REACH FOR TOMORROW
by
ARTHUR C. CLARKE


BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE

NON-FICTION

INTERPLANETARY FLIGHT

THE EXPLORATION OF SPACE

THE COAST OF CORAL

THE ROBES OF TAPROBANE

BOY BENEATH THE SEA (with Mike Wilson)

THE FIRST FIVE FATHOMS (with Mike Wilson)

INDIAN OCEAN ADVENTURE (with Mike Wilson)

THE TREASURE OF THE GREAT REEF (with Mike Wilson)

THE CHALLENGE OF THE SPACESHIP

THE CHALLENGE OF THE SEA

PROFILES OF THE FUTURE

VOICES FROM THE SKY

FICTION

PRELUDE TO SPACE

THE SANDS OF MARS

AGAINST THE FALL OF NIGHT

ISLANDS IN THE SKY

CHILDHOOD'S END

EXPEDITION TO EARTH

HARTHLIGHT

REACH FOR TOMORROW

THE CITY AND THE STARS

TALES FROM THE WHITE HART

THE DEEP RANGE

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SKY

ACROSS THE SEA OF STARS (Omnibus)

A FALL OF MOONDUST

FROM THE OCEAN, FROM THE STARS (Omnibus)

TALES OF TEN WORLDS

DOLPHIN ISLAND

GLIDE PATH

PRELUDE TO MARS (Omnibus)

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (with Stanley Kubrick)

This is an original novel not a reprint.

REACH for TOMORROW

by

Arthur C. Clarke

BALLANTINE BOOKS NEW YORK

"Rescue Party" appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, Copyright 1946
by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.; "The Fires Within" appeared in
Startling Stories, Copyright 1949 by Standard Magazines, Inc."

"Technical Mirror" (under the title "The Reversed Man") and "A Walls in
the Dark" appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, Copyright 1950 by
Standard Magazines Inc., "Trouble with the Natives" was copyrighted
1951 by Marvel Science Fiction; "The Awakening" and "The Possessed"
were copyrighted 1951 and 1952 respectively by Columbia Publications,
Inc.; "Time's Arrow" appeared in Worlds Beyond, Copyright 1952 by
Hillman Periodicals, Inc.; "The Curse" appeared in Cosmos, Copyright
1953 by Star Publications, Inc.; "The Forgotten Enemy" and "The
Parasite" appeared in AVON SCIENCE FictioN AND FANTASY READER,
Copyright 1953 by Avon Publications, Inc.; "Jupiter Five" appeared in
If Magazine, Copyright 1953 by Quinn Publishing Company, Inc.

@) 1956 BY ARTHUR c. CLARKE

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CAM NO.  S6-8164

PRINTED In THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

First printing: March, 1956

Second printing: December, 1957

Third printing: December, 1963

Fourth printing: March, 1969

Fifth printing: August, 1969

Sixth printing: March, 1970

To Scott Meredith for selling all these stories at least once.

BALLANTINE!  BOOKS INC.

101 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10003

Preface

Preface writing is an occupational disease of authors, but it must be
granted that they have a legitimate excuse.  It is the only opportunity
they ever get of pinning their readers into a corner and telling them
exactly what they are trying to do.  In my case, this can be stated
very briefly.

I wrote these stories to entertain one person myself.  It still seems a
remarkable piece of good luck to me that other people have been
entertained as well.

"Rescue Party," which was written in 1945, was my first published
story, and a depressing number of people still consider it my best.  If
this is indeed the case, I have been steadily going downhill for the
past ten years, and those who continue to praise this story will
understand why my gratitude is so well controlled.  Readers of my
earlier collection, EXPEDITION TO EARTH, may just conceivably be
interested in knowing that "History Lesson" and "Rescue Party" both
stemmed from the same forgotten original, though now it would be
difficult to find two more contrasting endings.

It seems only right to warn the reader that "Jupiter Five,"

"Technical Error" and "The Fires Within" are all pure science fiction.
In each case some unfamiliar (but I hope both plausible and
comprehensible) scientific fact is the basis of the story action, and
human interest is secondary.  Some critics maintain that this is always
a Bad Thing; I believe this is too sweeping a generalization.

In his perceptive preface to A. D. MOO, for example, Mr.  Angus Wilson
remarks: "Science fiction which ends as technical information dressed
with a little fantasy or plot can never be any good."  But any good for
what?  If it is done properly, without the information being too
obtrusive or redolent of the textbook, it can still have at least the
entertainment value of a good puzzle.  It may not be art, but it can be
enjoyable and intriguing.

I am by no means sure that I could write "Jupiter Five" today; it
involved twenty or thirty pages of orbital calculations and should by
rights be dedicated to Professor G. C. McVittie, my erstwhile tutor in
applied mathematics.  (I had better hasten to add that he bears no
slightest resemblance to the professor in the story.) This fact is
mentioned, not to boast of now forgotten skills, nor to scare nervous
readers whose maths stopped at the multiplication table, but to make it
clear that the surprising state of affairs described in the story
really exists, and is not a figment of my imagination.  What is more,
it exists not only in the remote orbit of Jupiter V but will soon do
so, much closer to home, among the artificial satellites of the next
decade.

"Time's Arrow" is an example of how hard it is for the science-fiction
writer to keep ahead of fact.  The quite at the time the story was
written imaginary discovery described in the tale now actually exists,
and may be seen in the New York Natural History Museum.  I think it
most unlikely, however, that the rest of the story will ever come
true.... "The Forgotten Enemy" also involved a geological or perhaps
one should say meteorological theme.  I apologize in advance to any
experts who may be offended by the slight liberties I have taken with
time-scales.  But what is a factor of 103 among friends?

"The Curse" now appears, perhaps, somewhat less imaginative than when
it was first published in the distant dawn of the Atomic Age, before
tritium had succeeded uranium and the wheel had gone full circle to
uranium again.

It was written within a few miles of the small and famous slab of stone
whose ultimate fate it describes.

To the best of my recollection (and like most authors I am singularly
bad at remembering this sort of thing) I have written only two stories
based on ideas suggested by other people.  One of them is "The
Possessed," and I hereby acknowledge my thanks to Mike Wilson, who can
take his share of any blame.

Arthur C Clarke

Contents

PREFACE V

RESCUE PARTY 1

A WALK IN THE DARK 30

THE FORGOTTEN ENEMY 41

TECHNICAL ERROR 48

THE PARASITE 67

THE FIRES WITHIN 80

THE AWAKENING 90

TROUBLE WITH THE NATIVES 95

THE CURSE 109

TIME'S ARROW 112

JUPITER FIVE 128

THE POSSESSED 161

Rescue Party

WHO WAS TO BLAME?  FOR THREE DAYS

AEVERON S THOUGHTS

had come back to that question, and still he had found no answer.  A
creature of a less civilized or a less sensitive race would never have
let it torture his mind, and would have satisfied himself with the
assurance that no one could be responsible for the working of fate. But
Alveron and his kind had been lords of the Universe since the dawn of
history, since that far distant age when the Time Barrier had been
folded round the cosmos by the unknown powers that lay beyond the
Beginning.

To them had been given all knowledge and with infinite knowledge went
infinite responsibility.  If there were mistakes and errors in the
administration of the galaxy, the fault lay on the heads of Alveron and
his people.  And this was no mere mistake: it was one of the greatest
tragedies in history.

The crew still knew nothing.  Even Rugon, his closest friend and the
ship's deputy captain, had been told only part of the truth.

But now the doomed worlds lay less than a billion miles ahead.  In a
few hours, they would be landing on the third planet.

Once again Alveron read the message from Base; then, with a flick of a
tentacle that no human eye could have followed, he pressed the "General
Attention" button.

Throughout the mile-long cylinder that was the Galactic Survey Ship
S9000, creatures of many races laid down their work to listen to the
words of their captain.

"I know you have all been wondering," began Alveron, "why we were
ordered to abandon our survey and to proceed at such an acceleration to
this region of space.  Some of you may realize what this acceleration
means.  Our ship is on its-last voyage: the generators have already
been running for sixty hours at Ultimate Overload.

We will be very lucky if we return to Base under our own power.

"We are approaching a sun which is about to become a Nova.  Detonation
will occur in seven hours, with an uncertainty of one hour, leaving us
a maximum of only four hours for exploration.  There are ten planets in
the system about to be destroyed and there is a civilization on the
third.

That fact was discovered only a few days ago.  It is our tragic mission
to contact that doomed race and if possible to save some of its
members.

I know that there is little we can do in so short a time with this
single ship.  No other machine can possibly reach the system before
detonation occurs."

There was a long pause during which there could have been no sound or
movement in the whole of the mighty ship as it sped silently toward the
worlds ahead.  Alveron knew what his companions were thinking and he
tried to answer their unspoken question.

"You will wonder how such a disaster, the greatest of which we have any
record, has been allowed to occur.  On one point I can reassure you.
The fault does not lie with the Survey.

"As you know, with our present fleet of under twelve thousand ships, it
is possible to re-examine each of the eight thousand million solar
systems in the Galaxy at intervals of about a million years.  Most
worlds change very little in so short a time as that.

"Less than four hundred thousand years ago, the survey ship S5060
examined the planets of the system we are approaching.  It found
intelligence on none of them, though the third planet was teeming with
animal life and two other worlds had once been inhabited.  The usual
report was submitted and the system is due for its next examination in
six hundred thousand years.

"It now appears that in the incredibly short period since the last
survey, intelligent life has appeared in the system.  The first
intimation of this occurred when unknown radio signals were detected on
the planet Kulath in the system X29.35, Y34.76, Z27.93.  Bearings were
taken on them;

they were coming from the system ahead.

"Kulath is two hundred light-years from here, so those radio waves had
been on their way for two centuries.

Thus for at least that period of time a civilization has existed on one
of these worlds a civilization that can generate electromagnetic waves
and all that that implies.

"An immediate telescopic examination of the system was made and it was
then found that the sun was in the unstable pre-nova stage.  Detonation
might occur at any moment, and indeed might have done so while the
light waves were on their way to Kulath.

"There was a slight delay while the super velocity scanners on Kulath
II were focused on to the system.  They showed that the explosion had
not yet occurred but was only a few hours away.  If Kulath had been a
fraction of a light-year further from this sun, we should never have
known of its civilization until it had ceased to exist

"The Administrator of Kulath contacted Sector Base immediately, and I
was ordered to proceed to the system at once.  Our object is to save
what members we can of the doomed race, if indeed there are any left.
But we have assumed that a civilization possessing radio could have
protected itself against any rise of temperature that may have already
occurred.

"This ship and the two tenders will each explore a section of the
planet.

Commander Torkalee will take Number One, Commander Orostron Number
Two.

They will have just under four hours in which to explore this world. At
the end of that time, they must be back in the ship.  It will be
leaving then, with or without them.  I will give the two commanders
detailed instructions in the control room immediately.

"That is all.  We enter atmosphere in two hours."

On the world once known as Earth the fires were dying out: there was
nothing left to burn.  The great forests that had swept across the
planet like a tidal wave with the passing of the cities were now no
more than glowing charcoal and the smoke of their funeral pyres still
stained the sky.  But the last hours were still to come, for the
surface rocks had not yet begun to flow.  The continents were dimly
visible through the haze, but their outlines meant nothing to the
watchers in the approaching ship.  The charts they possessed were out
of date by a dozen Ice Ages and more deluges than one.

The S9000 had driven past Jupiter and seen at once that no life could
exist in those half-gaseous oceans of compressed hydrocarbons, now
erupting furiously under the sun's abnormal heat.  Mars and the outer
planets they had missed, and Alveron realized that the worlds nearer
the sun than Earth would be already melting.  It was more than likely,
he thought sadly, that the tragedy of this unknown race was already
finished.  Deep in his heart, he thought it might be better so.  The
ship could only have carried a few hundred survivors, and the problem.
of selection had been haunting his mind.

Rugon, Chief of Communications and Deputy Captain, came into the
control room.  For the last hour he had been striving to detect
radiation from Earth, but in vain.

"We're too late," he announced gloomily.

"I've monitored the whole spectrum and the ether's dead except for our
own stations and some two-hundred-year-old programs from Kulath.
Nothing in this system is radiating any more."

He moved toward the giant vision screen with a graceful flowing motion
that no mere biped could ever hope to imitate.  Alveron said nothing;
he had been expecting this news.

One entire wall of the control room was taken up by the screen, a great
black rectangle that gave an impression of almost infinite depth.

Three of Rugon's slender control tentacles, useless for heavy work but
incredibly swift at all manipulation, flickered over the selector dials
and the screen lit up with a thousand points of light The star field
flowed swiftly past as Rugon adjusted the controls, bringing the
projector to bear upon the sun itself.

No man of Earth would have recognized the monstrous shape that filled
the screen.  The sun's light was white no longer: great violet-blue
clouds covered half its surface and from them long streamers of flame
were erupting into space.  At one point an enormous prominence had
reared itself out of the photosphere, far out even into the flickering
veils of the corona.  It was as though a tree of fire had taken root in
the surface of the sun a tree that stood half a minion miles high and
whose branches were rivers of flame sweeping through space at hundreds
of miles a second.

"I suppose," said Rugon presently, tchat you are quite satisfied about
the astronomers' calculations.  After all"

"Oh, we're perfectly safe," said Alveron confidently..  "I've spoken to
Kulath Observatory and they have been making some additional checks
through our own instruments.  That uncertainty of an hour includes a
private safety margin which they won't tell me in case I feel tempted
to stay any longer."

He glanced at the instrument board.

"The pilot should have brought us to the atmosphere now.  Switch the
screen back to the planet, please.  Ah, there they go! "

There was a sudden tremor underfoot and a raucous clanging of alarms,
instantly stilled.  Across tHe vision screen two slim projectiles dived
toward the looming mass of Earth.  For a few miles they traveled
together, Hen they separated, one vanishing abruptly as it entered the
shadow of tHe planet.

Slowly the huge mother ship, with its Thousand times greater mass,
descended after them into The raging storms that already were tearing
down the deserted cities of Man.

It was night in The hemisphere over which Orostron drove his tiny
command.

Like Torkalee, his mission was to photograph and record, and to report
progress to the mother ship.  The little scout had no room for
specimens or passengers.  If contact was made with the inhabitants of
this world, the S9000 would come at once.  There would be no time for
parleying.  If there was any trouble The rescue would be by force and
the explanations could come later.

The ruined land beneath was bathed with an eerie, flickering light, for
a great auroral display was raging over half the world.  But the image
on the vision screen was in dependent of external light, and it showed
clearly a waste of barren rock that seemed never to have known any form
of life.  Presumably this desert land must come to an end somewhere.

Orostron increased his speed to the highest value he dared risk in so
dense an atmosphere.

The machine fled on through the storm, and presently the desert of rock
began to climb toward the sky.  A great mountain range lay ahead, its
peaks lost in the smoke-laden clouds.

Orostron directed the scanners toward the horizon, and on the vision
screen the line of mountains seemed suddenly very close and menacing.
He started to climb rapidly.  It was difficult to imagine a more
unpromising land in which to find civilization and he wondered if it
would be wise to change course.  He decided against it.  Five minutes
later, he had his reward.

Miles below lay a decapitated mountain, the whole of its summit sheared
away by some tremendous feat of engineering.  Rising out of the rock
and straddling the artificial plateau was an intricate structure of
metal girders, supporting masses of machinery.  Orostron brought his
ship to a halt and spiraled down toward the mountain

The slight Doppler blur had now vanished, and the picture on the screen
was clear-cut.  The latticework was supporting some scores of great
metal mirrors, pointing skyward at an angle of forty-five degrees to
the horizontal They were slightly concave, and each had some
complicated mechanism at its focus.  There seemed something impressive
and purposeful about the great array; every mirror was aimed at
precisely the same spot in the sky or beyond.

Orostron turned to his colleagues.

"It looks like some kind of observatory to me," he said.

"Have you ever seen anything like it before?"

Klarten, a multi tentacled tripedal creature from a globular cluster at
the edge of the Milky Way, had a different theory.

"That's communication equipment Those reflectors are for focusing
electromagnetic beams.  I've seen the same kind of installation on a
hundred worlds before.  It may even be the station that Kulath picked
up though that's rather unlikely, for the beams would be very narrow
from mirrors that size."

"That would explain why Rugon could detect no radiation before we
landed," added Hansur II, one of the twin beings from the planet
Thargon.

Orostron did not agree at all.

"If that is a radio station, it must be built for interplanetary
communication.

Look at the way the mirrors are pointed.

I don't believe that a race which has only had radio for two centuries
can have crossed space.  It took my people six thousand years to do
it."

"We managed it in three," said Hansur II mildly, speaking a few seconds
ahead of his twin.  Before the inevitable argument could develop,
Klarten began to wave his tentacles with excitement.

While the others had been talking, he had started the automatic
monitor.

"Here it is!  Listen!"

He threw a switch, and the little room was filled with a raucous
whining sound, continually changing in pitch but nevertheless retaining
certain characteristics that were difficult to define.

The four explorers listened intently for a minute; then Orostron said,
"Surely that can't be any form of speech!  No creature could produce
sounds as quickly as that!"

Hansur I had come to the same conclusion.

"That's a television program.  Don't you think so, Klarten?"

The other agreed.

"Yes, and each of those mirrors seems to be radiating a different
program.  I wonder where they're going?  If I'm correct, one of the
other planets in the system must lie along those beams.  We can soon
check that."

- Orostron called the S9000 and reported the discovery.

Both Rugon and Alveron were greatly excited, and made a quick check of
the astronomical records.

The result was surprising and disappointing.  None of the other nine
planets lay anywhere near the line of transmission.  The great mirrors
appeared to be pointing blindly into space.

There seemed only one conclusion to be drawn, and Klarten was the first
to voice it.

"They had interplanetary communication," he said "But the station must
be deserted now, and the transmitters no longer controlled.

They haven't been switched off and are just pointing where they were
left."

"Well, we'll soon find out," said Orostron.

"I'm going to land."

He brought the machine slowly down to the level of the great metal
mirrors, and past them until it came to rest on the mountain rock.  A
hundred yards away, a white stone building crouched beneath the maze of
steel girders.  It was windowless, but there were several doors in the
wall facing them.

Orostron watched his companions climb into their protective suits and
wished he could follow.  But someone had to stay in the machine to keep
in touch with the mother ship.  Those were Alveron's instructions, and
they were very wise.  One never knew what would happen on a world that
was being explored for the first time, especially under conditions such
as these.

Very cautiously, the three explorers stepped out of the airlock and
adjusted the antigravity field of their suits.  Then, each with the
mode of locomotion peculiar to his race, the little party went toward
the building, the Hansur twins leading and Klarten following close
behind.  His gravity control was apparently giving trouble, for he
suddenly fell to the ground, rather to the amusement of his colleagues.
Orostron saw them pause for a moment at the nearest door then it opened
slowly and they disappeared from sight.

So Orostron waited, with what patience he could, while the storm rose
around him and the light of the aurora grew even brighter in the sky.

At the agreed times he called the mother ship and received brief
acknowledgments from Rugon.  He wondered how Torkalee was faring,
halfway round the planet, but he could not contact him through the
crash and thunder of solar interference.

It did not take Klarten and the Hansurs long to discover that their
theories were largely correct.  The building was a radio station, and
it was utterly deserted.  It consisted of one tremendous room with a
few small offices leading
from it In the main chamber, row after row of electrical equipment
stretched into the distance; lights flickered and winked on hundreds of
control panels, and a dull glow came from the elements in a great
avenue of vacuum tubes.

But Klarten was not impressed.  The first radio set his race had built
were now fossilized in strata a thousand million years old.  Man, who
had possessed electrical machines for only a few centuries, could not
compete with those who had known them for half the lifetime of the
Earth.

Nevertheless, the party kept their recorders running as they explored
the building.  There was still one problem to be solved.  The deserted
station was broadcasting programs, but where were they coming from? The
central switchboard had been quickly located.

It was designed to handle scores of programs simultaneously, but the
source of those programs was lost in a maze of cables that vanished
underground.  Back in the S9000, Rugon was trying to analyze the
broadcasts and perhaps his researches would reveal their origin.  It
was impossible to trace cables that might lead across continents.

The party wasted little time at the deserted station.  There was
nothing they could learn from it, and they were seeking life rather
than scientific information.  A few minutes later the little ship rose
swiftly from the plateau and headed toward the plains that must lie
beyond the mountains.  Less than three hours were still left to them,

As the array of enigmatic mirrors dropped out of sight, Orostron was
struck by a sudden thought.  Was it imagination, or had they all moved
through a small angle while he had been waiting, as if they were still
compensating for the rotation of the Earth?  He could not be sure, and
he dismissed the matter as unimportant.

It would only mean that the directing mechanism was still working,
after a fashion.

They discovered the city fifteen minutes later.  It was a great,
sprawling metropolis, built around a river that had disappeared leaving
an ugly scar winding its way among the great buildings and beneath
bridges that looked very incongruous now.

Even from the air, the city looked deserted.  But only two and a half
hours were left there was no time for further exploration.  Orostron
made his decision, and landed near the largest structure he could see.
It seemed reasonable to suppose that some creatures would have sought
shelter in the strongest buildings, where they would be safe until the
very end.

The deepest caves the heart of the planet itself would give no
protection when the final cataclysm came.  Even if this race had
reached the outer planets, its doom would only be delayed by the few
hours it would take for the ravening wavefronts to cross the Solar
System.

Orostron could not know that the city had been deserted not for a few
days or weeks, but for over a century.  For the culture of cities,
which had outlasted so many civilizations had been doomed at last when
the helicopter brought universal transportation.  Within a few
generations the great masses of mankind, knowing that they could reach
any part of the globe in a matter of hours, had gone back to the fields
and forests for which they had always longed.  The new civilization had
machines and resources of which earlier ages had never dreamed, but it
was essentially rural and no longer bound to the steel and concrete
warrens that had dominated the centuries before.  Such cities as still
remained were specialized centers of research, administration or
entertainment; the others had been allowed to decay, where it was too
much trouble to destroy them.  The dozen or so greatest of all cities,
and the ancient university towns, had scarcely changed and would have
lasted for many generations to come.  But the cities that had been
founded on steam and iron and surface transportation had passed with
the industries that had nourished them.

And so while Orostron waited in the tender, his colleagues raced
through endless empty corridors and deserted halls, taking innumerable
photographs but learning nothing of the creatures who had used these
buildings.  There were libraries, meeting places, council rooms, thousands
of offices all were empty and deep with dust.  If they had not
seen the radio station on its mountain eyrie, the explorers could well
have believed that this world had known no life for centuries.

Through the long minutes of waiting, Orostron tried to imagine where
this race could have vanished.  Perhaps they had killed themselves
knowing that escape was impossible; perhaps they had built great
shelters in the bowels of the planet, and even now were cowering in
their millions beneath his feet, waiting for the end.  He began to fear
that he would never know.

It was almost a relief when at last he had to give the order-for the
return.  Soon he would know if Torkalee's party had been more
fortunate.  And he was anxious to get back to the mother ship, for as
the minutes passed the suspense had become more and more acute.  There
had always been the thought in his mind: What if the astronomers of
Kulath have made a mistake?  He would begin to feel happy when the
walls of the S9000 were around him.  He would be happier still when
they were out in space and this ominous sun was shrinking far astern.

As soon as his colleagues had entered the airlock, Orostron hurled his
tiny machine into the sky and set the controls to home on the S9000.
Then he turned to his friends.

"Well, what have you found?"  he asked.

Klarten produced a large roll of canvas and spread it out on the
floor

"This is what they were like," he said quietly.

"Bipeds, with only two arms.  They seem to have managed welt in spite
of that handicap.  Only two eyes as well, unless there are others in
the back.  We were lucky to find this; it's about the only thing they
left behind."

The ancient oil paintings stared stonily back at the three creatures
regarding it so intently.  By the irony of fate, its complete
worthlessness had saved it from oblivion.  When the city had been
evacuated, no one had bothered to move Alderman John Richards,
1909-1974.  For a century and a half he had been gathering dust while
far away from the old cities the new civilization had been rising to
heights no earlier culture had ever known.

"That was almost all we found," said Klarten.

"The city must have been deserted for years.  I'm afraid our expedition
has been a failure.  If there are any living beings on this world,
they've hidden themselves too well for us to find them."

His commander was forced to agree.

"It was an almost impossible task," he said.

"If we'd had weeks instead of hours we might have succeeded.  For all
we know, they may even have built shelters under the sea.  No one seems
to have thought of that."

He glanced quickly at the indicators and corrected the course.

"We'll be there in five minutes.

Alveron seems to be moving rather quickly.  I wonder if Torkalee has
found anything."

The S9000 was hanging a few miles above the seaboard of a blazing
continent when Orostron homed upon it.

The danger line was thirty minutes away and there was no time to
lose.

Skillfully, he maneuvered the little ship into its launching tube and
the party stepped out of the airlock.

There was a small crowd waiting for them.  That was to be expected, but
Orostron could see at once that something more than curiosity had
brought his friends here.  Even before a word was spoken, he knew that
something was wrong.

"Torkalee hasn't returned.  He's lost his party and we're going to the
rescue.  Come along to the control room at once."

From the beginning, Torkalee had been luckier than Orostron.  He had
followed the zone of twilight, keeping away from the intolerable glare
of the sun, until he came to the shores of an inland sea.  It was a
very recent sea, one of the latest of Man's works, for the land it
covered had been desert less than a century before.  In a few hours it
would be desert again, for the water was boiling and clouds of steam
were rising to the skies.  But they could not veil the loveliness of
the great white city that overlooked the tideless sea.

Flying machines were still parked neatly round the square in which
Torkalee landed.  They were disappointingly primitive, though
beautifully finished, and depended on rotating airfoils for support.
Nowhere was there any sign of life, but the place gave the impression
that its inhabitants were not very far away.

Lights were still shining from some of the windows.

Torkalee's three companions lost no time in leaving the machine. Leader
of the party, by seniority of rank and race was T'sinadree, who like
Alveron himself had been born on one of the ancient planets of the
Central Suns.

Next came Alarkane, from a race which was one of the youngest in the
Universe and took a perverse pride in the fact.

Last came one of the strange beings from the system of Palador.  It was
nameless, like all its kind, for it possessed no identity of its own,
being merely a mobile but still dependent cell in the consciousness of
its race.

Though it and its fellows had long been scattered over the galaxy in
the exploration of countless worlds, some unknown link still bound them
together as inexorably as the living cells in a human body.

When a creature of Palador spoke, the pronoun it used was always "We."
There was not, nor could there ever be, any first person singular in
the language of Palador.

The great doors of the splendid building baffled the explorers, though
any human child would have known their secret.  T'sinadree wasted no
time on them but called Torkalee on his personal transmitter.  Then the
three hurried aside while their commander maneuvered his machine-into
the best position.  There was a brief burst of intolerable flame; the
massive steelwork flickered once at the edge of the visible spectrum
and was gone.  The stones were still glowing when the eager party
hurried into the building, the beams of their light projectors fanning
before them.

The torches were not needed.  Before them lay a great hall, glowing
with light from lines of tubes along the ceiling.  On either side, the
hall opened out into long corridors, while straight ahead a massive
stairway swept majestically toward the upper floors.

For a moment T'sinadree hesitated.

Then, since one way was as good as another, he led his companions down
the first corridor.

The feeling that life was near had now become very strong.  At any
moment, it seemed, they might be confronted by the creatures of this
world.  If they showed hostility and they could scarcely be blamed if
they did the paralyzers would be used at once.

The tension was very great as the party entered the first room, and
only relaxed when they saw that it held nothing but machines row after
row of them, now stilled and silent.  Lining the enormous room were
thousands of metal filing cabinets, forming a continuous wall as far as
the eye could reach.  And that was all; there was no furniture, nothing
but the cabinets and the mysterious machines.

Alarkane, always the quickest of the three, was already examining the
cabinets.  Each held many thousand sheets of tough, thin material
perforated with innumerable holes and slots.  The Paladorian
appropriated one of the cards and Alarkane recorded the scene together
with some close-ups of the machines.  Then they left.  The great room,
which had been one of the marvels of the world, meant nothing to them.
No living eye would ever again see that wonderful battery of almost
human Hollerith analyzers and the five thousand million punched cards
holding all that could be recorded of each man, woman and child on the
planet.

It was clear that this building had been used very recently.  With
growing excitement, the explorers hurried on to the next room.  This
they found to be an enormous library, for millions of books lay all
around them on miles and miles of shelving.  Here, though the explorers
could not know it, were the records of all the laws that Man had ever
passed, and all the speeches that had ever been made in his council
chambers.

T'sinadree was deciding his plan of action, when Alarkane drew his
attention to one of the racks a hundred yards away.  It was half empty,
unlike all the others.  Around it books lay in a tumbled heap on the
floor, as if knocked down by someone in frantic haste.  The signs were
unmistakable.

Not long ago, other creatures had been this way.  Faint wheel marks
were clearly visible on the floor to the acute sense of Alarkane,
though the others could see nothing.  Alarkane could even detect
footprints, but knowing nothing of the creatures that had formed them
he could not say which way they led.

The sense of nearness was stronger than ever now, but it was nearness
in time, not in space.  Alarkane voiced the thoughts of the party.

"Those books must have been valuable, and someone has come to rescue
them rather as an afterthought, I should say.  That means there must be
a place of refuge, possibly not very far away.  Perhaps we may be able
to find some other clues that will lead us to it."

T'sinadree agreed; the Paladorian wasn't enthusiastic.

"That may be so," it said, "but the refuge may be anywhere on the
planet, and we have just two hours left.  Let us waste no more time if
we hope to rescue these people."

The party hurried forward once more, pausing only to collect a few
books that might be useful to the scientists at Base though it was
doubtful if they could ever be translated.  They soon found that the
great building was composed largely of small rooms, all showing signs
of recent occupation.

Most of them were in a neat and tidy condition, but one or two were
very much the reverse.  The explorers were particularly puzzled by one
room clearly an office of some kind that appeared to have been
completely wrecked.  The floor was littered with papers, the furniture
had been smashed, and smoke was pouring through the broken windows from
the fires outside.

T'sinadree was rather alarmed.

"Surely no dangerous animal could have got into a place like this!"  he
exclaimed, fingering his paralyzer nervously.

Alarkane did not answer.  He began to make that annoying sound which
his race called "laughter."  It was several minutes before he would
explain what had amused him.

"I don't think any animal has done it," he said.

"In fact, the explanation is very simple.  Suppose you had been working
all your life in this room, dealing with endless papers, year after
year.  And suddenly, you are told that you will never see it again,
that your work is finished, and that you can leave it forever.  More
than that no one will come after you.  Everything is finished.  How
would you make your exit, T'sinadree>"

The other thought for a moment.

"Well, I suppose I'd just tidy things up and leave.  That's what seems
to have happened in all the other rooms."

Alarkanelaughed again.

"I'm quite sure you would.  But some individuals have a different
psychology.  I think I should have liked the creature that used this
room."

He did not explain himself further, and his two colleagues puzzled over
his words for quite a while before they gave it up.

It came as something of a shock when Torkalee gave the order to
return.

They had gathered a great deal of information, but had found no clue
that might lead them to the missing inhabitants of this world.  That
problem was as baffling as ever, and now it seemed that it would never
be solved.  There were only forty minutes left before the S9000 would
be departing.

They were halfway back to the tender when they saw the semicircular
passage leading down into the depths of the building.  Its
architectural style was quite different from that used elsewhere, and
the gently sloping floor was an irresistible attraction to creatures
whose many legs had grown weary of the marble staircases which only
bipeds could have built in such profusion.  T'sinadree had been the
worst sufferer, for he normally employed twelve legs and could use
twenty when he was in a hurry, though no one had ever seen him perform
this feat.

The party stopped dead and looked down the passageway with a single
thought.  A tunnel, leading down into the depths of Earth!  At its end,
they might yet find the people of this world and rescue some of them
from their fate.  For there was still time to call the mother ship if
the need arose.

T'sinadree signaled to his commander and Torkalee brought the little
machine immediately overhead.  There might not be time for the party to
retrace its footsteps through the maze of passages, so meticulously
recorded in the Paladorian mind that There was no possibility of going
astray.  If speed was necessary, Torkalee could blast his way through
the dozen floors above their head.  In any case, it should not take
long to find what lay at the end of the passage.

It took only thirty seconds.  The tunnel ended quite abruptly in a very
curious cylindrical room with magnificently padded seats along the
walls.

There was no way out save that by which they had come and it was
several seconds before the purpose of the chamber dawned on Alarkane's
mind.  It was a pity, he thought, that they would never have time to
use this.  The thought was suddenly interrupted by a cry from
T'sinadree.  Alarkane wheeled around, and saw that the entrance had
closed silently behind them.

Even in that first moment of panic, Alarkane found himself Blinking
with some admiration: Whoever they were, they knew how to build
automatic machinery!

The Paladorian was the first to speak.  It waved one of its tentacles
toward the seats.

"We think it would be best to be seated," it said.  The multiplex mind
of Palador had already analyzed the situation and knew what was
coming.

They did not have long to wait before a low-pitched hum came from a
grill overhead, and for the very last time in history a human, even if
lifeless, voice was heard on Earth.  The words were meaningless, though
the trapped explorers could guess their message clearly enough.

"Choose your stations, please, and be seated."

Simultaneously, a wall panel at one end of the compartment glowed with
light.  On it was a simple map, consisting of a series of a dozen
circles connected by a line.  Each of the circles had writing alongside
it, and beside the writing were two buttons of different colors.

Alarkane looked questioningly at his leader.

"Don't touch them," said T'sinadree.

"If we leave the controls alone, the doors may open again."

He was wrong.  The engineers who had designed the automatic subway had
assumed that anyone who entered it would naturally wish to go
somewhere.  If they selected no intermediate station, their destination
could only be the end of the line.

There was another pause while the relays and thyratrons waited for
their orders.  In those thirty seconds, if they had known what to do,
the party could have opened the doors and left the subway.  But they
did not know, and the machines geared to a human psychology acted for
them.

