Short Science Fiction Collection 049 - Various

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by Bascom Jones Jr. This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org blind spot by Bascom Jones Jr. Johnny Stark, director of the Department of Interplanetary relations for Mars Settlement 1 re read the final paragraph of the note, which he had found on his desk upon returning from lunch earlier in the day. His eye flicked rapidly over the moistly smeared Martian scrawl, ignoring the bitterness directed at him in the first paragraphs. He was vaguely troubled by the last sentences, but he hadn't been able to pin the feeling down. Our civilization predates that of Earth's by millions of years. We are an advanced, peaceful race. Yet since Earth's first rocket landed here 13 years ago, we have been looked upon as freaks and contemptuously called Bugmen behind our backs. This is our planet. We gave of our far advanced knowledge and science freely so that Earth would be a better place. We asked nothing in return, but we were rewarded by having forced upon us foreign ideas of government, religion, and behavior. Our protests have been silenced by an armed police and punitive system we have never needed before. Someday you will awaken to this injustice. On that day in your life, you have my sympathy and pity. Stark knew that the settlement's Investigations Lab could readily determine the identity of the Martian who had written the note, but he hesitated to send it over. Under the new system, such troublemakers were banished to the slave labour details of the precious earth mines to the north. Crumpling the note in sudden decision, Stark dropped it into the office incendiary tube. The morning visy report had shown that there were more than 17,000 workers at the mines, and only five had been earthlings. Let the armed police system find the Martian through their own channels. It wasn't his job. A glance at the solar clock on the far wall reminded him that there was still time for one more interview before the last bell, so he impatiently signalled his secretary to send in the waiting couple. Ordinarily he liked his work, and time meant little to him. He had jumped from interpreter to director in the ten years since the department had been created, but this day was different. Stark was to announce his engagement at the Chief's monthly dinner party that evening, and time had seemed to drag since his lunch with Carroll. When the door opened, he rose and nodded to the plump, freckle faced girl who entered. The girl topped 5ft by 1 or 2 inches, but she was no taller than the Martian man who followed her at the prescribed four feet. After the girl had seated herself, Stark and the Martian sat down. Stark opened the folder which his secretary had placed on his desk earlier. Your names are Ruth and Ralph Gilroy, and you want permission to move into Housing Perimeter D. It was a formality, since the information was in the folder. When the girl nodded, Stark placed a small check mark in the space beside her name. Then he turned to the Martian. A large single red eye set deep in the Martian's smooth green forehead above the two brown ones blinked twice before he answered. He spoke deliberately. As is required of all Martians under the new system, I have taken the name of one of the early earthlings to write and pronounce. The large red eye blinked again. My wife would like to move into Housing Perimeter D by regulation. I respect her wish. Stark placed a check mark by the Martian's name. He wiped the smudge of ink off his hand and said, you both know, of course, that Perimeter D is reserved for couples who have intermarried and are about to have offspring. The girl and the Martian nodded, and the girl passed Stark a medical report. Stark looked over the report and then made a notation. On small pink slip. He said, this permit certifies that you are eligible to move from Perimeter E to Housing Perimeter D. It also certifies that your husband has no record as a troublemaker. Stark looked at the girl. You understand that you may visit your friends in Perimeter E, but by law they will not be allowed to enter Perimeter D to visit you. And of course, the new law clearly states that neither of you may visit Earthlings in housing perimeter A, B, or C. The girl looked down at her hands. Her voice was almost inaudible. My husband and I are familiar with the advantages and disadvantages listed under the section pertaining to intermarriage in the new law, Mr. Stark. Thank you. Stark rose as they left. For a brief moment he thought he had detected a sense of rebellion in their attitude, but that was not possible. The new law provided equality for all, and his department had been created to iron out relations between the two races, accepting complaints originated by troublemakers for the purposes of weakening the new system. In such cases, investigations had stepped in and the Martian or Earthing troublemaker had been sent to the rare earth mines. The reddish light filtering through the quartz and lead wall of his office showed that it was almost time for the last bell. On the street below, shoppers were streaming out of the stores on their way to the various housing perimeters. Earthlings were climbing into their speedy little jet cars for the short trip to the recently modernised inner perimeters. Martians were waiting for the slower autobuses. The traffic problem had been solved under the new system by restricting the use of Martian built jet cars to persons living in the inner perimeters. As Stark watched, a black jet car impatiently hurtled out of the line of traffic, bowled through a crowd of Martians waiting for an autobus, and skidded to a stop at the curb in front of the building. A tall girl got out. The red evening glow reflecting from her golden hair made her breathing globe almost amber. Male Martians and Earthlings alike turned to stare in appreciation as she pushed her way through the crowd to the building's compressor lock. Carol was that kind of girl. Almost. At the exact moment that Carol opened the door into Stark's office, the yellow visi screen of the vocal box upon Stark's desk flashed on brilliantly, and the Chief's booming voice filled the office. The light from the screen picked up the highlights on the furniture and gave a sallow greenish cast to Stark's features. Carol stepped back into the doorway to stay out of range of the two way unit. Stark, the automatic tuner on the box corrected to bring the Chief's image into wireshark focus. Yes, sir. About the dinner tonight. Just checking to make sure you're planning to be there. We want a full turnout. An inspection team has come from Earth, and we have two visiting dignitaries from Venus. Stark nodded and waited for the Chief to say something else, but the visi screen blanked out. Carol said. That was dad, wasn't it? Stark felt very depressed suddenly. Haven't you told him yet? No. He's been tied up with those inspectors all afternoon and you know how dad is, Johnny. There's a right and wrong time to tell him things. Right now he's only interested in hearing about Earth. But we're supposed to announce our engagement tonight at the dinner. He shook his head. We can't go on forever with just a few stolen moments here and there, eating an occasional lunch or third meal together in little out of the way places. Carol laughed, the youthful swell of her breasts against the soft spun glass material of her blouse. Don't worry so, Johnny. I'm a big girl now. This is my 18th birthday. Dad's bark is much worse than his bite. I'll tell him about us on the way home. She moved closer to him until he could feel the warmth of her body. He could see the warm damp indentation where her breathing globe had rested against her shoulders and chest. She asked teasingly, what did you get me for my birthday, Johnny? Something real nice. What did you want? Johnny asked gently, and suddenly she wasn't teasing anymore. She put her arms around him. Dan and my brother would say I'm crazy, but all I want, Johnny, is you. Just you. You know that. Stark had picked out her birthday present, but he wanted it to be a surprise for that night. He said, I already saw one of your presents. A black jet car. How did you know that? I saw you drive up in it a few minutes ago. Carol giggled. Dad gave it to me. Did you see me plough through that crowd waiting for the autobus? Did your brother send you anything? She nodded. Three new outfits from Earth. They were on the same liner that brought the inspection team to the settlement this morning. Oh yes, and the captain of the liner brought me this. She showed him the tiny pin she wore attached to her collar. The pin itself was a carefully wrought but cruel caricature of an awkward bug like creature. A small ruby set in the centre of its face served as its eye. Stark frowned. Carol, you shouldn't be wearing that. He reached up and unpinned it. That's the sort of thing our department is fighting. But the captain said he was the latest rage back on Earth. They're even making toys like it. I'm sure they're not designed toto poke fun at anyone. Stark started to say something but the last bell interrupted him. He said, if you're going to take your father home and tell him about us before the dinner, you'd Better hurry. I'll come early. Carol kissed him and said goodbye. She left the pin on Stark's desk and was smiling at him as she closed the door. After waiting until the first rush of workers had gone and the building was quiet, Stark caught the elevator down. The overhead lights in the compression lock were reflected in the twin rows of breathing globes. The green tinted ones had to be used by Martians in the building, and the clear ones were used by Earthmen when they were outside in the Martian atmosphere. Stark stopped in at a little open shop down one of the many side streets. The sign said closed, but he rang the bell until a little dried up Martian appeared. The storekeeper handed him a small box. Stark opened it to examine the ring, Carol's birthday present. The single large diamond, set in a thin precious metal band, dated back to an all but forgotten custom practised on Earth. Stark thought the engagement ring would please Carol, though standing in the compressor lock at the Chief's home later, Stark rubbed the diamond against the sleeve of his tunic. He fumbled with his breathing globe and then pushed the button that activated the door. The teleguard beyond the opening door scanned him rapidly as he stepped forward. A red light above the teleguard flashed on and the door began to close again. Stark threw all his strength against the door and squeezed through into the house. Throughout the house, Stark could hear an alarm bell. A taped voice activated by the teleguard said, do not enter. Do not enter. He found Carol and the Chief in the library, alone, nearly purple with rage. The Chief drew himself up to his full six feet. The Chief bellowed stark. Are you crazy? The growing feeling of sickness spread through Stark. Who do you think you are? The Chief yelled. Get back to your office and consider yourself under arrest as a troublemaker. Give you people an inch and you try and walk away with everything. Why, I wouldn't let you touch my daughter if you were the last living being in the universe. Carol didn't look up. She stood through it all silently, without moving. Stark knew now where his blind spot had been. He turned and left them. Back at his office, he waited for the police. Stark stared down at his reflection in the polished top of the desk. A yellow, moist film of sweat covered his face. The red eye set in his forehead blinked. But the pain visible just behind the surface of that eye was not over Carroll or himself. The pain was for what he was seeing for the first time now. End of Blind Spot by Bascom Jones Jr. Recording by Patrick Eaton Kenilworth, Warwickshire, United Kingdom.

Dead Ringer by Lester Del Rey. This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Martin Rato Dead Ringer by Lester Del Rey Dane Phillips slouched in the window seat, watching the morning crowds on their way to work and carefully avoiding any attempt to read Jordan's old face as the editor skimmed through the notes. He had learned to make his tall, bony body seem all loose jointed relaxation no matter what he felt, but the oversized hands in his pockets were clenched so tightly that the nails were cutting into his palms. Every tick of the old fashioned clock sent the throb racing through his brain. Every rustle of the pages seemed to release a fresh shot of adrenaline into his bloodstream. This time his mind was pleading. It has to be right this time. Jordan finished his reading and shoved the folder back. He reached for his pipe, sighed, and then nodded slowly. A nice job of researching Phillips, and it might make a good feature for the Sunday section at that. It took a second to realize that the words meant acceptance, and for Phillips had prepared himself too thoroughly against another failure. Now he felt the tauten muscles release so quickly that he would have fallen if he hadn't been braced against the seat. He groped in his mind, hunting for words and finding none. There was only the hot, sudden flame of unbelieving hope and then an almost blinding exultation. Jordan didn't seem to notice his silence. The editor made a neat pile of the notes, nodding again. Sure, I like it. We've been short of shock stuff lately, and the readers go for it when we can get a fresh angle. But naturally you'd have to leave out all that nonsense on Blanding. Hell, the man's just buried, and his relatives and friends. But that's the proof. Philip stared at the editor, trying to penetrate through the haze of hope that had somehow grown chilled and unreal. His thoughts were abruptly disorganized and out of control. Only the urgency remained. It's the key evidence, and we've got to move fast. I don't know how long it takes, but even one more day may be too late. Jordan nearly dropped the pipe from his lips as he jerked upright to peer sharply at the younger man. Are you crazy? Do you seriously expect me to get an order to exhume him now? What would it get us other than lawsuits, even if we could get the order without cause, which we can't? Then the pipe did fall as he gaped open mouthed. My God, you believe all that stuff. You expected us to publish it straight? No, dane said thickly. The hope was gone now, as if it had never existed, leaving a numb emptiness where nothing mattered. No, I guess I didn't really expect anything. But I believe the facts. Why shouldn't I? He reached for the papers with hands he could hardly control and began stuffing them back into the folder. All the careful documentation, the fingerprints smudged perhaps in some cases, but still evidence enough for anyone but a fool. Phillips, jordan said questioningly to himself, and then his voice was taking on a new edge. Phillips, wait a minute. I've got it now. Dane Phillips, not Arthur. Two years on the trip, then you turned up on the register in Seattle. Philip Dean or some such name there. Yeah, dane agreed. There was no use in denying anything now. Yeah. Dane Arthur Phillips. So I suppose I'm through here. Jordan nodded again, and there was a faint look of fear in his expression. You can pick up your pay on the way out. And make it quick before I change my mind and call the boys in white. It could have been worse. It had been worse before, and there was enough in the pay envelope to buy what he needed. A flash camera, a little folding shovel for one of the surplus houses, and a bottle of good Scotch. It would be dark enough for him to taxi out to Oak Haven Cemetery, where Blanding had been buried. It wouldn't change the minds of the fools, of course. Even if he could drag back what he might find without the change being completed, they wouldn't accept the evidence. He'd been crazy to think anything could change their minds, and they called him a fanatic. If the facts he'd dug up in ten years of hunting wouldn't convince them, nothing would. And yet he had to see for himself before it was too late. He picked a cheap hotel at random and checked in under an assumed name. He couldn't go back to his room. While there was a chance that Jordan still might try to turn him in, there wouldn't be time for Sylvia's detectives to bother him. Probably. But there was the ever present danger that one of the aliens might intercept the message. He shivered. He'd been risking that for ten years, yet the likelihood was still a horror to him. The uncertainty made it harder to take than any human devised torture could be. There was no way of guessing what an alien might do to anyone who discovered that all men were not human, that some were zombies. There was the classic syllogism all men are mortal. I am a man, therefore I am mortal. But not Blanding or Corporal Harding. It was Harding's death that had started it all. During the fighting on Guadalcanal, a grenade had come flying into the foxhole where Dane and Harding had felt reasonably safe. The concussion had knocked Dane out, possibly saving his life. When the enemy thought he was dead, he'd come to in the daylight to see Harding lying there, mangled and twisted with his throat torn. There was blood on Dane's uniform, obviously spattered from the dead man. It hadn't been a mistake or delusion. Harding had been dead. It had taken Dane two days of crawling and hiding to get back to his group. Too exhausted to report Harding's death, he'd slept for 20 hours, and when he awoke, Harding had been standing beside him with a whole throat and a fresh uniform, grinning and kidding him for running off and leaving a stunned friend behind. It was no ringer but Harding himself, complete to the smallest personal memories and personality traits. The pressures of war probably saved Dane's sanity while he learned to face the facts. All men are mortal. Harding is not mortal. Therefore Harding is not a man. Nor was Harding alone. Dane found enough evidence to know there were others. The Tribune morgue yielded even more data. A man had faced seven firing squads and walked away. Another survived over a dozen attacks by professional killers. Fingerprints turned up mysteriously copied from those of men long dead. Some of the aliens seemed to heal almost instantly. Others took days. Some operated completely alone. Some seemed to have joined with others, but they were legion. Lack of a clearer pattern of attack made him consider the possibility of human mutation. But such tissue was too wildly different, and the invasion had begun long before atomics or X rays. He gave up trying to understand their alien motivations. It was enough that they existed in secret, slowly growing in numbers while mankind was unaware of them. When his proof was complete and irrefutable, he took it to his editor to be fired politely but coldly. Other editors were less polite, but he went on doggedly, trying and failing. What else could he do? Somehow he had to find the few people who could recognize facts and warn them. The aliens would get him, of course, when the story broke. But a warrant. Humanity could cope with them. You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Then he met Sylvia by accident after losing his fifth job. A girl who had inherited a fortune big enough to spread his message and paid ads across the country. They were married before he found she was hard headed about her money. She demanded a full explanation for every cent beyond his allowance. In the end she got the explanation, and while he was trying to cash the check, she gave him she visited Dr. Buell to come back with a squad of quiet, refined strong arm boys who made sure Dane reached Buell's rest home safely. Hydrotherapy. Buell as the kindly, firm father. Image analysis. Hypnosis that stripped every secret from him, including his worst childhood nightmare. His father had committed a violent, bloody suicide after one of the many quarrels with Dane's mother. Dane had found the body two nights after the funeral. He had dreamed of his father's face. Horror filled at the window. He knew now that it was a normal nightmare caused by being forced to look at the face in the coffin. But the shock had lasted for years. It had bothered him again after his discovery of the aliens, until a thorough check had proved without doubt that his father had been fully human with a human, if tempestuous, childhood behind him. Dr. Buell was delighted. You see, Dane, you know it was a nightmare. But you don't really believe it even now. Your father was an alien monster to you. No adult is quite human to a child. And that literal mind itself, your subconscious saw him after he died. So there are alien monsters who return from death. Then you come to from a concussion. Harding is sprawled out unconscious, covered with blood. Probably your blood, since you say he wasn't wounded later. But after seeing your father, you can't associate blood with yourself. You see it as a horrible wound on Harding. When he turns out to be alive, you're still in partial shock with your subconscious dominant. And that has the answer already. There are monsters who come back from the dead. An exaggerated reaction, but nothing really abnormal. We'll have you out of here in no time. No non directive psychiatry for Buell. The man beamed paternally, chuckling as he added what he must have considered the clincher. Anyhow. Even zombies can't stand fire, Dane. So you can stop worrying about Harding. I checked up on him. He was burned to a crisp in a hotel fire two months ago. It was logical enough to shake Dane's faith until he came across Milo Blanding's picture in a magazine article on Society in St. Louis. According to the item, Milo was a cousin of the Blanding's whose father had vanished in Chile as a young man and who had just rejoined the family. The picture was of Harding. An alien could have gotten away by simply committing suicide and being carried from the rest home. But Dane had to do it the hard way. Watching his chance and using commando tactics on a guard who had come to accept him as a harmless nut. In St. Louis, he'd used the purloined letter technique to hide going Back to newspaper work and using almost his real name. It had seemed to work too, but he'd been less lucky about hiding Blanding. The man had been in Europe on some kind of tour until his return only this last week. Dane had seen him just once then, but long enough to be sure it was Hardy before he died again. This time it was in a drunken auto accident that seemed to be none of his fault, but left his body a mangled wreck. It was almost dark when Dane dismissed the taxi of the false address a mile from the entrance to the cemetery. He watched it turn back down the road, then picked up the valise with his camera and folding shovel. He shivered as he moved reluctantly ahead. War had proved that he would never be a brave man, and the old fears of darkness and graveyards were still strong in him. But he had to know what the coffin contained now, if it wasn't already too late. It represented the missing link in his picture of the aliens. What happened to them during the period of regrowth? Did they revert to their natural form? Were they at all conscious while the body reshaped itself into wholeness? Dane had puzzled over it night after night with no answer. Nor could he figure how they could escape from the grave. Perhaps a man could force his way out of some of the coffins he had inspected. The soil would still be soft and loose in the grave, and a lot of the coffins and the boxes around them were strong in appearance. Only a determined creature that could exist without much air for long enough might make it. But there were other caskets that couldn't be cracked, at least not without the aid of outside help. What happened when a creature that could survive even the poison of embalming fluids and the draining of all the blood woke up in such a coffin? Dain's mind skittered from it as always, and then came back to it reluctantly. There were still accounts of corpses turned up with the nails and hair grown long in the grave. Could normal tissues stand the current tricks of the morticians? To have life enough for such growth? The possibility was absurd. Those cases had to be aliens, ones who hadn't escaped even. They must die eventually. In such a case, after weeks and months, it took time for hair to grow, and there were stories of corpses that had apparently fought and twisted in their coffins. Still, what was it like for an alien then, going slowly mad while it waited for true death? How long did madness take? He shivered again, but went steadily on while the cemetery fence appeared in the distance. He'd seen Blanding's coffin and the big, solid metal casket around it that couldn't be cracked by any amount of effort and strength. He was sure the creature was still there, unless it had a confederate, but that wouldn't matter. An empty coffin would also be proof. Dane avoided the main gate, unsure about whether there would be a watchman or not. A hundred feet away there was a tree near the ornamental spikes of the iron fence. He threw his bag over and began shinnying up. It was difficult, but he made it, finally dropping onto the soft grass beyond. There was a trace of the moon at times through the clouds, but it hadn't betrayed him, and there had been no alarm wire along the top of the fence. He moved from shadow to shadow, his hair prickling along the base of his neck. Locating the right grave in the darkness was harder than he had expected, even with an occasional brief use of the small flashlight.

