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Title: The Time Armada

Author: Fox B. Holden

Illustrator: W. E. Terry

Release date: April 13, 2021 [eBook #65072]

Language: English

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TIME ARMADA ***




                            THE TIME ARMADA

                           By Fox B. Holden

              Politics and science don't mix--except that
           Congressman Blair had once been a physicist. This
          was The Beginning--but The End was worlds away....

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                       October and November 1953
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


_5:20 P. M., April 17, 1958_

Congressman Douglas Blair shivered a little, turned up his coat collar
against the gray drizzle that had been falling like a finely-sifted fog
all day. His head ached, his nose felt stuffy, and he was tired. It was
good of Grayson to pick him up.

The front seat of the dark blue sedan was soft and reassuring, and the
warm current of air from the heater beneath it felt good. He let his
spare, barely six-foot body slump like a bag of wet wash and pushed
his hat back with the half-formed thought that it might ease the dull
pressure behind his eyes.

"Rough going today, eh, Congressman?"

Grayson twisted the blue sedan into outbound Washington traffic, turned
the windshield wipers to a faster pace. Click-click, click-click, and
Blair wished someone would invent windshield wipers for the brain, to
be worn like a radio head-set, maybe with a hole in the top of the head.

"Hey, buddy! Republicans got your tongue?"

"No, sorry, Carl. Just tired. It's that damned McKenny bill."

"Off the record?"

"I'm afraid so for now, Carl. He can get the thing through--he's so
damn clever he should've been a woman. Got the steel men eating out of
his hand. Made no bones about telling the rest of us today that what
the hell, the people never had anything to say about it, anyway. The
work of government is up to the professionals. The sooner the people
get their nose out of it, the better off they'll be. He said that,
Carl, right in front of everybody. And nobody so much as blinked."

The drizzle started to develop into a dark blue rain as they headed
toward the suburbs.

"What's going to happen, Carl?" Blair said after awhile.

"If I knew, believe me, I wouldn't be sitting here! I don't know, Doug.
We'll all cook in Hell together I guess. Here, have a cigarette."

"Thanks. No, dammit. That's just it--if they'd take this going to Hell
business and forget about it--sink it, scuttle it. Nobody goes to
Hell, he makes his own if that's the way he lives, or he makes his own
personal Heaven or Paradise or whatever you call it if that's the way
he lives. Most of us are in between someplace, a little scared, mostly
indifferent, and too mixed up to see the simple fact that the way of
living we've got in this country isn't so bad but what just plain
honesty and a little intelligence couldn't run it right side up."

"Sure, sure, I know and you're right, Doug. But take it easy.... Things
aren't always as bad as they look."

       *       *       *       *       *

Blair inhaled on the cigarette, laughed a little and felt better.
Sometimes he knew he sounded like a college kid trying to tell his
father what was wrong with the world, but that was why he liked Carl.
Carl let him talk, knew it was his way of blowing off the pent-up steam.

"You know what, chum?" They were running smoothly along the highway
now, the engine a reassuring hum of power, the interior of the sedan
warm and relaxing. The rain was letting up a little, but dirty banks
of fog had started gathering at the roadside like ghosts of all the
work of the day, tenuous, without substance.

"What, Carl?"

"You should've stuck with the M.I.T. degree after all. Hell with your
brain you'd've made that try for the Moon a success last month instead
of another near-miss."

"Maybe you're right. Those boys know what they're doing though. I'll
stick to puttering."

"Puttering the man calls it. 'He hath a lean and hungry look--such
men are dangerous....' Myself, I think that gadget you 'putter' with
in that cellar of yours is some kind of a gismo to hypnotize all the
states-righters into doing something intelligent like dropping dead
without being told!"

"With ingenuity such as yours, my friend, I think I could really
accomplish something in that cellar of mine at that! That's the
trouble. You writers and newsmen have all the good ideas--slide-rules
don't think worth a damn! Instead of a wonderful creation such as you
suggest, what have I got? A pile of junk that may, if it works in any
degree at all, turn out to be a fairly good television set...."

"You wouldn't kid an old friend. That martini you were putting away
the other night said that it was an experiment with something called
tired light."

"Exactly. Television."

"Look, the quality of curiosity is not strained, it droppeth as a
gentle ten-ton truck from twenty stories up! You said--or the martini
said anyway--that if this little gimcrack of yours works, it'd be able
to bring back pictures of things that happened in the past. You're
guilty until proven innocent, Galileo. Start talking."

"Off the record--"

"I should broadcast it and get dunked in a witch's chair."

"Well--the martini had it a little balled up, but the essential idea's
there I guess. Anyway, it isn't everybody who has a space-warp for a
household pet."

"Or Einstein for a hobby."

"Blah, this is strictly Blair. That's why it won't work, and I'd be
only sensationally nuts if I ever thought it would. But some men take
Scotch for their nerves, and I take Scotch with electronics. More of a
jolt that way."

"Yuk, yuk."

       *       *       *       *       *

That was why it was good to have Carl for a friend. No matter how sorry
you got to feeling for yourself, he could usually snap you out of it
one way or another. Right now, Doug thought, Carl was diligently at
work with that peculiar brand of psychology that all newspapermen
strive ceaselessly to acquire that makes people blab when they ought to
keep quiet. But why not--Carl wouldn't know what the hell it was all
about and he wouldn't care, if he thought it would take some of the
pressure off.

"Well, listen then. Ever look through an observatory telescope and
have somebody tell you you were focused on some star or other a couple
of thousand light years away? Maybe it was in the process of blowing
up and becoming a nova or something like that. Anyhow, it would be
explained to you that you were seeing that star as it was two thousand
years ago. You were seeing, for instance, an explosion that happened
twenty centuries in the past. Reason, of course, is that it took the
light that long to get from the star to you. More simply, the light
that strikes your back porch in the morning left the sun about nine
minutes before."

"Very clear. Only how come, if the universe is a closed form of
infinity like it says in all the new books, this light never doubles
back on itself--gives you two or even a million images of the same
star?"

"That's where the tired light comes in. After a certain length of
time--unthinkable aeons of it--it, like all other forms of energy,
peters out. Runs down. Quits. Kaput. They call it entropy. It
constitutes, actually, a gradual running down, growing old of the
universe. As far as anyone knows, this happens before it 'doubles back'
on itself, as you put it. You can't catch it coming around the second
time to see what you looked like umpteenillion ages ago. So, if you
want a second look at yourself, you've got to go out and catch the
light which you reflected in the past--"

"Oh brother. You mean anybody on a planet, say, forty light years from
Earth with a supertelescope looking at us would be watching the battle
of Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood! A hundred and eighty light years
away he'd see us slugging it out against King George III at Saratoga
and Valley Forge!"

"You've got it. In other words, the light reflected from Earth then is
somewhere deep in Space now. If you could haul it in on some kind of a
receiver, you could see everything all over again--you could watch the
land masses of Earth as they shifted to form the continents as we know
them today."

"You'd need something faster than light to trap the light itself--and
I thought that was against Fitzgerald or somebody."

"If you followed the same space warps the light did, it would be. But
if it were possible to operate your receiver _through_ the fabric of
space-time, instead of _along_ it--a kind of short-cut--you might turn
up with what you're after."

"I am sorry I got into this."

Blair smiled tiredly. "Me too. Hell, I'm fooling around with things
I don't pretend to know anything about. Just enough to putter. Just
enough to keep my mind off all-day-long. God knows what I'll get when I
turn the damn thing on. Probably not even snow so I'm not worried. Turn
left at the next stop-light--they've got that new cut-off finished." He
started buttoning his coat. Grayson turned left as ordered.

"But suppose it works?"

"Wow. Then the steam-fitters would envy me."

"Well it sure oughtta do something. You've been tinkering with it
for--how long? Couple years?"

"About four I guess, off and on. Sometimes I get to wondering what
it'll do if it does do anything."

"Show us Lillian Russell, maybe, or Little Egypt!"

"There's a million possible results when you go fooling around with the
structure of the universe, Carl. I guess that's what fascinates me. A
little learning is a dangerous thing, they say. Dot's afraid I'll blow
us up."

"Well--she could have something there!"

"The thing probably won't even toast a piece of bread. But I'd rather
fool with it than collect buttons or play bridge or some other damfool
thing, so...."

The blue sedan sloshed up the puddled drive-way to the new nine-room
bungalow and at the porch Doug Blair got out. A wind had sprung up and
the dampness suddenly grasped his body, clung, as though he were naked.

"Time for a drink, supper?"

"No, thanks, Doug--gotta see a man. Now take it easy--let the state of
the nation go bury its head for tonight and you have some fun blowing
fuses!"

"Yeah, yeah! O.K. and thanks."

The blue sedan sloshed its way back to the highway, and Doug went into
the house.

       *       *       *       *       *

Douglas Blair kissed his wife and, as he did every time he kissed her,
wondered how he'd been so lucky. He preferred to think as seldom as
memory would permit of how close he'd come on a couple of occasions to
marrying a country club, a bridge deck, a women's society, an Emily
Post book. And when Dot had given him Terry and Mike, she'd topped off
the miracle of herself with the added one of two healthy young minds
that had already learned to say "prove it!" Some of the tiredness left
him, a lot of the aching discouragement was brushed away.

"Tired, Doug?"

"I was."

There was a sudden thundering which grew quickly into the crashing
noises often made by wild elephants getting exercise in a native
village.

"The patter of little feet," Dorothy said.

"Oh. For a minute I thought it was termites. Hi, fellas! What kind of
trouble did we almost keep out of today?"

"Hi, dad! Hey, Mike says you aren't ever going to try it out. You are,
aren't you?"

"I didn't say not ever. I said _maybe_ not ever. Things like the
Contraption take years to develop, don't they, dad?"

"Well," Doug said, doing what he could to stem the onslaught and still
stay on his feet, "what's the source of all this wisdom, Mr. Scientist?"

"Some day I'll be a scientist. Mommy said so, didn't you, mom?"

Every so often Doug wondered where they got that solid healthy look,
and if either of them would ever faintly resemble the Cassius after
whom even Carl thought he should have been named. The red hair of
course was Dorothy's. The blue eyes were Dorothy's. Even the brains
were, he sometimes suspected, all Dorothy's. But the dormant challenge
that grew, not yet quite fully awakened, somewhere behind the freckled,
ten-year-old faces--that, if it matured well, would be his.

"If," Doug said then, "you three will let a hungry man eat his supper,
he'll let you in on a little surprise before hand. That is, if
anybody's interested--"

"Tell us!"

"Is it, Doug?"

"Your brilliant father has exactly three connections to solder on the
Contraption, and then--well, after supper, we'll all see together." He
laughed. Terry and Mike hooted. Dorothy looked a little worried, and
told the boys to wash up.

       *       *       *       *       *

It covered half the ten-foot workbench, its large screen a huge,
lens-like square eye as it glinted beneath the glare of the
cold-cathode lights that lined the ceiling of the laboratory-like
cellar.

Doug put the cooling soldering-iron back in its place. Dorothy had her
Christmas camera mounted on a tripod a few feet back, "Just in case,"
she said, "it does something before it blows up."

Terry and Mike were silent, eyes wide, not quite behind their mother.

"We shall now," Doug said, "see if we can get a look at Hopalong
Cassidy the way he looked when I was a boy. Better yet, maybe Jack
Benny when he was 39 ... and Valentino...."

He closed the switch, and the cathode lights flickered, went out. There
was a humming sound that seemed to come from all sides of the cellar
rather than from the Contraption, and the bluish glow emanated from the
square convex eye. Directly before it, they watched.

The light shimmered, gave the illusion that the Contraption itself was
shimmering, fading. The work bench became indistinct.

"Doug--"

And then the workbench and the Contraption were gone, the overhead
cathode tubes were gone, and daylight was filtering through a cellar
window that had moved about four feet along the wall--which was now
made of glass brick instead of concrete.

Doug and his wife stood rooted. Terry and Mike were gone, too.




                              CHAPTER II


She was clad in superbly tailored cream-colored slacks of a material
that was glass-like in sheen, an equally well-fitted blouse of forest
green hardly a shadow less than opaque, and sandals of a soft, flexible
texture slightly raised at the heel. The wide cummerbund of silken
flame that circled her slender waist was her only ornamentation.

Doug's pastel shirt felt like a feather; it lay open at the throat and
clung comfortably about his chest and shoulders, then tapered leisurely
to his waist. The trousers were of the same weight and of a darker hue
somewhere between the blue of midnight and cobalt; the sandals were
like hers.

He did not understand.

"You--I know you are not--"

Her face was not the same; her hair was the deeper red of mahogany, her
eyes as large, but of green, not blue. Dorothy's mouth was wider, her
cheeks not quite so shadowed. Yet now her face was drawn in the look of
bewilderment that he felt on his own.

"Doug?"

"Dot! For God's sake!"

"Your voice is the same--but you don't look like--"

"Don't get scared, take it easy. It's me. You're different too--all
but your voice. I've got to figure it out. Everything's all wrong.
Wrong as hell--"

He found a chair of light metal that felt like foam rubber when he
sat on it. Dorothy--and he knew somehow that it must be Dorothy--was
looking around her with quick, nervous glances.

"Doug, the boys--where are the boys?"

"Terry! Mike!" He called again, stood up. "Oh, God--"

"They were just behind me, Doug, they couldn't have run--"

"No I think--I think they must've stayed with--with the Contraption. We
were in the blur light. It wasn't. They must've been just beyond its
effective range. That must be it. It just got _us_."

"Got us--you mean we're--"

"No, no of course not. Alive as we'll ever be. But where--"

"Wherever we are, I don't want to be here, Doug. I want to be back...."

"Easy, honey." He put his arm about her, drew her to him, and he could
feel her taut muscles relax a little. "I'd like to say it's a dream,
but two people don't dream the same dream at once. And I'm not the
type to think up clothes like these all by myself.... Somehow, the
Contraption did it. I was monkeying with a theorem I got interested in
once in space-time mechanics. But it was all on paper--just something
to fool with. It was impossible for the Contraption to really do
anything." He sat down again. "Impossible."

"Like flying, my mother used to say. What do we do, Doug?"

"That's my gal...." He got up a second time, forced a smile. "Let's go
upstairs and see if anybody's around."

There were stairs. Wide and gently curving and constructed of a light,
lusterless steel.

Architecturally, the house was little different from many of the
expensive-looking California-type affairs he had seen in the women's
magazines that Dot bought every so often. Yet there was something about
its interior, a certain grace combined with a subtle simplicity that
made it a work of art as a good painting or sculptural piece is art.
There was rebellion in it--a gentle rebellion against the eye-aching
extremes of artificial modernity, yet at the same time a freedom of
execution that made the confines of formalized pattern seem childish.

The pastel carpeting was of a deep, soft substance that Doug recognized
as a masterpiece in plastic; the furniture was simple, casual, but not
stark and starved-looking. The rooms themselves were ample and were
as bright in the far corners as in those nearest the wide, sashless
windows. They were not separated by partitions, but divided instead by
a fragile-appearing tracery of lattice-work in which a decorative motif
was woven with an almost fairy-like geometrical magic. The air was cool
and fresh.

"Now I know I'm dreaming," Dot said in a low voice. They walked
quietly, from room to room, listening, half-waiting. "I expect any
minute to find three bowls of porridge somewhere," Dot said.

"I wonder ..." Doug said. "What's here is--I think its ours. I think we
live here."

"Doug look--through the window!"

       *       *       *       *       *

He saw a broad lawn of carefully trimmed yet almost ankle-deep grass,
inset at the edges with a running garden. And the street beyond was
wide, and there were other houses at its far side that looked much
as he knew this one must appear. Roofs of tinted tiling, walls of
delicately-toned glass brick, wide, gently-curving windows.

These Doug saw in the first instant, and then there were the soundless
vehicles in the street.

"Like smooth, transparent walnut shells," Doug said. "Cooling louvres
in the back--engines in the rear. They know their engineering, too.
Wonder if the body is some sort of transparent steel--"

"The people in them, Doug! Did you see them? Just like--"

"Like us, of course. Still expecting the three bears?" He laughed a
little. They were like children in some new fairyland, half afraid,
half unbelieving. "Wherever we are, it's populated by humans--if it
weren't, we may not have come out this way...."

"Doug, do you know?" She turned, faced him, and there was still fear
deep in her eyes. Not the stark fear of terror, but the bewildered,
uncomprehending fear of disbelief.

"No I don't. But these clothes aren't ours--even our faces, our
bodies aren't. Just our actual selves came through unaltered. Our
egos--personalities--whatever you want to call it that gives a human
being his identity. The rest we've--moved into, I think. Anyway, it's a
theory to go on. I wonder what our names are--"

"Doug, don't."

"I wish I were trying to be funny. But don't you see?"

"Whatever happened to us--couldn't that have changed us? Our--our
atomic structure, couldn't that have been changed or altered somehow?
It's all so crazy--"

"It's easy to see, m'girl, that you don't spend your time at a bridge
table all those hours I'm slaving away on Madhouse Hill! But if that
had happened ... I don't know. It's the clothes. Too completely
different--not just out of shape, or an altered shape, but of a
fundamentally _different_ shape. We got--we got transplanted."

"But then what of--"

"Thinking the same thing. Suppose the Contraption, whatever it's
done--suppose it works _two_ ways? A swap, a trade?"

"But Doug that's--"

He smiled. Dot was suddenly silent with the knowledge that whether she
liked it or not, she could no longer refuse to accept the facts as they
were, could no longer cross off their implications for want of bolder
imagination.

"Are we--is it the ... the future?"

"Maybe. You could even ask 'is this Earth?' and I couldn't tell you. I
wonder what they think where _they_ are ... I wonder if _they_ know."

"Doug, would they--do anything? To Terry and Mike, I mean?"

"I sure hope not--and I don't think so. The boys will be all
right--they know their way around back home--whomever it is we've
replaced is in the same boat we are. They'd think more than twice
before rashly committing themselves to trouble. They're probably trying
to communicate with the kids--if the kids stuck around that long. I'm
wondering more about the Contraption. If they start fooling with it...."

"Then we'd go back?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. I think though that they'd leave it alone, on the
theory that whoever invented it knows its use, knows how to handle it
safely. They'd be wrong, but I think that's how they'd figure it. I
don't think any one'll dare touch it, simply out of sheer fear of what
might happen next."

"I'm scared, Doug. Awful scared."

"I guess that makes two of us. Somehow we've got to dig up the parts
for another Contraption. And then--" He let the sentence drift into
silence.

"And then, Doug?"

"Well maybe with the exact same set-up--same everything, I could do
it again. I don't know. But if they so much as try to turn the other
one off, try to change anything, we'll lose this point of reference in
space-time for good."

       *       *       *       *       *

Slowly, Dot nodded understanding. "The parts," she said then. "Can we
find the things you need?"

"I'll give it the old college try, sweetheart."

"How long--"

He shrugged. "A few days maybe. Depends."

They were silent for a moment, looking through the wide window,
watching the beautiful vehicles as they slid silently past,
re-examining what they could see of the colorful world beyond the
rolling lawn. Doug felt an aching in his jaws, a tightness through his
lips. God, it was so silly--standing there, trying to explain, when
he didn't even know what had happened, where they were or--or when
they were. He'd been after travelling light to bring back pictures of
the past--every home should have one. Nuts. The future--no, it wasn't
supposed to be that way. Unless you accepted past, present and future
as the components of one great unit, and progression from one to the
other nothing more than illusion, like the illusion of movement given
by the hundreds of still frames on a film-strip. If time was like such
a film-strip, and you found a way to jump forward along it, bypassing
the frames that were in immediate succession--

But then what about the possibility-probability pattern theory, in
which time was supposed to exist as an infinite number of possibility
and probability paths, intersecting, paralleling, diverging, splitting
with each new decision, each new action--Lord it was getting insane.

"Hell I'm all mixed up," he said. Dot put her arm through his. He
nodded toward what was beyond the window. "We might as well have a
look for ourselves. If anybody says anything to us we'll suddenly see
something interesting in the other direction. Game?"

"I--I guess so...."

"Damn, I wish I had a cigarette!"

They went to the front door, swung it open.

       *       *       *       *       *

The streets were long and incredibly wide and straight, bearing their
traffic smoothly and with hardly a hint of the inevitable jamming that
was so familiar. The sidewalks were immaculately kept, yet surprisingly
free of pedestrians; a few passed, bowed slightly and smiled, continued
on.

"Polite bunch," Doug murmured. "They bow like good Republicans...."

"And all smiling--as if they didn't have a worry in the world."

"Democrats, then!" They laughed, and for a moment the anxiety was gone,
and the street could have been any fine street in the world from which
they'd come.

"We'd better try to find the center of town," Doug said then. "We've
got to do a lot more than ogle if we want to locate the stuff we're
after. Sshh...."

This time two women passed. They smiled, bowed, went on.

"Maybe you're the mayor of this town or something--at least an
alderman."

"They wouldn't smile, honey! Anyway, there are three things we'd better
figure. How to get money, how to get food, how to get the equipment.
Any ideas?"

"We should've searched the house for a wallet or something. Or maybe
these people don't believe in money--maybe they use a different system
altogether."

"It's possible, of course, and--good night!" Doug was staring suddenly
upward. There had been a low rumbling sound which within seconds had
ascended the decibel scale to a throbbing roar. A great, tapering thing
of silvery metal with no hint of wing-surfaces was bolting skyward,
and Doug knew somehow that the sky was not its limit. The roar and
scream of suddenly-split atmosphere subsided, and in moments, the
vertically-climbing craft was out of sight. "They've done it here,
Dot! I'd bet the bottom dollar I don't have that we've seen our first
space-liner!"

"Could I have been right, Doug? The future, I mean?"

"I don't know, Dot.... I don't know."

There were towering buildings less than a half-mile from them of
a simplicity and beauty that left no time for talk. The city was
suddenly before them--a sparkling thing, unmarred by eye-stumbling
bits and pieces--a flawless, symmetrical sweep toward the heavens that
momentarily stupefied credulity. Traffic ramps soared from street-level
in gently-curving ribbons above spacious quiet parks; sound was muffled
to near-inaudibility, and the illusion of a great fairy kingdom was
unmarred by the confusion of advertising posters, marquees, store front
lettering, or the raucous stampede of elbowing mobs....

"I wonder how they illuminate at night," Doug was saying. "I wonder
what they--my God, Dot, look up--all over. Where is it?"

Far above, the sky seemed gradually to darken into an ever-deepening
shadow of blackness. But the sun--She couldn't find the sun!

"It's a different planet, Doug!"

"And the city--it _is_ lit! There must be a sun but it's down--it's
night, and they've found a way to illuminate an entire city as though
daylight were perpetual!"

And that was when it caught their eye. It was a small store, and she
could see neatly-tiered rows of groceries inside--fruits and vegetables
were easily recognizable even the street's width from them. But it was
the little rack outside the store--the one that held the newspapers.

Almost at a run they crossed the street, and Doug fought down the urge
to reach out, grab one of the editions.

The front pages of the newspapers were easily readable. Because they
were printed in excellent English.

The date beneath the masthead of one was April 17, 1958. The paper was
the Washington Post.




                              CHAPTER III


It was light. Terry had been watching the darkness fade for about ten
minutes, fascinated, because the diffused glow grew as though from
nowhere, and he could not find the sun. At first he'd felt sort of
scared, but nothing happened, so he'd kept watching, trying to find it.

He was still in bed. It was when he became aware that it wasn't his
own bed that he sat up straight, wondering, trying to remember. He was
in a long, narrow place, and there were a lot of beds--bunks, like his
own, lining each side, end to end. Across from him somebody else was
sitting up. All the others were still asleep.

"Hey!" Terry called.

"Hey yourself! Who're you?" the other boy said.

"Terry Blair. What in the heck is this place? What's your name?" He had
a funny feeling in his stomach, and he was hot and sweaty. He wanted to
hear the other boy's voice again.

"Quit your kiddin'--Terry Blair's my brother!"

"What're you talking about, anyway?" Terry said, wondering if the
other boy was trying to pick a fight. "I'm Terry Blair all right, and
I know _my_ brother when I see him! He's Mike Blair, and he don't look
anything like you."

"Say who are you anyhow? Somebody tell you my name or something? You
aren't awful funny."

"Neither are you, tryin' to imitate the way Mike talks."

There were stirrings in some of the other beds, and somebody mumbled
"Pipe down!" Terry tried to be quiet getting out of the bunk. He stood
up, felt a little light-headed, and walked over to the other's bed. He
sat at its foot. The light feeling--and it seemed to be all over him
now--wouldn't go away.

"Come on, don't be wise. What is this place?"

"Don't be wise yourself! How should I know? Maybe it's a hospital.
I must've got sick down cellar or something when Dad turned on the
Contraption--"

"All that funny blue light," Terry said. "But how--"

Then they looked at each other. Hard.

"What d'you know about the blue light?" Mike asked.

"How d'you know about Dad and the Contraption?" Terry countered. "You
spying from someplace?" Terry was on his feet and had both small fists
clenched. "You get up out of there!"

"Wait up ... maybe it put us to sleep, so this is all a dream, like.
Nobody looks the same in dreams."

"You're crazy. They don't sound alike, and you're trying to sound like
Mike...."

"You sound like Terry, too. You could all right in a dream, just like
you know the same things. I'll tell you the first two numbers in the
address of our house. If you can give me the last two, then we will
know. And if you can't smart guy--"

"You don't even know the street we live on."

"It's Delaware, so how do you like that? And here's the first two
numbers--2, 6--"

"8, 1--"

"What'd I tell you? It sure is a dream. You're Terry all right I guess
and I'm me--Mike--but in a dream everybody always looks funny. You got
black hair, all straight and cut short."

"You too. But guess you're Mike though, as long as it's a dream. Only I
feel pretty real."

"Sure, me too. Sometimes dreams are like that. Just like for real."

"Well I hope we don't get into a nightmare. They make me sweat awful."

"I'm all sweaty now--so're you. It's sure hot around here. Where in
heck d'you suppose we are, anyway?"

"You don't think Dad's thing killed us, and--and we're--"

"Naw--they wouldn't have beds or anything. Anyhow, Dad told us all
about that once. There's no such place. It's got something to do with
state of mind, whatever that is."

"Well we've been kinda bad every now and then just the same."

"Dad says that hasn't got anything to do with it, don't you remember?
Nobody keeps books on you, like a report card, or anything. It's up to
you, and you know how you feel about it inside. That's what he said,
and I believe Dad. Dad's smart, Terry."

"Wish he was here too."

"Grown-ups got dreams of their own to worry about. You're not scared,
are you?"

"Who me? Heck, no. Hey, have a look at the funny clothes hanging up at
the side of our beds. Like riding pants, with wide black belts. Look,
some belts got three little silver things in each side. And have a look
at the boots! Hey, feel this one--light as anything."

"Who ever heard of blue riding pants? Besides you don't know how to
ride a horse any more than I do."

"Bet I could though. Boy--"

"Hey, have a look out this window. You can see all over. Gosh, this
must be the same kind of place all the other long ones are."

       *       *       *       *       *

The buildings were long and narrow with rounded, Quonset-type roofs.
They were built end to end in long, dull-blue rows, and the grass that
grew between them was of an exactly matching shade, tall, and lush. At
precise intervals, the rows of buildings were interrupted by uncurbed
streets of hard-packed, dull black dirt, and at the end of the widest
was a field-like expanse trimmed to a perfect circle. The massive,
glittering building in its center was immense. Varicolored banners flew
from a trio of spires rising antenna-like from a single point atop the
highest, oddly flat-topped turret. In the geometric center of the squat
structure's otherwise unbroken curving front was a balcony, molded
deftly into the severe sweeping architectural lines of which it was an
integral, although predominating part. Beyond were rolling hills, and
close above them, a foggy, blue-white sky.

Already waves of heat were beginning to shimmer from the triple turrets
of the gold-hued colossus in the center of the great circle, and the
banners above them were being whipped by stiff gusts that seemed to
blow from several directions at once. Once or twice, there were flashes
of lightning that split the low rolling bottom of the sky, but there
were no gathering storm clouds, nor was there rain.

"Gosh," Terry said. "It sure is funny grass--"

A high, shrill sound suddenly pierced the stillness, and at its signal,
youngsters, no older than themselves were stumbling from their narrow
cots, yawning, standing.

"They're putting on their pants and boots. We better--" Mike was
saying. Wide-eyed, they watched the others, carefully imitated them.
There were no shirts to cover the young, sweating torsos, and dressing
was simple. Just the crisply-cut breeches, the light snug-fitting
boots, and the black belts.

"You guys been assigned to a quadrant yet?"

Mike looked up. He was a taller boy, and looked a little older than the
rest. He wore a gold star in his belt, and there were still-red scars
across his chest and across one shoulder.

"I guess not," Mike said. "What's that? Quadrant, I mean?"

"How long have you been here, anyway? Thought you two came a couple of
weeks ago. On the _Mikol VI_."

The twins looked at each other, then back to the tall, blonde boy.

"What's your name?" Terry asked.

"I'm Jon Tayne. Son of Quadrate Larsen Tayne. Your father's a general
officer just like mine--that's why we can talk together out here.
Otherwise we couldn't--part of the training, you know. Teaches you the
undesirability of class-consciousness. I've been here two years--they
tossed me back. Insufficient conditioning. But it doesn't matter to
me--maybe you'll get as big a kick out of it as I do. I like it here.
Not many do, though."

"It's sure different," Mike said, "but we haven't been here any two
weeks, I don't think. Anyway it hasn't seemed like that long, has it
Terry?"

