit on; I can’t itemize the assets—but I can lump them. The assets are a planet—a whole planet, Dan, that’s never been touched. And more planets beyond it. If we can’t figure out ways to swindle a few fast bucks out of a sweet set-up like that then you and I had better both go on relief. It’s like having Manhattan Island offered to you for twenty-four dollars and a case of whiskey.”

Dixon grunted. “You make it sound like the chance of a lifetime.”

“Chance of a lifetime, nuts! This is’ the greatest chance in all history. It’s raining soup; grab yourself a bucket.”

Next to Entenza sat Gaston P. Jones, director of Trans-America and half a dozen other banks, one of the richest men in the room. He carefully removed two inches of cigar ash, then said dryly, “Mr. Harriman, I will sell you all of my interest in the Moon, present and future, for fifty cents.”

Harriman looked delighted. “Sold!”

Entenza had been pulling at his lower lip and listening with a brooding expression on his face. Now he spoke up. “Just a minute, Mr. Jones—I’ll give you a dollar for it.” “Dollar fifty,” answered Harriman.

“Two dollars,” Entenza answered slowly. “Five!”

They edged each other up. At ten dollars Entenza let Harriman have it and sat back, still looking thoughtful. Harriman looked happily around. “Which one of you thieves is a lawyer?” he demanded. The remark was rhetorical; out of seventeen directors the normal percentage—eleven, to be exact—were lawyers. “Hey, Tony,” he continued, “draw me up an instrument right now that will tie down this transaction so that it couldn’t be broken before the Throne of God. All of Mr. Jones’ interests, rights, title, natural interest, future interests, interests held directly or through ownership of stock, presently held or to be acquired, and so forth and so forth. Put lots of Latin in it. The idea is that every interest in the Moon that Mr. Jones now has or may acquire is mine-for a ten spot, cash in hand paid.” Harriman slapped a bill down on the table. “That right, Mr. Jones?”

Jones smiled briefly. “That’s right, young fellow.” He pocketed the bill. “I’ll frame this for my grandchildren—to show them how easy it is to make money.” Entenza’s eyes darted from Jones to Harriman.

“Good!” said Harriman. “Gentlemen, Mr. Jones has set a market price for one human being’s interest in our satellite. With around three billion persons on this globe that sets a price on the Moon of thirty billion dollars.” He hauled out a wad of money. “Any more suckers? I’m buying every share that’s offered, ten bucks a copy.”

“I’ll pay twenty!” Entenza rapped out.

Harriman looked at him sorrowfully. “Jack—don’t do that! We’re on the same team. Let’s take the shares together, at ten.”

Dixon pounded for order. “Gentlemen, please conduct such transactions after the meeting is adjourned. Is there a second to Mr. Harriman’s motion?” Gaston Jones said, “I owe it to Mr. Harriman to second his motion, without prejudice. Let’s get on with a vote.”

No one objected; the vote was taken. It went eleven to three against Harriman—Harriman, Strong, and Entenza for; all others against. Harriman popped up before anyone could move to adjourn and said, “I expected that. My real purpose is this: since the company is no longer interested in space travel, will it do me the courtesy of selling me what I may need of patents, processes, facilities, and so forth now held by the company but relating to space travel and not relating to the production of power on this planet? Our brief honeymoon with the power satellite built up a backlog; I want to use it. Nothing formal—just a vote that it is the policy of the company to assist me in any way not inconsistent with the primary interest of the company. How about it, gentlemen? It’ll get me out of your hair.”

Jones studied his cigar again. “I see no reason why we should not accommodate him, gentlemen … and I speak as the perfect disinterested party.”

“I think we can do it, Delos,” agreed Dixon, “only we won’t sell you anything, we’ll lend it to you. Then, if you happen to hit the jackpot, the company still retains an interest. Has anyone any objection?” he said to the room at large.

There was none; the matter was recorded as company policy and the meeting was adjourned. Harriman stopped to whisper with Entenza and, finally, to make an appointment. Gaston Jones stood near the door, speaking privately with Chairman Dixon. He beckoned to Strong, Harriman’s partner. “George, may I ask a personal question?”

“I don’t guarantee to answer. Go ahead.”

“You’ve always struck me as a level-headed man. Tell me-why do you string along with Harriman? Why, the man’s mad as a hatter.”

Strong looked sheepish. “I ought to deny that, he’s my friend … but I can’t. But dawggone it! Every time Delos has a wild hunch, it turns out to be the real thing. I hate to string along—it

makes me nervous—but I’ve learned to trust his hunches rather than another man’s sworn financial report.”

Jones cocked one brow. “The Midas touch, eh?” “You could call it that.”

“Well, remember what happened to King Midas—in the long run. Good day, gentlemen.” Harriman had left Entenza; Strong joined him. Dixon stood staring at them, his face very thoughtful.

CHAPTER TWO

HARRIMAN’S HOME had been built at the time when everyone who could was decentralizing and going underground. Above ground there was a perfect little Cape Cod cottage—the clapboards of which concealed armor plate— and most delightful, skillfully landscaped grounds; below ground there was four or five times as much floorspace, immune to anything but a direct hit and possessing an independent air supply with reserves for one thousand hours. During the Crazy Years the conventional wall surrounding the grounds had been replaced by a wall which looked the same but which would stop anything short of a broaching tank—nor were the gates weak points; their gadgets were as personally loyal as a well-trained dog.

Despite its fortress-like character the house was comfortable. It was also very expensive to keep up. Harriman did not mind the expense; Charlotte liked the house and it gave her something to do. When they were first married she had lived uncomplainingly in a cramped flat over a

grocery store; if Charlotte now liked to play house in a castle, Harriman did not mind.

But he was again starting a shoe-string venture; the few thousand per month of ready cash represented by the household expenses might, at some point in the game, mean the difference between success and the sheriff’s bailiffs. That night at dinner, after the servants fetched the coffee, and port, he took up the matter.

“My dear, I’ve been wondering how you would like a few months in Florida.”

His wife stared at him. “Florida? Delos, is your mind wandering? Florida is unbearable at this time of the year.” “Switzerland, then. Pick your own spot. Take a real vacation, as long as you like.”

“Delos, you are up to something.”

Harriman sighed. Being “up to something” was the unnameable and unforgivable crime for which any American male could be indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced in one breath. He wondered how things had gotten rigged so that the male half of the race must always behave to suit feminine rules and feminine logic, like a snotty-nosed school boy in front of a stern teacher.

“In a way, perhaps. We’ve both agreed that this house is a bit of a white elephant. I was thinking of closing it, possibly even of disposing of the land— it’s worth more now than when we bought it. Then, when we get around to it, we could build something more modern and a little less like a bombproof.”

Mrs. Harriman was temporarily diverted. “Well, I have thought it might be nice to build another place, Delos—say a little chalet tucked away in the mountains, nothing ostentatious, not more than two servants, or three. But we won’t close this place until it’s built, Delos—after all, one must live somewhere.”

“I was not thinking of building right away,” he answered cautiously. “Why not? We’re not getting any younger, Delos; if we are to enjoy the good things of life we had better not make delays. You needn’t worry about it; I’ll manage everything.”

Harriman turned over in his mind the possibility of letting her build to keep her busy. If he earmarked the cash for her “little chalet,” she would live in a hotel nearby wherever she decided to build it—and he could sell this monstrosity they were sitting in. With the nearest roadcity now less than ten miles away, the land should bring more than Charlotte’s new house would cost and he would be rid of the monthly drain on his pocketbook.

“Perhaps you are right,” he agreed. “But suppose you do build at once; you won’t be living here; you’ll be supervising every detail of the new place. I say we should unload this place; it’s eating its head off in taxes, upkeep, and running expenses.”

She shook her head. “Utterly out of the question, Delos. This is my home.” He ground out an almost unsmoked cigar. “I’m sorry, Charlotte, but you can’t have it both ways. If you build, you can’t stay here. If you stay here, we’ll close these below-ground catacombs, fire about a dozen of the parasites I keep stumbling over, and live in the cottage on the surface. I’m cutting expenses.”

“Discharge the servants? Delos, if you think that I will undertake to make a home for you without a proper staff, you can just—”

“Stop it.” He stood up and threw his napkin down. “It doesn’t take a squad of servants to make a home. When we were first married you had no servants—and you washed and ironed my shirts in the bargain. But we had a home then. This place is owned by that staff you speak of. Well, we’re getting rid of them, all but the cook and a handy man.”

She did not seem to hear. “Delos! sit down and behave yourself. Now what’s all this about cutting expenses? Are you in some sort of trouble? Are you? Answer me!” He sat down wearily and answered, “Does a man have to be in trouble to want to cut out unnecessary expenses?”

“In your case, yes. Now what is it? Don’t try to evade me.”

“Now see here, Charlotte, we agreed a long time ago that I would keep business matters in the office. As for the house, we simply don’t need a house this size. It isn’t as if we had a passel of kids to fill up—”

“Oh! Blaming me for that again!”

“Now see here, Charlotte,” he wearily began again, “I never did blame you and I’m not blaming you now. All I ever did was suggest that we both see a doctor and find out what the trouble was we didn’t have any kids. And for twenty years you’ve been making me pay for that one remark. But that’s all over and done with now; I was simply making the point that two people don’t fill up twenty-two rooms. I’ll pay a reasonable price for a new house, if you want it, and give you an ample household allowance.” He started to say how much, then decided not to. “Or you can close this place and live in the cottage above. It’s just that we are going to quit squandering money—for a while.”

She grabbed the last phrase. “‘For a while.’ What’s going on, Delos? What are you going to squander money on?” When he did not answer she went on. “Very well, if you won’t tell me, I’ll call George. He will tell me.”

“Don’t do that, Charlotte. I’m warning you. I’ll—”

“You’ll what!” She studied his face. “I don’t need to talk to George; I can tell by looking at you. You’ve got the same look on your face you had when you came home and told me that you had sunk all our money in those crazy rockets.”

“Charlotte, that’s not fair. Skyways paid off. It’s made us a mint of money.”

“That’s beside the point. I know why you’re acting so strangely; you’ve got that old trip-to-the-Moon madness again. Well, I won’t stand for it, do you hear? I’ll stop you; I don’t bave to put up with it. I’m going right down in the morning and see Mr. Kamens and find out what has to be done to make you behave yourself.” The cords of her neck jerked as she spoke.

He waited, gathering his temper before going on. “Charlotte, you have no real cause for complaint. No matter what happens to me, your future is taken care of.” “Do you think I want to be a widow?”

He looked thoughtfully at her. “I wonder.”

“Why— Why, you heartless beast.” She stood up. “We’ll say no more about it; do you mind?” She left without waiting for an answer.

His “man” was waiting for him when he got to his room. Jenkins got up hastily and started drawing Harriman’s bath. “Beat it,” Harriman grunted. “I can undress myself.” “You require nothing more tonight, sir?”

“Nothing. But don’t go unless you feel like it. Sit down and pour yourself a drink. Ed, how long you been married?” “Don’t mind if I do.” The servant helped himself. “Twenty-three years, come May, sir.”

“How’s it been, if you don’t mind me asking?” –

“Not bad. Of course there have been times—”

“I know what you mean. Ed, if you weren’t working for me, what would you be doing?”

“Well, the wife and I have talked many times of opening a little restaurant, nothing pretentious, but good. Aplace where a gentleman could enjoy a quiet meal of good food.” “Stag, eh?”

“No, not entirely, sir—but there would be a parlor’ for gentlemen only. Not even waitresses, I’d tend that room myself.” “Better look around for locations, Ed. You’re practically in business.”

CHAPTER THREE

STRONG ENTERED THEIR JOINT OFFICES the next morning at a precise nine o’clock, as usual. He was startled to find Harriman there before him. For Harriman to fail to show up at all meant nothing; for him to beat the clerks in was significant.

Harriman was busy with a terrestrial globe and a book—the current Nautical Almanac, Strong observed. Harriman barely glanced up. “Morning, George. Say, who’ve we got a line to in Brazil?”

“Why?”

“I need some trained seals who speak Portuguese, that’s why. And some who speak Spanish, too. Not to mention three or four dozen scattered around in this country. I’ve come across something very, very interesting. Look here… according to these tables the Moon only swings about twentyeight, just short of twenty-nine degrees north and south of the equator.” He held a pencil against the globe and spun it. “Like that. That suggest anything?”

“No. Except that you’re getting pencil marks on a sixty dollar globe.”

“And you an old real estate operator! What does a man own when he buys a parcel of land?” “That depends on the deed. Usually mineral rights and other subsurface rights are-“

“Never mind that. Suppose he buys the works, without splitting the rights: how far down does he own? How far up does he own?”

“Well, he owns a wedge down to the center of the Earth. That was settled in the slant-drilling and off-set oil lease cases. Theoretically he used to own the space above the land, too, out

indefinitely, but that was modified by a series of cases after the commercial airlines came in—and a good thing, for us, too, or we would have to pay tolls every time one of our rockets took off for Australia.”

“No, no, no, George! you didn’t read those cases right. Right of passage was established—but ownership of the space above the land remained unchanged. And even right of passage was not absolute; you can build a thousand-foot tower on your own land right where airplanes, or rockets, or whatever, have been in the habit of passing and the ships will thereafter have to go above it, with no kick back on you. Remember how we had to lease the air south of Hughes Field to insure that our approach wasn’t built up?”

Strong looked thoughtful. “Yes. I see your point. The ancient principle of land ownership remains undisturbed—down to the center of the Earth, up to infinity. But what of it? It’s a purely theoretical matter. You’re not planning to pay tolls to operate those spaceships you’re always talking about, are you?” He grudged a smile at his own wit.

“Not on your tintype. Another matter entirely. George-who owns the Moon?” Strong’s jaw dropped, literally. “Delos, you’re joking.”

“I am not. I’ll ask you again: if basic law says that a man owns the wedge of sky above his farm out to infinity, who owns the Moon? Take a look at this globe and tell me.” Strong looked. “But it can’t mean anything, Delos. Earth laws wouldn’t apply to the Moon.”

“They apply here and that’s where I am worrying about it. The Moon stays constantly over a slice of Earth bounded by latitude twenty-nine north and the same distance south; if one man owned all that belt of Earth—it’s roughly the tropical zone-then he’d own the Moon, too, wouldn’t he? By all the theories of real property ownership that our courts pay any attention to. And, by direct derivation, according to the sort of logic that lawyers like, the various owners of that belt of land have title-good vendable title—to the Moon somehow lodged collectively in them. The fact that the distribution of the title is a little vague wouldn’t bother a lawyer; they grow fat on just such distributed titles every time a will is probated.”

“It’s fantastic!”

“George, when are you going to learn that ‘fantastic’ is a notion that doesn’t bother a lawyer?” “You’re not planning to try to buy the entire tropical zone-that’s what you would have to do.”

“No,” Harriman said slowly, “but it might not be a bad idea to buy right, title and interest in the Moon, as it may appear, from each of the sovereign countries in that belt. If I thought I could keep it quiet and not run the market up, I might try it. You can buy a thing awful cheap from a man if he thinks it’s worthless and wants to sell before you regain your senses.

“But that’s not the plan,” he went on. “George, I want corporations— local corporations—in every one of those countries. I want the legislatures of each of those countries to grant franchises to its local corporation for lunar exploration, exploitation, et cetera, and the right to claim lunar soil on behalf of the country—with fee simple, naturally, being handed on a silver platter to the patriotic corporation that thought up the idea. And I want all this done quietly, so that the bribes won’t go too high. We’ll own the corporations, of course, which is why I need a flock of trained seals. There is going to be one hell of a fight one of these days over who owns the Moon; I want the deck stacked so that we win no matter how the cards are dealt.”

“It will be ridiculously expensive, Delos. And you don’t even know that you will ever get to the Moon, much less that it will be worth anything after you get there.”

“We’ll get there! It’ll be more expensive not to establish these claims. Anyhow it need not be very expensive; the proper use of bribe money is a homoeopathic art—you use it as a catalyst. Back in the middle of the last century four men went from California to Washington with $40,000; it was all they had. Afew weeks later they were broke-but Congress had awarded them a billion dollars’ worth of railroad right of way. The trick is not to run up the market.”

Strong shook his head. “Your title wouldn’t be any good anyhow. The Moon doesn’t stay in one place; it passes over owned land certainly—but so does a migrating goose.”

“And nobody has title to a migrating bird. I get your point—but the Moon always stays over that one belt. If you move a boulder in your garden, do you lose title to it? Is it still real estate? Do

the title laws still stand? This is like that group of real estate cases involving wandering islands in the Mississippi, George—the land moved as the river cut new channels, but somebody

always owned it. In this case I plan to see to it that we are the ‘somebody.’”

Strong puckered his brow. “I seem to recall that some of those island-andriparian cases were decided one way and some another.” “We’ll pick the decisions that suit us. That’s why lawyers’ wives have mink coats. Come on, George; let’s get busy.”

“On what?” “Raising the money.”

“Oh.” Strong looked relieved. “I thought you were planning to use our money.”

“I am. But it won’t be nearly enough. We’ll use our money for the senior financing to get things moving; in the meantime we’ve got to work out ways to keep the money rolling in.” He pressed a switch at his desk; the face of Saul Kamens, their legal chief of staff, sprang out at him. “Hey, Saul, can you slide in for a p0w-wow?”

“WThatever it is, just tell them ‘no,’” answered the attorney. “I’ll fix it.”

“Good. Now come on in—they’re moving Hell and I’ve got an option on the first ten loads.”

Kamens showed up in his own good time. Some minutes later Harriman had explained his notion for claiming the Moon ahead of setting foot on it. “Besides those dummy corporations,” he went on, “we need an agency that can receive contributions without having to admit any financial interest on the part of the contributor—like the National Geographic Society.”

Kamens shook his head. “You can’t buy the National Geographic Society.” “Damn it, who said we were going to? We’ll set up our own.”

“That’s what I started to say.”

“Good. As I see it, we need at least one tax-free, non-profit corporation headed up by the right people-we’ll hang on to voting control, of course. We’ll probably need more than one; we’ll set them up as we need them. And we’ve got to have at least one new ordinary corporation, not tax-free— but it won’t show a profit until we are ready. The idea is to let the nonprofit corporations have all of the prestige and all of the publicity—and the other gets all of the profits, if and when. We swap assets around between corporations, always for perfectly valid reasons, so that the non-profit corporations pay the expenses as we go along. Come to think about it, we had better have at least two ordinary corporations, so that we can let one of them go through bankruptcy if we find it necessary to shake out the water. That’s the general sketch. Get busy and fix it up so that it’s legal, will you?”

Kamens said, “You know, Delos, it would be a lot more honest if you did it at the point of a gun.” “Alawyer talks to me of honesty! Never mind, Saul; I’m not actually going to cheat anyone-“ “Humph!”

“—and I’m just going to make a trip to the Moon. That’s what everybody will be paying for; that’s what they’ll get. Now fix it up so that it’s legal, that’s a good boy.”

“I’m reminded of something the elder Vanderbilt’s lawyer said to the old man under similar circumstances: ‘It’s beautiful the way it is; why spoil it by making it legal?’ Okeh, brother gonoph, I’ll rig your trap. Anything else?”

“Sure. Stick around, you might have some ideas. George, ask Montgomery to come in, will you?” Montgomery, Harriman’s publicity chief, had two virtues in his employer’s eyes: he was personally loyal to Harriman, and, secondly, he was quite capable of planning a campaign to convince the public that Lady Godiva wore a Caresse-brand girdle during her famous ride

or that Hercules attributed his strength to Crunchies for breakfast. He arrived with a large portfolio under his arm. “Glad you sent for me, Chief. Get a load of this—” He spread the folder open on Harriman’s desk and began displaying sketches and layouts. “Kinsky’s work—is that boy hot!” Harriman closed the portfolio. “What outfit is it for?”

“Huh? New World Homes.”

“I don’t want to see it; we’re dumping New World Homes. Wait a minute-don’t start to bawl. Have the boys go through with it; I want the price kept up while we unload. But open your ears to another matter.” He explained rapidly the new enterprise.

Presently Montgomery was nodding. “When do we start and how much do we spend?”

“Right away and spend what you need to. Don’t get chicken about expenses; this is the biggest thing we’ve ever tackled.” Strong flinched; Harriman went on, “Have insomnia over it tonight; see me tomorrow and we’ll kick it around.”

“Wait a see, Chief. How are you going to sew up all those franchises from the, uh—the Moon states, those countries the Moon passes over, while a big publicity campaign is going on about a trip to the Moon and how big a thing it is for everybody? Aren’t you about to paint yourself into a corner?”

“Do I look stupid? We’ll get the franchise before you hand out so much as a filler—you’ll get ‘em, you and Kamens. That’s your first job.” “Hmmm… .” Montgomery chewed a thumb nail. “Well, all right—I can see some angles. How soon do we have to sew it up?”

“I give you six weeks. Otherwise just mail your resignation in, written on the skin off your back.”

“I’ll write it right now, if you’ll help me by holding a mirror.”

“Damn it, Monty, I know you can’t do it in six weeks. But make it fast; we can’t take a cent in to keep the thing going until you sew up those franchises. If you dilly-dally, we’ll all starve-and we won’t get to the Moon, either.”

Strong said, “D.D., why fiddle with those trick claims from a bunch of moth-eaten tropical countries? If you are dead set on going to the Moon, let’s call Ferguson in and get on with the matter.”

“I like your direct approach, George,” Harriman said, frowning. “Mmmm back about i 84; or ‘46 an eager-beaver American army officer captured California. You know what the State Department did?”

“They made him hand it back. Seems he hadn’t touched second base, or something. So they had to go to the trouble of capturing it all over again a few months later. Now I don’t want that to happen to us. It’s not enough just to set foot on the Moon and claim it; we’ve got to validate that claim in terrestrial courts—or we’re in for a peck of trouble. Eh, Saul?”

Kamens nodded. “Remember what happened to Columbus.” “Exactly. We aren’t going to let ourselves be rooked the way Columbus was.”

Montgomery spat out some thumb nail. “But, Chief—you know damn well those banana-state claims won’t be worth two cents after I do tie them up. Why not get a franchise right from the

U.N. and settle the matter? I’d as lief tackle that as tackle two dozen cockeyed legislatures. In fact I’ve got an angle already—we work it through the Security Council and—”

“Keep working on that angle; we’ll use it later. You don’t appreciate the full mechanics of the scheme, Monty. Of course those claims are worth nothing—except nuisance value. But their nuisance value is all important. Listen: we get to the Moon, or appear about to. Every one of those countries puts up a squawk; we goose them into it through the dummy corporations they have enfranchised. Where do they squawk? To the U.N., of course. Now the big countries on this globe, the rich and important ones, are all in the northern temperate zone. They see what the claims are based on and they take a frenzied look at the globe. Sure enough, the Moon does not pass over a one of them. The biggest country of all—Russia-doesn’t own a spadeful of dirt south of twenty-nine north. So they reject all the claims.

“Or do they?” Harriman went on. “The U.S. balks. The Moon passes over Florida and the southern part of Texas. Washington is in a tizzy. Should they back up the tropical countries and support the traditional theory of land title or should they throw their weight to the idea that the Moon belongs to everyone? Or should the United States try to claim the whole thing, seeing as how it was Americans who actually got there first?

“At this point we creep out from under cover. It seems that the Moon ship was owned and the expenses paid by a non-profit corporation chartered by the U.N. itself—” “Hold it,” interrupted Strong. “I didn’t know that the U.N. could create corporations?”

“You’ll find it can,” his partner answered. “How about it, Saul?” Kamens nodded. “Anyway,” Harriman continued, “I’ve already got the corporation. I had it set up several years ago. It can do most anything of an educational or scientific nature-and brother, that covers a lot of ground! Back to the point—this corporation, the creature of the U.N., asks its parent to declare the lunar colony autonomous territory, under the protection of the U.N. We won’t ask for outright membership at first because we want to keep it simple—”

“Simple, he calls it!” said Montgomery.

“Simple. This new colony will be a de facto sovereign state, holding title to the entire Moon, and—listen closely!—capable of buying, selling, passing laws, issuing title to land, setting up monopolies, collecting tariffs, et cetera without end. And we own it.”

“The reason we get all this is because the major states in the U.N. can’t think up a claim that sounds as legal as the claim made by the tropical states, they can’t agree among themselves as to how to split up the swag if they were to attempt brute force and the other major states aren’t willing to see the United States claim the whole thing. They’ll take the easy way out of their dilemma by appearing to retain title in the U.N. itself. The real title, the title controlling all economic and legal matters, will revert to us. Now do you see my point, Monty?”

Montgomery grinned. “Damned if I know if it’s necessary, Chief, but I love it. It’s beautiful.” “Well, I don’t think so,” Strong grumbled. “Delos, I’ve seen you rig some complicated deals—some of them so devious that they turned even my stomach—but this one is the worst yet. I

think you’ve been carried away by the pleasure you get out of cooking up involved deals in which somebody gets double-crossed.”

Harriman puffed hard on his cigar before answering, “I don’t give a damn, George. Call it chicanery, call it anything you want to. I’m going to the Moon! If I have to manipulate a million people to accomplish it, I’ll do it.”

“But it’s not necessary to do it this way.” “Well, how would you do it?”

“Me? I’d set up a straightforward corporation. I’d get a resolution in Congress making my corporation the chosen instrument of the United States—” “Bribery?”

“Not necessarily. Influence and pressure ought to be enough. Then I would set about raising the money and make the trip.” “And the United States would then own the Moon?”

“Naturally,” Strong answered a little stiffly.

Harriman got up and began pacing. “You don’t see it, George, you don’t see it. The Moon was not meant to be owned by a single country, even the United States.” “It was meant to be owned by you, I suppose.”

“Well, if I own it—for a short while—I won’t misuse it and I’ll take care that others don’t. Damnation, nationalism should stop at the stratosphere. Can you see what would happen if the United States lays claim to the Moon? The other nations won’t recognize the claim. It will become a permanent bone of contention in the Security Council—just when we were beginning to get straightened out to the point where a man could do business planning without having his elbow jogged by a war every few years. The other nations—quite rightfully—will be scared to death of the United States. They will be able to look up in the sky any night and see the main atom-bomb rocket base of the United States staring down the backs of their necks. Are they going to hold still for it? No, sirree—they are going to try to clip off a piece of the Moon for their own national use. The Moon is too big to hold, all at once. There will be other bases established there and presently there will be the worst war this planet has ever seen—and we’ll be to blame.

“No, it’s got to be an arrangement that everybody will hold still for—and that’s why we’ve got to plan it, think of all the angles, and be devious about it until we are in a position to make it work.

“Anyhow, George, if we claim it in the name of the United States, do you know where we will be, as business men?” “In the driver’s seat,” answered Strong.

“In a pig’s eye! We’ll be dealt right out of the game. The Department of National Defense will say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Harriman. Thank you, Mr. Strong. We are taking over in the interests of

national security; you can go home now.’ And that’s just what we would have to do—go home and wait for the next atom war.

“I’m not going to do it, George. I’m not going to let the brass hats muscle in. I’m going to set up a lunar colony and then nurse it along until it is big enough to stand on its own feet. I’m telling you—all of you!—this is the biggest thing for the human race since the discovery of fire. Handled right, it can mean a new and braver world. Handle it wrong and it’s a one-way ticket to Armageddon. It’s coming, it’s coming soon, whether we touch it or not. But I plan to be the Man in the Moon myself—and give it my personal attention to see that it’s handled right.”

He paused. Strong said, “Through with your sermon, Delos?”

“No, I’m not,” Harriman denied testily. “You don’t see this thing the right way. Do you know what we may find up there?” He swung his arm in an arc toward the ceiling. “People!” “On the Moon?” said Kamens.

“Why not on the Moon?” whispered Montgomery to Strong.

“No, not on the Moon—at least I’d be amazed if we dug down and found anybody under that airless shell. The Moon has had its day; I was speaking of the other planets—Mars and Venus and the satellites of Jupiter. Even maybe out at the stars themselves. Suppose we do find people? Think what it will mean to us. We’ve been alone, all alone, the only intelligent race in the only world we know. We haven’t even been able to talk with dogs or apes. Any answers we got we had to think up by ourselves, like deserted orphans. But suppose we find people, intelligent people, who have done some thinking in their own way. We wouldn’t be alone any more! We could look up at the stars and never be afraid again.”

He finished, seeming a little tired and even a little ashamed of his outburst, like a man surprised in a private act. He stood facing them, searching their faces. “Gee whiz, Chief,” said Montgomery, “I can use that. How about it?”

“Think you can remember it?”

“Don’t need to—I flipped on your ‘silent steno.” “Well, damn your eyes!”

“We’ll put it on video—in a play I think.”

Harriman smiled almost boyishly. “I’ve never acted, but if you think it’ll do any good, I’m game.”

“Oh, no, not you, Chief,” Montgomery answered in horrified tones. “You’re not the type. I’ll use Basil Wilkes-Booth, I think. With his organlike voice and that beautiful archangel face, he’ll really send ‘em.”

Harriman glanced down at his paunch and said gruffly, “O.K.—back to business. Now about money. In the first place we can go after straight donations to one of the non-profit corporations, just like endowments for colleges. Hit the upper brackets, where tax deductions really matter. How much do you think we can raise that way?”

“Very little,” Strong opined. “That cow is about milked dry.”

“It’s never milked dry, as long as there are rich men around who would rather make gifts than pay taxes. How much will a man pay to have a crater on the Moon named after him?” “I thought they all had names?” remarked the lawyer.

“Lots of them don’t—and we have the whole back face that’s not touched yet. We won’t try to put down an estimate today; we’ll just list it. Monty, I want an angle to squeeze dimes out of the school kids, too. Forty million school kids ‘at a dime a head is $4,000,000.00—we can use that.”

“Why stop at a dime?” asked Monty. “If you get a kid really interested he’ll scrape together a dollar.” “Yes, but what do we offer him for it? Aside from the honor of taking part in a noble venture and so forth?”

“Mmmm… .” Montgomery used up more thumb nail. “Suppose we go after both the dimes and the dollars. For a dime he gets a card saying that he’s a member of the Moonbeam club—” “No, the ‘Junior Spacemen’.”

“O.K., the Moonbeams will be girls—and don’t forget to rope the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts into it, too. We give each kid a card; when he kicks in another dime, we punch it. When he’s punched out a dollar, we give him a certificate, suitable for framing, with his name and some process engraving, and on the back a picture of the Moon.”

“On the front,” answered Harriman. “Do it in one print job; it’s cheaper and it’ll look better. We give him something else, too, a steelclad guarantee that his name will be on the rolls of the Junior Pioneers of the Moon, which same will be placed in a monument to be erected on the Moon at the landing site of the first Moon ship—in microfilm, of course; we have to watch weight.”

“Fine!” agreed Montgomery. “Want to swap jobs, Chief? V/hen he gets up to ten dollars we give him a genuine, solid gold-plated shooting star pin ~nd he’s a senior Pioneer, with the right to vote or something or other. And his name goes outside of the monument—microengraved on a platinum strip.”

Strong looked as if he had bitten a lemon. “What happens when he reaches a hundred dollars?” he asked.

“Why, then,” Montgomery answered happily, “we give him another card and he can start over. Don’t worry about it, Mr. Strong—if any kid goes that high, he’ll have his reward. Probably we will take him on an inspection tour of the ship before it takes off and give him, absolutely free, a picture of himself standing in front of it, with the pilot’s own signature signed across the bottom by some female clerk.”

“Chiseling from kids. Bah!”

“Not at all,” answered Montgomery in hurt tones. “Intangibles are the most honest merchandise anyone can sell. They are always worth whatever you are willing to pay for them and they never wear out. You can take them to your grave untarnished.”

“Hmmmph!”

Harriman listened to this, smiling and saying nothing. Kamens cleared his throat. “If you two ghouls are through cannibalizing the youth of the land, I’ve another idea.” “Spill it.”

“George, you collect stamps, don’t you?” “Yes.”

“How much would a cover be worth which had been to the Moon and been cancelled there?” “Huh? But you couldn’t, you know.”

“I think we could get our Moon ship declared a legal post office substation without too much trouble. What would it be worth?” “Uh, that depends on how rare they are.”

“There must be some optimum number which will fetch a maximum return. Can you estimate it?”

Strong got a faraway look in his eye, then took out an old-fashioned pencil and commenced to figure. Harriman went on, “Saul, my minor success in buying a share in the Moon from Jones went to my head. How about selling building lots on the Moon?”

“Let’s keep this serious, Delos. You can’t do that until you’ve landed there.”

“I am serious. I know you are thinking of that ruling back in the ‘forties that such land would have to be staked out and accurately described. I want to sell land on the Moon. You figure out a way to make it legal. I’ll sell the whole Moon, if I can—surface rights, mineral rights, anything.”

“Suppose they want to occupy it?”

“Fine. The more the merrier. I’d like to point out, too, that we’ll be in a position to assess taxes on what we have sold. If they don’t use it and won’t pay taxes, it reverts to us. Now you figure out how to offer it, without going to jail. You may have to advertise it abroad, then plan to peddle it personally in this country, like Irish Sweepstakes tickets.”

Kamens looked thoughtful. “We could incorporate the land company in Panama and advertise by video and radio from Mexico. Do you really think you can sell the stuff?” “You can sell snowballs in Greenland,” put in Montgomery. “It’s a matter of promotion.”

Harriman added, “Did you ever read about the Florida land boom, Saul? People bought lots they had never seen and sold them at tripled prices without ever having laid eyes on them. Sometimes a parcel would change hands a dozen times before anyone got around to finding out that the stuff was ten-foot deep in water. We can offer bargains better than that—an acre, a guaranteed dry acre with plenty of sunshine, for maybe ten dollars—or a thousand acres at a dollar an acre. Who’s going to turn down a bargain like that? Particularly after the rumor gets around that the Moon is believed to be loaded with uranium?”

“Is it?”

“How should I know? When the boom sags a little we will announce the selected location of Luna City—and it will just happen to work out that the land around the site is still available for sale. Don’t worry, Saul, if it’s real estate, George and I can sell it. Why, down in the Ozarks, where the land stands on edge, we used to sell both sides of the same acre.” Harriman looked thoughtful. “I think we’ll reserve mineral rights—there just might actually be uranium there!”

Kamens chuckled. “Delos, you are a kid at heart. Just a great big, overgrown, lovable—juvenile delinquent.” Strong straightened up. “I make it half a million,” he said.

“Half a million what?” asked Harriman.

“For the cancelled philatelic covers, of course. That’s what we were talking about. Five thousand is my best estimate of the number that could be placed with serious collectors and with dealers. Even then we will have to discount them to a syndicate and hold back until the ship is built and the trip looks like a probability.”

“Okay,” agreed Harriman. “You handle it. I’ll just note that we can tap you for an extra half million toward the end.” “Don’t I get a commission?” asked Kamens. “I thought of it.”

“You get a rising vote of thanks—and ten acres on the Moon. Now what other sources of revenue can we hit?” “Don’t you plan to sell stock?” asked Kamens.

“I was coming to that. Of course-but no preferred stock; we don’t want to be forced through a reorganization. Participating common, non-voting—” “Sounds like another banana-state corporation to me.”

“Naturally—but I want some of it on the New York Exchange, and you’ll have to work that out with the Securities Exchange Commission somehow. Not too much of it—that’s our show case and we’ll have to keep it active and moving up.”

“Wouldn’t you rather I swam the Hellespont?”

“Don’t be like that, Saul. It beats chasing ambulances, doesn’t it?” “I’m not sure.”

“Well, that’s what I want you—wups!” The screen on Harriman’s desk had come to life. Agirl said, “Mr. Harriman, Mr. Dixon is here. He has no appointment but he says that you want to see him.”

“I thought I had that thing shut off,” muttered Harriman, then pressed his key and said, “O.K., show him in.” “Very well, sir—oh, Mr. Harriman, Mr. Entenza came in just this second.”

“Look who’s talking,” said Kamens. Dixon came in with Entenza behind him. He sat down, looked around, started to speak, then checked himself. He looked around again, especially at Entenza. “Go ahead, Dan,” Harriman encouraged him. “‘Tain’t nobody here at all but just us chickens.”

Dixon made up his mind. “I’ve decided to come in with you, D.D.,” he announced. “As an act of faith I went to the trouble of getting this.” He took a formal-looking instrument from his pocket and displayed it. It was a sale of lunar rights, from Phineas Morgan to Dixon, phrased in exactly the same fashion as that which Jones had granted to Harriman.

Entenza looked startled, then dipped into his own inner coat pocket. Out came three more sales contracts of the same sort, each from a director of the power syndicate. Harriman cocked an eyebrow at them. “Jack sees you and raises you two, Dan. You want to call?”

Dixon smiled ruefully. “I can just see him.” He added two more to the pile, grinned and offered his hand to Entenza.

“Looks like a stand off.” Harriman decided to say nothing just yet about seven telestated contracts now locked in his desk—after going to bed the night before he had been quite busy on the phone almost till midnight. “Jack, how much did you pay for those things?”

“Standish held out for a thousand; the others were cheap.”

“Damn it, I warned you not to run the price up. Standish will gossip. How about you, Dan?” “I got them at satisfactory prices.”

“So you won’t talk, eh? Never mind—gentlemen, how serious are you about this? How much money did you bring with you?” Entenza looked to Dixon, who answered, “How much does it take?”

“How much can you raise?” demanded Harriman. Dixon shrugged. “We’re getting no place. Let’s use figures. Ahundred thousand.”

Harriman sniffed. “I take it what you really want is to reserve a seat on the first regularly scheduled Moon ship. I’ll sell it to you at that price.” “Let’s quit sparring, Delos. How much?”

Harriman’s face remained calm but he thought furiously. He was caught short, with too little information—he had not even talked figures with his chief engineer as yet. Confound it! Why had he left that phone hooked in? “Dan, as I warned you, it will cost you at least a million just to sit down in this game.”

“So I thought. How much will it take to stay in the game?” “All you’ve got.”

“Don’t be silly, Delos. I’ve got more than you have.”

Harriman lit a cigar, his only sign of agitation. “Suppose you match us, dollar for dollar.” “For which I get two shares?”

“Okay, okay, you chuck in a buck whenever each of us does—share and share alike. But I run things.”

“You run the operations,” agreed Dixon. “Very well, I’ll put up a million now and match you as necessary. You have no objection to me having my own auditor, of course.” “When have I ever cheated you, Dan?”

“Never and there is no need to start.”

“Have it your own way—but be damned sure you send a man who can keep his mouth shut.” “He’ll keep quiet. I keep his heart in a jar in my safe.”

Harriman was thinking about the extent of Dixon’s assets. “We just might let you buy in with a second share later, Dan. This operation will be expensive.” Dixon fitted his finger tips carefully together. “We’ll meet that question when we come to it. I don’t believe in letting an enterprise fold up for lack of capital.” “Good.” Harriman turned to Entenza. “You heard what Dan had to say, Jack. Do you like the terms?”

Entenza’s forehead was covered with sweat. “I can’t raise a million that fast.”

“That’s all right, Jack. We don’t need it this morning. Your note is good; you can take your time liquidating.”

“But you said a million is just the beginning. I can’t match you indefinitely; you’ve got to place a limit on it. I’ve got my family to consider.” “No annuities, Jack? No monies transferred in an irrevocable trust?”

“That’s not the point. You’ll be able to squeeze me-freeze me out.”

Harriman waited for Dixon to say something. Dixon finally said, “We wouldn’t squeeze you, Jack—as long as you could prove you had converted every asset you hold. We would let you stay in on a pro rata basis.”

Harriman nodded. “That’s right, Jack.” He was thinking that any shrinkage in Entenza’s share would give himself and Strong a clear voting majority. Strong had been thinking of something of the same nature, for he spoke up suddenly, “I don’t like this. Four equal partners—we can be deadlocked too easily.” Dixon shrugged. “I refuse to worry about it. I am in this because I am betting that Delos can manage to make it profitable.”

“We’ll get to the Moon, Dan!”

“I didn’t say that. I am betting that you will show a profit whether we get to the Moon or not. Yesterday evening I spent looking over the public records of several of your companies; they were very interesting. I suggest we resolve any possible deadlock by giving the Director—that’s you, Delos— the power to settle ties. Satisfactory, Entenza?”

“Oh, sure!”

Harriman was worried but tried not to show it. He did not trust Dixon, even bearing gifts. He stood up suddenly. “I’ve got to run, gentlemen. I leave you to Mr. Strong and Mr. Kamens. Come along, Monty.” Kamens, he was sure, would not spill anything prematurely, even to nominal full partners. As for Strong—George, he knew, had not even let his left hand know how many fingers there were on his right.

He dismissed Montgomery outside the door of the partners’ personal office and went across the hall. Andrew Ferguson, chief engineer of Harriman Enterprises, looked up as he came in. “Howdy, Boss. Say, Mr. Strong gave me an interesting idea for a light switch this morning. It did not seem practical at first but—”

“Skip it. Let one of the boys have it and forget it. You know the line we are on now.” “There have been rumors,” Ferguson answered cautiously.

“Fire the man that brought you the rumor. No-send him on a special mission to Tibet and keep him there until we are through. Well, let’s get on with it. I want you to build a Moon ship as quickly as possible.”

Ferguson threw one leg over the arm of his chair, took out a pen knife and began grooming his nails. “You say that like it was an order to build a privy.”

“Why not? There have been theoretically adequate fuels since way back in ‘49. You get together the team to design it and the gang to build it; you build it—I pay the bills. What could be

simpler?”

Ferguson stared at the ceiling. “‘Adequate fuels—’” he repeated dreamily.

“So I said. The figures show that hydrogen and oxygen are enough to get a step rocket to the Moon and back—it’s just a matter of proper design.”

“‘Proper design,’ he says,” Ferguson went on ifl the same gentle voice, then suddenly swung around, jabbed the knife into the scarred desk top and bellowed, “What do you know about proper design? Where do I get the steels? What do I use for a throat liner? How in the hell do I burn enough tons of your crazy mix per second to keep from wasting all my power breaking loose? How can I get a decent mass-ratio with a step rocket? Why in the hell didn’t you let me build a proper ship when we had the fuel?”

Harriman waited for him to quiet down, then said, “What do we do about it, Andy?”

“Hmmm… . I was thinking about it as I lay abed last night—and my old lady is sore as hell at you; I had to finish the night on the couch. In the first place, Mr. Harriman, the proper way to tackle this is to get a research appropriation from the Department of National Defense. Then you—”

“Damn it, Andy, you stick to engineering and let me handle the political and financial end of it. I don’t want your advice.”

“Damn it, Delos, don’t go off half-cocked. This is engineering I’m talking about. The government owns a whole mass of former art about rocketry—all classified. Without a government contract you can’t even get a peek at it.”

“It can’t amount to very much. What can a government rocket do that a Skyways rocket can’t do? You told me yourself that Federal rocketry no longer amounted to anything.” Ferguson looked supercilious. “I am afraid I can’t explain it in lay terms. You will have to take it for granted that we need those government research reports. There’s no sense in

spending thousands of dollars in doing work that has already been done.”

“Spend the thousands.” “Maybe millions.”

“Spend the millions. Don’t be afraid to spend money. Andy, I don’t want this to be a military job.” He considered elaborating to the engineer the involved politics back of his decision, thought better of it. “How bad do you actually need that government stuff? Can’t you get the same results by hiring engineers who used to work for the government? Or even hire them away from the government right now?”

Ferguson pursed his lips. “If you insist on hampering me, how can you expect me to get results?”

“I am not hampering you. I am telling you that this is not a government project. If you won’t attempt to cope with it on those terms, let me know now, so that I can find somebody who will.” Ferguson started playing mumblety-peg on his desk top. When he got to “noses”—and missed—he said quietly, “I mind a boy who used to work for the government at White Sands. He

was a very smart lad indeed-design chief of section.”

“You mean he might head up your team?” “That was the notion.”

“What’s his name? Where is he? Who’s he working for?”

“Well, as it happened, when the government closed down White Sands, it seemed a shame to me that a good boy should be out of a job, so I placed him with Skyways. He’s maintenance chief engineer out on the Coast.”

“Maintenance? What a hell of a job for a creative man! But you mean he’s working for us now? Get him on the screen. No—call the coast and have them send him here in a special rocket; we’ll all have lunch together.”

“As it happens,” Ferguson said quietly, “I got up last night and called him—that’s what annoyed the Missus. He’s waiting outside. Coster—Bob Coster.” Aslow grin spread over Harriman’s face. “Andy! You black-hearted old scoundrel, why did you pretend to balk?”

“I wasn’t pretending. I like it here, Mr. Harriman. Just as long as you don’t interfere, I’ll do my job. Now my notion is this: we’ll make young Coster chief engineer of the project and give him his head. I won’t joggle his elbow; I’ll just read the reports. Then you leave him alone, d’you hear me? Nothing makes a good technical man angrier than to have some incompetent nitwit with a check book telling him how to do his job.”

“Suits. And I don’t want a penny-pinching old fool slowing him down, either. Mind you don’t interfere with him, either, or I’ll jerk the rug out from under you. Do we understand each other?” “I think we do.”

“Then get him in here.”

Apparently Ferguson’s concept of a “lad” was about age thirty-five, for such Harriman judged Coster to be. He was tall, lean, and quietly eager. Harriman braced him immediately after shaking hands with, “Bob, can you build a rocket that will go to the Moon?”

Coster took it without blinking. “Do you have a source of X-fuel?” he countered, giving the rocket man’s usual shorthand for the isotope fuel formerly produced by the power satellite. Coster remained perfectly quiet for several seconds, then answered, “I can put an unmanned messenger rocket on the face of the Moon.”

“Not good enough. I want it to go there, land, and come back. Whether it lands here under power or by atmosphere braking is unimportant.”

It appeared that Coster never answered promptly; Harriman had the fancy that he could hear wheels turning over in the man’s head. “That would be a very expensive job.” “Who asked you how much it would cost? Can you do it?”

“I could try.”

“Try, hell. Do you think you can do it? Would you bet your shirt on it? Would you be willing to risk your neck in the attempt? If you don’t believe in yourself, man, you’ll always lose.” “How much will you risk, sir? I told you this would be expensive-and I doubt if you have any idea how expensive.” “And I told you not to worry about money. Spend what you need; it’s my job to pay the bills. Can you do it?”

“I can do it. I’ll let you know later how much it will cost and how long it will take.”

“Good. Start getting your team together. Where are we going to do this, Andy?” he added, turning to Ferguson. “Australia?” “No.” It was Coster who answered. “It can’t be Australia; I want a mountain catapult. That will save us one step-combination.” “How big a mountain?” asked Harriman~ “Will Pikes Peak do?”

“It ought to be in the Andes,” objected Ferguson. “The mountains are taller and closer to the equator. After all, we own facilities there—or the Andes Development Company does.”

“Do as you like, Bob,” Harriman told Coster. “I would prefer Pikes Peak, but it’s up to you.” He was thinking that there were tremendous business advantages to locating Earth’s space port ~ i inside the United States—and he could visualize the advertising advantage of having Moon ships blast off from the top of Pikes Peak, in plain view of everyone for hundreds of miles to the East.

“I’ll let you know.”

“Now about salary. Forget whatever it was we were paying you; how much do you want?” Coster actually gestured, waving the subject away. “I’ll work for coffee and cakes.” “Don’t be silly.”

“Let me finish. Coffee and cakes and one other thing: I get to make the trip.

Harriman blinked. “Well, I can understand that,” he said slowly. “In the meantime I’ll put you on a drawing account.” He added, “Better calculate for a three-man ship, unless you are a pilot.”

“I’m not.”

“Three men, then. You see, I’m going along, too.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“AGOOD THING YOU DECIDED to come in, Dan,” Harriman was saying, “or you would find yourself out of a job. I’m going to put an awful crimp in the power company before I’m through with this.”

Dixon buttered a roll. “Really? How?”

“We’ll set up high-temperature piles, like the Arizona job, just like the one that blew up, around the corner on the far face of the Moon. We’ll remote-control them; if one explodes it won’t matter. And I’ll breed more X-fuel in a week than the company turned out in three months. Nothing personal about it; it’s just that I want a source of fuel for interplanetary liners. If we can’t get good stuff here, we’ll have to make it on the Moon.”

“Interesting. But where do you propose to get the uranium for six piles? The last I heard the Atomic Energy Commission had the prospective supply earmarked twenty years ahead.” “Uranium? Don’t be silly; we’ll get it on the Moon.”

“On the Moon? Is there uranium on the Moon?”

“Didn’t you know? I thought that was why you decided to join up with me?” “No, I didn’t know,” Dixon said deliberately. “What proof have you?”

“Me? I’m no scientist, but it’s a well-understood fact. Spectroscopy, or something. Catch one of the professors. But don’t go showing too much interest; we aren’t ready to show our hand.” Harriman stood up. “I’ve got to run, or I’ll miss the shuttle for Rotterdam. Thanks for the lunch.” He grabbed his hat and left.

Harriman stood up. “Suit yourself, Mynheer van der Velde. I’m giving you and your colleagues a chance to hedge your bets. Your geologists all agree that diamonds result from volcanic action. What do you think we will find there?” He dropped a large photograph of the Moon on the Hollander’s desk.

The diamond merchant looked impassively at the pictured planet, pockmarked by a thousand giant craters. “If you get there, Mr. Harriman.”

Harriman swept up the picture. “We’ll get there. And we’ll find diamonds—though I would be the first to admit that it may be twenty years or even forty before there is a big enough strike to matter. I’ve come to you because I believe that the worst villain in our social body is a man who introduces a major new economic factor without planning his innovation in such a way as to permit peaceful adjustment. I don’t like panics. But all I can do is warn you. Good day.”

“Sit down, Mr. Harriman. I’m always confused when a man explains how he is going to do me good. Suppose you tell me instead how this is going to do you good? Then we can discuss

how to protect the world market against a sudden influx of diamonds from the Moon.”

Harriman sat down.

Harriman liked the Low Countries. He was delighted to locate a dog-drawn milk cart whose young master wore real wooden shoes; he happily took pictures and tipped the child heavily, unaware that the set-up was arranged for tourists. He visited several other diamond merchants but without speaking of the Moon. Among other purchases he found a brooch for Charlotte— a peace offering.

Then he took a taxi to London, planted a story with the representatives of the diamond syndicate there, arranged with his London solicitors to be insured by Lloyd’s of London through a dummy, against a successful Moon flight, and called his home office. He listened to numerous reports, especially those concerning Montgomery, and found that Montgomery was in New Delhi. He called him there, spoke with him at length, then hurried to the port just in time to catch his ship. He was in Colorado the next morning.

At Peterson Field, east of Colorado Springs, he had trouble getting through the gate, even though it was now his domain, under lease. Of course he could have called Coster and gotten it straightened out at once, but he wanted to look around before seeing Coster. Fortunately the head guard knew him by sight; he got in and wandered around for an hour or more, a tn- colored badge pinned to his coat to give him freedom.

The machine shop was moderately busy, so was the foundry … but most of the shops were almost deserted. Harriman left the shops, went into the main engineering building. The drafting room and the loft were fairly active, as was the computation section. But there were unoccupied desks in the structures group and a churchlike quiet in the metals group and in the adjoining metallurgical laboratory. He was about to cross over into the chemicals and materials annex when Coster suddenly showed up.

“Mr. Harriman! I just heard you were here.”

“Spies everywhere,” remarked Harriman. “I didn’t want to disturb you.” “Not at all. Let’s go up to my office.”

Settled there a few moments later Harriman asked, “Well—how’s it going?” Coster frowned. “All right, I guess.”

Harriman noted that the engineer’s desk baskets were piled high with papers which spilled over onto the desk. Before Harriman could answer, Coster’s desk phone lit up and a feminine voice said sweetly, “Mr. Coster— Mr. Morgenstern is calling.”

“Tell him I’m busy.”

After a short wait the girl answered in a troubled voice, “He says he’s just got to speak to you, sir.” Coster looked annoyed. “Excuse me a moment, Mr. Harriman—O.K., put him on.”

The girl was replaced by a man who said, “Oh there you are-what was the hold up? Look, Chief, we’re in a jam about these trucks. Every one of them that we leased needs an overhaul and now it turns out that the White Fleet company won’t do anything about it—they’re sticking to the fine print in the contract. Now the way I see it, we’d do better to cancel the contract and do business with Peak City Transport. They have a scheme that looks good to me. They guarantee to—”

“Take care of it,” snapped Coster. “You made the contract and you have authority to cancel. You know that.”

“Yes, but Chief, I figured this would be something you would want to pass on personally. It involves policy and—” “Take care of it! I don’t give a damn what you do as long as we have transportation when we need it.” He switched off. “Who is that man?” inquired Harriman.

“Who? Oh, that’s Morgenstern, Claude Morgenstem.” “Not his name—what does he do?”

“He’s one of my assistants—buildings, grounds, and transportation.” “Fire him!”

Coster looked stubborn. Before he could answer a secretary came in and stood insistently at his elbow with a sheaf of papers. He frowned, initialed them, and sent her out. “Oh, I don’t mean that as an order,” Harriman added, “but I do mean it as serious advice. I won’t give orders in your backyard,—but will you listen to a few minutes of advice?” “Naturally,” Coster agreed stiffly.

“Mmm … this your first job as top boss?” Coster hesitated, then admitted it.

“I hired you on Ferguson’s belief that you were the engineer most likely to build a successful Moon ship. I’ve had no reason to change my mind. But top administration ain’t engineering, and maybe I can show you a few tricks there, if you’ll let me.” He waited. “I’m not criticizing,” he added. “Top bossing is like sex; until you’ve had it, you don’t know about it.” Harriman had the mental reservation that if the boy would not take advice, he would suddenly be out of a job, whether Ferguson liked it or not.

Coster drummed on his desk. “I don’t know what’s wrong and that’s a fact. It seems as if I can’t turn anything over to anybody and have it done properly. I feel as if I were swimming in quicksand.”

“Done much engineering lately?”

“I try to.” Coster waved at another desk in the corner. “I work there, late at night.”

“That’s no good. I hired you as an engineer. Bob, this setup is all wrong. The joint ought to be jumping—and it’s not. Your office ought to be quiet as a grave. Instead your office is jumping and the plant looks like a graveyard.”

Coster buried his face in his hands, then looked up. “I know it. I know what needs to be done-but every time I try to tackle a technical problem some bloody fool wants me to make a decision about trucks—or telephones—or some damn thing. I’m sorry, Mr. Harriman. I thought I could do it.” Harriman said very gently, “Don’t let it throw you, Bob. You haven’t had much sleep lately, have you? Tell you what—we’ll put over a fast one on Ferguson. I’ll take that desk you’re at for a few days and build you a set-up to protect you against such things. I want that brain of yours thinking about reaction vectors and fuel efficiencies and design stresses, not about contracts for trucks.” Harriman stepped to the door, looked around the outer office and spotted a man who might or might not be the office’s chief clerk. “Hey, you! C’mere.”

The man looked startled, got up, came to the door and said, “Yes?”

“I want that desk in the corner and all the stuff that’s on it moved to an empty office on this floor, right away.” The clerk raised his eyebrows. “And who are you, if I may ask?”

“Damn it—”

“Do as he tells you, Weber,” Coster put in.

“I want it done inside of twenty minutes,” added Harriman. “Jump!” He turned back to Coster’s other desk, punched the phone, and presently was speaking to the main offices of Skyways. “Jim, is your boy Jock Berkeley around? Put him on leave and send him to me, at Peterson Field, right away, special trip. I want the ship he comes in to raise ground ten minutes after we sign off. Send his gear after him.” Harriman listened for a moment, then answered, “No, your organization won’t fall apart if you lose Jock— or, if it does, maybe we’ve been paying the wrong man the top salary .

“Okay, okay, you’re entitled to one swift kick at my tail the next time you catch up with me but send Jock. So long.”

He supervised getting Coster and his other desk moved into another office, saw to it that the phone in the new office was disconnected, and, as an afterthought, had a couch moved in there, too. “We’ll install a projector, and a drafting machine and bookcases and other junk like that tonight,” he told Coster. “Just make a list of anything you need—to work on engineering. And call me if you want anything.” He went back to the nominal chiefengineer’s office and got happily to work trying to figure where the organization stood and what was wrong with it.

Some four hours later he took Berkeley in to meet Coster. The chief engineer was asleep at his desk, head cradled on his arms. Harriman started to back out, but Coster roused. “Oh! Sorry,” he said, blushing, “I must have dozed off.”

“That’s why I brought you the couch,” said Harriman. “It’s more restful. Bob, meet Jock Berkeley. He’s your new slave. You remain chief engineer and top, undisputed boss. Jock is Lord High Everything Else. From now on you’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about—except for the little detail of building a Moon ship.”

They shook hands. “Just one thing I ask, Mr. Coster,” Berkeley said seriously, “bypass me all you want to-you’ll have to run the technical show—but for God’s sake record it so I’ll know what’s going on. I’m going to have a switch placed on your desk that will operate a sealed recorder at my desk.”

“Fine!” Coster was looking, Harriman thought, younger already.

“And if you want something that is not technical, don’t do it yourself. Just flip a switch and whistle; it’ll get done!” Berkeley glanced at Harriman. “The Boss says he wants to talk with you about the real job. I’ll leave you and get busy.” He left.

Harriman sat down; Coster followed suit and said, “Whew!” “Feel better?”

“I like the looks of that fellow Berkeley.”

“That’s good; he’s your twin brother from now on. Stop worrying; I’ve used him before. You’ll think you’re living in a well-run hospital. By the way, where do you live?” “At a boarding house in the Springs.”

“That’s ridiculous. And you don’t even have a place here to sleep?” Harriman reached over to Coster’s desk, got through to Berkeley. “Jock—get a suite for Mr. Coster at the Broadmoor, under a phony name.”

“Right.”

“And have this stretch along here adjacent to his office fitted out as an apartment.” “Right. Tonight.”

“Now, Bob, about the Moon ship. Where do we stand?”

They spent the next two hours contentedly running over the details of the problem, as Coster had laid them out. Admittedly very little work had been done since the field was leased but Coster had accomplished considerable theoretical work and computation before he had gotten swamped in administrative details. Harriman, though no engineer and certainly not a mathematician outside the primitive arithmetic of money, had for so long devoured everything he could find about space travel that he was able to follow most of what Coster showed him.

“I don’t see anything here about your mountain catapult,” he said presently. Coster looked vexed. “Oh, that! Mr. Harriman, I spoke too quickly.”

“Huh? How come? I’ve had Montgomery’s boys drawing up beautiful pictures of what things will look like when we are running regular trips. I intend to make Colorado Springs the spaceport capital of the world. We hold the franchise of the old cog railroad now; what’s the hitch?”

“Well, it’s both time and money.” “Forget money. That’s my pidgin.”

“Time then. I still think an electric gun is the best way to get the initial acceleration for a chem-powered ship. Like this—” He began to sketch rapidly. “It enables you to omit the first step- rocket stage, which is bigger than all the others put together and is terribly inefficient, as it has such a poor mass-ratio. But what do you have to do to get it? You can’t build a tower, not a tower a couple of miles high, strong enough to take the thrusts—not this year, anyway. So you have to use a mountain. Pikes Peak is as good as any; it’s accessible, at least.

“But what do you have to do to use it? First, a tunnel in through the side, from Manitou to just under the peak, and big enough to take the loaded ship—” “Lower it down from the top,” suggested Harriman.

Coster answered, “I thought of that. Elevators two miles high for loaded space ships aren’t exactly built out of string, in fact they aren’t built out of any available materials. It’s possible to gimmick the catapult itself so that the accelerating coils can be reversed and timed differently to do the job, but believe me, Mr. Harrima; it will throw you into other engineering problems quite as great … such as a giant railroad up to the top of the ship. And it still leaves you with the shaft of the catapult itself to be dug. It can’t be as small as the ship, not like a gun barrel for a bullet. It’s got to be considerably larger; you don’t compress a column of air two miles high with impunity. Oh, a mountain catapult could be built, but it might take ten years—or longer.”

“Then forget it. We’ll build it for the future but not for this flight. No, wait—how about a surface catapult. We scoot up the side of the mountain and curve it up at the end?” “Quite frankly, I think something like that is what will eventually be used. But, as of today, it just creates new problems. Even if we could devise an electric gun in which you could make

that last curve—we can’t, at present— the ship would have to be designed for terrific side stresses and all the additional weight would be parasitic so far as our main purpose is

concerned, the design of a rocket ship.”

“Well, Bob, what is your solution?” Coster frowned. “Go back to what we know how to do—build a step rocket.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“MONTY—”

“Yeah, Chief?”

“Have you ever heard this song?” Harriman hummed, “The Moon belongs to everyone; the best things in life are free—,” then sang it, badly off key. “Can’t say as I ever have.” “It was before your time. I want it dug out again. I want it revivcd, plugged until Hell wouldn’t have it, and on everybody’s lips.”

“O.K.” Montgomery took out his memorandum pad. “When do you want it to reach its top?”

Harriman considered. “In, say, about three months. Then I want the first phrase picked up and used in advertising slogans.” “Acinch.”

“How are things in Florida, Monty?”

“I thought we were going to have to buy the whole damned legislature until we got the rumor spread around that Los Angeles had contracted to have a City-Limits-of-Los-Angeles sign planted on the Moon for publicity pix. Then they came around.”

“Good.” Harriman pondered. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. How much do you think the Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles would pay for such a picture?” Montgomery made another note. “I’ll look into it.”

“I suppose you are about ready to crank up Texas, now that Florida is loaded?” “Most any time now. We’re spreading a few snide rumors first.”

Headline from Dallas-Fort Worth Banner: “THE MOON BELONGS TO TEXAS!!!”

“—and that’s all for tonight, kiddies. Don’t forget to send in those box tops, or reasonable facsimiles. Remember—first prize is a thousand-acre ranch on the Moon itself, free and clear; the second prize is a six-foot scale model of the actual Moon ship, and there are fifty, count them, fifty third prizes, each a saddle-trained Shetland pony. Your hundred word composition ‘Why I want to go to the Moon’ will be judged for sincerity and originality, not on literary merit. Send those boxtops to Uncle Taffy, Box 214, Juarez, Old Mexico.”

Harriman was shown into the office of the president of the Moka-Coka Company (“Only a Moke is truly a coke”—~ “Drink the Cola drink with the Lift”). He paused at the door, some twenty feet from the president’s desk and quickly pinned a two-inch wide button to his lapel.

Patterson Griggs looked up. “Well, this is really an honor, D.D. Do come in and—” The soft-drink executive stopped suddenly, his expression changed. “What are you doing wearing that?” he snapped. “Trying to annoy me?”

“That” was the two-inch disc; Harriman unpinned it and put it in his pocket. It was a celluloid advertising pin, in plain yellow; printed on it in black, almost covering it, was a simple 6+, the trademark of Moka-Coka’s only serious rival.

“No,” answered Harriman, “though I don’t blame you for being irritated. I see half the school kids in the country wearing these silly buttons. But I came to give you a friendly tip, not to annoy you.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I paused at your door that pin on my lapel was just the size—to you, standing at your desk—as the full Moon looks when you are standing in your garden, looking up at it. You didn’t have any trouble reading what was on the pin, did you? I know you didn’t; you yelled at me before either one of us stirred.”

“What about it?”

“How would you feel—and what would the effect be on your sales—if there was ‘six-plus’ written across the face of the Moon instead of just on a school kid’s sweater?” Griggs thought about it, then said, “D.D., don’t make poor jokes. I’ve had a bad day.”

“I’m not joking. As you have probably heard around the St~reet, I’m behind this Moon trip venture. Between ourselves, Pat, it’s quite an expensive undertaking, even for me. Afew days ago a man came to me—you’ll pardon me if I don’t mention names? You can figure it out. Anyhow, this man represented a client who wanted to buy the advertising concession for the Moon. He knew we weren’t sure of success; but he said his client would take the risk.

“At first I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about; he set me straight. Then I thought he was kidding. Then I was shocked. Look at this—” Harriman took out a large sheet of paper and spread it on Griggs’ desk. “You see the equipment is set up anywhere near the center of the Moon, as we see it. Eighteen pyrotechnics rockets shoot out in eighteen directions, like the spokes of a wheel, but to carefully calculated distances. They hit and the bombs they carry go off, spreading finely divided carbon black for calculated distances. There’s no air on the Moon, you know, Pat—a fine powder will throw just as easily as a javelin. Here’s your result.” He turned the paper over; on the back there was a picture of the Moon, printed lightly. Overlaying it, in black, heavy print was:

“So it is that outfit—those poisoners!”

“No, no, I didn’t say so! But it illustrates the point; six-plus is only two symbols; it can be spread large enough to be read on the face of the Moon.” Griggs stared at the horrid advertisement. “I don’t believe it will work!”

“Areliable pyrotechnics firm has guaranteed that it will—provided I can deliver their equipment to the spot. After all, Pat, it doesn’t take much of a pyrotechnics rocket to go a long distance on the Moon. Why, you could throw a baseball a couple of miles yourself—low gravity, you know.”

“People would never stand for it. It’s sacrilege!”

Harriman looked sad. “I wish you were right. But they stand for skywriting—and video commercials.”

Griggs chewed his lip. “Well, I don’t see why you come to me with it,” he exploded. “You know damn well the name of my product won’t go on the face of the Moon. The letters would be too small to read.”

Harriman nodded. “That’s exactly why I came to you. Pat, this isn’t just a business venture to me; it’s my heart and soul. It just made me sick to think of somebody actually wanting to use the face of the Moon for advertising. As you say, it’s sacrilege. But somehow, these jackals found out I was pressed for cash. They came to me when they knew I would have to listen.

“I put them off. I promised them an answer on Thursday. Then I went home and lay awake about it. After a while I thought of you.” “Me?”

“You. You and your company. After all, you’ve got a good product and you need legitimate advertising for it. It occurred to me that there are more ways to use the Moon in advertising than by defacing it. Now just suppose that your company bought the same concession, but with the public-spirited promise of never letting it be used. Suppose you featured that fact in your ads? Suppose you ran pictures of a boy and girl, sitting out under the Moon, sharing a bottle of Moke? Suppose Moke was the only soft drink carried on the first trip to the Moon? But I don’t have to tell you how to do it.” He glanced at his watch finger. “I’ve got to run and I don’t want to rush you. If you want to do business just leave word at my office by noon tomorrow and I’ll have our man Montgomery get in touch with your advertising chief.”

The head of the big newspaper chain kept him waiting the minimum time reserved for tycoons and cabinet members. Again Harriman stopped at the threshold of a large office and fixed a disc to his lapel.

“Howdy, Delos,” the publisher said, “how’s the traffic in green cheese today?” He then caught sight of the button and frowned. “If that is a joke, it is in poor taste.” Harriman pocketed the disc; it displayed not 6+, but the hammer-and-sickle.

“No,” he said, “it’s not a joke; it’s a nightmare. Colonel, you and I are among the few people in this country who realize that communism is still a menace.”

Sometime later they were talking as chummily as if the Colonel’s chain had not obstructed the Moon venture since its inception. The publisher waved a cigar at his desk. “How did you come by those plans? Steal them?”

“They were copied,” Harriman answered with narrow truth. “But they aren’t important. The important thing is to get there first; we can’t risk having an enemy rocket base on the Moon. For years I’ve had a recurrent nightmare of waking up and seeing headlines that the Russians had landed on the Moon and declared the Lunar Soviet—say thirteen men and two female scientists—and had petitioned for entrance into the U.S.S.R.—and the petition had, of course, been graciously granted by the Supreme Soviet. I used to wake up and tremble. I don’t know that they would actually go through with painting a hammer and sickle on the face of the Moon, but it’s consistent with their psychology. Look at those enormous posters they are always hanging up.”

The publisher bit down hard on his cigar. “We’ll see what we can work out. Is there any way you can speed up your take-off?”

CHAPTER SIX

“MR. HARRIMAN?”

“Yes?”

“That Mr. LeCroix is here again.” “Tell him I can’t see him.”

“Yes, sir—uh, Mr. Harriman, he did not mention it the other day but he says he is a rocket pilot.” “Send him around to Skyways. I don’t hire pilots.”

Aman’s face crowded into the screen, displacing Harriman’s reception secretary. “Mr. Harriman—I’m Leslie LeCroix, relief pilot of the Charon.” “I don’t care if you are the Angel Gab— Did you say Charon?”

“I said Charon. And I’ve got to talk to you.” “Come in.”

Harriman greeted his visitor, offered him tobacco, then looked him over with interest. The Charon, shuttle rocket to the lost power satellite, had been the nearest thing to a space ship the world had yet seen. Its pilot, lost in the same explosion that had destroyed the satellite and the Charon had been the first, in a way, of the coming breed of spacemen.

Harriman wondered how it had escaped his attention that the Charon had alternating pilots. He had known it, of course—but somehow he had forgotten to take the fact into account. He had written off the power satellite, its shuttle rocket and everything about it, ceased to think about them. He now looked at LeCroix with curiosity.

He saw a small, neat man with a thin, intelligent face, and the big, competent hands of a jockey. LeCroix returned his inspection without embarrassment. He seemed calm and utterly sure of himself.

“Well, Captain LeCroix?” “You are building a Moon ship.” “Who says so?”

“AMoon ship is being built. The boys all say you are behind it.” “Yes?”

“I want to pilot it.” “Why should you?”

“I’m the best man for it.” Harriman paused to let out a cloud of tobacco smoke. “If you can prove that, the billet is yours.” “It’s a deal.” LeCroix stood up. “I’ll leave my nameand address outside.”

“Wait a minute. I said ‘if.’ Let’s talk. I’m going along on this trip myself; I want to know more about you before I trust my neck to you.”

They discussed Moon flight, interplanetary travel, rocketry, what they might find on the Moon. Gradually Harriman warmed up, as he found another spirit so like his own, so obsessed with the Wonderful Dream. Subconsciously he had already accepted LeCroix; the conversation began to assume that it would be a joint venture.

After a long time Harriman said, “This is fun, Les, but I’ve got to do a few chores yet today, or none of us will get to the Moon. You go on out to Peterson Field and get acquainted with Bob Coster—I’ll call him. If the pair of you can manage to get along, we’ll talk contract.” He scribbled a chit and handed it to LeCroix. “Give this to Miss Perkins as you go out and she’ll put you on the payroll.”

“That can wait.” “Man’s got to eat.”

LeCroix accepted it but did not leave. “There’s one thing I don’t understand, Mr. Harriman.” “Huh?”

“Why are you planning on a chemically powered ship? Not that I object; I’ll herd her. But why do it the hard way? I know you had the City of Brisbane refitted for X-fuel—”

Harriman stared at him. “Are you off your nut, Les? You’re asking why pigs don’t have wings—there isn’t any X-fuel and there won’t be any more until we make some ourselves—on the Moon.”

“Who told you that?” “What do you mean?”

“The way I heard it, the Atomic Energy Commission allocated X-fuel, under treaty, to several other countries—and some of them weren’t prepared to make use of it. But they got it just the same. What happened to it?”

“Oh, that! Sure, Les, several of the little outfits in Central America and South America were cut in for a slice of pie for political reasons, even though they had no way to eat it. Agood thing, too—we bought it back and used it to ease the immediate power shortage.” Harriman frowned. “You’re right, though. I should have grabbed some of the stuff then.”

“Are you sure it’s all gone?”

“Why, of course, I’m— No, I’m not. I’ll look into it. G’bye, Les.”

His contacts were able to account for every pound of X-fuel in short order—save for Costa Rica’s allotment. That nation had declined to sell back its supply because its power plant, suitable for X-fuel, had been almost finished at the time of the disaster. Another inquiry disclosed that the power plant had never been finished.

Montgomery was even then in Managua; Nicaragua had had a change in administration and Montgomery was making certain that the special position of the local Moon corporation was protected. Harriman sent him a coded message to proceed to San Jose, locate X-fuel, buy it and ship it back—at any cost. He then went to see the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

That official was apparently glad to see him and anxious to be affable. Harriman got around to explaining that he wanted a license to do experimental work in isotopes—X-fuel, to be precise.

“This should be brought up through the usual channels, Mr. Harriman.” “It will be. This is a preliminary inquiry. I want to know your reactions.”

“After all, I am not the only commissioner … and we almost always follow the recommendations of our technical branch.” “Don’t fence with me, Carl. You know dern well you control a working majority. Off the record, what do you say?” “Well, D.D.—off the record—you can’t get any X-fuel, so why get a license?”

“Let me worry about that.”

“Mmmm . . we weren’t required by law to follow every millicurie of X-fuel, since it isn’t classed as potentially suitable for mass weapons. Just the same, we knew what happened to it. There’s none available.”

Harriman kept quiet.

“In the second place, you can have an X-fuel license, if you wish—for any purpose but rocket fuel.” “Why the restriction?”

“You are building a Moon ship, aren’t you?” “Me?”

“Don’t you fence with me, D.D. It’s my business to know things. You can’t use X-fuel for rockets, even if you can find it—which you can’t.” The chairman went to a vault back of his desk and returned with a quarto volume, which he laid in front of Harriman. It was titled: Theoretical Investigation into the Stability of Several Radioisotopic Fuels—With Notes on the Charon-Power- Satellite Disaster. The cover had a serial number and was stamped: SECRET.

Harriman pushed it away. “I’ve got no business looking at that—and I wouldn’t understand it if I did.”

The chairman grinned. “Very well, I’ll tell you what’s in it. I’m deliberately tying your hands, D.D., by trusting you with a defense secret—” “I won’t have it, I tell you!”

“Don’t try to power a space ship with X-fuel, D.D. It’s a lovely fuel— but it may go off like a firecracker anywhere out in space. That report tells why.”

“Confound it, we ran the Charon for nearly three years!”

“You were lucky. It is the official—but utterly confidential—opinion of the government that the Charon set off the power satellite, rather than the satellite setting off the Charon. We had thought it was the other way around at first, and of course it could have been, but there was the disturbing matter of the radar records. It seemed as if the ship had gone up a split second before the satellite. So we made an intensive theoretical investigation. X-fuel is too dangerous for rockets.”

“That’s ridiculous! For every pound burned in the Charon there were at least a hundred pounds used in power plants on the surface. How come they didn’t explode?”

“It’s a matter of shielding. Arocket necessarily uses less shielding than a stationary plant, but the worst feature is that it operates out in space. The disaster is presumed to have been triggered by primary cosmic radiation. If you like, I’ll call in one of the mathematical physicists to elucidate.”

Harriman shook his head. “You know I don’t speak the language.” He considered. “I suppose that’s all there is to it?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m really sorry.” Harriman got up to leave. “Uh, one more thing, D.D.—you weren’t thinking of approaching any of my subordinate colleagues, were you?” “Of course not. Why should I?”

“I’m glad to hear it. You know, Mr. Harriman, some of our staff may not be the most brilliant scientists in the world—it’s very hard to keep a first-class scientist happy in the conditions of government service. But there is one thing I am sure of; all of them are utterly incorruptible. Knowing that, I would take it as a personal affront if anyone tried to influence one of my people

—a very personal affront.”

“So?”

“Yes. By the way, I used to box light-heavyweight in college. I’ve kept it up.”

“Hmmm … well, I never went to college. But I play a fair game of poker.” Harriman suddenly grinned. “I won’t tamper with your boys, Carl. It would be too much like offering a bribe to a starving man. Well, so long.”

When Harriman got back to his office he called in one of his confidential clerks. “Take another coded message to Mr. Montgomery. Tell him to ship the stuff to Panama City, rather than to the States.” He started to dictate another message to Coster, intending to tell him to stop work on the Pioneer, whose skeleton was already reaching skyward on the Colorado prairie, and shift to the Santa Maria, formerly the City of Brisbane.

He thought better of it. Take-off would have to be outside the United States; with the Atomic Energy Commission acting stuffy, it would not do to try to move the Santa Maria: it would give the show away.

Nor could she be moved without refitting her for chem-powered flight. No, he would have another ship of the Brisbane class taken out of service and sent to Panama, and the power plant of the Santa Maria could be disassembled and shipped there, too. Coster could have the new ship ready in six weeks, maybe sooner … and he, Coster, and LeCroix would start for the Moon!

The devil with worries over primary cosmic rays! The Charon operated for three years, didn’t she? They would make the trip, they would prove it could be done, then, if safer fuels were needed, there would be the incentive to dig them out. The important thing was to do it, make the trip. If Columbus had waited for decent ships, we’d all still be in Europe. Aman had to take some chances or he never got anywhere.

Contentedly he started drafting the messages that would get the new scheme underway. He was intercupted by a secretary. “Mr. Harriman, Mr. Montgomery wants to speak to you.” “Eh? Has he gotten my code already?”

“I don’t know, sir.” “Well, put him on.”

Montgomery had not received the second message. But he had news for Harriman:Costa Rica had sold all its X-fuel to the English Ministry of Power, soon after the disaster. There was not an ounce of it left, neither in Costa Rica, nor in England.

Harriman sat and moped for several minutes after Montgomery had cleared the screen. Then he called Coster. “Bob? Is LeCroix there?” “Right here-we were about to go out to dinner together. Here he is, now.”

“Howdy, Les. Les, that was a good brain storm of yours, but it didn’t work. Somebody stole the baby.” “Eh? Oh, I get you. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t ever waste time being sorry. We’ll go ahead as originally planned. We’ll get there!” “Sure we will.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

FROM THE JUNE ISSUE of Popular Technics magazine: “URANIUM PROSPECTING ON THE MOON—A Fact Article about a soon-to-come Major Industry.” From HOLIDAY: “Honeymoon on the Moon—A Discussion of the Miracle Resort that your children will enjoy, as told to our travel editor.”

From the American Sunday Magazine: “DIAMONDS ON THE MOON?—AWorld Famous Scientist Shows Why Diamonds Must Be Common As Pebbles in the Lunar Craters.”

“Of course, Clem, I don’t know anything about electronics, but here is the way it was explained to me. You can hold the beam of a television broadcast down to a degree or so these days, can’t you?”

“Yes—if you use a big enough reflector.”

“You’ll have plenty of elbow room. Now Earth covers a space two degrees wide, as seen from the Moon. Sure, it’s quite a distance away, but you’d have no power losses and absolutely perfect and unchanging conditions for transmission. Once you made your set-up, it wouldn’t be any more expensive than broadcasting from the top of a mountain here, and a derned sight less expensive than keeping copters in the air from coast to coast, the way you’re having to do now.”

“It’s a fantastic scheme, Delos.”

“What’s fantastic about it? Getting to the Moon is my worry, not yours. Once we are there, there’s going to be television back to Earth, you can bet your shirt on that. It’s a natural set-up for line-of-sight transmission. If you aren’t interested, I’ll have to find someone who is.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.”

“Well, make up your mind. Here’s another thing, Clem—I don’t want to go sticking my nose into your business, but haven’t you had a certain amount of trouble since you lost the use of the power satellite as a relay station?”

“You know the answer; don’t needle me. Expenses have gone out of sight without any improvement in revenue.” “That wasn’t quite what I meant. How about censorship?”

The television executive threw up his hands. “Don’t say that word! How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the country claiming a veto over wLhat we can say and can’t say and what we can show and what we can’t show—it’s enough to make you throw up. The whole principle is wrong; it’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t eat steak. If I were able to lay my hands on those confounded, prurient-minded, slimy—”

“Easy! Easy!” Harriman interrupted. “Did it ever occur to you that there is absolutely no way to interfere with a telecast from the Moon—and that boards of censorship on Earth won’t have

jurisdiction in any case?”

“What? Say that again.”

“LIFE goes to the Moon.’ LIFE-TIME Inc. is proud to announce that arrangements have been completed to bring LIFE’S readers a personally conducted tour of the first trip to our satellite. In place of the usual weekly feature ‘LIFE Goes to a Party’ there will commence, immediately after the return of the first successful—”

“ASSURANCE FOR THE NEW AGE”

(An excerpt from an advertisement of the North Atlantic Mutual Insurance and Liability Company)

“—the same looking-to-the-future that protected our policy-holders after the Chicago Fire, after the San Francisco Fire, after every disaster since the War of 1812, now reaches out to insure you from unexpected loss even on the Moon—”

“THE UNBOUNDED FRONTIERS OF TECHNOLOGY”

“When the Moon ship Pioneer climbs skyward on a ladder of flame, twenty-seven essential devices in her ‘innards’ will be powered by especiallyengineered DELTAbatteries—” “Mr. Harriman, could you come out to the field?”

“What’s up, Bob?”

“Trouble,” Coster answered briefly. “What sort of trouble?”

Coster hesitated. “I’d rather not talk about it by screen. If you can’t come, maybe Les and I had better come there.” “I’ll be there this evening.”

When Harriman got there he saw that LeCroix’s impassive face concealed bitterness, Coster looked stubborn and defensive. He waited until the three were alone in Coster’s workroom before he spoke. “Let’s have it, boys.”

LeCroix looked at Coster. The engineer chewed his lip and said, “Mr. Harriman, you know the stages this design has been through.” “More or less.”

“We had to give up the catapult idea. Then we had this—” Coster rummaged on his desk, pulled out a perspective treatment of a four-step rocket, large but rather graceful.”Theoretically it was a possibility; practically it cut things too fine. By the time the stress group boys and the auxiliary group and the control group got through adding things we were forced to come to this

—” He hauled out another sketch; it was basically like the first, but squattier, almost pyramidal. “We added a fifth stage as a ring around the fourth stage. We even managed to save some weight by using most of the auxiliary and control equipment for the fourth stage to control the fifth stage. And it still had enough sectional density to punch through the atmosphere with no important drag, even if it was clumsy.”

Harriman nodded. “You know, Bob, we’re going to have to get away from the step rocket idea before we set up a schedule run to the Moon.” “I don’t see how you can avoid it with chem-powered rockets.”

“If you had a decent catapult you could put a single-stage chem-powered rocket into an orbit around the Earth, couldn’t you?” “Sure.”

“That’s what we’ll do. Then it will refuel in that orbit.”

“The old space-station set-up. I suppose that makes sense-in fact I know it does. Only the ship wouldn’t refuel and continue on to the Moon. The economical thing would be to have special ships that never landed anywhere make the jump from there to another fueling station around the Moon. Then—”

LeCroix displayed a most unusual impatience. “AJ1 that doesn’t mean anything now. Get on with the story, Bob.” “Right,” agreed Harriman.

“Well, this model should have done it. And, damn it, it still should do it.” Harriman looked puzzled. “But, Bob, that’s the approved design, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve got two-thirds built right out there on the field.”

“Yes.” Coster looked stricken. “But it won’t do it. It won’t work.” “Why not?”

“Because I’ve had to add in too much dead weight, that’s why. Mr. Harriman, you aren’t an engineer; you’ve no idea how fast the performance falls off when you have to clutter up a ship with anything but fuel and power plant. Take the landing arrangements for the fifth-stage power ring. You use that stage for a minute and a half, then you throw it away. But you don’t dare take a chance of it falling on Wichita or Kansas City. We have to include a parachute sequence. Even then we have to plan on tracking it by radar and cutting the shrouds by radio control when it’s over empty countryside and not too high. That means more weight, besides the parachute. By the time we are through, we don’t get a net addition of a mile a second out of that stage. It’s not enough.”

Harriman stirred in his chair. “Looks like we made a mistake in trying to launch it from the States. Suppose we took off from someplace unpopulated, say the Brazil coast, and let the booster stages fall in the Atlantic; how much would that save you?”

Coster looked off in the distance, then took out a slide rule. “Might work.” “How much of a chore will it be to move the ship, at this stage?”

“Well … it would have to be disassembled completely; nothing less would do. I can’t give you a cost estimate off hand, but it would be expensive.” “How long would it take?” “Hmm…shucks, Mr. Harriman, I can’t answer off hand. Two years— eighteen months, with luck. We’d have to prepare a site. We’d have to build shops.”

Harriman thought about it, although he knew the answer in his heart. His shoe string, big as it was, was stretched to the danger point. He couldn’t keep up the promotion, on talk alone, for another two years; he had to have a successful flight and soon—or the whole jerry-built financial structure would burst. “No good, Bob.”

“I was afraid of that. Well, I tried to add still a sixth stage.” He held up another sketch. “You see that monstrosity? I reached the point of diminishing returns. The final effective velocity is actually less with this abortion than with the five-step job.”

“Does that mean you are whipped, Bob? You can’t build a Moon ship?” “No, I—”

LeCroix said suddenly, “Clear out Kansas.” “Eh?” asked Harriman.

“Clear everybody out of Kansas and Eastern Colorado. Let the fifth and fourth sections fall anywhere in that area. The third section falls in the Atlantic; the second section goes into a permanent orbit—and the ship itself goes on to the Moon. You could do it if you didn’t have to waste weight on the parachuting of the fifth and fourth sections. Ask Bob.”

“So? How about it, Bob?”

“That’s what I said before. It was the parasitic penalties that whipped us. The basic design is all right.”

“Hmmm… somebody hand me an Atlas.” Harriman looked up Kansas and Colorado, did some rough figuring. He stared off into space, looking surprisingly, for the moment, as Coster did when the engineer was thinking about his own work. Finally he said, “It won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Money. I told you not to worry about money—for the ship. But it would cost upward of six or seven million dollars to evacuate that area even for a day. We’d have to settle nuisance suits out of hand; we couldn’t wait. And there would be a few diehards who just couldn’t move anyhow.”

LeCroix said savagely, “If the crazy fools won’t move, let them take their chances.”

“I know how you feel, Les. But this project is too big to hide and too big to move. Unless we protect the bystanders we’ll be shut down by court order and force. I can’t buy all the judges in two states. Some of them wouldn’t be for sale.”

“It was a nice try, Les,” consoled Coster.

“I thought it might be an answer for all of us,” the pilot answered.

Harriman said, “You were starting to mention another solution, Bob?” Coster looked embarrassed. “You know the plans for the ship itself—a three-man job, space and supplies for three.”

“Yes. What are you driving at?”

“It doesn’t have to be three men. Split the first step into two parts, cut the ship down to the bare minimum for one man and jettison the remainder. That’s the only way I see to make this basic design work.” He got out another sketch. “See? One man and supplies for less than a week. No airlock— the pilot stays in his pressure suit. No galley. No bunks. The bare minimum to keep one man alive for a maximum of two hundred hours. It will work.”

“It will work,” repeated LeCroix, looking at Coster.

Harriman looked at the sketch with an odd, sick feeling at his stomach. Yes, no doubt it would work—and for the purposes of the promotion it did not matter whether one man or three went to the Moon and returned. Just to do it was enough; he was dead certain that one successful flight would cause money to roll in so that there would be capital to develop to the point of practical, passenger-carrying ships.

The Wright brothers had started with less.

“If that is what I have to put up with, I suppose I have to,” he said slowly. Coster looked relieved. “Fine! But there is one more hitch. You know the conditions under which I agreed to tackle this job—I was to go along. Now Les here waves a contract under my nose and says he has to be the pilot.”

“It’s not just that,” LeCroix countered. “You’re no pilot, Bob. You’ll kill yourself and ruin the whole enterprise, just through bull-headed stubbornness.”

“I’ll learn to fly it. After all, I designed it. Look here, Mr. Harriman, I hate to let you in for a suit—Les says he will sue-but my contract antedates his. I intend to enforce it.” “Don’t listen to him, Mr. Harriman. Let him do the suing. I’ll fly that ship and bring her back. He’ll wreck it.”

“Either I go or I don’t build the ship,” Coster said flatly.

Harriman motioned both of them to keep quiet. “Easy, easy, both of you. You can both sue me if it gives you any pleasure. Bob, don’t talk nonsense; at this stage I can hire other engineers to finish the job. You tell me it has to be just one man.”

“That’s right.” “You’re looking at him.” They both stared.

“Shut your jaws,” Harriman snapped. “What’s funny about that? You both knew I meant to go. You don’t think I went to all this trouble just to give you two a ride to the Moon, do you? I intend to go. What’s wrong with me as a pilot? I’m in good health, my eyesight is all right, I’m still smart enough to learn what I have to learn. If I have to drive my own buggy, I’ll do it. I won’t step aside for anybody, not anybody, d’you hear me?”

Coster got his breath first. “Boss, you don’t know what you are saying.” Two hours later they were still wrangling. Most of the time Harriman had stubbornly sat still, refusing to answer their arguments. At last he went out of the room for a few minutes, on the usual pretext. When he came back in he said, “Bob, what do you weigh?”

“Me? Alittle over two hundred.”

“Close to two twenty, I’d judge. Les, what do you weigh?” “One twenty-six.”

“Bob, design the ship for a net load of one hundred and twenty-six pounds.” “Huh? Now wait a minute, Mr. Harriman—”

“Shut up! If I can’t learn to be a pilot in six weeks, neither can you.” “But I’ve got the mathematics and the basic knowledge to—”

“Shut up I said! Les has spent as long learning his profession as you have learning yours. Can he become an engineer in six weeks? Then what gave you the conceit to think that you can learn his job in that time? I’m not going to have you wrecking my ship to satisfy your swollen ego. Anyhow, you gave out the real key to it when you were discussing the design. The real limiting factor is the actual weight of the passenger or passengers, isn’t it? Everything—everything works in proportion to that one mass. Right?”

“Yes, but—” “Right or wrong?”

“Well … yes, that’s right. I just wanted—”

“The smaller man can live on less water, he breathes less air, he occunies less space. Les goes.” Harriman walked over and put a hand on Coster’s shoulder. “Don’t take it hard, son. It can’t be any worse on you than it is on me. This trip has got to succeed—and that means you and I have got to give up the honor of being the first man on the Moon. But I promise you this: we’ll go on the second trip, we’ll go with Les as our private chauffeur. It will be the first of a lot of passenger trips. Look, Bob-you can be a big man in this game, if you’ll play along now. How would you like to be chief engineer of the first lunar colony?”

Coster managed to grin. “It might not be so bad.”

“You’d like it. Living on the Moon will be an engineering problem; you and I have talked about it. How’d you like to put your theories to work? Build the first city? Build the big observatory we’ll found there? Look around and know that you were the man who had done it?”

Coster was definitely adjusting himself to it. “You make it sound good. Say, what will you be doing?”

“Me? Well, maybe I’ll be the first mayor of Luna City.” It was a new thought to him; he savored it. “The Honorable Delos David Harriman, Mayor of Luna City. Say, I like that! You know, I’ve never held any sort of public office; I’ve just owned things.” He looked around. “Everything settled?”

“I guess so,” Coster said slowly. Suddenly he stuck his hand out at LeCroix. “You fly her, Les; I’ll build her.”

LeCroix grabbed his hand. “It’s a deal. And you and the Boss get busy and start making plans for the next job-big enough for all of us.”

“Right!”

Harriman put his hand on top of theirs. “That’s the way I like to hear you talk. We’ll stick together and we’ll found Luna City together.” “I think we ought to call it “Harriman,” LeCroix said seriously.

“Nope, I’ve thought of it as Luna City ever since I was a kid; Luna City it’s going to be. Maybe we’ll put Harriman Square in the middle of it,” he added. “I’ll mark it that way in the plans,” agreed Coster.

Harriman left at once. Despite the solution he was terribly depressed and did not want his two colleagues to see it. It had been a Pyrrhic victory; he had saved the enterprise but he felt like an animal who has gnawed off his own leg to escape a trap.

CHAPTER EIGHT

STRONG WAS ALONE in the offices of the partnership when he got a call from Dixon. “George, I was looking for D.D. Is he there?” “No, he’s back in Washington—something about clearances. I expect him back soon.”

“Hmmm… . Entenza and I want to see him. We’re coming over.” They arrived shortly. Entenza was quite evidently very much worked up over something; Dixon looked sleekly impassive as usual. After greetings Dixon waited a moment, then said, “Jack, you had some business to transact, didn’t you?”

Entenza jumped, then snatched a draft from his pocket.

“Oh, yes! George, I’m not going to have to pro-rate after all. Here’s my payment to bring my share up to full payment to date.” Strong accepted it. “I know that Delos will be pleased.” He tucked it in a drawer. “Well,” said Dixon sharply, “aren’t you going to receipt for it?”

“If Jack wants a receipt. The cancelled draft will serve.” However, Strong wrote out a receipt without further comment; Entenza accepted it. They waited a while. Presently Dixon said, “George, you’re in this pretty deep, aren’t you?”

“Possibly.”

“Want to hedge your bets?”

“How?”

“Well, candidly, I want to protect myself. Want to sell one half of one. percent of your share?”

Strong thought about it. In fact he was worried—worried sick. The presence of Dixon’s auditor had forced them to keep on a cash basis—and only Strong knew how close to the line that had forced the partners. “Why do you want it?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t use it to interfere with Delos’s operations. He’s our man; we’re backing him. But I would feel a lot safer if I had the right to call a halt if he tried to commit us to something we couldn’t pay for. You know Delos; he’s an incurable optimist. We ought to have some sort of a brake on him.”

Strong thought about it. The thing that hurt him was that he agreed with everything Dixon said; he had stood by and watched while Delos dissipated two fortunes, painfully built up through the years. D.D. no longer seemed to care. Why, only this morning he had refused even to look at a report on the H & S automatic household switch—after dumping it on Strong.

Dixon leaned forward. “Name a price, George. I’ll be generous.” Strong squared his stooped shoulders. “I’ll sell—”

“Good!”

“—if Delos okays it. Not otherwise.” Dixon muttered something. Enteuza snorted. The conversation might have gone acrimoniously further, had not Harriman walked in.

No one said anything about the proposal to Strong. Strong inquired about the trip; Harriman pressed a thumb and finger together. “All in the groove! But it gets more expensive to do business in Washington every day.” He turned to the others. “How’s tricks? Any special meaning to the assemblage? Are we in executive session?”

Dixon turned to Entenza. “Tell him, Jack.”

Entenza faced Harriman. “What do you mean by selling television rights?” Harriman cocked a brow. “And why not?”

“Because you promised them to me, that’s why. That’s the original agreement; I’ve got it in writing.”

“Better take another look at the agreement, Jack. And don’t go off halfcocked. You have the exploitation rights for radio, television, and other amusement and special feature ventures in connection with the first trip to the Moon. You’ve still got ‘em. Including broadcasts from the ship, provided we are able to make any.” He decided that this was not a good time to mention that weight considerations had already made the latter impossible; the Pioneer would carry no electronic equipment of any sort not needed in astrogation. “What I sold was the franchise to erect a-television station on the Moon, later. By the way, it wasn’t even an exclusive franchise, although Clem Haggerty thinks it is. If you want to buy one yourself, we can accommodate you.”

“Buy it! Why you—” “Wups! Or you can have it free, if you can get Dixon and George to agree that you are entitled to it. I won’t be a tightwad. Anything else?” Dixon cut in. “Just where do we stand now, Delos?”

“Gentlemen, you can take it for granted that the Pioneer will leave on schedule—next Wednesday. And now, if you will excuse me, I’m on my way to Peterson Field.”

After he had left his three associates sat in silence for some time, Entenza muttering to himself, Dixon apparently thinking, and Strong just waiting. Presently Dixon said, “How about that fractional share, George?”

“You didn’t see fit to mention it to Delos.”

“I see.” Dixon carefully deposited an ash. “He’s a strange man, isn’t he?” Strong shifted around. “Yes.” “How long have you known him?”

“Let me see—he came to work for me in—” “He worked for you?”

“For several months. Then we set up our first company.” Strong thought back about it. “I suppose he had a power complex, even then.” “No,” Dixon said carefully. “No, I wouldn’t call it a power complex. It’s more of a Messiah complex.”

Entenza looked up. “He’s a crooked son of a bitch, that’s what he is!”

Strong looked at him mildly. “I’d rather you wouldn’t talk about him that way. I’d really rather you wouldn’t.”

“Stow it, Jack,” ordered Dixon. “You might force George to take a poke at you. One of the odd things about him,” went on Dixon, “is that he seems to be able to inspire an almost feudal loyalty. Take yourself. I know you are cleaned out, George-yet you won’t let me rescue you. That goes beyond logic; it’s personal.”

Strong nodded. “He’s an odd man. Sometimes I think he’s the last of the Robber Barons.”

Dixon shook his head. “Not the last. The last of them opened up the American West. He’s the first of the new Robber Barons—and you and I won’t see the end of it. Do you ever read Carlyle?”

Strong nodded again. “I see what you mean, the ‘Hero’ theory, but I don’t necessarily agree with it.”

“There’s something to it, though,” Dixon answered. “Truthfully, I don’t think Delos knows what he is doing. He’s setting up a new imperialism.

There’ll be the devil to pay before it’s cleaned up.” He stood up. “Maybe we should have waited. Maybe we should have balked him—if we could have. Well, it’s done. We’re on the merry- go-round and we can’t get off. I hope we enjoy the ride.. Come on, Jack.”

CHAPTER NINE

THE COLORADO p~ArRIE was growin’~ dusky. The Sun was behind the peak and the broad white face of Luna, full and round, was rising in the east. In the middle of Peterson Field the Pioneer thrust toward the sky. Abarbedwire fence, a thousand yards from its base in all directions, held back the crowds. Just inside the barrier guards patrolled restlessly. More guards circulated through the crowd. Inside the fence, close to it, trunks and trailers for camera, sound, and television equipment were parked and, at the far ends of cables, remote-control pick- ups were located both near and far from the ship on all sides. There were other trucks near the ship and a stir of organized activity.

Harriman waited in Coster’s office; Coster himself was out on the field, and Dixon and Entenza had a room to themselves. LeCroix, still in a drugged sleep, was in the bedroom of Coster’s on-the-job living quarters.

There was a stir and a challenge outside the door. Harriman opened it a crack. “If that’s another reporter, tell him ‘no.’ Send him to Mr. Montgomery across the way. Captain LeCroix will grant no unauthorized interviews.”

“Delos! Let me in.”

“Oh—you, George. Come in. We’ve been hounded to death.”

Strong came in and handed Harriman a large and heavy handbag. “Here it is.” “Here is what?”

“The cancelled covers for the philatelic syndicate. You forgot them. That’s half a million dollars, Delos,” he complained. “If I hadn’t noticed them in your coat locker we’d have been in the soup.”

Harriman composed his features. “George, you’re a brick, that’s what you are.” “Shall I put them in the ship myself?” Strong said anxiously.

“Huh? No, no. Les will handle them.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re about to waken him. I’ll take charge of the covers.” He took the bag and added, “Don’t come in now. You’ll have a chance to say goodbye on the field.”

Harriman went next door, shut the door behind him, waited for the nurse to give the sleeping pilot a counteracting stimulant by injection, then chased her out. When he turned around the pilot was sitting up, rubbing his eyes. “How do you feel, Les?”

“Fine. So this is it.”

“Yup. And we’re all rooting for you, boy. Look, you’ve got to go out and face them in a couple of minutes. Everything is ready—but I’ve got a couple of things I’ve got to say to you.” “Yes?”

“See this bag?” Harriman rapidly explained what it was and what it signified. LeCroix looked dismayed. “But I can’t take it, Delos; It’s all figured to the last ounce.”

“Who said you were going to take it? Of course you can’t; it must weigh sixty, seventy pounds. I just plain forgot it. Now here’s what we do: for the time being I’ll just hide it in here—” Harriman stuffed the bag far back into a clothes closet. “When you land, I’ll be right on your tail. Then we pull a sleight-of-hand trick and you fetch it out of the ship.”

LeCroix shook his head ruefully. “Delos, you beat me. Well, I’m in no mood to argue.”

“I’m glad you’re not; otherwise I’d go to jail for a measly half million dollars. We’ve already spent that money. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter,” he went on. “Nobody but you and me will know it— and the stamp collectors will get their money’s worth.” He looked at the younger man as if anxious for his approval.

“Okay, okay,” LeCroix answered. “Why should I care what happens to a stamp collector—tonight? Let’s get going.”

“One more thing,” said Harriman and took out a small cloth bag. “This you take with you—and the weight has been figured in. I saw to it. Now here is what you do with it.” He gave detailed and very earnest instructions.

LeCroix was puzzled. “Do I hear you straight? I let it be found—then I tell the exact truth about what happened?” “That’s right.”

“Okay.” LeCroix zipped the little bag into a pocket of his coveralls. “Let’s get out to the field. H-hour minus twenty-one minutes already.”

Strong joined Harriman in the control blockhouse after LeCroix had gone up inside the ship. “Did they get aboard?” he demanded anxiously. “LeCroix wasn’t carrying anything.” “Oh, sure,” said Harriman. “I sent them ahead. Better take your place. The ready flare has already gone up.”

Dixon, Entenza, the Governor of Colorado, the Vice-President of the United States, and a round dozen of V.I.P.’s were already seated at periscopes, mounted in slits, on a balcony above the control level. Strong and Harriman climbed a ladder and took the two remaining chairs.

Harriman began to sweat and realized he was trembling. Through his periscope out in front he could see the ship; from below he could hear Coster’s voice, nervously checking departure station reports. Muted through a speaker by him was a running commentary of one of the newscasters reporting the show. Harriman himself was the—well, the admiral, he decided—of the operation, but there was nothing more he could do, but wait, watch, and try to pray.

Asecond flare arched up in the sky, burst into red and green. Five minutes.

The seconds oozed away. At minus two minutes Harriman realized that he could not stand to watch through a tiny slit; he had to be outside, take part in it himself—he had to. He climbed down, hurried to the exit of the blockhouse. Coster glanced around, looked startled, but did not try to stop him; Coster could not leave his post no matter what happened. Harriman elbowed the guard aside and went outdoors.

To the east the ship towered skyward, her slender pyramid sharp black against the full Moon. He waited. And waited.

What had gone wrong? There had remained less than two minutes when he had come out; he was sure of that—yet there she stood, silent, dark, unmoving. There was not a sound, save the distant ululation of sirens warning the spectators behind the distant fence. Harriman felt his own heart stop, his breath dry up in his throat. Something had failed. Failure.

Asingle flare rocket burst from the top of the blockhouse; a flame licked at the base of the ship.

It spread, there was a pad of white fire around the base. Slowly, almost lumberingly, the Pioneer lifted, seemed to hover for a moment, balanced on a pillar of fire-then reached for the sky with acceleration so great that she was above him almost at once, overhead at the zenith, a dazzling circle of flame. So quickly was she above, rather than out in front, that it seemed as if she were arching back over him and must surely fall on him. Instinctively and futilely he threw a hand in front of his face.

The sound reached him.

Not as sound—it was a white noise, a roar in all frequencies, sonic, subsonic, supersonic, so incredibly loaded with energy that it struck him in the chest. He heard it with his teeth and with his bones as well as with his ears. He crouched his knees, bracing against it.

Following the sound at the snail’s pace of a hurricane came the backwash of the splash. It ripped at his clothing, tore his breath from his lips. He stumbled blindly back, trying to reach the lee of the concrete building, was knocked down.

He picked himself up coughing and strangling and remembered to look at the sky. Straight overhead was a dwindling star. Then it was gone. He went into the blockhouse.

The room was a babble of high-tension, purposeful confusion. Harriman’s ears, still ringing, heard a speaker blare, “Spot One! Spot One to blockhouse! Step five loose on schedule— ship and step five showing separate blips—” and Coster’s voice, high and angry, cutting in with, “Get Track One! Have they picked up step five yet? Are they tracking it?”

In the background the news commentator was still blowing his top. “Agreat day, folks, a great day! The mighty Pioneer, climbing like an angel of the Lord, flaming sword at hand, is even now on her glorious way to our sister planet. Most of you have seen her departure on your screens; I wish you could have seen it as I did, arching up into the evening sky, bearing her precious load of—”

“Shut that thing off!” ordered Coster, then to the visitors on the observation platform, “And pipe down up there! Quiet!”

The Vice-President of the United States jerked his head around, closed his mouth. He remembered to smile. The other V.I.P.’s shut up, then resumed again in muted whispers. Agirl’s voice cut through the silence, “Track One to Blockhouse—step five tracking high, plus two.” There was a stir in the corner. There a large canvas hood shielded a heavy sheet of Plexiglass from direct light. The sheet was mounted vertically and was edge-lighted; it displayed a coordinate map of Colorado and Kansas in fine white lines; the cities and towns glowed red. Unevacuated farms were tiny warning dots of red light.

Aman behind the transparent map touched it with a grease pencil; the reported location of step five shone out. In front of the map screen a youngish man sat quietly in a chair, a pear- shaped switch in his hand, his thumb lightly resting on the button. He was a bombardier, borrowed from the Air Forces; when he pressed the switch, a radio-controlled circuit in step five should cause the shrouds of step five’s landing ‘chute to be cut and let it plummet to Earth. He was working from radar reports aloi~e with no fancy computing bombsight to think for him. He was working almost by instinct— or, rather, by the accumulated subconscious knowledge of his trade, integrating in his brain the meager data spread before him, deciding where the tons of step five would land if he were to press his switch at any particular instant. He seemed unworried.

“Spot One to Blockhouse!” came a man’s voice again. “Step four free on schedule,” and almost immediately following, a deeper voice echoed, “Track Two, tracking step four, instantaneous altitude nine-five-one miles, predicted vector.”

No one paid any attention to Harriman.

Under the hood the observed trajectory of step five grew in shining dots of grease, near to, but not on, the dotted line of its predicted path. Reaching out from each location dot was drawn a line at right angles, the reported altitude for that location.

The quiet man watching the display suddenly pressed down hard on his switch. He then stood up, stretched, and said, “Anybody got a cigaret?” “Track Two!” he was answered. “Step four

—first impact prediction—forty miles west of Charleston, South Carolina.”

“Repeat!” yelled Coster.

The speaker blared out again without pause, “Correction, correction— forty miles east, repeat east.”

Coster sighed. The sigh was cut short by a report. “Spot One to Blockhouse—step three free, minus five seconds,” and a talker at Coster’s control desk called out, “Mr. Coster, Mister Coster—Palomar Observatory wants to talk to you.”

“Tell ‘em to go—no, tell ‘em to wait.” Immediately another voice cut in with, “Track One, auxiliary range Fox—Step one about to strike near Dodge City, Kansas~” “How near?”

There was no answer. Presently the voice of Track One proper said, “Impact reported approximately fifteen miles southwest of Dodge City.” “Casualties?”

Spot One broke in before Track One could answer, “Step two free, step two free-the ship is now on its own.” “Mr. Coster—please, Mr. Coster—”

And a totally new voice: “Spot Two to Blockhouse-we are now tracking the ship. Stand by for reported distances and bearings. Stand by—”

“Track Two to Blockhouse-step four will definitely land in Atlantic, estimated point of impact oh-five-seven miles east of Charleston bearing ohnine-three. I will repeat—” Coster looked around irritably. “Isn’t there any drinking water anywhere in this dump?”

“Mr. Coster, please-Palomar says they’ve just got to talk to you.”

Harriman eased over to the door and stepped out. He suddenly felt very much let down, utterly weary, and depressed.

The field looked strange without the ship. He had watched it grow; now suddenly it was gone. The Moon, still rising, seemed oblivious—and space travel was as remote a dream as it had been in his boyhood.

There were several tiny figures prowling around, the flash apron where the ship had stood—souvenir hunters, he thought contemptuously. Someone came up to him in the gloom. “Mr. Harriman?”

“Eh?”

“Hopkins—with the A.P. How about a statement?” “Uh? No, no comment. I’m bushed.”

“Oh, now, just a word. How does it feel to have backed the first successful Moon flight—if it is successful.”

“It will be successful.” He thought a moment, then squared his tired shoulders and said, “Tell them that this is the beginning of the human race’s greatest era. Tell them that every one of them will have a chance to follow in Captain LeCroix’s footsteps, seek out new planets, wrest a home for themselves in new lands. Tell them that this means new frontiers, a shot in the arm for prosperity. It means—” He ran down. “That’s all tonight. I’m whipped, son. Leave me alone, will you?”

Presently Coster came out, followed by the V.I.P.’s. Harriman went up to Coster. “Everything all right?”

“Sure. Why shouldn’t it be? Track three followed him out to the limit of range-all in the groove.” Coster added, “Step five killed a cow when it grounded.”

“Forget it—we’ll have steak for breakfast.” Harriman then had to make conversation with the Governor and the Vice-President, had to escort them out to their ship. Dixon and Entenza left together, less formally; at last Coster and Harriman were alone save for subordinates too junior to constitute a strain and for guards to protect them from the crowds. “Where you headed, Bob?”

“Up to the Broadmoor and about a week’s sleep. How about you?”

“if you don’t mind, I’ll doss down in your apartment.” “Help yourself. Sleepy pills in the bathroom.”

“I won’t need them.” They had a drink together in Coster’s quarters, talked aimlessly, then Coster ordered a copter cab and went to the hotel. Harriman went to bed, got up, read a day-old copy of the Denver Post filled with pictures of the Pioneer, finally gave up and took two of Coster’s sleeping capsules.

CHAPTER TEN

SOMEONE WAS SHAKING HIM. “Mr. Harriman! Wake up—Mr. Caster is on the screen.”

“Huh? Wazza? Oh, all right.” He got up and padded to the phone. Caster was :ooking tousie-headea and excited. “Hey, Boss—he made it!” “Huh? What do you mean?”

“Palomar just called me. They saw the mark and now they’ve spotted the ship itself. He—”

“Wait a minute, Bob. Slow up. He can’t be there yet. He just left last night.”

Coster looked disconcerted. “What’s the matter, Mr. Harriman? Don’t you feel well? He left Wednesday.”

Vaguely, Harriman began to be oriented. No, the take-off had not been the night before—fuzzily he recalled a drive up into the mountains, a day spent dozing in the sun, some sort of a party at which he had drunk too much. What day was today? He didn’t know. If LeCroix had landed on the Moon, then—never mind. “It’s all right, Bob-I was half asleep. I guess I dreamed the take-off all over again. Now tell me the news, slowly.”

Coster started over. “LeCroix has landed, just west of Archimedes crater. They can see his ship, from Palomar. Say that was a great stunt you thought up, marking the spot with carbon black. Les must have covered two acres with it. They say it shines out like a billboard, through the Big Eye.”

“Maybe we ought to run down and have a look. No—later,” he amended. “We’ll be busy.”

“I don’t see what more we can do, Mr. Harriman. We’ve got twelve of our best ballistic computers calculating possible routes for you now.”

Harriman started to tell the man to put on another twelve, switched off the screen instead. He was still at Peterson Field, with one of Skyways’ best stratoships waiting for him outside, waiting to take him to whatever point on the globe LeCroix might ground. LeCroix was in the upper stratosphere, had been there for more than twenty-four hours. The pilot was slowly, cautiously wearing out his terminal velocity, dissipating the incredible kinetic energy as shock wave and radiant heat.

They had tracked him by radar around the globe and around again—and again … yet there was no way of knowing just where and what sort of landing the pilot would choose to risk. Harriman listened to the running radar reports and cursed the fact that they had elected to save the weight of radio equipment.

The radar figures started coming closer together. The voice broke off and started again: “He’s in his landing glide!”

“Tell the field to get ready!” shouted Harriman. He held his breath and waited. After endless seconds another voice cut in with, “The Moon ship is now landing. It will ground somewhere west of Chihuahua in Old Mexico.”

Harriman started for the door at a run.

Coached by radio en route, Harriman’s pilot spotted the Pioneer incredibly small against the desert sand. He put his own ship quite close to it, in a beautiful landing. Harriman was fumbling at the cabin door before the ship was fairly stopped.

LeCroix was sitting on the ground, resting his back against a skid of his ship and enjoying the shade of its stubby triangular wings. Apaisano sheepherder stood facing him, open- mouthed. As Harriman trotted out and lumbered toward him LeCroix stood up, flipped a cigaret butt away and said, “Hi, Boss!”

“Les!” The older man threw his arms around the younger. “It’s good to see you, boy.”

“It’s good to see you. Pedro here doesn’t speak my language.” LeCroix glanced around; there was no one else nearby but the pilot of Harriman’s ship. “Where’s the gang? Where’s Bob?”

“I didn’t wait. They’ll surely be along in a few minutes—hey, there they come now!” It was another stratoship, plunging in to a landing. Harriman turned to his pilot. “Bill—go over and meet them.”

“Huh? They’ll come, never fear.” “Do as I say.”

“You’re the doctor.” The pilot trudged through the sand, his back expressing disapproval. LeCroix looked puzzled. “Quick, Les—help me with this.”

“This” was the five thousand cancelled envelopes which were supposed to have been to the Moon. They got them out of Harriman’s stratoship and into the Moon ship, there to be stowed in an empty food locker, while their actions were still shielded from the later arrivals by the bulk of the strataship. “Whew!” said Harriman. “That was close. Half a million dollars. We need it, Les.”

“Sure, but look, Mr. Harriman, the di—”

“Sssh! The others are coming. How about the other business? Ready with your act?” “Yes. But I was trying to tell you—”

“Quiet!”

It was not their colleagues; it was a shipload of reporters, camera men, mike men, commentators, technicians. They swarmed over them.

Harriman waved to them jauntily. “Help yourselves, boys. Get a lot of pictures. Climb through the ship. Make yourselves at home. Look at anything you want to. But go easy on Captain LeCroix—he’s tired.”

Another ship had landed, this time with Caster, Dixon and Strong. Entenza showed up in his own chartered ship and began bossing the TV, pix, and radio men, in the course of which he almost had a fight with an unauthorized camera crew. Alarge copter transport grounded and spilled out nearly a platoon of khaki-clad Mexican troops. Fom somewhere—out of the sand apparently—several dozen native peasants showed up. Harriman broke away from reporters, held a quick and expensive discussion with the captain of the local troops and a degree of order was restored in time to save the Pioneer from being picked to pieces.

“Just let that be!” It was LeCroix’s voice, from inside the Pioneer. Harriman waited and listened. “None of your business!” the pilot’s voice went on, rising higher, “and put them back!” Harriman pushed his way to the door of the ship. “What’s the trouble, Les?” Inside the cramped cabin, hardly large enough for a TVbooth, three men stood, LeCroix and two reporters. All three men looked angry. “What’s the trouble, Les?” Harriman repeated. LeCroix was holding a small cloth bag which appeared to be empty. Scattered on the pilot’s acceleration rest between him and the reporters were several small, dully brilliant stones. A

reporter held one such stone up to the light.

“These guys were poking their noses into things that didn’t concern them,” LeCroix said angrily. The reporter looked at the stone said, “You told us to look at what we liked, didn’t you, Mr. Harriman?” “Yes.”

“Your pilot here-” He jerked a thumb at LeCroix. “—apparently didn’t expect us to find these. He had them hidden in the pads of his chair.”

“What of it?” “They’re diamonds.” “What makes you think so?” “They’re diamonds all right.”

Harriman stopped and unwrapped a cigar. Presently he said, “Those diamonds were where you found them because I put them there.” Aflashlight went off behind Harriman; a voice said, “Hold the rock up higher, Jeff.”

The reporter called Jeff obliged, then said, “That seems an odd thing to do, Mr. Harriman.”

“I was interested in the effect of outer space radiations on raw diamonds. On my orders Captain LeCroix placed that sack of diamonds in the ship.”

Jeff whistled thoughtfully. “You know, Mr. Harriman, if you did not have that explanation, I’d think LeCroix had found the rocks on the Moon and was trying to hold out on you.” “Print that and you will be sued for libel. I have every confidence in Captain LeCroix. Now give me the diamonds.”

Jeff’s eyebrows went up. “But not confidence enough in him to let him keep them,.maybe?” “Give me the stones. Then get out.”

Harriman got LeCroix away from the reporters as quickly as possible and into Harriman’s own ship. “That’s all for now,” he told the news and pictures people. “See us at Peterson Field.” Once the ship raised ground he turned to LeCroix. “You did a beautiful job, Les.”

“That reporter named Jeff must be sort of confused.”

“Eh? Oh, that. No, I mean the flight. You did it. You’re head man on this planet.”

LeCroix shrugged it off. “Bob built a good ship. It was a cinch. Now about those diamonds—”

“Forget the diamonds. You’ve done your part. We placed those rocks in the ship; now we tell everybody we did—truthful as can be. It’s not our fault if they don’t believe us.” “But Mr. Harriman—”

“What?”

LeCroix unzipped a pocket in his coveralls, hauled out a soiled handkerchief, knotted into a bag. He untied it—and spilled into Harriman’s hands many more diamonds than had been displayed in the ship—larger, finer diamonds.

Harriman stared at them. He began to chuckle. Presently he shoved them back at LeCroix. “Keep them.” “I figure they belong to all of us.”

“Well, keep them for us, then. And keep your mouth shut about them. No, wait.” He picked out two large stones. “I’ll have rings made from these two, one for you, one for me. But keep your mouth shut, or they won’t be worth anything, except as curiosities.”

It was quite true, he thought. Long ago the diamond syndicate had realized that diamonds in plentiful supply were worth little more than glass, except for industrial uses. Earth had more than enough for that, more than enough for jewels. If Moon diamonds were literally “common as pebbles” then they were just that—pebbles.

Not worth the expense of bringing them to earth. But now take uranium. If that were plentiful— Harriman sat back and indulged in daydreaming. Presently LeCroix said softly, “You know, Boss, it’s wonderful there.”

“Eh? Where?”

“Why, on the Moon of course. I’m going back. I’m going back just as soon as I can. We’ve got to get busy on the new ship.” “Sure, sure! And this time we’ll build one big enough for all of us. This time I go, too!”

“You bet.”

“Les—” The older man spoke almost diffidently. “What does it look like when you look back and see the Earth?”

“Huh? It looks like— It looks—” LeCroix stopped. “Hell’s bells, Boss, there isn’t any way to tell you. It’s wonderful, that’s all. The sky is black and—well, wait until you see the pictures I took. Better .yet, wait and see it yourself.”

Harriman nodded. “But it’s hard to wait.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN “FIELDS OF DIAMONDS ON THE MOONU!”

“BILLIONAIRE BACKER DENIES DIAMOND STORY Says Jewels Taken Into Space for Science Reasons” “MOON DIAMONDS: HOAXOR FACT?”

“—but consider this, friends of the invisible audience: why would anyone take diamonds to the moon? Every ounce of that ship and its cargo was calculated; diamonds would not be taken along without reason. Many scientific authorities have pronounced Mr. Harriman’s professed reason an absurdity. It is easy to guess that diamonds might be taken along for the purpose of ‘salting’ the Moon, so to speak, with earthly jewels, with the intention of convincing us that diamonds exist on the Moon—but Mr. Harriman, his pilot Captain LeCroix, and everyone connected with the enterprise have sworn from the beginning that the diamonds did not come from the Moon. But it is an absolute certainty that the diamonds were in the space ship when it landed. Cut it how you will; this reporter is going to try to buy some lunar diamond mining stock—”

Strong was, as usual, already in the office when Harriman came in. Before the partners could speak, the screen called out, “Mr. Harriman, Rotterdam calling.” “Tell them to go plant a tulip.”

“Mr. van der Velde is waiting, Mr. Harriman.” “Okay.”

Harriman let the Hollander talk, then said, “Mr. van der Velde, the statements attributed to me are absolutely correct. I put those diamonds the reporters saw into the ship before it took off. They were mined right here on Earth. In fact I bought them when I came over to see you; I can prove it.”

“But Mr. Harriman—”

“Suit yourself. There may be more diamonds on the Moon than you can run and jump over. I don’t guarantee it. But I do guarantee that those diamonds the newspapers are talking about came from Earth.”

“Mr. Harriman, why would you send diamonds to the Moon? Perhaps you intended to fool us, no?”

“Have it your own way. But I’ve said all along that those diamonds came from Earth. Now see here: you took an option—an option on an option, so to speak. If you want to make the second payment on that option and keep it in force, the deadline is nine o’clock Thursday, New York time, as specified in the contract. Make up your mind.”

He switched off and found his partner looking at him sourly. “What’s eating you?”

“I wondered about those diamonds, too, Delos. So I’ve been looking through the weight schedule of the Pioneer.” “Didn’t know you were interested in engineering.”

“I can read figures.”

“Well, you found it, didn’t you? Schedule F-i 7-c, two ounces, allocated to me personally.” “I found it. It sticks out like a sore thumb. But I didn’t find something else.”

Harriman felt a ‘cold chill in his stomach. “What?”

“I didn’t find a schedule for the cancelled covers.” Strong stared at him.

“It must be there. Let me see that weight schedule.”

“It’s not there, Delos. You know, I thought it was funny when you insisted on going to meet Captain LeCroix by yourself. What happened, Delos? Did you sneak them aboard?” He continued to stare while Harriman fidgeted. “We’ve put over some sharp business deals—but this will be the first time that anyone can say that the firm of Harriman and Strong has cheated.”

“George—I would cheat, lie, steal, beg, bribe—do anything to accomplish what we have accomplished.”

Harriman got up and paced the room. “We had to have that money, or the ship would never have taken off. We’re cleaned out. You know that, don’t you?” Strong nodded. “But those covers should have gone to the Moon. That’s what we contracted to do.”

“I just forgot it. Then it was too late to figure the weight in. But it doesn’t matter. I figured that if the trip was a failure, if LeCroix cracked up, nobody would know or care that the covers hadn’t gone. And I knew if he made it, it wouldn’t matter; we’d have plenty of money. And we will, George, we will!”

“We’ve got to pay the money back.”

“Now? Give me time, George. Everybody concerned is ‘happy the way it is. Wait until we recover our stake; then I’ll buy every one of those covers back—out of my own pocket. That’s a promise.”

Strong continued to sit. Harriman stopped in front of him. “I ask you, George, is it worth while to wreck an enterprise of this size for a purely theoretical point?” Strong sighed and said, “When the time comes, use the firm’s money.”

“That’s the spirit! But I’ll use my own, I promise you.”

“No, the firm’s money. If we’re in it together, we’re in it together.” “O.K., if that’s the way you want it.”

Harriman turned back to his desk. Neither of the two partners had anything to say for a long while. Presently Dixon and Entenza were announced. “Well, Jack,” said Harriman. “Feel better now?”

“No thanks to you. I had to fight for what I did put on the air—and some of it was pirated as it was. Delos, there should have been a television pick-up in the ship.” “Don’t fret about it. As I told you, we couldn’t spare the weight this time. But there will be the next trip, and the next. Your concession is going to be worth a pile of money.” Dixon cleared his throat. “That’s what we came to see you about, Delos. What are your plans?”

“Plans? We go right ahead. Les and Coster and I make the next trip. We set up a permanent base. Maybe Coster stays behind. The third trip we send a real colony—nuclear engineers, miners, hydroponics experts, communications engineers. We’ll found Luna City, first city on another planet.”

Dixon looked thoughtful. “And when does this begin to pay off?”

“What do you mean by ‘pay off’? Do you want your capital back, or do you want to begin to see some return on your investment? I can cut it either way.” Entenza was about to say that he wanted his investment back; Dixon cut in first, “Profits, naturally. The investment is already made.”

“Fine!”

“But I don’t see how you expect profits. Certainly, LeCroix made the trip and got back safely. There is honor for all of us. But where are the royalties?” “Give the crop time to ripen, Dan. Do I look worried? What are our assets?” Harriman ticked them off on his fingers. “Royalties on pictures, television, radio—.” “Those things go to Jack.”

“Take a look at the agreement. He has the concession, but he pays the firm—that’s all of us—for them.”

Dixon said, “Shut up, Jack!” before Entenza could speak, then added, “What else? That won’t pull us out of the red.”

“Endorsements galore. Monty’s boys are working on that. Royalties from the greatest best seller yet—I’ve got a ghost writer and a stenographer following LeCroix around this very minute. Afranchise for the first and only space line-“

“From whom?”

“We’ll get it. Kamens and Montgomery are in Paris now, working on it. I’m joining them this afternoon. And we’ll tie down that franchise with a franchise from the other end, just as soon as we can get a permanent colony there, no matter how small. It will be the autonomous state of Luna, under the protection of the United Nations—and no ship will land or take off in its territory without its permission. Besides that we’ll have the right to franchise a dozen other companies for various purposes—and tax them, too—just as soon as we set up the Municipal Corporation of the City of Luna under the laws of the State of Luna. We’ll sell everything but vacuum— we’ll even sell vacuum, for experimental purposes. And don’t forgct—we’ll still have a big chunk of real estate, sovereign title in us—as a state-and not yet sold. The Moon is big.”

“Your ideas are rather big, too, Delos,” Dixon said dryly. “But what actually happens next?”

“First we get title confirmed by the U.N. The Security Council is now in secret session; the Assembly meets tonight. Things will be popping; that’s why I’ve got to be there. When the United Nations decides—as it will!— that its own non-profit corporation has the only real claim to the Moon, then I get busy. The poor little weak non-profit corporation is going to grant a number of things to some real honest-to-god corporations with hair on their chests—in return for help in setting up a physics research lab, an astronomical observatory, a lunography institute and some other perfectly proper nonprofit enterprises. That’s our interim pitch until we get a permanent colony with its own laws. Then we-“

Dixon gestured impatiently. “Never mind the legal shenanigans, Delos. I’ve known you long enough to know that you can figure out such angles. What do we actually have to do next?” “Huh? We’ve got to build another ship, a bigger one. Not actually bigger, but effectively bigger. Coster has started the design of a surface catapult— it will reach from Manitou Springs to

the top of Pikes Peak. With it we can put a ship in free orbit around the Earth. Then we’ll use such a ship to fuel more ships—it amounts to a space station, like the power station. It adds

up to a way to get there on chemical power without having to throw away nine-tenths of your ship to do it.”

“Sounds expensive.”

“It will be. But don’t worry; we’ve got a couple of dozen piddling little things to keep the money coming in while we get set up on a commercial basis, then we sell stock. We- sold stock before; now we’ll sell a thousand dollars’ worth where we sold ten before.”

“And you think that will carry you through until the enterprise as a whole is on a paying basis? Face it, Delos, the thing as a whole doesn’t pay off until you have ships plying between here and the Moon on a paying basis, figured in freight and passenger charges. That means customers, with cash. What is there on the Moon to ship—and who pays for it?”

“Dan, don’t you believe there will be? If not, why are you here?”

“I believe in it, Delos—or I believe in you. But what’s your time schedule? What’s your budget? What’s your prospective commodity? And please don’t mention diamonds; I think I understand that caper.”

Harriman chewed his cigar for a few moments. “There’s one valuable commodity we’ll start shipping at once.” “What?”

“Knowledge.”

Entenza snorted. Strong looked puzzled. Dixon nodded. “I’ll buy that. Knowledge is always worth something—to the man who knows how to exploit it. And I’ll agree that the Moon is a place to find new knowledge. I’ll assume that you can make the next trip pay off. What’s your budget and your time table for that?”

Harriman did not answer. Strong searched his face closely. To him Harriman’s poker face was as revealing as large print—he decided that his partner had been crowded into a corner. He waited, nervous but ready to back Harriman’s play. Dixon went on, “From the way you describe it, Delos, I judge that you don’t have money enough for your next step—and you don’t know where you will get it. I believe in you, Delos—and I told you at the start that I did not believe in letting a new business die of anemia. I’m ready to buy in with a fifth share.”

Harriman stared. “Look,” he said bluntly, “you own Jack’s share now, don’t you?” “I wouldn’t say that.”

“You vote it. It sticks out all over.”

Entenza said, “That’s not true. I’m independent. I—”

“Jack, you’re a damn liar,” Harriman said dispassionately. “Dan, you’ve got fifty percent now. Under the present rules I decide deadlocks, which gives me control as long as George sticks by me. If we sell you another share, you vote three-fifths—and are boss. Is that the deal you are looking for?”

“Delos, as I told you, I have confidence in you.”

“But you’d feel happier with the whip hand. Well, I won’t do it. I’ll let space travel—real space travel, with established runs—wait another twenty years before I’ll turn loose. I’ll let us all go broke and let us live on glory before I’ll turn loose. You’ll have to think up another scheme.”

Dixon said nothing. Harriman got up and began to pace. He stopped in front of Dixon. “Dan, if you really understood what this is all about, I’d let you have control. But you don’t. You see this is just another way to money and to power. I’m perfectly willing to let you vultures get rich—but I keep control. I’m going to see this thing developed, not milked. The human race is heading out to the stars—and this adventure is going to present new problems compared with which atomic power was a kid’s toy. Unless the whole matter is handled carefully, it will be fouled up. You’ll foul it up, Dan, if I let you have the deciding vote in it—because you don’t understand it.”

He caught his breath and went on, “Take safety for instance. Do you know why I let LeCroix take that ship out instead of taking it myself? Do you think I was afraid? No! I wanted it to come back—safely. I didn’t want space travel getting another set-back. Do you know why we have to have a monopoly, for a few years at least? Because every so-and-so and his brother is going to want to build a Moon ship, now that they know it can be done. Remember the first days of ocean flying? After Lindbergh did it, every so-called pilot who could lay hands on a crate took off for some over-water point. Some of them even took their kids along. And most of them landed in the drink. Airplanes get a reputation for being dangerous. Afew years after that the airlines got so hungry for quick money in a highly competitive field that you couldn’t pick up a paper without seeing headlines about another airliner crash.

“That’s not going to happen to space travel! I’m not going to let it happen.

Space ships are too big and too expensive; if they get a reputation for being unsafe as well, we might as well have stayed in bed. I run things.” He stopped. Dixon waited and then said, “I said I believed in you, Delos. How much money do you need?”

“Eh? On what terms?”

“Your note.”

“My note? Did you say my note?”

“I’d want security, of course.”

Harriman swore. “I knew there was a hitch in it. Dan, you know everything I’ve got is tied up in this venture.” “You have insurance. You have quite a lot of insurance, I know.”

“Yes, but that’s all made out to my wife.”

“I seem to have heard you say something about that sort of thing to Jack Entenza,” Dixon said. “Come, now—if I know your tax-happy sort, you have at least one irrevocable trust, or paid- up annuities, or something, to keep Mrs. Harriman out of the poor house.”

Harriman thought fiercely about it. “When’s the call date on this note?” “In the sweet bye and bye. I want a no-bankruptcy clause, of course.” “Why? Such a clause has no legal validity.”

“It would be valid with you, wouldn’t it?”

“Mmm … yes. Yes, it would.”

“Then get out your policies and see how big a note you can write.” Harriman looked at him, turned abruptly and went to his safe. He came back with quite a stack of long, stiff folders. They added them up together; it was an amazingly large sum—for those days. Dixon then consulted a memorandum taken from his pocket and said, “One seems to be missing— a rather large one. ANorth Atlantic Mutual policy, I think.”

Harriman glared at him. “Am I going to have to fire every confidential clerk in my force?”

“No,” Dixon said mildly, “I don’t get my information from your staff. Harriman went back to the safe, got the policy and added it to the pile. Strong spoke up, “Do you want mine, Mr. Dixon?” “No,” answered Dixon, “that won’t be necessary.” He started stuffing the policies in his pocket. “I’ll keep these, Delos, and attend to keeping up the premiums. I’ll bill you of course. You

can send the note and the changeof-beneficiary forms to my office. Here’s your draft.” He took out another slip of paper; it was the draft—already made out in the amount of the policies.

Harriman looked at it. “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “I wonder who’s kidding who?” He tossed the draft over to Strong. “O.K., George, take care of it. I’m off to Paris, boys. Wish me luck.” He strode out as jauntily as a fox terrier.

Strong looked from the closed door to Dixon, then at the note. “I ought to tear this thing up!”

“Don’t do it,” advised Dixon. “You see, I really do believe in him.” He added, “Ever read Carl Sandburg, George?” “I’m not much of a reader.”

“Try him some time. He tells a story about a man who started a rumor that they had struck oil in hell. Pretty soon everybody has left for hell, to get in on the boom. The man who started the rumor watches them all go, then scratches his head and says to himself that there just might be something in it, after all. So he left for hell, too.”

Strong waited, finally said, “I don’t get the point.”

“The point is that I just want to be ready to protect myself if necessary, George—and so should you. Delos might begin believing his own rumors. Diamonds! Come, Jack.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE ENSUING MONTHS were as busy as the period before the flight of the Pioneer (now honorably retired to the Smithsonian Institution). One engineering staff and great gangs of men were working on the catapult, two more staffs were busy with two new ships; the Mayflower, and the Colonial; a third ship was on the drafting tables. Ferguson was chief engineer for all of this; Coster, still buffered by Jock Berkeley, was engineering consultant, working where and as he chose. Colorado Springs was a boom town; the Denver-Trinidad roadcity settlements spread out at the Springs until they surrounded Peterson Field.

Harriman was as busy as a cat with two tails. The constantly expanding exploitation and promotion took eight full days a week of his time, but, by working Kamens and Montgomery almost to ulcers and by doing without sleep himself, he created frequent opportunities to run out to Colorado and talk things over with Caster.

Luna City, it was decided, would be founded on the very next trip. The Mayflower was planned for a pay-load not only of seven passengers, but with air, water and food to carry four of them over to the next trip; they would live in an aluminum Quonset-type hut, sealed, pressurized, and buried under the loose soil of Luna until—and assuming—they were succored.

The choice of the four extra passengers gave rise to another contest, another publicity exploitation—and more sale of stock. Harriman insisted that they be two married couples, over the united objections of scientific organizations everywhere. He gave in only to the extent of agreeing that there was no objection to all four being scientists, providing they constituted two married couples. This gave rise to several hasty marriages—and some divorces, after the choices were announced.

The Mayflower was the maximum size that calculations showed would be capable of getting into a free orbit around the Earth from the boost of the catapult, plus the blast of her own engines. Before she took off, four other ships, quite as large, would precede her. But they were not space ships; they were mere tankers—nameless. The most finicky of ballistic calculations, the most precise of launchings, would place them in the same orbit at the same spot. There the Mayflower would rendezvous and accept their remaining fuel.

This was the trickiest part of the entire project. If the four tankers could be placed close enough together, LeCroix, using a tiny maneuvering reserve, could bring his new ship to them. If not—well, it gets very lonely out in Space.

Serious thought was given to placing pilots in the tankers and accepting as a penalty the use of enough fuel from one tanker to permit a get-away boat, a life boat with wings, to decelerate, reach the atmosphere and brake to a landing. Caster found a cheaper way.

Aradar pilot, whose ancestor was the proximity fuse and whose immediate parents could be found in the homing devices of guided missiles, was given the task of bringing the tankers together. The first tanker would not be so equipped, but th~ second tanker through its robot would smell out the first and home on it with a pint-sized rocket engine, using the smallest of vectors to bring them together. The third would home on the first two and the fourth on the group.

LeCroix shouid have no trouble-if the scheme worked. CHAPTER THIRTEEN

STRONG WANTED TO SHOW HARRIMAN the sales reports on the H & S automatic household switch; Harriman brushed them aside.

Strong shoved them back under his nose. “You’d better start taking an interest in such things, Delos. Somebody around this office had better start seeing to it that some money comes in

—some money that belongs to us, personally-or you’ll be selling apples on a street corner.”

Harriman leaned back and clasped his hands back of his head. “George, how can you talk that way on a day like this? Is there no poetry in your soul? Didn’t you hear what I said when I came in? The rendezvous worked. Tankers one and two are as close together as Siamese twins. We’ll be leaving within the week.”

“That’s as may be. Business has to go on.”

“You keep it going; I’ve got a date. When did Dixon say he would be over?” “He’s due now.”

“Good!” Harriman bit the end off a cigar and went on, “You know, George, I’m not sorry I didn’t get to make the first trip. Now I’ve still got it t~ do. I’m as expectant as a bridegroom—and as happy.” He started to hum.

Dixon came in without Entenza, a situation that had obtained since the day Dixon had dropped the pretence that he controlled only one share. He shook hands. “You heard the news, Dan?”

“George told me.”

“This is it-or almost. Aweek from now, more or less, I’ll be on the Moon. I can hardly believe it.”

Dixon sat down silently. Harriman went on, “Aren’t you even going to congratulate me? Man, this is a great dayl” Dixon said, “D.D., why are you going?”

“Huh? Don’t ask foolish questions. This is what I ~have been working toward.”

“It’s not a foolish question. I asked why you were going. The four colonists have an obvious reason, and each is a selected specialist observer as well. LeCroix is the pilot. Coster is the man who is designing the permanent colony. But why are you going? What’s your function?”

“My function? Why, I’m the guy who runs things. Shucks, I’m going to run for mayor when I get there. Have a cigar, friend—the name’s Harriman. Don’t forget to vote.” He grinned. Dixon did not smile. “I did not know you planned on staying.”

Harriman looked sheepish. “Well, that’s still up in the air. If we get the shelter built in a hurry, we may save enough in the way of supplies to let me sort of lay over until the next trip. You wouldn’t begrudge me that, would you?”

Dixon looked him in the eye. “Delos, I can’t let you go at all.”

Harriman was too startled to talk at first. At last he managed to say, “Don’t joke, Dan. I’m going. You can’t stop me. Nothing on Earth can stop me.” Dixon shook his head. “I can’t permit it, Delos. I’ve got too much sunk in this. If you go and anything happens to you, I lose it all.”

“That’s silly. You and George would just carry on, that’s all.” “Ask George.”

Strong had nothing to say. He did not seem anxious to meet Harriman’s eyes. Dixon went on, “Don’t try to kid your way out of it, Delos. This venture is you and you are this venture. If you get killed, the whole thing folds up. I don’t say space travel folds up; I think you’ve already given that a boost that will carry it along even with lesser men in your shoes. But as for this venture—our company—it will fold up. George and I will have to liquidate at about half a cent on the dollar. It would take sale of patent rights to get that much. The tangible assets aren’t worth anything.”

“Damn it, it’s the intangibles we sell. You knew that all along.”

“You are the intangible asset, Delos. You are the goose that lays the golden eggs. I want you to stick around until you’ve laid them. You must not risk your neck in space flight until you have this thing on a profit-making basis, so that any competent manager, such as George or myself, thereafter can keep it solvent. I mean it, Delos. I’ve got too much in it to see you risk it in a joy ride.”

Harriman stood up and pressed his fingers down on the edge of his desk. He was breathing hard. “You can’t stop me!” he said slowly and forcefully. “Not all the forces of heaven or hell can stop me.”

Dixon answered quietly, “I’m sorry, Delos. But I can stop you and I will. I can tie up that ship out there.” “Try it! I own as many lawyers as you do—and better ones!”

“I think you will find that you are not as popular in American courts as you once were-not since the United States found out it didn’t own the Moon after all.” “Try it, I tell you. I’ll break you and I’ll take your shares away from you, too.”

“Easy, Delos! I’ve no doubt you have some scheme whereby you could milk the basic company right away from George and me if you decided to. But it won’t be necessary. Nor will it be necessary to tie up the ship. I want the flight to take place as much as you do. But you won’t be on it, because you will decide not to go.”

“I will, eh? Do I look crazy from where you sit?” “No, on the contrary.”

“Then why won’t I go?”

“Because of your note that I hold. I want to collect it.”

“What? There’s no due date.”

“No. But I want to be sure to collect it.”

“Why, you dumb fool, if I get killed you collect it sooner than ever.”

“Do I? You are mistaken, Delos. If you are killed-on a flight to the Moon—I collect nothing. I know; I’ve checked with every one of the companies underwriting you. Most of them have escape clauses covering experimental vehicles that date back to early aviation. In any case all of them will cancel and fight it out in court if you set foot inside that ship.”

“You put them up to this!”

“Calm down, Delos. You’ll be bursting a blood vessel. Certainly I queried them, but I was legitimately looking after my own interests. I don’t want to collect on that note-not now, not by your death. I want you to pay it back out of your own earnings, by staj’ing here and nursing this company through till it’s stable.”

Harriman chucked his cigar, almost unsmoked and badly chewed, at a waste basket. He missed. “I don’t give a hoot if you lose on it. If you hadn’t stirred them up, they’d have paid without a quiver.”

“But it did dig up a weak point in your plans, Delos. If space travel is to be a success, insurance will have to reach out and cover the insured anywhere.” “Confound it, one of them does now—N. A. Mutual.”

“I’ve seen their ad and I’ve looked over what they claim to offer. It’s just window dressing, with the usual escape clause. No, insurance will have to be revamped, all sorts of insurance.” Harriman looked thoughtful. “I’ll look into it. George, call Kamens. Maybe we’ll have to float our own company.”

“Never mind Kamens,” objected Dixon. “The point is you can’t go on this trip. You have too many details of that sort to watch and plan for and nurse along.” Harriman looked back at him. “You haven’t gotten it through your head, Dan, that I’m going! Tie up the ship if you can. If you put sheriffs around it, I’ll have goons there to toss them aside.” Dixon looked pained. “I hate to mention this point, Delos, but I am afraid you will be stopped even if I drop dead.”

“How?” “Your wife.”

“What’s she got to do with it?”

“She’s ready to sue for separate maintenance right now—she’s found out about this insurance thing. When she hears about this present plan, she’ll force you into court and force an accounting of your assets.”

“You put her up to it!”

Dixon hesitated. He knew that Entenza had spilled the beans to Mrs. Harriman—maliciously. Yet there seemed no point in adding to a personal feud. “She’s bright enough to have done some investigating on her own account. I won’t deny I’ve talked to her—but she sent for me.”

“I’ll fight both of you!” Harriman stomped to a window, stood looking out—it was a real window; he liked to look at the sky.

Dixon came over and put a hand on his shoulder, saying softly, “Don’t take it this way, Delos. Nobody’s trying to keep you from your dream. But you can’t go just yet; you can’t let us down. We’ve stuck with you this far; you owe it to us to stick with us until it’s done.”

Harriman did not answer; Dixon went on, “If you don’t feel any loyalty toward me, how about George? He’s stuck with you against me, when it hurt him, when he thought you were ruining him—and you surely were, unless you finish this job. How about George, Delos? Are you going to let him down, too?”

Harriman swung around, ignoring Dixon and facing Strong. “What about it, George? Do you think I should stay behind?” Strong rubbed his hands and chewed his lip. Finally he looked up. “It’s all right with me, Delos. You do what you think is best.”

Harriman stood looking at him for a long moment, his face working as if he were going to cry. Then he said huskily, “Okay, you rats. Okay. I’ll stay behind.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE GLORIOUS EVENINGS so common in the Pikes Peak region, after a day in which the sky has been well scrubbed by thunderstorms. The track of the catapult crawled in a straight line up the face of the mountain, whole shoulders having been carved away to permit it. At the temporary space port, still raw from construction, Harriman, in company with visiting notables, was saying good-bye to the passengers and crew of the Mayflower.

The crowds came right up to the rail of the catapult. There was no need to keep them back from the ship; the jets would not blast until she was high over the peak. Only the ship itself was guarded, the ship and the gleaming rails.

Dixon and Strong, together for company and mutual support, hung back at the edge of the area roped off for passengers and officials. They watched Harriman jollying those about to leave: “Good-bye, Doctor. Keep an eye on him, Janet. Don’t let him go looking for Moon Maidens.” They saw him engage Coster in private conversation, then clap the younger man on the back.

“Keeps his chin up, doesn’t he?” whispered Dixon. “Maybe we should have let him go,” answered Strong. “Eh? Nonsense! We’ve got to have him. Anyway, his place in history is secure.”

“He doesn’t care about history,” Strong answered seriously, “he just wants to go to the Moon.” “Well, confound it—he can go to the Moon … as soon as he gets his job done. After all, it’s his job. He made it.” “I know.”

Harriman turned around, saw them, started toward them. They shut up. “Don’t duck,” he said jovially. “It’s all right. I’ll go on the next trip. By then I plan to have it running itself. You’ll see.” He turned back toward the Mayflower. “Quite a sight, isn’t she?”

The outer door was closed; ready lights winked along the track and from the control tower. Asiren sounded. Harriman moved a step or two closer.

“There she goes!”

It was a shout from the whole crowd. The great ship started slowly, softly up the track, gathered speed, and shot toward the distant peak. She was already tiny by the time she curved up the face and burst into the sky.

She hung there a split second, then a plume of light exploded from her tail. Her jets had fired.

Then she was a shining light in the sky, a ball of flame, then—nothing. She was gone, upward and outward, to her rendezvous with her tankers. The crowd had pushed to the west end of the platform as the ship swarmed up the mountain. Harriman had stayed where he was, nor had Dixon and Strong followed the crowd. The

three were alone, Harriman most alone for he did not seem aware that the others were near him. He was watching the sky.

Strong was watching him. Presently Strong barely whispered to Dixon, “Do you read the Bible?” “Some.”

“He looks as Moses must have looked, when he gazed out over the promised land.”

Harriman dropped his eyes from the sky and saw them. “You guys still here?” he said. “Come on—there’s work to be done.”

The End

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The Rolling Stones (full text) by Robert Heinlein

This solid book of space travel is a great example of why Robert Heinlein is still a major name in Science Fiction. The Rolling Stones is primarily a Space Travel Science Fiction novel, as the story is centered on the Stone family’s trip through the solar system. It is a humorous science fiction story about a family traveling through space in a second-hand spaceship.

The Rolling Stones is one of Heinlein’s most lighthearted novels. It was written primarily for young adults, but it’s a good read at any age. The book is about a middle class family, living on the moon as the story begins, in a time when middle class families can buy spaceships about as easily as you or I could buy a large recreational vehicle or a small yacht.

The Rolling Stones

1 – THE UNHEAVENLY TWINS

The two brothers stood looking the old wreck over. “Junk,” decided Castor.

“Not junk,” objected Pollux. “A jalopy – granted. A heap any way you look at it A clunker possibly. But not junk.” “You’re an optimist, Junior.” Both boys were fifteen; Castor was twenty minutes older than his brother.

“I’m a believer, Grandpa – and you had better be, too. Let me point out that we don’t have money enough for anything better. Scared to gun it?”

Castor stared up the side of the ship. “Not at all – because that thing will never again rise high enough to crash. We want a ship that will take us out to the Asteroids – right? This superannuated pogo stick wouldn’t even take us to Earth.”

“It will when I get through hopping it up – with your thumb-fingered help. Let’s look through it and see what it needs.”

Castor glanced at the sky. “It’s getting late.” He looked not at the Sun making long shadows on the lunar plain, but at Earth, reading the time from the sunset line now moving across the Pacific.

“Look, Grandpa, are we buying a ship or are we getting to supper on time?”

Castor shrugged. “As you say, Junior.” He lowered his antenna, then started swarming up the rope ladder left there for the accommodation of prospective customers. He used his hands only and despite his cumbersome vacuum suit his movements were easy and graceful. Pollux swarmed after him. Castor cheered up a bit when they reached the control room. The ship had not been stripped for salvage as completely as had many of the ships on the lot. True, the ballistic computer was missing but the rest of the astrogation instruments were in place and the controls to the power room seemed to be complete. The space-battered old hulk was not a wreck, but merely obsolete. A hasty look at the power room seemed to confirm this.

Ten minutes later Castor, still mindful of supper, herded Pollux down the ladder. When Castor reached the ground Pollux said, “Well?” “Let me do the talking.”

The sales office of the lot was a bubble dome nearly a mile away; they moved toward it with the easy, fast lope of old Moon hands. The office airlock was marked by a huge sign:

DEALER DAN

THE SPACESHIP MAN

CRAFT OF ALL TYPES *** SCRAP METAL *** SPARE PARTS FUELING & SERVICE

(AEC License No. 739024)

They cycled through the lock and unclamped each other’s helmets. The outer office was crossed by a railing; back of it sat a girl receptionist. She was watching a newscast while buffing her nails. She spoke without taking her eyes off the TV tank:

“We’re not buying anything, boys – nor hiring anybody.” Castor said, “You sell spaceships?”

She looked up. “Not often enough.” “Then tell your boss we want to see him.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Whom do you think you are kidding, sonny boy? Mr. Ekizian is a busy man.” Pollux said to Castor, “Let’s go over to the Hungarian, Cas. These people don’t mean business.” “Maybe you’re right.”

The girl looked from one to the other, shrugged, and flipped a switch. “Mr. Ekizan – there are a couple of Boy Scouts out here who say they want to buy a spaceship. Do you want to bother with them?”

A deep voice responded, “And why not? We got ships to sell.” Shortly a bald-headed, portly man, dressed in a cigar and a wrinkled moonsuit came out of the inner office and rested his hands on the rail. He looked them over shrewdly but his voice was jovial. “You wanted to see me?”

“You’re the owner?” asked Castor.

“Dealer Dan Ekizian, the man himself. What’s on your mind, boys? Time is money.” “Your secretary told you,” Castor said ungraciously. “Spaceships.”

Dealer Dan took his cigar out of his mouth and examined it. “Really? What would you boys want with a spaceship?” Pollux muttered something; Castor said, “Do you usually do business out here?” He glanced at the girl.

Ekizan followed his glance. “My mistake. Come inside.” He opened the gate for them, led them into his office, and seated them. He ceremoniously offered them cigars; the boys refused politely. “Now out with it kids. Let’s not joke.”

Castor repeated, “Spaceships.”

He pursed his lips. “A luxury liner, maybe? I haven’t got one on the field at the moment but I can always broker a deal.” Pollux stood up. “He’s making fun of us, Cas. Let’s go see the Hungarian.”

“Wait a moment Pol. Mr. Ekizian, you’ve got a heap out there on the south side of the field, a class VII, model ’93 Detroiter. What’s your scrap metal price on her and what does she mass?”

The dealer looked surprised. “That sweet little job? Why, I couldn’t afford to let that go as scrap. And anyhow, even at scrap that would come to a lot of money. If it is metal you boys want, I got it. Just tell me how much and what sort.”

“We were talking about that Detroiter.” “I don’t believe I’ve met you boys before?”

“Sorry, sir. I’m Castor Stone. This is my brother Pollux.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Stone. Stone … Stone? Any relation to – The “Unheavenly Twins” – that’s it.” “Smile when you say that,” said Pollux.

“Shut up, Pol. We’re the Stone twins.”

“The frostproof rebreather valve, you invented it, didn’t you?” “That’s right.”

“Say, I got one in my own suit. A good gimmick – you boys are quite the mechanics.” He looked them over again. “Maybe you were really serious about a ship.”

“Of course we were.”

“Hmm. . . you’re not looking for scrap; you want something to get around it. I’ve got just the job for you, a General Motors Jumpbug, practically new. It’s been out on one grubstake job to a couple of thorium prospectors and I had to reclaim it. The hold ain’t even radioactive.”

“Not interested.”

“Better look at it. Automatic landing and three hops takes you right around the equator. Just the thing for a couple of lively, active boys.” “About that Detroiter – what’s your scrap price?”

Ekizian looked hurt. “That’s a deep space vessel, son – It’s no use to you, as a ship. And I can’t let it go for scrap; that’s a clean job. It was a family yacht – never been pushed over six g, never had an emergency landing. It’s got hundreds of millions of miles still in it. I couldn’t let you scrap that ship, even if you were to pay me the factory price. It would be a shame. I love ships. Now take this Jumpbug. . .”

“You can’t sell that Detroiter as anything but scrap,” Castor answered. “It’s been sitting there two years that I know of. If you had hoped to sell her as a ship you wouldn’t have salvaged the computer. She’s pitted, her tubes are no good, and an overhaul would cost more than she’s worth. Now what’s her scrap price?”

Dealer Dan rocked back and forth in his chair; he seemed to be suffering. “Scrap that ship? Just fuel her up and she’s ready to go – Venus, Mars, even the Jovian satellites.”

“What’s your cash price?” “Cash?”

“Cash.”

Ekizian hesitated, then mentioned a price. Castor stood up and said, “You were right, Pollux. Let’s go see the Hungarian.” The dealer looked pained. “If I were to write it off for my own use, I couldn’t cut that price – not in fairness to my partners.”

“Come on, Pol.”

“Look, boys, I can’t let you go over to the Hungarian’s. He’ll cheat you.” Pollux looked savage. “Maybe he’ll do it politely.”

“Shut up, Poll!” Castor went on, “Sorry, Mr. Ekizian, my brother isn’t housebroken. But we can’t do business.” He stood up.

“Wait a minute. That’s a good valve you boys thought up. I use it; I feel I owe you something.” He named another and lower sum. “Sorry. We can’t afford it.” He started to follow Pollux out.

”Wait!” Ekizian mentioned a third price. “Cash,” he added. “Of course. And you pay the sales tax?”

“Well. . . for a cash deal, yes.” “Good.”

“Sit down, gentlemen. I’ll call in my girl and we’ll state the papers.”

“No hurry,” answered Castor. “We’ve still got to see what the Hungarian has on his lot – and the government salvage lot, too.” “Huh? That price doesn’t stand unless you deal right now. Dealer Dan, they call me. I got no time to waste dickering twice.” “Nor have we. See you tomorrow. If it hasn’t sold we can take up where we left off.”

“If you expect me to hold that price, I’ll have to have a nominal option payment.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t expect you to pass up a sale for us. If you can sell it by tomorrow, we wouldn’t think of standing in your way. Come on, Pol.” Ekizian shrugged. “Been nice meeting you, boys.”

“Thank you, sir.”

As they closed the lock behind them and waited for it to cycle, Pollux said “You should have paid him an option.” His brother looked at him. “You’re retarded, Junior.”

On leaving Dealer Dan’s office the boys headed for the spaceport, intending to catch the passenger tube back to the city, fifty miles west of the port. They had less than thirty minutes if they were to get home for supper on time – unimportant in itself but Castor disliked starting a family debate on the defensive over a side issue. He kept hurrying Pollux along.

Their route took them through the grounds of General Synthetics Corporation, square miles of giant cracking plants, sun screens, condensers, fractionating columns, all sorts of huge machinery to take advantage of the burning heat, the bitter cold, and the endless vacuum for industrial chemical engineering purposes – a Dantesque jungle of unlikely shapes. The boys paid no attention to it; they were used to it. They hurried down the company road in the flying leaps the Moon’s low gravity permitted, making twenty miles an hour. Half way to the port they were overtaken by a company tractor; Pollux flagged it down.

As he ground to a stop, the driver spoke to them via his cab radio: “What do you want?” “Are you meeting the Terra shuttle?”

“Subject to the whims of fate – yes.”

“It’s Jefferson,” said Pollux. “Hey, Jeff – it’s Cas and Pol. Drop us at the tube station, will you?”

“Climb on the rack. Mind the volcano – come up the usual way.” As they did so he went on, “What brings you two carrot-topped accident-prones to this far reach of culture?”

Castor hesitated and glanced at Pollux. They had known Jefferson James for some time, having bowled against him in the city league. He was an old Moon hand but not a native, having come to Luna before they were born to gather color for a novel. The novel was still unfinished.

Pollux nodded. Castor said, “Jeff, can you keep a secret?”

“Certainly – but permit me to point out that these radios are not directional. See your attorney before admitting any criminal act or intention.” Castor looked around; aside from two tractor trucks in the distance no one seemed to be in line-of-sight. “We’re going into business.” “When were you out of it?”

“This is a new line – interplanetary trade. We’re going to buy our own ship and run it ourselves.”

The driver whistled. “Remind me to sell Four-Planet Export short. When does this blitz take place?”

“We’re shopping for a ship now. Know of a good buy?”

“I’ll alert my spies.” He shut up, being busy thereafter with the heavier traffic near the spaceport. Presently he said, “Here’s your stop.” As the boys climbed down from the rack of the truck he added, “If you need a crewman, keep me in mind.”

“Okay, Jeff. And thanks for the lift.”

Despite the lift they were late. A squad of marine M.P.s heading into the city on duty pre-empted the first tube car; by the time the next arrived the ship from Earth had grounded and its passengers took priority Thereafter they got tangled with the changing shift from the synthetics plant. It was well past suppertime when they arrived at their family’s apartment a half mile down inside Luna city

Mr. Stone looked up as they came in. “Well! the star boarders,” he announced. He was sitting with a small recorder in his lap, a throat mike clipped to his neck.

“Dad, it was unavoidable,” Castor began. “We -”

“It always is,” his father cut in. “Never mind the details. Your dinner is in the cozy. I wanted to send it back but your mother went soft and didn’t let me.”

Dr. Stone looked up from the far end of the living room, where she was modelling a head of their older sister, Meade. “Correction,” she said. “Your father went soft; I would have let you starve. Meade, quit turning your head.”

“Check,” announced their four-year old brother and got up from the floor where he had been playing chess with their grand mother. He ran towards them. “Hey, Cas, Pol – where you been? Did you go to the port? Why didn’t you take me? Did you bring me anything?”

Castor swung him up by his heels and held him upside down. “Yes. No. Maybe. And why should we? Here, Pol – catch.” He sailed the child through the air; his twin reached out and caught him, still by the heels.

“Check yourself,” announced Grandmother, “and mate in three moves. Shouldn’t let your social life distract you from your game, Lowell.” The youngster looked back at the board from his upside down position. “Wrong, Hazel. Now I let you take my queen, then – Blammie!”

His grandmother looked again at the board. “Huh? Wait a minute – suppose I refuse your queen, then – Why, the little scamp! He’s trapped me again.”

Meade said, “Shouldn’t let him beat you so often, Hazel. It’s not good for him.” “Meade, for the ninth time, quit turning your head!”

“Sorry, Mother. Let’s take a rest.”

Grandmother snorted. “You don’t think I let him beat me on purpose, do you? You play him; I am giving up the game for good.” Meade answered just as her mother spoke; at the same time Pollux chucked the boy back at Castor. “You take him. I want to eat.” The child squealed. Mr. Stone shouted, “QUIET!”

“And stay quiet,” he went on, while unfastening the throat mike. “How is a man to make a living in all this racket? This episode has to be done over completely, sent to New York tomorrow, shot, canned, distributed, and on the channels by the end of the week. It’s not possible.”

“Then don’t do it,” Dr. Stone answered serenely. “Or work in your room – it’s soundproof.”

Mr. Stone turned to his wife. “My dear, I’ve explained a thousand times that I can’t work in there by myself. I get no stimulation. I fall asleep.” Castor said, “How’s it going, Dad? Rough?”

“Well, now that you ask me, the villains are way ahead and I don’t see a chance for our heroes.”

“I thought of a gimmick while Pol and I were out. You have this young kid you introduced into the story slide into the control room while everybody is asleep. They don’t suspect him, see? – he’s too young so they haven’t put him in irons. Once in the control room – “ Castor stopped and looked crestfallen. “No, it won’t do; he’s too young to handle the ship. He wouldn’t know how.”

“Why do you say that?” his father objected. “All I have to do is to plant that he has had a chance to. . . let me see –“ He stopped; his face went blank. “No,” he said presently.

“No good, huh?”

“Eh? What? It smells – but I think I can use it. Stevenson did something like it in Treasure Island – and I think he got it from Homer. Let’s see; if we

–“ He again went into his trance.

Pollux had opened the warming cupboard Castor dropped his baby brother on the floor and accepted a dinner pack from his twin. He opened it.

“Meat pie again,” he stated bleakly and sniffed it. “Synthetic, too.”

“Say that over again and louder,” his sister urged him. “I’ve been trying for weeks to get Mother to subscribe to another restaurant.” “Don’t talk, Meade,” Dr. Stone answered. “I’m modelling your mouth.”

Grandmother Stone snorted. “You youngsters have it too easy. When I came to the Moon there was a time when we had nothing but soya beans and coffee powder for three months.”

Meade answered, “Hazel, the last time you told us about that it was two months and it was tea instead of coffee.”

“Young lady, who’s telling this lie? You, or me?” Hazel stood up and came over to her twin grandsons. “What were you two doing on Dan Ekizian’s lot?”

Castor looked at Pollux, who looked back. Castor said cautiously, “Who told you that we were there?” “Don’t try to kid your grandmother. When you have been on -”

The entire family joined her in chorus: “- on the Moon as long as I have!” Hazel sniffed. “Sometimes I wonder why I married!”

Her son said, “Don’t try to answer that question,” then continued to his sons, “Well, what were you doing there?” Castor consulted Pollux by eye, then answered, “Well, Dad, it’s like this -”

His father nodded. “Your best flights of imagination always start that way. Attend carefully, everybody.” “Well, you know that money you are holding for us?”

“What about it?”

“Three per cent isn’t very much.”

Mr. Stone shook his head vigorously. “I will not invest your royalties in some wildcat stock. Financial genius may have skipped my generation but when I turn that money over to you, it will be intact.”

“That’s just it. It worries you. You could turn it over to us now and quit worrying about it.” “No. You are too young.”

“We weren’t too young to earn it.”

His mother snickered. “They got you, Roger. Come here and I’ll see if I can staunch the blood.”

Dr. Stone said serenely, “Don’t heckle Roger when he is coping with the twins, Mother. Meade, turn a little to the left.”

Mr. Stone answered, “You’ve got a point there, Cas. But you may still be too young to hang on to it. What is this leading up to?”

Castor signalled with his eyes; Pollux took over. “Dad, we’ve got a really swell chance to take that money and put it to work. Not a wildcat stock, not a stock at all. We’ll have every penny right where we can see it, right where we could cash in on it at any time. And in the meantime we’ll be making lots more money.”

“Hmmm…how?”

“We buy a ship and put it to work.”

His father opened his mouth; Castor cut in swiftly, “We can pick up a Detroiter VII cheap and overhaul it ourselves; we won’t be out a cent for wages.”

Pollux filled in without a break. “You’ve said yourself, Dad, that we are both born mechanics; we’ve got the hands for it.” Castor went on. “We’d treat it like a baby because it would be our own.”

Pollux: “We’ve both got both certificates, control and power. We wouldn’t need any crew.” Castor: “No overhead – that’s the beauty of it.”

Pollux: “So we carry trade goods out to the Asteroids and we bring back a load of high-grade. We can’t lose.” Castor: “Four hundred percent, maybe five hundred.”

Pollux: “More like six hundred.”

Castor: “And no worries for you.”

Pollux: “And we’d be out of your hair.” Castor: “Not late for dinner.”

Pollux had his mouth open when his father again yelled, “QUIET!” He went on, “Edith, bring the barrel. This time we use it.” Mr. Stone had a theory, often expressed, that boys should be raised in a barrel and fed through the bunghole. The barrel had no physical existence.

Dr. Stone said, “Yes, dear,” and went on modelling.

Grandmother Stone said, “Don’t waste your money on a Detroiter. They’re unstable; the gyro system is no good. Wouldn’t have one as a gift. Get a Douglas.”

Mr. Stone turned to his mother. “Hazel, if you are going to encourage the boys in this nonsense -”

“Not at all! Not at all! Merely intellectual discussion. Now with a Douglas they could make some money. A Douglas has a very favorable -” “Hazel!”

His mother broke off, then said thoughtfully, as if to herself, “I know there is free speech on the Moon: I wrote it into the charter myself.”

Roger Stone turned back to his sons. “See here, boys – when the Chamber of Commerce decided to include pilot training in their Youth-Welfare program I was all for it. I even favored it when they decided to issue junior licenses to anybody who graduated high in the course. When you two got your jets I was proud as could be. It’s a young man’s game; they license commercial pilots at eighteen and -”

“And they retire them at thirty,” added Castor. “We haven’t any time to waste. We’ll be too old for the game before you know it.”

“Pipe down. I’ll do the talking for a bit. If you think I’m going to draw that money out of the bank and let you two young yahoos go gallivanting around the system in a pile of sky junk that will probably blow the first time you go over two g’s, you had better try another think. Besides, you’re going down to Earth for school next September.”

“We’ve been to Earth,” answered Castor. “We didn’t like it,” added Pollux.

“Too dirty.”

“Likewise too noisy.”

“Groundhogs everywhere,” Castor finished.

Mr. Stone brushed it aside. “Two weeks you were there – not time enough to find out what the place is like. You’ll love it, once you get used to it. Learn to ride horseback, play baseball, see the Ocean”

“A lot of impure water,” Castor answered. “Horses are to eat.”

“Take baseball,” Castor continued. “It’s not practical. How can you figure a one-g trajectory and place your hand at the point of contact in the free- flight time between bases? We’re not miracle men.”

“I played it.”

“But you grew up in a one-g field; you’ve got a distorted notion of physics. Anyhow, why would we want to learn to play baseball? When we come back, we wouldn’t be able to play it here. Why, you might crack your helmet”

Mr. Stone shook his head. “Games aren’t the point. Play base-ball or not, as suits you. But you should get an education.” “What does Luna City Technical lack that we need? And if so, why? After all, Dad, you were on the Board of Education.” “I was not; I was mayor.”

“Which made you a member ex-officio – Hazel told us.”

Mr. Stone glanced at his mother; she was looking elsewhere. He went on, “Tech is a good school, of its sort, but we don’t pretend to offer everything at Tech. After all, the Moon is still an outpost, a frontier -”

“But you said,” Pollux interrupted, “in your retiring speech as mayor, that Luna City was the Athens of the future and the hope of the new age.” “Poetic license. Tech is still not Harvard. Don’t you boys want to see the world’s great works of art? Don’t you want to study the world’s great

literature?”

“We’ve read lvanhoe,” said Castor.

“And we don’t want to read The Mill on the Floss,” added Pollux. “We prefer your stuff.”

“My stuff? My stuff isn’t literature. It’s more of an animated comic strip.” “We like it,” Castor said firmly.

His father took a deep breath. “Thank you. Which reminds me that I still have a full episode to sweat out tonight, so I will cut this discussion short. In the first place you can’t touch the money without my thumbprint – from now on I am going to wear gloves. In the second place both of you are too young for an unlimited license.”

“You could get us a waiver for out-system. When we got back we’d probably be old enough for unlimited.” “You’re too young!”

Castor said, “Why, Dad, not half an hour ago you accepted a gimmick from me in which you were going to have an eleven-year-old kid driving a ship.”

“I’ll raise his age!”

“It’ll ruin your gimmick.”

“Confound it! That’s just fiction – and poor fiction at that. It’s hokum, dreamed up to sell merchandise.” He suddenly looked suspiciously at his son. “Cas, you planted that gimmick on me. Just to give yourself an argument in favor of this hair-brained scheme – didn’t you?”

Castor looked pious. “Why, Father, how could you think such a thing?” “Don’t Father me! I can tell a hawk from a Hanshaw.”

“Anybody can,” Grandmother Hazel commented. “The Hawk class is a purely commercial type while the Hanshaw runabout is a sport job. Come to think about it, boys, a Hanshaw might be better than a Douglas. I like its fractional controls and -”

“Hazel!” snapped her son. “Quit encouraging the boys. And quit showing off. You’re not the only engineer in the family.” “I’m the only good one,” she answered smugly.

“Oh, yes? Nobody ever complained about my work.” “Then why did you quit?”

“You know why. Fiddle with finicky figures for months on end – and what have you got? A repair dock. Or a stamping mill. And who cares?” “So you aren’t an engineer. You’re merely a man who knows engineering.”

“What about yourself? You didn’t stick with it.”

“No,” she admitted, “but my reasons were different. I saw three big, hairy, male men promoted over my head and not one of them could do a partial integration without a pencil. Presently I figured out that the Atomic Energy Commission had a bias on the subject of women no matter what the civil service rules said. So I took a job dealing blackjack. Luna City didn’t offer much choice in those days – and I had you to support.”

The argument seemed about to die out; Castor judged it was time to mix it up again. “Hazel, do you really think we should get a Hanshaw? I’m not sure we can afford it.”

“Well, now, you really need a third crewman for a -” “Do you want to buy in?”

“Mr. Stone interrupted. “Hazel, I will not stand by and let you encourage this. I’m putting my foot down.”

“You look silly standing there on one foot. Don’t try to bring me up, Roger. At ninety-five my habits are fairly well set.” “Ninety-five indeed! Last week you were eighty-five.”

“It’s been a hard week. Back to our muttons – why don’t you buy in with them? You could go along and keep them out of trouble.”

“What? Me?” Mr. Stone took a deep breath. “(A) a marine guard couldn’t keep these two junior-model Napoleons out of trouble. I know; I’ve tried.

(B) I do not like a Hanshaw; they are fuel hogs. (C) I have to turn out three episodes a week of The Scourge of the Spaceways – including one which must be taped tonight, if this family will ever quiet down!”

“Roger,” his mother answered. “trouble in this family is like water for fish. And nobody asked you to buy a Hanshaw, As to your third point, give me a blank spool and I’ll dictate the next three episodes tonight while I’m brushing my hair.” Hazel’s hair was still thick and quite red. So far, no one had caught her dyeing it. “It’s about time you broke that contract anyway; you’ve won your bet.”

Her son winced. Two years before be had let himself be trapped into a bet that he could write better stuff than was being channeled up from Earth

and had gotten himself caught in a quicksand of fat checks and options. “I can’t afford to quit,” he said feebly.

“What good is money if you don’t have time to spend it? Give me that spool and the box.” “You can’t write it.”

“Want to bet?”

Her son backed down; no one yet had won a bet with Hazel.

“That’s beside the point I’m a family man; I’ve got Edith and Buster and Meade to think about, too.”

Meade turned her head again. “If you’re thinking about me, Daddy, I’d like to go. Why, I’ve never been any place – except that one trip to Venus and twice to New York.”

“Hold still. Meade,” Dr. Stone said quietly. She went on to her husband, “You know, Roger, I was thinking just the other day how cramped this apartment is. And we haven’t been any place, as Meade says, since we got back from Venus.”

Mr. Stone stared. “You too? Edith, this apartment is bigger than any ship compartment; you know that.” “Yes, but a ship seems bigger. In free fall one gets so much more use out of the room.”

“My dear, do I understand that you are supporting this junket?”

“Oh, not at all! I was speaking in general terms. But you do sleep better aboard ship. You never snore in free fall.” “I do not snore!”

Dr. Stone did not answer. Hazel snickered. Pollux caught Castor’s eye and Castor nodded; the two slipped quietly away to their own room. It was a lot of trouble to get mother involved in a family argument, but worth the effort; nothing important was ever decided until she joined in.

Meade tapped on their door a little later; Castor let her in and looked her over; she was dressed in the height of fashion for the American Old West. “Square dancing again, huh?”

“Eliminations tonight. Look here, Cas, even if Daddy breaks loose from the money you two might be stymied by being underage for an unlimited license – right?”

“We figure on a waiver.” They had also discussed blasting off without a waiver, but it did not seem the time to mention it. “But you might not get it. Just bear in mind that I will be eighteen next week. Bye now!”

“Good night.”

When she had gone Pollux said, “That’s silly. She hasn’t even taken her limited license.” “No, but she’s had astrogation in school and we could coach her.”

“Cas, you’re crazy. We can’t drag her all around the system; girls are a nuisance.” “You’ve got that wrong, Junior. You mean “sisters” – girls are okay.”

Pollux considered this. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” “I’m always right.”

“Oh, so? How about the time you tried to use liquid air to -” “Let’s not be petty!”

Grandmother Hazel stuck her head in next. “Just a quick battle report, boys. Your father is groggy but still fighting gamely.” “Is he going to let us use the money?”

“Doesn’t look like it, as now. Tell me, how much did Ekizian ask you for that Detroiter?”

Castor told her; she whistled. “The gonoph,” she said softly. “That unblushing groundhog – I’ll have his license lifted.” “Oh, we didn’t agree to pay it.”

“Don’t sign with him at all unless I’m at your elbow. I know where the body is buried.”

“Okay. Look, Hazel, you really think a Detroiter VII is unstable?”

She wrinkled her brow. “Its gyros are too light for the ship’s moment of inertia. I hate a ship that wobbles. If we could pick up a war-surplus triple- duo gyro system, cheap, you would have something. I’ll inquire around.”

It was much later when Mr. Stone looked in. “Still awake, boys?” “Oh, sure, come in.”

“About that matter we were discussing tonight -” Pollux said, “Do we get the money?”

Castor dug him in the ribs but it was too late. Their father said, “I told you that was out. But I wanted to ask you: did you, when you were shopping around today, happen to ask, us, about any larger ships?”

Castor looked blank. “Why, no sir. We couldn’t afford anything larger could we, Pol?” “Gee, no! Why do you ask, Dad?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing at all! Uh, good night.”

He left. The twins turned to each other and solemnly shook hands.

II – A CASE FOR DRAMATIC LICENSE

At breakfast the next morning – ‘morning’ by Greenwich time, of course; it was still late afternoon by local sun time and would be for a couple of days – the Stone family acted out the episode Hazel had dictated the night before of Mr. Stone’s marathon adventure serial. Grandma Hazel had stuck the spool of dictation into the autotyper as soon as she had gotten up; there was a typed copy for each of them. Even Buster had a small side to read and Hazel played several parts, crouching and jumping around and shifting her voice from rusty bass to soprano.

Everybody got into the act – everybody but Mr. Stone; he listened with a dour try-to-make-me-laugh expression.

Hazel finished her grand cliff-hanging finale by knocking over her coffee She plucked the cup out of the air and had a napkin under the brown flood before it could reach the floor under the urge of the Moon’s leisurely field. “Well?” she said breathlessly to her son, while still panting from the Galactic Overlord’s frantic attempts to escape a just fate. “How about it? Isn’t that a dilly? Did we scare the dickens out of ’em or didn’t we?”

Roger Stone did not answer; he merely held his nose. Hazel looked amazed. “You didn’t like it? Why, Roger, I do believe you’re jealous. To think I would raise a son with spirit so mean that he would be envious of his own mother!”

Buster spoke up. “I liked it Let’s do that part over where I shoot the space pirate.” He pointed a finger and made a buzzing noise. “Whee! Blood all over the bulkheads!”

“There’s your answer, Roger. Your public. If Buster likes it, you’re in.” “I thought it was exciting,” Meade put in. “What was wrong with it, Daddy?” “Yes,” agreed Hazel belligerently. “Go ahead. Tell us.”

“Very well. In the first place, spaceships do not make hundred-and eighty-degree turns.” “This one does!”

“In the second place, what in blazes is this “Galactic Overlord” nonsense? When did he creep in?” “Oh, that! Son, your show was dying on its feet, so I gave it a transfusion.”

“But “Galactic Overlords” – now, really! It’s not only preposterous: it’s been used over and over again.”

“Is that bad? Next week I’m going to equip Hamlet with atomic propulsion and stir it in with The Comedy of Errors. I suppose you think Shakespeare will sue me?”

“He will if he can stop spinning.” Roger Stone shrugged ‘I’ll send it in. There’s no time left to do another one and the contract doesn’t say it has to be good: it just says I have to deliver it. They’ll rewrite it in New York anyway.”

His mother answered, “Even money says your fan mail is up twenty-five per cent on this episode.” “No, thank you. I don’t want you wearing yourself out writing fan mail – not at your age.”

“What’s wrong with my age? I used to paddle you twice a week and I can still do it. Come on; put up your dukes!” “Too soon after breakfast.”

“Sissy! Pick your way of dying – Marquis of Queensbury, dockside, or kill-quick.”

“Send around your seconds; let’s do this properly. In the meantime –“ He turned to his sons. “Boys, have you any plans for today?” Castor glanoed at his brother, then said cautiously, “well, we were thinking of doing a little more shopping for ships.

“I’ll go with you.”

Pollux looked up sharply. “You mean we get the money?” His brother glared at him. Their father answered, “No, your money stays in the bank where it belongs.”

“Then why bother to shop?” He got an elbow in the ribs for this remark.

“I’m interested in seeing what the market has to offer,” Mr. Stone answered. “Coming, Edith?” Dr. Stone answered, “I trust your judgement, my dear.”

Hazel gulped more coffee and stood lip. “I’m coming along.” Buster bounced down out of his chair. “Me, too!”

Dr. Stone stopped him. “No, dear. Finish your oatmeal.”

“No! I’m going, too. Can’t I, Grandma Hazel?”

Hazel considered it. Riding herd on the child outside the pressurised city was a full-time chore; he was not old enough to be trusted to handle his vacuum-suit controls properly. On this occasion she wanted to be free to give her full attention to other matters. “I’m afraid not, Lowell. Tell you what, sugar, I’ll keep my phone open and we’ll play chess while I’m away.”

“It’s no fun to play chess by telephone. I can’t tell what you are thinking.”

Hazel stared at him. “So that’s it? I’ve suspected it for some time. Maybe I can win a game once. No, don’t start whimpering – or I’ll take your slide rule away from you for a week.” The child thought it over, shrugged, and his face became placid. Hazel turned to her son. “Do you suppose he really does hear thoughts?”

Her son looked at his least son. “I’m afraid to find out.” He sighed and added, “Why couldn’t I have been born into a nice, normal, stupid family? Your fault, Hazel.”

“His mother patted his arm. “Don’t fret, Roger. You pull down the average.”

“Hummph! Give me that spool. I’d better shoot it off to New York before I lose my nerve.”

Hazel fetched it; Mr. Stone took it to the apartment phone, punched in the code for RCA New York with the combination set for high speed transcription relay. As he slipped the spool into its socket he added, “I shouldn’t do this. In addition to that “Galactic Overlord” nonsense, Hazel, you messed up the continuity by killing off four of my standard characters.”

Hazel kept her eye on the spool; it had started to revolve. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it all worked out. You’ll see.”

“Eh? What do you mean? Are you intending to write more episodes? I’m tempted to go limp and let you struggle with it – I’m sick of it and it would serve you right. Galactic Overlords indeed!”

His mother continued to watch the spinning spool in the telephone. At high speed relay the thirty-minute spool zipped through in thirty seconds. Shortly it went spung! and popped up out of the socket; Hazel breathed relief. The episode was now either in New York, or was being held automatically in the Luna City telephone exchange, waiting for a break in the live Luna-to-Earth traffic. In either case it was out of reach, as impossible to recall as an angry word.

“Certainly I plan to do more episodes,” she told him. “Exactly seven, in fact.” “Huh! Why seven?”

“Haven’t you figured out why I am killing off characters? Seven episodes is the end of this quarter and a new option date. This time they won’t pick up your option because every last one of the characters will be dead and the story will be over. I’m taking you off the hook, son.”

“What? Hazel, you can’t do that! Adventure serials never end.” “Does it say so in your contract?”

“No, but -”

“You’ve been grousing about how you wanted to get off this golden treadmill. You would never have the courage to do it yourself, so your loving mother has come to the rescue. You’re a free man again, Roger.”

“But -” His face relaxed. “I suppose you’re right Though I would prefer to commit suicide, even literary suicide, in my own way and at my own time. Mmm. .. see here, Hazel, when do you plan to kill off John Sterling?”

“Him? Why, Our Hero has to last until the final episode, naturally. He and the Galactic Overlord do each other in at the very end. Slow music.” “Yes. Yes, surely… that’s the way it would have to be. But you can’t do it”

“Why not?”

“Because I insist on writing that scene myself. I’ve hated that mealy-mouthed Galahad ever since I thought him up. I’m not going to let anyone else have the fun of killing him; he’s mine!”

His mother bowed. “Your honour, sir.”

Mr. Stone’s face brightened; he reached for his pouch and slung it over his shoulder. “And now let’s look at some space-ships!” “Geronimo!”

As the four left the apartment and stepped on the slid eway that would take them to the pressure lfft to the surface Pollux said to his grandmother, “Hazel, what does “Geronimo” mean?”

“Ancient Druid phrase meaning “Let’s get out of here even if we have to walk.” So pick up your feet.”

III – THE SECOND-HAND MARKET

They stopped at the Locker Rooms at East Lock and suited up. As usual, Hazel unbelted her gun and strapped it to her vacuum suit. None of the others was armed; aside from civic guards and military police no one went armed in Luna City at this late date except a few of the very old-timers like Hazel herself. Castor said, “Hazel, why do you bother with that?”

“To assert my right. Besides, I might meet a rattlesnake.” “Rattlesnakes? On the Moon? Now, Hazel!”

“’Now, Hazel’” yourself. More rattlesnakes walking around on their hind legs than ever wriggled in the dust. Anyhow, do you remember the reason the White Knight gave Alice for keeping a mouse trap on his horse?”

“Uh, not exactly.”

“Look it up when we get home. You kids are ignorant Give me a hand with this helmet.”

The conversation stopped, as Buster was calling his grandmother and insisting that they start their game. Castor could read her lips through her helmet; when he had his own helmet in place and his suit radio switched on he could hear them arguing about which had the white men last game. Hazel was preoccupied thereafter as Buster, with the chess board in front of him, was intentionally hurrying the moves, whereas Hazel was kept busy visualising the board.

They had to wait at the lock for a load of tourists, just arrived in the morning shuttle from Earth, to spill out. One of two women passengers stopped and stared at them. “Thelma,” she said to her companion, “that little man – he’s wearing a gun.”

The other woman urged her along. “Don’t take notice,” she said. “It’s not polite.” She went on, changing the subject ‘I wonder where we can buy souvenir turtles around here? I promised Herbert.”

Hazel turned and glared at them; Mr. Stone took her arm and urged her into the now empty lock. She continued to fume as the lock cycled. “Groundhogs! Souvenir turtles indeed!”

“Mind your blood pressure, Hazel,” her son advised.

“You mind yours.” She looked up at him and suddenly grinned. “I should ha’ drilled her, podnuh – like this.” She made a fast draw to demonstrate, then, before returning the weapon to its holster, opened the charge chamber and removed a cough drop. This she inserted through the pass valve of her helmet and caught it on her tongue. Sucking it, she continued. “Just the same, son, that did it. Your mind may not be made up; mine is. Luna is getting to be like any other ant hill. I’m going out somewhere to find elbow room, about a quarter of a billion miles of it.”

“How about your pension?”

“Pension be hanged! I got along all right before I had it, Hazel, along with the other remaining Founding Fathers – and mothers – of the lunar colony, had been awarded a lifetime pension from a grateful city. This might be for a long period, despite her age, as the normal human life span under the biologically easy conditions of the Moon’s low gravity had yet to be determined; the Luna city geriatrics clinic regularly revised the estimate upwards.

She continued, “How about you? Are you going to stay here, like a sardine in a can? Better grab your chance, son, before they run you for office again. Oueen to king’s bishop three, Lowell.”

“We’ll see. Pressure is down; let’s get moving.”

Castor and Pollux carefully stayed out of the discussion; things were shaping up.

As well as Dealer Dan’s lot, the government salvage yard and that of the Bankrupt Hungarian were, of course, close by the spaceport The Hungarian’s lot sported an ancient sun-tarnished sign – BARGAINS! BARGAINS!! BARGAINS!!! GOING OUT OF BUSINESS – but there were no bargains there, as Mr. Stone decided in ten minutes and Hazel in five. The government salvage yard held mostly robot freighters without living qnarters – one-trip ships, the interplanetary equivalent of discarded packing cases – and obsolete military craft unsuited for most private uses. They ended up at Ekizian’s lot.

Pollux headed at once for the ship he and his brother had picked out. His father immediately called him back ‘Hey,” Pol! What’s your hurry?” “Don’t you want to see our ship?”

“Your ship? Are you still laboring under the fancy that I am going to let you two refugees from a correction school buy that Deiroiter?”

“Huh? Then what did we come out here for?”

“I want to look at some ships. But I am not interested in a Detroiter VII.”

Pollux said, “Huh! See here, Dad, we aren’t going to settle for a jumpbug. We need a – “The rest of his protest was cut off as Castor reached over

and switched off his walkie-talkie; Castor picked it up:

“What sort of a ship, Dad? Pol and I have looked over most of these heaps, one time or another.” “Well, nothing fancy. A conservative family job. Let’s look at that Hanshaw up ahead.”

Hazel said, “I thought you said Hanshaws were fuel hogs, Roger?” “True, but they are very comfortable. You can’t have everything.” “Why not?”

Pollux had switched his radio back on immediately. He put in, “Dad, we don’t want a runabout. No cargo space.” Castor reached again for his belt switch; he shut up.

But Mr. Stone answered hirn. “Forget about cargo space. You two boys would lose your shirts if you attempted to compete with the sharp traders running around the system. I’m looking for a ship that will let the family make an occasional pleasure trip; I’m not in the market for a commercial freighter.”

Pollux shut up; they all went to the Hanshaw Mr. Stone had pointed out and swarmed up into her control room. Hazel used both hands and feet in climbing the rope ladder but was only a little behind her descendants. Once they were in the ship she went down the hatch into the power room; the others looked over the control roof and the living quarters, combined in one compartment. The upper or bow end was the control station with couches for pilot and co-pilot. The lower or after end had two more acceleration couches for passengers, all four couches were reversible, for the ship could be tumbled in flight, caused to spin end over end to give the ship artificial ‘gravity’ through centrifugal force – in which case the forward direction would be ‘down’, just the opposite of the ‘down’ of flight under power.

Pollux looked over these arrangements with distaste. The notion of cluttering up a ship with gadgetry to coddle the tender stomachs of groundhogs disgusted him. No wonder Hanshaws were fuel hogs!

But his father thought differently. He was happily stretched out in the pilot’s couch, fingering the controls. “This baby might do,” he announced, “if the price is right.”

Castor said, “I thought you wanted this for the family, “I do.”

“Be pretty cramped in here once you rigged extra couches. Edith won’t like that” “You let me worry, about your mother. Anyhow, there are enough couches now. “With only four? How do you figure?”

“Me, your mother, your grandmother, and Buster. If Meade is along we’ll rig something for the baby. By which you may conclude that I am really serious about you two juvenile delinquents finishing your schooling. Now don’t blow your safeties! – I have it in mind that you two can use this crate to run around in after you finish school. Or even during vacations, once you get your unlimited licenses. Fair enough?”

The twins gave him the worst sort of argument to answer; neither of them said anything. Their expressions said everything that was necessary. Their father went on, “See here – I’m trying to be fair and I’m trying to. be generous. But how many boys your age do you know, or have even heard of, who have their own ship? None – right? You should get it through your heads that you are not supermen.”

Castor grabbed at it. “How do you know that we are not “supermen”?”

Poliux followed through with, “Conjecture, pure conjecture.” Before Mr. Stone could think of an effective answer his mother poked her head up the power room hatch. Her expression seemed to say she had whiffed a very bad odor. Mr. Stone said, “What’s the trouble, Hazel? Power plant on the blink?”

“”On the blink”, he says! Why, I wouldn’t lift this clunker at two gravities.” “What’s the matter with it?”

“I never saw a more disgracefully abused – No, I won’t tell you. Inspect it yourself; you don’t trust my engineering ability.” “Now see here, Hazel, I’ve never told you I don’t trust your engineering.”

“No, but you don’t. Don’t try to sweet-talk me; I know. So check the power room yourself. Pretend I haven’t seen it”

Her son turned away and headed for the outer door, saying huffily, “I’ve never suggested that you did not know power plants. If you are talking about that Gantry design, that was ten years ago; by now you should have forgiven me for being right about it.”

To the surprise of the twins Hazel did not continue the argument but followed her son docilely into the air lock. Mr. Stone started down the rope ladder; Castor pulled his grandmother aside, switched off both her radio and pushed his helmet into contact with hers so that he might speak with her in private. “Hazel, what was wrong with the power plant? Pol and I went through this ship last week – I didn’t spot anything too bad.”

Hazel look at him pityingly. “You’ve been losing sleep lately? It’s obvious – only four couches.”

“Oh.” Castor switched on his radio and silently followed his brother and father to the ground.

Etched on the stern of the next ship they visited was Cherub, Roma, Terra, and she actually was of the Carlotti Motors Angel series, though she resembled very little the giant Archangels, She was short – barely a hundred fifty feet high – and slender, and she was at least twenty years old. Mr. Stone had been reluctant to inspect her. “She’s too big for us,” he protested, “and I’m not looking for a cargo ship.”

“Too big how?” Hazel asked ‘”Too big” is a financial term, not a matter of size. And with her cargo hold empty, think how lively she’ll be. I like a ship that jumps when I twist its tail – and so do you.”

“Mmmm, yes,” he admitted. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t cost anything to look her over.” “You’re talking saner every day, son.” Hazel reached for the rope ladder.

The ship was old and old-fashioned and she had plied many a lonely million miles of space, but, thanks to the preservative qualities of the Moon’s airless waste, she had not grown older since the last time her jets bad blasted. She had simply slumbered timelessly, waiting for someone to come along and appreciate her sleeping beauty. Her air had been. salvaged; there was no dust in her compartments. Many of her auxiliary fittings had been stripped and sold, but she herself was bright and clean and spaceworthy.

The light Hazel could see in her son’s eyes she judged to be love at first sight. She hung back and signalled the twins to keep quiet. The open airlock had let them into the living quarters; a galley-saloon, two little staterooms, and a bunkroom. The control room was separate, above them, and was a combined conn. & comm. Roger Stone immediately climbed into it.

Below the quarters was the cargo space and below that the power room. The little ship was a passenger-carrying freighter, conversely a passenger ship with cargo space; it was this dual nature which had landed her, an unwanted orphan, in Dealer Dan’s second-hand lot. Too slow when carrying cargo to compete with the express liners, she could carry too few passengers to make money without a load of freight, Although of sound construction she did not fit into the fiercely competitive business world.

The twins elected to go on down into the power room. Hazel poked around the living quarters, nodded approvingly at the galley, finally climbed up into the control room. There she found her son stretched out in the pilot’s couch and fingering the controls. Hazel promptly swung herself into the co- pilot’s couch, settled down in the bare rack – the pneumatic pads were missing – and turned her head toward Roger Stone. She called out ‘All stations manned and ready, Captain !”

He looked at her and grinned. “Stand by to raise ship!”

She answered, “Board green! Clear from tower! Ready for count off!”

“Minus thirty! Twenty-nine – twenty-eight –“ He broke off and added sheepishly, “It does feel good.”

“You’re dern tootin’ it does. Let’s grab ourselves a chunk of it before we’re too old. This city life is getting us covered with moss.” Roger Stone swung his long legs out of the pilot’s couch. “Um, maybe we should. Yes, we really should.”

Hazel’s booted feet hit the deck plates by his. “That’s my boy! I’ll raise you up to man size yet. Let’s go see what the twins have taken apart.”

The twins were still in the power room. Roger went down first; he said to Castor, “Well, son, how does it look? Will she raise high enough to crash?”

Castor wrinkled his forehead. “We haven’t found anything wrong, exactly, but they’ve taken her boost units out. The pile is just a shell.”

Hazel said, “What do you expect? For ’em to leave “hot” stuff sitting in a decommissioned ship? In time the whole stern would be radioactive, even if somebody didn’t steal it.

Her son answered, “Quit showing off, Hazel, Cas knows that. We’ll check the log data and get a metallurgical report later – if we ever talk business.”

Hazel answered, “King’s knight to queen bishop five. What’s the matter, Roger? Cold feet?”

“No, I like this ship. . . but I don’t know that I can pay for her. And even if she were a gift, it will cost a fortune to overhaul her and get her ready for space.”

“Pooh! I’ll run the overhaul myself, with Cas and Pol to do the dirty work. Won’t cost you anything but dockage. As for the price, we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

“I’ll supervise the overhaul, myself.”

“Want to fight? Let’s go down and find out just what inflated notions Dan Ekizian has this time. And remember – let me do the talking.” “Now wait a minute – I never said I was going to buy this bucket.”

“Who said you were? But it doesn’t cost anything to dicker. I can make Dan see reason.”

Dealer Dan Ekizian was glad to see them, doubly so when he found that they were interested, not in the Detroiter VII, but in a larger, more

expensive ship. At Hazel’s insistence she and Ekizian went into his inner office alone to discuss prices. Mr. Stone let her get away with it, knowing

that his mother drove a merciless bargain. The twins and he waited outside for quite a while; presently Mr. Ekizian called his office girl in.

She came out a few minutes later, to be followed shortly by Ekizian and Hazel. “It’s all settled,” she announced, looking smug. The dealer smiled grudgingly around his cigar. “Your mother is a very smart woman, Mister Mayor.”

“Take it easy!” Roger Stone protested. “You are both mixed up in your timing. I’m no longer mayor, thank heaven – and nothing is settled yet. What are the terms?”

Ekizian glanced at Hazel, who pursed her lips. “Well, now, son,” she said slowly, “it’s like this. I’m too old a woman to fiddle around. I might die in bed, waiting for you to consider all sides of the question. So I bought it”

“You?”

“For all practical purposes. It’s a syndicate. Dan puts up the ship; I wangle the cargo – and the boys and I take the stuff out to the Asteroids for a fat profit. I’ve always wanted to be a skipper.”

Castor and Pollux had been lounging in the background, listening and watching faces. At Hazel’s announcement Pollux started to speak; Castor caught his eye and shook his head. Mr. Stone said explosively, “That’s preposterous! I won’t let you do it”

“I’m of age, son.” –

“Mr. Ekizian, you must be out of your mind.”

The dealer took his cigar and stared at the end of it. “Business is business.” “Well…at least you won’t get my boys mixed up in it That’s out!”

“Mmm. . . “ said Hazel. “Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s ask them.” “They’re not of age.”

“No. . . not quite. But suppose they went into court and asked that I be appointed their guardian?”

Mr. Stone listened to this quietly, then turned to his sons.’Cas. . . Pol . . . did you frame this with your grandmother?” Pollux answered, “No, sir.”

“Would you do what she suggests?”

Castor answered, “Now, Dad, you know we wouldn’t like to do anything like that.” “But would you do it, eh?”

“I didn’t say so, sir.”

“Hmm – “ Mr. Stone turned back. “This is pure blackmail – and I won’t stand for it. Mr. Ekizian, you knew that I came in here to bid on that ship. You knew that my mother was to bargain for it as my agent. You both knew that – but you made a deal behind my back. Now either you set that so-called deal aside and we start over – or I haul both of you down to the Better Business Bureau.

Hazel was expressionless; Mr. Ekizan examined his rings.

“There’s something in what you say, Mr. Stone. Suppose we go inside and talk it over?” “I think we had better.”

Hazel followed them in and plucked at her son’s sleeve before he had a chance to start anydung. “Roger? You really want to buy this ship?” “I do.”

She pointed to papers spread on Ekizian’s desk. “Then just sign right there and stamp your thumb.”

He picked up the papers instead. They contained no suggestion of the deal Hazel had outlined; instead they conveyed to him all right, title and interest in the vessel he had just inspected, and at a price much lower than he had been prepared to pay. He did some hasty mental arithmetic and concluded that Hazel had not only gotten the ship at scrapmetal prices but also must have bulldozed Ekizian into discounting the price by what it would have cost him to cut the ship up into pieces for salvage.

In dead silence he reached for Mr. Ekizian’s desk stylus, signed his name, then carefully affixed his thumb print. He looked up and caught his mother’s eye. “Hazel, there is no honesty in you and you’ll come to a bad end.”

She smiled. “Roger, you do say the sweetest things.”

Mr. Ekizian sighed. “As I said, Mr. Stone, your mother is a very smart woman. I offered her a partnership.”

“Then there was a deal?”

Oh, no, no, not that deal – I offered her a partnership in the lot.” “But I didn’t take it.” Hazel added. “I want elbow room.”

Roger Stone grinned and shrugged, stood up. “Well, anyway – who’s skipper now?” “You are – Captain.”

As they came out both twins said, “Dad, did you buy it?”

Hazel answered, “Don’t call him “Dad” – he prefers to be called “Captain”.” “Oh.”

“Likewise “Oh”,” Pol repeated.

Dr. Stone’s only comment was, “Yes, dear, I gave them notice on the lease.” Meade was almost incoherent; Lowell was incoherent After dinner Hazel and the twins took Meade and the baby out to see their ship; Dr. Stone – who had shown no excitement even during the Great Meteor Shower

stayed home wrth her husband. He spent the time making lists of things that must be attended to, both in the city and on the ship itself, before they could leave. He finished by making a list that read as follows:

Myself – skipper

Castor – 1st officer & pilot Meade – 2nd officer & asst. cook Hazel – chief engineer

Pollux – asst. eng. & relief pilot Edith – ship’s surgeon & cook Buster – “supercargo”

He stared at it for a while, then said softly to himself, “Something tells me this isn’t going to work.”

II – ASPECTS OF DOMESTIC ENGINEERING

Mr. Stone did not show his ship’s organisation bill to the rest of the family; he knew in his heart that the twins were coming along, but he was not ready to concede it publicly. The subject was not mentioned while they were overhauling the ship and getting it ready for space.

The twins did most of the work with Hazel supervising and their father, from time to time, arguing with her about her engineering decisions. When this happened the twins usually went ahead and did it in the way they thought it ought to be done. Neither of them had much confidence in the skill and knowledge of their elders; along with their great natural talent for mechanics and their general brilliance went a cocksure, half-baked conceit which led them to think that they knew a great deal more than they did.

This anarchistic and unstable condition came to a head over the overhaul of the intermediate injector sequence. Mr. Stone had decreed, with Hazel concurring, that all parts which could be disassembled would so be, interior surfaces inspected, tolerances checked, and gaskets replaced with new ones. The intermediate sequence in this model was at comparatively low pressure; the gasketing was of silicone-silica laminate rather than wrung metal.

Spare gaskets were not available in Luna city, but had to be ordered up from Earth; this Mr. Stone had done. But the old gaskets appeared to be in perfect condition, as Pollux pointed when they opened the sequence. “Hazel, why don’t we put these back in? They look brand new.”

His grandmother took one of the gaskets, looked it over, flexed it, and handed it back. “Lots of life left in it; that’s sure. Keep it for a spare.”

Castor said, “That wasn’t what Pol said. The new gaskets have to be flown from Rome to Pikes Peak, then jumped here. Might be three days, or it might be a week. And we can’t do another thing until we get this mess cleaned up.”

“You can work in the control room. Your father wants all new parts on everything that wears out.” “Oh, bother! Dad goes too much by the book; you’ve said so yourself.”

Hazel looked up at her grandson, bulky in his pressure suit. “Listen, runt, your father is an A-one engineer. I’m privileged to criticise him; you aren’t.”

Pollux cut in hastily, “Just a Sec, Hazel, let’s keep personalities out of this. I want your unbiased professional opinion; are those gaskets fit to put back in, or aren’t they? Cross your heart and shame the devil.”

“Well. . . I say they are fit to use. You can tell your father I said so. He ought to be here any minute now; I expect he will agree.” She straightened up. “I’ve got to go.”

Mr. Stone failed to show up when expected. The twins fiddled around, doing a little preliminarv work on the preheater. Finally Pollux said, “What time is it?”

“Past four.”

“Dad won’t show up this afternoon. Look, those gaskets are all right and, anyhow, two gets you five he’d never know the difference.” “Well – he would okay them if he saw them.”

“Hand me that wrench.”

Hazel did show up again but by then they had the sequence put back together and had opened up the preheater. She did not ask about the injector sequence but got down on her belly with a flashlight and mirror and inspected the preheater’s interior. Her frail body, although still agile as a cricket under the Moon’s weak pull, was not up to heavy work with a wrench, but her eyes were sharper – and much more experienced – than those of the twins. Presently she wiggled out. “Looks good,” she announced. “We’ll put it back together tomorrow. Let’s go see what the cook ruined tonight.” She helped them disconnect their oxygen hoses from the ship’s tank and reconnect to their back packs, then the three went down out of the ship and back to Luna City.

Dinner was monopolised by a hot argument over the next installment of The Scourge of the Spaceways. Hazel was still writing it but the entire family, with the exception of Dr. Stone, felt free to insist on their own notions of just what forms of mayhem. and violence the characters should indulge in next. It was not until his first pipe after dinner that Mr. Stone got around to inquiring about the day’s progress.

Castor explained that they were about to close up the preheater. Mr. Stone nodded. “Moving right along – good! Wait a minute; You’ll just have to tear it down again to put in the – Or did they send those gaskets out to the ship? I didn’t think they had come in yet?”

“What gaskets?” Pollux said innocently. Hazel glanced quickly at him but said nothing. “The gaskets for the intermediate injector sequence, of course.”

“Oh, those!” Pollux shrugged. “They were okay, absolutely perfect to nine decimal places – so we put ’em back in.”

“Oh, you did? That’s interesting. Tomorrow you can take them out again – and I’ll stand over you when you put the new ones in.” Castor took over. “But Dad, Hazel said they were okay!”

Roger Stone looked at his mother. “Well, Hazel?”

She hesitated. She knew that she had not been sufficiently emphatic in telling the twins that their father’s engineering instructions were to be carried out to the letter; on the other hand she had told them to check with him. Or had she? ‘The gaskets were okay, Roger. No harm done.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “So you saw fit to change my instructions? Hazel, are you itching to be left behind?” She noted the ominously gentle tone of his voice and checked an angry reply. “No,” she said simply.

“”No” what?”

“No, Captain.”

“Not captain yet, perhaps, but that’s the general idea.” He turned to his sons. “I wonder if you two yahoos understand the nature of this situation?”

Castor bit his lip. Pollux looked at his twin, then back at his father. “Dad, you‘re the one who doesn’t understand the nature of the situation. You’re making a fuss over nothing. If it’ll give you any satisfaction, we’ll open it up again – but you’ll simply see that we were right. If you had seen those gaskets, you would have passed them.”

“Probably. Almost certainly. But a skipper’s orders as to how he wants his ship gotten ready for space are not subject to change by a dockyard mechanic – which is what you both rate at the moment. Understand me?”

“Okay, so we should have waited: Tomorrow we’ll open her up, you’ll see that we were right and we’ll close it up again.”

“Wrong. Tomorrow you will go out, open it up, and bring the old gaskets back to me. Then you will both stay right here at home until the new gaskets arrive. You can spend the time contemplating the notion that orders are meant to be carried out.”

Castor said, “Now just a minute, Dad! You’ll put us days behind.”

Pollux added, “Not to mention the hours of work you are making us waste already.” Castor: “You can’t expect us to get the ship ready if you insist on jiggling our elbows!” Pollux: “And don’t forget the money we’re saving you.”

Castor: “Right! It’s not costing you a square shilling!”

Pollux: “And yet you pull this “regulation skipper” act on us.” Castor: “Discouraging! That’s what it is!”

“Pipe down!” Without waiting for them to comply he stood up and grasped each of them by the scruff of his jacket. Luna’s one-sixth gravity permitted him to straight-arm them both; he held them high up off the floor and wide apart. They struggled helplessly, unable to reach anything.

“Listen to me,” he ordered. “Up to now I hadn’t quite decided whether to let you two wild men go along or not. But now my mind’s made up.” There was a short silence from the two, then Pollux said mournfully, “You mean we don’t go?”

“I mean you do go. You need a taste of strict ship’s discipline a durn sight more than you need to go to school; these modern schools aren’t tough enough for the likes of you. I mean to run a taut ship – prompt, cheerful obedience, on the bounce! Or I throw the book at you. Understand me? Castor?”

“Uh, yes, sir.” “Pollux?”

“Ayeaye,sir!”

“See that you remember it. Pull a fast-talk like that on me when we’re in space and I’ll stuff you down each other’s throat.” He cracked their heads together smartly and threw them away.

The next day, on the way back from the field with the old gaskets, the twins stopped for a few minutes at the city library. They spent the four days they had to wait boning up on space law. They found it rather sobering reading, particularly the part which asserted that a commanding officer in space, acting independently, may and must maintain his authority against any who might attempt to usurp or dispute it. Some of the cited cases were quite grisly. They read of a freighter captain who, in his capacity as chief magistrate, had caused a mutineer to be shoved out an airlock, there to rupture his lungs in the vacuum of space, drown in his own blood

Pollux made a face. “Grandpa,” he inquired, “how would you like to be spaced?” “No future in it. Thin stuff, vacuum. Low vitamin content”

“Maybe we had better be careful not to irritate Dad. This “captain” pose has gone to his head.”

“It’s no pose. Once we raise ship it’s legal as church on Sunday. But Dad won’t space us, no matter what we do.”

“Don’t count on it. Dad is a very tough hombre when he forgets that he’s a loving father” “Junior, you worry too much.”

“So? When you feel the pressure drop remember what I said.”

It had been early agreed that the ship could not stay the Cherub. There had been no such agreement on what the new name should be. After several noisy arguments Dr. Stone, who herself had no special preference, suggested that they place a box on the dining table into which proposed names might be placed without debate. For one week the slips accumulated; then the box was opened.

Dr. Stone wrote them down:

Dauntless Icarus

Jabberwock Susan B. Anthony

H. M. S. Pinafore Iron Duke

The Clunker Morning Star Star Wagon Tumbleweed

Go-Devil Oom Paul

Onward Viking

“One would think,” Roger grumbled, “that with all the self-declared big brains there are around this table someone would show some originality. Almost every name on the list can be found in the Big Register – half of them for ships still in commission. I move we strike out those tired, second- hand, wed-before names and consider only fresh ones.”

Hazel looked at him suspiciously. “What ones will that leave?” “Well -”

“You’ve looked them up, haven’t you? I thought I caught you sneaking a look at the slips before breakfast.” “Mother, “your allegation is immaterial, irrelevant, and unworthy of you.”

“But true. Okay; let’s have a vote. Or does someone want to make a campaign speech?”

Dr. Stone rapped on the table with her thimble. “We’ll vote. I’ve still got a medical association meeting to get to tonight.” As chairman she ruled that any name receiving less than two votes in the first round would be eliminated. Secret ballot was used; when Meade canvassed the vote, seven names had gotten one vote each, none had received two.

Roger Stone pushed back his chair. “Agreement from this family is too much to expect . I’m going to bed. Tomorrow morning I’m going to register her as the R. S. Deadlock.”

“Daddy, you wouldn’t!” Meade protested.

“Just watch me. The R. S. Hair Shirt might be better. Or the R. S. Madhouse.” “Not bad,” agreed Hazel. “It sounds like us. Never a dull moment.”

“I, for one,” retorted her son, “could stand a little decent monotony.” “Rubbish! We thrive on trouble. Do you want to get covered with moss?” “What’s “moss”, Grandma Hazell?” Lowell demanded.

“Huh? It’s. . . well, it’s what rolling stones don’t gather.”

Roger snapped his fingers. “Hazel, you’ve just named the ship.” “Eh? Come again.”

“The Rolling Stones. No, the Rolling Stone.”

Dr. Stone glanced up. “I like that, Roger.” “Meade?”

“Sounds good, Daddy.” “Hazel?”

“This is one of your brighter days, son.”

“Stripped of the implied insult, I take it that means “yes.”“

“I don’t like it,” objected Pollux. “Castor and I plan to gather quite a bit of moss.”

“It’s four to three, even if you get Buster to go along with you and your accomplice. Overruled. The Roiling Stone it is.”

Despite their great sizes and tremendous power spaceships are surprisingly simple machines. Every technology goes through three stages: first, a crudely simple and quite unsatisfactory gadget; second, an enormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcome the shortcomings of the original and achieving thereby somewhat satisfactory performance through extremely complex compromise; third, a final stage of smooth simplicity and efficient performance based on correct under-standing of natural laws and proper design therefrom.

In transportation, the ox cart and the rowboat represent the first stage of technology.

The second stage might well be represented by the automobiles of the middle twentieth century just before the opening of interplanetary travel. These unbelievable museum pieces were for the time fast, sleek and powerful -. but inside their skins were assembled a preposterous collection of mechanical buffoonery. The prime mover for such a juggernaut might have rested in one’s lap; the rest of the mad assembly consisted of afterthoughts intended to correct the uncorrectable, to repair the original basic mistake in design – for automobiles and even the early aeroplanes were ‘powered’ (if one may call it that) by ‘reciprocating engines.”

A reciprocating engine was a collection of miniature heat engines using (in a basically inefficient cycle) a small percentage of an exothermic chemical reaction, a reaction which was started and stopped every split second. Much of the heat was intentionally thrown away into a ‘water jacket’ or ‘cooling system,” then wasted into the atmosphere through a heat exchanger.

What little was left caused blocks of metal to thump foolishly back-and-forth (hence the name ‘reciprocating’) and thence through a linkage to cause a shaft and flywheel to spin around. The flywheel (believe it if you can) had no gyroscopic function; it was used to store kinetic energy in a futile attempt to cover up the sins of reciprocation. The shaft at long last caused wheels to turn and thereby propelled this pile of junk over the countryside.

The prime mover was used only to accelerate and to overcome ‘friction’ – a concept then in much wider engineering use. To decelerate, stop, or turn the heroic human operator used their own muscle power, multiplied precariously through a series of levers.

Despite the name ‘automobile’ these vehicles had no autocontrol circuits; control, such as it was, was exercised second by second for hours on end by a human being peering out through a small pane of dirty silica glass, and judging unassisted and often disastrously his own motion and those of other objects. In almost all cases the operator had no notion of the kinetic energy stored in his missile and could not have written the basic equation. Newton’s Laws of Motion were to him mysteries as profound as the meaning of the universe.

Nevertheless millions of these mechanical jokes swarmed over our home planet, dodging each other by inches or failing to dodge. None of them ever worked right; by their nature they could not work right; and they were constantly getting out of order. Their operators were usually mightily pleased when they worked at all. When they did not, which was every few hundred miles (hundred, not hundred thousand) they hired a member of a social class of arcane specialists to make inadequate and always expensive temporary repairs.

Despite their mad shortcomings, these ‘automobiles’ were the most characteristic form of wealth and the most cherished possessions of their time. Three whole generations were slaves to them.

The Rolling Stone was the third stage of technology. Her power plant was nearly 100% efficient, and, save for her gyro-scopes, she contained almost no moving parts – the power plant used no moving parts at all; a rocket engine is the simplest of all possible heat engines. Castor and Pollux might have found themselves baffled by the legendary Model-T Ford automobile, but the Roiling Stone was not nearly that complex, she was

merely much larger. Many of the fittings they had to handle were very massive, but the Moon’s one-sixth gravity was an enormous advantage; only occasionally did they have to resort to handling equipment.

Having to wear a vacuum suit while doing mechanic’s work was a handicap but they were not conscious of it. They had worn space suits whenever they were outside the pressurised underground city since before they could remember; they worked in them and wore them without thinking about them, as their grandfather had worn overalls. They conducted the entire overhaul without pressurising the ship because it was such a nuisance to have to be forever cycling an airlock, dressing and undressing, whenever they wanted anything outside the ship.

An IBM company representative from the city installed the new ballistic computer and ran it in, but after he had gone the boys took it apart and checked it throughout themselves, being darkly suspicious of any up-check given by a manufacturer’s employee. The ballistic computer of a space ship has to be right; without perfect performance from it a ship is a mad robot, certain to crash and kill its passengers. The new computer was of the standard ‘I-tell-you-three-times’ variety, a triple brain each third of which was capable of solving the whole problem; if one triplet failed, the other two would out-vote it and cut it off from action, permitting thereby at least one perfect landing and a chance to correct the failure.

The twins made personally sure that the multiple brain was sane in all its three lobes, then, to their disgust, their father and grandmother checked everything that they had done.