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But at last he found the marker that was serving until the regular monument could arrive. His hands were sweating so much that it was hard to use the small shovel, but the digging of foxholes had given him experience, and the ground was still soft from the gravedigger's work. He stopped once as the moon came out briefly again. A Sound in the darkness above left him hovering and sick in the hole, but it must have been only some animal. He uncovered the top of the casket with hands already blistering. Then. Then he cursed as he realized the catchers were near the bottom. Making his work even harder. He reached them at last, fumbling them open. The metal top of the casket seemed to be a dome of solid lead, and he had no room to maneuver. But it began swinging up reluctantly, until he could feel the polished wood of the coffin. Dane reached for the lid with hands he could barely control. Fear was thick in his throat now. What could an alien do to a man who discovered it? Would it be Harding there, or some monstrous thing still changing? How long did it take a revived monster to go mad when it found no way to escape? He gripped the shovel in one hand, working at the lid with the other. Now, abruptly, his nerves steadied as they had done whenever he was in real battle. He swung the lid up and began groping for the camera. His hand went into the silk lined interior and found nothing. He was too late. Either Harding had gotten out somehow before the final ceremony, or a confederate had already been there. The coffin was empty. There were no warning sounds this time, only hands that slipped under his arms and across his mouth, lifting him easily from the grave. A match flared briefly, and he was looking into the face of Buell's chief strong armed man. Hello, Mr. Phillips. Promise to be quiet and we'll release you. Okay? At Dane's sickened nod, he gestured to the others. Let him go. And Tom, better get that filled in. We don't want any trouble from this. Surprise came from the grave a moment later. Hey, Burke. There's no corpse here. Burke's words killed any hopes Dane had at once.

So what?

Ever hear a cremation? Lots of people use a regular coffin for the ashes. He wasn't cremated, Dane told him. You can check up on that. Then he knew it was useless. Sure, Mr. Phillips. We'll do that. The tone was one reserved for humoring madmen. Burke turned, gesturing. Better come along, Mr. Phillips. Your wife and Dr. Buell are waiting at the hotel. Dane went along quietly, sitting in the rubble of his hopes while the big car purred through the morning and on down Lindell Boulevard toward the hotel. Once he shivered and Burke dug out hot brandied coffee. They had thought of everything, including a coat to cover his dirt soiled clothes as they took him up the elevator to where Buell and Sylvia were waiting for him. She'd been crying, obviously, but there were no tears or recriminations when she came over to kiss him. Funny she must still love him. As he learnt. To his surprise, he loved her under different circumstances. So you found me? He asked needlessly of Buell. He was operating on purely automatic habits now, the reaction from the night and his failure numbing him emotionally. Jordan got in touch with you. Buell smiled back at him. We knew where you were all along, Dane, but as long as you acted normal, we hoped it might be better than the home. Too bad we couldn't stop you before you got all mixed up in this. So I suppose I'm committed to your booby hatch. Again Buell nodded, refusing to resent the term. I'm afraid so, Dane. For a while, anyhow. You'll find your clothes in that room. Why don't you clean up a bit? Take a hot bath. Maybe you'll feel better. Dane went in, surprised when no guards followed him, but they had thought of everything. What looked like a screen on the window had been recently installed, and it was strong enough to prevent his escape. Blessed are the poor, for they shall be poorly guarded. He was turning on the shower when he heard the sound of voices coming through the door. He left the water running and came back to listen. Sylvia was speaking. Seems so logical, so completely rational. It makes him a dangerous person, buell answered, and there was no false warmth in his voice. Now, Sylvia, you've got to admit it to yourself. All the reason and analysis in the world won't convince him he's wrong. This time. We'll have to use shock treatment. Burn over those memories, fade them out. It's the only possible course. There was a pause and then a sigh. I suppose you're right. Dane didn't wait to hear more. He drew back while his mind fought to accept the hideous reality. Shock treatment. The works. If what he knew of psychiatry was correct, enough of it to erase his memories, a part of himself. It wasn't therapy Buell was considering. It couldn't be. It was the answer of an alien that had a human in its hands. One who knew too much. He might have guessed. What better place for an alien than in the guise of a psychiatrist? Where else was there to chance for all the refined modern torture needed to burn out a man's mind? Dane had spent ten years in fear of being discovered by them, and now Buell had him. Sylvia? He couldn't be sure. Probably she was human. It wouldn't make any difference. There was nothing he could do through her either. She was part of the game, where she really thought him Mad Dane tried the window again, but it was hopeless. There'd be no escape this time. Buell couldn't risk it. The shock treatment, or whatever Buell would use under the name of shock treatment would begin at once. It would be easy to slip, to use an overdose of something to make sure Dane was killed. Or there were ways of making sure it didn't matter. They could leave him alive but take his mind away in alien hands. Human psychiatry could do worse than all the medieval torture chambers. The sickness grew in his stomach as he considered the worst that could happen. Death he could accept if he had to. He could even face the chance of torture by itself, as he had accepted the danger while trying to have his facts published. But to have his mind taken from him a step at a time, to watch his personality, his ego, rotted away under him and to know that he would wind up as a drooling idiot. He made his decision almost as quickly as he had come to realize what Buell must be. There was a razor in the medicine chest. It was a safety razor, of course, but. But the blade was sharp and it would be big enough. There was no time for careful planning. One of the guards might come in at any moment if they thought he was taking too long. Some fear came back as he leaned over the wash basin, staring at his throat, fingering the suddenly murderous blade. But the pain wouldn't last long. A lot less than they would be under shock treatment. And less pain. He'd read enough to feel sure of that. Twice he braced himself and failed. At the last second his mind flashed out in wild schemes, fighting against what it knew had to be done. The world still had to be warned. If he could escape somehow, if he could still find a way. He couldn't quit, no matter how impossible things looked. But he knew better. There was nothing one man could do against the aliens in this world. They'd taken over. He'd never had a chance. Man had been chained already by carefully developed ridicule against superstition, by carefully indoctrinated gobbledygook about insanity, persecution complexes and all the rest. For a second Dane even considered the possibility that he was insane. But he knew it was only a blind effort to cling to life. There had been no insanity in him when he groped for evidence in the coffin and found it empty. He leaned over the wash basin, his eyes focussed on his throat, and his hand came down and around, carrying the razor blade through a lethal semicircle. Dane Phillips watched fear give place to sickness on his face as the pain lanced through him and the blood spurted. He watched horror creep up to replace the sickness while the bleeding stopped and the gash began closing. By the time he recognized his expression as the same one he'd seen on his father's face at the window so long ago, the wound was completely healed. End of dead ringer by lester del rey.

Desire no More by Algis Budras this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Recording by Jason Mills Desire no More by Aldous Budras Desire no more than to thy lot may fall.

Howard Isherwood

Chaucer.

Narrator/Various Characters

The small young man looked at his father and shook his head. But you've got to learn a trade, his father said, exasperated. I can't afford to send you to college, you know that. I've got a trade, he answered. His father smiled thinly.

Howard Isherwood

What?

Narrator/Various Characters

He asked patronizingly. I'm a rocket pilot, the boy said, his thin jaw stretching the skin of his cheeks. His father laughed in the way the boy had learned to anticipate and hate. Yeah, he said. He leaned back in his chair and laughed so hard that the Sunday paper slipped off his wide lap and fell to the floor with an unnoticed stiff rustle. A rocket pilot. His father's derision hooted through the quiet parlour. A ro. Oh, no. A rocket pilot. The boy stared silently at the convulsed figure in the chair. His lips fell into a set wide bar and the corners of his jaws bulged with the tension in their muscles. Suddenly he turned on his heel and stalked out of the parlour, through the hall, out the front door to the porch. He stopped there, hesitating a little. Marty. His father's shout followed him out of the parlour. It seemed to act like a hand between the shoulder blades because the boy almost ran as he got down the porch stairs. What is it, Howard? Marty's mother asked in a worried voice as she came in from the kitchen, her damp hands rubbing themselves dry against the sides of her house dress. Crazy kid, howard Isherwood muttered. He stared at the figure of his son as the boy reached the end of the walk and turned off into the street. Come back here. He shouted. A rocket pilot. He cursed under his breath. What's the kid been reading, claiming he's a rocket pilot? Margaret Isherwood's brow furrowed into a faint, bewildered frown. But isn't he a little young? I know they're teaching some very odd things in high schools these days. But it seems to me oh, for Pete's sake, Marge, there aren't even any rockets yet. Come back here, you idiot. Howard Isherwood was standing on his porch, his clenched fists trembling at the end of his stiffly held arms. Are you sure, Howard? His wife asked faintly. Yes, I'm sure. But where's he going? Stop that. Get off that bus. You hear me, Marty? Howard, stop acting like a child and talk to me. Where is that boy going? Howard Isherwood, Stocky, red faced, 47 and defeated, turned away from the retreating bus and looked at his wife. I don't know, he told her bitterly between rushes of air into his jerkily heaving lungs. Maybe the moon, he told her sarcastically. Martin Isherwood, rocket pilot 10024ft 11 inches had come of age at 17. The small man looked at his faculty advisor. No, he said. I am not interested in working for a degree. But the faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. Look, Ish, you've got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you've followed for nine semesters. Nothing but math and engineering. You've taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up? I'm signed up for Astronomy 101, Isherwood pointed out. The faculty advisor snorted a snap. Course a breather after you've studied the same stuff in celestial navigation? What's the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts? Ish? Misha would shook his head. Uh, not interested. No time. And that astronomy course isn't a breather. Different slant from C Nav. They won't be talking about stars as checkpoints, but as things in themselves. Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it. The advisor missed it. He was too engrossed in his argument. Still a snap. What's the difference how you look at a star? Ishua almost winced. Call it a hobby, he said. He looked down at his watch. Come on, Dave, you're not going to convince me. You haven't convinced me any of the other times either. So you might as well give up, don't you think? I've got a half hour before I go on the job. Let's go get some beer. The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. Crazy, he muttered. But it was a hot day and he was as thirsty as the next man. The boy was air conditioned. The Adviser shivered, half grinned. And softly though I go bare, take ye no care. I am nothing, a cold I stuff my skin so full within of jolly good ale. And old.

Huh?

Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar. The Adviser lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. It's a poem. About 400 years old, as a matter of fact. Oh, don't you give a damn? The advisor asked with some peevishness. Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. Sorry, Dave, but no, it's not my racket. The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass. Strictly a specialist, huh? Ish nodded. Call it that.

Howard Isherwood

But what?

Narrator/Various Characters

For Pete's sake, what is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done? Ish took a swallow of his beer. Well now, if I was a poet, I'd say it was the finest thing that man has ever done. The advisor's lips twisted in derision. That's pretty fanatical, isn't it? Uh huh. Ish waved to the bartender for refills. The Navion took a boiling thermal under its right wing and bucked upward, suddenly tilting at the same time so that the pretty brunette girl in the other half of the side by side was thrown against him. Ish laughed, a sound that came out of his throat as turbulently as that sudden gust of heated air had shot up out of the Everglades and corrected with a tilt of the wheel. Relax, Nan, he said, his words colored by the lingering laughter. It's only air. Nasty old air. The girl patted her short hair back into place. I wish you wouldn't fly this low, she said, half frightened. Low? Call this low? Ish teased. Here, let's drop it a little and you'll really get an idea of how fast we're going. He nudged the wheel forward and the Navion dipped its nose in a shallow dive, flattening out 30ft above the mangrove. The swamp howled with the chug of the dancing pistons and the claw of the propeller at the protesting air, and from the cockpit the Everglades resolved into a dirty green blur that rocketed backward into the slipstream. Morty Ish chuckled again. He couldn't have held the ship down much longer anyway. He tugged back on the wheel, suddenly targeting a cumulus bank with his spinner. His lips peeled back from his teeth and his jaw set. The Navion went up at the clouds, her engine turning over as fast as it could, her wings cushioned on the rising thrust of another thermal, and suddenly it was as if there were no girl beside him to be teased and no air to rock the wings. There were no wings. His face lost all expression. Faint beads of sweat broke out above his eyes and under his nose. Up. He grunted through his clenched teeth, his fists locked on the wheel. Up. The Navion broke through the cloud, kept going up. If he listened closely in just the right way, he could almost hear Marty the rumble of a louder, prouder engine that the earth had ever known. He sighed, the breath whispering through his parting teeth, and the aircraft levelled off as he pushed at the wheel with suddenly lax hands still half lost. He turned and looked at the white faced girl. Scare you? He asked gently. She nodded. Her fingers were trembling on his forearm. Me too, he said. Lost my head.

Howard Isherwood

Sorry.

Narrator/Various Characters

Look, he told the girl, you got any idea what it costs to maintain a racing plane? Everything I own is tied up in the Foo. My ground crew, my trailer, and that scrummy old Ryan that should have been salvaged 10 years ago. I can't get married. Suppose I crack the Foo next week. You're dead broke, a widow, and with a funeral to pay for. The only smart thing to do is wait a while. Nan's eyes clouded and her lips trembled. That's what I've been trying to say. Why do you have to win the Vandenberg cup next week? Why can't you sell the Foo and go into some kind of business? You're a trained pilot. He had been standing in front of her with his body unconsciously tense from the strain of trying to make her understand. Now he relaxed more. He slumped and something began to die in his face, and the first faint lines crept in to show that after it had died it would not return to life but would fossilize, leaving his features in the almost unreadable mask that the newspapers would come to know. I'm a good bit more than a trained pilot, he said quietly. The Foo is a means to an end. After I win the Vandenberg Cup, I can walk into any plant in the States, Douglas, North American, Boeing, any of them, and pick up the chief test pilot's job for the asking. A few of them have as good as said so. After that his voice had regained some of its former animation from this new source. Now he broke off and shrugged. I've told you all this before. The girl reached up as if the physical touch could bring him back to her and put her fingers around his wrist. Darling, she said, if it's that rocket pilot business again. Somehow his wrist was out of her encircling fingers. It's always that rocket pilot business, he said, mimicking her voice. Damn it, I'm the only trained rocket pilot in the world. I weigh a hundred and fifteen pounds, I'm five feet tall, and I know more navigation and math than anybody in the Air Force or Navy have. I can use words like Brenschluss and mass ratio without running over to a copy of Colliers and I. He stopped himself, half smiled and shrugged again. I guess I was kidding myself. After the cup there'll be the test job and after that there'll be the rockets. You would have had to wait a long time. All she could think of to say was, but darling, there aren't any man carrying rockets. That's not my fault, he said and walked away from her. A week later he took his stripped down F110 across the last line with a scream like that of a hawk that brings its prey safely to its nest. He brought the Mark seven out of her orbit after two days of running rings around the spinning earth and the world loved him. He climbed out of the crackling, pinging ship, bearded and dirty, with oil on his face and in his hair, with food stains all over his whipcord, red eyed and huskily quiet as he said his few words into the network microphones, and he was not satisfied. There was no peace in his eyes and his hands moved even more sharply in their expressive gestures as he gave an impromptu report to the technicians who were walking back to the personnel bunker with him. Nan could see that four years ago he had been different. Four years ago, if she had only known the right words, he wouldn't be so intent now on throwing himself away to the sky. She was a woman scorned. She had to lie to herself. She broke out of the press section and ran over to him. Morty. She brushed past a technician. He looked at her with faint surprise on his face. Well, Nan, he mumbled, but he did not put his hand over her own where it touched his shoulder. I'm sorry, Marty, she said in a rush. I didn't understand. I couldn't see how much it all meant. Her face was flushed and she spoke as rapidly as she could, not noticing that Ish had already gestured away the guards she was afraid would interrupt her. But it's all right now. You got your rockets, you've done it, you trained yourself for it, and now it's over. You've flown your rocket. He looked up at her and shook his head in quiet pity. One of the shocked technicians was trying to pull her away and Ish made no move to stop him. Suddenly he was tired. There was something in him that was trying to break out against his will, and his reaction was that of a child whose candy is being taken away from him after only one bite. Rocket. He shouted into her terrified face. Rocket. Call that pile of tin a rocket. He pointed at the weary Mark seven with a trembling arm. Who cares about the bloody machines? If I thought roller skating would get me there, I would have gone to work in a rink when I was 17. It's getting there that counts. Who gives a good goddamn how it's done or what with. And he stood there shaking like a leaf, outraged, while the guards came and got her. Sit down, Ish, the flight surgeon said. They always begin that way, Isherwood thought. The standard medical opening. Sit down? What for? Did somebody really believe that anything you might hear would make him faint? He smiled with as much expression as he ever did and chose a comfortable chair, rolling the white cylinder of a cigarette between his fingers. He glanced at his watch. 14 hours, 36 minutes and 4 days to go. How's it? The FS asked. Ish grinned and shrugged. All right. But he didn't usually grin. The realization disquieted him a little. Think you'll make it deliberately rather than automatically? He fell back into his usual response pattern. Don't know. That's what I'm being paired to find out.

Huh?

Huh? The FS tapped the eraser of his pencil against his teeth. Look, you want to talk to a

Spinquest Announcer

man for a while?

Narrator/Various Characters

What man? It didn't really matter. He had a feeling that anything he said or did now would have a bearing somehow on the trip. If they wanted him to do something for them, he was bloody well going to do it. Fellow named Mackenzie, big gun in the head, thumping racket. The flight surgeon was trying to be as casual as he could. Air Force insisted on it, as a matter of fact, he said. Can't really blame them. After all, it's their beast. Don't want any whole heads denting it up on them, huh? Ish lit the cigarette and flipped his lighter shut with the snap of the lid. Sure. Bring him on. The FS smiled. Good. He's. He's in the next room. Okay to ask him in right now?

Howard Isherwood

Sure.

Narrator/Various Characters

Something flickered in Isherwood's eyes. Amusement at the flight surgeon's discomfort was part of it. Worry was some of the rest. Mackenzie didn't seem to be taking any notes or paying any special attention to the answers Ish was giving to his casual questions. But the Questions fell into a pattern that was far from casual, and Ish could see the small button mark of a portable tape recorder nestling under the man's lapel. Been working your own way for the last 17 years, haven't you? Mackenzie seemed to mumble in a perfectly clear voice. Ish nodded.

How's that?

The corners of Isherwood's mouth twitched, and he said yes, for the recorder's benefit. Odd jobs, first of all. Something like that. Anything I could get. The first few months after I was halfway set up, I stuck to garages and repair shops. Hit at the airports around Miami mostly, wasn't it?

Uh huh.

Took some of your pay in flying lessons, right? Mackenzie's face passed no judgments. He simply hunched in his chair, seemingly dwarfed by the shoulders of his perfectly tailored suit, his stubby fingers twiddling a Phi Beta Kappa key. He was a spare man, only a step or two away from emaciation. Occasionally he pushed a tired strand of washed out hair away from his forehead. Ish answered him truthfully, without more than ordinary reservations. This was the man who could ground him. He was dangerous. Red letter dangerous because of it. No family? Ish shrugged. Not that I know of. Cut out at 17. My father was making good money. He had a pension plan, insurance policies. No need to worry about them. Is. Ish knew, the normal reaction a statement like that should have brought. Mackenzie's face did not go into a blank of repression, but it still passed no judgment. How's things between you and the opposite sex? About normal. No wife. No steady girl. Not a very good idea in my racket. Mackenzie grunted. Suddenly he sat bolt upright in his chair and swung toward Ish. His lean arm shot out and his index finger was aimed between Isherwood's eyes. You can't go. Ish was on his feet, his fists clenched, the blood throbbing in his temple veins.

Howard Isherwood

What?

Narrator/Various Characters

He roared. Mackenzie seemed to collapse in his chair. The brief, commanding burst was over and his face was apologetic. Sorry, he said. He seemed genuinely abashed. Shotgun therapy works best sometimes. You can go. All right. I just wanted to get a fast check on your reactions and drives. Ish could feel the anger that still ran through him, anger and more fear than he wanted to admit. I'm due at a briefing, he said tautly. You through with me? Mackenzie nodded, still embarrassed. Sorry. Ish ignored the man's obvious feelings. He stopped at the door to send a parting stroke at the thing that had frightened him. Big gun in the psychiatry racket, huh? Well, your professional lingo's slipping, Doc.