"Golly, I--"

"Terry? Thought you two were Kurt and Ronal Blair? Washington, western
hemisphere north?"

"We live in Washington, that's for sure," Terry said. "But I'm--"

"Hey I know, Terry. It's all like we said, and here that's us. You can
be Kurt. I'm Ronal. But don't get mixed up."

"Your father's Senior Quadrate Douglas Blair, isn't he?" the tall boy
said.

"He's the Douglas Blair part, anyway," Mike said. "Makes I guess over
thirteen thousand dollars a year, too."

"Say, you sure you're all right? I didn't think you were hit very hard
in practice yesterday, but you talk as if you were. Thirteen thousand
dollars is just about enough to buy a loaf of bread. Your father makes
what mine does and what every other adult does--thirty billion dollars
a year. Then after he contributes his dutiful share to the Prelatinate,
he has a billion dollars left. Didn't you know that?"

"Gosh no. Not exactly, I mean."

"What's Prelatinate?" Terry asked.

"What's--listen, fellows--any one of us, even a Quadrate's son, can
be turned into the Director for saying a thing like that, even as a
joke. Better watch it. If there's one thing you learn here, it's praise
and respect for your government. They're pretty rough on sacrilege, I
should think your father would have told you. My training was started
when I was four, but you sound almost as though you haven't had any
yet."

"I don't even remember when I was four," Mike said.

"That doesn't matter. When an adult tells you something--"

The tall boy was interrupted then by a second sounding of the shrill
signal, and at once, he hurried to the end of the building. The others
fell in behind him in a column of threes. Mike and Terry took positions
at the end of the column.

"Where are we going?"

"Breakfast, I hope!" Terry said. The tall boy pressed a stud in the
wall, and the front door rolled back. Then he turned his head and
bellowed "Section, tench-_hut_! Forward _march_!" And he sounded as
though he enjoyed it.

They marched out, and, to Terry's gratification, it was to a huge,
diamond-shaped building in which they found breakfast waiting.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was during the rest period after the half-hour session of
calisthenics that the _Mikol VII_ landed. Terry and Mike had been
laying prostrate on the thickly-matted, damp blue grass, a little out
of breath but strangely enough, little more fatigued than had they
just finished a short inning of sandlot baseball. They both had been
watching the milky-blue sky, and had chosen a place to rest somewhat
apart from the others. There were hundreds and hundreds of the others
in formations of their own, Terry had noticed, and all together he
could only guess at how many there were. There was one adult in charge
of all of them, but they had not seen him closely yet nor heard his
voice.

Before the first sounds of thunder, Mike had been puzzling a lot of
things at once.

"Did you ever jump so high before?"

"It really wasn't awful high. Higher, though I guess than ever before.
Felt kind of funny, huh?"

"Sure did. Is it hard for you to walk?"

"We never played soldier much--you know how Dad felt about that. The
other guys are pretty good at keeping the same step. We'll catch on,
though."

"I didn't mean that. I didn't feel--well, heavy enough, sort of. I
kinda bounce when I try to walk."

"Me too, but all dreams are funny. I suppose in a dream you could jump
clear over the buildings back there if you wanted to. Boy, wait'll we
tell Dad about dreaming we're in a military school. He'll have a fit!"

"He sure will. Remember that time we asked him about it? I guess even
Mom was surprised at how he flew up that way. He said if he hadn't
thought he could teach us himself how to grow up good without putting
us in uniforms to do it he'd never have had us. But it's kind of fun
though. So far--"

That was when they heard the thundering sound almost directly above
them, but it was like no thunder they had ever heard before. There was
a sudden swirling of the thick sky above them, and they jumped up,
rooted, watching.

The _Mikol VII_ burst suddenly through the heavy clouds, its stern
belching flame and rolling volumes of sound. The heavy air about them
vibrated as they watched.

It looked like a huge, shining artillery shell, dropping groundward as
though held in the grip of some great, invisible hand that slowed it,
held it in perfect balance as it descended wrong-end first, directly
above the circular place at the end of the long, broad street.

"Like a big V-2 going the wrong way!" Mike said.

"It's a space-ship, that's what it is!" Terry yelled. "Comin' in to
land. Just like in the movie we saw, Mike. Just like."

"Look, it's almost down--c'mon up on this little hill here. You can see
'em driving big trucks or something out to meet it. What do you suppose
it's got?"

"Wonder where it's from? Mars, I bet."

"Hi! Pretty sight, isn't it?" It was the tall boy who led their
section. He had his thumbs hooked in his belt just behind where the
gold stars were.

"Sure is," Terry said, eyes glued to the towering craft which had just
settled perfectly to the ground.

"It's the _Mikol VII_, and it's the last shipment before the games.
Guess there'll be another ten thousand or so guys, and then we can
start getting all our equipment issued. They don't give us our stuff
until everybody's here. That's to make it so that we all have an
absolutely equal amount of training. Watch--they're starting to come
out now. Just the way you guys did when you came."

       *       *       *       *       *

Mike and Terry weren't listening. They watched as a great opening
suddenly appeared near the ship's blunt stern, to which an inclined
ramp was being towed by a tiny surface-vehicle. Then they started
coming out, five abreast, in seemingly unending numbers.

"They're still wearing civvies," the tall boy said. "They'll get their
game issue tonight, though, and their equipment, along with us. Trucks
drop it off at each barracks, and then it's given out by each section
leader. I guess there must be tons of the stuff."

"Where they going now?"

As the youngsters poured from the _Mikol VII_ they were grouped into
formations by adults who had come from the huge, golden building.

"Why, to their barracks, just like everybody else does. They ate before
they landed, and their barracks assignments were made at headquarters
on Earth before they even took off."

"On Earth?"

"Sure, didn't you know that? Believe me, it has to be efficient. The
Quadrates and their staffs work all year at headquarters getting
things lined up for the games. They don't show up here until the day
things start. The Director's here, but you only see him once, at
the opening ceremonies. As far as the games are concerned, he ranks
everybody--except the Prelate General, of course. He signs the orders
that split us up into our quadrants."

"Hey, Jon...."

"You better call me lance-sergeant out here. Somebody could get the
wrong idea."

"Sure, sarge! Is that what the gold star means?"

"Uh huh. You get 'em if you volunteer. Like I did, before I was ten.
Sets a good example, you know."

"Gee. Is everybody here our age?"

"Nobody can be more than a month over ten. That's the law. That is
except for volunteers, who are younger, and those who get tossed back
for insufficient conditioning and have to stay for the games all over
again, like me. I was twelve a couple months ago. I like it though."

"But say, what'd you mean about Earth?"

"Well, that's where all the plans and everything are made before you
even leave. You didn't think all that stuff was done here on Venus, did
you?"

       *       *       *       *       *

As Jon had said, the trucks came with the loads of equipment for each
barracks that night after supper. They were large, long trucks and
Terry wondered why they didn't make the awful racket that trucks always
made. There wasn't the stink of burned Diesel fuel. The huge vehicle
just rolled up outside soundlessly, and Terry watched for the driver to
get out. None did. He tried to look into the front of the vehicle, but
it was too dark to see what was on the other side of the long, narrow
windows.

"Nothing in there," Jon said. "Those are just for maintenance
inspection. It'd be a mess if the robot-control ever went out of whack,
believe me. Better start help unloading."

The unloading took less than fifteen minutes, and then the truck moved
on to the next barracks. The rude, wooden crates were heavy, but not
large. There were three for each of the hundred bunks.

When the last was placed at the foot of Jon's bunk, he stood on the
largest one and told them what to do.

"I'll distribute a chisel to each of you," he said, "and as you open
each box, place its contents on your bunk, so that it can be inspected
for fitness before use.

"You will open the smallest box first. In it you will find your helmet
and polishing kit. The helmet is to be kept shined at all times--if
anybody's isn't it's ten demerits. Fifty, as you've all been told, and
you get your records marked 'insufficient conditioning'. Your helmets
may look heavy--on Earth they'd weigh about five pounds, but here
they're just a little less than four. You'll get used to them.

"In the second box--the flat one--you'll find all your personal
maintenance equipment. You should have a whetstone, extra leather
thongs, a set of files, and a small can of oil. They're to be kept in
the condition which you find them, and will be worn at all times on the
shoulder equipment sling which is in the third box.

"In the third box--the long, flat one, are your most important pieces
of equipment. I'll show you how they attach to your arm belt. Needless
to say, they must be kept thoroughly polished--and sharpened--at all
times. Now I'll give out the chisels, and you can open the boxes."

They did. Terry and Mike helped each other when they got their chisels.
They followed Jon's directions perfectly. First the helmet and the
polishing kit. Then the whetstone, extra leather thongs, the set of
files, the can of oil, and the shoulder equipment sling.

Then the eight-inch dagger, the two-foot spiked mace, and the
double-edged broadsword....




                              CHAPTER IV


The price of the paper was $3,000.

"Doug--do we dare--"

"No. We've only got a second or so, as though we were just interested
passersby, looking at the headlines. Got to be careful."

PRELATINATE OKs MORE FUNDS FOR SCHOOLS the eight-column streamer read.
Doug scanned the two-column lead quickly.

"Washington, April, 17--(WP)--Prelate General Wendel announced
through his press headquarters here tonight that both houses of the
Prelatinate have unanimously voted to grant the request of the Council
of Education, 27th Department, for seven trillion dollars in additional
funds for school building. The funds will be used for the replacement
of 34 outmoded buildings in the Department, the newest of which, it
was said, is more than 12 years old. The Council's original request
for five trillion dollars was increased by the Prelatinate to seven
trillion in recognition of--"

_Good Lord_, he thought, _good Lord...._

_City Cabinet Praises Mayor On Budget Expansion...._

_Area Industries Vote Shorter Work Week...._

_Liberals, Conservatives In Accord On Labor Issue...._

_S-Council Reports Second Arrest In Four Years...._

_Veteran Civic Leader Admits Wisdom Of Youth Group's Plan...._

"Doug--oh Doug, none of this can be real...."

"We'd better go. Back to the house. And take it easy, lady...." He
managed to grin a little.

No one passed them on the walk back, but Dot clung close to him as
they walked, as though the mature years since college had never been,
as though simple happiness were again all that mattered.

The mature years....

Doug wondered. Somewhere, he had always known, there was the place
between resigned acceptance of things as they were and perpetual
refusal to recognize a condition for what it was. Somewhere, happiness
was a simple, honest thing, uncomplicated by the devious machinations
of sadistic moral codes that would make a struggle of that right.
Somewhere there was meaning to action, and the hypocrite was at last
fallen from the mocking pedestal of lip-service righteousness.

Somewhere, perhaps long ago, a man had said "I question" even as, at
the same time, another had said "I condemn" and another had said "I
follow". Thus far, had they travelled the same road, but here, the road
was forked. One was a wide path. One an aimless twisting thing that had
no destination. The other, narrow, and ever narrower as it progressed.
And there would be other forks, other paths, that split and re-split as
they tracked the infinite reaches of time itself....

He remembered the first thing he'd learned in his first plunge into
space-mechanics research. _Space cannot exist without time; time
cannot exist without space. Space-time, then, is the fabric of the
Universe._

So the threads were real. As real as the fact that one day in his life,
he had decided to study law rather than to continue as a physicist.
There had suddenly been a new split in the thread, and he chose, and
had become an attorney, and then a man of politics.

What had Carl said? "... _you'd've made that try for the moon a success
last month instead of another near-miss_ ..."

And how many other might-have-beens could there be?

_We conceive of Time, as it is integral with the structure of Space, an
infinite_ ... The second thing he had learned.

And therefore--therefore each thread of might-have-been, unto itself,
_was_.

_Somewhere, there was a Congressman named Douglas Blair. Somewhere,
there was an astro-physicist, an artist, a sculptor, a writer, a
cab-driver, a general, a sailor, a doctor, a thief, perhaps even a
corpse named Douglas Blair...._

"I know," he said to the woman at his side then. "Dorothy, I think I
know."

They entered the beautiful house set far back from a wide, beautiful
highway on a lush, beautiful lawn.

And he tried to explain, until he thought she understood.

He was tired, then. She located food in the house, and he found money
in a wallet in which the identification card said simply Douglas Blair,
Senior Quadrate of Games.

But everything was changed--everything. Not just himself, not just
Dorothy. A whole world. All on another thread, that had started back
somewhere, much further back. Through history, there had been so many
ifs....

In a little while she lay beside him, and they slept.

       *       *       *       *       *

They had intended to begin the search for materials to build another
contraption, but before he was fully dressed, from somewhere, there
was a soft tinkling sound. It was repeated, signal-like, from a far
corner of the room. It came from what could only have been an extremely
simplified, compact version of the telephone, installed integrally with
the ample arm of a lounging chair.

"Shall I?" he hesitated.

"Be careful...."

Doug lifted the slender receiver. "Blair," he said.

"Quadrate Blair, sorry, sir, that the liberty was taken to disturb
you at your home. However, because of the urgency of this morning's
conference at your offices, it was considered wise to remind you of
the time it is planned to convene, as per Instruction 43-A. May you be
expected at 1100 hours, sir?"

He dared not hesitate.

"Yes, yes of course." The voice he answered was a woman's.

"Will you wish the 'copter as usual, sir?"

"Why--yes of course, as usual. Thank you...." He hung up quickly. Dot
was looking at him with the question held at her lips.

"I'm expected at some sort of high-powered pow-wow in--" he glanced
at a delicate clock inset in the chair's opposite arm, "--less than a
half-hour. They're sending a 'copter for me. God knows what will happen
if I don't show up."

And, he observed to himself, only God knew what would happen when he
did.




                               CHAPTER V


When the 'copter swished to a feather-like landing on the wide expanse
of the front lawn, Doug was ready. He had dressed himself in one of
the dozen uniforms he had found arrayed in neat order in a full-length
bedroom closet. He fastened the cape at his throat, wished suddenly
that there was some way he could take Dot with him.

Suddenly she was in his arms, and Doug could feel her tremble.

"Don't worry, honey," Doug said. He opened the door. "So far it looks
pretty civilized--hell, they couldn't be any worse than the quaint
little tribe of cut-throats back home! Matter of fact, if I thought for
a minute anyone here'd believe me--"

"Better not, Doug."

"Not a chance. I'm still one of Our Crowd--I don't trust anybody! And
don't you--Stay put right here 'til I'm back, understand?"

He kissed her, then walked across the lawn to the idling helicopter.

It was empty.

He got inside, then saw the red button with the one word RETURN under
it. He punched it.

Effortlessly, the robot-controlled craft lifted, wafted him in seconds
high above the city. Its rise stopped at what he judged was about 1,000
feet, then proceeded on a course of its own.

"Wonderful, these dreamers," he muttered, and became engrossed in study
of the fabulous city below him.

There was no capitol dome, nor could he find the Washington monument.
But there was still the Potomac, and there were the cherry blossoms.

Then the city became little more than a rolling pattern of line and
color to him, and the thoughts began coming quickly, intensely. An
excuse for the difference in his voice--did people here have colds? The
uniform--suppose something were wrong ... and his own mannerisms--how
closely would he resemble, under the close scrutiny of the few there
must be who knew him well, the man whom he'd replaced--the other
Douglas Blair, who must at this instant be facing the same problem in
a world as alien to him as this was to Congressman Douglas Blair? The
woman on the phone had said "Your offices"--his meeting, then, and
they'd ask questions.

He'd been a fool. He'd never carry it off in a million years! They
were smart--even a half-intelligent person of his own world could spot
the eternal phony trying to bluff for what just wasn't there, even
in the guy who'd learned how from the right books. Hell, he'd be as
transparent as manners at a pink tea.

       *       *       *       *       *

He wondered about the other Douglas Blair, and how the trap felt that
had snapped on him. About the kids--what about his kids? Terry was a
smart boy and he'd know the Contraption had been responsible for what
had happened. Would he try to get hold of Carl or somebody? If a bunch
of technicians or even scientists got to the Contraption, touched
anything.... There would be no knowing about that until they tried to
get back. Either the reference frame would be the same or, if someone
had tampered, it would be completely altered, and Dot and himself would
go from one time thread to the next, _ad infinitum_, with finding their
own again as probable as finding a specific grain of sand in the Sahara.

The other Douglas Blair. And of course, his wife. He knew what they
looked like--she would have Dot's slenderness, her face, eyes, hair....
No one would know. And the man would look like himself. Suppose even
the kids didn't know? Doug wondered if they'd fool the kids.... And
then--then what? No one would know, but that was a joke. They wouldn't
believe it if his alter-ego got to a microphone and broadcast it.
People only believed in gossip, in rumor, in the miracles of wishful
thinking. They never believed in facts. They accepted them, but they
were not convinced. Newspapers would publish accounts of dolls that
wept, but carefully steered clear of the scientific phenomenon if
it were not between governmental quotation marks. It was true of
course--mystery, properly interpreted, could not hurt. A fact defied
interpretation; in the final analysis, it must be taken or left. And
when it was a fact strange to the beliefs of men, it was left for
as long a period as curiosity would permit. And then, of course,
misunderstood.

He wondered how the other Douglas Blair would manage, and what, upon
realizing that his was the superior intelligence and knowledge, he
would do with it....

The 'copter had begun to lose altitude and the flat expanse of a
large roof below was its destination. Its edges were lined with other
'copters, hangars, servicing equipment, men. While he watched a
pilotless ship gently rose into a flight-pattern above the roof toward
which he descended. Another was descending toward it even as he was,
from slightly above and from the east.

And then there were little cold, stabbing fingers of panic inside him,
squeezing, twisting his vitals.

_Relax, mister._

Now it was no longer a pleasantly fantastic detached stage setting,
with red exit lights glowing reassuringly somewhere off in the shadows
of reality. Quite painfully, he felt the chiding slap of reality across
his face.

And it hurt.

_Forget about the Contraption, forget about the smart guys, and their
smart little world--their little dung-heaps of stupidity and moral
cannibalism you've had the colossal luck to escape...._

_Can't do it? That's right--the kids, of course...._

_Sure, but old Mother Nature takes care of that, doesn't she? When your
kids are lying dead on some foreign battlefield you can have more....
That's why life's cheap, old man.... Nature doesn't care--she'll keep
supplying and supplying as long as there are fools enough to flood the
market. And you have your woman, if it's kids you want...._

_It's a clean slate.... Pick up the chalk--_

_But you couldn't name them Mike and Terry, dammit, you couldn't!_

The 'copter's landing-gear touched.

Its blades were still slowing as the two uniformed men appeared
beside it, opened the small door. Doug climbed out, and the two stood
at attention, each right palm open and raised. He understood. The
universal gesture for peace--a salute. An odd gesture to replace the
mock-shielding of the eyes against the glitter of a nobleman's shiny
battle armor!

He returned it, and they fell in at his side to escort him across the
landing roof to an opening entrance, cloaks swirling gently behind
them in the bright morning sunlight.

       *       *       *       *       *

He entered the chamber still flanked by the orderlies. There were
nine men and a woman about the circumference of the long, elliptical
conference table, and they stood as though brought erect by a common
puppet-string as he came through the wide door.

The vacant chair was at the far end of the table. Silently, he was
escorted to it, seated. The others bowed with but a hint of movement
toward him, then seated themselves. The orderlies withdrew, and the
softly curved walls seemed to grow in upon themselves as the wide
doorway through which he had come soundlessly disappeared.

Here they were, then. Ten people whom he did not know, called to
conference for the discussion of some supposedly vital situation of
which he had not the slightest inkling. And he had apparently called
it, so the talking was up to him.

It would mean discovery before he had said ten words.

As they sat, his eyes swept from one to the next in unhesitating
succession.

The woman, next to him, was clothed as Dot had been. He had seen many
less attractive. Of the men, three obviously outranked the remaining
six, who would have looked, were it not for the too-serious set of
their faces, like college athletes. Their three superiors, he judged,
were nearer his own age. The markings at the collars of their blue
cloaks were identical with his own, with the exception that they were
executed in red rather than in white. Four identical insignia--four
identical commands then.

The term Quadrate was at once self-explanatory. Somewhere, there were
four great armies....

And he, apparently, held power of decision over them all. What colossal
thing surged one way or the other at his order? And--who or what, in
turn, ordered him?

Now they were seated, waiting.

_You should've run, you should've run.... What'd you think it was, just
a dream with the label "Impossible" stuck on it? How long did you think
you could deny the reality of what you knew was real? How deep do you
have to get into a mess before you're convinced you don't come equipped
with a guardian angel, a $64 miracle that'll just take you over and
bail you out when the going gets rough enough? Charms and such went out
with the Dark Ages, mister.... Or didn't anybody ever tell you?_

"... Gentlemen, you of course know why you're here...." _That's the
idea! After all, you learned the old double-talk technique a long time
ago--Congressman._ "Therefore perhaps it will be best to reverse the
usual question and answer procedure; I shall hear your questions and
opinions on the matter first, then present my own. Proceed...."

The girl was writing.

The others seemed to be swallowing it.

"Quadrate Blair," the tallest of the three said abruptly. "Frankly,
we were hoping you might lay the matter open in this way! I don't
intend to speak for Quadrate Tayne and Quadrate Klauss, but I think
they have felt the same as I. Is it to be our understanding that we
are to receive no OP for this year's games? I for one would be the
first to grant that our overall system, developed since the days of the
Sahara as it has been, is well perfected, as nearly without flaw as is
possible to make it. Yet the burden of detail is always with us. It is
the small details, after all, each built on each, that have brought
us to the high level we've achieved. There has always been room for
correction, for experiment, for change. Therefore I, and I think here
I may speak for the others, am puzzled that, with the first phase of
the games but a week hence, we have received nothing--and there were
details of last year's Operational Procedure that I know Quadrate
Klauss as well as myself felt should have been further examined in
the field. The boys themselves keep developing new techniques--one
tells the other, a brother, a friend--and we must make it our business
to keep abreast of them, or we'll find ourselves in the midst of
a confusion that could conceivably assail the very psychological
foundations upon which our civilization is built!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The one called Klauss rose then. He had a more soldierly carriage than
the first man, but he was not as tall. His tone was more conservative,
yet of a more subtle firmness. And Doug listened. It was the only way
in which he might gain some hint, some shadow of an idea of what these
impossible men were talking about.

"Would you answer one question, sir?" the Quadrate named Klauss said.
"Is the Director's word on this thing final? I ask this since if there
is still the possibility of discussing further any or all of the
procedure amendments proposed in our checklists...."

The words meant nothing. So far so good, but it was just
stalling--he'd succeeded in gaining time, but when they were finished,
they'd expect some sort of decision, and then a follow-through.

Dammit, he was balled up! Somehow maybe he could fake long enough to
get the materials, build the Contraption and get out. A tele-radio
machine he had examined in the house while Dot slept might provide
some of the needed material, but not the vital stuff. He would order
that from a government supply office as soon as he returned to the
house. His rank should be sufficient to get him what he needed without
questions being asked. The Earth he knew with all its clatter of
empty heads, its life-long familiarity--Terry and Mike were there. Or
this world of seeming intelligence, efficiency, forthright honesty of
conviction? Was there a choice?

The girl beside him moved in her chair. Recording secretary, of course.
She would know. Everything--

_How many times have you dreamed of a world like this? Don't be a
fool...._

"--and I therefore submit, sir, that unless final decision has been
made by the Director, we further discuss the expedited drafting of
the new OP for this year, based on the details enumerated in our
checklists."

The third one rose, the one referred to as Tayne.

There was something in the look of the man that brought Doug at once
on guard. Wide face and shoulders, sharp, small features that gave
his face a curious look of flatness, small eyes. The eyes bored in as
though they could see through Doug's body and into his brain, examine
it, and find it an imposter.

"I think the Senior Quadrate will agree," he said, "that each time the
games are conducted, it must be according to a plan which is as closely
fool-proof as is possible to make it. I think he will agree that
personal feelings have no place in the formulation of such plans--or
their lack of formulation."

All eyes were suddenly on Doug, and he knew that here was a
challenge--that here was something the others had wished to say, but
had considered the risk too great.

"Continue," he said.

"I ask, in the interests of the Council, what the Senior Quadrate's
real reason is for having delayed the revised OP for so protracted a
length of time. I am not in position to demand an answer, but I point
out that I ask the question as an alternative to filing a formal charge
of outright profligacy in office!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The sharp intakes of breath about the table were his cue. Even the girl
hesitated the space of a second in her transcription. Suddenly, the
thing was obvious. And Doug knew he could cope with it--he had, so many
times before!

_This lad_, he thought, _wants to be the next Senior Quadrate!_

"It seems," he said, "the Quadrate has forgotten that the Council table
is not intended as a political arena. He will be seated."

Tayne reddened. But he did not sit.

"The Director be praised but it's time we got to the bottom of this!
Is it not true, Quadrate Blair, that the OP is being delayed so that
whole sections may be entirely revised--in order to conform to your
personal beliefs concerning what you term efficiency of equipment, on
which we hear you expound so often? I suggest sir that you are grossly
overstepping your authority! I doubt seriously that our checklists have
even been consulted! The Senior Quadrate would accuse me of seeking
his position--I'm aware of that--but I ask him point-blank of his own
ambitions toward the Directorate!"

There was but an instant of silence; the Council was stunned. Doug
felt cold little drops of sweat rolling down the undersides of his
arms. What now? Was he supposed to shoot the man on the spot? Fire him,
what? He turned to the girl.

"You will make extra copies of the Quadrate's remarks for the--the
Director's personal file. Forward them to his headquarters as soon
following adjournment of this session as is possible." She nodded. He
was still doing it right. But luck wasn't a consistent thing. "Until
the Director clarifies the status of Quadrate Tayne, pending his review
of this report of his insubordinate charges and my own recommendations
for the severest penalty the law allows for such insubordination, we
will consider the conference adjourned, gentlemen...."

They stood at once, bowed, and flanked by their junior officers filed
silently out.

Doug remained seated. The secretary was gathering her equipment. He
dared ask her--what?

She startled him when she spoke.

"I'll get the transcription coded and prepared for A priority
transmission on the first open Venus channel. But if I may say so,
Sir--not that he certainly hasn't deserved it ever since his brother
got him appointed--it's too bad you could not have found some other
way--I've always marvelled at the methods you've been able to devise to
cope with him in the past. This was--but pardon me. I'm entirely out of
place."

"No, no it's all right. His brother?"

"Why--yes of course, Gundar Tayne. The Director."




                              CHAPTER VI


He had thought like a child to have believed he could have done more
than bluff. He had thought like a child to have taken the impossible
gamble at all. Already he had committed a fatal error, and he knew that
were it not for his physical appearance the farce would not have lasted
ten seconds.

Nonsense! Was not a high stake worth the toss of any dice? Perhaps he
was slightly mad, but he had _not_ thought like a child. Slightly mad,
mad enough to suppose that to win happiness there must be courage, and
with the courage, success, somehow.

He could feel the solidity of the corridor floor beneath his feet as he
followed her toward the panel at its end upon which the words Office
Of The Senior Quadrate stood boldly, with the insignia of the office
inscribed beneath them.

Fatal error be damned!

He would satisfy Tayne! As soon as the panel of the large, private
office slid shut behind them, he would countermand his order to the
secretary and have her scrap the section of her records which was so
much more damning to himself than it could ever be to Tayne. There
would be some other way....

Yes, it was politics. But it was the only weapon he knew, and for the
moment he would have to wield it more skillfully than he ever had in
his life.

And idly, he wondered what they would do if he failed. If, somehow they
saw through the disguise of his body....

He knew what they would do. They would make him build a new
Contraption, make him go. And the Contraption they would make him
build--there was of course too great a chance that he and Dorothy would
miss their own point in time, become hopelessly lost....

And wouldn't it be sheer idiocy to risk that?

       *       *       *       *       *

The office was a miniature of the council chamber. It was elliptical,
furnished with two desks of smooth, soft-finished metal molded to fit
the general configurations of the chamber itself, and planned for both
business-like efficiency and personal comfort. The name-plate on the
larger desk bore his insignia and said Douglas J. Blair; that on the
smaller said Miss Jane Landis.

He seated himself.

"Miss Landis, about that report to the Director. Perhaps--perhaps as
you suggested, it was in, shall we say, bad taste. Better file it.
Future reference."

"Why Doug--what on Earth's the matter?" She put the recording device on
her desk, walked over to his. There was a look of concern on her face
that he didn't understand. What had he said wrong now? Whatever it was,
there was no hint of suspicion in her look, only a vague puzzlement.

Young, and pretty. A trap, perhaps--no, they hadn't tumbled yet.
Perhaps just Nature's own trap and that was all. Funny, Doug thought,
very funny. There were rules. Sometimes you were supposed to be
thankful to Nature, worship her, hold her in awe--and other times, you
were supposed to completely deny that she existed, and villify her if
she had done too good a job. She had done a good job on Miss Landis.

"Why, nothing. It is simply that--"

"But why the 'Miss' Landis? Did I do something wrong? And the way you
just went over and sat down...."

"Sorry ... sorry, Jane." He smiled. "It's Tayne. I think I handled him
rather badly."

"Don't worry so, Doug! I've never seen such a little thing get under
your skin. Everyone knows he never got properly conditioned, even the
Director himself. He's a good games officer, and that's that. He's
always trying to draw someone into a state of anger, and you told me
yourself just yesterday that you're his special target just for the
job. It's a good thing you didn't blow up in there. What came over
you--giving an order like that, I mean?"

"I--let's say I was confused for the moment."

"As long as he's the only headquarters man like that there's nothing to
keep you so upset, Doug. Now come on--"

She was behind the desk, a slender hand on the back of his chair.