The last casting had been x-rayed, the last metallurgical report had been received from the spaceport laboratories, the last piece of tubing had been reinstalled and pressure tested; it was time to move the Rolling Stone from Dan Ekizian’s lot to the port, where a technician of the Atomic Energy Commission – a grease monkey with a Ph.D – would install and seal the radioactive bricks which fired her ‘boiler.” There, too, she would take on supplies and reactive mass, stablised mon-atomic hydrogen; in a pinch the Rolling Stone could eat anything, but she performed best on ‘single-H.”

The night before the ship was to be towed to the spaceport the twins tackled their father on a subject dear to their hearts – money. Castor made an indirect approach. “See here, Dad, we want to talk with you seriously.”

“So? Wait till I phone my lawyer.”

“Aw, Dad! Look, we just want to know whether or not you’ve made up your mind where we are going?”

“Eh? What do you care? I’ve already promised you that it will be some place new to you. We won’t go to Earth, nor to Venus, not this trip.” “Yes, but where?”

“I may just close my eyes, set up a prob on the computer by touch, and see what happens. If the prediction takes us close to any rock bigger than the ship, we’ll scoot off and have a look at it. That’s the way to enjoy travelling.”

Pollux said, “But, Dad, you can’t load a ship if you don’t know where it’s going.”

Castor glared at him; Roger Stone stared at him. “Oh,” he said slowly, “I begin to see. But don’t worry about it. As skipper, it is my responsibility to see that we have whatever we need aboard before we blast.”

Dr. Stone said quietly, “Don’t tease them, Roger.” “I’m not teasing.”

“You’re managing to tease me, Daddy,” Meade said suddenly. “Let’s settle it. I vote for Mars.” Hazel said, “The deuce it ain’t!”

“Pipe down, Mother. Time was, when the senior male member of a family spoke, everybody did what he -” “Roger, if you think I am going to roll over and play dead-”

“I said, “pipe down.” But everybody in this family thinks it’s funny to try to get around Pop. Meade sweet-talks me. The twins fast-talk me. Buster yells until he gets what he wants. Hazel bullies me and pulls seniority.” He looked at his wife. “You, too, Edith. You give in until you get your own way.”

“Yes, dear.”

“See what I mean? You all think papa is a schnook. But I’m not. I’ve got a soft head, a pliable nature, and probably the lowest I.Q. in the family, but this clambake is going to be run to suit me.”

“What’s a clambake?” Lowell wanted to know. “Keep your child quiet, Edith.”

“Yes, dear.”

“I’m going on a picnic, a wanderjahr. Anyone who wants to come along is invited. But I refuse to deviate by as much as a million miles from whatever trajectory suits me. I bought this ship from money earned in spite of the combined opposition of my whole family; I did not touch one thin credit of the money I hold in trust for our two young robber barons – and I don’t propose to let them run the show.”

Dr. Stone said quietly, “They merely asked where we were going. I would like to know, too.” “So they did. But why? Castor, you want to know so that you can figure a cargo, don’t you?”

“Well – yes. Anything wrong with that? Unless we know what market we’re taking it to, we won’t know what to stock.” “True enough. But I don’t recall authorising any such commercial ventures. The Rolling Stone is a family yacht.” Pollux cut in with, “For the love of Pete, Dad! With all that cargo space just going to waste, you’d think that -”

“An empty hold gives us more cruising range.” “But -”

“Take it easy. This subject is tabled for the moment. What do you two propose to do about your education?”

Castor said, “I thought that was settled. You said we could go along.”

“That part is settled. But we’ll be coming back this way in a year or two. Are you prepared to go down to Earth to school then – and stay there – until you get your degrees?”

The twins looked at each other; neither one of them said anything. Hazel butted in: “Quit being so offensively orthodox, Roger. I’ll take over their education. I’ll give them the straight data. What they taught me in school darn near ruined me, before I got wise and started teaching myself.”

Roger Stone looked bleakly at his mother. “You would teach them, all right. No, thanks, I prefer a somewhat more normal approach.” “”Normal!” Roger, that’s a word with no meaning.”

“Perhaps not, around here. But I’d like the twins to grow up as near normal as possible.”

“Roger, have you ever met any normal people? I never have. The so-called normal man is a figment of the imagination; every member of the human race, from Jojo the cave man right down to that final culmination of civilisation, namely me, has been as eccentric as a pet coon – once you caught him with his mask off.”

“I won’t dispute the part about yourself.”

“It’s true for everybody. You try to make the twins “normal” and you’ll simply stunt their growth.” Roger Stone stood up. “That’s enough. Castor, Pollux – come with me. Excuse us, everybody.” “Yes, dear.”

“Sissy,” said Hazel. “I was just warming up to my rebuttal.” He led them into his study, closed the door. “Sit down.”

The twins did so. “Now we can settle this quietly. Boys, I’m quite serious about your education. You can do what you like with your lives – turn pirate or get elected to the Grand Council. But I won’t let you grow up ignorant.”

Castor answered, “Sure, Dad, but we do study. We study all the time. You’ve said yourself that we are better engineers than half the young snots that come up from Earth.”

“Granted. But it’s not enough. Oh, you can learn most things on your own but I want you to have a formal, disciplined, really sound grounding in mathematics.”

“Huh? Why, we cut our teeth on differential equations!”

Pollux added, “We know Hudson’s Manual by heart We can do a triple integration in our heads faster than Hazel can. If there’s one thing we do

know, it’s mathematics.”

Roger Stone shook his head sadly. “You can count on your fingers but you can’t reason. You probably think that the interval from zero to one is the same as the interval from ninety-nine to one hundred.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Is it? If so, can you prove it?” Their father reached up to the spindles on the wall, took down a book spool, and inserted it in the to his study projector. He spun the selector, stopped with a page displayed on the wall screen. It was a condensed chart of fields of mathematics invented, thus far by the human mind. “Let’s see you find your way around that page.”

The twins blinked at it. In the upper left-hand corner of the chart they spotted the names of subjects they had studied; the rest of the array was unknown territory; in most cases they did not even recognise the names of the subjects. In the ordinary engineering forms of the calculus they actually were adept; they had not been boasting. They knew enough of vector analysis to find their way around unassisted in electrical engineering and electronics; they knew classical geometry and trigonometry well enough for the astrogating of a space ship, and they had had enough of non- Euclidean geometry, tensor calculus, statistical mechanics, and quantum theory to get along with an atomic power plant

But it had never occurred to them that they had not yet really penetrated the enormous and magnificent field of mathematics. “Dad,” asked Pollux in a small voice, “what’s a “hyperideal”?”

“Time you found out.”

Castor looked quickly at his father. “How many of these things have you studied, Dad?” “Not enough. Not nearly enough. But my sons should know more than I do.”

It was agreed that the twins would study mathematics intensively the entire time the family was in space, and not simply under the casual supervision of their father and grandmother but formally and systematically through I.C.S. correspondence courses ordered up from Earth. They

would take with them spools enough to keep them busy for at least a year and mail their completed lessons from any port they might touch. Mr.

Stone was satisfied, being sure in his heart that any person skilled with mathematical tools could learn anything else he needed to know, with or without a master.

“Now, boys, about this matter of cargo-”

The twins waited; he went on: “I’ll lift the stuff for you -” “Gee, Dad, that’s swell!”

“- at cost.”

“You figure it and I’ll check your figures. Don’t try to flummox me or I’ll stick on a penalty. If you’re going to be businessmen, don’t confuse the vocation with larceny.”

“Right, sir. Uh. . . we still can’t order until we know where we are going.” “True. Well, how would Mars suit you, as the first stop?”

“Mars?” Both boys got far-away looks in their eyes; their lips moved soundlessly. “Well? Quit figuring your profits; you aren’t there yet”

“Mars? Mars is fine, Dad!”

“Very well. One more thing: fail to keep up your studies and I won’t let you sell a tin whistle.”

“Oh, we’ll study!” The twins ‘got out while they were ahead. Roger Stone looked at the closed door with a fond smile on his face, an expression he rarely let them see, Good boys! Thank heaven he hadn’t been saddled with a couple of obedient, well-behaved little nincompoops!

When the twins reached their own room Castor got down the general catalog of Four Planets Export. Pollux said, “Cas?” “Don’t bother me.”

“Have you ever noticed that Dad always gets pushed around until he gets his own way?” “Sure. Hand me that slide rule.”

III – BICYCLES AND BLAST-OFF

The Rolling Stone was moved over to the spaceport by the port’s handling & spotting crew – over the protests of the twins, who wanted to rent a tractor and dolly and do it themselves. They offered to do so at half price, said price to be applied against freightage on their trade goods to Mars.

“Insurance?” inquired their father. “Well, not exactly,” Pol answered.

“W’e’d carry our own risk,” added Castor. “After all, we’ve got assets to cover it.”

But Roger Stone was not to be talked into it; he preferred, not unreasonably, to have the ticklish job done by bonded professionals. A spaceship on the ground is about as helpless and unwieldly as a beached whale. Sitting on her tail fins with her bow pointed at the sky and with her gyros dead a ship’s precarious balance is protected by her lateral jacks, slanting down in three directions. To drag her to a new position requires those jacks to be raised clear of the ground, leaving the ship ready to topple, vulnerable to any jar. The Rolling Stone had to be moved thus through a pass in the hills to the port ten miles away. First she was jacked higher until her fins were two feet off the ground, then a broad dolly was backed under her; to this she was clamped. The bottom handler ran the tractor; the top handler took position in the control room. With his eyes on a bubble level, his helmet hooked by wire phone to his mate, he nursed a control stick which let him keep the ship upright. A hydraulic mercury capsule was under each fin of the ship; by tilting the stick the top handler could force pressure into any capsule to offset any slight irregularity in the road.

The twins followed the top handler up to his station. “Looks easy,” remarked Pol while the handler tested his gear with the jack still down.

“It is easy,” agreed the handler, “provided you can out-guess the old girl and do the opposite of what she does – only do it first. Get out now; we’re ready to start.”

“Look, Mister,” said Castor, we want to learn how. We’ll hold still and keep quiet.”

“Not even strapped down – you might twitch an eyebrow and throw me half a degree off.” “Well, for the love of Pete!” complained Pollux. “Whose ship do you think this is?”

“Mine, for the time being,” the man answered without rancor. “Now do you prefer to climb down, or simply be kicked clear of the ladder?”

The twins climbed out and clear, reluctantly but promptly. The Rolling Stone, designed for the meteoric speeds of open space, took off for the spaceport at a lively two miles an hour. It took most of a Greenwich day to get her there. There was a bad time in the pass when a slight moonquake set her to rocking, but the top handler had kept her jacks lowered as far as the terrain permitted. She bounced once on number-two jack, then he caught her and she resumed her stately progress.

Seeing this, Pollux admitted to Castor that he was glad they had not gotten the contract. He was beginning to realise that this was an estoric skill, like glassblowing or chipping flint arrowheads. He recalled stories of the Big Quake of ’31 when nine ships had toppled.

No more temblors were experienced save for the microscopic shivers Luna continually experiences under the massive tidal strains of her eighty- times-heavier cousin Terra. The Rolling Stone rested at last on a launching flat on the east side of Leyport, her jet pointed down into splash baffles. Fuel bricks, water, and food, and she was ready to go – anywhere.

The mythical average man needs three and a half pounds of food each day, four pounds of water (for drinking, not washing), and thirty-four pounds of air. By the orbit most economical of fuel, the trip to Mars from the Earth-Moon system takes thirty-seven weeks. Thus it would appear that the seven rolling Stones would require some seventy-five thousand pounds of consumable supplies for the trip, or about a ton a week.

Fortunately the truth was brighter or they would never have raised ground. Air and water in a space ship can be used over and over again with suitable refreshing, just as they can be on a planet. Uncounted trillions of animals for uncounted millions of years have breathed the air of Terra and drunk of her streams, yet air of Earth is still fresh and her rivers still run full. The Sun sucks clouds up from the ocean brine and drops it as sweet rain; the plants swarming over the cool green hills and lovely plains of Earth take the carbon dioxide of animal exhalation from the winds and convert it into carbohydrates, replacing it with fresh oxygen.

With suitable engineering a spaceship can be made to behave in the same way.

Water is distilled; with a universe of vacuum around the ship, low-temperature, low-pressure distillation is cheap and easy. Water is no problem – or, rather, shortage of water is no problem. The trick is to get rid of excess, for the human body creates water as one of the by-prodncts of its metabolism, in ‘burning’ the hydrogen in food. Carbon dioxide can be replaced by oxygen through ‘soilless’ gardening’ – hydroponics. Short-jump ships, such as the Earth-Moon shuttles, do not have such equipment, any more than a bicycle has staterooms or a galley, but the Rolling Stone, being a deep-space vessel, was equipped to do these things.

Instead of forty-one and a half pounds of supplies per person per day the Rolling Stone could get along with two; as a margin of safety and for luxury she carried about three, or a total of about eight tons, which included personal belongings. They would grow their own vegetables en route; most foods carried along would be dehydrated. Meade wanted them to carry shell eggs, but she was overruled both by the laws of physics and her mother – dried eggs weigh so very much less.

Baggage included a tossed salad of books as well as hundreds of the more usual flim spools. The entire family, save the twins tended to be old-

fashioned about books; they liked books with covers, volumes one could hold in the lap. Film spools were not quite the same.

Roger Stone required his sons to submit lists of what they proposed to carry to Mars for trade. The first list thus submitted caused him to call them into conference. “Castor, would you mind explaining this proposed manifest to me?”

“Huh? What is there to explain? Pol wrote it up. I thought it was clear enough.” “I’m afraid it’s entirely too clear. Why all this copper tubing?”

“Well, we picked it up as scrap. Always a good market for copper on Mass.” “You mean you’ve already bought it?”

“Oh, no. We just put down a little to hold it.” “Same for the valves and fittings I suppose?” “Yes, sir.”

“That’s good. Now these other items – cane sugar, wheat, dehydrated potatoes, polished rice. How about those?” Pollux answered. “Cas thought we ought to buy hardware; I favored foodstuffs. So compromised.”

“Why did you pick the foods you did?”

“Well, they’re all things they grow in the city’s air-conditioning tanks, so they’re cheap. No Earth imports on the list, you noticed.” “I noticed.”

“But most of the stuff we raise here carries too high a percentage of water. You wouldn’t want to carry cucumbers to Mars, would you?” “I don’t want to carry anything to Mars; I’m just going for the ride.” Mr. Stone put down the cargo list, picked up another. “Take a look at this.” Pollux accepted it gingerly. “What about it?”

“I used to be a pretty fair mechanic myself. I got to wondering just what one could build from the ‘hardware’ you two want to ship. I figure I could build a fair-sized still. With the “foodstuffs” you want to take a man would be in a position to make anything from vodka to grain alcohol. But I don’t suppose you two young innocents noticed that?”

Castor looked at the list. “Is that so?”

“Hmm – Tell me: did you plan to sell this stuff to the government import agency, or peddle it on the open market?” “Well, Dad, you know you can’t make much profit unless you deal on the open market.”

“So I thought. You didn’t expect me to notice what the stuff was good for – and you didn’t expect the customs agents on Mars to notice, either.” He looked them over. “Boys, I intend to try to keep you out of prison until you are of age. After that I’ll try to come to see you. each visiting day.” He chucked the list back at them. “Guess again. And bear in mind that we raise ship Thursday – and that I don’t care whether we carry cargo or not.”

Pollux said, “Oh, for pity’s sake, Dad! Abraham Lincoln used to sell whiskey. They taught us that in history. And Winston Churchill used to drink it.” “And George Washington kept slaves,” his father agreed. “None of which has anything to do with you two. So scram!”

They left his study and passed through the living room; Hazel was there. She cocked a brow at them. “Did you get away with it?” “No.”

She stuck out a hand, palm up. “Pay me. And next time don’t bet that you can outsmart your Pop. He’s my boy.”

Cas and Pol settled on bicycles as their primary article of export. On both Mars and Luna prospecting by bicycle was much more efficient than prospecting on foot; on the Moon the old-style rock sleuth with nothing but his skis and Shank’s ponies to enable him to scout the area where he had landed his jumpbug had almost disappeared; all the prospectors took bicycles along as a matter of course, just as they carried climbing ropes and spare oxygen. In the Moon’s one-sixth gravity it was an easy matter to shift the bicycles to one’s back and carry it over any obstacle to further progress.

Mars’ surface gravity is more than twice that of Luna, but it is still only slightly more than one-third Earth normal, and Mars is a place of flat plains and very gentle slopes; a cyclist could maintain fifteen to twenty miles an hour. The solitary prospector, deprived of his traditional burro, found the bicycle an acceptable and reliable, if somewhat less congenial, substitute. A miner’s bike would have looked odd in the streets of Stockholm; over- sized wheels, doughnut sand tires, towing yoke and trailer, battery trickle charger, two-way radio, saddle bags, and Geiger-counter mount made it not the vehicle for a spin in the perk – but on Mars or on the Moon it fitted its purpose the way a canoe fits a Canadian stream.

Both planets imported their bicycles from Earth – until recently. Lunar Steel Products Corporation had lately begun making steel tubing, wire, and extrusions from native ore; Sears & Montgomery had subsidised an assembly plant to manufacture miner’s bikes on the Moon under the trade

name ‘Lunocycle’ and Looney bikes, using less than twenty per cent. by weight of parts raised up from Earth, undersold imported bikes by half.

Castor and Pollux decided to buy up second-hand bicycles which were consequently flooding the market and ship them to Mars. In interplanetary trade cost is always a matter of where a thing is gravity-wise – not how far away. Earth is a lovely planet but all her products lie at the bottom of a very deep ‘gravity well,” deeper than that of Venus, enormously deeper than Luna’s. Although Earth and Luna average exactly the same distance from Mars in miles, Luna is about five miles per second ‘closer’ to Mars in terms of fuel and shipping cost.

Roger Stone released just enough of their assets to cover the investment. They were still loading their collection of tired bikes late Wednesday afternoon, with Cas weighing them in, Meade recording for him, and Pol hoisting. Everything else had been loaded; trial weight with the crew aboard would be taken by the port weightmaster as soon as the bicycles were loaded Roger Stone supervised the stowing, he being personally responsible for the ship being balanced on take off.

Castor and he went down to help Pol unload the last flat. “Some of these seem hardly worth shipping,” Mr. Stone remarked. “Junk, if you ask me,” added Meade.

“Nobody asked you,” Pol told her.

“Keep a civil tongue in your head,” Meade answered sweetly, “or go find yourself another secretary.”

“Stow it, Junior,” admonished Castor. “Remember she’s working free. Dad, I admit they aren’t much to look at, but wait a bit. Pol and I will overhaul them and paint them in orbit. Plenty of time to do a good job – like new.”

“Mind you don’t try to pass them off as new. But it looks to me as if you had taken too big a bite. When we get these inside and clamped down, there won’t be room enough in the hold to swing a cat, much less do repair work. If you were thinking of monopolising the living space, consider it vetoed.”

“Why would anyone want to swing a cat?” asked Meade. “The cat wouldn’t like it. Speaking of that, why don’t we take a cat?” “No cats,” her father replied. “I travelled with a cat once and I was in executive charge of its sand box. No cats.”

“Please, Cap’n Daddy! I saw the prettiest little kitten over at the Haileys’ yesterday and -”

“No cats. And don’t call me “Captain Daddy.” One or the other, but the combination sounds silly.” “Yes, Captain Daddy.”

“We weren’t planning on using the living quarters.” Castor answered. “Once we are in orbit we’ll string ’em outside and set up shop in the hold. Plenty of room.”

A goodly portion of Luna City came out to see them off. The current mayor, the Honorable Thomas Beasley, was there to say good-by to Roger Stone; the few surviving members of the Founding Fathers turned out to honor Hazel. A delegation from the Junior League and what appeared to be approximately half of the male members of the senior class of City Tech showed up to mourn Meade’s departure. She wept and hugged them all, but kissed none of them; kissing while wearing a space suit is a futile, low-caloric business.

The twins were attended only by a dealer who wanted his payment and wanted it now and wanted it in full.

Earth hung in half phase over them and long shadows of the Obelisk Mountains stretched over most of the field. The base of the Rolling Stone was floodlighted; her slender bow thrust high above the circle of brightness. Beyond her, masking the far side of the field, the peaks of Rodger Young Range were still shining in the light of the setting Sun. Glorious Orion glittered near Earth; north and east of it, handle touching the horizon, was the homely beauty of the Big Dipper. The arching depth of sky and the mighty and timeless monuments of the Moon dwarfed the helmeted, squatty figures at the base of the spaceship.

A searchlight on the distant control tower pointed at them; blinked red three times. Hazel turned to her son. “Thirty minutes, Captain.”

“Right.” He whistled into his microphone. “Silence, everyone! Please keep operational silence until you are underground Thanks for coming, everybody. Good-by!”

“Bye, Rog!” “Good trip, folks!” “Aloha!”

“Hurry back”

Their friends started filing down a ramp mto one of the field tunnels; Mr. Stone turned to his family. “Thirty minutes. Man the ship!” “Aye aye, sir.”

Hazel started up the ladder with Pollux after her. She stopped suddenly, backed down and stepped on his fingers. “Out of my way, youngster!” She jumped down and ran toward the group disappearing down the ramp. “Hey, Tom! Beasley! Wait! Half a mo-”

The mayor paused and turned around; she thrust a package into his hand. “Mail this stuff for me?” “Certainly, Hazel.”

“That’s a good boy. ‘Bye!”

She came back to the ship; her son inquired, “What was the sudden crisis, Hazel?”

“Six episodes. I stay up all night getting them ready. . . then I didn’t even notice I still had ’em until I had trouble climbing with one hand.” “Sure your head’s on tight?”

“None of your lip, boy.” “Get in the ship.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Once they were all inboard the port’s weightmaster made his final check, reading the scales on the launching flat under each fin, adding them together. “Two and seven-tenths pounds under, Captain. Pretty close figuring.” He fastened trim weights in that amount to the foot of the ladder. “Take it up.”

“Thank you, sir.” Roger Stone hauled up the ladder, gathered in the trim weights, and closed the door of the air lock. He let himself into the ship proper, closed and dogged the inner door behind him, then stuck his head up into the control room. Castor was already in the co-pilot’s couch. “Time?”

“Minus seventeen minutes, Captain.”

“She tracking?” He reached out and set the trim weights on a spindle at the central axis of the ship.

“Pretty as could be.” The main problem and the exact second of departure had been figured three weeks earlier; there is only one short period every twenty-six months when a ship may leave the Luna-Terra system for Mars by the most economical orbit. After trial weight had been taken the day before Captain Stone had figured his secondary problem, i.e., how much thrust for how long a period was required to put this particular ship into that orbit. It was the answer to this second problem which Castor was now tracking in the automatic pilot.

The first leg of the orbit would not be towards Mars but toward Earth, with a second critical period, as touchy as the take off, as they rounded Earth. Captain Stone frowned at the thought, then shrugged; that worry had to come later. “Keep her tracking. I’m going below.”

He went down into the power room, his eyes glancing here and there as he went. Even to a merchant skipper, to whom it is routine, the last few minutes before blast-off are worry making. Blast-off for a spaceship has a parachute-jump quality; once you jump it is usually too late to correct any oversights. Space skippers suffer nightmares about misplaced decimal points.

Hazel and Pollux occupied the couches of the chief and assistant. Stone stuck his head down without going down. “Power Room?” “She’ll be ready. I’m letting her warm slowly.”

Dr. Stone, Meade, and Buster were riding out the lift in the bunkroom, for company; he stuck his head in. “Everybody okay?”

His wife looked up from her couch. “Certainly, dear. Lowell has had his injection.” Buster was stretched out on his back, strapped down and sleeping. He alone had never experienced acceleration thrust and free falling; his mother had decided to drug him lest he be frightened.

Roger Stone looked at his least son. “I envy him.” Meade sat up. “Head pretty bad, Daddy?”

“I’ll live. But today I regard farewell parties as much overrated affairs, especially for the guest of honor.” The horn over his head said in Castor’s voice, “Want me to boost her, Dad? I feel fine.”

“Mind your own business, co-pilot. She still tracking?” “Tracking, sir. Eleven minutes.”

Hazel’s voice came out of the horn. ” ‘The wages of sin are death’.”

“Look who’s talking! No more unauthorised chatter over the intercom. That’s an order.” “Aye aye, Captain.”

He started to leave; his wife stopped him. “I want you to take this, dear.” She held out a capsule. “I don’t need it.”

“Take it.”

“Yes, Doctor darling.” He swallowed it, made a face, and went up to the control room. As he climbed into his couch he said, “Call tower for clearance.”

“Aye aye, sir. Rolling Stone, Luna City registry, to Tower – request clearance to lift according to approved plan.” “Tower to Rolling Stone – you are cleared to lift”

“Rolling Stone to Tower – roger!” Castor answered. Captain Stone looked over his board. All green, except one red light from power room which would not wink green until he told his mother to unlock the safety on the cadmium damper plates. He adjusted the microvernier on his tracking indicator, satisfied himself that the auto-pilot was tracking to perfection as Castor had reported. “All stations, report in succession -power room !”

“She’s sizzling, Skipper!” came back Hazel’s reply. “Passengers!”

“We’re ready, Roger.” “Co-pilot!”

“Clear and green, sir! Check off completed. Five minutes.” “Strap down and report!”

“Power gang strapped.” – “We’re strapped, dear.” – “Strapped, sir all stations.” “Power room, unlock for lift.”

The last red light on his board winked green as Hazel reported, “Power board unlocked, Skipper. Ready to blast.” Another voice followed hers, more softly: “Now I lay me down to sleep -”

“Shut up, Meade!” Roger Stone snapped. “Co-pilot, commence the count!”

Castor started singsonging: “Minus two minutes ten. . . minus two minutes. . . minus one minute fifty. . . minus one minute forty -”

Roger Stone felt his blood begin to pound and wished heartily that he had had the sense to come home early, even if the party had been in his honor.

“Minus one minute!. . . minus fifty-five. . . minus fifty -”

He braced his right hand with his forefinger over the manual firing key, ready to blast if the auto-pilot should fail – then quickly took it away. This was no military vessel! If it failed to fire, the thing to do was to cancel – not risk his wife and kids with imperfect machinery. After all, he held only a private license – “Minus thirty-five. . . half minute!”

His head felt worse. Why leave a warm apartment to bounce around in a tin covered wagon? “Twenty-eight, twenty–sev‘n, twenty-six -”

Well, if anything went wrong, at least there wouldn’t be any little orphans left around. The whole Stone family was here, root and branch. The rolling Stones –

“Nineteen. . . eighteen. . . seventeen -,

He didn’t fancy going back and meeting all those people who had just come out to say good-by – telling them, “It’s like this: we swung and we missed -”

“Twelve! Eleven! and ten! and nine! “

He again placed his forefinger over the manual button, ready to stab. “And five!

“And four!

“And three! “And two!

“And – “ Castor’s chant was blanked out by the blazing ‘white noise’ of the jet; the Rolling Stone cast herself into the void.

– BALLISIICS AND BUSTER

Blasting off from Luna is not the terrifying and oppressive experience that a lift from Earth is. The Moon’s field is so weak, her gravity well so shallow, that a boost of one-g would suffice – just enough to produce Earth-normal weight.

Captain Stone chose to use two gravities, both to save time and to save fuel by getting quickly away from Luna – “quickly’ because any reactive mass spent simply to hold a spaceship up against the pull of a planet is an ‘overhead’ cost; it does nothing toward getting one where one wants to go. Furthermore, while the Rolling Stone would operate at low thrust she could do so only by being very wasteful of reactive mass, i.e., by not letting the atomic pile heat the hydrogen hot enough to produce a really efficient jet speed.

So he caused the Stone to boost at two gravities for slightly over two minutes. Two gravities – a mere nothing! The pressure felt by a wrestler pinned to the mat by the body of his opponent – the acceleration experienced by a child in a school-yard swing – hardly more than the push resulting from standing up very suddenly.

But the Stone family had been living on Luna; all the children had been born there – two gravities was twelve times what they were used to.

Roger’s headache, which had quieted under the sedative his wife had prescribed for him, broke out again with renewed strength. His chest felt caved in; he fought for breath and he had to read and reread the accelerometer to convince himself that the ship had not run wild.

After checking over his board and assuring himself that all was going according to plan even if it did feel like a major catastrophe he turned his head heavily. “Cas? You all right?”

Castor gasped, “Sure Skipper . . . tracking to flight plan.

“Very well, sir.” He turned his face to his inter-com link. “Edith -” There was no answer. “Edith“

This time a strained voice replied, “Yes, dear.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, dear. Meade and I. . . are all right. The baby is having a bad time.”

He was about to call the power room when Castor reminded him of the passage of time. “Twenty seconds! Nineteen! Eighteen -”

He tumed his eyes to the brennschluss timer and poised his hand on the cut-off switch, ready to choke the jet if the autopilot should fail. Across from him Castor covered him should he fail; below in the power room Hazel was doing the same thing, hand trembling over the cut-off.

As the timer flashed the last half second, as Castor shouted, “Brennschluss!”, three hands slammed at three switches – but the autopilot had beaten them to it. The jet gasped as its liquid food was suddenly cut off from it; damper plates quenched the seeking neutrons in the atomic pile – and the Stone was in free orbit, falling toward Earth in a sudden, aching silence broken only by the whispering of the airconditioner.

Roger Stone reswallowed his stomach, “Power room!” he rasped. “Report!”

He could hear Hazel sighing heavily. “Okay, son,” she said feebly, “but mind that top step – it’s a dilly!” “Cas, call the port. Get a doppler check.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Castor called the radar & doppler station at Leyport. The Rolling Stone had all the usual radar and piloting instruments but a spaceship cannot possibly carry equipment of the size and accuracy of those mounted as pilot aids at all ports and satellite stations. “Rolling Stone to Luna Pilot – come in, Luna Pilot.” While he called he was warming up their own radar and doppler-radar, preparing to check the performance of their own instruments against the land-based standards. He did this without being told, it being a co-pilot’s routine duty.

“Luna Pilot to Rolling Stone.”

“Rolling Stone to Luna Pilot – request range, bearing and separation rate, and flight plan deviations, today’s flight fourteen – plan as field; no variations.”

“We’re on you. Stand by to record.”

“Standing by,” answered Castor and flipped the switch on the recorder. They were still so close to the Moon that the speed-of-light lag in transmission was unnoticeable.

A bored voice read off the reference time to the nearest half second, gave the double co-ordinates of their bearing in terms of system standard – corrected back to where the Moon had been at their blast-off – then gave their speed and distance relative to Luna with those figures also corrected back to where the Moon had been. The corrections were comparatively small since the Moon ambles along at less than two-thirds of a mile per second, but the corrections were utterly necessary. A pilot who disregarded them would find himself fetching up thousands or even millions of miles from his destination.

The operator added, “Deviation from flight plan negligible. A very pretty departure, Rolling Stone.”

Castor thanked him and signed off. “In the groove, Dad!” “Good. Did you get our own readings?”

“Yes, sir. About seven seconds later than theirs.”

“Okay. Run ’em back on the flight line and apply the vectors. I want a check.” He looked more closely at his son; Castor’s complexion was a delicate chartreuse. “Say, didn’t you take your pills?”

“Uh, yes, sir. It always hits me this way at first. I’ll be all right.” “You look like a week-old corpse.”

“You don’t look so hot yourself, Dad.”

“I don’t feel so hot, just between us. Can you work that prob, or do you want to sack in for a while?” “Sure I can!”

“Well. . . mind your decimal places.” “Aye aye, Captain.”

“I’m going aft.” He started to unstrap, saying into the intercom as he did so, “All hands, unstrap at will. Power room, secure the pile and lock your board.”

Hazel answered, “I heard the flight report, Skipper. Power room secured.” “Don’t anticipate my orders, Hazel – unless you want to walk back.”

She answered, “I expressed myself poorly, Captain. What I mean to say is, we are now securing the power room, as per your orders, sir. There – it’s done. Power room secured!”

“Very well, Chief.” He smiled grimly, having noted by the tell tales on his own board that the first report was the correct one; she had secured as soon as she had known they were in the groove. Just as he had feared: playing skipper to a crew of rugged individualists was not going to be a picnic. He grasped the centre stanchion, twisted around so that he faced aft and floated through the hatch into the living quarters.

He wiggled into the bunkroom and checked himself by a handhold. His wife, daughter, and least child were all unstrapped. Dr. Stone was manipulating the child’s chest and stomach. He could not see just what she was doing but it was evident that Lowell had become violently nauseated – Meade, glassy-eyed herself, was steadying herself with one hand and trying to clean up the mess with the other. The boy was still unconscious.

Roger Stone felt suddenly worse himself. “Good grief!” His wife looked over her shoulder. “Get my injection kit,” she ordered. “In the locker behind you. I’ve got to give him the antidote and get him awake. He keeps trying to swallow his tongue.”

He gulped. “Yes, dear, Which antidote?” “Neocaffeine – one c.c. Move!”

He found the case, loaded the injector, handed it to Dr. Stone. She pressed it against the child’s side. “What else can I do?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Is he in any danger?”

“Not while I have an eye on him. Now get out and ask Hazel to come here.”

“Yes, dear. Right away.” He swam on aft, found his mother sitting in midair, looking pleased with herself. Pollux was still loosely secured to his control couch. “Everything all right back here?” he asked.

“Sure. Why not? Except my assistant, maybe. I believe he wants off at the next stop.” Pollux growled. “I’m feeling okay. Quit riding me.”

Roger Stone said, “Edith could use your help, Mother. Buster has thrown up all over the bunkroom.” “Why, the little devil! He didn’t have a thing to eat today; I rode herd on him myself.”

“You must have let him out of your sight for a few minutes, from the evidence. Better go give Edith a hand.”

“To hear is to obey, Master.” She kicked one heel against the bulkhead behind her and zipped out the hatch. Roger turned to his son.

“How’s it going?”

“I’ll be all right in a couple of hours. It’s just one of those things you have to go through with, like brushing your teeth.” “Check. I’d like to rent a small planet myself. Have you written up the engineering log?”

“Not yet.”

“Do so. It will take your mind off your stomach.” Roger Stone went forward again and looked into the bunkroom. Lowell was awake and crying; Edith had him sheeted to a bunk to give him a feeling of pressure and stability.

The child wailed, “Mama! Make it hold still” “Shush, dear. You’re all right. Mother is here,” “I want to go home!”

She did not answer but caressed his forehead. Roger Stone backed hastily out and pulled himself forward.

By supper time all hands except Lowell were over the effects of free fall – a sensation exactly like stepping off into an open elevator shaft in the dark. Nevertheless no one wanted much to eat; Dr. Stone limited the menu to a clear soup, crackers, and stewed dried apricots. Ice cream was available but there were no takers.

Except for the baby none of them had any reason to expect more than minor and temporary discomfort from the change from planet-surface weight to the endless falling of free orbit. Their stomachs and the semicircular canals of their ears had been through the ordeal before; they were inured to it, salted.

Lowell was not used to it; his physical being rebelled against it, nor was he old enough to meet it calmly and without fear. He cried and made himself worse, alternating that with gagging and choking. Hazel and Meade took turns trying to quiet him. Meade finished her skimpy dinner and relieved the watch; when Hazel came into the control room where they were eating Roger Stone said, “How is he now?”

Hazel shrugged. “I tried to get him to play chess with me. He spat in my face.” “He must be getting better.”

“Not so you could notice it.”

Castor said, “Gee whiz, Mother, can’t you dope him up till he gets his balance?”

“No,” answered Dr. Stone, “I’m giving him the highest dosage now that his body mass will tolerate.” “How long do you think it will take him to snap out of it?” asked her husband.

“I can’t make a prediction. Ordinarily children adapt more readily than adults, as you know, dear – but we know also that some people never do adapt. They simply are constitutionally unable to go out into space.”

Pollux let his jaw sag. “You mean Buster is a natural-born groundhog?” He made the word sound like both a crippling disability and a disgrace. “Pipe down,” his father said sharply.

“I mean nothing of the sort,” his mother said crisply. “Lowell is having a bad time but he may adjust very soon.”

There was glum silence for some minutes. Pollux refilled his soup bag, got himself some crackers, and eased back to his perch with one leg hooked around a stanchion. He glanced at Castor; the two engaged in a conversation that consisted entirely of facial expressions and shrugs. Their father looked at them and looked away; the twins often talked to each other that way; the code – if it was a code – could not be read by anyone else. He turned to his wife. “Edith, do you honestly think there is a chance that Lowell may not adjust?”

“A chance, of course.” She did not elaborate, nor did she need to. Spacesickness like seasickness does not itself kill, but starvation and exhaustion do.

Castor whistled. “A fine time to find it out, after it’s too late. We’re akeady in orbit for Mars.” Hazel said sharply. “You know better than that, Castor.”

“Huh?”

“Of course, dopy,” his twin answered. “We’ll have to tack back.’ 1

“Oh.” Castor frowned. “I forgot for the moment that this was a two-legged jump.” He sighed. “Well, that’s that. I guess we go back.” There was one point and one only at which they could decide to return to the Moon. They were falling now toward Earth in a conventional ‘S-orbit” practically a straight line. They would pass very close to Earth in an hyperboloid at better than five miles per second, Earth relative. To continue to Mars they planned to increase this speed by firing the jet at the point of closest approach, falling thereby into an ellipsoid, relative to the Sun, which would let them fall to a rendezvous with Mars. They could reverse this maneuver, check their plunging progress by firing the jet against their motion and

thereby force the Stone into an ellipsoid relative to Earth, a curve which, if correctly calculated, would take them back to Luna, back home before their baby brother could starve or wear himself out with retching. “Yep, that’s that,” agreed Pollux. He suddenly grinned. “Anybody want to buy a load of bicycles? Cheap?”

“Don’t be in too big a hurry to liquidate,” his father told him, “but we appreciate your attitude. Edith, what do you think?” “I say we mustn’t take any chances,” announced Hazel. “That baby is sick.”

Dr. Stone hesitated: “Roger, how long is it to perigee?” He glanced at his control board. “About thirty-five hours.”

“Why don’t you prepare both maneuvers? Then we will not have to decide until it’s time to turn ship.”

“That makes sense, Hazel, you and Castor work the homing problem; Pol and I will work the Mars vector. First approximations only; we’ll correct when we’re closer. Everyone work independently, then we’ll swap and check. Mind your decimals!”

“You mind yours.” Hazel answered.

Castor gave his father a sly grin. “You picked the easy one, eh, Dad?” His father looked at him. “Is it too hard for you? Do you want to swap?” “Oh, no, Sir! I can do it.”

“Then get on with it – and bear in mind you are a crew member in space.” “Aye aye, sir.”

He had in fact ‘picked the easy one’; the basic tack-around-Earth-for-Mars problem had been solved by the big computers of Luna Pilot Station before they blasted off. To be sure, Luna Pilot’s answer would have to be revised to fit the inevitable errors, or deviations from flight plan, that would show up when they reached perigee rounding Earth – they might be too high, too low, too fast, too slow, or headed somewhat differently from the theoretical curve which had bem computed for them. In fact they could be sure to be wrong in all three factors; the tiniest of errors at blast-off had a quarter of a million miles in which to multiply.

But nothing could be done to compute the corrections for those errors for the next fifteen or twenty hours; the deviations had to be allowed to grow before they could be measured accurately.

But the blast back to shape an ellipsoid home to Luna was a brand-new, unpremeditated problem. Captain Stone had not refused it out of laziness; he intended to do both problems but had kept his intention to himself. In the meantime he had another worry; strung out behind him were several more ships, all headed for Mars. For the next several days there would be frequent departures from the Moon, all ships taking advantage of the one favorable period in every twenty-six months when the passage to Mars was relatively ‘cheap’, i.e., when the minimum-fuel ellipse tangent to both planet’s orbits would actually make rendezvous with Mars rather than arrive foolishly at some totally untenanted part of Mars’ orbit. Except for military vessels and super expensive passenger-ships, all traffic for Mars left at this one time.

During the four-day period bracketing the ideal instant of departure ships leaving Leyport paid a fancy premium for the privilege over and above the standard service fee. Only a large ship could afford such a fee; the saving in cost of single-H reactive mass had to be greater than the fee. The Rolling Stone had departed just before the premium charge went into effect; consequently she had trailing her like beads on a string a round dozen of ships, all headed down to Earth, to tack around her toward Mars.

If the Rolling Stone vectored back and shaped course for Luna rather than Mars, there was a possibility of traffic trouble.

Collisions between spaceships are almost unheard of; space is very large and ships are very tiny. But they are possible, particularly when many ships are doing much the same thing at the same time ia the same region of space. Spacemen won’t forget the Rising Star and the patrol vessel Trygve Lie – four hundred and seven dead, no survivors.

Ships for Mars would be departing Luna for the next three days and more; the Rolling Stone, in rounding Earth and heading back to Luna (toward where Luna would be on her arrival) would cut diagonally across their paths. Besides these hazards, there were Earth’s three radio- satellites and her satellite space station; each ship’s flight plan, as approved by Luna Pilot Station, took into consideration these four orbits, but the possible emergency maneuver of the Rolling Stone had had no such safety check. Roger Stone mentally chewed his nails at the possibility that Traffic Control might refuse permission for the Rolling Stone to change its approved flight plan – which they would do if there was the slightest possibility of collision, sick child or no.

And Captain Stone would ignore their refusal, risk collision and take his child home – there to lose his pilot’s license certainly and to face a stiff sentence from the Admiralty court possibly.

Besides the space station and the radio satellites there were the robot atom-bomb peace rockets of the Patrol, circling the Earth from pole to pole, but it was most unlikely that the Rolling Stone’s path would intersect one of their orbits; they moved just outside the atmosphere, lower than a spaceship was allowed to go other than in landing, whereas in order to tack the Rolling Stone would necessarily go inside the orbits of the radio satellites and that of the space station wait a minute – Roger Stone thought over that last idea. Would it be possible to match in with the space station instead of going back to Luna?

If he could, he could get Lowell back to weight a couple of days sooner – in the spinning part of the space station!

The ballistic computer was not in use; Castor and Hazel were still in the tedious process of setting up their problems. Captain Stone moved to it and started making a rough set-up directly on the computer itself, ignoring the niceties of ballistics, simply asking the machine, “Can this, or can this not, be done?”

Half an hour later he gave up, let his shoulders sag. Oh, yes, he could match in with the space station’s orbit – but at best only at a point almost a hundred degrees away from the station. Even the most lavish expenditure of reaction mass would not permit him to reach the station itself.

He cleared the computer almost violently. Hazel glanced toward him. “What’s eating you, son?” “I thought we might make port at the station. We can’t.”

“I could have told you that”

He did not answer but went aft. Lowell, he found, was as sick as ever.

Earth was shouldering into the starboard port, great and round and lovely; they were approaching her rapidly, less than ten hours from the critical point at which they must maneuver, one way or the other. Hazel’s emergency flight plan, checked and rechecked by the Captain, had been radioed to Traffic Control. They were all resigned to a return to Luna; nevertheless Pollux was, with the help of Quito Pilot, Ecuador, checking their deviations from the original flight plan and setting up the problem of preparing a final ballistic for Mars.

Dr. Stone came into the control room, poised near the hatch, caught her husband’s eye and beckoned him to come with her. He floated after her into their stateroom. “What is it?” he asked. “Is Lowell worse?”

“No, he’s better.” “Eh?”

“Dear, I don’t think he was spacesick at all.” “What’s that?”

“Oh, a little bit, perhaps. But I think his symptoms were largely allergy; I think he is sensitive to the sedative.” “Huh? I never heard of anyone being sensitive to that stuff before.”

“Neither have I, but there can always be a first time I withdrew the drug several hours ago since it did not seem to help him. His symptoms eased off gradually and his pulse is better now.”

“Is he okay? Is it. safe to go on to Mars?”

“Too early to say. I’d like to keep him under observation another day or two.”

“But – Edith, you know that’s impossible. I’ve got to maneuver.” He was wretched from strain and lack of sleep; neither had slept since blast-off more than twenty-four hours earlier.

“Yes, I know. Give me thirty minutes warning before you must have an answer. I’ll decide then.” “Okay. I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“Dear Roger!”

Before they were ready to ’round the corner’ on their swing past Earth the child was much better. His mother kept him under a light hypnotic for several hours; when he woke from it he demanded food. She tried letting him have a few mouthfuls of custard; he choked on the first bite but that was simply mechanical trouble with no gravity – on the second bite he learned how to swallow and kept it down.

He kept several more down and was still insisting that he was starved when she made him stop. Then he demanded to be untied from the couch. His mother gave in on this but sent for Meade to keep him under control and in the bunk-room. She pulled herself forward and found her husband. Hazel and Castor were at the computer; Castor was reading off to her a problem program while she punched the keys; Pollux was taking a doppler reading on Earth. Edith drew Roger Stone away from them and whispered, “Dear, I guess we can relax. He has eaten – and he didn’t get sick.”

“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to take even a slight chance.”

She shrugged. “How can I be sure? I’m a doctor, not a fortune-teller.” “What’s your decision?”

She frowned, “I would say to go on to Mars.”

“It’s just as well.” He sighed. “Traffic turned down my alternate flight plan. I was just coming back to tell you.”

“Then we have no choice.”

“You know better than that. I’d rather tell it to the judge than read the burial service. But I have one more card up my sleeve.”

She looked her query; he went on. “The War God is less than ten thousand miles behind us. If necessary, by using our mass margin, in less than

a week I could match with her and you and the baby could transfer. She’s a “tumbling. pigeon” since they refitted her – anything from Luna-surface to

a full gravity.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. Well, I don’t think it will be necessary but it’s a comfort to know that there is help close by.” She frowned. “I would not like to leave you and the children to shift for yourselves – and besides, it’s risky to use your margin; you may need it badly when we approach Mars.”

“Not if we handle the ship properly. Don’t you worry; Hazel and I will get it there if we have to get out and push.”

Pollux had stopped what he was doing and had been trying to overhear his parents’ conversation. He was unsuccessful; they had had too many years’ practice in keeping the kids from hearing. But he could see their intent expressions and the occasional frowns; he signaled his twin.

Castor said, “Hold it, Hazel. Time out to scratch. What goes, Pol?” “‘Now is the time for all good men”.” He nodded toward their parents. “Right. I’ll do the talking.” They moved aft.

Roger Stone looked at them and frowned. “What is it, boys? We’re busy.” “Yes, sir. But this seems like a salubrious time to make an announcement.” “Yes?”

“Pol and I vote to go back home. “Huh?”

“We figure that there’s no percentage in taking a chance with Buster.”

Pol added, “Sure, he’s a brat, but look how much you’ve got invested in him.” “If he died on us,” Castor went on, “it would spoil all the fun.”

“And even if he didn’t, who wants to clean up after him for weeks on end?” “Right,” agreed Pol. “Nobody likes to play room steward to a sick groundhog.” “And if he did die, the rest of you would blame us for the rest of our lives.” “Longer than that,” Pol added.

“Don’t worry about that “negat” from Traffic. Hazel and I are working out a skew path that will let us miss the Queen Mary ,with minutes to spare – seconds anyhow. Course it may scare em a little.”

“Quiet!” said Captain Stone. “One at a time – Castor, let me get this straight: do I understand that you and your brother are sufficiently concerned about your younger brother’s welfare that you want to return to Luna in any case?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even if your mother decides that it is safe for him to continue?”

“Yes, sir. We talked it over. Even if he’s looking pretty good now, he was one sick pup and anybody that sick might not make it to Mars. It’s a long haul. We don’t want to risk it.”

Hazel had come aft and listened; now she said, “Nobility ill-becomes you, Cas. You were more convincing with the other routine.” “You butt out of this, Mother. Pol?”

“Cas told you. Shucks, we can make other trips”

Roger Stone looked at his sons. “I must say,” he said slowly, “that it is surprising and gratifying to find so much family solidarity in this aggregation of individualists. Your mother and I will remember it with pride. But I am glad to say that it is unnecessary. We will continue for Mars.”

Hazel scowled at him. “Roger, did you bump your head on the take-off? This is no time to take a chance; we take the kid back to Luna. I’ve talked with the boys and they mean it. So do I.”

Castor said, “Dad, if you’re afraid of that skew orbit, I’ll pilot. I know-”

“Silence!” When he got it he went on as if to himself, “It says right here in the book to give orders, not explanations, and never to let them be

argued. So help me, I’m going to run a taut ship if I have to put my own mother in irons.” He raised his voice. “All hands! Prepare for maneuvering.

Departure for Mars, gravity-well procedure.”

Edith Stone said softly to Hazel, “The baby is all right. Mother. I’m sure.” Then she turned to her sons. “Castor, Pollux – come here, dears.” “But Dad said -”

“I know. Come here first.” She kissed each of them and said, “Now man your stations.”

Mead appeared at the hatch, towing Lowell behind her like a toy balloon. He seemed cheerful and his face was cheerfully smeared with chocolate. “What’s all the racket about?” she demanded. “You not only woke us; you must be disturbing people three ships behind.”

V – IN THE GRAVITY WELL

A gravity-well maneuver involves what appears to be a contradiction in the law of conservation of energy. A ship leaving the Moon or a space station for some distant planet can go faster on less fuel by dropping first toward Earth, then performing her principal acceleration while as close to Earth as possible. To be sure, a ship gains kinetic energy (speed) in falling towards Earth, but one would expect that she would lose exactly the same amount of kinetic energy as she coasted away from Earth.

The trick lies in the fact that the reactive mass or ‘fuel’ is itself mass and as such has potential energy of position when the ship leaves the Moon. The reactive mass used in accelerating near Earth (that is to say, at the bottom of the gravity well) has lost its energy of position by falling down the gravity well. That energy has to go somewhere, and so it does – into the ship, as kinetic energy. The ship ends up going faster for the same force and duration of thrust than she possibly could by departing directly from the Moon or from a space station. The mathematics of this is somewhat baffling – but it works.

Captain Stone put both the boys in the power room for this maneuver and placed Hazel as second pilot. Castor’s feelings were hurt but he did not argue, as the last discussion of ship’s discipline was still echoing. The pilot has his hands full in this maneuver, leaving it up to the co-pilot to guard the auto-pilot, to be ready to fire manually if need he, and to watch for brennschluss. It is the pilot’s duty to juggle his ship on her gyros and flywheel with his eyes glued to a measuring telescope, a ‘coelostat’, to be utterly sure to the extreme limit of the accuracy of his instruments that his ship is aimed exactly right when the jet fires.

In the passage from Earth to Mars a mistake in angle of one minute of arc, one sixtieth of a degree, will amount to – at the far end – about fifteen thousand miles. Such mistakes must be paid for in reactive mass by maneuvering to correct, or, if the mistake is large enough, it will he paid for tragically and inexorably with the lives of captain and crew while the ship plunges endlessly on into the empty depths of space.

Roger Stone had a high opinion of the abilities of his twins, but on this touchy occasion, he wanted the co-pilot backing him up to have the steadiness of age and experience. With Hazel riding the other. couch he could give his whole mind to his delicate task.

To establish a frame of reference against which to aim his ship he had three stars, Spica, Deneb, and Fomalhaut, lined up in his scope, their images brought together by prisms. Mars was still out of sight beyond the bulging breast of Earth, nor would it have helped to aim for Mars; the road to Mars is a long curve, not a straight line. One of the images seemed to drift a trifle away from the others; sweating, he unclutched his gyros and nudged the ship by flywheel. The errant image crept back into position. “Doppler?” he demanded.

“In the groove.” “Time?”

“About a minute. Son, keep your mind on your duck shooting and don’t fret.”

He wiped his hands on his shirt and did not answer. For some seconds silence obtained, then Hazel said quietly, “Unidentified radar beacon blip on the screen, sir. Robot response and a string of numbers.”

“Does it concern us?”

“Closing north and starboard. Possible collision course.”

Roger Stone steeled himself not to look at his own screen; a quick glance would tell him nothing that Hazel had not reported. He kept his face glued to the eyeshade of the coelostat. “Evasive maneuver indicated?

“Son, you’re as likely to dodge into it as duck away from it. Too late to figure a ballistic.”

He forced himself to watch the star images and thought about it. Hazel was right, one did not drive a spaceship by the seat of the pants. At the high speeds and tight curves at the bottom of a gravity well, close up to a planet, an uncalculated maneuver might bring on a collision. Or it might throw them into an untenable orbit, one which would never allow them to reach Mars.

But what could it be? Not a spaceship, it was unmanned. Not a meteor, it carried a beacon. Not a bomb rocket, it was too high. He noted that the images were steady and stole a glance, first at his own screen, which told him nothing, and then through the starboard port.

Good heavens! he could see it!

A great gleaming star against the black of space… growing growmg! “Mind your scope, son,” said Hazel. “Nineteen seconds.”

He put his eye back to the scope; the images were steady. Hazel continued, “It seems to be drawing ahead slightly.”

He had to look. As he did so something flashed up and obscured the starboard port and at once was visible in the portside port – visible but shrinking rapidly. Stone had a momentary impression of a winged torpedo shape.

“Whew!” Hazel sighed. “They went that-a-way, podnuh!” She added briskly, “All hands, brace for acceleration – five seconds!”

He had his eye on the star images, steady and perfectly matched, as the jet slammed him into his pads. The force was four gravities, much more

than the boost from Luna, but they held it for oniy slightly more than one minute. Captain Stone kept watching the star images, ready to check her if

she started to swing, but the extreme care with which he had balanced his ship in loading was rewarded: she held her attitude.

He heard Hazel shout, “Brennschluss!” just as the noise and pressure dropped off and died. He took a deep breath and said to the mike, “You all right, Edith?”

“Yes, dear,” she answered faintly. “We’re all right.” “Power room?”

“Okay!” Pollux answered.

“Secure and lock.” There was no need to have the power room stand by, any correction to course and speed on this leg would be made days or weeks later, after much calculation.

“Aye aye, sir. Say, Dad, what was the chatter about a blip?”

“Pipe down,” Hazel interrupted. “I’ve got a call coming in.” She added, “Rolling Stone, Luna, to Traffic – come in, Traffic.” There was a whir and a click and a female voice chanted:

“Traffic Control to Rolling Stone, Luna – routine traffic precautionary: your plan as filed will bring you moderately close to experimental rocket satellite of Harvard Radiation Laboratory. Hold to flight plan; you will fail contact by ample safe margin. End of message; repeat – “ The transcription ran itself through once more and shut off.

“Nowthey tell us!” Hazel exploded. “Oh, those cushion warmers! Those bureaucrats! I’ll bet that message has been holding in the tank for the past hour waiting for some idiot to finish discussing his missing laundry.”

She went on fuming: “”Moderately close!” “Ample safe margin!” Why, Roger, the consarned thing singed my eye-brows!” “”A miss is as good as a mile”.”

“A mile isn’t nearly enough, as you know darn well. It took ten years off my life – and at my age I can’t afford that.”

Roger Stone shrugged. After the strain and excitement he was feeling let down and terribly weary; since blast-off he had been running on stimulants instead of sleep. “I’m going to cork off for the next twelve hours. Get a preliminary check on our, vector; if there’s nothing seriously wrong, don’t wake me. I’ll look at it when I turn out.”

“Aye aye, Captain Bligh.”

First check showed nothing wrong with their orbit: Hazel followed him to bed – “bed’ in a figurative sense, for Hazel never strapped herself to her bunk in free fall, preferring to float loosely wherever air currents wafted her. She shared a stateroom with Meade. The three boys were assigned to the bunkroom and the twins attempted to turn in – but Lowell was not sleepy. He felt fine and was investigating the wonderful possibilities of free fall. He wanted to play tag. The twins did not want to play tag; Lowell played tag anyhow,.

Pollux snagged him by an ankle. “Listen, you! Weren’t you enough trouble by being sick?” “I was not sick!”

“So? Who was it we had to clean up after? Santa Claus?”

“There ain’t any Santa Claus. I was not sick. You’re a fibber, you’re a fibber, you’re a fibber!”

“Don’t argue with him,” Castor advised. “Just choke him and stuff him out the lock. We can explain and correct the ship’s mass factor tomorrow.” “I was not sick!”

Pollux said, “Meade had quite a bit of sack time on the leg down. Maybe you can talk her into taking him off our hands?” “I’ll try’.”

Meade was awake; she considered it. “Cash?” “Sis, don’t be that way!”

“Well … three days’ dishwashing?”

“Skinflint! It’s a deal; come take charge of the body.” Meade had to use the bunkroom as a nursery; the boys went forward and slept in the control room, each strapping himself loosely to a control couch as required by ship’s regulations to avoid the chance of jostling instruments during sleep.

VI – THE MIGHTY BOOM

Captain Stone had all hands with the exception of Dr. Stone and Lowell compute their new orbit. They all worked from the same. data, using readings supplied by Traffic Control and checked against their own instruments. Roger Stone waited until all had finished before comparing results.

“What do you get, Hazel?”

“As I figure, Captain, you won’t miss Mars by more than a million miles or so.” “I figure it right on.”

“Well, now that you mention it, so do I.” “Cas? Pol? Meade?”

The twins were right together to six decimal places and checked with their father and grandmother to five, but Meade’s answer bore no resemblance to any of the others. Her father looked it over curiously. “Baby girl, I can’t figure out how you got this out of the computer. As near as I can tell you have us headed for Proxima Centauri.”

Meade looked at it with interest. “Is that so? Tell you what let’s use mine and see what happens. It ought to be interesting.” “But not practical. You have us going faster than light.”

“I thought the figures were a bit large.”

Hazel stuck out a bony forefinger. “That ought to be a minus sign, hon.”

“That’s not all that’s wrong,” announced Pollux. “Look at this – “ He held out Meade’s programming sheet. “That will do, Pol,” his father interrupted. “You are not called on to criticise Meade’s astrogation.”

“But -”

“Stow it.”

“I don’t mind, Daddy,” Meade put in. “I knew I was wrong.” She shrugged. “It’s the first one I’ve ever worked outside of school. Somehow it makes a difference when it’s real.”

“It certainly does as every astrogator learns. Never mind, Hazel has the median figures. We’ll log hers.” Hazel shook hands with herself. “The winnah and still champeen!”

Castor said, “Dad, that’s final? No more maneuvers until you calculate your approach to Mars?” “Of course not. No changes for six months at least. Why?”

“Then Pol and I respectfully request the Captain’s permission to decompress the hold and go outside. We want to get to work on our bikes.”

“Never mind the fake military-vessel phraseology. But I have news for you.” He took a sheet of paper out of his belt pouch. “Just a moment while I make a couple of changes.” He wrote on it, then fastened it to the control room bulletin board. It read:

SHIP’S ROUTINE

0700 Reveille (optional for Edith, Hazel, & Buster) 0745 Breakfast (Meade cooks. Twins wash dishes) 0900 School C & P, math

Meade, astrogation, coached by Hazel

Lowell, reeling, writhing, and fainting in coils – or whatever his mother deems necessary

1200 End of morning session 1215 Lunch

1300 School C&P, math

Hydroponics chores, Meade 1600 End of afternoon session

1800 Dinner – All Hands initial ship’s maintenance schedule.

SATURDAY ROUTINE – turn to after breakfast and clean ship, Hazel in charge. Captain’s inspection at 1100. Personal laundry in afternoon. SUNDAY ROUTINE – meditation, study, and recreation. Make & Mend in afternoon.

Hazel looked it over. “Where are we headed, Rog? Botany Bay? You forgot to set a time to flog the peasants.” “It seems very reasonable to me.”

“Possibly. Six gets you ten it won’t last a week.” “Done. Let’s see your money.”

The twins had read it with dismay. Pollux blurted out, “But Dad! You haven’t left us any time to repair our bikes – do you want us to lose our investment?”

“I’ve assigned thirty hours of study a week. That leaves one hundred and thirty-eight other hours. How you use them is your business as long as you keep our agreement about studying.”

Castor said, “Suppose we want to start math at eight-thirty and again right after lunch? Can we get out of school that much earlier?” “I see no objection.”

“And suppose we study evenings sometimes? Can we work up some velvet?”

Their father shrugged. “Thirty hours a week – any reasonable variations in the routine will be okay, provided you enter in the log the exact times.” “Now that that’s settled,” Hazel commenced, “I regret to inforrn you, Captain, that there is one other little item on that Procrustean program that will

have to be canceled for the time being at least. Much as I would enjoy inducing our little blossom into the mysteries of astrogation I don’t have the time right now. You’ll have to teach her yourself.”

“Why?”

“‘Why” the man asks? You should know better than anyone. The Scourge of the Spaceways, that’s why. I’ve got to hole up and write like mad for the next three or four weeks; I’ve got to get several months of episodes ahead before we get out of radio range.”

Roger Stone looked at his mother sadly. “I knew it was bound to come, Hazel, but I didn’t expect it to hit you so young. The mental processes dull, the mind tends to wander, the -”

“Whose mind does what? Why you young -”

“Take it easy. If you’ll look over your left shoulder out the starboard port and squint your eyes, you might imagine that you see a glint on the War

God. It can’t be much over ten thousand miles away.”

“What’s that got to do with me?” she demanded suspiciously.

“Poor Hazel! We’ll take good care of you, Mother, we’re riding in orbit with several large commercial vessels; every one of them has burners powerful enough to punch through to Earth. We won’t ever be out of radio contact with Earth.”

Hazel stared out the port as if she could actually spot the War God. “Well, I’ll be dogged,” she breathed. “Roger, lead me to my room – that’s a good boy. It’s senile decay, all right You’d better take back your show; I doubt if I can write it.”

“Huh, uh! You let them pick up that option; you’ve got to write it. Speaking of The Scum of the Waste Spaces, I’ve been meaning to ask you a couple of questions about it and this is the first spare moment we’ve had. In the first place, why did you let them sign us up again?”

“Because they waved too much money under my nose, as you know full well. It’s an aroma we Stones have hardly ever been able to resist.” “I just wanted to make you admit it. You were going to get me off the hook – remember? So you swallowed it yourself.”

“More bait.”

“Surely. Now the other point: I don’t see how you dared to go ahead with it, no matter how much money they offered. The last episode you showed

me, while you had killed off the Galactic Overlord you had also left Our Hero in a decidedly untenable position. Sealed in a radioactive sphere, if I

remember correctly, at the bottom of an ammonia ocean on Jupiter. The ocean was swarming with methane monsters, whatever they are, each hypnotised by the Overlord’s mind ray to go after John Sterling at the first whiff – and him armed only with his Scout knife. How did you get him out of it?”

“We found a way,” put in Pol. “If you assume -”

“Quiet infants. Nothing to it, Roger. By dint of superhuman effort Our Hero extricated himself from his predicament and-” “That’s no answer.”

“You don’t understand. I open the next episode on Ganymede. John Sterling is telling Special Agent Dolores O’Shanahan about his adventure. He’s making light of it, see? He’s noble so he really wouldn’t want to boast to a girl. Just as he is jokingly disparaging his masterly escape the next action starts and it’s so fast and so violent and so bloody that our unseen audience doesn’t have time to think about it until the commercial. And by then they’ve got too much else to think about.”

Roger shook his head. “That’s literary cheating.”

“Who said this was literature? It’s a way to help corporations take tax deductions. I’ve got three new sponsors.” “Hazel,” asked Pollux, “where have you got them now? What’s the situation?”

Hazel glanced at the chronometer. “Roger, does that schedule take effect today? Or can we start fresh tomorrow?” He smiled feebly. “Tomorrow, I guess.”

“If this is going to degenerate into a story conference, I’d better get Lowell. I get my best ideas from Lowell; he’s just the mental age of my average audience.”

“If I were Buster, I would resent that.”

“Quiet!” She slithered to the hatch and called out, “Edith! May I borrow your wild animal for a while?” Meade said, “I’ll get him, Grandmother. But wait for me.”

She returned quickly with the child. Lowell said, “What do you want, Grandma Hazel? Bounce tag?” She gathered him in an arm. “No, son – blood. Blood and gore. We’re going to kill off some villains.” “Swell!

“Now as I recall it – and mind you, I was only there once – I left them lost in the Dark Nebula. Their food is gone and so is the Q-fuel. They’ve made a temporary truce with their Arcturian prisoners and set them free to help – which is safe enough because they are silicon-chemistry people and can’t eat humans. Which is about what they are down to; the real question is – who gets barbecued for lunch? They need the help of the Arcturian prisoners because the Space Entity they captured in the last episode and imprisoned in an empty fuel tank has eaten its way through all but the last bulkhead and it doesn’t have any silly previous prejudices about body chemistry. Carbon or silicon; it’s all one to it.”

“I don’t believe that’s logical,” commented Roger stone. “If its own chemistry was based-”

“Out of order,” ruled Hazel. “Helpful suggestions only, please. Pol? You seem to have a gleam in your eye” “This, Space Entity jigger can he stand up against radar wave lengths?”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. But we’ve got to complicate it a bit Well, Meade?”

The twins started moving their bicycles outside the following day. The suits they wore were the same ones they had worn outdoors on the Moon, With the addition of magnetic boots and small rocket motors. These latter were strapped to their backs with the nozzles sticking straight out from their waists. An added pressure bottle to supply the personal rocket motor was mounted on the shoulders of each boy but, being weightless, the additional mass was little handicap.

“Now remember,” their father warned them, “those boost units are strictly for dire emergency. Lifelines at all times. And don’t depend on your boots when you shift lines, snap on the second line before you loose the first.”

“Shucks, Dad, we’ll be careful.”

“No doubt. But you can expect me to make a surprise inspection at any time. One slip on a safety precaution and it’s the rack and thumb screws, plus fifty strokes of bastinado.”

“No boiling oil?”

“Can’t afford it. See here, you think I’m joking. If one of you should happen to get loose and drift away from the ship, don’t expect me to come after you. One of you is a spare anyway.”

“Which one?” asked Pollux. “Cas, maybe?”

“Sometimes I think it’s one, sometimes the other. Strict compliance with ship’s orders will keep me from having to decide at this time.”

The cargo hatch had no airlock; the twins decompressed the entire hold, then opened the door, remembering just in time to snap on their lines as the door opened. They looked out and both hesitated. Despite their lifelong experience with vacuum suits on the face of the Moon this was the first time either one had ever been outside a ship in orbit.

The hatch framed endless cosmic night, blackness made colder and darker by the unwinking diamond stars many light-years away. They were on the night side of the Stone; there was nothing but stars and the swallowing depths. It was one thing to see it from the safety of Luna or through the strong quartz of a port; it was quite another to see it with nothing at all between one’s frail body and the giddy, cold depths of eternity.

Pollux said, “Cas, I don’t like this.” “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” “Then why are my teeth chattering?”

“Go ahead; I’ll keep a tension on your line.”

“You are too good to me, dear brother – a darn sight too good! You go and I’ll keep a tension on your line.” “Don’t be silly! Get on out there.”

“After you, Grandpa.”

“Oh, well!” Castor grasped the frame of the hatch and swung himself out. He scrambled to click his magnetic boots to the side of the ship but the position was most awkward, the suit was cumbersome, and he had no. gravity to help him. Instead, he swung around and his momentum pulled his fingers loose from the smooth frame. His floundering motions bumped the side of the ship and pushed him gently away. He floated out, still floundering, until his line checked him three or four feet from the side. “Pull me in!”

“Put your feet down, clumsy!”

“I can’t. Pull me in, you red-headed moron!”

“Don’t call me “red-headed”.” Pollux let out a couple of feet more line. “Pol, quit fooling. I don’t like this.”

“I thought you were brave. Grandpa?”

Castor’s reply was incoherent. Pollux decided that it had gone far enough; he pulled Castor in and, while holding firmly to a hatch dog himself, he grabbed one of Castor’s boots and set it firmly against the side; it clicked into place. “Snap on your other line,” he ordered.

Castor, still breathing heavily, looked for a padeye in the side of the ship. He found one nearby and walked over to it, picking up his feet as if he walked in sticky mud. He snapped his second line to the ring of the padeye and straightened up. “Catch,” Pollux called out and sent his own second line snaking out to his twin

Castor caught it and fastened it beside his own. “All set?” asked Pollux. “I’m going to unsnap us in here.” “All secure.” Castor moved closer to the hatch.

“Here I come.”

“So you do.” Castor gave Pollux’s line a tug; Pollux came sailing out of the hatch – and Castor let him keep on sailing. Castor checked the line gently through his fingers, soaking up the momentum, so that Pollux reached the end of the fifty-foot line and stayed there without bouncing back.

Pollux had been quite busy on the way out but to no effect -sawing vacuum is futile. When he felt himself snubbed to a stop he quit straggling. “Pull me back!”

“Say “uncle”.”

Pollux said several other things, some of which he had picked up dockside on Luna, plus some more colorful expressions derived from his grandmother. “You had better get off this ship,” he concluded, “because I’m coming down this line and take your helmet off.” He made a swipe for the line with one hand; Castor flipped it away.

“Say “even-Steven” then.”

Pollux had the line now, having remembered to reach for his belt where it was hooked instead of grabbing for the bight.” Suddenly he grinned. “Okay – “even-Steven”.”

“Even-Steven it is. Hold still; I’ll bring you in.” He towed him in gently, grabbing Pol’s feet and clicking them down as he approached. “You looked mighty silly out there,” he commented when Pollux was firm to the ship’s side.

His twin invoked their ritual. “Even-Steven!” “My apologies, Junior. Let’s get to work.”

Padeyes were spaced about twenty feet apart all over the skin of the ship. They had been intended for convenience in rigging during overhauls and to facilitate outside inspections while underway; the twins now used them to park bicycles. They removed the bicycles from the hold half a dozen at a time, strung on a wire loop like a catch of fish. They fastened each clutch of bikes to a padeye; the machines floated loosely out from the side like boats tied up to an ocean ship.

Stringing the clusters of bicycles shortly took them over the ‘horizon’ to the day side of the ship. Pollux was in front carrying six bicycles in his left hand. He stopped suddenly. “Hey, Grandpa! Get a load of this!”

“Don’t look at the Sun,” Castor said sharply. “Don’t be silly. But come see this.”

Earth and Moon swam in the middle distance in slender crescent phase. The Stone was slowly dropping behind Earth in her orbit, even more slowly drifting outward away from the Sun. For many weeks yet Earth would appear as a ball, a disc, before distance cut her down to a brilliant star. Now she appeared about as large as she had from Luna but she was attended by Luna herself. Her day side was green and dun and lavished with cottony clouds; her night side showed the jewels of cities.

But the boys were paying no attention to the Earth; they were looking at the Moon. Pollux sighed. “Isn’t she beautiful?” “What’s the matter, Junior? Homesick?”

“No. But she’s beautiful, just the same. Look, Cas, whatever ships we ever own, let’s always register them out of Luna City. Home base.” “Suits. Can you make out the burg?”

“I think so.”

“Probably just a spot on your helmet. I can’t. Let’s get back to work.”

They had used all the padeyes conveniently close to the hatch and were working aft when Pollux said, “Wups I Take it easy. Dad said not to go aft of frame 65.”

“Shucks, it must be “cool” back to 90, at least. We’ve used the jet less than five minutes.”

“Don’t be too sure; neutrons are slippery customers. And you know what a stickler Dad is, anyway.” “He certainly is,” said a third voice.

They did not jump out of their boots because they were zipped tight. Instead they turned around and saw their father standing, hands on hips, near the passenger airlock. Pollux gulped and said, “Howdy, Dad.”

“You sure gave us a start,” Castor added sheepishly.

“Sorry. But don’t let me disturb you; I just came out to enjoy the view.” He looked over their work. “You’ve certainly got my ship looking like a junkyard.”

“Well, we had to have room to work. Anyhow, who’s to see?”

“In this location you have the Almighty staring down the back of your neck. But I don’t suppose He’ll mind.” “Say, Dad, Pol and I sort of guessed that you wouldn’t want us to do any welding inside the hold?”

“You sort of guessed correctly – not after what happened in the Kong Christian.”

“So we figured we could jury-rig a rack for welding out here. Okay?”

“Okay. But it’s too nice a day to talk business.” He raised his open hands to the stars and looked out. “Swell place. Lots of elbow room. Good scenery.”

“That’s the truth; But come around to the Sun side if you want to see something.”

“Right. Here, help me shift my lines.” They walked around the hull and into the sunlight. Captain Stone, Earth born, looked first at the mother planet. “Looks like a big storm is working up around the Philippines.”

Neither of the twins answered; weather was largely a mystery to them, nor did they approve of weather. Presently he turned to them and said softly, “I’m glad we came, boys. Are you?”

“Oh, you bet!”

“Sure!” They had forgotten how cold and unfriendly the black depths around them had seemed only a short time before. Now it was an enormous

room, furnished in splendor, though not yet fully inhabited. It was their own room, to live in, to do with as they liked.

They stood there for quite a long time, enjoying it At last Captain Stone said, “I’ve had all the sun I can stand for a while. Let’s work around back into the shade.” He shook his head to dislodge a drop of sweat from his nose.

“We ought to get back to work anyhow.” “I’ll help you; we’ll get done faster.”

The Rolling Stone swung on and outward toward Mars; her crew fell into routine habits. Dr. Stone was handy at weightless cooking, unusually skilful, in fact, from techniques she had picked up during a year’s internship in the free-fall research clinic in Earth’s station. Meade was not so skilled but very little can be done to ruin breakfast. Her father supervised her hydroponics duties, supplementing thereby the course she had had in Luna City High School. Dr. Stone split the care of her least child with his grandmother and used her leisure placidly collating some years of notes for a paper ‘On the Cumulative Effects of Marginal Hypoxia.”

The twins discovered that mathematics could be even more interesting than they had thought and much more difficult – it required even more ‘savvy’ than they thought they had (already a generous estimate) and they were forced to stretch their brains. Their father caught up on the back issues of The Reactomotive World and studied his ship’s manual but still had plenty of time to coach them and quiz them. Pollux, he discovered, was deficient in the ability to visualise a curve on glancing at ,an equation.

“I don’t understand it,” he said. “You got good marks in analytical geometry.” Pollux turned red. “What’s biting you?” his father demanded.

“Well, Dad, you see it’s this way -” “Go on.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly get good marks in analyt.”

Eh? What is this? You both got top marks; I remember clearly.”

“Well, now, you see – Well, we were awfully busy that semester and, well, it seemed logical. . . “ His voice trailed off. “Out with it! Out with it!”

“Cas took both courses in analyt.” Pollux blurted out, “and I took both courses in history. But I did read the book.”

“Oh, my!” Roger Stone sighed. “I suppose it’s covered by the statute of limitations by this time. Anyhow, you are finding out the hard way that such offences carry their own punishments. When you need it, you don’t know it worth a hoot.”

“Yessir.”

“But an extra hour a day for you, just the same – until you can visualise instantly from the equation a four-coordinate hyper-surface in a non- Euclidean continuum – standing on your head in a cold shower.”

“Yessir.”

“Cas, what course did you fudge? Did you read the book?” “Yes, sir. It was medieval European history, sir.”

“Hmm . . . You’re equally culpable, but I’m not too much concerned with any course that does not require a slide rule and tables. You coach your brother.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“If you are pinched for time, I’ll give you a hand with those broken-down bicycles, though I shouldn’t.”

The twins pitched into it, hard. At the end of two weeks Roger Stone announced himself satisfied with Pollux’s proficiency in analytical geometry. They moved on to more rarefied heights . . . the complex logics of matrix algebra, frozen in beautiful arrays. . . the tensor calculus that unlocks the atom. . . the wild and wonderful field equations that make Man king of the universe . . . the crashing, mind-splitting intuition of Forsyte’s Solution that had opened the 21st century and sent mankind another mighty step toward the stars. By the time Mars shone larger in the sky than Earth they had gone beyond the point where their father could reach them; they ploughed on together.

They usually studied together, out of the same book, floating head to head in their bunkroom, one set of feet pointed to celestial south, the other pair to the north. The twins had early gotten into the habit of reading the same book at the same time; as a result either of them could read upside down as easily as in the conventional attitude. While so engaged Pollux said to his brother, “You know, Grandpa, some of this stuff makes me think we ought to go into research rather than business. After all, money isn’t everything.”

“No,” agreed Castor, “there are also stocks, bonds, and patent rights, not to mention real estate and chattels.”

“I’m serious.

“We’ll do both. I’ve finished this page; flip the switch when you’re ready.”

The War God, riding in a slightly different orbit, had been gradually closing on them until she could be seen as a ‘star’ by naked eye – a variable star that winked out and flared up every sixteen seconds. Through the Stone‘s coelostat the cause could easily be seen; the War God was tumbling end over end, performing one full revolution every thirty-two seconds to provide centrifugal ‘artificial gravity’ to coddle the tender stomachs of her groundhog passengers. Each half revolution the Sun’s rays struck her polished skin at the proper angle to flash a dazzling gleam at the Stone. Through the ‘scope the reflection was bright enough to hurt the eyes.

The observation turned out to be both ways. A radio message came in; Hazel printed it and handed it with a straight face to her son: “WAR GOD TO ROLLING STONE – PVT – ROG OLD BOY, I HAVE YOU IN THE SCOPE. WHAT IN SPACE HAVE YOU GOT ON YOU? FUNGUS? OR SEA WEEDS? YOU LOOK LIKE A CHRISI’MAS TREE. P. VANDENBERGH, MASTER.”

Captain Stone glared at the message stat. “Why, that fat Dutchman’! I’ll “fungus” him. Here, Mother, send this: “Master to Master – private message: In that drunken tumbling pigeon how do you keep your eye to a scope? Do you enjoy playing nursemaid to a litter of groundhogs? No doubt the dowagers fight over a chance to eat at the captain’s table. Fun, I’ll bet. R. Stone, Master”.”

The answer came back: “ROGER DODGER YOU OLD CODGER, I’VE LIMITED MY TABLE TO FEMALE PASSENGERS CIRCA AGE TWENTY SO I CAN KEEP AN EYE ON THEM – PREFERENCE GIVEN TO BLONDES AROUND FIFTY KILOS MASS. COME OVER FOR DINNER. VAN.”

Pollux looked out the port, caught the glint on the War God. “Why don’t you take him up, Dad? I’ll bet I could make it across on my suit jet with one spare oxy bottle.”

“Don’t be silly. We haven’t that much safety line, even at closest approach. Hazel, tell him: “Thanks a million but I’ve got the prettiest little girl in the system cooking for me right now.”“

Meade said, “Me, Daddy? I thought you didn’t like my cooking?” “Don’t give yourself airs, snub nose. I mean your mother, of course.” Meade considered this. “But I look like her, don’t I?”

“Some. Send it, Hazel.”

“RIGHT YOU ARE! MY RESPECTS TO EDITH. “TRUTHFULLY, WHAT IS THAT STUFF? SHALL I SEND OVER WEEDKILLER, OR BARNACLE REMOVER? OR COULD WE BEAT IT TO DEATH WITH A STICK?”

“Why not tell him, Dad?” Castor inquired

“Very well, I will, send: “Bicycles: want to buy one?”“ To their surprise Captain Vandenbergh answered: “MAYBE. GOT A RALEIGH “SANDMAN”?”

“Tell him, “Yes!”

“Pollux put in. “A-number-one condition and brand-new tires. A bargain.”

“Slow up there,” his father interrupted. “I’ve seen your load. If you’ve got a bike in first-class condition, Raleigh or any other make, you’ve got it well hidden.”

“Aw, Dad, it will be – by the time we deliver.”

“What do you suppose he wants a bicycle for, dear?” Dr. Stone asked. “Prospecting? Surely not.”

“Probably just sightseeing. All right, Hazel, you can send it – but mind you, boys, I’ll inspect that vehicle-myself; Van trusts me.” Hazel pushed herself away from the rig. “Let the boys tell their own whoppers. I’m getting bored with this chit-chat.”

Castor took over at the key, started to dicker. The passenger skipper, it developed, really was willing to buy a bicycle. After a leisurely while they settled on a price well under Castor’s asking price, attractively under the usual prices on Mars, but profitably over what the boys had paid on Luna – this for delivery F.O.B. Phobos, circum Mars.

Roger Stone exchanged affectionate insults and gossip with his friend from time to time over the next several days. During the following week the War God came within phone range, but the conversations dropped off and stopped; they had exhausted topics of conversation. The War God had made her closest approach and was pulling away again; they did not hear from her for more than three weeks.

The call was taken by Meade. She hurried aft to the hold where her father was helping the twins spray enamel on reconditioned bicycles. “Daddy,

you’re wanted on the phone? War God, master to master – official.”

“Coming.” He hurried forward and took the call. “Rolling Stone, Captain Stone speaking.” “War God, commanding officer speaking. Captain, can you –

“Just a moment. This does not sound like Captain Vandenbergh.” “It isn’t. This is Rowley, Second Officer. I -”

“I understand that your captain wanted me, officially. Let me speak with him.”

“I’m trying to explain, Captain.” The officer sounded strained and irritable. “I am the commanding officer. Both Captain Vandenbergh and Mr. O’Flynn are on the binnacle list.”

“Eh? Sorry. Nothing serious, I hope?”

“I’m afraid it is, sir. Thirty-seven cases on the sick list this morning – and four deaths.” “Great Scott, man! What is it?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Well, what does your medical officer say it is?” “That’s it, sir. The Surgeon died during the midwatch.” “Oh-”

“Captain, can you possibly match with us? Do you have enough maneuvering margin?” “What? Why?”

“You have a medical officer aboard. Haven’t you?” “Huh? But she’s my wife!” –

“She’s an M.D., is she not?”

Roger Stone remained silent for a long moment. Then he said, “I’ll call you back shortly, sir.”

It was a top level conference, limited to Captain Stone, Dr. Stone, and Hazel. First, Dr. Stone insisted on calling the War God and getting a full report on symptoms and progress of the disease. When she switched off her husband said, “Well, Edith, what is it?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to see it.”

“Now, see here, I’m not going to have you risking -” “I’m a doctor, Roger.”

“You’re not in practice, not now. And you are the mother of a family. It’s quite out of the ques -” “I am a doctor, Roger.”

He sighed heavily. “Yes, dear.”

“The only thing to be determined is whether or not you can match in with the War God. Have you two reached an answer?” “We’ll start computing.”

“I’m going aft and check over my supplies.” She frowned. “1 didn’t expect to have to cope with an epidemic.” When she was gone Roger turned his face, twisted with indecision, to Hazel. “What do you think, Mother?” “Son, you don’t stand a chance. She takes her oath seriously. You’ve known that a long time.”

“I haven’t taken the Hippocratic oath! If I won’t move the ship, there’s nothing she can do about it.”

“You’re not a doctor, true. But you’re a master in space. I guess the “succour & rescue” rule might apply.” “The devil with rules! This is Edith.”

“Well,” Hazel said slowly, “I guess I might stack the Stone family up against the welfare of the entire human race in a pinch, myself. But I can’t decide it for you.”

“I won’t let her do it! It’s not me. There’s Buster – he’s no more than a baby still; he needs his mother.” “Yes, he does.”

“That settles it. I’m going aft and tell her.”

“Wait a minute! If that’s your decision, Captain, you won’t mind me saying that’s the wrong way to do it.” “Eh?”

“The only way you’ll get it past your wife is to get on that computer and come out with the answer you’re looking for. . . an answer that says it’s physically impossible for us to match with them and still reach Mars.”

“Oh. You’re right. Look, will you help me fake it?” “I suppose so.”

“Then let’s get busy.”

“As you say, sir. You know, Roger, if the War God comes in with an unidentified and uncontrolled disease aboard, they’ll never let her make port at Mars. They’ll swing her in a parking orbit, fuel her up again, and send her back at next optimum.”

“What of it? It’s nothing to me if fat tourists and a bunch of immigrants are disappointed.”

“Check. But I was thinking of something else. With Van and the first officer sick, maybe about to check in, if the second officer comes down with it, too, the War God might not even get as far as a parking orbit.”

Roger Stone did not have to have the thought elaborated; a ship approaching a planet, unless manoeuvred at the last by a skilled pilot, can do one of only two things – crash, or swing on past and out endlessly into empty space to take up a comet-like orbit which arrives nowhere ever.

He covered his face with his hands. “What do I do, Mother?” “You are captain, son.”

He sighed. “I suppose I knew it all along.”

“Yes, but you had to struggle with it first.” She kissed him. “Orders, son?” “Let’s get to it. It’s a good thing we didn’t waste any margin in departure.” “That it is.”

When Hazel told the others the news Castor asked, “Does Dad want us to compute a ballistic?” “No.”

“A good thing – for we’ve got to get those bikes inboard, fast! Come on, Pol. Meade, how about suiting up and giving us a hand? Unless Mother needs you?”

“She does,” answered Hazel, “to take care of Lowell and keep him out of the way. But you won’t be bringing the bikes inboard.”

“What? You can’t balance the ship for maneuvers with them where they are. Besides, the first blast would probably snap the wires and change your mass factor.”

“Cas, where are your brains? Can’t you see the situation? We jettison.” “Huh? We throw away our bikes? After dragging almost to Mars?”

“Your bikes, all our books, and everything else we can do without. The rough run-through on the computer made that clear as quartz; it’s the only way we can do this maneuver and still be sure of having a safe margin for homing in. Your father is checking over the weight schedule right now.”

“But -, Castor’s face suddenly relaxed and became impassive. “Aye aye, ma’am.”

The twins were suiting up but had not yet gone outside when Pollux was struck by a notion. “Cas? We cut the bikes loose; then what happens?” “We charge it off to experience – and try to recover from Four-Planets Transit. They won’t pay up, of course.”

“Use your skull. Where do the bikes end up?” “Huh? Why, at Mars!”

“Right. Or pretty near. In the orbit we’re in now, they swing in mighty close and then head down Sunside again. Suppose, on closest approach, we are standing there waiting to snag ’em?”

“Not a chance. It will take us just as long to get to Mars – and in a different orbit, same as the War God’s?

“Yes, but just supposing. You know, I wish I had a spare radar beacon to hang on them. Then if we could reach them, we’d know where they were.”

“Well, we haven’t got one. Say! Where did you put that used reflecting foil?”

“Huh? Oh, I see. Grandpa, sometimes your senile decay is not quite so noticeable.” The Stone had started out, of course, covered on one side of her living quarters by mirror-bright aluminium foil. As she drifted farther and farther from the Sun, reflecting the Sun’s heat had grown less

necessary, absorbing it more desirable. To reduce the load on the ship’s heating and cooling system, square yards of it were peeled up and taken inside to store from week to week.

“Let’s ask Dad.”

Hazel stopped them at the hatch to the control room. “He’s at the computer. What’s the complaint?” “Hazel, the reflecting foil we’ve been salvaging – is it on the jettison list?”

“Certainly. We’ll pick up some more on Mars for the trip back. Why?”

“A radar corner – that’s why!” They explained the plan. She nodded. “A long chance, but it makes sense. See here, wire everything we jettison to the bikes. We might get it all back.”

“Sure thing!” The twins got busy. While Pollux gathered together the bunches of bicycles, all but a few in good repair and brave with new paint. Castor constructed a curious geometrical toy. With 8-gauge wire, aluminium foil, and sticky tape he made a giant square of foil, edged and held flat with wire. This he bisected at right angles with a second square. The two squares he again bisected at the remaining possible right angle with a third square. The result was eight shiny right-angled corners facing among them in all possible directions – a radar reflector. Each corner would bounce radar waves directly back to source, a principle easily illustrated with a rubber ball and any room or box corner. The final result was to step up the effectiveness or radar from an inverse fourth-power law to an inverse square law – in theory, at least. In practice it would be somewhat less than perfectly efficient but the radar response of the assembly would be increased enormously. A mass so tagged would stand out on a radar screen like a candle in a cave.

This flimsy giant kite Castor anchored to the ball of bicycles and other jetsam with an odd bit of string. No stronger link was necessary; out here no vagrant wind would blow it away, no one would cut it loose. “Pol,” he said, “go bang on the port and tell ’em we’re ready.”

Pollux walked forward and did so, rapping on the quartz first to attract his grandmother’s attention, then tapping code to report. While he was gone Castor attached a piece of paper reading:

NOT FOR SALVAGE

This cargo is in free transit by intention. The undersigned owner intends to recover it and warns all parties not to claim it as abandoned. U.P. Rev. Stat. # 193401

Roger Stone, Master

P.Y. Rolling Stone, Luna

When Pollux came back he said, “Hazel says go ahead but take it easy.”

“Of course.” Castor untwisted the single wire that held the ungainly mass to the ship, then stood back and watched it. It did not move. He reached out and gave it the gentlest shove with his little finger, then continued watching. Slowly, slowly it separated from the ship. He wished to disturb its orbit as little as possible, to make it easy to find. The petty vector he had placed on it – an inch a minute was his guess – would act for all the days from there to Mars; he wanted the final sum to remain small.

Pollux twisted around and picked out the winking gleam of the War God. “Will the jet be clear of it when we swing ship?” he asked anxiously. “Quit worrying. I already figured that.”

The maneuver to he performed was of the simplest – point to point in space in a region which could be treated as free of gravity strain since the two ships were practically the same distance from the Sun and Mars was too far away to matter. There were four simple steps: cancellation of the slight vector difference between the two ships (the relative speed with which the War God was puffing away), acceleration toward the War God, transit of the space between them, deceleration to match orbits and lie dead in space relative to each other on arrival.

Steps one and two would be combined by vector addition; step three was simply waiting time. The operation would be two maneuvers, two blasts on the jet.

But step three, the time it would take to reach the War God, could be enormously cut down by lavish use of reactive mass. Had time been no object they could have, as Hazel put it, closed the gap ‘by throwing rocks off the stern.” There was an infinite number of choices, each requiring

different amounts of reactive mass. One choice would have saved the bicycles and their personal possessions – but it would have stretched the

transit time out to over two weeks.

This was a doctor’s emergency call – Roger Stone elected to jettison.

But he did not tell the twins this and he did not require them to work a ballistic. He did not care to let them know of the choice between sacrificing their capital or letting strangers wait for medical attention. After all, he reflected, the twins were pretty young.

Eleven hours from blast time the Stone hung in space close by the War God. The ships were still plunging toward Mars at some sixteen miles per second; relative to each other they were stationary – except that the liner continued her stately rotation, end over end. Dr. Stone, her small figure encumbered not only with space suit, pressure bottles, radio, suit jet, and life lines, but also with a Santa Claus pack of surgical supplies, stood with her husband on the side of the Stone nearest the liner. Not knowing exactly what she might need she had taken all that she believed could be spared from the stock of their own craft -drugs, antibiotics, instruments, supplies.

The others had been kissed good-by inside and told to stay there. Lowell had cried and tried to keep his mother from entering the lock. He had not been told what was going on, but the emotions of the others were contagious.

Roger Stone was saying anxiously, “Now see here, the minute you have this under control, back you come – you hear?” She shook her head. “I’ll see you on Mars, dearest.”

“No indeed! You -”

“No, Roger. I might act as a carrier. We can’t risk it.”

“You might act as a carrier corning back to us on Mars, too. Don’t you ever expect to come back?”

She ignored the rhetorical question. “On Mars there will be hospitals. But I can’t risk a family epidemic in space.” “Edith I’ve a good mind to refuse to-”

“They’re ready for me, dear. See?”

Over their heads, two hundred yards away, a passenger lock on the rotation axis of the mighty ship had opened; two small figures spilled silently out, flipped neatly to boot contact, stood on the ship’s side, their heads pointing ‘down’ at Mr. and Mrs Stone. Roger Stone called into his microphone, “War God!”

“WarGod aye aye!” “Are you ready?” “Whenever you are.” “Stand by for transfer.”

Acting Captain Rowley had proposed sending a man over to conduct Dr. Stone across the gap. She had refused, not wishing to have anyone from the infected ship in contact with the Rolling Stone. Now she said, “Are my lines free for running, Roger?”

“Yes, dearest.” He had bent several lines together, one end to her waist, the other to a padeye. “Will you do my boots, dear?”

He kneeled and unzipped her magnetic boots without speaking, his voice having become uncertain. He straightened and she put her arms around him. They embraced awkwardly, hampered by the suits, hampered by the extra back pack she carried. “Adios, my darling,” she said softly. “Take care of the children.”

“Edith! Take care of yourself!” “Yes, dear. Steady me now.”

He slipped his hands to her hips; she stepped out of the boots, was now held against the ship only by his hands.

“Ready! One! Two!” They crouched down together. “Three!” She jumped straight away from the ship, her lines snaking after her. For long, long seconds she sailed straight out over his head, closing the gap between her and the liner. Presently it became evident that she had not leapt quite straight; her husband got ready to haul her back in.

But the reception committee was ready for the exigency. One of them was swinging a weighted line around his head; he let the end of it swing farther and farther out. As she started to move past the side of the War God he swung it against her safety line; the weighted end wrapped itself around her line. Back at the Rolling Stone Roger Stone snubbed her line and stopped her; the man on the liner gently pulled her in.

The second man caught her and snapped a hook to her belt, then unfastened the long line from the Stone. Before she entered the lock she waved, and the door closed.

Roger Stone looked at the closed door for a moment, then pulled in the line. He let his eyes drop to the pair of little boots left standing empty

beside him. He pulled them loose, held them to him, and plodded back to his own airlock.

II – ASSETS RECOVERABLE

The twins kept out of their father’s way for the next several days. He was unusually tender and affectionate with all of them but he never smiled and his mood was likely to flare suddenly and unexpectedly into anger. They stayed in their bunkroom and pretended to study they actually did study some of the time. Meade and Hazel split the care of Lowell between them; the child’s feeling of security was damaged by the absence of his mother. He expressed it by temper tantrums and demands for attention.

Hazel took over the cooking of lunch and dinner; she was no better at it than Meade. She could be heard twice a day, burning herself and swearing and complaining that she was not the domestic type and never had had any ambitions that way. Never!

Dr. Stone phoned once a day, spoke briefly with her husband, and begged off from speaking to anyone else for the reason that she was much too busy. Roger Stone’s explosions of temper were most likely to occur shortly after these daily calls.

Hazel alone had the courage to quiz him about the calls. On the sixth day at lunch she said, “Well, Roger? What was the news today? Give.” “Nothing much. Hazel, these chops are atrocious.’.

“They ought to be good; I flavored ’em with my own blood.” She held out a bandaged thumb. “Why don’t you try cooking? But back to the subject. Don’t evade me, boy.”

“She thinks she’s on the track of something. So far as she can tell from their medical records, nobody has caught it so far who is known to have had measles.”

Meade said, “Measles? People don’t die of that, do they?”

“Hardly ever,” agreed her grandmother, “though it can be fairly serious in an adult.”

“I didn’t say it was measles,” her father answered testily, “nor did your mother. She thinks it’s related to measles, a mutant strain maybe more virulent.”

“Call it “neomeasles”,” suggested Hazel. “That’s a good question-begging tag and it has an impressive scientific sound to it Any more deaths, Roger?”

“Well, yes.” “How many?”

“She wouldn’t say. Van is still alive, though, and she says that he is recovering. She told me,” he added, as if trying to convince himself, “that she thought she was learning how to treat it.”

“Measles,” Hazel said thoughtfully. “You’ve never had it, Roger.” “No.”

“Nor any of the kids.”

“Of course not,” put in Pollux. Luna City was by long odds the healthiest place in the known universe; the routine childhood diseases of Earth had never been given a chance to establish.

“How did she sound, Son?”

“Dog tired.” He frowned. “She even snapped at me.” “Not Mummy!”

“Quiet, Meade.” Hazel went on, “I’ve had measles, seventy or eighty years ago. Roger, I had better go over and help her.” He smiled without humor. “She anticipated that. She said to tell you thanks but she had all the unskilled help she could use.”

“”Unskilled help!” I like that! Why, during the epidemic of ’93 there were times when I was the only woman in the colony able to change a bed. Hummph!”

Hazel deliberately waited around for the phone call the next day, determined to get a few words at least with her daughter-in-law. The call came in about the usual time; Roger took it. It was not his wife.

“Captain Stone? Turner, sir Charlie Turner. I’m the third engineer. Your wife asked me to phone you.” “What’s the matter? She busy?”

“Quite busy.”

“Tell her to call me as soon as she’s free. I’ll wait by the board.”

“I’m afraid that’s no good, sir. She was quite specific that she would not be calling you today. She won’t have time.” “Fiddlesticks! It will only take her thirty seconds. In a big ship like yours you can hook her in wherever she is.”

The man sounded embarrassed. “I’m sorry, sir. Dr. Stone gave strict orders not to be disturbed.” “But confound it, I -”

“I’m very sorry, sir. Good-by.” He left him sputtering into a dead circuit.

Roger Stone remained quiet for several moments, then turned a stricken face to his mother. “She’s caught it.”

Hazel answered quietly, “Don’t jump to conclusions, Son.” But in her own heart she had already reached the same conclusion. Edith Stone had contracted the disease she had gone to treat.

The same barren stall was given Roger Stone on the following day; by the third day they gave up the pretence. Dr. Stone was ill, but her husband was not to worry. She had already, before she gave into it herself, progressed far enough in standardizing a treatment that all the new cases – hers among them – were doing nicely. So they said.

No, they would not arrange a circuit to her bed. No, he could not talk to Captain Vandenbergh; the Captain was still too ill. “I’m coming over!” Roger Stone shouted.

Turner hesitated. “That’s up to you, Captain. But if you do, we’ll have to quarantine you here. Dr. Stone’s written orders.”

Roger Stone switched off. He knew that that settled it; in matters medical Edith was a Roman judge – and he could not abandon his own ship, his family, to get to Mars by themselves. One frail old woman, two cocksure half-trained student pilots – no, he had to take his ship in.

They sweated it out The cooking got worse, when anyone bothered to cook. It was seven endless, Earth-standard days later when the daily call was answered by, “Roger – hello, darling!”

“Edith! Are you all right?” “Getting that way.”

“What’s your temperature?”

“Now, darling, I won’t have you quack-doctoring me. My temperature is satisfactory, as is the rest of my physical being. I’ve lost a little weight, but I could stand to – don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t. Listen – you come home! You hear me?”

“Roger dearest! I can’t and that’s settled. This entire ship is under quarantine. But how is the rest of my family?” “Oh, shucks, fine, fine! We’re all in the pink.”

“Stay that way. I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye, dear.”

Dinner that night was a celebration. Hazel cut her thumb again, but not even she cared.

The daily calls, no longer a naging worry but a pleasure, continued. It was a week later that Dr. Stone concluded by saying ‘Hold on, dear. A friend of yours wants to speak with you.”

“Okay, darling: Love and stuff – good-by.” “Roger Dodger?” came a bass voice.

“Van! You squareheaded bay window! I knew you were too mean to die.”

“Alive and kicking, thanks to your wonderful wife. But no longer with a bay window; I haven’t had time to regrow it yet” “You will.”

“No doubt. But I was asking the good doctor about something and she couldn’t give me much data. Your department Rog, how did this speed run leave you for single-H? Could you use some g-juice?”

Captain Stone considered it. “Have you any surplus, Captain?”

“A little. Not much for this wagon, but it might be quite a lot for a kiddie cart like yours.”

“We had to jettison, did you know?”

“I know – and I’m sorry. I’ll see that a claim is pushed through promptly. I’d advance it myself, Captain, if alimony on three planets left me anything to advance.”

“Maybe it won’t be necessary.” He explained about the radar reflector. “If we could nudge back into the old groove we just might get together with our belongings.”

Vandenbergh chuckled. “I want to meet those kids of yours again; they appear to have grown up a bit in the last seven years.” “Don’t. They’ll stea! your bridgework. Now about this single-H: how much can you spare?”

“Enough, enough, I’m sure. This caper is worth trying, just for the sport. I’m sure it has never been done before. Never.”

The two ships, perfectly matched to eye and almost so by instrument, nevertheless had drifted a couple. of miles apart while the epidemic in the liner raged and died out. The undetectable gravitational attraction between them gave them mutual escape velocity much less than their tiny residual relative motion. Up to now nothing had been done about it since they were still in the easiest of phone range. But now it was necessary to pump reactive mass from one to the other.

Roger Stone threw a weight fastened to a light messenger line as straight and as far as he could heave. By the time it was slowed to a crawl by the drag of the line a crewman from the War God came out after it on his suit jet, In due course the messenger line brought over a heavier line which was fastened to the smaller ship. Hand power alone took a strain on the line. While the mass of Rolling Stone was enormous by human muscle standards, the vector involved was too small to handle by jet and friction was nil. In warping in a space ship the lack of brakes is a consideration more important than numerous dents to ships and space stations testify.

As a result of that gentle tug, two and a half days later the ships were close enough to permit a fuel hose to be connected between them. Roger and Hazel touched the hose only with wrench and space-suit gauntlet, not enough contact to affect the quarantine even by Dr. Stone’s standards. Twenty minutes later even that connection was broken and the Stone had a fresh supply of jet juice.

And not too soon. Mars was a ruddy gibbous moon, bulging ever bigger in the sky; it was time to prepare to maneuver. “There it is!” Pollux was standing watch on the radar screen; his yelp brought his grandmother floating over.

“More likely a flock of geese,” she commented, “Where?” “Right there. Can’t you see it?”

Hazel grudgingly conceded that the blip might be real. The next several hours were spent in measuring distance, bearing, and relative motion by radar and doppler and in calculating the cheapest maneuver to let them match with the errant bicycles, baggage, and books. Roger Stone took it as easily as he could, being hurried somewhat by the growing nearness of Mars. He finally settled them almost dead in space relative to the floating junk pile, with a slight drift which would bring them within three hundred yards of the mass – so he calculated – at closest approach a few hours hence.

They spent the waiting time figuring the maneuvers to rendezvous with Mars. The Rolling Stone would not, of course, land on Mars but at the port on Phobos. First they must assume an almost circular ellipse around Mars matching with Phobos, then as a final maneuver they must settle the ship on the tiny moon – simple maneuvers made fussy by one thing only; Phobos has a period of about ten hours; the Stone would have to arrive not only at the right place with the right speed and direction, but also at the right time. After the bicycles were taken aboard the ship would have to be nursed along while still fairly far out if she were to fall to an exact rendezvous.

Everybody worked on it but Buster, Meade working under Hazel’s tutelage. Pollux continued to check by radar their approach to their cargo. Roger Stone had run through and discarded two trial solutions and was roughing out another which, at last, seemed to be making sense when Pollux announced that his latest angulation of the radar data showed that they were nearly as close as they would get.

His father unstrapped himself and floated to a port. “Where is it? Good heavens, we’re practically sitting on it. Let’s get busy, boys.” “I’m coming, too,” announced Hazel.

“Me, too!” agreed Lowell.

Meade reached out and snagged him. “That’s what you think, Buster. You and Sis are going to play a wonderful game called, “What’s for dinner?” Have fun, folks.” She headed aft, towing the infant against his opposition.

Outside the bicycles looked considerably farther away. Cas glanced at the mass and said. “Maybe I ought to go across on my suit jet, Dad? It would save time.”

“I strongly doubt it. Try the heaving line, Pol.” Pollux snapped the light messenger line to a padeye. Near the weighted end had been fastened a half a dozen large hooks fashioned of 6-gauge wire. His first heave seemed to be strong enough but it missed the cluster by a considerable margin,

“Let me have it, Pol,” Castor demanded.

“Let him be,” ordered their father. “So help me, this is the last time I’m going into space without a proper line-throwing gun. Make note of that,

Cas. Put it on the shopping list when we go inside.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The second throw was seen to hit the mass, but when Pol heaved in the line came away, the hooks having failed to catch. He tried again. This time the floating line came taut.

“Easy, now!” his father cautioned. “We don’t want a bunch of bikes in our lap. There – “vast heaving. She’s started.” They waited.

Castor became impatient and suggested that they give the line another tug. His father shook his head. Hazel added, “I saw a green hand at the space station try to hurry a load that way. Steel plate, it was.”

“What happened?”

“He had started it with a pull; he thought he could stop it with a shove. They had to amputate both legs but they saved his life.” Castor shut up.

A few minutes later the disorderly mass touched down, bending a handlebar of one bike that got pinched but with no other damage. The twins and Hazel swarmed over the mass, working free on their safety lines and clicking on with their boots only to pass bicycles into the hold, where Roger Stone stowed them according to his careful mass distribution schedule.

Present!y Pollux came across Castor’s ‘Not for Salvage’ warning. “Hey, Cas! Here’s your notice.” “It’s no good now.” Nevertheless he accepted it and glanced at it. Then his eyes snapped wider. An endorsement had been added at the bottom:

“Sez you!

‘The Galactic Overlord.”

Captain Stone came out to investigate the delay, took the paper and read it. He looked at his mother. “Hazel!” “Me? Why, I’ve been right here in plain sight the whole time. How could I have done it?”

Stone crumpled the paper. “I do not believe in ghosts, inside straights, nor “Galactic Overlords.”“

If Hazel did it, no one saw her and she never admitted it. She persisted in the theory that the Galactic Overlord wasn’t really dead after all. To prove it, she revived him in her next episode.

– PHOBOS PORT

Mars has two ready-made space stations, her two tiny, close-in moons – Phobos and Deimos, the dogs of the War God, Fear and Panic. Deimos is a jagged, ragged mass of rock; a skipper would he hard put to find a place to put down a ship. Phobos was almost spherical and fairly smooth as we found her; atomic power has manicured her into one big landing field all around her equator – a tidying-up that may have been over hasty; by one very plausible theory the Martian ancients used her themselves as a space station. The proof, if such there be, may lie buried under the slag of Phobos port.

The Rolling Stone slid inside the orbit of Deimos, blasted as she approached the orbit of Phobos and was matched in with Phobos, following an almost identical orbit around Mars only a scant five miles from that moon. She was falling now, falling around Mars but falling toward Phobos, for no vector had been included as yet to prevent that. The fall could not be described as a headlong plunge; at this distance, one radius of Phobos, the moon attracted the tiny mass of the spaceship with a force of less than three ten-thousandths of one Earth surface gravity. Captain Stone had

ample time in which to calculate a vector which would let him land; it would take the better part of an hour for the Stone to sink to the surface of the satellite.

However, he had chosen to do it the easy way, through outside help. The jet of the Rolling Stone, capable of blasting at six gravities, was almost too much of a tool for the thin gravity field of a ten-mile rock – like swatting a fly with a pile-driver. A few minutes after they had ceased blasting, a small scooter rocket up from Phobos matched with them and anchored to their airlock.

The spacesuited figure who swam in removed his helmet and said, “Permission to board, sir? Jason Thomas, port pilot – you asked for pilot-and- tow?”

“That’s right, Captain Thomas.”

“Just call me Jay. Got your mass schedule ready?”

Roger Stone gave it to him; he look it over while they looked him over. Meade thought privately that he looked more like a bookkeeper than a dashing spaceman – certainly nothing like the characters in Hazel’s show. Lowell stared at him gravely and said, “Are you a Martian, Mister?”

The port pilot answered him with equal gravity. “Sort of, son.” “Then where’s your other leg?”

Thomas looked startled, but recovered. “I guess I’m a cut-rate Martian.”

Lowell seemed doubtful but did not pursue the point. The port official returned the schedule and said, “Okay, Captain. Where are your outside control-circuit jacks?”

“Just forward of the lock. The inner terminals are here on the board.”

“Be a few minutes.” He went back outside, moving very rapidly. He was back inside in less than ten minutes. “That’s all the time it took you to mount auxiliary rockets?” Roger Stone asked incredulously.

“Done it a good many times. Gets to be a routine. Besides, I’ve got good boys working with me.” Quickly he plugged a small portable control board to the jacks pointed out to him earlier, and tested his controls. “All set.” He glanced at the radar screen. “Nothing to do but loaf for a bit You folks immigrating?”

“Not exactly. It’s more of a pleasure trip.”

“Now ain’t that nice! Though it beats me what pleasure you expect to find on Mars.” He glanced out the port where the reddish curve of Mars pushed up into the black.

“We’ll do some sightseeing I expect”

“More to see in the State of Vermont than on this whole planet I know.” He looked around. “This your whole family?” “All but my wife.” Roger Stone explained the situation.

“Oh, yes! Read about it in the daily War Cry. They got the name of your ship wrong, though.”

Hazel snorted in disgust ‘Newspapers!”

Yes, mum. I put the War God down just four hours ago. Berths 32 & 33. She’s in quarantine, though.” He pulled out a pipe ‘You folks got static precipitation?”

Yes,” agreed Hazel. “Go ahead and smoke, young man.”

“Thanks on both counts.” He made almost a career of getting it lighted; Pollux began to wonder when he intended to figure his ballistic.

But Jason Thomas did not bother even to glance at the radar screen; instead he started a long and meandering story about his brother-in-law

back Earthside. It seemed that this connection of his had tried to train a parrot to act as an alarm clock.

The twins knew nothing of parrots and cared less. Castor began to get worried. Was this moron going to crash the Stone? He began to doubt that Thomas was a pilot of any sort. The story ambled on and on. Thomas interrupted him-self to say, “Better hang on, everybody. And somebody ought to hold the baby.”

“I’m not a baby,” Lowell protested.

“I wish I was one, youngster.” His hand sought his control panel as Hazel gathered Lowell in. “But the joke of the whole thing was – A deafening rumble shook the ship, a sound somehow more earsplitting than their own jet. It continued for seconds only, as it died Thomas continued triumphantly:

the bird never did learn to tell time. Thanks, folks. The office’ll bill you.” He stood up with a catlike motion, slid across or without lifting his feet ‘Glad to have met you. G’bye!”

They were down on Phobos.

Pollux got up from where he had sprawled on the deck-plates – and bumped his head on the overhead. After that he tried to walk like Jason Thomas. He had weight, real weight, for the first time since Luna, but it amounted to only two ounces in his clothes. “I wonder how high I can jump here?” he said.

“Don’t try it,” Hazel advised. “Remember the escape velocity of this piece of real estate is only sixty-six feet a second.” “I don’t think a man could jump that fast”

“There was Ole Gunderson. He dived right around Phobos – a free circular orbit thirty-five miles long. Took him eighty-five minutes. He’d have been traveling yet. If they hadn’t grabbed as he came back around.”

“Yes, but wasn’t he an Olympic jumper or something? And didn’t he have to have a special rack or some such to take off from?”

“You wouldn’t have to jump,” Castor put in. “Sixty-six feet a second is forty-five miles an hour, so the circular speed comes out a bit more than thirty miles an hour. A man can run twenty miles an hour back home, easy. He could certainly get up to forty-five here.”

Pollux shook tiis head. “No traction.”

“Special spiked shoes and maybe a tangent launching ramp for the last hundred yards – then woosh! off the end and you’re gone for good.” “Okay, you try it, Grandpa. I’ll wave good-by to you.”

Roger Stone whistled loudly. “Quiet, please! If you armchair athletes are quite through, I have an announcement to make.” “Do we go groundside now, Dad?”

“Not if you don’t quit interrupting me. I’m going over to the War God. Anyone who wants to come along, or wishes to take a stroll outside, may do so – just as long as you settle the custody of Buster among you. Wear your boots; I understand they have steel strip walkways for the benefit of transients.”

Pollux was the first one suited up and into the lock, where he was surprised to find the rope ladder still rolled up. He wondered about Jason Thomas and decided that he must have jumped. . . a hundred-odd feet of drop wouldn’t hurt a man’s arches here. But when he opened the outer door he discovered that it was quite practical to walk straight down the side of the ship like a fly on a wall. He had heard of this but had not quite believed it, not on a planet . . . well, a moon.

The others followed him, Hazel carrying Lowell. Roger Stone stopped when they were down and looked around. “I could have sworn,” he said with a puzzled air, “that I spotted the War God not very far east of us just before we landed.”

“There is something sticking up over there,” Castor said, pointing north. The object was a rounded dome swelling up above the extremely near horizon – an horizon only two hundred yards away for Castor’s height of eye: The dome looked enormous but it grew rapidly smaller as they approached it and finally got it entirely above the horizon. The sharp curvature of the little globe played tricks on them; it was so small that it was possible to see that it was curved, but the habit of thinking of anything over the horizon as distant stayed with them.

Before they reached the dome they encountered one of the steel walking strips running across their path, and on it a man. He was spacesuited as they were and was carrying with ease a large coil of steel line, a hand-powered winch, and a ground anchor with big horns. Roger Stone stopped him. “Excuse me, friend but could you tell me the way to the R.S. War God? Berths thirty-two and -three, I believe she is.”

Off east there. Just follow this strip about five miles; you’ll raise her. Say, are you from the Rolling Stone?” “Yes. I’m her master. My name’s Stone, too.”

“Glad to know you, Captain. I’m just on my way out to respot your ship. You’ll find her in berth thirteen, west of here when you come back.”

The twins looked curiously at the equipment he was carrying. “Just with that?” asked Castor, thinking of the ticklish problem it had been to move

the Stone on Luna.

“Did you leave your gyros running?” asked the port jockey. “Yes,” answered Captain Stone.

“I won’t have any trouble. See you around.” He headed out to the ship. The family party turned east along the strip; the traction afforded by their boot magnets against steel made much easier walking. Hazel put Lowell down and let him run.

They were walking toward Mars, a great arc of which filled much of the eastern horizon. The planet rose appreciably as they progressed; like Earth in the Lunar sky Mars never rose nor set for any particular point of the satellite’s surface – but they were moving over the curve of Phobos so rapidly that theff own walking made it rise. About a mile farther along Meade spotted the bow of the War God silhouetted against the orange-red face of Mars. They hurried, but it was another three miles before they had her in sight down. to her fins.

At last they reached her – to find a temporary barrier of line and posts around her and signs prominently displayed: “WARNING! – QUARANTINE – no entrance by order of Phobos Port Authority.”

I can t read,” said Hazel.

Roger Stone pondered it ‘The rest of you stay here, or go for a walk – whatever you please. I’m going in. Mind you stay off the field proper.” “Shucks,” answered Hazel, “there’s plenty of time to see a ship coming in and run for it, the way they float in here. That’s all the residents do. But

don’t you want me to come with you, boy?”

“No its my pidgin.” He left them at the barrier, went toward the liner. They waited. Hazel passed the time by taking a throat lozenge from her gun and popping it in through her mouth valve; she gave one to Lowell. Presently they saw Roger walk up the side of the ship to a view port. He stayed there quite a whlle, then walked down again.

When he got back to them his face was stormy. Hazel said ‘No go, I take it?”

“None at all. Oh, I saw Van and he rapped out some irrelevant insults. But he did let me see Edith – through the port” “How did she look?”

“Wonderful, just wonderful! A little bit thinner perhaps, but not much. She blew a kiss for all of you.” He paused and frowned. “But I can’t get in and I can’t get her out.”

“You can’t blame Van,” Hazel pointed out. “It would mean his ticket.” “I’m not blaming anybody! I’m just mad, that’s all.”

“Well, what next?”

He thought about it. “The rest of you do what you like for the next hour or so. I’m going to the administration building – it’s that dome back there. I’ll meet you all at the ship – berth thirteen.”

The twins elected to walk on east while Meade and Hazel returned at once to the ship Buster was getting restless. The boys wanted a really good look at Mars. They had watched it through the Stone‘s ports, of course, on the approach – but this was different. . . more real, somehow – not framed like a television shot. Three more miles brought all of it in sight, or all of it that was illuminated, for the planet was in half phase to them, the Sun being at that point almost overhead.

They studied the ruddy orange deserts, the olive green fertile stretches, the canals stretching straight as truth across her fiat landscape. The south polar cap was tipped slightly toward them; it had almost disappeared. Facing them was the great arrowhead of Syrtis Major.

They agreed that it was beautiful, almost as beautiful as Luna – more beautiful perhaps than Earth in spite of Earth’s spectacular and always changing cloud displays. But after a while they grew bored with it and headed back to the ship.

They found berth thirteen without trouble and walked up into the ship. Meade had dinner ready; Hazel was playing with Buster. Their father came in just as they were ready to eat. “You,” announced Hazel, “looked as if you had bribed a chair-warmer.”

“Not quite.” He hesitated, then said, “I’m going into quarantine with Edith. I’ll come out when she does.” “But Daddy -” protested Meade.

“I’m not through. While I’m gone Hazel takes command. She is also head of this family.” “I always have been,” Hazel said smugly.

“Please, Mother. Boys, if she finds it necessary to break your arms, please be advised that the action is authorised in advance. You understand me?”

“Yes sir. – “Aye aye, sir.”

“Good. I’m going to pack now and leave.”

“But Daddy!” Meade objected, almost in tears, “aren’t you going to wait for dinner?”

He stopped and smiled. “Yes, sugar pie. You are getting to be a good cook, did you know?”

Castor glanced at Pollux, then said, “Uh, Dad, let me get this straight We are simply to wait here in the ship – on this under-sized medicine ball until you and Mother get out of hock?”

“Why, yes – no, that isn’t really necessary. I simply hadn’t thought about it. If Hazel is willing, you can close down the ship and go down to Mars. Phone us your address and we’ll join you there. Yes, I guess that’s the best scheme.”

The twins sighed with relief.

IV – “WELCOME TO MARS!”

Roger Stone promptly caught the epidemic disease and had to be nursed through it – and thereby extended the quarantine time It gave the twins that much more time in which to exercise their talent for trouble. The truncated family went from Phobos down to Marsport by shuttle – not the sort of shuttle operating between Pikes Peak and Earth’s station, but little glider rockets hardly more powerful than the ancient German war rockets. Mars’ circular-orbit speed is only a trifle over two miles per second.

Nevertheless the fares were high . . . and so were freight charges The twins had unloaded their cargo, moved it to the freight lots between the customs shed and the administration building and arranged for it to follow them down, all before they boarded the shuttle. They had been horrified when they were presented with the bill – payable in advance. It had come to more than the amount they had paid their father for the added ship’s costs of boosting the bicycles all the way to Mars.

Castor was still computing their costs and possible profits as the five Stones were strapping down for the trip down to Marsport. “Pol, he said fretfully, “we’d better by a darn sight get a good price for those bikes.”

“We will, Grandpa, we will. They’re good bikes.”

The thuttle swooped to a landing on the Grand Canal and was towed into a slip, rocking gently the while. The twins were glad to climb out; they had never before been in a water-borne vehicle and it seemed to them an undependable if not outright dangerous mode of travel. The little ship was unsealed with a soft sigh and they were breathing the air of Mars. It was thin but the pressure was not noticeably lower than that they had maintained in the Rolling Stone – a generation of the atmosphere project had made skin suits and respirators unnecessary. It was not cold; the Sun was right at the zenith. Meade sniffed as she climbed to the dock. “What’s the funny smell, Hazel?”

“Fresh air. Odd stuff, isn’t it? Come on, Lowell.” They all went inside the Hall of Welcome, that being the only exit. from the dock. Hazel looked around, spotted a desk marked ‘Visas’ and headed for it. “Come on, kids Let’s stick together.”

The clerk looked over their papers as if he had never seen anything of the sort before and didn’t want to now. “You had your physical examinations at Phohos port?” he said doubtfully.

“See for yourself. They’re all endorsed.”

“Well. . . you don’t have your property declaration filled out for immigration.” “We’re not imrnjgrants; we’re visitors.”

“Why didn’t you say so? You haven’t posted a bond; all terrestrial citizens have to post bonds.”

Pollux looked at Castor and shook his head. Hazel counted up to ten and replied, “We’re not terrestrials; we’re citizens of Luna Free State – and entitled to full reciprocity under the treaty of ’07. Look it up and see.”

“Oh.’. The clerk looked baffled and endorsed and stamped their papers. He stuck them in the stat machine, then handed them back. “That’ll be five pounds.”

“Five pounds?”

“Pounds Martian, of course. If you apply for citizenship it’s returnable.”

Hazel counted it out. Pollux converted the figure into System credit in his head and swore under his breath; he was beginning to think that Mars was the Land of the Fee. The clerk. recounted the money, then reached for a pile of pamphlets, handed them each one. “Welcome to Mars,” he said, smiling frigidly. “I know you’ll like it here.”

“I was beginning to wonder,” Hazel answered, accepting a pamphlet “Eh?”

“Never mind. Thank you.”

They turned away. Castor glanced at his pamphlet; it was titled:

WELCOME TO MARS! ! !

Compliments of the Marsport

Chamber of Commerce &

Booster Club

He skimmed the table of contents: What to See – Where to Eat – And Now to Sleep – “When in Rome-” – In Ancient Times – Souvenirs? of course – Business Opportunities – Facts & Figures about Marsport, Fastest Growing City in the System.

The inside, he found, contained more advertising space than copy. None of the pictures were stereo. Still, it was free; he stuck it in his pouch. They had not gotten more than ten steps away when the clerk suddenly called out, “Hey! Madam! Just a moment, please-comeback!”

Hazel turned around and advanced on him, her mouth set grimly. “What’s biting you, bub?” He pointed to her holster. “That gun. You can’t wear that – not in the city limits.”

“I can’t, eh?” She drew it, opened the charge chamber, and offered it to him with a sudden grin. “Have a cough drop?”

A very pleasant lady at the Travellers’ Aid desk, after determining that they really did not want to rent an ancient Martian tower believed to be at least a million years old but sealed and airconditioned nevertheless, made out for them a list of housekeeping apartments for rent. Hazel had vetoed going to any of the tourist hotels even for one night, after telephoning three and getting their rates. They tramped through a large part of the city, searching. There was no public transit system; many of the inhabitants used powered roller skates, most of them walked. The city was laid out in an oblong checkerboard with the main streets parallel to the canal. Except for a few remaining pressurised domes in ‘Old Town’ the buildings were all one-storey prefabricated boxlike structures without eaves or windows, all of depressing monotony.

The first apartment turned out to be two little stalls in the back of a private home – share refresher with family. The second was large enough but was in sniffing range of a large plastics plant; one of its exhalations seemed to be butyl mersaptan though Hazel insisted it put her more in mind of a dead goat The third – but none of them approached the standard of comfort they had enjoyed on the Moon, nor even that of the Rolling Stone.

Hazel came out of the last one they had jooked at, jumped back suddenly to keep from being run over by a delivery boy pulling a large hand truck, caught her breath and said, “What’ll it be, children? Pitch a tent, or go back up to the Stone?”

Pollux protested, “But we can’t do that We’ve got to sell our bicycles.”

“Shut up, Junior,” his brother told him ‘Hazel, I thought there was one more? “Casa” something?”

“Casa Mañana Apartments, way out south along the canal – and likely no better than the rest Okay, troops, mush on!”

The buildings thinned out and they saw some of the heliotropic Martian vegetation, spreading greedy hands to the Sun. Lowell began to complain at the walk. “Carry me, Grandma Hazel!”

“Nothing doing, pet,” she said emphatically, “your legs are younger than mine.” Meade stopped. “My feet hurt, too.”

“Nonsense! This is just a shade over one-third gravity.”

“Maybe so, but it’s twice what it is back home and we’ve been in free fall for half a year and more. Is it much farther?” “Sissy!”

The twins’ feet hurt, too, but they would not admit it They alternated taking Buster piggy-back the rest of the way. Casa Mañana turned out to be quite new and, by their suddenly altered standards, acceptable. The walls were of compacted sand, doubled against the bitter nights; the roof was of sheet metal sandwich with glass-wool core for insulation. It was a long, low building which made Hazel think of chicken coops but she kept the thought to herself. It had no windows but there were sufficient glow tubes and passable air ducting.

The apartment which the owner and manager showed to them consisted of two tiny cubicles, a refresher, and a general room. Hazel looked them over. “Mr. d’Avril, don’t you have something a bit larger?”

“Well, yes, ma’am, I do – but I hate to rent larger ones to such a small family with the tourist season just opening up: I’ll bring in a cot for the youngster.”

She explained that two more adults would be coming. He considered this. “You dbn’t know how long the War God will be quarantined? “Not the slightest”

“Then why don’t we play that hand after it’s dealt? We’ll accomodate you somehow; that’s a promise.” Hazel decided to close the deal; her feet were killing her. “How much?”

“Four hundred and fifty a month – four and a quarter if you take a lease for the whole season.”

At first Hazel was too surprised to protest She had not inquired rents at the other places since she had not considered renting them. “Pounds or credits?” she said feebly.

“Why, pounds, of course.”

“See here, I don’t want to buy this du – this place. I just want to use it for a while.”

Mr. d’Avril looked hurt. “You needn’t do either one, ma’am. With ships arriving every day now I’ll have my pick of tenants. My prices are considered very reasonable. The Property Owner’s Association has tried to get me to up ’em – and that’s a fact”

Hazel dug into her memory to recall how to compare a hotel price with a monthly rental – add a zero to the daily rate; that was it Why, the man must be telling the truth! – if the hotel rates she had gotten were any guide. She shook her head. “I’m just a country girl, Mr. d’Avril. How much did this place cost to build?”

Again he looked hurt ‘You’re not looking at it properly, ma’am. Every so often we have a big load of tourists dumped on us. They stay awhile, then they go away and we have no rent coming in at all. And you’d be surprised how these cold nights nibble away at a house. We can’t build the way the Martians could.”

Hazel gave up. “Is that season discount you mentioned good from now to Venus departure?”

“Sorry, ma’am. It has to be the whole season.” The next favorable time to shape an orbit for Venus was ninety-six Earth-standard days away – ninety-four Mars days – whereas the ‘whole season’ ran for the next fifteen months, more than half a Martian year before Earth and Mars would again be in a position to permit a minimum-fuel orbit.

“We’ll take it by the month. May I borrow your stylus? I don’t have that much cash on me.”

Hazel felt better after dinner. The Sun was down and the night would soon be too bitter for any human not in a heated suit, but inside Casa Mañana it was cozy, even though cramped. Mr. d’Avril, for an extra charge only mildly extortionate, had consented to plug in television for them and Hazel was enjoying for the first time in months one of her own shows. She noted that they had rewritten it in New York, as usual, and, again as usual, she found the changes no improvement. But she could recognise some of the dialogue and most of the story line.

That Galactic Overlord – he was a baddy, he was! Maybe she should kill him off again.

They could try to find a cheaper place tomorrow. At least as long as the show kept up its audience rating the family wouldn’t starve, but she hated to think of Roger’s face when he heard what rent he was paying. Mars! All right to visit, maybe, but no place to live. She frowned.

The twins were whispering in their own cubicle about some involved financial dealing; Meade was knitting quietly and watching the screen. She caught Hazel’s expression. “What were you thinking about, Grandmother?”

“I know what she’s thinking about!” announced Lowell.

“If you do, keep it to yourself. Nothing much, Meade – that pipsqueak clerk. Imagine the nerve of him, saying I couldn’t pack a gun!”

– FREE ENTERPRISE

The twins started out to storm the marts of trade next morning after breakfast Hazel cautioned them. “Be back in time for dinner. And try not to commit any capital crimes.”

“What are they here?”

“Um, let me see. Abandonment without shelter. . . pollution of the water supply . . . violation of treaty regulations with the natives – I think. that’s about all.”

“Murder?”

“Killing is largely a civil matter here – but they stick you for the prospective earnings of your victim for whatever his life expectancy was. Expensive. Very expensive, if the prices we’ve run into are any guide. Probably leave you indentured the rest of your life.”

“Hmm – We’ll be careful. Take note of that, Pol. Don’t kill anybody.” “You take note of it. You’re the one with the bad temper.”

“Back sharp at six, boys. Have you adjusted your watches?”

“Pol slowed his down; I’m leaving mine on Greenwich rate.” “Sensible.”

“Pol!” put in Lowell. “Cas! Take me along!” “Can’t. do it, sprout. Business.”

“Take me! I want to see a Martian. Grandma Hazel, when am I going to. see a Martian?”

She hesitated. Ever since an unfortunate but instructive incident forty years earlier a prime purpose of the planetary government had been to keep humans as far away from the true Martians as possible – tourists most especially. Lowell had less chance of getting his wish than a European child visiting Manhattan would have of seeing an American Indian. “Well, Lowell, it’s like this -The twins left hastily, not wishing to be drawn into what was sure to be a fruitless debate.

They soon found the street catering to the needs of prospectors. They picked a medium-sized shop displaying the sign of Angelo & Sons, Ltd., General Outfitters, which promised ‘Bed-rolls, Geiger Counters, Sand Cycles, Assaying Service, Black-Light Lamps, Firearms, Hardware- Ironmongery – Ask for It; We’ve Got It or Can Get It’.

Inside they found a single shopkeeper leaning against a counter while picking his teeth and playing with something that moved on the counter top. Pollux glanced curiously at it; aside from the fact that it was covered with fur and seemed to be roughly circular, he could not make out what it was. Some sort of Martian dingus probably. He would investigate later – business first.

The shopkeeper straightened up and remarked with professional cheer, “Good morning, gentlemen. Welcome to Mars.” “How did you know?” asked Castor.

“Know what?”

“That we had just gotten here.”

“Eh? That’s hard to say. You’ve still got some free fall in your walk and – oh, I don’t know. Little things that add up automatically. You get to know.”

Pollux shot Castor a glance of warning; Castor nodded. This man’s ancestors, he realised subconsciously, had plied the Mediterranean, sizing up customers, buying cheap and selling dear. “You’re Mr. Angelo?”

“I’m Tony Angelo. Which one did you want?”

“Uh, no one in particular, Mr. Angelo. We were just looking around.” “Help yourselves. Looking for souvenirs?”

“Well, maybe.”

“How about this?” Mr. Angelo reached into a box behind him and pulled out a battered face mask. “A sandstorm mask with the lenses pitted by the sands of Mars. You can hang it up in your parlor and tell a real thiller about how it got that way and how lucky you are to be alive. It won’t add much to your baggage weight allowance and I can let you have it cheap – I’d have to replace the lenses before I could sell it to the trade.”

Pollux was beginning to prowl the stock, edging towards the bicycles; Castor decided that he should keep Mr. Angelo engaged while his brother picked up a few facts, “Well, I don’t know,” he replied. “I wouldn’t want to tell a string of lies about it”

“Not Lies, just creative storytelling. After all, it could have happened – it did happen to the chap that wore it; I know him. But never mind.” He put the mask back. “I’ve got some honest-to-goodness Martian gems, only K’Raath HimseIf knows how old – but they are very expensive. And I’ve got some others that can’t be told from the real ones except in a laboratory under polarised light; they come from New Jersey and aren’t expensive at all. What’s your pleasure?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Castor repeated, “Say Mr. Angelo, what is this? At first I thought it was a fur cap; now I see its alive” Castor pointed to the furry heap on the counter. It was slowly slithering toward the edge.

The shopkeeper reached out and headed it back to the middle. “That? That’s a “flat cat”.” “”Flat cat?”“

“It has a Latin name but I never bothered to learn it.” Angelo tickled it with a forefinger; it began to purr like a high-pitched buzzer. It had no discernible features, being merely a pie-shaped mass of sleek red fur a little darker than Castor’s own hair. “They’re affectionate little things and many of the sand rats keep them for pets – a man has to have someone to talk to when he’s out prospecting and a flat cat is better than a wife because it can’t talk back. It just purrs and snuggles up to you. Pick it up.”

Castor did so, trying not seem gingerly about it The flat cat promptly plastered itself to Castor’s shirt, fattened its shape a little to fit better the crook of the boy’s arm, and changed its purr to a low throbbing which Castor could feel vibrate in his chest. He looked down and three beady little eyes stared trust-fully back up at him, then closed and disappeared completely. A little sigh interrupted the purrs and the creature snuggled closer.

Castor chuckled ‘It is like a cat, isn’t it? “Except that it doesn’t scratch. Want to buy it?”

Castor hesitated. He found himself thinking of Lowell’s anxiety to see a ‘real Martian’. Well, this was a ‘Martian’, wasn’t it? A sort of a Martian. “I wouldn’t know how to take care of it”

“No trouble at all. In the first place they’re cleanly little heasties – no problem that way. And they’ll eat anything; they love garbage. Feed it every week or so and let it have all the water it will take every month or six weeks – it doesn’t matter really; if it isn’t fed or watered it just slows down until it is. Doesn’t hurt a bit And you don’t even have see that it keeps warm. Let me show you.” He reached out and took the flat cat back, jiggled it in his hand. It promptly curled up into a ball.

“See that? Like everything else on Mars, it can wrap itself up when the weather is bad. A real survivor type.” The shopkeeper started to mention another of its survival characteristics, then decided it had no bearing on the transaction. “How about it? I’ll make you a good price.”

Castor decided that Lowell would love it – and besides, it was a legitimate business expense, chargeable to good will. “How much?”

Angelo hesitated, trying to estimate what the traffic would bear, since a flat cat on Mars had roughly the cash value of still another kitten on a Missouri farm. Still, the boys must be rich or they wouldn’t be here – just in and with spending money burning holes in their pockets, no doubt Business had been terrible lately anyhow. “A pound and a half,” he said firmly.

Castor was surprised at how reasonable the price was. “That seems like quite a lot,” he said automatically. Angelo shrugged. “It likes you. Suppose we say a pound?”

Castor was again surprised, this time at the speed and the size of the mark-down. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “Well. . . ten per cent off for cash.”

Out of the corner of his eye Castor could see that Pollux had finished inspecting the rack of bicycles and was coming back. He decided to clear the decks and establish that good will, if possible, before Pol got down to business. “Done.” He fished out a pound note, received his change, and picked up the flat cat ‘Come to papa, Fuzzy Britches.” Fuzzy Britches came to papa, snuggled up and purred.

Pollux came back, stared at the junior Martian. “What in the world?” “Meet the newest member of the family. We just bought a flat cat”

“We?” Pollux started to protest that it was no folly of his, but caught the warning in Castor’s eye in time. “Uh, Mr. Angelo, I don’t see any prices marked?”

The shopkeeper nodded. “That’s right The sand rats like to haggle and we accommodate them. It comes to the same thing in the long run. We always settle at list: they know it and we know it, but it’s part of their social life. A prospector doesn’t get much.”

“That Raleigh Special over there – what’s the list on it?” Pollux had picked it because it looked very much like the sand-cycle their father had delivered for them to Captain Vandenbergh when he had gone into quarantine.

“You. want to buy that bike?”

Castor shook his head a sixteenth of an inch; Pollux answered, “Well, no, I was just pricing it. I couldn’t take it Sunside. you know.”

“Well, seeing that there are no regular customers around, I’ll tell you. List is three hundred and seventy-five – and a bargain!”

“Whew! That seems high.”

“A bargain. She’s a real beauty. Try any of the other dealers.”

“Mr. Angelo,” Castor said carefully, “suppose I offered to sell you one just like it, not new but reconditioned as good as new and looking new, for just half that?”

“Eh? I’d probably say you were crazy”

“I mean it I’ve got it to sell. You might as well have the benefit of the low price as one of your competitors, I’m not going to offer it retail; this is for dealers.”

“Mmm. . . you didn’t come in here to buy souvenirs, did you?” “No, sir.”

“If you had come to me with that proposition four months ago, and could have backed it up, I’d have jumped at it. Now. . . well, no.” “Why not? it’s a good bike I’m offering you. A real bargain.”

“I’m not disputing it.” He reached out and stroked the flat cat. “Shucks, it can’t hurt anything to tell you why. Come along.”

He led them into the rear, past shelves crammed with merchandise, and on out behind the store. He waved a hand at stacks of merchandise that looked all too familiar. “See that? Second-hand bikes. That shed back there is stuffed with ’em; that’s why I’ve got these stored in the open.”

Castor tried to keep surprise and dismay out of his voice. “So you’ve got secoud-hand bikes,” he said, “all beat-up and sand pitted. I’ve got second-hand bikes that look like new and will wear like new – and I can sell them cheaper than you can sell these, a lot cheaper. Don’t you want to bid on them, at least?”

Angelo shook his head. “Brother, I admit that I didn’t take you for a jobber. But I have bad news for you. You can’t sell them to me; you can’t sell them to my competitors; you can’t sell them anywhere.”

“Why not?”

“Because there aren’t any retail customers.” “Huh?”

“Haven’t you heard of the Hallelujah Node? Didn’t you notice I didn’t have any customers? Three fourths of the sand rats on Mars are swarming into town – but they’re not buying, leastwise not bicycles. They’re stocking up for the Asteroids and kicking in together to charter ships. That’s why I have used bikes; I had to take them back on chattel mortgages -and that’s why you can’t sell bikes. Sorry – I’d like to do business with you.”

The twins had heard of the Hallelujah, all right – the news bad reached them in space: a strike of both uranium and core metal out in the Asteroids. But they had given it only intellectual attention, the Asteroids no longer figuring into their plans.

“Two of my brothers have already gone,” Angelo went on, “and I might give it a whirl myself if I weren’t stuck with the store. But I’d close and reopen as strictly a tourist trap if I could unload my present stock. That’s how bad things are.”

They crept out into the street as soon as they could do so gracefully. Pollux looked at Castor. “Want to buy a bicycle, sucker?” “Thanks, I’ve got one. Want to buy a flat cat?”

“Not likely. Say, let’s go over to the receiving dock. If any tourists are coming in, we might find another sucker to unload that thing on. We might even show a small profit – on flat cats, that is.”

“No, you don’t. Fuzzy Britches is for Buster – that’s settled. But let’s go over anyway; our bikes might be down.” “Who Ceres?”

“I do. Even if we can’t sell them, we can ride a couple of them. My feet hurt.”

Their shipment was not yet down from Phobos but it was expected about an hour hence. They stopped in the Old Southern Dining Room & Soda Fountain across from the Hall of Welcome. There they nursed sodas, petted Fuzzy Britches, and considered their troubles. “I don’t mind losing the money so much –“ Castor started in.

“I do!”

“Well, so do I. But what really hurts is the way Dad will laugh when he finds out. And what he’ll say.” “Not to mention Hazel.”

“Yes, Hazel. Junior, weve just got to figure out some way of picking up some money before we have to tell them.”

“With what? Our capital is gone. And Dad wouldn’t let us touch any more of our money even if he were here – which he isn’t.” “Then it has to be a way without capital.”

“Not many. Not for real money.”

“Hazel makes plenty credits without capital.”

“You aren’t suggesting that we write a television serial?” Pollux sounded almost shocked. “Of course not. We don’t have a customer for one. But there must be a way. Start thinking.”

After a glum silence Pollux said, “Grandpa, did you notice that announcement in the Hall of Welcome of the Mars chess championship matches next month?”

“No. Why?”

“People bet on ’em here – same as race horses Earthside.” “I don’t like bets. You can lose.”

“Sometimes. But suppose we entered Buster?”

“Huh? Are you crazy? Enter him against the best players on Mars?”

“Why not? Hazel used to be Luna champion, but Buster beats her regularly.” “But you know why. He reads her mind.”

“That’s precisely what I am talking about”

Castor shook his head. “It wouldn’t be honest, Junior.” “Since when did they pass a law against telepathy?”

“Anyhow you don’t know for certain that he does read her mind. And you don’t know that he could read a stranger’s mind. And it would take plenty cash to set up a good bet – which we haven’t got. And besides, we might lose.

“Okay, okay, it was just a thought You produce one.”

Castor frowned. “I don’t have one. Let’s go back over and see if our bikes are in. If they are, let’s treat ourselves to a day off and go sightseeing. We might as well get some use out of those bikes; they cost us enough.” He stood up.

Pollux sat still and stared at his glass. Castor added, “Come on.” Pollux said, “Sit down, Grandpa. I think I’m getting an idea.” “Don’t frighten it”

“Quiet.” Presently Pollux said, “Grandpa, you and I have just arrived here. We want to go sightseeing – so we immediately think of our bikes. Why wouldn’t tourists like to do the same thing – and pay for it?”

“Huh?” Castor thought about it ‘There must be some catch in it – or somebody would have done it long before this.”

“Not necessarily. it has only been the past few years that you could get a tourist visa to Mars; you came as a colonist or you didn’t come at all. I’d guess that nobody has thought of shipping bikes to Mars for tourists. Bikes cost plenty and they have been imported just for prospectors – for work, because a sand rat could cover four or five times as much territory on a sand cycle as on foot I’ll bet nobody here has ever thought of them for pleasure.”

“What do you want us to do? Paint a sign and then stand under it, shouting, “Bicycles! Get your bicycle here! You can’t see the sights of Mars without a bicycle”.”

Pollux thought it over. “We could do worse. But we would do better to try to sell somebody else on it, somebody who has the means to get it going. Shucks, we couldn’t even rent a lot for our bike stand.”

“There’s the soft point in the whole deal. We tell somebody and what does he do? He doesn’t buy our bikes; he goes to Tony Angelo and makes a deal with him to put Angelo’s bikes to work, at a lower cost.”

“Use your head, Grandpa. Angelo and the other dealers won’t rent their new machines to tourists; they cost too much. And tourists won’t rent that junk Angelo has in his back lot, they’re in a holiday mood; they’ll go for something new and shiny and cheerful. And for rental purposes. Remember, our bikes aren’t just practically new; they are new. Anybody who rents anything knows it has been used before; he’s satisfied if it looks new.

Castor stood up again. “Okay, you’ve sold me. Now let’s see if you can sell it to somebody else. Pick a victim.”

“Sit down; what’s your hurry? Our benefactor is probably right under this roof.” “Huh?”

“What’s the first thing a tourist sees when he first comes out of the Hall of Welcome? The Old Southern Dining Room, that’s what. The bike stand ought to be right out in front of this restaurant”

“Let’s find the owner.”

Joe Pappalopoulis was in the kitchen; he came out wiping his hands on his apron. “What’s the matter, boys? You don’t like your soda? “Oh, the sodas were swell! Look, Mr. Pappalopoulis, can you spare us a few minutes?”

“Call me “Poppa”; you wear yourself out. Sure.”

“Thanks. I’m Cas Stone; this is my brother Pol. We live on Luna and we came in with a load you might be interested in.” “You got a load of imported food? I don’t use much. Just coffee and some flavors.”

“No, no, not food. How would you like to add a new line that would fit right in with your restaurant business? Twice as much volume and only one overhead.”

The owner took out a knife and began to pare his nails. “Keep talking.”

Pollux took over, explained his scheme with infectious enthusiasm. Pappalopoulis looked up from time to time, said nothing. When Pollux seemed to be slowing down Castor took over; ‘Besides renting them by the hour, day, or week, you set up sightseeing tours and charge extra for those.”

“The guides don’t cost you any salary; you make ’em pay for the concession and then allow them a percentage of the guide fee.” “They rent their own bikes from you, too.”

“No overhead; you’ve already got the best spot in town. You just arrange to be out in front every time a shuttle comes down and maybe pay one of your guides a commission on rentals he makes to watch the stand in between times.”

“But the best deal is the long-term lease. A tourist uses a bike one day; you point out to him how cheap he can get it for the full time of his stay and you get the full price of the bike back in one season. From then on you’re operating on other people’s money.

The restaurateur put his knife away and said, “Tony Angelo is a good businessman. Why don’t I buy second hand bikes from him- cheap?

Castor took the plunge. “Go look at his bikes. Just look at them, sand pits and worn-out tires and all. Then we’ll meet his price – with better bikes.” “Any price he names?”

“Any firm price, not a phony. If his price is really low, we’ll buy his bikes ourselves.” Pollux looked a warning but Castor ignored it ‘We can undersell any legitimate price he can afford to make – with better merchandise. Let’s go see his bikes.”

Pappalopoulis stood up. “I’ve seen bikes in from the desert We go see yours.”

“They may not be down yet.” But they were down. Joe Poppa looked them over without expression, but the twins were very glad of the hours they had spent making them brave with paint, gaudy with stripes, polish and new decals.

Castor picked out three he knew to be in tiptop shape and said, “How about a ride? I’d like to do some sightseeing myself – free. Pappalopoulis smiled for the first time. “Why not?”

They rode north along the canal clear to the power pile station, then back to the city, skirted it, and right down Clarke Boulevard to the Hall of Welcome and the Old Southern Dining Room. After they had dismounted and returned the vehicles to the pile. Castor signaled Pollux and waited silently.

The cafe owner said nothing for several moments. At last he said, “Nice ride, boys. Thanks.” “Don’t mention it”

He stared at the heap of bikes. “How much?”

Castor named a price. Pappalopoulis shook his head sadly, “That’s a lot of money.”

Before Pollux could name a lower price Castor said, “Make it easy on yourself. We’d rather be cut in on the gravy but we thought you might prefer to own them yourselves. So let’s make it a partnership; you run the business, we put up the bikes. Even split on the gross and you absorb the overhead. Fair enough?”

Pappalopoulis reached over and stroked the flat cat ‘Partnerships make quarrels,” he said thoughtfully.

“Have it your own way,” Castor answered. “Five per cent for cash.

Pappalopoulis pulled out a roll that would have choked a medium-large Venerian sand hog. “I buy ’em.”

The twins spent the afternoon exploring the city on foot and looking for presents for the rest of the family. When they started home their way led them back through the square between the receiving station and Poppa’s restaurant The sign now read:

THE OLD SOUTHERN DINING ROOM AND

TOURIST BUREAU

Sodas Souvenirs Candy Sightseeing Trips BICYCLES RENTED

Guide Service

See the Ancient Martian Ruins!!!

Pollux looked at it. “He’s a fast operator, all right. Maybe you should have insisted on a partnership.” “Don’t be greedy. We turned a profit, didn’t we?”

“I told you we would. Well, let’s get Fuzzy Britches home to Buster.”

VI – CAVEAT VENDOR

Fuzzy Britches was not an immediate success with Lowell. “Where its legs?” he said darkly. “If it’s a Martian, it ought to have three legs.” “Well,” argued Castor, “some Martians don’t have legs.”

“Prove it!”

“This one doesn’t That proves it”

Meade picked Fuzzy Britches up; it immediately began to buzz – whereupon Lowell demanded to hold it Meade passed it over. “I don’t see,” she remarked, “why anything as helpless as that would have such bright colors.”

“Think again, honey lamb,” advised Hazel. “Put that thing out on the desert sand and you would lose it at ten feet, Which might be a good idea.” “No!” answered Lowell.

“”No” what, dear?”

“Don’t you lose Fuzzy Britches. He’s mine.” The child left carrying the flat cat and cooing a lullaby to it. Fuzzy Britches might lack legs but it knew how to win friends; anyone who picked it up hated to put it down. There was something intensely satisfying about petting the furry thing. Hazel tried to analyse it but could not.

No one knew when the quarantine of the War God would be lifted. Therefore Meade was much surprised one morning to return to Casa Mañana and fined her father in the general room. “Daddy!” she yelled, swarming over him. “When did you get down?.

“Just now.” “Mummy, too?”

“Yes. She’s in the ‘fresher.”

Lowell stood in the doorway, watching them impassively. Roger Stone loosed himself from his daughter and said, “Good morning, Buster.” “Good morning, Daddy. This is Fuzzy Britches. He’s a Martian. He’s also a flat cat.”

“Glad to know you, Fuzzy Britches. Did you say “flat cat”?” “Yes.”

“Very well. But it looks more like a wig.”

Dr. Stone entered, was subjected to the same treatment by Meade, then turned to Lowell. He permitted her to kiss him, then said, “Mama, this is Fuzzy Britches. Say hello to him.”

“How do you do, Fuzzy Britches? Meade, where are your brothers? And your grandmother?” Meade looked upset. “I was afraid you would get around to that. The twins are in jail again.” Roger Stone groaned. “Oh, no, not again! Edith, we should have stayed on Phobos.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Well, let’s face it What is the charge this time, Meade?” “Fraud and conspiring to evade the customs duties.”

“I feel better. The last time but one, you’ll remember, it was experimenting with atomics inside the city limits and without license. But why aren’t they out on bail? Or is there some-thing worse you haven’t told us?”

“No, it’s just that the court has tied up their bank account and Hazel wouldn’t get them bond. She said they were safer where they were.” “Good for Hazel!”

“Daddy, if we hurry we can get back downtown for the hearing. I’ll tell you and Mummy about it on the way.”

The ‘fraud’ part of it came from Mr. Pappalopoulis; the rest of it came straight from the planetary government. Mars, being in a state of expanding economy, just beginning to be self-supporting and only recently of declared sovereignty, had a strongly selective tariff. Being forced to import much and having comparatively little to export which could not be had cheaper Earthside, all her economic statutes and regulations were bent toward relieving her chronic credit gap; Articles not produced on Mars but needed for her economy came in duty free; articles of luxury or pleasure carried

very high rates; articles manufactured on Mars were completely protected by embargo against outside competition.

Bicycles were classed by the Import Commission as duty free since they were necessary to prospecting – but bicycles used for pleasure became ‘luxury items’. The customs authorities had gotten around to noticing the final disposition of the cargo of the Rolling Stone. “Of courss somebody put them up to it,” continued Meade, “but Mr. Angelo swears he didn’t do it and I believe him. He’s nice.”

“That’s clear enough. What’s the fraud angle?”

“Oh, that!” The bicycles had at once been impounded for unpaid duty penalties and costs whereupon their new owner had sworn an information charging fraud. “He’s getting a civil suit, too, but I think Hazel has it under control. Mr. Poppa says he just wants his bicycles back; he’s losing business. He’s not mad at anybody.”

“I would be,” Roger Stone answered grimly. “I intend to skin those two boys with a dull knife. What makes Hazel think she can square Mr. Pappa- et-cetera? Just what, I’d like to know?”

“She got a temporary court order freeing the bicycles to Mr. Poppa pending the outcome of the hearing; she had to put up a delivery bond on the bicycles. So Mr. Poppa dropped the fraud matter and is waiting on the civil suit to see if he’s hurt”

“Hmm – My bank account feels a little better anyway. Well, dear, we might as well go down and get it over with. There doesn’t seem to be anything here that a long check book can’t cover.”

“Yes, dear.”

“Remind me to buy a pair of Oregon boots on the way home. Meade, how much is this tariff?” “Forty per cent.”

“Not too bad. They probably made more profit than that”

“But that’s not all, Daddy. Forty per cent, plus another forty per cent penalty – plus confiscation of the bicycles.” “Plus two weeks in pillory, I hope?”

“Don’t do anything hasty, Daddy. Hazel is arguing the case.” “Since when was she admitted to the bar?”

“I don’t know, but it seems to be all right She got that court order.”

“Dear,” said Dr. Stone, “Shouldn’t the boys have a regular lawyer? Your mother is a wonderful person, but she is sometimes just a bit impetuous.” “If you mean she’s as crazy as a skew orbit, I agree with you. But I’m betting on Hazel anyhow. We’ll let her have her turn at the board. It probably

won’t cost me much more.”

“As you say, dear.”

They slipped into the back of the courtroom, which appeaed to be a church on some other days. Hazel was up front, talking to the judge. She saw them come in but did not appear to recognise them. The twins, looking very sober, were sitting together near the bench; they recognised their parents but took their cue from their grandmother.

“May it please the court,” said Hazel, “I am a stranger here in a strange land I am not skilled in your laws nor sophisticate in your customs. If I err, I pray the court to forgive me in advance and help me back to the proper path.”

The judge leaned back and looked at her. “We were over all that earlier this morning.” “Sure, judge, but it looks good in the record.”

“Do you expect to get me reversed?”

“Oh, no! We’ll settle the whole thing right here and now, I’d guess.”

“I wouldn’t venture to guess. I told you this morning that I would advise you as to the law, if need be. As to courtroom formalities, this Is a frontier. I can remember the time when, if one of us became involved in a misadventure which caused public disapproval, the matter was settled by calling a town meeting and taking a show of hands – and I’ve no doubt that as much justice was dispensed that way as any other. Times have changed but I don’t think you will find this court much bothered by etiquette. Proceed.”

“Thanks, judge. This young fellow here – “ She hooked a thumb at the prosecutor’s table. “ – would have you believe that my boys cooked up a nefarious scheme to swindle the citizens of this nation out of their rightful and lawful taxes. I deny that. Then he asks you to believe that, having hatched this Machiavellian plot, they carried it through and got away with it, until the hand of justice, slow but sure, descended on them and grabbed them. That’s a pack of nonsense, too.”

“One moment I thought you stipulated this morning to the alleged facts?”

“I admitted that my boys didn’t pay duty on those bikes. I didn’t admit anything else. They didn’t pay duty because nobody asked them to pay.”

“I see your point You’ll have to lay a foundation for that and get it in by proper evidence later. I can see that this is going to be a little involved.”

“It needn’t be, if we’ll all tell the truth and shame the devil.” She paused and looked puzzled. “Warburton . . . Warburton . . .” she said slowly, “Your name is Warburton, Judge? Any kinfolk on Luna?”

The judge squared his shoulders. “I’m a hereditary citizen of the Free State,” he said proudly. “Oscar Warburton was my grandfather.”

“That’s it!” agreed Hazel. “It’s been bothering me all morning but the numbers didn’t click into place until I noticed your profile just now. I knew your, granddaddy well. I’m a Founding Father, too.”

“How’s that? There weren’t any Stones on the roster.” “Hazel Meade Stone.”

“You’re Hazel Meade? But you can’t be!You must be dead!” “Take another look, Judge. I’m Hazel Meade.”

“Well, by the breath of K’Raath! Excuse me, ma’am. We must get together when this is over.” He straightened up again. “In the meantime I trust you realize that this in no way affects the case before us?”

“Oh, naturally not! But I must say it makes me feel better to know who’s sitting on this case. Your granddaddy was a just man.” “Thank you. And now shall we proceed?”

The young prosecutor was on his feet. “May it please the court!” “May what. please the court?”

“We feel that this is most irregular. We feel that under the circumstances the only proper procedure is for this court to disqualify itself. We feel -”

“Cut out that “we” stuff, Herbert You’re neither an editor nor a potentate. Motion denied. You know as well as I do that Judge Bonelli is laid up sick. I don’t propose to clutter up the calendar on the spurious – theory that I can’t count fingers in front of my face.” He glanced at the clock. “In fact, unless one of you has new facts to produce – facts, not theories – I’m going to assume that you have both stipulated to the same body of facts. Objection?”

“Okay with me, Judge.”

“No objection,” the prosecutor said wearily.

“You may continue, ma’am. I think we ought to wind this up in about ten minutes, if you both will stick to the subject. Let’s have your theory.” “Yes, your honor. First, I want you to take a look at those two young and innocent lads and see for yourself that they could not be up to anything

criminal.” Castor and Pollux made a mighty effort to look the description; they were not notably successful.

Judge Warburton looked at them and scratched his chin. “That’s a conclusion, ma’am. I can’t see any wings sprouting from here.”

“Forget it, then. They’re a couple of little hellions, both of them. They’ve given me plenty of grief. But this time they didn’t do anything wrong and they deserve a vote of thanks from your chamber of commerce – and from the citizens of Mars Cornmonwealth.

“The first part sounds plausible. The latter part is outside the jurisdiction of this court”

“You’ll see. The key to this case is whether or not a bicycle is a production item, or a luxury. Right?”

“Correct And the distinction depends on the end use of the imported article. Our tariff schedule is flexible in that respect. Shall I cite the pertinent cases?”

“Oh, don’t bother!”

Her son looked her over. “Hazel, it occurs to me that the the end use of sightseeing, that the defendants knew that, that they even suggested that end use and made it part of their sales argument, and that they neglected to inform the buyer of the customs status of the articles in question. Correct?”

“Right to nine decimals, Judge.”

“I’ve not yet gotten a glimpse of your theory. Surely you are not contending that sightseeing is anything but a luxury?” “Oh, it’s a luxury all right!”

“Madam, it seems to me that you are doing your grandsons no good. If you will withdraw, I will appoint counsel.”

“Better ask them, Judge.”

“I intended to.” He looked inquiringly at the twins. “Are you satisfied with your representation?”

Castor caught Pollux’s eye, then answered promptly, “We’re as much in the dark as you are, sir – but we’ll string along with grandmother.” “I admire your courage at least Proceed, ma’am”

“We agreed that sightseeing is a luxury. But “luxury” is a relative term. Luxury for whom? Roast suckling pig is a luxury for you and me-” “It certainly is. I haven’t tasted one on this planet”

“- but it’s an early death for the pig. Will the court take judicial notice of an activity known as “Mars” Invisible Export?”“ “The tourist trade? Certainly, if it’s necessary to your theory.”

“Objection!”

“Just hang on to that objection, Herbert; she may not establish a connection. Proceed.”

“Let’s find out who eats that pig. Your tariff rules, so it has been explained, are to keep citizens of the Commonwealth from wasting valuable foreign exchange on unnecessary frills. You’ve got a credit gap -”

“Regrettably, we have. We don’t propose to increase it”

“That’s my point Who pays the bill? Do you go sightseeing? Does he?” She pointed again at the prosecutor. “Shucks, no! It’s old stuff to both of you. But 1 do – I’m a tourist I rented one of those bicycles not a week ago – and helped close your credit gap. Your honor, we contend that the renting of bicycles to tourists, albeit a luxury to the tourist, is a productive activity for export to the unmixed benefit of every citizen of the Commonwealth and that therefore those bicycles are “articles of production” within the meaning and intent of your tariff laws!”

“Finished?” She nodded. “Herbert?”

“Your honor, this is ridiculous! The prosecution has clearly established its case and the defense does not even dare to dispute it I have never heard a more outlandish mixture of special pleading and distortion of the facts. But I am sure the facts are clear to the court. The end use is sightseeing, which the defence agrees is a luxury. Now a luxury is a luxury -,

“Not to the pig, son.”

“.”The pig?” What pig? There are no pigs in this case; there isn’t a pig on Mars. If we -” “Herbert! Have you anything to add?”

“I – “ The young prosecutor slumped. “Sorry Dad, I got excited. We rest.”

The judge turned to Hazel. “He a good boy, but he’s impetuous – like yours. I’ll make a lawyer out of him yet.” He straightened up. “And the court rests – ten minutes out for a pipe. Don’t go away.” He ducked out

The twins whispered and fidgeted; Hazel caught the eyes of her son and daughter-in-law and gave them a solemn wink. Judge Warburton returned in less than ten minutes and the bailiff shouted for order. The judge stared at the prisoners. “The court rules,” he said solemnly, “that the bicycles in question are “articles of production” within the meaning of the tariff code. The prisoners are acquitted and discharged. The clerk will release the delivery bond.”

There was very scattered applause, led by Hazel. “No demonstrations!” the judge said sharply. He looked again at the twins. “You’re extremely lucky – you know that, don’t you?”

“Yessir!”

“Then get out of my sight and try to stay out of trouble.”

Dinner was a happy family reunion despite the slight cloud that still hung over the twins. It was also quite good, Dr. Stone having quietly taken over the cooking. Captain Vandenbergh, down on the same shuttle, joined them for dinner. By disconnecting the TV receiver and placing it temporarily on Meade’s bunk and by leaving open the door to the twins’ cubicle so that Captain Vandenbergh’s chair could be backed into the door frame, it was just possible for all of them to sit down at once. Fuzzy Britches sat in Lowell’s lap; up till now the flat cat had had its own chair.

Roger Stone tried to push back his chair to make more room for his knees, found himself chock-a-block against the wall ‘Edith, we will just have to get a larger place.”

“Yes, dear. Hazel and I spoke to the landlord this afternoon.” “What did he say?”

Hazel took over. “I’m going to cut his gizaard out I reminded him that he had promised to take care of us when you two got down. He looked saintly and pointed out that he had given us two more cots. Lowell, quit feeding that mop with your own spoon!”

“Yes, Grandma Hazel. May I borrow yours?”

“No. But he did say that we could have the flat the Burkhardts are in, come Venus depasture. It has one more cubicle.”

“Better,” agreed Roger Stone, “but hardly a ballroom – and Venus departure is still three weeks away. Edith, we should have kept our nice room in the War God. How about it, Van? Want some house guests? Until you blast for Venus, that is?”

“Certainly.”

“Daddy! You wouldn’t go away again?” “I’m joking, snub nose.”

“I wasn’t” answered the liner’s captain. “Until Venus departure – or all the way to Venus and then back to Luna, if you choose. I got official approval of my recommendation this afternoon; you two can drag free in the War God until death or decommission do you past How about it? Come on to Venus with me?”

“We’ve been to Venus,” announced Meade. “Gloomy place.”

“Whether they take you up or not,” Hazel commented, “that’s quite a concession to get out of Four-Planets. Ordinarily that bunch of highbinders wouldn’t give away a bucketful of space.”

“They were afraid of the award an admiralty court might hand out.” Vandenbergh said drily. “Speaking of courts, I understand you put in a brilliant defence today, Hazel. Are you a lawyer, along with your other accomplishments?”

“No,” answered her son, “but she’s a fast talker.” “Who’s not a lawyer?”

“You aren’t”

“of course I am!”

“When and where? Be specific.”

“Years and years ago, back in Idaho – before you were born. I just never got around to mentioning it” Her son looked her over. “Hazel, it occurs to me that the records in Idaho are conveniently far away.” “None of your sass, boy. Anyway, the courthouse burned down.”

“I thought as much”

“In any case,” Vandenbergh put in soothingly, “Hazel got the boys off. When I heard about it, I expected that they would have to pay the duty at least You young fellows must have made quite a tidy profit”

“We did all right,” Castor admitted. “Nothing spectacular,” Pollux hedged.

“Figure it up,” Hazel said happily, “because I am going to collect a fee from you of exactly two-thirds your net profit for getting your necks out of a bight”

The twins stared at her. “Hazel, you wouldn’t?” Castor said uncertainly. “Wouldn’t I!”

“Don’t tease them, Mother,” Dr. Stone suggested.

“I’m not teasing. I want this to be a lesson to them. Boys, anybody who sits in a game without knowing the house rules is a sucker. Time you knew

it”

Vandenbergh put in smoothly, “It doesn’t matter too much these days when the government -” He stopped suddenly. “What in the world!” “What’s the matter, Van?” demanded Roger. Vandenbergh’s face cleared and he grinned sheepishly. Nothing. Just your flat cat crawling up my

leg. For a moment I thought I had wandered into your television show.”

Roger Stone shook his head. “Not mine, Hazel’s. And it wouldn’t have been a flat cat; it would have been human gore.”

Captain Vandenbergh picked up Fuzzy Britches, stroked it, then returned it to Lowell “It’s a Martian,” announced Lowell.”

“Yes?”

Hazel caught his attention. “The situation has multifarious ramifications not immediately apparent to the unassisted optic. This immature zygote holds it as the ultimate desideratum to consort with the dominate aborigine of the trifurcate variety. Through a judicious use of benign mendacity, Exhibit “A” performs as a surrogate in spirit if not in letter. Do you dig me, boy?”

Vandenbergh blinked. “I think so. Perhaps it’s just as well. They are certainly engaging little pets – though I wouldn’t have one in any ship of mine. They -”

“She means,” Lowell explained, “that I want to see a Martian with legs. I still do. Do you know one?” Hazel said, “Coach, I tried, but they were too big for me.”

Captain Vandenbergh stared at Lowell. “He’s quite serious about it, isn’t he?” “I’m afraid he is”

He turned to Dr. Stone. “Ma’am, I’ve fair connections around here and these things can always be arranged, in spite of treaties. Of course, there would be a certain element of danger – not much in my opinion.”

Dr. Stone answered, Captain, I have never considered danger to be an evaluating factor.” “Um, no, you wouldn’t, ma’am. Shall I try it?”

“If you would be so kind.”

“It will pay interest on my debt. I’ll let you know.” He dismissed the matter and turned again to the twins. “What profit-tax classification does your enterprise come under?”

“Profit tax?”

“Haven’t you figured it yet?”

“We didn’t know there was one.”

“I can see you haven’t done much importing and exporting, not on Mars anyhow. If you are a Commonwealth citizen, it all goes into income tax, of course. But if you come from out planet, you pay a single-shot tax on each transaction. Better find yourself a tax expert; the formula is somewhat complicated”

“We won’t pay it!” said Pollux.

His father answered quietly, “Haven’t you two been in jail in enough lately?”

Pollux shut up. For the next few minutes they exchanged glances, whispers, and shrugs. Presently Castor stood up. “Dad, Mother – may we be excused?”

“Certainly. If you can manage to squeeze out.” “No dessert, boys?”

“We aren’t very hungry.”

They went into town, to return an hour later not with a tax expert but with a tax guide they had picked up at the Chamber of Commerce. The adults were still seated in the general room, chatting; the table had been folded up to the ceiling. They threaded through the passageway of knees into their cubicle; they could be heard whispering in there from time to time.

Presently they came out. “Excuse us, folks. Uh, Hazel?” “What is it, Cas?”

“You said your fee was two-thirds of our net.”

“Huh? Did your leg come away in my hand, chum? I wouldn’t -”

“Oh, no, we’d rather pay it.” He reached out, dropped half a dozen small coins in her hand ‘There it is.” She looked at it ‘This is two-thirds of all you made on the deal?”

“Of course,” added Pollux, “it wasn’t a total loss. We had the use of the bicycles for a couple of hundred million miles.”

VII – FLAT CATS FACTORIAL

Vandenbergh made good his offer. Lowell and he went by stratorocket to the treaty town of Richardson, were gone about three days. When Lowell came back he had seen a Martian, he had talked with one. But he had been cautioned not to talk about it and his family could get no coherent account out of him.

But the simple matter of housing was more difficult than the presumably impossible problem of meeting a Martian. Roger Stone had had no luck in finding larger and more comfortable quarters, even after he had resigned himself to fantastic rentals. The town was bursting with tourists and would be until Venus departure, at which time those taking the triangular trip would leave – a majority, in fact. In the meantime they crowded the restaurants, took pictures of everything including each other, and ran their bicycles over the toes of pedestrians. Further packing a city already supersaturated were sand rats in from the desert and trying to arrange some way, any way, to get out to the Hallelujah Node in the Asteroid Belt.

Dr. Stone said one night at dinner, “Roger, tomorrow is rent day. Shall I pay it for a full month? Mr. d’Avril says that the Burkhardts are talking about staying on.”

“Pay it for six days only,” Hazel advised. “We can do better than this after Venus departure – I hope.” Roger Stone looked up and scowled. “Look here, why pay the rent at all?”

“What are you saying, dear?”

“Edith, I’ve been chewing this over in my mind. When we first came here our plans, such as they were, called for living here through one wait.” He referred to the fifteen months elapsed time from arrival Mars to Earth departure from Mars, using the economical orbits. Then we planned to shape orbit home. Fair enough, if this overrated tourist trap had decent housing. But I haven’t been able to start writing my book. When Buster isn’t climbing into my lap, his pet is slithering down the back of my neck.”

“What do you suggest, dear?”

“Go to Phobos tomorrow, get the old Rock ready to go, and blast for Venus when the others do.” “Loud cheers!” agreed Meade. “Let’s go!”

Dr. Stone said, “Meade, I thought you didn’t like Venus?”

“I don’t. But I don’t like it here and I’m tired all the time. I’d like to get back into free fall.” “You shouldn’t be tired. Perhaps I had better check you over.”

“Oh, Mother, I’m perfectly well! I don’t want to be poked at.” Lowell grinned. “I know why she wants to go to Venus – Mr. Magill.”

“Don’t be a snoop, Snoop!” Meade went on with quiet dignity. “In case anyone is interested, I am not interested in Second Officer Magill – and I wouldn’t be going in the Caravan in any case. Besides, I found out he afready has a wife in Colorado.” Hazel said, “Well, that’s legal. He’s still eligible off Earth,”

“Perhaps it is, but I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I,” Roger Stone cut in. “Meade, you weren’t really getting interested in this wolf in sheep’s clothing, were you?” “Of course not, Daddy!” She added, “But I suppose I’ll get married one of these days.”

“That’s the trouble with girls,” Castor commented. “Give them education – boom! They get married. Wasted.”

Hazel glared at them, “Oh, so? Where would you be if I hadn’t married?”

“It didn’t happen that way,” Roger Stone cut in, “so there is no use talking about other possibilities. They probably aren’t really possibilities at all, if only we understood it”

Pollux: “Predestination.” Castor: “Very shaky theory.”

Roger grinned. “I’m not a determinist and you can’t get my goat. I believe in free will.” Pollux: “Another very shaky theory.”

“Make up your minds,” their father told them. “You can’t have it both ways.”

“Why not?” asked Hazel. “Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.” “Not mathematical,” objected Pollux.

Castor nodded. “Just poetry.”

“And not very good poetry.”

“Shut up!” ordered their father. “Boys, it’s quite evident that you have gone to considerable trouble to change the subject. Why?” The twins swapped glances; Castor got the go-ahead. “Uh, Dad, the way we see it, this Venus proposition hasn’t been thought out” “Go on. I suppose you have an alternative suggestion?”

“Well, yes. But we didn’t mean to bring it up until after Venus departure.”

“I begin to whiff something. What you mean is that you intended to wait until the planetary aspects were wrong – too late to shape orbit for Venus.” “Well, there was no use in letting the matter get cluttered up with a side issue.”

“What matter? Speak up.”

Castor said worriedly, “Look, Dad, we aren’t unreasonable. We can compromise. How about this: you and Mother and Buster and Meade go to Venus in the War God. Captain Van would love to have you do it – you know that. And -”

“Slow up. And what would you be doing? And Hazel? Mother, are you in on this?” “Not that I know of. But I’m getting interested.”

“Castor, what’s on your mind? Speak up.”

Well, I will if you’ll just let me, sir. You and the rest of the family could have a pleasant trip back home – in a luxury liner. Hazel and Pol and I – well, I suppose you know that Mars will be in a favorable position for the Hallelujah Node in about six weeks?”

“For a cometary-type orbit, that is,” Pollux added.

“So it’s the Asteroids again,” their father said slowly. “We settled that about a year ago.” “But we’re a year older now.”

“More experienced.”

“You’re still not old enough for unlimited licenses. I suppose that is why you included your grandmother.” “Oh,no! Hazel is an asset.”

“Thank you, boys.”

“Hazel, you had no inkling of this latest wild scheme?”

“No. But I don’t think it’s so wild. I’m caught up and then some on my episodes – and I’m tired of this place. I’ve seen the Martian ruins; they’re in a poor state of repair. I’ve seen a canal; it has water in it. I understand that the rest of the planet is much the same, right through to chapter eighty- eight. And I’ve seen Venus. I’ve never seen the Asteroids.”

“Right!” agreed Castor. “We don’t like Mars. The place is one big clip joint” “Sharp operators,” added Pollux.

“Sharper than you are, you mean,” said Hazel.

“Never mind, Mother. Boys, it is out of the question. I brought my ship out from Luna; I intend to take her back.” He stood up. “You can give Mr. d’Avril notice, dear.”

“Dad!”

“Yes, Castor?”

“That was just a compromise offer. What we really hoped you would do – what we wanted you to do – was for all of us to go out to the Hallelujah.” “Eh? Why, that’s silly! I’m no meteor miner.”

“You could learn to be. Or you could just go for the ride. And make a profit on it, too.” “Yes? How?”

Castor wet his lips. “The sand rats are offering fabulous prices just for cold-sleep space. We could carry about twenty of them at least And we could put them down on Ceres on the way, let them outfit there’.

“Cas! I suppose you are aware that only seven out of ten cold-sleep passengers arrive alive in a long orbit?”

“Well. . . they know that That’s the risk they are taking.” Roger Stone shook his head. “We aren’t going, so I won’t have to find out if you are as cold-blooded as you sound. Have you ever seen a burial in space?”

“No, sir’.”

“I have. Let’s hear no more about cold-sleep freight.”

Castor passed it to Pollux, who took over: “Dad, if you won’t listen to us all going, do you have any objections to Cas and me going?” “Eh? How ‘do you mean?”

“As Asteroid miners, of course. We’re not afraid of cold-sleep. If we haven’t got a ship, that’s how we would have to go.” “Bravo!” said Hazel. “I’m going with you, boys,”

“Please, Mother!” He turned to his wife. “Edith, I sometimes wonder if we brought the right twins back from the hospital.”

“They may not be yours,” said Hazel, “but they are my grandsons, I’m sure of that. Hallelujah, here I come! Anybody coming with me?” Dr. Stone said quietly, “You know, dear, I don’t much care for Venus, either. And it would give you leisure for your book”

The Rolling Stone shaped orbit from Phobos outward bound for the Asteroids six weeks later. This was no easy lift like the one from Luna to Mars; in choosing to take a ‘cometary’ or fast orbit to the Hallelujah the Stones had perforce to accept an expensive change-of-motion of twelve and a half miles per second for the departure maneuver. A fast orbit differs from a maximum-economy orbit in that it cuts the orbit being abandoned at an angle instead of being smoothly tangent to it. . . much more expensive in reaction mass. The far end of the cometary orbit would be tangent to the orbit of the Hallelujah; matching at that point would be about the same for either orbit; it was the departure from Phobos-circum-Mars that would be rugged.

The choice of a cometary orbit was not a frivolous one. In the first place, it would have been necessary to wait more than one Earth year for Mars to be in the proper relation, orbit-wise, with the Hallelujah Node for the economical orbit; secondly, the travel time itself would be more than doubled

five hundred and eighty days for the economical orbit versus two hundred and sixty-nine days for the cometary orbit (a mere three days longer than the Luna-Mars trip).

Auxiliary tanks for single-H were fitted around the Stone‘s middle, giving her a fat and sloppy appearance, but greatly improving her mass-ratio for the ordeal. Port Pilot Jason Thomas supervised the refitting; the twins helped. Castor got up his nerve to ask Thomas how he had managed to conn the Stone in to a landing on their arrival. “Did you figure a ballistic before you came aboard, sir?”

Thomas put down his welding torch. “A ballistic? Shucks, no, son, I’ve been doing it so long that I know every little bit of space hereabouts by its freckles.”

Which was all the satisfaction Cas could get out of him The twins talked it over and concluded that piloting must be something more than a mathematical science.

In addition to more space for single-H certain modifications were made inside the ship. The weather outside the orbit of Mars is a steady ‘clear but cold’; no longer would they need reflecting foil against the Sun’s rays. Instead one side of the ship was painted with carbon black and the capacity of the air-heating system was increased by two coils. In the control room a time-delay variable-baseline stereoscopic radar was installed by means of which they would be able to see the actual shape of the Hallelujah when they reached it.

All of which was extremely expensive and the Galactic Overlord had to work overtime to pay for it Hazel did not help with the refitting. She stayed in her room and ground out, with Lowell’s critical help, more episodes in the gory but virtuous career of Captain John Sterling – alternating this activity with sending insulting messages and threats of blackmail and/or sit-down strike to her producers back in New York; she wanted an unreasonably large advance and she wanted it right now. She got it, by sending on episodes equal to the advance. She had to write the episodes in advance anyhow; this time the Rolling Stone would be alone, no liners comfortably near by. Once out of radio range of Mars, they would not be

able to contact Earth again until Ceres was in range of the Stone‘s modest equipment. They were not going to Ceres but would be not far away; the Hallelujah was riding almost the same orbit somewhat ahead of that tiny planet.

The boost to a cometary orbit left little margin for cargo but what there was the twins wanted to use, undeterred by their father’s blunt disapproval of the passengers-in-cold-sleep idea. Their next notion was to carry full outfits for themselves for meteor mining – rocket scooter, special suits, emergency shelter, keyed radioactive claiming stakes, centrifuge speegee tester, black lights, Geiger counters, prospecting radar, portable spark spectroscope, and everything else needed to go quietly rock-happy.

Their father said simply, “Your money?” “Of course. And we pay for the boost.”

“Go ahead. Go right ahead. Don’t let me discourage you. Any objections from me would simply confirm your preconceptions.” Castor was baffled by the lack of opposition. “What’s the matter with it, Dad? You worried about the danger involved?”

“Danger? Heavens, no! It’s your privilege to get yourselves killed in your own way. Anyhow, I don’t think you will. You’re young and you’re both

smart, even if you don’t show it sometimes, and you’re both in tiptop physical condition, and I’m sure you’ll know your equipment.”

“Then what is it?”

“Nothing. For myself, I long since came to the firm conclusion that a man can do more productive work, and make more money if this is his object, by sitting down with his hands in his pockets than by any form of physical activity. Do you happen to know the average yearly income of a meteor miner?”

“Well, no, but -”

“Less than six hundred a year.” “But some of them get rich!”

“Sure they do. And some make much less than six hundred a year; that’s an average, including the rich strikes. Just as a matter of curiosity, bearing in mind that most of those miners are experienced and able, what is it that you two expect to bring to this trade that will enable you to raise the yearly average? Speak up; don’t be shy.”

“Doggone it, Dad, what would you ship?”

“Me? Nothing. I have no talent for trade. I’m going out for the ride – and to take a look at the bones of Lucifer. I’m beginning to get interested in planetology. I may do a book about it-”

“What happened to your other book?”

“I hope that isn’t sarcasm, Cas. I expect to have it finished before we get there.” He adjourned the discussion by leaving. The twins turned to leave, found Hazel griamng at them. Castor scowled at her. “What are you smirking at, Hazel?”

“You two.”

“Well. . . why shouldn’t we have a whirl at meteor mining?”

“No reason. Go ahead; you can afford the luxury. But see here, boys, do you really want to know what to ship to make some money?” “Sure!”

“What’s your offer?”

“Percentage cut? Or flat fee? But we don’t pay if we don’t take your advice.”

“Oh, rats! I’ll give it to you free. If you get advice free, you won’t take it and I’ll be able to say, “I told you so!”“ “You would, too.”

“Of course I would. There’s no warmer pleasure than being able to tell a smart aleck, “I told you so, but you wouldn’t listen.” Okay, here it is, in the form of a question, just like an oracle: Who made money in all the other big mining rushes of history?”

“Why, the chaps who struck it rich, I suppose.”

“That’s a laugh. There are so few cases of prospectors who actually hung on to what they had found and died rich that they stand out like supernovae. Let’s take a famous rush, the California Gold Rush back in 1861- no, 1861 was something else; I forget. 1849, that was it – the ‘Forty- niners. Read about ’em in history?”

“Some.”

“There was a citizen named Sutter; they found gold on his place. Did it make him rich? It ruined him. But who did get rich?” “Tell us, Hazel. Don’t bother to dramatise it”

“Why not? I may put it in the show – serial numbers rubbed off, of course. I’ll tell you: everybody who had something the miners had to buy. Grocers, mostly. Boy, did they get rich! Hardware dealers. Men with stamping mills, Everybody but the poor miner. Even laundries in Honolulu.”

“Honolulu? But that’s way out in the Pacific, off China somewhere.”

“It was in Hawaii the last time I looked. But they used to ship dirty laundry from California clear to Honolulu to have it washed – both Ways by sailing ship. That’s about like having your dirty shirts shipped from Marsport to Luna. Boys, if you want to make money, set up a laundry in the Hallelujah. But it doesn’t have to be a laundry – just anything, so long as the miners want it and you’ve got it If your father wasn’t a Puritan at heart, I’d set up a well-run perfectly honest gambling hall! That’s like having a rich uncle.”

The twins considered their grandmother’s advice and went into the grocery business, with a few general store sidelines. They decided to stock only luxury foods, things that the miners would not be likely to have and which would bring highest prices per pound. They stocked antibiotics and

surgical drugs and vitamins as well, and some lightweight song-and-story projectors and a considerable quantity of spools to go with them. Pollux

found a supply of pretty-girl pictures, printed on thin stock in Japan and intended for calendars on Mars, and decided to take a flyer on them, since they didn’t weigh much. He pointed out to Castor that they could not lose entirely, since they could look at them themselves.

Dr. Stone found them, ran through them, and required him to send some of them back. The rest passed her censorship; they took them along. The last episode was speeding toward Earth; the last weld had been approved; the last pound of food and supplies was at last aboard. The

Stone lifted gently from Phobos and dropped toward Mars. A short gravity-well maneuver around Mars at the Stone‘s best throat temperature –

which produced a spine-grinding five gravities – and she was headed out and fast to the lonely reaches of space inhabited only by the wreckage of

the Ruined Planet.

“They fell easily and happily back into free fall routine. More advanced mathematical texts had been obtained for the boys on Mars; they did not have to be urged to study, having grown really interested – and this time they had no bicycles to divert their minds. Fuzzy Britches took to free fall if the creature had been born in space; if it was not being held and stroked by someone (which it usually was) it slithered over wall and bulkhead, or floated gently around the compartments, undulating happily.

Castor maintained that it could swim through the air; Pollux insisted that it could not and that its maneuvers arose entirely from the air currents of the ventilation system, They wasted considerable time, thought, and energy in trying to devise scientific tests to prove the matter, one way or the other. They were unsuccessful.

The flat cat did not care; it was warm, it was well fed, it was happy. It had numerous friends all willing to take time off to reward its tremendous and undiscriminating capacity for affection. Only one incident marred its voyage.

Roger Stone was strapped to his pilot’s chair, blocking out – so he said – a chapter in his book. If so, the snores may have helped. Fuzzy Britches was cruising along about its lawful occasions, all three eyes open and merry. It saw one of its friends; good maneuvering or a random air current enabled it to make a perfect landing – on Captain Stone’s face.

Roger came out of the chair with a yell, clutching at his face. He bounced against the safety belt, recovered, and pitched the flat cat away from him. Fuzzy Britches, offended but not hurt, flipped itself flat to its progress, air-checked and made another landing on the far wall.

Roger Stone used several other words, then shouted, “Who put that animated toupee on my face?” But the room was otherwise empty. Dr. Stone appeared at the hatch and said, “What is it, dear?”

“Oh, nothing – nothing important. Look, dear, would you return this tailend offspring of a dying planet to Buster? I’m trying to think.”

“Of course, dear.” She took it aft and gave it to Lowell, who promptly forgot it, being busy working out a complicated gambit against Hazel. The flat cat was not one to hold a grudge; there was not a mean bone in its body, had it had bones, which it did not The only emotion it could feel wholeheartedly was love. It got back to Roger just as he had. again fallen asleep.

It again settled on his face, purring happily.

Captain Stone proved himself a mature man. Knowing this time what it was,.he detached it gently and himself returned it to Lowell. “Keep it,” he said. “Don’t let go of it.” He was careful to close the door behind him.

He was equally careful that night to close the door of the stateroom he shared with his wife. The Rolling Stone, being a small private ship, did not have screens guarding her ventilation ducts; they of course had to be left open at all times. The flat cat found them a broad highway. Roger Stone had a nightmare in which he was suffocating, before his wife woke him and removed Fuzzy Britches from his face. He used some more words.

“It’s all right, dear,” she answered soothingly. “Go back to sleep.” She cuddled it in her arms and Fuzzy Britches settled for that.

The ship’s normal routine was disturbed the next day while everyone who could handle a wrench or a spot welder installed screens in the ducts.

Thirty-seven days out Fuzzy Britches had eight golden little kittens, exactly like their parent but only a couple of inches across when flat, marble- sized when contracted. Everyone, including Captain Stone thought they were cute; everyone enjoying petting them, stroking them with a gentle forefinger and listening carefully for the tiny purr, so high as to be almost beyond human ear range. Everyone enjoyed feeding them and they seemed to be hungry all the time.

Sixty-four days later the kittens had kittens, eight each. Sixty-four days after that, the one hundred and forty-sixth day after Phobos departure, the kittens’ kittens had kittens; that made five hundred and thirteen.

“This,” said Captain Stone, “has got to stop!” “Yes, dear.”

“I mean it At this rate we’ll run out of food before we get there, including the stuff the twins hope to sell. Besides that we’ll be suffocated under a mass of buzzing fur mats. What’s eight times five hundred and twelve? Then what’s eight times that?”

“Too many, I’m sure.”

“My dear, that’s the most masterly understatement since the death of Mercutio. And I don’t think I’ve figured it properly anyway; its an exponential

expansion, not a geometric – provided we don’t all starve first”

“Roger.”

“I think we should-Eh? What?”

“I believe there is a simple solution. These are Martian creatures; they hibernate in cold weather.” “Yes?”

“We’ll put them in the hold – fortunately there is room.” “I agree with all but the “fortunately.”“

“And we’ll keep it cold.”

“I wouldn’t want to kill the little things. I can’t manage to hate them. Drat it, they’re too cute.”

“We’ll hold it about a hundred below, about like a normal Martian winter night. Or perhaps warmer will do.” “We certainly will. Get a shovel. Get a net Get a barrel.” He began snagging flat cats out of the air.

“You aren’t going to freeze Fuzzy Britches!” Lowell was floating in the stateroom door behind them, clutching an adult flat cat to his small chest. It may or may not have been Fuzzy Britches; none of the others could tell the adults apart and naming had been dropped after the first litter. But Lowell was quite sure and it did not seem to matter whether or not he was right The twins had discussed slipping in a ringer on him while he was asleep, but they had been overheard and the project forbidden. Lowell was content and his mother did not wish him disturbed in his belief.

“Dear, we aren’t going to hurt your pet”

“You better not! You do and I’ll – I’ll space you!”

“Oh, dear, he’s been helping Hazel with her serial!” Dr. Stone got face to face with her son. “Lowell, Mother has never lied to you, has she?” “Uh, I guess not”

“We aren’t going to hurt Fuzzy Britches. We aren’t going to hurt any of the flat kitties. But we haven’t got room for all of them. You can keep Fuzzy Britches, but the other kittens, are going for a long nap. They’ll be perfectly safe; I promise.

“By the code of the Galaxy?” “By the code of the Galaxy.”

Lowell left, still guarding his pet. Roger said, “Edith, we’ve got to put a stop to that collaboration.”

“Don’t worry dear; it won’t harm him.” She frowned. “But I’m afraid I will have to disappoint him on another score.” “Such as?”

“Roger, I didn’t have much time to study the fauna of Mars – and I certainly didn’t study flat cats, beyond making sure that they were harmless.” “Harmless!” He batted a couple of them out of the way. “Woman, I’m drowning.”

“But Martian fauna have certain definite patterns, survival adaptations. Except for the water-seekers, which probably aren’t Martian in origin anyhow, their methods are both passive and persistent. Take the flat cat-”

“You take it!” He removed one gently from his chest.

“It is defenseless. It can’t even seek its own food very well. I understand that in its native state it is a benign parasite attaching itself to some more mobile animal-”

“If only they would quit attaching to me! And you look as if you were wearing a fur coat Let’s put ’em in freeze!”

“Patience, dear. Probably it has somewhat the same pleasing effect on the host that it has on us; consequently the host tolerates it and lets it pick up the crumbs. But its other characteristic it shares with almost anything Martian. It can last long periods in hibernation, or if that isn’t necessary, in a state of lowered vitality and activity – say when there is no food available. But with any increase in the food supply, then at once – almost like

throwing a switch – it expands, multiplies to the full extent of the food ‘supply.”

“I’ll say it does!”

“Cut off the food supply and it simply waits for more good times. Pure theory, of course, since I am reasoning by analogy from other Martian life forms – but that’s why I’m going to have to disappoint Lowell – Fuzzy Britches will have to go on very short rations.”

Her husband frowned. “That won’t be easy; he feeds it all the time. We’ll just have to watch him – or there will be more little visitors from heaven.

Honey, let’s get busy. Right now.”

“Yes, dear. I just had to get my thoughts straight”

Roger called them all to general quarters; Operation Round-up began. They shooed them aft and into the hold; they slithered back, purring and seeking companionship. Pollux got into the hold and tried to keep them herded together while the others scavenged through the ship. His father stuck his head in; tried to make out his son in a cloud of flat cats; ‘How many have you got so far?”

“I can’t count them – they keep moving around. Close the door!” “How can I keep the door closed and still send them in to you?”

“How can I keep them in here if you keep opening the door?” Finally they all got into space suits – Lowell insisted on taking Fuzzy Britches inside with him, apparently not trusting even ‘the code of the Galaxy’ too far. Captain Stone reduced the temperature of the entire ship down to a chilly twenty below; the flat cats, frustrated by the space suits and left on their own resources, gave up and began forming themselves into balls, like fur- covered grape fruit. They were then easy to gather in, easy to count, easy to store in the hold.

Nevertheless the Stones kept finding and incarcerating fugitives for the next several days.

VIII – “INTER JOVEM ET MARTEM PLANETAM INTERPOSUI”

The great astronomer Kepler wrote: “Between Mars and Jupiter I put a planet.” His successors devised a rule for planetary distances, called ‘Bode’s Law’, which seemed to require a planet at precisely two and eight/tenths the distance from Sun to Earth, 2.8 astro units.

On the first night of the new nineteenth century the Monk Giuseppe Piazzi discovered a new heavenly body. It was the Asteroid Ceres – just where a planet should have been. It was large for an Asteroid, the largest in fact – diameter 485 miles. In the ensuing two centuries hundreds and thousands more were discovered, down to size of rocks. “The Asteroids’ proved a poor name; they were not little stars, nor were they precisely planetoids. It was early suggested that they were the remains of a once sizable planet and by the middle of the twentieth century mathematical investigation of their orbits seemed to prove it.

But it was not until the first men in the early days of the exploration of space actually went out to the lonely reaches between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and looked that we learned for certain that the Asteroids were indeed fragments of a greater planet – destroyed Lucifer, long dead brother

of Earth.

As the Rolling Stone rose higher and ever higher above the Sun, she slowed, curved her path in, and approached the point where she would start to fall back toward the Sun. She was then at the orbit of Ceres and not far in front of that lady. The Stone had been in the region of the Asteroids for the past fifty million miles. The ruins of Lucifer are scattered over a wide belt of space; the Hallelujah Node was near the middle of that belt.

The loose group of rocks, sand, random molecules, and microplanetoids known as the Hallelujah Node was travelling in company around the Sun at a speed of eleven miles per second. The Stone‘s vector was eight miles per, second and in the same direction. Captain Stone speeded up his ship to match in by a series of blasts during the last two days, coming by a radar beacon deep in the swarm and thereby sneaking up on the collection of floating masses at a low relative speed.

The final blast that positioned them dead with the swarm was a mere love tap; the Stone did clear her throat – and she was one with the other rolling space stones of space.

Captain Stone took a last look into the double eyepiece of the stereo radar, swung the sweep control fore and aft and all around; the masses of the Hallelujah, indistinguishable from the background of stars by naked eye, hung in greatly exaggerated perspective in the false ‘space’ of the stereo tank while the true stars showed not at all. None of them displayed the crawling trail of relative motion.

A point brighter than the rest glowed in a fluctuating pattern fairly close by and a few degrees out-orbit; it was the radar beacon on which he had homed. It too, seemed steady by stereo; he turned to Castor and said, “Take a doppler on City Hall.”

“Just getting it, Captain.” In a moment he added, “Uh, relative about ten miles an hour – nine point seven and a whisper. And just under seven hundred miles away.”

“Vector?”

“Closing almost for it We ought to slide past maybe ten, fifteen miles south and in-orbit”

Roger Stone relaxed and grinned. “How’s that for shooting? Your old man can still figure them, eh?” “Pretty good, Dad – considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Considering you used Pol’s figures.”

“When I figure out which one of us you are insulting, I’ll answer that.” He spoke to the mike: “All hands, secure from maneuvers. Power room, report when secure. Edith, how soon can we have dinner?”

“It’s wrapped up, son,” Hazel reported.

“About thirty minutes, dear,” his wife answered.

“A fine thing! A man slaves over a hot control board and then has to wait thirty minutes for his dinner. What kind of a hotel is this?” “Yes, dear. By the way, I’m cutting your calorie ration again.”

“Mutiny! What would John Sterling do?”

“Daddy’s getting fat! Daddy’s getting fat!” Lowell chanted. “And strangle your child. Anybody want to come out with me while I set units?” “I will, Daddy!”

“Meade, you’re just trying to get out of helping with dinner.”

“I can spare her, dear.”

“Spare the child and spoil the fodder. Come with your fodder, baby.” “Not very funny, Daddy.”

“And I’m not getting paid for it, either.” Captain Stone went aft, whistling. The twins as well as Meade went out with him; they made quick work of setting jato units, the young people locking them in place and the Captain seeing to the wiring personally. They set a belt of them around the waist of the ship and matched pairs on the bow and quarter. Wired for triggering to the piloting radar, set at minimum range, they would give the ship a sharp nudge in the unlikely event that any object came toward them on a collision course at a relative speed high enough to be dangerous.

Coming through the Asteroid Belt to their present location deep in it, they had simply taken their chances. Although one is inclined to think of the Belt as thick with sky junk, the statistical truth is that there is so enormously more space than rock that the chance of being hit is negligible. Inside a node the situation was somewhat different, the concentration of mass being several hundred times as great as in the ordinary reaches of the Belt. But most of the miners took no precautions even there, preferring to bet that this unending game of Russian roulette would always work out in their favor rather than go to the expense and trouble of setting up a meteor guard. This used up a few miners, but not often; the accident rate in Hallelujah node was about the same as that of Mexico City.

They went inside and found dinner ready. “Call for you, Captain.” announced Hazel. “Already?”

“City Hall. Told ’em you were out but would call back. Nine point six centimeters.” “Come eat your dinner, dear, while it’s hot”

“You all go ahead. I won’t be long.”

Nor was he. Dr. Stone looked inquiringly at him as he joined them. “The Mayor,” he told her and the others. “Welcome to Rock City and all that sort of thing. Advised me that the Citizen’s Committee has set a speed limit of a hundred miles an hour for ships, five hundred miles an hour for scooters, anywhere within a thousand miles of City Hall.”

Hazel bristled. “I suppose you told him what they could do with their speed limits?”

“I did not I apologized sweetly for having unwittingly offended on my approach and said that I would be over to pay my respects tomorrow or the next day.”

“I thought Mars would have some elbow room,” Hazel grumbled. “It turned out to be nothing but scissorbills and pantywaists and tax collectors. So we come on out to the wide open spaces and what do we find? Traffic cops! And my only son without the spunk to talk back to them. I think I’ll go to Saturn.”

“I hear that Titan Base is awfully chilly,” her son answered without rancor. “Why not Jupiter? Pol, flip the salt over this way, please.” “Jupiter? The position isn’t favorable. Besides I hear that, Ganymede has more regulations than a girls’ school.”

“Mother, you are the only juvenile delinquent old enough for a geriatrics clinic whom I have ever known. You know perfectly well that an artificial colony has to have regulations.”

“An excuse for miniature Napoleons! This whole system has taken to wearing corsets.” “What’s a corset?” inquired Lowell.

“Uh . . . a predecessor to the spacesuit, sort of.”

Lowell still looked puzzled; his mother said, “Never mind, dear. When we get back, Mother will show you one, in the museum.”

Captain Stone proposed that they all turn in right after supper; they had all run short on sleep during the maneuvering approach. “I keep seeing spots before my eyes,” he said, rubbing them, “from staring into the tank. I think I’ll sleep the clock around.”

Hazel started to answer when an alarm shrilled; he passed instantly from sleepy to alert. “Object on collision course! Grab something, everybody.” He clutched at a stanchion with one hand, gathered in Lowell with the other.

But no shove from a firing jato followed. “Green,” Hazel announced quietly. “Whatever it is, it isn’t moving fast enough to hurt us. Chances favor a near miss, anyway.”

Captain Stone took a deep breath, “I hope you’re right, but I’ve been on the short end of too many long shots to place much faith in statistics. I’ve been jumpy ever since we entered the Belt”

Meade went aft with dirty dishes. She returned in a hurry, round eyed. “Daddy – somebody’s at the door.” “What? Meade, you’re imagining things.”

“No, I’m not I heard him. Listen.”

“Quiet, everyone.” In the silence they could hear the steady hiss of an air injector; the lock was cycling. Roger Stone lunged toward the airlock; he

was stopped by a sharp warning from his mother. “Son! Hold it a second”

“What?”

“Keep back from that door.” She had her gun out and at the ready. “Huh? Don’t be silly. And put that thing away; it isn’t charged anyhow.” “He won’t know that. Whoever is coming in that lock.”

Dr. Stone said quietly, “Mother Hazel, what are you nervous about?”

“Can’t you see? We’ve got a ship here with food in it. And oxy. And a certain amount of single-H. This isn’t Luna City; there are men out here who would be tempted.”

Dr. Stone did not answer but turned to her husband. He hesitated only momentarily, then snapped, “Go forward, dear. Take Lowell. Meade, you go along and lock the access hatch. Leave the ship’s phones open. If you hear anything wrong, radio City Hall and tell them we are being hijacked. Move!” He was already ducking into his stateroom, came out with his own gun.

By the time the hatch to the control room had clanged shut the airlock finished cycling. The four remaining waited, surrounding the airlock inner door. “Shall we jump him, Dad?” Castor whispered.

“No just stay out of my line of ifre.”

Slowly the door swung open. A spacesuited figure crouched in the frame, its features indistinct in its helmet. It looked around, saw the guns trained on it, and spread both its hands open in front of it. “What’s the matter?” a muffled voice said plaintively. “I haven’t done anything.”

Captain Stone could see that the man, besides being empty-handed, carried no gun at his belt. He put his own away. “Sorry. Let me give you a hand with that helmet”

The helmet revealed a middle-aged, sandy-haired man with mild eyes. “What was the matter?” he repeated.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. We didn’t know who was boarding us and we were a bit nervous. My name’s Stone, by the way. I’m master.” “Glad to know you, Captain Stone. I’m Shorty Devine.”

“I’m glad to know you, Mr. Devine. Welcome aboard.”

“Just Shorty.” He looked around. “Uh, excuse me for bursting in on you and scaring you but I heard you had a doctor aboard. A real doctor, I mean

not one of those science johnnies.”

“We have.”

“Gee, that’s wonderful! The town hasn’t had a real doctor since old Doc Schultz died. And I need one, bad.” “Sorry! Pol, get your mother.”

“I heard, dear,” the speaker horn answered. “Coming.” The hatch opened and Dr. Stone came in. “I’m the doctor, Mr. Devine. Dear, I’ll use this room, I think. If you will all go somewhere else, please?”

The visitor said hastily, “Oh, they needn’t”

“I prefer to make examinations without an audience,” she said firmly. “But I didn’t explain, ma’am – Doctor. It isn’t me; it’s my partner.” “Oh?”

“He broke his leg. Got careless with two big pieces of core material and got his leg nipped between ’em. Broke it. I guess I didn’t do too well by him for he’s a powerfully sick man. Could you come over right away, Doctor?”

“Certainly.” “Now, Edith!”

“Castor, get my surgical kit – the black one. Will you help me suit up, dear?” “But Edith, you -”

“It’s all right, Captain; I’ve got my scooter right outside. We’re only eight-five, ninety miles away; we won’t be gone long.” Captain Stone sighed. “I’m going with you. Will your scooter take three?”

“Sure, sure! It’s got Reynolds saddles; set any balance you need.”

“Take command, Hazel” “Aye aye, sir!”

They were gone all night, ship’s time, rather than a short while. Hazel sat at the control board, tracking them all the way out – then watched and waited until she spotted them leaving, and tracked them back. Devine, profuse with thanks, had breakfast with them. Just before he left Lowell came into the saloon carrying Fuzzy Britches. Devine stopped with a bite on the way to his mouth and stared. “A flat cat! Or am I seeing things?”

“Of course it is. Its name is Fuzzy Britches. It’s a Martian.” “You bet it is! Say, do you mind if I pet her for a moment?”

Lowell looked him over suspiciously, granted the boon. The prospector held it like one who knows flat cats, cooed to it, and stroked it. “Now ain’t that nice! Almost makes me wish I had never left Mars – not but what its better here.” He handed it back reluctantly, thanked them all around again, and left

Dr. Stone flexed her fingers. “That’s the first time I’ve done surgery in free fall since the old clinic days. I must review my techniques.” “My dear, you were magnificent. And Jock Donaher is mighty lucky that you were near by.”

“Was he pretty bad, Mummy?” asked Meade.

“Quite,” answered her father. “You wouldn’t enjoy the details. But your Mother knew what to do and did it And I was a pretty fair scrub nurse myself, if I do say so as shouldn’t.”

“You do say so and shouldn’t,” agreed Hazel.

“Roger,” asked Dr. Stone, “that thing they were living in could it be operated as a ship?” “I doubt it, not the way they’ve got it rigged now. I wouldn’t call it a ship; I’d call it a raft” “What do they do when they want to leave?”

“They probably don’t want to leave. They’ll probably die within hailing distance of Rock City – as Jock nearly did. I suppose they sell their high grade at Ceres, by scooter – circum Ceres, that is. Or maybe the sell it here.”

“But the whole town is migratory. They have to move some-time.”

“Oh, I imagine you could move that hulk with a few jato units, if you were gentle about it and weren’t in any hurry. I think I’d decompress it before I tried it, though.”

IX – ROCK CITY

The Asteroid Belt is a flattened torus ring or doughnut in space encompassing thirteen thousand five hundred thousand million trillion cubic miles. This very conservative figure is arrived at by casting out of the family the vagrant black sheep who wander in down to Mars and farther – even down close, to Sun itself – and by ignoring those which strayed too far out and became slaves to mighty Jove, such as the Trojan Asteroids which make him a guard of honor sixty degrees ahead and behind him, in orbit. Even those that swing too far north or south are excluded; an arbitrary limit of six degrees deviation from ecliptic has been assumed.

13,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic miles of space.

Yet the entire human race could be tucked into one corner of a single cubic mile; the average human body is about two cubic feet in bulk. Even Hazel’s dauntless hero ‘Captain John Sterling’ would he hard put to police such a beat. He would need to be twins, at least.

Write the figure as 1.35 x 1025th cubic miles; that makes it easier to see if no easier to grasp. At the time the Rolling Stone arrived among the rolling stones of Rock City the Belt had a population density of one human soul for every two billion trillion cubic miles – read 2 x 1021. About half of these six thousand-odd lived on the larger planetoids. Ceres, Pallas, Vesta, Juno; one of the few pleasant surprises in the exploration of our system was the discovery that the largest Asteroids were unbelievably dense and thus had respectable surface gravitations. Ceres, with a diameter of only 485 miles, has an average density five times that of Earth and a surface gravity about the same as Mars. These large planetoids are believed to be mainly core material of lost Lucifer, covered with a few miles of lighter debris.

The other three thousand inhabitants constitute the Belt’s floating population in a most literal sense; they live and work in free fall. Almost all of them are gathered into half a dozen loose communities working the nodes or clusters of the Belt. The nodes are several hundred times as dense as the main body of the Belt – if ‘dense’ is the proper word; a transport for Ganymede could have ploughed through the Hallelujah node and Rock City and never noticed it except by radar. The chance that such a liner would hit anything is extremely small.

The miners worked the nodes for uranium, transuranics, and core material, selling their high grade at the most conveniently positioned large Asteroid and occasionally moving on to some other node. Before the strike in the Hallelujah the group calling themselves Rock City had been working Kaiser Wilhelm node behind Ceres in orbit; at the good news they moved, speeding up a trifle and passing in-orbit of Ceres, a ragtag caravan nudged through the sky by scooters, chemical rocket engines, jato units, and faith. Theirs was the only community well placed to migrate. Grogan’s Boys were in the same orbit but in Heartbreak node beyond the Sun, half a billion miles away. New Joburg was not far away but was working the node known as Reynolds Number Two, which rode the Themis orbital pattern, inconveniently far out.

None of these cities in the sky was truly self-supporting, nor perhaps ever would be; but the ravenous appetite of Earth’s industries for power metal and for the even more valuable planetary-core materials for such uses as jet throats and radiation shields – this insatiable demand for what the Asteroids could yield – made certain that the miners could swap what they had for what they needed Yet in many ways they were almost self- supporting; uranium refined no further away than Ceres gave them heat and light and power; all of their vegetables and much of their protein came from their own hydroponic tanks and yeast vats, Single-H and oxygen came from Ceres or Pallas.

Wherever there is power and mass to manipulate, Man can live.

For almost three days, the Rolling Stone coasted slowly through Rock City. To the naked eye looking out a port or even to a person standing outside on the hull Rock City looked like any other stretch of space – empty, with a backdrop of stars. A sharp-eyed person who knew the constellations well would have noticed far too many planets distorting the classic configurations, planets which did not limit their wanderings to the Zodiac. Still sharper attention would have spotted motion on the part of these ‘planets’, causing them to open out and draw aft from the direction the Stone was heading.

Just before lunch on the third day Captain Stone slowed his ship still more and corrected her vector by firing a jato unit; City Hall and several other shapes could be seen ahead. Later in the afternoon he fired one more jato unit, leaving the Stone dead in space relative to City Hall and less than an eighth of a mile from it He turned to the phone and called the Mayor.

“Rolling Stone, Luna, Captain Stone speaking.”

“We’ve been watching you come in, Captain,” came the voice of the Mayor.

“Good. Mr. Fries, I’m going to try to get a line over to you. With luck. I’ll be over to see you in a half-hour or so.” “Using a line-throwing gun? I’ll send someone out to pick it up.”

“No gun, worse luck. With the best of intentions I forgot to stock one.”

Fries hesitated. “Uh, Captain, pardon me, but are you in good practice for free-fall suit work?” “Truthfully, no.”

“Then let me send a boy across to put a line on you. No, no! I insist”

Hazel, the Captain, and the twins suited up, went outside, and waited. They could make out a small figure on the ship across from them; the ship

itself looked larger now, larger than the Stone. City Hall was an obsolete space-to-space vessel, globular, and perhaps thirty years old. Roger Stone surmised correctly that she had made a one-way freighter trip after she was retired from a regular run.

In close company with City Hall was a stubby cylinder; it was either smaller than the spherical ship or farther away. Near it was an irregular mass impossible to make out; the sunlight on it was bright enough but the unfilled black shadows gave no clear clues. All around them were other ships or shapes close enough to be distinguished from the stars; Pollux estimated that there must be two dozen within as many miles. While he watched a scooter left a ship a mile or more away and headed toward City Hall.

The figure they had seen launched himself across the gap. He seemed to swell; in half a minute he was close by, checking himself by the line he carried. He dropped to an easy landing near the bow of the Stone; they went to meet him.

“Howdy, Captain. I’m Don Whitsitt, Mr. Fries’ bookkeeper.”

“Howdy, Don.” He introduced the others; the twins helped haul in the light messenger line and coil it; it was followed by a steel line which Don Whitsitt shackled to the ship.

“See you at the store,” he said. “So long.” He launched himself back the way he came, carrying the coiled messenger line and not bothering with the line he had rigged.

Pollux watched him draw away. “I think I could do that”

“Just keep on thinking it,” his father said, “and loop yourself to that guide line.”

One leap took them easily across the abyss, provided one did not let one’s loop twist around the guide line. Castor’s loop did so; it braked him to a stop. He had to unsnarl it, then gain momentum again by swarming along the line hand over hand

Whitsitt had gone inside but he had recycled the lock and left it open for them. They went on in, to be met there by the Honorable Jonathan Fries, Mayor of Rock City. He was a small, bald, pot-bellied man with a sharp, merry look in his eye and a stylus tucked back of his ear. He shook hands with Roger Stone enthusiastically. “Welcome, welcome! We’re honored to have you with us, Mister Mayor. I ought to have a key to the city, or some such, for you. Dancing girls and brass bands.”

Roger shook his head. “I’m an ex-mayor and a private traveller. Never mind the brass bands.” “But you’ll take the dancing girls?”

“I’m a married man. Thanks anyhow.”

“If we had any dancing girls I’d keep ’em for myself. And I’m a married man, too.” “You certainly are!” A plump, plain but very jolly woman had floated up behind them.

Yes, Martha.” They completed the rest of the introductions; Mrs Fries took Hazel in tow; the twins trailed along with the two men, into the forward half of the globe. It was a storeroom and a shop; racks had been fitted to the struts and thrust members; goods and provisions of every sort were lashed or netted to them. Don Whitsitt clung with his knees to a saddle in the middle of the room with a desk folded into his lap. In his reach were ledgers on lazy tongs and a rack of clips holding several hundred small account books. A miner floated in front of him. Several more were burrowing through the racks of merchandise.

Seeing the display of everything a meteor miner could conceivably need, Pollux was glad that they had concentrated on luxury goods then remembered with regret that they had precious little left to sell; the flat cats, before they were placed in freeze, had eaten so much that the family had been delving into their trade goods, from caviar to Chicago sausage. He whispered to Castor, “I had no idea the competition would be so stiff.”

“Neither did I.”

A miner slithered up to Mr. Fries. “One-Price, about that centrifuge -” “Later, Sandy. I’m busy.”

Captain Stone protested, “Don’t let me keep you from your customers.”

“Oh, Sandy hasn’t got anything to do but wait. Right, Sandy? Shake hands with Captain Stone – it was his wife who fixed up old Jocko.”

“It was? Say, I’m mighty proud to know you, Captain! You’re the best news we’ve had in quite a while.” Sandy turned to Fries. “You better put him right on the Committee.”

“I shall. I’m going to call a phone meeting this evening.”

“Just a moment!” objected Roger Stone. “I’m just a visitor. I don’t belong on your Citizens’ Committee.”

Fries shook his head. “You don’t know what it means to our people to have a medical doctor with us again. The Committee ain’t any work, really. It’s just to let you know we’re glad you’ve joined us. And we’ll make Mrs Stone – I mean Doctor Stone – a member if she wants it. She won’t have time for it, though.”

Captain Stone was beginning to feel hemmed in. “Slow down! We expect to be leaving here come next Earth departure – and my wife is not now

engaged in regular practice, anyhow. We’re on a pleasure trip.”

Fries looked worried. “You mean she won’t attend the sick? But she operated on Jock Donaher.”

Stone was about to say that she positively would not under any circumstances take over a regular practice when he realized that he had very little voice in the matter. “She’ll attend the sick. She’s a doctor.”

“Good!”

“But, confound it, man! We didn’t come here for that She’s on a vacation.”

Fries nodded. “We’ll see what we can work out to make it easy on her. We won’t expect the lady to go hopping rocks the way Doc Schultz did. Get that, Sandy? We can’t have every rock-happy rat in the swarm hollering for the doctor every time he gets a sore finger. We want to get the word around that if a man gets sick or gets hurt it’s up to him and his neighbours to drag him in to City Hall if he can possibly wear a suit. Tell Don to draft me a proclamation.”

The miner nodded solemnly. “That’s right, One-Price.”

Sandy moved away; Fries went on, “Let’s go back into the restaurant and see if Martha has some fresh coffee. I’d like to get your opinion on several civic matters”

“Frankly, I couldn’t possibly have opinions on your public affairs here. Things are so different”

“Oh, why don’t I be truthful and admit I want to gossip about politics with another pro. I don’t meet one every day. First, though, did you have any shopping in mind today? Anything you need? Tools? Oxy? Catalysts? Planning on doing any prospecting and if so, do you have your gear?”

“Nothing especial today – except one thing: we need to buy, or by preference rent, a scooter. We’d like to explore a bit”

Fries shook his head. “Friend, I wish you hadn’t asked me that. That’s one thing I haven’t got All these sand rats booming in here from Mars, and even from Luna, half of ’em with no equipment They lease a scooter and a patent igloo and away they go, red hot to make their fortunes. Tell you what I can do, though – I’ve got more rocket motors and tanks coming in from Ceres two months from now. Don and I can weld you up one and have it ready to slap the motor in when the Firefly gets here.”