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They did put some learning in my head at college, you know. Therapy. Hell, testing maybe. But you sure didn't do anything to help me. I don't know, mackenzie said softly. I wish I did. Ish slammed the door behind him. He stood in the corridor, jamming a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He threw a glance at his watch. 12 hours, 22 minutes and four days to go. Damn, he was late for the briefing. Odd. That fool psychiatrist hadn't seemed to take up that much of his time. He shrugged. What difference did he make? As he strode down the hall, he lost his momentary puzzlement under the flood of realization that nothing could stop him now, that the last hurdle was beaten. He was going, he was going. And if there were faint echoes of Marty ringing in the dark background of his mind, they only served to push him faster, as they always had. Nothing but death could stop him now. Ish looked up bitterly at the receptionist. No, he said. But everybody fills out an application, she protested. No, I've got a job, he said. As he had been saying for the last half hour. The receptionist sighed. If you'll only read the literature I've given you, you'll understand that all your previous commitments have been cancelled. Look, honey, I've seen company poop sheets before. Now let's cut this nonsense. I've got to get back. But nobody goes back. Goddammit. I don't know what kind of place this is, but. He stopped at the receptionist's wince and looked around, his mouth open. The reception desk was solid enough. There were in and out and hold baskets on the desk, and the receptionist seemed to see nothing extraordinary about it. But the room. A big room, he realised, seemed to fade out at the edges rather than stop at walls. The lighting too. Lets see your back. He rapped out, his voice high. She sighed in exasperation. If you'd read the literature. She swiveled her chair slowly. No wings, he said. Of course not, she snapped. She brushed her hair away from her forehead without his telling her to. No horns either. Streamlined, huh? He said bitterly. It's a little different for everybody, she said with unexpected gentleness. It would have to be, wouldn't it? Yeah, I guess so, he admitted slowly. Then he lost his momentary awe and his posture grew tense again. He glanced down at his wrist. Six hours, 47 minutes and no days to go. Who do I see? She stared at him, bewildered at the sudden change in his voice. See about getting out of here. Come on, come on. He barked, snapping his fingers impatiently. I haven't got much time. She smiled sweetly. Oh, but you do. Can it. Who's your section boss? Get him down here on the double. Come on. His face was streaming with perspiration, but his voice was firm with the purpose that drove him. Her lips closed into an angry line and she jabbed a finger at a desk button. I'll call the personnel manager. Thanks, he said sarcastically, and waited impatiently. Odd the way the receptionist looked a little like Nan. The personnel manager wore a perfectly tailored suit. He strolled across the lobby floor toward Ish, his hand outstretched. Martin Isherwood. He exclaimed enthusiastically. I'm very glad to meet you. I'll bet, ish said dryly, giving the personnel manager's hand a short shake. I've got other ideas. I want out. That's all he's been saying for the past 45 minutes. Sir? The receptionist said from behind her desk. The personnel manager frowned. Um, yes. Well, that's not unprecedented, but hardly usual, he added. Ish found himself liking the man. He had a job to do, and after the preliminary formality of the greeting had been passed, he was ready to buckle down to it. Oh, he shucks. The receptionist wasn't such a bad girl either. He smiled at her. Sorry I lost my head, he said. She smiled back. It happens. He took time to give her one more smile and a half wink and swung back to the personnel manager. Now let's get this thing straightened out. I've got he stopped to look at his watch. Six hours and a few minutes. They're fueling the beast right now. Do you know how much red tape you'd have to cut? Ish shook his head. I don't want to sound nasty, but that's your problem. The personnel manager hesitated. Look, you feel you've got a job unfinished, or anyway, that's the way you'd put it. But let's face it, that's not really what's galling you. It's not really the job, is it? It's just that you think you've been cheated out of what you devoted your life to. Ish could feel his jaw muscles bunching. Don't put words in my mouth, he snapped. Just get me back and we'll split hairs about it when I get round this way again. Suddenly he found himself pleading. All I need is a week, he said. It'll be a rough week. No picnic, no pleasures of the flesh, no smoking, no liquor. I certainly won't be breaking any laws. One week. Get there, put her around for two days and back again. Then you can do anything you want to. As long as it doesn't look like the trip's responsible, of course. The personnel manager hesitated. Suppose, he began, but Ish interrupted him. Look, they need it down there. They've got to have a target, someplace to go. We're built for it. People have to have. But what am I telling you for? If you don't know, who does? The personnel manager smiled. I was about to say something. Ish stopped, abashed. Sorry. He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it? Suppose I showed you something first. Then you could decide whether you want to stay. After all. How long's it going to take? Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something. Not long, the personnel manager said. He half turned and pointed up at the earth hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing. Earth, the personnel manager said. Somehow Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night. He looked around him. The moon was silent, quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere a metal glint against the planet above. If it were only large enough to be seen, was the station and the ship for which the moon had waited. Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice. The ages had torn, but it was the way he had thought of it nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the Navian at that day over the Everglades. It's not the same, he said. The personnel manager sighed. Don't you see? Ish said. It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets. The personnel manager sighed again. There wouldn't be, you know, taking off from the station, landing here. Vacuum. Ish shook his head. There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear. And maybe. Maybe there would be. There'd be people back on Earth who'd hear it. All right, the personnel manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little. Ish. Hey, Ish, wake up, will you? There was a hand on his shoulder. Will you get a load of this guy? The voice said to someone else. An hour to go and he's sleeping like the dead. Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly begin to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold. Come on, Ish, the crew chief said. All right, he mumbled. Okay, I'm up. He sat on the edge of his bunk, looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs. Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit. The moon opened its face to him from where he lay strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble. He looked at it emotionlessly and began to brake for a landing. He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder. He brought the twin bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it for the TV pickups and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all dead, faced, his eyes empty. It was easy, he said over a worldwide network and pushed the press representatives out of his way. Mackenzie was waiting for him in the crew section. Ish flicked his stolid eyes at him, shrugged, and stripped out of his clothes. He pulled a coverall out of a locker and climbed into it, then went over to his bunk and lay down on his side, facing the bulkhead. Ish. It was Mackenzie bending over him. Ish grunted. It wasn't any good, was it? You'd done it all before. You'd been there. He was past emotions. Yeah. We couldn't take the chance. Mackenzie was trying desperately to explain. You were the best there was, but you'd done something to yourself by becoming the best. You shut yourself off from your family. You had no close friends, no women. You had no other interests. You were a rocket pilot. Nothing else. You've never read an adult book that wasn't a text. You've never listened to a symphony except by accident. You don't know Rembrandt from Norman Rockwell. Nothing. No ties, no props, nothing to sustain you if something went wrong. We couldn't take the chance, Ish, so there was too much at stake. If we let you go, you might have forgotten to come back. You might have just kept going. He remembered the time with the navi on and nodded. I might have. I hypnotized you, mackenzie said. You were never dead. I don't know what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came through all right. You thought you'd been to the moon before. It took all the adventure out of the actual flight. It was just a work a day trip. I said it was easy, ish said. There was no other way to do it. I had to cancel out the thrill that comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and you knew what the moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it? Yeah. Now get out of here before I kill you. He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again. He died on the station and was buried in space while a grateful world mourned him. I wonder what it was like in his mind when he really died. But he spent the days he had after the trip just sitting at an observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and purposeless eyes. End of Desire no More by Algis Budras.

Duel on Syrtis by Paul Anderson this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Martin Rato Dual by Paul Anderson the night whispered the message over the many miles of loneliness that was borne, carried on the wind, rustled by the half sentient lichens and the dwarf trees murmured from one to another of the little creatures that huddled under crags and caves by shadowy dunes. In no words, but in a dim pulsing of dread which echoed through Krige's brain, the warning ran they are hunting again. Krige shuddered in a sudden blast of wind. The night was enormous around him, above him, from the iron bitterness of the hills to the wheeling glittering constellations light years over him his head. He reached out with his trembling perceptions, tuning himself to the brush and the wind and the small burrowing things under foot, letting the night speak to him alone. Alone there was not another Martian. For a hundred miles of emptiness. There were only the tiny animals in the shivering brush and and the thin sad blowing of the wind. The voiceless scream of dying traveled through the brush from plant to plant, echoed by the fear pulses of the animals and the ringingly reflecting cliffs. They were curling, shriveling and blackening as the rocket poured the glowing death down on them and the withering veins and nerves cross cried to the stars. Krige huddled against a tall, gaunt crag. His eyes were like yellow moons in the darkness, cold with terror and hate and a slowly gathering resolution. Grimly, he estimated that the death was being sprayed in a circle some 10 miles across, and he was trapped in it. And soon the hunter would come after him. He looked up to the indifferent glitter of stars and a shudder went along his body. Then he sat down and began to think. It had started a few days before in the private office of the Trader. I came to Mars, said Reardon, to get me an owly. Wisby had learned the value of a poker face. He peered across the rim of his glass at the other man, estimating him. Even in godforsaken holes like Port Armstrong, one had heard of Reardon, heir to a million dollar shipping firm which he himself had pyramided into a system wide monster. He was equally well known as a big game hunter. From the fire drakes of Mercury to the ice crawlers of Pluto, he'd bagged them all. Except of course, a Martian. That particular game was forbidden. Now he sprawled in his chair, big and strong and ruthless. Still a young man, he dwarfed the unkempt room with his size and the hard held dynamo strength in him, and his cold green gaze dominated the traitor. It's illegal, you know, said Wisby. It's a 20 year sentence if you're caught at it.

Bah.

The Martian commissioner is at Ares, halfway around the planet. If we go at it, right? Who's ever to know? Reardon gulped at his drink. I'm well aware that in another year or so they'll have tightened up enough to make it impossible. This is the last chance for any man to get an owlie. That's why I'm here. Wisbey hesitated, looking out the window. Poor Armstrong was no more than a dusty huddle of domes interconnected by tunnels and a red waste of sand stretching to the near horizon. An Earthman in air suit and transparent helmet was walking down the street, and a couple of Martians were lounging against a wall. Otherwise nothing. A silent, deadly monotony brooding under the shrunken sun. Life on Mars was not especially pleasant for a human. You're not falling into this owly loving that's corrupted all Earth? Demanded Reardon contemptuously. Oh no, said Wisby. I keep them in their place around my post. But times are changing. It can't be helped. There was a time when they were slaves, said Reardon. Now those old women on Earth want to give them the vote. He snorted. Well, times are changing, repeated Wisby mildly. When the first humans landed on Mars a hundred years ago, Earth had just gone through the Hemispheric wars, the worst wars man had ever known. They damned near wrecked the old ideas of liberty and equality. People were suspicious and tough. They had to be to survive. They weren't able toto empathize the Martians, or whatever you call it, not able to think of them as anything but intelligent animals. And Martians made such useful slaves. They need so little food or heat or oxygen they can even live 15 minutes or so without breathing at all. And the wild Martians made fine sport, intelligent game that could get away as often as not, or even manage to kill the hunter. I know, said Reardon. That's why I want to hunt one. It's no fun if the game doesn't have a chance. It's different now, went on Wisby. Earth has been at peace for a long time. The liberals have gotten the upper hand, naturally. One of their first reforms was to end Martian slavery. Reardon swore the forced repatriation of Martian's working on spaceships had cost him plenty. I haven't got time for your philosophizing, he said. If you can arrange for me to get a Martian, I'll make it worth your while. How much worth it? Asked Wisby. They haggled for a while before settling on a figure. Reardon had brought guns and a small rocket boat, but Wisby would have to supply radioactive material, a hawk and a rock hound. Then he had to be paid for the risk of legal action, though that was small. The final price came high. Now where do I get my Martian? Inquired Reardon. He gestured at the two in the street. Catch one of them and release him in the desert. It was Wisby's turn to be contemptuous. One of them, huh? Town loungers. A city dweller from Earth would give you a better fight. The Martians didn't look impressive. They stood only some 4ft high on skinny claw footed legs and the arms ending and bony. Forefingered hands were stringy. The chests were broad and deep, but the waists were ridiculously narrow. They were viviparous, warm blooded and suckled their young, but gray feathers covered their hides. The round hook beaked heads with huge amber eyes and tufted feather ears showed the origin of the name Owley. They wore only pouched belts and carried sheath knives. Even the liberals of Earth weren't ready to allow the natives modern tools and weapons. There were too many old grudges. The Martians always were good fighters, said Reardon. They wiped out quite a few earth settlements in the old days. The wild ones, agreed Wisby. But not these. They're just stupid laborers as dependent on our civilization as we are. You aren't a real old timer, and I know where one's to be found. He spread a map on the desk. See here in the Hrafnian Hills, about a hundred miles from here. These Martians live a long time, maybe two centuries. And this fellow Kriega has been around since the first Earthmen came. He led a lot of Martian raids in the early days, but since the general amnesty and peace he's lived all alone up there in one of the old ruined towers. A real old time warrior who hates earthmen's guts. He comes here once in a while with furs and minerals to trade, so I know a little about him. Wisbey's eyes gleamed savagely. He'll be doing us all a favor by shooting the arrogant bastard. He struts around here as if the place belonged to him and he'll give you a run for your money. Reardon's massive dark head nodded in satisfaction. The man had a bird and a rock hound. That was bad. Without them Kriega could lose himself in the labyrinth of caves and canyons and scrubby thickets. But the hound could follow his scent and the bird could spot him from above. To make matters worse, the man had landed near Kriega's tower. The weapons were all there now he was cut off, unarmed and alone, save for what feeble help the desert life could give, unless he could double back to the place somehow. But meanwhile he had to survive. He sat in a cave, looking down past a tortured wilderness of sand and bush and wind, carved rock miles in the thin clear air to the glitter of metal where the rocket lay. The man was a tiny speck in the huge barren landscape, a lonely insect crawling under the tree. Deep blue sky even by day. The stars glistened in the tenuous atmosphere. Weak, pallid sunlight spilled over rocks, tawny and ochreous and rust red, over the low dusty thorn bushes and the gnarled little trees and the sand that blew faintly between them. Equatorial Mars, lonely or not, the man had a gun that could spang death clear to the horizon, and he had his beasts, and there would be a radio in the rocket boat for calling his fellows. And the glowing death ringed them in a charmed circle which Kriega could not cross without bringing a worse death on himself than the rifle would give. Or was there a worse death than that, to be shot by a monster and have his stuffed hide carried back as a trophy for four holes to gape at? The old iron pride of his race rose in Krige, hard and bitter and unrelenting. He didn't ask much of life these days, solitude in his tower to think the long thoughts of a Martian and create the small exquisite artworks which he loved. The company of his kind at the gathering season, grave ancient ceremony and acrid merriment, and the chance to beget and rear sons. An occasional trip to the earthling settling for the metal goods and the wine which were the only valuable things they have brought to Mars. A vague dream of raising his folk to a place where they could stand as equals before all the universe. No more. And now they would take even this from him. He rasped a curse on the humans and resumed his patient work, chipping his spearhead for what puny help it could give him. The brush rustled dryly in alarm. Tiny hidden animals squeaked their terror. The desert shouted to him of the monster that strode toward his cave. But he didn't have to flee right away. Reardon sprayed the heavy metal isotope in a 10 mile circle around the old tower. He did that by night, just in case patrol craft might be snooping around. But once he'd landed, he was safe. He could always claim to be peacefully exploring, hunting leapers or some such thing. The radioactive had a half life of about four days, which meant that it would be unsafe to approach for Some three weeks, two at the minimum. That was time enough. When the Martian was bucked in so small an area, there was no danger that he would try to cross it. The owlies had learned what radioactivity meant back when they fought the humans, and their vision, extending well into the ultraviolet, made it directly visible to them through its fluorescence, to say nothing of the wholly unhuman extra senses they had. No, Krieger would try to hide and perhaps to fight, and eventually he'd be cornered. Still, there was no use taking chances. Reardon set a timer on the boat's radio. If he didn't come back within two weeks to turn it off, it would emit a signal which Wisby would hear and he'd be rescued. He checked his other equipment. He had an air suit designed for Martian conditions with a small pump operated by a power beam from the boat to compress the atmosphere sufficiently for him to breathe it. The same unit recovered enough water from his breath so that the weight of supplies for several days was in Martian gravity, not too great for him to bear. He had a.45 rifle built to shoot and Martian air that was heavy enough for his purposes. And of course, compass and binoculars and sleeping bag. Pretty light equipment, but he preferred a minimum. Anyway, for ultimate emergencies, there was the little tank of suspensing. By turning a valve, he could release it into his air system. The gas didn't exactly induce suspended animation, but it paralyzed efferent nerves and slowed the overall metabolism to a point where a man could live for weeks on one lungful of air. It was useful in surgery and had saved the life of more than one interplanetary explorer whose oxygen system went awry. But Reardon didn't expect to have to use it. He certainly hoped he wouldn't. It would be tedious to lie fully conscious for days, waiting for the automatic signal to call Wisby. He stepped out of the boat and locked it. No danger that the Owley would break in if he should double back. It would take towardnight to crack that hull. He whistled to his animals. They were native beasts long ago, domesticated by the Martians and later by man. The rock hound was like a gaunt wolf, but huge breasted and feathered, a tracker as good as any terrestrial bloodhound. The hawk had less resemblance to its counterpart of Earth. It was a bird of prey, but in the tenuous atmosphere it needed a six foot wingsprit to lift its small body. Reardon was pleased with their training. The hound bayed a low quavering note which would have been muffled almost to inaudibility by the thin air and the mass plastic helmet. Had the suit not included microphones and amplifiers? It circled, sniffing while the hawk rose into the alien sky. Reardon did not look closely at the tower. It was a crumbling stump atop a rusty hill, unhuman and grotesque. Once, perhaps 10,000 years ago, the Martians had had a civilization of sorts, cities and agriculture and a Neolithic technology. But according to their own traditions, they had achieved a union or symbiosis with the wildlife of the the planet, and had abandoned such mechanical aids as unnecessary. Reardon snorted. The hound bayed again. The noise seemed to hang eerily in the still cold air, to shiver from cliff and crag and die reluctantly under the enormous silence.