The surge of acceleration was not very great; the lavish upholstery was
a luxury, not a necessity.  Only an almost imperceptible vibration told
of the speed at which they were traveling through the bowels of the
earth, on a journey the duration of which they could not even guess.
And in thirty minutes, the S9000 would be leaving the Solar System.

There was a long silence in the speeding machine.  T'sinadree and
Alarkane were thinking rapidly.  So was the Paladorian, though in a
different fashion.  The conception of personal death was meaningless to
it, for the destruction of a single unit meant no more to the group
mind than the loss of a nail-paring to a man.  But it could, though
with great difficulty, appreciate the plight of individual
intelligences such as Alarkane and T'sinadree, and it was anxious to
help them if it could.

Alarkane had managed to contact Torkalee with his personal transmitter,
though the signal was very weak and seemed to be fading quickly.
Rapidly he explained the situation, and almost at once the signals
became clearer.  Torkalee was following the path of the machine, flying
above the ground under which they were speeding to their unknown
destination.  That was the first indication they had of the fact that
they were traveling at nearly a thousand miles an hour, and very soon
after that Torkalee was able to give the still more disturbing news
that they were rapidly approaching the sea.

While they were beneath the land, there was a hope, though a slender
one, that they might stop the machine and escape.  But under the ocean
not all the brains and the machinery in the great mother ship could
save them.  No one could have devised a more perfect trap.

T'sinadree had been examining the wall map with great attention.  Its
meaning was obvious, and along the line connecting the circles a tiny
spot of light was crawling.  It was already halfway to the first of the
stations marked.

"I'm going to press one of those buttons," said T'sinadree at last.

"It won't do any harm, and we may learn something."

"I agree.  Which will you try first? "

"There are only two kinds, and it won't matter if we try the wrong one
first.  I suppose one is to start the machine and the other is to stop
it."

Alarkane was not very hopeful.

"It started without any button pressing," he said.

"I think it's completely automatic and we can't control it from here at
all."

T'sinadree could not agree.

! "These buttons are clearly associated with the stations,

and there's no point in having them unless you can use them to stop
yourself.  The only question is, which is the right one?"

His analysis was perfectly correct.

The machine could be stopped at any intermediate station.  They had
only been on their way ten minutes, and if They could leave now, no
harm would have been done.  It was just bad luck that T'sinadree's
first choice was the wrong button.

The little light on the map crawled slowly through the illuminated
circle without checking its speed.  And at the same time Torkalee
called from the ship overhead.

"You have just passed underneath a city and are heading out to sea.
There cannot be another stop for nearly a Thousand miles."

Alveron had given up all hope of finding life on this world.  The S9000
had roamed over half the planet, never staying long in one place,
descending ever and again in an effort to attract attention.  There had
been no response;

Earth seemed utterly dead.  If any of its inhabitants were still alive,
thought Alveron, they must have hidden them selves in its depths where
no help could reach them, though their doom would be nonetheless
certain.

Rugon brought news of the disaster.

The great ship ceased its fruitless searching and fled back through the
storm to the ocean above which Torkalee's little tender was still
following the track of the buried machine.

The scene was truly terrifying.  Not since the days when Earth was born
had there been such seas as this.

Mountains of water were racing before the storm which had now reached
velocities of many hundred miles an hour.  Even at this distance from
the mainland the air was full of flying debris trees, fragments of
houses, sheets of metal, anything that had not been anchored to the
ground.  No airborne machine could have lived for a moment in such a
gale.  And ever and again even the roar of the wind was drowned as the
vast water-mountains met head-on with a crash that seemed to shake the
sky.

Fortunately, there had been no serious earthquakes yet.  Far beneath
the bed of the ocean, the wonderful piece of engineering which had been
the World President's private vacuum-subway was still working
perfectly, unaffected by the tumult and destruction above.  It would
continue to work until the last minute of the Earth's existence, which,
if the astronomers were right, was not much more than fifteen minutes
away though precisely how much more Alveron would have given a great
deal to know.  It would be nearly an hour before the trapped party
could reach land and even the slightest hope of rescue.

Alveron's instructions had been precise, though even without them he
would never have dreamed of taking any risks with the great machine
that had been entrusted to his care.  Had he been human, the decision
to abandon the trapped members of his crew would have been desperately
hard to make.

But he came of a race far more sensitive than Man, a race that so loved
the things of the spirit that long ago, and with infinite reluctance,
it had taken over control of the Universe since only thus could it be
sure that justice was being done.  Alveron would need all his
superhuman gifts to carry him through the next few hours.

Meanwhile, a mile below the bed of the ocean Alarkane

and T'sinadree were very busy indeed widh their private
communicators.

Fifteen minutes is not a long time in which to wind up the affairs of a
lifetime.  It is indeed, scarcely long enough to dictate more than a
few of those farewell messages which at such moments are so much more
important than all other matters.

All the while the Paladorian had remained silent and motionless, saying
not a word.  The other two, resigned to their fate and engrossed in
their personal affairs, had given it no Thought.  They were startled
when suddenly it began to address them in its peculiarly passionless
voice.

"We perceive that you are making certain arrangements concerning your
anticipated destruction.  That will probably be unnecessary.  Captain
Alveron hopes to rescue us if we can stop this machine when we reach
land again."

Both T'sinadree and Alarkane were too surprised to say anything for a
moment.  Then the latter gasped, "How do you know?"

It was a foolish question, for he remembered at once that there were
several Paladorians if one could use the phrase in the S9000, and
consequently their companion knew everything that was happening in the
mother ship.  So he did not wait for an answer but continued, "Alveron
can't do that!  He daren't take such a risk!"

"There will be no risk," said the Paladorian.

"We have told him what to do.  It is really very simple."

Alarkane and T'sinadree looked at their companion with something
approaching awe, realizing now what must have happened.  In moments of
crisis, the single Units comprising the Paladorian mind could link
together in an organization no less close than that of any physical
brain.

At such moments they formed an intellect more powerful than any other
in the Universe.  All ordinary problems could be solved by a few
hundred or thousand units.  Very rarely, millions would be needed, and
on two historic occasions the billions of cells of the entire
Paladorian consciousness had been welded together to deal with
emergencies that threatened the race.

The mind of Palador was one of the greatest mental resources of the
Universe; its full force was seldom required, but the knowledge that it
was available was supremely comforting to other races.  Alarkane
wondered how many cells had coordinated to deal with this particular
emergency.  He also wondered how so trivial an incident had ever come
to its attention.

To that question he was never to know the answer, though he might have
guessed it had he known that the chillingly remote Paladorian mind
possessed an almost human streak of vanity.  Long ago, Alarkane had
written a book trying to prove that eventually all intelligent races
would sacrifice individual consciousness and that one day only
group-minds would remain in the Universe.  Palador, he had said, was
the first of those ultimate intellects, and the vast, dispersed mind
had not been displeased.

They had no time to ask any further questions before Alveron himself
began to speak through their communicators.

"Alveron calling!  We're staying on this planet until the detonation
waves reach it, so we may be able to rescue you.  You're heading toward
a city on the coast which you'll reach in forty minutes at your present
speed.  If you cannot stop yourselves then, we're going to blast the
tunnel behind and ahead of you to cut off your power.

Then we'll sink a shaft to get you out the chief engineer says he can
do it in five minutes with the main projectors.  So you should be safe
within an hour, unless the sun blows up before."

"And if that happens, you'll be destroyed as well!  You mustn't take
such a risk!"

"Don't let that worry you; we're perfectly safe.  When the sun
detonates, the explosion wave will take several minutes to rise to its
maximum.  But apart from that, we're on the night side of the planet,
behind an eight-thousand mile screen of rock.

When the first warning of the explosion comes, we will accelerate out
of the Solar System, keeping in the shadow of the planet.  Under our
maximum drive, we will reach the velocity of light before leaving the
cone of shadow, and the sun cannot harm us then."

T'sinadree was still afraid to hope.

Another objection came at once into his mind.

"Yes, but how will you get any warning, here on the night side of the
planet?"

"Very easily," replied Alveron.

"This world has a moon which is now visible from this hemisphere.  We
have telescopes trained on it.  If it shows any sudden increase in
brilliance, our main drive goes on automatically and we'll be thrown
out of the system."

The logic was flawless.  Alveron, cautious as ever, was taking no
chances.  It would be many minutes before the eight-thousand-mile
shield of rock and metal could be destroyed by the fires of the
exploding sun.  In that time, the S9000 could have reached the safety
of the velocity of light.

Alarkane pressed the second button when they were still several miles
from the coast.  He did not expect anything to happen then, assuming
that the machine could not stop between stations.  It seemed too good
to be true when, a few minutes later, the machine's slight vibration
died away and they came to a halt.

The doors slid silently apart.  Even before they were fully open, the
three had left the compartment.  They were taking no more chances.
Before them a long tunnel stretched into the distance, rising slowly
out of sight.

They were starting along it when suddenly Alveron's voice called from
the communicators.

"Stay where you are!  We're going to blast!"

The ground shuddered once, and far ahead there came the rumble of
falling rock.  Again the earth shook and a hundred yards ahead the
passageway vanished abruptly.  A tremendous vertical shaft had been cut
clean through it.

The party hurried forward again until they came to the end of the
corridor and stood waiting on its lip.  The shaft in which it ended was
a full thousand feet across and descended into the earth as far as the
torches could throw their beams.  Overhead, the storm clouds fled
beneath a moon that no man would have recognized, so luridly brilliant
was its disk.  And, most glorious of all sights, the S9000 floated high
above, the great projectors that had drilled this enormous pit still
glowing cherry red.

A dark shape detached itself from the mother ship and dropped swiftly
toward the ground.

Torkalee was returning to collect his friends.  A little later, Alveron
greeted them in the control room.  He waved to the great vision screen
and said quietly, "See, we were barely in time."

The continent below them was slowly settling beneath the mile-high
waves that were attacking its coasts.  The last that anyone was ever to
see of Earth was a great plain, bathed with the silver light of the
abnormally brilliant moon.  Across its face the waters were pouring in
a glittering flood toward a distant range of mountains.  The sea had
won its final victory, but its triumph would be shortlived for soon sea
and land would be no more.  Even as the silent party in the control
room watched the destruction below, the infinitely greater catastrophe
to which this was only the prelude came swiftly upon them.

It was as though dawn had broken suddenly over this moonlit
landscape.

But it was not dawn: it was only the moon, shining with the brilliance
of a second sun.  For perhaps thirty seconds that awesome, unnatural
light burnt fiercely on the doomed land beneath.

Then there came a sudden flashing of indicator lights across the
control board.  The main drive was on.  For a second Alveron glanced at
the indicators and checked their information.  When he looked again at
the screen, Earth was gone.

The magnificent, desperately overstrained generators quietly died when
the S9000 was passing the orbit of Persephone.  It did not matter, the
sun could never harm them now, and although the ship was speeding
helplessly out into the lonely night of interstellar space, it would
only be a matter of days before rescue came.

There was irony in that.  A day ago, they had been the rescuers, going
to the aid of a race that now no longer existed.  Not for the first
time Alveron wondered about the world that had just perished.  He
tried, in vain, to picture it as it had been in its glory, the streets
of its cities thronged with life.  Primitive though its people had
been, they might have offered much to the Universe.  If only they could
have made contact!  Regret was useless; long before their coming, the
people of this world must have buried themselves in its iron heart.

And now they and their civilization would remain a mystery for the rest
of time.

Alveron was glad when his thoughts were interrupted by Rugon's
entrance.

The chief of communications had been very busy ever since the take-off,
trying to analyze the programs radiated by the transmitter Orostron had
discovered.  The problem was not a difficult one, but it demanded the
construction of special equipment, and that had taken time.

"WelL what have you found?"  asked Alveron.

"Quite a lot," replied his friend.

"There's something mysterious here, and I don't understand it.

"It didn't take long to find how the vision transmissions were built
up, and we've been able to convert them to suit our own equipment.  It
seems that there were cameras all over the planet, surveying points of
interest.

Some of them were apparently in cities, on the tops of very high
buildings.  The cameras were rotating continuously to give panoramic
views.

In the programs we've recorded there are about twenty different
scenes.

"In addition, there are a number of transmissions of a different kind,
neither sound nor vision.  They seem to be purely scientific possibly
instrument readings or something of that sort.  All these programs were
going out simultaneously on different frequency bands.

"Now there must be a reason for all this.  Orostron still thinks that
the station simply wasn't switched off when it was deserted.  But these
aren't the sort of programs such a station would normally radiate at
all.  It was certainly used for interplanetary relaying Klarten was
quite right there.  So these people must have crossed space, since none
of the other planets had any life at the time of the last survey. Don't
you agree?"

Alveron was following intently.

"Yes, that seems reasonable enough.

But it's also certain that the beam was pointing to none of the other
planets.  I checked that myself."

"Y know," said Rugon.

"What I want to discover is why a giant interplanetary relay station is
busily transmitting pictures of a world about to be destroyed pictures
that would be of immense interest to scientists and astronomers.
Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to arrange all those panoramic
cameras.  I am convinced that those beams were going somewhere."

Alveron started up.

"Do you imagine that there might be an outer planet that hasn't been
reported?  " he asked.

"If so, your theory's certainly wrong.  The beam wasn't even pointing
in the plane of the Solar System.  And even if it were just look at
this."

He switched on the vision screen and adjusted the controls.  Against
the velvet curtain of space was hanging a blue-white sphere, apparently
composed of many concentric shells of incandescent gas.  Even though
its immense distance made all movement invisible, it was clearly
expanding at an enormous rate.  At its center was a blinding point of
light the white dwarf star that the sun had now become.

"You probably don't realize just how big that sphere is," said
Alveron.

"Look at this."

He increased the magnification until only the center portion of the
nova was visible.  Close to its heart were two minute condensations,
one on either side of the nucleus.

"Those are the two giant planets of the system.  They have still
managed to retain their existence after a fashion.  And they were
several hundred million miles from the sun.  The nova is still
expanding but it's already twice the size of the Solar System."

Rugon was silent for a moment.

"Perhaps you're right," he said, rather grudgingly.

"You've disposed of my first theory.  But you still haven't satisfied
me."

He made several swift circuits of the room before speaking again.

Alveron waited patiently.  He knew the almost intuitive powers of his
friend, who could often solve a problem when mere logic seemed
insufficient.

Then, rather slowly, Rugon began to speak again.

"What do you think of this?"  he said.

"Suppose we've completely underestimated this people?  Orostron did it
once he thought they could never have crossed space,

since they'd only known radio for two centuries.  Hansur II told me
that.

WelL Orostron was quite wrong.  Perhaps we're all wrong.  I've had a
look at the material that Klarten brought back from the transmitter. He
wasn't impressed by what he found, but it's a marvelous achievement for
so short a time.  There were devices in that station that belonged to
civilizations thousands of years older.  Alveron, can we follow that
beam to see where it leads?"

Alveron said nothing for a full minute.  He had been more than half
expecting the question, but it was not an easy one to answer.  The main
generators had gone completely.  There was no point in trying to repair
them.

But there was still power available, and while there was power,
anything could be done in time.  It would mean a lot of improvisation,
and some difficult maneuvers, for the ship still had its enormous
initial velocity.

Yes, it could be done, and the activity would keep the crew from
becoming further depressed, now that the reaction caused by the
mission's failure had started to set in.  The news that the nearest
heavy repair ship could not reach them for three weeks had also caused
a slump in morale.

The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss.  Again as usual they
did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely
impossible.  Very slowly, over many hours, the great ship began to
discard the speed its main drive had given it in as many minutes.  In a
tremendous curve, millions of miles in radius, the S9000 changed its
course and the star fields shifted round it.

The maneuver took three days, but at the end of that time the ship was
limping along a course parallel to the beam that had once come from
Earth.

They were heading out into emptiness, the blazing sphere that had been
the sun dwindling slowly behind them.  By the standards of interstellar
flight, they were almost stationary.

For hours Rugon strained over his instruments, driving his detector
beams far ahead into space.  There were certainly no planets within
many light-years; there was no doubt of that.  From time to time
Alveron came to see him and always he had to give the same reply:
"Nothing to report."  About a fifth of the time Rugon's intuition let
him down badly;

he began to wonder if this was such an occasion.

Not until a week later did the needles of the mass-detectors quiver
feebly at the ends of their scales.

But Rugon said nothing, not even to his captain.  He waited until he
was sure, and he went on waiting until even the short-range scanners
began to react, and to build up the first faint pictures on the vision
screen.  Still he waited patiently until he could interpret the images.
Then, when he knew that his wildest fancy was even less than the truth,
he called his colleagues into the control room.

The picture on the vision screen was the familiar one of endless star
fields, sun beyond sun to the very limits of the Universe.  Near the
center of the screen a distant nebula made a patch of haze that was
difficult for the eye to grasp.

Rugon increased the magnification.

The stars flowed out of the field; the little nebula expanded until it
filled the screen and then it was a nebula no longer.  A simultaneous
gasp of amazement came from all the company at the sight that lay
before them.

Lying across league after league of space, ranged in a vast
three-dimensional array of rows and columns with the precision of a
marching army, were thousands of tiny pencils of light.  They were
moving swiftly; the whole immense entice holding its shape as a single
unit.

Even as Alveron and his comrades watched, the formation began to drift
off the screen and Rugon had to recenter the controls.

After a long pause, Rugon started to speak.

"This is the race," he said softly, "that has known radio for only two
centuries the race that we believed had crept to die in the heart of
its planet.  I have examined those images under the highest possible
magnification.

"That is the greatest fleet of which there has ever been a record. Each
of those points of light represents a ship larger than our own. Of
course, they are very primitive what you see on the screen are the jets
of their rockets.  Yes, they dared to use rockets to bridge
interstellar space!

You realize what that means.  It would take them centuries to reach the
nearest star.  The whole race must have embarked on this journey in the
hope that its descendants would complete it, generations later.

"To measure the extent of their accomplishment, think of the ages it
took us to conquer space, and the longer ages still before we attempted
to reach the stars.  Even if we were threatened with annihilation,
could we have done so much in so short a time?

Remember, this is the youngest civilization in the Universe.  Four
hundred thousand years ago it did not even exist.  What wi'D it be a
million years from now?"

An hour later, Orostron left the crippled mother ship to make contact
with the great fleet ahead.  As the little torpedo disappeared among
the stars, Alveron turned to his friend and made a remark that Rugon
was often to remember in the years ahead.

"I wonder what they'll be like?"  he mused.

"Will they be nothing but wonderful engineers, with no art or
philosophy?  They're going to have such a surprise when Orostron
reaches them I expect it will be rather a blow to their pride.  It's
funny how all isolated races think they're the only people in the
Universe.  But they should be grateful to us; we're going to save them
a good many hundred years of travel."

Alveron glanced at the Milky Way, lying like a veil of silver mist
across the vision screen.  He waved toward it with a sweep of a
tentacle that embraced the whole circle of the galaxy, from the Central
Planets to the lonely suns of the Rim.

"You know," he said to Rugon, "I feel rather afraid of there people.
Suppose they don't like our little Federation?"  He waved once more
toward the star-clouds that lay massed across the screen, glowing with
the light of their countless suns.

"Something tells me they'll be very determined people," he added.

"We had better be polite to them.  After all, we only outnumber them
about a thousand million to one."

Rugon laughed at his captain's little joke.

Twenty years afterward, the remark didn't seem funny.

A Walk in the Dark

ROBERT ARMSTRONG HAD WALKED JUST OVER TWO MILES, AS

far as he could judge, when his torch failed.  He stood still for a
moment, unable to believe that such a misfortune could really have
befallen him.  Then, half maddened with rage, he hurled the useless
instrument away.  It landed somewhere in the darkness, disturbing the
silence of this little world.  A metallic echo came ringing back from
the low hills: then all was quiet again.

This, thought Armstrong, was the ultimate misfortune.  Nothing more
could happen to him now.  He was even able to laugh bitterly at his
luck, and resolved never again to imagine that the fickle goddess had
ever favored him.  Who would have believed that the only tractor at
Camp IV would have broken down when he was just setting off for Port
Sanderson?  He recalled the frenzied repair work, the relief when the
second start had been made--and the final debacle when the caterpillar
track had jammed.

It was no use then regretting the lateness of his departure: he could
not have foreseen these accidents, and it was still a good four hours
before the "Canopus" took off.  He had to catch her, whatever happened;
no other ship would be touching at this world for another month.

Apart from the urgency of his business, four more weeks-on this
out-of-the-way planet were unthinkable.

There had been only one thing to do.  It was lucky that Port Sanderson
was little more than six miles from the camp not a great distance, even
on foot.  He had had to leave all his equipment behind, but it could
follow on the next ship and he could manage without it.  The road was
poor, merely stamped out of the rock by one of the Board's hundred-ton
crushers, but there was no fear of going astray.

... Even now, he was in no real danger, though he might well be too
late to catch the ship.  Progress would be slow, for he dare not risk
losing the road in this region of canyons and enigmatic tunnels that
had never been explored.  It was, of course, pitch-dark.  Here at the
edge of the galaxy the stars were so few and scattered that their light
was negligible.  The strange crimson sun of this lonely world would not
rise for many hours, and although five of the little moons were in the
sky they could barely be seen by the unaided eye.  Not one of them
could even cast a shadow

Armstrong was not the man to bewail his luck for long.  He began to
walk slowly along the road, feeling its texture with his feet.  It was,
he knew, fairly straight except where it wound through Carver's Pass.
He wished he had a stick or something to probe the way before him, but
he would have to rely for guidance on the feel of the ground.

It was terribly slow at first, until he gained confidence.  He had
never known how difficult it was to walk in a straight line.  Although
the feeble stars gave him his bearings, again and again he found
himself stumbling among the virgin rocks at the edge of the crude
roadway.  He was traveling in long zigzags that took him to alternate
sides of the road.  Then he would stub his toes against the bare rock
and grope his way back on to the hard-packed surface once again.

Presently it settled down to a routine.  It was impossible to estimate
his speed; he could only struggle along and hope for the best.  There
were four miles to go four miles and as many hours.  It should be easy
enough, unless he lost his way.  But he dared not think of that.

Once he had mastered the technique he could afford the luxury of
thought.  He could not pretend that he was enjoying the experience, but
he had been in much worse positions before.  As long as he remained on
the road, he was perfectly safe.  He had been hoping that as his eyes
became adapted to the starlight he would be able to see the way, but he
now knew that the whole journey would be blind.  The discovery gave him
a vivid sense of his remoteness from the heart of the Galaxy.

On a night as clear as this, the skies of almost any other planet would
have been blazing with stars.  Here at this outpost of the Universe the
sky held perhaps a hundred faintly gleaming points of light, as useless
as the five ridiculous moons on which no one had ever bothered to
land.

A slight change in the road interrupted his thoughts.  Was there a
curve here, or had he veered off to the right again?  He moved very
slowly along the invisible and illdefined border.  Yes, there was no
mistake: the road was bending to the left.  He tried to remember its
appearance in the daytime, but he had only seen it once before.  Did
this mean that he was nearing the Pass?  He hoped so, for the journey
would then be half completed.

He peered ahead into the blackness, but the ragged line of the horizon
told him nothing.  Presently he found that the road had straightened
itself again and his spirits sank.  The entrance to the Pass must still
be some way ahead: there were at least four miles to go.

Four miles how ridiculous the distance seemed!  How long would it take
the "Canopus" to travel four miles?  He doubted if man could measure so
short an interval of time.  And how many trillions of miles had he,
Robert Armstrong, traveled in his life?  It must have reached a
staggering total by now, for in the last twenty years he had scarcely
stayed more than a month at a time on any single world.

This very year, he had twice made the crossing of the Galaxy, and that
was a notable journey even in these days of the phantom drive.

He tripped over a loose stone, and the-jolt brought him back to
reality.

It was no use, here, thinking of ships that could eat up the
light-years.  He was facing nature, with no weapons but his own
strength and skill.

It was strange that it took him so long to identify the real cause of
his uneasiness.  The last four weeks had been very full, and the rush
of his departure, coupled with the annoyance and anxiety caused by the
tractor's breakdowns, had driven everything else from his mind.
Moreover, he had always prided himself on his hard-headedness and lack
of imagination.  Until now, he had forgotten all about that first
evening at the Base, when the crews had

A WALR IN THE DARK 3 3

regaled him with the usual tall yarns concocted for the benefit of
newcomers.

It was then that the old Base clerk had told the story of his walk by
night from Port Sanderson to the camp, and of what had trailed him
through Carver's Pass, keeping always beyond the limit of his
torchlight.

Armstrong, who had heard such tales on a score of worlds, had paid it
little attention at the time.  This planet, after all, was known to be
uninhabited.  But logic could not dispose of the matter as easily as
that.  Suppose, after all, there was some truth in the old man's
fantastic tale .. . ?

It was not a pleasant thought, and Armstrong did not intend to brood
upon it.  But he knew that if he dismissed it out of hand it would
continue to prey on his mind.  The only way to conquer imaginary fears
was to face them boldly; he would have to do that now.

His strongest argument was the complete barrenness of this world and
its utter desolation, though against that one could set many
counter-arguments, as indeed the old clerk had done.  Man had only
lived on this planet for twenty years, and much of it was still
unexplored.  No one could deny that the tunnels out in the wasteland
were rather puzzling, but everyone believed them to be volcanic vents
Though, of course, life often crept into such places.  With a shudder
he remembered the giant polyps that had snared the first explorers of
Vargon III.

It was all very inconclusive.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, one granted the existence of life
here.

What of that?

The vast majority of life forms in the Universe were completely
indifferent to man.  Some, of course, like the gas-beings of Alcoran or
the roving wave-lattices of Shandaloon, could not even detect him but
passed through or around him as if he did not exist.  Others were
merely inquisitive, some embarrassingly friendly.  There were few
indeed that would attack unless provoked.

Nevertheless, it was a grim picture that the old stores clerk had
painted.

Back in the warm, well-lighted smoking-room, with the drinks going
around, it had been easy enough to laugh at it.  But here in the
darkness, miles from any human settlement, it was very different.

It was almost a relief when he stumbled off the road again and had to
grope with his hands until he found it once more.  This seemed a very
rough patch, and the road was scarcely distinguishable from the rocks
around.

In a few minutes, however, he was safely on his way again

It was unpleasant to see how quickly his thoughts returned to the same
disquieting subject.  Clearly it was worrying him more than he cared to
admit.

He drew consolation from one fact:

it had been quite obvious that no one at the base had believed the old
fellow's story.  Their questions and banter had proved thee.  At the
time, he had laughed as loudly as any of them.  After all, what was the
evidence?  A dim shape, just seen in the darkness, that might well have
been an oddly formed rock.  And the curious clicking noise that had so
impressed the old man anyone could imagine such sounds at night if they
were sufficiently overwrought.  If it had been hostile, why hadn't the
creature come any closer?

"Because it was afraid of my light," the old chap had said.  WelL that
was plausible enough: it would explain why nothing had ever been seen
in the daylight.

Such a creature might live underground, only emerging at night damn it,
why was he taking the old idiot's ravings so seriously!

Armstrong got control of his thoughts again.  If he went on this way,
he told himself angrily, he would soon be seeing and hearing a whole
menagerie of monsters.

There was, of course, one factor that disposed of the ridiculous story
at once.  It was really very simple; he felt sorry he hadn't thought of
it before.  What would such a creature live on?  There was not even a
trace of vegetation on the whole of the planet.

He laughed to think that the bogy could be disposed of so easily and in
the same instant felt annoyed with himself for not laughing aloud.  If
he was so sure of his reasoning, why not whistle, or sing, or do
anything to keep up his spirits?  He put the question fairly to himself
as a test of his manhood.  Half-ashamed, he had to admit that he was
still afraid

afraid because "there might be something in it, after all."  But at
least his analysis had done him some good.

It would have been better if he had left it there, and remained
half-convinced by his argument.  But a part of his mind was still
busily trying to break down his careful reasoning.  It succeeded only
too well, and when he remembered the plant-beings of Xantil Major the
shock was so unpleasant that he stopped dead in his tracks.

Now the plant-beings of Xantil were not in any way horrible.  They were
in fact extremely beautiful creatures.

But what made them appear so distressing now was the knowledge that
they could live for indefinite periods with no food whatsoever.  All
the energy they needed for their strange lives they extracted from
cosmic radiation and that was almost as intense here as anywhere else
in the universe.

He had scarcely thought of one example before others crowded into his
mind and he remembered the life form on Trantor Beta, which was the
only one known capable of directly utilizing atomic energy.  That too
had lived on an utterly barren world, very much like this .. .

Armstrong's mind was rapidly splitting into two distinct portions, each
trying to convince the other and neither wholly succeeding.  He did not
realize how far his morale had gone until he found himself holding his
breath lest it conceal any sound from the darkness about him.  Angrily,
he cleared his mind of the rubbish that had been gathering there and
turned once more to the immediate problem.

There was no doubt that the road was slowly rising, and the silhouette
of the horizon seemed much higher in the sky.  The road began to twist,
and suddenly he was aware of great rocks on either side of him.  Soon
only a narrow ribbon of sky was still visible, and the darkness became,
if possible, even more intense.

Somehow, he felt safer with the rock walls surrounding him: it meant
that he was protected except in two directions.  Also, the road had
been levelled more carefully and it was easy to keep it.  Best of all,
he knew now that the journey was more than half completed.

For a moment his spirits began to rise.  Then, with maddening
perversity, his mind went back into the old grooves again.  He
remembered that it was on the far side of Carver's Pass that the old
clerk's adventure had taken place if it had ever happened at all.

In half a mile, he would be out in the open again, out of the
protection of these sheltering rocks.  The thought seemed doubly
horrible now and he already felt a sense of nakedness.  He could be
attacked from any direction, and he would be utterly helpless ..

Until now, he had still retained some self-control Very resolutely he
had kept his mind away from the one fact that gave some color to the
old man's tale the single piece of evidence that had stopped the banter
in the crowded room back at the camp and brought a sudden hush upon the
company.  Now, as Armstrong's will weakened, he recalled again the
words that had struck a momentary chill even in the warm comfort of the
base building.

The little clerk had been very insistent on one point.  He had never
heard any sound of pursuit from the dim shape sensed, rather than seen,
at the limit of his light.  There was no scuffing of claws or hoofs on
rock, nor even the clatter of displaced scones.  It was as if, so the
old man had declared in that solemn manner of his, "as if the thing
that was following could see perfectly in the darkness, and had many
small legs or pads so that it could move swiftly and easily over the
rock like a giant caterpillar or one of the carpet-things of Kralkor

II."

Yet, although there had been no noise of pursuit, there had been one
sound that the old man had caught several times.  It was so unusual
that its very strangeness made it doubly ominous.  It was a faint but
horribly persistent clicking.

The old fellow had been able to describe it very vividly much too
vividly for Armstrong's liking now.

"Have you ever listened to a large insect crunching its prey?"  he
said.

"Well, it was just like that I imagine that a crab makes exactly the
same noise with its claws when it clashes them together.  It was a
what's the wording chitinous sound."

At this point, Armstrong remembered laughing loudly.  (Strange, how it
was all coming back to him now.) But no one else had laughed, though
they had been quick to do so earlier.  Sensing the change of tone, he
had sobered at once and asked the old man to continue his story.  How
he wished now that he had stifled his curiosity!

It had been quickly told.  The next day, a party- of skeptical
technicians had gone into the no-man's land beyond Carver's Pass.  They
were not skeptical enough to leave their guns behind, but they had no
cause to use them for they found no trace of any living thing.

There were the inevitable pits and tunnels, glistening holes down which
the light of the torches rebounded endlessly until it was lost in the
distance but the planet was riddled with them.

Though the party found no sign of life, it discovered one thing it did
not like at all.  Out in the barren and unexplored land beyond the Pass
they had come upon an even larger tunnel than the rest.  Near the mouth
of that tunnel was a massive rock, half embedded in the ground.  And
the sides of that rock had been worn away as if it had been used as an
enormous whetstone.

No less than five of those present had seen this disturbing rock.  None
of them could explain it satisfactorily as a natural formation, but
they still refused to accept the old man's story.

Armstrong had asked them if they had ever put it to the test.  There
had been an uncomfortable silence.  Then big Andrew Hargraves had said:
"Heft who'd walk out to the Pass at night just for fun!"  and had left
it at that.

Indeed, there was no other record of anyone walking from Port Sanderson
to the camp by night, or for that matter by day.  During the hours-of
light, no unprotected human being could live in the open beneath the
rays of the enormous, lurid sun that seemed to fill half the sky.  And
no one would walk six miles, wearing radiation armor, if the tractor
was available.

Armstrong felt that he was leaving the Pass.  The rocks on either side
were falling away, and the road was no longer as firm and well packed
as it had been.  He was coming out into the open plain once more, and
somewhere not far away in the darkness was that enigmatic pillar that
might have been used for sharpening monstrous fangs or claws.  It was
not a reassuring thought, but he could not get it out of his mind.

Feeling distinctly worried now, Armstrong made a great effort to pull
himself together.  He would try to be rational again; he would think of
business, the work he had done at the camp anything but this infernal
place.

For a while, he succeeded quite well.

But presently, with a maddening persistence, every train of thought
came back to the same point.  He could not get out of his mind the
picture of that inexplicable rock and its appalling possibilities. Over
and over again he found himself wondering how far away it was, whether
he had already passed it, and whether it was on his right or his
left.... The ground was quite flat again, and the road drove on
straight as an arrow.  There was one gleam of consolation: Port
Sanderson could not be much more than two miles away.  Armstrong had no
idea how long he had been on the road.  Unfortunately his watch was not
illuminated and he could only guess at the passage of time.  With any
luck, the "Canopus" should not take off for another two hours at
least.

But he could not be sure, and now another fear began to enter his mind
the dread that he might see a vast constellation of lights rising
swiftly into the sky ahead, and know that all this agony of mind had
been in vain.