"Not--no not now Jane. Anyway you should appreciate my--"

"Your position ... yes.... But Lisa's not the jealous sort Doug, you
know that. Your wife's always been willing to share you with others...."

"I--yes I know that of course...." _Good Lord_ ...

He hadn't even thought of it, hadn't been ready. The entire set-up of
conventions would of course have so many differences--what was simple
bad taste in his time-phase might be accepted as a matter of course
here. And vice-versa perhaps--how was he to know? And he would have to
know.

"Doug...."

He said nothing, and she withdrew a little.

"Doug I'm sorry about getting out of line when I said what I did about
the way you handled Tayne, if that's what it is ... I know my business
and I know yours...."

He remained silent, and she left his side of the desk.

He tried to think, tried to remember the early days in the courtroom.
And he must say something quickly--

"No--no honestly I'm glad you said it. After all, how long have we
known each other, Jane?"

"Ever since--ever since your election to the Quadrature almost ten
years ago."

"Yes--it's a long time, isn't it? Tell me, had you ever known anything
about me before then?"

"Why, only your name, your accomplishments. Your work for the great
cause of politics and government as a journalist. I read a lot of your
work. I thought there was never a man more devoted to his party since
the formation of the Prelatinate itself. You were a great man then just
as you are now, Doug--and you're third in worship only to the Prelate
General himself."

"Worship ... you mean public admiration, respect...."

"Doug, how can you say such a thing? It's like--well, as if they'd said
years ago that they--that they admired or respected their God!"

He felt the muscles in his jaw slacken, caught them.

"There's been a lot of progress since that era, of course. A lot
of hard, exhausting work...." He was careful, lest any of his
question-marks show. At any moment he could imagine her whirling upon
him, shrieking "Imposter!"

But she was taking the bait.

"It seems impossible that there could ever have been a way of life
without the Prelatinate, the Quadrature. Impossible even that there
was once such a thing as war. How terrible it must have been--no
conditioning, the constant killing of valuable adults...."

       *       *       *       *       *

He let her words sink into his memory, pushed them, crammed them into
it, then tried to make them follow through.

"Ironic, isn't it, that without such beastiality there might never
have been a world as we know it now. I sometimes wonder how often they
thought about the future--if they thought about it as we do today.
You know, Jane, I think about the future a lot. Remember what we were
talking about just the other day--a week or so ago, wasn't it?"

And he waited, tensed. Too far, perhaps--

"Doug--Doug you mustn't talk about that any more! The S-Council would
have both of us in a minute if they ever heard us. The boys in white
have sterilized people for less than talking about the desirability of
inter-political marriages. But God, how I wish I'd been brought up a
Liberal! Lisa wouldn't have had a chance!"

"I suppose it would've made the children a problem...."

"An understatement if I ever heard one! Your twin sons--I bet they're
good solid Liberals by now! Do they--do they ever question, Doug? I've
often wondered about kids, brought up in the family party from the time
they're old enough to say 'Prelatinate'. Have Kurt and Ronal ever--do
they ever show a streak of heresy--you know what I mean ... I should
think kids'd rebel, try out some ideas of their own."

"Well, did you ever, when you were a child?"

"No--no I guess not. I see what you mean. If you come out with a really
good question, there's always an answer for you right out of the
Constitutional Commandments."

"And of course no one dares challenge them!"

"Doug!"

"Oh, don't misunderstand, Jane." Almost, that time. He could feel the
sweat start under his arms again. Dammit what an organization. They
worshipped government, they were scrupulously careful to keep a perfect
check-and-balance on political spheres of influence, they had such
well-oiled machinery that even war was impossible.

"Don't worry, I don't."

"I just meant that sometimes it really makes me realize what a
wonderful balance we've achieved. Education, population."

"No form of birth control could ever have solved the problems of
over-crowding and starvation and war as well as the games. You should
know! Without work like yours, Doug, just think what the whole world
could be like! There'd be the problem of enforcing the birth control
laws again, knowing that every time they were violated the threat of
unbalance would grow a little more."

The games again. What kind of magic, what kind of panacea were they? He
thought of the teeming, overcrowded millions in Europe, Asia--World
War I, World War II, Korea, the Puerto Rican revolution in 1955. New
York and her East Side slums, Chicago, and--whatever it was he headed,
it solved these things.

"Guess I'd better get back to the big job," he said then. "--Or
Tayne'll be your new boss! And then--"

"Doug what a perfectly awful thing to say! You've got to stop worrying.
Sometimes you're hardly yourself--honestly, if I didn't know you better
I'd think you'd lost the old self-confidence, the old strut! Your voice
even sounds kind of different. You've got to relax, mister."

"When I get things taken care of, maybe then.... And I think--I think I
can give them something they can't say no to if I go over every detail
once more--a whole re-study." He watched her face closely, nerves taut
for the first tell-tale sign that he'd fallen on his face. But she
nodded.

"Probably help. Shall I bring in the whole file for last year?
Checklists, film-strips, the works?

"Yes," he said. "Yes. That's what I want--the works."

       *       *       *       *       *

Neatly lettered on the file-tab of the heavy folder she brought were
the words WAR GAMES, 1957, and he did not understand.

_War Games, and she had said there was no war...._

Suddenly, he was afraid. Afraid to reach inside the folder, afraid to
find what would tell him that for some fearful reason she had lied,
that this beautiful, sparkling world was nothing but a lie....

He read the file-tab again. WAR GAMES, 1957, it said. No--no he did not
understand.

He drew out the four thick volumes of bound records, the square can
containing the film-strips, the thin sheaf of checklists.

And he opened the personal record titled _Senior Quadrate's Report. May
1, 1957-May 7, 1957. Blair._

And simply, directly, it began on the first page.

_Subject: War Games, 1957: Notes._

_Location: Venus, northern mass, west: N Lat. 38°24' to N Lat. 37°12' E
Long. 41°6' to E Long 39°12'._

_Force: 1,231,693._

_Age range: Reg. 10 yrs. 1 mo. to 10 yrs. 4 mos. Av: 10 yrs. 2-1/2 mos._

_Mortality: 483,912._

_Wounded In Action (Retrieved): 202,516._

_Balance: Minus 200 M; plus 173 WIA._

_Remarks: Within forgiveness margin._

_Conditioning: 3% held over._

_Personal observation: Full month training period completed by entire
quadrant. For male children of the 10-year age level, exceptionally
excellent military discipline this year. From what I witnessed of
the quadrants under Tayne, Klauss and Vladkow, they have experienced
the same good results. Despite use of outmoded weapons, combat
exceptionally vigorous, well-executed and effective. This was
especially true in final phase, with all quadrants meeting on common
front, northern mass (See map, Final Phase,) at which time 692,511 were
committed. Full day rest allowed all quadrants during transfer from
southwestern mass of quadrants 2 and 4._

_Klauss is to be especially commended for this thoroughness in
psychologically preparing his quadrant. Each of its members seemed
completely convinced that battle was necessary to survival; I assume
Klauss' extraordinary success may be laid to a great extent on his
expert use of the propaganda techniques so successful in the World War._

_Tayne is also to be commended, as is Vladkow, for having trained his
quadrant to an admirably high degree of technical proficiency with both
broadsword and mace. (See Recommendations, Final Report.)_

_Removal of dead done with somewhat lower expedience than usual in all
quadrants, due, however to the increased vigor on numerous occasions
to...._

Doug shut his eyes.

No. No, none of this was so. None of it....

"Jane!"

"Yes, Doug. Something--"

"I want to see the strips--now, if possible."

"Hit on something already?"

"The strips I said! Now!"

"Of course--right away, Doug." She pressed a stud in a panel flush with
the desk-top. He knew he had startled her.

But he had to see. If he could see, he'd understand. The words had made
no sense at all, they were gibberish, crazy and he didn't know what
they meant.

       *       *       *       *       *

He held his muscles rigid as he waited for the orderly she had summoned
to prepare the recessed projector, inset wall-screen. _Hurry, damn you,
hurry!_

"Verbal commentary desired, sir?"

"Oh--yes, yes of course."

"All ready then, sir."

"Go ahead then, go on."

The suffused lighting of the chamber suddenly dimmed, and Jane rose
from her desk.

"I'll be in the eightieth level records library, sir, if I'm needed."

"I don't--well if you wish, Miss Landis." She left. Because she
knew--yes, of course she'd known what was coming. And she had left--

In full color, the pictures flashed on the screen.

He watched, only subconsciously aware of the intermittent voice
describing, evaluating, analyzing. He sat and watched as though there
were not a mobile muscle in his sweating body.

_Ten-year-old children, somewhere beneath a fantastic milk-white sky,
painting an impossible blue plain with the red of their own blood...._

The broadswords rose and fell with a savagery unknown to any but the
ancient Turk, Mongol, Spartan. They glinted strangely in a daylight
where there was no sun, and the piked maces swung in circles of red
horror as they tore, smashed, at young, half-naked bodies....

They swarmed across the wide, flat expanses of bush, blue grass,
and the cries that issued from their throats as they charged like
hunger-crazed beasts into the sword-points of their opponents were
mercifully deleted; the maddened distortion of the features on their
white, young faces was enough.

The voice explained, pointed out, reconciled pre-calculated plans with
facts as they transpired.

The masses of mangled young flesh surged now forward now back, to
either side; swelled, bunched, drove, fell writhing....

He saw a head fall, a running body split in two down the back.

"That's all, that's _all_!"

There was bitter stuff in his throat and he fought to keep the violent
sickness bottled inside him.

"Yes, yes sir."

_No no no no no!_

       *       *       *       *       *

The illumination had returned fully when Tayne walked in, saluted
loosely. He carried something in his right hand.

"Yes?"

"There's been an alteration in our rosters--Old Man himself, I had
nothing to do with it. Here."

Senses still numbed, he took the thin plastisheets. He tried to get
the words to make sense. Subject, transfer, quadrant 3 to quadrant 1,
attention, Quadrates concerned.

"Apparently the Director thought it would be better this way. For
myself, I don't see that it could make any actual difference."

What was the man saying? What did--there it was. Ronal Blair, Kurt
Blair: quadrant 3, Blair, to quadrant 1, Tayne. By Command: Gundar
Tayne, Director....

His thoughts spun dizzily. _Mike, Terry--no, those were not the names.
The other Blair's sons...._

_This time, thank God, the other Blair's sons...._




                              CHAPTER VII


"I am apparently a relatively high official in the government. It is
called a Congressman. Although there are many others of equal and
superior rank, I am well liked. I have a strong political following."

"Was there any suspicion?"

"None at all. I had the good fortune, almost immediately upon
discovering my role in this civilization, to gain access to a number of
speech recordings our host had made. His voice is very little different
than mine, and of course within about thirty minutes I had mastered his
tone, his inflection, and his manner of speech. We shall have little or
no difficulty."

They were seated in the living-room of the house; in its den, two young
boys were diligently working at the task their father had set them. The
books were opened in an orderly array on the wide, polished floor. One
read excerpts from the texts as the other quickly gained mastery of a
portable typewriter, transcribed as his brother read aloud.

"Father was correct in his reasoning ... take this ... _with the
desertion by Germany of the League of Nations, the stage for World War
II was set. Failure of the Weimar Republic_ ..."

Their sheaf of notes had grown measurably in thickness since the first
fact had been written on the first page the night before. The boy
had written it slowly as he had begun mastery of the awkward writing
machine--_1. Washington defeats Cornwallis at Yorktown, Oct. 19,
1781_ ...

In the living-room, the woman was listening to her husband.

"By their standards, we would seem as improbable in our psychological
reactions, our reasoning and our way of life as they seem
under-developed and generally inferior in intelligence to our eyes.
When you're among them, Lisa, you will have to guard against the
self-assurance which to them could be easily interpreted as lack of
emotion. Under any but the most intimate circumstances, we might appear
to them as some sort of thinking machinery devoid of what they term
'character' and 'personality'. Other than that, you should have little
trouble. If you should err through some lack of detailed knowledge,
you will find it amazingly easy to cover up." He toyed with a cigarette
in a momentary attempt to deduce its function. He broke it in two,
examined the tobacco grains as she spoke. Her voice was quiet, almost
as though consciously held in check by some secret restraint.

"From your description, these people can be dealt with more or less at
the mental level of a child of eight, then...."

"A child of about 13, on their standards. Not in individual cases,
however--you will have to judge quickly for yourself. There are many
who approach us in mental agility. I believe, from what I've been able
to discover during the last few hours, that our host was one of those.
There are few others of his rank, however, who are his equal."

"That would account for the apparatus." And then in a different voice
and quite suddenly she said, "Dare we not use it, Douglas, and--"

"And what? Lisa, sometimes I think I don't understand you at all. You
seem frightened, I think. Are you frightened?"

"No. No, Douglas."

"That's better. At any rate, we will do best to leave his apparatus
absolutely unmolested. Here, apparently, science is not a restricted
thing, in the sense that the individual is not limited by law in its
study and practice. Technological secrets of the government are of
course carefully guarded, and periodically divulged to the public in
vague or distorted form. However, the individual may be a free agent in
science to the limit of his wealth, interest and intellectual ability.
That is why our host was able to complete a project similar to that
upon which Zercheq was at work when he was apprehended. Although even
my technical training at Quadrature Academy excluded detailed study of
space-time mechanics just as it did nuclear fission, I'm quite positive
that our host has constructed a successful Chronospan, as Zercheq
called it. If we tamper with it, his chances of returning here and ours
of returning to our phase in time are reduced to absolute zero. As it
is, he will be faced with the task of building another to effect his
return--and unless he is a clever man indeed, his chances are of course
exceedingly slim. Zercheq was only half-finished when the S Council
apprehended him."

"We are the--innocent victims of a trap, then."

"It need not be a trap, precisely, my dear. There is a slim chance that
we may return--but that must of course remain in his hands. Quite
probably, he may fail. Therefore, we must go about the process of
adapting ourselves, and in any measure possible, alter and adapt this
civilization to our own methods and standards."

"Please, Douglas--"

"Yes?"

       *       *       *       *       *

She looked away from him for a moment, then back, but with her eyes
lowered.

"I suppose changing them," she said softly, "would be a--a challenge to
you, Douglas." Then her eyes came up, looked full into his. "Please,
let us use his device. Let us go back. I--It is that I--I _am_ afraid,
Douglas," she said.

"Afraid?" His tone was that of a man speaking half in doubt, half in
impatience. "I still fail to understand you, Lisa. A moment ago you
said--"

"Then forgive me," she interjected with a nervous suddenness. "It
is--let us say it is the shock."

"If so it shall wear off. But you may be assured, Lisa, there is
nothing to fear. These people are at least a century behind us,
generally speaking. Sociologically, they are where we were before the
formation of the Prelatinate--purely a case of arrested development
dating from antiquity. Technologically they are very little behind
us--perhaps only decades. I am not as yet familiar with the manifold
details of which the causes are comprised, but the effects in
themselves are starkly obvious. There are wars, for one thing. They
are the end effect of all the other contributory effects. I am in a
position to inaugurate the proper political maneuvers to eliminate this
end effect--and I shall. The problem of changing these people should
be quite simple, and because of their terrible desperation, it should
take astonishingly little time. They are slow-moving when it comes to
governmental function for the direct benefit of the individual, but
in their present state--as I say, almost unbelievably confused and
hazardous--I am quite sure that they can be relied on to favor any
possible solution to the curtailment of crisis after crisis."

"You mean--you mean the games, don't you, Douglas?..."

"Why of course! What else would I mean?"

"They have space travel, I suppose--"

"No--no, oddly, they're highly skeptical of it--it's still relegated
to colorful pamphlets for amusement purposes and to a few rather well
done pieces of fiction with all too limited circulation. But of course,
when the time comes, the Sahara will serve well enough--that is where
we started. Ordinarily, it would take years with people such as these
to convince them to adopt our game system. I shall work through their
weak spots--their fear, their desperation, their willingness to follow
beliefs unfounded in fact. Perhaps even within months ... Lisa, you're
not listening!"

"Yes. Yes I am, Douglas."

"I see. You think that because they're rank amateurs in the philosophy
of political mechanics, I will meet insurmountable stumbling blocks.
It is true they are quite backward in economic theory, and of course
that has its manifestation throughout government as well as the
governed. But fortunately, their motives are transparent to anyone
except themselves--that will help at least in gaining a toehold. Before
I begin, I want a few hours careful study of the notes the boys are
compiling. They've been industrious, I hope and not too taken with all
this."

She did not answer him.

"You are to be highly credited, my dear," he said. He knew her mood
would pass. It had, before.... "They are fine sons. I shall see to it,
as long as we must remain in this time-phase, that the only arms they
shall ever carry will be in the war games which I feel confident I can
inaugurate. They're in the den? After you, my dear...."

He did not notice the sudden tightening of the little lines at the
edges of her mouth.

       *       *       *       *       *

For several days, it was little more than a game of watchful waiting.
There had been committee meetings, sub-committee meetings, and each
had been more tense in the complexion of its discussions than the one
preceding it. These men, he found, were little, desperate men, and had
but only recently come to realize it.

The notes Ronal and Kurt had compiled for him were extensive and
accurate. Fundamentally, he understood the background of cause and
effect underlying the tensions, and had realized at once that these
men had become mired so deeply in the swale of political intrigue
that they had at last come to the point where they would gladly grab
at the nearest straw to extricate themselves. But they had run out of
straws. They had begun running out in the early 1950's; each had broken
pitifully since the Korea fiasco, and now they had been used up. He
listened, for his opportunity could come at any moment--and it must be
precisely the right moment.

"Gentlemen," one of them began in the soft drawl of the south, "I am
in favor of the President's proposal for two main reasons and two
alone: firstly, it is an indirect solution to the thorny problem of
Civil Rights. Secondly, we simply must have the arms. No one could
have foretold that Soviet Russia would have succeeded as she did in
ultimately outproducing us. Therefore we are caught by surprise, and
simply must have the funds, gentlemen. I wish to go definitely on
record as favoring the 50 per cent tax on individual income...."

"Impossible! I think the Congressman forgets the inherent strength in
the will of the people! I tell you they've had all they will take.
Especially in your own state. Congressman--they will become slaves in a
far more severe sense of the word than they ever were before the Civil
W--pardon me, the War Between the States."

"As I pointed out, Congressman, the President's proposal will solve the
thorny Civil Rights problem. And at any rate, the people of which you
so respectfully speak, Congressman, seem to have learned that politics
is after all a matter for the professional politicians. I think we both
realize that whether or not they feel, as you say, that they have had
all they can take, they will do little about it. When, in recent years,
have they, may I ask? I suggest, therefore...."

Several of the conferees looked in Blair's direction, as though
expecting him to do something. But the time was not yet. And when it
came, he must be careful--even in their desperation, they would not
accept it whole-hog.

"--and I b'lieve it is obvious that by working gradually, as we have in
the past, we should not have any of the trouble the Congressman from
New York suggests. Each year, we have simply added a little more, and
promised it would be the last time. Until now, even at 30 per cent we
are in a position to continue almost indefinitely. One thing the people
do fear, gentlemen, is war. We have been skillful, and let us not mince
words about it. They have been thoroughly frightened!"

Of course that was it. Gradually, with accompanying promises.... The
fear had been made a direct thing, and the tangled, subtle causes
beneath had become psychologically, if not actually, inaccessible.

All of the causes, of course, he might never learn. But the general
effects were obvious, so it was on them and with them alone that he
must build his case.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was now a matter of discerning how many of these men were genuinely
concerned with bettering the situation, how many were tenaciously
satisfied with the status quo, and how many were intent on using the
situation to better their own interests. All were desperate men. Only
their goals were different.

In time of course he would be able to do away with most of them.
They would in all probability fail to fit in a world organized about
the psychological concept on which the games were built. The people
themselves, however, if what the southern Congressman had said were
true, would fit perfectly.

And inwardly, he smiled. It was almost a simple thing, because it was
obvious that what the man had said was at least true to a degree. Their
economic set-up was proof of it. Millions and millions of pieces of
green paper, in which they had implicit faith despite the facts which
they knew to be true--that far less than half of their paper currency
was validly backed by the standard metal on which it was based. There
was not that much ore in the planet's entire crust!

But they _believed_ that the system worked, and that was all that was
necessary.

Just as the people of his own time-phase believed that a child could
actually be conditioned for life against violence, after sustaining
the temporary psychological shock caused by a week's subjugation to the
bloody horror of wanton slaughter. It was understood that such severe
psychological shock during the early years of mental development was
sufficient to condition each new generation for life against any future
acts of violence as adults, and it was believed because it seemed
to work. And because it seemed to work, it was believed _in_. Each
surviving youth grew into adulthood as convinced as his neighbor that
the conditioning of the games was life-long, that the psychological
scar they left was permanent, and would therefore render impossible any
form of violent conflict.

The belief, scientifically questionable as it might be, was never
challenged, because there was always the fact to face that there was,
after all, no war.

There was none primarily because the games simply solved the main cause
of it. Carefully controlled mortality rates on the battlefields kept
the population where it belonged, prevented the ultimate over-crowding
which was directly and indirectly responsible at 90 per cent of the
causes of any armed conflict. The few who were sufficiently timorous
to probe the philosophy upon which the system was based were at once
amazed at its simplicity: it consisted simply of a logical premise
that the killing of a required number of immature children was
self-evidently worth the saving of millions of valuable adults. It was
a matter of necessary sacrifice.

Yes, the people of this time-phase would fit into the plan well. Not
because they were intelligent, but because they had a natural tendency
as followers, and because their limited imaginations held them in a
mentally astigmatic state, too concerned with the status quo to ask
questions concerning the future until it was too late.

Blair smiled, this time openly. Tayne could have the directorship back
there! Here there was no Tayne. Here was a world for the asking, upon
which he would at last be the object of primary, not tertiary, worship
by a planet! He could take the shapeless clay--could cultivate it,
could forge it in time into a great, brilliant civilization--and it
would be his, all his. What greater monument to the genius of a man....

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a week later when the time came. The Congressman from the south
had been on a brief inspection of a hydrogen bomb site following a test
detonation. The pink flush had subsequently vanished from his jowls
and in its place was the color of ash. His brain had been mightily
disturbed; he had been forced to the painful recourse of thought, and
that had disturbed it even further.

Two other Congressmen were getting away with intelligent debate,
because the Congressman from the south was at last quite silent.

"... And I contend that our armed forces have not at all times been
informing us truthfully, especially regarding the need for vast land
armies, when it is obvious that they have become obsolete. It is my
opinion that their maintenance is used simply as a tool, gentlemen--a
tool to gouge extra taxes from the public, thereby enforcing their
increased dependence for survival on the government itself."

"You mean, Congressman, to say that the Army lies?"

"Like a rug, Congressman!"

There was a murmur throughout the group, short, whispered exchanges.

"You can substantiate this claim?"

"Do I really have to, Congressman?"

A gavel rapped quickly. Blair had slipped for the moment into the
comfort of relaxation; by the Prelatinate, it was _amusing_!

Then the debate continued, and he was at last convinced that these men
were genuinely afraid that the war from which no amount of influence
or money could buy their safety was imminent. The third war in their
history which would genuinely be fought to win. The others had been
their American Revolution, and their Civil War.

Then, "Congressman Blair. You've had little to say for the last few
days. Perhaps this sub-committee could profit by an opinion from
you...."

The chance had come.

He rose. "I have a plan," he said, "that may seem fantastic to you. I
have waited until most of the routine arguments were heard, so that
this thing would not be any more confused and bogged down in senseless
debate than necessary. I am prepared to answer all questions directed
to me regarding it, but I am finished at the first sign of the usual
harangue."

       *       *       *       *       *

He watched their faces. They were suddenly intense, and there was a new
alertness in them. It was true, then--they did respect him; he had a
good following.

"It is quite evident that our enemy has taken the advantage by
surprise. The nuclear weapons on both sides have kept us deadlocked for
about seven nervous, uncomfortable, difficult years. And the deadlock
is now on the verge of finally being broken, and to his advantage.
He is now capable of outproducing us--his dealings with unscrupulous
American businessmen have finally borne fruit, and he has sprung his
surprise. His nuclear weapons outnumber ours five to one and he is
in the driver's seat whether we care to deny it or not. And we are
stuck with twenty million men under arms in the field--rifles and
hand-grenades, lumbering tanks and a few other ridiculous toys. An
organization so tremendous that it trips itself and falls flat on its
face at every attempted move.

"But you gentlemen are painfully aware of all this, as are the
high-ranking, tradition-bound military leaders who are still denying
it. What you may not be aware of is that we may equalize our position
if we are quick to act--we may counter-surprise, counter-shock, if we
do not delay.

"I therefore ask your support, gentlemen, when I introduce my bill
to immediately lower the present minimum draft age from seventeen to
thirteen years."

The gavel clattered for order. Many had risen to their feet.

"Your questions, one at a time, gentlemen."

"Very well. The chair recognizes the Congressman from New Jersey."

"May I submit, Congressman Blair, that your plan is crazy? You yourself
admitted that manpower alone is woefully insufficient to cope with this
situation."

"It is, as such. In the form of surprise--and believe me, it would
surprise the enemy ten times the degree to which it has obviously
shocked this group here--it would prove of great value, in that it
would reflect a murderously frightening desperation. It would, of
course, have to be simultaneously accompanied by an immediate step-up
in production of nuclear weapons. All other types would immediately
be dropped. Factory shifts would in all instances immediately become
full-day, full-week."

"The Congressman from California."

"And you mean to imply that our enemy would actually stand in fear of a
thirteen-year-old?"

"Human mass has nothing to do with age, Congressman."

"The Congressman from Ohio."

"What you suggest, Congressman, is inhuman, unbearably horrible--you
suggest that we support you in a bill to draft _children_!"

"To make my point more clear, perhaps I should ask some questions of
my own. First, am I to understand that this group was at any time in
_opposition_ to Universal Military Training? And--second, is the youth
of seventeen a grown man?

"Or shall I ask the question this way--where would you rather place
these youngsters--in a position to possibly solve our dilemma, or in
cities that cannot possibly be adequately defended, and have them
marked for certain death along with the rest of us in them?

"You say my proposal is unbearably inhuman. You are right. War is. It
makes little difference how you draft its plans.

"Are there any further questions?"

There were none.

"Very well. I will call for a confidence vote, with the chair's
permission."

"Permission granted."

The Congressman from the south was very white. And very silent.




                             CHAPTER VIII


Dot's face was tense as she watched him. Doug held the delicate phone
device to his ear with pressure that made his flesh white around it. He
was oblivious to the wonder-like comforts of the beautiful home now,
cursing it subconsciously as though it had been built for the sole
purpose of trapping him, imprisoning him here.

The high-pitched signal in the receiver repeated evenly and he forced
himself to wait. His fingers drummed an uneven tattoo on the low table,
vibrated the dismantled parts of the tele-radio set that he'd examined
earlier. The open pages of the catalogue from the Science Council
library trembled in his left hand.

"Electrosupply, Federal Service Division," the voice said suddenly.

"Hail, this is Senior Quadrate Blair again."

"Hail, sir. Is there something unsatisfactory? The equipment you
ordered should have arrived at your home--"

"It has, it is satisfactory. However I find that I neglected to request
a high-speed bl--correction, high-kempage power-pack." He tried to
steady the pages. The closely printed alphabetized lines kept running
together.

"High-kempage power-pack? Your reference, sir?"

"Reference?" The veins on his throat stood out, but his voice was not a
sudden bellow from indignation. "You forget my position! How soon may I
expect the unit?"

"As soon as possible, sir."

He hung up. "Damn," he said. "Damn it to hell anyway!"

"Doug, can I do anything?"

"No, honey, no. We've just got to sweat it out until that pack gets
here. It'll be all right." He forced a smile, sank to a chair, put his
head in his hands. She knelt beside him. "The film-strips, that you
saw--they must have been--horrible."

He looked up. "Horrible isn't the word. God, what people. And at first
they seemed so--What a cold-blooded, ruthless--"

"Easy, mister." She came closer to him and he felt himself relax slowly
at the warmth of her touch.

"What a system.... I guess I read over those reports a dozen times.
They know there is no possible way to tell how long such an awful
mental shock will stay--even in the impressionable mind of a half-grown
child. Yet they accept it as full-blown conditioning process--they
_believe_ in it! They _believe_ in everything around here--they worship
the government, the Prelate General, the Director--even me! And because
there's no war and hasn't been since the first Prelatinate, they keep
right on believing that from the day you fight in the games--if you
survive--till the day you die, you're thoroughly conditioned against
physical violence--" He let the sentence taper off into silence.

"Just rest awhile, darling," she murmured.

He smiled. "Thanks, Dot. But I've got to get that mess downstairs
cleaned up. I'll be all right."

The equipment--the neat sorted rows of resistors, condensers, vacuum
tubes and the rest of it glittered on the long, wide expanse of the
workbench he'd installed. At one end was a half-completed framework,
and at the other--was the blackened ruin of what had been a transformer.

The burnt-out unit had cooled, but the stench of overheated oil and
melted insulation still hung in the air trapped in the blue haze of
smoke.

"Can any of the rest be assembled in the meantime, Doug? I'll help...."

       *       *       *       *       *

He busied himself with the blackened junk. "It could, but it's not
worth the chance. It's got to be so damn perfect. I've got to know
exactly what I'm going to be able to get out of the pack. Got to have
at least 1,000 Volts--or should I say Kemps--anyway. Damn the DC...."

