Tal-Karanth, Supreme Executive of Tharnar, signed the paper and dropped it in to the out-going slot of the message dispatch tube. It was an act that would terminate one hundred and eighty days of studying the tapes and records on the Terran ship and would set the final hearing of the Terran man and woman for that day.

And, since the Terrans were guilty, their execution would take place before the sun rose again on Tharnar.

He went to the wide windows which had automatically opened with the coming of the day's warmth and looked out across the City. The City had a name, to be found in the books and tapes of history, but for fifty thousand years it had been known as the City. It was the city of all cities, the center and soul of Tharnarian civilization. It was a city of architectural beauty, of flowered gardens and landscaped parks, a city of five hundred centuries of learning, a city of eternal peace.

The gentle summer breeze brought the sweet scent of the flowering lana trees through the window and the familiar sound of the City as it went about its day's routine; a sound soft and unhurried, like a slow whisper. Peace for fifty thousand years; peace and the unhurried quiet. It would always be so for the City. The Supreme Executives of the past had been chosen for their ability to insure the safety of the City and so had he.

He turned away from the window and back to his desk, to brush his hand across the gleaming metal top of it. No faintest scratch marred the eternalloy surface, although the desk had been there for more than thirty thousand years. It was permanent and never-changing, like the robot-operated fleet that guarded Tharnar, like the white and massive Executive Building, like the way of life on Tharnar.

The Terrans would have to die, lest the peace and the way of life on Tharnar be destroyed. They were of a young race; a race so young that his desk had already been in place for fifteen thousand years when they began emerging from their caves. They were a dangerously immature race; it had been only three hundred years since their last war with themselves. Three hundred years—three normal Tharnarian lifetimes. And the Tharnarians had not known war for six hundred lifetimes.

A race so young could not possess a civilized culture. The Terrans were—he searched for a suitable description—barbarians in spaceships. They lacked the refinement and wisdom of the Tharnarians; they were a dangerous and unpredictable race. It could be seen in their history; could be seen in the way the two Terrans had reacted to their capture.

He pressed one of the many buttons along the edge of his desk and a three-dimensional projection appeared; the scene that had taken place one hundred and eighty days before when the Terrans were brought to Tharnar.

The ship of the Terrans stood bright silver in the sunlight, slim and graceful against the bulk of the Executive Building behind it. The Terrans descended the boarding ramp, the left wrist of the man chained to the right wrist of the girl. Two armed robots walked behind them, their faces metallically impassive, and four armed Tharnarian guards waited at the bottom of the ramp to help take the Terrans to their place of imprisonment.

The Terrans approached the guards with a watchfulness that reminded him of the old films of the coast wolves that had once lived on Vendal. They did not walk with the studied, practiced, leisure of the Tharnarians but as though they held some unknown vitality barely in check. The face of the man was lean and hard, the black eyes inscrutable as flint. The girl looked at the guards with a bold nonchalance, as though they were really not formidable at all. Somehow, by contrast with the Terrans, the guards appeared to be not grimly vigilant but only colorless.

There seemed to be a menace in the way the man watched the guards; there was the impression that he would overpower them and sieze their weapons if given a shadow of a chance. And the girl—what would she do, then? Would she flash in beside him to help him, as the female coast wolves always helped their mates?

He switched off the projection, feeling a little repugnance at the thought of executing the Terrans. They were living, sentient beings, and intelligent, for all their lack of civilization. It would have been better if they had been of some repulsive and alien physical form, such as bloated, many-legged giant insects. But they were not at all repulsive; they were exactly like the Tharnarians.

Exactly?

He shook his head. Not exactly. The similarity was only to the eye—and not even to the eye when one looked closely, as he had looked at the images. There was a potential violence about them, lurking close beneath their deceptively Tharnarian physical appearance. The Terrans were not like the Tharnarians. There was a difference of fifty thousand years between them; the difference between savage barbarianism and a great and peaceful civilization.

He looked again across the City, listening to its softly murmuring voice. In hundreds of centuries the City had known no strife or violence. But what if the barbarians should come, not two of them, but thousands? What would they do?

He was sure he knew what they would do to the gentle, peaceful City and the faint twinge of remorse at the thought of executing the Terran man and girl paled into insignificance.

Under no circumstance could they be permitted to live and tell the others of Tharnar and the City.

Bob Randall shifted his position a little in the wide seat and the chain that linked his wrist with Virginia's rattled metallically, sounding unduly loud in the quiet of the room.