He was not zigzagging so badly now, and seemed to be able to anticipate
the edge of the road before stumbling off it.  It was probable, he
cheered himself by thinking, that he was traveling almost as fast as if
he had a light.  If all went well, he might be nearing Port Sanderson
in thirty minutes a ridiculously small space of time.  How he would
laugh at his fears when he strolled into his already reserved stateroom
in the "Canopus," and felt that peculiar quiver as the phantom drive
hurled the great ship far out of this system, back to the clustered
star clouds near the center of the Galaxy back toward Earth itself,
which he had not seen for so many years.  One day, he told himself, he
really must visit Earth again.  All his
life he had been making the promise, but always there had been the same
answer lack of time.  Strange, wasn't it, that such a tiny planet
should have played so enormous a part in the development of the
Universe, should even have come to dominate worlds far wiser and more
intelligent than itself!

Armstrong's thoughts were harmless again, and he felt calmer.  The
knowledge that he was nearing Port Sanderson was immensely reassuring,
and he deliberately kept his mind on familiar, unimportant matters.

Carver's Pass was already far behind, and with it that thing he no
longer intended to recall.  One day, if he ever returned to this world,
he would visit the pass in the daytime and laugh at his fears.  In
twenty minutes now, they would have joined the nightmares of his
childhood.

It was almost a shock, though one of the most pleasant he had ever
known, when he saw the lights of Port Sanderson come up over the
horizon.  The curvature of this little world was very deceptive: it did
not seem right that a planet with a gravity almost as great as Earth's
should have a horizon so close at hand.  One day, someone would have to
discover what lay at this world's core to give it so great a density.
Perhaps the many tunnels would help it was an unfortunate turn of
thought, but the nearness of his goal had robbed it of terror now.

Indeed, the thought that he might really be in danger seemed to give
his adventure a certain piquancy and heightened interest.  Nothing
could happen to him now, with ten minutes to go and the lights of the
Port already in sight.

A few minutes later, his feelings changed abruptly when he came to the
sudden bend in the road.  He had forgotten the chasm that caused his
detour, and added half a mile to the journey.  Well, what of it?  he
thought stubbornly.  An extra half-mile would make no difference now
another ten minutes, at the most.

It was very disappointing when the lights of the city vanished.
Armstrong had not remembered the hill which the road was skirting;
perhaps it was only a low ridge, scarcely noticeable in the daytime.
But by hiding the lights of the port it had taken away his chief
talisman and left him again at the mercy of his fears.

Very unreasonably, his intelligence told him, he began to think how
horrible it would be if anything happened now, so near the end of the
journey.  He kept the worst of his fears at bay for a while, hoping
desperately that the lights of the city would soon reappear.  But as
the minutes dragged on, he realized that the ridge must be longer than
he imagined.  He tried to cheer himself by the thought that the city
would be all the nearer when he saw it again, but somehow logic seemed
to have failed him now.  For presently he found himself doing something
he had not stooped to, even out in the waste by Carver's Pass.

He stopped, turned slowly round, and with hated breath listened until
his lungs were nearly bursting.

The silence was uncanny, considering how near he must be to the Port.
There was certainly no sound from behind him.  Of course there wouldn't
be, he told himself angrily.  But he was immensely relieved.  The
thought of that faint and insistent clicking had been haunting him for
the last hour.

So friendly and familiar was the noise that did reach him at last that
the anticlimax almost made him laugh aloud.  Drifting through the still
air from a source clearly not more than a mile away came the sound of a
landing-field tractor, perhaps one of the machines loading the
"Canopus" itself.  In a matter of seconds, thought Armstrong, he would
be around this ridge with the Port only a few hundred yards ahead.  The
journey was nearly ended.  In a few moments, this evil plain would be
no more than a fading nightmare.

It seemed terribly unfair: so little time, such a small fraction of a
human life, was all he needed now.  But the gods have always been
unfair to man, and now they were enjoying their little jest.  For there
could be no mistaking the rattle of monstrous claws in the darkness
ahead of him.

The Forgotten Enemy

THE THICK FURS THUDDED SOFTLY TO THE GROUND AS PROFESsor Millward
jerked himself upright on the narrow bed.  This time, he was sure, it
had been no dream; the freezing air that rasped against his lungs still
seemed to echo with the sound that had come crashing out of the
night.

He gathered the furs around his shoulders and listened intently.  All
was quiet again: from the narrow windows on the western walls long
shafts of moonlight played upon the endless rows of books, as they
played upon the dead city beneath.  The world was utterly still; even
in the old days the city would have been silent on such a night, and it
was doubly silent now.

With weary resolution Professor Millward shuffled out of bed, and doled
a few lumps of coke into the glowing brazier.  Then he made his way
slowly toward the nearest window, pausing now and then to rest his hand
lovingly on the volumes he had guarded an these years.

He shielded his eyes from the brilliant moonlight and peered out into
the night.  The sky was cloudless:

the sound he had heard had not been thunder, whatever it might have
been.

It had come from the north, and even as he waited it came again.

Distance had softened it, distance and the bulk of the hills that lay
beyond London.  It did not race across the sky with the wantonness of
thunder, but seemed to come from a single point far to the north.  It
was like no natural sound that he had ever heard, and for a moment he
dared to hope again.

Only Man, he was sure, could have made such a sound.  Perhaps the dream
that had kept him here among these treasures of civilization for more
than twenty years would soon be a dream no longer.  Men were resuming
to Eng41

land, blasting their way through the ice and snow with the weapons that
science had given them before the coming of the Dust.  It was strange
that they should come by land, and from the north, but he thrust aside
any thoughts that would quench the newly kindled flame of hope.

Three hundred feet below, the broken sea of snowcovered roofs lay
bathed in the bitter moonlight.  Miles away the tall stacks of
Battersea Power Station glimmered like thin white ghosts against the
night sky.  Now that the dome of St.  Paul's had collapsed beneath the
weight of snow, they alone challenged his supremacy.

Professor Millward walked slowly back along the bookshelves, thinking
over the plan that had formed in his mind.  Twenty years ago he had
watched the last helicopters climbing heavily out of Regent's Park the
rotors churning the ceaselessly falling snow.

Even then, when the silence had closed around him, he could not bring
himself to believe that the North had been abandoned forever.  Yet
already he had waited a whole generation, among the books to which he
had dedicated his life.

In those early days he had sometimes heard, over the radio which was
his only contact with the South, of the struggle to colonize the
now-temperate lands of the Equator.  He did not know the outcome of
that far-off battle, fought with desperate skill in the dying jungles
and across deserts that had already felt the first touch of snow.
Perhaps it had failed; the radio had been silent now for fifteen years
or more.  Yet if men and machines were indeed returning from the north
of all directions he might again be able to hear their voices as they
spoke to one another and to the lands from which they had come.

Professor Millward left the University building perhaps a dozen times a
year, and then only through sheer necessity.  Over the past two decades
he had collected everything he needed from the shops in the Bloomsbury
area, for in the final exodus vast supplies of stocks had been left
behind through lack of transport.  In many ways, indeed, his life could
be called luxurious: no professor of English literature had ever been
clothed in such garments as those he had taken from an Oxford Street
furrier's.

The sun was blazing from a cloudless sky as he shouldered his pack and
unlocked the massive gates.  Even ten years ago packs of starving dogs
had hunted in this area, and though he had seen none for years he was
still cautious and always carried a revolver when he went into the
open.

The sunlight was so brilliant that the reflected glare hurt his eyes;
but it was almost wholly lacking in heat.

Although the belt of cosmic dust through which the Solar System was now
passing had made little visible difference to the sun's brightness, it
had robbed it of all strength.  No one knew whether the world would
swim out into the warmth again in ten or a thousand years, and
civilization had fled southward in search of lands where the word
"summer" was not an empty mockery.

The latest drifts had packed hard and Professor Millward had little
difficulty in making the journey to Tottenham Court Road.  Sometimes it
had taken him hours of floundering through the snow, and one year he
had been sealed in his great concrete watchtower for nine months.

He kept away from the houses with their dangerous burdens of snow and
their Damoclean icicles, and went north until he came to the shop he
was seeking.  The words above the shattered windows were still bright:
"Jenkins & Sons.  Radio and ElectricaL Television A Specialty."

Some snow had drifted through a broken section of roofing, but the
little upstairs room had not altered since his last visit a dozen years
ago.  The all-wave radio still stood on the table, and empty tins
scattered on the floor spoke mutely of the lonely hours he had spent
here before all hope had died.  He wondered if he must go through the
same ordeal again.

Professor Millward brushed the snow from the cow of The Amateur Radio
Handbook for 196S, which had taught him what little he knew about
wireless.  The test meters and batteries were still lying in their
half-remembered places, and to his relief some of the batteries still
held their charge.  He searched through the stock until he had built up
the necessary power supplies, and checked the radio as well as he
could.  Then he was ready.

It was a pity that he could never send the manu fac curers the
testimonial they deserved.  The faint "hiss" from the speaker brought
back memories of the BBC."  of the nine o'clock news and symphony
concerts, of all the things he had taken for granted in a world that
was gone like a dream.

With scarcely controlled impatience he ran across the wave-bands, but
everywhere there was nothing save that omnipresent hiss.  That was
disappointing, but no more: he remembered that the real test would come
at night.  In the meantime he would forage among the surrounding shops
for anything that might be useful.

It was dusk when he returned to the little room.  A hundred miles above
his head, tenuous and invisible, the Heaviside Layer would be expanding
outward toward the stars as the sun went down.  So it had done every
evening for millions of years, and for half a century only, Man had
used it for his own purposes, to reflect around the world his messages
of hate or peace, to echo with trivialities or to sound with music once
called immortal.

Slowly, with infinite patience, Professor Millward began to traverse
the shortwave bands that a generation ago had been a babel of shouting
voices and stabbing morse.  Even as he listened, the faint hope he had
dared to cherish began to fade within him.  The city itself was no more
silent than the once crowded oceans of ether.  Only the faint crackle of
thunderstorms half the world away broke the intolerable stillness.  Man
had abandoned his latest conquest.

Soon after midnight the batteries faded out.  Professor Millward did
not have the heart to search for more, but curled up in his furs and
fell into a troubled sleep.  He got what consolation he could from the
thought that if he had not proved his theory, he had not disproved it
either.

The heatless sunlight was flooding the lonely white road when he began
the homeward journey.  He was very tired, for he had slept little and
his sleep had been broken by the recurring fantasy of rescue.

The silence was suddenly broken by the distant thunder that came
rolling over the white roofs.  It came there could be no doubt now from
beyond the northern hills that had once been London's playground.  From
the buildings on either side little avalanches of snow went swishing out into
the wide street; then the silence returned.

Professor Millward stood motionless, weighing, considering, analyzing.
The sound had been too long-drawn to be an ordinary explosion he was
dreaming again it was nothing less than the distant thunder of an
atomic bomb, burning and blasting away the snow a million tons at a
time.  His hopes revived, and the disappointments of the night began to
fade.

That momentary pause almost cost him his life.  Out of a side-street
something huge and white moved suddenly into his field of vision.  For
a moment his mind refused to accept the reality of what he saw; then
the paralysis left him and he fumbled desperately for his futile
revolver.

Padding toward him across the now, swinging its head from side to side
with a hypnotic, serpentine motion, was a huge polar bear.

He dropped his belongings and ran, floundering over the snow toward the
nearest buildings.  Providentially the Underground entrance was only
fifty feet away.  The steel grille was closed, but he remembered
breaking the lock many years ago.  The temptation to look back was
almost intolerable, for he could hear nothing to tell how near his
pursuer was.  For one frightful moment the iron lattice resisted his
numbed fingers.  Then it yielded reluctantly and he forced his way
through the narrow opening.

Out of his childhood there came a sudden, incongruous memory of an
albino ferret he had once seen weaving its body ceaselessly across the
wire netting of its cage.  There was the same reptile grace in the
monstrous shape, almost twice as high as a man, that reared itself in
baffled fury against the grille.  The metal bowed but did not yield
beneath the pressure; then the bear dropped to the ground, grunted
softly and padded away.  It slashed once or twice at the fallen
haversack, scattering a few tins of food into the snow, and vanished as
silently as it had come.

A very shaken Professor Millward reached the University three hours
later, after moving in short bounds from-one refuge to the next.  After
all these years he was no longer alone in the city.  He wondered if
there were other visitors, and that same night he knew the answer. Just
before dawn he heard, quite distinctly, the cry of a wolf from
somewhere in the direction of Hyde Park.

By the end of the week he knew that the animals of the North were on
the move.  Once he saw a reindeer running southward, pursued by a pack
of silent wolves, and sometimes in the night there were sounds of
deadly conflict.

He was amazed that so much life still existed in the white wilderness
between London and the Pole.  Now something was driving it southward,
and the knowledge brought him a mounting excitement.  He did not
believe that these fierce survivors would flee from anything save
Man.

The strain of waiting was beginning to affect Professor Millward's
mind, and for hours he would sit in the cold sunlight, his furs wrapped
around him, dreaming of rescue and thinking of the way in which men
might be returning to England.  Perhaps an expedition had come from
North America across the Atlantic ice.  It might have been years upon
its way.  But why had it come so far north?  His favorite theory was
that the Atlantic ice-packs were not safe enough for heavy traffic
further to the south

One thing, however, he could not explain to his satisfaction.  There
had been no air reconnaissance; it was hard to believe that the art of
flight had been lost so soon.

Sometimes he would walk along the ranks of books, whispering now and
then to a well-loved volume.  There were books here that he had not
dared to open for years, they reminded him so poignantly of the past.
But now, as the days grew longer and brighter, he would sometimes take
down a volume of poetry and re-read his old favorites.

Then he would go to the tall windows and shout the magic words over the
rooftops, as if they would break the spell that had gripped the
world.

It was warmer now, as if the ghosts of lost summers had returned to
haunt the land.  For whole days the temperature rose above freezing,
while in many places flowers were breaking through the snow.  Whatever
was approaching from the north was nearer, and several times a day that
enigmatic roar would go thundering over the city, sending the snow
sliding upon a thousand roofs ..

There were strange, grinding undertones that Professor Millward found
baffling and even ominous.  At times it was almost as if he were
listening to the clash of mighty armies, and sometimes a mad but
dreadful thought came into his mind and would not be dismissed.  Often
he would wake in the night and imagine he heard the sound of mountains
moving to the sea.  ,

So the summer wore away, and as the sound of that distant battle drew
steadily nearer Professor Millward was the prey of ever more violently
alternating hopes and fears.  Although he saw no more wolves or bears
they seemed to have fled southward he did not risk leaving the safety
of his fortress.  Every morning he would climb to the highest window of
the tower and search the northern horizon with field-glasses.  But all
he ever saw was the stubborn retreat of the snows above Hampstead, as
they fought their bitter rear guard action against the sun.

His vigil ended with the last days of the brief summer.  The grinding
thunder in the night had been nearer than ever before, but there was
still nothing to hint at its real distance from the city.  Professor
Millward felt no premonition as he climbed to the narrow window and
raised his binoculars to the northern sky.

As a watcher from the walls of some threatened fortress might have seen
the first sunlight glinting on the spears of an advancing army, so in
that moment Professor Millward knew the truth.  The air was
crystal-clear, and the hills were sharp and brilliant against the cold
blue of the sky.  They had lost almost all their snow.  Once he would
have rejoiced at that, but it meant nothing now.

Overnight, the enemy he had forgotten had conquered the last defenses
and was preparing for the final onslaught.

As he saw that deadly glitter along the crest of the doomed hills,
Professor Millward understood at last the sound he had heard advancing
for so many months.  It was little wonder he had dreamed of mountains
on the march.

Out of the North, their ancient home, returning in triumph to the lands
they had once possessed, the glaciers had come again.

Technical Error

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE ACCIDENTS FOR WHICH NO ONE COULD be blamed. Richard
Nelson had been in and out of the generator pit a dozen times, taking
temperature readings to make sure that the unearthly chill of liquid
helium was not seeping through the insulation.  This was the first
generator in the world to use the principle of superconductivity. The
windings of the immense stator had been immersed in a helium bath, and
the miles of wire now had a resistance too small to be measured by any
means known to man.

Nelson noted with satisfaction that the temperature had not fallen
further than expected.  The insulation was doing its work; it would be
safe to lower the rotor into the pit.  That thousand-ton cylinder was
now hanging fifty feet above Nelson's head, like the business end of a
mammoth drop hammer.  He and everyone else in the power station would
feel much happier when it had been lowered onto its bearings and keyed
into the turbine shaft.

Nelson put away his notebook and started to walk toward the ladder.  At
the geometric center of the pit, he made his appointment with
destiny.

The load on the power network had been steadily increasing for the last
hour, while the zone of twilight swept across the continent.  As the
last rays of sunlight faded from the clouds, the miles of mercury arcs
along the great highways sprang into life.  By the million, fluorescent
tubes began to glow in the cities; housewives switched on their
radio-cookers to prepare the evening meal.  The needles of the mega
wattmeters began to creep up the scales.

These were the normal loads.  But on a mountain three hundred miles to
the south a giant cosmic ray analyzer
was being rushed into action to await the expected shower from the new
supernova in Gapricornus, which the astronomers had detected only an
hour before.  Soon the coils of its five-thousand-ton magnets began to
drain their enormous currents from the thyratron converters.

A thousand miles to the west, fog was creeping toward the greatest
airport in the hemisphere.  No one worried much about fog, now, when
every plane could land on its own radar in zero visibility, but it was
nicer not to have it around.  So the giant dispersers were thrown into
operation, and nearly a thousand megawatts began to radiate into the
night, coagulating the water droplets and clearing great swaths through
the banks of mist.

The meters in the power station gave another jump, and the engineer on
duty ordered the stand-by generators into action.  He wished the big,
new machine was finished; then there would be no more anxious hours
like these.  But he thought he could handle the load.  Half an hour
later the Meteorological Bureau put out a general frost warning over
the radio.  Within sixty seconds, more than a million electric fires
were switched on in anticipation.  The meters passed the danger mark
and went on soaring.

With a tremendous crash three giant circuit breakers leaped from their
contacts.  Their ares died under the fierce blast of the helium jets.
Three circuits had opened but the fourth breaker had failed to clear.
Slowly, the great copper bars began to glow cherry-red.  The acrid
smell of burning insulation filled the air and molten metal dripped
heavily to the floor below, solidifying at once on the concrete slabs.
Suddenly the conductors sagged as the load ends broke away from their
supports.

Brilliant green arcs of burning copper flamed and died as the circuit
was broken.  The free ends of the enormous conductors fell perhaps ten
feet before crashing into the equipment below.  In a fraction of a
second they had welded themselves across the lines that led to the new
generator.

Forces greater than any yet produced by man were at war in the windings
of the machine.  There was no resistance to oppose the current, but the
inductance of the tremendous windings delayed the moment of peak
intensity.  The current rose to a maximum in an immense surge that
lasted several seconds.  At that instant, Nelson reached the center of
the pit.

Then the current tried to stabilize itself, oscillating wildly between
narrower and narrower limits.  But it never reached its steady state;

somewhere, the overriding safety devices came into operation and the
circuit that should never have been made was broken again.  With a last
dying spasm, almost as violent as the first, the current swiftly ebbed
away.

It was all over.

When the emergency lights came on again, Nelson's assistant walked to
the lip of the rotor pit.  He didn't know what had happened, but it
must have been serious.  Nelson, fifty feet down, must have been
wondering what it was all about.

"Hello, Dick!"  he shouted.

"Have you finished?  We'd better see what the trouble is."

There was no reply.  He leaned over the edge of the great pit and
peered into it.  The light was very bad, and the shadow of the rotor
made it difficult to see what was below.  At first it seemed that the
pit was empty, but that was ridiculous; he had seen Nelson enter it
only a few minutes ago.  He called again.

"Hello!  You all right, Dick>"

Again no reply.  Worried now, the assistant began to descend the
ladder.

He was halfway down when a curious noise, like a toy balloon bursting
very far away, made him look over his shoulder.  Then he saw Nelson,
lying at the center of the pit on the temporary woodwork covering the
turbine shaft.

He was very still, and there seemed something altogether wrong about
the angle at which he was lying.

Ralph Hughes, chief physicist, looked up from his littered desk as the
door opened.  Things were slowly returning to normal after the night's
disasters.  Fortunately, the trouble had not affected his department
much, for the generator was unharmed.  He was glad he was not the chief
engineer:

Murdock would still be snowed under with

paperwork.  The thought gave Dr.  Hughes considerable satisfaction.

"Hello, Doc," he greeted the visitor.

"What brings you here?  How's your patient getting on?"

Doctor Sanderson nodded briefly.

"He'll be out of hospital in a day or so.  But I want to talk to you
about him."

"I don't know the fellow I never go near the plant, except when the
Board goes down on its collective knees and asks me to.  After all,
Murdock's paid to run the place."

Sanderson smiled wryly.  There was no love lost between the chief
engineer and the brilliant young physicist.

Their personalities were too different, and there was the inevitable
rivalry between theoretical expert and "practical" man.

"I think this is up your street, Ralph.  At any rate, it's beyond me.

You've heard what happened to Nelson?"

"He was inside my new generator when the power was shot into it, wasn't
he?"

-"That's correct.  His assistant found him suffering from shock when
the power was cut off again."

"What kind of shock?  It couldn't have been electric; the windings are
insulated, of course.  In any case, I gather that he was in the center
of the pit when they found him."

"That's quite true.  We don't know what happened.  But he's now come
round and seems none the worse apart from one thing."  The doctor
hesitated a moment as if choosing his words carefully.

"Well, go on!  Don't keep me in suspense!"

"I left Nelson as soon as I saw he would be quite safe, but about an
hour later Matron called me up to say he wanted to speak- to me
urgently.  When I got to the ward he was sitting up in bed looking at a
newspaper with a very puzzled expression.  I asked him what was the
matter.  He answered, "Something's happened to me, Doc."  So I said,
"Of course it has, but you'll be out in a couple of days."  He shook
his head; I could see there was a worried look in his eyes.  He picked
up the paper he had been looking at and pointed to it.

"I can't read any more," he said.

"I diagnosed amnesia and thought: This is a nuisance!  Wonder what else
he's forgotten?  Nelson must have read my expression, for he went on to
say, "Oh, I still know the letters and words but they're the wrong way
round!

I think something must have happened to my eyes."  He held up the paper
again.

"This looks exactly as if I'm seeing it in a mirror," he said.

"I

can spell out each word separately, a letter at a time.  Would you get
me a looking glass?  I want to try something."

"I did.  He held the paper to the glass and looked at the reflection.

Then he started to read aloud, at normal speed.  But that's a trick
anyone can learn compositors have to do it with type and I wasn't
impressed.  On the other hand, I couldn't see why an intelligent fellow
like Nelson should put over an act like that.  So I decided to humor
him, thinking the shock must have given his mind a bit of a twist.  I
felt quite certain he was suffering from some delusion, though he
seemed perfectly normal.

"After a moment he put the paper away and said, "Well, Doc."  what do
you make of that?"  I didn't know quite what to say without hurting his
feelings, so I passed the buck and said, "I think I'll have to hand you
over to Dr.  Humphries, the psychologist.  It's rather outside my
province."  Then he made some remark about Dr.  Humphries and his
intelligence tests, from which I gathered he had already suffered at
his hands."

"That's correct," interjected Hughes.

"All the men are grilled by the Psychology Department before they join
the company.  All the same, it's surprising-what gets through," he
added thoughtfully.

Dr.  Sanderson smiled, and continued his story.

"I was getting up to leave when Nelson said, "Oh, I almost forgot.  I
think I must have fallen on my right arm.  The wrist feels badly
sprained."

"Let's look at it," I said, bending to pick it up.

"No, the other arm," Nelson said, and held up his left wrist.  Still
humoring him, I answered, "Have it your own way.  But you said your
right one, didn't you?"

"Nelson looked puzzled.

"So what?"  he replied.

"This is my right arm.  My eyes may be queer, but there's no argument
about that.  There's my wedding ring to prove it.  I've not been able
to get the darned thing off for five years."

"That shook me rather badly.  Because you see, it was his left arm he
was holding up, and his left hand that had the ring on it.  I could see
that what he said was quite true.  The ring would have to be cut to get
it off again.  So I said, "Have you any distinctive scars?"  He
answered, "Not that I can remember."

"

"Any dental fillings?"

"

"Yes, quite a few."

"We sat looking at each other in silence while a nurse went to fetch
Nelson's records.

"Gazed at each other with a wild surmise' is just about how a novelist
might put it.  Before the nurse returned, I was seized with a bright
idea.  It was a fantastic notion, but the whole affair was becoming
more and more outrageous.  I asked Nelson if I could see the things he
had been carrying in his pockets.

Here they are."

Dr.  Sanderson produced a handful of coins and a small leather-bound
diary.

Hughes recognized the latter at once as an Electrical Engineer's Diary;
he had one in his own pocket.  He took it from the doctor's hand and
flicked it open at random, with that slightly guilty feeling one always
has when a stranger still more, a friend's diary falls into one's
hands.

And then, for Ralph Hughes, it seemed that the foundations of his world
were giving way.  Until now he had listened to Dr.  Sanderson with some
detachment, wondering what all the fuss was about.

But now the incontrovertible evidence lay in his own hands, demanding
his attention and defying his logic.

For he could read not one word of Nelson's diary.  Both the print and
the handwriting were inverted, as if seen in a mirror.

Dr.  Hughes got up from his chair and walked rapidly around the room
several times.  His visitor sat silently watching him.  On the fourth
circuit he stopped at the window and looked out across the lake,
overshadowed by the immense white wall of the dam.  It seemed to
reassure him, and he turned to Dr.  Sanderson again.

"You expect me to believe that Nelson has been laterally inverted in
some way, so that his right and left sides have been interchanged?"

"I don't expect you to believe anything.  I'm merely giving you the
evidence.  If you can draw any other conclusion I'd be delighted to
hear it.  I might add that I've checked Nelson's teeth.  All the
fillings have been transposed.  Explain that away if you can.  Those
coins are rather interesting, too."

Hughes picked them up.  They included a shilling, one of the beautiful
new, beryl-copper crowns, and a few pence and halfpence.  He would have
accepted them as change without hesitation.

Being no more observant than the next man, he had never noticed which
way the Queen's head looked.  But the lettering Hughes could picture
the consternation at the Mint if these curious coins ever came to its
notice.

Like the diary, they too had been laterally inverted.

Dr.  Sanderson's voice broke into his reverie.

"I've told Nelson not to say anything about this.  I'm going to write a
full report; it should cause a sensation when it's published.  But we
want to know how this has happened.  As you are the designer of the new
machine, I've come to you for-advice."

Dr.  Hughes did not seem to hear him.

He was sitting at his desk with his hands outspread, little fingers
touching  For the first time in his life he was thinking seriously
about the difference between left and right.

Dr.  Sanderson did not release Nelson from hospital for several days,
during which he was studying his peculiar patient and collecting
material for his report.  As far as he could tell, Nelson was perfectly
normal, apart from his inversion.  He was learning to read again, and
his progress was swift after the initial strangeness had worn off.  He
would probably never again use tools in the same way that he had done
before the accident; for the rest of his life, the world would think
him left-handed.  However, that would not handicap him in any way.

Dr.  Sanderson had ceased to speculate about the cause of Nelson's
condition.

He knew very little about electricity;

that was Hughes's job.  He was quite confident that
the physicist would produce the answer in due course; he had always
done so before.  The company was not a philanthropic institution, and
it had good reason for retaining Hughes's services.  The new generator,
which would be running within a week, was his brain-child, though he
had had little to do with the actual engineering details.

Dr.  Hughes himself was less confident.  The magnitude of the problem
was terrifying; for he realized, as Sanderson did not, that it involved
utterly new regions of science.  He knew that there was only one way in
which an object could become its own mirror image.  But how could so
fantastic a theory be proved?

He had collected all available information on the fault that had
energized the great armature.

Calculations had given an estimate of the currents that had flowed
through the coils for the few seconds they had been conducting.  But
the figures were largely guesswork; he wished he could repeat the
experiment to obtain accurate data.  It would be amusing to see
Murdock's face if he said, "Mind if I throw a perfect short across
generators One to Ten sometime this evening;" No, that was definitely
out.

It was lucky he still had the working model Tests on it had given some
ideas of the field produced at the generator's center, but their
magnitudes were a matter of conjecture.  They must have been enormous.
It was a miracle that the windings had stayed in their slots.  For
nearly a month Hughes struggled with his calculations and wandered
through regions of atomic physics he had carefully avoided since he
left the university.  Slowly the complete theory began to evolve in his
mind; he was a long way from the final proof, but the road was clear.
In another month he would have finished.

The great generator itself, which had dominated his thoughts for the
past year, now seemed trivial and unimportant He scarcely bothered to
acknowledge the congratulations of his colleagues when it passed its
final tests and began to feed its millions of kilowatts into the
system.  They must have thought him a little strange, but he had always
been regarded as somewhat unpredictable.  It was expected of him; the
company would have been disappointed if its tame genius possessed no
eccentricities.

A fortnight later, Dr.  Sanderson came to see him again.  He was in a
grave mood.

- "Nelson's back in the hospital," he announced.

"I was wrong when I said he'd be O.K."

"What's the matter with him?"  asked Hughes in surprise.

"He's starving to death"

"Starving?  What on earth do you mean?"

Dr.  Sanderson pulled a chair up to Hughes's desk and sat down.

"I haven't bothered you for the past few weeks"" he began, "because I
knew you were busy on your own theories.  I've been watching Nelson
carefully all this time, and writing up my report.  At first, as I told
you, he seemed perfectly normal.  I had no doubt that everything would
be all right.

"Then I noticed that he was losing weight.  It was some time before I
was certain of it; then I began to observe other, more technical
symptoms.  He started to complain of weakness and lack of
concentration.  He had all the signs of vitamin deficiency.  I gave him
special vitamin concentrates, but they haven't done any good.  So I've
come to have another talk with you."

Hughes looked baffled, then annoyed.

"But hang it all, you're the doctor!"

"Yes, but this theory of mine needs some support.  I'm only an unknown
medico no one would listen to me until it was too late.  For Nelson is
dying, and I think I know why...."

Sir Robert had been stubborn at first, but Dr.  Hughes had had his way,
as he always did.  The members of the Board of Directors were even now
filing into the conference room, grumbling and generally making a fuss
about the extraordinary general meeting that had just been called.
Their perplexity was still further increased when they heard that
Hughes was going to address them.  They all knew the physicist and his
reputation, but he was a scientist and they were businessmen.  What was
Sir Robert planning?

Dr.  Hughes, the cause of all the trouble, felt annoyed with himself
for being nervous.  His opinion of the Board of Directors was not
flattering, but Sir Robert was a man he could respect, so there was no
reason to be afraid of them.  It was true that they might consider him
mad, but his past record would take care of that.  Mad or not, he was
worth thousands of pounds to them.

Dr.  Sanderson smiled encouragingly at him as he walked into the
conference room.  The smile was not very successful, but it helped. Sir
Robert had just finished speaking.  He picked up his glasses in that
nervous way he had, and coughed deprecatingly.  Not for the first time,
Hughes wondered how such an apparently timid old man could rule so vast
a commercial empire.

"Well, here is Dr.  Hughes, gentlemen.

He will ahem explain everything to you.  I have asked him not to be too
technical.  You are at liberty to interrupt him if he ascends into the
more rarefied stratosphere of higher mathematics.  Dr.  Hughes .. ."

Slowly at first, and then more quickly as he gained the confidence of
his audience, the physicist began to tell his story.  Nelson's diary
drew a gasp of amazement from the Board, and the inverted coins proved
fascinating curiosities.  Hughes was glad to see that he had aroused
the interest of his listeners.  He took a deep breath and made the
plunge he had been fearing.

"You have heard what has happened to Nelson, gentlemen, but what I am
going to tell you now is even more startling.

I must ask you for your very close attention."

He picked up a rectangular sheet of notepaper from the conference
table, folded it along a diagonal and tore it along the fold.

"Here we have two right-angled triangles with equal sides.  I lay them
on the table so."  He placed the paper triangles side by side on the
table, with their hypotenuses touching, so that they formed a
kite-shaped figure.

"Now, as I have arranged them, each triangle is the mirror image of the
other.  You can imagine that the plane of the mirror is along the
hypotenuse.

This is the point I want you to notice.

As long as I keep the triangles in the plane of the table, I can slide
them around as much as I like, but I can never place one so that it
exactly covers the other.  Like a pair of gloves, they are not
interchangeable although their dimensions are identical"

He paused to let that sink in.  There were no comments, so he
continued.

"Now, if I pick up one of the triangles, turn it over in the air and
put it down again, the two are no longer mirror images, but have become
completely identical so."  He suited the action to the words.

"This may seem very elementary; in fact, it is so.  But it teaches us
one very important lesson.  The triangles on the table were flat
objects, restricted to two dimensions.  To turn one into its mirror
image I had to lift it up and rotate it in the third dimension.  Do you
see what I am driving at?"

He glanced round the table.  One or two of the directors nodded slowly
in dawning comprehension.

"Similarly, to change a solid, three-dimensional body, such as a man,
into its analogue or mirror image, it must be rotated in a fourth
dimension.  I repeat a fourth dimension."

There was a strained silence.  Someone coughed, but it was a nervous,
not a skeptical cough

"Four-dimensional geometry, as you know" he'd be surprised if they did
"has been one of the major tools of mathematics since before the time
of Einstein But until now it has always been a mathematical fiction,
having no real existence in the physical world.  It now appears that
the unheard-of currents, amounting to millions of amperes, which flowed
momentarily in the windings of our generator muse have produced a
certain extension into four dimensions, for a fraction of a second and
in a volume large enough to contain a man.  I have been making some
calculations and have been able to satisfy myself that a 'hyperspace'
about ten feet on a side was, in fact, generated: a matter of some ten
thousand quartic not cubic!  feet.  Nelson was occupying that space.
The sudden collapse of the field when the circuit was broken caused the
rotation of the space, and Nelson was inverted.

"I must ask you to accept this theory, as no other explanation fits the
facts.  I have the mathematics here if you wish to
consult them."

He waved the sheets in front of his audience, so that the directors
could see the imposing array of equations.

The technique worked it always did.