He hadn't found out about the utility power in the house until he'd
blown up the transformer. It was a little thing, direct current rather
than alternating current, but it meant time, and there wasn't much
time. He knew there'd be no chance of his getting through the games
undetected, even if he found a way somehow to stomach such a horror.

There was a gentle chiming sound.

"The front door, Doug!"

"Guess I really threw a scare into 'em! You go up first, I'll douse the
lights."

There were two of them, and their uniforms were white. Their helicopter
idled on the front lawn. They saluted.

"Quadrate Blair, if you'll accompany us please."

They stood there, their faces impassive, their tones matter-of-fact as
though they had asked him to pass the salt.

"Accompany you? I understood that you were going to deliver--"

"S-Council, Department of Security, sir. You appreciate our position.
We have our orders. The Prelatinate-Attorney suggests an interview
immediately, sir. If you will accompany us, please."

"You may tell the--the Prelatinate-Attorney that I'm quite busy, but
that I shall be glad to make an appointment for him later tomorrow."

They stood there. There was a questioning look on Dot's face, and he
had no answer for it. Somehow, they'd gotten onto something. Jane. No.
Tayne again--

"We are sorry, sir."

"I'm afraid I fail to understand. You make it sound actually as though
I'm to have no choice in the matter. Who issued your orders?"

"Office of the Director, sir. And actually, sir, you have no choice. If
you will please accompany us."

They stood, immobile, waiting. There were only two of them. But he knew
that in minutes there could be two hundred.

He went with them.

       *       *       *       *       *

He judged the pneumatic elevator tube had descended at least 20 levels
below the surface before it came to a softly-whispering halt on a
resilient cushion of compressed air. They left the tube, and the same
miracle of lighting that kept the city in eternal daylight was gently
suffused through the entire length of the wide, silent corridors.

They did not walk far. Doug forced his mind into what order he could.
If this were some adventure fantasy from the pages of fiction there
would somehow be an escape, some thing he could suddenly do and the
tables would be turned. But it was not. It was fantastic, but it was as
real as the day the first atomic bomb was dropped.

The sliding panel admitted them to a round, low-ceilinged room similar
in most respects to his own office, even to the intertelecon screen
inset in the curving wall to the left of the large metal desk. The
man behind the desk was thin-faced and slight, but there was an
intelligence behind the high forehead that seemed to put a snap in his
wide-spaced eyes as well as in his voice. But it was the eyes that made
Doug's nerves feel that they must break like an overdrawn violin string
at any moment; the voice was smooth, controlled.

The orderlies saluted and were dismissed. The panel slid closed.

"Sorry to have to call you down here like this, Doug. But damn it, it's
my job, and besides that you've done something this time for which
there'd be hell to pay if the PG ever found out and you know it as well
as I do."

He gestured Doug to a chair. The Prelatinate-Attorney's tone was
relaxed, but Doug wondered how it might have sounded to a man of lesser
rank than himself.

One thing was certain; it was time to go back into the act. "I suppose
this all is leading up to threats of the S-Council--"

"Doug, when the DO buzzed me and said they'd been notified by
Electrosupply that you'd refused to give a reference for a piece of
equipment you ordered, there was nothing else for me to do but to get
you down here on the spot. You can imagine where I'd be if I didn't."

"It was Tayne I suppose."

There was a quick flick of the attorney's eyes, but his face didn't
change. "Personalities don't matter, Doug."

Doug waited for it. Behind the nonchalance, the
employer-to-faithful-but-errant-employee tone, there was something of
hard spring steel, coiled, waiting to be sprung.

"I'm not sure I like your tone," Doug bluffed. "I have some degree of
position you know--"

"Yes, I know--you seldom let anybody forget it. I understand you've
even reminded the Director on occasion...."

Doug shrugged. "Suppose we get down to it. Just what is there this time
that has the DO so upset?"

       *       *       *       *       *

The Attorney stiffened visibly. "What _is_ there? You mean you
don't realize that you've come about as close as anyone can come to
committing a capital heresy? Did you actually suppose you could order
a thing like that without a triple-endorsed Science Council reference?
You know as well as I do how strict the law is about possession of
restricted equipment of any kind by anyone except members of the
Science Council itself. Even the Director has to go through channels!
Where d'you think we'd be, anyway, if just anybody and everybody could
read any books, tinker with any kind of paraphernalia they wanted to?
Damn it, man, if every Tom, Dick and Harry went fooling around with the
knowledge that wasn't food for them the whole damn planet would be in
the S-chambers!"

"What do you mean, restricted--?"

"And we can't have any exceptions! Except, that is, for the special
training such as picked men as yourself received at the Quadrature
Academy. But when it comes to personal possession of restricted stuff,
without the required reference, you might just as well be caught with a
copy of Freud in your library!"

The pack. That had to be what he meant--he'd been phoning for the pack,
and they'd asked for a reference.... Somehow, he had to--the catalogue!
_The closely printed lines that got tangled up because he couldn't hold
it steady!_

"You're accusing me of ordering restricted--"

"Now look, Doug. You'd better tell me--I don't want it on the record
that I had to use Right of Office to get an answer. You ordered a
high-kempage power-pack. Now what for?"

"High-kempage power-pack? You can't be serious!"

"I've warned you, Doug."

"Warn and be damned! You sit there and repeatedly accuse me of ordering
restricted equipment--without reference, and you haven't even got your
facts straight! Did Electrosupply tell you that?"

A peculiar look was on the Attorney's face.

"DO said so."

"Well you could've saved us a good hour's time if you'd have called me
to see what I had to say first before dragging me over here as if I
were a common criminal! I think an apology will be in order!" _If only
Barnum had been right!_ "What I ordered, just in the event you're as
interested as you say you are, was a high-speed blower-rack!"

"A--what?"

_Reel him in!_

"A high-speed blower-rack. So happens I'm having trouble with the
electronic units of my vento-conditioner at home, and I'm doing the
work myself more or less as a project in avocational therapy--"

"Now it is you who can't be serious. How great a fool do you think--"

"Damn it, whose word are you going to take in this?" Doug stood up.
"Some Electrosupply technician's, who can't hear any better than you
can reason, or mine?"

There was a second's silence.

"All right, Doug. You're a fool, you know. You are, and so am I.... It
was a high-speed blower-rack. I'll make sure it's set straight."

"Well, thank you."

"Just be careful, Doug."

"That's good advice--don't wear it out!"

He turned quickly, made his exit before the panel had widened half-way.




                              CHAPTER IX


The ugly, black building stood out like a shapeless smudge of soot
against the milk-white sky, but it was by sheer accident that Terry and
Mike discovered it, built as it was at the water's edge where the high
blue grass had been neither trampled nor trimmed, and at a distance
further from the training areas than they had ever ventured.

"We'd better go back, Terry. We'll get in trouble." Mike's young
body glistened with perspiration as he stood on the knoll with his
brother, eyes still fastened to the low black structure as he spoke.
His equipment belt was heavy and he tugged again at it to change the
distribution of its weight. The broadsword swung loosely at his left
side, not quite counterbalancing the mace which hung by its thong to
his right.

"They said there were a couple of hours before the next class, didn't
they? The guy in the sharp uniform said we could amuse ourselves any
way we wanted."

"Sure, but this isn't the way the others are doing it. They all went
out and started practicing with the swords again. We oughtta."

"You rather do that than go exploring?"

Mike touched the half-healed flesh-wound on his right shoulder. He
remembered how the short, dark-haired kid had laughed when it had
started to bleed, and then how mad he got when he found he couldn't use
the sword well enough to cut him back.

"I'd like to get that guy."

"Don't be a dope. It's only a dream--you didn't really get hurt. Come
on, let's see what that place is. Nobody's around...."

"Maybe it is only a dream, but he made me mad. Boy I'll cut his ears
off if I--"

"Aw, come on."

They had barely started down the opposite side of the knoll when Jon
Tayne's voice hailed them.

"Hey, you two! Where d'you think you're going, anyway?" They waited
for him. There was a cross look on his face which Mike immediately
resented.

"Over there." He pointed toward the black building. "What's it to you?"

"Nothing to me, but it'll be double duty to you if you don't get back
to the recreation area right away."

"There's a lot of time yet. He said we could amuse ourselves, didn't
he?"

"That doesn't mean walking around wherever you please. It means just
what it says--giving your weapons a work-out. I was called away from a
good match just to come and find you two. Come on."

They turned, fell in at either side of him.

"We didn't mean anything wrong," Terry said.

"They'll let it go this time because you're new, and because you are
who you are. But you guys had better be more careful. That's restricted
back there."

"What's that? Restricted?"

"You should know that!"

"What is it?"

"Your father never told you anything, did he?"

"Sure--course he did. Lots of things. But there's no way he'd know what
that place is."

       *       *       *       *       *

Jon stopped in mid-stride. "No way he'd know? You crazy?"

"Who's crazy?" Terry clenched his fists, stuck his chin out.

"Look here--you want a fight or something?" Jon's hand went to the hilt
of his sword. Terry unhooked his mace. Mike had his sword half free of
its wide scabbard.

Jon let his arms drop to his sides.

"Come on, wise guy, who's crazy?" Terry glared at him.

"You know what'll happen to you if you do anything to a section leader?"

"We didn't ask to be here," Mike said. "And we didn't ask to be pushed
around, either, or told where we could go and couldn't go. Or be called
crazy, either. The whole thing is dumb."

"After the games, if you're still alive, I'll report you for that," Jon
said.

"Still alive? Who you kidding? You talk like there was going to be a
war. Grown-ups do that, kids don't."

"What do you think you're being trained to use your weapons for?"

"That's easy," Terry said. "So we'll know how to use 'em when we're
grown ups. It's called UMT or something."

"You guys _are_ cr--ah, don't be funny. The games start in three days,
then you'll know if you're in a war or not. And frankly, I hope you
both end up back there." He turned, started walking.

Terry and Mike let their hands fall from their weapons, followed after
him.

"Nobody's being funny," Mike said. "Suppose we do end up back in that
place? So what?"

"Listen the hero," Jon said. "You planning on taking on the whole First
Quadrant single-handed or something? They sure don't bring you back to
life back there, if that's what you think. They just make you a little
deader."

"Deader?"

"Well I'd rather be buried if I get killed than burned into a little
pile of ashes and sent home in a jar. And that's what they do. There's
not enough land on Venus to bury everybody every year, and they sure
aren't going to go to the trouble of hauling a bunch of corpses out
into the ocean just to dump 'em. Not when they can burn 'em up, anyway,
right here."

"Burn 'em up?" Mike said, feeling funny in his stomach. "Alive?"

"Not often, I guess. Only when there's a mistake and they don't notice
it in time. Or if there haven't been enough guys killed to make the
year's quota. Then they take unconscious ones. That's what my father
told me once, anyway."

"Suppose--suppose you're just hurt bad? Do they--"

"Not if they've made the quota. If you end up hurt they take you to the
other land mass--there's a big hospital there. I've never seen it, but
my father says it's the biggest single building ever made."

"How long are you kept there?"

"Until you're recovered, of course. The longest case on their records
was my cousin's. He got a broken neck when he was hit in the face by a
mace, and lost both eyes. They repaired the cut nerves, gave him two
new eyes, and fixed his neck in about a month. They can do anything, so
you don't have to worry. I got a broken back myself last year--I was
out walking in two weeks."

       *       *       *       *       *

The recreation area was almost in view. Already they were able to hear
the clash of metal on metal, as though a great tangled mass of scythes
was being shaken by some huge, clumsy hand which could not break them
apart.

"Jon...."

The section leader was quickening his pace. "Yes?"

"How in heck do they know about the quota? How do they know if they
should pick you up if you're hurt, or just leave you there?"

"The tab ships take care of it. There's a whole fleet of 'em, and they
cover each area where there's fighting. They tabulate everything that
happens with things called telescanners, and they keep in constant
communication with the Quadrate's ship. Any time during the fighting,
they know if they're ahead of the quota rate or behind it in their
own area. And all the time, the Quadrates are comparing the figures
they get from the tab ships with each other so they can keep a running
record of the quota rate for all four quadrants. As long as the rate's
right, or high, the medical ships keep landing and picking up the
wounded, and flying 'em back. When the tabulations show the rate's
lagging, the medical ships take it easy until they get the word to get
to work again."

"They wouldn't have so much work to do if we could use guns instead of
these things," Terry said. "I think guns would be more fun, don't you?"

"That's what your father thinks, isn't it?"

"Gosh, no, he doesn't--"

"My father says that killing at a distance isn't much good, because you
never get into close contact. And if you can't see what happens when
you actually kill somebody, you can't get conditioned very well. You'd
get bored just sitting around with a gun. And even in the short time
of a week--"

"Is that how long it lasts?"

"Usually about that. But even then with guns, you'd get used to it.
With swords it's different. You don't get used to that in a week. You
still feel pretty shaky when it's all over, believe me...."

"Were you scared, Jon?"

"You shouldn't be scared," he said. "All you have to remember is what
they keep telling you--the others will kill you if you don't kill them.
Always remember that. Then it gets to be sort of a--well, like a game,
to see who's strongest, who can use a sword the best...."

"Yeah," Mike said. "Wait'll I get that guy!" His fingers brushed
lightly against the half-healed wound again.

Jon laughed. "Sore at somebody already?"

"I'll cut his ears off!"

"You're getting the idea all right! Just be sure you don't go breaking
any more rules--you can't kill anybody until the games begin, you know."

"I'll show him!" Mike said. "How long do we have yet to practice? Now,
I mean?"

"Half an hour, maybe. I'll see you later. I'll forget about reporting
you this time--but don't go for any more walks!" He left them, and they
walked into the recreation area with the others.

Mike found the boy who had laughed. And he found that it was as Jon had
said. There wasn't any reason to feel afraid. The sword wasn't as heavy
in his hands as it had been at first, and it was more thrilling to use
than just fists....

The other boy was grinning, and it was easy to get mad enough to want
to cut his head off. Both hands on the long haft of his weapon, Mike
swung harder, more surely than the first times he handled the sword. He
could parry, now--and cut. Like _that_!

The boy staggered back. The side of his head was bleeding profusely,
and the blood spurted through his fingers as he pressed them to the
gaping place where his ear had been.

"Rules! Rules!"

Mike lowered his sword. That was right, the rules. He couldn't kill
now....

So he tried to laugh. At first he had to force the sound from his
throat, but suddenly he found it coming easily, clear, and loud.

The boy left the field toward the medical tents.

And Mike found another with whom to practice. It was what Jon had said,
a great game--a great, crashing adventure!

He swung the sword and wondered if the dream would ever have to end.




                               CHAPTER X


Doug worked silently. His eyes stung, and he wasted a moment to rub
them again, because he must see, must see so precisely, so exactly. The
work table was almost bare of the equipment he had ordered. The new
Contraption had devoured it into its fantastic vitals as fast as his
taut hands and flagging memory were able to feed. Yet it was useless
work--the gleaming thing he had built would never so much as fry an egg.

Yet he worked as though the power-pack were resting on the table
among the scraps of wire, bits and pieces that were left, as though
somehow it would be there when he needed it, and then they could go,
could escape, and then forget... The two shiny terminals glared at him
dully like two tiny eyes, each telling him that he was such a fool to
hope that they could ever be anything else than bare. They glared at
him, told him that he was finished now, finished, but with the end
impossibly far away.

He let the tools drop amid the bits and pieces The Contraption was a
cold, dead thing, a mockery without its great surging electric heart. A
mockery, a precisely assembled heap of shiny junk.

He was near exhaustion as he looked at the two empty terminals.
The anger in him had burned out and became a cold leaden thing. He
no longer cared about the ridiculous beliefs, the regulations, the
laws that prohibited him from obtaining the thing he needed to free
himself--no longer cursed himself, for it was not he who was to blame.

He went upstairs to where Dot slept, and wondered if this was how it
felt to be a thousand years old. Finally tired, finally fed-up, finally
weary of being a fool.

He watched her as she slept, watched the gentle rise and fall of her
breasts, let his eyes wander over the soft symmetry of her body, and
asked himself why men were so dutiful in creating their clanking
idiocies about life and about death when all that such diligence
accomplished was eternal blasphemy of the pure and simple. The
beautiful they defiled, then disguised the ruin they left with a cloak
labeled Duty, and went forth armed with the rotten wood of what they
called Law to build a dingy world more to their liking than the garden
that had been given them for nothing....

It was not fair, no it was not fair, but he was tired at last. Too
tired to look now for another time-track, to throw the Contraption
wildly out of focus and careen through a thousand tracks, a million,
and look for a place where a man and a woman could be simply that and
nothing either more nor less. For in all infinity there was no such
place, and the running would be worth less than the wasted breath it
took.

With Dot, one last time, then.

She stirred. Her eyes opened, and she smiled.

"Doug? Did you finish it, Doug?"

"Yes. Yes, I finished it, as far as it ever will be finished."

She dropped her eyes. "We can keep trying." They met his. "We will keep
trying, Doug. We've got to--for Terry and Mike...."

He said nothing. He sat heavily on the bed, his features grim.

He took off his shirt and dropped, exhausted, beside her.

       *       *       *       *       *

He awoke with the idea. "Dot! Dot I think I've found it!" He was
instantly on his feet, trying to jam the sleep back from the center
of his brain, trying to make sure it was no left-over figment from a
nightmare, a wild dream. He heard her foot-steps coming almost at a run.

"What is it? You sound as if you've found a pre-Truman dollar under the
bed--"

"I don't know--it may be as half-baked as the kind that came
later--worth even less, perhaps, but it's worth a try. They say
desperate situations call for desperate action...."

"Take it easy, now. You aren't the blood and thunder type, exactly!"
There was a note of cautious anticipation in her voice, but there was
hope in it, and it was enough.

"Tomorrow--or more exactly, some sixteen hours from now, we are
scheduled to take-off for Venus headquarters to begin the games...."

"Yes, I know," she said quietly.

"Well that's it, don't you see? I'll go of course--I'll go but not all
the way!"

"Doug I won't let you--anymore than you'd let me try to seduce the
Prelate General into giving us the thing!"

"And I'll bet you could, too!" He laughed, and it was a real laugh
for the first time in what seemed all his life. "But I'm afraid the
Prelate General is going to be denied that dainty bit of intrigue, my
darling. Don't you see? Space-ships--they've got to have a method of
communication! High-frequency radio--high-voltage stuff! Ten to one I'd
find a power-pack aboard!"

"No, Doug, no...."

"It's a chance, Dot, and it's a good one. I'll be the ranking officer
aboard of course--I shouldn't have too much trouble in pirating the
thing--I'll make them rip the pack out for me, then I'll order them to
bring me back. Then it'll just be a race against time."

He stood there, staring at the delicate tracery of a lattice-work wall,
not seeing it. But he heard the fear in Dot's voice.

"A space-ship, Doug.... Why you'd--you'd die."

He laughed. "I'm sure the other Quadrates don't plan on dying, not for
awhile yet, anyway. And I know it'll work, if I'm careful. And I've
been careful so far." He looked at her, and the fear had not left her
eyes. "You mustn't be afraid, Dot," he said then. "There's less to fear
this way, because this way there's at least a chance. Don't you see the
beauty of it--right up to the last moment, everything will appear to
be as it should--and then before there's even any suspicion I'll take
over--probably be almost back to Earth before they even know anything's
gone hay-wire."

"Won't they be able to radio back from the other ships, I mean, when
they realize things aren't as they should be--that the ship you are in
isn't tagging along in the formation? They'll just be waiting for you
when you land, Doug."

"They'll want to be waiting, sure--but they won't know where, not until
I'm down, and safely out, headed here."

Dot didn't say anything then. It was such a story-book plan, such a
crazy thing that it would never work; she knew it would never work.

"Doug, Doug...."

He held her close to him.

"Dot," he said, "we have two choices I think. We can be mature, we can
be logical, we can make a tragedy out of a desperate situation and die
martyrs to conservative thinking. Or we can keep grabbing at straws
until we are sunk or end up ingloriously alive. Which way?"

She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. "I guess a knock-down drag-out
thriller, mister.... But Doug--I'm scared."

       *       *       *       *       *

He stood still, apart from the other three as they talked in low,
casual tones, waiting for the space-tower signal to board their ships.
An early morning breeze tugged gently at his blue cloak, and he had to
shield his eyes with his gauntlets as he looked at the four slender
columns of glittering metal that tapered to needle points high above
him. A quarter their diameter and height they might have been simple
V-2 rockets on some strange desert proving-ground. At the same time
they were the fantastic silver darts that he remembered from the pages
of colored Sunday supplements which had foretold the coming of flight
through Space. Yet the feeling of everyday security that they tore away
was replaced with a vigorous thing inside him that was of firmer stuff
than awe, more challenging than fear, more exciting than adventure.
And suddenly, sailing ships were the toys of children, and oceans were
spilled tea in a saucer.

They were a strange people, Doug thought. A horrible people, perhaps,
a people whom he wanted desperately to escape. Yet a people who had
learned that the sky and the Earth were not enough, nor were ever meant
to be.

A green light flashed. The three Quadrates ended their conversation,
boarded waiting surface-vehicles and started toward their ships.

A car with a pennant bearing the insignia of a Senior Quadrate flying
from atop its sleek passenger enclosure drove up beside Doug.

"Your transportation, sir."

He returned the salute. "Thank you, no. I shall walk," he said.

It was a short walk--less than two hundred yards, but he did not want
it all to happen too quickly.

His steps were measured in slow, deliberate cadence as he crossed
the smooth plaza toward the great craft on which his insignia was
emblazoned.

At length he was swallowed up inside it, and at a flashing blue signal,
the four great ships thundered for the stars, and left Earth a little
thing behind them.




                              CHAPTER XI


Acceleration had left Doug at the brink of unconsciousness despite the
hammock in which they'd secured him, but gradually the roar in his ears
subsided and the words took shape, as though they were being spoken
from the bottom of an empty well.

"... SQ check one ... speed five-three thousand one two oh,
acceleration two point one, steady ... trajectory minus two point oh
five seconds at eight thousand two hundred, three hundred, four, five,
compensate please ... plus point oh three seconds at nine thousand,
seven, eight, nine, compensate please ... SQ at stand-by, over."

"Three-dimensional plot-check, sir. Reconciled, and steady as she
blasts...."

"SQ to control, SQ check one, trajectory secure. Out."

He fumbled with the wide straps across his chest and hips, and his arms
were awkward as though he had lost at least half of his co-ordination.
He could taste blood at the corners of his mouth, but it was already
caking to his flesh.

"Old Man had a tough time this trip, sir...."

"Yes. When they're desk passengers for six months running and then try
to get aboard a space-deck they find it isn't as easy as when they wore
an ack harness every day. The price of being eager, sergeant."

"Yes, sir. He ought to be coming out of it soon."

"We'll be locked tight on the curve when he does. Off a half-second and
he'll holler like a Conservative--especially after final compensation.
How close did we come to the C-limit this time, anyway?"

"Had almost a minute to spare, sir."

"Nicely done, sergea--I think I hear him trying to get the deck under
him. Better get over to the trackers."

The words Doug heard still weren't making sense, but he was on his feet
and had his balance. He had slid oddly down to the metal deck from
the bulkhead on which the hammock was built, and he had the peculiar
feeling that up was no longer up, nor down exactly where it was
supposed to be. His body did not feel as though it were all of lead as
he'd half-expected, although it didn't feel its usual hundred and sixty
pounds, either.

He was still focusing his eyes when they saw the weird blur of color on
the bulkhead above the crewman's head. Teleview screen of course--and
the middle blur--Earth.

In moments he was able to see it plainly as it receded--a tan and blue
mass dotted with white, shadowed to the shape of a football, hanging in
what seemed direct contradiction to all the laws of physics in a great,
black void.

For minutes he stood without moving, oblivious to the immaculately
polished masterpiece of engineering which surrounded him.

As a video-image, what he saw could have been nothing more than a
cleverly-done stage prop, an ingenious painting by some futuristic
artist. But the realization that it was real held him fascinated.
Of all the human emotions, here was one that could only flounder
helplessly for expression, for it had no precedent for comparison.
The awe and the strangely-placid fear were intermingled with a sense
of brute power; the sudden loneliness and strange humility were
woven inextricably with an irrepressible consciousness of godliness,
of unbounded omnipotence. And Doug knew that the first airmen had
but touched a tiny edge of the sky, for here was the sky in her
entirety--the infinite woman, at once belonging to man, yet an unending
mystery to him, and granting of her uncountable secrets but slowly,
enticingly, stubbornly.

As he watched, the tan-and-blue shape shrank gradually as though Space
were tauntingly erasing it from existence.

       *       *       *       *       *

The interior of the compartment in which he stood had been designed
with the same simplicity of line as had the ship itself, and with so
smooth a compactness that it seemed to occupy more of the ship's long
interior than a bare third. The two crewmen had evidently not seen him
as yet; they stood with their backs to him, their eyes intent on the
long, curving banks of dials which ran the gamut of geometrical shapes.
Oddly, their hands hung idle at their sides. Doug wondered if they
constituted the entire crew, and if they did not, how many more of them
there were.

He would let them speak first. He walked over to a panel of dials, gave
them a studied scrutiny. The officer turned immediately.

"Ablast thirteen minutes, sir, at fourteen thousand miles. I believe
you'll find our track with zero variation. C-limit was passed four
minutes ago. Glad to have you aboard again, sir."

Doug returned the salute, nodded his head in acknowledgement of
information he had no way of understanding.

"Communications effective?"

"Why--yes sir. Sergeant, prepare space-radio for message--"

"No, no." Doug waved the sergeant back to his post. "Just--checking,
captain. How long since the last overhaul of your unit?"

"Why, at the prescribed overhaul date for the entire ship, sir. I
believe about four months ago, sir."

"Don't you know, captain?"

"Four months ago, sir."

"I see. If I may inspect the unit, captain."

"Sergeant! Prepare communications for inspection!"

He had no way of knowing how unorthodox his procedure was, only that
while aboard the ship, at least, his rank was the final law, and that
they would never land on Venus. Yet, these were intelligent men, of the
same high caliber as those Earth-bound in the headquarters units. He
must be cautious.

Within minutes, the complex communications assembly had been bared, and
its circuits were half-mystery to him. Yet the fundamentals would be
the same, as they had been with the equipment he had ordered to build
the second Contraption. Only the shapes, the sizes, the juxtapositions
different.

"Your transmission power supply, captain--"

"The power-pack, sir?" Inadvertantly, the officer glanced at the unit
and Doug followed the glance. Smaller, more compact than the best he'd
seen in his own time, yet obviously evolved on identical principles.
But now he had to carry the farce out, had to wring some of the
freshman stuff from his memory.

"Sergeant--" He gestured toward the unit as he removed his gauntlets.
"What is the v--Kempage on the plates of the final amplifier?"

"Eleven hundred Kemps at 300 milliamperes, sir."

"Very well. Suppose you give me the final power supply nomenclature!"

"Yes, sir. Genemotor, type A-26-F modified. Two hundred fifty Kemp
input, eleven hundred Kemp output, at three hundred milliamperes. Two
filter condensers, type L-73 new departure, one filter choke, L-12, one
bleeder resistor--"

"That's enough, sergeant. Captain, upon perfunctory inspection at
least, your communications unit seems to be in excellent condition.
However, I suggest that after this you commit each successive overhaul
date to memory."

"Yes, sir."

       *       *       *       *       *

So far, so good, Doug thought. Yet it was a thing of mocking irony.
He was actually perfecting the act so well that one day the risk of
impersonation would vanish entirely--yet now, now he must use it to
its utmost to carry through a desperate plan to escape, rather than to
stay. Worse, it was even a double irony, for had he sought escape at
first rather than a lifetime of imposture in this next-door world, they
would have helped him. Of course there were the games--he might never
have learned enough in so short a time to have gone undetected through
them. It was a strangely reassuring thought; it eliminated choice. But
at the same time it heightened his desperation. There was only one mark
at which to aim, but it was a bull's-eye with no margin for error.

The captain was speaking to him.

"... care to check the flight-pattern coordinates? Sergeant Zukar here
is quite justifiably proud, I think, of his ability to delay terminal
compensation until the last fraction of a minute before C-limit is
reached...."

"No--no thank you, captain. I am quite satisfied. I would like,
however, a routine check of the remaining crew."

"Remaining crew, sir?" The captain's face was suddenly a mask of
perplexity, and his features were again taut. "I'm afraid I fail to
understand, sir. Unless there were last-minute orders which I failed to
receive assigning two additional--"

He had discovered what he wanted, but he had been awkward....

"Yes, yes of course, captain. The orders for Tayne's ship. For some
reason I--"

"Of course, sir."

Not a natural, but he'd made the point. But he couldn't let the dice
get cold now. Only the two of them aboard; that made it simpler. And
the sergeant had said the power-pack used a 250 Kemp input, the same
as the wall current at the house. Usable, then, and he had to get it
back....

He walked slowly over to a bulkhead seat, sat down.

He groped uncertainly for the brief-tube he'd brought, let it fall with
a clatter to the deck.

The captain was scooping it up in a trice, and Doug twisted the muscles
of his face into a grimace of discomfort.

"Sir,--sir, is there something wrong?"

"I--no I don't think so, captain. Nervous strain, I'm afraid. I--"
Another grimace.

"Sergeant! Three neuro-tablets at once--"

"No, no--" Doug said. "Like poison to me." He doubled over.
"Captain...."

"Yes sir, what can I get--"

"Nothing, I'm afraid.... Back to Earth as quickly as possible--"

"Back to Earth, sir? But that's impossible! We're at least thirty
minutes past C-limit, sir ... the trajectory's locked. We must
continue, of course."

