Omnivore
by Piers Anthony
Version 1.0
A #BW Release

CHAPTER ONE

A LOAF OF BREAD

NORTH of Appalachia an outcropping of wilderness sur-
vived. Subble aligned visible topography with known coor-
dinates and guided his craft to a soft landing beside a
thickly-spoked bull spruce. The distinctive gum smell of it
surrounded him as he stepped out, and decades of rotting
needles crunched underfoot.

The measured ring of steel striking hardwood led him
past a grossly twisted yellow birch and into a subforest of
tall beech trees. The forest was rather pleasant, in a dis-
ordered way; it occurred to him that few places on Earth
remained so close to Nature's original.

The sound that had seemed so near was actually some
distance away. Subble threaded his way through a thicket of
young ash and maple and came at last to a forest trail: two
slick brown ruts cut in the leafy floor. Clusters of toadstools
sprouted periodically along it, and he spied one large
bracket fungus embracing a decaying stump. Tiny gnats
found him and hovered tirelessly before his eyes.

The trail debouched into an artificial clearing formed by a
felled beech. A man stood facing away from him, one
booted foot braced against the scarred trunk, his broad back
flexing as he swung a heavy axe. The lumberman was power-
ful; it showed in the checkered bulge of sleeve and in the
smoothness of the swing. Chips scattered with every second
connection as the blade bit a growing triangular section
from the base of a hefty branch.

The limb severed and crashed into a leafy jungle beyond

the trunk. The man turned and saw Subble, balancing the
axe in his left hand while wiping the sweat off his forehead
with a meaty right forearm. 'Yeah?' he inquired, scowling.

This was the ticklish part. I'm an investigator,' Subble
said, and kept his distance.

The man stiffened. Subble noted the slight elevation of the
tendons along the back of the hand holding the axe, the
sudden creases in a normally amiable face, and the slight
shifting of weight 'Yeah?'

'All I want is information. If you are Vachel Smith, social
code number 4409'

'Cut it. I been Veg ten year and I ain't a number yet.'

Subble ignored the tone and the exaggerated accent. 'All
right, Veg. I got a job, same as you, and I got to do it if I like
it or not. Sooner we'

Veg threw the axe at the beech stump, where it caught
neatly, the handle vibrating. He closed his fists and took one
step forward. 'Last time a damn city slicker talked down to
me, I broke his collarbone. Speak your piece and get out.'

Subble smiled. 'Very well - I'll stick to my own language.
But I must have your cooperation. There is information
nobody else can provide.'

'Yeah? What?'

'I don't know. That's why I have to ask.'

'You don't know!' Veg seemed uncertain whether to
laugh or swear, and his accent eased considerably. 'You
come poking into my lot and you don't even know what
you're looking for?'

It was best to keep him asking questions. 'That's right.'

But Veg did not keep asking. 'Mister, you're trying to
make a fool out of me.' He moved in.

Subble blew his breath out audibly in a controlled show of
exasperation. He was not as large as the lumberman nor as
heavily muscled, but he did not back off. 'If you attempt to
force me off your premises by physical means, I will have to
employ certain defensive techniques at my command,' he
said as Veg advanced.

'Yeah?' Veg leaped.

Subble stepped aside and put his right foot forward as
Veg's right fist came at his head. He jammed his right toe
against Veg's, bent his knees, grabbed the big man's shirt,
spun around counter-clockwise and threw him over his
shoulder.

Veg landed in the slippery moist earth of the trail, un-
harmed and undismayed. 'Yeah!' he said again, and
launched himself a second time.

Subble ducked, caught Veg in the stomach with a shoul-
der block and followed it up with a quick and effective series
of grips about the neck and shoulders.

Veg kept his feet, but his head lolled and both arms
dangled. Subble let him catch his balance and recover the
use of his extremities. 'I gave you fair warning.'

The lumberman shook himself and stretched his head
from side to side. 'Yeah,' he said.

'Now I have to talk with you, because that's my job. I'll
leave as soon as I have what I need. I'm willing to trade for
what I get.'

'Mister, nobody ever bought me yet.'

'Nobody offered to. You take a break and I'll fill in for as
long as it takes you to talk. That way you won't lose any
time and I'll be out of your way in a hurry.'

Veg laughed, his good humor seemingly restored by his
setback. 'You sure are a determined cuss. There aren't any
fancy nerves you can pinch on a bolt of beech, mister. I
don't know you and I won't tell you a thing.'

Subble was careful not to threaten the man. He looked
around at the divergent timber, spotting a shy cinnamon-
brown thrush with indistinct spots on its breast. 'Veery,' he
said.

Veg followed his gaze. 'Yeah, I know him,' he said more
softly. 'Comes around every two, three days. Got a hermit
thrush, too - state bird, you should hear him sing! Never
found the nest, though.' Then he remembered whom he was
talking to and scowled again.

'I must have been pretty clumsy to set you against me so
quickly.' It was a calculated overture.

'Mister, it's not you. Anyone who knows a veery when he
sees one has some good in him. It's the government. We
don't truck much with - you really don't know what you
came for?'

'An agent's memory is washed blank before every as-
signment. I have been given three addresses and a caution
signal. That was, literally, all I knew about you before I
landed. Your name, where to find you, and a warning of
danger.'

'That's crazy!'

'It prevents me from approaching the case with a bias.
Everything must come from the case itself, nothing from my
expectations or records which may be incomplete or dis-
torted.'

'But if you don't even know what - I mean, I could lie to
you and you'd never guess. I could tell you I'm a petty thief
on the lam'

'You aren't.'

'I thought you said you had no'

Subble glanced at the tree again, but the bird was gone.
So, oddly, were most of the other ubiquitous creatures of the
forest. Something had subdued them. 'I was given no infor-
mation, but my training enables me to obtain it very
quickly. I know a good deal about you now.'

'Okay, Mister what's-your-name'

'Subble.'

'Mister Government Agent. How do you know I'm not a
thief?'

'I can give you a general idea. I'm equipped to pick up
your respiration, heartbeat, muscle tension, the nuances of
facial expression, vocal inflection, subvocal'

'You saying you can tell when I'm lying just by watching
me?'

'Yes. You are not a devious man.'

'I'm not a liar, either. But I'm not so sure about you.'

Subble took no offense. 'You are wise. I con a devious
man. I am fully capable of lying when my mission requires
it, and I am an expert at it.'

Veg touched his sore neck. 'More than that, I guess.'

'Yes - I could have maimed you or killed you. But that's
my specialty, and I don't misuse my training any more than
you would misuse your axe, or destroy that thrush's nest.
You could cut down every sapling in the forest'

'God, no! This's fourth generation timber now. I'm just
cleaning out the weed trees and' He paused. 'Yeah, I guess
I see what you mean. You don't go 'round hurting people
for the fun of it. But you still can't find out a thing if I don't
talk to you.'

'I'm afraid I can, if there is no alternative.'

Veg studied him with genuine curiosity. 'How?'

'By making statements, asking questions, and reading
your reactions.'

'Okay. I'm going to shut up now. You tell me what you
learn.'

'You may not like this, Veg.'

The man picked up his axe and returned to the trunk he
had been limbing.

'Are you a vegetarian?' Subble asked. 'Yes, you are,' he
answered himself immediately.

'You already knew!' Veg shouted, shaken. 'You wouldn't
even've asked that question if you didn't know!'

'I knew - but you were the one who told me. Your nick-
name, for one thing, and the smell of your breath, and your
tension when I mentioned killing. You haven't touched
meat for a decade.'

Veg's mouth was tight. 'Tell me something you
couldn't've found in a government snoop-file,' he said. He
didn't bother to chop any more.

'If you will put down your weapon'

'Weapon? Oh.' He pitched the axe at the stump, missing
this time.

'You see, you're upset now - and I would have to act
precipitously if you were to attack me with that. Are you
sure you'

'Go ahead. Prove it.'

Subble's voice was low, but he watched Veg very carefully.

'Are you interested in baseball? ... No. Shakespeare?
... No. Any other playwright? ... Yes. Modern? ... Yes,
but not too modern ... American? Foreign? ... Ah, Eng-
lish? Shaw, of course!'

Veg started to say something, but didn't. Stronger medi-
cine was required before he would be convinced.

'How about women? ... Yes and no. Not just any
woman. Are you in love?... Yes, I see that you are, and not
casually, but there is something wrong. Is she pretty? ...
Yes, lovely. Have you slept with her, man to woman? ...
No? But you aren't impotent... No! Would she let you?...
She would, probably. Her name is Aquilon'

Veg's lunge missed by several inches. 'Easy! The name
happens to be the second on my list,' Subble explained. 'It
was logical, in the circumstance, that she would be the one
you - now don't charge me again.'

The big man halted. 'Yeah, you did warn me. Again.' He
looked at Subble with a certain difficult respect. 'I guess I
believe you.'

'I don't want to pry into your private affairs. All I want is
the information I was sent for. My offer stands. If you want
anything for your trouble'

'Mister - Subble, you said? - you have more on the ball
than I figured. But I already said: it's not you. It's the
government. That's trouble every tune. I have a notion what
you came for, and I can't tell you. Not when some bureau-
crat's going to'

'I'm not an ordinary agent. What you tell me is held in
confidence. I gather the information, assimilate it and make
a single verbal report from which all irrelevancies are ex-
cluded. I may need to learn some personal matters in order
to pursue my investigation and draw conclusions, but no
one else need know.'

'You sound pretty sure of that.'

'I am sure. I'm sorry my word is worthless, since I could
and would easily break it. I'll just have to assure you
unofficially that I could be lying now, but am not. Your
relationship with Aquilon has no relevance to - oh, oh.'

'Yeah. Just me and you, okay. But it isn't. It's my friends
and the government, and I just don't have the right.'

Subble had expected something like this. The nature of
the assignment was beginning to take shape, and he was now
in a position to obtain a great deal from Veg - but his very
training in prevarication, as with that in combat, made him
exceedingly careful of the rights of others. An agent who
gained his ends ruthlessly was apt to be unsuccessful in the
end, since force inevitably inspired counterforce. And it was
not wise to act in a manner that would increase the general
distrust of agents as a whole. There was danger - extreme
danger, he suspected now - and not from Veg himself. It was
essential that no personal antagonism be added to it.

'Veg, I have all day, as far as I know, and tomorrow too.
I'm not on a schedule, but I do have to get at the facts,
whatever they may be. How about letting me stay with you
for a few hours, so we can get to know each other, and you
can tell me as much as you feel free to. I won't push you for
any more than that, once you draw the line, and you'll have
the confidence that you are not simply spouting off to a
stranger.'

'What if I decide to tell you nothing?'

'Then you tell me nothing.'

Veg thought about it, scratching his sandy head. 'You
going to talk to 'Quilon?'

'I have to. And Calvin. And anybody else who knows -
whatever it is.'

'And you don't report till the end, just a summary?'

'That's right.'

'I guess I'd better, then. God, I sure don't like it, though.'

Subble smiled, but not inside. He could see that Veg had
grave misgivings, and not on purely personal grounds. There
was danger, and Veg knew it, and it was personal and im-
mediate.

'I understand that you do not bear me any more than
residual ill-will,' Subble observed. 'You respect physical abi-
lity, as many strong men do. But you are afraid that if I
learn too much, I will be harmed or killed, and that will

make real trouble. I mention this only so that you will be
aware that I know. And you are right: while I do not fear
death, if I do die there will be a thorough and official investi-
gation. You know what that means.'

'Yeah,' Veg said unhappily.

Subble dropped the subject. It was always difficult to
obtain the trust of a normal person, but always necessary.
He believed that frankness was best, and before long it
would occur to Veg that he would be well advised to see that
the agent got enough information at least to preserve his life.
'How can I help?'

'Well' Veg looked about, searching for some pretext to
accept the inevitable. 'Say - there is a little matter I've been
saving up for a special occasion. This way.'

He trotted down the fresh logging track, intersecting
another trail and following that. Subble saw the prints and
ordure of horses, animals rarely seen today but still used in
these protected tracts. Machines of all types were banned
here; men harvested trees with hand tools and hauled out
the logs with animal labor. Anyone who didn't care for the
physical life was invited out in a hurry. There were too many
people and too many machines in the world, and the fringe
wilderness was a jealously guarded area.

Veg angled away from the trail, brushing by the round
leaves of a young basswood and the serrated ones of the
maples to jump over an ancient stone wall. Over a century
ago men had built such walls by hand, using the great
chunks of rock they cleared from their fields; such a wall
had inspired the poet Robert Frost to discourse upon its
mending, but no one cared to mend it now.

A sitting chipmunk dropped its acorn and scurried
silently away. 'Sorry, pal - didn't see you,' Veg muttered as
the handsome striped body disappeared. He pulled up under
a huge blazed beech and put his hands to his mouth. 'Yo,
Jones!' he yelled.

In a few minutes two dark men appeared and came to
stand beyond the tree. 'What'sa matter - lonesome?' one
inquired with blunt sarcasm. He was a husky individual,

smaller than Veg but sure of himself. He wore the standard
denims and checkered shirt, and a small neat mustache. His
companion was similar, lacking the mustache.

'Naw,' Veg said. He put his hands on his hips aggress-
ively. 'Remember that business about this boundary last
month?'

'You mean when you tried to poach on our territory?'

'I mean when you hauled the marker-stone twenty feet
out of line and claimed three of my best white ash and a
rock maple.' He gestured, and Subble saw the stone some
distance beyond.

'Reclaimed, you mean.'

'And I said I'd take care of it when the time came.'

The two men nodded, smirking.

'Well, the time's come,' Veg said.

The mustached man approached. 'That your second?' he
asked, glancing disparagingly at Subble. 'A city slick?'

'That's my second. Name's Subble.' He turned to Subble.
'This is Hank Jones. He and his brother work this lot next to
mine - and some of mine, too.'

'City duds!' Jones said. 'Well, I reckon bound'ry jumpers
can't be choosy.' He unlimbered a roundhouse left at
Veg.

It was grandiose and clumsy by Subble's standards, but
basic rules were evident. The two men moved out into the
clearing beyond the tree, exchanging ferocious blows and
taking almost no evasive action, but the object seemed to be
to beat the opponent into submission without doing irrepar-
able damage. Fists, feet and heads were freely employed, but
never fingers or teeth, and eyes and crotches were left alone.
Jones' brother called lewd encouragement and advice to his
side, but did not interfere.

Veg took the first blow on the ear and shrugged it off. His
own fist drove into Jones' belly, forcing the man away. Jones
charged back headfirst, butting with such power that Veg
fell to the ground. As he rolled to hands and knees, Jones
put his boot up and shoved him down again, following this
with a hard kick with the side of the boot to the shoulder.

Toe-points also outlawed, Subble surmised, and heel-stomp-
ing.

Veg growled and leaped, fists alternating like pistons even
before they met the target. He backed Jones against the
beech and blasted mercilessly at his midsection until the
man doubled over.

Jones' brother edged toward the pair, and Subble also
moved in. Veg was an independent sort, and would not have
accepted a 'second' unless he deemed it necessary.

The combatants bounced away from the tree, dirty and
sweaty but with undiminished energies. Veg backed off to re-
cover his balance, and Jones' brother surreptitiously poked
a stick between his feet. Veg tripped, and Jones was on him
immediately.

Subble strode across the arena and stood before his op-
posite number. 'Friend, if you want to participate, pick your
own fight,' he suggested.

The man scowled and swung. The attack was incredibly
crude - but Subble accepted the blow on the shoulder and
replied with a moderate jab to the gut. He had no need of his
special skills here, and preferred not to display them. Obvi-
ously these encounters were family affairs, and all interested
parties participated.

The single fight had become two - and privacy had dis-
sipated. Only partially concerned with the mock-fight he
was engaged in, Subble watched and listened to the other
lumbermen as they emerged from the forest on all sides,
until a great circle of cheerful faces surrounded them.

The sounds of extracurricular activity penetrated a long
distance, it seemed, and the neighbors wasted no time deal-
ing themselves in.

'Veg and Hank Jones are settling their account, as I make
it,' one man explained to his companion. 'My guess is the
stranger was standing in for Veg's second, and figured to
keep Job Jones out of it. City man.'

'I'll second the stranger,' the other said. 'He's holding up
his end okay, considering.'

'Yeah?' a third put in. 'I'm for Job.'

'Son, you picked a loser. Neither Jones can last long with-
out his brother.'

The third raised his fist. 'I'm his brother, far as you're
concerned.'

And the third fight commenced. In like manner the two
new antagonists were seconded, and soon a fourth battle was
underway.

Subble laughed inwardly. He had been right: fighting was
as much pleasure as business to these hardy folk, and any
pretext would do. They could not stand idly by and let others
war; they had to join in. But it was man to man, not group to
group.

He ducked a swing from Job Jones and butted him in
approved fashion. Job backed into another contestant, jar-
ring the other man's aim as he cocked his fist 'Sorry,' Job
muttered. 'Forget it,' the other said, and proceeded with his
own concern.

The ring was crowded now, resembling a ballroom filled
with strenuous dancers. It was impossible to tell for which
side any given man stood - yet each pair remained distinct
and no one intentionally struck anyone except his assigned
antagonist. As in the dance, each couple created its discrete
formations in the midst of babel. There even seemed to be
music.

A hand fell upon his shoulder. 'Your turn's up,' Veg said
jovially. 'Take a seat.'

Surprised, Subble broke. Job Jones quit immediately and
went to the far side to join his brother, while Veg squatted
down to view the melee. Hank Jones was playing a harmon-
ica with some rude skill... so there was music now!

Before long the man who had seconded Subble joined
them, his match lining up with the seated Joneses. New
matches were still being formed from the uncommitted
pool, distinguished by cleaner clothing and absence of
bruises, and this in turn was constantly reinforced by arriving
spectators. The men bore a common stamp of sturdy self-
assurance and lusty living that contrasted with what Subble
knew the city-norm to be.

'No room for everyone at once,' Veg explained.

Someone hauled out a guitar and began strumming more
or less in time with the harmonica, and another man took a
stick and began setting the beat on the scarred beech.

Subble was astonished at the scope of the battle. A dozen
pairs were brawling in the clearing, and as many more men
were scattered about the fringe. Someone had hauled in a
wagon bearing a monstrous keg of beer, and wooden mugs
of the frothing liquid were being circulated along with pails
of forest berries and triangular beechnuts.

Subble accepted a warm beer and took a swallow. The
activity had made him pleasantly thirsty - that, he realized,
was part of the point of all this. It was technically a malt
beverage - but home-brewed to about twenty proof. He
smiled; he was sure the local soft-liquor taxmen had never
met this keg.

Veg noticed his reaction. 'You didn't come for this?' he
asked with sudden concern.

Subble drained his high-potency mug. 'You know it
ain't!'

This time Veg did not take exception to the language.

The battle waned as the beer fumes drifted. The active
participants became ten, then eight, as each contest fissioned
into thirsty individuals. The lines of the seated extended
almost entirely around the circle, the men conversing con-
tentedly and waving their mugs.

The show dwindled to two, and finally to a single en-
counter. The audience watched avidly now, rooting not so
much for one man or the other as for the fight itself.

'Which one is ours?' Subble inquired, having lost track.
'Or does it matter anymore?'

'It matters,' Veg said. 'I hope it's Buff. He's a good man.'

Buff was a good man, and in due course he was conceded
the victory. The last two grabbed mugs and gulped them
pantingly as they plumped to the ground. The music finished
with a flourish and an expectant silence came.

'Now the fun begins,' Veg muttered. Then, loudly: 'This
meeting's to settle my boundary dispute with the Jones

boys. Who did you second, Buff, you lop-eared
bastard?'

'Not you, turnip!' Buff called back. He finished his beer. 'I
follow Zebra.'

'You with me, animal?' Hank Jones yelled next.

'Naw, brushface,' Zebra said. 'I'm with Kenson.'

And so it went, Veg and Jones taking turns challenging
each ascending member of the victory chain, exchanging
good-natured insults at every step while the keg gurgled to
its steaming dregs and beechnut shells littered the ground.
Long before the line finished Subble recognized its outcome,
but refrained from comment.

'I follow this Fancy-Dan stranger here!' Subble's second
proclaimed, and belched.

'And who the hell's your better man, you city refugee?'
Veg shouted for the benefit of those who had joined the
party too late to know.

'You are - in the daytime!' Subble cried. There was a
burst of applause for the winner.

In moments a strong-backed crew had moved the
boundary rock to the position Veg indicated, and an im-
promptu a capella group sang several verses of The Frozen
Logger.

I see that you are a logger,
And not just a common bum
'Cause nobody but a logger
Stirs his coffee with his thumb!

Jones, it appeared, didn't feel like playing his instrument
any more, but he did come up to shake hands. 'I wasn't
going to cut those trees,' he said.

The crowd dissipated, the men returning to their separate
plots, happy for the break. The beermaster hitched his team
and tilted down the track. Subble wondered who paid the
cost of such refreshment, and decided that there were prob-
ably standing arrangements. Perhaps, instead of logging, he
brewed - but received an allotment from the lumber mill

anyway. Whatever it was, the system seemed to be func-
tioning smoothly.

Subble mouthed the conventionalities, but abruptly his
attention was elsewhere. At the fringe of it all something
deadly watched, hardly more than a dark shadow lost
behind the trees. He focused his trained perceptions and
picked up a momentary flicker, a suggestion of motion, a
subdued whistle. As a wolf might glare at the fires of early
man, waiting for the embers to die, waiting for sleep....

'You did okay,' Veg said, and the shadow was gone.
Subble sniffed, but picked up only the rotting leaves and
pushing fungus of the forest floor. He had lost it.

They tramped back to the original work area, the forest as
empty as before, though Subble knew that many men were
still within a mile. Soon the distant sounds of their labors
would resume.

Veg's tongue had been loosened by several mugs of brew.
'You catch on quick, and you fight fair once you get going.
What do you make of our bunch?'

'It's a good bunch. I wish it were possible to'

'Sub, don't start pulling that government-agent reserve on
me again. We've been through a party together, and we
won!' But it was Veg's own reserve that had dissipated.

A party: fists and drink and a symbol of friendship. Why
was it that men so often could only respect each other after
testing their respective mettles in combat? Here it was
physical; but in the more sophisticated, less open gatherings,
male and female, it also went on continually. Men and
animals measured each other before giving of each other,
establishing, if not a pecking order, at least a nuance order.
Was this a fundamental characteristic of life?

Subble regretted that he was not free to explore this thesis
thoroughly. Agents were doers rather than thinkers, how-
ever their inclinations might run. 'Well, there's little I can
relate to,' he told Veg. 'My background is not like yours.
I've never been to a - party - like this before. I was raised
more conventionally.'

Veg unpacked a collapsible saw from a cache in a tree.

'I'm not exactly bright, but I know your education was not
conventional,' he said. He led the way to a pile of peeled
spruce logs. 'Grab an end and we'll get to know each other.'

Subble accepted the proffered handle and fell into the
rhythm of sawing. He knew that it was a matter of pull, not
push, and that no weight should be applied; the saw's own
weight would take it through the wood in its own fashion.
The teeth were sharp and angled out alternately so that the
cut was wider than the thickness of the saw; sharpening
would be a tedious chore, but the saw worked well enough
here.

What he hadn't known was the importance of a balanced,
comfortable position that provided circulation for the legs
and free play for arms and upper body. He was doing it
incorrectly, and though he was not tired he knew that an
ordinary man would wear out quickly this way.

Veg had marked off four foot lengths, and each time one
bolt was severed he brought the next mark over the balanc-
ing point and began again. 'Now take me,' he said, pulling
his end without noticeable exertion. 'Folks take me for an
ordinary, no-count joker who won't eat meat, and that's
okay. But I have things I'

He paused, and Subble knew that he had almost let slip
something about the menace that had cast its strange eye
upon the party. He certainly knew about it, and the matter
was definitely relevant to Subble's mission; the signals were
strong. But Veg was not yet ready to speak of this.

They sawed for a while. Subble copied Veg's stance, and
finally caught on to the swing of it. The motions were re-
laxing, vaguely similar to the steady beat of waves upon a
lonely shore, leading the mind to introspection. Jets of
sweet-smelling sawdust splattered across his foot and into
the top of his sock, giving him another lesson in woods-
man's clothing. The curlicues settled on his toe were twisted
lengths, some like little worms, rather than the powder he
had expected. The texture would depend upon the nature
and hardness of the wood, he thought.

'Well, like why I don't eat meat,' Veg was saying instead

of whatever he had intended. 'It's okay to talk about how
the world's too crowded, not enough places to live, not
enough food to go around, everybody going crazy because
there's no room to holler in. So they tell me I get a neurosis
from all that, and that's why I have to make it harder for
myself. You believe that?'

'No,' Subble said, sensing the proper answer to the am-
biguous question. Veg was trying to come to grips with the
problems posed by the frustration of the territorial impera-
tive, though he evidently was not familiar with the terms.
Every creature sought out a territory of its own, distinct
from that of other representatives of its species; birds sang,
in part, to define by sound the limits of their domains, their
foraging grounds, and men liked to talk of their homes as
being their castles. The contest he had just participated in
had been a rather tangible manifestation of that need; it was
important for Veg to know exactly where his boundaries
were, even though the land was his only to the extent of
limited cutting rights. Successful defense of those bound-
aries gave him a fundamental satisfaction; he had fought for
his territory and won. Neurotic? Hardly; it was a return to
normalcy.

'You're damn right, no. Those headshrinkers never set
their twinkletoes in the forest. They've never been off-world.
That's why'

Once more that pause. Veg kept approaching the key and
shying away.

'You're a vegetarian - and this is part of what I may have
been sent to investigate,' Subble said, helping him. 'But you
don't feel free to tell me just what the connection is.'

'Yeah.' They sawed for another period in silence. An
inchworm mounted Subble's shoe, struggling to navigate the
unsteady sawdust strings and freezing when it thought it was
observed. All creatures had their problems and their frights,
he thought. An inchworm hid itself in stillness; a man in
silence.

Veg tried again. 'Tell me if you ever heard anything like
this. Maybe it makes sense to you. When I was a kid, my

brother - well, he was a good guy. Everybody liked him. I
liked him. We fought sometimes, but no real trouble - I
mean, I had the muscle and he had the savvy, so we didn't
feel crowded. We'd go around together all the time, but I
knew he was the one going to make good. In the long run,
you know, because of his brains. I didn't mind. He was right
for it.

'Then he took sick. He was in the hospital, but he looked
okay. I saw him there, and he said he felt fine, and that they
told him he was going to be back in school again soon and to
keep up with his studies. I guess that's the only time I was
jealous of him, a little, 'cause all he had to do was lie around
all day, while I had all those dull classes.

'Then he died. A teacher just came up and told me one
day, that he'd gone the way they always knew he would.
From the first day, almost, they'd known. Only they never
told him that, or his friends, or me. Cancer - and all those
doctors lying about it, telling us he was getting better and all,
when he was dying. Them and their hypocritic oath. I didn't
believe it at first; I used to dream he was still there, only he'd
broken his leg or something and they thought it was real
bad, but it got better after all, you know? I guess it took
me a couple of years to believe he was gone, all the way
down in my mind.

'And it got to me. I mean, here was my brother, a good
guy, nobody had anything against him, but he died. And it
got in my head, if there'd been this god - I don't believe in
God - this guy looking down, saying "One of these two boys
has to go, there isn't room anymore for both," and he had to
make the choice, see ... well, I was the one he should have
taken, because I didn't have much to give the world anyway.
You have to save the sheep and cast out the goat, or what-
ever, and he was the sheep.

'But this god took the wrong one. And there was this
destiny, this good life, meant for my brother - and the
wrong boy left to fill it. I was living his life, and it was all
wrong, all wrong. But then I thought, now this mistake's
been made, and it's too late to fix it, but it isn't all gone quite

if I save as much as I can. What I have to do is, is - well,
make something out of it the way he was supposed to
make it, you know? Prove that maybe it wasn't, a big
mistake, just a small one, and not so much was changed after
all.'

They sawed another bolt in silence. The inchworm had
negotiated the shoe and disappeared into the crushed leafery
beyond, and the sawdust was mounding tremendously -
three or four inches high. A swift fly had settled upon it,
savoring its freshness, perhaps. The scene darkened
alarmingly, then brightened as an unseen cloud crossed the
sun. It was amazing how absorbing the microcosm became
with a little concentration.

'Any of that make sense to you?' Veg inquired after a bit.

'Too much,' Subble said, suffering a personal pang that
surprised bun.

'But it still hurt, knowing how he died,' Veg said, en-
couraged. How often people were afraid to express their true
feelings, for fear of ridicule, and so presented artificial ones
instead. Veg was concerned because he had let slip the mask
and failed to be artificial, but now it was all right. 'I thought
about it, and if there was one thing I was sure of, it was that
death like that was wrong. I don't care what they say about
statistics and survival - so many boys might've died, and
him being the one that - but then I saw that those other boys
were all somebody's brother too, you know, and probably if
I knew them I'd know why they should live too. It wasn't all
right to kill anybody's brother. And then I thought, what
about the animals....

'And when I stopped thinking, I wasn't killing anything
that moved, or letting anybody else do it for me. It's as
though that meat is his flesh.'

'But you will fight,' Subble observed.

'Yeah. I never did understand those pacifist types that
preach nonviolence and demonstrate against war and then
go home to a big juicy steak dinner. At least a man can fight
back. Smack on the jaw doesn't hurt him, but'

Subble moved so quickly that Veg, who was looking right

at him, spoke the last several words and finished his stroke
before realizing he was alone.

'Wha?' But Subble was already coming back to resume
sawing, disappointed. The menace at the fringe had moved
faster yet, which deepened the mystery. Few animate things
on Earth could elude an agent on the move.

'What kind of man are you?' Veg demanded somewhat
belligerently. 'You were just a blur'

'I was after that thing. It's been stalking us all afternoon.
I'm pretty sure that's what I was sent for.'

'You saw it?' Veg made no pretense of ignorance, though
this would have made little difference to Subble in any event.

'Only a flicker. Just enough to tell me it is animal and
alien. You're fooling with strong medicine, Veg.'

'Yeah.' The big man seemed almost relieved to be com-
mitted. 'But it isn't what you think. I don't know what you
think, but it isn't that.'

'I don't have an opinion. I was sent to gather information
on a matter relevant to Earth security. I make no judgment
and no final decision. When I tell you that thing is danger-
ous, that's observation, not opinion. It reacted faster than I
did.'

Veg's brow wrinkled. 'Just because it got the jump on
you, it's a threat to the world?'

'I'm a very quick man, Veg. My powers are a threat to
any normal community, unless completely under control.'

Veg was hostile again. 'So why should I trust you at all?'

'It's not a question of trust. You have to take me for what
I am and make your decisions accordingly.'

'Okay - tell me what you are.'

'I'm a special breed of government agent. I'll have to give
you some background'

'Give.'

'This continent is lightly populated compared to some,
but its economic and political organizations are still im-
mensely complicated. Every facet contributes exponentially
to the overall' Subble saw that Veg wasn't following, so
shifted his ground. 'Take crime. If a woodsman murders his

neighbor to get his cutting rights, the other lumbermen will
have a pretty good idea who did it, won't they?'

'Yeah. Not too many secrets hereabouts.'

'That's the "isolated community" approach. Everybody
knows everybody, and trouble is easily handled by the
group. But suppose I killed someone here, and went back
home in my flyer before anything was done about it?'

'Guess we'd have to report it to the sheriff. But it'd be
pretty hard for him to'

'Precisely. Crime is no longer simple when there are many
communities involved and interacting, and so many
conflicting interests. Your sheriff's estimate of the situation
would be valueless in running me down, because he
wouldn't know me or my motives. I could walk into any
body shop in Appalachia and have my, facial features
modified, hair restyled and recolored, body profile altered by
braces and injections -I could be quite unrecognizable to
you in half an hour. Even if the sheriff had my exact identity
- which he probably wouldn't - it could take enough tune to
run me down so that my lawyer could cover the evidence
against me. And believe me, the changes a body shop could
make in my physical appearance are as nothing compared to
what a lawyer can do to my legal appearance.'

'You telling me you can get away with murder?'

'Yes. In today's complex world, almost anybody can - if
he knows how. All he has to do is avoid detection or capture
for the few hours necessary to cover his traces - his legal
ones - and the job of bringing him to justice becomes so
complicated and expensive that it isn't worth making the
attempt.'

Veg shook his head. 'I'm just a simple country boy. I'll
take your word it's rough in the big city. What has that got
to do with why you're here?'

'Obviously we can't let the murderers go free - or any
other criminals. And that's only one section of the problem.
What we need is a carefully trained and disciplined force of
investigators, who can wrap up most cases so quickly that
complications never develop. Men who can be assigned at a

moment's notice and take hold immediately. Men who have
the brains and muscle to act on their own, but the discipline
to be inhumanly fair. Men whose reports will be so similar
that a central computer can correlate them without having
to make adjustments for individual ignorance or bias.'

Veg frowned again. 'You still aren't answering my ques-
tion.'

Subble smiled in reply. 'I'm almost there. You wouldn't
let Jones' brother arbitrate your dispute with Jones, would
you?'

'Hell no! He'd-'

'So you understand what I mean by bias. The trouble is
every person on this world is biased in some manner, even if
he doesn't want to be. But when thousands of reports are
being submitted by thousands of agents on thousands of
unique situations every hour, bias is a luxury we can't afford.
The computer has to be sure that the case is accurately pre-
sented, or the report is worthless. Yet it can't send out a
bunch of identical robots'

'You are a man?' Veg demanded.

'I am a man - but not an ordinary one. That is, not ordi-
nary in the usual sense.'

'Cut the pussyfooting and tell me!'

'I'm a stripped-down human chassis rebuilt to computer-
specifications - physical and mental.'

'An android!'

'No. I am a man, with a man's memories and feelings. I
was born and raised as you were, and I'm sure I had my
problems and my successes - but the past I have now has
been grafted on with the body.'