Virginia's black hair brushed his cheek as she turned her face up to him, to ask in a whisper so low it could not be heard by the four guards who stood beside and behind them:

"It's almost over, isn't it?"

He nodded and she turned her attention back to the five judges seated at the row of five desks before them. The gray-haired one at the center desk, Bob knew, was the one in charge of the proceedings and his name was Vor-Dergal. He had gained the knowledge by watching and listening and it was the only information he had acquired. He did not know the names of the other four judges, nor even for sure that they were judges and that it was a trial. There had been no introductions by the Tharnarians, no volunteering of information.

Vor-Dergal spoke to them:

"In brief, the facts are these: You claim that your mission was of a scientific nature, that the two of you were sent from Earth to try to reach the center of the galaxy where you hoped to find data concerning the creation of the galaxy. Your ship carried only the two of you and is one of several such ships sent out on such missions. Since the voyages of these small exploration ships were expected to require an indefinite number of years and since the occupants would have to endure each other's company for those years, your government thought it more feasable to let the crew of each ship consist of a man and a woman, rather than two men."

He saw Virginia's cheek quiver at the words, but she managed to restrain the smile.

"Our system was reached in your journey," Vor-Dergal continued, "and you swung aside to investigate our sister planet, Vendal. You were met by a guard ship before reaching Vendal and it fired upon you. Instead of turning back, you destroyed it with a tight-beam adaptation of your meteor disintegrator."

Vor-Dergal waited questioningly and Bob said:

"Our instruments showed us that the guard ship was robot-operated. They could discern nothing organic in the ship, nothing alive. The same instruments showed us that this planet, Vendal, possessed operating mines and factories and no organic life other than small animals. We knew that machines neither voluntarily build factories nor reproduce other machines, yet the mines and factories were operating. We thought it might be a world where the inhabitants had all died for some reason and the robots were still following the production orders given them when the race lived."

"And so you wilfully destroyed the guard ship that would have turned you back?"

"We did. It was a machine, operated by machines. And so far as we knew, it was protecting a race that had died a thousand years before. It was all a mystery and we wanted to find the answer to it."

Vor-Dergal and the others accepted the explanation without change of expression. Vor-Dergal resumed:

"Three more guard ships appeared when you were near Vendal. In the battle that followed, you severely damaged one of them. And when your ship was finally caught in the guard cruiser's tractor beams, you resisted the robots. When they boarded your ship, you destroyed several of them and were subdued only when the compartments of your ship were flooded with a disabling gas."

"That's true," Bob said.

"In summary: You deliberately invaded Tharnarian territory, deliberately damaged and destroyed Tharnarian ships, and would have landed on Vendal had the guard ships not prevented it.

"Your guilt is both evident and admitted. Are there any extenuating circumstances that have not been presented at this hearing?"

"No," Bob said.

None had been presented all day for the good reason that there was not a single factor of the circumstances that the Tharnarians would consider extenuating.

"Your guilt was evident from the beginning," Vor-Dergal said. "We have spent the past one hundred and eighty days in studying the books and tapes in your ship. What we learned of your history and your form of civilization leaves us no alternative in the sentence we must pass upon you."

The chain clinked faintly as Virginia lifted her hand to lay it on his arm and she gave him a quick glance that said, " Here it comes! "

Vor-Dergal pronounced sentence upon them:

"Tomorrow morning, at thirty-three twelve time, you will both be put to death by a robot firing squad."

Virginia's breath stopped for a moment and her hand gripped his arm with sudden pressure but she gave no other indication of emotion and her eyes did not waver from Vor-Dergal's face.

Vor-Dergal looked past her to the guards. "Return them to their cell."

The guards produced another chain, to link their free arms together behind their backs, and they were marched across the room and out the door.

Outside, the sun was setting, already invisible behind a low-lying cloud. Bob calculated the designated time of their execution in relation to the Terran time as given by his watch and found that thirty-three twelve would be about halfway between daylight and sunrise.

Tal-Karanth stood by the open windows and watched the guards return the Terrans to their cell. Extra guards, both robot and Tharnarian, had been posted inside and outside the prison building for the night to prevent any possibility of an escape. Other robots stood guard around the Terran ship, although it was inconceivable that the Terrans could ever overpower the prison guards and reach their ship.