They cowered visibly.  Only McPherson, the secretary, was made of
sterner stuff.  He had had a semi-technical education and still read a
good deal of popular science, which he was fond of airing whenever he
had the opportunity.  But he was intelligent and willing to learn, and
Dr.  Hughes had often spent official time discussing some new
scientific theory with him.

"You say that Nelson has been rotated in the Fourth Dimension; but I
thought Einstein had shown that the Fourth Dimension was time."

Hughes groaned inwardly.  He had been anticipating this red herring.

"I was referring to an additional dimension of space," he explained
patiently.

"By that I mean a dimension, or direction, at right-angles to our
normal three.  One can call it the Fourth Dimension if one wishes. With
certain reservations, time may also be regarded as a dimension. As we
normally regard space as three-dimensional, it is then customary to
call time the Fourth Dimension.  But the label is arbitrary.

As I'm asking you to grant me four dimensions of space, we must call
time the Fifth Dimension."

"Five Dimensions!  Good Heavens!"

exploded someone further down the table.

Dr.  Hughes could not resist the opportunity.

"Space of several million dimensions has been frequently postulated in
sub-atomic physics," he said quietly.

There was a stunned silence.  No one, not even McPherson, seemed
inclined to argue.

"I now come to the second part of my account," continued Dr.  Hughes.

"A few weeks after his inversion we found that there was something
wrong with Nelson.  He was taking food normally, but it didn't seem to
nourish him properly.  The explanation has been given by Dr. Sanderson,
and leads us into the realms of organic chemistry.

I'm sorry to be talking like a textbook, but you will soon realize how
vitally important this is to the company.  And you also have the
satisfaction of knowing that we are now all on equally unfamiliar
territory."

That was not quite true, for Hughes still remembered some fragments of
his chemistry.

But it might encourage the stragglers.

"Organic compounds are composed of atoms of carbon, oxygen and
hydrogen, with other elements, arranged in complicated ways in space.
Chemists are fond of making models of them out of knitting needles and
colored plasHcine.  The results are often very pretty and look like
works of advanced art.

"Now, it is possible to have two organic compounds containing identical
numbers of atoms, arranged in such a way that one is the mirror image
of the other.  They're called stereo-isomers, and are very common among
the sugars.  If you could set their molecules side by side, you would
see that they bore the same sort of relationship as a right and left
glove.  They are, in fact, called right or left-handed dextro or laevo
compounds.  I hope this is quite clear."

Dr.  Hughes looked around anxiously.

Apparently it was.

"Stereo-isomers have almost identical chemical properties he went on,
"though there are subtle differences.  In the last few years, Dr.
Sanderson tells me, it has been found that certain essential foods,
including the new class of vitamins discovered by Professor Vandenburg,
have properties depending on the arrangement of their atoms in space.
In other words, gentlemen, the left-handed compounds might be essential
for life, but the right-handed one would be of no value.  This in spite
of the fact that their chemical formulae are identical.

"You will appreciate, now, why Nelson's inversion is much more serious
than we at first thought.  It's not merely a matter of teaching him to
read again, in which case apart from its philosophical interest the
whole business would be trivial.  He is actually starving to death in
the midst of plenty, simply because he can no more assimilate
certain molecules of food than we can put our right foot into a left
boot.

"Dr.  Sanderson has tried an experiment which has proved the truth of
this theory.  With very great difficulty, he has obtained the
stereo-isomers of many of these vitamins.  Professor Vandenburg himself
synthesized them when he heard of our trouble.  They have already
produced a very marked improvement in Nelson's condition."

Hughes paused and drew out some papers.  He thought he would give the
Board time to prepare for the shock.

If a man's life were not at stake, the situation would have been very
amusing.  The Board was going to be hit where it would hurt most.

"As you will realize, gentlemen, since Nelson was injured if you can
call it that while he was on duty, the company is liable to pay for any
treatment he may require.  We have found that treatment, and you may
wonder why I have taken so much of your time telling you about it.  The
reason is very simple.  The production of the necessary stereo-isomers
is almost as difficult as the extraction of radium more so, in some
cases.  Dr.

Sanderson tells me that it will cost over five thousand pounds a day to
keep Nelson alive."

The silence lasted for half a minute;

then everyone started to talk at once.

Sir Robert pounded on the table, and presently restored order.  The
council of war had begun.

Three hours later, an exhausted Hughes left the conference room and
went in search of Dr.  Sanderson, whom he found fretting in his
office.

"Well, what's the decision?"  asked the doctor.

"What I was afraid of.  They want me to re-invert Nelson."

"Can you do it?"

"Frankly, I don't know.  All I can hope to do is to reproduce the
conditions of the original fault as accurately as I can."

"Weren't there any other suggestions?"

"Quite a few, but most of them were stupid.  McPher son had the best
idea.  He wanted to use the generator to invert normal food so that
Nelson could eat it.  I had to point out that to take the big machine
out of action for this purpose would cost several millions a year, and
in any case the windings wouldn't stand it more than a few times.  So
that scheme collapsed.  Then Sir Robert wanted to know if you could
guarantee there were no vitamins we'd overlooked, or that might still
be undiscovered.  His idea was that in spite of our synthetic diets we
might not be able to keep Nelson alive after all."

"What did you say to that? "

"I had to admit it was a possibility.  So Sir Robert is going to have a
talk with Nelson.  He hopes to persuade him to risk it; his family will
be taken care of if the experiment fails."

Neither of the two men said anything for a few moments.  Then Dr.
Sanderson broke the silence.

"Now do you understand the sort of decision a surgeon often has to
make," he said.

Hughes nodded in agreement.

"It's a beautiful dilemma, isn't it?  A perfectly healthy man, but it
will cost two millions a year to keep him alive, and we can't even be
sure of that.  I know the Board's thinking of its precious balance
sheet more than anything else, but I don't see any alternative.  Nelson
will have to take a chance."

"Couldn't you make some tests first?"

"Impossible.  It's a major engineering operation to get the rotor out.
We'll have to rush the experiment through when the load on the system
is at minimum.  Then we'll slam the rotor back, and tidy up the mess
our artificial short has made.  All this has to be done before the peak
loads come on again.  Poor old Murdock's mad as hell about it."

"I don't blame him.  When will the experiment start?"

"Not for a few days, at least.  Even if Nelson agrees, I've got to fix
up all my gear."

No one was ever to know what Sir Robert said to Nelson during the hours
they were together.  Dr.  Hughes was more than half prepared for it
when the telephone rang and the Old Man's tired voice said, "Hughes?
Get your equipment ready.

I've spoken to Murdock, and we've fixed the time for Tuesday night Can
you manage by then?"

"Yes, Sir Robert."

"Good.  Give me a progress report every afternoon until Tuesday. That's
all."

The enormous room was dominated by the great cylinder of the rotor,
hanging thirty feet above the gleaming plastic floor.  A little group
of men stood silently at the edge of the shadowed pit, waiting
patiently.  A maze of temporary wiring ran to Dr.

Hughes's equipment multi beam oscilloscopes, mega wattmeters and micro
chronometers and the special relays that had been constructed to make
the circuit at the calculated instant.

That was the greatest problem of all.

Dr.  Hughes had no way of telling when the circuit should be closed;
whether it should be when the voltage was at maximum, when it was at
zero, or at some intermediate point on the sine wave.  He had chosen
the simplest and safest course.  The circuit would be made at zero
voltage; when it opened again would depend on the speed of the
breakers.

In ten minutes the last of the great factories in the service area
would be closing down for the night.  The weather forecast had been
favorable;

there would be no abnormal loads before morning.  By then, the rotor
had to be back and the generator running again.  Fortunately, the
unique method of construction made it easy to reassemble the machine,
but it would be a very close thing and there was no time to lose.

When Nelson came in, accompanied by Sir Robert and Dr.  Sanderson, he
was very pale.  He might, thought Hughes, have been going to his
execution.  The thought was somewhat ill-timed, and he put it hastily
aside.

There was just time enough for a last quite unnecessary check of the
equipment.  He had barely finished when he heard Sir Robert's quiet
voice.

"We're ready, Dr.  Hughes."

Rather unsteadily, he walked to the edge of the pit.

Nelson had already descended, and as he had been instructed, was
standing at its exact center, his upturned face a white blob far below.
Dr.  Hughes waved a brief encouragement and turned away, to rejoin the
group by his equipment.

He flicked over the switch of the oscilloscope and played with the
synchronizing controls until a single cycle of the main wave was
stationary on the screen.  Then he adjusted the phasing: two brilliant
spots of light moved toward each other along the wave until they had
coalesced at its geometric center.  He looked briefly toward Murdock,
who was watching the mega wattmeters intently.  The engineer nodded.
With a silent prayer, Hughes threw the switch.

There was the tiniest click from the relay unit A fraction of a second
later, the whole building seemed to rock as the great conductors
crashed over in the switch room three hundred feet away.  The lights
faded, and almost died.  Then it was all over.  The circuit breakers,
driven at almost the speed of an explosion, had cleared the line again.
The lights returned to normal and the needles of the mega wattmeters
dropped back onto their scales.

The equipment had withstood the overload.  But what of Nelson?

Dr.  Hughes was surprised to see that Sir Robert, for all his sixty
years, had already reached the generator.  He was standing by its edge,
looking down into the great pit.  Slowly, the physicist went to join
him.  He was afraid to hurry; a growing sense of premonition was
filling his mind.

Already he could picture Nelson lying in a twisted heap at the center
of the well, his lifeless eyes staring up at them reproachfully.  Then
came a still more horrible thought.  Suppose the field had collapsed
too soon, when the inversion was only partly completed?

In another moment, he would know the worst.

There is no shock greater than that of the totally unexpected, for
against it the mind has no chance to prepare its defenses.  Dr.  Hughes
was ready for almost anything when he reached the generator.  Almost,
but not quite.... He did not expect to find it completely empty.

What came after, he could never perfectly remember.  Murdock seemed to
take charge then.  There was a great flurry of activity, and the
engineers swarmed in to replace the giant rotor.

Somewhere in the distance he heard Sir Robert saying, over and over
again, "We did our best we did our best."  He must have replied,
somehow, but everything was very vague.... In the gray hours before the
dawn, Dr.  Hughes awoke from his fitful sleep.

All night he had been haunted by his dreams, by weird fantasies of
multi-dimensional geometry.  There were visions of strange,
other-worldly universes of insane shapes and intersecting planes along
which he was doomed to struggle endlessly, fleeing from some nameless
terror.  Nelson, he dreamed, was trapped in one of those unearthly
dimensions, and he was trying to reach him.  Sometimes he was Nelson
himself, and he imagined that he could see all around him the universe
he knew, strangely distorted and barred from him by invisible walls.

The nightmare faded as he struggled up in bed.  For a few moments he
sat holding his head, while his mind began to clear.  He knew what was
happening;

this was not the first time the solution of some baffling problem had
come suddenly upon him in the night.

There was one piece still missing in the jigsaw puzzle that was sorting
itself out in his mind.  One piece only and suddenly he had it.  There
was something that Nelson's assistant had said, when he was describing
the original accident.  It had seemed trivial at the time; until now,
Hughes had forgotten all about it.

"When I looked inside the generator, there didn't seem to be anyone
there, so I started to climb down the ladder...."

What a fool he had been!  Old McPherson had been right, or partly
right, after all!

The field had rotated Nelson in the fourth dimension of space, but
there had been a displacement in time as well.  On the first occasion
it had been a matter of seconds only.  This time, the conditions must
have been different in spite of all his care.  There were so many
unknown factors, and the theory was more than half guesswork.

Nelson had not been inside the generator at the end of the experiment.
But he would be.

Dr.  Hughes felt a cold sweat break out all over his body.  He pictured
that thousand-ton cylinder, spinning beneath the drive of its fifty
million horse-power.  Suppose something suddenly materialized in the
space it already occupied.... ?

He leaped out of bed and grabbed the private phone to the power
station.

There was no time to lose the rotor would have to be removed at once.

Murdock could argue later.

Very gently, something caught the house by its foundations and rocked
it to and fro, as a sleepy child may shake its rattle.  Flakes of
plaster came planing down from the ceiling; a network of cracks
appeared as if by magic in the walls.  The lights flickered, became
suddenly brilliant, and faded out.

Dr.  Hughes threw back the curtain and looked toward the mountains. The
power station was invisible beyond the foothills of Mount Perrin, but
its site was clearly marked by the vast column of debris that was
slowly rising against the bleak light of the dawn.

The Parasite

""THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO," SAT CONNOLLY, "NOTHING at all.

Why did you have to follow me?"  He was standing with his back to
Pearson, staring out across the calm blue water that led to Italy.  On
the left, behind the anchored fishing fleet, the sun was setting in
Mediterranean splendor, incarnadining land and sky.  But neither man
was even remotely aware of the beauty all around.

Pearson rose to his feet, and came forward out of the little cafe's
shadowed porch, into the slanting sunlight He joined Connolly by the
cliff wall, but was careful not to come too close to him.  Even in
normal times Connolly disliked being touched.

His obsession, whatever it might be, would make him doubly sensitive
now.

"Listen, Roy," Pearson began urgently.

"We've been friends for twenty years, and you ought to know I

wouldn't let you down this time.

Besides"

"I know.  You promised Ruth."

"And why not?  After all, she is your wife.  She has a right to know
what's happened."  He paused, choosing his words carefully.

"She's worried, Roy.

Much more worried than if it was only another woman."  He nearly added
the word "again," but decided against it

Connolly stubbed out his cigarette on the flat-topped granite wall,
then flicked the white cylinder out over the sea, so that it fell
twisting and turning toward the waters a hundred feet below.  He turned
to face his friend.

"I'm sorry, Jack," he said, and for a moment there was a glimpse of the
familiar personality which, Pearson knew, must be trapped somewhere
within the stranger standing at his side.

"I

know you're trying to be helpful and I appreciate it.  But I wish you
hadn't followed me.  You'll only make matters worse."

"Convince me of that, and I'll go away."

Connolly sighed.

"I could no more convince you than that psychiatrist you persuaded me
to see.  Poor Curtis!  He was such a well-meaning fellow.  Give him my
apologies, will you?"

"I'm not a psychiatrist, and I'm not trying to cure you whatever that
means.  If you like it the way you are, that's your affair.  But I
think you ought to let us know what's happened, so that we can make
plans accordingly."

"To get me certified? "

Pearson shrugged his shoulders.  He wondered if Connolly could see
through his feigned indifference to the real concern he was trying to
hide.  Now that all other approaches seemed to have failed, the
"frankly-I-don'tcare" attitude was the only one left open to him.

"I wasn't thinking of that.  There are a few practical details to worry
about.  Do you want to stay here indefinitely?  You can't live without
money, even on Syrene."

"I can stay at Clifford Rawnsley's villa as long as I like.  He was a
friend of my father's you know.  It's empty at the moment except for
the servants, and they don't bother me."

Connolly turned away from the parapet on which he was resting.

"I'm going up the hill before it's dark," he said.  The words were
abrupt, but Pearson knew that he was not being dismissed.  He could
follow if he pleased, and the knowledge brought him the first
satisfaction he had felt since locating Connolly.  It was a small
triumph, but he needed it.

They did not speak during the climb;

indeed, Pearson scarcely had the breath to do so.  Connolly set off at
a reckless pace, as if deliberately attempting to exhaust himself.  The
island fell away beneath them, the white villas gleamed like ghosts in
the shadowed valleys, the little fishing boats, their day's work done,
lay at rest in the harbor.  And all around was the darkling sea.

When Pearson caught up with his friend, Connolly was sitting in front
of the shrine which the devout islanders had built on Syrene's highest
point.  In the daytime, there would be tourists here, photographing
each other or gaping at the much advertised beauty spread beneath them,
but the place was deserted now.

Connolly was breathing heavily from his exertions, yet his features
were relaxed and for the moment he seemed almost at peace.  The shadow
that lay across his mind had lifted, and he turned to Pearson with a
smile that echoed his old, infectious grin.

"He hates exercise, Jack.  It always scares him away."

"And who is he?"  said Pearson.

"Remember, you haven't introduced us yet."

Connolly smiled at his friend's attempted humor; then his face suddenly
became grave.

"Tell me, Jack," he began.

"Would you say I have an overdeveloped imagination?"

"No: you're about average.  You're certainly less imaginative than I
am."

Connolly nodded slowly.

"That's true enough, Jack, and it should help you to believe me.
Because I'm certain I could never have invented the creature who's
haunting me.

He really exists.  I'm not suffering from paranoiac hallucinations, or
whatever Dr.  Curtis would call them.

"You remember Maude White?  It all began with her.  I met her at one of
David Trescott's parties, about six weeks ago.  I'd just quarreled with
Ruth and was rather fed up.  We were both pretty tight, and as I was
staying in town she came back to the flat with me."

Pearson smiled inwardly.  Poor Roy!  It was always the same pattern,
though he never seemed to realize it.  Each affair was different to
him, but to no one else.  The eternal Don Juan, always seeking always
disappointed, because what he sought could be found only in the cradle
or the grave, but never between the two.

"I guess you'll laugh at what knocked me out it seems so trivial though
it frightened me more than anything that's ever happened in my life.  I
simply went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured out the drinks, as
I've done a hundred times before.  It wasn't until I'd handed one to

Maude that I realized I'd filled three glasses.  The act was so
perfectly natural that at first I didn't recognize what it meant.  Then
I looked wildly around the room to see where the other man was even
then I knew, somehow, that it wasn't a man.  But, of course, he wasn't
there.  He was nowhere at all in the outside world:

he was hiding deep down inside my own brain...."

The night was very still, the only sound a thin ribbon of music winding
up to the stars from some cafe in the village below.  The light of the
rising moon sparkled on the sea; overhead, the arms of The crucifix
were silhouetted against the darkness.  A brilliant beacon on the
frontiers of twilight, Venus was following the sun into the west.

Pearson waited, letting Connolly take his time.  He seemed lucid and
rational enough, however strange the story he was telling.  His face
was quite calm in the moonlight, though it might be the calmness that
comes after acceptance of defeat.

"The next thing I remember is lying in bed while Maude sponged my
face.

She was pretty frightened: I'd passed out and cut my forehead badly as
I felt There was a lot of blood around the place, but that didn't
matter.  The thing that really scared me was the thought that I'd gone
crazy.  That seems funny, now that I'm much more scared of being
sane.

"He was still there when I woke up;

he's been there ever since.  Somehow I got rid of Maude it wasn't easy
and tried to work out what had happened.

Tell me, Jack, do you believe in telepathy"

The abrupt challenge caught Pearson off his guard.

"I've never given it much thought, but the evidence seems rather
convincing.  Do you suggest that someone else is reading your mind?"

"It's not as simple as that.  What I'm telling you now I've discovered
slowly usually when I've been dreaming or slightly drunk.  You may say
that invalidates the evidence, but I don't think so.  At first it was
the only way I could break through the barrier that separates me from

Omega I'll tell you later why I've called him that.  But now there
aren't any obstacles: I know he's there all the time, waiting for me to
let down my guard.  Night and day, drunk or sober, I'm conscious of his
presence.

At times like this he's quiescent, watching me out of the corner of his
eye.  My only hope is that he'll grow tired of waiting, and go in
search of some other victim."

Connolly's voice, calm until now, suddenly came near to breaking.

"Try and imagine the horror of that discovery: the effect of learning
that every act, every thought or desire that flitted through your mind
was being watched and shared by another being.  It meant, of course,
the end of all normal life for me.  I had to leave Ruth and I couldn't
tell her why.

Then, to make matters worse, Maude came chasing after me.  She wouldn't
leave me alone, and bombarded me with letters and phone calls.  It was
hell.

I couldn't fight both of them, so I ran away.  And I thought that on
Syrene, of all places, he would find enough to interest him without
bothering me."

"Now I understand," said Pearson softly.

"So that's what he's after.  A kind of telepathic Peeping Tom no longer
content with mere watching...."

"I suppose you're humoring me," said Connolly, without resentment.

"But I don't mind, and you've summed it up pretty accurately, as you
usually do.

It was quite a while before I realized what his game was.  Once the
first shock had worn off, I tried to analyze the position logically.  I
thought backward from that first moment of recognition, and in the end
I knew that it wasn't a sudden invasion of my mind.  He'd been with me
for years, so well hidden that I'd never guessed it.

I expect you'll laugh at this, knowing me as you do.  But I've never
been altogether at ease with a woman, even when I've been making love
to her, and now I know the reason.  Omega has always been there,
sharing my emotions, gloating over the passions he can no longer
experience in his body.

"The only way I kept any control was by fighting back, trying to come
to grips with him and to understand what he was.  And in the end I
succeeded.

He's a long way away and there must be some limit to his powers.
Perhaps that first contact was an accident, though I'm not sure.

"What I've told you already, Jack, must be hard enough for you to
believe, but it's nothing to what I've got to say now.  Yet remember
you agreed that I'm not an imaginative man, and see if you can find a
flaw anywhere in this story.

"I don't know if you've read any of the evidence suggesting that
telepathy is somehow independent of time.  I know that it is.  Omega
doesn't belong to our age: he's somewhere in the future, immensely far
ahead of us.  For a while I thought he must be one of the last men
that's why I gave him his name.

But now I'm not sure; perhaps he belongs to an age when there are a
myriad different races of man, scattered all over the universe some
sell ascending, others sinking into decay.  His people, wherever and
whenever they may be, have reached the heights and fallen from them
into the depths the beasts can never know.

There's a sense of evil about him, Jack the real evil that most of us
never meet in all our lives.  Yet sometimes I feel almost sorry for
him, because I knot what has made him the thing he is.

"Have you ever wondered, Jack, what the human race will do when science
has discovered everything, when there are no more worlds to be
explored, when all the stars have given up their secrets?  Omega is one
of the answers.

I hope he's not the only one, for if so everything we've striven for is
in vain.  I hope that he and his race are an isolated cancer in a still
healthy universe, but I can never be sure.

"They have pampered their bodies until they are useless, and too late
they have discovered their mistake.

Perhaps they have thought, as some men have thought, that they could
live by intellect alone.  And perhaps they are immortal, and that must
be their real damnation.  Through the ages their minds have been
corroding in their feeble bodies, seeking some release from their
intolerable boredom.  They have found it at last in the only way they
can, by sending back their minds to an earlier, more virile
age, and becoming parasites on the emotions of others.

"I wonder how many of them there are?  Perhaps they explain all cases
of what used to be called possession.  How they must have ransacked the
past to assuage their hunger!  Can't you picture them, flocking like
carrion crows around the decaying Roman Empire, jostling one another
for the minds of Nero and Caligula and Tiberius' Perhaps Omega failed
to get those richer prizes.  Or perhaps he hasn't much choice and must
take whatever mind he can contact in any age, transferring from that to
the next whenever he has the chance.

"It was only slowly, of course, that I worked all this out.  I think it
adds to his enjoyment to know that I'm aware of his presence.  I think
he's deliberately helping breaking down his side of the barrier.  For
in the end, I was able to see him."

Connolly broke off.  Looking around, Pearson saw that they were no
longer alone on the hilltop.  A young couple, hand in hand, were coming
up the road toward the crucifix.  Each had the physical beauty so
common and so cheap among the islanders.  They were oblivious to the
night around them and to any spectators, and went past without the
least sign of recognition.

There was a bitter smile on Connolly's lips as he watched them go.

"I suppose I should be ashamed of this, but I was wishing then that
he'd leave me and go after that boy.  But he won't; though I've refused
to play his game any more, he's staying to see what happens."

"You were going to tell me what he's like," said Pearson, annoyed at
the interruption.  Connolly lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply before
replying.

"Can you imagine a room without walls?  He's in a kind of hollow,
egg-shaped space surrounded by blue mist that always seems to be
twisting and turning, but never changes its position.  There's no
entrance or exit and no gravity, unless he's learned to defy it.
Because he floats in the center, and around him is a circle of short,
fluted cylinders, turning slowly in the air.  I think they must be
machines of some kind, obeying his will.  And once there was a large
oval hanging beside him, with perfectly human, beautifully formed arms
coming from it.  It could only have been a robot, yet those hands and
fingers seemed alive.  They were feeding and massaging him, treating
him like a baby.  It was humble.... "Have you ever seen a femur or a
spectral tarsier?  He's rather like that a nightmare travesty of
mankind, with huge malevolent eyes.  And this is strange it's not the
way one had imagined evolution going he's covered with a fine layer of
fur, as blue as the room in which he lives.  Every time I've seen him
he's been in the same position, half curled up like a sleeping baby.  I
think his legs have completely atrophied; perhaps his arms as well.
Only his brain is still active, hunting up and down the ages for its
prey.

"And now you know why there was nothing you or anyone else could do.
Your psychiatrists might cure me if I was insane, but the science that
can deal with Omega hasn't been invented yet."

Connolly paused, then smiled wryly.

"Just because I'm sane, I realize that you can't be expected to believe
me.  So there's no common ground on which we can meet."

Pearson rose from the boulder on which he had been sitting, and
shivered slightly.  The night was becoming cold, but that was nothing
to the feeling of inner helplessness that had overwhelmed him as
Connolly spoke.

"I'll be frank, ROY," he began slowly.

"Of course I don't believe you.  But insofar as you believe in Omega
yourself, he's real to you, and I'll accept him on that basis and fight
him with you."

"It may be a dangerous game.  How-do we know what he can do when he's
cornered?"

"I'll take that chance," Pearson replied, beginning to walk down the
hill.

Connolly followed him without argument.

"Meanwhile, just what do you propose to do yourself?"

"Relax.  Avoid emotion.  Above all, keep away from women Ruth, Maude,
and the rest of them.  That's been the hardest job.  It isn't easy to
break the habits of a lifetime."

.... "I can well believe that," replied Pearson, a little dryly.

"How successful have you been so far?"

"Completely.  You see, his own eagerness defeats his purpose, by
filling me with a kind of nausea and selfloathing whenever I think of
sex.

Lord, to think that I've laughed at the prudes all my life, yet now
I've become one myself!"

There, thought Pearson in a sudden flash of insight, was the answer. He
would never have believed it, but Connolly's past had finally caught up
with him.  Omega was nothing more than a symbol of conscience, a
personification of guilt.  When Connolly realized this, he would cease
to be haunted.  As for the remarkably detailed nature of the
hallucination, that was yet another example of the tricks the human
mind can play in its efforts to deceive itself.  There must be some
reason why the obsession had taken this form, but that was of minor
importance.

Pearson explained this to Connolly at some length as they approached
the village.  The other listened so patiently that Pearson had an
uncomfortable feeling that he was the one who was being humored, but he
continued grimly to the end.  When he had finished, Connolly gave a
short, mirthless laugh.

"Your story's as logical as mine, but neither of us can convince the
other.

If you're right, then in time I may returned to 'normal."  I can't
disprove the possibility; I simply don't believe it.  You can't imagine
how real Omega is to me.  He's more real than you are: if I close my
eyes you're gone, but he's still there.  I wish I knew what he was
waiting for!  I've left my old life behind; he knows I won't go back to
it while he's there.

So what's he got to gain by hanging on?"  He turned to Pearson with a
feverish eagerness.

"That's what really frightens me, Jack.  He must know what my future is
all my life must be like a book he can dip into where he pleases.  So
there must still be some experience ahead of me that he's waiting to
savor.  Sometimes sometimes I wonder if it's my death."

They were now among the houses at the outskirts of the village, and
ahead of them the nightlife of Syrene was getting into its stride.  Now
that they were no longer alone, there came a subtle change in
Connolly's attitude.  On the hilltop he had been, if not his normal
self, at least friendly and prepared to talk.

But now the sight of the happy, carefree crowds ahead seemed to make
him withdraw into himself.  He lagged behind as Pearson advanced and
presently refused to come any further.

"What's the matter?"  asked Pearson.

"Surely you'll come down to the hotel and have dinner with me?"

Connolly shook his head.

"I can't," he said.

"I'd meet too many people."

It was an astonishing remark from a man who had always delighted in
crowds and parties.  It showed, as nothing else had done, how much
Connolly had changed.  Before Pearson could think of a suitable reply,
the other had turned on his heels and made off up a side-street.  Hurt
and annoyed, Pearson started to pursue him, then decided that it was
useless.

That night he sent a long telegram to Ruth, giving what reassurance he
could.  Then, tired out, he went to bed.

Yet for an hour he was unable to sleep.  His body was exhausted, but
his brain was still active.  He lay watching the patch of moonlight
move across the pattern on the wall, marking the passage of time as
inexorably as it must still do in the distant age that Connolly had
glimpsed.  Of course, that was pure fantasy yet against his will
Pearson was growing to accept Omega as a real and living threat.  And
in a sense Omega qvas real as real as those other mental abstractions,
the Ego and the Subconscious Mind.

Pearson wondered if Connolly had been wise to come back to Syrene.  In
times of emotional crisis there had been others, though none so
important as this Connolly's reaction was always the same.  He would
return again to the lovely island where his charming, feckless parents
had borne him and where he had spent his youth.  He was seeking now,
Pearson knew well enough, the contentment he had known only for one
period of his life, and which he had sought so vainly in the arms of
Ruth and all those others who had been unable to resist him.

Pearson was not attempting to criticize his unhappy friend.  He never
passed judgments; he merely observed with a bright-eyed, sympathetic
interest that was hardly tolerance, since tolerance implied the
relaxation of standards which he had never possessed.... After a
restless night, Pearson finally dropped into a sleep so sound that he
awoke an hour later than usual.  He had breakfast in his room, then
went down to the reception desk to see if there was any reply from
Ruth.  Someone else had arrived in the night: two traveling cases,
obviously English, were stacked in a corner of the hall, waiting for
the porter to move them.  Idly curious, Pearson glanced at the labels
to see who his compatriot might be.  Then he stiffened, looked hastily
around, and hurried across to the receptionist.

- "This Englishwoman," he said anxiously.

"When did she arrive?"

"An hour ago, Signor, on the morning boat."

"Is she in now?"

The receptionist looked a little undecided, then capitulated
gracefully.

"No, Signor.  She was in a great hurry, and asked me where she could
find Mr.  Connolly.  So I told her.  I hope it was allright."

Pearson cursed under his breath.  It was an incredible stroke of bad
luck, something he would never have dreamed of guarding against.  Maude
White was a woman of even greater determination than Connolly had
hinted.  Somehow she had discovered where he had fled, and pride or
desire or both had driven her to follow.  That she had come to this
hotel was not surprising; it was an almost inevitable choice for
English visitors to Syrene.

As he climbed the road to the Villa, Pearson fought against an
increasing sense of futility and uselessness.  He had no idea what he
should do when he met Connolly and Maude.  He merely felt a vague yet
urgent impulse to be helpful.  If he could catch Maude before she
reached the villa, he might be able to convince her that Connolly was a
sick man and that her intervention could only do harm.  Yet was this
true' It was perfectly possible that a touching reconciliation had
already taken place, and that neither party had the least desire to see
him.

They were talking together on the beautifully laid-out lawn in front of
the Villa when Pearson turned through the gates and paused for
breath.

Connolly was resting on a wrought-iron seat beneath a palm tree, while
Maude was pacing up and down a few yards away.  She was speaking
swiftly; Pearson could not hear her words, but from the intonation of
her voice she was obviously pleading with Connolly.  It was an
embarrassing situation.  While Pearson was still wondering whether to
go forward, Connolly looked up and caught sight of him.  His face was a
completely expressionless mask; it showed neither welcome nor
resentment.

At the interruption, Maude spun round to see who the intruder was, and
for the first time Pearson glimpsed her face.  She was a beautiful
woman, but despair and anger had so twisted her features that she
looked like a figure from some Greek tragedy.  She was suffering not
only the bitterness of being scorned, but the agony of not knowing
why.

Pearson's arrival must have acted as a trigger to her pent-up emotions.
She suddenly whirled away from him and turned toward Connolly, who
continued to watch her with lack-lustre eyes.  For a moment Pearson
could not see what she was doing; then he cried in horror:

"Look out, ROY!"

Connolly moved with surprising speed, as if he had suddenly emerged
from a trance.  He caught Maude's wrists there was a brief struggle,
and then he was backing away from her, looking with fascination at
something in the palm of his hand.  The woman stood motionless,
paralyzed with fear and shame, knuckles pressed against her mouth.

Connolly gripped the pistol with his right hand and stroked it lovingly
with his left.  There was a low moan from Maude.

- "I only meant to frighten you, ROY!

I swear it!"

"That's all right, my dear," said Connolly softly.

"I believe you.

There's nothing to worry about."  His voice was perfectly natural.  He
turned toward Pearson, and gave him his old, boyish smile.

"So this is what he was waiting for, Jack," he said.

"I'm not going to disappoint him."

"No!"  gasped Pearson, white with terror.

"Don't, Roy, for God's sake!"

But Connolly was beyond the reach of his friend's entreaties as he
turned the pistol to his head.  In that same moment Pearson knew at
last, with an awful clarity, that Omega was real and that Omega would
now be seeking for a new abode.

He never saw the flash of the gun or heard the feeble but adequate
explosion.  The world he knew had faded from his sight, and around him
now were the fixed yet crawling mists of the blue room.  Staring from
its center as they had stared down the ages at how many others?  were
two vast and lidless eyes.  They were satiated for the moment, but for
the moment only.

The Fires Within

THIS, sArD KARN SMUGLY, WlEL IN REST YOU.  JUST take a look at it!"

He pushed across the file he had been reading, and for the nth time I
decided to ask for his transfer or, failing that, my own.

"What's it about?"  I said wearily.

"It's a long report from a Dr.
Matthews to the Minister of Science."

He waved it in front of me.

"Just read it!"

Without much enthusiasm, I began to go through the file.  A few minutes
later I looked up and admitted grudgingly: "Maybe you're right this
time."

I didn't speak again until I'd finished.... My dear Minister (the
letter began).

As you requested, here is my special report on Professor Hancock's
experiments, which have had such unexpected and extraordinary results.
I have not had time to cast it into a more orthodox form, but am
sending you the dictation just as it stands.