Veg struggled with the concept. 'You mean you aren't
real? You can't'

'I'm real - but not as I was born. Whatever I was was cut
away, and the entire framework of the ideal agent sub-
stituted. My memories - all of them - are his memories, and
my abilities are his abilities. There are thousands like me,
male and female.'

'Just so your report will be like someone else's?'

'More or less. It's not merely a matter of standardization,
but conformity to the highest qualifications. I can do things
that my original personality could never have achieved.'

'Like moving in a blur,' Veg agreed. Then, after a
moment: 'I guess I see why you understood about my filling
in for my brother's life. That's what you're doing. You're
another peavey made out of a cant hook - only you don't
even know what you started out to be.'

Subble decided not to inquire what the difference was be-
tween a peavey and a cant hook.

They had finished the sawing. Veg stood up and stretched
cramped legs. 'Sub, I guess I know everything about you I
want to. I'll tell you as much as I can, but I can't tell you
everything. I mean, I know more, but'

'But there is Aquilon. I understand.'

'Yeah. 'Quilon and Cal and the rest of it. And when I
stop, you don't ask any more questions, you just get out of
here and I won't see you again, okay? And you don't poke
around after what's in the forest, either.'

'Agreed,' Subble said. The discomfort normal people felt
around the retread was a fact of his life, and did not disturb
him. Perhaps some of the antipathy stemmed from the fact
that agents only questioned people who had something to
conceal. Veg had agreed to cooperate to a certain extent,
and that was all that was required.

As Veg talked, Subble forgot the man's lingering home-
spun mannerisms and language and absorbed the episode as
though it were his own. He imagined himself on a distant
colony-planet, gazing at scenery unlike any on Earth,
breathing through a filter in his nose and riding beside a
lovely but unsmiling woman.

*	 *    *

'Don't smile, 'Quilon,' the big man said, forearms flexing on
the controls.

The girl beside him put both hands to her lips in a nat-
urally graceful reaction, searching, as though afraid her
features had betrayed her.

' 'Quilon,' Veg continued, 'you know you're a mir'cle of
beauty in summer shorts. Be a shame to ruin it with a little
smile, now.'

Aquilon leaned over, unsmiling, to rest her forehead
against his muscular shoulder. 'Don't,' she pleaded quietly.

Veg stared ahead, realizing that he had hurt her but not
understanding why. The truth was that he rather admired
Aquilon's composure; it lent her features a classic splendor
that few living women possessed. He had known many smil-
ing females and respected none; they were always to be
found hanging around the spaceport, eager for his money
and his muscle and most of all for his notoriety: a spaceman.
The mature ones were competent - and expensive - and not
always trustworthy. The teeners were agog with puppylike
willingness, anxious to question him on what simply had to
be exciting, and too often taking the more prosaic truth for
some veiled criticism of their feminine worth.

He was not a philosophic man, apart from one area that
he kept to himself, and craved little more than physical
pleasure and honest companionship; but circumstances had
forced cynicism upon him. He was unsatisfied, and when
driven to probe the reasons for this had realized that it was
because he was in fact a non-person. The dedicated women
of the spaceport were eager for news of space and for proxi-
mity to it - though not eager to undertake offworld voyages
themselves. They had little interest in the personal needs or
feelings of the man within the uniform. They paid off in sex
and thought that was enough. It was true that he needed sex
- but that was only the physical side of the coin. Sex was
minutes; what about the hours remaining?

Aquilon was different. First, she had come to space her-
self, and that was a definite signal of determination, talent
and courage. Second, she was young and astonishingly
beautiful - an almost foolproof formula for serious trouble
in space. She gave no shred of encouragement to any man -
but she needed a man, if only to protect her boundaries from
other males.

She had come to Cal.

If the choice seemed ludicrous, it was quickly apparent
that it was not. Cal had no designs on her, and was know-
ledgeable about many things. She could talk to him without
affectation or defensiveness, and touch him without being
forcibly reminded that they were male and female. She
could sleep in his cabin safely, for he forced himself on no
person in any way. Indeed, she served him by bringing him
books from the ship's library, by making up his bunk and
cleaning his instruments and buttoning his uniform for him
the few times uniforms were used in space. Cal was not
always strong enough to do these things for himself.

But no one interfered. At first there had been little rest-
lessness, but Veg had talked to the men in question and it
passed.

'As with Ferrovius and the Roman courtier,' Cal had re-
marked sagely. Veg had failed to comprehend, and so the
little man explained. 'Ferrovius was a character in Shaw's
play Androcles and the Lion. He was constructed somewhat
like you, Veg, and I think there would be a fair comparison
in temperament too. He was an early Christian, back in the
days when such faith was unfashionable, and pledged to
nonviolence. When the Roman struck him on the cheek, he
dutifully turned the other cheek - but then he suggested that
the Roman should try a similar exercise. "I sat up all night
with that youth wrestling for his soul;" he tells us, "and in
the morning not only was he a Christian, but his hair was as
white as snow."'

After that Veg, who had little interest in literature, had
taken the trouble to read the complete play, and had dis-
covered that the Irish playwright himself was a vegetarian.
Small cosmos.

At any rate, Veg had impressed upon the remaining
complement of the ship that Cal was his friend. When Aqui-
lon entered the picture, she became Cal's second friend. It
was that simple. What upset her, upset Cal - and that in turn
made Veg restless and brought about Ferrovian exercises of
pacifism.

The relationship between Veg and Aquilon was some-

what cooler. It was absolutely polite, and there was even
innocent banter, as there had been just now - but they did
not quite understand each other, as the recent dialogue had
just reminded him.

She touched his tense biceps. 'I'm sorry, Veg. My fault.'

'Naw,' he said, grinning. Suddenly his world was bright,
though what he viewed was not. He swung the tractor
around one of the giant fungi, wrinkling his nose at the fetid
odor he fancied he smelled. He squinted through the front
screen, trying to penetrate the haze that covered the planet
of Nacre. The level plain ahead became lost in the gloom, its
foreground broken only by the massive fungoid growths bal-
looning out of the fertile dust.

'Are we near the mountains?' Aquilon asked, slender
fingers toying with a small but rather special art brush. Veg
grunted.

The tractor accelerated, forging through the thick atmos-
phere. The wind whipped into the open cockpit, carrying
Aquilon's hair out in short blonde streamers. She faced
ahead, inhaling deeply through the concealed nostril filters.
She did not smile.

Veg eased up as the mountain ridge appeared. Nacre had
never been mapped, largely because there was no econ-
omical way to do it, but men were working on the problem
now, and he enjoyed exploring. The outcroppings at the
base of these hills of his were stark, while the tops projected
into the encompassing mist and vanished. Aquilon's fingers
moved in air, shaping the vision she saw, eager to express it
on canvasite.

'Look at the vegetation!' she exclaimed. 'The toadstools!'

Now that they were moving slowly, Veg could see what
she meant. The plain had been largely featureless, a foggy
desert, but the foot of the mountain at close view was
covered with fungoid brilliance. What had seemed like bare
stone was actually gray and blue fungus, its hugely spread-
ing tops an umbrella over the lesser growths. What appeared
to be sand was the salt and pepper of myriad tiny spokes
emerging from a brown spongelike underpinning. Between

were layered colors - red, yellow, blue and black, the indi-
vidual plants shaped like funnels, horns, brackets, plates
and, yes, toadstools. From a distance it was all a blur, largely
the fault of the atmosphere; close, it was a wonderland of
shape and color. He pulled to a halt.

'Don't touch anything,' he warned her. 'Some of these
mushrooms could be poisonous.' Then he felt foolish, re-
membering her training; she should be warning him. There
was no danger of anyone taking a bite.

Aquilon unfolded a tripod from her pad and painted
busily. She wore brown shorts and a white blouse and filled
both so well Veg found it hard to look at her. He wondered
again why she had deserted the popular life she could have
had on Earth to venture into lonely space. But she offered
no hint, as she twirled her brush and duplicated item after
item in full color.

He walked to the rear of the tractor and lifted the catch on
the back equipment hold. There, suspended in a com-
prehensive padded harness, was a very small, thin, be-
spectacled man with sparse brown hair. His trousers and
sleeves were full length, as though he did not want people to
see his limbs, and his shirt came together in a snug collar
about a small neck.

'How you doing, Cal?'

The little man smiled bravely. 'Well enough,' he said, but
his face was pinched and white.

'We stopped to draw some pictures,' Veg explained.
'Maybe you want a few samples?'

The sunken eyes brightened. 'You found some distinctive
varieties!' The emaciated hands came up to touch the fasten-
ings of the harness, then dropped wearily. 'Perhaps you
could select a few for me.'

'Sure,' Veg said, embarrassed. He could see that the ride
had been hard on his friend. He kept forgetting that others
did not always share his enthusiasm for speed. Cal had not
adapted properly to the gravity of Nacre, though it was less
than that of Earth, and the filters Impeded his breathing. In
space, under null-gravity conditions, he was all right, and he

had a liquid suspension bath for conditions of acceleration.
On land - he suffered. But Cal was Cal, and had insisted on
coming on the exploratory excursion, rough as the journey
might be. He was as excited as Aquilon about what might lie
in the mountain range. It was not courage he lacked, but
strength.

Veg donned protective gloves and marched toward the
most luxuriant display. 'Not those!' Aquilon cried, startling
him into drawing a breath through his mouth. Her voice was
apt to do that to him. He expelled the air hastily, realizing
that she wanted to preserve that particular group for a
portrait, and moved over.

The atmosphere of Nacre had been exhaustively tested
and pronounced safe - in moderation. A few breaths
through the mouth would not cause serious discomfort, and
all personnel were trained to breathe automatically through
the filters, even in sleep. Veg knew this, but the unfiltered air
seemed unclean and it upset him to inhale it.

The flora and fauna were another matter. Some of these
were deadly in unexpected ways, and most had yet to be
tested and classified. The rule: Do not touch until the lab-
oratory has taken apart and approved.

Aquilon glanced at him as he advanced upon the bend of
the outcropping, but he did not interrupt her sketching. Veg
stopped, spread out a collection sheet, and carefully reached
out to grip the nearest offerings.

The fungi were even fancier than he had thought, and so
thickly packed that there was no clear way to isolate them
for individual harvest. Yellow goo flowed where his feet had
crushed minute growths, and he regretted this accidental des-
truction. He reached for an Earth-sky-blue six-inch stink-
horn, afraid the projecting tip would break off and crumble
in his hand, but to his relief and surprise it was as solid as a
stick of wood. He worked it free, sadly snipping off the wire-
like root strands, and laid it on the cloth.

Farther along was a specimen about the size of a softball,
with innumerable spaghetti-like threads twisting about.
These moved as his hand approached, startling him. He

jerked back, almost losing his balance, and glanced over the
outcropping of mushroom-rock into the alcove beyond.

He stiffened.' 'Quilon,' he called in a low tone.

She knew immediately that something important was
there. She came swiftly and quietly and followed the direc-
tion of his gaze. 'I see it,' she said, as tense and quiet now as
he.

It was a bay in the sea of dust, and squatting in front of a
smaller inlet was a creature about the size of a small
crouched man. From this vantage point the most distinctive
feature was its enormous single eye.

'What is it?' she asked him. Veg did not reply. The
creature stood unmoving, its eye, three inches across, fo-
cused unwaveringly upon them. The body was hunched into
a globular mass balanced upon a single muscular foot.

They exchanged glances. Veg shook his head at the un-
spoken question. 'We're only supposed to note the lay of the
land,' he said. 'We don't dare mess with the local life - not
something as strange as this.'

'It doesn't look dangerous.'

'But eighteen men were killed before we arrived - by
something. ...' He did not need to say more. They were
conditioned to caution as members of a semiprivate trouble-
shooting expedition investigating a promising but danger-
ous planet. Pay was to some extent contingent upon success
in solving the problem, and qualified volunteers were scarce.
Strange people enlisted and strange things happened - but
individuals avoided risks not so much for personal safety as
from consideration for the needs of the expedition. A fool-
ishly brave man was a liability.

Veg had wondered from time to time why Cal was al-
lowed to stick with the group, since he was most apt to get
himself killed. Perhaps it was because he was also most apt to
put his finger, feeble as it might be, directly upon the source
of trouble, and thus save many other lives and much time.

At any rate, they were bound to watch this strange
creature, but not to approach it, however much they might
be tempted to.

Aquilon was already sketching, wasting no motions.
Color flowed from her brush, seemingly of its own volition.
She flicked it, once, at Veg; a bright red dab flew to spatter
against his cheek. Satisfied, she returned to her picture, the
magic strokes quickly evoking a lifelike image of the animal
ahead.

'Got a tail,' Veg said, wiping at his face with good humor,
'but no jaws. Not like the omnivore. How does it fight?'

She did not comment, rapidly filling new sheets of can-
vasite. All the animals they had observed on Nacre - and
there were not many - were constructed on a roughly similar
blueprint, as though radiating from a common ancestor.
Just as the animals of Earth had settled on four limbs and
two eyes, regardless of the vertebrate species, those of Nacre
stayed with one foot and one eye. But, as on Earth, these
animals diverged into large and small, bold and shy, pre-
dator and prey. The most savage of them all was the omni-
vore.

'Could have weapons that don't show,' Veg said, having
nothing to do while Aquilon painted. 'That eye'

Even from this distance the eye was impressive. It glit-
tered from a convex surface like a lens, as deep and dark as a
well. Inside, perhaps just beyond the visible spectrum, there
seemed to be a flicker, almost a glow.

'... something about it,' Aquilon agreed, sketching an en-
larged view of the organ.

Veg drew her back at last, his two hands on her slender
shoulders while she continued to paint. 'We'd better get
home and report this thing. Might be important.'

She acquiesced reluctantly. They backed away until the
creature was hidden from view behind the projecting arm of
the mountain; then Veg stood guard while Aquilon ran to
the tractor to explain the situation to Cal. Veg kept his hand
on his sidearm, hoping he would not have to draw it. For
one thing, he never liked using a weapon, though he did when
he had to; for another, he had no guarantee that the re-
pellant fog it emitted would be effective, since this creature
was quite different from any seen before.

After allowing Aquilon time, he backed the rest of the
way to the tractor. He had been careless to harvest mush-
rooms without checking the area thoroughly first. The thing
could have crept upon them silently....

'That's all I got,' he said apologetically to Cal as he de-
posited the single fungus and closed up the compartment.
The little man only nodded, and Veg knew he was wishing
he had been able to see the new creature. A single glance
would mean more to Cal than ten minutes to Veg. 'I'll glide
by it as we go. You can watch through your periscope.'

'If only radio worked on this planet' Aquilon com-
plained as he joined her in the front. It was a familiar
grumble; parties did not like being out of contact with the
main base, but the dust seemed to blank out most electro-
magnetic radiation in the atmosphere. Later, alternative
communication would be worked out; but now they had to
desert a phenomenal discovery because they could not
summon another party from the base. 'We may never see it
again.'

He started the huge motors and ground slowly forward.
The vehicle rounded the edge of the mountain and cut into
the bay.

The animal remained, flickering inscrutably. Veg drew
carefully opposite, then stopped and turned, hoping Cal was
getting a satisfactory view. The man was fascinated by
extraterrestrial life of all kinds, but especially by the larger
animals. This would make his day.

The tractor spun to face its own retreating spoor. Aqui-
lon, still curious, mounted the back of the seat to watch over
the top of the vehicle as they departed. Veg glanced once at
the several square inches of soft thigh exposed, then bit his
lip and concentrated upon his driving. His expression was
thoughtful.

The creature moved. Veg could see it in the rear vision
screen. It made an awkward, high leap, twisting in the air to
land on its foot a dozen feet nearer the tractor. The lambent
alien eye still watched intently.

'I think it's as curious about us as we are about it,' Aqui-

lon said brightly, still facing behind as they picked up speed.
'It's following us.'

Veg grinned, relieved now that the three were safely in the
moving machine. 'Maybe it wants to race.' He accelerated to
an even twenty miles per hour. 'Let me know when it gives
up.'

'Not yet,' the girl said. She watched the creature leap and
leap again, approaching the tractor, while Veg watched her
watching. 'It's catching up to us.'

Veg grunted and played with the controls, letting out the
mighty engine until the indicator registered thirty-five.

'It's still gaining,' Aquilon said, genuinely excited now
and even more attractive in that condition. 'But - it isn't the
same. I mean' She faltered and glanced at him as though
expecting a rebuke. 'It - I think it changed its shape. To hop
faster.'

This was no overstatement, as he could see for himself.
The body had flattened out and elongated, and the bounding
effect was gone. The foot had become a pistonlike pushing
member, touching the ground at intervals of twenty feet,
sending the body forward in long shallow trajectories. The
large eye was in the front of a head now tapered like a
rocket, fading back into a neckless trunk, and the long tail
streamed behind.

Veg tried to watch screen, girl and the view ahead, but
had to alternate. 'We latched on to something here,' he
muttered, rising to the challenge. 'But if it really wants to
race'

Once more the tractor accelerated. It had been built for
high speed over rough terrain, and was as potent a machine
as Earth produced. Veg switched on the headlights and
maneuvered deftly around the rapidly looming fungi. Aqui-
lon hung on to the hand rail behind the seat as the thick
wind tore at her body. Her blouse inflated and hair shot over
her face in a rigid bonnet. She faced back still, a look of
solemn excitement on her comely features, lips parted but
breathing through her nose, intent on the uniped behind. At
sixty it began, slowly, to fall away.

Aquilon reluctantly lowered herself down into the seat,
fighting the fierce currents and jolts. 'I never saw anything so
fast' She realized only then that her blouse had torn free of
the elastic waistband and now hung loosely over the shoul-
ders and arms.

Veg nodded appreciatively but made no comment He
wasn't going to get her mad at him again!

She tucked herself together and leaned over to view the
screen before the driver. 'Look!'

Directly behind, the creature was gaining again.

Veg's mouth dropped open. 'But we're doing seventy-
five!' he protested.

Aquilon watched closely, while Veg peered in frustration
past her head. He did not really have the tune to con-
centrate on the screen at this velocity. He was approaching
the limit of forward visibility under Nacre conditions, and
Cal would not be appreciating the roughness of the ride.

'It changed again,' she said, a little smugly, and described
it to him. The thing no longer leaped or pushed at all; in-
stead it stayed close to the ground, its foot moving so
rapidly that it was invisible at contact. The body moved on
an almost level course, flattened all the way into a thin disk
ten feet in diameter. The vast front eye still stared ahead,
hypnotic, glowing darkly.

'How could I have thought it awkward?' Aquilon whis-
pered. 'It's the most beautiful thing, like a butterfly - no,
like a swimming manta ray, back on Earth. Only it swims in
the air, so swift'

The tractor leaped forward, its motors roaring. 'This
time,' Veg said with grim enthusiasm, 'this time I'm really
going to show it dust!' He touched a button and an armored
canopy slid over the cockpit, killing the turbulence within.
But heavy vibration jarred the occupants as the vehicle
sped over the plain in a straight course, blasting apart the
mists and shattering the fungi in its path. He was proud of
the machine, with its engine composed of a motor for every
wheel and its overwhelming impetus.

The thick dust stirred at last, obscuring the afterview, and

once again the pursuer was lost to sight. But in a moment it
reappeared, off to the side and still gaining over the tractor's
speed of ninety-five.

'Is there any limit?' Aquilon breathed, staring raptly at it.
'Such a performance...'

As the tractor continued to accelerate, the flat thing out-
side slowly forfeited ground, and was finally lost again in the
mists. This time it did not return.

Veg eased off slowly, somewhat intoxicated by the speed.
He seldom had a pretext to really push the tractor.

Aquilon was first to react, lifting her flaxen head like an
alert doe. 'Burning,' she said. 'Something is burning!'

Veg laughed and pinched her bare knee with corded
fingers. Then he smelled it. 'Oh-oh.'

The tractor slued alarmingly. 'Wheel's froze up,' he
grunted. 'Got to cut that motor. Damn dust must've'

It lurched again, throwing them both to one side. Veg
cursed and fought the controls; Aquilon unplastered her
bosom from his shoulder and braced herself against the op-
posite corner. The dust ascended in surging clouds, hiding
earth and sky.

The sturdy vehicle did not topple. They sat quietly while
the pocket storm outside subsided, then choked jointly as
the reek of well-charred insulation fumed in. Veg released
the canopy and forced it back by hand. The incoming swirl
of dust washed out the bitter air and gave their filters
something tangible to work on.

'We're stranded,' Veg said bluntly. 'Own fault. This
machine won't move for weeks.'

Aquilon worked it out for herself. 'In this mist and dust
there won't be any tracks to follow by the time they realize
we're lost... and we can't signal them. A full search pattern
would take too long.'

There was a groan. Her eyes widened. 'We forgot Cal!'

Veg banged the door open and jumped to the ground.
Aquilon slid over and dismounted more carefully. Together,
they circled through the settling particles to the rear of the
tractor.

Cal's glasses were broken and hooked over one ear, but
there was no blood on his face. Veg unfastened the harness
and lifted him down.

Aquilon flung both arms about the unconscious man and
held him up while Veg checked his body quickly for injuries.
'He's okay,' he announced. 'Spinout must've made him
light-headed.' He hoped he was right.

Aquilon set Cal on the ground and cradled his head upon
her thighs. Before long his eyes opened. 'There appears to
have been a - shake-up,' he murmured.

Veg relaxed, only now allowing himself to admit how
worried he had been. The shock could have thrown his
friend into a coma, and if there had been any internal injury
- 'a shake-up! Friend, if I woke up in a lap like that, I'd be
shook up, and I'd damn well think of something better to
say than!' He was compensating for his concern by show-
ing mock gruffness.

Cal smiled but Aquilon did not. Veg turned away, irked
yet again by his seeming ability to say the wrong thing. They
all knew that his little jokes were just thinly veiled appeals
for-

For what? For the same thing the spaceport professionals
provided for pay or glamor? Was he that hard up already,
that he had to chase after the friend of his friend? And if by
some mischance he got her - would she then be no more to
him than those contemptible others? Aquilon was a nice
girl. What demon prompted him to dream of destroying
her?

'Spores,' Cal said, sitting up with Aquilon's help.

'Spores?' For a moment Veg was afraid Cal's mind had
been affected.

'This is a fungus world - insufficient light for chlorophyll
plants, on the ground, at any rate. Much of this "dust" is in
reality a surplus mass of spores, microscopically small, since
that is the way most fungi reproduce. A palynologist will tell
you that you could fit fifty sextillion of them in a level tea-
spoon. They float in the air and get into everything, and
there are so many types that even on Earth they are con-

stantly feeding on new materials. Probably some worked
into the wheel bearings and sprouted in the oil, leading to'

Cal was back to normal.

Veg moved over to stand before a locker in the side of the
tractor. He stared silently into the ulterior, frowning.

'Supplies?' Aquilon inquired. Her head, as she came to
stand beside him, barely passed his shoulder.

'Steam rifle and a compass,' he said with disgust. 'We're in
trouble Beautiful.'

She ducked under his arm and poked into the com-
partment. 'It's a complete survival pack,' she said, pleased.
'Knives, matches, first aid, handbook.... We can hike back
to the base, with this.'

Veg studied her.

'Why look,' she continued innocently. 'The compass
shows only twenty-four miles. That's not so far' She broke
off, noticing that Veg wasn't responding. 'What's the
matter?'

'I never met a woman yet who could think straight That
score miles is straight cross-country; follow level ground,
it's more like a hundred. We were a couple of hours out, in
the tractor. You and I,' 'Quilon, might make it....'

'Oh.' Her hand flew to her mouth. 'Cal....'

'Yeah.' Veg got to work unloading the compartment and
setting up the knapsack provided.

Already a thin film of the ubiquitous powder falling nat-
urally had formed on the horizontal surfaces of the vehicle.
Only the ghostly, dead, white fungus giants interrupted the
obscurity of the shrouded plain. It was not cold, but Veg
saw Aquilon shiver as he tightened the pack, picked up the
rifle, and took his bearing from the compass.

'Couldn't you cut across by yourself and bring help?' she
asked without particular hope. 'You could make it in a day
and we'd be safe in the tractor.'

'If I knew the terrain, yes,' Veg said seriously. 'But there
are some bad drop-offs around, worse because you can't see
'em. The camp sits right under a cliff. If something hap-
pened to me, or even if I were delayed only a little, you'd be

finished. With only one real weapon, no food and precious
little water, we can't split up.' He chucked her under the
chin, trying to break the mood. 'Besides, I want you where I
can keep an eye on you.' He pointed across the fog. 'That
way - and pray it stays level after all. Help the lady, Cal.'

Aquilon caught the hint and took hold of the little man's
elbow. They moved out, following Veg's lead. The pace was
slow - hardly two miles an hour, but Cal stumbled almost
immediately. He had discarded the useless glasses, but that
was only part of the problem; he could see well enough at
intermediate range, and wouldn't need to read on the
journey. Sweat beaded his brow as he struggled to advance,
but it was evident that even this slow pace was too much for
his wasted body.

The woman, half a head taller than he and heavier, put
her arm around his waist firmly and half-lifted him, helping
him forward. Cal grimaced at the pressure of her arm but
did not speak. Veg, rifle ready and eyes scanning the trek
facing them, tried not to look back, but he slowed his pace
until a balance was struck.

Two hours later they hove in sight of a group of animals.
'Herbivores,' Veg said. 'No danger.'

'Food,' Aquilon said. 'Why don't we wait here while you
bring back a small one? We could use the break.' She meant
that Cal could use it, principally.

Veg started to say something, then changed his mind. She
had forgotten; that was all. Still, he could bring back a live
one for her.... He slung the pack to the ground and headed
for the herd at a rapid pace, still wearing the rule.

Over twenty miles to go! He could make it so easily ...
and so could Aquilon. But Cal

The trouble was they could not do it at Cal's pace. That
would take three days at least, with the frequent rests, and
while they might last that long without food, the lack of
water would bring them down. He was thirsty already, and
there was only a quart bottle of sterile water, intended for
first-aid use. They would drink that, of course - but for how
long?

Sooner or later it would occur to Cal that he was im-
peding their chances. Then there would really be trouble.
Veg had no intention of deserting his friend. He would
simply have to carry him; maybe that way they could make
good enough time. Aquilon could carry the pack. He'd have
to strip it down, throw out everything they weren't sure
they'd need....

He kicked at a football-sized fungus bulging out of a crev-
ice in the dust. It held its ground and absorbed his boot
spongily, almost tripping him. Veg cursed and recovered his
balance, as angry at himself for taking out his passion on an
innocuous living thing as at it for resisting the blow. There
was transparent moisture dripping from his toe; he had
wounded it after all. He went on, nagged by something but
unable to place it, quite.

He approached the edge of the herd, not bothering to
unstring the rifle. The peaceful herbivores of Nacre were
common, and no threat to anyone. Their flesh was edible,
but he did not propose to slaughter one, not even for Aqui-
lon. She would have to do that herself - and he didn't think
she would.

Like virtually all the animals here, these were one-legged.
He could see several hopping about, covering two or three
feet with each effort. Racers they were not; they did not
travel much, and a herd migrated only gradually in much
the same manner as a dune of sand: one particle at a tune.
There were about fifty members here, and no more than half
a dozen were moving, seeking fresher pasture at the forward
edge. The others were grazing, their long pink breathing gills
extending from the tops of their knoblike heads to give indi-
viduals a faintly rabbit appearance. The group, inspected as
a whole, resembled a field of gently waving grain. He had
heard that those gills extracted water, among other things,
from the atmosphere; too bad human beings couldn't do
that!

The herbivores came in all colors of gray and all sizes of
medium and grew, as nearly as had been determined, for life.
A few were taller than himself and somewhat more massive.

He stooped to pick up a medium-small representative that
looked as though it weighed no more than fifty pounds. He
had had contact with these creatures before, but had never
quite overcome his amazement at the complete alienness of
them.

He put his hands on this one's narrowest part, catching it
just above the circular foot before it could realize what he
was doing and hop away. He heaved. It came up easily,
making no sound. The foot, splayed in a full circle to feed
on the nutrient dust, flopped loosely as he lifted the creature
into the air and held it before him.

The globular body rose in a hump like that of an
octopus, and the single eye bulged placidly. The long breath-
ing gill flowered at an angle now, an undulating mass of fine
fibers.

The waving antenna brushed his face with a damp and
gentle touch, and through it he saw Aquilon coming up to
the herd. 'Your pet!' he shouted, knowing that the noise
would not disturb these creatures; no animal so far dis-
covered on Nacre made any vocal noise or possessed hear-
ing apparatus. It was a silent planet - which, as Cal had
pointed out, was strange, because the perpetual mist made
sight a far less useful perception than it was elsewhere. The
falling dust inhibited light and damped out beams and
signals of any

The distance between himself, and Aquilon had halved,
and she was waving her arms and shouting. 'Veg! Behind
you!'

He whirled, still holding the herbivore. Something
bounded out of the herd, rising far too high to be a normal
member of its company. Sleek and black, its body con-
trasted sharply with the gray shades of its neighbors, too. A
great eye shone from the thing, unnaturally malignant and
totally unlike the empty mirrors of the herbivores. It landed
at the edge of the group nearest Veg and moved toward him,
flattening into a suddenly familiar shape.

'The manta!' Aquilon screamed.

Veg dropped his burden and slid the rifle into one hand

with an experienced twitch of the shoulder. This was the last
thing he had expected, and he felt naked in the presence of
such a menace. A race in the tractor had been one thing; but
to meet it in the open-
The heat chamber of his rifle flared as it built up pressure.
His hands had been doing the right things automatically, as
though they were more eager to kill than he was. It only
took a few seconds for the steam to form - seconds that
seemed very long, right now - but after that the rifle was
good for service limited only by the aim of the marksman
and the quantity of ammunition.

The manta came, shimmying toward the side, incredibly
fast. Now he saw the whiplike tail, and with a sick insight he
realized what that tail could do. He hadn't wanted to fire,
but there was no longer a choice.

The steam hissed as he squeezed the trigger: once, twice.
The manta came on, unhurt. Cursing, Veg ripped an ex-
plosive shell from the stock and clapped it into the auxiliary
chamber. He held back another moment, however, despising
the shell as, at best, unsporting.

The manta was little more than a thin line, head on,
moving now at such a velocity that it was over Veg before he
could aim properly the second time. It passed a foot above
his head - but did not strike.

Now it landed between him and Aquilon, facing her. Veg
saw her recoil in terror from its immense disk, she who had
thought it so beautiful, with the trailing tail and the great eye
that seemed to plummet through its entire length. It was
after her!

Veg fired. This time the manta shook as the shell tore
open its body. It spun, coalescing in mid-air, then fell
heavily and moved no more.

He had killed it after all.

CHAPTER TWO

A JUG OF WINE

THE mountains gave way to the northern lakelands as
Subble guided his flyer west, avoiding the crowded airspace
above Appalachia. Then he cut south across the anti-
pollutant smokestacks of the Midwest and angled on into
the flat expanse of the intensive farmland beyond the Mis-
sissippi. Juggernauts trod along the endless plantations like
mighty harvester ants, far too powerful to be challenged by
barehanded man yet militant in the protection of the ten-
derest shoot of corn.

He drifted across the massed elevated pipelines of the
rapidly depleting Oklahoma oilfields and landed at last
upon one of the towering residentials just north of the Texas
border. There was ample parking space on the broad asphalt
roof of the address in his notes, and he taxied to the visitor's
lot without event. A conveyor took him to the nearest ele-
vator. The layout was standard, if unimaginative; so far
everything was routine.

He stepped out on the twentieth floor down and navigated
the cubistic maze until he found the proper apartment. The
door opened promptly to his summons and warm air puffed
out. A strikingly beautiful woman stood before him, the
image of the girl of Nacre come stunningly to life in the long
skirts and low bodice of a pseudo-gypsy siren. Her long fair
hair was carelessly looped in a crude knot, as though tied in
a preoccupied hurry, but this could not detract appreciably
from the classic lines of her face. She was blue-eyed and
barefooted and gently smiling.

'You are-'

' 'Quilon,' she said immediately. 'Come in. I need you.'

Subble entered, picking up the spring essence of the
simple perfume she wore. His perceptions told him that this
woman was far more complicated and disturbed than Veg
had seen her, but not dangerous in the physical sense. She
was in many ways complimentary to the bluff, powerful
vegetarian, and it was not strange that they were in love.

'I am-'

'One of those agents,' she said. She handed him a folded
stack of material. 'Put this on, please.'

Subble withdrew to her tiny bedroom and changed, set-
ting his inconspicuous trousers and jacket carefully upon
her bed. He did not worry about the things she might dis-
cover therein; only a trained weaponist would recognize the
subtle modifications in cloth and leather, and in any event
he would keep alert.

She had provided him with an archaic, outlandish space
costume of the type reputed to have been employed during
the earliest days of space exploration: cumbersome, heavy
cloth and a bulbous transparent helmet. This was a costume,
however, and hardly mistakable for anything else; the cloth
was porous and the helmet fashioned of fiberglass mesh.

'Good,' she said as he emerged. 'Now stand before that
backdrop and look tired. You're supposed to be the second
man on the moon, back in the 1970's, lost in the shadow
fringe with the sun coming up. You have to find shelter in
six hours or less or Sol will fry you. That's good.'

She had set up an easel and was half-hidden behind a
large canvasboard. Her right hand flirted with color and
image while her left guided him by signals into the exact
posture she desired.

'Turn your handsome face away from me - down a little -
bend your knees - more - good. Hold it there,' she said.
'Now you can talk, or whatever it is you came to do, so long
as you don't violate the pose.'

'You do commercial illustration,' Subble said, not
moving.

'At the moment,' she agreed. 'But I paint all the time,
whether I expect to be paid for it in money or not.'