But it had been inconceivable that a ship as small as the Terran ship could ever destroy a Tharnarian guard cruiser. The tight-beam adaptation circuit of the meteor disintegrators was very ingenious.

Why had the Tharnarian cruisers not had the same weapon? They possessed the same general type of meteor disintegrators; the same adaptation circuit would transform a Tharnarian cruiser's meteor disintegrators into terrible weapons. Why had no one ever thought of doing such a thing? Why had it been taken for granted for fifty thousand years that the cruiser's blasters were the ultimate in weapons?

What other weapons did the Terrans on Earth possess? How invincible would their cruisers be if a small exploration ship could destroy a Tharnarian cruiser?

The captive Terrans could not be permitted to return to Earth and tell the others of Tharnar. Neither could they be permitted to live out their lives in prison on Tharnar. Someday, somehow, they might escape and return to Earth, or send a message to Earth. The robot fleet of Tharnar could never withstand an attack by a Terran fleet; the fate of Tharnar and the quiet and gentle City would be written in blood and dust and ashes.

There was the sound of rubber-padded metal feet in the distance and he saw six more robots marching out to add their numbers to the robots already guarding the Terran ship. The ship, itself, was not far from the Executive Building; close enough that his eyes, still sharp despite his seventy years, could make out the name on it: The Cat .

The Cat. And a cat was—he recalled the definition to be found among the Terran books— any of various species of carnivorous and predatory animals, noted for their stealth and quickness, and their ferocity when angered .

The robot shoved the plastic food tray under the cell door and went back down the corridor. Virginia turned away from the single window, where The Cat could be seen as a silhouette merging into the darkness.

"Last supper, Bob," she said. "Let's eat, drink, and be merry."

He went to the door to get the tray and noticed the three robots and two Tharnarian guards down the left hand stretch of corridor and the same number down the right. Virginia came up beside and said, "They're not taking any chances we won't be here in the morning, are they?"

"No," he said, picking up the tray. "None to speak of."

He carried the tray to the little table in the center of the room and Virginia seated herself across from him as she had done each meal for the past six months. But she toyed with the plastic spoon and did not begin to eat at once.

"I wonder why they made it a firing squad?" she asked. "You'd think they would have used something ultra-civilized and refined, such as some painless and flower-scented gas."

"Spies were executed with firing squads during the last Terran war, three hundred years ago," he said. He smiled thinly. "I suppose they consider us spies and want us to feel at home in the morning."

"I'm glad they do. I don't want it to be shut up in a room—I would rather be out under the open sky." She poked at the rim of her tray again. "They never did tell us why, Bob. They didn't tell us anything, only that they had no alternative. We didn't hurt any Tharnarians; we only destroyed one of their ships and some of their robots."

"We upset their sense of security and showed them they're not secure at all. I suppose they're afraid of an attack from Earth."

"They didn't tell us anything," she said again. "They act as though we were animals."

"No," he said, "they don't seem to have a very high opinion of our low position on the social evolution scale."

He began to eat in the manner of one who knows the body needs nourishment to take advantage of any opportunity for escape, even though the mind may be darkly certain that no such opportunity shall arise.

"You ought to eat a little, Ginny," he said.

She tried, and gave up after a few bites.

"I guess I'm just not hungry—not now," she said. She glanced at the darkened window where The Cat had become invisible. "How long until daylight again, Bob?"

He looked at his watch. "Seven hours."

"Seven hours?" A touch of wistfulness came into her voice. "I never noticed, before, how short the nights are."

The robot laid the material Tal-Karanth had requested on his desk, the records and tapes from the Terran ship, and withdrew. Tal-Karanth sighed wearily as he inserted the first tape in the projector, wondering again why he felt the vague dissatisfaction and wondering why he hoped to find an answer among the material from the Terran ship. It would be an all night task—and he could hardly expect to find more than he already knew. Tharnar was not safe and secure from discovery by Terrans in the years to come and faith in the robot fleet had been an illusion.

Before setting the projector in operation he put through a call to his daughter.

Thralna's image appeared before him, reclining on a couch while two robots worked at caring for her finger nails. She raised up a little as his image appeared before her and the robots stepped back.

"Yes, Father?" she asked.

She waited for him to speak, her wide gray eyes on his image and her jet-black curls framing her young and delicately beautiful face. For a moment she reminded him of someone; someone more mature and stronger—

With something of a shock he realized it was the Terran girl his daughter reminded him of; that the Terran girl seemed the more mature of the two although Thralna was twenty-eight and the Terran girl was twenty-one. They had the same gray eyes and black curls, the same curve to the jaw, the same chin and full lips....