"Must--must _continue_?"

"Why, yes of course, sir."

Doug straightened his body, but kept his arms locked around his
middle, kept the grimace on his face and feigned shortness of breath.

"Of course _what_, captain?"

       *       *       *       *       *

A look of comprehension came suddenly to the captain's face. He
straightened, stood again at attention. "According to Constitutional
Commandments Four, Part 3, Sub-section 12 as amended July 9, 1949,
part A: 'All space craft shall be robot-controlled and shall fly
predetermined trajectories, save (1) when bearing members of the
Science Council and/or their certified representatives, to whom manual
operation and navigation at will is singularly permissible, or (2)
when insurmountable emergency shall occur. All other craft shall be
launched on the predetermined trajectory as hereinbefore stipulated,
and shall be compensated to their true course by remote control from
Earth for so long as radio impulses between ship and Earth shall be
for all practical purposes instantaneous. Beyond this limit, to be
hereinafter described as Compensation Limit, whereafter distance shall
create a time-lag of communications and corresponding control impulses
so as to make further remote control an impracticability the ship shall
continue on the trajectory as last corrected under control of its own
self-directing, or autorobot, units. These units will be constructed
so as to be inaccessible to all passengers, including instrument and
communications technicians."

For a moment Doug said nothing, let the captain remain at attention,
struggling to regain his breath and composure. The man had thought the
feigned sickness was simply a device to get him off guard so that his
alertness might be tried with some disguised test of his knowledge of
regulations. Of course that was it ... unthinkable that any officer,
any rank, should give such an order as he had given for actual
execution.

Funny, how the twists saved you when there was no longer any point in
being saved. He was trapped here--trapped, and on Venus the trap would
tighten and finally close when Tayne found some opening in his guard
and plunged through it.

"Well done, captain. As you were. Your qualifications seem quite
adequate. See to it that they are continually maintained."

"Yes, sir."

With what nonchalance he could muster, Doug dropped the sickness act as
though it had been a trick the captain might have expected, and opened
the brief-tube. He would have to memorize every word of its contents,
every direction on the plastic sheets it contained. If he wanted to
see his own home again--for that matter, if he ever wanted to see Dot
again, he would have to run a bluff that would, he mused, even amaze
the United States Bureau of Internal Revenue.

And that, he knew, would be damn near impossible.




                              CHAPTER XII


After Doug had gone, Dot tried to make herself forget why he had gone,
where he was going. She wanted the old conviction to come back; she
wanted to be smugly sure again that it was impossible for him to fly to
another planet, and that what he had said was just a great joke.

She twisted a dial on the luxurious radio console, sat for a moment
beside it and wished that she could as easily twist fact away from
belief, so that the awful fear would go. Yet blindness to fact was no
answer to fear of it.

It seemed long ago that space flight had been something for light
dinner-table conversation, something for fanciful conjecture in an idle
moment, something to discuss politely when the overimaginative person
became serious with his day-after-tomorrow talk.

But now suddenly it was none of those things. Now suddenly it was a
thing of life or death to her; it was real, and she was afraid. The
science-fiction stories she had leafed through in an idle moment--what
had their writers said? What had they, in their irrepressible way, so
logically theorized about the balance of life in the impossibly deep
reaches of Space--about the precocious ships that men would some day
build when they were at last free of their age-old fear of infinity?

The soft music from the radio had stopped, and the newscaster's voice
disturbed her reverie.

"... this afternoon, the Prelatinate announced eight new amendments
to the Constitutional Commandments, making the total for the day so
far a slightly-under-average twelve. This afternoon's amendments deal
specifically with Commandment Ninety-three, Section 189, Chapter 914,
paragraph 382, sub-division 2103-K. The first stipulates...."

She tried to find another program of music, but the daily amendment
announcements were everywhere. With a fleeting smile she remembered
what Doug had said--that at last the commercial had met its match as an
instrument for ruining radio listening. Yet logical enough, for here
the dollar was secondary, and Government was God.

She turned the console off, and again the house was quiet, and the
chill mantle of worry drew closer about her brain, grew steadily into
a stifling strait-jacket of helpless fear. Lord, there was nothing she
could _do_....

Then of a sudden her pulse was racing as the large helicopter landed at
the side of the house. She looked out the window.

But it was not Doug. The word ELECTROSUPPLY was stenciled in large
letters above the craft's opening freight-door, and she watched as a
dolly was lowered from it. There were four men, and they were unloading
a large crate. It went on the dolly, and then the dolly with its load
was being pushed by the four to the side of the house.

The door-signal sounded.

"Yes?"

"Madame Blair, would you please sign for the shipment?"

"Yes, of course. But what is it that I--"

"Sorry, Madame. Only the Order Division knows the nature of the
consignment--policy, you know. There, that'll do it. Thank you."

       *       *       *       *       *

He left with her permission to leave the crate in the cellar, and
after a few minutes the 'copter and its efficient crew was gone.

She knew intuitively that it was the equipment he needed so
desperately--ironically enough it must be that. She had to fight back
the impulse to rush to the cellar and rip the crate open. For if in
some way she should slip, do something wrong, damage what was inside....

Quite suddenly her thoughts were marshaled from their uninhibited
adventuring and became sharp hard-edged instruments. Even the tiniest
error now could mean the difference between winning and losing, and it
was still not too late to win.

A message to him through his office, but it must be contrived somehow
so that they could not suspect that she was telling him he must
return immediately. She could simply say something like "as per your
instructions, am informing you of arrival of the last item for which
you phoned. Am sure it is exactly what you wanted. Good luck, Lisa."
That should work--

But the telecall signal sounded before she could pick the slender unit
from its cradle.

"Yes?"

"Madame Blair?" It was a woman's voice.

"Why yes, speaking."

"This is Madame--Doe. We missed you at the culture lecture yesterday
afternoon my dear, and just wanted to make sure that everything
was--all right, you know."

"The lecture--oh, yes of course. Why I'm sorry--"

"But everything is--all right? You're not ill?"

"Oh, no. It just must have been one of my usual oversights," Dot
bluffed. And she knew there was something missing. In the woman's
voice. Something....

"Oversights?"

"Why, yes--I'm afraid so. Dreadfully sorry. But of course I'll try not
to forget next time."

"But Madame Blair--" and then suddenly the tone changed. "Yes, I know
how it is--we all have those days, don't we? Well, there's something
you really should know, so don't forget our next little get-together,
will you?" An enchanting little giggle was attached, but there had been
no giggle in the first three words.

"No, I won't forget," Dot said.

"'Til next time, then. Good-bye."

Dot hung up, and the room seemed suddenly to have become cold.
Intuition was one thing--she wouldn't be a woman if she didn't trust
that. But imagination was of course quite another. It had been simply
an unexpected half-minute phone-call. Short, almost too short, if she
were any judge of the ladies' society type. Nonsense....

She sat down. And the chair was cold.

_Nerves, girl, that's all. Like the night you saw the man in the
shadows outside the house and Doug wasn't home from the banquet yet,
and it turned out to be the neighborhood cop waiting for his beat
relief...._

She had to forget it, get the message to Doug. What would she say, now?
"As per your instructions--"

_But Madame Blair--!_

Damn! This was ridiculous--pure imagination--since when was a culture
society a thing to get goose-pimples over? That was all it was of
course. Just the knowledge of the crate downstairs.... God the house
was quiet.

She reached for the phone.

And again, the door-signal chimed.

She half-walked, half-ran to answer it; tripped, caught herself. It
chimed again.

Then somehow she had the door open, and there were four men in white
uniforms standing before it.

"Madame Blair, if you will please come with us."

"No, I'm sorry,--I can't. Why, what are you here for?"

"You received a telecall several minutes ago, did you not, Madame?" He
phrased it as a question, but she knew that it was a statement.

"Why, yes I did. A social call--"

"We know that it was not, Madame Blair. If you will accompany us
please." They stood there, unmoving.

"I--I don't understand. My culture society, if it is important for some
reason that you know...."

"Precisely. We've known for some time about the society, madame. We
are sorry that we have at length linked you with it. Now if you will
accompany us please."

There was no choice. She did not want to think of what might happen if
she ran.




                             CHAPTER XIII


"Inside Venus compensation limit, sir. They've taken over. Inversion
in three minutes; jet-down at NMHQ in twelve. Secondary check please,
sergeant."

Space had been monotonous. After the first thrill of watching Earth
grow smaller and smaller until it was nothing more than another planet
in the heavens, after the realization that the studded blackness to
each side was real, and not some gigantic planetarium show, the trip
had been a seemingly motionless thing, like high flight in a light
plane at less than cruising speed. They had licked the problem of
weightlessness by an artificial gravity set-up which functioned, as
far as he was able to find out from the captain, on a complex system
of gyroscopes--but not even they furnished so much as a tremor to the
deck plates, and he might as well have been planted firmly on Earth for
all the sensation there was of movement. Even when inversion began, the
gyro system automatically compensated for its inertia effects, and he
would have been unaware of it had it not been for the series of oral
checks between sergeant and captain, captain and the base on Venus.

Then suddenly, the second planet loomed large and white--it blotted out
the blackness, and then there was no more blackness, and the telescreen
seemed to be swimming in pea-soup fog.

"Six minutes, sir."

The syrupy whiteness seemed limitless and for a moment Doug felt little
pangs of panic, of fear that they must be falling into a great pit to
which there was no bottom, only the eternity of the falling itself.
Then suddenly it was above them like a diffuse, infinite ceiling,
receding quickly at first, then more slowly, more slowly....

There was a gentle pressure beneath his feet. The gyros had compensated
to their limit and had automatically cut out, and true gravity and
inertia once more were settling their grip about the sleek ship.

"Switch the screen aft, captain."

"As she blasts, sir."

Blue. Great, incredible expanses of blue in every shade of color, every
intensity of pastel, forced to the bending curve of a horizon that
seemed like some great arching bulwark against the heavy, stifling
whiteness that was the sky. For moments he was not able to distinguish
land from ocean, but then he discerned it as the midnight blue,
near-black mass that undulated slowly, in long, even swells--and it
was the vari-shaded, lighter area, smaller in size than the state of
Connecticut--that was the northern land mass. And it was toward that
which they descended. Their formation had already split and far to
starboard, he saw two long darts of silver pair off to land on the
planet's southwestern mass.

He drew the cloak about his shoulders, secured the decorative dress
sword at his waist.

Down. As silently as had been the long drift through Space, save for
the nearly inaudible rumble of the great engine as it had checked
in for deceleration. The descent was so perfectly controlled that if
there was the heavy whine of atmosphere about their hull from too-great
downward speed, he could not hear it. Down.

He drew on the gauntlets.

There was a gentle jar.

       *       *       *       *       *

Their escort formed at once midway between his ship and Tayne's. They
marched abreast, flanked by echelons of cadre officers and Quadrature
Academy cadets. They marched silently toward a great, shining building
that commanded the entire edge of the landing plaza. Its size alone
made Doug catch his breath, yet it was dwarfed by a frozen human sea
of tan-bodied pygmies, amassed before it in wave after spreading wave
of superbly formed divisions. To realize at once that they were not
formations of some stunted denizens of the planet, but children of
Earth not yet eleven years old, was almost impossible for him although
he had known, had seen the terrifying figures.... But here were the
statistics, immobile, at rigid attention, not in black and white, but
in the hue of living flesh, with red blood still coursing through them.
Here were what tomorrow would be the numbers--small still things,
cold, impersonal, and dead. Here was the stability factor of a people
which had forged a device for peace. Here was the monument to their
stupidity, the warrant for their ultimate place in infamy.

They faced the building in a long arc at the far edge of the plaza, an
arc that Doug judged over a mile in length, easily 300 yards in depth.
In it were the children of two full quadrants, his and Tayne's--perhaps
a half-million--and the number would be matched on the southwestern
mass, where Klauss and Vladkow had landed later, the survivors of their
commands would be shipped here, and there would be the last battle. It
had been planned that way for key psychological reasons.

After the first taste of battle, then the indeterminate time of
waiting.... And suddenly the waiting would cease, the sea-going troops
at last would land, and swarm from their swift ships, clanging in
droves to the attack. And the small, still dead things would mount
again. Until margin was reached. Then they would stop.

Midway the length of the arc, where it was cleft by a distance of
about a quarter-mile, the escort halted. It faced left. Doug and Tayne
followed suit. The escort fell back to each side, once again forming
the impressive flying wedge with the two Quadrates at its point. Then,
facing the fantastically pretentious edifice looming silently before
them, the great assemblage waited, the mute silence broken only by the
rustling sound of a half-million sword-sheaths as they swung gently in
the warm gentle breeze.

Gradually, then, the sound grew. A rumble like far-off thunder was
above them, and it mounted slowly to a vibrant roar. The milk-white sky
suddenly swirled as if in indecision, then was ripped asunder, and torn
tendrils of it groped to fill the gaping rent in it as a great, silver
shape plunged through, descended on a seething pillar of flame.

It landed atop the building itself. It was like a towering, silver
spire there, as though to become an integral fixture to transform the
sprawling Colossus from administrative nerve-center to the temple of
empire. Doug's own ship beside it would have been as a sloop to a
battleship. He knew that in a moment the main port of the flagship
would open, and through it would be escorted the Prelate General
himself.

A half-million pairs of ears were tuned sharply to hear the voice of
their God. And when it had thrown them into conflict here, the mighty
ship would rise and vanish as it had come, to bear its high priest to
the southwest, where the lesson would be read for the second and final
time.

       *       *       *       *       *

Doug tensed, knowing as he did from sleepless study what was to come.
Suddenly, from well-concealed amplifiers through which the Prelate
General's voice would soon sound, there were the first thunderous
strains of The Battle Hymn To Peace. Doug whirled, faced Tayne.

"Quadrants to salute!"

Tayne pivoted.

"Division leaders, give your divisions present arms!"

A hundred cadets about-faced in turn, bawled in unison "_Regimental
sachens, give your regiments present arms!_"

And the command was passed in swelling unison from regiment to
battalion, battalion to company, and the timing had been perfect. As
the surging hymn of hysteria struck its climaxing strain, a cacophony
of two thousand young voices swelled hysterically above it--"...
PRE-SENT--_ARMS_!"

There was a piercing shriek of sound as 500,000 broadswords whipped
from their scabbards, glittered like the teeth of some Hell-spawned,
pulsating monster as they flashed in salute.

And Doug sickened. For he had seen it before, and only the sound had
been different. There had been the resounding slap of taut rifle-slings
against the wood of polished stocks....

The terrible music ended on a measure of rolling drums, and the command
was relayed for order arms. There was the crash of a half-million
blades slammed home in their scabbards as one, and then the silence
fell as though some great impenetrable curtain had fallen.

The Prelatinate General, borne in a highly-polished sedan chair of
lightweight metal on the shoulders of the colorfully-uniformed members
of the Inner Prelatinate, appeared in the pocket-like balcony which was
dwarfed only by the immensity of the building itself. Visible only as a
jewel-encrusted shadow behind the transparent metal enclosure in which
he was ensconced, he began his speech. The two quadrants stood again as
statues.

"Once again, for the glory of the highest order of life and with the
blessing of the Prelatinate Saints, we unite to do battle for the
salvation of Man. May our mission be one of success."

A great rolling murmur of sound swelled from the throats of the
half-million, subsided.... The word was undistinguishable, but Doug
knew what it was. They had said "_Amen._"

"Our sacred duty to the One World, to the Universal State is before
us, and handed down to us by the will of the people as they worship in
their countless community senates, we shall discharge it without fear,
and for the love of our way of life. Sobeit.

"It behooves us all, as children of a mighty government, to believe
without contest in the inviolate concepts upon which our all-powerful
way of living and thought is built. There have been those who were
unbelievers; there have been those who would profess to debase
government and political philosophy to the level of mere intellectual
function and enterprise of policy, yet even those were heard to admit
before paying the terrible price for their heresies that, because their
beliefs were different, they must have of course been wrong.

"For those of us who aspire and pray that we may one day hold a seat
in the great Quorum of the Perfectly Governed, let there be no doubt,
let there be no threat to the mightiness of the glorious order which we
foster....

"As it is to be found in the immortal words of the Constitutional
Commandments, and I read from Four Chapter 18, Book of Sections,
_Section 932: 'There shall be great honor to those who give of their
blood that the One World shall live, and great reverence for the
glorious memories of those who give of their lives that the One World
shall not perish.'_ Sobeit."

Once again the rolling murmur of a half-million voices. "Amen...."

"It is then to you that I command, go forth, and perform the duties of
your great faith; go forth, for the dead shall inherit the living!"

And as at a signal, the air was rent with a deafening surge of voices
strained to their topmost in a savage cheer.

       *       *       *       *       *

Slowly then, it subsided, and the Prelatinate General raised his left
hand as though in half-salute, half-benediction. And again, there was
silence, and the living things that were statues had lost their shape
and form, and had become row upon row of symmetrically-hewn markers
dotting a large graveyard on Sunday afternoon in July.

"And now, let us join minds as we listen to the ancient tongue voicing
the Prelatinate's Creed which has taught us to believe...."

And the sounds were strange, their meaning neither having been taught
nor studied for the century and a half that English had been decreed
by law as the universal tongue. Doug knew that only he, of all the
half-million, understood the sounds. With difficulty at first, then
with increasing facility, he translated the Latin. The Latin which
the others heard and obeyed. And which they had never, nor ever would
understand.

"... believe in the purchase of everlasting peace with the blood of the
young; in eternal adherence to the regime of the Prelatinate because
it is the sole existing concept in which to adhere; in sacrifice of
thought upon the omnipotent altar of Belief to Government Almighty,
and in the everlasting spirit of the Founders, to whom we daily pray
for the strength to forever remain unchanged, unchangeable, despite
the temptations of knowledge, progress, and human feeling: Sobeit. I
believe in the infinite divinity of the two parties, and in the concept
of truth as they shall dictate, rather than as it may seem to exist
through exercise of mere reason; in the...."

The sing-song tones droned with heavy monotony through the hidden
speakers, as though weaving some hypnotic spell to insure the captivity
of the young myrmidons upon whose ears they fell, unintelligible, but
Law.

The sea of young heads was bowed and a million eyes were focused
unmoving on the ground, for to view the heavens and to think upon their
unbounded freedom, with which they sought to lure the mind away from
the patterns which had been decreed for it, would be tantamount to
heresy.

And then suddenly the drone had ceased. There was movement in the
balcony. Two of the Inner Prelatinate, cloaks swaying heavily with the
weight of the precious metals with which they were gaudily embroidered,
took posts as though sentinels at each side of the Prelate General's
shoulder-borne sedan. The naked broadswords in their hands swung upward
slowly until their lips touched directly above it. And the Latin came
again, in low, swift cadences.

"... _You who are about to die, go forth_ ..."

And as the words were intoned, the broadswords were brought level, were
swung slowly, in wide, horizontal half-arcs above the high-held heads
of the regimented multitude.

"_God_ ..." Doug thought, "_God! A blessing!_"

Then the ceremony was over, and the strains of the hymn again burst
forth, and Doug caught himself almost too late. He whirled.

"Troops pass in review!"

Tayne returned the salute, relayed the order until within seconds it
was a surging, shrieking thing, the more frightening for its perfect
unison. _Hysteria_, Doug thought, _by the numbers!_

He knew the plan. The ranks that formed the long arc of formations
would face right, and then, at simultaneous commands, would step off
to the beat of the terrible hymn, preserving the curvature of the arc
so that the actual line of march would be a perfect circle nearly a
mile and a half at its inner diameter, with the great building as its
precise center. And the ranks would be kept in perfect dress as they
fanned out in 300 yard-lengths, and the cover of each endless column
would be of such precision that at a command, the inner columns of each
quadrate would march to the rear, and the spectacle would be one of
four immense, counter-marching arcs. As they met at the opposite pole
of the great diameter, the perfection of their circle would be proven.

He took his station near the edge of the inner circumference. Tayne
took his, nearly a half-mile to Doug's rear. The cadre officers and
Quadrature Academy cadets took posts of command at equally spaced
intervals for the entire length of the arc, marching to them along
invisible radii as the thousands of young section and squad leaders
shrilled their commands.

       *       *       *       *       *

Doug drew his sword then, held it high over his head, then swept it
in flashing salute to the ground. And together, he and Tayne gave the
first order.

"Troops march forward!"

The cadremen and cadets repeated it.

"_For-ward_--"

And like an echo bounding its way into infinity, the word magnified
into an undistinguishable roar.

"_MARCH!_"

The throbbing hymn was again at its climax, and the volume of sound was
so great about him that the tiny shrill note which his ear had singled
out for the briefest instant could only have been in his subconscious.
Yet for a split-second, it had been by itself, for it had been out of
timing with the rest. And it had been near him.

He would listen again, when the counter-march command was given.
Impossible, of course. Unthinkable, unthinkable....

It seemed suddenly that the two-hour long march about the 5-mile mean
circumference would take two days. The display was ridiculous and
time-consuming, but he was thankful for it even as he cursed it. For he
must hear the sound again. Yet if he heard it, then the spectacle must
never end.

Slowly, slowly, at a measured, tireless step the Prelate General's
Review marched in indefatigable tribute.

And at length, at the half-way mark, Doug raised his sword for the
command, whipped it downward.

"Inner columns march to the rear!"

The relay began.

"Inner columns as assigned, to the rear--"

And the last words were magnified to the proportion of thunder, but his
ears heard it only as a faraway thing. And again he heard the near-by
command, again a split-second off.

"_MARCH!_"

This time it was unmistakable. A recently designed section or
squad-leader, of course, who had not yet mastered the timing of
commands to perfection. Nearby. He looked desperately into the files
of marching boys at his side, now muddled as the centermost columns
marched to the rear. The command would not have been relayed to the
outside columns, since they were continuing their march forward. Then
he must quickly search the reverse column as it shuttled its obscured
way to the rear.

But of course not! He would not recognize a face, even as--as his
had gone unrecognized! But the voice he had heard it three times,
three split-seconds! And somehow it was, it was Terry's voice! In
there somewhere--Terry, Terry and Mike! Swords and maces swinging
rhythmically at their sides....




                              CHAPTER XIV


Carl Grayson lit a cigarette. Senior Quadrate Blair watched him
closely as he went over the last of his notes. The man was obviously
disturbed, but only about the interview itself. There had not been an
instant's suspicion; Blair was certain of it. The greatest danger was
over. It had been a danger ever-present with first meetings but with
each, it had become progressively easier with which to cope, yet with
the man Grayson, there had been unexpected pitfalls. These strange
people indulged in a peculiar relationship called friendship, he had
discovered--in essence it was a psychological thing, a thing from
which to derive a satisfying personal pleasure. In actuality, it had
become a rather distorted relationship, forged as it had been into a
many-ratcheted tool. Between the Congressman and Grayson, however,
the relationship was genuine and--the subtle thing which he had
missed until it had been almost too late--of a partial nature. The
thing called friendship was a thing of varying degree. And Grayson was
a "best" friend. He had almost missed that. It was so different to
stabilize things here....

"Doug, I want to get this straight for sure, and then I think I'll have
the works. What do you mean by 'new sources of military manpower yet
waiting to be tapped'? You mean simply the next UMT draft in July don't
you--all the new 17-year-olds?"

"For broadcast--immediate broadcast, Carl, I shall explain the
phrase by simply saying, uh--a new program of draft-age analysis and
evaluation is soon expected to be under study by the Blair Defense
Preparedness Committee...."

"Yes, but--Doug that's just a mess of words. It doesn't tell beans
about.... Oh. I get it--OK." He pushed the hat further back on his
head, made a marginal clarification. It was comfortable in the small
office, but there was perspiration on Grayson's wide forehead.

"You don't sound too satisfied, Carl."

"Who, me? Hell, I'm satisfied. I keep getting the exclusives, so I
can't holler. I just thought somehow you'd never get around to using
that method, that's all, Doug. If you want to tell 'em, you can--and I
guess you always have. But I supposes if you don't want to, but want
'em to think you have, it's as legitimate as ever to just confuse
'em. Get me. Philosopher." He completed the marginal note. "Now let's
see.... OK, OK, OK."

"Carl, how busy are you this afternoon?"

"Not, especially. Got to get this ready for my seven o'clock stint
tonight and knock out the rest of next Monday's column, and then
there's some of the routine junk but that can wait. Why?"

"I think I need your personal reaction to--well, to be frank about it,
to a new angle the committee's got in its sights on this UMT business.
I want to know what you think the radio--and the press, of course--will
do with it."

"I guess I better put the pencil away?"

"Afraid so. But you'll get it first when the time comes. And perhaps
you can help me decide when that should be, too."

"Shoot. All ears and no memory." He folded the uneven sheets of
newsprint, crammed them in an inner pocket.

"The story I've just given you, Carl, is a lot more important than
it looks. At first glance it's just Sunday feature stuff--that's the
way you'll play it in your column, and you'll probably just give it
a tag-end spot on your program. And that's the way I want it played.
But--it is important. I think you could call it a sort of--of a
corner-stone story."

"Thinking of a series, you mean? Hell, Doug, you've got the next elec--"

"Not as a series, that's the point. Not so direct. More like a good
propag--public relations campaign I mean. The development will be
gradual, and not too regular--that part of it I'm going to leave up to
you to some extent, I think--until it automatically becomes the top
news."

"Don't get it, Doug. I've told you before what's page one and what
isn't. This thing you've just given me hasn't any big names in it,
anything about money, taxes, or things to make anybody good and sick
at heart. This is just--well, just opinion. Thoughtful analysis. The
thoughtful stuff never makes the front pages, you know that."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Quadrate smiled. "Precisely. I feel it should be pretty casually
introduced. But don't worry--I won't ruin its news value. I think
you'll agree with me when I'm ready for the top spot on your broadcast
and for the front pages, I'll have something that will--how do you
put it?--make people suddenly sick. Point is, I want them to be
unconsciously thinking along the right lines first, so that when they
get through being sick and stop to think about it, it will make sense."

He was careful. It was difficult to maintain the curious bantering
way of speech these people continually employed. An end-product, of
course, of their emotional degeneration, and therefore as difficult to
perfectly imitate as a provincial misuse of the language. But it was
not as difficult as at first....

"Sure Doug--what you're talking about is done all the time, every day
of the week. That part's easy enough--too damn easy. But--you keep
saying 'it.' 'It' will make sense. What are you gunning at?"

"Suppose I give you an example. The final development of that statement
you weren't clear on. 'New sources of military manpower yet waiting to
be tapped.' What it will mean, when the time comes, is the UMT drafting
of children ten years old. Thirteen at first."

"_The what?_" The man Grayson looked almost ludicrous. His mouth hung
foolishly open, and there was no sound coming from it.

"I'm afraid you not only heard correctly, Carl, but that I had better
tell you that if you're thinking of sending for the booby-wagon for
me, you'll have to send for about thirty others for the rest of the
committee. Next week, the Blair Defense Preparedness Committee will
introduce a bill for unlimited lowering of the draft age, for either
war or peacetime use. Within a month after its passage--and I can
guarantee you that it will be passed--the committee will give you what
you'll need for your first big story on it. It will urge, and then it
will demand that all male youths from the present draft age of 17 down
to the age of thirteen be immediately registered for selective service."

"Good Lord, Doug--"

"The committee is strong, Carl. It is strong because I knew how to pick
it. I did not pick it, I assure you, on the basis of intelligence or
learning or capability. I picked it in terms of personal political and
financial influence, and in terms of my capability in persuading its
members to my way of thinking. That was not too difficult--they're all
band-wagon men.

"But to the point. On the heels of the new Blair Law's invocation, the
committee will again make a demand--registration of all youngsters
down to and including the age of ten years."

"Doug for God's sake--"

"Sit down, Carl!"

"Sure...."

"I'm quite sane. Worried?"

"Hell yes I'm worried."

"Take it easy. They thought a man called Litvinov was deranged
once--around 1913 I think it was, when he predicted World War One, and
the fall of the House of Czars."

       *       *       *       *       *

"But you can't be serious about this--this kid business. Why my God
if I think you've been--overworking, let's say, what d'you think the
reaction of the man in the street'll be?"

"That, Carl, hasn't mattered for quite some time. You know it, and I
know it. He's already swallowed UMT itself, don't forget."

"But--hell, the Blair Committee isn't the only bunch of politicians
around here. And they--"

"I told you, Carl, my committee is strong. I picked it that way. Others
can yell all they want. But no amount of yelling--even by the most
widely-heard commentators and widely-published columnists--has ever
really accomplished much when a particularly strong political faction
has decided how things are going to be. It's the things that make you
sick that have always made the front pages, remember?"

"I--you're crazy, Doug. Crazy as a 1951 tax program. You've gotten
bitter about things in the past, sometimes a little cynical. Hell, who
doesn't. But you've always been the one man the people knew they could
count on--and your fellow-workers, I can even add. If you try to come
out with a thing like this--"

"A moment. Just a minute, Carl. I want to ask an easy one. It is really
easy. How long before the next world war breaks out?"

"Easy, what d'you mean, easy? Tomorrow, next month, next year maybe.
Maybe not until 1960. Nobody knows that--"

"I still say, easy. There's certainty it will be at least by 1960,
and probably sooner. That's terrifyingly close enough, isn't it, when
you're speaking in terms of the inevitable?"

"I see."

"The world is a pretty desperate place right now, wouldn't you say?
Worse even than five or six years ago."

"Desperate, desperate--yes of course it's desperate. And you--you're
going to make something of it, is that it? Doug, you're not being very
original. I never thought--I never honestly thought the day would come
when I'd hear you--"

"Give me a chance, Carl."