Roger Stone frowned, “With Earth departure only five months away that’s a long time to wait”

“Well, we’ll just have to see what we can scare up. Certainly the new doctor is entitled to the best – and the doctor’s family. Say -”. A miner tapped him on the shoulder. “Say, storekeeper, I -”

Fries’ face darkened. “You can address me as “Mr. Mayor!”‘ “Huh?”

“And beat it! Can’t you see I’m busy?” The man backed away; Fries fumed, “”One Price” I’m known as, to my friends and to my enemies, from here to the Trojans. If he doesn’t know that, he can call me by my title – or take his trade else-where. Where was I? Oh, yes! You might try old Charlie.”

“Eh?”

“Did you notice that big tank moored to City Hall? That’s Charlie’s hole. He’s a crazy old coot, rock-happy as they come, and he’s a hermit by intention. Used to hang around the edge of the community, never mixing – but with this boom and ten strangers swarming in for every familiar face Charlie got timid and asked could he please tie in at civic center? I guess he was afraid that somebody would slit his throat and steal his hoorah’s nest Some of the boomers are a rough lot at that”

“He sounds like some of the old-timers on Luna. What about him?”

“Oh! Too much on my mind these days; it wanders. Charlie runs a sort of a fourth-hand shop, and I say that advisedly. He has stuff I won’t handle. Every time a rock jumper dies, or goes Sunside, his useless plunder winds up in Charlie’s hole. Now I don’t say he’s got a scooter – though you just might lease his own now that he’s moored in-city. But he might have parts that could be jury-rigged. Are you handy with tools?”

“Moderately. But I’ve got just the team for such a job.” He looked around for the twins, finally spotted them pawing through merchandise. “Cas! Pol! Come here.”

The storekeeper explained what he had in mind. Castor nodded. “If it worked once, we’ll fix it” “That’s the spirit Now let’s go test that coffee.”

Castor hung back ‘Dad? Why don’t Pol and I go over there and see what he’s got? It’ll save you time.” “Well-”

“It’s just a short jump,” said Fries.

“Okay, but don’t jump. Use your lines and follow the mooring line over.”

The twins left Once in the airlock Pollux started fuming. “Stow it,” said Cas. “Dad just wants us to be careful.” “Yes, but why does he have to say it where everybody can hear?”

Charlie’s hole, they decided, had once been a tow tank to deliver oxygen to a colony. They let themselves into the lock, started it cycling. When pressure was up, they tried the inner door; it wouldn’t budge. Pollux started pounding on it with his belt wrench while Castor searched for a switch or other signal. The lock was miserably lighted by a scant three inches of glow tube.

“Cut the racket,” Castor told Pollux. “If he’s alive, he’s heard you by now.” Pollux complied and tried the door again – still locked. They heard a muffled voice: “Who’s there?”

Castor looked around for the source of the voice, could not spot it. “Castor and Pollux Stone,” he answered, “from the Rolling Stone, out of Luna”

Somebody chuckled. “You don’t fool me. And you can‘t arrest me without a warrant Anyhow I won’t let you in.” Castor started to explode,” Pollux patted his arm. “We aren’t cops. Shucks, we aren’t old enough to be cops.” “Take your. helmets off.”

“Don’t do it,” Castor cautioned. “He could recycle while we’re unsealed.”

Pollux went ahead and took his off; Castor hesitated, then followed. “Let us in,” Pollux said mildly. “Why should I?”

“We’re customers. We want to buy things.” “What you got to trade?”

“We’ll pay cash”

“Cash!” said the voice. “Banks! Governments! What you got to trade? Any chocolate?” “Cas,” Pollux whispered, “have we got any chocolate left?”

“Maybe six or seven pounds. Not more.” “Sure we got chocolate.”

“Let me see it.”

Castor interrupted. “What sort of nonsense is this? Pol, let’s go back and see Mr. Fries again. He’s a businessman.” The voice moaned, “Oh, don’t do that! He’ll cheat you.”

“Then open up!”

After a few seconds of silence the voice said wheedlingly,. “You look like nice boys. You wouldn’t hurt Charlie? Not old Charlie?” “Of course not We want to trade with you.”

The door opened at last In the gloom a face, etched by age and darkened by raw sunlight, peered out at them ‘Come in easy. Don’t try any tricks – I know you.”

Wondering if it were the sensible thing to do the boys pulled themselves in. When their eyes adjusted to the feeble circle of glow tube in the middle of the space they looked around while their host looked at them. The tank, large outside, seemed smaller by the way it was stuffed. As in Fries’ shop, every inch, every strut, every nook was crammed, but where the City Hall was neat, this was rank disorder, where Fries’ ‘shop was rational, this was nightmare confusion. The air was rich enough but ripe with ancient and nameless odors.

Their host was a skinny monkey of a man, covered with a single dark garment, save for head, hands, and bare feet. It had once been, Pollux decided, heated underwear for space-suit use far out starside, or in caves.

Old Charlie stared at them, then grinned, reached up and scratched his neck with his big toe. “Nice boys,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt Charlie. I was just foolin’.”

“We wouldn’t hurt anybody. We just wanted to get acquainted, and do a little business.”

“We want a – “ Pollux started; Castor’s elbow cut off the rest; Castor ‘went on,’Nice place you’ve got here.”

“Comfortable. Practical. Just right for a man with no nonsense about him. Good place for a man who likes to be quiet and think. Good place to

read a book You boys like to read?”

“Sure. Love to.”

“You want to see my books?” Without waiting for an answer he dared like a bat into the gloom, came back in a few moments with books in both hands and a half dozen held by his feet. He bumped to a stop with his elbows and offered them

There were old-style bound books, most of them, the twins saw, ships’ manuals of ships long dead. Castor’s eyes widened when he saw the dates on some of them, and wondered what the Astrogation Institute would pay for them. Among them was a dog-eared copy of Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi.

“Look ’em over, boys. Make yourselves comfortable. Bet you didn’t expect to find a literary man out here among these yokels. You boys can read, can’t you?”

“Sure we can.”

“Didn’t know. They teach such funny things nowadays. Quote a bit of latin to ’em and they look like you’re crazy in the head. You boys hungry? You want something to eat?” He looked anxious.

They both assured him that they had fed well and recently; he looked relieved. “Old Charlie ain’t one to let a man go hungry, even if he hasn’t got enough for himself.” Castor had noted a net of sealed rations; there must have been a thousand of them by conservative estimate. But the old man continued, “Seen the time, right herein this node – no, it was the Emmy Lou – when a man didn’t dare make breakfast without he barred his lock first and turned off his beacon. It was about that time that Lafe Dumont ate High-Grade Henderson. He was dead first, naturally – but it brought on a crisis in our community affairs. They formed up the vigilantes, what they call the Committee nowadays.”

“Why did he eat him?”

“Why, he was dead. I told you that. Just the same, I don’t think a man ought to eat his own partner, do you?” The boys agreed that it was a breech of etiquette.

“I think he ought to limit it to members of his own family, unless the two of them have got a signed and sealed contract. See any ghosts yet?” The acceleration was so sharp that it left both the twins a bit confused. “Ghosts?”

“You will. Many’s the time I’ve talked to High-Grade Henderson. Said he didn’t blame Lafe a bit, would ‘a’ done the same thing in his place. Ghosts all around here. All the rockmen that have died out here, they can’t get back to Earth. They’re in a permanent orbit – see? And it stands to reason that you can’t accelerate anything that doesn’t have mass.” He leaned toward them confidentially. “Sometimes you see ’em, but mostly they whisper in your earphones. And when they do, listen – because that’s the only way you’ll ever find any of the big strikes that got found and then got lost again. I’m telling you this because I like you, see? So listen. If it’s too faint, just close your chin valve and hold your breath; then it comes clearer.”

They agreed and thanked him. “Now tell me about your-selves, boys.” To their surprise he appeared to mean it; when they slowed down he taxed them for details, filling in only occasionally with his own disjointed anecdotes. At last Castor described the fiasco of the flat cats. “So that’s why we don’t have much food to trade with. But we do have some chocolate left and lots of other things.”

Charlie rocked back and forth from his perch in the air. “Flat cats, eh? I ain’t had my hands on a flat cat in a power of years. Nice to hold, they are. Nice to have around. Philosophical, if we just understand ’em.” He suddenly fixed Castor with his eye. “What you planning to do with all those flat cats?”

“Why, nothing, I guess.”

“That’s just what I thought You wouldn’t mind giving a poor old man who hasn’t kith nor kin nor wife nor chick one of those harmless flat cats? An old man who would always give you a bite to eat and a charge for your suit bottle?”

Castor glanced at Pollux and agreed cautiously that any dicker they reached would certainly include a flat cat as a mark of faith in dealing. “Then what do you want? You talked about scooters. You know old Charlie hasn’t got a scooter – except the one I have to have myself to stay alive.”

Castor broached the notion about repairing old parts, fitting together a scooter. Charlie scratched an inch-long stubble. “Seems. to me I did have a rocket motor – you wouldn’t mind if it lacked a valve or two? Or did I trade that to Swede Gonzalez? No, that was another one. I think – just a second while I take a look.” He was gone more nearly 600 seconds, buried in the mass; he came out dragging a piece of junk behind. “There you are! Practically new. Nothing a couple of bright boys couldn’t fix.”

Pollux looked at Castor. “What do you think it’s worth?”

Castor’s lips moved silently: “He ought to pay us to take it away.” It took them another twenty minutes but they got it for three pounds of chocolate and one flat cat.

X – FLAT CATS FINANCIAL

It took the better part of two weeks to make the ancient oxyalcohol engine work; another week to build a scooter rack to receive it, using tubing from Fries’ second-hand supply. It was not a pretty thing, but, with the Stone‘s stereo gear mounted on it, it was an efficient way to get around the node. Captain Stone shook his head over it and subjected it to endless tests before he conceded that it was safe even though ugly.

In the meantime the Committee had decreed a taxi service for the doctor lady; every miner working within fifty miles of City Hall was required to take his turn at standby watch with his scooter, with a fixed payment in high grade for any run he might have to make. The Stones saw very little of Edith Stone during this time: it seemed as if every citizen of Rock City had been saving up ailments.

But they were not forced to fall back on Hazel’s uninspired cooking. Fries had the Stone warped into contact with City Hall and a passenger tube sealed from the Stone‘s lock to an unused hatch of the bigger ship; when Dr. Stone was away they ate in his restaurant Mrs Fries was an excellent cook and she raised a great variety in her hydroponics garden.

While they were rigging the scooter the twins had time to mull over the matter of the flat cats. It had dawned on them that here in Rock City was a potential, unexploited market for flat cats. The question was: how best to milk it for all the traffic would bear?

Pol suggested that they peddle them in the scooter; he pointed out that a man’s sales resistance was lowest, practically zero, when he actually had a flat cat in his hands. His brother shook his head. “No good,” Junior.”

“Why not?”

“One, the Captain won’t let us monopolize the scooter; you know he regards it as ship’s equipment, built by the crew, namely us. Two, we would burn up our profits in scooter fuel. Three, it’s too slow; before we could move a third of them, some idiot would have fed our first sale too much, it has kittens – and there you are, with the market flooded with flat cats. The idea is to sell them as nearly as possible all at one time.”

“We could stick up a sign in the store – One-Price would let us – and sell them right out of the Stone.”

“Better but not good enough. Most of these rats shop only every three or four months. No, sir, we’ve got to build that better mouse trap and make the world beat a path to our door.”

“I’ve never been able to figure out why anybody would want to trap a mouse. Decompress a compartment and you kill all of them, every time.” “Just a figure of speech, no doubt Junior, what can we do to make Rock City flat-cat conscious?”

They found a way. The Belt, for all its lonely reaches – or because of them – was as neighbourly as a village. They gossiped among themselves, by suit radio. Out in the shining blackness it was good to know that, if something went wrong, there was a man listening not five hundred miles away who would come and investigate if you broke off and did not answer.

They gossiped from node to node by their more powerful ship’s radios. A rumor of death, of a big strike, or of accident, would bounce around the entire belt, relayed from rockman to rockman, at just short of the speed of light. Heartbreak node was sixty-six light minutes away, following orbit; big news often reached it in less than two hours, including numerous manual relays.

Rock City even had its own broadcast. Twice a day One-Price picked up the news from Earthside, then re-broadcast it with his own salty comments. The twins decided to follow it with one of their own, on the same wave length – a music & chatter show, with commercials. Oh, decidedly with commercials. They had hundreds of spools in stock which they could use, then sell, along with the portable projectors they had bought on Mars.

They started in; the show never was very good, but, on the other hand, it had no competition and it was free. Immediately following Fries’ sign-off Castor would say, “Don’t go away, neighbours! Here we are again with two hours of fun and music – and a few tips on bargains. But first, our theme

the warm and friendly purr of a Martian flat cat.” Pollux would hold Fuzzy Britches up to the microphone and stroke it; the good-natured little creature would always respond with a loud buzz. “Wouldn’t that be nice to come home to? And now for some music: Harry Weinstein’s Sunbeam Six in “High Gravity”. Let me remind you that this tape, like all other music on this program, may be purchased at an amazing saving in Flat Cat Alley, right off the City Hall – as well as Ajax three-way projectors in the Giant, Jr. model, for sound, sight, and stereo. The Sunbeam Six – hit it, Harry!”

Sometimes they would do interviews:

Castor: “A few words with one of our leading citizens, Rocks-in-his-Head Rudolf. Mr. Rudolf, all Rock City is waiting to hear from you. Tell me, do you like it out here?”

Pollux: “Naw!”

Castor: “But you’re making lots of money, Mr. Rudolf?” Pollux: “Naw!”

Castor: “At least you bring in enough high grade to eat well.” “Naw!”

“No? Tell me, why did you come out here in the first place?”

Pollux, “Bub, was you ever married?”

Sound effect of blow with blunt instrument, groan, and the unmistakable cycling of an air lock – Castor: “Sorry, folks. My assistant has just spaced Mr. Rudolf. To the purchaser of the flat cat we had been saving for Mr. Rudolf we will give away – absolutely free! – a beautiful pin-up picture printed in gorgeous living colors on fireproof paper. I hate to tell you what these pictures ordinarily sell for on Ceres; it hurts me to say how little we are letting them go for now, until our limited stock is exhausted. To the very first customer who comes in that door wanting to purchase a flat cat we will – Lock that door! Lock that door! All right, all right – all three of you will receive pin-up pictures; we don’t want anyone fighting here. But you’ll have to wait until we finish this broadcast Sorry, neighbours – a slight interruption but we settled it without bloodshed. But I find myself in a dilemma. I made you a promise and I did not know what would happen, but the truth is, too many customers were already here, pounding on the door of Flat Cat Alley. But to make good our promise I am enlarging it: not to the first customer, not to the second, nor to the third – but to the next twenty persons

purchasing flat cats will go, absolutely free, one of these gorgeous pictures. Bring no money – we accept high grade or core material at the standard

rates.”

Sometimes they varied it by having Meade sing. She was not of concert standards, but she had a warm, intimate contralto. After hearing her, a man possessing not even a flat cat felt lonely indeed. She pulled even better than the slick professional recordings; the twins found it necessary to cut her in for a percentage.

But in the main they depended on the flat cats themselves. The boomers from Mars, almost to a man, bought flat cats as soon as they heard that they were available, and each became an unpaid travelling salesman for the enterprise. Hardrock men from Luna, or directly from Earth, who had never seen a flat cat, now had opportunities to see them, pet them, listen to their hypnotic purr – and were lost. The little things not only stirred to aching suppressed loneliness, but, having stimulated it, gave it an outlet.

Castor would hold Fuzzy Britches to the mike and coo, “Here is a little darling – Molly Malone. Sing for the boys, honey pet.” While he stroked Fuzzy Britches Pollux would step up the power. “No, we can’t let Molly go – she’s a member of the family. But here is Bright Eyes. We’d like to keep Bright Eyes, too, but we mustn’t be selfish. Say hello to the folks, Bright Eyes.” Again he would stroke Fuzzy Britches. “Mr. P., now hand me Velvet.”

The stock of flat cats in deep freeze steadily melted. Their stock of high grade grew.

Roger Stone received their suggestion that they save out a few for breeding stock with one of his more emphatic refusals; once, he declaimed, was enough to be swamped in flat cats. Fuzzy Britches could stay, safely on short rations – but one was enough.

They had reached the last few at the back of the hold and were thinking about going out of business when a tired-looking, grey-haired man showed up after their broadcast. There were several other customers; he hung back and let the twins sell flat cats to the others. He had with him a girl child, little older than Lowell. Castor had not seen him before but he guessed that he might be Mr. Erska; bachelors far out-numbered families in the node and families with children were very rare. The Erskas picked up a precarious living down orbit and north; they were seldom seen at City Hall. Mr. Erska spoke Basic with some difficulty; Mrs Erska spoke it not at all. The family used some one of the little lingos – Icelandic, it might have been.

When the other customers had left the Stone Castor put on his professional grin and introduced himself. Yes, it was Mr. Erska. “And what can I do for you today, sir? A flat cat?”

“I’m afraid not”

“How about a projector? With a dozen tapes thrown in? Just the thing for a family evening.”

Mr. Erska seemed nervous. “Uh, very nice, I’m sure. No.” He tugged at the little girl’s hand. “We better go now, babykin.”

“Don’t rush off. My baby brother is around somewhere – or was. He’d like to meet your kid. Maybe he’s wandered over into the store. I’ll look for him”

“We better go.”

“What’s the rush? He can’t be far.”

Mr. Erska swallowed in embarrassment ‘My little girl. She heard your program and she wanted to see a flat cat. Now she’s seen one, so we go.” “Oh-” Castor brought himself face to face with the child. “Would you like to hold one, honey?” She did not answer, but nodded solemnly. “Mr. P.,.

bring up the Duchess.”

“Right, Mr. C.” Pollux went aft and fetched the Duchess – the first flat cat that came to hand, of course. He came back, warming it against his belly to revive it quickly.

Castor took it and massaged it until it flattened out and opened its eyes. “Here, honeybunch. Don’t be afraid”

Still silent, the child took it, cuddled it The small furry bundle sighed and began to purr. Castor turned to her father. “Don’t you want to get it for her?”

The man turned red. “No, no!”

“Why not? They’re no trouble. She’ll love it. So will you.”

“No!” He reached out and tried to take the flat cat from his daughter, speaking to her in another language.

She clung to it, replying in what was clearly the negative. Castor looked at them thoughtfully. “You would like to buy it for her, wouldn’t you?” The man looked away. “I can’t buy it.”

“But you want to.” Castor glanced at Pollux. “Do you know what you are, Mr. Erska. You are the five hundredth customer of Flat Cat Alley.”

“Uh?”

“Didn’t you hear our grand offer? You must have missed one of our programs. The five hundredth flat cat is absolutely free.”

The little girl looked puzzled but clung to the flat cat Her father looked doubtful. “You’re fooling?” Castor laughed. “Ask Mr. P.”

Pollux nodded solemnly. “The bare truth, Mr. Erska. It’s a celebration of a successful season. One flat cat, absolutely free with the compliments of the management And with it goes either one pin-up, or two candy bars – your choice.”

Mr. Erska seemed only half convinced, but they left with the child clinging to ‘Duchess’ and the candy bars. When the door was closed behind them Castor said fretfully, “You didn’t need to chuck in the candy bars They were the last; I didn’t mean us to sell them”

“Well, we didn’t sell them; we gave ’em away.”

Castor grinned and shrugged. “Okay, I hope they don’t make her sick. What was her name?” “I didn’t get it.”

“No matter. Our Mrs Fries will know.” He turned around, saw Hazel behind them in the hatch. “What are you grinning about?”

“Nothing, nothing. I just enjoy seeing a couple of cold-cash businessmen at work.” “Money isn’t everything!”

“Besides,” added Pollux, “it’s good advertising.”

“Advertising? With your stock practically gone?” She snickered. “There wasn’t any “grand offer” – and I’ll give you six to one it wasn’t your five hundredth sale.”

Castor looked embarrassed. “Aw, she wanted it! What would you have done?”

Hazel moved up to them, put an arm around the neck of each. “My boys! I’m beginning to think you may grow up yet. In thirty, forty, fifty more years you may be ready to join the human race.”

“Aw, lay off it!”

XI – THE WORM IN THE MUD

Cost-accounting on the flat-cat deal turned out to be complicated. The creatures were all descendants of Fuzzy Britches, chattel of Lowell. But the increase was directly attributable to food fed to them by everyone – which in turn had forced them to eat most of the luxury foods stocked by the

twins for trade. But it had been the twins’ imaginative initiative which had turned a liability into an asset. On the other hand they had used freely the capital goods (ship and electronic equipment) belonging to the entire family. But how to figure the probable worth of the consumed luxury foods? Whatever the figure was, it was not just original cost plus lift fuel.

Roger Stone handed down a Solomon’s decision. From the gross proceeds would be subtracted Meade’s percentage for singing; the twins would be reimbursed for the trade goods that had been commandeered; the balance would be split three ways among the twins and Lowell – all to be settled after they had traded high grade for refined metal at Ceres, then sold their load at Luna.

In the meantime he agreed to advance the twins’ money to operate further. Fries having promised to honor his sight draft on Luna City National.

But for once the twins found no immediate way to invest money. They toyed with the idea of using their time to prospect on their own, but a few trips out in the scooter convinced them that it was a game for experts and one in which even the experts usually made only a bare living. It was the fixed illusion that the next mass would be ‘the glory rock’ – the one that would pay for years of toil – that kept the old rockmen going. The twins knew too much about statistics now, and they believed in their ability rather than their luck. Finding a glory rock was sheer gamble.

“They made one fairly long trip into the thickest part of the node, fifteen hundred miles out and back taking all one day and the following night to do it. They got the scooter up to a dawdling hundred and fifty miles per hour and let it coast, planning to stop and investigate if they found promising masses having borrowed a stake-out beacon from Fries with the promise that they would pay for it they kept it

They did not need it. Time after time they would spot a major blip in the stereo radar, only to have someone else’s beacon wink on when they got within thirty miles of the mass. At the far end they did find a considerable collection of rock travelling loosely in company; they matched, shackled on their longest lines (their father had emphatically forbidden free jumping) and investigated. Having neither experience nor a centrifuge, their only way of checking on specific gravity was by grasping a mass and clutching it to them vigorously, then getting a rough notion of its inertia by its resistance to being shoved around. A Geiger counter (borrowed) had shown no radioactivity; they were searching for the more valuable core material.

Two hours of this exercise left them tired but no richer. “Grandpa,” announced Pollux, “this is a lot of left-over country rock.” “Not even that. Most of it’s pumice, I’d say.”

“Get for home?” “Check.”

They turned the scooter around by flywheel and homed on the City Hall beacon, boosting it up to four hundred miles per hour before. letting it coast, that being the top maneuver they could figure on for the juice they had left in their tanks. They would have preferred to break the speed limit, being uneasily aware that they were late – and being anxious to get home; the best designed suit is not comfortable for too long periods. They knew that their parents would not be especially worried; while they were out of range for their suit radios, they had reported in by the gossip grapevine earlier.

Their father was not worried. But the twins spent the next week under hatches, confined to the ship for failing to get back on time.

For a longer period nothing more notable took place than the incident in which Roger Stone lost his breathing mask while taking a shower and almost drowned (so he claimed) before he could find the water cut-off valve. There are very few tasks easier to do in a gravity field than in free fall, but bathing is one of them.

Dr. Stone continued her practice, now somewhat reduced. Sometimes she was chauffeured by the miner assigned to that duty; sometimes the twins took her around. One morning following her office hours in City Hall she came back into the Stone looking for the twins. “Where are the boys?”

“Haven’t seen them since breakfast,” answered Hazel. “Why?”

Dr. Stone frowned slightly. “Nothing, really. I’ll ask Mr. Fries to call a scooter for me.” “Got to make a call? I’ll take you unless those lunks have taken our scooter.”

“You needn’t, Mother Hazel.”

“I’d enjoy it. I’ve been promising Lowell a ride for weeks. Or will it take too long?”

“Shouldn’t. It’s only eight hundred miles or so out.” The doctor was not held down to the local speed limit in her errand of mercy.

“Do it in two hours, with juice to spare.” Off they went, with Buster much excited. Hazel allotted one-fourth her fuel as safety margin, allotted the working balance for maximum accelerations, figuring the projected mass-ratios in her head. Quite aside from the doctor’s privilege to disregard the law, high speed was not dangerous in the sector they would be in, it being a ‘thin’ volume of the node.

Their destination was an antiquated winged rocket, the wings of which had been torched off and welded into a tent-shaped annex to give more living room. Hazel thought that it had a shanty-town air -but so did many of the ships in Rock City. She was pleased enough to go inside and have a

sack of tea and let Lowell out of his spacesuit for a time. The patient, Mr. Bakers, was in a traction splint; his wife could not pilot their scooter, which was why Dr. Stone granted the house call. Dr. Stone received a call by radio while they were there; she came back into the general room looking troubled. “’S matter?” inquired Hazel.

“Mrs Silva. I’m not really surprised; it’s her first child.”

“Did you get the co-ordinates and beacon pattern? I’ll run you right-” “Lowell?”

“Oh. Oh, yes,” It would be a long time in a suit for a youngster. Mrs Eakers suggested that they leave the child with her.

Before Lowell could cloud up at the suggestion Dr. Stone said, “Thanks, but it isn’t necessary. Mr. Silva is on his way here. What I was trying to say, Mother Hazel, is that I probably had better go with him and let you and Lowell go back alone. Do you mind?”

“Of course not. Pipe down, Lowell! I’ll have us home in three-quarters of an hour and Lowell can have his nap or his spanking on time, as the case may be.”

She gave Dr. Stone one of two spare oxygen bottles before she left; Dr. Stone refused to take both of them. Hazel worked the new mass figures over; with Edith, her suit, and the spare bottle subtracted she had spare fuel. Better hit it up pretty fast and get home before the brat got cranky –

She lined up on City Hall by flywheel and stereo, spun on that axis to get the sun out of her eyes, clutched her gyros, and gave it the gun.

The next thing she knew she was tumbling like a liner in free fall. She remembered from long habit to cut the throttle but only after a period of aimless acceleration, for she had been chucked around in her saddle, thrown against her belts, and could not at first find the throttle.

When they were in free fall again she remembered to laugh. “Some ride, eh, Lowell?” “Do it again, Grandma!”

“I hope not.” Quickly she checked things over. There was not much that could go wrong with the little craft, it being only a rocket motor, an open rack with saddles and safety harness, and a minimum of instruments and controls. It was the gyros, of course; the motor had been sweet and hot. They were hunting the least bit, she found, that being the only evidence that they had just tumbled violently. Delicately she adjusted them by hand, putting her helmet against the case so that she could hear what she was doing.

Only then did she try to find where they were and where they were going. Let’s see – the Sun is over there and that’s Betelgeuse over yonder – so City Hall must be out that way. She ducked her helmet into the hemispherical ‘eye shade’ of the stereo. Yup! there she be!

The Eakers place was the obvious close-by point on which to measure her vector. She looked around for it, was startled to discover how far away it was. They must have coasted quite a distance while she was fiddling with the gyros. She measured the vector in amount and direction, then whistled. There were, she thought, few grocery shops out that way – darn few neighbours of any sort. She decided that it might be smart to call Mrs Eakers and tell her what had happened and ask her to call City Hall – just in case.

She could not raise Mrs Eakers. The sloven, she thought bitterly, has probably switched off her alarm so she could sleep. Lazy baggage! Her house looked it – and smelled it, too.

But she kept trying to call Mrs Eakers, or anyone else in range of her suit radio while she again lined up the ship for City, with offset to compensate for the now vector. She was cautious and most alert this time – in consequence she wasted only a few seconds of fuel when the gyros again tumbled.

She unclutched the gyros and put them out of her mind, then took careful measure of the situation. The Eakers dump was now a planetary light in the sky, shrinking almost noticeably, but it was still the proper local reference point. She did not like the vector she got. As always, they seemed to be standing still in the exact center of a starry globe – but her instruments showed them speeding for empty space, headed clear outside the node.

“What’s the matter, Grandma Hazel?”

“Nothing, son, nothing. Grandma has to stop and look at some road signs, that’s all.” She was thinking that she would gladly swap her chance of eternal bliss for an automatic distress signal and a beacon. She reached over, switched off the child’s receiver, then repeatedly called for help.

No answer. She switched Lowell’s receiver back on. “Why. did you do that, Grandma Hazel?” “Nothing. Just checking it”

“You can’t fool me! You’re scared! Why?”

“Not scared, pet Worried a little, maybe. Now shut up; Grandma’s got work to do.”

Carefully she lined up the craft by flywheel; carefully she checked it when it tried to swing past She aimed both to offset the new and disastrous vector and to create a vector for City Hall. She intentionally left the gyros unclutched. Then she restrapped Lowell in his saddle, checked its position. “Hold still,” she warned. “Move your little finger and Grandma will scalp you”

Just as carefully she positioned herself, considering lever arms, masses, and angular moments in her head Without gyros the craft must be

balanced just so. “Now,” she said to herself, “Hazel, we find out whether you are a pilot – or just a Sunday pilot.” She ducked her helmet into the eyeshade, picked a distant blip on which to center her crosshairs, and gunned the craft

The blip wavered; she tried to rebalance by shifting her body. When the blip suddenly slipped off to one side she cut the throttle quickly. Again she checked her vector. Their situation was somewhat improved. Again she called for help, not stopping to cut the child out of hearing. He said nothing and looked grave.

She went through the same routine, cutting power again when the craft ‘fell off its tail.” She measured the vector, called for help – and did it all again. A dozen times she tried it. On the last try the thrust stopped with the throttle still wide open. With all fuel gone there was no need to be in a hurry. She measured her vector most carefully on the Eakers’ ship, now far away, then checked the results against the City Hall blip, all the while calling for help. She ran through the figures again; in a fashion she had been successful. They were now unquestionably headed for City Hall, could not miss it by more than a few miles at most – almost jumping distance. But, while the vector was correct in direction, it was annoyingly small in quantity – six hundred and fifty miles at about forty miles an hour; they would be closest in about sixteen hours.

She wondered whether Edith really had needed that other spare oxygen bottle. Her own gauge showed about half full. She called for help again, then decided to go through the problem once more; maybe she had dropped a decimal in her head. While she was lining up on City Hall, the tiny light in the stereo tank faded and died. Her language caused Lowell to inquire, “What’s the matter now, Grandma?”

“Nothing more than I should have expected, I guess. Some days, hon, it just isn’t worth while to wake up in the morning.” The trouble, she soon found, was so simple as to be beyond repair. The stereo radar would no longer work because all three cartridges in the power pack were dead. She was forced to admit that she had been using it rather continuously – and it took a lot of power.

“Grandma Hazel! I want to go home!” She pulled out of her troubled thoughts to answer the child. “We’re going home, dear. But it’s going to take quite a while.”

“I want to go home right now?” “I’m sorry but you can’t”

“But -”

“Shut it up – or when I get you out of that sack, I’ll give you something to yelp for. I mean it” She again called for help. Lowell made one of his lightning changes to serenity. “That’s better,” approved Hazel. “Want to play a game of chess?” “No.”

“Sissy. You’re afraid I’ll beat you. I’ll bet you three spanks and a knuckle rub.” Lowell considered this. “I get the white men?”

“Take ’em. I’ll beat you anyhow.”

To her own surprise she did. It was a long drawn-out game; Lowell was not as practised as she was in visualising a board and they had had to recount the moves on several occasions before he would concede the arrangement of men . . . and between each pair of moves she had again called for help. About the middle of the game she had found it necessary to remove her oxygen bottle and replace it with the one spare. She and the child had started out even but Lowell’s small mass demanded much less oxygen.

“How about another one? Want to get your revenge?” “No! I want to go home.”

“We’re going home, dear.”

“How soon?”

“Well… it’ll be a while yet I’ll tell you a story.” “What story?”

“Well, how about the one about the worm that crawled up out of the mud?” “Oh, I know that one! I’m tired of it”

“There are parts I’ve never told you, And you can’t get tired of it, not really, because there is never any end to it. Always something new.” So she told him again about the worm that crawled up out of the slime, not because it didn’t have enough to eat, not because it wasn’t nice and warm and comfortable down there under the water – but because the worm was restless. How it crawled up on dry land and grew legs. How part of it got to be the Elephant’s Child and part of it got to be a monkey, grew hands, and fiddled with things. How, still insatiably restless, it grew wings and reached up for the stars. She spun it out a long, long time, pausing occasionally to call for aid.

Thechild was either bored and ignored her, or liked it and kept quiet on that account. But when she stopped he said, “Tell me another one”

“Not just now, dear.” His oxygen gauge showed empty. “Go on! Tell me a new one – a better one.”

“Not now, dear. That’s the best story Hazel knows. The very best. I told it to you again because I want you to remember it.” She watched his

anoxia warning signal turn red, then quietly disconnected the partly filled bottle on her own suit, closing the now useless suit valves, and replaced his empty bottle with hers. For a moment she considered cross-connecting the bottle to both suits, then shrugged and let it stand. “Lowell -”

“What, Grandma?”

“Listen to me, dear. You’ve heard me calling for help. You’ve got to do it now. Every few minutes, all the time.” “Why?”

“Because Hazel is tired, dear. Hazel has to sleep. Promise me you’ll do it” “Well… all right”

She tried to hold perfectly still, to breathe as little of the air left in her suit as possible. It wasn’t so bad, she thought She had wanted to see the Rings – but there wasn’t much else she had missed. She supposed everyone had his Carcassonne; she had no regrets.

“Grandma! Grandma Hazel!” She did not answer. He waited, then began to cry, endlessly and without hope.

Dr. Stone arrived back at the Rolling Stone to find only her husband there. She greeted him and added, “Where’s Hazel, dear? and Lowell?” “Eh? Didn’t they come back with you? I supposed they had stopped in the store.”

“No, of course not” “Why “of course not”?”

She explained the arrangement; he looked at her in stunned astonishment ‘They left the same time you did?” “They intended to. Hazel said she would be home in forty-five minutes.”

“There’s a bare possibility that they are still with the Eakers. We’ll find out.” He lunged toward the door.

The twins returned to find their home and City Hall as well in turmoil. They had been spending an interesting and instructive several hours with old Charlie.

Their father turned away from the Stone‘s radio and demanded, “Where have you two been?” “Just over in Charlie’s hole. What’s the trouble?”

Roger Stone explained. The twins looked at each other. “Dad,” Castor said painfully, “you mean Hazel took Mother out in our scooter?” “Certainly.” The twins questioned each other wordlessly again.

‘Why shouldn’t she? Speak up.” “Well, you . . . well, it was like this -” “Speak up!”

“There was a bearing wobble, or something, in one of the gyros,” Pollux admitted miserably. We were working on it”

“You were? In Charlie’s place!”

“Well, we went over there to see what he had in the way of spare parts and, well, we got detained, sort of.”

Their father looked at them for several seconds with no expression of any sort. He then said in a flat voice, “You left a piece of ship’s equipment out of commission. You failed to log it. You failed to report it to the Captain. He paused. “Go to your room.”

“But Dad! We want to help!”

“Stay in your room; you are under arrest”

The twins did as they were ordered. While they waited, the whole of Rock City was alerted. The word went out: the doctor’s little boy is missing; the boy’s grandmother is missing. Fuel up your scooters; stand by to help. Stay on this wave length.

“Pol, quit muttering!”

Pollux turned to his brother. “How can I help it?”

“They can’t be lost, not really lost Why, the stereo itself would stand out on a screen like a searchlight”

Pollux thought about it ‘I don’t know. You remember I said I thought we might have a high-potential puncture in the power pack?” “I thought you fixed that?”

“I planned to, just as soon as we got the bugs smoothed out in the gyros.”

Castor thought about it ‘That’s bad. That could be really bad.” He added suddenly, “But quit muttering, just the same. Start thinking instead. What happened? We’ve got to reconstruct it”

“”What happened?” Are you kidding? Look, the pesky thing tumbles, then anything can happen. No control.” “Use your head, I said. What would Hazel do in this situation?”

They both kept quiet for some moments, then Pollux said, “Cas, that derned thing always tumbled to the left, didn’t it? Always.”

“What good does that do us? Left can be any direction.”

“No! You asked what Hazel would do. She’d be along her homing line, of course – and Hazel always oriented around her drive line so as to get the Sun on the back of her neck, if possible. Her eyes aren’t too good.”

Castor screwed up his face, trying to visualise it. “Say Eakers’ is off that way and City Hall over here; if the Sun is over on this side, then, when it tumbles, she’d vector off that way.” He acted it with his hands.

“Sure, sure! When you put in the right coordinates, that is. But what else would she do? What would you do? You’d vector back I mean vector home.”

“Huh? How could she? With no gyros?”

“Think about it Would you quit? Hazel is a pilot. She’d ride that thing like a broomstick.” He shaped the air with his hands. “So she’d be coming back, or trying to, along here – and everybody will be looking for her way over here.”

Castor scowled. “Could be.”

“It had better be. They’ll be looking for her in a cone with its vertex at Eakers’ – and they ought to be looking in a cone with its vertex right here, and along one side of it at that”

Castor said, “Come along!” “Dad said we were under arrest” “Come along!”

City Hall was empty, save for Mrs Fries who was standing watch, red-eyed and tense, at the radio. She shook her head. “Nothing yet.”

“Where can we find a scooter?”

“You can’t Everybody is out searching.”

Castor tugged at Pollux’s sleeve. “Old Charlie.” “Huh?” Say, Mrs Fries, is old Charlie out searching?” “I doubt if he knows about it.”

They rushed into their suits, cycled by spilling and wasting air, did not bother with safety lines. Old Charlie let them in. “What’s all the fuss about, boys?”

Castor explained Charlie shook his head. “That’s too bad, that really is. I’m right sorry.” “Charlie, we’ve got to have your scooter.”

“Right now!” added Pollux.

Charlie looked astorsished. “Are you fooling? I’m the only one can gun that rig.” “Charlie, this serious! We’ve got to have it”

“You couldn’t gun it”

“We’re both pilots.”

Charlie scratched meditatively while Castor considered slugging him for his keys – but his keys probably weren’t on him – and how would one find

anything in that trash pile? Charlie finally said, “If you’ve just got to, I suppose I better gun it for you.”

“Okay, okay! Hurry up! Get your suit on!”

“Don’t be in such a rush. It just slows you down.”

Charlie disappeared into the underbush, came out fairly promptly with a suit that seemed to consist mostly of vulcanized patches. “Dog take it,” he complained as he began to struggle with it, “if your mother would stay home and mind her own business, these things wouldn’t happen.”

“Shut up and hurry!”

“I am hurrying. She made me take a bath. I don’t need no doctors. All the bugs that ever bit me, died.”

When Charlie had dug his scooter out of the floating junk-yard moored to his home they soon saw why he had refused to lend it. It seemed probable that no one else could possibly pilot it Not only was it of vintage type, repaired with parts from many other sorts, but also the controls were arranged for a man with four hands. Charlie had been in free fall so long that he used his feet almost as readily for grasping and handling as does an ape; his space suit had had the feet thereof modified so that he could grasp things between the big toe and the second, as with Japanese stockings.

“Hang on. Where we going?”

“Do you know where the Eakers live?”

“Sure. Used to live out past that way myself. Lonely stretch.” He pointed. “Right out there, “bout half a degree right of that leetle second-magnitude star – say eight hundred, eight hundred ten miles.”

“Cas, maybe we’d better check the drift reports in the store?”

Charlie seemed annoyed. “I know Rock City. I keep up with the drifts. I have to.” “Then let’s go.”

“To Eakers’?”

“No, no – uh, just about. . .” He strained his neck, figured the position of the Sun, tried to imagine himself in Hazel’s suit, heading back. “About there – would you say, Pol?”

“As near as we can guess it.”

The crate was old but Charlie had exceptionally large tanks on it; it could maintain a thrust for plenty of change-of-motion. Its jet felt as sweet as any. But it had no radar of any sort. “Charlie, how do you tell where you are in this thing?”

“That”

“’That’ proved to be an antiquated radio compass loop. The twins had never seen one, knew how it worked only by theory. They were radar pilots, not used to conning by the seats of their suits. Seeing their faces Charlie added, “Shucks, if you’ve got any eye for angle, you don’t need fancy gear. Anywhere within twenty miles of the City Hall, I don’t even turn on my suit jet – I just jump.”

They cruised out the line that the twins had picked. Once in free fall Charlie taught them how to handle the compass loop. “Just plug it into your suit in place of your regular receiver. If you pick up a signal, swing the loop until it’s least loud.

“That’s the direction of the signal – an arrow right through the middle of the loop.” “But which way? The loop faces both ways.”

“You have to know that. Or guess wrong and go back and try again.”

Castor took the first watch. He got plenty of signals; the node was buzzing with talk – all bad news. He found, too, that the loop, while not as directional as a ‘salad bowl’ antenna, usually did not pick up but one signal at a time. As they scooted along, endlessly he swung the loop, staying with each signal just long enough to be sure that the sound could not be Hazel.

Pollux tapped his arm and put his helmet in contact with Castor’s. “Anything?” “Just chatter.”

“Keep trying. We’ll stay out until we find them. Want me to spell you?” “No. If we don’t find them. I’m not going back.”

“Quit being a cheap hero and listen. Or give me that loop.”

City Hall dropped astern until it was no longer a shape – Castor at last reluctantly gave over the watch to Pollux. His twin had been at it for

perhaps ten minutes when he suddenly made motions waving them to silence even though he could not have heard them in any case. Castor spoke

to him helmet to helmet. “What is it?”

“Sounded like a kid crying. Might have been Buster.” “Where?”

“I’ve lost it I tried to get a minimum. Now I can’t raise it”

Charlie, anticipating what would be needed, had swung ship as soon as he had quit accelerating. Now he blasted back as much as he had accelerated, bringing them dead in space relative to City Hall and the node. He gave it a gentle extra bump to send them cruising slowly back the way they had come. Pollux listened, slowly swinging his loop. Castor strained his eyes, trying to see something, anything, other than the cold stars.

“Got it again!” Pollux pounded his brother.

Old Charlie killed their relative motion; waited. Pollux cautiously tried for a minimum, then swung the loop, and tried again. He pointed, indicating that it had to be one of two directions, a hundred and eighty degrees apart

“Which way?” Castor asked Charlie. “Over that way.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“Me neither. I got a hunch.”

Castor did not argue. Either direction was equally likely.

Charlie gunned it hard in the direction he had picked, roughly toward Vega. He had hardly cut the gun and let it coast in free fall when Pollux was nodding vigorously. They coasted for some minutes, with Pollux reporting the signal stronger and the minimum sharper . . . but still nothing in sight Castor longed for radar. By now he could hear crying in his own phones. It could he Buster – it must be Buster.

“There she is!”

It was Charlie’s shout. Castor could not see anything, even though old Charlie pointed it out to him. At last he got it – a point of light, buried in stars. Pollux unplugged from the compass when it was clear that what they saw was a mass, not a star, and in the proper direction. Old Charlie handled his craft as casually as a bicycle, bringing them up to it fast and killing his headway so that they were dead with it. He insisted on making the jump himself. Lowell was too hysterical to be coherent. Seeing that he was alive and not hurt, they turned at once to Hazel. She was still strapped in her seat, eyes open, a characteristic half-smile on her face. But she neither greeted them nor answered.

Charlie looked at her and shook his head. “Not a chance, boys. She ain’t even wearing an oxy bottle.”

Nevertheless they hooked a bottle to her suit – Castor’s bottle; no one had thought to bring a spare. The twins went back cross-connected on what was left in Pollux’s bottle, temporarily Siamese twins. The family scooter they left in orbit, to he picked up and towed in by someone else. Charlie used almost all his fuel on the way back, gunning as high a speed as he dared while still saving boost to brake them at City Hall.

They shouted the news all the way back. Somewhere along the line someone picked up their signal; passed it along.

They took her into Fries’ store, there being more room there. Mrs Fries pushed the twins aside and applied artificial respiration herself, to be displaced ten minutes later by Dr. Stone. She used the free-fall method without strapping down, placing herself behind Hazel and rhythmically squeezing her ribs with both arms.

It seemed that all of Rock City wanted to come inside. Fries chased them out, and, for the first time in history, barred the door to his store. After a while Dr. Stone swapped off with her husband, then took back the task after only a few minutes’ rest

Meade was weeping silently; old Charlie was wringing his hands and looking out of place and unhappy. Dr. Stone worked with set face, her features hardened to masculine, professional lines. Lowell, his hand in Meade’s was dry-eyed but distressed, not understanding, not yet knowing death. Castor’s mouth was twisted, crying heavily as a man cries, the sobs wrung from him; Pollux, emotion already exhausted, was silent.

When Edith Stone relieved him, Roger Stone backed away, turned toward the others. His face was without anger but without hope. Pollux whispered, “Dad? Is she?”

Roger Stone then noticed them, came over and put an arm around Castor’s heaving shoulders. “You must remember, boy, that she is very old. They don’t have much comeback at her age.”

Hazel’s eyes opened. “Who doesn’t boy?”

XII – THE ENDLESS TRAIL

Hazel had used the ancient fakir’s trick, brought to the west, so it is said, by an entertainer called Houdini, of breathing as shallowly as possible and going as quickly as may be into a coma. To hear her tell it, there never had been any real danger. Die? Shucks, you couldn’t suffocate in a coffin in that length of time. Sure, she had had to depend on Lowell to keep up the cry for help; he used less oxygen. But deliberate suicide to save the boy? Ridiculous! There hadn’t been any need to.

It was not until the next day that Roger Store called the boys in. He told them, “You did a good job on the rescue. We’ll forget the technical breach of confinement to the ship.”

Castor answered, “It wasn’t anything. Hazel did it, really. I mean, it was an idea that we got out of her serial, the skew orbit episode.” “I must not have read that one.”

“Well, it was a business about how to sort out one piece of space from another when you don’t have too much data to go on. You see, Captain Sterling had to -”

“Never mind. That’s not what I wanted to talk with you about, you did a good job, granted, no matter what suggested it to you. If only conventional search methods had been used, your grandmother would unquestionably now be dead. You are two very intelligent men – when you take the trouble. But you didn’t take the trouble soon enough. Not about the gyros.”

“But Dad, we never dreamed -”

“Enough.” He reached for his waist; the twins noticed that he was wearing an old-fashioned piece of apparel – a leather belt. He took it off. “This belonged to your great grandfather. He left it to your grandfather – who in turn left it to me. I don’t know how far back it goes – but you might say that the Stone family was founded on it.” He doubled it and tried it on the palm of his hand. “All of us, all the way back, have very tender memories of it. Very tender. Except you two.” He again whacked his palm with it.

Castor said, “You mean you’re going to beat us with that?” “Have you any reason to offer why I shouldn’t?”

Castor looked at Pollux, sighed and moved forward, I’ll go first, I’m the older.”

Roger moved to a drawer, put the belt inside. “I should have used it ten years ago.” He closed the drawer. “It’s too late, now.” “Aren’t you going to do it?”

“I never said I was going to. No.”

The twins swapped glances. Castor went on. “Dad – Captain. We’d rather you did.” Pollux added quickly, “Much rather.”

“I know you would. That way you’d be through with it. But instead you’re going to have to live with it. That’s the way adults have to do it.” “But Dad -”

“Go to your quarters, sir.”

When it was time for the Rolling Stone to leave for Ceres a good proportion of the community crowded into City Hall to bid the doctor and her family good-by; all the rest were hooked in by radio, a full town meeting. Mayor Fries made a speech and presented them with a scroll which made them all honorary citizens of Rock City, now and forever; Roger Stone tried to answer and choked up. Old Charlie, freshly bathed, cried openly. Meade sang one more time into the microphone, her soft contralto unmixed this time with commercialism. Ten minutes later the Stone drifted out- orbit and back.

As at Mars, Roger Stone left her circum Ceres, not at a station or satellite – there was none – but in orbit. Hazel, the Captain, and Meade went down by shuttle to Ceres City, Meade to see the sights. Roger to arrange the disposal of their high grade and core material and for a cargo of refined metal to take back to Luna, Hazel to take care of business or pleasure of her own. Doctor Stone chose not to go – on Lowell’s account; the shuttle was no more than an over-sized scooter with bumper landing gear.

The twins were still under hatches, not allowed to go.

Meade assured them, on return, that they had not missed anything. “It’s just like Luna City, only little and crowded and no fun.” Their father added, “She’s telling the truth, boys, so don’t take it too hard. You’ll be seeing Luna itself next stop anyway.

“Oh, we weren’t kicking!” Castor said stiffly.

“Not a bit,” insisted Pollux. “We’re willing to wait for Luna.”

Roger Stone grinned, “You’re not fooling anyone. But we will be shaping orbit home in a couple of weeks. In a way I’m sorry. All in all, it’s been two good years.”

Meade said suddenly, “Did you say “home” Daddy? It seems to me we are home. We’re going back to Luna, but we’re taking home with us.” “Eh? Yes, I suppose you’re right; the good old Rolling Stone is home, looked at that way. She’s taken us through a lot.” He patted a bulkhead

affectionately. “Right, Mother?”

Hazel had been unusually silent. Now she looked at her son and said, “Oh, sure, sure. Of course.” Dr. Stone said, “What did you do downside, Mother Hazel?”

“Me? Oh, not much. Swapped lies with a couple of old-timers. And sent off that slough episodes. By the way, Roger, better start thinking about story lines.”

“Eh? What was that, Mother?”

“That’s my last. I’m giving the show back to you.” “Well, all right – but why?”

“Uh, I’m not going to find it so convenient now.” She seemed embarrassed. “You see – well, would any of you mind very much if I checked out now?”

“What do you mean?”

“The Helen of Troy is shaping for the Trojans and the Wellington is matching there for single-H and a passenger. Me. I’m going on out to Titan.”

Before they could object she went on, “Now don’t look at me that way. I’ve always wanted to see the Rings, close up – close enough to file my nails on ’em. They must be the gaudiest sight in the System. I got to thinking right seriously about it when the air was getting a little stuffy back – well, back you-know-when. I said to myself; Hazel, you aren’t getting any younger; you catch the next chance that comes your way. I missed one once, Roger, when you were three. A good chance, but they wouldn’t take a child and well, never mind. So now I’m going.”

She paused, then snapped, “Don’t look so much like a funeral! You don’t need me now. What I mean is, Lowell is bigger now and not such a problem”

“I’ll always need you, Mother Hazel,” her daughter-in-law said quietly.

“Thanks. But not true. I’ve taught Meade all the astrogation I know, She could get a job with Four-Planets tomorrow if they weren’t so stuffy about hiring female pilots. The twins -well, they’ve soaked up all the meanness I can pass on to them; they’ll put up a good fight, whatever comes up. And you, Son, I finished with you when you were in short pants. You’ve been bringing me up ever since.”

“Mother!”

“Yes, Son?”

“What’s your real reason? Why do you want to go?”

“Why? Why does anybody want to go anywhere? Why did the bear go round the mountain? To see what he could see! I’ve never seen the Rings. That’s reason enough to go anywhere. The race has been doing it for all time. The dull ones stay home – and the bright ones stir around and try to see what trouble they can dig up. It’s the human pattern. It doesn’t need a reason, any more than a flat cat needs a reason to buzz. Why anything?”

“When are you coming back?”

“I may never come back. I like free fall. Doesn’t take any muscle. Take a look at old Charlie. You know how old he is? I did some checking. He’s at least a hundred and sixty. That’s encouraging at my age – makes me feel like a young girl. I may see quite a few things yet,”

Dr. Stone said, “Of course you will, Mother Hazel.” Roger Stone turned to his wife. “Edith?”

“Yes, dear?”

“What’s your opinion?”

“Well . . . there’s actually no reason why we should go back to Luna, not just now.” “So I was thinking. But what about Meade?”

“Me?” said Meade.

Hazel put in dryly, “They’re thinking you are about husband-high, hon.”

Dr. Stone looked at her daughter and nodded slightly. Meade looked surprised, then said, “Pooh! I’m in no hurry. Besides – there’s a Patrol base on Titan. There ought to be lots of young officers.”

Hazel answered, “It’s a Patrol research base, hon – probably nothing but dedicated scientists.” “Well, perhaps when I get through with them they won’t be quite so dedicated!”

Roger Stone turned to the twins. “Boys?”

Castor answerd for the team. “Do we get a vote? Sure!”

Roger Stone grasped a stanchion, pulled himself forward. “Then it’s settled. All of you – Hazel, boys, Meade – set up trial orbits. I’ll start the mass computations”

“Easy, son – count me out on that,” “Eh?”

“Son, did you check the price they’re getting for single-H here? If we are going to do a cometary for Saturn instead of a tangential for Earth, it’s back to the salt mines for me. I’ll radio New York for an advance, then I’ll go wake Lowell and we’ll start shoveling gore.”

“Well… okay. The rest of you-mind your decimals!”

All stations were manned and ready; from an instruction couch rigged back of the pilot and co-pilot Meade was already running down the count- off. Roger Stone glanced across at his mother and whispered, “What are you smiling about?”

“And five! And four!” chanted Meade.

“Nothing much. After we get to Titan we might-”

The blast cut off her words; the Stone trembled and threw herself outward bound, toward Saturn. In her train followed hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of thousands of restless rolling Stones. . . to Saturn. . . to Uranus, to Pluto. . . rolling on out to the stars. . . outward bound to the ends of the Universe.

The End

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Farmer in the Sky (full text) by Robert Heinlein

“Farmer in the Sky” is another one of Heinlein’s excellent novels. It is set in the “Heinlein solar system” which means Venus and Mars have life. It is about a family trying to be homesteaders on Ganymede as it orbits Jupiter. The descriptions of the sky from the surface of Ganymede are some of the best parts of this well written and engaging story.

Farmer in the sky

1. Earth

Our troop had been up in the High Sierras that day and we were late getting back. We had taken off from the camp field on time but Traffic Control swung us ‘way east to avoid some weather. I didn’t like it; Dad usually won’t eat if I’m not home.

Besides that, I had had a new boy shoved off on me as co-pilot; my usual co-pilot and assistant patrol leader was sick, so our Scoutmaster, Mr. Kinski, gave me this twerp. Mr. Kinski rode in the other copter with the Cougar Patrol.

“Why don’t you put on some speed?” the twerp wanted to know.

“Ever hear of traffic regulations?” I asked him.

The copter was on slave-automatic, controlled from the ground, and was cruising slowly, down a freight lane they had stuck us in.

The twerp laughed. “You can always have an emergency. Here–I’ll show you.” He switched on the mike. “Dog Fox Eight Three, calling traffic–“

I switched it off, then switched on again when Traffic answered and told them that we had called by mistake. The twerp looked disgusted. “Mother’s good little boy!” he said in sticky sweet tones.

That was just the wrong thing to say to me. “Go aft,” I told him, “and tell Slats Keifer to come up here.” “Why? He’s not a pilot.”

“Neither are you, for my money. But he weighs what you do and I want to keep the crate trimmed.” He settled back in his seat. “Old Man Kinski assigned me as co-pilot; here I stay.”

I counted to ten and let it ride. The pilot compartment of a ship in the air is no place for a fight. We had nothing more to say to each other until I put her down on North Diego Platform and cut the tip jets.

I was last one out, of course. Mr, Kinski was waiting there for us but I didn’t see him; all I saw was the twerp. I grabbed him by the shoulder. “Want to repeat that crack now?” I asked him.

Mr. Kinski popped up out of nowhere, stepped between us and said, “Bill! Bill! What’s the meaning of this?” “I–” I started to say that I was going to slap the twerp loose from his teeth, but I thought better of it

Mr. Kinski turned to the twerp. “What happened, Jones?” “I didn’t do anything! Ask anybody.”

I was about to say that he could tell that to the Pilots’ Board. Insubordination in the air is a serious matter. But that “Ask anybody” stopped me. Nobody else had seen or heard anything.

Mr. Kinski looked at each of us, then said, “Muster your patrol and dismiss them, Bill.” So I did and went on home.

All in all, I was tired and jumpy by the time I got home. I had listened to the news on the way home; it wasn’t good. The ration had been cut another ten calories–which made me still hungrier and reminded me that I hadn’t been home to get Dad’s supper. The newscaster went on to say that the Spaceship Mayflower had finally been commissioned and that the rolls were now opened for emigrants. Pretty lucky for them, I thought. No short rations. No twerps like Jones.

And a brand new planet.

George–my father, that is–was sitting in the apartment, looking over some papers. “Howdy, George,” I said to him, “eaten yet?” “Hello, Bill. No.”

“I’ll have supper ready right away.” I went into the pantry and could see that he hadn’t eaten lunch, either. I decided to fix him a plus meal.

I grabbed two Syntho-Steaks out of the freezer and slapped them in quickthaw, added a big Idaho baked potato for Dad and a smaller one for me, then dug out a package of salad and let it warm naturally.

By the time I had poured boiling water over two soup cubes and over coffee powder the steaks were ready for the broiler. I transferred them, letting it cycle at medium rare, and stepped up the gain on the quickthaw so that the spuds would be ready when the steaks were–then back to the freezer for a couple of icekreem cake slices for dessert.

The spuds were ready. I took a quick look at my ration accounts, decided we could afford it, and set out a couple of pats of butterine for them. The

broiler was ringing; I removed the steaks, set everything out, and switched on the candles, just as Anne would have done.

“Come and get it!” I yelled and turned back to enter the calorie and point score on each item from the wrappers, then shoved the wrappers in the incinerator. That way you never get your accounts fouled up.

Dad sat down as I finished. Elapsed time from scratch, two minutes and twenty seconds–there’s nothing hard about cooking; I don’t see why women make such a fuss about it. No system, probably.

Dad sniffed the steaks and grinned. “Oh boy! Bill, you’ll bankrupt us.”

“You let me worry,” I said. I’m still plus for this quarter.” Then I frowned. “But I won’t be, next quarter, unless they quit cutting the ration.” Dad stopped with a piece of steak on its way to his mouth. “Again?”

“Again. Look, George, I don’t get it. This was a good crop year and they started operating the Montana yeast plant besides.” “You follow all the commissary news, don’t you, Bill?”

“Naturally.”

“Did you notice the results of the Chinese census as well? Try it on your slide rule.”

I knew what he meant–and the steak suddenly tasted like old rubber. What’s the use in being careful if somebody on the other side of the globe is going to spoil your try? “Those darned Chinese ought to quit raising babies and start raising food!”

“Share and share alike, Bill.”

“But–” I shut up. George was right, he usually is, but somehow it didn’t seem fair. “Did you hear about the Mayflower?” I asked to change the subject.

“What about the Mayflower?” Dad’s voice was suddenly cautious, which surprised me. Since Anne died –Anne was my mother–George and I have been about as close as two people can be.

“Why, she was commissioned, that’s all. They’ve started picking emigrants.” “So?” There was that cautious tone again. “What did you do today?”

“Nothing much. We hiked about five miles north of camp and Mr. Kinski put some of the kids through tests. I saw a mountain lion.” “Really? I thought they were all gone.”

“Well, I thought I saw one.”

“Then you probably did. What else?”

I hesitated, then told him about this twerp Jones. “He’s not even a member of our troop. How does he get that way, interfering with my piloting?” “You did right, Bill. Sounds as if this twerp Jones, as you call him, was too young to be trusted with a pilot’s license.”

“Matter of fact, he’s a year older than I am.”

“In my day you had to be sixteen before you could even go up for your license.” “Times change, George.”

“So they do. So they do.”

Dad suddenly looked sad and I knew he was thinking about Anne. I hastily said, “Old enough or not, how does an insect like Jones get by the temperament-stability test?”

“Psycho tests aren’t perfect, Bill. Neither are people.” Dad sat back and lit his pipe. “Want me to clean up tonight?”

“No, thanks.” He always asked; I always turned him down. Dad is absent-minded; he lets ration points get into the incinerator. When I salvage, I really salvage. “Feel like a game of cribbage?”

“I’ll beat the pants off you.”

“You and who else?” I salvaged the garbage, burned the dishes, followed him into the living room. He was getting out the board and cards.

His mind wasn’t really on the game. I was around the corner and ready to peg out before he was really under way. Finally he put down his cards and looked square at me. “Son–“

“Huh? I mean, ‘Yes, George?'”

“I’ve decided to emigrate in the Mayflower.“

I knocked over the cribbage board. I picked it up, eased my throttle, and tried to fly right. “That’s swell! When do we leave?” Dad puffed furiously on his pipe. “That’s the point, Bill. You’re not going.”

I couldn’t say anything. Dad had never done anything like this to me before. I sat there, working my mouth like a fish. Finally I managed, “Dad, you’re joking.”

“No, I’m not, Son.”

“But why? Answer me that one question: why?” “Now see here, Son–“

“Call me ‘Bill’.”

“Okay, Bill. It’s one thing for me to decide to take my chances with colonial life but I’ve got no right to get you off to a bad start. You’ve got to finish your education. There are no decent schools on Ganymede. You get your education, then when you’re grown, if you want to emigrate, that’s your business.”

“That’s the reason? That’s the only reason? To go to school?“

“Yes. You stay here and take your degree. I’d like to see you take your doctor’s degree as well. Then, if you want to, you can join me. You won’t have missed your chance; applicants with close relatives there have priority.”

“No!”

Dad looked stubborn.

So did I, I guess. “George, I’m telling you, if you leave me behind, it won’t do any good. I won’t go to school. I can pass the exams for third class citizenship right now. Then I can get a work permit and–“

He cut me short. “You won’t need a work permit. I’m leaving you well provided for, Bill. You’ll–“

‘Well provided for’! Do you think I’d touch a credit of yours if you go away and leave me? I’ll live on my student’s allowance until I pass the exams and get my work card.”

“Bring your voice down, Sonl” He went on, “You’re proud of being a Scout, aren’t you?”

“Well–yes.”

“I seem to remember that Scouts are supposed to be obedient. And courteous, too.” That one was pretty hot over the plate. I had to think about it. “George–“

“Yes, Bill?”

“If I was rude, I’m sorry. But the Scout Law wasn’t thought up to make it easy to push a Scout around. As long as I’m living in your home I’ll do what you say. But if you walk out on me, you don’t have any more claim on me. Isn’t that fair?”

“Be reasonable, Son. I’m doing it for your own good.”

“Don’t change the subject, George. Is that fair or isn’t it? If you go hundreds of millions of miles away, how can you expect to run my life after you’re gone? I’ll be on my own.”

“I’ll still be your father.”

“Fathers and sons should stick together. As I recall, the fathers that came over in the original Mayflower brought their kids with them.” “This is different.”

“How?”

“It’s further, incredibly further–and dangerous.”

“So was that move dangerous–half the Plymouth Rock colony died the first winter; everybody knows that. And distance doesn’t mean anything; what matters is how long it takes. If I had had to walk back this afternoon, I’d still be hiking next month. It took the Pilgrims sixty-three days to cross the Atlantic or so they taught me in school–but this afternoon the caster said that the Mayflower–will reach Ganymede in sixty days. That makes Ganymede closer than London was to Plymouth Rock.”

Dad stood up and knocked out his pipe. “I’m not going to argue, Son.”

“And I’m not, either.” I took a deep breath. I shouldn’t have said the next thing I did say, but I was mad. I’d never been treated this way before and I guess I wanted to hurt back. “But I can tell you this: you’re not the only one who is sick of short rations. If you think I’m going to stay here while you’re eating high on the hog out in the colonies, then you had better think about it again. I thought we were partners.”

That last was the meanest part of it and I should have been ashamed. That was what he had said to me the day after Anne died, and that was the way it had always been.

The minute I said it I knew why George had to emigrate and I knew it didn’t have anything to do with ration points. But I didn’t know how to unsay it. Dad stared. Then he said slowly, “You think that’s how it is? That I want to go away so I can quit skipping lunch to save ration points?”

“What else?” I answered. I was stuck in a groove; I didn’t know what to say. “Hmm … well, if you believe that, Bill, there is nothing I can say. I think I’ll turn in.”

I went to my room, feeling all mixed up inside. I wanted Mother around so bad I could taste it and I knew that George felt the same way. She would never have let us reach the point where we were actually shouting at each other–at least I had shouted. Besides that, the partnership was busted up, it would never be the same.

I felt better after a shower and a long massage. I knew that the partnership couldn’t really be busted up. In the long run, when George saw that I had to go, he wouldn’t let college stand in the way. I was sure of that–well, pretty sure at least.

I began to think about Ganymede.

Ganymede!

Why, I had never even been out to the Moon!

There was a boy in my class who had been born on the Moon. His parents were still there; he had been sent home for schooling. He gave himself airs as a deep-space man. But Luna was less than a quarter of a million miles away; you could practically throw rocks at it. It wasn’t self-supporting; Moon Colony had the same rations as Earth. It was really part of Earth. But Ganymede!

Let’s see–Jupiter was half a billion miles away, more or less, depending on the time of year. What was the tiny distance to the Moon compared with a jump like that?

Suddenly I couldn’t remember whether Ganymede was Jupiter’s third moon or fourth. And I just had to know. There was a book out in the living room that would tell and more besides–Ellsworth Smith’s A Tour of Earth’s Colonies. I went out to get it.

Dad hadn’t gone to bed. He was sitting up, reading. I said, “Oh–hello,” and went to look for the book. He nodded and went on reading. The book wasn’t where it should have been. I looked around and Dad said, “What are you looking for, Bill?”

Then I saw that he was reading it. I said, “Oh, nothing. I didn’t know you were using it.” “This?” He held it up.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll find something else.” “Take it. I’m through with it.”

“Well … All right-thanks.” I took it and turned away. “Just a minute, Bill.”

I waited. “I’ve come to a decision, Bill. I’m not going.”

“Huh?”

“You were right about us being partners. My place is here.”

“Yes, but– Look, George, I’m sorry I said what I did about rations. I know that’s not the reason. The reason is–well, you’ve got to go.” I wanted to tell him I knew the reason was Anne, but if I said Anne’s name out loud I was afraid I’d bawl.

“You mean that you are willing to stay behind–and go to school?”

“Uh–” I wasn’t quite ready to say that; I was dead set on going myself. “I didn’t quite mean that. I meant that I know why you want to go, why you’ve

got to go.”

“Hmm …” He lit his pipe, making a long business of it. “I see. Or maybe I don’t” Then he added, “Let’s put it this way, Bill. The partnership stands. Either we both go, or we both stay–unless you decide of your own volition that you will stay to get your degree and join me out there later. Is that fair?”

“Huh? Oh, yes!”

“So let’s talk about it later.”

I said goodnight and ducked into my room quick. William, my boy, I told myself, it’s practically in the bag–if you can just keep from getting soft- hearted and agreeing to a split up. I crawled into bed and opened the book.

Ganymede was Jupiter-III; I should have remembered that. It was bigger than Mercury, much bigger than the Moon, a respectable planet, even if it was a moon. The surface gravity was one third of Earth-normal; I would weigh about forty-five pounds there. First contacted in 1985–which I knew– and its atmosphere project started in 1998 and had been running ever since.

There was a stereo in the book of Jupiter as seen from Ganymede–round as an apple, ruddy orange, and squashed on both poles. And big as all outdoors. Beautiful. I fell asleep staring at it.

Dad and I didn’t get a chance to talk for the next three days as my geography class spent that time in Antarctica. I came back with a frostbitten nose and some swell pix of penguins–and some revised ideas. I had had time to think.

Dad had fouled up the account book as usual but he had remembered to save the wrappers and it didn’t take me long to straighten things out. After dinner I let him beat me two games, then said, “Look, George–“

“Yes?”

“You know what we were talking about?” “Well, yes.”

“It’s this way. I’m under age; I can’t go if you won’t let me. Seems to me you ought to, but if you don’t, I won’t quit school. In any case, you ought to go– you need to go–you know why. I’m asking you to think it over and take me along, but I’m not going to be a baby about it.”

Dad almost looked embarrassed. “That’s quite a speech, Son. You mean you’re willing to let me go, you stay here and go to school, and not make a fuss about it?”

“Well, not ‘willing’-but I’d put up with it.”

“Thanks.” Dad fumbled in his pouch and pulled out a flat photo. “Take a look at this.” “What is it?”

“Your file copy of your application for emigration. I submitted it two days ago.”

2. The Green-Eyed Monster

I wasn’t much good in school for the next few days. Dad cautioned me not to get worked up over it; they hadn’t approved our applications as yet. “You know, Bill, ten times as many people apply as can possibly go.”

“But most of them want to go to Venus or Mars. Ganymede is too far away; that scares the sissies out.”

“I wasn’t talking about applications for all the colonies; I meant applications for Ganymede, specifically for this first trip of the Mayflower“

“Even so, you can’t scare me. Only about one in ten can qualify. That’s the way it’s always been.”

Dad agreed. He said that this was the first time in history that some effort was being made to select the best stock for colonization instead of using colonies as dumping grounds for misfits and criminals and failures. Then he added, “But look, Bill, what gives you the notion that you and I can necessarily qualify? Neither one of us is a superman,”

That rocked me back on my heels. The idea that we might not be good enough hadn’t occurred to me. “George, they couldn’t turn us down!“

“They could and they might.”

“But how? They need engineers out there and you’re tops. Me–I’m not a genius but I do all right in school. We’re both healthy and we don’t have any

bad mutations; we aren’t color blind or bleeders or anything like that.”

“No bad mutations that we know of,” Dad answered. “However, I agree that we seem to have done a fair job in picking our grandparents. I wasn’t thinking of anything as obvious as that.”

“Well, what, then? What could they possibly get us on?”

He fiddled with his pipe the way he always does when he doesn’t want to answer right away. “Bill, when I pick a steel alloy for a job, it’s not enough to say, ‘Well, it’s a nice shiny piece of metal; let’s use it.’ No, I take into account a list of tests as long as your arm that tells me all about that alloy, what it’s good for and just what I can expect it to do in the particular circumstances I intend to use it. Now if you had to pick people for a tough job of colonizing, what would you look for?”

“Uh … I don’t know.”

“Neither do I. I’m not a social psychometrician. But to say that they want healthy people with fair educations is like saying that I want steel rather than wood for a job. It doesn’t tell what sort of steel. Or it might not be steel that was needed; it might be titanium alloy. So don’t get your hopes too high.”

“But–well, look, what can we do about it?”

“Nothing. If we don’t get picked, then tell yourself that you are a darn good grade of steel and that it’s no fault of yours that they wanted magnesium.” It was all very well to look at it that way, but it worried me. I didn’t let it show at school, though. I had already let everybody know that we had put in for

Ganymede; if we missed–well, it would be sort of embarrassing.

My best friend, Duck Miller, was all excited about it and was determined to go, too. “But how can you?” I asked. “Do your folks want to go?”

“I already looked into that,” Duck answered. “All I have to have is a grown person as a sponsor, a guardian. Now if you can tease your old man into signing for me, it’s in the bag.”

“But what will your father say?”

“He won’t care. He’s always telling me that when he was my age he was earning his own living. He says a boy should be self reliant. Now how about it? Will you speak to your old man about it–tonight?”

I said I would and I did. Dad didn’t say anything for a moment, then he asked: “You really want Duck with you?” “Sure I do. He’s my best friend.”

“What does his father say?”

“He hasn’t asked him yet,” and then I explained how Mr. Miller felt about it “So?” said Dad. “Then let’s wait and see what Mr. Miller says.”

“Well–look, George, does that mean that you’ll sign for Duck if his father says it’s okay?” “I meant what I said, Bill. Let’s wait. The problem may solve itself.”

I said, “Oh well, maybe Mr. and Mrs. Miller will decide to put in for it, too, after Duck gets them stirred up.”

Dad just cocked an eyebrow at me. “Mr. Miller has, shall we say, numerous business interests here. I think it would be easier to jack up one corner of Boulder Dam than to get him to give them up.”

“You’re giving up your business.”

“Not my business, my professional practice. But I’m not giving up my profession; I’m taking it with me.” I saw Duck at school the next day and asked him what his father had said.

“Forget it,” he told me. “The deal is off.” “Huh?”

“My old man says that nobody but an utter idiot would even think of going out to Ganymede. He says that Earth is the only planet in the system fit to live on and that if the government wasn’t loaded up with a bunch of starry-eyed dreamers we would quit pouring money down a rat hole trying to turn a bunch of bare rocks in the sky into green pastures. He says the whole enterprise is doomed.”

“You didn’t think so yesterday.”

“That was before I got the straight dope. You know what? My old man is going to take me into partnership. Just as soon as I’m through college he’s going to start breaking me into the management end. He says he didn’t tell me before because he wanted me to learn self reliance and initiative, but he thought it was time I knew about it. What do you think of that?”

“Why, that’s pretty nice, I suppose. But what’s this about the ‘enterprise being doomed’?”

‘Nice’, he calls it! Well, my old man says that it is an absolute impossibility to keep a permanent colony on Ganymede. It’s a perilous toehold, artificially maintained–those were his exact words–and someday the gadgets will bust and the whole colony will be wiped out, every man jack, and then we will quit trying to go against nature.”

We didn’t talk any more then as we had to go to class. I told Dad about it that night. “What do you think, George?” “Well, there is something in what he says–“

“Huh?”

“Don’t jump the gun. If everything went sour on Ganymede at once and we didn’t have the means to fix it, it would revert to the state we found it in. But that’s not the whole answer. People have a funny habit of taking as ‘natural’ whatever they are used to–but there hasn’t been any ‘natural’ environment, the way they mean it, since men climbed down out of trees. Bill, how many people are there in California?”

“Fifty-five, sixty million.”

“Did you know that the first four colonies here starved to death? ‘S truthl How is it that fifty-odd million can live here and not starve? Barring short rations, of course.”

He answered it himself. “We’ve got four atomic power plants along the coast just to turn sea water into fresh water. We use every drop of the Colorado River and every foot of snow that falls on the Sierras. And we use a million other gadgets.

If those gadgets went bad–say a really big earthquake knocked out all four atomic plants–the country would go back to desert. I doubt if we could evacuate that many people before most of them died from thirst. Yet I don’t think Mr. Miller is lying awake nights worrying about it. He regards Southern California as a good ‘natural’ environment.

“Depend on it, Bill. Wherever Man has mass and energy to work with and enough savvy to know how to manipulate them, he can create any environment he needs.”

I didn’t see much of Duck after that. About then we got our preliminary notices to take tests for eligibility for the Ganymede colony and that had us pretty busy. Besides, Duck seemed different–or maybe it was me. I had the trip on my mind and he didn’t want to talk about it. Or if he did, he’d make some crack that rubbed me the wrong way.

Dad wouldn’t let me quit school while it was still uncertain as to whether or not we would qualify, but I was out a lot, taking tests. There was the usual physical examination, of course, with some added wrinkles. A g test, for example–I could take up to eight gravities before I blacked out, the test showed. And a test for low-pressure tolerance and hemorrhaging–they didn’t want people who ran to red noses and varicose veins. There were lots more.

But we passed them. Then came the psycho tests which were a lot worse because you never knew what was expected of you and half the time you

didn’t even know you were being tested. It started off with hypno-analysis, which really puts a fellow at a disadvantage. How do you know what you’ve blabbed while they’ve got you asleep?

Once I sat around endlessly waiting for a psychiatrist to get around to seeing me. There were a couple of clerks there; when I came in one of them dug my medical and psycho record out of file and laid it on a desk. Then the other one, a red-headed guy with a permanent sneer, said, “Okay, Shorty, sit down on that bench and wait.”

After quite a while the redhead picked up my folder and started to read it. Presently he snickered and turned to the other clerk and said, “Hey, Ned– get a load of this!”

The other one read what he was pointing to and seemed to think it was funny, too. I could see they were watching me and I pretended not to pay any attention.

The second clerk went back to his desk, but presently the redhead went over to him, carrying my folder, and read aloud to him, but in such a low voice that I couldn’t catch many of the words. What I did catch made me squirm.

When he had finished the redhead looked right at me and laughed. I stood up and said, “What’s so funny?” He said, “None of your business, Shorty. Sit down.”

I walked over and said, “Let me see that.”

The second clerk stuffed it into a drawer of his desk. The redhead said, “Mamma’s boy wants to see it, Ned. Why don’t you give it to him?” “He doesn’t really want to see it,” the other one said.

“No, I guess not.” The redhead laughed again and added, “And to think he wants to be a big bold colonist.”

The other one looked at me while chewing a thumbnail and said, “I don’t think that’s so funny. They could take him along to cook.” This seemed to convulse the redhead. “I’ll bet he looks cute in an apron.”

A year earlier I would have poked him, even though he outweighed me and outreached me. That “Mamma’s boy” remark made me forget all about wanting to go to Ganymede; I just wanted to wipe the silly smirk off his face.

But I didn’t do anything. I don’t know why; maybe it was from riding herd on that wild bunch of galoots, the Yucca Patrol–Mr. Kinski says that anybody who can’t keep order without using his fists can’t be a patrol leader under him.

Anyhow I just walked around the end of the desk and tried to open the drawer. It was locked. I looked at them; they were both grinning, but I wasn’t. “I had an appointment for thirteen o’clock,” I said. “Since the doctor isn’t here, you can tell him I’ll phone for another appointment.” And I turned on my heel and left.

I went home and told George about it. He just said he hoped I hadn’t hurt my chances.

I never did get another appointment. You know what? They weren’t clerks at all; they were psycho-metricians and there was a camera and a mike on me the whole time.

Finally George and I got notices saying that we were qualified and had been posted for the Mayflower, “subject to compliance with all requirements.”

That night I didn’t worry about ration points; I really set us out a feast.

There was a booklet of the requirements mentioned. “Satisfy all debts”–that didn’t worry me; aside from a half credit I owed Slats Keifer I didn’t have any. “Post an appearance bond”–George would take care of that “Conclude any action before any court of superior jurisdiction”–I had never been in court except the Court of Honor. There were a flock of other things, but George would handle them.

I found some fine print that worried me. “George,” I said, “It says here that emigration is limited to families with children.”

He looked up. “Well, aren’t we such a family? If you don’t mind being classified as a child.” “Oh. I suppose so. I thought it meant a married couple and kids.”

“Don’t give it a thought.”

Privately I wondered if Dad knew what he was talking about.

We were busy with innoculations and blood typing and immunizations and I hardly got to school at all. When I wasn’t being stuck or being bled, I was sick with the last thing they had done to me. Finally we had to have our whole medical history tattooed on us–identity number, Rh factor, blood type, coag time, diseases you had had, natural immunities and inoculations. The girls and the women usually had it done in invisible ink that showed up only under infra-red light, or else they put it on the soles of their feet.

They asked me where I wanted it, the soles of my feet? I said no, I don’t want to be crippled up; I had too much to do. We compromised on putting it where I sit down and then I ate standing up for a couple of days. It seemed a good place, private anyhow. But I had to use a mirror to see it.

Time was getting short; we were supposed to be at Mojave Space Port on 26 June, just two weeks away. It was high time I was picking out what to take. The allowance was fifty-seven and six-tenths pounds per person and had not been announced until all our body weights had been taken.

The booklet had said, “Close your terrestrial affairs as if you were dying.” That’s easy to say. But when you die, you can’t take it with you, while here we could– fifty-seven-odd pounds of it.

The question was: what fifty-seven pounds?

My silkworms I turned over to the school biology lab and the same for the snakes. Duck wanted my aquarium but I wouldn’t let him; twice he’s had fish and twice he’s let them die. I split them between two fellows in the troop who already had fish. The birds I gave to Mrs. Fishbein on our deck. I didn’t have a cat or a dog; George says ninety floors up is no place to keep junior citizens–that’s what he calls them.

I was cleaning up the mess when George came in. “Well,” he says, “first time I’ve been able to come into your room without a gas mask.” I skipped it; George talks like that. “I still don’t know what to do,” I said, pointing at the heap on my bed.

“Microfilmed everything you can?”

“Yes, everything but this picture.” It was a cabinet stereo of Anne, weighing about a pound and nine ounces. “Keep that, of course. Face it, Bill, you’ve got to travel light. We’re pioneers.”

“I don’t know what to throw out.”

I guess I looked glum for he said, “Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Me, I’ve got to give up this—and that’s tough, believe me.” He held out his pipe. “Why?” I asked. “A pipe doesn’t weigh much.”

“Because they aren’t raising tobacco on Ganymede and they aren’t importing any.”

“Oh. Look, George, I could just about make it if it weren’t for my accordion. But it licks me.” “Hmm … Have you considered listing it as a cultural item?”

“Huh?”

“Read the fine print. Approved cultural items are not covered by the personal weight schedule. They are charged to the colony.” It had never occurred to me that I might have anything that would qualify. “They wouldn’t let me get away with it, George!”

“Can’t rule you out for trying. Don’t be a defeatist.”

So two days later I was up before the cultural and scientific board, trying to prove that I was an asset. I knocked out Turkey in the Straw, Nehru’s Opus 81, and the introduction to Morgenstern’s Dawn of the 22nd Century, as arranged for squeeze boxes. I gave them The Green Hills of Earth for an encore.

They asked me if I liked to play for other people and told me politely that I would be informed as to the decision of the board … and about a week later I got a letter directing me to turn my accordion over to the Supply Office, Hayward Field. I was in, I was a “cultural asset”!

Four days before blast-off Dad came home early – he had been closing his office–and asked me if we could have something special for dinner; we were having guests. I said I supposed so; my accounts showed that we would have rations to turn back.

He seemed embarrassed. “Son–” “Huh? Yes, George?”

“You know that item in the rules about families?” “Uh, yes.”

“Well, you were right about it, but I was holding out on you and now I’ve got to confess. I’m getting married tomorrow.” There was a sort of roaring in my ears. Dad couldn’t have surprised me more if he had slapped me.

I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there, looking at him. Finally I managed to get out, “But, George, you can’t do that!” “Why not, Son?”

“How about Anne?” “Anne is dead.”

“But– But–” I couldn’t say anything more; I ducked into my room and locked myself in. I lay on the bed, trying to think. Presently I heard Dad trying the latch. Then he tapped on the door and said, “Bill?”

I didn’t answer. After a while he went away. I lay there a while longer. I guess I bawled, but I wasn’t bawling over the trouble with Dad. It seemed the way it did the day Anne died, when I couldn’t get it through my head that I wouldn’t ever see her again. Wouldn’t ever see her smile at me again and hear her say, “Stand tall, Billy.”

And I would stand tall and she would look proud and pat my arm.

How could George do it? How could he bring some other woman into Anne’s home?

I got up and had a look at myself in the mirror and then went in and set my ‘fresher for a needle shower and a hard massage. I felt better afterwards, except that I still had a sick feeling in my stomach. The ‘fresher blew me off and dusted me and sighed to a stop. Through the sound it seemed to me I could hear Anne speaking to me, but that must have been in my head.

She was saying, “Stand tall, Son.” I got dressed again and went out.

Dad was messing around with dinner and I do mean messing. He had burned his thumb on the shortwave, don’t ask me how. I had to throw out what he had been fiddling with, all except the salad. I picked out more stuff and started them cycling. Neither of us said anything.

I set the table for three and Dad finally spoke. “Better set it for four, Bill. Molly has a daughter, you know.”

I dropped a fork. “Molly? You mean Mrs. Kenyon?”

“Yes. Didn’t I tell you? No, you didn’t give me a chance to.”

I knew her all right. She was Dad’s draftsman. I knew her daughter, too–a twelve-year-old brat. Somehow, it being Mrs. Kenyon made it worse, indecent. Why, she had even come to Anne’s Farewell and had had the nerve to cry.

I knew now why she had always been so chummy with me whenever I was down at Dad’s office. She had had her eye on George. I didn’t say anything. What was there to say?

I said “How do you do?” politely when they came in, then went out and pretended to fiddle with dinner. Dinner was sort of odd. Dad and Mrs. Kenyon talked and I answered when spoken to. I didn’t listen. I was still trying to figure out how he could do it. The brat spoke to me a couple of times but I soon put her in her place.

After dinner Dad said how about all of us going to a show? I begged off, saying that I still had sorting to do. They went. I thought and thought about it. Any way I looked at it, it seemed like a bad deal.

At first I decided that I wouldn’t go to Ganymede after all, not if they were going. Dad would forfeit my bond, but I would work hard and pay it back–I wasn’t going to owe them anything!

Then I finally figured out why Dad was doing it and I felt some better, but not much. It was too high a price.

Dad got home late, by himself, and tapped on my door. It wasn’t locked and he came in. “Well, Son?” he said. “‘Well’ what?”

“Bill, I know that this business comes as a surprise to you, but you’ll get over it.”

I laughed, though I didn’t feel funny. Get over it! Maybe he could forget Anne, but I never would.

“In the meantime,” he went on, “I want you to behave yourself. I suppose you know you were as rude as you could be without actually spitting in their faces?”

“Me rude?”I objected. “Didn’t I fix dinner for them? Wasn’t I polite?”

“You were as polite as a judge passing sentence. And as friendly. You needed a swift kick to make you remember your manners.”

I guess I looked stubborn. George went on, “That’s done; let’s forget it. See here, Bill–in time you are going to see that this was a good idea. All I ask you to do is to behave yourself in the meantime. I don’t ask you to fall on their necks; I do insist that you be your own normal, reasonably polite and friendly self. Will you try?”

“Uh, I suppose so.” Then I went on with, “See here, Dad, why did you have to spring it on me as a surprise?”

He looked embarrassed. “That was a mistake. I suppose I did it because I knew you would raise Cain about it and I wanted to put it off.” “But I would have understood if you had only told me. I know why you want to marry her–“

“Eh?”

“I should have known when you mentioned that business about rules. You have to get married so that we can go to Ganymede–“

“What?”

I was startled. I said, “Huh? That’s right, isn’t it? You told me so yourself. You said–“

“I said nothing of the sort!” Dad stopped, took a deep breath, then went on slowly, “Bill, I suppose you possibly could have gathered that impression–though I am not flattered that you could have entertained it. Now I’ll spell out the true situation: Molly and I are not getting married in order to emigrate. We are emigrating because we are getting married. You may be too young to understand it, but I love Molly and Molly loves me. If I wanted to stay here, she’d stay. Since I want to go, she wants to go. She’s wise enough to understand that I need to make a complete break with my old background. Do you follow me?”

I said I guessed so.

“I’ll say goodnight, then.”

I answered, “Goodnight.” He turned away, but I added, “George–” He stopped. I blurted out. “You don’t love Anne any more, do you?”

Dad turned white. He started back in and then stopped. “Bill,” he said slowly, “it has been some years since I’ve laid a hand on you–but this is the first time I ever wanted to give you a thrashing.”

I thought he was going to do it. I waited and I had made up my mind that if he touched me he was going to get die surprise of his life. But he didn’t come any nearer; he just closed the door between us.

After a while I took another shower that I didn’t need and went to bed. I must have lain there an hour or more, thinking that Dad had wanted to hit me and wishing that Anne were around to tell me what to do. Finally I switched on the dancing lights and stared at them until they knocked me out.

Neither one of us said anything until breakfast was over and neither of us ate much, either. Finally Dad said, “Bill, I want to beg your pardon for what I said last night. You hadn’t done or said anything to justify raising a hand to you and I had no business thinking it or saying it.”

I said, “Oh, that’s all right.” I thought about it and added, “I guess I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“It was all right to say it What makes me sad is that you could have thought it. Bill, I’ve never stopped loving Anne and I’ll never love her any less.” “But you said–” I stopped and finished, “I just don’t get it.”

“I guess there is no reason to expect you to.” George stood up. “Bill, the ceremony is at fifteen o’clock. Will you be dressed and ready about an hour before that time?”

I hesitated and said, “I won’t be able to, George. I’ve got a pretty full day.”

His face didn’t have any expression at all and neither did his voice. He said, “I see,” and left the room. A bit later he left the apartment. A while later

I. tried to call him at his office, but the autosecretary ground out the old stall about “Would you like to record a message?” I didn’t. I figured that George would be home some time before fifteen hundred and I got dressed in my best. I even used some of Dad’s beard cream.

He didn’t show up. I tried the office again, and again, got the “Would-you-like-to-record-a-message?” routine. Then I braced myself and looked up the code on Mrs. Kenyon.

He wasn’t there. Nobody was there.

The time crawled past and there was nothing I could do about it. After a while it was fifteen o’clock and I knew that my father was off somewhere getting married but I didn’t know where. About fifteen-thirty I went out and went to a show.

When I got back the red light was shining on the phone. I dialed playback and it was Dad: “Bill I tried to reach you but you weren’t in and I can’t wait. Molly and I are leaving on a short trip. If you need to reach me, call Follow Up Service, Limited, in Chicago–we’ll be somewhere in Canada. We’ll be back Thursday night. Goodbye.” That was the end of the recording.

Thursday night–blast-off was Friday morning.

3. Space Ship Bifrost

Dad called me from Mrs. Kenyon’s–I mean from Molly’s–apartment Thursday night. We were both polite but uneasy. I said yes, I was all ready and I hoped they had had a nice time. He said they had and would I come over and we would all leave from there in the morning.

I said I hadn’t known what his plans were, so I had bought a ticket to Mojave port and had reserved a room at Hotel Lancaster. What did he want me to do?

He thought about it and said, “It looks like you can take care of yourself, Bill.” “Of course I can.”

“All right. We’ll see you at the port. Want to speak to Molly?” “Uh, no, just tell her hello for me.”

“Thanks, I will.” He switched off.

I went to my room and got my kit–fifty-seven and fifty-nine hundredths pounds; I couldn’t have added a clipped frog’s hair. My room was bare, except for my Scout uniform. I couldn’t afford to take it, but I hadn’t thrown it away yet.

I picked it up, intending to take it to the incinerator, then stopped. At the physical exam I had been listed at one hundred thirty-one and two tenths pounds mass in the clothes I would wear for blast off.

But I hadn’t eaten much the last few days.

I stepped into the ‘fresher and onto the scales–one hundred twenty-nine and eight tenths. I picked up the uniform and stepped back on the scales– one hundred thirty-two and five tenths.

William, I said, you get no dinner, you get no breakfast, and you drink no water tomorrow morning. I bundled up my uniform and took it along.

The apartment was stripped. As a surprise for the next tenant I left in the freezer the stuff I had meant to eat for supper, then switched all the gadgets to zero except the freezer, and locked the door behind me. It felt funny; Anne and George and I had lived there as far back as I could remember.

I went down to subsurface, across town, and caught the In-Coast tube for Mojave. Twenty minutes later I was at Hotel Lancaster in the Mojave Desert.

I soon found out that the “room” I had reserved was a cot in the billiard room. I trotted down to find out what had happened.

I showed the room clerk the ‘stat that said I had a room coming to me. He looked at it and said, “Young man, have you ever tried to bed down six thousand people at once?”

I said no, I hadn’t.

“Then be glad you’ve got a cot. The room you reserved is occupied by a family with nine children.” I went.

The hotel was a madhouse. I couldn’t have gotten anything to eat even if I hadn’t promised myself not to eat; you couldn’t get within twenty yards of the dining room. There were children underfoot everywhere and squalling brats galore. There were emigrant families squatting in the ball room. I looked them over and wondered how they had picked them; out of a grab bag?

Finally I went to bed. I was hungry and got hungrier. I began to wonder why I was going to all this trouble to hang on to a Scout uniform I obviously wasn’t going to use.

If I had had my ration book I would have gotten up and stood in line at the dining room–but Dad and I had turned ours in. I still had some money and

thought about trying to find a free-dealers; they say you can find them around a hotel. But Dad says that “free-dealer” is a fake word; they are black

marketeers and no gentleman will buy from them.

Besides that I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to go about finding one.

I got up and got a drink and went back to bed and went through the relaxing routine. Finally I got to sleep and dreamed about strawberry shortcake with real cream, the kind that comes from cows.

I woke up hungry but I suddenly remembered that this was it!–my last day on Earth. Then I was too excited to be hungry. I got up, put on my Scout uniform and my ship suit over it.

I thought we would go right on board. I was wrong.

First we had to assemble under awnings spread out in front of the hotel near the embarking tubes. It wasn’t air conditioned outside, of course, but it was early and the desert wasn’t really hot yet. I found the letter “L” and sat down under it, sitting on my baggage. Dad and his new family weren’t around yet; I began to wonder if I was going to Ganymede by myself. I didn’t much care.

Out past the gates about five miles away, you could see the ships standing on the field, the Daedalus and the Icarus, pulled off the Earth-Moon run for this one trip, and the old Bifrost that had been the shuttle rocket to Supra-New-York space station as far back as I could remember.

The Daedalus and the Icarus were bigger but I hoped I would get the Bifrost; she was the first ship I ever saw blast off.

A family put their baggage down by mine. The mother looked out across the field and said, “Joseph, which one is the Mayflower?“

Her husband tried to explain to her, but she still was puzzled. I nearly burst, trying to keep from laughing. Here she was, all set to go to Ganymede and yet she was so dumb she didn’t even know that the ship she was going in had been built out in space and couldn’t land anywhere.

The place was getting crowded with emigrants and relatives coming to see them off, but I still didn’t see anything of Dad. I heard my name called and turned around and there was Duck Miller. “Gee, Bill,” he said, “I thought I’d missed you.”

“Hi, Duck. No, I’m still here.”

“I tried to call you last night but your phone answered ‘service discontinued,’ so I hooked school and came up.” “Aw, you shouldn’t have done that.”

“But I wanted to bring you this.” He handed me a package, a whole pound of chocolates. I didn’t know what to say. I thanked him and then said, “Duck, I appreciate it, I really do. But I’ll have to give them back to you.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Weight Mass, I mean. I can’t get by with another ounce.” “You can carry it.”

“That won’t help. It counts just the same.”

He thought about it and said, “Then let’s open it.”

I said, “Fine,” and did so and offered him a piece. I looked at them myself and my stomach was practically sitting up and begging. I don’t know when I’ve been so hungry.

I gave in and ate one. I figured I would sweat it off anyhow; it was getting hot and I had my Scout uniform on under my ship suit–and that’s no way to dress for the Mojave Desert in June! Then I was thirstier than ever, of course; one thing leads to another.

I went over to a drinking fountain and took a very small drink. When I came back I closed the candy box and handed it back to Duck and told him to

pass it around at next Scout meeting and tell the fellows I wished they were going along. He said he would and added, “You know, Bill, I wish I was

going. I really do.”

I said I wished he was, too, but when did he change his mind? He looked embarrassed but about then Mr. Kinski showed up and then Dad showed up, with Molly and the brat–Peggy–and Molly’s sister, Mrs. van Metre. Everybody shook hands all around and Mrs. van Metre started to cry and the brat wanted to know what made my clothes so bunchy and what was I sweating about?

George was eyeing me, but about then our names were called and we started moving through the gate.

George and Molly and Peggy were weighed through and then it was my turn. My baggage was right on the nose, of course, and then I stepped on the scales. They read one hundred and thirty-one and one tenth pounds–I could have eaten another chocolate.

“Check!” said the weightmaster, then he looked up and said, “What in the world have you got on, son?”

The left sleeve of my uniform had started to unroll and was sticking out below the half sleeve of my ship suit. The merit badges were shining out like signal lights.

I didn’t say anything. He started feeling the lumps the uniform sleeves made. “Boy,” he said, “you’re dressed like an arctic explorer; no wonder you’re sweating. Didn’t you know you weren’t supposed to wear anything but the gear you were listed in?”

Dad came back and asked what the trouble was? I just stood there with my ears burning. The assistant weightmaster got into the huddle and they argued what should be done. The weightmaster phoned somebody and finally he said, “He’s inside his weight limit; if he wants to call that monkey suit part of his skin, we’ll allow it. Next customer, please!”

I trailed along, feeling foolish. We went down inside and climbed on the slide strip, it was cool down there, thank goodness. A few minutes later we got off at the loading room down under the rocket ship. Sure enough, it was the Bifrost, as I found out when the loading elevator poked above ground and stopped at the passenger port. We filed in.

They had it all organized. Our baggage had been taken from us in the loading room; each passenger had a place assigned by his weight. That split us up again; I was on the deck immediately under the control room. I found my place, couch 14-D, then went to a view port where I could see the Daedalus and the Icarus.

A brisk little stewardess, about knee high to a grasshopper, checked my name off a list and offered me an injection against dropsickness. I said no, thanks.

She said, “You’ve been out before?”

I admitted I hadn’t; she said, “Better take it.”

I said I was a licensed air pilot; I wouldn’t get sick I didn’t tell her that my license was just for copters. She shrugged and turned away. A loudspeaker said, “The Daedalus is cleared for blasting.” I moved up to get a good view.

The Daedalus was about a quarter of a mile away and stood up higher than we did. She had fine lines and was a mighty pretty sight, gleaming in the morning sunshine. Beyond her and to the right, clear out at the edge of the field, a light shone green at the traffic control blockhouse.

She canted slowly over to the south, just a few degrees.

Fire burst out of her base, orange, and then blinding white. It splashed down into the ground baffles and curled back up through the ground vents. She lifted.

She hung there for a breath and you could see the hills shimmer through her jet. And she was gone.

Just like that–she was gone. She went up out of there like a scared bird, just a pencil of white fire in the sky, and was gone while we could still hear and feel the thunder of her jets inside the compartment.

My ears were ringing. I heard someone behind me say, “But I haven’t had breakfast. The Captain will just have to wait. Tell him, Joseph.”

It was the woman who hadn’t known that the Mayflower was a space-to-space ship. Her husband tried to hush her up, but he didn’t have any luck.

She called over the stewardess. I heard her answer, “But, madam, you can’t speak to the Captain now. He’s preparing for blast-off.”

Apparently that didn’t make any difference. The stewardess finally got her quiet by solemnly promising that she could have breakfast after blast-off. I bent my ears at that and I decided to put in a bid for breakfast, too.

The Icarus took off twenty minutes later and then the speaker said, “All hands! Acceleration stations-prepare to blast off.” I went back to my couch and the stewardess made sure that we were all strapped down. She cautioned us not to unstrap until she said we could. She went down to the deck below.

I felt my ears pop and there was a soft sighing in the ship. I swallowed and kept swallowing. I knew what they were doing: blowing the natural air out and replacing it with the standard helium-oxygen mix at half sea-level pressure. But the woman–the same one–didn’t like it. She said, “Joseph, my head aches. Joseph, I can’t breathe. Do something!”

Then she clawed at her straps and sat up. Her husband sat up, too, and forced her back down. The Bifrost tilted over a little and the speaker said, “Minus three minutes!”

After a long time it said, “Minus two minutes!”

And then “Minus one minutel” and another voice took up the count: “Fifty-nine! Fifty-eight! Fifty-seven!”

My heart started to pound so hard I could hardly hear it. But it went on: “-thirty-five! Thirty-four! Thirty-three! Thirty-two! Thirty-one! Half! Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight!”

And it got to be: “Ten!”

And “Nine!” “Eight! “Seven! “And six! “And five! “And four! “And three! “And two–“

I never did hear them say “one” or “fire” or whatever they said. About then something fell on me and I thought I was licked. Once, exploring a cave with the fellows, a bank collapsed on me and I had to be dug out. It was like that–but nobody dug me out.

My chest hurt. My ribs seemed about to break. I couldn’t lift a finger. I gulped and couldn’t get my breath.

I wasn’t scared, not really, because I knew we would take off with a high g, but I was awfully uncomfortable. I managed to turn my head a little and saw that the sky was already purple. While I watched, it turned black and the stars came out, millions of stars. And yet the Sun was still streaming in through the port

The roar of the jets was unbelievable but the noise started to die out almost at once and soon you couldn’t hear it at all. They say the old ships used to be noisy even after you passed the speed of sound; the Bifrost was not. It got as quiet as the inside of a bag of feathers.

There was nothing to do but lie there, stare out at that black sky, try to breathe, and try not to think about the weight sitting on you.

And then, so suddenly that it made your stomach turn flip-flops, you didn’t weigh anything at all.

4. Captain DeLongPre

Let me tell you that the first time you fall is no fun. Sure, you get over it. If you didn’t you would starve. Old space hands even get so they like it– weightlessness, I mean. They say that two hours of weightless sleep is equal to a full night on Earth. I got used to it, but I never got to like it.

The Bifrost had blasted for a little more than three minutes. It seemed lots longer because of the high acceleration; we had blasted at nearly six g. Then she was in free orbit for better than three hours and we fell the whole time, until the Captain started to maneuver to match orbits with the Mayflower.

In other words we fell straight up for more than twenty thousand miles.

Put that way, it sounds silly. Everybody knows that things don’t fall up; they fall down.

Everybody knew the world was flat, too. We fell up.

Like everybody, I had had the elements of space ballistics in grammar school physics, and goodness knows there have been enough stories about how you float around in a spaceship when it’s in a free orbit. But, take it from me, you don’t really believe it until you’ve tried it.

Take Mrs. Tarbutton–the woman who wanted breakfast. I suppose she went to school like everybody else. But she kept insisting that the Captain had to do something about it. What he could do I don’t know; find her a small asteroid, maybe.

Not that I didn’t sympathize with her–or with myself, I guess. Ever been in an earthquake? You know how everything you ever depended on suddenly goes back on you and terra firma isn’t firma any longer? It’s like that, only much worse. This is no place to review grammar school physics but when a spaceship is in a free trajectory, straight up or any direction, the ship and everything in it moves along together and you fall, endlessly–and your stomach darn near falls out of you.

That was the first thing I noticed. I was strapped down so that I didn’t float away, but I felt weak and shaky and dizzy and as if I had been kicked in the stomach. Then my mouth filled with saliva and I gulped and I was awfully sorry I had eaten that chocolate.

But it didn’t come up, not quite.

The only thing that saved me was no breakfast. Some of the others were not so lucky. I tried not to look at them. I had intended to unstrap as soon as we went free and go to a port so I could look at Earth, but I lost interest in that project entirely. I stayed strapped down, and concentrated on being miserable.

The stewardess came floating out the hatch from the next deck, shoved herself along with a toe, checked herself with a hand at the center stanchion, and hovered in the air in a swan dive, looking us over. It was very pretty to watch if I’d been in shape to appreciate it.

“Is everybody comfy?” she said cheerfully.

It was a silly remark but I suppose nurses get that way. Somebody groaned and a baby on the other side of the compartment started to cry. The stewardess moved over to Mrs. Tarbutton and said, “You may have breakfast now. What would you like? Scrambled eggs?”

I clamped my jaw and turned my head away, wishing she would shut up. Then I looked back. She had paid for that silly remark–and she had to clean it up.

When she was through with Mrs. Tarbutton I said, “Uh-oh, Miss–” “Andrews.”

“Miss Andrews, could I change my mind about that drop-sick injection?”

“Righto, chum,” she agreed, smiling, and whipped out an injector from a little kit she had at her belt. She gave me the shot. It burned and for a moment I thought I was going to lose the chocolate after all. But then things quieted down and I was almost happy in a miserable sort of way.

She left me and gave shots to some others who had kidded themselves the same way I had. Mrs. Tarbutton she gave another sort of shot to knock her out entirely. One or two of the hardier souls unstrapped themselves and went to the ports; I decided I was well enough to try it.

It’s not as easy as it looks, this swimming around in free fall. I undid the safety belts and sat up; that’s all I meant to do. Then I was scrambling in the air, out of control, trying frantically to grasp at anything.

I turned over in the air and cracked the back of my head against the underside of the control room deck and saw stars, not the ones out the ports– some of my own. Then the deck with the couches on it was approaching me slowly.

I managed to grab a safety belt and came to anchor. The couch it belonged to was occupied by a little plump man. I said, “Excuse me.”

He said, “Don’t mention it,” and turned his face away, looking as if he hated me. I couldn’t stay there and I couldn’t even get back to my own couch without grabbing handholds on other couches that were occupied, too, so I pushed off again, very gently this time, and managed to grab hold when I bumped against the other deck.

It had handholds and grab lines all over it. I didn’t let go again, but pulled myself along, monkey fashion, to one of the ports. And there I got my first view of Earth from space.

I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t what I expected. There it was, looking just like it does in the geography books, or maybe more the way it does in the station announcements of Super-New-York TV station. And yet it was different. I guess I would say it was like the difference between being told about a good hard kick in the rear and actually being kicked.

Not a transcription. Alive.

For one thing it wasn’t prettily centered in a television screen; it was shouldering into one side of the frame of the port, and the aft end of the ship cut a big chunk out of the Pacific Ocean. And it was moving, shrinking. While I hung there it shrunk to about half the size it was when I first got there and got rounder and rounder. Columbus was right.

From where I was it was turned sideways; the end of Siberia, then North America, and finally the north half of South America ran across from left to right. There were clouds over Canada and the eastern part of the rest of North America; they were the whitest white I ever saw–whiter than the north pole cap. Right opposite us was the reflection of the Sun on the ocean; it hurt my eyes. The rest of the ocean was almost purple where there weren’t clouds.

It was so beautiful my throat ached and I wanted to reach out and touch it.

And back of it were stars, even brighter and bigger and more of them than the way they look from Little America.

Pretty soon there were more people crowding around, trying to see, and kids shoving and their mothers saying, “Now, now, darling!” and making silly remarks themselves. I gave up. I pulled myself back to my couch and put one belt around me so I wouldn’t float away and thought about it.

It makes you proud to know that you come from a big, fancy planet like that. I got to thinking that I hadn’t seen all of it, not by a long sight, in spite of all the geography trips I had made and going to one Scout round-up in Switzerland and the time George and Anne and I went to Siam.

And now I wasn’t going to see any more of it. It made me feel pretty solemn.

I looked up; there was a boy standing in front of me. He said, “What’s the trouble, William, my boy? Dropsick?”

It was that twerp Jones. You could have knocked me out with a feather. If I had known he was going to emigrate, I would have thought twice about it. I asked him where in the world he had come from.

“The same place you did, naturally. I asked you a question.”

I informed him that I was not dropsick and asked him whatever gave him that silly notion. He reached out and grabbed my arm and turned it so that the red spot the injection had made showed. He laughed and I jerked my arm away.

He laughed again and showed me his arm; it had a red spot on it, too. “Happens to the best of us,” he said. “Don’t be shy about it.” Then he said, “Come on. Let’s look around the joint before they make us strap down again.”

I went along. He wasn’t what I would pick for a buddy but he was a familiar face. We worked our way over to the hatch to the next deck. I started to go through but Jones stopped me. “Let’s go into the control room,” he suggested.

“Huh? Oh, they wouldn’t let us!”

“Is it a crime to try? Come on.” We went back the other way and through a short passage. It ended in a door that was marked: CONTROL ROOM- STAY OUT! Somebody had written under it: This means you!!! and somebody else had added: Who? Me?

Jones tried it; it was locked. There was a button beside it; he pushed it.

It opened and we found ourselves staring into the face of a man with two stripes on his collar. Behind him was an older man with four stripes on his; he called out, “Who is it, Sam? Tell ’em we’re not in the market.”

The first man said, “What do you kids want?”

Jones said, “Please, sir, we’re interested in astrogation. Could we have permission to visit the control room?”

I could see he was going to chuck us out and I had started to turn away when the older man called out, “Oh, shucks, Sam, bring ’em in!” The younger fellow shrugged and said, “As you say, Skipper.”

We went in and the Captain said, “Grab on to something; don’t float around. And don’t touch anything, or I’ll cut your ears off. Now who are you?”

We told him; he said, “Glad to know you, Hank-same to you, Bill. Welcome aboard.” Then he reached out and touched the sleeve of my uniform–it had come loose again. “Son, your underwear is showing.”

I blushed and told him how I happened to be wearing it. He laughed and said, “So you swindled us into lifting it anyway. That’s rich–eh, Sam? Have a cup of coffee.”

They were eating sandwiches and drinking coffee– not from cups, of course, but from little plastic bags like they use for babies. The bags even had nipples on them. I said no, thanks. While the shot Miss Andrews gave me had made me feel better, it hadn’t made me feel that much better. Hank Jones turned it down, too.

The control room didn’t have a port in it of any sort. There was a big television screen forward on the bulkhead leading to the nose, but it wasn’t turned on. I wondered what Mrs. Tarbutton would think if she knew that the Captain couldn’t see where we were going and didn’t seem to care.

I asked him about the ports. He said ports were strictly for tourists. “What would you do with a port if you had one?” he asked. “Stick your head out the window and look for road signs? We can see anything we need to see. Sam, heat up the video and show the kids.”

“Aye aye, Skipper.” The other chap swam over to his couch and started turning switches. He left his sandwich hanging in the air while he did so.

I looked around. The control room was circular and the end we came in was bigger than the other end; it was practically up in the nose of the ship and the sides sloped in. There were two couches, one for the pilot and one for the co-pilot, flat against the wall that separated the control room from the passenger compartments. Most of the space between the couches was taken up by the computer.

The couches were fancier than the ones the passengers had; they were shaped to the body and they lifted the knees and the head and back, like a hospital bed, and there were arm rests to support their hands over the ship’s controls. An instrument board arched over each couch at the middle, where the man in the couch could see the dials and stuff even when his head was pushed back into the cushions by high g.

The TV screen lighted up and we could see Earth; it filled most of the screen. “That’s ‘View Aft’,” the copilot said, “from a TV camera in the tail.

We’ve got ’em pointing in all directions. Now we’ll try ‘View Forward’.” He did, but it didn’t amount to anything, just a few tiny little dots that might have been stars. Hank said you could see more stars out a port.

“You don’t use it to look at stars,” he answered. “When you need to take a star sight, you use the coelostats. Like this.” He lay back on the couch and reached behind his head, pulling an eye piece arrangement over his face until the rubber guard fitted over one eye without lifting his head off the couch.

“Coelostat” is just a trick name for a telescope with a periscope built into it. He didn’t offer to let us look through it, so I looked back at the instrument board. It had a couple of radar presentations, much like you’ll find in any atmosphere ship, even in a copter, and a lot of other instruments, most of which I didn’t understand, though some of them were pretty obvious, like approach rate and throat temperature and mass ratio and ejection speed and such.

“Watch this,” said the co-pilot. He did something at his controls; one of the tiny blips on the TV screen lit up very brightly, blinked a few times, then died away. “That was Supra-New-York; I triggered her radar beacon. You are not seeing it by television; it’s radar brought on to the same screen.” He fiddled with the controls again and another light blinked, two longs and a short. “That’s where they’re building the Star Rover.”

“Where’s the Mayflower?” Hank asked.

“Want to see where you’re going, eh?” He touched his controls again; another light came on, way off to one side, flashing in groups of three.

I said it didn’t look much like we were going there. The Captain spoke up. “We’re taking the long way round, past the fair grounds. That’s enough, Sam. Lock your board.”

We all went back where the Captain was still eating. “You an Eagle Scout?” he asked me. I said yes and Hank said he was too.

“How old were you when you made it?” he wanted to know. I said I had been thirteen, so Hank said twelve, whereupon the Captain claimed he had made it at eleven. Personally I didn’t believe either one of them.

The Captain said so now we were going out to Ganymede; he envied both of us. The co-pilot said what was there to envy about that? The Captain said, “Sam, you’ve got no romance in your soul. You’ll live and die running a ferry boat.”

“Maybe so,” the co-pilot answered, “but I sleep home a lot of nights.”

The Captain said pilots should not marry. “Take me,” he said, “I always wanted to be a deep-space man. I was all set for it, too, when I was captured by pirates and missed my chance. By the time I had the chance again, I was married.”

“You and your pirates,” said the co-pilot.

I kept my face straight. Adults always think anybody younger will swallow anything; I try not to disillusion them.

“Well, all that’s as may be,” said the Captain. “You two young gentlemen run along now. Mr. Mayes and I have got to fake up a few figures, or we’ll be landing this bucket in South Brooklyn.”

So we thanked him and left.

I found Dad and Molly and the Brat in the deck aft of my own. Dad said, “Where have you been, Bill? I’ve been looking all over the ship for you.” I told them, “Up in the control room with the Captain.”

Dad looked surprised and the Brat made a face at me and said, “Smarty, you have not. Nobody can go up there.”

I think girls should be raised in the bottom of a deep, dark sack until they are old enough to know better. Then when it came time, you could either let them out or close the sack and throw them away, whichever was the best idea.

Molly said, “Hush, Peggy.”

I said, “You can just ask Hank. He was with me. We–” I looked around but Hank was gone. So I told them what had happened, all but the part about pirates.

When I finished the Brat said, “I want to go into the control room, too.”

Dad said he didn’t think it could be arranged. The Brat said, “Why not? Bill went.”

Molly said hush again. “Bill is a boy and older than you are.” The Brat said it wasn’t fair.

I guess she had something there–but things hardly ever are. Dad went on, “You should feel flattered, Bill, being entertained by the famous Captain DeLongPre.”

“Huh?”

“Maybe you are too young to remember it. He let himself be sealed into one of the robot freighters used to jump thorium ore from the lunar mines– and busted up a ring of hijackers, a gang the newscasters called the ‘Ore Pirates.'”

I didn’t say anything.

I wanted to see the Mayflower from space, but they made us strap down before I could locate it. I got a pretty good view of Supra-New-York though; the Mayflower was in the 24-hour orbit the space station rides in and we were closing almost directly on it when the word came to strap down.

Captain DeLongPre was quite some pilot. He didn’t fiddle around with jockeying his ship into the new groove; he gave one long blast on the jet, the right time, the right amount, and the right direction. As it says in the physics book, “every one-plane correction-of-orbit problem which can be solved at all, can be solved with a single application of acceleration”–provided the pilot is good enough.

He was good enough. When we went weightless again, I looked over my shoulder out a port and there was the Mayflower, with the Sun gleaming on her, large as life and not very far away. There was the softest sort of a correction bump and the loudspeaker sang out, “Contact completed. You may unstrap.”

I did and went to the port from which we could see the Mayflower. It was easy to see why she could never land; she had no airfoils of any sort, not even fins, and she was the wrong shape–almost spherical except that one side came out to a conical point.

She looked much too small–then I realized that a little bulge that was sticking out past her edge at one point was actually the bow of the Icarus,

unloading on the far side. Then suddenly she was enormous and the little flies on her were men in space suits.

One of them shot something at us and a line came snaking across. Before the knob on the end of it quite reached us there was a bright purple brush discharge from the end of it and every hair on my head stood straight up and my skin prickled.

A couple of the women in the compartment squealed and I heard Miss Andrews soothing them down and telling them that it was just the electrical potential adjusting between the two ships. If she had told them it was a bolt of lightning she would have been just as correct, but I don’t suppose that would have soothed them.

I wasn’t scared; any kid who had fooled around with radio or any sort of electronics would have expected it.

The knob on the line clunked against the side of the ship and after a bit the little line was followed by a heavier line and then they warped us together, slowly. The Mayflower came up until she filled the port.

After a bit my ears popped and the loudspeaker said, “All hands–prepare to disembark.”

Miss Andrews made us wait quite a while, then it was our deck’s turn and we pulled ourselves along to the deck we had come in by. Mrs. Tarbutton didn’t come along; she and her husband were having some sort of a discussion with Miss Andrews.

We went right straight out of our ship, through a jointed steel drum about ten feet long, and into the Mayflower.

5. Captain Harkness

Do you know the worst thing about spaceships? They smell bad.

Even the Mayflower smelled bad and she was brand new. She smelled of oil and welding and solvents and dirty, sweaty smells of all the workmen who had lived in her so long. Then we came, three shiploads of us, most of us pretty whiff with that bad odor people get when they’re scared or very nervous. My stomach still wasn’t happy and it almost got me.

The worst of it is that there can’t be very good ‘freshers in a ship; a bath is a luxury. After the ship got organized we were issued tickets for two baths a week, but how far does that go, especially when a bath means two gallons of water to sponge yourself off with?

If you felt you just had to have a bath, you could ask around and maybe buy a ticket from somebody who was willing to skip one. There was one boy in my bunk room who sold his tickets for four weeks running until we all got sick of it and gave him an unscheduled bath with a very stiff brush. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

And you couldn’t burn your clothes either; you had to wash them.

When we first got into the Mayflower it took them maybe half an hour to get us all sorted out and into our acceleration couches. The people from the Daedalus and the Icarus were supposed to be stowed away by the time we got there, but they weren’t and the passageways were traffic jams. A traffic jam when everybody is floating, and you don’t know which end is up, is about eight times as confusing as an ordinary one.

There weren’t any stewardesses to get us straight, either; there were emigrants instead, with signs on their chests reading SHIP’S AIDE-but a lot of them needed aid themselves; they were just as lost as anybody else. It was like amateur theatricals where the ushers don’t know how to find the reserved seats.

By the time I was in the bunk room I was assigned to and strapped down there were bells ringing all over the place and loudspeakers shouting: “Prepare for acceleration! Ten minutes!”

Then we waited.

It seemed more like half an hour. Presently the count-off started. I said to myself, William, if the blast-off from Earth was rugged, this is going to knock the teeth right out of your head. I knew what we were going to build up to–better than ninety-three miles per second. That’s a third of a million miles an hour! Frankly I was scared.

The seconds ticked away; there was a soft push that forced me down against the cushions–and that was all. I just lay there; the ceiling was the ceiling again and the floor was under me, but I didn’t feel extra heavy, I felt fine.

I decided that was just the first step; the next one would be a dilly.

Up overhead in the bunk room was a display screen; it lighted up and I was looking into the face of a man with four collar stripes; he was younger than Captain DeLongPre. He smiled and said, “This is your Captain speaking, friends–Captain Harkness. The ship will remain at one gravity for a little more than four hours. I think it is time to serve lunch, don’t you?”

He grinned again and I realized that my stomach wasn’t bothering me at all–except that I was terribly hungry. I guess he knew that all of us ground hogs would be starving to death as soon as we were back to normal weight. He went on:

“We’ll try to serve you just as quickly as possible. It is all right for you to unstrap now, sit up, and relax, but I must ask you to be very careful about one thing:

“This ship is precisely balanced so that the thrust of our drive passes exactly through our center of gravity. If that were not so, we would tend to spin instead of moving in a straight line–and we might fetch up in the heart of the Sun instead of at Ganymede.

“None of us wants to become an impromptu barbecue, so I will ask each of you not to move unnecessarily from the neighborhood of your couch. The ship has an automatic compensator for a limited amount of movement, but we must not overload it–so get permission from your ship’s aide before moving as much as six inches from your present positions.”

He grinned again and it was suddenly a most unpleasant grin. “Any one violating this rule will be strapped down by force–and the Captain will assign punishment to fit the crime after we are no longer under drive.”

There wasn’t any ship’s aide in our compartment; all we could do was wait. I got acquainted with the boys in the bunkroom, some older, some

younger. There was a big, sandy-haired boy about seventeen, by the name of Edwards–“Noisy” Edwards. He got tired of waiting.

I didn’t blame him; it seemed like hours went past and still nothing to eat. I thought we had been forgotten.

Edwards had been hanging around the door, peering out. Finally he said, “This is ridiculous! We can’t sit here all day. I’m for finding out what’s the hold up. Who’s with me?”

One of the fellows objected, “The Captain said to sit tight.”

“What if he did? And what can he do if we don’t? We aren’t part of the crew.”

I pointed out that the Captain had authority over the whole ship, but he brushed me off. “Tommyrot! We got a right to know what’s going on–and a right to be fed. Who’s coming along?”

Another boy said, “You’re looking for trouble, Noisy.”

Edwards stopped; I think he was worried by the remark but he couldn’t back down. Finally he said, “Look, we’re supposed to have a ship’s aide and we haven’t got one. You guys elect me ship’s aide and I’ll go bring back chow. How’s that?”

Nobody objected out loud. Noisy said, “Okay, here I go.”

He couldn’t have been gone more than a few seconds when a ship’s aide showed up carrying a big box of packaged rations. He dealt them out and had one left over. Then he counted the bunks. “Weren’t there twenty boys in here?” he asked.

We looked at each other but nobody said anything. He pulled out a list and called our names. Edwards didn’t answer, of course, and he left, taking Noisy’s ration with him.

Then Noisy showed up and saw us eating and wanted to know where his lunch was. We told him; he said, “For the love of Mike! Why didn’t you guys save it for me? A fine bunch you turned out to be.” And he left again.

He came back shortly, looking mad. A ship’s aide followed him and strapped him down.

We had about reached the teeth-picking stage when the screen on the ceiling lit up again and there was the Moon. It looked as if we were headed right toward it and coming up fast. I began to wonder if Captain Harkness had dropped a decimal point.

I lay back on my couch and watched it grow. After a while it looked worse. When it had grown until it filled the screen and more and it seemed as if we couldn’t possibly miss, I saw that the mountains were moving past on the screen from right to left. I breathed a sigh of relief; maybe the Old Man knew what he was doing after all.

A voice came over the speaker: “We are now passing the Moon and tacking slightly in so doing. Our relative speed at point of closest approach is more than fifty miles per second, producing a somewhat spectacular effect.”

I’ll say it was spectacular! We zipped across the face of the Moon in about half a minute, then it faded behind us. I suppose they simply kept a TV camera trained on it, but it looked as if we had dived in, turned sharply, and raced out again. Only you don’t make sharp turns at that speed.

About two hours later they stopped gunning her. I had fallen asleep and I dreamed I was making a parachute jump and the chute failed to open. I woke up with a yell, weightless, with my stomach dropping out of me again. It took me a moment to figure out where I was.

The loudspeaker said: “End of acceleration. Spin will be placed on the ship at once.”

But it did not happen all at once; it happened very slowly. We drifted toward one wall and slid down it toward the outer wall of the ship. That made what had been the outer wall the floor; we stood on it– and the side with the bunks on it was now a wall and the side with the TV screen on it, which had been the ceiling, was now the opposite wall. Gradually we got heavier.

Noisy was still strapped to his couch; the ship’s aide had moved the buckles so that he could not reach them himself. Now he was up against the wall, hanging on the straps like a papoose. He began to yell for us to help him down.

He was not in any danger and he could not have been too uncomfortable, for we weren’t up to a full gravity, not by a whole lot. It turned out later that

the Captain had brought the spin up to one-third g and held it there, because Ganymede has one-third g. So there wasn’t any urgent need to turn Noisy loose.

Nor was there any rush to do so. We were still discussing it and some of the fellows were making comical remarks which Noisy did not appreciate when the same ship’s aide came in, unstrapped Noisy, and told all of us to follow him.

That’s how I happened to attend Captain’s mast.

“Captain’s mast” is a sort of court, like when in ancient times the lord of the countryside would sit and dispense the high and middle justice. We followed the aide, whose name was Dr. Archibald, to Captain Harkness’s cabin. There were a lot of other people waiting there in the passage outside the cabin. Presently Captain Harkness came out and Noisy was the first case.

We were all witnesses but the Captain didn’t question but a few of us; I wasn’t questioned. Dr. Archibald told about finding Noisy wandering around the ship while we were under acceleration and the Captain asked Noisy if he had heard the order to stay at his bunk?

Noisy beat around the bush a good deal and tried to spread the blame on all of us, but when the Captain pinned him down he had to admit that he had heard the order.

Captain Harkness said, “Son, you are an undisciplined lunk. I don’t know what sort of trouble you’ll run into as a colonist, but so far as my ship is concerned, you’ve had it.”

He mused for a moment, than added, “You say you did this because you were hungry?” Noisy said yes, he hadn’t had anything since breakfast and he still hadn’t had his lunch. “Ten days bread and water,” said the Captain. “Next case.”

Noisy looked as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

The next case was the same thing, but a woman-one of those large, impressive ones who run things. She had had a row with her ship’s aide and had stomped off to tell the Captain about it personally– while we were under acceleration.

Captain Harkness soon cut through the fog. “Madam,” he said, with icy dignity, “by your bull-headed stupidity you have endangered the lives of all of us. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

She started a tirade about how “rude” the aide had been to her and how she never heard of anything so preposterous in her life as this kangaroo court, and so forth, and so forth. The Captain cut her short.

“Have you ever washed dishes?” he asked. “Why, no!”

“Well, you are going to wash dishes–for the next four hundred million miles.”

6. E = MC 2

I looked up dad after they let us go. It was like finding a needle in a haystack but I kept asking and presently I found him. Molly and he had a room to themselves. Peggy was there and I thought she was rooming with them, which annoyed me some, until I saw that there were only two couches and realized that Peggy must be in a dormitory. It turned out that all the kids over eight were in dormitories.

Dad was busy unclamping their couches and moving them to what was the floor, now that the ship was spinning. He stopped when I came in and we sat around and talked. I told him about Captain’s mast. He nodded. “We saw it in the screen. I didn’t notice your shining face, however.”

I said I hadn’t been called on.

“Why not?” Peggy wanted to know.

“How should I know?” I thought about mast for a bit and said, “Say, George, the skipper of a ship in space is just about the last of the absolute monarchs, isn’t he?”

Dad considered it and said, “Mmm … no, he’s a constitutional monarch. But he’s a monarch all right.” “You mean we have to bow down to him and say ‘Your Majesty?” Peggy wanted to know.

Molly said, “I don’t think that would be advisable, Peg.” “Why not? I think it would be fun.”

Molly smiled. “Well, let me know how you make out. I suspect that he will just turn you over his knee and paddle you.” “Oh, he wouldn’t dare! I’d scream.”

I wasn’t so sure. I remembered those four hundred million miles of dirty dishes. I decided that, if the Captain said “Frog,” I’d hop.

If Captain Harkness was a monarch, he didn’t seem anxious to rule; the first thing he had us do was to hold an election and set up a ship’s council. After that we hardly laid eyes on him.

Everybody over eighteen could vote. The rest of us got to vote, too; we were told to set up a junior council–not that it was ever good for anything.

But the senior council, the real council, ran the ship from then on. It even acted as a court and the Captain never handed out punishments again. Dad told me that the Captain reviewed everything that the council did, that he had to, to make it legal–but I never heard of him over-ruling their decisions.

And you know what the first thing was that that council did–after setting up meal hours and simple things like that? They decided we had to go to school!

The junior council promptly held a meeting and passed a resolution against it, but it didn’t mean anything. We had school, just the same.

Peggy was on the junior council. I asked her why she didn’t resign if she wasn’t going to do anything. I was just teasing–as a matter of fact she put up quite a battle for us.

School wasn’t so bad, though. There is very little to do in space and when you’ve seen one star you’ve seen ’em all. And the first thing we had in school was a tour of the ship, which was all right.

We went in groups of twenty and it took all day – “day” by ship’s time, I mean. The Mayflower was shaped like a ball with a cone on one side–top shaped. The point of the cone was her jet–although Chief Engineer Ortega, who showed us around, called it her “torch.”

If you count the torch end as her stern, then the round end, her bow, was where the control room was located; around it were the Captain’s cabin and the staterooms of the officers. The torch and the whole power plant space were cut off from the rest of the ship by a radiation shield that ran right through the ship. From the shield forward to the control room was a big cargo space.

It was a cylinder more than a hundred feet in diameter and was split up into holds. We were carrying all sorts of things out to the colony –earth moving machinery, concentrated soil cultures, instruments, I don’t know what all.

Wrapped around this central cylinder were the decks for living, “A” deck just inside the skin of the ship, “B” deck under it, and “C” deck just inside that, with “D” deck’s ceiling being the outer wall of the cargo space. “D” deck was the mess rooms and galley and recreation rooms and sick bay and such; the three outer decks were bunk rooms and staterooms. “A” deck had steps in it every ten or fifteen feet because it was fitted into the outer curve of the ship; this made the ceilings in it of various heights.

The furthest forward and furthest aft on “A” deck were only about six feet between floor and ceiling and some of the smaller kids lived in them, while at the greatest width of the ship the ceilings in “A” deck must have been twelve or thirteen feet high.

From inside the ship it was hard to see how it all fitted together. Not only was it all chopped up, but the artificial gravity we had from spinning the ship made directions confusing–anywhere you stood on a deck it seemed level, but it curved sharply up behind you and in front of you. But you never came to the curved part; if you walked forward it was still level. If you walked far enough you looped the loop and came back to where you started, having walked clear around the ship.

I never would have figured it out if Mr. Ortega hadn’t drawn a sketch for us.

Mr. Ortega told us that the ship was spinning three and six-tenths revolutions per minute or two hundred and sixteen complete turns an hour, which was enough to give “B” deck a centrifugal force of one-third g. “B” deck was seventy-five feet out from the axis of the Mayflower; “A” deck where I lived was further out and you weighed maybe a tenth more there, while “C” deck caught about a tenth less. “D” deck was quite a lot less and you could make yourself dizzy if you stood up suddenly in the mess room.

The control room was right on the axis; you could float in it even when the ship was spinning–or so they told me; I never was allowed inside. Spinning the ship had another odd effect: all around us was “down.” I mean to say that the only place you could put a view port was in the floor

plates of “A” deck and that’s where they were, four of them–big ones, each in its own compartment.

Mr. Ortega took us into one of these view galleries. The view port was a big round quartz plate in the floor, with a guard rail around it.

The first ones into the room went up to the guard rail and then backed away from it quick and two of the girls squealed. I pushed forward and got to the rail and looked down . . and I was staring straight into the very bottom of the universe, a million trillion miles away and all of it down.

I didn’t shy away–George says I’m more acrobat than acrophobe–but I did sort of grip the railing. Nobody wants to fall that far.

The quartz was surface-treated so that it didn’t give off reflections and it looked as if there were nothing at all between you and Kingdom Come.

The stars were reeling across the hole from the ship spinning, which made it worse. The Big Dipper came swinging in from the left, passed almost under me, and slid away to the right–and a few seconds later it was back again. I said, “This is where I came in,” and gave up my place so that someone else could have a look, but nobody seemed anxious to.

Then we went through the hydroponics plant, but there wasn’t anything fancy about that–just enough plants growing to replace the oxygen we used up breathing. Eel grass, it was mostly, but there was a vegetable garden as well. I wondered how they had gotten it going before they had the passengers aboard? Mr. Ortega pointed to a CO2 fitting in the wall. “We had to subsidize them, of course.”

I guess I should have known it; it was simple arithmetic.

The Chief led us back into one of the mess rooms, we sat down, and he told us about the power plant.

He said that there had been three stages in the development of space ships: first was the chemical fuel rocket ship that wasn’t very different from the big German war rockets used in the Second World War, except that they were step rockets. “You kids are too young to have seen such rockets,” he said, “but they were the biggest space ships ever built. They had to be big because they were terribly inefficient. As you all know, the first rocket to reach the Moon was a four-stage rocket. Its final stage was almost as long as the Mayflower–yet its pay load was less than a ton.

“It is characteristic of space ship development that the ships have gotten smaller instead of bigger. The next development was the atom-powered rocket. It was a great improvement; steps were no longer necessary. That meant that a ship like the Daedalus could take off from Earth without even a catapult, much less step rockets, and cruise to the Moon or even to Mars.

But such ships still had the shortcomings of rockets; they depended on an atomic power plant to heat up reaction mass and push it out a jet, just as their predecessors depended on chemical fuel for the same purpose.

“The latest development is the mass-conversion ship, such as the Mayflower, and it may be the final development–a mass-conversion ship is theoretically capable of approaching the speed of light. Take this trip: we accelerated at one gravity for about four hours and twenty minutes which brought us up to more than ninety miles a second. If we had held that drive for a trifle less than a year, we would approach the speed of light.

“A mass-conversion ship has plenty of power to do just that. At one hundred per cent efficiency, it would use up about one per cent of her mass as energy and another one per cent as reaction mass. That’s what the Star Rover is going to do when it is finished.”

One of the younger kids was waving his hand. “Mister Chief Engineer?”

“Yes, son?”

“Suppose it goes on a few weeks longer and passes the speed of light?” Mr. Ortega shook his head. “It can’t.”

“Why not, sir?”

“Eh, how far have you gone in mathematics, sonny?”

“Just through grammer school calculus,” the kid answered.

‘Tm afraid there is no use in trying to explain it, then. Just take it from me that the big brains are sure it can’t be done.”

I had worried about that very point more than once. Why can’t you go faster than light? I know all that old double-talk about how the Einstein equations show that a speed faster than light is a meaningless quantity, like the weight of a song or the color of a sound, because it involves the square root of minus one–but all of that is just theory and if the course we had in history of science means anything at all, it means that scientists change their theories about as often as a snake changes his skin. I stuck up my hand.

“Okay,” he says. “You with the cowlick. Speak up.”

“Mr. Ortega, admitting that you can’t pass the speed of light, what would happen if the Star Rover got up close to the speed of light–and then the Captain suddenly stepped the drive up to about six g and held it there?”

“Why, it would– No, let’s put it this way–” He broke off and grinned; it made him look real young. “See here, kid, don’t ask me questions like that. I’m an engineer with hairy ears, not a mathematical physicist.” He looked thoughtful and added, “Truthfully, I don’t know what would happen, but I would sure give a pretty to find out. Maybe we would find out what the square root of minus one looks like– from the inside.”

He went on briskly, “Let’s go on about the Mayflower. You probably know that when the original Star Rover failed to come back, the Mayflower was designed to be the Star Rover II, but the design was obsolete before they ever started putting her together.

So they shifted the name over to the new intersteller ship, the Star Rover III, renamed this one the Mayflower and grabbed her for the colonial service.

“You kids should consider how lucky you are. Up to now, emigrants to Ganymede have had to spend two years and nine months in space, just to get there. You’re making it in two months.”

“Couldn’t we go faster?” somebody wanted to know.

“We could,” he told us. “But we don’t need to and it runs up the astrogation and control difficulties. In these new ships the power plant has gotten way ahead of the instrumentation. Be patient; your grandchildren will make the trip in a week, blasting at one g all the way. There’ll be so many ships they’ll have to have traffic cops and maybe we can come close to shipping out as many people as there are extras born each year.

“Enough about that,” he went on. “Who here can tell me what ‘E equals M C squared’ means?”

I could have answered but I had already spoken up once and it doesn’t do to get a reputation for apple polishing. Finally one of the older kids said, “It means that mass can be converted into energy.”

“Right!” Mr. Ortega agreed. “The first real demonstration of that was the atom bomb they set off ‘way back in 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. That was a special case; they still didn’t know how to control it; all they could do was to make one whale of a big bang.

Then came the uranium power plants, but that still didn’t amount to much because it was a very special case and only a microscopic percentage of the mass was converted into energy. It wasn’t until Kilgore’s energy transformation equations–don’t worry about them; you’ll study them when you are older if you are interested–it wasn’t until Kilgore showed how it could be done that we had any idea of howto do what Dr. Einstein’s energy- mass equation said, clear back in 1905.

“And we still didn’t know how to control it. If we were going to turn mass into energy, we needed more mass with which to surround the reaction, a very special sort of mass that would not turn into energy when we didn’t want it to and would hold the reaction where we wanted it. Ordinary metal

wouldn’t do; one might as well use soft butter.

“But the Kilgore equations showed how to do that, too, when they were read correctly. Now has anyone here any notion of how much energy you get when you convert a chunk of mass into raw energy?”

Nobody knew. “It’s all in that one equation,” he said, “good old Doc Einstein’s ‘E equals M C squared.’ It comes out that one gram of mass gives nine times ten to the twentieth power ergs.” He wrote it down for us: 1 gm. = 9 x l020 ergs.

“Doesn’t look like much, does it?” he said. “Now try it this way:” He wrote down 900,000,000,000,000,000,000 ergs.

“Read it off. Nine hundred thousand million billion ergs. It still doesn’t mean much, does it? Figures like that are impossible to comprehend. The nuclear physicists keep a barrel of zeroes around handy the way a carpenter does a keg of nails.

“I’ll try once more,” he went on. “A pound of mass, any old mass, say a pound of feathers, when converted into energy equals fifteen billion

horsepower-hours. Does that give anyone a notion of why the Mayflower was assembled out in an orbit and will never ever land anywhere?”

“Too hot,” somebody said.

“‘Too hot’ is an understatement. If the Mayftower had blasted off from Mojave space port the whole Los Angeles Borough of the City of Southern California would have been reduced to a puddle of lava and people would have been killed by radiation and heat from Bay City to Baja California. And that will give you an idea of why the shielding runs right through the ship between here and the power plant, with no way at all to get at the torch.”

We had the misfortune to have Noisy Edwards along, simply because he was from the same bunk room. Now he spoke up and said, “Suppose you have to make a repair?”

“There is nothing to go wrong,” explained Mr. Ortega. “The power plant has no moving parts of any sort” Noisy wasn’t satisfied. “But suppose something did go wrong, how would you fix it if you can’t get at it?”

Noisy has an irritating manner at best; Mr. Ortega sounded a little impatient when he answered. “Believe me, son, even if you could get at it, you wouldn’t want to. No indeed!”

“Humph!” said Noisy. “All I’ve got to say is, if there isn’t any way to make a repair when a repair is needed, what’s the use in sending engineer officers along?”

You could have heard a pin drop. Mr. Ortega turned red, but all he said was, “Why, to answer foolish questions from youngsters like yourself, I suppose.” He turned to the rest of us. “Any more questions?”

Naturally nobody wanted to ask any then. He added, “I think that’s enough for one session. School’s out.”

I told Dad about it later. He looked grim and said, “I’m afraid Chief Engineer Ortega didn’t tell you the whole truth.” “Huh?”

“In the first place there is plenty for him to do in taking care of the auxiliary machinery on this side of the shield. But it is possible to get at the torch, if necessary.”

“Huh? How?”

“There are certain adjustments which could conceivably have to be made in extreme emergency. In which case it would be Mr. Ortega’s proud privilege to climb into a space suit, go outside and back aft, and make them.”

“You mean–“

“I mean that the assistant chief engineer would succeed to the position of chief a few minutes later. Chief engineers are very carefully chosen, Bill, and not just for their technical knowledge.”

It made me feel chilly inside; I didn’t like to think about it.

1. Scouting in Space

Making a trip in a space ship is about the dullest way to spend time in the world, once the excitement wears off. There’s no scenery, nothing to do, and no room to do it in. There were nearly six thousand of us crowded into the Mayflower and that doesn’t leave room to swing a cat.

Take “B” deck–there were two thousand passengers sleeping in it. It was 150 feet across–fore and aft, that is–and not quite 500 feet around, cylinder fashion. That gives about forty square feet per passenger, on the average, but a lot was soaked up in stairs, passageways, walls, and such. It worked out that each one had about room enough for his bunk and about that much left over to stand on when he wasn’t sleeping.

You can’t give a rodeo in that kind of space; you can’t even get up a game of ring-around-the-rosy.

“A” deck was larger and “C” deck was smaller, being nearer the axis, but they averaged out the same. The council set up a staggered system to get the best use out of the galley and the mess rooms and to keep us from falling over each other in the ‘freshers. “A” deck was on Greenwich time; “B” deck was left on zone plus-eight time, or Pacific West Coast time; and “C” deck drew zone minus-eight time, Philippine time.

That would have put us on different days, of course, but the day was always figured officially on Greenwich time; the dodge was just to ease the pressure on eating facilities.

That was really all we had to worry about. You would wake up early, not tired but bored, and wait for breakfast Once breakfast was over, the idea was to kill time until lunch. All afternoon you could look forward to the terrific excitement of having dinner.

I have to admit that making us go to school was a good plan; it meant that two and a half hours every morning and every afternoon was taken care of. Some of the grown ups complained that the mess rooms and all the spare space was always crowded with classes, but what did they expect us to do? Go hang on sky hooks? We used up less space in class than if we had been under foot.

Still, it was a mighty odd sort of school. There were some study machines in the cargo but we couldn’t get at them and there wouldn’t have been enough to go around. Each class consisted of about two dozen kids and some adult who knew something about something. (You’d be surprised how many adults don’t know anything about anything!) The grown up would talk about what he knew best and the kids would listen, then we would ask questions and he would ask questions. No real examinations, no experiments, no demonstrations, no stereos.

Dad says this is the best kind of a school, that a university consists of a log with a teacher on one end and a pupil on the other. But Dad is a sort of romantic.

Things got so dull that it was hardly worth while to keep up my diary, even if I had been able to get microfilm, which I wasn’t.

Dad and I played an occasional game of cribbage in the evening–somehow Dad had managed to squeeze the board and a pack of cards into his weight allowance. Then he got too busy with technical planning he was doing for the council and didn’t have time. Molly suggested that I teach her to play, so I did.

After that I taught Peggy to play and she pegged a pretty sharp game, for a girl. It worried me a little that I wasn’t being loyal to Anne in getting chummy with Peg and her mother, but I decided that Anne would want me to do just what I did. Anne was always friendly with everybody.

It still left me with time on my hands. What with only one-third gravity and no exercise I couldn’t sleep more than six hours a night. The lights were out eight hours but they didn’t make us go to bed, not after the trouble they had with it the first week. I used to fool around the corridors after lights out, usually with Hank Jones, until we both would get sleepy. We talked a lot. Hank turned out not to be such a bad guy as long as you kept him trimmed down to size.

I still had my Scout suit with me and kept it folded up in my bunk. Hank came in one morning while I was making up my bunk and noticed it. “See here, William,” he said, “why do you hang on to that? Let the dead past bury its dead.”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe there will be Scouting on Ganymede.”

“Not that I ever heard of.”

“Why not? There is Scouting on the Moon.” “Proves nothing,” he answered.

But it got us to talking about it and Hank got a brilliant idea. Why not start up Scouting right now, in the Mayflower?

We called a meeting. Peggy spread the word around for us, through the junior council, and we set it for fifteen-thirty that same afternoon, right after school. Fifteen-thirty Greenwich, or “A” deck time, that is. That made it seven-thirty in the morning for the “B” deck boys and a half hour before midnight for the fellows on “C” deck. It was the best we could do. “B” deck could hurry through breakfast and get to the meeting if they wanted to and we figured that those who were really interested from “C” would stay up for the meeting.

I played my accordion while they were drifting in because Hank’s father said that you needed music to warm up a meeting before it got down to work. The call had read “all Scouts and former Scouts;” by fifteen-forty we had them packed in and spilling into the corridors, even though we had the use of the biggest mess room. Hank called them to order and I put away my accordion and acted as Scribe pro tem, having borrowed a wire recorder from the Communications Officer for the purpose.

Hank made a little speech. I figure him for politics when he grows up. He said that all of us had enjoyed the benefits, the comradeship, and the honorable traditions of Scouting on Earth and it seemed a shame to lose them. He said that the Scouting tradition was the tradition of the explorer and pioneer and there could be no more fitting place and time for it than in the settlement of a new planet. In fact the spirit of Daniel Boone demanded that we continue as Scouts.

I didn’t know he had it in him. It sounded good.

He stopped and slipped me the wink. I got up and said that I wanted to propose a resolution. Then I read it–it had been a lot longer but we cut it down. It read: “Be it resolved–we the undersigned, Scouts and former Scouts of many jurisdictions and now passengers in the good ship Mayflower, having as our purpose to continue the Scouting tradition and to extend the Scouting trail out to the stars, do organize ourselves as the Boy Scouts of Ganymede in accordance with the principles and purpose of Scouting and in so doing do reaffirm the Scout Law.”

Maybe it was flowery but it sounded impressive; nobody laughed. Hank said, “You have heard the resolution; what is your pleasure? Do I hear a second?”

He surely did; there were seconds all over the place. Then he asked for debate.

Somebody objected that we couldn’t call ourselves the Boy Scouts of Ganymede because we weren’t on Ganymede yet. He got a chilly reception and shut up. Then somebody else pointed out that Ganymede wasn’t a star, which made that part about “Carrying the Scouting trail out to the stars” nonsense.

Hank told him that was poetic license and anyhow going out to Ganymede was a step in the right direction and that there would be more steps; what about the Star Rover III? That shut him up.

The worst objection was from “Millimetre” Muntz, a weary little squirt too big for his britches. He said, “Mr. Chairman, this is an outlaw meeting. You haven’t any authority to set up a new Scouting jurisdiction. As a member in good standing of Troop -Ninety-Six, New Jersey, I object to the whole proceeding.”

Hank asked him just what authority he thought Troop Ninety-Six, New Jersey, had out around the orbit of Mars? Somebody yelled, “Throw him out!” Hank banged on the mess table. “It isn’t necessary to throw him out–but, since Brother Millimetre thinks this is not a proper meeting, then it isn’t

proper for him to take part in it. He is excused and the chair will recognize him no further. Are you ready to vote?”

It was passed unanimously and then Hank was elected organizational chairman. He appointed a flock of committees, for organization and for plans and programs and for credentials and tests and for liaison, and such. That last was to dig out the men in the ship who had been troop masters and commissioners and things and get a Court of Honor set up. There were maybe a dozen of the men passengers at the meeting, listening. One of them, a Dr. Archibald who was an aide on “A” deck, spoke up.

“Mr. Chairman, I was a Scoutmaster in Nebraska. I’d like to volunteer my services to this new organization.” Hank looked him straight in the eye. “Thank you, sir. Your application will be considered.”

Dr. Archibald looked startled, but Hank went smoothly on, “We want and need and will appreciate the help of all you older Scouts. The liaison committee is instructed to get the names of any who are willing to serve.”

It was decided that we would have to have three troops, one for each deck, since it wasn’t convenient to try to meet all at the same time. Hank asked all the Explorer Scouts to stand up. There were too many of them, so he asked those who were Eagles to remain standing. There were about a dozen of us.

Hank separated us Eagles by decks and told us to get busy and organize our troops and to start by picking an acting senior patrol leader. “A” deck had only three Eagles, me, Hank, and a kid from another bunk room whom I hadn’t met before, Douglas MacArthur Okajima. Doug and Hank combined on me and I found myself tagged with the job.

Hank and I had planned to finish the meeting with setting up exercises, but there just wasn’t room, so I got out my accordion again and we sang The Scouting Trail and followed it with The Green Hills of Earth. Then we took the oath together again:

“Upon my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my planet, and to keep myself physically fit, mentally alert, and morally straight.” After that the meeting busted up.

For a while we held meetings every day. Between troop meetings and committee meetings and Explorer meetings and patrol leader meetings we didn’t have time to get bored. At first the troops were just “A” troop, “B” troop, and “C” troop, after the decks, but we wanted names to give them some personality. Anyhow I wanted a name for my troop; we were about to start a membership drive and I wanted something with more oomph to it than “‘A'” deck troop.”

Somebody suggested “The Space Rats” but that was voted down, and somebody else suggested “The Mayflowers”; they didn’t bother to vote on that; they simply sat on him.

After that we turned down “The Pilgrims,” “Deep Space Troop,” “Star Rovers,” and “Sky High.” A kid named John Edward Forbes-Smith got up. “Look,” he said, “we’re divided into three troops on the basis of the time zones we use, aren’t we? “B” deck has California time; “C” deck has Philippine time; and we have Greenwich or English time. Why don’t we pick names that will show that fact? We could call ourselves the Saint George Troop.”

Bud Kelly said it was a good idea as far as it went but make it Saint Patrick instead of Saint George; after all, Dublin was on Greenwich time, too, and Saint Patrick was a more important saint.

Forbes-Smith said, “Since when?”

Bud said, “Since always, you limey–” So we sat on both of them, too, and it was decided not to use saints. But Johnny Edwards had a good idea, just the same; we settled on the Baden-Powell Troop, Boy Scouts of Ganymede, which tied in with the English time zone and didn’t offend anybody.

The idea took hold; “C” deck picked Aguinaldo as a name and “B” deck called themselves the Junipero Serra Troop. When I heard that last I was kind of sorry our deck didn’t have California time so that we could have used it. But I got over it; after all “Baden-Powell” is a mighty proud name, too.

For that matter they were all good names–scouts and explorers and brave men, all three of them. Two of them never had a chance to be Scouts in the narrow, organized meaning, but they were all Scouts in the wider sense–like Daniel Boone.

Dad says there is a lot in a name.

As soon as they heard about what we were doing the girls set up Girl Scouting, too, and Peggy was a member of the Florence Nightingale Troop. I suppose there was no harm in it, but why do girls copy what the boys do? We were too busy to worry about them, though; we had to revamp Scouting activities to fit new conditions.

We decided to confirm whatever ranks and badges a boy had held in his former organization–permanent rankings, I mean, not offices. Having been a patrol leader or a scribe didn’t mean anything, but if you were an Eagle on Earth, you stayed one in the B.S.G.; if you were a Cub, then you were still a Cub. If a boy didn’t have records–and about half of them didn’t– we took his Scout oath statement as official.

That was simple; working over the tests and the badges was complicated. After all you can’t expect a boy to pass beekeeping when you haven’t any bees.

(It turned out that there were several swarms of bees sleep-frozen in the cargo, but we didn’t have the use of them.)

But we could set up a merit badge in hydroponics and give tests right there in the ship. And Mr. Ortega set up a test for us in spaceship engineering and Captain Harkness did the same for ballistics and astrogation. By the end of the trip we had enough new tests to let a boy go up for Eagle Scout, once we had a Court of Honor.

That came last. For some reason I couldn’t figure Hank had kept putting off the final report of the liaison committee, the committee which had as its job getting Scout Masters and Commissioners and such. I asked him about it, but he just looked mysterious and said that I would see.

I did see, eventually. At last we had a joint meeting of all three troops to install Scout Masters and dedicate the Court of Honor and such. And from then on the adults ran things and we went back to being patrol leaders at the most. Oh well–it was fun while it lasted.

2. Trouble

When we were fifty-three days out and about a week to go to reach Ganymede, Captain Harkness used the flywheel to precess the ship so that we could see where we were going–so that the passengers could see, that is; it didn’t make any difference to his astrogation.

You see, the axis of the Mayflower had been pointed pretty much toward Jupiter and the torch had been pointed back at the Sun. Since the view ports were spaced every ninety degrees around the sides, while we had been able to see most of the sky, we hadn’t been able to see ahead to Jupiter nor behind to the Sun. Now he tilted the ship over ninety degrees and we were rolling, so to speak, along our line of flight. That way, you could see Jupiter and the Sun both, from any view port, though not both at the same time.

Jupiter was already a tiny, ruddy-orange disc. Some of the boys claimed they could make out the moons. Frankly, I couldn’t, not for the first three days after the Captain precessed the ship. But it was mighty fine to be able to see Jupiter.

We hadn’t seen Mars on the way out, because Mars happened to be on the far side of the Sun, three hundred million miles away. We hadn’t seen anything but the same old stars you can see from Earth. We didn’t even see any asteroids.

There was a reason for that. When we took off from the orbit of Supra-New-York, Captain Harkness had not aimed the Mayflower straight for where Jupiter was going to be when we got there; instead he had lifted her north of the ecliptic high enough to give the asteroid belt a wide berth. Now anybody knows that meteors are no real hazard in space.

Unless a pilot does deliberately foolish things like driving his ship through the head of a comet it is almost impossible to get yourself hit by a meteor. They are too far between.

On the other hand the asteroid belt has more than its fair share of sky junk. The older power-pile ships used to drive straight through the belt, taking their chances, and none of them was ever hit to amount to anything. But Captain Harkness, having literally all the power in the world, preferred to go around and play it safe. By avoiding the belt there wasn’t a chance in a blue moon that the Mayflower would be hit.

Well, it must have been a blue moon. We were hit.

It was just after reveille, “A” deck time, and I was standing by my bunk, making it up. I had my Scout uniform in my hands and was about to fold it up and put it under my pillow. I still didn’t wear it. None of the others had uniforms to wear to Scout meetings so I didn’t wear mine. But I still kept it tucked away in my bunk.

Suddenly I heard the goldarnest noise I ever heard in my life. It sounded like a rifle going off right by my ear, it sounded like a steel door being slammed, and it sounded like a giant tearing yards and yards of cloth, all at once.

Then I couldn’t hear anything but a ringing in my ears and I was dazed. I shook my head and looked down and I was staring at a raw hole in the ship, almost between my feet and nearly as big as my fist.

There was scorched insulation around it and in the middle of the hole I could see blackness–then a star whipped past and I realized that I was staring right out into space.

There was a hissing noise.

I don’t remember thinking at all. I just wadded up my uniform, squatted down, and stuffed it in the hole. For a moment it seemed as if the suction would pull it on through the hole, then it jammed and stuck and didn’t go any further. But we were still losing air. I think that was the point at which I first realized that we were losing air and that we might be suffocated in vacuum.

There was somebody yelling and screaming behind me that he was killed and alarm bells were going off all over the place. You couldn’t hear yourself think. The air-tight door to our bunk room slid across automatically and settled into its gaskets and we were locked in.

That scared me to death.

I know it has to be done. I know that it is better to seal off one compartment and kill the people who are in it than to let a whole ship die–but, you see, I was in that compartment, personally. I guess I’m just not the hero type.

I could feel the pressure sucking away at the plug my uniform made. With one part of my mind I was recalling that it had been advertised as “tropical weave, self ventilating” and wishing that it had been a solid plastic rain coat instead. I was afraid to stuff it in any harder, for fear it would go all the way through and leave us sitting there, chewing vacuum. I would have passed up desserts for the next ten years for just one rubber patch, the size of my hand.

The screaming had stopped; now it started up again. It was Noisy Edwards, beating on the air-tight door and yelling, “Let me out of here! Get me out of here!”

On top of that I could hear Captain Harkness’s voice coming through the bull horn. He was saying, “H-twelve! Report! H-twelve! Can you hear me?”

On top of that everybody was talking at once.

I yelled: “Quiet!” at the top of my voice–and for a second or so there was quiet.

Peewee Brunn, one of my Cubs, was standing in front of me, looking big-eyed. “What happened, Billy?” he said. I said, “Grab me a pillow off one of the bunks. Jump!”

He gulped and did it. I said, “Peel off the cover, quick!”

He did, making quite a mess of it, and handed it to me–but I didn’t have a hand free. I said, “Put it down on top of my hands.”

It was the ordinary sort of pillow, soft foam rubber. I snatched one hand out and then the other, and then I was kneeling on it and pressing down with the heels of my hands. It dimpled a little in the middle and I was scared we were going to have a blowout right through the pillow.

But it held. Noisy was screaming again and Captain Harkness was still asking for somebody, anybody, in compartment H-12 to tell him what was going on. I yelled “Quiet!” again, and added, “Somebody slug Noisy and shut him up.”

That was a popular idea. About three of them jumped to it. Noisy got clipped in the side of the neck, then somebody poked him in the pit of his stomach and they swarmed over him. “Now everybody keep quiet,” I said, “and keep on keeping quiet. If Noisy lets out a peep, slug him again,” I gasped and tried to take a deep breath and said, “H-twelve, reporting!”

The Captain’s voice answered, “What is the situation there?” “There is a hole in the ship, Captain, but we got it corked up.” “How? And how big a hole?”

I told him and that is about all there was to it. They took a while to get to us because–I found this out afterward–they isolated that stretch of corridor first, with the air-tight doors, and that meant they had to get everybody out of the rooms on each side of us and across the passageway. But presently two men in space suits opened the door and chased all the kids out, all but me. Then they came back. One of them was Mr. Ortega.

“You can get up now, kid,” he said, his voice sounding strange and far away through his helmet. The other man squatted down and took over holding the pillow in place.

Mr. Ortega had a big metal patch under one arm. It had sticky padding on one side. I wanted to stay and watch him put it on but he chased me out and closed the door. The corridor outside was empty but I banged on the air-tight door and they let me through to where the rest were waiting. They wanted to know what was happening but I didn’t have any news for them because I had been chased out.

After a while we started feeling light and Captain Harkness announced that spin would be off the ship for a short time. Mr. Ortega and the other man came back and went on up to the control room. Spin was off entirely soon after that and I got very sick.

Captain Harkness kept the ship’s speaker circuits cut in on his conversations with the men who had gone outside to repair the hole, but I didn’t listen. I defy anybody to be interested in anything when he is drop sick

Then spin came back on and everything was all right and we were allowed to go back into our bunk-room. It looked just the same except that there was a plate welded over the place where the meteorite had come in.

Breakfast was two hours late and we didn’t have school that morning.

That was how I happened to go up to Captain’s mast for the second time. George was there and Molly and Peggy and Dr. Archibald, the Scoutmaster of our deck, and all the fellows from my bunk room and all the ship’s officers. The rest of the ship was cut in by visiplate. I wanted to wear my uniform but it was a mess–torn and covered with sticky stuff. I finally cut off the merit badges and put it in the ship’s incinerator.

The First Officer shouted, “Captain’s Mast for punishments and rewards!” Everybody sort of straightened up and Captain Harkness walked out and faced us. Dad shoved me forward.

The Captain looked at me. “William Lermer?” he said. I said, “Yessir.”

He said, “I will read from yesterday’s log: ‘On twenty-one August at oh-seven-oh-four system standard, while cruising in free fall according to plan, the ship was broached by a small meteorite. Safety interlocks worked satisfactorily and the punctured volume, compartment H-twelve, was isolated with no serious drop in pressure elsewhere in the ship.

‘Compartment H-twelve is a bunk room and was occupied at the time of the emergency by twenty passengers. One of the passengers, William J. Lermer, contrived a makeshift patch with materials at hand and succeeded in holding sufficient pressure for breathing until a repair party could take over.

‘His quick thinking and immediate action unquestionably saved the lives of all persons in compartment H-twelve.’ “

The Captain looked up from the log and went on, “A certified copy of this entry, along with depositions of witnesses, will be sent to Interplanetary Red Cross with recommendation for appropriate action. Another copy will be furnished you. I have no way to reward you except to say that you have my heart-felt gratitude. I know that I speak not only for the officers but for all the passengers and most especially for the parents of your bunk mates.”

He paused and waggled a finger for me to come closer. He went on in a low voice, to me alone, “That really was a slick piece of work. You were on your toes. You have a right to feel proud.”

I said I guessed I had been lucky.

He said, “Maybe. But that sort of luck comes to the man who is prepared for it.”

He waited a moment, then said, “Lermer, have you ever thought of putting in for space training?”

I said I suppose I had but I hadn’t thought about it very seriously. He said, “Well, Lermer, if you ever do decide to, let me know. You can reach me care of the Pilots’ Association, Luna City.”

With that, mast was over and we went away, George and I together and Molly and Peggy following along. I heard Peggy saying, “That’s my brother.” Molly said, “Hush, Peggy. And don’t point.”

Peggy said, “Why not? He is my brother–well, isn’t he?”

Molly said, “Yes, but there’s no need to embarrass him.” But I wasn’t embarrassed.

Mr. Ortega looked me up later and handed me a little, black, twisted piece of metal, about as big as a button. “That’s all there was left of it,” he said, “but I thought you would like to have it–pay you for messing up your Scout suit, so to speak.”

I thanked him and said I didn’t mind losing the uniform; after all, it had saved my neck, too. I looked at the meteorite. “Mr. Ortega, is there any way to tell where this came from?”

“Not really,” he told me, “though you can get the scientific johnnies to cut it up and then express an opinion–if you don’t mind them destroying it.”

I said no, I’d rather .keep it–and I have; I’ve still got it as a pocket piece. He went on, “It’s either a bit of a comet or a piece of the Ruined Planet. We can’t tell which because where we were, there shouldn’t have been either one.”

“Only there was,” I said. “As you say, there was.”

“Uh, Mr. Ortega, why don’t they put enough armor on a ship to stop a little bitty thing like this?” I remembered what the skin of the ship looked like where it had been busted; it seemed awful thin.

“Well, now, in the first place, this meteor is a real giant, as meteors go. In the second place–do you know anything about cosmic rays, Bill?” “Uh, not much, I guess.”

“You undoubtedly know that the human body is transparent to primary cosmic radiation and isn’t harmed by it. That is what we encounter out here in space. But metal is not completely transparent to it and when it passes through metal it kicks up all sorts of fuss–secondary and tertiary and quaternary cosmic radiation.

The stuff cascades and it is not harmless, not by a darn sight. It can cause mutations and do you and your descendants a lot of harm. It adds up to this: a man is safest in space when he has just enough ship around him to keep the air in and ultraviolet out.”

Noisy didn’t have much to say around the compartment for the next couple of days and I thought maybe he had learned his lesson. I was wrong. I ran into him in one of the lower passageways when there was nobody else around. I started to go around him but he stepped in my way. “I want to talk to you,” he said.

“Okay,” I answered. “What’s on your mind?” “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”

I didn’t like the way he said it, nor what he said. I said, “I don’t think I’m smart; I am smart.” He made me tired.

“Pretty cocky, aren’t you? You think I ought to be kissing your hand and telling you how grateful I am for saving my life, don’t you?” I said, “Oh, yeah? If that’s what is worrying you, you can just skip it; I didn’t do it for you.“

“I know that,” he answered,” and I’m not grateful, see?”

“That’s fine with me,” I told him. “I wouldn’t want a guy like you being grateful to me.”

He was breathing hard. “I’ve had just about enough of you,” he said slowly. And the next thing I knew I had a mouthful of knuckles and I was down.

I got up cautiously, trying to surprise him. But it was no good; he knocked me down again. I tried to kick him while I was down, but he danced out of my way.

The third time he hit me I stayed down. When I quit seeing stars he was gone–and I hadn’t managed to lay a finger on him. I never was any good in a fight; I’m still talking when I ought to be slugging.

I went to a scuttlebutt and bathed my face. Hank ran across me there and asked me what in the world I had been doing. I told him I had run into a door. I told Dad the same thing.

Noisy didn’t bother me any more and we never had anything to say to each other again. I lay awake a long time that night, trying to figure it out. I didn’t get it. The chap who thought up that malarkey about “my strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure” certainly had never met Noisy Edwards.

For my taste Noisy was a no good so-and-so and I wished I had been able to use his face to stuff the hole the meteor made. I thought about a number of ways to fix him, but none of them was any good. As Dad says, sometimes there just isn’t any cure for a situation.

3. The Moons of Jupiter

Nothing much happened until it was time to make our approach to Jupiter, except that a four-year-old kid turned up missing. The kid’s parents searched all around and they passed the word from the control room for everybody to keep an eye open but they still couldn’t find him.

So we had a chance to try out the Scouts’ emergency organization. The ship’s officers couldn’t search the ship, since there was just the Captain and two watch officers and Mr. Ortega and his assistant chief. Captain Harkness supplied plans to each of the Scoutmasters and we went through that ship like a kid searching his clothes for a half credit. We turned the kid up, all right, in about twenty minutes. Seems the little devil had snuck into the hydroponics room while it was being serviced and had got himself locked in.

While he was in there he had got thirsty and had tried to drink the solutions they raise the plants in – had drunk some, in fact. The result was just about what you would expect. It didn’t do him any real harm but, boy, was that place a mess!

I was talking to Dad about it that night over a game. Peggy had a Girl Scout meeting and Molly was off somewhere; we were alone for once. The baby’s mother had raised particular Ned, just as if there had really been something wrong–I mean, what can happen in a space ship? The kid couldn’t fall overboard.

Dad said her reaction was perfectly natural.

I said, “See, here, George, does it seem to you that some of the emigrants don’t have what it takes to be colonists?” “Mmmm… possibly.”

I was thinking of Noisy but the ones I mentioned were Mrs. Tarbutton, who gave up and didn’t even come along, and that female–Mrs. Grigsby–who got in trouble and had to wash dishes. And another fellow named Saunders who was continually in trouble with the council for trying to live his own life, wild and free, no matter what it did to the rest of us. “George, how did those characters get past the psycho tests?”

George stopped to peg fifteen-four, then said, “Bill, haven’t you ever heard of political influence?” All I said was, “Huh?”

“It’s a shocking thought I know, but you are old enough to get used to the world as it is, instead of the way it ought to be. Take a hypothetical case: I don’t suppose that a niece of a state councilor would be very likely to fail the psycho tests. Oh, she might fail the first tests, but a review board might find differently – if the councilor really wanted her to pass.”

I chewed this over a while. It did not sound like George; he isn’t the cynical type. Me, I’m cynical, but George is usually naive. “In that case, George, there is no use in having psycho tests at all, not if people like that can sneak past.”

“Contrariwise. The tests are usually honest. As for those who sneak past, it doesn’t matter. Old Mother Nature will take care of them in the long run. Survivors survive.” He finished dealing and said, “Wait till you see what I’m going to do to you this hand. You haven’t a chance.”

He always says that. I said, “Anybody who would use public office like that ought to be impeached!”

George said mildly, “Yep. But don’t bum out your jets, son; we’ve got human beings, not angels, to work with.”

On the twenty-fourth of August Captain Harkness took spin off and started bringing us in. We decelerated for better than four hours and then went into free fall about six hundred thousand miles out from Jupiter and on the opposite side from where Ganymede was then. Weightlessness still wasn’t any fun but this time we were ready and everyone got shots for it who wanted them. I took mine and no nonsense.

Theoretically the Mayflower could have made it in one compound maneuver, ending up at the end of deceleration in a tight circular orbit around Ganymede. Practically it was much better to sneak in easy and avoid any more trouble with meteorites–with the “false rings,” that is.

Of course Jupiter doesn’t have rings like Saturn, but it does have quite a lot of sky junk traveling around in the same plane as its moons. If there were enough of it, it would show up like Saturn’s rings. There isn’t that much, but there is enough to make a pilot walk on eggs coming in. This slow approach gave us a fine front seat for a tour of Jupiter and its satellites.

Most of this stuff we were trying to avoid is in the same plane as Jupiter’s equator, just the way Saturn’s rings are–so Captain Harkness brought us in over the top of Jupiter, right across Jupiter’s north pole. That way, we never did get in the danger zone until we had curved down on the other side to reach Ganymede–and by then we were going fairly slow.

But we weren’t going slow when we passed over Jupiter’s north pole, no indeedy! We were making better than thirty miles a second and we were close in, about thirty thousand miles. It was quite a sight.

Jupiter is ninety thousand miles thick; thirty thousand miles is close–too close for comfort.

I got one good look at it for about two minutes from one of the view ports, then had to give up my place to somebody who hadn’t had a turn yet and go back to the bunk room and watch through the vision screen. It was an odd sight; you always think of Jupiter with equatorial bands running parallel across it. But now we were looking at it end on and the bands were circles. It looked like a giant archery target, painted in orange and brick red and brown– except that half of it was chewed away. We saw it in half moon, of course.

There was a dark spot right at the pole. They said that was a zone of permanent clear weather and calm and that you could see clear down to the surface there. I looked but I couldn’t see anything; it just looked dark.

As we came over the top, Io–that’s satellite number one–suddenly came out of eclipse. Io is about as big as the Moon and was about as far away from us at the time as the Moon is from the Earth, so it looked about Moon size. There was just black sky and then there was a dark, blood red disc and in less than five minutes it was brilliant orange, about the color of Jupiter itself. It simply popped up, like magic.

I looked for Barnard’s satellite while we were close in, but missed it. It’s the little one that is less than one diameter from the surface of Jupiter–so close that it whirls around Jupiter in twelve hours. I was interested in it because I knew that the Jovian observatory was on it and also the base for Project Jove.

I probably didn’t miss anything; Barnard’s satellite is only about a hundred and fifty miles in diameter. They say a man can come pretty close to jumping right off it. I asked George about it and he said, no, the escape speed was about five hundred feet per second and who had been filling me up with nonsense?

I looked it up later; he was right. Dad is an absolute mine of useless information. He says a fact should be loved for itself alone.

Callisto was behind us; we had passed her on the way in, but not very close. Europa was off to the right of our course nearly ninety degrees; we saw her in half moon. She was more than four hundred thousand miles away and was not as pretty a sight as the Moon is from Earth.

Ganymede was straight ahead, almost, and growing all the time–and here was a funny thing; Callisto was silvery, like the Moon, but not as bright; Io and Europa were bright orange, as bright as Jupiter itself. Ganymede was downright dull!

I asked George about it; he came through, as usual “Ganymede used to be about as bright as Io and Europa,” he told me. “It’s the greenhouse effect–the heat trap. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to live on it.”

I knew about that, of course; the greenhouse effect is the most important part of the atmosphere project When the 1985 expedition landed Ganymede had a surface temperature a couple of hundred degrees below zero–that’s cold enough to freeze the milk of human kindness! “But look, George,” I objected, “sure, I know about the heat trap, but why is it so dark? It looks like the inside of a sack.”

“Light is heat; heat is light,” he answered. “What’s the difference? It’s not dark on the ground; it goes in and doesn’t come out–and a good thing, too.”

I shut up. It was something new to me and I didn’t understand it, so I decided to wait and not pound my teeth about it.

Captain Harkness slowed her down again as we came up to Ganymede and we got in one good meal while she was under drive. I never did get so I could eat at free fall, even with injections. He leveled her off in a tight circular orbit about a thousand miles up from Ganymede. We had arrived–just as soon as we could get somebody to come and get us.

It was on the trip down to Ganymede’s surface that I began to suspect that being a colonist wasn’t as glamorous and romantic as it had seemed back on Earth. Instead of three ships to carry us all at once, there was just one ship, the Jitterbug, and she would have fitted into one of the Bifrost‘s compartments. She could carry only ninety of us at a time and that meant a lot of trips.

I was lucky; I had to wait only three days in free fall. But I lost ten pounds.

While I waited, I worked, helping to stow the freight that the Jitterbug brought up each trip. At last it came our turn and we piled into the Jitterbug. She was terrible; she had shelves rather than decks–they weren’t four feet apart. The air was stale and she hadn’t been half way cleaned up since the last trip. There weren’t individual acceleration couches; there were just pads covering the deck space and we covered the pads, shoulder to shoulder–and foot in your eye, for that matter.

The skipper was a loud-mouthed old female they called “Captain Hattie” and she kept bawling us out and telling us to hurry. She didn’t even wait to make sure that we were all strapped down.

Fortunately it didn’t take very long. She drove away so hard that for the first time except in tests I blacked out, then we dropped for about twenty minutes; she gunned her again, and we landed with a terrible bump. And Captain Hattie was shouting, “Out you come, you ground hogsl This is it.”

The Jitterbug carried oxygen, rather than the helium-oxygen mix of the Mayflower. We had come down at ten pounds pressure; now Captain Hattie spilled the pressure and let it adjust to Ganymede normal, three pounds. Sure, three pounds of oxygen is enough to live on; that’s all Earth has–the other twelve pounds are nitrogen. But a sudden drop in pressure like that is enough to make you gasp anyhow. You aren’t suffocating but you feel as if you were.

We were miserable by the time we got out and Peggy had a nose bleed. There weren’t any elevators; we had to climb down a rope ladder. And it was cold!

It was snowing; the wind was howling around us and shaking the ladder–the smallest kids they had to lower with a line. There was about eight inches of snow on the ground except where the splash of the Jitterbugs jet had melted it. I could hardly see, the wind was whipping the snow into my face so, but a man grabbed me by the shoulder, swung me around, and shouted, “Keep moving! Keep moving! Over that way.”

I headed the way he pointed. There was another man at the edge of the blast clearing, singing the same song, and there was a path through the snow, trampled to slush. I could see some other people disappearing in the snow ahead and I took out after them, dogtrotting to keep warm.

It must have been half a mile to the shelter and cold all the way. We weren’t dressed for it. I was chilled through and my feet were soaking wet by the time we got inside.

The shelter was a big hangarlike building and it was not much warmer, the door was open so much, but it was out of the weather and it felt good to be inside. It was jammed with people, some of them in ship suits and some of them Ganymedeans–you couldn’t miss the colonial men; they were bearded and some of them wore their hair long as well. I decided that was one style I was not going to copy; I’d be smooth shaven, like George.

I went scouting around, trying to find George & Co. I finally did. He had found a bale of something for Molly to sit on and she was holding Peggy on her lap. Peg’s nose had stopped bleeding. I was glad to see, but there were dried tears and blood and dirt on her face. She was a sight.

George was looking gloomy, the way he did the first few days without his pipe. I came up and said, “Hi, folks!” George looked around and smiled and said, “Well, Bill, fancy meeting you here! How is it going?”

“Now that you ask me,” I answered, “it looks like a shambles.”

He looked gloomy again and said, “Oh, I suppose they will get things straightened out presently.”

We didn’t get a chance to discuss it. A colonist with snow on his boots and hair on his face stopped near us, put his little fingers to his lips, and whistled. “Pipe down!” he shouted. “I want twelve able-bodied men and boys for the baggage party.” He looked around and started pointing. “You– and you–and you–“

George was the ninth “You”; I was the tenth.

Molly started to protest. I think George might have balked if she had not. Instead he said, “No, Molly, I guess it has to be done. Come on, Bill.” So we went back out into the cold.

There was a tractor truck outside and we were loaded in it standing up, then we lumbered back to the rocket site. Dad saw to it that I was sent up into the Jitterbug to get me out of the weather and I was treated to another dose of Captain Hattie’s tongue; we couldn’t work fast enough to suit her. But we got our baggage lowered finally; it was in the truck by the time I was down out of the ship. The trip back was cold, too.

Molly and Peggy were not where we had left them. The big room was almost empty and we were told to go on into another building through a connecting door. George was upset, I could see, from finding Molly gone.

In the next building there were big signs with arrows: MEN & BOYS-TO THE RIGHT and WOMEN & GIRLS-TO THE LEFT. George promptly turned to the left. He got about ten yards and was stopped by a stem-faced woman dressed like a colonial, in a coverall. “Back the other way,” she said firmly. “This is the way to the ladies’ dormitory.”

“Yes, I know,” agreed Dad, “but I want to find my wife.” “You can look for her at supper.”

“I want to see her now.“

“I haven’t any facilities for seeking out any one person at this time. You’ll have to wait.”

“But–” There were several women crowding past us and going on inside. Dad spotted one from our deck in the Mayflower. “Mrs. Archibald!” She turned around. “Oh–Mr. Lermer. How do you do?”

“Mrs. Archibald,” Dad said intently, “could you find Molly and let her know that I’m waiting here?” “Why, I’d be glad to try, Mr. Lermer.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Archibald, a thousand thanks!”

“Not at all.” She went away and we waited, ignoring the stern-faced guard. Presently Molly showed up without Peggy. You would have thought Dad hadn’t seen her for a month.

“I didn’t know what to do, dear,” she said. “They said we had to come and it seemed better to get Peggy settled down. I knew you would find us.” “Where is Peggy now?”

“I put her to bed.”

We went back to the main hall. There was a desk there with a man behind it; over his head was a sign: IMMIGRATION SERVICE-INFORMATION. There was quite a line up at it; we took our place in the queue.

“How is Peggy?” Dad asked.

“I’m afraid she is catching a cold.”

“I hope-” Dad said. “Ah, I HOPE–Atchoo!“ “And so are you,” Molly said accusingly.

“I don’t catch cold,” Dad said, wiping his eyes. “That was just a reflex.”

“Hmm–” said Molly.

The line up took us past a low balcony. Two boys, my age or older, were leaning on the rail and looking us over. They were colonials and one was trying to grow a beard, but it was pretty crummy.

One turned to the other and said, “Rafe, will you look at what they are sending us these days?” The other said, “It’s sad.”

The first one pointed a thumb at me and went on, “Take that one, now–the artistic type, no doubt.” The second one stared at me thoughtfully. “Is it alive?” he asked.

“Does it matter?” the first one answered.

I turned my back on them, whereupon they both laughed. I hate self-panickers.

4. The Promised Land

Mr. Saunders was ahead of us in line. He was crabbing about the weather. He said it was an outrage to expose people the way we had been. He had been with us on the working party, but he had not worked much.

The man at the desk shrugged. “The Colonial Commission set your arrival date; we had nothing to say about it. You can’t expect us to postpone winter to suit your convenience.”

“Somebody’s going to hear about this!”

“By all means.” The man at the desk handed him a form, “Next, please!” He looked at Dad and said, “What may I do for you, citizen?” Dad explained quietly that he wanted to have his family with him. The man shook his head. “Sorry. Next case, please.”

Dad didn’t give up his place. “You can’t separate a man and wife. We aren’t slaves, nor criminals, nor animals. The Immigration Service surely has some responsibilities toward us.”

The man looked bored. “This is the largest shipload we’ve ever had to handle. We’ve made the best arrangements we could. This is a frontier town, not the Astor.”

“All I’m asking for is a minimum family space, as described in the Commission’s literature about Ganymede.” “Citizen, those descriptions are written back on Earth. Be patient and you will be taken care of.”

“Tomorrow?”

“No, not tomorrow. A few days–or a few weeks.”

Dad exploded. “Weeks, indeed! Confound it, I’ll build an igloo out on the field before I’ll put up with this.”

“That’s your privilege.” The man handed Dad a sheet of paper. “If you wish to lodge a complaint, write it out on this.”

Dad took it and I glanced at it. It was a printed form–and it was addressed to the Colonial Commission back on Earth! The man went on, “Turn it in to me any time this phase and it will be ultramicro-filmed in time to go back with the mail in the Mayflower.“

Dad looked at it, snorted, crumpled it up, and stomped away. Molly followed him and said, “George! Georgel Don’t be upset. We’ll live through it.”

Dad grinned sheepishly. “Sure we will, honey. It’s the beauty of the system that gets me. Refer all complaints to the head office–half a billion miles away!”

The next day George’s reflexes were making his nose run. Peggy was worse and Molly was worried about her and Dad was desperate. He went off somewhere to raise a stink about the way things were being handled.

Frankly, I didn’t have it too bad. Sleeping in a dormitory is no hardship to me; I could sleep through the crack of doom. And the food was everything they had promised.

Listen to this: For breakfast we had corn cakes with syrup and real butter, little sausages, real ham, strawberries with cream so thick I didn’t know what it was, tea, all the milk you could drink, tomato juice, honey-dew melon, eggs–as many eggs as you wanted.

There was an open sugar bowl, too, but the salt shaker had a little sign on it; DON’T WASTE THE SALT.

There wasn’t any coffee, which I wouldn’t have noticed if George had not asked for it. There were other things missing, too, although I certainly didn’t notice it at the time. No tree fruits, for example–no apples, no pears, no oranges. But who cares when you can get strawberries and watermelon and pineapples and such? There were no tree nuts, too, but there were peanuts to burn.

Anything made out of wheat flour was a luxury, but you don’t miss it at first.

Lunch was choice of corn chowder or jellied consomme, cheese souffle, fried chicken, corned beef and cabbage, hominy grits with syrup, egg plant au gratin, little pearl onions scalloped with cucumbers, baked stuffed tomatoes, sweet potato surprise, German-fried Irish potatoes, tossed endive, coleslaw with sour cream, pineapple and cottage cheese with lettuce.

Then there was peppermint ice cream, angel berry pie, frozen egg nog, raspberry ice, and three kinds of pudding–but I didn’t do too well on the desserts. I had tried to try everything, taking a little of this and a dab of that, and by the time desserts came along I was short on space. I guess I ate too much.

The cooking wasn’t fancy, about like Scout camp, but the food was so good you couldn’t ruin it. The service reminded me of camp, too–queueing up for servings, no table cloths, no napkins. And the dishes had to be washed; you couldn’t throw them away or burn them–they were imported from Earth and worth their weight in uranium.

The first day they took the first fifty kids in the chow line and the last fifty lads to leave the mess hall and made them wash dishes. The next day they changed pace on us and took the middle group. I got stuck both times.

The first supper was mushroom soup, baked ham, roast turkey, hot corn bread with butter, jellied cold meats, creamed asparagus, mashed potatoes and giblet gravy, spinach with hard boiled egg and grated cheese, corn pudding, creamed peas and carrots, smothered lettuce and three kinds of salad. Then there was frozen custard and raisin pudding with hard sauce and Malaga and Thompson grapes and more strawberries with powdered sugar.

Besides that you could drop around to the kitchen and get a snack any time you felt like it.

I didn’t go outside much the first three days. It snowed and although we were in Sun phase when we got there it was so murky that you couldn’t see the Sun, much less Jupiter. Besides, we were in eclipse part of the time. It was as cold as Billy-be-switched and we still didn’t have any cold weather clothes.

I was sent along with the commissary tractor once to get supplies over in town. Not that I saw much of the town–and not that Leda is much of a town, anyhow, to a person who has lived in Diego Borough–but I did see the hydroponics farms.

There were three of them, big multiple sheds, named for what they grew in them, “Oahu,” “Imperial Valley,” and “Iowa.” Nothing special about them, just the usual sort of soiless gardening. I didn’t hang around because the flicker lighting they use to force the plants makes my eyes burn.

But I was interested in the tropical plants they grew in “Oahu”–I had never seen a lot of them before. I noticed that most of the plants were marked “M-G” while a few were tagged “N. T.” I asked one of the gardeners; he said that “M-G” meant “mutation-Ganymede” and the other meant “normal terrestrial.”

I found out later that almost everything grown on Ganymede was a special mutation adapted to Ganymede conditions.

Beyond there was another of the big multiple sheds named “Texas”; it had real cows in it and was very interesting. Did you know a cow moves its lower jaw from side to side? And no matter what you’ve heard, there is not one teat that is especially for cream.

I hated to leave, but “Texas” shed smelled too much like a space ship. It was only a short dash through the snow to the Exchange where all of Leda’s retail buying and selling takes place–big and little shops all under one roof.

I looked around, thinking I might take a present back to Peggy, seeing that she was sick. I got the shock of my life. The prices!

If I had had to buy in the Exchange the measly fifty-eight pounds of stuff they had let me bring with me, it would have cost–I’m telling the truth!– several thousand credits. Everything that was imported from Earth cost that kind of money. A tube of beard cream was two hundred and eighty credits.

There were items for sale made on Ganymede, hand work mostly, and they were expensive, too, though not nearly as expensive as the stuff brought up from Earth.

I crept out of that place in a hurry. As nearly as I could figure the only thing cheap on Ganymede was food.

The driver of the commissary tractor wanted to know where I had been when there was loading to do? “I should have left you behind to walk back,” he groused. I didn’t have a good answer so I didn’t say anything.

They shut off winter soon after that. The heat trap was turned on full force, the skies cleared and it was lovely. The first view I got of the Ganymede sky was a little after dawn next Sun phase. The heat trap made the sky a pale green but Jupiter shone right through it, ruddy orange, and big. Big and beautiful–I’ve never gotten tired of looking at Jupiter!

A harvest moon looks big, doesn’t it? Well, Jupiter from Ganymede is sixteen or seventeen times as wide as the Moon looks and it covers better than two hundred and fifty times as much sky. It hangs there in the sky, never rising, never setting, and you wonder what holds it up.

I saw it first in half-moon phase and I didn’t see how it could be any more beautiful than it was. But the Sun crept across the sky and a day later Jupiter was a crescent and better than ever. At the middle of Sun phase we went into eclipse, of course, and Jupiter was a great red, glowing ring in the sky, brightest where the Sun had just passed behind it.

But the best of all is during dark phase.

Maybe I ought to explain how the phases work; I know I didn’t understand it until I came to Ganymede. Ganymede is such a small planet and so close to its primary that it is tide-locked, just the way the Moon is; it keeps one face always toward Jupiter and therefore Jupiter does not move in the sky. The sun moves, the other Jovian moons move, the stars move–but not good old Jove; it just hangs there.

Ganymede takes just over an Earth week to revolve around Jupiter, so we have three and a half days of sunlight and then three and a half days of darkness. By Ganymede time the period of rotation is exactly one week; twenty-four Ganymede hours is one seventh of the period. This arrangement makes a Ganymede minute about a standard second longer than an Earth minute, but who cares? Except scientists, of course, and they have clocks that keep both sorts of time.

So here is the way a week goes on Ganymede: the Sun rises at Sunday midnight every week; when you get up Monday morning it’s a little above the eastern horizon and Jupiter is in half-moon phase.

The Sun keeps climbing higher and about suppertime on Tuesday it slides behind Jupiter and Ganymede is in eclipse; eclipse can last an hour or so up to a maximum of about three hours and a half. The stars come out and Jupiter shows that beautiful red ring effect because of its thick atmosphere. Then it’s light again by bedtime Tuesday.

At noon on Thursday the Sun goes down and we start the dark phase; that’s best of all. Jupiter’s colors really show and the other moons are easier to see. They can be almost anywhere and in almost any combination.

Jupiter and its satellites is sort of a miniature solar system; from Ganymede you have a front seat for the show. There is always something new in the sky. Besides the eleven “historical” satellites ranging in size from Ganymede down to Jay-ten or Nicholson-Alpha, which is a ball of rock and ice only fifteen miles thick, there are maybe a dozen more a few miles or less in diameter but big enough to be called moons and heaven knows how many smaller than that.

Sometimes these little ones come close enough to Ganymede to show discs; they mostly have very eccentric orbits. Any time there will be several

that are conspicuous lights in the sky, like the planets are from Earth.

Io, and Europa, and Callisto are always discs. When Europa passes between Jupiter and Ganymede it is as big in the sky as the Moon is from Earth. It actually is as big as the Moon and at that time it is only about a quarter of a million miles away.

Then it swings around to the far side and is very much smaller–more than a million miles away and less than a quarter as wide. Io goes through the same sorts of changes, but it never gets as big.

When Io and Europa pass between Ganymede and Jupiter you can see them move with your naked eye, chasing their shadows or running ahead of them, depending on the phase. Io and Europa, being inside Ganymede’s orbit, never get very far away from Jupiter, Io sticks within a couple of diameters of the big boy; Europa can get about sixty degrees away from it. Callisto is further out than Ganymede and goes all around the sky.

It’s a show you never get tired of. Earth’s sky is dull.

By six o’clock Saturday morning Jupiter would be in full phase and it was worthwhile to get up to see it. Not only was it the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen, but there was always the reverse eclipse, too, and you could see Ganymede’s shadow, a little round black dot, crawling across old Jupiter’s face. It gave you an idea of just how colossally big Jupiter was– there was the shadow of your whole planet on it and it wasn’t anything more than a big freckle.

Jupiter is ninety thousand miles across the equator, eighty-four thousand from pole to pole. Ganymede is only a little better than three thousand.

For the next couple of days after full phase Jupiter would wane and at Sunday midnight it would be in half phase again, the Sun would rise and a new light phase would start. One thing I expected but didn’t find was dim sunlight. Jupiter is a long way out; it gets only one twenty-seventh the sunlight that Earth does. I expected that we would always be in a sort of twilight.

It didn’t work out that way. It seemed to me that the sunlight was just as bright as on Earth.

George says that this is an optical illusion and that it has to do with the way the human eye works, because the iris of the eye simply shuts out light it doesn’t need. Bright desert sunlight back on Earth is maybe ten thousand foot-candles; the same thing on Ganymede is only four hundred foot- candles. But really good bright artificial light is only twenty–five foot candles and a “well-lighted” room is seldom that bright.

If you’ve got only a two-gallon bucket does it make any difference whether you fill it from the ocean or from a small pond? Sunlight on Ganymede was still more than the eye could accept, so it looked just as bright as sunlight on Earth.

I did notice, however, that it was almost impossible to get a sunburn.

5. “Share Croppers”

George got us a place to live when we had been there about a week, which was a lot better than most of the other immigrants did, but it didn’t suit him and it didn’t suit Molly and it didn’t really suit me.

The trouble was he had to take a job as a staff engineer with the colonial government to get quarters for us–and that meant he would be too tied down to prove a piece of land for homestead. But it did carry private family quarters with it, if you could call two rooms twelve feet square a home.

It was like this: the colony was made up of homesteaders and townies. The townies worked for the government and lived in government-owned buildings –except for a very few who were in private trade.

The townies included the Colonial Commission representative, Captain Hattie the pilot, the hydroponics engineers, the hospital staff, the engineers who ran the power plant and the heat trap, the staff of the local office of Project Jove, and everybody else who worked at anything but land farming.

But most of the colonials were homesteaders and that’s what George had meant us to be. Like most everybody, we had come out there on the promise of free land and a chance to raise our own food.

There was free land, all right, a whole planet of it. Putting up a house and proving a farm was another matter.

Here is the way it was supposed to work: A colonist comes out from Earth with his family and lands at Leda. The Colonial Commission gives him an apartment in town on arrival, helps him pick out a piece of land to improve and helps him get a house up on it. The Commission will feed him and his family for one Earth year–that is, two Ganymede years–while he gets a couple of acres under cultivation.

Then he has ten G-years in which to pay back the Commission by processing at least twenty acres for the Commission– and he is allowed to process as much land for himself as for the Commission during the time he is paying what he owes. At the end of five Earth years he owns a tidy little farm, free and clear. After that, he can spread out and acquire more land, get into trade, anything he likes. He has his toehold and has paid off his debt.

The Colonial Commission had a big expensive investment in having started the atmosphere project and made the planet fit to live on in the first place. The land processed by the colonists was its return on the investment; the day would come when the Colonial Commission would own thousands of acres of prime farmland on Ganymede which it could then sell Earthside to later settlers … if you wanted to emigrate from Earth you would have to pay for the privilege and pay high. People like us would not be able to afford it.

By that time, although Ganymede would be closed to free immigration, Callisto would have an atmosphere and pioneers could move in there and do it all over again. It was what the bankers call “Self-liquidating,” with the original investment coming from Earth.

But here is the way it actually did work out: when we landed there were only about thirty thousand people on Ganymede and they were geared to accept about five hundred immigrants an Earth year, which was about all the old-type ships could bring out. Remember, those power-pile ships took over five years for the round trip; it took a fleet of them to bring in that many a year.

Then the Star Rover II was renamed the Mayflower and turned over to the Colonial Commission, whereupon six thousand people were dumped on them all at once. We were about as welcome as unexpected overnight guests when there is sickness in the family.

The colonists had known, for a full Earth year, that we were coming, but they had not been able to protest. While Earth Sender can punch a message through to Ganymede anytime except when the Sun is smack in the way, at that time the best radio the colony could boast had to relay via Mars to reach Earth–and then only when Mars was at its closest approach to Jupiter– which it wasn’t.

I’ve got to admit that they did what they could for us. There was plenty to eat and they had managed to fix up places for us to sleep. The Immigrants’ Receiving Station had formerly been split up into family apartments; they had torn out the partitions and used the partitions to build bunks for the big dormitories we were stacked in. They had moved their town hall and made it over into a mess hall and kitchen for us. We were in out of the weather and well fed, even if we were about as crowded as we had been in the Mayflower.

You may ask why, with a year to get ready, they had not built new buildings for us? Well, we asked the same thing, only we weren’t asking, we were demanding, and we were sore about it!

They hadn’t built new buildings because they could not. Before the Earthmen moved in, Ganymede was bare rock and ice. Sure, everybody knows that–but does everybody know what that means? I’m sure I didn’t.

No lumber. No sheet metal. No insulation. No wires, No glass. No pipe. The settlers in North America built log cabins–no logs.

The big hydroponics sheds, the Receiving Station and a few other public buildings had been built with materials lifted a half a billion miles from Earth. The rest of Leda and every homesteader’s farm house had been built the hard way, from country rock. They had done their best for us, with what they had.

Only we didn’t appreciate it.

Of course we should not have complained. After all, as George pointed out, the first California settlers starved, nobody knows what happened to the Roanoke Colony, and the first two expeditions to Venus died to the last man. We were safe.

Anyhow, even if we had to put up with barracks for a while, there was all that free land, waiting for us.

On close inspection, it looked as if it would have to wait quite a while. That was why George had given in and taken a staff engineering job. The closest land to town open to homesteading was nine miles away. To find enough land for six thousand people meant that most of them would have to go about eighteen to twenty miles away.

“What’s twenty miles? A few minutes by tube, an up-and-down hop for a copter–brother, have you ever walked twenty miles? And then walked back again?

It wasn’t impossible to settle six thousand people that far from town; it was just difficult–and slow. The pioneer explorer used to set out with his gun

and an axe; the settler followed by hitching his oxen to a wagonload of furniture and farm tools. Twenty miles meant nothing to them.

They weren’t on Ganymede.

The colony had two tractor trucks; another had come in the Mayflower. That’s all the transportation there was on the whole planet–not just to settle six thousand people but for the daily needs of thirty thousand people who were there ahead of us.

They explained it all to us at a big meeting of heads of families. I wasn’t supposed to be there but it was held outdoors and there was nothing to stop me. The chief ecologist and the chief engineer of the planet were there and the chairman of the colony council presided. Here was the proposition:

What Ganymede really needed was not more farmers, but manufacturing. They needed prospectors and mines and mills and machine shops. They needed all the things you can make out of metal and which they simply could not afford to import from Earth. That’s what they wanted us to work on and they would feed any of us who accepted, not just for a year, but indefinitely.

As for any who insisted on homesteading–well, the land was there; help ourselves. There wasn’t enough processing machinery to go around, so it might be two or three years before any particular immigrant got a chance to process his first acre of ground.

Somebody stood up near the front of the crowd and yelled, “We’ve been swindled!”

It took Mr. Tolley, the chairman, quite a while to calm them down. When they let him talk again, he said, “Maybe you have been swindled, maybe you haven’t. That’s a matter of opinion. I’m quite willing to concede that conditions here are not the way they were represented to you when you left Earth. In fact–“

Somebody yelled. “That’s mighty nice of you!” only the tone was sarcastic.

Mr. Tolley looked vexed. “You folks can either keep order, or I’ll adjourn this meeting.”

They shut up again and he went on. Most of the present homesteaders had processed more land than they could cultivate. They could use hired hands to raise more crops. There was a job waiting for every man, a job that would keep him busy and teach him Ganymede farming–and feed his wife and family-while he was waiting his turn to homestead.

You could feel a chill rolling over the crowd when the meaning of Mr. Tolley’s words sunk in. They felt the way Jacob did when he had labored seven years and then was told he would have to labor another seven years to get the girl he really wanted. I felt it myself, even though George had already decided on the staff job.

A man spoke up. “Mr. Chairman!” “Yes? Your name, please.”

“Name of Saunders. I don’t know how the rest of them feel, but I’m a farmer. Always have been. But I said ‘farmer,’ not sharecropper. I didn’t come here to hire out to no boss. You can take your job and do what you see fit with it. I stand on my rights!”

There was scattered applause and the crowd began to perk up. Mr. Tolley looked at him and said, “That’s your privilege, Mr. Saunders.”

“Huh? Well, I’m glad you feel that way, Mr. Chairman. Now let’s cut out the nonsense. I want to know two things: what piece of land am I going to get and when do I lay hands on some machinery to start putting it into condition?”

Mr. Tolley said, “You can consult the land office about your first question. As to the second, you heard the chief engineer say that he estimates the average wait for processing machinery will be around twenty-one months.”

“That’s too long.”

“So it is, Mr. Saunders.”

“Well, what do you propose to do about it?” Mr. Tolley shrugged and spread his hands. “I’m not a magician. We’ve asked the Colonial Commission by urgent message going back on the Mayflower not to send us any more colonists on the next trip, but to send us machinery. If they agree, there may be some relief from the situation by next winter. But you have seen–all of you have already seen–that the Colonial Commission makes

decisions without consulting us. The first trip of the Mayflower should have been all cargo; you folks should have waited.”

Saunders thought about it. “Next winter, eh? That’s five months away. I guess I can wait–I’m a reasonable man. But no sharecropping; that’s outl” “I didn’t say you could start homesteading in five months, Mr. Saunders. It may be twenty-one months or longer.”

“No, indeedy!”

“Suit yourself. But you are confronted with a fact, not a theory. If you do have to wait and you won’t work for another farmer, how do you propose to feed yourself and your family in the mean time?”

Mr. Saunders looked around and grinned, “Why, in that case, Mr. Chairman, I guess the government will just have to feed us until the government can come through on its end of the deal. I know my rights.”

Mr. Tolley looked at him as if he had just bitten into an apple and found Saunders inside. “We won’t let your children starve,” he said slowly, “but as for you, you can go chew rocks. If you won’t work, you won’t eat.”

Saunders tried to bluster. “You can’t get away with it! I’ll sue the government and I’ll sue you as the responsible government official You can’t–“

“Shut up!” Mr. Tolley went on more quietly, speaking to all of us. “We might as well get this point straight. You people have been enticed into coming out here by rosy promises and you are understandably disappointed. But your contract is with the Colonial Commission back on Earth.

But you have no contract with the common council of Ganymede, of which I am chairman, and the citizens of Ganymede owe you nothing. We are trying to take care of you out of common decency.

“If you don’t like what we offer you, don’t start throwing your weight around with me; I won’t stand for it. Take it up with the representative of the Immigration Service. That’s what he is here for. Meeting’s adjourned!”

But the immigration representative wasn’t there; he had stayed away from the meeting.

6. Bees and Zeroes

We had been swindled all right. It was equally clear that there was no help for it. Some of the immigrants did see the Colonial Commission representative, but they got no comfort out of him. He had resigned, he said, fed up with trying to carry out impossible instructions five hundred million miles from the home office. He was going home as soon as his relief arrived.

That set them off again; if he could go home so could they. The Mayflower was still in orbit over us, taking on cargo. A lot of people demanded to go back in her.

Captain Harkness said no, he had no authority to let them deadhead half way across the system. So they landed back on the Commission representative, squawking louder than ever.

Mr. Tolley and the council finally settled it. Ganymede wanted no soreheads, no weak sisters. If the Commission refused to ship back those who claimed they were gypped and didn’t want to stay, then the next shipload wouldn’t even be allowed to land. The representative gave in and wrote Captain Harkness out a warrant for their passage.

We held a family pow-wow over the matter, in Peggy’s room in the hospital–it had to be there because the doctors were keeping her in a room pressurized to Earth normal

Did we stay, or did we go back? Dad was stuck in a rut. Back Earthside he at least had been working for himself; here he was just an employee. If he quit his job and elected to homestead, it meant working two or three G-years as a field hand before we could expect to start homesteading.

But the real rub was Peggy. In spite of having passed her physical examination Earthside she hadn’t adjusted to Ganymede’s low pressure. “We might as well face it,” George said to Molly. “We’ve got to get Peg back to the conditions she’s used to.”

Molly looked at him; his face was as long as my arm. “George, you don’t want to go back, do you?”

“That’s not the point, Molly. The welfare of the kids comes first.” He turned to me and added, “You’re not bound by this, Bill. You are big enough to make up your own mind. If you want to stay, I am sure it can be arranged.”

I didn’t answer right away. I had come into the family get-together pretty disgusted myself, not only because of the run-around we had gotten, but also because of a run-in I had had with a couple of the Colonial kids. But you know what it was that swung me around? That pressurized room. I had gotten used to low pressure and I liked it. Peggy’s room, pressurized to Earth normal, felt like swimming in warm soup. I could hardly breath. “I don’t think I want to go back,” I said.

Peggy had been sitting up in bed, following the talk with big eyes, like a little lemur. Now she said, “I don’t want to go back, eitherl”

Molly patted her hand and did not answer her, “George,” she said, “I’ve given this a lot of thought You don’t want to go back, I know. Neither does Bill But we don’t all have to go back. We can–“

“That’s out, Molly,” Dad answered firmly. “I didn’t marry you to split up. If you have to go back, I go back.”

“I didn’t mean that. Peggy can go back with the O’Farrells and my sister will meet her and take care of her at the other end. She wanted me to leave Peggy with her when she found I was determined to go. It will work out all right.” She didn’t look at Peggy as she said it.

“But, Molly!” Dad said.

“No George,” she answered, “I’ve thought this all out. My first duty is to you. It’s not as if Peggy wouldn’t be well taken care of; Phoebe will be a mother to her and–“

By now Peggy had caught her breath. “I don’t want to go live with Aunt Phoebe!” she yelled and started to bawl. George said, “It won’t work, Molly.”

Molly said, “George, not five minutes ago you were talking about leaving Bill behind, on his own.” “But Bill is practically a man!”

“He’s not too old to be lonesome. And I’m not talking about leaving Peggy alone; Phoebe will give her loving care. No, George, if the womenfolk ran home at the first sign of trouble there never would be any pioneers. Peggy has to go back, but I stay.”

Peggy stopped her blubbering long enough to say, “I won‘t go back! I’m a pioneer, too–ain’t I, Bill?” I said, “Sure kid, sure!” and went over and patted her hand. She grabbed onto mine.

I don’t know what made me say what I did then. Goodness knows the brat had never been anything but a headache, with her endless questions and her insistence that she be allowed to do anything I did. But I heard myself saying, “Don’t worry, Peggy. If you go. back, I’ll go with you.”

Dad looked at me sharply, then turned to Peggy. “Bill spoke hastily, Baby. You mustn’t hold him to that.” Peggy said, “You did so mean it, didn’t you, Bill?”

I was regretting it already. But I said, “Sure, Peggy.”

Peggy turned back to Dad. “See? But it doesn’t matter; we’re not going back, not any of us. Please Daddy –I’ll get well, I promise you I will. I’m getting better every day.”

Sure, she was–in a pressurized room. I sat there, sweating, and wishing I had kept my big mouth shut. Molly said, “It defeats me, George. What do you think?”

“Mmmm–“

“Well?”

“Uh, I was thinking we could pressurize one room in our quarters. I could rig some sort of an impeller in the machine shop.” Peggy was suddenly all over her tears. “You mean I can get out of the hospital?”

“That’s the idea, Sugar, if Daddy can work it.”

Molly looked dubious. “That’s no answer to our problems, George.”

“Maybe not.” Dad stood up and squared his shoulders. “But I have decided one thing; we all go, or we’ll all stay. The Lermers stand together. That’s settled.”

Homesteading wasn’t the only thing we had been mistaken about. There was Scouting on Ganymede even if the news hadn’t gotten back to Earth. There hadn’t been any meetings of the Mayflower troops after we landed; everybody had been just too busy to think about it. Organized Scouting is fun, but sometimes there just isn’t time for it.

There hadn’t been any meetings of the Leda Troop, either. They used to meet in their town hall; now we had their town hall as a mess hall, leaving them out in the cold. I guess that didn’t tend to make them fee! chummy towards us.

I ran into this boy over in the Exchange. Just as he was passing me I noticed a little embroidered patch on his chest. It was a homemade job and not very good, but I spotted it. “Hey!” I said.

He stopped. ” ‘Hey’ yourself! Were you yelling at me?” “Uh, yes. You’re a Scout, aren’t you?”

“Certainly.”

“So am I. My name’s Bill Lermer. Shake.” I slipped him the Scout grip.

He returned it. “Mine’s Sergei Roskov.” He looked me over. “You’re one of the Johnny-Come-Latelies, aren’t you?” “I came over in the Mayflower” I admitted.

“That’s what I meant. No offense– I was born Earth-side, myself. So you used to be a Scout, back home. That’s good. Come around to meeting and

we’ll sign you up again.”

“I’m still a Scout,” I objected.

“Huh? Oh, I get you–‘Once a Scout, always a Scout.’ Well, come around and we’ll make it official.”

That was a very good time for me to keep my lip zipped. But not me–oh, no! When comes the Tromp of Doom, I’ll still be talking instead of listening. I said, “It’s as official as it can be. I’m senior patrol leader, Baden-Powell Troop.”

“Huh? You’re kind of far away from your troop, aren’t you?”

So I told him all about it. He listened until I was through, then said quietly, “And you laddie bucks had the nerve to call yourselves the ‘Boy Scouts of Ganymede.’ Anything else you would like to grab? You already have our meeting hall; maybe you’d like to sleep in our beds?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.” He seemed to be thinking it over. “Just a friendly warning, Bill–” “Huh?”

“There is only one senior patrol leader around here-and you’re looking right at him. Don’t make any mistake about it. But come on around to

meeting anyhow,” he added. “You’ll be welcome. We’re always glad to sign up a new tenderfoot.”

I went back to the Receiving Station and looked up Hank Jones and told him all about it. He looked at me admiringly. “William, old son,” he said, “I’ve got to hand it to you. It takes real talent to louse things up that thoroughly. It’s not easy.”

“You think I’ve messed things up?”

“I hope not. Well, let’s look up Doc Archibald and see what can be done.”

Our troop master was holding clinic; we waited until the patients were out of the way, then went in. He said, “Are you two sick, or just looking for a ticket to gold brick?”

“Doc,” I said, “we were wrong. There are so Scouts on Ganymede.” “So I know,” he answered.

I said, “Huh?”

“Mr. Ginsberg and Mr. Bruhn and I have been negotiating with the senior Scout officials here to determine just how our troops will be taken into the parent organization. It’s a bit complicated as there are actually more Mayflower Scouts than there are in the local troop. But they have jurisdiction, of course.”

I said, “Oh.”

“Well have a joint meeting in a few days, after we get the rules ironed out.”

I thought it over and decided I had better tell him what had happened, so I did.

He listened, not saying anything. Finally I said, “Hank seems to think I’ve messed things up. What do you think, Doc?” “Mmmm–” he said. “Well, I hope he’s wrong. But I think I may say you haven’t helped the situation any.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Don’t look so tragic about it,” he urged. “You’ll get well. Now run along and forget it. It may not make any difference.”

But it did make a difference. Doc and the others had been pitching for our troops to be recognized as properly constituted troops, with all ratings acknowledged. But after Sergei spread the word around, the regular Ganymede Scouts all squawked that we were nothing but a bunch of tenderfeet, no matter what we had been back on Earth. The place for us to start was the bottom; if we were any good, we could prove it– by tests.

It was compromised; George says things like that are always compromised. Ratings were confirmed on probation, with one G-year to make up any tests that were different. Our troops were kept intact But there was one major change:

All patrol leaders had to be from the original Ganymede Scouts; they were transferred from the Leda troop. I had to admit the justice of it. How could I be a patrol leader on Ganymede when I was still so green that I didn’t know northwest from next week? But it didn’t set well with the other fellows who had been patrol leaders when the word got around that I was responsible for the flies in the soup.

Hank talked it over with me. “Billy my boy,” he told me, “I suppose you realize that you are about as popular as ants at a picnic?” “Who cares?” I objected.

“You care. Now is the time for all good men to perform an auto da fe”

“What in great blazing moons is an auto da fe?”

“In this case it means for you to transfer to the Leda Troop.”

“Have you gone crazy? You know what those guys think of us, especially me. I’d be lucky to get away with my life.”

“Which just goes to show how little you know about human nature. Sure, it would be a little rough for a while, but it’s the quickest way to gain back some respect.”

“Hank, you really are nuts. In that troop I really would be a tenderfoot–and how!”

“That’s just the point,” Hank went on quietly, “We’re all tenderfeet–only here in our own troop it doesn’t show. If we stay here, we’ll keep on being tenderfeet for a long time. But if we transfer, we’ll be with a bunch who really know their way around–and some of it will rub off on us.”

“Did you say ‘we’?”

“I said ‘we’.”

“I catch on. You want to transfer, so you worked tip this gag about how I ought to do so, so you would have company. A fine chum you are!”

He just grinned, completely unembarrassed. “Good old Bill! Hit him in the head eight or nine times and he can latch on to any idea. It won’t be so bad, Bill. In precisely four months and nine days we won’t be tenderfeet; we’ll be old timers.”

“Why the exact date?”

“Because that is the due date of the Mayflower on her next trip–as soon as they arrive they‘ll be the Johnny-Come-Latelies.” “Oh!”

Anyhow, we did it–and it was rough at first, especially on me … like the night they insisted that I tell them how to be a hero. Some twerp had gotten hold of the meteorite story. But the hazing wasn’t too bad and Sergei put a stop to it whenever he caught them at it. After a while they got tired of it.

Sergei was so confounded noble about the whole thing that I wanted to kick him.

The only two merit badges to amount to anything that stood in the way of my getting off probation and back up to my old rating of Eagle Scout were agronomy and planetary ecology, Ganymede style. They were both tough subjects but well worth studying. On Ganymede you had to know them to stay alive, so I dug in.

Ecology is the most involved subject I ever tackled. I told George so and he said possibly politics was worse–and on second thought maybe politics was just one aspect of ecology. The dictionary says ecology is “the science of the interrelations of living organisms and their environment.” That doesn’t get you much, does it? It’s like defining a hurricane as a movement of air.

The trouble with ecology is that you never know where to start because everything affects everything else. An unseasonal freeze in Texas can affect the price of breakfast in Alaska and that can affect the salmon catch and that can affect something else.

Or take the old history book case: the English colonies took England’s young bachelors and that meant old maids at home and old maids keep cats and the cats catch field mice and the field mice destroy the bumble bee nests and bumble bees are necessary to clover and cattle eat clover and cattle furnish the roast beef of old England to feed the soldiers to protect the colonies that the bachelors emigrated to, which caused the old maids.

Not very scientific, is it? I mean you have too many variables and you can’t put figures to them. George says that if you can’t take a measurement and write it down in figures you don’t know enough about a thing to call what you are doing with it “science” and, as for him, hell stick to straight engineering, thank you.

But there were some clear cut things about applied ecology on Ganymede which you could get your teeth into. Insects, for instance–on Ganymede, under no circumstances do you step on an insect. There were no insects on Ganymede when men first landed there. Any insects there now are there because the bionomics board planned it that way and the chief ecologist okayed the invasion. He wants that insect to stay right where it is, doing whatever it is that insects do; he wants it to wax and grow fat and raise lots of little insects.

Of course a Scout doesn’t go out of his way to step on anything but black widow spiders and the like, anyhow–but it really brings it up to the top of your mind to know that stepping on an insect carries with it a stiff fine if you are caught, as well as a very pointed lecture telling you that the colony can get along very nicely without you but the insects are necessary.

Or take earthworms. I knowthey are worth their weight in uranium because I was buying them before I was through. A farmer can’t get along without

earthworms.

Introducing insects to a planet isn’t as easy as it sounds. Noah had less trouble with his animals, two by two, because when the waters went away he still had a planet that was suited to his load. Ganymede isn’t Earth.

Take bees–we brought bees in the Mayflower but we didn’t turn them loose; they were all in the shed called “Oahu” and likely to stay there for a smart spell. Bees need clover, or a reasonable facsimile. Clover would grow on Ganymede but our real use for clover was to fix nitrogen in the soil and thereby refresh a worn out field. We weren’t planting clover yet because there wasn’t any nitrogen in the air to fix–or not much.

But I am ahead of my story. This takes us into the engineering side of ecology. Ganymede was bare rock and ice before we came along, cold as could be, and no atmosphere to speak of–just traces of ammonia and methane. So the first thing to do was to give it an atmosphere men could breathe.

The material was there–ice. Apply enough power, bust up the water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen goes up–naturally–and the oxygen sits on the surface where you can breathe it. That went on for more than fifty years.

Any idea how much power it takes to give a planet the size of Ganymede three pressure-pounds of oxygen all over its surface?

Three pressure-pounds per square inch means nine mass pounds, because Ganymede has only one third the surface gravitation of Earth. That means you have to start with nine pounds of ice for every square inch of Ganymede–and that ice is cold to start with, better than two hundred degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

First you warm it to the freezing point, then you melt it, then you dissociate the water molecule into oxygen and hydrogen–not in the ordinary laboratory way by electrolysis, but by extreme heat in a mass converter. The result is three pressure pounds of oxygen and hydrogen mix for that square inch. It’s not an explosive mixture, because the hydrogen, being light, sits on top and the boundary layer is too near to being a vacuum to maintain burning.