Since you have many matters engaging your attention, perhaps I should
briefly summarize our dealings with Professor Hancock.  Until 1955, the
Professor held the Kelvin Chair of Electrical Engineering at Brendon
University, from which he was granted indefinite leave of absence to
carry out his researches.  In these he was joined by the late Dr.
Clayton, sometime Chief Geologist to the Ministry of Fuel and Power.
Their joint research was financed by grants from the Paul Fund and the
Royal Society.

The Professor hoped to develop sonar as a means of precise geological
surveying.  Sonar, as you will know, is the acoustic equivalent of
radar, and although less familiar is older by some millions of years,
since bats use it very effectively to detect insects and obstacles at
night.  Professor Hancock intended to send highpowered supersonic
pulses into the ground and to build up from the returning echoes an
image of what lay beneath.  The picture would be displayed on a cathode
ray tube and the whole system would be exactly analagous to the type of
radar used in aircraft to show the ground through cloud.

In 1957 the two scientists had achieved partial success but had
exhausted their funds.  Early in 1958 they applied directly to the
government for a block grant.  Dr.

Clayton pointed out the immense value of a device which would enable us
to take a kind of X-ray photo of the Earth's crust, and the Minister of
Fuel gave it his approval before passing on the application to us.  At
that time the report of the Bernal Committee had just been published
and we were very anxious that deserving cases should be dealt with
quickly to avoid further criticisms.  I went to see the Professor at
once and submitted a favorable report; the first payment of our grant
(S/543A/68) was made a few days later.  From that time I have been
continually in touch with the research and have assisted to some extent
with technical advice.

The equipment used in the experiments is complex, but its principles
are simple.  Very short but extremely powerful pulses of supersonic
waves are generated by a special transmitter which revolves
continuously in a pool of a heavy organic liquid.  The beam produced
passes into the ground and "scans" like a radar beam searching for
echoes.  By a very ingenious time-delay circuit which I will resist the
temptation to describe, echoes from any depth can be selected and so
pictures of the strata under investigation can be built up on a cathode
ray screen in the normal way.

When I first met Professor Hancock his apparatus was rather primitive,
but he was able to show me the distribution of rock down to a depth of
several hundred feet and we could see quite clearly a part of the
Bakerloo Line which passed very near his laboratory.  Much of the
Professor's success was due to the great intensity of his supersonic
bursts;

almost from the beginning he was able to generate peak powers of
several hundred kilowatts, nearly all of which was radiated into the
ground.  It was unsafe to remain near the transmitter, and I noticed
that the soil became quite warm around it.  I was rather surprised to
see large numbers of birds in the vicinity, but soon discovered that
they were attracted by the hundreds of dead worms lying on the
ground.

At the time of Dr.  Clayton's death in 1960, the equipment was working
at a power level of over a megawatt and quite good pictures of strata a
mile down could be obtained.  Dr.  Clayton had correlated the results
with known geographical surveys, and had proved beyond doubt the value
of the information obtained.

Dr.  Clayton's death in a motor accident was a great tragedy.  He had
always exerted a stabilizing influence on the Professor, who had never
been much interested in the practical applications of his work.  Soon
afterward I noticed a distinct change in the Professor's outlook, and a
few months later he confided his new ambitions to me.  I had been
trying to persuade him to publish his results (he had already spent
over 50,000 and the Public Accounts Committee was being difficult
again), but he asked for a little more time.  I think I can best
explain his attitude by his own words, which I remember very vividly,
for they were expressed with peculiar emphasis.

"Have you ever wondered," he said, "what the Earth really is like
inside?

We've only scratched the surface with our mines and wells.  What lies
beneath is as unknown as the other side of the Moon.

"We know that the Earth is unnaturally dense far denser than the rocks
and soil of its crust would indicate.  The core may be solid metal, but
until now there's been no way of telling.  Even ten miles down the
pressure must be thirty tons or more to the square inch and the
temperature several hundred degrees.  What it's like at the center
staggers the imagination: the pressure must be thousands of tons to the
square inch.

It's strange to think that in two or three years we may have reached
the Moon, but when we've got to the stars we'll still be no nearer that
inferno four thousand miles beneath our feet.

"I can now get recognizable echoes from two miles down, but I hope to
step up the transmitter to ten mega watts in a few months.  With that
power, I believe the range will be increased to ten miles; and I don't
mean to stop there."

I was impressed, but at the same time I felt a little skeptical.

"That's all very well," I said, "but surely the deeper you go the less
there'll be to see.  The pressure will make any cavities impossible,
and after a few miles there will simply be a homogeneous mass getting
denser and denser."

"Quite likely," agreed the Professor.

"But I can still learn a lot from the transmission characteristics.
Anyway, we'll see when we get there!"

That was four months ago; and yesterday I saw the result of that
research.  When I answered his invitation the Professor was clearly
excited, but he gave me no hint of what, if anything, he had
discovered.

He showed me his improved equipment and raised the new receiver from
its bath.  The sensitivity of the pickups had been greatly improved,
and this alone had effectively doubled the range, altogether apart from
the increased transmitter power.  It was strange to watch the steel
framework slowly turning and to realize that it was exploring regions,
which, in spite of their nearness, man might never reach.

When we entered the hut containing the display equipment, the Professor
was strangely silent.  He switched on the transmitter, and even though
it was a hundred yards away I could feel an uncomfortable tingling.
Then the cathode ray tube lit up and the slowly revolving time base
drew the picture I had seen so often before.  Now, however, the
definition was much improved owing to the increased power and
sensitivity of the equipment.  I adjusted the depth control and
focussed on the Underground, which was clearly visible as a dark lane
across the faintly luminous screen.  While I was watching, it suddenly
seemed to fill with mist and I knew that a train was going through.

Presently I continued the descent.

Although I had watched this picture many times before, it was always
uncanny to see great luminous masses floating toward me and to know
that they were buried rocks perhaps the
debris from the glaciers of fifty Thousand years ago.  Dr.  Clayton had
worked out a chart so that we could identify the various strata as they
were passed, and presently I saw that I was through the alluvial soil
and entering the great clay saucer which traps and holds the city's
artesian water.  Soon that too was passed, and I was dropping down
through the bedrock almost a mile below the surface.

The picture was still clear and bright, Though there was little to see,
for there were now few changes in the ground structure.  The pressure
was already rising to a thousand atmospheres; soon it would be
impossible for any cavity to remain open, for the rock itself would
begin to flow.  Mile after mile I sank, but only a pale mist floated on
the screen, broken sometimes when echoes were returned from pockets or
lodes of denser material.  They became fewer and fewer as the depth
increased or else they were now so small that They could no longer be
seen.

The scale of the picture was, of course, continually expanding.  It was
now many miles from side to side, and I felt like an airman looking
down upon an unbroken cloud ceiling from an enormous height.  For a
moment a sense of vertigo seized me as I thought of the abyss into
which I was gazing.  I do not think that the world will ever seem quite
solid to me again.

At a depth of nearly ten miles I stopped and looked at the Professor.
There had been no alteration for some time, and I knew that the rock
must now be compressed into a featureless, homogeneous mass.  I did a
quick mental calculation and shuddered as I realized that the pressure
must be at least thirty tons to The square inch The scanner was
revolving very slowly now, for the feeble echoes were taking many
seconds to struggle back from The depths.

"Well, Professor," I said, "I congratulate you.  It's a wonderful
achievement.  But we seem to have reached the core now.  I don't
suppose there'll be any change from here to the center."

He smiled a lithe wryly.

"Go on," he said.

"You haven't finished yet."

There was something in his voice that puzzled and ,

alarmed me.  I looked at him intently for a moment; his features were
just visible in the blue-green glow of the cathode ray tube.

"How far down cam this thing go?"  I asked, as the interminable descent
started again.

"Fifteen miles," he said shortly.  I wondered how he knew, for the last
feature I had seen at all clearly was only eight miles down.  But I
continued the long fall through the rock, the scanner turning more and
more slowly now, until it took almost five minutes to make a complete
revolution.  Behind me I could hear the Professor breathing heavily,
and once the back of my chair gave a crack as his fingers gripped it.

Then, suddenly, very faint markings began to reappear on the screen.  I
leaned forward eagerly, wondering if this was the first glimpse of the
world's iron core.  With agonizing slowness the scanner turned through
a right angle, then another.  And then

I leaped suddenly out of my chair, cried "My God!"  and turned to face
the Professor.  Only once before in my life had I received such an
intellectual shock fifteen years ago, when I had accidentally turned on
the radio and heard of the fall of the first atomic bomb.  That had
been unexpected, but this was inconceivable.  For on the screen had
appeared a grid of faint lines, crossing and recrossing to form a
perfectly symmetrical lattice.

I know that I said nothing for many minutes, for the scanner made a
complete revolution while I stood frozen with surprise.  Then the
Professor spoke in a soft, unnaturally calm voice.

"I wanted you to see it for yourself before I said anything.  That
picture is now thirty miles in diameter, and those squares are two or
three miles on a side.  You'll notice that the vertical lines converge
and the horizontal ones are bent into arcs.

We're looking at part of an enormous structure of concentric rings; the
center must lie many miles to the north, probably in the region of
Cambridge.  How much further it extends in the other direction we can
only guess."

"But what Is it, for heaven's sake?"

"Well, it's clearly artificial."

"That's ridiculous!  Fifteen miles down!"

The Professor pointed to the screen again.

"God knows I've done my best," he said, "but I can't convince myself
that Nature could make anything like that."

I had nothing to say, and presently he continued: "I discovered it
three days ago, when I was trying to find the maximum range of the
equipment.  I can go deeper than this, and I rather think that the
structure we can see is so dense that it won't transmit my radiations
any further.

"I've tried a dozen theories, but in the end I keep returning to one.
We know that the pressure down there must be eight or nine thousand
atmospheres, and the temperature must be high enough to melt rock.  But
normal matter is still almost empty space.  Suppose that there is life
down there not organic life, of course, but life based on partially
condensed matter, matter in which the electron shells are few or
altogether missing.  Do you see what I mean?  To such creatures, even
the rock fifteen miles down would offer no more resistance than water
and we and all our world would be as tenuous as ghosts."

"Then that thing we can see"
"Is a city, or its equivalent.

You've seen its size, so you can judge for yourself the civilization
that must have built it.  All the world we know our oceans and
continents and mountains is nothing more than a film of mist
surrounding something beyond our comprehension."

Neither of us said anything for a while.  I remember feeling a foolish
surprise at being one of the first men in the world to learn the
appalling truth; for somehow I never doubted that it was the truth. And
I wondered how the rest of humanity would react when the revelation
came.

Presently I broke into the silence.

"If you're right," I said, "why have they whatever they are never made
contact with us?"

The Professor looked at me rather pityingly.

"We think we're good engineers," he said, "but how could we reach them'
Besides, I'm not at all sure that there haven't been contacts.

Think of all the underground creatures and the mythology trolls and co
balds and the rest.  No, it's quite impossible I take it back. Still,
the idea is rather suggestive."

All the while the pattern on the screen had never changed: the dim
network still glowed there, challenging our sanity.  I tried to imagine
streets and buildings and the creatures going among them, creatures who
could make their way through the incandescent rock as a fish swims
through water.  It was fantastic .. .

and then I remembered the incredibly narrow range of temperatures and
pressures under which the human race exists.  We, not they, were the
freaks, for almost all the matter in the universe is at temperatures of
thousands or even millions of degrees.

"Well," I said lamely, "what do we do now? "

The Professor leaned forward eagerly.

"First we must learn a great deal more, and we must keep this an
absolute secret until we are sure of the facts.  Can you imagine the
panic there would be if this information leaked out?  Of course, the
truth's inevitable sooner or later, but we may be able to break it
slowly.

"You'll realize that the geological surveying side of my work is now
utterly unimportant.  The first thing we have to do is to build a chain
of stations to find the extent of the structure.  I visualize them at
ten-mile intervals toward the north, but I'd like to build the first
one somewhere in South London to see how extensive the thing is.  The
whole job will have to be kept as secret as the building of the first
radar chain in the late thirties.

"At the same time, I'm going to push up my transmitter power again.  I
hope to be able to beam the output much more narrowly, and so greatly
increase the energy concentration.  But this will involve all sorts of
mechanical difficulties, and I'll need more assistance."

I promised to do my utmost to get further aid, and the Professor hopes
that you will soon be able to visit his laboratory yourself.  In the
meantime I am attaching a photograph of the vision screen, which
although not as clear as the original will, I hope, prove beyond doubt
that our observations are not mistaken.

I am well aware that our grant to the Interplanetary

Society has brought us dangerously near the total estimate for the
year, but surely even the crossing of space is less important than the
immediate investigation of this discovery which may have the most
profound effects on the philosophy and the future of the whole human
race.

I sat back and looked at Karn.  There was much in the document I had
not understood, but the main outlines were clear enough.

"Yes," I said, "this is it!  Where's that photograph?"

He handed it over.  The quality was poor, for it had been copied many
times before reaching us.  But the pattern was unmistakable and I
recognized it at once.

"They were good scientists," I said admiringly.

"That's Callastheon, all right.  So we've found the truth at last, even
if it has taken us three hundred years to do it."

"Is that surprising," asked Karn, "when you consider the mountain of
stuff we've had to translate and the didiculty of copying it before it
evaporates? "

I sat in silence for a while, thinking of the strange race whose relics
we were examining.  Only once never again!  had I gone up the great
vent our engineers had opened into the Shadow World.  It had been a
frightening and unforgettable experience.  The multiple layers of my
pressure suit had made movement very difficult, and despite their
insulation I could sense the unbelievable cold that was all around
me.

"What a pity it was," I mused, "that our emergence destroyed them so
completely.  They were a clever race, and we might have learned a lot
from them."

"I don't think we can be blamed," said Karn.

"We never really believed that anything could exist under those awful
conditions of near-vacuum, and almost absolute zero.  It couldn't be
helped."

I did not agree.

"I think it proves that they were the more intelligent race.  After
all, they discovered us first.  Everyone laughed at my grandfather when
he said that the radiation he'd detected from the Shadow World must be
artificial."

Karn ran one of his tentacles over the manuscript.

"We've certainly discovered the cause of that radiation," he said.

"Notice the date it's just a year before your grandfather's discovery.
The Professor must have got his grant all right!  " He laughed
unpleasantly.

"It must have given him a shock when he saw us coming up to the
surface, right underneath him."

I scarcely heard his words, for a most uncomfortable feeling had
suddenly come over me.  I thought of the thousands of miles of rock
lying below the great city of Callastheon, growing hotter and denser
all the way to the Earth's unknown core.  And so I turned to Karn.

"That isn't very funny," I said quietly.

"It may be our turn next."

The Awakening

MAR LAN WAS BORED, WITH THE ULTIMATE BOREDOM THAT only Utopia can
supply.  He stood before the great window and stared down at the
scudding clouds, driven by the gale that was racing past the foothills
of the city.  Sometimes, through a rent in the billowing white blanket,
he could catch a glimpse of lakes and forests and the winding ribbon of
the river that flowed through the empty land he now so seldom troubled
to visit.

Twenty miles away to the west, rainbow-hued in the sunlight, the upper
peaks of the artificial mountain that was City Nine floated above the
clouds, a dream island adrift in the cold wastes of the stratosphere.

Marlan wondered how many of its inhabitants were staring listlessly
across at him, equally dissatisfied with life.

There was, of course, one way of escape, and many had chosen it.  But
that was so obvious, and Marlan avoided the obvious above all things.

Besides, while there was still a chance that life might yet hold some
new experience, he would not pass through the door that led to
oblivion.

Out of the mist that lay beneath him, something bright and flaming
burst through the clouds and dwindled swiftly toward the deep blue of
the zenith.  With lack-lustre eyes, Marlan watched the ascending ship:
once how long ago!  the sight would have lifted his heart.  Once he too
had gone on such journeys, following the road along which Man had found
his greatest adventures.  But now on the twelve planets and the fifty
moons there was nothing one could not find on Earth.

Perhaps, if only the stars could have been reached, humanity might have
avoided the cul-de-sac in which it was now trapped; there would still
have remained endless vistas of exploration and discovery.  But the
spirit of mankind had quailed before the

awful immensities of interstellar space.  Man had reached the planets
while he was still young, but the stars had remained forever beyond his
grasp.

And yet Marlan stiffened at the thought and stared along the twisting
vapor-trail that marked the path of the departed ship if Space had
defeated him, there was still another conquest to be attempted.  For a
long time he stood in silent thought, while, far beneath, the storm's
ragged hem slowly unveiled the buttresses and ramparts of the city, and
below those, the forgotten fields and forests which^ had once been
Man's only home.

The idea appealed to Sandrak's scientific ingenuity; it presented him
with interesting technical problems which would keep him occupied for a
year or two.  That would give Marlan ample time to wind up his affairs,
or, if necessary, to change his mind.

If Marlan felt any last-minute hesitations, he was too proud to show it
as he said good-by to his friends.

They had watched his plans with morbid curiosity, convinced that he was
indulging in some unusually elaborate form of euthanasia.  As the door
of the little spaceship closed behind Marlan, they walked slowly away
to resume the pattern of their aimless lives; and Roweena wept, but not
for long.

While Marlan made his final preparations, the ship climbed on its
automatic course, gaining speed until the Earth was a silver crescent,
then a fading star lost against the greater glory of the sun.  Rising
upward from the plane in which the planets move, the ship drove
steadily toward the stars until the sun itself had become no more than
a blazing point of light.

Then Marlan checked his outward speed, swinging the ship round into an
orbit that made it the outermost of all the sun's children.  Nothing
would ever disturb it here; it would circle the sun for eternity,
unless by some inconceivable chance it was captured by a wandering
comet.

For the last time Marlan checked the instruments that Sandrak had
built.

Then he went to the innermost chamber and sealed the heavy metal door.
When he opened it again, it would be to learn the secret of human
destiny

His mind was empty of all emotion as he lay on the thickly padded couch
and waited for the machines to do their duty.  He never heard the first
whisper of gas through the vents; but consciousness went out like an
ebbing tide.

Presently the air crept hissing from the little chamber, and its store
of heat drained outward into the ultimate cold of space.  Change and
decay could never enter here; Marlan lay in a tomb that would outlast
any that man had ever built on Earth, and might indeed outlast the
Earth itself.  Yet it was more than a tomb, for the machines it carried
were biding their time, and every hundred years a circuit opened and
closed, counting the centuries

So Marlan slept, in the cold twilight beyond Pluto.  He knew nothing of
the life that ebbed and flowed upon Earth and its sister planets while
the centuries lengthened into millennia, the millennia into eons.  On
the world that had once been Marlan's home, the mountains crumbled and
were swept into the sea; the ice crawled down from the Poles as it had
done so many times before and would do many times again.

On the ocean beds the mountains of the future were built layer by layer
from the falling silt, and presently rose into the light of day, and in
a little while followed the forgotten Alps and Himalayas to their
graves.

The sun had changed very little, all things considered, when the
patient mechanism of Marlan's ship reawakened from their long sleep.
The air hissed back into the chamber, the temperature slowly climbed
from the verge of absolute zero to a level at which life might start
again.  Gently, the handling machines began the delicate series of
tasks which should revitalize their master.

Yet he did not stir.  During the long ages that had passed since Marlan
began his sleep, something had failed among the circuits that should
have awakened him.  Indeed, the marvel was that so much had functioned
correctly;

for Marlan still eluded Death, though his servants would never recall
him from his slumbers.

And now the wonderful ship remembered the commands it had been given so
long ago.  For a little while, as its multitudinous mechanisms slowly
warmed to life, it floated inert with the feeble sunlight glinting on
its walls.  Then, ever more swiftly, it began to retrace the path along
which it had traveled when the world was young.  It did not check its
speed until it was once more among the inner planets, its metal hull
warming beneath the rays of the ancient unwearying sun.  Here it began
its search, in the temperate zone where the Earth had once circled; and
here it presently found a planet it did not recognize.

The size was correct, but all else was wrong.  Where were the seas that
once had been Earth's greatest glory?

Not even their empty beds were left:

the dust of vanished continents had clogged them long ago.  And where,
above all, was the Moon?  Somewhere in the forgotten past it had crept
earthward and met its doom, for the planet was now girdled, as once
only Saturn had been, by a vast, thin halo of circling dust.

For a while the robot controls searched through their electronic
memories as the ship considered the situation.  Then it made its
decision, if a machine could have shrugged its shoulders, it would have
done so.

Choosing a landing place at random, it fell gently down through the
thin air and came to rest on a flat plain of eroded sandstone.  It had
brought Marlan home; there was nothing more that it could do.  If there
was still life on the Earth, sooner or later it would find him.

And here, indeed, those who were now masters of Earth presently came
upon Marlan's ship.  Their memories were long, and the tarnished metal
ovoid lying upon the sandstone was not wholly strange to them.  They
conferred among each other with as much excitement as their natures
allowed and, using their own strange tools, began to break through the
stubborn walls until they reached the chamber where Marlan slept.

In their way, they were very wise, for they could understand the
purpose of Marlan's machines and could tell where they had failed in
their duty.

In a little while the scientists had made what repairs were necessary,
though they were none too hopeful of success.  The best that they could
expect was that Marlan's mind might be brought, if only for a little
while, back to the borders of consciousness before Time exacted its
long-deferred revenge.

The light came creeping back into Marlan's brain with the slowness of a
winter dawn.  For ages he lay on the frontiers of self-awareness,
knowing that he existed but not knowing who he was or whence he had
come.  Then fragments of memory returned, and fitted one by one into
the intricate jigsaw of personality, until at last Marlan knew that he
was Marlan.

Despite his weakness, the knowledge of success brought him a deep and
burning sense of satisfaction.  The curiosity that had driven him down
the ages when his fellows had chosen the blissful sleep of euthanasia
would soon be rewarded: he would know what manner of men had inherited
the earth.

Strength returned.  He opened his eyes.  The light was gentle, and did
not dazzle him, but for a moment all was blurred and misty.  Then he
saw figures looming dimly above him, and was filled with a sense of
dreamlike wonder, for he remembered that he should have been alone on
his return to life, with only his machines to tend him.

And now the scene came swiftly into focus, and staring back at him,
showing neither enmity nor friendship, neither excitement nor
indifference, were the fathomless eyes of the Watchers.  The thin,
grotesquely articulated figures stood around him in a close-packed
circle, looking down at him across a gulf which neither his mind nor
theirs could ever span.

Other men would have felt terror, but Marlan only smiled, a little
sadly, as he closed his eyes forever.

His questing spirit had reached its goal; he had no more riddles to ask
of Time.  For in the last moment of his life, as he saw those waiting
round him, he knew that the ancient war between Man and insect had long
ago been ended, and that Man was not the victor.

Trouble With the Natives

THE FLYING SAUCER CAME DOWN VERTICALLY THROUGH THE

clouds, braked to a halt about fifty feet from the ground, and settled
with a considerable bump on a patch of heather-strewn moorland.

"That," said Captain Wyxtpthll, "was a lousy landing."

He did not, of course, use precisely these words.  To human ears his
remarks would have sounded rather like the clucking of an angry hen.
Master Pilot Krtclugg unwound three of his tentacles from the control
panel, stretched all four of his legs, and relaxed comfortably.

"Not my fault the automatics have packed up again," he grumbled.

"But what do you expect with a ship that should have been scrapped five
thousand years ago?  If those cheese-paring form-fillers back at Base
Planet"

"Oh, all right!  We're down in one piece, which is more than I
expected.  Tell Crysteel and Danstor to come in here.  I want a word
with them before they go."

Crysteel and Danstor were, very obviously, of a different species from
the rest of the crew.  They had only one pair of legs and arms, no eyes
at the back of the head, and other physical deficiencies which their
colleagues did their best to overlook.  These very defects, however,
had made them the obvious choice for this particular mission, for it
had needed only a minimum of disguise to let them pass as human beings
under all but the closest scrutiny.

"Now you're perfectly sure," said the Captain, "that you understand
your instructions?"

"Of course," said Crysteel, slightly huffed.

"This isn't the first time I've made contact with a primitive race.  My
training in anthropology"

"Good.  And the language?"

"Well, that's Danstor's business, but I can speak it reasonably
fluently now.  It's a very simple language, and after all we've been
studying their radio programs for a couple of years."

"Any other points before you go?"

"Er there's just one matter."

Crysteel hesitated slightly.

"It's quite obvious from their broadcasts that the social system is
very primitive, and that crime and lawlessness are widespread.  Many of
the wealthier citizens have to use what are called 'detectives' or
'special agents' to protect their lives and property.  Now we know it's
against regulations, but we were wondering .. ."

"What?"

"Well we'd feel much safer if we could take a couple of Mark III
disrupters with us."

"Not on your life!  I'd be court-martialed if they heard about it at
the Base.  Suppose you killed some of the natives _then I'd have the
Bureau of Interstellar Politics, the Aborigines Conservancy Board, and
half a dozen others after me."

"There'd be just as much trouble if we got killed," Crysteel pointed
out with considerable emotion.

"After all, you're responsible for our safety.

Remember that radio play I was telling you about?  It described a
typical household, but there were two murders in the first half
hour!"

"Oh, very well.  But only a Mark II we don't want you to do too much
damage if there is trouble."

"Thanks a lot; that's a great relief.

I'll report every thirty minutes as arranged.  We shouldn't be gone
more than a couple of hours."

Captain Wyxtpthll watched them disappear over the brow of the hill.

He sighed deeply.

"Why," he said, "of all the people in the ship did it have to be those
two?"

"It couldn't be helped," answered the pilot.

"All these primitive races are terrified of anything strange.  If they
saw us coming, there'd be general panic and before we knew where we
were the bombs would be falling on top of us.  You just can't rush
these things."

Captain Wyxtpthll was absentmindedly making a cat's cradle out of his
tentacles in the way he did when he was worried.

"Of course," he said, "if they don't come back I can always go away and
report the place dangerous."  He brightened considerably.

"Yes, that would save a lot of trouble."

"And waste all the months we've spent studying it?"  said the pilot,
scandalized.

"They won't be wasted," replied the captain, unraveling himself with a
flick that no human eye could have followed.

"Our report will be useful for the next survey ship.

I'll suggest that we make another visit in oh, let's say five thousand
years.  By then the place may be civilized though frankly, I doubt
it."

Samuel Higginsbotham was settling down to a snack of cheese and cider
when he saw the two figures approaching along the lane.  He wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand, put the bottle carefully down beside
his hedge trimming tools, and stared with mild surprise at the couple
as they came into range.

"Morr,in'," he said cheerfully between mouthfuls of cheese.

The strangers paused.  One was surreptitiously ruffling through a small
book which, if Sam only knew, was packed with such common phrases and
expressions as: "Before the weather forecast, here is a gale
warning,"

"Stick 'em up I've got you covered!", and "Calling all cars!"

Danstor, who had no needs for these aids to memory, replied promptly
enough.

"Good morning, my man," he said in his best BBC.  accent.

"Could you direct us to the nearest hamlet, village, small town or
other such civilized community?"

"Eh?"  said Sam.  He peered suspiciously at the strangers, aware for
the first time that there was something very odd about their clothes.
One did not, he realized dimly, normally wear a roll-top sweater with a
smart pin-striped suit of the pattern fancied by city gents.

And the fellow who was still fussing with the little book was actually
wearing full evening dress which would have been faultless but for the
lurid green and red tie, the hob-nailed boots and the cloth cap.
Crysteel and Danstor had done their best, but they had seen too many
television plays.  When one considers that they had no other source of
information, their sartorial aberrations were at least
understandable.

Sam scratched his head.  Furriners, I suppose, he told himself.  Not
even the townsfolk got themselves up like this.

He pointed down the road and gave them explicit directions in an accent
so broad that no one residing outside the range of the BBC."s West
Regional transmitter could have understood more than one word in three.
Crysteel and Danstor, whose home planet was so far away that

Marconi's first signals couldn't possibly have reached it yet, did even
worse than this.  But they managed to get the general idea and retired
in good order, both wondering if their knowledge of English was as good
as they had believed.

So came and passed, quite uneventfully and without record in the
history books, the first meeting between humanity and beings from
Outside.

"I suppose," said Danstor thoughtfully, but without much conviction,
"that he wouldn't have done?  It would have saved us a lot of
trouble."

"I'm afraid not.  Judging by his clothes, and the work he was obviously
engaged upon, he could not have been a very intelligent or valuable
citizen.  I doubt if he could even have understood who we were."

"Here's another one!"  said Danstor, pointing ahead.

"Don't make sudden movements that might cause alarm.

Just walk along naturally, and let him speak first."

The man ahead strode purposefully toward them, showed not the slightest
signs of recognition, and before they had recovered was already
disappearing into the distance.

"Well!"  said Danstor.

"It doesn't matter," replied Crysteel philosophically.

"He probably wouldn't have been any use either."

"That's no excuse for bad manners!"

They gazed with some indignation at the retreating back of Professor
Fitzsimmons as, wearing his oldest hiking outfit and engrossed in a
difficult piece of atomic theory, he dwindled down the lane.  For the
first time, Crysteel began to suspect uneasily that it might not be as
simple to make contact as he had optimistically believed.

Little Milton was a typical English village, nestling at the foot of
the hills whose higher slopes now concealed so portentous a secret.

There were very few people about on this summer morning, for the men
were already at work and the womenfolk were still tidying up after the
exhausting task of getting their lords and masters safely out of the
way.

Consequently Crysteel and Danstor had almost reached the center of the
village before their first encounter, which happened to be with the
village postman, cycling back to the office after completing his
rounds.  He was in a very bad temper, having had to deliver a penny
postcard to Dodgson's farm, a couple of miles off his normal route.  In
addition, the weekly parcel of laundry which Gunner Evans sent home to
his doting mother had been a lot heavier than usual, as well it might,
since it contained four tins of bully beef pinched from the cook
house

"Excuse me," said Danstor politely.

"Can't stop," said the postman, in no mood for casual conversation.

"Got another round to do."  Then he was gone.

"This is really the limit!"  protested Danstor.

"Are they all going to be like this?"

"You've simply got to be patient," said Crysteel.

"Remember their customs are quite different from ours; it may take some
time to gain their confidence.  I've had this sort of trouble with
primitive races before.

Every anthropologist has to get used to it."

"Hmm," said Danstor.

"I suggest that we call at some of their houses.  Then they won't be
able to run away."

"Very well," agreed Crysteel doubtfully.

"But avoid anything that looks like a religious shrine, otherwise we
may get into trouble."

Old Widow Tomkins' council-house could hardly have been mistaken, even
by the most inexperienced of explorers, for such an object.  The old
lady was agreeably ex cited to see two gentlemen standing on her
doorstep, and noticed nothing at all odd about their clothes.  Visions
of unexpected legacies, of newspaper reporters asking about her 100th
birthday (she was really only 95, but had managed to keep it dark)
flashed through her mind.  She picked up the slate she kept hanging by
the door and went gaily forth to greet her visitors.

"You'll have to write it down," she simpered, holding out the slate.

"I've been deaf this last twenty years."

Crysteel and Danstor looked at each other in dismay.  This was a
completely unexpected snag, for the only written characters they had
ever seen were television program announcements, and they had never
fully deciphered those.

But Danstor, who had an almost photographic memory, rose to the
occasion.  Holding the chalk very awkwardly, he wrote a sentence which,
he had reason to believe, was in common use during such breakdowns in
communication.

As her mysterious visitors walked sadly away, old Mrs.  Tomkins stared
in baffled bewilderment at the marks on her slate.  It was some time
before she deciphered the characters Danstor had made several mistakes
and even then she was little the wiser.

TRANSMISSIONS WILL BE RESUMED AS

SOON AS POSSIBLE.

It was the best that Danstor could do; but the old lady never did get
to the bottom of it.

They were little luckier at the next house they tried.  The door was
answered by a young lady whose vocabulary consisted largely of giggles,
and who eventually broke down completely and slammed the door in their
faces.

As they listened to the muffled, hysterical laughter, Crysteel and
Danstor began to suspect, with sinking hearts, that their disguise as
normal human beings was not as effective as they had intended.

At Number 3, on the other hand, Mrs.

Smith was only too willing to talk at 120 words to the minute in an
accent as impenetrable as Sam Higginsbotham's.  Danstor made his
apologies as soon as he could get a word in edgeways, and moved on.

"Doesn't anyone talk as they do on the radio?"  he lamented.

"How do they understand their own programs if they all speak like this?
"

"I think we must have landed in the wrong place," said CrysteeL even
his optimism beginning to fail.  It sagged still further when he had
been mistaken, in swift succession, for a Gallup Poll investigator, the
prospective Conservative candidate, a vacuum-cleaner salesman, and a
dealer from the local black market.

At the sixth or seventh attempt they ran out of housewives.  The door
was opened by a gangling youth who clutched in one clammy paw an object
which at once hypnotized the visitors.

It was a magazine whose cover displayed a giant rocket climbing upward
from a crater studded planet which, whatever it might be, was obviously
not the Earth.  Across the background were the words: "Staggering
Stories of Pseudo-Science.  Price 25 cents."

Crysteel looked at Danstor with a "Do you think what I think?"
expression which the other returned.  Here at last, surely, was someone
who could understand them.  His spirits mounting, Danstor addressed the
youngster.

"I think you can help us," he said politely.

"We find it very difficult to make ourselves understood here.  You see,
we've just landed on this planet from space and we want to get in touch
with your government."

"Oh," said Jimmy Williams, not yet fully returned to Earth from his
vicarious adventures among the outer moons of Saturn.

"Where's your spaceship?"

"It's up in the hills; we didn't want to frighten anyone."

"Is it a rocket? "

"Good gracious no.  They've been obsolete for thousands of years."

"Then how does it work?  Does it use atomic power?"

"I suppose so," said Danstor, who was pretty shaky on physics.

"Is there any other kind of power? "

"This is getting us nowhere," said Crysteel, impatient for once.

"We've got to ask him questions.  Try and find where there are some
officials we can meet."

Before Danstor could answer, a stentorian voice came from inside the
house.

"Jimmy!  Who's there?"

"Two .. . men," said Jimmy, a little doubtfully.

"At least, they look like men.  They've come from Mars.