But the similarity was only incidental. There was a grace and a gentleness to Thralna's beauty; a grace and gentleness that was the result of fifty thousand years of civilization. Beneath the superficial beauty of the barbarian girl lay only an animal-like vitality and potential violence....

"Yes, Father?" Thralna asked again in her carefully modulated voice.

"Are you going to the theatre tonight, Thralna?"

"Yes. Tonight's play was written by D'ret-Thon and it's supposed to be almost as good as one of the classics. Why do you ask, Father?"

"I called to tell you that I have to work late tonight. I may not be home until morning."

"Couldn't you let a robot do it?"

"No. I have to do it, myself."

"Does it have to do with those two aliens?"

"Yes."

A little frown of worry appeared and as quickly disappeared. Her slim fingers touched her forehead for a moment, to smooth away any vestige of a wrinkle, then she said, "It will be such a relief when they're finally disposed of. Whenever I think of how they might escape and get into the City, it frightens me. Are you sure they can't escape, Father?"

"There is no possibility of their escaping," he said. "You go ahead with your plans for the evening. Will you come home when the show is over?"

"Not for a while. Kin is taking me dancing, afterward."

"Where you went last time—the place where they were reviving the old dances?"

"No. Nobody goes there anymore. Those old dances were rather fun but they were so—so tiring. Our modern dances are much slower and more graceful, you know."

"All right, Thralna," he said in dismissal. "Enjoy yourself."

"Yes, Father."

She was reclining on the couch again, her eyes closed, when he switched off the image. He sat for a little while before turning on the tape projector, recalling his conversation with her and a feeling growing within him that he was almost on the verge of discovering still another menace to Tharnar.

Virginia held her hands to her face to shade her eyes as she looked out the window. "What you can see of the city from here is all bright with lights," she said, "but there's no one on the streets. Only some robots. Everyone in the city must be in bed."

"That's the way it's been every night," he said. "Early to bed and late to rise—they're an odd race. I've wondered what they do to pass away the time. But what they're doing now is something you should be doing—resting."

She turned away from the window. "I'm not sleepy. I keep thinking of The Cat out there waiting for us and how we might get to it if we could only get hold of a blaster."

"Which we can't try to do until they come for us in the morning. Some rest now might mean a lot then."

"All right, Bob." She went to him and sat beside him on his cot. "What is it now—how much more time?"

"About three hours."

She leaned her head against him and he put his arm around her. "I guess I am a little tired," she said. "But don't let me go to sleep."

"All right, Ginny."

"It's only three hours and never any more, if we aren't lucky in the morning. And if we aren't lucky, I don't want to have wasted our last three hours."

Tal-Karanth stood before the window again and watched the City as it slept in the pre-dawn darkness. How many slept in the City? Once there had been three million in the City but each census found the population to be less. Five years before there had been less than a million—two-thirds of the City was a beautiful shell that housed only the robots that cared for it.

What was wrong? And why had it never occurred to him before that there was something wrong?

He went back to his desk, where the material from the Terran ship littered the eternalloy top of it, and sat down again. He was tired, and frustrated. A menace faced Tharnar, and no one seemed to realize it. The coming of the barbarians had awakened him to the fallacy of trusting the robot fleet, but there was still another danger. And the robot fleet would be more helpless before the newly discovered danger than it would be before the Terran ships.

He pressed a button and music filled the room; music that had always before been soothing and restful to hear. But it sounded flat and meaningless compared with the throbbing barbarian music he had heard that night and he switched it off again.

What was wrong? It was one of the latest compositions; one that had been acclaimed as almost as good as one of the classics.

Almost as good.... Like the play Thralna had attended, like the art exhibits, the athletic records, the scientific discoveries, like everything in the City and on Tharnar. Almost as good—but never quite as good as they had been fifty thousand years before.

Was that part of the answer?

No—not part of the answer. Part of the problem, part of the danger greater than a barbarian invasion. There was no answer that he could see. Something had been lost by the Tharnarians fifty thousand years before and he was neither sure what it was nor how to give it back to them.

He pressed the button that would connect him with Security Officer Ten-Quoth. Of the two problems, it was only within his power to handle the immediate phase of the first problem; to make the final authorization of the execution of the Terrans.