But to carry out this breakdown takes power and plenty of it–65,000 BTUs for each square inch of surface, or for each nine pounds of ice, whichever way you like it. That adds up; Ganymede may be a small planet but it has 135,000,000,000,000,000 square inches of surface. Multiply that by 65,000 BTUs for each square inch, then convert British Thermal Units to ergs and you get:

92,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ergs.

Ninety-two-and-a-half million billon quadrillion ergs! That figure is such a beauty that I wrote it down in my diary and showed it to George.

He wasn’t impressed. George said that all figures were the same size and nobody but a dimwit is impressed by strings of zeroes. He made me work out what the figure meant in terms of mass-energy, by the good old E = MC2 formula, since mass-energy converters were used to give Ganymede its atmosphere.

By Einstein’s law, one gram mass equals 9×1020 ergs, so that fancy long figure works out to be 1.03×1011 grams of energy, or 113,200 tons. It was ice, mostly, that they converted into energy, some of the same ice that was being turned into atmosphere–though probably some country rock crept in along with the ice. A mass converter will eat anything.

Let’s say it was all ice; that amounts to a cube of ice a hundred and sixty feet on an edge. That was a number I felt I could understand.

I showed my answer to George and he still was not impressed. He said I ought to be able to understand one figure just as easily as the other, that both meant the same thing, and both figures were the same size.

Don’t get the idea that Ganymede’s atmosphere was made from a cube of ice 160 feet on a side; that was just the mass which had to be converted to energy to turn the trick. The mass of ice which was changed to oxygen and hydrogen would, if converted back into ice, cover the entire planet more than twenty feet deep —like the ice cap that used to cover Greenland.

George says all that proves is that there was a lot of ice on Ganymede to start with and that if we hadn’t had mass converters we could never have colonized it. Sometimes I think engineers get so matter of fact that they miss a lot of the juice in life.

With three pressure-pounds of oxygen on Ganymede and the heat trap in place and the place warmed up so that blood wouldn’t freeze in your veins, colonists could move in and move around without wearing space suits and without living in pressure chambers.

The atmosphere project didn’t stop, however. In the first place, since Ganymede has a low escape speed, only 1.8 miles per second compared with

Earth’s 7 m/s, the new atmosphere would gradually bleed off to outer space, especially the hydrogen, and would be lost– in a million years or so. In

the second place, nitrogen was needed.

We don’t need nitrogen to breathe and ordinarily we don’t think much about it. But it takes nitrogen to make protein–muscle. Most plants take it out of the ground; some plants, like clover and alfalfa and beans, take it out of the air as well and put it back into the ground. Ganymede’s soil was rich in nitrogen; the original scanty atmosphere was partly ammonia–but the day would come when we would have to put the nitrogen back in that we were taking out. So the atmosphere project was now turned to making nitrogen.

This wasn’t as simple as breaking up water; it called for converting stable isotope oxygen-16 into stable isotope nitrogen-14, an energy consuming reaction probably impossible in nature–or so the book said–and long considered theoretically impossible.

I hadn’t had any nucleonics beyond high school physics, so I skipped the equations. The real point was, it could be done, in the proper sort of a mass-energy converter, and Ganymede would have nitrogen in her atmosphere by the time her fields were exhausted and had to be replenished.

Carbon dioxide was no problem; there was dry ice as well as water ice on Ganymede and it had evaporated into the atmosphere long before the first homesteader staked out a claim.

Not that you can start farming with oxygen, carbon dioxide, and a stretch of land. That land was dead. Dead as Christopher Columbus. Bare rock, sterile, no life of any sort–and there never had been any life in it. It’s a far piece from dead rock to rich, warm, black soil crawling with bacteria and earthworms, the sort of soil you have to have to make a crop.

It was the job of the homesteaders to make the soil.

See how involved it gets? Clover, bees, nitrogen, escape speed, power, plant-animal balance, gas laws, compound interest laws, meteorology–a mathematical ecologist has to think of everything and think of it ahead of time. Ecology is explosive; what seems like a minor and harmless invasion can change the whole balance. Everybody has heard of the English sparrow.

There was the Australian jack rabbit, too, that darn near ate a continent out of house and home. And the Caribbean mongoose that killed the chickens it was supposed to protect. And the African snail that almost ruined the Pacific west coast before they found a parasite to kill it.

You take a harmless, useful insect, plant, or animal to Ganymede and neglect to bring along its natural enemies and after a couple of seasons you’ll wish you had imported bubonic plague instead.

But that was the chief ecologist’s worry; a farmer’s job was engineering agronomy–making the soil and then growing things in it.

That meant taking whatever you came to–granite boulders melted out of the ice, frozen lava flows, pumice, sand, ancient hardrock–and busting it up into little pieces, grinding the top layers to sand, pulverizing the top few inches to flour, and finally infecting the topmost part with a bit of Mother Earth herself-then nursing what you had to keep it alive and make it spread. It wasn’t easy.

But it was interesting. I forgot all about my original notion of boning up on the subject just to pass a merit badge test. I asked around and found out where I could see the various stages going on and went out and had a look for myself. I spent most of one light phase just looking.

When I got back to town I found that George had been looking for me. “Where in blazes have you been?” he wanted to know. “Oh, just out and around,” I told him, “seeing how the ‘steaders do things.”

He wanted to know where I had slept and how I had managed to eat? “Bill, it’s all very well to study for your merit badges but that’s no reason to turn into a tramp,” he objected. “I guess I have neglected you lately–I’m sorry.” He stopped and thought for a moment, then went on, “I think you had better enter school here. It’s true they haven’t much for you, but it would be better than running around at loose ends.”

“George?”

“Yes, that’s probably the best-huh?”

“Have you completely given up the idea of home-steading?”

Dad looked worried. “That’s a hard question, Bill. I still want us to, but with Peggy sick–it’s difficult to say. But our name is still in the hat. I’ll have to make up my mind before the drawing.”

“Dad, I’ll prove it.” “Eh?”

“You keep your job and take care of Peggy and Molly. I’ll make us a farm.”

7. Johnny Appleseed

The drawing of our division took place three weeks later; the next day George and I walked out to see what we had gotten. It was west of town out through Kneiper’s Ridge, new country to me; I had done my exploring east of town, over toward the power plant, where most of the proved land was located.

We passed a number of farms and some of them looked good, several acres in cultivation, green and lush, and many more acres already chewed level. It put me in mind of Illinois, but there was something missing. I finally figured out what it was–no trees.

Even without trees it was beautiful country. On the right, north of us, were the foothills of the Big Rock Candy Mountains. Snow-covered peaks thrust up beyond them, twenty or thirty miles away. On the left, curving in from the south and closer than it came to Leda, was Laguna Serenidad. We were a couple of hundred feet higher than the lake. It was a clear day and I tried to see the far shore, but I couldn’t be sure.

It was a mighty cheerful scene. Dad felt it, too. He strode along, whistling “Beulah Land” off key. I get my musical talent from Anne. He broke off and said, “Bill, I envy you.”

I said, “We’ll all be together yet, George. I’m the advance guard.” I thought a bit and said, “George, do you know what the first thing I raise is going to be-after I get some food crops in?”

“What?”

“I’m going to import some seed and raise you some tobacco.” “Oh, no, Son!”

“Why not?” I knew he was touched by it, because he called me ‘Son’. “I could do it, as well as not.”

“It’s a kind thought, but we’ll have to stick to the main chance. By the time we can afford that, I will have forgotten how to light a pipe. Honest, I don’t miss it.”

We slogged along a bit further, not saying anything but feeling close together and good. Presently the road played out. Dad stopped and took his sketch map out of his pouch. “This must be about it.”

The sketch showed where the road stopped, with just a dotted line to show where it would be, some day. Our farm was outlined on it, with the nearest comer about half a mile further along where the road ought to be and wasn’t. By the map, the edge of our property–or what would be ours if we proved it–ran along the north side of the road about a quarter of a mile and from there back toward the foothills. It was marked “Plot 117-H-2” and had the chief engineer’s stamp on it.

Dad was staring at where the road ended. There was a lava flow right across it, high as my head and rough as a hard winter in Maine. “Bill,” he said, “How good an Indian are you?”

“Fair, I guess.”

“We’ll have to try to pace it off and hold a straight line due west.”

But it was almost impossible to do it. We struggled and slipped on the lava and made detours. Lava looks soft and it isn’t. Dad slipped and skinned his shin and I discovered that I had lost track of how many paces we had come. But presently we were across the flow and in a boulder field. It was loose rubble, from pieces the size of a house down to stuff no bigger than your fist–stuff dropped by the ice when it melted and formed Laguna

Serenidad.

George says that Ganymede must have had a boisterous youth, covered with steam and volcanoes.

The boulder field was somewhat easier going but it was even harder to hold a straight line. After a bit Dad stopped. “Bill,” he said, “do you know where we are?”

“No,” I admitted, “but we aren’t really lost. If we head back east we are bound to come to proved ground.” “Perhaps we had better.”

“Wait a minute.” There was a particularly big boulder ahead of us. I picked a way and managed to scramble to the top with nothing worse than a cut on my hand. I stood up. “I can see the road,” I told Dad. “We’re north of where we ought to be. And I think maybe we’ve come too far.” I marked a spot with my eye and came down.

We worked south the amount I thought was right and then headed east again. After a bit I said, “I guess we missed it, George. I’m not much of an In- He said, “So? What’s this?” He was a little ahead of me and had stopped.

It was a cairn with a flat rock on top. Painted on it was: “117-H-2, SE corner.”

We had been on our farm for the past half hour; the big boulder I had climbed up on was on it.

We sat down on a fairly flat rock and looked around. Neither of us said anything for a while; we were both thinking the same thing: if this was a farm, I was my own great uncle.

After a bit Dad muttered something. I said, “What did you say?”

“Golgotha,” he said out loud. “Golgotha, the place of skulls.” He was staring straight ahead.

I looked where he was looking; there was a boulder sitting on top of another and the way the sun caught it, it did look like a skull. It leered at us.

It was so darn quiet you could hear your hair grow. The place was depressing me. I would have given anything to hear something or see something move. Anything–just a lizard darting out from behind a rock, and I could have kissed it.

But there were no lizards here and never had been.

Presently Dad said, “Bill, are you sure you want to tackle this?” “Sure I’m sure.”

“You don’t have to, you know. If you want to go back to Earth and go to M.I.T., I could arrange it for the next trip.”

Maybe he was thinking that if I went back, I could take Peggy with, me and she would be willing to go. Maybe I should have said something about it. But didn’t; I said, “Are you going back?”

“No.”

“Neither am I.” At the moment is was mostly stubbornness. I had to admit that our “farm” wasn’t flowing with milk and honey; in fact it looked grim. Nobody but a crazy hermit would want to settle down in such a spot.

“Think it over, Bill.” “I’ve thought it over.”

We sat there a while longer, not saying anything, just thinking long thoughts. Suddenly we were almost startled out of our boots by somebody

yodelling at us. A moment before I had been wishing to hear just anything, but when it came it was like unexpectedly encountering a clammy hand in

the dark.

We both jumped and Dad said, “What in the–?” I looked around. There was a large man coming toward us. In spite of his size he skipped through the rocks like a mountain goat, almost floating in the low gravity. As he got closer I knew I had seen him before; he was on the Court of Honor, a Mr. Schultz.

Dad waved to him and pretty soon he reached us. He stood half a head taller than Dad and would have made the pair of us, he was so big. His chest was as thick as my shoulders were broad and his belly was thicker than that. He had bushy, curly red hair and his beard spread out over his chest like a tangle of copper springs. “Greetings, citizens,” he boomed at us, “my name is Johann Schultz.”

Dad introduced us and he shook hands and I almost lost mine in his. He fixed his eyes on me and said, “I’ve seen you before, Bill.” I said I guessed he had, at Scout meetings. He nodded and added, “A patrol leader, no?”

I admitted that I used to be. He said, “And soon again,” as if the matter were all settled. He turned to Dad. “One of the kinder saw you going past on the road, so Mama sent me to find you and bring you back to the house for tea and some of her good coffee cake.”

Dad said that was very kind but that we didn’t want to impose. Mr. Schultz didn’t seem to hear him. Dad explained what we were there for and showed him the map and pointed out the cairn. Mr. Schultz nodded four or five times and said, “So we are to be neighbors. Good, good!” He added to Dad “My neighbors call me John, or sometimes ‘Johnny’.” Dad said his name was George and from then on they were old friends.

Mr. Schultz stood by the cairn and sighted off to the west and then north to the mountains. Then he scrambled up on a big boulder where he could see better and looked again. We went up after him.

He pointed to a rise west of us. “You put your house so, not too far from the road, but not on it. And first you work this piece in here and next season you work back further toward the hills.” He looked at me and added. “No?”

I said I guessed so. He said, “It is good land, Bill. You will make a fine farm.” He reached down and picked up a piece of rock and rubbed it between his fingers. “Good land,” he repeated.

He laid it down carefully, straightened up, and said, “Mama will be waiting for us.”

Mama was waiting for us, all right, and her idea of a piece of coffee cake was roughly what they used to welcome back the Prodigal Son. But before we got into the house we had to stop and admire the Tree.

It was a real tree, an apple tree, growing in a fine bluegrass lawn out in front of his house. Furthermore it was bearing fruit on two of its limbs. I stopped and stared at it.

“A beauty, eh, Bill?” Mr. Schultz said, and I agreed. “Yes,” he went on, “it’s the most beautiful tree on Ganymede–you know why? Because it’s the

only tree on Ganymede.” He laughed uproariously and dug me in the ribs as if he had said something funny. My ribs were sore for a week.

He explained to Dad all the things he had had to do to persuade it to grow and how deep down he had had to go to prepare for it and how he had had to channel out to drain it. Dad asked why it was bearing only on one side. “Next year we pollenate the other side,” he answered, “and then we have Stark’s Delicious. And Rome Beauties. This year, Rhode Island Greenings and Winesaps.” He reached up and picked one. “A Winesap for you, Bill.”

I said thanks and bit into it. I don’t know when I’ve tasted anything so good.

We went inside and met Mama Schultz and four or five other Schultzes of assorted sizes, from a baby crawling around in the sand on the floor up to a girl as old as I was and nearly as big. Her name was Gretchen and her hair was red like her father’s, only it was straight and she wore it in long braids. The boys were mostly blond, including the ones I met later.

The house was mainly a big living room, with a big table down the middle of it. It was a solid slab of rock, maybe four feet wide and twelve or thirteen feet long, supported by three rock pillars. A good thing it was rock, the way Mama Schultz loaded it down.

There were rock slab benches down the long sides and two real chairs, one at each end, made out of oil drums and padded with stuffed leather cushions.

Mama Schultz wiped her face and hands on her apron and shook hands and insisted that Dad sit down in her chair; she wouldn’t be sitting down

much, she explained. Then she turned back to her cooking while Gretchen poured tea for us.

The end of the room was the kitchen and was centered around a big stone fireplace. It had all the earmarks of being a practical fireplace–and it was, as I found out later, though of course nothing had ever been burned in it. It was really just a ventilation hole. But Papa Schultz had wanted a fireplace so he had a fireplace. Mama Schultz’s oven was set in the side of it.

It was faced with what appeared to be Dutch tile, though I couldn’t believe it. I mean, who is going to import anything as useless as Ornamental tile all the way from Earth? Papa Schultz saw me looking at them and said, “My little girl Kathy paints good, huh?” One of the medium-sized girls blushed and giggled and left the room.

I had the apple down to a very skinny core and was wondering what to do with it in that spotless room when Papa Schultz stuck out his hand. “Give it to me, Bill.”

I did. He took out his knife and very gently separated out the seeds. One of the kids left the room and fetched him a tiny paper envelope in which he placed the seeds and then sealed it. He handed it to me. “There, Bill,” he said. “I have only one apple tree, but you have eight!”

I was sort of surprised, but I thanked him. He went on, “That place just this side of where you will build your house–if you will fill that gully from the bottom, layer by layer, building your soil as you go, with only a very little ‘pay dirt’ you will have a place that will support a whole row of trees. When your seedlings are big, we’ll bud from my tree.”

I put them very carefully in my pouch.

Some of the boys drifted in and washed up and soon we were all sitting around the table and digging into fried chicken and mashed potatoes and tomato preserves and things. Mama Schultz sat beside me and kept pressing food on me and insisting that I wasn’t eating enough to keep body and soul together which wasn’t true.

Afterwards I got acquainted with the kids while George and Papa Schultz talked. Four of the boys I knew; they were Scouts. The fifth boy, Johann Junior –they called him “Yo”–was older than I, almost twenty, and worked in town for the chief engineer. The others were Hugo and Peter, both Cubs, then Sam, and then Vic, who was an Explorer Scout, same as I was. The girls were the baby, Kathy and Anna, who seemed to be twins but weren’t, and Gretchen. They all talked at once.

Presently Dad called me over. “Bill, you know we don’t rate a chance at a rock crusher for several months.” “Yes,” I said, somewhat mystified.

“What are your plans in the meantime?”

“Uh, well, I don’t know exactly. Study up on what I’ll have to do.”

“Mmrn … Mr. Schultz has very kindly offered to take you on as a farm hand in the meantime. What do you think of the idea?”

8. Land of My Own

Papa Schultz needed a field hand about as much as I need four ears, but that didn’t keep me from moving in. In that family everybody worked but the baby and you could count on it that she would be washing dishes as soon as she was up off the floor. Everybody worked all the time and seemed to enjoy it. When the kids weren’t working they were doing lessons and the boys were punished when they weren’t up on their lessons by being required to stay in from the fields.

Mama would listen to them recite while she cooked. Sometimes she listened to lessons in things I’m pretty sure she never had studied herself, but Papa Schultz checked up on them, too, so it didn’t matter.

Me, I learned about pigs. And cows. And chickens. And how you breed pay dirt to make more pay dirt. “Pay dirt” is the stuff that is actually imported from Earth, concentrated soil cultures with the bacteria and so forth in it you have to have to get a field alive.

There was an awful lot to learn. Take cows, now-half the people you meet can’t tell their left hands from their right so who would think that a cow

would care about such things? But they do, as I found out when I tried to milk one from the left.

Everything was stoop labor around the place, as primitive as a Chinese farm. The standard means of transportation was a wheelbarrow. I learned not to sneer at a wheelbarrow after I priced one at the Exchange.

The total lack of power machinery wasn’t through lack of power; the antenna on the farm house roof could pick up as much power as necessary–but there wasn’t any machinery. The only power machinery in the colony belonged to the whole colony and was the sort of thing the colony absolutely couldn’t get along without, like rock chewers and the equipment for the heat trap and the power plant itself.

George explained it this way: every load that was sent up from Earth was a compromise between people and cargo. The colonists were always yapping for more machinery and fewer immigrants; the Colonial Commission always insisted on sending as many people as possible and holding the imports down to a minimum.

“The Commission is right, of course,” he went on. “If we have people, we’ll get machinery–we’ll make it ourselves. By the time you have a family of your own, Bill, immigrants will arrive here bare-handed, no cargo at all, and we’ll be able to outfit a man with everything from plastic dishes for his cupboard to power cultivators for his fields.”

I said, “If they wait until I have a family, they’ll have a long wait. I figure a bachelor travels faster and further.”

Dad just grinned, as if he knew something I didn’t know and wouldn’t tell. I had walked into town to have dinner with him and Molly and the kid. I hadn’t seen much of them since I went to work for Papa Schultz. Molly was teaching school, Peggy couldn’t come out to the farm, of course, and Dad was very busy and very excited over a strike of aluminum oxides twenty miles east of town. He was in the project up to his ears and talking about having sheet aluminum on sale in another G-year.

As a matter or fact, cultivating a farm by stoop labor wasn’t too bad, not on Ganymede. Low gravity was a big help; you didn’t wear yourself out just dragging your own carcass around. I grossed a hundred and forty-two mass pounds, what with the way Mama Schultz stuffed me; that meant I weighed less than fifty pounds, field boots and all. A wheelbarrow was similarly light when loaded.

But the real advantage that made the work easy was something you might not guess. No weeds.

No weeds at all; we had very carefully not imported any. Once the land was built, making a crop was darn near a case of poking a seed into the ground and then stepping back quick before the stalk shot up and hit you in the eye.

Not that we didn’t work. There is plenty of work around a farm even with no weeds to worry about. And a light wheelbarrow load simply meant that we piled three times as much on. But we had fun, too; I never met a family that laughed so much.

I brought my squeeze box out from town and used to play it after supper. We would all sing, with Papa Schultz booming away on his own and leaving it up to the rest of us to find the key he was singing in. We had fun.

It turned out that Gretchen was an awful tease when she got over being shy. But I could always get her goat by pretending that her head was on fire and either warming my hands over her hair or threatening to pour water on her before she burned the place down.

The day finally came when it was my turn to have the colony’s crushers work on my land and I was almost sorry to see it arrive; I had had such a nice time at the Schultz’s. But by then I could caponize a rooster or plant a row of corn; I still had a lot to learn, but there wasn’t any good reason why I shouldn’t start making my own farm.

Dad and I had had to prepare our farm for the crusher by dynamiting the biggest boulders. A crusher will choke on anything much bigger than a barrel but it will handle up to that size very nicely. Dynamite is cheap, thank goodness, and we used plenty of it. The raw material is nitroglycerine which we didn’t have to import from Earth, the glycerine being refined from animal fats and the nitric acid being a synthetic byproduct of the atmosphere project.

Dad spent two weekends with me, making medium-sized ones out of big ones, then decided it was safe to trust me to set powder by myself and I finished the job. There was a little stream of melted snow water coming down from the hills at the far side of our property; we blew out a new bed for it to lead it close to the place where the house would go.

We left it dry for the time being, with a natural rock dam to blow up later. One fair-sized hill we moved entirely and blew it into a gully on the lake side of the land. Big charges that took and I almost got fitted for a halo through underestimating how far some of the stuff would throw.

It was easy work and lots of fun. I had a vibro-drill, borrowed from the engineer’s office; you could sink a charge hole with it twenty feet into rock as easily as you could sink a hot knife into butter. Then drop in the powder, fill the rest of the hole with rock dust, light the fuse, and run like the dickens!

But the most fun was blowing up that rock that looked like a grinning skull. I fixed it properly, it and its leer!

We had a visitor while we were dynamiting the land. Dad and I had just knocked off for lunch one day when Saunders, “The One-Man Lobby”–that’s George’s name for him–showed up. We invited him to share what we had; he had brought nothing but his appetite.

He complained about this and that. Dad tried to change the subject by asking him how he was getting along with his blasting. Saunders said it was slow work. Dad said, “You have the crusher the day after us, don’t you?”

Saunders admitted it and said he wanted to borrow some powder; he was running short of time. Dad let him have it, though it meant another trip out from town, after work, for him the next day. Saunders went on, “I’ve been looking this situation over, Mr. Lermer. We’re tackling it all wrong.”

George said, “So?”

Saunders said, “Yes, indeedy! Now in the first place this blasting ought not to be done by the homesteader; it should be done by trained crews, sent out by the government. It’s really part of the contract anyway; we’re supposed to receive processed land.”

Dad said mildly that, while that might be a nice idea, he didn’t know where they would find enough trained crews to do the work for fifteen hundred new farms.

“Let the government hire them!” Mr. Saunders answered. “Bring them in from Earth for that purpose. Now, see here, Mr. Lermer, you are in the chief engineer’s office. You ought to put in a word for the rest of us.”

George picked up the vibro and got ready to set a charge. Presently he answered, “I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong party. I’m in an entirely different department.”

I guess Mr. Saunders saw he was off on the wrong tack for he went on, “In the second place, I have been looking into the matter of the soil, or what they call ‘soil’–again they are off on the wrong foot.” He kicked a rock. “This stuff isn’t good for anything. You can’t grow anything in stuff like that.”

“Naturally not,” agreed Dad. “You have to make soil first.”

“That’s just what I’m getting at,” Saunders went on. “You have to have soil–good, black, rich soil. So they tell us to breed it, a square foot at a time. Plough garbage into it, raise earthworms–I don’t know how many tomfool stunts.”

“Do you know of a better way?”

“You bet you I do! That’s just what I’m getting at. Here we are, piddling along, doing things the way a bunch of bureaucrats who never made a crop tell us to, all for a few inches of second-rate soil–when there are millions of cubic feet of the richest sort of black soil going begging.”

Dad looked up sharply. “Where?”

“In the Mississippi Delta, that’s where! Black soil goes down there for hundreds of feet.”

We both looked at him, but he was quite serious about it. “Now here’s what you’ve got to have–Level the ground off, yes. But after that spread real Earth soil over the rock to a depth of at least two feet; then it will be worth while to farm. As it is, we are just wasting our time.”

Dad waited a bit before answering, “Have you figured out what this would cost?”

Mr. Saunders brushed that aside. “That’s not the point; the point is, that’s what we’ve got to have. The government wants us to settle here, doesn’t it? Well, then, if we all stick together and insist on it, we’ll get it.” He jerked his chin triumphantly.

George started to say something, then stopped. He patted rock dust in on top of his charge, then straightened up and wiped the sweat off his beard. “Listen, citizen,” he said, “can’t you see that we are busy? I’m about to light this fuse; I suggest that you back away out of danger.”

“Huh?” said Saunders. “How big a charge is it? How far?”

If he had kept his eyes open, he would have seen how big a charge it was and known how far to give back. Dad said, “Oh, say a mile and a half–or even two miles. And keep backing.”

Saunders looked at him, snorted disgustedly, and stalked away. We backed out of range and let her blow.

While we were setting the next charge I could see George’s lips moving. After a while he said, “Figuring gumbo mud conservatively at a hundred pounds per cubic foot it would take one full load of the Mayflower to give Mr. Saunders alone the kind of a farm he would like to have handed to him. At that rate it would take just an even thousand G-years–five hundred Earth years–for the Mayflower to truck in top-soil for farms for our entire party.”

“You forgot the Covered Wagon,” I said brightly.

George grinned. “Oh, yes! When the Covered Wagon is commissioned and in service we could cut it down to two hundred and fifty years–provided no new immigrants came in and there was a ban on having babies!” He frowned and added, “Bill, why is it that some apparently-grown men never learn to do simple arithmetic?” I didn’t know the answer, so he said, “Come on, Bill, let’s get on with our blasting. I’m afraid we’ll just have to piddle along in our inefficient way, even if it doesn’t suit our friend Saunders.”

The morning the crusher was scheduled to show up I was waiting for it at the end of the road. It came breezing down the road at twenty miles an hour, filling it from side to side. When it came to the wall of lava, it stopped. I waved to the operator; he waved back, then the machine grunted a couple of times, inched forward, and took a bite out of the lava.

Lava didn’t bother it; it treated it like peanut brittle. A vibro-cutter built into its under carriage would slice under the flow like a housewife separating biscuit from a pan, the big steel spade on the front of the thing would pry under and crack the bite off, and the conveyor would carry the chunk up into the jaws.

The driver had a choice of dropping the chewed up material under the rear rollers or throwing it off to the side. Just now he was throwing it away, leaving the clean slice made by the vibro-cutter as a road bed –a good road, a little dusty but a few rains would fix that.

It was terrifically noisy but the driver didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to enjoy it; there was a good breeze taking the dust away from him and he had his anti-silicosis mask pushed up on his forehead, showing the grin on his face.

By noon he was down to our place and had turned in. We had a bite to eat together, then he started in levelling a farm for me–five acres, the rest would have to wait. At that I was lucky for I was to get land to work months ahead of the original schedule.

The second trip of the Mayflower had brought in three more crushers and very few immigrants, just enough to replace those who had given up and gone back out of our party, that being the compromise the town council had worked out with the Colonial Commission.

The racket was still worse when the crusher bit into hard rock, instead of lava, but it was music to me and I didn’t get tired of watching. Every bite was a piece of land to me. At suppertime the second-shift driver showed up with Dad. We watched together for a while, then Dad went back to town. I stayed. About midnight I went over into a stretch that was not to be processed now, found a big rock to keep the Sun out of my eyes and lay down for a quick nap.

Then the relief driver was shaking me and saying, “Wake up, kid–you got a farm.”

I stood up and rubbed my eyes and looked around. Five acres, with just enough contour for drainage and a low hummock in the middle where the house would sit. I had a farm.

The next logical thing to do would have been to get the house up, but, under the schedule, I rated the use of a cud-chewer for the following week. A cud-chewer is a baby rock crusher. It uses a power pack instead of an antenna, it is almost fool proof and anybody can run one, and it finishes up what the crusher starts. It is small and low-powered compared with a crusher. The colony had about forty of them.

The crusher left loose rubble several feet deep in pieces as big as my fist. The cud-chewer had a fork spade on the front of it, several sizes of spade forks, in fact. The coarse fork went down into the loose rocks about eighteen inches and picked up the big ones. These drifted back into the hopper as the machine moved forward and were busted into stuff about the size of walnuts.

When you had been over the ground once with the coarse fork, you unshipped it and put on the medium fork and reset the chewing rollers. This time you went down only ten inches and the result was gravel. Then you did it again for medium-fine and then fine and when you were done the upper six inches or so was rock flour, fine as the best loam–still dead, but ready to be bred into life.

Round and round and round, moving forward an inch at a time. To get real use out of your time allotment the cud-chewer had to be moving twenty- four hours a day until they took it away from you. I stayed at it all through the first day, eating my lunch in the saddle. Dad spelled me after supper and Hank came out from town and we alternated through the night-light phase it was, actually, it being Monday night.

Papa Schultz found me asleep with my head on the controls late next afternoon and sent me back to his house to get some real sleep. Thereafter one of the Schultzes always showed up when I had been at it alone for four or five hours. Without the Schultzes I don’t know how Dad and I would have gotten through the dark phase of that week.

But they did help and by the time I had to pass the cud-chewer along I had nearly three and a half acres ready to be seeded with pay dirt.

Winter was coming on and I had my heart set on getting my house up and living in it during the winter month, but to do so I really had to hump. I had to get some sort of a holding crop in or the spring thaw would wash my top soil away. The short Ganymede year is a good idea and I’m glad they run it that way; Earth’s winters are longer than necessary. But it keeps you on the jump.

Papa Schultz advised grass; the mutated grass would grow in sterile soil much like growing things in hydroponic solutions. The mat of rootlets would hold my soil even if the winter killed it and the roots would furnish something through which the infection could spread from the “pay dirt.”

Pay dirt is fundamentally just good black soil from Earth, crawling with bacteria and fungi and microscopic worms–everything you need but the big fishing worms; you have to add those. However, it wouldn’t do simply to ship Earth dirt to Ganymede by the car load. In any shovelful of loam there are hundreds of things, plant and animal, you need for growing soil–but there are hundreds of other things you don’t want. Tetanus germs. Plant disease viruses. Cut worms. Spores. Weed seeds. Most of them are too small to be seen with the naked eye and some of them can’t even be filtered out

So to make pay dirt the laboratory people back on Earth would make pure cultures of everything they wanted to keep in the way of bacteria, raise the little worms under laboratory conditions, do the same for fungi and everything else they wanted to save–and take the soil itself and kill it deader than Luna, irradiate it, bake it, test it for utter sterility.

Then they would take what they had saved in the way of life forms and put it back into the dead soil That was “pay dirt,” the original pay dirt. Once on Ganymede the original stuff would be cut six ways, encouraged to grow, then cut again. A hundred weight of pay dirt supplied to a ‘steader might contain a pound of Terra’s own soil.

Every possible effort was made to “limit the invasion,” as the ecologists say, to what was wanted. One thing that I may not have mentioned about the trip out was the fact that our clothes and our baggage were sterilized during the trip and that we ourselves were required to take a special scrub before we put our clothes back on. It was the only good bath I got the whole two months, but it left me smelling like a hospital.

The colony’s tractor trucks delivered the pay dirt I was entitled to in order to seed my farm; I left the Schultz place early that morning to meet them. There is difference of opinion as to the best way to plant pay dirt; some ‘steaders spread it all over and take a chance on it dying; some build up little pockets six or eight feet apart, checker board style … safe but slow. I was studying the matter, my mind not made up, when I saw something moving down the road.

It was a line of men, pushing wheelbarrows, six of them. They got closer and I could see that it was all the male Schultzes. I went out to meet them. Every one of those wheelbarrows was loaded with garbage and all for me!

Papa Schultz had been saving it as a surprise for me. I didn’t know what to say. Finally I blurted out, “Gee, Papa Schultz, I don’t know when I’ll be able to pay you back!”

He looked fierce and said, “Who is speaking of paying back when we have compost running out of our ears yet?” Then he had the boys dump their loads down on top of my pay dirt, took a fork and began mixing it as gently as Mama Schultz folding in beaten egg white.

He took charge and I didn’t have to worry about the best way to use it. In his opinion–and you can’t bet that I didn’t buck itl–what we had was good for about an acre and his method was to spread it through the soil. But he did not select one compact acre; he laid out strips, seven of them, a couple of hundred yards long each and stretching across my chewed soil thirty-five or forty feet apart. Each of us took a wheelbarrow–their six and my one–and distributed the mix along each line.

When that was done and cairns had been set to show where the strips ran, we raked the stuff into the rock dust five or six feet on each side of each line. Around noon Mama and Gretchen showed up, loaded down, and we stopped and had a picnic.

After lunch Yo had to go back to town but he had almost finished his strip. Papa had finished his and proceeded to help Hugo and Peter who were

too small to swing a good rake. I dug in and finished mine soon enough to be able to finish what Yo had left.

Dad showed up at the end of the day, expecting to help me all evening–it was light phase and you could work as late as you could stand up under it-

– but there was nothing left to do. And he didn’t know how to thank them either.

I like to think that we would have gotten the farm made anyhow, without the Schultzes, and maybe we would have–but I’m sure not sure. Pioneers need good neighbors.

The following week I spent working artificial nitrates from the colony’s power pile into the spaces between the strips–not as good as pay dirt from Earth, but not as expensive, either.

Then I tackled sowing the grass, by hand, just like in the Bible, and then raking it gently in. That old pest Saunders showed up. He still did so every now and then, but never when Dad was around. I guess he was lonely. His family was still in town and he was camping out in a ten-foot rock shed he had built. He wasn’t really making a farm, not properly; I couldn’t figure out what he was up to. It didn’t make sense.

I said, “Howdy,” and went on with my work.

He watched me, looking sour, and finally said, “You still bent on breaking your heart on this stuff, aren’t you, youngster?” I told him I hadn’t noticed any wear and tear on my pump, and anyhow, wasn’t he making a farm, too?

He snorted. “Not likely!” “Then what are you doing?”

“Buying my ticket, that’s what.”

“Huh?”

“The only thing you can sell around this place is improved land. I’m beating them at their own game, that’s what. I’ll get that land in shape to unload it on some other sucker and then me and mine are heading straight back for that ever-lovin’ Earth. And that’s just what you’ll be doing if you aren’t an utter fool. You’ll never make a farm here. It can’t be done.”

I was getting very tired of him but I’m short on the sort of point-blank guts it takes to be flatly rude. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Look at Mr. Schultz– he’s got a good farm.”

Saunders snorted again. “You mean ‘Johnny Apple-seed?” “I mean Mr. Johann Schultz.”

“Sure, sure–Johnny Appleseed. That’s what everybody calls him in town. He’s nuts. You know what he did? He gave me a handful of apple seeds and acted like he had handed me the riches of Solomon.”

I stopped raking. “Well, hadn’t he?”

Saunders spat on the ground between us. “He’s a clown.”

I lifted up the head of the rake. I said, “Mr. Saunders, you are standing on my land, my property. I’ll give you just two shakes to get off it and never set foot on it again!”

He backed away and said, “Hey! You stop that! Watch what you are doing with that rake!” I said, “Git!”

He got.

The house was a problem. Ganymede has little quakes all the time. It has to do with “isostasy” which doesn’t mean a thing but “equal-pressure”

when you get right down to it, but it’s the science of how the mountains balance the seas and the gravitation of a planet all comes out even.

It has to do with tidal strains, too, which is odd, since Ganymede doesn’t have any tides; the Sun is too far away to matter and Ganymede always keeps the same face toward Jupiter. Oh, you can detect a little tide on Laguna Serenidad when Europa is closest to Ganymede and even a trifle from Callisto and lo, but what I mean is it doesn’t have tides—not like the Pacific Ocean.

What it does have is a frozen tidal strain. The way Mr. Hooker, the chief meteorologist, explains it is that Ganymede was closer to Jupiter when it cooled off and lost its rotation, so that there is a tidal bulge in the planet itself–sort of a fossil tidal bulge. The Moon has one, you know.

Then we came along and melted off the ice cap and gave Ganymede an atmosphere. That rearranged the pressures everywhere and the isostatic balance is readjusting. Result: little quakes all the time.

I’m a California boy; I wanted a quakeproof house. Schultzes had a quakeproof house and it seemed like a good idea, even though there had never been a quake heavy enough to knock a man down, much less knock a house down. On the other hand most of the colonists didn’t bother; it is hard to make a rock house really quakeproof.

Worse than that, it’s expensive. The basic list of equipment that a ‘steader is promised in his emigration contract reads all right, a hoe, a spade, a shovel, a wheelbarrow, a hand cultivator, a bucket, and so forth down the list–but when you start to farming you find that is only the beginning and you’ve got to go to the Exchange and buy a lot of other stuff. I was already in debt a proved acre and a half, nearly, before the house ever went up.

As usual we compromised. One room had to be quake proof because it had to be air tight–Peggy’s room. She was getting better all the time, but she still couldn’t take low pressure for any length of time. If the family was going to move out to the farm, her bedroom had to be sealed, it had to have an air lock on it, and we had to have an impeller. All that runs into money.

Before I was through I had to pledge two more acres. Dad tried to sign for it but they told him bluntly that while a ‘steader’s credit was good, his wasn’t. That settled the matter. We planned on one reinforced room and hoped to build on to it later. In the mean time the house would be a living room, ten by twelve, where I would sleep, a separate bedroom too small to swing a cat for George and Molly, and Peggy’s room. All but Peggy’s room would be dry wall rock with a patent roof.

Pretty small, eh? Well, what’s wrong with that? Abe Lincoln started with less.

I started in cutting the stone as soon as the seed was in. A vibro-saw is like a vibro-drill, except that it cuts a hair line instead of drilling a hole. When the power is on you have to be durned careful not to get your fingers or anything into the field, but it makes easy work of stone cutting. By the contract you got the use of one for forty-eight hours free and another forty-eight hours, if you wanted it, at a reduced rate.

I got my work lined up and managed to squeeze it into the two free days. I didn’t want to run up any more debt, because there was another thing I was hankering for, come not later than the second spring away–flicker flood lights. Papa Schultz had them for his fields and they just about doubled his crops. Earth plants aren’t used to three and half days of darkness, but, if you can tickle them during the dark phase with flicker lights, the old photosynthesis really gets in and humps itself.

But that would have to wait.

The patrol got the house up–the patrol I was in, I mean, the Auslanders. It was a surprise to me and yet it wasn’t, because everybody has a house raising; you can’t do it alone. I had already taken part in six myself–not just big-heartedness, don’t get me wrong. I had to learn how it was done.

But the patrol showed up before I had even passed the word around that I was ready to hold a house raising. They came swinging down our road; Sergei marched them up to where the house was to be, halted them, and said to me, “Bill, are your Scout dues paid up?” He sounded fierce. I said, “You know they are.”

“Then you can help. But don’t get in our way.” Suddenly he grinned and I knew I had been framed. He turned to the patrol and shouted, “House raising drill! Fall out and fall to.”

Suddenly it looked like one of those TV comedies where everything has been speeded up. I never saw anybody work the way they did. Let me tell you it doesn’t take Scout uniforms to make Scouts. None of us ever had uniforms; we couldn’t afford special clothes just for Scouting.

Besides the Auslanders there was Vic Schultz and Hank Jones, both from the Hard Rock patrol and Doug Okajima, who wasn’t even of our troop but still with the Baden-Powell. It did my heart good. I hadn’t seen much of the fellows lately; during light phase I always worked too late to get in to meetings; during dark phase a cold nine miles into town after supper is something to think twice about.

I felt sheepish to realize that while I might have forgotten them, they hadn’t forgotten me, and I resolved to get to meetings, no matter how tired I was.

And take the tests for those two merit badges, too–the very first chance I got.

That reminded me of another item of unfinished business, too–Noisy Edwards. But you can’t take a day off just to hunt somebody up and poke him in the snoot, not when you are making a farm. Besides it wouldn’t hurt anything for me to put on another ten pounds; I didn’t want it to be a repetition of the last time.

Dad showed up almost immediately with two men from his office and he took charge of bracing and sealing Peggy’s room. The fact that he showed up at all let me know that he was in on it–which he admitted. It had been Sergei’s idea and that was why Dad had put me off when I said it was about time to invite the neighbors in.

I got Dad aside. “Look, George,” I said, “how in tarnation are we going to feed ’em?” “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

“But I do worry about it!” Everybody knows it’s the obligation of the ‘steader whose house is being raised to provide the victuals and I had been taken by surprise.

“I said not to,” he repeated. And presently I knew why; Molly showed up with Mama Schultz, Gretchen, Sergei’s sister Marushka, and two girls who were friends of Peggy–and what they were carrying they couldn’t have carried on Earth. It was a number one picnic and Sergei had trouble getting them back to work after lunch.

Theoretically, Molly had done the cooking over at the Schultz’s but I know Mama Schultz–anyhow, let’s face it, Molly wasn’t much of a cook.

Molly had a note for me from Peggy. It read: “Dearest Billy, Please come into town tonight and tell me all about it. Pretty please!” I told Molly I would. By eighteen o’clock that afternoon the roof was on and we had a house. The door wasn’t hung; it was still down at the ‘Change. And the power unit

wasn’t in and might not be for a week. But we had a house that would keep off the rain, and a pint-sized cow barn as well, even if I didn’t own a cow.

9. Why Did We Come?

According to my diary we moved into the house on the first day of spring.

Gretchen came over and helped me get ready for them. I suggested that we ask Marushka as well, since there would be lots of work to do. Gretchen said, “Suit yourself!” and seemed annoyed, so I didn’t. Women are funny. Anyhow Gretchen is a right good worker.

I had been sleeping in the house ever since the raising and even before the technicians from the engineer’s office had come and installed the antenna on the roof and rigged the lights and heat–but that was done before winter was started and I passed a comfortable month, fixing up the inside of the place and getting in a crop of ice for the summer. I stored the ice, several tons of it, in the gully at the side of the house, where I meant to plant apple trees just as soon as I could get fixed for it. The ice would keep there until I could build a proper cold cellar.

The first few months after the folks moved out are the happiest I can remember. We were together again and it was good. Dad still spent most of each dark phase in town, working on a part time basis, but that was quite as much because he was interested in the manufacturing project as it was to help pay off our debts. During light phase we worked almost around the clock, side by side or at least within earshot.

Molly seemed to like being a housewife. I taught her how to cook and she caught on real fast. Ganymede cooking is an art. Most things have to be cooked under pressure, even baked things, for water boils at just a little over a hundred and forty degrees. You can stir boiling water with your finger if you don’t leave it in too long. Then Molly started learning from Mama Schultz but I didn’t mind that; Mama Schultz was an artist. Molly got to be a really good cook.

Peg had to live in her room, of course, but we had hopes that she would be out soon. We had the pressure down to eight pounds, half oxygen and half nitrogen, and we usually all ate in her room. I still hated the thick stuff but it was worth while putting up with it so that the family could eat together. After a while I got so that I could change pressure without even an earache.

Peggy could come outside, too. We had brought her from town in a bubble stretcher–another thing bought on credit!–and Dad had fitted it with the gas apparatus from an old space suit he had salvaged from the Project Jove people. Peggy could get into the stretcher and shut herself in and we could bleed off the pressure in her room and take her outside where she could get some sunshine and look at the mountains and the lake and watch Dad and me work in the fields. The clear plastic of the bubble did not stop ultraviolet and it was good for her.

She was a skinny little runt and it was no trouble to move her around, even in the stretcher. Light phase, she spent a lot of time outdoors.

We had started with a broody hen and fifteen fertile eggs, and a pair of rabbits. Pretty soon we had meat of our own. We always let Peggy think that the fryers we ate came from the Schultzes and I don’t think she ever caught on. At first I used to go to the Schultz farm every day for fresh milk for Peggy, but I got a chance, midsummer, to get a fresh two-year-old cow on tick at a reasonable price. Peggy named her Mabel and was much irked that she couldn’t get at her to pet her.

We were on the move all the time. I still hadn’t managed to take my merit badge tests and I hadn’t done much better about getting in to Scout meetings. There was just too much to do. Building a pond, for example–Laguna Serenidad was being infected with plankton and algae but there weren’t fish in it yet and it would be a long time, even after the fish were stocked, before fishing would be allowed. So we did fish-pond gardening, Chinese style, after I got the pond built.

And there were always crops to work on. My cover grass had taken hold all right and shortly after we moved in the soil seemed ready to take angle worms. Dad was about to send a sample into town for analysis when Papa Schultz stopped by. Hearing what we were about he took up a handful of the worked soil, crumbled it, smelled it, tasted it, and told me to go ahead and plant my worms. I did and they did all right; we encountered them from time to time in working the fields thereafter.

You could see the stripes on the fields which had been planted with pay dirt by the way the grass came up. You could see that the infection was spreading, too, but not much. I had a lot of hard work ahead before the stripes would meet and blend together and then we could think about renting a cud-chewer and finishing off the other acre and a half, using our own field loam and our own compost heap to infect the new soil. After that we could see about crushing some more acres, but that was a long way away.

We put in carrots and lettuce and beets and cabbage and brussels sprouts and potatoes and broccoli. We planted corn between the rows. I would like to have put in an acre of wheat but it didn’t make sense when we had so little land. There was one special little patch close to the house where we put in tomatoes and Hubbard squash and some peas and beans.

Those were “bee” plants and Molly would come out and pollenate them by hand, a very tedious business. We hoped to have a hive of bees some day and the entomologists on the bionomics staff were practically busting their hearts trying to breed a strain of bees which would prosper out doors. You see, among other things, while our gravity was only a third Earth-normal, our air pressure was only a little better than a fifth Earth-normal and the bees resented it; it made flying hard work for them. Or maybe bees are just naturally conservative.

I guess I was happy, or too tired and too busy to be unhappy, right up to the following winter.

At first winter seemed like a good rest. Aside from getting the ice crop in and taking care of the cow and the rabbits and the chickens there wasn’t too much to do. I was tired out and cranky and didn’t know it; Molly, I think, was just quietly, patiently exhausted. She wasn’t used to farm life and she wasn’t handy at it, the way Mama Schultz was.

Besides that, she wanted inside plumbing and it just wasn’t in the cards for her to have it any time soon. I carried water for her, of course, usually having to crack ice in the stream to get it, but that didn’t cover everything, not with snow on the ground. Not that she complained.

Dad didn’t complain, either, but there were deep lines forming from his nose down to his mouth which his beard didn’t cover entirely. But it was mostly Peggy.

When we first moved her out to the farm she perked up a lot. We gradually reduced the pressure in her room and she kept insisting that she was fine and teasing for a chance to go out without the bubble stretcher. We even tried it once, on Dr. Archibald’s advice, and she didn’t have a nose bleed but she was willing to get back in after about ten minutes.

The fact was she wasn’t adjusting. It wasn’t just the pressure; something else was wrong. She didn’t belong here and she wouldn’t growhere. Have you ever had a plant that refused to be happy where you planted it? It was like that.

She belonged back on Earth.

I suppose we weren’t bad off, but there is a whale of a difference between being a rich farmer, like Papa Schultz, with heaps of cow manure in your barn yard and hams hanging in your cold cellar and every modern convenience you could want, even running water in your house, and being poor farmers, like us, scratching for a toe hold in new soil and in debt to the Commission. It told on us and that winter we had time to brood about it.

We were all gathered in Peggy’s room after lunch one Thursday. Dark phase had just started and Dad was due to go back into town; we always gave him a send off. Molly was darning and Peg and George were playing cribbage. I got out my squeeze box and started knocking out some tunes. I guess we all felt cheerful enough for a while. I don’t know how I happened to drift into it, but after a bit I found I was playing The Green Hills of Earth. I hadn’t played it in a long time.

I brayed through that fortissimo part about “Out ride the sons of Terra; Far drives the thundering jet–” and was thinking to myself that jets didn’t thunder any more. I was still thinking about it when I went on into the last chorus, the one you play very softly: “We pray for one last landing on the globe that gave us birth–“

I looked up and there were tears running down Molly’s cheeks.

I could have kicked myself. I put my accordion down with a squawk, not even finishing, and got up. Dad said, “What’s the matter, Bill?”, I muttered something about having to go take a look at Mabel.

I went out into the living room and put on my heavy clothes and actually did go outside, though I didn’t go near the barn. It had been snowing and it was already almost pitch dark, though the Sun hadn’t been down more than a couple of hours. The snow had stopped but there were clouds overhead and you couldn’t see Jupiter.

The clouds had broken due west and let the sunset glow come through a bit. After my eyes adjusted, by that tiny amount of light I could see around me–the mountains, snow to their bases, disappearing in the clouds, the lake, just a sheet of snow-covered ice, and the boulders beyond our fields, making weird shapes in the snow. It was a scene to match the way I felt; it looked like the place where you might be sent for having lived a long and sinful life.

I tried to figure out what I was doing in such a place.

The clouds in the west shifted a little and I saw a single bright green star, low down toward the horizon, just above where the Sun had set. It was Earth.

I don’t know how long I stood there. Presently somebody put a hand on my shoulder and I jumped. It was Dad, all bundled up for a nine-mile tramp through the dark and the snow.

“What’s the matter, Son?” he said.

I started to speak, but I was all choked up and couldn’t. Finally I managed to say, “Dad, why did we come here?” “Mmmm … you wanted to come. Remember?”

“I know,” I admitted.

“Still, the real reason, the basic reason, for coming here was to keep your grandchildren from starving. Earth is overcrowded, Bill.”

I looked back at Earth again. Finally I said, “Dad, I’ve made a discovery. There’s more to life than three square meals a day. Sure, we can make crops here– this land would grow hair on a billiard ball. But I don’t think you had better plan on any grandchildren here; it would be no favor to them. I know when I’ve made a mistake.”

“You’re wrong, Bill, Your kids will like this place, just the way Eskimos like where they live.” “I doubt it like the mischief.”

“Remember, the ancestors of Eskimos weren’t Eskimos; they were immigrants, too. If you send your kids back to Earth, for school, say, they’ll be homesick for Ganymede. They’ll hate Earth. They’ll weigh too much, they won’t like the air, they won’t like the climate, they won’t like the people.”

“Hmm–look, George, do you like it here? Are you glad we came?”

Dad was silent for a long time. At last he said, “I’m worried about Peggy, Bill.” “Yeah, I know. But how about yourself–and Molly?”

“I’m not worried about Molly. Women have their ups and downs. You’ll learn to expect that.” He shook himself and said, “I’m late. You go on inside

and have Molly fix you a cup of tea. Then take a look at the rabbits. I think the doe is about to drop again; we don’t want to lose the young ‘uns.” He

hunched his shoulders and set off down toward the road. I watched him out of sight and then went back inside.

1. Line Up

Then suddenly it was spring and everything was all right.

Even winter seemed like a good idea when it was gone. We had to have winter; the freezing and thawing was necessary to develop the ground, not to mention the fact that many crops won’t come to fruit without cold weather. Anyway, anybody can live through four weeks of bad weather.

Dad laid off his job when spring came and we pitched in together and got our fields planted. I rented a power barrow and worked across my strips to spread the living soil. Then there was the back-breaking job of preparing the gully for the apple trees. I had started the seeds soon after Papa Schultz had given them to me, forcing them indoors, first at the Schultz’s, then at our place. Six of them had germinated and now they were nearly two feet tall.

I wanted to try them outdoors. Maybe I would have to take them in again next winter, but it was worth a try.

Dad was interested in the venture, too, not just for fruit trees, but for lumber. Wood seems like an obsolete material, but try getting along without it. I think George had visions of the Big Rock Candy Mountains covered with tall straight pines … someday, someday.

So we went deep and built it to drain and built it wide and used a lot of our winter compost and some of our precious topsoil. There was room enough for twenty trees when we got through, where we planted our six little babies. Papa Schultz came over and pronounced a benediction over them.

Then he went inside to say hello to Peggy, almost filling her little room. George used to say that when Papa inhaled the pressure in the room dropped.

A bit later Papa and Dad were talking in the living room; Dad stopped me as I was passing through. “Bill,” he asked, “how would you like to have a window about here?” He indicated a blank wall.

I stared. “Huh? How would we keep the place warm?” “I mean a real window, with glass.”

“Oh.” I thought about it. I had never lived in a place with windows in my life; we had always been apartment dwellers. I had seen windows, of course, in country houses back Earthside, but there wasn’t a window on Ganymede and it hadn’t occurred to me that there ever would be.

“Papa Schultz plans to put one in his house. I thought it might be nice to sit inside and look out over the lake, light phase evenings,” Dad went on. “To make a home you need windows and fireplaces,” Papa said placidly. “Now that we glass make, I mean to have a view.”

Dad nodded. “For three hundred years the race had glazed windows. Then they shut themselves up in little air-conditioned boxes and stared at silly television pictures instead. One might as well be on Luna.”

It was a startling idea, but it seemed like a good one. I knew they were making glass in town. George says that glassmaking is one of the oldest manufacturing arts, if not the oldest, and certainly one of the simplest. But I had thought about it for bottles and dishes, not for window glass. They already had glass buckets on sale at the ‘Change, for about a tenth the cost of the imported article.

A view window–it was a nice idea. We could put one on the south and see the lake and another on the north and see the mountains. Why, I could even put in a skylight and lie on my bunk and see old Jupiter.

Stow it, William, I said to myself; you’ll be building a whole house out of glass next. After Papa Schultz left I spoke to George about it. “Look,” I said, “about this view window idea. It’s a good notion, especially for Peggy’s room, but the question is: can we afford it?”

“I think we can,” he answered.

“I mean can we afford it without your going back to work in town? You’ve been working yourself to death –and there’s no need to. The farm can support us now.”

He nodded. “I had been meaning to speak about that. I’ve about decided to give up the town work, Bill–except for a class I’ll teach on Saturdays.” “Do you have to do that?”

“Happens that I like to teach engineering, Bill And don’t worry about the price of the glass; well get it free–a spot of cumshaw coining to your old man for designing the glass works. “The kine who tread the grain,'” he quoted. “Now you and I had better get busy; there is a rain scheduled for fifteen o’clock.’

It was maybe three weeks later that the moons lined up. This is an event that almost never happens, Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa, all perfectly lined up and all on the same side of Jupiter. They come close to lining up every seven hundred and two days, but they don’t quite make it ordinarily. You see, their periods are all different, from less than two days for Io to more than two weeks for Callisto and the fractions don’t work out evenly. Besides that they have different eccentricities to their orbits and their orbits aren’t exactly in the same plane.

As you can see, a real line up hardly ever happens.

Besides that, this line up was a line up with the Sun, too; it would occur at Jupiter full phase. Mr. Hooker, the chief meteorologist, announced that it had been calculated that such a perfect line up would not occur again for more than two hundred thousand years. You can bet we were all waiting to see it. The Project Jove scientists were excited about it, too, and special arrangements had been made to observe it.

Having it occur at Jupiter full phase meant not only that a sixth heavenly body–the Sun–would be in the line up, but that we would be able to see it. The shadows of Ganymede and Callisto would be centered on Jupiter just as Io and Europa reached mid transit.

Full phase is at six o’clock Saturday morning; we all got up about four-thirty and were outside by five. George and I carried Peggy out in her bubble stretcher. We were just in time.

It was a fine, clear summer night, light as could be, with old Jupiter blazing overhead like a balloon on fire. Io had just barely kissed the eastern edge of Jupiter–“first contact” they call it. Europa was already a bit inside the eastern edge and I had to look sharp to see it.

When a moon is not in full phase it is no trouble to pick it out while it’s making its transit, but at full phase it tends to blend into the background. However, both Ioand Europa are just a hair brighter than Jupiter. Besides that, they break up the pattern of Jupiter’s bands and that lets you see them, too.

Well inside, but still in the eastern half–say about half way to Jupiter’s center point–were the shadows of Ganymede and Callisto. I could not have told them apart, if I hadn’t known that the one further east had to be Ganymede’s. They were just little round black dots; three thousand miles or so isn’t anything when it’s plastered against Jupiter’s eighty-nine thousand mile width.

Io looked a bit bigger than the shadows; Europa looked more than half again as big, about the way the Moon looks from Earth.

We felt a slight quake but it wasn’t even enough to make us nervous; we were used to quakes. Besides that, about then Io”kissed” Europa. From then on, throughout the rest of the show, Io gradually slid underneath, or behind, Europa.

They crawled across the face of Jupiter; the moons fairly fast, the shadows in a slow creep. When we had been outside a little less than half an hour the two shadows kissed and started to merge. Io had slid halfway under Europa and looked like a big tumor on its side. They were almost halfway to center and the shadows were even closer.

Just before six o’clock Europa–you could no longer see Io; Europa covered it–as I was saying, Europa kissed the shadow, which by now was round, just one shadow.

Four or five minutes later the shadow had crawled up on top of Europa; they were all lined up–and I knew I was seeing the most extraordinary sight I would ever see in my life, Sun, Jupiter, and the four biggest moons all perfectly lined up.

I let out a deep breath: I don’t know how long I had been holding it. “Gee whiz!” was all I could think of to say.

“I agree in general with your sentiments, Bill,” Dad answered. “Molly, hadn’t we better get Peggy inside? I’m afraid she is getting cold.”

“Yes,” agreed Molly. “I know I am, for one.”

“I’m going down to the lake now,” I said. The biggest tide of record was expected, of course. While the lake was too small to show much tide, I had made a mark the day before and I hoped to be able to measure it.

“Don’t get lost in the dark,” Dad called out. I didn’t answer him. A silly remark doesn’t require an answer. I had gotten past the road and maybe a quarter of a mile beyond when it hit.

It knocked me flat on my face, the heaviest shake I had ever felt in my life. I’ve felt heavy quakes in California; they weren’t a patch on this one. I lay face down for a long moment, digging into the rock with my finger nails and trying to get it to hold still.

The seasick roll kept up and kept up and kept up, and with it the noise–a deep bass rumble, deeper than thunder and more terrifying.

A rock rolled up against me and nipped my side. I got to my feet and managed to stay there. The ground was still swaying and the rumble kept on. I headed for the house, running–like dancing over shifting ice. I fell down twice and got up again.

The front end of the house was all caved in. The roof slanted down at a crazy angle. “George!” I yelled. “Molly! Where are you?”

George heard me and straightened up. He was on the other side of the house and now I saw him over the collapsed roof. He didn’t say anything. I rushed around to where he stood. “Are you all right?” I demanded.

“Help me get Molly out–” he gasped.

I found out later that George had gone inside with Molly and Peggy, had helped get Peg out of the stretcher and back into her room, and then had gone outside, leaving Molly to get breakfast. The quake had hit while he was returning from the barn. But we didn’t have time then to talk it over; we dug–moving slabs with our bare hands that had taken four Scouts, working together, to lay. George kept crying, “Molly! Molly! Where are you?”

She was lying on the floor beside the stone work bench that was penned in by the roof. We heaved it off her; George scrambled over the rubble and reached her. “Molly! Molly darling!”

She opened her eyes. “George!” “Are you all right?”

“What happened?”

“Quake. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

She sat up, made a face as if something hurt her, and said, “I think I– George! Where’s Peggy? Get Peggy!”

Peggy’s room was still upright; the reinforcements had held while the rest of the house had gone down around it. George insisted on moving Molly out into the open first, then we tackled the slabs that kept us from getting at the air lock to Peggy’s room.

The outer door of the air lock was burst out of its gaskets and stood open, the wrong way. It was black inside the lock; Jupiter light didn’t reach inside. I couldn’t see what I was doing but when I pushed on the inner door it wouldn’t give. “Can’t budge it,” I told Dad. “Get a light.”

“Probably still held by air pressure. Call out to Peggy to get in the stretcher and we’ll bleed it.” “I need a light,” I repeated.

“I haven’t got a light.”

“Didn’t you have one with you?” I had had one; we always carried torches, outdoors in dark phase, but I had dropped mine when the quake hit. I didn’t know where it was.

Dad thought about it, then climbed over the slabs. He was back in a moment. “I found it between here and the barn. I must have dropped it.” He shined it on the inner door and we looked over the situation.

“It looks bad,” Dad said softly. “Explosive decompression.” There was a gap you could poke your fingers through between the top of the door and the frame; the door wasn’t pressure held, it was jammed.

Dad called out, “Peggy! Oh, Peggy, darling–can you hear me?”

No answer. “Take the light, Bill–and stand aside.” He reared back and then hit the door hard with his shoulder. It gave a bit but didn’t open. He hit it again and it flew open, spilling him on his hands and knees. He scrambled up as I shined the light in past him.

Peggy lay half in and half out of bed, as if she had been trying to get up when she passed out. Her head hung down and a trickle of blood was dripping from her mouth on to the floor.

Molly had come in right behind us; she and Dad got Peggy into the stretcher and Dad brought the pressure up. She was alive; she gasped and choked and sprayed blood over us while we were trying to help her. Then she cried. She seemed to quiet down and go to sleep –or maybe fainted again–after we got her into the bubble.

Molly was crying but not making any fuss about it. Dad straightened up, wiped his face and said, “Grab on, Bill. We’ve got to get her into town.”

I said, “Yes,” and picked up one end. With Molly holding the light and us carrying, we picked our way over the heap of rock that used to be our house and got out into the open. We put the stretcher down for a moment and I looked around.

I glanced up at Jupiter; the shadows were still on his face and Io and Europa had not yet reached the western edge. The whole thing had taken less than an hour. But that wasn’t what held my attention; the sky looked funny.

The stars were too bright and there were too many of them. “George,” I said, “what’s happened to the sky?” “No time now–” he started to say. Then he stopped and said very slowly, “Great Scott!”

“What?” asked Molly. “What’s the matter?”

“Back to the house, all of you! We’ve got to dig out all the clothes we can get at. And blanketsl” “What? Why?”

“The heat trap! The heat trap is gone–the quake must have gotten the power house.”

So we dug again, until we found what we had to have. It didn’t take long; we knew where things had to be. It was just a case of getting the rocks off. The blankets were for the stretcher; Dad wrapped them around like a cocoon and tied them in place. “Okay, Bill,” he said. “Quick march, nowl”

It was then that I heard Mabel bawl. I stopped and looked at Dad. He stopped too, with an agony of indecision on his face. “Oh, damn!” he said, the first time I had ever heard him really swear. “We can’t just leave her to freeze; she’s a member of the family. Come, Bill.”

We put the stretcher down again and ran to the bam. It was a junk heap but we could tell by Mabel’s complaints where she was. We dragged the roof off her and she got to her feet. She didn’t seem to be hurt but I guess she had been knocked silly. She looked at us indignantly.

We had a time of it getting her over the slabs, with Dad pulling and me pushing. Dad handed the halter to Molly. “How about the chickens?” I asked, “And the rabbits?” Some of them had been crushed; the rest were loose around the place. I felt one–a rabbit –scurry between my feet

“No time!” snapped Dad. “We can’t take them; all we could do for them would be to cut their throats. Come!” We headed for the road.

Molly led the way, leading and dragging Mabel and carrying the light. We needed the light. The night, too bright and too clear a few minutes before, was now suddenly overcast. Shortly we couldn’t see Jupiter at all, and then you couldn’t count your fingers in front of your face.

The road was wet underfoot, not rain, but sudden dew; it was getting steadily colder.

Then it did rain, steadily and coldly. Presently it changed to wet snow. Molly dropped back. “George,” she wanted to know, “have we come as far as the turn off to the Schultz’s?”

“That’s no good,” he answered. “We’ve got to get the baby into the hospital.” That isn’t what I meant. Oughtn’t I to warn them?”

They’ll be all right. Their house is sound.”

“But the cold?”

“Oh.” He saw what she meant and so did I, when I thought about it. With the heat trap gone and the power house gone, every house in the colony was going to be like an ice box. What good is a power receiver on your roof with no power to receive? It was going to get colder and colder and colder ….

And then it would get colder again. And colder….

“Keep moving,” Dad said suddenly. “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”

But we didn’t figure it out, because we never found the turn off. The snow was driving into our faces by then and we must have walked on past it. It was a dry snow now, little sharp needles that burned when they hit.

Without saying anything about it, I had started counting paces when we left the walls of lava that marked the place where the new road led to our place and out to the new farms beyond. As near as I could make it we had come about five miles when Molly stopped. “What’s the matter?” yelled Dad.

“Dear,” she said, “I can’t find the road. I think I’ve lost it.”

I kicked the snow away underfoot. It was made ground, all right–soft. Dad took the torch and looked at his watch. “We must have come about six miles,” he announced.

“Five,” I corrected him. “Or five and a half at the outside,” I told him I had been counting.

He considered it. “We’ve come just about to that stretch where the road is flush with the field,” he said. “It can’t be more than a half mile or a mile to the cut through Kneiper’s Ridge. After that we can’t lose it. Bill, take the light and cast off to the right for a hundred paces, then back to the left. If that doesn’t do it, well go further. And for heaven’s sakes retrace your steps–it’s the only way you’ll find us in this storm.”

I took the light and set out. To the right was no good, though I went a hundred and fifty paces instead of a hundred, I got back to them, and reported, and started out again. Dad just grunted; he was busy with something about the stretcher.

On the twenty-third step to the left I found the road –by stepping down about a foot, falling flat on my face, and nearly losing the light. I picked myself up and went back.

“Good!” said Dad. “Slip your neck through this.”

“This” was a sort of yoke he had devised by retying the blankets around the stretcher so as to get some free line. With my neck through it I could carry the weight on my shoulders and just steady my end with my hands. Not that it was heavy, but our hands were getting stiff with cold. “Good enough!” I said, “But, look, George–let Molly take your end.”

“Nonsense!”

“It isn’t nonsense. Molly can do it–can’t you, Molly? And you know this road better than we do; you’ve tramped it enough times in the dark.” “Bill is right, dear,” Molly said at once. “Here–take Mabel.”

Dad gave in, took the light and the halter. Mabel didn’t want to go any further; she wanted to sit down, I guess. Dad kicked her in the rear and jerked

on her neck. Her feelings were hurt; she wasn’t used to that sort of treatment–particularly not from Dad. But there was no time to humor her; it was getting colder.

We went on. I don’t know how Dad kept to the road but he did. We had been at it another hour, I suppose, and had left Kneiper’s slot well behind, when Molly stumbled, then her knees just seemed to cave in and she knelt down in the snow.

I stopped and sat down, too; I needed the rest. I just wanted to stay there and let it snow.

Dad came back and put his arms around her and comforted her and told her to lead Mabel now; she couldn’t get lost on this stretch. She insisted that she could still carry. Dad ignored her, just lifted the yoke business off her shoulders. Then he came back and peeled a bit of blanket off the bubble and shined the torch inside. He put it back into place. Molly said, “How is she?’

Dad said, “She’s still breathing. She opened her eyes when the light hit them. Let’s go.” He got the yoke on and Molly took the light and the halter. Molly couldn’t have seen what I saw; the plastic of the bubble was frosted over on the inside. Dad hadn’t seen Peggy breathe; he hadn’t seen

anything.

I thought about it for a long while and wondered how you would classify that sort of a lie. Dad wasn’t a liar, that was certain–and yet it seemed to me that such a lie, right then, was better than the truth. It was complicated.

Pretty soon I forgot it; I was too busy putting one foot in front of the other and counting the steps. I couldn’t feel my feet any longer. Dad stopped and I bumped into the end of the stretcher. “Listen!” he said.

I listened and heard a dull rumble. “Quake?”

“No. Keep quiet.” Then he added, “It’s down the road. Off the road, everybody! Off to the right.”

The rumble got louder and presently I made out a light through the snow, back the way we had come. Dad saw it, too, and stepped out on the road and started waving our torch.

The rumble stopped almost on top of him; it was a rock crusher and it was loaded down with people, people clinging to it all over and even riding the spade. The driver yelled, “Climb on! And hurry!”

Then he saw the cow and added, “No live stock.”

“We’ve got a stretcher with my little girl in it,” Dad shouted back to him. “We need help.”

There was a short commotion, while the driver ordered a couple of men down to help us. In the mix up Dad disappeared. One moment Molly was holding Mabel’s halter, then Dad was gone and so was the cow.

We got the stretcher up onto the spade and some of the men braced it with their backs. I was wondering what to do about Dad and thinking maybe I ought to jump off and look for him, when he appeared out of the darkness and scrambled up beside me. “Where’s Molly?” he asked.

“Up on top. But where is Mabel? What did you do with her?”

“Mabel is all right.” He folded his knife and put it in his pocket. I didn’t ask any more questions.

2. Disaster

We passed several more people after that, but the driver wouldn’t stop. We were fairly close into town and he insisted that they could make it on their own. His emergency power pack was running low, he said; he had come all the way from the bend in the lake, ten miles beyond our place.

Besides, I don’t know where he would have put them. We were about three deep and Dad had to keep warning people not to lean on the bubble of

the stretcher.

Then the power pack did quit and the driver shouted, “Everybody off! Get on in on your own.” But by now we were actually in town, the outskirts, and it would have been no trouble if it hadn’t been blowing a blizzard. The driver insisted on helping Dad with the stretcher. He was a good Joe and turned out to be–when I saw him in the light–the same man who had crushed our acreage.

At long, long last we were inside the hospital and Peggy was turned over to the hospital people and put in a pressurized room. More than that, she was alive. In bad shape, but alive.

Molly stayed with her. I would like to have stayed, too–it was fairly warm in the hospital; it had its own emergency power pack. But they wouldn’t let me.

Dad told Molly that he was reporting to the chief engineer for duty. I was told to go to the Immigration Receiving Station. I did so and it was just like the day we landed, only worse–and colder. I found myself right back in the very room which was the first I had ever been in on Ganymede.

The place was packed and getting more packed every minute as more refugees kept pouring in from the surrounding country. It was cold, though not so bitterly cold as outside. The lights were off, of course; light and heat all came from the power plant for everything.

Hand lights had been set up here and there and you could sort of grope your way around. There were the usual complaints, too, though maybe not as bad as you hear from immigrants. I paid no attention to any of them; I was happy in a dead beat sort of way just to be inside and fairly warm and feel the blood start to go back into my feet.

We stayed there for thirty-seven hours. It was twenty-four hours before we got anything to eat.

Here was the way it went: the metal buildings, such as the Receiving Station, stood up. Very few of the stone buildings had, which we knew by then from the reports of all of us. The Power Station was out, and with it, the heat trap. They wouldn’t tell us anything about it except to say that it was being fixed.

In the mean time we were packed in tight as they could put us, keeping the place warm mainly by the heat from our bodies, sheep style. There were, they say, several power packs being used to heat the place, too, one being turned on every time the temperature in the room dropped below freezing. If so, I never got close to one and I don’t think it ever did get up to freezing where I was.

I would sit down and grab my knees and fall into a dopey sleep. Then a nightmare would wake me up and I’d get up and pound myself and walk around. After a while I’d sit down on the floor and freeze my fanny again.

I seem to remember encountering Noisy Edwards in the crowd and waving my finger under his nose and telling him I had an appointment to knock his block off. I seem to remember him staring back at me as if he couldn’t place me. But I don’t know; I may have dreamed it. I thought I ran across Hank, too, and had a long talk with him, but Hank told me afterwards that he never laid eyes on me the whole time.

After a long time–it seemed a week but the records show it was eight o’clock Sunday morning–they passed us out some lukewarm soup. It was wonderful. After that I wanted to leave the building to go to the hospital. I wanted to find Molly and see how Peggy was doing.

They wouldn’t let me. It was seventy below outside and still dropping. About twenty-two o’clock the lights came on and the worst was over.

We had a decent meal soon after that, sandwiches and soup, and when the Sun came up at midnight they announced that anybody could go outside who cared to risk it. I waited until noon Monday. By then it was up to twenty below and I made a dash for it to the hospital.

Peggy was doing as well as could be expected. Molly had stayed with her and had spent the time in bed with her, huddling up to her to keep her warm. While the hospital had emergency heat, it didn’t have the capacity to cope with any such disaster as had struck us; it was darn near as cold as the Receiving Station. But Peggy had come through it, sleeping most of the time. She even perked up enough to smile and say hello.

Molly’s left arm was in a sling and splinted. I asked how that happened–and then I felt foolish. It had happened in the quake itself but I hadn’t known it and George still didn t know about it; none of the engineers were back.

It didn’t seem possible that she could have done what she did, until I recalled that she carried the stretcher only after Dad had rigged the rope yokes. Molly is all right.

They chased me out and I high-tailed it back to the Receiving Station and ran into Sergei almost at once. He hailed me and I went over to him. He

had a pencil and a list and a number of the older fellows were gathered around him. “What’s up?” I said.

“Just the guy I’m looking for,” he said. “I had you down for dead. Disaster party–are you in?”

I was in, all right. The parties were made up of older Scouts, sixteen and up, and the younger men, We were sent out on the town’s tractors, one to each road, and we worked in teams of two. I spotted Hank Jones as we were loading and they let us make up a team.

It was grim work. For equipment we had shovels and lists–lists of who lived on which farm. Sometimes a name would have a notation “known to be alive,” but more often not. A team would be dropped off with the lists for three or four farms and the tractor would go on, to pick them up on the return trip.

Our job was to settle the doubt about those other names and–theoretically–to rescue anyone still alive. We didn’t find anyone alive.

The lucky ones had been killed in the quake; the unlucky ones had waited too long and didn’t make it into town. Some we found on the road; they had tried to make it but had started too late. The worst of all were those whose houses hadn’t fallen and had tried to stick it out. Hank and I found one couple just sitting, arms around each other. They were hard as rock.

When we found one, we would try to identify it on the list, then cover it up with snow, several feet deep, so it would keep for a while after it started to thaw.

When we settled with the people at a farm, we rummaged around and found all the livestock we could and carried or dragged their carcasses down to the road, to be toted into town on the tractor and slapped into deep freeze. It seemed a dirty job to do, robbing the dead, but, as Hank pointed out, we would all be getting a little hungry by and by.

Hank bothered me a little; he was merry about the whole thing. I guess it was better to laugh about it, in the long run, and after a while he had me doing it. It was just too big to soak up all at once and you didn’t dare let it get you.

But I should have caught on when we came to his own place. “We can skip it,” he said, and checked off the list. “Hadn’t we better check for livestock?” I said.

“Nope. We’re running short of time. Let’s move on to the Millers’ place.” “Did they get out?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see any of them in town.”

The Millers hadn’t gotten out; we barely had time to take care of them before the tractor picked us up. It was a week later that I found out that both of Hank’s parents had been killed in the quake. He had taken time to drag them out and put them into their ice cellar before he had headed for town.

Like myself, Hank had been outside when it hit, still looking at the line up. The fact that the big shock had occurred right after the line up had kept a lot of people from being killed in their beds–but they say that the line up caused the quake, triggered it, that is, with tidal strains, so I guess it sort of evens up. Of course, the line up didn’t actually make the quake; it had been building up to it ever since the beginning of the atmosphere project. Gravity’s books have got to balance.

The colony had had thirty-seven thousand people when the quake hit. The census when we finished it showed less than thirteen thousand. Besides that we had lost every crop, all or almost all the livestock. As Hank said, we’d all be a little hungry by and by.

They dumped us back at the Receiving Station and a second group of parties got ready to leave. I looked for a quiet spot to try to get some sleep. I was just dozing off, it seemed to me, when somebody shook me. It was Dad. “Are you all right, Bill?”

I rubbed my eyes. “I’m okay. Have you seen Molly and Peggy?”

“Just left them. I’m off duty for a few hours. Bill, have you seen anything of the Schultzes?”

I sat up, wide awake. “No. Have you?” “No.”

I told him what I had been doing and he nodded. “Go back to sleep, Bill. I’ll see if there has been a report on them.”

I didn’t go to sleep. He was back after a bit to say that he hadn’t been able to find out anything one way or another. “I’m worried, Bill.” “So am I.”

“I’m going out and check up.” “Let’s go.”

Dad shook his head. “No need for us both. You get some sleep.” I went along, just the same.

We were lucky. A disaster party was just heading down our road and we hitched a ride. Our own farm and the Schultz’s place were among those to be covered on this trip; Dad told the driver that we would check both places and report when we got back to town. That was all right with him.

They dropped us at the turn off and we trudged up toward the Schultz’s house. I began to get the horrors as we went. It’s one thing to pile snow over comparative strangers; it’s another thing entirely to expect to find Mama Schultz or Gretchen with their faces blue and stiff.

I didn’t visualize Papa as dead; people like Papa Schultz don’t die-they just go on forever. Or it feels like that. But I still wasn’t prepared for what we did find.

We had just come around a little hummock that conceals their house from the road. George stopped and said, “Well, the house is still standing. His quake-proofing held.”

I looked at it, then I stared–and then I yelled. “Hey, George! The Tree is gone!”

The house was there, but the apple tree–“the most beautiful tree on Ganymede”–was missing. Just gone. I began to run. We were almost to the house when the door opened. There stood Papa Schultz.

They were all safe, every one of them. What remained of the tree was ashes in the fireplace. Papa had cut it down as soon as the power went off and the temperature started to drop–and then had fed it, little by little, into the flames.

Papa, telling us about it, gestured at the blackened firebox. “Johann’s folly, they called it. I guess they will not think old Appleseed Johnny quite so foolish now, eh?” He roared and slapped Dad on the shoulders.

“But your tree,” I said stupidly.

“I will plant another, many others.” He stopped and was suddenly serious. “But your trees, William, your brave little baby trees–they are dead, not?” I said I hadn’t seen them yet. He nodded solemnly. “They are dead of the cold. Hugo!”

“Yes, Papa.”

“Fetch me an apple.” Hugo did so and Papa presented it to me. “You will plant again.” I nodded and stuck it in my pocket.

They were glad to hear that we were all right, though Mama clucked over Molly’s broken arm. Yo had fought his way over to our place during the first part of the storm, found that we were gone and returned, two frost bitten ears for his efforts. He was in town now to look for us.

But they were all right, every one of them. Even their livestock they had saved–cows, pigs, chickens, people, all huddled together throughout the

cold and kept from freezing by the fire from their tree.

The animals were back in the barn, now that power was on again, but the place still showed that they had been there–and smelled of it, too. I think Mama was more upset by the shambles of her immaculate living room than she was by the magnitude of the disaster. I don’t think she realized that most of her neighbors were dead. It hadn’t hit her yet.

Dad turned down Papa Schultz’s offer to come with us to look over our farm. Then Papa said he would see us on the tractor truck, as he intended to go into town and find out what he could do. We had mugs of Mama’s strong tea and some corn bread and left.

I was thinking about the Schultzes and how good it was to find them alive, as we trudged over to our place. I told Dad that it was a miracle. He shook his head. “Not a miracle. They are survivor types.”

“What type is a survivor type?” I asked.

He took a long time to answer that one. Finally he said, “Survivors survive. I guess that is the only way to tell the survivor type for certain.” I said. “We’re survivor types, too, in that case.”

“Could be,” he admitted. “At least we’ve come through this one.”

When I had left, the house was down. In the mean time I had seen dozens of houses down, yet it was a shock to me when we topped the rise and I saw that it really was down. I suppose I expected that after a while I would wake up safe and warm in bed and everything would be all right.

The fields were there, that was all that you could say for it. I scraped the snow off a stretch I knew was beginning to crop. The plants were dead of course and the ground was hard. I was fairly sure that even the earth worms were dead; they had had nothing to warn them to burrow below the frost line.

My little saplings were dead, of course.

We found two of the rabbits, huddled together and stiff, under a drift against what was left of the barn. We didn’t find any of the chickens except one, the first old hen we ever had. She had been setting and her nest wasn’t crushed and had been covered by a piece of the fallen roof of the barn. She was still on it, hadn’t moved and the eggs under her were frozen. I think that was what got me.

I was just a chap who used to have a farm.

Dad had been poking around the house. He came back to the barn and spoke to me. “Well, Bill?” I stood up. “George, I’ve had it.”

“Then let’s go back to town. The truck will be along shortly.” “I mean I’ve really had it!”

“Yes, I know.”

I took a look in Peggy’s room first, but Dad’s salvage had been thorough. My accordion was in there, however, with snow from the broken door drifted over the case. I brushed it off and picked it up. “Leave it,” Dad said. “It’s safe here and you’ve no place to put it.”

“I don’t expect to be back,” I said. “Very well.”

We made a bundle of what Dad had gotten together, added the accordion, the two rabbits and the hen, and carried it all down to the road. The tractor showed up presently, we got aboard and Dad chucked the rabbits and chicken on the pile of such that they had salvaged. Papa Schultz was waiting at his turnoff.

Dad and I tried to spot Mabel by the road on the trip back, but we didn’t find her. Probably she had been picked up by an earlier trip, seeing that she

was close to town. I was just as well pleased. All right, she had to be salvaged–but I didn’t want the job. I’m not a cannibal.

I managed to get some sleep and a bite to eat and was sent out on another disaster party. The colony began to settle down into some sort of routine. Those whose houses had stood up moved back into them and the rest of us were taken care of in the Receiving Station, much as we had been when our party landed. Food was short, of course, and Ganymede had rationing for the first time since the first colonials really got started.

Not that we were going to starve. In the first place there weren’t too many of us to feed and there had been quite a lot of food on hand. The real pinch would come later. It was decided to set winter back by three months, that is, start all over again with spring–which messed up the calendar from then on. But it would give us a new crop as quickly as possible to make up for the one that we had lost.

Dad stayed on duty with the engineer’s office. Plans called for setting up two more power plants, spaced around the equator, and each of them capable of holding the heat trap alone. The disaster wasn’t going to be allowed to happen again. Of course the installations would have to come from Earth, but we had been lucky on one score; Mars was in a position to relay for us. The report had gone into Earth at once and, instead of another load of immigrants, we were to get what we needed on the next trip.

Not that I cared. I had stayed in town, too, although the Schultzes had invited me to stay with them. I was earning my keep helping to rebuild and quakeproof the houses of the survivors. It had been agreed that we would all go back, George, Molly, Peggy, and me, on the first trip, if we could get space. It had been unanimous except that Peggy hadn’t been consulted; it just had to be.

We weren’t the only ones who were going back. The Colonial Commission had put up a squawk of course, but under the circumstances they had to give in. After it had been made official and the lists were opened Dad and I went over to the Commission agent’s office to put in our applications. We were about the last to apply; Dad had been out of town on duty and I had waited until he got back.

The office was closed with a “Back in a half hour” sign stuck on the door. We waited. There were bulletin boards outside the office; on them were posted the names of those who had applied for repatriation. I started reading them to kill time and so did Dad.

I found Saunders’ name there and pointed it out to George. He grunted and said, “No loss.” Noisy Edwards’ name was there, too; maybe I had seen him in the Receiving Station, although I hadn’t seen him since. It occurred to me that I could probably corner him in the ship and pay him back his lumps, but I wasn’t really interested in the project. I read on down.

I expected to find Hank Jones’ name there, but I couldn’t find it. I started reading the list carefully, paying attention to every name I recognized. I began to see a pattern.

Presently the agent got back and opened the door. Dad touched my arm. “Come on, Bill.” I said, “Wait a minute, George. You read all the names?”

“Yes, I did.”

“I’ve been thinking. You know, George, I don’t like being classed with these lugs.” He chewed his lip. “I know exactly what you mean.”

I took the plunge. “You can do as you like, George, but I’m not going home, if I ever do, until I’ve licked this joint.”

Dad looked as unhappy as he could look. He was silent for a long time, then he said, “I’ve got to take Peggy back, Bill. She won’t go unless Molly and I go along. And she’s got to go.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You understand how it is, Bill?”

“Yes, Dad, I understand.” He went on in to make out his application, whistling a little tune he used to whistle just after Anne died. I don’t think he knew he was whistling it.

I waited for him and after a bit we went away together.

I moved back out to the farm the next day. Not to the Schultzes–to the farm. I slept in Peggy’s room and got busy fixing the place up and getting

ready to plant my emergency allowance of seed.

Then, about two weeks before they were to leave in the Covered Wagon, Peggy died, and there wasn’t any reason for any of us to go back to Earth.

Yo Schultz had been in town and Dad sent word back by him. Yo came over and woke me up and told me about it. I thanked him.

He wanted to know if I wanted to come back to the house with him. I said, no, thanks, that I would rather be alone. He made me promise to come over the next day and went away.

I lay back down on Peggy’s bed.

She was dead and there was nothing more I could do about it She was dead and it was all my fault … if I hadn’t encouraged her, they would have been able to get her to go back before it was too late. She would be back Earthside, going to school and growing up healthy and happy–right back in California, not here in this damned place where she couldn’t live, where human beings were never meant to live.

I bit the pillow and blubbered. I said, “Oh, Anne, Anne! Take care of her, Anne–She’s so little; she won’t know what to do.” And then I stopped bawling and listened, half way expecting Anne to answer me and tell me she would,

But I couldn’t hear anything, not at first … and what I did hear was only, “Stand tall, Billy,” . .. very faint and far away, “Stand tall, son.” After a while I got up and washed my face and started hoofing it back into town.

3. Pioneer Party

We all lived in Peggy’s room until Dad and I had the seeds in, then we built on to it, quake proof this time and with a big view window facing the lake and another facing the mountains. We knocked a window in Peggy’s room, too; it made it seem like a different place.

We built on still another room presently, as it seemed as if we might be needing it. All the rooms had windows and the living room had a fireplace. Dad and I were terribly busy the second season after the quake. Enough seed could be had by then and we farmed the empty farm across the road

from us. Then some newcomers, the Ellises, moved in and paid us for the crop. It was just what they call a “book transaction,” but it reduced our

debt with the Commission.

Two G-years after the line up you would never have known that anything had happened. There wasn’t a wrecked building in the community, there were better than forty-five thousand people, and the town was booming. New people were coming in so fast that you could even sell some produce to the Commission in lieu of land.

We weren’t doing so badly, ourselves. We had a hive of bees. We had Mabel II, and Margie and Mamie, and I was sending the spare milk into town by the city transport truck that passed down our road once a day. I had broken Marge and Mamie to the yoke and used them for ploughing as well– we had crushed five more acres–and we were even talking about getting a horse.

Some people had horses already, the Schultzes for instance. The council had wrangled about it before okaying the “invasion,” with conservatives holding out for tractors. But we weren’t equipped to manufacture tractors yet and the policy was to make the planet self-sufficient–the hay burners won out. Horses can manufacture more horses and that is one trick that tractors have never learned.

Furthermore, though I would have turned my nose up at the idea when I was a ground hog back in Diego Borough, horse steak is very tasty.

It turned out we did need the extra room. Twins– both boys. New babies don’t look as if they were worth keeping, but they get over it–slowly. I bought a crib as a present for them, made right here on Ganymede, out of glass fabric stuck together with synthetic resin. It was getting possible to buy quite a number of home products.

I told Molly I would initiate the brats into the Cubs when they were old enough. I was getting in to meetings oftener now, for I had a patrol again–the Daniel Boone patrol, mostly new kids. I still hadn’t taken my own tests but you can’t do everything at once. Once I was scheduled to take them and a

litter of pigs picked that day to arrive. But I planned to take them; I wanted to be an Eagle Scout again, even if I was getting a little old to worry about badges in themselves.

It may sound as if the survivors didn’t give a hoot about those who had died in the disaster. But that isn’t the truth. It was just that you work from day to day and that keeps your mind busy. In any case, we weren’t the first colony to be two-thirds wiped out– and we wouldn’t be the last. You can grieve only so much; after that it’s self pity. So George says.

George still wanted me to go back to Earth to finish my education and I had been toying with the idea myself. I was beginning to realize that there were a few things I hadn’t learned. The idea was attractive; it would not be like going back right after the quake, tail between my legs. I’d be a property owner, paying my own way. The fare was considerable–five acres–and would about clean me out, my half, and put a load on George and Molly. But they were both for it.

Besides, Dad owned blocked assets back Earthside which would pay my way through school. They were no use to him otherwise; the only thing the Commission will accept as pay for imports is proved land. There was even a possibility, if the council won a suit pending back Earthside, that his blocked assets could be used for my fare as well and not cost us a square foot of improved soil. All in all, it was nothing to turn down idly.

We were talking about me leaving on the NewArk when another matter came up–the planetary survey.

Ganymede had to have settlements other than Leda; that was evident even when we landed. The Commission planned to set up two more ports-of- entry near the two new power stations and let the place grow from three centers. The present colonists were to build the new towns–receiving stations, hydroponics sheds, infirmaries, and so forth–and be paid for it in imports. Immigration would be stepped up accordingly, something that the Commission was very anxious to do, now that they had the ships to dump them in on us in quantity.

The old Jitterbug was about to take pioneer parties out to select sites and make plans–and both Hank and Sergei were going.

I wanted to go so bad I could taste it In the whole time I had been here I had never gotten fifty miles from Leda. Suppose somebody asked me what it was like on Ganymede when I got back on Earth? Truthfully, I wouldn’t be able to tell them; I hadn’t been any place.

I had had a chance, once, to make a trip to Barnard’s Moon, as a temporary employee of Project Jove–and that hadn’t worked out either. The twins. I stayed back and took care of the farm.

I talked it over with Dad.

“I hate to see you delay it any longer,” he said seriously. I pointed out that it would be only two months. “Hmmm–” he said. “Have you taken your merit badge tests yet?”

He knew I hadn’t; I changed the subject by pointing out that Sergei and Hank were going. “But they are both older than you are,” he answered.

“Not by very much!”

“But I think they are each over the age limit they were looking for–and you are just under.”

“Look, George,” I protested, “rules were made to be broken. I’ve heard you say that There must be some spot I can fill–cook, maybe.” And that’s just the job I got–cook.

I always have been a pretty fair cook–not in Mama Schultz’s class, but good. The party had nothing to complain about on that score.

Captain Hattie put us down at a selected spot nine degrees north of the equator and longitude 113 west–that is to say, just out of sight of Jupiter on the far side and about thirty-one hundred miles from Leda.

Mr. Hooker says that the average temperature of Ganymede will rise about nine degrees over the next century as more and more of the ancient ice melts–at which time Leda will be semi-tropical and the planet will be habitable half way to the poles. In the meantime colonies would be planted only at or near the equator.

I was sorry we had Captain Hattie as pilot; she is such an insufferable old scold. She thinks rocket pilots are a special race apart–supermen. At

least she acts like it.

Recently the Commission had forced her to take a relief pilot; there was just too much for one pilot to do. They had tried to force a check pilot on her, too–an indirect way to lead up to retiring her, but she was too tough for them. She threatened to take the Jitterbug up and crash it … and they didn’t dare call her bluff. At that time they were absolutely dependent on the Jitterbug.

Originally the Jitterbug‘s only purpose was for supply and passengers between Leda and the Project Jove station on Barnard’s Moon–but that was back in the days when ships from Earth actually landed at Leda. Then the Mayflower came along and the Jitterbug was pressed into service as a shuttle.

There was talk of another shuttle rocket but we didn’t have it yet, which is why Captain Hattie had them where it hurt. The Commission had visions of a loaded ship circling Ganymede, just going round and round and round again, with no way to get down, like a kitten stuck up in a tree.

I’ll say this for Hattie; she could handle her ship. I think she had nerve ends out in the skin of it. In clear weather she could even make a glide landing, in spite of our thin air. But I think she preferred to shake up her passengers with a jet landing.

She put us down, the Jitterbug took on more water mass, and away it bounced. She had three more parties to land. All in all the Jitterbug was servicing eight other pioneer parties. It would be back to pick us up in about three weeks.

The leader of our party was Paul du Maurier, who was the new assistant Scoutmaster of the Auslander troop and the chap who had gotten me taken on as cookie. He was younger than some of those working for him; furthermore, he shaved, which made him stand out like a white leghorn in a hog pen and made him look even younger. That is, he did shave, but he started letting his beard grow on this trip. “Better trim that grass,” I advised him.

He said, “Don’t you like my beard, Doctor Slop?” –that was a nickname he had awarded me for “Omnibus stew,” my own invention. He didn’t mean any harm by it.

I said, “Well, it covers your face, which is some help–but you might be mistaken for one of us colonial roughnecks. That wouldn’t do for one of you high-toned Commission boys.”

He smiled mysteriously and said, “Maybe that’s what I want.”

I said, “Maybe. But they’ll lock you up in a zoo if you wear it back to Earth.” He was due to go back for Earthside duty by the same trip I expected to make, via the Covered Wagon, two weeks after the end of the survey.

He smiled again and said, “Ah, yes, so they would,” and changed the subject. Paul was one of the most thoroughly good guys I have ever met and smart as a whip as well. He was a graduate of South Africa University with Post Grad on top of that at the System Institute on Venus–an ecologist, specializing in planetary engineering.

He handled that gang of rugged individualists without raising his voice. There is something about a real leader that makes it unnecessary for him to get tough.

But back to the survey–I didn’t see much of it as I was up to my elbows in pots and pans, but I knew what was going on. The valley we were in had been picked from photographs taken from the Jitterbug; it was now up to Paul to decide whether or not it was ideally suited to easy colonization.

It had the advantage of being in direct line-of-sight with power station number two, but that was not essential. Line-of-sight power relays could be placed anywhere on the mountains (no name, as yet) just south of us.

Most of the new villages would have to have power relayed anyhow. Aside from a safety factor for the heat trap there was no point in setting up extra power stations when the whole planet couldn’t use the potential of one mass-conversion plant.

So they got busy–an engineering team working on drainage and probable annual water resources, topographers getting a contour, a chemistry- agronomy team checking on what the various rock formations would make as soil, and a community architect laying out a town and farm and rocket port plot. There were several other specialists, too, like the mineralogist, Mr. Villa, who was doodlebugging the place for ores.

Paul was the “general specialist” who balanced all the data in his mind, fiddled with his slip stick, stared off into the sky, and came up with the over all answer. The over all answer for that valley was “nix”–and we moved on to the next one on the list, packing the stuff on our backs.

That was one of the few chances I got to look around. You see, we had landed at sunrise–about five o’clock Wednesday morning sunrise was, in

that longitude–and the object was to get as much done as possible during each light phase.

Jupiter light is all right for working in your own fields, but no good for surveying strange territory–and here we didn’t even have Jupiter light–just Callisto, every other dark phase, every twelve-and-half days, to be exact. Consequently we worked straight through light phase, on pep pills.

Now a man who is on the pills will eat more than twice as much as a man who is sleeping regularly. You know, the Eskimos have a saying, “Food is sleep.” I had to produce hot meals every four hours, around the clock. I had no time for sightseeing.

We got to camp number two, pitched our tents, I served a scratch meal, and Paul passed out sleeping pills. By then the Sun was down and we really died for about twenty hours. We were comfortable enough –spun glass pads under us and resin sealed glass canvas over us.

I fed them again, Paul passed out more sleepy pills, and back we went to sleep. Paul woke me Monday afternoon. This time I fixed them a light breakfast, then really spread myself to turn them out a feast. Everybody was well rested by now, and not disposed to want to go right back to bed. So I stuffed them.

After that we sat around for a few hours and talked. I got out my squeeze box–brought along by popular demand, that is to say, Paul suggested it– and gave ’em a few tunes. Then we talked some more.

They got to arguing about where life started and somebody brought up the old theory that the Sun had once been much brighter–Jock Montague, it was, the chemist. “Mark my words,” he said, “When we get around to exploring Pluto, you’ll find that life was there before us. Life is persistent, like mass-energy.”

“Nuts,” answered Mr. Villa, very politely. “Pluto isn’t even a proper planet; it used to be a satellite of Neptune.”

“Well, Neptune, then,” Jock persisted. “Life is all through the universe. Mark my words–when the Jove Project straightens out the bugs and gets going, they’ll even find life on the surface of Jupiter.”

“On Jupiter?” Mr. Villa exploded. “Please, Jock! Methane and ammonia and cold as a mother-in-law’s kiss. Don’t joke with us. Why, there’s not even light down under on the surface of Jupiter; it’s pitch dark.”

“I said it and I’ll say it again,” Montague answered. “Life is persistent. Wherever there is mass and energy with conditions that permit the formation of large and stable molecules, there you will find life. Look at Mars. Look at Venus. Look at Earth–the most dangerous planet of the lot. Look at the Ruined Planet.”

I said, “What do you think about it, Paul?”

The boss smiled gently. “I don’t. I haven’t enough data.”

“There!” said Mr. Villa. “There speaks a wise man. Tell me, Jock, how did you get to be an authority on this subject?”

“I have the advantage,” Jock answered grandly, “of not knowing too much about the subject. Facts are always a handicap in philosophical debate.” That ended that phase of it, for Mr. Seymour, the boss agronomist, said, “I’m not so much worried about where life came from as where it is going–

here.”

“How?” I wanted to know. “In what way?”

“What are we going to make of this planet? We can make it anything we want. Mars and Venus–they had native cultures. We dare not change them much and we’ll never populate them very heavily. These Jovian moons are another matter; it’s up to us. They say man is endlessly adaptable. I say on the contrary that man doesn’t adapt himself as much as he adapts his environment. Certainly we are doing so here. But how?”

“I thought that was pretty well worked out,” I said. “We set up these new centers, more people come in and we spread out, same as at Leda.”

“Ah, but where does it stop? We have three ships making regular trips now. Shortly there will be a ship in every three weeks, then it will be every week, then every day. Unless we are almighty careful there will be food rationing here, same as on Earth. Bill, do you know how fast the population is increasing, back Earthside?”

I admitted that I didn’t

“More than one hundred thousand more persons each day than there were the day before. Figure that up.”

I did. “That would be, uh, maybe fifteen, twenty shiploads a day. Still, I imagine they could build ships to carry them.”

“Yes, but where would we put them? Each day, more than twice as many people landing as there are now on this whole globe. And not just on Monday, but on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday–and the week and the month and the year after that, just to keep Earth’s population stable. I tell you, it won’t work. The day will come when we will have to stop immigration entirely.” He looked around aggressively, like a man who expects to be contradicted.

He wasn’t disappointed. Somebody said, “Oh, Seymour, come off it! Do you think you own this place just because you got here first? You snuck in while the rules were lax.”

“You can’t argue with mathematics,” Seymour insisted. “Ganymede has got to be made self-sufficient as soon as possible–and then we’ve got to slam the door!”

Paul was shaking his head. “It won’t be necessary.”

“Huh?” said Seymour. “Why not? Answer me that. You represent the Commission: what fancy answer has the Commission got?”

“None,” Paul told him. “And your figures are right but your conclusions are wrong. Oh, Ganymede has to be made self-sufficient, true enough, but your bogeyman about a dozen or more shiploads of immigrants a day you can forget.”

“Why, if I may be so bold?”

Paul looked around the tent and grinned apologetically. “Can you stand a short dissertation on population dynamics? I’m afraid I don’t have Jock’s advantage; this is a subject I am supposed to know something about.”

Somebody said, “Stand back. Give him air.”

“Okay,” Paul went on, “you brought it on yourselves. A lot of people have had the idea that colonization is carried on with the end purpose of relieving the pressure of people and hunger back on Earth. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

I said. “Huh?”

“Bear with me. Not only is it physically impossible for a little planet to absorb the increase of a big planet, as Seymour pointed out, but there is another reason why well never get any such flood of people as a hundred thousand people a day–a psychological reason. There are never as many people willing to emigrate (even if you didn’t pick them over) as there are new people born. Most people simply will not leave home. Most of them won’t even leave their native villages, much less go to a far planet.”

Mr. Villa nodded. “I go along with you on that The willing emigrant is an odd breed of cat. He’s scarce.”

“Right,” Paul agreed. “But let’s suppose for a moment that a hundred thousand people were willing to emigrate every day and Ganymede and the other colonies could take them. Would that relieve the situation back home–I mean “back Earthside’? The answer is, ‘No, it wouldn’t’.”

He appeared to have finished. I finally said, “Excuse my blank look, Paul, but why wouldn’t it?” “Studied any bionomics, Bill?”

“Some.”

“Mathematical population bionomics?” “Well-no.”

“But you do know that in the greatest wars the Earth ever had there were always more people after the war than before, no matter how many were killed. Life is not merely persistent, as Jock puts it; life is explosive.

The basic theorem of population mathematics to which there has never been found an exception is that population increases always, not merely up to extent of the food supply, but beyond it, to the minimum diet that will sustain life–the ragged edge of starvation.

In other words, if we bled off a hundred thousand people a day, the Earth’s population would then grow until the increase was around two hundred thousand a day, or the bionomical maximum for Earth’s new ecological dynamic.”

Nobody said anything for a moment; there wasn’t anything to say. Presently Sergei spoke up with, “You paint a grim picture, boss. What’s the answer?”

Paul said, “There isn’t any!”

Sergei said, “I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, what is the outcome?”

When Paul did answer it was just one word, one monosyllable, spoken so softly that it would not have been heard if there had not been dead silence. What he said was:

“War.”

There was a shuffle and a stir; it was an unthinkable idea. Seymour said, “Come now, Mr. du Maurier–I may be a pessimist, but I’m not that much of one. Wars are no longer possible.”

Paul said, “So?”

Seymour answered almost belligerently, “Are you trying to suggest that the Space Patrol would let us down? Because that is the only way a war could happen.”

Paul shook his head. “The Patrol won’t let us down. But they won’t be able to stop it. A police force is all right for stopping individual disturbances; it’s fine for nipping things in the bud. But when the disturbances are planet wide, no police force is big enough, or strong enough, or wise enough. They’ll try–they’ll try bravely. They won’t succeed.”

“You really believe that?”

“It’s my considered opinion. And not only my opinion, but the opinion of the Commission. Oh, I don’t mean the political board; I mean the career scientists.”

“Then what in tarnation is the Commission up to?”

“Building colonies. We think that is worthwhile in itself. The colonies need not be affected by the War. In fact, I don’t think they will be, not much. It will be like America was up to the end of the nineteenth century; European troubles passed her by.

I rather expect that the War, when it comes, will be of such size and duration that interplanetary travel will cease to be for a considerable period. That is why I said this planet has got to be self-sufficient. It takes a high technical culture to maintain interplanetary travel and Earth may not have it– after a bit.”

I think Paul’s ideas were a surprise to everyone present; I know they were to me. Seymour jabbed a finger at him, “If you believe this, then why are you going back to Earth? Tell me that.”

Again Paul spoke softly. “I’m not. I’m going to stay here and become a ‘steader.” Suddenly I knew why he was letting his beard grow.

Seymour answered, “Then you expect it soon.” It was not a question; it was a statement.

“Having gone this far,” Paul said hesitantly, “I’ll give you a direct answer. War is not less than forty Earth years away, not more than seventy.”

You could feel a sigh of relief all around the place. Seymour continued to speak for us, “Forty to seventy, you say. But that’s no reason to

homestead; you probably wouldn’t live to see it. Not but what you’d make a good neighbor.”

“I see this War,” Paul insisted. “I know it’s coming. Should I leave it up to my hypothetical children and grandchildren to outguess it? No. Here I rest. If I marry, I’ll marry here. I’m not raising any kids to be radioactive dust.”

It must have been about here that Hank stuck his head in the tent, for I don’t remember anyone answering Paul. Hank had been outside on business of his own; now he opened the flap and called out, “Hey gents! Europa is up!”

We all trooped out to see. We went partly through embarrassment, I think; Paul had been too nakedly honest. But we probably would have gone anyhow. Sure, we saw Europa every day of our lives at home, but not the way we were seeing it now.

Since Europa goes around Jupiter inside Ganymede’s orbit, it never gets very far away from Jupiter, if you call 39 degrees “not very far.” Since we were 113 west longitude, Jupiter was 23 degrees below our eastern horizon–which meant that Europa, when it was furthest west of Jupiter, would be a maximum of 16 degrees above the true horizon.

Excuse the arithmetic. Since we had a row of high hills practically sitting on us to the east, what all this means is that, once a week, Europa would rise above the hills, just peeking over, hang there for about a day–then turn around and set in the east, right where it had risen. Up and down like an elevator.

If you’ve never been off Earth, don’t tell me it’s impossible. That’s how it is–Jupiter and its moons do some funny things.

It was the first time it had happened this trip, so we watched it–a little silver boat, riding the hills like waves, with its horns turned up. There was argument about whether or not it was still rising, or starting to set again, and much comparing of watches. Some claimed to be able to detect motion but they weren’t agreed on which way. After a while I got cold and went back in.

But I was glad of the interruption. I had a feeling that Paul had said considerably more than he had intended to and more than he would be happy to recall, come light phase. I blamed it on the sleeping pills. Sleeping pills are all right when necessary, but they tend to make you babble and tell your right name-treacherous things.

4. The Other People

By the end of the second light phase it was clear-to Paul, anyhow–that this second valley would do. It wasn’t the perfect valley and maybe there was a better one just over the ridge–but life is too short. Paul assigned it a score of 92% by some complicated system thought up by the Commission, which was seven points higher than passing. The perfect valley could wait for the colonials to find it … which they would, some day.

We named the valley Happy Valley, Just for luck, and named the mountains south of it the Pauline Peaks, over Paul’s protests. He said it wasn’t official anyway; we said we would see to it that it was made so–and the boss topographer, Abie Finkelstein, marked it so on the map and we all intialed it

We spent the third light phase rounding up the details. We could have gone back then, if there had been any way to get back. There wasn’t, so we had to dope through another dark phase.

Some of them preferred to go back on a more normal schedule instead; there was a round-the-clock poker game, which I stayed out of, having nothing I could afford to lose and no talent for filling straights. There were more dark phase bull sessions but they never got as grave as the first one and nobody ever again asked Paul what he thought about the future prospects of things.

By the end of the third dark phase I was getting more than a little tired of seeing nothing but the inside of our portable range. I asked Paul for some time off.

Hank had been helping me since the start of the third dark phase. He had been working as a topographical assistant; flash contour pictures were on the program at the start of that dark phase. He was supposed to get an open-lens shot across the valley from an elevation on the south just as a sunburst flash was let off from an elevation to the west.

Hank had a camera of his own, just acquired, and he was shutter happy, always pointing it at things. This time he had tried to get a picture of his own as well as the official picture. He had goofed off, missed the official picture entirely, and to top it off had failed to protect his eyes when the sunburst went off. Which put him on the sick list and I got him as kitchen police.

He was all right shortly, but Finkelstein didn’t want him back. So I asked for relief for both of us, so we could take a hike together and do a little

exploring. Paul let us go.

There had been high excitement at the end of the second light phase when lichen had been discovered near the west end of the valley. For a while it looked as if native life had been found on Ganymede. It was a false alarm–careful examination showed that it was not only an Earth type, but a type authorized by the bionomics board.

But it did show one thing–life was spreading, taking hold, at a point thirty-one hundred miles from the original invasion. There was much argument as to whether the spores had been air borne, or had been brought in on the clothing of the crew who had set up the power plant. It didn’t matter, really.

But Hank and I decided to explore off that way and see if we could find more of it. Besides it was away from the way we had come from camp number one. We didn’t tell Paul we were going after lichen because we were afraid he would veto it; the stuff had been found quite some distance from camp. He had warned us not to go too far and to be back by six o’clock Thursday morning, in time to break camp and head back to our landing point, where the Jitterbug was to meet us.

I agreed as I didn’t mean to go far in any case. I didn’t much care whether we found lichen or not; I wasn’t feeling well. But I kept that fact to myself; I wasn’t going to be done out of my one and only chance to see some of the country.

We didn’t find any more lichen. We did find the crystals.

We were trudging along, me as happy as a kid let out of school despite an ache in my side and Hank taking useless photographs of odd rocks and lava flows. Hank had been saying that he thought he would sell out his place and homestead here in Happy Valley. He said, “You know, Bill, they are going to need a few real Ganymede farmers here to give the greenhorns the straight dope. And who knows more about Ganymede-style farming than I do?”

“Almost everybody,” I assured him.

He ignored it. “This place has really got it,” he went on, gazing around at a stretch of country that looked like Armageddon after a hard battle. “Much better than around Leda.”

I admitted that it had possibilities. “But I don’t think it’s for me,” I went on. “I don’t think I’d care to settle anywhere where you can’t see Jupiter.” “Nonsense!” he answered. “Did you come here to stare at the sights or to make a farm?”

“That’s a moot point,” I admitted. “Sometimes I think one thing, sometimes the other. Sometimes I don’t have the foggiest idea.” He wasn’t listening. “See that slot up there?”

“Sure. What about it?”

“If we crossed that little glacier, we could get up to it.” “Why?”

“I think it leads into another valley–which might be even better. Nobody has been up there. I know–I was in the topo gang.”

“I’ve been trying to help you forget that,” I told him. “But why look at all? There must be a hundred thousand valleys on Ganymede that nobody has looked at. Are you in the real estate business?” It didn’t appeal to me. There is something that gets you about virgin soil on Ganymede; I wanted to stay in sight of camp. It was quiet as a library–quieter. On Earth there is always some sound, even in the desert. After a while the stillness and the bare rocks and the ice and the craters get on my nerves.

“Come on! Don’t be a sissyl” he answered, and started climbing.

The slot did not lead to another valley; it led into a sort of corridor in the hills. One wall was curiously flat, as if it had been built that way on purpose. We went along it a way, and I was ready to turn back and had stopped to call to Hank, who had climbed the loose rock on the other side to get a picture. As I turned, my eye caught some color and I moved up to see what it was. It was the crystals.

I stared at them and they seemed to stare back. I called, “Hey! Hank! Come here on the bounce!”

“What’s up?”

“Come here! Here’s something worth taking a picture of.”

He scrambled down and joined me. After a bit he let out his breath and whispered, “Well, I’ll be fried on Friday!”

Hank got busy with his camera. I never saw such crystals, not even stalactites in caves. They were six-sided, except a few that were three-sided and some that were twelve-sided. They came anywhere from little squatty fellows no bigger than a button mushroom up to tall, slender stalks, knee high. Later on and further up we found some chest high.

They were not simple prisms; they branched and budded. But the thing that got you was the colors.

They were all colors and they changed color as you looked at them. We finally decided that they didn’t have any color at all; it was just refraction of light. At least Hank thought so.

He shot a full cartridge of pictures then said, “Come on. Let’s see where they come from.”

I didn’t want to. I was shaky from the climb and my right side was giving me fits every step I took. I guess I was dizzy, too; when I looked at the crystals they seemed to writhe around and I would have to blink my eyes to steady them.

But Hank had already started so I followed. The crystals seemed to keep to what would have been the water bed of the canyon, had it been spring. They seemed to need water. We came to a place where there was a drift of ice across the floor of the corridor –ancient ice, with a thin layer of last winter’s snow on top of it. The crystals had carved a passage right through it, a natural bridge of ice, and had cleared a space of several feet on each side of where they were growing, as well.

Hank lost his footing as we scrambled through and snatched at one of the crystals. It broke off with a sharp, clear note, like a silver bell. Hank straightened up and stood looking at his hand. There were parallel cuts across his palm and fingers. He stared at them stupidly. “That’ll teach you,” I said, and then got out a first-lid kit and bandaged it for him. When I had finished I said, “Now let’s go back.” “Shucks,” he said. “What’s a few little cuts? Come

I said, “Look, Hank, I want to go back. I don’t feel good.” “What’s the matter?”

“Stomach ache.”

“You eat too much; that’s your trouble. The exercise will do you good.” “No, Hank. I’ve got to go back.”

He stared up the ravine and looked fretful. Finally he said, “Bill, I think I see where the crystals come from, not very far up. You wait here and let me take a look. Then I’ll come back and well head for camp. I won’t be gone long; honest I won’t.”

“Okay,” I agreed. He started up; shortly I followed him. I had had it pounded into my head as a Cub not to get separated in a strange country. After a bit I heard him shout. I looked up and saw him standing, facing a great dark hole in the cliff. I called out, “What’s the matter?”

He answered:

“GREAT JUMPING HOLY SMOKE!!!”-like that.

“What’s the matter?” I repeated irritably and hurried along until I was standing beside him.

The crystals continued up the place where we were. They came right to the cave mouth, but did not go in; they formed a solid dense thicket across the threshold. Lying across the floor of the ravine, as if it had been tumbled there by an upheaval like the big quake, was a flat rock, a monolith, Stonehenge size. You could see where it had broken off the cliff, uncovering the hole. The plane of cleavage was as sharp and smooth as anything done by the ancient Egyptians.

But that wasn’t what we were looking at; we were looking into the hole.

It was dark inside, but diffused light, reflected off the canyon floor and the far wall, filtered inside. My eyes began to adjust and I could see what Hank was staring at, what he had exploded about.

There were things in there and they weren’t natural

I couldn’t have told you what sort of things because they were like nothing I had ever seen before in my life, or seen pictures of–or heard of. How can you describe what you’ve never seen before and have no words for? Shucks, you can’t even see a thing properly the first time you see it; your eye doesn’t take in the pattern.

But I could see this: they weren’t rocks, they weren’t plants, they weren’t animals. They were made things, man made–well, maybe not “man” made, but not things that just happen, either.

I wanted very badly to get up close to them and see what they were. For the moment, I forgot I was sick. So did Hank. As usual he said, “Come onl Let’s go!”

But I said, “How?”

“Why, we just–” He stopped and took another look. “Well, let’s see, we go around– No. Hmm … Bill, we will have to bust up some of those crystals and go right through the middle. There’s no other way to get in.”

I said, “Isn’t one chopped up hand enough for you?”

“I’ll bust ’em with a rock. It seems a shame; they are so pretty, but that’s what I’ll have to do.”

“I don’t think you can bust those big ones. Besides that, I’ll give you two to one that they are sharp enough to cut through your boots.”

“I’ll chance it.” He found a chunk of rock and made an experiment; I was right on both counts. Hank stopped and looked the situation over, whistling softly. “Bill–“

“Yeah?”

“See that little ledge over the opening?” “What about it?”

“It comes out to the left further than the crystals do. I’m going to pile rock up high enough for us to reach it, then we can go along it and drop down right in front of the cave mouth. The crystals don’t come that close.”

I looked it over and decided it would work. “But how do we get back?”

“We can pile up some of that stuff we can see inside and shinny up again. At the very worst I can boost you up on my shoulders and then you can reach down your belt to me, or something.”

If I had my wits about me, maybe I would have protested. But we tried it and it worked–worked right up to the point where I was hanging by my fingers from the ledge over the cave mouth.

I felt a stabbing pain in my side and let go.

I came to with Hank shaking me. “Let me alone!” I growled.

“You knocked yourself out,” he said. “I didn’t know you were so clumsy.” I didn’t answer. I just gathered my knees up to my stomach and closed my eyes.

Hank shook me again. “Don’t you want to see what’s in here?”

I kicked at him. “I don’t want to see the Queen of Sheba! Can’t you see I’m sick?” I closed my eyes again.

I must have passed out. When I woke up, Hank was sitting Turk fashion in front of me, with my torch in his hand. “You’ve been asleep a long time, fellow,” he said gently. “Feel any better?”

“Not much.”

‘Try to pull yourself together and come along with me. You’ve got to see this, Bill. You won’t believe it. This is the greatest discovery since–well, since– Never mind; Columbus was a piker. We’re famous, Bill.”

“You may be famous,” I said. “I’m sick.” “Where does it hurt?”

“All over. My stomach is hard as a rock–a rock with a toothache.” “Bill,” he said seriously, “have you ever had your appendix out?” “No.”

“Hmmm … maybe you should have had it out.” “Well, this is a fine time to tell me!”

“Take it easy.”

“Take it easy, my foot!” I got up on one elbow, my head swimming. “Hank, listen to me. You’ve got to get back to camp and tell them. Have them send a tractor for me.”

“Look, Bill,” he said gently, “you know there isn’t anything like a tractor at camp.”

I tried to struggle with the problem but it was too much for me. My brain was fuzzy. “Well, have them bring a stretcher, at least,” I said peevishly and lay down again.

Some time later I felt him fumbling around with my clothes. I tried to push him away, then I felt something very cold on me. I took a wild swing at him; it didn’t connect.

“Steady,” he said. “I have found some ice. Don’t squirm around or you’ll knock off the pack.” “I don’t want it.”

“You’ve got to have it. You keep that ice pack in place until we get out of here and you may live to be hanged, yet.”

I was too feeble to resist. I lay back down and closed my eyes again. When I opened my eyes again, I was amazed to feel better. Instead of feeling ready to die, I merely felt awful. Hank wasn’t around; I called to him. When he didn’t answer at once I felt panicky.

Then he came trotting up, waving the torch. “I thought you had gone,” I said.

“No. To tell the truth, I can’t get out of here. I can’t get back up to the ledge and I can’t get over the crystals. I tried it.” He held up one boot; it was in

shreds and there was blood on it.

“Hurt yourself?” “I’ll live.”

“I wonder,” I answered. “Nobody knows we are here–and you say we can’t get out. Looks like we starve. Not that I give a hoot.” ‘Speaking of that,” he said. “I saved you some of our lunch. I’m afraid I didn’t leave much; you were asleep a long, long time.” “Don’t mention food!” I retched and grabbed at my side.

“Sorry. But look–I didn’t say we couldn’t get out” “But you did.”

“No, I said I couldn’t get out.” “What’s the difference?”

“Uh, never mind. But I think we’ll get out. It was what you said about getting a tractor–” “Tractor? Are you out of your head?”

“Skip it,” Bill answered. “There is a sort of tractor thing back there–or more like a scaffolding, maybe.” “Make up your mind.”

“Call it a wagon. I think I can get it out, at least across the crystals. We could use it as a bridge.” “Well, roll it out.”

“It doesn’t roll. It, uh-well, it walks.”

I tried to get up. “This I got to see.”

“Just move over out of the way of the door.”

I managed to get to my feet, with Hank helping me. “I’m coming along.” “Want the ice pack changed?”

“Later, maybe.” Hank took me back and showed me. I don’t know how to describe the walker wagon-maybe you’ve seen pictures since. If a centipede were a dinosaur and made of metal to boot, it would be a walker wagon. The body of it was a sort of trough and it was supported by thirty-eight legs, nineteen on a side.

“That,” I said, “is the craziest contraption I ever laid eyes on. You’ll never shove it out the door.”

“Wait until you see,” he advised. “And if you think this is crazy, you should see the other things in here.” “Such as?”

“Bill, you know what I think this place is? I think it’s a hangar for a space ship.”

“Huh? Don’t be silly; space ships don’t have hangars.”

“This one has.”

“You mean you sawa space ship in here?”

“Well, I don’t know. It’s not like any I ever saw before, but if it’s not a space ship, I don’t know what it is good for.” I wanted to go see, but Hank objected. “Another time, Bill; we’ve got to get back to camp. We’re late as it is.”

I didn’t put up any fight. My side was paining me again, from the walk. “Okay, what happens next?”

“Like this.” He led me around to the end of the contraption; the trough came nearly down to the floor in back. Hank helped me get inside, told me to lie down, and went up to the other end. ‘The guy that built this,” he said, “must have been a hump-backed midget with four arms. Hang on.”

“Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked.

“I moved it about six feet before; then I lost my nerve. Abracadabra! Hold onto your hat!” He poked a finger deep into a hole.

The thing began to move, silently, gently, without any fuss. When we came out into the sunshine, Hank pulled his finger out of the hole. I sat up. The thing was two thirds out of the cave and the front end was beyond the crystals.

I sighed. “You made it, Hank, Let’s get going. If I had some more ice on my side I think I could walk.” “Wait a second,” he said. “I want to try something. There are holes here I haven’t stuck a finger in yet.” “Leave well enough alone.”

Instead of answering he tried another hole. The machine backed up suddenly. “Woopsl” he said, jerked his finger out, and jabbed it back where it had been before. He left it there until he regained what we had lost.

He tried other holes more cautiously. At last he found one which caused the machine to rear up its front end slightly and swing it to the left, like a caterpillar. “Now we are in business,” he said happily. “I can steer it.” We started down the canyon.

Hank was not entirely correct in thinking he could guide it. It was more like guiding a horse than a machine–or perhaps more like guiding one of those new groundmobiles with the semi-automatic steering.

The walker wagon came to the little natural bridge of ice through which the crystals passed and stopped of itself. Hank tried to get it to go through the opening, which was large enough; it would have none of it. The front end cast around like a dog sniffing, then eased gradually up hill and around the ice.

It stayed level; apparently it could adjust its legs, like the fabulous hillside snee.

When Hank came to the ice flow we had crossed on the way up to the notch, he stopped it and gave me a fresh ice pack. Apparently it did not object to ice in itself, but simply refused to go through holes, for when we started up again, it crossed the little glacier, slowly and cautiously, but steadily.

We headed on toward camp. “This,” Hank announced happily, “is the greatest cross-country, rough-terrain vehicle ever built. I wish I knew what makes it go. If I had the patent on this thing, I’d be rich.”

“It’s yours; you found it.”

“It doesn’t really belong to me.”

“Hank,” I answered, “you don’t really think the owner is going to come back looking for it, do you?”

He got a very odd look. “No, I don’t, Bill. Say, Bill, uh, how long ago do you think this thing was put in there?”

“I wouldn’t even want to guess.”

There was only one tent at the camp site. As we came up to it, somebody came out and waited for us. It was Sergei. “Where have you guys been?” he asked. “And where in Kingdom Come did you steal that?

“And what is it?” he added.

We did our best to bring him up to date, and presently he did the same for us. They had searched for us as long as they could, then Paul had been forced to move back to camp number one to keep the date with the Jitterbug. He had left Sergei behind to fetch us when we showed up. “He left a note for you,” Sergei added, digging it out

It read:

“Dear Pen Pals,

I am sorry to go off and leave you crazy galoots but you know the schedule as well as I do. I would stay behind myself to herd you home, but your pal Sergei insists that it is his privilege. Every time I try to reason with him he crawls further back into his hole, bares his teeth, and growls.

As soon as you get this, get your chubby little legs to moving in the direction of camp number one. Run, do not walk. We’ll hold the Jitterbug, but you knowhowdear old Aunt Hattie feels about keeping her schedule. She isn’t going to like it if you are late.

When I see you, I intend to beat your ears down around your shoulders. Good luck,

P. du M.

P. S. to Doctor Slop: I took care of your accordion.”

When we had finished reading it Sergei said, “I want to hear more about what you found–about eight times more. But not now; we’ve got to tear over to camp number one. Hank, you think Bill can’t walk it?”

I answered for myself, an emphatic “no.” The excitement was wearing off and I was feeling worse again. “Hmm–Hank, do you think that mobile junk yard will carry us over there?”

“I think it will carry us any place.” Hank patted it. “How fast? The Jitterbug has already grounded.” “Are you sure?” asked Hank.

“I saw its trail in the sky at least three hours ago.” “Let’s get going!”

I don’t remember much about the trip. They stopped once in the pass, and packed me with ice again. The next thing I knew I was awakened by hearing Sergei shout, “There’s the Jitterbug! I can see it.”

“Jitterbug, here we come,” answered Hank. I sat up and looked, too.

We were coming down the slope, not five miles from it, when flame burst from its tail and it climbed for the sky. Hank groaned. I lay back down and closed my eyes.

I woke up again when the contraption stopped. Paul was there, hands on his hips, staring at us. “About time you birds got home,” he announced. “But where did you find that?“

“Paul,” Hank said urgently, “Bill is very sick.”

“Oh, oh!” Paul swung up and into the walker and made no more questions then. A moment later he had my belly bared and was shoving a thumb into that spot between the belly button and the hip bone. “Does that hurt?” he asked.

I was too weak to slug him. He gave me a pill.

I took no further part in events for a while, but what had happened was this: Captain Hattie had waited, at Paul’s urgent insistence, for a couple of hours, and then had announced that she had to blast. She had a schedule to keep with the Covered Wagon and she had no intention, she said, of keeping eight thousand people waiting for the benefit of two. Hank and I could play Indian if we liked; we couldn’t play hob with her schedule.

There was nothing Paul could do, so he sent the rest back and waited for us.

But I didn’t hear this at the time. I was vaguely aware that we were in the walker wagon, travelling, and I woke up twice when I was repacked with ice, but the whole episode is foggy. They travelled east, with Hank driving and Paul navigating–by the seat of his pants. Some long dreamy time later they reached a pioneer camp surveying a site over a hundred miles away–and from there Paul radioed for help.

Whereupon the Jitterbug came and got us. I remember the landing back at Leda–that is, I remember somebody saying, “Hurry, there! We’ve got a boy with a burst appendix.”

5. Home

There was considerable excitement over what we had found–and there still is–but I didn’t see any of it. I was busy playing games with the Pearly Gates. I guess I have Dr. Archibald to thank for still being here. And Hank. And Sergei. And Paul. And Captain Hattie. And some nameless party, who lived somewhere, a long time ago, whose shape and race I still don’t know, but who designed the perfect machine for traveling overland through rough country.

I thanked everybody but him. They all came to see me in the hospital, even Captain Hattie, who growled at me, then leaned over and kissed me on the cheek as she left. I was so surprised I almost bit her.

The Schultzes came, of course, and Mama cried over me and Papa gave me an apple and Gretchen could hardly talk, which isn’t like her. And Molly brought the twins down to see me and vice versa.

The Leda daily Planet interviewed me. They wanted to know whether or not we thought the things we found were made by men? Now that is a hard question to answer and smarter people than myself have worked on it since.

What is a man?

The things Hank and I–and the Project Jove scientists who went later–found in that cave couldn’t have been made by men–not men like us. The walker wagon was the simplest thing they found. Most of the things they still haven’t found out the use for. Nor have they figured out what the creatures looked like–no pictures.

That seems surprising, but the scientists concluded they didn’t have eyes–not eyes like ours, anyhow. So they didn’t use pictures.

The very notion of a “picture” seems pretty esoteric when you think it over. The Venetians don’t use pictures, nor the Martians. Maybe we are the only race in the universe that thought up that way of recording things.

So they weren’t “men”–not like us.

But they were men in the real sense of the word, even though I don’t doubt that I would run screaming away if I met one in a dark alley. The important thing, as Mr. Seymour would say, they had–they controlled their environment. They weren’t animals, pushed around and forced to accept what

nature handed them; they took nature and bent it to their will.

I guess they were men.

The crystals were one of the oddest things about it and I didn’t have any opinions on that. Somehow, those crystals were connected with that cave– or space ship hangar, or whatever it was. Yet they couldn’t or wouldn’t go inside the cave.

Here was another point that the follow-up party from Project Jove recorded: that big unwieldly walker wagon came all the way down that narrow canyon-yet it did not step on a single crystal. Hank must be a pretty good driver. He says he’s not that good.

Don’t ask me. I don’t understand everything that goes on in the universe. It’s a big place.

I had lots of time to think before they let me out of the hospital–and lots to think about. I thought about my coming trip to Earth, to go back to school I had missed the Covered Wagon, of course, but that didn’t mean anything; I could take the Mayflower three weeks later. But did I want to go? It was a close thing to decide.

One thing I was sure of: I was going to take those merit badge tests as soon as I was out of bed. I had put it off too long. A close brush with the hereafter reminds you that you don’t have forever to get things done.

But going back to school? That was another matter. For one thing, as Dad told me, the council had lost its suit with the Commission; Dad couldn’t use his Earthside assets.

And there was the matter that Paul had talked about the night he had to let his hair down–the coming war.

Did Paul know what he was talking about? If so, was I letting it scare me out? I honestly didn’t think so; Paul had said that it was not less than forty years away. I wouldn’t be Earthside more than four or five years–and, besides, how could you get scared of anything that far in the future?

I had been through the Quake and the reconstruction; I didn’t really think I’d ever be scared of anything again.

I had a private suspicion that, supposing there was a war, I’d go join up; I wouldn’t be running away from it. Silly, maybe.

No, I wasn’t afraid of the War, but it was on my mind. Why? I finally doped it out. When Paul called I asked him about it. “See here, Paul–this war you were talking about: when Ganymede reaches the state that Earth has gotten into, does that mean war here, too? Not now–a few centuries from now.”

He smiled rather sadly. “By then we may know enough to keep from getting into that shape. At least we can hope.” He got a far-away look and added, “A new colony is always a new hope.”

I liked that way of putting it. “A new hope–” Once I heard somebody call a new baby that.

I still didn’t have the answer about going back when Dad called on me one Sunday night. I put it up to him about the cost of the fare. “I know the land is technically mine, George–but it’s too much of a drain on you two.”

“Contrariwise,” said George, “well get by and that’s what savings are for. Molly is for it. We will be sending the twins back for school, you know.” “Even so, I don’t feel right about it. And what real use is there in it, George? I don’t need a fancy education. I’ve been thinking about Callisto: there’s

a brand new planet not touched yet with great opportunities for a man in on the ground floor. I could get a job with the atmosphere expedition–Paul

would put in a word for me–and grow up with the project. I might be chief engineer of the whole planet some day.”

“Not unless you learn more about thermodynamics than you do now, you won’t be!” “Huh?”

“Engineers don’t just ‘grow up’; they study. They go to school.”

“Don’t I study? Ain’t I attending two of your classes right now? I can get to be an engineer here; I don’t have to drag back half a billion miles for it.”

“Fiddlesticks! It takes discipline to study. You haven’t even taken your merit badge tests. You’ve let your Eagle Scoutship lapse.”

I wanted to explain that taking tests and studying for tests were two different things–that I had studied. But I couldn’t seem to phrase it right.

George stood up. “See here, Son, I’m going to put it to you straight. Never mind about being chief engineer of a planet; these days even a farmer needs the best education he can get. Without it he’s just a country bumpkin, a stumbling peasant, poking seeds into the ground and hoping a miracle will make them grow.

I want you to go back to Earth and get the best that Earth has to offer. I want you to have a degree with prestige behind it–M.I.T., Harvard, the Sorbonne. Some place noted for scholarship. Take the time to do that and then do anything you want to do. Believe me, it will pay.”

I thought about it and answered, “I guess you are right, George.”

Dad stood up. “Well, make up your mind. I’ll have to hurry now for the bus, or I’ll be hoofing it back to the farm. See you tomorrow.” “Good night, George.”

I lay awake and thought about it. After a while, Mrs. Dinsmore, the wing nurse, came in, turned out my light, and said goodnight. But I didn’t go to sleep.

Dad was right, I knew. I didn’t want to be an ignoramus. Furthermore, I had seen the advantage held by men with fancy degrees–first crack at the jobs, fast promotion. Okay, I’d get me one of those sheepskins, then come back and–well, go to Callisto, maybe, or perhaps prove a new parcel of land. I’d go and I’d come back.

Nevertheless I couldn’t get to sleep. After a while I glanced at my new watch and saw that it was nearly midnight–dawn in a few minutes. I decided that I wanted to see it It might be the last time I’d be up and around at midnight Sunday for a long, long time.

I scouted the corridor; Old Lady Dinsmore wasn’t in sight. I ducked outside.

The Sun was just barely below the horizon; north of me I could see its first rays touching the topmost antenna of the power station, miles away on Pride Peak. It was very still and very beautiful. Overhead old Jupiter was in half phase, bulging and orange and grand. To the west of it Io was just coming out of shadow; it passed from black to cherry red to orange as I watched.

I wondered how I would feel to be back on Earth? How would it feel to weigh three times as much as I did now? I didn’t feel heavy; I felt just right. How would it feel to swim in that thick dirty soup they use for air?

How would it feel to have nobody but ground hogs to talk to? How could I talk to a girl who wasn’t a colonial, who had never been off Earth higher than a copter hop? Sissies. Take Gretchen, now–there was a girl who could kill a chicken and have it in the pot while an Earthside girl would still be squealing.

The top of the Sun broke above the horizon and caught the snow on the peaks of the Big Rock Candy Mountains, tinting it rosy against a pale green sky. I began to be able to see the country around me. It was a new, hard, clean place–not like California with its fifty, sixty million people falling over each other. It was my kind’ of a place–it was my place.

The deuce with Caltech and Cambridge and those fancy schools! I’d show Dad it didn’t take ivied halls to get an education. Yes, and I’d pass those tests and be an Eagle again, first thing.

Hadn’t Andrew Johnson, that American President, learned to read while he was working? Even after he was married? Give us time; we’d have as good scientists and scholars here as anywhere.

The long slow dawn went on and the light caught Kneiper’s cut west of me, outlining it. I was reminded of the night we had struggled through it in the storm. As Hank put it, there was one good thing about colonial life–it sorted out the men from the boys.

“I have lived and worked with men.” The phrase rang through my head. Rhysling? Kipling, maybe. I had lived and worked with men!

The Sun was beginning to reach the roof tops. It spread across Laguna Serenidad, turning it from black to purple to blue. This was my planet, this

was my home and I knew that I would never leave it

Mrs. Dinsmore came bustling out to the door and spotted me. “Why, the very idea!” she scolded. “You get back where you belong!” I smiled at her. “I am where I belong. And I’m going to stay!”

The End

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Genesis Revisited (full text) by Zecharia Sitchin in free HTML

This is a complete reprint of the non-fiction work by Zecharia Sitchin titled “Genesis Revisited”. It is free here and provided in HTML for easy translation online for non-English speakers.

This work is part of a long series of books by this author. You can classify it as “speculative history”, as opposed to “established history”.

You see, Zecharia is a linguist that specialized in ancient languages. Certainly an odd-ball person, wouldn’t you think? And his specialty was ancient Sumeria. You know, the “birth place” of civilization. And the thing is, whenever he conducted his translations it was as if the ancient peoples were transcribing actual events, not recording tales and histories. And as such, these actual histories intrigued him.

For they described an extraterrestrial species that “grew” humans, adapted them, enslaved them, and then left and returned to their “home in the sky”.

To me, in my MAJestic role, it sounds a lot to me like they are describing the species that I refer to as the Type-1 greys.

And why mainstream science, and literature has scoffed and belittled his work. It just doesn’t match with their world narrative. You know the one where there is only one intelligent species; Man, and that we are the direct image of, and embodiment of God.

I do not know how accurate his conclusions are, or how precisely they fit within the world history as I know it to be. What I can say is that, taken as a whole, his work suggests extraterrestrial interaction with early humans. It is not to be discounted, as there are elements within his narrative that “ring true” for me.

And thus this volume is being reprinted herein.

About Zecharia Sitchin

Zecharia Sitchin is a researcher and author of (at least) 14 books that retell the history and prehistory of mankind.

Zecharia Sitchin has 76 books on Goodreads with 36910 ratings. Zecharia Sitchin’s most popular book is The 12th Planet (Earth Chronicles, #1).

He explains the prehistory of mankind by combining archaeology, the Bible, and ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts with the latest in scientific discoveries. This ranges from space exploration to biology.

Phew!

Being able to read millennia-old Sumerian cuneiform tablets, his writings treat ancient sources not as myth, but as records of actual events. The result is a saga of flesh and blood, astronauts, gods and Earthlings, and a chain of events from the past that leads to our contemporaneous modern lifestyle.

His Books

His books are divided into a number of “series”. The first is the “Earth Chronicles”.

The Earth Chronicles Series

The 12th Planet (1976)

This is the first volume of the series that puts forth the view that humanity was the creation of a group of aliens who came to Earth, some time between 450,000 BCE and 13,000 BCE. The book tells us how the aliens mixed their own DNA with that of the proto-humans to create a superior race of the Homo sapiens, to work for the mining enterprises they had set up on Earth.

The Stairway to Heaven (1980)

This second volume of the series ponders on the mystery of immortality. It seeks to unravel the secrets of alien landings on Earth, stating that the Anunnaki gods may have had a spaceport in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, where they frequently landed―”Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came.” He also puts forth a thought that the Pyramid of Giza may have been the Pharaoh’s entrance to the world of the immortal gods, which he aimed to enter in his afterlife.

The Wars of Gods and Men (1985)

Sitchin begins this volume by saying that the Sinai spaceport was destroyed by nuclear weapons some 4,000 years ago. The book goes on to describe the violent beginnings of humanity on Earth, and how these power conflicts had begun ages before on another planet. The volume takes references from ancient texts, and attempts to reconstruct epic events like The Great Flood.

The Lost Realms (1990)

Another well-researched volume in the series, The Lost Realms seeks to uncover the mysteries of ancient civilizations. The book describes how, in the 16th century, the Spaniards came to the New World in quest of the legendary City of Gold, El Dorado, and found instead, the most inexplicable ancient ruins in the most inaccessible of places. He further put forth the idea that the so-called pre-Columbian people―Mayans, Aztecs, Incans, etc.―might, in fact, have been the fabled Anunnaki.

When Time Began (1993)

Through this book, Sitchin attempts to draw correlations between the various events in several millennia, which helped shape the human civilization on Earth. He stresses on the idea that the human race has progressed and prospered with the help of ancient aliens, who left behind several impressive and imposing structures, which testify their genius to this day.

The Cosmic Code (1998)

Yet another engaging volume, The Cosmic Code delves in the idea that the human DNA, which was created by the ancient aliens, is in fact, a cosmic code that connects Man to God and the Earth to Heaven. He refers to writings on ancient prophesies, and proposes that this cosmic code is key to several secrets related to the celestial destiny of man.

The End of Days: Armageddon and Prophecies of the Return (2007)

In this last volume of the Earth Chronicles, Sitchin stresses on the idea that the past is very similar to the future. He attempts to put forth compelling evidence that the fate of man and that of our planet depends on a predetermined celestial time cycle, and if we understand the past properly, it is also possible to foretell the future.

The Companion Volumes

Genesis Revisited: Is Modern Science Catching Up With Ancient Knowledge? (1990)

Sitchin wrote this first companion volume to his Earth Chronicles series, in which he attempts to establish, in the light of ancient as well as modern evidence, that all the advances made by humans today were actually known to our ancestors, millions of years ago.

This is the volume and work that is reprinted in this post.

Divine Encounters: A Guide to Visions, Angels and Other Emissaries (1995)

This book seeks to tackle the issue of the possible links between humans and the so-called divine beings. Sitchin refers to several Biblical stories in his attempt to establish a probability of an interaction between Anunnaki and the humans, thus, also offering an explanation to the UFO sightings in recent years.

The Lost Book of Enki: Memoirs and Prophecies of an Extraterrestrial God (2001)

This companion volume attempts to reveal the actual identity of the Anunnaki―the first gods of mankind according to the Sumerian mythology. Sitchin has taken efforts to explain the reason behind the creation of humans, and the probable existence of the knowledge of genetic engineering, millions of years ago.

The Earth Chronicles Expeditions (2004)

This book is Zecharia Sitchin’s autobiographical account of his various expeditions to the ancient and relatively modern archaeological sites in quest of the probable connection between humans and extraterrestrials. He presents compelling evidence to state that ancient myths are, in fact, recollections of real events of the past. The book also contains many photographs from the author’s personal collection.

Journeys to the Mythical Past (2007)

A continuation of the earlier volume, The Earth Chronicles Expeditions, this book talks about some more investigations and discoveries of Sitchin, and how all these experiences inspired him to write his Earth Chronicles. This autobiographical account takes us to several interesting places right from Egypt to the Vatican to the Alps and Malta, and attempts to list some mind-stirring facts.

The Earth Chronicles Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Seven Books of The Earth Chronicles (2009)

This is an encyclopedic compilation that is meant to serve as a navigational tool for the entire Earth Chronicles series. This is a must-have volume, especially if you are reading the series without any background knowledge.

There Were Giants Upon the Earth: Gods, Demigods & Human Ancestry: The Evidence of Alien DNA (2010)

This volume attempts to present supporting evidence for the author’s assertion in the Earth Chronicles that the human DNA was genetically engineered by the aliens. In the light of ancient writings and artifacts, Sitchin not only tries to reveal the DNA source, but also to provide proof of alien presence on Earth millions of years ago.

The King Who Refused to Die: The Anunnaki and The Search for Immortality (2013)

This is the last book authored by Zecharia Sitchin, which attempts to reconstruct the famous epic of Gilgamesh in the wake of his own findings. The novel tells a tale of ancient Sumerian ceremonies, love and betrayal, gods among men, travels from one planet to the other, and the age-old thirst of humans for immortality. The book was published after Sitchin’s death.

A final word before we get to the book…

Though all of Zecharia Sitchin’s books are international bestsellers, it is worth pointing out that his research and ideas have been subject to some really serious criticisms. Most of his ideas have been completely dismissed by academics and scientists as pseudohistory and pseudoscience. Nevertheless, irrespective of whether they hold any truth or not, Sitchin’s books are most certainly quite engaging reads.

Note that all illustrations are not included herein. Sorry for that.

Genesis Revisited (full text)

FOREWORD

The last decades of the twentieth century have witnessed an upsurge of human knowledge that boggles the mind. Our ad- vances in every field of science and technology are no longer measured in centuries or even decades but in years and even months, and they seem to surpass in attainments and scope anything that Man has achieved in the past.

But is it possible that Mankind has come out of the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages; reached the Age of Enlightenment; experienced the Industrial Revolution; and entered the era of high-tech, genetic engineering, and space flight—only to catch up with ancient knowledge?

For many generations the Bible and its teachings have served as an anchor for a searching Mankind, but modern science appeared to have cast us ail adrift, especially in the confrontation between Evolution and Creationism. In this volume it will be shown that the conflict is baseless; that the Book of Genesis and its sources reflect the highest levels of scientific knowledge.

Is it possible, then, that what our civilization is discovering today about our planet Earth and about our corner of the uni- verse, the heavens, is only a drama that can be called “Genesis Revisited”—only a rediscovery of what had been known to a much earlier civilization, on Earth and on another planet?

The question is not one of mere scientific curiosity; it goes to the core of Mankind’s existence, its origin, and its destiny.

It involves the Earth’s future as a viable planet because it concerns events in Earth’s past; it deals with where we are going because it reveals where we have come from. And the answers, as we shall see, lead to inevitable conclusions that some consider too incredible to accept and others too awesome to face.

1

The Host of Heaven

In the beginning
God created the Heaven and the Earth.

The very concept of a beginning of all things is basic to modern astronomy and astrophysics. The statement that there was a void and chaos before there was order conforms to the very latest theories that chaos, not permanent stability, rules the universe. And then there is the statement about the bolt of light that began the process of creation.

Was this a reference to the Big Bang, the theory according to which the universe was created from a primordial explosion,

a burst of energy in the form of light, that sent the matter from which stars and planets and rocks and human beings are formed flying in all directions and creating the wonders we see in the heavens and on Earth? Some scientists, inspired by the insights of our most inspiring source, have thought so. But then, how did ancient Man know the Big Bang theory so long ago? Or ws this biblical tale the description of matters closer to home, of how our own little planet Earth and the heavenly zone called the Firmament, or “hammered-out bracelet,” were formed?

Indeed, how did ancient Man come to have a cosmogony at all? How much did he really know, and how did he know it?

It is only appropriate that we begin the quest for answers where the events began to unfold—in the heavens; where also, from time immemorial, Man has felt that his origins, higher values—God, if you will—are to be found. As thrilling as discoveries made by the use of microscopes are, it is what telescopes enable us to see that fills us with the realization of the grandeur of nature and the universe. Of all recent advances,

the most impressive have undoubtedly been the discoveries in the heavens surrounding our planet. And what staggering ad-

Figure I

vances they have been! In a mere few decades we Earthlings have soared off the face of our planet; roamed Earth’s skies hundreds of miles above its surface; landed on its solitary satellite, the Moon; and sent an array of unmanned spacecraft to probe our celestial neighbors, discovering vibrant and active worlds dazzling in their colors, features, makeup, satellites, rings. For the first time, perhaps, we can grasp the meaning and feel the scope of the Psalmist’s words:

The heavens bespeak the glory of the Lord and the vault of heaven reveals His handiwork.

A fantastic era of planetary exploration came to a magnificent climax when, in August 1989, the unmanned spacecraft des- ignated Voyager 2 flew by distant Neptune and sent back to Earth pictures and other data. Weighing just about a ton but ingeniously packed with television cameras, sensing and meas- uring equipment, a power source based on nuclear decay, trans- mitting antennas, and tiny computers (Fig. 1), it sent back whisperlike pulses that required more than four hours to reach Earth even at the speed of light. On Earth the pulses were captured by an array of radiotelescopes that form the Deep Space Network of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); then the faint signals were translated by electronic wizardry into photographs, charts, and other forms of data at the sophisticated facilities of the Jet Propulsion

Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which managed the project for NASA.

Launched in August 1977, twelve years before this final mission—the visit to Neptune—was accomplished. Voyager 2 and its companion. Voyager I, were originally intended to reach and scan only Jupiter and Saturn and augment data ob- tained earlier about those two gaseous giants by the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 unmanned spacecraft. But with remarkable ingenuity and skill, the JPL scientists and technicians took advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets and, using the gravitational forces of these planets as “slingshots,” man- aged to thrust Voyager 2 first from Saturn to Uranus and then from Uranus to Neptune (Fig. 2).

Figure 2

Thus it was that for several days at the end of August 1989, headlines concerning another world pushed aside the usual news of armed conflicts, political upheavals, sports results, and market reports that make up Mankind’s daily fare. For a few days the world we call Earth took time out to watch another world; we, Earthlings, were glued to our television sets, thrilled by closeup pictures of another planet, the one we call Neptune.

As the dazzling images of an aquamarine globe appeared on our television screens, the commentators stressed repeatedly that this was the first time that Man on Earth had ever really been able to see this planet, which even with the best Earth- based telescopes is visible only as a dimly lit spot in the dark- ness of space almost three billion miles from us. They reminded the viewers that Neptune was discovered only in 1846, after perturbations in the orbit of the somewhat nearer planet Uranus indicated the existence of another celestial body beyond it. They reminded us that no one before that—neither Sir Isaac Newton nor Johannes Kepler, who between them discovered and laid down the laws of celestial motion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; neither Copernicus, who in the six- teenth century determined that the Sun, not the Earth, was in the center of our planetary system, nor Galileo, who a century later used a telescope to announce that Jupiter had four moons—no great astronomer until the mid-nineteenth century and certainly no one in earlier times knew of Neptune. And thus not only the average TV viewer but the astronomers them- selves were about to see what had been unseen before—it would be the first time we would learn the true hues and makeup of Neptune.

But two months before the August encounter, I had written an article for a number of U. S., European, and South American monthlies contradicting these long-held notions: Neptune was known in antiquity, I wrote; and the discoveries that were about to be made would only confirm ancient knowledge. Neptune, I predicted, would be blue-green, watery, and have patches the color of “swamplike vegetation”!

The electronic signals from Voyager 2 confirmed all that and more. They revealed a beautiful blue-green, aquamarine planet embraced by an atmosphere of helium, hydrogen, and methane gases, swept by swirling, high-velocity winds that make Earth’s hurricanes look timid. Below this atmosphere there appear mysterious giant “smudges” whose coloration is sometimes darker blue and sometimes greenish yellow, perhaps depending on the angle at which sunlight strikes them. As expected, the atmospheric and surface temperatures are below freezing, but unexpectedly Neptune was found to emit heat that emanates from within the planet. Contrary to the previous consideration of Neptune as being a “gaseous” planet, it was determined by Voyager 2 to have a rocky core above which there floats, in the words of the JPL scientists, “a slurry mixture of water ice.” This watery layer, circling the rocky core as the planet revolves in its sixteen-hour day, acts as a dynamo that creates a sizable magnetic field.

This beautiful planet (see Neptune, back cover) was found to be encircled by several rings made up of boulders, rocks, and dust and is orbited by at least eight satellites, or moons. Of the latter, the largest, Triton, proved no less spectacular than its planetary master. Voyager 2 confirmed the retrograde mo- tion of this small celestial body (almost the size of Earth’s Moon): it orbits Neptune in a direction opposite to that of the coursing of Neptune and all other known planets in our Solar System, not anticlockwise as they do but clockwise. Besides its very existence, its approximate size, and its retrograde motion, astronomers knew nothing else of Triton. Voyager 2 revealed it to be a “blue moon,” an appearance resulting from methane in Triton’s atmosphere. The surface of Triton showed through the thin atmosphere—a pinkish gray surface with rugged, mountainous features on one side and smooth, almost craterless features on the other side. Close-up pictures suggested recent volcanic activity but of a very odd kind: what the active, hot interior of this celestial body spews out is not molten lava but jets of slushy ice. Even preliminary assessments indicated that Triton had flowing water in its past, quite possibly even lakes that may have existed on the surface until relatively recent times, in geological terms. The astronomers had no immediate explanation for “double-tracked ridge lines” that run straight for hundreds of miles and, at one or even two points, intersect at what appears to be right angles, suggesting rectangular areas (Fig. 3).

The discoveries thus fully confirmed my prediction: Neptune is indeed blue-green; it is made up in great part of water; and it does have patches whose coloration looks like “swamplike vegetation.” This last tantalizing aspect may bespeak more than a color code if the full implication of the discoveries on Triton is taken into consideration: there, “darker patches with brighter halos” have suggested to the scientists of NASA the existence of “deep pools of organic sludge.” Bob Davis re-

Figure 3

ported from Pasadena to The Wall Street Journal that Triton, whose atmosphere contains as much nitrogen as Earth’s, may be spewing out from its active volcanoes not only gases and water ice but also ‘”organic material, carbon-based compounds which apparently coat parts of Triton.”

Such gratifying and overwhelming corroboration of my prediction was not the result of a mere lucky guess. It goes back to 1976 when The 12th Planet, my first book in The Earth Chronicles series, was published. Basing my conclusions on millennia-old Sumerian texts, I had asked rhetorically: “When we probe Neptune someday, will we discover that its persistent association with waters is due to the watery swamps” that had once been seen there?

existence of “deep pools of organic sludge.” Bob Davis re-

Figure 3

Such gratifying and overwhelming corroboration of my pre- diction was not the result of a mere lucky guess. It goes back to 1976 when The 12th Planet, my first book in The Earth Chronicles series, was published. Basing my conclusions on millennia-old Sumerian texts, I had asked rhetorically: “When we probe Neptune someday, will we discover that its persistent association with waters is due to the watery swamps” that had once been seen there?

This was published, and obviously written, a year before Voyager 2 was even launched and was restated by me in an article two months before the Neptune encounter.

How could I be so sure, on the eve of Voyager’s encounter with Neptune, that my 1976 prediction would be corrobo- rated—how dared I take the chance that my predictions would be disproved within weeks after submitting my article? My certainty was based on what happened in January 1986, when Voyager 2 flew by the planet Uranus.

Although somewhat closer to us—Uranus is “only” about two billion miles away—it lies so far beyond Saturn that it cannot be seen from Earth with the naked eye. It was discovered in 1781 by Frederick Wilhelm Herschel, a musician turned amateur astronomer, only after the telescope was perfected. At the time of its discovery and to this day, Uranus has been hailed as the first planet known in antiquity to be discovered in modern times; for, it has been held, the ancient peoples knew of and venerated the Sun, the Moon, and only five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), which they believed moved around the Earth in the “vault of heaven”; nothing could be seen or known beyond Saturn.

But the very evidence gathered by Voyager 2 at Uranus proved the opposite: that at one time a certain ancient people did know about Uranus, and about Neptune, and even about the more-distant Pluto!

Scientists are still analyzing the photographs and data from Uranus and its amazing moons, seeking answers to endless

Plate A

puzzles. Why does Uranus lie on its side, as though it was hit by another large celestial object in a collision? Why do its winds blow in a retrograde direction, contrary to what is normal in the Solar System? Why is its temperature on the side that is hidden from the Sun the same as on the side facing the Sun? And what shaped the unusual features and formations on some of the Uranian moons? Especially intriguing is the moon called Miranda, “one of the most enigmatic objects in the Solar Sys-

Figure 4

tern,” in the words of NASA’s astronomers, where an elevated, flattened-out plateau is delineated by 100-mile-long escarpments that form a right angle (a feature nicknamed “the Chevron” by the astronomers), and where, on both sides of this plateau, there appear elliptical features that look like racetracks ploughed over by concentric furrows (Plate A and Fig. 4).

Two phenomena, however, stand out as the major discov- eries regarding Uranus, distinguishing it from other planets. One is its color. With the aid of Earth-based telescopes and

unmanned spacecraft we have become familiar with the gray- brown of Mercury, the sulphur-colored haze that envelops Ve- nus, the reddish Mars, the multihued red-brown-yellow Jupiter and Saturn. But as the breathtaking images of Uranus began to appear on television screens in January 1986, its most striking feature was its greenish blue color—a color totally different from that of all the previous planets seen (see Uranus, back cover).

The other different and unexpected finding had to do with what Uranus is made of. Defying earlier assumptions by astron- omers that Uranus is a totally “gaseous” planet like the giants Jupiter and Saturn, it was found by Voyager 2 to be covered not by gases but by water; not just a sheet of frozen ice on its surface but an ocean of water. A gaseous atmosphere, it was found, in- deed enshrouds the planet; but below it there churns an immense layer—6,000 miles thick!—of “super-heated water, its tempera- ture as high as 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit” (in the words of JPL analysts). This layer of liquid, hot water surrounds a molten rocky core where radioactive elements (or other, unknown pro- cesses) produce the immense internal heat.

As the images of Uranus grew bigger on the TV screen the closer Voyager 2 neared the planet, the moderator at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory drew attention to its unusual green-blue color. I could not help cry out loud, ‘ ‘Oh, my God, it is exactly as the Sumerians had described it!” I hurried to my study, picked up a copy of The 12th Planet, and with unsteady hands looked up page 269 (in the Avon paperback edition). I read again and again the lines quoting the ancient texts. Yes, there was no doubt: though they had no telescopes, the Sumerians had described Uranus as MASH.SIG, a term which I had trans- lated “bright greenish.”

A few days later came the results of the analysis of Voyager 2’s data, and the Sumerian reference to water on Uranus was also corroborated. Indeed, there appeared to be water all over the place: as reported on a wrap-up program on the television series NOVA (‘The Planet That Got Knocked on Its Side”), “Voyager 2 found that all the moons of Uranus are made up of rock and ordinary water ice” This abundance, or even the mere presence, of water on the supposed “gaseous” planets and their satellites at the edges of the Solar System was totally unexpected.

Yet here we had the evidence, presented in The 12th Planet, that in their texts from millennia ago the ancient Sumerians had not only known of the existence of Uranus but had ac- curately described it as greenish blue and watery!

What did all that mean? It meant that in 1986 modern science did not discover what had been unknown; rather, it rediscov- ered and caught up with ancient knowledge. It was, therefore, because of that 1986 corroboration of my 1976 writings and thus of the veracity of the Sumerian texts that I felt confident enough to predict, on the eve of the Voyager 2 encounter with Neptune, what it would discover there.

The Voyager 2 flybys of Uranus and Neptune had thus con- firmed not only ancient knowledge regarding the very existence of these two outer planets but also crucial details regarding them. The 1989 flyby of Neptune provided still more corroboration of the ancient texts. In them, Neptune was listed before Uranus, as would be expected of someone who is coming into the Solar System and sees first Pluto, then Neptune, and then Uranus. In these texts or planetary lists Uranus was called Kakkab shanamma, “Planet Which Is the Double” of Neptune. The Voyager 2 data goes far to uphold this ancient notion.

Uranus is indeed a look-alike of Neptune in size, color, and watery content; both planets are encircled by rings and orbited by a multitude of satellites, or moons. An unexpected similarity has been found regarding the two planets’ magnetic fields: both have an unusually extreme inclination relative to the planets’ axes of rotation—58 degrees on Uranus, 50 degrees on Neptune. “Neptune appears to be almost a magnetic twin of Uranus,” John Noble Wilford reported in The New York Times. The two planets are also similar in the lengths of their days: each about sixteen to seventeen hours long.

The ferocious winds on Neptune and the water ice slurry layer on its surface attest to the great internal heat it generates,like that of Uranus. In fact, the reports from JPL state that initial temperature readings indicated that “Neptune’s temperatures are similar to those of Uranus, which is more than a billion miles closer to the Sun.” Therefore, the scientists assumed “that Neptune somehow is generating more of its internal heat than Uranus does”—somehow compensating for its greater distance from the Sun to attain the same temperatures as Uranus generates, resulting in similar temperatures on both planets—and thus adding one more feature “to the size and other characteristics that make Uranus a near twin of Neptune.”

“Planet which is the double,” the Sumerians said of Uranus in comparing it to Neptune. “Size and other characteristics that make Uranus a near twin of Neptune,” NASA’s scientists announced. Not only the described characteristics but even the terminology—”planet which is the double,” “a near twin of Neptune”—is similar. But one statement, the Sumerian one, was made circa 4,000 B.C., and the other, by NASA, in AD . 1989, nearly 6,000 years later. . . .

In the case of these two distant planets, it seems that modern science has only caught up with ancient knowledge. It sounds incredible, but the facts ought to speak for themselves. More- over, this is just the first of a series of scientific discoveries in the years since The 12th Planet was published that corroborate its findings in one instance after another.

Those who have read my books (The Stairway to Heaven, The Wars of Gods and Men, and The Lost Realms followed the first one) know that they are based, first and foremost, on the knowledge bequeathed to us by the Sumerians.

Theirs was the first known civilization. Appearing suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere some 6,000 years ago, it is credited with virtually all the “firsts” of a high civilization: inventions and innovations, concepts and beliefs, which form the foundation of our own Western culture and indeed of all other civilizations and cultures throughout the Earth. The wheel and animal-drawn vehicles, boats for rivers and ships for seas, the kiln and the brick, high-rise buildings, writing and schools and scribes, laws and judges and juries, kingship and citizens’ councils, music and dance and art, medicine and chemistry, weaving and textiles, religion and priesthoods and temples— they all began there, in Sumer, a country in the southern part of today’s Iraq, located in ancient Mesopotamia. Above all, knowledge of mathematics and astronomy began there.

Indeed, all the basic elements of modern astronomy are of Sumerian origin: the concept of a celestial sphere, of a horizon and a zenith, of the circle’s division into 360 degrees, of a celestial band in which the planets orbit the Sun, of grouping stars into constellations and giving them the names and pictorial images that we call the zodiac, of applying the number 12 to this zodiac and to the divisions of time, and of devising a calendar that has been the basis of calendars to this very day. All that and much, much more began in Sumer.

Figure 5

The Sumerians recorded their commercial and legal transactions, their tales and their histories, on clay tablets (Fig. 5a); they drew their illustrations on cylinder seals on which the depiction was carved in reverse, as a negative, that appeared as a positive when the seal was rolled on wet clay (Fig. 5b). In the ruins of Sumerian cities excavated by archaeologists in the past century and a half, hundreds, if not thousands, of the texts and illustrations that were found dealt with astronomy. Among them are lists of stars and constellations in their correct heavenly locations and manuals for observing the rising and setting of stars and planets. There are texts specifically dealing with the Solar System. There are texts among the unearthed tablets that list the planets orbiting the Sun in their correct order; one text even gives the distances between the planets. And there are illustrations on cylinder seals depicting the Solar System, as the one shown in Plate B that is at least 4,500 years old and that is now kept in the Near Eastern Section of the State Museum in East Berlin, catalogued under number VA/243.

If we sketch the illustration appearing in the upper left-hand comer of the Sumerian depiction (Fig. 6a) we see a complete Solar System in which the Sun (not Earth!) is in the center,

Plate B

orbited by all the planets we know of today. This becomes clear when we draw these known planets around the Sun in their correct relative sizes and order (Fig. 6b). The similarity between the ancient depiction and the current one is striking; it leaves no doubt that the twinlike Uranus and Neptune were known in antiquity.

The Sumerian depiction also reveals, however, some differences. These are not artist’s errors or misinformation; on the contrary, the differences—two of them—are very significant.

The first difference concerns Pluto. It has a very odd orbit— too inclined to the common plane (called the Ecliptic) in which the planets orbit the Sun, and so elliptical that Pluto sometimes (as at present and until 1999) finds itself not farther but closer to the Sun than Neptune. Astronomers have therefore speculated, ever since its discovery in 1930, that Pluto was originally a satellite of another planet; the usual assumption is that it was a moon of Neptune that “somehow”—no one can figure out how—got torn away from its attachment to Neptune and attained its independent (though bizarre) orbit around the Sun.

This is confirmed by the ancient depiction, but with a significant difference. In the Sumerian depiction Pluto is shown not near Neptune but between Saturn and Uranus. And Sumerian cosmological texts, with which we shall deal at length, relate that Pluto was a satellite of Saturn that was let loose to

eventually attain its own “destiny”—its independent orbit around the Sun.

The ancient explanation regarding the origin of Pluto reveals not just factual knowledge but also great sophistication in matters celestial. It involves an understanding of the complex forces that have shaped the Solar System, as well as the development of astrophysical theories by which moons can be- come planets or planets in the making can fail and remain moons. Pluto, according to Sumerian cosmogony, made it; our Moon, which was in the process of becoming an independent planet, was prevented by celestial events from attaining the independent status.

Modern astronomers moved from speculation to the convic- tion that such a process has indeed occurred in our Solar System only after observations by the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft determined in the past decade that Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, was a planet-in-the-making whose detachment from Saturn was not completed. The discoveries at Neptune rein- forced the opposite speculation regarding Triton, Neptune’s moon that is just 400 miles smaller in diameter than Earth’s Moon. Its peculiar orbit, its volcanism, and other unexpected features have suggested to the JPL scientists, in the words of the Voyager project’s chief scientist Edward Stone, that “Tri- ton may have been an object sailing through the Solar System several billion years ago when it strayed too close to Neptune, came under its gravitational influence and started orbiting the planet.”

How far is this hypothesis from the Sumerian notion that planetary moons could become planets, shift celestial positions, or fail to attain independent orbits? Indeed, as we continue to expound the Sumerian cosmogony, it will become evident that not only is much of modern discovery merely a rediscovery of ancient knowledge but that ancient knowledge offered expla- nations for many phenomena that modern science has yet to figure out.

Even at the outset, before the rest of the evidence in support of this statement is presented, the question inevitably arises: How on Earth could the Sumerians have known all that so long ago, at the dawn of civilization?

The answer lies in the second difference between the Sumerian depiction of the Solar System (Fig. 6a) and our present knowledge of it (Fig. 6b). It is the inclusion of a large planet in the empty space between Mars and Jupiter. We are not aware of any such planet; but the Sumerian cosmological, astronomical, and historical texts insist that there indeed exists one more planet in our Solar System—its twelfth member: they included the Sun, the Moon (which they counted as a celestial body in its own right for reasons stated in the texts), and ten, not nine, planets. It was the realization that a planet the Sumerian texts called NIBIRU (“Planet of the Crossing”) was neither Mars nor Jupiter, as some scholars have debated, but another planet that passes between them every 3,600 years that gave rise to my first book’s title, The 12th Planet—the planet which is the “twelfth member” of the Solar System (although technically it is, as a planet, only the tenth).

It was from that planet, the Sumerian texts repeatedly and persistently stated, that the ANUNNAKI came to Earth. The term literally means “Those Who from Heaven to Earth Came.” They are spoken of in the Bible as the Anakim, and in Chapter 6 of Genesis are also called Nefilim, which in He- brew means the same thing: Those Who Have Come Down, from the Heavens to Earth.

And it was from the Anunnaki, the Sumerians explained— as though they had anticipated our questions—that they had learnt all they knew. The advanced knowledge we find in Sumerian texts is thus, in effect, knowledge that was possessed by the Anunnaki who had come from Nibiru; and theirs must have been a very advanced civilization, because as I have surmised from the Sumerian texts, the Anunnaki came to Earth about 445,000 years ago. Way back then they could already travel in space. Their vast elliptical orbit made a loop—this is the exact translation of the Sumerian term—around all the outer planets, acting as a moving observatory from which the Anunnaki could investigate all those planets. No wonder that what we are discovering now was already known in Sumerian times.

Why anyone would bother to come to this speck of matter we call Earth, not by accident, not by chance, not once but repeatedly, every 3,600 years, is a question the Sumerian texts have answered. On their planet Nibiru, the Anunnaki/Nefilim were facing a situation we on Earth may also soon face: ecological deterioration was making life increasingly impossible. There was a need to protect their dwindling atmosphere, and the only solution seemed to be to suspend gold particles above it, as a shield. (Windows on American spacecraft, for example, are coated with a thin layer of gold to shield the astronauts from radiation). This rare metal had been discovered by the Anunnaki on what they called the Seventh Planet (counting from the outside inward), and they launched Mission Earth to obtain it. At first they tried to obtain it effortlessly, from the waters of the Persian Gulf; but when that failed, they embarked on toilsome mining operations in southeastern Africa.

Some 300,000 years ago, the Anunnaki assigned to the African mines mutinied. It was then that the chief scientist and the chief medical officer of the Anunnaki used genetic manipulation and in-vitro fertilization techniques to create “primitive workers”—the first Homo sapiens to take over the backbreaking toil in the gold mines.

The Sumerian texts that describe all these events and their condensed version in the Book of Genesis have been extensively dealt with in The 12th Planet. The scientific aspects of those developments and of the techniques employed by the Anunnaki are the subject of this book. Modern science, it will be shown, is blazing an amazing track of scientific advances— but the road to the future is replete with signposts, knowledge, and advances from the past. The Anunnaki, it will be shown, have been there before; and as the relationship between them and the beings they had created changed, as they decided to give Mankind civilization, they imparted to us some of their knowledge and the ability to make our own scientific advances.

Among the scientific advances that will be discussed in the ensuing chapters will also be the mounting evidence for the existence of Nibiru. If it were not for The 12th Planet, the discovery of Nibiru would be a great event in astronomy but no more significant for our daily lives than, say, the discovery in 1930 of Pluto. It was nice to learn that the Solar System has one more planet “out there,” and it would be equally gratifying to confirm that the planetary count is not nine but ten; that would especially please astrologers, who need twelve celestial bodies and not just eleven for the twelve houses of the zodiac.

But after the publication of The 12th Planet and the evidence therein—which has not been refuted since its first printing in 1976—and the evidence provided by scientific advances since then, the discovery of Nibiru cannot remain just a matter in- volving textbooks on astronomy. If what I have written is so—

if, in other words, the Sumerians were correct in what they were recording—the discovery of Nibiru would mean not only that there is one more planet out there but that there is Life out there. Moreover, it would confirm that there are intelligent beings out there—people who were so advanced that, almost half a million years ago, they could travel in space; people who were coming and going between their planet and Earth every 3,600 years.

It is who is out there on Nibiru, and not just its existence, that is bound to shake existing political, religious, social, economic, and military orders on Earth. What will the repercussions be when—not if—Nibiru is found?

It is a question, believe it or not, that is already being pondered.

GOLD MINING—HOW LONG AGO?

Is there evidence that mining took place, in southern Africa, during the Old Stone Age? Archaeological studies indicate that it indeed was so.

Realizing that sites of abandoned ancient mines may in- dicate where gold could be found, South Africa’s leading mining corporation, the Anglo-American Corporation, in the 1970s engaged archaeologists to look for such ancient mines. Published reports (in the corporation’s journal Op- tima) detail the discovery in Swaziland and other sites in South Africa of extensive mining areas with shafts to depths of fifty feet. Stone objects and charcoal remains established dates of 35,000, 46,000, and 60,000 B.C. for these sites. The archaeologists and anthropologists who joined in dating the finds believed that mining technology was used in south- ern Africa “during much of the period subsequent to 100,000 B.C.”

In September 1988, a team of international physicists came to South Africa to verify the age of human habitats in Swaziland and Zululand. The most modern techniques indicated an age of 80,000 to 115,000 years.

Regarding the most ancient gold mines of Monotapa in southern Zimbabwe, Zulu legends hold that they were worked by “artificially produced flesh and blood slaves created by the First People.” These slaves, the Zulu legends recount, “went into battle with the Ape-Man” when “the great war star appeared in the sky” (see Indaba My Chil- dren, by the Zulu medicine man Credo Vusamazulu Mu- twa).

2

IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE

“It was Voyager [project] that focused our attention on the importance of collisions,” acknowledged Edward Stone of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the chief scientist of the Voyager program. “The cosmic crashes were potent sculptors of the Solar System.”

The Sumerians made clear, 6,000 years earlier, the very same fact. Central to their cosmogony, world view, and religion was a cataclysmic event that they called the Celestial Battle.

It was an event to which references were made in miscellaneous Sumerian texts, hymns, and proverbs—just as we find in the Bible’s books of Psalms, Proverbs, Job, and various others. But the Sumerians also described the event in detail, step by step, in a long text that required seven tablets. Of its Sumerian original only fragments and quotations have been found; the mostly complete text has reached us in the Akkadian language, the language of the Assyrians and Babylonians who followed the Sumerians in Mesopotamia. The text deals with the formation of the Solar System prior to the Celestial Battle and even more so with the nature, causes, and results of that awe- some collision. And, with a single cosmogonic premise, it explains puzzles that still baffle our astronomers and astro- physicists.

Even more important, whenever these modern scientists have come upon a satisfactory answer—it fits and corroborates the Sumerian one!

Until the Voyager discoveries, the prevailing scientific view point considered the Solar System as we see it today as the way it had taken shape soon after its beginning, formed by immutable laws of celestial motion and the force of gravity. There have been oddballs, to be sure—meteorites that come from somewhere and collide with the stable members of the Solar System, pockmarking them with craters, and comets that zoom about in greatly elongated orbits, appearing from some- where and disappearing, it seems, to nowhere. But these examples of cosmic debris, it has been assumed, go back to the very beginning of the Solar System, some 4.5 billion years ago, and are pieces of planetary matter that failed to be incorporated into the planets or their moons and rings. A little more baffling has been the asteroid belt, a band of rocks that forms an orbiting chain between Mars and Jupiter. According to Bode’s law, an empirical rule that explains why the planets formed where they did, there should have been a planet, at least twice the size of Earth, between Mars and Jupiter. Is the orbiting debris of the asteroid belt the remains of such a planet? The affirmative answer is plagued by two problems: the total amount of matter in the asteroid belt does not add up to the mass of such a planet, and there is no plausible explanation for what might have caused the breakup of such a hypothetical

Figure 7

celestial collision—when, with what, and why? The scientists had no answer.

The realization that there had to be one or more major col- lisions that changed the Solar System from its initial form became inescapable after the Uranus flyby in 1986, as Dr. Stone has admitted. That Uranus was lilted on its side was already known from telescopic and other instrumental obser- vations even before the Voyager encounter. But was it formed that way from the very beginning, or did some external force— a forceful collision or encounter with another major celestial body—bring about the tilting?

The answer had to be provided by the closeup examination of the moons of Uranus by Voyager 2. The fact that these moons swirl around the equator of Uranus in its tilted position—forming, all together, a kind of bull’s-eye facing the Sun (Fig. 7)—made scientists wonder whether these moons were there at the time of the tilting event, or whether they formed after the event, perhaps from matter thrown out by the force of the collision that tilted Uranus.

The theoretical basis for the answer was enunciated, prior to the encounter with Uranus, among others by Dr. Christian Veillet of the French Centre d’Etudes et des Recherches Geo- dynamiques. If the moons formed at the same time as Uranus, the celestial “raw material” from which they agglomerated should have condensed the heavier matter nearer the planet; there should be more of heavier, rocky material and thinner

ice coats on the inner moons and a lighter combination of materials (more water ice, less rocks) on the outer moons. By the same principle of the distribution of material in the Solar System—a larger proportion of heavier matter nearer the Sun, more of the lighter matter (in a “gaseous” state) farther out— the moons of the more distant Uranus should be proportionately lighter than those of the nearer Saturn.

But the findings revealed a situation contrary to these expectations. In the comprehensive summary reports on the Uranus encounter, published in Science, July 4, 1986, a team of forty scientists concluded that the densities of the Uranus moons (except for that of the moon Miranda)’ ‘are significantly heavier than those of the icy satellites of Saturn.” Likewise, the Voyager 2 data showed—again contrary to what “should have been”—that the two larger inner moons of Uranus, Ariel and Umbriel, are lighter in composition (thick, icy layers; small, rocky cores) than the outer moons Titania and Oberon, which were discovered to be made mostly of heavy rocky material and had only thin coats of ice.

These findings by Voyager 2 were not the only clues sug- gesting that the moons of Uranus were not formed at the same time as the planet itself but rather some lime later, in unusual circumstances. Another discovery that puzzled the scientists was that the rings of Uranus were pitch-black, “blacker than coal dust,” presumably composed of “carbon-rich material, a sort of primordial tar scavenged from outer space” (the em- phasis is mine). These dark rings, warped, tilted, and “bi- zarrely elliptical,” were quite unlike the symmetrical bracelets of icy particles circling Saturn. Pitch-black also were six of the new moonlets discovered at Uranus, some acting as “shepherds” for the rings. The obvious conclusion was that the rings and moonlets were formed from the debris of a “violent event in Uranus’s past.” Assistant project scientist at JPL Ellis Miner stated it in simpler words: “A likely possibility is that an interloper from outside the Uranus system came in and struck a once larger moon sufficiently hard to have fractured it.”

The theory of a catastrophic celestial collision as the event that could explain all the odd phenomena on Uranus and its moons and rings was further strengthened by the discovery that the boulder-size black debris that forms the Uranus rings circles the planet once every eight hours—a speed that is twice the speed of the planet’s own revolution around its axis. This raises the question, how was this much-higher speed imparted to the debris in the rings?

Based on all the preceding data, the probability of a celestial collision emerged as the only plausible answer. “We must take into account the strong possibility that satellite formation con- ditions were affected by the event that created Uranus’s large obliquity,” the forty-strong team of scientists stated. In simpler words, it means that in all probability the moons in question were created as a result of the collision that knocked Uranus on its side. In press conferences the NASA scientists were more audacious. “A collision with something the size of Earth, traveling at about 40,000 miles per hour, could have done it,”they said, speculating that it probably happened about four billion years ago.

Astronomer Garry Hunt of the Imperial College, London, summed it up in seven words: “Uranus took an almighty bang early on.”

But neither in the verbal briefings nor in the long written reports was an attempt made to suggest what the “something” was, where it had come from, and how it happened to collide with, or bang into, Uranus.

For those answers, we will have to go back to the Sumerians… .

Before we turn from knowledge acquired in the late 1970s and 1980s to what was known 6,000 years earlier, one more aspect of the puzzle should be looked into: Are the oddities at Neptune the result of collisions, or ‘ ‘bangs,” unrelated to those of Uranus—or were they all the result of a single catastrophic event that affected all the outer planets?

Before the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune, the planet was known to have only two satellites, Nereid and Triton. Nereid was found to have a peculiar orbit: it was unusually tilted compared with the planet’s equatorial plane (as much as 28 degrees) and was very eccentric—orbiting the planet not in a near-circular path but in a very elongated one, which takes the moon as far as six million miles from Neptune and as close as one million miles to the planet. Nereid, although of a size that by planetary-formation rules should be spherical, has an odd shape like that of a twisted doughnut. It also is bright on one side and pitch-black on the other. All these peculiarities have led Martha W. Schaefer and Bradley E. Schaefer, in a major study on the subject published in Nature magazine (June 2, 1987) to conclude that “Nereid accreted into a moon around Neptune or another planet and that both it and Triton were knocked into their peculiar orbits by some large body or planet.” “Imagine,” Brad Schaefer noted, “that at one time Neptune had an ordinary satellite system like that of Jupiter or Saturn; then some massive body comes into the system and perturbs things a lot.”

The dark material that shows up on one side of Nereid could be explained in one of two ways—but both require a collision in the scenario. Either an impact on one side of the satellite swept off an existing darker layer there, uncovering lighter material below the surface, or the dark matter belonged to the impacting body and “went splat on one side of Nereid.” That the latter possibility is the more plausible is suggested by the discovery, announced by the JPL team on August 29, 1989, that all the new satellites (six more) found by Voyager 2 at Neptune “are very dark” and “all have irregular shapes,” even the moon designated 1989N1, whose size normally would have made it spherical.

The theories regarding Triton and its elongated and retro- grade (clockwise) orbit around Neptune also call for a collision event.

Writing in the highly prestigious magazine Science on the eve of the Voyager 2 encounter with Neptune, a team of Caltech scientists (P. Goldberg, N. Murray. P. Y. Longaretti, and D. Banfield) postulated that “Triton was captured from a heliocentric orbit”—from an orbit around the Sun—”as a result of a collision with what was then one of Neptune’s regular satellites.” In this scenario the original small Neptune satellite “would have been devoured by Triton,” but the force of the collision would have been such that it dissipated enough of Triton’s orbital energy to slow it down and be captured by Neptune’s gravity. Another theory, according to which Triton was an original satellite of Neptune, was shown by this study to be faulty and unable to withstand critical analysis.

The data collected by Voyager 2 from the actual flyby of Triton supported this theoretical conclusion. It also was in accord with other studies (as by David Stevenson of Caltech) that showed that Triton’s internal heat and surface features could be explained only in terms of a collision in which Triton was captured into orbit around Neptune.

“Where did these impacting bodies come from?” rhetori- cally asked Gene Shoemaker, one of NASA’s scientists, on the NOVA television program. But the question was left with- out an answer. Unanswered too was the question of whether the cataclysms at Uranus and Neptune were aspects of a single event or were unconnected incidents.

It is not ironic but gratifying to find that the answers to all these puzzles were provided by the ancient Sumerian texts.

and that all the data discovered or confirmed by the Voyager flights uphold and corroborate the Sumerian information and my presentation and interpretation thereof in The 12th Planet. The Sumerian texts speak of a single but comprehensive event. Their texts explain more than what modern astronomers have been trying to explain regarding the outer planets. The ancient texts also explain matters closer to home, such as the origin of the Earth and its Moon, of the Asteroid Belt and the comets. The texts then go on to relate a tale that combines the credo of the Creationists with the theory of Evolution, a tale that offers a more successful explanation than either mod- ern conception of what happened on Earth and how Man and his civilization came about.

It all began, the Sumerian texts relate, when the Solar System was still young. The Sun (APSU in the Sumerian texts, mean- ing “One Who Exists from the Beginning”), its little com- panion MUM. MU (” One Who Was Born,” our Mercury) and farther away TI.AMAT (“Maiden of Life”) were the first members of the Solar System; it gradually expanded by the “birth” of three planetary pairs, the planets we call Venus and Mars between Mummu and Tiamat, the giant pair Jupiter and Saturn (to use their modern names) beyond Tiamat, and Uranus and Neptune farther out (Fig. 8).

Into this original Solar System, still unstable soon after its formation (I estimated the time about four billion years ago), an Invader appeared. The Sumerians called it NIBIRU; the Babylonians renamed it Marduk in honor of their national god. It appeared from outer space, from “the Deep,” in the words of the ancient text. But as it approached the outer planets of our Solar System, it began to be drawn into it. As expected, the first outer planet to attract Nibiru with its gravitational pull was Neptune—E.A (“He Whose House Is Water”) in Sumerian. “He who begot him was Ea,” the ancient text explained.

Nibiru/Marduk itself was a sight to behold; alluring, spar- kling, lofty, lordly are some of the adjectives used to describe it. Sparks and flashes bolted from it to Neptune and Uranus as it passed near them. It might have arrived with its own satellites already orbiting it, or it might have acquired some as a result

Figure 8

of the gravitational pull of the outer planets. The ancient text speaks of its “perfect members. . .difficult to perceive”— “four were his eyes, four were his ears.”

As it passed near Ea/Neptune, Nibiru/Marduk’s side began to bulge “as though he had a second head.” Was it then that the bulge was torn away to become Neptune’s moon Tri- ton? One aspect thai speaks strongly for this is the fact that Nibiru/Marduk entered the Solar System in a retrograde (clock- wise) orbit, counter to that of the other planets (Fig. 9). Only

Figure 9

this Sumerian detail, according to which the invading planet was moving counter to the orbital motion of all the other planets, can explain the retrograde motion of Triton, the highly elliptical orbits of other satellites and comets, and the other major events that we have yet to tackle.

More satellites were created as Nibiru/Marduk passed by Anu/Uranus. Describing this passing of Uranus, the text states that “Anu brought forth and begot the four winds”—as clear a reference as one could hope for to the four major moons of Uranus that were formed, we now know, only during the col- lision that tilted Uranus. At the same time we learn from a later passage in the ancient text that Nibiru/Marduk himself gained three satellites as a result of this encounter.

Although the Sumerian texts describe how, after its eventual capture into solar orbit, Nibiru/Marduk revisited the outer planets and eventually shaped them into the system as we know it today, the very first encounter already explains the various puzzles that modern astronomy faced or still faces regarding Neptune, Uranus, their moons, and their rings.

Past Neptune and Uranus, Nibiru/Marduk was drawn even more into the midst of the planetary system as it reached the immense gravitational pulls of Saturn (AN.SHAR, “Foremost of the Heavens”) and Jupiter (KI.SHAR, “Foremost of the Firm Lands”). As Nibiru/Marduk “approached and stood as

though in combat” near Anshar/Saturn, the two planets “kissed their lips.” It was then that the “destiny,” the orbital path, of Nibiru/Marduk was changed forever. It was also then that the chief satellite of Saturn, GA.GA (the eventual Pluto), was pulled away in the direction of Mars and Venus—a di- rection possible only by the retrograde force of Nibiru/Marduk. Making a vast elliptical orbit, Gaga eventually returned to the outermost reaches of the Solar System. There it “addressed” Neptune and Uranus as it passed their orbits on the swing back. It was the beginning of the process by which Gaga was to become our Pluto, with its inclined and peculiar orbit that sometimes takes it between Neptune and Uranus.

The new “destiny,” or orbital path, of Nibiru/Marduk was now irrevocably set toward the olden planet Tiamat. At that time, relatively early in the formation of the Solar System, it was marked by instability, especially (we learn from the text) in the region of Tiamat. While other planets nearby were still wobbling in their orbits, Tiamat was pulled in many directions by the two giants beyond her and the two smaller planets between her and the Sun. One result was the tearing off her, or the gathering around her, of a “host” of satellites “furious with rage,” in the poetic language of the text (named by schol- ars the Epic of Creation). These satellites, “roaring monsters,” were “clothed with terror” and “crowned with halos,” swirl- ing furiously about and orbiting as though they were “celestial gods”—planets.

Most dangerous to the stability or safety of the other planets was Tiamat’s “leader of the host,” a large satellite that grew to almost planetary size and was about to attain its independent “destiny”—its own orbit around the Sun. Tiamat “cast a spell for him, to sit among the celestial gods she exalted him.” It was called in Sumerian KIN.GU—”Great Emissary.”

Now the text raised the curtain on the unfolding drama; I have recounted it, step by step, in The 12th Planet. As in a Greek tragedy, the ensuing “celestial battle” was unavoidable as gravitational and magnetic forces came inexorably into play, leading to the collision between the oncoming Nibiru/Marduk with its seven satellites (“winds” in the ancient text) and

Tiamat and its “host” of eleven satellites headed by Kingu.

Although they were headed on a collision course, Tiamat orbiting counterclockwise and Nibiru/Marduk clockwise, the

Figure 10

two planets did not collide—a fact of cardinal astronomical importance. It was the satellites, or “winds,” (literal Sumerian meaning: “Those that are by the side”) of Nibiru/Marduk that smashed into Tiatnat and collided with her satellites.

In the first such encounter (Fig. 10), the first phase of the Celestial Battle,

The four winds he stationed that nothing of her could escape: 

The South Wind, the North Wind, the East Wind, the West Wind. 
Close to his side he held the net,the gift of his grandfather Anu who brought forth the Evil Wind, the Whirlwind and the Hurricane. . . .

He sent forth the winds which he had created, the seven of them; to trouble Tiamat within they rose up behind him.

These “winds,” or satellites, of Nibiru/Marduk, “the seven of them,” were the principal “weapons” with which Tiamat was attacked in the first phase of the Celestial Battle (Fig. 10). But the invading planet had other “weapons” too:

In front of him he set the lightning, with a blazing flame he filled his body;

He then made a net to enfold Tiamat therein. . . .

A fearsome halo his head was turbaned.

He was wrapped with awesome terror as with a cloak.

As the two planets and their hosts of satellites came close enough for Nibiru/Marduk to “scan the inside of Tiamat” and ‘ ‘perceive the scheme of Kingu,” Nibiru/ Marduk attacked Tia- mat with his “net” (magnetic field?) to “enfold her,” shooting at the old planet immense bolts of electricity (“divine light- nings”). Tiamat “was filled with brilliance”—slowing down, heating up, “becoming distended.” Wide gaps opened in its crust, perhaps emitting steam and volcanic matter. Into one widening fissure Nibiru/Marduk thrust one of its main satel- lites, the one called “Evil Wind.” It tore Tiamat’s “belly, cut through her insides, splitting her heart.”

Besides splitting up Tiamat and “extinguishing her life,” the first encounter sealed the fate of the moonlets orbiting her— all except the planetlike Kingu. Caught in the “net”—the magnetic and gravitational pull—of Nibiru/Marduk, “shat- tered, broken up,” the members of the “band of Tiamat” were thrown off their previous course and forced into new orbital paths in the opposite direction: “Trembling with fear, they turned their backs about.”

Thus were the comets created—thus, we learn from a 6,000- year-old text, did the comets obtain their greatly elliptical and retrograde orbits. As to Kingu, Tiamat’s principal satellite, the text informs us that in that first phase of the celestial collision

Kingu was just deprived of its almost-independent orbit. Nibiru/Marduk took away from him his “destiny.” Ni- biru/Marduk made Kingu into a DUG.GA.E, “a mass of lifeless clay,” devoid of atmosphere, waters and radioactive matter and shrunken in size; and “with fetters bound him,” to remain in orbit around the battered Tiamal.

Having vanquished Tiamat, Nibiru/Marduk sailed on on his new “destiny.” The Sumerian text leaves no doubt that the erstwhile invader orbited the Sun:

He crossed the heavens and surveyed the regions, and Apsu's quarter he measured;

The Lord the dimensions of the Apsu measured.

Having circled the Sun (Apsu), Nibiru/Marduk continued into distant space. But now, caught forever in solar orbit, it had to turn back. On his return round, Ea/Neptune was there to greet him and Anshar/Saturn hailed his victory. Then his new orbital path returned him to the scene of the Celestial Battle, “turned back to Tiamat whom he had bound.”

The Lord paused to view her lifeless body. To divide the monster he then artfully planned. Then, as a mussel, he split her into two parts.

With this act the creation of “the heaven” reached its final stage, and the creation of Earth and its Moon began. First the new impacts broke Tiamat into two halves. The upper part, her “skull,” was struck by the Nibiru/Marduk satellite called North Wind; the blow carried it, and with it Kingu, “to places that have been unknown”—to a brand-new orbit where there had not been a planet before. The Earth and our Moon were created (Fig. 11)!

The other half of Tiamat was smashed by the impacts into bits and pieces. This lower half, her “tail,” was “hammered together” to become a “bracelet” in the heavens:

Locking the pieces together,as watchmen he stationed them. . . .
He bent Tiamat's tail to form the Great Band as a bracelet.

Thus was “the Great Band,” the Asteroid Belt, created. Having disposed of Tiamat and Kingu, Nibiru/Marduk once

Figur e I I

again “crossed the heavens and surveyed the regions.”

This time his attention was focused on the “Dwelling of Ea” (Nep- tune), giving that planet and its twinlike Uranus their final makeup. Nibiru/Marduk also, according to the ancient text, provided Gaga/Pluto with its final “destiny,” assigning to it “a hidden place”—a hitherto unknown part of the heavens.

It was farther out than Neptune’s location; it was, we are told, “in the Deep”—far out in space. In line with its new position as the outermost planet, it was granted a new name: US.MI— “He Who Shows the Way,” the first planet encountered com- ing into the Solar System—that is, from outer space toward the Sun.

Thus was Pluto created and put into the orbit it now holds. Having thus “constructed the stations” for the planets, Ni-

Figure 12

Figure 13

biru/Marduk made two “abodes” for itself. One was in the “Firmament,” as the asteroid belt was also called in the ancient texts; the other far out “in the Deep” was called the “Great/Distant Abode,” alias E.SHARRA (“Abode/Home of the Ruler/Prince”).

Modern astronomers call these two pla- netary positions the perigee (the orbital point nearest the Sun) and the apogee (the farthest one) (Fig. 12). It is an orbit, as concluded from the evidence amassed in The 12th Planet, that takes 3,600 Earth-years to complete.

Thus did the Invader that came from outer space become the twelfth member of the Solar System, a system made up of the Sun in the center, with its longtime companion Mercury; the three olden pairs (Venus and Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune); the Earth and the Moon, the remains of the great Tiamat, though in a new position; the newly independent Pluto; and the planet that put it all into final shape, Nibiru/Marduk (Fig. 13).

Modern astronomy and recent discoveries uphold and corroborate this millennia-old tale.

WHEN EARTH HAD NOT BEEN FORMED

In 1766 J. D. Titius proposed and in 1772 Johann Elert Bode popularized what became known as “Bode’s law,” which showed that planetary distances follow, more or less, the pro- gression 0, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc., if the formula is manipulated by multiplying by 3, adding 4, and dividing by 10. Using as a measure the astronomical unit (AU), which is the distance of Earth from the Sun, the formula indicates that there should be a planet between Mars and Jupiter (the asteroids are found there) and a planet beyond Saturn (Uranus was discovered). The formula shows tolerable deviations up until one reaches Uranus but gets out of whack from Neptune on.

Bode’s law, which was arrived at empirically, thus uses Earth as its arithmetic starting point. But according to the Sumerian cosmogony, at the beginning there was Tiamat between Mars and Jupiter, whereas Earth had not yet formed.

Dr. Amnon Sitchin has pointed out that if Bode’s law is stripped of its arithmetical devices and only the geometric progression is retained, the formula works just as well if Earth is omitted—thus confirming Sumerian cosmogony:

IN THE BEGINNING

In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form and void
and darkness was upon the face of the deep,
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said. Let there be light; and there was light.

For generations this majestic outline of the manner in which our world was created has been at the core of Judaism as well as of Christianity and the third monotheistic religion Islam, the latter two being outgrowths of the first. In the seventeenth century Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh in Ireland cal- culated from these opening verses of Genesis the precise day and even the moment of the world’s creation, in the year 4004 B.C. Many old editions of the Bible still carry Ussher’s chro- nology printed in the margins; many still believe that Earth and the Solar System of which it is a part are indeed no older than that. Unfortunately, this belief, known as Creationism, has taken on science as its adversary; and science, firmly wed to the Theory of Evolution, has met the challenge and joined the battle.

It is regrettable that both sides pay little heed to what has been known for more than a century—that the creation tales of Genesis are edited and abbreviated versions of much more detailed Mesopotamian texts, which were in turn versions of an original Sumerian text.

The battle lines between the Creationists and Evolutionists—a totally unwarranted demarcation, as the evidence herewith presented will show—are undoubtedly more sharply etched by the principle of the separation between religion and state that is embodied in the U.S. Constitution. But such a separation is not the norm among the Earth’s nations (even in enlightened democracies such as En- gland), nor was it the norm in antiquity, when the biblical verses were written down.

indeed, in ancient times the king was also the high priest, the state had a national religion and a national god, the temples were the seat of scientific knowledge, and the priests were the savants. This was so because when civilization began, the gods who were worshipped—the focus of the act of being “reli- gious”—were none other than the Anunnaki/Nefilim, who were the source of all manner of knowledge, alias science, on Earth.

The merging of state, religion, and science was nowhere more complete than in Babylon. There the original Sumerian Epic of Creation was translated and revised so that Marduk, the Babylonian national god, was assigned a celestial coun- terpart. By renaming Nibiru “Marduk” in the Babylonian ver- sions of the creation story, the Babylonians usurped for Marduk the attributes of a supreme “God of Heaven and Earth.” This version—the most intact one found so far—is known as Enuma elish (“When in the heights”), taken from its opening words. It became the most hallowed religious-political-scientific document of the land; it was read as a central part of the New Year rituals, and players reenacted the tale in passion plays to bring its import home to the masses. The clay tablets (Fig. 14) on which they were written were prized possessions of temples and royal libraries in antiquity.

The decipherment of the writing on the clay tablets discovered in the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia more than a century ago led to the realization that texts existed that related biblical creation tales millennia before the Old Testament was com- piled. Especially important were texts found in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in Nineveh (a city of biblical renown); they recorded a tale of creation that matches, in some parts word for word, the tale of Genesis. George Smith of the British Museum pieced together the broken tablets that held the creation texts and published, in 1876, The Chaldean Genesis, it conclusively established that there indeed existed an Akkadian text of the Genesis tale, written in the Old Babylonian dialect, that preceded the biblical text by at least a thousand years. Excavations between 1902 and 1914 uncovered tablets

with the Assyrian version of the creation epic, in which the name of Ashur, the Assyrian national god, was substituted for that of the Babylonian Marduk. Subsequent discoveries estab- lished not only the extent of the copying and translation, in antiquity, of this epic text, but also its unmistakable Sumerian origin.

It was L. W. King who, in 1902, in his work The Seven Tablets of Creation, showed that the various fragments add up to seven tablets; six of them relate the creation process; the seventh tablet is entirely devoted to the exaltation of “the Lord” — Marduk in the Babylonian version, Ashur in the Assyrian one. One can only guess that this seven-tablet division somehow is the basis of the division of the biblical story into a seven-part timetable, of which six parts involve divine handiwork and the seventh is devoted to a restful and satisfactory look back at what had been achieved.

It is true that the Book of Genesis, written in Hebrew, uses the term yom, commonly meaning and translated as “day,” to denote each phase. Once, as a guest on a radio talk show in a “Bible Belt” city, I was challenged by a woman who called in about this very point. I explained that by “day” the ible does not mean our term of twenty-four hours on Earth but rather conveys the concept of a phase in the process of creation. No, she insisted, that is exactly what the Bible means: twenty-four hours. I then pointed out to her that the text of the first chapter of Genesis deals not with a human timetable but with that of the Creator, and we are told in the Book of Psalms (90:4) that in God’s eyes “a thousand years are like yester- day.” Would she concede, at least, that Creation might have taken six thousand years? I asked. To my disappointment, there was no concession. Six days means six days, she insisted. Is the biblical tale of creation a religious document, its con- tents to be considered only a matter of faith to be believed or disbelieved; or it is a scientific document, imparting to us essential knowledge of how things began, in the heavens and on Earth? This, of course, is the core of the ongoing argument between Creationists and Evolutionists. The two camps would have laid down their arms long ago were they to realize that what the editors and compilers of the Book of Genesis had done was no different from what the Babylonians had done: using the only scientific source of their time, those descendants of Abraham—scion of a royal-priestly family from the Su- merian capital Ur—also took the Epic of Creation, shortened and edited it, and made it the foundation of a national religion glorifying Yahweh “who is in the Heavens and on Earth.”

In Babylon, Marduk was a dual deity. Physically present, resplendent in his precious garments (Fig. 15), he was wor- shipped as Ilu (translated “god” but literally meaning “the Lofty One”); his struggle to gain supremacy over the other Anunnaki gods has been detailed in my book The Wars of Gods and Men. On the other hand, “Marduk” was a celestial deity.

Figure 15

a planetary god, who in the heavens assumed the attributes, role, and credit for the primordial creations that the Sumerians had attributed to Nibiru, the planet whose most frequent symbolic depiction was that of a winged disc (Fig. 16). The Assyrians, replacing Marduk with their national god Ashur, combined the two aspects and depicted Ashur as a god within the winged disc (Fig. 17).

The Hebrews followed suit but, preaching monotheism and recognizing—based on Sumerian scientific knowledge—the universality of God, ingeniously solved the problem of duality and of the multitude of Anunnaki deities involved in the events on Earth by concocting a singular-but-plural entity, not an El (the Hebrew equivalent of Ilu) but Elohim—a Creator who is plural (literally “Gods”) and yet One.

This departure from the Babylonian and Assyrian religious viewpoint can be explained only by a realization that the Hebrews were aware that the deity who could speak to Abraham and Moses and the celestial Lord whom the Sumerians called Nibiru were not one and the same scientifically, although all were part of a universal, ev-

crlasting, and omnipresent God—Elohim—-in whose grand de- sign for the universe the path of each planet is its predetermined “destiny,” and what the Anunnaki had done on Earth was likewise a predetermined mission. Thus was the handiwork of a universal God manifest in Heaven and on Earth.

These profound perceptions, which lie at the core of the biblical adoption of the creation story, Enuma elish, could be arrived at only by bringing together religion and science while retaining, in the narrative and sequence of events, the scientific basis.

But to recognize this—that Genesis represents not just religion but also science—one must recognize the role of the aunnaki and accept that the Sumerian texts are not “myth” but factual reports. Scholars have made much progress in this respect, but they have not yet arrived at a total recognition of the factual nature of the texts. Although both scientists and theologians are by now well aware of the Mesopotamian origin of Genesis, they remain stubborn in brushing off the scientific value of these ancient texts. It cannot be science, they hold, because “it should be obvious by the nature of things that none of these stories can possibly be the product of human memory” (to quote N. M. Sama of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Understanding Genesis). Such a statement can be challenged only by explaining, as I have repeatedly done in my writings, that the information of how things began—including how Man himself was created—indeed did not come from the memory of the Assyrians or Babylonians or Sumerians but from the knowledge and science of the Anunnaki/Nefilim. They too, of course, could not “remember”1 how the Solar System was created or how Nibiru/Marduk invaded the Solar System, be- cause they themselves were not yet created on their planet. But just as our scientists have a good notion of how the Solar System came about and even how the whole universe came into being (the favorite theory is that of the Big Bang), the Anunnaki/Nefilim, capable of space travel 450,000 years ago, surely had the capacity to arrive at sensible scenarios of cre- ation; much more so since their planet, acting as a spacecraft that sailed past all the outer planets, gave them a chance at repeated close looks that were undoubtedly more extensive than our Voyager “peeks.”

Several updated studies of the Enumu elish, such as The Babylonian Genesis by Alexander Heidel of the Oriental In- stitute, University of Chicago, have dwelt on the parallels in theme and structure between the Mesopotamian and biblical narratives. Both indeed begin with the statement that the tale takes its reader (or listener, as in Babylon) to the primordial time when the Earth and “the heavens” did not yet exist. But whereas the Sumerian cosmogony dealt with the creation of the Solar System and only then set the stage for the appearance of the celestial Lord (Nibiru/Marduk), the biblical version skipped all that and went directly to the Celestial Battle and its aftermath.

With the immensity of space as its canvas, here is how the Mesopotamian version began to draw the primordial picture:

When in the heights Heaven had not been named And below earth had not been called,
Naught but primordial Apsu, their Begetter,
Mummu, and Tiamat, she who bore them all.
Their waters were mingled together.
No reed had yet been formed,
No marshland had appeared.

Even in the traditional King James version, the biblical open- ing is more matter-of-fact, not an inspirational religious opus but a lesson in primordial science, informing the reader that there indeed was a time when Heaven and the Earth did not yet exist, and that it took an act of the Celestial Lord, his “spirit” moving upon the “waters.” to bring Heaven and Earth about with a bolt of light.

The progress in biblical and linguistic studies since the time of King James has moved the editors of both the Catholic The New American Bible and The New English Bible of the churches in Great Britain to substitute the word “wind”—which is what the Hebrew ru’ach means—for the “Spirit of God,” so that the last verse now reads “a mighty wind swept over the waters.” They retain, however, the concept of “abyss” for the Hebrew word Tehom in the original Bible; but by now even theologians acknowledge that the reference is to no other entity than the Sumerian Tiamat.

With this understanding, the reference in the Mesopotamian version to the mingling “waters” of Tiamat ceases to be al- legorical and calls for a factual evaluation. It goes to the ques- tion of the plentiful waters of Earth and the biblical assertion (correct, as we shall soon realize) that when the Earth was formed it was completely covered by water. If water was so abundant even at the moment of Earth’s creation, then only if Tiamat was also a watery planet could the half that became Earth be watery!

The watery nature of Tehom/Tiamat is mentioned in various biblical references. The prophet Isaiah (51:10) recalled “the primeval days” when the might of the Lord “carved the Haughty One, made spin the watery monster, drained off the waters of the mighty Tehom.” The psalmist extolled the Lord of Beginnings who “by thy might the waters thou didst disperse, the leader of the watery monsters thou didst break up.”

What was the “wind” of the Lord that “moved upon the face of the waters” of Tehom/Tiamat? Not the divine “Spirit” but the satellite of Nibiru/Marduk that, in the Mesopotamian texts, was called by that term! Those texts vividly described the flashes and lightning strokes that burst off Nibiru/Marduk as it closed in on Tiamat. Applying this knowledge to the biblical text, its correct reading emerges:

When, in the beginning,
The Lord created the Heaven and the Earth,
The Earth, not yet formed, was in the void,
and there was darkness upon Tiamat.
Then the Wind of the Lord swept upon its waters
and the Lord commanded, "Let there be lightning!"
and there was a bright light.

The continuing narrative of Genesis does not describe the ensuing splitting up of Tiamat or the breakup of her host of satellites, described so vividly in the Mesopotamian texts. It is evident, however, from the above-quoted verses from Isaiah and Psalms, as well as from the narrative in Job (26:7-13), that the Hebrews were familiar with the skipped-over portions of the original tale. Job recalled how the celestial Lord smote “the helpers of the Haughty One,” and he exalted the Lord who, having come from the outer reaches of space, cleaved Tiamat (Tehom) and changed the Solar System:

The hammered canopy He stretched out in the place of Tehom,
The Earth suspended in the void; He penned waters in its denseness,
without any cloud bursting. . . .
His powers the waters did arrest,
His energy the Haughty One did cleave.
His wind the Hammered Bracelet measured out,
His hand the twisting dragon did extinguish.

The Mesopotamian texts continued from here to describe how Nibiru/Marduk formed the asteroid belt out of Tiamat’s lower half:

The other half of her
he set up as a screen for the skies;
Locking them together
as watchmen he stationed them. . . .
He bent Tiamat's tail
to form the Great Band as a bracelet.

Genesis picks up the primordial tale here and describes the forming of the asteroid belt thus:

And Elohim said:
Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And Elohim made the Firmament,
dividing the waters which are under the Firmament
from the waters which are above the Firmament.
And Elohim called the Firmament "Heaven."

Realizing that the Hebrew word Shama’im is used to speak of Heaven or the heavens in general, the editors of Genesis went into some length to use two terms for “the Heaven” created as a result of the destruction of Tiamat. What separated the “upper waters” from the “lower waters.” the Genesis text stresses, was the Raki’a; generally translated “Firmament,” it literally means “Hammered-out Bracelet.” Then Genesis goes on to explain that Elohim then called the Raki’a, the so- called Firmament, Shama’im, “the Heaven”—a name that in its first use in the Bible consists of the two words sham and ma’im, meaning literally “where the waters were.” In the creation tale of Genesis, “the Heaven” was a specific celestial location, where Tiamat and her waters had been, where the asteroid belt was hammered out.

That happened, according to the Mesopotamian texts, when Nibiru/Marduk returned to the Place of Crossing—the second phase of the battle with Tiamat: “Day Two,” if you wish, as the biblical narrative does.

The ancient tale is replete with details, each of which is amazing by itself. Ancient awareness of them is so incredible that its only plausible explanation is the one offered by the Sumerians themselves—namely, that those who had come to Earth from Nibiru were the source of that knowledge. Modern astronomy has already corroborated many of these details; by doing so, it indirectly confirms the key assertions of the ancient cosmogony and astronomy: the Celestial Battle that resulted in the breakup of Tiamat, the creation of Earth and the asteroid belt, and the capture of Nibiru/Marduk into permanent orbit around our Sun.

Let us look at one aspect of the ancient tale—the “host” of satellites, or “winds,” that the “celestial gods” had.

We now know that Mars has two moons, Jupiter sixteen moons and several more moonlets, Saturn twenty-one or more, Uranus as many as fifteen, Neptune eight. Until Galileo discovered with his telescope the four brightest and largest sat- ellites of Jupiter in 1610, it was unthinkable that a celestial body could have more than one such companion-—evidence Earth and its solitary Moon.

But here we read in the Sumerian texts that as Ni- biru/Marduk’s gravity interacted with that of Uranus, the Invader “begot” three satellites (“winds”) and Anu/Uranus “brought forth” four such moons. By the time Nibiru/Marduk reached Tiamat, it had a total of seven “winds” with which to attack Tiamat, and Tiamat had a “host” of eleven—among them the “leader of the host,” which was about to become an independently orbiting planet, our eventual Moon.

Another element of the Sumerian tale, of great significance to the ancient astronomers, was the assertion that the debris from the lower half of Tiamat was stretched out in the space where she had once existed.

The Mesopotamian texts, and the biblical version thereof in Genesis, are emphatic and detailed about the formation of the asteroid belt—insisting that such a “bracelet” of debris exists and orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. But our astronomers were not aware of that until the nineteenth century. The first realization that the space between Mars and Jupiter was not just a dark void was the discovery by Giuseppe Piazzi on January 1, 1801, of a small celestial object in the space between the two planets, an object that was named Ceres and that has the distinction of being the first known (and named) asteroid.

Three more asteroids (Pallas, Juno, and Vesta) were discovered by 1807, none after that until 1845, and hundreds since then, so that almost 2,000 are known by now. Astronomers believe that there may be as many as 50,000 asteroids at least a mile in diameter, as well as many more pieces of debris, too small to be seen from Earth, which number in the billions.

In other words, it has taken modern astronomy almost two centuries to find out what the Sumerians knew 6,000 years ago.

Even with this knowledge, the biblical statement that the “Hammered-out Bracelet,” the Shama’im—alias “the Heaven,” divided the “waters which are below the Firmament” from the “waters which are above the Firmament” remained a puzzle. What, in God’s name, was the Bible talking about?

We have known, of course, that Earth was a watery planet, but it has been assumed that it is uniquely so. Many will undoubtedly recall science-fiction tales wherein aliens come to Earth to carry off its unique and life-giving liquid, water. So even if the ancient texts had in mind Tiamat’s, and hence Earth’s, waters, and if this was what was meant by the “water which is below the Firmament,” what water was there to talk about regarding that which is “above the Firmament”?

We know—don’t we?-—that the asteroid belt had, indeed, as the ancient text reported, divided the planets into two groups.

“Below” it are the Terrestrial, or inner, Planets; “above” it the gaseous, or Outer, Planets. But except for Earth the former had barren surfaces and the latter no surfaces at all, and the long-held conventional wisdom was that neither group (again, excepting Earth) had any water.

Well, as a result of the missions of unmanned spacecraft to all the other planets except Pluto, we now know better. Mercury, which was observed by the spacecraft Mariner 10 in 1974/75, is too small and too close to the Sun to have retained water, if it ever had any. But Venus, likewise believed to be waterless because of its relative proximity to the Sun, surprised the scientists. It was discovered by unmanned spacecraft, both American and Soviet, that the extremely hot surface of the planet (almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit) was caused not so much by its proximity to the Sun as by a “greenhouse” effect: the planet is enshrouded in a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and clouds that contain sulphuric acid. As a result the heat of the Sun is trapped and does not dissipate back into space during the night. This creates an ever-rising temperature that would have vaporized any water that Venus might have had. But did it ever have such water in its past?

The careful analysis of the results of unmanned probes led the scientists to answer emphatically, yes. The topographical features revealed by radar mapping suggested erstwhile oceans and seas. That such bodies of water might have indeed existed on Venus was indicated by the finding that the “hell-like atmosphere,” as some of the scientists termed it, contained traces of water vapor.

Data from two unmanned spacecraft that probed Venus for an extended period after December 1978, Pioneer-Venus I and 2, convinced the team of scientists that analyzed the findings that Venus “may once have been covered by water at an average depth of thirty feet”; Venus, they concluded (Science, May 7, 1982), once had “at least 100 times as much water in liquid form as it does today in the form of vapor.” Subsequent studies have suggested that some of that ancient water was used up in the formation of the suphuric acid clouds, while some of it gave up its oxygen to oxidize the rocky surface of the planet.

“The lost oceans of Venus” can be traced in its rocks; that was the conclusion of a joint report of U.S. and Soviet scientists

Plate C

published in the May 1986 issue of Science. There was indeed water “below the Firmament,” not only on Earth but also on Venus.

The latest scientific discoveries have added Mars to the list of inner planets whose waters corroborate the ancient statement.

At the end of the nineteenth century the existence of enig- matic “canals” on Mars was popularized by the telescopic observations of the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli and the American Percival Lowell. This was generally laughed off; and the conviction prevailed that Mars was dry and barren. The first unmanned surveys of Mars, in the 1960s, seemed to confirm the notion that it was a “geologically lifeless planet, like the Moon.” This notion was completely discredited when the spacecraft Mariner 9 launched in 1971, went into orbit around Mars and photographed its entire surface, not just the 10 percent or so surveyed by all the previous probes. The results, in the words of the astronomers managing the project, “were astounding.” Mariner 9 revealed that volcanoes, canyons, and dry river beds abound on Mars (Plate C). “Water has played an active role in the planet’s evolution,” stated Harold Masursky of the U.S. Geological Survey, who headed the team analyzing the photographs. “The most convincing evidence was found in the many photographs showing deep, winding channels that may have once been fast-flowing streams. … We are forced to no other conclusion but that we are seeing the effects of water on Mars.”

The Mariner 9 findings were confirmed and augmented by the results of the Viking 1 and Viking 2 missions launched five years later; they examined Mars both from orbiters and from landers that descended to the planet’s surface. They showed such features as evidence of several floodings by large quan- tities of water in an area designated Chryse Planitis; channels that once held and were formed by running water coming from the Vallis Marineris area; cyclical meltings of permafrost in the equatorial regions; rocks weathered and eroded by the force of water; and evidence of erstwhile lakes, ponds, and other “water basins.”

Water vapor was found in the thin Martian atmosphere;

Charles A. Barth, the principal scientist in charge of Mariner 9’s ultraviolet measurements, estimated that the evaporation amounted to the equivalent of 100,000 gallons of water daily. Norman Horowitz of Caltech reasoned that “large amounts of water in some form have in past eons been introduced to the surface and into the atmosphere of Mars,” because that was required in order to have so much carbon dioxide (90 percent) in the Martian atmosphere. In a report published in 1977 by the American Geographical Union (Journal of Geophysical Research, September 30, 1977) on the scientific results of the Viking project, it was concluded that “a long time ago giant flash floods carved the Martian landscape in a number of places; a volume of water equal to Lake Erie poured . . . scouring great channels.”