'You receive payment other than money?' Though she
had positioned him so that he could not watch her now, his
ears and nostrils kept him informed of her exact position
and mood. Her breathing was slightly irregular, her heart-
beat accelerated, and the perfume could not conceal the
odors of nervousness emanating from her. She was not
nearly as sure of herself as she wanted him to believe.

'The best,' she said. 'Peace of mind.' But she was far
from such reward at the moment. 'What do you want with
me?'

'I'm not certain.'

She laughed. 'It is a strange man who says that to me! But
that's right - they make you learn everything for yourself,
don't they? To keep you on your ... toes. I should think
that would be dangerous, though.'

'We are equipped for it.'

She was more at ease now, as though she had scored a
point. 'I can see that. You hold that pose as though you're
a statue. Not even a quiver. It takes a very special control to
do that. But suppose someone simply refused to talk to
you?'

'I can still learn much of what I need to. But I'd much
prefer to have cooperation.'

She was nervous again. 'Change into this,' she said, bring-
ing him another costume.

Subble returned to her room and switched outfits. He
noted that she had none of her own paintings on display
here, and nowhere were there any depicting Nacre.

The new costume was a conservative twentieth-century
business suit, the sole incongruous note a bright campaign
button pinned to the right lapel proclaiming LET'S BACK
JACK!

Aquilon had also changed, and stood in a head-to-toe
scuba-diving rig that appeared to be genuine. The clinging
rubberized suit displayed a figure that required no enhance-
ment. She was one of the healthiest, loveliest women of the

times, judged by his objective standards. It was unusual for
such a creature to bury herself alone.

'This is for a period "confession" reprint,' she said. 'You
just stand there full-face and look interested, as though
about to fall desperately in love with a sweet girl. No, not
lascivious. Interested. You see her as the ideal homemaker,
wife and - No.' She tucked her brush behind her right ear
and stepped from behind the canvasboard. 'Look at me. I am
the future mother of your children.but you aren't in love with
me yet. It's all potential. Raise your eyebrows a little, put
one hand searchingly forward, fingers curved but relaxed,
your weight on the balls of your feet but a trifle over-
balanced as though you are about to take a step. Yes.' She
took a breath which further defined her remarkable bosom.
'Now imagine me in a kitchen apron, ironing your shirts.
This is 1960, you know; everything has to be ironed. It all
has to show on your face, right down to the year and the
season. Spring, of course. You know what they say: the desire
of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is
for the desire of the man. But it has to be clean desire. This
is a clean publication. You have to be the type of man whose
desire the nice girl desires, if you see what I mean. There!
Hold that expression.'

She painted industriously. 'Now show me how you're
going to get information from an uncooperative client,' she
said, her voice suddenly drained of animation. She, like Veg,
demanded personal proof.

Subble watched her and discovered the trap. The board
concealed the main portion of her torso, so that he could not
directly observe the variations in her breathing and posture,
and the opaque suit covered possible skin flushes and
minute muscular reactions, as well as sealing in bodily
odors. She lowered a tinted plastic face mask and breathed
through a functioning oxygen system, so that there were no
hints there either. He could still see her face - but it was as
expressionless as a photograph.

Aquilon knew about special agents.

'Very nice,' he said. 'But the very fact you can turn off

your facial animation gives me a starting point, and even if I
had no other sources I could learn much by studying your
apartment. If the need were urgent, I could strip you and so
reestablish the physical signals. That would be interesting
enough - they'd have to assign the competition handicaps if
you entered a beauty contest. But I repeat: I want only what
you will give me freely.'

She lifted the mask. 'Information, you mean.'

'Certainly.'

'I wonder. Is it true that you are wiped out after each
mission?'

'It is true.'

'Isn't that like dying?'

'No. It's like freedom from dying.'

She shuddered expressively, no longer bothering to con-
trol her physical reactions. 'Why? I mean, what harm can a
few memories do?'

'A great deal. The point is that we are virtually alike -
every single agent - except for slight superficial variations in
skin color, weight, fingerprints, and so on. That's to avoid
the appearance of duplication and lessen notoriety. We are
almost identical where it counts, in mind, physique and
training. If an agent were permitted to retain individual ex-
periences, he would shortly become an individual, and the
objectivity of uniformity would be sacrificed.'

'But some memories might help you do the next job
better.'

'Such memories are erased from the individuals, then im-
planted uniformly in the entire corps.'

She flushed. 'You mean if the computer thought you
should remember me it would put me in thousands of
minds? And every single agent in the world would know
where I lived and... everything?'

He smiled reassuringly. 'It could'

'That's it! That's the expression.'

He held it while she completed her portrait, then went on.
'The computer could spread you across the globe, but it is
unlikely that it would deem so unusual a woman as yourself

to be suitable material for that. You can safely assume that
our personal relationship is private.'

'I'll have to,' she muttered. 'Change again.'

This time it was a scant jungle-man costume, hardly more
than a loin cloth. He had to dangle from a fixture set in the
ceiling, by one hand, while holding aloft a papier-mache
'club' with the other. Aquilon had also changed again, to an
Asiatic toga.

Try to look as though you're swinging on a vine,' she
said. Then, as an afterthought: 'You do have nice mus-
culature.'

'All part of the specifications, ma'am.'

She painted. 'Do they let you live between assignments?
Or is it all work and no play?'

'We are given breaks after completing each mission,'
Subble said. 'There are generally a number of agents of both
sexes in the termination pool. But we live, as you put it, all
the time. We encounter some fascinating people in the line
of duty.' He was still hanging.

'But you can't keep it,' she said. 'They might as well line
you up before a firing squad. And you know extinction is
coming.'

'On the contrary. No need to italicize your words at me,
miss. I told you before that we are free from dying. You
look ahead to a tedious gradual aging and loss of faculties
and inevitable sickness and death. That is a lifelong dying. I
look forward only to a completed mission and a paid va-
cation. I don't have to worry about age or disability, or even
be concerned about the future. Death is not a spectre to me.
I know that all of my conscious life I will be a virtual super-
man facing the world's most intriguing challenges. The best
of any life is reserved for me.'

'Do you realize you've been hanging by one arm for six
minutes?'

'Five minutes, thirty-five seconds at the mark,' he said.
'Mark.'

She looked at her watch. 'You are quite a man. You can
let go now.'

Subble dropped noiselessly to the floor. 'Technically, I'm
not a man, in that sense. I'm a number. I'm identified by a
three-letter code, SUB, with a humanizing suffix. I differ
from SUA or SUC or SUD no more than my code does.'

'I don't believe it,' she said, nettled. 'You must have feel-
ings.'

'Not on duty. After this mission is over, I will have a few
days to remember you and your friend Veg and appreciate
your doubtless charming individual qualities. But at the
moment'

'Oh,' she said, rising to the challenge. 'So you have no
normal human reactions right now. No pleasure, no anger,
no. ...?'

'I have them, but they are completely controlled.'

She was silent a few seconds. 'I have to do a series for a
"Nature" magazine. The law doesn't allow it through the
fax, but it still has a fair mechanical circulation. Just toss
your Tarzan suit over there.'

'You are asking me to pose naked?'

'Unless you have human scruples.' She poised her brush
before a new canvas expectantly.

Subble removed the loincloth.

Aquilon stared at him for thirty seconds before speaking.
'This will illustrate the cover of an issue with a guaranteed
circulation of four hundred and twenty thousand,' she said
at last.

'Agents have appeared on covers before.'

'You go this far - just to obtain the answers to a few
questions?'

'An agent will do anything within reason to maintain a
harmonious relationship and uphold the integrity of the ser-
vice. My body is public property, and you appear to have a
valid use for it. Once you have confidence in me, perhaps
you will no longer wish to withhold the information I need.'

'Put your arms forward as though about to dive into a
pool,' she said. 'Give me a three-quarter view.' Then, as he
posed, she began to talk about herself. 'It's a triangle. Veg
and Cal and I - we're in love. I know that sounds funny. But

I have to choose one of them, and I can't. I just can't make
the decision. That's why we split up, mainly. It just wasn't
possible, together, any more, in spite of - of what happened.
I have to go to one of them - when I can.' She paused
apprehensively. 'How much did Veg tell you?'

'That he loved you. That the three of you were marooned
on Nacre. That he killed a "manta".'

'That was all? Just to the'

'That was all. He felt that was his share, and that the rest
belonged to you and Calvin.'

'Yes ...' She painted quietly for a while. 'Well, now I
have to choose. I might make love with one, but then I'd
have to do it with the other, too, to be fair. That would be
promiscuity, and they'd both know it. I care too much for
them both to hurt them like that. It's too intimate. I could
sleep with someone I didn't care about, because that's only
the body, public property, as you say. It's the emotion that
counts. Who my heart sleeps with.'

She paused again, studying him frankly. 'I could sleep
with you, the sexual part I mean, because I'm not involved
with you. It would just be a physical release. An impersonal
thing. Would you like that?'

'My preferences have no bearing on my duty.'

'So if I offered myself to you, physically right now, you'd
decline?'

'Unless there were legitimate contrary reason, yes.'

'Legitimate reason!'

'Do you wish me to continue this pose?'

'No, but stay where you are. I want to know just how far
this control of yours extends.' She touched her toga and it
unwrapped languorously from her body. She wore nothing
underneath. 'Now take a good look at me.'

Subble obliged. 'Is comment required?'

She sighed. 'You've proved your point, if that isn't an
abysmal pun. You haven't been fooled at all, have you?
You knew I meant to vamp you, to avoid telling you about
Nacre.'

'Veg tried to use his fists.'

'With equivalent success, I'm sure. And Cal will use his
mind. And you'll absorb it all unmoved and complete your
assignment on schedule.'

'I have no schedule. I was impressed by Veg's nature, as I
am by yours. You should not mistake my physical control
for disparagement.'

She marched to her collection of costumes and tossed him
a man's bathrobe. 'Let's get drunk.'

Dressed in HIS and HERS robes, they started for her
kitchenette. She put out a hand. 'Wait.'

He waited.

She made her decision and turned about. 'This way.'

He followed her out the door and down the hall to the
elevator. She punched for the basement forty stories below.
The other passengers stared straight ahead, not deigning to
notice the intimate dishabille: loose hair, bare legs and feet,
matching bathroom attire - but Subble could pick up the
remarks of those who got off. He smiled. The basement did
seem like a peculiar destination for such a couple....

The basement - actually, he was sure, the first of a
number of unnumbered sublevels - was an austere com-
partment opening into several hallways. There was a direc-
tory billboard, but Aquilon ignored it. She led him down
one of the central passages.

Pipes of tremendous girth crossed the low ceiling, and
tunnel-like offshoots led to pits with collections of valves and
indicators. There was a light but pervasive aroma com-
pounded of - he sniffed and isolated the principal com-
ponents - mildew, animal dung, seed pellets, insecticide,
ammonia, machine oil and offal. This would be the area's
intensive livestock production unit; many residentials had
their own, to avoid interstate controls, shipping charges and
taxes.

One other smell: the same suggestion of alienness he had
noted when searching for the vanishing trace of the thing in
Veg's forest. The - creature had been here within a day. Was
that why she had brought him here?

At the end of the hall a man sat at a desk poring over a

chart. He looked up as they approached. He smiled. 'Good
to see you, 'Quilon,' he said, rubbing his puffy eyes. Subble
read the ingrained fatigue in him, the subdued desperation
and misery. This man was unhappily married, sick of his
job, bored and ridden with guilt. His pulse quickened as
Aquilon came near him. He was not smitten with her, being
too realistic for that, but he appreciated her physical qual-
ities fiercely. He daydreamed, almost certainly, of an
eventual liaison - but that was not the source of the guilt.

' 'Lo, Joe,' Aquilon replied, and smiled. The man's ex-
pression did not change, but Subble picked up the electric
glow that shot through his physique and vitalized him; he
was a sucker for the attentions of a lovely woman, par-
ticularly one so suggestively garbed. Aquilon, obviously,
was using him; her smile was a cynical, calculated thing, as
though the current were controlled by rheostat - yet she was
prepared to arouse and oblige his passions in a certain not
unlikely circumstance. She, like Veg, had come to terms with
certain necessities - whatever these might be. It would be
necessary to find out why she was cultivating Joe, Subble
realized; probably it did involve the alien presence. The
thing was hiding there, and a report by this man could
betray it. 'I'd like to show my guest the farm, if it's all right.'

Joe looked at Subble. 'What's a government agent doing
here?' he demanded suspiciously. 'We're inspected regu-
larly. We're a top-classification unit.'

'Please,' Aquilon said gently, leaning over the desk. The
man basked in her warmth, ready to yield her anything.

'But it's all in order,' he said in a final defensive reflex as
he returned to his chart.

They entered the unit - and the smell magnified tremen-
dously. 'He's really a computer programmer,' she said as she
led the way down a narrow, straw-lined corridor. 'But they
put him here because he was assigned to streamline the
farm. He has to be thoroughly familiar with it before he can
set up new flow charts. The distribution of feed, the per-
centage of calcium in the formula, the intensity of the light
- the stock is sensitive to little things and the program has to

be modified for each unit or the profit ratio suffers.' Her
tone showed that she had little sympathy with the suffering
profit ratio. 'It's all automated, of course, so he's the only
one on duty except for a mechanic, until he gets the job
done. That makes him the veterinarian, now, even though he
hasn't been trained for it. And he hates it.'

Subble nodded. Such things were common. Programmers
too often wound up in outre situations, as did agents. Yet
the popular imagination clothed them both in glamor and,
oddly, a certain concurrent dislike.

'These are our bunnies,' she said.

They stood in a well-lighted room decked on either side
with lined cages, the lowest set so close to the center that
there was less than a yard to walk in. The second layer was
set back a foot, and the third another foot, so that there was
a good deal of space at head height, just under the swishing
air-ducts. The room was not air-conditioned; these ap-
peared to be oxygenating units only, and it was hot. The
odor was stifling.

'These are the growing hutches,' she explained, "See, they
have no floors, just wire mesh so the droppings can fall
through. The nesting boxes are more comfortable - they
have solid plastic at the bottom and genuine bedding. How
would you like to spend your life in one of these?'

Subble inspected the nearest cage at her direction. A con-
veyor-trough brought the nutrient pellets through and a
drip-valve provided water. Another conveyor transported
the descending dung away slowly. The cage was about four
feet long and half as wide with clearance barely high enough
for the occupants to assume a normal stance. Within it were
a mother rabbit, pure white, and her litter of nine pink-eared
babies.

'She has to raise twelve families in two years then she
goes to the slaughter herself,' Aquilon said. 'Her pelt will
find its way into some man's hat, and her delicate flesh will
be packaged as quality broiler. She will never see honest
daylight, and her only moment of pleasure, if that's what it
is, is when the buck covers her. He doesn't get much leisure

- he gets fed strictly according to the number of does he
services, and if he falters, that's the end.'

She got ready to tell him something important, but balked
and led him into another area. What was it that worried
these people so? Veg, had not been frightened for himself,
and neither was Aquilon, but both were frightened by some-
thing.

'Antibiotics are put in their food, but still a lot die in the
cages. Flies get in somehow, and mold. Fungus pops up
everywhere, and it seems to mutate so rapidly that they can't
keep up with it.'

'As on Nacre?'

The question disturbed her. 'Sometimes I wish it were.
This is the henhouse.'

Here the lights were low and red. Subble had no difficulty,
but Aquilon had to wait a moment while her vision adjusted.
'It's so they won't flutter about and peck each other,' she
said. 'Some are de-beaked anyway, or given blinders; but
with only four to a cage there isn't too much trouble. It's
all down to a science. The music helps, too.'

Sure enough: the speakers were playing Bach's 'Sheep
May Safely Graze', as though sweet melodies could add to
the freshness of the eggs.

'They aren't sheep, they can't graze, and they certainly
aren't safe,' Aquilon remarked sourly.

The strains and harmonies were incongruous in the gloom
and stink of the battery. The cages were similar to those for
the rabbits except that their mesh floors were tilted to make
the eggs roll into external troughs where they were borne
gently away.

'What do you think of it?' she inquired as they proceeded
to another room.

'Good, standard outfit,' he said. 'Seems as efficient as the
state of the art can make it.'

She went on in silence.

The slaughtering section was more active, though also
fully automated. The selected young chickens were fun-
nelled into cul-de-sacs, urged on by moving brushes, where a

machine looped cord about their feet, lifted them squawking
and fluttering, and shackled them upside-down to an ele-
vated conveyor-rod. At the end of the line another machine
caught their struggling heads and slit their throats. The
blood spouted into yet another trough.

'They aren't even stunned first,' Aquilon said, shudder-
ing. 'Because their flapping helps the blood flow out more
quickly, or something. I tried to have Joe write a stunner
into the program, and he wanted to, but he said he'd be fired
if he tried to include anything that would increase the
cost like that. He's trapped in this mess, just as we all
are.'

Subble nodded agreement, though the realities of the situ-
ation did not strike him as a moral issue. A slaughter oper-
ation was not suitable for a man with scruples about pain -
but the fate of a worker fired for inefficiency was not a san-
guine one.

'If they don't die soon enough,' she continued tightly, the
scalding tank takes care of that detail. Or the defeatherer, or
the eviscerator. Most of the chickens, I'm sure, are dead by
the time they are packaged, anyway.' She no longer tried to
play down the irony. 'Still, their lot is better than that of the
calves or pigs.'

Subble saw that she was quite upset about it. This was
not what she had intended to show him originally, but
the issue was a serious one with her. She must have
looked for a place to hide the alien - and found this,
then become concerned with the conditions she found in the
farm.

'Let's get out of here,' she said. She had changed her mind
again, still hesitating to reveal the secret overtly, though she
must have realized that he would become aware of it. What
held her back?

Back in the apartment she washed convulsively and in full
view, as though her body had been soiled by flying blood.
'Do you understand, now?' she asked as she toweled arms
and breasts and donned a new bathrobe.

He stripped and washed, knowing that she would find him

contaminated if he did not. 'Why you have not eaten meat
or eggs in several months? No,' he said, giving her a chance
to explain it herself. She needed a case to argue before she
could settle down.

'If we can do this to our animals today, what will we be
doing to ourselves tomorrow?' she demanded. Her voice
was bitter, her eyes becoming red. 'Don't you see how close
we are already? This whole district - one mass of hutches
for people, tier upon tier, each one fed by piped-in pellets
called groceries and cleaned by communally flushing toilets.
Every mind distracted by standard-formula canned enter-
tainment that someone has programmed so there won't be
too much fuss. They have to give tranquilizing drugs to the
chickens so they won't turn to cannibalism when they get
too crowded in their dark unnatural habitat - and we
have drugs too, don't we, so we can stand it all a little
longer.'

She walked jerkily to the kitchenette and brought out a
quart bottle of gin. 'Come, deaden your mind with me,' she
invited, pouring two four-ounce portions.

'It is no kinder in nature,' Subble pointed out. 'What man
does in the effort to feed himself is only a more disciplined
extension of'

'I know,' she exclaimed. 'I know, I know! It's absolutely
logical, this terrible cruelty. So we have to starve the little
calves of iron so their meat will be white, and force naturally
cleanly pigs to wallow in filth to save a few pennies. There's
reason to it all - but where is the heart in it? Isn't there some
better way than this?'

'Emotionalism doesn't help.'

'As chickens to the slaughter,' she declaimed, brandishing
her empty glass, 'so mankind to the Bomb! I'm ready! Just
water me and breed me and pluck me and'

'If it is any consolation, I understand that intensive farm-
ing is on the decline,' Subble said, disturbed by her attitude.
'The need to rework the programs is evidence of that. Syn-
thetics are more efficient.'

'It doesn't matter,' she said, collapsing into despair. 'I still

can't stand to be a member of a species that brutalizes this
way. Veg is right. I'm an - an omnivore.'

'All of us must be what we are - and it is not entirely evil.
There are redemptions, even glories. You know that.'

'My mind, not my heart,' she said, sipping at another
glass. 'Ignorance is not bliss. I never knew what I was, until
Nacre. Now I wish I could undo it all - a lifetime of
thoughtless evil. I wish I were back there, the three of us
back on Nacre, to stay forever and ever.' She changed the
subject abruptly. 'You know, Veg called us "Beauty, Brains
and Brawn",' she said, demure for the moment. 'I think of it
as physical, emotional and intellectual - except I have the
order mixed up - well, you know. But really it's - do you
know Omar Khayyam?'

'The eleventh century astronomer-poet? Contemporary
and friend of Hasan the Assassin, who'

'Stop it!' she said with flash ferocity. 'I mean the Rubaiyat
- the poetry. "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A
Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou." '

' "Beside me singing in the Wilderness - Oh, Wilderness
were Paradise enow!" That would be Edward FitzGerald's
rendition, third edition, I believe.'

She stared somberly at him. 'You're getting even for all
that posturing I made you do. All right, have your fun.
What is the difference between editions?'

'According to the literal translation of Heron-Allen, the
words are: "I desire a little ruby wine and book of verses/
Just enough to keep me alive, and half a loaf is needful; /
And then, that I and thou should sit in a desolate place/ Is
better than the kingdom of a sultan." McCarthy had two
prose variants. Whinfield an alternate, Graves another, and
FitzGerald's own first and second editions differed some-
what. Do you wish them quoted?'

'Why didn't you become an English teacher? You cer-
tainly have the touch for ruining something beautiful!' But
her desolate mood had been broken.

'There may at some time be occasion to impersonate such
a person. But more importantly, familiarity with literature,

among other things, can lead to better comprehension of the
key aspects of a complex situation. So we are educated
rather carefully in this respect.'

'The way my knowledge of anatomy helps me as an
artist?'

'Something like that.'

'Well, just don't try that stuff on Cal. He'll stand you on
your literary head before you get the whole quotation out.'

'I'll remember,' he said, smiling.

She was on her third unadulterated glass. 'As soon as I
saw your face,' she murmured into it, 'I knew what you were
and what you wanted. But it isn't as simple as you think. No,
I don't suppose you care whether it's simple or not. But this
is - well, I just can't tell you what it is. Maybe if I drink
enough I'll tell you. Maybe you'll have to make love to me
after all to make me tell. You could force yourself, I'm sure.
Maybe I'll just kill myself.'

'Are you willing to show me the paintings?'

She looked at him sharply. 'What paintings?'

'The ones you don't have on your bedroom wall.'

'What's the use,' she said, plopping an ice sphere into her
gin. 'He was bound to think of that. He's an agent.' She
stood up unsteadily and went to a locked closet, rummaging
in her purse for the key. 'I haven't shown these to anyone.'

She brought several large canvases to the table, propping
them against its leg. She held up the first. 'That's the herbie
herd,' she said. 'I repainted from my field notes.'

Subble studied it with interest. Aquilon had great talent,
and her heart and soul had gone into this painting.

The landscape presented was dark: the misty world of
Nacre, named for its brightness in space and not from the
surface denied that light. The bloated fungi Veg had des-
cribed loomed in the background. In the foreground was
the herd: standing blobs like squid with their tentacles fused
into fleshy columns. The pink gills were so finely drawn they
seemed to wave.

But it was the technique that touched him more than the
fidelity to an alien landscape. Somehow Aquilon had put

emotion into this painting and made it live. It stirred him far
more than her earlier nudity had, for this was genuine and
without affectation. He glanced at her with a respect he had
not felt before.

She brought up the second item: a smaller sheet glued to a
board. 'This is the original,' she said. 'I did it on the moun-
tain ledge after the first day's hike.'

Subble did not remind her that this had not been in the
segment Veg had reported. 'You paint when you're tired?'

'I paint because I'm tired,' she said quietly. Her speech
was becoming slow as the alcohol reached it. 'How else can I
show my feelings?'

She reached for the bottle again, but Subble caught her
hand. 'I'd rather you didn't,' he said. 'Alcohol has little
effect on me because my subconscious is aligned with my
conscious. There are no barriers to break down. But you'

'What, feelings now? What do you care what I do?'

Subble did not reply immediately. He contemplated the
picture, thinking of the circumstances of its creation. They
must have been climbing, and Aquilon dead tired, for she
had had to help Cal. Unable to relieve her feelings in normal
expression, she had turned to her painting. Her eyes had
focused on the phantom darkening gray of the sky while her
brush formed a scene. The painting, though done on the
spot, had to be from memory or imagination, for the
haze, formed from the microscopic debris of the helio-
animalcules high in the atmosphere - this much he under-
stood about the planet - combined with the closing dusk to
obscure everything more than a few feet from the open ledge.
But it had taken shape steadily: an image of the trail those
three had covered in the last hour, creeping around the
corners of the mountain, fungus clinging like stylized puffs
of cotton.

The trail over which they had traveled would have been
tortuous and ugly, and Aquilon's rendition of it was strik-
ing. Her picture was a composite of all the features of the
climb. The fatigue of the steep ascent was there, and the
hardness of bare rock; the nausea of tired feet skidding on

the slime of crushed fungus. There was a hint of the hope-
lessness of a man who lacked the strength or the will to live,
and perhaps also that of a girl who would not, then, smile.

But the painting itself was magnificent.

And had she then set it aside, on that far world, and
leaned back against the vertical stone wall rising from the
inner ledge? The pale blue rock of the mountain she de-
picted would have contrasted gently with the dark haze of
the sky beyond the drop-off, and here, ringed by the billow-
ing white fungus, the lonely beauty of such a woman might
have been at peace.

'When you tried to seduce me,' he said slowly, 'I was
required to resist. That did not mean that I found you unat-
tractive, or that I was indifferent to your welfare, as I tried
to advise you. Now that you have shown me what is within
you, I ask you not to demean it by - this.' He indicated the
bottle, and discovered that he still held her hand.

This was an incidental intimacy more penetrating than all
the dialogue and nakedness they had been practicing. She
looked at him, realizing this, and gently disengaged herself.
'A jug of gin,' she said. 'I guess we got off on the wrong foot.
I'm sorry.' She did not touch the bottle.

The third picture was quite different. Savagery dominated
it. A monster glared from a single eye, and behind it rose the
head of an incredible snake, all teeth and no eyes or nose.
Subble had never seen a combination so menacing.

'The omnivore of Nacre,' Aquilon said.

The last painting showed the manta, immediately recog-
nizable as the creature Veg had described. It was in full
motion, probably as seen from the retreating tractor, and
strangely beautiful.

'This is my mission,' he said, studying it.

'I know.' She laid her head on the table and cried.

Subble stood up and put the paintings away. He walked
around the apartment and looked at the collected works,
largely on mundane topics. Few of them had the magic of
the four they had just looked at together. Aquilon had
hinted that she disliked her present life, and her work pro-

claimed it. Her heart was on Nacre, with the two men she
had known there and the creatures she remembered.

Behind him, she stirred, throwing away the bottle and
going into the bathroom. He heard the water splashing
wastefully, and knew she was trying to be sick.

He came across the pictures she had made of him: a
spaceman staggering over a bleak moonscape, a handsome
twentieth-century gentleman, an apeman swinging from a
jungle tree, and a diver au naturel. Each likeness was accu-
rate and detailed - and increasingly, from the first to the last,
the special touch was there. The spaceman could have been
anybody, but the diver was Subble. Not just an agent -
Subble the individual. And, odd as it was to apply the
thought to a picture of a naked man, Aquilon had put her-
self into it. She was astonishingly quick, for these were not
mere sketches, and her skill was natural, not trained; her
work really did reflect what was within her.

Subble was no artist, but interpretation of illustration was
one of a number of things he was equipped to do with fair
competence. He could learn a great deal about the character
and mood of the artist by studying the technique.

He stood for some time contemplating the paintings.

His clothing still lay on the bed. He went to it.

Aquilon lay beside his suit, watching him. 'You're giving
up?'

He picked up his clothing, intending to take it to the other
room before changing. 'Two men already love you.'

'And now you are modest,' she said. 'You don't want me
to see your body again.'

He walked to the door.

'Come here,' she said.

He set his burden upon the chair beside the door and went
to her.

Aquilon threw her arms about him and kissed him, draw-
ing him down to lie beside her. 'You know we can't make
love now,' she said.

'I know.'

They lay embraced, the bathrobes decorously closed.

'What happened to your invincibility?' she murmured in his
ear.

'I saw what you are.'

She nestled her head against his shoulder. 'If only I knew
what I am, I wouldn't be here.'

'You are a truly beautiful woman. Your body has nothing
to do with it.'

His shoulder became damp from her tears. 'Will you help
me?'

'I will try.'

'If only I were beautiful!' she exclaimed. 'But I'm ugly in
a way nobody can cure. If only I could choose, one way or
the other. Veg and Cal are clean, in their ways, but I'm duty,
and I just can't choose which one to - to inflict myself upon.
And now I've come between them, because I can't decide.
And I can't even'

She tensed and bit the hard muscles of his shoulder. 'I
can't tell you that. It's up to Cal. All I can do is'

She paused, then rolled onto her back, closed her eyes,
took his hand and told him about the omnivore.

*	*          *

Cal was breathing in pitiful gasps, but he spoke as soon as
Veg was gone. 'You shouldn't have done that, 'Quilon.'

Aquilon plumped down beside him and delved into the
pack. 'He can handle that sort of thing much better alone,'
she said. 'You and I would only be in the way.' She unfolded
a survival cup and drew out the container of water. 'You'd
better drink some of this.'

'I don't think you understand,' Cal said carefully, waving
away the drink. 'How well do you know Veg?'

She looked up in surprise. 'Why, for three months of
course. Ever since I joined the expedition. We've gotten
along well enough. But I thought you two were old
friends.'

'More than that,' he said morosely. 'We are a team:
Brains and Brawn ... and now Beauty, of course.' Aquilon
flushed gently. 'Didn't you realize'

Her flush paled all the way. 'I forgot!' She scrambled
lithely to her feet. 'I'll go after him. I never meant to'

'Please.' Cal gestured her back tiredly. 'He would never
kill a harmless creature. He will decide it was a joke.
Perhaps he will actually bring back a herbivore for you to
admire. Perhaps it is just as well.' He looked at the water she
still held and turned away. 'We can hardly have come three
miles. I can't make it.'

'Of course you can,' Aquilon said. 'I'll help you.' But she
was tired already. Twenty-one miles?

Cal shook his head regretfully and tried to smile. 'It's not
that, entirely. I could walk the distance, perhaps with your
help. But you see, I can't eat, either.'

'You mean you're another'

'No. It becomes... complicated... to explain. I can't eat
off the land, as you might, and I have no supply of my own. I
can't survive very long without it. The water might help, but
I'll be dead long before we reach camp.'

Aquilon opened her mouth but was unable to speak.

'Don't feel that way,' Cal said softly. 'I brought it on
myself when I insisted upon coming along. It was a cal-
culated risk. I knew the moment the tractor failed that it was
the end of me. The two of you will have a better chance if
you don't wait for me to die.'

'Cal' She faltered. 'I hardly know you as I thought I did,
but' She waved her hands in the air, characteristically
trying to shape a concept that would not fit into words. 'I
just can't leave you here, no matter what. The omnivore'

The little man shrugged. 'I can only tell you that I have
wanted to die for some tune. Now fate has given me the
opportunity. I'm not being sacrificial. For me, the end is
clear - and I want to meet it alone.'

Aquilon stared at him, feeling the pupils of her eyes con-
tracting to black pits in the pallor of her face. She tried to
control her physical reactions, but she had been hit too sud-
denly by too much. Cal's gaze did not falter. He was not an
old man, but the narrow lines about his eyes and mouth
tokened appalling suffering. No, he was not being sacrificial.

She set down the cup, knowing that he had refused to
drink so that he would die more rapidly. 'I'll go get Veg,' she
said, unable to face him longer.

'Strange,' Cal said as he watched Aquilon work. If this
creature is a true carnivore'

Aquilon did not look up from the carcass. Veg had
dragged it to their 'camp' and this surprising development
had postponed discussion of Cal's fate for the time being.
'We really can't tell, can we?' she asked. 'We know the
signals for Earth animals - the type of teeth, and so on - but
this one doesn't have any teeth. I'm hoping that the lab
experts will be able to tell from my pictures. But if it isn't
like the herbivore or omnivore'

'Call it a paleontologist's hunch,' Cal said with animation.
'This has the feel of a carnivore. The sleekness of it, the
speed, the armament - look at the cutting edge of that tail! -
this thing is organized to prey on the run. But what bothers
me is, if it is our carnivore, why weren't the herbivores
afraid of it? It must have been hiding right inside the herd.'

'You know, he's right,' Veg said, surprised. 'You saw it
first 'Quilon. You say it came out of the bunch. But it just
isn't natural for herbies not to be afraid of the hunter.'

Aquilon looked up this time. 'Herbies?'

'Well, what would you call them? You named the manta.'

'All right,' she said. 'Herbies.'

'Don't smile, now.'

Aquilon didn't smile.

'Unless they knew it was impossible to get away,' Cal
mused. 'Its speed is fantastic.'

'But it only came out when we got there,' Aquilon pointed
out. 'Why did it attack us, when the ... herbies ... were so
much easier to catch?'

'It wanted to race again,' Veg said. 'Find out how it made
out when we didn't have our machine along. Like a dog.' He
became sober, for had he believed that, he would not have
surmounted his aversion to taking its life. 'But we can't
afford that kind of race, with it or the omnivore.'

There was silence for a time. Mention of the omnivore
had a tempering effect.

'This eye,' Aquilon said. 'I've never seen anything like it.
It's almost as massive as the brain - and that brain is heavily
convoluted.'

'That, too, bothers me,' Cal admitted. 'I wish I could
focus on the details, but without my glasses'

Veg looked at the water container and put it aside re-
gretfully. 'Just how well do you figure it sees?'

'The eye is almost nine inches long and three in diameter,'
Aquilon said seriously. The sharp knife in her hand flashed
as she aimed the spotlight at it and dexterously severed
tissues. 'There are so many major nerve trunks connecting it
to the brain that it's almost impossible to tell where one
leaves off and the other begins. The eye itself is filled with
some sort of refractive fluid. It's almost like an electronic
tube. There's no guessing its properties - but my estimate is
that the manta can see a great deal better than we can.'