"If I do I don't think I'll ever broadcast another word of what you
have to say."

"I'll take that chance. But first I'd better clear some things up.
First of all, I'll tell you how much I've explained to the committee.
I've pointed out to them that there is but one way open--and one way
only--of offsetting the Soviets' superiority in arms production, and
that's to shock the living daylights out of them. Shock them so that
they'll be convinced we're--we're a nation gone mad, perhaps. As you
think I've gone mad, this moment. But--what stomach would any foreign
enemy have for fighting a madman, armed to the teeth with atomic
weapons? They say a lunatic with a gun is a great deal more deadly than
a sane man similarly armed.

"So--we shall shock them, Carl. We shall, perhaps before the year
is out, not only double our own production regardless of cost, but
register every kid in the country down to the ten-year age level. And
have a gun ready for each one, too. As I explained to the committee,
it won't be even their tremendous numbers that will be frightening.
It will be the seemingly crazed desperation of the country that would
consider calling them to arms that would throw the scare. And then, of
course, we'll take advantage of the scare. We'll produce A-weapons as
we never have before. Hell, every parent in the nation will be breaking
his back at a defense plant--not just for the ridiculously high wages
that a riveter gets, but to insure the safety of their kids' skins."

"Doug, you're either really nuts or--or--"

"So much the committee knows, as of now. And, I've sold it to them.
I sold it to them by simply asking them which was less desirable, my
plan, or the end of civilization in a few short years. And, by asking
them what other solution they had."

"Any straw--any straw at all." The reporter was not speaking to be
heard, but Blair heard him.

"You've hit it precisely, Carl. It's come finally to that. Any straw at
all."

       *       *       *       *       *

For a few moments there was silence in the small office, and Carl
Grayson just sat, staring at the floor. At length he put a fresh
cigarette between his lips, lit it, and smoked automatically. It was
half consumed before Doug said, "Now, I want to discuss the rest of the
plan with you. The part I've not broached to the committee as yet."

"The--rest? Doug, what are you talking about?"

"The rest of it. You see, sooner or later the initial shock is going to
wear off, Carl. Then, perhaps if we're lucky, we'll be evenly matched
in armament and personnel under arms, but that will be all. A balance
of peace is no good. You convince no one that peace is desired. You
simply convince them that for awhile, there's no way they dare break
it. But again, sooner or later, the dare is taken and then--"

"I want to go, Doug."

"Not yet. I want you to hear me out. And, I'm going to ask a rather
special favor, Carl. Judge the plans on the merits of its logic alone.
For the moment, imagine you have no emotion."

"I can, but it won't do any good. Afraid I have emotion, Douglas."

"I see. Tell me, if it is so valuable a thing as to be allowed to cloud
your reasoning, why would you instantly throw it away if something
called patriotic duty were suddenly thrust upon you?"

"It would shake me up a little of course--"

"Yes, but you'd chuck it. You'd perform the duty."

"All right. I don't know the tricks of debate, you do. Go ahead, I'm
listening."

"I'll begin this way. If, we'll say, an infantry captain realized that
by sacrificing the lives of three of his men and possibly his own, he
could save the lives of his entire company, what would he do, if he
were what is termed a 'good' officer?"

"Why, if that were his only alternative--"

"I assure you, it would be, for the purposes of my analogy."

"He'd--he'd save the company. That's happened."

"Even to men with emotions."

"Why--yes of course. Damn you Doug--"

"Even when one of the three to be sacrificed might be a kid who was
still in high school when he enlisted--"

"Yes. Yes I guess so."

"Now remember what you've just told me, and switch to this.... What,
actually, is the basis for armed conflict between nations? Generally
speaking, with the long view of history?"

"I--I suppose covetousness. Materially translated that would mean
just plain wanting the grain fields, the ore mines, the sea ports,
the wealth someone else has and that you no longer have, doesn't it?
Land, then. Hitler called it _Lebensraum_. One outfit thinks another is
stepping on its toes over this chunk of real estate or that. Etcetera,
ad nauseum, ad politics."

"Good. And what's the real root of this material covetousness do you
think?"

"Grass is always greener, I guess."

"That is motive enough for the small-scale wars, yes. But I'm speaking
of the kind nations fight in desperation, not merely for the sake of
warring."

"Then, well--they run out of what they've got. Want more. Is that the
answer you want?"

"Almost. What makes them run out, Carl?"

"Not enough stuff to take care of their population, not enough work to
supply the money to buy what little there is to buy. Too many people,
not enough resources to keep 'em happy."

"Now, essentially, you have it. Now, if you'll remember those
two things--the captain's sacrifice and Mr. Hitler's fight for
_Lebensraum_--we'll switch again. If I owed you a dollar, Carl, and
gave you a bill, you'd accept it. What would it be worth?"

"Why, about--let's see--"

"No, I mean in terms of the metal backing it."

"Well--actually, it could be worthless. But as long as I don't think it
is--"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Correct. As long as you, and everybody else of course, has faith in
it, it is of value, and is working currency. Now one more thing.
Did you ever have anything really bad happen to you when you were a
youngster--say about ten years old, Carl?"

"I don't get this, Doug. You're way over me--"

"No, answer me. Think of something unpleasant that happened--"

"Don't have to think. I still get goose-pimples when I hear a near-by
train whistle. Almost got killed once when my father's car got stalled
on a railroad crossing. Sort of a--I guess they call it conditioning.
Pretty strong with me, I guess."

"Yes. Now--we'll put the four things together, Carl. First of all,
according to my plan, the world must somehow be given implicit faith in
a method for the elimination of warfare. A method in which they will so
strongly believe that, although the supposed reason for such belief may
be scientifically quite fallacious, they will practice it nonetheless.
To do this, they must be shown a method which, by one means or another,
actually works. And, that is possible. There is such a method, based on
the sacrifice of the few for the ultimate preservation of the many...."

"Go on. So far you've brought in the dollar-bill idea; the business
about conditioning, the captain and his company.... What method?"

"Taking the drafted ten-year-olds--first of just this nation, then of
the entire world--placing them once each year in four divisions in the
Sahara desert, and setting them at one another with manual weapons."

Carl turned white. He sat, unmoving, silent.

"The accepted theory will be that the horror of death by arms will
create so deep a mental scar on the young plastic minds that in
adulthood they will never again be able to kill. In actuality, the
theory is in many respects fallacious, granted. But it will be
accepted, because the practice--the desert fighting--will reduce the
basic cause of warfare to flat zero, and there will eventually be
no war. How? Through such a plan, many male children of course will
die yearly. The number killed will be subject to strict control of
course, in exact proportion to annual world birth-rate, and potential
multiplication. Such, Carl, that the population of the world will,
in terms of future generations as well as those almost immediate, be
always stabilized. Of course, since a period of from twenty to fifty
years may be needed for practice of the method before the first
tangible stabilization results are shown, the 'conditioning' angle
must be heavily stressed, before as well as during the actual desert
fighting. Backing by the press will greatly help toward this end--you
yourself know how terribly potent it can be--and I'm certain, once the
method is explained to them in terms of survival, we will also be able
to count on the 'corroboration' of the world's most popular scientists.

"However, as absolutely necessary insurance, an influence infinitely
more powerful than those combined will be employed to positively insure
unquestioning belief in the validity of the plan, not only before and
during the first few years, but for all time!

"I have, therefore, already taken steps to bring it into play. I have
already issued invitations to one hundred of the world's highest
ranking ecclesiastical leaders for a conference here next week. By
then, the committee should be rolling with quite a bit of momentum. As
we said, these are desperate times...."

       *       *       *       *       *

Carl remained silent. His question was in his eyes, but he would not
give it speech. But Blair saw it.

"The clergy? Their assistance will be essential. I just told you
why, didn't I? You see, once they realize that they can materially
contribute to lasting peace, I am sure they will cooperate. If
necessary, they--all of them--would consent to a merger of church and
state. History bears me out."

"The mer--"

"Naturally. How else can I make _sure_ the people are made to believe
implicitly in the plan until they can at least see its tangible
results? And how better to maintain that belief? Government and
politics and all they imply are already worshipped more than God, Carl!
So let's put it on a paying basis!"

"And you think--you actually think you'll get the support of the
world's clergy in this revolting scheme--"

"I told you that history bears me out, Carl. For instance--from the
fourth to the fourteenth centuries, one of the world's most powerful
sects was heavily involved in temporal government--because, it said,
of necessity to preserve itself. And surely you must remember the
cooperation of the church with Constantine and Charlemagne when their
empires were in danger of disintegrating, when unity was so sorely
needed, and they knew there was but one that could help them? Often the
church--the sect to which I referred before--actually took over the
powers of government during Charlemagne's rule--not, perhaps, because
it wanted involvement in those things which were Caesar's--but because
it realized the grave perils which would face it if whole empires were
to break apart, and their peoples reduced to pagan savagery as a result.

"I think you see my point. And--I imagine the simile about the captain
and his platoon will also be appealing, don't you? The idea of
sacrifice that others might live...?"

"You--you son of a bitch!"

"I'm sorry you said that, Carl. Because the plan will work, you know.
From telling it to you, I see that its shock-value is valid. From
seeing your final reaction, I realize that you are inwardly as sure
as I that it will succeed. It is actually all I wanted, to get your
immediate reaction."

"Doug, I'm going. But there's just one thing I want to ask you before I
smear you from here to damnation. Just what, Congressman, is _your_ cut
in this?"

"None. I have not once mentioned money."

"You're a madman, Blair."

"When you've convinced yourself of that, Carl, you may try to smear me
if you wish. But first--_first, convince yourself!_"




                              CHAPTER XV


As Doug marched, he thought.

There was less than an hour yet of marching to complete the great
circle, to devise a plan.

Two boys in five hundred thousand. An impersonation now demanding so
complex a knowledge of the situation of which it was the center that to
carry it to successful conclusion would be impossible. Even a moment's
belief otherwise was rank stupidity. Escape? Yes, by himself somehow,
perhaps he could escape in one of the two sleek ships even now being
serviced on the plaza; that had been the basis for his original plan.
But the plan was junk now. Junk, unless he could find Terry and Mike
first. Two boys, in a half-million!

Aircraft were being rolled out on the plaza. The immense aircraft
in which he and Tayne would fly as they directed the maneuvers of
their quadrants, and the aircraft of the tabulation and evacuation
specialists. They were huge, and there were fully a hundred of them.
But for all their size and number, they offered no hope. It was like
being in a nightmare wherein one had to run for life, but the ground
beneath was a sucking, miring bog.

His reason hinted temptingly that the voice he had heard might well
not have been that of his son. How many voices were there in all
creation that were precise echoes of each other? Thousands? Millions,
even. But among them, there was of course the _one_. And he must know.
He had to know.

The Contraption. Again, what had it done? It had transmitted himself
and Dot into their physical counterparts on a parallel time-track. If
the blue glow of the contraption had touched Terry and Mike, then they
too would have been transmitted. But because they had not appeared in
the cellar when the transmission was complete, he and Dot had assumed
that they had been just outside the Contraption's limited range.

That was it, of course--the cellar. That was what had thrown them off,
confused their logic. Through some quirk of coincidence, the other
Blair, Senior Quadrate Blair and his wife had been in their cellar at
the time of the switch. Had they been anywhere else--anywhere else
at all, even just upstairs, the mistake in logic would not have been
made. And if Madame Blair had no sons, Terry and Mike would not have
been transmitted at all. But Quadrate and Madame Blair had had sons.
Two, ten years old. He remembered when Tayne had told him of their
transfer from his quadrant to Tayne's own.... Ordered by Gundar Tayne,
Director. He remembered. He remembered how thankful he had been that
they had not been his. But now--now, fantastically, they were. Because
when the switch happened, Ronal and Kurt Blair had not been in the
cellar. They had been on Venus.

But it was too much, the coincidences--the marriage of two
counterparts; their children, same sex, same age.

And then he remembered what he had told Grayson so terribly long ago.
_There's a million possible results when you go fooling around with the
structure of the universe, Carl_ ...

       *       *       *       *       *

Thousands of voices in the universe that were exact echoes of each
other. But Terry and Mike were here, and there was no doubting that.
And in Tayne's quadrate, the one beside which he was even now marching.
Oh, he was doing well with his thinking! He had narrowed the field down
to a trifling two hundred fifty thousand!

And he knew that by any direct means that would not arouse Tayne's
too-willing suspicion, it was as far down as he would narrow it.

Indirect, then.... Somehow, through Tayne himself, perhaps. Tayne had
his boys. Tayne's brother had seen to that, with of course no reason
given. Pressure--simple pressure. Doug wondered if the pressure was
supposed to break him. He wondered what Tayne's reaction would be--and
his brother's--if it did not. Easy enough to guess. If his sons' deaths
at Tayne's careful arrangement were not enough to break him, shatter
him, make him throw down his office, then the corpses of Kurt and
Ronal--Terry and Mike--would somehow end up on the battle area occupied
by his quadrant, far enough behind the front lines of fighting to
convince any martial court that he had violated the Director's order,
had obviously at the last moment brought his sons back within his own
quadrant, where they might be in some measure protected.

That was how it would be. If the pressure was not enough, then a simple
frame. A simple matter of good timing. Yet if the timing should, by
some miracle, go wrong....

_If the timing went wrong! God there it was!_

Suddenly, the blood was pounding through his body, throbbing in the
large veins at his throat. Five minutes more and this thing would end.
Three hundred seconds, four hundred strides. Then the final salute as
the Prelate General left as he had come. And then thirty minutes for
deployment, and the games on the northern mass would begin.

But before those thirty minutes started.... It must be done just as the
Prelate General's ship disappeared into the white syrup of the sky. It
must be done just before the order to break ranks to prepare for combat
deployment.

And then of course it would be a gamble at best. But it was a chance,
where before there had been no chance at all.

       *       *       *       *       *

Five hundred thousand swords flashed in final salute as the Prelate
General's glittering ship leapt skyward, trailing a satisfactorily
impressive wake of flame and thunder as it ascended into invisibility.
And the sprawling headquarters building was at once denuded of its
steeple. The Director had taken his place in the balcony. Divinity had
withdrawn, entrusting its mission at length to the obedient officer of
its lay hosts.

The swords were sheathed. And in a moment, the Director of the games
would signal dismissal.

_Now!_

Suddenly, Doug was striding from his post at the point of the flying
wedge, the thin flanks of which still joined the two quadrants,
heading unerringly for a point directly before the balcony itself. And
as suddenly he stopped, stiffly raised his open palm in salute. His
cloak fluttered in the warm breeze.

"Your Very Grand Excellence! Senior Quadrate Blair wishes to report
a suspected breach of command!" And he held his breath, but not
intentionally, for suddenly breath would not come.

His salute was returned. And the field behind him was again still as
though carven from stone.

"Report, Quadrate!"

He mustered all the wavering strength in his body, for each word must
be crisp, clear, strong and flowing with confidence.

"Your Very Grand Excellence, it has come to this officer's attention
that there exists the possibility of failure to execute a quadrant
reassignment as prescribed in your command of June 3, in which Ronal
Blair and Kurt Blair, identification numbers 28532 and 28533, were
ordered transferred from the quadrant which I command to that of
Quadrate Tayne. In order that such a failure be rectified at once if,
in actuality, it has transpired, I request permission to order an
immediate inspection of the units concerned!"

His muscles were rigid and his throat felt like so much wadded
sandpaper. Everything hinged on what happened now. Everything.

"In the interests of military efficiency and discipline, your
unprecedented request must be granted, Quadrate Blair. I will expect,
however, a full report in writing concerning the basis of your
suspicion of such failure at your earliest convenience. Order the
inspection; you may have ten minutes!"

"At once, sir!"

He saluted, about-faced, and strode, the single animate figure in a
great open amphitheater of statues, toward the Post Tayne held behind
his own. And as he walked the foreboding silence was suddenly shattered
by the roar of starting aircraft engines. The tabulation and evacuation
planes, readying for warm-up flights, last-minute terrain checks. There
was so little time. And the Director's flat, superbly confident tone
had been enough to tell him that only a naive fool could hope to win.
In it there had been no trace of surprise, no trace of suspicion, no
trace of hesitation. It could mean that he was already beaten. Or,
there was the thread-slim chance that it meant the Director had seen no
threat in the request to the subtle plan against him. For, regardless
of the inspection's outcome, the sons of Quadrate Blair would end up
where they belonged, under Quadrate Tayne. And so the plan would thence
go forward.

But for the record, the Director had demanded a report!

A report, Doug knew, which one way or the other, he would never write.

Somewhere behind him a flight of tab planes thundered into the air.

And then suddenly, he was facing Tayne, and it was time to play out the
gamble to the end.

"Quadrate Tayne, in order to satisfy the Director and myself that the
transfer of my sons to your quadrant has been effected as ordered
by the Director's command dated June 3, you will order forward for
inspection the unit within your quadrant to which they were assigned."

"Yes, sir."

Tayne pivoted.

"Divisions Six and Eighteen, forward--march!" Again, the familiar relay
of command. Then the two great masses surged forward, one behind the
other, leaving the two behind them still in formation. "Six by the
left flank, march!" Six had cleared the quadrant formation, moved off
as commanded to the left. "Eighteen by the right flank, march!" And
Eighteen did the same. "Divisions, halt! Six, right, face! Eighteen,
left, face!" And as quickly as Tayne's commands were relayed, the way
was methodically cleared for the rear rank division he called next.
There were perhaps seven minutes left.... "Division Thirty forward,
march!"

       *       *       *       *       *

And it came forward, and Doug realized at once that in this formation,
this Division Thirty, were his sons, if they were anywhere among the
five hundred thousand at all.

"Division, halt!" A second flight of evac ships roared over them, and
Tayne waited. Six minutes.... "'A' Company, First Battalion, Second
Regiment, forward--" This time, the unit Tayne wanted was in the very
front, and at once, two hundred boys were separated from a division of
over five thousand, as the division itself had been picked from among
forty-eight others in a quadrant of a quarter-million.

And then--

"Squad leaders Kurt and Ronal Blair, _front center_!" And from the
squads of a rear platoon, two bare-torsoed, helmeted youngsters rushed
forward on the double!

They halted three paces from Tayne, saluted. And to Doug, their young
faces were completely unrecognizable.

Curiously pinched, worried young faces, drawn taut with the tension of
bewilderment and sudden fear.

Tayne pivoted, faced Doug.

"Sir, Kurt and Ronal Blair, as assigned by command! At your orders,
sir!"

Doug returned the salute, said nothing. He walked with a careful
nonchalance to where the two boys, swords and maces still swinging at
their sides, stood at attention. Their arms rose in salute. There was
no sign of recognition in their eyes.

He dared linger near them but a moment, the fleeting moment it would
take for him to identify his own sons beyond doubt. And again, it would
be a matter of timing. For until the right moment, Tayne could hear
every word.

"How long have you boys been in your present unit?"

"Since--since June the third I think, sir." Terry's voice. And it was
Terry's way of saying words. It was Terry, and it was Mike beside him.

But he remained silent. He waited, and he prayed.

The silence drew into seconds, and it was deadly.

And then suddenly a third flight of evac ships thundered their paen of
power as they fought for altitude above him!

And with the prayer still at his lips lest his words be either too loud
or drowned altogether, Doug shouted almost in their faces: "_Terry,
Mike! It's Dad! The Contraption's done all of this! Watch for me--I'll
pick you up off the field!_"

Their eyes were suddenly wide but the roar was already subsiding. He
had managed about twenty quick words. He turned to Tayne. And Tayne's
sword was not drawn. On his face was the masked look of hatred, but not
the unveiled one of sudden comprehension. He had not heard....

"My sons, without doubt, Quadrate. You may order them to fall in, and
reform your ranks. You shall receive my apology of record as soon as
practicable."

He saluted stiffly and took his post at the apex of the wedge.

Tayne bellowed his commands for the reformation of his quadrant between
the fourth and fifth ascending flights of tab and evac planes. And
then, once again, there was the fantastic tableau of helmeted statues.

And through the speakers came the Director's command to deploy for
combat.

       *       *       *       *       *

As their quadrants were marched off to take the field under the
ground command of the Junior Quadrates of the headquarters cadre,
Doug and Tayne were escorted by an honor guard of cadets to the
hangar-sections of the headquarters building where their command planes
waited in the dank heat, engines idling. Huge aircraft, powerful, but
not built for speed. Propeller-driven instead of jet, and the reason
was obvious enough--the great, broad-winged craft had been designed
for observation, not pursuit. Although there was no sign of a rotor
assembly on either ship, Doug knew that for all their size, they were
capable, in the thick atmosphere of Venus, of hovering at very little
more than the speed of a slow human run. Everything, planned to the
last detail. Everything, irrevocably woven into the unchangeable fabric
of destiny itself.

The last half of what little plan he had remained only partially within
the pattern, and after that, it would simply be a race between fugitive
and pursuer--a fully-committed race between hunter and hunted. Nothing
more, he knew, than a desperate attempt at escape where there could be
no escape. But at least there would be the brief, red-hot satisfaction
of trying--there was always that, when there was nothing else....

It would be simple. As Senior Quadrate, his was the duty of
over-seeing the campaign not only of his own quadrant, but that of
Tayne, Vladkow, Klauss. His was the prerogative of flying his ship
over or landing it among any of the troops, wherever they fought. He
could land in any quadrant--in Tayne's quadrant. The detailed campaign
maps, kept in constant conformation with each phase of the battle as
it progressed by picked tabulation personnel, would show him where to
land. Wherever he found A Company, First Battalion, Second Regiment,
Division Thirty.... And if the boys had understood, they would be
watching, waiting. And after that, back to the plaza, the ship,
with the prayer that its return trajectory was already plotted, its
autorobot already reset for the return journey to Earth.

That was where he must break the pattern. That was when the hopeless,
foolish race would begin.

And inwardly, Doug smiled an ironic, tight little smile. So funny,
so tragically funny. A down-to-Earth, practical man like Congressman
Douglas Blair, running for his life from a fantasy that could not
possibly exist! As the people of Hiroshima had run on the day of the
atomic bomb....

Their cloaks started to whip in the slipstreams of the waiting
aircraft. Another ten strides and he would have been aboard the plane.

But before he had taken five of them, the speeding surface-vehicle
had drawn up beside them and stopped scant feet short of the plane's
opening port. Cadremen leapt from it, swords drawn. And behind them
came the Director himself.

The formation halted as though it had suddenly struck an invisible wall.

As he walked between his flanks of guards, the hulking Gundar Tayne
drew his own sword. And Doug knew what the gesture meant.

"Senior Quadrate Blair, as lawful husband of Madame Lisa Blair, who
was taken into custody by the S-Council of Earth at 1300 hours Earth
Standard Time today, I hereby place you under official arrest. Guards!
Disarm this man."




                              CHAPTER XVI


Doug stood motionless as his dress sword was whipped from its scabbard,
snapped across the bent knee of one of the Director's guards, and cast
at his feet. A second denuded him of the wide belt and narrow scabbard
which had held it.

"Sir, unless you are able to cite well-founded charges for this
outrageous action, I can assure you it will be reported to the Prelate
General at once!" Doug bit the words out knowing that as a defensive
threat they were hopelessly impotent, but he had to know what they had
done to Dot. He had to know that even if they were to kill him within
the next second. He sensed Tayne's presence behind him, could all but
feel his sword-point at his back. The cadets, a moment before formed as
a guard of honor, were suddenly in a bristling ring about him as though
from some melodrama from the pages of Roman history. Their faces were
impassive, their feet wide-spread, their swords hip-high, and pointed
unwaveringly at him.

And the sneer in the Director's voice was only carelessly concealed.

"This is hardly the time for jests, Quadrate. I hardly think I need
quote the Commandment sub-section setting forth the law concerning
the status of husband and wife when either is found guilty of heresy.
Your rank permits you to deny your wife's collusion if you wish,
but--unfortunately, Madame Blair has been unquestionably linked with
one of the pitiful but vicious little underground groups of men and
women whose constant and sole aim is not only to abolish the war games,
but to accomplish the eventual destruction of our sacred government.
She--as well as yourself, I might add--has been under painstaking
scrutiny for almost a year. I am informed that a carefully guarded
but all too unwise series of tele-calls to your home has at last
established the necessary link. Ever hear of the Saint Napoleon Culture
Society, Quadrate? No? No, of course you haven't! Quadrate Tayne!"

"Yes, your Very Grand Excellence!"

"I'm putting this man in your custody for the trip to Earth. Your
orders are to deliver him in person to the S-Council--you'll take-off
immediately. The games will be under my personal supervision until you
return. Any questions?"

"I am to deliver this man in person to the S-Council. No questions,
sir."

"Carry on, then." He returned Tayne's salute with a perfunctory dip of
his sword-point, then sheathed the weapon and followed Doug into the
waiting vehicle.

       *       *       *       *       *

Take-off black-out was but momentary and wore off quickly. Escaping
Venus' lesser gravity was noticeably easier, and the fog-shrouded
planet still filled the viewscreen when Doug got to his feet. He
was half surprised to discover that there were no steel cuffs at his
wrists, and that he had not been bound other than by the safety belts
to the acceleration hammock. But it was logical enough. A robot-guided
ship in Space was quite efficiently escape-proof. It had been an
effective trap before, and now it was an equally effective prison. And
Tayne, who had already opened trajectory compensation communications
with Venus headquarters, was the one who had the sword.

Tayne's back was to him. A sudden leap--

No. With Tayne unconscious or dead, it would make little difference.
His presence aboard the ship was apparently only for the satisfaction
of protocol. Placed aboard it alone, Doug reasoned, he would have been
as well secured a prisoner as had he been accompanied by a guard of one
hundred men. It was not Tayne, but the autorobot guiding the ship that
was his jailer. Yet, Tayne had not removed his sword....

Doug watched the white mass of Venus as it receded with torturing
slowness in the screen, let it half-hypnotize him. There was something
stirring uneasily somewhere far back in his brain--something,
something--but it did not matter. Nothing at all mattered now. The
race--the great, hopeless race he had planned for freedom had never
even begun!

They had denied him even that satisfaction. Yes, he could attack Tayne,
and Tayne would kill him. But that would not be a fight. It would be
simply the choice of suicide, at the hands of the man who would derive
the most satisfaction from being its prime instrument. The man who
already signed the death warrants for Mike and Terry....

And Dot. Dot, after some awful agony would see him again perhaps, but
she would see with uncomprehending eyes, hear with unrecognizing ears.
If she lived through what they did to her, she would no longer be Dot
at all.

Dully, he could hear Tayne's words in a background that was a thousand
miles away. "_Reconciled and steady as she blasts. This is QT to
Control, C-Limit check--trajectory secure. Out._"

And again, there was something far back in Doug's brain, struggling
harder....

Then even as Tayne turned toward him from the dial consoles, it
burst into the forefront of his mind like a flare in the darkness.
_Twelve hundred Kemps at three hundred milliamperes, sir....
Genemotor, type A-26-F modified.... Sergeant! The neuro-tablets at
once.... Commandments Four, Part 3, Sub-section 12 as amended ... all
space craft shall be robot-controlled and shall fly predetermined
trajectories, save (1) when bearing members of the Science Council
and/or their certified representatives, to whom manual operation
and navigation at will is singularly permissible, or (2) when
insurmountable emergency shall occur...._

And suddenly, Doug's brain vaulted from the lethargy of hopelessness
and it was again at his command, a sharp, poised weapon of battle. _For
Tayne knew! Yet he would die before he would tell--unless, somehow...._

"Such confidence, Quadrate Tayne! Admirable! But you would look so
much more fit for your role with your sword in your hand, not in your
scabbard!"

Tayne reddened. "If it were not for my orders, Blair--"

"Why, such a lack of conditioning, Quadrate! Don't you know killing me
is supposed to be so repulsive to you that you couldn't even stomach
the thought of it? Tell me, don't I make you sick, Quadrate?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Tayne's hand went to the hilt of his weapon. He half-drew it, slammed
it back in its scabbard.

"Blair, we have twenty hours aboard this ship together. We can be at
each other's throats like children. Or not, as you please."

Doug sat down on the edge of the acceleration hammock. Perhaps it would
not be so difficult. Carefully, he entered the role further. He must
have just the right kind of smile.

"Ah, but think of all the trouble I can get you in if I make you lose
your temper and kill me! And you have got to admit, where I'm going, it
doesn't make much difference--to me, I mean."

Tayne turned back to the instrument panel as though to signify that he
had suddenly become a deaf man. And Doug kept talking, as though to
signify a complete lack of interest in whether Tayne was a deaf man or
not.

"As the matter stands, they took my sword away. So you'd never get
anywhere with a self-defense alibi. Lord, how they'd make you sweat!
By Saint Napoleon's mother I like the thought of that! And, after all,
since this is going to be my last flight, I really think I'm entitled
to a little amusement."

Silence.

"You know, Quadrate," Doug kept on relentlessly, "I don't imagine you
expected even me to act like this, did you? No, of course not. Not
very much the officer and gentleman. But that makes us more or less
even. You don't know what a gentleman is. You're so stupid you don't
even know who the next President of the United States is going to
be!--Oh, sorry. I keep forgetting--I don't think I ever told you that
I'm not the real Senior Quadrate Blair, and that I'm not from your
universe at all, did I, Tayne? Ever hear of the World Series? Oh, there
I--"

Tayne turned his head.

"Easy does it! I imagine you must think I've gone mad. Don't blame
you. I don't act at all like the Blair you know. Of course if I am
mad, you'd better be careful. And if I am from another universe, you'd
better be even more careful. As a matter of fact, at the moment,
Quadrate, your life may not be worth very much."