The Viking 2 lander reported frost on the ground where it came to rest. The frost was found to consist of a combination of water, water ice, and frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice). The debate about whether the polar ice caps of Mars contain water ice or dry ice was resolved in January 1979 when JPL scientists reported at the 2nd International Colloquium on Mars, held at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, that “the north pole consists of water ice,” though not so the south pole.

The final NASA report after the Viking missions (Mars: The Viking Discoveries) concluded that “Mars once had enough water to form a layer several meters deep over the whole surface of the planet.” This was possible, it is now believed, because Mars (like Earth) wobbles slightly as it spins about its axis. This action results in significant climatic changes every 50,000 years. When the planet was warmer it may have had lakes as large as Earth’s Great Lakes in North America and as much as three miles deep. ‘This is an almost inescapable conclu- sion,” stated Michael H. Carr and Jack McCauley of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1985. At two conferences on Mars held in Washington, DC, in July 1986 under the auspices of NASA. Walter Sullivan reported in The New York Times, sci- entists expressed the belief that ‘ ‘there is enough water hidden in the crust of Mars to theoretically flood the entire planet to an average depth of at least 1,000 feet.” Arizona State Uni- versity scientists working for NASA advised Soviet scientists in charge of their country’s Mars landing projects that some deep Martian canyons may still have flowing water in their depths, or at least just below the dry riverbeds.

What had started out as a dry and barren planet has emerged, in the past decade, as a planet where water was once abundant—not just passively lying about but flowing and gushing and shaping the planet’s features. Mars has joined Venus and Earth in corroborating the concept of the Sumerian texts of water “below the Firmament,” on the inner planets.

The ancient assertion that the asteroid belt separated the waters that were below the Firmament from those that were above it implies that there was water on the celestial bodies that are located farther out. We have already reviewed the latest discoveries of Voyager 2 that confirm the Sumerian de- scription of Uranus and Neptune as “watery.” What about the other two celestial bodies that are orbiting between those two outer planets and the asteroid belt, Saturn and Jupiter?

Saturn itself, a gaseous giant whose volume is more than eight hundred times greater than that of Earth, has not yet been penetrated down to its surface—assuming it has, somewhere below its vast atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, a solid or liquid core. But its various moons as well as its breathtaking rings (Fig. 18) are now known to be made, if not wholly then in large part, of water ice and perhaps even liquid water.

Originally, Earth-based observations of Saturn showed only seven rings; we now know from space probes that there are many more, with thinner rings and thousands of ringlets filling the spaces between the seven major rings; all together they create the effect of a disk that, like a phonograph record, is “grooved” with rings and ringlets. The unmanned spacecraft Pioneer 11 established in 1979 that the rings and ringlets consist of icy material, believed at the time to be small pieces of ice a few inches in diameter or as small as snowflakes. What was originally described as “a carousel of bright icy particles” was revealed, however, by the data from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1980 and 1981 to consist of chunks of ice ranging from boulder size to that of “big houses.” We are seeing “a sea of sparkling ice,” JPL’s scientists said. The ice, at some pri- mordial time, had been liquid water.

The several larger moons of Saturn at which the three space- craft, especially Voyager 2, took a peek, appeared to have much more water, and not only in the form of ice. Pioneer 11 reported in 1979 that the group of inner moons of Saturn— Janus, Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, and Rhea—ap- peared to be “icy bodies . . . consisting largely of ice.” Voyager 1 confirmed in 1980 that these inner satellites as well as the newly discovered moonlets were “spheres of ice.” On Enceladus, which was examined more closely, the indications were that its smooth plains resulted from the filling in of old craters with liquid water that had oozed up to the surface and then frozen.

Voyager 1 also revealed that Saturn’s outer moons were ice covered. The moon lapetus, which puzzled astronomers be- cause it showed dark and bright portions, was found to be “coated with water ice” in the bright areas. Voyager 2 con- firmed in 1981 that lapetus was “primarily a ball of ice with some rock in its center.” The data, Von R. Eshleman of Stanford University concluded, indicated that lapetus was 55 per- cent water ice, 35 percent rock, and 10 percent frozen methane. Saturn’s largest moon, Titan—larger than the planet Mer- cury—was found to have an atmosphere and a surface rich in hydrocarbons. But under them there is a mantle of frozen ice, and some sixty miles farther down, as the internal heat of this celestial body increases, there is a thick layer of water slush. Farther down, it is now believed, there probably exists a layer of bubbling hot water more than 100 miles deep. All in all, the Voyagers’ data suggested that Titan is 15 percent rock and 85 percent water and ice.

Is Saturn itself a larger version of Titan, its largest moon?

Future missions might provide the answer. For the time being it is clear that wherever the modern instruments could reach— moons, moonlets, and rings—there was water everywhere. Saturn did not fail to confirm the ancient assertions.

Jupiter was investigated by Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 and by the two Voyagers. The results were no different than at Saturn. The giant gaseous planet was found to emit immense amounts of radiation and heat and to be engulfed by a thick atmosphere that is subject to violent storms. Yet even this

impenetrable envelope was found to be constituted primarily of hydrogen, helium, methane, ammonia, water vapor, and probably droplets of water, somewhere farther down inside the thick atmosphere there is liquid water, the scientists have con- cluded.

As with Saturn, the moons of Jupiter proved more fascinating, revealing, and surprising than the planet itself. Of the four Galilean moons, Io, the closest to Jupiter (Fig. 19), revealed totally unexpected volcanic activity. Although what the volcanoes spew is mostly sulphur based, the erupted material contains some water. The surface of Io shows vast plains with troughs running through them, as if they had been carved by running water. The consensus is that Io has “some internal sources of water.”

Europa, like Io, appears to be a rocky body, but its somewhat lower density suggests that it may contain more internal water than Io. Its surface shows a latticework of veinlike lines that suggested to the NASA teams shallow fissures in a sea of frozen ice. A close look at Europa by Voyager 2 revealed a layer of mushy water ice under the cracked surface. At the December 1984 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Fran- cisco, two scientists (David Reynolds and Steven Squyres) of NASA’s Ames Research Center suggested that under Europa’s ice sheet there might exist warmer oases of liquid water that could sustain living organisms. After a reexamination of Voy- ager 2 photographs, NASA scientists tentatively concluded that the spacecraft witnessed volcanic eruptions of water and am- monia from the moon’s interior. The belief now is that Europa has an ice covering several miles thick “overlaying an ocean of liquid water up to thirty miles deep, kept from freezing by radioactive decay and the friction of tidal forces.”

Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter’s moons, appears to be covered with water ice mixed with rock, suggesting it has undergone moonquakes that have cracked its crust of frozen ice. It is thought to be made almost entirely of water ice, with an inner ocean of liquid water near its core. The fourth Galilean moon, Callisto—about the size of the planet Mercury—also has an ice-rich crust; under it there are mush and liquid water surrounding a small, rocky core. Estimates are that Callisto is more than 50 percent water. A ring discovered around Jupiter is also made mostly, it not wholly, of ice particles.

Modern science has confirmed the ancient assertion to the fullest: there indeed have been “waters above the Firmament.”

Jupiter is the Solar System’s largest planet—as large as 1,300 Earths. It contains some 90 percent of the mass of the complete planetary system of the Sun. As stated earlier, the Sumerians called it KI.SHAR, “Foremost of the Firm Lands,” of the planetary bodies. Saturn, though smaller than Jupiter, occupies a much larger portion of the heavens because of its rings, whose “disk” has a diameter of 670,000 miles. The Sumerians called it AN.SHAR, “Foremost of the Heavens.”

Evidently they knew what they were talking about.

SEEING THE SUN

When we can see the Sun with the naked eye, as at dawn or at sunset, it is a perfect disk. Even when viewed with telescopes, it has the shape of a perfect globe. Yet the Sumerians depicted it as a disk with a triangular rays ex- tending from its round surface, as seen on cylinder seal VA/243 (Plate B and Fig. 6a). Why?

In 1980 astronomers of the High Altitude Observatory of the University of Colorado took pictures of the Sun with a special camera during an eclipse observed in India. The pictures revealed that because of magnetic influences, the Sun’s corona gives it the appearance of a disk with triangular rays extending from its surface—just as the Sumerians had depicted millennia earlier.

In January 1983, I brought the “enigmatic representa- tion” on the Sumerian cylinder seal to the attention of the editor of Scientific American, a journal that reported the astronomers’ discovery. In response, the editor, Dennis Flanagan, wrote to me on January 27, 1983:

“Thank you for your letter of January 25.

“What you have to say is most interesting, and we may well be able to publish it.”

“In addition to the many puzzles posed by this depiction,” 1 had written in my letter, “foremost of which is the source of the Sumerian knowledge, is now their apparent familiarity with the true shape of the Sun’s corona.”

Is it the need to acknowledge the source of Sumerian knowledge that is still holding up publication of what Scientific American has deemed “most interesting”?

4

THE MESSENGERS OF GENESIS

In 1986 Mankind was treated to a oncc-in-a-lifetime event: the appearance of a messenger from the past, a Messenger of Genesis. Its name was Halley’s comet.

One of many comets and other small objects that roam the heavens, Halley’s comet is unique in many ways; among them is the fact that its recorded appearances have been traced to millennia ago, as well as the fact that modern science was able, in 1986, to conduct for the first time a comprehensive, close-

up examination of a comet and its core. The first fact under- scores the excellence of ancient astronomy; because of the second, data was obtained that—-once again—corroborated ancient knowledge and the tales of Genesis.

The chain of scientific developments that led Edmund Hal- ley, who became British Astronomer Royal in 1720, to determine, during the years 1695-1705, that the comet he observed in 1682 and that came to bear his name was a periodic one, the same that had been observed in 1531 and 1607, involved the promulgation of the laws of gravitation and celestial motion by Sir Isaac Newton and Newton’s consulting with Halley about his findings. Until then the theory regarding comets was that they crossed the heavens in straight lines, appearing at one end of the skies and disappearing in the other direction, never to be seen again. But based on Newtonian laws, Halley concluded that the curve described by comets is elliptical, eventually bringing these celestial bodies back to where they had been observed before. The “three” comets of 1531, 1607, and 1682 were unusual in that they were all orbiting in the “wrong” direction—clockwise rather than counterclockwise; had similar deviations from the general orbital plane of the planets around the Sun—being inclined about 17 to 18 degrees—and were

similar in appearance. Concluding they were one and the same comet, he plotted its course and calculated its period (the length of time between its appearances) to be about seventy-six years. He then predicted that it would reappear in 1758. He did not live long enough to see his prediction come true, but he was honored by having the comet named after him.

Like that of all celestial bodies, and especially because of a comet’s small size, its orbit is easily perturbed by the gravitational pull of the planets it passes (this is especially true of Jupiter’s effect). Each time a comet nears the Sun, its frozen material comes to life; the comet develops a head and a long tail and begins to lose some of its material as it turns to gas and vapor. All these phenomena affect the comet’s orbit; there- fore, although more precise measurements have somewhat narrowed the orbital range of Halley’s comet from the seventy- four to seventy-nine years that he had calculated, the period of seventy-six years is only a practical average; the actual orbit and its period must be recalculated each time the comet makes an appearance.

With the aid of modern equipment, an average of five or six comets are reported each year; of them, one or two are comets on return trips, while the others are newly discovered. Most of the returning comets are short-period ones, the shortest known being that of Encke’s comet, which nears the Sun and then returns to a region slightly beyond the asteroid belt (Fig.

20) in a little over three years. Most short-period comets av- erage an orbital period of about seven years, which carries them to the environs of Jupiter. Typical of them is comet Giacobini-Zinner (named, like other comets, after its discoverers), which has a period of 6 1/2 years; its latest passage within Earth’s view was in 1985. On the other hand there are the very-long-period comets like comet Kohoutek, which was dis- covered in March 1973, was fully visible in December 1973 and January 1974, and then disappeared from view, perhaps to return in 75,000 years. By comparison, the cycle of 76 years for Halley’s comet is short enough to remain in living memories, yet long enough to retain its magic as a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event.

When Halley’s comet appeared on its next-to-last passage around the Sun, in 1910, its course and aspects had been well mapped out in advance (Fig. 21). Still, the Great Comet of

1910, as it was then hailed, was awaited with great appre- hension. There was fear that Earth or life on it would not survive the anticipated passage because Earth would be envel- oped in the comet’s tail of poisonous gases. There was also alarm at the prospect that, as was believed in earlier times, the appearance of the comet would be an ill omen of pestilence, wars, and the death of kings. As the comet reached its greatest magnitude and brilliance in May of 1910, its tail stretching over more than half the vault of heaven (Fig. 22), King Edward VII of Great Britain died. On the European continent, a series of political upheavals culminated in the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

The belief, or superstition, associating Halley’s comet with wars and upheavals was fed by much that was coming to light about events that coincided with its previous appearances. The Seminole Indians’ revolt against the white settlers of Florida in 1835, the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618, the Turkish siege of Belgrade in 1456, the outbreak of the Black Death (bubonic plague) in 1347—all were accompanied or preceded by the appearance of a great comet, which was finally recognized as Halley’s Comet, thus establishing its role as the messenger of God’s wrath.

Whether divinely ordained or not, the coincidence of the comet’s appearance in conjunction with major historic events seems to grow the more we go back in time. One of the most celebrated appearances of a comet, definitely Halley’s, is that of 1066, during the Battle of Hastings in which the Saxons, under King Harold, were defeated by William the Conqueror. The comet was depicted (Fig. 23) on the famous Bayeux tap- estry, which is thought to have been commissioned by Queen

Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, to illustrate his vic- tory. The inscription next to the comet’s tail, Isti mirant stella, means, “They are in awe of the star,” and refers to the de- piction of King Harold tottering on his throne.

The year A.D. 66 is considered by astronomers one in which Halley’s comet made an appearance; they base their conclusion on at least two contemporary Chinese observations. That was the year in which the Jews of Judea launched their Great Revolt against Rome. The Jewish historian Josephus (Wars of the Jews, Book VI) blamed the fall of Jerusalem and the de- struction of its holy Temple on the misinterpretation by the Jews of the heavenly signs that preceded the revolt: “a star resembling a sword which stood over the city, a comet that continued a whole year.”

Until recently the earliest certain record of the observation of a comet was found in the Chinese Chronological Tables of Shih-chi for the year 467 B.C., in which the pertinent entry reads, “During the tenth year of Ch’in Li-kung a broom-star was seen.” Some believe a Greek inscription refers to the same comet in that year. Modern astronomers are not sure that the 467 B.C. Shih-chi entry refers to Halley’s comet; they are more confident regarding a Shih-chi entry for the year 240 B.C. (Fig. 24). In April 1985, F. R. Stephenson, K. K. C. Yau, and H.

Hunger reported in Nature that a reexamination of Babylonian astronomical tablets that had been lying in the basement of the British Museum since their discovery in Mesopotamia more than a century ago, shows that the tablets recorded the ap- pearance of extraordinary celestial bodies—probably comets, they said—in the years 164 B.C. and 87 B.C. The periodicity of seventy-seven years suggested to these scholars that the unusual celestial bodies were Halley’s comet.

The year 164 B.C., as none of the scholars who have been preoccupied with Halley’s comet have realized, was of great significance in Jewish and Near Eastern history. It was the very year in which the Jews of Judea, under the leadership of the Maccabees, revolted against Greek-Syrian domination, recap- tured Jerusalem, and purified the defiled Temple. The Temple rededication ceremony is celebrated to this day by Jews as the festival of Hanukkah (“Rededication”). The 164 B.C. tablet (Fig. 25), numbered WA-41462 in the British Museum, is clearly dated to the relevant year in the reign of the Seleucid (Greek-Syrian) king Antiochus Epiphanes, the very evil King Antiochus of the Books of Maccabees. The unusual celestial object, which the three scholars believe was Halley’s comet, is reported to have been seen in the Babylonian month of Kislimu, which is the Jewish month Kislev and, indeed, the one in which Hanukkah is celebrated.

In another instance, the comparison by Josephus of the comet to a celestial sword (as it seems to be depicted also in the Bayeux tapestry) has led some scholars to suggest that the Angel of the Lord that King David saw “standing between the earth and heaven, having a sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem” (I Chronicles 21:16) might have been in reality Halley’s comet, sent by the Lord to punish the king for having conducted a prohibited census. The time of this incident, circa 1000 B.C., coincides with one of the years in which Halley’s comet should have appeared.

In an article published in 1986,1 pointed out that the Hebrew name for “comet” is Kokhav shavit, a “Scepler star.” This has a direct bearing, I wrote, on the biblical tale of the seer Bilam. When the Israelites ended their wanderings in the desert after the Exodus and began the conquest of Canaan, the Moa- bite king summoned Bilam to curse the Israelites. But Bilam, realizing that the Israelite advance was divinely ordained, blessed them instead. He did so, he explained (Numbers 24:17), because he was shown a celestial vision:

I see it, though not now;
I behold it, though it is not near:
A star of Jacob did course, A scepter of Israel did arise.

In The Stairway to Heaven I provided a chronology that fixed the date of the Exodus at 1433 B.C.; the Israelite entry into Canaan began forty years later, in 1393 B.C. Halley’s comet, at an interval of 76 or 77 years, would have appeared circa 1390 B.C. Did Bilam consider that event as a divine signal that the Israelite advance could not and should not be stopped? If, in biblical times, the comet we call Halley’s was considered the Scepter Star of Israel, it could explain why the Jewish revolts of 164 B.C. and A.D. 66 were timed to coincide with the comet’s appearances. It is significant that in spite of the crushing defeat of the Judean revolt by the Romans in A.D. 66, the Jews took up arms again some seventy years later in a heroic effort to free Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. The leader of that revolt, Shimeon Bar Kosiba, was renamed by the religious leaders Bar Kokhba, “Son of the Star,” specif- ically because of the above-quoted verses in Numbers 24.

One can only guess whether the revolt the Romans put down after three years, in A.D. 135, was also intended as was the Maccabean one, to achieve the rededication of the Temple by the time of the return of Halley’s comet, in A.D. 142. The realization that we, in 1986, have seen and experienced the return of a majestic celestial body that had great historic impact in the past, should send a shudder down some spines, mine among them.

How far back does this messenger of the past go? According

to the Sumerian creation epics, it goes all the way back to the time of the Celestial Battle. Halley’s comet and its like are truly the Messengers of Genesis.

The Solar System, astronomers and physicists believe, was formed out of a primordial cloud of gaseous matter; like every- thing else in the universe, it was in constant motion—circling about its galaxy (the Milky Way) and rotating around its own center of gravity. Slowly the cloud spread as it cooled; slowly the center became a star (our Sun) and the planets coalesced out of the rotating disc of gaseous matter. Thenceforth, the motion of all parts of the Solar System retained the original direction of the primordial cloud, anticlockwise. The planets orbit the Sun in the same direction as did the original nebula; so do their satellites, or moons; so should also the debris that either did not coalesce or that resulted from the disintegration of bodies such as comets and asteroids. Everything must keep going anticlockwise. Everything must also remain within the plane of the original disk, which is called the Ecliptic.

Nibiru/Marduk did not conform to all that. Its orbit, as previously reviewed, was retrograde—in the opposite direction, clockwise. Its effect on Pluto—which according to the Sumerian texts was GA.GA and was shifted by Nibiru to its present orbit, which is not within the ecliptic but inclined 17 degrees to it—suggests that Nibiru itself followed an inclined path. Sumerian instructions for its observation, fully discussed in The 12th Planet, indicate that relative to the ecliptic it arrived from the southeast, from under the ecliptic; formed an arc above the ecliptic; then plunged back below the ecliptic in its journey back to where it had come from.

Amazingly, Halley’s comet shows the same characteristics, and except for the fact that its orbit is so much smaller than that of Nibiru (currently about 76 years compared with Nibiru’ s 3,600 Earth-years), an illustration of Halley’s orbit (Fig. 26) could give us a good idea of Nibiru’s inclined and retrograde path. Looking at Halley’s comet, we see a miniature Nibiru! This orbital similarity is but one of the aspects that make this comet, and others too, messengers from the past—not only the historic past, but all the way back to Genesis.

Halley’s comet is not alone in having an orbit markedly inclined to the ecliptic (a feature measured as an angle of Declination) and a retrograde direction. Nonperiodic comets— comets whose paths form not ellipses but parabolas or even hyperbolas and whose orbits are so vast and whose limits are so far away they cannot even be calculated—have marked declinations, and about half of them move in a retrograde direction. Of about 600 periodic comets (which are now given the letter “P” in front of their name) that have been classified and catalogued, about 500 have orbital periods longer than 200 years; they all have declinations more akin to that of Halley’s than to the greater declinations of the nonperiodic comets, and more than half of them course in retrograde motion. Comets with medium orbital periods (between 200 and 20 years) and short periods (under 20 years) have a mean declination of 18 degrees, and some, like Halley’s, have retained the retrograde motion in spite of the immense gravitational effects of Jupiter.

It is noteworthy that of recently discovered comets, the one designated P/Hartley-IRAS (1983v) has an orbital period of 21 years, and its orbit is both retrograde and inclined to the ecliptic.

Where do comets come from, and what causes their odd orbits, of which the retrograde direction is the oddest in as- tronomers’ eyes? In the 1820s the Marquis Pierre-Simon de Laplace believed that comets were made of ice and that their glowing head (“coma”) and tail that formed as they neared the Sun, were both made of vaporized ice. This concept was replaced after the discovery of the extent and nature of the asteroid belt, and theories developed that comets were “flying sandbanks”—pieces of rock that might be the remains of a disintegrated planet. The thinking changed again in the 1950s mainly because of two hypotheses: Fred L. Whipple (then at Harvard) suggested that comets were “dirty snowballs” of ice (mainly water ice) mixed with darker specks of sandlike ma- terial; and Jan Oort, a Dutch astronomer, proposed that long- period comets come from a vast reservoir halfway between the Sun and the nearer stars. Because comets appear from all di- rections (traveling prograde, or anticlockwise; retrograde; and at different declinations), the reservoir of comets—billions of them—is not a belt or ring like the asteroid belt or the rings of Saturn but a sphere that surrounds the Solar System. This “Oort Cloud,” as the concept came to be named, settled at a mean distance, Oort calculated, of 100,000 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, one AU being the average distance (93 million miles) of the Earth from the Sun. Because of pertur- bations and intercometal collisions, some of the cometary horde may have come closer, to only 50,000 AU from the Sun (which is still ten thousand times the distance of Jupiter from the Sun). Passing stars occasionally perturb these comets and send them flying toward the Sun. Some, under the gravitational influence of the planets, mainly Jupiter, become medium- or short-period comets; some, especially influenced by the mass of Jupiter, are forced into reversing their course (Fig. 27). This, briefly, is how the Oort Cloud concept is usually stated.

Since the 1950s the number of observed comets has increased by more than 50 percent, and computer technology has made possible the projection backward of cometary motions to determine their source. Such studies, as one by a team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Observatory under Brian G. Marsden, have shown that of 200 observed comets with periods of 250 years or more, no more than 10 percent could have entered the

Solar System from outer space; 90 percent have always been bound to the Sun as the focus of their orbits. Studies of cometary velocities have shown, in the words of Fred L. Whipple in his book, The Mystery of Comets, that “if we are really seeing comets coming from the void, we should expect them to fly by much faster than just 0.8 kilometers per second,” which they do not. His conclusion is that “with few exceptions, comets belong to the Sun’s family and are gravitationally attached to it.”

“During the past few years, astronomers have questioned the simple view of Oort’s Cloud,” stated Andrew Theokas of Boston University in the New Scientist (February 11, 1988); “astronomers still believe that the Oort Cloud exists, but the new results demand that they reconsider its size and shape.

They even reopen the questions about the origin of the Oort Cloud and whether it contains “new’ comets that have come from interstellar space.” As an alternative idea Theokas men- tions that of Mark Bailey of the University of Manchester, who suggested that most comets “reside relatively close to the Sun, just beyond the orbits of the planets.” Is it perhaps, one may ask, where Nibiru/Marduk’s “distant abode”—its aphelion— is?

The interesting aspect of the “reconsideration” of the Oort Cloud notion and the new data suggesting that comets, by and large, have always been part of the Solar System and not just outsiders occasionally thrust into it, is that Jan Oort himself had said so. The existence of a cloud of comets in interstellar space was his solution to the problem of parabolic and hyperbolic cometal orbits, not the theory he had developed. In the study that made him and the Oort Cloud famous (“The Structure of the Cloud of Comets Surrounding the Solar System and a Hypothesis Concerning its Origin,” Bulletin of the Astronomical Institutions of the Netherlands vol. 11, January 13, 1950) Oort’s new theory was called by him a “hypothesis of a common origin of comets and minor planets” (i.e., asteroids). The comets are out there, he suggested, not because they were “born” there but because they were thrust out to there. They were fragments of larger objects, “diffused away” by the perturbations of the planets and especially by Jupiter— just as more recently the Pioneer spacecraft were made to fly off into space by the “slingshot” effects of Jupiter’s and Sat- urn’s gravitation.

“The main process now,” Oort wrote, “is the inverse one,

that of a slow transfer of comets from a large cloud into short- period orbits. But at the epoch at which the minor planets (asteroids) were formed . . . the trend must have been the op- posite, many more objects being transferred from the asteroid region to the comet cloud. … It appears far more probable that instead of having originated in the faraway regions, comets

were born among the planets. It is natural to think in the first place of a relation with the minor planets (asteroids). There are indications that the two classes of objects”—comets and asteroids—”belong to the same ‘species.’ . . . It seems rea- sonable to assume that the comets originated together with the minor planets.” Summing up his study, Oort put it this way:

The existence of the huge cloud of comets finds a natural explanation if comets (and meteorites) are considered as minor planets escaped, at an early stage of the planetary system, from the ring of asteroids.

It all begins to sound like the Enuma elish. . . .

Placing the origin of the comets within the asteroid belt and considering both comets and asteroids as belonging to the same “species” of celestial objects—objects of a common birth— still leaves open the questions: How were these objects created? What gave “birth” to them? What “diffused” the comets? What gave comets their inclinations and retrograde motions?

A major and outspoken study on the subject was made public in 1978 by Thomas C. Van Flandern of the U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington, D.C. (Icarus, 36). He titled the study, “A Former Asteroidal Planet as the Origin of Comets,” and openly subscribed to the nineteenth-century suggestions that the asteroids, and the comets, come from a former planet that had exploded. It is noteworthy that in the references to Oort’s work, Van Flandern picked out its true essence: “Even the father of the modern ‘cloud of comets’ theory was led to conclude,” Van Flandern wrote, “on the basis of evidence then

available, that a solar system origin for these comets, perhaps in connection with ‘the occurrence which gave birth to the belt of asteroids,’ was still the least objectionable hypothesis.” He also referred to studies, begun in 1972, by Michael W. Oven- den, a noted Canadian astronomer who introduced the concept of a “principle of least interaction action,” a corollary of which was the suggestion that “there had existed, between Mars and Jupiter, a planet of a mass of about 90 times that of Earth, and that this planet had ‘disappeared’ in the relatively recent past, about 107 [10,000,000] years ago.” This, Ovenden further explained in 1975 (“Bode’s Law—Truth or Consequences?” vol. 18, Vistas in Astronomy), is the only way to meet the requirement that “the cosmogonic theory must be capable of producing retrograde as well as direct” celestial motions.

Summarizing his findings, Van Flandern said thus in 1978:

The principal conclusion of this paper is that the comets originated in a breakup event in the inner solar system.

In all probability it was the same event which gave rise to the asteroid belt and which produced most of the meteors visible today.

He said that it was less certain that the same “breakup event” may have also given birth to the satellites of Mars and the outer satellites of Jupiter, and he estimated that the “breakup event” occurred five million years ago. He had no doubt, however, that the “breakup event” took place “in the asteroid belt.” Physical, chemical, and dynamic properties of the re- sulting celestial bodies, he stated emphatically, indicate “that a large planet did disintegrate” where the asteroid belt is today.

But what caused this large planet to disintegrate? “The most frequently asked question about this scenario,” Van Flandern wrote, “is ‘how can a planet blow up?’… There is presently,”

he conceded, “no satisfactory answer to this question.”

No satisfactory answer, that is, except the Sumerian one: the tale of Tiamat and Nibiru/Marduk, the Celestial Battle, the breakup of half of Tiamat, the annihilation of its moons (except for “Kingu”), and the forcing of their remains into a retrograde orbit…

A key criticism of the destroyed-planet theory has been the problem of the whereabouts of the planet’s matter; when astronomers estimate the total mass of the known asteroids and comets it adds up to only a fraction of the estimated mass of the broken-up planet. This is especially true if Ovenden’s estimate of a planet with a mass ninety times that of Earth is used in the calculations. Ovenden’s response to such criticism has been that the missing mass was probably swept up by Jupiter; his own calculations (Monthly Notes of the Royal Astronomical Society, 173, 1975) called for an increase in the mass of Jupiter by as much as 130 Earth-masses as a result of the capture of asteroids, including Jupiter’s several retrograde moons. To allow for the discrepancy between the mass (ninety times that of Earth) of the broken-up planet and the accretion of 130 Earth-sized masses to Jupiter, Ovenden cited other studies that concluded that Jupiter’s mass had decreased some time in its past.

Rather than to first inflate the size of Jupiter and then shrink it back, a better scenario would be to shrink the estimated size of the destroyed planet. That is what the Sumerian texts have put forth. If Earth is the remaining half of Tiamal, then Tiamat was roughly twice the size of Earth, not ninety times. Studies of the asteroid belt reveal not only capture by Jupiter but a dispersion of the asteroids from their assumed original site at about 2.8 AU to a zone so wide that it occupies the space between 1.8 AU and 4 AU. Some asteroids are found between Jupiter and Saturn; a recently discovered one (2060 Chiron) is located between Saturn and Uranus at 13.6 AU. The smashup of the destroyed planet must have been, therefore, extremely forceful—as in a catastrophic collision.

In addition to the voids between groups of asteroids, astronomers discern gaps within the clusters of asteroids (Fig. 28). The latest theories hold that there had been asteroids in the gaps but they were ejected, all the way to outer space except for those that may have been captured on the way by the gravitational forces of the outer planets; also, the asteroids that used to be in the “gaps” were probably destroyed “by catastrophic collisions”! (McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Astronomy, 1983). In the absence of valid explanations for such ejections and catastrophic collisions, the only plausible theory is that offered by the Sumerian texts, which describe the orbit of Nibiru/Marduk as a vast, elliptical path that brings it periodically (every 3,600 Earth years, by my calculations) back into the asteroid belt. As Figures 10 and 11 show, the conclusion drawn from the ancient texts was that Nibiru/Marduk

passed by Tiamat on her outer, or Jupiter, side; repeated returns to that celestial zone can account for the size of the “gap” there. It is the periodic return of Nibiru/Marduk that causes the “ejecting” and “sweeping.”

By the acknowledgment of the existence of Nibiru and its periodic return to the Place of the Battle, the puzzle of the “missing matter” finds a solution. It also addresses the theories that place the accretions of mass by Jupiter at a relatively recent time (millions, not billions, of years ago). Depending on where Jupiter was at the times of Nibiru’s perihelion, the accretions might have occurred during various passages of Nibiru and not necessarily as a one-and-only event at the time of the cata- strophic breakup of Tiamat. Indeed, spectrographic studies of asteroids reveal that some of them “were heated within the first few hundred million years after the origin of the solar system” by heat so intense as to melt them; “iron sank to their centers, forming strong stony-iron cores, while basaltic lavas floated to their surface, producing minor planets like Vesta” (McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Astronomy). The suggested time of the catastrophe is the very time indicated in The 12th Planet—some 500 million years after the formation of the Solar System.

Recent scientific advances in astronomy and astrophysics go beyond corroborating the Sumerian cosmogony in regard to the celestial collision as the common origin of the comets and the asteroids, the site of that collision (where the remains of the asteroid belt still orbit), or even the time of the cata- strophic event (about 4 billion years ago). They also corro- borate the ancient texts in the vital matter of water.

The presence of water, the mingling of waters, the separation of waters—all somehow played an important role in the tale of Tiamat, Nibiru/Marduk, and the Celestial Battle and its aftermath. Part of the puzzle was already answered when we showed that the ancient notion of the asteroid belt as a divider of the waters “above” and the water “below” is corroborated by modern science. But there was more to this preoccupation with water. Tiamat was described as a “watery monster,” and the Mesopotamian texts speak of the handling of her waters by Nibiru/Marduk:

Half of her he stretched as a ceiling to be Sky,
As a bar at the Place of Crossing he posted it to guard;
Not to allow her waters to escape was its command.

The concept of an asteroid belt not only as a divider between the waters of the planets above and below it but also as a “guardian” of Tiamat’s own waters is echoed in the biblical verses of Genesis, where the explanation is given that the “Hammered-out bracelet” was also called Shama’im, the place “where the waters were.” References to the waters where the Celestial Battle and the creation of the Earth and the Shama’im took place are frequent in the Old Testament, indicating millennia-old familiarity with Sumerian cosmogony even at the time of the Prophets and Judean kings. An example is found in Psalm 104, which depicts the Creator as the Lord

Who has stretched out the Shama'im as a curtain, Who in the waters for His ascents put a ceiling.

These verses are almost a word-for-word copy of the verses in Enuma dish; in both instances, the placing of the asteroid belt “where the waters were” followed the earlier acts of the splitting up of Tiamat and having the invader’s “wind” thrust the half that became Earth into a new orbit. The waters of Earth would explain the whereabouts of some or most of Tia- mat’s waters. But what about the remains of her other part and of her satellites? If the asteroids and comets are those remains, should they not also contain water?

What would have been a preposterous suggestion when these objects were deemed “chunks of debris” and “flying sand- banks” has turned out, as the result of recent discoveries, to be not so preposterous: the asteroids are celestial objects in which water—yes, water—is a major component.

Most asteroids belong to two classes. About 15 percent be- long to the S type, which have reddish surfaces made up of silicates and metallic iron. About 15 percent are of the C type: they are carbonaceous (containing carbon), and it is these that have been found to contain water. The water discovered in such asteroids (through spectrographic studies) is not in liquid form; since asteroids have no atmospheres, any water on their

surface would quickly dissipate. But the presence of water molecules in the surface materials indicates that the minerals that make up the asteroid have captured water and combined with it. Direct confirmation of this finding was observed in August 1982, when a small asteroid that came too close to Earth plunged into the Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrated; it was seen as “a rainbow with a long tail going across the sky.” A rainbow appears when sunlight falls on a collection of water drops, such as rain, fog, or spray.

When the asteroid is more like what its name originally implied, “minor planet,” actual water in liquid form could well be present. Examination of the infrared spectrum of the largest and first-to-be-discovered asteroid Ceres shows an extra dip in the spectral readings that is the result of free water rather than water bound to minerals. Since free water even on Ceres will quickly evaporate, the astronomers surmise that Ceres must have a constant source of water welling up from its in- terior. “If that source has been there throughout the career of Ceres,” wrote the British astronomer Jack Meadows (Space Garbage—Cornels, Meteors and Other Solar-System Debris), “then it must have started life as a very wet lump of rock.” He pointed out that carbonaceous meteorites also “show signs of having been extensively affected by water in times past.”

The celestial body designated 2060 Chiron, interesting in many ways, also confirms the presence of water in the remnants of the Celestial Battle. When Charles Kowal of the Hale Observatories on Mount Palomar, California, discovered it in November 1977, he was not certain what it was. He simply referred to it as a planetoid, named it temporarily “O-K” for “Object Kowal,” and opined that it might be a wayward satellite of either Saturn or Uranus. Several weeks of follow-up studies revealed an orbit much more elliptical than that of planets or planetoids, one closer to that of comets. By 1981 the object was determined to be an asteroid, perhaps one of others to be found reaching as far out as Uranus, Neptune or beyond, and was given the designation 2060 Chiron. However, by 1989, further observations by astronomers at Kitt Peak National Observatory (Arizona) detected an extended atmo- sphere of carbon dioxide and dust around Chiron, suggesting that it is more cometlike. The latest observations have also established that Chiron “is essentially a dirty snowball com- posed of water, dust and carbon-dioxide ice.”

If Chiron proves to be more a comet than an asteroid, it will only serve as further evidence that both classes of these rem- nants of the Genesis event contain water.

When a comet is far away from the Sun, it is a dark and invisible object. As it nears the Sun, the Sun’s radiation brings the comet’s nucleus to life. It develops a gaseous head (the coma) and then a tail made up of gases and dust ejected by the nucleus as it heats up. It is the observation of these emis- sions that has by and large confirmed Whipple’s view of comets as “dirty snowballs,” first by determining that the onset of activity in comets as the nucleus begins to heat up is consistent with the thermodynamic properties of water ice, and then by spectroscopic analysis of the gaseous emissions, which have invariably shown the presence of the compound H2O (i.e., water).

The presence of water in comets has been definitely estab- lished in recent years through enhanced examination of arriving comets. Comet Kohoutek (1974) was studied not only from Earth but also with rockets, from orbiting manned spacecraft (Skylab), and from the Mariner 10 spacecraft that was on its way to Venus and Mercury. The findings, it was reported at the time, provided “the first direct proof of water” in a comet. “The water finding, as well as that of two complex molecules in the comet’s tail, are the most significant to date,” stated Stephen P. Moran, who directed the scientific project for NASA. And all scientists concurred with the evaluation by astrophysicists at the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich that was seen were “the oldest and essentially unchanged specimens of the material from the birth of the Solar System.”

Subsequent cometary observations confirmed these findings. However, none of those studies, accomplished with a variety of instruments, match the intensity with which Halley’s comet was probed in 1986. The Halley findings established unequivocally that the comet was a watery celestial body.

Apart from several only partly successful efforts by the United States to examine the comet from a distance, Halley’s comet was met by a virtual international welcoming flotilla of

five spacecraft, all unmanned. The Soviets directed to a Comet Halley rendezvous Vega 1 and Vega 2 (Fig. 29a), the Japanese sent the spacecraft Sakigake and Suisei, and the European Space Agency launched Giotto (Fig. 29b)—so named in honor of the Florentine master painter Giotto di Bondone (fourteenth century), who was so enchanted by Halley’s comet when it appeared in his time that he included it, streaking across the sky, in his famous fresco Adoration of the Magi, suggesting that this comet was the Star of Bethlehem in the tale of the birth of Christ (Fig. 30).

As intensive observations began when Halley’s comet developed its coma and tail in November 1985, astronomers at the Kitt Peak Observatory tracking the comet with telescopes reported it was certain “that the comet’s dominant constituent is water ice, and that much of the tenuous 360,000-mile-wide cloud surrounding it consisted of water vapor.” A statement by Susan Wyckoff of Arizona State University claimed that

“this was the first strong evidence that water ice was prevalent.” These telescopic observations were augmented in January 1986 by infrared observations from high-altitude aircraft, whereupon a team made up of NASA scientists and astronomers from several American universities announced “direct confirmation that water was a major constituent of Halley’s comet.”

By January 1986, Halley’s comet had developed an immense tail and a halo of hydrogen gas that measured 12.5 million miles across—fifteen times bigger than the diameter of the Sun. It was then that NASA’s engineers commanded the space- craft Pioneer-Venus (which was orbiting Venus) to turn its instruments toward the nearing comet (at its perihelion Halley’s passed between Venus and Mercury). The spacecraft’s spectrometer, which “sees” the atoms of its subject, revealed that “the comet was losing 12 tons of water per second.” As it neared perihelion on March 6, 1986, Ian Stewart, the director of NASA’s Halley’s project at the Ames Research Center, reported that the rate of water loss “increased enormously,” first to 30 tons a second and then to 70 tons a second; he assured the press, however, that even at this rate Halley’s comet had “enough water ice to last thousands of more orbits.”

The close encounters with Halley’s comet began on March 6, 1986, when Vega 1 plunged through Halley’s radiant at- mosphere and, from a distance of less than 6,000 miles, sent the first-ever pictures of its icy core. The press dutifully noted that what Mankind was seeing was the nucleus of a celestial body that had evolved when the Solar System began. On March 9, Vega 2 flew within 5,200 miles of Halley’s nucleus and confirmed the findings of Vega 1. The spacecraft also revealed that the comet’s “dust” contained chunks of solid matter, some boulder size, and that this heavier crust or layer enveloped a nucleus where the temperature—almost 90 million miles from the Sun—was a hot 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

The two Japanese spacecraft, designed to study the effect of the solar wind on the comet’s tail and the comet’s huge hydrogen cloud, were targeted to pass at substantial distances from Halley’s. But Giotto’s mission was to meet the comet virtually head-on, swooping at an immense encounter speed within 300 mites from the comet’s core. On March 14 (European time), Giotto streaked past the heart of Halley’s comet and revealed a “mysterious nucleus,” its color blacker than coal, its size bigger than had been thought (about half the size of Manhattan Island). The shape of the nucleus was rough and irregular (Fig. 31), some describing it as “two peas in a pod” and some as an irregularly shaped “potato.” From the nucleus five main jets were emitting streams of dust and 80 percent water vapor, indicating that within the carbonaceous crust the comet contained “melted ice”—liquid water.

The first comprehensive review of the results of all these close-up observations was published in Nature’s special sup- plement of 15-21 May, 1986. In the series of very detailed reports, the Soviet team confirmed the first findings that water (H2O) is the comet’s major component, followed by carbon and hydrogen compounds. The Giotto report stated repeatedly that “H2O is the dominant parent molecule in Halley’s coma,” and that “water vapor accounts for about 80% of the volume of gases escaping from the comet.” These preliminary con- clusions were reaffirmed in October 1986, at an international

conference in Heidelberg, West Germany. And in December 1986, scientists at the John Hopkins University announced that evaluation of data collected in March 1986 by the small Earth- orbiting satellite IUE (International Ultraviolet Explorer) re- vealed an explosion on Hailey’s Comet that blew 100 cubic feet of ice out of the comet’s nucleus.

There was water everywhere on these Messengers of Genesis!

Studies have shown that comets coming in from the cold “come to life” as they reach a distance of between 3 to 2.5

AU, and that water is the first substance to unfreeze there. Little significance has been given to the fact that this distance from the Sun is the zone of the asteroid belt, and one must wonder whether it is there that comets come to life because it is where they were born—whether water comes to life there because there is where it had been, on Tiamat and her watery host

In the discoveries concerning the comets and the asteroids, something else came to life: the ancient knowledge of Sumer.

CELESTIAL “SEEING EYES”

When the Anunnaki’s Mission Earth reached its full com- plement, there were six hundred of them on Earth, while three hundred remained in orbit, servicing the shuttle craft. The Sumerian term for the latter was IGI.GI, literally “Those who observe and see.”

Archaeologists have found in Mesopotamia many objects they call “eye idols” (a), as well as shrines dedicated to these “gods” (b). Texts refer to devices used by the An- unnaki to “scan the Earth from end to end.” These texts and depictions imply the use by the Anunnaki of Earth- orbiting, celestial “seeing eyes”—satellites that “observe and see.”

Perhaps it is no coincidence that some of the Earth-scanning, and especially fixed-position communications satellites launched in our own modern times, such as Intelsat- IV and Intelsat IV-A (c, d), look so much like these millennia-old depictions.

5 GAIA: THE CLEAVED PLANET

Why do we call our planet “Earth”?

In German it is Erde, from Erda in Old High German; Jordh in Icelandic, Jord in Danish. Erthe in Middle English, Airtha in Gothic; and going eastward geographically and backward in time, Ereds or Aratha in Aramaic, Erd or Ertz in Kurdish, Eretz in Hebrew. The sea we nowadays call the Arabian Sea, the body of water that leads to the Persian Gulf, was called in antiquity the Sea of Erythrea; and to this day, ordu means an encampment or settlement in Persian. Why?

The answer lies in the Sumerian texts that relate the arrival of the first group of Anunnaki/Nefilim on Earth. There were fifty of them, under the leadership of E.A (“Whose Home is Water”), a great scientist and the Firstborn son of the ruler of Nibiru, ANU. They splashed down in the Arabian Sea and waded ashore to the edge of the marshlands that, after the climate warmed up, became the Persian Gulf (Fig. 32). And at the head of the marshlands they established their first set- tlement on a new planet; it was called by them E.RI.DU— “Home In the Faraway”—a most appropriate name.

And so it was that in time the whole settled planet came to be called after that first settlement—Erde, Erthe, Earth. To this day, whenever we call our planet by its name, we invoke the memory of that first settlement on Earth; unknowingly, we remember Eridu and honor the first group of Anunnaki who established it.

The Sumerian scientific or technical term for Earth’s globe and its firm surface was KI. Pictographically it was represented as a somewhat flattened orb (Fig. 33a) crossed by vertical lines not unlike modern depictions of meridians (Fig. 33b). Since Earth does indeed bulge somewhat at its equator, the Sumerian

representation is more correct scientifically than the usual modern way of depicting Earth as a perfect globe. . . .

After Ea had completed the establishment of the first five of the seven original settlements of the Anunnaki, he was given the title/epithet EN.KI, “Lord of Earth.” But the term KI, as a root or verb, was applied to the planet called “Earth” for a reason. It conveyed the meaning “to cut off, to sever, to hollow out.” Its derivatives illustrate the concept: KI.LA meant “ex- cavation,” KI.MAH “tomb,” KI.IN.DAR ”crevice, fissure.” In Sumerian astronomical texts the term KI was prefixed with the determinative MUL (“celestial body”). And thus when they spoke of mul.KI, they conveyed the meaning, “the ce- lestial body that had been cleaved apart.”

By calling Earth KI, the Sumerians thus invoked their cos- mogony—the tale of the Celestial Battle and the cleaving of Tiamat.

Unaware of its origin we continue to apply this descriptive epithet to our planet to this very day. The intriguing fact is that over time (the Sumerian civilization was two thousand years old by the time Babylon arose) the pronunciation of the term ki changed to gi, or sometimes ge. It was so carried into the Akkadian and its linguistic branches (Babylonian, Assyr- ian, Hebrew), at all times retaining its geographic or topo- graphic connotation as a cleavage, a ravine, a deep valley. Thus the biblical term that through Greek translations of the Bible is read Gehenna stems from the Hebrew Gai-Hinnom, the crevicelike narrow ravine outside Jerusalem named after Hinnom, where divine retribution shall befall the sinners via an erupting subterranean fire on Judgment Day.

We have been taught in school that the component geo in all the scientific terms applied to Earth sciences—geo-graphy, goo-metry, geo-logy, and so on—comes from the Greek Gaia (or Gaea), their name for the goddess of Earth. We were not taught where the Greeks picked up this term or what its real meaning was. The answer is, from the Sumerian KI or GI.

Scholars agree that the Greek notions of primordial events and of the gods were borrowed from the Near East, through Asia Minor (at whose western edge early Greek settlements like Troy were located) and via the island of Crete in the eastern Mediterranean. According to Greek tradition Zeus, who was

the chief god of the twelve Olympians, arrived on the Greek mainland via Crete, whence he had fled after abducting the beautiful Europa, daughter of the Phoenician king of Tyre. Aphrodite arrived from the Near East via the island of Cyprus. Poseidon (whom the Romans called Neptune) came on horse- back via Asia Minor, and Athena brought the olive to Greece from the lands of the Bible. There is no doubt that the Greek alphabet developed from a Near Eastern one (Fig. 34). Cyrus H. Gordon (Forgotten Scripts: Evidence for the Minoan Lan- guage and other works) deciphered the enigmatic Cretan script known as Linear A by showing that it represented a Semitic, Near Eastern language. With the Near Eastern gods and the terminology came also the “myths” and legends.

The earliest Greek writings concerning antiquity and the affairs of gods and men were the Iliad, by Homer; the Odes of Pindar of Thebes; and above all the Theogony (“Divine Genealogy”) by Hesiod, who composed this work and another (Works and Days). In the eighth century B.C., Hesiod began the divine tale of events that ultimately led to the supremacy of Zeus—a story of passions, rivalries, and struggles covered in The Wars of Gods and Men, third book of my series The Earth Chronicles—and the creation of the celestial gods, of Heaven and Earth out of Chaos, a tale not unlike the biblical Beginning:

Verily, at first Chaos came to be, and next the wide-bosomed Gaia—
she who created all the immortal ones
who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus:
Dim Tartarus, wide-pathed in the depths,
and Eros, fairest among the divine immortals. . . .
From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Nyx;
And of Nyx were born Aether and Hemera.

At this point in the process of the formation of the “divine immortals”—the celestial gods—”Heaven” does not yet ex- ist, just as the Mesopotamian sources recounted. Accordingly, the “Gaia” of these verses is the equivalent of Tiamat, “she who bore them all” according to the Enuma elish. Hesiod lists the celestial gods who followed “Chaos” and “Gaia” in three pairs (Tartarus and Eros, Erebus and Nyx, Aether and Hemera). The parallel with the creation of the three pairs in Sumerian cosmogony (nowadays named Venus and Mars, Saturn and Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune) should be obvious (though this comparability seems to have gone unnoticed).

Only after the creation of the principal planets that made up the Solar System when Nibiru appeared to invade it does the tale by Hesiod—as in the Mesopotamian and biblical texts— speak of the creation of Ouranos, “Heaven.” As explained in the Book of Genesis, this Shama’im was the Hammered-Out- Bracelet, the asteroid belt. As related in the Enuma elish, this was the half of Tiamat that was smashed to pieces, while the other, intact half became Earth. All this is echoed in the ensuing verses of Hesiod’s Theogony:

And Gaia then bore starry Ouranos
—equal to herself—
to envelop her on every side,
to be an everlasting abode place for the gods.

Equally split up. Gaia ceased to be Tiamat. Severed from the smashed-up half that became the Firmament, everlasting abode of the asteroids and comets, the intact half (thrust into another orbit) became Gaia, the Earth. And so did this planet, first as Tiamat and then as Earth, live up to its epithets: Gaia, Gi, Ki—the Cleaved One.

How did the Cleaved Planet look in the aftermath of the Celestial Battle, now orbiting as Gaia/ Earth? On one side there were the firm lands that had formed the crust of Tiamat; on the other side there was a hollow, an immense cleft into which the waters of the erstwhile Tiamat must have poured. As Hesiod put it, Gaia (now the half equivalent to Heaven) on one side “brought forth long hills, graceful haunts of the goddess- Nymphs”; and on the other side “she bare Pontus, the fruitless deep with its raging swell.'”

This is the same picture of the cleaved planet provided by the Book of Genesis:

And Elohim said,
"Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear."
And it was so.
And Elohim called the dry land "Earth,"
and the gathered-together water He called "Seas."

Earth, the new Gaia, was taking shape.

Three thousand years separated Hesiod from the time when the Sumerian civilization had blossomed out; and it is clear that throughout those millennia ancient peoples, including the authors or compilers of the Book of Genesis, accepted the Sumerian cosmogony. Called nowadays “myth,” “legend,” or “religious beliefs,” in those previous millennia it was science—knowledge, the Sumerians asserted, bestowed by the Anunnaki.

According to that ancient knowledge, Earth was not an original member of the Solar System. It was the cleaved-off half of a planet then called Tiamat, “she who bore them all.” The Celestial Battle that led to the creation of Earth occurred several hundred million years after the Solar System with its planets had been created. Earth, as a part of Tiamat, retained much of the water that Tiamat, “the watery monster,” was known for. As Earth evolved into an independent planet and attained the shape of a globe dictated by the forces of gravity, the waters were gathered into the immense cavity on the torn-off side, and dry land appeared on the other side of the planet This, in summary, is what the ancient peoples firmly believed. What does modern science have to say?

The theories concerning planetary formation hold that they started as balls congealing from the gaseous disk extending from the Sun. As they cooled, heavier matter—iron, in Earth’s case—sank into their centers, forming a solid inner core. A less solid, plastic, or even fluid outer core surrounded the inner one; in Earth’s case, it is believed to consist of molten iron. The two cores and their motions act as a dynamo, producing the planet’s magnetic field. Surrounding the solid and fluid cores is a mantle made of rocks and minerals; on Earth it is estimated to be some 1,800 miles thick. While the fluidity and heat generated at the planet’s core (some 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit in the Earth’s center) affect the mantle and what is on top of it, it is the uppermost 400 miles or so of the mantle (on Earth) that mostly account for what we see on the surface of the planet—its cooled crust.

The processes that produce, over billions of years, a spher- ical orb—the uniform force of gravity and the planet’s rotation around its axis—should also result in an orderly layering. The solid inner core, the flexible or fluid outer core, the thick lower mantle of silicates, the upper mantle of rocks, and the upper- most crust should encompass one another in ordered layers,

like the skin of an onion. This holds true for the orb called Earth (Fig. 35)—but only up to a point; the main abnormalities concern Earth’s uppermost layer, the crust.

Ever since the extensive probes of the Moon and Mars in the 1960s and 1970s, geophysicists have been puzzled by the paucity of the Earth’s crust. The crusts of the Moon and of Mars comprise 10 percent of their masses, but the Earth’s crust comprises less than one half of 1 percent of the Earth’s land- mass. In 1988, geophysicists from Caltech and the University of Illinois at Urbana, led by Don Anderson, reported to the American Geological Society meeting in Denver, Colorado, that they had found the “missing crust.” By analyzing shock waves from earthquakes, they concluded that material that be- longs in the crust has sunk down and lies some 250 miles below the Earth’s surface. There is enough crustal material there, these scientists estimated, to increase the thickness of the Earth’s crust tenfold. But even so, it would have given Earth a crust comprising no more than about 4 percent of its land-mass—still only about half of what seems to be the norm (judging by the Moon and Mars); half of the Earth’s crust will still be missing even if the findings by this group prove correct. The theory also leaves unanswered the question of what force caused the crustal material, which is lighter than the mantle’s material, to “dive”—in the words of the report—hundreds of miles into the Earth’s interior. The team’s suggestion was that the crustal material down there consists of “huge slabs of crust” that “dived into the Earth’s interior” where fissures exist in the crust. But what force had broken up the crust into such “huge slabs”?

Another abnormality of the Earth’s crust is that it is not uniform. In the parts we call “continents,” its thickness varies from about 12 miles to almost 45 miles; but in the parts taken up by the oceans the crust is only 3.5 to five miles thick. While the average elevation of the continents is about 2,300 feet, the average depth of the oceans is more than 12,500 feet. The combined result of these factors is that the much thicker con- tinental crust reaches much farther down into the mantle, whereas the oceanic crust is just a thin layer of solidified ma- terial and sediments (Fig. 36).

There are other differences between the Earth’s crust where the continents are and where the oceans are. The composition of the continental crust, consisting in large part of rocks resembling granite, is relatively light in comparison with the composition of the mantle: the average continental density is 2.7-2.8 grams per cubic centimeter, while that of the mantle is 3.3 grams per cubic centimeter. The oceanic crust is heavier and denser than the continental crust, averaging a density of 3.0 to 3.1 grams per cubic centimeter; it is thus more akin to the mantle, with its composition of basaltic and other dense rocks, than to the continental crust. It is noteworthy that the “missing crust” the scientific team mentioned above suggested had dived into the mantle is similar in composition to the oceanic crust, not to the continental crust.

This leads to one more important difference between the Earth’s continental and oceanic crusts. The continental part of the crust is not only lighter and thicker, it is also much older than the oceanic part of the crust. By the end of the 1970s the consensus among scientists was that the greater part of today’s continental surface was formed some 2.8 billion years ago. Evidence of a continental crust from that time that was about as thick as today’s is found in all the continents in what geologists term Archean Shield areas; but within those areas, crustal rocks were discovered that turned out to be 3.8 billion years old. In 1983, however, geologists of the Australian National University found, in western Australia, rock remains of a continental crust whose age was established to be 4.1 to 4.2 billion years old. In 1989, tests with new, sophisticated methods on rock samples collected a few years earlier in northern Canada (by researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and from the Geological Survey of Canada) determined the rocks’ age to be 3.96 billion years; Samuel Bowering of Washington University reported evidence that nearby rocks in the area were as much as 4.1 billion years old.

Scientists are still hard put to explain the gap of about 500 million years between the age of the Earth (which meteor fragments, such as those found at Meteor Crater in Arizona, show to be 4.6 billion years) and the age of the oldest rocks thus far found; but no matter what the explanation, the fact that Earth had its continental crust at least 4 billion years ago is by now undisputed. On the other hand, no part of the oceanic crust has been found to be more than 200 million years old.

This is a tremendous difference that no amount of speculation about rising and sinking continents, forming and vanishing seas can explain. Someone has compared the Earth’s crust to the skin of an apple. Where the oceans are, the “skin” is fresh— relatively speaking, born yesterday. Where the oceans began in primordial times, the “skin,” and a good part of the “apple” itself, appear to have been shorn off.

The differences between the continental and oceanic crusts must have been even greater in earlier times, because the continental crust is constantly eroded by the forces of nature, and a good deal of the eroded solids are carried into the oceanic basins, increasing the thickness of the oceanic crust. Furthermore, the oceanic crust is constantly enhanced by the upwelling of molten basaltic rocks and silicates that flow up from the mantle through faults in the sea floor. This process, which puts down ever-new layers of oceanic crust, has been going on for 200 million years, giving the oceanic crust its present form. What was there at the bottom of the seas before then? Was there no crust at all, just a gaping “wound” in the Earth’s surface? And is the ongoing oceanic crust formation akin to the process of blood clotting, where the skin is pierced and wounded?

Is Gaia—a living planet—trying to heal her wounds?

The most obvious place on the surface of the Earth where it was so “wounded” is the Pacific Ocean. While the average plunge in the crust’s surface in its oceanic parts is about 2.5 miles, in the Pacific the crust has been gouged out to a present depth reaching at some points 7 miles. If we could remove from the Pacific’s floor the crust built up there over the last 200 million years, we would arrive at depths reaching 12 miles below the water’s surface and between some 20 to nearly 60 miles below the continental surface. This is quite a cavity. . . .

How deep was it before the crustal buildup over the past 200 million years—how large was the “wound” 500 million years ago, a billion years ago, 4 billion years ago? No one can even guess, except to say that it was substantially deeper.

What can be said with certainty is that the extent of the gouging was more extensive, affecting a vastly greater part of the planet’s surface. The Pacific Ocean at present occupies about a third of Earth’s surface; but (as far as can be ascertained for the past 200 million years) it has been shrinking. The reason for the shrinkage is that the continents flanking it—the Americas on the east, Asia and Australia on the west—are moving closer to each other, squeezing out the Pacific slowly but relentlessly, reducing its size inch by inch year by year.

The science and explanations dealing with this process have come to be known as the Theory of Plate Tectonics. Its origin lies, as in the study of the Solar System, in the discarding of notions of a uniform, stable, permanent condition of the planets in favor of the recognition of catastrophism, change, and even evolution—concerning not only flora and fauna but the globes on which they evolved as “living” entities that can grow and shrink, prosper and suffer, even be born and die.

The new science of plate tectonics, it is now generally recognized, owes its beginning to Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, and his book Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, published in 1915. As it was for others before him, his starting point was the obvious “fit” between the contours of the continents on both sides of the southern Atlantic. But before Wegener’s ideas, the solution had been to postulate the disappearance, by sinking, of continents or land bridges: the belief that the continents have been where they are from time immemorial, but that a midsection sank below sea level, giving the appearance of continental separation. Augmenting available data on flora and fauna with considerable geological “matches” between the two sides of the Atlantic, Wegener came up with the notion of Pangaea—a supercontinent, a single huge landmass into which he could fit all the present continental masses like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Pangaea, which covered about one half of the globe, Wegener suggested, was surrounded by the primeval Pacific Ocean. Floating in the midst of the waters like an ice floe, the single landmass underwent a series of liftings and healings until a definite and final breakup in the Mesozoic Era, the geological period that lasted from 225 to 65 million years ago. Gradually the pieces began to drift apart. Antarctica, Australia, India, and Africa began to break away and separate (Fig. 37a). Subsequently, Africa and South America split apart (Fig. 37b) as North America began to move away from Europe and India was thrust toward Asia (Fig. 37c); and so the continents continued to drift until they rearranged themselves in the pattern we know today (Fig. 37d).

The split-up of Pangaea into several separate continents was accompanied by the opening up and closing down of bodies of water between the separating pieces of the landmass. In time the single “Panocean” (if I may be allowed to coin a term) also separated into a series of connecting oceans or enclosed seas (such as the Mediterranean, Black, and Caspian seas), and such major bodies of water as the Atlantic and the Indian oceans took shape. But all these bodies of water were “pieces” of the original “Panocean,” of which the Pacific Ocean still remains.

Wegener’s view of the continents as “pieces of a cracked ice floe” shifting atop an impermanent surface of the Earth was mostly received with disdain, even ridicule, by the geologists and paleontologists of the time. It took half a century for the idea of Continental Drift to be accepted into the halls of science. What helped bring about the changed attitude were surveys of the ocean floors begun in the 1960s that revealed such features as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that, it was surmised, was formed by the rise of molten rock (called “magma”) from the Earth’s interior. Welling up, in the case of the Atlantic, through a fissure in the ocean floor that runs almost the whole ocean’s length, the magma cooled and formed a ridge of basaltic rock. But then as one welling up followed another, the old sides of the ridge were pushed to either side to make way for the new magma flow. A major advance in these studies of the ocean floors took place with the aid of Seasat, an oceanographic satellite launched in June 1978 that orbited the Earth for three months; its data were used to map the sea floors, giving us an entirely new understanding of our oceans, with their ridges, rifts, seamounts, underwater volcanoes, and fracture zones. The discovery that as each upwelling of magma cooled and solidified it retained the magnetic direction of its position at that time was followed by the determination that a series of such magnetic lines, almost parallel to one another, provided a time scale as well as a directional map for the ongoing expansion of the ocean’s floor. This expansion of the sea floor in the Atlantic was a major factor in pushing apart Africa and South America and in the creation of the Atlantic Ocean (and its continuing widening).

Other forces, such as the gravitational pull of the Moon, the Earth’s rotation, and even movements of the underlying mantle, also are believed to act to split up the continental crust and shift the continents about. These forces also exert their influence, naturally, in the Pacific region. The Pacific Ocean revealed even more midocean ridges, fissures, underwater volcanoes, and other features like those that have worked to expand the Atlantic Ocean. Why, then, as all the evidence shows, have the landmasses flanking the Pacific not moved apart (as the continents flanking the Atlantic have done) but rather keep moving closer, slowly but surely, constantly re- ducing the size of the Pacific Ocean?

The explanation is found in a companion theory of continental drift, the Theory of Plate Tectonics. The continents, it has been postulated, rest upon giant movable “plates” of the Earth’s crust, and so do the oceans. When the continents drift, when oceans expand (as the Atlantic) or contract (as the Pacific), the underlying cause is the movement of the plates on which they ride. At present scientists recognize six major plates (some of which are further subdivided): the Pacific, American, Eurasian, African, Indo-Australian, and Antarctic (Fig. 38).

The spreading seafloor of the Atlantic Ocean is still distancing the Americas from Europe and Africa, inch by inch. The con- comitant shrinking of the Pacific Ocean is now recognized to be accommodated by the dipping, or “subduction,” of the Pacific plate under the American plate. This is the primary cause of the crustal shifts and earthquakes all along the Pacific rim, as well as of the rise of the major mountain chains along that rim. The collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian one created the Himalayas and fused the Indian subcontinent to Asia. In 1985, Cornell University scientists discovered the “geological suture” where a part of the western African plate remained attached to the American plate when the two broke apart some fifty million years ago, “donating” Florida and southern Georgia to North America.

With some modifications, almost all scientists today accept Wegener’s hypothesis of an Earth initially consisting of a single landmass surrounded by an all-embracing ocean. Notwithstanding (geologically) the young age (200 million years) of the present seafloor, scholars recognize that there had been a primeval ocean on Earth whose traces can be found not in the newly covered depths of the oceans but on the continents. The Archean Shield zones, where the youngest rocks are 2.8 billion years old, contain belts of two kinds: one of greenstone, another of granite-gneiss. Writing in Scientific American of March, 1977, Stephen Moorbath (‘The Oldest Rocks and the Growth of Continents””) reported (hat geologists “believe that the greenstone belt rocks were deposited in a primitive oceanic environment and in effect represent ancient oceans, and that the granite-gneiss terrains may be remnants of ancient oceans.” Extensive rock records in virtually all the continents indicate that they were contiguous to oceans of water for more than three billion years; in some places, such as Zimbabwe in south- ern Africa, sedimentary rocks show that they accreted within large bodies of water some 3.5 billion years ago. And recent advances in scientific dating have extended the age of the Archean belts—those that include rocks that had been depos- ited in primeval oceans—back to 3.8 billion years (Scientific American, September, 1983; special issue: “The Dynamic Earth”).

How long has continental drift been going on? Was there a Pangaea?

Stephen Moorbath, in the above-mentioned study, offered the conclusion that the process of continental breakup began some 600 million years ago: “Before that there may have been just the one immense supercontinent known as Pangaea, or possibly two supercontinents: Laurasia to the north and Gondwanaland to the south.” Other scientists, using computer simulations, suggest that 550 million years ago the landmasses that eventually formed Pangaea or its two connected parts were no less separate than they are today, that plate-tectonic processes of one kind or another have been going on since at least about four billion years ago. But whether the mass of dry land was first a single supercontinent or separate landmasses that then joined, whether a superocean surrounded a single mass of dry land or bodies of water first stretched between several dry lands, is, in the words of Moorbath, like the chicken-and- the-egg argument: “Which came first, the continents or the oceans?”

Modern science thus confirms the scientific notions that were expressed in the ancient texts, but it cannot see far enough back to resolve the land mass/ocean sequence. If every modern scientific discovery seems to have corroborated this or that aspect of ancient knowledge, why not also accept the ancient answer in this instance: that the waters covered the face of the Earth and—on the third “day,” or phase—were “gathered into” one side of the Earth to reveal the dry land. Was the uncovered dry land made up of isolated continents or one supercontinent, a Pangaea? Although it really matters not as far as the corroboration of ancient knowledge is concerned, it is interesting to note that Greek notions of Earth, although they led to a belief that the Earth was disklike rather than a globe, envisioned it as a landmass with a solid foundation surrounded by waters. This notion must have drawn on earlier and more accurate knowledge, as most of Greek science did. We find that the Old Testament repeatedly referred to the “founda- tions” of Earth and expressed knowledge of the earlier times regarding the shape of Earth in the following verses praising the Creator:

The Lord's is the Earth and its entirety, the world and all that dwells therein. For He hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.
(Psalms 24:1-2)

However the Moon became a constant companion of Earth— the various theories will soon be examined—it, like Earth, belonged to the same Solar System, and the histories of both go back to its creation. On Earth, erosion caused by the forces of nature as well as by the life that has evolved on it has obliterated much of the evidence bearing on that creation, to say nothing of the cataclysmic event that changed and re- vamped the planet. But the Moon, so it was assumed, had remained in its pristine condition. With neither winds, atmosphere, nor waters, there were no forces of erosion. A look at the Moon was tantamount to a peek at Genesis. Man has peered at the Moon for eons, first with the naked eye, then with Earth-based instruments. The space age made it possible to probe the Moon more closely. Between 1959 and 1969, a number of Soviet and American unmanned spacecraft photographed and otherwise examined the Moon either by or- biting it or by landing on it. Then Man finally set foot on the

Moon when the landing module of Apollo 11 touched down on the Moon’s surface on July 20, 1969, and Neil Armstrong announced, for all the world to hear: “Houston! Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed!”

In all, six Apollo spacecraft set down a total of twelve astronauts on the Moon; the last manned mission was that of Apollo 17, in December 1972. The first one was admittedly intended primarily to “beat the Russians to the Moon”; but the missions became increasingly scientific as the Apollo pro- gram progressed. The equipment for the tests and experiments became more sophisticated, the choice of landing sites was more scientifically oriented, the areas covered increased with the aid of surface vehicles, and the length of stay increased from hours to days. Even the crew makeup changed, to include in the last mission a trained geologist, Harrison Schmitt; his expertise was invaluable in the on-the-spot selection of rocks and soil to be taken back to Earth, in the description and evaluation of dust and other lunar materials left behind, and in the choice and description of topographic features—hills, valleys, small canyons, escarpments, and giant boulders (Plate D)—without which the true face of the Moon would have remained inscrutable. Instruments were left on the Moon to measure and record its phenomena over long periods; deeper soil samples were obtained by drilling into the face of the Moon; but most scientifically precious and rewarding were the 838 pounds of lunar soil and Moon rocks brought back to Earth. Their examination, analysis, and study were still in progress as the twentieth anniversary of the first landing was being celebrated.

The notion of “Genesis rocks” to be found on the Moon was proposed to NASA by the Nobel laureate Harold Urey. The so-called Genesis rock that was one of the very first to be picked up on the Moon proved, as the Apollo program pro- gressed, not to be the oldest one. It was “only” some 4.1 billion years old, whereas the rocks later found on the Moon ranged from 3.3 billion-year-old “youngsters” to 4.5 billion- year “old-timers.” Barring a future discovery of somewhat older rocks, the oldest rocks found on the Moon have thus brought its age to within 100 million years of the estimated age of the Solar System—of 4,6 billion years—which until then was surmised only from the age of meteorites that struck the Earth.

The Moon, the lunar landings established, was a Witness to Genesis.

Establishing the age of the Moon, the time of its creation, intensified the debate concerning the question of how the Moon was created.

“The hope of establishing the Moon’s origin was a primary scientific rationale for the manned landings of the Apollo proj- ect in the 1960s,” James Gleick wrote in June 1986 for The New York Times Science Service. It was, however, “the great question that Apollo failed to answer.”

How could modern science read an uneroded “Rosetta stone” of the Solar System, so close by, so much studied, landed upon six times—and not come up with an answer to the basic question? The answer to the puzzle seems to be that the findings were applied to a set of preconceived notions; and because none of these notions is correct, the findings appear to leave the question unanswered.

One of the earliest scientific theories regarding the Moon’s origin was published in 1879 by Sir George H. Darwin, second son of Charles Darwin. Whereas his father put forth the theory regarding the origin of species on Earth, Sir George was the first to develop a theory of origins for the Sun-Earth-Moon system based on mathematical analysis and geophysical theory. His specialty was the study of tides; he therefore conceived of the Moon as having been formed from matter pulled off Earth by solar tides. The Pacific basin was later postulated to be the scar that remained after this “pinching off” of part of Earth’ s body to form the Moon.

Although, as the Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it so mildly, it is “a hypothesis now considered unlikely to be true,” the idea reappeared in the twentieth century as one of three contenders for being proved or disproved by the lunar findings. Given a high-tech name, the Fission Theory, it was revived with a difference. In the reconstructed theory, the simplistic idea of the tidal pull of the Sun was dropped; instead it was proposed that the Earth divided into two bodies while spinning very rapidly during its formation. The spinning was so rapid that a chunk of the material of which the Earth was forming was thrown off, coalesced at some distance from the bulk of the Earthly matter, and eventually remained orbiting its bigger twin brother as its permanent satellite (Fig. 39).

The “thrown-off chunk” theory, whether in its earlier or renewed form, has been conclusively rejected by scientists from various disciplines. Studies presented at the third Conference on the Origins of Life (held in Pacific Palisades, California, in 1970) established that tidal forces as the cause of the fission could not account for the origin of the Moon beyond a distance of five Earth radii, whereas the Moon is some 60 Earth radii away from the Earth. Also, scientists consider a

study by Kurt S. Hansen in 1982 (Review of Geophysics and Space Physics, vol. 20) as showing conclusively that the Moon could never have been closer to Earth than 140,000 miles; this would rule out any theory that the Moon was once part of Earth (the Moon is now an average distance of about 240,000 miles from Earth, but this distance has not been constant).

Proponents of the Fission Theory have offered various var- iants thereof in order to overcome the distance problem, which is further constrained by a concept termed the Roche limit (the distance within which the tidal forces overcome the gravita- tional force). But all variants of the fission theory have been rejected because they violate the laws of the preservation of energy. The theory requires much more angular momentum than has been preserved in the energy that exists to spin the Earth and the Moon around their axes and to orbit around the Sun. Writing in the book Origin of (he Moon (1986), John A. Wood of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (” ‘A Review of Hypotheses of Formation of Earth’s Moon”) summed up this constraint thus: “The fission model has very severe dynamic problems: In order to fission, the Earth had to have about four times as much angular momentum as the Earth- Moon system now has. There is no good explanation why the Earth had such an excess of angular momentum in the first place, or where the surplus angular momentum went after fis- sion occurred.”

The knowledge about the Moon acquired from the Apollo program has added geologists and chemists to the lineup of scientists rejecting the fission theory. The Moon’s composition is in many respects similar to that of Earth, yet different in key respects. There is sufficient “kinship” to indicate they are very close relatives, but there are enough differences to show they are not twin brothers. This is especially true of the Earth’s crust and mantle, from which the Moon had to be formed, according to the fission theory. Thus, for example, the Moon has too little of the elements called “siderophile,” such as tungsten, phosphorus, cobalt, molybdenum, and nickel, com- pared with the amount of these substances present in the Earth’s mantle and crust; and too much of the “refractory” elements such as aluminum, calcium, titanium, and uranium. In a highly technical summary of the various findings (“The Origin of the Moon,” American Scientist, September-October 1975), Stuart R. Taylor stated: “For all these reasons, it is difficult to match the composition of the bulk of the Moon to that of the terrestrial mantle.”

The book Origin of the Moon, apart from its introductions and summaries (such as the above-mentioned article by J. A. Wood), is a collection of papers presented by sixty-two sci- entists at the Conference on the Origin of the Moon held at Kona, Hawaii, in October 1984—the most comprehensive since the conference twenty years earlier that had mapped out the scientific goals of the unmanned and manned Moon probes. In their papers, the contributing scientists, approaching the problem from various disciplines, invariably reached conclu- sions against the fission theory. Comparisons of the compo- sition of the upper mantle of the Earth with that of the Moon, Michael J. Drake of the University of Arizona stated, “rig- orously exclude” the Rotational Fission hypothesis.

The laws of angular momentum plus the comparisons of the composition of the Moon with that of Earth’s mantle also ruled out, after the landings on the Moon, the second favored theory, that of Capture. According to this theory, the Moon was formed not near the Earth but among the outer planets or even beyond them. Somehow thrown off into a vast elliptical orbit around the Sun, it passed loo closely to the Earth, was caught by the Earth’s gravitational force, and became Earth’s satellite.

This theory, it was pointed out after numerous computer studies, required an extremely slow approach by the Moon toward the Earth. This capture process not unlike that of the satellites we have sent to be captured and remain in orbit around Mars or Venus, fails to take into account the relative sizes of Earth and Moon. Relative to the Earth, the Moon (about one- eightieth the mass of Earth) is much too large to have been snared from a vast elliptical orbit unless it was moving very slowly; but then, all the calculations have shown, the result would be not a capture but a collision. This theory was further laid to rest by comparisons of the compositions of the two celestial bodies: the Moon was too similar to Earth and too dissimilar to the outer bodies to have been born so far away from Earth.

Extensive studies of the Capture Theory suggested that the Moon would have remained intact only if it had neared Earth, not from way out, but from the very same part of the heavens where Earth itself was formed. This conclusion was accepted even by S. Fred Singer of George Mason University—a proponent of the capture hypothesis—in his paper (“Origin of the Moon by Capture”) presented at the above-mentioned Con- ference on the Origin of the Moon. “Capture from an eccentric heliocentric orbit is neither feasible nor necessary,” he stated; the oddities in the Moon’s composition “can be explained in terms of a Moon formed in an Earthlike orbit”: the Moon was “captured” while forming near Earth.

These admissions by proponents of the fission and the capture theories lent support to the third main theory that was previously current, that of Coaccretion, a common birth. This theory has its roots in the hypothesis proposed at the end of the eighteenth century by Pierre-Simon de Laplace, who said that the Solar System was born of a nebular gas cloud that coalesced in time to form the Sun and the planets—a hypothesis that has been retained by modern science. Showing that lunar accelerations are dependent on eccentricities in the Earth’s orbit, Laplace concluded that the two bodies were formed side by side, first the Earth and then the Moon. The Earth and the Moon, he suggested, were sister planets, partners in a binary, or two-planet, system, in which they orbit the Sun together while one “dances” around the other.

That natural satellites, or moons, coalesce from the remain- der of the same primordial matter of which their parent planet was formed is now the generally accepted theory of how planets acquired moons and should also apply to Earth and the Moon. As has been found by the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, the moons of the outer planets—that had to be formed, by and large, out of the same primordial material as their “parents”— are both sufficiently akin to their parent planets and at the same time reveal individual characteristics as “children” do; this might well be true also for the basic similarities and sufficient dissimilarities between the Earth and the Moon.

What nevertheless makes scientists reject this theory when it is applied to the Earth and the Moon is their relative sizes. The Moon is simply too large relative to the Earth—not only about one-eightieth of its mass but about one quarter of its diameter. This relationship is out of all proportion to what has been found elsewhere in the Solar System. When the mass of all the moons of each planet (excluding Pluto) is given as a ratio of the planet’s mass, the result is as follows:

A comparison of the relative sizes of the largest moon of each of the other planets with the size of the Moon relative to Earth (Fig. 40) also clearly shows the anomaly. One result of this disproportion is that there is too much angular momentum in the combined Earth-Moon system to support the Binary Planets hypothesis.

With all three basic theories unable to meet some of the required criteria, one may end up wondering how Earth ended up with its satellite at all… Such a conclusion, in fact, does

not bother some; they point to the fact that none of the terrestrial planets (other than Earth) have satellites: the two tiny bodies that orbit Mars are, all are agreed, captured asteroids. If con- ditions in the Solar System were such that none of the planets formed between the Sun and Mars (inclusive) obtained satel- lites in any one of the considered methods—Fission, Capture, Coaccretion—should not Earth, too, being within this moon- less zone, have been without a moon? But the fact remains that Earth as we know it and where we know it does have a moon, and an extremely large one (in proportion) to boot. So how to account tor that?

Another finding of the Apollo program also stands in the way of accepting the coaccretion theory. The Moon’s surface as well as its mineral content suggest a “magma ocean” created by partial melting of the Moon’s interior. For that, a source of heat great enough to melt the magma is called for. Such heat can result only from cataclysmic or catastrophic event; in the coaccretion scenario no such heat is produced. How then explain the magma ocean and other evidence on the Moon of a cataclysmic heating?

The need for a birth of the Moon with the right amount of angular momentum and a cataclysmic, heat-producing event led to a post-Apollo program hypothesis that has been dubbed the Big Whack Theory. It developed from the suggestion by William Hartmann, a geochemist at the Planetary Science In- stitute in Tucson, Arizona, and his colleague Donald R. Davis in 1975 that collisions and impacts played a role in the creation of the Moon (“Satellite-sized Planetesimals and Lunar Ori- gin,” Icarus, vol. 24). According to their calculations, the rate at which planets were bombarded by small and large asteroids during the late stages of the planets’ formation was much higher than at present; some of the asteroids were big enough to deliver a blow that could chip off parts of the planet they hit; in Earth’s case, the blown-off chunk became the Moon.

The idea was taken up by two astrophysicists, Alastair G. W. Cameron of Harvard and William R. Ward of Caltech. Their study, “The Origin of the Moon” (Lunar Science, vol. 7, 1976) envisioned a planet-sized body—at least as large as the planet Mars—racing toward the Earth at 24,500 miles per hour; coming from the outer reaches of the Solar System, its path arced toward the Sun—but the Earth, in its formative orbit,

stood in the way. The “glancing blow” that resulted (Fig. 41) slightly tilted the Earth, giving it its ecliptic obliquity (currently about 23.5 degrees); it also melted the outer layers of both bodies, sending a plume of vaporized rock into orbit around the Earth. More than twice as much material as was needed to form the Moon was shot up, with the force of the expanding vapor acting to distance the debris from Earth. Some of the ejected material fell back to Earth, but enough remained far enough away to eventually coalesce and become the Moon.

This Collision-Ejection theory was further perfected by its authors as various problems raised by it were pointed out; it was also modified as other scientific teams tested it through computer simulations (the leading teams were those of A. C. Thompson and D. Stevenson at Caltech, H. J. Melosh and M. Kipp at Sandia National Laboratories, and W. Benz and W. L. Slattery at Los Alamos National Laboratory).

Under this scenario (Fig. 42 shows a simulated sequence,

lasting about eighteen minutes in all), the impact resulted in immense heat (perhaps 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit) that caused a melting of both bodies. The bulk of the impactor sank to the center of the molten Earth; portions of both bodies were va- porized and thrust out. On cooling, the Earth re-formed with the iron-rich bulk of the impactor at its core. Some of the ejected material fell back to Earth; the rest, mostly from the impactor, cooled and coalesced at a distance—resulting in the Moon that now orbits the Earth.

Another major departure from the original Big Whack hypothesis was the realization that in order to resolve chemical composition constraints, the impactor had to come from the same place in the heavens as Earth itself did—not from the outer regions of the Solar System. But if so, where and how did it acquire the immense momentum it needed for the vaporizing impact?

There is also the question of plausibility, which Cameron himself recognized in his presentation at the Hawaii conference. “Is it plausible,” he asked, “that an extra- planetary body with about the mass of Mars or more should have been wandering around in the inner solar system at an appropriate time to have participated in our postulated collision?” He felt that about 100 million years after the planets were formed, there were indeed enough planetary instabilities in the newborn Solar System and enough “proto – planetary remnants” to make the existence of a large impactor and the postulated collision plausible.

Subsequent calculations showed that in order to achieve the

end results, the impactor had to be three times the size of Mars. This heightened the problem of where and how in Earth’s vicinity such a celestial body could accrete. In response, astronomer George Wetherill of the Carnegie Institute calculated backward and found that the terrestrial planets could have evolved from a roaming band of some five hundred planetesimals. Repeatedly colliding among themselves, the small moonlets acted as the building blocks of the planets and of the bodies that continued to bombard them. The calculations sup- ported the plausibility of the Big Whack theory in its modified Collision-Ejection scenario, but it retained the resulting immense heat. “The heat of such an impact,” Wetherill concluded, “would have melted both bodies.” This, it seemed, could explain a) how the Earth got its iron core and b) how the Moon got its molten magma oceans.

Although this latest version left many other constraints un- met, many of the participants in the 1984 Conference on the Origin of the Moon were ready, by the time the conference ended, to treat the collision-ejection hypothesis as the leading contender—not so much out of conviction of its correctness as out of exasperation. “This happened,” Wood wrote in his summary, “mainly because several independent investigators showed that coaccretion, the model that had been most widely accepted by lunar scientists (at least at a subconscious level), could not account for the angular momentum content of the Earth-Moon system.” In fact, some of the participants at the conference, including Wood himself, saw vexing problems inherent in the new theory. Iron, Wood pointed out, “is actually quite volatile and would have suffered much the same fate as the other volatiles, like sodium and water”; in other words, it would not have sunk intact into the Earth’s core as the theory postulates. The abundance of water on Earth, to say nothing of the abundance of iron in the Earth’s mantle, would not have been possible if Earth had melted down.

Since each variant of the Big Whack hypothesis involved a total meltdown of the Earth, it was necessary that other evidence of such a meltdown be found. But as was overwhelmingly reported at the 1988 Origin of the Earth Conference at Berkeley, California, no such evidence exists. If Earth had melted and resolidified, various elements in its rocks would have crystallized differently from the way they actually are found, and they would have reappeared in certain ratios, but this is not the case. Another result should have been the distortion of the chondrite material—the most primordial matter on Earth that is also found in the most primitive meteorites— but no such distortion has been found. One investigator, A. E. Ringwood of the Australian National University, extended these tests to more than a dozen elements whose relative abun- dance should have been altered had the first crust of Earth been formed after an Earth meltdown; but there was no such alter- ation to any significant extent. In a review of these findings in Science (March 17, 1989) it was pointed out that at the 1988 conference the geochemists “contended that a giant impact and its inevitable melting of Earth do not jibe with what they know of geochemistry. In particular, the composition of the upper few hundred kilometers of the mantle implies it has not been totally molten at any time.” “Geochemistry,” the authors of the article in Science concluded, “would thus seem to be a potential stumbling block for the giant-impact origin of the moon.” In “Science and Technology,” (The Economist, July 22, 1989) it was likewise reported that numerous studies have led geochemists “to be skeptical about the impact story.”

Like the previous theories, the Big Whack also ended up meeting some constraints but failing others. Still, one should ask whether, while this theory of impact-meltdown ran into problems when applied to Earth, did it not at least solve the problem of the melting that is evident on the Moon?

As it turned out, not exactly so. Thermal studies did, indeed, indicate the Moon had experienced a great meltdown. “The indications are that the Moon was largely or totally molten early in lunar history,” Alan B. Binder of NASA’s Johnson Space Center said at the 1984 Conference on the Origin of the Moon. “Early,” but not “initial,” countered other scientists. This crucial difference was based on studies of stresses in the Moon’s crust (by Sean C. Solomon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), as well of isotope ratios (when atomic nuclei of the same element have different masses because they have different numbers of neutrons) studied by D. L. Turcotte and L. H. Kellog of Cornell University. These studies, the 1984 conference was told, “support a relatively cool origin for the Moon.”

What, then, of the evidence of meltings on the Moon? There is no doubt that they have occurred: the giant craters, some a hundred or more miles in diameter, are silent witnesses visible to all. There are the maria (“seas”), that, it is now known, were not bodies of water but areas of the Moon’s surface flattened by immense impacts. There are the magma oceans.

There are glass and glassy material embedded in the rocks and grains of the Moon’s surface that resulted from shock melting of the surface caused by high-velocity impacts (as distinct from heated lava as a source). At the third Conference on the Origins of Life, a whole day was devoted to the subject of “Glass on the Moon,” so important was this clue held to be. Eugene Shoemaker of NASA and Caltech reported that such evidence of “shock vitrified” glasses and other types of melted rock were found in abundance on the Moon; the presence of nickel in the glassy spheres and beads suggested to him that the impactor had a composition different from that of the Moon, since the Moon’s own rocks lack nickel.

When did all these impacts that caused the surface melting take place? Not, the findings showed, when the Moon was created but some 500 million years afterward. It was then.

NASA scientists reported at a 1972 press conference and subsequently, that “the Moon had undergone a convulsive evolution. . . . The most cataclysmic period came 4 billion years ago, when celestial bodies the size of large cities and small countries came crashing into the Moon and formed its huge basins and towering mountains. The huge amounts of radio- active minerals left by the collisions began heating the rock beneath the surface, melting massive amounts of it and forcing seas of lava through cracks in the surface. . . . Apollo 15 found rockslides in the crater Tsiolovsky six times greater than any rockslide on Earth. Apollo 16 discovered that the collision that created the Sea of Nectar deposited debris as much as 1,000 miles away. Apollo 17 landed near a scarp eight times higher than any on Earth.”

The oldest rocks on the Moon were judged to be 4.25 billion years old; soil particles gave a date of 4.6 billion years. The age of the Moon, all 1,500 or so scientists who have studied the rocks and soil brought back agree, dates back to the time the Solar System first took shape. But then something happened about 4 billion years ago. Writing in Scientific American (Jan- uary 1977), William Hartmann, in his article “Cratering in the Solar System,” reported that “various Apollo analysts have found that the age of many samples of lunar rocks cuts off rather sharply at four billion years; few older rocks have sur- vived.” The rocks and soil samples that contained the glasses formed by the intense impacts were as old as 3.9 billion years. “We know that a widespread cataclysmic episode of intense bombardment destroyed older rocks and surfaces of the planets,” Gerald J. Wasserburg of Caltech stated on the eve of the last Apollo mission; the remaining question, then, was “what happened between the origin of the Moon about 4.6 billion years ago and 4 billion years ago,” when the catastrophe occurred.

So the rock found by astronaut David Scott that was nick- named “the Genesis Rock” was not formed at the time the Moon was formed, it was actually formed as a result of that catastrophic event some 600 million years later. Even so, it was appropriately named; for the tale in Genesis is not that of the primordial forming of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago, but of the Celestial Battle of Nibiru/Marduk with Tiamat some 4 billion years ago.

Unhappy with all the theories that have so far been offered for the origin of the Moon, some have attempted to select the best one by grading the theories according to certain constraints and criteria. A “Truth Table” prepared by Michael J. Drake of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory had the Coaccretion theory far ahead of all others. In John A. Wood’s analysis it met all the criteria except that of the Earth- Moon angular momentum and the melting on the Moon; oth- erwise it bettered all others. The consensus has now focused again on the Coaccretion theory, with some elements borrowed from the Giant Impact and Fission theories. According to the theory offered at the 1984 Conference by A. P. Boss of the Carnegie Institute and S. J. Peale of the University of Cali- fornia, the Moon is indeed seen as coaccreting with Earth from the same primoridal matter, but the gas cloud within which the coaccretion took place was subjected to bombardments by pla- netesimals, which sometimes disintegrated the forming Moon and sometimes added foreign material to its mass (Fig. 43). The net result was an ever-larger Moon attracting and absorbing other moonlets that were forming within the circumterrestrial ring—a Moon both akin to and somewhat different from the Earth.

Having swung from theory to theory, modern science now embraces as a theory for the origin of our Moon the same process that gave the outer planets their multimoon systems. The hurdle still to be overcome is the need to explain why, instead of a swarm of smaller moons, a too-small Earth has ended up with a single, too-large Moon.

For the answer, we have to go back to Sumerian cosmogony. The first help it offers modern science is its assertion that the Moon originated not as a satellite of Earth but of the much larger Tiamat. Then—millennia before Western civilization had discovered the swarms of moons encircling Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—the Sumerians ascribed to Tiamat a swarm of satellites, “eleven in all.” They placed Tiamat be- yond Mars, which would qualify her as an outer planet; and the “celestial horde” was acquired by her no differently than by the other outer planets.

When we compare the latest scientific theories with Sumerian cosmogony, we find not only that modern scientists have come around to accepting the same ideas found in the Sumerian body of knowledge but are even using terminology that mimics the Sumerian texts. . . .

Just as the latest modern theories do, the Sumerian cosmogony also describes the scene as that of an early, unstable Solar System where planetesimals and emerging gravitational forces disturb the planetary balance and, sometimes, cause moons to grow disproportionately. In The 12th Planet, I described the celestial conditions thus: “With the end of the majestic drama of the birth of the planets, the authors of the Creation Epic now raise the curtain on Act II, on a drama of celestial turmoil. The newly created family of planets was far from being stable. The planets were gravitating toward each other; they were converging on Tiamat, disturbing and endangering the primordial bodies.” In the poetic words of the Enuma elish,

The divine brothers banded together;
They disturbed Tiamat as they surged back and forth.
They were troubling the belly of Tiamatby their antics in the dwellings of heaven.
Apsu [the Sun] could not lessen their clamor;
Tiamat was speechless at their ways.
Their doings were loathsome . . . 
Troublesome were their ways; they were overbearing.

“We have here obvious references to erratic orbits,” I wrote in The 12th Planet. The new planets “surged back and forth”; they got too close to each other (“banded together”); they interfered with Tiamat’s orbit; they got too close to her “belly”; their “ways”—orbits—”were troublesome”; their gravitational pull was “overbearing”—excessive, disregarding the others’ orbits.

Abandoning earlier concepts of a Solar System slowly cooling and gradually freezing into its present shape out of the hot primordial cloud, scientific opinion has now swung in the opposite direction. “As faster computers allow celestial mechanicians longer looks at the behavior of the planets,” Richard A. Kerr wrote in Science (“Research News,” April 14, 1989), “chaos is turning up everywhere.” He quoted such studies as that by Gerald J. Sussman and Jack Wisdom of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in which they went back by computer simulations and discovered that “many orbits that lie between Uranus and Neptune become chaotic,” and that “the orbital behavior of Pluto is chaotic and unpredictable.”

J. Laskar of the Bureau des Longitudes in Paris found original chaos throughout the Solar System, “but especially among the inner planets, including Earth.”

George Wetherill, updating his calculations of multicolli- sions by some five hundred planetesimals (Science, May 17, 1985), described the process in the zone of the terrestrial planets as the accretion of “lots of brothers and sisters” that collided to form “trial planets.” The process of accretion—crashing into one another, breaking up, capturing the material of others, until some grew larger and eventually became the terrestrial planets—he said, was nothing short of a “battle royal” that lasted most of the first 100 million years of the Solar System.

The eminent scientist’s words are astoundingly similar to those of the Enutna elish. He speaks of “lots of brothers and sisters” moving about, colliding with each other, affecting each other’s orbits and very existence. The ancient text speaks of “divine brothers” who “disturbed,” “troubled,” “surged back and forth” in the heavens in the very zone where Tiamat was, near her “belly.” He uses the expression “battle royal” to describe the conflict between these “brothers and sisters.” The Sumerian narrative uses the very same word—”battle”—- to describe what happened, and recorded for all time the events of Genesis as the Celestial Battle.

We read in the ancient texts that as the celestial disturbances increased, Tiamat brought forth her own “host” with which “to do battle” with the celestial “brothers” who were encroaching on her:

She has set up an Assembly and is furious with rage. . . .
Withall, eleven of this kind she brought forth. . . .
They thronged and marched at the side of Tiamat; Enraged, they plot ceaselessly day and night. They are set for combat, fuming and raging; They have assembled, prepared for conflict.

Just as modern astronomers are troubled by the disproportionately large size of the Moon, so were the authors of the Enuma elish. Putting words in the mouths of the other planets, they point to the expanding size and disturbing mass of “Kingu” as their chief complaint:

From among the gods who formed her host her first-born, Kingu, she elevated;
In their midst she made him great.
To be head of her ranks, to command her host,
to raise weapons for the encounter,
to be in the lead for combat,
in the battle to be the commander— these to the hand of Kingu she entrusted. As she caused him to be in her host,
"I have cast a spell for thee," she said to him;
"I have made thee great in the assembly of the gods;
Dominion over the gods I have given unto thee.
Verily, thou art supreme!"

According to this ancient cosmogony, one of the eleven moons of Tiamat did grow to an unusual size because of the ongoing perturbations and chaotic conditions in the newly formed Solar System. How the creation of this monstrous moon affected these conditions is regrettably not clear from the an- cient text; the enigmatic verses, with some of the original words subject to different readings and translations, seem to say that making Kingu “exalted” resulted in “making the fire subside” (per E. A. Speiser), or “quieting the fire-god” (per A. Heidel) and humbling /vanquishing the “Power-weapon which is so potent in its sweep”—a possible reference to the disturbing pull of gravitation.

Whatever quieting effect the enlargement of “Kingu” may have had on Tiamat and her host, it proved increasingly dis- ruptive to the other planets. Especially disturbing to them was the elevation of Kingu to the status of a full-fledged planet:

She gave him a Tablet of Destinies, fastened it on his breast. . . .
Kingu was elevated,
had received a heavenly rank.

It was this “sin” of Tiamat, her giving Kingu his own orbital “destiny,” that enraged the other planets to the point of “calling in” Nibiru/Marduk to put an end to Tiamat and her out- of-line consort. In the ensuing Celestial Battle, as described earlier, Tiamat was split in two: one half was shattered; the other half, accompanied by Kingu, was thrust into a new orbit to become the Earth and its Moon.

We have here a sequence that conforms with the best points of the various modern theories regarding the origin, evolution, and final fate of the Moon. Though the nature of the “power- weapon . . . so potent in its sweep” or that of “the fire-god” that caused Kingu to grow disproportionately large remains unclear, the fact of the disproportionate size of the Moon (even relative to the larger Tiamat) is recorded in all its disturbing details. All is there-—except that it is not Sumerian cosmogony that corroborates modern science, but modern science that catches up with ancient knowledge.

Could the Moon have indeed been a planet-in-the- making, as the Sumerians said? As reviewed in earlier chapters, this was quite conceivable. Did it in fact assume planetary aspects? Contrary to long-held views that the Moon was always an inert object, it was found, in the 1970s and 1980s, to possess virtually all the attributes of a planet except its own independent orbit around the Sun. Its surface has regions of rugged and tangled mountains; it has plains and “seas” that, if not formed by water, were probably formed by molten lava. To the sci- entists’ surprise the Moon was found to be layered, as the Earth is. In spite of the depletion of its iron by the catastrophic event discussed earlier, it appears to have retained an iron core. Scientists debate whether the core is still molten, for to their astonishment the Moon was found to have once possessed a magnetic field, which is caused by the rotation of a molten iron core, as is true of the Earth and other planets. Significantly, as studies by Keith Runcorn of Britain’s University of New- castle-upon-Tyne indicate, the magnetism “dwindled away circa four billion years ago”-—the time of the Celestial Battle.

Instruments installed on the Moon by Apollo astronauts relayed data that revealed “unexpectedly high heat flows from beneath the lunar surface,” indicating ongoing activity inside the “lifeless orb.” Vapor—water vapor—was detected by Rice University scientists, who reported (in October 1971) seeing “geysers of water vapor erupting through cracks in the lunar surface.” Other unexpected findings reported at the Third Lunar Science Conference in Houston in 1972 disclosed on-going volcanism on the Moon, which “‘would imply the simultaneous existence near the lunar surface of significant quantities of heat and water.”

In 1973, “bright flashes” sighted on the Moon were found to be emissions of gas from the Moon’s interior. Reporting this, Walter Sullivan, science editor of The New York Times, observed that it appeared that the Moon, even if not a “living celestial body… is at least a breathing one,” Such puffs of gas and darkish mists have been observed in several of the Moon’s deep craters from the very first Apollo mission and at least through 1980.

The indications that lunar volcanism may still be going on have led scientists to assume that the Moon once had a full- fledged atmosphere whose volatile elements and compounds included hydrogen, helium, argon, sulfur, carbon compounds,

and water. The possibility that there may still be water below the Moon’s surface has raised the intriguing question of whether water once flowed on the face of the Moon—water that, as a very volatile compound, evaporated and was dissi- pated into space.

Were it not for budgetary constraints, NASA would have been willing to adopt the recommendations of a panel of sci- entists to explore the Moon with a view to begin mining its mineral resources. Thirty geologists, chemists, and physicists who met in August 1977 at the University of California in San Diego pointed out that research on the Moon—both from orbit and on its surface—had been limited to its equatorial regions; they urged the launching of a lunar polar orbiter, not only because such an orbiter could collect data from the entire Moon, but also with a view to discovering if there is now water on the Moon. “One target of the orbiter’s observations,” ac- cording to James Arnold of the University of California, “would be small areas near each pole where the Sun never shines. It has been theorized by scientists that as much as 100 billion tons of water in the form of ice are likely to be found in those places. … If you’re going to have large-scale activities in space, like mining and manufacturing, it’s going to involve a lot of water, the Moon’s polar regions could be a good source.”

Whether the Moon still has water, after all the cataclysmic events it has undergone, is still to be ascertained. But the increasing evidence that it may still have water in its interior and may have had water on its surface should not be surprising. After all, the Moon—alias Kingu—was the leading satellite of the “watery monster” Tiamat.

On the occasion of the last Apollo mission to the Moon, The Economist (Science and Technology, December 11,1 972) summed up the program’s discoveries thus: “Perhaps the most important of all, exploration of the moon has shown that it is not a simple, uncomplicated sphere but a true planetary body.”

“A true planetary body.” Just as the Sumerians described millennia ago. And just as they stated millennia ago, the planet- to-be was not to become a planet with its own orbit around the Sun because it was deprived of that status as a result of the Celestial Battle. Here is what Nibiru/Marduk did to “Kingu”:

And Kingu, who had become chief among them,
he made shrink, as a DUG.GA.E god he counted him.
He took from him the Tablet of Destinies
which was not rightfully his;
He sealed on it his own seal
and fastened it to his own breast.

Deprived of its orbital momentum, Kingu was reduced to the status of a mere satellite—our Moon.

The Sumerian observation that Nibiru/Marduk made Kingu “shrink” has been taken to refer to its reduction in rank and importance. But as recent findings indicate, the Moon has been depleted of the bulk of its iron by a cataclysmic event, resulting in a marked decrease in its density. “There are two planetary bodies within the Solar System whose peculiar mean density implies that they are unique and probably the products of unusual circumstances,” Alastair Cameron wrote in Icarus (vol. 64, 1985); “these are the Moon and Mercury. The former has a low mean density and is greatly depleted in iron.” In other words, Kingu has indeed shrunk!

There is other evidence that the Moon became more compact as a result of heavy impacts. On the side facing away from Earth-—its far side—the surface has highlands and a thick

crust, while the near side—-the side facing Earth—shows large, flat plains, as though the elevated features had been wiped off. Inside the Moon, gravitational variations reveal the existence of compacted, heavier masses in several concentrations, es- pecially where the surface had been flattened out. Though outwardly the Moon (as do all celestial bodies larger than a minimal size) has a spherical shape, the mass in its core appears to have the shape of a gourd, as a computer study shows (Fig. 44). It is a shape that bears the mark of the “big whack” that compressed the Moon and thrust it into its new place in the heavens, just as the Sumerians had related.

The Sumerian assertion that Kingu was turned into a DUG.GA.E is equally intriguing. The term, I wrote in The 12th Planet, literally means “pot of lead.” At the time I took it to be merely a figurative description of the Moon as ” a mass of lifeless clay.” But the Apollo discoveries suggest that the Sumerian term was not just figurative but was literally and scientifically correct. One of the initial puzzles encountered on the Moon was so-called “parentless lead.” The Apollo program revealed that the top few miles of the Moon’s crust are unusually rich in radioactive elements such as uranium. There was also evidence of the existence of extinct radon. These elements decay and become lead at either final or intermediary stages of the radioactive-decay process.

How the Moon became so enriched in radioactive elements remains an unresolved puzzle, but that these elements had mostly decayed into lead is now evident. Thus, the Sumerian assertion that Kingu was turned into a “pot of lead” is an accurate scientific statement.

The Moon was not only a Witness to Genesis. It is also a witness to the veracity of the biblical Genesis—to the accuracy of ancient knowledge.

IN THE ASTRONAUTS’ OWN WORDS

Feeling changes of “almost a spiritual nature” in their views of themselves, of other humans, and of the possibility of intelligent life existing beyond Earth have been reported by almost all the American astronauts.

Gordon Cooper, who piloted Mercury 9 in 1963 and co- piloted Gemini 5 in 1965, returned with the belief that “in- telligent, extraterrestrial life has visited Earth in ages past” and became interested in archaeology. Edward G. Gibson, a scientist aboard Skylab 3 (1974), said that orbiting the Earth for days “makes you speculate a little more about life existing elsewhere in the universe.”

Especially moved were the astronauts of the Apollo missions to the Moon. “Something happens to you out there,” stated Apollo 14 astronaut Ed Mitchell. Jim Irwin Apollo 15) was “deeply moved … and felt the presence of God.” His comrade on the mission, Al Worden, speaking on the twentieth anniversary of the first landing on the Moon on a TV program (“The Other Side of the Moon” produced by Michael G. Lemle) compared the lunar module that was used to land on and take off vertically from the Moon to the spaceship described in Ezekiel’s vision.

“In my mind,” said Al Worden, “the universe has to be cyclic; in one galaxy there is a planet becoming unlivable and in another part or a different galaxy there is a planet that is perfect for habitation, and I see some intelligent being, like us, skipping around from planet to planet, as South Pacific Indians do on islands, to continue the species. I think that’s what the space program is all about. … 1 think we may be a combination of creatures that were living here on Earth some time in the past, and had a visitation by beings from somewhere else in the universe; and those two species getting together and having progeny. . . . In fact, a very small group of explorers could land on a planet and create successors to themselves who would eventually take up the pursuit of inhabiting the rest of the universe,”

And Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) expressed the belief that “one of these days, through telescopes that may be in orbit, like the Hubble telescope, or other technical breakthroughs, we may learn that indeed we are not alone in this marvelous universe.

7

THE SEED OF LIFE

Of all the mysteries confronting Mankind’s quest for knowl- edge, the greatest is the mystery called “life.”

Evolution theory explains how life on Earth evolved, all the way from the earliest, one-celled creatures to Homo sapiens; it does not explain how life on Earth began. Beyond the question, Are we alone? lies the more fundamental question: Is life on Earth unique, unmatched in our Solar System, our galaxy, the whole universe?

According to the Sumerians, life was brought into the Solar System by Nibiru; it was Nibiru that imparted the “seed of life” to Earth during the Celestial Battle with Tiamat. Modern science has come a long way toward the same conclusion.

In order to figure out how life might have begun on the primitive Earth, the scientists had to determine, or at least assume, what the conditions were on the newly born Earth. Did it have water? Did it have an atmosphere? What of life’s main building blocks—molecular combinations of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus? Were they available on the young Earth to initiate the precursors of living organisms? At present the Earth’s dry air is made up of 79 percent nitrogen (N2), 20 percent oxygen (O2) and 1 percent argon (Ar), plus traces of other elements (the atmosphere contains water vapor in addition to the dry air). This docs not reflect the relative abundance of elements in the universe, where hydrogen (87 percent) and helium (12 percent) make up 99 percent of all abundant elements. It is therefore believed (among other reasons) that the present earthly atmosphere is not Earth’s original one. Both hydrogen and helium are highly volatile, and their diminished presence in Earth’s atmosphere, as well as its deficiency of “noble” gases such as neon, argon, krypton, and xenon (relative to their cosmic abundance), sug- gest to scientists that the Earth experienced a “thermal epi- sode” sometime before 3.8 billion years ago—an occurrence with which my readers are familiar by now. . . .

By and large the scientists now believe that Earth’s atmosphere was reconstituted initially from the gases spewed out by the volcanic convulsions of a wounded Earth. As clouds thrown up by these eruptions shielded the Earth and it began to cool, the vaporized water condensed and came down in torrential rains. Oxidation of rocks and minerals provided the first reservoir of higher levels of oxygen on Earth; eventually, plant life added both oxygen and carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere and started the nitrogen cycle (with the aid of bacteria).

It is noteworthy that even in this respect the ancient texts stand up to the scrutiny of modern science. The fifth tablet of Enutna elish, though badly damaged, describes the gushing lava as Tiamat’s “spittle” and places the volcanic activity earlier than the formation of the atmosphere, the oceans, and the continents. The spittle, the text states, was “laying in layers” as it poured forth. The phase of “making the cold” and the “assembling of the water clouds” are described; after that the “foundations” of Earth were raised and the oceans were gathered—just as the verses in Genesis have reiterated. It was only thereafter that life appeared on Earth: green herbage upon the continents and ‘”swarms” in the waters.

But living cells, even the simplest ones, are made up of complex molecules of various organic compounds, not just of separate chemical elements. How did these molecules come about? Because many of these compounds have been found elsewhere in the Solar System, it has been assumed that they form naturally, given enough time. In 1953 two scientists at the University of Chicago, Harold Urey and Stanley Miller, conducted what has since been called “a most striking experiment.” In a pressure vessel they mixed simple organic molecules of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor, dissolved the mixture in water to simulate the primordial watery “soup,” and subjected the mixture to electrical sparks to emulate primordial lightning bolts. The experiment produced several amino and hydroxy acids—the building blocks of proteins.

which are essential to living matter. Other researchers later subjected similar mixtures to ultraviolet light, ionizing radiation, or heat to simulate the effects of the Sun’s rays as well as various other types of radiation on the Earth’s primitive atmosphere and murky waters. The results were the same.

But it was one thing to show that nature itself could, under certain conditions, come up with life’s building blocks—not just simple but even complex organic compounds; it was an- other thing to breathe life into the resulting compounds, which remained inert and lifeless in the compression chambers.

“Life” is defined as the ability to absorb nutrients (of any kind) and to replicate, not just to exist. Even the biblical tale of Creation recognizes that when the most complex being on Earth, Man, was shaped out of “clay,” divine intervention was needed to “breathe the spirit/breath of life” into him. Without that, no matter how ingeniously created, he was not yet animate, not yet living.

As astronomy has done in the celestial realm, so, in the 1970s and 1980s, did biochemistry unlock many of the secrets of terrestrial life. The innermost reaches of living cells have been pried open, the genetic code that governs replication has been understood, and many of the complex components that make the tiniest one-celled being or the cells of the most advanced creatures have been synthesized. Pursuing the research, Stanley Miller, now at the University of California at San Diego, has commented that “we have learned how to make organic compounds from inorganic elements; the next step is to learn how they organize themselves into a replicating cell.”

The murky-waters, or “primordial-soup,” hypothesis for the origin of life on Earth envisions a multitude of those earliest organic molecules in the ocean, bumping into each other as the result of waves, currents, or temperature changes, and eventually sticking to one another through natural cell attractions to form cell groupings from which polymers—long-chained molecules that lie at the core of body formation— eventually developed. But what gave these cells the genetic memory to know, not just how to combine, but how to replicate, to make the ultimate bodies grow? The need to involve the genetic code in the transition from inanimate organic matter to an animate state has led to a “Made-of-Clay” hypothesis.

The launching of this theory is attributed to an announcement in April 1985 by researchers at the Ames Research Center, a NASA facility at Mountainview, California; but in fact the idea that clay on the shores of ancient seas played an important role in the origin of life on Earth was made public at the October 1977 Pacific Conference on Chemistry. There James A. Law- less, who headed a team of researchers at NASA’s Ames fa- cility, reported on experiments in which simple amino acids (the chemical building blocks of proteins) and nucleotides (the chemical building blocks of genes)—assuming they had al- ready developed in the murky “primordial soup” in the sea— began to form into chains when deposited on clays that con- tained traces of metals such as nickel or zinc, and allowed to dry.

What the researchers found to be significant was that the traces of nickel selectively held on only to the twenty kinds of amino acids that are common to all living things on Earth, while the traces of zinc in the clay helped link together the nucleotides, which resulted in a compound analogous to a crucial enzyme (called DNA-polymerase) that links pieces of genetic material in all living cells.

In 1985 the scientists of the Ames Research Center reported substantial advances in understanding the role of clay in the processes that had led to life on Earth. Clay, they discovered, has two basic properties essential to life: the capacity to store and the ability to transfer energy. In the primordial conditions such energy might have come from radioactive decay, among other possible sources. Using the stored energy, clays might have acted as chemical laboratories where inorganic raw ma- tefials were processed into more complex molecules. There was more: one scientist, Armin Weiss of the University of Munich, reported experiments in which clay crystals seemed to reproduce themselves from a “parent crystal”—a primitive replication phenomenon; and Graham Cairns-Smith of the Uni- versity of Glasgow held that the inorganic “proto-organisms” in the clay were involved in “directing” or actually acting as a “template” from which the living organisms eventually evolved.

Explaining these tantalizing properties of clay-—even common clay—Lelia Coyne, who headed one research team, said that the ability of the clays to trap and transmit energy was due to “mistakes” in the formation of clay crystals; these defects in the clays’ microstructure acted as the sites where energy was stored and from which the chemical directions for the formation of the proto-organisms emanated.

“If the theory can be confirmed,” The New York Times commented in its report of the announcements, “it would seem that an accumulation of chemical mistakes led to life on Earth.” So the “life-from-clay” theory, in spite of the advances it offered, depended, as the “murky-soup” theory did, on random occurrences—microstructural mistakes here, occasional lightning strikes and collisions of molecules there—to explain the transition from chemical elements to simple organic molecules to complex organic molecules and from inanimate to animate matter.

The improved theory seemed to do another thing, which did not escape notice. “The theory,” The New York Times continued, “is also evocative of the biblical account of the Creation. In Genesis it is written, ‘And the Lord God formed man of dust of the ground,’ and in common usage the primordial dust is called cl a y. ” This news story, and the biblical parallel implicit in it, merited an editorial in the venerable newspaper. Under the headline “Uncommon Clay,” the editorial said:

Ordinary clay, it seems, has two basic properties essential to life. It can store energy and also transmit it. So, the scientists reason, clay could have acted as a "chemical factory" for turning inorganic raw materials into more complex molecules. Out of those complex molecules arose life—and, one day, us.

That the Bible's been saying so all along, clay being what Genesis meant by the "dust of the ground" that formed man, is obvious. What is not so obvious is how often we have been saying it to one another, and without knowing it.

The combined murky-soup and life-from-clay theories, few have realized, have gone even further in substantiating the ancient accounts. Further experiments by Lelia Coyne together with Noam Lahab of the Hebrew University, Israel, have shown that to act as catalysts in the formation of short strings of amino acids, the clays must undergo cycles of wetting and drying. This process calls for an environment where water can alternate with dryness, either on dry land that is subjected to on-and-off rains or where seas slosh back and forth as a result of tides. The conclusion, which appeared to gain support from experiments aimed at searching for “protocells” that were conducted at the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Evolution at the University of Miami, pointed to primitive algae as the first one-celled living creatures on Earth. Still found in ponds and in damp places, algae appear little changed in spite of the passage of billions of years.

Because until a few decades ago no evidence for land life older than about 500 million years had been found, it was assumed that the life that evolved from algae was limited to the oceans. “There were algae in the oceans but the land was

yet devoid of life,” textbooks used to state. But in 1977 a scientific team led by Elso S. Barghoorn of Harvard discovered in sedimentary rocks in South Africa (at a site in Swaziland called Figtree) the remains of microscopic, one-celled creatures that were 3.1 (and perhaps as much as 3.4) billion years old; they were similar to today’s blue-green algae and pushed back by almost a billion years the time when this precursor of more complex forms of life evolved on Earth.

Until then evolutionary progression was believed to have occurred primarily in the oceans, with land creatures evolving from maritime forms, with amphibian life forms as an intermediary. But the presence of green algae in sedimentary rocks of such a great age required revised theories. Though there is no unanimity regarding the classification of algae as either plant or nonplant, since it has backward affinities with bacteria and forward affinities with the earliest fauna, either green or blue- green algae is undoubtedly the precursor of chlorophyllic plants—the plants that use sunlight to convert their nutrients to organic compounds, emitting oxygen in the process. Green algae, though without roots, stems, or leaves, began the plant family whose descendants now cover the Earth.

It is important to follow the scientific theories of the ensuing evolution of life on Earth in order to grasp the accuracy of the biblical record. For more complex life forms to evolve, oxygen was needed. This oxygen became available only after algae or proto-algae began to spread upon the dry land. For these green plantlike forms to utilize and process oxygen, they needed an environment of rocks containing iron with which to “bind” the oxygen (otherwise they would have been destroyed by oxidation; free oxygen was still a poison to these life forms). Scientists believe that as such “banded-iron formations’1 sank into ocean bottoms as sediments, the single-celled organisms evolved into multicelled ones in the water. In other words, the covering of the lands with green algae had to precede the emergence of maritime life.

The Bible, indeed, says as much: Green herbage, it states, was created on Day Three, but maritime life not until Day Five. It was on the third “day,” or phase, of creation that Elohim said:

Let the Earth bring forth green herbage, and grasses that yield seeds, and fruit trees that bear fruit of all kinds
in accordance with the seeds thereof.

The presence of fruits and seeds as the green growth ad- vanced from grasses to trees also illustrates the evolution from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction. In this, too, the Bible includes in its scientific account of evolution a step that modern science believes took place, in algae, some two billion years ago. That is when the “green herbage” began to increase the air’s oxygen.

At that point, according to Genesis, there were no “crea- tures” on our planet—neither in the waters, nor in the air, nor on dry land. To make the eventual appearance of vertebrate (inner-skeleton) “creatures” possible, Earth had to set the pat- tern of the biological clocks that underlie the life cycles of all living forms on Earth. The Earth had to settle into its orbital and rotational patterns and be subjected to the effects of the Sun and the Moon, which were primarily manifested in the cycles of light and darkness. The Book of Genesis assigns the fourth “day” to this organization and to the resulting year,

month, day, and night repetitious periods. Only then, with all celestial relationships and cycles and their effects firmly es- tablished, did the creatures of the sea, air, and land make their appearance.

Modern science not only agrees with this biblical scenario but, may also provide a clue to the reason the ancient authors of the scientific summary called Genesis inserted a celestial “chapter” (“day four”) between the evolutionary record of “day three”—time of the earliest appearance of life forms— and “day five,” when the “creatures” appeared. In modern

science, too, there is an unfilled gap of about 1.5 billion years—from about 2 billion years to about 570 million years ago—about which little is known because of the paucity of geological and fossil data. Modem science calls this era “Precambrian”; lacking the data, the ancient savants used (his gap to describe the establishment of celestial relationships and biological cycles.

Although modern science regards the ensuing Cambrian period (so named after the region in Wales where the first geologic data for it were obtained) as the first phase of the Paleozoic (“Old Life”) era, it was not yet the time of vertebrates—the life forms with an inner skeleton that the Bible calls “creatures.” The first maritime vertebrates appeared about 500 mil- lion years ago, and land vertebrates followed about 100 million years later, during periods that are regarded by scientists as the transition from the Lower Paleozoic era to the Upper Paleozoic era. When that era ended, about 225 million years ago,

(Fig. 45) there were fish in the waters as well as sea plants, and amphibians had made the transition from water to dry land and the plants upon the dry lands attracted ihe amphibians to evolve into reptiles; today’s crocodiles are a remnant of that evolutionary phase.

The following era, named the Mesozoic (“Middle Life”), embraces the period from about 225 million to 65 million years ago and has often been nicknamed the ” Age of the Dinosaurs.” Alongside a variety of amphibians and marine lizards there evolved, away from the oceans and their teeming marine life, two main lines of egg-laying reptilians: those who took to flying and evolved into birds; and those who, in great variety, roamed and dominated the Earth as dinosaurs (“terrible lizards”) (Fig. 46).

It is impossible to read the biblical verses with an open mind without realizing that the creational events of the fifth “day” of Genesis describe the above-listed development:

And Elohim said:
"Let the waters swarm with living creatures,
and let aves fly above the earth, under the dome of the sky.''
And Elohim created the large reptilians,
and all the living creatures that crawl
and that swarmed in the waters, all in accordance with their kinds,
and all the winged aves by their kinds. And Elohim blessed them, saying:
"Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let the aves multiply upon the earth."

The tantalizing reference in these verses of Genesis to the "large reptilians" as a recognition of the dinosaurs cannot be dismissed. The Hebrew term used here, Taninim (plural of Tanin) has been variously translated as "sea serpent," "sea monsters," and "crocodile." To quote the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "the crocodiles are the last living link with the dinosaur-like reptiles of prehistoric times; they are, at the same

time, the nearest living relatives of the birds.” The conclusion that by “large Taninim”‘ the Bible meant not simply large reptilians but dinosaurs seems plausible—not because the Su- merians had seen dinosaurs, but because Anunnaki scientists had surely figured out the course of evolution on Earth at least as well as twentieth-century scientists have done.

No less intriguing is the order in which the ancient text lists the three branches of vertebrates. For a long time scientists held that birds evolved from dinosaurs, when these reptiles began to develop a gliding mechanism to ease their jumping from tree branches in search of food or, another theory holds, when ground-bound heavy dinosaurs attained greater running

speed by reducing their weight through the development of hollow bones. A fossil confirmation of the origin of birds from the latter, gaining further speed for soaring by evolving two- leggedness, appeared to have been found in the remains of Deinonychus (“terrible-clawed” reptile), a fast runner whose tail skeleton assumed a featherlike shape (Fig. 47). The discovery of fossilized remains of a creature now called Archaeopteryx (“old feather”—Fig. 48a) was deemed to have provided the “missing link” between dinosaurs and birds and gave rise to the theory that the two-—dinosaurs and birds—had an early common land ancestor at the beginning of the Triassic period. But even this antedating of the appearance of birds has come into question since additional fossils of Archaeopteryx

were discovered in Germany; they indicate that this creature was by and large a fully developed bird (Fig. 48b) that had not evolved from the dinosaurs but rather directly from a much earlier ancestor who had come from the seas.

The biblical sources appear to have known all that. Not only does the Bible not list the dinosaurs ahead of birds (as scientists

did for awhile); it actually lists birds ahead of the dinosaurs. With so much of the fossil record still incomplete, paleontol- ogists may still find evidence that will indeed show that early birds had more in common with sea life than with desert lizards.

About 65 million years ago the era of the dinosaurs came to an abrupt end; theories regarding the causes range from

climatic changes to viral epidemics to destruction by a “Death Star.” Whatever the cause, there was an unmistakable end of one evolutionary period and the beginning of another. In the words of Genesis, it was the dawn of the sixth “day.” Modern science calls it the Cenozoic (“current life”) era, when mam- mals spread across the Earth. This is how the Bible put it:

And Elohim said:

“Let the Earth bring forth living animals

according to their kind:

bovines, and those that creep,

and beasts of the land,

all according to their kind,”

And it was so.

Thus did Elohim make all the animals of the land

according to their kinds,

and all the bovines according to their kinds,

and all those that creep upon the earth by their kinds.

There is full agreement here between Bible and Science. The conflict between Creationists and Evolutionists reaches its crux in the interpretation of what happened next—-the appear- ance of Man on Earth. It is a subject that will be dealt with in the next chapter. Here it is important to point out that although one might expect that a primitive or unknowing society, seeing how Man is superior to all other animals, would assume Man to be the oldest creature on Earth and thus the most developed, the wisest. But the Book of Genesis does not say so at all. On

the contrary, it asserts that Man was a latecomer to Earth. We are not the oldest story of evolution but only its last few pages. Modem science agrees.

That is exactly what the Sumerians had taught in their schools. As we read in the Bible, it was only after all the “days” of creation had run their course, after “all the fishes of the sea and all the fowl that fly the skies and all the animals that fill the earth and all the creeping things that crawl upon the earth” that “Elohim created the Adam.”

On the sixth “day” of creation, God’s work on Earth was done.

“This,” the Book of Genesis states, “is the way the Heaven and the Earth have come to be.”

Up to the point of Man’s creation, then, modern science and ancient knowledge parallel each other. But by charting the course of evolution, modern science has left behind the initial question about the origin of life as distinct from its development and evolution.

The murky-soup and life-from-clay theories only suggest that, given the right materials and conditions, life could arise

spontaneously. This notion, that life’s elemental building

blocks, such as ammonia and methane (the simplest stable

compounds of nitrogen and hydrogen and of carbon and hy-

drogen, respectively) could have formed by themselves as part

of nature’s processes, seemed fortified by the discovery in

recent decades that these compounds are present and even plentiful on other planets. But how did chemical compounds become animate?

That the feat is possible is obvious; the evidence is that life did appear on Earth. The speculation that life, in one form or another, may also exist elsewhere in our Solar System, and

probably in other star systems, presupposes the feasibility of the transition from inanimate to animate matter. So, the ques- tion is not can it happen but how did it happen here on Earth?

For life as we see it on Earth to happen, two basic molecules are necessary: proteins, which perform all the complex met- abolic functions of living cells; and nucleic acids, which carry

the genetic code and issue the instructions for the cell’s pro- cesses. The two kinds of molecules, as the definition itself

suggests, function within a unit called a cell—quite a complex organism in itself, which is capable of triggering the replication not only of itself but of the whole animal of which the single cell is but a minuscule component. In order to become proteins, amino acids must form long and complex chains. In the cell they perform the task according to instructions stored in one nucleic acid (DNA—deoxyribonucleic acid) and transmitted by another nucleic acid (RNA—ribonucleic acid). Could ran- dom conditions prevailing on the primordial Earth have caused amino acids to combine into chains? In spite of varied attempts and theories (notable experiments were conducted by Clifford Matthews of the University of Illinois), the pathways sought by the scientists all required more “compressive energy” than would have been available.

Did DNA and RNA, then, precede amino acids on Earth? Advances in genetics and the unraveling of the mysteries of

the living cell have increased, rather than diminished, the prob-

lems. The discovery in 1953 by James D. Watson and Francis

H. Crick of the “double-helix” structure of DNA opened up

vistas of immense complexity regarding these two chemicals

of life. The relatively giant molecules of DNA are in the

form of two long, twisted strings connected by “rungs” made of four very complex organic compounds (marked on gene- tic charts by the initials of the names of the compounds, A-G-C-T). These four nucleotides can combine in pairs in sequences of limitless variety and are bound into place (Fig.

49) by sugar compounds alternating with phosphates. The nu-

cleic acid RNA, no less complex and built of four nucleotides whose initials are A-G-C-U, may contain thousands of com- binations.

How much time did evolution take on Earth to develop these complex compounds, without which life as we know it would have never evolved?

The fossil remains of algae found in 1977 in South Africa were dated to 3.1 to 3.4 billion years ago. But while that discovery was of microscopic, single-celled organisms, other discoveries in 1980 in western Australia deepened the won- derment. The team, led by J. William Schopf of the University of California at Los Angeles, found fossil remains of organisms

that not only were much older—3.5 billion years—but that

Figure 49

were multicelled and looked under the microscope like chain- like filaments (Fig. 50). These organisms already possessed both amino acids and complex nucleic acids, the replicating genetic compounds, 3.5 billion years ago; they therefore had to represent, not the beginning of the chain of life on Earth, but an already advanced stage of it.

What these finds had set in motion can be termed the search for the first gene. Increasingly, scientists believe that before algae there were bacteria. “We are actually looking at cells which are the direct morphological remains of the bugs them- selves,” stated Malcolm R. Walter, an Australian member of the team. “They look like modern bacteria,” he added. In fact, they looked like five different types of bacteria whose structures, amazingly, “were almost identical to several mod- ern-day bacteria.”

Figure 50

The notion that self-replication on Earth began with bacteria that preceded algae seemed to make sense, since advances in genetics showed that all life on Earth, from the simplest to the most complex, has the same genetic “ingredients” and the same twenty or so basic amino acids. Indeed, much of the early genetic research and development of techniques in genetic engineering were done on the lowly bacterium Esch- erichia coli (E. coli, for short), which can cause diarrhea in humans and cattle. But even this minuscule, single-celled bac- terium that reproduces not sexually but simply by dividing, has almost 4,000 different genes!

That bacteria have played a role in the evolutionary process is apparent, not only from the fact that so many marine, plant and animal higher organisms depend on bacteria for many vital processes, but also from discoveries, first in the Pacific Ocean

and then in other seas, that bacteria did and still make possible life forms that do not depend on photosynthesis but metabolize sulfur compounds in the oceans’ depths. Calling such early bacteria “archaeo-bacteria,” a team led by Carl R. Woese of the University of Illinois dated them to a time between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago. Such an age was corroborated in 1984 by

finds in an Austrian lake by Hans Fricke of the Max Planck Institute and Karl Stetter of the University of Regensburg (both in West Germany).

Sediments found off Greenland, on the other hand, bear

chemical traces that indicate the existence of photosynthesis as early as 3.8 billion years ago. All these finds have thus shown that, within a few hundred million years of the impen- etrable limit of 4 billion years, there were prolific bacteria and archaeo-bacteria of a marked variety on Earth. In more recent studies (Nature, November 9, 1989), an august team of sci-

entists led by Norman H. Sleep of Stanford University con- cluded that the “window of time” when life on Earth began was just the 200 million years between 4 and 3.8 billion years ago. “Everything alive today,” they stated, “evolved from organisms that originated within that Window of Time.” They did not attempt, however, to establish how life originated at

such a time.

Based on varied evidence, including the very reliable iso-

topic ratios of carbon, scientists have concluded that no matter

how life on Earth began, it did so about 4 billion years ago.

Why then only and not sooner, when the planets were formed

some 4.6 billion years ago? All scientific research, conducted

on Earth as well as on the Moon, keeps bumping against the 4-billion-year date, and all that modern science can offer in explanation is some “catastrophic event.” To know more, read the Sumerian texts….

Since the fossil and other data have shown that celled and replicating organisms (be they bacteria or archaeo-

bacteria) already existed on Earth a mere 200 million years after the “Window of Time” first opened, scientists began to search for the “essence” of life rather than for its resulting organisms: for traces of DNA and RNA themselves. Viruses, which are pieces of nucleic acids looking for cells in which to replicate, are prevalent not only on land but also in water, and

that has made some believe that viruses may have preceded bacteria. But what gave them their nucleic acids?

An avenue of research was opened a few years ago by Leslie Orgel of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, when he proposed that the simpler RNA might have preceded the much more complex DNA. Although RNA only transmits the genetic

messages contained in the DNA blueprint, other researchers, among them Thomas R. Cech and co-workers at the University of Colorado and Sidney Altman of Yale University concluded that a certain type of RNA could catalyze itself under certain conditions. All this led to computerized studies of a type of RNA called transfer-RNA undertaken by Manfred Eigen, a Nobel-prize winner. In a paper published in Science (May 12, 1989) he and his colleagues from Germany’s Max Planck In- stitute reported that by sequencing transfer-RNA backward on the Tree of Life, they found that the genetic code on Earth cannot be older than 3.8 billion years, plus or minus 600 million years. At that time, Manfred Eigen said, a primordial gene might have appeared “whose message was the biblical in- junction ‘Go out into the world, be fruitful and multiply’.” If the leeway, as it appears, had to be on the plus side—i.e., older than 3.8 billion years—”this would be possible only in the case of extraterrestrial origin,” the authors of the learned paper added.

In her summation of the fourth Conference on the Origin of Life, Lynn Margulis had predicted this astounding conclusion.

“We now recognize that if the origin of our self-replicating system occurred on the early Earth, it must have occurred quite quickly—millions, not billions of years,” she stated. And she added:

The central problem inspiring these conferences, perhaps slightly better defined, is as unsolved as ever. Did our organic matter originate in interstellar space? The infant science of radioastronomy has produced evidence that some of the smaller organic molecules are there.

Writing in 1908, Svante Arrhenius (Worlds in the Making) proposed that life-bearing spores were driven to Earth by the pressure of light waves from the star of another planetary sys- tem where life had evolved long before it did on Earth. The notion came to be known as “the theory of Panspermia”; it languished on the fringes of accepted science because, at the time, one fossil discovery after another seemed to corroborate the theory of evolution as an unchallenged explanation for the origin of life on Earth.

These fossil discoveries, however, raised their own questions and doubts; so much so that in 1973 the Nobel laureate (now Sir) Francis Crick together with Leslie Orgel, in a paper titled “Directed Panspermia” (Icarus, vol. 19), revived the notion of the seeding of Earth with the first organisms or spores from an extraterrestrial source—not, however, by chance but as “the deliberate activity of an extraterrestrial society.” Whereas our Solar System was formed only some 4.6 billion years ago, other solar systems in the universe may have formed as much as 10 billion years earlier; while the interval between the for- mation of Earth and the appearance of life on Earth is much too short, there has been as much as six billion years available for the process on other planetary systems. “The time available makes it possible, therefore, that technological societies existed elsewhere in the galaxy even before the formation of the Earth,” according to Crick and Orgel. Their suggestion was therefore that the scientific community “consider a new ‘in- fective’ theory, namely that a primitive form of life was de- liberately planted on Earth by a technologically advanced society on another planet.” Anticipating criticism—which in- deed followed—that no living spores could survive the rigors of space, they suggested that the microorganisms were not sent to just drift in space but were placed in a specially designed spaceship with due protection and a life-sustain ing environ- ment.

In spite of the unquestionable scientific credentials of Crick and Orgel, their theory of Directed Panspermia met with disbe-

lief and even ridicule. However, more recent scientific ad- vances changed these attitudes; not only because of the narrowing of the Window of Time to a mere couple of hundred million years, almost ruling out the possibility that the essential genetic matter had enough time to evolve here on Earth. The change in opinion was also due to the discovery that of the

myriad of amino acids that exist, it is only the same twenty or so that are part of all living organisms on Earth, no matter what these organisms are and when they evolved; and that the same DNA, made up of the same four nucleotides—that and no other—is present in all living things on Earth.

It was therefore that the participants of the landmark eighth

Conference on the Origins of Life, held at Berkeley, California,

in 1986. could no longer accept the random formation of life inherent in the murky-soup or life-from-clay hypotheses, for according to these theories, a variety of life forms and genetic codes should have arisen. Instead, the consensus was that “all life on Earth, from bacteria to sequoia trees to humans, evolved from a single ancestral cell.”

But where did this single ancestral cell come from? The 285 scientists from 22 countries did not endorse the cautious sug- gestions that, as some put it, fully formed cells were planted on Earth from space. Many were, however, willing to consider

that “the supply of organic precursors to life was augmented from space.” When all was said and done, the assembled scientists were left with only one avenue that, they hoped, might provide the answer to the puzzle of the origin of life on Earth: space exploration. The research should shift from Earth to Mars, to the Moon, to Saturn’s satellite Titan, it was sug-

gested, because their more pristine environments might have better preserved the traces of the beginnings of life.

Such a course of research reflects the acceptance, it must be obvious, of the premise that life is not unique to Earth. The first reason for such a premise is the extensive evidence that organic compounds permeate the Solar System and outer space.

The data from interplanetary probes have been reviewed in an earlier chapter; the data indicating life-related elements and compounds in outer space are so voluminous that only a few instances must suffice here. In 1977, for example, an inter- national team of astronomers at the Max Planck Institute dis- covered water molecules outside our own galaxy. The density

of the water vapor was the same as in Earth’s galaxy, and Otto Hachenberg of the Bonn Institute for Radio Astronomy con- sidered that finding as support for the conclusion that “con- ditions exist at some other place which, like those on Earth, are suitable for life.” In 1984 scientists at the Goddard Space Center found ‘ ‘a bewildering array of molecules, including the

beginning of organic chemistry” in interstellar space. They had discovered “complex molecules composed of the same atoms that make up living tissue,” according to Patrick Thad- deus of the Center’s Institute for Space Studies, and it was “reasonable to assume that these compounds were deposited on Earth at the time of its forming and that life ultimately came

from them.” In 1987, to give one more instance, NASA in- struments discovered that exploding stars (supernovas) pro- duced most of the ninety-odd elements, including carbon, that are contained in living organisms on Earth.

How did such life-essential compounds, in forms that ena- bled life to sprout on Earth, arrive on Earth from space, near

or distant? Invariably, the celestial emissaries under consid- eration are comets, meteors, meteorites, and impacting aster- oids. Of particular interest to scientists are meteorites containing carbonaceous chondrites, believed to represent the most primordial planetary matter in the Solar System. One, which fell near Murchison in Victoria, Australia, in 1969,

revealed an array of organic compounds, including amino acids and nitrogenous bases that embraced all the compounds in- volved in DNA. According to Ron Brown of Monash Uni- versity in Melbourne, researchers have even found “formations in the meteorite reminiscent of a very primitive form of cell structure.”

Until then, carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, first collected in France in 1806, were dismissed as unreliable evidence be- cause their life-related compounds were explained away as terrestrial contamination. But in 1977 two meteorites of this type were discovered buried in the icy wilderness of Antarctica, where no contamination was possible. These, and meteorite fragments collected elsewhere in Antarctica by Japanese sci- entists, were found to be rich in amino acids and to contain at least three of the nucleotides (the A, G, and U of the genetic “alphabet”) that make up DNA and/or RNA. Writing in Sci- entific American (August 1983), Roy S. Lewis and Edward Anders concluded that “carbonaceous chondrites, the most primitive meteorites, incorporate material originating outside the Solar System, including matter expelled by supernovas and other stars.” Radiocarbon dating has given these meteorites an age of 4.5 to 4.7 billion years; it makes them not only as old as but even older than Earth and establishes their extra- terrestrial origin.

Reviving, in a way, the old beliefs that comets cause plagues on Earth, two noted British astronomers. Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, suggested in a study in the New Scientist (November 17, 1977) that “life on Earth began when

stray comets bearing the building blocks of life crashed into the primitive Earth.” In spite of criticism by other scientists, the two have persisted in pressing this theory forward at sci- entific conferences, in books (Lifecloud and others) and in scholarly publications, offering each time more supportive ar- guments for the thesis that “about four billion years ago life arrived in a comet.”

Recent close studies of comets, such as Halley’s, have shown that the comets, as do the other messengers from far out in space, contain water and other life-building compounds. These findings have led other astronomers and biophysicists to con-

cede the possibility that cometary impacts had played a role in giving rise to life on Earth. In the words of Armand Del- semme of the University of Toledo, “A large number of comets hitting Earth contributed a veneer of chemicals needed for the formation of amino acids; the molecules in our bodies were likely in comets at one time.”

As scientific advances made more sophisticated studies of meteorites, comets, and other celestial objects possible, the results included an even greater array of the compounds es- sential to life. The new breed of scientists, given the name “Exobiologists,” have even found isotopes and other elements in these celestial bodies that indicate an origin preceding the

formation of the Solar System. An extrasolar origin for the life that eventually evolved on Earth has thus become a more ac- ceptable proposition. The argument between the Hoyle-Wick- ramasinghe team and others has by now shifted its focus to whether the two are right in suggesting that “spores”—actual microorganisms—rather than the antecedent life-forming com-

pounds were delivered to Earth by the cometary/meteoritic impacts.

Could “spores” survive in the radiation and cold of outer space? Skepticism regarding this possibility was greatly dis- pelled by experiments conducted at Leiden University, Hol- land, in 1985. Reporting in Nature (vol. 316) astrophysicist J.

Mayo Greenberg and his associate Peter Weber found that this was possible if the “spores” journeyed inside an envelope of molecules of water, methane, ammonia, and carbon monox- ide—all readily available on other celestial bodies. Pansper- mia, they concluded, was possible.

How about directed panspermia, the deliberate seeding of Earth by another civilization, as suggested earlier by Crick and Orgel? In their view, the “envelope” protecting the spores was not made up just of the required compounds, but was a spaceship in which the microorganisms were kept immersed in nutrients. As much as their proposal smacks of science fiction, the two held fast to their “theorem.” “Even though it sounds a bit cranky,” Sir Francis Crick wrote in The New York Times (October 26, 1981), “all the steps in the argument are scientifically plausible.” Foreseeing that Mankind might one day send its “seeds of life” to other worlds, why could it not be that a higher civilization elsewhere had done it to Earth in the distant past?

Lynn Margulis, a pioneer of the Origin of Life conferences and now a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, held in her writings and interviews that many organisms, when faced with harsh conditions, “release tough little packages”—

she named them “Propagules”—”that can carry genetic ma- terial into more hospitable surroundings” (Newsweek, October 2, 1989). It is a natural “strategy for survival” that has ac- counted for “space age spores”; it will happen in the future because it has happened in the past.

In a detailed report concerning all these developments, head-

lined “NASA to Probe Heavens for Clues to Life’s Origins on Earth” in The New York Times (September 6, 1988), Sandra Blakeslee summed up the latest scientific thinking thus:

Driving the new search for clues to life’s beginnings is the recent discovery that comets, meteors and interstellar dust carry vast amounts of complex organic chemicals as well as the elements crucial to living cells.

Scientists believe that Earth and other planets have been seeded from space with these potential building blocks of life.

“Seeded from space”—the very words written down mil- lennia ago by the Sumerians!

It is noteworthy that in his ‘presentations, Chandra Wick- ramasinghe has frequently invoked the writings of the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras who, about 500 B.C., believed that

the “seeds of life” swarm through the universe, ready to sprout and create life wherever a proper environment is found. Com- ing as he did from Asia Minor, his sources, as was true for so much of early Greek knowledge, were the Mesopotamian writ- ings and traditions.

After a detour of 6.000 years, modem science has come back to the Sumerian scenario of an invader from outer space that brings the seed of life into the Solar System and imparts it to “Gaia” during the Celestial Battle.

The Anunnaki, capable of space travel about half a million years before us, discovered this phenomenon long before us;

in this respect, modem science is just catching up with ancient knowledge.

8

THE ADAM: A SLAVE MADE TO ORDER

The biblical tale of Man’s creation is, of course, the crux of the debate—at times bitter—between Creationists and Evo- lutionists and of the ongoing confrontation between them—at times in courts, always on school boards. As previously stated, both sides had better read the Bible again (and in its Hebrew original); the conflict would evaporate once Evolutionists rec- ognized the scientific basis of Genesis and Creationists realized what its text really says.

Apart from the naive assertion by some that in the account of Creation the “days” of the Book of Genesis are literally

twenty-four-hour periods and not eras or phases, the sequence

in the Bible is, as previous chapters should have made clear,

a description of Evolution that is in accord with modern sci-

ence. The insurmountable problem arises when Creationists

insist that we. Mankind, Homo sapiens sapiens, were created

instantaneously and without evolutionary predecessors by “God.” “And the Lord God formed Man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Man became a living soul.” This is the tale of Man’s creation as told in chapter 2, verse 7 of the Book of Genesis—according to the King James English version; and this is what the Cre-

ationist zealots firmly believe.

Were they to learn the Hebrew text—which is, after all, the

original—they would discover that, first of all, the creative act

is attributed to certain Elohim—a plural term that at the least

should be translated as “gods,” not “God.” And second, they

would become aware that the quoted verse also explains why

“The Adam” was created: “For there was no Adam to till the land.” These are two important—and unsettling—hints to who had created Man and why.

158

Then, of course, there exists the other problem, that of another (and prior) version of the creation of Man, in Genesis 1:26-27. First, according to the King James version, “God said, Let us make men in our image, after our likeness”; then the suggestion was carried out: “And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.” The biblical account is further com- plicated by the ensuing tale in Chapter 2, according to which “The Adam” was alone until God provided him with a female counterpart, created of Adam’s rib.

While Creationists might be hard put to decide which par- ticular version is the sine qua non tenet, there exists the problem

of pluralism. The suggestion for Man’s creation comes from

a plural entity who addresses a plural audience, saying, “Let

us make an Adam in our image and after our likeness.” What,

those who believe in the Bible must ask, is going on here?

As both Orientalists and Bible scholars now know, what

went on was the editing and summarizing by the compilers of the Book of Genesis of much earlier and considerably more detailed texts first written down in Sumer. Those texts, re- viewed and extensively quoted in The 12th Planet with all sources listed, relegate the creation of Man to the Anunnaki. It happened, we learn from such long texts as Atra Basis, when

the rank-and-file astronauts who had come to Earth for its gold mutinied. The backbreaking work in the gold mines, in south- east Africa, had become unbearable. Enlil, their commander- in-chief, summoned the ruler of Nibiru, his father Anu, to an Assembly of the Great Anunnaki and demanded harsh punish- ment of his rebellious crew. But Anu was more understanding.

“What are we accusing them of?” he asked as he heard the complaints of the mutineers. “Their work was heavy, their distress was much!” Was there no other way to obtain the gold, he wondered out loud.

Yes, said his other son Enki (Enlil’s half brother and rival), the brilliant chief scientist of the Anunnaki. It is possible to

relieve the Anunnaki of the unbearable toil by having someone else take over the difficult work: Let a Primitive Worker be created!

The idea appealed to the assembled Anunnaki. The more they discussed it, the more clear their clamor grew for such a

Primitive Worker, an Adamu, to take over the work load. But, they wondered, how can you create a being intelligent enough to use tools and to follow orders? How was the creation or “bringing forth,” of the Primitive Worker to be achieved? Was it, indeed, a feasible undertaking?

A Sumerian text has immortalized the answer given by Enki to the incredulous assembled Anunnaki, who saw in the cre-

ation of an Adamu the solution to their unbearable toil:

The creature whose name you uttered— IT EXISTS!

All you have to do, he added, is to

Bind upon it the image of the gods.

In these words lies the key to the puzzle of Man’s creation, the magical wand that removes the conflict between Evolution and Creationism. The Anunnaki, the Elohim of the biblical verses, did not create Man from nothing. The being was already there, on Earth, the product of evolution. All that was needed to upgrade it to the required level of ability and intelligence was to “bind upon it the image of the gods,” the image of the Elohim themselves.

For the sake of simplicity let us call the “creature” that already existed then Apeman/Apewoman. The process envi- sioned by Enki was to “bind” upon the existing creature the “image”—the inner, genetic makeup—of the Anunnaki; in other words, to upgrade the existing Apeman/Apewoman through genetic manipulation and, by thus jumping the gun on evolution, bring “Man”—Homo sapiens—into being.

The term Adamu, which is clearly the inspiration for the biblical name “Adam,” and the use of the term “image” in

the Sumerian text, which is repeated intact in the biblical text, are not the only clues to the Sumerian/Mesopotamian origin of the Genesis creation of Man story. The biblical use of the plural pronoun and the depiction of a group of Elohim reaching a consensus and following it up with the necessary action also lose their enigmatic aspects when the Mesopotamian sources

are taken into account.

In them we read that the assembled Anunnaki resolved lo proceed with the project, and on Enki’s suggestion assigned the task to Ninti, their chief medical officer:

They summoned and asked the goddess,

the midwife of the gods, the wise birthgiver,

[saying:]

“To a creature give life, create workers!

Create a Primitive Worker, that he may bear the yoke!

Let him bear the yoke assigned by Enlil, Let The Worker carry the toil of the gods!”

One cannot say for certain whether it was from the Atra Hasis text, from which the above lines are quoted, or from much earlier Sumerian texts that the editors of Genesis got their abbreviated version. But we have here the background of events that led to the need for a Primitive Worker, the assembly of the gods and the suggestion and decision to go ahead and have one created. Only by realizing what the biblical sources were can we understand the biblical tale of the Elohim—the Lofty Ones, the “gods”—saying: “Let us make the Adam in our image, after our likeness,” so as to remedy the situation that “there was no Adam to till the land.”

In The 12th Planet it was stressed that until the Bible begins to relate the genealogy and history of Adam, a specific person,

the Book of Genesis refers to the newly created being as “The

Adam,” a generic term. Not a person called Adam, but, lit-

erally, “the Earthling,” for that is what “Adam” means, com-

ing as it does from the same root as Adamah, “Earth.” But

the term is also a play on words, specifically dam, which means

“blood” and reflects, as we shall soon see, the manner in which The Adam was “manufactured.”

The Sumerian term that means “Man” is LU. But its root meaning is not “human being”; it is rather “worker, servant,” and as a component of animal names implied “domesticated.” The Akkadian language in which the Atra Hasis text was writ-

ten (and from which all Semitic languages have stemmed) applied to the newly created being the term lulu, which means, as in the Sumerian, “Man” but which conveys the notion of

mixing. The word lulu in a more profound sense thus meant “the mixed one.” This also reflected the manner in which The Adam—”Earthling” as well as “He of the blood”—-was cre- ated.

Numerous texts in varying states of preservation or frag- mentation have been found inscribed on Mesopotamian clay

tablets. In sequels to The 12th Planet the creation “myths” of

other peoples, from both the Old and New Worlds, have been

reviewed; they all record a process involving the mixing of a

godly element with an earthly one. As often as not, the godly

element is described as an “essence” derived from a god’s

blood, and the earthly element as “clay” or “mud.” There can be no doubt that they all attempt to tell the same tale, for they all speak of a First Couple. There is no doubt that their origin is Sumerian, in whose texts we find the most elaborate descriptions and the greatest amount of detail concerning the wonderful deed: the mixing of the “divine” genes of the An-

unnaki with the “earthly” genes of Apeman by fertilizing the egg of an Apewoman.

It was fertilization in vitro—in glass tubes, as depicted in this rendering on a cylinder seal (Fig. 51). And, as I have been saying since modern science and medicine achieved the feat of in vitro fertilization, Adam was the first test-tube baby. . . .

Figure 51

There is reason to believe that when Enki made the surprising suggestion to create a Primitive Worker through genetic ma- nipulation, he had already concluded that the feat was possible. His suggestion to call in Ninti for the task was also not a spur- of-the-moment idea.

Laying the groundwork for ensuing events, the Atra Hasis text begins the story of Man on Earth with the assignment of tasks among the leading Anunnaki. When the rivalry between the two half brothers. Enlil and Enki, reached dangerous levels, Anu made them draw lots. As a result, Enlil was given mastery

over the old settlements and operations in the E.DIN (the bib- lical Eden) and Enki was sent to Africa, to supervise the AB. ZU, the land of mines. Great scientist that he was, Enki was bound to have spent some of his time studying the flora and fauna of his surroundings as well as the fossils that, some 300,000 years later, the Leakeys and other paleontologists have

been uncovering in southeastern Africa. As scientists do today, Enki, too, must have contemplated the course of evolution on Earth. As reflected in the Sumerian texts, he came to the con- clusion that the same “seed of life” that Nibiru had brought with it from its previous celestial abode had given rise to life on both planets; much earlier on Nibiru, and later on Earth,

once the latter had been seeded by the collision.

The being that surely fascinated him most was Apeman— a step above the the other primates, a hominid already walking erect and using sharpened stones as tools, a proto-Man—but not yet a fully evolved human. And Enki must have toyed with the intriguing challenge of “playing God” and conducting experiments in genetic manipulation.

To aid his experiments he asked Ninti to come to Africa and be by his side. The official reason was plausible. She was the chief medical officer; her name meant “Lady Life” (later on she was nicknamed Mammi, the source of the universal

Mamma/Mother). There was certainly a need for medical ser- vices, considering the harsh conditions under which the miners toiled. But there was more to it: from the very beginning, Enlil and Enki vied for her sexual favors, for both needed a male heir by a half sister, which she was. The three of them were children of Anu, the ruler of Nibiru, but not of the same mother;

and according to the succession rules of the Anunnaki (later

adopted by the Sumerians and reflected in the biblical tales of the Patriarchs), it was not necessarily the Firstborn son but a son bom by a half sister from the same royal line who became the Legal Heir. Sumerian texts describe torrid lovemaking be- tween Enki and Ninti (with unsuccessful results, though: the offspring were all females); there was thus more than an interest in science that led to Enki’s suggestion to call in Ninti and assign the task to her.

Knowing all this, we should not be surprised to read in the creation texts that, first, Ninti said she could not do it alone,

that she had to have the advice and help of Enki; and second, that she had to attempt the task in the Abzu, where the right materials and facilities were available. Indeed, the two must have conducted experiments together there long before the suggestion was made at the assembly of the Anunnaki to ”let us make an Adamu in our image.” Some ancient depictions

show “Bull-Men” accompanied by naked Ape-men (Fig. 52) or Bird-Men (Fig. 53). Sphinxes (bulls or lions with human heads) that adorned many ancient temples may have been more than imaginary representations; and when Berossus, the Ba- bylonian priest, wrote down Sumerian cosmogony and tales of creation for the Greeks, he described a prehuman period when

Figure 52

Figure 53

“men appeared with two wings,” or “one body and two heads,” or with mixed male and female organs, or “some with the legs and horns of goats” or other hominid-animal mixtures. That these creatures were not freaks of nature but the result of deliberate experiments by Enki and Ninti is obvious from the Sumerian texts. The texts describe how the two came up with a being who had neither male nor female organs, a man who could not hold back his urine, a woman incapable of bearing children, and creatures with numerous other defects. Finally, with a touch of mischief in her challenging announce- ment, Ninti is recorded to have said:

How good or bad is man’s body? As my heart prompts me,

I can make its fate good or bad.

Having reached this stage, where genetic manipulation was sufficiently perfected to enable the determination of the re- sulting body’s good or bad aspects, the two felt they could master the final challenge: to mix the genes of hominids. Ape- men, not with those of other Earth creatures but with the genes of the Anunnaki themselves. Using all the knowledge they had amassed, the two Elohim set out to manipulate and speed up the process of Evolution. Modern Man would have undoubt-

edly eventually evolved on Earth in any case, just as he had done on Nibim, both having come from the same “seed of life.” But there was still a long way and a long time to go from the stage hominids were at 300,000 years ago to the level of development the Anunnaki had reached at that time. If, in the course of 4 billion years, the evolutionary process had been earlier on Nibiru just 1 percent of that time, Evolution would have been forty million years ahead on Nibiru compared with the course of evolution on Earth. Did the Anunnaki jump the gun on evolution on our planet by a million or two million years? No one can say for sure how long it would have taken Homo sapiens to evolve naturally on Earth from the earlier hominids, but surely forty million years would have been more than enough time.

Called upon to perform the task of “fashioning servants for the gods”—”to bring to pass a great work of wisdom.” in the words of the ancient texts—Enki gave Ninti the following

instructions:

Mix to a core the clay

from the Basement of the Earth,

just above the Abzu,

and shape it into the form of a core.

I shall provide good, knowing young Anunnaki

who will bring the clay to the right condition.

In The 12th Planet, I analyzed the etymology of the Sumerian and Akkadian terms that are usually translated “clay” or “mud” and showed that they evolved from the Sumerian TI.IT, literally, “that which is with life,” and then assumed the derivative meanings of “clay” and “mud,” as well as “egg.” The earthly element in the procedure for “binding upon” a being who already existed “the image of the gods” was thus to be the female egg of that being—of an Apewoman.

All the texts dealing with this event make it clear that Ninti relied on Enki to provide the earthly element, this egg of a

female Apewoman, from the Abzu, from southeast Africa. Indeed, the specific location is given in the above quote: not exactly the same site as the mines (an area identified in The 12th Planet as Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe) but a place

“above” it, farther north. This area was, indeed, as recent finds have shown, where Homo sapiens emerged. . . .

The task of obtaining the “divine” elements was Ninti’s. Two extracts were needed from one of the Anunnaki, and a

young “god” was carefully selected for the purpose. Enki’s instructions to Ninti were to obtain the god’s blood and shiru, and through immersions in a “purifying bath” obtain their “essences.” What had to be obtained from the blood was termed TE.E.MA, at best translated “personality,” a term that expresses the sense of the word: that which makes a person

what he is and different from any other person. But the trans- lation “personality” does not convey the scientific precision of the term, which in the original Sumerian meant “That which houses that which binds the memory.” Nowadays we call it a “gene.”

The other element for which the young Anunnaki was se-

lected, shiru, is commonly translated “flesh.” In time, the word did acquire the meaning “flesh” among its various con- notations. But in the earlier Sumerian it referred to the sex or reproductive organs; its root had the basic meaning “to bind,” “that which binds.” The extract from the shiru was referred to in other texts dealing with non-Anunnaki offspring of the

“gods” as kisru; coming from the male’s member, it meant “semen,” the male’s sperm.

These two divine extracts were to be mixed well by Ninti in a purifying bath, and it is certain that the epithet lulu (“The mixed one”) for the resulting Primitive Worker stemmed from this mixing process. In modern terms we would call him a

hybrid.

All these procedures had to be performed under strict sanitary

conditions. One text even mentions how Ninti first washed her

hands before she touched the “clay.” The place where these

procedures were carried out was a special structure called in

Akkadian Bit Shimti, which, coming from the Sumerian

SHI.1M.TI literally meant “house where the wind of life is breathed in”—the source, no doubt, of the biblical assertion that after having fashioned the Adam from the clay, Elohim “blew in his nostrils the breath of life.” The biblical term, sometimes translated “soul” rather than “breath of life,” is Nephesh. The identical term appears in the Akkadian account

of what took place in the “house where the wind of life is hreathed in” after the purifying and extracting procedures were completed:

The god who purifies the napishtu, Enki, spoke up.

Seated before her [Ninti] he was prompting her.

After she had recited her incantation,

she put her hand to the clay.

A depiction on a cylinder seal (Fig. 54) may well have illustrated the ancient text. It shows Enki seated, “prompting” Ninti (who is identified by her symbol, the umbilical cord), with the “test-tube” flasks behind her.

The mixing of the “clay” with all the component extracts and “essences” was not yet the end of the procedure. The egg of the Apewoman, fertilized in the “purifying baths” with the

sperm and genes of the young Anunnaki “god,” was then deposited in a “mold,” where the “binding” was to be com- pleted. Since this part of the process is described again later in connection with the determining of the sex of the engineered being, one may surmise that was the purpose of the ‘ ‘binding” phase.

The length of time the fertilized egg thus processed stayed

Figure 54

in the “mold” is not stated, but what was to be done with it was quite clear. The fertilized and “molded” egg was to be reimplanted in a female womb—but not in that of its original Apewoman. Rather, it was to be implanted in the womb of a “goddess,” an Anunnaki female! Only thus, it becomes clear, was the end result achievable.

Could the experimenters, Enki and Ninti, now be sure that, after all their trial-and-error attempts to create hybrids, they would then obtain a perfect lulu by implanting the fertilized and processed egg in one of their own females—that what she

would give birth to would not be a monster and that her own life would not be at risk?

Evidently they could not be absolutely sure; and as often happens with scientists who use themselves as guinea pigs for a dangerous first experiment calling for a human volunteer, Enki announced to the gathered Anunnaki that his own spouse,

Ninki (“Lady of the Earth”) had volunteered for the task. “Ninki, my goddess-spouse,” he announced, “will be the one for labor”; she was to be the one to determine the fate of the new being:

The newborn’s fate thou shalt pronounce; Ninki would fix upon it the image of the gods; And what it will be is “Man.”

The female Anunnaki chosen to serve as Birth Goddesses if the experiment succeeded, Enki said, should stay and observe what was happening. It was not, the texts reveal, a simple and smooth birth-giving process:

The birth goddesses were kept together. Ninti sat, counting the months.

The fateful tenth month was approaching, The tenth month arrived—

the period of opening the womb had elapsed.

The drama of Man’s creation, it appears, was compounded by a late birth; medical intervention was called for. Realizing what had to be done, Ninti “covered her head” and, with an instrument whose description was damaged on the clay tablet,

“made an opening.” This done, “that which was in the womb came forth.” Grabbing the newborn baby, she was overcome with joy. Lifting it up for all to see (as depicted in Fig. 51), she shouted triumphantly:

I have created!

My hands have made it!

The first Adam was brought forth.

The successful birth of The Adam—by himself, as the first biblical version states—confirmed the validity of the process and opened the way for the continuation of the endeavor. Now, enough “mixed clay” was prepared to start pregnancies in fourteen birth goddesses at a time:

Ninti nipped off fourteen pieces of clay, Seven she deposited on the right, Seven she deposited on the left; Between them she placed the mold.

Now the procedures were genetically engineered to come up with seven males and seven females at a time. We read on another tablet that Enki and Ninti,

The wise and learned,

Double-seven birth-goddesses had assembled.

Seven brought forth males,

Seven brought forth females;

The birth-goddesses brought forth

the Wind of the Breath of Life.

There is thus no conflict among the Bible’s various versions of Man’s creation. First, The Adam was created by himself; but then, in the next phase, the Elohim indeed created the first humans “male and female.”

How many times the “mass production” of Primitive Work- ers was repeated is not stated in the creation texts. We read elsewhere that the Anunnaki kept clamoring for more, and that eventually Anunnaki from the Edin—Mesopotamia—came to the Abzu in Africa and forcefully captured a large number of

Primitive Workers to take over the manual work back in Mes- opotamia. We also learn that in time, tiring of the constant need for Birth Goddesses, Enki engaged in a second genetic manipulation to enable the hybrid people to procreate on their own; but the story of that development belongs in the next chapter.

Bearing in mind that these ancient texts come to us across a bridge of time extending back for millennia, one must admire the ancient scribes who recorded, copied, and translated the earliest texts-—as often as not, probably, without really know- ing what this or that expression or technical term originally meant but always adhering tenaciously to the traditions that required a most meticulous and precise rendition of the copied texts.

Fortunately, as we enter the last decade of the twentieth century of the Common Era, we have the benefit of modern

science on our side. The “mechanics” of cell replication and human reproduction, the function and code of the genes, the cause of many inherited defects and illnesses—all these and so many more biological processes are now understood; per- haps not yet completely but enough to allow us to evaluate the ancient tale and its data.

With all this modern knowledge at our disposal, what is the verdict on that ancient information? Is it an impossible fantasy, or are the procedures and processes, described with such at- tention to terminology, corroborated by modern science?

The answer is yes, it is all the way we would do it today— the way we have been following, indeed, in recent years.

We know today that to have someone or something ‘ ‘brought forth” in the “image” and “after the likeness” of an existing being (be it a tree, a mouse, a man) the new being must have the genes of its creator; otherwise, a totally different being would emerge. Until a few decades ago all that science was aware of was that there are sets of chromosomes lurking within

every living cell that impart both the physical and mental/ emotional characteristics to offspring. But now we know that the chromosomes are just stems on which long strands of DNA are positioned. With only four nucleotides at its disposal, the DNA can be sequenced in endless combinations, in short or

long stretches interspersed with chemical signals that can mean “stop” or “go” instructions (or, it seems, to do nothing at all anymore). Enzymes are produced and act as chemical busy- bodies, launching chemical processes, sending off RNAs to do their job, creating proteins to build body and muscles, produce the myriad differentiated cells of a living creature, trigger the immune system, and, of course, help the being procreate by bringing forth offspring in its own image and after its likeness.

The beginnings of genetics are now credited to Gregor Jo- hann Mendel, an Austrian monk who, experimenting with plant hybridization, described the hereditary traits of common peas

in a study published in 1866. A kind of genetic engineering has of course been practiced in horticulture (the cultivation of flowers, vegetables, and fruits) through the procedure called grafting, where the part of the plant whose qualities are desired to be added to those of another plant is added via an incision to the recipient plant. Grafting has also been tried in recent

years in the animal kingdom, but with limited success between donor and recipient due to rejection by the recipient’s immune system.

The next advance, which for a while received great publicity, was the procedure called Cloning. Because each cell—let us say a human cell—contains all the genetic data necessary to

reproduce that human, it has the potential forgiving rise, within a female egg, to the birth of a being identical to its parent. In theory, cloning offers a way to produce an endless number of Einsteins or, heaven help us. Hitlers.

Experimentally the possibilities of cloning began to be tested with plants, as an advanced method to replace grafting. Indeed,

the term cloning comes from the Greek klon which means “twig.” The procedure began with the notion of implanting just one desired cell from the donor plant in the recipient plant. The technique then advanced to the stage where no recipient plant was needed at all; all that had to be done was to nourish the desired cell in a solution of nutrients until it began to grow,

divide, and eventually form the whole plant. In the 1970s one of the hopes pinned on this process was that whole forests of trees identical to a desired species will be created in test tubes, then shipped in a parcel to the desired location to be planted and grow.

Adapting this technique from plants to animals proved more tricky. First, cloning involves asexual reproduction. In animals that reproduce by fertilizing an egg with a sperm, the repro- ductive cells (egg and sperm) differ from all other cells in that they do not contain all the pairs of chromosomes (which carry the genes as on stems) but only one set each. Thus, in a fertilized human egg (“ovum”) the forty-six chromosomes that constitute the required twenty-three pairs are provided half by the mother (through the ovum) and half by the father (in the sperm). To achieve cloning, the chromosomes in the ovum must be removed surgically and a complete set of pairs inserted instead, not from a male sperm but from any other human cell. If all succeeds and the egg, nestled in the womb, becomes first an embryo, then a fetus and then a baby—the baby will be identical to the person from whose single cell it has grown.

There were other problems inherent in the process, too tech- nical to detail here, but they were slowly overcome with the

aid of experimentation, improved instruments, and progress in

understanding genetics. One intriguing finding that aided the

experiments was that the younger the source of the transplanted

nucleus the better the chances of success. In 1975 British sci-

entists succeeded in cloning frogs from tadpole cells; the pro-

cedure required the removal of a frog egg’s nucleus and its replacement with a tadpole cell’s nucleus. This was achieved by microsurgery, possible because the cells in question are considerably larger than, say, human cells. In 1980 and 1981 Chinese and American scientists claimed to have cloned fish with similar techniques; flies were also experimented on.

When the experiments shifted to mammals, mice and rabbits were chosen because of their short reproductive cycles. The problem with mammals was not only the complexity of their cells and cell nuclei but also the need to nestle the fertilized egg in a womb. Better results were obtained when the egg’s nucleus was not removed surgically but was inactivated by

radiation; even better results followed when this nucleus was “evicted” chemically and the new nucleus also introduced chemically; the procedure, developed through experiments on rabbit eggs by J. Derek Bromhall of Oxford University, became known as Chemical Fusion.

Other experiments relating to the cloning of mice seemed

to indicate that for a mammal’s egg to be fertilized, to start dividing, and, even more important, to begin the process of differentiation (into the specialized cells that become the dif- ferent parts of the body), more than the donor’s set of chro- mosomes is needed. Experimenting at Yale, Clement L. Markert concluded that there was something in the male sperm that promoted these processes, something beside the chro- mosomes; that “the sperm might also be contributing some unidentified spur that stimulates development of the egg.”

In order to prevent the sperm’s male chromosomes from merging with the egg’s female chromosomes (which would have resulted in a normal fertilization rather than in cloning), one set had to be removed surgically just before the merger began and the remaining set “excited” by physical or chemical means to double itself. If the sperm’s chromosomes were cho- sen for the latter role, the embryo might become either male or female; if the egg’s set were chosen and duplicated, the embryo could only be female. While Markert was continuing his experiments on such methods of nuclear transfer, two other scientists (Peter C. Hoppe and Karl Illmensee) announced in 1977 the successful birth, at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, of seven “single-parent mice.” The process, however, was more accurately designated parthenogenesis, “virgin birth,” than cloning; since what the experimenters did was to cause the chromosomes in the egg of a female mouse to double, keep the egg with the full set of chromosomes in certain solutions, and then, after the cell had divided several times, introduce the self-fertilized cell into the womb of a female mouse. Significantly, the recipient mouse had to be a different female, not the mouse whose own egg had been used.

Quite a stir was caused early in 1978 by the publication of a book that purported to relate how an eccentric American millionaire, obsessed by the prospect of death, sought im-

mortality by arranging to be cloned. The book claimed that the nucleus of a cell taken from the millionaire was inserted into a female egg, which was carried through pregnancy to a suc- cessful birth by a female volunteer; the boy, fit and healthy in all respects, was reported at the time of publication to have been fourteen months old. Though written as a factual report,

the tale was received with disbelief. The scientific community’s

skepticism stemmed not from the impossibility of the feat— indeed, that it would one day be possible almost all concerned agreed—-but from doubts whether the feat could have been achieved by an unknown group in the Caribbean when the best researchers had only, at that time, achieved the virgin birth of mice. There was also doubt about the successful cloning of a male adult, when all the experiments had indicated that the older the donor’s cell, the lower the chances of success.

With the memory of the horrors inflicted on Mankind by Nazi Germany in the name of a “master race” still fresh, even

the possibility of cloning selected humans for evil purposes (a

theme of Ira Levin’s best-selling novel The Boys from Brazil)

was reason enough to dampen interest in this avenue of genetic

manipulation. One alternative, which substituted the “Should

man play God?” outcry with what one might call the “Can

science play husband?” idea, was the process that led to the phenomenon of “Tesi-tube babies.”

Research conducted at Texas A & M University in 1976 showed that it was possible to remove an embryo from a mam- mal (a baboon, in that instance) within five days of ovulation and reimplant it in the uterus of another female baboon in a

transfer that led to a successful pregnancy and birth. Other researchers found ways to extract the eggs of small mammals and fertilize them in test tubes. The two processes, that of Embryo Transfer and In vitro Fertilization, were employed in an event that made medical history in July, 1978, when Louise Brown was born at the Oldham and District General Hospital

in northwest England. The first of many other test-tube babies, she was conceived in a test tube, not by her parents but by techniques employed by Doctors Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards. Nine months earlier they had used a device with a light at its end to suck out a mature egg from Mrs. Brown’s ovary. Bathed in a dish containing life-support nutrients, the

extracted egg was “mixed”—the word was used by Dr. Ed- wards-—with the husband’s sperm. Once a sperm succeeded in fertilizing the egg, the egg was transferred to a dish con- taining other nutrients, where it began to divide. After fifty hours it had reached an eight-celled division; at that point, the egg was re-implanted in Mrs. Brown’s womb. With care and

special treatment, the embryo developed properly; a caesarean

delivery completed the feat, and a couple who before this could not have a child because of the wife’s defective fallopian tubes now had a normal daughter.

“We have a girl and she’s perfect!” the gynecologist who performed the caesarean delivery shouted as he held up the baby.

“I have created, my hands have made it!” Ninti cried out as she delivered the Adam by caesarean section, an eon ear- lier. …

Also reminiscent of the ancient reports of the long road of trial and error taken by Enki and Ninti was the fact that the Baby Louise “breakthrough” about which the media went wild

(Fig. 55) came after twelve years of trial and error, in the course of which fetuses and even babies turned out defective. Undoubtedly unbeknown to the doctors and researchers was the fact that, in discovering also that the addition of blood serum to the mixture of nutrients and sperm was essential to

Figure 55

success, they were following (he very same procedures that Enki and Ninti had employed. . .

Although the feat gave new hope to barren women (it also opened the way to surrogate motherhood, embryo freezing, semen banks, and new legal entanglements), it was just a distant cousin of the feat accomplished by Enki and Ninti. Yet it had to employ the techniques of which we have read in the ancient texts—just as the scientists engaged in nucleus transfers have found that the male donor must be young, as the Sumerian texts have stressed.

The most obvious difference between the test-tube baby var- iants and what the ancient texts describe is that in the former the natural process of procreation is emulated: human male sperm fertilize a human female egg that then develops in the

womb. In the case of the creation of The Adam, the genetic material of two different (even if not dissimilar) species was mixed to create a new being, positioned somewhere between the two “parents.”

In recent years modern science has made substantial ad- vances in such genetic manipulation. With the aid of

increasingly sophisticated equipment, computers, and ever- more minute instruments, scientists have been able to “read” the genetic code of living organisms, up to and including that of Man. Not only has it become possible to read the A-G-C- T of DNA and the A-G-C-U “letters” of the genetic “al- phabet,” but we can now also recognize the three-letter

“words” of the genetic code (like AGG, AAT, GCC, GGG— and so on in myriad combinations) as well as the segments of the DNA strands that form genes, each with its specific task— for example, to determine the color of the eyes, to direct growth, or to transmit a hereditary disease. Scientists have also found that some of the code’s “words” simply act to instruct

the replication process where to start and when to stop. Grad- ually, scientists have become able to transcribe the genetic code to a computer screen and to recognize in the printouts (Fig. 56) the “stop” and “go” signs. The next step was to tediously find out the function of each segment, or gene—of which the simple E. colt bacterium has about 4,000 and human

beings well over 100,000. Plans are now afoot to “map” the

Figure 56

complete human genetic makeup (“Genome”); the enormity of the task, and the extent of the knowledge already gained, can be appreciated by the fact that if the DNA in all human cells were extracted and put in a box, the box need be no bigger than an ice cube; but if the twisting strands of DNA were stretched out, the string would extend 47 million miles. . . .

In spite of these complexities, it has become possible, with the aid of enzymes, to cut DNA strands at desired places, remove a “sentence” that makes up a gene, and even insert into the DNA a foreign gene; through these techniques an undesired trait (such as one that causes disease) can be removed

or a desired one (such as a growth-hormone gene) added. The advances in understanding and manipulating this fundamental chemistry of life were recognized in 1980 with the award of the Nobel prize in chemistry to Walter Gilbert of Harvard and Frederick Sanger of Cambridge University for the development of rapid methods for reading large segments of DNA, and to Paul Berg of Stanford University for pioneering work in “gene splicing.” Another term used for the procedures is “Recom- binant DNA technology,” because after the splicing, the DNA is recombined with newly introduced segments of DNA.

These capabilities have made possible gene therapy, the removal from or correction within human cells of genes causing inherited sicknesses and defects. It has also made possible Biogenetics: inducing, through genetic manipulation, bacteria or mice to manufacture a needed chemical (such as insulin) for medical treatment. Such feats of recombinant technology are possible because all the DNA in all living organisms on Earth is of the same makeup, so that a strand of bacteria DNA will accept (“recombine” with) a segment of human DNA. (Indeed, American and Swiss researchers reported in July 1984 the discovery of a DNA segment that was common to human beings, flies, earthworms, chickens, and frogs—further cor- roboration of the single genetic origin of all life on Earth.)

Hybrids such as a mule, which is the progeny of a donkey and a horse, can be born from the mating of the two because they have similar chromosomes (hybrids, however, cannot pro- create). A sheep and a goat, though not too distant relatives, cannot naturally mate; however, because of their genetic kin-

ship, experiments have brought them together to form (in 1983) a “geep” (Fig. 57)—a sheep with its woolly coat but with a goat’s horns. Such mixed, or1 “mosaic,” creatures are called chimeras, after the monster in Greek mythology that had the forepart of a lion, the middle of a goat, and the tail of a dragon (Fig. 58). The feat was attained by “Cell Fusion,” the fusing together of a sheep embryo and a goat embryo at the stage of their early divisions into four cells each, then incubating the mixture in a test tube with nutrients until it was time to transfer the mixed embryo to the womb of a sheep that acted as a surrogate mother.

In such cell fusions, the outcome (even if a viable offspring

Figure 57

Figure 58

is born) cannot be predicted; it is totally a matter of chance which genes will end up where on the chromosomes, and what traits—”images” and “likenesses”—will be picked up from which cell donor. There is little doubt that the monsters of Greek mythology, including the famous Minotaur (half bull, half man) of Crete, were recollections of the tales transmitted to the Greeks by Berossus, the Babylonian priest, and that his sources were the Sumerian texts concerning the trial-and-error experiments of Enki and Ninti which produced all kinds of chimeras.

The advances in genetics have provided biotechnology with other routes than the unpredictable chimera route; it is evident that in doing so, modern science has followed the alternate (though more difficult) course of action undertaken by Enki and Ninti. By cutting out and adding on pieces of the genetic strands, or Recombinant Technology, the traits to be omitted, added, or exchanged can be specified and targeted. Some of the landmarks along this progress in genetic engineering were the transfer of bacterial genes to plants to make the latter resistant to certain diseases and, later (in 1980), of specific bacteria genes into mice. In 1982 growth genes of a rat were spliced into the genetic code of a mouse (by teams headed by Ralph L. Brinster of the University of Pennsylvania and Rich- ard D. Palmiter of Howard Hughes Medical Institute), resulting in the birth of a “Mighty Mouse” twice the size of a normal mouse. In 1985 it was reported in Nature (June 27) that ex- perimenters at various scientific centers had succeeded in in- serting functioning human growth genes into rabbits, pigs, and sheep; and in 1987 (New Scientist, September 17) Swedish scientists likewise created a Super-Salmon. By now, genes carrying other traits have been used in such “trans-genic” recombinations between bacteria, plants, and mammals. Tech- niques have even progressed to the artificial manufacture of compounds that perfectly emulate specific functions of a given gene, mainly with a view to treating diseases.

In mammals, the altered fertilized female egg ultimately must be implanted in the womb of a surrogate mother—the function that was assigned, according to the Sumerian tales,

to the “Birth Goddesses.” But before that stage, a way had to be found to introduce the desired genetic traits from the male donor into the egg of the female participant. The most common method is micro-injection, by which a female egg, already fertilized, is extracted and injected with the desired added genetic trait; after a short incubation in a glass dish, the

egg is reimplanted in a female womb (mice, pigs, and other mammals have been tried). The procedure is difficult, has many hurdles, and results in only a small percentage of successes— but it works. Another technique has been the use of viruses, which naturally attack cells and fuse with their genetic cores: the new genetic trait to be transferred into a cell is attached

by complex ways to a virus, which then acts as the carrier; the

problem here is that the choice of the site on the chromosome stem to which the gene is to be attached is uncontrollable, and in most cases chimeras have resulted.

In June 1989 a report in Cell by a team of Italian scientists

headed by Corrado Spadafora of the Institute of Biomedical Technology in Rome announced success in using sperm to act as the carriers of the new gene. They reported procedures whereby sperm were induced to let down their natural resis- tance to foreign genes; then, after being soaked in solutions containing the new genetic material, the sperm incorporated

the genetic material into their cores. The altered sperm were then used to impregnate female mice; the offspring contained the new gene in their chromosomes (in this case a certain bacterial enzyme).

The use of the most natural medium—sperm—to carry ge- netic material into a female egg astounded the scientific com-

munity in its simplicity and made front-page news even in The New York Times. A follow-up study in Science of August 11, 1989, reported mixed successes by other scientists in dupli- cating the Italian technique. But all the scientists involved in recombinant technologies concurred that, with some modifi- cations and improvements, a new technique—and the most

simple and natural one—has been developed.

Some have pointed out that the ability of sperm to take up

foreign DNA was suggested by researchers as early as 1971,

after experiments with rabbit sperm. Little is it realized that

the technique had been reported even earlier, in Sumerian texts

describing the creation of The Adam by Enki and Ninti, who

had mixed the Apewoman’s egg in a test tube with the sperm of a young Anunnaki in a solution also containing blood serum.

In 1987 the dean of anthropology at the University of Flor- ence, Italy, raised a storm of protests by clergymen and hu- manists when he revealed that ongoing experiments could lead to the “creation of a new breed of slave, an anthropoid with

a chimpanzee mother and a human father.” One of my fans sent me the clipping of the story with the comment, “Well, Enki, here we go again!”

This seems to best sum up the achievements of modern microbiology.

The Adam: A Slave Made to Order 183

WASPS, MONKEYS, AND BIBLICAL PATRIARCHS

Much of what has happened on Earth, and especially its earliest wars, stemmed from the Succession Code of the Anunnaki that deprived the firstborn son of the succession if another son was born to the ruler by a half sister.

The same succession rules, adopted by the Sumerians, are reflected in the tales of the Hebrew Patriarchs. The Bible relates that Abraham (who came from the Sumerian capital city of Ur) asked his wife Sarah (a name that meant “Prin- cess”) to identify herself, when meeting foreign kings, as his sister rather than as his wife. Though not the whole truth it was not a lie, as explained in Genesis 20:12: “Indeed she is my sister, the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife.”

Abraham’s successor was not the firstborn Ishmael, whose mother was the handmaiden Hagar, but Isaac, the son of the half sister Sarah, though he was born much later.

The strict adherence to these succession rules in antiquity in all royal courts, whether in Egypt of the Old World or in the Inca empire in the New World, suggest some “blood- line,” or genetic, assumption that appears odd and contrary to the belief that mating with close relatives is undesirable.

But did the Anunnaki know something modern science has yet to discover?

In 1980 a group led by Hannah Wu at Washington Uni- versity found that, given a choice, female monkeys preferred to mate with half brothers. “The exciting thing about this experiment,” the report stated, “is that although the pre- ferred half brothers shared the same father, they had dif- ferent mothers.” Discover magazine (December 1988) reported studies showing that “male wasps ordinarily mate with their sisters.” Since one male wasp fertilizes many females, the preferential mating was found to be with half sisters: same father but different mother.

It appears thus that there was more than whim to the succession code of the Anunnaki.

9

THE MOTHER CALLED EVE

By tracing Hebrew words in the Bible through their Akkadian stem to their Sumerian origin it has been possible to understand the true meaning of biblical tales, especially those in the Book of Genesis. The fact that so many Sumerian terms had more than one meaning, mostly but not always derived from a com- mon original pictograph, constitutes a major difficulty in un- derstanding Sumerian and requires reading them carefully in context. On the other hand, the propensity of Sumerian writers to use that for frequent plays of words, makes their texts an intelligent reader’s joy.

Dealing, for example, with the biblical tale of the “up- heavaling” of Sodom and Gomorrah in The Wars of Gods and Men, 1 pointed out that the notion that Lot’s wife was turned

into a “pillar of salt” when she stayed back to watch what was happening, in fact meant “pillar of vapor” in the original Sumerian terminology. Since salt was obtained in Sumer from vapor-filled swamps, the original Sumerian term NI.MUR came to mean both “salt” and “vapor.” Poor Lot’s wife was vaporized, not turned into salt, by the nuclear blasts that caused

the upheaval of the cities of the plain.

Regarding the biblical tale of Eve, it was the great Sumer-

ologist Samuel N. Kramer who first pointed out that her name,

which meant in Hebrew “She who has life,” and the tale of

her origin from Adam’s rib in all probability stemmed from

the Sumerian play on the word TI, which meant both “life”

and “rib.”

Some other original or double meanings in the creation tales

have already been mentioned in a previous chapter. More can

be gleaned about “Eve” and her origins from comparisons of

184

the biblical tales with the Sumerian texts and an analysis of Sumerian terminology.

The genetic manipulations, we have seen, were conducted

by Enki and Ninti in a special facility called, in the Akkadian versions, Bit Shimti—”House where the wind of life is breathed in”; this meaning conveys a pretty accurate idea of what the purpose of the specialized structure, a laboratory, was. But here we have to invite into the discussion the Su- merian penchant for word play, thereby throwing fresh light

on the source of the tale of Adam’s rib, the use of clay, and the breaths of life.

The Akkadian term, as earlier stated, was a rendering of the Sumerian SHI.IM.T1. a compound word in which each of the three components conveyed a meaning that combined with, strengthened, and expanded the other two. SHI stood for what the Bible called Nephesh, commonly translated “soul” but more accurately meaning “breath of life.” IM had several meanings, depending on the context. It meant “wind,” but it could also mean “side.” In astronomical texts it denoted a satellite that is “by the side” of its planet; in geometry it meant the side of a square or triangle; and in anatomy it meant “rib.” To this day the parallel Hebrew word Sela means both the side of a geometric shape and a person’s rib. And, lo and behold, IM also had a totally unrelated fourth meaning: “clay.” . . .

As if the multiple meanings “wind”/”side”/”rib”/”clay” of IM were not enough, the term TI added to the Sumerians’

linguistic fun. It meant, as previously mentioned, both “life” and “rib”—the latter being the parallel of the Akkadian situ, from which came the Hebrew Sela. Doubled, TI.TI meant “belly”—that which held the fetus; and, lo and behold, in Akkadian titu acquired the meaning “clay,” from which the Hebrew word Tit has survived. Thus, the component TI of the

laboratory’s Sumerian name, SHI.IM.TI, we have the mean- ings “life”/”clay’7″belly’7″rib.”

In the absence of the original Sumerian version from which the compilers of Genesis might have obtained their data, one cannot be sure whether they had chosen the ” ‘rib” interpretation because it was conveyed by both IM and TI or because it gave

them an opening to making a social statement in the ensuing verses:

And Yahweh Elohim caused a deep sleep upon the Adam, and he slept.

And He look one of his ribs

and closed up the flesh in its place.

And Yahweh Elohim constructed of the rib

which He had taken from the Adam a woman, and He brought her to the Adam.

And the Adam said,

“This is now bone of my bones,

flesh of my flesh.”

Therefore is the being called Ish-sha [“Woman”] because out of Ish [“Man”] was this one taken. Therefore doth a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife

to become as one flesh.

This tale of the creation of Man’s female counterpart relates how the Adam, having already been placed in the E.DIN to till it and tend its orchards, was all alone. “And Yahweh Elohim said, it is not good that the Adam is by himself; let me make him a mate.” This obviously is a continuation of the version whereby The Adam alone was created, and not part of the version whereby Mankind was created male and female right away.

In order to resolve this seeming confusion, the sequence of creating the Earthlings must be borne in mind. First the male lulu, “mixed one” was perfected; then the fertilized eggs of Apewoman, bathed and mixed with the blood serum and sperm

of a young Anunnaki, were divided into batches and placed in a “mold,” where they acquired either male or female char- acteristics. Reimplanted in the wombs of Birth Goddesses, the embryos produced seven males and seven females each time. But these “mixed ones” were hybrids, which could not pro- create (as mules cannot). To get more of them, the process

had to be repeated over and over again.

At some point it became apparent that this way of obtaining

the serfs was not good enough; a way had to be found to get

more of these humans without imposing the pregnancies and

deliveries on female Anunnaki. That way was a second genetic

manipulation by Enki and Ninti, giving The Adam the ability to procreate on his own. To be able to have offspring, Adam had to mate with a fully compatible female. How and why she was brought into being is the story of the Rib and of the Garden of Eden.

The tale of the Rib reads almost like a two-sentence summary of a report in a medical journal. In no uncertain terms it de- scribes a major operation of the kind that makes headlines nowadays, when a close relative (for example, a father or a sister) donates an organ for transplant. Increasingly, modern medicine resorts to the transplantation of bone marrow when

the malady is a cancer or affects the immune system.

The donor in the biblical case is Adam. He is given general

anesthesia and is put to sleep. An incision is made and a rib

is removed. The flesh is then pulled together to close up the

wound, and Adam is allowed to rest and recover.

The action continues elsewhere. The Elohim now use the

piece of bone to construct a woman; not to create a woman, but to “construct” one. The difference in terminology is sig- nificant; it indicates that the female in question already existed but required some constructive manipulation to become a mate for Adam. Whatever was needed was obtained from the rib, and the clue to what the rib supplied lies in the other meanings

of IM and TI—life, belly, clay. Was an extract of Adam’s bone marrow implanted in that of a female Primitive Worker’s “clay” through her belly? Regrettably, the Bible does not describe what was done to the female (named Eve by Adam), and the Sumerian texts that have surely dealt with this point have not been found so far. That something of the kind did

exist is certain from the fact that the best available translation of the Atra Hasis text into Early Assyrian (about 850 B.C.) contains lines that parallel some of the biblical verses about a man leaving his father’s house and becoming as one with his wife as they lie in bed together. The tablet that carries this text is too damaged, however, to reveal all that the Sumerian orig-

inal text had to say.

But we do know nowadays, thanks to modern science, that sexuality and the ability to procreate lie in human chromo- somes; each person’s cell contains twenty-three pairs—in the case of a woman a pair of X chromosomes and in the case of

Figure 59

men one X and one Y chromosome (Fig. 59). However, the reproductive cells (female egg, male sperm) each contain only one set of chromosomes, not pairs. The pairing takes place when the egg is fertilized by the sperm; the embryo thus has the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, but only half of them come from the mother and only half from the father. The mother, having two X chromosomes, always contributes an X. The father, having both an X and a Y, may end up contributing either one; if it is an X, the baby will be female; if a Y, it will be a male.

The key to reproduction thus lies in the fusion of the two single sets of chromosomes; if their number and genetic code differ, they will not combine and the beings will not procreate. Since both female and male Primitive Workers already existed,

their sterility was not due to the lack of X or Y chromosomes. The need for a bone—the Bible stresses that Eve was “bone of the bones” of Adam—suggests that there was a need to overcome some immunological rejection by the female Prim- itive Workers of the males’ sperms. The operation carried out by the Elohim overcame this problem. Adam and Eve discov- ered their sexuality, having acquired “knowing”—a biblical term that connoted sex for the purpose of procreation (“And Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived and gave birth to Cain.”). Eve, as the tale of the two of them in the Garden of Eden relates, was thenceforth able to become pregnant by Adam, receiving from the deity a blessing combined with a curse: “In suffering shall thou bear children.”

With that, “The Adam,” Elohim said, “has become as one of us.” He was granted “Knowing.” Homo sapiens was able to procreate and multiply on his own. But though he was given

a good measure of the genetic makeup of the Anunnaki, who made Man in their image and after their likeness even in this respect of procreation, one genetic trait was not transmitted. That was the longevity of the Anunnaki. Of the fruit of the “Tree of Life,” partaking of which would have made Man live as long as the Anunnaki, he was not even to taste. This

point is clearly spelled out in the Sumerian tale of Adapa, the Perfect Man created by Enki:

Wide understanding he perfected for him. … Wisdom he had given him. . . .

To him he had given Knowing; Eternal life he had not given him.

Ever since publication of The 12th Planet in 1976, I have spared no effort to explain the seeming “immortality” of the “gods.” Using flies in my home as an example, I have been wont to say that if flies could talk, Papa Fly would tell Son Fly, “You know, this man here is immortal; as long as I have lived, he has not aged at all; my father told me that his father, all our forefathers as far as we can remember, have seen this man the way he is: ever-living, immortal!”

My “immortality” (in the eyes of the talking flies) is, of course, simply a result of the different life cycles. Man lives

so many decades of years; flies count their lives in days. But what are all these terms? A “day” is the time it takes our planet to complete one revolution about its axis; a “year” is the time it takes our planet to complete one orbit around the Sun. The length of time activities by the Anunnaki took on Earth was counted in sars, each one equivalent to 3,600 Earth- years. A sar, I have suggested, was the “year” on Nibiru— the time it took that planet to complete one orbit around the Sun. So when the Sumerian King Lists reported, for example, that one leader of the Anunnaki administered one of their cities for 36,000 years, the text actual states ten sars. if a single generation for Man is twenty years, there would be 180 gen- erations of Man’s progeny in one Anunnaki “year”—making them appear to be Forever Living, “immortal.”

The ancient texts make clear that this longevity was not passed on to Man, but intelligence was. This implies a belief

or knowledge, in antiquity, that the two traits, intelligence and

longevity, could somehow be bestowed upon or denied to Man

by those who had genetically created him. Not surprisingly,

perhaps, modem science agrees. “Evidence amassed over the

past 60 years suggests that there is a genetic component to

intelligence,” Scientific American reported in its March 1989 issue. Besides giving examples of geniuses in various fields who had bequeathed their talents to children and grandchildren, the article highlighted a report by researchers from the Uni- versity of Colorado at Boulder and Pennsylvania State Uni- versity (David W. Fulker, John C. DeFries, and Robert

Plomin), who had established a “close biological correlation” in mental abilities attributable to genetic heredity. Scientific American headlined the article, “More Evidence Links Genes and Intelligence.” Other studies, recognizing that “memories are made of molecules,” have led to the suggestion that if computers are ever to match human intelligence, they ought

to be “molecular computers.” Updating suggestions made in this direction by Forrest Carter of the Naval Research Labo- ratories in Washington, D.C., John Hopfield of Caltech and AT&T’s Bell Laboratories outlined in 1988 (Science, vol. 241) a blueprint for a “biological computer.”

Evidence has also been mounting for the genetic source of

the life cycles of living organisms. The various stages in the

life of insects and the length of time they live are clearly genetically orchestrated. So is the fact that so many creatures— but not mannals—die after reproducing. Octopuses, for ex- ample, it was discovered (by Jerome Wodinsky of Brandeis University) are genetically programmed to “self-destruct” after reproduction through chemicals found in their optical glands. The studies were carried out in the course of research on the aging process in animals, not on the life of octupuses per se. Many other studies have shown that some animals possess the capacity to repair damaged genes in their cells and thus halt or reverse the aging process. Every species clearly has a life span fixed by its genes—a single day for the mayfly, about six years for a frog, a limit of about fifteen for a dog. Nowadays the human limit lies somewhere not much beyond one hundred years but in earlier times human life spans were much longer.

According to the Bible, Adam lived to be 930 years old, his son Seth 912 years, and his son Enosh, 905. Although there

is reason to believe that the editors of Genesis reduced by a

factor of 60 the much greater life spans reported in the Sumerian

texts, the Bible does acknowledge that mankind had much

longer lifetimes before the Deluge. Patriarchal life spans began

to shorten as the millennia raced on. Terah, Abraham’s father,

died at the age of 205. Abraham lived 175 years; his son Isaac died at age 180. Isaac’s son Jacob lived to be 147 but Jacob’s son passed away at age 110.

While it is believed the genetic errors that accumulate as DNA keeps reproducing itself in the cells contribute to the aging process, scientific evidence indicates the existence of a

biological “clock” in all creatures, a basic, built-in genetic trait that controls the life span of each species. What that gene or group of genes is, what makes it tick, what triggers it to “express” itself, are still matters of intense research. But that the answer lies in the genes has been shown by numerous studies. Some, on viruses, show that they possess fragments

of DNA that can literally “immortalize” them.

Enki must have known all that, so that when it came to

perfecting The Adam—creating a true, procreating Homo sap-

iens—he gave Adam intelligence and “Knowing,” but not the

full longevity that the Anunnaki genes possessed.

As Mankind keeps distancing itself from the days of its creation as a Lulu, a “mixed” being who carried the genetic heritage of both the Earth and the Heavens, the shortening of its average life span might be seen as a symptom of the minute loss, from generation to generation, of what some consider “divine” elements and the increasing preponderance of the “animal which is within us.” The existence in our genetic makeup of what some call “nonsense” DNA—segments of DNA that seem to have lost their purpose—is an apparent leftover from the original “mixing.” The two independent, though connected, parts of the brain—one more primitive and emotional, the other newer and more rational—are another attestation to the mixed genetic origin of Mankind.

The evidence that corroborates the ancient tales of creation, massive as it has been so far, does not end with genetic ma- nipulation. There is more to come, and it is all above Eve!

Modern anthropology, with the aid of fossil finds by pa- leontologists and advances in other fields of science, has made great strides in tracing back the origin of Man. By now the question “Where did we come from?” has been clearly an- swered: Mankind arose in southeastern Africa.

The story of Man, we now know, did not begin with Man; the “chapter” that tells of the group of mammals called “Pri- mates” takes us back some forty-five or fifty million years, when a common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and Man appeared in Africa. Twenty-five or thirty million years later—that is how slowly the wheels of evolution turn—a precursor of the

Great Apes branched off the primate line. In the 1920s fossils of this early ape, “Proconsul,” were found by chance on an island in Lake Victoria (see map), and the find eventually attracted to the area the best-known husband-wife team of paleontologists, Louis S. B. and Mary Leakey. Besides Pro- consul fossils they also discovered in the area remains of Ra-

mapithecus, the first erect ape or manlike primate; it was some fourteen million years old—some eight or ten million years up the evolutionary tree from Proconsul.

These discoveries meant more than finding a few fossils; they unlocked the door to nature’s secret laboratory, the hide- away where Mother Nature keeps forging ahead with the ev-

Figure 60

olutionary march that has led from mammal to primate to great apes to hominids. The place was the rift valley that slashes through Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania—part of the rift system that begins in the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea in Israel, includes the Red Sea, and runs all the way to southern Africa (map, Fig. 60).

Numerous fossil finds have been made at sites that the Leak- eys and other paleoanthropologists have made famous. The

richest finds have been in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania; near

Lake Rudolf (renamed Lake Turkana) in Kenya; and in the Afar province of Ethiopia, to name the best-known sites. There have been many discoverers from many nations, but some— prominent in the scholarly debates regarding the meaning and time scales of the finds—ought to be mentioned: the Leakeys’ son Richard (curator of the National Museums of Kenya), Donald C. Johanson (curator at the Cleveland Museum of Nat- ural History at the time of his discoveries), Tim White, and J. Desmond Clark (University of California at Berkeley), Alan Walker (John Hopkins University), Andrew Hill and David Pilbeam of Harvard, and Raymond Dart and Phillip Tobias of South Africa.

Putting aside the problems raised by pride of discovery, different interpretations of finds, and a propensity for splitting species and genuses into smaller subdivisions, it is safe to state that the branch leading to humans separated from that of four-

legged apes some fourteen million years ago and that it took another nine million years or so until the first apes with hominid aspects, called Australopithecus, showed up—-all where nature had chosen its “man-making” laboratory to be.

While the fossil record for those intervening ten million years is almost blank, paleoanthropologists (as the new group of

scientists has come to be called) have been quite ingenious in piecing together the record in the ensuing three million years. Sometimes with only a jawbone, a fractured skull, a pelvis bone, the remains of some fingers, or, with luck, even parts of skeletons, they have been able to reconstruct the beings these fossils represented; with the aid of other finds, such as

animal bones or stones crudely shaped to serve as tools, they have determined the developmental stage and customs of the beings; and by dating the geologic strata in which the fossils are found, they have been able to date the fossils themselves.

Among the outstanding road markers have been such finds as skeletal parts of a female nicknamed “Lucy” (who might

have looked like the hominid in Fig. 61)—believed to have been an advanced Australopithecus who lived some 3.5 million years ago; a fossil known by its catalog number as “Skull 1470” of a male from perhaps 2 million years ago and con- sidered by its finders to be a “near man,” or Homo habilis (“Handy Man”)—a term to whose implications many object;

Figure 61

and skeletal remains of a “strapping young male” cataloged WT.15000 of a Homo erectus from about 1.5 million years ago, probably the first true hominid. He ushered in the Old Stone Age; he began to use stones as tools, and migrated via the Sinai peninsula, which acts as a land bridge between Africa and Asia, to southeast Asia on the one hand and to southern Europe on the other.

The trail of the Homo genus is lost after that; the chapter between about 1.5 million years to about 300,000 years ago is missing, except for traces of Homo erectus on the peripheries of this hominid’s migrations. Then, about 300,000 years ago, without any evidence of gradual change, Homo sapiens made his appearance. At first it was believed that Homo sapiens neanderthalis. Neanderthal man (so named after the site of his first discovery in Germany), who came into prominence in Europe and parts of Asia about 125,000 years ago, was the ancestor of the Cro-Magnons, Homo sapiens sapiens, who took over the lands about 35,000 years ago. Then it was held that

the more “brutish” and thus “primitive'” Neanderthal stemmed from a different Homo sapiens branch, that Cro- Magnon had developed somewhere on his own. Now it is known that the latter notion is more correct, but not entirely. Related but not the offspring of each other, the two lines of Homo sapiens lived side by side as far back as 90,000 or even 100,000 years ago.

The evidence was found in two caves, one on Mount Carmel and the other near Nazareth, in Israel; they are among a number of caves in the area where prehistoric man had made himself a home. The first finds in the 1930s were believed to be about 70,000 years old and only of Neanderthal Man, thus fitting well with the theories then held. In the 1960s a joint Israeli- French team reexcavated the cave at Qafzeh, the one near Nazareth, and discovered that the remains were not only of Neanderthals but also of Cro-Magnon types. In fact, the lay- ering indicated that Cro-Magnons had used the cave before the Neanderthals—a fact that pushed back the appearance of the Cro-Magnons from the supposed 35,000 years ago to well before 70,000 years ago.

Themselves incredulous, the scientists at Hebrew University in Jerusalem turned for verification to the remains of rodents

found in the same layers. Their examination gave the same

incredible date: Cro-Magnons, Homo sapiens sapiens, who

were not supposed to have made an appearance before 35,000

years ago, had reached the Near East and settled in what is

now Israel more than 70,000 years ago. Moreover, for a long

time they shared the area with the Neanderthals.

At the end of 1987 the finds at Qafzeh and Kebara, the cave

on Mount Carmel, were dated by new methods, including

Thermoluminescence, a technique that gives reliable dates

much further back than the 40,000 to 50,000 year limit of

radiocarbon dating. As reported in two issues (vols. 330 and

340) of Nature by the leader of the French team, Helene Val- lades of the National Research Center at Gif sur Yvette, the results showed without doubt that both Neanderthals and Cro- Magnons dwelt in the area between 90,000 and 100,000 years ago (scientists now use 92,000 years as the mean date). These findings were confirmed later at another site in the Galilee.

Devoting an editorial in Nature to the findings, Christopher

Stringer of the British Museum acknowledged that the con- ventional view that Neanderthals preceded Cro-Magnons had to be discarded. Both lines appeared to stem from an earlier form of Homo sapiens. “Wherever the original ‘Eden1 for modern humans might have been,” the editorial stated, it now appeared that for some reason Neanderthals were the first to migrate northward, about 125.000 years ago. Joined by his colleague, Peter Andrews, and Ofer Bar-Yosef of Hebrew Uni- versity and Harvard, they forcefully argued for an “Out of Africa” interpretation of these finds. A northward migration by these first Homo sapiens from an African birthplace was confirmed by the discovery (by Fred Wendorf of Southern Methodist University, Dallas) of a Neanderthal skull near the Nile in Egypt that was 80,000 years old.

“Does it all mean an earlier dawn for humans’?” a Science headline asked. As scientists from other disciplines joined the search, it became clear the answer was yes. The Neanderthals, it was determined, were not just visitors to the Near East but long-time dwellers there. And they were not the primitive brutes that earlier notions had made them out to be. They buried their dead in rituals that indicated religious practices and “at least one type of spiritually motivated behavior that allies them with modern humans” (Jared M. Diamond of the University of California Medical School at Los Angeles). Some, as the discoverer of Neanderthal remains at the Shanidar cave, Ralph

S. Solecki of Columbia University, believe that the Neander- thals knew how to use herbs for healing—60,000 years ago.

Skeletal finds in the Israeli caves convinced anatomists that,

contrary to previously held theories. Neanderthals could speak:

“Fossil brain casts show a well-developed language area,”

stated Dean Falk of the State University of New York at Al-

bany. And “Neanderthal’s brain was bigger than ours … he

was not dull-witted and inarticulate,” concluded neuroanato- mist Terrence Deacon of Harvard.

All these recent discoveries have left no doubt that Nean- derthal man was without doubt a Homo sapiens—not an ances- tor of Cro-Magnon man but an earlier type from the same human stock.

In March 1987 Christopher Stringer of the British Museum, along with a colleague, Paul Mellars, organized a conference

at Cambridge University to update and digest the new findings concerning “The Origins and Dispersal of Modern Man.” As reported by J. A. J. Gowlett in Antiquity (July 1987), the con- ferees first considered the fossil evidence. They concluded that after a hiatus of 1.2 to 1.5 million years by Homo erectus. Homo sapiens made a sudden appearance soon after 300,000 years ago (as evidenced by fossil remains in Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Africa). Neanderthals “differentiated” from those early Homo sapiens (“Wise man”) about 230,000 years ago and may have begun their northward migrations 100,000 years later, perhaps coinciding with the appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens.

The conference also examined other lines of evidence, in- cluding the brand-new data provided by the field of biochem- istry. Most exciting were the findings based on genetics. The

ability of geneticists to trace parentage through comparisons of DNA “sentences” has been proven in paternity lawsuits. It was inevitable that the new techniques would be extended to trace not only child-parent relationships but also whole lin- eages of species. It was this new science of molecular genetics that enabled Allan C. Wilson and Vincent M. Sarich (both of

the University of California at Berkeley) to establish with great accuracy that hominids differentiated from apes about 5 mil- lion, not 15 million years ago, and that the hominids’ closest “next of kin” were chimpanzees and not gorillas.

Because a person’s DNA keeps getting mixed by the genes of the generational fathers, comparisons of the DNA in the

nucleus of the cell (which come half from mother, half from father) do not work well after several generations. It was dis- covered, however, that in addition to the DNA in the cell’s nucleus, some DNA exists in the mother’s cell but outside the nucleus in bodies called “mitochondria” (Fig. 62). This DNA does not get mixed with the father’s DNA; instead, it is passed

on “unadulterated” from mother to daughter to granddaughter, and so on through the generations. This discovery, by Douglas Wallace of Emory University in the 1980s, led him to compare this “mtDNA” of about 800 women. The surprising conclu- sion, which he announced at a scientific conference in July 1986, was that the mtDNA in all of them appeared to be so

similar that these women must have all descended from a single female ancestor.

Figure 62

The research was picked up by Wesley Brown of the Uni- versity of Michigan, who suggested that by determining the rate of natural mutation of mtDNA, the length of time that had passed since this common ancestor was alive could be calcu- lated. Comparing the mtDNA of twenty-one women from di- verse geographical and racial backgrounds, he came to the conclusion that they owed their origin to “a single mitochon- drial Eve” who had lived in Africa between 300,000 and 180,000 years ago.

These intriguing findings were taken up by others, who set out to search for “Eve.” Prominent among them was Rebecca Cann of the University of California at Berkeley (later at Hawaii University). Obtaining the placentas of 147 women of different

races and geographical backgrounds who gave birth at San Francisco hospitals, she extracted and compared their mtDNA. The conclusion was that they all had a common female ancestor who had lived between 300,000 and 150,000 years (depending on whether the rate of mutation was 2 percent or 4 percent per million years). “We usually assume 250,000 years,” Cann

stated.

The upper limit of 300,000 years, palcoanthropologists

noted, coincided with the fossil evidence for the time Homo

sapiens made his appearance. “What could have happened

300,000 years ago to bring this change about?” Cann and Allan

Wilson asked, but they had no answer.

To further test what has come to be called the “Eve Hy- pothesis,” Cann and her colleagues, Wilson and Mark Stone- king, proceeded to examine placentas of about 150 women in America whose ancestors came from Europe, Africa, the Mid- dle East, and Asia, as well as placentas from aborigine women in Australia and New Guinea. The results indicated that the African mtDNA was the oldest and that all those different women from various races and the most diverse geographic and cultural backgrounds had the same sole female ancestor who had lived in Africa between 290,000 and 140,000 years ago.

In an editorial in Science (September 11,1 987) in which all these findings were reviewed, it was stated that the overwhelm- ing evidence showed that “Africa was the cradle of modem humans. . . . The story molecular biology seems to be telling is that modern humans evolved in Africa about 200,000 years

ago.”

These sensational findings—since then corroborated by

other studies—made worldwide headlines. “The question

Where did we come from? has been answered” the National

Geographic (October, 1988) announced: out of southeastern

Africa. “The Mother of Us All” has been found, headlined

the San Francisco Chronicle. “Out of Africa: Man’s Route to Rule the World,” announced the London Observer. Newsweek (January 11, 1988) in what was to be its best-selling issue ever depicted an “Adam” and an “Eve” with a serpent on its front cover, headlining it “The Search for Adam and Eve.”

The headline was appropriate, for as Allan Wilson observed,

“Obviously where there was a mother there had to be a father.”

All these very recent discoveries go a long way indeed in confirming the biblical claim regarding the first couple of Homo sapiens:

And Adam called his wife’s name Chava [“She of Life”—”Eve” in English] for she was the mother of all who live.

Several conclusions are offered by the Sumerian data. First, the creation of the Lulu was the result of the mutiny of the

Anunnaki about 300,000 years ago. This date as the upper limit for the first appearance of Homo sapiens has been cor- roborated by modem science.

Second, the forming of the Lulu had taken place “above the Abzu,” north of the mining area. This is corroborated by the location of the earliest human remains in Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia—north of the gold-mining areas of southern Af- rica.

Third, the full emergence of the first type of Homo sapiens,

the Neanderthals—-about 230,000 years ago—falls well within the 250.000 years suggested by the mtDNA findings for the data of “Eve,” followed later by the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens, “modern Man.”

There is no contradiction at all between these later dates and the 300,000-year date of the mutiny. Bearing in mind that

these were Earth-years, whereas for the Anunnaki 3,600 Earth- years amounted to only one of theirs, we should first recall that a period of trial and error followed the decision to ‘ ‘create the Adam,” until the “perfect model” was achieved. Then, even after the Primitive Workers were brought forth, seven males and seven females at a time, pregnancies by Birth God-

desses were required, as the new hybrid was unable to pro- create.

Clearly, the tracing of mtDNA accounts for the”Eve” who could bear children, not a female Lulu unable to procreate. The granting to mankind of this ability, it was shown earlier, took place as a result of a second genetic manipulation by Enki

and Ninti which, in the Bible, is reflected in the story of Adam, Eve, and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Did that second genetic manipulation take place about 250,000 years ago, the data for “Eve” suggested by Rebecca Cann, or 200,000 years ago, as the article in Science prefers?

According to the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve began to

have children only after their expulsion from “Eden.” We know nothing of whether Abel, their second son who was killed by his elder brother Cain, had any offspring. But we do read that Cain and his descendants were ordered to migrate to far- away lands. Were these descendants of the “accursed line of Cain” the migrating Neanderthals? It is an intriguing possi-

bility that must remain a speculation.

What seems certain is that the Bible does recognize the final emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens, modern human beings. It tells us that the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth, had a son named Enosh, of whom the lineage of Mankind is descended. Now, Enosh in Hebrew means “human, human being”—you and me. It was in the time of Enosh, the Bible states, that “men began to call the name of Yahweh. It was then, in other words, that fully civilized Man and religious worship were established.

With that, all the aspects of the ancient tale stand corrob- orated .

THE EMBLEM OF ENTWINED SERPENTS

In the biblical tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the antagonist of the Lord God who had caused them to acquire “knowing” (the ability to procreate) was the Serpent, Nahash in Hebrew.

The term has two other meanings: “he who knows se- crets” and “he who knows copper.” These other meanings or word plays are found in the Sumerian epithet BUZUR for Enki, which meant “he who solves secrets” and “he of the metal mines.” I have therefore suggested in previous writings that, in the original Sumerian version, the “Ser- pent” was Enki. His emblem was entwined serpents; it was the symbol of his “cult center” Eridu (a), of his African domains in general (b), and of the pyramids in particular (c); and it appeared on Sumerian illustrations on cylinder seals of the events described in the Bible.

What did the emblem of entwined serpents—the symbol for medicine and healing to this very day—represent? The discovery by modern science of the double-helix structure of DNA (see Fig. 49) offers the answer: the Entwined Ser- pents emulated the structure of the genetic code, the secret knowledge of which enabled Enki to create The Adam and then grant Adam and Eve the ability to procreate.

The emblem of Enki as a sign of healing was invoked by Moses when he made a nahash nehosheth—-a “copper ser- pent”—to halt an epidemic afflicting the Israelites. Was the involvement of copper in the triple meanings of the term

The Mother Called Eve 203

and in the making of the copper serpent by Moses due to some unknown role of copper in genetics and healing?

Recent experiments, conducted at the universities of Min- nesota and St. Louis, suggest that it is indeed so. They showed that radionucleide copper-62 is a “positron-emit- ter,” valuable in imaging blood flow, and that other copper compounds can carry Pharmaceuticals to living cells, in- cluding brain cells.

10

WHEN WISDOM WAS LOWERED FROM HEAVEN

The Sumerian King Lists—a record of rulers, cities, and events arranged chronologically—divide prehistory and history into two distinct parts: first the long record of what had happened before the Deluge, then what transpired after the Deluge. One was the time when the Anunnaki “gods” and then their sons by the “daughters of Man,” the so-called demigods, ruled upon the Earth; the other was when human rulers—kings se- lected by Enlil—were interposed between the “gods” and the people. In both instances the institution of an organized society and orderly government, “Kingship,” was stated to have been “lowered from heaven”—the emulation on Earth of the so- cietal and governmental organization on Nibiru.

“When kingship was lowered from heaven,” begins the Sumerian King List, “kingship was in Eridu. In Eridu, Alulim became king and ruled 28,800 years.” After listing the other antediluvial rulers and cities, the text states that “then the Flood swept over the Earth.” And it continues: “After the Flood had

swept over the Earth, when kingship was lowered again from heaven, kingship was in Kish.” From then on, the lists take us into historical times.

Although the subject of this volume is what we call Science and the ancients called Wisdom, a few words about “King- ship”—the good order of things, an organized society and its

institutions—will not be out of place, because without them no scientific progress or the dissemination and preservation of “Wisdom” could be possible. “Kingship” was the “portfo- lio” of Enlil, the Chief Administrator of the Anunnaki on Earth. It is noteworthy that as in so many scientific fields where we still live off and build upon the Sumerian bequests, so does

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the institution of kings and kingship still exist, having served Mankind for so many millennia. Samuel N. Kramer, in History Begins at Sumer, listed scores of “firsts” begun there, in- cluding a bicameral chamber of elected (or selected) deputies.