'I agree,' Cal said. His whole attitude was different when
he had a problem to wrestle with. 'This entire thing is an
astonishing'

'Barely an hour of daylight left, as I make it,' Veg inter-
rupted. 'We have to move. We don't want to be caught in the
open plain at night.'

Cal frowned. 'Veg, I want to tell you'

' 'Quilon, you take the pack, if you can carry it; I'll
handle Cal.' Veg picked up the smaller man and hoisted him
over his shoulders with careful strength. 'We lost some tune,
here, but we can make it up if we move right along.'

Aquilon silently rolled up her anatomical sketches,
plunged the dissection knife into the ground to clean it, and
struggled into the straps. Veg set the pace, a good
four miles an hour, burden and all. Cal didn't try to speak
again.

There was a single half-hearted trail up the side of the
mountain ridge, twisting narrowly among the rainbow fungi
and over the ledges and slopes. At the foot the fungus was
brilliant - horns, spires, skyscrapers of it, layer upon layer

like a candy fairyland; but two miles up only tired white
blobs clung to the ledges, unable to take firm hold on the
outcroppings of rock and unwilling to surrender the slim
beach-head that they had. Even the dust seemed sparse and
dry.

It was a tortuous ascent - yet something had made the
trail, and something must use it still. And it led, generally, in
the direction they were going.

They sat propped against the mountain at dusk, recov-
ering from the exertion. Veg had not complained, but Cal
looked bad and Aquilon hurt all over from the chafing
weight of the pack. The air was cooler now, but this only
seemed to intensify her thirst; no one would touch the quart
of water.

Veg lifted one of the football fungi from its precarious
perch. 'You know, I lacked one of these, and my toe was
wet.'

Cal lifted his head. 'Give me,' he said.

Veg passed it over and the little man squeezed it experi-
mentally. A few drops of fluid fell to the ground. 'Let's look
at this,' he said.

Aquilon passed him a cup and he squeezed some more,
letting the juice collect. 'Here,' Veg said. He took the fungus
and pressed with both hands.

Liquid spurted between his fingers, rilling the cup and
overflowing onto his legs. 'It's a water-sponge!' he ex-
claimed.

Cal held the brimming vessel and looked into its depths.
The fluid was almost transparent. He sniffed it. He put the
cup to his lips.

'Hey!' Veg and Aquilon cried together.

'Water,' Cal said complacently. 'We have to be practical.
If I survive it, we have a usable source. You two share the
jug. By the time you need more, either you'll have it or your
load will be lighter.'

Aquilon looked at Veg and he looked at her. Cal was
being practical, all right. He claimed to want to die, and
without water he certainly would. He had nothing to lose

from experimentation - and perhaps could gain a reprieve
for them all.

They watched him drink down the cupful.

'I don't remember any mountain between us and the
base,' Aquilon said doubtfully. 'Are you sure the
compass' She was fishing for a diversion from the morbid
wait they were involved in.

'The compass is correct,' Cal said, stretching out comfort-
ably. 'It works on the gyro-vector principle. This one was set
at the base; as long as it runs, it has to be accurate.'

Veg looked at the forbidding trail ahead. 'I wish they'd
made the distress signal on the gyro-victim principle, or
whatever it is,' he muttered. 'Still almost twenty miles to go.
Straight up and down, I figure.'

That brought the conversation to a halt. The dusk was
intensifying slowly, but little time remained for them to find
a suitable location for the night.

'No time for talk,' Veg said. 'If we can find a good level
ledge or somewhere safe, we'll be okay. 'Quilon, leave that
pack there; I'll come back for it. But we'd better ditch any-
thing we can spare. You take the rifle and some ammo' He
browsed through the pack, searching for things to remove.
Soon there was a meager pile beside the fog-pistol. 'No om-
nivores here,' he said, seeing her glance at it.

She started to protest, but realized that she lacked the
strength to haul either the pack or the surplus items farther.
'You drink the water, then,' she said.

He nodded, to her surprise, and upended the quart. She
was sure he wasn't being selfish, though her thirst abruptly
multiplied; he had something else in mind. Possibly he in-
tended to conserve his strength to carry her, if Cal

Veg was already on the move. She dropped the strap and
followed him meekly up the mountain.

They climbed. Veg, indefatigable, carried his companion
without seeming to lessen the pace at all, and Aquilon, pack-
less as she was, strained to keep up. Night tightened about
them; the mist seemed to take on a more physical substance
and close in until little beyond the immediate trail was

visible. The dust stirred up by their feet coated her body
with grime. The path went on, rising to its hidden climax.

'Luck,' Veg exclaimed. Aquilon, mistaking the word,
caught up to him and looked ahead. They had come to an
ideal ledge, hardly more than a widening of the path, but flat
and almost level. The mountain sheered off so sharply above
and below that it would be exceedingly difficult for any noc-
turnal prowler to approach them unaware.

Veg set Cal down. 'Got to pick up that pack,' he said to
Aquilon, and disappeared into the night.

'Take the rifle!' she called after him. It was the one thing
she had made certain not to leave behind, though even its
slight weight had proved to be an enormous encumbrance at
this pace. But he was gone, his quick heavy footsteps already
muffled in the blank trail below.

Cal remained where he was, asleep or unconscious. Aqui-
lon took off her blouse, afraid to think what his condition
might mean, and rolled it up to place under his head so that
he would not breathe the dust. She brought out her brush
and sketching pad; these, too, she never forgot.

Cal opened his eyes a few minutes later to see her paint-
ing. 'My God - where do you find the energy to paint?'

'Your god?' she replied, puzzled, but thrilled to realize
that he was better, not worse. Every moment that passed,
now, was evidence that the sponge-fungus juice was safe to
drink. 'You have such quaint expressions.'

He did not deign to reply, but watched her with a half-
smile.

Aquilon faced the emptiness beyond the fungus-encrusted
perimeter and stroked the brush across the surface of the
canvasite. Color came once more in magical mechanism -
but the mechanism stemmed from technology and the magic
was her own. The brush was a compact, highly refined in-
strument, a sorcerer's wand in her practiced fingers. A touch
on one of the concealed selection spots could produce and
blend any combination of colors in the visible spectrum and
feed it through the bristles in meager or generous flow. Veg
had marveled that she could perform these shifts of hue and

density so subtly, and she had told him that the brush was
really an extension of her arm. That, said in jest, was close
enough to the truth; she was no longer conscious of the
control she exerted. She willed a shade of gray, it came;
royal purple, it was there. The brush might as well have been
programmed directly to her brain, or perhaps her soul, her
creative being; the images she saw merged into a grand
whole that reflected in the canvas.

People always asked her why she didn't use a camera.
How could she explain to them the difference between a
living brush and a dead machine? It was said that the artist
distorted his image, while the camera was exact - but the
truth was that the artist captured the living essence while the
camera recorded one dead still-image, a mounted fragment
of the animated series that was reality. In life there were no
frozen scenes. If the lines of her brush were not as literal as
those of the photograph, it was because the lines of life were
less literal than those of death. By the time a living thing
could be reduced to formula, it was no longer living.

But she had given up trying to explain this concept to
people. Cal would comprehend it, and therefore he had
never needed to ask. Veg had probably never thought about
the matter; he accepted things as they were, and that too was
good.

For the others - she murmured technical things, such as
the fragility of good equipment and perishability of photo-
graphic emulsion; the distortion induced by alien radiation
and wavelengths, the awkwardness of carrying heavy sup-
plies and setting them up in emergency situations. 'How
could you make a color plate of an alien creature who ap-
peared for only half a second unexpectedly, and never
again?' she demanded. 'But the brush is even slower!' the
nameless arguer insisted. 'Not for me.' She meant that she
could hold the image in her mind and paint it accurately
before it faded, but they didn't understand.

No - the brush was compact and limitless, as the mind was
limitless, and it would never be replaced by machine pro-
cessing. Not on the frontier. Just as man would never be

superseded by automation, where it counted. The machines
and machine minds had tried to unravel Nacre - and the
insidious molds and fungi had silenced them, while the ex-
plorer-colonists suffered and died.

'You match your painting,' Cal said sincerely.

Aquilon turned away from him, overcome by an emotion
she did not understand.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't mean to hurt you. You and
your work are elegant. No man could look upon either and
not respond.'

She put away her painting, but continued to look over the
edge. There was nothing there to see; it was easy to believe
that it was not a drop-off but a celestial curtain enclosing the
ledge. There were no stars, of course. 'Do you love me?' she
asked, surprising herself.

'I'm afraid I do.'

'That's really why you came - on the tractor.'

He did not deny it.

She faced him again, knowing that her face was now no
more than a pale blur shadowed by her hair. The fungi
around the fringe of their little camp were luminescent, and
soft pastels glowed in silent levels, red, yellow, blue and
green. She wished she had realized this before she put away
her painting; but probably the effect did not materialize
until darkness was complete. The colors seemed bright, but
were not; Cal was visible only as a darkness cutting off the
decorations.

'Cal,' she whispered, sounding like a frightened little girl.
'Cal - would you love me if I were not beautiful?'

'I would love you.'

She went to him, then, finding his hands in the dark and
holding them in hers. 'When I was six,' she said, 'I was
pretty. Then the virus came. I was only sick for a day - but
after that... I didn't even know....'

"The sickness of our time,' Cal murmured. ' "A terrible
beauty is bom."'

'I - I thought I was smiling,' she said. 'And they
screamed. Every time I was happy, they beat me, and I

didn't know why. I had to learn never to smile...' She
caught her breath. 'And they - they named me after the
Northwest wind... the cold north wind....'

He stroked her hair. 'That was cruelty.'

'They knew, while I was all confused....'

' "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of
passionate intensity." Forgive me, 'Quilon, for retreating to
literature, but I cannot improve upon William Butler Yeats.
There is too much sorrow in our existence.'

'I don't want William Butler Yeats!' she flared. 'I want
your

'Yet you would change me,' he reminded her gently.

She bowed her head so that the blonde hair obscured any
of her face that might still be visible, still holding one of his
hands. 'We're different, you and I and Veg. We look ...
normal... but we're not. We're torn and frightened and so
very much alone....'

That is a half-truth, 'Quilon. We'

She laid her head on his shoulder, forgetful of his weak-
ness. 'I never realized that before. That there were others.
We need each other, Cal, because we're only half-people by
ourselves. You don't have the right to die, not by yourself,
no matter what happened to you'

Suddenly, surprisingly, she was sobbing. Cal put his arms
around her, leaned back against the rock and the resilient
molds upon it, and continued to stroke her fine hair. His
manner showed that he had been touched, but remained re-
signed.

'I wish I could smile again....' she said into his shoulder.

Aquilon woke when Veg's little spotlight played over
them. Cal lolled against the rock; he had been too polite to
ask her to move, and one of his hands still rested on her
bare back. He too came awake, slowly.

'None of that now, friend,' Veg said, not unkindly. Tut
her down and come over here. We have a problem.'

Aquilon sat up, lifted Cal's head and rearranged the
wadded shirt so that he could face Veg without moving; but

he elected to get up anyway. She shrugged and remained to
put on her blouse. There seemed to be no doubt now: the
fungus water was a success.

Veg set the pack down and flashed the light on it. 'Do you
see that?' he asked gravely.

'Somebody cut the straps!'

Veg laughed, a little hollowly. 'Something, more likely,'
he corrected Cal. 'Genuine surplus alligator-hide leather
straps. Never liked 'em much myself, but you know I didn't
do that. I had a terrible time toting that bundle all the way
up here, and holding the beam too, to see the trail. Had to
hold everything in my arms.'

'But what could have'

'Who else but Brother Manta?'

Aquilon considered, still on the far side of the shelf. 'Yes,
the manta could have done it. That means there're more
than one in this area. But I really don't see why... and why
just the straps?'

'It's just as well those creatures aren't equipped to climb
very well,' Cal said.

Veg took him by the shoulders and turned him around to
face the trail below. Aquilon looked past them in the same
direction.

There, less than twenty feet away, at the edge of the shelf,
a single luminous eye was watching them.

Morning: the eye remained. They had slept, fitfully, under
its awesome scrutiny. There was nothing else to do. Veg
refused to fire at it, and they knew they could not escape it.
This, she thought, might be the attitude of the herbivores:
why flee or fight such a creature? Neither attempt could
help.

By daylight there was certainty. It was the eye of another
manta, perhaps the third they had seen, hunched near the
end of their little plateau. Its stationary form was not so
frightening, but knowing what they did of its nature they
were hardly able to ignore it, either.

Aquilon got up, shaking off the inevitable film of dust

and stretching her limbs in a natural but dazzling manner. 'I
wish we'd saved the other one for food,' she said. 'I can
mend the pack, but we still have to eat.'

'We can try some of the white fungus,' Veg said. 'If the
water's good, maybe the rest of it is too. That'll take care of
us, at least until we get to the base.'

'But even Earth mushrooms can kill you, and many of
these are worse,' Aquilon protested. 'How can we take the
chance?' She was hungry enough to do it, however.

'I tried some last night,' Veg said, a little sheepishly.
'Tasted terrible, but didn't hurt me. Better than the dust.'

So he had followed Cal's example that quickly! 'The
dust?' she asked, shocked. 'You tried eating'

'The dust is organic,' Cal said. 'The sun never touches the
surface of Nacre. That's why you don't see anything green,
except as an occasional fungus decoration. But the living
cells drift down steadily. Highly nutritious sediment, if you
can stomach it, and the herbivores evidently have no
trouble.'

'Oh, I see,' she said. 'And the omnivores eat the herb-
ivores ... and so must our manta.'

'The ecological pyramid,' Cal agreed. 'It has to exist. Of
course, the omnivores eat dust too, and fungus, or they'd be
misnamed.'

Veg carved a chunk from one of the more succulent foot-
balls. 'Whatever the manta is, it sure is fast on its foot. Prob-
ably has to be, to keep clear of the omnivore.' He glanced at
the animal, which sat unmoving at the edge. 'Try this,
'Quilon, if you're hungry.' He held out a chunk of white
substance.

She reached to take it.

The manta bounded into the air, its body assuming some-
thing like the dread racing shape. It hurtled between them.

Aquilon fell back with a cry. Veg stood frozen as the
creature came to rest beside him, near the fungus. They
stared at it.

'Are you sure it's tame?' Aquilon asked facetiously.

Veg watched it baffled. 'I thought I was done for, last

night,' he admitted. 'When I saw that eye coming after me,
and me without the rifle. But all it did was follow - that's
when I began to be sorry about blasting that other. Maybe it
wasn't attacking.'

Cal spoke up from the far side. 'I don't think it was at-
tacking just now. It seemed to be trying to keep the two of
you apart.'

'Hands off the damsel?' Veg asked thoughtfully. 'But last
night the two of you were pretty close'

Aquilon flushed. 'Maybe it thought we were'

'Now wait a minute,' Veg exclaimed in mock anger. 'A
moralistic manta I can do without - at least, if it figures me
as the extra man.'

'Perhaps we should marry?' she murmured sweetly.

'I could never marry a' Veg stopped, but it was there
between them, a joke that hurt. She had mistaken his gallan-
try for genuine interest and he had set her straight. They
were man and woman, but there was a fundamental
difference in practice. She had thought his vegetarianism
was only a personal preference, but now she saw that it
affected his whole outlook on life.

By mutual consent they turned away from that subject,
too.

'The fungus!' Aquilon said excitedly. 'Maybe it is poison-
ous. Maybe it was trying to stop us from eating it!'

Veg still held the white mass. Slowly he brought it to his
mouth, eyeing the creature beside him. The manta looked
back, motionless. Veg took a bite.

Nothing happened.

'You try it,' he said, tossing the remainder to Aquilon.

She caught it deftly and repeated the process as the manta
swiveled smoothly to watch her. The faint putrescence of it
made her gag. It was like eating rotten potato, but she forced
her teeth to close on it. The manta did not respond. She
looked at Cal, offering the morsel, but he shook his head
negatively.

Veg shrugged. 'I'll prepare a full, er, repast,' he said,
taking up the knife.

Aquilon went over to Cal. She knew he was hungry, and
that for him a few hours of undernourishment were like
starvation for a normal man. He simply did not have the
physical resources to stand up under it. 'What are you going
to do?' she asked, looking into his eyes. 'You told me you
couldn't eat'

'I don't suppose it would do any good just to tell you to
leave me here and get on back to the main camp.'

She shook her head no. 'If you'll just tell us how we can
help you'

'You can't help me. I will die in a few hours, no matter
what you do. If I could only convince you of the
truth'

Veg, slicing into more fungus, had been listening intently.
'Maybe it's time you did tell us, Cal. I've known you for
three years, and you never let out a word. You never come
to the mess hall. What's the matter with you? Why are you
always so weak you can hardly walk? Why can't you eat any
of our food?'

Cal closed his eyes as if in pain. 'You wouldn't under-
stand.'

Aquilon took his hands, as she had the night before. 'We
aren't going to let you die, Cal,' she said. 'We'll all stay here
together.'

Veg chewed on fungus, not disagreeing.

'Death is my destiny,' Cal said, the words, from him, quite
unmelodramatic. 'Anything else I might tell you would be a
lie.'

'Then tell us the lie,' Veg said around his mouthful.

Aquilon started, surprised by the simplicity of it. She kept
forgetting that the big man's unsubtle mannerisms did not
denote any obtusity of mind or feeling; he would not have
been permitted in space were that the case. At one stroke he
had nullified Cal's elaborate defensive structure.

Cal watched them both for some sign of relentment, but
found none; Veg consumed his fungus entree and Aquilon
imitated him, more to keep up appearances than from pre-
sent appetite. The stuff was foul.

'A story, then,' Cal said at last. 'Then you go on - the two
of you.'

There was no response.

'I was only a paleozoologist searching for fossils,'
Cal said, closing his eyes. 'You can't generally locate a
given specimen just by digging a hole in the ground. My
specialty was Eocene insectivores and I was running down
a rumor that a primitive primate shinbone had been spot-
ted in a sedimentary outcrop. It happened to be in a
restive corner of the world, and I hadn't paid sufficient
attention to local politics. I didn't even speak the
language.'

'I don't believe a word,' Veg said equably.

'I was arrested as a spy - that was one word I picked up in
a hurry! - and was unable to convey the true nature of my
mission to them. My captors didn't understand pale-
ontology; I think their religion renounced any nonbeatific
derivation of man. They were convinced I was concealing
information, and they had devious methods of coercion.
They were not backward in the modern biological sciences.
Odd how retrogression and advancement sometimes co-
exist. ...' He trailed off.

'What did they do to you, Cal?' Veg inquired. 'According
to your story, I mean.'

Cal went on with a visible effort. Aquilon was shocked to
see the fatigue and misery of years so deeply etched upon his
face. 'It doesn't matter now, except for one thing. My diet
became ... restricted. They fixed it so that I can't live on
anything but' He stopped.

'We have to know,' Aquilon said softly.

'... blood.'

There was silence for several minutes.

Veg walked over to the pack at last and withdrew a
cup. He squatted down. 'Can you take it straight,' he
asked, abandoning pretense, 'or does it have to be by
transfusion?'

Cal's self-control dissolved, embarrassing Aquilon
acutely. What had happened to the intellectual power she

had so admired in Cal? This was a moaning baby of a man.
Would it have been kinder to let him die?

'They made me into a vampire,' Cal whispered. 'I've been
living on plasma ... have to go to the doctor for my meals.
He's the only one on the ship that knows. The grouping -
RH factor - doesn't matter; I take it orally. How I've
wanted to die!'

Aquilon whirled as the meaning of Veg's question sank
in. 'You can't' she cried.

Veg was carefully sterilizing his knife in the flame of one
of the matches. 'Keep out of this,' he said gruffly.

He must have known. He had taken the last of the water
so that he would have ... blood. 'But you can't even kill a
herbivore,' she said, distracted. 'How can you'

Veg wiped off his arm and readied the knife. Aquilon
made as if to throw herself upon him, then subdued herself.

She had thought she understood the motivations of these
men, and thought they understood each other - but her
knowledge of anatomy, human and animal, and her associ-
ated studies left her convinced that Cal's story was a lie. No
drug or surgical technique she knew of could possibly do to
a man what Cal claimed; the nearest approach would be
regression to an infantile dependence on milk, which was in
fact very similar to blood. But if it could be limited
specifically to blood, yet not so narrowly as to restrict the
condition of that blood or the animals from which it came, a
chemically similar substitute could certainly be prepared in
the laboratory in quantity. The oral dosage was the give-
away - a transfusion was a precise business, but the digestive
tract of man was equipped to handle a variety of
things.

Cal had indeed made up a story, as he had threatened -
and Veg must have recognized it for what it was. Why, then,
was Veg accepting the fiction as fact - and acting upon it?
How could he donate, literally, his own blood, for the per-
petuation of a charade?

And then she understood.

'I don't think I ever knew what real friendship ... was,'

she said quietly. 'But you have to save your strength to carry
him. Otherwise we won't get back at all, any of us.'

Veg hesitated. 'He's got to eat.'

She held out her own arm. 'I don't have to carry any-
thing,' she said.

Veg studied her and nodded. 'You're pretty much of a
woman,' he said, and there was a double meaning there, as
there had to be. It erased his prior reaction to the bantering
suggestion of marriage, and the motive behind it.

He lurched to his feet and charged past her.

Turning, she saw the reason. Cal had almost made it to
the edge. There could be no doubt about his intent. Veg
caught the little man and carried him back to the inner side.

'You don't know what you're doing,' Cal gasped weakly.
'I need to die'

'You don't have a choice,' Veg said. 'Unless you want to
spill her blood into the dust.' He returned to Aquilon, carry-
ing the knife.

Once again the manta moved, flashing between them with
alarming speed.

'What the' Veg grunted, angry now. 'You can touch
Cal, I can touch Cal. But it won't let me touch you. What's
the matter with the critter?'

'Throw me the knife,' Aquilon said.

Gritting her teeth against the pain and shock, she made a
neat surgical slice across the fleshy part of her forearm and
let the rich blood drip into the cup.

The four moved on up the slope. Veg led the way, carrying
Cal on his shoulders; Aquilon followed, bearing the rifle
and her sketch-pad; last came the manta, hopping erratically.
It evidently wasn't accustomed to slow travel. Aquilon
remained nervously aware of it, almost feeling the slash of
the tail down her exposed back, but it never came too
close.

The sheer side of the mountain began to level out, as they
neared what had to be the top of a convex slope. The spheri-
cal fungi became larger and more numerous, lining the trail

like fat snowmen, and the candyland smaller growths re-
appeared.

The ground shuddered. Loud crashing and pounding ap-
proached from the obscurity above. Something was
charging down the trail! Veg lowered Cal to the side and
whirled. 'Only one thing makes a noise like that,' he said
grimly.

Aquilon gripped the rifle and pressed the ignition stud,
feeling the warmth of the chamber in her hands. It occurred
to her now, as she saw the jet of water vaporize inside the
translucent barrel, that they could have distilled the fungus-
water, cooking out the bacteria and eliminating the poisons
that might have been in the solution.

The rifle was hot and ready to fire. Veg strode toward her,
reaching for the weapon. The manta leaped and flared omin-
ously. He backed away. 'Throw it here!'

Too late. A great mottled shape came hurtling out of the
mist ahead. It would weigh, Aquilon knew, in the neigh-
borhood of a thousand pounds. Its spiny, discolored skin
hung in huge folds, making the creature resemble an enor-
mous horned toad. A single tiny eye was embedded in the
flesh of its forepart, glaring balefully out. This was ani-
mosity incarnate. This was the omnivore.

Cal, nearest to it, huddled on the ground. The savage
beast leaped, too anxious for its prey, and the great blotched
shape passed over him, the sharp teeth of its striking tail
clashing together just inches from his head.

Aquilon was before the monster now, the rifle hissing in
her hands. The omnivore turned on her, raising its stout tail
overhead. The vicious jaws in it gaped as that tail wove from
side to side like a deadly serpent, doubly dangerous because
it was a most specialized weapon of offense. There was no
connecting alimentary tract, no soft tissue, no weak spot.
Those jaws could crunch a human arm in half, and the tail
could hurl a human body into the air and dash it against a
rock or under the slavering underside.

Her bullets only stung it, and she had no time to put a
shell in the other chamber. The massive propulsive muscles

of the omnivore's single foot bunched, ready for the next
leap.

Veg stepped in from the side, shouting, trying to distract
the omnivore's attention, though he was armed only with
the puny knife. The monster swiveled, aware of him in spite
of the foolish cries; it could not, of course, hear him, but its
perceptions were more diversified than those of other Nacre
creatures, and it could smell him and feel the warmth of his
body. The jaws of its tail clashed together loudly as it turned
on this new adversary.

The manta, temporarily quiescent, came back to life. It
rose into the air, once more assuming the shape that had
earned it its name. The eye seemed to flash as the creature
banked around both humans and landed before the omni-
vore.

Facing the monster, the manta was tiny. Four feet tall
when stationary, it could not have weighed more than eighty
or ninety pounds, Earth-gravity. Yet the bulking omnivore
recoiled; it leaped back, turning in the air. Its toothed tail
came back as a kind of rear guard, intersecting the second
jump of the manta.

The disk of the manta spread out, suddenly huge. Aquilon
could feel the wash of air as it took off. It passed over the
omnivore. There was a sharp Crack! as of the snap of a whip
- and the gruesome jaws at the tip of the monster's tail were
flying through the air directly at Veg. He jerked back - and
toppled over the edge of the path.

With a cry, Aquilon rushed to the brink, light-headed
from the exertion and the loss of the blood she had donated.
Veg was rolling helplessly down the side, puffball fungi shat-
tering and squirting under him but cushioning his descent.
He careened into one of the giants, bounced off as though it
were a rubber boulder, and fetched up with his head buried
in a smaller growth.

Aquilon scrambled down to help him, glad that the slope
was less ferocious here than it had been lower on the moun-
tain. As she got there, panting and dizzy, Veg straightened
and spat white chunks out of his mouth.

'Are you all right?' she asked foolishly.

'Gimme a little - phew! - kiss and we'll find out,' he re-
plied, smiling. It was more fungus he was clearing out, not
an insult to her.

Overcome by relief, she returned the smile.

She saw him blink, then tighten his jaw muscles in a spas-
tic effort at facial control. Horror showed in the narrowing
of his eyes.

Behind him the shape of the manta appeared, sailing
down the steep slope. Its eye centered on Aquilon. Suddenly
the body folded and swerved in a tangible double-take.

Too late she realized what she had done. Veg had seen.
She had appalled him with her smile, that shameful thing she
had tried never to show again. Now anything that might
have built between them was gone. She knew what it was to
wish for immediate death. Death...

'Cal!' she cried, remembering. 'He's still up there with
the'

Veg launched himself up the slope, followed lopingly by
the manta. Aquilon started after them, but her head began
to spin again almost immediately. She had exerted herself
too much already, and there had been the shock of the ...
smile. But life went on, and there were other things to worry
about. She eased her pace and picked her way up carefully.

She reached the trail, afraid for what she might see. There
had been no sound from Veg - or anything else. It was too
quiet.

The omnivore lay dead, its body slashed into tattered sec-
tions as though a cosmic knife had dropped upon it. Pale
blood dripped from the carcass, forming rivulets across the
flesh and soaking into the dust beneath, as thick and slow as
that of a man. Cal was trying to gather some of it in his cup.

It was a horrible sight, ludicrous and pitiful at once.
Somehow the notion that Cal should try to drink the blood
of the omnivore disturbed Aquilon even more than had the
donation of her own. Yet it was the obvious solution, if they
were to survive at all as a group; her present disorientation
proved that her resources in this respect were severely

limited. The wrenching of it suppressed the shock of the
other thing, the smile for the moment.

It was right. It was a stroke of fortune. The omnivore
could feed them, and the risk the consumption of its flesh
and blood entailed was no greater than the one they had
already taken eating the loathsome fungus or drinking its
juice. If it worked, it spelled life for all of them, instead of a
cruel death.

It was still sickening.

Something nudged her foot, making her jump and look
down. The jaws of the omnivore's tail were lying there, like
the head of a mutilated dog, snapping reflexively with a
lingering life of their own. Muscle fibers trailed from the
stub, tangling with the dust in clotted strings.

Aquilon leaned over the edge and gave way to silent
nausea.

CHAPTER THREE

A BOOK OF VERSES

CAL'S house fronted the flexing water of the Gulf of
Mexico. Subble had looked in vain for a private landing
spot in the intensely developed suncoast of Florida, and had
finally had to settle on the water, to the distress of the water-
skiers ranging there. He anchored his flyer to the shallow
bottom-land, allowed for the change of tide, and swam to
shore.

Cal was working in the sun just beyond the seawall. He
was small, standing a little over five feet, and not well-
fleshed, but his skin was tanned and his movements sure, He
gave no sign of any unusual weakness.

Before him, or rather around him, was an electronic
device comprised of massed wires, a television chassis, ham
radio equipment and laboratory mechanisms ranging from a
pencil-soldering iron to a sophisticated pocket oscilloscope.

'Good,' Cal remarked as Subble swam to the wall and
heaved himself onto the pavement. 'I need extra hands at
this point.'

'Aquilon called you,' Subble said, shaking off the salt
water.

'And Veg. Those two try to look out for my welfare, as I
think you know. I owe them a great deal.'

Subble nodded, remembering the bloodletting episode
Aquilon had described. He also understood by the man's
entire attitude and immediate reactions that Cal was by far
the most formidable of the persons on his list, physical evi-
dence to the contrary. The man was extremely intelligent,

and evidently approached the interview with a clinical
rather than defensive manner. There was no bluster in him
and no overconfidence; Subble was a situation to be ex-
plored and a hypothesis to be verified. Cal would ascertain
the facts and let the consensus be his guide. Yet he was
concealing something important, just as the others had
done.

'I think we understand the situation,' Cal said. 'And this
equipment should be no mystery to you.'

'A jury-rigged closed-circuit television transceiver adap-
ted to the signal emitted by the manta's eye,' Subble said.

'Yes. We were slow to comprehend the nature of the
creature. We assumed that it saw in much the way we do,
though 'Quilon's dissection refuted that. But of course ordi-
nary optics would be ineffective on a hazy world like Nacre.
Just as the fish of the sublevels of the ocean become lu-
minous'

Subble was studying the schematics. 'This is highly adap-
table.'

'Highly imprecise, you mean. I am not an electrical
engineer, and until this is tested in the field it must be gen-
eralized. And testing is a problem.'

'I saw the manta in the forest with Veg, and I smelled
another in Aquilon's basement,' Subble said quietly. 'I pre-
sume the first fed on wildlife and the second on rats. At least
two other mantas have been at this spot within the past two
days, and your equipment has been in operation. Why is
testing a problem?'

Cal was not alarmed. 'Importation of unregistered aliens
is illegal, for one thing. We called them pets, but that was a
misnomer, and your presence here indicates that the govern-
ment is getting suspicious. These creatures are dangerous,
for another thing. Even you, with all your strength and skill,
would be virtually helpless against a single manta.'

Subble did not comment. He explored a large fibrous con-
tainer, noting the pockets and fastenings inside. It was de-
signed to hold the assembled transceiver, and to float on
water. He glanced out over the gulf.

'Yes, they can "walk" on water,' Cal said. 'At high speed
the water presents a surface as solid as the dust nature
trained them for. But the air here is thin, for them.'

'When will I meet them?'

Cal shook his head. 'I know you have no fear of death -
but a premature encounter would be disastrous, for you and
perhaps for Earth.'

'Not for the manta?'

Cal tried to lift an energizer pack into the basket, but his
strength was insufficient. Subble took it from him and
fastened it in the proper place. Obviously the little man had
not intended to take this equipment out to sea by himself.

'We live in a charged environment,' Cal observed. 'So
many billions of sentient individuals, such intense war
hysteria, cultural unrest, pressure to succeed. Most of the
people of this planet are desperate to get away from it all -
but there is nowhere to go. Only a few qualify for space.
And so they grasp at anything in reach, and pull it down in
the belief they are climbing'

Subble remembered the misery of the programmer in
charge of the cellar farm, and Aquilon's own distraught
emotionalism. He quoted:

The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain
Slaves by their own compulsion. In mad game
They burst their manacles and wear the name
Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain!

'Coleridge,' Cal agreed. 'He referred to the French Revo-
lution, of course, two hundred years ago, but he spoke for
humanity as well, as the great poets do. "When France in
wrath her giant limbs upreared" - how easy it would be to
transpose that for today!'

Subble smiled. 'When Man in wrath his nuclear arms up-
reared, And with that oath which smote air, earth and sea
Fired his great jets and swore he would be freeBear
witness how I hoped and feared!'

'Except that some of us no longer hope. Man is an

omnivore, figuratively as well as literally. He consumes
everything'

'An omnivore,' Subble murmured remembering Aquilon's
remarks.

'You begin to see the problem. Man is the true omnivore,
far more savage than the creature we designated by that
term on Nacre. I'm afraid it hit 'Quilon pretty hard when
she realized'

'It did. She won't touch meat now.'

'I know exactly how she feels. Nacre was a pretty drastic
lesson. But none of us realized the really fundamental
difference between man's nature and that of the creatures of
Nacre. As it was, we were casting about blindly.'

'So am I,' Subble hinted. 'What is this "fundamental"
difference, if it is not the ecological adjustment or the
methods of perception?'

'I can't make that clear unless I tell you first about the
third kingdom.'

'I don't follow you.' This sounded like a fairy tale, but the
man had something concrete in mind.

Cal nodded. 'Probably you overlook it just as we did on
Nacre. I certainly had little excuse. All the learning in the
world can't make a man grasp the obvious, when that learn-
ing contributes to a prescribed mode of thinking. This, more
than the sensory differences, makes it difficult to establish
full contact with the manta.'