Doug rubbed his fingernails on his tunic, inspected their new sheen.
Then he looked up at Tayne.

Tayne stood, face mottled, an uneasy little thread of uncertainty deep
under the surface of his eyes.

"Very well, just to make it easy for you, Mr. Tayne, we shall say I am
mad, because that's easy to believe, and I can see you're quite sure of
it already. Yet just the same I can outwit you, Quadrate. That is, I
think that in the twenty hours of our flight together I can reduce you
to a gibbering idiot, far worse off than myself! Why, I may even have
you mumbling that you're Saint Napoleon himself! Now wouldn't that be a
picture!" Blair slapped his right hand to his tunic-front.

And Tayne drew his sword.

"If you killed me, Quadrate, you would have no proof of my madness for
the others--and I'm sure that our standing enmity would be reasoned as
the far more credible motive. Reasonable people, yours. Very. So much
so that they're all above making a rather ridiculous harangue like
this. Face the S-Council rather stoically, I should imagine. Quietly,
as befits their dignity. _Right?_"

Tayne almost jumped clear of the deck.

"By jingo, you're nervous, man! Sweating, too. And twenty more hours.
Let's see--what'll we talk about?"

Tayne was tense, immobile, undisguisedly confused.

"I bet you're thinking that if you could get me in a state of--shall
we say, unconsciousness, your troubles would be over. But you'd have
to get close to me to do that. And we both know that sword of yours
is no threat. Besides, I'm a madman. Either mad, or from another
universe--ha!--and then I might be able to kill you with a glance! Of
course, you can suppose this is all just an act, but even if I told you
it was you wouldn't be exactly sure, would you? Would you, now?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Tayne sheathed the sword. And slowly, as though he had reached some
desperate decision, he turned to the control panels. But not to the
ones at which he'd stood before. He touched one of a row of white studs
above which were the words S-C ONLY. And a rectangle of metal hardly
more than a foot in length and half as much in width slid back beneath
his fingertips, exposing a compact console of control keys.

_Or (2) when an insurmountable emergency should occur...._

Tayne was pressing buttons, and Doug knew that the trajectory had been
broken, and that the ship was free of its autorobot and under Tayne's
sole command.

The manual control console. Tayne had had enough! Were he an Earthman
as Doug was an Earthman--but he was not! He was a creature of pattern,
and there was only the pattern to follow. And an 'insurmountable
emergency' had indeed arisen. Flight with a madman who spoke of other
universes, and who, by definition of orders, dare not be killed.

Doug, still seated, braced his feet on the hammock's bottom edge, and
checked his spring even with his muscles tensed.

For Tayne turned suddenly. And the fear, the confusion were gone!

"Thank you, Quadrate Blair!" he said. "Madman, I am convinced--yet
brilliant to the last! I admit, I may not have thought of our personal
enmity as a motive for my actions--as a motive, I mean, that would
justify them!"

Something turned to ice in Doug's stomach. It was going wrong, somehow.

Tayne drew the sword slowly. "I shall kill you now. You see, you hated
me so much that I am afraid your hatred broke its bounds. And you not
only attacked me but--but I'm afraid you also attempted to take over
manual control of the ship in your madness. And for that of course--"

The sword was descending even as Doug launched his body from the
hammock.

They went down then, and the sword clattered from Tayne's grasp. The
blade-edge was speckled with red, and there was a searing pain across
Doug's back. But his hands were on Tayne's throat, and they were
closing.

And then they opened. The whistle of air into Tayne's lungs as he
fought for breath and for consciousness told Doug he had only seconds
before there was full life in the Quadrate's body again.

But the seconds were enough, for within them, he had the sword's hilt
firmly in his own hand. And then he had its tip at the Quadrate's
swollen, pulsing throat.

"You damn near threw me off schedule, Grand Imperial Wizard. Come on
get up."

Doug felt little rivulets of blood trickle down his spine. The wound
still stung, but it was not deep.

Slowly, Tayne rose, the sword-point beneath his chin.

"Don't make me nervous," Doug said. "Sudden moves get me all jittery,
and sometimes when I'm jittery I kill stuffed shirts just to ease the
tension. Back up. Now around--slow, Noble Grand Knight, or you'll
fall down without your head." The sword-point traced a thin line
of red half-way around Tayne's neck as the man turned. "Now we're
going to have some fun--only wish you were a tax-writer and I'd get
a bigger kick out of this. Venus, James. And at the first peculiar
maneuver--such as maybe cutting out the pseudograv or dumping us on the
carpet without enough back-blast and your nice uniform will get all
gooked up. Blood, you know." He dug the point deeper into Tayne's flesh
until some of it was red, the rest white with pain.

And again, there was nothing to do but play the gamble out. How brave,
Doug wondered, was a creature of pattern?

       *       *       *       *       *

Venus filled the viewscreen, the white sea of the planet's sky
stretching unruffled beneath them.

"Northern land mass, Tayne. Your Quadrant. Thirtieth Division, Second
Regiment, First Battalion, Company 'A'."

Tayne still said nothing. Doug kept the steady pressure on the sword
point.

The round, black buttons were arranged like an inverted T. Beneath
them were three square, flush-set dials. One was easily recognizable
as an artificial horizon-ecliptic indicator. The second, Doug thought,
indicated both plus and minus acceleration. And the third, simple
velocity and altitude.

Tayne's fingers had not punched the buttons, but had played them almost
as though they were the keys of a musical instrument. The horizontal
row was for change of direction to either left or right. The vertical,
change in axial thrust, for either upward accelerations or forward,
depending upon flight attitude. A slow turn executed by pressing
the buttons of desired intensity of power in both horizontal and
vertical columns simultaneously, with turn sharpness simply a matter of
coordinated button selection.

The top button was for full thrust--full speed in level flight,
blast-off from take-off position, or full deceleration in landing
attitude. Those below it were for power in progressively lesser
amounts. A twist of a fingertip would lock any of the buttons at any
degree of power output desired. With practiced co-ordination, simple
enough. Yet--what about climb or dip from the horizontal? Or inversion
for landing? That was something for which he must wait.

The cut across his back throbbed now, and he dared not brush his hands
across his eyes to smear the sweat from them.

And suddenly, Tayne's voice grated, "You had better drop the sword,
Blair." There was the tightness of pain in his words, but they were
clear. "I refuse to invert the ship. If we are to land, it must be
inverted in sixty seconds. If you kill me, you kill yourself, for you
do not know how to operate the panel beyond what you have seen--and you
have not seen the operation for inversion. If you give me the sword,
you will land alive."

"You're out of your head, Mr. Tayne! I'm Senior Quadrate Blair,
remember? I know how to operate the panel as well or better than you
do. Get going!" He dug the tip deeper, and fresh blood started.

But, Tayne's fingers remained immobile.

"Mad or sane, Senior Quadrate Blair or--or something else, if you knew
how to use the panel, you would not have taken the risk of forcing me
to do it! I would already be dead--"

There was a sudden, empty space in Doug's stomach.

"Thirty seconds, Blair."

The white mass of the sky was scant miles below them. He would need all
of the thirty seconds, and there was no time to think--only time to
realize that if he were to live, he must kill Tayne. It was like that
time so long ago on the beaches of Normandy....

With all his strength he plunged the sword through Tayne's neck. And
his own hands were at the control panel before Tayne's gurgling corpse
had slumped to the deck. The life-blood seeped from it far more slowly
than the seconds slipped beneath Doug's taut fingers.

Not the buttons, not the dials, for he had seen them. But part of the
panel itself--it had to be!

The panel _itself_!

He pressed one side, the other. Nothing. Ten seconds perhaps....

The bottom or the top next. But which? If it moved on a lateral
axis--that would be it, for elevation or depression from the
horizontal! But to accomplish what would amount to a half-loop....

He pressed the top of the panel. And it gave beneath his touch. In the
viewscreen, the white mass which rushed to envelop him seemed to shift--

Further down--that was it, all the way around!

Slowly, against an unseen source of pressure, he revolved the panel
a half-revolution about its lateral axis. Already he could see its
reverse side--on it in the same pattern there was an identical set of
control buttons, dials.

In the viewscreen there was a half-second's glimpse of the blackness of
Space before the inverted ship tumbled tail-first into the white ocean
of the Venus sky.

And again there was the awful sensation of falling through infinity.
Desperately, he pushed the top button.




                             CHAPTER XVII


He locked the top button at full depression and struggled to keep his
legs straight beneath him, braced as they were now against a bulkhead
which but a few minutes before had been, not a floor, but a wall. The
ship's gyro system was no longer functioning as a pseudograv unit,
but rather as a vertical stabilizer, and the second dial said four
gravities.

The acceleration needle dropped with agonizing slowness. Four
gravities, three point seven. The altimeter said one hundred thousand
feet, then ninety thousand, eighty, seventy-five.

Three point five gravities. Three point three. Even three at last.

Fifty thousand feet, forty-five, forty-two, forty thousand.

Two point six gravities.

Thirty-five thousand.

Two. One point nine. Point eight, seven, six, five.

Twenty-three thousand.

One gravity.

And the ship was hovering balanced by her gyros, at twenty-one thousand
feet above boundless reaches of Venusian sea.

Gingerly, Doug pressed the top of the panel, released the top button.

There was a sickening drop as from somewhere deep inside the ship new
sets of engines rumbled automatically to life as her nose came down,
her belly-jets belching, breaking the drop on their cushion of power.
And again the craft hovered, but now horizontally.

Tayne's corpse tumbled grotesquely off the bulkhead to the deck, made
Doug miss his footing, and he fell.

But nothing happened. The panel, without pressure, had returned
automatically to zero setting, and the belly-jets held steady.

Swiftly then, cursing himself for his awkwardness, Doug tore at Tayne's
cloak, the blood-soaked tunic beneath it. Somewhere he must have
it--logically, he must have it.

Something crackled. Doug smeared stinging sweat from his eyes as he
bent closer, found the neatly-hidden pocket, thrust a hand inside.

It was hard to keep the thin, bound packet of wide plastisheets steady.
Clumsily, he flicked to blank pages of Tayne's unused record tablet. In
those he had examined at his office the campaign maps had been in the
back.

And he found them there. _Estimated deployment, Phase One, First Hour._

No good ... two, perhaps three hours had elapsed. Gamble on Phase Three.

Division Thirty, Second Regiment, First Battalion, 'A' Company. There.

He stood up, locked a deep breath inside him, and placed his fingers
on the inverted T of control buttons for a second time.

North was the top of the viewscreen. What shown in it then must slide
from the top down.

His fingertip caressed the bottom-most button. And there was a gentle
surge of acceleration, and the screen picture was moving diagonally.
First button on the right....

       *       *       *       *       *

The picture swung slowly around. And then it was moving from top to
bottom of the screen. He pushed the bottom button all the way in, and
the velocity needles swung slowly up. A touch on the button above it,
and the needle quivered five hundred ten.

And then on the horizon there was suddenly a light blue blur, and he
braced himself against the shock of forward acceleration as he pushed
the button all the way in. Its limit was close to two thousand miles
per hour, and he locked it there.

Moments later he released it, eased pressure on it as the blue blur
shaped itself into the coastline of the northern land mass. Gradually,
he depressed the panel a full ninety degrees.

And the hurtling craft swung again on her blazing tail. Doug let the
panel return to zero and held the bottom button in. The belly-jets had
automatically cut out, and again he hovered, sinking slightly, this
time not above the dark blue waste of the Venusian sea, but above the
place where fantastic young armies with ten-year-old soldiers were
writhing, dying.

The altimeter needle showed five thousand feet, and already he was able
to discern the battle-lines of the two quadrants, no longer in close
marching formation, but now spread wide to cover an irregular area of
more than one hundred square miles. The lines surged first forward then
back, as though joined in some Gargantuan tug-of-war--shifted, changed,
like a great wounded serpent in its death-throes.

The lines were little more than a hundred yards in depth because
deployment for the games provided for no rear echelons--there were
only the battle echelons, with their ends defended mightily against
encirclement, attack from the rear.

Eventually, Doug knew, the flank defenses of both lines would give way,
and the centers of each would rupture, and then, until the hovering
tab and evac planes gave the signal that the Phase Three limit had
been reached, the battle would wage in a great undulating mass,
without formation, without plan, without reason. He had to reach Mike
and Terry before then, for once the lines disintegrated into Final
Phase--deployment at will--they'd be lost to him for good.

And Phase Three lasted at best for three hours. Final Phase, when it
begun, would last as many days.

Somehow, he had to jockey the hovering ship over the area where the
map-estimate indicated that Mike and Terry would be fighting. And when
he landed, he must somehow halt the carnage momentarily--just long
enough for them to see him, to run....

Doug tilted the great ship at an angle of about seventy degrees,
compensated it on the main drive and the single bank of bow belly-jets
that automatically checked in as the ship left vertical balance. And
the terrain below him moved slowly, canted oddly between horizon and
sky.

Slowly, toward the area designated on the map--slowly, sinking
slightly, so that he could see their faces now, watch as their maces
shattered the glittering helmets into junk, smashed into living flesh,
as their broadswords glistened red and swung, struck....

       *       *       *       *       *

Momentarily hypnotized by the horror that screamed below him and by
the sickening realization that what he saw was real even though his
reason rebelled through force of habit from admission that such reality
could exist, Doug watched the tilted battlefield as it stretched but
hundreds of feet below him now, watched as a smoothly-oiled, carefully
calculated device preserved the peace of a planet.

_A small, sweating body was hewn in two._

_A helmeted head fell; an arm dropped grotesquely beside it._

_A boy's boot was bathed in blood as he kicked viciously at his
opponent's chest to withdraw his sword from it._

_A brief, two-handed struggle with sword and mace--a sword stroke was
parried, the swinging mace was not, and a splintered rib with shreds
of flesh still sticking to it clung to the mace-pikes as an adversary
fell, the left side of his body gone._

And the dead, still-quivering masses of flesh and bone were trampled
as they fell, to be swiftly covered by other still-dying bodies which
collapsed, writhing, atop them, to be trampled in their turn....

Doug shuddered uncontrollably. Kids, dying on a battlefield like this!

A pair of helmeted heads suddenly disappeared in a twin red gush
from two pairs of sweating shoulders, and a group of twenty boys
converged on the spot, fought for almost a minute, and then the heads
were covered, and one boy at length dragged himself away, arms limp,
helpless. He died while an evac ship was landing. The swinging mace
that broke his back had not been necessary. He who wielded it fell
also an instant later, his spine severed in a long, diagonal gash. And
Doug thought how odd it was that a sword-cleft could look so like the
tearing wound which a flying chunk of shrapnel would gouge.

He was so low now that he had long since lost sight of the lines'
ends, had no way of knowing when encirclement at last would begin,
when the center of each line would give way, when Final Phase would
begin. But it seemed that the fighting had become less orderly, more
closely-grouped, more frenzied. Within minutes the Third Phase map
would be useless, and in Final Phase, there would be no knowing. No
knowing until long after the end.

The altimeter needle said two hundred feet, when, if he had read the
map with any degree of accuracy, he was over the area assigned to
Tayne's Thirtieth Division. He had the ship straightened and descending
when the blue light inset in the communications panel began to blink.
He would let it blink. Yet if he answered, at least he would know their
intentions....

Bloody young warriors sought desperately to give the great craft room
as he descended. Some were incinerated in its back-blast, and Doug
murmured a prayer that they had been among the already-dying. He would
not let himself think that of all he had seen die, any two could have
been Terry and Mike. He refused to let himself think that of the dozen
turned to cinders by his descending jets, any two could have been Terry
and Mike....

       *       *       *       *       *

The blue-red ground came slowly up to meet him. The blue light kept
blinking. He increased pressure on the bottom button--hovered, sank,
hovered again, sank.

And when the ground was obliterated with the searing flame of his
drive tubes, there was a gentle jar, and Doug let the button snap from
beneath his finger. He was down, and there was not even time to feel
relief.

He tripped over Tayne's body, fell heavily against the communications
panel. His fingers fumbled for a switch near the inset microphone.
The words blurred.... _FIELD ADDRESS. RADIO-SEND. RADIO-REC. FLEET
INTERCOM._

He twisted the knob to _RADIO-REC._ and the blue light stopped blinking.

"... D to QT, D to QT, over...."

He turned the dial to _RADIO-SEND_.

"This is QT," he said. He switched back, waited.

"Larsen, this is Gundar! What in Napoleon's name are you doing? What
did you do with Blair?"

Doug tore a plastisheet leaf from Tayne's note tablet, thrust it over
the mike-face.

"I had to kill him."

"_Kill_ him? Larsen you fool.... You know what they'll say--"

"He tried to get at the manual controls ... succeeded in wrecking the
autorobot, so I had to use them. And I had to kill him when he tried to
take over by force. Give you a--"

"Larsen, something wrong with your communications? You're coming in
badly--didn't read your last. Say again please."

"He wrecked the robot-control," Doug repeated. His lips were dry across
his teeth and it was hard to keep his voice even. "I had to break out
the manual. He tried to take them over, too, so I had to kill him. He
was like a maniac--you know how he hated me. Must have figured out the
whole plan somehow, and went berserk. I'll file a complete report when
this is finished. Over." He waited, sweat rolling in icy rivulets the
length of his arms. The wound on his back stung, and his muscles were
trembling with fatigue.

"What do you mean, when this is finished? Got to be immediate, man!
There'll be hell to pay as it is. I was afraid something would go
wrong--he was a smarter man than you thought, and I told you as much.
Take care of whatever you're checking on down there immediately and
then get back to headquarters and draw up a form 312-L-5. File for my
office and the PG's. You should've done that at once. Out."

"Yes, sir, right away. Out."

There was a silent prayer on Doug's lips as he turned the knob to
_FIELD ADDRESS_. It was worth a try....

There was a humming sound. However it functioned, it was ready.

"This is Senior Quadrate Blair. All units within range of this command
will cease battle immediately...."

He twisted a control under the viewscreen, kept twisting until its
scope had undergone a ninety degree shift. And then he saw them, waves
of them, slowing, stopping, turning to face the ship. Unbelievably,
the sound of his voice had somehow been carried for a radius of at
least a mile, and thousands of them, their blood mingled with their
muddied sweat, were suddenly still, listening. Some fell, untouched,
as a last wound belatedly took its toll. But all that could remained
standing. There could be no sitting rest, for none knew when the
command to resume battle would come, and when it did, it would be death
to be sitting.

Within a half minute, a great circle of them was still, battle
continuing only at its periphery where his command was either being
defended or had gone unheard.

"Attention, troops of Division Thirty, Second Regiment, First
Battalion, A Company. If--" and he dared not hesitate, must say it
quickly, and then wait, "--Ronal Blair and Kurt Blair are able, they
will report to this ship on the double! Terry, Mike--" and there was
a sudden catch in his voice that he could not help. Then, "_Come
running._"

And he watched the viewscreen, turned the knob slowly to revolve its
range, a complete 360 degrees.

Nothing, nothing as he turned slowly.

       *       *       *       *       *

In moments Gundar Tayne would contact him again, question him, and
he would have no convincing answer. And then it would be too late.
He would have the choice of punching the top button and catapulting
himself to safety, not knowing even if Mike and Terry still lived
somewhere down there, or staying to carry out a gamble that should have
been lost a dozen times already.

Suddenly, he saw it. The huge ship of the Director, in a long, circling
glide. And the boys were moving again, raising their swords, circling
their maces. He had been countermanded--

The blue light was blinking.

Another ten degrees of turn--

There was a terrible clattering at the stern of the ship as though
it was being rent apart plate by plate. The screen would not depress
that far. He revolved it back. Tayne's ship had landed a scant hundred
yards away and a guard had already been flung around it. And men were
approaching on the run, strange devices in their hands. Then they
stopped, were putting the devices in position on the ground.

The clanging grew louder now.

It would be one of them. One of them with a warning, and if he did not
open up, surrender.... But the blue light still blinked.

He could have missed them. As he swung the screen, they could have
been running in an area yet untouched--the last ten degrees....

The clanging was lessening.

He hauled down the knife-switch marked "STERN PORT."

The clanging ceased.

And then, muffled almost to inaudibility, a wild, far-off yell. "_Shut
it, Dad, for the luvva mike, SHUT it!_"

And he jammed the switch home.

There was an awful racket then. An awful, wonderful racket. Mike,
Terry, clambering hell-bent up the spiraling cat-walks! Mike, Terry,
safe aboard....

A movement in the viewplate stilled the cry that had formed in his
throat. The strange devices--there was a bluish-white flash, and the
viewscreen was suddenly white with a ball of coruscating brilliance.
Short....

Had to blast-off--but the kids, not braced on the cat-walks.... Still
clambering, maybe only half-way up....

Another streak, but no flash. Over. They were bracketing.

The next one, whatever it was, the next one would be a bulls-eye.

With all his voice he bellowed "_HANG ON!_" even as Mike and Terry
burst, breathless, into the control room.

His finger hesitated only a moment. And then he jammed the bottom
button in and his knees bent, but they held.

And in the corner of his eye he saw the blue-white flash erupt
dead-center below.

He eased the button pressure and hovered, out of range.

In a moment Gundar Tayne's craft would be in the air. Then....

"Kids--kids, you O.K.?" He locked the ship in its hover and then he
was beside them, scanning their half-naked, bruised bodies in quick
glances, then holding them to him with all the strength of both arms.

"Dad?"

"Yes. Me, your old man...."

"We been dodgin' and watchin' for hours, Dad. Let's get out of here!"

He held them to him a second longer, then turned to the communications
panel, Mike at his left, Terry at his right. "... They almost caught us
at the door down there.... Dad I--I think I killed one...."

"We did as you said, Dad. We watched as much as we could, but most of
the time we had to stay on the ground, playing dead...."

The communications dial was still at _FIELD ADDRESS_.

He looked at it, then looked at the viewscreen. Thousands of them,
stilled for so short a moment, now surging, tearing at each other's
vitals again. There was a terrible hurt somewhere deep inside him, and
he wanted to voice it, to get it out, to tell them somehow.

But they would not understand him if he were to speak for a minute or
for an hour. These whom he watched had been lost from the day of their
birth.

But, thank Heaven, not the two at his side.

"Get in those hammocks, kids," he said.

They did, and he braced himself against the bulkhead. He was twisting
the top button even as he punched it home, and it caught.

The deck rushed up with smashing force.




                             CHAPTER XVIII


The white, sterile room seemed to have closed in upon itself since
she had been first brought to it so many hours before, and the heavy
desk was now just a great mass of steel, its curved lines no longer
distinct, but trailing off somewhere in an incomprehensible geometry of
their own. There was movement behind the desk, white, blurry movement
that blended with the walls, but the flesh-colored mask that hovered
above it did not seem to move at all. Dot's eyes could no longer focus
for the fatigue of the tests had sucked the well of her physical
energy dry, but she knew the face.

He was Mannix, director of the S-Council, they had told her.

The tests had torn her soul from her, turned it inside out, stripped
it naked, examined it beneath their microscopes of unending questions
asked in a thousand different ways with a thousand different
inflections, connotations.... The sterile white rooms, the lights, the
darkness....

To hear what she and they had known from the beginning, and what the
blurred, unmoving face was telling her now.

"... tests have been evaluated according to Section 679, Sub-section B
of Commandment Seventeen, Part E, as amended, and you have been found
to be unquestionably sane. It is my duty therefore to interpret the law
with a finding of guilty of acts of heresy, as charged in each of the
counts cited, committed with the premeditated deliberation of a sound,
and therefore fully responsible mind."

Dot no longer felt fear, only a terrible tiredness. It did not matter
what Mannix said. Nor of course, could it matter what she might say.
There was the truth, of course, but it would be doubly incriminating,
and would spell disaster for Doug.

_She would never see Doug again._

"... entitled, by rank, to denial...."

_Or know him if she did._

"... may speak, now as privileged, before you are sentenced...."

_Never see her Earth, her Terry or her Mike again!_

"... and in the absence of remonstrance as privileged...."

_Or know that the sun and the stars above the alien planet upon which
she would walk were not those under which she had been born...._

"... hereby sentence you, Madame Lisa Blair, to loss of privilege to
breed offspring through sterilization, and to the complete loss of
all ego and all memory therewith connected through psychomutation,
which treatment shall immediately follow the first. In the name of
the Prelatinate, the Prelate General, and the party hosts, I do so
pronounce sentence."

A panel had opened noiselessly behind her.

The blurred face nodded imperceptibly, and arms suddenly were lifting
her to her feet, leading her from the white, sterile room....

       *       *       *       *       *

There was an empty roaring in his ears as he struggled for
consciousness, and he could only half-feel the tugging at his body,
half-hear the frightened sound of Terry's voice.

"Dad--dad, you've got to get up, dad!"

Painfully, he made his shaking muscles take over the burden of his
weight, forced himself to his feet.

The viewscreen was black save for the receding white disk that was
Venus. The acceleration needle quivered at just under two gravities.

"--Dad, everything feels funny. So heavy. For a long time we couldn't
even move out of those bed-things."

His head hurt and there was drying blood on the side of his face. His
body felt as though it had been flailed by a thousand of the maces, and
his back wound was a long, throbbing ache, and it was sticky-wet again.

He tried to force a grin to his face, and even that drew tiny shards of
pain.

"Wish I could've gotten to one of those bed-things, Mike! Believe me I
never want to hear the expression 'hit the deck' again."

"Well you sure hit it. Anything feel busted?"

"Everything sure does! But I'll be O.K. in a minute." He sat heavily
on the edge of a hammock, fought against the tugging urge to sink
back into unconsciousness. But when the acceleration needle said one
gravity and the gyros took over, he had to get back on his feet.

"Dad! Where the heck are we going?"

"And when you get us there, will you tell us what the contraption did
to get us in this place, and make us all--even you--look all different?
We thought it was one of those scary dreams until you got us out in
front of everybody ... and I still ain't so sure...."

Doug still hurt, but the dizziness was going, and there was Terry's
question to answer. It was a good question.

"Earth, that's where we're going! Ever hear of it?"

"This is a _real_ space-ship, Dad?"

Doug smiled down at him. "It's pretty real," he said.

They watched him in silence as he began his search.

He wasted twenty minutes at it before he was forced to the conclusion
that there were no astronomical charts, no star maps. The Science
Council would have its own, and the robot didn't need any....

He was glad the boys were with him. Glad, because without them, the
cold panic that welled inside might have taken hold. Glad, because with
them, he could muster the will it took to keep from telling himself how
terribly big and empty infinity was.

Maybe you should've stuck with the MIT degree after all, Carl Grayson
had said. And, he had stuck himself with it! But, if the things he had
learned to get it had gotten him into this, then they would damn well
have to get him out!

Doug ripped the blank plastisheets from Tayne's unused notebook, tossed
them to the flat surface of the console. There was an ink-stylus in
another pocket of the dead man's tunic.

He pointed to a bulkhead chronometer. "Tell me when an hour's up,
boys," he said.

He must have his answers within the hour, for in computing them he
would need a constant to represent known navigation error, and the hour
would represent it, once he determined its value. And if he should
exceed that time, its value would be changed--and the constant, the
calculations, worthless.

With the viewscreen, he began his search of space for the bright,
blue-white planet that would be Earth. When he found it, he would use
twenty minutes of the hour to establish the plane of its ecliptic.
Then, if he could remember what the books had said, remember its
orbital speed, its orbital arc for the month of August and its
resultant distance from the sun. And then of course the same
mathematical equivalents for Venus, and subsequent establishment of the
necessary relationships. And then interjected in it must be his own
speed and relative direction for the space of one hour.

And when he had his dead-reckoning solution, it would still be like
shooting ducks--with Earth the biggest duck that a man ever had to bag.
And with a sling-shot--his stylus--not the finely-machined shotgun that
would be the slide-rule and calculator which he didn't have.

He kept turning the screen. In six precious minutes he found it, like a
bright new jewel pinned to the white silk scarf of the Milky Way.

Earth.

He reached for the ink-stylus, the blank plastisheets....

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a searing, bright light above her and it sent stabbing
tentacles of pain through her head, and they lashed at her flagging
brain.

They had lain her prone on a cold, flat surface, and their faces
circled her, blurred as Mannix' had been, and infinitely far above her.

There was the murmur of voices, and the bright light was divided and
divided again into myriads of white, stabbing lances as it was broken
into glittering bits upon the edges of the slender instruments they
held.

Let them, let them....

_No, scream--scream or something, you idiot!_

In a second there would be the hypodermic or the anaesthesia and she
would not be able to scream--

"You're so--so stupid ..." she heard her voice saying, a dimly audible
echo off the edges of infinity itself. "Sterilize me. Keep me from
breeding. What I want, you fools! They all do, they all do, you know.
And you, yourselves, give the answer to it. To our question, how much
longer, how many, many more...."

She could not be sure if she spoke waking or dreaming, in the delirium
of exhaustion or in the unintelligibility of anaesthesia. But she was
thinking the words, and she could still feel the motion of her tongue,
its fuzzy touch against her teeth.

The glittering instruments were immobile.

"If heresy brings us this--this relief from a fear of forever being
only a machine of flesh and blood to produce--to produce as any machine
with no value whatever other than to produce until it falls into
wreckage--then, then heresy will some day flourish, and you'll all be
wrinkled and old, and there will be no young voices."

She let the words bubble from her, not caring, yet somehow caring,
somehow fighting with all her being. But it was not a clever ruse, for
there was still not strength enough to consciously pit her wits against
them. It was something else, this strange fight, something else that
stemmed from deep within her.