Various aspects of an organized and orderly society were incorporated into the concept of kingship, first and foremost among them the need for justice. A king was required to be “righteous” and to promulgate and uphold the laws, for Su- merian society was one that lived by the law. Many have learnt in school of the Babylonian king Hammurabi and his famous law code, dating back to the second millenium B.C.; but at least two thousand years before him Sumerian kings had al- ready promulgated codes of law. The difference was that Ham- murabi’s was a code of crime and punishment: if you do this, your punishment will be that. The Sumerian law codes, on the other hand, were codes of just behavior; they stated that “you should not take away a widow’s donkey” or delay the wages of a day laborer. The Bible’s Ten Commandments were, like the Sumerian codes, not a list of punishments but a code of what is right to do and what is wrong and should not be done.

The laws were upheld by a judicial administration. It is from Sumer that we have inherited the concept of judges, juries, witnesses, and contracts. The unit of society we call the “fam- ily,” based on a contractual marriage, was instituted in Sumer; so were rules and customs of succession, of adoption, of the

rights of widows. The rule of law was also applied to economic activities: exchange based on contracts, rules for employment, wages, and—how else—taxation. We know much of Sumer’s foreign trade, for example, because there had been a customs station at a city called Drehem where meticulous records were kept of all commercial movements of goods and animals.

All that and more came under the umbrella of “Kingship.” As the sons and grandchildren of Enlil entered the stage of relations between Man and his gods, the functions of kingship and the supervision of kings were gradually handed over to them, and Enlil as the All Beneficent became a cherished mem- ory. But to this day what we call a “civilized society” still

owes its foundations to the time when “kingship was lowered from heaven.”

“Wisdom”—sciences and the arts, the activities that re- quired know-how—were the domain first of Enki, the Chief Scientist of the Anunnaki, and later on, of his children.

We learn from a text scholars call “Inanna and Enki: The Transfer of the Arts of Civilization” that Enki possessed certain

unique objects called ME—a kind of computer or data disks— which held the information needed for the sciences, the han- dicrafts, and the arts. Numbering more than a hundred, they included such diverse subjects as writing, music, metalwork- ing, construction, transportation, anatomy, medical treatments, flood control, and urban decay; also, as other lists make clear,

astronomy, mathematics, and the calendar.

Like Kingship, Wisdom was “lowered to Earth from

Heaven,” granted to Mankind by the Anunnaki “gods.” It

was by their sole decision that scientific knowledge was passed

on to Mankind, usually through the medium of selected indi-

viduals; the instance of Adapa, to whom Enki granted “wide

understanding,” has already been mentioned. As rule, how- ever, the chosen person belonged to the priesthood—another “first” that stayed with Mankind for millennia through the Middle Ages, when priests and monks were still also the sci- entists.

Sumerian texts tell of Enmeduranki who was groomed by the gods to be the first priest, and relate how the gods

Showed him how to observe oil and water, secrets of Anu, Enlil and Enki.

They gave him the Divine Tablet,

the engraved secrets of Heaven and Earth.

They taught him how to make calculations with numbers.

These brief statements disclose considerable information. The first subject Enmeduranki was taught, the knowledge of “oil and water,” concerned medicine. In Sumerian times phy- sicians were called either an A.ZU or a IA.ZU, meaning “One who knows water” and “One who knows oil,” and the dif- ference was the method by which they administered medica- ments: mixed and drunk down with water, or mixed with oil and administered by an enema. Next, Enmeduranki was given a “divine,” or celestial, tablet on which were engraved the

“secrets of Heaven and Earth”—information about the planets and the Solar System and the visible constellations of stars, as well as knowledge about “Earth sciences”-—geography, ge- ology, geometry and—since the Enuma etish was incorporated into the temple rituals on New Year’s Eve—cosmogony and evolution. And, to be able to understand all that—the third subject, mathematics: “calculations with numbers.”

In Genesis the story of the antediluvial patriarch called Enoch is summed up in the statement that he did not die but was taken up to the Lord when he was 365 years old (a number that corresponds to the number of days in a year); but considerably

more information about Enoch is provided in the Book of Enoch (of which several renderings have been found), which was not made part of the Bible. In it the knowledge imparted by angels to Enoch is described in much detail; it included mining and metallurgy and the secrets of the Lower World, geography and the way Earth is watered, astronomy and the laws governing

celestial motions, how to calculate the calendar, knowledge of plants and flowers and foods and so on—all shown to Enoch in special books and on “heavenly tablets.”

The biblical Book of Proverbs devotes a good deal of its teachings to Man’s need for Wisdom and to the realization that it is granted by God only to the righteous, “for it is the Lord

who giveth wisdom.” The many secrets of Heaven and Earth that Wisdom encompasses are highlighted in an Ode to Wisdom found in chapter 8 of Proverbs. The Book of Job likewise extols the virtues of Wisdom and all the abundance Man can obtain by it, but pointedly asks: “But whence cometh Wisdom, and where is the source of Understanding?” To which the

answer is. “It is God who understands the way thereof”; the Hebrew word translated “God” is Elohim, the plural term first used in the creation tales. It is certain that the inspiration for these two biblical books, if not their actual source, was Su- merian and Akkadian texts of proverbs and of the Sumerian equivalent of the Book of Job; the latter, interestingly, was

titled “I Will Praise the Lord of Wisdom.”

There was no doubt in ancient times that scientific knowledge

was a gift and a teaching from the “gods”—the Anunnaki,

Elohim—to Mankind. The assertions that astronomy was a

major subject are self-evident statements, since, as must be

evident from earlier chapters in this book, the astounding knowledge in Sumerian times of the complete Solar System and the cosmogony that explained the origin of Earth, the asteroid belt, and the existence of Nibiru could have come only from the Anunnaki.

While I have seen a gratifying increase—to some extent, I would like to think, due to my writings—in the recognition of the Sumerian contribution to the beginnings and concept of

laws, medical treatment, and cuisine, the parallel recognition of the immense Sumerian contribution to astronomy has not come about; this, I suspect, because of the hesitation in crossing the “forbidden threshold” of the inevitable next step: if you admit what the Sumerians knew about celestial matters, you must admit the existence not only of Nibiru but also of its

people, the Anunnaki. . . .Nevertheless, this “fear of cross- ing” (a nice play on words, since Nibiru’s name meant “Planet of the Crossing” . . .) in no way negates the fact that modem astronomy owes to the Sumerians (and through them, to the Anunnaki) the basic concept of a spherical astronomy with all its technicalities; the concept of an ecliptic as the belt around

the Sun in which the planets orbit; the grouping of stars into constellations; the grouping of the constellations seen in the ecliptic into the Houses of the Zodiac; and the application of the number 12 to these constellations, to the months of the year, and to other celestial, or “divine,” matters. This em- phasis on the number 12 can be traced to the fact that the Solar

System has twelve members, and each leading Anunnaki was assigned a celestial counterpart, forming a pantheon of twelve “Olympians” who were also each assigned a constellation and a month. Astrologers certainly owe much to these celestial divisions, since in the planet Nibiru astrologers find the twelfth member of the Solar System that they have been missing for

so long.

As the Book of Enoch details and as the biblical reference

to the number 365 attests, a direct result of the knowledge of

the interrelated motions of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth

was the development of the calendar: the counting of the days

(and their nights), the months, and the years. It is now generally

recognized that the Western calendar we use nowadays harkens back to Mankind’s first-ever calendar, the one known as the

Calendar of Nippur. Based on the alignment of its start with the spring equinox in the zodiac of Taurus, scholars have con- cluded that this calendar was instituted at the beginning of the fourth millennium B.C. Indeed, the very concept of a calendar that is coordinated with the Earth-Sun occurrences of the equi- noxes (the time the Sun crosses the equator and day and night are equal) or, alternatively, with the solstices (when the Sun appears to have reached its farthest point north or south)— concepts that are found in all calendars in both the Old World and the New World—come to us from Sumer.

The Jewish calendar, as I have repeatedly pointed out in books and articles, still adheres to the calendar of Nippur not

only in its form and structure but also in its count of years. In

A.D. 1990 the Jewish calendar counts the year 5750; and it is

not from “the creation of the world,” as the explanation has

been, but from the start of the calendar of Nippur in 3760 B.C.

It was in that year, I have suggested in The Lost Realms,

that Anu, Nibiru’s king, came to Earth on a state visit. His name, AN in Sumerian and Anu in Akkadian, meant “heaven,” “The Heavenly One.” and was a component of numerous astronomical terms, such as AN.UR (“celestial ho- rizon”) and AN.PA (“point of zenith”), as well as being a component of the name “Anunnaki,” “Those Who From

Heaven to Earth Came.” Archaic Chinese, whose syllables were written and pronounced in a manner that reveals their Sumerian origin, used for example the term kuan to denote a temple that served as an observatory; the Sumerian kernel of the term, KU.AN, had meant “opening to the heavens.” (The Sumerian origin of Chinese astronomy and astrology was dis-

cussed by me in the article “The Roots of Astrology,” which appeared in the February 1985 issue of East-West Journal). Undoubtedly, the Latin annum (“year”) from which the French annee (“year”), the English annual (“yearly”), and so on stem from the time when the calendar and the count of years began with the state visit of AN.

The Chinese tradition of combining temples with observa- tories has, of course, not been limited to China; it harkens back to the ziggurats (step pyramids) of Sumer and Babylon. Indeed, a long text dealing with that visit by Anu and his spouse Antu to Sumer relates how the priests ascended to the ziggurat’s

Figure 63

topmost level to observe the appearance of Nibiru in the skies. Enki imparted the knowledge of astronomy (and of other sci- ences) to his firstborn son Marduk, and the renowned ziggurat of Babylon, built there after Marduk gained supremacy in Mes- opotamia, was built to serve as an astronomical observatory (Fig. 63).

Enki bestowed the “secrets” of the calendar, mathematics, and writing on his younger son Ningishzidda, whom the Egyp-

tians called Thoth. In The Lost Realms I present substantial evidence to show that he was one and the same Mesoamerican god known as Quetzalcoatl, “The Plumed Serpent.” This god’s name, which means (in Sumerian) “Lord of the Tree of Life,” reflected the fact that it was to him that Enki entrusted medical knowledge, including the secret of reviving the dead.

A Babylonian text quotes the exasperated Enki as telling Mar- duk he had taught him enough, when Marduk also wanted to learn the secret of reviving the dead. That the Anunnaki could achieve that feat (at least in so far as their own were concerned)

Figure 64

is clear from a text titled “The Descent of Inanna to the Lower World,” where she was put to death by her own sister. When her father appealed to Enki to revive the goddess, Enki directed at the corpse “that which pulsates” and “that which radiates” and brought her back to life. A Mesopotamian depiction of a patient on a hospital table shows him receiving radiation treat- ment (Fig. 64).

Putting aside the ability to revive the dead (which is men- tioned as fact in the Bible), it is certain that the teaching of

anatomy and medicine was part of priestly training, as stated

in the Enmeduranki text. That the tradition continued into later

times is clear from Leviticus, one of the Five Books of Moses,

which contains extensive instructions by Yahweh to the Isra-

elite priests in matters of health, medical prognosis, treatment

and hygiene. The dietary commandments regarding “appro- priate” (kosher) and non-appropriate foods undoubtedly stemmed from health and hygienic considerations rather than from religious observance; and many believe that the important requirement of circumcision was also rooted in medical rea- sons. These instructions were not unlike those in numerous

earlier Mesopotamian texts that served as medical manuals for the A.ZUs and IA.ZUs, which instructed the physician

-priests to first observe the symptoms; next stated which remedy had to be applied; and then gave a list of the chemicals, herbs,

and other pharmaceutical ingredients from which the medicines were to be prepared. That the Elohim were the source of these teachings should come as no surprise when we recall the med- ical, anatomical, and genetic feats of Enki and Ninti.

Basic to the science of astronomy and the workings of the calendar, as well as to commerce and economic activity, was the knowledge of mathematics—the “making of calculations with numbers,” in the words of the Enmeduranki text.

The Sumerian numbers system is called sexagesimal, mean- ing “base 60.” The count ran from 1 to 60, as we now do

with 1 to 100. But then, where we say “two hundred,” the Sumerians said (or wrote) “2 gesh,” meaning 2 x 60, which equaled 120. When in their calculations the text said “take half” or “take one-third,” the meaning was one-half of 60

= 30, one-third of 60 = 20. This might seem to us, reared on the decimal system (“times 10”), which is geared to the

number of fingers on our hands, cumbersome and complicated; but to a mathematician, the sexagesimal system is a delight.

The number 10 is divisible by very few other whole numbers (by 2 and 5 only, to be precise). The number 100 is divisible only by 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, and 50. But 60 is divisible by 2,

3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30. Inasmuch as we have inherited the Sumerian 12 in our counting of the daily hours, 60 in our counting of time (60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour), and 360 in geometry (360 degrees in a circle), the sexagesimal system is still the only perfect one in the celestial sciences, in time reckoning, and in geometry (where a triangle

has angles adding up to 180 degrees and a square’s angles add up to 360 degrees). In both theoretical and applied geometry (such as the measuring of field areas) this system made it possible to calculate the areas of diverse and complex shapes (Fig, 65), the volumes of vessels of all kinds (needed to hold grains or oil or wine), the length of canals, or the distances

between planets.

When record keeping began, a stylus with a round tip was

used to impress on wet clay the various symbols that stood for

the numbers 1, 10, 60, 600, and 3,600 (Fig. 66a). The ultimate

numeral was 3,600, signified by a large circle; it was called

SAR (Shar in Akkadian)—the “princely,” or “royal,” num-

Figure 65

Figure 66

ber, the number of Earth-years it took Nibiru to complete one orbit around the Sun.

With the introduction of cuneiform (“wedge-shaped”) writ- ing, in which scribes used a wedge-shaped stylus (Fig. 66b),

the numerals were also written in wedge-shaped signs (Fig. 66c). Other cuneiform signs denoted fractions or multiples (Fig. 66d); together with combination signs that instructed the calculator to add, subtract, divide, or multiply, problems in arithmetic and algebra that would baffle many of today’s stu- dents were correctly solved. These problems included the

squaring, cubing, or finding the square root of numbers. As shown by F. Thureau-Dangin in Textes mathematiques Ba- byloniens, the ancients followed prescribed formulas, with two or even three unknowns, that are still in use today.

Although dubbed “sexagesimal,” the Sumerian system of numeration and mathematics was in reality not simply based

on the number 60 but on a combination of 6 and 10. While in the decimal system each step up is accomplished by multiplying the previous sum by 10 (Fig. 67a), in the Sumerian system the numbers increased by alternate multiplications: once by 10, then by 6, then by 10, then again by 6 (Fig. 67b). This method has puzzled today’s scholars. The decimal system is obviously

geared to the ten digits of the human hands (as the numbers, too, are still called), so the 10 in the Sumerian system can be understood; but where did the 6 come from, and why?

Figure 67

There have been other puzzles. Among the thousands of mathematical tablets from Mesopotamia, many held tables of

ready-made calculations. Surprisingly, however, they did not run from smaller numbers up (like 1, 10, 60, etc.) but ran down, starting from a number that can only be described as astronomical: 12,960,000. An example quoted by Th.G. Pinches (Some Mathematical Tablets of the British Museum) began with the following lines at the top:

1. 12960000	its 2/3 part	8640000
2.	its half part	6480000
3.	its third “	4320000
4.	its fourth “	3240000

and continued all the way down through “its 80th part 180000” to the 400th part “[which is] 32400.” Other tablets carried the procedure down to the 16,000th part (equals 810), and there is no doubt that this series continued downward to 60, the 216,000th part of the initial number 12,960,000.

H. V. Hilprecht (The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania), after studying thousands of mathematical

tablets from the temple libraries of Nippur and Sippar and from the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, con- cluded that the number 12,960,000 was literally astronomi- cal—that it stemmed from the phenomenon of Precession, which retards the zodiac constellation against which the Sun rises by a full House once in 2,160 years. The complete circle

of the twelve Houses, by which the Sun returns to its original background spot, thus takes 25,920 years; the number 12,960,000 represented five hundred such complete Preces- sional circles.

It was incredible to learn, as Hilprecht and others have, that the Sumerians were not only aware of the phenomenon of

precession but also knew that a shift from House to House in the zodiac required 2,160 years; it was doubly incomprehen- sible that they chose as the base of their mathematics a number representing five hundred complete twelve-House cycles, each one of which required the fantastic (as far as human beings are concerned) time span of 25,920 years. In fact, while modern

astronomy accepts the existence of the phenomenon and its periods as calculated in Sumer, there is no scientist now or in former times who can or could confirm from personal expc-

rience the shift of even one House (a shift to Aquarius is now anticipated); and all the scientists put together have yet to witness one complete cycle. Stilt, there it is in the Sumerian tablets.

It seems to me that a solution to all these puzzles can be found if modern science will accept the existence of Nibiru and its Anunnaki as fact. Since it was they who had granted mathematical “wisdom” to Mankind, the astronomical base number and the sexagesimal system were developed by the

Anunnaki for their own use and from their own viewpoint— and then were scaled down to human proportions.

As Hilprecht has correctly suggested, the number 12,960,000 indeed stemmed from astronomy—the time (25,920 years) required for a full precessional cycle. But that cycle could be broken down to more human-sized proportions,

that of the precessional shift by one zodiacal House. Although a complete shift in 2,160 years was also beyond an Earthling’s lifetime, the gradual shift of one degree every 72 years was an observable phenomenon (which the astronomer-priests wit- nessed and dealt with). This was the “earthly” element in the formulation.

Then there was the orbital period of Nibiru, which the An- unnaki knew equaled 3,600 Earth-years. Here, then, were two basic and immutable phenomena, cycles of a certain length that combined the movements of Nibiru and Earth in a ratio of 3,600:2,160. This ratio can be reduced to 10:6. Once in 21,600 years, Nibiru completed six orbits around the Sun and

Earth shifted ten zodiacal houses. This, I suggest, created the 6 x 1 0 x 6 x 1 0 system of alternating counting that is called “sexagesimal.”

The sexagesimal system, as has been noted, still lies at the core of modern astronomy and time-keeping. So has the legacy of the 10:6 ratio of the Anunnaki. Having perfected architecture

and the eye-pleasing plastic arts, the Greeks devised a canon of proportions called the Golden Section. They held that a perfect and pleasing ratio of the sides of a temple or great chamber was reached by the formula AB:AP = AP:PB, which gives a ratio of the long part or side to the shorter one of 100 to 61.8 (feet, cubits, or whatever unit of measure is chosen).

It seems to me that architecture owes the debt for this Golden

Section not to the Greeks but to the Anunnaki (via the Su- merians), for this ratio is really the 10:6 ratio on which the sexagesimal system was based.

The same can be said of the mathematical phenomenon

known as the Fibonacci Numbers, wherein a series of numbers grows in such a way that each successive number (e.g., 5) is the sum of its two preceding numbers (2 + 3); then 8 is the sum of 3 + 5, and so on. The fifteenth century mathematician Lucas Pacioli recognized the algebraic formula for this series and called the quotient—1.618-—the Golden Number and its

reciprocal—0.618—the Divine Number. Which brings us back to the Anunnaki. . . .

Having explained how, in my opinion, the sexagesimal sys- tem was devised, let us look at what Hilprecht concluded was the upper base of the system, the number 12,960,000.

It is easy to show that this number is simply the square of the real basic number of the Anunnaki—3,600—which is the length in Earth-years of Nibiru’s orbit. (3,600 x 3,600 = 12,960,000). It was from dividing 3,600 by the earthly ten that the easier-to-handle number of 360 degrees in a circle was obtained. The number 3,600, in turn, is the square of 60; this

relationship provided the number of minutes in an hour and (in modern times) the number of seconds in a minute, and of course the basic sexagesimal number.

The zodiacal origin of the astronomical number 12,960,000 can, 1 believe, explain a puzzling biblical statement. It is in Psalm 90 that we read that the Lord—the reference is to the

“Celestial Lord”—who has had his abode in the heavens for countless generations and from the time “before the mountains were brought forth, before Earth and continents were created,” considers a thousand years to be merely a single day:

A thousand years in thine eyes are but a day, a yesterday past.

Now if we divide the number 12,960,000 by 2,160 (the number of years to achieve a shift from one zodiac House), the result is 6,000—a thousand times six. Six as a number of “days” is not unfamiliar—we came upon it at the beginning of Genesis and its six days of creation. Could the psalmist

have seen the mathematical tablets in which he would have found the line listing “12,960,000 the 2160th part of which is a thousand times six”? It is indeed intriguing to find that the Psalms echo the numbers with which the Anunnaki had toyed.

In Psalm 90 and other relevant psalms, the Hebrew word translated as “generation” is Dor. It stems from the root dur, “to be circular, to cycle.” For human beings it does mean a generation; but for celestial bodies it means a cycle around the sun—an orbit. It is with this understanding that the true mean-

ing of Psalm 102, the moving prayer of a mortal to the Ev- erlasting One, can be grasped:

But thou, O Lord, shalt abide forever, and thy remembrance from cycle to cycle.

For He hath looked down from his sanctuary on high: From Heaven did Yahweh behold the Earth.

1 say. my God,

“Do not ascend me in the midst of my days,”

thou whose years arc in a cycle of cycles.

Thou art unchanged;

Thine years shalt have no end.

Relating it all to the orbit of Nibiru, to its cycle of 3,600 Earth-years, to the precessional retardation of Earth in its orbit around the Sun—this is the secret of the Wisdom of Numbers that the Anunnaki lowered from Heaven to Earth.

Before Man could “calculate with numbers,” the other two of the “three Rs”—reading and ‘riting—had to be mastered. We take it for granted that Man can speak, that we have lan- guages by which to communicate to our fellow men (or clans- men). But modern science has not held it so; in fact, until quite recently, the scientists dealing with speech and languages be- lieved that “Talking Man” was a rather late phenomenon that may have been one reason the Cro-Magnons—who could speak

and converse with each other—took over from the nonspeaking Neanderthals.

This was not the biblical view. The Bible took it for granted, for example, that the Elohim who were on Earth long before

The Adam could speak and address each other. This is apparent from the statement that The Adam was created as a result of a discussion among the Elohim, in which it was said, “Let us make The Adam in our image and after our likeness.” This implies not only the ability to speak but also a language with which to communicate.

Let us now look at The Adam. He is placed in the Garden of Eden and is told what to eat and what to avoid. The instruc- tions were understood by The Adam, as the ensuing conver- sation between the Serpent and Eve makes clear. The Serpent (whose identity is discussed in The Wars of Gods and Men) “said unto the woman: Hath Elohim indeed said, Ye shall not

eat of all the trees in the garden?” Eve says yes, the fruit of one tree was forbidden on penalty of death. But the Serpent assures the woman it is not so, and she and Adam eat of the forbidden fruit.

A lengthy dialogue then ensues. Adam and Eve hide when they hear the footsteps of Yahweh, “strolling in the garden in

the cool of the day.” Yahweh calls out to Adam, “Where are you?” and the following exchange takes place:

Adam: “I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because 1 am naked, and I hid.”

Yahweh: “Who told you that you are naked? Did you eat of the tree of which I ordered you not to eat?”

Adam: “The woman whom you placed with me, she is the one who gave me of the tree, and I ate.”

Yahweh: [to the woman] “What have you done?” Woman: “The serpent beguiled me, and I ate.”

This is quite a conversation. Not only the Deity can speak; Adam and Eve can also speak and understand the Deity’s language. So, in what language did they converse, for there must have been one (according to the Bible). If Eve was the

First Mother, was there a First Language—a Mother Tongue?

Again, scholars began by differing with the Bible. They

assumed that language was a cultural heritage rather than an

evolutionary trait. It was assumed that Man progressed from

groans to meaningful shouts (on seeing prey or sensing danger)

to rudimentary speech as he formed clans. From words and syllables, languages were born—many languages, arising si- multaneously as clans and tribes formed.

This theory of the origin of languages not only ignored the significance of the biblical tales of the Elohim and of the in- cident in the Garden of Eden; it denied the biblical assertion

that prior to the incident of the Tower of Babel “the whole Earth was of one language and of one kind of words”; that it was a deliberate act of the Elohim to disperse Mankind all over the Earth and “confuse” its language “that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

It is gratifying to note that in recent years, modern science

has come around to the belief that there was indeed a Mother Tongue; and that both types of Homo sapiens—Cro- Magnon and Neanderthal—could talk from the very begin- ning.

That many languages have words that sound the same and have similar meanings has long been recognized, and that cer-

tain languages can therefore be grouped into families has been an accepted theory for over a century, when German scholars proposed naming these language families “Indo-European,” “Semitic,” “Hamitic,” and so on. But this very grouping held the obstacle to the recognition of a Mother Tongue, be- cause it was based on the notion that totally different and

unrelated groups of languages developed independently in dif- ferent “core zones” from which migrants carried their tongues to other lands. Attempts to show that there are apparent word and meaning similarities even between distant groups, such as the writings in the nineteenth century by the Reverend Charles Foster (The One Primeval Language, in which he pointed to

the Mesopotamian precursors of Hebrew) were dismissed as no more than a theologian’s attempt to elevate the status of the Bible’s language, Hebrew.

It was mainly advances in other fields, such as anthropology, biogenetics. and the Earth sciences, as well as computerization,

that opened new avenues of study of what some call “linguistic genetics.” The notion that languages developed rather late in Man’s march to civilization—at one point the beginning of languages (not just speech) was put at only five thousand years ago—obviously had to be amended and the date pushed back to much earlier times when archaeological finds showed that the Sumerians could already write six thousand years ago. As the dates of ten thousand and twelve thousand years ago were being considered, the search for points of similarity, speeded up by computers, led scholars to the discovery of protolan- guages and thus to larger and less numerous groupings.

Searching for an early affiliation for the Slavic languages, Soviet scientists under the leadership of Vladislav Illich- Svitych and Aaron Dolgopolsky suggested, in the 1960s, a proto-language they termed Nostratic (from the Latin “Our Language”) as the core of most European (including Slavic) languages. Later on they presented evidence for a second such proto-language, which they termed Dene-Caucasian, as the core tongue of the Far Eastern languages. Both began, they estimated from linguistic mutations, about twelve thousand years ago. In the United States, Joseph Greenberg of Stanford University and his colleague Merritt Ruhlen suggested a third proto-language, Amerind.

Without dwelling on the significance of the fact, it behooves me to mention that the date of about twelve thousand years ago would put the period of the appearance of these protolan- guages somewhere around the immediate aftermath of the Del- uge, which in The 12th Planet was shown to have occurred about thirteen thousand years ago; that also conforms to the biblical notion that post-Diluvial Mankind divided into three branches, descended from the three sons of Noah.

Meanwhile, archaeological discoveries kept pushing back the time of human migrations, and this was especially signif- icant in regard to the arrival of migrants in the Americas. When a time of twenty thousand years or even thirty thousand years ago was suggested, Joseph Greenberg created a sensation when he demonstrated in 1987 (Language in the Americas) that the hundreds of tongues in the New World could be grouped into just three families, which he termed Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene, and Amerind. The greater significance of his conclusions was

that these three in turn were brought to the Americas by mi- grants from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific and thus in effect were not true proto-languages but offshoots of Old World ones. The protolanguage he called “Na-Dene,” Greenberg suggested, was related to the Dene-Caucasian group of the Soviet scholars. This family, Merritt Ruhlen wrote in Natural History (March 1987), appears to be “genetically closest” to the group of languages that include “the extinct languages Etruscan and Sumerian.” Eskimo-Aleut, he wrote, is most closely related to the Indo-European languages. (Readers wish- ing to know more about the earliest arrivals in the Americas may want to read The Lost Realms, Book IV of “The Earth Chronicles” series).

But did true languages begin only about twelve thousand years ago—only after the Deluge? It is not only according to the Bible that language existed at the very beginning of Homo sapiens (Adam and Eve), but also the fact that Sumerian texts

repeatedly refer to inscribed tablets that dated from before the Deluge. The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal boasted that, knowl- edgeable as Adapa, he could read “tablets from before the Deluge.” If so, there had to be true language even much earlier.

Discoveries by paleontologists and anthropologists make lin- guists push their estimations back in time. The discoveries in

the Kebara cave, mentioned earlier, indeed forced a complete reevaluation of previous timetables.

Among the finds in the cave was an astounding clue. The skeletal remains of a sixty-thousand-year-old Neanderthal in- cluded an intact hyoid bone—the first ever to be discovered. This horned-shaped bone which lies between the chin and the

larynx (voice box) anchors the muscles that move the tongue, lower jaw, and larynx and makes human speech possible (Fig. 68).

Combined with other skeletal features, the hyoid bone of- fered unequivocal proof that Man could speak as he does today at least sixty thousand years ago and probably much earlier.

Neanderthal Man, the team of six international scientists led by Baruch Arensburg of Tel-Aviv University stated in Nature (April 27, 1989), “had the morphological basis for human speech capability.”

If so, how could Indo-European, whose origins are traceable

Figure 68

to only a few thousand years ago, be given such a prominent position on the language tree? Less inhibited about lowering the claims for Indo-European than their Western colleagues, Soviet scholars continued to search audaciously for a proto- proto language. Spearheading the search for a Mother Tongue have been Aaron Dolgopolsky, now at Haifa University in Israel, and Vitaly Shevoroshkin, now at the University of Mich- igan. It was primarily on the latter’s initiative that a “break- through” conference was held at the University of Michigan in November 1988. Titled “Language and Prehistory,” the conference brought together, from seven countries, more than forty scholars from the fields of linguistics, anthropology, ar- chaeology, and genetics. The consensus was that there had been a “mono-genesis” of human languages—a Mother Tongue in a “proto-proto-proto stage” at a time about 100,000 years ago.

Still, scientists from other fields relating to the anatomy of speech, such as Philip Lieberman of Brown University and Dean Falk of the State University of New York at Albany, see speech as a trait of Homo sapiens from the very first appearance of these ‘”Thinking/Wise Men.” Brain specialists such as Ron-

ald E. Myers of the National Institute of Communicative Dis- orders and Strokes believe that “human speech developed spontaneously, unrelated to the crude vocalization of other primates,” as soon as humans acquired their two-part brains.

And Allan Wilson, who had participated in the genetic re-

search leading to the”One-Mother-of-All” conclusion, put speech back in the mouth of “Eve”: “The human capacity for language may have come from a genetic mutation that occurred in a woman who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago,” he an- nounced at a meeting in January 1989 of the American As- sociation for the Advancement of Science.

“Gift of Gab Goes Back to Eve,” one newspaper headlined the story. Well, to Eve and Adam, according to the Bible.

And so we arrive at the last of the Rs—writing.

It is now believed that many of the shapes and symbols

found in Ice Age caves in Europe, attributed to Cro-

Magnons living during the period of between twenty thousand and thirty thousand years ago, represent crude pictographs— “picture writing.” Undoubtedly, Man learned to write long after he began to speak. The Mesopotamian texts insist that there was writing before the Deluge, and there is no reason to disbelieve this. But the first writing discovered in modern times

is the early Sumerian script which was pictographic. It took but a few centuries for this script to evolve into the cuneiform script (Fig. 69), which was the means of writing in all the ancient languages of Asia until it was finally replaced, millen- nia later, by the alphabet.

At first glance cuneiform script looks like an impossible

hodgepodge of long, short, and just wedge-point markings (Fig. 70). There are hundreds of cuneiform symbols, and how on Earth the ancient scribes could remember how to write them and what they meant is baffling—but not more so than the Chinese language signs are to a non-Chinese. Three generations of scholars have been able to arrange the signs in a logical

order and, as a result, have come up with lexicons and dic- tionaries of the ancient languages—Sumerian, Babylonian, As- syrian, Hittite, Elamite and so on—that used cuneiform.

But modern science reveals that there was more than some logical order to creating such a diversity of signs.

Figure 69

Mathematicians, especially those dealing with graph the- ory—the study of points joined by lines—are familiar with the Ramsey Graph Theory, named for Frank P. Ramsey, a British mathematician who, in a paper read to the London Mathematical Society in 1928, suggested a method of calcu- lating the number of various ways in which points can be connected and the shapes resulting therefrom. Applied to games and riddles as well as to science and architecture, the theory offered by Ramsey made it possible to show, for ex-

Figure 70

ample, that when six points representing six people are joined by either red lines (connecting any two who know each other) or blue lines (connecting any two who are strangers), the result will always be either a red or a blue triangle. The results of calculating the possibilities for joining (or not joining) points can best be illustrated by some examples (Fig. 71). Underlying the resulting graphs (i.e., shapes) are the so-called Ramsey Numbers, which can be converted to graphs connecting a cer- tain number of dots. I find that this results in dozens of “graphs” whose similarity to the Mesopotamian cuneiform signs is undeniable (Fig. 72).

The almost one hundred signs, only partly illustrated here, are simple graphs based on no more than a dozen Ramsey

Numbers. So, if Enki or his daughter Nidaba, the Sumerian

“goddess of writing,” had known as much as Frank Ramsey,

they must have had no problem in devising for the Sumerian

When Wisdom Was Lowered from Heaven 227

scribes a mathematically perfect system of cuneiform signs.

“1 will greatly bless thee, and I will exceedingly multiply

thy seed as the stars of the heavens,” Yahweh told Abraham.

And with this single verse, several of the elements of the

knowledge that was lowered from heaven were expressed: speech, astronomy, and the “counting with numbers.”

Modern science is well on its way to corroborating all that.

When Wisdom Was Lowered from Heaven 229

THE FRUITS OF EDEN

What was the Garden of Eden, remembered in the Bible for its variety of vegetation and as the place where still- unnamed animals were shown to Adam?

Modem science teaches that Man’s best friends, the crops and animals we husband, were domesticated soon after 10000 B.C. Wheat and barley, dogs and sheep (to cite some examples) in their domesticated and cultivable forms ap- peared, then, within no more than two thousand years. This, it is admitted, is a fraction of the time that natural selection alone would require.

Sumerian texts offer an explanation. When the Anunnaki landed on Earth, they state, there were none of such “do- mesticated” crops and animals; it was the Anunnaki who brought them forth, in their “Creation Chamber.” Together with Lahar (“woolly cattle”) and Anshan (“grains”) they also brought forth “vegetation that luxuriates and multi- plies.” It was all done in the Edin; and after The Adam was created, he was brought there to tend it all.

The amazing Garden of Eden was thus the bio-genetic farm or enclave where “domesticated” crops, fruits, and animals were brought forth.

After the Deluge (about thirteen thousand years ago) the Anunnaki provided Mankind with the crop and animal seeds, which they had preserved, to get started again. But this time, Man himself had to be the husbandman. The Bible confirms this and attributes to Noah the honor of having been the first husbandman. It also states that the first cul- tivated food after the Deluge was the grape. Modern science confirms the grape’s antiquity; science has also discovered that besides being a nourishing food, the grape’s wine is a strong gastrointestinal medicine. So, when Noah drank the wine (in excess), he was, in a manner of speaking, taking his medicine.

11

A SPACE BASE ON MARS

Having been to the Moon, Earthlings are eager to set foot on Mars.

It was on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the

first landing by Man on the Moon that the President of the

United States outlined his country’s stepping stones to Earth’s

nearest outer planet. Speaking at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington and flanked by the three Apollo 11 astronauts—Neil A. Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., and Michael Collins—President George Bush outlined America’s way stations to Mars. First, progress from the shuttlecraft pro- gram to the emplacement in permanent Earth orbit of a Space

Station, where the larger vehicles necessary for the onward flights would be assembled. Then would come the establish- ment of a space base on the Moon, where materials, equipment, and fuels necessary for the long space voyages would be de- veloped and tested, and experience would be gained in Man’s living and working for extended periods in outer space. And

finally, the actual expedition to Mars,

Vowing to make the United States “a spacefaring nation,” the goal, the President said, will be “back to the Moon, back to the future . . . and then, a journey into tomorrow, to another planet: a manned mission to Mars.”

“Back to the future.” The choice of words may or may not have been coincidental; the premise that going to the future involves going back to the past might have been more than a speech writer’s choice slogan.

For there is evidence that “A Space Base on Mars,” this

chapter’s heading, should apply not to the discussion of future plans but to a disclosure of what has already taken place in the past: Evidence that a space base existed on the planet Mars

230

in antiquity; and what is even more startling, that it might have been reactivated before our very eyes.

If Man is to venture from planet Earth into space, it is only logical and technologically called for to make Mars the first

planet on the outbound voyage. The road to other worlds must have way stations due to the laws of celestial motion, the constraints of weight and energy, the requirements for human survival, and limitations on human physical and mental en- durance. A spaceship capable of carrying a team of astronauts to Mars and back might have to weigh as much as four million

pounds. Lifting such a massive vehicle off the surface of Earth (a planet with a substantial gravitational pull, compared with its immediate neighbors) would require a commensurately large load of fuel that, together with the tanks to hold it, would further increase the lift-off weight and make the launch im- practical. (U.S. space shuttles now have a payload capacity of

sixty-five thousand pounds.)

Such lift-off and fuel problems would be greatly reduced if

the spaceship will be assembled in weightless orbit around the

Earth. This scenario envisions an orbiting, manned space sta-

tion, to which shuttle craft will ferry the knocked-down space-

ship. Meanwhile, astronauts stationed on the Moon at a

permanent space base would develop the technology required for Man’s survival in space. Man and vehicle would then be joined for the voyage to Mars.

The round trip may take between two and three years, de- pending on the trajectory and Earth-Mars alignments. The length of stay on Mars will also vary according to these con-

straints and other considerations, beginning with no stay at all (just several orbits around Mars) to a long stay in a permanent colony served or sustained by shifts of spacecraft and astro- nauts. Indeed, many advocates of “The Case for Mars,” as this approach has come to be called after several scientific conferences on the subject, consider a manned mission to Mars

justified only if a permanent space base is established there, both as a prelude to manned missions to even more distant planets and as the forerunner of a colony, a permanent settle- ment of Earthlings on a new world.

The progression from shuttlecraft to an orbiting space station to landings on the Moon and the establishment of a space base

thereon, all as stepping-stones or way stations toward a landing on Mars, has been described in scenarios that read like science fiction but are based on scientific knowledge and attainable technology. Bases on the Moon and on Mars, even a colony on Mars, have been in the planning for a long time and are deemed entirely feasible. Sustaining human life and activity on the Moon is certainly challenging, but the studies show how it could be achieved. The tasks are more challenging for Mars, since resupply from Earth (as the Moon projects envision) is more difficult and costly. Nevertheless, the vital resources needed by Man to survive and function are available on Mars, and scientists believe that Man could live “off the land” there.

Mars, it has been concluded, is habitable—because it was habitable in the past.

Mars appears nowadays as a cold, half-frozen planet inhos- pitable to anything living upon its surface, with bitter-cold

winters and temperatures rising above freezing only at the equator in the warmest season, with vast areas covered either with permafrost or with rusted iron rocks and gravel (which give the planet its reddish hue), with no liquid water to sustain life or oxygen to breathe. But not so long ago in geological terms, it was a planet with relatively pleasant seasons, flowing

water, oceans and rivers, cloudy (blue!) skies, and perhaps— just perhaps—even some forms of indigenous simple plant life.

All the various studies converge toward the conclusion that Mars is now going through an ice age, not unlike the ice ages that Earth has experienced periodically. The causes of Earth’s

ice ages, attributed to many factors, are now believed to stem from three basic phenomena that relate to Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The first is the configuration of the orbit itself: the orbit, it has been concluded, changes from more circular to more elliptical in a cycle of about one hundred thousand years; this brings the Earth at times closer to the Sun and at times

farther away from it. Earth has seasons because the axis of Earth is not perpendicular to its orbital plane (ecliptic) but is tilted, bringing the northern hemisphere under a stronger in- fluence of the Sun’s rays during the (northern) summer (during winter in the southern hemisphere), and vice versa (Fig. 73); but this tilt, now about 23.5 degrees, is not stable; the Earth,

Figure 73

like a rolling ship, changes its tilt by about 3 degrees back and forth in a cycle that takes about forty-one thousand years to complete. The greater the tilt the more extreme are the winters and summers; air and water flows change and aggravate the climatic changes that we call “ice ages” and ” interglacial” warm periods. A third contributing cycle is that of the Earth’s wobble as it spins, its axis forming an imaginary circle in the heavens; this is the phenomenon of Precession of the Equi- noxes, and the duration of this cycle is about twenty-six thou- sand years.

The planet Mars is also subject to all three cycles, except that its larger orbit around the Sun and greater tilt differential cause more extreme climatic swings. The cycle, as we have mentioned, is believed to last some fifty thousand years on Mars (although shorter and longer durations have also been suggested).

When the next Martian warm period, or interglacial, arrives, the planet will literally flow with water, its seasons will not

be as harsh, and its atmosphere will not be as alien to Earthlings as it is today. When was the last “interglacial” epoch on Mars? The time could not have been too distant, because otherwise the dust storms on Mars would have obliterated more, if not most, of the evidence on its surface of once flowing rivers, ocean shorelines, and lake basins; and there would not be as much water vapor still in the Martian atmosphere as is found today. “Running water must have existed on the red planet in relatively recent times, geologically speaking,” according to Harold Masursky of the U.S. Geological Survey. Some believe the last change occurred no more than ten thousand years ago. Those who are planning the landings and extended stays on Mars do not expect the climate there to revert to an interglacial epoch within the next two decades; but they do believe that the basic requirements for life and survival on Mars are locally available. Water, as has been shown, is present as permafrost in vast areas and could be found in the mud of what from space appear to be dry riverbeds. When geologists at Arizona State University working for NASA were suggesting Mars landing sites to Soviet scientists, they pointed to the great canyon in the Lunae Planum basin as a place where a roving vehicle “could visit former riverbeds and dig into the sediments of a delta where an ancient river flowed into a basin,” and find there liquid water. Aquifers—subterranean water pools—are a sure source of water in the opinion of many scientists. New analyses of data from spacecraft as well as from Earth-based instruments led a team headed by Robert L. Huguenin of the University of Massachusetts to conclude, in June 1980, that two concentrations of water evaporation on Mars south of its equator suggest the existence of vast reservoirs of liquid water just a few inches below the Martian surface. Later that year Stanley H. Zisk of the Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts, and Peter J. Mouginis-Mark of Brown Uni- versity, Rhode Island, reported in Science and Nature (No- vember 1980) that radar probing of areas in the planet’s southern hemisphere indicated “moist oases” of “extensive liquid water” beneath the surface. And then, of course, there is all the water captured in the ice cap of the northern pole, which melts around its rims during the northern summer, cre- ating large, visible darkish patches (Fig. 74). Morning fogs

Figure 74

and mists that have been observed on Mars suggest to scientists the existence of dew, a source of water for many plants and animals on Earth in arid areas.

The Martian atmosphere, at first sight inhospitable and even poisonous to Man and life, could in fact be a source of vital resources. The atmosphere has been found to contain some water vapor, which could be extracted by condensation. It could also be a source of oxygen for breathing and burning. It consists on Mars primarily of carbon dioxide (CO2) with

small percentages of nitrogen, argon, and traces of oxygen (Earth’s atmosphere consists primarily of nitrogen, with a large percentage of oxygen and small amounts of other gases). The process of converting carbon dioxide (C02) to carbon monoxide (CO), thereby releasing oxygen (CO + O) is almost elementary and could easily be performed by astronauts and settlers. Car- bon monoxide can then serve as a simple rocket fuel.

The planet’s reddish-brown, or “rusty,” hue is also a clue to the availability of oxygen, for it is the result of the actual rusting of iron rocks on Mars. The product is iron oxide—iron that has combined with oxygen. On Mars it is of a type called limonite, a combination of iron oxide (Fe2O3) with several molecules of water (H2O); with the proper equipment, the plentiful oxygen could be separated and extracted. The hydro- gen obtainable by breaking down water into its component elements could be used in the production of foods and useful materials, many of which are based on hydrocarbons {hydro- gen-carbon combinations).

Although the Martian soil is relatively high in salts, scientists believe it could be washed with water sufficiently to the point where patches would be suitable for plant cultivation in green- houses; local foods could thus be grown, especially from seeds of salt-resistant strains of grains and vegetables; human waste could be used as fertilizer, as it is used in many Third World countries on Earth. Nitrogen, needed by plants and fertilizers, is in short supply on Mars but not absent: the atmosphere, though 95 percent carbon dioxide, does contain almost 3 per- cent nitrogen. The greenhouses for growing all this food would be made of inflatable plastic domes; electricity would be ob- tained from solar-powered batteries; the rover vehicles will also be solar-powered.

Another source not just of water but also of heat on Mars is indicated by the past volcanic activity there. Of several notable volcanoes, the one named Olympus, after the Greek mountain of the gods, dwarfs anything on Earth or even in the Solar System. The largest volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, rises 6.3 miles; Olympus Mons on Mars towers 15 miles above the surrounding plain; its crater’s top measures 45 miles across. The volcanoes of Mars and other evidence of volcanic activity on the planet indicate a hot molten core and

thus the possible existence of warm surface spots, hot-water springs, and other phenomena resulting from internally gen- erated heat.

With a day almost exactly the length of a day on Earth,

seasons (although about twice as long as Earth’s), equatorial regions, icy northern and southern poles, water resources that once were seas and lakes and rivers, mountain ranges and plains, volcanoes and canyons, Mars is Earthlike in so many ways. Indeed, some scientists believe that Mars, although cre- ated at the same time as the other planets 4.6 billion years ago,

is at the stage Earth was at its beginnings, before plant life began to emit oxygen and change Earth’s atmosphere. This notion has served as a basis for the suggestion by proponents of the Gaia Theory of how Man might “jump the gun” on Martian evolution by bringing life to it; for they hold that it was Life that made Earth hospitable to life.

Writing in The Greening of Mars, James Lovelock and Mi- chael Allaby employed science fiction to describe how micro- organisms and “halocarbon gases” would be sent from Earth to Mars in rockets, the former to start the biological chain and the latter to create a shield in the Martian atmosphere. This shield of halocarbon gases, suspended in the atmosphere above

the now cold and arid planet, would block the dissipation into space of the warmth Mars receives from the Sun and its own internal heat and would create an artificially induced “green- house” effect. The warming and the thickened atmosphere would release Mars’s frozen waters, enhance plant growth, and thereby increase the planet’s oxygen supply. Each step in this

artificially induced evolution would strengthen the process; thus will the bringing of Life to Mars make it hospitable to life.

The suggestion by the two scientists that the transformation of Mars into a habitable planet—they called the process “Terra forming”—should begin with the creation of an artificial shield to protect the planet’s dissipating heat and water vapor by artificially suspending a suitable material in the planet’s at- mosphere was made by them in 1984.

Whether by coincidence or not, it was once again a case of modern science catching up with ancient knowledge. For, in The I2th Planet (1976), it was described how the Anunnaki

came to Earth about 450,000 years ago in order to obtain

gold—needing the metal to protect life on their planet Nibiru by suspending gold particles as a shield in its dwindling at- mosphere, to reverse the loss of heat, air, and water.

The plans proposed by the advocates of the Gaia Hypothesis are based on an assumption and a presumption. The first, that Mars does not have life-forms of its own; the second, that people from one planet have the right to introduce their life- forms to another world, whether or not it has its own life.

But does Mars have life on it or as some prefer to ask, did it have life on it in its less harsh epochs? The question has preoccupied those who have planned and executed the various

missions to Mars; and after all the scanning and photographing and probing, it is evident that Life as it has blossomed on Earth—trees and forests, bushes and grasses, flying birds and roaming animals—is just not there. But what about lesser life- forms—lichens or algae or the lowly bacteria?

Although Mars is much smaller than Earth (its mass is about a tenth that of Earth, its diameter about half) its surface, now all dry land, is about the same area as the dry-land portion of Earth’s surface. The area to be explored is thus the same as the area on Earth with all its continents, mountains, valleys, equatorial and polar zones; its warm and the cold places; its humid regions and the dry desert ones. When an outline of the United States, coast to coast, is superimposed on the face of Mars (Fig. 75), the scope of the exploration and the variety of terrains and climates to contend with can well be appreciated.

No wonder when then that the first successful unmanned Mars probes. Mariners 4, 6, and 7 (1965-69), which photo-

graphed parts of the planet’s surface in the course of flybys, revealed a planet that was heavily cratered and utterly desolate, with little sign of any geologic activity in its past. As it hap- pened, the pictures were almost all of the cratered highlands in the southern hemisphere of Mars. This image, of a planet not only without life on it but itself a lifeless and dead globe,

changed completely when Manner 9 went into orbit around Mars in 1971 and surveyed almost its entire surface. It showed a living planet with a history of geologic activity and volcan- ism, with plains and mountains, with canyons in which Amer- ica’s Grand Canyon could be swallowed without a trace, and

Figure 75

the marks of flowing water. It was not only a living planet but one that could have life upon it.

The search for life on Mars was thus made a prime objective of the Viking missions. Viking 1 and Viking 2 were launched from Cape Canaveral in the summer of 1975 and reached their

destination in July and August of 1976. Each consisted of an Orbiter that remained in orbit around the planet for ongoing observation, and of a Lander that was lowered to the planet’s surface. Although to ensure safe landings, relatively flat sites in the northern hemisphere, not too distant from each other, were selected for the touchdowns, “biological criteria” (i.e.,

the possibility of life) “dominated the decision regarding the latitude at which the spacecraft would land.” The orbiters have provided a rich array of data about Mars that is still being studied and analyzed, with new details and insights constantly

emerging; the landers sent thrilling photographs of the Martian landscape at very close range and conducted a series of ex- periments in search of Life.

Besides instruments to analyze the atmosphere and cameras to photograph the areas in which they touched down, each Lander carried a combined gas-chromatograph/mass-spectrom-

eter for analyzing the surface for organic material, as well as three instruments designed to detect metabolic activity by any organism in the soil. The soil was scooped up with a mechanical arm, put into a small furnace, heated, and otherwise treated and tested. There were no living organisms in the samples; only carbon dioxide and a small amount of water vapor were

found. There were not even the organic molecules that im- pacting meteorites bring with them; the presumption is that if such molecules had been delivered to Mars, the present high level of ultraviolet light that strikes the planet, whose protective atmosphere is now almost gone, must have destroyed them.

During the long days of experiments on Mars, drama and

excitement were not absent. In retrospect the ability of the NASA team to manipulate and direct from Earth equipment on the surface of Mars seems like a fairy tale; but both planned routines and emergencies were adroitly tackled. Mechanical arms failed to work but were fixed by radio commands. There were other malfunctions and adjustments. There was breath-

taking suspense when the gas-exchange experiments detected a burst of oxygen; there was the need to have Viking 2 instru- ments confirm or disprove the results of experiments carried out by those of Viking 1 that left open the question of whether changes in the scooped-up soil samples were organic or chem- ical, biological or inanimate. Viking 2 results confirmed the

reactions of Viking 1 experiments: when gases were mixed or when soil was added to a “nutrient soup,” there were marked changes in the level of carbon dioxide; but whether the changes represented a chemical reaction or a biological response re- mained a puzzle.

As eager as scientists were to find life on Mars, and thereby

find support for their theories of how life on Earth began spon- taneously from a primordial soup, most had to conclude re- gretfully that no evidence of life on Mars was found. Norman Horowitz of Caltech summed up the prevailing opinion when

he stated (in Scientific American, November 1977) that “at least those areas on Mars examined by the two spacecraft are not habitats of life. Possibly the same conclusion applies to the entire planet, but that is an intricate problem that cannot yet be addressed.”

In subsequent years, in laboratory experiments in which the soil and conditions on Mars were simulated as best as the researchers could, the reactions indicated biological responses.

Especially intriguing were experiments conducted in 1980 at the Space Biology Laboratory of Moscow University: when Earthly life-forms were introduced into a simulated Martian environment, birds and mammals expired in a few seconds, turtles and frogs lived many hours, insects survived for weeks—but fungi, lichens, algae, and mosses quickly adapted

themselves to the new environment; oats, rye, and beans sprouted and grew but could not reproduce.

Life, then, could take hold on Mars; but had it? With 4.6 billion years at the disposal of evolution on Mars, where are not merely some microorganisms (which may or may not exist) but higher life-forms? Or were the Sumerians right in saying

that life sprouted on Earth so soon after its formation only because the “Seed of Life” was brought to it, by Nibiru?

While the soil of Mars still keeps its riddle of whether or not its test reactions were chemical and lifeless or biological and caused by living organisms, the rocks of Mars challenge us with even more enigmatic puzzles.

One can begin with the mystery of Martian rocks found not on Mars but on Earth. Among the thousands of meteorites

found on Earth, eight that were discovered in India, Egypt, and France between 1815 and 1865 (known as the SNC group, after the initials of the sites’ names) were unique in that their age was only 1.3 billion years, whereas meteorites are generally

4.5 billion years old. When several more were discovered in Antarctica in 1979, the gaseous composition of the Martian

atmosphere was already known; comparisons revealed that the SNC meteorites contained traces of isotopic Nitrogen-14. Ar- gon-40 and 36, Neon-20, Krypton-84, and Xenon-13 almost identical to the presence of these rare gases on Mars.

How did these meteorites or rocks reach Earth? Why are they only 1.3 billion years old? Did a catastrophic impact on

Figure 76

Mars cause them to somehow defy its gravity and fly off to Earth?

The rocks discovered in Antarctica are even more puzzling. A photograph of one of them, released by NASA and published in The New York Times of September 1, 1987, shows it to be

not “football sized” as these rocks had been described, but rather a broken-off block (Fig. 76) of four bricklike, artificially shaped and angled stones fitted together—something one would expect to find in pre-Inca ruins in Peru’s Sacred Valley (Fig. 77) but not on Mars. Yet all tests on the rock (it is no longer referred to as a meteorite) attest to its Martian origin.

To compound the mystery, photographs of the Martian sur- face have revealed features that, on seeing them, astronomers dubbed “Inca City.” Located in the planet’s southern part, they represent a series of steep walls made up of squarish or rectangular segments (Fig. 78 is from Mariner-9 photographic frame 4212-15). John McCauley, a NASA geologist, com- mented that the “ridges” were “continuous, show no breach- ing, and stand out among the surrounding plains and small hills like walls of an ancient ruin.”

Figure 77

Figure 78

This immense wall or series of connected shaped stone blocks bears a striking resemblance to such colossal and enigmatic structures on Earth as the immense wall of gigantic stone blocks that forms the base of the vast platform at Baalbek in Lebanon (Fig. 79) or to the cruder but equally impressive zigzagging parallel stone walls of Sacsahuaman above Cuzco in Peru (Fig.

Figure 79

80). In The Stairway to Heaven and The Lost Realms, I have attributed both structures to the Anunnaki/Nefilim. The features on Mars might perhaps be explained as natural phenomena, and the size of the blocks, ranging from three to five miles in length, might very well indicate the hand of nature rather than of people, of whatever provenance. On the other hand, since no plausible natural explanation has emerged, they might be

Figure 80

the remains of artificial structures—if the “giants'” of Near Eastern and Andean lore had also visited Mars. . . .

The notion of “canals” on Mars appeared to have been laid

to rest when—after decades of ridicule—scientists suggested

that what Schiaparelli and Lowell had observed and mapped were in fact channels of dried-up rivers. Yet other features were found on the Martian surface that defy easy explanation. These include white “streaks” that run in straight lines for endless miles—-sometimes parallel, sometimes at angles to each other, sometimes crossing other, narrower “tracks” (Fig.

81 is a sketched-over photo). Once again, the NASA teams suggested that windblown dust storms may have caused these features. This may be so, although the regularity and especially the intersecting of the lines seem to indicate an artificial origin. Searching for a comparable feature on Earth, one must look to the famous Nazca lines in southern Peru (Fig. 82) which

have been attributed to “the gods.”

Both the Near East and the Andes are known for their various

pyramids—the immense and unique ones at Giza, the stepped

pyramids or ziggurats of Mesopotamia and of the early Amer-

ican civilizations. As pictures taken by the Mariner and Viking

Figure 81

cameras seem to show, even pyramids, or what look like pyr- amids, have been seen on Mars.

What appear to be three-sided pyramids in the Elysium (map. Fig. 83) plateau in the region called Trivium Charontis were first noticed on Mariner-9 frames 4205-78, taken on February 8, 1972 and 4296-23, taken six months later. Attention was focused on two pairs of “tetrahedron pyramidal structures,”

to use the cautious scientific terminology; one pair were huge pyramids, while the other pair were much smaller, and they seemed to be laid out in a rhombus-shaped pattern (Fig. 84). Here again, the size of the “pyramids”—the larger are each two miles across and half a mile high—suggests that they are natural phenomena, and a study in the journal Icarus (vol. 22,

1974, by Victor Ablordeppy and Mark Gipson) offered four theories to explain these formations naturally. David Chandler (Life on Mars) and astronomer Francis Graham (in Frontiers of Science, November-December 1980), among others, showed the flaws in each theory. The fact that the features

Figure 82

were photographed six months apart, at different sunlights and angles, and yet show their accurate terrahedral shapes, con- vinces many that they are artificial structures, even if we do not understand the reason for their great size. “Given the present lack of any easily acceptable explanation,” Chandler wrote, “there seems to be no reason to exclude from consid- eration the most obvious conclusion of all: perhaps they were

Figure 83

built by intelligent beings.” And Francis Graham, stating that “the conjecture that these are buildings of an ancient race of Martians must take its place among the theories of their ori- gin,” wondered whether future explorers might discover in these structures inner chambers, buried entrances, or inscrip- tions that might have withstood “ten thousand millennia of wind erosion.”

More “pyramids” with varying numbers of smooth sides have been discerned by researchers who have scanned the Mar- tian photographs. Interest, and controversy, have focused

mainly on an area named Cydonia (see map, Fig. 83) because a group of what may be artificial structures appears to be aligned with what some called a Martian “sphinx” to the east of these structures, as can be readily seen in the panoramic NASA photo O35-A-72 (Plate E). What is noticeable is a rock with the features of a well-proportioned human face, seemingly

of a man wearing some kind of a helmet (Fig. 85), with a

Plate E

slightly open mouth and with eyes that look straight out at the viewer—if the viewer happens to be in the skies above Mars. Like the other “monuments”—the features that resemble ar- tificial structures—on Mars, this one, too, is of large propor- tions: the Face measures almost a mile from top to bottom and has been estimated to rise almost half a mile above the sur- rounding plateau, as can be judged by its shadow.

Although it is said that the NASA scientist who examined the photographs received from the Viking 1 Orbiter on July

25, 1976, “almost fell out of his chair” when he saw this frame and that appropriate “Oh, my God” or expressions to that effect were uttered, the fact is that the photograph was filed away with the thousands of other Viking photographs without any further action because the similarity to a human face was deemed just a play of light and shadows on a rock

eroded by natural forces (water, wind). Indeed, when some newsmen who happened to see the transmitted image wondered whether it in fact showed a human face, the chief scientist of the Mission asserted that another photograph, taken a few hours later, did not show such a feature at all. (Years later NASA acknowledged that that was an incorrect and misleading state- ment and an unfortunate one, because the fact was that the area fell into darkness of night “a few hours later” and there did exist other photographs clearly showing the Face.)

Three years later Vincent DiPietro, an electrical engineer and imaging specialist, who remembered seeing the “Face”

in a popular magazine, came face-to-face with the Martian image as he was thumbing through the archives of the National Space Science Data Center. The Viking photo, bearing the catalog number 76-A-593/17384, was simply titled “HEAD.” Intrigued by the decision to keep the photo in the scientific data center under that tantalizing caption—the “Head” whose

very existence had been denied—he embarked, together with Greg Molenaar, a Lockheed computer scientist, on a search for the original NASA image. They found not one but two, the other being image 070-A-13 (Plate F). Subsequent searches came up with more photos of the Cydonia area taken by dif- ferent Viking Orbiter cameras and from both the right and left

sides of the features (there are eleven by now). The Face as well as more pyramidlike and other puzzling features could be seen on all of them. Using sophisticated computer enhancement and imaging techniques, DiPietro and Molenaar obtained en- larged and clearer images of the Face that convinced them it had been artificially sculpted.

Armed with their findings, they attended the 1981 The Case for Mars conference but instead of acclaiming them the assem- bled scientists cold-shouldered their assertions—undoubtedly because they would have to draw the conclusion that the Face was the handiwork of intelligent beings, “Martians” who had inhabited the planet; and that was a totally unacceptable prop- osition. Publishing their findings privately (Unusual Mars Sur- face Features) DiPietro and Molenaar took great pains to dissociate themselves from “wild speculations” regarding the origin of the unusual features. All they claimed, the book’s epilogue stated, was “that the features do not seem natural and

Plate F

warrant further investigation.” NASA scientists, however, strongly rejected any suggestion that future missions should include a visit to the Face, since it was clearly just a rock shaped by the forces of nature so that it resembled a human face.

The cause of the Face on Mars was thereafter taken up primarily by Richard C. Hoagland, a science writer and one-

time consultant at the Goddard Space Flight Center. He or-

ganized a computer conference titled The Independent Mars

Investigation Team with the purpose of having the features and

all other pertinent data studied by a representative group of

scientists and specialists; the group eventually included Brian

O’Leary, a scientist-astronaut, and David Webb, a member of the U.S. President’s Space Commission. In their conclusions they not only concurred with the view that the “Face” and “pyramids” were artificial structures, they also suggested that

other features on (he surface on Mars were the handiwork of intelligent beings who had once been on Mars.

I was especially intrigued by the suggestion in their reports

that the orientation of the Face and the principal pyramid in- dicated they were built about half a million years ago in align- ment with sunrise at solstice time on Mars. When Hoagland and his colleague Thomas Rautenberg, a computer specialist, sought my comments on their photographic evidence, I pointed out to them that the Anunnaki/Nefilim, according to my con-

clusions in The 12th Planet, had first landed on Earth about 450,000 years ago; it was, perhaps, no coincidence that Hoag- land and Rautenberg’s dating of the monuments on Mars co- incided with my timetable. Although Hoagland was careful to hedge his bets, he did devote many pages in his book The Monuments of Mars to my writings and to the Sumerian evi-

dence concerning the Anunnaki.

The publicity accorded the findings of DiPietro, Molenaar,

and Hoagland has caused NASA to insist that they were wrong.

In an unusual move, the National Space Flight Center in Green-

belt, Maryland, which supplies the public with copies of NASA

data, has been enclosing along with the “Face” photographs

copies of rebuttals of the unorthodox interpretations of the images. These rebuttals include a three-page paper dated June 6, 1987, by Paul Butterworth, the Center’s Resident Plane – tologist. He states that “there is no reason to believe that this particular mountain, which is similar to tens of thousands of others on the planet, is not the result of the natural geological

processes which have produced all the other landforms on Mars. Among the huge numbers of mountains on Mars it is not surprising that some should remind us of more familiar objects, and nothing is more familiar than the human face. I am still looking for the ‘Hand on Mars’ and the “Leg on Mars’!”

“No reason to believe” that the feature is other than natural is, of course, not a factual argument in disproving the opposite position, whose proponents contend that they do have reason to believe the features are artificial structures. Still, it is true that on Earth there are hills or mountains that give the ap- pearance of a sculpted human or animal head although they

are the work of nature alone. This, I feel, might well be a valid argument regarding the “pyramids” on the Elysium plateau or the “Inca City.” But the Face and some features near it, especially those with straight sides, remain a challenging enigma.

A scientifically significant study by Mark J. Carlotto, an optics scientist, was published in the May 1988 issue of the prestigious journal Applied Optics. Using computer graphic techniques developed in optical sciences, Carlotto employed

four frames from NASA images, taken by the Viking Orbiter with different cameras during four different orbits, to recreate a three-dimensional representation of the Face. The study pro- vided detailed information about the complex optical proce- dures and mathematical formulations of the three-dimensional analysis, and Carlotto’s conclusions were that the “Face” was

indeed a bisymmetrical human face, with another eye socket in the shaded part and a “fine structure of the mouth suggesting teeth.” These, Carlotto stated, “were facial features and not a transient phenomenon” or a trick of light and shadow. “Al- though the Viking data are not of sufficient resolution to permit the identification of possible mechanisms of origin for these

objects, the results to date suggest that they may not be nat- ural.””

Applied Optics deemed the study important enough to make it its front-cover feature, and the scientific journal New Scientist devoted a special report to the published paper and to an in- terview with its author. The journal echoed his suggestion that

“at the very least these enigmatic objects”—the Face and the adjoining pyramidal features that some had dubbed “The City”—”deserve further scrutiny by future Mars probes, such as the 1988 Soviet Phobos mission or the U.S. Mars Ob- server.”

The fact that the controlled Soviet press has published and

republished articles by Vladimir Avinksy, a noted researcher in geology and mineralogy, that support the non-natural origin of the monuments, surely indicates the Soviet aerospace atti- tudes on the matter—a subject that will be dealt with at greater length later on. Noteworthy here are two points made by Dr. Avinsky. He suggests (in published articles and privately de-

livered papers) that in considering the enormous size of the

A Space Base on Mars 255

Martian formations, one must bear in mind that due to the low gravity of Mars a man could perform gigantic tasks on it; and he attaches great importance to the dark circle that is clearly seen in the flat area between the Face and the pyramids. While NASA scientists dismissed it as “a water spot on the lens of the Viking Orbiter,” Avinsky considers it “the centre of the entire composition” of the “Martian complex” and its layout (Fig. 86).

Figure 86

Unless it is assumed that Earthlings possessed, tens of thou- sands or even half a million years ago, a high civilization and a sophisticated technology that enabled them to engage in space travel, arrive on Mars and, among other things, put up mon- uments on it, including the Face, only two other alternatives logically remain. The first is that intelligent beings had evolved on Mars who not only could engage in megalithic construction but also happened to look like us. But in the absence even of microorganisms in the soil of Mars, nor evidence of plant and animal life that among other things could provide the humanlike Martians with nourishment, the rise of a Martian population

akin to Earthlings and one that even duplicated the structural forms found on Earth seems highly improbable.

The only remaining plausible alternative is that someone,

neither from Earth nor from Mars, capable of space travel half a million years ago, had visited this part of the Solar System and had stayed; and then left behind monuments, both on Earth and on Mars. The only beings for which evidence has been found—in the Sumerian and biblical texts and in all the ancient “mythologies'”—are the Anunnaki from Nibiru. We know

how they looked: they looked like us because they made us look like them, in their image and after their likeness, to quote Genesis.

Their humanlike visages appear in countless ancient depic- tions, including the famous Sphinx at Giza (Fig. 87). Its face, according to Egyptian inscriptions, was that of Hor-

em-Akhet, the “Falcon-god of the Horizon,” an epithet for Ra, the firstborn son of Enki, who could soar to the farthest heavens in his Celestial Boat.

The Giza Sphinx was so oriented that its gaze was aligned

Figure 87

precisely eastward along the thirtieth parallel toward the space- port of the Anunnaki in the Sinai Peninsula. The ancient texts attributed communications functions to the Sphinx (and the purported subterranean chambers under it):

A message is sent from heaven;

it is heard in Heliopolis and is repeated in Memphis

by the Fair of Face.

It is composed in a dispatch by the writing of Thoth

with regard to the city of Amen. . . .

The gods are acting according to command.

The reference to the message-transmitting role of the “Fair of Face”—the sphinx at Giza—raises the question of what the purpose of the Face on Mars was; for, if it was indeed the handiwork of intelligent beings, then by definition they did not expend the time and effort to create the Face without a logical reason. Was the purpose, as the Egyptian text suggests, to send the “message from Heaven” to the sphinx on Earth, a “com- mand” according to which the gods acted, sent from one Face to another Fair-of-Face?

If such was the purpose of the Face on Mars, then one would indeed expect to find pyramids nearby, as one finds at Giza; there, three unique and exceptional pyramids, one smaller and two colossal, rise in symmetry with each other and with the Sphinx. Interestingly, Dr. Avinsky discerns three true pyramids in the area adjoining the Face on Mars.

As the ample evidence presented in the volumes of “The Earth Chronicles” series indicates, the Giza pyramids were not the handiwork of Pharaohs but were constructed by the Anunnaki. Before the Deluge their spaceport was in Meso- potamia, at Sippar (“Bird City”). After the Deluge the space- port was located in the Sinai Peninsula, and the two great pyramids of Giza, two artificial mountains, served as beacons for the Landing Corridor whose apex was anchored on Mount Ararat, the Near East’s most visible natural feature. If this was also the function of the pyramids in the Cydonia area, then some correlation with that most conspicuous natural feature on Mars, Olympus Mons, might eventually be found.

When the principal center of gold production by the An-

unnaki shifted from southeast Africa to the Andes, their me- tallurgical center was established on the shores of Lake Titicaca, at what is nowadays the ruins of Tiahuanacu and Puma-Punku. The principal structures in Tiahuanacu, which was connected to the lake by canals, were the “pyramid” called Akapana, a massive mound engineered to process ores, and the Kalasasaya, a square, “hollowed-out” structure (Fig. 88) that served astronomical purposes; its orientation was aligned with the solstices. Puma-Punku was situated directly on the lakeshore; its principal structures were “golden enclosures” built of immense stone blocks that stood alongside an array of zigzagging piers (Fig. 89).

Of the unusual features the orbiting cameras captured on the face of Mars, two appear to me to be almost certainly artifi-

cial—and both seem to emulate structures found on the shores

Figure 88

of Lake Titicaca in the Andes. One, which is akin to the Ka- lasasaya, is the first fealure west of the Face on Mars, just above (north of) the mysterious darkish circle (see Plate E). As an enlargement thereof indicates (Plate G), its still-standing southern part consists of two distinct massive walls, perfectly straight, meeting at an angle that appears sharp because of the photographic angle but is in fact a true right angle. The struc- ture—which could not possibly be natural no matter how far the imagination is stretched—appears to have collapsed, in its

Figure 89

Plate G

northern part, under the impact of a huge boulder that dropped on it in some catastrophic circumstances.

The other feature that could not be the product of natural erosion is found directly south of the Face, in an area of chaotic features, some of which have amazingly straight sides (Plate H). Separated by what might have been a channel or water- way—all are agreed that the area was on the shores of an ancient Martian sea or lake—the prominent feature’s side that

faces the channel is not straight but is outfitted with a series of “indentations” (Plate H). One must keep in mind that all these photographs were taken from an altitude of about one thousand two hundred miles above the Martian surface; what we observe, then, may well have been an array of large piers- just as one finds at Puma-Punku.

The two features, which cannot be explained away as the result of the play of light and shadow, thus bear similarities to the facilities and structures on the shores of Lake Titicaca. In this they not only support my suggestion that they are the remains of structures put up by the same visitors—the An-

Plate H

unnaki—they also offer a hypothesis for explaining their pur- pose and possible function. This conclusion is further supported by features that can be seen in the Utopia area: a pentagonal structure (enhanced NASA frame 086-A-07) and a “runway” next to what some deem evidence of mining (NASA frame O86-A-O8)—Plates I and J.

The spaceports of the Anunnaki on Earth, judging by Su- merian and Egyptian records, consisted of a Mission Control Center, Landing Beacons, an underground silo, and a large, flat plain whose natural surface served as runways. The Mission Control Center and certain Landing Beacons were some dis- tance away from the spaceport proper where the runways were situated; when the spaceport was in the Sinai Peninsula, Mis- sion Control Center was in Jerusalem and the Landing Beacons were in Giza, Egypt (the underground silo in the Sinai is de- picted in Egyptian tomb drawings—-see vignette at end of this chapter—and was destroyed by nuclear weapons in 2024 B.C.). In the Andes, the Nazca lines, I believe, represent the visual

Plate I

evidence for the use of that perfect, arid plain as runways for space shuttle takeoffs and landings. The inexplicable criss- crossing lines on the surface of Mars, the so called “tracks” (see Fig. 81) could well represent the same kind of evidence. There are also what appear to be true tracks on the Martian surface. From the air they look like the markings made by a pointed object on a linoleum floor, more or less straight “scratches” left on the Martian plain. These markings have been explained away as geological features, that is, natural cracks in the Martian surface. But as can be seen in NASA frame 651-A-06 (Plate K), the “cracks,” or tracks, appear to lead from an elevated structure of a geometric design with

Plate J

straight sides and pierlike “teeth” on one side—a structure now mostly buried under windblown sands—to the shores of what evidently was once a lake. Other aerial photographs (Fig.

90) show some tracks on an escarpment above the great canyon in the Valles Marineris near the Martian equator; these tracks

not only follow the contours of the terrain but also crisscross

each other in a pattern that could hardly be natural.

It has been pointed out that if an alien spacecraft were to

search for signs of life on Earth in areas of the Earth’s surface

outside the cities, what would give away the presence of in-

telligent beings on Earth would be the tracks we call “roads” and the rectilinear patterns of agricultural lands. NASA itself has supplied what might amount to evidence of deliberate ag- ricultural activity on Mars. Frame 52-A-35 (Plate L) shows a

Plate K

series of parallel grooves resembling contoured farmland—as one would find in the high mountains of Peru’s Sacred Valley. The photo caption prepared by the NASA News Center in Pasadena. California, when the photograph was released on August 18, 1976, stated thus:

Peculiar geometric markings, so regular that they appear almost artificial can be seen in this Mars picture taken by Viking Orbiter 1 on August 12 from a range of 2053 kilometers (1273 miles).

The contoured markings are in a shallow depression or basin, possibly formed by wind erosion. The markings—

about one kilometer (one-half mile) from crest to crest— are low ridges and valleys and may be related to the same erosion process.

The parallel contours look very much like an aerial view of plowed ground.

meaning conveyed information regarding the named person or object. One epithet for Mars was Simug, meaning “smith,” honoring the god Nergal with whom the planet was associated in Sumerian times. A son of Enki, he was in charge of African domains that included the gold-mining areas. Mars was also called UTU.KA.GAB.A, meaning ”Light Established at the Gate of the Waters,” which can be interpreted either as its position next to the asteroid belt that separated the Lower Waters from the Upper Waters, or as a source of water for the astronauts as they passed beyond the more hazardous and less hospitable giant planets Saturn and Jupiter.

Even more interesting are Sumerian planetary lists that de- scribe the planets as the Anunnaki passed them during a space

journey to Earth. Mars was called MUL APIN—”Planet

Where the- Right Course is Set.” It was so named also on an

amazing circular tablet which copied nothing less than a route

map for the journey from Nibiru to Earth by Enlil, graphically

showing the “right turn” at Mars.

Even more enlightening as to what role Mars, or the space facilities upon it, had played in the journeys of the Anunnaki to Earth is the Babylonian text concerning the Akitu festival. Borrowed from ancient Sumerian traditions, it outlined the rituals and symbolic procedures during the ten days of the New Year ceremonies. In Babylon the principal deity who took over

the supremacy from the earlier ones was Marduk; part of the transfer of the supremacy to him was the renaming by the Babylonians of the Planet of the Gods from the Sumerian Nibiru to the Babylonian Marduk.

The Akitu ceremonies included a reenactment by Marduk of the voyages of the Anunnaki from Nibiru/Marduk to Earth.

Each planet passed on the way was symbolized by a way station along the course of the religious processions, and the epithet for each planet or way station expressed its role, appearance, or special features. The station/planet Mars was termed “The Traveler’s Ship,” and I have taken it to mean that it was at Mars that the astronauts and cargo coming from Nibiru trans-

ferred to smaller spacecraft in which they were transported to Earth (and vice versa), coming and going between Mars and Earth not once in three thousand six hundred years but on a more frequent schedule. Nearing Earth, these transporters

linked up with the Earth orbiting station(s) manned by the Igigi; the actual landing on and takeoff from Earth were performed by smaller shuttlecraft that glided down to the natural “run- ways’ ” and took off by soaring upward as they increased power.

Planners of the forthcoming steps into space by Mankind envision almost the same sequence of different vehicles as the best way to overcome the constraints of Earth’s gravity, making use of the weightlessness of the orbiting station and the lower gravity of Mars (and, in their plans, also of the Moon). In this, once again, modern science is only catching up with ancient knowledge.

Coupled with these ancient texts and depictions, the pho- tographic data from the surface of Mars, and the similarities between the Martian structures and those on Earth erected by the Anunnaki all lead to one plausible conclusion:

Mars, some time in its past, was the site of a space base.

And there is also evidence suggesting that the ancient space

base has been reactivated—in our very own time, in these very days.

A DRAWING THAT DREW ATTENTION

When the Egyptian viceroy Huy died, his tomb was dec- orated with scenes of his life and work as governor of Nubia and the Sinai during the reign of the renowned Pharaoh Tut- Ankh-Amen. Among the drawings was that of a rocketship with its shaft in an underground silo and its conical command module above ground, among palm trees and giraffes.

The drawing, which was reproduced in The 12th Planet together with a comparable Sumerian pictograph of a space- craft that designated the Anunnaki, caught the eye of Stuart

W. Greenwood, an aerospace engineer then conducting re- search for NASA. Writing in Ancient Skies (July-August 1977), a publication of the Ancient Astronaut Society, he found in the ancient drawing aspects indicating knowledge of a sophisticated technology and drew attention in particular to four “highly suggestive features”: (1) The “airfoil cross- section surrounding the rocket,” which appears suitable for “the walls of a duct used for the development of thrust”;

A Space Base on Mars 271

(2) The rocket head above ground, ‘”reminiscent of the Gemini space capsule even to the appearance of the windows and (3) the charred surface and blunt end”; and (4) The unusual spike, which is like spikes tested by NASA for reducing the drag on the space capsule without success, but which in the drawing suggests it was retractable and thus could overcome the overheating problem that NASA was unable to solve.

He estimated that “if the relative locations of the rocket- head and shaft shown in the drawing are those applying during operation within the atmosphere, the inclined shock wave from the nose of the rockethead would touch the duct ‘lip’ at about Mach-3 (3 times the speed of sound).”

PHOBOS: MALFUNCTION OR STAR WARS INCIDENT?

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Earthlings’ first artificial satellite. Sputnik 1, and set Mankind on a road that has led Man to the Moon and his spacecraft to the edge of the Solar System and beyond.

On July 12, 1988, the Soviet Union launched an unmanned spacecraft called Phobos 2 and may have provided Mankind with its first Star Wars incident—not the “Star Wars” nick- name of America’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but a war with people from another world.

Phobos 2 was one of two unmanned satellites, the other being Phobos 1, that were set off from Earth in July 1988, headed toward the planet Mars. Phobos 1, reportedly because of a radio command error, was lost two months later. Phobos 2 arrived safely at Mars in January 1989 and entered into orbit around Mars as the first step at its destination toward its ultimate goal-—to transfer to an orbit that would make it fly almost in tandem with the Martian moonlet called Phobos (hence the spacecraft’s name) and explore the moonlet with highly so- phisticated equipment that included two packages of instru- ments to be placed on the moonlet’s surface.

All went well until Phobos 2 aligned itself with Phobos, the Martian moonlet. Then, on March 28, 1989, the Soviet mission

control center acknowledged sudden communication “prob-

lems” with the spacecraft; and Tass, the official Soviet news

agency, reported that “Phobos 2 failed to communicate with

Earth as scheduled after completing an operation yesterday

around the Martian moon Phobos. Scientists at mission control

have been unable to establish stable radio contact.”

These admissions left the impression that the problem was

not incurable and were accompanied by assurances that mission

272

control scientists were engaged in maneuvers to reestablish contact with the spacecraft. Soviet space program officials as well as many Western specialists were aware that the Phobos mission represented an immense investment in terms of fi- nance, planning, effort, and prestige. Although launched by the Soviets, the mission in reality represented an international effort on an unprecedented scale, with more than thirteen Eu- ropean countries (including the European Space Agency and major French and West German scientific institutions) partic- ipating officially and British and American scientists partici- pating “personally” (with their governments1 knowledge and blessing). It was thus understandable that the “problem” was at first represented as a break in communications that could be overcome in a matter of days. Soviet television and press re- ports played down the seriousness of the occurrence, empha- sizing that attempts were being made to reestablish links with the spacecraft. In fact, American scientists associated with the program were not officially informed of the nature of the prob- lem and were led to believe that the communications break- down was caused by the malfunction of a low-power backup transmitting unit that had been in use since the principal trans- mitter had failed earlier.

But on the next day, while the public was still being reas- sured that a resumption of contact with the spacecraft was achievable, a high-ranking official at Glavkosmos, the Soviet

space agency, hinted that there indeed was no such hope. “Phobos 2 is ninety-nine percent lost for good,” Nikolai A. Simyonov said; on that day, his choice of words —not that contact with the spacecraft was lost but that the spacecraft itself was “lost for good”—was not paid any particular heed.

On March 30, in a special report from Moscow to The New

York Times, Esther B. Fein mentioned that Vremya, the main evening news program on Soviet television, “rapidly rattled off the bad news about Phobos” and focused its report instead on the successful research the spacecraft had already accom- plished. Soviet scientists appearing on the program “displayed some of the space images, but said it was still not clear what

clues they offered to understanding Mars, Phobos, the Sun and interplanetary space.”

What “images” and what “clues” were they talking about?

This became clearer the following day, when reports pub- lished in the European press (but for some reason not in the

U.S. media) spoke of an “unidentified object” that was seen

“in the final pictures taken by the spaceship,” which showed an “inexplicable” object or “elliptical shadow” on Mars.

This was an avalanche of puzzling words out of Moscow!

The Spanish daily La Epoca, for example (Fig. 92), head-

lined the dispatch by the Moscow correspondent of the Eu-

ropean news agency EFE “Phobos 2 Captured Strange Photos

of Mars Before Losing Contact With Its Base.” The text of the dispatch, in translation, read as follows:

The TV newscast “Vremya” revealed yesterday that the space probe Phobos 2, which was orbiting above Mars when Soviet scientists lost contact with it on Monday, had photographed an unidentified object on the Martian surface seconds before losing contact.

The TV broadcast devoted a long segment to the strange pictures taken by the spaceship before losing contact, and

Figure 92

showed the two most important pictures, in which a large shadow is visible in one of the pictures and in the other.

Scientists characterized the final picture taken by the spaceship, in which the thin ellipse can be clearly seen, as “inexplicable.”

The phenomenon, it was stated, could not be an optical illusion because it was captured with the same clarity both by color cameras as well as by cameras taking infrared

images.

One of the members of the Permanent Space Commis- sion who had worked around the clock to reestablish con- tact with the lost space probe stated on Soviet television that in the opinion of the commission’s scientists the object “looked like a shadow on the surface of Mars.”

According to calculations by researchers from the So- viet Union the “shadow” that the last photo taken by Phobos 2 shows is some twenty kilometers [about 12.5 miles] long.

A few days earlier, the spaceship had already recorded

an identical phenomenon, except that in that instance the “shadow” was between twenty-six to thirty kilometers [about 16 to 19 miles] long.

The reporter from “Vremya” asked one of the members of the special commission if the shape of the “phenom- enon” didn’t suggest to him a space rocket, to which the

scientist responded, “This is to fantasize.” [Here follow details of the mission’s original assign- ments.)

Needless to say, this is an amazing and literally “out of this world” report that raises as many questions as it answers. The loss of contact with the spacecraft was associated, by impli- cation if not in so many words, with the observation by the spacecraft of “an object on the Martian surface seconds be- fore.” The culprit “object” is described as “a thin ellipse” and is also called “a phenomenon” as well as “a shadow.” It was observed at least twice—the report does not state whether in the same location on the surface of Mars—and is capable of changing its size: the first time it was about 12,5 miles long; the second and fatal time, about 16 to 19 miles long. And when the “Vremya” reporter wondered whether it

was a “space rocket,” the scientist responded, “This is to fantasize.” So, what was—or is—it?

The authoritative weekly Aviation Week & Space Technol-

ogy, in its issue of April 3, 1989, printed a report of the incident based on several sources in Moscow, Washington, and Paris (the authorities in the last being deeply involved because an equipment malfunction would have reflected badly on the French contribution to the mission, whereas an “act of God” would exonerate the French space industry). The version given

AW&ST treated the occurrence as a “communications prob- lem” that remained unresolved in spite of a week of attempts to “re-establish contact.” It included the information that pro- gram officials at the Soviet Space Research Institute in Moscow said that the problem occurred “after an imaging and data- gathering session,” following which Phobos 2 had to change

the orientation of its antenna. “The data-gathering segment itself apparently proceeded as planned, but reliable contact with Phobos 2 could not be established afterward.” At the time, the spacecraft was in a near-circular orbit around Mars and in the phase of “final preparations for the encounter with Phobos” (the moonlet).

While this version attributed the incident to a “loss-of-com- munications” problem, a report a few days later in Science (April 7, 1989) spoke of “the apparent loss of Phobos 2″— loss of the spacecraft itself, not just of the communications link with it. It happened, the prestigious journal stated, “on 27 March as the spacecraft turned from its normal alignment

with Earth to image the tiny moon Phobos that was the primary mission target. When it came time for the spacecraft to turn itself and its antenna automatically back toward Earth, nothing was heard.”

The journal then continued with a sentence that remains as inexplicable as the whole incident and the “thin ellipse” on

the surface of Mars. It states:

A few hours later, a weak transmission was received, but controllers could not lock onto the signal. Nothing was heard during the next week.

Now, as a rereading of all the previous reports and statements will confirm, the incident was described as a sudden and total

loss of the “communications link.” The reason given was that the spacecraft, having turned its antennas to scan Phobos, failed to turn its antenna back toward Earth due to some un- known reason. But if the antenna remained stuck in a position facing away from Earth, how could “a weak transmission” be received “a few hours later”? And if the antenna did in fact turn itself back toward Earth properly, what caused the abrupt silence for several hours, followed by the transmission of a signal too weak to be locked onto?

The question that arises is indeed a simple one: Was the spacecraft Phobos 2 hit by “something” that put it out of commission, except for a last gasp in the form of a weak signal hours later?

There was one more report, from Paris, in AW&ST of April

10, 1989. Soviet space scientists, it said, suggested that Phobos 2 “did not stabilize itself on the proper orientation to have the high-gain antenna pointing earthward.” This obviously puz- zled the editors of the magazine because, its report said, the Phobos2 spacecraft was “three-axis stabilized” by technology developed for the Soviet Venera spacecraft, which had per-

formed perfectly on Venus missions.

The mystery thus is, what caused the spacecraft to destabilize

itself? Was it a malfunction, or was there an extraneous cause—

perhaps an impact?

The weekly’s French sources provided this tantalizing detail:

One controller at the Kaliningrad control center said the limited signals received after conclusion of the imaging session gave him the impression he was “tracking a spin- ner.”

Phobos 2, in other words, acted as if it was in a spin.

Now, what was Phobos 2 “imaging” when the incident occurred? We already have a good idea from the “Vremya” and European press agency reports. But here is what the AW&ST report from Paris states, quoting Alexander Dunayev, chairman of the Soviet Glavkosmos space administration:

One image appears to include an odd-shaped object be- tween the spacecraft and Mars. It may be debris in the orbit of Phobos or could be Phobos 2’s autonomous pro-

pulsion sub-system that was jettisoned after the spacecraft was injected into Mars orbit—we just don’t know.”

This statement must have been made with quite a tongue- in-cheek attitude. The Viking orbiters left no debris in Mars orbit, and we know of no other “debris” resulting from Earth- originated activities. The other “possibility,” that the object orbiting Mars between the planet and the spacecraft Phobos 2 was a jettisoned part of the spacecraft, can be readily dismissed once one looks at the shape and structure of Phobos 2 (Fig. 93); none of its parts had the shape of a “thin ellipse.” More- over, it was disclosed on the “Vremya” program that the “shadow” was 12.5, 16, or 19 miles long. Now, it is true that an object can throw a shadow much longer than itself, de- pending on the angle of sunlight; still, a part of Phobos 2 that was only a few feet in length could hardly throw a shadow measured in miles. Whatever had been observed was neither debris nor a jettisoned part.

At the time I wondered why the official speculation omitted what was surely the most natural and believable third possi- bility, that what had been observed was indeed a shadow—

but the shadow of Phobos, the Martial moonlet itself. It has

Figure 93

most often been described as “potato-shaped” (Fig. 94) and measures about seventeen miles across—just about the size of the “shadow” mentioned in the initial reports. In fact. I re- called seeing a Mariner 9 photograph of an eclipse on Mars caused by the shadow of Phobos. Couldn’t that be, I thought, what the fuss was all about, at least regarding the “apparition,” if not what had caused the spacecraft, Phobos 2, to be lost? The answer came about three months later. Pressed by their international participants in the Phobos missions to provide more definitive data, the Soviet authorities released the taped television transmission Phobos 2 sent in its last moments—

Figure 94

except for the last frames, taken just seconds before the space- craft fell silent. The television clip was shown by some TV stations in Europe and Canada as part of weekly “diary” pro- grams, as a curiosity and not as a hot news item.

The television sequence thus released focused on two an- omalies. The first was a network of straight lines in the area of the Martian equator; some of the lines were short, some longer, some thin, some wide enough to look like rectangular shapes “embossed” in the Martian surface. Arranged in rows parallel to each other, the pattern covered an area of some six hundred square kilometers (more than two hundred thirty square miles). The “anomaly” appeared to be far from a nat- ural phenomenon.

The television clip was accompanied by a live comment by Dr. John Becklake of England’s Science Museum. He de- scribed the phenomenon as very puzzling, because the pattern seen on the surface of Mars was photographed not with the spacecraft’s optical camera but with its infrared camera—a camera that takes pictures of objects using the heat they radiate, and not by the play of light and shadow on them. In other words, the pattern of parallel lines and rectangles covering an area of almost two hundred fifty square miles was a source of heat radiation. It is highly unlikely that a natural source of heat radiation (a geyser or a concentration of radioactive minerals under the surface, for example) would create such a perfect geometric pattern. When viewed over and over again, the pat- tern definitely looks artificial; but what it was, the scientist said, “I certainly don’t know.”

Since no coordinates for the precise location of this “anom- alous feature” have been released publicly, it is impossible to judge its relationship to another puzzling feature on the surface of Mars that can be seen in Mariner 9 frame 4209-75. It is

also located in the equatorial area (at longitude 186.4) and has been described as “unusual indentations with radial arms pro- truding from a central hub” caused (according to NASA sci- entists) by the melting and collapse of permafrost layers. The design of the features, bringing to mind the structure of a modern airport with a circular hub from which the long struc-

tures housing the airplane gates radiate, can be better visualized when the photograph is reversed (showing depressions as pro- trusions—Fig. 95).

Figure 95

We now come to the second “anomaly” shown on the tele- vision segment. Seen on the surface of Mars was a clearly defined dark shape that could indeed be described, as it was in the initial dispatch from Moscow, as a “thin ellipse” (Plate N is a still from the Soviet television clip). It was certainly different from the shadow of Phobos recorded eighteen years earlier by Mariner 9 (Plate O). The latter cast a shadow that was a rounded ellipse and fuzzy at the edges, as would be cast by the uneven surface of the moonlet. The “anomaly” seen in the Phobos 2 transmission was a thin ellipse with very sharp rather than rounded points (the shape is known in the diamond trade as a “marquise”) and the edges, rather than being fuzzy.

Plate N

stood out sharply against a kind of halo on the Martian surface. Dr. Becklake described it as “something that is between the spacecraft and Mars, because we can see the Martian surface below it,” and stressed that the object was seen both by the optical and the infrared (heat-seeking) camera.

All these reasons explain why the Soviets have not suggested that the dark, “thin ellipse” might have been the shadow of the moon let.

While the image was held on the screen, Dr. Becklake ex-

plained that it was taken as the spacecraft was aligning itself with Phobos (the moonlet). “As the last picture was halfway through,” he said, “they [Soviets] saw something which should not be there.” The Soviets, he went on to state, “have not yet released this last picture, and we won’t speculate on what it shows.”

Since the last frame or frames have not yet been publicly released even a year after the incident, one can only speculate, surmise, or believe rumors, according to which the last frame,

Plate O

halfway through its transmission, shows the “something that should not be there” rushing toward Phobos 2 and crashing into it, abruptly interrupting the transmission. Then there was, according to the reports mentioned earlier, a weak burst of transmission some hours later, too garbled to be clear. (This report, incidentally, belies the initial explanation that the space- craft could not turn its antennas back to an Earth-transmitting position).

In the October 19, 1989 issue of Nature, Soviet scientists published a series of technical reports on the experiments Pho- bos 2 did manage to conduct; of the thirty-seven pages, a mere three paragraphs deal with the spacecraft’s loss. The report confirms that the spacecraft was spinning, either because of a

computer malfunction or because Phobos 2 was “impacted” by an unknown object (the theory that the collision was with “dust particles” is rejected in the report).

So what was it that collided or crashed into Phobos 2, the “something that should not be there”? What do the last frame

or frames, still secret, show? In his careful words to AW&ST, the chairman of the Soviet equivalent of NASA referred to that last frame when he tried to explain the sudden loss of contact, saying,

“One image appears to include an odd-shaped object be- tween the spacecraft and Mars.”

If not “debris,” or “dust,” or a “jettisoned part of Phobos 2,” what was the “object” that all accounts of the incident now admit collided with the spacecraft—an object with an impact strong enough to put the spacecraft into a spin, an object whose image was captured by the last photographic frames?

“We just don’t know,” said the chief of the Soviet space program.

But the evidence of an ancient space base on Mars and the

odd-shaped “shadow” in its skies add up to an awesome con- clusion: What the secret frames hide is evidence that the loss of Phobos 2 was not an accident but an incident.

Perhaps the first incident in a Star Wars—the shooting down by Aliens from another planet of a spacecraft from Earth in- truding on their Martian base.

Has it occurred to the reader that the Soviet space chief’s answer, “We just don’t know” what the “odd-shaped object between the spacecraft and Mars” was, is tantamount to calling it a UFO—an Unidentified Flying Object?

For decades now, ever since the phenomenon of what was first called Flying Saucers and later UFOs became a worldwide

enigma, no self-respecting scientist would touch the subject even with a ten foot pole—except, that is, to ridicule the phenomenon and whoever was foolish enough to take it seri- ously.

The “modern UFO era,” according to Antonio Huneeus, a science writer and internationally known lecturer on UFOs, began on June 24, 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, an American pilot and businessman, sighted a formation of nine silvery disks flying over the Cascade Mountains in the state of Washington. The term “Flying Saucer” that then came into vogue was based on Arnold’s description of the mysterious objects.

Phonos: Malfunction or Star Wars Incident? 285 While the “‘Arnold incident” was followed by alleged sight-

ings across the United States and other parts of the world, the

UFO case deemed most significant and one still discussed (and

dramatized on television) is the alleged crash of an “alien spacecraft” on July 2, 1947—a week after the Arnold sight- ing—on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. That evening a bright, disk-shaped object was seen in the area’s skies; the next day a rancher, William Brazel, discovered scattered wreckage in his field northwest of Roswell. The wreckage and the

“metal” of which it was made looked odd, and the discovery was reported to the nearby Army Air Corps base at Roswell Field (which then had the world’s only nuclear-weapons squad- ron.) Major Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer, together with an officer from the counterintelligence corps, went to examine the debris. The pieces, engineered in various shapes, looked

and felt like balsa wood but were not wood; they would neither burn nor bend, no matter how the investigators tried. On some beam-shaped pieces there were geometric markings that were later referred to as “hieroglyphics.” On returning to the base, the officer in charge instructed the base’s public relations officer to notify the press (in a release dated July 7, 1947) that AAF

personnel had retrieved parts of a “crashed flying saucer.” The release made headline news in The Roswell Daily Record (Fig. 96) and was picked up by a press wire service in Al- buquerque, New Mexico. Within hours a new official state- ment, superseding the first, claimed instead that the debris was part of a fallen weather balloon. Newspapers printed the re-

traction; and, according to some reports, radio stations were ordered to stop broadcasting the first version by being told, “Cease transmission. National security item. Do not trans- mit.”

In spite of the revised version and ensuing official denials of any “flying saucer” incident at Roswell, many of those

personally involved in that incident persist, to this very day, in adhering to the first version. Many also assert that at a nearby crash site of another “flying saucer” (in an area west of So- corTo, New Mexico), civilian witnesses had seen not only the wreckage but also several bodies of dead humanoids. These bodies, as well as bodies allegedly of “aliens” who crashed

after these two events, have been variously reported to have

Figure 96

undergone examination at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. According to a document known in UFO circles as MJ-

12 or Majestic-12 (the two, some claim, are not identical),

President Truman formed, in September, 1947, a blue-ribbon,

top-secret committee to deal with the Roswell and related in-

cidents, but the authenticity of this document remains unver- ified. What is known for a fact is that Senator Barry Goldwater, who either chaired or was a senior member of U.S. Senate committees on Intelligence, Armed Services, Tactical Warfare, Science, Technology, and Space and others with a bearing on the subject, was repeatedly refused admission to a so-called

Blue Room at that air base. “I have long ago given up acquir- in g access to th e so-called blu e ro om at Wri ght – Patterson, as I have had one long string of denials from chief after chief,” he wrote to an inquirer in 1981. “This thing has gotten so highly classified … it is just impossible to get any- thing on it.”

Reacting to continued reporting of UFO sightings and unease about excessive official secrecy, the U.S. Air Force conducted several investigations of the UFO phenomenon through such

projects as Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book. Between 1947 and 1969 about thirteen thousand reports of UFOs were investi- gated, and they were by and large dismissed as natural phe- nomena, balloons, aircraft, or just imagination. Some seven hundred sightings, however, remained unexplained. In 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of Scientific Intelligence convened a panel of scientists and government officials. Known as the Robertson Panel, the group spent a total of twelve hours viewing UFO films and studying case histories and other information and found that “reasonable explanations could be suggested for most sightings.” The evi- dence presented, it was reported, showed how the remaining cases could not be explained by probable causes, “leaving ‘extra-terrestrials’ as the only remaining explanation in many cases,” although, the panel noted, “present astronomical knowledge of the solar system makes the existence of intelli- gent beings. . . elsewhere than on the Earth extremely un- likely.”

While official “debunking” of UFO reports continued (an- other investigation along the same lines and with similar con-

clusions was the officially commissioned Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects by the University of Colorado, conducted from 1966 to 1969), the number of sightings and “encounters” continued to rise, and civilian amateur investi- gative groups have sprung up in numerous countries. The en- counters are now classified by these groups; those of the

“second kind” are instances where physical evidence (landing markings or interference with machinery) is left behind by the UFOs; and those of the “third kind,” where contact takes place with the UFO’s occupants.

Descriptions of the UFOs once were varied, from “flying saucers” to “cigar-shaped.” Now most describe them as cir-

cular in construction and, when landing, as resting on three or four extended legs. Descriptions of the occupants also are more uniform: “humanoids” three to four feet tall, with large, hair- less heads and very big eyes (Fig. 97a, b). According to a purported eye-witness report by a military intelligence officer who saw “recovered UFOs and alien bodies” at a “secret base

in Arizona,” the humanoids “were very, very white; there were no ears, no nostrils. There were only openings: a very

Figure 97

small mouth and their eyes were large. There was no facial hair, no head hair, no pubic hair. They were nude. I think the tallest one could have been about three-and-a-half feet, maybe a little taller.” The witness added that he saw no genitals and no breasts, although some humanoids looked male and some female.

The multitude of people reporting sightings or contacts come from every geographical or occupational background. President Jimmy Carter, for example, disclosed in a campaign speech in 1976 that he had seen a UFO. He moved to “make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings

available to the public and the scientists”; but for reasons that were never given, his campaign promise was not kept.

Besides the official U.S. policy of “debunking” UFO re- ports, what has irked UFO believers in the United States is the official tendency to give the impression that government agen- cies have lost interest even in investigating UFO reports,

whereas it has repeatedly come to light that this or that agency, including NASA, is keeping a close eye on the subject. In the Soviet Union, on the other hand, the Institute of Space Research published in 1979 an analysis of ‘ ‘Observations of Anomalous

Atmospheric Phenomena in the USSR” (“‘anomalous atmo- spheric phenomena” is the Russian term for UFOs), and in 1984 the Soviet Academy of Sciences formed a permanent commission to study the phenomena. On the military side, the subject came under the jurisdiction of the GRU (Chief Intel- ligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff); its orders were to discover whether UFOs were “secret vehicles of foreign powers,” unknown natural phenomena, or “manned or un- manned extraterrestrial probes engaged in the investigation of Earth.”

Numerous reported or purported sightings in the Soviet Union included some by Soviet cosmonauts. In September 1989, the Soviet authorities took the significant step of having Tass, the official news agency, report a UFO incident in the city of Voronezh in a manner that made front pages worldwide;

in spite of the usual disbelief, Tass stood by its story.

The French authorities have also been less “debunkative”

(to coin a word) than U.S. officials. In 1977 the French Na-

tional Space Agency (CNES), headquartered in Toulouse, es-

tablished the Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena Study Group

(GEPAN); it was recently renamed the Service d’Expertise des

Phenomenes de Rentree Atmospherique, with the same task of following up and analyzing UFO reports. Some of the more celebrated UFO cases in France included follow-up analyses of the sites and soils where the UFOs were seen to have landed, and the results showed the “presence of traces for which there is no satisfactory explanation.” Most French scientists have

shared the disdain of their colleagues from other countries for the subject, but among those who did get involved and voiced an opinion, the consensus has been to see in the phenomena “a manifestation of the activities of extraterrestrial visitors.”

In Great Britain, the veil of secrecy over the UFO phenom- enon has held tight in spite of such efforts as the inquiring

UFO Study Group of the House of Lords initiated by the Earl of Clancarty (a group I had the privilege to address in 1980). The British experience, as well as that of many other countries, is reported in some detail in Timothy Good’s book Above Top Secret (1987). The wealth of documents quoted or reproduced in Good’s book leads to the conclusion that at first the various

governments “covered up” their findings because UFOs were

suspected of being advanced aircraft of another superpower, and admission of the enemy’s superiority was not in the national interest. But once the extraterrestrial nature of the UFOs be- came the primary guess (or knowledge), the memory of such panics as was caused by Orson Welles” “War of the Worlds’1 radio broadcast was used as the rationale for what so many UFO enthusiasts call a cover up.

The real problem many have with UFOs is the lack of a cohesive and plausible theory to explain their origin and pur- pose. Where do they come from? Why?

I myself have not encountered a UFO, to say nothing of being abducted and experimented upon by humanlike beings with elliptical heads and bulging eyes—incidents witnessed and experienced, if such claims be true, by many others. But when asked for my opinion, whether I “believe in UFOs,” 1 sometimes answer by telling a story. Let us imagine, 1 say to the people in the room or the auditorium in which I am speak- ing, that the entrance door is thrust open and a young man bursts in, breathless from running and obviously agitated, who ignores the proceedings and just shouts, “You wouldn’t believe what happened to me!” He then goes on to relate that he was out in the countryside hiking, that it was getting dark and he was tired, that he found some stones and put his knapsack on them as a cushion, and that he fell asleep. Then he was suddenly awakened, not by a sound but by bright lights. He looked up and saw beings going up and down a ladder. The ladder led skyward, toward a hovering, round object. There was a door- way in the object through which light from inside shone out. Silhouetted against the light was the commander of the beings. The sight was so awesome that our lad fainted. When he came to, there was nothing to be seen. Whatever had been there was gone.

Still excited by his experience, the young man finishes the story by saying he was no longer sure whether what he had seen was real or just a vision, perhaps a dream. What do we think? Do we believe him?

We should believe him if we believe the Bible, I say, because

what I had just related is the tale of Jacob’s vision as told in Genesis, chapter 7. Though it was a vision seen in a dreamlike trance, Jacob was certain that the sight was real, and he said,

Phonos: Malfunction or Star Wars Incident? 291 Surely Yahweh is present in this place,

and I knew it not. . . .

This is none other but an abode of the gods,

and this is the gateway to heaven.

I once pointed out at a conference where other speakers delved into the subject of UFOs that there is no such thing as Unidentified Flying Objects. They are only unidentified or unexplainable by the viewer, but those who operate them know very well what they are. Obviously, the hovering craft that Jacob saw was readily identified by him as belonging to the Elohim, the plural gods. What he did not know, the Bible makes clear, was only that the place where he had slept was one of their lift-off pads.

The biblical tale of the heavenward ascent of the Prophet Elijah describes the vehicle as a Fiery Chariot. And the Prophet Ezekiel, in his well-documented vision, spoke of a celestial or airborne vehicle that operated as a whirlwind and could land

on four wheeled legs.

Ancient depictions and terminology show that a distinction

was made even then between the different kinds of flying ma-

chines and their pilots. There were the rocketships (Fig. 98a)

that served as shuttle craft and the orbiters, and we have already

seen what the Anunnaki astronauts and the orbiting Igigi looked

like. And there were the “whirlbirds” or “sky chambers” that we now call VTOLs (Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft) and helicopters; how these looked in antiquity is depicted in a mural at a site on the east side of the Jordan, near the place from which Elijah was carried heavenward (Fig. 98b). The goddess Inanna/Ishtar liked to pilot her own “sky chamber,”

at which time she would be dressed like a World War I pilot (Fig. 98c).

But other depictions were also found—clay figurines of hu- man-looking beings with elliptical heads and large, slanting eyes (Fig. 99)—an unusual feature of whom was their bi- sexuality (or lack of it): their lower parts depicted the male

member overlaid or dissected by the opening of a female va- gina.

Now, as one looks at the drawings of the “humanoids” by those who claim to have seen the occupants of UFOs, it is

Figure 98

obvious they do not look like us—which means they do not look like the Anunnaki. Rather, they look like the odd hu- manoids depicted by the ancient figurines.

This similarity may hold an important clue to the identity of the small creatures with smooth skins, no sex organs, no hair, elliptical heads, and large odd eyes that are supposed to be operating the purported UFOs. If the tales be true, then what the “contactees” have seen are not the people, the in- telligent beings, from another planet—but their anthropoid robots.

And if even a tiny percentage of the reported sightings is true, then the relatively large number of alien craft visiting Earth in recent times suggests that they could not possibly come, in such profusion and frequency, from a distant planet. If they come, they must come from somewhere relatively close

by.

And the only plausible candidate is Mars—and its moonlet

Phobos.

Figure 99

The reasons for the use of Mars as a jumping-off base for spacemen’s visits to Earth should be clear by now. The evi- dence for my suggestion that Mars had served in the past as a space base for the Anunnaki has been presented. The circum- stances in which Phobos 2 was lost indicate that someone is back there on Mars—someone ready to destroy what to them is an “alien” spacecraft. How does Phobos, the moonlet, fit into all this?

Simply put, it tits very well.

To understand why, we ought to backtrack and list the rea-

sons for the 1989 mission to Phobos. At present Mars has two

tiny satellites named Phobos and Deimos. Both are believed

to be not original moons of Mars but asteroids that were cap-

tured into Mars orbit. They are of the carbonaceous type (see

the discussion of asteroids in chapter 4) and therefore contain water in substantial amounts, mostly in the form of ice just under the moonlets’ surfaces. It has been proposed that with the aid of solar batteries or a small nuclear generator, the ice could be melted to obtain water. The water could then be

separated into oxygen and hydrogen, for breathing and as fuel. The hydrogen could also be combined with the moonlets” car- bon to make hydrocarbons. As do other asteroids and comets, these planetisimals contain nitrogen, ammonia, and other or- ganic molecules. All in all, the moonlets could become self- supporting space bases, the gift of nature.

Deimos would be less convenient for such a purpose. It is only nine by eight by seven miles in size and orbits some 15,000 miles away from Mars. The much larger Phobos (sev- enteen by thirteen by twelve miles) is only some 5,800 miles away from Mars—a short hop for a shuttlecraft or transporter from one to the other. Because Phobos (as does Deimos too) orbits Mars in the equatorial plane, Phobos can be observed from Mars (or observe goings on upon Mars), between the sixty fifth parallels north and south—a band that includes all the unusual and artificial-looking features on Mars except ” Inca City.” Moreover, because of its proximity, Phobos com- pletes about 3.5 orbits around Mars in a single Martian day— an almost constant presence.

Further recommending Phobos as a natural orbiting station around Mars is its minuscule gravity, compared with that of Earth and even of Mars. The power required for take-off from Phobos is no greater than that required to develop an escape velocity of fifteen miles an hour; conversely, very little power

is needed to brake for a landing on it.

These are the reasons the two Soviet spacecraft, Phobos 1

and 2, were sent there. It was an open secret that the mission

was a scouting expedition for the intended landing of a “robotic

rover” on Mars in 1994 and the launching of a manned mission

to Mars after that, with a view to establishing a base thereon

within the following decade. Prearrival briefings at mission control in Moscow revealed that the spacecraft carried equip- ment to locate “the heat-emitting areas on Mars” and to obtain “a better idea of what kind of life exists on Mars.” Although the provision, “if any,” was quickly added, the plan to scan both Mars and Phobos not only with infrared equipment but

also with gamma-ray detectors hinted at a very purposeful search.

After scanning Mars the two spacecraft were to turn their attention entirely to Phobos. It was to be probed by radar as well as by the infrared and gamma-ray scanners and was to be

photographed by three television cameras. Apart from such orbital scanning, the spacecraft were to drop two types of landers to the surface of Phobos: one, a stationary device that would have anchored itself to the surface and transmitted data over the long term; the other, a “hopper” device with springy legs that was meant to hop and skip about the moonlet and report its findings from all over it.

There were still other experiments in the bag of tricks of Phobos 2. It was equipped with an ion emitter and a laser gun that were to shoot their beams at the moonlet, stir up its surface

dust, pulverize some of the surface material, and enable equip- ment aboard the spacecraft to analyze the resultant cloud. At that point the spacecraft was to hover a mere 150 feet above Phobos, and its cameras were to photograph features as small as six inches.

What exactly were the mission planners expecting to dis-

cover at such close range? It must have been an important objective, because it later transpired that the “individual sci- entists” from the United States who were involved in the mis- sion’s planning and equipping included Americans with experience in Mars research whose roles were officially sanc- tioned by the United States government within the framework

of the improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations. Also, NASA had put at the mission’s disposal its Deep Space Network of radio telescopes which has been involved not only in satellite com- munications but also in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelli- gence (SETI) programs; and scientists at the JPL in Pasadena, California, were helping track the Phobos spacecraft and mon-

itor their data transmissions. It also became known that the British scientists who were participating in the project were in fact assigned to the mission by the British National Space Centre.

With the French participation, guided by its National Space Agency in Toulouse; the input by West Germany’s prestigious

Max Planck Institute; and the scientific contributions from a dozen other European nations, the Phobos Mission was nothing short of a concerted effort by modern science to lift the veil from Mars and enlist it in Mankind’s course on the road to Space.

But was someone there, at Mars, who did not welcome this

intrusion?

296 GENESIS REVISITED

lt is noteworthy that Phobos. unlike the smaller and smooth- surfaced Deimos, has peculiar features that have led some scientists in the past to suspect that it was artificially fashioned. There are peculiar “track marks” (Fig. 100) that run almost straight and parallel to each other. Their width is almost uni- form, some 700 to 1,000 feet, and their depth, too. is a uniform 75 to 90 feet (as far as could be measured from the Viking orbiters). The possibility that these “‘trenches,” or tracks, were caused by flowing water or by wind has been ruled out, since neither exist on Phobos. The tracks seem to lead to or from a crater that covers more than a third of the moonlet’s diameter and whose rim is so perfectly circular that it looks artificial (see Fig. 94).

What are these tracks or trenches, how did they come about, why do they emanate from the circular crater, and does the crater lead into the moonlet’s interior? Soviet scientists have thought that there was something artificial about Phobos in general, because its almost perfect circular orbit around Mars at such proximity to the planet defies the laws of celestial motion: Phobos, and to some extent Deimos, too, should have elliptical orbits that would have either thrown them off into space or made them crash into Mars a long time ago.

The implication that Phobos and Deimos might have been placed in Mars orbit artificially by “someone” seemed pre- posterous. In fact, however, the capture of asteroids and towing them to where they would stay in Earth orbit has been deemed a technologically achievable feat; so much so that such a plan was presented at the Third Annual Space Development Con- ference held in San Francisco in 1984. Richard Gertsch of the Colorado School of Mines, one of several presenters of the plan, pointed out that “a startling variety of materials exist” out in space; “asteroids are particularly rich in strategic min- erals such as chromium, germanium and gallium.” “I believe that we have identified asteroids that are accessible and could be exploited,” stated another presenter, Eleanor F. Helin of JPL.

Have others, long ago, carried out ideas and plans that mod- ern science envisions for the future—bringing Phobos and Dei- mos, two captured asteroids, into orbit around Mars to burrow into their interiors?

In the 1960s it was noticed that Phobos was speeding up its

Phobos: Malfunction or Star Wars Incident? 297

Figure 100

orbit around Mars; this led Soviet scientists to suggest that Phobos was lighter than its size warrants. The Soviet physicist

I. S. Shklovsky then offered the astounding hypothesis that Phobos was hollow.

298 GENESIS REVISITED

Other Soviet writers then speculated (hat Phobos was an “artificial satellite” put into Mars orbit by “an extinct race of humanoids millions of years ago.” Others ridiculed the idea of a hollow satellite and suggested that Phobos was accelerating because it is drifting closer to Mars. The detailed report in Nature now includes the finding that Phobos is even less dense than has been thought, so that its interior is either made of ice or is hollow.

Were a natural crater and interior faults artificially enlarged and carved out by “someone” to create inside Phobos a shelter,

shielding its occupants from the cold and radiation of space? The Soviet report does not speculate on that; but what it says regarding the “tracks” is illuminating. It calls them “grooves,” reports that their sides are of a brighter material than the moonlet’s surface, and, what is indeed a revelation, that in the area west of the large crater, “new grooves can be

identified”—-grooves or tracks that were not there when Mar- iner 9 and the Vikings took pictures of the moonlet.

Since there is no volcanic activity on Phobos (the crater in its natural shape resulted from meteorite impacts, not volcan- ism), no wind storms, no rain, no flowing water-—how did the new grooved tracks come about? Who was there on Phobos

(and thus on Mars) since the 1970s? Who is on it now?

For, if there is no one there now, how to explain the March

27, 1989, incident?

The chilling possibility that modern science, catching up with ancient knowledge, has brought Mankind to the first in- cident in a War of the Worlds, rekindles a situation that has lain dormant almost 5,500 years.

The event that parallels today’s situation has come to be known as the Incident of the Tower of Babel. It is described in Genesis, chapter 11, and in The Wars of Gods and Men I refer to Mesopotamian texts with earlier and more detailed

accounts of the incident. I have placed it in 3450 B.C. and construed it as the first attempt by Marduk to establish a space base in Babylon as an act of defiance against Enlil and his sons.

In the biblical version, the people whom Marduk had gotten to do the job were building, in Babylon, a city with a “tower

Phobos: Malfunction or Star Wars Incident? 299

Figure 101

whose head shall reach the heaven” in which a Shem—a space rocket—was to be installed (quite possibly in the manner de- picted on a coin from Byblos; see Fig. 101). But the other deities were not amused by this foray of Mankind into the space age; so

Yahweh came down to see the city

and the tower which the humans were building. And he said to unnamed colleagues:

This is just the beginning of their undertakings; From now on, anything that they shall scheme to do

shall no longer be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down and confuse their language

so that they should not understand each other’s speech.

Almost 5,500 years later, the humans got together and “spoke one language,” in a coordinated international mission to Mars and Phobos.

And, once again, someone was not amused.

13

IN SECRET ANTICIPATION

Are we unique? Are we alone?

These were the central questions posed in The 12th Planet back in 1976, and the book proceeded to present the ancient evidence regarding the Anunnaki (the biblical Nefilim) and

their planet Nibiru.

Scientific advances since 1976, reviewed in previous chap-

ters, have gone a long way in corroborating ancient knowledge.

But what about the two pillars of that knowledge and that

ancient answer to the central questions? Has modern science

confirmed the existence of one more planet in our Solar System,

and has it found other intelligent beings outside Earth?

That a search has been going on, both for another planet

and for other beings, is a matter of record. That it has intensified

in recent years can be gleaned from publicly available docu-

ments. But now it is also evident that when the mists of leaks,

rumors, and denials are pierced, if not the public, then the

world’s leaders have been aware for some time first, that there is one more planet in our Solar System and second, that we are not alone.

ONLY THIS KNOWLEDGE CAN EXPLAIN THE IN- CREDIBLE CHANGES IN WORLD AFFAIRS THAT HAVE BEEN TAKING PLACE WITH EVEN MORE INCREDIBLE

SPEED.

ONLY THIS KNOWLEDGE CAN EXPLAIN THE AC-

TUAL PREPARATIONS BEING MADE FOR THE DAY,

WHICH IS SURELY COMING, WHEN THE TWO FACTS

WILL HAVE TO BE DROPPED LIKE BOMBSHELLS ON

THE PEOPLE OF THIS PLANET EARTH.

Suddenly, all that had divided and preoccupied the world powers for decades seems not to matter anymore. Tanks, air- craft, armies are withdrawn and disbanded. One regional con- 300

flict after another is unexpectedly settled. The Berlin Wall, a symbol of Europe’s division, is gone. The Iron Curtain that has divided West from East militarily, ideologically, and eco- nomically is being dismantled. The head of the atheistic Com- munist empire visits the Pope—with a medieval painting of a UFO as the centerpiece of the room’s decoration. An American president, George Bush, who began his presidency in 1989 with a cautious wait-and-see policy, has by year’s end thrown all caution to the winds and has become an ardent partner of his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, in clearing the desks of the old agendas; but clearing them for what?

The Soviet president, who a few years ago made any progress in disarmament absolutely dependent on the United States drop- ping its Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—the so-called Star Wars defense in space against enemy missiles and spacecraft— agreed to unprecedented troop withdrawals and reductions a week after the same U.S. president, amidst reductions in the American military spending, asked the Congress to increase funds for SDI/Star Wars by 4.5 billion dollars in the next fiscal year. And before the month was out, the two superpowers and their two major wartime allies. Great Britain and France, have agreed to let German unification proceed. For forty-five years the vow never to see a unified, resurgent Germany again was a basic tenet of European stability; now, suddenly, that seemed to matter no more.

Suddenly, inexplicably, there seem to be more important, more urgent subjects on the agenda of the world’s leaders. But what?

As one looks for answers, the clues point in one direction:

Space. Surely, the turmoil in Eastern Europe has long been building up. Certainly, economic failures have necessitated long-overdue reforms. But what is astounding is not the out- break of change, but the unexpected lack of almost any resis- tance to it in the Kremlin. Since about the middle of 1989, all that had been vigorously defended and brutally suppressed no

longer seemed important; and after the summer of 1989, a reticent and go-slow American government shifted into high- gear cooperation with the Soviet leadership, rushing a previ- ously take-our-time summit meeting between President Bush and President Gorbachev.

Was it only a coincidence that the Phobos 2 incident in March 1989 was conceded in June to have been the result of spinning caused by an impact? Or that it was in that same June that Western audiences were shown the enigmatic television pictures from Phobos 2 (minus the last frame or frames) re- vealing the heat-emitting pattern on the surface of Mars and the “thin, elliptical shadow” for which there was no expla- nation? Was it a mere coincidence in timing that the hurried change of U.S. policy occurred after the Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune, in August 1989, which relayed back pictures of mys- terious “double tracks” on Neptune’s moon Triton (see Fig. 3)—tracks as enigmatic as those photographed on Mars in previous years and on Phobos in March 1989?

A review of world events and space-related activities after the March/June/August series of space discoveries in 1989 traces a pattern of bursts of activity and course changes that

bespeak the impact of these discoveries.

After the loss of Phobos 2 on the heels of the misfortune

with Phobos 1, Western experts speculated that the USSR

would give up its plans to proceed with their reconnaisance

mission to Mars in 1992 and the plan to land rovers there in

1994. But Soviet spokesmen brushed such doubts aside and

reaffirmed strongly that in their space program they “have given priority to Mars.” They were determined to go on to Mars, and to do it jointly with the United States.

Was it mere coincidence that within days of the Phobos 2 incident the White House took unexpected steps to reverse a Defense Department decision to cancel the 3.3-billion-dollar

National Aero-Space Plane program, under which NASA was to develop and build, by 1994, two X-30 hypersonic planes that could take off from Earth and soar into orbit, becoming self-launching spaceships for military space defense? This was one of the decisions made by President Bush together with Vice President Dan Quayle, the newly appointed chairman of

the National Space Council, at the very first NSC meeting in April 1989. In June, the NSC instructed NASA to accelerate the Space Station preparations, a program funded in fiscal year 1990 at 13.3 billion dollars. In July of 1989 the Vice President briefed Congress and the space industry on the specific pro- posals for the manned missions to the Moon and to Mars. It

was made clear that of five options, that of “developing a lunar

base as a stepping-stone to Mars is receiving the greatest at- tention.” A week later it was disclosed that instruments lofted by a military rocket successfully fired a “neutral-particle beam”—a “death ray”—in space as part of the SDI space- defense program.

Even an outside observer could sense that the White House, the President himself, was now in charge of the direction of the space program, its links with SDI, and their accelerated

timetable. And so it was that immediately after his hurried summit meeting with the Soviet leader in Malta, President Bush submitted to Congress his next annual budget, with its increase of billions of dollars for “Star Wars.” The media wondered how Mikhail Gorbachev would react to this “slap in the face,” But rather than criticism from Moscow, there was accelerated

cooperation. Evidently, the Soviet leader knew what SDI is all about: President Bush, in their joint press conference, ac- knowledged that SDI was discussed, both “defensive” and “offensive”—”rockets as well as people … a wide discus- sion.”

The budget proposal also asked 24 percent more funds for NASA, specifically for carrying out what by then had become the President’s “commitment” to “return astronauts to the Moon and to the eventual exploration of Mars by humans.” That commitment, it should be recalled, was made in the Pres- ident’s speech in July 1989 on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the first landing on the Moon—a commitment puzzling by its timing. When the Challenger shuttle was ac- cidentally destroyed in January 1986, all space work was put on hold. But in July 1989, just a few months after the Phobos 2 loss, the United States, rather than pull in its horns, reiterated a determination to go to Mars. There must have been a com- pelling reason… .

Under the Human Exploration Initiative part of the proposed budget, an Administration official said, space efforts would be expanded in accordance with a program developed by the White House’s National Space Council; that program included the development of new launch facilities, “opening up new fron-

tiers for manned and unmanned exploration” and “insuring that the space program contributes to the national military se- curity.” Human exploration of the Moon and Mars were de- fined assignments.

Concurrently with these developments, NASA has been ex- panding its network of space telescopes, both ground based and orbital, and has equipped some of the shuttles with sky- scanning devices. The Deep Space Network of radio telescopes was expanded by the reactivation of unused facilities as well as by arrangements with other nations, with stress on obser- vation of the southern skies. Up to 1982, the U.S. Congress has grudgingly allocated funds for SETI programs, reducing them from year to year until they were completely cut off in 1982. But in 1983—again that pivotal year, 1983—the funding was abruptly restored. In 1989 NASA managed to have the funding for the “Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence” doubled and tripled, in part due to the active support of Senator John Garn of Utah, a former shuttle astronaut who became convinced of the existence of extraterrestrial beings. Signifi- cantly, the funding was sought by NASA for new scanning and search devices to analyze emissions in the microwave band and in the skies above Earth, rather than only (as SETI had done before) listening in for radio emissions from distant stars or even galaxies. In its explanatory brochure, NASA quotes, in regard to the “Sky Survey,” the formulation by Thomas

O. Paine, its former Administrator:

“A continuing program to search for evidence that life exists—or has existed—beyond Earth, by studying other bodies of the Solar System, by searching for planets cir- cling other stars, and by searching for signals broadcast by intelligent life elsewhere in the Galaxy.

Commenting on these developments, a spokesman for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington said, “The future is starting to arrive.” And The New York Times of February 6, 1990, headlined the report of the invigorated SETI programs “HUNT FOR ALIENS IN SPACE: THE NEXT

GENERATION.” A small but symbolic change: no longer a search for an extraterrestrial “intelligence,” but for Aliens.

A search in secret anticipation.

The 1989 shock was preceded by a marked change at the end of 1983.

In retrospect it is evident that the diminution of superpower adversity was the other side of the coin of cooperation in space efforts and that from 1984 on, the only joint effort that was paramount in all minds was “Going to Mars, Together.”

We have already reviewed the extent of the U.S. endorse- ment of. and participation in, the Phobos mission. When the role of American scientists in this mission became known, it was explained that it was “officially sanctioned due to the improvement in Soviet-American relations.” It was also re- vealed that American defense experts were concerned about

the Soviet intent to use a powerful laser in space (to bombard the surface of Phobos), fearing it would give the Soviets an advantage in their own ‘ ‘Star Wars” program of space defense; but the White House overruled the defense experts and gave its consent.

Such cooperation was quite a change from what had been the norm before then. In the past the Soviets not only guarded their space secrets zealously but also made every effort to upstage the Americans. In 1969 they launched Luna 15 in a failed attempt to beat the Americans to the Moon; in 1971 they sent to Mars not one but three spacecraft intending to put orbiters on Mars just days ahead of Mariner 9. When the two superpowers paused for detente, they signed a space cooper- ation agreement in 1972; its only visible result was the Apollo- Soyuz linkup in 1975. Ensuing events, such as the suppression of the Solidarity movement in Poland and the invasion of Af- ghanistan, renewed cold war tensions. In 1982 President Rea- gan refused to renew the 1972 agreement, and launched instead a massive U.S. rearmament effort against the “Evil Empire.”

When President Reagan, in a televised address in March 1983, surprised the American people, the world’s nations (and, it later became known, most top officials of his own admin-

istration) with his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—the con- cept of a protective shield in space against missiles and spaceships—it was natural to assume that its sole purpose was to attain military superiority over the Soviet Union. That was the Soviet reaction, and it was vehement. When Mikhail Gor- bachev followed Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader in

1985, he adhered to the position that any improvement in East-

West relations depended first and foremost on the abandonment of SDI. But, as it now seems clear, before the year was out, a new mood began to take hold as the true reasons for SDI were communicated to the Soviet leader. Antagonism was re- placed by an attitude of “Let’s Talk”; and the talk was to be about cooperation in space and, more specifically, about going together to Mars.

Observing that the Soviets suddenly “shed their habit… of being obsessively secretive about their space program,” the Economist (June 15, 1985) remarked that recently Soviet sci-

entists had been astonishing Western scientists by their open- ness, “talking frankly and enthusiastically about their plans.” The weekly noted that the prime subject was the missions to Mars.

The marked change was even more puzzling, since in 1983 and 1984 the Soviet Union appeared to be moving far ahead

of the United States in space achievements. It had by then lofted a series of Salyut space stations into Earth orbit, manned them with cosmonauts who achieved record long stays in space, and practiced linking to these stations a variety of service and resupply spacecraft. Comparing the two national programs, a

U.S. Congressional study reported, at the end of 1983, that they were like an American tortoise and a Soviet hare. Still, by the end of 1984, the first sign of renewed cooperation was given when a U.S. device was included in the Soviet Vega spacecraft that was launched to encounter Halley’s comet.

There were other manifestations, semiofficial and official, of the new spirit of cooperation in space, despite SDI. In January 1985 scientists and defense officials, meeting in Washington to discuss SDI, invited a top Soviet space official (later a key adviser to Gorbachev), Roald Sagdeyev, to attend. At the same time then U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz met his Soviet counterpart in Geneva, and they agreed to renew the defunct U.S.-Soviet space cooperation agreement.

In July 1985 scientists, space officials, and astronauts from the United States and the Soviet Union met in Washington, ostensibly to commemorate the Apollo-Soyuz linkup of 1975. In reality, it was a seminar held to discuss a joint mission to Mars. A week later Brian T. O’Leary, the former astronaut who became active in the Aerospace Systems Group of Science Applications International Corporation, told a meeting of the Society for (he Advancement of Science in Los Angeles that Mankind’s next giant step should be to one of the moons of Mars: “What would be a better way to celebrate the millen- nium’s end than with a return human trip from Phobos and Deimos, especially if it was an international mission?” And in October of that same year, 1985, several American Con- gressmen, government officials, and former astronauts were invited by the Soviet Academy of Sciences to visit, for the first time ever, Soviet space facilities.

Was it all just an evolutionary process, part of new policies by a new leader in the USSR, changing conditions behind the Iron Curtain—deepening restlessness, mounting economic hardships that had increased the Soviet need for Western help? No doubt. But did it necessitate the rush to unveil the plans

and secrets of the Soviet space program? Was there perhaps also some other cause, some significant occurrence that sud- denly made a major difference, that changed the agenda, that called for new priorities—that necessitated the revival of a World War II alliance? But if so, who was now the common enemy? Against whom were the United States and the USSR aligning their space programs? And why the priority, given by both nations, to going to Mars?

For sure, there have been objections, in both nations, to such coziness. In the United States many defense officials and con- servative politicians opposed “lowering the guard” in the Cold War, especially in space. In the past President Reagan agreed;

for five years he refused to meet the leader of the “Evil Em- pire.” But now there were compelling reasons to meet and to confer—in private. In November 1985 Reagan and Gorbachev met and emerged as friendly allies, pronouncing a new era of cooperation, trust, understanding.

How could he explain this U-turn, Reagan was asked. His answer was that what made a common cause was space. More specifically, a danger from space to all the nations on Earth.

At the first opportunity to elaborate publicly, President Reagan said, in Fallston, Maryland, on December 4, 1985:

As you know, Nancy and I returned almost two weeks ago from Geneva, where I had several lengthy meetings with General Secretary Gorbachev of the Soviet Union.

I had more than fifteen hours of discussions with him, including five hours of private conversation just between the two of us. I found him to be a determined man, but one who is willing to listen. And 1 told him about America’s deep desire for peace and that we do not threaten the Soviet Union and that I believe the people of both our countries want the same thing—a safer and better future for themselves and their children. . . .

I couldn’t but—one point in our discussion privately with General Secretary Gorbachev—when you stop to think that we’re all God’s children, wherever we may live in the world—I couldn’t help say to him,

“Just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We’d forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries and we would find out once and for all that we are all human beings here on this earth together.”

I also stressed to Mr. Gorbachev how our nation’s com- mitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative—our research

and development of a non-nuclear, high-tech shield that would protect us against ballistic missiles, and how we are committed to that. 1 told him that SDI was a reason to hope, not to fear.

Was this statement an irrelevant detail or a deliberate dis- closure by the U.S. President that in his private session with the Soviet leader he had brought up the “threat to this world from some other species from another planet” as the reason for bringing the two nations together and the cessation of Soviet opposition to SDI?

Looking back, it is clear that the “threat” and the need for a defense in space against it preoccupied the American President. In Journey Into Space, Bruce Murray, who was Director of the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1976 to 1982 (and cofounder with Carl Sagan of The Planetary Society), recounts how at a meeting at the White House in March 1986 with a select group of six space scientists to brief President Reagan on the discoveries of Voyager at Uranus, the president inquired, “You gentlemen have investigated a lot of things in space; have you found any evidence that there may be other people out there?” When they answered negatively, he con- cluded the meeting by saying he hoped they would have “more excitement as time went on.”

Were these ruminations of an aging leader, destined to be dismissed with a grin by the youthful and “determined man” now leading the Soviet empire? Or did Reagan convince Gorbachev, in their private five-hour meeting, that the threat of aliens from space was no joke?

What we know from the public record is that on February 16, 1987, in a major address to an international “Survival of Humanity” forum at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Gorbachev recalled his discussion with President Reagan in words almost identical to those the American President had used. “The destiny of the world and the future of humanity have concerned the best minds from the time man first began thinking of the future,” he said at the very beginning of his address. “Until relatively recently these and related reflections have been seen as an imaginative exercise, as other-worldly pursuits of philosophers, scholars, and theologians. In the past few decades, however, these problems have moved onto a highly practical plane.” After pointing to the risks of nuclear weapons and the common interests of “human civilization,” he went on to say,

At our meeting in Geneva, the U.S. President said that if the earth faced an invasion by extraterrestrials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion.

I shall not dispute the hypothesis, though I think it’s early yet to worry about such an intrusion.

In choosing “not to dispute this hypothesis,” the Soviet leader appeared to define the threat in starker terms than President Reagan’s smoother talk: he spoke of “an invasion by extraterrestrials”‘ and disclosed that in the private conversation at Geneva President Reagan did not merely talk philosophically about the merits of a united Mankind but proposed that ‘”‘the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion.”

Even more significant than this confirmation, at an inter- national forum, of the potential threat and the need to “join forces” was its timing. Just one year earlier, on January 28, 1986, the United States suffered its terrible setback when the space shuttle Challenger exploded soon after launch, killing its seven astronauts and grounding America’s space program. On the other hand, on February 20, 1986, the Soviet Union launched its new space station Mir, a substantially more advanced model than the previous Salyut series. In the following months, rather than taking advantage of the situation and asserting Soviet independence of U.S. space cooperation, the Soviets increased it; among the steps taken was the invitation to U.S. television networks to witness the next space launch from their hitherto top-secret spaceport at Baikonur. On March 4 the Soviet spacecraft Vega 1, having swung by Venus to drop off scientific probes, kept its date with Halley’s comet; Europeans and Japanese were also up there, but not the United States. Still, the Soviet Union, through Roald Sagdeyev, the director of the Institute for Space Research who had- been invited to Washington in 1985 to discuss SD1, insisted that going to Mars be a joint effort with the United States.

Amid the gloom of the Challenger disaster, all the space programs were suspended except those pertaining to Mars. To remain on the road to the Moon and Mars, NASA appointed a study group under the chairmanship of astronaut Dr. Sally K. Ride to reevaluate the plans and their feasibility. The panel strongly recommended the development of celestial ferryboats and transfer ships to carry astronauts and cargoes for “human settlement beyond Earth orbit, from the highlands of the Moon to the plains of Mars.”

This eagerness to go to Mars, as evidence at Congressional hearings made clear, necessitated joint U.S.-Soviet efforts and cooperation between their space programs. Not everyone in the United States was for it. in particular, defense planners considered the setback to the manned shuttle program to mean a change to greater reliance on ever more powerful unmanned rockets; and to gain public and Congressional support, some data about the Air Force’s new booster rockets to be used in the “Star Wars” defenses was released.

Overriding objections, the United States and the USSR signed, in April 1987, a new agreement for cooperation in space. Immediately after signing the agreement, the White House ordered NASA to suspend work on the Mars Observer spacecraft that was to be launched in 1990; thenceforth, there were to be joint efforts with the Soviet Union in support of its Phobos mission.

In (he United States opposition to sharing space secrets with the Soviet Union nevertheless continued, and some experts viewed the repeated Soviet invitations to the United States to join in their missions to Mars simply as attempts to gain access to Western technology. Prompted, no doubt, by such objec- tions, President Reagan once again spoke up publicly of the extraterrestrial threat. The occasion was his address to the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 21,

1987. Speaking of the need to turn swords into plowshares, he said:

In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment we often forget how much unites all the members of hu- manity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to recognize this common bond.

I occasionally think how quickly our differences would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.

As reported at the time in The New Republic by its senior editor Fred Barnes, President Reagan, during a White House luncheon on September 5, sought confirmation from the Soviet foreign minister that the Soviet Union would indeed join the United States against an alien threat from outer space; and Shevardnadze responded, “Yes, absolutely.”

While one can only guess what debates might have taken place in the Kremlin in the next three months that led to the second Reagan-Gorbachev summit meeting in December 1987, some of the conflicting views current in Washington were publicly known. There were those who questioned Soviet motives and found it difficult to draw a clear distinction be- tween sharing scientific technology and sharing military secrets. And there were those, like the chairman of the House of Representatives’ Science, Space and Technology Commit-

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Double Star (full text) by Robert Heinlein

Double Star is considered by many to be the finest of his titles. Brian Aldiss called it his “most enjoyable novel.” Whether it is the simplicity of a lively tale, the complexity of the situation, or the depth of characterization, the book has developed a loyal following. It also won Heinlein his first Hugo.

Double Star is one of Robert Heinlein’s most enjoyable early period SF novels, a short and tightly-plotted story of out-of-work actor Lawrence Smith (aka “The Great Lorenzo”), who is unexpectedly tapped for a very important acting job, to impersonate an important politician named John Bonforte who has been kidnapped.

Double Star

Chapter 1

If a man walks in dressed like a hick and acting as if he owned the place, he’s a spaceman.

It is a logical necessity. His profession makes him feel like boss of all creation; when he sets foot dirtside he is slumming among the peasants. As for his sartorial inelegance, a man who is in uniform nine tenths of the time and is more used to deep space than to civilization can hardly be expected to know how to dress properly. He is a sucker for the alleged tailors who swarm around every spaceport peddling “ground outfits.”

I could see that this big-boned fellow had been dressed by Omar the Tentmaker-padded shoulders that were too big to start with, shorts cut so that they crawled up his hairy thighs as he sat down, a ruffled chemise that might have looked well on a cow.

But I kept my opinion to myself and bought him a drink with my last half-Imperial, considering it an investment, spacemen being the way they are about money. “Hot jets!” I said as we touched glasses. He gave me a quick glance.

That was my initial mistake in dealing with Dak Broadbent. Instead of answering, “Clear space!” or, “Safe grounding!” as he should have, he looked me over and said softly, “Anice sentiment, but to the wrong man. I’ve never been out.”

That was another good place to keep my mouth shut. Spacemen did not often come to the bar of Casa Manana; it was not their Sort of hotel and it’s miles from the port. When one shows up in ground clothes, seeks a dark corner of the bar, and objects to being called a spaceman, that’s his business. I had picked that spot myself so that I could see without being seen-I owed a little money here and there at the time, nothing important but embarrassing. I should have assumed that he had his reasons, too, and respected them.

But my vocal cords lived their own life, wild and free. “Don’t give me that, shipmate,” I replied. “If you’re a ground hog, I’m Mayor of Tycho City. I’ll wager you’ve done more drinking on Mars,” I added, noticing the cautious way he lifted his glass, a dead giveaway of low-gravity habits, “than you’ve ever done on Earth.”

“Keep your voice down!” he cut in without moving his lips. “What makes you sure that I am a voyageur? You don’t know me.” “Sorry,” I said. “You can be anything you like. But I’ve got eyes. You gave yourself away the minute you walked in.”

He said something under his breath. “How?”

“Don’t let it worry you. I doubt if anyone else noticed. But I see things other people don’t see.” I handed him my card, a little smugly perhaps. There is only one Lorenzo Smythe, the One- Man Stock Company. Yes, I’m “The Great Lorenzo”-stereo, canned opera, legit-“Pantomimist and Mimicry Artist Extraordinary.”

He read my card and dropped it into a sleeve pocket-which annoyed me; those cards had cost me money-genuine imitation hand engraving. “I see your point,” he said quietly, “but what was wrong with the way I behaved?”

“I’ll show you,” I said. “I’ll walk to the door like a ground hog and come back the way you walk. Watch.” I did so, making the trip back in a slightly exaggerated version of his walk to allow for his untrained eye-feet sliding softly along the floor as if it were deck plates, weight carried forward and balanced from the hips, hands a trifle forward and clear of the body, ready to grasp.

There are a dozen other details which can’t be set down in words; the point is you have to be a spaceman when you do it, with a spaceman’s alert body and unconscious balance-you have to live it. Acity man blunders along on smooth floors all his life, steady floors with Earth-normal gravity, and will trip over a cigarette paper, like as not. Not so a spaceman.

“See what I mean?” I asked, slipping back into my seat. “I’m afraid I do,” he admitted suurly. “Did I walk like that?” “Yes.”

“Hmmm… Maybe I should take lessons from you.” “You could do worse,” I admitted.

He sat there looking me over, then started to speak-changed his mind and wiggled a finger at the bartender to refill our glasses. When the drinks came, he paid for them, drank his, and slid out of his seat all in one smooth motion. “Wait for me,” he said quietly.

With a drink he had bought sitting in front of me I could not refuse. Nor did I want to; he interested me. I liked him, even on ten minutes’ acquaintance; he was the sort of big ugly- handsome galoot that women go for and men take orders from.

He threaded his way gracefully through the room and passed a table of four Martians near the door. I didn’t like Martians. I did not fancy having a thing that looks like a tree trunk topped off by a sun helmet claiming the privileges of a man. I did not like the way they grew pseudo limbs; it reminded me of snakes crawling out of their holes. I did not like the fact that they could look all directions at once without turning their heads-if they had had heads, which of course they don’t. And I could not stand their smell!

Nobody could accuse me of race prejudice. I didn’t care what a man’s color, race, or religion was. But men were men, whereas Martians were things. They weren’t even animals to my way of thinking. I’d rather have had a wart hog around me any day. Permitting them in restaurants and bars used by men struck me as outrageous. But there was the Treaty, of course, so what could I do?

These four had not been there when I came in, or I would have whiffed them. For that matter, they certainly could not have been there a few moments earlier when I had walked to the door and back. Now there they were, standing on their pedestals around a table, pretending to be people. I had not even heard the air conditioning speed up.

The free drink in front of me did not attract me; I simply wanted my host to come back so that I could leave politely. It suddenly occurred to me that he had glanced over that way just before he had left so hastily and I wondered if the Martians had anything to do with it. I looked over at them, trying to see if they were paying attention to our table-but how could you tell what a Martian was looking at or what it was thinking? That was another thing I didn’t like about them.

I sat there for several minutes fiddling with my drink and wondering what had happened to my spaceman friend. I had hoped that his hospitality might extend to dinner and, if we became sufficiently simpatico, possibly even to a small temporary loan. My other prospects were-I admit it!-slender. The last two times I had tried to call my agent his autosecretary had simply recorded the message, and unless I deposited coins in the door, my room would not open to me that night … That was how low my fortunes had ebbed: reduced to sleeping in a coin- operated cubicle.

In the midst of my melancholy ponderings a waiter touched me on the elbow. “Call for you, sir.” “Eh? Very well, friend, will you fetch an instrument to the table?”

“Sorry, sir, but I can’t transfer it. Booth 12 in the lobby.”

“Oh. Thank you,” I answered, making it as warm as possible since I was unable to tip him. I swung wide around the Martians as I went Out.

I soon saw why the call had not been brought to the table; No. 12 was a maximum-security booth, sight, sound, and scramble. The tank showed no image and did not clear even after the door locked behind me. It remained milky until I sat down and placed my face within pickup, then the opalescent clouds melted away and I found myself looking at my spaceman friend.

“Sorry to walk out on you,” he said quickly, “but I was in a hurry. I want you to come at once to Room 2106 of the Eisenhower.”

He offered no explanation. The Eisenhower is just as unlikely a hotel for spacemen as Casa Manana. I could smell trouble. You don’t pick up a stranger in a bar and then insist that he come to a hotel room-well, not one of the same sex, at least.

“Why?” I asked.

The spaceman got that look peculiar to men who are used to being obeyed without question; I studied it with professional interest-it’s not the same as anger; it is more like a thundercloud just before a storm. Then he got himself in hand and answered quietly, “Lorenzo, there is no time to explain. Are you open to a job?”

“Do you mean a professional engagement?” I answered slowly. For a horrid instant I suspected that he was offering me … Well, you know-a job. Thus far I had kept my professional pride intact, despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

“Oh, professional, of course!” he answered quickly. “This requires the best actor we can get.”

I did not let my relief show in my face. It was true that J was ready for any professional work-I would gladly have played the balcony in Romeo and Juliet-but it does not do to be eager. “What is the nature of the engagement?” I asked. “My calendar is rather full.”

He brushed it aside. “I can’t explain over the phone. Perhaps you don’t know it, but any scrambler circuit can be unscrambled- with the proper equipment. Shag over here fast!”

He was eager; therefore I could afford not to be eager. “Now really,” I protested, “what do you think I am? Abellman? Or an untried juvenile anxious for the privilege of carrying a spear? I am Lorenzo!” I threw up my chin and looked offended. “What is your offer?”

“Uh… Damn it, I can’t go into it over the phone. How much do you get?” “Eh? You are asking my professional salary?”

“Yes, yes!”

“For a single appearance? Or by the week? Or an option contract?” “Never mind. What do you get by the day?”

“My minimum fee for a one-evening date is one hundred Imperials.” This was simple truth. Oh, I have been coerced at times into paying some scandalous kickbacks, but the voucher never read less than my proper fee. Aman has his standards. I’d rather starve.

“Very well,” he answered quickly, “one hundred Imperials in cash, laid in your hand the minute you show up here. But hurry!”

“Eh?” I realized with sudden dismay that I could as easily have said two hundred, or even two fifty. “But I have not agreed to accept the engagement.”

“Never mind that! We’ll talk it over when you get here. The hundred is yours even if you turn us down. If you accept-well, call it bonus, over and above your salary. Now will you sign off and get over here?”

I bowed. “Certainly, sir. Have patience.”

Fortunately the Eisenhower is not too far from the Casa, for I did not even have a minimum for tube fare. However, although the art of strolling is almost lost, I savor it-and it gave me time to collect my thoughts. I was no fool; I was aware that when another man is too anxious to force money on one, it is time to examine the cards, for there is almost certainly something illegal, or dangerous, or both, involved in the matter. I was not unduly fussy about legality qua legality; I agreed with the Bard that the Law is often an idiot. But in the main I had stayed on the right side of the Street.

But presently I realized that I had insufficient facts, so I put it out of my mind, threw my cape over my right shoulder, and strode along, enjoying the mild autumn weather and the rich and varied odors of the metropolis. On arrival I decided to forego the main entrance and took a bounce tube from the sub-basement to the twenty-first floor, I having at the time a vague feeling that this was not the place to let my public recognize me. My voyageur friend let me in. “You took long enough,” he snapped.

“Indeed?” I let it go at that and looked around me. It was an expensive suite, as I had expected, but it was littered and there were at least a dozen used glasses and as many coffee cups scattered here and there; it took no skill to see that I was merely the latest of many visitors. Sprawled on a couch, scowling at me, was another man, whom I tabbed tentatively as a spaceman. I glanced inquiringly but no introduction was offered.

“Well, you’re here, at least. Let’s get down to business.”

“Surely. Which brings to mind,” I added, “there was mention of a bonus, or retainer.” “Oh, yes.” He turned to the man on the couch. “Jock, pay him.”

“For what?” “Pay him!”

I now knew which one was boss-although, as I was to learn, there was usually little doubt when Dak Broadbent was in a room. The other fellow stood up quickly, still scowling, and counted Out to me a fifty and five tens. I tucked it away casually without checking it and said, “I am at your disposal, gentlemen.”

The big man chewed his lip. “First, I want your solemn oath not even to talk in your sleep about this job.”

“If my simple word is not good, is my oath better?” I glanced at the smaller man, slouched again on the couch. “I don’t believe we have met. I am Lorenzo.” He glanced at me, looked away. My barroom acquaintance said hastily, “Names don’t matter in this.”

“No? Before my revered father died he made me promise him three things: first, never to mix whisky with anything but water; second, always to ignore anonymous letters; and lastly, never to talk with a stranger who refuses to give his name. Good day, sirs.” I turned toward the door, their hundred Imperials warm in my pocket.

“Hold it!” I paused. He went on, “You are perfectly right. My name is-“ “Skipper!”

“Stow it, Jock. I’m Dak Broadbent; that’s Jacques Dubois glaring at us. We’re both voyageurs-master pilots, all classes, any acceleration.” I bowed. “Lorenzo Smythe,” I said modestly, “jongleur and artist-care of The Lambs Club.” I made a mental note to pay my dues.

“Good. Jock, try smiling for a change. Lorenzo, you agree to keep our business secret?” “Under the rose. This is a discussion between gentlemen.”

“Whether you take the job or not?”

“Whether we reach agreement or not. I am human, but, short of illegal methods of questioning, your confidences are sale with me.” “I am well aware of what neodexocaine will do to a man’s forebrain, Lorenzo. We don’t expect the impossible.”

“Dak,” Dubois said urgently, “this is a mistake. We should at least—”

“Shut up, Jock. I want no hypnotists around at this point. Lorenzo, we want you to do an impersonation job. It has to be so perfect that no one-I mean no one-will ever know it took place. Can you do that sort of a job?”

I frowned. “The first question is not ‘Can I?’ but ‘Will I?’ What are the circumstances?”

“Uh, we’ll go into details later. Roughly, it is the ordinary doubling job for a well-known public figure. The difference is that the impersonation will have to be so perfect as to fool people who know him well and must see him close up. It won’t be just reviewing a parade from a grandstand, or pinning medals on girl scouts.” He looked at me shrewdly. “It will take a real artist.”

“No,” I said at once.

“Huh? You don’t know anything about the job yet. If your conscience is bothering you, let me assure you that you will not be working against the interests of the man you will impersonate- nor against anyone’s legitimate interests. This is a job that really needs to be done.”

“No.”

“Well, for Pete’s sake, why? You don’t even know how much we will pay.” “Pay is no object,” I said firmly. “I am an actor, not a double.”

“I don’t understand you. There are lots of actors picking up spare money making public appearances for celebrities.”

“I regard them as prostitutes, not colleagues. Let me make myself clear. Does an author respect a ghost writer? Would you respect a painter who allowed another man to sign his work- for money? Possibly the spirit of the artist is foreign to you, sir, yet perhaps I may put it in terms germane to your own profession. Would you, simply for money, be content to pilot a ship while some other man, not possessing your high art, wore the uniform, received the credit, was publicly acclaimed as the Master? Would you?”

Dubois snorted. “How much money?”

Broadbent frowned at him. “I think I understand your objection.”

“To the artist, sir, kudos comes first. Money is merely the mundane means whereby he is enabled to create his art.”

“Hmm… All right, so you won’t do it just for money. Would you do it for other reasons? If you felt that it had to be done and you were the only one who could do it successfully?” “I concede the possibility; I cannot imagine the circumstances.”

“You won’t have to imagine them; we’ll explain them to you.” Dubois jumped up off the couch. “Now see here, Dak, you can’t—” “Cut it, Jock! He has to know.”

“He doesn’t have to know now-and here. And you haven’t any right to jeopardize everybody else by telling him. You don’t know a thing about him.” “It’s a calculated risk.” Broadbent turned back to me.

Dubois grabbed his arm, swung him around. “Calculated risk be damned! Dak, I’ve strung along with you in the past~-but this time before I’ll let you shoot off your face, well, one or the other of us isn’t going to be in any shape to talk.”

Broadbent looked startled, then grinned coldly down at Dubois. “Think you’re up to it, Jock old son?”

Dubois glared up at him, did not flinch. Broadbent was a head taller and outweighed him by twenty kilos. I found myself for the first time liking Dubois; I am always touched by the gallant audacity of a kitten, the fighting heart of a bantam cock, or the willingness of a little mart to die in his tracks rather than knuckle under…And, while I did not expect Broadbent to kill him, I did think that I was about to see Dubois used as a dust rag.

I had no thought of interfering. Every man is entitled to elect the time and manner of his own destruction.

I could see tension grow. Then suddenly l3roadbent laughed and clapped Dubois on the shoulder. “Good for you, Jock!” He turned to me and said quietly, “Will you excuse us a few moments? My friend and I must make heap big smoke.”

The suite was equipped with a hush corner, enclosing the autograph and the phone. Broadbent took Dubois by the arm and led him over there; they stood and talked urgently. Sometimes such facilities in public places like hotels are not all that they might be; the sound waves fail to cancel out completely. But the Eisenhower is a luxury house and in this case,

at least, the equipment worked perfectly; I could see their lips move but I could hear no sound.

But I could indeed see their lips move. Broadbent’s face was toward me and Dubois I could glimpse in a wall mirror. When I was performing in my famous mentalist act, I found out why my father had beaten my tail until I learned the silent language of lips-in my mentalist act I always performed in a brightly lighted hail and made use of spectacles which-but never mind; I could read lips.

Dubois was saying: “Dak, you bloody, stupid, unprintable, illegal and highly improbable obscenity, do you want us both to wind up counting rocks on Titan? This conceited pipsqueak will spill his guts.”

I almost missed Broadbent’s answer. Conceited indeed! Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man. Broadbent: “… doesn’t matter if the game is crooked when it’s the only game in town. Jock, there is nobody else we can use.”

Dubois: “All right, then get Doc Scortia over here, hypnotize him, and shoot him the happy juice. But don’t tell him the score- not until he’s conditioned, not while we are still on dirt.” Broadbent: “Uh, Scortia himself told me that we could not depend on hypno and drugs, not for the performance we need.

We’ve got to have his co-operation, his intelligent co-operation.”

Dubois snorted. “What intelligence? Look at him. Ever see a rooster strutting through a barnyard? Sure, he’s the right size and shape and his skull looks a good bit like the Chief-but there is nothing behind it. He’ll lose his nerve, blow his top, and give the whole thing away. He can’t play the part-he’s just a ham actor!”

If the immortal Caruso had been charged with singing off key, he could not have been more affronted than I. But I trust I justified my claim to the mantle of Burbage and Booth at that moment; I went on buffing my nails and ignored it-merely noting that I would someday make friend Dubois both laugh and cry within the span of twenty seconds. I waited a few moments more, then stood up and approached the hush corner. When they saw that I intended to enter it, they both shut up. I said quietly, “Never mind, gentlemen, I have changed my mind.”

Dubois looked relieved. “You don’t want the job.”

“I mean that I accept the engagement. You need not make explanations. I have been assured by friend Broadbent that the work is such as not to trouble my conscience-and I trust him. He has assured rue that he needs an actor. But the business affairs of the producer are not my concern. I accept.”

Dubois looked angry, but shut up. I expected Broadbent to look pleased and relieved; instead he looked worried. “All right,” he agreed, “let’s get on with it. Lorenzo, I don’t know exactly how long we will need you. No more than a few days, I’m certain-and you will be on display only an hour or so once or twice in that time.”

“That does not matter as long as I have time to study the role- the impersonation. But approximately how many days will you need me? I should notify my agent.”

“Oh no! Don’t do that.”

“Well-how long? As much as a week?” “It will be less than that-or we’re sunk.”

“Never mind. Will a hundred Imperials a day suit you?”

I hesitated, recalling how easily he had met my minimum just to interview me-and decided this was a time to be gracious. I waved it aside. “Let’s not speak of such things. No doubt you will present me with an honorarium consonant with the worth of my performance.”

“All right, all right.” Broadbent turned away impatiently. “Jock, call the field. Then call Langston and tell him we’re starting Plan Mardi Gras. Synchronize with him. Lorenzo …” He motioned for me to follow and strode into the bath. He opened a small case and demanded, “Can you do anything with this junk?”

“Junk” it was-the sort of overpriced and unprofessional makeup kit that is sold over the counter to stage-struck youngsters. I stared at it with mild disgust. “Do I understand, sir, that you expect me to start an impersonation now? Without time for study?”

“Huh? No, no, no! I want you to change your face-on the outside chance that someone might recognize you as we leave here.

That’s possible, isn’t it?”

I answered stiffly that being recognized in public was a burden that all celebrities were forced to carry. I did not add that it was certain that countless people would recognize The Great Lorenzo in any public place.

“Okay. So change your phiz so it’s not yours.” He left abruptly.

I sighed and looked over the child’s toys he had handed me, no doubt thinking they were the working tools of my profession- grease paints suitable for clowns, reeking spirit gum, crepe hair which seemed to have been raveled from Aunt Maggie’s parlor carpet. Not an ounce of Silicoflesh, no electric brushes, no modern amenities of any sort. But a true artist can do wonders with a burnt match, or oddments such as one might find in a kitchen- and his own genius. I arranged the lights and let myself fall into creative reverie.

There are several ways to keep a well-known face from being recognized. The simplest is misdirection. Place a man in uniform and his face is not likely to be noticed-do you recall the lace of the last policeman you encountered? Could you identify him if you saw him next in mufti? On the same principle is the attentiongoing special feature. Equip a man with an enormous nose, disfigured perhaps with acne rosacea; the vulgar will stare in fascination at the nose itself, the polite will turn away-but neither will see the face.

I decided against this primitive maneuver because I judged that my employer wished me not to be noticed at all rather than remembered for an odd feature without being recognized. This is much more difficult; anyone can be conspicuous but it takes real skill not to be noticed. I needed a face as commonplace, as impossible to remember as the true face of the immortal Alec Guinness. Unfortunately my aristocratic features are entirely too distinguished, too handsome-a regrettable handicap for a character actor. As my father used to say, “Larry, you are too damned pretty! If you don’t get off your lazy duff and learn the business, you are going to spend fifteen years as a juvenile, under the mistaken impression that you are an

actor-then wind up selling candy in the lobby. ‘Stupid’ and ‘pretty’ are the two worst vices in show business-and you’re both.”

Then he would take off his belt and stimulate my brain. Father was a practical psychologist and believed that warming the glutei maximi with a strap drew excess blood away from a boy’s brain. While the theory may have been shaky, the results justified the method; by the time I was fifteen I could stand on my head on a slack wire and quote page after page of Shakespeare and Shaw-or steal a scene simply by lighting a cigarette.

I was deep in the mood of creation when Broadbent stuck his face in. “Good grief!” he snapped. “Haven’t you done anything yet?”

I stared coldly. “I assumed that you wanted my best creative work-which cannot be hurried. Would you expect a cordon bleu to compound a new sauce on the back of a galloping horse?” “Horses be damned!” He glanced at his watch finger. “You have six more minutes. If you can’t do anything in that length of time, we’ll just have to take our chances.”

Well! Of course I prefer to have plenty of time-but I had understudied my father in his quick-change creation, The Assassination of Hu*ey Long, fifteen parts in seven minutes-and had once played it in nine seconds less time than he did. “Stay where you are!” I snapped back at him. “I’ll be with you at once.” I then put on “Benny Grey,” the colorless handy man who does the murders in The House with No Doors-two quick strokes to put dispirited lines into my cheeks from nose to mouth corners, a mere suggestion of bags under my eyes, and Factor’s

#5 sallow over all, taking not more than twenty seconds for everything-I could have done it in my sleep; House ran on boards for ninety-two performances before they recorded it.

Then I faced Broadbent and he gasped. “Good God! I don’t believe it.”

I stayed in “Benny Grey” and did not smile acknowledgment. What l3roadbent could not realize was that the grease paint really was not necessary. It makes it easier, of course, but I had used a touch of it primarily because he expected it; being one of the yokels, he naturally assumed that make-up consisted of paint and powder.

He continued to stare at me. “Look here,” he said in a hushed voice, “could you do something like that for me? In a hurry?”

I was about to say no when I realized that it presented an interesting professional challenge, I had been tempted to say that if my father had started in on him at five he might be ready now to sell cotton candy at a punkin’ doin’s, but I thought better of it. “You simply want to be sure that you will not be recognized?” I asked.

“Yes, yes! Can you paint me up, or give me a false nose, or something?”

I shook my head. “No matter what we did with make-up, it would simply make you look like a child dressed up for Trick or Treat. You can’t act and you can never learn, at your age. We won’t touch your face.”

“Huh? But with this beak on me-“

“Attend me. Anything I could do to that lordly nose would just call attention to it, I assure you. Would it suffice if an acquaintance looked at you and said, ‘Say, that big fellow reminds me of Dak Broadbent. It’s not Dak, of course, but looks a little like him.’ Eh?”

“Huh? I suppose so. As long as he was sure it wasn’t me. I’m supposed to be on… Well, I’m not supposed to be on Earth just now.”

“He’ll be quite sure it is not you, because we’ll change your walk. That’s the most distinctive thing about you. If your walk is wrong, it cannot possibly be you-so it must be some other big boned, broad-shouldered man who looks a bit like you.”

“Okay, show me how to walk.”

“No, you could never learn it. I’ll force you to walk the way I want you to.” “How?”

‘We’ll put a handful of pebbles or the equivalent in the toes of your boots. That will force you back on your heels and make you stand up straight. It will be impossible for you to sneak along in that catfooted spaceman’s crouch. Mmrn 11 slap some tape across your shoulder blades to remind you to keep your shoulders back, too. That will do it.”

“You think they wont recognize me just because I’ll walk differently?”

“Certain. An acquaintance won’t know why he is sure it is not you, but the very fact that the conviction is subconscious and unanalyzed will put it beyond reach of doubt. Oh, I’ll do a little something to your face, just to make you feel easier-but it isn’t necessary.”

We went back into the living room of the suite. I was still being “Benny Grey” of course; once I put on a role it takes a conscious effort of will to go back to being myself. Dubois was busy at the phone; he looked up, saw me, and his jaw dropped. He hurried out of the hush locus and demanded, “Who’s he? And where’s that actor fellow?” After his first glance at me, he had looked away and not bothered to look back-“Benny Grey” is such a tired, negligible little guy that there is no point in looking at him.

“What actor fellow?” I answered in Benny’s flat, colorless tones. It brought Dubois’ eyes back to me. Re looked at me, started to look away, his eyes snapped back, then he looked at my clothes. Broadbent guffawed and clapped him on the shoulder.

“And you said he couldn’t act!” He added sharply, “Did you get them all, Jock?” “Yes.” Dubois looked back at me, looked perplexed, and looked away.

“Okay. We’ve got to be out of here in four minutes. Let’s see how fast you can get me fixed up, Lorenzo.”

Dak had one boot off, his blouse off, and his chemise pulled up so that I could tape his shoulders when the light over the door came on and the buzzer sounded. He froze. “Jock? We expecting anybody?”

“Probably Langston. He said he was going to try to get over here before we left.” Dubois started for the door.

“It might not be him. It might be—” 1 did not get to hear Broadbent say who he thought it might be as Dubois dilated the door. Framed in the doorway, looking like a nightmare toadstool, was a Martian.

For an agony-stretched second I could see nothing but the Martian. I did not see the human standing behind him, nor did I notice the life wand tile Martian cradled in his pseudo limb. Then the Martian flowed inside, the man with him stepped in behind him, and the door relaxed. The Martian squeaked, “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Going somewhere?”

I was frozen, dazed, by acute xenophobia. Dak was handicapped by disarranged clothing. But little Jock Dubois acted with a simple heroism that made him my beloved brother even as he died … He flung himself at that life wand. Right at it-he made no attempt to evade it.

He must have been dead, a hole burned through his belly you could poke a fist through, before he hit the floor. But he hung on and the pseudo limb stretched like taffy-then snapped, broken off a few inches from the monster’s neck, and poor Jock still had the life wand cradled in his dead arms.

The human who had followed that stinking, reeking thing into the room had to step to one side before he could get in a shot- and he made a mistake. He should have shot Dak first, then me. Instead he wasted his first one on Jock and he never got a second one, as Dak shot him neatly in the face. I had not even known Dak was armed.

Deprived of his weapon, the Martian did not attempt to escape. Dak bounced to his feet, slid up to him, and said, “Ah, Rrringriil. I see you.” “1 see you, Captain Dak Broadhent,” the Martian squeaked, then added, “you will tell my nest?”

“I will tell your nest, Rrringriil.”

“I thank you, Captain Dak Broadbent.”

Dak reached out a long bony finger and poked it into the eye nearest him, shoving it on home until his knuckles were jammed against the brain case. He pulled it out and his finger was slimed with green ichor. The creature’s pseudo limbs crawled back into its trunk in reflex spasm but the dead thing continued to stand firm on its base. Dak hurried into the bath; 1 heard him washing his hands. I stayed where I was, almost as frozen by shock as the late Rrringriil.

Dak came out, wiping his hands on his shirt, and said, “We’ll have to clean this up. There isn’t much time.” He could have been speaking of a spilled drink.

I tried to make clear in one jumbled sentence that I wanted no part of it, that we ought to call the cops, that I wanted to get away from there before the cops came, that he knew what he could do with his crazy impersonation job, and that I planned to sprout wings and fly out the window, flak brushed it all aside. “Don’t jitter, Lorenzo. We’re on minus minutes now. Help me get the bodies into the bathroom.”

“Huh? Good God, man! Let’s just lock up and run for it. Maybe they will never connect us with it.”

“Probably they wouldn’t,” he agreed, “since neither one of us is supposed to be here. But they would be able to see that Rrringriil had killed Jock-and we can’t have that. Not now we can’t.”

“Huh?”

“We can’t afford a news story about a Martian killing a human. So shut up and help me.”

I shut up and helped him. It steadied me to recall that “Benny Grey” had been the worst of sadistic psychopaths, who had enjoyed dismembering his victims. I let “Benny Grey” drag the two human bodies into the bath while Dak took the life wand and sliced Rrringriil into pieces small enough to handle. He was careful to make the first cut below the brain case so the job was not messy, but I could not help him with it-it seemed to me that a dead Martian stank even worse than a live one.

The oubliette was concealed in a panel in the bath just beyond the bidet; if it had not been marked with the usual radiation trefoil it would have been hard to find. After we had shoved the chunks of Rrringriil down it (I managed to get my spunk up enough to help), Dak tackled the messier problem of butchering and draining the human corpses, using the wand and, of course, working in the bath tub.

It is amazing how much blood a man holds. We kept the water running the whole time; nevertheless, it was bad. But when Dak had to tackle the remains of poor little Jock, he just wasn’t up to it. His eyes flooded with tears, blinding him, so I elbowed him aside before he sliced off his own fingers and let “Benny Grey” take over.

When I had finished and there was nothing left to show that there had ever been two other men and a monster in the suite, I sluiced out the tub carefully and stood up. Dak was in the doorway, looking as calm as ever. “I’ve made sure the floor is tidy,” he announced. “I suppose a criminologist with proper equipment could reconstruct it-but we are counting on no one ever suspecting. So let’s get out of here. We’ve got to gain almost twelve minutes somehow. Come on!”

I was beyond asking where or why. “All right. Let’s fix your boots.”

He shook his head. “It would slow me up. Right now speed is more essential than not being recognized.”

“I am in your hands.” I followed him to the door; he stopped and said, “There may be others around. If so, shoot first-there’s nothing else you can do.” He had the life wand in his hand, with his cloak drawn over it.

“Martians?”

“Or men. Or both.”

“Dak? Was Rrringriil one of those four at the Manana bar?”

“Certainly. Why do you think I went around Robinson’s barn to get you out of there and over here? They either tailed you, as we did, or they tailed me. Didn’t you recognize him?” “Heavens, no! Those monsters all look alike to me.”

“And they say we all look alike. The four were Rrringriil, his conjugate-brother Rrringlath, and two others from his nest, of divergent lines. But shut up. If you see a Martian, shoot. You have the other gun?”

“Uh, yes. Look, Dak, I don’t know what this is all about. But as long as those beasts are against you, I’m with you. I despise Martians.” He looked shocked. “You don’t know what you are saying. We’re not fighting Martians; those four are renegades.”

“Huh?”

“There are lots of good Martians-almost all of them. Shucks, even Rrringriil wasn’t a bad sort in most ways-I’ve had many a fine chess game with him.” “What? In that case, I’m—”

“Stow it. You’re in too deep to back out. Now quick-march, straight to the bounce tube. I’ll cover our rear.” I shut up. I was in much too deep-that was unarguable.

We hit the sub-basement and went at once to the express tubes. Atwo-passenger capsule was just emptying; Dak shoved me in so quickly that I did not see him set the control combiiiation. But I was hardly surprised when the pressure let up from my chest and I saw the sign blinking JEFFERSON SKYPORT-ALL OUT.

Nor did I care what station it was as long as it was as far as possible from Hotel Eisenhower. The few minutes we had been crammed in the vactube had been long enough for me to devise a plan-sketchy, tentative, and subject to change without notice, as the fine print always says, but a plan. It could be stated in two words: Get lost!

Only that morning I would have found the plan very difficult to execute; in our culture a man with no money at all is baby-helpless. But with a hundred slugs in my pocket I could go far and fast. I felt no obligation to Dak Broadbent. For reasons of his own-not my reasons!-he had almost got me killed, then had crowded me into covering up a crime, made rue a fugitive from justice. But we had evaded the police, temporarily at least, and now, simply by shaking off Broadbent, I could forget the whole thing, shelve it as a bad dream. It seemed most unlikely that I could be connected with the affair even if it were discovered-fortunately a gentleman always wears gloves, and I had had mine off only to put on makeup and later during that ghastly house cleaning.

Aside from the warm burst of adolescent heroics I had felt when I thought Dak was fighting Martians I had no interest in his schemes-and even that sympathy had shut off when I found that he liked Martians in general. His impersonation job I would not now touch with the proverbial eleven-foot pole. To hell with Broadbent! All I wanted out of life was money enough to keep body and soul together and a chance to practice my art; cops-androbbers nonsense did not interest me-poor theater at best.

Jefferson Port seemed handmade to carry out my scheme. Crowded and confused, with express tubes spiderwebbing from it, in it, if Dak took his eyes off me for half a second I would be halfway to Omaha. I would lie low a few weeks, then get in touch with my agent and find out if any inquiries had been made about me.

Dak saw to it that we climbed out of the capsule together, else I would have slammed it shut and gone elsewhere at once. I pretended not to notice and stuck close as a puppy to him as we went up the belt to the main hall just under the surface, coming out between the Pan-Am desk and American Skylines. Dak straight across the waiting-room floor toward Diana, Ltd.,

and I surmised that he was going to buy tickets for the Moon shuttle- how he planned to get me aboard without passport or vaccination certificate I could not guess but I knew that be was resourceful. I decided that I would fade into the furniture while he bad his wallet out; when a man counts money there are at least a few seconds when his eyes and attention are fully occupied.

But we went right on past the Diana desk and through an archway marked Private Berths. The passageway beyond was not crowded and the walls were blank; I realized with dismay that I had let slip my best chance, back there in the busy main hail. I held back. “Dak? Are we making a jump?”

“Of course.”

“Dak, you’re crazy. I’ve got no papers, I don’t even have a tourist card for the Moon.” “You won’t need them.”

“Huh? They’ll stop me at ‘Emigration.’ Then a big, beefy cop will start asking questions.”

Ahand about the size of a cat closed on my upper arm. “Let’s not waste time. Why should you go through ‘Emigration,’ when officially you aren’t leaving? And why should I, when officially I never arrived? Quick-march, old son.”

I am well muscled and not small, but I felt as if a traffic robot were pulling me out of a danger zone. I saw a sign reading MEN and I made a desperate attempt to break it up. “Dak, half a minute, please. Got to see a man about the plumbing.”

He grinned at me. “Oh, yes? You went just before we left the hotel.” He did not slow up or let go of me. “Kidney trouble-“

“Lorenzo old son, I smell a case of cold feet. Tell you what I’ll do. See that cop up ahead?” At the end of the corridor, in the private berths station, a defender of the peace was resting his big feet by leaning over a counter. “I find I have a sudden attack of conscience. I feel a need to confess-about how you killed a visiting Martian and two local citizens-about how you held a gun on me and forced me to help you dispose of the bodies. About—”

“You’re crazy!”

“Almost out of my mind with anguish and remorse, shipmate.” “But-you’ve got nothing on me.”

“So? I think my story will sound more convincing than yours. I know what it is all about and you don’t. I know all about you and you know nothing about me. For example he mentioned a couple of details in my past that I would have sworn were buried and forgotten. All right, so I did have a couple of routines useful for stag shows that are not for the family trade-a man has to eat. But that matter about Bebe; that was hardly fair, for I certainly had not known that she was underage. As for that hotel bill, while it is true that bilking an “innkeeper” in Miami Beach carries much the same punishment as armed robbery elsewhere, it is a very provincial attitude-I would have paid if I had had the money. As for that unfortunate incident in Seattle-well, what I am trying to say is that Dak did know an amazing amount about my background but he had the wrong slant on most of it. Still.

“So,” he continued, “let’s walk right up to yon gendarme and make a clean breast of it. I’ll lay you seven to two as to which one of us is out on bail first.”

So we marched up to the cop and on past him. He was talking to a female clerk back of the railing and neither one of them looked up. Dak took out two tickets reading, GATE PASS- MAINTENANCE PERMIT-Berth K-l27, and stuck them into the monitor. The machine scanned them, a transparency directed us to take an tipper-level car, code King 127; the gate let us through and locked behind us as a recorded voice said, “Watch your step, please, and heed radiation warnings. The Terminal Company is not responsible for accidents beyond the gate.”

Dak punched an entirely different code in the little car; it wheeled around, picked a track, and we took off out under the field. It did not matter to me. I was beyond caring.

When we stepped out of the little car it went back where it came from. In front of me was a ladder disappearing into the steel ceiling above. Dak nudged me. “Up you go.” There was a scuttle hole at the top and on it a sign: RADIATION HAZARD-Optimax 13 Seconds. The figures had been chalked in. I stopped. I have no special interest in offspring but I am no fool. Dak grinned and said, “Got your lead britches on? Open it, go through at once and straight up the ladder into the ship. If you don’t stop to scratch, you’ll make it with at least three seconds to spare.”

I believe I made it with five seconds to spare. I was out in the sunlight for about ten feet, then I was inside a long tube in the ship. I used about every third rung.

The rocket ship was apparently small. At least the control room was quite cramped; I never got a look at the outside. The only other spaceships I had ever been in were the Moon shuttles Evangeline and her sister ship the Gabriel, that being the year in which I had incautiously accepted a lunar engagement on a co-op basis-our impresario had had a notion that a juggling, tightrope, and acrobatic routine would go well in the one-sixth gee of the Moon, which was correct as far as it went, but he had not allowed rehearsal time for us to get used to low gravity. I had to take advantage of the Distressed Travelers Act to get back and I had lost my wardrobe.

There were two men in the control room; one was lying in one of three acceleration couches fiddling with dials, the other was making obscure motions with a screw driver. The one in the couch glanced at me, said nothing. The other one turned, looked worried, then said past me, “What happened to Jock?”

Dak almost levitated out of the hatch behind me. “No time!” he snapped. “Have you compensated for his mass?” “Red, is she taped? Tower?”

The man in the couch answered lazily, “I’ve been recomputing every two minutes. You’re clear with the tower. Minus forty-, uh, seven seconds.” “Out of that bunk! Scram! I’m going to catch that tick!”

Red moved lazily out of the couch as Dak got in. The other man shoved me into the copilot’s couch and strapped a safety belt across my chest. He turned and dropped down the escape tube. Red followed him, then stopped with his head and shoulders out. “Tickets, please!” he said cheerfully.

“Oh, cripes!” Dak loosened a safety belt, reached for a pocket, got out the two field passes we bad used to sneak aboard, and shoved them at him.

“Thanks,” Red answered. “See you in church. Hot jets, and so forth.” He disappeared with leisurely swiftness; I heard the air lock close and my eardrums popped. Dak did not answer his farewell; his eyes were busy on the computer dials and he made some minor adjustment.

“Twenty-one seconds,” he said to me. “There’ll be no rundown. Be sure your arms are inside and that you are relaxed. The first step is going to be a honey.” I did as I was told, then waited for hours in that curtain-going-up tension. Finally I said, “Dak?”

“Shut up!”

“Just one thing: where are we going?”

“Mars.” I saw his thumb jab at a red button and I blacked out. Chapter 2

What is so funny about a man being dropsick? Those dolts with cast-iron stomachs always laugh-I’ll bet they would laugh if Grandma broke both legs.

I was spacesick, of course, as soon as the rocket ship quit blasting and went into free fall. I came out of it fairly quickly as my stomach was practically empty-I’d eaten nothing since breakfast- and was simply wanly miserable the remaining eternity of that awful trip. It took us an hour and forty-three minutes to make rendezvous, which is roughly equal to a thousand years in purgatory to a ground hog like myself.

I’ll say this for Dak, though: he did not laugh. Dak was a professional and he treated my normal reaction with the impersonal good manners of a ifight nurse-not like those flat-headed, loudvoiced jackasses you’ll find on the passenger list of a Moon shuttle. If I had my way, those healthy self -panickers would be spaced in mid-orbit and allowed to laugh themselves to death in vacuum.

Despite the turmoil in my mind and the thousand questions I wanted to ask we had almost made rendezvous with a torchship, which was in parking orbit around Earth, before I could stir up interest in anything. I suspect that if one were to inform a victim of spacesickness that he was to be shot at sunrise his own answer would be, “Yes? Would you hand me that sack, please?”

But I finally recovered to the point where instead of wanting very badly to die the scale had tipped so that I had a flickering, halfhearted interest in continuing to live. Dak was busy most of the time at the ship’s communicator, apparently talking on a very tight beam for his hands constantly nursed the directional control like a gunner laying a gun under difficulties. I could not hear what he said, or even read his lips, as he had his face pushed into the nimble box. I assumed that he was talking to the long-jump ship we were to meet.

But when he pushed the communicator aside and lit a cigarette I repressed the stomach retch that the mere sight of tobacco smoke had inspired and said, “Dak, isn’t it about time you told me the score?”

“Plenty of time for that on our way to Mars.”

“Huh? Damn your arrogant ways,” I protested feebly. “I don’t want to go to Mars. I would never have considered your crazy offer if 1 had known it was on Mars.” “Suit yourself. You don’t have to go.”

“Eh?”

“The air lock is right behind you. Get out and walk. Mind you close the door.”

I did not answer the ridiculous suggestion. He went on, “But if you can’t breathe space the easiest thing to do is to go to Mars- and I’ll see that you get back. The Can Do-that’s this bucket-is about to rendezvous with the Go For Broke, which is a high-gee torchship. About seventeen seconds and a gnat’s wink after we make contact the Go For Broke will torch for Mars-for we’ve got to be there by Wednesday.”

I answered with the petulant stubbornness of a sick man. “I’m not going to Mars. I’m going to stay right in this ship. Somebody has to take it back and land it on Earth. You can’t fool me.” “True,” Broadbent agreed. “But you won’t be in it. The three blokes who are supposed to be in this ship-according to the records back at Jefferson Field-are in the Go For Broke right now.

This is a three-man ship, as you’ve noticed. I’m afraid you will find them stuffy about giving up a place to you. And besides, how would you get back through ‘Immigration’?”

“I don’t care! I’d be back on ground.”

“And in jail, charged with everything from illegal entry to mopery and dopery in the spaceways. At the very least they would be sure that you were smuggling and they would take you to some quiet back room and run a needle in past your eyeball and find out just what you were up to. They would know what questions to ask and you wouldn’t be able to keep from answering. But you wouldn’t be able to implicate me, for good old Dak Broadhent hasn’t been back to Earth in quite a spell and has unimpeachable witnesses to prove it.”

I thought about it sickly, both from fear and the continuing effects of spacesickness. “So you would tip off the police? You dirty, slimy—” I broke off for lack of an adequately insulting noun. “Oh no! Look, old son, I might twist your arm a bit and let you think that I would cry copper-but I never would. But Rrringriil’s conjugate-brother Rrringlath certainly knows that old ‘Grill’ went

in that door and failed to come out. He will tip off the noises. Conjugate-brother is a relationship so close that we will never understand it, since we don’t reproduce by fission.”

I didn’t care whether Martians reproduced like rabbits or the stork brought them in a little black bag. The way he told it I could never go back to Earth, and I said so. He shook his head. “Not at all. Leave it to me and we will slide you back in as neatly as we slid you out. Eventually you will walk off that field or some other field with a gate pass which shows that you are a mechanic who has been making some last-minute adjustment-and you’ll have greasy coveralls and a tool kit to back it up. Surely an actor of your skill can play the part of a mechanic for a few minutes?”

“Eh? Why, certainly! But-“

“There you are! You stick with ol’ Doc Dak; he’ll take care of you. We shuffled eight guild brothers in this current caper to get me on Earth and both of us off; we can do it again. But you would not stand a chance without voyageurs to help you.” He grinned. “Every voyageur is a free trader at heart. The art of smuggling being what it is, we are all of us always ready to help out one another in a little innocent deception of the port guards. But a person outside the lodge does not ordinarily get such co-operation.”

I tried to steady my stomach and think about it. “Dak, is this a smuggling deal? Because-“ “Oh no! Except that we are smuggling you.”

“I was going to say that I don’t regard smuggling as a crime.”

“Who does? Except those who make money off the rest of us by limiting trade. But this is a straight impersonation job, Lorenzo, and you are the man for it. It wasn’t an accident that I ran across you in the bar; there had been a tail on you for two days. As soon as I hit dirt I went where you were.” He frowned. “I wish I could be sure our honorable antagonists had been following me, and not you.”

“Why?”

“If they were following me they were trying to find out what I was after-which is okay, as the lines were already drawn; we knew we were mutual enemies. But if they were following you, then they knew what I was after-an actor who could play the role.”

“But how could they know that? Unless you told them?”

“Lorenzo, this thing is big, much bigger than you imagine. I don’t see it all myself-and the less you know about it until you must, the better off you are. But I can tell you this: a set of personal characteristics was fed into the big computer at the System Census Bureau at The Hague and the machine compared them with the personal characteristics of every male professional actor alive. It was done as discreetly as possible but somebody might have guessed-and talked. The specifications amounted to identification both of the principal and the actor who could double for him, since the job had to be perfect.”

“Oh. And the machine told you that I was the man for it?” “Yes. You-and one other.”

This was another good place for me to keep my mouth shut. But I could not have done so if my life had depended on it-which in a way it did. I just had to know who the other actor was who was considered competent to play a role which called for my unique talents. “This other one? Who is he?”

Dak looked me over; I could see him hesitate. “Mmm-fellow by the name of Orson Trowbridge. Know him?” “That ham!” For a moment I was so furious that I forgot my nausea.

“So? I hear that he is a very good actor.”

I simply could not help being indignant at the idea that anyone should even think about that oaf Trowbridge for a role for which I was being considered. “That arm-waver! That word- mouther!” I stopped, realizing that it was more dignified to ignore such colleagues-if the word fits. But that popinjay was so conceited that- well, if the role called for him to kiss a lady’s hand, Trowbridge would fake it by kissing his own thumb instead. Anarcissist, a poseur, a double fake-how could such a man live a role?

Yet such is the injustice of fortune that his sawings and rantings had paid him well while real artists went hungry. “Dak, I simply cannot see why you considered him for it.”

“Well, we didn’t want him; he is tied up with some long-term contract that would make his absence conspicuous and awkward. It was lucky for us that you were-uh, ‘at liberty.’ As soon as you agreed to the job I had Jock send word to call off the team that was trying to arrange a deal with Trowbridge.”

“I should think so!”

“But-see here, Lorenzo, I’m going to lay it on the line. While you were busy whooping your cookies after Brennschluss I called the Go For Broke and told them to pass the word down to get busy on Trowbridge again.”

“What?”

“You asked for it, shipmate. See here, a man in my racket contracts to herd a heap to Ganymede, that means he will pilot that pot to Ganymede or die trying. He doesn’t get fainthearted and try to welsh while the ship is being loaded. You told me you would take this job-no ‘ifs’ or ‘ands’ or ‘buts’-you took the job. Afew minutes later there is a fracas; you lose your nerve. Later you try to run out on me at the field. Only ten minutes ago you were screaming to be taken back dirtside. Maybe you are a better actor than Trowbridge. I wouldn’t know. But I know we need a man who can be depended on not to lose his nerve when the time comes. I understand that Trowbridge is that sort of bloke. So if we can get him, we’ll use him instead, pay you off and tell you nothing and ship you back. Understand?”

Too well I understood. Dak did not use the word-I doubt if he would have understood it-but he was telling me that I was not a trouper. The bitter part about it was that he was justified. I could not be angry; I could only be ashamed. I had been an idiot to accept the contract without knowing more about it-but I had agreed to play the role, without conditions or escape clauses. Now I was trying to back out, like a rank amateur with stage fright.

“The show must go on” is the oldest tenet of show business. Perhaps it has no philosophical verity, but the things men live by are rarely subject to logical proof. My father had believed it-I had seen him play two acts with a burst appendix and then take his bows before he had let them rush him to a hospital. I could see his face now, looking at me with the contempt of a trouper for a so-called actor who would let an audience down.

“Dak,” I said humbly, “I am very sorry. I was wrong.” He looked at me sharply. “You’ll do the job?”

“Yes.” I meant it sincerely. Then I suddenly remembered a factor which could make the part as impossible for me as the role of Snow White in The Seven Dwarfs. “That is-well, I want to. But—”

“But what?” he said scornfully. “More of your damned temperament?”

“No, no! But you said we were going to Mars. Dak, am I going to be expected to do this impersonation with Martians around me?” “Eh? Of course. How else on Mars?”

“Uh … But, Dak, I can’t stand Martians! They give me the heebie jeebies. I wouldn’t want to-I would try not to-but I might fall right out of the characterization.” “Oh. If that is all that is worrying you, forget it.”

“Huh? But I can’t forget it. I can’t help it. I-“

“I said, ‘Forget it.’ Old son, we knew you were a peasant in such matters-we know all about you. Lorenzo, your fear of Martians is as childish and irrational as a fear of spiders or snakes. But we had anticipated it and it will be taken care of. So forget it.”

“Well-all right.” I was not much reassured, but he had flicked me where it hurt. “Peasant”-why, “peasants” were the audience! So I shut up.

Dak pulled the communicator to him, did not bother to silence his message with the rumble box: “Dandelion to Tumbleweed- cancel Plan Inkblot. We will complete Mardi Gras.” “Dak?” I said as he signed off.

“Later,” he answered. “I’m about to match orbits. The contact may be a little rough, as I am not going to waste time worrying about chuck holes. So pipe down and hang on.”

And it was rough. By the time we were in the torchship I was glad to be comfortably back in free fall again; surge nausea is even worse than everyday dropsickness. But we did not stay in free fall more than five minutes; the three men who were to go back in the Can Do were crowding into the transfer lock even as Dak and I floated into the torchship. The next few moments were extremely confused. I suppose I am a ground hog at heart for I disorient very easily when I can’t tell the floor from the ceiling. Someone called out, “Where is he?” Dak replied, “Here)” The same voice replied, “Him?” as if he could not believe his eyes.

“Yes, yes!” Dak answered. “He’s got make-up on. Never mind, it’s all right. Help me get him into the cider press.”

Ahand grabbed my arm, towed me along a narrow passage and into a compartment. Against one bulkhead and flat to it were two bunks, or “cider presses,” the bathtub-shaped, hydraulic, pressure-distribution tanks used for high acceleration in torchships. I had never seen one before but we had used quite convincing mock-ups in the space opus The Earth Raiders.

There was a stenciled sign on the bulkhead behind the bunks:

WARRING!!! Do Not Take More than Three Gravities without a Gee Suit. By Order of— I rotated slowly out of range of vision before I could finish reading it and someone shoved me into one cider press. Dak and the other men were hurriedly strapping me against it when a horn somewhere near by broke into a horrid hooting. It continued for several seconds, then a voice replaced it: “Red warning! Two gravities! Three minutes! Red warning! Two gravities! Three minutes!” Then the hooting started again.

Through the racket I heard Dak ask urgently, “Is the projector all set? The tapes ready?” “Sure, sure!”

“Got the hypo?” Dak squirmed around in the air and said to me, “Look, shipmate, we’re going to give you a shot. It’s all right. Part of it is Nullgrav, the rest is a stimulant-for you are going to have to stay awake and study your lines. It will make your eyeballs feel hot at first and it may make you itch, but it won’t hurt you.”

“Wait, Dak, I-“

“No time! I’ve got to smoke this scrap heap!” He twisted and was out the door before I could protest. The second man pushed up my left sleeve, held an injection gun against the skin, and I had received the dose before I knew it. Then he was gone. The hooting gave way to: “Red waning! Two gravities! Two minutes!”

I tried to look around but the drug made me even more confused. My eyeballs did feel hot and my teeth as well and I began to feel an almost intolerable itching along my spine-but the safety straps kept me from reaching the tortured area-and perhaps kept me from breaking an arm at acceleration. The hooting stopped again and this time Dak’s self-confident baritone boomed out, “Last red warning! Two gravities! One minute! Knock off those pinochle games and spread your fat carcasses-we’re goin’ to smoke!” The hooting was replaced this time by a recording of Arkezian’s Ad Astra, opus 61 in C major. It was the controversial London Symphony version with the 14-cycle “scare” notes buried in the timpani. Battered, bewildered, and doped as I was, they seemed to have no effect on me-you can’t wet a river.

Amermaid came in the door. No scaly tail, surely, but a mermaid is what she looked like. When my eyes refocused I saw that it was a very likely looking and adequately mammalian young woman in singlet and shorts, swimming along head first in a way that made clear that free fall was no novelty to her. She glanced at me without smiling, placed herself against the other cider press, and took hold of the hand grips-she did not bother with safety belts. The music hit the rolling finale and I felt myself grow very heavy.

Two gravities is not bad, not when you are floating in a liquid bed. The skin over the top of the cider press pushed up around me, supporting me inch by inch; I simply felt heavy and found it hard to breathe. You hear these stories about pilots torching at ten gravities and ruining themselves and I have no doubt that they are true-but two gravities, taken in the cider press, simply makes one feel languid, unable to move.

It was some time before I realized that the horn in the ceiling was speaking to me. “Lorenzo! How are you doing, shipmate?” “All right.” The effort made me gasp. “How long do we have to put up with this?”

“About two days.”

I must have moaned, for Dak laughed at me. “Quit bellyaching, chum! My first trip to Mars took thirty-seven weeks, every minute of it free fall in an elliptical orbit. You’re taking the luxury route, at a mere double gee for a couple of days-with a one-gee rest at turnover, I might add. We ought to charge you for it.”

I started to tell him what I thought of his humor in scathing green-room idiom, then recalled that there was a lady present. My father had taught me that a woman will forgive any action, up to and including assault with violence, but is easily insulted by language; the lovelier half of our race is symbol-oriented-very strange, in view of their extreme practicality. In any case, I have never let a taboo word pass my lips when it might offend the ears of a lady since the time 1 last received the back of my father’s hard hand full on my mouth… Father could have given Professor Pavlov pointers in reflex conditioning.

But Dak was speaking again. “Penny! You there, honey chile?” “Yes, Captain,” the young woman with me answered.

“Okay, start him on his homework. I’ll be down when I have this firetrap settled in its groove.”

“Very well, Captain.” She turned her head toward me and said in a soft, husky, contralto voice, “Dr. Capek wants you simply to relax and look at movies for several hours. I am here to answer questions as necessary.”

I sighed. “Thank goodness someone is at last going to answer questions!”

She did not answer, but raised an ann with some difficulty and passed it over a switch. The lights in the compartment died out and a sound and stereo image built up in front of my eyes. I recognized the central figure-just as any of the billions of citizens of the Empire would have recognized him-and I realized at last how thoroughly and mercilessly Dak Broadbent had tricked me.

It was Bonforte.

The Bonforte, I mean-the Right Honorable John Joseph Bonforte, former Supreme Minister, leader of the loyal opposition, and head of the Expansionist coalition-the most loved (and the most hated!) man in the entire Solar System.

My astonished mind made a standing broad jump and arrived at what seemed a logical certainty. Bonforte had lived through at least three assassination attempts-or so the news reports would have us believe. At least two of his escapes had seemed almost miraculous. Suppose they were not miraculous? Suppose they had all been successful-but dear old Uncle Joe Bonforte had always been somewhere else at the time?

You could use up a lot of actors that way. Chapter 3

I had never meddled in politics. My father had warned against it. “Stay out of it, Larry,” he had told me solemnly. “The publicity you get that way is bad publicity. The peasants don’t like it.” I had never voted-not even after the amendment of ‘98 made it easy for the floating population (which includes, of course, most members of the profession) to exercise franchise.

However, insofar as I had political leanings of any sort, they certainly did not lean toward Bonforte. I considered him a dangerous man and very possibly a traitor to the human race. The idea of standing up and getting killed in his place was-how shall I put it?-distasteful to me.

But-what a role!

I had once played the lead in L’Aiglon and I had played Caesar in the only two plays about him worthy of the name. But to play such a role in life-well, it is enough to make one understand how a man could go to the guillotine in another man’s place-just for the chance to play, even for a few moments, the ultimately exacting role, in order to create the supreme, the perfect, work of art.

I wondered who my colleagues had been who had been unable to resist that temptation on those earlier occasions. They had been artists, that was certain-though their very anonymity was the only tribute to the success of their characterizations. I tried to remember just when the earlier attempts on Bonforte’s life had taken place and which colleagues who might have been capable of the role had died or dropped out of sight at those times. But it was useless. Not only was I not too sure of the details of current political history but also actors simply fade out of view with depressing frequency; it is a chancy profession even for the best of us.

I found that I had been studying closely the characterization.

I realized I could play it. Hell, I could play it with one foot in a bucket and a smell of smoke backstage. To begin with, there was no problem of physique; Bonforte and I could have swapped clothes without a wrinkle. These childish conspirators who had shanghaied me had vastly overrated the importance of physical resemblance, since it means nothing if not backed up by art-and need not be at all close if the actor is competent. But I admit that it does help and their silly game with the computer machine had resulted (quite by accident!) in selecting a true artist, as well as one who was in measurements and bony structure the twin of the politician. His profile was much like mine; even his hands were long, narrow, and aristocratic like mine-and hands are harder than faces.

That limp, supposedly the result of one of the attempts on his life-nothing to it! After watching him for a few minutes I knew that I could get up from that bed (at one gravity, that is) and walk in precisely the same way and never have to think about it. The way he had of scratching his collarbone and then brushing his chin, the almost imperceptible tic which preceded each of his sentences-such things were no trouble; they soaked into my subconscious like water into sand.

To be sure, he was fifteen or twenty years older than I was, but it is easier to play a role older than oneself than one younger. In any case, age to an actor is simply a matter of inner attitude; it has nothing to do with the steady march of catabolism.

I could have played him on boards, or read a speech in his place, within twenty minutes. But this part, as I understood it, would be more than such an interpretation; Dak had hinted that I would have to convince people who knew hlin well, perhaps in intimate circumstances. This is surpassingly more difficult. Does he take sugar in his coffee? If so, how much? Which hand does he use to strike a cigarette and with what gesture? I got the answer to that one and planted it deep in my mind even as I phrased the question; the simulacrum in front of me struck a cigarette in a fashion that convinced me that he had used matches and the oldfashioned sort of gasper for years before he had gone along with the march of so-called progress.

Worst of all, a man is not a single complexity; he is a different complexity to every person who knows him-which means that, to be successful, an impersonation must change for each “audience”

-for each acquaintance of the man being impersonated. This is not merely difficult; it is statistically impossible. Such little things could trip one up. What shared experiences does your principal have with acquaintance John Jones? With a hundred, or a thousand, John Joneses? How could an impersonator possibly know?

Acting per Se, like all art, is a process of abstracting, of retaining only significant detail. But in impersonation any detail can be significant. In time, something as silly as not crunching celery could let the cat out of the bag.

Then I recalled with glum conviction that my performance probably need be convincing only long enough for a marksman to draw a bead on me.

But I was still studying the man I was to replace (what else could I do?) when the door opened and I heard Dak in his proper person call out, “Anybody home?” The lights came on, the threedimensional vision faded, and I felt as if I had been wrenched from a dream. I turned my head; the young woman called Penny was struggling to lift her head from the other hydraulic bed and Dak was standing braced in the doorway.

I looked at him and said wonderingly, “How do you manage to stand up?” Part of my mind, the professional part that works independentiy, was noting how he stood and filing it in a new drawer marked: “How a Man Stands under Two Gravities.”

He grinned at me. “Nothing to it. I wear arch supports.” “Hmmmph!”

“You can stand up, if you want to. Ordinarily we discourage passengers from getting out of the boost tanks when we are torching at anything over one and a half gees-too much chance that some idiot wifi fall over his own feet and break a leg. But I once saw a really tough weight-lifter type climb out of the press and walk at five gravities-but he was never good for much afterwards. But two gees is okay-about like carrying another man piggyback.” He glanced at the young lady. “Giving him the straight word, Penny?”

“He hasn’t asked anything yet.”

“So? Lorenzo, I thought you were the lad who wanted all the answers.”

I shrugged. “I cannot now see that it matters, since it is evident that I will not live long enough to appreciate them.” “Eh? What soured your milk, old son?”

“Captain Broadbent,” I said bitterly, “I am inhibited in expressing myself by the presence of a lady; therefore I cannot adequately discuss your ancestry, personal habits, morals, and destination. Let it stand that I knew what you had tricked me into as soon as I became aware of the identity of the man I am to impersonate. I will content myself with one question only:

who is about to attempt to assassinate Bonforte? Even a clay pigeon should be entitled to know who is shooting at him.”

For the first time I saw Dak register surprise. Then he laughed so hard that the acceleration seemed to be too much for him; he slid to the deck and braced his back against a bulkhead, still laughing.

“I don’t see anything funny about it,” I said angrily.

He stopped and wiped his eyes. “Lorrie old son, did you honestly think that I had set you up as a sitting duck?” “It’s obvious.” I told him my deductions about the earlier assassination attempts.

He had the sense not to laugh again. “I see. You thought it was a job about like food taster for a Middle Ages king. Well, we’ll have to try to straighten you out; I don’t suppose it helps your acting to think that you are about to be burned down where you stand. Look, I’ve been with the Chief for six years. During that time I know he has never used a double … Nevertheless, I was present on two occasions when attempts were made on his life- one of those times I shot the hatchet man. Penny, you’ve been with the Chief longer than that. Has he ever used a double before?”

She looked at me coldly. “Never. The very idea that the Chief would let anybody expose himself to danger in his place is-well, I ought to slap your face; that’s what I ought to do!”

“Take it easy, Penny,” Dak said mildly. “You’ve both got jobs to do and you are going to have to work with him. Besides, his wrong guess isn’t too silly, not from the outside. By the way, Lorenzo, this is Penelope Russell. She is the Chief’s personal secretary, which makes her your number-one coach.”

“I am honored to meet you, mademoiselle.” “I wish I could say the same!”

“Stow it, Penny, or I’ll spank your round fanny-at two gravities. Lorenzo, I concede that doubling for John Joseph Bonforte isn’t as safe as tiding in a wheel chair-shucks, as we both know, several attempts have been made to close out his life insurance. But that is not what we are afraid of this time. Matter of fact, this time, for political reasons you will presently understand, the laddies we are up against won’t dare to try to kill the Chief-or to kill you when you are doubling for the Chief. They are playing rough

-as you know!-and they would kill me, or even Penny, for the slightest advantage. They would kill you right now, if they could get at you. But when you make this public appearance as the Chief you’ll be safe; the circumstances will be such that they can’t afford to kill.”

He studied my face. “Well?”

I shook my head. “I don’t follow you.”

“No, but you will. It is a complicated matter, involving Martian ways of looking at things. Take it for granted; you’ll know all about it before we get there.”

I still did not like it. Thus far Dak had told me no outright lies that I knew of-but he could lie effectively by not telling all that he knew, as I had learned the bitter way. I said, “See here, I have no reason to trust you, or to trust this young lady-if you will pardon mc, miss. But while I haven’t any liking for Mr. Bonforte, he does have the reputation for being painfully, even offensively, honest. When do I get to talk to him? As soon as we reach Mars?”

Dak’s ugly, cheerful face was suddenly shadowed with sadness. “I’m afraid not. Didn’t Penny tell you?” “Tell me what?”

“Old son, that’s why we’ve got to have a double for the Chief. They’ve kidnapped him!”

My head ached, possibly from the double weight, or perhaps from too many shocks. “Now you know,” Dak went on. “You know why Jock Dubois didn’t want to trust you with it until after we raised ground. It is the biggest news story since the first landing on the Moon, and we are sitting on it, doing our damnedest to keep it from ever being known. We hope to use you until

we can find him and get him back. Matter of fact, you have already started your impersonation. This ship is not really the Go For Broke; it is the Chief’s private yacht and traveling office, the Tom Paine. The Go For Broke is riding a parking orbit around Mars, with its transponder giving out the recognition signal of this ship-a fact known only to its captain and comm officer- while the Tommie tucks up her skirts and rushes to Earth to pick up a substitute for the Chief. Do you begin to scan it, old son?”

I admit that I did not. “Yes, but-see here, Captain, if Mr. Bonforte’s political enemies have kidnapped him, why keep it secret? I should expect you to shout it from the housetops.” “On Earth we would. At New Batavia we would. On Venus we would. But here we are dealing with Mars. Do you know the legend of Kkkahgral the Younger?”

“Eh? I’m afraid I don’t.”

“You must study it; it will give you insight into what makes a Martian tick. Briefly, this boy Kkkah was to appear at a certain time and place, thousands of years ago, for a very high honor- like being knighted. Through no fault of his own (the way we would look at it) he failed to make it on time. Obviously the only thing to do was to kill him-by Martian standards. But because of his youth and his distinguished record some of the radicals present argued that he should be allowed to go back and start over. But Kkkahgral would have none of it. He insisted on his right to prosecute the case himself, won it, and was executed. Which makes him the very embodiment, the patron saint, of propriety on Mars.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Is it? We aren’t Martians. They are a very old race and they have worked out a system of debts and obligations to cover every possible situation-the greatest formalists conceivable. Compared with them, the ancient Japanese, with their girl and gimu, were outright anarchists. Martians don’t have ‘right’ and ‘wrong’-instead they have propriety and impropriety, squared, cubed, and loaded with gee juice. But where it bears on this problem is that the Chief was about to be adopted into the nest of Kkkahgral the Younger himself. Do you scan me now?”

I still did not. To my mind this Kkkah character was one of the more loathsome items from Le Grand Guignol. Broadbent went on, “It’s simple enough. The Chief is probably the greatest practical student of Martian customs and psychology. He has been working up to this for years. Comes local noon on Wednesday at Lacus Soli, the ceremony of adoption takes place. If the Chief is there and goes through his paces properly, everything is sweet. If he is not there-and it makes no difference at all why he is not there-his name is mud on Mars, in every nest from pole to pole- and the greatest interplanetary and interracial political coup ever attempted falls flat on its face. Worse than that, it will backfire. My guess is that the very least that will happen is for Mars to withdraw even from its present loose association with the Empire. Much more likely there will be reprisals and human beings will be killed-maybe every human on Mars. Then the extremists in the Humanity Party would have theft way and Mars would be brought into the Empire by force-but only after every Martian was dead. And all set off just by Bonforte failing to show up for the adoption ceremony… Martians take these things very seriously.”

Dak left as suddenly as he had appeared and Penelope Russell turned on the picture projector again. It occurred to me fretfully that I should have asked him what was to keep our enemies from simply killing me, if all that was needed to upset the political applecart was to keep Bonforte (in his proper person, or through his double) from attending some barbaric Martian ceremony. But I had forgotten to ask-perhaps I was subconsciously afraid of being answered.

But shortly I was again studying Bonforte, watching his movements and gestures, feeling his expressions, subvocalizing the tones of his voice, while floating in that detached, warm reverie of artistic effort. Already I was “wearing his head.”

I was panicked out of it when the images shifted to one in which Bonforte was surrounded by Martians, touched by their pseudo limbs. I had been so deep inside the picture that I could actually feel them myself-and the stink was unbearable. I made a strangled noise and clawed at it. “Shut it oft!”

The lights came up and the picture disappeared. Miss Russell was looking at me. “What in the world is the matter with you?”

I tried to get my breath and stop trembling. “Miss Russell-I am very sorry-but please-don’t turn that on again. I can’t stand Martians.”

She looked at me as if she could not believe what she saw but despised it anyhow. “I told them,” she said slowly and scornfully, “that this ridiculous scheme would not work.” “I am very sorry. I cannot help it.”

She did not answer but climbed heavily out of the cider press. She did not walk as easily at two gravities as Dak did, but she managed. She left without another word, closing the door as she went.

She did not return. Instead the door was opened by a man who appeared to be inhabiting a giant kiddie stroller. “Howdy there, young fellow!” he boomed out. He was sixtyish, a bit too

heavy, and bland; I did not have to see his diploma to be aware that his was a “bedside” manner.

“How do you do, sir?”

“Well enough. Better at lower acceleration.” He glanced down at the contrivance he was strapped into. “How do you like my corset-on-wheels? Not stylish, perhaps, but it takes some of the strain off my heart. By the way, just to keep the record straight, I’m Dr. Capek, Mr. Bonforte’s personal therapist. I know who you are. Now what’s this we hear about you and Martians?”

I tried to explain it clearly and unemotionally.

Dr. Capek nodded. “Captain Broadbent should have told me. I would have changed the order of your indoctrination program. The captain is a competent young fellow in his way but his muscles run ahead of his brain on occasion … He is so perfectly normal an extrovert that he frightens me. But no harm done. Mr. Smythe, 1 want your permission to hypnotize you. You have my word as a physician that it will be used only to help you in this matter and that I will in no wise tamper with your personal integration.” He pulled out an old-fashioned pocket watch of the sort that is almost a badge of his profession and took my pulse.

I answered, “You have my permission readily, sir-but it won’t do any good. I can’t go under.” I had learned hypnotic techniques myself during the time I was showing my mentalist act, but my teachers had never had any luck hypnotizing me. Atouch of hypnotism is very useful to such an act, especially if the local police aren’t too fussy about the laws the medical association has hampered us with.

“So? Well, we’ll just have to do the best we can, then. Suppose you relax, get comfortable, and we’ll talk about your problem.” He still kept the watch in his hand, fiddling with it and twisting the chain, after he had stopped taking my pulse. I started to mention it, since it was catching the reading light just over my head, but decided that it was probably a nervous habit of which he was not aware and really too trivial a matter to call to the attention of a stranger.

“I’m relaxed,” I assured him. “Ask me anything you wish. Or free association, if you prefer.”

“Just let yourself float,” he said softly. “Two gravities makes you feel heavy, doesn’t it? I usually just sleep through it myself. It pulls the blood out of the brain, makes one sleepy. They are beginning to boost the drive again. We’ll all have to sleep … We’ll be heavy … We’ll have to sleep. .

I started to tell him that he had better put his watch away-or it would spin right out of his hand. Instead I fell asleep.

When I woke up, the other acceleration bunk was occupied by Dr. Capek. “Howdy, bub,” he greeted me. “I got tired of that confounded perambulator and decided to stretch out here and distribute the strain.”

“Uh, are we back on two gravities again?” “Eh? Oh yes! We’re on two gravities.”

“I’m sorry I blacked out. How long was I asleep?” “Oh, not very long. How do you feel?”

“Fine. Wonderfully rested, in fact.”

“It frequently has that effect. Heavy boost, I mean. Feel like seeing some more pictures?” “Why, certainly, if you say so, Doctor.”

“Okay.” He reached up and again the room went dark.

I was braced for the notion that he was going to show me more pictures of Martians; I made up my mind not to panic. After all, I had found it necessary on many occasions to pretend that they were not present; surely motion pictures of them should not affect me-I had simply been surprised earlier.

They were indeed stereos of Martians, both with and without Mr. Bonforte. I found it possible to study them with detached mind, without terror or disgust. Suddenly I realized that I was enjoying looking at them!

I let out some exclamation and Capek stopped the film. “Trouble?” “Doctor-you hypnotized me!”

“You told me to.”

“But I can’t be hypnotized.” “Sorry to hear it.”

“Uh-so you managed it. I’m not too dense to see that.” I added, “Suppose we try those pictures again. I can’t really believe it.”

He switched them on and I watched and wondered. Martians were not disgusting, if one looked at them without prejudice; they weren’t even ugly. In fact, they possessed the same quaint grace as a Chinese pagoda. True, they were not human in form, but neither is a bird of paradise-and birds of paradise are the loveliest things alive.

I began to realize, too, that their pseudo limbs could be very expressive; their awkward gestures showed some of the bumbling friendliness of puppies. I knew now that I had looked at Martians all my life through the dark glasses of hate and fear.

Of course, I mused, theft stench would still take getting used to, but-and then I suddenly realized that I was smelling them, the unmistakable odor-and I didn’t mind it a bit! In fact, I liked it. “Doctor!” I said urgently. “This machine has a ‘smellie’ attachment-doesn’t it?”

“Eh? I believe not. No, I’m sure it hasn’t-too much parasitic weight for a yacht.” “But it must. I can smell them very plainly.”

“Oh, yes.” He looked slightly shamefaced. “Bub, I did one thing to you that I hope will cause you no inconvenience.” “Sir?”

“While we were digging around inside your skull it became evident that a lot of your neurotic orientation about Martians was triggered by their body odor. I didn’t have time to do a deep job so I had to offset it. I asked Penny-that’s the youngster who was in here before-for a loan of some of the perfume she uses. I’m afraid that from here on out, bub, Martians are going to smell like a Parisian house of joy to you. If I had had time I would have used some homelier pleasant odor, like ripe strawberries or hotcakes and syrup. But I had to improvise.”

I sniffed. Yes, it did smell like a heavy and expensive perfume- and yet, damn it, it was unmistakably the reek of Martians. “I like it.” “You can’t help liking it.”

“But you must have spilled the whole bottle in here. The place is drenched with it.”

“Huh? Not at all. I merely waved the stopper under your nose a half hour ago, then gave the bottle back to Penny and she went away with it.” He sniffed. “The odor is gone now. ‘Jungle Lust,’ it said on the bottle. Seemed to have a lot of musk in it. I accused Penny of trying to make the crew space-happy and she just laughed at me.” He reached up and switched off the stereopix. “We’ve had enough of those for now. I want to get you onto something more useful.”

When the pictures faded out, the fragrance faded with them, just as it does with smellie equipment. I was forced to admit to myself that it was all in the head. But, as an actor, I was intellectually aware of that truth anyhow.

When Penny came back in a few minutes later, she had a fragrance exactly like a Martian. I loved it.

Chapter 4

My education continued in that room (Mr. Bonforte’s guest room, it was) until turnover. I had no sleep, other than under hypnosis, and did not seem to need any. Either Doc Capek or Penny stuck with me and helped me the whole time. Fortunately my man was as thoroughly photographed and recorded as perhaps any man in history and I had, as well, the close co- operation of his intimates. There was endless material; the problem was to see how much I could assimilate, both awake and under hypnosis.

I don’t know at what point I quit disliking Bonforte. Capek assured me-and I believe him-that he did not implant a hypnotic suggestion on this point; I had not asked for it and I am quite certain that Capek was meticulous about the ethical responsibilities of a physician and hypnotherapist. But I suppose that it was an inevitable concomitant of the role-I rather think I would learn to like Jack the Ripper if I studied for the part. Look at it this way:

to learn a role truly, you must for a time become that character. And a man either likes himself, or he commits suicide, one way or another. “To understand all is to forgive all”-and I was beginning to understand Bonforte.

At turnover we got that one-gravity rest that Dak had promised. We never were in free fall, not for an instant; instead of putting out the torch, which I gather they hate to do while under way, the ship described what Dak called a 1 SO-degree skew turn. It leaves the ship on boost the whole time and is done rather qulckly, but it has an oddly disturbing effect on the sense of balance. The effect has a name something like Coriolanus. Coriolis?