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But it was a bugle call a Haughty challenge to a world grown old. Stand aside. Make way. Here comes the conqueror. The animal suddenly loped forward. He had a scent, reared and swung into a long, easy, low gravity stride. His eyes gleamed like green ice. The hunt was begun. Breath sobbed in Kriega's lungs, hard and quick and raw. His legs felt weak and heavy, and the thudding of his heart seemed to shake his whole body. Still he ran while the frightful clamor rose behind him and the padding of feet grew ever nearer. Leaping, twisting, bounding from crag to crag, sliding down shaly ravines and slipping through clumps of trees. Kriga fled. The hound was behind him and the hawk soaring overhead. In a day and a night they'd driven him to this, running like a crazed leaper with death baying at his heels. He had not imagined a human could move so fast or with such endurance. The desert fought for him. The plants, with their queer, blind life that no earthling would ever understand, were on his side. Their thorny branches twisted away as he darted through and then came back to rake the flanks of the hound, slow him. But they could not stop his brutal rush. He ripped past their strengthless, clutching fingers and yammered on the trail of the Martian. The human was toiling a good mile behind, but showed no sign of tiring. Still, Kriega ran. He had to reach the cliff edge before the hunters saw him through his rifle sights, hat to hat to. And the hound was snarling a yard behind him now. Up the long slope he went. The hawk fluttered, striking at him, seeking to lay beak and talons in his head. He batted at the creature with his spear and dodged around a tree. The tree snaked out a branch from which the hound rebounded, yelling till the rocks rang. The Martian burst onto the edge of the cliff. It fell sheer to the canyon floor. 500ft of iron streaked ro rock, tumbling into windy depths beyond. The lowering sun glared in his eyes. He paused only an instant, etched black against the sky. A perfect shot if the human should come into view. And then he sprang over the edge. He had hoped the rock hound would go shooting past, but the animal braked itself barely in time. Kriga went down the cliff face, clawing into every tiny crevice, shuddering as the age worn rock crumbled under his fingers. The hawk swept close, hacking at him and screaming for its master. He couldn't fight it, not with every finger and toe needed to hang against shattering death. But he slid along the face of the precipice into a great green clump of trees, and his nerves thrilled forth the appeal of the ancient symbiosis. The hawk swooped again and he lay unmoving, rigid as if dead, until it cried out in shrill triumph and settled on his shoulder to pluck out his eyes. Then the vines stirred. They weren't strong, but their thorns sank into the flesh and it couldn't pull loose. Kriga toiled on down into the canyon. While the vines pulled the hawk apart, Reardon loomed hugely against the darkening sky. He fired once, twice, the bullets humming wickedly close. But as the shadows swept up from the depths, the Martian was covered. The man turned up his speech amplifier and his voice rolled and boomed monstrously through the gathering night, thunder such as dry Mars had not heard for millennia. Score one for you, but it isn't enough. I'll find you. The sun slipped below the horizon and night came down like a falling curtain. Through the darkness Krige heard the man laughing. The old rocks trembled with his laughter. Reardon was tired with the long chase and the niggling insufficiency of his oxygen supply. He wanted a smoke and hot food, and neither was to be had. Oh well, he'd appreciate the luxuries of life all the more when he got home with the Martian's skin. He grinned as he made camp. The little fellow was a worthwhile quarry, that was for damn sure. He'd held off for two days now in a little 10 mile circle of ground, and he'd even killed the hawk. But Reardon was close enough to him now so that the hound could follow his spoor, for Mars had no water courses to break a trail, so it didn't matter. He lay watching the splendid night of stars. It would get cold before long. Unmercifully cold. But his sleeping bag was a good enough insulator to keep him warm. With the help of solar energy stored during the day by its gurgen cells. Mars was dark at night, its moons of little help. Phobos a hurtling speck Deimos merely a bright star, dark and cold and empty. The rock hound had burrowed into the loose sand nearby, but it would raise the alarm if the Martian should come sneaking near the camp. Not that that was likely. He'd have to find shelter somewhere too, if he didn't want to freeze. The bushes and the trees and the little furtive animals whispered a word he could not hear, chattered and gossiped on the wind about the Martian who kept himself warm with work. But he didn't understand that language, which was no language. Drowsily reared in thought of past hunts. The big game of Earth. Lion and tiger and elephant and buffalo and sheep on the high sun blazing peaks of the Rockies rainforests of Venus. And the coughing roar of a many legged swamp monsters monster crashing through the trees to the place where he stood waiting. Primitive throb of drums in a hot wet night. Chant of beaters dancing around a fire scramble along the hell plains of Mercury with the swollen sun licking against his puny insulating suit. The grandeur and desolation of Neptune's liquid gas swamps and the huge blind thing that screamed and blundered after him. But this was the loneliest and strangest and perhaps most dangerous hunt of all. And on that account the best. He had no malice toward the Martian. He respected the little being's courage as he respected the bravery of the other animals he'd fought. Whatever trophy he brought home from this chase would be well earned. The fact that his success would have to be treated discreetly didn't matter. He hunted less for the glory of it. Though he had to admit he didn't mind the publicity than for love. His ancestors had fought under one name or another. Viking, crusader, mercenary, rebel, patriot, whatever was fashionable at the moment. Struggle was in his blood and in these degenerate days there was little to struggle against save what he hunted. Well, to morrow he drifted off to sleep. He woke in the short gray dawn, made a quick breakfast and whistled his hound to heel. His nostrils dilated with excitement, A high keen drunkenness that sang wonderfully within him. Today maybe. Today they had to take a roundabout way down into the canyon and the hound cast about for an hour before he picked up the scent. Then the deep voiced cry rose again and they were off, more slowly now, for it was a cruel stony trail. The sun climbed high as they worked along the ancient riverbed. Its pale chill light washed needle sharp crags and fantastically painted cliffs. Shale and sand and the wreck of geological ages. The low harsh brush crunched under the man's feet, writhing and crackling its impotent protest. Otherwise it was still a deep and taut and somehow waiting stillness. The hound shattered the quiet with an eager yelp and plunged forward. Hot scent. Reardon dashed after him, trampling through the dense bush, panting and swearing and grinning with excitement. Suddenly the brush opened underfoot. With a howl of dismay the hound slid down the sloping wall of the pit it had covered. Reardon flung himself forward with tigerish swiftness, flat down on his belly with one hand barely catching the animal's tail. The shock almost pulled him into the hole too. He wrapped one arm around a bush that clawed at his helmet and pulled the hound back. Shaking, he peered into the trap. It had been well made, about 20ft deep, with walls as straight and narrow as the sand would allow, and skilfully covered with brush planted in the bottom with three wicked looking flint spears. Had he been a shade less quick in his reactions, he would have lost the hound and perhaps himself. He skinned his teeth in a wolf grin and looked around. The owley must have worked all night on it. Then he couldn't be far away and he'd be very tired. As if to answer his thoughts, a boulder crashed down from the nearer cliff wall. It was a monster, but a falling object on Mars has less than half the acceleration it does on Earth reared and scrambled aside as it boomed into the place where he had been living. Come on. He yelled and plunged toward the cliff. For an instant a gray form loomed over the edge, hurled a spear at him, reared and snapped a shot at it and it vanished. The spear glanced off the tough fabric of his suit and he scrambled up a narrow ledge to the top of the precipice. The Martian was nowhere in sight, but a faint red trail led him to the rugged hill country. Winged him. By God. The hound was slower in negotiating the shale covered trail. His own feet were bleeding when he came up. Reardon cursed him and they set out again. They followed the trail for a mile or two and then it ended. Reardon looked around the wilderness of trees and needles which blocked view in any direction. Obviously the owley had backtracked and climbed up one of those rocks from which he could take a flying leap to some other point. But which one sweat, which he couldn't wipe off, ran down the man's face and body. He itched intolerably and his lungs were raw from gasping at his dole of air. But still he laughed in a gusty delight. What a chase. What a chase. Kriega lay in the shadow of a dark rock and shuddered with weariness. Beyond the shade the sunlight danced in what to him was a blinding and tolerable dazzle, hot and cruel and life hungry, hard and bright as the metal of the conquerors. It had been a mistake to spend priceless hours when he might have been resting, working on that trap. It hadn't worked, and he might have known that it wouldn't. And now he was hungry and thirst was like a wild beast in his mouth and throat. And still they followed him. They weren't far behind now. All this day they had been dogging him. He'd never been more than half an hour ahead. No rest. No rest. A devil's hunt through a tormented wilderness of stone and sand. And now he could only wait for the battle with an iron burden of exhaustion laid on him. The wound in his side burned. It wasn't deep, but it had cost him blood and pain and the few minutes of catnapping he might have snatched. For a moment, the warrior Kriga was gone, and a lonely, frightened infant sobbed in the desert silence. Why can't they let me alone? A low, dusty green bush rattled. A sand runner piped in one of the ravines. They were getting close. Warily, Kriega scrambled up on top of the rock and crouched low. He had backtracked to it. They should, by rights, go past him toward his tower. He could see it from here, a low yellow ruin worn by the winds of millennia. There had only been time to dart in, snatch a bow and a few arrows and an ax. Pitiful weapons, the arrows could not penetrate the earthman suit when there was only a Martian's thin grasp to draw the bow. And even with a steel head, the axe was a small and feeble thing. But it was all he had, he and his few little allies of a desert which fought only to keep its solitude. Repatriated slaves that told him of the earthling's power. Their roaring machines filled the silence of their own deserts, gouged the quiet face of their own moon, shook the planets with a senseless fury of meaningless energy. They were the conquerors, and it never occurred to them that an ancient peace and stillness could be worth preserving. Well. He fitted an arrow to the string and crouched in the silent, flimmering sunlight, waiting. The hound came first, yelping and howling. Krieger drew the bow as far as he could, but the human had to come near first. There he came, running and bounding over the rocks, rifle in hand and restless eyes shining with taut green light, closing in for the death. Kriga swung softly around. The beast was beyond the rock now, the Earthman almost below it. The bow twanged with a savage thrill. Kriega saw the arrow go through the hound, saw the creature leap in the air and then roll over and over, howling and biting at the thing in its breast like a gray thunderbolt. The Martian launched himself off the rock, down at the human. If his axe could shatter that helmet. He struck the man and they went down together. Wildly. The Martian hewed the axe, glanced off the plastic. He hadn't had room for a swing. Reared and roared and lashed out with a fist. Retching, Krige rolled backwards. Reardon snapped a shot at him. Kriga turned and fled. The man got to one knee, sighting carefully on the gray form that streaked up the nearest slope. A little, sad snake darted up the man's leg and wrapped about his wrist. Its small strength was just enough to pull the gun aside. The bullets screamed past Kriega's ear as he vanished into a cleft. He felt the thin death agony of the snake as the man pulled it loose and crushed it underfoot. Somewhat later, he heard a dull boom echoing between the hills. The man had got an explosive from his boat and blown up the tower. He had lost his axe and bow. Now he was utterly weaponless, without even a place to retire for a last stand. And the hunter would not give up. Even without his animals. He would follow more slowly, but as relentlessly as before. Kriga collapsed on a shelf of rock. Dry sobbing wracked his thin body, and the sunset wind cried with him. Presently he looked up across a red and yellow immensity to the low sun. Long shadows were creeping over the land. Peace and stillness for a brief moment before the iron cold of night closed down somewhere. The soft trill of a sand runner echoed between low wind worn cliffs, and the brush began to speak, whispering back and forth in its ancient, wordless tongue. The desert, the planet and its wind and sand under the high cold stars, the clean open land of silence and loneliness and destiny which was not man's, spoke to him. The enormous oneness of life on Mars, cl drawn together against the cruel environment, stirred in his blood. As the sun went down and the stars blossomed forth in awesome frosty glory. Kriega began to think again. He did not hate his persecutor, but the grimness of Mars was in him. He fought the war of all which was old and primitive and lost in its own dreams, against the alien and the desecrator. It was as ancient and pitiless as life. That war and each battle won or lost meant something, even if no one ever heard of it. You do not fight alone, whispered the desert. You fight for all Mars, and we are with you. Something moved in the darkness, A tiny warm form running across his hand. A little feathered mouse like thing that burrowed under the sand and lived its small fugitive life and was glad in its own way of living. But it was a part of the world, and Mars has no pity in its voice. Still, a tenderness was within Kriega's heart, and he whispered gently in the language that was not a language. You will do this for us. You will do it. Little Brother. Reardon was too tired to sleep. Well, he had lain awake for a long time, thinking, and that's not good for a man alone in the Martian hills. So now the rock hound was dead too. It didn't matter. The owley wouldn't escape. But somehow the incident brought home to him the immensity and the age and the loneliness of the desert. It whispered to him. The brush rustled and something wailed in darkness and the wind blew with a wild, mournful sound over faintly starlit cliffs, and it was as if they all somehow had voice, as if the whole world muttered and threatened him in the night. Dimly he wondered if man would ever subdue Mars, if the human race had not finally run across something bigger than itself. But that was nonsense. Mars was old and worn out and barren, dreaming itself into slow death. The tramp of human feet, shouts of men and roar of sky storming rockets. Ra were waking it but to a new destiny, to man's. When Ares lifted its hard spires above the hills of Syrtis, where then were the ancient gods of Mars? It was cold, and the cold deepened as the night wore on. The stars were fire and ice, glittering diamonds in the deep crystal dark. Now and then he could hear a faint snapping borne through the earth as rock or tree split open. The wind laid itself to rest. Sound froze to death. There was only the hard, clear starlight falling through space to shatter on the ground once something stirred. He woke from a restless sleep and saw a small thing skittering toward him. He groped for the rifle beside his sleeping bag, then laughed harshly. It was only a sand mouse, but it proved that the Martian had no chance of sneaking up on him while he rested. He didn't laugh again. The sound had echoed too hollowly in his helmet. With the clear, bitter dawn, he was up. He wanted to get the hunt over with. He was dirty and unshaven inside the unit, sick of iron rations, pushed through the airlock, stiff and sore with exertion. Lacking the hound, which he'd had to shoot, tracking would be slow. But he didn't want to go back to Port Armstrong for another. No, hell, take that Martian. He'd have the devil's skin soon. Breakfast and a little moving made him feel better. He looked with a practiced eye for the Martian's trail. There was sand and brush over everything. Even the rocks had a thin coating of their own erosion. The owley couldn't cover his tracks perfectly. If he tried, it would slow him too much. Reardon fell into a steady jog. Noon found him on higher ground, rough hills with gaunt needles of rock reaching yards into the sky. He kept going, confident of his own ability to wear down the quarry. He had run dear to earth back home, day after day, until the animal's heart broke and it waited, quivering, for him to come. The trail looked clear and fresh now. He tensed with the knowledge that the Martian couldn't be far away. Too clear. Could this be bait for another trap? He hefted the rifle and proceeded more warily. But no, there wouldn't have been time. He mounted a high ridge and looked over the grim, fantastic landscape. Near the horizon he saw a blackened strip, the border of his radioactive barrier. The Martian couldn't go further, and if he doubled back, Reardon would have an excellent chance of spotting him. He tuned up his speaker and let his voice roar into the stillness. Come out, Owley. I'm going to get you. You might as well come out now and be done with it. The echoes took it up, flying back and forth between the naked crags, trembling and shivering under the brassy arch of sky. Come out. Come out. Come out. The Martians seemed to appear from thin air, a gray ghost rising out of the jumbled stones and standing poised not 20ft away. For an instant, the shock of it was too much. Reardon gaped in disbelief. Krieg awaited, quivering ever so faintly, as if he were a mirage. Then the man shouted and lifted his rifle. Still the Martian stood there as if carved in gray stone. And with a shock of disappointment, Reardon thought that he had, after all, decided to give himself to an inevitable death. Well, it had been a good hunt so long, whispered Reardon and squeezed the trigger. Since the sand mouse had crawled into the barrel, the gun exploded. Reardon heard the roar and saw the barrel peel open like a rotten banana. He wasn't hurt, but as he staggered back from the shock, Kriega lunged at him. The Martian was four feet tall and skinny and weaponless, but he hit the earthling like a small tornado. His legs wrapped around the man's waist and his hands got to work on the air hose. Reardon went down under the impact. He snarled tigerishly and fastened his hands on the Martian's narrow throat. Kriga snapped futilely at him with his beak. They rolled over in a cloud of dust. The brush began to chatter excitedly. Reardon tried to break Kriega's neck. The Martian twisted away, bored in again. With a shock of horror, the man heard the hiss of escaping air as Kriega's beak and fingers finally worried the air hose loose. An automatic valve clamped shut. But there was no connection with the pump. Now Reardon cursed and got his hands about the Martian's throat again. Then he simply lay there, squeezing, and not all Krieger's writhing and twistings could break that grip. Reardon smiled sleepily and held his hands in place. After five minutes or so, Kriega was still. Reardon kept right on throttling him for another five minutes, just to make sure. Then he let go and fumbled at his back, trying to reach the pump. The air in his suit was hot and foul. He couldn't quite reach around to connect the hose to the pump. Poor design, he thought vaguely. But then these air suits weren't meant for battle armor. He looked at the slight, silent form of the Martian. A faint breeze ruffled the gray feathers. What a fighter the little guy had been. He'd be the pride of the trophy room back on Earth. Lets see now. He unrolled his sleeping bag and spread it carefully out. He'd never make it to the rocket with what air he had, so it was necessary to let the suspension into his suit. But he'd have to get inside the bag lest the nights freeze his blood solid. He crawled in, fastening the flaps carefully, and opened the valve on the suspensing tank. Lucky he had it. But then a good hunter thinks of everything. He'd get awfully bored lying there till Whisby caught the signal in 10 days or so and came to find him. But he'd last. It would be an experience to remember.

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In this dry air, the Martian's skin would key perfectly well. He felt the paralysis creep up on him, the waning of heartbeat and lung action. His senses and mind were still alive, and he grew aware that complete relaxation has its unpleasant aspects. Oh well, he'd won. He'd killed the wiliest game with his own hands. Presently, Kriega sat up. He felt himself gingerly. There seemed to be a rib broken. Well, that could be fixed. He was still alive. He'd been choked for a good 10 minutes, but a Martian can last 15 without air. He opened the sleeping bag and got Reardon's keys. Then he limped slowly back to the rocket. A day or two of experimentation taught him how to fly it. He'd go to his kinsmen near Syrtis now that they had an earthly machine and earthly weapons to copy. But there was other business. First. He didn't hate Reardon, but Mars is a hard world. He went back and dragged the earthling into a cave and hit him beyond all possibility of human search parties finding him. For a while. He looked into the man's eyes. Horror stared dumbly back at him. He spoke slowly in halting English. For those you killed, and for being a stranger on a world that does not want you. And against the day when Mars is free, I leave you. Before departing, he got several oxygen tanks from the boat and hooked them into the mass air supply. That was quite a bit of air for one in suspended animation. Enough to keep him alive for a thousand years. End of duel on syrtis by pole anderson.

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Field Trip by Jean Hunter this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, Please visit Librivox.org Recording by Pam Castile Field Trip by Jean Hunter Kyle was disgusted with the slow, cumbersome train. He disliked using this uncomfortable means of travel, but since he wanted to learn more about these strange creatures who were his ancestors, he had decided to try to become used to their ways. He was lonely in this strange, backward age, and when he unexpectedly saw another being like himself in the same coach, he hastened to make his presence known. He introduced himself and asked politely, when are you from 8,000? The other replied. Name's Broik, from 7 Galaxy. I'm from out 19 way myself, Kyle said. Just a country boy. But 8,000, that's only a period ahead of my own time. Maybe you could tell me. Ah, ah, the other admonished. Remember the first law of thec oh, center, kyle grumbled. I know. One may not divulge any scientific, technical, or social information to anyone from his own past, whom he may meet at an equidistant place point. In effect, travel. I forgot. Bad, broik said. Then he added, almost jokingly, you wouldn't want to be marooned in this dismal era, would you? Kyle shuddered. Of course not. But the laws seem so ridiculous. Not a bit broke said, warming up to the subject. It's very simple, really. Same principle that doesn't allow anyone to thet travel into the future. Look, I'm from 8,000. Say I went into 12,000, where I memorized as much information as I could on some subject such as medicine. So I returned to 8,000, retaining all such knowledge in my mind that's been learned in four periods. Therefore, I'd have knowledge that wasn't dreamed of in my own time, but was discovered sometime during the next four periods. But then it couldn't be discovered because I'd brought it back to 8,000, and, well, I'm no logician, but you see my point. Oh, it's reasonable, I suppose, kyle admitted. I realize the laws are really for our own good. By the way, I'm here on a field trip to gather material for my thesis on advanced therapeutical psychology and its development since the 20th century. What phase of this era are you here to study? I'm afraid I couldn't tell you that, broik said. It's of rather a secret nature and you mean we might violate a law and be stuck here for good? Is that it? Yes, in a way. Frightened, Kyle let the matter drop. His gaze wandered through the coach, examining the other passengers with interest. As time travelers from a different space time plane from their 20th century ancestors, he and Broyck were naturally invisible to their fellow travelers. Two pompous old gentlemen were lighting cigars, and Kyle was about to remark on the habit of smoking when he noticed an even more remarkable phenomenon. A few seats ahead of them sat a good looking young couple, oblivious to others about them. Look. Kyle cried excitedly. Lovers, Honeymooners. I've read about such things. Isn't it disgusting? Oh, I don't know, brooks said a little wistfully. I sometimes think it was a mistake for Senner to do away with sex. It must have been interesting. Atavist. Kyle snapped in horror. Had his people's emotional make up provided for blushing, Kyle would undoubtedly have turned beet red. Broik's words had caused him acute embarrassment. As he sat reflecting upon his strange companion, he suddenly began to feel a sensation he had often heard about but never before had experienced. Terror and dismay filled him as he sought to throw off the probing finger that that was penetrating his mind. He looked at Broke. There was the faintest notion of a smile on the other's face as he said, yes, Kyle, I am a telepath. Kyle's mind reeled. He felt himself on the brink of some gigantic abyss. And then, as suddenly as it had come, the searching sensation faded away. Since you are unable to enter my mind, broik said calmly, it's only fair that I tell you about myself. You are right. I'm an Atavist. Even in period 8000, such things can happen. Always such creatures are destroyed after their first psycho test. But my case was different. The controller who bred me was only a dabbler in such things. I was a failure, but he took a fancy to me. I was allowed to mature. Secretly, few people knew of my existence. When I reached my majority, my presence became dangerous, and I was sent back into time to try and find the proper place for myself. And I think I found it here. Kyle was a very amazed young man. But such a barbarous age, he complained. Sex and atom bombs and everything, remember? Broik smiled. These people are the forebears of the geniuses who created center and the Galactic Empire. They'll survive despite their barbarism. The existence of center is proof. It's rather horrible to contemplate, Kyle said thoughtfully, calmer now. And yet, this might really be a great age. In a way, I almost envy you. Of course you do, royk said. You have certain tendencies. They bother you, although you manage to hide them well. I discovered them when I took the liberty of telepathing you. Artificial genetics isn't perfect even in our time, Perhaps because we originally sprang from man. Perhaps we'll never be quite perfect because of that, even after thousands of periods of breeding. Kyle took another look at the loving young couple. It might be fun after all. Broke laughed. You needn't envy me at all, you know. Kyle frowned. I'm telling you about myself, bright went on. I have also told you of a specific condition existing, a period ahead of your own time. Remember the first law center? We're marooned in the 20th century. You have to accept it. But what will we do? Carl's mind was reeling again. Since we've already broken the First Law, brook said, we may just as well break the second. No. Thet traveler may enter the body of a native of a foreign space time. The young lovers kissed again, and this time there seemed to be an added zest, even to their passionate embrace. The End Field Trip by Jean Hunter Recording by Pam Castile.