Subble studied him, but found no evidence of equivo-
cation. The man had a concept that was not easy to accept
or discuss, particularly for him, and the odds were good that
it had direct bearing on what Veg and Aquilon had not felt
free to tell him. There was a major section of the puzzle
missing. 'What must I do to acquire this information?'

'It is not information per se; it is a way of thinking. I
haven't mastered it myself, and may never do so, though I
like to think I am gaining ground. But it is a difficult route,
especially for someone like yourself. You have too much
contemporary power.'

'Too much?'

'That can be a liability. There are realms only the impov-
erished can achieve.'

Subble smiled again. 'And again I say unto you, it is easier
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich
man to enter the kingdom of God.'

'I'm afraid that's what I mean. You have chosen one of
the most popular misquotes of the language, and are prob-
ably not even aware of it.'

'I assure you the quote is exact. King James Version,
Matthew XIX: 24.'

'Precisely. You have been indoctrinated with a standard
education, and a remarkably comprehensive one. You
therefore have not reaped the benefits of genuine scholar-
ship. You are limited by the standard restrictions and errors.
I daresay you can quote the entire Bible'

'I can.'

'Yet you have never thought to question the version or
translation. Otherwise you would have suspected that Jesus
of Nazareth, in whatever capacity He existed, probably
never spoke of a camel attempting anything so ludicrous as
climbing through the eye of a needle. I believe the original
term was "rope", or "camel-hair", miscopied and never cor-
rected.'

Subble was silent. It was true: he had no means to verify
or refute this statement, but it had the ring of authenticity. It
made no difference whether the little man was right or
wrong; he had the advantage because his knowledge was
more pertinent than Subble's own. Cal had pinpointed the
weakness of a man who had his entire education grafted on,
and Cal was in control.

For the time being. Well, Aquilon had warned him.

The information doesn't matter,' Cal said. 'It is the atti-
tude that counts. You were sure of yourself because you
knew you had your quotation straight. You were right, yet
wrong. That's why your rich man has so much difficulty - he
can't bring himself to part with his wealth, even when it
becomes an impediment to the achievement of his basic
desires. The poor man has no moral advantage; he simply

has less to lose. So he can travel where the rich man
can't.'

'You are telling me that I must give up my knowledge if I
am to complete my mission?'

'Essentially, yes. At least you must set aside your
confidence in it. Your certainty will betray you, here.'

'Can you provide me some more tangible reason for
doing so?'

'That sounds like my cue to condemn you as a materialist
who will never achieve the kingdom of heaven! But I don't
require blind faith in anything, including faith itself. I can
give you reason: you must learn to communicate with the
manta, and the manta is alien. Much more alien than its
actions or appearance indicate. Perhaps in time normal
man will hold meaningful dialogue with normal manta - but
not for many years, I suspect. You need to do it now - and
that means you must go to the manta. You have to meet it
on its own territory, in its own framework. No human con-
ventions will help you; they'll only interfere. You may never
get a second chance, if you blunder early.'

Again Subble remembered Aquilon's episode, and knew
that what Cal said was true. The manta's appearance was
strange and its actions stranger - and the reactions of the
three who had dealt with it on its home world were stranger
yet. If he were to learn the whole truth, he would have to
finish with the mysterious manta - and it obviously was
alien. He could not trust the second-handed impressions of
others.

But if he set aside his formidable training, he would be
vulnerable - as perhaps the starfaring trio had been. Assum-
ing that he could set it aside. 'Do you realize what land of
conditioning I have undergone?' Subble inquired. 'No cas-
uistry can shake my logic; no torture can break me; no
brainwashing can overcome my loyalty to my mission with-
out first killing me. How do you propose that I accomplish
what my entire existence was conceived and shaped to pre-
vent?'

'I'm not sure, but I believe you can approach the third

kingdom - and with that and my equipment you have a
chance. The trick is to lead you there without destroying
your mind. Trust me and let me guide you as far as I can and
- we'll see.'

'Why should I trust you?'

It was Cal's turn to smile. 'Because I am completely sin-
cere. You can read my emotion easily, and I know it and
you know I know. You must believe me - or renounce faith
in your own abilities, which is the same thing. So you have
no choice.'

Mousetrapped again, this tune by paradox. His abilities
did inform him that he had to question them. 'This statement
is false,' he said, musing at it. Taken alone, those four words
negated themselves, and forced a new framework which ex-
cluded them. An intellectual toy  but it had come to life.
'All right. Lay on, Macduff. Lead the way to the third king-
dom. I follow.'

'And damn'd be he that first cries "Hold, enough!"' Cal
said. He went inside and returned with an ornate copper
vessel resembling an antique teakettle, but slung lower. He
set it on the pavement and touched a lighter to its spout.
After several attempts he got it going with a tiny greenish
flame perched just beyond the projecting tip.

'A lamp,' Subble observed. 'Aladdin's lamp?'

'Something like it. It generally takes a little while for
Myco to appear, however. We'll talk; you tell me when you
see him.'

'Myco - a combining form applying to fungus. An
unflattering designation.'

'Not necessarily.' Cal indicated a spot beside the lamp
and they took their places crosslegged on the tile.

Subtle perfume wafted from the flame: cedar and more
obscure aromas blended in a harmony new to him. He
ticked the ingredients off in his mind, classifying each auto-
matically, but there was a residue that escaped him. An un-
usual incense, certainly, but harmless. Evidently Cal was
trying to create a mood for whatever he was leading up to.

'You have met Veg and 'Quilon already,' Cal said, 'and

you know something of the situation we found ourselves in
on Nacre. You know about the omnivore?'

'Yes.'

'I suppose it seems a striking coincidence that our par-
ticular trio happened to possess the very qualities necessary
for survival there.'

'Yes. My boss views such coincidences with distrust.
There is generally more to them than what is visible on the
surface - or in the official reports.' Subble stared at the
flame, waiting for the trap to spring. He detected no aliens
nearby, but Cal was expecting something momentarily.

'Actually, there was no coincidence at all,' Cal said. 'Our
unusual qualities were at best incidental to the problem, and
contributed to some confusion. We just happened to be the
group that became isolated on Nacre at the time contact was
scheduled to be made. Anyone could have done it.'

That was not precisely true. Cal had hold of information
which frightened him thoroughly, and his bodily processes
reflected it on every level. Veg and Aquilon had suspected,
but Cal knew - whatever it was.

'Chance threw us together, but it meant nothing,' Cal
said. 'I wish it would throw us together again.'

'Triangle and all?'

'Triangle and all. 'Quilon has this thing about choosing,
when really it isn't necessary. Love is not exclusive.'

'She said she felt "unclean".'

Cal sighed. 'The sensual and the dark rebel in vain,' he
said. His form was hazy through the gathering smoke of the
lamp. 'Slaves by their own compulsion. Earth has become a
population of neurotics, turning inward what they can no
longer dissipate outward. Acquaint yourself with virtually
any person living today and you will discover it. Suppressed
madness. That much certainly is not coincidence. No unique
qualities remain - only unique ways to express the horror of
continued existence. Some call it creativity, others psycho-
neurosis - but it remains the madness of a people who have
lost their last rational frontier.'

'Veg-'

'Convinced himself that death was the evil he had to fight.
Fortunately, he was satisfied to restrict it to the refusal to
kill unnecessarily, or to consume the flesh of any creature
with a tangible instinct of self-preservation. He was never
deeply touched, and remains one of the best adjusted
members of our society. He's happy - while his forest lasts.'

Subble had his doubts about that, but was trying to follow
Cal, not debate with him. 'Aquilon'

'Was hit by it in childhood. She was a pretty girl, envied
for her appearance. Some chance occurrence suggested to
her that she should punish herself by sacrificing her smile.
That way the others would not resent her. She took the in-
junction too literally, and the retribution was far more
savage than the offense. Oh, yes, she was beaten - but that
was the ignorance of her family, who took the symptom for
wilful meanness, though she was actually a rather wonder-
ful person underneath.'

'Yes,' Subble said, remembering. 'But she smiles now.'

'And she's worse off than before. She's caught in a more
devious complex. When she believed that the destruction of
her smile exonerated her, she was free of other phobias and
compulsions. Now she searches for them. She's trying to
follow Veg's path, as though death were the ultimate evil -
and of course it isn't. Life is our world's problem. Too much
human life on Earth, crowding in so tightly that territory
and freedom are largely concepts of the past. Death is the
greatest privilege granted to man; death is responsible for
his very evolution. Death is not our enemy - it is our sal-
vation.'

'That's an unusual view in itself.' The perfumed smoke
was exhilarating.

'It is the paleontologist's view. Anyone who studies the
history of life on Earth must come to respect death as a vital
force. Without death there would be no natural selection;
without selection, mammal and man would never have
arisen. The weak, the deviant, the outmoded - these
must all make room for progress. Species radiation and
selection: constant variations, some good, most bad, but on

the whole the good ones survive and propagate. When you
interfere with the selective process, you destroy man.'

'And we have interfered,' Subble said, seeing the reason-
ing but not the point of it. Cal was still working up to it. 'We
have preserved every human life, strong and weak, and
nature cannot act.'

'Oh, nature can act - but not in what we consider to be
normal fashion,' Cal corrected him. 'I think our genie is on
his way. Do you see him?'

Subble peered at the flame. He had been about to inquire
about the nature of Cal's own malady, but had missed his
chance. Or perhaps he had been outmaneuvered again.
'Myco of the third kingdom? I'm afraid not.'

'There above the lamp - like a little whirlwind, growing.
Gray, at first, becoming lighter as it expands. Stop trying to
be reasonable and look.'

'If you insist.' Subble concentrated - and saw it. The
green flame flickered, changing color, gold, purple and
bright red, and from the spout emerged a fine column of
smoke, gray and whirling swiftly. As he watched it in-
creased, a dust-devil, miniature tornado, a burgeoning der-
vish, suddenly exploding into a giant dusky man garbed in
streamers of thick smoke. 'I see it,' he said.

The genie placed clublike hands on hips and stared at
him.

'Good,' Cal said. 'Myco will guide us to the third king-
dom.'

Subble jumped up, realizing that he'd been had again.
'Psychedelic drug! Lysergic acid diethylamide'

The genie laughed, and the sound echoed. The back of his
head resembled a colored toadstool and his teeth were tusks.

'LSD? No,' Cal said. 'This is a hallucinatory agent,
though both are derived originally from mushrooms. Their
properties differ in ways that wouldn't be important to
you.'

'This is the basis of your new philosophy?' Subble in-
quired, disappointed. He reached to snuff out the lamp.

'No. It is merely a vehicle, a channel - that may or may

not lead to the contact we seek. Give it a fair trial before you
turn away.'

"There is nothing in my mind not already available to me,'
Subble said, but he let the flame be. 'No mysteries can be
unveiled where none exist. But the distortion induced by the
drug can prejudice my effectiveness.'

'Your mind is still closed. Look at yourself: are you
elated? Depressed? Do you feel as though you are floating?
Have your horizons become limitless? Are you nearer to
God? Sexually precocious? Just what effect has the drug
had upon your system? How has it incapacitated you?'

Subble ran through a quick series of physical and intellec-
tual exercises. 'It has affected my system very slightly,' he
admitted. 'Not enough to interfere with my performance
significantly.'

'In what way has it changed you, then?'

Subble looked at the standing genie, who stared con-
temptuously back at him. 'It has provoked a sustained hal-
lucination.'

The genie bellowed. 'O fool of a mortal - and I breathed
upon thee one tiny breath, thou would fly into the sea and
drown most foully, nor could thou do aught contrary!'

'Don't provoke Myco,' Cal warned. 'In the physical
world, you may be supreme - but this is not your world. It
does not follow your rules.'

'Yeah,' Myco said with satisfaction.

'Whose rules does it follow?' Subble inquired, interested.

'Mine,' the little man said. 'This drug produces halluci-
nations without inhibiting the conscious mind or affecting
the thinking processes, except to the extent the halluci-
nations themselves affect them. You are in complete control
of your mind and body - but I control the habitat.'

'A shared dream?'

'Call it that for convenience. Actually, your view is built
up from discreet hints I provide - key words and the use of
the lamp which you could not fail to associate with Alad-
din's escapade - but what you see naturally differs some-
what from what I see, as our knowledge and tastes vary.

When it comes down to it, this is a fact of life anyway; one
person can never be certain, for example, that the color he
sees as red is not blue to his neighbor: the blue his neighbor
calls red. In this respect the change is not great, and perhaps
the drug really produces a closer accord, since any honest
difference can quickly be reconciled, when challenged, with
the dominant view. The weaker will conforms to the
stronger will.'

'How can you be certain that your will is stronger than
mine?"

'Do you want tangible proof or a reasoned explanation?'

'Both.'

'Is Myco wearing a turban?'

'No - his head is blatantly bare.'

'Look again.'

'He is wearing a turban.'

'You are mistaken.'

The genie was bareheaded again, Subble concentrated,
trying to visualize the turban that had appeared for a
moment, but nothing changed. Myco grinned at him, enjoy-
ing it. 'It appears the genie obeys his master,' Subble admit-
ted.

'Yes. First, he is my image, a figment of my selection, well
rehearsed by me, while you are meeting him for the first
time. I probably know much more about Arabic mythology
than you do, and that gives me power, just as my attitude
toward the Bible translation gave me the advantage there.
Now the situation is clearer, thanks to the literal nature of
the drug's imagery. You could not control Myco unless you
knew more about him.'

'Yeah,' Myco repeated.

'Second, I have been here many times before under the
drug, I mean - and I have developed tolerance and control. I
am under less deeply than you are, though we have taken the
same dose, and that gives me a firmer grip on objectivity as
we both know it. Experience is the best teacher, particularly
here.'

Subble studied the genie, intrigued by the creature's evi-

dent reality despite agreement that he was a product of the
imagination. Realization that a fear was groundless was sup-
posed to banish it - but he knew it often did not. Knowledge
that an illness was psychosomatic did not always ease the
pain, either. Suddenly he sympathized with a host of prob-
lems he would ordinarily have observed dispassionately -
the problems of desperate individuals on a crowded world.
He knew the genie did not exist - but this didn't change a
thing. There it stood, as the unfounded fears and problems
stood before others.

'I can read thy mind, too,' Myco said. 'Not that it pleasur-
eth me.'

'Finally, your own preference betrays you,' Cal said. 'You
do not want to take control, because that would abort your
mission. You don't need supremacy, you need information
- and you know that I can only give it to you this way.'

'I do not remember past experiences, of course,' Subble
said, 'but I suspect that you and Veg and Aquilon represent
the damnedest trio I have encountered. I'd certainly like to
see the interplay between you when you three are
together.'

Cal smiled a little sadly. 'It is a quartet now: physique,
emotion, intellect - and spirit. Perhaps, soon, we shall be
together again. We cannot endure apart.'

Subble perceived that the little man was not thinking of
the romantic aspects. There was something else, just as there
had been for the others. Cal had been correct: every person
on Earth was pressured into an odd configuration, but these
three had a peculiar interaction that gave them something
special.

'But we have other business,' Cal said briskly. 'Myco,
show the vault.'

'I hear and obey!' the genie boomed. He stooped and
touched the floor. A great silver ring appeared, arabesqued
inside and out, and screwed vertically into the center tile.
Myco hauled on this and the slab came up to reveal a stair-
case going down.

'Down there?' Subble inquired, no longer bothering to

distinguish between types of reality. 'Not the black hole of
Calcutta?'

'Another fallacy,' Cal said. 'That episode is entirely fictio-
nal. It was a rumor which even historians took as fact, since
it seemed to justify British policy in India.'

'I see. But in this edition your genie could shut us in se-
curely and take over the hallucination.'

'An interesting thought,' Cal said. 'But a chance we'll
have to take. You have to experience the marvels of the
third kingdom, to appreciate them properly. This is import-
ant.'

'As you say,' Subble agreed. His remark had not been
serious, but now he wondered.

Myco shrank somewhat in size, manifested a torch,
touched it to the flame of the lamp and held it there until it
caught. He led the way into the ground.

The stairs descended into a vaulted corridor lined with
heavy closed doors. 'The third kingdom is rich in all the
needs and comforts of man,' Cal said. 'Here is the chamber
of food. Observe it well.' The genie opened the door with a
flourish and stood beside it at attention as the two men en-
tered.

It was a gourmet's delight. An enormous banquet table
had been set up, groaning with exotic delicacies. An entire
stuffed pig squatted in a platter at the head place, garnished
with fragrant herbs and spices and relishes. Beyond it was a
monstrous roast turkey nestling in matted parsley, and
beyond that a line of salmon steaks decorated with stewed
raisins and sliced lemon.

They walked down the interminable length of it, past
creole shrimp, meat loaf and lamb shish kebab. There were
towering salads - chicken, tuna, potato, gelatin and fruit,
with dressings too numerous and exotic to number. There
were steaming tureens of soup and aromatic breadstuffs and
pastries. There was chocolate cake and strawberry pie. Fresh
corn on the cob steamed beside golden carrots and thick
pods of okra ... jelly omelet ... potato pancakes. Table
wines of every description stood adjacent to their traditional

dishes, and after them were boiling coffee and frosty ice
cream.

Agents sometimes found themselves in odd situations, in
the line of duty.

They completed the gustful circuit and returned to the
hall. 'Impressive?' Cal inquired, and again there was a
subtle extra meaning there.

'Impressive. Can any of it be eaten?'

'Oh, yes, and most enjoyably. But you would be hungry
again the moment the vision ended. That's the trouble with
magic - no residual effect.'

'Suppose there were actually more commonplace food
available?'

'You could feast on it delightfully, and afterwards you
would have a full stomach and a pleasant memory.'

Subble appreciated how easily a craze could form.

Myco had not bothered to accompany them inside. He
stood at the door holding his nose.

'Our next display is within the chamber of health,' Cal
said, gesturing. The door opened.

The room was large - so large it seemed they were emerg-
ing into a valley. Just ahead was an open plain bounded by
vigorous trees: beech, ash, maple and a solitary bull spruce.
Bronzed Greek athletes were taking exercise: one throwing
the javelin, another heaving the discus, four indulging in a
foot race and two wrestling strenuously. Down the valley
two vibrant young women in shorts were playing tennis. The
men looked like Veg, the women like Aquilon. A man re-
sembling Subble himself was practicing elaborate dives
into a rippling pool, naked.

The air was bracing, with a crisp occasional breeze. The
grass underfoot sprang up luxuriantly, and nothing showed,
animal or vegetable, that was not in the prune of life.

'And wealth,' Cal said, leading the way to the third
chamber. Myco had disappeared.

It was a palace comprising many chambers in itself. The
first was filled with gold and silver coins of rare and hand-
some design, some round, some hexagonal, some holed in

the, center, overflowing from great jars and piled hap-
hazardly upon the floor. Subble estimated the weight of
metal and calculated its net value in modern terms: over
eleven million dollars for what was visible in this room
alone, discounting the antique or archaeological enhance-
ment of the strange old coins.

The second room was more impressive: jewels of every
color and description - blue diamonds, green emeralds, red
rubies, star sapphires and assorted lesser gems, some splen-
didly faceted, others gleaming in natural crystalline form-
ations. There were strings of pearls and intricate rings and
bracelets.

The third room held priceless paintings and statuary:
Subble recognized the handiwork of Michelangelo, Da
Vinci, Van Gogh, Picasso and many other masters, all rep-
resented by originals. A number he did not recognize, except
by type: Chinese Ming, Maya Jaina, Egyptian Middle Dyn-
asty, Mandingo leatherwork, a Gupta Buddha - artifacts
which could not be valued because of their immense social
and historical significance, as well as their artistic merit.
And at the far end, the Nacre landscape Aquilon had
painted, at last in the appropriate company.

The fourth room was a library of first editions, the finest
volumes produced by man. Every author, every researcher
he valued was there, every book in perfect condition though
some like the Caxton Le Morte d'Arthur were centuries
old.

'And finally the chamber of Life and Death,' Cal said as
they returned through gallery and treasure-rooms to the
hall. He opened the last door.

Armies were arrayed on either side: on the left a Roman
phalanx, on the right the mounted horde of Ghenghis Khan.
Subble had wondered idly, just as he was sure all agents
wondered, what would be the outcome of such an encounter.
The Romans had been supreme in their day, owing this
largely to their discipline and training, but the Mongols of
later centuries were a horde in name only: they were actually
among the most methodical fighters and slaughterers of all

time. Numbers being equivalent, the nomad riders were prob-
ably superior to any military force prior to the advent of
firearms, and had they had rifles....

Still, nothing was certain until the armies actually met.
Generalship was a vital matter, and morale, and circum-
stance.

As the two visitors emerged from the hall, the horsemen
charged, screaming and firing arrows from horseback while
the Romans advanced stolidly, shields overlapping, long
spears thrust forward.

Cal was looking at him questioningly, and then he re-
membered: the phalanx was not Roman, but Greek and Ma-
cedonian! He was guilty of another carelessness, and now
this anomaly was engaging the enemy. Exactly how was the
Roman legion armed and organized? The short sword, flex-
ibility

'This is visual, auditory and olfactory only,' Cal said,
mistaking his concern. 'The images will pass through us
without effect, or vice versa.'

It was good to know. The armies met, and Subble found
himself in the midst of a savage engagement. The horses
reared up against the massed shields, striking them with
their hooves and beating them back with the weight of their
bodies. One hoof struck at Subble, passed through him, and
churned up turf and sand. The brown-skinned rider swung
his curved blade at a break in the phalanx and the Roman
fell, his ear cut off. A spear lashed out, lodging in the belly of
the horse, and the rider came down as gore spurted.

Then it was an indecipherable melee, suffused with the
stench of blood and iron and sweat and urine and crushed
vegetation, the screams of animal and man, the sight of car-
nage and agony. Subble was acclimatized to violence, but
the brutality of this encounter disgusted him. And he still
wasn't certain whether the Romans had ever employed the
true phalanx, or whether the Mongols ever stayed put for a
pitched battle. The violation of history, after allowing for
the basic anachronism of the situation, was probably worse
than that of the slaughtered men.

Cal drew him back into the hall and closed the door. The
bloodletting was cut off abruptly. 'Come and relax for a
while,' he murmured. 'I have some questions.'

The end of the hall opened into a twentieth-century living
room, air-conditioned and with the FM playing soft music.
Subble realized with a start that it was the same piece he had
heard at the intensive farming unit he had toured with
Aquilon. The animals were pacified by music - and drugs -
while they girded their corpulence for the butcher-machine.

'Please describe to me what you experienced,' Cal re-
quested.

'You weren't watching?'

'I wish to make a point.'

Subble described in detail what he had seen in each
chamber, a little embarrassed about the last. He was sure
Cal would have some pointed corrections to make.

'Your verses differ from mine,' Cal said. 'You are still
clinging to your own expectations. This is what I warned
you against, and one reason I brought you here. It would be
disastrous if you strayed this far during a meeting with the
manta. Clear your mind of everything and follow me, and
this time I will show you the true nature of the third king-
dom.' The little man was becoming more and more didactic,
but Subble accepted the rebuke and accompanied him back
to the fourth chamber.

It was empty. 'Look at the ground,' Cal said.

Ground appeared then: rich, dark earth. 'See that mush-
room?' Cal suggested, pointing.

A single mushroom sprouted, bursting from the soil in
accelerated motion and opening its soft umbrella, white and
delicate. 'This is a saprophyte,' Cal said.

'A saprophyte - an organism that feeds on dead organic
matter,' Subble agreed. 'This is a characteristic of the mush-
room and related fungi, while others are parasitic.'

'Think about it.'

Then Subble made the connection. Fungus - a thing that
took its life from death, locked behind the door of Life and
Death. This was a much neater definition than his vision of

battle had been. And he had worried about military detail!
Fungus - and Nacre was a world of fungus forms, to the
exclusion of chlorophyll plants. Death - and Cal was ob-
sessed with it, personally and philosophically. The genie
Myco, whose name meant fungus; the hallucinogen, derived
from another variety of fungus.

And the mysterious third kingdom itself

Animal - Plant - and Fungus! Animals were animate,
possessing, among other things, the powers of motion and
conscious reaction. Plants performed photosynthesis, draw-
ing nourishment from inorganic substances. But fungi
neither moved nor drew energy from light - yet they lived
and thrived. They had found an alternate route, and some
experts - mycologists - considered them to represent a king-
dom of their own, distinct from plants.

A kingdom that had ousted plants, to become dominant
on Nacre.

'Forget about Nacre, for now,' Cal said. 'I want to show
you what the third kingdom means to Earth. Mushrooms,
fungi, mold, mildew, yeasts, bacteria - a little more heat and
humidity and this kingdom would dominate right here.
Fungi can live off almost anything organic: meat, veg-
etables, milk, leather, wood, coal, plastics, bones. The strains
adapt rapidly. Develop a new jet fuel, and before long you
will find a fungus feeding on it. The spores are tougher than
we are; cold will not kill them, heat must be extreme to
damage them all, dehydration - they can be dried and saved
for years and grow again when conditions change. Fungi can
grow at phenomenal speeds. Some are, as you know, para-
sites - their food doesn't have to be dead. Some change back
and forth. One fungus can release hundreds of millions of
spores in a few days - and those spores are everywhere,
floating invisibly in the air we breathe and settling upon
every mouthful of food we eat, no matter how "clean" we
think it is.'

'In other words, they are pervasive,' Subble said. 'But at
least they are under control, here.' But he remembered the
infestation of the cellar-farm, and wondered.

'That is a matter of opinion. Man cannot exist without
them, while the fungi can certainly exist without us - in fact,
without the entire animal kingdom.'

'Evidently my programming isn't up to date on this sub-
ject,' Subble said. 'How is a parasite or saprophyte to exist
without animals, live or still, to feed upon? And in what way
am I personally dependent upon that little mushroom or its
brethren? I can eat it, if it isn't poisonous, but I certainly
don't have to, and I wouldn't miss it much if it vanished
forever.'

'To answer your first question: parasites and saprophytes
cannot exist in isolation, naturally, but the plant kingdom is
sufficient for their dietary needs, so animals are unnecessary.
The answer to the second is more devious - but also more
important, because both plants and animals are now de-
pendent upon the fungus kingdom. Are you familiar with
the oxygen-carbon dioxide breathing cycle?'

'Of course. Animals take in oxygen and release carbon
dioxide. Plants require carbon dioxide for photosynthesis,
and give off oxygen. It's a rather neat balance.'

'No. It is not neat at all. Animal respiration provides only
a quarter of what is needed by the plants.'

'A quarter? That doesn't add up.'

'The rest is a by-product of decomposition.'

'And decomposition'

'Is the service performed by bacteria and fungi. Without
these, dead organisms would remain as they died, sterile.
Their elements would never be returned to the earth or at-
mosphere. Three quarters of the carbon dioxide, among
other things, would be permanently trapped, the percentage
growing, and the plants would be on a one-way track leading
to extinction. And with the end of the plant kingdom'

'The end of the animal kingdom. I follow you now.'

'And without decomposition, no higher creature could
have evolved on Earth. There would be no regenerative
cycle; the first micro-organisms that ever formed would be
with us today, two or three billion years dead but as durable
as stone. Natural selection would never have had a chance.

No room, no food, no air. As a matter of fact, to the best of
our present knowledge, the presence of fungi of some type is
essential to the development of any higher forms of life any-
where.'

Subble looked at the mushroom with new respect. 'I con-
gratulate you, little saprophyte.'

Cal led the way to the third door, that had previously
opened on money, gems, works of art and a library. Again
the room was blank until he spoke.

'You saw wealth in conventional terms. Most people do.
But in reality, wealth is not money, art or literature; it is the
improved standard of living these things represent. A
man can starve, locked in a roomful of gold, or in a library.
The gold must be traded for functional products, the
books interpreted to apply to tangible things. What you
saw were the convenient symbols for wealth, material
and intellectual - handy for tabulations and comparisons
and storage, but not directly contributory to personal well-
being.'

'No argument there,' Subble said. This certainly was a
lesson in how far afield a mind could go when not corrected.

'Instead, let's look at the things we can use. Observe the
healthy expanse of growing barley, wheat, rye and oats - the
breadbasket of a nation, a world.'

Subble saw the patchwork of fields as from an airplane,
stirred like standing water by vagrant breezes. 'And peas,
tomatoes, onions, potatoes.' The plane swooped low to
bring these into view. 'Cattle, sheep, horses.' Livestock
ranges appeared - the old kind, before the animals were
herded into darkened buildings for confinement and forced
feeding.

'But these are ordinary plants and animals,' Subble
pointed out.

'But they are dying. See, the leaves are wilting, the
animals are feeble.' And they were; a massive blight
swept over the fertile scene, destroying flora and fauna
alike.

'They have been attacked by tiny eelworms, nematodes,'

Cal explained. 'We are shrinking now, rapidly, down to rat
size, mouse size, insect size - but the destroyer is neither
rodent nor insect.'

The airplane vanished and the fields zoomed closer, as
though they were falling, and expanded voluminously. Then
the two men stood on the ground and watched the world
explode around them. 'We are an inch tall, a tenth of an
inch, a hundredth.'

The world was an animated microscope slide. 'We are in a
chamber in the soil, the humus just below the surface. This
is the most active biologic zone of the world, the vital key to
the entire ecological cycle. This is the fiercest battleground
of the three kingdoms - they fight ruthlessly, you know -
and there are monsters here more astonishing than any we
know in the macrocosm.' He gestured. 'Before us is one
such: the nematode, the most successful wormlike organism
on Earth.'

Subble looked at it: an eyeless python twenty-five feet
long, according to present perspective. The semi-transparent
body behind the bare oral openings was a foot in diameter.
'It eats anything, but especially root hairs,' Cal continued,
'and it can lay its own weight in eggs in a week. It is one of
the most savage destroyers we know of, and the plants we
cultivate have little effective defense against it, since we
corral them in so tightly. A cultivated field is like an open
supermarket, for the worm.'

The nematode slid toward them, its body slimy and rank.
Subble stepped back. 'Do other animals handle it satisfac-
torily?'

'It would dominate the world, if not stopped - and neither
plant nor animal seems capable of controlling it. It para-
sitizes larger creatures, too. It can expand its length a thou-
sandfold, in time, in the intestine of a mammal. No sizable
crops would survive its ravages, and'

'I understand the gravity of the situation,' Subble said,
retreating another step as the blind orifice quested after him.
'Just what does stop it?'

Cal pointed to the side. 'Now here is a handsome clump

of saprophytic fungus. Perfectly harmless - we can pass
among the threads - the mycelium - without danger.'

'Third kingdom to the rescue!' Subble said, climbing
through the spongy brush he pictured. At least it offered
some tacit resistance to progress of the hungry worm. But
the nematode remained intent on their trail, and forced its
way through the mycelium close behind.

'But you see, the nemin coating the creature's body has a
peculiar effect on the fungus. As soon as a nematode ap-
proaches, short branches sprout with loops at the ends.' The
loops appeared, each about a foot in diameter. The worm
ignored them, thrashing after the retreating men with almost
mindless determination. Subble still did not feel at all
comfortable so close to its eagerly sucking mouth.

But the loops became so profuse that they were un-
avoidable. The men pushed them aside, but the nematode
didn't care; it poked its front end into one and came on,
sliding through it easily. But the thicker central part of its
body jammed; the loop was just too small to permit free
passage. The creature struggled, attempting to withdraw or
squirm on through the construction - but the loop inflated
like a rubber tire and pinned the worm securely about the
middle.

Now there was furious thrashing. The monster whipped
its head and tail back and forth with frightening violence,
but the booby-trapped ring only bound it more tightly. The
nematode was far larger and heavier than the fungus, but it
was not anchored and its leverage was poor in this position. It
was unable to break the narrow band.

Gradually its struggles diminished, and it expired.

'Some species of fungi touch sticky knobs to the worm,
holding it down, then grow strands into its body to consume
its innards. Others deposit spores that germinate and para-
sitize it,' Cal said, watching the dying worm dispassionately.
'In any event, it is indeed the third kingdom that saves our
crops, in this important instance, and so is the protector of
our wealth, much more significantly than your hoard of
gold. It kills animal parasites, and in many cases sets up

symbiotic relationships without which even mighty trees
could not flourish. We have just seen an omnivore fall prey
to something it didn't even notice was dangerous, but that is
only one aspect of the story.'

That was significant. An omnivore brought down by a
seemingly innocent fungus. Even through the layers of hal-
lucination, he perceived the stress Cal placed upon the con-
cept. Man's appetite was very like the worm's. 'Evidently
you have been researching the matter.'

'I reviewed it, at any rate. After Nacre, I had to. The
representatives of the third kingdom are primitive, here,
perhaps because there is always food for them and further
evolution is not essential to survival - but they remain the
best key to the advanced species there. I haven't begun to
cover the economic importance this kingdom has for Earth.
We use molds in industry to synthesize the acids employed
in the manufacture of plastics, new paints, photographic de-
veloper, bleach, ceramics, monosodium glutamate ...
fungus to break down petroleum and detergent... electric
batteries powered by yeast action. And the wealth of know-
ledge provided in the laboratory: molds and bacteria are the
most primitive organisms containing DNA, the basic mole-
cule of life.'

'Wealth indeed,' Subble said, impressed. The
DNA/RNA researches were leading to tremendous break-
throughs in the life sciences already. 'But I'm not certain
how this will help me to complete my mission.'

'It is not my place to tell you that,' Cal said soberly. 'But
my hope is that somewhere in this demonstration you will
discover the clue I couldn't. We should be better able to
understand the advanced fungi once we study the primitive
ones. I'm afraid we made a bad mistake on Nacre, but I
can't bring myself to define it and have no idea how to undo
it. That is what you have to learn - and I think only the
manta can complete the picture for you. You must learn to
communicate on its terms, as you are now learning to do so
on mine.'
 'So I understand.' And that would be the reason for the

drug. Cal could have presented the material directly, but not
the experience of the hallucinogen, the training in personal
submersion in order to respond to another person's slightest
concept. With an alien, there might be no standard com-
munication, and the nuance response would become all im-
portant. He was mastering the technique now - but he
certainly would not have wanted to practice while facing the
manta.