Bob looked again at the window which had lightened to a pale gray square. It was already daylight outside; it would not be long until the guards came for them. Virginia had fallen asleep at last, more tired than she had thought, and she still slept with her head against his shoulder and with his arm around her to support her. He straightened his legs slowly, not wanting them to be numb from lack of circulation when the guards came and not wanting to awaken Virginia to grim reality any sooner than he had to.

But the slight movement was enough. She opened her eyes drowsily, then the sleepiness gave way to the hard jolt of remembrance and realization. She looked at the gray window and asked, "How much longer?"

"Within a few minutes."

"I wish you hadn't let me sleep."

"You were tired."

"I didn't want to sleep—I didn't think I would." Then she changed the subject, as though to keep it from going into the sentimental. "I see the robot never did come back for the tray. We'll be leaving a messy room, won't we? I wonder if they'll disinfect it to make sure it's clean when we're gone? You know"—she smiled a little—"fleas and things."

She lifted her face to kiss him on the cheek, then she rose and moved to the window.

"It's cloudy," she said. "There's a mist of rain falling and it's cloudy outside. I guess it's already later than we thought."

He went over to stand beside her and saw that the morning was alight with near-sunrise behind the gray clouds.

"It's out there waiting for us— The Cat ," she said.

He saw it, standing silver-white in the gray morning, gleaming in the rain and with its slim, dynamic lines making it look as though it might at any moment hurl itself roaring into the sky.

"It's a beautiful ship," she said. "I wonder what they will do with it when they—"

A sound came from the far end of the corridor; a snapped command in Tharnarian. The command was followed at once by the sound of footsteps approaching their cell; the heavy tread of robots and the lighter, softer steps of the guards.

Virginia turned away from the window and they faced the cell door as they waited.

"This is it," she said.

"Are you afraid, Ginny?"

"Afraid?" She laughed up at him, a laugh that came only a little too quickly. "It's like a play, set a long time ago on Earth. Coffee and pistols at dawn. Only I don't think they're bringing us any coffee and if we get a pistol, it will have to be one of theirs."

"It isn't over with till the end—and maybe we can change the ending of this play for them."

"I'll be watching you, Bob, so I can help you the moment you make the try."

The Tharnarian guards stopped outside the door, their blasters in their hands. One of them unlocked the door and two robots entered, guards locking the big door behind the robots the moment they were inside. The robots carried no blasters, nothing but three lengths of chain.

The Tharnarian leader outside the door rasped a command:

"You will both turn to face the window, with your hands behind you."

Bob did not obey at once, but appraised the situation. The robots were massive things—more than six hundred pounds in weight, their metal bodies invulnerable to any attack he could make with his bare hands. But there was one chance in ten thousand: if he could catch the first robot by surprise and send it toppling into the cell door, its weight might be enough to break the lock of the door.

He struck it with his shoulder, all his weight and strength behind the attack, and Virginia's small body struck it a moment later.

But it was like shoving against a stone wall. The robot rocked for the briefest instant, then it threw out a foot to regain its balance. The other robot snapped a chain around his wrists while Virginia fought it.

"Don't, Ginny," he said, ceasing his own struggles. "It's no use, honey."

She stopped, then, and the robot jerked her arms around behind her back, to lock the second chain around her wrists.

She smiled up into his dark and sombre face. "We tried, Bob. They were just too big for us."

A third chain, longer than the first two, was produced. He felt the cool metal of it encircle his neck and heard the lock snap shut. The other end of it was locked around Virginia's neck.

The cell door was opened and the guard leader commanded, "Step forward. The robots will guide you."

They stepped forward, the robots beside them, gripping their arms with steel fingers. The chain around their necks rattled from the movement of walking, linking them together like a pair of captive wild animals. Bob wondered if the chain had been solely as another precaution to prevent their escape or if it had been a deliberate act of contempt. The Tharnarians feared them and, because they feared them, they hated them. Did it bolster the morale of the Tharnarians to deliberately treat them as though they were animals?

They stepped out into the cool dawn, into a small courtyard with a black stone wall at its farther side. The sky was bleakly gray and the rain was falling as a cold mist, dampening Virginia's face as she looked up at him.

"The last mile, Bob."

"Walk it straight and steady, Ginny. They're watching."

"How else would we walk it?" she asked calmly.

They came to the wall, where a metal ring had been set in the stone. There was a chain fastened to the ring and when the robots had swung them around with their backs to the wall, the free end of the chain was locked to the center of the chain around their necks.