I always said that was going to happen."

There was the sound of ponderous movements, and a lady of elephantine
bulk and ferocious when appeared from the gloom.  She glared at the
strangers, looked at the magazine Jimmy was carrying, and summed up the
situation.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!"  she cried, rounding on
Crysteel and Danstor.

"It's bad enough having a good-for-nothing son in the house who wastes
all his time reading this rubbish, without grown men coming along
putting more ideas into his head.  Men from Mars, indeed!  I suppose
you've come in one of those flying saucers!"

"But I never mentioned Mars," protested Danstor feebly.

Slam!  From behind the door came the sound of violent altercation, the
unmistakable noise of tearing paper, and a wail of anguish.  And that
was that.

"Well," said Danstor at last.

"What do we try next?  And why did he say we came from Mars?  That
isn't even the nearest planet, if I remember correctly."

"I don't know," said Crysteel.

"But I suppose it's natural for them to assume that we come from some
close planet.  They're going to have a shock when they find the truth.
Mars, indeed!  That's even worse than here, from the reports I've
seen."  He was obviously beginning to lose some of his scientific
detachment.

"Let's leave the houses for a while," said Danstor.

"There must be some more people outside."

This statement proved to be perfectly true, for they had not gone much
further before they found themselves surrounded by small boys making
incomprehensible but obviously rude remarks.

"Should we try and placate them with gifts?"  said Danstar anxiously.

"That usually works among more backward races."

"Well, have you brought any?"

"NO, I thought your'

Before Danstor could finish, their tormentors took to their heels and
disappeared down a side street.  Coming along the road was a majestic
figure in a blue uniform.

Crysteel's eyes lit up.

"A policeman!"  he said.

"Probably going to investigate a murder somewhere.  But perhaps he'll
spare us a minute," he added, not very hopefully.

P. C Hinks eyed the strangers with some astonishment, but managed to
keep his feelings out of his voice.

"Hello, gents.  Looking for anything?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," said Danstor in his friendliest and most
soothing tone of voice.

"Perhaps you can help us.  You see, we've just landed on this planet
and want to make contact with the authorities."

"Eh?"  said P. C Hinks startled.

There was a long pause though not too long, for P. C. Hinks was a
bright young man who had no intention of remaining a village constable
all his life.

"So you've just landed, have you?  In a spaceship, I suppose?"

"That's right," said Danstor, immensely relieved at the absence of the
incredulity, or even violence, which such announcements all too often
provoked on the more primitive planets.

"Well, well!  " said P. C. Hinks, in tones which he hoped would inspire
confidence and feelings of amity.  (Not that it mattered much if they
both became violent they seemed a pretty skinny pair.) "Just tell me
what you want, and I'll see what we can do about it."

"I'm so glad," said Danstor.

"You see, we've landed in this rather remote spot because we don't want
to create a panic.  It would be best to keep our presence known to as
few people as possible until we have contacted your government."

"I quite understand," replied P. C. Hinks, glancing round hastily to
see if there was anyone through whom he could send a message to his
sergeant.

"And what do you propose to do then?"

"I'm afraid I can't discuss our long-term policy with regard to Earth?"
said Danstor cagily.

"All I can say is that this section of the Universe is being surveyed
and opened up for development, and we're quite sure we can help you in
many ways.  '

"That's very nice of you," said P. C. Hinks heartily.

"I think the best thing is for you to come along to the station with me
so that we can put through a call to the Prime Minister."

"Thank you very much," said Danstor, full of gratitude.  They walked
trustingly beside P. C. Hinks, despite his slight tendency to keep
behind them, until they reached the village police station.

"This way, gents," said P. C Hinks, politely ushering them into a room
which was really rather poorly lit and not at all well furnished, even
by the somewhat primitive standards they had expected.  Before they
could fully take in their surroundings there was a "click" and they
found themselves separated from their "rude by a large door composed
entirely of iron bars.

"Now don't worry," said P. C. Hinks.

"everything will be quite all right.

I'll be back in a minute."

Crysteel and Danstor gazed at each other with a surmise that rapidly
deepened to a dreadful certainty.

"We're locked in!"

"This is a prison!"

"Now what are we going to do,"

"I don't know if you chaps understand English," said a languid voice
from the gloom, "but you might let a fellow sleep in peace."

For the first time, the two prisoners saw that they were not alone.
Lying on a bed in the corner of the cell was a somewhat dilapidated
young man, who gazed at them blearily out of one resentful eye.

"My goodness!"  said Danstor nervously.

"Do you suppose he's a dangerous criminal?"

"He doesn't look very dangerous at the moment," said Crysteel with
more accuracy than he guessed.

"What are you in for, anyway?"  asked the stranger, sitting up
unsteadily.

"You look as if you've been to a fancy-dress party.  Oh, my poor
head!"

He collapsed again into the prone position.

"Fancy locking up anyone as ill as this!"  said Danstor, who was a
kind-hearted individual.  Then he continued, in English, "I don't know
why we're here.  We just told the policeman who we were and where we
came from, and this is what's happened."

"Well, who are you?"

"We've just landed"

"Oh, there's no point in going through all that again," interrupted
Crysteel.

"We'll never get anyone to believe us."

"Hey!"  said the stranger, sitting up once more.

"What language is that you're speaking; I know a few, but I've never
heard anything like that."

"Oh, all right," Crysteel said to Danstor.

"You might as well tell him.

There's nothing else to do until that policeman comes back anyway."

At this moment, P. C. Hinks was engaged in earnest conversation with
the superintendent of the local mental home, who insisted stoutly that
all his patients were present.  However, a careful check was promised
and he'd call back later.

Wondering if the whole thing was a practical joke, P. C Hinks put the
receiver down and quietly made his way to the cells.  The three
prisoners seemed to be engaged in friendly conversation, so he tiptoed
away again.  It would do them all good to have a chance to cool down He
rubbed his eye tenderly as he remembered what a battle it had been to
get Mr.  Graham into the cell during the small hours of the morning.

That young man was now reasonably sober after the night's celebrations,
which he did not in the least regret.

(It was, after all quite an occasion when your degree came through and
you found you'd got Honors when you'd barely expected a Pass.) But he
began to fear that he was still under the influence as Danstor unfolded
his tale and waited, not expecting to be believed.

In these circumstances, thought Graham, the best thing to do was to
behave as matter-of-factly as possible until the hallucinations got fed
up and went away.

"If you really have a spaceship in the hills," he remarked, "surely you
can get in touch with it and ask someone to come and rescue you?"

"We want to handle this ourselves," said Crysteel with dignity.

"Besides, you don't know our captain."

They sounded very convincing, thought Graham.  The whole story hung
together remarkably well.  And yet ..

"It's a bit hard for me to believe that you can build interstellar
spaceships, but can't get out of a miserable village police station."

Danstor looked at Crysteet who shuffled uncomfortably.

"We could get out easily enough," said the anthropologist.

"But we don't want to use violent means unless it's absolutely
essential.  You've no idea of the trouble it causes, and the reports we
might have to fill in.

Besides, if we do get out, I suppose your Flying Squad would catch us
before we got back to the ship."

"Not in Little Milton," grinned Graham.

"Especially if we could get across to the "White Hart' without being
stopped.  My car is over there."

"Oh," said Danstor, his spirits suddenly reviving.  He turned to his
companion and a lively discussion followed.  Then, very gingerly, he
produced a small black cylinder from an inner pocket, handling it with
much the same confidence as a nervous spinster holding a loaded gun for
the first time.  Simultaneously, Crysteel retired with some speed to
the far corner of the cell.

It was at this precise moment that Graham knew, with a sudden icy
certainty, that he was stone-sober and that the story he had been
listening to was nothing less than the truth.

There was no fuss or bother, no flurry of electric sparks or colored
rays but a section of the wall three feet across dissolved quietly and
collapsed into a little pyramid of sand.  The sunlight came streaming
into the cell as, with a great sigh of relief, Danstor put his
mysterious weapon away.

"Well, come on," he urged Graham.

"We're waiting for you."

There were no signs of pursuit' for P. C. Hinks was still arguing on
the phone, and it would be some minutes yet before that bright young
man returned to the cells and received the biggest shock of his
official career.

No one at the "White Hart" was particularly surprised to see Graham
again; they all knew where and how he had spent the night, and
expressed hope that the local Bench would deal leniently with him when
his case came up.

With grave misgivings, Crysteel and Danstor climbed into the back of
the incredibly ramshackle Bentley which Graham affectionately addressed
as "Rose."  But there was nothing wrong with the engine under the rusty
bonnet, and soon they were roaring out of Little Milton at fifty miles
an hour.  It was a striking demonstration of the relativity of speed,
for Crysteel and Danstor, who had spent the last few years traveling
tranquilly through space at several million miles a second, had never
been so scared in their lives.  When Crysteel had recovered his breath
he pulled out his little portable transmitter and called the ship.

"We're on the way back," he shouted above the roar of the wind.

"We've got a fairly intelligent human being with us.  Expect us in
whoops!  I'm sorry we just went over a bridge about ten minutes.  What
was that?  No, of course not.  We didn't have the slightest trouble.
Everything went perfectly smoothly.  Good-by."

Graham looked back only once to see how his passengers were faring. The
sight was rather unsettling for their ears and hair (which had not been
glued on very firmly) had blown away and their real selves were
beginning to emerge.  Graham began to suspect, with some discomfort,
that his new acquaintances also lacked noses.  Oh well, one could grow
used to anything with practice.  He was going to have plenty of that in
the years ahead.

The rest, of course, you all know;

but the full story of the first landing on Earth, and of the peculiar
circumstances under which Ambassador Graham became humanity's
representative to the universe at large, has never before- been
recounted.  We extracted the main details, with a good deal of
persuasion, from Crysteel and Danstor themselves, while we were working
in the Department of Extraterrestrial affairs.

It was understandable, in view of their success on Earth, that they
should have been selected by their superiors to make the first contact
with our mysterious and secretive neighbors, the Martians.  It is also
understandable, in the light of the above evidence, that Crysteel and
Danstor were so reluctant to embark on this later mission, and we are
not really very surprised that nothing has ever been heard of them
since.

The Curse

FOR THREE HUNDRED YEARS, WHILE ITS FAME SPREAD ACROSS

the world, the little town had stood here at the river's bend.  Time
and change had touched-it lightly; it had heard from afar both the
coming of the Armada and the fall of the Third Reich, and all Man's
wars had passed it by.

Now it was gone, as though it had never been.  In a moment of time the
toil and treasure of centuries had been swept away.  The vanished
streets could still be traced as faint marks in the vitrified ground,
but of the houses, nothing remained.  Steel and concrete, plaster and
ancient oak it had mattered little at the end.  In the moment of death
they had stood together, transfixed by the glare of the detonating
bomb.  Then, even before they could flash into fire, the blast waves
had reached them and they had ceased to be.  Mile upon mile the
ravening hemisphere of flame had expanded over the level farmlands, and
from its heart had risen the twisting totem-pole that had haunted the
minds of men for so long, and to such little purpose.

The rocket had been a stray, one of the last ever to be fired.  It was
hard to say for what target it had been intended.  Certainly not
London, for London was no longer a military objective.  London, indeed,
was no longer anything at all.  Long ago the men whose duty it was had
calculated that three of the hydrogen bombs would be sufficient for
that rather small target.  In sending twenty, they had been perhaps a
little overzealous.

This was not one of the twenty that had done their work so well.  Both
its destination and its origin were unknown: whether it had come cross
the lonely Arctic wastes or far above the waters of the Atlantic, no
one could tell and there were few now who cared.

Once there had been men who had known such things, who had watched from afar
the flight of the great projectiles and had sent their own missiles to meet
them.  Often that appointment had been kept, high above the Earth where
the sky was black and sun and stars shared the heavens together.  Then
there had bloomed for a moment that indescribable flame, sending out
into space a message that in centuries to come other eyes than Man's
would see and understand.

But that had been days ago, at the beginning of the War.  The defenders
had long since been brushed aside, as they had known they must be. They
had held on to life long enough to discharge their duty; too late, the
enemy had learned his mistake.  He would launch no further rockets;
those still falling he had dispatched hours ago on secret trajectories
that had taken them far out into space.  They were returning now
unguided and inert, waiting in vain for the signals that should lead
them to their destinies.

One by one they were falling at random upon a world which they could
harm no more.

The river had already overflowed its banks; somewhere down its course
the land had twisted beneath that colossal hammer-blow and the way to
the sea was no longer open.  Dust was still falling in a fine rain, as
it would do for days as Man's cities and treasures returned to the
world that had given them birth.  But the sky was no longer wholly
darkened, and in the west the sun was settling through banks of angry
cloud.

A church had stood here by the river's edge, and though no trace of the
building remained, the gravestones that the years had gathered round it
still marked its place.  Now the stone slabs lay in parallel rows,
snapped off at their bases and pointing mutely along the line of the
blast.  Some were half flattened into the ground, others had been
cracked and blistered by terrific heat, but many still bore the
messages they had carried down the centuries in vain.

The light died in the west and the unnatural crimson faded from the
sky.

Yet still the graven words could be clearly read, lit by a steady,
unwavering radiance, too faint to be seen by day but strong enough to
banish night.

The land was burning: for miles the glow of its radioactivity was
reflected from the clouds.  Through the glimmering landscape wound the
dark ribbon of the steadily widening river, and as the waters submerged
the land that deadly glow continued unchanging in the depths.  In a
generation, perhaps, it would have faded from sight, but a hundred
years might pass before life could safely come this way again.

Timidly the waters touched the worn gravestone that for more than three
hundred years had lain before the vanished altar.  The church that had
sheltered it so long had given it some protection at the last, and only
a slight discoloration of the rock told of the fires that had passed
this way.

In the corpse-light of the dying land, the archaic words could still be
traced as the water rose around them, breaking at last in tiny ripples
across the stone.  Line by line the epitaph upon which so many millions
had gazed slipped beneath the conquering waters  For a little while the
letters could still be faintly seen; then they were gone forever.

Good freed for Iesvs sake forbeare,

To digg the dvst encloased he are

Blest be ye man yt spares tines stones, And cvrst be he yt moves my
bones.

Undisturbed through all eternity the poet could sleep in safety now: in
the silence and darkness above his head, the Avon was seeking its new
outlet to the sea

Time's Arrow

THE RIVER WAS DEAD AND THE LAKE ALREADY DYING WHEN

the monster had come down the dried-up watercourse and turned onto the
desolate mud-flats.  There were not many places where it was safe to
walk, and even where the ground was hardest the great pistons of its
feet sank a foot or more beneath the weight they carried.  Sometimes it
had paused, surveying the landscape with quick, birdlike movements of
its head.  Then it had sunk even deeper into the yielding soil, so that
fifty million years later men could judge with some accuracy the
duration of its halts.

For the waters had never returned, and the blazing sun had baked the
mud to rock.  Later still the desert had poured over all this land,
sealing it beneath protecting layers of sand.  And later very much
later had come Man.

"Do you think," shouted Barton above the din, "that Professor Fowler
became a palaeontologist because he likes playing with pneumatic
drills?  Or did he acquire the taste afterward?"

"Can't hear you!"  yelled Davis, leaning on his shovel in a most
professional manner.  He glanced hopefully at his watch.

"Shall I tell him it's dinnertime?  He can't wear a watch while he's
drilling, so he won't know any better."

"I doubt if it will work," Barton shrieked.

"He's got wise to us now and always adds an extra ten minutes.  But it
will make a change from this infernal digging."

With noticeable enthusiasm the two geologists downed tools and started
to walk toward their chief.  As they approached, he shut off the drill
and relative silence descended broken only by the throbbing of the compressor
in the background.

"About time we went back to camp, Professor," said Davis, wristwatch
held casually behind his back.

"You know what cook says if we're late."

Professor Fowler, MA."  FRS., F.G.S."  mopped some, but by no means ale
of the ocher dust from his forehead.  He would have passed anywhere as
a typical navvy, and the occasional visitors to the site seldom
recognized the Vice-President of the Geological Society in the brawny,
half-naked workman crouching over his beloved pneumatic drill

It had taken nearly a month to clear the sandstone down to the surface
of the petrified mud-flats.  In that time several hundred square feet
had been exposed, revealing a frozen snapshot of the past that was
probably the finest -yet discovered by palaeontology.  Some scores of
birds and reptiles had come here in search of the receding water, and
left their footsteps as a perpetual monument eons after their bodies
had perished.  Most of the prints had been identified, but one the
largest of them all was new to science.  It belonged to a beast which
must have weighed twenty or thirty tons: and Professor Fowler was
following the fifty-million-year-old spoor with all the emotions of a
big-game hunter tracking his prey.  There was even a hope that he might
yet overtake it; for the ground must have been treacherous when the
unknown monster went this way and its bones might still be near at
hand, marking the place where it had been trapped like so many
creatures of its time.

Despite the mechanical aids available, the work was very tedious.

Only the upper layers could be removed by the power tools, and the
final uncovering had to be done by hand with the utmost care. Professor
Fowler had good reason for his insistence that he alone should do the
preliminary drilling, for a single slip might cause irreparable harm.

The three men were halfway back to the main camp, jolting over the
rough road in the expedition's battered jeep, when Davis raised the
question that had been intriguing the younger men ever since the work
had begun.

"I'm getting a distinct impression," he said, "that our neighbors down
the valley don't like us, Lough I can't imagine why.

We're not interfering with them, and they might at least have the
decency to invite us over."

"Unless, of course, it is a war research plant," added Barton, voicing
a generally accepted theory.

"I don't think so," said Professor Fowler mildly.

"Because it so happens that I've just had an invitation myself.  I'm
going there tomorrow.

If his bombshell failed to have the expected result, it was thanks to
his staff's efficient espionage system.

For a moment Davis pondered over this confirmation of his suspicions;
then he continued with a slight cough:

"No one else has been invited, then?"

The Professor smiled at his pointed hint.

"No," he said.

"It's a strictly personal invitation.  I know you boys are dying of
curiosity but, frankly, I don't know any more about the place than you
do.  If I learn anything tomorrow, I'll tell you all about it.

B'ut at least we've found out who's running the establishment."

His assistants pricked up their ears.

"Who is it?"  asked Barton, "My guess was the Atomic Development
Audlority."

"You may be right," said the Professor.

"At any rate, Henderson and Barnes are in charge."

This time the bomb exploded effectively; so much so that Davis nearly
drove the jeep off the road not that that made much difference, the
road being what it was.

"Henderson and Barnes?  In this god-forsaken hole?"

"That's right," said the Professor gaily.

"The invitation was actually from Barnes.  He apologized for not
contacting us before, made the usual excuses, and wondered if I could
drop in for a chat."

"Did he say what they are doing?"

"No; not a hint."

"Barnes and Henderson?"  said Barton thoughtfully.

"I don't know much about them except that They're physicists.

What's Their particular racket?"

"They're the experts on low-temperature physics," answered Davis.

"Henderson was Director of the Cavendish for years.  He wrote a lot of
letters to Nature not so long ago.  If I remember rightly, they were
all about Helium II."

Barton, who didn't like physicists and said so whenever possible, was
not impressed.

"I don't even know what Helium II is," he said smugly.

"What's more, I'm not at all sure that I want to."

This was intended for Davis, who had once taken a physics degree in, as
he explained, a moment of weakness.  The "moment" had lasted for
several years before he had drifted into geology by rather devious
routes, and he was always harking back to his first love.

"It's a form of liquid helium that only exists at a few degrees above
absolute zero.  It's got the most extraordinary properties but as far
as I can see, none of them can explain the presence of two leading
physicists in this corner of the globe."

They had now arrived at the camp, and Davis brought the jeep to its
normal crash-halt in the parking space.  He shook his head in annoyance
as he bumped into the truck ahead with slightly more violence than
usual.

"These tires are nearly through.  Have the new ones come yet?"

"Arrived in the 'copter this morning, widh a despairing note from
Andrews hoping that you'd make them last a full fortnight this time."

"Good!  I'll get them fitted this evening."

The Professor had been walking a little ahead; now he dropped back to
join his assistants.

"You needn't have hurried Jim," he said glumly.

"It's corned beef again."

It would be most unfair to say that Barton and Davis did less work
because the Professor was away.  They probably worked a good deal
harder than usual, since the native laborers required twice as much
supervision in the Chief's absence.  But there was no doubt that they
managed to find time for a considerable amount of extra talking.

Ever since they had joined Professor Fowler, the two young geologists
had been intrigued by the strange establishment five miles away down
the valley.  It was clearly a research organization of some type, and
Davis had identified the tall stacks of an atomic-power unit.  That, of
course, gave no clue to the work that was proceeding, but it did
indicate its importance.  There were still only a few thousand
turbo-piles in the world, and they were all reserved for major
projects.

There were dozens of reasons why two great scientists might have hidden
themselves in this place: most of the more hazardous atomic research
was carried out as far as possible from civilization, and some had been
abandoned altogether until laboratories in space could be set up.

Yet it seemed odd that this work, whatever it was, should be carried
out so close to what had now become the most important center of
geological research in the world.  It might, of course, be no more than
a coincidence;

certainly the physicists had never shown any interest in their
compatriots so near at hand.

Davis was carefully chipping round one of the great footprints, while
Barton was pouring liquid perspex into those already uncovered so that
they would be preserved from harm in the transparent plastic.  They
were working in a somewhat absentminded manner, for each was
unconsciously listening for the sound of the jeep.  Professor Fowler
had promised to collect them when he returned from his visit, for the
other vehicles were in use elsewhere and they did not relish a two-mile
walk back to camp in the broiling sun.  Moreover, they wanted to have
any news as soon as possible.

"How many people," said Barton suddenly, "do you think they have over
there?"

Davis straightened himself up.

"Judging from the buildings, not more than a dozen or so."

"Then it might be a private affair, not an ADA project at all."

"Perhaps, though it must have pretty considerable backing.  Of course,
Henderson and Barnes could get that on their reputations alone."

"That's where the physicists score," said Barton.

"They've only got to convince some war department that they're on the
track of a new weapon, and they can get a couple of million without any
trouble."

He spoke with some bitterness; for, like most scientists, he had strong
views on this subject.  Barton's views, indeed, were even more definite
than usual, for he was a Quaker and had spent the last year of the War
arguing with not-unsympathetic tribunals.

The conversation was interrupted by the roar and clatter of the jeep,
and the two men ran over to meet the Professor.

"Well?"  they cried simultaneously.

Professor Fowler looked at them thoughtfully, his expression giving no
hint of what was in his mind.

"Had a good day?"  he said at last.

"Come off it, Chief!"  protested Davis.

"TeN us what you've found out."

The Professor climbed out of the seat and dusted himself down.

"I'm sorry, boys," he said with some embarrassment, "I can't tell you a
thing, and that's flat."

There were two united wails of protest, but he waved them aside.

"I've had a very interesting day, but I've had to promise not to say
anything about it.  Even now I don't know exactly what's going on, but
it's something pretty revolutionary as revolutionary, perhaps, as
atomic power.  But Dr.  Henderson is coming over tomorrow; see what you
can get out of him."

For a moment, both Barton and Davis were so overwhelmed by the sense of
anticlimax that neither spoke.  Barton was the first to recover.

"Well, surely there's a reason for this sudden interest in our
activities?"

The Professor thought this over for a moment.

"Yes; it wasn't entirely a social call," he admitted.

"They think I may be able to help them.  Now, no more questions, unless
you want to walk back to camp!"

Dr.  Henderson arrived on the site in the middle of the afternoon.  He
was a stout, elderly man, dressed rather incongrnously in a dazzling
white laboratory smock and very little else.  Though the garb was
eccentric, it was eminently practical in so hot a climate.

Davis and Barton were somewhat distant when Professor Fowler introduced
them;

they still felt that they had been snubbed and were determined that
their visitor should understand their feelings.

But Henderson was so obviously interested in their work that they soon
thawed, and the Professor left them to show him round the excavations
while he went to supervise the natives.

The physicist was greatly impressed by the picture of the world's
remote past that lay exposed before his eyes.  For almost an hour the
two geologists took him over the workings yard by yard, talking of the
creatures who had gone this way and speculating about future
discoveries.  The track which Professor Fowler was following now lay in
a wide trench running away from the main excavation, for he had dropped
all other work to investigate it.  At its end the trench was no longer
continuous: to save time, the Professor had begun to sink pits along
the line of the footprints.

The last sounding had missed altogether, and further digging had shown
that the great reptile had made a sudden change of course.

"This is the most interesting bit," said Barton to the slightly wilting
physicist.

"You remember those earlier places where it had stopped for a moment to
have a look around?  WelL here it seems to have spotted something and
has gone off in a new direction at a run, as you can see from the
spacing."

"I shouldn't have thought such a brute could run."

"Well, it was probably a pretty clumsy effort, but you can cover quite
a bit of ground with a fifteen-foot stride.  We're going to follow it
as far as we can.  We may even find what it was chasing.  I think the
Professor has hopes of discovering a trampled battlefield with the
bones of the victim still around.

That would make everyone sit up."

Dr.  Henderson smiled.

"Thanks to Walt Disney, I can picture the scene rather well."

Davis was not very encouraging.

"It was probably only the missus banging the Her gong," he said.

"The most infuriating part of our work is the way everything can
peter out when it gets most exciting.

The strata have been washed away, or there's been an earthquake or,
worse still, some silly fool has smashed up the evidence because he
didn't recognize its value."

Henderson nodded in agreement.

"I can sympathize with you," he said.

"That's where the physicist has the advantage.

He knows he'll get the answer eventually, if there is one."

He paused rather diffidently, as if weighing his words with great
care.

"It would save you a lot of trouble, wouldn't it, if you could actually
see what took place in the past, without having to infer it by these
laborious and uncertain methods.  You've been a couple of months
following these footsteps for a hundred yards, and they may lead
nowhere for all your trouble."

There was a long silence.  Then Barton spoke in a very thoughtful
voice.

"Naturally, Doctor, we're rather curious about your work," he began.

"Since Professor Fowler won't tell us anything, we've done a good deal
of speculating.  Do you really mean to say that"

The physicist interrupted him rather hastily.

"Don't give it any more thought," he said.

"I was only daydreaming.  As for our work, it's a very long way from
completion, but you'll hear all about it in due course.  We're not
secretive but, like everyone working in a new field, we don't want to
say anything until we're sure of our ground.  Why, if any other
palaeontologists came near this place, I bet Professor Fowler would
chase them away with a pick-axe! "

"That's not quite true," smiled Davis, "He'd be much more likely to set
them to work.  But I see your point of view; let's hope we don't have
to wait too long."

That night, much midnight oil was burned at the main camp.  Barton was
frankly skeptical, but Davis had already built up an elaborate
superstructure of theory around their visitor's remarks.

"It would explain so many things," he said.

"First of ale their presence in this place, which otherwise doesn't
make sense at all.  We know the ground level here to with in an inch
for the last hundred million years, and we can date any event with an
accuracy of better than one per cent.

There's not a spot on Earth that's had its past worked out in such
detail it's the obvious place for an experiment like this!"

"But do you think it's even theoretically possible to build a machine
that can see into the past?"

"I can't imagine how it could be done.  But I daren't say it's
impossible especially to men like Henderson and Barnes."

"Hmmm.  Not a very convincing argument.  Is there any way we can hope
to test it?  What about those letters to Natured"

"I've sent to the College Library; we should have them by the end of
the weed There's always some continuity in a scientist's work, and they
may give us some valuable clues."

But at first they were disappointed; indeed, Henderson's letters only
increased the confusion.  As Davis had remembered, most of them had
been about the extraordinary properties of Helium II.

"It's really fantastic stuff," said Davis.

"If a liquid behaved like this at normal temperatures, everyone would
go mad.  In the first place, it hasn't any viscosity at all.

Sir George Darwin once said that if you had an ocean of Helium II,
ships could sail in it without any engines.  You'd give them a push at
the beginning of their voyage and let them run into buffers on the
other side.  There'd be one snag, though; long before that happened the
stuff would have climbed straight up the hull and the whole outfit
would have sunk gurgle, gurgle, gurgle .. ."

"Very amusing," said Barton, "but what the heck has this to do with
your precious theory?"

"Not much," admitted Davis.

"However, there's more to come.  It's possible to have two streams of
Helium II flowing in opposite directions in the sine tube one stream
going through the other, as it were."

"That must take a bit of explaining; it's almost as bad
as an object moving in two directions at once.  I suppose there is an
explanation, something to do with Relativity, I bet.

Davis was reading carefully.

"The explanation," he said slowly, "is very complicated and I don't
pretend to understand it fully.  But it depends on the fact that liquid
helium can have negative entropy under certain conditions."

"As I never understood what positive entropy is, I'm not much wiser."

"Entropy is a measure of the heat distribution of the Universe.  At the
beginning of time, when all energy was concentrated in the suns,
entropy was a minimum.  It will reach its maximum when everything's at
a uniform temperature and the Universe is dead.

There will still be plenty of heat around, but it won't be usable."

"Whyever not?"

"WelL all the water in a perfectly flat ocean won't run a
hydro-electric plant but quite a little lake up in the hills will do
the trick.  You must have a difference in level."

"I get the idea Now I come to think of it, didn't someone once call
entropy "Time's Arrow?"

"Yes Eddington, I believe.  Any kind of clock you care to mention a
pendulum, for instance might just as easily run forward as backward.
But entropy is a strictly one-way affair it's always increasing with
the passage of time.  Hence the expression,

"Then negative entropy my gosh!"

For a moment the two men looked at each other.  Then Barton asked in a
rather subdued voice: "What does Henderson say about it?"

"I'll quote from his last letter:

"The discovery of negative entropy introduces quite new and
revolutionary conceptions into our picture of the physical world.  Some
of these will be examined in a further communication."

"And are they?"

"That's the snag: there's no 'further communication."  From that you
can guess two alternatives.  First, the Editor of Nature may have
declined to publish the letter.  I

think we can rule that one out.

Second, the consequences may have been so revolutionary that Henderson
never did write a further report."

"Negative entropy negative time," mused Barton.

"It seems fantastic; yet it might be theoretically possible to build
some sort of device that could see into the past...."

"I know what we'll do," said Davis suddenly.

"We'll tackle the Professor about it and watch his reactions.  Now I'm
going to bed before I get brain fever."

That night Davis did not sleep well.

He dreamed that he was walking along a road that stretched in both
directions as far as the eye could see.  He had been walking for miles
before he came to the signpost, and when he reached it he found that it
was broken and the two arms were revolving idly in the wind.  As they
turned, he could read the words they carried.  One said simply: To the
Future, the other: To the Past.

They learned nothing from Professor Fowler, which was not surprising;
next to the Dean, he was the best poker player in the College.  He
regarded his slightly fretful assistants with no trace of emotion while
Davis trotted out his theory.

When the young man had finished, he said quietly, "I'm going over again
tomorrow, and I'll tell Henderson about your detective work.  Maybe
he'll take pity on you; maybe he'll tell me a bit more, for that
matter.  Now let's go to work."

Davis and Barton found it increasingly difficult to take a great deal
of interest in their own work while their minds were filled with the
enigma so near at hand.  Nevertheless they continued conscientiously,
though ever and again they paused to wonder if all their labor might
not be in vain.  If it were, they would be the first to rejoice.
Supposing one could see into the past and watch history unfolding
itself, back to the dawn of time!  All the great secrets of the past
would be revealed: one could watch the coming of life on the Earth, and
the whole story of evolution from amoeba to man.

No; it was too good to be true.  Having decided this,

they would go back to their digging and scraping for another half-hour
until the thought would come: but what if it Severe true?  And then the
whole cycle would begin all over again.

When Professor Fowler returned from his second visit, he was a subdued
and obviously shaken man.  The only satisfaction his assistants could
get from him was the statement that Henderson had listened to their
theory and complimented them on their powers of deduction.

That was all; but in Davis's eyes it clinched the matter, though Barton
was still doubtful.  In the weeks that followed, he too began to waver,
until at last they were both convinced that the theory was correct. For
Professor Fowler was spending more and more of his time with Henderson
and Barnes; so much so that they sometimes did not see him for days.
He had almost lost interest in the excavations, and had delegated all
responsibility to Barton, who was now able to use the big pneumatic
drill to his heart's content.

They were uncovering several yards of footprints a day, and the spacing
showed that the monster had now reached its utmost speed and was
advancing in great leaps as if nearing its victim.  In a few days they
might reveal the evidence of some eon-old tragedy, preserved by a
miracle and brought down the ages for the observation of man.  Yet all
this seemed very unimportant now; for it was clear from the Professor's
hints and his general air of abstraction that the secret research was
nearing its climax.  He had told them as much, promising that in a very
few days, if all went well, their wait would be ended.  But beyond that
he would say nothing.

Once or twice Henderson had paid them a visit, and they could see that
he was now laboring under a considerable strain.  He obviously wanted
to talk about his work, but was not going to do so until the final
tests had been completed.  They could only admire his self-control and
wish that it would break down.  Davis had a distinct impression that
the elusive Barnes was mainly responsible for his secrecy; he had
something of a reputation for not publishing work until it had been
checked and double checked.  If these experiments were as important as
they believed, his caution was understandable, however infuriating.

Henderson had come over early that morning to collect the Professor,
and as luck would have it, his car had broken down on the primitive
road.

This was unfortunate for Davis and Barton, who would have to walk to
camp for lunch, since Professor Fowler was driving Henderson back in
the jeep.

They were quite prepared to put up with this if their wait was indeed
coming to an end, as the others had more than half-hinted.

They had stood talking by the side of the jeep for some time before the
two older scientists had driven away.

It was a rather strained parting, for each side knew what the other was
thinking.  Finally Barton, as usual the most outspoken, remarked:

"Well, Doc, if this is Der Tag, I hope everything works properly.  I'd
like a photograph of a brontosaur us as a souvenir."

This sort of banter had been thrown at Henderson so often that he now
took it for granted.  He smiled without much mirth and replied, "I
don't promise anything.  It may be the biggest flop ever."

Davis moodily checked the tire pressure with the toe of his boot.  It
was a new set, he noticed, with an odd zigzag pattern he hadn't seen
before.