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The Mississippi Saucer by Frank Belknap Long this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Bill Yalleley the Mississippi Saucer by Frank Belknap Long Jimmy watched the Natchez Bell draw near, a shining eagerness in his stare. He stood on the deck of the shanty boat, his toes sticking out of his socks, his heart knocking against his ribs. Straight down the river the big packet boat came, purpling the water with its shadow, its smokestacks belching soot. Jimmy had a wild talent for collecting things. He knew exactly how to infuriate the captains without sticking out his neck up and down the Father of Waters from the Bayous of Louisiana to the Great Sandy Other little shanty boat boys envied Jimmy and tried hard to imitate him. But Jimmy had a very special gift, a genius for pantomime. He'd wait until there was a glimmer of red flame on the river and small objects stood out with a startling clarity. Then he'd go into his act. Nothing upset the captains quite so much as Jimmy's habit of holding a big croaking bullfrog up by its legs as the river boats went steaming past. It was a sure fire way of reminding the captains that men and frogs were brothers under the skin. The puffed out throat of the frog told the captains exactly what Jimmy thought of their cheek. Jimmy refrained from making faces or sticking out his tongue at the grinning roustabouts. It was the frog that did the trick. In the still dawn, things came sailing. Jimmy's way hurled by captains with a twinkle of repressed merriment, dancing in eyes that were kindlier and more tolerant than Jimmy dreamed. Just because the shanty boat folk had no right to insult the river boats. Jimmy had collected 40 empty tobacco tins, a Down at Heels shoe, a Sears Roebuck catalog and more rolled up newspapers than Jimmy could ever read. Jimmy couldn't read, of course, no matter how badly Uncle Al needed a new pair of shoes. Jimmy's education came first. So Jimmy had spent six winters ashore in a first class grammar school. His books paid for out of Uncle Al's New Orleans money. Uncle Al blowing on a vinegar jug and making sweet music. The holes in his socks much bigger than the holes in Jimmy's socks. Uncle Al shaking his head and saying, some day, young fellow, I ain't going to sit here harmonizing no sure ee. I'm going to buy myself a brand new store suit, trade in this here jig jug for a big round of banjo and hie myself off to the Mardi Gras. Ain't too old. That a way to get a little fun out of life, young fellow. Poor old Uncle Al. The money he'd saved up for the Mardi Gras now never seemed to stretch far enough. There was enough kindness in him to stretch like a rainbow over the bayous and the river forests of sweet rustling pine for as far as the eye could see. Enough kindness to wrap all of Jimmy's life in a glow. And the life of Jimmy's sister as well. Jimmy's parents had died of winter pneumonia too soon to appreciate Uncle Al. But up and down the river everyone knew that Uncle Al was a great man. Enemies. Well, sure. All great men made enemies, didn't they? The Harmon brothers were downright sinful about carrying their feuding meanness right up to the doorstep of Uncle Al. If it could be said that a man living in a shanty boat had a doorstep. Uncle Al made big catches and the Harmon Brothers never seemed to have any luck. So long before Jimmy was old enough to understand how corrosive ins envy could be, the Harmon Brothers had started feuding with Uncle Al. Jimmy, here comes the Natchez Bell. Uncle Al says for you to git him a newspaper. The newspaper you got him yesterday. He couldn't read noways it was soaking wet. Jimmy turned to glower at his sister. Up and down the river, Pigtail Annie was known as a tomboy. But she wasn't no ways. She was Jimmy's little sister. And that meant Jimmy was the man in the family. Wore the pants, and nothing Pigtail said or did could change that for one minute. Don't yell at me, jimmy complained. How can I get Captain Simmons mad if you git me mad first? Have a heart, will you? But Pigtail Annie refused to budge, even when the Natchez Belle loomed so close to the shanty boat that had blotted out the sky eye. She continued to crowd her brother, preventing him from holding up the frog and making Captain Simmons squirm. But Jimmy got the newspaper anyway. Captain Simmons had a keen insight into Tom Boy psychology, and from the bridge of the Natchez Bell he could see that Pigtail was making life miserable for Jimmy. True, Jimmy had no respect for packet boats and deserved a good trouncing, but what a scrapper the lad was. Never let it be said that in a struggle between the sexes the men of the river did not stand shoulder to shoulder. The paper came sailing over the shining brown water like a white bellied buffalo cat shot from a sling. Pigtail grabbed it before Jimmy could give her a shove. Calmly, she unwrapped it, her chin tilted in bellicose defiance as the Natchez Bell dwindled around a lazy cypress shadowed bend. Pigtail Annie became a superior being wrapped in a cosmopolitan aura, a wide eyed little girl on a swaying deck, the great outside world rushing straight toward her from all directions. Pigtail could take that world in her stride. She liked the fashion page best, but she was not above clicking her tongue at everything in the paper. Kidnap Plot Linked to airliner crash killing 50, she read. Red Sox Blank Yanks Congress Sits Today Vowing Vengeance Million Dollar Heiress Elopes With a Clerk Court Lets Dog Pick Owner Girl of eight Kills Her Brother in Accidental Shooting I ought to push your face right down in the mud, jimmy muttered. Don't you dare. I've got a right to see what's going on in the world. You said the paper was for Uncle Al. It is when I get finished with it. Jimmy started to take hold of his sister's wrist and pry the paper from her clasp. Only started, for as Pigtail wriggled back, sunlight fell on a shadowed part of the paper which drew Jimmy's gaze as Sunlight Draws dew. Exciting wasn't the word for the headline. It seemed to blaze out of the page at Jimmy as he stared, his chin nudging Pigtail's shoulder. New Flying Monster reported Blazing Gulf State skies. Jimmy snatched the paper and backed away from Pigtail, his eyes glued to the headline. He was kind to his sister, however he read the news item aloud. If an account so startling could be called an item. To Jimmy it seemed more like a dazzling burst of light in the sky. A New Orleans resident reported today that he saw a big bright object, roundish like a disk, flying north against the wind. It was all lighted up from inside, the observer stated. As far as I could tell, there were no signs of life aboard the thing. It was much bigger than any of the flying saucers previously reported. People keep seeing them, jimmy muttered after a pause. Nobody knows where they come from. Saucers flying through the sky. High up at night. In the daytime, too. Maybe we're being watched, Pigtail. Watched, Jimmy?

What do you mean?

What are you talking about? Jimmy stared at his sister, the paper jiggling in his clasp. It's way over your head, Pigtail, he said sympathetically. I'll prove it. What's a planet? A star in the sky, you dope. Pigtail almost screamed. Wait till Uncle Al hears what a meanie you are. If I wasn't your sister, you wouldn't dare grab a paper that doesn't belong to you. Jimmy refused to be enraged. A planet's not a star, Pigtail, he said patiently. A star's a big ball of fire like the sun. A planet is small and cool like the earth. Some of the planets may even have people on them. Not people like us, but people all the same. Maybe we're just frogs to them. You're crazy, Jimmy.

Crazy.

Crazy, you hear? Jimmy started to reply, then shut his mouth tight. Big waves were nothing new in the wake of steamboats. But the shanty boat wasn't just riding a swell. It was swaying and rocking like a floating barrel, and the kind of blow shanty boaters dreaded worse than the thought of dying. Jimmy knew that a big blow could come up fast, straight down from the sky in gusts from all directions, banging against the boat like a drunken roustabout, slamming doors, tearing away mooring blanks. The river could rise fast, too, under the lashing of a hurricane blowing up from the Gulf. The river could lift a shanty boat right out of the water and smash it to smithereens against a tree. But now the blow was coming from just one part of the sky. A funnel of wind was churning the river into a white froth and raising big swells directly offshore. But the river wasn't rising, and the sun was shining in a clear sky. Jimmy knew a dangerous floodwater storm when he saw one. The sky had to be dark with rain, and you had to feel scared in fear of drowning. Jimmy was scared all right. That part of it rang true. But a hollow, sick feeling in his chest. Couldn't mean anything by itself, he told himself fiercely. Pigtail Annie saw the disk before Jimmy did. She screamed and pointed skyward, her twin braids standing straight out in the wind like ropes on a bale of cotton when smokestacks collapse and the savage howling sends the river ghosts scurrying for cover. Straight down out of the sky the disk swooped, a huge spinning shape as flat as a buckwheat cake swimming in a golden haze of butterfat. But the disk didn't remind Jimmy of a buckwheat cake. It made him think. Instead of a slowly turning wheel in the pilot house of a rotting old riverboat, a big ghostly wheel manned by a steersman a century dead, his eye sockets filled with flickering swamplights. It made Jimmy want to run and hide almost. It made him want to cling to his sister, content to let her wear the pants if only he could be spared the horror. For there was something so chilling about the downsweeping disk that Jimmy's heart began leaping like a vinegar jug bobbing about in the wake of a capsizing fishboat. Lower and lower the disk swept, trailing plumes of white smoke lashing the water with a fearful blow straight down over the cypress wilderness that fringed the opposite bank and then out across the river with a long drawn whistling sound louder than the air sucking death gasps of a thousand buffalo cats. Jimmy didn't see the disk strike the shining broad shoulders of the Father of Waters, for the bend around which the Natchez Bell had steamed so proudly hid the sky monster from view. But Jimmy did see the waterspout spiraling skyward like the atom bomb explosion he goggled at in the pages of an old Life magazine, all smudged now with oily thumb prints, just a roaring for an instant and a big white mushroom shooting straight up into the sky. Then slowly the mushroom decayed and fell back, and an awful stillness settled down over the river. The stillness was broken by a shrill cry from Pigtail Annie. It was a flying saucer. Jimmy. We've seen one. We've seen one. We've Shut your mouth. Pigtail Jimmy shaded his eyes and stared out across the river, his chest a throbbing ache. He was still staring when a door creaked behind him. Jimmy trembled. A tingling fear went through him, for he found it hard to realize that the disk had swept around the bend, out of sight. To his overheated imagination it continued to fill all of the sky above him, overshadowing the shanty boat making every sound a threat. Sucking the still air deep into his lungs, Jimmy swung about. Uncle Al was standing on the deck and a little pool of sunlight, his gaunt, hollow cheeked face set in harsh lines. Uncle Al was shading his eyes too, but he was tearing up the river, not down. Trouble, young fellow, he grunted. Sure as I'm a standin here barrelful o trouble, headin straight for us. Jimmy gulped and gestured wildly toward the bend. He came down over there, Uncle Al. He got out. Pigtail saw it too. A big flying. The Harmon's are a comin young fellow, uncle Al drawled, silencing Jimmy with a wave of his hand. Yesterday I rode over a Harmon jug line without meaning to. Now Jed Harmon's telling everybody I stole his fish. Very calmly, Uncle Al cut himself a slice of the strongest tobacco on the river and packed it carefully in his pipe. Wadding it down with his thumb. He started to put the pipe between his teeth, then thought better of it. I can bone feel the Harmon boat a comin young fellow, he said, using the pipe to gesture with smooth and quiet over the river like a moccasin snake. Jimmy turned pale. He forgot about the disk and the mushrooming waterspout. When he shut his eyes he saw only a red haze overhanging the river and a shanty boat nosing out of the cypress, its windows spitting death. Jimmy knew that the Harmons had waited a long time for an excuse. The Harmons were law respecting river rats with sharp teeth. Feuding wasn't lawful, but murder could be made lawful by whittling down a lie until it looked as sharp as the truth. The Harmon brothers would do their whittling down with double barreled shotguns. It was easy enough to make murder look like a lawful crime if you could point to a body covered by a blanket and we caught him stealing our fish. He was a goin to kill us so we got him first. No one would think of lifting the blanket and asking Uncle Al about it. A man lying stiff and still under a blanket could no more make himself heard than a river cat frozen in the ice. Get inshot, young UN's. Here they come. Jimmy's heart skipped a beat. Down the river in the sunlight a shanty boat was drifting. Jimmy could see the Harmon brothers crouching on the deck, their faces livid with hate, sunlight glinting on their arm cradled shotguns. The Harmon brothers were not in the least alike. Jed Harmon was tall and gaunt, his right cheek puckered by a knife scar, his cruel thin lipped mouth snagged by his teeth. Joe Harmon was small and stout, a little round man with bushy eyebrows and the flabby face of a cottonmouth snake. Go inside, Pigtail, jimmy said calmly. I'm a goin to stay and fight. Uncle Al grabbed Jimmy's arm and swung him around. You heard what I said, young fellow. Now git. I want to stay here and fight with you, Uncle Al, jimmy said. Have you got a gun? Do you want to be blown apart, young fellow? I'm not scared, Uncle Al, jimmy pleaded. You might get wounded. I know how to shoot straight, Uncle Al. If you get hurt, I'll go right on fighting. No you won't, young fellow. Take Pigtail inside. You hear me? You want me to take you across my knee and beat the living stuffings out of you? Silence. Deep in his uncle's face, Jimmy saw an anger he couldn't buck. Grabbing Pigtail Annie by the arm, he propelled her across the deck and into the dismal front room of the shanty boat. The instant he released her, she glared at him and stamped her foot. If Uncle Al gets shot, it'll be your fault, she said cruelly. Then Pigtail's anger really flared up. The Harmons wouldn't dare shoot us cause we're children. For an instant, brief as a dropped heartbeat, Jimmy stared at his sister with unconcealed admiration. You can be right smart when you've got nothing else on your mind, Pigtail, he said. If they kill me, they'll hang around sure as shooting. Jimmy was out in the sunlight again before Pigtail could make a grab for him, out on the deck and running along the deck toward Uncle Al. He was still running when the first blast came. It didn't sound like a shotgun blast. The deck shook and a big swirl of smoke floated straight toward Jimmy, half blinding him and blotting Uncle Al from view. When the smoke cleared, Jimmy could see the Harmon shanty boat. It was less than 30ft away now, drifting straight past and rocking with the tide like a top heavy, flat barge. On the deck, Jed Harmon was crouching down, his gaunt face split in a triumphant smirk. Beside him, Joe Harmon stood quivering like a mound of jelly, a stick of dynamite in his hand, his flabby face looking almost gentle in the slanting sunlight. There was a little square box at Jed Harmon's feet. As Joe pitched, Jed reached into the box for another dynamite stick. Jed was passing the sticks along to his brother, depending on wad dynamite to silence Uncle Al forever. Wildly, Jimmy told himself that the guns had just been a trick to mix Uncle Al up and keep him from shooting until they had him where they wanted him. Uncle Al was shooting now, his face as grim as death. His big heavy gun was leaping about like mad, almost hurling him to the deck. Jimmy saw the second dynamite stick spinning through the air, but he never saw it come down. All he could see was the smoke and the shanty boat rocking and another terrible splintering crash as he went plunging into the river from the end of a rising plank, a sob strangling in his throat. Jimmy struggled up from the river with the long leg thrusts of a terrified bullfrog, his head a throbbing ache. As he swam shoreward. He could see the cypress on the opposite bank, dark against the sun.