Again, it could be an added precaution. Or it could be the final attempt to let their execution be like the killing of a pair of dangerous animals. It did not really matter, of course....

Two of the armed robots who had walked with the guards took up a position twenty feet in front of them, blasters in their metal hands. The robots who had chained them stepped to one side, away from the line of fire. The leader of the guards lifted his arm to look at his watch and said something to the robots. The robots lifted their blasters at the words and leveled them, one aimed at Virginia's heart and one at Bob's.

But the expected blast did not come. The guard leader continued to observe his watch. Apparently the first command had meant only: "Aim." The "Fire" command would come when the hands of the watch reached the thirty-three twelve mark.

Virginia's shoulder was warm against his arm. But her hand, when it found his behind their backs, was cold.

"They cheated us," she said. "We were supposed to have a whole firing squad."

The guard leader gave another command and there was a double click as the robots pressed the buttons that would ready their blasters for firing. Virginia swayed a little for the first time, a movement too small for the Tharnarians to see and one from which she recovered almost at once.

"It's—I'm all right," she said. "I'm not afraid, Bob."

"Of course you're not, Ginny—of course you're not."

The guard leader had returned his attention to his watch and the seconds went by; long seconds in which the only sound was the almost inaudible whisper of the rain against the stone wall behind them. Virginia looked up at him for the last time, the cold mist wet on her face.

"We've had a lot of fun together, Bob. We never expected it to end so soon, but we knew all the time that it might. We'll go together and that's the way we always wanted it to be, wherever and whenever it might happen."

Then she faced forward again and they waited, the rain whispering on the wall behind them and forming in crystal drops on the chain around their necks. She did not waver again as she stood beside him and he knew she would not when the end came.

The guard leader dropped his arm, as though he no longer needed to refer to his watch. He glanced at them very briefly then turned to the robots, his face revealing the command he was going to give.

Virginia's hand tightened on his own in farewell and he could feel the pulse of her wrist racing hard and fast. But she stood very straight as she looked into the blaster and they heard the final command to their robot-executioners:

" Dorend thendar! "

Thirty-three one.

Tal-Karanth looked again at the timepiece on the wall. Thirty-three one. At the end of eleven more small fractions of time, the Terrans would no longer exist.

What was life? What was the purpose behind it all? In fifty thousand years the Tharnarians were no nearer the answer than their ancestors had been. Why should there be life at all? Why not the suns and planets, created by chance, and devoid of life? And why even the suns and planets, the millions of galaxies racing outward across the illimitable expanse of space and time? Why the universe and why the life it contained? Why not just—nothing?

The barbarians had set out to find the answer within a hundred years after the building of their first interstellar ship. And Tharnar's interstellar ships had not been outside the system for fifty thousand years; no Tharnarian had been as far as Vendal for fifteen thousand years.

Why had the Tharnarians lost their curiosity; the curiosity and desire to learn that had created the past glory of Tharnar?

He thought again of what he had discovered that night; of one of the reasons why the Terrans had named their ship The Cat . It was not because a cat was a dangerous animal, as he and the others had thought. It was because the mission of The Cat would be to explore in unknown territory, because of an old Terran proverb: Curiosity killed a cat . He did not yet understand the second reason behind the name, but the first reason showed that the Terrans were not without a sense of humor. How long had it been since he had heard a Tharnarian laugh at himself, at his own failings or possibility of failure? Never.

Yet—wasn't that pride? What was wrong with the high-headed pride that admitted no inferiority, no failure? Wasn't fifty thousand years of civilization something of which to be extremely proud?

Thirty-three five.

He went to the window and pressed the button that would open it against the mechanical will of the automatic health-guard equipment. It slid open and he breathed the cool, moist air that smelled of wet earth and grass and the odor of the lana tree flowers; flowers that were closed against the rain and would not open until the sun came out.

The City was quiet in the gray of the morning. He could see one pedestrian and three moving vehicles in the entire visible portion of the City. The City, like the flowers of the lana trees, would not open into life until the storm was over and the sun was shining again.

Thirty-three nine.

The City, like the flowers of the lana trees. The beauty and perfection of them both was the result of fifty thousand years of breeding to bring about that perfection. The City, like the flowers of the lana trees....

But flowers were without purpose; were only—vegetation.

And what was the purpose of the City?

He did not know. He was the Supreme Executive of Tharnar, and he did not know.