And now the murmur of voices above her had changed tenor, oddly
interrupted by jagged bits of silence.

Done something. What she had said had done something, and they were
hearing her. Hearing her, so she must speak louder, must open her eyes
wide and let the bright light send the stabbing flashes of pain deep
into her brain, whip it stingingly into consciousness.

It hurt, it hurt....

Colored circles, drifting, but it was from the light--and she was
thinking now, and in a moment she would be seeing their faces more
clearly. Had to talk again....

       *       *       *       *       *

Dot lurched up on her elbows, felt the curious relaxation of a smile
on her lips. "Go ahead! The rest of the women know what you're going
to do to me! And pretty soon they'll let you do it to them! If we're
no good as an underground to stop you, we'll let you use us to stop
yourselves--think that one over before next election!"

From somewhere very near her a voice said "Madame Blair, please. You
are interfering with the operation!"

But now the words were coming more easily. Her hands and feet were cold
and wet, and her muscles shook, but now she was fighting with the last
of the energy in her, she was fighting because she had found the chink
in their armor, and she could widen it, could break through!

"Oh, very well--I wouldn't do that! Because I've been looking forward
to this for so very long. Just to think, I'll be comfortably dried up,
and--it'll be legal! No more fear!"

"You must be silent, Madame Blair."

"Is there some new amendment to the precious Commandments that
says I must be silent? The last one I heard was just before I was
brought here--Yes, have you heard the latest, gentlemen? An amendment
prohibiting the execution of a sentence on an official's wife, until
that official is present as a legal witness? But no, I can see you
haven't, and hope you get into all kinds of trouble! Chapter--Chapter
580, gentlemen--Book 631, Section 451, Paragraph A, Sub-paragraph 34,
Sentence."

And abruptly she let the bitter spurt of words taper into silence, and
her eyes were wide. Only one of them was at her side--the rest were
suddenly grouped around the one in charge, who was nervously fingering
a telecall dial.

Like children! Doug said they were creatures of pattern, and something
had suddenly smashed the pattern to smithereens, and they dared do
nothing until they had a firm hold on the torn-up ends again. She had
got them scared stiff!

_This is it, girl! Move!_

The last of her strength. A swift, sidewise kick, and she buried the
heel of one bare foot into the groin of the man who had stayed to guard
her. She had braced her other leg on the edge of the low operating
table, and thus anchored, the kick carried all the merciless impact
that was needed. She did not wait to see the quick look of agony that
mottled his face and she was off the table and running before he had
sunk silently to his knees. The surgical robe was short and did not
hamper her legs, and for the first time since she was a little girl,
she ran for the sake of pure, uninhibited speed. She had reached the
door marked EXIT ONLY before the rest of them realized what she had
done, and then they were after her, their howling voices a mixture of
disbelief and dismayed anger.

It was a long, wide corridor. The enraged shouts of alarm behind her
had already turned it into a thunderously echoing cacophony of pure and
terrible noises, and she knew that within moments, around some turn
ahead of her there would be more of them, and she would be trapped, and
it would be all over.

She would have let the sudden pain in her side double her when, less
than a hundred feet ahead of her, more of them did appear; her flagging
strength would have let her fall at their feet had she not seen it
at the last moment, hardly twenty feet from her--the thing for which
she'd been so desperately looking, had not been able to see through the
stinging mist that still made things blur uncertainly.... Another door.
Another door marked SERVICE EXIT at the top.

She ran through it, breath sucking painfully into her lungs, the
surgical gown already wet and clinging to her with ice-cold sweat.
A long steel ramp, forty feet above the ground, curving in a gentle
half-spiral to the broad street below.

She fled the curving length of it, swiftly past other service exits,
her flight becoming more of a fall each split-second than a run, for
her legs would not keep up. And then her momentum pitched her headlong
into the street and she struggled desperately for balance.

She heard them behind her, feet thundering on the ramp, thundering in
her ears.

A silver vehicle sped by, missed her, its undertow plucking at the
sodden fabric of her garment. Another, and then suddenly the thundering
grew louder and there was no more strength left.

The speeding golden-hued vehicle bore down on her, and Dot screamed,
fell headlong in its path.

       *       *       *       *       *

Doug's error was wide, but mercifully, he had led his target by too
great a distance rather than by too little, and the ecliptic had
been right. It would not be a chase, but a meeting. He brought Ship
QT into a sharp, angling turn when he was sure, and there was silent
thanksgiving at his lips as the moon of Earth rolled slowly far
below him. And Earth itself became a pale blue bull's eye, growing
perceptibly larger with each minute in the viewscreen.

He did not unlock the top button. He could be already many, many hours
too late, but there was no knowing.

Like a great torpedo, the ship hurtled toward its target as though to
blast it from Space. In eight minutes it would be midway between Earth
and its moon, and in nine, Doug would invert, cutting the difference
between crash and controlled landing perilously thin.

"Terry, get the dead man's sword and belt. Mike, help me find some
tools--anything that even looks like a wrench."

When two of the nine minutes were gone, Doug had found a tool that
would serve. When a portion of the third was gone he had a section of
the communications panel naked. When seven of them were gone he had its
high-kempage pack loose on its bearers, and when there were but seconds
left in the ninth, he had it free, and lashed with torn strips of his
cloak to one of the hammocks.

"Hold on, now," he said then. His voice was raw and it hurt to
talk. There was a dryness in his mouth that made his words fuzzy
and indistinct, and his tongue felt swollen enough to choke him. "I
want both of you on that hammock--get that thing between you, strap
yourselves down, and then hold onto it for all your life. When we land,
get the straps off quickly, and--" he clenched his teeth, had to push
the words through them, "--and have your swords ready. I'll take care
of the rest; you just follow me. Understand, boys?"

They nodded silently, strapping themselves securely to the hammock.

Three seconds ... two, one. Release the top button. Press the panel
full around, all the way ... there go the bow belly-jets--stern jets
topside.... Top button, all the way in, twist it--

The Moon swam into the viewscreen, was shrinking fast, too fast. No,
slowing a little....

He swung the screen to full stern, and Earth was rushing up, not quite
yet filling it.

Speed in thousands per second ... sixteen ... fifteen point
five--fifteen. The needle fell so slowly. Gravs were coming up, one
point five--two full. Over two now, and speed falling a little faster.

Earth filled the screen.

And then he took his eyes from the dials, for he knew that whatever
they read, he was at the full mercy of the ship itself. The top button
was all the way in, and locked. She was giving all she had.

When the grav indicator quivered at four, Doug slumped to the deck,
unable to stand. He rolled to his back, winced, and tried to keep his
eyes on the grav needle.

       *       *       *       *       *

They blurred, stung in oceans of hot tears. The shrill siren-scream of
atmosphere pierced the thick, heavily insulated hull and Doug knew what
was coming--heat, unbearable heat.

His short gasps seared his mouth, and his heart was like a gigantic
pile-driver inside him, struggling to burst its way through his chest.

And then as though it had all been but part of a timed experiment in
some weird laboratory, the sensation of being crushed to death began to
abate. He could see the grav needle again, and it had already fallen
back to two. Speed was now in unit miles per hour, and the figures were
dropping from nine hundred.

Doug forced himself to his feet.

"Dad ... Dad, are we O.K.? Dad?"

"Maybe," he said.

When the grav needle was steady at One, Doug reduced thrust to hold
them hovering at a little more than two hundred thousand feet over the
Atlantic, with the coastline of what to him was France almost directly
below.

A sickening, quick drop and the horizon-ecliptic indicator showed
parallel flight, and Doug could feel the thrust of the belly engines
beneath his feet. Then he pressed the bottom button, then the middle,
and the Atlantic was rushing beneath them. Carefully, he depressed the
next one up. All the way in, he locked it. The velocity figure in unit
miles per hour was fifteen thousand.

Eleven minutes later he cut the power again, slowed, brought the ship
once more on its stern, and began his descent over Washington.

Within moments they would spot him, would be ready.

It would have to be fast, miles from the central space-port--a suburb,
near a highway.

He let her fall fast. Ten thousand. Eight. Four.

He tilted, angled a little north and west, then dropped again.

At five hundred feet he trebled the power, and it was as though a great
'chute had snapped open above them.

Three hundred feet--the highway perhaps a quarter of a mile distant.

No one down there, but they could be hiding, waiting.

Fifty feet. Had to time it just so, now....

The last ten feet they fell.




                              CHAPTER XIX


He estimated that there would be five minutes at the most before the
area was flooded with S-men. The rest of the gamble hinged entirely on
what they succeeded in doing, or failed to do, within the space of a
few hundred heart-beats.

They made the roadside in little more than a minute after leaving the
ship. Terry and Mike lay prone in the wide drainage gutter, their
swords drawn, their bodies camouflaged by a few handfuls of hastily
hacked scrub brush.

Doug stood at the side of the superhighway, the power-pack at his feet,
his shredded cloak in his hands to wave.

The traffic seemed light for so late in the afternoon. The sun was hot,
and he was breathing heavily from the stumbling, desperate run across
the small, rutted field. The ship towered above what few trees there
were, and it marked them for a target.

A streamlined shape was racing toward him. It seemed to take all the
strength he had left to wave the cape, and he wondered if he were
waving it at searching S-men....

The vehicle sped by, whipping the cape in its undertow. It was going
nearly two hundred miles an hour, and there was no driver inside it. A
robot carrier.

Thirty seconds went by before the next one came. It was going slower,
and it too was driverless.

Doug glanced at the sky. To the west, high, tiny dots--

It was a full minute before the next one came. With both hands, cloak
dropped because it was too heavy, Doug waved, and the vehicle was
slowing.

"Ready, boys...." There was a slight rustle behind him as they came to
their knees.

The driver stopped his car almost abreast of him, and opened the
passenger door.

"What's the trouble? You crack up? While we're riding you can use the
autophone--"

Doug moved into the vehicle slowly, then lashed out at the man's
head with the smooth, heavy rock that was in his left hand. In his
exhaustion he struck only a glancing blow, and there was barely time
for a second, but the second connected, and the driver slumped, jammed
behind his semi-circular steering wheel.

"Mike, Terry--"

In a moment the helicopter would have him spotted, or an S-Council
patrol car would be braking beside him.

They hauled the driver out, left him at the road side. He was not
dead, and Doug was curiously thankful for that. He had killed one man
already....

He wasted a second for another glance at the sky. Closer now, and
it was obvious that they had spotted the ship. He had to get the
vehicle in motion somehow. A robot sped by, its air wake rocking
them slightly. He had the pack on the seat beside him, and Terry was
slamming the door.

No clutch or brake pedal. Only one pedal, and it could only be an
accelerator. But pivoted in the middle. There was no sound to the
engine, no way to tell if it were running because the only dash
instrument was a speed indicator.

He pressed the pedal forward. And they did not move. Backward, then....

It moved. In five seconds the speed needle was climbing past eighty,
going smoothly upward.

He wondered if they had been seen.

In a dash mirror he saw Terry and Mike turning their heads up, looking
through the curved transparent metal top.

"Must be a hunnerd of 'em--they're starting to land I think!"

"All of them?"

"I guess so--wait! Yeah, he's gonna land, too, I guess. I can't see 'em
anymore. Gosh, we're sure moving."

"Creepers, a hundred and _eighty_! Hey Dad, where are we going, anyway?"

"To the headquarters hospital building. I think--I think that's where
your mother is."

"Is she hurt?"

"I don't know, Mike, I don't know."

He pressed his heel to the floor-board. He was glad for Tayne's sword
at his side. Even for the ones the boys carried.

       *       *       *       *       *

The sign said City of Washington, District of Columbia, Population
531,423. Speed Limit 55 MPH.

Doug raised his heel, the car slowed. He frowned. No road-blocks, no
pursuit! There had been plently of time since the helicopters had
landed--five, six minutes perhaps. They knew where he was going, and
were going to let him walk right into it, some neatly conceived trap at
the hospital. So they'd be sure to have him alive ... alive, to be used
as an example!

Savagely, he heeled the pedal down. Let them be waiting--they were
fools if they hadn't figured on the swords! Or--or he was a fool, for
counting on them.

The car's tires wailed as he rounded the long, curving turn that
brought him onto St. Jefferson Way, past the Payne Monument, and within
two blocks of the headquarters building hospital wing.

The traffic was thickening, planned of course to make things look as
natural as possible--not to arouse his suspicion at the last moment....

"Get those swords ready, kids...."

He heard them scrape from their scabbards.

And without warning the form of a woman darted into his path. He
swerved, jammed the pedal forward, and the car rocked sickenly.

And he had seen her face in that one awful second--it was Dot who had
fallen in the street behind him!

The boys were at his heels as he leapt from the car. There were
white-clad men rushing toward them, and he had Dot's form in his arms
as the first of them closed in.

There was the quick blink of sunlight on steel as Mike and Terry swung
their weapons.

And as though stunned, the men in white stopped short, suddenly silent,
awkwardly-poised statues.

Doug knew the spell would last for seconds at best. The half-naked boys
stood grimly, feet wide apart, sword-hilts grasped in both hands.

Doug, with Dot's limp body in his arms, broke for the car.

"Come on!"

And Terry and Mike were at his heels. The men in white broke their
frozen ranks then and swarmed over the small area of street that the
two broadswords had commanded for the telling few seconds.

Doug bolted the vehicle into motion. And then they were free.

"What dopes," Mike was saying. "Were they scared! I bet they didn't
figure we'd be ready to fight 'em! But who did we--?"

"Boys, see what you can do for your mother. It is your mother, she just
looks different, like we do...."

"Mother--"

"Hurry up. She's just fainted, that's all. We didn't hit her."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dot was conscious when they arrived at the house, and she was managing
to speak.

"Are they--"

"The boys, yes Dot. Our boys. Now look, we've got to run for it. I'll
carry you, and you hang on to the pack.... Mike, Terry--"

"Ready, Dad. Will there be many?"

"I don't know. Maybe none, but if there aren't, it'll only be for a
very few minutes. Let's go!"

They ran, and the boys burst through the front door with their swords
lunging at emptiness.

"The cellar!"

He heard them clamber down the steel stairs.

"It's O.K. Dad--come on!"

Dot's face was white, and her eyes were open wide. He carried her as
gently as he could, but she had never been so terribly heavy in his
arms.

It happened at the cellar doorway, at the top of the stairs.

He stumbled, fought for balance, fell to one knee, clutched hard and
Dot screamed.

But he held her, and her arms were choking at his neck.

And there was a crashing, clanging noise as the power-pack fell from
her, caromed from step to step, and lay finally in a shattered ruin on
the cellar floor.




                              CHAPTER XX


Slowly, Doug straightened, descended the stairs with Dot's trembling
body still in his arms. The boys stood motionless.

There was only the sound of Dot's quiet sobbing, and that of Doug's
boots as they struck hollow sounds from the steel stair treads, moved
heavily as though fitted to the legs of an awkward robot to scatter
the shattered bits of the power-pack tubes and crush them as they came
underfoot.

Gently, he put her down. The boys knelt at either side of her, Doug
himself before her.

"Don't, please don't, Dot," he said.

"Oh, Doug--"

And then she clung to him, and her face was wet against his own, but
they were the last of her tears.

"Afraid?"

"No. Scared a little, but just scared. I don't fear them, Doug ...
they're not worth enough to fear."

Mike and Terry had gone over to where the Contraption was, had pulled
off its dust-cover, and stood looking at it as though puzzled, as
though wondering why, so suddenly, it had become a worthless thing.

"Nobody's touched it, Dad," Doug heard Mike saying. "I don't think
anybody's done anything to it."

Doug didn't answer, for he did not know how to tell them, how to make
them know that there was no way.

"I just--just dropped it, Doug...."

He tried to smile, and his face felt old and tired. "We were overdue
anyway," he said. "Way overdue. I guess it's against the rules to beat
the odds forever."

"I just ... just dropped it...."

"Don't, don't my darling. It wasn't you, don't you understand? It
wasn't you, or me--the little fight we made just prolonged things for
awhile. Sort of like living itself, I guess. The big system. You can
let it sweep you along as it will or you can fight it if you're fool
enough...."

"Doug! Doug, you don't believe those things!"

He felt the muscles of his face tighten, and he said nothing. No, no
he did not believe them, but what difference did that make? It was the
ways things were that mattered!

He picked up the broadsword Terry had let fall.

"How long--how long will it be, Doug?"

Her voice was calm; there was even a faint flush of color in her face
again.

"I don't know," he said. "For awhile at least, this might seem the
least logical place."

"Dad, what's in this big box? Hey, Dad!"

       *       *       *       *       *

He stood up, turned toward them. The kids--so full of life and the
love of living, so full of the myriad curiosities that made living a
colorful vibrant thing.

"This one here. Over here--a big tall wooden one."

Doug heard her quick intake of breath, turned to her.

"Before the telecall, Doug. Before they took me. A helicopter came,
from the electronics place ... they brought that box, and I--"

In quick strides he was beside Mike and Terry, and everything inside
him was suddenly churned up, cold, hot....

Mike had wrenched a section of planking loose, had reached inside.

"I got the label, Dad.... High-Speed Blower-Rack, With Double Blower,
Model 4-L532, two each--"

The final, hellish irony. As though it were not enough to fail, but to
be mocked as he failed, as though Fate--or was it Providence?--could
not close the incident without at least a gentle laugh at him, a cruel
laugh to make light of all his confusion, his efforts and all that had
driven him to make them. Doug wondered if there would be enough of the
strength he would need, when he died, to laugh back.

The planking squawked as Terry pried with Mike's broadsword.

"Maybe it can help, Dad ... maybe it can," Terry said, and he continued
the prying. Mike pulled at it, and there were louder squawks as the
nails protestingly surrendered.

Doug wanted to stop them, to tell them, but there could be such a
little time left, and if it kept them busy there might not be time for
them to become afraid.

He watched them as they ripped the top from the crate, eagerly began
hauling out its contents.

Four large, wide-bladed fans, each perhaps sixteen inches in diameter,
and each driven by a compact electric motor. They were coaxially
mounted on tall, slender chromium plated racks and could be adjusted on
them to meet any conceivable experiment in ventilation engineering.

Doug said nothing, let them continue. It might not even be necessary to
tell them that their discovery was nothing more than two ingeniously
designed air conditioning units.

He wondered why they had come at all. The Prelatinate-Attorney's idea,
perhaps, of a not-too-subtle jest. That, or even a veiled warning.

There was more squawking of wood, and in a few moments Mike and Terry
had each of the units placed beside each other on the cellar floor.

"There's other junk here too," Terry was saying. "Pulleys and stuff,
Dad. And a sheet of directions or something. Here, look Dad ... maybe
it'll help."

Doug looked at the smudged sheet of plastisheet that Terry had thrust
in his hand. Only simple diagrams, indicating the use and assembly of
the pulleys for desired variations in blower speeds. Even the simple
rheostat, Doug mused, was taboo....

He crumpled the sheet, let it fall to the floor.

And suddenly grabbed it up again, smoothed it, looked again at the
last sentence! ... _each motor operates on regular household direct
current of 250 Kemps, as authorized by_ ...

Two hundred fifty Kemps--and there were four of the motors!

"Dot! Dot those tools by the Contraption! And any scrap wire
there--hurry!"

       *       *       *       *       *

He worked with inhuman swiftness of desperation. Dot knelt beside him,
handed him tool by tool as he asked for it, as though she were a scrub
nurse and he the surgeon, with a patient that might have but moments to
live.

And silently, Terry and Mike watched, eyes wide with wonderment. They
watched as Doug equipped two of the motors with the large pulleys,
the two others with pulleys of less than half their diameter. Then he
linked them with the flat rubber belts.

"See if you can get the insulation off the ends of those wires--the
ones a couple feet long are all right."

He moved the racks next to the bench, brought them close together, and
when Dot handed him the wire, he had the two motors on which he had
placed the small pulleys denuded of their streamlined jackets. It was
between those two that he made a simple connection in series.

"Terry, Mike--while I'm making connections to the Contraption, see if
you can get the fan blades off their shafts."

Two connections--two simple connections....

He finished the second connection.

"One more fan to go, Dad--"

He plugged the two outer motors with the large pulleys into the wall
outlets above the bench. Then his fingers waited on the switches.

"But Doug, the fan motors will only work on house current--"

"Yes, that's right, but I've geared--pulleyed, I mean--two of them up,
so that they'll turn the other two at least twice their normal armature
speed. And the simple electric motor works--"

"--in reverse, too, doesn't it! If you turn it by mechanical means, it
generates electric current!"

"That's about it. I ought to get about five hundred volts from each,
with the pulley ratio I'm using. And they're both connected in series,
so--a thousand volts, I hope. Childish, isn't it--"

There was sudden chaos above them.

"Doug--"

Terry dropped the last fan-blade to the floor.

Doug pressed the switches, and the two electric motors spun into
humming, whirring motion, driving the other two at a speed he knew
might burn them out in minutes. Then he closed the Contraption's main
switch, and pulled Terry and Mike bodily to him with one arm as he held
tightly to Dot with the other.

S-men swarmed down the cellar stairs.




                              CHAPTER XXI


A dozen men clad in white uniforms of the S-Council surrounded them,
and there were weapons in their hands.

Senior Quadrate Blair understood. Partially, he understood. He had been
reading a banner headline, and then suddenly--suddenly there had been
an indescribable moment of utter dark, of awful timelessness--and cold.
And there was still the cold, tangible and fluorescing in a green-blue
flame about him. Through it he could see the white blurs--the men in
white. S-men....

"Lisa--" He felt her beside him, crushing their two sons to her
trembling body. He could see their faces, then--upturned to his,
pleading, afraid. "The change. Somehow my counterpart, my imposing
alter-ego has succeeded, Lisa! He has found his way back, and in so
doing he has returned the four of us...."

And then the green glow and the cold was gone, and there was no more
time to speak.

"Stand where you are! You have only to move to--_Madame Blair_!"

The leader of the white-uniformed band had half-succeeded in masking
his initial amazement, but now the surprise on his heavy face was a
naked thing. The others stood as statues to each side of him.

There was an awful moment of silence, and the weapon-muzzles held
steady, even if the dozen hands that gripped them were momentarily
incapable of flexing trigger-fingers.

And then the Senior Quadrate had found his full voice.

"There has of course been some error. S-men do not enter the home of a
Senior Quadrate--"

And Lisa's voice cut across her husband's.

"They--Douglas, these aren't--aren't S-men! I recognize him--the
leader! Mylor Kuun...."

"Of course, Madame," the heavy-faced one said rapidly. "The
disguises--a desperate necessity, I assure you. There is very little
time, however. Once informed of your escape from the hospital, and of
the Senior Quadrate's violation of arrest, it was necessary to act at
once to find you. Genuine S-squads cannot be much behind us. We're but
one of a number of our groups in the search, and we came to your home
only so no possibility might be overlooked. Yet I don't understand--"
For a moment a look of puzzled doubt flickered on the underground
leader's heavy features. His nervous gaze touched the strange array of
forbidden equipment which but moments before had been bathed in the
green-blue glow.

"There will be time for explanations later!" Lisa said. She caught
herself as she was about to add that what the agent was saying made
little sense.

She put a protective arm around each of her still, frightened children.
There must be great trouble or the group would not have so brazenly
exposed itself, and come here to her home. Something desperate enough
so that added confusion might serve only to make a dangerous situation
an impossible one.

"But I don't--you said violation of arrest," her husband was saying
stubbornly. "I demand a thorough--"

"Your lives are in danger, sir. If we do not move immediately, it
will very probably be not at all. Gundar Tayne is relentless, and is
reported enroute from Venus to join this search himself."

"Tayne!" Blair's face blanched, then reddened. "The Taynes, you mean!
Gundar and Larsen, with Larsen behind it--"

"Sir? You're being tracked down for--they say, for murdering Larsen.
Please follow us sir, Madame...." The look of puzzled bewilderment
deepened on the underground leader's face as he motioned his men in
screening flanks surrounding the four. One of the men handed him a
white bundle from a compact equipment-pack on his back.

"You had better get these on. We would say we have captured your boys--"

       *       *       *       *       *

They were S-Council uniforms, and the Quadrate and his wife donned
them quickly; Blair doing so more in hesitant imitation of Lisa's
frantic haste than from the desperation of a situation which he only
half-understood.

_Murdered_ Larsen Tayne? Then ... yes of course. The other Blair. But
why should the other Blair hate Tayne so? He was of a different Earth,
of course.... He would think like those of his own world. He would hate
all this world stood for. Hate Tayne for his overbearing, brutish use
of authority--criminal cleverness at deception.

Suddenly, he knew the confusion of panic for the first time in his
life. Suddenly, his mind was a boiling thing, and all the brilliant
solutions that had been forming in it with split-second rapidity were
inexplainably invalid, wrong....

And then they were at a half-run, leaving the house, heading for
a 'copter painted with the S-Council insigne, counterfeit serial
code-numbers beneath it.

In moments, the craft was airborne, and Washington was falling away
below them, fading away behind. And now any small thing--an incorrectly
acknowledged radio challenge--would undo them, the Quadrate realized,
but that was only a part of this terrible gamble they were taking.
Gamble, on their very lives, yes--only why? Why?

Slowly, bit by bit, the thing pieced itself together as they flew. A
great forest stretched ten miles beneath them, faded, wilted at last
into desert as the first shadows of a day dying crept silently upward
to engulf them.

In low tones, he and Lisa talked with the heavy-faced leader, and they
talked for a long time.

"If it were not for the boys--" Blair murmured finally.

"The boys will be safe with us," Lisa answered. She looked at them, and
they were sleeping, hardly looking the part now of young warriors of
broadsword and mace. "We will teach them a different way...."

He was silent for long moments. Then: "I cannot understand. I cannot,
Lisa. That I have always believed as I have--and he, as we know he did.
Yet that we should both have mortal hatred for the same men; he to the
point of doing what I did not have courage to do. And now, regardless
of what I believe, my own kind are hunting me down."

"They would have, had you had the courage of which you speak--the
courage of that conviction. And was it, Douglas, simply a conviction
about a single man?"

"I--I don't know." He looked through a port; it was night, and they
were speeding silently westward. Then he was looking back to her, and
deep into her eyes. He had never felt lost, alone, hunted before. There
was something very wrong.

"With us, Douglas ... will you try? To understand--with us?"

"Not because I am hunted."

"No. No. But now is the time for that wanting courage. Another man,
too, hated a Tayne, and killed him. Can you help us kill the things
that all Taynes stood for? In our way?"

Great mountains were looming before them, and the 'copter was
beginning to lower into their darkened maw. And suddenly he felt a new
strength in him from depths of his being that were opening to him for
the first time. _Another man had killed Tayne. And could he--_

"But what of the other man?" he suddenly heard himself asking. "What
have I done to him? What have I done to _his_ world?"

"He must be a man of great courage." Lisa answered slowly. "I think--I
think such a man will find a way to undo what you have done. For such a
man, and for such others as he, there is always great hope."

"You will help me, Lisa."

"All of us, Douglas."

"Then that is all _I_ shall need," he said softly.

The 'copter vanished into the mountains.

       *       *       *       *       *

Terry and Mike came running from Doug's den, a welter of books open on
the floor behind them which they had not opened.

Dot was coming from her bedroom. A pistol Doug owned had been in her
hand, and she put it in its place in the open drawer from which she had
taken it.

"Dot! Kids--the living-room, I'm in the living-room! Dot!"

In a moment they were around him, and they were the Dot and the Mike
and the Terry whose faces had been so familiar so long ago.

"I must've--he--I must've been reading this final--look, Dot, my God
look--"

She saw the Page One streamer.

"Then he was--he was trying, here, he was trying, Doug.... That was
why. When I arrived, I had a pistol in my hand...."

The headline read BLAIR BILL GOES TO HOUSE TOMORROW. And in the
three-column drop beneath it: _Unanimous Passage Seen--Senate Reported
Favorable--President Says He'll Sign Immediately--Draft Of 13's Would
Begin Nov. 15--Soviet Terms Measure 'Fantastic.'_

"Doug--"

"He's begun it all right. How, I don't know, unless--And beneath the
centerfold he read CLERGY LAUDS BLAIR BILL AT PARLEY HERE.

"Had them falling for it, had 'em mainlined all the way!" Doug said.

And then he was going swiftly toward the den, almost at a run.

He pulled a battered chair up to the big desk, lifted his telephone
from its cradle almost in a single motion.

Quietly, Dot shut the door behind him. It would be a long time, she
knew, before it would open again.




                             CHAPTER XXII


The night was quiet, and the air was warm and still.

The man and the woman walked close together, and with slow, unmeasured
steps, as though the great, slumbering city was a garden, and they were
exploring it for the first time.

They did not speak, for their eyes were wide, engrossed simply in
seeing.

A soldier passed them, then a man who might have been a store-clerk, a
student, a salesman, a clergyman, a scientist.

A young couple approached from the opposite direction, saying quiet
things to each other, perhaps deciding intimate, very important plans
for some near future time.

They passed an all-night drug store, its gaudy light washing the
sidewalk to the curb, limning the wide racks of newspapers and
magazines which told their stories in a dozen languages, on a thousand
themes.

The streets were wide and empty, but they were not lonely, for in them
were the silent echoes of the struggles and victories, big and small,
that had been fought, won and lost in them in a day just dying, just to
be born again in a few short hours.

The man and woman walked for a long time.

And Douglas Blair thought of what would not happen tomorrow.

Not tomorrow or, perhaps with great care and the forgiveness of the
Almighty, not even the day after that.



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