All I know about spaceships is that the ones that operate from the surface of a planet are true rockets but the voyageurs call them “teakettles” because of the steam jet of water or hydrogen they boost with. They aren’t considered real atomic-power ships even though the jet is heated by an atomic pile. The long-jump ships such as the Tom Paine, torchships that is, are (so they tell me) the real thing, making use of F equals MC squared, or is it Mequals EC squared? You know-the thing Einstein invented.

Dak did his best to explain it all to me, and no doubt it is very interesting to those who care for such things. But I can’t imagine why a gentleman should bother with such. It seems to me that every time those scientific laddies get busy with their slide rules life becomes more complicated. What was wrong with things the way they were?

During the two hours we were on one gravity I was moved up to Bonforte’s cabin. I started wearing his clothes and his face and everyone was careful to cail me “Mr. Bonforte” or “Chief” or (in the case of Dr. Capek) “Joseph,” the idea being, of course, to help me build the part.

Everyone but Penny, that is… She simply would not call me “Mr. Bonforte.” She did her best to help but she could not bring herself to that. It was clear as scripture that she was a secretary who silently and hopelessly loved her boss, and she resented me with a deep, illogical, but naturai bitterness. It made it hard for both of us, especially as I was finding her most attractive. No man can do his best work with a woman constantly around him who despises him. But I could not dislike her in return; I felt deeply sorry for her-even though I was decidedly irked.

We were on a tryout-in-the-sticks basis now, as not everyone in the Tom Paine knew that I was not Bonforte. I did not know exactly which ones knew of the substitution, but I was allowed to relax and ask questions only in the presence of Dak, Penny, and Dr. Capek. I was fairiy sure that Bonforte’s chief clerk, Mr. Washington, knew but never let on; he was a spare, elderly mulatto with the tight-lipped mask of a saint. There were two others who certhinly knew, but they were not in the Tom Paine; they were standing by and covering up from the Go For Broke, handling press releases and routine dispatches-Bill Corpsman, who was Bonforte’s front man with the news services, and Roger Clifton. I don’t know quite how to describe Clifton’s job. Political deputy? He had been Minister without Portfolio, you may remember, when Bonforte was Supreme Minister, but that says nothing. Let’s put it symbolically: Bonforte handed out policy and Clifton handed out patronage.

This small group had to know; if any others knew it was not considered necessary to tell me. To be sure, the other members of Bonforte’s staff and all the crew of the Tom Paine knew that something odd was going on; they did not necessarily know what it was. Agood many people had seen me enter the ship-but as “Benny Grey.” By the time they saw me again I was already “Bonforte.”

Someone had had the foresight to obtain real make-up equipment, but I used aimost none. At close range make-up can be seen; even Silicoflesh cannot be given the exact texture of skin. I contented myself with darkening my natural complexion a couple of shades with Semiperm and wearing his face, from inside. I did have to sacrifice quite a lot of hair and Dr. Capek inhibited the roots. I did not mind; an actor can always wear hair-pieces-and I was sure that this job was certain to pay me a fee that would let me retire for life, if 1 wished.

On the other hand, I was sometimes queasily aware that “life” might not be too long-there are those old saws about the man who knew too much and the one about dead men and tales. But truthfully I was beginning to trust these people. They were all darn nice people-which told me as much about Bonforte as I had learned by listening to his speeches and seeing his pix. Apolitical figure is not a single man, so I was learning, but a compatible team. If Bonforte himself had not been a decent sort he would not have had these people around him.

The Martian language gave me my greatest worry. Like most actors, I had picked up enough Martian, Venerian, Outer Jovian, etc., to be able to fake in front of a camera or on stage. But those roiled or fluttered consonants are very difficult. Human vocal cords are not as versatile as a Martian’s tympanus, I believe, and, in any case, the semi-phonetic spelling out of those sounds in Roman letters, for example “kkk” or “jjj” or “rrr,” have no more to do with the true sounds than the gin “Gnu” has to do with the inhaled click with which a Bantu pronounces “Gnu.” “Jjj,” for instance, closely resembles a Bronx cheer.

Fortunately Bonforte had no great talent for other languages- and I am a professional; my ears really hear, I can imitate any sound, from a buzz saw striking a nail in a chunk of firewood to a setting hen disturbed on her nest. It was necessary only to acquire Martian as poorly as Bonforte spoke it. He had worked hard to overcome his lack of talent, and every word and phrase of Martian that he knew had been sight-sound recorded so that he could study his mistakes.

So I studied his mistakes, with the projector moved into his office and Penny at my elbow to sort out the spools for me and answer questions.

Human languages fall into four groups: inflecting ones as in Anglo-American, positional as in Chinese, agglutinative as in Old Turkish, polysynthetic (sentence units) as in Eskimo-to which, of course, we now add alien structures as wildly odd and as nearly impossible for the human brain as non-repetitive or emergent Venetian. Luckily Martian is analogous to human speech forms. Basic Martian, the trade language, is positional and involves only simple concrete ideas-like the greeting: “I see you.” High Martian is polysynthetic and very stylized, with an expression for every nuance of their complex system of rewards and punishments, obligations and debts. It had been almost too much for Bonforte; Penny told me that he could read those arrays of dots they use for writing quite easily but of the spoken form of High Martian he could say only a few hundred sentences.

Brother, how I studied those few he had mastered!

The strain on Penny was even greater than it was on me. Both she and Dak spoke some Martian but the chore of coaching me fell on her as Dak had to spend most of his time in the control room; Jock’s death had left him shorthanded. We dropped from two gravities to one for the last few million miles of the approach, during which time he never came below at all. I spent it learning the ritual I would have to know for the adoption ceremony, with Penny’s help.

I had just completed running through the speech in which 1 was to accept membership in the Kkkah nest-a speech not unlike that, in spirit, with which an orthodox Jewish boy assumes the responsibilities of manhood, but as fixed, as invariable, as Hamlet’s soliloquy. I had read it, complete with Bonforte’s misprofluflciations and facial tic; I finished and asked, “How was that?”

“That was quite good,” she answered seriously.

“Thanks, Curly Top.” It was a phrase I had lifted from the language-practice spools in Bonforte’s files; it was what Bonforte called her when he was feeling mellow-and it was perfectly in character.

“Don’t you dare call me that?’

It looked at her in honest amazement and answered, still in character, “Why, Penny my child!”

“Don’t you call me that, either! You fake! You phony! You- actor!” She jumped up, ran as far as she could-which was only to the door-and stood there, faced away from me, her face buried in her hands and her shoulders shaking with sobs.

I made a tremendous effort and lifted myself out of the character_pulled in my belly, let my own face come up, answered in my own voice. “Miss Russell!” She stopped crying, whirled around, looked at me, and her jaw dropped. I added, still in my normal self, “Come back here and sit down.”

I thought she was going to refuse, then she seemed to think better of it, came slowly back and sat down, her hands in her lap but with her face that of a little girl who is “saving up more spit.”

I let her sit for a moment, then said quietly, “Yes, Miss Russell, I am an actor. Is that a reason for you to insult me?”

She simply looked stubborn.

“As an actor, I am here to do an actor’s job. You know why. You know, too, that I was tricked into taking it-it is not a job I would have accepted with my eyes open, even in my wildest moments. I hate having to do it considerably more than you hate having me do it-for despite Captain Broadbent’S cheerful assurances I am not at all sure that I will come out of it with my skin intact-and I’m actually fond of my skin; it’s the only one I have. I believe, too, that I know why you find it hard to accept me. But is that any reason for you to make my job harder than it has to be?”

She mumbled. I said sharply, “Speak up!” “It’s dishonest. It’s indecent!”

I sighed. “It certainly is. More than that, it is impossible without the wholehearted support of the other members of the cast. So let’s call Captain Broadbent down here and tell him. Let’s call it off.”

She jerked her face up and said, “Oh no! We can’t do that.”

“Why can’t we? Afar better thing to drop it now than to present it and have it flop. 1 can’t give a performance under these conditions. Let’s admit it.” “But…but…We’ve got to! It’s necessary.”

“Why is it necessary, Miss Russell? Political reasons? I have not the slightest interest in politics-and I doubt if you have any really deep interest. So why must we do it?” “Because-because he—” She stopped, unable to go on, strangled by sobs.

I got up, went over, and put a hand on her shoulder. “I know. Because if we don’t, something that he has spent years building up will fall to pieces. Because he can’t do it himself and his friends are trying to cover up and do it for him. Because his friends are loyal to him. Because you are loyal to him. Nevertheless, it hurts you to see someone else in the place that is rightfully his. Besides that, you are half out of your mind with grief and worry about him. Aren’t you?”

“Yes.” I could barely hear it.

I took hold of her chin and tilted her face up. “I know why you find it so hard to have me here, in his place. You love him. But I’m doing the best job for him I know how. Confound it, woman! Do you have to make my job six times harder by treating me like dirt?”

She looked shocked. For a moment I thought she was going to slap me. Then she said brokenly, “I am sorry. I am very sorry. I won’t let it happen again.” I let go her chin and said briskly, “Then let’s get back to work.”

She did not move. “Can you forgive me?”

“Huh? There’s nothing to forgive, Penny. You were acting up because you love him and you were worried. Now let’s get to work. I’ve got to be letter-perfect-and it’s only hours away.” I dropped at once back into the role.

She picked up a spool and started the projector again. I watched him through it once, then did the acceptance speech with the sound cut out but stereo on, matching my voice-Mr voice, I mean-to the moving image. She watched me, looking from the image back to my face with a dazed look on her own. We finished and I switched it off myself. “How was that?”

“That was perfect!”

I smiled his smile. “Thanks, Curly Top.” “Not at all-‘Mr. Bonforte.’”

Two hours later we made rendezvous with the Go For Broke.

Dak brought Roger Clifton and Bill Corpsman to my cabin as soon as the Go For Broke had transferred them. I knew them from pictures. I stood up and said, “Hello, Rog. Glad to see you, Bill.” My voice was warm but casual; on the level at which these people operated, a hasty trip to Earth and back was simply a few days’ separation and nothing more. I limped over and offered my hand. The ship was at the moment under low boost as it adjusted to a much tighter orbit than the Go For Broke had been riding in.

Clifton threw me a quick glance, then played up. He took his cigar out of his mouth, shook hands, and said quietly, “Glad to see you back, Chief.” He was a small man, bald-headed and middle-aged, and looked like a lawyer and a good poker player.

“Anything special while I was away?” “No. Just routine. I gave Penny the file.”

“Good.” I turned to Bill Corpsman, again offered my hand.

He did not take it. Instead he put his fists on his hips, looked up at me, and whistled. “Amazing! I really do believe we stand a chance of getting away with it.” He looked me up and down, then said, “Turn around, Smythe. Move around. I want to see you walk.”

I found that I was actually feeling the annoyance that Bonforte would have felt at such uncalled-for impertinence, and, of course, it showed in my face. Dak touched Corpsman’s sleeve and said quickly, “Knock it off, Bill. You remember what we agreed?”

“Chicken tracks!” Corpsman answered. “This room is soundproof. I just want to make sure he is up to it. Smythe, how’s your Martian? Can you spiel it?”

I answered with a single squeaking polysyllabic in High Martian, a sentence meaning roughly, “Proper conduct demands that one of us leave!”-but it means far more than that, as it is a challenge which usually ends in someone’s nest being notified of a demise.

I don’t think Corpsman understood it, for he grinned and answered, “I’ve got to hand it to you, Smythe. That’s good.”

But Dak understood it. He took Corpsman by the arm and said, “Bill, I told you to knock it off. You’re in my ship and that’s an order. We play it straight from here on-every second.” Clifton added, “Pay attention to him, Bill. You know we agreed that was the way to do it. Otherwise somebody might slip.”

Corpsman glanced at him, then shrugged. “All right, all right. I was just checking up-after all, this was my idea.” He gave me a one-sided smile and said, “Howdy, Mister Bonforte. Glad to see you back.”

There was a shade too much emphasis on “Mister” but I answered, “Good to be back, Bill. Anything special I need to know before we go down?” “I guess not. Press conference at Goddard City after the ceremonies.” I could see him watching me to see how I would take it.

I nodded. “Very well.”

Dak said hastily, “Say, Rog, how about that? Is it necessary? Did you authorize it?”

“I was going to add,” Corpsman went on, turning to Clifton, “before the Skipper here got the jitters, that I can take it myself and tell the boys that the Chief has dry laryngitis from the ceremonies-or we can limit it to written questions submitted ahead of time and I’ll get the answers written out for him while the ceremonies are going on. Seeing that he looks and sounds so good close up, I would say to risk it. How about it, Mister-‘Bonforte’? Think you can swing it?”

“I see no problem involved in it, Bill.” I was thinking that if I managed to get by the Martians without a slip I would undertake to ad-lib double talk to a bunch of human reporters as long as they wanted to listen. I had good command of Bonforte’s speaking style by now and at least a rough notion of his policies and attitudes-and I need not be specific.

But Clifton looked worried. Before he could speak the ship’s horn brayed out, “Captain is requested to come to the control room. Minus four minutes.” Dak said quickly, “You all will have to settle it. I’ve got to put this sled in its slot-I’ve got nobody up there but young Epstein.” He dashed for the door.

Corpsman called out, “Hey, Skip! I wanted to tell you-” He was out the door and following Dak without waiting to say goodby.

Roger Clifton closed the door Corpsman had left open, came back, and said slowly, “Do you want to risk this press conference?” “That is up to you. I want to do the lob.”

“Mnim … Then I’m inclined to risk it-if we use the written questions method. But I’ll check Bill’s answers myself before you have to give them.”

“Very well.” I added, “If you can find a way to let me have them ten minutes or so ahead of time, there shouldn’t be any difficulty. I’m a very quick study.”

He inspected me. “I quite believe it-Chief. All right, I’ll have Penny slip the answers to you right after the ceremonies. Then you can excuse yourself to go to the men’s room and just stay there until you are sure of them.”

“That should work.”

“I think so. Uh, I must say I feel considerably better now that I’ve seen you. Is there anything I can do for you?” “I think not, Rog. Yes, there is, too. Any word about-him?”

“Eh? Well, yes and no. He’s still in Goddard City; we’re sure of that. He hasn’t been taken off Mars, or even out in the country. We blocked them on that, if that was their intention.” “Eh? Goddard City is not a big place, is it? Not more than a hundred thousand? What’s the hitch?”

“The hitch is that we don’t dare admit that you-I mean that he

-is missing. Once we have this adoption thing wrapped up, we can put you out of sight, then announce the kidnaping as if it had lust taken place-and make them take the city apart rivet by rivet. The city authorities are all Humanity Party appointees, but they will have to co-operate-after the ceremony. It will be the most wholehearted co-operation you ever saw, for they will be deadly anxious to produce him before the whole Kkkahgral nest swarms over them and tears the city down around theft ears.”

“Oh. I’m still learning about Martian psychology and customs.” “Aren’t we all?”

“Rog? Mmm… What leads you to think that he is still alive? Wouldn’t theft purpose be better served-and with less risk-just by killing him?” I was thinking queasily how simple it had turned out to be to get rid of a body, if a man was ruthless enough.

“I see what you mean. But that, too, is tied up with Martian notions about ‘propriety.’” (He used the Martian word.) “Death is the one acceptable excuse for not carrying out an obligation. If he were simply killed, they would adopt him into the nest after his death-and then the whole nest and probably every nest on Mars would set out to avenge him. They would not mind in the least if the whole human race were to die or be killed-but to kill this one human being to keep him from being adopted, that’s another kettle of fish entirely. Matter of obligation and propriety-in some ways a Martian’s response to a situation is so automatic as to remind one of instinct. It is not, of course, since they are incredibly intelligent. But they do the damnedest things.” He frowned and added, “Sometimes I wish I had never left Sussex.”

The warning hooter broke up the discussion by forcing us to hurry to our bunks. Dak had cut it fine on purpose; the shuttle rocket from Goddard City was waiting for us when we settled into free fall. All five of us went down, which just filled the passenger couches-again a matter of planning, for the Resident Commissioner had expressed the intention of coming up to meet me and had been dissuaded only by Dak’s message to him that our party would require all the space.

I tried to get a better look at the Martian surface as we went down, as I had had only one glimpse of it, from the control room of the Tom Paine-since I was supposed to have been there many times I could not show the normal curiosity of a tourist. I did not get much of a look; the shuttle pilot did not turn us so that we could see until he leveled off for his glide approach and I was busy then putting on my oxygen mask.

That pesky Mars-type mask almost finished us; I had never had a chance to practice with it-Dak did not think of it and I had not realized it would be a problem; I had worn both spacesuit and aqua lung on other occasions and I thought this would be about the same. It was not. The model Bonforte favored was a mouthfree type, a Mitsubushi “Sweet Winds” which pressurizes directly at the nostrils-a nose clamp, nostril plugs, tubes up each nostril which then run back under each ear to the supercharger on the back of your neck. I concede that it is a fine device, once you get used to it, since you can talk, eat, drink, etc., while wearing it. But I would rather have a dentist put both hands in my mouth.

The real difficulty is that you have to exercise conscious control on the muscles that close the back of your mouth, or you hiss like a teakettle, since the dun thing operates on a pressure difference. Fortunately the pilot equalized to Mars-surface pressure once we all had our masks on, which gave me twenty minutes or so to get used to it. But for a few moments I thought the jig was up, just over a silly piece of gadgetry. But I reminded myself that I had worn the thing hundreds of times before and that I was as used to it as I was to my toothbrush. Presently I believed it.

Dak had been able to avoid having the Resident Commissiooer chit-chat with me for an hour on the way down but it had not been possible to miss him entirely; he met the shuttle at the skyfield. The close timing did keep me from having to cope with other humans, since I had to go at once into the Martian city. It made sense, but it seemed strange that I would be safer among Martians than among my own kind.

It seemed even stranger to be on Mars. Chapter 5

Mr. Commissioner Boothroyd was a Humanity Party appointee, of course, as were all of his staff except for civil service technical employees. But Dak had told me that it was at least sixty- forty that Boothroyd had not had a finger in the plot; Dak considered him honest but stupid. For that matter, neither Dak nor Rog Clifton believed that Supreme Minister Quiroga was in it; they attributed the thing to the clandestine terrorist group inside the Humanity Party who called themselves the “Actionists”-and they attributed them to some highiy respectable big-money boys who stood to profit heavily.

Myself, I would not have known an Actionist from an auctioneer.

But the minute we landed something popped up that made me wonder whether friend Boothroyd was as honest and stupid as Dak thought he was. It was a minor thing but one of those little things that can punch holes in an impersonation. Since I was a Very Important Visitor the Commissioner met me; since I held no public office other than membership in the Grand Assembly and was traveling privately no official honors were offered. He was alone save for his aide-and a little girl about fifteen.

I knew him from photographs and I knew quite a bit about him; Rog and Penny had briefed me carefully. I shook hands, asked about his sinusitis, thanked him for the pleasant time I had had on my last visit, and spoke with his aide in that warm man-to-man fashion that Bonforte was so good at. Then I turned to the young lady. I knew Boothroyd had children and that one of them was about this age and sex; I did not know-perhaps Rog and Penny did not know-whether or not I had ever met her.

Boothroyd himself saved me. “You haven’t met my daughter Deirdre, I believe. She insisted on coming along.”

Nothing in the pictures I had studied had shown Bonforte dealing with young girls-so I simply had to be Bonforte-a widower in his middle fifties who had no children of his own, no nieces, and probably little experience with teen-age girls-but with lots of experience in meeting strangers of every sort. So I treated her as if she were twice her real age; I did not quite kiss her band. She blushed and looked pleased.

Boothroyd looked indulgent and said, “Well, ask him, my dear. You may not have another chance.”

She blushed deeper and said, “Sir, could I have your autograph? The girls in my school collect them. I have Mr. Quiroga’s I ought to have yours.” She produced a little book which she had been holding behind her.

I felt like a copter driver asked for his license-which is home in his other pants. I had studied hard but I had not expected to have to forge Bonforte’s signature. Damn it, you can’t do everything in two and a half days!

But it was simply impossible for Bonforte to refuse such a request-and I was Bonforte. I smiled jovially and said, “You have Mr. Quiroga’s already?” “Yes, sir.”

“Just his autograph?”

“Yes. Er, he put ‘Best Wishes’ on it.”

I winked at Boothroyd. “Just ‘Best Wishes,’ eh? To young lathes I never make it less than ‘Love.’ Tell you what I’m going to do-” I took the little book from her, glanced through the pages. “Chief,” Dak said urgently, “we are short on minutes.”

“Compose yourself,” I said without looking up. “The entire Martian nation can wait, if necessary, on a young lady.” I banded the book to Penny. “Will you note the size of this book? And then remind me to send a photograph suitable for pasting in it-and properly autographed, of course.”

“Yes, Mr. Bonforte.”

“Will that suit you, Miss Deirdre?” “Gee!”

“Good. Thanks for asking me. We can leave now, Captain. Mr. Commissioner, is that our car?”

“Yes, Mr. Bonforte.” He shook his head wryly. “I’m afraid you have converted a member of my own family to your Expansionist heresies. Hardly sporting, eh? Sitting ducks, and so forth?” “That should teach you not to expose her to bad company-eh, Miss Deirdre?” I shook hands again. “Thanks for meeting us, Mr. Commissioner. I am afraid we had better hurry thong

now.”

“Yes, certainly. Pleasure.” “Thanks, Mr. Bonforte!” “Thank you, my dear.”

I turned away slowly, so as not to appear jerky or nervous in stereo. There were photographers around, still, news pickup, stereo, and so forth, as well as many reporters. Bill was keeping the reporters away from us; as we turned to go he waved and said, “See you later, Chief,” and turned back to talk to one of them. Rog, Dak, and Penny followed me into the car. There was the usual skyfield crowd, not as numerous as at any earthport, but numerous. I was not worried about them as long as Boothroyd accepted the impersonation-though there were certainly some present who knew that I was not Bonforte.

But I refused to let those individuals worry me, either. They could cause us no trouble without incriminating themselves.

The car was a Rolls Outlander, pressurized, but I left my oxygen mask on because the others did. I took the right-hand seat, Rog sat beside me, and Penny beside him, while Dak wound his long legs around one of the folding seats. The driver glanced back through the partition and started up.

Rog said quietly, “I was worried there for a moment.”

“Nothing to worry about. Now let’s all be quiet, please. I want to review my speech.”

Actually I wanted to gawk at the Martian scene; I knew the speech perfectly. The driver took us along the north edge of the field, past many towns. I read signs for Verwijs Trading Company, Diana Outlines, Ltd., Three Planets, and I. G. Farbenindustrie. There were almost as many Martians as humans in sight. We ground hogs get the impression that Martians are slow as snails- and they are, on our comparatively heavy planet. On their own world they skim along on their bases like a stone sliding over water.

To the right, south of us past the fiat field, the Great Canal dipped into the too-close horizon, showing no shore line beyond. Straight ahead of us was the Nest of Kkkah, a fairy city. I was staring at it, my heart lifting at its fragile beauty, when Dak moved suddenly.

We were well past the traffic around the towns but there was one car ahead, coming toward us; I had seen it without noticing it.

But Dak must have been edgily ready for trouble; when the other car was quite close, he suddenly slammed down the partition separating us from the driver, swarmed over the man’s neck, and grabbed the wheel. We slewed to the nght, barely missing the other car, slewed again to the left and barely stayed on the road It was a near thing, for we were past the field now and here the highway edged the canal.

I had not been much use to Dak a couple of days earlier in the Eisenhower, but 1 had been unarmed and not expecting trouble, This day 1 was still unarmed, not so much as a poisoned fang, but 1 comported myself a little better. Oak was more than busy trying to drive the car while leaning over from the back seat. The driver, caught off balance at first, now tried to wrestle him away from the wheel.

I lunged forward, got my left arm around the drivers neck, and shoved my right thumb into his ribs. Move and you’ve had it!” The voice belonged to the hero—villain in The Second-Story Gentleman; the line of dialogue was his too.

My prisoner became very quiet.

Dak said urgently, “Rog, what are they doing?”

Clifton looked back and answered, “They’re turning around.”

Oak answered, “Okay. Chief, keep your gun on that character while I climb over.” He was doing so even as he spoke, an awkward matter in view of his long legs and the crowded car- He settled into the seat and said happily, “1 doubt if anything on wheels can catch a Rolls on a straightaway.” He jerked on the damper and the big car shot forward. “How am I doing, Rog?”

“They’re just turned around.”

“All right. What do we do with this item? Dump him out?”

My victim squirmed and said, “I didn’t do anything!” 1 jabbed my thumb harder and he quieted.

“Oh, not a thing,” Dak agreed, keeping his eyes on the road. All you did was try to cause a little crash-just enough to make Mr. Bonforte late for his appointment If I had not noticed that you were slowing down to make it easy on yourself, you might have got away with it. No guts, eh?” He took a slight curve with the tires screaming and the gyro fighting to keep us upright. “What’s the situation, Rog?”

“They’ve given up.”

“So.” Dak did not slacken speed; we must have been doing well over three hundred kilometers. “I wonder if they would try to bomb us with one of their own boys aboard? How about it, bub? Would they write you off as expendable?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! You’re going to be in trouble over this!”

“Really? The word of four respectable people against your jailbird record? Or aren’t you a transportee? Anyhow, Mr. Bonforte prefers to have me drive him-so naturally you were glad to do a favor for Mr. Bonforte.” We hit something about as big as a worm cast on that glassy road and my prisoner and I almost went through the roof.

“‘Mr. Bonforte!’” My victim made it a swear word.

Dak was silent for several seconds. At last he said, “I don’t think we ought to dump this one, Chief. I think we ought to let you off, then take him to a quiet place. I think he might talk if we urged him.”

The driver tried to get away. I tightened the pressure on his neck and jabbed him again with my thumb knuckle. Aknuckle may not feel too much like the muzzle of a heater-but who wants to find out? He relaxed and said sullenly, “You don’t dare give me the needle.”

“Heavens, no!” Dak answered in shocked tones. “That would be illegal. Penny girl, got a bobby pin?”

“Why, certainly, Dak.” She sounded puzzled and I was. She did not sound frightened, though, and I certainly was.

“Good. Bub, did you ever have a bobby pin shoved up under your fingernails? They say it will even break a hypnotic command not to talk. Works directly on the subconscious or something. Only trouble is that the patient makes the most unpleasant noises. So we are going to take you out in the dunes where you won’t disturb anybody but sand scorpions. After you have talked-now here comes the nice part! After you talk we are going to turn you loose, not do anything, just let you walk back into town. But-listen carefully now!-if you are real nice and co-operative, you get a prize. We’ll let you have your mask for the walk.”

Dak stopped talking; for a moment there was no sound but the keening of the thin Martian air past the roof. Ahuman being can walk possibly two hundred yards on Mars without an oxygen mask, if he is in good condition. I believe I read of a case where a man walked almost half a mile before he died. I glanced at the trip meter and saw that we were about twenty- three kilometers from Goddard City.

The prisoner said slowly, “Honest, I don’t know anything about it. I was just paid to crash the car.”

“We’ll try to stimulate your memory.” The gates of the Martian city were just ahead of us; Dak started slowing the car. “Here’s where you get out, Chief. Rog, better take your gun and relieve the Chief of our guest.”

“Right, Dak.” Rog moved up by me, jabbed the man in the ribs-again with a bare knuckle. I moved out of the way. Dak braked the car to a halt, stopping right in front of the gates. “Four minutes to spare,” he said happily. “This is a nice car. I wish I owned it. Rog, ease up a touch and give me room.”

Clifton did so, Dak chopped the driver expertly on the side of his neck with the edge of his hand; the man went limp. “That will keep him quiet while you get clear. Can’t have any unseemly disturbance under the eyes of the nest. Let’s check time.”

We did so. I was about three and a half minutes ahead of the deadline. “You are to go in exactly on time, you understand? Not ahead, not behind, but on the dot.” “That’s right,” Clifton and I answered in chorus.

“Thirty seconds to walk up the ramp, maybe. What do you want to do with the three minutes you have left?” I sighed. “Just get my nerve back.”

“Your nerve is all right. You didn’t miss a trick back there. Cheer up, old son. Two hours from now you can head for home, with your pay burning holes in your pocket We’re on the last lap.”

“1 hope so. It’s been quite a strain. Uh, Dak?” “Yes?”

“Come here a second.” I got out of the car, motioned him to come with me a short distance away. “What happens if I make a mistake-in there?” “Eh?” Dak looked surprised, then laughed a little too heartily. “You won’t make a mistake. Penny tells me you’ve got it down Jo-block perfect.” “Yes, but suppose I slip?”

“You won’t slip. I know how you feel; I felt the same way on my first solo grounding. But when it started, I was so busy doing it I didn’t have time to do it wrong.” Clifton called out, his voice thin in thin air, “Dak! Are you watching the time?”

“Gobs of time. Over a minute.”

“Mr. Bonforte!” It was Penny’s voice. I turned and went back to the car. She got out and put out her hand. “Good luck, Mr. Bonforte.” “Thanks, Penny.”

Rog shook hands and Dak clapped me on the shoulder. “Minus thirty-five seconds. Better start.”

I nodded and started up the ramp. It must have been within a second or two of the exact, appointed time when I reached the top, for the mighty gates rolled back as I came to them. I took a deep breath and cursed that damned air mask.

Then I took my stage.

It doesn’t make any difference how many times you do it, that first walk on as the curtain goes up on the first night of any run is a breath-catcher and a heart-stopper. Sure, you know your sides. Sure, you’ve asked the manager to count the house. Sure, you’ve done it all before. No matter-when you first walk out there and know that all those eyes are on you, waiting for you to speak, waiting for you to do something-maybe even waiting for you to go up on your lines, brother, you feel it. This is why they have prompters.

I looked out and saw my audience and I wanted to run. I had stage fright for the first time in thirty years.

The siblings of the nest were spread out before me as far as I could see. There was an open lane in front of me, with thousands on each side, set close together as asparagus. I knew that the first thing I must do was slow-march down the center of that lane, clear to the far end, to the ramp leading down into the inner nest.

I could not move.

I said to myself, “Look, boy, you’re John Joseph Bonforte. You’ve been here dozens of times before. These people are your friends. You’re here because you want to be here-and because they want you here. So march down that aisle. Tum turn te turn! ‘Here comes the bride!”

I began to feel like Bonforte again. I was Uncle Joe Bonforte, determined to do this thing perfectly-for the honor and welfare of my own people and my own planet-and for my Mends the Martians. I took a deep breath and one step.

That deep breath saved me; it brought me that heavenly fragrance. Thousands on thousands of Martians packed close together-it smelled to me as if somebody had dropped and broken a whole case of Jungle Lust. The conviction that I smelled it was so strong that I involuntarily glanced back to see if Penny had followed me in. I could feel her handclasp warm in my palm.

I started limping down that aisle, trying to make it about the speed a Martian moves on his own planet. The crowd closed in behind me. Occasionally kids would get away from their elders and skitter out in front of me. By “kids” I mean post-fission Martians, half the mass and not much over half the height of an adult. They are never out of the nest and we are inclined to forget that there can be little Martians. It takes almost five years, after fission, for a Martian to regain his full size, have his brain fully restored, and get all of his memory back. During this transition he is an idiot studying to be a moron. The gene rearrangement and subsequent regeneration incident to conjugation and fission put him out of the running for a long time. One of Bonforte’s spools was a lecture on the subject, accompanied by some not very good amateur stereo.

The kids, being cheerful idiots, are exempt from propriety and all that that implies. But they are greatly loved.

Two of the kids, of the same and smallest size and looking just alike to me, skittered out and stopped dead in front of me, just like a foolish puppy in traffic. Either I stopped or I ran them down.

So I stopped. They moved even closer, blocking my way completely, and started sprouting pseudo limbs while chittering at each other. I could not understand them at all. Quickly they were plucking at my clothes and snaking their patty-paws into my sleeve pockets.

The crowd was so tight that I could hardly go around them. I was stretched between two needs. In the first place they were so darn cute that I wanted to see if I didn’t have a sweet tucked away somewhere for them-but in a still firster place was the knowledge that the adoption ceremony was timed like a ballet. If I didn’t get on down that street, I was going to commit the classic sin against propriety made famous by Kkkahgral the Younger himself.

But the kids were not about to get out of my way. One of them had found my watch.

I sighed and was almost overpowered by the perfume. Then I made a bet with myself. I bet that baby-kissing was a Galactic Universal and that it took precedence even over Martian propriety. I got on one knee, making myself about the height they were, and fondled them for a few moments, patting them and running my hands down their scales.

Then I stood up and said carefully, “That is all now. I must go,” which used up a large fraction of my stock of Basic Martian.

The kids clung to me but I moved them carefully and gently aside and went on down the double line, hurrying to make up for the time I had lost. No life wand burned a hole in my back. I risked a hope that my violation of propriety had not yet reached the capital offense level. I reached the ramp leading down into the inner nest and started on down.

* * * * I. * * * * * * * *

That line of asterisks represents the adoption ceremony. Why? Because it is limited to members of the Kkkah nest. It is a family matter.

Put it this way: AMormon may have very close gentile friends-but does that friendship get a gentile inside the Temple at Salt Lake City? It never has and it never will. Martians visit very freely back and forth between theft nests-but a Martian enters the inner nest only of his own family. Even his conjugate-spouses are not thus privileged. I have no more right to tell the details of the adoption ceremony than a lodge brother has to be specific about ritual outside the lodge.

Oh, the rough outlines do not matter, since they are the same for any nest, just as my part was the same for any candidate. My sponsor-Bonforte’s oldest Martian friend, Kkkahnreash- met me at the door and threatened me with a wand. I demanded that he kill me at once were I guilty of any breach. To tell the truth, I did not recognize him, even though I had studied a picture of him. But it had to be him because ritual required it.

Having thus made clear that I stood four-square for Motherhood, the Home, Civic Virtue, and never missing Sunday school, I was permitted to enter. ‘Rrreash conducted me around all the stations, I was questioned and I responded. Every word, every gesture, was as stylized as a classical Chinese play, else I would not have stood a chance. Most of the time I did not know what they were saying and half of the time I did not understand my own replies; I simply knew my cues and the responses. It was not made easier by the low light level the Martians prefer; I was groping around like a mole.

I played once with Hawk Mantell, shortly before he died, after he was stone-deaf. There was a trouper! He could not even use a hearing device because the eighth nerve was dead. Part of the time he could cue by llps but that is not always possible. He directed the production himself and he timed it perfectly. I have seen him deliver a line, walk away-then whirl around and snap out a retort to a line that he had never heard, precisely on the timing.

This was like that. I knew my part and I played it. If they blew it, that was their lookout.

But it did not help my morale that there were never less than half a dozen wands leveled at me the whole time. I kept telling myself that they wouldn’t burn me down for a slip. After all, I was just a poor stupid human being and at the very least they would give me a passing mark for effort. But I didn’t believe it.

After what seemed like days-but was not, since the whole ceremony times exactly one ninth of Mars’ rotation-after an endless time, we ate. I don’t know what and perhaps it is just as well. It did not poison me.

After that the elders made their speeches, I made my acceptance speech in answer, and they gave me my name and my wand. I was a Martian.

I did not know how to use the wand and my name sounded like a leaky faucet, but from that instant on it was my legal name on Mars and I was legally a blood member of the most aristocratic family on the planet-exactly fifty-two hours after a ground hog down on his luck had spent his last half-Imperial buying a drink for a stranger in the bar of Casa Manana.

I guess this proves that one should never pick up strangers.

I got out as quickly as possible. Dak had made up a speech for me in which I claimed proper necessity for leaving at once and they let me go. I was nervous as a man upstairs in a sorority house because there was no longer ritual to guide me. I mean to say even casual social behavior was still hedged around with airtight and risky custom and I did not know the moves. So I recited my excuse and headed out. ‘Rrreash and another elder went with me and I chanced playing with another pair of the kids when we were outside-or maybe the same pair. Once I reached the gates the two elders said good-by in squeaky English and let me go out alone; the gates closed behind me and I reswallowed my heart.

The Rolls was waiting where they had let me out; I hurried down, a door opened, and I was surprised to see that Penny was in it alone. But not displeased. I called out, “Hi, Curly Top! I made it!”

“I knew you would.”

I gave a mock sword salute with my wand and said, “Just call me Kkkahjjjerrr”-spraying the front rows with the second syllable. “Be careful with that thing!” she said nervously.

I slid in beside her on the front seat and asked, “Do you know how to use one of these things?” The reaction was setting in and I felt exhausted but gay; I wanted three quick drinks and a thick steak, then to wait up for the critics’ reviews.

“No. But do be careful.”

“I think all you have to do is to press it here,” which I did, and there was a neat two-inch hole in the windshield and the car wasn’t pressurized any longer. Penny gasped. I said, “Gee, I’m sorry. I’ll put it away until Dak can coach me.”

She gulped. “It’s all right. Just be careful where you point it.” She started wheeling the car and I found that Dak was not the only one with a heavy hand on the damper.

Wind was whistling in through the hole I had made. I said, “What’s the rush? I need some time to study my lines for the press conference. Did you bring them? And where are the others?” I had forgotten completely the driver we had grabbed; I had not thought about him from the time the gates of the nest opened.

“No. They couldn’t come.”

“Penny, what’s the matter? What’s happened?” I was wondering if I could possibly take a press conference without coaching. Perhaps I could tell them a little about the adoption; I wouldn’t have to fake that.

“It’s Mr. Bonforte-they’ve found him.” Chapter 6

I had not noticed until then that she had not once called me “Mr. Bonforte.” She could not, of course, for I was no longer he; I was again Lorrie Smythe, that actor chap they had hired to stand in for him.

I sat back and sighed, and let myself relax. “So it’s over at last-and we got away with it.” I felt a great burden lift off me; I had not known how heavy it was until I put it down. Even my “lame” leg stopped aching. I reached over and patted Penny’s hand on the wheel and said in my own voice, “I’m glad it’s over. But I’m going to miss having you around, pal. You’re a trouper. But even the best run ends and the company breaks up. I hope I’ll see you again sometime.”

“I hope so too.”

“I suppose Dak has arranged some shenanigan to keep me under cover and sneak me back into the Tom Paine?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice sounded odd and I gave her a quick glance and saw that she was crying. My heart gave a skip. Penny crying? Over us separating? I could not believe it and yet I wanted to. One might think that, between my handsome features and cultivated manners, women would find me irresistible, but it is a deplorable fact that all too many of them have found me easy to resist. Penny had seemed to find it no effort at all.

“Penny,” I said hastily, “why all the tears, hon? You’ll wreck this car.” “I can’t help it.”

“Well-put me in it. What’s wrong? You told me they had got him back; you didn’t tell me anything else.” I had a sudden horrid but logical suspicion. “He was alive-wasn’t he?” “Yes-he’s alive-but, oh, they’ve hurt him!” She started to sob and I had to grab the wheel.

She straightened up quickly. “Sorry.”

“Want me to drive?”

“I’ll be all right. Besides, you don’t know how-I mean you aren’t supposed to know how to drive.”

“Huh? Don’t be silly. I do know how and it no longer matters that-” I broke off, suddenly realizing that it might still matter. If they had roughed up Bonforte so that it showed, then he could not appear in public in that shape-at least not only fifteen minutes after being adopted into the Kkkah nest. Maybe I would have to take that press conference and depart publicly, while Bonforte would be the one they would sneak aboard. Well, all right-hardly more than a curtain call. “Penny, do Dak and Rog want me to stay in character for a bit? Do I play to the reporters? Or don’t I?”

“I don’t know. There wasn’t time.”

We were already approaching the stretch of godowns by the field, and the giant bubble domes of Goddard City were in sight. “Penny, slow this car down and talk sense. I’ve got to have my cues.”

The driver had talked-I neglected to ask whether or not the bobby-pin treatment had been used. He had then been turned loose to walk back but had not been deprived of his mask; the others had barreled back to Goddard City, with Dak at the wheel. I felt lucky to have been left behind; voyageurs should not be allowed to drive anything but spaceships.

They went to the address the driver had given them, in Old Town under the original bubble. I gathered that it was the sort of jungle every port has had since the Phoenicians sailed through the shoulder of Africa, a place of released transportees, prostitutes, monkey-pushers, rangees, and other dregs-a neighborhood where policemen travel only in pairs.

The information they had squeezed out of the driver had been correct but a few minutes out of date. The room had housed the prisoner, certainly, for there was a bed in it which seemed to have been occupied continuously for at least a week, a pot of coffee was still hot-and wrapped in a towel on a shelf was an old- fashioned removable denture which Clifton identified as belonging to Bonforte. But Bonforte himself was missing and so were his captors.

They had left there with the intention of carrying out the original plan, that of claiming that the kidnapping had taken place immediately after the adoption and putting pressure on Boothroyd by threatening to appeal to the Nest of Kkkah. But they had found Bonforte, had simply run across him in the street before they left Old Town-a poor old stumblebum with a week’s beard, dirty and dazed. The men had not recognized him, but Penny had known him and made them stop.

She broke into sobs again as she told me this part and we almost ran down a truck train snaking up to one of the loading

Areasonable reconstruction seemed to be that the laddies in the second car-the one that was to crash us-had reported back, whereupon the faceless leaders of our opponents had decided that the kidnaping no longer served their purposes. Despite the arguments I had heard about it, I was surprised that they had not simply killed him; it was not until later that I understood that what they had done was subtler, more suited to their purposes, and much crueler than mere killing.

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“Dak took him to the voyageurs’ hostel in Dome 3.” “Is that where we are headed?”

“I don’t know. Rog just said to go pick you up, then they disappeared in the service door of the hostel. Uh, no, I don’t think we dare go there. I don’t know what to do.” “Penny, stop the car.”

“Huh?”

“Surely this car has a phone. We won’t stir another inch until we find out-or figure out-what we should do. But I am certain of one thing: I should stay in character until Dak or Rog decides that I should fade out. Somebody has to talk to the newsmen. Somebody has to make a public departure for the Tom Paine. You’re sure that Mr. Bonforte can’t be spruced up so that he can do it?”

“What? Oh, he couldn’t possibly. You didn’t see him.”

“So I didn’t. I’ll take your word for it. All right, Penny, I’m ‘Mr. Bonforte’ again and you’re my secretary. We’d better get with “Yes-Mr. Bonforte.”

“Now try to get Captain Broadbent on the phone, will you, please?”

We couldn’t find a phone list in the car and she had to go through “Information,” but at last she was tuned with the clubhouse of the voyageurs. I could hear both sides. “Pilots’ Club, Mrs. Kelly speaking.”

Penny covered the microphone. “Do I give my name?” “Play it straight. We’ve nothing to hide.”

“This is Mr. Bonforte’s secretary,” she said gravely. “Is his pilot there? Captain Broadbent.”

“I know him, dear.” There was a shout: “Hey! Any of you smokers see where Dak went?” After a pause she went on, “He’s gone to his room. I’m buzzing him.” Shortly Penny said, “Skipper? The Chief wants to talk to you,” and handed me the phone.

“This is the Chief, Dak.” “Oh. Where are you-sir?”

“Still in the car. Penny picked me up. Dak, press conference, I believe. Where is it?”

He hesitated. “I’m glad you called in, sir. There’s been a-slight change in the situation.”

“So Penny told me. I’m just as well pleased; I’m rather tired. Dak, I’ve decided not to stay dirtside tonight; my gimp leg has been bothering me and I’m looking forward to a real rest in free fall.” I hated free fall but Bonforte did not. “Will you or Rog make my apologies to the Commissioner, and so forth?”

“We’ll take care of everything, sir.”

“Good. How soon can you arrange a shuttle for me?”

“The Pixie is still standing by for you, sir. If you will go to Gate 3, I’ll phone and have a field car pick you up.” “Very good. Out.”

“Out, sir.”

I handed the phone to Penny to put back in its clamp. “Curly Top, I don’t know whether that phone frequency is monitored or not-or whether possibly the whole car is bugged. If either is the case, they may have learned two things-where Dak is and through that where he is, and second, what I am about to do next. Does that suggest anything to your mind?”

She looked thoughtful, then took out her secretary’s notebook, wrote in it: Let’s get rid of the car. I nodded, then took the book from her and wrote in it: How far away is Gate 3?

She answered: Walking distance.

Silently we climbed out and left. She had pulled into some executive’s parking space outside one of the warehouses when she had parked the car; no doubt in time it would be returned where it belonged-and such minutiae no longer mattered.

We had gone about fifty yards, when I stopped. Something was the matter. Not the day, certainly. It was almost balmy, with the sun burning brightly in clear, purple Martian sky. The traffic,

wheel and foot, seemed to pay no attention to us, or at least such attention was for the pretty young woman with me rather than directed at me. Yet I felt uneasy.

“What is it, Chief?” “Eh? That is what it is!” “Sir?”

“I’m not being the ‘Chief.’ It isn’t in character to go dodging off like this. Back we go, Penny.”

She did not argue, but followed me back to the car. This time I climbed into the back seat, sat there looking dignified, and let her chauffeur me to Gate 3.

It was not the gate we had come in. I think Dak had chosen it because it ran less to passengers and more to freight. Penny paid no attention to signs and ran the big Rolls right up to the gate. Aterminal policeman tried to stop her; she simply said coldly, “Mr. Bonforte’s ear. And will you please send word to the Commissioner’s office to call for it here?”

He looked baffled, glanced into the rear compartment, seemed to recognize me, saluted, and let us stay. I answered with a friendly wave and he opened the door for me. “The lieutenant is very particular about keeping the space back of the fence clear, Mr. Bonforte,” he apologized, “but I guess it’s all right.”

“You can have the car moved at once,” I said. “My secretary and I are leaving. Is my field car here?”

“I’ll find out at the gate, sir.” He left. It was just the amount of audience I wanted, enough to tie it down solid that “Mr. Bonforte” had arrived by official car and had left for his space yacht. I tucked my life wand under my arm like Napoleon’s baton and limped after him, with Penny tagging along. The cop spoke to the gatemaster, then hurried back to us, smiling. “Field car is waiting, sir.”

“Thanks indeed.” I was congratulating myself on the perfection of the timing.

“Uh…” The cop looked flustered and added hurriedly, in a low voice, “I’m an Expansionist, too, sir. Good job you did today.” He glanced at the life wand with a touch of awe. I knew exactly how Bonforte should look in this routine. “Why, thank you. I hope you have lots of children. We need to work up a solid majority.”

He guffawed more than it was worth. “That’s a good one! Uh, mind if I repeat it?”

“Not at all.” We had moved on and I started through the gate. The gatemaster touched my arm. “Er … Your passport, Mr. Bonforte.” I trust I did not let my expression change. “The passports, Penny.”

She looked frostily at the official. “Captain Broadbent takes care of all clearances.”

He looked at me and looked away. “I suppose it’s all right. But I’m supposed to check them and take down the serial numbers.”

“Yes, of course. Well, I suppose I must ask Captain Broadbent to run out to the field. Has my shuttle been assigned a take-off time? Perhaps you had better arrange with the tower to ‘hold.’”

But Penny appeared to be cattily angry. “Mr. Bonforte, this is ridiculous! We’ve never had this red tape before-certainly not on Mars.” The cop said hastily, “Of course it’s all right, Hans. After all, this is Mr. Bonforte.”

“Sure, but—”

I interrupted with a happy smile. “There’s a simpler way out. If you-what is your name, sir?” “Hasiwanter. Hans Haslwanter,” he answered reluctantly.

“Mr. Haslwanter, if you will call Mr. Commissioner Boothroyd, I’ll speak to him and we can save my pilot a trip out to the field- and save me an hour or more of time.” “Uh, I wouldn’t like to do that, sir. I could call the port captain’s office?” he suggested hopefully.

“Just get me Mr. Boothroyd’s number. 1 will call him.” This time I put a touch of frost into my voice, the attitude of the busy and important man who wishes to be democratic but has had all the pushing around and hampering by underlings that he intends to put up with.

That did it. He said hastily, “I’m sure it’s all right, Mr. Banforte. It’s just-well, regulations, you know.” “Yes, I know. Thank you.” I started to push on through.

“Hold it, Mr. Bonforte! Look this way.”

I glanced around. That i-dotting and 1-crossing civil servant had held us up just long enough to let the press catch up with us. One man had dropped to his knee and was pointing a stereobox at me; he looked up and said, “Hold the wand where we can see it.” Several others with various types of equipment were gathering around us; one had climbed up on the roof of the Rolls. Someone else was shoving a microphone at me and another had a directional mike aimed like a gun.

I was as angry as a leading woman with her name in small type but I remembered who I was supposed to be. I smiled and moved slowly. Bonforte had a good grasp of the fact that motion appears faster in pictures; I could afford to do it properly.

“Mr. Bonforte, why did you cancel the press conference?”

“Mr. Bonforte, it is asserted that you intend to demand that the Grand Assembly grant full Empire citizenship to Martians; will you comment?” “Mr. Bonforte, how soon are you going to force a vote of confidence in the present government?”

I held up my hand with the wand in it and grinned. “One at a time, please! Now what was that first question?”

They all answered at once, of course; by the time they had sorted out precedence I had managed to waste several moments without having to answer anything. Bill Corpsman came charging up at that point. “Have a heart, boys. The Chief has had a hard day. I gave you all you need.”

I held out a palm at him. “I can spare a minute or two, Bill. Gentiemen, I’m just about to leave but I’ll try to cover the essentials of what you have asked. So far as I know the present government does not plan any reassessment of the relation of Mars to the Empire. Since I am not in office my own opinions are hardly pertinent. I suggest that you ask Mr. Quiroga. On the question of how soon the opposition will force a vote of confidence all I can say is that we won’t do it unless we are sure we can win it-and you know as much about that as I do.”

Someone said, “That doesn’t say much, does it?”

“It was not intended to say much,” I retorted, softening it with a grin. “Ask me questions I can legitimately answer and I will. Ask me those loaded ‘Have-you-quit-beating-your-wife?’ sort and I have answers to match.” I hesitated, realizing that Bonforte had a reputation for bluntness and honesty, especially with the press. “But I am not trying to stall you. You all know why I am here today. Let me say this about it-and you can quote me if you wish.” I reached back into my mind and hauled up an appropriate bit from the speeches of Bonforte I had studied. “The real meaning of what happened today is not that of an honor to one man. This”-I gestured with the Martian wand-.”is proof that two great races can reach out across the gap of strangeness with understanding. Our own race is spreading out to the stars. We shall find-we are finding-that we are vastly outnumbered. If we are to succeed in our expansion to the stars, we must deal honestly, humbly, with open hearts. I have heard it said that our Martian neighbors would overrun Earth if given the chance. This is nonsense; Earth is not suited to Martians. Let us protect our own-but let us not be seduced by fear and hatred into foolish acts. The stars will never be won by little minds; we must be big as space itself.”

The reporter cocked an eyebrow. “Mr. Bonforte, seems to me I heard you make that speech last February.”

“You will hear it next February. Also January, March, and all the other months. Truth cannot be too often repeated.” I glanced back at the gatemaster and added, “I’m sorry but I’ll have to go now-or I’ll miss the tick.” I turned and went through the gate, with Penny after me.

We climbed into the little lead-armored field ear and the door sighed shut. The car was automatized, so I did not have to play up for a driver; I threw myself down and relaxed. “Whew!”

“I thought you did beautifully,” Penny said seriously.

“I had a bad moment when he spotted the speech I was cribbing.”

“You got away with it. It was an inspiration. You-you sounded just like him.” “Was there anybody there I should have called by name?”

“Not really. One or two maybe, but they wouldn’t expect it when you were so rushed.”

“I was caught in a squeeze. That fiddlin’ gatemaster and his passports. Penny, I should think that you would carry them rather than Dak.” “Dak doesn’t carry them. We all carry our own.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a little book. “I had mine-but I did not dare admit it.” “Eh?”

“He had his on him when they got him. We haven’t dared ask for a replacement-not at this time.” I was suddenly very weary.

Having no instructions from Dak or Rog, I stayed in character during the shuttle trip up and on entering the Tom Paine. It wasn’t difficult; I simply went straight to the owner’s cabin and spent long, miserable hours in free fall, biting my nails and wondering what was happening down on the surface. With the aid of antinausea pills I finally managed to float off into fitful sleep-which was a mistake, for I had a series of no-pants nightmares, with reporters pointing at me and cops touching me on the shoulder and Martians aiming their wands at me. They all knew I was phony and were simply arguing over who had the privilege of taking me apart and putting me down the oubliette.

I was awakened by the hooting of the acceleration alarm. Dak’s vibrant baritone was booming, “First and last red warning! One third gee! One minute!” I hastily pulled myself over to my bunk and held on. I felt lots better when it hit; one third gravity is not much, about the same as Mars’ surface I think, but it is enough to steady the stomach and make the floor a real floor.

About five minutes later Dak knocked and let himself in as I was going to the door. “Howdy, Chief.” “Hello, Dak. I’m certainly glad to see you back.”

“Not as glad as I am to be back,” he said wearily. He eyed my bunk. “Mind if I spread out there?” “Help yourself.”

He did so and sighed. “Cripes, am I pooped! I could sleep for a week… I think I wifi.” “Let’s both of us. Uh … You got him aboard?”

“Yes. What a gymkhana!”

“I suppose so. Still, it must be easier to do a job like that in a small, informal port like this than it was to pull the stunts you rigged at Jeff erson.” “Huh? No, it’s much harder here.”

“Eh?”

“Obviously. Here everybody knows everybody-and people will talk.” Dak smiled wryly. “We brought him aboard as a case of frozen canal shrimp. Had to pay export duty, too.” “Dak, how is he?”

“Well …” Dak frowned. “Doc Capek says that he will make a complete recovery-that it is just a matter of time.” He added explosively, “If I could lay my hands on those rats! It would make you break down and bawl to see what they did to him-and yet we have to let them get away with it cold-for his sake.”

Dak was fairly close to bawling himself. I said gently, “I gathered from Penny that they had roughed him up quite a lot. How badly is he hurt?” “Huh? You must have misunderstood Penny. Aside from being filthy-dirty and needing a shave he was not hurt physically at all.”

I looked stupid. “I thought they beat him up. Something about like working him over with a baseball bat.” “I would rather they had! Who cares about a few broken bones? No, no, it was what they did to his brain.” “Oh …” I felt ill. “Brainwash?”

“Yes. Yes and no. They couldn’t have been trying to make him talk because he didn’t have any secrets that were of any possible political importance. He always operated out in the open and everybody knows it. They must have been using it simply to keep him under control, keep him from trying to escape.”

He went on, “Doc says that he thinks they must have been using the minimum daily dose, just enough to keep him docile, until just before they turned him loose. Then they shot him with a load that would turn an elephant into a gibbering idiot. The front lobes of his brain must be soaked like a bath sponge.”

I felt so ill that I was glad I had not eaten. I had once read up on the subject; I hate it so much that it fascinates me. To my mind there is something immoral and degrading in an absolute cosmic sense in tampering with a man’s personality. Murder is a clean crime in comparison, a mere peccadillo. “Brainwash” is a term that comes down to us from the Communist movement of the Late Dark Ages; it was first applied to breaking a man’s will and altering his personality by physical indignities and subtle torture. But that might take months; later they found a “better” way, one which would turn a man into a babbling slave in seconds-simply inject any one of several cocaine derivatives into his frontal brain lobes.

The ifithy practice had first been developed for a legitimate purpose, to quiet disturbed patients and make them accessible to psychotherapy. As such, it was a humane advance, for it was used instead of lobotomy-“lobotomy” is a term almost as obsolete as “chastity girdle” but it means stirring a man’s brain with a knife in such a fashion as to destroy his personality without killing him. Yes, they really used to do that-just as they used to beat them to “drive the devils out.”

The Communists developed the new brainwash-by-drugs to an efficient technique, then when there were no more Communists, the Bands of Brothers polished it up still further until they could dose a man so lightly that he was simply receptive to leadership-. or load him until he was a mindless mass of protoplasm-all in the sweet name of brotherhood. After all, you can’t have “brotherhood” if a man is stubborn enough to want to keep his own secrets, can you? And what better way is there to be sure that he is not holding out on you than to poke a needle past his eyeball and slip a shot of babble juice into his brain? “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” The sophistries of villains-bah!

Of course, it has been illegal for a long, long time now, except for therapy, with the express consent of a court. But criminals use it and cops are sometimes not lily white, for it does make a prisoner talk and it does not leave any marks at all. The victim can even be told to forget that it has been done.

I knew most of this at the time Dak told me what had been done to Bonforte and the rest I cribbed out of the ship’s Encyclopedia Batavia. See the article on “Psychic Integration” and the one on “Torture.”

I shook my head and tried to put the nightmares out of my mind. “But he’s going to recover?”

“Doc says that the drug does not alter the brain structure; it just paralyzes it. He says that eventually the blood stream picks up and carries away all of the dope; it reaches the kidneys and passes out of the body. But it takes time.” Dak looked up at me. “Chief?”

“Eh? About time to knock off that ‘Chief’ stuff, isn’t it? He’s back.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Would it be too much trouble to you to keep up the impersonation just a little while longer?” “But why? There’s nobody here but just us chickens.”

“That’s not quite true. Lorenzo, we’ve managed to keep this secret awfully tight. There’s me, there’s you.” He ticked it off on his fingers. “There’s Doc and Rog and Bill. And Penny, of course. There’s a man by the name of Langston back Earthside whom you’ve never met. I think Jimmie Washington suspects but he wouldn’t tell his own mother the right time of day.

We don’t know how many took part in the kidnaping, but not many, you can be sure. In any case, they don’t dare talk-and the joke of it is they no longer could prove that he had ever been missing even if they wanted to. But my point is this: here in the Tommie we’ve got all the crew and all the idlers not in on it. Old son, how about staying with it and letting yourself be seen each day by crewmen and by Jimmie Washington’s girl and such-while he gets well? Huh?”

“Mmm… I don’t see why not. How long will it be?”

“Just the trip back. We’ll take it slow, at an easy boost. You’ll enjoy it.”

“Okay. Dak, don’t figure this into my fee. I’m doing this piece of it just because I hate brainwashing.”

Dak bounced up and clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re my kind of people, Lorenzo. Don’t worry about your fee; you’ll be taken care of.” His manner changed. “Very well, Chief. See you in the morning, sir.”

But one thing leads to another. The boost we had started on Dak’s return was a mere shift of orbits, to one farther out where there would be little chance of a news service sending up a shuttle for a follow-up story. I woke up in free fall, took a pill, and managed to eat breakfast. Penny showed up shortly thereafter. “Good morning, Mr. Bonforte.”

“Good morning, Penny.” I inclined my head in the direction of the guest room. “Any news?”

“No, sir. About the same. Captain’s compliments and would it be too much trouble for you to come to his cabin?”

“Not at all.” Penny followed me in. Dak was there, with his heels hooked to his chair to stay in place; Rog and Bill were strapped to the couch. Dak looked around and sald, “Thanks for coming in, Chief. We need some help.”

“Good morning. What is it?”

Clifton answered my greeting with his usual dignified deference and called me Chief; Corpsman nodded. Dak went on, “To clean this up in style you should make one more appearance.”

“Eh? I thought-“

“Just a second. The networks were led to expect a major speech from you today, commenting on yesterday’s event. I thought Rog intended to cancel it, but Bill has the speech worked up. Question is, will you deliver it?”

The trouble with adopting a cat is that they always have kittens. “Where? Goddard City?”

“Oh no. Right in your cabin. We beam it to Phobos; they can it for Mars and also put it on the high circuit for New Batavia, where the Earth nets will pick it up and where it will be relayed for Venus, Ganymede, et cetera. Inside of four hours it will be all over the system but you’ll never have to stir out of your cabin.”

There is something very tempting about a grand network. I had never been on one but once and that time my act got clipped down to the point where my face showed for only twenty- seven seconds. But to have one all to myself- Dak thought I was reluctant and added, “It won’t be a strain, as

we are equipped to can it right here in the Tommie. Then we can project it first and clip out anything if necessary.” “Well-all right. You have the script, Bill?”

“Yes.”

“Let me check it.”

“What do you mean? You’ll have it in plenty of time.” “Isn’t that it in your hand?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then let me read it.”

Corpsman looked annoyed. “You’ll have it an hour before we record. These things go better if they sound spontaneous.” “Sounding spontaneous is a matter of careful preparation, Bill. It’s my trade. I know.”

“You did all right at the skyfield yesterday without rehearsal. This is just more of the same old hoke: I want you to do it the same way.”

Bonforte’s personality was coming through stronger the longer Corpsman stalled; I think Clifton could see that I was about to cloud up and storm, for he said, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Bill! Hand him the speech.”

Corpsman snorted and threw the sheets at me. In free fall they sailed but the air spread them wide. Penny gathered them together, sorted them, and gave them to me. I thanked her, said nothing more, and started to read.

I skimmed through it in a fraction of the time it would take to deliver it. Finally I finished and looked up. “Well?” said Rog.

“About five minutes of this concerns the adoption. The rest is an argument for the policies of the Expansionist Party. Pretty much the same as I’ve heard in the speeches you’ve had me study.”

“Yes,” agreed Clifton. “The adoption is the hook we hang the rest on. As you know, we expect to force a vote of confidence before long.” “I understand. You can’t miss this chance to beat the drum. Well, it’s all right, but—”

“But what? What’s worrying you?”

“Well-characterization. In several places the wording should be changed. It’s not the way he would express it.”

Corpsman exploded with a word unnecessary in the presence of a lady; I gave him a cold glance. “Now see here, Smythe,” he went on, “who knows how Bonforte would say it? You? Or the man who has been writing his speeches the past four years?”

I tried to keep my temper; he had a point “It is nevertheless the case,” I answered, “that a line which looks okay in print may not dellver well. Mr. Bonforte is a great orator, I have already learned. He belongs with Webster, Churchill, and Demosthenes-a rolling grandeur expressed in simple words. Now take this word ‘intransigent,’ which you have used twice. I might say that, but I have a weakness for polysyllables; I like to exhibit my literary erudition. But Mr. Bonforte would stay ‘stubborn’ or ‘mulish’ or ‘pigheaded.’ The reason he would is, naturally, that they convey emotion much more effectively.”

“You see that you make the delivery effective! I’ll worry about the words.”

“You don’t understand, Bill. I don’t care whether the speech is politically effective or not; my job is to carry out a characterization. I can’t do that if I put into the mouth of the character words that he would never use; it would sound as forced and phony as a goat spouting Greek. But if I read the speech in words he would use, it will automatically be effective. He’s a great orator.”

“Listen, Smythe, you’re not hired to write speeches. You’re hired to-“

“Hold it, Bill!” Dak cut in. “And a little less of that ‘Smythe’ stuff, too. Well, Rog? How about it?” Clifton said, “As I understand it, Chief, your only objection is to some of the phrasing?”

“Well, yes. I’d suggest cutting out that personal attack on Mr. Quiroga, too, and the insinuation about his financial backers. It doesn’t sound like real Bonforte to me.”

He looked sheepish. “That’s a bit I put in myself. But you may be right. He always gives a man the benefit of the doubt.” He remained silent for a moment. “You make the changes you think you have to. We’ll can it and look at the playback. We can always clip it-or even cancel completely ‘due to technical difficulties.’” He smiled grimly. “That’s what we’ll do, Bill.”

“Damn it, this is a ridiculous example of-“ “That’s how it is going to be, Bill.”

Corpsman left the room very suddenly. Clifton sighed. “Bill always has hated the notion that anybody but Mr. B. could give him instructions. But he’s an able man. Uh, Chief, how soon can you be ready to record? We patch in at sixteen hundred.”

“I don’t know. I’ll be ready in time.”

Penny followed me back into my office. When she closed the door I said, “I won’t need you for the next hour or so, Penny child. But you might ask Doc for more of those pills. I may need them.”

“Yes, sir.” She floated with her back to the door. “Chief?” “Yes, Penny?”

“I just wanted to say don’t believe what Bill said about writing his speeches!” “I didn’t. I’ve heard his speeches-and I’ve read this.”

“Oh, Bill does submit drafts, lots of times. So does Rog. I’ve even done it myself. He-he will use ideas from anywhere if he thinks they are good. But when he delivers a speech, it is his, every word of it.”

“I believe you. I wish he had written this one ahead of time.” “You just do your best!”

I did. I started out simply substituting synonyms, putting in the gutty Germanic words in place of the “intestinal” Latin jawbreakers. Then I got excited and red in the face and tore it to pieces. It’s a lot of fun for an actor to mess around with lines; he doesn’t get the chance very often.

I used no one but Penny for my audience and made sure from Dak that I was not being tapped elsewhere in the ship-though I suspect that the big-boned galoot cheated on me and listened in himself. I had Penny in tears in the first three minutes; by the time I finished (twenty-eight and a half minutes, just time for station announcements), she was limp. I took no liberties with the straight Expansionist doctrine, as proclaimed by its official prophet, the Right Honorable John Joseph Bonforte; I simply reconstructed his message and his delivery, largely out of phrases from other speeches.

Here’s an odd thing-I believed every word of it while I was talking. But, brother, I made a speech!

Afterwards we all listened to the playback, complete with full stereo of myself. Jimmie Washington was present, which kept Bill Corpsman quiet. When it was over I said, “How about it, Rog? Do we need to clip anything?”

He took his cigar out of his mouth and said, “No. If you want my advice, Chief, I’d say to let it go as it is.”

Corpsman left the room again-but Mr. Washington came over with tears leaking out of his eyes-tears are a nuisance in free fall; there’s nowhere for them to go. “Mr. Bonforte, that was beauti/ui.”

“Thanks, Jimmie.”

Penny could not talk at all.

I turned in after that; a top-notch performance leaves me fagged. I slept for more than eight hours, then was awakened by the hooter. I had strapped myself to my bunk-I hate to float around while sleeping in free fall-so I did not have to move. But I had not known that we were getting under way so I called the control room between first and second warning. “Captain Broadbent?”

“Just a moment, sir,” I heard Epstein answer.

Then Dak’s voice came over. “Yes, Chief? We are getting under way on schedule-pursuant to your orders.” “Eh? Oh yes, certainly.”

“I believe Mr. Clifton is on his way to your cabin.” “Very well, Captain.” I lay back and waited.

Immediately after we started to boost at one gee Rog Clifton came in; he had a worried look on his face I could not interpret- equal parts of triumph, worry, and confusion. “What is it, Rog?”

“Chief! They’ve jumped the gun on us! The Quiroga government has resigned!” Chapter 7

I was still logy with sleep; I shook my head to try to clear it. “What are you in such a spin about, Rog? That’s what you were trying to accomplish, wasn’t it?” “Well, yes, of course. But-” He stopped.

“But what? I don’t get it. Here you chaps have been working and scheming for years to bring about this very thing. Now you’ve won-and you look like a bride who isn’t sure she wants to go through with it. Why? The no-good-nicks are out and now God’s chillun get their innings. No?”

“Uh-you haven’t been in politics much.”

“You know I haven’t. I got trimmed when I ran for patrol leader in my scout troop. That cured me.” “Well, you see, timing is everything.”

“So my father always told me. Look here, Rog, do I gather that if you had your druthers you’d druther Quiroga was still in office? You said he had ‘jumped the gun.”

“Let me explain. What we really wanted was to move a vote of confidence and win it, and thereby force a general election on them-but at our own time, when we estimated that we could win the election.”

“Oh. And you don’t figure you can win now? You think Quiroga will go back into office for another five years-or at least the Humanity Party will?” Clifton looked thoughtful. “No, I think our chances are pretty good to win the election.”

“Eh? Maybe I’m not awake yet. Don’t you want to win?”

“Of course. But don’t you see what this resignation has done to us?” “I guess I don’t.”

“Well, the government in power can order a general election at any time up to the constitutional limitation of five years. Ordinarily they will go to the people when the time seems most

favorable to them. But they don’t resign between the announcement and the election unless forced to. You follow me?”

I realized that the event did seem odd, little attention as I paid to politics. “I believe so.”

“But in this case Quiroga’s government scheduled a general election, then resigned in a body, leaving the Empire without a government. Therefore the sovereign must call on someone else to form a ‘caretaker’ government to serve until the election. By the letter of the law he can ask any member of the Grand Assembly, but as a matter of strict constitutional precedent he has no choice. When a government resigns in a body-not just reshuffling portfolios but quits as a whole-then the sovereign must call on the leader of the opposition to form the

‘caretaker’ government. It’s indispensable to our system; it keeps resigning from being just a gesture. Many other methods have been tried in the past; under some of them governments were changed as often as underwear. But our present system insures responsible government.”

I was so busy trying to see the implications that I almost missed his next remark. “So, naturally, the Emperor has summoned Mr. Bonforte to New Batavia.”

“Eh? New Batavia? Welll” I was thinking that I had never seen the Imperial capital. The one time I had been on the Moon the vicissitudes of my profession had left me without time or money for the side trip. “Then that is why we got under way? Well, I certainly don’t mind. I suppose you can always find a way to send me home if the Tommie doesn’t go back to Earth soon.”

“What? Good heavens, don’t worry about that now. When the time comes, Captain Broadbent can find any number of ways to deliver you home.”

“Sorry. I forget that you have more important matters on your mind, Rog. Sure, I’m anxious to get home now that the job is done. But a few days, or even a month, on Luna would not matter. I have nothing pressing me. But thanks for taking time to tell me the news.” I searched his face. “Rog, you look worried as hell.”

“Don’t you see? The Emperor has sent for Mr. Bonforte. The Emperor, man! And Mr. Bonforte is in no shape to appear at an audience. They have risked a gambit-and perhaps trapped us in a checkmate!”

“Eh? Now wait a minute. Slow up. I see what you are driving at

-but, look, friend, we aren’t at New Batavia. We’re a hundred million miles away, or two hundred million, or whatever it is. Doc Capek will have him wrung out and ready to speak his piece by then. Won’t he?”

“Well-we hope so.” “But you aren’t sure?”

“We can’t be sure. Capek says that there is little clinical data on such massive doses. It depends on the individual’s body chemistry and on the exact drug used.”

I suddenly remembered a time when an understudy had slipped me a powerful purgative just before a performance. (But I went on anyhow, which proves the superiority of mind over matter- then I got him fired.) “Rog-they gave him that last, unnecessarily big dose not just out of simple sadism-but to set up this situation!”

“I think so. So does Capek.”

“Hey! In that case it would mean that Quiroga himself is the man behind the kidnapping-and that we’ve had a gangster running the Empire!”

Rog shook his head. “Not necessarily. Not even probably. But it would indeed mean that the same forces who control the Actionists also control the machinery of the Humanity Party. But you will never pin anything on them; they are unreachable, ultrarespectable. Nevertheless, they could send word to Quiroga that the time had come to roll over and play dead-and have him do it. Almost certainly,” he added, “without giving him a hint of the real reason why the moment was timely.”

“Criminy! Do you mean to tell me that the top man in the Empire would fold up and quit, just like that? Because somebody behind the scenes ordered him to?” “I’m afraid that is just what I do think.”

I shook my head. “Politics is a dirty game!”

“No,” Clifton answered insistently. “There is no such thing as a dirty game. But you sometimes run into dirty players.” “I don’t see the difference.”

“There is a world of difference. Quiroga is a third-rater and a stooge-in my opinion, a stooge for villains. But there is nothing third-rate about John Joseph Bonforte and he has never, ever been a stooge for anyone. As a follower, he believed in the cause; as the leader, he has led from conviction!”

“I stand corrected,” I said humbly. “Well, what do we do? Have Dak drag his feet so that the Tommie does not reach New Batavia until he is back in shape to do the job?”

“We can’t stall. We don’t have to boost at more than one gravity; nobody would expect a man Bonforte’s age to place unnecessary strain on his heart. But we can’t delay. When the Emperor sends for you, you come.”

“Then what?”

Rog looked at me without answering. I began to get edgy. “Hey, Rog, don’t go getting any wild notions! This hasn’t anything to do with me. I’m through, except for a few casual appearances around the ship. Dirty or not, politics is not my game-just pay me off and ship me home and I’ll guarantee never even to register to vote!”

“You probably wouldn’t have to do anything. Dr. Capek will almost certainly have him in shape for it. But it isn’t as if it were anything hard-not like that adoption ceremony-just an audience with the Emperor and—”

“The Emperor!” I almost screamed. Like most Americans, I did not understand royalty, did not really approve of the institution in my heart-and had a sneaking, unadmitted awe of kings.

After all, we Americans came in by the back door. When we swapped associate status under treaty for the advantages of a full voice in the affairs of the Empire, it was explicitly agreed

that our local institutions, our own constitution, and so forth, would not be affected-and tacitly agreed that no member of the royal family would ever visit America. Maybe that is a bad thing.

Maybe if we were used to royalty we would not be so impressed by them. In any case, it is notorious that “democratic” American women are more quiveringly anxious to be presented at

court than is anybody else.

“Now take it easy,” Rog answered. “You probably won’t have to do it at all. We just want to be prepared. What I was trying to tell you is that a ‘caretaker’ government is no problem. It passes no laws, changes no policies. I’ll take care of all the work. All you will have to do-if you have to do anything-is make the formal appearance before King Wilem-and possibly show up at a controlled press conference or two, depending on how long it is before he is well again. What you have already done is much harder-and you will be paid whether we need you or not.”

“Damn it, pay has nothing to do with it! It’s-well, in the words of a famous character in theatrical history, ‘Include me out.’”

Before Rog could answer, Bill Corpsman came bursting into my cabin without knocking, looked at us, and said sharply to Clifton, “Have you told him?” “Yes,” agreed Clifton. “He’s turned down the job.”

“Huh? Nonsense!”

“It’s not nonsense,” I answered, “and by the way, Bill, that door you just came through has a nice spot on it to knock. In the profession the custom is to knock and shout, ‘Are you decent?’ I wish you would remember it.”

“Oh, dirty sheets! We’re in a hurry. What’s this guff about your refusing?” “It’s not guff. This is not the job I signed up for.”

“Garbage! Maybe you are too stupid to realize it, Smythe, but you are in too deep to prattle about backing out. It wouldn’t be healthy.” I went to him and grabbed his arm. “Are you threatening me? If you are, let’s go outside and talk it over.”

He shook my hand off. “In a spaceship? You really are simple, aren’t you? But haven’t you got it through your thick head that you caused this mess yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“He means,” Clifton answered, “that he is convinced that the fall of the Quiroga government was the direct result of the speech you made earlier today. It is even possible that he is right. But it is beside the point. Bill, try to be reasonably polite, will you? We get nowhere by bickering.”

I was so surprised by the suggestion that I had caused Quiroga to resign that I forgot all about my desire to loosen Corpsman’s teeth. Were they serious? Sure, it was one dilly of a fine speech, but was such a result possible?

Well, if it was, it was certainly fast service.

I said wonderingly, “Bill, do I understand that you are complaining that the speech I made was too effective to suit you?” “Huh? Hell, no! It was a lousy speech.”

“So? You can’t have it both ways. You’re saying that a lousy speech went over so big that it scared the Humanity Party right out of office. Is that what you meant?”

Corpsman looked annoyed, started to answer, and caught sight of Clifton suppressing a grin. He scowled, again started to reply- finally shrugged and said, “All right, buster, you proved your point; the speech could not have had anything to do with the fall of the Quiroga government. Nevertheless, we’ve got work to do. So what’s this about you not being willing to carry your share of the load?”

I looked at him and managed to keep my temper-Bonforte’s influence again; playing the part of a calm-tempered character tends to make one calm inside. “Bill, again you cannot have it two ways. You have made it emphatically clear that you consider me just a hired hand. Therefore I have no obligation beyond my job, which is finished. You can’t hire me for another job unless it suits me. It doesn’t.”

He started to speak but I cut in. “That’s all. Now get out. You’re not welcome here.”

He looked astounded. “Who the hell do you think you are to give orders around here?”

“Nobody. Nobody at all, as you have pointed out. But this is my private room, assigned to me by the Captain. So now get out or be thrown out. I don’t like your manners.”

Clifton added quietly, “Clear out, Bill. Regardless of anything else, it is his private cabin at the present time. So you had better leave.” Rog hesitated, then added, “I think we both might as well leave; we don’t seem to be getting anywhere. If you will excuse us

-Chief?” “Certainly.”

I sat and thought about it for several minutes. I was sorry that I had let Corpsman provoke me even into such a mild exchange; it lacked dignity. But I reviewed it in my mind and assured myself that my personal differences with Corpsman had not affected my decision; my mind had been made up before he appeared.

Asharp knock came at the door. I called out, “Who is it?” “Captain Broadbent.”

“Come in, Dak.”

He did so, sat down, and for some minutes seemed interested only in pulling hangnails. Finally he looked up and said, “Would it change your mind if I slapped the blighter in the brig?” “Eh? Do you have a brig in the ship?”

“No. But it would not be hard to jury-rig one.”

I looked at him sharply, trying to figure what went on inside that bony head. “Would you actually put Bill in the brig if I asked for it?”

He looked up, cocked a brow, and grinned wryly. “No. Aman doesn’t get to be a captain operating on any such basis as that. I would not take that sort of order even from him.” He inclined his head toward the room Bonforte was in. “Certain decisions a man must make himself.”

“That’s right.”

“Mmm-I hear you’ve made one of that sort.” “That’s right.”

“So. I’ve come to have a lot of respect for you, old son. First met you, I figured you for a clotheshorse and a facemaker, with nothing inside. I was wrong.” “Thank you.”

“So I won’t plead with you. Just tell me: is it worth our time to discuss the factors? Have you given it plenty of thought?” “My mind is made up, Dak. This isn’t my pidgin.”

“Well, perhaps you’re right. I’m sorry. I guess we’ll just have to hope he pulls out of it in time.” He stood up. “By the way, Penny would like to see you, if you aren’t going to turn in again this minute.”

I laughed without pleasure. “Just ‘by the way,’ eh? Is this the proper sequence? Isn’t it Dr. Capek’s turn to try to twist my arm?” “He skipped his turn; he’s busy with Mr. B. He sent you a message, though.”

“He said you could go to hell. Embroidered it a bit, but that was the gist.” “He did? Well, tell him I’ll save him a seat by the fire.”

“Can Penny come in?”

“Oh, sure! But you can tell her that she is wasting her time; the answer is still ‘No.’”

So I changed my mind. Confound it, why should an argument seem so much more logical when underlined with a whiff of Jungle Lust? Not that Penny used unfair means, she did not even shed tears-not that I laid a finger on her-but I found myself conceding points, and presently there were no more points to concede. There is no getting around it, Penny is the world- saver type and her sincerity is contagious.

The boning I did on the trip out to Mars was as nothing to the hard study I put in on the trip to New Batavia. I already had the basic character; now it was necessary to fill in the background, prepare myself to be Bonforte under almost any circumstances. While it was the royal audience I was aiming at, once we were at New Batavia I might have to meet any of hundreds or thousands of people. Rog planned to give me a defense in depth of the sort that is routine for any public figure if he is to get work done; nevertheless, I would have to see people-a public figure is a public figure, no way to get around that.

The tightrope act I was going to have to attempt was made possible only by Bonforte’s Farleyfile, perhaps the best one ever compiled. Farley was a political manager of the twentieth century, of Eisenhower I believe, and the method he invented for handling the personal relations of politics was as revolutionary as the German invention of staff command was to warfare. Yet I had never heard of the device until Penny showed me Bonforte’s.

It was nothing but a file about people. However, the art of politics is “nothing but” people. This file contained all, or almost all, of the thousands upon thousands of people Bonforte had met in the course of his long public life; each dossier consisted of what he knew about that person from Bon forte’s own personal contact. Anything at all, no matter how trivial-in fact, trivia were always the first entries: names and nicknames of wives, children, and pets, hobbies, tastes in food or drink, prejudices, eccentricities. Following this would be listed date and place and comments for every occasion on which Boriforte had talked to that particular man.

When available, a photo was included. There might or might not be “below-the-line” data, i.e. information which had been researched rather than learned directly by Bonforte. It depended on the political importance of the person. In some cases the “below-the-line” part was a formal biography running to thousands of words.

Both Penny and Bonforte himself carried minicorders powered by theft body heat. If Bonforte was alone he would dictate into his own when opportunity offered-in rest rooms, while riding, etc.; if Penny went along she would take it down in hers, which was disguised to look like a wrist watch. Penny could not possibly do the transcribing and microfilming; two of Jimmie Washington’s girls did little else.

When Penny showed me the Farleyfile, showed me the very bulk of it-and it was bulky, even at ten thousand words or more to the spool-and then told me that this represented personal information about Mr. Bonforte’s acquaintances, I scroaned (which is a scream and groan done together, with intense feeling). “God’s mercy, child! I tried to tell you this job could not be done. How could anyone memorize all that?”

“Why, you can’t, of course.”

“You just said that this was what he remembered about his friends and acquaintances.”

“Not quite. I said that this is what he wanted to remember. But since he can’t, not possibly, this is how he does it. Don’t worry; you don’t have to memorize anything. I just want you to know that it is available. It is my job to see that he has at least a minute or two to study the appropriate Farleyfile before anybody gets in to see him. If the need turns up, I can protect you with

the same service.”

I looked at the typical file she had projected on the desk reader.

AMr. Saunders of Pretoria, South Africa, I believe it was. He had a bulldog named Snuffles Bullyboy, several assorted uninteresting offspring, and he liked a twist of lime in his whisky and splash.

“Penny, do you mean to tell me that Mr. B. pretends to remember minutiae like that? It strikes me as rather phony.”

Instead of getting angry at the slur on her idol Penny nodded soberly. “I thought so once. But you don’t look at it correctly, Chief. Do you ever write down the telephone number of a friend?” “Eh? Of course.”

“Is it dishonest? Do you apologize to your friend for caring so little about him that you can’t simply remember his number?” “Eh? All right, I give up. You’ve sold me.”

“These are things he would like to remember if his memory were perfect. Since it isn’t, it is no more phony to do it this way than it is to use a tickler file in order not to forget a friend’s birthday-that’s what it is: a giant tickler file, to cover anything. But there is more to it. Did you ever meet a really important person?”

I tried to think. Penny did not mean the greats of the theatrical profession; she hardly knew they existed. “I once met President Warfield. I was a kid of ten or eleven.” “Do you remember the details?”

“Why, certainly. He said, ‘How did you break that arm, son?’ and I said, ‘Riding a bicycle, sir,’ and he said, ‘Did the same thing myself, only it was a collarbone.’” “Do you think he would remember it if he were still alive?”

“Why, no.”

“He might-he may have had you Farleyfiled. This Farleyfile includes boys of that age, because boys grow up and become men. The point is that top-level men like President Warfield meet many more people than they can remember. Each one of that faceless throng remembers his own meeting with the famous man and remembers it in detail. But the supremely important person in anyone’s life is himself-and a politician must never forget that. So it is polite and friendly and warmhearted for the politician to have a way to be able to remember about other people the sort of little things that they are likely to remember about him. It is also essential-in politics.”

I had Penny display the Farleyfile on King Willem. It was rather short, which dismayed me at first, until I concluded that it meant that Bonforte did not know the Emperor well and had met him only on a few official occasions-Bonforte’s first service as Supreme Minister had been before old Emperor Frederick’s death. There was no biography below the line, but just a notation, “See House of Orange.” I didn’t-there simply wasn’t time to plow through a few million words of Empire and pre-Empire history and, anyhow, I got fair-to-excellent marks in history when I was in school. All I wanted to know about the Emperor was what Bonforte knew about him that other people did not.

It occurred to me that the Farleyfile must include everybody in the ship since they were (a) people (b) whom Bonforte had met. I asked Penny for them. She seemed a little surprised. Soon I was the one surprised. The Torn Paine had in her six Grand Assemblymen. Rog Clifton and Mr. Bonforte, of course- but the first item in Dak’s file read: “Broadbent, Darius K., the

Honorable, 0. A. for League of Free Travelers, Upper Division.” It also mentioned that he held a Ph.D. in physics, had been reserve champion with the pistol in the Imperial Matches nine

years earlier, and had published thee volumes of verse under the nom de plume of “Acey Wheelwright.” I resolved never again to take a man at merely his face value.

There was a notation in Bonforte’s sloppy handwriting: “Almost irresistible to women-and vice versa!”

Penny and Dr. Capek were also members of the great parliament. Even Jimmie Washington was a member, for a “safe” district, I realized later-he represented the Lapps, including all the reindeer and Santa Claus, no doubt. He was also ordained in the First Bible Truth Church of the Holy Spirit, which I had never heard of, but which accounted for his tight-lipped deacon look.

I especially enjoyed reading about Penny-the Honorable Miss Penelope Taliaferro Russell. She was an M.A. in government administration from Georgetown and a B.A. from Wellesley, which somehow did not surprise me. She represented districtless university women, another “safe” constituency (I learned) since they are about five to one Expansionist Party members.

On down below were her glove size, her other measurements, her preferences in colors (I could teach her something about dressing), her preference in scent (Jungle Lust, of course), and many other details, most of them innocuous enough. But there was “comment”:

“Neurotically honest-arithmetic unreliable-prides herself on her sense of humor, of which she has none-watches her diet but is gluttonous about candied cherries-little-mother-of-all- living complex-unable to resist reading the printed word in any form.”

Underneath was another of Bonforte’s handwritten addenda: “Ah, Curly Top! Snooping again, I see.”

As I turned them back to her I asked Penny if she had read her own Farleyfile. She told me snippily to mind my own business! Then turned red and apologized.

Most of my time was taken up with study but I did take time to review and revise carefully the physical resemblance, checking the Semiperm shading by colorimeter, doing an extremely careful job on the wrinkles, adding two moles, and setting the whole job with electric brush. It was going to mean a skin peel before I could get my own face back but that was a small price to pay for a make-up job that could not be damaged, could not be smeared even with acetone, and was proof against such hazards as napkins. I even added the scar on the “game” leg, using a photograph Capek had kept in Bonforte’s health history. If Bonforte had had wife or mistress, she would have had difficulty in telling the impostor from the real thing simply on physical appearance. It was a lot of trouble but it left my mind free to worry about the really difficult part of the impersonation.

But the all-out effort during the trip was to steep myself in what Bonforte thought and believed, in short the policies of the Expansionist Party. In a manner of speaking, he himself was the Expansionist Party, not merely its most prominent leader but its political philosopher and greatest statesman. Expansionism had hardly been more than a “Manifest Destiny” movement when the party was founded, a rabble coalition of groups who had one thing in common: the belief that the frontiers in the sky were the mast important issue in the emerging future of the human race. Bonforte had given the party a rationale and an ethic, the theme that freedom and equal rights must run with the Imperial banner; he kept harping on the notion that the human race must never again make the mistakes that the white subrace had made in Africa and Asia.

But I was confused by the fact-I was awfully unsophisticated in such matters-that the early history of the Expansionist Party sounded remarkably like the present Humanity Party. I was not aware that political parties often change as much in growing up as people do. I had known vaguely that the Humanity Party had started as a splinter of the Expansionist movement but I had never thought about it. Actually it was inevitable; as the political parties which did not have their eyes on the sky dwindled away under the imperatives of history and ceased to elect candidates, the one party which had been on the right track was bound to split into two factions.

But I am running ahead; my political education did not proceed so logically. At first I simply soaked myself in Bonforte’s public utterances. True, I had done that on the trip out, but then I was studying how he spoke; now I was studying what he said.

Bonforte was an orator in the grand tradition but he could be vitriolic in debate, e.g; a speech he made in New Paris during the ruckus over the treaty with the Martian nests, the Concord of Tycho. It was this treaty which had knocked him out of office before; he had pushed it through but the strain on the coalition had lost him the next vote of confidence. Nevertheless, Quiroga had not dared denounce the treaty. I listened to this speech with special interest since I had not liked the treaty myself; the idea that Martians must be granted the same privileges on Earth that humans enjoyed on Mars had been abhorrent to me-until I visited the Kkkah nest.

“My opponent,” Bonforte had said with a rasp in his voice, “would have you believe that the motto of the so-called Humanity Party, ‘Government of human beings, by human beings, and for human beings,’ is no more than an updating of the immortal words of Lincoln. But while the voice is the voice of Abraham, the hand is the hand of the Ku Klux Klan. The true meaning of that innocent-seeming motto is ‘Government of all races everywhere, by human beings alone, for the profit of a privileged few.’

“But, my opponent protests, we have a God-given mandate to spread enlightenment through the stan, dispensing our own brand of Civilization to the savages. This is the Uncle Remus school of sociology-the good dahides singin’ spirituals and Ole Massa lubbin’ every one of dem! It is a beautiful picture but the frame is too small; it fails to show the whip, the slave block-and the counting house!”

I found myself becoming, if not an Expansionist, then at least a Bonfortite. I am not sure that I was convinced by the logic of his words-indeed, I am not sure that they were logical. But I was in a receptive frame of mind. I wanted to understand what he said so thoroughly that I could rephrase it and say it in his place, if need be.

Nevertheless, here was a man who knew what he wanted and (much rarer!) why he wanted it. I could not help but be impressed, and it forced me to examine my own beliefs. What did I live by?

My profession, surely! I had been brought up in it, I liked it, I had a deep though unlogical conviction that art was worth the effort-and, besides, it was the only way I knew to make a living. But what else?

I have never been impressed by the formal schools of ethics. I had sampled them-public libraries are a ready source of recreation for an actor short of cash-but I had found them as poor in vitamins as a mother-in-law’s kiss. Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.

I had the same contempt for the moral instruction handed to mast children. Much of it is prattle and the parts they really seem to mean are dedicated to the sacred proposition that a “good” child is one who does not disturb mother’s nap and a “good” man is one who achieves a muscular bank account without getting caught. No, thanks!

But even a dog has rules of conduct. What were mine? How did I behave-or, at least, how did I like to think I behaved?

“The show must go on.” I had always believed that and lived by it. But why must the show go on?-seeing that some shows are pretty terrible. Well, because you agreed to do it, because there is an audience out there; they have paid and each one of them is entitled to the best you can give. You owe it to them. You owe it also to stagehands and manager and producer and other members of the company-and to those who taught you your trade, and to others stretching back in history to open-air theaters and stone seats and even to storytellers squatting in a market place. Noblesse oblige.

I decided that the notion could be generalized into any occupation. “Value for value.” Building “on the square and on the level.” The Hippocratic oath. Don’t let the team down. Honest work for honest pay. Such things did not have to be proved; they were an essential part of life-true throughout eternity, true in the farthest reaches of the Galaxy.

I suddenly got a glimpse of what Bonforte was driving at. If there were ethical basics that transcended time and place, then they were true both for Martians and for men. They were true on any planet around any star-and if the human race did not behave accordingly they weren’t ever going to win to the stars because some better race would slap them down for double- dealing.

The price of expansion was virtue. “Never give a sucker an even break” was too narrow a philosophy to fit the broad reaches of space.

But Bonforte was not preaching sweetness and light. “I am not a pacifist. Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay-and claims a halo for his dishonesty. Mr. Speaker, life belongs to those who do not fear to lose it. This bill must pass!” And with that he had got up and crossed the aisle in support of a military appropriation his own party had refused in caucus.

Or again: “Take sides! Always take sides! You will sometimes be wrong-but the man who refuses to take sides must always be wrong! Heaven save us from poltroons who fear to make a choice. Let us stand up and be counted.” (This last was in a closed caucus but Penny had caught it on her minicorder and Bonforte had saved it-Bonforte had a sense of history; he was a record keeper. If he had not been, I would not have had much to work with.)

I decided that Bonforte was my kind of man. Or at least the kind I liked to think I was. His was a persona I was proud to wear.

So far as I can remember I did not sleep on that trip after I promised Penny that I would take the royal audience if Bonforte could not be made ready. I intended to sleep-there is no point in taking your stage with your eyes bagging like hound’s ears-but I got interested in what I was studying and there was a plentiful supply of pepper pills in Bonforte’s desk. It is amazing how much ground you can cover working a twenty-four-hour day, free from interruptions and with all the help you could ask for.

But shortly before we were due at New Batavia, Dr. Capek came in and said, “Bare your left forearm.” “Why?” I asked.

“Because when you go before the Emperor we don’t want you falling flat on your face with fatigue. This will make you sleep until we ground. Then I’ll give you an antidote.” “Eh? I take it that you don’t think he will be ready?”

Capek did not answer, but gave me the shot. I tried to finish listening to the speech I was running but I must have been asleep in seconds. The next thing I knew Dak was saying deferentially, “Wake up, sir. Please wake up. We’re grounded at Lippershey Field.”

Chapter 8

Our Moon being an airless planet, a torchship can land on it. But the Tom Paine, being a torchship, was really intended to stay in space and be serviced only at space stations in orbit; she had to be landed in a cradle. I wish I had been awake to see it, for they say that catching an egg on a plate is easy by comparison. Dak was one of the half dozen pilots who could do it.

But I did not even get to see the Tommie in her cradle; all I saw was the inside of the passenger bellows they fastened to her air lock and the passenger tube to New Batavia-those tubes are so fast that, under the low gravity of the Moon, you are again in free fall at the middle of the trip.

We went first to the apartments assigned to the leader of the loyal opposition, Bonforte’s official residence until (and if) he went back into power after the coming election. The magnificence of them made me wonder what the Supreme Minister’s residence was like. I suppose that New Batavia is odds-on the most palatial capital city in all history; it is a shame that it can hardly be seen from outdoors-but that minor shortcoming is more than offset by the fact that it is the only city in the Solar System that is actually impervious to fusion bombs. Or perhaps I should say “effectively impervious” since there are some surface structures which could be destroyed. Bonforte’s apartments included an upper living room in the side of a cliff, which looked out through a bubble balcony at the stars and Mother Earth herself-but his sleeping room and offices were a thousand feet of solid rock below, by private lift.

I had no time to explore the apartments; they dressed me for the audience. Bonforte had no valet even dirtside, but Rog insisted on “helping” me (he was a hindrance) while going over lastminute details. The dress was ancient formal court dress, shapeless tubular trousers, a silly jacket with a claw-hammer tail, both in black, and a chemise consisting of a stiff white breastplate, a “winged” collar, and a white bow tie. Bonforte’s chemise was all in one piece, because (I suppose) he did not use a dresser; correctly it should be assembled piece by piece and the bow tie should be tied poorly enough to show that it has been tied by hand-but it is too much to expect a man to understand both politics and period costuming.

It is an ugly costume, but it did make a fine background for the Order of Wilhelmina stretched in colorful diagonal across my chest. I looked at myself in a long glass and was pleased with the effect; the one color accent against the dead black and white was good showmanship. The traditional dress might be ugly but it did have dignity, something like the cool stateliness of a maitre d’hotel. I decided that I looked the part to wait on the pleasure of a sovereign.

Rog Clifton gave me the scroll which was supposed to list the names of my nominations for the ministries and he tucked into an inner pocket of my costume a copy of the typed list thereof-the original had gone forward by hand of Jimmie Washington to the Emperor’s State Secretary as soon as we had grounded. Theoretically the purpose of the audience was for the Emperor to inform me that it was his pleasure for me to form a government and for me to submit humbly my suggestions; my nominations were supposed to be secret until the

sovereign graciously approved.

Actually the choices were all made; Rog and Bill had spent most of the trip lining up the Cabinet and making sure the nominees would serve, using state-scramble for the radio messages. I had studied the Farleyflies on each nomination and each alternate. But the list really was secret in the sense that the news services would not receive it until after the Imperial audience.

I took the scroll and picked up my life wand. Rog looked horrified. “Good Lord, man, you can’t carry that thing into the presence of the Emperor!” “Why not?”

“Huh? It’s a weapon.”

“It’s a ceremonial weapon. Rog, every duke and every pipsqueak baronet will be wearing his dress sword. So I wear this.”

He shook his head. “They have to. Don’t you understand the ancient legal theory behind it? Their dress swords symbolize the duty they owe their liege lord to support and defend him by force of arms, in their own persons. But you are a commoner; tradi-. tionally you come before him unarmed.”

“No, Rog. Oh, I’ll do what you tell me to, but you are missing a wonderful chance to catch a tide at its flood. This is good theater, this is right.” “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

“Well, look, will the word get back to Mars if I carry this wand today? Inside the nests, I mean?” “Eh? I suppose so. Yes.”

“Of course. I would guess that every nest has stereo receivers; I certainly noticed plenty of them in Kkkah nest. They follow the Empire news as carefully as we do. Don’t they?” “Yes. At least the elders do.”

“II I carry the wand, they’ll know it; if I fail to carry it, they will know it. It matters to them; it is tied up with propriety. No adult Martian would appear outside his nest without his life wand, or inside on ceremonial occasions. Martians have appeared before the Emperor in the past; they carried their wands, didn’t they? I’d bet my life on it.”

“Yes, but you-“

“You forget that 1 am a Martian.”

Rog’s face suddenly blanked out. I went on, “I am not only ‘John Joseph Bonforte’; I am Kkkahjjjerrr of Kkkah nest. If I fail to carry that wand, I commit a great impropriety-and frankly I do not know what would happen when the word got back; I don’t know enough about Martian customs. Now turn it around and look at it the other way. When I walk down that aisle carrying this wand, I am a Martian citizen about to be named His Imperial Majesty’s first minister. How will that affect the nests?”

“I guess I had not thought it through,” he answered slowly.

“Nor would I have done so, had I not had to decide whether or not to carry the wand. But don’t you suppose Mr. B. thought it through-before he ever let himself be invited to be adopted? Rog, we’ve got a tiger by the tail; the only thing to do is to swarm aboard and ride it. We can’t let go.”

Dak arrived at that point, confirmed my opinion, seemed surprised that Clifton had expected anything else. “Sure, we’re setting a new precedent, Rog-but we’re going to set a lot of new ones before we are through.” But when he saw how I was carrying the wand he let out a scream. “Cripes, man! Are you trying to kill somebody? Or just carve a hole in the wall?”

“I wasn’t pressing the stud.”

“Thank God for small favors! You don’t even have the safety on.” He took it from me very gingerly and said, “You twist this ring-and shove this in that slot-then it’s just a stick. Whew!” “Oh. Sorry.”

They delivered me to the robing room of the Palace and turned me over to King Willem’s equerry, Colonel Pateel, a bland-faced Hindu with perfect manners and the dazzling dress uniform of the Imperial space forces. His bow to me must have been calculated on a slide rule; it suggested that I was about to be Supreme Minister but was not quite there yet, that I was his senior but nevertheless a civilian-then subtract five degrees for the fact that he wore the Emperor’s aiguillette on his right shoulder.

He glanced at the wand and said smoothly, “That’s a Martian wand, is it not, sir? Interesting. I suppose you will want to leave it here-it will be safe.” I said, “I’m carrying it.”

“Sir?” His eyebrows shot up and he waited for me to correct my obvious mistake.

I reached into Bonforte’s favorite cliches and picked one he used to reprove bumptiousness. “Son, suppose you tend to your knitting and I tend to mine.” His face lost all expression. “Very well, sir. If you will come this way?”

We paused at the entrance to the throne room. Far away, on the raised dais, the throne was empty. On both sides the entire length of the great cavern the nobles and royalty of the court were standing and waiting. I suppose Pateel passed along some sign, for the Imperial Anthem welled out and we all held still for it, Pateel in robotlike attention, myself in a tired stoop suitable to a middleaged and overworked roan who must do this thing because he must, and all the court like show-window pieces. I hope we never dispense with the pageantry of a court entirely; all those noble dress extras and spear carriers make a beautiful sight.

In the last few bars he came in from behind and took his throne

-Willem, Prince of Orange, Duke of Nassau, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Knight Commander of the Holy Roman Empire, Admiral General of the Imperial Forces, Adviser to the Martian Nests, Protector of the Poor, and, by the Grace of God, King of the Lowlands and Emperor of the Planets and the Spaces Between.

I could not see his face, but the symbolism produced in me a sudden warm surge of empathy. I no longer felt hostile to the notion of royalty.

As King Willem sat down the anthem ended; he nodded acknowledgment of the salute and a wave of slight relaxation rippled down the courtiers. Pateel withdrew and, with my wand tucked under my arm, I started my long march, limping a little in spite of the low gravity. It felt remarkably like the progress to the Inner Nest of Kkkah, except that I was not frightened; I was simply warm and tingling. The Empire medley followed me down, the music sliding from “King Christian” to “Marseillaise” to “The StarSpangled Banner” and all the others.

At the first balk line I stopped and bowed, then again at the second, then at last a deep bow at the third, just before the steps. I did not kneel; nobles must kneel but commoners share sovereignty with the Sovereign. One sees this point incorrectly staged some- times in stereo and theater, and Rog had made sure that I knew what to do.

“Aye, Imperator!” Had I been a Dutchman I would have said “Rex” as well, but I was an American. We swapped schoolboy Latin back and forth by rote, he inquiring what I wanted, I reminding him that he had summoned me, etc. He shifted into Anglo-American, with a slight “down-East” accent.

“You served our father well. it is now our thought that you might serve us. How say you?” “My sovereign’s wish is my will, Majesty.”

“Approach us.”

Perhaps I made too good a thing of it but the steps up the dais are high and my leg actually was hurting-and a psychosomatic pain is as bad as any other. I almost stumbled-and Willem was up out of his throne like a shot and steadied my arm. I heard a gasp go around the hall. He smiled at me and said sotto voce, “Take it easy, old friend. Wet make this short.”

He helped me to the stool before the throne and made me sit down an awkward moment sooner than he himself was again seated. Then he held out his hand for the scroll and I passed it over. He unrolled it and pretended to study the blank page.

There was chamber music now and the court made a display of enjoying themselves, ladies laughing, noble gentlemen uttering gallantries, fans gesturing. No one moved very far from his place, no one held still. Little page boys, looking like Michelangelo’s cherubim, moved among them offering trays of sweets. One knelt to Willem and he helped himself without taking

his eyes off the nonexistent list. The child then offered the tray to me and I took one, not knowing whether it was proper or not. It was one of those wonderful, matchless chocolates made only in Holland.

I found that I knew a number of the court faces from pictures. Most of the unemployed royalty of Earth were there, concealed under their secondary titles of duke or count. Some said that Willem kept them on as pensioners to brighten his court; some said he wanted to keep an eye on them and keep them out of politics and other mischief. Perhaps it was a little of both. There were the nonroyal nobility of a dozen nations present, too; some of them actually worked for a living.

I found myself trying to pick out the Habsburg lips and the Windsor nose.

At last Willem put down the scroll. The music and the conversation ceased instantly. In dead silence he said, “It is a gallant company you have proposed. We are minded to confirm it.” “You are most gracious, Majesty.”

“We will ponder and inform you.” He leaned forward and said quietly to me alone, “Don’t try to back down those damned steps. Just stand up. I am going to leave at once.” I whispered back, “Oh. Thank you, Sire.”

He stood up, whereupon I got hastily to my feet, and he was gone in a swirl of robes. I turned around and noticed some startled looks. But the music started up at once and I was let to walk out while the noble and regal extras again made polite conversation.

Pateel was at my elbow as soon as I was through the far archway. “This way, sir, if you please.” The pageantry was over; now came the real audience.

He took me through a small door, down an empty corridor, through another small door, and into a quite ordinary office. The only thing regal about it was a carved wall plaque, the coat of arms of the House of Orange, with its deathless motto, “I Maintain!” There was a big, fiat desk, littered with papers. In the middle of it, held down by a pair of metal-plated baby shoes, was the original of the typed list in my pocket. In a copper frame there was a family group picture of the late Empress and the kids. Asomewhat battered couch was against one wall and beyond it was a small bar. There were a couple of armchairs as well as the swivel chair at the desk. The other furnishings might have suited the office of a busy and not fussy family physician.

Pateel left me alone there, closing the door behind him. I did not have time to consider whether or not it was proper for me to sit down, as the Emperor came quickly in through a door opposite. “Howdy, Joseph,” he called out. “Be with you in a moment.” He strode through the room, followed closely by two servants who were undressing him as he walked, and went out a third door. He was back again almost at once, zipping up a suit of coveralls as he came in. “You took the short route; I had to come long way around. I’m going to insist that the palace engineer cut another tunnel through from the back of the throne room, dammed if I’m not. I have to come around three sides of a square-either that or parade through semi-public corridors dressed like a circus horse.” He added meditatively, “I never wear anything but underwear under those silly robes.”

I said, “I doubt if they are as uncomfortable as this monkey jacket I am wearing, Sire.”

He shrugged. “Oh well, we each have to put up with the inconveniences of our jobs. Didn’t you get yourself a drink?” He picked up the list of nominations for cabinet ministers. “Do so, and pour me one.”

“What will you have, Sire?”

“Eh?” He looked up and glanced sharply at me. “My usual. Scotch on ice, of course.”

I said nothing and poured them, adding water to my own. I had had a sudden chill; if Bonforte knew that the Emperor always took scotch over bare cubes it should have been in his Farleyfile. It was not.

But Willem accepted the drink without comment, murmured, “Hot jets!” and went on looking at the list. Presently he looked up and said, “How about these lads, Joseph?”

“Sire? It is a skeleton cabinet, of course.” We had doubled up on portfolios where possible and Bonforte would hold Defense and Treasury as well as first. In three cases we had given temporary appointments to the career deputy ministers-Research, Population Management, and Exterior. The men who would hold the posts in the permanent government were all needed for campaigning.

“Yes, yes, it’s your second team. Mmm … How about this man Braun?”

I was considerably surprised. It had been my understanding that Willem would okay the list without comment, but that he might want to chat about other things. I had not been afraid of chatting; a man can get a reputation as a sparkling conversationalist simply by letting the other man do all the talking.

Lothar Braun was what was known as a “rising young statesman.” What I knew about him came from his Farleyfile and from Rog and Bill. He had come up since Bonforte had been turned out of office and so had never had any cabinet post, but had served as caucus sergeant at arms and junior whip. Bill insisted that Bonforte had planned to boost him rapidly and that he should try his wings in the caretaker government; he proposed him for Minister of External Communications.

Rog Clifton had seemed undecided; he had first put down the name of Angel Jesus de la Tone y Perez, the career subminister. But Bill had pointed out that if Braun flopped, now was a good time to find it out and no harm done. Clifton had given in.

“Braun?” I answered. “He’s a coming young man. Very brilliant.”

Willem made no comment, but looked on down the list. I tried to remember exactly what Bonforte had said about Braun in the Farleyffle. Brilliant … hardworking … analytical mind. Had he said anything against him? No-well, perhaps-“a shade too affable.” That does not condemn a man. But Bonforte had said nothing at all about such affirmative virtues as loyalty and honesty. Which might mean nothing, as the Farleyfile was not a series of character studies; it was a data file.

The Emperor put the list aside. “Joseph, are you planning to bring the Martian nests into the Empire at once?” “Eh? Certainly not before the election, Sire.”

“Come now, you know I was talking about after the election. And have you forgotten how to say ‘Willem’? ‘Sire’ from a man six years older than I am, under these circumstances, is silly.” “Very well, Willem.”

“We both know I am not supposed to notice politics. But we know also that the assumption is silly. Joseph, you have spent your off years creating a situation in which the nests would wish to come wholly into the Empire.” He pointed a thumb at my wand. “I believe you have done it. Now if you win this election you should be able to get the Grand Assembly to grant me permission to proclaim it. Well?”

I thought about it. “Willem,” I said slowly, “you know that is exactly what we have planned to do. You must have some reason for bringing the subject up.”

He swizzled his glass and stared at me, managing to look like a New England groceryman about to tell off one of the summer people. “Are you asking my advice? The constitution requires you to advise me, not the other way around.”

“I welcome your advice, Wilem. I do not promise to follow it.”

He laughed. “You damned seldom promise anything. Very well, let’s assume that you win the election and go back into office

-but with a majority so small that you might have difficulty in voting the nests into full citizenship. In such case I would not advise you to make it a vote of confidence. If you lose, take your licking and stay in office; stick the full term.”

“Why, Willem?”

“Because you and I are patient men. See that?” He pointed at the plaque of his house. “‘I Maintain!’ It’s not a flashy rule but it is not a king’s business to be flashy; his business is to conserve, to hang on, to roll with the punch. Now, constitutionally speaking, it should not matter to me whether you stay in office or not. But it does matter to me whether or not the Empire holds together. I think that if you miss on the Martian issue immediately after the election, you can afford to wait-for your other policies are going to prove very popular. You’ll pick up votes in by-elections and eventually you’ll come around and tell me I can add ‘Emperor of Mars’ to the list. So don’t hurry.”

“I will think about it,” I said carefully.

“Do that. Now how about the transportee system?”

“We’re abolishing it immediately after the election and suspending it at once.” I could answer that one firmly; Bonforte hated it. “They’ll attack you on it.”

“So they will. Let them. We’ll pick up votes.”

“Glad to hear that you still have the strength of your convictions, Joseph. I never liked having the banner of Orange on a convict ship. Free trade?” “After the election, yes.”

“What are you going to use for revenue?”

“It is our contention that trade and production will expand so rapidly that other revenues will make up for the loss of the customs.” “And suppose it ain’t so?”

I had not been given a second-string answer on that one-and economics was largely a mystery to me. I grinned. “Willem, I’ll have to have notice on that question. But the whole program of the Expansionist Party is founded on the notion that free trade, free travel, common citizenship, common currency, and a minimum of Imperial laws and restrictions are good not only for the citizens of the Empire but for the Empire itself. If we need the money, we’ll find it-but not by chopping the Empire up into tiny bailiwicks.” All but the first sentence was pure Bonforte, only slightly adapted.

“Save your campaign speeches,” he grunted. “I simply asked.” He picked up the list again. “You’re quite sure this line-up is the way you want it?”

I reached for the list and he handed it to me. Damnation, it was clear that the Emperor was telling me as emphatically as the constitution would let him that, in his opinion, Braun was a wrong ‘un. But, hell’s best anthracite, I had no business changing the list Bill and Rog had made up.

On the other hand, it was not Bon forte’s list; it was merely what they thought Bonforte would do if he were compos mentis. I wished suddenly that I could take time out and ask Penny what she thought of Braun.

Then I reached for a pen from Willem’s desk, scratched out “Braun,” and printed in “de la Torre”-in block letters; I still could not risk Bonforte’s handwriting. The Emperor merely said, “It looks like a good team to me. Good luck, Joseph. You’ll need it.”

That ended the audience as such. I was anxious to get away, but you do not walk out on a king; that is one prerogative they have retained. He wanted to show me his workshop and his new train models. I suppose he has done more to revive that ancient hobby than anyone else; personally I can’t see it as an occupation for a grown man. But I made polite noises about his new toy locomotive, intended for the “Royal Scotsman.”

“If I had had the breaks,” he said, getting down on his hands and knees and peering into the innards of the toy engine, “I could have been a very fair shop superintendent, I think-a master machinist. But the accident of birth discriminated against me.”

“Do you really think you would have preferred it, Willem?”

“I don’t know. This job I have is not bad. The hours are easy and the pay is good-and the social security is first-rate-barring the outside chance of revolution, and my line has always been lucky on that score. But much of the work is tedious and could be done as well by any second-rate actor.” He glanced up at me. “I relieve your office of a lot of tiresome cornerstone-laying and parade-watching, you know.”

“I do know and I appreciate it.”

“Once in a long time I get a chance to give a little push in the right direction-what I think is the right direction. Kinging is a very odd profession, Joseph. Don’t ever take it up.” “I’m afraid it’s a bit late, even if I wanted to.”

He made some fine adjustment on the toy. “My real function is to keep you from going crazy.” “Eh?”

“Of course. Psychosis-situational is the occupational disease of heads of states. My predecessors in the king trade, the ones who actually ruled, were almost all a bit balmy. And take a look at your American presidents; the job used frequently to kill them in their prime. But me, I don’t have to run things; I have a professional like yourself to do it for me. And you don’t have the killing pressure either; you, or those in your shoes, can always quit if things get too tough-and the old Emperor-it’s almost always the ‘old’ Emperor; we usually mount the throne about the age other men retire-the Emperor is always there, maintaining continuity, preserving the symbol of the state, while you professionals work out a new deal.” He blinked solemnly. “My job is not glamorous, but it is useful.”

Presently he let up on me about his chlldish trains and we went back into his office. I thought I was about to be dismissed. In fact, he said, “I should let you get back to your work. You had a hard trip?”

“Not too hard. I spent it working.”

“I suppose so. By the way, who are you?”

There is the policeman’s tap on the shoulder, the shock of the top step that is not there, there is falling out of bed, and there is having her husband return home unexpectedly-I would take any combination of those in preference to that simple inquiry. I aged inside to match my appearance and more.

“Sire?”

“Come now,” he said impatiently, “surely my job carries with it some privileges. Just tell me the truth. I’ve known for the past hour that you were not Joseph Bonforte-though you could fool his own mother; you even have his mannerisms. But who are you?”

“My name is Lawrence Smith, Your Majesty,” I said faintly.

“Brace up, man! I could have called the guards long since, if I had been intending to. Were you sent here to assassinate me?” “No, Sire. I am-loyal to Your Majesty.”

“You have an odd way of showing it. Well, pour yourself another drink, sit down, and tell me about it.”

I told him about it, every bit. It took more than one drink, and presentiy I felt better. He looked angry when I told him of the kidnapping, but when I told him what they had done to Bonforte’s mind his face turned dark with a Jovian rage.

At last he said quietly, “It’s just a matter of days until he is back in shape, then?” “So Dr. Capek says.”

“Don’t let him go to work until he is fully recovered. He’s a valuable man. You know that, don’t you? Worth six of you and me. So you carry on with the doubling job and let him get well. The Empire needs him.”

“Yes, Sire.”

“Knock off that ‘Sire.’ Since you are standing in for him, call me ‘Willem,’ as he does. Did you know that was how I spotted you?” “No, Si-no, Willem.”

“He’s called me Willem for twenty years. I thought it decidedly odd that he would quit it in private simply because he was seeing me on state business. But I did not suspect, not really. But, remarkable as your performance was, it set me thinking. Then when we went in to see the trains, I knew.”

“Excuse me? How?”

“You were polite, man! I’ve made him look at my trains in the past-and he always got even by being as rude as possible about what a way for a grown man to waste time. It was a little act we always went through. We both enjoyed it.”

“Oh. I didn’t know.”

“How could you have known?” I was thinking that I should have known, that damned Farleyfile should have told me … It was not until later that I realized that the file had not been

defective, in view of the theory on which it was based, i.e. it was intended to let a famous man remember details about the less famous. But that was precisely what the Emperor was not-

less famous, I mean. Of course Bonforte needed no notes to recall personal details about Willem! Nor would he consider it proper to set down personal matters about the sovereign in a

file handled by his clerks.

I had muffed the obvious-not that I see how I could have avoided it, even ii I had realized that the file would be incomplete.

But the Emperor was still talking. “You did a magnificent job- and after risking your life in a Martian nest I am not surprised that you were willing to tackle me. Tell me, have I ever seen you in stereo, or anywhere?”

I had given my legal name, of course, when the Emperor demanded it; I now rather timidly gave my professional name. He looked at me, threw up his hands, and guff awed. I was somewhat hurt. “Er, have you heard of me?”

“Heard of you? I’m one of your staunchest fans.” He looked at me very closely. “But you still look like Joe Bonforte. I can’t believe that you are Lorenzo.” “But I am.”

“Oh, I believe it, I believe it. You know that skit where you are a tramp? First you try to milk a cow-no luck. Finally you end up eating out of the cat’s dish-but even the cat pushes you away?” I admitted it.

“I’ve almost worn out my spool of that. I laugh and cry at the same time.”

“That is the idea.” I hesitated, then admitted that the barnyard “Weary Willie” routine had been copied from a very great artist of another century. “But I prefer dramatic roles.” “Like this one?”

“Well-not exactly. For this role, once is quite enough. I wouldn’t care for a long run.”

“I suppose so. Well, tell Roger Clifton- No, don’t tell Clifton anything. Lorenzo, I see nothing to be gained by ever telling anyone about our conversation this past hour. If you tell Clifton, even though you tell him that I said not to worry, it would just give him nerves. And he has work to do. So we keep it tight, eh?”

“As my emperor wishes.”

“None of that, please. We’ll keep it quiet because it’s best so. Sorry I can’t make a sickbed visit on Uncle Joe. Not that I could help him-although they used to think the King’s Touch did marvels. So we’ll say nothing and pretend that I never twigged.”

“Yes-Wilem.”

“I suppose you had better go now. I’ve kept you a very long time.” “Whatever you wish.”

“I’ll have Pateel go back with you-or do you know your way around? But just a moment-” He dug around in his desk, muttering to himself. “That girl must have been straightening things again. No-here it is.” He hauled out a little book. “I probably won’t get to see you again-so would you mind giving me your autograph before you go?”

Chapter 9

Rog and Bill I found chewing their nails in Bonforte’s upper living room. The second I showed up Corpsman started toward me. “Where the hell have you been?” “With the Emperor,” I answered coldly.

“You’ve been gone five or six times as long as you should have been.”

I did not bother to answer. Since the argument over the speech Corpsman and I had gotten along together and worked together, but it was strictly a marriage of convenience, with no love. We cooperated, but we did not really bury the hatchet-unless it was between my shoulder blades. I had made no special effort to conciliate him and saw no reason why I should-in my opinion his parents had met briefly at a masquerade ball.

I don’t believe in rowing with other members of the company, but the only behavior Corpsman would willingly accept from me was that of a servant, hat in hand and very ‘umble, sir. I would not give him that, even to keep peace. I was a professional, retained to do a very difficult professional job, and professional men do not use the back stairs; they are treated with respect.

So I ignored him and asked Rog, “Where’s Penny?” “With him. So are Dak and Do; at the moment.” “He’s here?”

“Yes.” Clifton hesitated. “We put him in what is supposed to be the wife’s room of your bedroom suite. It was the only place where we could maintain utter privacy and still give him the care he needs. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

“It won’t inconvenience you. The two bedrooms are joined, you may have noticed, only through the dressing rooms, and we’ve shut off that door. It’s soundproof.” “Sounds like a good arrangement. How is he?”

Clifton frowned. “Better, much better-on the whole. He is lucid much of the time.” He hesitated. “You can go in and see him, if you like.” I hesitated still longer. “How soon does Dr. Capek think he will be ready to make public appearances?”

“It’s hard to say. Before long.”

“How long? Three or four days? Ashort enough time that we could cancel all appointments and just put me out of sight? Rog, I don’t know just how to make this clear but, much as I would like to call on him and pay my respects, I don’t think it is smart for me to see him at all until after I have made my last appearance. It might well ruin my characterization.” I had made the terrible mistake of going to my father’s funeral; for years thereafter when I thought of him I saw him dead in his coffin. Only very slowly did I regain the true image of him-the virile, dominant man who had reared me with a firm hand and taught me my trade. I was afraid of something like that with Bonforte; I was now impersonating a well man at the height of his powers, the way I had seen him and heard him in the many stereo records of him. I was very much afraid that if I saw him ill, the recollection of it would blur and distort my performance.

“I was not insisting,” Clifton answered. “You know best. It’s possible that we can keep from having you appear in public again, but I want to keep you standing by and ready until he is fully recovered.”

I almost said that the Emperor wanted it done that way. But I caught myself-the shock of having the Emperor find me out had shaken me a little out of character. But the thought reminded

me of unfinished business. I took out the revised cabinet list and handed it to Corpsman. “Here’s the approved roster for the news services, Bill. You’ll see that there is one change on it- De la Torre for Braun.”

“What?”

“Jesus de Ia Tone for Lothar Braun. That’s the way the Emperor wanted it.”

Clifton looked astonished; Corpsman looked both astonished and angry. “What difference does that make? He’s got no goddamn right to have opinions!”

Clifton said slowly, “Bill is fight, Chief. As a lawyer who has specialized in constitutional law I assure you that the sovereign’s confirmation is purely nominal. You should not have let him make any changes.”

I felt like shouting at them, and only the imposed calm personality of Bonforte kept me from it. I had had a hard day and, despite a brilliant performance, the inevitable disaster had overtaken me. I wanted to tell Rog that if Willem had not been a really big man, kingly in the fine sense of the word, we would all be in the soup-simply because I had not been adequately coached for the role. Instead I answered sourly, “It’s done and that’s that.”

Corpsman said, “That’s what you think! I gave out the correct list to the reporters two hours ago. Now you’ve got to go back and straighten it out. Rog, you had better call the Palace right away and-“

I said, “Quiet!”

Corpsman shut up. I went on in a lower key. “Rog, from a legal point of view, you may be right. I wouldn’t know. I do know that the Emperor felt free to question the appointment of Braun. Now if either one of you wants to go to the Emperor and argue with him, that’s up to you. But I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to get out of this anachronistic strait jacket, take my shoes off, and have a long, tall drink. Then rm going to bed.”

“Now wait, Chief,” Clifton objected. “You’ve got a five-minute spot on grand network to announce the new cabinet.” “You take it. You’re first deputy in this cabinet.”

He blinked. “All right.”

Corpsman said insistently, “How about Braun? He was promised the job.”

Clifton looked at him thoughtfully. “Not in any dispatch that I saw, Bill. He was simply asked if he was willing to serve, like all the others. Is that what you meant?” Corpsman hesitated like an actor not quite sure of his lines. “Of course. But it amounts to a promise.”

“Not until the public announcement is made, it doesn’t.”

“But the announcement was made, I tell you. Two hours ago.”

“Mmm … Bill, I’m afraid that you will have to call the boys in again and tell them that you made a mistake. Or I’ll call them in and tell them that through an error a preliminary list was handed out before Mr. Bonforte had okayed it. But we’ve got to correct it before the grand network announcement.”

“Do you mean to tell me you are going to let him get away with it?”

By “him” I think Bill meant me rather than Willem, but Rog’s answer assumed the contrary. “Yes. Bill, this is no time to force a constitutional crisis. The issue isn’t worth it. So will you phrase the retraction? Or shall I?”

Corpsman’s expression reminded me of the way a cat submits to the inevitable-“just barely.” He looked grim, shrugged, and said, “I’ll do it. I want to be damned sure it is phrased properly, so we can salvage as much as possible out of the shambles.”

“Thanks, Bill,” Rog answered mildly.

Corpsman turned to leave. I called out, “Bill! As long as you are going to be talking to the news service I have another announcement for them.” “Huh? What are you after now?”

“Nothing much.” The fact was I was suddenly overcome with weariness at the role and the tensions it created. “Just tell them that Mr. Bonforte has a cold and his physician has ordered him to bed for a rest. I’ve had a bellyful.”

Corpsman snorted. “I think I’ll make it ‘pneumonia.” “Suit yourself.”

When he had gone Rog turned to me and said, “Don’t let it get you, Chief. In this business some days are better than others.” “Rog, I really am going on the sick list. You can mention it on stereo tonight.”

“So?”

“I’m going to take to my bed and stay there. There is no reason at all why Bonforte can’t ‘have a cold’ until he is ready to get back into harness himself. Every time I make an appearance it just increases the probability that somebody will spot something wrong- and every time I do make an appearance that sorehead Corpsman finds something to yap about. An artist can’t do his best work with somebody continually snarling at him. So let’s let it go at this and ring down the curtain.”

“Take it easy, Chief. I’ll keep Corpsman out of your hair from now on. Here we won’t be in each other’s laps the way we were in the ship.”

“No, Rog, my mind is made up. Oh, I won’t run out on you. I’ll stay here until Mr. B. is able to see people, in case some utter emergency turns up”-I was recalling uneasily that the Emperor had told me to hang on and had assumed that I would-“but it is actually better to keep me out of sight. At the moment we have gotten away with it completely, haven’t we? Oh, they know- somebody knows-that Bonforte was not the man who went through the adoption ceremony-but they don’t dare raise that issue, nor could they prove it if they did. The same people may suspect that a double was used today, but they don’t know, they can’t be sure-because it is always possible that Bonforte recovered quickly enough to carry it off today. Right?”

Clifton got an odd, half-sheepish look on his face. “I’m afraid they are fairly sure you were a double, Chief.” “Eh?”

“We shaded the truth a little to keep you from being nervous. Doc Capek was certain from the time he first examined him that only a miracle could get him in shape to make the audience today. The people who dosed him would know that too.”

I frowned. “Then you were kidding me earlier when you told me how well he was doing? How is he, Rog? Tell me the truth.”

“I was telling you the truth that time, Chief. That’s why I suggested that you see him-whereas before I was only too glad to string along with your reluctance to see him.” He added, “Perhaps you had better see him, talk with him.”

“Mmm-no.” The reasons for not seeing him still applied; if I did have to make another appearance I did not want my subconscious playing me tricks. The role called for a well man. “But, Rog, everything I said applies still more emphatically on the basis of what you have just told me. If they are even reasonably sure that a double was used today, then we don’t dare risk another appearance. They were caught by surprise today-or perhaps it was impossible to unmask me, under the circumstances. But it will not be later. They can rig some deadfall, some test that I can’t pass- then blooey/ There goes the old ball game.” I thought about it. “I had better be ‘sick’ as long as necessary. Bill was right; it had better be ‘pneumonia.’”

Such is the power of suggestion that I woke up the next morning with a stopped-up nose and a sore throat. Dr. Capek took time to dose me and I felt almost human by suppertime; nevertheless, he issued bulletins about “Mr. Bonforte’s virus infection.” The sealed and air-conditioned cities of the Moon being what they are, nobody was anxious to be exposed to an S- vectored ailment; no determined effort was made to get past my chaperones. For four days I loafed and read from Bonforte’s library, both his own collected papers and his many books

… I discovered that both politics and economics could make engrossing reading; those subjects had never been real to me before. The Emperor sent me flowers from the royal

greenhouse-or were they for me?

Never mind. I loafed and soaked in the luxury of being Lorenzo, or even plain Lawrence Smith. I found that I dropped back into character automatically if someone came in, but I can’t help that. It was not necessary; I saw no one but Penny and Capek, except for one visit from Dak.

But even lotus-eating can pall. By the fourth day I was as tired of that room as I had ever been of a producer’s waiting room and I was lonely. No one bothered with me; Capek’s visits had been brisk and professional, and Penny’s visits had been short and few. She had stopped calling me “Mr. Bonforte.”

When Dak showed up I was delighted to see him. “Dak! What’s new?”

“Not much. I’ve been trying to get the Tommie overhauled with one hand while helping Rog with political chores with the other. Getting this campaign lined up is going to give him ulcers, three gets you eight.” He sat down. “Politics!”

“Hmm – . . Dak, how did you ever get into it? Offhand, I would figure voyageurs to be as unpolitical as actors. And you in particular.”

“They are and they aren’t. Most ways they don’t give a damn whether school keeps ot not, as long as they can keep on herding junk through the sky. But to do that you’ve got to have cargo, and cargo means trade, and profitable trade means wide-open trade, with any ship free to go anywhere, no customs nonsense and no restricted areas. Freedom! And there you are; you’re in politics. As for myself, I came here first for a spot of lobbying for the ‘continuous voyage’ rule, so that goods on the triangular trade would not pay two duties. It was Mr. B’s bill, of course. One thing led to another and here I am, skipper of his yacht the past six years and representing my guild brothers since the last general election.” He sighed. “I hardly know how it happened myself.”

“I suppose you are anxious to get out of it. Are you going to stand for re-election?” He stared at me. “Huh? Brother, until you’ve been in politics you haven’t been alive.” “But you said-“

“I know what I said. It’s rough and sometimes it’s dirty and it’s always hard work and tedious details. But it’s the only sport for grownups. All other games are for kids. All of ‘em.” He stood up. “Gotta run.”

“Oh, stick around.”

“Can’t. With the Grand Assembly convening tomorrow I’ve got to give Rog a hand. I shouldn’t have stopped in at all.”

“It is? I didn’t know.” I was aware that the G.A., the outgoing G.A. that is, had to meet one more time, to accept the caretaker cabinet. But I had not thought about it. It was a routine matter, as perfunctory as presenting the list to the Emperor. “Is he going to be able to make it?”

“No. But don’t you worry about it. Rog will apologize to the house for your-I mean his-absence and will ask for a proxy rule under no-objection procedure. Then he will read the speech of the Supreme Minister Designate-Bill is working on it right now. Then in his own person he will move that the government be confirmed. Second. No debate. Pass. Adjourn sine die-and everybody rushes for home and starts promising the voters two women in every bed and a hundred Imperials every Monday morning. Routine.” He added, “Oh yes! Some member of the Humanity Party will move a resolution of sympathy and a basket of flowers, which will pass in a fine hypocritical glow. They’d rather send flowers to Bonforte’s funeral.” He scowled.

“It is actually as simple as that? What would happen if the proxy rule were refused? I thought the Grand Assembly didn’t recognize proxies.”

“They don’t, for all ordinary procedure. You either pair, or you show up and vote. But this is just the idler wheels going around in parliamentary machinery. If they don’t let him appear by proxy tomorrow, then they’ve got to wait around until he is well before they can adjourn sine die and get on with the serious business of hypnotizing the voters. As it is, a mock quorum has been meeting daily and adjourning ever since Quiroga resigned. This Assembly is as dead as Caesar’s ghost, but it has to be buried constitutionally.”

“Yes-but suppose some idiot did object?”

“No one will. Oh, it could force a constitutional crisis. But it won’t happen.”

Neither one of us said anything for a while. Dak made no move to leave. “Dak, would it make things easier if I showed up and gave that speech?”

“Huh? Shucks, I thought that was settled. You decided that it wasn’t safe to risk another appearance short of an utter save-the-baby emergency. On the whole, I agree with you. There’s the old saw about the pitcher and the well.”

“Yes. But this is just a walk-through, isn’t it? Lines as fixed as a play? Would there be any chance of anyone puffing any surprises on me that I couldn’t handle?”

“Well, no. Ordinarily you would be expected to talk to the press afterwards, but your recent illness is an excuse. We could slide you through the security tunnel and avoid them entirely.” He smiled grimly. “Of course, there is always the chance that some crackpot in the visitors’ gallery has managed to sneak in a gun…Mr. B. always referred to it as the ‘shooting gallery’ after they winged him from it.”

My leg gave a sudden twinge. “Are you trying to scare me off?”

“You pick a funny way to encourage me. Dak, be level with me. Do you want me to do this job tomorrow? Or don’t you?” “Of course I do! Why the devil do you think I stopped in on a busy day? Just to chat?”

The Speaker pro tempore banged his gavel, the chaplain gave an invocation that carefully avoided any differences between one religion and another-and everyone kept silent. The seats themselves were only half filled but the gallery was packed with tourists.

We heard the ceremonial knocking amplified over the speaker system; the Sergeant at Arms rushed the mace to the door. Three times the Emperor demanded to be admitted, three times he was refused. Then he prayed the privilege; it was granted by acclamation. We stood while Willem entered and took his seat back of the Speaker’s desk. He was in uniform as Admiral General and was unattended, as was required, save by escort of the Speaker and the Sergeant at Arms.

Then I tucked my wand under my arm and stood up at my place at the front bench and, addressing the Speaker as if the sovereign were not present, I delivered my speech. It was not the one Corpsman had written; that one went down the oubliette as soon as I had read it. Bill had made it a straight campaign speech, and it was the wrong time and place.

Mine was short, non-partisan, and cribbed right straight out of Bonforte’s collected writings, a paraphrase of the one the time before when he formed a caretaker government. I stood foursquare for good roads and good weather and wished that everybody would love everybody else, just the way all us good democrats loved our sovereign and he loved us. It was a blank-verse lyric poem of about five hundred words and if I varied from Bonforte’s earlier speech then I simply went up on my lines.

They had to quiet the gallery.

Rog got up and moved that the names I had mentioned in passing be confirmed-second and no objection and the clerk cast a white ballot As I marched forward, attended by one member of my own party and one member of the opposition, I could see members glancing at their watches and wondering if they could still catch the noon shuttle.

Then I was swearing allegiance to my sovereign, under and subject to the constitutional limitations, swearing to defend and continue the rights and privileges of the Grand Assembly, and to protect the freedoms of the citizens of the Empire wherever they might be-and incidentally to carry out the duties of His Majesty’s Supreme Minister. The chaplain mixed up the words once, but I straightened him out.

I thought I was breezing through it as easy as a curtain speech- when I found that I was crying so hard that I could hardly see. When I was done, Willem said quietly to me, “Agood performance, Joseph.” I don’t know whether he thought he was talking to me or to his old friend-and I did not care. I did not wipe away the tears; I just let them drip as I turned back to the Assembly. I waited for Willem to leave, then adjourned them.

Diana, Ltd., ran four extra shuttles that afternoon. New Batavia was deserted-that is to say there were only the court and a million or so butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, and civil servants left in town-and a skeleton cabinet.

Having gotten over my “cold” and appeared publicly in the Grand Assembly Hall, it no longer made sense to hide out. As the supposed Supreme Minister I could not, without causing comment, never be seen; as the nominal head of a political party entering a campaign for a general election I had to see people-some people, at least. So I did what I had to do and got a daily report on Bonforte’s progress toward complete recovery. His progress was good, if slow; Capek reported that it was possible, if absolutely necessary, to let him appear any time

now-but he advised against it; he had lost almost twenty pounds and his co-ordination was poor.

Rog did everything possible to protect both of us. Mr. Bonforte knew now that they were using a double for him and, after a first fit of indignation, had relaxed to necessity and approved it. Rog ran the campaign, consulting him only on matters of high policy, and then passing on his answers to me to hand out publicly when necessary.

But the protection given me was almost as great; I was as hard to see as a topflight agent. My office ran on into the mountain beyond the opposition leader’s apartments (we did not move over into the Supreme Minister’s more palatial quarters; while it would have been legal, it just “was not done” during a caretaker regime)

-they could be reached from the rear directly from the lower living room, but to get at me from the public entrance a man had to pass about five check points-except for the favored few who were conducted directly by Rog through a bypass tunnel to Penny’s office and from there into mine.

The setup meant that I could study the Farleyfile on anyone before he got to see me. I could even keep it in front of me while he was with me, for the desk had a recessed viewer the visitor could not see, yet I could wipe it out instantly if he turned out to be a floor pacer. The viewer had other uses; Rog could give a visitor the special treatment, rushing him right in to see me, leave him alone with me-and stop in Penny’s office and write me a note, which would then be projected on the viewer-such quick tips as, “Kiss him to death and promise nothing,” or, “All he really wants is for his wile to be presented at court. Promise him that and get rid of him,” or even, “Easy on this one. It’s a ‘swing’ district and he is smarter than he looks. Turn him over to me and I’ll dicker.”

I don’t know who ran the government. The senior career men, probably. There would be a stack of papers on my desk each morning, I would sign Bonforte’s sloppy signature to them, and Penny would take them away. I never had time to read them. The very size of the Imperial machinery dismayed me. Once when we had to attend a meeting outside the offices, Penny had led me on what she called a short cut though the Archives-miles on miles of endless ifies, each one chockablock with microfilm and all of them with moving belts scooting past them so that a clerk would not take all day to fetch one ifie.

But Penny told me that she had taken me through only one wing of it. The file of the files, she said, occupied a cavern the size of the Grand Assembly Hall. It made me glad that government was not a career with me, but merely a passing hobby, so to speak.

Seeing people was an unavoidable chore, largely useless since Rog, or Bonforte through Rog, made the decisions. My real job was to make campaign speeches. Adiscreet rumor had been spread that my doctor had been afraid that my heart had been strained by the “virus infection” and had advised me to stay in the low gravity of the Moon throughout the campaign. I did not dare risk taking the impersonation on a tour of Earth, much less make a trip to Venus; the Farleyfile system would break down if I attempted to mix with crowds, not to mention the unknown hazards of the Actionist goon squads-what I would babble with a minim dose of neodexocaine in the forebrain none of us liked to think about, me least of all.

Quiroga was hitting all continents on Earth, making his stereo appearances as personal appearances on platforms in front of crowds. But it did not worry Rog Clifton. He shrugged and said, “Let him. There are no new votes to be picked up by personal appearances at political rallies. All it does is wear out the speaker. Those rallies are attended only by the faithful.”

I hoped that he knew what he was talking about. The campaign was short, only six weeks from Quiroga’s resignation to the day he had set for the election before resigning, and I was speaking almost every day, either on a grand network with time shared precisely with the Humanity Party, or speeches canned and sent by shuttle for later release to particular audiences. We had a set routine; a draft would come to me, perhaps from Bill although I never saw him, and then I would rework it. Rog would take the revised draft away; usually it would come back approved-and once in a while there would be corrections made in Bonforte’s handwriting, now so sloppy as to be almost illegible.

I never ad-libbed at all on those parts he corrected, though I often did on the rest-when you get rolling there is often a better, more alive way to say a thing. I began to notice the nature of his corrections; they were almost always eliminations of qualifiers- make it blunter, let ‘em like it or lump it!

After a while there were fewer corrections. I was getting with it.

I still never saw him. I felt that I could not “wear his head” if I looked at him on his sickbed. But I was not the only one of his intimate family who was not seeing him; Capek had chucked Penny out-for her own good. I did not know it at the time. I did know that Penny had become irritable, absent-minded, and moody after we reached New Batavia. She got circles under her eyes like a raccoon-all of which I could not miss, but I attributed it to the pressure of the campaign combined with worry about Bonforte’s health. I was only partly right. Capek spotted it and took action, put her under llght hypnosis and asked her questions-then he flatly forbade her to see Bonforte again until I was done and finished and shipped away.

The poor girl was going almost out of her mind from visiting the sickroom of the man she hopelessly loved-then going straight in to work closely with a man who looked and talked and sounded just like him, but in good health. She was probably beginning to hate me.

Good old Doc Capek got at the root of her trouble, gave her helpful and soothing post-hypnotic suggestions, and kept her out of the sickroom after that. Naturally I was not told about it at the time; it wasn’t any of my business. But Penny perked up and again was her lovable, incredibly efficient self.

It made a lot of difference to me. Let’s admit it; at least twice I would have walked out on the whole incredible rat race if it had not been for Penny.

There was one sort of meeting I had to attend, that of the campaign executive committee. Since the Expansionist Party was a minority party, being merely the largest fraction of a coalition of several parties held together by the leadership and personality of John Joseph Bonforte, I had to stand in for him and peddle soothing syrup to those prima donnas. I was briefed for it with painstaking care, and Rog sat beside rue and could hint the proper direction if I faltered. But it could not be delegated.

Less than two weeks before election day we were due for a meeting at which the safe districts would be parceled out. The organization always had thirty to forty districts which could be used to make someone eligible for cabinet office, or to provide for a political secretary (a person like Penny was much more valuable if he or she was fully qualified, able to move and Speak on the floor of the Assembly, had the right to be present at closed caucuses, and so forth), or for other party reasons. Bonforte himself represented a “safe” district; it relieved him from the necessity of precinct campaigning. Clifton had another. Dak would have had one if he had needed it, but he actually commanded the support of his guild brethren. Rog even hinted to me once that if I wanted to come back in my proper person, I could say the word and my name would go on the next list.

Some of the spots were always saved for party wheel horses willing to resign at a moment’s notice and thereby provide the Party with a place through a by-election if it proved necessary to qualify a man for cabinet office, or something.

But the whole thing had somewhat the flavor of patronage and, the coalition being what it was, it was necessary for Bonforte to straighten out conilicting claims and submit a list to the campaign executive committee. It was a last-minute job, to be done just before the ballots were prepared, to allow for late changes.

When Rog and Dak came in I was working on a speech and had told Penny to hold off anything but five-alarm fires. Quiroga had made a wild statement in Sydney, Australia, the night before, of such a nature that we could expose the lie and make him squirm. I was trying my hand at a Speech in answer, without waiting for a draft to be handed me; I had high hopes of getting my own version approved.

When they came in I said, “Listen to this,” and read them the key paragraph. “How do you like it?”

“That ought to nail his hide to the door,” agreed Rog. “Here’s the ‘safe’ list, Chief. Want to look it over? We’re due there in twenty minutes.”

“Oh, that damned meeting. I don’t see why I should look at the list. Anything you want to tell me about it?” Nevertheless, I took the list and glanced down it. I knew them all from their Farleyfiles and a few of them from contact; I knew already why each one had to be taken care of.

Then I struck the name: Corpsman, William 1.

I fought down what I felt was justifiable annoyance and said quietly, “I see Bill is on the list, Rog.”

“Oh, yes. I wanted to tell you about that. You see, Chief, as we all know, there has been a certain amount of bad blood between you and Bill. Now I’m not blaming you; it’s been Bill’s fault. But there are always two sides. What you may not have realized is that Bill has been carrying around a tremendous inferiority feeling; it gives him a chip on the shoulder. This will fix it up.”

“So?”

“Yes. It is what he has always wanted. You see, the rest of us all have official status, we’re members of the G.A., I mean. I’m talking about those who work closely around, uh, you. Bill feels it. I’ve heard him say, after the third drink, that he was just a hired man. He’s bitter about it. You don’t mind, do you? The Party can afford it and it’s an easy price to pay for elimination of friction at headquarters.”

I had myself under full control by now. “It’s none of my business. Why should I mind, if that is what Mi. Bonforte wants?” I caught just a flicker of a glance from Dak to Clifton. I added, “That is what Mr. B. wants? Isn’t it, Rog?”

Dak said harshly, “Tell him, Rog.”

Rog said slowly, “Dak and I whipped this up ourselves. We think it is for the best.” “Then Mr. Bonforte did not approve it? You asked him, surely?”

“No, we didn’t.” “Why not?”

“Chief, this is not the sort of thing to bother him with. He’s a tired, old, sick man. I have not been worrying him with anything less than major policy decisions-which this isn’t. It is a district we command no matter who stands for it.”

“Then why ask my opinion about it at all?”

“Well, we felt you should know-and know why. We think you ought to approve it.”

“Me? You’re asking me for a decision as if I were Mr. Bonforte. I’m not.” I tapped the desk in his nervous gesture. “Either this decision is at his level, and you should ask him-or it’s not, and you should never have asked me.”

Rog chewed his cigar, then said, “All right, I’m not asking you.” “No!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean ‘NoVYou did ask me; therefore there is doubt in your mind. So if you expect me to present that name to the committee- as 1/I were Bonforte-then go in and ask him.” They both sat and said nothing. Finally Dak sighed and said, “Tell the rest, Rog. Or I will.”

I waited. Clifton took his cigar out of his mouth and said, “Chief, Mi. Bonforte had a stroke four days ago. He’s in no shape to be disturbed.”

I held still, and recited to myself all of “the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,” and so forth. When I was back in shape I said, “How is his mind?”

“His mind seems clear enough, but he is terribly tired. That week as a prisoner was more of an ordeal than we realized. The stroke left him in a coma for twenty-four hours. He’s out of it now, but the left side of his face is paralyzed and his entire left side is partly out of service.”

“Uh, what does Dr. Capek say?”

“He thinks that as the clot clears up, you’ll never be able to tell the difference. But he’ll have to take it easier than he used to. But, Chief, right now he is ill. We’ll just have to carry on through the balance of the campaign without him.”

I felt a ghost of the lost feeling I had had when my father died. I had never seen Bonforte, I had had nothing from him but a few scrawled corrections on typescript. But I leaned on him all the way. The fact that he was in that room next door had made the whole thing possible.

I took a long breath, let it out, and said, “Okay, Rog. We’ll have to.”

“Yes, Chief.” He stood up. “We’ve got to get over to that meeting. How about that?” He nodded toward the safe-districts list.

“Oh.” I tried to think. Maybe it was possible that Bonforte would reward Bill with the privilege of calling himself “the Honorable,” just to keep him happy. He wasn’t small about such things; he did not bind the mouths of the kine who tread the grain. In one of his essays on politics he had said, “I am not an intellectual man. If I have any special talent, it lies in picking men of ability and letting them work.”

“How long has Bill been with him?” I asked suddenly. “Eh? About four years. Allttle over.”

Bonforte evidently had liked his work. “That’s past one general election, isn’t it? Why didn’t he make him an Assemblyman then?” “Why, I don’t know. The matter never came up.”

“When was Penny put in?”

“About three years ago. Aby-election.” “There’s your answer, Rog.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Bonforte could have made Bill a Grand Assemblyman at any time. He didn’t choose to. Change that nomination to a ‘resigner.’ Then if Mr. Bonforte wants Bill to have it, he can arrange a byelection for him later-when he’s feeling himself.”

Clifton showed no expression. He simply picked up the list and said, “Very well, Chief.”

Later that same day Bill quit. I suppose Rog had to tell him that his arm-twisting had not worked. But when Rog told me about it I felt sick, realizing that my stiff-necked attitude had us all in acute danger. I told him so. He shook his head.

“But he knows it all! It was his scheme from the start. Look at the load of dirt he can haul over to the Humanity camp.”

“Forget it, Chief. Bill may be a louse-I’ve no use for a man who will quit in the middle of a campaign; you just don’t do that, ever. But he is not a rat. In his profession you don’t spill a client’s secrets, even if you fall out with him.”

“I hope you are right.”

“You’ll see. Don’t worry about it. Just get on with the job.”

As the next few days passed I came to the conclusion that Rog knew Bill better than I did. We heard nothing from him or about him and the campaign went ahead as usual, getting rougher all the time, but with not a peep to show that our giant hoax was compromised. I began to feel better and buckled down to making the best Bonforte speeches I could manage- sometimes with Rog’s help; sometimes just with his okay. Mr. Bonforte was steadily improving again, but Capek had him on absolute quiet.

Rog had to go to Earth during the last week; there are types of fence-mending that simply can’t be done by remote control. After all, votes come from the precincts and the field managers count for more than the speechmakers. But speeches still had to be made and press conferences given; I carried on, with Dak and Penny at my elbow-of course I was much more closely with it now; most questions I could answer without stopping to think.

There was the usual twice-weekly press conference in the offices the day Rog was due back. I had been hoping that he would be back in time for it, but there was no reason I could not take it alone. Penny walked in ahead of me, carrying her gear; I heard her gasp.

I saw then that Bill was at the far end of the table.

But I looked around the room as usual and said, “Good morning, gentlemen.” “Good morning, Mr. Minister!” most of them answered.

I added, “Good morning, Bill. Didn’t know you were here. Whom are you representing?”

They gave him dead silence to reply. Every one of them knew that Bill had quit us-or had been fired. He grinned at me, and answered, “Good morning, Mister Bon forte. I’m with the Krein

Syndicate.”

I knew it was coming then; I tried not to give him the satisfaction of letting it show. “Afine outfit. I hope they are paying you what you are worth. Now to business- The written questions first. You have them, Penny?”

I went rapidly through the written questions, giving out answers I had already had time to think over, then sat back as usual and said, “We have time to bat it around a bit, gentlemen. Any other questions?”

There were several. I was forced to answer “No comment” only once-an answer Bonforte preferred to an ambiguous one. Finally I glanced at my watch and said, “That will be all this morning, gentlemen,” and started to stand up.

“Smythe!” Bill shouted.

I kept right on getting to my feet, did not look toward him.

“I mean you, Mr. Phony Bonforte-Smythe!” he went on angrily, raising his voice still more.

This time I did look at him, with astonishment-just the amount appropriate, I think, to an important official subjected to rudeness under unlikely conditions. Bill was pointing at me and his face was red. “You impostor! You small-time actor! You fraud!”

The London Times man on my right said quietly, “Do you want me to call the guard, sir?” I said, “No. He’s harmless.”

Bill laughed. “So I’m harmless, huh? You’ll find out.” “I really think I should, sir,” the Times man insisted.

“No.” I then said sharply, “That’s enough, Bill. You had better leave quietly.”

“Don’t you wish I would?” He started spewing forth the basic story, talking rapidly. He made no mention of the kidnaping and did not mention his own part in the hoax, but implied that he had left us rather than be mixed up in any such swindle. The impersonation was attributed, correctly as far as it went, to illness on the part of Bonforte-with a strong hint that we might have doped him.

I listened patiently. Most of the reporters simply listened at first, with that stunned expression of outsiders exposed unwillingly to a vicious family argument. Then some of them started scribbling or dictating into minicorders.

When he stopped I said, “Axe you through, Bill?” “That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“More than enough. I’m sorry, Bill. That’s all, gentlemen. I must get back to work.”

“Just a moment, Mr. Minister!” someone called out. “Do you want to issue a denial?” Someone else added, “Axe you going to sue?” I answered the latter question first. “No, I shan’t sue. One doesn’t sue a sick man.”

“Sick, am I?” shouted Bill.

“Quiet down, Bill. As for issuing a denial, I hardly think it is called for. However, I see that some of you have been taking notes. While I doubt if any of your publishers would run this story, if they do, this anecdote may add something to it. Did you ever hear of the professor who spent forty years of his life proving that the Odyssey was not written by Homer-but by another Greek of the same name?”

It got a polite laugh. I smiled and started to turn away again. Bill came rushing around the table and grabbed at my arm. “You can’t laugh it off!” The Times man-Mr. Ackroyd, it was-pulled him away from me.

I said, “Thank you, sir.” Then to Corpsman I added, “What do you want me to do, Bill? I’ve tried to avoid having you arrested.” “Call the guards if you like, you phony! We’ll see who stays in jail longest! Wait until they take your fingerprints!”

I sighed and made the understatement of my life. “This is ceasing to be a joke. Gentlemen, I think I had better put an end to this. Penny my dear, will you please have someone send in fingerprinting equipment?” I knew I was sunk-but, damn it, if you are caught by the Birkenhead Drill, the least you owe yourself is to stand at attention while the ship goes down. Even a villain should make a good exit.

Bill did not wait. He grabbed the water glass that had been sitting in front of me; I had handled it several times. “The hell with that! This will do.” “I’ve told you before, Bill, to mind your language in the presence of ladies. But you may keep the glass.”

“You’re bloody well right I’ll keep it.”

“Very well. Please leave. If not, I’ll be forced to summon the guard.”

He walked out. Nobody said anything. I said, “May I provide fingerprints for any of the rest of you?” Ackroyd said hastily, “Oh, I’m sure we don’t want them, Mr. Minister.”

“Oh, by all means! If there is a story in this, you’ll want to be covered.” I insisted because it was in character-and in the second and third place, you can’t be a little bit pregnant, or slightly unmasked-and I did not want my friends present to be scooped by Bill; it was the last thing I could do for them.

We did not have to send for formal equipment. Penny had carbon sheets and someone had one of those lifetime memo pads with plastic sheets; they took prints nicely. Then I said good morning and left.

We got as far as Penny’s private office; once inside she fainted dead. I carried her into my office, laid her on the couch, then sat down at my desk and simply shook for several minutes. Neither one of us was worth much the rest of the day. We carried on as usual except that Penny brushed off all callers, claiming excuses of some sort. I was due to make a speech that

night and thought seriously of canceling it. But I left the news turned on all day and there was not a word about the incident of that morning. I realized that they were checking the prints

before risking it-after all, I was supposed to be His Imperial Majesty’s first minister; they would want confirmation. So I decided to make the speech since I had already written it and the

time was schedtiled. I couldn’t even consult Dak; he was away in Tycho City.

It was the best one I had made. I put into it the same stuff a comic uses to quiet a panic in a burning theater. After the pickup was dead I just sunk my face in my hands and wept, while Penny patted my shoulder. We had not discussed the horrible mess at all.

Rog grounded at twenty hundred Greenwich, about as I finished, and checked in with me as soon as he was back. In a dull monotone I told him the whole dirty story; he listened, chewing on a dead cigar, his face expressionless.

At the end I said almost pleadingly, “I had to give the fingerprints, Rog. You see that, don’t you? To refuse would not have been in character.” Rog said, “Don’t worry.”

“Huh?”

“I said, ‘Don’t worry.’ When the reports on those prints come back from the Identification Bureau at The Hague, you are in for a small but pleasant surprise-and our ex-friend Bill is in for a much bigger one, but not pleasant. If he has collected any of his blood money in advance, they will probably take it out of his hide. I hope they do.”

I could not mistake what he meant. “Oh! But, Rog-they won’t stop there. There are a dozen other places. Social Security

Uh, lots of places.”

“You think perhaps we were not thorough? Chief, I knew this could happen, one way or another. From the moment Dak sent word to complete Plan Mardi Gras, the necessary cover-up started. Everywhere. But I didn’t think it necessary to tell Bill.” He sucked on his dead cigar, took it out of his mouth, and looked at it. “Poor Bill.”

Penny sighed softly and fainted again. Chapter 10

Somehow we got to the final day. We did not hear from Bill again; the passenger lists showed that he went Earthside two days after his fiasco. If any news service ran anything I did not hear of it, nor did Quiroga’s speeches hint at it.

Mr. Bonforte steadily improved until it was a safe bet that he could take up his duties after the election. His paralysis continued in part but we even had that covered: he would go on vacation right after election, a routine practice that almost every politician indulges in. The vacation would be in the Tommie, safe from everything. Sometime in the course of the trip I would be transferred and smuggled back-and the Chief would have a mild stroke, brought on by the strain of the campaign.

Rog would have to unsort some fingerprints, but he could safely wait a year or more for that.

Election day I was happy as a puppy in a shoe closet. The impersonation was over, although I was going to do one more short turn. I had already canned two five-minute speeches for grand network, one magnanimously accepting victory, the other gallantly conceding defeat; my job was finished. When the last one was in the can, I grabbed Penny and kissed her. She didn’t even seem to mind.

The remaining short turn was a command performance; Mr. Bonforte wanted to see me-as him-before he let me drop it. I did not mind. Now that the strain was over, it did not worry me to see him; playing him for his entertainment would be like a comedy skit, except that I would do it straight. What am I saying? Playing straight is the essence of comedy.

The whole family would gather in the upper living room-there because Mr. Bonforte had not seen the sky in some weeks and wanted to-and there we would listen to the returns, and either drink to victory or drown our sorrows and swear to do better next time. Strike me out of the last part; I had had my first and last political campaign and I wanted no more politics. I was not even sure I wanted to act again. Acting every minute for over six weeks adds up to about five hundred ordinary performances. That’s a long run.

They brought him up the lift in a wheel chair. I stayed out of sight and let them arrange him on a couch before I came in; a man is entitled not to have his weakness displayed before strangers. Besides, I wanted to make an entrance.

I was almost startled out of character. He looked like my f ather! Oh, it was just a “family” resemblance; he and I looked much more alike than either one of us looked like my father, but the likeness was there-and the age was right, for he looked old. I had not guessed how much he had aged. He was thin and his hair was white.

I made an immediate mental note that during the coming vacation in space I must help them prepare for the transition, the resubstitution. No doubt Capek could put weight back on him; if not, there were ways to make a man appear fleshier without obvious padding. I would dye his hair myself. The delayed announcement of the stroke he had suffered would cover the inevitable discrepancies. After all, he had changed this much in only a few weeks; the need was to keep the fact from calling attention to the impersonation.

But these practical details were going on by themselves in a corner of my mind; my own being was welling with emotion. ifi though he was, the man gave off a force both spiritual and virile. I felt that warm, almost holy, shock one feels when first coming into sight of the great statue of Abraham Lincoln. I was reminded of another statue, too, seeing him lying there with his legs and his helpless left side covered with a shawl: the wounded Lion of Lucerne. He had that massive strength and dignity, even when helpless: “The guard dies, but never surrenders.”

He looked up as I came in and smiled the warm, tolerant, and friendly smile I had learned to portray, and motioned with his good hand for me to come to him. I smiled the same smile back and went to him. He shook hands with a grip surprisingly strong and said warmly, “I am happy to meet you at last.” His speech was slightly blurred and I could not see the slackness on the side of his face away from me.

“I am honored and happy to meet you, sir.” I had to think about it to keep from matching the blurring of paralysis. He looked me up and down, and grinned. “It looks to me as if you had already met me.”

I glanced down at myself. “I have tried, sir.”

“‘Tried’! You succeeded. It is an odd thing to see one’s own self.”

I realized with sudden painful empathy that he was not emotionally aware of his own appearance; my present appearance was “his”-and any change in himself was merely incidental to illness, temporary, not to be noticed. But he went on speaking. “Would you mind moving around a bit for me, sir? I want to see me-you-us. I want the audience’s viewpoint for once.”

So I straightened up, moved around the room, spoke to Penny (the poor child was looking from one to the other of us with a dazed expression), picked up a paper, scratched my collarbone and rubbed my chin, moved his wand from under my arm to my hand and fiddled with it.

He was watching with delight. So I added an encore. Taking the middle of the rug, I gave the peroration of one of his finest’ speeches, not trying to do it word for word, but interpreting it, letting it roll and thunder as he would have done-and ending with his own exact ending: “Aslave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!”

There was that wonderful hushed silence, then a ripple of clapping and Bonforte himself was pounding the couch with his good hand and calling, “Bravo!” It was the only applause I ever got in the role. It was enough.

He had me pull up a chair then and sit with him. I saw him glance at the wand, so I handed it to him. “The safety is on, sir.”

“I know how to use it.” He looked at it closely, then handed it back. I had thought perhaps he would keep it. Since he did not, I decided to turn it over to Dak to deliver to him. He asked me about myself and told me that he did not recall ever seeing me play, but that he had seen my father’s Cyrano. He was making a great effort to control the errant muscles of his mouth and his speech was clear but labored.

Then he asked me what I intended to do now. I told him that I had no plans as yet. He nodded and said, “We’ll see. There is a place for you. There is work to be done.” He made no mention of pay, which made me proud.

The returns were beginning to come in and he turned his attention to the stereo tank. Returns had been coming in, of course, for forty-eight hours, since the outer worlds and the districtless constituencies vote before Earth does, and even on Earth an election “day” is more than thirty hours long, as the globe turns. But now we began to get the important districts of the great land masses of Earth. We had forged far ahead the day before in the outer returns and Rog had had to tell me that it meant nothing; the Expansionists always carried the outer worlds. What the billions of people still on Earth who had never been out and never would thought about it was what mattered.

But we needed every outer vote we could get. The Agrarian Party on Ganymede had swept five out of six districts; they were part of our coalition, and the Expansionist Party as such did not put up even token candidates. The situation on Venus was more ticklish, with the Venerians split into dozens of splinter parties divided on fine points of theology impossible for a human being to understand. Nevertheless, we expected most of the native vote, either directly or through caucused coalition later, and we should get practically all of the human vote there. The Imperial restriction that the natives must select human beings to represent them at New Batavia was a thing Bonforte was pledged to remove; it gained us votes on Venus; we did not know yet how many votes it would lose us on Earth.

Since the nests sent only observers to the Assembly the only vote we worried about on Mars was the human vote. We had the popular sentiment; they had the patronage. But with an honest count we expected a shoo-in there.

Dak was bending over a slide rule at Rog’s side; Rog had a big sheet of paper laid out in some complicated weighting formula of his own. Adozen or more of the giant metal brains through the Solar System were doing the same thing that night, but Rog preferred his own guesses. He told me once that he could walk through a district, “sniffing” it, and come within two per cent of its results. I think he could.

Doc Capek was sitting back, with his hands over his paunch, as relaxed as an angleworm. Penny was moving around, pushing straight things crooked and vice versa and fetching us

drinks. She never seemed to look directly at either me or Mr. Bonforte.

I had never before experienced an election-night party; they were not like any other. There is a cozy, warm rapport of all passion spent. It really does not matter too much how the people decide; you have done your best, you are with your friends and comrades, and for a while there is no worry and no pressure despite the over-all excitement, like frosting on a cake, of the incoming returns.

I don’t know when I’ve had so good a lime.

Rog looked up, looked at me, then spoke to Mr. Bonforte. “The Continent is seesaw. The Americans are testing the water with a toe before coming in on our side; the only question is, how deep?”

“Can you make a projection, Rog?”

“Not yet. Oh, we have the popular vote but in the G.A. it could swing either way by half a dozen seats.” He stood up. “I think I had better mosey out into town.”

Properly speaking, I should have gone, as “Mr. Bonforte.” The Party leader should certainly appear at the main headquarters of the Party sometime during election night. But I had never been in headquarters, it being the sort of a buttonholing place where my impersonation might be easily breached. My “illness” had excused me from it during the campaign; tonight it was not worth the risk, so Rog would go instead, and shake hands and grin and let the keyed-up girls who had done the hard and endless paperwork throw their arms around him and weep. “Back in an hour.”

Even our little party should have been down on the lower level, to include all the office staff, especially Jimmie Washington. But it would not work, not without shutting Mr. Bonforte himself out of it. They were having their own party of course. I stood up. “Rog, I’ll go down with you and say hello to Jimmie’s harem.”

“Eh? You don’t have to, you know.”

“It’s the proper thing to do, isn’t it? And it really isn’t any trouble or risk.” I tuned to Mr. Bonforte. “How about it, sir?” “I would appreciate it very much.”

We went down the lift and through the silent, empty private quarters and on through my office and Penny’s. Beyond her door was bedlam. Astereo receiver, moved in for the purpose, was blasting at full gain, the floor was littered, and everybody was drinking, or smoking, or both. Even Jimmie Washington was holding a drink while he listened to the returns. He was not drinking it; he neither drank nor smoked. No doubt someone had handed it to him and he had kept it. Jimmie had a fine sense of fitness.

I made the rounds, with Rog at my side, thanked Jimmie warmly and very sincerely, and apologized that I was feeling tired. “I’m going up and spread the bones, Jimmie. Make my excuses to people, will you?”

“Yes, sir. You’ve got to take care of yourself, Mr. Minister.”

I went back up while Rog went on out into the public tunnels.

Penny shushed me with a finger to her lips when I came into the upper living room. Bonforte seemed to have dropped off to sleep and the receiver was muted down. Dak still sat in front of it, filling in figures on the big sheet against Rog’s return. Capek had not moved. He nodded and raised his glass to me.

I let Penny fix me a scotch and water, then stepped out into the bubble balcony. It was night both by clock and by fact and Earth was almost full, dazzling in a Tiffany spread of stars. I searched North America and tried to pick out the little dot I had left only weeks earlier, and tried to get my emotions straight.

After a while I came back in; night on Luna is rather overpowering. Rog returned a little later and sat back down at his work sheets without speaking. I noticed that Bonforte was awake again.

The critical returns were coming in now and everybody kept quiet, letting Rog with his pencil and Dak with his slide rule have peace to work. At long, long last Rog shoved his chair back. “That’s it, Chief,” he said without looking up. “We’re in. Majority not less than seven seats, probably nineteen, possibly over thirty.”

After a pause Bonforte said quietly, “You’re sure?” “Positive. Penny, try another channel and see what we get.”

I went over and sat by Bonforte; I could not talk. He reached out and patted my hand in a fatherly way and we both watched the receiver. The first station Penny got said: “-doubt about it, folks; eight of the robot brains say yes, Curiae says maybe. The Expansionist Party has won a decisive-” She switched to another.

“-confirms his temporary post for another five years. Mr. Quiroga cannot be reached for a statement but his general manager in New Chicago admits that the present trend cannot be over

—”

Rog got up and went to the phone; Penny muted the news down until nothing could be heard. The announcer continued mouthing; he was simply saying in different words what we already knew.

Rog came back; Penny turned up the gain. The announcer went on for a moment, then stopped, read something that was handed to him, and turned back with a broad grin. “Friends and fellow citizens, I now bring you for a statement the Supreme Minister!”

The picture changed to my victory speech.

I sat there luxuriating in it, with my feelings as mixed up as possible but all good, painfully good. I had done a job on the speech and I knew it; I looked tired, sweaty, and calmly triumphant. It sounded ad-kb.

I had just reached: “Let us go forward together, with freedom for all-” when I heard a noise behind me. “Mr. Bonforte!” I said. “Doc! Doe! Come quickly!”

Mr. Bonforte was pawing at me with his right hand and trying very urgently to tell me something. But it was no use; his poor mouth failed him and his mighty indomitable will could not make the weak flesh obey.

I took him in my arms-then he went into Cheyne-Stokes breathing and quickly into termination.

They took his body back down in the lift, Dak and Capek together; I was no use to them. Rog came up and patted me on the shoulder, then he went away. Penny had followed the others down. Presently I went again out onto the balcony. I needed “fresh air” even though it was the same machine-pumped air as the living room. But it felt fresher.

They had killed him. His enemies had killed him as certainly as if they had put a knife in his ribs. Despite all that we had done, the risks we had taken, in the end they had murdered him. “Murder most four’!

I felt dead inside me, numb with the shock. I had seen “myself” die, I had again seen my father die. I knew then why they so rarely manage to save one of a pair of Siamese twins. I was empty.

I don’t know how long I stayed out there. Eventually I heard Rog’s voice behind me. “Chief?” I tuned. “Rog,” I said urgently, “don’t call me that. Please!”

“Chief,” he persisted, “you know what you have to do now? Don’t you?”

I felt dizzy and his face blurred. I did not know what he was talking about-I did not want to know what he was talking about. “What do you mean?”

“Chief-one man dies-but the show goes on. You can’t quit now.”

My head ached and my eyes would not focus. He seemed to pull toward me and away while his voice drove on. “. – – robbed him of his chance to finish his work. So you’ve got to do it f or

him. You’ve got to make him live again!”

I shook my head and made a great effort to pull myself together and reply. “Rog, you don’t know what you are saying. It’s preposterous-ridiculous! Fm no statesman. I’m just a bloody actor! I make faces and make people laugh. That’s all I’m good for.”

To my own horror I heard myself say it in Bonforte’s voice. Rog looked at me. “Seems to me you’ve done all right so far.”

I tried to change my voice, tried to gain control of the situation. “Rog, you’re upset. When you’ve calmed down you will see how ridiculous this is. You’re right; the show goes on. But not that way. The proper thing to do-the only thing to do-is for you yourself to move on up. The election is won; you’ve got your majority-now you take office and carry out the program.”

He looked at me and shook his head sadly. “I would if I could. I admit it. But I can’t. Chief, you remember those confounded executive committee meetings? You kept them in line. The whole coalition has been kept glued together by the personal force and leadership of one man. If you don’t follow through now, all that he lived for-and died for-will fall apart.”

I had no answering argument; he might be right-I had seen the wheels within wheels of politics in the past month and a half. “Rog, even if what you say is true, the solution you offer is impossible. We’ve barely managed to keep up this pretense by letting me be seen only under carefully stage-managed conditions-and we’ve just missed being caught out as it is. But to make it work week after week, month after month, even year after year, if I understand you-no, it couldn’t be done. It is impossible. I can’t do it!”

“You can!” He leaned toward me and said forcefully, “We’ve all talked it over and we know the hazards as well as you do. But you’ll have a chance to grow into it. Two weeks in space to start with-hell, a month if you want it! You’ll study all the time-his journals, his boyhood diaries, his scrapbooks, you’ll soak yourself in them. And we’ll all help you.”

I did not answer. He went on, “Look, Chief, you’ve learned that a political personality is not onq man; it’s a team-it’s a team bound together by common purposes and common beliefs. We’ve lost our team captain and we’ve got to have another one. But the team is still there.”

Capek was out on the balcony; I had not seen him come out. I tuned to him. “Are you for this too?” “It’s your duty,” Rog added.

Capek said slowly, “I won’t go that far. I hope you will do it. But, damnit, I won’t be your conscience. I believe in free will, frivolous as that may sound from a medical man.” He turned to Clifton. “We had better leave him alone, Rog. He knows. Now it’s up to him.”

But, although they left, I was not to be alone just yet. Dak came out. To my relief and gratitude he did not call me “Chief.” “Hello, Dak.”

“Howdy.” He was silent for a moment, smoking and looking out at the stars. Then he turned to me. “Old son, we’ve been through some things together. I know you now, and I’ll back you with a gun, or money, or fists any time, and never ask why. If you choose to drop out now, I won’t have a word of blame and I won’t think any the less of you. You’ve done a noble best.”

“Uh, thanks, Dak.”

“One more word and I’ll smoke out. Just remember this: if you decide you can’t do it, the foul scum who brainwashed him will win. In spite of everything, they win.” He went inside.

I felt ton apart in my mind-then I gave way to sheer self-pity. It wasn’t fair! I had my own life to live. I was at the top of my powers, with my greatest professional triumphs still ahead of me. It wasn’t right to expect me to bury myself, perhaps for years, in the anonymity of another man’s role-while the public forgot me, producers and agents forgot me-would probably believe I was dead.

It wasn’t fair. It was too much to ask.

Presently I pulled out of it and for a time did not think. Mother Earth was still serene and beautiful and changeless in the sky; I wondered what the election-night, celebrations there sounded like. Mars and Jupiter and Venus were all in sight, strung like prizes along the zodiac. Ganymede I could not see, of course, nor the lonely colony out on far Pluto.

“Worlds of Hope,” Bonforte had called them.

But he was dead. He was gone. They had taken away from him his birthright at its ripe fullness. He was dead. And they had put it up to me to re-create him, make him live again.

Was. I up to it? Could I possibly measure up to his noble standards? What would he want me to do? If he were in my place- what would Bonf one do? Again and again in the campaign I had asked myself: “What would Bonforte do?”

Someone moved behind me, I tuned and saw Penny. I looked at her and said, “Did they send you out? Did you come to plead with me?” “No.”

She added nothing and did not seem to expect me to answer, nor did we look at each other. The silence went on. At last I said, “Penny? If I try to do it-will you help?” She turned suddenly toward me. “Yes. Oh yes, Chief! I’ll help!’?

“Then I’ll try,” I said humbly.

I wrote all of the above twenty-five years ago to try to straighten out my own confusion. I tried to tell the truth and not spare myself because it was not meant to be read by anyone but myself and my therapist, Dr. Capek. It is strange, after a quarter of a century, to reread the foolish and emotional words of that young man. I remember him, yet I have trouble realizing that I was ever he. My wife Penelope claims that she remembers him better than I do-and that she never loved anyone else. So time changes us.

I find I can “remember” Bonforte’s early life better than I remember my actual life as that rather pathetic person, Lawrence Smith, or-as he liked -to style himself-“The Great Lorenzo.” Does that make me insane? Schizophrenic, perhaps? If so, it is a necessary insanity for the role I have had to play, for in order to let Bonforte live again, that seedy actor had to be suppressed- completely.

Insane or not, I am aware that he once existed and that I was he. He was never a success as an actor, not really-though I think he was sometimes touched with the true madness. He made his final exit still perfectly in character; I have a yellowed newspaper clipping somewhere which states that he was “found dead” in a Jersey City hotel room from an overdose of sleeping pills-apparently taken in a fit of despondency, for his agent issued a statement that he had not had a part in several months. Personally, I feel that they need not have mentioned that about his being out of work; if not libelous, it was at least unkind. The date of the clipping proves, incidentally, that he would not have been in New Batavia, or anywhere else, during the campaign of ‘15.

I suppose I should bum it.

But there is no one left alive today who knows the truth other than Dak and Penelope-except the men who murdered Bonforte’s body.

I have been in and out of office three times now and perhaps this term will be my last. I was knocked out the first time when we finally put the eetees-Venerians and Martians and Outer Jovians

-into the Grand Assembly. But the non-human peoples are still there and I came back. The people will take a certain amount of reform, then they want a rest. But the reforms stay. People don’t really want change, any change at all-and xenophobia is very deep-rooted. But we progress, as we must-if we are to go out to the stars.

Again and again I have asked myself: “What would Bonforte do?” I am not sure that my answers have always been right (although I am sure that I am the best-read student in his works in the System). But I have tried to stay in character in his role. Along time ago someone-Voltaire?-someone said, “If Satan should ever replace God he would find it necessary to assume the attributes of Divinity.”

I have never regretted my lost profession. In a way, I have not lost it; Willem was right. There is other applause besides handclapping and there is always the warm glow of a good performance. I have tried, I suppose, to create the perfect work of art. Perhaps I have not fully succeeded-but I think my father would rate it as a “good performance.”

No, I do not regret it, even though I was happier then-at least I slept better. But there is solemn satisfaction in doing the best you can for eight billion people.

Perhaps their lives have no cosmic significance, but they have feelings. They can hurt.

The End

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Orphans of the Sky (full text) by Robert A. Heinlein

The following is the full text of the short science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein titled “Orphans of the Sky”. Here it is in it’e entirety and you do not need to “register”, give out your credit card number or do anything that compromises your privacy to view it. It is all 100% free for you to read. Enjoy.

Lost in Space -- Hugh had been taught that, according to the ancient sacred writings, the Ship was on a voyage to faraway Centaurus. But he also understood this was just allegory for a voyage to spiritual perfection. Indeed, how could the Ship move, since its miles and miles of metal corridors were all there was of creation? Science knew that the Ship was all the universe, and as long as the sacred Converter was fed, the lights would continue to glow, the air would flow, and the Creator's Plan would be fulfilled.

Some quick reviews

I've read this book three times; first when I was a young boy and, later, as a young man, at my aunt and uncle's house in Potsdam, NY. My uncle was David A. Kyle and he was a sci-fi writer and #1 fan of that genre. He and my aunt used to fly me up from NJ to spend summers with them. They had a vast library of sci-fi literature, books, in particular. It was a fascinating place to stay and it opened my mind to the universe. I read many books, but this one really captured my imagination and brought back happy memories of my youth.

-Marinade Dave

I first read this when I was 9. Back then it was just a simple adventure story. I re-read it at 21 and got a whole lot more about the background politics and such in the story. When this e-book came out, I snatched it up out of nostalgia, and when I read it again at 53, I saw things I had never realized were in there before about just how degraded society and conditions were aboard that ship. It's a short novel, but there are layers upon layers woven throughout it.

-Richard Chandler

First Impressions:

The book reads rather rapidly and well for a young adult novel, originally appearing in Astounding Science Fiction back in the 1940s. Heinlein's writing and plotting had improved since those days, but there's something fun and unique about his early writings such as Space Cadet, or Starship Troopers, contemporary stories that involved a strong lead character and lots of plot points.

Plots:

I may be wrong but this may be one of the first stories of a multi-generational ship that had some kind of catastrophe where everyone forgot they lived on a ship and thought the Ship was all there was! I've seen this idea played out in the original Star Trek episode "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" and the television series "Star Lost."

The main character Hugh Hoyland lives on a Ship where scientists are revered as holy and the Captain of the ship is near godhood. There are farms going on, and a Converter that is used to create energy from mass (and occasionally from dead bodies). There is an internal struggle with mutants in the upper levels. It's very dictatorial and people know their places. To question is to court death.

But Hugh questions. And he ends up with the mutants, a two headed guy called Joe-Jim and his sidekick Bobo. This small unassuming trio are the vanguard of a major change where the Ship is headed for a star -- but the inhabitants don't even know what space is.

Fascinating scenario, but not enough time is spent on the whole religious aspect of the scientists. They do mention a few scientific facts but have decided its all allegory and ancient myths -- such as the law of gravity!

The part where we move into rebellion, assassination and betrayal towards the end of the book is really fascinating. The end is a bit rushed, but Heinlein acknowledges that as a string of amazing coincidences! Ha!

Overall a great read and highly recommended to fans of early Heinlein.

-Critics Corner

Orphans of the Sky

UNIVERSE

The Proxima Centauri Expedition, sponsored by the Jordan Foundation in 2119, was the first recorded attempt to reach the nearer stars of this galaxy. Whatever its unhappy fate we can only conjecture. — Quoted from The Romance of Modern Astrography, by Franklin Buck, published by Lux Transcriptions, Ltd., 3.50 cr.

“THERE’S AMUTIE! Look out!”

At the shouted warning, Hugh Hoyland ducked, with nothing to spare. An egg-sized iron missile clanged against the bulkhead just above his scalp with force that promised a fractured skull. The speed with which he crouched had lifted his feet from the floor plates. Before his body could settle slowly to the deck, he planted his feet against the bulkhead behind him and shoved. He went shooting down the passageway in a long, flat dive, his knife drawn and ready.

He twisted in the air, checked himself with his feet against the opposite bulkhead at the turn in the passage from which the mutie had attacked him, and floated lightly to his feet. The other branch of the passage was empty. His two companions joined him, sliding awkwardly across the floor plates.

“Is it gone?” demanded Alan Mahoney.

“Yes,” agreed Hoyland. “I caught a glimpse of it as it ducked down that hatch. Afemale, I think. Looked like it had four legs.” “Two legs or four, we’ll never catch it now,” commented the third man.

“Who the Huff wants to catch it?” protested Mahoney. “I don’t.”

“Well, I do, for one,” said Hoyland. “By Jordan, if its aim had been two inches better, I’d be ready for the Converter.”

“Can’t either one of you two speak three words without swearing?” the third man disapproved. “What if the Captain could hear you?” He touched his forehead reverently as he mentioned the Captain.

“Oh, for Jordan’s sake,” snapped Hoyland, “don’t be so stuffy, Mort Tyler. You’re not a scientist yet. I reckon I’m as devout as you are; there’s no grave sin in occasionally giving vent to your feelings. Even the scientists do it. I’ve heard ‘em.”

Tyler opened his mouth as if to expostulate, then apparently thought better of it. Mahoney touched Hoyland on the arm. “Look, Hugh,” he pleaded, “let’s get out of here. We’ve never been this high before. I’m jumpy; I want to get back down to where I can feel some weight on my feet.”

Hoyland looked longingly toward the hatch through which his assailant had disappeared while his hand rested on the grip of his knife, then be turned to Mahoney. “OK, kid,” he agreed, “It’s along trip down anyhow.”

He turned and slithered back toward the hatch, whereby they had reached the level where they now were, the other two following him. Disregarding the ladder by which they had mounted, he stepped off into the opening and floated slowly down to the deck fifteen feet below, Tyler and Mahoney close behind him. Another hatch, staggered a few feet from the first, gave

access to a still lower deck. Down, down, down, and still farther down they dropped, tens and dozens of decks, each silent, dimly lighted, mysterious. Each time they fell a little faster, landed a little harder. Mahoney protested at last, “Let’s walk the rest of the way, Hugh. That last jump hurt my feet.”

“All right. But it will take longer. How far have we got to go? Anybody keep count?” “We’ve got about seventy decks to go to reach farm country,” answered Tyler. “How d’you know?” demanded Mahoney suspiciously.

“I counted them, stupid. And as we came down I took one away for each deck.”

“You did not. Nobody but a scientist can do numbering like that. Just because you’re learning to read and write you think you know everything.”

Hoyland cut in before it could develop into a quarrel. “Shut up, Alan. Maybe he can do it. He’s clever about such things. Anyhow, it feels like about seventy decks — I’m heavy enough.” “Maybe he’d like to count the blades on my knife.”

“Stow it, I said. Dueling is forbidden outside the village. That is the Rule.” They proceeded in silence, running lightly down the stairways until increasing weight on each succeeding level forced them to a more pedestrian pace. Presently they broke through into a level that was quite brilliantly lighted and more than twice as deep between decks as the ones above it. The air was moist and warm; vegetation obscured the view.

“Well, down at last,” said Hugh. “I don’t recognize this farm; we must have come down by a different line than we went up.” “There’s a farmer,” said Tyler. He put his little fingers to his lips and whistled, then called, “Hey! Shipmate! Where are we?”

The peasant looked them over slowly, then directed them in reluctant monosyllables to the main passageway which would lead them back to their own village.

Abrisk walk of a mile and a half down a wide tunnel moderately crowded with traffic: travelers, porters, an occasional pushcart, a dignified scientist swinging in a litter borne by four husky orderlies and preceded by his master-at-arms to clear the common crew out of the way. Amile and a half of this brought them to the common of their own village, a spacious compartment three decks high and perhaps ten times as wide. They split up and went their own ways, Hugh to his quarters in the barracks of the cadets, young bachelors who do not live with their parents. He washed himself and went thence to the compartments of his uncle, for whom he worked for his meals. His aunt glanced up as he came in, but said nothing, as became a woman.

His uncle said, “Hello, Hugh. Been exploring again?” “Good eating, Uncle. Yes.”

His uncle, a stolid, sensible man, looked tolerantly amused. “Where did you go and what did you find?”

Hugh’s aunt had slipped silently out of the compartment, and now returned with his supper which she placed before him. He fell to; it did not occur to him to thank her. He munched a bite before replying.

“Up. We climbed almost to the level-of-no-weight. Amutie tried to crack my skull.”

His uncle chuckled. “You’ll find your death In those passageways, lad. Better you should pay more attention to my business against the day when I die and get out of your way.” Hugh looked stubborn. “Don’t you have any curiosity, Uncle?”

“Me? Oh, I was prying enough when I was a lad. I followed the main passage all the way around and back to the village. Right through the Dark Sector I went, with muties tagging my heels. See that scar?”

Hugh glanced at it perfunctorily. He had seen it many times before and heard the story repeated to boredom. Once around the Ship, pfft! He wanted to go everywhere, see everything, and find out the why of things. Those upper levels now: if men were not intended to climb that high, why had Jordan created them?

But he kept his own counsel and went on with his meal. His uncle changed the subject. “I’ve occasion to visit the Witness. John Black claims I owe him three swine. Want to come along?”

“Why, no, I guess not — Wait! I believe I will.”

“Hurry up, then.”

They stopped at the cadets’ barracks, Hugh claiming an errand. The Witness lived in a small, smelly compartment directly across the Common from the barracks, where he would be readily accessible to any who had need of his talents. They found him leaning in his doorway, picking his teeth with a fingernail. His apprentice, a pimply-faced adolescent with an intent nearsighted expression, squatted behind him.

“Good eating.” said Hugh’s uncle.

“Good eating to you, Edard Hoyland. D’you come on business, or to keep an old man company?” “Both,” Hugh’s uncle returned diplomatically, then explained his errand.

“So,” said the Witness. “Well, the contract’s clear enough. Black John delivered ten bushels of oats, Expecting his pay in a pair of shoats; Ed brought his sow to breed for pig; John gets his pay when the pigs grow big.

“How big are the pigs now, Edard Hoyland?”

“Big enough,” acknowledged Hugh’s uncle, “but Black John claims three instead of two.” “Tell him to go soak his head. The Witness has spoken.”

He laughed in a thin, high cackle.

The two gossiped for a few minutes, Edard Hoyland digging into his recent experiences to satisfy the old man’s insatiable liking for details. Hugh kept decently silent while the older men talked. But when his uncle turned to go he spoke up. “I’ll stay awhile, Uncle.”

“Eh? Suit yourself. Good eating, Witness.” “Good eating, Edard Hoyland.”

“I’ve brought you a present, Witness,” said Hugh, when his uncle had passed out of hearing. “Let me see it.”

Hugh produced a package of tobacco which he had picked up from his locker at the barracks. The Witness accepted it without acknowledgment, then tossed it to his apprentice, who took charge of it.

“Come inside,” invited the Witness, then directed his speech to his apprentice. “Here, you, fetch the cadet a chair.” “Now, lad,” he added as they sat themselves down, “tell me what you have been doing with yourself.”

Hugh told him, and was required to repeat In detail all the incidents of his more recent explorations, the Witness complaining the meanwhile over his inability to remember exactly everything he saw.

“You youngsters have no capacity,” he pronounced. “No capacity. Even that lout—” he jerked his head toward the apprentice, “he has none, though he’s a dozen times better than you. Would you believe it, he can’t soak up a thousand lines a day, yet he expects to sit in my seat when I am gone. Why, when I was apprenticed, I used to sing myself to sleep on a mere thousand lines. Leaky vessels — that’s what you are.”

Hugh did not dispute the charge, but waited for the old man to go on, which he did in his own time. “You had a question to put to me, lad?”

“In a way, Witness.”

“Well? Out with it. Don’t chew your tongue.”

“Did you ever climb all the way up to no-weight?”

“Me? Of course not. I was a Witness, learning my calling. I had the lines of all the Witnesses before me to learn, and no time for boyish amusements.” “I had hoped you could tell me what I would find there.”

“Well, now, that’s another matter. I’ve never climbed, but I hold the memories of more climbers than you will ever see. I’m an old man. I knew your father’s father, and his grandsire before that. What is it you want to know?”

“Well…” What was it be wanted to know? How could he ask a question that was no more than a gnawing ache in his breast? Still… “What is it all for, Witness? Why are there all those levels above us?”

“Eh? How’s that? Jordan’s name, son, I’m a Witness, not a scientist.” “Well … I thought you must know. I’m sorry.”

“But I do know. What you want is the Lines from the Beginning.” “I’ve heard them.”

“Hear them again. All your answers are in there, if you’ve the wisdom to see them. Attend me. No, this is a chance for my apprentice to show off his learning. Here, you! The Lines from the Beginning — and mind your rhythm.”

The apprentice wet his lips with his tongue and began:

“In the Beginning there was Jordan, thinking His lonely thoughts alone. In the Beginning there was darkness, formless, dead, and Man unknown. Out of the loneness came a longing, out of the longing came a vision, Out of the dream there came a planning, out of the plan there came decision: Jordan’s hand was lifted and the Ship was born.

Mile after mile of snug compartments, tank by tank for the golden corn, Ladder and passage, door and locker, fit for the needs of the yet unborn. He looked on His work and found it pleasing, meet for a race that was yet to be. He thought of Man; Man came into being; checked his thought and searched for the key. Man untamed would shame his Maker, Man unruled would spoil the Plan; So Jordan made the Regulations, orders to each single man, Each to a task and each to a station, serving a purpose beyond their ken, Some to speak and some to listen; order came to the ranks of men. Crew He created to work at their stations, scientists to guide the Plan. Over them all He created the Captain, made him judge of the race of Man. Thus it was in the Golden Age!

Jordan is perfect, all below him lack perfection in their deeds. Envy, Greed, and Pride of Spirit sought for minds to lodge their seeds. One there was who gave them lodging: accursed Huff, the first to sin! His evil counsel stirred rebellion, planted doubt where it had not been; Blood of martyrs stained the floor plates, Jordan’s Captain made the Trip. Darkness swallowed up—”

The old man gave the boy the back of his hand, sharp across the mouth. “Try again!” “From the beginning?”

“No! From where you missed.”

The boy hesitated, then caught his stride: “Darkness swallowed ways of virtue, Sin prevailed through out the Ship . .”

The boy’s voice droned on, stanza after stanza, reciting at great length but with little sharpness of detail the dim, old story of sin, rebellion, and the time of darkness. How wisdom prevailed at last and the bodies of the rebel leaders were fed to the Converter. How some of the rebels escaped making the Trip and lived to father the muties. How a new Captain was chosen, after prayer and sacrifice. Hugh stirred uneasily, shuffling his feet. No doubt the answers to his questions were there, since these were the Sacred Lines, but he had not the wit to understand them. Why? What was it all about? Was there really nothing more to life than eating and sleeping and finally the long Trip? Didn’t Jordan intend for him to understand? Then why this ache in his breast? This hunger that persisted in spite of good eating?

While he was breaking his fast after sleep an orderly came to the door of his uncle’s compartments. “The scientist requires the presence of Hugh Hoyland,” be recited glibly.

Hugh knew that the scientist referred to was lieutenant Nelson, in charge of the spiritual and physical welfare of the Ship’s sector which included Hugh’s flative vilage. He bolted the last of his breakfast and hurried after the messenger.

“Cadet Hoyland!” he was announced. The scientist locked up from his own meal and said: “Oh, yes. Come in, my boy. Sit down. Have you eaten?”

Hugh acknowjedged that he had, but his eyes rested with interest on the fancy fruit In front of his superior. Nelson followed his glance. “Try some of these figs. They’re a new mutation; I had them brought all the way from the far side. Go ahead — a man your age always has somewhere to stow a few more bites.”

Hugh accepted with much self-consciousness. Never before had he eaten in the presence of a scientist. The elder leaned back in his chair, wiped his fingers on his shirt, arranged his beard, and started in.

“I haven’t seen you lately, son. Tell me what you have been doing with yourself.” Before Hugh could reply he went on: “No, don’t tell me; I will tell you. For one thing you have been exploring, climbing, without too much respect for the forbidden areas. Is it not so?” He held the young man’s eye. Hugh fumbled for a reply.

But he was let off again. “Never mind. I know, and you know that I know. I am not too displeased. But it has brought it forcibly to my attention that it is time that you decided what you are to do with your life. Have you any plans?”

“Well, no definite ones, sir.”

“How about that girl, Edris Baxter? D’you intend to marry her?”

“Why, uh — I don’t know, sir. I guess I want to, and her father is willing, I think. Only…” “Only what?”

“Well, he wants me to apprentice to his farm. I suppose it’s a good idea. His farm together with my uncle’s business would make a good property.” “But you’re not sure?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Correct. You’re not for that. I have other plans. Tell me, have you ever wondered why I taught you to read and write? Of course, you have. But you’ve kept your own counsel. That is good. “Now attend me. I’ve watched you since you were a small child. You have more imagination than the common run, more curiosity, more go. And you are a born leader. You were different even as a baby. Your head was too large, for one thing, and there were some who voted at your birth inspection to put you at once into the Converter. But I held them off. I wanted to see how you would turn out.

“Apeasant life is not for the likes of you. You are to be a scientist.”

The old man paused and studied his face. Hugh was confused, speechless. Nelson went on, “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. For a man of your temperament, there are only two things to do with him: Make him one of the custodians, or send him to the Converter.”

“Do you mean, sir, that I have nothing to say about it?”

“If you want to put it that bluntly, yes. To leave the bright ones among the ranks of the Crew is to breed heresy. We can’t have that. We had it once and it almost destroyed tbe human race. You have marked yourself out by your exceptional ability; you must now be instructed in right thinking, be initiated into the mysteries, in order that you may be a conserving force rather than a focus of infection and a source of trouble.” The orderly reappeared loaded down with bundles which he dumped on the deck. Hugh glanced at them, then burst out, “Why, those are my things!”

“Certainly,” acknowledged Nelson. “I sent for them. You’re to sleep here henceforth. I’ll see you later and start you on your studies, unless you have something more on your mind?” “Why, no, sir. I guess not. I must admit I am a little confused. I suppose … I suppose this means you don’t want me to marry?”

“Oh, that,” Nelson answered indifferently. “Take her if you like; her father can’t protest now. But let me warn you, you’ll grow tired of her.”

Hugh Hoyland devoured the ancient books that his mentor permitted him to read, and felt no desire for many, many sleeps to go climbing, or even to stir out of Nelson’s cabin. More than once he felt that he was on the track of the secret — a secret as yet undefined, even as a question — but again he would find himself more confused than ever. It was evidently harder to reach the wisdom of scientisthood than he had thought.

Once, while he was worrying away at the curious twisted characters of the ancients and trying to puzzle out their odd rhetoric and unfamiliar terms, Nelson came into the little compartment that had been set aside for him, and, laying a fatherly hand on his shoulder, asked, “How goes it, boy?”

“Why, well enough, sir, I suppose,” he answered, laying the book aside. “Some of it is not quite clear to me — not clear at all, to tell the truth.”

“That is to be expected,” the old man said equably. “I’ve let you struggle along by yourself at first in order that you may see the traps that native wit alone will fall into. Many of these things are not to be understood without instruction. What have you there?” He picked up the book and glanced at it. It was inscribed Basic Modern Physics. “So? This is one of the most valuable of the sacred writings, yet the uninitiate could not possibly make good use of it without help. The first thing that you must understand, my boy, is that our forefathers, for all their spiritual perfection, did not look at things in the fashion in which we do.

“They were incurable romantics, rather than rationalists, as we are, and the truths which they handed down to us, though strictly true, were frequently clothed in allegorical language. For example, have you come to the Law of Gravitation?”

“I read about it.”

“Did you understand it? No, I can see that you didn’t.”

“Well,” said Hugh defensively, “it didn’t seem to mean anything. It just sounded silly, if you will pardon me, sir.”

“That illustrates my point. You were thinking of it in literal terms, like the laws governing electrical devices found elsewhere in this same book. ‘Two bodies attract each other directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the square of their distance.’ It sounds like a rule for simple physical facts, does it not? Yet it is nothing of the sort; it was the poetical way the old ones bad of expressing the rule of propinquity which governs the emotion of love. The bodies referred to are human bodies, mass is their capacity for love. Young people have a greater capacity for love than the elderly; when they are thrown together, they fall in love, yet when they are separated they soon get over it. ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ It’s as simple as that. But you were seeking some deep meaning for it.”

Hugh grinned. “I never thought of looking at it that way. I can see that I am going to need a lot of help.” “Is there anything else bothering you just now?”

“Well, yes, lots of things, though I probably can’t remember them offhand. I mind one thing: Tell me, Father, can muties be considered as being people?”

“I can see you have been listening to idle talk. The answer to that is both yes and no. It is true that the niuties originally descended from people but they are no longer part of the Crew; they cannot now be considered as members of the human race, for they have flouted Jordan’s Law.

“This is a broad subject,” he went on, settling down to it. “There is even some question as to the original meaning of the word ‘mutie.’ Certainly they number among their ancestors the mutineers who escaped death at the time of the rebellion. But they also have in their blood the blood of many of the mutants who were born during the dark age. You understand, of

course, that during that period our present wise rule of inspecting each infant for the mark of sin and returning to the Converter any who are found to be mutations was not in force. There are strange and horrible things crawling through the dark passageways and lurking in the deserted levels.”

Hugh thought about it for a while, then asked, “Why is it that mutations still show up among us, the people?”

“That is simple. The seed of sin is still in us. From time to time it still shows up, incarnate. In destroying those monsters we help to cleanse the stock and thereby bring closer the culmination of Jordan’s Plan, the end of the Trip at our heavenly home, Far Centaurus.”

Hoyland’s brow wrinkled again. “That is another thing that I don’t understand. Many of these ancient writings speak of the Trip as if it were an actual moving, a going somewhere, as if the Ship itself were no more than a pushcart. How can that be?”

Nelson chuckled. “How can it, indeed? How can that move which is the background against which all else moves? The answer, of course, is plain. You have again mistaken allegorical language for the ordinary usage of everyday speech. Of course, the Ship is solid, immovable, in a physical sense. How can the whole universe move? Yet, it does move, in a spiritual sense. With every righteous act we move closer to the sublime destination of Jordan’s Plan.”

Hugh nodded. “I think I see.”

“Of course, it is conceivable that Jordan could have fashioned the world in some other shape than the Ship, had it suited His purpose. When man was younger and more poetical, holy men vied with one another in inventing fanciful worlds which Jordan might have created. One school invented an entire mythology of a topsy-turvy world of endless reaches of space, empty save for pinpoints of light and bodiless mythological monsters. They called it the heavenly world, or heaven, as if to contrast it with the solid reality of the Ship. They seemed never to tire of speculating about it, inventing details for it, and of outlining pictures of what they conceived it to be like. I suppose they did it to the greater glory of Jordan, and who is to say that He found their dreams unacceptable? But in this modern age we have more serious work to do.”

Hugh was not interested In astronomy. Even his untutored mind had been able to see in its wild extravagance an intention not literal. He turned to problems nearer at hand. “Since the muties are the seed of sin, why do we make no effort to wipe them out? Would not that be an act that would speed the Plan?”

The old man considered a while before replying. “That is a fair question and deserves a straight answer. Since you are to be a scientist you will need to know the answer. Look at it this way. There is a definite limit to the number of Crew the Ship can support. If our numbers increase without limit, there comes a time when there will not be good eating for all of us. Is it not better that some should die in brushes with the muties than that we should grow in numbers until we killed each other for food?.

“The ways of Jordan are inscrutable. Even the muties have a part in His Plan.” It seemed reasonable, but Hugh was not sure.

But when Hugh was transferred to active work as a junior scientist in the operation of the Ship’s functions, he found there were other opinions. As was customary, he put in a period serving the Converter. The work was not onerous; he had principally to check in the waste materials brought in by porters from each of the villages, keep books of their contributions, and make sure that no redemable metal was introduced into the first-stage hopper. But it brought him into contact with Bill Ertz, the Assistant Chief Engineer, a man not much older than himself.

He discussed with him the things he had learned from Nelson, and was shocked at Ertz’s attitude.

“Get this through your head, kid,” Ertz told him. “This is a practical job for practical men. Forget all that romantic nonsense. Jordan’s Plan! That stuff is all right to keep the peasants quiet and in their place, but don’t fall for it yourself. There is no Plan, other than our own plans for looking out for ourselves. The Ship has to have light and heat and power for cooking and irrigation. The Crew can’t get along without those things and that makes us boss of the Crew.

“As for this softheaded tolerance toward the muties, you’re going to see some changes made! Keep your mouth shut and string along with us.”

It impressed on him that he was expected to maintain a primary loyalty to the bloc of younger men among the scientists. They were a well-knit organization within an organization and were made up of practical, hardheaded men who were working toward improvement of conditions throughout the Ship, as they saw them. They were well knit because an apprentice who failed to see things their way did not last long. Either he failed to measure up and soon found himself back in the ranks of the peasants, or, as was more likely, suffered some mishap and wound up in the Converter.

And Hoyland began to see that they were right.

They were realists. The Ship was the Ship. It was a fact, requiring no explanation. As for Jordan, who had ever seen Him, spoken to Him? What was this nebulous Plan of His? The object of life was living. Aman was born, lived his life, and then went to the Converter. It was as simple as that, no mystery to it, no sublime Trip and no Centaurus. These romantic stories were simply hangovers from the childhood of the race before men gained the understanding and the courage to look facts in the face.

He ceased bothering his head about astronomy and mystical physics and all the other mass of mythology he bad been taught to revere. He was still amused, more or less, by the Lines from the Beginning and by all the old stories about Earth (what the Huff was ‘Earth,’ anyhow?) but now realized that such things could be taken seriously only by children and dullards.

Besides, there was work to do. The younger men, while still maintaining the nominal authority of their elders, had plans of their own, the first of which was a systematic extermination of the muties. Beyond that, their intentions were still fluid, but they contemplated making full use of the resources of the Ship, including the upper levels. The young men were able to move ahead with their plans without an open breach with their elders because the older scientists simply did not bother to any great extent with the routine of the Ship. The present Captain had grown so fat that he rarely stirred from his cabin; his aide, one of the young men’s bloc, attended to affairs for him.

Hoyland never laid eyes on the Chief Engineer save once, when he showed up for the purely religious ceremony of manning landing stations.

The project of cleaning out the muties required reconnaissance of the upper levels to be done systematically. It was in carrying out such scouting that Hugh Hoyland was again ambushed by a mutie.

This mutie was more accurate with his slingshot. Hoyland’s companions, forced to retreat by superior numbers, left him for dead.

Joe-Jim Gregory was playing himself a game of checkers. Time was when they had played cards together, but Joe, the head on the right, had suspected Jim, the left-hand member of the team, of cheating. They had quarreled about it, then given it up, for they both learned early in their joint career that two heads on one pair of shoulders must necessarily find ways of getting along together.

Checkers was better. They could both see the board, and disagreement was impossible.

Aloud metallic knocking at the door of the oompartment interrupted the game. Joe-Jim unsheathed his throwing knife and cradled it, ready for quick use. “Come in!” roared Jim. The door opened, the one who had knocked backed into the room — the only safe way, as everyone knew, to enter Joe-Jim’s presence. The newcomer was squat and rugged and

powerful, not over four feet in height. The relaxed body of a man hung across one shoulder and was steadied by a hand.

Joe-Jim returned the knife to its sheath. “Put it down, Bobo,” Jim ordered. “And close the door,” added Joe. “Now what have we got here?”

It was a young man, apparently dead, though no wound appeared on him. Bobo patted a thigh. “Eat ‘im?” he said hopefully. Saliva spilled out of his still-opened lips. “Maybe,” temporized Jim. “Did you kill him?”

Bobo shook his undersized head.

“Good Bobo,” Joe approved. “Where did you hit him?”

“Bobo hit him there.” The microcephalic shoved a broad thumb against the supine figure in the area between the umbilicus and the breasthone. “Good shot,” Joe approved. “We couldn’t have done better with a knife.”

“Bobo good shot,” the dwarf agreed blandly. “Want see?” He twitched his slingshot invitingly.

“Shut up,” answered Joe, not unkindly. “No, we don’t want to see; we want to make him talk.” “Bobo fix,” the short one agreed, and started with simple brutality to carry out his purpose.

Joe-Jim slapped him away, and applied other methods, painful but considerably less drastic than those of the dwarf. The younger man jerked and opened his eyes. “Eat ‘im?” repeated Bobo.

“No,” said Joe. “When did you eat last?” inquired Jim.

Bobo shook his head and rubbed his stomach, indicating with graphic pantomime that it had been a long time, too long. Joe-Jim went over to a locker, opened it, and withdrew a haunch of meat. He held it up. Jim smelled it and Joe drew his head away in nose-wrinkling disgust Joe-Jim threw, it to Bobo, who snatched it happily out of the air. “Now, get out,” ordered Jim.

Bobo trotted away, closing the door behind him. JoeJim turned to the captive and prodded him with his foot. “Speak up,” said Jim. “Who the Huff are you?”

The young man shivered, put a hand to his head, then seemed suddenly to bring his surroundings into focus, for be scrambled to his feet, moving awkwardly. against the low weight conditions of this level, and reached for his knife.

It was not at his belt.

Joe-Jim had his own out and brandished it. “Be good and you won’t get hurt. What do they call you?” The young man wet his lips, and his eyes hurried about the room. “Speak up,” said Joe.

“Why bother with him?” inquired Jim. “I’d say he was only good for meat. Better call Bobo back.” “No hurry about that,” Joe answered. “I want to talk to him. What’s your name?”

The prisoner looked again at the kife and muttered, “Hugh Hoyland.”

“That doesn’t tell us much,” Jim commented. “What d’you do? What village do you come from? And what were you doing in mutie country?” But this time Hoyland was sullen. Even the prick of the knife against his ribs caused him only to bite his lips. “Shucks,” said Joe, “he’s only a stupid peasant. Let’s drop it.”

“Shall we finish him off?” “No. Not now. Shut him up.”

Joe-Jim opened the door of a small side compartment, and urged Hugh in with the knife. He then closed and fastened the door and went back to his game. “Your move, Jim.”

The compartment in which Hugh was locked was dark. He soon satisfied himself by touch that the smooth steel walls were entirely featureless save for the solid, securely fastened door. Presently he lay down on the deck and gave himself up to fruitless thinking.

He had plenty of time to think, time to fall asleep and awaken more than once. And time to grow very hungry and very, very thirsty.

When Joe-Jim next took sufficient interest in his prisoner to open the door of the cell, Hoyland was not immediately in evidence. He had planned many times what he would do when the door opened and his chance came, but when the event arrived, he was too weak, semi-comatose. Joe-Jim dragged him out. , The disturbance roused him to partial comprehension. He sat up and stared around him. “Ready to talk?” asked Jim. Hoyland opened his mouth but no words came out.

“Can’t you see he’s too dry to talk?” Joe told his twin. Then to Hugh: “Will you talk if we give you some water?” Hoyland looked puzzled, then nodded vigorously.

Joe-Jim returned in a moment with a mug of water. Hugh drank greedily, paused, and seemed about to faint. Joe-Jim took the mug from him. “That’s enough for now,” said Joe. “Tell us about yourself.”

Hugh did so. In detail, being prompted from time to time by questions from one of the twins, or a kick against his shin.

Hugh accepted a de facto condition of slavery with no particular resistance and no great disturbance of soul. The word ‘slave’ was not in his vocabulary, but the condition was a commonplace in everything he had ever known. There had always been those who gave orders and those who carried them out; he could imagine no other condition, no other type of social organization. It was a fact of life.

Though naturally he thought of escape.

Thinking about it was as far as he got. Joe-Jim guessed his thoughts and brought the matter out into the open. Joe told him, “Don’t go getting ideas, youngster. Without a knife you wouldn’t get three levels away in this part of the Ship. If you managed to steal a knife from me, you still wouldn’t make it down to high-weight. Besides, there’s Bobo.”

Hugh waited a moment, as was fitting, then said, “Bobo?”

Jim grinned and replied, “We told Bobo that you were his to butcher, if he liked, if you ever stuck your head out of our compartments without us. Now he sleeps outside the door and spends a lot of his time there.”

“It was only fair,” put in Joe. “He was disappointed when we decided to keep you.”

“Say,” suggested Jim, turning his bead toward his brother’s, “how about some fun?” He turned back to Hugh. “Can you throw a knife?” “Of course,” Hugh answered.

“Let’s see you. Here.” Joe-Jim handed him their own knife. Hugh accepted it, jiggling it in his band to try its balance. “Try my mark.”

Joe-Jim had a plastic target. set up at the far end of the room from his favorite chair, on which he was wont to practice his own skill. Hugh eyed it, and, with an arm motion too fast to follow, let fly. He used the economical underhand stroke, thumb on the blade, fingers together. The blade shivered in the target, well centered in the chewed-up area which marked Joe- Jim’s best efforts. “Good boy!” Joe approved. “What do you have in mind, Jim?”

“Let’s give him the knife and see how far he gets.” “No,” said Joe, “I don’t agree.”

“Why not?”

“If Bobo wins, we’re out one servant. If Hugh wins, we lose both Bobo and him. It’s wasteful.” “Oh, well, if you insist.”

“I do. Hugh, fetch the knife.”

Hugh did so. It had not occurred to him to turn the knife against Joe-Jim. The master was the master. For servant to attack master was not simply repugnant to good morals, it was an idea so wild that it did not occur to him at all.

Hugh had expected that Joe-Jim would be impressed by his learning as a scientist. It did not work out that way. Joe-Jim, especially Jim, loved to argue. They sucked Hugh dry in short order and figuratively cast him aside. Hoyland felt humiliated. After all, was he not a scientist? Could he not read and write?

“Shut up,” Jim told Hugh. “Reading is simple. I could do it before your father was born. D’you think you’re the first scientist that has served me? Scientists—bah! Apack of ignoramuses!” In an attempt to re-establish his own intellectual conceit, Hugh expounded the theories of the younger scientists, the strictly matter-of-fact, hard-boiled realism which rejected all religious interpretation and took the Ship as it was. He confidently expected Joe-Jim to approve such a point of view; it seemed to fit their temperaments. They laughed in his face.

“Honest,” Jim insisted, when be bad ceased snorting, “are you young punks so stupid as all that? Why you’re worse than your elders.”

“But you just got through saying,” Hugh protested in hurt tones, “that all our accepted religious notions are so much bunk. That is just what my friends think. They want to junk all that old nonsense.”

Joe started to speak; Jim cut in ahead of him. “Why bother with him, Joe? He’s hopeless.”

“No, he’s not. I’m enjoying this. He’s the first one I’ve talked with in I don’t know how long who stood any chance at all of seeing the truth. Let us be — I want to see whether that’s a head he has on his shoulders, or just a place to hang his ears.”

“O.K.,” Jim agreed, “but keep it quiet. I’m going to take a nap.” The left-hand head closed its eyes, soon it was snoring. Joe and Hugh continued their discussion in whispers.

“The trouble with you youngsters,” Joe said, “is that if you can’t understand a thing right off, you think it can’t be true. The trouble with your elders is, anything they didn’t understand they reinterpreted to mean something else and then thought they understood it. None of you has tried believing clear words the way they were written and then tried to understand them on that basis. Oh, no, you’re all too bloody smart for that! If you can’t see it right off, it ain’t so; it must mean something different.”

“What do you mean?” Hugh asked suspiciously.

“Well, take the Trip, for instance. What does it mean to you?

“Well, to my mind, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a piece of nonsense to impress the peasants.” “And what is the accepted meaning?”

“Well, it’s where you go when you die, or rather what you do. You make the Trip to Centaurus.” “And what is Centaurus?”

“It’s — mind you, I’m just telling you the orthodox answers; I don’t really believe this stuff — it’s where you arrive when you’ve made the Trip, a place where everybody’s happy and there’s always good eating.” Joe snorted. Jim broke the rhythm of his snoring, opened one eye, and settled back again with a grunt.

“That’s just what I mean,” Joe went on in a lower whisper. “You don’t use your head. Did it over occur to you that the Trip was just what the old books said It was: the Ship and all the Crew actually going somewhere, moving?” Hoyland thought about it. “You don’t mean for me to take you seriously. Physically, it’s an impossibility. The Ship can’t go anywhere. It already is everywhere. We can make a trip through it, but the Trip, that has to have a spiritual meaning, if it has any.”

Joe called on Jordan to support him. “Now, listen,” he said, “get this through that thick head of yours. Imagine a place a lot bigger than the Ship, a lot bigger, with the Ship inside it, moving. D’you get it?”

Hugh tried. He tried very hard. He shook his bead. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “There can’t be anything bigger than the Ship. There wouldn’t be any place for it to be.” “Oh, for Huff’s sake! Listen. Outside the Ship, get that? Straight down beyond the level in every direction. Emptiness out there. Understand me?”

“But there isn’t anything below the lowest level. That’s why it’s the lowest level.”

“Look. If you took a knife and started digging a hole in the floor of the lowest level, where would it get you?” “But you can’t. It’s too hard.”

“But suppose you did and it made a hole. Where would that hole go? Imagine it.”

Hugh shut his eyes and tried to imagine digging a hole in the lowest level. Digging as if it were soft, soft as cheese. He began to get some glimmering of a possibility, a possibility that was unsettling, soul-shaking. He was falling, falling into a hole that he had dug which had no levels under it. He opened his eyes very quickly. “That’s awful!” he ejaculated. “I won’t believe it.”

Joe-Jim got up. “I’ll make you believe it,” he said grimly, “if I have to break your neck to do it.” He strode over to the outer door and opened it. “Bobo!” he shouted. “Bobo!”

Jim’s head snapped erect. “Wassa matter? Wha’s going on?” “We’re going to take Hugh to no-weight.”

“What for?”

“To pound some sense into his silly head.” “Some other time.”

“No, I want to do it now.”

“All right, all right. No need to shake. I’m awake now anyhow.”

Joe-Jim Gregory was almost as nearly unique in his — or their — mental ability as he was in his bodily construction. Under any circumstances he would have been a dominant personality; among the muties it was inevitable that he should bully them, order them about, and live on their services. Had he had the will-to-power, it is conceivable that he could have organized the muties to fight and overcome the Crew proper.

But he lacked that drive. He was by native temperament an intellectual, a bystander, an observer. He was interested in the ‘how’ and the ‘why,’ but his will to action was satisfied with comfort and convenience alone.

Had he been born two normal twins and among the Crew, it is likely that he would have drifted into scientisthood as the easiest and most satisfactory answer to the problem of living and as such would have entertained himself mildly with conversation and administration. As it was, he lacked mental companionship and had whiled away three generations reading and rereading books stolen for him by his stooges.

The two halves of his dual person had argued and discussed what they had read, and had almost inevitably arrived at a reasonably coherent theory of history and the physical world, except in one respect. The concept of fiction was entirely foreign to them; they treated the novels that had been provided for the Jordan expedition in exactly the same fashion that they did text and reference books.