"Whatever happens, we hope you'll tell us.  Otherwise, we're going to
break in one night and find out just what you're up to."

Henderson laughed.

"You'll be a pair of geniuses if you can learn anything from our
present lash up  But, if all goes well, we may be having a little
celebration by nightfall."

"What time do you expect to be back, Chief?"

"Somewhere around four.  I don't want you to have to walk back for
tea"

"O.K. here's hoping!"

The machine disappeared in a cloud of dust, leaving two very thoughtful
geologists standing by the roadside.

Then Barton shrugged his shoulders.

"The harder we work," he said, "the quicker the time will go.  Come
along!"

The end of the trench, where Barton was working with the power drill,
was now more than a hundred yards from the main excavation.  Davis was
putting the final touches to the last prints to be uncovered.  They
were now very deep and widely spaced, and looking along them, one could
see quite clearly where the great reptile had changed its course and
started, first to run, and then to hop like an enormous kangaroo.
Barton wondered what it must have felt like to see such a creature
bearing down upon one with the speed of an express; then he realized
that if their guess was true this was exactly what they might soon be
seeing.

By mid-afternoon they had uncovered a record length of track.  The
ground had become softer, and Barton was roaring ahead so rapidly that
he had almost forgotten his other preoccupations.  He had left Davis
yards behind, and both men were so busy that only the pangs of hunger
reminded them when it was time to finish.  Davis was the first to
notice that it was later than they had expected, and he walked over to
speak to his friend.

"It's nearly half-past four!"  he said when the noise of the drill had
died away.

"The Chief's late I'll be mad if he's had tea before collecting us."

"Give him another half-hour," said Barton.

"I can guess what's happened.

They've blown a fuse or something and it's upset their schedule."

Davis refused to be placated.

"I'll be darned annoyed if we've got to walk back to camp again.
Anyway, I'm going up the hill to see if there's any sign of him."

He left Barton blasting his way through the so rock, and climbed the
low hill at the side of the old riverbed.  From here one could see far
down the valley, and the twin stacks of the Henderson-Barnes laboratory
were clearly visible against the drab landscape.  But there was no sign
of the moving dust-cloud that would be following the jeep: the
Professor had not yet started for home.

Davis gave a snort of disgust.  There was a two-mile walk ahead of
them, after a particularly tiring day, and to make matters worse they'd
now be late for tea.  He decided not to wait any longer, and was already
walking down the hill to rejoin Barton when something caught his eye
and he stopped to look down the valley.

Around the two stacks, which were all he could see of the laboratory, a
curious haze not unlike a heat tremor was playing.  They must be hot,
he knew, but surely not that hot.  He looked more carefully, and saw to
his amazement that the haze covered a hemisphere that must be almost a
quarter of a mile across.

And, quite suddenly, it exploded.

There was no light, no blinding flash;

only a ripple that spread abruptly across the sky and then was gone.
The haze had vanished and so had the two great stacks of the
power-house.

Feeling as though his legs had turned suddenly to water, Davis slumped
down upon the hilltop and stared open-mouthed along the valley.

A sense of overwhelming disaster swept into his mind; as in a dream, he
waited for the explosion to reach his ears.

It was not impressive when it came;

only a cult long drawn-out whoooooosh!

that died away swiftly in the still air.  Half unconsciously, Davis
noticed that the chatter of the drill had also stopped; the explosion
must have been louder than he thought for Barton to have heard it
too.

The silence was complete.  Nothing moved anywhere as far as his eye
could see in the whole of that empty, barren landscape.  He waited
until his strength returned; then, half running, he went unsteadily
down the hill to ..... relom rus rnena.

Barton was half sitting in the trench with his head buried in his
hands.  He looked up as Davis approached; and although his features
were obscured by dust and sand, the other was shocked at the expression
in his eyes.

"So you heard it too!"  Davis said.

"I think the whole lab's blown up.

Come along, for heaven's sake!"

"Heard what?," said Barton dully.

Davis stared at him in amazement.

Then he realized that Barton could not possibly have heard any sound
while he was working with the drill.  The sense of disaster deeps ....
ened with a rush; he felt like a character in some Greek tragedy,
helpless before an implacable doom.

Barton rose to his feet.  His face was working strangely, and Davis saw
that he was on the verge of breakdown.  Yet, when he spoke, his words
were surprisingly calm.

"What fools we were!"  he said.

"How Henderson must have laughed at us when we told him that he was
trying to see into the past!"

Mechanically, Davis moved to the trench and stared at the rock that was
seeing the light of day for the first time in fifty million years.
Without much emotion, now, he traced again the zigzag pattern he had
first noticed a few hours before.  It had sunk only a little way into
the mud, as if when it was formed the jeep had been traveling at its
utmost speed.

No doubt it had been; for in one place the shallow tire marks had been
completely obliterated by the monster's footprints.  They were now very
deep indeed, as if the great reptile was about to make the final leap
upon its desperately fleeing prey.

Jupiter Five

PROFESSOR FORSTER IS SUCH A SMALL MAN THAT A SPECIAL

space-suit had to be made for him.  But what he lacked in physical size
he more than made up as is so often the case in sheer drive and
determination.

When I met him, he'd spent twenty years pursuing a dream.  What is more
to the point, he had persuaded a whole succession of hard-headed
business men, World Council Delegates and administrators of scientific
trusts to underwrite his expenses and to fit out a ship for him.
Despite everything that happened later, I still think that was his most
remarkable achievement.... The "Arnold Toynbee" had a crew of six
aboard when we left Earth.  Besides the Professor and Charles Ashton,
his chief assistant, there was the usual pilot-navigator engineer
triumvirate and two graduate students Bill Hawkins and myself.  Neither
of us had ever gone into space before, and we were still so excited
over the whole thing that we didn't care in the least whether we got
back to Earth before the next term started.  We had a strong suspicion
that our tutor had very similar views.  The reference he had produced
for us was a masterpiece of ambiguity, but as the number of people who
could even begin to read Martian script could be counted, if I may coin
a phrase, on the fingers of one hand, we'd got the job.

As we were going to Jupiter, and not to Mars, the purpose of this
particular qualification seemed a little obscure, though knowing
something about the Professor's theories we had some pretty shrewd
suspicions.  They were partly confirmed when we were ten days out from
Earth.

The Professor looked at us very thoughtfully when we answered his
summons.  Even under zero g he always managed
to preserve his dignity, while the best we could do was to cling
to the nearest handhold and float around like drifting seaweed.  I got
the impression though I may of course be wrong that he was thinking:
What have I done to deserve this?  as he looked from Bill to me and
back again.  Then he gave a sort of "It's too late to do anything about
it now" sigh and began to speak in that slow, patient way he always
does when he has something to explain.  At least, he always uses it
when he's speaking to us, but it's just occurred to me oh, never mind

"Since we left Earth," he said, "I've not had much chance of telling
you the purpose of this expedition.  Perhaps you've guessed it
already."

"I think I have," said Bill.

"WelL go on," replied the Professor, a peculiar gleam in his eye.  I
did my best to stop Bill, but have you ever tried to kick anyone when
you're in free fall?

"You want to find some proof I mean, some more proof of your diffusion
theory of extraterrestrial culture."

"And have you any idea why I'm going to Jupiter to look for it?"

"Well, not exactly.  I suppose you hope to find something on one of the
moons."

"Brilliant, Bill, brilliant.  There are fifteen known satellites, and
their total area is about half that of Earth.  Where would you start
looking if you had a couple of weeks to spare?

I'd rather like to know."

Bill glanced doubtfully at the Professor, as if he almost suspected him
of sarcasm.

"I don't know much about astronomy," he said.

"But there are four big moons, aren't there?  I'd start on those."

"For your information, lo, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are each about
as big as Africa.  Would you work through them in alphabetical
order?"

"No," Bill replied promptly.

"I'd start on the one nearest Jupiter and go outward."

"I don't think we'll waste any more time pursuing your logical
processes," sighed the Professor.  He was obviously un patient to begin
his set speech "Anyway, you're quite wrong.  We're not going to the big
moons at all They've been photographically surveyed from space and
large areas have been explored on the surface.  They've got nothing of
archaeological interest.  We're going to a place that's never been
visited before."

"Not to Jupiter!"  I gasped.

"Heavens no, nothing as drastic as that!  But we're going nearer to him
than anyone else has ever been."

He paused thoughtfully.

"It's a curious thing, you know or you probably don't that it's nearly
as difficult to travel between Jupiter's satellites as it is to go
between the planets, although the distances are so much smaller.  This
is because Jupiter's got such a terrific gravitational field and his
moons are traveling so quickly.  The innermost moon's moving almost as
fast as Earth, and the journey to it from Ganymede costs almost as much
fuel as the trip from Earth to Venus, even though it takes only a day
and a half.

"And it's that journey which we're going to make.  No one's ever done
it before because nobody could think of any good reason for the
expense.

Jupiter Five is only thirty kilometers in diameter, so it couldn't
possibly be of much interest.  Even some of the outer satellites, which
are far easier to reach, haven't been visited because it hardly seemed
worth while to waste the rocket fuel."

"Then why are we going to waste it?"

I asked impatiently.  The whole thing sounded like a complete wild
goose chase, though as long as it proved interesting, and involved no
actual danger, I didn't greatly mind.

Perhaps I ought to confess though I'm tempted to say nothing, as a good
many others have done that at this time I didn't believe a word of
Professor Forster's theories.  Of course I realized that he was a very
brilliant man in his field, but I did draw the line at some of his more
fantastic ideas.  After all, the evidence was so slight and the
conclusions so revolutionary that one could hardly help being
skeptical.

Perhaps you can still remember the astonishment when the first Martian
expedition found the remains not of one ancient civilization, but of
two.

Both had been highly advanced, but both had perished more than five
million years ago.  The reason was unknown (and still is).  It did not
seem to be warfare, as the two cultures appear to have lived amicably
together.  One of the races had been insect-like, the other vaguely
reptilian.  The insects seem to have been the genuine, original
Martians.

The reptile people usually referred to as "Culture X" had arrived on
the scene later.

So, at least, Professor Forster maintained.  They had certainly
possessed the secret of space travel, because the ruins of their
peculiar cruciform cities had been found on of all places Mercury.
Forster believed that they had tried to colonize all the smaller
planets Earth and Venus having been ruled out because of their
excessive gravity.  It was a source of some disappointment to the
Professor that no traces of Culture X had ever been found on the Moon,
though he was certain that such a discovery was only a matter of
time.

The "conventional" theory of Culture X was that it had originally come
from one of the smaller planets or satellites, had made peaceful
contact with the Martians the only other intelligent race in the known
history of the System and had died out at the same time as the Martian
civilization.

But Professor Forster had more ambitious ideas: he was convinced that
Culture X had entered the Solar System from interstellar space.  The
fact that no one else believed this annoyed him, though not very much,
for he is one of those people who are happy only when in a minority.

From where I was sitting, I could see Jupiter through the cabin
porthole as Professor Forster unfolded his plan.

It was a beautiful sight: I could just make out the equatorial cloud
belts, and three of the satellites were visible as little stars close
to the planet.  I wondered which was Ganymede, our first port of
call.

"If Jack will condescend to pay attention," the Professor continued,
"I'll tell you why we're going such a long way from home.  You know
that last year I spent a good deal of time poking among the ruins in
the twilight belt of Mercury.  Perhaps you read the paper I gave on the
subject at the London School of Economics.  You may even have been
there I do remember a disturbance at the back of the hall.

"What I didn't tell anyone then was that while I was on Mercury I
discovered an important clue to the origin of Culture X. I've kept
quiet about it, although I've been sorely tempted when fools like Dr.
Haughton have tried to be funny at my expense.

But I wasn't going to risk letting someone else get here before I could
organize this expedition.

"One of the things I found on Mercury was a rather well preserved
has-relief of the Solar System.  It's not the first that's been
discovered as you know, astronomical motifs are common in true Martian
and Culture X art.  But there were certain peculiar symbols against
various planets, including Mars and Mercury.

I think the pattern had some historic significance, and the most
curious thing about it is that little Jupiter Five one of the least
important of all the satellites seemed to have the most attention drawn
to it.  I'm convinced that there's something on Five which is the key
to the whole problem of Culture X, and I'm going there to discover what
it is."

As far as I can remember now, neither Bill nor I was particularly
impressed by the Professor's story.

Maybe the people of Culture X had left some artifacts on Five for
obscure reasons of their own.  It would be interesting to unearth them,
but hardly likely that they would be as important as the Professor
thought.  I guess he was rather disappointed at our lack of enthusiasm.
If so it was his fault since, as we discovered later, he was still
holding out on us

We landed on Ganymede, the largest moon, about a week later.  Ganymede
is the only one of the satellites with a permanent base on it; there's
an observatory and a geophysical station with a staff of about fifty
scientists.  They were rather glad to see visitors, but we didn't stay
long as the Professor was anxious to refuel and set off again.  The
fact that we were heading for Five naturally aroused a good deal of
interest, but the Professor wouldn't talk and we couldn't; he kept too
close an eye on us.

Ganymede, by the way, is quite an interesting place and we managed to
see rather more of it on the return journey.  But as I've promised to
write an article for another magazine about that, I'd better not say
anything else here.  (You might like to keep your eyes on the National
Astrographic Magazine next Spring.)

The hop from Ganymede to Five took just over a day and a half, and it
gave us an uncomfortable feeling to see Jupiter expanding hour by hour
until it seemed as if he was going to fill the sky.  I don't know much
about astronomy, but I couldn't help thinking of the tremendous gravity
field into which we were falling.  All sorts of things could go wrong
so easily.  If we ran out of fuel we'd never be able to get back to
Ganymede, and we might even drop into Jupiter himself.

I wish I could describe what it was like seeing that colossal globe,
with its raging storm belts spinning in the sky ahead of us.  As a
matter of fact I did make the attempt, but some literary friends who
have read this MS advised me to cut out the result.

(They also gave me a lot of other advice which I don't think they could
have meant seriously, because if I'd followed it there would have been
no story at all.)

Luckily there have been so many color close-ups of Jupiter published by
now that you're bound to have seen some of them.  You may even have
seen the one which, as I'll explain later, was the cause of all our
trouble.

At last Jupiter stopped growing: we'd swung into the orbit of Five and
would soon catch up with the tiny moon as it raced around the planet.
We were all squeezed in the control room waiting for our first glimpse
of our target.

At least, all of us who could get in were doing so.  Bill and I were
crowded out into the corridor and could only crane over other people's
shoulders.

Kingsley Searle, our pilot, was in the control seat looking as
unruffled as ever: Eric Fulton, the engineer, was thoughtfully chewing
his mustache and watching the fuel gauges, and Tony Groves was doing
complicated things with his navigation tables.

And the Professor appeared to be rigidly attached to the eyepiece of
the tele periscope  Suddenly he gave a start and we heard a whistle of
indrawn breath.

After a minute, without a word, he beckoned to Searle, who took his
place at the eyepiece.  Exactly the sane thing happened, and then
Searle handed over to Fulton.  It got a bit monotonous by the time
Groves had reacted identically,-so we wormed our way in and took over
after a bit of opposition.

I don't know quite what I'd expected to see, so that's probably why I
was disappointed.  Hanging there in space was a tiny gibbous moon, its
"night" sector lit up faintly by the reflected glory of Jupiter.  And
that seemed to be all.

Then I began to make out additional markings, in the way that you do if
you look through a telescope for long enough There were faint
crisscrossing lines on the surface of the satellite, and suddenly my
eye grasped their full pattern.  For it was a pattern: those lines
covered Five with the same geometrical accuracy as the lines of
latitude and longitude divide up a globe of the Earth.  I suppose I
gave my whistle of amazement, for then Bill pushed me out of the way
and had his turn to look.

The next thing I remember is Professor Forster looking very smug while
we bombarded him with questions.

"Of course," he explained, "this isn't as much a surprise to me as it
is to you.

Besides the evidence I'd found on Mercury, there were other clues. I've
a friend at the Ganymede Observatory whom I've sworn to secrecy and
who's been under quite a strain this last few weeks.  It's rather
surprising to anyone who's not an astronomer that the Observatory has
never bothered much about the satellites.  The big instruments are all
used on extra galactic nebulae, and the little ones spend all their
time looking at Jupiter.

"The only thing the Observatory had ever done to Five was to measure
its diameter and take a few photographs.  They weren't quite good
enough to show the markings we've just observed, otherwise there would
have been an investigation before.  But my friend Lawton detected them
through the hundred-centimeter reflector when I asked him to look, and
he also noticed something else that should have been spotted before.

Five is only thirty kilometers in
diameter, but it's much brighter than it should be for its size.  When
you compare its reflecting power its al deb its"

"Its albedo."

"Thanks, Tony its albedo with that of the other Moons, you find that
it's a much better reflector than it should be.  In fact, it behaves
more like polished metal than rock."

"So that explains it!"  I said.

"The people of Culture X must have covered Five with an outer shell
like the domes they built on Mercury, but on a bigger scale."

The Professor looked at me rather pityingly.

"So you still haven't guessed!"  he said.

I don't think this was quite fair.

Frankly, would you have done any better in the same circumstances?

We landed three hours later on an enormous metal plain.  As I looked
through the portholes, I felt completely dwarfed by my surroundings.

An ant crawling on the top of an oil-storage tank might have had much
the same feelings and the looming bulk of Jupiter up there in the sky
didn't help.  Even the Professor's usual cockiness now seemed to be
overlaid by a kind of reverent awe.

The plain wasn't quite devoid of features.  Running across it in
various directions were broad bands where the stupendous metal plates
had been joined together.  These bands, or the crisscross pattern they
formed, were what we had seen from space.

About a quarter of a kilometer away was a low hill at least, what would
have been a hill on a natural world.

We had spotted it on our way in after making a careful survey of the
little satellite from space.  It was one of six such projections, four
arranged equidistantly around the equator and the other two at the
Poles.  The assumption was pretty obvious that they would be entrances
to the world below the metal shell.

I know that some people think it must be very entertaining to walk
around on an airless, low-gravity planet in spacesuits.  Well, it
isn't.  There are so many points to think about, so many checks to make
and precautions to observe, that the mental strain outweighs the glamor
at least as far as I'm concerned.  But I must admit that this time, as
we climbed out of the airlock, I was so excited that for once these
things didn't worry me.

The gravity of Five was so microscopic that walking was completely out
of the question.  We were all roped together like mountaineers and blew
ourselves across the metal plain with gentle bursts from our recoil
pistols.  The experienced astronauts, Fulton and Groves, were at the
two ends of the chain so that any unwise eagerness on the part of the
people in the middle was restrained.

It took us only a few minutes to reach our objective, which we
discovered to be a broad, low dome at least a kilometer in
circumference.  I wondered if it was a gigantic airlock, large enough
to permit the entrance of whole spaceships.  Unless we were very lucky,
we might be unable to find a way in, since the controlling mechanisms
would no longer be functioning, and even if they were, we would not
know how to operate them.  It would be difficult to imagine anything
more tantalizing than being locked out, unable to get at the greatest
archaeological find in all history.

We had made a quarter circuit of the dome when we found an opening in
the metal shell.  It was quite small only about two meters across and
it was so nearly circular that for a moment we did not realize what it
was.  Then Tony's voice came over the radio:

"That's not artificial.  We've got a meteor to thank for itt

"Impossible!"  protested Professor Forster.

"It's much too regular."

Tony was stubborn.

"Big meteors always produce circular holes, unless they strike very
glancing blows.  And look at the edges; you can see there's been an
explosion of some kind.  Probably the meteor and the shell were
vaporized; we won't find any fragments."

"You'd expect this sort of thing to happen," put in Kingsley.

"How long has this been here?  Five million years?  I'm surprised we
haven't found any other craters."

"Maybe you're right," said the Professor, too pleased to argue.

"Anyway, I'm going in first."

"Right," said Kingsley, who as captain has the last say in all such
matters.

"I'll give you twenty meters of rope and will sit in the hole so that
we can keep radio contact.

Otherwise this shell will blanket your signals."

So Professor Forster was the first man to enter Five, as he deserved to
be.  We crowded close to Kingsley so that he could relay news of the
Professor's progress.

He didn't get very far.  There was another shell just inside the outer
one, as we might have expected.  The Professor had room to stand
upright between them, and as far as his torch could throw its beam he
could see avenues of supporting struts and girders, but that was about
all.

It took us about twenty-four exasperating hours before we got any
further.  Near the end of that time I remember asking the Professor why
he hadn't thought of bringing any explosives.  He gave me a very hurt
look.

"There's enough aboard the ship to blow us all to glory," he said.

"But I'm not going to risk doing any damage if I can find another
way."

That's what I call patience, but I could see his point of view.  After
all, what was another few days in a search that had already taken him
twenty years?

It was Bill Hawkins, of all people, who found the way in when we had
abandoned our first line of approach.

Near the North Pole of the little world he discovered a really giant
meteor hole about a hundred meters across and cutting through both the
outer shells surrounding Five.  It had revealed still another shell
below those, and by one of those chances that must happen if one waits
enough eons, a second, smaller, meteor had come down inside the crater
and penetrated the innermost skin.  The hole was just big enough to
allow entrance for a man in a spacesuit.  We went through head first,
one at a time.

I don't suppose I'll ever have a weirder experience than hanging from
that tremendous vault, like a spider suspended beneath the dome of
St.

Peter's.  We only knew that the space in which we floated was vast.
Just how big it was we could not tell, for our torches gave us no sense
of distance.  In this airless, dustless cavern the beams were, of
course, totally invisible and when we shone them on the roof above, we
could see the ovals of light dancing away into the distance until they
were too diffuse to be visible.  If we pointed them "downward" we could
see a pale smudge of illumination so far below that it revealed
nothing.

Very slowly, under the minute gravity of this tiny world, we fell
downward until checked by our safety ropes.  Overhead I could see the
tiny glimmering patch through which we had entered; it was remote but
reassuring.

And then, while I was swinging with an infinitely sluggish pendulum
motion at the end of my cable, with the lights of my companions
glimmering like fitful stars in the darkness around me, the truth
suddenly crashed into my brain.  Forgetting that we were all on open
circuit, I cried out involuntarily:

"Professor I don't believe this is a planet at all!  It's a
spaceships"

Then I stopped, feeling that I had made a fool of myself.  There was a
brief, tense silence, then a babble of noise as everyone else started
arguing at once.  Professor Forster's voice cut across the confusion
and I could tell that he was both pleased and surprised.

"You're quite right, Jack.  This is the ship that brought Culture X to
the Solar System."

I heard someone it sounded like Eric Fulton 'give a gasp of
incredulity.

"It's fantastic!  A ship thirty kilometers across!"

"You ought to know better than that," replied the Professor with
surprising mildness.

"Suppose a civilization wanted to cross interstellar space how else
would it attack the problem?  It would build a mobile planetoid out in
space, taking perhaps centuries over the task.  Since the ship would
have to be a seLf-contained world, which could support its inhabitants
for generations, it would need to be as large as this.  I wonder how
many suns they visited before they found ours and knew that their
search was ended?

They must have had smaller ships that could take
them down to the planets, and of course they had to leave the parent
vessel somewhere in space.  So they parked it here, in a close orbit
near the largest planet, where it would remain safely forever or until
they needed it again.  It was the logical place: if they had set it
circling the Sun, in time the pulls of the planets would have disturbed
its orbit so much that it might have been lost.  That could never
happen to it here."

"Tell me, Professor," someone asked, "did you guess all this before we
started?"

"I hoped it.  All the evidence pointed to this answer.  There's always
been something anomalous about Satellite Five, though no one seems to
have noticed it.  Why this single tiny moon so close to Jupiter, when
all the other small satellites are seventy times further away?
Astronomically speaking, * didn't make sense.  But enough of this
chattering.  We've got work to do."

That, I think, must count as the understatement of the century.  There
were seven of us faced with the greatest archaeological discovery of
all time.  Almost a whole world a small world, an artificial one, but
still a world was waiting for us to explore.  All we could perform was
a swift and superficial reconnaissance:

there might be material here for generations of research workers.

The first step was to lower a powerful floodlight on a power line
running from the ship.  This would act as a beacon and prevent us
getting lost, as well as giving local -illumination on the inner
surface of the satellite.  (Even now, I still find it hard to call Five
a ship.) Then we dropped down the line to the surface below.  It was a
fall of about a kilometer, and in this low gravity it was quite safe to
make the drop un retarded  The gentle shock of the impact could be
absorbed easily enough by the spring loaded staffs we carried for that
purpose.

I don't want to take up any space here with yet another description of
all the wonders of Satellite Five;

there have already been enough pictures, maps and books on the subject.
(My own, by the way is being published by Sidgwick and Jackson next
Summer.) What I would like to give you instead is some impression of
what it was actually like to be the first men ever to enter that
strange metal world.  Yet I'm sorry to say I know this sounds hard to
believe I simply can't remember what I was feeling when we came across
the first of the great mushroom capped entrance shafts.  I suppose I
was so excited and so overwhelmed by the wonder of it all that I've
forgotten everything else.  But I can recall the impression of sheer
size, something which mere photographs can never give.  The builders of
this world, coming as they did from a planet of low gravity, were
giants about four times as tall as men.  We were pigmies crawling among
their works.

We never got below the outer levels on our first visit, so we met few
of the scientific marvels which later expeditions discovered.  That was
just as well; the residential areas provided enough to keep us busy for
several lifetimes.  The globe we were exploring must once have been lit
by artificial sunlight pouring down from the triple shell that
surrounded it and kept its atmosphere from leaking into space.

Here on the surface the Jovians (I suppose I cannot avoid adopting the
popular name for the people of Culture X) had reproduced, as accurately
as they could, conditions on the world they had left unknown ages ago.
Perhaps they still had day and night, changing seasons, rain and mist.
They had even taken a tiny sea with them into exile.  The water was
still there, forming a frozen lake three kilometers across.  I hear
that there is a plan afoot to electrolize it and provide Five with a
breathable atmosphere again, as soon as the meteor holes in the outer
shell have been plugged.

The more we saw of their work, the more we grew to like the race whose
possessions we were disturbing for the first time in five million
years.  Even if they were giants from another sun, they had much in
common with man, and it is a great tragedy that our races missed each
other by what is, on the cosmic scale, such a narrow margin.

We were, I suppose, more fortunate than any archaeologists in history.
The vacuum of space had preserved everything from decay and this was
something which could not have been expected the Jovians had not
emptied their mighty ship of all its treasures when they had
set out to colonize the Solar System.

Here on the inner surface of Five everything still seemed intact, as it
had been at the end of the ship's long journey.  Perhaps the travelers
had preserved it as a shrine in memory of their lost home, or perhaps
they had thought that one day they might have to use these things
again.

Whatever the reason, everything was here as its makers had left it.

Sometimes it frightened me.  I might be photographing, with Bill's
help, some great wall carving when the sheer timelessness of the place
would strike into my heart.  I would look round nervously, half
expecting to see giant shapes come stalking in through the pointed
doorways, to continue the tasks that had been momentarily
interrupted.

We discovered the art gallery on the fourth day.  That was the only
name for it; there was no mistaking its purpose.  When Groves and
Searle, who had been doing rapid sweeps over the southern hemisphere,
reported the discovery we decided to concentrate all our forces there.
Forj as somebody or other has said, the art of a people reveals its
soul, and here we might find the key to Culture X

The building was huge, even by the standards of this giant race.  Like
all the other structures on Five, it was made of metal, yet there was
nothing cold or mechanical about it.  The topmost peak climbed half way
to the remote roof of the world, and from a distance before the details
were visible the building looked not unlike a Gothic cathedral.  Misled
by this chance resemblance, some later writers have called it a temple;
but we have never found any trace of what might be called a religion
among the Jovians.

Yet there seems something appropriate about the name "The Temple of
Art," and it's stuck so thoroughly that no one can change it now.

It has been estimated that there are between ten and twenty million
individual exhibits in this single building the harvest garnered during
the whole history of a race that may have been much older than Man. And
it was here that I found a small, circular room which at first sight
seemed to be no more than the meeting place of six radiating corridors.
I was by myself (and thus, I'm afraid, disobeying the Professor's
orders) and taking what I thought would be a short-cut back to my
companions.  The dark walls were drifting silently past me as I glided
along, the light of my torch dancing over the ceiling ahead.  It was
covered with deeply cut lettering, and I was so busy looking for
familiar character groupings that for some time I paid no attention to
the chamber's floor.  Then I saw the statue and focused my beam upon
it

The moment when one first meets a great work of art has an impact that
can never again be recaptured.  In this case the subject matter made
the effect all the more overwhelming.  I was the first man ever to know
what the Jovians had looked like, for here, carved with superb skill
and authority, was one obviously modeled from life.

The slender, reptilian head was looking straight toward me, the
sightless eyes staring into mine.  Two of the hands were clasped upon
the breast as if in resignation; the other two were holding an
instrument whose purpose is still unknown.  The long, powerful tail
which, like a kangaroo's, probably balanced the rest of the body was
stretched out along the ground, adding to the impression of rest or
repose.

There was nothing human about the face or the body.  There were, for
example, no nostrils only gill-like openings in the neck.  Yet the
figure moved me profoundly; the artist had spanned the barriers of time
and culture in a way I should never have believed possible.

"Not human but humane" was the verdict Professor Forster gave.  There
were many things we could not have shared with the builders of this
world, but all that was really important we would have felt in
common.

Just as one can read emotions in the alien but familiar face of a dog
or a horse, so it seemed that I knew the feelings of the being
confronting me.

Here was wisdom and authority the calm, confident power that is shown,
for example; in Bellini's famous portrait of the Doge Loredano.  Yet
there was sadness also the sadness of a race which had made some
stupendous effort, and made it in vain.

We still do not know why this single statue is the only representation
the Jovians have ever made of themselves in their art.  One would
hardly expect to find taboos of this nature among such an advanced
race; perhaps we will know the answer when we have deciphered the
writing carved on the chamber walls.

Yet I am already certain of the statue's purpose.  It was set here to
bridge time and to greet whatever beings might one day stand in the
footsteps of its makers.  That, perhaps, is why they shaped it so much
smaller than life.  Even then they must have guessed that the future
belonged to Earth or Venus, and hence to beings whom they would have
dwarfed.  They knew that size could be a barrier as well as time.

A few minutes later I was on my way back to the ship with my
companions, eager to tell the Professor about the discovery.  He had
been reluctantly snatching some rest, though I don't believe he
averaged more than four hours sleep a day all the time we were on Five.
The golden light of Jupiter was flooding the great metal plain as we
emerged through the shell and stood beneath the stars once more.

"Hello!"  I heard Bill say over the radio, "the Prof's moved the
ship."

"Nonsense," I retorted.

"It's exactly where we left it."

Then I turned my head and saw the reason for Bill's mistake  We had
visitors.

The second ship had come down a couple of kilometers away, and as far
as my non-expert eyes could tell it might have been a duplicate of
ours.

When we hurried through the airlock, we foumd that the Professor, a
little bleary eyed was already entertaining.

To our surprise, though not exactly to our displeasure, one of the
three visitors was an extremely attractive brunette.

"This," said Professor Forster, a little wearily, "is Mr.  Randolph
Mays, the science writer.  I imagine you've heard of him.  And this is
" He turned to Mays.

"I'm afraid I didn't quite catch the names."

"My pilot, Donald Hopkins my secretary, Marianne MitchelL"

There was just the slightest pause before the word "secretary," but it
was long enough to set a little signal light flashing in my brain.  I
kept my eyebrows from going up, but I caught a glance from Bill that
said, without any need for words: If you're thinking what I'm thinking,
I'm ashamed of you.

Mays was a tale rather cadaverous man with thinning hair and an
attitude of bonhomie which one felt was only skin-deep the protective
coloration of a man who has to be friendly with too many people.

"I expect this is as big a surprise to you as it is to me," he said
with unnecessary heartiness.

"I certainly never expected to find anyone here before me; and I
certainly didn't expect to find all this."

"What brought you here?"  said Ashton, trying to sound not too
suspiciously inquisitive.

"I was just explaining that to the Professor.  Can I have that folder
please, Marianne?  Thanks."

He drew out a series of very fine astronomical paintings and passed
them round.  They showed the planets from their satellites a
common-enough subject, of course.

"You've all seen this sort of thing before," Mays continued.

"But there's a difference here.  These pictures are nearly a hundred
years old.  They were painted by an artist named Chesley Bonestell and
appeared in Life back in 1911 long before space-travel began, of
course.  Now what's happened is that Life has commissioned me to go
round the Solar System and see how well I can match these imaginative
paintings against the reality.  In the centenary issue, they'll be
published side by side with photographs of the real thing.  Good idea,
eh?"

I had to admit that it was.  But it was going to make matters rather
complicated, and I wondered what the Professor thought about it.  Then
I glanced again at Miss MitchelL standing demurely in the corner, and
decided that there would be compensations.

In any other circumstances, we would have been glad to meet another
party of explorers, but here there was the question of priority to be
considered.

Mays would certainly be hurrying back to Earth as quickly as he
could, his original mission abandoned and all his film used up here and now.
It was difficult to see how we could stop him, and not even certain
that we desired to do so.  We wanted all the publicity and support we
could get, but we would prefer to do things in our own time, after our
own fashion.

I wondered how strong the Professor was on tact, and feared the
worst.

Yet at fire,t diplomatic relations were smooth enough The Professor had
hit upon the bright idea of pairing each of us with one of Mays's team,
so that we acted simultaneously as guides and supervisors.  Doubling
the number of investigating groups also greatly increased the rate at
which we could work.  It was unsafe for anyone to operate by himself
under there conditions, and this had handicapped us a great deaL

The Professor outlined his policy to us the day after the arrival of
Mays's party.

"I hope we can get along together," he said a lithe anxiously.

"As far as I'm concerned they can go where they like and photograph
what they like, as long as they don't take anything, and as long as
they don't get back to Earth with their records before we do."

"I don't see how we can stop them," protested Ashton.

"Well, I hadn't intended to do this, but I've now registered a claim to
Five.  I radioed it to Ganymede last night, and it will be at The Hague
by now."