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And something that looked like the roof of a house with water washing over it. Then with mud sucking at his heels, Jimmy was clinging to a Slippery bank and staring out across the river. Shading his eyes against the glare, Jimmy thought, I'm dreaming. I'll wake up and see Uncle Joe blowing on a vinegar jug. I'll see Pigtail, too. Uncle Al will be sitting on the deck, taking it easy. But Uncle Al wasn't sitting on the deck. There was no deck for Uncle Al to sit upon. Just the top of the shanty boat sinking lower and lower, and Uncle Al swimming. Uncle Al had his arm around Pigtail, and Jimmy could see Pigtail's white face bobbing up and down as Uncle Al breasted the tide with his strong right arm. Closer to the bend was the Harmon shanty boat. The Harmons were using their shotguns now, blasting fiercely away at Uncle Al and Pigtail. Jimmy could see the smoke curling up from the leaping guns and the water jumping up and down in little spurts all around Uncle Al. There was an awful hollow agony in Jimmy's chest as he stared. A fear that was partly a soundless screaming and partly a vision of Uncle Al sinking down through the dark water and turning it red. It was strange, though. Something was happening to Jimmy, nibbling away at the outer edges of the fear like a big hungry river cat, making the fear seem less swollen and awful, shredding it away in little flakes. There was a white core of anger in Jimmy which seemed suddenly to blaze up. He shut his eyes tight. In his mind's gaze, Jimmy saw himself holding the Harmon brothers up by their long, mottled legs. The Harmon brothers were frogs. Not friendly, good natured frogs like Uncle Al, but snake frogs, cottonmouth frogs, all flannel. Red were their mouths, and they had long, evil fangs which dripped poison in the sunlight. But Jimmy wasn't afraid of them no ways, not any more. He had too firm a grip on their legs. Don't let anything happen to Uncle Al and Pigtail, jimmy whispered, as though he were talking to himself. No, not exactly to himself to someone like himself, only larger. Very close to Jimmy, but larger, more powerful. Catch them before they harm Uncle Al. Hurry. Hurry. There was a strange lifting sensation in Jimmy's chest now, as though he could shake the river if he tried hard enough. Tilt it, send it swirling in great thunderous white surges clear down to Lake Pontchartrain. But Jimmy didn't want to tilt the river, not with Uncle Al on it and Pigtail and all those people in New Orleans who would disappear right off the streets. They were frogs, too, maybe, but good frogs. Not like the Harmon brothers. Jimmy had a funny picture of himself, much Younger than he was, Jimmy saw himself as a great husky baby, standing in the middle of the river and blowing on it with all his might. The waves rose and rose, and Jimmy's cheeks swelled out, and the river kept getting angrier. No, he must fight that. Save Uncle Al, he whispered fiercely. Just to save him and Pigtail. It began to happen the instant Jimmy opened his eyes. Around the bend in the sunlight came a great spinning disk wrapped in a fiery glow straight toward the Harman shanty boat. The disk swept water, spurting up all about it, its bottom 50ft wide. There was no collision, only a brightness for one awful instant where the shanty boat was twisting and turning in the current, a brightness that outshone the rising sun. Just like a camera flashbulb going off, but bigger, brighter, so big and bright that Jimmy could see the faces of The Harmon brothers, 50 times as large as life, shriveling and disappearing in a magnifying burst of flame high above the cypress trees, just as though a giant in the sky had trained a big burning glass on the Harmon brothers and whipped it back quick, whipped it straight up so that the faces would grow huge before dissolving as a warning to all snakes. There was an evil anguish in the dissolving faces, which made Jimmy's blood run cold. Then the disk was alone in the middle of the river, spinning around and around. The shanty boat swallowed up, and Uncle Al was still swimming fearfully close to it. The net came swirling out of the disc over Uncle Al like a great dew drenched gossamer web. It enmeshed him as he swam, so gently that he hardly seemed to struggle or even to be aware of what was happening to him. Pigtail didn't resist either. She simply stopped thrashing in Uncle Al's arms, as though a great wonder had come upon her. Slowly Uncle Al and Pigtail were drawn into the disk. Jimmy could see Uncle Al reclining in the web with Pigtail in the crook of his arm, his long, angular body as quiet as a butterfly in his deep winter sleep inside a swaying glass cocoon. Uncle Al and Pigtail being drawn together into the disk as Jimmy stared, a dull pounding in his chest. After a moment, the pounding subsided, and a silence settled down over the river. Jimmy sucked in his breath. The voices began quietly, as though they had been waiting for a long time to speak to Jimmy deep inside his head and didn't want to frighten him in any way. Take it easy, Jimmy. Stay where you are. We're just going to have a friendly little talk with Uncle Al. Uh, talk Jimmy heard himself stammering. We knew we'd find you where life flows simply and serenely. Jimmy, your parents took care of that before they left you with Uncle Al. You see, Jimmy, we wanted you to study the Earth people on a great wide flowing river, far from the cruel, twisted places. To grow up with them, Jimmy, and to understand them. Especially the Uncle Al's. For Uncle Al is unspoiled, Jimmy, if there's any hope at all for Earth as we guide and watch it, that hope burns most brightly in the Uncle Al's. The voice paused and then went on. See, Jimmy, you're not human in the same way that your sister is human or Uncle Lyle. But you're still young enough to feel human. And we want you to feel human, Jimmy. Who are you? Jimmy gasped. We are the Shining Ones, Jimmy. For wide wastes of years we have cruised Earth skies almost unnoticed by the Earth people. When darkness wraps the earth in a great spinning shroud, we hide our ships close to the cities the and glide through the silent streets in search of our young. You see, Jimmy, we must watch and protect the young of our race until sturdiness comes upon them and they are ready for the great change. For an instant there was a strange humming sound deep inside Jimmy's head, like the drowsy murmur of bees in a dew drenched clover patch. Then the voice droned on. The Earth People are frightened by our ships now, for their cruel wars have put a great fear of death in their hearts. They watch the skies with sharper eyes and their minds have groped closer to the truth. To the Earth People, our ships are no longer the fireballs of mysterious legend, haunted will o' the wisps marsh flickerings and the even more elusive distortions of the sick mind. It is a long, bold step from fireballs to flying saucers. Jimmy, a day will come when the Earth people will be wise enough to put aside fear. Then we can show ourselves to them as we really are and help them openly. The voice seemed to take more complete possession of Jimmy's thoughts then growing louder and more eager, echoing through his mind with the pervasiveness of muted chimes. Jimmy, close your eyes tight. We're going to take you across wide gulfs of space to the bright and shining land of your birth. Jimmy obeyed. It was a city, and yet it wasn't like New York or Chicago or any of the other cities Jimmy had seen illustrations of in the newspapers and picture magazines. The buildings were white and domed and shining, and they seemed to tower straight up into the Sky. There were streets, too, weaving in and out between the domes like rainbow colored spider webs in a forest of mushrooms. There were no people in the city, but down the aerial streets, shining objects swirled with the swift, easy gliding of flat stones skimming an edge of running water. Then, as Jimmy stared into the depths of the strange glow behind his eyelids, the city dwindled and fell away, and he saw a huge circular disk looming in a wilderness of shadows. Straight toward the disk, a shining object moved, bearing aloft on filaments of flame, a much smaller object that struggled and mewed and reached out little white arms. Closer and closer the shining object came, until Jimmy could see that it was carrying a human infant that stared straight at Jimmy out of wide, dark eyes. But before he could get a really good look at the shining object, it pierced the shadows and passed into the disk. There was a sudden blinding burst of light, and the disk was gone. Jimmy opened his eyes. You were once like that, baby Jimmy, the voice said. You were carried by your parents into a waiting ship and then out across wide gulfs of space to Earth. You see, Jimmy, our race was once entirely human. But as we grew to maturity, we left the warm little worlds where our infancy was spent and boldly sought the stars, shedding our humanness as sunlight sheds the dew or a bright soaring moth of the night, its ugly pupa case. We grew great and wise, Jimmy, but not quite wise enough to shed our human heritage of love and joy and heartbreak in our childhood. We must return to the scenes of our past, to take root again in familiar soil, to grow in power and wisdom, slowly and sturdily, like a seed dropped back into the loam which nourished the great flowering mother plant. Or, like the eels of earth seas, Jimmy, that must be spawned in the depths of the great cold ocean and swim slowly back to the bright highlands and the shining rivers of earth. Young eels do not resemble their parents, Jimmy. They're white and thin and transparent and have to struggle hard to survive and grow up. Jimmy, you were planted here by your parents to grow wise and strong. Deep in your mind, you knew we had come to seek you out. For we are all born human and are bound to one another by that knowledge and that secret trust. You knew that we would watch over you and see that no harm would come to you. You called out to us, Jimmy, with all the strength of your mind and heart. Your Uncle Owl was in danger, and you sensed our nearness. It was partly your knowledge that saved him, Jimmy, but it took courage, too, and a willingness to Believe that you were more than human and armed with a great, proud strength and wisdom of the shining ones. The voice suddenly grew gentle, like a caressing wind. You're not old enough yet to go home, Jimmy. Or wise enough. We'll take you home when the time comes. Now we just want to have a talk with Uncle Al to find out how you're getting along. Jimmy looked down into the river and then up into the sky. Deep down under the dark, swirling water, he could see life taking shape in a thousand forms. Caddisflies building bright, shining new nests. And dragonfly nymphs crawling up toward the sunlight. And pollywogs growing sturdy hind limbs to conquer the land. But there were cottonmouths down there, too, with death behind their fangs. And no love for the life that was crawling upward. When Jimmy looked up into the sky, he could see all the blazing stars. Stars of space, with cottonmouths on every planet, of every sun. Uncle Al was like a bright caddis fly, building a fine new nest, thatched with kindness, denying himself bright little Mardi Gras pleasures so that Jimmy could go to school and grow wiser than Uncle Al. That's right, Jimmy. You're growing up. We can see that. Uncle Al says he told you to hide from the cottonmouths, but you were ready to give your life for your sister and Uncle Al. Shucks, it was nothing. Jimmy heard himself protesting. Uncle Al doesn't think so, and neither do we. A long silence while the river mists seemed to weave a bright cocoon of radiance around Jimmy, clinging to the bank and the great circular disc that had swallowed up Uncle Al. Then the voices began. No reason why Uncle Al shouldn't have a little fun out of life, Jimmy. Gold's easy to make, and we'll make some right now. A big lump of gold in Uncle Al's hand won't hurt him in any way. Whenever he gets any spending money, he gives it away. Jimmy gulped. I know, Jimmy. But he'll listen to you. Tell him you. You want to go to New Orleans, too. Jimmy looked up quickly then. In his heart was something of the wonder he'd felt when he'd seen his first riverboat and waited for he knew not what. Something of the wonder that must have come to men seeking magic in the sky. The rain makers of ancient tribes and of days long vanished. Only to Jimmy, the wonder came now with a white burst of remembrance and recognition. It was as though he could sense something of himself in the two towering spheres that rose straight up out of the water behind the disk, still white and beautiful they were, like bubbles floating on a rainbow sea with all the stars of space behind them staring at them. Jimmy saw himself as he would be and knew himself for what he was. It was not a glory to be long endured. Now you must forget again, Jimmy. Forget, as Uncle Al will forget, until we come for you. Be a little shanty boat boy. You are safe in the wide bosom of the Father of Waters. Your parents planted you in a rich, kindly loam, and in all the finite universe you will find no cozier nook, for life flows here with a diversity that is infinite. And Pigtail, she gets on your nerves at times, doesn't she, Jimmy? She sure does, jimmy admitted. Be patient with her, Jimmy. She's the only human sister you'll ever have on Earth. I I'll try, jimmy muttered. Uncle Al and Pigtail came out of the disc in an amazingly simple way. They just seemed to float out in the glimmering web. Then suddenly there wasn't any disk on the river at all, just a dull flickering where the sky had opened like a great blazing furnace to swallow it up. I was just swimmin along with Pigtail, not worrying too much, because there's no sense in worrying when death is staring ye in the face, uncle Al muttered. A few minutes later Uncle Al sat on the river bank beside Jimmy, staring down at his palm, his vision misted a little by a furious blinking. It's gold, Uncle Al. Pigtail shrilled. A big lump of solid gold. I just felt my hand get heavy. And there it was, young fellow, nestling there in my palm. Jimmy didn't seem to be able to say anything. High school books don't cost more than grammar school books, young fellow, uncle Al said, his face a sudden shining. Next winter you'll be a going to high school, sure as I am a sitting here. For a moment the sunlight seemed to blaze so brightly about Uncle Al that Jimmy couldn't even see the holes in his socks. Then Uncle Al made a wry face. Some day, young fellow, when your books are all paid for, I'm going to buy myself a brand new store suit and hie myself off to the Mardi Gras. Ain't too old. That a way to get a little fun out of life, young fellow. The Mississippi Saucer by Frank Belknap Long Recording by Bill Yallatly.

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1 out of 10 by J. Anthony Furlane this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information are to volunteer year please visit Librivox.org Recording by Pam Castile 1 out of 10 by J. Anthony Furlane. There may be a town called Mars in Montana, but little Mrs. Freda Dunny didn't come from there. I watched Don Phillips, the commercial announcer, out of the corner of my eye. The camera in front of me swung around and lined up on my set. And now on with the show, Phillips was saying, and here, ready to test your wits, is your quizzing quiz master, smiling Jim Parsons. I smiled into the camera and waited while the audience applauded. The camera tally light went on and the stage manager brought his arm down and pointed at me. Good afternoon, I said into the camera. Here we go again with another half hour of fun and prizes on television's newest, most exciting game, Parlor Quiz. In a moment I'll introduce you to our first contestant. But first, here is a special message to you mothers. The baby powder commercial appeared on the monitor and I walked over to the next set. They had the first contestant lined up for me. I smiled and took her card from the floor man. She was a middle aged woman with a faded print dress and old style shoes. I never saw the contestants until we were on the air. They were screened before the show by the staff. They usually tried to pick contestants, contestants who would make good show material. An odd name or occupation or somebody with 20 kids, something of that nature. I looked at the card for the tip off. Mrs. Freda Dunny, the card said. Ask her where she comes from. I smiled at the contestant again and took her by the hand. The tally light went on again and I grinned into the camera. Well, now we're all set to go. And our first, first contestant today is this charming little lady right here beside me, Mrs. Freda Dunny. I looked at the card. How are you, Mrs. Dunny? Fine, just fine. All set to answer a lot of questions and win a lot of prizes. Oh, I'll win all right, said Mrs. Dunny, smiling around at the audience. The audience tittered a bit at the remark. I looked at the card again. Where are you from, Mrs. Dunny? Mars, said Mrs. Dunny. Mars. I laughed, anticipating the answer. Mars, Montana, Mars, Peru? No Marsup there, she said, pointing up in the air. The planet Mars. The fourth planet out from the sun. My assistant looked unhappy. I smiled again, wondering what the gag was. I decided to play along. Well, well, I said. All the way from Mars, eh? And how long have you been on earth, Mrs. Dunny? Oh, about 30 or 40 years. I've been here nearly all my life. Came here when I was a wee bit of a girl. Well, I said. You're practically an Earth woman by now, aren't you? The audience laughed. Do you plan on going back some day, or have you made up your mind to stay here on Earth for the rest of your days? Oh, I'm just here for the invasion, said Mrs. Dunny. When that's over, I'll probably go back home again. The invasion? Yes, the invasion of Earth. As soon as enough of us are here, we'll get started. You mean there are others here too? Oh, yes. There are several million of us here in the United States already, and more on the way. There are only about 170 million people in the United States, Mrs. Dunny, I said. If there are several million Martians among us, one out of every hundred would have to be a Martian. One out of every 10, said Mrs. Dunny. That's what the boss said just the other day. We're getting pretty close to the number we need to take over Earth. What do you need? I asked. One to one. One Martian for every Earthman. Oh no, said Mrs. Dunny. One Martian is worth ten Earthmen. The only reason we're waiting is we don't want any trouble. You don't look any different from us earth people, Mrs. Dunny. How. How does one tell the difference between a Martian and an Earthman when one sees one? Oh, we don't look any different, said Mrs. Dunny. Some of the kids don't even know they're Martians. Most mothers don't tell their children until they're grown up. And there are other children who are never told because they just don't develop their full powers. What powers? Oh, telepathy, thought control, that sort of thing. You mean that Martians can read people's thoughts?

Lady Luck

Sure.

Spinquest Announcer

It's no trouble at all. It's very easy, really, once you get the hang of it. Can you read my mind? I asked, smiling. Sure, said Mrs. Dunny, smiling up at me. That's why I said I'd know the answers. I'll be able to read the answers from your mind when you look at that sheet of paper. Now that's hardly spread sporting, is it, Mrs. Dunny? I said, turning to the camera. The audience laughed. Everybody else has to do it the hard way. And here you are reading it from my mind. All's fair in love and war, said Mrs. Dunny. Tell me, Mrs. Dunny, why are you telling me all about this? Isn't it supposed to be a secret? I have my reasons, said Mrs. Dunny. Nobody believes me anyhow. Oh, I believe you, Mrs. Dunny. I said gravely. And now let's see how you do on the questions. Are you ready? She nodded. Name the one and only mammal that has the ability to fly. I asked, reading from the script. A bat, she says. Right. Did you read that from my mind? Oh yes, you're coming over very clear, said Mrs. Dunny. Try this one, I said. A princess is any daughter of a sovereign. What is a princess royal? The eldest daughter of a sovereign, she said. Correct. How about this one? Is a Kodiak, a kind of simple box camera, a type of double bowed boat, or a type of Alaskan bear? A bear, said Mrs. Dunny. Very good, I said. That was a hard one. I asked her seven more questions and she got them all right. None of the other contestants even came close to her score, so I wound up giving her the gas range and a lot of other smaller prizes. After we were off the air, I followed the audience out into the hall. Mrs. Dunny was walking towards the lobby with an old paper shopping bag under her arm. An attendant was following her with an armful of prizes. I caught up with her before she reached the door. Mrs. Donny, I said, and she turned around. I want to talk to you. When do I get the gas stove? She said. Your local dealer will send it to you in a few days. Did you give them your address? Yes, I gave it to them. My Philadelphia address, that is. I don't even remember my address at home anymore. More Come now, Mrs. Dunny. You don't have to keep up that marrs business now that we're off the air. It's the truth. And I didn't come here just by accident, said Mrs. Dunny, looking over her shoulder toward the attendant who was still holding the prizes. I came here to see you. Me? Mrs. Dunny set the paper bag down on the floor and dug down into her pocketbook book. She took out a dog eared piece of white paper and bent it up in her hand. Yes, she said finally. I came to see you. And you didn't follow me out here because you wanted to. I commanded you to come. Commanded me to come? I spluttered. What for? To prove something to you. Do you see this piece of paper? She held out the paper in her hand with the blank side towards me. My address is on this paper. I am reading the address. Concentrate on what I'm reading. I looked at her. I concentrated. Suddenly I knew. 251 South 8th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I said aloud. You see, it's very easy once you get the hang of it, she said. Said I nodded and smiled down at her. Now I understood. I picked up her bag and put my hand on her shoulder. Let's go, I said. We have a lot to talk about. End of 1 out of 10 by J. Anthony Furlane Recording by Pam Cast. The Perfectionist by Arnold Castle this is the Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Pam Castile the Perfectionist by Arnold Castle Is there something wrong with you? Do you fail to fit in with your group? Nervous? Anxious? Ill at ease? Happy about it? Lucky you. Frank Pembroke sat behind the desk of his shabby little office over Lamarque's Liquors in downtown Los Angeles and waited for his first customer. He had been in business for a week and as yet had had no callers. Therefore, it was with a mingled sense of excitement and satisfaction that he greeted the tall, dark, smooth faced figure that came up the stairs and into the office shortly before noon. Good day, sir, said Pembroke with an amiable smile. I see my advertisement has interested you. Please stand in that corner for just a moment. Opening the desk drawer, which was almost empty, Pembroke removed an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer. Pointing it at the amazed customer, he fired four.22 caliber longs into the narrow chest. Then he made a telephone call and sat down to wait. He wondered how long it would be before his neighbor, next client, would arrive. The series of events leading up to Pembroke's present occupation had commenced on a dismal, overcast evening in the South Pacific. A year earlier. Bound for Sydney two days out of Valparaiso, the Columbian tramp steamer Elena Mia had encountered a dense greenish fog which seemed seemed vaguely redolent of citrus trees. Standing on the forward deck, Pembroke was one of the first to perceive the peculiar odor and to spot the immense gray hulk wallowing in the murky distance. Then the explosion had come from far below the water line, and the decks were awash with frantic crewmen, officers, and the handful of passengers.

Narrator/Various Characters

Passengers.

Spinquest Announcer

Only two lifeboats were launched before the Elena Mia went down. Pembroke was in the second. The roar of the sinking ship was the last thing he heard for some time. Pembroke came as close to being a professional adventurer as one can in these days of regimented travel, organized peril, and political restriction. He had made for himself a substantial, substantial fortune through speculation in a great variety of properties, real and otherwise. Life had given him much and demanded little, which was perhaps the reason for his restiveness. Loyalty to person or to people was a trait Pembroke had never recognized in himself, nor had it ever been expected of him. And yet he greatly envied those staunch patriots and lovers who could find it in themselves to elevate the glory and safety of others above that of themselves. Hey everybody.

Lady Luck

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Lady Luck

Your whole neighborhood goes black in seconds except your house. The Patriot Power Generator 2200X from 4 Patriots keeps your lights on when the grid goes down. It's the most powerful generator 4patriots has ever built. Only 4patriots gives you backup power without gas fumes or a loud engine. Just lights a cold fridge and peace of mind when the power fails. Right now, save $500 and get two solar panels free. That means you can recharge twice as fast, but only while supplies last. Keep your lights on, your food cold and your family calm when the grid goes down. Don't wait for the next blackout. Visit fourpatriots.com today. That's the number four P A T R I-O-T S.com and see why families trust four Patriots to stay ready. When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-granger clickranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

Spinquest Announcer

Lacking such loyalties, Pembroke adapted quickly to the situation in which he found himself. When he regained consciousness, he awoke in a small room in what appeared appeared to be a typical modern American hotel. The wallet in his pocket contained exactly what it should approximately $300. His next thought was of food. He left the room and descended via the elevator to the restaurant. Here he observed that it was early afternoon ordering a full dinner, for he was unusually hungry. He began to study the others in the restaurant. Many of the faces seemed familiar. The crew of the ship probably. He also recognized several of the passengers. However, he made no attempt to speak to them. After his meal he bought a good Corona and went for a walk. His situation could have been any small western American seacoast city. He heard the hiss of the ocean in the direction the afternoon sun was taking. In his full, gaited walk, he was soon approaching the beach. On the sand he saw a number of sun bathers. One in particular, an attractive woman of about 30, tossed back her long chestnut locks and gazed up intently at Pembroke as he passed. Seldom had he enjoyed so ingenious an invitation. He halted and stared down at her for a few moments. You are looking for someone? She inquired. Much of the time, said the man. Could it be me? It could be. Yet you seem unsure, she said. Pembroke smiled uneasily. There was something not entirely normal about her conversation, though the rest of her compensated for that. Tell me what's wrong with me, she went on urgently. I'm not good. Good enough, am I? I mean, there's something wrong with the way I looked or act, isn't there? Please help me. Please. You're not casual enough for one thing, said Pembroke, deciding to play along with her for the moment. You're too tense. Also, you're a bit knock kneed. Not that it matters. Is that what you wanted to hear? Yes. Yes. I. I mean, I suppose so. I could try to be more casual, but I don't know what to do about my knees, she said wistfully, staring across at the smooth, tanned limbs. Do you think I'm okay otherwise? I mean, as a whole, I'm not so bad, am I? Oh, please tell me. How about talking it over at supper to night? Pembroke proposed. Maybe with less distraction. I'll have a better picture of you as a whole. Oh, that's very generous of you, the woman told him. She scribbled a name and an address on a small piece of paper and handed it to him. Any time after six, she said. Pembroke left the beach and walked through several small specialty shops. He tried to get the woman off his mind, but the oddness of her conversation continued to bother him. She was right about being different, but it was her concern about being different that made her so. How to explain that to her? Then he saw the weird little glass statuette among the usual bric a brac. It rather resembled a ground hog, had seven fingers on each of its six limbs, and smiled up at him as he stared. Can I help you, sir? A middle aged saleswoman inquired. Oh, good heavens. Whatever's that thing doing here? Pembroke watched with lifted eyebrows as the clerk whisked the bizarre statuette underneath the counter. What the hell was that? Pembroke demanded. Oh, you know are, don't you? Oh my, she concluded. Are you one of the strangers? And if I were? Well, I'd certainly appreciate it if you'd tell me how I walk. She came around in front of the counter and and strutted back and forth a few times. They tell me I leaned too far forward, she confided. But I should think you'd fall down if you didn't. Don't try to go so fast and you won't fall down, suggested Pembroke. You're in too much of a hurry. Also, those fake flowers on your blouse make you look frumpy. Well, I'm supposed to look frumpy, the woman retorted. That's the type of person I am. But you can look frumpy and still walk natural, can't you? Everyone says you can. Well, they've got a point, said Pembroke. Incidentally, just where are we anyway? What city is this? Porto Pacifico, she told him. Isn't that a lovely name? It means peaceful port in Spanish. That was fine. At least he now knew where he was. But as he left the shop, he began checking off every west coast state, city, town, and inlet. None, to the best of his knowledge, was called Porto Pacifico. He headed for the nearest service station and asked for a map. The attendant gave him one which showed the city, but nothing beyond. Which way is it to San Francisco? Asked Pembroke. That all depends on where you are, the boy returned. Ok, then, where am I? Pardon me, there's a customer, the boy said. This is Porto Pacifico. Pembroke watched him hurry off to service a car with the sense of having been given the run around. To his surprise, the boy came back a few minutes later after servicing the automobile. Say, I've just figured out who you are at the end, youngster told him. I'd sure appreciate it if you'd give me a little help on my lingo. Also, you gas up the car first, then try to sell em the oil, right? Right, said Pembroke wearily. What's wrong with your lingo? Other than the fact that it's not colloquial enough? Not enough slang, huh? Well, I guess I'll have to concentrate on that. How about the smile? Perfect, pembroke told him. Yeah, said the boy delightedly. Say, come back again, huh? I sure appreciate the help. Keep the map. Thanks. One more thing, Pembroke said. What's over that way outside the city? Sand. How about that way? He asked, pointing north. And that way pointing south. More of the same. Any railroads that we ain't got? Buses? Airlines? The kid shook his head. Some city. Yeah, it's kind of isolated. A lot of ships dock here, though. All cargo ships, I'll bet. No passengers, said Pembroke. Right, said the attendant, giving with his perfect smile. No getting out of here, is there? That's for sure, the boy said, walking away to wait on another customer. If you don't like the place, you've had it. Pembroke returned to the hotel. Going to the bar, he recognized one of the Elena Mia's paying passengers. He was a short, rectangular little man in his 50s named Spencer. He sat in a booth with three young women, all lovely, all effusive. The topic of the conversation turned out to be precisely what Pembroke had predicted. Well, Louisa, I'd say your only fault is the way you keep wiggling your shoulders up and down. Whyn't you try holding em straight? I thought it'd make me look sexy, the red head said petulantly. Just be yourself, gal, spencer drawled, jabbing her intimately with the fat elbow, and you'll qualify. Me?