'Let's check the other rooms,' he said.

They expanded to normal size. 'Was it not a mushroom
Alice ate in Wonderland, to change her size?' Subble in-
quired, requiring no answer. The third kingdom was per-
vasive, now that he had become aware of it as such.

'Health,' Cal said at the next door. 'Most people are
aware of mycotic infection - ringworm, athlete's foot, his-
toplasmosis - but don't realize how much more they owe to
fungal antibiotics and drugs. You saw an array of healthy
people - but how many would have stayed that way without
penicillin and the other fungoid derivatives?' He opened
the door.

A foul odor wafted out. The chamber was rilled with a
monstrous bubbling vat, churned constantly by a mighty
paddle wielded by the grinning genie. 'Surprise!' Myco
cried. This is where I live.'

It was penicillin mold, stimulated to grow in aerated nu-
trient fluid.

Cal closed the door, cutting off the smell. 'Not to mention
the work still being done with yeasts in connection with
radiation sickness and cancer and memory restoration.'

'Or with mental health, via the mind-opening drug ther-
apy,' Subble added. That's a little fungoid trick I will not
forget in a hurry.'

There was a clap of laughter from the health chamber;
Myco, it seemed, appreciated the feed-back.

'Or mental control,' Cal murmured. 'Knowledge does
have its dangers.'

They stood before the door of the chamber of food. 'Let
me guess,' Subble said. 'Edible mushrooms of splendiferous

variety: morel, puffball, shaggymane, polypore, truffle ...
and breads leavened, liquor fermented, cheese ripened, all
by virtue of yeasts and fungi cultures.'

'Only partly,' Cal said, smiling. 'I could add the biblical
manna from heaven to your list, since that was another
fungus product that people have eaten directly in time of
need, but I was thinking along another line. Actually, it is
not necessary to give up your original banquet. I can double
or triple it via the third kingdom.'

'By feeding mushrooms to livestock?'

'By feeding garbage to yeast.'

'Don't open that door!' Subble exclaimed. 'The penicillin
was bad enough. Let me remember my banquet as it was.
Just tell me about it.'

This time Cal laughed. 'The processing is rather interest-
ing, but I admit there are uncomfortable elements. Even our
sewers have become marvelous fonts of nourishment.' But
he dropped his hand from the knob.

'Today there are six billion human beings on Earth, and
not more than ten percent are actually hungry. We're feed-
ing our population better than ever in spite of its appalling
growth rate. You can't do that on steak, no matter how
brutally you intensify your farming. A steer yields less than
a pound and a half of dried beef for every hundred pounds of
feed provided it, and it takes many months to do it, and
copious rangeland if you insist on a really healthy product.
Much of what those impacted livestock batteries turn out is
technically unfit for human consumption: tasteless, non-
nutritive meat contaminated with residual insecticides and
deleterious hormones.' This seemed to disturb him more
than the idea of food from sewage.

'A pig yields six pounds of pork for the same bag of feed,
and does it in less time and much less space,' Cal went on.
'But still there isn't room or food for the porcine billions
that would be required to feed us if that were the major
dietary staple. Other animals are no better. Plants are more
efficient as food converters - barring nematode infestations!
- but there is only so much arable land. We use artificially

illuminated interior farms, multi-leveled, certainly, and we
also farm the sea and to a limited extent the atmosphere -
but our biggest single source of protein today is torula yeast.'

'Yeast? Straight?'

'Not exactly the variety that makes bread rise,' Cal said.
'But the principle is the same. Torula feeds on almost any-
thing organic - refuse from sawmills, molasses, rotten fruit -
even petroleum and cool tar.'

'Another omnivore!'

'You could call it that, yes. It produces sixty-five pounds
of edible solids for every hundred of feed, which is ten times
as good as any animal, and what it consumes is foodstuff
that would otherwise be largely wasted. And it does it on no
more land area than that required to support the vats, multi-
plying its original weight many times in a single day. It can
be mixed with other foods, indistinguishable by taste and
rich in nourishment. Hah5 of what we eat today is in fact
processed from varieties of torula - and the average man
doesn't realize it. Your turkey, your stuffed pig - if those
were standard brands, much of their weight was textured
and sculptured torula protein. A lot of artistry goes into
blending it.'

'It must,' Subble agreed, 'if the banquet in my own im-
agination is made from fungus I didn't know about!'

'You're in good company. Our spacemen are fed their
own waste products, broken down by the yeast. Anyway,
this is the true breadbasket of the world - and man can no
longer survive at his present level without the generous as-
sistance of the third kingdom.'

They mounted the steps and emerged upon the terrace.
'That's it,' Cal said. That's what the third kingdom means to
Earth. Remember that Nacre is an advanced fungus world;
it is billions of years ahead of us in that respect. Somewhere
in all this information is the key to disaster, perhaps, for all
of us.' He stooped beside the lamp, still quietly burning, and
snuffed out the little flame.

Almost immediately the nether staircase faded. 'No resi-
dual effect?' Subble inquired, indicating the lamp.

'Not with this dosage. You would not want to overdo it,
however. None of the hallucinogens are mere amusements.'
He considered for a moment. 'I'm not sure what would
happen if a person ever became entirely subservient to this
drug. It isn't addictive, theoretically, but it's potent stuff. We
sat about a yard from it, which diluted it sufficiently, but if
you inhaled directly over the flame'

'My antibrainwash syndrome could trigger self-
destruction,' Subble finished.

'Yes. It would in effect give you a psychoneurotic dis-
order, and you haven't been conditioned to it as we have.'

'You showed me all this for a reason - not just
background or practice. What reason?'

Cal would not meet his gaze. 'I lack the courage to tell
you. I hope most urgently that I am wrong - but you must
discover that for yourself, then do what you must. Perhaps
you will find, incidentally, some solution for our more per-
sonal problems.'

Subble nodded. 'I promised to help Aquilon, too. That's
really the price for your cooperation. I'll do what I can. But
first I'll have to take your lamp and your communication
device and go to meet the manta directly. That is where it
will end.'

'I don't know whether to wish you success or failure.'

'One other thing,' Subble said. 'I want your segment of
the Nacre adventure. I only have part of the story so far.'

'Yes - there is that,' Cal agreed wearily. 'I had forgotten.
We'll have some torula pancakes and...'

*	*          *

Hours later, away from the stench and gore, they camped on
another thin ledge and spread out on the ground. Veg and
Aquilon were tired, and quiet for their own reasons; the
manta was as inscrutable as ever. It had fed upon the omni-
vore's carcass, absorbing the juices through its digestive
underside, and now seemed content to relax. Aquilon had
looked at the remains and decided to continue eating fungus
after all. Only Cal was possessed of new strength.

'Do you know,' he said, 'that manta must be the most
formidable fighting machine on the planet! Did you see the
way it cut apart the omnivore? Our rifle didn't faze the
monster, but the knife-edged tail of the manta slashed it to
pieces. And the omnivore knew it; it was afraid.'

'We - didn't see all of it,' Aquilon said. 'But why doesn't
the manta attack us?' Her motive seemed to be more to
encourage him than genuine curiosity. 'Why does it keep
Veg away from me, and not from you?'

'I've been thinking about that,' Cal said. He was buoyed
by some nameless excitement, as though the horrible en-
counter had released him from a coma. He would have to
explore the reason. Could it be some invigorating chemical
in the omnivore blood he had eaten - or had the revelation
of his vice brought relief instead of shame? No, there was
something else, something highly significant, that he could not
pinpoint yet. 'I've also been wondering why the herbivores
weren't afraid of the manta. And I think I have the answer.'

Veg stared morosely into the ground, facing away from
Aquilon. Something had passed between them, something
Cal didn't know about, that left both pensive. But what?
There had been no tune for any private dialogue, and the
battle with the omnivore should not have prejudiced their
interpersonal relationship.

The entire complexion of their little group had somehow
been changed. Veg had been dominant at the beginning of
the adventure, running the tractor and determining their
route back toward the camp. Then, with the slaughter of the
first manta, Veg had given way subtly to Aquilon, the artist
and anatomist. Now the immediate problems of survival for.
the three of them had been surmounted, and their eventual
return to the base seemed probable - if they could grasp the
special nature of their contact with the manta. Obviously it
could kill them all, and might do that, if they gave it incen-
tive. Now was the time for intellectual exercise, for problem
solving on other than a physical basis. Now it was Cal's turn
to be dominant. But that was not the source of his exhilar-
ation.

Aquilon was curious. 'You can explain the manta's
actions?'

'I think so. But it's not simple, and the implications may
not be pleasant.'

'I think we'd better know,' Aquilon said. 'If it affects our
safety ... and it isn't as though there hasn't been un-
pleasantness already.'

Cal looked at her, concerned for the effect his words
might have upon her. She was a very sensitive girl. He
glanced at Veg, but knew the big man would shrug off the
implications. 'It does affect our safety - and our pride,' he
said. 'On Nacre, the ecological chain seems spare: one
species of herbivore, one of omnivore, and also, apparently,
one of true carnivore. But that's only a very small part of the
story. It is impossible for animal and fungoid life to exist to
the exclusion of the photosynthesizing plants. Those are the
ones that manufacture food from light and inorganic sub-
stances, using chlorophyll, the green pigment. Everything
else feeds on these, directly or indirectly.'

Veg began to take an interest. 'None of those here.'

'They are here, though. They have to be. They're in the
atmosphere, microscopically small, circulating in the higher
reaches where sufficient sunlight penetrates. As a matter of
fact, the evidence is that the major ecological chains are
completed in the atmosphere, and that the ground is merely
a wasteland for the debris. Thus the plant life remains primi-
tive, since it can't establish a ground base, send out roots,
form a woody structure, flower and so on. It is like plankton
in Earth's sea, floating and growing where conditions are
favorable, and falling to the bottom when it grows too large
to remain suspended. That's our dust - the perpetually sink-
ing plankton. The plants really seem to occupy a sub-
ordinate niche here, perpetually retarded, just as many fungi
are on Earth. That's an oversimplification, of course'

He saw their restlessness and realized he was lecturing.
'At any rate, the ground habitat is restricted enough so that
three major species of animal have been able to dominate, at
least in the section we have seen. The so-called herbivores

feed on the dust, and are easy prey, but without them the
other species would perish. It would be easy for the omni-
vore to wipe them out, seemingly'

'But what about the manta?' Aquilon asked. 'It should be
even more'

'Let him talk,' Veg growled. Nettled, Aquilon shut up.

'The manta, the true carnivore, would maintain the bal-
ance by preying on the omnivore, which in turn eats any-
thing available, from dust to men. But the manta shouldn't
require the herbivore for food at all'

'That's it!' Veg exclaimed. Aquilon gave him a look. 'The
manta doesn't eat herbies. It protects them!'

'Let him talk,' Aquilon said.

'If I'm right,' Cal continued quickly, 'these creatures
would instinctively define everything in terms of their own
system. There would be just three animal classifications:
herbivore, omnivore and carnivore, preying, respectively,
upon no creature, upon all creatures, and upon just one: the
middle. So the herbivore would have to fear only the omni-
vore, and might even be protected by the manta. They
would distinguish each other by type, not physical ap-
pearance, since their shapes are somewhat flexible - and
may even be able to distinguish similar divisions in unre-
lated species. As fate would have it, the three of us rep-
resent'

The other two came to life.'Herby!'

'Omnivore!'

'And carnivore,' Cal finished. 'In that light, the manta's
motives are clear. To it, Veg is a helpless creature in need of
protection. Every time a manta has seen him, it has fol-
lowed, probably in response to that impulse. Naturally it has
to safeguard him from the menace so close at hand.'

'It was protecting him from me,' Aquilon said, not en-
tirely pleased.

'That tune in the herby herd,' Veg said, running it down.
'The manta sailed right over me. It could have sliced me in
half with that tail, but it was headed for her. And when that
omnivore attacked, our manta didn't budge until I got in the

way. It must've figured Cal could take care of himself, and it
didn't care about 'Quilon ...' He paused. 'And I killed the
first one. It was trying to help me, and I shot it down'

'It might have killed 'Quilon, otherwise,' Cal reminded
him.

'But why,' Aquilon said, beginning to comprehend her
personal danger, 'why didn't this one attack me right away,
instead of watching?'

'It must have realized that all three of us were alien,' Cal
said, finding the need to offer something though this ques-
tion bothered him considerably. 'It may not know quite how
to deal with us, and is holding off until it can make up its
mind.'

'Still no call to cut the alligator pack-straps,' Veg
muttered.

'Don't you know the difference between alligator and
granulated pig leather?' Aquilon demanded. "Those straps
are omnivore hide.'

Veg looked embarrassed.

'After a rude surprise like that, no wonder it wanted to
keep an eye on us,' she continued.

'A large eye,' Veg said, staring at it.

'But when it finally comes to a decision'

'I suggest that we get back to the base before it comes to
that,' Cal said.

Aquilon looked at the manta's well of an eye and shud-
dered. Death stared back at her.

They climbed with new incentive. The manta followed,
declining to take action - yet.

The trail ended in midafternoon. One moment they were
toiling past coral cones and hanging yellow strings crowding
the path in increasing proliferation; the next, they faced a
vast level plain extending into the haze. To either side the
fungus colored the brink, setting it off, but most species did
not venture far onto the plateau.

Veg studied the compass. 'Six miles. But we can't make
it today.'

'So close?' Aquilon asked him. 'But why not?'

'We could make the level distance, all right. It's the up-
down that bothers me. We must be a mile in the air. Got to
be a drop-off somewhere....'

'Oh.'

'One more night on the road won't hurt us,' Cal said.
'Manta permitting. I'd certainly like to know just how smart
this creature is.'

'Smart as a man, you figure?' Veg asked.

'I didn't say that. We know that it has a complex brain, or
something analogous, and its actions certainly show some-
thing more than blind impulse. But with its superb fighting
equipment, it doesn't really need intelligence as we think of
it. There isn't enough challenge. It could have genius, but'

Aquilon's brush and canvas appeared. She seemed to
have shaken off her apprehension about the manta. Once
again the vitality of her personality showed in two dimen-
sions as the brush created its extemporaneous color. Sit-
ting before the manta, trying to conceal any nervousness she
might have felt, she painted its portrait: the midnight hump
of a body, the flickering depth of the mighty eye that
transfixed her with unblinking candor, the cruel whip-length
of the tail, now curled on the ground in a circle about its
foot.

The manta sat through this, quite still.

'Try one of the omnivore,' Cal said, understanding her
purpose. Aquilon obliged, producing from memory an
effective rendition of the charging monster. She presented it
to the manta, but met with no response.

She tried a herbivore, a fungus, an enlarged manta eye, all
to no avail. It would not be possible to establish com-
munication unless she could find some point of reaction. At
Cal's further suggestion she drew an omnivore charging at a
group of herbivores. Still nothing. She went on to portray
lifelike caricatures of the three human beings. Finally she
drew a picture which she concealed from the men, showing
it only to the manta. When that also brought no response,
she hesitated, flushed gently, and signaled to Veg, who was
getting ready to backtrack for the pack down the trail.

'Something I can do for you, Beautiful?' he inquired. Cal
noted this with interest; apparently whatever had soured
them earlier was fading, and the subdued flirtations were
recommencing. Thus encouraged, Aquilon beckoned again.

Veg came - and the manta moved. Dust swirled as its flat
body angled between them. Aquilon cried out and dropped
the sketch, while Veg jumped back.

'Still forbidden,' he commented sadly. 'That thing sure
watches out for what it thinks are my interests. Otherwise
you know what I'd'

His eye fell on the picture, laying face up on the ground.
'Yeah, I guess you do.'

Cal looked at it. It was a picture of Veg embracing Aqui-
lon.

The following day opened with uneasy turbulence. On
Nacre, the shrouded planet that sparkled in space like a
pearl, the wind was seldom more than a wash of mist, and
the day-to-night extremes of temperature fluctuated within
ten degrees. There appeared to be no rain other than the
constant fall of dust - yet on this morning something was
developing, something very like a storm.

They moved on, traversing the last few miles toward the
base. Veg's estimate was verified within two hours: there
was a sheer drop at the other side of the plateau. The human
base was so close that they could hear the distant clank of
machinery, but it remained invisible in the mist.

The cliff was authoritative, here; there was no feasible
way for them to scale it. A few puttylike fungi leaned over
the edge, but did not brave farther. Veg shouted into
the gulf, but without effect There would have to be a
detour.

As suddenly as it had come, the manta left. It sailed off
the edge, spiraling down to disappear in the dust.

Veg peered after it, astonished. 'It can fly,' he said. Then
his mind reverted to first principles. 'Chaperone's gone!' He
caught hold of Aquilon's slim waist and drew her close. He
kissed her.

'Not bad,' he said after a moment. 'For an omnivore ...
maybe we should marry.'

She kicked him and moved out of reach. Cal still won-
dered what had caused the rift, now evidently healed and
more than healed, but did not care to inquire. He felt no
jealousy; it was enough that dissension had been removed.

With something less than enthusiasm they turned to
the right and proceeded down a slight incline parallel to
the cleft. Two miles to go and they had had to turn
aside.

An hour later they had to halt again. Across the sloping
plain a thin line of disks appeared, emerging from the ob-
scurity with astonishing rapidity.

'Mantas,' Veg said. 'Dozens of them.'

'I'm afraid Ragnarok is at hand,' Cal said. 'Our guardian
has returned with his company. If only we had been able to
make some kind of contact.' But he was not seriously
worried; had immediate death been the verdict, the original
manta would have handled it alone. This was something
else, and therefore promising.

In moments the line of sailing creatures closed the dis-
tance and circled the human group. It was strange to see so
many at once, after the three contacts with individuals. A
single ring of them settled down, a manta every five or six feet,
eyes facing into the center where the human trio stood. Most
were sleek and black, though they were of differing sizes and
variable posture. There was no way to distinguish one from
another with certainty, since the shape of each body was not
fixed, except by size. Cal could not even be sure that their
erstwhile companion was among them.

They found the one I shot!' Veg exclaimed. 'They're here
for revenge.'

'I doubt it,' Cal said. 'How would they know which one
of us fired the weapon?' But that suggested a manta inves-
tigation, a trial. ... 'Probably they are merely curious how
this weird collection of aliens manages to associate in har-
mony.'

He hardly believed this now, and was sure neither other

person was fooled. There was too much they did not know
about these creatures. The mantas must have surrounded
them for some purpose. Did they have a leader? A decision
maker?

He spied a huge grizzled individual, two hundred pounds
at least and almost five feet tall. It's eye bore upon him.
Menacingly? Intelligently? Could size be an indication of
status, since presumably the largest was the oldest?

Outside the immediate ring the smaller mantas moved ,
about, leaping and cruising in widening spirals, their paths
crossing and recrossing. It seemed to be an aimless pattern,
antlike; and like ants, each member hesitated as it met
another, exchanging glances and dodging by.

Cal observed all this with growing excitement. 'That eye -
why didn't I think of it before! It is constructed like an
electronic tube, a cathode. It must generate a com-
munication signal!'

'But why didn't my pictures'

'I see it all now,' Cal rushed on, hardly hearing her. 'Why,
more straight perception must be massed in that one optic
than in all our multiple senses. It would be a highly effective
natural radar device, emitting a controlled beam and coordi-
nating the data returned. The dust would prevent confusion
by limiting the range. I wouldn't be surprised if it detected
depth by analyzing the tune-delay of the returning signal.'

'But if it could see that well' Aquilon began.

'That's the reason! We see by our own "visible" spec-
trum, but the manta wouldn't necessarily operate on that
level at all. Even if it could make out the colors, it would
hardly interpret them as a representation of a three-dimen-
sional object. Its vision wouldn't utilize the same illusions of
perspective as our own. You may have been showing it a flat,
blank sheet.'

Veg had been walking around the circle. 'So it sees too
well for us?' he asked.

Tartly that, but' Cal drifted off, working it out. 'We
know from that dissection that virtually all of the manta's
brain is tied directly to the eye. If it emits a modulated signal

- why, its whole intellect is keyed in. Think of the com-
munication possible, when two of them lock their gaze. The
full power of each brain channeled through the transceiver
... pictures, feelings, all of it in an instant....'

"They must be pretty smart,' Veg said.

'No, probably the opposite. They'

Both stared at bun curiously. He tried again. 'Don't you
see - so much of man's vaunted intelligence is required
simply to transmit and receive information. Each of us has a
wall of isolation, of ignorance, to transcend. We have no
direct communication, and so we have to master complex
verbal codes and symbolic interpretations, merely to get our
thoughts and needs across. With such second-hand contact,
no wonder a powerful cerebral backstop is necessary. But
the manta must have virtual telepathy: one glance, and com-
munication is complete. It needs no real intelligence.'

'Yeah. Sure,' Veg said dubiously.

The grizzled leader (presumed) swiveled to meet the
glance of a traveling manta as a strangely hot gust of air
washed over the assemblage. Then it was moving, and so
were the others.

"There's something else going on,' Aquilon said nervously.
'I don't think they care about us. Not to talk with, anyway.'

'If only we had the proper equipment here - a television
transducer, perhaps - we might be able to establish direct
contact,' Cal said, disappointed. 'We could photograph their
signal and analyze it. But right now we have no way to know
their motives.' But he knew that she had a good point. It was
a strange day in a strange area, and the strange actions of the
mantas were more likely than not to be connected. Had the
human party overrated its importance?

Across the plateau the gray mists parted. A brilliant light
appeared, widening rapidly. The mantas scattered across the
plain reacted with bursts of energy that tore up the ground.

'Look at them move!' Veg exclaimed admiringly.

The light expanded, sweeping toward them in a burning
arc. 'What is it?' Aquilon demanded, clutching Veg's arm.
'That light - like a furnace. Where is it coming from?'

She realized what she was doing and jerked her hand
away, but the sweeping shapes paid no attention. The
mantas seemed possessed, darting about in a crazed firefly
pattern.

More flares appeared, as far as he could see across the
plain. It was a phenomenon that extended for miles, if what
he observed were typical. Volcanic eruption? Then where
was the noise, the earth-shuddering? This was silent light,
flaring intermittently as though a curtain flapped before a
projector.

Then he understood. 'The sun - the storm has let in the
sun!'

The advancing light struck one of the billowing fungi
spotting the plain in this neighborhood. Almost immedi-
ately the structure began to twist and shrivel; then, as the
radiation and heat penetrated its rind, the dormant gases
inside expanded. The skin of the fungus distended in gross
blisters; then the entire growth shattered.

'I never thought of that,' Aquilon said, fascinated. 'Nacre
hardly ever sees the direct light of the sun. The native life
isn't conditioned to it.'

'Like a forest fire,' Veg agreed. 'Wipes out everything it
touches, and nobody knows how to get away.'

It occurred to Cal that this could explain the barren-
ness of the upper plain. The higher elevation might
predispose it to such breakthroughs, letting the sun
blast away all life periodically. Had the mantas come
to warn them? Convection currents at the edges could
keep enough new dust stirred up so that the fungus there was
protected.

The sky opened near at hand and the terrible brilliance
flamed down almost where they stood. Cal visualized the
weight of the suspended plants becoming too great for at-
mospheric conditions, forcing an occasional massive inver-
sion, just as sometimes happened in Earth storms. The
overturning could become so violent, here where the lay of
the land forced air currents up, as to create a rent from top
to bottom and lay the ground open to the sun. But it could

hardly last long; more ordered dust would soon fill in from
the sides.

The mantas must have known it was coming. They had
acted in foolhardy fashion, coming here for any reason at
this time, unless the storm held some particular fascination
for them. Now they leaped in masses over the edge of the
fault, fleeing the blazing path of light.

'Look!' Aquilon cried, pointing. One manta had been
trapped within the sunlit area. It cast about violently,
unable to find shelter.

She started forward. 'The sun is killing it. It can't see to
get away!'

'There is nothing we can do,' Cal cautioned her. 'We can't
interfere'

'We can't let it die!' she cried. Veg caught her arm, but she
knocked his hand away without even looking. He reached
for her again, trying to restrain her, but she was away, run-
ning fleetly across the plain. She plunged into the sunshine
without hesitation, straight toward the blinded manta.

In moments she reached it. The thing was writhing on the
ground, and Cal could see the dangerous tail snapping with-
out direction. It was trying to get its eye into shadow, but
there was none.

Aquilon stopped briefly, looking at it. Cal knew the
reason for her hesitation: she had never actually touched a
live manta with her hands. Then she ripped off her light
blouse and threw it over the creature's tortured eye. It would
offer scant protection, but the idea was good. She circled
both arms around its globular, contracted body and picked
it up. Burdened with its weight, she ran heavily out of the
light. The tail dragged on the ground behind.

Veg ran forward to help her, but she was already out of
the danger area, putting down the manta. It was of medium
size, or about fifty pounds.

The sun storm was over, as though it saw no point in
continuing now that its victim was gone. Singly and in
groups the mantas returned. Aquilon stopped to unwind the
blouse from her manta's head. 'I never knew they were cold-

blooded,' she said, as though that were the most significant
thing of all.

The circle reformed. The largest manta came forward,
and Aquilon stepped out of its way. It contemplated the
quivering creature on the ground; then without warning it
was airborne. The body of the blinded one shook as the
tremendous disk passed over and cut it to pieces with in-
visible slashes. Soon there was nothing but a pile of tattered
flesh.

'No, no!' Aquilon cried. She strained, but this time Veg's
grasp was firm. She struck at him ineffectively, then fell sob-
bing into his arms. 'I only tried to save it... did they think
my touch contaminated'

'Look out!' Veg shouted, throwing her to one side and
lunging to the other. The great manta was coming, its fierce
eye glittering. The disk seemed to expand enormously. Veg
spread his arms as though to intercept and halt the creature
by the mass of his own body, but it pleated in mid-air and
funnelled by him.

Aquilon looked up - and screamed as the manta struck.
Four times the tail knifed into her face before she could
protect it with her hands. Then the vengeful shape was gone
and she fell, knuckles to her cheeks, blood welling between
the fingers.

Veg knelt at her side immediately, gripping both her
wrists in his large hands and pulling her hands away by main
force. Cal peered over Veg's shoulder, sick at heart. As
Aquilon raised her face he saw her flowing tears mixed with
the smeared blood. Cheek and jaw on both sides had been
deeply slashed, but the blood was running, not gouting. Her
eyes had not been touched, and no artery had been hit.

His gaze fell on her bare shoulders and back. The skin was
red and beginning to blister from the brief exposure to the
rays of Nacre's sun, the damage extending down to her bra
strap.

Cal removed his own shirt, the need for cloth overcoming
his extreme disinclination to expose his skeletal body. He
handed it to Veg, who accepted it unceremoniously and

wiped Aquilon's face as clean as he could. The cuts were
sharp and well defined, not ragged, and the flow of blood
diminished quickly.

'Need a clean one,' Veg snapped; then, realizing what it
was: 'Hey!' He looked at Cal, embarrassed, then gripped the
short sleeve of his own shirt and wrenched. Muscles bulged
as the tearproof fabric tore. He moistened it with his tongue
and carefully wiped away the remaining smears.

'I can do that,' Cal offered.

'Maybe you'd better,' Veg said grimly, remembering
something. 'I have business with Brother Manta.' Rising, he
strode to the rifle and picked it up, activating the flare-
chamber immediately.

'No, stop!' Cal called, seeing his intent. 'You can't judge
the manta by our standards. We have no way to know its
motives. It could have thought 'Quilon was responsible for
torturing and blinding that young one. They must have no
real conception of the sun ... perhaps they even worship it
as the embodiment of evil. They might even believe that we
brought the light....'

Veg paid no attention. He was stalking the large manta.

'They could even be right,' Cal went on desperately. 'Our
ships go up and down, disrupting the atmosphere as we
ferry supplies. Remember - man is an omnivore....'

Veg stood still, holding the rifle ready, chamber hot. Cal
knew the weapon could do a lot of damage as its steam fired
a rapid stream of projectiles at the standing mantas. Its chief
advantages were silent operation, except for the hiss of the
escaping gouts of steam, and safe ammunition, since the
motive power came from the rifle and not from explosive
bullets. But it would be disastrous to fire it now; the mantas
would very quickly realize its purpose and wipe out the at-
tacker. A good weapon in the hands of an angry man....

'If I can live with the omnivore,' Veg said, 'so can the
manta. She saved one from the sun - and that big bastard
killed it and went after her. It tried to blind her. You saw.'

'But she didn't save it from the sun!'

Aquilon looked up, startled.

'That manta had been blinded by the light,' Cal said,
hoping he could hold Veg's attention until he cooled off
enough to remember he didn't believe in killing. 'Remem-
ber, their eyes must be far more sensitive than ours, and the
sun may be deadly to them. The first few seconds may have
destroyed its vision utterly, as surely as though a glowing
poker had been rammed into its eye. There would be no
possibility of salvage, with such a delicate mechanism.'

'But it lived,' Veg said. 'She saved its life.'

Cal sat back and looked at him. 'Life,' he said. 'You wor-
ship life. You think everything is all right so long as you do
not kill - except maybe for revenge. You are a fool.'

'I th-thought I was helping it,' Aquilon said, putting her
hand to her face to feel the wounds. She had not been
seriously hurt; that was now obvious to all of them. The
manta's attack had not been to kill - or, perhaps, to blind,
either.

Cal shook his head, meeting her gaze. 'You mean so well,
'Quilon - but you are thinking with your emotions, not your
mind. Don't you understand - the manta has no other per-
ception besides its sight. A man has eyes and ears and so
many other senses that the loss of one doesn't really hurt
him; he can function perfectly well with one or two impaired.
You dissected the manta's brain two days ago; you know the
eye is the only perceptory connection to speak of. Our own
eyes are such feeble candles, ranged against that. But when it
is destroyed'

He took another breath. 'When it is destroyed, the
manta's total contact with its environment is severed. In
such a case, it is only mercy to terminate its life quickly.
Believe me, I know.'

'Okay,' Veg said, softening. 'Now tell me why it went for
'Quilon. If it had so much mercy'

'I'm afraid it is an animal,' Cal said sadly. 'Not capable of
understanding that an omnivore is not necessarily an enemy.
And yet - it could so easily have killed her. Those little cuts
won't even mutilate her face permanently. They're neat and
precise, almost like surgery. A token punishment'

'I don't think so,' Aquilon said, speaking with difficulty.
Her words were blurred as though she had trouble con-
trolling her facial muscles. The cuts began to bleed again,
and he hastily dabbed some more.

'Look!' Veg cried, still facing the main group. 'Little
mantas!'

The mass of moving bodies parted. It was true. There,
herded by a grown one, were eight tiny mantas, the first
babies they had seen. Their miniature leaps were uncertain,
their landings awkward, and they had not yet learned to
flatten their bodies properly for control in the air, but
mantas they certainly were. They could not have been more
than a few days old.

'They did understand,' Cal said.

By expert snaps of her whiplike tail the adult drove them
in a course that led directly to Aquilon. Cal got up and
moved away. As they came to rest in front of her, the adult
left. Mantas and humans waited, intent upon that scene.

Astonished, Aquilon looked down, at the tiny group.
From a six-inch elevation, eight sober little lenses looked
back, flickering tentatively. Touched, she leaned over and
spread out her arms, and the babies hopped into their circle
trustingly.

'They are for me,' she said in wonder.

'Too young to be afraid of the omnivore,' Cal murmured.
'Could a human mother ever show such trust? These eight
will come to understand our ways. We'll be able to colonize,
now. And' here he broke into a smile that set the years of
agony aside  'we shall come to understand them.'

'For me,' Aquilon repeated, holding the little bodies.

'Don't smile, 'Quilon,' Veg cautioned, then bit his lip. Cal
saw the motion and began to see what had happened to
make that joke unacceptable.

But Aquilon did smile. Gradually, in the reflex sup-
pressed for so many years, the corners of her delicate lips
upturned. Her face lighted, casting an emotional radiance
that touched man and manta alike, reflecting from the watch-

full extent of the manta's gift - the physical pretext and the
psychological reality - she showed the beauty that was in her
heart unfolding like a brilliant flower; warm and clean and
fine, so full of rapture that the onlookers were stunned.

CHAPTER FOUR
WILDERNESS

But the loveliness of a blooming flower may be a fleeting
thing, Subble thought as he stroked through the water.
Nacre had not solved any problems, it had only graven their
names on heavier chains. So long as home was a ruinously
impacted Earth, the horrors would remain in one form or
another.

He towed a basket by a cord looped around his waist. A
mile ahead rose the offshore key - a semi-tropic island pre-
served as a wilderness park, inhabited only by birds, rodents,
arthropods and elements of the second and third kingdoms.
It was dusk, the island was outlined against the sunset, black
palm against red cloud. A few gulls wheeled, and there were
sundry movements in the shadowed tide beneath him. That
was all.

He swam, enjoying the feel of the cool gulf water, the slap
of salty spume against his shoulders and face. There was
discovery and danger ahead, perhaps death - but death was
an impersonal thing to him. He had a mission, and its com-
pletion was at hand - whatever that might mean.

The story of Nacre ran through his mind. What an adven-
ture it had been, for the diverse trio! A vegetarian, a normal
omnivore and a technical carnivore, solving the riddle of a
world whose fauna mirrored their own habits. Yet the solu-
tion had not been complete, for now the deadly carnivores
were on Earth, and there was danger no one quite com-
prehended yet all suspected. Not the human problems of the
male-female triangle; that would be resolved quietly in its

own fashion once the principals got together again. Not the
risk of an alien scourge on Earth, for the mantas were highly
ethical creatures; they could attack man, but would not.
They had come to comprehend, he was sure, not to conquer.

What, then? There was danger, terrible peril. His trained
perception was suffused with it. Veg, Aquilon, Cal - all car-
ried the aura of fear, tied in with the manta. There was a
potent mystery to the presence of the creature on Earth, and
it was not a matter of diet or savagery or even intent. The
future of Earth itself might hang upon the success of his
mission - and he still could not grasp how.