"But no one can claim an astronomical body for himself.  That was
settled in the case of the Moon, back in the last century."

The Professor gave a rather crooked smile.

"I'm not annexing an astronomical body, remember.  I've put in a claim
for salvage, and I've done it in the name of the World Science
Organization.  If Mays takes anything out of Five, he'll be stealing it
from them.  Tomorrow I'm going to explain the situation gently to him,
just in case he gets any bright ideas."

It certainly seemed peculiar to think of Satellite Five as salvage, and
I could imagine some pretty legal quarrels developing when we got
home.

But for the present the Professor's move should have given us some
safeguards and might discourage Mays from collecting souvenirs so we
were optimistic enough to hope.

It took rather a lot of organizing, but I managed to get paired off
with Marianne for several trips round the interior of Five.  Mays
didn't seem to mind: there was no particular reason why he should.  A
spacesuit is the most perfect chaperon ever devised, confound it

Naturally enough I took her to the art gallery at the first
opportunity, and showed her my find.  She stood looking at the statue
for a long time while I held my torch beam upon it.

"It's very wonderful," she breathed at last "Just think of it waiting
here in the darkness all those millions of years!  But you'll have to
give it a name."

"I have.  I've christened it "The Ambassador."

"Why? "

"Well, because I think it's a kind of envoy, if you like, carrying a
greeting to us.  The people who made it knew that one day someone else
was bound to come here and find this place."

"I think you're right.

"The Ambassador' yes, that was clever of you.

There's something noble about it, and something very sad, too.  Don't
you feel it?"

I could tell that Marianne was a very intelligent woman.  It was quite
remarkable the way she saw my point of view, and the interest she took
in everything I showed her.  But "The Ambassador" fascinated her most
of all, and she kept on coming back to it.

"You know, Jack," she said (I think this was sometime the next day,
when Mays had been to see it as well) "you must take that statue back
to Earth.

Think of the sensation it would cause."

I sighed.

"The Professor would like to, but it must weigh a ton.  We can't afford
the fuel.  It will have to wait for a later trip."

She looked puzzled.

"But things hardly weigh anything here," she protested.

"That's different," I explained.

"There's weight, and there's inertia two quite different things.  Now
inertia oh, never mind.  We can't take it back, anyway.  Captain Searle's told
us that, definitely."

"What a pity," said Marianne.

I forgot all about this conversation until the night before we left. We
had had a busy and exhausting day packing our equipment (a good deaL of
course, we left behind for future use.) All our photographic material
had been used up.  As Charlie Ashton remarked, if we met a live Jovian
now we'd be unable to record the fact.  I think we were all wanting a
breathing space, an opportunity to relax and sort out our impressions
and to recover from our head-on collision with an alien culture.

Mays's ship, the "Henry Luce," was also nearly ready for take-off.  We
would leave at the same time, an arrangement which suited the Professor
admirably as he did not trust Mays alone on Five.

Everything had been settled when, while checking through our records, I
suddenly found that six rolls of exposed film were missing.  They were
photographs of a complete set of transcriptions in the Temple of Art.

After a certain amount of thought I recalled that they had been
entrusted to my charge, and I had put them very carefully on a ledge in
the Temple, intending to collect them later.

It was a long time before take-off, the Professor and Ashton were
canceling some arrears of sleep, and there seemed no reason why I
should not slip back to collect the missing material.  I knew there
would be a row if it was left behind, and as I remembered exactly where
it was I need be gone only thirty minutes.  So I went, explaining my
mission to Bill just in case of accidents.

The floodlight was no longer working, of course, and the darkness
inside the shell of Five was somewhat oppressive.

But I left a portable beacon at the entrance, and dropped freely until
my hand torch told me it was time to break the fall.  Ten minutes
later, with a sigh of relief, I gathered up the missing films.

It was a natural-enough thing to pay my last respects to The
Ambassador: it might be years before I saw him again, and that calmly
enigmatic figure had begun to exercise an extraordinary fascination
over me.

Unfortunately, that fascination had not been confined to me alone.  For
the chamber was empty and the statue gone.

I suppose I could have crept back and said nothing, thus avoiding
awkward explanations.  But I was too furious to think of discretion,
and as soon as I returned we woke the Professor and told him what had
happened.

He sat on his bunk rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, then uttered a
few harsh words about Mr.  Mays and his companions which it would do no
good at all to repeat here.

"What I don't understand," said Searle "is how they got the thing out
if they have, in fact.  We should have spotted it."

"There are plenty of hiding places, and they could have waited until
there was no one around before they took it up through the hull.  It
must have been quite a job, even under this gravity," remarked Eric
Fulton, in tones of admiration.

"There's no time for postmortems said the Professor savagely.

"We've got five hours to think of something.

They can't take off before then, because we're only just past
opposition with Ganymede.  That's correct, isn't it Kingsley?"

Searle nodded agreement.

"Yes We must move round to the other side of Jupiter before we can
enter a transfer orbit at least, a reasonably economical one."

"Good.  That gives us a breathing space.  Well, has anyone any ideas?
"

Looking back on the whole thing now, it often seems to me that our
subsequent behavior was, shall I say, a little peculiar and slightly
uncivilized.  It was not the sort of thing we could have imagined
ourselves doing a few months before.  But we were annoyed and
overwrought, and our remoteness from all other human beings somehow
made everything seem different.  Since there were no other laws here,
we had to make our own.... "Can't we do something to stop them from
taking off?

Could we sabotage their rockets, for instance?"  asked BILL

Searle didn't like this idea at all.

"We musm't do anything drastic," he said.

"Besides, Don Hopkins is a good friend of mine.  He'd never forgive me
if I damaged his ship.  There'd be the danger, too, that we might do
something that couldn't be repaired."

"Then pinch their fuel," said Groves laconically.

"Of course!  They're probably all asleep, there's no light in the
cabin.

An we've got to do is to connect up and pump."

"A very nice idea," I pointed out "but we're two kilometers apart.  How
much pipeline have we got?  Is it as
much as a hundred meters?"

The others ignored this interruption as though it was beneath contempt
and went on making their plans.  Five minutes later the technicians had
settled everything: we only had to climb into our spacesuits and do the
work.

I never thought, when I joined the Professor's expedition, that I
should end up like an African porter in one of those old adventure
stories, carrying a load on my head.  Especially when that load was a
sixth of a spaceship (being so short, Professor Forster wasn't able to
provide very effective help).  Now that its fuel tanks were half empty,
the weight of the ship in this gravity was about two hundred kilograms.
We squeezed beneath, heaved, and up she went very slowly, of course,
because her inertia was still unchanged.  Then we started marching.

It took us quite a while to make the journey, and it wasn't quite as
easy as we'd thought it would be.  But presently the two ships were
lying side by side, and nobody had noticed us.  Everyone in the "Henry
Luce" was fast asleep, as they had every reason to expect us to be.

Though I was still rather short of breath, I found a certain schoolboy
amusement in the whole adventure as Searle and Fulton drew the
refueling pipeline out of on; airlock and quietly coupled up to the
other ship.

"The beauty of this plan," explained Groves to me as we stood watching,
"is that they can't do anything to stop us, unless they come outside
and uncouple our line.  We can drain them dry in five minutes, and it
will take them half that time to wake up and get into their
spacesuits."

A sudden horrid fear smote me.

"Suppose they turned on their rockets and tried to get away?"

"Then we'd both be smashed up.  No, they'll just have to come outside
and see what's going on.  Ah, there go the pumps."

The pipeline had stiffened like a fire-hose under pressure, and I knew
that the fuel was pouring into our tanks.  Any moment now the lights
would go on in the "Henry Luce" and her startled occupants would come
scuttling out.

It was something of an anticlimax when they didn't.  They must have
been sleeping very soundly not to have felt the vibration from the
pumps, but when it was all over nothing had happened and we just stood
round looking rather foolish Searle and Fulton carefully uncoupled the
pipeline and put it back into the airlock.

"Well?"  we asked the Professor.

He thought things over for a minute.

"Let's get back into the ship," he said.

When we had climbed out of our suits and were gathered together in the
control room, or as far in as we could get, the Professor sat down at
the radio and punched out the "Emergency" signal.  Our sleeping
neighbors would be awake in a couple of seconds as their automatic
receiver sounded the alarm.

The TV screen glimmered into life.

There, looking rather frightened, was Randolph Mays.

"Hello, Forster," he snapped.

"What's the trouble?"

"Nothing wrong here," replied the Professor in his best deadpan manner,
"but you've lost something important.

Look at your fuel gauges."

The screen emptied, and for a moment there was a confused mumbling and
shouting from the speaker.  Then Mays was back, annoyance and alarm
competing for possession of his features.

"What's going on?"  he demanded angrily.

"Do you know anything about this?"

The Prof.  let him sizzle for a moment before he replied.

"I think you'd better come across and talk things over," he said.

"You won't have far to walk."

Mays glared back at him uncertainly, then retorted "You bet I will!"
The screen went blank.

"He'll have to climb down now!"  said Bill gleefully.

"There's nothing else he can do!"

"It's not so simple as you think," warned Fulton.

"If he really wanted to be awkward, he could just sit tight and radio
Ganymede for a tanker."

"What good would that do him?  It would waste days and cost a
fortune."

"Yes, but he'd still have the statue, if he wanted it that badly.  And
he'd get his money back when he sued us."

The airlock light flashed on and Mays stumped into the room.  He was in
a surprisingly conciliatory mood; on the way over, he must have had
second thoughts.

"Well, well," he said affably.

"What's all this nonsense in aid of?"

"You know perfectly well," the Professor retorted coldly.

"I made it quite clear that nothing was to be taken off Five.  You've
been stealing property that doesn't belong to you."

"Now, let's be reasonable.  Who does it belong to?  You can't claim
everything on this planet as your personal property."

"This is not a planet it's a ship and the laws of salvage operate."

"Frankly, that's a very debatable point.  Don't you think you should
wait until you get a ruling from the lawyers?"

The Professor was being icily polite, but I could see that the strain
was terrific and an explosion might occur at any moment.

"Listen, Mr.  Mays," he said with ominous calm.

"What you've taken is the most important single find we've made here. I
will make allowances for the fact that you don't appreciate what you've
done, and don't understand the viewpoint of an archaeologist like
myself.  Return that statue, and we'll pump your fuel back and say no
more."

Mays rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"I really don't see why you should make such a fuss about one statue,
when you consider all the stuff that's still here."

It was then that the Professor made one of his rare mistakes.

"You talk like a man who's stolen the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and
argues that nobody will miss it because of all the other paintings.

This statue's unique in a way that no terrestrial work of art can ever
be.

That's why I'm determined to get it back."

You should never, when you're bargaining, make it obvious that you want
something really badly.  I saw the greedy glint in Mays's eye and said
to myself "Uh-huh!  He's going to be tough."  And I remembered Fulton's
remark about calling Ganymede for a tanker.

"Give me half an hour to think it over," said Mays, turning to the
airlock.

"Very well," replied the Professor stiffly.

"Half an hour no more."

I must give Mays credit for brains.

Within five minutes we saw his communications aerial start stewing
round until it locked on Ganymede.

Naturally we tried to listen in, but he had a scrambler.  These
newspaper men must trust each other.

The reply came back a few minutes later; that was scrambled, too. While
we were waiting for the next development, we had another council of
war.  The Professor was now entering the stubborn, stop-at-nothing
stage.

He realized he'd miscalculated and that had made him fighting mad.

I think Mays must have been a little apprehensive, because he had
reinforcements when he returned.

Donald Hopkins, his pilot, came with him, looking rather
uncomfortable.

"I've been able to fix things up, Professor," he said smugly.

"It will take me a little longer, but I can get back without your help
if I have to.  Still, I must admit that it will save a good deal of
time and money if we can come to an agreement.  I'll tell you what.
Give me back my fuel and I'll return the other er souvenirs I've
collected.  But I insist on keeping Mona Lisa, even if it means I won't
get back to Ganymede until the middle of next week."

The Professor then uttered a number of what are usually called
deep-space oaths, though I can assure you they're much the same as any
other oaths.  That seemed to relieve his feelings a lot and he became
fiendishly friendly.

"My dear Mr.  Mays," he said, "You're an unmitigated crook, and
accordingly I've no compunction left in dealing with you.  I'm prepared
to use force, knowing that the law will justify me."

Mays looked slightly alarmed, though not unduly so.  We had moved to
strategic positions round the door.

"Please don't be so melodramatic," he said haughtily.

"This is the twenty-first century, not the Wild West back in 1800."

"1880," said Bill, who is a stickler for accuracy.

"I must ask you," the Professor continued, "to consider yourself under
detention while we decide what is to be done.  Mr.  Searle, take him to
Cabin B."

Mays sidled along the wall with a nervous laugh.

"Really, Professor, this is too childish!  You can't detain me against
my will."  He glanced for support at the Captain of the "Henry Luce."

Donald Hopkins dusted an imaginary speck of flu fl from his uniform.

"I refuse," he remarked for the benefit of all concerned, "to get
involved in vulgar brawls."

Mays gave him a venomous look and capitulated with bad grace.  We saw
that he had a good supply of reading matter, and locked him in.

When he was out of the way, the Professor turned to Hopkins, who was
looking enviously at our fuel gauges.

"Can I take it, Captain," he said politely, "that you don't wish to get
mixed up in any of your employer's dirty business?"

"I'm neutral.  My job is to fly the ship here and take her home.  You
can fight this out among yourselves."

"Thank you.  I think we understand each other perfectly.
Perhaps it would be best if you returned to your ship and
explained the situation.  We'll be calling you in a few minutes."

Captain Hopkins made his way languidly to the door.  As he was about to
leave he turned to Searle.

"By the way, Kingsley," he drawled.

"Have you thought of torture?  Do call me if you get round to it I've
some jolly interesting ideas."  Then he was gone, leaving us with our
hostage.

I think the Professor had hoped he could do a direct exchange.  If so,
he had not bargained on Marianne's stubborness.

"It serves Randolph right," she said.

"But I don't really see that it makes any difference.  He'll be just as
comfortable in your ship as in ours, and you can't do anything to him.
Let me know when you're fed up with having him around."

It seemed a complete impasse.  We had been too clever by half, and it
had got us exactly nowhere.  We'd captured Mays, but he wasn't any use
to us.

The Professor was standing with his back to us, staring morosely out of
the window.  Seemingly balanced on the horizon, the immense bulk of
Jupiter nearly filled the sky.

"We've got to convince her that we really do mean business," he said.

Then he turned abruptly to me.

"Do you think she's actually fond of this blackguard?"

"Er I shouldn't be surprised.  Yes, I really believe so."

The Professor looked very thoughtful.  Then he said to Searle, "Come
into my room.  I want to talk something over."

They were gone quite a while.  When they returned, they both had an
indefinable air of gleeful anticipation, and the Professor was carrying
a piece of paper covered with figures.  He went to the radio, and
called the "Henry Luce."

"Hello," said Marianne, replying so promptly that she'd obviously been
waiting for us.

"Have you decided to call it off?  I'm getting so bored."

The Professor looked at her gravely.

"Miss Mitchell," he replied.

"It's apparent that you have not been taking us seriously.  I'm
therefore arranging a somewhat drastic little demonstration for your
benefit.  I'm going to place your employer in a position from which
he'll be only too anxious for you to retrieve him as quickly as
possible."

"Indeed?"  replied Marianne noncommittally though I thought I could
detect a trace of apprehension in her voice.

"I don't suppose," continued the Professor smoothly, "that you know
anything about celestial mechanics.

No?  Too bad, but your pilot will confirm everything I tell you.  Won't
you, Hopkins? "

"Go ahead," came a painstakingly neutral voice from the background.

"Then listen carefully, Miss Mitchell.  I want to remind you of our
curious indeed our precarious position on this satellite.  You've only
got to look out of the window to see how close to Jupiter we are, and I
need hardly remind you that Jupiter has by far the most intense
gravitational field of all the planets.  You follow me?"

"Yes," replied Marianne, no longer quite so self-possessed.

"Go on."

"Very well.  This little world of ours goes round Jupiter in almost
exactly twelve hours.  Now there's a well-known theorem stating that if
a body falls from an orbit to the center of attraction, it will take
point one seven seven of a period to make the drop.  In other words,
anything falling from here to Jupiter would reach the center of the
planet in about two hours seven minutes.  I'm sure Captain Hopkins can
confirm this."

There was a long pause.  Then we heard Hopkins say, "well, of course I
can't confirm the exact figures, but they're probably correct.  It
would be something like that, anyway."

"Good," continued the Professor.

"Now I'm sure you realize," he went on with a hearty chuckle, "that a
fall to the center of the planet is a very theoretical case.  If
anything really was dropped from here, it would reach the upper
atmosphere of Jupiter in a considerably shorter time.  I hope I'm not
boring you?"

"No," said Marianne, rather faintly.

"I'm so glad to hear it.  Anyway, Captain Searle has worked out the
actual time for me, and it'd one hour thirty five minutes with a few
minutes either way.  We can't guarantee complete accuracy, ha, ha!

"Now, it has doubtless not escaped your notice that this satellite of
ours has an extremely weak gravitational field.  It's escape velocity
is only about ten meters a second, and anything thrown away from it at
that speed would never come back.

Correct, Mr.  Hopkins?"

"Perfectly correct."

"Then, if I may come to the point, we propose to take Mr.  Mays for a
walk until he's immediately under Jupiter, remove the reaction pistols
from his suit, and ah launch him forth.  We will be prepared to
retrieve him with our ship as soon as you've handed over the property
you've stolen.  After what I've told you, I'm sure you'll appreciate
that time will be rather vital.  An hour and thirty five minutes is
remarkably short, isn't it?"

"Professor!"  I gasped, "You can't possibly do this!"

"Shut up!  " he barked.

"Well, Miss Mitchell, what about it? "

Marianne was staring at him with mingled horror and disbelief.

"You're simply bluffing!"  she cried.

"I

don't believe you'd do anything of the kind!  Your crew won't let you!
"

The Professor sighed.

"Too bad," he said.

"Captain Searle Mr.

Groves will you take the prisoner and proceed as instructed."

"Aye-aye, sir," replied Searle with great solemnity.

Mays looked frightened but stubborn.

"What are you going to do now?"  he said, as his suit was handed back
to him.

Searle upholstered his reaction pistols.

"Just climb in," he said.

"We're going for a walk."

I realized then what the Professor hoped to do.  The whole thing was a
colossal bluff: of course he wouldn't really have Mays thrown into Jupiter;

and in any case Searle and Groves wouldn't do it.  Yet surely Marianne
would see through the bluff, and then we'd be left looking mighty
foolish.

Mays couldn't run away; without his reaction pistols he was quite
helpless.  Grasping his arms and towing him along like a captive
balloon, his escorts set off toward the horizon and towards Jupiter.

I could see, looking across the space to the other ship, that Marianne
was staring out through the observation windows at the departing
trio.

Professor Forster noticed it too.

"I hope you're convinced, Miss Mitchell, that my men aren't carrying
along an empty spacesuit.  Might I suggest that you follow the
proceedings with a telescope?  They'll be over the horizon in a minute,
but you'll be able to see Mr.  Mays when he starts toer ascend."

There was a stubborn silence from the loudspeaker.  The period of
suspense seemed to last for a very long time.

Was Marianne waiting to see how far the Professor really would go?

By this time I had got hold of a pair of binoculars and was sweeping
the sky beyond the ridiculously close horizon.

Suddenly I saw it a tiny flare of light against the vast yellow
back-cloth of Jupiter.  I focused quickly, and could just make out the
three figures rising into space.  As I watched, they separated: two of
them decelerated with their pistols and started to fall back toward
Five.  The other went on ascending helplessly toward the ominous bulk
of Jupiter.

I turned on the Professor in horror and disbelief.

"They've really done it!"  I cried.

"I

thought you were only bluffing!"

"So did Miss Mitchell, I've no doubt," said the Professor calmly, for
the benefit of the listening microphone.

"I hope I don't need to impress upon you the urgency of the situation.
As I've remarked once or twice before, the time of fall from our orbit
to Jupiter's surface is ninety-five minutes.  But, of course, if one
waited even half that time, it would be much too late...."

HE let that sink in.  There was no reply from the other ship.

"And now," he continued, "I'm going to switch off our receiver so we
can't have any more arguments.  We'll wait until you've unloaded that
statue and the other items Mr.

Mays was careless enough to mention before we'll talk to you again.
Good-by."

It was a very uncomfortable ten minutes.

I'd lost track of Mays, and was seriously wondering if we'd better
overpower the Professor and go after him before we had a murder on our
hands.  But the people who could fly the ship were the ones who had
actually carried out the crime.  I didn't know what to think.

Then the airlock of the "Henry Luce" slowly opened.  A couple of
space-suited figures emerged, 'coating the cause of all the trouble
between them.

"Unconditional surrender," murmured the Professor with a sigh of
satisfaction.

"Get it into our ship," he called over the radio, "I'll open up the
airlock for you."

He seemed in no hurry at all.  I kept looking anxiously at the clock;
fifteen minutes had already gone by.  Presently there was a clanking
and banging in the airlock, the inner door opened, and Captain Hopkins
entered.  He was followed by Marianne, who only needed a bloodstained
axe to make her look like Clytaemnestra.  I did my best to avoid her
eye, but the Professor seemed to be quite without shame.  He walked
into the airlock, checked that his property was back, and emerged
rubbing his hands.

"Well, that's that," he said cheerfully.

"Now let's sit down and have a drink to forget all this unpleasantness,
shall we? "

I pointed indignantly at the clock.

"Have you gone crazy!"  I yelled.

"He's already halfway to Jupiter! "

Professor Forster looked at me disapprovingly.

"Impatience," he said, "is a common failing in the young.  I see no
cause at all for hasty action."

Marianne spoke for the first time; she now looked really scared.

"But you promised," she whispered.

The Professor suddenly capitulated.

He had had his little joke, and didn't want to prolong the agony.

"I can tell you at once, Miss Mitchell- and you too, Jack that Mays is
in no more danger than we are.  We can go and collect him whenever we
like."

"Do you mean that you lied to me"

"Certainly not.  Everything I told you was perfectly true.  You simply
jumped to the wrong conclusions.  When I said that a body would take
ninety-five minutes to fall from here to Jupiter, I omitted not, I must
confess, accidentally a rather important phrase.  I should have added
"a body at rest with respect to Jupiter."  Your friend Mr.

Mays was sharing the orbital speed of this satellite, and he's still
got it.

A little matter of twenty-six kilometers a second, Miss Mitchell.

"Oh yes, we threw him completely off Five and toward Jupiter.  But the
velocity we gave him then was trivial.

He's still moving in practically the same orbit as before.  The most he
can do I've got Captain Searle to work out the figures is to drift
about a hundred kilometers inward.  And in one revolution twelve hours-
he'll be right back where he started, without us bothering to do
anything at all."

There was a long, long silence.

Marianne's face was a study in frustration, relief, and annoyance at
having been fooled.  Then she turned on Captain Hopkins.

"You must have known all the time!

Why didn't you tell me?"

Hopkins gave her a wounded expression.

"You didn't ask me," he said.

We hauled Mays down about an hour later.  He was only twenty kilometers
up, and we located him quickly enough by the flashing light on his
suit.  His radio had been disconnected, for a reason that hadn't
occurred to me.  He was intelligent enough to realize that he was in no
danger, and if his set had been working he could have called his ship
and exposed our bluff.  That is, if he wanted to.  Personally, I think
I'd have been glad enough to call the whole thing off even if I had
known that I was perfectly safe.  It must have been awfully lonely up
there.  To my great surprise, Mays wasn't as mad as I'd expected.
Perhaps he was too relieved to be back in our snug little cabin when we
drifted up to him on the merest fizzle of rockets and yanked him in.

Or perhaps he felt that he'd been worsted in fair fight and didn't bear
any grudge.

I really think it was the latter.

There isn't much more to tell, except that we did play one other trick
on him before we left Five.  He had a good deal more fuel in his tanks
than he really needed, now that his payload was substantially reduced.
By keeping the excess ourselves, we were able to carry The Ambassador
back to Ganymede after all.  Oh, yes, the Professor gave him a cheque
for the fuel we'd borrowed.  Everything was perfectly legal.

There's one amusing sequel I must tell you, though The day after the
new gallery was opened at the British Museum I went along to see The
Ambassador, partly to discover if his impact was still as great in
these changed surroundings.  (For the record, it wasn't though it's
still considerable and Bloomsbury will never be quite the same to me
again.) A huge crowd was milling around the gallery, and there in the
middle of it was Mays and Marianne.

It ended up with us having a very pleasant lunch to' ether in Holborn.
I'll say this about Mays he doesn't bear any grudges.  But I'm still
rather sore about Marianne.

And, frankly, I can't imagine what she sees in him.

The Possessed

JiND NOW 115 SUN AHEAD WAS SO CLOSE THAT THE HURRIcane of radiation
was forcing the Swarm back into the dark night of space.  Soon it would
be able to come no closer; the gales of light on which it rode from
star to star could not be faced so near their source.  Unless it
encountered a planet very soon, and could fall down into the peace and
safety of its shadow, this sun must be abandoned as had so many
before.

Six cold outer worlds had already been searched and discarded.  Either
they were frozen beyond all hope of organic life, or else they harbored
entities of types that were useless to the Swarm.  If it was to
survive, it must find hosts not too unlike those it had left on its
doomed and distant home.  Millions of years ago the Swarm had begun its
journey, swept star ward by the fires of its own esploding sun.

Yet even now the memory of its lost birthplace was still sharp and
clear, an ache that would never die.

There was a planet ahead, swinging its cone of shadow through the
flame-swept night.  The senses that the Swarm had developed upon its
long journey reached out toward the approaching world, reached out and
found it good.

The merciless buffeting of radiation ceased as the black disc of the
planet eclipsed the sun.  Falling freely under gravity, the Swarm
dropped swiftly until it hit the outer fringe of the atmosphere.  The
first time it had made planet fall it had almost met its doom, but now
it contracted its tenuous substance with the unthinking skill of long
practice, until it formed a tiny, close-knit sphere.  Slowly its
velocity slackened, until at last it was floating motionless between
earth and sky.

For many years it rode the winds of the stratosphere 161

from Pole to Pole, or let the soundless fusillades of dawn blast it
westward from the rising sun.

Everywhere it found life, but nowhere intelligence.  There were things
that crawled and flew and leaped, but there were no things that talked
or built.

Ten million years hence there might be creatures here with minds that
the Swarm could possess and guide for its own purposes; there was no
sign of them now.  It could not guess which of the countless life-forms
on this planet would be the heir to the future, and without such a host
it was helpless a mere pattern of electric charges, a matrix of order
and self-awareness in a universe of chaos.

By its own resources the Swarm had no control over matter, yet once it
had lodged in the mind of a sentient race there was nothing that lay
beyond its powers.

It was not the first time, and it would not be the last, that the
planet had been surveyed by a visitant from space though never by one
in such peculiar and urgent need.  The Swarm was faced with a
tormenting dilemma It could begin its weary travels once more, hoping
that ultimately it might find the conditions it sought, or it could
wait here on this world, biding its time until a race had arisen which
would fit its purpose.

It moved like mist through the shadows, letting the vagrant winds take
it where they willed.  The clumsy, ill formed reptiles of this young
world never saw its passing, but it observed them, recording,
analyzing, trying to extrapolate into the future.  There was so little
to choose between all these creatures; not one showed even the first
faint glimmerings of conscious mind.  Yet if it left this world in
search of another, it might roam the universe in vain until the end of
time.

At last it made its decision.  By its very nature, it could choose both
alternatives.  The greater part of the Swarm would continue its travels
among the stars, but a portion of it would remain on this world, like a
seed planted in the hope of future harvest.

It began to spin upon its axis, its tenuous body flattening into a
disc.

Now it was wavering at the frontiers of visibility it was a pale ghost,
a faint will-of-the-wisp that suddenly fissured into two unequal
fragments.

The spinning slowly died away: the Swarm had become two, each an entity
with all the memories of the original, and all its desires and needs.

There was a last exchange of thoughts between parent and child who were
also identical twins.  If all went well with them both, they would meet
again in the far future here at this valley in the mountains.  The one
who was staying would return to this point at regular intervals down
the ages; the one who continued the search would send back an emissary
if ever a better world was found.  And then they would be united again,
no longer homeless exiles vainly wandering among the indifferent
stars.

The light of dawn was spilling over the raw, new mountains when the
parent swarm rose up to meet the sun.  At the edge of the atmosphere
the gales of radiation caught it and swept it unresisting out beyond
the planets, to start again upon the endless search.

The one that was left began its almost equally hopeless task.  It
needed an animal that was not so rare that disease or accident could
make it extinct, nor so tiny that it could never acquire any power over
the physical world.  And it must breed rapidly, so that its evolution
could be directed and controlled as swiftly as possible.

The search was long and the choice difficult, but at last the Swarm
selected its host.  Like rain sinking into thirsty soiL it entered the
bodies of certain small lizards and began to direct their destiny.

It was an immense task, even for a being which could never know
death.

Generation after generation of the lizards was swept into the past
before there came the slightest improvement in the race.  And always,
at the appointed time, the Swarm returned to its rendezvous among the
mountains.

Always it returned in vain: there was no messenger from the stars,
bringing news of better fortune elsewhere.

The centuries lengthened into millennia, the millennia into eons.  By
the standards of geological time, the lizards were now changing
rapidly.

Presently they were lizards no more, but warm-blooded, fur-covered
creatures that brought forth their young alive.  They were still small
and feeble, and their minds were rudimentary, but they contained the
seeds of future greatness.

Yet not only the living creatures were altering as the ages slowly
passed.  Continents were being rent asunder, mountains being worn down
by the weight of the unwearying rain.

Through all these changes, the Swarm kept to its purpose; and always,
at the appointed times, it went to the meeting place that had been
chosen so long ago, waited patiently for a while, and came away.
Perhaps the parent swarm was still searching or perhaps it was a hard
and terrible thought to grasp some unknown fate had overtaken it and it
had gone the way of the race it had once ruled.  There was nothing to
do but to wait and see if the stubborn life-stuff of this planet could
be forced along the path to intelligence.

And so the eons passed.... Somewhere in the labyrinth of evolution the
Swarm made its fatal mistake and took the wrong turning.  A hundred
million years had gone since it came to Earth, and it was very weary.

It could not die, but it could degenerate.  The memories of its ancient
home and of its destiny were fading: its intelligence was waning even
while its hosts climbed the long slope that would lead to
self-awareness.

By a cosmic irony, in giving the impetus which would one day bring
intelligence to this world, the Swarm had exhausted itself.  It had
reached the last stage of parasitism; no longer could it exist apart
from its hosts.

Never again could it ride free above the world, driven by wind and sun.
To make the pilgrimage to the ancient rendezvous, it must travel slowly
and painfully in a thousand little bodies.

Yet it continued the immemorial custom, driven on by the desire for
reunion which burned all the more fiercely now that it knew the
bitterness of failure.

Only if the parent swarm returned and reabsorbed it could it ever know
new life and vigor.

The glaciers came and went; by a miracle the little beasts that now
housed the waning alien intelligence escaped the clutching fingers of
the ice.  The oceans overwhelmed
the land, and still the race survived.  It even multiplied, but
it could do no more.  This world would never be its heritage, for far
away in the heart of another continent a certain monkey had come down
from the trees and was looking at the stars with the first glimmerings
of curiosity.

The mind of the Swarm was dispersing, scattering among a million tiny
bodies, no longer able to unite and assert its will.  It had lost all
cohesion; its memories were fading.  In a million years, at most, they
would all be gone.

Only one thing remained the blind urge which still, at intervals which
by some strange aberration were becoming ever shorter, drove it to seek
its consummation in a valley that long ago had ceased to exist.

Quietly riding the lane of moonlight, the pleasure steamer passed the
island with its winking beacon and entered the fjord.  It was a calm
and lovely night, with Venus sinking in the west out beyond the Faroes,
and the lights of the harbor reflected with scarcely a tremor in the
still waters far ahead.

Nils and Christina were utterly content.  Standing side by side against
the boat rail, their fingers locked together, they watched the wooded
slopes drift silently by.  The tall trees were motionless in the
moonlight, their leaves unruffled by even the merest breath of wind,
their slender trunks rising whitely from pools of shadow.  The whole
world was asleep; only the moving ship dared to break the spell that
had bewitched the night.

Then suddenly, Christina gave a little gasp and Nils felt her fingers
tighten convulsively on his arm.  He followed her gaze: she was staring out
across the water, looking toward the silent sentinels of the forest.

"What is it, darling?"  he asked anxiously.

"Look!"  she replied, in a whisper Nils could scarcely hear.

"There under the pines!"

Nils stared, and as he did so the beauty of the night ebbed slowly away
and ancestral terrors came crawling back from exile.  For beneath the
trees the land was alive: a dappled brown tide was moving down the
slopes of the hill and merging into the dark waters.  Here was an open
patch on which the moonlight fell unbroken by shadow.  It was changing
even as he watched: the surface of the land seemed to be rippling
downward like a slow waterfall seeking union with the sea.

And then Nils laughed and the world was sane once more.  Christina
looked at him, puzzled but reassured.

"Don't you remember?"  he chuckled.

"We read all about it in the paper this morning.  They do this every
few years, and always at night.  It's been going on for days."

He was teasing her, sweeping away the tension of the last few-
minutes.

Christina looked back at him, and a slow smile lit up her face.

"Of course!"  she said.

"How stupid of me!"  Then she turned once more toward the land and her
expression became sad, for she was very tender-hearted.

"Poor little things!"  she sighed.

"I

wonder why they do it?"

Nils shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

"No one knows," he answered.

"It's just one of those mysteries.  I shouldn't think about it if it
worries you.  Look we'll soon be in harbor!"

They turned toward the beckoning lights where their future lay, and
Christina glanced back only once toward the tragic, mindless tide that
was still flowing beneath the moon.

Obeying an urge whose meaning they had never known, the doomed legions
of the lemmings were finding oblivion beneath the waves.

BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE

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