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Me?

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The blonde with the feather cut was insisting. What is wrong with me? You're perfect, sweetheart, he told her, taking her hand. Ah, come on, she pleaded. Everyone tells me I chew gum with my mouth open. Don't you hate that? Now that's part of your charm, spencer assured her. How about me, sugar? Asked the girl with the coal black hair. Aw, you're perfect too. You are all perfect. I've never seen such a collection of dolls as parade around the this here city. Come on, kids, how about another round? But the dolls had apparently lost interest in him. They got up one by one and walked out of the bar. Pembroke took his rum and tonic and moved over to Spencer's booth. Okay if I join you? Sure, said the fat man. Wonder what the hell got into those babes. You said they were perfect. They know they're not. You've got to be rough with them in this town, said Pembroke. That's all they want from us. Mister, you've been doing some thinking. I can see, said Spencer, peering at him suspiciously. Maybe you've figured out where we are. Your bet's as good as mine, said Pembroke. It's not Wellington and it's not Brisbane and it's not Long beach and it's not Tahiti. There are a lot of places it's not. But where the hell it is it? You tell me. And by the way, he added, I hope you like it in Porto Pacifico because there isn't any place to go from here. And there isn't any way to get there. If there were. Pardon me, gentlemen, but I'm Joe Valencia, manager of the hotel. I would be very grateful if you would give me a few minutes of honest criticism. Ah, no, not you too. Groaned Spencer, looking. Look, Joe. What's the gag? You are newcomers, Mr. Spencer, Valencia explained. You are therefore in an excellent position to point out our faults as you see them. Well, so what? Demanded Spencer. I've got more important things to do than to worry about your troubles. You look okay to me, Mr. Valencia, said Pembroke. I've noticed that you walk with a very slight. Slight limp. If you have a bad leg, I should think you would do better to develop a more pronounced limp. Otherwise you may appear to be self conscious about it. Spencer opened his mouth to protest, but saw with amazement that it was exactly this that Valencia was seeking. Pembroke was amused at his companion's reaction, but observed that Spencer still failed to see the point. Also, there is a certain effeminateness in the way in which you speak, said Pembroke. Try to be a little more direct, a little more brusque. Speak in a monotone. It will make you more acceptable. Thank you so much, said the manager. There is much food for thought in what you have said, Mr. Pembroke. However, Mr. Spencer, your value has failed to prove itself. You. You have only yourself to blame. Cooperation is all we require of you. Valencia left. Spencer ordered another martini. Neither he nor Pembroke spoke for several minutes. Somebody's crazy around here, the fat man muttered after a few moments. Is it me, Frank? No. You just don't belong here. In this particular place, said Pembroke thoughtfully. You're the wrong type. But they couldn't know that ahead of time. The way they operate, it's a pretty hit or miss operation. But they don't care one bit about us, Spencer. Consider the men who went down with the ship. That was just part of the game. What the hell are you saying? Asked Spencer in disbelief. You figure they sunk the ship? Valencia and the waitress and the three babes. Ah, come on. It's what you think that will determine what you do, Spencer. I suggest you change your attitude. Play along with them for a few days. Till the picture becomes a little clearer to you. We'll talk about it again then. Pembroke rose and started out of the bar. A policeman entered and walked directly to Spencer's table. Loitering at the jukebox. Pembroke overheard the conversation. You Spencer? That's right, said the fat man sullenly. What don't you like about me? The truth, buddy. Aw, hell, nothing's wrong with you at all. And nothing'll make me say there is, said Spencer. You're the guy, all right. Too bad, Mac, said the cop. Pembroke heard the shots as he strolled casually out into the brightness of the hotel lobby. While he waited for the elevator, he saw them carrying the body into the street. How many others, he wondered, had gone out on their backs during their first day in Porto Pacifico? Pembroke shaved, showered, and put on the new suit and shirt he had bought. Then he took Mary Ann, the woman he had met on the beach, out to dinner. She would look magnificent even when fully clothed, he decided, and the pale chartreuse gown she wore hardly placed her in that category. Her conversation seemed considerably more normal after the other denizens of Porta Pacifico Pembroke had listened to that afternoon. After eating, they danced for an hour, had a few more drinks, then went to Pembroke's room. He still knew nothing about her and had almost exhausted his critical capabilities. But not once had she become annoyed with him. She seemed to devour every factual point of imperfection about herself that Pembroke brought to her attention. And fantastically enough, she actually appeared to have overcome every little imperfection he had been able to communicate to her. It was in the privacy of his room that Pembroke became aware of just how. How perfect. Physically, Marianne was too perfect. No freckles or moles anywhere on the visible surface of her brown skin, which was more than a mere sampling. Furthermore, her face and body were meticulously symmetrical, and she seemed to be wholly ambidextrous. With so many beautiful women in Porto Pontifico, said Pembroke probingly, I find it hard to understand while there are so few children. Yes, children are decorative, aren't they? Said Mary Ann. I do wish there were more of them. Why not have a couple of your own? He asked. Oh, they're only given to maternal types. I'd never get one anyway. I won't ever marry, she said. I'm the paramore type. It was obvious that the liquor had been having some. Some effect. Either that or she had a basic flaw of loquacity that no one else had discovered. Pembroke decided he would have to cover his tracks carefully. What type am I? He asked. Silly. You're real. You're not a type at all. Maryanne, I love you very much, pembroke murmured. Gambling everything on this one throw. Would you go to Earth? I'll miss you terribly. Hey, guys. Lady luck here. Are you going on any road trips this summer?

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Oh, but you'll be dead by then. She pouted. So I mustn't fall in love with you. I don't want to be miserable if I pretended I was one of you. If I left on the boat with you, they let me go to Earth with you, wouldn't they? Oh yes, I'm sure they would. Mary, you have two other flaws I feel I should mention. Yes, please tell me. In the first place, said Pembroke, you should be willing to fall in love with me, even if it will eventually make you unhappy. How can you be the paramour type if you refuse to fall in love foolishly? And when you have fallen in love, you should be very loyal. I'll try, she said. Said unsurely. What else? The other thing is that as my mistress, you must never mention me to anyone. It would place me in great danger. I'll never tell anyone anything about you, she promised. Now try to love Me, Pembroke said, drawing her into his arms and kissing with little pleasure the smooth, warm perfection of her tanned cheeks. Love me, my sweet, beautiful, affectionate Marianne. My paramour. Making love to Mary Ann was something short of ecstasy. Not for any obvious reason, but because of subtle little factors that make a woman a woman. Marianne had no pulse. Marianne did not perspire. Marianne did not fatigue gradually, but all at once. Marianne breathed regularly. Under all circumstances. Marianne talked and talked and talked. But then, Marianne was not a human being. When she left the hotel at midnight, Pembroke was quite sure that she understood his plan. And that she was irrevocably in love with him. To morrow might bring his death, but it might also ensure his escape. After 42 years of searching for a passion, for a cause, for a loyalty, Frank Pembroke had at last found his earth and the human race that peopled it. And Marianne would help him to save it. The next morning, Pembroke talked to Valencia about hunting. He said that he planned to go shooting out on the desert which surrounded the city. Valencia told him that there were no living creatures anywhere but in the city. Pembroke said he was going out anyway. He picked up Mary Ann at her apartment and together they went to a sporting goods store. As he guessed, there was a goodly selection of firearms. Despite the fact that there was nothing to hunt and only a single target range within the city. Everything, of course, course, had to be just like earth. That, after all, was the purpose of Porto Pacifico. By noon, they had rented a jeep and were well away from the city. Pembroke and Marianne took turns firing at the paper targets they had purchased. At twilight, they headed back to the city on the outskirts, where the sand and soil were mixed and no footprints would be left. Pembroke hopped off. Mary Ann would go straight to the police and report that Pembroke had attacked her and that she had shot him. If necessary, she would conduct the authorities to the place where they had been target shooting. But would be unable to locate the spot where she had buried the body. Why had she buried it? Because at first she was not going to report the incident. She was frightened. It was not airtight, but there would probably be no further investigation. And they certainly would not prosecute Mary Ann for killing an earthman. Now Pembroke had himself to worry about. The first step was to enter smoothly into the new life he had planned. It wouldn't be so comfortable as the previous one, but should be considerably safer. He headed slowly for the old part of town, aging his clothes against building and fences as he walked. He had already torn the collar of the shirt and discarded his belt. By morning his beard would grow to blacken his face and he would look weary and hungry and aimless. Only the last would be a deception. Two weeks later Pembroke phoned Mary Ann. The police had accepted her story without even checking and and whenwhen would she be seeing him again? He had aroused her passion and no amount of long distance love could requite it. Soon, he assured her. Soon. Because after all, you do owe me something, she added. And that was bad, because it sounded as if she had been given some womanly thought to the situation. A little more of that and she was might go to the police again. This time for vengeance. Twice during his wanderings Pembroke had seen the corpses of earthmen being carted out of buildings. They had to be earthmen because they bled. Marianne had admitted that she did not. There would be very few earthmen left in Porto Pacifico and it would be simple enough to locate him if he were reported as being on the loose. There was no out but to do away with Mary Ann. Pembroke headed for the beach. He knew she invariably went there in the afternoon. He loitered around the stalls where hot dogs and soft drinks were sold, leaning against a post in the hot sun hat pulled down over his forehead. Then he noticed that people all about him were talking excitedly. They were discussing a ship. It was leaving the that afternoon. Anyone who could pass the interview would be sent to Earth. Pembroke had visited the docks every day without being able to learn when the great exodus would take place. Yet he was certain the first lap would be by water rather than by spaceship, since no one he had talked to in the city had ever heard of spaceships. In fact, they knew very little about their masters. Now. Now the ship had arrived and was to leave shortly. If there was any but the most superficial examination, Pembroke would no doubt be discovered and exterminated. But since no one seemed concerned about anything but his own speech and behaviour, he assumed they had all qualified in every other respect. The reason for transporting Earth people to this planet was of course to apply a corrective to any of the Pacifico's aberrant mannerisms or articulation. This was the polishing up phase. Pembroke began hobbling toward the docks. Almost at once he found himself face to face with Marian. She smiled happily when she recognized him. That was a good thing. It is a sign of poor breeding to smile at tramps, Pembroke admonished her in a whisper. Walk on ahead. She obeyed. He followed. The crowd grew thicker. They neared the docks and Pembroke saw that there were now set up on the roped off wharves, small interviewing booths. When it was their turn, he and Marianne each went into separate ones. Pembroke found himself alone in the little room. Then he saw that there was another entity in his presence, confined beneath a glass dome. It looked rather like a ground hog and had seven fingers on each of its six limbs, but it was larger and hairier than the glass one he had seen at the gift store with four of its limbs. It tapped on an intricate keyboard in front of it. What is your name? Queried a metallic voice from a speaker on the wall. I'm Jerry Newton. Got no middle initial, pembroke said in a surly voice. Occupation? I work a lot of trades. Fisherman, fruit picker, fighting range fires, vineyards, car washer, anything, you name it. Been out of work for a long time now, though. Going on five months. These here are hard times, no matter what they say. Say, what do you think of the Chinese situation? The voice inquired. Which situation's that? Where's Seattle? Seattle, State of Washington. And so it went for about five minutes. Then he was told he had qualified as a satisfactory surrogate for a mid 20th century American male itinerant type. You understand your mission, Newton? The voice asked. You are to establish yourself on Earth in time. You will receive instructions, then you will attack. You will not see us, your masters again until the atmosphere has been sufficiently chlorinated. In the meantime, serve us well. He stumbled out toward the docks, then looked about for Marianne. He saw her at last behind the ropes, her lovely face in tears. Then she saw him waving frantically. She called his name several times. Pembroke mingled with the crowd moving toward the ship, ignoring her, but still the woman persisted in her shouting, sidling up to a well dressed man about town type. Pembroke winked at him and said, snickered. You Frank? He asked. Hell no. But some poor punk, sure. Red in the face, I'll bet, the man about town said with a chuckle. Those high strung paramour types, always raising a ruckus. They never do pass the interview. Don't know why they even make em. Suddenly Marianne was quiet. Ambulance squad, pembroke's companion explained. They'll take her off to the back buggy house for a few days and bring her out fresh and ignorant as the day she was assembled. Don't know why they keep making em as I say, but I guess there's a call for that type up there on earth. Yea, I reckon there is at that, said Pembroke, snickering again as he moved away from the other. And why not, hey, why not? Pembroke went right on hating himself, however, till the night he was deposited in in a field outside of Ensenada, broke but happy with two other itinerant types. They separated in San Diego, and it was not long before Pembroke was explaining to the police how he had drifted far from the scene of the sinking of the Elena Mia on a piece of wreckage, and he had been picked up by a Chilean trawler, how he had then made his way with much suffering up the coast to California. Two days later, his identity established and his circumstances again solvent, he was headed for Los Angeles to begin his Save Earth campaign. Now, seated at his battered desk in the shabby rented office over Lamarque's liquors, Pembroke gazed without emotion at the two demolished Pacificoes that lay sprawled one atop the other in the corner. His wife watch said 1:15. The man from the FBI should arrive soon. There were footsteps on the stairs for the third time that day. Not the brisk, efficient steps of a federal official, but the hesitant, self conscious steps of a junior clerk type. Pembroke rose as the young man appeared at the door. His face was smooth, unpimpled, clean shaven without sweat on a warm summer afternoon. Are you Dr. Von Schubert? The newcomer asked, peering into the room. You see, I've got a problem. The four shots from Pembroke's pistol solved his problem effectively. Pembroke tossed his third victim onto the pile, then opened a can of lager, quaffing it appreciatively. Seating himself once more, he leaned back, back of the chair, both feet upon the desk. He would be out of business soon, once the FBI agent had got there. Pembroke was only in it to get the proof he would need to convince people of the truth of his tale. But in the meantime, he allowed himself to admire the clipping of the newspaper ad he had run in all the Los Angeles papers for the past week, the little ad that had saved mankind from God knew what. What insidious menace, it read. Are you imperfect? Let Dr. Von Schubert point out your flaws. It is his goal to make you the average for your type. Fee $3.75 money back if not satisfied. End of the Perfectionist By Arnold Castle Recording by Pam Castile.

Narrator/Various Characters

Pipe of Peace this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Frank Malanga pipe of peace by James McKimme Jr. The farmer refused to work. His wife, a short, thin woman with worried eyes, watched him while he sat before the kitchen table. He was thin too, like his wife, but tall and tough skinned. His face with its leather look was immobile. Why? Asked his wife. Good reasons, the farmer said. He poured yellow cream into a cup of coffee. He let the cup sit on the table. Henry, said the woman, as though she were really speaking to someone else.

Howard Isherwood

She.

Narrator/Various Characters

She walked around the kitchen in quick, aimless bird steps. My right, said Hendry. He lifted his cup, finally tasting. We'll starve. Not likely. Not until everybody else does, anyway. The woman circled the room and came back to her husband. Her eyes winked and there were lines between them. Her fingers clutched the edge of the table. You've gone crazy, she said, as though it were a half question, a half pronouncement. The farmer was relaxing now, leaning back in his chair. Might have. Might have at that. Why? She asked. The farmer turned his coffee cup carefully. Thing to do is all. Each man in his own turn. This is my turn. The woman watched him for a long time. Then she sat down on a chair beside the table. The quick, nervous movement was gone out of her, and she sat like a frozen sparrow. The farmer looked up and grinned. Feels good just to sit here. Does well for the back and the arms. Been working too hard, Henry, the woman said. The farmer tasted his coffee again. He put the cup on the table and leaned back, tapping his brown fingers. Just in time, I'd say. Waited any longer, it wouldn't have done any good. Another few years, a farmer wouldn't mean anything. The woman watched him, hurt her eyes frightened, as though he might suddenly gnash his teeth or leap in the air. Pretty soon, the farmer said, they'd have it all mechanical. Couldn't stop anything now, he said, smiling at his wife. We can stop it all, Henry. Go out to the fields, the woman said. No, henry said, standing, stretching his thin, hard body. I won't go out to the fields. Neither will August Brown nor Clyde Briggs nor Alfred Swanson. None of us anywhere. Not until the food's been stopped long enough for people to wake up. The farmer looked out of the kitchen window, beyond his tractor and the cow barn and the windmill. He looked at rows of strong corn, shivering their soft silk in the morning breeze. We'll stop the corn, stop the wheat, stop the cattle, the hogs, and the chickens. You can't. I can't. But all of us together can. No sense, the woman said, wagging her head. No sense. It sense, all right. Best sense we've ever had. Can't use an army with no stomach. Old as the earth. Can't fight without food. Takes food to run a war. You'll starve the two of us. That's all you'll do. Nobody else will stop work. The farmer turned to his wife. Yes they will. Everywhere a farmer is the same. He works the land. He reads the papers. He votes. He listens to the radio. He watches the television. Mostly he works the land alone with his own thoughts and ideas.

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He isn't any different in Maine than he is in Oregon. We've all stopped work now this morning. How about those across the ocean? Are they stopping too? They're not going to feed up their soldiers to kill us if we don't starve first two, they stop too. A farmer is a farmer. Like a leaf on a tree. No matter on what tree, in what country, on whose land. A leaf is a leaf. A farmer's the same. A farmer is a farmer. It won't work, the woman said dully. Yes, it will. They'll make you work.

Howard Isherwood

How?

Narrator/Various Characters

It's our own property. They'll take it away from you. Who'll work it then? The woman rocked in her chair, her mouth quivering. They'll get somebody. The farmer shook his head. Too many people doing other things, like making shells and guns, like sitting in foxholes or flying planes. The woman sat rocking her hands together in her lap. It won't work, she repeated. It'll work, said the farmer. Right now it'll work. Yes, we've got milkers and shuckers and we've got hatches for the chickens. We've got tractors and combines and threshing machines. They're all mechanical all right, but we don't have mechanical farmers yet. The pumps, the tractors, the milkers don't work by themselves. In time, maybe, but not now. We're still ahead of them on that. It'll work. Go out to the fields, Henry, his wife said, her voice like the sound of a worn phonograph record. No, the farmer said, taking a pipe from his overalls. I think instead I'll just sit in the sun and watch the corn, watch the birds on top of the barn. Maybe I'll fill my pipe and sit there and smoke and watch, and when I get sleepy I'll sleep. After a while I might go see August Brown or Clyde Briggs or maybe Alfred Swanson. We'll sit and talk about pleasant things, peaceful things.

Howard Isherwood

We'll wait.

Narrator/Various Characters

The farmer put the pipe between his teeth and walked to the door. He put on his straw hat, buttoned the sleeves of his blue shirt, and stepped outside. His wife sat at the table, staring at nothing in the room. The farmer walked across the barnyard, listening to the sound of the chickens and the sound of the breeze going through the corn. Near the barn he sat upon an old tree stump and filled his pipe with tobacco. He lit the pipe, cupping his hands, and sat there smoking, the smoke spiraling up into the bright warm air. He took his pipe from his teeth and looked at it. Pipe of peace, he said, laughing inside himself. The breeze was soft and the sun warm on his back. He sat there smoking, feeling the quiet of the morning, the peace of the great sky above. He had no time to stand or to take his pipe from his mouth, but when the two men crossed the yard and lifted him up by the arms, he dropped the pipe. While he was dragged past the house to the road beyond. He had no time to yell or scream before his hat was swept from his head, the overalls and the blue shirt stripped from his body. He had not even thought about what it was that had happened before he was thrust inside a white truck with strong steel sides and and with grilled windows like those of a cell. He was just sitting there in the truck without his clothes, speeding away with August Brown and Clyde Briggs and Alfred Swanson. Outside, the sun was warm upon the earth. Chickens clucked in their pens while birds fluttered about the top of the barn. A pig squealed, the corn rustled, and beside the farmhouse on the ground lay a pipe. Its tobacco spilled, the last of its smoke squirreling out of its bowl into the air, disappearing. The woman sat in the kitchen of the farmhouse and turned her head. When the door opened, she widened her eyes and caught at her throat with her hand. The sun through the doorway shone down on metallic hands and and a metallic face gleaming on the surface which the straw hat and the overalls and the blue shirt didn't hide. The door snapped shut and there was a sound of heavy metal footsteps against the kitchen floor. The woman pressed against the chair. Who are you? She screamed. Henry said the mechanical thing. End of Pipe of Peace by James McKimmie Jr. Recording by Frank Malanga Pembroke Pines, Florida.