Early night, and the isle loomed close before him. Subble
turned on his back and looked up at the still trees, and
beyond them to the cold stars. He had never been away from
the planet himself, he was sure; agents had to be specially
conditioned for extraterrestrial duty, and there would be no
point in utilizing an Earth-trained unit for it. He understood
that the average man felt a nameless emotion when viewing
the stars, a kind of compulsive awe, a yearning to reach
them and also a deep loneliness. Subble felt nothing except a
mild intellectual curiosity. Probably he had been con-
ditioned to cleave to Earth, and could not leave it without
suffering from the same kind of emotional malady the
normals suffered just existing upon it. Or perhaps it was
because he needed no sense of continuity, of timelessness,
since he had no past and no future. There was only the
mission, and the stars were elsewhere.

There had been other missions before, but no trace of
them remained with him. He might have had severe adven-
tures in prior assignments, and could be fated for worse
ones to come - but such speculations were hardly worth the
effort it took to dwell upon them now. Death did not
frighten him, and neither did the termination of his mission.
Failure was the only spectre, and he was not a man to fail
easily.

No, there was one realistic fear for him. Sometimes, he
knew, an agent became stranded. For some reason it might
be impossible to complete the assignment and check in

promptly, and an agent caught in that situation was obliged
to continue indefinitely, gradually growing old and losing
the edge of his powers, missing the automatic updating pro-
vided by the reconditioning. It could be due to a continuing
relationship - marriage in the line of duty, for example - in
which a substitution would be inexpedient. Of course, if a
female agent happened to be involved....

Occasionally there was an accident; the agent was re-
ported lost in action and his file discontinued prematurely
while actually he survived to strive futilely for termination.
It could happen to him! The unit SUB could be inca-
pacitated upon this island, unable to return or report, yet
alive. It could be months or even years before a follow-up
located him, during which period he would be without a
mission.

The thought was horrible. His body was nothing, his life
irrelevant; pain and pleasure were only commodities of
existence. But the mission - that was paramount, and with-
out it he was wasted. Waste was the only intolerable. Better
a clean death in the line of duty; better by far.

His feet found the sand beneath the shallows, and he drew
his basket to the beach. A score of tiny brownish fiddler
crabs scuttled sideways away from him as he emerged. They
disappeared into their peppered holes in the damp sand. He
waited while one big-clawed giant, well over an inch long,
tried vainly to get into two of the pencil-sized holes and
finally squeezed into the third. He wondered whether the
burrows were linked underneath, like Aquilon's residential
section. Did they have air-conditioning and color tele-
vision? Well, running salt water, perhaps.

The isle was quiet; no frogs or crickets chirrupped, and
the birds held their peace. They were present, though; as he
concentrated his faculties he perceived them all about, hear-
ing their surreptitious motions and smelling their furtive ani-
mation behind the drifting odors of seaweed and rot. The
animals would return to normal activities when assured he
was not a menace. Already the fiddlers were peeking out.

It was a normal beach. The packed, even sand gave way to

a line of tumbled larger shells just beyond the high-tide line:
clam halves ranging from several inches across down to
half-inch coquinas, broken red and white conches with the
inner spirals exposed, bleached sand-dollars decorated with
five-leaf clover designs. Farther back the weeds and creepers
sprouted between occasional driftwood and desiccated palm
fronds. Whitish morning-glory type flowers nestled upon
beach-running vines, and toward the forest line the jointed,
head-high sea-oats waved beside the great round sea-grape
leaves.

He set up the electronic equipment and tested it. Cal's
notion had been good: duplicate the frequency and quality
of the manta's eye-beam and emulate the patterns of com-
munication with the guidance of the oscilloscope. Cal had
had limited success; he thought he had the proper channel,
as it were, but had trouble gaining the cooperation of the
mantas. Subble believed that the groundwork was good;
now it was up to the faster responses of a trained man:
himself. He would try it first without the hallucinogen; he
was not convinced that this aspect of Cal's regimen was
either appropriate or safe. There was no guarantee that the
fungus drug would bring him closer to the representatives of
the fungus world. It was as likely to give him the illusion of
liaison, which was hardly his mission, and if, like an addict,
he lost his perspective and inhaled an overdose-
It was dark when he finished, but this was no dis-
advantage. Subble, as a fully equipped agent, was at home in
the night. He knew the mantas were largely nocturnal on
Earth; they, unlike man, were severely handicapped by
bright daylight, and only in the gloom of the forest or closed
buildings could they function well. An overcast day might
allow them to go abroad, however. It was not so much the
sensitivity of the single eye as of the body: sunlight would
burn away the delicate skin and interfere with the pressure
responses essential to precision control of movement. This
would be a fact of life for any creature with the properties of
the manta; specialization inevitably brought special lia-
bilities.

He was ready. Cal had said that the mantas would find
him, once he made himself available - if they wanted to.
They were half-grown now and knew their way about, prey-
ing on fish and rodents. They would come. After that

Subble resigned himself to a long wait. If they did not
seek him out tonight, he would look for them by day. It was
pleasant enough here upon the spongy sand, contemplating
the mosslike growths and ribbonlike weed - but the mission
could not wait upon alien capriciousness.

There was no wait. They came over the beach, flying
saucers kicking up gouts of wet sand, twenty feet apart. No
evasion, no maneuvering; they came to rest in a wide circle
around him, six one-eyed humps, now absolutely still, tails
curled around their feet. The party was on.

He assessed each in turn, turning slowly in their cynosure.
He had not seen any this close before, and had had only the
descriptions of the three spacefarers to guide him, apart
from the evanescent flash in Veg's woods and Aquilon's
portrait. These were young individuals, smaller than the
ones the trio had encountered; he judged their weight at
forty-four pounds, plus or minus three percent. He was not
yet certain of the specific gravity of manta flesh. The color
was nongloss black. The six together would outmass him
only moderately, and in this thin - for them - air their flight
would suffer somewhat, requiring a greater spread for a
given speed. Their eyes would suffer from increased signal-
loss, too, since there was not so much atmospheric opacity
to bounce it back. It seemed unlikely that they represented
the physical threat to him that Cal had suggested, though he
had come without his most formidable armament. Their
concerted attack could be severe, however.

Subble had not come to fight. He was trained to assess the
physical potential of any man or animal or machine he met,
and this was an automatic process that signified no aggress-
ive imperative. It was intellectual contact he required, on
whatever level available. He turned on the communicator.

One manta hopped forward. A single bound, a single
yard, and the tableau was as before, the circle broken only at

that spot. Subble aimed the projector at the proffered eye
and adjusted the settings.

Was all this paraphernalia necessary, he wondered?
Surely the creature could read the nuances of human
countenance by now with a facility impossible to any man
or Earth machine. Selected frequencies probably penetrated
the subject in the manner of an X-ray to read internal
configurations, perhaps the convolutions of the brain itself.
The manta might not have olfactory apparatus, but could
actually see the minute particles arising from all objects,
that men interpreted as smell. Sight could replace several of
the conventional senses. This was sight quintessential, more
potent than man's diversified hearing, smell, touch, balance,
tension and fragmented other bodily perceptions. Sight,
bringing almost total information, geared directly to the
brain and thus the most efficient communicatory instrument
ever devised or evolved.

But as Cal had theorized, this did not guarantee intelli-
gence as man defined it. For man, communication was an
effort; but the manta could convey its entire world-view in
the blink of an eye. Not literally: the eye did not blink. The
external lens seemed to be crystalline, requiring no lubri-
cation; he wondered what mechanism kept it clean. At any
rate, it could represent a barrier to increasing intelligence by
its very effectiveness. Ants and termites had evolved com-
plex societies without intelligence; instinct was more than
sufficient. Mantas could easily have done the same, using
neither intelligence nor instinct, but simply their version of
complete communication.

Cal had hoped that he had discovered an alien civi-
lization, but now, after further study, he was not certain at
all. Cal wanted complete understanding, but had become
resigned to the fact that he could not achieve it on his own,
for reasons that eluded him. He had helped Subble as much
as he could, though desperately afraid of the consequence.

Cal was not a man to be frightened by phantoms.

'Say something, Brother,' Subble urged the manta.

The screen came to life. Meaningless patterns played

across its surface, whorls and lines shifting in kaleidoscopic
confusion. Meaningless to him, Subble reminded himself; the
signals might be direct and plain if he could interpret them
properly. Cal had succeeded in aligning the equipment to
manta impulses, but the fine tuning still had to be done. This
first step was equivalent to establishing radio contact while
remaining ignorant of the language.

'Let's revert to sign language,' he said. He brought out the
light-pencil and played it over the separate photoelectric
screen. Scribbled lines appeared in its wake, as though he had
run chalk over a blackboard randomly.

He hooked the screen into the main circuit and began to
draw. He had, in effect, a two-way contact: his probe could
initiate designs that were transmitted to the manta fre-
quency, albeit crudely, and the screen would reflect impulses
originated from the other end as well. Their minds could
meet via this circumscribed channel - if the manta desired it.

'Observe.' Subble drew a line of light and waited. The
screen could only be activated by a steady, controlled im-
pulse, and this had been demonstrated to be within the capa-
bility of the manta - when it chose to employ the technique.
The transitory flickerings of the screen faded, indicating that
the creature was following him, but there was nothing more.

He drew a second line beside the first. 'Come on, whip-tail
- make like an artist,' he suggested. Still no response - yet
the manta would not remain before the equipment unless it
understood its purpose.

He added a third and a fourth line, and finally it hap-
pened: a fifth appeared.

'Now we're in business!' The manta was participating at
last.

Subble erased the screen and drew a circle - and suddenly
it was filled with duplicate circles and wiped clean again,
with no action on his part. It was as tangible an expression
of impatience as he could imagine. There was at least mini-
mal comprehension, and phenomenal manipulative ability.
'So you can make symbols,' the manta had remarked, in
effect 'So what? Stop wasting my tune.'

Could it simply have been tedium that had interfered with
Cal's efforts? The little man was a deliberate thinker, check-
ing and rechecking before taking any new step. Quite pos-
sibly the volatile manta had given up in disgust while Cal
deliberated.

'I doubt it,' he said aloud, finding it easy to maintain the
one-sided verbal conversation while working out new lines
of play on the board. That smacked of the same simplicity
as the 'revenge' motif when one of the mantas of Nacre had
struck Aquilon in the face. The truth appeared to be im-
mensely more complicated. The simple answer's main asset
was its convenience for simple minds. There had to be more
to the present problem than impatience - and already he had
had far more specific success than Cal had described, despite
his lack of experience with the manta.

'So you just didn't want to talk to Cal,' he said, as his
electronic pencil moved as swiftly as his heightened
ability could control it. 'Why not? Why do you speak to
the stranger and not to your friend? Isn't that a little
fickle?'

He drew a man, simplified and stylized but recognizable,
he hoped. The manta produced an identical figure, seem-
ingly instantaneously. Subble drew a flying manta and this
too was reproduced.

Was he achieving anything? Mere imitation proved only
that the line was open. He needed intelligent application,
and he hadn't found it yet.

He drew a slightly larger man, and opposite it a Nacre
herbivore. 'You know Veg, right? And this is Aquilon, who
brought you here, but didn't want to keep you all cooped up
in her apartment. She's an omnivore - like this Nacre speci-
men, make of that what you will. And this smaller male-
symbol is Cal, who is' He left the opposite space blank,
and waited. If Aquilon's technique had been soundly con-
ceived

The manta figure appeared in the appropriate space.
Success! It understood the parallel.

A dotted X appeared, superimposed over the entire

screen, but the picture remained. Then, rapidly, a standard
man-symbol appeared beside the female, and the herbivore
and the carnivore sets vanished. The manta was telling him
that it knew that most men were omnivores; the screen
quickly filled with human figures, the straight men and the
bosomed women. But why the X?

Was the manta saying 'I understand your point, but it
isn't valid'?

Then the slate wiped clean again, to be renewed by a
group of Nacre omnivores. Subble's estimate of manta intel-
lect jumped abruptly as he watched what followed.

For the figures were animate, no longer stationary
symbols. The omnivores quivered and pounced, horribly
real, and now they took on color and a fungus background of
the Nacre habitat. Their size expanded until the screen was a
picture of a single living creature, leaping heavily and care-
lessly crushing the smaller mushrooms beneath its muscular
foot.

A placid herbivore came into view, as though a television
camera were centering on it - and the omnivore leaped upon
it, tore away great juicy hunks of soft flesh with the toothed
tail, and settled upon the spread remains to feed. Subble
could even see the digestive acids flowing over the carcass,
breaking the flesh down externally so that the predator's
underside could absorb the jellied essence.

Then a single manta appeared, much smaller than the om-
nivore, but also much swifter. They fought, and the manta
won and began feeding on omnivore meat.

The scene shifted to Earth: a recognizable tropical jungle.
Subble now appreciated one of the reasons Cal had chosen
to make his fungus commentary the way he had - in scenes.
He must have suspected that the manta would employ this
camera-mode.

A striped tiger prowled fretfully, the play of the great
muscles beautifully pictured. A man appeared dressed as a
hunter, with a heavy rifle in his hands. So accurate was the
detail that Subble was able to identify the make of the
weapon: one of the vintage gunpowder models. The

tiger sprang; the man wheeled, brought up his rifle, and
fired. The tiger fell and rolled on the ground, snapping and
dying.

'Right,' Subble said. 'On Earth the omnivore prevails
over the carnivore - and all other creatures. So long as he has
his trusty technology at hand.'

Now the picture split: the victorious manta on one side,
the man on the other. The backgrounds metamorphosed
into sand and palm trees: the island upon which they stood.
The line between them faded. Man and manta stepped
toward each other.

And the screen went blank.

The manta hopped out of the circle, past its companions,
and found a place in the center of the beach. It waited. None
of the others moved to utilize the electronic setup.

'Oho!' Subble exclaimed. 'So that's the way the jet fires.
You don't care to talk to me either.'

He turned off the set. There was no use running down the
battery until they settled this matter. The manta had proved
beyond question that it could communicate - when it chose.
It had gone as far as it intended to, and the next gesture was
up to him.

Why? Because it did not respect the omnivore? Subble
could understand this. He would be unlikely to treat a pig
with respect unless the creature first demonstrated qualities
deserving such attention. Unless, in fact, it were in a position
to command respect - by superior intellect or physical
prowess. Swine in a muddy pen were one thing; a great boar
hog in the wilderness another. Wild tusks were more
effective arguments than tame pork.

What did man have to distinguish himself? A technology
that was superfluous to the framework of the manta, and
rather crude where intelligible. Man's weapons were little
more than an extension of the innate savagery of the species.
Not an impressive total.

But Aquilon's act of faith and courage on Nacre had
brought a limited response. That had been the first solid
example of omnivore compassion the manta had observed

and understood, and it had replied in kind. The seed had
been planted.

Perhaps if the hunter saw the wild boar spare a human
child, he would be constrained to hold his fire - but not
necessarily to adopt that pig into his family. Respect had to
be earned step by step; it could not be given as a gift.

The manta, it would seem, had returned Aquilon's favor
and gone one step farther. It had sent its representatives to
Earth. Now it was up to a designate of Earth to prove him-
self - step by step.

And the foundation had to be laid in the field of arms.
The root of respect was almost always physical, no matter
how tempting it might be to consider it otherwise. Man and
manta had won their respective places by becoming the most
deadly fighters of their worlds. The order of precedence had
to be established before higher negotiations could begin.
This was the essence of natural selection; not pretty, but
necessary.

'So you wouldn't fight handicapped men,' he said. 'You
insisted on a really capable specimen, so that there could be
no excuses.' That was why Cal had had no success.

The manta was waiting.

Subble looked at it. 'Well, you've got one.' Was he to pit
his devastating physical attributes against a half-grown
animal? Immediately he caught himself. He had just had
formidable evidence that the creature was alert and sapient,
yet he still thought of it as an animal. Acceptance was a two-
way business!

Still it bothered him. Inherent in ritual combat was the
concept of fair play, and this was evidently highly developed
in the manta. They had not simply attacked him; they had
explained first, and now awaited his acquiescence. Fine - but
he was probably a match for several of the creatures facing
him, while only one made the offer.

Subble's reflexes were keyed to speeds far beyond those of
ordinary men, and his weapons were the finest Earth tech-
nology could provide. He was a superman; no creature on
the planet could match his strength, speed, endurance and

general command of combat technique - except another
agent. These mantas, on the other hand, were adapted to
another planet, used to a thicker atmosphere and a steadier
clime. They should hesitate to commit their forces in un-
favorable terrain, just as an agent like himself would con-
sider it bad tactics to engage, barehanded, a killer whale in
the water.

Perhaps they had not completely understood the situ-
ation. He would clarify it.

'If you will direct your attentions to the inland veg-
etation ...' he said, gesturing, but none changed position.
One was already facing that way, however.

Subble's hands touched the band of his trunks. Two
lances of fire appeared and disappeared. Two fronds on sep-
arate palm trees dropped to the ground, their blasted stems
smoking.

Not a manta moved.

But distance weapons were not part of the manta's frame-
work, though they evidently knew something about them.
Subble stepped out of the armored trunks and dropped them
beside the equipment. He removed his rather special watch,
a potent ring, and certain portions of his bridgework. A
naked man against a naked manta - that was closer to it.

'But it still isn't entirely sporting, Brother,' he said. 'You
weigh in at forty-four pounds, no hands.'

Subble moved: five steps, turnabout and somersault, in
the time it would have taken an ordinary man to focus his
eyes - and he had swept up a sturdy length of driftwood and
shattered it with one blow of one hand.

The single manta waited.

'You offer me no apparent choice,' he said regretfully.
'I'll have to kill you before the others will believe.' He knew
there could be no mercy in such a confrontation, for mercy
in elementary battle was weakness.

He was prepared to do what had to be done, efficiently
and supposedly without regrets - but he regretted this. His
mission required the exchange of information with the
mantas, to complete the picture, and a subsequent report

That was all - but they refused to cooperate until mastered.
It was such a waste, to destroy an intelligent creature so
casually - but necessary.

He strode to the center of the beach, fifty feet from the
selected manta. As he did so the others bounded outward,
taking up positions several hundred feet distant at either end
of the long strip: two and two, with the fifth beneath the
blasted palm on the inland side.

Subble paused, assessing the slope of the beach and tes-
ting the footing offered by the sand. He would do best to
stay clear of the dry area, since that would be powdery and
contain prickly sandspurs; he needed good leverage more
than the manta did. Then he marched toward his opponent.

He was uncertain how to kill it cleanly. He could not
expect to strangle it, since it did not breathe in an Earthly
fashion, and the tail would be dangerous in close work. He
could not expect to stun it with nerve blows because he did
not know enough about its nervous system, which could be
simplified and well protected. As a matter of fact, he re-
alized belatedly, he knew much less about it than it
knew about him. Perhaps the match was not so uneven after
all.

The best choice, in the face of his ignorance, was a quick
series of blows, crushing the head section. The eye was the
obvious vulnerability, and he did not wish to torture it by a
slow death or dismemberment. The slaughter had a bad
taste, but at least suffering could be minimized.

The manta did not move as he walked up. At twenty feet
it looked pitifully small, an innocuous black hump with a
single eye, something like a negative shmoo. Had he made
an error? Had he misread its intent, and seen combat to the
death where some gentler dialogue had been proposed?
What a terrible mistake, if

The manta was airborne, leaping away from him. He
would have to catch it first - and one thing he could not do
was outrun it Even handicapped by Earth conditions, and
under-age, it was probably capable of forty miles per hour
over the sand. He would have to wear it down, or

outmaneuver it, or mousetrap it as it assailed him. He was
glad; it was too noble a creature to die ignominiously.

'The recipe for rabbit stew ...' he reminded himself.
Could he catch it, if it stayed clear?

It angled into the air, a disk a dozen feet in diameter. The
foot disappeared into the body in this attitude, streamlining
it, and he could see the flux of the surface responding to air
resistance. The thing was both kite and glider, as much at
home in the air as on land, though technically it could not
fly. Beautiful control.

The manta swooped at the ground - and suddenly it was
coming directly at him at double its prior velocity. Subble
threw himself prone, clapping one hand over the back of his
neck and the other over his spine while his face dug into the
sand. It passed over him, the tail striking down as he
squirmed to the side.

He was on his feet again immediately, facing it, but the
manta settled a hundred feet up the beach. He glanced at his
hand, the one that had protected his neck, and saw a long
shallow slash beginning just below the wrist and running
eight inches down the forearm.

Then he knew what he was up against. The wound was not
dangerous, and in moments his physical control had sealed
it off almost bloodlessly. But it was at the wrong angle. The
manta's tail, moving forward in line with its body, should
have cut crosswise over his wrist. Instead it had sliced at
right angles to the creature's flight.

The manta had not only had tune to select its target care-
fully, but had had the control to make a rather awkwardly
positioned cut.

There was a similar incision along his other arm.

It had returned Subble's warning demonstration: this pass
had been to alert him to its capability, not to incapacitate
him. Now they both knew where they stood.

It was probably the first time he had ever seriously under-
estimated his opposition, for he would not have been avail-
able for this mission otherwise. He had allowed for
exaggeration in the Nacre episode, for the observers had had

other concerns to distract them from really objective views,
and he had allowed for his own surprise when the manta
moved in Veg's forest. Now he knew that these reasonable
allowances for human error were faulty. He was in a battle
for his life, and it was not possible to anticipate the outcome.

The tail was too fast for him. After appreciating what it
could do in a controlled run, he knew that it could crack the
sonic barrier when snapped with force, just as a whip could.
He had no defense but interference and avoidance. He had
to keep the manta out of range while in striking position or
it would blind him or slit his throat or lay open some other
part of his body on the next pass.

The manta lifted, flattening as it gained speed, coming at
him. Subble dived for the water's edge and scooped up a
handful of pebbles. He whirled and began firing them as the
disk approached, his throws rapid and accurate.

It dodged easily, rippling to let the stones pass harmlessly,
but it slowed; Subble was aiming for the great eye and knew
that should the manta grow careless and allow a hit it would
be in serious trouble. He began feeding his shots in pairs,
forcing double dodging, and abruptly the creature gave up
and swerved aside.

The manta touched the sand and catapulted ferociously at
him again. But this time Subble was not to be surprised; he
leaped - high into the air, directly at the manta.

Its velocity was too great to allow it to swerve in time, and
his body was far too big for it to dodge like a pebble. A
collision would favor him, because he massed over four
times as much as it did, and his body was comparatively
bony. He reached to enclose it, knowing that its delicate
extensions would be highly vulnerable to the grasp of his
hands. The striking tail would be ineffective in the face of
such direct bodily contact.

The manta flexed and passed under him, going out to sea,
and Subble landed on hands and feet, his nose not far from a
pretty two-inch corkscrew shell lying just beyond the water.
He jumped sideways and whirled, rearmed with stones, but
the creature had not turned. It sailed over the rounded

waves, the beat of its pumping foot casting up thin sprays of
water.

Subble watched, startled, though he should not have been.
Cal had remarked on this, and it was obvious that at the
speed the foot struck, water was as good a medium for lever-
age as any. It was possible for a man to water-ski upon his
two bare feet, if towed at sufficient speed, and the manta's
foot-area at contact was far wider than man's. That was
why they had chosen an island: the sea was a private
highway.

But only at speed, surely. Were a manta actually to fall
into the ocean, it would not be able to get up sufficient vel-
ocity to become airborne again, and its pusher would be
virtually useless for swimming. That was worth remem-
bering.

It was coming in again, flat and deadly as a flying knife.
He could not hope to avoid it indefinitely; the manta was too
fast, its tail too accurate. He could not run it down in his own
time, either, since it could 'walk' on water. If it became
fatigued, it could cross to another island and recover at
leisure; if he tried to swim after it, he would be subject to
immediate attack in the water, where the disparity in their
maneuverability would be greatest.

The manta gave him no tune to think. It rose to an alti-
tude of nine feet above sea level and sailed over the choppy
waves of the incoming tide, too high for him to block
effectively but just right for its own striking range.

Subble lurched to the side, and the manta shifted angles to
head him off. But the mid-air maneuver cost it velocity that
it could not regain without coming down. He ran along the
beach, seeking the hard-packed wet sand at the very edge of
the water and moving at thirty miles per hour: a feat impos-
sible for any normal athlete.

The manta altered its course to follow him, touching the
ground. It gained momentum. Subble heard it approaching,
closing the distance between them rapidly. He could main-
tain this pace for only a few seconds, yet it was easily out-
running him. In a moment it would draw abreast, and the

tail would flick across to touch the throat, the eye, perhaps
the hamstring tendon above the heel, and he would be
pinned for the kill.

It drew within ten feet. It was silent, except for the stac-
cato beat of the great foot and a faint whistling of air. He
positioned it by sound: two feet above the sand, six feet
behind. It would have to get close, beside him or over him,
to utilize the tail, unless it could whiplash over its own
head....

Four feet, three - and Subble stopped. He braked with all
of his force, driving his feet into the sand and throwing back
his body. His arms went up over his head, as stiff as
ramrods, fists clenched.

But the manta too had profited from experience. At forty
miles per hour it could not stop within a yard; its foot was
structured for forward drive, not braking. As old Ettore
Bugatti had protested when cautioned on safety: 'I make my
cars to go, not to stop!' Again Subble was using his less
specialized physique to good effect; he could do more things
than the manta could, even if he could not compete in its
specialties.

It could not swerve aside in tune, nor could it rise the six
feet necessary to avoid him without totally disrupting its
aerodynamics and looping out of control. It was made to go
- but it had come prepared.

It accepted the collision.

The soft ball of it smacked into Subble's back - and
bounced. He twisted around, grabbing for it again, but
already it was bounding high into the air, ten feet, and open-
ing into its traveling form, unhurt. One more trait had been
revealed: the manta could protect its eye temporarily by
englobing it in its own flesh, and its bonelessness prevented
internal rupturing.

Why had it not done so in the Nacre sun storm? Probably
because the light burned its skin and never let up; there it
could not rebound and recover.

Subble scrambled beneath the spreading mantle, knowing
that it lacked the proper leverage for a tail-strike when

almost stationary. It was not the manta's own small mass
that anchored it, but the resistance of the air to its spread
body. That same resistance provided the real forward
impetus, too - the foot pushed primarily up, but the sail
tacked against the stable air and sent the body shooting for-
ward much faster than otherwise. The manta was a creature
of motion, and could not even achieve its full umbrella with-
out sufficient velocity. Now it was almost still, and had to
descend for at least one push before getting away. To this
extent it had miscalculated.

And Subble was under it. 'Come to Papa,' he said as his
hands reached up, enclosing the vainly fluttering shape. But
he kept his face averted; it could blind him yet, as his grip on
its body provided some of the vital leverage. He would have
to fall upon it, crushing it into the sand, encumbering the
tail

A sledgehammer struck his head.

Subble fell, stunned by the blow. The shallow water came
up to meet his face, and the bright shells under the surface,
though the night was black. The manta had driven its foot at
his head, perhaps instinctively, and almost broken bis neck!
His brain had been severely jarred; unless he brought his
bodily reactions under control immediately, he would lose
consciousness - and life.

And mission. The phosphorescent surface smacked
against his face. It was sheer luck; the external shock stimu-
lated adrenalin and gave him momentary control. He
brought his knees up under him and pushed for deeper
water.

Or was it Enrico Ferrari who made his cars to go?

The manta was coming again, ready this time for the kill.
Its black shape passed a few feet to the side, visible only as a
moving shadow. Subble placed it principally by ear, dis-
covering that he had temporarily lost his infrared vision,
more sensitive to damage than normal sight because it was
artificially implanted. He was, in this situation, virtually
blind.

A searing blade slashed across his shoulders, laying the

flesh open. Painful, but not crucial - but the end was near if
he could not get away in seconds.

Subble dived. The ocean was only four feet deep here, but
it was enough. The dread tail could not strike at him
through very much water. He was safe - so long as he could
hold his breath.

He could hear the foot pounding against the surface as the
manta circled above, frustrated for the moment. It would
slice away the top of his skull as soon as it appeared above
the water - but he would drown if he did not come up within
another minute. He had good resources here too, and could
ordinarily stay under a long time, but he had entered the
water disadvantageously. Unless he could deceive the manta
in some way, gaining time for a breath

The shape passed directly over him as he continued to
stroke out to sea. Subble lunged for the surface and gulped
air before it could turn. The manta's liability here was that it
could not remain stationary on the water; it had to keep
moving, and that allowed a few seconds between passes. By
the tune it could return, he was below again.

But how long could he hold out? At best this represented
a standoff, and at worst defeat for him, if the manta learned
to time his rise for air and lash out then. He could not over-
come his opponent by hiding from it. If he lasted this way
until daylight - still many hours away - the creature would
probably retreat to shade on another island. Then night
would come again....

The beat of the foot stopped. Subble listened, interpreting
the cessation of the loud clear sounds conveyed by the
water, and the strange substitution. The manta was coming
at him - under the surface!

But almost immediately it was out of the water again,
resuming flight. Now he realized what had happened: the
manta had cut below the waterline much as a flying fish cut
above it; a shallow, temporary incursion dependent upon
initial velocity. This was a dangerous maneuver. One second
too long, and it would be trapped, lacking the speed to angle
successfully back into the air.

Why had it taken such a chance? Unless it could not
locate him from the surface-
He worked it out. The manta was dependent upon one
perception: sight. It was a phenomenal perception, but still
subject to the limitations of the medium. It was necessarily
narrow-beam; an eye which provided its own radiation had
to limit its energy output stringently or essential resources
would be drained from the system. Even a simple flashlight
soon exhausted its batteries. Human beings, who utilized
external sources of illumination, used as much as twenty-five
percent of their bodily energies in connection with their eyes
alone. The ratio would be worse for the auto-illuminants of
Nacre, unless they were considerably more efficient.

But a narrow beam was virtually useless for locating a
specific object in space. Even the wide-beam perception of
Earthly eyes required special synapses to call motion to the
attention, which solved most problems. A warty toad was
lost amid the dry leaves of the forest floor, though in plain
view - until it moved. Peripheral vision and sensitivity to
motion: these were vital to a moving creature. The manta
seemed to have neither; it played its fine beam over all
objects and knew by its biologic radar what they were and
how they moved.

What would the refraction of water do to this power? For
man, the apparent displacement of objects beneath liquid,
and the reflective properties of the surface were merely odd-
ities and occasional nuisances. Man had other ways to
plumb the depths. For manta - it could be a complex prob-
lem indeed. It had no verifying senses except the touch of
foot and tail and skin, and these were almost useless here.
Yet it was experienced enough to realize that the medium
did effect the impulse, as a man might see a mirage and hear
a ringing in his ears while knowing that these things did not
reflect the true situation. Indeed, as a man might perceive a
complete framework of stimuli, and know them all to be
false ... as he had done himself under the influence of the
hallucinogen.
As it was, that dialogue had disturbed him. Now he was

uncertain about little things, such as exactly what a given
racing-car pioneer had said. It must have been Bugatti!

So the manta could not trust what he saw beneath the
shifting waves. Still, it could wait for the telltale appearance
of his head above water - except that its narrow-beam vision
made this largely a matter of chance. How likely was a man
with a small beam to spot a figure in a dark ocean - a head
that appeared only a second or two every three minutes or
less?

The odds were with him after all! He could swim under-
water and come up near the manta at any time - and duck
when spotted. He could find a pole and jab it, spearlike, at
the passing enemy, without emerging at all. No wonder the
creature was desperate to locate him!

Subble broke surface and looked about. He was in deep
water now, and had the whole gulf to hide within. It was still
dark to his gaze: apparently his infrared was done for the
duration. He could compensate to a considerable extent,
since that seemed to be the worst of his injury, apart from
the slash across his back and a headache he was able to
suppress. He could see the white beach and the tall stars;
only the black on black of the manta evaded him visually.
But he could hear it well enough, ranging at a distance, and
smell its distinctive, funguslike aroma.

He had lost some blood and his neck was stiff; he had
gamed a major tactical advantage. He was, all in all, in good
shape.

'Over here, Brother!' he called.

And the manta looped about and came toward him. It
had heard!

Subble submerged hastily and sought a new location.
How could a creature without auditory apparatus respond
to sound waves? Cal had shown him a copy of Aquilon's
dissection pictures: the manta had no ears and its skin was
not attuned to sonic vibrations. It had only the eye.

Unless it could actually see sound waves....

He could not chance it. Obviously it could locate him
when he made a noise, and if it missed the tiny splashes of

his lifting head in distant water, it would not overlook those
noises near at hand, or the vapors of his breath. Impasse
again.

He came up, spotting it near his last emergence. But as he
did, it changed course and zeroed in on him. Once again it
had profited from experience, recognizing the noises charac-
teristic of him and watching for the expanding atmospheric
waves that were his sounds. He had thrown away his major
advantage.

Again, his choices were continuing retreat - or death. This
ocean episode had given him a limited reprieve and edu-
cated him somewhat, but it had not forwarded his mission
particularly. Better to meet the foe on land, where, if defeat
were more likely, so was victory. If only he understood the
manta better!

And suddenly he did. The thing that Cal had hinted at
and had not been able to say; the thing that made the manta
incredibly dangerous to civilized Earth; the obvious ren-
dered obscure by a mind trained to expertness at con-
ventionalities - the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into
place at last, and hinted at the devastating consequences of
ignorance.

He took a breath and stroked powerfully for the cache of
equipment. He stayed under as far as the diminishing depth
permitted, then emerged silently, holding his breath. The
tide was at its height, the surges almost touching his basket,
but it was undisturbed.

Beside it sat a dark hump. The manta had anticipated
him!

But it did not attack. He realized with relief that this was
one of the watchers, a noncombatant. It would leave him
alone - he hoped.