Thirty-three ten.

He went back to his desk and switched on the three-dimensional projection of the scene that would be taking place in the courtyard behind the prison.

The man and girl stood chained to the wall and the robots were waiting for the third and last command from the guard leader, the blasters in their hands as steady as though held in vises and their metal faces impassive. He increased the magnification of the scene, drawing the images of the man and girl closer to him. There was no reading the man's face, other than the hardness and lack of fear. But on the face of the girl was a defiance that seemed to shine like a radiance about her. He was reminded of the physical similarity between the barbarian girl and his daughter. But now the similarity had faded to a shadow. There was something vital and alive about the barbarian girl, there was a beauty to her in the way she waited for death that was strange and wild by Tharnarian standards.

What had Thralna said the night before? "... Whenever I think of how they might escape and get into the City, it frightens me. "

— it frightens me —

What if it was Thralna who stood before the robots? Would she have her Tharnarian pride as she looked into the black muzzle of the blaster and knew she had only a few more heart beats of life left? Would she stand with the bold defiance of the barbarian girl? Or would she drop to the ground and plead for her life?

He knew the answer. But it was not Thralna's fault that she was as she was. She was only like all the others of Tharnar.

Thirty-three eleven.

How different they were, the two barbarians and the men and women of Tharnar. Yet the difference would cease to exist within a few moments. When the man and girl were dead, when all the life and restless drive were gone from them and they lay still on the cold, wet ground, they would look the same as Tharnarians.

How did it feel to die in the cold dawn, on an alien world a thousand lightyears from your own? But they had known such a thing might happen to them. They had named their ship The Cat because of that. Because of that, and something else....

Suddenly, clearly, he understood the second reason for the name of their ship.

Thirty-three twelve.

The guard leader dropped his arm, to give the last command to the robots. Tal-Karanth's mind raced and he saw two things with vivid clarity:

He saw the inexorable decline of Tharnar and the City continuing down the centuries until the little spark that was left smouldered its last and was gone. And he saw the way death would obliterate the wild and savage beauty of the barbarian girl, knew that it would go when the life went from her, to leave her with a beauty that would be colorless by contrast, that would be like the beauty of a lana blossom—or a Tharnarian woman.

And he thought he could see the answer to the menace that faced Tharnar and the City.

" Dorend —"

The guard leader's first word of command came. Tal-Karanth's finger stabbed at one of the buttons along his desk. He shoved it down, to deactivate the robot-executioners, and they were frozen in immobility when the final word came:

"— thendar! "

He snapped the switch which connected him with the office of Security Officer Ten-Quoth and said:

"Have the chains taken from the Terrans and see that they are given comfortable and unguarded quarters. Tell them they have been pardoned by the Supreme Executive and that they are free to leave Tharnar whenever they wish."

It was mid-morning of the next day, bright and warm with a few fleecy white clouds drifting across the blue sky. Tal-Karanth stood before the window again, Vor-Dergal beside him, and watched the City come to life; slowly and leisurely, as it had come to life each mid-morning for the past fifty thousand years.

Vor-Dergal looked toward The Cat , where the boarding ramps had already been withdrawn and the airlocks closed.

"They're ready to go," he said. "I hope you haven't made a mistake in what you did. The other Terrans will learn of us now, and when they come...." He let the sentence trail off, unfinished.

"We have a great deal to gain by the coming of the Terrans," Tal-Karanth said, "and little to lose."

"Little to lose?" Vor-Dergal asked. "We have Tharnar and the City to lose; we have our lives and our civilization to lose."

"Yes, our civilization," Tal-Karanth said. "Our god that we worshipped—our civilization. Look, Vor—listen to what I have to say:

"I did some thinking the night the Terrans were waiting to be executed. I'm afraid it was probably one of the few times for thousands of years that a Tharnarian ever tried to critically examine the Tharnarian way of life. I started from the beginning, more than fifty thousand years ago, when the interstellar ships of Tharnar were actually interstellar and were manned by men instead of robots.

"It was a good start we made in interstellar exploration, but it didn't last very long. We wanted to associate with our cultural peers, and there weren't any. We didn't attempt to make any contact with the primitive races we found. We felt that there would be no point in doing so. Tharnar possessed the highest—and the only—civilization in all the explored regions of the galaxy and younger races had nothing to offer us.