This led to their one major difference of opinion. Jim regarded Allan Quartermain as the greatest man who had ever lived; Joe held out for John Henry.

They were both inordinately fond of poetry; they could recite page after page of Kipling, and were nearly as fond of Rhysling, the blind singer of the spaceways. Bobo backed in. Joe-Jim hooked a thumb toward Hugh. “Look,” said Joe, “he’s going out.”

“Now?” said Bobo happily, and grinned, slavering.

“You and your stomach!” Joe answered, rapping Bobo’s pate with his knuckles. “No, you don’t eat him. You and him, blood brothers. Get it?” “Not eat ‘im?”

“No. Fight for him. He fights for you.”

“O.K.” The pinhead shrugged his shoulders at the inevitable. “Blood brothers. Bobo know.” “All right. Now we go up to the place-where-everybody-flies. You go ahead and make lookout.”

They climbed in single file, the dwarf running ahead to spot the lie of the land, Hoyland behind him, Joe-Jim bringing up the rear, Joe with eyes to the front, Jim watching their rear, head

turned over his shoulder.

Higher and higher they went, weight slipping imperceptibly from them with each successive deck. They emerged finally into a level beyond which there was no further progress, no opening above them. The deck curved gently, suggesting that the true shape of the space was a giant cylinder, but overhead a metallic expanse which exhibited a similar curvature obstructed the view and prevented one from seeing whether or not the deck in truth curved back on itself.

There were no proper bulkheads; great stanchions, so huge and squat as to give an impression of excessive, unnecessary strength, grew thickly about them, spacing deck and overhead evenly apart.

Weight was imperceptible. If one remained quietly in one place, the undetectable residuum of weight would bring the body in a gentle drift down to the ‘floor,’ but ‘up’ and ‘down’ were terms largely lacking in meaning. Hugh did not like it; it made him gulp, but Bobo seemed delighted by it and not unused to it. He moved through the air like an uncouth fish, banking off stanchion, floor plate, and overhead as suited his convenience.

Joe-Jim set a course parallel to the common axis of the inner and outer cylinders, following a passageway formed by the orderly spacing of the stanchions. There were handrails set along the passage, one of which he followed like a spider on its thread. He made remarkable speed, which Hugh floundered to maintain. In time, be caught the trick of the easy, effortless, overhand pull, the long coast against nothing but air resistance, and the occasional flick of the toes or the hand against the floor. But he was much too busy to tell how far they went before they stopped. Miles, he guessed it to be, but he did not know.

When they did stop, it was because the passage, had terminated. Asolid bulkhead, stretching away to right and left, barred their way. Joe-Jim moved along it to the right, searching.

He found what he sought, a man-sized door, closed, its presence distinguishable only by a faint crack which marked its outline and a cursive geometrical design on its surface. Joe-Jim studied this and scratched his right-hand head. The two heads whispered to each other. Joe-Jim raised his hand in an awkward gesture.

“No, no!” said Jim. Joe-Jim checked himself. “How’s that?” Joe answered. They whispered together again, Joe nodded, and Joe-Jim again raised his hand.

He traced the design on the door without touching It, moving his forefinger through the air perhaps four inches from the surface of the door. The order of succession in which his finger moved over the lines of the design appeared simple but certainly not obvious.

Finished, he shoved a palm against the adjacent bulkhead, drifted back from the door, and waited.

Amoment later there was a soft, almost inaudible insufflation; the door stirred and moved outward perhaps six inches, then stopped. Joe-Jim appeared puzzled. He ran his hands cautiously into the open crack and pulled. Nothing happened. He called to Bobo, “Open it.”

Bobo looked the situation over, with a scowl on his forehead which wrinkled almost to his crown. He then placed his feet against the bulkhead, steadying himself by grasping the door with one hand. He took hold of the edge of the door with both hands, settled his feet firmly, bowed his body, and strained.

He held his breath, chest rigid, back bent, sweat breaking out from the effort. The great cords in his neck stood out, making of his head a misshapen pyramid. Hugh could hear the dwarf’s joints crack. It was easy to believe that he would kill himself with the attempt, too stupid to give up.

But the door gave suddenly, with a plaint of binding metal. As the door, in swinging out, slipped from Bobo’s fingers, the unexpectedly released tension in his legs shoved him heavily away from the bulkhead; he plunged down the passageway, floundering for a handhold. But he was back in a moment, drifting awkwardly through the air as he massaged a cramped calf.

Joe-Jim led the way inside, Hugh close behind him. “What is this place?” demanded Hugh, his curiosity overcoming his servant manners. “The Main Control Room,” said Joe.

Main Control Room! The most sacred and taboo place in the Ship, its very location a forgotten mystery. In the credo of the young men it was nonexistent. The older scientists varied in their attitude between fundamentalist acceptance and mystical belief. As enlightened as Hugh believed himself to be, the very words frightened him. The Control Room! Why, the very spirit of Jordan was said to reside there. He stopped.

Joe-Jim stopped and Joe looked around. “Come on,” he said. “What’s the matter?” “Why, uh … uh …”

“Speak up.”

“But … but this place is haunted … this is Jordan’s…”

“Oh, for Jordan’s sake!” protested Joe, with slow exasperation. “I thought you told me you young punks didn’t take any stock in Jordan.” “Yes, but … but this is…”

“Stow it. Come along, or I’ll have Bobo drag you.” He turned away. Hugh followed, reluctantly, as a man climbs a scaffold. They threaded through a passageway just wide enough for two to use the handrails abreast. The passage curved in a wide sweeping arc of full ninety degrees, then opened into the control room proper. Hugh peered past Joe-Jim’s broad shoulders, fearful but curious.

He stared into a well-lighted room, huge, quite two hundred feet across. It was spherical, the interior of a great globe. The surface of the globe was featureless, frosted silver. In the geometrical center of the sphere, Hugh saw a group of apparatus about fifteen feet across. To his inexperienced eye, it was completely unintelligible; he could not have described it, but he saw that it floated steadily, with no apparent support.

Running from the end of the passage to the mass at the center of the globe was a tube of metal latticework, wide as the passage itself. It offered the only exit from the passage. Joe-Jim turned to Bobo, and ordered him to remain in the passageway, then entered the tube.

He pulled himself along it, hand over hand, the bars of the latticework making a ladder. Hugh followed him; they emerged into the mass of apparatus occupying the center of the sphere. Seen close up, the gear of the control station resolved itself into its individual details, but it still made no sense to him. He glanced away from it to the inner surface of the globe which surrounded them.

That was a mistake. The surface of the globe, being featureless silvery white, had nothing to lend it perspective. It might have been a hundred feet away, or a thousand, or, many miles. He had never experienced an unbroken height greater than that between two decks, nor an open space larger than the village common. He was panic-stricken, scared out of his wits, the more so in that he did not know what it was he feared. But the ghost of long-forgotten jungle ancestors possessed him and chilled his stomach with the basic primitive fear of falling.

He clutched at the control gear, clutched at Joe-Jim.

Joe-Jim let him have one, hard across the mouth with the flat of his hand. “What’s the matter with you?” growled Jim. “I don’t know,” Hugh presently managed to get out. “I don’t know, but I don’t like this place. Let’s get out of here!”

Jim lifted his eyebrows to Joe, looked disgusted, and said, “We might as well. That weak-bellied baby will never understand anything you tell him.” “Oh, he’ll be all right,” Joe replied, dismissing the matter. “Hugh, climb into one of the chairs; there, that one.”

In the meantime, Hugh’s eyes had fallen on the tube whereby they had reached the control center and had followed it back by eye to the passage door. The sphere suddenly shrank to its proper focus and the worst of his panic was over. He complied with the order, still trembling, but able to obey. The control center consisted of a rigid framework, made up of chairs, or frames, to receive the bodies of the operators, and consolidated instrument and report panels, mounted in such a fashion as to be almost in the laps of the operators, where they were readily visible but did not obstruct the view. The chairs had high supporting sides, or arms, and mounted in these aims were the controls appropriate to each officer on watch, but Hugh was not yet aware of that. He slid under the instrument panel into his seat and settled back, glad of its enfolding stability. It fitted him in a semi-reclining position, footrest to head support.

But something was happening on the panel in front of Joe-Jim; he caught it out of the corner of his eye and turned to look. Bright red letters glowed near the top of the board: 2ND ASTROGATOR POSTED. What was a second astrogator? He didn’t know; then he noticed that the extreme top of his own board was labeled 2ND ASTROGATOR and concluded it must be himself, or rather, the man who should be sitting there. He felt momentarily uncomfortable that the proper second astrogator might come in and find him usurping his post, but he put

it out of his mind; it seemed unlikely.

But what was a second astrogator, anyhow?

The letters faded from Joe-Jim’s board, a red dot appeared on the left-hand edge and remained. Joe-Jim did something with his right hand; his board reported: ACCELERATION: ZERO, then MAIN DRIVE. The last two words blinked several times, then were replaced with NO REPORT. These words faded out, and a bright green dot appeared near the right-hand edge.

“Get ready,” said Joe, looking toward Hugh; “the light is going out.” “You’re not going to turn out the light?” protested Hugh.

“No, you are. Take a look by your left hand. See those little white lights?”

Hugh did so, and found, shining up through the surface the chair arm, little beads of light arrayed to form two squares, one above the other. “Each one controls the light of one quadrant,” explained Joe. “Cover them with your hand to turn Out the light. Go ahead, do it.”

Reluctantly, but fascinated, Hugh did as he was directed. He placed a palm over the tiny lights, and waited. The silvery sphere turned to dull lead, faded still more, leaving them in darkness complete save for the silent glow from the instrument panels. Hugh felt nervous but exhilarated. He withdrew his palm; the sphere remained dark, the eight little lights had turned blue.

“Now,” said Joe, “I’m going to show you the Stars!”

In the darkness, Joe-Jim’s right hand slid over another pattern of eight lights. Creation.

Faithfully reproduced, shining as steady and serene from the walls of the stellarium as did their originals from the black deeps of space, the mirrored stars looked down on him. Light after jeweled light, scattered in careless bountiful splendor across the simulacrum sky, the countless suns lay before him; before him, over him, under him, behind him, in every direction from him. He hung alone in the center of the stellar universe.

“Oooooh!” It was an involuntary sound, caused by his indrawn breath. He clutched the chair arms hard enough to break fingernails, but he was not aware of it. Nor was he afraid at the moment; there was room in his being for but one emotion. Life within the Ship, alternately harsh and workaday, had placed no strain on his innate capacity to experience beauty; for the first time in his life he knew the intolerable ecstasy of beauty unalloyed. It shook him and hurt him, like the first trembling intensity of sex.

It was some time before Hugh sufficiently recovered from the shock and the ensuing intense preoccupation to be able to notice Jim’s sardonic laugh, Joe’s dry chuckle. “Had enough?” inquired Joe. Without waiting for a reply, Joe-Jim turned the lights back on, using the duplicate controls mounted in the left arm of his chair.

Hugh sighed. His chest ached and his heart pounded. He realized suddenly that he had been holding his breath the entire time that the lights had been turned out. “Well, smart boy,” asked Jim, “are you convinced?”

Hugh sighed again, not knowing why. With the lights back on, he felt safe and snug again, but was possessed of a deep sense of personal loss. He knew, subconsciously, that, having seen the stars, he would never be happy again. The dull ache in his breast, the vague inchoate yearning for his lost heritage of open sky and stars, was never to be silenced, even though he was yet too ignorant to be aware of it at the top of his mind. “What was it?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“That’s,” answered Joe. “That’s the world. That’s the universe. That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you about.”

Hugh tried furiously to force his inexperienced mind to comprehend. “That’s what you mean by Outside?” he asked. “All those beautiful little lights?” “Sure,” said Joe, “only they aren’t little. They’re a long way off, you see; maybe thousands of miles.”

“What?”

“Sure, sure,” Joe persisted. “There’s lots of room out there. Space. It’s big. Why, some of those stars may be as big as the Ship, maybe bigger.” Hugh’s face was a pitiful study in overstrained imagination. “Bigger than the Ship?” he repeated. “But … but …”

Jim tossed his head impatiently and said to Joe, “Wha’d’ I tell you? You’re wasting our time on this lunk. He hasn’t got the capacity.”

“Easy, Jim,” Joe answered mildly; “don’t expect him to run before he can crawl. It took us a long time. I seem to remember that you were a little slow to believe your own eyes.” “That’s a lie,” said Jim nastily. “You were the one that had to be convinced.”

“O.K., O.K.,” Joe conceded, “let it ride. But it was a long time before we both had it all straight.”

Hoyland paid little attention to the exchange between the two brothers. It was a usual thing; his attention was centered on matters decidedly not usual. “Joe,” he asked, “what became of the Ship while we were looking at the Stars? Did we stare right through it?”

“Not exactly,” Joe told him. “You weren’t looking directly at the stars at all, but at a kind of picture of them. It’s like… Well, they do it with mirrors, sort of. I’ve got a book that tells about it.” “But you can see ‘em directly,” volunteered Jim, his momentary pique forgotten. “There’s a compartment forward of here…”

“Oh, yes,” put in Joe, “it slipped my mind. The Captain’s veranda. He’s got one all of glass; you can look right out.” “The Captain’s veranda? But—”

“Not this Captain. He’s never been near the place. That’s the name over the door of the compartment.” “What’s a ‘veranda’?”

“Blessed if I know. It’s just the name of the place.” “Will you take me up there?”

Joe appeared to be about to agree, but Jim cut in. “Some other time. I want to get back; I’m hungry.” They passed back through the tube, woke up Bobo, and made the long trip back down.

It was long before Hugh could persuade Joe-Jim to take him exploring again, but the time intervening was well spent. Joe-Jim turned him loose on the largest collection of books that Hugh had ever seen. Some of them were copies of books Hugh had seen before, but even these he read with new meanings. He read incessantly, his mind soaking up new ideas, stumbling over them, struggling, striving to grasp them. He begrudged sleep, he forgot to eat until his breath grew sour and compelling pain in his midriff forced him to pay attention to his body. Hunger satisfied, he would be back at it until his head ached and his eyes refused to focus.

Joe-Jim’s demands for service were few. Although Hugh was never off duty, Joe-Jim did not mind his reading as long as he was within earshot and ready to jump when called. Playing checkers with one of the pair when the other did not care to play was the service which used up the most time, and even this was not a total loss, for, if the player were Joe, he could almost always be diverted into a discussion of the Ship, its history, its machinery as equpment, the sort of people who had built it and then manned it and their history, back on Earth, Earth the incredible, that strange place where people had lived on the outside instead of the inside.

Hugh wondered why they did not fall off.

He took the matter up with Joe and at last gained some notion of gravitation. He never really understood it emotionally; it was too wildly improbable; but as an intellectual concept he was able to accept it and use it, much later, in his first vague glimmerings of the science of ballistics: and the art of astrogation and ship maneuvering. And it led in time to his wondering about weight in the Ship, a matter that had never bothered him before. The lower the level the greater the weight had been to his mind simply the order of nature, and nothing to wonder at. He was familiar with centrifugal force as it applied to slingshots. To apply it also to the whole Ship, to think of the Ship as spinning like a slingshot and thereby causing weight, was too much of a hurdle; he never really believed it.

Joe-Jim took him back once more to the Control Room and showed him what little Joe-Jim knew about the manipulation of the controls and the reading of the astrogation instruments.

The long-forgotten engineer-designers employed by the Jordan Foundation had been instructed to design a ship that would not — could not — wear out, even though the Trip were protracted beyond the expected sixty years. They builded better than they knew. In planning the main drive engines and the auxiliary machinery, largely automatic, which would make the Ship habitable, and in designing the controls necessary to handle all machinery not entirely automatic, the very idea of moving parts had been rejected. The engines and auxiliary equipment worked on a level below mechanical motion, on a level of pure force, as electrical transformers do. Instead of push buttons, levers, cams, and shafts, the controls and the machinery they served were planned in terms of balance between static fields, bias of electronic flow, circuits broken or closed by a hand placed over a light.

On this level of action, friction lost its meaning, wear and erosion took no toll. Had all hands been killed in the mutiny, the Ship would still have plunged on through space, still lighted, its air still fresh and moist, its engines ready and waiting. As it was, though elevators and conveyor belts fell into disrepair, disuse, and finally into the oblivion of forgotten function, the essential machinery of the Ship continued its automatic service to its ignorant human freight, or waited, quiet and ready, for someone bright enough to puzzle out its key.

Genius had gone into the building of the Ship. Far too huge to be assembled on Earth, it had been put together piece by piece in its own orbit out beyond the Moon. There it had swung for fifteen silent years while the problems presented by the decision to make its machinery foolproof and enduring had been formulated and solved. Awhole new field of submolar action had been conceived in the process, struggled with, and conquered.

So, when Hugh placed an untutored, questing hand over the first of a row of lights marked ACCELERATION, POSITIVE, he got an immediate response, though not in terms of acceleration. Ared light at the top of the chief pilot’s board blinked rapidly and the annunciator panel glowed with a message: MAIN ENGINES: NOT MANNED.

“What does that mean?” he asked Joe-Jim.

“There’s no telling,” said Jim. “We’ve done the same thing in the main engine room,” added Joe. “There, when you try it, it says ‘Control Room Not Manned.’” Hugh thought a moment. “What would happen,” he persisted, “if all the control stations had somebody at ‘em at once, and then I did that?”

“Can’t say,” said Joe. “Never been able to try it.”

Hugh said nothing. Aresolve which had been growing, formless, in his mind was now crystalizing into decision. He was busy with it for some time, weighing it, refining it, and looking for the right moment to bring it into the open.

He waited until he found Joe-Jim in a mellow mood, both of him, before broaching his idea. They were in the Captain’s veranda at the time Hugh decided the moment was due. Joe-Jim rested gently in the Captain’s easy chair, his belly full of food, and gazed out through the heavy glass of the view port at the serene stars. Hugh floated beside him. The spinning of the Ship caused the stars to cross the circle of the port in barely perceptible arcs.

Presently he said, “Joe-Jim …”

“Eh? What’s that, youngster?” It was Joe who had replied. “It’s pretty swell, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“All that. The stars.” Hugh indicated the view through the port with a sweep of his arm, then caught at the chair to stop his own backspin. “Yeah, it sure is. Makes you feel good.” Surprisingly, it was Jim who offered this.

Hugh knew the time was right. He waited a moment, then said, “Why don’t we finish the job?” Two heads turned simultaneously, Joe leaning out a little to see past Jim. “What job?”

“The Trip. Why don’t we start up the main drive and go on with it? Somewhere out there,” be said hurriedly to finish before he was interrupted, “there are planets like Earth, or so the First Crew thought. Let’s go find them.”

Jim looked at him, then laughed. Joe shook his head.

“Kid,” he said, “you don’t know what you are talking about. You’re as balmy as Bobo. “No,” he went on, “that’s all over and done with. Forget it.” “Why is it over and done with, Joe?”

“Well, because. It’s too big a job. It takes a crew that understands what it’s all about, trained to operate the Ship.”

“Does it take so many? You have shown me only about a dozen places, all told, for men actually to be at the controls. Couldn’t a dozen men run the Ship … if they knew what you know,” he added slyly.

Jim chuckled. “He’s got you, Joe. He’s right”

Joe brushed it aside. “You overrate our knowledge. Maybe we could operate the Ship, but we wouldn’t get anywhere. We don’t know where we are. The Ship has been drifting for I don’t know how many generations. We don’t know where we’re headed, or how fast we’re going.”

“But look,” Hugh pleaded, “there are instruments. You showed them to me. Couldn’t we learn how to use them? Couldn’t you figure them out, Joe, if you really wanted to?” “Oh, I suppose so,” Jim agreed.

“Don’t boast, Jim,” said Joe.

“I’m not boasting,” snapped Jim. “If a thing’ll work, I can figure it out.”

“Humph!” said Joe. The matter rested in delicate balance. Hugh had got them disagreeing among themselves — which was what he wanted — with the less tractable of the pair on his side. Now, to consolidate his gain, “I had an idea,” he said quickly, “to get you men to work with, Jim, if you were able to train them.”

“What’s your idea?” demanded Jim suspiciously. “Well, you remember what I told you about a bunch of the younger scientists?” “Those fools!”

“Yes, yes, sure; but they didn’t know what you know. In their way they were trying to be reasonable. Now, if I could go back down and tell them what you’ve taught me, I could get you enough men to work with.”

Joe cut in. “Take a good look at us, Hugh. What do you see?” “Why … why, I see you. Joe-Jim.”

“You see a mutie,” corrected Joe, his voice edged with sarcasm. “We’re a mutie. Get that? Your scientists won’t work with us.”

“No, no,” protested Hugh, “that’s not true. I’m not talking about peasants. Peasants wouldn’t understand, but these are scientists, and the smartest of the lot. They’ll understand. All you need to do is to arrange safe conduct for them through mutie country. You can do that, can’t you?” he added, instinctively shifting the point of the argument to firmer ground.

“Why, sure,” said Jim. “Forget it,” said Joe.

“Well, O.K.,” Hugh agreed, sensing that Joe really was annoyed at his persistence, “but it would be fun.” He withdrew some distance from the brothers.

He could hear Joe-Jim continuing the discussion with himself in low tones. He pretended to ignore it. Joe-Jim had this essential defect in his joint nature: being a committee, rather than a single individual, he was hardly fitted to be a man of action, since all decisions were necessarily the result of discussion and compromise. Several moments later Hugh heard Joe’s

voice raised. “All right, all right, have it your own way!” He then called out, “Hugh! Come here!” Hugh kicked himself away from an adjacent bulkhead and shot over to the immediate vicinity of Joe-Jim, arresting his flight with both hands against the framework of the Captain’s chair.

“We’ve decided,” said Joe without preliminaries, “to let you go back down to the high-weight and try to peddle your goods. But you’re a fool,” he added sourly.

Bobo escorted Hugh down through the dangers of the levels frequented by muties and left him in the uninhabited zone above high-weight “Thanks, Bobo,” Hugh said in parting. “Good eating.” The dwarf grinned, ducked his head, and sped away, swarming up the ladder they had just descended. Hugh turned and started down, touching his knife as he did so. It was good to feel it against him again.

Not that it was his original knife. That had been Bobo’s prize when he was captured, and Bobo had been unable to return it, having inadvertently left it sticking in a big one that got away. But the replacement Joe-Jim had given him was well balanced and quite satisfactory.

Bobo had conducted him, at Hugh’s request and by Joe-Jim’s order, down to the area directly over the auxiliary Converter used by the scientists. He wanted to find Bill Ertz, Assistant Chief Engineer and leader of the bloc of younger scientists, and he did not want to have to answer too many questions before he found him. Hugh dropped quickly down the remaining levels and found himself in a main passageway which he recognized. Good! Aturn to the left, a couple of hundred yards walk and he found himself at the door of the compartment which housed the Converter. Aguard lounged in front of it. Hugh started to push on past, was stopped. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I want to find Bill Ertz.”

“You mean the Chief Engineer? Well, he’s not here.”

“Chief? What’s happened to the old one?” Hoyland regretted the remark at once, but it was already out.

“Huh? The old Chief? Why, he’s made the Trip long since.” The guard looked at him suspiciously. “What’s wrong with you?” “Nothing,” denied Hugh. “Just a slip.”

“Funny sort of a slip. Well, you’ll find Chief Ertz around his office probably.” “Thanks. Good eating.”

“Good eating.”

Hugh was admitted to see Ertz after a short wait Ertz looked up from his desk as Hugh came in. “Well,” he said, “so you’re back, and not dead after all. This is a surprise. We had written you off, you know, as making the Trip.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Well, sit down and tell me about it; I’ve a little time to spare at the moment. Do you know, though, I wouldn’t have recognized you. You’ve changed a lot, all that gray hair. I imagine you had some pretty tough times.”

Gray hair? Was his hair gray? And Ertz had changed a lot, too, Hugh now noticed. He was paunchy and the lines in his face had set. Good Jordan! How long had he been gone? Ertz drummed on his desk top, and pursed his lips. “It makes a problem, your coming back like this. I’m afraid I can’t just assign you to your old job; Mort Tyler has that. But we’ll find a place for you, suitable to your rank.”

Hugh recalled Mort Tyler and not too favorably. Aprecious sort of a chap, always concerned with what was proper and according to regulations. So Tyler had actually made scientisthood, and was on Hugh’s old job at the Converter. Well, it didn’t matter. “That’s all right, he began. “I wanted to talk to you about—”

“Of course, there’s the matter of seniority,” Ertz went on, “Perhaps the Council had better consider the matter. I don’t know of a precedent. We’ve lost a number of scientists to the muties in the past, but you are the first to escape with his life in my memory.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Hugh broke in. “I’ve something much more pressing to talk about. While I was away I found out some amazing things, Bill, things that it is of paramount importance for you to know about. That’s why I came straight to you. Listen. I—”

Ertz was suddenly alert. “Of course you have! I must be slowing down. You must have had a marvelous opportunity to study the muties and scout out their territory. Come on, man, spill it! Give me your report.”

Hugh wet his lips. “It’s not what you think,” he said. “It’s much more important than just a report on the muties, though it concerns them, too. In fact, we may have to change our whole policy with respect to the mu—”

“Well, go ahead, go ahead! I’m listening.”

“All right.” Hugh told him of his tremendous discovery as to the actual nature of the Ship, choosing his words carefully and trying very hard to be convincing. He dwelt lightly on the difficulties presented by an attempt to reorganize the Ship in accordance with the new concept and bore down heavily on the prestige and honor that would accrue to the man who led the effort.

He watched Ertz’s face as he talked. After the first start of complete surprise when Hugh launched his key idea, the fact that the Ship was actually a moving body in a great outside space, his face became impassive and Hugh could read nothing in it, except that he seemed to detect a keener interest when Hugh spoke of how Ertz was just the man for the job because of his leadership of the younger, more progressive scientists.

When Hugh concluded, he waited for Ertz’s response. Ertz said nothing at first, simply continued with his annoying habit of drumming on the top of his desk. Finally he said, “These are important matters, Hoyland, much too important to be dealt with casually. I must have time to chew it over.”

“Yes, certainly,” Hugh agreed. “I wanted to add that I’ve made arrangements for safe passage up to no-weight. I can take you up and let you see for yourself.” “No doubt that is best,” Ertz replied. “Well, are you hungry?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll both sleep on it. You can use the compartment at the back of my office. I don’t want you discussing this with anyone else until I’ve had time to think about it; it might cause unrest if it got out without proper prepartion.”

“Yes, you’re right”

“Very well, then.” Ertz ushered him into a compartment behind his office which he very evidently used for a lounge. “Have a good rest,” he said, “and we’ll talk later.” “Thanks,” Hugh acknowledged. “Good eating.”

“Good eating.”

Once he was alone, Hugh’s excitement gradually dropped away from him, and he realized that he was fagged out and very sleepy. He stretched out on a builtin couch and fell asleep. When he awoke he discovered that the only door to the compartment was barred from the other side. Worse than that, his knife was gone.

He had waited an indefinitely long time when he heard activity at the door. It opened; two husky, unsmiling men entered. “Come along,” said one of them. He sized them up, noting that neither of them carried a knife. No chance to snatch one from their belts, then. On the other hand he might be able to break away from them.

But beyond them, a wary distance away in the outer room, were two other equally formidable men, each armed with a knife. One balanced his for throwing; the other held his by the grip, ready to stab at close quarters. He was boxed in and be knew it. They had anticipated his possible moves.

He had long since learned to relax before the inevitable. He composed his face and marched quietly out. Once through the door he saw Ertz, waiting and quite evidently in charge of the party of men. He spoke to him, being careful to keep his voice calm. “Hello, Bill. Pretty extensive preparations you’ve made. Some trouble, maybe?”

Ertz seemed momentarily uncertain of his answer, then said, “You’re going before the Captain.”

“Good!” Hugh answered. “Thanks, Bill. But do you think it’s wise to try to sell the idea to him without laying a little preliminary foundation with the others?”

Ertz was annoyed at his apparent thickheadedness and showed it. “You don’t get the idea,” he growled. “You’re going before the Captain to stand trial for heresy!”

Hugh considered this as if the idea had not before occurred to him. He answered mildly, “You’re off down the wrong passage, Bill. Perhaps a charge and trial is the best way to get at the matter, but I’m not a peasant, simply to be hustled before the Captain. I must be tried by the Council. I am a scientist.”

“Are you now?” Ertz said softly. “I’ve had advice about that. You were written off the lists. Just what you are is a matter for the Captain to determine.”

Hugh held his peace. It was against him, he could see, and there was no point in antagonizing Ertz. Ertz made a signal; the two unarmed men each grasped one of Hugh’s arms. He went with them quietly.

Hugh looked at the Captain with new interest. The old man had not changed much, a little fatter, perhaps. The Captain settled himself slowly down in his chair, and picked up the memorandum before him. “What’s this all about?” he began irritably. “I don’t understand it.”

Mort Tyler was there to present the case against Hugh, a circumstance which Hugh had had no way of anticipating and which added to his misgivings. He searched his boyhood recollections for some handle by which to reach the man’s sympathy, found none. Tyler cleared his throat and commenced: “This is the case of one Hugh Hoyland, Captain, formerly one of your junior scientists—”

“Scientist, eh? Why doesn’t the Council deal with him?”

“Because he is no longer a scientist, Captain. He went over to the muties. He now returns among us, preaching heresy and seeking to undermine your authority.” The Captain looked at Hugh with the ready belligerency of a man jealous of his prerogatives. “Is that so?” he bellowed. “What have you to say for yourself?”

“It is not true, Captain,” Hugh answered. “All that I have said to anyone has been an affirmation of the absolute truth of our ancient knowledge. I have not disputed the truths under which we live; I have simply affirmed them more forcibly than is the ordinary custom. I—”

“I still don’t understand this,” the Captain interrupted, shaking his head. “You’re charged with heresy, yet you say you believe the Teachings. If you aren’t guilty, why are you here?” “Perhaps I can clear the matter up,” put in Ertz. “Hoyland—”

“Well, I hope you can,” the Captain went on. “Come, let’s hear it.”

Ertz proceeded to give a reasonably correct, but slanted, version of Hoyland’s return and his strange story. The Captain listened, with an expression that varied between puzzlement and annoyance. When Ertz had concluded, the Captain turned to Hugh. “Humph!” he said.

Hugh spoke immediately. “The gist of my contention, Captain, is that there is a place up at no-weight where you can actually see the truth of our faith that the Ship is moving, where you can actually see Jordan’s Plan in operation. That is not a denial of faith; that affirms it. There is no need to take my word for it. Jordan Himself will prove it.”

Seeing that the Captain appeared to be in a state of indecision, Tyler broke in: “Captain, there is a possible explanation of this incredible situation which I feel duty bound that you should hear. Offhand, there are two obvious interpretations of Hoyland’s ridiculous story He may simply be guilty of extreme heresy, or he may be a mutie at heart and engaged in a scheme to lure you into their hands. But there is a third, more charitable explanation and one which I feel within me is probably the true one.

“There is record that Hoyland was seriously considered for the Converter at his birth inspection, but that his deviation from normal was slight, being simply an overlarge head, and he was passed. It seems to me that the terrible experiences he has undergone at the hands of the muties have finally unhinged an unstable mind. The poor chap is simply not responsible for his own actions.”

Hugh looked at Tyler with new respect. To absolve him of guilt and at the same time to make absolutely certain that Hugh would wind up making the Trip: how neat! The Captain shook a palm at them. “This has gone on long enough.” Then, turning to Ertz, “Is there recommendation?”

“Yes, Captain. The Converter.”

“Very well, then. I really don’t see, Ertz,” he continued testily, “why I should be bothered with these details. It seems to me that you should be able to handle discipline in your department without my help.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The Captain shoved back from his desk, started to get up. “Recommendation confirmed. Dismissed.”

Anger flooded through Hugh at the unreasonable injustice of it. They had not even considered looking at the only real evidence he had in his defense. He heard a shout: “Wait!” — then discovered it was his own voice. The Captain paused, looking at him.

“Wait a moment,” Hugh went on, his words spilling out of their own accord. “This won’t make any difference, for you’re all so damn sure you know all the answers that you won’t consider a fair offer to come see with your own eyes. Nevertheless … Nevertheless, it still moves!”

Hugh had plenty of time to think, lying in the compartment where they confined him to await the power needs of the Converter, time to think, and to second-guess his mistakes. Telling his tale to Ertz immediately, that had been mistake number one. He should have waited, become reacquainted with the man and felt him out, instead of depending on a friendship which had never been very close.

Second mistake, Mort Tyler. When he heard his name he should have investigated and found out just how much influence the man had with Ertz. He had known him of old, he should have known better.

Well, here he was, condemned as a mutant, or maybe as a heretic. It came to the same thing. He considered whether or not he should have tried to explain why mutants happened. He had learned about it himself in some of the old records in Joe-Jim’s possession. No, it wouldn’t wash. How could you explain about radiations from the Outside causing the birth of mutants when the listeners did not believe there was such a place as Outside? No, he had messed it up before he was ever taken before the Captain.

His self-recriminations were disturbed at last by the sound of his door being unfastened. It was too soon for another of the infrequent meals; he thought that they had come at last to take him away, and renewed his resolve to take someone with him.

But he was mistaken. He heard a voice of gentle dignity: “Son, son, how does this happen?” It was Lieutenant Nelson, his first teacher, looking older than ever and frail.

The interview was distressing for both of them. The old man, childless himself, had cherished great hopes for his protege, even the ambition that he might eventually aspire to the captaincy, though he had kept his vicarious ambition to himself, believing it not good for the young to praise them too highly. It had hurt his heart when the youth was lost.

Now he had returned, a man, but under disgraceful conditions and under sentence of death. The meeting was no less unhappy for Hugh. He had loved the old man, in his way, wanted to please him and needed his approval. But he could see, as he told his story, that Nelson was not capable of treating the the story as anything but an aberration of Hugh’s mind, and he suspected that Nelson would rather see him meet a quick death in the Converter, his atoms smashed to hydrogen and giving up clean useful power, than have him live to make a mock of the ancient teachings.

In that.he did the old man an injustice; he underrated Nelson’s mercy, but not his devotion to ‘science.’ But let it be said for Hugh that, had there been no more at issue than his own personal welfare, he might have preferred death to breaking the heart of his benefactor, being a romantic and more than a bit foolish. Presently the old man got up to leave, the visit having grown unendurable to each of them. “Is there anything I can do for you, son? Do they feed you well enough?”

“Quite well, thanks,” Hugh lied. “Is there anything else?”

“No … yes, you might send me some tobacco. I haven’t had a chew in a long time.”

“I’ll take care of it. Is there anyone you would like to see?”

“Why, I was under the impression that I was not permitted visitors … ordinary visitors.”

“You are right, but I think perhaps I may be able to get the rule relaxed. But you will have to give me your promise not to speak of your heresy,” he added anxiously. Hugh thought quickly. This was a new aspect, a new possibility. His uncle? No, while they had always got along well, their minds did not meet; they would greet each other as strangers. He had never made friends easily; Ertz had been his obvious next friend and now look at the damned thing! Then he recalled his village chum, Alan Mahoney, with whom he had played as a boy. True, he had seen practically nothing of him since the time he was apprenticed to Nelson. Still… “Does Alan Mahoney still live in our village?”

“Why, yes.”

“I’d like to see him, if he’ll come.”

Alan arrived, nervous, ill at ease, but plainly glad to see Hugh and very much upset to find him under sentence to make the Trip. Hugh pounded him on the back. “Good boy,” he said. “I knew you would come.”

“Of course, I would,” protested Alan, “once I knew. But nobody in the village knew it. I don’t think even the Witnesses knew it.” “Well, you’re here, that’s what matters. Tell me about yourself. Have you married?”

“Huh, uh, no. Let’s not waste time talking about me. Nothing ever happens to me anyhow. How in Jordan’s name did you get in this jam, Hugh?” “I can’t talk about that, Alan. I promised Lieutenant Nelson that I wouldn’t.”

“Well, what’s a promise, that kind of a promise? You’re in a jam, fellow.” “Don’t I know it!”

“Somebody have it in for you?”

“Well, our old pal Mort Tyler didn’t help any; I think I can say that much.” Alan whistled and nodded his head slowly. “That explains a lot.” “How come? You know something?”

“Maybe, — maybe not. After you went away he married Edris Baxter.”

“So? Hmm-m-m … yes, that clears up a lot.” He remained silent for a time.

Presently Alan spoke up: “Look, Hugh. You’re not going to sit here and take it, are you? Particularly with Tyler mixed in it. We gotta get you outa here.” “How?”

“I don’t know. Pull a raid, maybe. I guess I could get a few knives to rally round and help us; all good boys, spoiling for a fight.” “Then, when it’s over, we’d all be for the Converter. You, me, and your pals. No, it won’t wash.”

“But we’ve got to do something. We can’t just sit here and wait for them to burn you.”

“I know that.” Hugh studied Alan’s face. Was it a fair thing to ask? He went on, reassured by what he had seen. “Listen. You would do anything you could to get me out of this, wouldn’t you?”

“You know that.” Alan’s tone showed hurt.

“Very well, then. There is a dwarf named Bobo. I’ll tell you how to find him…”

Alan climbed, up and up, higher than he had ever been since Hugh had led him, as a boy, into foolhardy peril. He was older now, more conservative; he had no stomach for it. To the very real danger of leaving the well-traveled lower levels was added his superstitious ignorance. But still he climbed.

This should be about the place, unless he had lost count. But he saw nothing of the dwarf Bobo saw him first. Aslingshot load caught Alan in the pit of the stomach, even as he was shouting, “Bobo!”

Bobo backed into Joe-Jim’s compartment and dumped his load at the feet of the twins. “Fresh meat,” he said proudly. “So it is,” agreed Jim indifferently. “Well, it’s yours; take it away.”

The dwarf dug a thumb into a twisted ear, “Funny,” he said, “he knows Bobo’s name.”

Joe looked up from the book he was reading: _Browning’s Collected Poems_, L-Press, New York, London, Luna City, cr. 35. “That’s interesting. Hold on a moment.”

Hugh had prepared Alan for the shock of Joe-Jim’s appearance. In reasonably short order he collected his wits sufficiently to be able to tell his tale. Joe-Jim listened to it without much comment, Bobo with interest but little comprehension.

When Alan concluded, Jim remarked, “Well, you win, Joe. He didn’t make it.” Then, turning to Alan, he added, “You can take Hoyland’s place. Can you play checkers?” Alan looked from one head to the other. “But you don’t understand,” he said. “Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

Joe looked puzzled. “Us? Why should we?”

“But you’ve got to. Don’t you see? He’s depending on you. There’s nobody else he can look to. That’s why I came. Don’t you see?”

“Wait a moment,” drawled Jim, “wait a moment. Keep your belt on. Supposing we did want to help him, which we don’t, how in Jordan’s Ship could we? Answer me that.” “Why, why,” Alan stumbled in the face of such stupidity. “Why, get up a rescue party, of course, and go down and get him out!”

“Why should we get ourselves killed in a fight to rescue your friend?” Bobo pricked his ears. “Fight?” he inquired eagerly. “No, Bobo,” Joe denied. “No fight. Just talk.” “Oh,” said Bobo and returned to passivity.

Alan looked at the dwarf. “If you’d even let Bobo and me—”

“No,” Joe said shortly. “It’s out of the question. Shut up about it.”

Alan sat in a corner, hugging his knees in despair. If only he could get out of there. He could still try to stir up some help down below. The dwarf seemed to be asleep, though it was difficult to be sure with him. If only Joe-Jim would sleep, too.

Joe-Jim showed no indication of sleepiness. Joe tried to continue reading, but Jim interrupted him from time to time. Alan could not hear what they were saying. Presently Joe raised his voice. “Is that your idea of fun?” he demanded.

“Well,” said Jim, “it beats checkers.”

“It does, does it? Suppose you get a knife in your eye; where would I be then?” “You’re getting old, Joe. No juice in you any more.”

“You’re as old as I am.”

“Yeah, but I got young ideas.”

“Oh, you make me sick. Have it your own way, but don’t blame me. Bobo!” The dwarf sprang up at once, alert. “Yeah, Boss.”

“Go out and dig up Squatty and Long Arm and Pig.”

Joe-Jim-got up, went to a locker, and started pulling knives out of their racks.

Hugh heard the commotion in the passageway outside his prison. It could be the guards coming to take him to the Converter, though they probably wouldn’t be so noisy. Or it could be just some excitement unrelated to him. On the other hand it might be …

It was. The door burst open, and Alan was inside, shouting at him and thrusting a brace of knives into his hands. He was hurried out of the door, while stuffing the knives in his belt and accepting two more.

Outside he saw Joe-Jim, who did not see him at once, as he was methodically letting fly, as calmly as if he had been engaging in target practice in his own study. And Bobo, who ducked his head and grinned with a mouth widened by a bleeding cut, but continued the easy flow of the motion whereby he loaded and let fly. There were three others, two of whom Hugh recognized as belonging to Joe-Jim’s privately owned gang of bullies, muties by definition and birthplace; they were not deformed.

The count does not include still forms on the floor plates.

“Come on!” yelled Alan. “There’ll be more in no time.” He hurried down the passage to the right

Joe-Jim desisted and followed him. Hugh let one blade go for luck at a figure running away to the left. The target was poor, and he had no time to see if he had thrown 01000. They scrambled along the passage, Bobo bringing up the rear, as if reluctant to leave the fun, and came to a point where a side passage crossed the main one.

Alan led them to the right again. “Stairs ahead,” he shouted.

They did not reach them. An airtight door, rarely used, clanged in their faces ten yards short of the stairs. Joe-Jim’s bravoes checked their flight and they looked doubtfully at their master. Bobo broke his thickened nails trying to get a purchase on the door.

The sounds of pursuit were clear behind them. “Boxed in,” said Joe softly. “I hope you like it, Jim.”

Hugh saw a head appear around the corner of the passage they had quitted. He threw overhand but the distance was too great; the knife clanged harmlessly against steel. The head disappeared. Long Arm kept his eye on the spot, his sling loaded and ready.

Hugh grabbed Bobo’s shoulder. “Listen! Do you see that light?”

The dwarf blinked stupidly. Hugh pointed to the intersection of the glowtubes where they crossed in the overhead directly above the junction of the passages. “That light. Can you hit them where they cross?”

Bobo measured the distance with his eye. It would be a hard shot under any conditions at that range. Here, constricted as he was by the low passageway, it called for a fast, flat trajectory, and allowance for higher weight then he was used to.

He did not answer. Hugh felt the wind of his swing but did not see the shot. There was a tinkling crash; the passage became dark.

“Now!” yelled Hugh, and led them away at a run. As they neared the intersection he shouted, “Hold your breaths! Mind the gas!” The radioactive vapor poured lazily out from the broken tube above and filled the crossing with a greenish mist.

Hugh ran to the right, thankful for his knowledge as an engineer of the lighting circuits. He had picked the right direction; the passage ahead was black, being serviced from beyond the break. He could hear footsteps around him; whether they were friend or enemy he did not know.

They burst into light. No one was in sight but a scared and harmless peasant who scurried away at an unlikely pace. They took a quick muster. All were present, but Bobo was making heavy going of it.

Joe looked at him. “He sniffed the gas, I think. Pound his back.”

Pig did so with a will. Bobo belched deeply, was suddenly sick, then grinned. “He’ll do,” decided Joe.

The slight delay had enabled one at least to catch up with them. He came plunging out of the dark, unaware of, or careless of, the strength against him. Alan knocked Pig’s arm down, as he raised it to throw. “Let me at him!” he demanded. “He’s mine!” It was Tyler.

“Man-fight?” Alan challenged, thumb on his blade.

Tyler’s eyes darted from adversary to adversary and accepted the invitation to individual duel by lunging at Alan. The quarters were too cramped for throwing; they closed, each achieving his grab in parry, fist to wrist.

Alan was stockier, probably stronger; Tyler was slippery. He attempted to give Alan a knee to the crotch. Alan evaded it, stamped on Tyler’s planted foot. They went clown. There was a crunching crack.

Amoment later, Alan was wiping his knife against his thigh. “Let’s get goin’,” he complained. “I’m scared.”

They reached a stairway, and raced up it, Long Arm and Pig ahead to fan out on each level and cover their flanks, and the third of the three choppers (Hugh heard him called Squatty) covering the rear. The others bunched in between.

Hugh thought they had won free, when he heard shouts and the clatter of a thrown knife just above him. He reached the level above in time to be cut not deeply but jaggedly by a ricocheted blade.

Three men were down. Long Arm bad a blade sticking in the fleshy part of his upper arm, but it did not seem to bother him. His slingshot was still spinning. Pig was scrambling after a thrown knife, his own armament exhausted. But there were signs of his work; one man was down on one knee some twenty feet away. He was bleeding from a knife wound in the thigh.

As the figure steadied himself with one hand against the bulkhead and reached towards an empty belt with the other, Hugh recognized him. Bill Ertz.

He had led a party up another way, and flanked them, to his own ruin. Bobo crowded behind Hugh and got his mighty arm free for the cast. Hugh caught at it. “Easy, Bobo,” he directed. “In the stomach, and easy.”

The dwarf looked puzzled, but did as he was told.

Ertz folded over at the middle and slid to the deck. “Well placed,” said Jim. “Bring him along, Bobo,” directed Hugh, “and stay in the middle.” He ran his eye over their party, now huddled at the top of that flight of stairs. “All right, gang; up we go again! Watch it.”

Long Arm and Pig swarmed up the next flight, the others disposing themselves as usual. Joe looked annoyed. In some fashion, a fashion by no means clear at the moment, he had been eased out as leader of this gang, his gang, and Hugh was giving orders. He reflected as there was no time now to make a fuss. It might get them all killed.

Jim did not appear to mind. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself.

They put ten more levels behind them with no organized opposition. Hugh directed them not to kill peasants unnecessarily. The three bravoes obeyed; Bobo was too loaded down with Ertz to constitute a problem in discipline. Hugh saw to it that they put thirty-odd more decks below them and were well into no man’s land before he let vigilance relax at all. Then he called a halt and they examined wounds.

The only deep ones were to Long Arm’s arm and Bobo’s face. Joe-Jim examined them and applied presses with which he had outfitted himself before starting. Hugh refused treatment for his flesh wound. “It’s stopped bleeding,” he insisted, “and I’ve got a lot to do.”

“You’ve got nothing to do but to get up home,” said Joe, “and that will be an end to this foolishness.” “Not quite,” denied Hugh. “You may be going home, but Alan and I and Bobo are going up to no-weight; to the Captain’s veranda.”

“Nonsense,” said Joe. “What for?”

“Come along if you like, and see. All right, gang. Let’s go.”

Joe started to speak, stopped when Jim kept still. Joe-Jim followed along. They floated gently through the door of the veranda, Hugh, Alan, Bobo with his still-passive burden, and Joe- Jim. “That’s it,” said Hugh to Alan, waving his hand at the splendid stars, “that’s what I’ve been telling you about.”

Alan looked and clutched at Hugh’s arm. “Jordan!” he moaned. “We’ll fall out!” He closed his eyes tightly. Hugh shook him. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s grand. Open your eyes.”

Joe-Jim touched Hugh’s arm. “What’s it all about?” he demanded. “Why did you bring him up here?” He pointed to Ertz. “Oh, him. Well, when he wakes up I’m going to show him the stars, prove to him that the Ship moves.”

“Well? What for?”

“Then I’ll send him back down to convince some others.”

“Hm-m-m, suppose he doesn’t have any better luck than you had?”

“Why, then,” Hugh shrugged his shoulders “why, then we shall just have to do it all over, I suppose, till we do convince them. “We’ve got to do it, you know.”

COMMON SENSE

JOE, THE RIGHT HAND head of Joe-Jim, addressed his words to Hugh Hoyland. “All right, smart boy, you’ve convinced the Chief Engineer.” He gestured toward Bill Ertz with the blade of his knife, then resumed picking Jim’s teeth with it. “So what? Where does it get you?”

“I’ve explained that,” Hugh Hoyland answered irritably. “We keep on, until every scientist in the Ship, from the Captain to the greenest probationer, knows that the Ship moves and believes that we can make it move. Then we’ll finish the Trip, as Jordan willed. How many knives can you muster?” he added.

“Well, for the love of Jordan! Listen, have you got some fool idea that we are going to help you with this crazy scheme?” “Naturally. You’re necessary to it.”

“Then you had better think up another think. That’s out. Bobo! Get out the checkerboard.”

“O.K., Boss.” The microcephalic dwarf hunched himself up off the floor plates and trotted across Joe-Jim’s apartment.

“Hold it, Bobo.” Jim, the left-hand head, had spoken. The dwarf stopped dead, his narrow forehead wrinkled. The fact that his two-headed master occasionally failed to agree as to what Bobo should do was the only note of insecurity in his tranquil bloodthirsty existence.

“Let’s hear what he has to say,” Jim continued. “There may be some fun in this.”

“Fun! The fun of getting a knife in your ribs. Let me point out that they are my ribs, too. I don’t agree to it.”

“I didn’t ask you to agree; I asked you to listen. Leaving fun out of it, it may be the only way to keep a knife out of our ribs.”

“What do you mean?” Joe demanded suspiciously. “You heard what Ertz had to say.” Jim flicked a thumb toward the prisoner. “The Ship’s officers are planning to clean out the upper levels. How would you like to go into the Converter, Joe? You can’t play checkers after we’re broken down into hydrogen.”

“Bunk! The Crew can’t exterminate the muties; they’ve tried before.” Jim turned to Etrz. “How about it?”

Ertz answered somewhat diffidently, being acutely aware of his own changed status from a senior Ship’s officer to prisoner of war. He felt befuddled anyhow; too much had happened and too fast. He had been kidnaped, hauled up to the Captain’s veranda, and had there gazed out at the stars. The stars.

His hard-boiled rationalism included no such concept. If an Earth astronomer had had it physically demonstrated to him that the globe spun on its axis because someone turned a crank, the upset in evaluations could have been no greater.

Besides that, he was acutely aware that his own continued existence hung in fine balance. Joe-Jim was the first upper-level mutie he had ever met other than in combat, knife to knife. A word from him to that great ugly dwarf sprawled on the deck— He chose his words. “I think the Crew would be successful, this time. We … they have organized for it. Unless there are more of you than we think there are and better organized, I think it could be done. You see … well, uh, I organized it.”

“You?”

“Yes. Agood many of the Council don’t like the policy of letting the muties alone. Maybe it’s sound religious doctrine and maybe it isn’t, but we lose a child here and a couple of pigs there. It’s annoying.”

“What do you expect muties to eat?” demanded Jim belligerently. “Thin air?”

“No, not exactly. Anyhow, the new policy was not entirely destructive. Any muties that surrendered and could be civilized we planned to give to masters and put them to work as part of the Crew. That is, any that weren’t, uh … that were—” He broke off in embarrassment, and shifted his eyes from the two-headed monstrosity before him.

“You mean any that weren’t physical mutations, like me,” Joe filled in nastily. “Don’t you?” he persisted. “For the likes of me it’s the Converter, isn’t it?” He slapped the blade of his knife nervously on the palm of his hand.

Ertz edged away, his own hand shifting to his belt. But no knife was slung there; he felt naked and helpless without it. “Just a minute,” he said defensively, “you asked me; that’s the situation. It’s out of my hands. I’m just telling you.”

“Let him alone, Joe. He’s just handing you the straight dope. It’s like I was telling you: either go along with Hugh’s plan, or wait to be hunted down. And don’t get any ideas about killing him; we’re going to need him.” As Jim spoke he attempted to return the knife to its sheath. There was a brief and silent struggle between the twins for control of the motor nerves to their right arm, a clash of will below the level of physical activity. Joe gave in.

“All right,” he agreed surlily, “but if I go to the Converter, I want to take this one with me for company.” “Stow it,” said Jim. “You’ll have me for company.”

“Why do you believe him?”

“He has nothing to gain by lying. Ask Alan.”

Alan Mahoney, Hugh’s friend and boyhood chum, had listened to the argument round-eyed, without joining it. He, too, had suffered the nerve-shaking experience of viewing the outer stars, but his ignorant peasant mind had not the sharply formulated opinions of Ertz, the Chief Engineer. Ertz had been able to see almost at once that the very existence of a world outside the Ship changed all his plans and everything he had believed in; Alan was capable only of wonder.

“What about this plan to fight the muties, Alan?”

“Huh? Why, I don’t know anything about it. Shucks, I’m not a scientist. Say, wait a minute; there was a junior officer sent in to help our village scientist, Lieutenant Nelson.” He stopped and looked puzzled.

“What about it? Go ahead.”

“Well, he has been organizing the cadets in our village, and the married men, too, but not so much. Making ‘em practice with their blades and slings. Never told us what for, though.” Ertz spread his hands. “You see?”

Joe nodded. “I see,” he admitted grimly.

Hugh Hoyland looked at him eagerly. “Then you’re with me?” “I suppose so,” Joe admitted. “Right!” added Jim.

Hoyland looked back to Ertz. “How about you, Bill Ertz?” “What choice have I got?”

“Plenty. I want you with me wholeheartedly. Here’s the layout: The Crew doesn’t count; it’s the officers we have to convince. Any that aren’t too addlepated and stiff-necked to understand after they’ve seen the stars and the Control Room, we keep. The others—” he drew a thumb across his throat while making a harsh sibilance in his cheek, “the Converter.”

Bobo grinned happily and imitated the gesture and the sound. Ertz nodded. “Then what?”

“Muties and Crew together, under a new Captain, we move the Ship to Far Centaurus! Jordan’s Will be done!”

Ertz stood up and faced Hoyland. It was a heady notion, too big to be grasped at once, but, by Jordan! he liked it. He spread his hands on the table and leaned across it. “I’m with you, Hugh Hoyland!”

Aknife clattered on the table before him, one from the brace at Joe-Jim’s belt. Joe looked startled, seemed about to speak to his brother, then appeared to think better of it. Ertz looked his thanks and stuck the knife in his belt.

The twins whispered to each other for a moment, then Joe spoke up. “Might as well make it stick,” he said. He drew his remaining knife and, grasping the blade between thumb and forefinger so that only the point was exposed, he jabbed himself in the fleshly upper part of his left arm. “Blade for blade!”

Ertz’s eyebrows shot up. He whipped out his newly acquired blade and cut himself in the same location. The blood spurted and ran down to the crook of his arm. “Back to back!” He shoved the table aside and pressed his gory shoulder against the wound on Joe-Jim.

Alan Mahoney, Hugh Hoyland, Bobo: all had their blades out, all nicked their arms till the skin ran red and wet. They crowded in, bleeding shoulders pushed together so that the blood dripped united to the death.

“Blade for blade!” “Back to back!” “Blood to blood!”

“Blood brothers, to the end of the Trip!”

An apostate scientist, a kidnaped scientist, a dull peasant, a two-headed monster, a apple-brained moron; five knives, counting Joe-Jim as one; five brains, counting Joe-Jim as two and Bobo as none; five brains and five knives to overthrow an entire culture.

“But I don’t want to go back, Hugh.” Alan shuffled his feet and looked dogged. “Why can’t I stay here with you? I’m a good blade.” “Sure you are, old fellow. But right now you’ll be more useful as a spy.”

“But you’ve got Bill Ertz for that.”

“So we have, but we need you too. Bill is a public figure; he can’t duck out and climb to the upper levels without it being noticed and causing talk. That’s where you come in; you’re his go- between.”

“I’ll have a Huff of a time explaining where I’ve been.”

“Don’t explain any more than you have to. But stay away from the Witness.” Hugh had a sudden picture of Alan trying to deceive the old village historian, with his searching tongue and lust for details. “Keep clear of the Witness. The old boy would trip you up.”

“Him? You mean the old one; he’s dead. Made the Trip long since. The new one don’t amount to nothing.” “Good. If you’re careful, you’ll be safe.” Hugh raised his voice. “Bill! Are you ready to go down?”

“I suppose so.” Ertz picked himself up and reluctantly put aside the book he had been reading _The Three Musketeers_, illustrated, one of Joe-Jim’s carefully stolen library. “Say, that’s a wonderful book. Hugh, is Earth really like that?”

“Of course. Doesn’t it say so in the book?”

Ertz chewed his lip and thought about it. “What is a house?” “Ahouse? Ahouse is a sort of a… a sort of a compartment.”

“That’s what I thought at first, but how can you ride on a compartment?” “Huh? What do you mean?”

“Why, all through the book they keep climbing on their houses and riding away.”

“Let me see that book,” Joe ordered. Ertz handed it to him. Joe-Jim thumbed through it rapidly. “I see what you mean. Idiot! They ride horses, not houses.” “Well, what’s a horse?”

“Ahorse is an animal, like a big hog, or maybe like a cow. You squat up on top of it and let it carry you along.”

Ertz considered this. “It doesn’t seem practical. Look, when you ride in a litter, you tell the chief porter where you want to go. How can you tell a cow where you want to go?” “That’s easy. You have a porter lead it.”

Ertz conceded the point. “Anyhow, you might fall off. It isn’t practical. I’d rather walk.” “It’s quite a trick,” Joe explained. “Takes practice.”

“Can you do it?”

Jim sniggered. Joe looked annoyed. “There are no horses in the Ship.” “OK, O.K. But look. These guys Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, they had something—” “We can discuss that later,” Hugh interrupted. “Bobo is back. Are you ready to go, Bill?” “Don’t get in a hurry, Hugh. This is important. These chaps had knives.” “Sure. Why not?”

“But they were better than our knives. They had knives as long as your arm, maybe longer. If we are going to fight the whole Crew, think what an advantage that would be.” “Hm-m-m.” Hugh drew his knife and looked at it, cradling it in his palm. “Maybe. You couldn’t throw it as well.”

“We could have throwing knives, too.” “Yes, I suppose we could.”

The twins had listened Without comment. “He’s right,” put in Joe. “Hugh, you take care of placing the knives. Jim and I have some reading to do.” Both of Joe-Jim’s heads were busy thinking of other books they owned, books. that discussed in saguinary detail the infinitely varied methods used by mankind to shorten the lives of enemies. He was about to institute a War College Department of Historical Research, although he called his project by no such fancy term.

“O.K.,” Hugh agreed, “but you will have to say the word to them.”

“Right away.” Joe-Jim stepped out of his apartment into the passageway where Bobo had assembled a couple of dozen of Joe-Jim’s henchmen among the muties. Save for Long Arm, Pig, and Squatty, who had taken part in the rescue of Hugh, they were all strangers to Hugh, Alan, and Bill, and they were all sudden death to strangers.

Joe-Jim motioned for the three from the lower decks to join him. He pointed them out to the muties, and ordered them to look closely and not to forget: these three were to have safe passage and protection wherever they went. Furthermore, in Joe-Jim’s absence his men were to take orders from any of them.

They stirred and looked at each other. Orders they were used to, but from Joe-Jim only.

Abig-nosed individual rose up from his squat and addressed them. He looked at Joe-Jim, but his words were intended for all. “I am Jack-of-the-Nose. My blade is sharp and my eye is keen. Joe-Jim with the two wise heads is my Boss and my knife fights for him. But Joe is my Boss, not strangers from heavy decks. What do say, knives? Is that not the Rule?”

He paused. The others had listened to him stealing glances at Joe-Jim. Joe muttered something of the corner of his mouth to Bobo. Jack O’Nose opened his mouth to continue. There was a smash of splintering teeth, a crack from a broken neck; his mouth stopped with a missile.

Bobo reloaded his slingshot. The body, not yet still, settled slowly to the deck. Joe-Jim waved a hand it. “Good eating!” Joe announced. “He’s yours.” The muties converged on the body as if they had suddenly been unleashed. They concealed it completely in a busy grunting pile-up. Knives out, they cuffed and crowded each other for a piece of the prize.

Joe-Jim waited patiently for the undoing to be over, then, when the place where Jack O’Nose had been was no more than a stain on the deck and the several polite arguments over the sharing had died down, he started again; Joe spoke. “Long Arm, you and Forty-one and the Ax go down with Bobo, Alan and Bill. The rest here.”

Bobo trotted away in the long loping strides, sped on by the low pseudogravity near the axis of rotation of Ship. Three of the muties detached themselves from pack and followed. Ertz and Alan Mahoney hurried catch up.

When he reached the nearest staircase trunk, he skipped out into space without breaking his stride letting centrifugal force carry him down to the next. Alan and the muties followed; but Ertz paused on the edge and looked back. “Jordan keep you, brother!” he sang out.

Joe-Jim waved to him. “And you,” acknowledged Joe. “Good eating!” Jim added.

“Good eating!”

Bobo led them down forty-odd decks, well into no man’s land inhabited neither by mutie nor crew, stopped. He pointed in succession to Long Arm, Forty-one, and the Ax. “Two Wise Heads say for you to watch here. You first,” he added, pointing again to Forty-one. “It’s like this,” Ertz amplified. “Alan and I are going down to heavy-weight level. You three are to keep a guard here, one at a time, so that I will be able to send messages back up to Joe-Jim. Get it?”

“Sure. Why not?” Long Arm answered.

“Joe-Jim says it,” Forty-one commented with a note of finality in his voice. The Ax grunted agreeably.

“O.K.,” said Bobo. Forty-one sat down at the stairwell, letting his feet hang over, and turned his attention to food which he had been carrying tucked under his left arm.

Bobo slapped Ertz and Alan on their backs. “Good eating,” he bade them, grinning. When he could get his breath, Ertz acknowledged the courteous thought, then dropped at once to the next lower deck, Alan close after him. They had still many decks to go to ‘civilization.’

Commander Phineas Narby, Executive Assistant to Jordan’s Captain, in rummaging through the desk of the Chief Engineer was amused to find that Bill Ertz had secreted therein a couple of Unnecessary books. There were the usual Sacred books, of course, including the priceless _Care and Maintenance of the Auxiliary Fourstage Converter_ and the _Handbook of Power, Light, and Conditioning, Starship Vanguard_. These were Sacred books of the first order, bearing the imprint of Jordan himself, and could lawfully be held only by the Chief Engineer.

Narby considered himself a skeptic and rationalist. Belief in Jordan was a good thing — for the Crew. Nevertheless the sight of a title page with the words ‘Jordan Foundation’ on it stirred up within him a trace of religious awe such as he had not felt since before he was admitted to scientisthood.

He knew that the feeling was irrational; probably there had been at some time in the past some person or persons called Jordan. Jordan might have been an early engineer or captain who codified the common sense and almost instinctive rules for running the Ship. Or, as seemed more likely, the Jordan myth went back much farther than this book in his hand, and its author had simply availed himself of the ignorant superstitions of the Crew to give his writings authority. Narby knew how such things were done; he planned to give the new policy with respect to the muties the same blessing of Jordan when the time was ripe for it to be put into execution. Yes, order and discipline and belief in authority were good things, for the Crew. It was equally evident that a rational, coolheaded common sense was a proper attribute for the scientists who were custodians of the Ship’s welfare, common sense and a belief in nothing but facts.

He admired the exact lettering on the pages of the book he held. They certainly had excellent clerks in those ancient times; not the sloppy draftsmen he was forced to put up with, who could hardly print two letters alike.

He made a mental note to study these two indispensable handbooks of the engineering department before turning them over to Ertz’s successor. It would be well, he thought, not to be too dependent on the statements of the Chief Engineer when he himself succeeded to the captaincy. Narby had no particular respect for engineers, largely because he had no particular talent for engineering. When he had first reached scientisthood and had been charged to defend the spiritual and material welfare of the Crew, had sworn to uphold the Teachings of Jordan, he soon discovered that administration and personnel management were more in his lines than tending the converter or servicing the power lines. He had served as clerk, village administrator, recorder to the Council, personnel officer, and was now chief executive for Jordan’s Captain himself, ever since an unfortunate and rather mysterious accident had shortened the life of Narby’s predecessor in that post.

His decision to study up on engineering before a new Chief Engineer was selected brought to mind the problem of choosing a new chief. Normally the Senior Watch Officer for the Converter would become Chief Engineer when a chief made the Trip, but in this case, Mort Tyler, the Senior Watch, had made the Trip at the same time; his body had been found, stiff and cold, after the mutie raid which had rescued that heretic, Hugh Hoyland. That left the choice wide open and Narby was a bit undecided as to whom he should suggest to the Captain.

One thing was certain; the new chief must not be a man with as much aggressive initiative as Ertz. Narby admitted that Ertz had done a good job in organizing the Crew for the proposed

extermination of the muties, but his very efficiency had made him too strong a candidate for succession to the captaincy, if and when. Had he thought about it overtly Narby might have admitted to himself that the present Captain’s life span had extended unduly because Narby was not absolutely certain that Ertz would not be selected. What he did think was that this might be a good time for the old Captain to surrender his spirit to Jordan. The fat old fool had long outlived his usefulness; Narby was tired of having to wheedle him into giving the proper orders. If the Council were faced with the necessity of selecting a new Captain at this time, there was but one candidate available. Narby put the book down, his mind made up.

The simple decision to eliminate the old Captain carried with it in Narby’s mind no feeling of shame, nor sin, nor disloyalty. He felt contempt but not dislike for the Captain, and no mean spirit colored his decision to kill him. Narby’s plans were made on the noble level of statesmanship. He honestly believed that his objective was the welfare of the entire Crew; common- sense administration, order and discipline, good eating for everyone. He selected himself because it was obvious to him that he was best fitted to accomplish those worthy ends. That some must make the Trip in order that these larger interests be served he did not find even mildly regrettable, but he bore them no malice.

“What in the Huff are you doing at my desk?”

Narby looked up to see the late Bill Ertz standing over him, not looking pleased. He looked again, then as an afterthought closed his mouth. He had been so certain, when Ertz failed to reappear after the raid, that he had made the Trip and was in all probability butchered and eaten; so certain that it was now a sharp wrench to his mind to see Ertz standing before him, aggressively alive. But he pulled himself together.

“Bill! Jordan bless you, man, we thought you had made the Trip! Sit down, sit down, and tell me what happened to you.” “I will if you will get out of my chair,” Ertz answered bitingly.

“Oh, sorry!” Narby hastily vacated the chair at Ertz’s desk and found another.

“And now,” Ertz continued, taking the seat Narby had left, “you might explain why you were going through my writings.”

Narby managed to look hurt. “Isn’t that obvious? We assumed you were dead. Someone had to take over and attend to your department until a new chief was designated. I was acting on behalf of the Captain.”

Ertz looked him in the eyes. “Don’t give me that guff, Narby. You know and I know who puts words in the Captain’s mouth; we’ve planned it often enough. Even if you did think I was dead, it seems to me you could wait longer than the time between two sleeps to pry through my desk.”

“Now really, old man, when a person is missing after a mutie raid, it’s a common-sense assumption that he has made the Trip.” “O.K., O.K., skip it. Why didn’t Mort Tyler take over in the meantime?”

“He’s in the Converter.”

“Killed, eh? But who ordered him put in the Converter? That much mass will make a terrific peak in the load.”

“I did, in place of Hugh Hoyland. Their masses were nearly the same, and your requisition for the mass of Hugh Hoyland was unfilled.” “Nearly the same isn’t good enough in handling the Converter. I’ll have to check on it.” He started to rise.

“Don’t get excited,” said Narby. “I’m not an utter fool in engineering, you know. I ordered his mass to be trimmed according to the same schedule you had laid out for Hoyland.” “Well, all right. That will do for now. But I will have to check it. We can’t afford to waste mass.”

“Speaking of waste mass,” Narby said sweetly, “I found a couple of Unnecessary books in your desk.” “Well?”

“They are classed as mass available for power, you know.” “So? And who is the custodian of mass allocated for power?” “You are certainly. But what were they doing in your desk?”

“Let me point out to you, my dear Captain’s Best Boy, that it lies entirely within my discretion where I choose to store mass available for power.” “Hm-m-m. I suppose you are right. By the way, if you don’t need them for the power schedule at once, would you mind letting me read them?”

“Not at all, if you want to be reasonable about it. I’ll check them out to you: have to do that; they’ve already been centrifuged. Just be discreet about it.” “Thanks. Some of those ancients had vivid imaginations. Utterly crazy, of course, but amusing for relaxation.”

Ertz got out the two volumes and prepared a receipt for Narby to sign. He did this absent-mindedly, being preoccupied with the problem of how and when to tackle Narby. Phineas Narby he knew to be a key man in the task he and his blood brothers had undertaken, perhaps the key man. If he could be won over… “Fine,” he said, when Narby had signed, “I wonder if we followed the wisest policy in Hoyland’s case.” Narby looked surprised, but said nothing.

“Oh, I don’t mean that I put any stock in his story,” Ertz added hastily, “but I feel that we missed an opportunity. We should have kidded him along. He was a contact with the muties. The worst handicap we work under in trying to bring mutie country under the rule of the Council is the fact that we know very little about theni. We don’t know how many of them there are, nor how strong they are, or how well organized. Besides that, we will have to carry the fight to them and that’s a big disadvantage. We don’t really know our way around the upper decks. If we had played along with him and pretended to believe his story, we might have learned a lot of things.”

“But we couldn’t rely on what he told us,” Narby pointed out

“We didn’t need to. He offered us an opportunity to go all the way to no-weight, and look around.”

Narby looked astounded. “You surely aren’t serious? Amember of the Crew that trusted the muties’ promise not to harm him wouldn’t get up to no-weight; he’d make the Trip — fast!” “I’m not so certain about that,” Ertz objected. “Hoyland believed his own story, I’m sure of that. And—”

“What! All that utter nonsense about the Ship being capable of moving. The solid Ship.” He pounded the bulkhead. “No one could believe that.”

“But I tell you he did. He’s a religious fanatic, granted. But he saw something up there, and that was how he interpreted it. We could have gone up to see whatever it was he was raving about and used the chance to scout out the muties.”

“Utterly foolhardy!”

“I don’t think so. He must have a great deal of influence among the muties; look at the trouble they went to just to rescue him. If he says he can give us safe passage up to no-weight, I think he can.”

“Why this sudden change of opinion?”

“It was the raid that changed my mind. If anyone had told me that a gang of muties would come clear down to high-weight and risk their necks to save the life of one man I would not have believed him. But it happened. I’m forced to revise my opinions. Quite aside from his story, it’s evident that the muties will fight for him and probably take orders from him. If that is true, it would be worth while to pander to his religious convictions if it would enable us to gain control over the muties without having to fight for it.”

Narby shrugged it off. “Theoretically you may have something there. But why waste time over might-have-beens? If there was such an opportunity, we missed it.” “Maybe not. Hoyland is still alive and back with the muties. If I could figure out some way of getting a message to him, we might still be able to arrange it.” “But how could you?”

“I don’t know exactly. I might take a couple of the boys and do some climbing. If we could capture a mutie without killing him, it might work out.”

“Aslim chance.”

“I’m willing to risk it”

Narby turned the matter over in his mind. The whole plan seemed to him to be filled with long chances and foolish assumptions. Nevertheless if Ertz were willing to take the risk and it did work, Narby’s dearest ambition would be much nearer realization. Subduing the unities by force would be a long and bloody job, perhaps an impossible job. He was clearly aware of its difficulty.

If it did not work, nothing was lost, but Ertz. Now that he thought it over, Ertz would be no loss at this point in the game. Hm-m-m. “Go ahead,” he said. “You are a brave man, but its a worth-while venture.”

“O.K.,” Ertz agreed. “Good eating.”

Narby took the hint. “Good eating,” he answered, gathered up the books, and left. It did not occur to him until later that Ertz had not told him where he had been for so long.

And Ertz was aware that Narby had not been entirely frank with him, but, knowing Narby, he was not surprised. He was pleased enough that his extemporaneous groundwork for future action had been so well received. It never did occur to him that it might have been simpler and more effective to tell the truth.

Ertz busied himseif for a short time in making a routine inspection of the Converter and appointed an acting Senior Watch Officer. Satisfied that his department could then take care of itself during a further absence, he sent for his chief porter and told the servant to fetch Alan Mahoney from his village. He had considered ordering his litter and meeting Mahoney halfway, but he decided against it as being too conspicuous.

Alan greeted him with enthusiasm. To him, still an unmarried cadet and working for more provident men when his contemporaries were all heads of families and solid men of property, the knowledge that he was blood brother to a senior scientist was quite the most important thing that had ever happened to him, even overshadowing his recent adventures, the meaning of which he was hardly qualified to understand anyway.

Ertz cut him short, and hastily closed the door to the outer engineering office. “Walls have ears,” he said quietly, “and certainly clerks have ears, and tongues as well. Do you want us both to make the Trip?”

“Aw, gosh, Bill … I didn’t mean to—”

“Never mind. I’ll meet you on the same stair trunk we came down by, ten decks above this one. Can you count?”

“Sure, I can count that much. I can count twice that much. One and one makes two, and one more makes three, and one more makes four, and one makes five, and—”

“That’s enough. I see you can. But I’m relying more on your loyalty and your knife than I am on your mathematical ability. Meet me there as soon as you can. Go up somewhere where you won’t be noticed.”

Forty-one was still on watch when they reached the rendezvous. Ertz called him by name while standing out of range of slingshot or thrown knife, a reasonable precaution in dealing with a creature who had grown to man size by being fast with his weapons. Once identification had been established, he directed the guard to find Hugh Hoyland. He and Alan sat down to wait.

Forty-one failed to find Hugh Hoyland at Joe-Jim’s apartment. Nor was Joe-Jim there. He did find Bobo, but the pinhead was not very helpful. Hugh, Bobo told him, had gone up where- everybody-flies. That meant very little to Forty-one; he had been up to no-weight only once in his life. Since the level of weightlessness extended the entire length of the Ship, being in fact the last concentric cylinder around the Ship’s axis, not that Forty-one could conceive it in those terms, the information that Hugh. had headed for no-weight was not helpful.

Forty-one was puzzled. An order from Joe-Jim was not to be ignored and he had got it through his not overbright mind that an order from Ertz carried the same weight. He woke Bobo up again. “Where is the Two Wise Heads?”

“Gone to see knifemaker.” Bobo closed his eyes again.

That was better. Forty-one knew where the knifemaker lived. Every mutie had dealings with her; she was the indispensable artisan and tradesman of mutie country. Her person was necessarily taboo; her workshop and the adjacent neighborhood were neutral territory for all. He scurried up two decks and hurried thence.

Adoor reading THERMODYNAMIC LABORATORY: KEEP OUT was standing open. Forty-one could not read; neither the name nor the injunction mattered to him. But he could hear voices, one of which be identified as coming from the twins, the other from the knifemaker. He walked in. “Boss,” be began.

“Shut up,” said Joe. Jim did not look around but continued his argument with the Mother of Blades. “You’ll make knives,” he said, “and none of your lip.”

She faced him, her four calloused hands set firmly on her broad hips. Her eyes were reddened from staring into the furnace in which she heated her metal; sweat ran down her wrinkled face into the sparse gray mustache which disfigured her upper lip, and dripped onto her bare chest. “Sure I make knives,” she snapped. “Honest knives. Not pig-stickers like you want me to make. Knives as long as your arm, ptui!” She spat at the cherry-red lip of the furnace.

“Listen, you old Crew bait,” Jim replied evenly, “you’ll make knives the way I tell you to, or I’ll toast your feet in your own furnace. Hear me?” Forty-one was struck speechless. No one ever talked back to the Mother of Blades; the Boss was certainly a man of power!

The knifemaker suddenly cracked. “But that’s not the right way to make knives,” she complained shrilly. “They wouldn’t balance right. I’ll show you.” She snatched up two braces of knives from her workbench and let fly at a cross-shaped target across the room — not in succession, but all four arms swinging together, all four blades in the air at once. They spwiged into the target, a blade at the extreme end of each arm of the cross. “See? You couldn’t do that with a long knife. It would fight with itself and not go straight.”

“Boss—” Forty-one tried again. Joe-Jim handed him a mouthful of knuckles without looking around.

“I see your point,” Jim told the knifemaker, “but we don’t want these knives for throwing. We want them for cutting and stabbing up close. Get on with it; I want to see the first one before you eat again.”

The old woman bit her lip. “Do I get my usuals?” she said sharply.

“Certainly you get your usuals,” he assured her. “Atithe on every kill till the blades are paid for, and good eating all the time you work.”

She shrugged her misshapen shoulders. “O.K.” She turned, tonged up a long flat fragment of steel with her two left hands and clanged the stock into the furnace. Joe-Jim turned to Forty- one.

“What is it?” Joe asked. “Boss, Ertz sent me to get Hugh.” “Well, why didn’t you do it?”

“I don’t find him. Bobo says he’s gone up to no-weight.”

“Well, go get him. No, that won’t do; you wouldn’t know where to find him. I’ll have to do it myself. Go back to Ertz and tell him to wait.” Forty-one hurried off. The Boss was all right, but it was not good to tarry in his presence.

“Now you’ve got us running errands,” Jim commented sourly. “How do you like being a blood brother, Joe?” “You got us into this.”

“So? The blood-swearing was your idea.”

“Damn it, you know why I did that. They took it seriously. And we are going to need all the help we can get, if we are to get out of this with a skin that will hold water.”

“Oh? So you didn’t take it seriously?”

“Did you?”

Jim smiled cynically. “Just about as seriously as you do, my dear, deceitful brother. As matters stand now, it is much, much healthier for you and me to keep to the bargain right up to the hilt. ‘All for one and one for all!’”

“You’ve been reading Dumas again.” “And why not?”

“That’s O.K. But don’t be a damn fool about it.” “I won’t be. I know which side of the blade is edged.”

Joe-Jim found Squatty and Pig sleeping outside the door which led to the Control Room. He knew then that Hugh must be inside, for he had assigned the two as personal bodyguards to Hugh. It was a foregone conclusion anyhow; if Hugh had gone up to no-weight, he would be heading either for Main Drive, or the Control Room, more probably the Control Room. The place held a tremendous fascination for Hugh. Ever since the earlier time when Joe-Jim had almost literally dragged him into the Control Room and had forced him to see with his own eyes that the Ship was not the whole world but simply a vessel adrift in a much larger world — a vessel that could be driven and moved — ever since that time and throughout the period that followed while he was still a captured slave of Joe-Jim’s, he had been obsessed with the idea of moving the Ship, of sitting at the controls and making it go!

It meant more to him than it could possibly have meant to a space pilot from Earth. From the time that the first rocket made the little jump from Terra to the Moon, the spaceship pilot has been the standard romantic hero whom every boy wished to emulate. But Hugh’s ambition was of no such picayune caliber; he wished to move his world. In Earth standards and concepts it would be less ambitious to dream of equipping the Sun with jets and go gunning it around the Galaxy.

Young Archimedes had his lever; he sought a fulcrum.

Joe-Jim paused at the door of the great silver stellarium globe which constituted the Control Room and peered in. He could not see Hugh, but he knew that he must be at the controls in the chair of the chief astrogator, for the lights were being manipulated. The images of the stars were scattered over the inner surface of the sphere producing a simulacrum of the heavens outside the Ship. The illusion was not fully convincing from the door where Joe-Jim rested; from the center of the sphere it would be complete.

Sector by sector the stars snuffed out, as Hugh manipulated the controls from the center of the sphere. Asector was left shining on the far side forward. It was marked by a large and brilliant orb, many times as bright as its companions. Joe-Jim ceased watching and pulled himself hand over hand up to the control chairs. “Hugh!” Jim called out.

“Who’s there?” demanded Hugh and leaned his head out of the deep chair. “Oh, it’s you. Hello.” “Ertz wants to see you. Come on out of there.”

“O.K. But come here first. I want to show you something.”

“Nuts to him,” Joe said to his brother. But Jim answered, “Oh, come on and see what it is. Won’t take long.” The twins climbed into the control station and settled down in the chair next to Hugh’s. “What’s up?” “That star out there,” said Hugh, pointing at the brilliant one. “It’s grown bigger since the last time I was here.” “Huh? Sure it has. It’s been getting brighter for a long time. Couldn’t see it at all first time I was ever in here.” “Then we’re closer to it.”

“Of course,” agreed Joe. “I knew that. It just goes to prove that the Ship is moving.” “But why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“About what?”

“About that star. About the way it’s been growing bigger.” “What difference does it make?”

“What difference does it make! Why, good Jordan, man, that’s it. That’s where we’re going. That’s the End of the Trip!”

Joe-Jim, both of him, was momentarily startled. Not being himself concerned with any objective other than his own safety and comfort, it was hard for him to realize that Hugh, and perhaps Bill Ertz as well, held as their first objective the recapturing of the lost accomplishments of their ancestors’ high order to complete the long-forgotten, half-mythical Trip to Far Centaurus.

Jim recovered himself. “Hm-m-m. Maybe. What makes you think that star is Far Centaurus?”

“Maybe it isn’t. I don’t care. But it’s the star we are closest to and we are moving toward it. When we don’t know which star is which, one is as good as another. Joe-Jim, the ancients must have had some way of telling the stars apart.”

“Sure they did,” Joe confirmed, “but what of it? You’ve picked the one you want to go to. Come on. I want to get back down.” “All right,” Hugh agreed reluctantly. They began the long trip down.

Ertz sketched out to Joe-Jim and Hugh his interview with Narby. “Now my idea in coming up,” he continued, “is this: I’ll send Alan back down to heavy-weight with a message to Narby, telling him that I’ve been able to get in contact with you, Hugh, and urging him to meet us somewhere above Crew country to hear what I’ve found out.”

“Why don’t you simply go back and fetch him yourself?” objected Hugh.

Ertz looked slightly sheepish. “Because you tried that method on me, and it didn’t work. You returned from mutie country and told me the wonders you had seen. I didn’t believe you and had you tried for heresy. If Joe-Jim hadn’t rescued you, you would have gone to the Converter. If you had not hauled me up to no-weight and forced me to see with my own eyes, I never would have believed you. I assure you Narby won’t be any easier a lock to force than I was. I want to get him up here, then show him the stars and make him see, peacefully if we can; by force if we must.”

“I don’t get it,” said Joe. “Why wouldn’t it be simpler to cut his throat?”

“It would be a pleasure. But it wouldn’t be smart. Narby can be a tremendous amount of help to us. Jim, if you knew the Ship’s organization the way I do, you would see why. Narby carries more weight in the Council than any other Ship’s officer and he speaks for the Captain. If we win him over, we may never have to fight at all. if we don’t … well, I’m not sure of the outcome, not if we have to fight.”

“I don’t think he’ll come up. He’ll suspect a trap.”

“Which is another reason why Alan must go rather than myself. He would ask me a lot of embarrassing questions and be dubious about the answers. Alan he won’t expect so much of.” Ertz turned to Alan and continued, “Alan, you don’t know anything when he asks you but just what I’m about to tell you. Savvy?”

“Sure. I don’t know nothing, I ain’t seen nothing, I ain’t heard nothing.” With frank simplicity he added, “I never did know much.”

“Good. You’ve never laid eyes on Joe-Jim, you’ve never heard of the stars. You’re just my messenger, a knife I took along to help me. Now here’s what you are to tell him.” He gave Alan the message for Narby, couched in simple but provocative terms, then made sure that Alan had it all straight. “All right, on your way! Good eating.”

Alan slapped the grip of his knife, answered, “Good eating!” and sped away.

It is not possible for a peasant to burst precipitously into the presence of the Captain’s Executive; Alan found that out. He was halted by the master-at-arms on watch outside Narby’s

suite, cuffed around a bit for his insistence on entering, referred to a boredly unsympathetic clerk who took his name and told him to return to his village and wait to be summoned. He held his ground and insisted that he had a message of immediate importance from the Chief Engineer to Commander Narby. The clerk looked up again. “Give me the writing.”

“There is no writing.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. There is always a writing. Regulations.” “He had no time to make a writing. He gave me a word message.” “What is it?”

Alan shook his head. “It is private, for Commander Narby only. I have orders.” The clerk looked his exasperation.

But, being only a probationer, he forewent the satisfaction of direct and immediate disciplining of the recalcitrant churl in favor of the safer course of passing the buck higher up. The chief clerk was brief. “Give me the message.”

Alan braced himself and spoke to a scientist in a fashion be had never used in his life, even to one as junior, as this passed clerk. “Sir, all I ask is for you to tell Commrnder Narby that I have a message for him from Chief Engineer Ertz. If the message is not delivered, I won’t be the one to go to the Converter! But I don’t dare give the message to anyone else.”

The under official pulled at his lip, and decided to take a chance on disturbing his superior.

Alan delivered his message to Narby in a low voice in order that the orderly standing just outside the door might not overhear. Narby stared at him. “Ertz wants me to come along with you up to mutie country?”

“Not all the way up to mutie country, sir. To a point in between, where Hugh Hoyland can meet you.” Narby exhaled noisily. “It’s preposterous. I’ll send a squad of knives up to fetch him down to me.”

Alan delivered the balance of his message. This time he carefully raised his voice to ensure that the orderly, and, if possible, others might hear his words. “Ertz said to tell you that if you were afraid to go, just to forget the whole matter. He will take it up with the Council himself.”

Alan owed his continued existence thereafter to the fact that Narby was the sort of man who lived by shrewdness rather than by direct force. Narby’s knife was at his belt; Alan was painfully aware that he had been required to deposit his own with the master-at-arms.

Narby controlled his expression. He was too intelligent to attribute the insult to the oaf before him, though he promised himself to give said oaf a little special attention at a more convenient time. Pique, curiosity, and potential loss of face all entered into his decision. “I’m coming with you,” he said savagely. “I want to ask him if you got his message straight.”

Narby considered having a major guard called out to accompany him, but he discarded the idea. Not only would it make the affair extremely public before he had an opportunity to judge its political aspects, but also it would cost him almost as much face as simply refusing to go. But he inquired nervously of Alan as Alan retrieved his weapon from the master-at-arms, “You’re a good knife?”

“None better,” Alan agreed cheerfully.

Narby hoped that the man was not simply boasting. Muties! Narby wished that he himself had found more time lately for practice in the manly arts.

Narby gradually regained his composure as he followed Alan up toward low-weight. In the first place nothing happened, no alarms; in the second place Alan was obviously a cautious and competent scout, one who moved alert and noiselessly and never entered a deck without pausing to peer cautiously around before letting his body follow his eye. Narby might have been more nervous had be hearing what Alan did hear: little noises from the depths of the great dim passageways, rustlings which told him that their progress was flanked on all sides. This worried Alan subconsciously, although he had expected something of the sort; he knew that both Hugh and Joe-Jim were careful captains who would not neglect to cover an approach. He would have worried more if he had not been able detect a reconnaissance which should have been present.

When he approached the rendezvous some twenty decks above the highest civilized level, he stopped and whistled. Awhistle answered him. “It’s Alan,” he called out.

“Come up and show yourself?” Alan did so, without neglecting his usual caution. When be saw no one but his friends: Ertz, Hugh, Joe-Jim, and Bobo, be motioned for Narby to foflow him.

The sight of Joe-Jim and Bobo broke Narby’s unsteady calm with a sudden feeling that he had been trapped. He snatched at his knife and backed clumsily down the stair then turned. Bobo’s knife was out even faster. For a split moment the outcome hung balanced, ready to fall either way. But Joe-Jim slapped Bobo across the face, took his knife from him and let it clatter to the deck, then relieved him of his slingshot.

Narby was in full flight, with Hugh and Ertz calling vainly after him. “Fetch him, Bobo!” Jim commanded, “and do not hurt him.” Bobo lumbered away.

He was back in fairly short order. “Run fast,” be commented. He dropped Narby to the deck where the officer lay almost quiet while he fought to catch his breath. Bobo took Narby’s knife from his own belt and tried it by shaving coarse black hairs from his left forearm. “Good blade,” he approved.

“Give it back to him,” Jim ordered. Bobo looked extremely startled but complied wistfully. Joe-Jim returned Bobo’s own weapons to him. Narby matched Bobo’s surprise at regaining his sidearm, but he concealed it better. He even managed to accept it with dignity.

“Look,” Ertz began in worried tones, “I’m sorry you got your wind up, Fin. Bobo’s not a bad sort. It was the only way to get you back.”

Narby fought with himself to regain the cool self-discipline with which he habitually met the world. Damn! he told himself, this situation is preposterous. Well… “Forget it,” he said shortly. “I was expecting to meet you; I didn’t expect a bunch of armed muties. You have an odd taste in playmates, Ertz.”

“Sorry,” Bill Ertz replied, “I guess I should have warned you.” a piece of mendacious diplomacy. “But they’re all right. Bobo you’ve met. This is Joe-Jim. He’s a… a sort of a Ship’s officer among the muties.”

“Good eating,” Joe acknowledged politely. “Good eating,” Narby replied mechanically.

“Hugh you know, I think.” Narby agreed that he did. An embarrassed pause followed. Narby broke it.

“Well,” he said, “you must have had some reason to send word for me to come up here. Or was it just to play games?”

“I did,” Ertz agreed. “I — Shucks, I hardly know where to start. See here, Narby, you won’t believe this, but I’ve seen. Everything Hugh told us was true. I’ve been in the Control Room. I’ve seen the stars. I know?”

Narby stared at him. “Ertz,” he said slowly, “you’ve gone out of your mind.”

Hugh Hoyland spoke up excitedly. “That’s because you haven’t seen. It moves, look you. The Ship moves like a—”

“Fit handle this,” Ertz cut in. “listen to me, Narby. What it all means you will soon decide for yourself, but I can tell you what I saw. They took me up to no-weight and into the Captain’s veranda. That’s a compartment with a glass wall. You can stare right out through into a great black empty space: big, bigger than anything could be. Bigger than the Ship. And there were lights out there, stars, just like the ancient myths said.”

Narby looked both amazed and disgusted. “Where’s your logic, man? I thought you were a scientist. What do you mean, ‘bigger than the Ship’? That’s an absurdity, a contradiction in terms. By definition, the Ship is the Ship. All else is a part of it.”

Ertz shrugged helplessly. “I know it sounds that way. I can’t explain it; it defies all logic. It’s — Oh, Huff! You’ll know what I mean when you see it.”

“Control yourself,” Narby advised him. “Don’t talk nonsense. Athing is logical or it isn’t. For a thing to be it must occupy space. You’ve seen, or thought you saw, something remarkable, but whatever it was, it can be no larger than the compartment it was in. You can’t show me anything that contradicts an obvious fact of nature.”

“I told you I couldn’t explain it.” “Of course you can’t.”

The twins had been whispering disgustedly, one head to the other. “Stop the chatter,” Joe said in louder tones. “We’re ready to go. Come on.” “Sure,” Ertz agreed eagerly, “let’s drop it, Narby, until you have seen it. Come on now; it’s a long climb.”

“What?” Narby demanded. “Say, what is this? Go where?” “Up to the Captain’s veranda, and the Control Room.” “Me? Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going down at once.”

“No, Narby,” Ertz denied. “That’s why I sent for you. You’ve got to see.”

“Don’t be silly. I don’t need to see; common sense gives sufficient answer. However,” he went on, “I do want to congratulate you on making a friendly contact with the muties. We should be able to work out some means of cooperation. I think—”

Joe-Jim took one step forward. “You’re wasting time,” he said evenly. “We’re going up; you, too. I really do insist.” Narby shook his head. “It’s out of the question. Some other time, perhaps, after we have worked out a method of cooperation.” Hugh stepped in closer to him from the other side. “You don’t seem to understand. You’re going now.”

Narby glanced the other way at Ertz. Ertz nodded. “That’s how it is, Narby.”

Narby cursed himself silently. Great Jordan! What in the Ship was he thinking of to let himself get into such a position? He had a distinct feeling that the two-headed man would rather that he showed fight. Impossible, preposterous situation. He cursed again to himself, but gave way as gracefully as he could. “Oh, well! Rather than cause an argument I’ll go now. Let’s get on with it. Which way?”

“Just stick with me,” advised Ertz. Joe-Jim whistled loudly in a set pattern. Muties seemed to grow out of the floor plates, the bulkheads, the overhead, until six or eight more had been added to the party. Narby was suddenly sick with the full realization of just how far he had strayed from the way of caution. The party moved up.

It took them a long time to get up to no-weight, as Narby was not used to climbing. The steady reduction in weight as they rose from deck to deck relieved him somewhat but the help afforded was more than offset by the stomach qualms he felt as weight dropped away from him. He did not have a true attack of space-sickness; like all born in the Ship, muties and Crew, he was more or less acclimated to lessened weight, but he had done practically no climbing since reckless adolescence. By the time they reached the innermost deck of the Ship he was acutely uncomfortable and hardly able to proceed.

Joe-Jim sent the added members of the party back below and told Bobo to carry Narby. Narby waved him away. “I can make it,” he protested, and by sheer stubborn will forced his body to behave. Joe-Jim looked him over and countermanded the order. By the time a long series of gliding dives had carried them as far forward as the transverse bulkhead beyond which lay the Control Room, he was reasonably comfortable again.

They did not stop first at the Control Room, but, in accordance with a plan of Hugh’s, continued on to. the Captain’s veranda. Narby was braced for what he saw there, not only by Ertz’s confused explanation, but because Hugh had chattered buoyantly to him about it all the latter part of the trip. Hugh was feeling warmly friendly to Narby by the time they arrived; it was wonderful to have somebody to listen!

Hugh floated in through the door ahead of the others, executed a neat turn in mid-air, and steadied himself with one hand on the back of the Captain’s easy chair. With the other he waved at the great view port and the starry firmament beyond it. “There it is!” he exulted. “There it is. Look at it, isn’t it wonderful?”

Narby’s face, showed no expression, but he looked long and intently at the brilliant display. “Remarkable,” he conceded at last, “remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like it.” “Remarkable ain’t half,” protested Hugh. “Wonderful is the word.”

“O.K., ‘wonderful,’” Narby assented. “Those bright little lights … you say those are the stars that the ancients talked about?”

“Why, yes,” agreed Hugh, feeling slightly disconcerted without knowing why, “only they’re not little. They’re big, enormous things, like the Ship. They just look little because they are so far away. See that very bright one, that big one, down to the left? It looks big because it’s closer. I think that is Far Centaurus, but I’m not sure,” he admitted in a burst of frankness.

Narby glanced quickly at him, then back to the big star. “How far away is it?”

“I don’t know. But we’ll find out. There are instruments to measure such things in the Control Room, but I haven’t got the hang of them entirely. It doesn’t matter, though. We’ll get there yet!”

“Huh?”

“Sure. Finish the Trip.”

Narby looked blank, but said nothing. His was a careful and orderly mind, logical to a high degree. He was a capable executive and could make rapid decisions when necessary, but he was by nature inclined to reserve his opinions when possible, until he had had time to chew over the data and assess it.

He was even more taciturn, in the Control Room. He listened and looked, but asked very few questions. Hugh did not care. This was his toy, his gadget, his baby. To show it off to someone who had never seen it and who would listen was all he asked.

At Ertz’s suggestion the party stopped at Joe-Jim’s apartment on the way back down. Narby must be committed to the same course of action as the blood brotherhood and plans must be made to carry out such action, if the stratagem which brought Narby to them was to be fruitful. Narby agreed to stop unreluctantly, having become convinced of the reality of the truce under which he made this unprecedented sortie into mutie country. He listened quietly while Ertz outlined what they had in mind. He was still quiet when Ertz had finished.

“Well?” said Ertz at last, when the silence had dragged on long enough to get on his nerves. “You expect some comment from me?”

“Yes, of course. You figure into it.” Narby knew that he did and knew that an answer was expected from him; he was stalling for time.

“Well…” Narby pursed his lips and fitted his fingertips together. “It seems to me that this problem divides itself into two parts. Hugh Hoyland, as I understand it, your purpose of carrying out the ancient Plan of Jordan cannot be realized until the Ship as a whole is pacified and brought under one rule; you need order and discipline for your purpose from Crew country clear to the Control Room. Is that right?”

“Certainly. We have to man the Main Drive and that means—”

“Please. Frankly, I am not qualified to understand things that I have seen so recently and have had no opportunity to study. As to your chances of success in that project, I would prefer to rely on the opinion of the Chief Engineer. Your problem is the second phase; it appears that you are necessarily interested in the first phase.”

“Of course.”

“Then let’s talk about the first phase only. It involves matters of public policy and administration. I feel more at home there; perhaps my advice will be useful. Joe-Jim, I understand that you ate looking for an opportunity to effect a peace between the muties and the members of the Crew; peace and good eating? Right?”

“That’s correct,” Jim agreed.

“Good. It has been my purpose for a long time and that of many of the Ship’s officers. Frankly it never occurred to me that it could be achieved other than by sheer force. We had steeled ourselves to the prospect of a long and difficult and bloody war. The records of the oldest Witness, handed down to him by his predecessors clear back to the time of the mythical Mutiny, make no mention of anything but war between muties and the Crew. But this is a better way; I am delighted.”

“Then you’re with us!” exclaimed Ertz.

“Steady, there are many other things to be considered. Ertz, you and I know, and Hoyland as well I should think, that not all of the Ship’s officers will agree with us. What of that?” “That’s easy,” put in Hugh Hoyland. “Bring them up to no-weight one at a time, let them see the stars and learn the truth.”

Narby shook his head. “You have the litter carrying the porters. I told you this problem is in two phases. There is no point in trying to convince a man of something he won’t believe when you need him to agree to something he can understand. After the Ship is consolidated it will be simple enough then to let the officers experience the Control Room and the stars.”

“But—”

“He’s right,” Ertz stopped him. “No use getting cluttered up with a lot of religious issues when the immediate problem is a practical one. There are numerous officers whom we could get on our side for the purpose of pacifying the Ship who would raise all kinds of fuss if we tackled them first on the idea that the Ship moves.”

“But—”

“No ‘buts’ about it. Narby is right. It’s common sense. Now, Narby, about this matter of those officers who may not be convinced, here’s how we see it: In the first place it’s your business and mine to win over as many as we can. Any who hold out against us — well, the Converter is always hungry.”

Narby nodded, completely undismayed by the idea of assassination as a policy. “That seems the safest plan. Mightn’t it be a little bit difficult?” “That is where Joe-Jim comes in. We’ll have the best knives in the Ship to back us up.”

“I see. Joe-Jim is, I take it, Boss of all the muties?”

“What gave you that idea?” growled Joe, vexed without knowing why.

“Why, I supposed … I was given to understand—” Narby stopped. No one had told him that Joe-Jim was king of the upper decks; he had assumed it from appearances. He felt suddenly very uneasy. Had he been negotiating uselessly? What was the point in a pact with this two-headed monstrosity if he did not speak for the muties?

“I should have made that clear,” Ertz said hastily. “Joe-Jim helps us to establish a new administration, then we will be able to back him up with knives to pacify the rest of the muties. Joe- Jim isn’t Boss of all the muties, but he has the largest, strongest gang. With our help he soon will be Boss of all of them.”

Narby quickly adjusted his mind to the new data. Muties against muties, with only a little help from the cadets of the Crew, seemed to him a good way to fight. On second thoughts, it was better than an outright truce at once, for there would be fewer muties to administer when it was all over, less chance of another mutiny. “I see,” he agreed. “So … Have you considered what the situation will be afterwards?”

“What do you mean?” inquired Hoyland.

“Can you picture the present Captain carrying out these plans?” Ertz saw what he was driving at, and so did Hoyland vaguely. “Go on,” said Ertz.

“Who is to be the new Captain?” Narby looked squarely at Ertz.

Ertz had not thought the matter through; he realized now that the question was very pertinent, if the coup d’etat was not to be followed by a bloody scramble for power. He had permitted himself to dream of being selected as Captain, sometime. But he knew that Narby was pointed that way, too.

Ertz had been as honestly struck by the romantic notion of moving the Ship as Hoyland. He realized that his old ambition stood in the way of the plan; he renounced the old with only a touch of wistfulness.

“You will have to be Captain, Fin. Are you willing to be?”

Phineas Narby accepted gracefully. “I suppose so, if that’s the way you want it. You would make a fine Captain, yourself, Ertz.”

Ertz shook his head, understanding perfectly that Narby’s full cooperation turned on this point. “I’ll continue Chief Engineer. I want to handle the Main Drive of the Trip.” “Slow down!” Joe interrupted. “I don’t agree to this. Why should he be Captain?”

Narby faced him. “Do you want to be Captain?” He kept his voice carefully free of sarcasm. Amutie for Captain! “Huff’s name, no! But why should you be? Why not Ertz or Hugh?”

“Not me,” Hugh disclaimed. “I’ll have no time for administration. I’m the astrogator.”

“Seriously, Joe-Jim,” Ertz explained, “Narby is the one of the group who can get the necessary cooperation out of the Ship’s officers.” “Damn it, if they won’t cooperate we can slit their throats.”

“With Narby as Captain we won’t have to slit throats.”

“I don’t like it,” groused Joe. His brother shushed, “Why get excited about it, Joe? Jordan knows we don’t want the responsibility.”

“I quite understand your misgivings,” Narby suggested suavely, “but I don’t think you need worry. I would forced to depend on you, of course, to administer the muties. I would administer the lower decks, a job I am used to and you would be Vice-Captain, if you are willing serve, for the muties. It would be folly for me to attempt to administer directly a part of the Ship I’m not familiar with and people whose customs I don’t know. I really can’t accept the captaincy unless you are willing to help me in that fashion. Will you do it?”

“I don’t want any part of it,” protested Joe.

“I’m sorry. Then I must refuse to be Captain. I really can’t undertake it if you won’t help me that much.” “Oh, go ahead, Joe,” Jim insisted. “Let’s take it, for the time being at least. The job has to be done.” “All right,” Joe capitulated, “but I don’t like it.”

Narby ignored the fact that Joe-Jim had not specifically agreed to Narby’s elevation to the captaincy; no further mention was made of it.

The discussion of ways and means was tedious and need not be repeated. It was agreed that Ertz, Alan, and Narby should all return to their usual haunts and occupations while preparations were made to strike.

Hugh detailed a guard to see them safely down to high-weight. “You’ll send Alan up when you are ready?” he said to Narby as they were about to leave.

“Yes,” Narby agreed, “but don’t expect him soon. Ertz and I will have to have time to feel out friends, and there’s the matter of the old Captain. I’ll have to persuade him to call a meeting of all the Ship’s officers; he’s never too easy to handle.”

“Well, that’s your job. Good eating!” “Good eating.”

On the few occasions when the scientist priests who ruled the Ship under Jordan’s Captain met in full assembly they gathered in a great hall directly above the Ship’s offices on the last civilized deck. Forgotten generations past, before the time of the mutiny led by Ship’s Metalsmith Roy Huff, the hall had been a gymnasium, a place for fun and healthy exercise, as planned by the designers of the great starship; but the present users knew nothing of that.

Narby watched the roster clerk check off the Ship’s Officers as they arrived, worried under a bland countenance. There were only a few more to arrive; he would soon have no excuse not to notify the Captain that the meeting was ready, but he had received no word from Joe-Jim and Hoyland. Had that fool Alan managed to get himself killed on the way up to deliver the word? Had he fallen and broken his worthless neck? Was he dead with a mutie’s knife in his belly?

Ertz came in, and before seeking his seat among the department heads, went up to where Narby sat in front of the Captain’s chair. “How about it?” he inquired softly. “All right,” Narby told him, “but no word yet.”

“Hm-m-m.” Ertz turned around and assayed his support in the crowd. Narby did likewise. Not a majority, not a certain majority, for anything as drastic as this. Still, the issue would not depend on voting.

The roster clerk touched his arm. “All present, sir, except those excused for sickness, and one on watch at the Converter.”

Narby directed that the Captain be notified, with a sick feeling that something had gone wrong. The Captain, as usual, with complete disregard for the comfort and convenience of others, took his time about appearing. Narby was glad of the delay, but miserable in enduring it. When the old man finally waddled in, flanked by his orderlies, and settled heavily into his chair, he was, again as usual, impatient to get the meeting over. He waved for the others to be seated and started in on Narby.

“Very well, Commander Narby, let’s have the agenda. You have an agenda, I hope?” “Yes, Captain, there is an agenda.”

“Then have it read, man, have it read! Why are you delaying?”

“Yes, sir.” Narby turned to the reading clerk and handed him a sheaf of writings. The clerk glanced at them, looked puzzled, but, receiving no encouragement from Narby, commenced to read: “Petition, to Council and Captain: Lieutenant Braune, administrator of the village of Sector 9, being of frail health and advanced age, prays that he be relieved of all duty and retired.” The clerk continued, setting forth the recommendations of the officers and departments concerned.

The Captain twisted impatiently in his chair, finally interrupted the reading. “What is this, Narby? Can’t you handle routine matters without all this fuss?”

“I understood that the Captain was displeased with the fashion in which a similar matter was lately handled. I have no wish to trespass on the Captain’s prerogatives.” “Nonsense, man! Don’t read Regulations to me. Let the Council act, then bring their decision to me for review.”

“Yes, sir.” Narby took the writing from the clerk and gave him another. The clerk read.

It was an equally fiddling matter. Sector 3 village, because of an unexplained blight which had infected their hydroponic farms, prayed for relief and a suspension of taxes. The Captain put up with still less of this item before interrupting. Narby would have been sorely pressed for any excuse to continue the meeting had not the word he awaited arrived at that moment. It was a mere scrap of parchment, brought in from outside the hall by one of his own men. It contained the single word, “Ready.” Narby looked at it, nodded to Ertz, and addressed the Captain:

“Sir, since you have no wish to listen to the petitions of your Crew, I will continue at once with the main business of this meeting.” The veiled insolence of the statement caused the Captain to stare at him suspiciously, but Narby went on. “For many generations, through the lives of a succession of Witnesses, the Crew has suffered from the depredations of the muties. Our livestock, our children, even our own persons, have been in constant jeopardy. Jordan’s Regulations are not honored above the levels where we live. Jordan’s Captain himself is not free to travel in the upper levels of the Ship.

“It has been an article of faith that Jordan so ordained it, that the children pay with blood for the sins of their ancestors. It was the will of Jordan, we were told. “I, for one, have never been reconciled to this constant drain on the Ship’s mass.” He paused.

The old Captain had been having some difficulty in believing his ears. But he found his voice. Pointing, he squealed, “Do you dispute the Teachings?”

“I do not. I maintain that the Teachings do not command us to leave the muties outside the Regulations, and never did. I demand that they be brought under the Regulations!” “You … you! You are relieved of duty, sir!”

“Not,” answered Narby, his insolence now overt, “until I have had my say.”

“Arrest that man!” But the Captain’s orderlies stood fast, though they shuffled and looked unhappy. Narby himself had selected them.

Narby turned back to the amazed Council, and caught the eye of Ertz. “All right,” he said. “Now!” Ertz got up and trotted toward the door. Narby continued, “Many of you think as I do, but we always supposed that we would have to fight for it. With the help of Jordan, I have been able to achieve contact with the muties and propose terms of a truce. Their leaders are coming here to negotiate with us. There!” He pointed dramatically at the door.

Ertz reappeared; following him came Hugh Hoyland, Joe-Jim, and Bobo. Hoyland turned to the right along the wall and circled the company. He was followed single file by a string of muties: Joe-Jim’s best butcher boys. Another such column trailed after Joe-Jim and Bobo to the left.

Joe-Jim, Hugh, and half a dozen more in each wing were covered with crude armor which extended below their waists. The armor was topped off with clumsy helms, latticeworks of steel, which protected their heads without greatly interfering with vision. Each of the armored ones, a few of the others, carried unheard-of knives, long as a man’s arm!

The startled officers might have stopped the invasion at the bottleneck through which it entered had they been warned and led. But they were disorganized, helpless, and their strongest leaders had invited the invaders in. They shifted in their chairs, reached for their knives, and glanced anxiously from one to another. But no one made the first move which would start a general bloodletting.

Narby turned to the Captain. “What about it? Do you receive this delegation in peace?”

It seemed likely that age and fat living would keep the Captain from answering, from ever answering anything again. But he managed to croak, “Get ‘em out of here! Get ‘em out! You— You’ll make the Trip for this!”

Narby turned back to Joe-Jim and jerked his thumb upward. Jim spoke to Bobo and a knife was buried to the grip in the Captain’s fat belly. He squawked, rather than screamed, and a look of utter bewilderment spread over his features. He plucked awkwardly at the hilt as if to assure himself that it was really there. “Mutiny.” he stated. “Mutiny—” The word trailed off as he collapsed into his chair, and fell heavily forward to the deck on his face.

Narby shoved it with his foot and spoke to the two orderlies. “Carry it outside,” he commanded. They obeyed, seeming relieved at having something to do and someone to tell them to do it. Narby turned back to the silent watching mass. “Does anyone else object to a peace with the muties?”

An elderly officer, one who had dreamed away his life as judge and spiritual adviser to a remote village, stood up and pointed a bony finger at Narby, while his white beard jutted indignantly. “Jordan will punish you for this! Mutiny and sin, the spirit of Huff!”

Narby nodded to Joe-Jim; the old man’s words gurgled in his throat, the point of a blade sticking out under one ear. Bobo looked pleased with himself.

“There has been enough talk,” Narby announced. “It is better to have a little blood now than much blood later. Let those who stand with me in this matter get up and come forward.” Ertz set the precedent by striding forward and urging his surest personal supporters to come with him. Reaching the front of the room, he pulled out his knife and raised the point. “I

salute Phineas Narby, Jordan’s Captain!”

His own supporters were left with no choice. “Phineas Narby, Jordan’s Captain!”

The hard young men in Narby’s clique, the backbone of the dissident rationalist bloc among the scientist priests, joined the swing forward en masse, points raised high and shouting for

the new Captain. The undecided and the opportunists hastened to join, as they saw which side of the blade was edged. When the division was complete, there remained a handful only of Ship’s officers still hanging back, almost all of whom were either elderly or hyperreligious.

Ertz watched Captain Narby look them over, then pick up Joe-Jim with his eyes. Ertz put a hand on his arm. “There are few of them and practically helpless,” he pointed out. “Why not disarm them and let them retire?”

Narby Eave him an unfriendly look. “Let them stay alive and breed mutiny. I am quite capable of making my own decisions, Ertz.” Ertz bit his lip. “Very well, Captain.”

“That’s better.” He signaled to Joe-Jim. The long knives made short work of it.

Hugh hung back horn the slaughter. His old teacher, Lieutenant Nelson, the village scientist who had seen his ability and selected him for scientisthood, was one of the group. It was a factor be had not anticipated.

World conquest and consolidation. Faith, or the Sword. Joe-Jim’s bullies, amplified by hot-blooded young cadets supplied by Captain Narby, combed the middle decks and the upper decks. The muties, individualists by the very nature of their existence and owing no allegiance higher than that to the leaders of their gangs, were no match for the planned generalship of Joe-Jim, nor did their weapons match the strange, long knives that bit before a man was ready.

The rumor spread through mutie country that it was better to surrender quietly to the gang of the Two Wise Heads; good eating for those who surrendered, death inescapable for those who did not.

But it was nevertheless a long slow process. There were so many, many decks, so many miles of gloomy corridors, so many countless compartments in which unsubdued muties might lurk. Furthermore, the process grew slower as it advanced, as Joe-Jim attempted to establish a police patrol, an interior guard, over each sector, deck, and stair way trunk, as fast as his striking groups mopped them up.

To Narby’s disappointment, the two-headed man was not killed in his campaigns. Joe-Jim had learned from his own books that a general need not necessarily expose himself to direct combat.

Hugh buried himself in the Control Room. Not only was he more interested in the subtle problems of mastering the how and why of the complex controls and the parallel complexity of starship ballistics, but also the whole matter of the blood purge was distasteful to him because of Lieutenant Nelson. Violence and death he was used to; they were commonplace even on the lower levels, but that incident made him vaguely unhappy, even though his own evaluations were not sufficiently clean-cut for him to feel personal responsibility for the old man’s death.

He just wished it had not happened.

But the controls: ahh. There was something a man could put his heart into. He was attempting a task that an Earthman would have rejected as impossible; an Earthmaa would have known that the piloting and operation of an interstellar ship was a task so difficult that the best possible technical education combined with extensive experience in the handling of lesser spacecraft would constitute a barely adequate grounding for the additional intensive highly specialized training necessary for the task.

Hugh Hoyland did not know that. So he went ahead and did it anyhow.

In which attempt he was aided by the genius of the designers. The controls of most machinery may be considered under the head of simple pairs, stop-and-go, push-and-pull, up-and- down, in-and-out, on-and-off, right-and-left, their permutations and combinations. The real difficulties have to do with upkeep and repair, adjustment and replacements.

But the controls and main drive machinery of the starship Vanguard required no upkeep and no repair; their complexities were below the molar level, they contained no moving parts, friction took no toil and they did not fall out of adjustment. Had it been necessary for him to understand and repair the machines he dealt with, it would have been impossible. Afourteen- year-old child may safely be entrusted with a family skycar and be allowed to make thousand-mile jaunts overnight unaccompanied; it is much more probable that he will injure himself on the trip by overeating than by finding some way to mismanage or damage the vehicle. But if the skycar should fall out of adjustment, ground itself, and signal for a repair crew, the repair crew is essential; the child cannot fix it himself.

The Vanguard needed no repair crew, save for nonessential ancilliary machinery such as transbelts, elevators, automassagers, dining services, and the like. Such machinery which necessarily used moving parts had worn out before the time of the first Witness; the useless mass involved had gone into the auxiliary Converter, or had been adapted to other simpler purposes. Hugh was not even aware that there ever had been such machinery; the stripped condition of most compartments was a simple fact of nature to him, no cause for wonder.

Hugh was aided in his quest for understanding by two other facts:

First, spaceship ballistics is a very simple subject, being hardly more than the application of the second law of motion to an inverse-square field. That statement runs contrary to our usual credos; It happens to be true. Baking a cake calls for much greater, though subconscious, knowledge of engineering; knitting a sweater requires a subconscious understanding of much more complex mathematical relationships: topology of a knitted garment, but try it yourself sometime!

For a complex subject, consider neurology, or catalysts, but don’t mention ballistics.

Second, the designers had clearly in mind that the Vanguard would reach her destination not sooner than generations after her departure; they wished to make it easy for the then-not- yet-born pilots who would command her on arrival. Although they anticipated no such hiatus in technical culture as took place, they did their best to make the controls simple and self- explanatory. The sophisticated fourteen-year-old mentioned, oriented as he would be to the concept of space, would doubtless have figured them out in a few minutes. Hugh, reared in a culture which believed that the Ship was the whole world, made no such quick job of it.

He was hampered by two foreign concepts, distance and metrical time. He had to learn to operate the finder, a delayed-action, long-base, parallax type designed for the Vanguard, and had taken measurements on a couple of dozen stellar bodies before it occurred him that the results he was getting could possibly stand for anything. The readings were in parsecs and without meaning emotionally. The attempt with the aid of the Sacred to translate his readings into linear units he could stand resulted in figures which he felt sure were were obviously preposterous. Check and recheck, followed long periods of brooding forced him unwillingly into some dim comprehension of astronomical magnitudes.

The concepts frightened him and bewildered him. For a period of several sleeps he stayed away from the Control Room, and gave way to a feeling of futility and depression. He occupied the time in sorting over the women captives, it being the first time since his capture by Joe-Jim long ago that he had had both the opportunity and the mood to consider the subject. The candidates were numerous, for, in addition to the usual crop of village maidens, Joe-Jim’s military operations had produced a number of prime widows. Hugh availed himself of his leading position in the Ship’s new setup to select two women. The first was a widow, a strong competent woman, adept at providing a man with domestic comforts. He set her up in his new apartment high up in low-weight, gave her a free hand, and allowed her to retain her former name of Chloe.

The other was a maiden, untrained and wild as a mutie. Hugh could not have told himself why he picked her. Certainly she had no virtues, but she made him feel funny. She had bitten him while he was inspecting her; he had slapped her, naturally, and that should have been an end to the matter. But he sent word back later for her father to send her along.

He had not got around to naming her.

Metrical time caused him as much mental confusion as astronomical distances, but no emotional upset The trouble was again the lack of the concept in the Ship. The Crew had the notion of topological time; they understood “now,” “before,” “after,” “has been,” “will be,” even such notions as long time and short time, but the notion of measured time had dropped out of the culture. The lowest of earthbound cultures has some idea of measured time, even if limited to days and seasons, but every earthly concept of measured time originates in astronomical phenomena; the Crew had been insulated from all astronomical phenomena for uncounted generations.

Hugh had before him, on the control consoles, the only working timepieces in the Ship, but it was a long, long time before he grasped what they were for and what bearing they had on other instruments. But until did, he could not control the Ship. Speed, and its derivatives, acceleration and flexure, are based on measured time.

But when these two new concepts were finally grasped, chewed over, and ancient books reread in the light of these concepts, he was, in a greatly restricted and theoretical sense, an astrogator.

Hugh sought out Joe-Jim to ask him a question. Joe-Jim’s minds were brilliantly penetrating when he cared to exert himself; he remained a superficial dilettante because he rarely cared.

Hugh found Narby just leaving. In order to conduct the campaign of pacification of the muties it had been necessary for Narby and Joe-Jim to confer frequently; to their mutual surprise they got along well together. Narby was a capable administrator, able to delegate authority and not given to useless elbow jogging; Joe-Jim surprised and pleased Narby by being more able than any subordinate he had ever dealt with before. There was no love wasted. between them, but each recognized in the other both intelligence and a hard self-interest which matched his own. There was respect and grudging contemptuous liking.

“Good eating, Captain,” Hugh greeted Narby formally.

“Oh, hello, Hugh,” Narby answered, then turned back to Joe-Jim. “I’ll expect a report, then.”

“You’ll get it,” Joe agreed. “There can’t be more than a few dozen stragglers. We’ll hunt them out, or starve them.” “Am I butting in?” Hugh asked.

“No, I’m just leaving. How goes the great work, my dear fellow?” He smiled irritatingly. “Well enough, but slowly. Do you wish a report?”

“No hurry. Oh, by the bye, I’ve made the Control Room and Main Drive, in fact the entire level of no-weight, taboo for everyone, muties and Crew alike.” “So? I see your point, I guess. There is no need for any but officers to go up there.”

“You don’t understand me. It is a general taboo, applying to officers as well. Not to ourselves, of course.” “But… but, that won’t work. The only effective way to convince the officers of the truth is to take them up and show them the stars!”

“That’s exactly my point. I can’t have any officers upset by disturbing ideas while I am consolidating my administration. It will, create religious differences and impair discipline.” Hugh was too upset and astounded to answer at once. “But,” he said at last, “but that’s the point. That’s why you were made Captain.”

“And as Captain I will have to be the final judge of policy. The matter is closed. You are not to take anyone to the Control Room, nor any part of no-weight, until I deem it advisable. You’ll have to wait.”

“It’s a good idea, Hugh,” Jim commented. “We shouldn’t stir things up while we’ve got a war to attend to.” “Let me get this straight,” Hugh persisted. “You mean this is a temporary policy?”

“You could put it that way.”

“Well, all right,” Hugh conceded. “But wait — Ertz and I need to train assistants at once.” “Very well. Nominate them to me and I’ll pass on them. Whom do you have in mind?”

Hugh thought. He did not actually need assistance himself; although the Control Room contained acceleration chairs for half a dozen, one man, seated in the chief astrogator’s chair, could pilot the Ship. The same applied to Ertz in the Main Drive station, save in one respect. “How about Ertz? He needs porters to move mass to the Main Drive.”

“Let him. I’ll sign the writing. See that he uses porters from the former muties; but no one goes to the Control Room save those who have been there before.” Narby turned and left with an air of dismissal.

Hugh watched him leave, then said, “I don’t like this, Joe-Jim.” “Why not?” Jim asked. “It’s reasonable.”

“Perhaps it is. But … well, damn it! It seems to me, somehow, that truth ought to be free to anyone, any time!” He threw up his hands in a gesture of baffled exasperation. Joe-Jim looked at him oddly. “What a curious idea,” said Joe.

“Yeah, I know. It’s not common sense, but it seems like it ought to be. Oh, well, forget it! That’s not what I came to see you about.” “What’s on your mind, Bud?”

“How do we … Look, we finish the Trip, see? We’ve got the Ship touching a planet, like this—” He brought his two fists together. “Yes. Go on.”

“Well, when that’s done, how do we get out of the Ship?”

The twins looked confused, started to argue between themselves. Finally Joe interrupted his brother. “Wait a bit, Jim. Let’s be logical about this. It was intended for us to get out; that implies a door, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“There’s no door up here. It must be down in high weight.”

“But it isn’t,” objected Hugh. “All that country is known. There isn’t any door. It has to be up in mutie country.”

“In that case,” Joe continued, “it should be either all the way forward, or all the way aft, otherwise it would not go anywhere. It isn’t aft. There’s nothing back of Main Drive but solid bulkheads. It would need to be forward.”

“That’s silly,” Jim commented. “There’s the Control Room and the Captain’s veranda. That’s all.” “Oh, yeah? How about the locked compartments?”

“Those aren’t doors, not to the Outside anyway. Just bulkheads abaft the Control Room.” “No, stupid, but they might lead to doors.”

“Stupid, eh? Even so, how are you going to open them; answer me that, bright boy?” “What,” demanded Hugh, “are the ‘locked compartments’?”

“Don’t you know? There are seven doors, spaced on the main shaft in the same bulkhead as the door to Main Control Room. We’ve never been able to open them.” “Well, maybe that’s what we’re looking for. Let’s see!”

“It’s a waste of time,” Jim insisted. But they went.

Bobo was taken along to try his monstrous strength on the doors. But even his knotted swollen muscles couldn’t budge the levers which appeared to be intended to actuate the doors. “Well?” Jim sneered to his brother. “You see?”

Joe shrugged. “O.K., you win. Let’s go down.”

“Wait a little,” Hugh pleaded. “The second door back the handle seemed to turn a little. Let’s try it again.” “I’m afraid it’s useless,” Jim commented. But Joe said, “Oh, all right, as long as we’re here.”

Bobo tried again, wedging his shoulder under the lever and pushing from his knees. The lever gave suddenly, but the door did not open. “He’s broken it,” Joe announced.

“Yeah,” Hugh acknowledged. “I guess that’s that.” He placed his hand against the door. It swung open easily.

The door did not lead to outer space, which was well for the three, for nothing in their experience warned them against the peril of the outer vacuum. Instead a very short and narrow vestibule led them to another door which was just barely ajar. The door stuck on its hinges, but the fact that it was slightly ajar prevented it from binding anywhere else. Perhaps the last man to use it left it so as a precaution against the metal surfaces freezing together, but no one would ever know.

Bobo’s uncouth strength opened it easily. Another door lay six feet beyond. “I don’t understand this,” complained Jim as Bobo strained at the third door. “What’s the sense in an endless series of doors?”

“Wait and find out,” advised his brother.

Beyond the third door lay, not another door, but an apartment, a group of compartments, odd ones, small, crowded together and of unusual shapes. Bobo shot on. ahead and explored the place, knife in teeth, his ugly body almost graceful in flight. Hugh and Joe-Jim proceeded more slowly, their eyes caught by the strangeness Of the place.

Bobo returned, killed his momentum skillfully against a bulkhead, took his blade from his teeth, and reported, “No door. No more door any place. Bobo look.” “There has to be,” Hugh insisted, irritated at the dwarf for demolishing his hopes.

The moron shrugged. “Bobo look.”

“We’ll look.” Hugh and the twins moved off in different directions, splitting the reconnaissance between them.

Hugh found no door, but what he did find interested him even more: an impossibility. He was about to shout for Joe-Jim, when he heard his own name called. “Hugh! Come here!” Reluctantly he left his discovery, and sought out the twins. “Come see what I’ve found,” he began.

“Nevermind,” Joe cut him short. “Look at that.”

Hugh looked. “That” was a Converter. Quite impossibly but indubitably a Converter. “It doesn’t make sense,” Jim protested. “An apartment this size doesn’t need a Converter. That thing would supply power and light for half the Ship. What do you make of it, Hugh?”

Hugh examined it. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “but if you think this is strange, come see what I’ve found.” “What have you found?”

“Come see.”

The twins followed him, and saw a small compartment, one wall of which appeared to be of glass, black as if the far side were obscured. Facing the wall were two acceleratlon chairs, side by side. The arms and the lap desks of the chairs were covered with patterns of little white lights of the same sort as the control lights on the chairs in the Main Control Room.

Joe-Jim made no comment at first, save for a low whistle from Jim. He sat down in one of the chairs and started experimenting cautiously with the controls. Hugh sat down beside him. Joe-Jim covered a group of white lights on the right-hand arm of his chair; the lights in the compartment went out. When he lifted his hand the tiny control lights were blue instead of white. Neither Joe-Jim nor Hugh was startled. When the lights went out; they had expected it, for the control involved corresponded to similar controls in the Control Room.

Joe-Jim fumbled around, trying to find controls which would produce a simulacrum of the heavens on the blank glass before him. There were no such controls and he had no way of knowing that the glass was an actual view port, obscured by the hull of the Ship proper, rather than a view screen.

But he did manage to actuate the controls that occupied the corresponding position. These controls were labeled LAUNCHING; Joe-Jim had disregarded the label because he did not understand it. Actuating them produced no very remarkable results, except that a red light blinked rapidly and a transparency below the label came into life. It read: AIR-LOCK OPEN.

Which was very lucky for Joe-Jim, Hugh, and Bobo. Had they closed the doors behind them and had the little Converter contained even a few grams of mass available for power, they would have found themselves launched suddenly into space, in a Ship’s boat unequipped for a trip and whose controls they understood only by analogy with those in the Control Room. Perhaps they could have maneuvered the boat back into its cradle; more likely they would have crashed attempting it.

But Hugh and Joe-Jim were not yet aware that the “apartment” they had entered was a spacecraft; the idea of a Ship’s boat was still foreign to them. “Turn on the lights,” Hugh requested. Joe-Jim did so.

“Well?” Hugh went on. “What do you make of it?”

“It seems pretty obvious,” answered Jim. “This is another Control Room. We didn’t guess it was here because we couldn’t open the door.” “That doesn’t make sense,” Joe objected. “Why should there be two Control Rooms for one Ship?”

“Why should a man have two heads?” his brother reasoned. “From my point of view, you are obviously a supernumerary.” “It’s not the same thing; we were born that way. But this didn’t just happen; the Ship was built.”

“So what?” Jim argued. “We carry two knives, don’t we? And we weren’t born with ‘em. It’s a good idea to have a spare.”

“But you can’t control the Ship from here,” Joe protested. “You can’t see anything from here. If you wanted a second set of controls, the place to put them would be the Captain’s veranda, where you can see the stars.”

“How about that?” Jim asked, indicating the wall of glass.

“Use your head,” his brother advised. “It faces the wrong direction. It looks into the Ship, not out. And it’s not an arrangement like the Control Room; there isn’t any way to mirror the stars on it.”

“Maybe we haven’t located the controls for it.”

“Even so, you’ve forgotten something. How about that little Converter?” “What about it?”

“It must have some significance. It’s not here by accident. I’ll bet you that these controls have something to do with that Converter.” “Why?”

“Why not? Why are they here together if there isn’t some connection?”

Hugh broke his puzzled silence. Everythmg the twins had said seemed to make sense, even the contradictions. It was all very confusing. But the Converter, the little Conver— “Say, look,” he burst out.

“Look at what?”

“Do you suppose — Do you think that maybe this part of the Ship could move?” “Naturally. The whole Ship moves.”

“No,” said Hugh, “no, no. I don’t mean that at all. Suppose it moved by itself. These controls and the little Converter, suppose it could move right away from the Ship.” “That’s pretty fantastic.”

“Maybe so … but if it’s true, this is the way out.”

“Huh?” said Joe. “Nonsense. No door to the Outside here either.”

“But there would be if this apartment were moved away from the Ship: the way we came in!”

The two heads snapped simultaneously toward him as if jerked by the same string. Then they looked at each other and fell to arguing. Joe-Jim repeated his experiment witit the controls. “See?” Joe pointed out “‘Launching.’ It means to start something, to push something away.”

“Then why doesn’t it?”

“‘Air Lock Open.’ The doors we came through; it has to be that. Everything else is closed.” “Let’s try it.”

“We would have to start the Converter first.” “O.K.”

“Not so fast. Get out, and maybe you can’t come back. We’d starve.” “Hm-m-m, we’ll wait a while.”

Hugh listened to the discussion while snooping around the control panels, trying to figure them out. There was a stowage space under the lap desk of his chair; he fished into it, encountered something, and hauled it out. “See what I’ve found!”

“What Is it?” asked Joe. “Oh, a book. Lot of them back in the room next to the Converter.” “Let’s see it,” said Jim. But Hugh had opened it himself. “Log, Starship Vanguard,” he spelled out, “2 June, 2172. Cruising as before—” “What!” yelled Joe. “Let me see that!”

“3 June. Cruising as before. 4 June. Cruising as before. Captain’s mast for rewards and punishments held at 1300. See Administration Log. 5 June. Cruising as before.” “Gimme that!”

“Wait!” said Hugh. “6 June. Mutiny broke out at 0431. The watch became aware of it by visiplate. Hull, Metalsmith Ordinary, screened the control station and called on the watch to surrender, designating himself as ‘Captain.’ The officer of the watch ordered him to consider himself under arrest and signaled the Captain’s cabin. No answer.

“0435. Communications failed. The officer of the watch dispatched a party of three to notify the Captain, turn out the chief proctor, and assist in the arrest of Huff. “0441. Converter power off; free flight

“0502. Lacy, Crewman Ordinary, messenger-of-thewatch, one of the party of three sent below, returned to the control station alone. He reported verbally that the other two, Malcolm Young and Arthur Sears, were dead and that he had been permitted to return in order to notify the watch to surrender. The mutineers gave 0515 as a—”

The next entry was in a different hand: “0545. I have made every attempt to get into communication with other stations and officers in the Ship, without success. I conceive it as my duty, under the circumstances, to leave the control station without being properly relieved, and attempt to restore order down below. My decision may be faulty, since we are unarmed, but I see no other course open to me.

“Jean Baldwin, Pilot Officer Third Class, Officer of the Watch.” “Is that all?” demanded Joe.

“No,” said Hugh. “1 October (approximately), 2172. I, Theodor Mawson, formerly Storekeeper Ordinary, have been selected this date as Captain of the Vanguard. Since the last entry in this log there have been enormous changes. The mutiny has been suppressed, or more properly, has died out, but with tragic cost. Every pilot officer, every navigation officer is dead, or believed to be dead. I would not have been chosen Captain had there been a qualified man left.

“Approximately ninety per cent of the personnel are dead. Not all of that number died in the original outbreak; no crops have been planted since the mutiny; our food stocks are low. There seems to be clear evidence of cannibalism among the mutineers who have not surrendered.

“My immediate task must be to restore some semblance of order and discipline among the Crew. Crops must be planted. Aregular watch must be instituted at the auxiliary Converter on which we are dependent for heat and light and power.”

The next entry was undated. “I have been far too busy to keep this log up properly. Truthfully, I do not know the date even approximately. The Ship’s clocks no longer run. That may be attributable to the erratic operation of the auxiliary Converter, or it may possibly be an effect of radiations from outer space. We no longer have an antiradiation shield around the Ship, since the Main Converter is not in operation. My Chief Engineer assures me that the Main Converter could be started, but we have no one fitted to astrogate. I have tried to teach myself astrogation from the books at hand, but the mathematics involved are very difficult.

“About one newborn child out of twenty is deformed. I have instituted a Spartan code: such children are not permitted to live. It is harsh, but necessary.

“I am growing very old and feeble and must consider the selection of my successor. I am the last member of the crew to be born on Earth, and even I have little recollection of it. I was five when my parents embarked. I do not know my own age, but certain unmistakable signs tell me that the time is not far away when I, too, must make the Trip to the Converter.

“There has been a curious change in orientation in my people. Never having lived on a planet, it becomes more difficult as time passes for them to comprehend anything not connected with the Ship. I have ceased trying to talk to them about it; it is hardly a kindness anyhow, as I have no hope of leading them out of the darkness. Theirs is a hard life at best: they strive for a crop only to have it raided by the outlaws who still flourish on the upper levels. Why speak to them of better things?

“Rather than pass this on to my successor I have decided to attempt to hide it, if possible, in the single Ship’s boat left by the mutineers who escaped. It will be safe there a long time, otherwise some witless fool may decide to use it for fuel for the Converter. I caught the man on watch feeding it with the last of a set of Encyclopaedia Terresriana: priceless books. The idiot had never been taught to read! Some rule must be instituted concerning books.

“This is my last entry. I have put off making the attempt to place this log in safekeeping, because it is very perilous to ascend above the lower decks. But my life is no longer valuable; I wish to die knowing that a true record is left.

“Theodor Mawson, Captain.”

Even the twins were silent for a long time after Hugh stopped reading. At last Joe heaved a long sigh and said, “So that’s how it happened.” “The poor guy,” Hugh said softly.

“Who? Captain Mawson? Why so?”

“No, not Captain Mawson. That other guy, Pilot Officer Baldwin. Think of him going out through that door, with Huff on the other side.” Hugh shivered. In spite of his enlightenment, he subconsciously envisioned Huff, ‘Huff the Accursed, first to sin,’ as about twice as high as Joe-Jim, twice as strong as Bobo, and having fangs rather than teeth.

Hugh borrowed a couple of porters from Ertz, porters whom Ertz was using to fetch the pickled bodies of the war casualties to the Main Converter for fuel, and used them to provision the Ship’s boat: water, breadstuffs, preserved meats, mass for the Converter. He did not report the matter to Narby, nor did he report the discovery of the boat itself. He had no conscious reason; Narby irritated him.

The star of their destination grew and grew, swelled until it showed a visible disc and was too bright to be stared at long. Its bearing changed rapidly, for a star; it pulled across the backdrop of the stellariwn dome. Left uncontrolled, the Ship would have swung part way around it in a wide hyperbolic arc, accelerated as it flipped around the star, then sped off again into the darkness. It took Hugh the equivalent of many weeks to calculate the elements of the trajectory; it took still longer for Ertz and Joe-Jim to check his figures and satisfy themselves that the preposterous answers were right. It took even longer to convince Ertz that the way to rendezvous in space was to apply a force that pushed one away from where one wished to go, that is to say, dig in the heels, put on the brakes, kill the momentum.

In fact it took a series of experiments in free flight on the level of weightlessness to sell him the idea, otherwise he would have favored finishing the Trip by the simple expedient of crashing headlong into the star at top Speed. Thereafter Hugh and Joe-Jim calculated how to apply acceleration to kill the speed of the Vanguard and warp her into an eccentric ellipse around the star. After that, they would search for planets.

Ertz bad a little trouble understanding the difference between a planet and a star. Alan never did get it. “If my numbering is correct,” Hugh informed Ertz, “we should start accelerating any time now.”

“O.K.,” Ertz told him. “Main Drive is ready: over two hundred bodies and a lot of waste mass. What are waiting for?” “Let’s see Narby and get permission to start.”

“Why ask him?”

Hugh shrugged. “He’s Captain. He’ll want to know.”

“All right. Let’s pick up Joe-Jim and get on with it.” They left Hugh’s apartment and went to Joe-Jim’s. Joe-Jim was not there, but they found Alan looking for him, too. “Squatty says he’s gone down to the Captain’s office,” Alan informed him.

“So? It’s just as well. We’ll see him there. Alan, old boy, you know what?” “What?”

“The time has arrived. We’re going to do it! Start moving the Ship!” Alan looked round-eyed. “Gee! Right now?” “Just as soon as we can notify the Captain. Come along, if you like.”

“You bet! Wait while I tell my woman.” He darted away to his own quarters nearby. “He pampers that wench,” remarked Ertz.

“Sometimes you can’t help it,” said Hugh with a faraway look.

Alan returned promptly, although it was evident that he had taken time to change to a fresh breechcloth. “O.K.,” he bubbled. “Let’s go!”

Alan approached the Captain’s office with a proud step. He was an important guy now, he exulted to himself. He’d march on through with his friends while the guards saluted; no more of this business of being pushed around.

But the doorkeeper did not stand aside, although he did salute, while placing himself so that he filled the door. “Gangway, man!” Ertz said gruffly. “Yes, sir,” acknowledged the guard, without moving. “Your weapons, please.”

“What! Don’t you know me, you idiot? I’m the Chief Engineer.” “Yes, sir. Leave your weapons with me, please. Regulations.”

Ertz put a hand on the man’s shoulder and shoved. The guard stood firm. “I’m sorry, sir. No one approaches the Captain wearing weapons. No one.” “Well, I’ll be damned!”

“He remembers what happened to the old Captain,” Hugh observed sotto voce. “He’s smart.” He drew his own knife and tossed it to the guard, who caught it neatly by the hilt. Ertz looked; shrugged, and handed over his own. Alan, considerably crestfallen, passed his own pair over with a look that should have shortened the guard’s life.

Narby was talking; Joe-Jim was scowling on both his faces; Bobo looked puzzled, and naked, unfinished, without his ubiquitous knives and slingshot. “The matter is closed, Joe-Jim. That is my decision. I’ve granted you the faver of explaining my reasons, but it does not matter whether you like them or not.”

“What’s the trouble?” inquired Hugh.

Narby looked up. “Oh. I’m glad you came in. Your mutie friend seems to be in doubt as to who is Captain.” “What’s up?”

“He,” growled Jim, hooking a thumb toward Narby, “seems to think he’s going to disarm all the muties.” “Well, the war’s over, isn’t it?”

“It wasn’t agreed on. The muties were to become part of the Crew. Take the knives away from the muties and the Crew will kill them off in no time. It’s not fair. The Crew have knives.” “The time will come when they won’t,” Narby predicted, “but I’ll do it at my own time in my own way. This is the first step. What did you want to see me about, Ertz?”

“Ask Hugh.” Narby turned to Hugh.

“I’ve come to notify you, Captain Narby,” Hugh stated formally, “that we are about to start the Main Converter and move the Ship.”

Narby looked surprised but not disconcerted. “I’m afraid you will have to postpone that. I am not yet ready to permit officers to go up to no-weight.”

“It won’t be necessary,” Hugh explained. “Ertz and I can handle the first maneuvers alone. But we can’t wait. If the Ship is not moved at once, the Trip won’t be in your lifetime nor mine.” “Then it must,” Narby replied evenly, “wait.”

“What?” cried Hugh. “Narby, don’t you want to the Trip?” “I’m in no hurry.”

“What sort of damn foolishness is this?” Ertz demanded. “What’s got into you, Fin? Of course we move the Ship.”

Narby drummed on his desk top before replying. Then: he said, “Since there seems to be some slight misunderstanding as to who gives orders around here, I might as well let you have it straight. Hoyland, as long as your pastimes did not interfere with the administration of tbe Ship, I was willing for you to amuse yourself. I granted that willingly, for you have been very useful in your own way. But when your crazy beliefs become a possible source of corruption to good morals and a danger to the peace and security of the Ship, I have to crack down.”

Hugh had opened and closed his mouth several times during this speech. Finally he managed to get out: “Crazy? Did you say crazy?”

“Yes, I did. For a man to believe that the solid Ship can move means that he is either crazy, or an ignorant religious fanatic. Since both of you have the advantage of a scientist’s training, I assume that you have lost your minds.”

“Good Jordan!” said Hugh. “The man has seen with his own eyes, he’s seen the immortal stars, yet he sits there and calls us crazy!”

“What’s the meaning of this, Narby?” Ertz inquired coldly. “Why the razzle-dazzle? You aren’t kidding anyone; you’ve been to the Control Room, you’ve been to the Captain’s veranda, you know the Ship moves.”

“You interest me, Ertz,” commented Narby, looking him over. “I’ve wondered whether you were playing up to Hoyland’s delusions, or were deluded yourself. Now I see that you are crazy too.”

Ertz kept his temper. “Explain yourself. You’ve seen the Control Room; how can you contend that the Ship does not move?”

Narby smiled. “I thought you were a better engineer than you appear to be, Ertz. The Control Room is an enormous hoax. You know yourself that those lights are turned on and off by

switches — a very clever piece of engineering. My theory is that it was used to strike awe in the minds of the superstitious and make them believe in the ancient myths. But we don’t need it any more, the Crew believe without it. It’s a source of distraction now I’m going to have it destroyed and the door sealed up.”

Hugh went all to pieces at this, sputtered incoherently, and would have grappled with Narby had not Ertz restrained him. “Easy, Hugh,” he admonished. Joe-Jim took Hugh by the arm, his own faces stony masks.

Ertz went on quietly, “Suppose what you say is true. Suppose that the Main Converter and the Main Drive itself are nothing but dummies and that we can never start them, what about the Captain’s veranda? You’ve seen the stars there, not just an engineered shadow show.”

Narby laughed. “Ertz, you are stupider than I’ve guessed. I admit that the display in the veranda had me mystified at first, not that I ever believed in it! Then the Control Room gave the clue: it’s an Illusion, a piece of skillful engineering. Behind that glass is another compartment, about the same size and unlighted. Against its darkness those tiny moving lights give the effect of a bottomless hole. It’s essentially the same trick as they used in the Control Room.

“It’s obvious,” he went on. “I’m surprised that you did not see it. When an apparent fact runs contrary to logic and common sense, it’s obvious that you have failed to interpret the fact correctly. The most obvious fact of nature is the reality of the Ship itself, solid, immutable, complete. Any so-called fact which appears to disprove that is bound to be an illusion. Knowing that, I looked for the trick behind the illusion and found it.”

“Wait,” said Ertz. “Do you mean that you have been on the other side of the glass in the Captain’s veranda and seen these trick lights you talk about?”

“No,” admitted Narby, “it wasn’t necessary. Not that it wouldn’t be easy enough to do so, but it isn’t necessary. I don’t have to cut myself to know that knives are sharp.”

“So…” Ertz paused and thought a moment. “I’ll strike a deal with you. If Hugh and I are crazy in our beliefs, no harm is done as long as we keep our mouths shut. We try to move the Ship. If we fail, we’re wrong and you’re right.”

“The Captain does not bargain,” Narby pointed out. “However, I’ll consider it. That’s all. You may go.” Ertz turned to go, unsatisfied but checked for moment. He caught sight of Joe-Jim’s faces, and turned back. “One more thing,” he said. “What’s this about the muties? Why are you shoving Joe-Jim around? He and his boys made you Captain; you’ve got to fair about this.”

Narby’s smiling superiority cracked for amoment.

“Don’t interfere, Ertz! Groups of armed savages are not going to threaten this Ship!”

“You can do what you like with the prisoners,” Jim stated, “but my own gang keep their knives. They were promised good eating forever if they fought for you. They keep their knives. And that’s flnal!”

Narby looked him up and down. “Joe-Jim,” he remarked, “I have long believed that the only good mutie was a dead mutie. You do much to confirm my opinion. It will interest you to know that, by this time, your gang is already disarmed, and dead in the bargain. That’s why I sent for you!”

The guards piled in, whether by signal or previous arrangement it was impossible to say. Caught flatfooted, naked, weaponless, the five found themselves each with an armed man at his back before they could rally. “Take them away,” ordered Narby.

Bobo whined and looked to Joe-Jim for guidance. Joe caught his eye. “Up, Bobo!”

The dwarf jumped straight for Joe-Jim’s captor, careless of the knife at his back. Forced to split his attention, the man lost a vital half second. Joe-Jim kicked him in the stomach, and appropriated his blade.

Hugh was on the deck, deadlocked with his man, his fist clutched around the knife wrist. Joe-Jim thrust and the struggle ceased. The two-headed man looked around, saw a mixed pile- up of four bodies, Ertz, Alan, two others. Joe-Jim used his knife judiciously, being careful to match the faces with the bodies. Presently his men emerged. “Get their knives,” he ordered superfluously.

His words were drowned by a high, agonized scream. Bobo, still without a knife, had resorted to his primal weapons. His late captor’s face was a bloody mess, half bitten away. “Get his knife,” said Joe.

“Can’t reach it,” Bobo admitted guiltily. The reason was evident: the hilt protruded from Bobo’s ribs, just below his right shoulder blade. Joe-Jim examined it, touched it gently. It was stuck. “Can you walk?”

“Sure,” grunted Bobo, and grimaced.

“Let it stay where it is. Alan! With me. Hugh and Bill, cover rear. Bobo In the middle.” “Where’s Narby?” demanded Ertz, dabbing at a round on his cheekbone.

But Narby was gone, ducked out through the rear door behind his desk. And it was locked.

Clerks scattered before them in the outer office; Joe-Jim knifed the guard at the outer door while he was still raising his whistle. Hastily they retrieved their own weapons and added them to those they had seized. They fled upward.

Two decks above inhabited levels Bobo stumbled and fell. Joe-Jim picked him up. “Can you make it?” The dwarf nodded dumbly, blood on his lips. They climbed. Twenty decks or so higher it became evident that Bobo could no longer climb, though they had taken turns in boosting him from the rear. But weight was lessened appreciably at that level; Alan braced himself and picked up the solid form as if it were a child. They climbed. Joe-Jim relieved Alan. They climbed.

Ertz relieved Joe-Jim. Hugh relieved Ertz.

They reached the level on which they lived forward of their group apartments. Hugh turned in that direction. “Put him down,” commanded Joe. “Where do you think you are going?” Hugh settled the wounded man to the deck. “Homes. Where else?”

“Fool! That’s where they will look for us first.” “Where do we go?”

“Nowhere, in the Ship. We go out of the Ship!” “Huh?”

“The Ship’s boat.”

“He’s right,” agreed Ertz. “The whole Ship’s against us, now.”

“But … but—” Hugh surrendered. “It’s a long chance — but we’ll try it.” He started again in the direction of their homes. “Hey!” shouted Jim. “Not that way.”

“We have to get our women.”

“To Huff with the women! You’ll get caught. There’s no time.” But Ertz and Alan started off without question. “Oh, all right!” Jim snorted. “But hurry! I’ll stay with Bobo” Joe-Jim turned his attention to the dwarf, gently rolled him to his side and made a careful examination. His skin was gray and damp; a long red stain ran down from his right shoulder. Bobo sighed bubblingly and rubbed his head against Joe-Jim’s thigh. “Bobo tired, Boss.”

Joe-Jim patted his head. “Easy,” said Jim, “this is going to hurt.” Lifting the wounded man slightly, he cautiously worked the blade loose and withdrew it from the wound. Blood poured out freely.

Joe-Jim examined the knife, noted the deadly length of steel, and measured it against the wound. “He’ll never make it,” whispered Joe.

Jim caught his eye. “Well?”

Joe nodded slowly. Joe-Jim tried the blade he had just extracted from the wound against his own thigh, and discarded it in favor of one of his own razor-edged tools. He took the dwarf’s chin in his left hand and Joe commanded, “Look at me, Bobo!”

Bobo looked up, answered inaudibly. Joe held his eye. “Good Bobo! Strong Bobo!” The dwarf grinned as if he heard and understood, but made no attempt to reply. His master pulled his head a little to one side; the blade bit deep, snicking the jugular vein without touching the windpipe. “Good Bobo!” Joe repeated. Bobo grinned again.

When the eyes were glassy and breathing had unquestionably stopped, Joe-Jim stood up, letting the head and shoulders roll from him. He shoved the body with his foot to the side of the passage, and stared down the direction in which the others had gone. They should be back by now.

He stuck the salvaged blade in his belt and made sure that all his weapons were loose and ready.

They arrived on a dead run. “Alittle trouble,” Hugh explained breathlessly. “Squatty’s dead. No more of your men around. Dead maybe. Narby probably meant it. Here.” He handed him a long knife and the body armor that had been built for Joe-Jim, with its great wide cage of steel, fit to cover two heads.

Ertz and Alan wore armor, as did Hugh. The women did not; none had been built for them. Joe-Jim noted that Hugh’s younger wife bore a fresh swelling on her lip, as if someone had persuaded her with a heavy hand. Her eyes were stormy though her manner was docile. The older wife, Chloe, seemed to take the events in her stride. Ertz’s was crying softly; Alan’s wench reflected the bewilderment of her master.

“How’s Bobo?” Hugh inquired, as he settled Joe-Jim’s armor in place. “Made the Trip,” Joe informed him.

“So? Well, that’s that; let’s go.”

They stopped short of the level of no-weight and worked forward, because the women were not adept at weightless flying. When they reached the bulkhead which separated the Control Room and boat pockets from the body of the Ship, they went up. There was neither alarm nor ambush, although Joe thought that he saw a head show as they reached one deck. He mentioned it to his brother but not to the others.

The door to the boat pocket stuck and Bobo was not there to free it. The men tried it in succession, sweating big with the strain. Joe-Jim tried it a second time, Joe relaxing and letting Jim control their muscles, that they might not fight each other. The door gave. “Get them inside!” snapped Jim.

“And fast!” Joe confirmed. “They’re on us.” He had kept lookout while his brother strove. Ashout from down the line reinforced his warning.

The twins faced around to meet the threat while the men shoved the women in. Alan’s fuzzy-headed mate chose that moment to go to pieces, squalled, and tried to run but weightlessness defeated her. Hugh nabbed her, shoved her inside and booted her heartily with his foot.

Joe-Jim let a blade go at long throwing range to slow down the advance. It accomplished its purpose; their opponents, half a dozen of them, checked their advance. Then, apparently on signal, six knives cut the air simultaneonsly.

Jim felt something strike him, felt no pain, and concluded that the armor had saved him. “Missed us, Joe,” he exulted.

There was no answer. Jim turned his bead, tried to look at his brother. Afew inches from his eye a knife stuck through the bars of the helmet, its point was buried deep inside his left eye. His brother was dead.

Hugh stuck his head back out of the door. “Come on, Joe-Jim,” he shouted. “We’re all in.” “Get inside,” ordered Jim. “Close the door.”

“But—”

“Get inside!” Jim turned, and shoved him in the face, closing the door as he did so. Hugh had one startled glimpse of the knife and the sagging, lifeless face it pinned. Then the door closed against him, and he heard the lever turn.

Jim turned back at the attackers. Shoving himself away from the bulkhead with legs which were curiously heavy, he plunged toward them, his great arm-long knife, more a bob than a sword, grasped with both hands. Knives sang toward him, clattered against his breastplate, bit into his legs. He swung a wide awkward two-handed stroke which gutted an opponent, nearly cutting him in two. “That’s for Joe!”

The blow stopped him. He turned in the air, steadied himself, and swung again. “That’s for Bobo!”

They closed on him; he swung widely caring not where he hit as long as his blade met resistance. “And that’s for me!” Aknife planted itself in his thigh. It did not even slow him up; legs were dispensable in no-weight. “‘One for all!’”

Aman was on his back now he could feel him. No matter; here was one before him, too, one who could feel steel. As be swung, he shouted, “All for o—” The words trailed off, but the stroke was finished.

Hugh tried to open the door which had been slammed in his face. He was unable to do so; if there were means provided to do so, he was unable to figure them out. He pressed an ear against the steel and listened, but the airtight door gave back no clue.

Ertz touched him on the shoulder. “Come on,” be said. “Where’s Joe-Jim?” “He stayed behind.”

“Open up the door! Get him.”

“I can’t, it won’t open. He meant to stay, he closed it himself.” “But we’ve got to get him; we’re blood-sworn.”

“I think,” said Hugh, with a sudden flash of insight, “that’s why he stayed behind.” He told Ertz what he had seen.

“Anyhow,” he concluded, “it’s the End of the Trip to him. Get on back and feed mass to that Converter. I want power.” They entered the Ship’s boat proper. Hugh closed the air-lock doors behind them. “Alan!” he called out. “We’re going to start. Keep those damned women out of the way.”

He settled himself in the pilot’s chair, and cut the lights.

In the darkness he covered a pattern of green lights. Atransparency flashed on the lap desk: DRIVE READY. Ertz was on the job. Here goes! he thought, and actuated the launching combination. There was a short pause, a short and sickening lurch, a twist. It frightened him, since he had no way of knowing that the launching tracks were pitched to offset the normal spinning of the Ship.

The glass of the view port before him was speckled with stars; they were free — moving!

But the spread of jeweled lights was not unbroken, as it invariably had been when seen from the veranda, or seen mirrored on the Control Room walls; a great, gross, ungainly shape gleamed softly under the light of the star whose system they had entered. At first he could not account for it. Then with a rush of superstitious awe he realized that he was looking at the Ship itself, the true Ship, seen from the Outside. In spite of his long intellectual awareness of the true nature of the Ship; he had never visualized looking at it. The stars, yes; the surface of a planet, he had struggled with that concept; but the outer surface of the Ship, no.

When he did see it, it shocked him. Alan touched him. “Hugh, what is it?”

Hoyland tried to explain to him. Alan shook his head, and blinked his eyes. “I don’t get it.”

“Never mind. Bring Ertz up here. Fetch the women, too; we’ll let them see it.”

“All right. But,” he added, with sound intuition, “it’s a mistake to show the women. You’ll scare ‘em silly; they ain’t even seen the stars.”

Luck, sound engineering design, and a little knowledge. Good design, ten times that much luck, and a precious little knowledge. It was luck that had placed the Ship near a star with a planetary system, luck that the Ship arrived there with a speed low enough for Hugh to counteract it in a ship’s auxiliary craft, luck that he learned to handle it after a fashion before they starved or lost themselves in deep space.

It was good design that provided the little craft with a great reserve of power and speed. The designers had anticipated that the pioneers might need to explore the far-flung planets of a solar system; they had provided for it in the planning of the Ship’s boats, with a large factor of safety. Hugh strained that factor to the limit.

It was luck that placed them near the plane of planetary motion, luck that, when Hugh did manage to gun the tiny projectile into a closed orbit, the orbit agreed in direction with the rotation of the planets.

Luck that the eccentric ellipse he achieved should cause them to crawl up on a giant planet so that he was eventually able to identify it as such by sight.

For otherwise they might have spun around that star until they all died of old age, ignoring for the moment the readier hazards of hunger and thirst, without ever coming close enough to a planet to pick it out from the stars.

There is a misconception, geocentric and anthropomorphic, common to the large majority of the earth-bound, which causes them to visualize a planetary system stereoscopically. The mind’s eye sees a sun, remote from a backdrop of stars, and surrounded by spinning apples: the planets. Step out on your balcony and look. Can you tell the planets from the stars? Venus you may pick out with ease, but could you tell it from Canopus, if you had not previously been introduced? That little red speck: is it Mars, or is it Antares? How would you know, if you were as ignorant as Hugh Hoyland? Blast for Antares, believing it to be a planet, and you will never live to have grandchildren.

The great planet that they crawled up on, till it showed a visible naked-eye disc, was larger than Jupiter, a companion to the star, somewhat younger and larger the the Sun, around which it swung at a lordly distance. Hugh blasted back, killing his speed over many sleeps, to bring the Ship into a path around the planet. The maneuver brought him close enough to see its moons.

Luck helped him again. He had planned to ground the great planet, knowing no better. Had he been able do so they would have lived just long enough to open the air-lock.

But he was short of mass, after the titanic task of pulling them out of the headlong hyperbolic plunge around an arc past the star and warping them into a closed orbit about the star, then into a subordinate orbit around the giant planet. He pored over the ancient books, substituted endlessly in the equations the ancients had set down as the laws for moving bodies, figured and refigured, and tested even the calm patience of Chloe. The other wife, the unnamed one, kept out of his way after losing a tooth, quite suddenly.

But he got no answer that did not require him to sacrifice some, at least, of the precious, irreplaceable ancient books for fuel. Yes, even though they stripped themselves naked and chucked in their knives, the mass of the books would still be needed.

He would have preferred to dispense with one of his wives. He decided to ground on one of the moons.

Luck again. Coincidence of such a colossal proportion that one need not be expected to believe it, for the moon of that planet was suitable for human terrestrial life. Never mind, skip over it, rapidly; the combination of circumstances is of the same order needed to produce such a planet in the first place. Our own planet, under our own sun is of the “There ain’t no such animal” variety. It is a ridiculous improbability.

Hugh’s luck was a ridiculous improbability.

Good design handled the next phase. Although he learned to maneuver the little Ship out in space where there is elbow room, landing is another and a ticklish matter. He would have crashed any spacecraft designed before the designing of the Vanguard. But the designers of the Vanguard had known that the Ship’s auxiliary craft would be piloted and grounded by at least the second generation of explorers; green pilots must make those landings unassisted. They planned for it.

Hugh got the vessel down into the stratosphere and straightened it triumphantly into a course that would with certainty kill them all. The autopilots took over.

Hugh stormed and swore, producing some words which diverted Alan’s attention and admiration from the view out of the port. But nothing he could do would cause the craft to respond. It settled in its own way and leveled off at a thousand feet, an altitude which it maintained regardless of changing contour.

“Hugh, the stars are gone!” “I know it.”

“But Jordan! Hugh, what happened to them?”

Hugh glared at Alan. “I don’t know and I don’t care! You get aft with the women and stop asking silly questions.”

Alan departed reluctantly with a backward look at the surface of the planet and the bright sky; It interested him, but he did not marvel much at it; his ability to marvel had been overstrained. It was some hours before Hugh discovered that a hitherto ignored group of control lights set in motion a chain of events whereby the autopilot would ground the Ship. Since he found this

out experimentally he did not exactly choose the place of landing. But the unwinking stereo-eyes of the autopilot fed its data to the ‘brain’; the submolar mechanism selected and rejected;

the Ship grounded gently on a rolling high prairie near a clump of vegetation.

Ertz came forward. “What’s happened, Hugh?”

Hugh waved at the view port. “We’re there.” He was too tired to make much of it, too tired and too emotionally exhausted. His weeks of fighting a fight he understood but poorly, hunger, and lately thirst, years of feeding on a consuming ambition, these left him with little ability to enjoy his goal when it arrived.

But they had landed, they had finished Jordan’s Trip. He was not unhappy, at peace rather, and very tired. Ertz stared out. “Jordan!” he muttered. Then, “Let’s go out.” “All right.”

Alan came forward, as they were opening the air-lock, and the women pressed after him. “Are we there, Captain?” “Shut up,” said Hugh.

The women crowded up to the deserted view port; Alan explained to them, importantly and incorrectly, the scene outside. Ertz got the last door open.

They sniffed at the air. “It’s cold,” said Ertz. In fact the temperature was perhaps five degrees less than the steady monotony of the Ship’s temperature, but Ertz was experiencing weather for the first time.

“Nonsense,” said Hugh, faintly annoyed that any fault should be found with _his_ planet. “It’s just your imagination.” “Maybe,” Ertz conceded. He paused uneasily. “Going out?” he added.

“Of course.” Mastering his own reluctance, Hugh pushed him aside and dropped five feet to the ground “Come on; it’s fine.” Ertz joined him, and stood close to him. Both of them remained close to the Ship. “It’s big, isn’t it?” Ertz said in a hushed voice. “Well, we knew it would be,” Hugh snapped, annoyed with himself for having the same lost feeling.

“Hi!” Alan peered cautiously out of the door. “Can I comedown? Is it alright?” “Come ahead.”

Alan eased himself gingerly over the edge and joined them. He looked around and whistled. “Gosh!”

Their first sortie took them all of fifty feet from the Ship. They huddled close together for silent comfort, and watched their feet to keep from stumbling on this strange uneven deck. They made it without incident until Alan looked up from the ground and found himself for the first time in his life with nothing close to him. He was hit by vertigo and acute agoraphobia; he moaned, closed his eyes and fell.

“What in the Ship?” demanded Ertz, looking around. Then it hit him.

Hugh fought against it. It pulled him to his knees, but be fought it, steadying himself with one hand on the ground. However, he had the advantage of having stared out through the view port for endless time; neither Alan nor Ertz were cowards.

“Alan!” his wife shrilled from the open door. “Alan! Come back here!” Alan opened one eye, managed to get it focused on the Ship, and started inching back on his belly. “Man!” commanded Hugh. “Stop that! Situp.”

Alan did so, with the air of a man pushed too far. “Open your eyes!” Alan obeyed cautiously, reclosed them hastily.

“Just sit still and you’ll be all right,” Hugh added. “I’m all right already.” To prove it he stood up. He was still dizzy, but he made it. Ertz sat up.

The sun had crossed a sizable piece of the sky, enough time had passed for a well-fed man to become hungry, and they were not well fed. Even the women were outside; that had been accomplished by the simple expedient of going back in and pushing them out. They had not ventured away from the side of the Ship, but sat huddled against it. But their menfolk had even learned to walk singly, even in open spaces. Alan thought nothing of strutting a full fifty yards away from the shadow of the Ship, and did so more than once, in full sight of the women.

It was on one such journey that a small animal native to the planet let his curiosity exceed his caution. Alan’s knife knocked him over and left him kicking. Alan scurried to the spot, grabbed his fat prize by one leg, and bore it proudly back to Hugh. “Look, Hugh, look! Good eating!”

Hugh looked with approval. His first strange fright of the place had passed and had been replaced with a deep warm feeling, a feeling that he had come at last to his long home. This seemed a good omen. “Yes,” he agreed. “Good eating. From now on, Alan, always Good Eating.”

The End

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The Green Hills of Earth (Full Text) by Robert Heinlein

Here’s a really nice short little story to help get your mind off the craziness of day to day life. It’s a short science fiction story about a “spaceman”. You know, one of those old grizzly old “salts” that tended to the boiler and reactor rooms within those great 1940’s style “needle” spaceships. It’s a good and fun read. Enjoy…

The Green Hills of Earth

This is the story of Rhysling, the Blind Singer of the Spaceways — but not the official version. You sang his words in school:

“I pray for one last landing...

On the globe that gave me birth;

Let me rest my eyes on the fleecy skies And the cool, green hills of Earth.”

Or perhaps you sang in French, or German. Or it might have been Esperanto, while Terra’s rainbow banner rippled over your head.

The language does not matter — it was certainly an Earth tongue. No one has ever translated “Green Hills” into the lisping Venerian speech; no Martian ever croaked and whispered it in the dry corridors. This is ours. We of Earth have exported everything from Hollywood crawlies to synthetic radioactives, but this belongs solely to Terra, and to her sons and daughters wherever they may be.

We have all heard many stories of Rhysling. You may even be one of the many who have sought degrees, or acclaim, by scholarly evaluations of his published works –

Songs of the Spaceways,
The Grand Canal and other Poems,
High and Far, and …
“UP SHIP!”

Nevertheless, although you have sung his songs and read his verses, in school and out your whole life, it is at least an even money bet — unless you are a spaceman yourself — that you have never even heard of most of Rhysling’s unpublished songs, such items as…

Since the Pusher Met My Cousin,
That Red-Headed Venusburg Gal,
Keep Your Pants On, Skipper, or
A Space Suit Built for Two.

Nor can we quote them in a family magazine.

Rhysling’s reputation was protected by a careful literary executor and by the happy chance that he was never interviewed. Songs of the Spaceways appeared the week he died; when it became a best seller, the publicity stories about him were pieced together from what people remembered about him plus the highly colored handouts from his publishers.

The resulting traditional picture of Rhysling is about as authentic as George Washington’s hatchet or King Alfred’s cakes.

In truth you would not have wanted him in your parlor; he was not socially acceptable. He had a permanent case of sun itch, which he scratched continually, adding nothing to his negligible beauty.

Van der Voort’s portrait of him for the Harriman Centennial edition of his works shows a figure of high tragedy, a solemn mouth, sightless eyes concealed by black silk bandage. He was never solemn! His mouth was always open, singing, grinning, drinking, or eating. The bandage was any rag, usually dirty. After he lost his sight he became less and less neat about his person.

“Noisy” Rhysling was a jetman, second class, with eyes as good as yours, when he signed on for a ioop trip to the Jovian asteroids in the RS Goshawk. The crew signed releases for everything in those days; a Lloyd’s associate would have laughed in your face at the notion of insuring a spaceman. The Space Precautionary Act had never been heard of, and the Company was responsible only for wages, if and when. Half the ships that went further than Luna City never came back. Spacemen did not care; by preference they signed for shares, and any one of them would have bet you that he could jump from the 200th floor of Harriman Tower and ground safely, if you offered him three to two and allowed him rubber heels for the landing.

Jetmen were the most carefree of the lot, and the meanest.

Compared with them the masters, the radarmen, and the astrogators (there were no supers nor stewards in those days) were gentle vegetarians. Jetmen knew too much. The others trusted the skill of the captain to get them down safely; jetmen knew that skill was useless against the blind and fitful devils chained inside their rocket motors.

The Goshawk was the first of Harriman’s ships to be converted from chemical fuel to atomic power-piles — or rather the first that did not blow up. Rhysling knew her well; she was an old tub that had plied the Luna City run, Supra-New York space station to Leyport and back, before she was converted for deep space. He had worked the Luna run in her and had been along on the first deep space trip, Drywater on Mars — and back, to everyone’s surprise.

He should have made chief engineer by the time he signed for the Jovian loop trip, but, after the Drywater pioneer trip, he had been fired, blacklisted, and grounded at Luna City for having spent his time writing a chorus and several verses at a time when he should have been watching his gauges. The song was the infamous The Skipper is a Father to his Crew, with the uproariously unprintable final couplet.

The blacklist did not bother him.

He won an accordion from a Chinese barkeep in Luna City by cheating at onethumb and thereafter kept going by singing to the miners for drinks and tips until the rapid attrition in spacemen caused the Company agent there to give him another chance. He kept his nose clean on the Luna run for a year or two, got back into deep space, helped give Venusburg its original ripe reputation, strolled the banks of the Grand Canal when a second colony was established at the ancient Martian capital, and froze his toes and ears on the second trip to Titan.

Things moved fast in those days. Once the power-pile drive was accepted the number of ships that put out from the LunaTerra system was limited only by the availability of crews. Jetmen were scarce; the shielding was cut to a minimum to save weight and few married men cared to risk possible exposure to radioactivity. Rhysling did not want to be a father, so jobs were always open to him during the golden days of the claiming boom. He crossed and recrossed the system, singing the doggerel that boiled up in his head and chording it out on his accordion.

The master of the Goshawk knew him; Captain Hicks had been astrogator on Rhysling’s first trip in her. “Welcome home, Noisy,” Hicks had greeted him. “Are you sober, or shall I sign the book for you?”

“You can’t get drunk on the bug juice they sell here, Skipper.” He signed and went below, lugging his accordion.

Ten minutes later he was back. “Captain,” he stated darkly, “that number two jet ain’t fit. The cadmium dampers are warped.” “Why tell me? Tell the Chief.”

“I did, but he says they will do. He’s wrong.”

The captain gestured at the book. “Scratch out your name and scram. We raise ship in thirty minutes.” Rhysling looked at him, shrugged, and went below again.

It is a long climb to the Jovian planetoids; a Hawk-class clunker had to blast for three watches before going into free flight. Rhysling had the second watch. Damping was done by hand then, with a multiplying vernier and a danger gauge.

When the gauge showed red, he tried to correct it — no luck.

Jetmen don’t wait; thats why they are jetmen. He slapped the emergency discover and fished at the hot stuff with the tongs. The lights went out, he went right ahead. Ajetman has to know his power room the way your tongue knows the inside of your mouth.

He sneaked a quick look over the top of the lead baffle when the lights went out. The blue radioactive glow did not help him any; he jerked his head back and went on fishing by touch. When he was done he called over the tube, “Number two jet out. And for crissake get me some light down here!”

There was light — the emergency circuit — but not for him. The blue radioactive glow was the last thing his optic nerve ever responded to.

“As Time and Space come bending back to shape this starspecked scene, The tranquil tears of tragic joy still spread their silver sheen;

Along the Grand Canal still soar the fragile Towers of Truth; Their fairy grace defends this place of Beauty, calm and couth.

“Bone-tired the race that raised the Towers, forgotten are their lores, Long gone the gods who shed the tears that lap these crystal shores. Slow heats the time-worn heart of Mars beneath this icy sky;

The thin air whispers voicelessly that all who live must die — “Yet still the lacy Spires of Truth sing Beauty’s madrigal

And she herself will ever dwell along the Grand Canal!”

— from The Grand Canal, by permission of Lux Transcriptions, Ltd., London and Luna City

On the swing back they set Rhysling down on Mars at Drywater; the boys passed the hat and the skipper kicked in a half month’s pay. That was all — finish — just another space bum who had not had the good fortune to finish it off when his luck ran out. He holed up with the prospectors and archeologists at How-Far? for a month or so, and could probably have stayed forever in exchange for his songs and his accordion playing. But spacemen die if they stay in one place; he hooked a crawler over to Drywater again and thence to Marsopolis.

The capital was well into its boom; the processing plants lined the Grand Canal on both sides and roiled the ancient waters with the filth of the runoff. This was before the TriPlanet Treaty forbade disturbing cultural relics for commerce; half the slender, fairylike towers had been torn down, and others were disfigured to adapt them as pressurized buildings for Earthmen.

Now Rhysling had never seen any of these changes and no one described them to him; when he “saw” Marsopolis again, he visualized it as it had been, before it was rationalized for trade. His memory was good. He stood on the riparian esplanade where the ancient great of Mars had taken their ease and saw its beauty spreading out before his blinded eyes — ice blue plain of water unmoved by tide, untouched by breeze, and reflecting serenely the sharp, bright stars of the Martian sky, and beyond the water the lacy buttresses and flying towers of an architecture too delicate for our rumbling, heavy planet.

The result was Grand Canal.

The subtle change in his orientation which enabled him to see beauty at Marsopolis where beauty was not now began to affect his whole life. All women became beautiful to him. He knew them by their voices and fitted their appearances to the sounds. It is a mean spirit indeed who will speak to a blind man other than in gentle friendliness; scolds who had given their husbands no peace sweetened their voices to Rhysling.

It populated his world with beautiful women and gracious men. Dark Star Passing, Berenice’s Hair, Death Song of a Wood’s Colt, and his other love songs of the wanderers, the womenless men of space, were the direct result of the fact that his conceptions were unsullied by tawdry truths. It mellowed his approach, changed his doggerel to verse, and sometimes even to poetry.

He had plenty of time to think now, time to get all the lovely words just so, and to worry a verse until it sang true in his head. The monotonous beat of Jet Song — When the field is clear, the reports all seen,

When the lock sighs shut, when the lights wink green, When the check-off’s done, when it’s time to pray, When the Captain nods, when she blasts away — Hear the jets!

Hear them snarl at your back When you’re stretched on the rack; Feel your ribs clamp your chest, Feel your neck grind its rest.

Feel the pain in your ship, Feel her strain in their grip. Feel her rise! Feel her drive! Straining steel, come alive, On her jets!

—came to him not while he himself was a jetman but later while he was hitch-hiking from Mars to Venus and sitting out a watch with an old shipmate.

At Venusburg he sang his new songs and some of the old, in the bars. Someone would start a hat around for him; it would come back with a minstrel’s usual take doubled or tripled in recognition of the gallant spirit behind the bandaged eyes.

It was an easy life. Any space port was his home and any ship his private carriage. No skipper cared to refuse to lift the extra mass of blind Rhysling and his squeeze box; he shuttled from Venusburg to Leyport to Drywater to New Shanghai, or back again, as the whim took him.

He never went closer to Earth than Supra-New York Space Station. Even when signing the contract for Songs of the Spaceways he made his mark in a cabin-class liner somewhere between Luna City and Ganymede. Horowitz, the original publisher, was aboard for a second honeymoon and heard Rhysling sing at a ship’s party. Horowitz knew a good thing for the publishing trade when he heard it; the entire contents of Songs were sung directly into the tape in the communications room of that ship before he let Rhysling out of his sight. The next three volumes were squeezed out of Rhysling at Venusburg, where Horowitz had sent an agent to keep him liquored up until he had sung all he could remember.

UP SHIP! is not certainly authentic Rhysling throughout. Much of it is Rhysling’s, no doubt, and Jet Song is unquestionably his, but most of the verses were collected after his death from people who had known him during his wanderings.

The Green Hills of Earth grew through twenty years. The earliest form we know about was composed before Rhysling was blinded, during a drinking bout with some of the indentured men on Venus. The verses were concerned mostly with the things the labor clients intended to do back on Earth if and when they ever managed to pay their bounties and thereby be allowed to go home. Some of the stanzas were vulgar, some were not, but the chorus was recognizably that of Green Hills.

We know exactly where the final form of Green Hills came from, and when.

There was a ship in at Venus Ellis Isle which was scheduled for the direct jump from there to Great Lakes, Illinois. She was the old Falcon, youngest of the Hawk class and the first ship to apply the Harriman Trust’s new policy of extra-fare express service between Earth cities and any colony with scheduled stops.

Rhysling decided to ride her back to Earth. Perhaps his own song had gotten under his skin — or perhaps he just hankered to see his native Ozark’s one more time.

The Company no longer permitted deadheads: Rhysling knew this but it never occurred to him that the ruling might apply to him. He was getting old, for a spaceman, and just a little matter of fact about his privileges. Not senile — he simply knew that he was one of the landmarks in space, along with Halley’s Comet, the Rings, and Brewster’s Ridge. He walked in the crew’s port, went below, and made himself at home in the first empty acceleration couch.

The Captain found him there while making a last minute tour of his ship. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Dragging it back to Earth, Captain.” Rhysling needed no eyes to see a skipper’s four stripes.

“You can’t drag in this ship; you know the rules. Shake a leg and get out of here. We raise ship at once.” The Captain was young; he had come up after Rhysling’s active time, but Rhysling knew the type — five years at Harriman Hall with only cadet practice trips instead of solid, deep space experience. The two men did not touch in background nor spirit; space was changing.

“Now, Captain, you wouldn’t begrudge an old man a trip home.”

The officer hesitated — several of the crew had stopped to listen. “I can’t do it. ‘Space PrecautionaryAct, Clause Six: No one shall enter space save as a licensed member of a crew of a chartered vessel, or as a paying passenger of such a vessel under such regulations as may be issued pursuant to this act.’ Up you get and out you go.”

Rhysling lolled back, his hands under his head. “If I’ve got to go, I’m damned if I’ll walk. Carry me.” The Captain bit his lip and said, “Master-at-Arms! Have this man removed.”

The ship’s policeman fixed his eyes on the overhead struts. “Can’t rightly do it, Captain. I’ve sprained my shoulder.” The other crew members, present a moment before, had faded into the bulkhead paint.

“Well, get a working party!”

“Aye, aye, sir.” He, too, went away.

Rhysling spoke again. “Now look, Skipper — let’s not have any hard feelings about this. You’ve got an out to carry me if you want to — the ‘Distressed Spaceman’ clause.”

“‘Distressed Spaceman’, my eye! You’re no distressed spaceman; you’re a space-lawyer. I know who you are; you’ve been bumming around the system for years. Well, you won’t do it in my ship. That clause was intended to succor men who had missed their ships, not to let a man drag free all over space.”

“Well, now, Captain, can you properly say I haven’t missed my ship? I’ve never been back home since my last trip as a signed-on crew member. The law says I can have a trip back.” “But that was years ago. You’ve used up your chance.”

“Have I now? The clause doesn’t say a word about how soon a man has to take his trip back; it just says he’s got it coming to him. Go look it up. Skipper. If I’m wrong, I’ll not only walk out on my two legs, I’ll beg your humble pardon in front of your crew. Go on — look it up. Be a sport.”

Rhysling could feel the man’s glare, but he turned and stomped out of the compartment. Rhysling knew that he had used his blindness to place the Captain in an impossible position, but this did not embarrass Rhysling — he rather enjoyed it.

Ten minutes later the siren sounded, he heard the orders on the bull horn for Up-Stations. When the soft sighing of the locks and the slight pressure change in his ears let him know that take-off was imminent he got up and shuffled down to the power room, as he wanted to be near the jets when they blasted off. He needed no one to guide him in any ship of the Hawk class.

Trouble started during the first watch. Rhysling had been lounging in the inspector’s chair, fiddling with the keys of his accordion and trying out a new version of Green Hills.

“Let me breathe unrationed air again

Where there’s no lack nor dearth”

And “something, something, something ‘Earth’” — it would not come out right. He tried again. “Let the sweet fresh breezes heal me

As they rove around the girth Of our lovely mother planet,

Of the cool green hills of Earth.”

That was better, he thought. “How do you like that, Archie?” he asked over the muted roar.

“Pretty good. Give out with the whole thing.” Archie Macdougal, Chief Jetman, was an old friend, both spaceside and in bars; he had been an apprentice under Rhysling many years and millions of miles back.

Rhysling obliged, then said, “You youngsters have got it soft. Everything automatic. When I was twisting her tail you had to stay awake.”

“You still have to stay awake.” They fell to talking shop and Macdougal showed him the direct response damping rig which had replaced the manual vernier control which Rhysling had used. Rhysling felt out the controls and asked questions until he was familiar with the new installation. It was his conceit that he was still a jetman and that his present occupation as a troubadour was simply an expedient during one of the fusses with the company that any man could get into.

“I see you still have the old hand damping plates installed,” he remarked, his agile fingers flitting over the equipment. “All except the links. I unshipped them because they obscure the dials.”

“You ought to have them shipped. You might need them.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think—” Rhysling never did find out what Macdougal thought for it was at that moment the trouble tore loose. Macdougal caught it square, a blast of radioactivity that burned him down where he stood.

Rhysling sensed what had happened. Automatic reflexes of old habit came out. He slapped the discover and rang the alarm to the control room simultaneously. Then he remembered the unshipped links. He had to grope until he found them, while trying to keep as low as he could to get maximum benefit from the baffles. Nothing but the links bothered him as to location. The place was as light to him as any place could be; he knew every spot, every control, the way he knew the keys of his accordion.

“Power room! Power room! What’s the alarm?”

“Stay out!” Rhysling shouted. “The place is ‘hot.’” He could feel it on his face and in his bones, like desert sunshine.

The links he got into place, after cursing someone, anyone, for having failed to rack the wrench he needed. Then he commenced trying to reduce the trouble by hand. It was a long job and ticklish. Presently he decided that the jet would have to be spilled, pile and all.

First he reported. “Control!” “Control aye aye!”

“Spilling jet three — emergency.” “Is this Macdougal?”

“Macdougal is dead. This is Rhysling, on watch. Stand by to record.”

There was no answer; dumbfounded the Skipper may have been, but he could not interfere in a power room emergency. He had the ship to consider, and the passengers and crew. The doors had to stay closed.

The Captain must have been still more surprised at what Rhysling sent for record. It was:

We rot in the molds of Venus,
We retch at her tainted breath. 
Foul are her flooded jungles, 
Crawling with unclean death.”

Rhysling went on cataloguing the Solar System as he worked, “—harsh bright soil of Luna—”,”—Saturn’s rainbow rings—”,”—the frozen night of Titan—”, all the while opening and spilling the jet and fishing it clean. He finished with an alternate chorus —

“We’ve tried each spinning space mote And reckoned its true worth:

Take us back again to the homes of men On the cool, green hills of Earth.”

—then, almost absentmindedly remembered to tack on his revised first verse:

“The arching sky is calling

Spacemen back to their trade. All hands! Stand by! Free falling! And the lights below us fade. Out ride the sons of Terra,

Far drives the thundering jet, Up leaps the race of Earthmen, Out, far, and onward yet—”

The ship was safe now and ready to limp home shy one jet. As for himself, Rhysling was not so sure. That “sunburn” seemed sharp, he thought. He was unable to see the bright, rosy fog in which he worked but he knew it was there.

He went on with the business of flushing the air out through the outer valve, repeating it several times to permit the level of radioaction to drop to something a man might stand under suitable armor.

While he did this he sent one more chorus, the last bit of authentic Rhysling that ever could be:

“We pray for one last landing On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies And the cool, green hills of Earth.”

The End

I do hope that you enjoyed this story. I have many more in my Fictional Stories Index here…

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The Liberation of Earth (Full Text) by William Tenn

This is the full text of a classic science fiction story called the “Liberation of Earth” by William Tenn. It was first published in the May 1953 issue of the Future Science Fiction monthly magazine, this amusing, insightful and thought-provoking satire of human pretentiousness in a galactic environment. Indeed; the Earth is invaded by warring very-superior, very-different and very-uncaring aliens, with very terrifying results. This was one of the best stories of the distinguished university professor Philip Klass (1920-2010). He was the author of some 60-odd excellent science-fiction stories, mostly under the pen-name of William Tenn.

LIBERATION OF EARTH

THIS, THEN is the story of our liberation. Suck air and grab clusters. Heigh-ho, here is the tale.

August was the month, a Tuesday in August. These words are meaningless now, so far have we progressed; but many things known and discussed by our primitive ancestors, our unliberated, unreconstructed forefathers, are devoid of sense to our free minds.

Still the tale must be told, with all of its incredible place-names and vanished points of reference.

Why must it be told? Have any of you a better thing to do? We have had water and weeds and lie in a valley of gusts. So rest, relax and listen. And suck air, suck air.

On a Tuesday in August, the ship appeared in the sky over France in a part of the world then known as Europe. Five miles long the ship was, and word has come down to us that it looked like an enormous silver cigar.

The tale goes on to tell of the panic and consternation among our forefathers when the ship abruptly materialized in the summer-blue sky. How they ran, how they shouted, how they pointed!
How they excitedly notified the United Nations, one of their chiefest institutions, that a strange metal craft of incredible size had materialized over their land. How they sent an order here to cause military aircraft to surround it with loaded weapons, gave instructions there for hastily-grouped scientists, with signaling apparatus, to approach it with friendly gestures. How, under the great ship, men with cameras took pictures of it; men with typewriters wrote stories about it; and men with concessions sold models of it.

All these things did our ancestors, enslaved and unknowing, do.
Then a tremendous slab snapped up in the middle of the ship and the first of the aliens stepped out in the complex tripodal gait that all humans were shortly to know and love so well. He wore a metallic garment to protect him from the effects of our atmospheric peculiarities, a garment of the opaque, loosely-folded type that these, the first of our liberators, wore throughout their stay on Earth.

Speaking in a language none could understand, but booming deafeningly through a huge mouth about halfway up his twenty-five feet of height, the alien discoursed for exactly one hour, waited politely for a response when he had finished, and, receiving none, retired into the ship.

That night; the first of our liberation! Or the first of our first liberation, should I say? That night, anyhow! Visualize our ancestors scurrying about their primitive intricacies: playing ice-hockey, televising, smashing atoms, red-baiting, conducting giveaway shows and signing affidavits—all the incredible minutiae that made the olden times such a frightful mass of cumulative detail in which to live—as compared with the breathless and majestic simplicity of the present.

THE BIG question, of course, was —what had the alien said? Had he called on the human race to surrender? Had he announced that he was on a mission of peaceful trade and, having made what he considered a reasonable offer—for, let us say, the north polar ice-cap—politely withdrawn so that we could discuss his terms among ourselves in relative privacy? Or, possibly, had he merely announced that he was the newly appointed ambassador to Earth from a friendly and intelligent race—and would we please direct him to the proper authority so that he might submit his credentials?

Not to know was quite maddening.

Since decision rested with the diplomats, it was the last possibility which was held, very late that night, to be most likely; and early the next morning, accordingly, a delegation from the United Nations waited under the belly of the motionless star-ship. The delegation had been instructed to welcome the aliens to the outermost limits of its collective linguistic ability. As an additional earnest of mankind’s friendly intentions, all military craft patrolling the air about the great ship were ordered to carry no more than one atom-bomb in their racks, and to fly a small white flag—along with the U.N. banner and their own national emblem.

Thus, did our ancestors face this, the ultimate challenge of history.

When the alien came forth a few hours later, the delegation stepped up to him, bowed, and, in the three official languages of the United Nations —English, French and Russian—asked him to consider this planet his home. He listened to them gravely, and then launched into his talk of the day before—which was evidently as highly charged with emotion and significance to him, as it was completely incomprehensible to the representatives of world government.

Fortunately, a cultivated young Indian member of the secretariat detected a suspicious similarity between the speech of the alien and an obscure Bengali dialect whose anomalies he had once puzzled over. The reason, as we all know now, was that the last time Earth had been visited by Aliens of this particular type, humanity’s most advanced civilization lay in a moist valley in Bengal; extensive dictionaries of that language had been written, so that speech with the natives of Earth would present no problem to any subsequent exploring-party.

However, I move ahead of my tale, as one who would munch on the succulent roots before the dryer stem. Let me rest and suck air for a moment. Heigh-ho, truly those were tremendous experiences for our kind.

You, sir, now you sit back and listen. You are not yet of an age to Tell the Tale. I remember, well enough do I remember how my father told it, and his father before him. You will wait your turn as I did; you will listen until too much high land between water holes blocks me off from life.

Then you may take your place in the juiciest weed-patch and, reclining gracefully between sprints, recite the great epic of our liberation to the carelessly exercising young.

PURSUANT to the young Hindu’s suggestions, the one professor of comparative linguistics in the world capable of understanding and conversing in this peculiar version of the dead dialect, was summoned from an academic convention in New York where he was reading a paper he had been working on for eighteen years: An Initial Study of Apparent Relationships Between Several Past Participles in Ancient Sanskrit and an Equal Number of Noun Substantives in Modern Szechuanese.

Yea, verily, all these things—and more, many more—did our ancestors in their besotted ignorance contrive to do. May we not count our freedoms indeed?

The disgruntled scholar, minus—as he kept insisting bitterly—some of his most essential word-lists, was flown by fastest jet to the area south of Nancy which, in those long-ago days, lay in the enormous black shadow of the alien space-ship.

Here he was acquainted with his task by the United Nations delegation, whose nervousness had not been allayed by a new and disconcerting development. Several more aliens had emerged from the ship carrying great quantities of immense, shimmering metal which they proceeded to assemble into something that was obviously a machine—though it was taller than any skyscraper man had ever built, and seemed to make noises to itself like a talkative and sentient creature. The first alien still stood courteously in the neighborhood of the profusely perspiring diplomats; ever and anon he would go through his little speech again, in a language that had been almost forgotten when the cornerstone of the library of Alexandria was laid. The men from the U.N. would reply, each one hoping desperately to make up for the alien’s lack of familiarity with his own tongue by such devices as hand-gestures and facial expressions. Much later, a commission of anthropologists and psychologists brilliantly pointed out the difficulties of such physical communication with creatures possessing—as these aliens did—five manual appendages and a single, unwinking compound eye of the type the insects rejoice in.

The problems and agonies of the professor as he was trundled about the world in the wake of the aliens, trying to amass a usable vocabulary in a language whose peculiarities he could only extrapolate from the limited samples supplied him by one who must inevitably speak it with the most outlandish of foreign accents—these vexations were minor indeed compared to the disquiet felt by the representatives of world government. They beheld the extra-terrestrial visitors move every day to a new site on their planet and proceed to assemble there a titanic structure of flickering metal which muttered nostalgically to itself, as if to keep alive the memory of those faraway factories which had given it birth.

True, there was always the alien who would pause in his evidently supervisory labors to release the set little speech; but not even the excellent manners he displayed, in listening to upwards of fifty-six replies in as many languages, helped dispel the panic caused whenever a human scientist, investigating the shimmering machines, touched a projecting edge and promptly shrank into a disappearing pinpoint. This, while not a frequent occurrence, happened often enough to cause chronic indigestion and insomnia among human administrators.

FINALLY, having used up most of his nervous-system as fuel, the professor collated enough of the language to make conversation possible. He—and, through him, the world—were thereupon told the following:

The aliens were members of a highly-advanced civilization which had spread its culture throughout the entire galaxy. Cognizant of the limitations of the as-yet-underdeveloped animals who had latterly become dominant upon Earth, they had placed us in a sort of benevolent ostracism. Until either we or our institutions would have evolved to a level permitting, say, at least associate membership in the galactic federation (under the sponsoring tutelage, for the first few millennia, of one of the older, more widespread and more important species in that federation)—until that time, all invasions of our privacy and ignorance —except for a few scientific expeditions conducted under conditions of great secrecy—had been strictly forbidden by universal agreement.

Several individuals who had violated this ruling—at great cost to our racial sanity, and enormous profit to our reigning religions—had been so promptly and severely punished that no known infringements had occurred for some time. Our recent growth-curve had been satisfactory enough to cause hopes that a bare thirty or forty centuries more would suffice to place us on applicant status with the federation.

Unfortunately, the peoples of this stellar community were many, and varied as greatly in their ethical outlook as their biological composition. Quite a few species lagged a considerable social distance behind the Dendi, as our visitors called themselves. One of these, a race of horrible, worm-like organisms known as the Troxxt—almost as advanced technologically as they were retarded in moral development—had suddenly volunteered for the position of sole and absolute ruler of the galaxy. They had seized control of several key suns, with their attendant planetary-systems, and, after a calculated decimation of the races thus captured, had announced their intention of punishing with a merciless extinction all species unable to appreciate from these object-lessons the value of unconditional surrender.

In despair, the galactic federation had turned to the Dendi, one of the oldest, most selfless, and yet most powerful of races in civilized space, and commissioned them—as the military arm of the federation—to hunt down the Troxxt, defeat them wherever they had gained illegal suzerainty, and destroy forever their power to wage war.

This order had come almost too late. Everywhere the Troxxt had gained so much the advantage of attack, that the Dendi were able to contain them only by enormous sacrifice. For centuries now, the conflict had careened across our vast island universe. In the course of it, densely-populated planets had been disintegrated; suns had been blasted into novae; and whole groups of stars ground Into swirling cosmic dust. A temporary stalemate had been reached a short while ago, and—reeling and breathless—both sides were using the lull to strengthen weak spots in their perimeter.

Thus, the Troxxt had finally moved into the till-then peaceful section of space that contained our solar-system —among others. They were thoroughly uninterested in our tiny planet with its meager resources; nor did they care much for such celestial neighbors as Mars or Jupiter. They established their headquarters on a planet of Proxima Centaurus—the star nearest our own sun—and proceeded to consolidate their offensive-defensive network between Rigel and Aldebaran. At this point in their explanation, the Dendi pointed out, the exigencies of interstellar strategy tended to become too complicated for anything but three-dimensional maps; let us here accept the simple statement, they suggested, that it became immediately vital for them to strike rapidly, and make the Troxxt position on Proxima Centaurus untenable—to establish a base inside their lines of communication.

The most likely spot for such a base was Earth.

THE DENDI apologized profusely for intruding on our development, an intrusion which might cost us dear in our delicate developmental state. But, as they explained—in impeccable pre-Bengali—before their arrival we had, in effect, become (all unknowingly) a satrapy of the awful Troxxt. We could now consider ourselves liberated.

We thanked them much for that.

Besides, their leader pointed out proudly, the Dendi were engaged in a war for the sake of civilization itself, against an enemy so horrible, so obscene in its nature, and so utterly filthy in its practices, that it was unworthy of the label of intelligent life. They were fighting, not only for themselves, but for every loyal member of the galactic federation; for every small and helpless species; for every obscure race too weak to defend itself against a ravaging conqueror. Would humanity stand aloof from such a conflict?

There was just a slight bit of hesitation as the information was digested. Then—“No!” humanity roared back through such mass-communication media as television, newspapers, reverberating jungle drums and mule-mounted backwoods messenger. “We will not stand aloof! We will help you destroy this menace to the very fabric of civilization! Just tell us what you want us to do!”

Well, nothing in particular, the aliens replied with some embarrassment. Possibly in a little while there might be something—several little things, in fact—which could be quite useful; but, for the moment, if we would concentrate on not getting in their way when they serviced their gun-mounts, they would be very grateful, really…

This reply tended to create a small amount of uncertainty among the two billion of Earth’s human population. For several days afterwards, there was a planet-wide tendency—the legend has come down to us—of people failing to meet each other’s eyes, an evident discomfort in looking at any other person directly.

But then Man rallied from this substantial punch to his pride. He would be useful, be it ever so humbly. to the race which had liberated him from potential subjugation by the ineffably ugly Troxxt. For this, let us remember well our ancestors! Let us hymn their sincere efforts amid their ignorance!

All standing armies, all air and sea fleets, were reorganized into guard-patrols around the Dendi weapons: no human might approach within two miles of the murmuring machinery, without a pass counter-signed by the Dendi. Since they were never known to sign such a pass during the entire period of their stay on this planet, however, this loophole-provision was never exercised as far as is known; and the immediate neighborhood of the extraterrestrial weapons became and remained thenceforth antiseptically free of two-legged creatures.

COOPERATION with our liberators took precedence over all other human activities. The order of the day was a slogan first given voice by a Harvard Professor of Government in a querulous radio round-table on “Man’s Place in a Somewhat Over-Civilized Universe.”

“Let us forget our individual egos and collective conceits,” the professor cried at one point. “Let us subordinate everything—to the end that the freedom of the Solar System in general, and Earth in particular, must and shall be preserved!”

Despite—and possibly because of—its mouth-filling qualities, this slogan was repeated everywhere.

Still, it was difficult sometimes to know exactly what the Dendi wanted—partly because of the limited number of interpreters of the only Earth-tongue the aliens knew, that were available to the heads of the various sovereign states, and partly because of their leader’s tendency to vanish into his ship after ambiguous and equivocal statements—such as the curt admonition to “Evacuate Washington!”

On that occasion, both the Secretary of State and the American President, himself, perspired through five hours of a July day in all the silk-hatted, stiff-collared, dark-suited diplomatic regalia that the barbaric past demanded of political leaders who would deal with the representatives of another people. They waited and wilted beneath the enormous ship—which no human had ever been invited to enter, despite the wistful hints constantly thrown out by university professors and aeronautical designers—they waited patiently and wetly for the Dendi leader to emerge and let them know whether he had meant the State of Washington or Washington, D. C.

The tale comes down to us at this point as a tale of glory. The capitol building taken apart in a few days, and set up almost intact in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains; the missing Archives, that were later to turn up in the Children’s Room of a Public Library in Duluth, Iowa; the bottles of Potomac River water carefully borne westward and ceremoniously poured into the circular concrete ditch built around the President’s mansion (from which unfortunately it was to evaporate within a week because of the relatively low humidity of the region)—all these are proud moments in the galactic history of our species, from which not even the later knowledge that the Dendi wished to build no gun-site on the spot, nor even an ammunition dump, but merely a recreation-hall for their troops, could remove any of the grandeur of our determined cooperation and most willing sacrifice.

There is no denying, however, that the ego of our race was greatly damaged by the discovery, in the course of a routine journalistic interview, that the aliens totaled no more powerful a group than a squad; and that their leader, instead of the great scientist and key military-strategist that we might justifiably have expected the Galactic Federation to furnish for the protection of Terra, ranked as the interstellar equivalent of a buck sergeant.

That the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and the Navy, had waited in such obeisant fashion upon a mere non-commissioned officer was hard for us to swallow; but that the impending Battle of Earth was to have a historical dignity only slightly higher than that of a patrol action was impossibly humiliating.

AND THEN there was the matter of “lendi.”

The aliens, while installing or servicing their planet-wide weapon system, would occasionally fling aside an evidently-unusable fragment of the talking metal. Separated from the machine of which it had been a component, the substance seemed to lose all those qualities which were deleterious to mankind and retain several which were quite useful indeed. For example, if a portion of the strange material were attached to any terrestrial metal—and insulated carefully, with standard dielectrics, from contact with other substances—it would, in a few hours, itself become exactly the metal that it touched, whether that happened to be zinc, gold or pure uranium.

This stuff—”lendi”, men had heard the aliens call it—was shortly in frantic demand in an economy ruptured by constant and unexpected emptyings of its most important industrial-centers.
Everywhere the aliens went, to and from their weapon-sites, hordes of ragged humans stood chanting—well outside the two-mile limit— “Any lendi, Dendi?”

All attempts by law-enforcement agencies of the planet to put a stop to this shameless, wholesale begging were useless—especially since the Dendi themselves seemed to get some unexplainable pleasure out of scattering tiny pieces of lendi to the scrabbling multitude. When policemen and soldiery began to join the trampling, murderous dash to the corner of the meadows, wherein had fallen the highly-versatile and garrulous metal, governments gave up.

Mankind almost began to hope for the attack to come, so that it would be relieved of the festering consideration of its own patent inferiorities. A few of the more fanatically-conservative among our ancestors probably even began to regret liberation.

They did, children; they did! Let us hope that these would-be troglodytes were among the very first to be dissolved and melted down by the red flame-balls. One cannot, after all, turn one’s back on progress!

Two days before the month of September was over, the aliens announced that they had detected activity upon one of the moons of Saturn. The Troxxt were evidently threading their treacherous way inward through the solar system. Considering their vicious and deceitful propensities, the Dendi warned, an attack from these worm-like monstrosities might be expected at any moment.

Few humans went to sleep as the night rolled up to and past the meridian on which they dwelt. Almost all eyes were lifted to a sky carefully denuded of clouds by watchful Dendi. There was a brisk trade in cheap telescopes and bits of smoked glass in some sections of the planet; while other portions experienced a substantial boom in spells and charms of the all-inclusive, or omnibus, variety.

THE TROXXT attacked in three cylindrical black ships simultaneously; one in the Southern Hemisphere, and two in the Northern. Great gouts of green flame roared out of their tiny craft; and everything that this flame touched imploded into a translucent, glass-like sand. No Dendi was hurt by these, however, and from each of the now-writhing gun-mounts there bubbled forth a series of scarlet clouds which pursued the Troxxt hungrily, until forced by a dwindling velocity to fall back upon Earth.

Here they had an unhappy after-effect. Any populated area into which these pale pink cloudlets chanced to fall was rapidly transformed into a cemetery—a cemetery, if the truth be told as it has been handed down to us, that had more the odor of the kitchen than the grave. The inhabitants of these unfortunate localities were subjected to enormous increases of temperature. Their skin reddened, then blackened; their hair and nails shriveled; their very flesh turned into liquid and boiled off their bones. Altogether a disagreeable way for one-tenth of the human race to die.

The only consolation was the capture of a black cylinder by one of the red clouds. When, as a result of this, it had turned white-hot and poured its substance down in the form of a metallic rainstorm, the two ships assaulting the Northern Hemisphere abruptly retreated to the asteroids into which the Dendi—because of severely-limited numbers—steadfastly refused to pursue them.

In the next twenty-four hours the aliens—resident aliens, let us say—held conferences, made repairs to their weapons and commiserated with us. Humanity buried its dead. This last was a custom of our forefathers that was most worthy of note; and one that has not, of course, survived into modern times.

By the time the Troxxt returned, Man was ready for them. He could not, unfortunately, stand to arms as he most ardently desired to do; but he could and did stand to optical instrument and conjurer’s oration.

Once more the little red clouds burst joyfully into the upper reaches of the stratosphere; once more the green flames wailed and tore at the chattering spires of lendi; once more men died by the thousands in the boiling backwash of war. But this time, there was a slight difference: the green flames of the Troxxt abruptly changed color after the engagement had lasted three hours; they became darker, more bluish. And, as they did so, Dendi after Dendi collapsed at his station and died in convulsions.

The call for retreat was evidently sounded. The survivors fought their way to the tremendous ship in which they had come. With an explosion from her stern jets that blasted a red-hot furrow southward through France, and kicked Marseilles into the Mediterranean, the ship roared into space and fled home ignominiously.

Humanity steeled itself for the coming ordeal of horror under the Troxxt.

THEY WERE truly worm-like in form. As soon as the two night-black cylinders had landed, they strode, from their ships, their tiny segmented bodies held off the ground by a complex harness supported by long and slender metal crutches. They erected a dome-like fort around each ship—one in Australia and one in the Ukraine—captured the few courageous individuals who had ventured close to their landing-sites, and disappeared back into the dark craft with their squirming prizes.

While some men drilled about nervously in the ancient military patterns, others poured anxiously over scientific texts and records pertaining to the visit of the Dendi—in the desperate hope of finding a way of preserving terrestrial independence against this ravening conqueror of the star-spattered galaxy.

And yet all this time, the human captives inside the artificially-darkened spaceships (the Troxxt, having no eyes, not only had little use for light but the more sedentary individuals among them actually found such radiation disagreeable to their sensitive, unpigmented skins) were not being tortured for information—nor vivisected in the earnest quest of same on a slightly higher level—but educated.

Educated in the Troxxtian language, that is.

True it was that a large number found themselves utterly inadequate for the task which the Troxxt had set them, and temporarily became servants to the more successful students. And another, albeit smaller, group developed various forms of frustration hysteria—ranging from mild unhappiness to complete catatonic depression—over the difficulties presented by a language whose every verb was irregular, and whose myriads of prepositions were formed by noun-adjective combinations derived from the subject of the previous sentence. But, eventually, eleven human beings were released, to blink madly in the sunlight as certified interpreters of Troxxt.

These liberators, it seemed, had never visited Bengal in the heyday of its millennia-past civilization.

Yes, these liberators For the Troxxt had landed on the sixth day of the ancient, almost mythical, month of October. And October the Sixth is, of course, the Holy Day of the Second Liberation. Let us remember, let us revere. If only we could figure out which day it is on our calendar!

THE TALE the interpreters told caused men to hang their heads in shame and gnash their teeth at the deception they had allowed the Dendi to practice upon them.

True, the Dendi had been commissioned by the Galactic Federation to hunt the Troxxt down and destroy them. This was largely because the Dendi were the Galactic Federation. One of the first intelligent arrivals on the interstellar scene, the huge creatures had organized a vast police-force to protect them and their power against any contingency of revolt that might arise in the future. This police-force was ostensibly a congress of all thinking lifeforms throughout the galaxy; actually, it was an efficient means of keeping them under rigid control.

Most species thus-far discovered were docile and tractable, however; the Dendi had been ruling from time immemorial, said they—very well, then, let the Dendi continue to rule. Did it make that much difference?

But, throughout the centuries, opposition to the Dendi grew—and the nuclei of the opposition were the protoplasm-based creatures. What, in fact, had come to be known as the Protoplasmic League.
Though small in number, the creatures whose life-cycles were derived from the chemical and physical properties of protoplasm varied greatly in size, structure and specialization. A galactic community deriving the main wells of its power from them would be a dynamic instead of a static place, where extra-galactic travel would be encouraged—instead of being inhibited, as it was at present because of Dendi fears of meeting a superior civilization. It would be a true democracy of species—a real biological republic—where creatures of adequate intelligence and cultural development would enjoy a control of their destinies at present experienced by the silicon-based Dendi alone.

To this end, the Troxxt—the only important race which had steadfastly refused the complete surrender of armaments demanded of all members of the Federation—had been implored by a minor member of the Protoplasmic League to rescue it from the devastation which the Dendi intended to visit upon it, as punishment for an unlawful exploratory excursion outside the boundaries of the galaxy.

Faced with the determination of the Troxxt to defend their cousins in organic chemistry, and the suddenly-aroused hostility of at least two-thirds of the interstellar peoples, the Dendi had summoned a rump meeting of the Galactic Council; declared a state of revolt in being; and proceeded to cement their disintegrating rule with the blasted life-forces of a hundred worlds. The Troxxt, hopelessly out-numbered and out-equipped, had been able to continue the struggle only because of the great ingenuity and selflessness of other members of the Protoplasmic League, who had risked extinction to supply them with newly-developed secret weapons.

Hadn’t we guessed the nature of the beast from the enormous precautions it had taken to prevent the exposure of any part of its body to the intensely-corrosive at m o s p h e r e of Earth? Surely the seamless, barely-translucent suits which our recent visitors had worn for every moment of their stay on our world should have made us suspect a body-chemistry developed from complex silicon compounds rather than those of carbon?

Humanity hung its collective head and admitted that the suspicion had never occurred to it.

Well, the Troxxt admitted generously, we were extremely inexperienced and possibly a little too trusting. Put it down to that. Our naivety, however costly to them—our liberators—would not be allowed to deprive us of that complete citizenship which the Troxxt were claiming as the birthright of all.

But as for our leaders, our probably-corrupted, certainly irresponsible leaders…

THE FIRST executions of U.N. officials, heads of states and pre-Bengali interpreters as “Traitors to Protoplasm”—after some of the lengthiest and most nearly-perfectly-fair trials in the history of Earth—were held a week after G-J Day, the inspiring occasion on which—amidst gorgeous ceremonies—humanity was invited to join, first the Protoplasmic League and thence the New and Democratic Galactic Federation of All Species, All Races.

Nor was that all.

Whereas the Dendi had contemptuously shoved us to one side as they went about their business of making our planet safe for tyranny, and had—in all probability—built special devices which made the very touch of their weapons fatal for us, the Troxxt—with the sincere friendliness which had made their name a byword for democracy and decency wherever living creatures came together among the stars—our Second Liberators, as we lovingly called them, actually preferred to have us help them with the intensive, accelerating labor of planetary defense.

So men’s intestines dissolved under the invisible glare of the forces used to assemble the new, incredibly-complex weapons; men sickened and died, in scrabbling hordes, inside the mines which the Troxxt had declared were deeper than any we had dug hitherto; men’s bodies broke open and exploded in the undersea oil-drilling sites which the Troxxt had declared were essential.

Children’s schooldays were requested, too, in such collecting drives as “Platinum Scrap for Procyon” and “Radioactive Debris for Deneb.” Housewives also were implored to save on salt whenever possible—this substance being useful to the Troxxt in literally dozens of incomprehensible ways—and colorful posters reminded: “Don’t salinate—sugarfy!”

And over all—courteously caring for us like an intelligent parent—were our mentors, taking their giant supervisory strides on metallic crutches, while their pale little bodies lay curled in the hammocks that swung from each paired length of shining leg.

Truly, even in the midst of a complete economic paralysis caused by the concentration of all major productive facilities on other-worldly armaments and despite the anguished cries of those suffering from peculiar industrial injuries which our medical men were totally unequipped to handle, in the midst of all this mind-wracking disorganization, it was yet very exhilarating to realize that we had taken our lawful place in the future government of the galaxy and were even now helping to make the Universe Safe for Democracy.

BUT THE Dendi returned to smash this idyll. They came in their huge, silvery space-ships and the Troxxt, barely warned in time, just managed to rally under the blow and fight back in kind. Even so, the Troxxt ship in the Ukraine was almost immediately forced to flee to its base in the depths of space. After three days, the only Troxxt on Earth were the devoted members of a little band guarding the ship in Australia. They proved, in three or more months, to be as difficult to remove from the face of our planet as the continent itself; and since there was now a state of close and hostile siege, with the Dendi on one side of the globe, and the Troxxt on the other, the battle assumed frightful proportions.

Seas boiled; whole steppes burned away; the climate itself shifted and changed under the grueling pressure of the cataclysm. By the time the Dendi solved the problem, the planet Venus had been blasted from the skies in the course of a complicated battle-maneuver, and Earth had wobbled over as orbital substitute.

The solution was simple: since the Troxxt were too firmly-based on the small continent to be driven away; the numerically-superior Dendi brought up enough fire-power to disintegrate all of Australia into an ash that muddied the Pacific. This occurred on the twenty-fourth of June, the Holy Day of First Reliberation.

A day of reckoning for what remained of the human race, however.

How could we have been so naive, the Dendi wanted to know, as to be taken in by the chauvinistic pro-protoplasm propaganda?

Surely, if physical characteristics were to be the criteria of our racial empathy, we would not orient ourselves on a narrow chemical basis! The Dendi life-plasma was based on silicon instead of carbon, true, but did not vertebrates—appendaged vertebrates, at that, such as we and the Dendi—have infinitely more in common, in spite of a minor biochemical difference or two, than vertebrates and legless, armless, slime-crawling creatures who happened, quite accidentally, to possess an identical organic substance?

As for this fantastic picture of life in the galaxy… Well! The Dendi shrugged their quintuple shoulders as they went about the intricate business of erecting their noisy weapons all ever the rubble of our planet. Had we ever seen a representative of these protoplasmic races the Troxxt were supposedly protecting? No, nor would we. For as soon as a race—animal, vegetable or mineral—developed enough to constitute even a potential danger to the sinuous aggressors, its civilization was systematically dismantled by the watchful Troxxt. We were in so primitive a state that they had not considered it at all risky to allow us the outward seeming of full participation.

Could we say we had learned a single useful piece of information about Troxxt technology—for all of the work we had done on their machines, for all of the lives we had lost in the process? No, of course not! We had merely contributed our mite to the enslavement of far-off races who had done us no harm.

There was much that we had cause to feel guilty about, the Dendi told us gravely—once the few surviving interpreters of the pre-Bengali dialect had crawled out of hiding. But our collective onus was as nothing compared to that borne by “vermicular collaborationists”—those traitors who had supplanted our martyred former leaders. And then there were the unspeakable individual humans who had had linguistic traffic with creatures destroying a two-million-year-old galactic peace!

Why, killing was almost too good for them, the Dendi murmured as they killed them.

WHEN THE Troxxt ripped their way back into possession of Earth some eighteen months later, bringing us the sweet fruits of the Second Reliberation—as well as a complete and most convincing rebuttal of the Dendi—there were few humans found who were to accept with any real enthusiasm the responsibilities of newly-opened and highly-paid positions in language, science and government.

Of course, since the Troxxt, in order to reliberate Earth, had found it necessary to blast a tremendous chunk out of the northern hemisphere, there were very few humans to be found. in the first place…

Even so, many of these committed suicide rather than assume the title of Secretary-General of the United Nations when the Dendi came back for the glorious Re-Reliberation, a short time after that. This was the liberation, by the way, which swept the deep collar of matter off our planet, and gave it what our forefathers came to call a pear-shaped look.

Possibly it was at this time—possibly a liberation or so later—that the Troxxt and the Dendi discovered the Earth had become far too eccentric in its orbit to possess the minimum safety conditions demanded of a Combat Zone. The battle, therefore, zig-zagged coruscatingly and murderously away in the direction of Aldebaran.

That was nine generations ago, but the tale that has been handed down from parent to child, to child’s child, has lost little in the telling. You hear it now from me almost exactly as I heard it. From my father I heard it as I ran with him from water-puddle to distant water-puddle, across the searing heat of yellow sand. From my mother I heard it as we sucked air and frantically grabbed at clusters of thick green weed, whenever the planet beneath us quivered in omen of a geological spasm that might bury us in its burned-out body, or a cosmic gyration that threatened to fling us into empty space.

Yes, even as we do now did we do then, telling the same tale, running the same frantic race across miles of unendurable heat for food and water; fighting the same savage battles with the giant rabbits for each other’s carrion—and always, ever and always, sucking desperately at the precious air. which leaves our world in greater quantities with every mad twist of its orbit.
Naked, hungry and thirsty came we into the world, and naked, hungry and thirsty do we scamper our lives out upon it, under the huge and never-changing sun.

The same tale it is, and the same traditional ending it has as that I had from my father and his father before him. Suck air, grab clusters and hear the last holy observation of our history:
“Looking about us, we can say with pardonable pride that we have been about as thoroughly liberated as it is possible for a race and a planet to be!”

The End

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