Carefully he knelt at the basket and drew out the lamp.
He found a match - still the surest route to fire! - and
thumbed it to life. As it flared the distant manta veered,
aware of the sound or the radiation of heat or light or some
other ambient characteristic of fire. He touched it to the
spout of the lamp, willing it to catch quickly. It did, and he

moved to the center of the beach, nostrils close to the
flame.

The manta left the water and shot across the narrow
beach, its eye bearing upon him with the typical flicker; he
could see that much directly now. Subble readied a fistful of
shells and pebbles, but it sheered away from the steady green
flame. Did the hallucinogen affect it too? Or did it suspect
some more subtle trap?

Subble inhaled, knowing he was taking too much but
urgent for the drug to take effect, while the manta circled
warily. Cal had been right; this was the only reasonable
avenue for comprehension, in the circumstances. And he
had to understand the creature before he dared to kill it.

*	*          *

The old one was dying. Laboriously it made its way to the
place of decease, climbing the narrow trail though hardly
able to spread its brittle aerofoil. Periodically it rested, its
massive body sagging with fatigue, the eye staring leth-
argically. The younger, vigorous ones passed it in salute and
went on, sparing it further exhibition of its incompetency.
The last trip had to be alone.

The old one came at last to the highest plateau and col-
lapsed ignominiously upon the level dust. It was the end -
but life remained behind the glazed eye, flickering into the
final configuration. Blind, the old one rose on its flaccid
foot, the globe of its body swelling tremendously. The ex-
tinguished eye bulged and exploded; the body split asunder.
A cloud of smokelike particles puffed into the air, spreading
slowly through the staid atmosphere.

The body collapsed, an empty husk devoid at last of ani-
mation, awaiting only the periodic annihilation of the fire
from the sky. No omnivore would defile the remains after
that cremation. Life had not been destroyed; it had passed
on, into myriad microscopic free-floating spores. The old
one had contributed its genes to the world.

The spores ascended, diffusing as they drifted over the
face of the cliff and caught the circulating breezes there.

They traveled, half an octillion strong: five times ten raised
to the twenty-sixth power, or a numeral followed by twenty-
six zeroes. Their motions were random, within reasonable
meaning of the term; they were governed by trace eddies
and currents, and by the gentle static repulsion contributed
by their common charge. They were male and female - that
is, complementary half-chromosome arrangements - in even
numbers, but the static prevented them from mating with
each other. And so they spread and merged with the in-
animate dust and wandered wherever fate decreed, almost
indistinguishable from their environment.

Time passed. Quintessentially decimated, the spores con-
tinued, settling on cliff and plain, on animate and vegetative,
rising into the sky and sinking into the water. Fungi fed
upon them, and grazing herbivores. Some died and rotted,
while others achieved the pinnacle and were destroyed by
the fierce radiation of the upper sunlight. Some were buried,
encysted, and lay dormant interminably, waiting for the des-
tiny that did not come. Quintillions remained, distributed
across the planet. Then quadrillions and finally only trill-
ions.

Other spores from other ancients mixed with these:
plants, molds, animates in countless species. The old one's
spawn was long lost in the proliferation. Now there was no
way to estimate their diminishing number, and seldom did
any approach a sibling close enough to react to the repul-
sion. But some few did encounter similar spores released by
other members of the species, and where sexually com-
patible they merged. Union had been completed, and the
two spores became a single embryo.

Perhaps no more than a million of the old one's seed
achieved such matings in the course of the fertile years, and
for almost all it meant destruction. Merged, they had to
grow - and there was little opportunity for it. Where they
landed they sprouted hyphae and formed cords of my-
celium, seeking nourishment - but there was seldom any-
thing they could use, since their diet was precise. Some
seemingly similar embryos flourished in organic dust, and

thousands competed for it vigorously, but the old one's
minions perished there. Others fell upon carrion and reveled
in the inert meat  but not these.

Time ran out. The mated spores grew without intake and
bled their energies into extinction. Some were preyed upon
by omnivorous animalcules. Some found suitable lodging,
but could not grow, inhibited by inherent defects or harmful
radiation or rough treatment or environmental incom-
patibility. Some grew too slowly, and were eliminated by
rivals for the food, and some were unsuccessful mutants.

One endured all hazards and became established: a para-
site upon the body of a tremendous beast. This one de-
veloped the characteristic symbol that would identify it as
an individual for the rest of its lifetime: an intricate network
representing a compromise between the symbols of its un-
known parents. Cruder intellects would fashion it a geo-
metric diamond with unimportant structural deviations.

Diam had achieved incipient sentience.

The host-beast charged and fought, and the unfelt
parasites upon its skin were crushed and bruised and
brushed away. Only Diam survived long enough, and at
such time as to develop mobility before the host terminated
its own violent existence in battle with another of its kind.

Diam tore free and fled, a leaping midget the size of an
insect, before the body of the omnivore dissolved beneath
the digestive secretions of its conqueror. Hitherto only
chance had dictated his survival; now he had control, and
would live or die depending upon his fitness. He lived. He
preyed upon the baby omnivores feeding on dust and
corpses, and he grew.

In tune he encountered an adult of his kind: a full-grown
carnivore. The manta took Diam in charge and helped him
find proper sustenance. Others were similarly salvaged, until
there was a flock of diversely parented hoppers: Diam and
Circe and Star and Pent and Hex and Lin and sibling
symbols. Secure, for a time, they grew fat and clumsy as they
learned to communicate with each other and to recognize
individual patterns.

Increasing size brought problems, for the aerodynamics
of a creature weighing less than an ounce changed when it
came to weigh more than a pound in a comparatively short
segment of its life. Gravity became a significant and objec-
tionable factor; a clumsy landing hurt. The tremendous
growth rate kept Diam and his foster siblings continually
off-balance, and the magnifying complexities of com-
munication also strained their as yet diminutive faculties. So
much was demanded!

Then, just as they were coming in sight of mastery, they
were given onerous instructions, taken to the place of de-
cease, and there put into the charge of a blind alien omni-
vore. It was the beginnings of an exile that they knew meant
a lifelong separation from their kind for most of them, and
dishonorable death.

The two-footed pseudo-omnivore stood over Pent's
crushed body, its slick round-pebble orbs shifting whitely.
The five-faceted symbol would speak no more; eye and
brain had been crushed beneath the savage and abruptly
knowledgeable force of the stranger.

It was good: the omnivore had proven itself. It had risen
above the terrible limitations of its physique to meet a civi-
lized creature on even terms. Now at last it was permissible
to converse with it without restraint, while Pent dissolved
into smoky spore vapors. The other omnivores had been
innocuous pets, unable ever to comprehend the code of the
warrior, unworthy to share the information of the elite. This
one - this one was contemporary.

Diam took his stance before the clumsy artificial eye the
omnivore had brought. It was uncomfortable, com-
municating via such a mechanism, but no more so than the
concept of a sapient omnivore, or a world in which green
plants retained their life to anchor on the ground and mag-
nify grotesquely. If the stranger learned quickly, the
machinery might soon be dispensed with.

The ball-eyed one gestured crudely with its forelimb. A
pictorial representation took shape, so abbreviated that it

was hard to follow. Surely there was some better way to do
the job! Complete understanding would be extremely
tedious if all communication had to be filtered through this
obstruction.

The omnivore seemed to realize this. It sucked in more of
the primitive fumes emerging from the burning container
and returned to try again.

Then it began to learn. Ratios clarified, symbols danced
through permutations, and the creature became more and
more responsive to suggestion. A truly powerful intellect
was beginning to emerge. But - an increasingly ill one.

'Like the slime mold!' it projected, showing in summary
the life history of the local example. A slimy, jellylike plas-
modium crept under the moist vegetable leaves fallen on the
floor of the monster-plant forest, surrounding the organic
matter it discovered and digesting it comfortably. Then,
emerging into the light, the yellow creature shifted into in-
animate status and fruited: brownish balls ascended slim
orange stems and opened to release the floating spores;
these, falling on water, germinated and put out tiny flagella
to enable them to swim. Two came together and mated,
found land and grew into the original slime formation.

'You actually evolved from the third kingdom - from
fungi!' the omnivore stated, as though this were not obvious
and reasonable. The parallel to the primitive slime mold was
imperfect, but certainly such a creature could have been an-
cestral to all the sentients of Nacre. The astonishing thing
was that it had not happened similarly on Earth. Here the
fungal forms had failed to advance properly, while the
plants overran the planet, and the animals - who neither
created food from light and mineral nor broke down resi-
dues to complete the cycle - somehow had become domi-
nant over it all. The notion of a life-form that served no
useful purpose appearing and achieving sapience was
appalling - but nevertheless a fact that had to be
recognized.

These things maintained two discrete sexes throughout
Me, and generated their spores long before death. They

omitted the atmospheric floating stage entirely, preferring
to confine their embryos within their living flesh.

What other monstrosities were to be found in the uni-
verse?

Circe, symbol of the circle, was to claim this episode,
though Diam read it first:

'The mantas saw us as pets?' Aquilon demanded, amazed.
'After we raised them and brought them all the way to
Earth?'

'Not exactly. But it was hard for them to refrain from
killing you as a matter of habit or instinct, without some
innocuous designation.' Subble watched her move about the
apartment, her body lovely under the translucent shift.
'They saw all three of you as omnivores from the start. They
were soon aware of your diets - I mean, the mantas on
Nacre were aware - not from any mysterious aura, but from
simple observation. Veg had no flesh adhering to his teeth,
and his breath reflected this, for example. They could see the
microscopic particles in the air that we discern as smell. But
the species Homo sapiens is omnivorous, and the attempted
deviation of individual members is an oddity, apart from the
oddity of the entire form of life. They could not imagine a
Nacre omnivore settling down to graze peacefully among the
herbivores. They marveled at this for a long time, wondering
whether the inconsistency was a characteristic of the king-
dom.'

She came and sat in his lap and ran her hand over his
cheek. Then why did that one manta stop Veg and me from
getting together? If it knew we were all of the same kind'

Subble found the trigger-thread and pulled. Her shift fell
open. 'Because it did not fully understand the rules of your
game. Your nature was omnivorous, but your practice devi-
ated, not just dietetically but in your evident concern for
each other. True omnivores never cooperate. It wanted to
study the three of you, and for all it knew, Veg might be
along solely to serve your hunger when the time came.
Apart from its natural aversion to cannibalism - another

omnivore trait - it wanted to fathom you as a group, and
had to play safe until it was sure.'

'Before we make love,' she murmured, 'there is something
you should know.'

'I know you are beautiful,' he said.

She smiled - and with that expression her lovely features
became flaccid, grotesquely homely. The vibrant body
seemed to cave in on itself, becoming a mushy mannequin;
the shape was there, but not the glory. It was the death of
rapture.

Subble shoved her away. 'That ties it. You were cured of
that. I saw you smile, before.'

He stood up and marched toward the lamp he now spot-
ted on the floor. 'I'm still under the hallucinogen. Damn
overdose!' He reached to snuff it out, though it flared vio-
lently.

Circe erased the rest

The mangled bodies had long since been eaten, the alien
structures that were bones scattered, but the old stockade
still seemed to reflect the night of ravage that had wiped out
the off-world colony. Fungus grew richly out of the crevices
of the tumbled buildings; dust and debris covered the inert
machinery. Measured plots of Earth plants remained only in
outline; they rotted where they had died when the mechanics
who ran the sunlamps vanished.

Star moved on. Never before had his people slaughtered
an entire population, and even traversing the scene in the
eidetic memory provided by the elder who had been there
was objectionable to him. He did not regret the action, for
anything the group decided upon was proper, but he disliked
the waste. These had been dangerous omnivores, yes, that
insisted upon killing indiscriminately as was their nature,
and so had set the precedent - but their flesh had proved to
be of an entirely different order of construction and quite
difficult to digest. Disposal of all eighteen bodies had been a
terrible struggle - but the manta was bound to eat all it
killed.

The aliens had seemed monstrous, with their inability to
communicate, but subsequent developments had thrown
into question their need to be put entirely out of their
misery. Perhaps it would have been better to study them
more carefully.

Then another party had descended from the blazing sky,
and set up a more powerful base, preventing contact until a
trio became isolated. The opportunity had come - if the
individuals could be protected from the dangers of the
world and their own quixotic nature. The first to spot them
had lost them again as they fled in their machine; the second
had died as they misunderstood his purpose. The third had
made contact at night, and shepherded them to the place of
dying, where the group could assemble. They were partly
tame by then.

Then the ugliest omnivore had become less frightening.
Star had it all in the transferred images, and it helped them
comprehend the astonishing and descending mind of the pre-
sent omnivore. These creatures were not entirely savage.

Diam:

'Report!'

Subble stood before the pickup of the Director's dais and
spoke to the man or men who controlled him - men he had
never seen. 'I interviewed the three names on the list and
determined that the problem involved them only indirectly.
Each person provided a segment of their joint experience on
the planet Nacre, but the whole remained incomplete. The
key actually lay with the representatives of the dominant
species of the planet, imported by the trio as theoretic pets
and approved by quarantine as sterile and distributed
among the three at the ratio of one, one and six when they
resettled on Earth. The humans feared for the eventual se-
curity of these alien carnivores, so hid them diversely; and
there were personal problems encouraging a temporary sep-
aration. These circumstances'

'We are aware of the circumstances. Proceed.'

Subble did not show surprise at this evidence of a parallel

investigation. 'Full contact was not feasible until one of our
own species earned the respect of the manta by meeting it in
honorable battle. With them, as with us. physical appreci-
ation must precede intellectual appreciation. I met their rep-
resentative on an isolated beach and'

'We know the details. Proceed.'

This time he hesitated visibly. 'It was an impasse. I finally
took the hallucinogenic drug again in order to establish a
close enough rapport with my opponent so that'

'Naturally! Proceed.'

'After I killed it, I realized that their fungoid nature was
an appalling danger to'

'Proceed!'

'Because Earth itself is now largely dependent upon'

'Proceed!'

'The moment one dies'

'Proceed!'

Subble leaped upon the dais and knocked aside the screen.
A single manta stood there, glaring into the translating
mechanism.

Subble grabbed the lamp and flung it against the wall. The
oils poured out; the green flame expanded hungrily.

Diam faded from view. So did the dais and the rest of the
set. There was only the heaving, animate fire.

'Next verse!' Subble cried.

Five mantas:

Subble stood on the sand watching Pent move. He had
taken the drug before he killed the manta - which meant
that everything since the moment of inhalation was suspect,
even the killing itself. He could trust none of it - and he
could not risk igniting the lamp again.

Pent circled but did not charge. Why hadn't the creature
killed him while he stood bemused by wish-fulfillments?
What held it back now?

Was it afraid of mycotic hallucinogen? Did the drug that
induced spurious images in the mind of a man have a similar
effect on the manta? Or was the result more severe, for it?

His hand hovered over the lamp, hesitating to snuff it out.

Then he realized: he had tried to kill that flame twice -
and had not succeeded. He had merely stepped into a new
sequence. What guarantee did he have that this was not yet
another nightmare, and the lamp an illusion?

How could he put it out - if the act of quenching it was
itself a dream?

Subble smiled. The manta hadn't attacked because it did
not understand his ploy. Why should he stand on land, after
establishing that his tactical posture was deficient there? Why
- unless he had come up with something special?

And perhaps he had. He was not the same man who had
begun the contest. The things he saw were entirely different
now. He appreciated Pent in a new and marvelous per-
spective, and would not react as he had before. The infor-
mation had been delivered hallucinogenically, as though he
had been listening to the manta's quarter of the story, im-
mersing himself in it as he had during the human quarters -
but that did not mean that it was invalid.

On the contrary. He must have killed Pent and earned
contact, learning to interpret the peripheral signals, to oper-
ate without dependency upon the transceiver. The drug
made his mind responsive to suggestion, even alien sugges-
tion. When he had taken it in the presence of the manta he
had recreated the world-view of the manta, and had seen to
some extent what the manta saw, modified somewhat by his
humanity. Somewhat....

Yet Pent circled still, alive. He could as easily have inven-
ted the entire thing, including the fungal origins of the
manta. Was he victor or vanquished?

Twice the vision had become dominated by his own am-
bitions - and twice he had realized this and cut it off. Agents
were not supposed to be subject to ambition. Such visions
indicated personality breakdown, making him unsuitable as
an agent. He had been moved by beautiful Aquilon's body,
so he had recreated her in a willing situation, much as he
might have done subconsciously had he possessed a
differentiated subconscious. Balked, he had jumped ahead,

then, to the completion of his mission - and perceived the
distortion more readily, that time.

The drug affected his perception, making real any trans-
itory thought that had sufficient force. He had taken an
overdose, but it did not impair his reasoning facilities - fac-
ulties! - or his memory. He had entered a world of hal-
lusions - but he could control them.

At this moment he was matching hal - illusion to reality.
He could now snuff out the flame successfully - and did not
need to. Assuming that his reasoning were valid. Otherwise
he was trapped anyway.

He tested. The genie Myco appeared, grinning. Tut on
your turban!' Subble said. The slave obeyed.

'Kill Pent.'

'Master, Pent is dead already.' The language was wrong;
Myco should not be speaking modern.

'Well, kill him again!'

'Gladly!' Myco swelled up, launched enormous jeweled
hands at Subble's throat.

The five watched him die, unable to protect the omnivore
from himself. Contact had been a failure after all.

Cal woke with a start, the dream fading. Strange, the way
it had become an obsession: the simple fact of drinking the
blood of the Nacre omnivore. He knew now that he had
suffered from the same compulsion syndrome that Veg and
Aquilon had - except that they had not possessed the intel-
lectual determination to carry it to such a macabre extreme.
The simple refusal to eat meat, or to smile - but he had
made of his entire life a nightmare, like the man who be-
lieved he must commit a crime every day or die. Cal had
taken unto himself the action he considered most reprehen-
sible: the parasitic consumption of the blood of other
animals.

Though the origin was psychasthenic, the effects were
real. He had wanted to die, and for years had driven himself
to it, fighting the internal censors of self-preservation ...
only to be balked at the climax by the blind faith of friends.

A man who gave of his strength, a woman who bled herself -
to show their faith in him.

He opened his eyes and saw Star standing at the window.
Was someone coming?

That had been the breaking point, he thought, resuming
the chain. They had beaten him, for he could not bring him-
self to sacrifice either the man or the woman he loved to his
own morbidity. Veg would have driven himself, like a faith-
ful horse, to a running collapse, traveling two miles loaded
for every mile while others went unburdened. Aquilon
would have bled herself dry - to save the feeble creature
they called friend. The two had overcome his death-wish by
tripling the cost of success. Better that he should live, than
they die.

And so he had been given the impetus for change, and had
searched for a pretext. He had taken the blood of the omni-
vore and thrived upon it - knowing, beneath a new sup-
pression, that it was a nutrient fluid unrelated to human or
Earthly blood except in general function. How could it be
blood - drawn from the corpse of an animate fungus? And
from that first exhilarating step, that concession to the needs
of life and health, he had progressed steadily toward a more
normal diet, and gained back much of the strength the years
had dissipated.

Yet, like Aquilon, he had replaced his chains with
stronger ones. He had accepted life for himself - at the pos-
sible expense of that of his species. Thus his new nightmare
stemmed from that cup of blood - Aquilon's or Nacre's, he
was not sure - and climaxed in rivers of the blood of man
drenching the earth of Earth.

'Wake and dress immediately,' the voice said, and for a
moment it seemed the manta had spoken. 'I will carry you.'

That was what had disturbed Star. A man had been ap-
proaching. 'Subble!' he said. 'Did you?'

'No. I am Sueve, assigned to complete this aspect of the
mission. Subble is otherwise occupied.'

Cal dressed hurriedly. Now he heard the movements of
trucks outside, of human activity. 'What's going on?'

'Evacuation.' Sueve picked him up and strode to the door.

'But my books, my notes'

'Sorry. Nothing but yourself. Your clothing will be de-
stroyed when you enter decontamination.'

'What's happening?' But Sueve did not reply. He was
running now, down the street that covered the length of the
beach establishments, avoiding the slowly maneuvering
army trucks and confused, milling people, while Star kept
up easily. The wind whistled by Cal's ear; the agent was
astonishingly strong and swift.

It was early dawn, still too dark for the birds to sing. The
greens and whites and browns of the plaster and wood
houses were only shades of gray. 'Truth is a shade of gray,'
he thought, and wondered who had said it first. Now and
then the gulf was visible, its water dark and still. Palmettoes
and pines leaned over the winding street, and large century
plants spoked beside it. The bright signs of the all-night
stores, the motels and restaurants catering to restless tour-
ists, these shone eerily in the absence of their proprietors
and clientele. The evacuation was almost complete already,
proceeding with a swiftness he had not thought possible as
the sealed trucks moved out. The drivers wore bacterial
masks. But there were no sirens, no shrill radio exhortations
or loudspeaker warnings. All was accomplished silently.
Why?

Sueve was cutting across the barbered golf links. In the
center of the convoluted greens stood a ship. A booster
rocket, grossly misplaced here. Then they were inside. Sueve
- so much like Subble! - set the controls and tied Cal into a
deep acceleration couch, while Star braced against what was
coming.

'What happens to all the other people? Why them,
too?'

'They are being interned for the duration.' The panel was
clicking off the countdown.

Yet he was sure there had been no declaration of war, no
reports of oncoming hurricane or other natural calamity.
This was a sudden, complete and secret evacuation of the

beaches - and he could think of only one reason. The one he
had dreamed about so guiltily.

'What about the ones who refuse to go? Who demand
reasons? Who hide, who are missed?'

'They remain.' The rocket ignited and acceleration
crushed him back into sleep.

The line of men in fire suits combed through the forest,
driving everything before them by spraying a toxic chemi-
cal. Where they passed, the green foliage wilted and dead
insects and small animals littered the leafy floor.

'Hey!' Hank Jones exclaimed. 'This is my land! Get outta
here!'

Then, seeing that they paid him no attention, he took up
his axe. 'Go get Veg!' he yelled to Job. 'He'll help. Tell 'im
it's an invasion - they're laying down mustard gas!'

Job bolted as the second line of invaders, masked and
armed, conducted Hank away. Job leaped over the wall and
pounded down the trail to the neighboring work area.

But Veg was the major object of the advance. He had
problems of his own, that early morning, as the troops con-
verged.

Hex, knowing the meaning of the weapons and the spray
and the hovering ring of helicopters, permitted himself to be
herded in with Veg. The omnivore had little sense of indi-
vidual ethics. The only defense here was no defense.

Behind them, as the flyer lifted, the reluctant smoke of
burning greenwood pushed up from the dying forest.

Joe looked up from his computer flow chart, but there
was nothing in the hall. The noise came from the air cir-
culation vents: not a hiss, not the usual knocking of incipi-
ent breakdown, but a subtle change in rhythm, as though the
texture of the air had changed. A fine haze emerged.

He reached for his phone. He had authorized no addition
of chemicals, and certainly not so unselectively as via the
air. What was good for the rabbits was not necessarily good
for the hens, and

He slumped over his chart, letting the receiver fall. In
their cages the animals also slumped. In minutes all were
dead.

Incendiary gas now descended from the vents, filling the
chambers. A spark, and it burned fiercely but not ex-
plosively, charring everything in almost complete silence.
The farm had become a thorough oven by the tune someone
realized that there had been a small error: the man was sup-
posed to have been evacuated first.

Circe alone escaped. She well knew the nature of the om-
nivore, and had been alert for the telltale sonic waves of the
first faint preparations. She sped for the elevator before clos-
ure was complete. Its mechanism was powered by the same
trunk line as the air circulators, and by the time the omni-
vores realized their oversight, Circe was out of the death
zone.

But Aquilon's apartment too was a trap. Woman and
manta were caught and sealed in a pressurized capsule: air
and water but not freedom. The capsule was taken from the
building secretly as the suited demolition crew razed the
apartment, burning the furnishings and paintings and melt-
ing down all other fixtures.

The faceless units of the incendiary crews moved relent-
lessly, guiding their tanks delicately down the length of the
beaches spraying gasoline and igniting it with bursts from
the flame throwers. Men ran screaming from the fired
houses: the ones who had avoided relocation by intent or
mistake, fearing the quarantine stations, the loss of their
expensive properties and household possessions, or just
plain ornery about their rights. The omnivore cared nothing
for their rights. They ran, touched by jets from the tanks,
their clothing and then their skin dropping from their bodies
in bright embers, arid after them their women and children,
crying skinlessly. Some tried to attack the massive tanks that
crushed their homes - and were themselves crushed beneath
the unswerving metal treads. Some dived into the ocean,
swimming beneath the hovering white-breasted gulls, and

the burning oils pursued them across the water, converting
the gray-green depths to orange and black.

It was swift, it was merciless. Lin, symbol of the line,
paced the length of it, observing the omnivore in action.
What the tanks did not destroy, the napalm bombers did. By
the time the sun appeared in the sky, the beaches for a hun-
dred miles had been leveled. If anything survived there, it
regretted it

Lin left, urged by time and the increasing light. Beyond
the beaches the nets extended, reaching far into the sea and
penning all surface marine creatures behind them. Ships pa-
trolled this perimeter - robot vessels, armored, no man upon
them, diffusing deadly fluids to plumb the lowest regions.
Automatic weapons shot down everything that approached
from either side - flights of birds, a straying pilot, even large
insects. Here, too, the closure was complete.

Lin joined the others at the robot shuttle that bore them
rapidly away, but he knew what happened behind. A single
missile arched over land and water, homing in on an isolated
island. A hundred feet above the tiny beach where Subble
lay it disappeared.

The island became a ball of incandescence as land and
water vaporized.

Where it had been, a monstrous mushroom sprouted.

'You mean - everything's gone?' Aquilon asked, shocked.
'Veg's forest, the whole cellar farm, all the gulf beaches?'

'They had to go,' Cal said. They were crowded with the
seven mantas into an orbiting chamber awaiting de-
contamination: a thoroughly unpleasant process. 'There is
no other way to be sure - and even the two hours they al-
lowed for evacuation before ... liquidation were a cal-
culated risk.'

'I don't get it,' Veg said. 'Why did they leave us alone so
long - no quarantine, no trouble - then suddenly, pow!'

'Because it took the bureaucracy some time to become
aware of the danger. They suspected that the mantas might
revert to a dangerous wild state, or something minor like

that, I think. When Subble figured it out and made his
report, they had to act immediately. We're extremely for-
tunate they decided to save our lives; that surprises me, as a
matter of fact.'

What danger? The mantas have no diseases, and they
know they aren't supposed to attack people.'

Cal sighed. 'It is complicated, but I'll try. Briefly, the
danger is inherent in the nature of the mantas and the other
creatures of Nacre. They are of a fungus world, where
animals of our type never evolved at all. The mantas are the
most advanced representatives of the third kingdom. They
are in fact evolved from parasitic fungi resembling our slime
molds, while the ones we call herbivores are similarly ad-
vanced saprophytes. Naturally they couldn't be true herb-
ivores, with no living vegetation on the planet's surface, and
they certainly aren't plants themselves.'

'I never thought of that!' Veg exclaimed. 'No trees, no
grass, no flowers'

'Then - they aren't really animals, even?' Aquilon wanted
to know.

'Not as we think of them. Parallel evolution has brought
the Nacre animates to a state surprisingly similar to the
higher Earth animals, which is why we made the mistake we
did. But their life cycle remains mycotic - that is, they repro-
duce by spores, and at some period they are unable to move
independently.'

'But so do Earth fungi,' Aquilon said.

'Precisely. And Earth fungi are exceedingly important to
Earth's economy, as I explained to Subble. So important
that no interference with their development and exploitation
can be tolerated. If we lost our food-yeasts alone, billions of
people would starve before alternatives were developed. And
if the carbon-dioxide cycle were broken'

Veg was shaking his head dubiously, and Aquilon seemed
uncertain also. He kept forgetting that although they had
been on Nacre, the chemistries of ecology meant little to
them. But there were other facets.

'Can you imagine what havoc would be wreaked in our

civilization if an octillion super-advanced fungus spores
were released in our atmosphere to mix with these here?
There could be millions of mantas overrunning the planet,
looking for omnivores - men, that is - to feed upon; and the
next generation would see more mantas than men in the
world.'

They looked at him, trying to visualize it.

'Or the spores might succeed in merging with local spores
to produce Earth-Nacre half-breeds that might very well
displace all other life on Earth. The mantas by themselves,
you see are self-limiting; they feed only on omnivores,
whether animal or fungus, and have the intelligence and
conscience to preserve some equitable balance. Man can live
with them, though perhaps not as master. But the half-
breeds could be'

'Omnivores,' Aquilon breathed. 'Beasts with no con-
trols. ...'

'Worse. They could operate on the molecular level, and
start our common molds and yeasts changing, leapfrogging
freakishly along the path of a billion years of evolution.
That's what would hit our food supply. We are able to work
so effectively with our fungi because they are primitive. But
we know now that their evolution can lead to forms in many
ways superior to us. Since most mutations are not beneficial,
all life as we understand it today could be imperiled while
savage semi-primitive strains competed for dominance. Our
yeasts could begin feeding on us.'

'But I thought different species could not mate unless they
were closely related,' Aquilon said. 'The Nacre spores
should be quite different from ours.'

'Perhaps. Perhaps not. We know so little about the third
kingdom that we just can't be certain. There is no such thing
as complete convergence in the animal kingdom - but
spores are about as hardy and versatile an instrument of
reproduction as exists. Some may grow to maturity without
mating, but ingest other spores they encounter. Alien
enzymes in a local predator could result in modification.
There are so many billions of spores in our atmosphere that

some kind of mutation becomes a probability rather than a
possibility. The danger is theoretical - but so great that
every vestige of alien life must be expunged from the planet.
Our existence may depend upon it.'

Veg thought about it, obviously following only part of the
technical discussion. 'We've been back on Earth several
months and I haven't see any new things appearing. Why all
the hurry now? All the - burning.'

'And why did they capture us and the mantas alive?'
Aquilon added.

'I think they did it because they had to get the mantas
alive, or completely sealed in at death, and that
would have been almost impossible without us. We're the
only ones who actually associate with mantas; they'll
come with us, while they might never be captured alive in
a hunt.'

'Yeah, but-'

'You see, the creatures of Nacre don't spore until death.
In the natural course, as I make it, they dissolve into spores
at the end of an active life. But if they anticipate death, they
can prime themselves for emergency reproduction. They're
sexless in the active stage, actually; the spores are the ones
that mate. So an individual manta can release a complete
collection of spores, and ours are pruned for it, even though
they are not full grown. If any die now, their bodies will
quickly fall apart into billions of spores - and the siege is on.
Each is a hopping bomb, on Earth.'

Aquilon looked at the mantas. 'I see,' she said soberly.
'They don't want to die, but if they do, the species goes
on.'

'Yes. The only safe procedure is live capture and de-
portation - and sterilization of the territory they occupied,
no matter what the cost. Any person, any animal, any gust
of wind could carry devastating spores. Everything that
leaves the zones of exposure has to be decontaminated, and
those who refuse to leave'

'What about us?'

'We're isolated now. I suppose we'll be exiled to Nacre.

Perhaps they'll let us return once the mantas are landed
there.'

'To Earth?' Veg remarked sourly. 'After they burned my
lot? I'd rather stay on Nacre.'

'I would, too,' Aquilon agreed. 'I didn't know how - close
- Earth felt until I came back. I' She looked at the mantas.
'One of them is missing! What happened to it?'

'I'm afraid Subble killed it. That would have been what
precipitated - this. They only burned the forest and cleaned
out your room, but the mantas' island'

They looked out the vision screen and watched the enor-
mous cloud below. The station was orbiting at such a dis-
tance that they remained above the general area of the gulf,
but even so the effect could be discerned.

'The spores were already in the air' Aquilon murmured.

'Why would he do a thing like that?' Veg demanded. 'He
seemed like a pretty straight guy to me, considering.'

'And me,' Aquilon whispered.

'We may never know. He went to meet the six mantas on
the island last night; that's all I know.'

'And he didn't return...' she said, staring down.

Diam, reading the compressions and rarefactions of the
ambient gases by which these omnivores communicated,
understood, just as he had finally grasped the terminal
signals of the stronger omnivore on the island. The Subble-
creature had achieved dominant status by meeting Pent
honorably and crushing him, but even as full com-
munication was attained he was reeling from severe dis-
tortion of perception. Subble's intellect, once unmasked,
had been monstrously powerful; had the ritual conflict been
mental instead of physical, he could have mastered them all
in concert. They had had to change off to assimilate it all,
even though his mind had wandered erratically and finally
lost contact entirely as he died. They had drawn from him
all the information they could, and tried to give him what he
had come for, but by the tune they understood the situation
it was too late for him.

Their presence on Earth was already forfeit. Pent's spores

would not produce new mantas; the conditions were wrong,
and there were no matching spores from others of their
kind. But the risk of mutation did exist.

They had come to comprehend, not to destroy. De-
struction was a characteristic of the omnivore, not the
manta. This was a wilderness world without true order: the
life forms were far more vigorous and tenacious than those
they had known. But Subble had approached sentience, and
his kind deserved its chance.

The omnivore was savage, but with certain redemptions.
Diam had known what would happen when he activated
Subble's equipment and made the coded report Subble
would have made, had his overdrugged mind not destroyed
itself. Diam had modified the report only to protect his
brothers and the three original contactees, seeing that desire
in the man's mind at the end. The omnivore had done his
best, and it was proper that his victory and his sacrifice be
honored.

The three lesser omnivores - whose minds, Diam now
realized, were also far more powerful than his own, but
almost entirely nullified by their physical and sensory limi-
tations - these three had problems he could not com-
prehend. But it was better to give them the chance to work
them out together, than to leave them at the mercy of the
corporate omnivore. None of them would have survived
that.

Yet his major thought was with Subble, who had expired
the way he wanted to: with his mission. Now Subble's incan-
descence blended with that of the periwinkles and sand
dollars and fiddler crabs and Pent's incipient spores, and it
was fitting.

THE END