"The time came when no more exploration ships were sent out. We retired to Tharnar and Vendal and surrounded them with a robot-operated fleet, to keep out the inferior races when they finally did learn how to build spaceships. We devoted ourselves to our social culture and became imbued with self-satisfaction, with the assurance that we of Tharnar possessed the full flowering of culture and progress. We withdrew into a shell of complacency and each generation lived out its life with comfortable, methodical, sameness. And our robot-operated fleet was on guard to prevent any other race from annoying us, from disturbing us in the wisdom and serenity of our way of life.

"Fifteen thousand years ago, the last of us on Vendal returned to the more ideal world of Tharnar. And there was plenty of room for them on Tharnar by then. The population had been decreasing for thousands of years—it's decreasing right now. Women don't want to have children anymore—it's an inconvenience for them. They want comfort; the full stomach, the soft couch, the attention of their robots. And men are the same.

"There is no longer any incentive for living on Tharnar other than to duplicate the lives of our ancestors. There is nothing new, nothing to be done that has not already been done better. So we lapse into an existence of placid satisfaction with the status quo—we vegetate. We're like plants that have been seeded in the same field for so many centuries that the fertility of the soil is exhausted. This barren field in which we grow is our own form of culture.

"Do you see what the ultimate end will have to be, Vor?"

He had thought old Vor-Dergal would reply with a heated defense of Tharnarian civilization, but he did not. Instead, he said, "If the present trend continues, there will come a time when there will be more robots in the guard ships than there will be Tharnarians for them to guard. But is the other better, the destruction at the hands of the barbarians?"

"Destruction? It's within their power to destroy us, but why should they? It will be unpleasant for many Tharnarians to contemplate, but an unbiased study of the Terrans shows that they would not want the things we have on Tharnar and in the City; that they would not consider Tharnar and the City worth the trouble of conquest."

"A conjecture," Vor-Dergal said. "And, even if you are right and the Terrans never come to destroy us—what have we to gain by taking this risk?"

"New life. We've been too long in the barren field of our own culture. We've lost our curiosity, our desire to learn, our sense of humor that would permit us to make honest self-evaluations, our pride and courage. And in losing these things, we lost our racial urge to survive.

"Look at the City this morning, Vor. See how slowly it moves; listen to how still it is for a city that contains almost a million people. Do you know what this day is for the City? It's one more act, to be added to all the thousands of acts in the past, in the City's rehearsal for extinction.

"The Terrans have what we lost. They're a young race with a vitality that's like a fire where our own is like a dying spark. That's why I let those two go; why I want the others of their kind to know of Tharnar and come here. It's not too late for us; not yet too late for contact with these Terrans to give back to us all these things we lost."

In the pause following his words the quiet of the City was suddenly shattered by the thunder of The Cat's drives. It lifted, shining and slender and graceful, and hurled itself up into the blue sky. Tal-Karanth watched it until it was a bright star, far away and going out into the universe beyond, until the sound of its drives had faded and gone.

He looked away from the sky and back to the slowly moving, softly whispering City; the City that was dying and did not know it. He felt the stirring of an uneasiness within him; a strange non-physical desire for something. It was the first time in his life he had ever felt such a sensation; it was something so long gone from the Tharnarians that the Tharnarian word for it was obsolete and forgotten. But the Terran word for it was wanderlust .

"I almost wish I could have gone with them, Vor," he said. "They're going to try to reach the heart of the galaxy and see if they can find the answer to Creation. And we on Tharnar spend our lives sipping sweet drinks as we discuss trifles and wait for the sun to shine warm enough for us to emerge from our air-conditioned houses."

"If you're right in thinking that Terrans won't come to plunder Tharnar and the City," Vor-Dergal said, "then it would be interesting to know what those two find when they reach the center of the galaxy. If they don't get killed long before they reach it."

"I think any hostile forms of life they encounter will find them hard to kill," Tal-Karanth said. "We paid a high price for their capture, remember? There were two Terran proverbs behind the name of their ship. It took me quite a while to understand the second one but when I did, I realized the true extent of Terran determination and self-confidence.

"Their mission was to explore across the unknown regions of space. They knew it would be dangerous, very dangerous. So they named their ship ' The Cat ' partly because of an old Terran proverb: ' Curiosity killed a cat .' But that was only half the reason behind the name. They intended to reach the center of the galaxy and they didn't intend to let anything stop them. So there was a second meaning behind the naming of their ship:

"' A cat has nine lives. '"