Runaway by William Morrison this is the Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Runaway by William Morrison

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thin speck appeared in the visor plate and grew with sinister and terrifying speed. Bursts of flame began to play around the rocketing spaceship, the explosions hurtling it from side to side as it twisted and turned in a frantic effort to escape. Rogue Rogan, his vicious lips compressed, his glittering evil eyes narrowed, heart pounding, knew that this was it. This was the day of retribution he had so long feared. Plato. Plato leapt to his feet and slid the book under the pillow. Then he seized a text book at random and opened it wide. His eyes fastened themselves to the print, seizing upon the meaningless words as if they would save him from a retribution that Rogue Rogan had never had to fear. The door master frowned in the doorway. Plato, didn't you hear the assembly bell? Assembly? Plato's eyes looked up in mild astonishment. No, sir. I didn't hear any bell. I was so absorbed in my studying, sir. He shut the book and placed it back with the others. I'm sorry, sir. I'm willing to accept my punishment. The doormaster studied the little martyr's expression. You better be, Plato. Now live up to your name and show some intelligence. Run along to assembly. Plato ran, but he also winced.

How.

How he had suffered from that miserable name of his. Even before he had known that the original Plato had been a philosopher, even before he had been capable of understanding what a philosopher was, he had been able to see the amused expression in the eyes of Those who heard his name and had hated them for it show little intelligence. Plato. Why couldn't they have given him a name like the others? There were so many ordinary, commonplace, manly names from which they might have chosen Jim, Jack, George, Tom, Billy. Anything would have been better than Plato, and infinitely better than what he was sometimes called by his equals. Plato, the dopey philosopher. He slipped into his seat in the assembly quietly, so as not to interrupt the droning of the principal. So they thought his name was funny, did they? Let them laugh at him? He was only 10 now, but someday he would really act like a man. Someday it would be he himself, and not a fictional hero like Comet's Carter, who would be adventuring on strange planets of unknown suns, tracking down the Rogans and the other criminals who sought refuge in the wide reaches of galactic space. Someday. And then the thought burst on him like a nova exploding in his brain. Why not now? Why not indeed? He was smart. He could take care of himself. Even his masters admitted that when they weren't carping at him for his daydreaming. Take that model of a spaceship that they had brought to school one day with a retired astrogator to explain to the pupils how the thing was run and and how it avoided stray meteors. He'd sat down at the controls, and even the astro gator had been surprised at how confidently he took over the role of pilot, how he got the idea at once. He could do as well in real life, he was sure of it. Give him a really worthwhile problem to work on instead of those silly questions about square roots and who discovered the third satellite of Mars, and he'd show them. Thus, declaimed the principal, you will be prepared to take up your duties? Norbert's to you. Thoroughly, thought Plato. I'm going to run away. Where to? There were so many stars to go to, such a bewildering number of planets and asteroids. Plato sat lost in thought. A planet whose habitation required a spacesuit was out of the question. Spacesuits his size were hard to get. The sensible thing would be to choose a place where the physical conditions, from gravity to atmospheric pressure and composition, would tend to resemble those here on Venus or on Earth, but full of the most thrilling danger. A boy's voice said, get up, you dopey philosopher. It's all over. He raised his head and realized that the principal had stopped droning from the platform, that all the pupils were standing up to leave. He stood up and marched out when the signal for lights out came that night Plato lay motionless for a time in the dark, his mind racing far too rapidly for him to think of sleep. He had plans to make, and after a time, when the dormitory quietened down, he went to the well of Knowledge for inspiration. He slipped on his pair of goggles and threw the special switch he himself had made. The infra red light flared on, invisible to anyone in the room but himself, and he drew his book from its hiding place and resumed his reading. The ship curveted in space like a prancing steed, panic stricken by the four dimensional space warp in which he was trapped. Rogue Rogan stormed at his terrified followers. Buy all the devils of the coalsack. He shouted. The man doesn't live. Who can take me alive? You fight and die like men, you hen hearted cowards. But they didn't die like men. In fact, they didn't die at all. And Plato permitted a slight sneer to play across his youthful features. Though he considered himself a passionate admirer of Comet Carter, even he felt dissatisfied with the story. When they were trapped, they were never really trapped. Comet Carter, sterling hero that he usually was, always showed weakness of intellect at the last moment, giving his deadly enemy an incredibly simple way out. One that Comet had, in his own incredibly simple way, overlooked. Plato would never be guilty of such stupidity. He himself, and now he was Comet Carter, a quicker thinker, smarter Carter, dealing out to Rogue Rogan a retribution many eons overdue. He was whistling through space at 10 light speeds. He was compressing light centuries into a single second. He was. He just had time to slip the goggles from his face before his eyes closed in sleep. During the day, he continued to make his plans. There was a spaceport 140 miles away. night, if the students poked their heads out of the window, they could see the distant ships as points of flame racing away into the darkness like shooting stars. In reverse, he would steal out of his room in the night, take a glider train to the spaceport and stow away. It would be as simple as that. Of course he needed money. He might travel at half fare, but even that would be expensive. And then there was the matter of food. He'd have to stay hidden until the spaceship took off and there was no turning back. And the thought of crouching in some dark hold motionless for hours, cramped and with an empty stomach. He wasn't going to starve himself. Even Comet Carter couldn't have gone without eating and got very far in his pursuit of Rogan. Plato would have to acquire money for flight fare and food. The book, of course, he couldn't think of selling. It was only a desi credit novel in the first place and somewhat worn at that, and the other students would have laughed at him for reading it. But his infra red bedside lamp and his goggles and the space receptor radio he had built out of spare parts, those should bring him enough to travel and live on for a few days. He made his first sail in the free time that evening to a young squirt in the neighbouring dormitory who had a passion akin to his own. He liked to listen to tales of high adventure of the kind the radio casters loved and the teachers in the school frowned upon. Having arrived here from Earth only six months before, he had difficulty adjusting to the type of derring do that features on the Venus stations, and he lacked a space receptor that would bring him his favorites from the next planet. He snapped up at the bargain price of 10 credits the receptor that Plato offered. There was a little difficulty with the infrared lamp and goggles. The customer Plato had selected turned out to be rather suspicious. He demanded, where did you steal them? Plato explained patiently, I didn't steal them. I made them myself. That's a lot of hot oxo nitrogen. You hook them someplace and if they ever find out. Ok, said Plato. If you don't want them, you don't have to take them. I can sell them to somebody else. He allowed the young sceptic to try the goggles on and read by the light of the lamp. He knew little of the psychology of salesmanship, but with what might be called Platonic shrewdness, he sensed that once the prospect had experienced the joys of using the magic articles, he would never give them up. The method worked, and soon Plato was richer by 15 credits instead of the 10 or 12 he had hoped for. He had a few other odds and ends, which he sold for as much as they would bring. After all, once he was out in space, he wouldn't need them anymore. In the middle of the next day, when the bell sounded the end of the class on planetary geography and it was time to go to the class on animal physiology, Plato picked himself up and walked out. One of the copter custodians looked at him suspiciously, but Plato didn't dignify the man by paying him direct attention. He muttered to himself, always picking on me. I don't see why they can't send someone else on his errands. It was better than the forged pass signed with the headmaster's name. The pass itself came in handy when he bought a flight ticket. The ticket agent also stared at him suspiciously. But Plato was ready for him. He had prepared the slip of paper beforehand, tracing the headmaster's name laboriously from one of the lists of regulations attached to the wall to make the pursuit as difficult as possible for anyone who tried to trail him. Plato asked for a ticket not to Space Junction, where he was going, but to Venusburg in the opposite direction. Both tickets cost about the same. The ticket of Venusburg, in fact cost three deci credits more. Once on the plane drawn glider, he could explain to the conductor that the agent had made a mistake and offer the ticket he had. Since the company would lose nothing by the transaction, there was no reason why the conductor should object. Plato was proud of this bit of trickery, and he flattered himself that by means of it he had entirely thrown off pursuit. It must be remembered that he was only 10 years old. On the glider flight, he found himself sitting next to a middle aged woman who wore glasses and was surrounded by packages.

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She beamed at him as she did at everyone else around her, and Plato shrank back into his seat. If there was anything he didn't want on this trip, it was to be mothered. But he couldn't escape her. She said, my, my, you're awfully young to be travelling alone this the first time. Yes, ma', am, said Plato nervously, afraid of the embarrassing questions he could read on her face. Hastily he stared out over the side and gasped, gee, how small everything is. Imagine anyone who had traveled vicariously through space with Comet Carter being awed by a flight in a plane drawn glider. But the ruse worked. She said, yes, it's frightening, isn't it? Even worse than space travel. You've been in space, marm. Bless your heart. I've been in space more times than you could shake a stick at. The take off isn't so nice, I'll admit, But after that you're just sailing free. What are you going to be when you grow up? They had his future all planned for him, but he knew that he wasn't going to be any of the things they wanted him to be. He said boldly, a space explorer. She laughed, you youngsters are all alike inside, no matter how different you seem. My boy was the same way when he was young, but he got over it. A space explorer, no less. Plato didn't answer. It was only a half hour's trip and the conductor was walking down the aisle. Plato found it difficult to take his eyes off him. He was afraid that the man would take a look at his ticket, say wrong plane, son, and turn him over to the station master at Space Junction to be shipped back. In his nervousness, Plato had difficulty getting his ticket out of his pocket. As he had expected, the conductor said, you're on the wrong flight. The motherly woman exclaimed, oh, isn't that a shame. Are they waiting for you in Venusburg? Plato said tearfully, yes, ma'. Am. The tearfulness wasn't hard to manage. He'd learned that trick at school. That's too bad. How are you going to get there? I don't know. I had just enough money to pay for this ticket. Doesn't the company correct mistakes, Conductor? Not mistakes the passengers make, said the conductor sourly. I'm sorry, boy. I'll have to take that ticket. The woman's eyes flashed, and as the conductor moved on, she said the nasty thing they have no consideration at all. Look, child. For a moment Plato thought she was going to offer him flight fare from Space Junction to Venusburg. But she was not, he discovered, as motherly as that. You know what you'll do. When you get off, send a gram collect to your people in Venusburg. They'll wire you your fare and you'll reach them in a couple of hours. Thank you, marm, he said, not feeling thankful at all. So it was all right to be sympathetic, he thought indignantly, up to the point where sympathy might cost her money. Like most people, she was free handed only with advice. Who wanted advice? At Space Junction he waved her a shy farewell, then turned and disappeared into the station crowd at the take off grounds. His heart sank. As he might have expected, the entrance to the space tarmac was well guarded. How was he going to become a stowaway on a spaceship if he couldn't even get close to it? He wandered around outside, staring through the charged wire fence at the crowds, the spacemen, the ship inside. They were gigantic, shining things, these wonderful ships, each so long that he realized for the first time how far away they must have been and how rapidly they must have travelled, for those he saw had seemed to him like shooting stars. They were pointed almost straight up. Near the stern of each ship was a vacuum pit to absorb the radioactive exhaust gases. His eye caught an old tub, its shininess dulled, its hull faintly scarred. Just such a ship, he thought with a thrill, as the one on which Comet's Carter had been shanghaied on that momentous occasion when the old freighter swung in a great circle, its torsion jets blasting desperately in an effort to keep it on an even keel. This, thought Comet's Carter, was it. This was the foul revenge that Rogue Rogan had planned, the evil death he had plotted with his unhuman companions. In a moment the pulsating radiations of electroid rays would set off the cargo of ghoulite, and when the interplanetary echoes of the explosion died away, Comet's Carter would be no more than a series of photon packets, his body torn apart, his very atoms converted into radiation that was hurtling with the speed of light into the far corners of the universe. It hadn't happened that way, of course, but if it had happened, well, it might have on just such a tub as this. A guard saw him peering through the fence and said, what are you looking at, kid? Those ships, said Plato honestly enough, and then he added, to throw the man off the track, gee, I'd be scared to go up in one of them. No, sir, you couldn't get me into one of them for a million credits. The man laughed. They're not for the likes of you. A lot of those ships go to other stars. Other Stars. Gosh, does that little one the Maree t that tub? Just an interplanetary freighter. But even that isn't for you. Now run along and mind your own business. Plato was happy to run along. Unfortunately, he realized, running along didn't help him get past the fence. And then he had a fear inspiring thought. He couldn't tell an interplanetary ship from an interstellar what if he did manage somehow to get in and stow away and then found himself on a ship bound for no more distant port than Earth, from which he could easily be sent home in disgrace? It sent a shiver through him. Fortunately, it also stimulated his mind. After all, there were such things as newspapers, and the school, nuisance in many ways though it was, had taught him to read. He bought a paper and turned at once to the shipping news section. As he had hoped, each ship was listed. He checked off some of the names he had glimpsed on the field and and found happily that their destinations were printed in the most routine manner. There still remained the question of how to get past the guards. This, he suddenly realized, was a question impossible to solve on an empty stomach. It had been many hours since he had eaten lunch. There were a dozen restaurants in the spaceport, and he selected one, carefully studying the illuminated menus and the prices before daring to enter. If that motherly old woman had been as kind hearted as she pretended to be, he wouldn't have had to worry so much about prices. And as it was, he knew that he had enough money for only two days. And after that his stomach could complain all it wanted to. It would have to go unfed. He chose from the menu only items that he never tasted at school. Dishes made from real plant and animal life with just enough synthetics to give them flavor. He couldn't say that he liked what he ate, but at least it gave him the feeling of being on his own, of having made the break with his tame past as complete as possible. Earth beef tasted too strong. Venus seaweed stew had a pungency that he didn't like. He finished his plate only because he'd been taught that to leave food over was wasteful. And for the first time he began to wonder what they would feed him on the spaceship. Suppose he got on one that wasn't scheduled to make port for five years and all he received to eat was stuff like this. The thought made him shudder. Here was a hardship of space travel that the books he read had never mentioned. After eating, he slumped back in his chair. He hadn't realized he was so completely exhausted Until a hand shook his shoulder. Then he awoke with a start. A waiter said, this is no place to sleep, youngster. I'm sorry, sir. I was tired and I didn't realize. You've been here a long time. Waiting for someone. Yes, sir. Something must have held him up. Seems to me that I noticed you walking here about three hours ago. That's a long time to wait. That's what I thought, sir. I can't understand what happened. Well, you can't hang around here. I'll tell you what to do, though. I'll turn you over to the matron in our lost and found room and she'll look out for you. Follow me. In a daze, Plato followed. But as his feet were set into motion, so was his brain. By now, of course, the search for him must be well on. They must have traced him to the station, and perhaps despite his clever trick with the ticket, they had found the flight he had taken. For all he knew, they might be waiting for him in the Lost and found room, ready to seize him the moment he showed his face. There was. He hadn't gone so far to be recaptured so easily. As they passed an exit door, Plato darted out. He heard the waiter's surprise shout, but he didn't wait to reply. In a second he had lost himself in the crowd. He knew now that if he was going to get aboard an interstellar vessel, he would have to do so soon. What would Comet's Carter have done in Plato's place if comets had been in one of his brighter moods? And then he had it. He saw a messenger coming down the street, gleaming in his uniform, and somewhat nervously approached him. May I speak to you? Asked Plato with school taught politeness. What about, Bud? I'm busy. Well, I've been wanting to get Captain Halvorson's autograph. He's on the Space Symphony. So what? Well, the thing is, they won't let me pass the gate. So I thought if I wore a messenger's uniform. The other boy glared at him. Are you off your Norbert? I wouldn't let you wear this uniform for a zillion credits. Plato swallowed nervously and said in desperation, I don't have a zillion credits, but I've got eight, and I'll give them to you if you let me wear it. Just half an hour. That's all it'll take. It's the last chance I'll have to ask him. He's bound for Rigel and he won't be back for five years. And you see his voice tapered to a thin, tearful squeak as the messenger looked at him. You're offering me eight space lousy credits. It's all I have. Well, just change clothes for a few minutes and that'll be all. Please, I've got to see him. I know that if I do, he'll give me his autograph. Ok, said the messenger unexpectedly. But hurry back. I'll be at the gate waiting for you. As they exchanged clothes, Plato was almost feverish with excitement, but he knew that if he expected to get past the guard, he would have to control himself. The clothes didn't fit too well, even though the messenger was small, and he must do nothing that would arouse the guard's suspicion. He said to the messenger, gee, thanks, you don't know how much this means to me. And then, with a mental grip on himself so tense that it hurt physically, he approached the guard and said casually, earthground for Captain Halvorson. The guard hardly looked at him. He was past the gate. He had been tricky again. Once out of sight of the guard, he made not for the space symphony but for the Long Ranger bound for Aldebaran. Earth ground for Captain Brinjar, he muttered, doing his best to look bored, as if delivering grams to ships was an old thing to him. And then he was aboard. It was not quite what he expected. The smooth walls were such as he might have found in his own dormitory. The quarters he saw were cramped, although for someone his size they were at least adequate. And the passageways, although brilliantly lighted, were mere narrow tunnels. From the main passageway. Other tunnels branched off bewilderingly, and Plato hesitated until he realized that his very confusion gave him an excuse of poking his nose into all sorts of of places. He followed one of the tunnels until he came to a door. Engine room. Keep out. He entered. A mechanic looked up. Earth ground for catching Brinjar. They said he was around here. Not here, replied the mechanic. Try the cargo hold. Plato backed out and set off down the corridor again, noting the direction arrows and signs to main lounge. No good to captain's cabin. Worse, he didn't want to find the captain and lose his excuse for being there. And then he saw two food storage and knew that he need look no further. This was a place to both hide and to eat until the ship took off and the crew found him and had to accept him as one of themselves. He opened the door to the food storage hold with an elaborate caution that turned out to be unnecessary. There was no one inside. He settled down between two packing cases and let out his breath. He had made it. He'd stowed away successfully, and in a few hours he would be out in space, the travelling between the stars fighting, adventuring. A yawn almost wiped the smile off his face. He awoke to disaster. The captain and Plato's doormaster were standing there, staring down at him, and the doormaster was saying, all right, Plato, you've had your adventure, and now I'm afraid you'll have to pay for it. It's time to go home. Plato couldn't move. It was impossible, after he had been so clever, so ingenious, and had thrown them off the trail in so many ways, them to have found him. You shouldn't have bought a ticket to the wrong station, said the dorm master, somewhat amusedly. When the conductor turned it in, the only one of its kind on his flight, it naturally attracted attention. We hadn't even suspected you had taken a glider train until the flight people came to us now. He would never adventure on strange planets of unknown suns. He would never course through space like Comet Carter. He would never have the adventures which alone made life seem worth living. Unable to control himself, he burst into tears. It was a completely unmanly thing to do, but he couldn't help himself. The tears flowed down over his cheeks, washing away all his shattered illusions. He would never dream such dreams again. From now on, it would be useless. They would be watching him carefully to make sure that he didn't leave the planet. He heard the captain say in astonishment, I didn't know the young ones could cry like that. Of course they cry, replied the doormaster. They eat, sleep, cry, almost like you and me, Captain. And worst of all, they even have their dreams. That's why I sometimes wonder, Captain, if it isn't a mistake to send them to school. They have to learn, granted, agreed the Dawn Master somberly, but not to dream of being human when they're only androids. End of Runaway by William Morrison Recording by Patrick Eaton Kenilworth, Warwickshire, United Kingdom.

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Sam this Is you by Murray Leinster this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Pam Castile Sam this Is yous by Murray Leinster Sam had led a peaceful and impecunious life until a voice cut in on a phone and said, sam, this is you. You are not supposed to believe this story, and if you ask Sam Yoder about it, he is apt to say that it's all a lie. But Sam is a bit sensitive about it. He does not want the question of property privacy to be raised again, especially in Rosie's hearing. And there are other matters, but it's all perfectly respectable and straightforward. It could have happened to anybody, well, almost anybody. Anybody, say, who was a telephone lineman for the Batesville and Rappahannock Telephone Company and who happened to be engaged to Rosie, and who had been told admiringly by Rosie that a man as smart as he was ought to make something wonderful of himself. And of course, anybody who'd taken that seriously and had been puttering around on a device to make private conversations on a party line telephone possible and almost had the trick. It began about 6 o' clock on July 2, when Sam was up a telephone pole near Bridges Run. He was hunting for the place where that party line had gone dead. He he'd hooked up in his lineman's phone and he couldn't raise central, so he was just going to start looking for the break. When his phone rang back, though, the line had checked dead. Startled, he put the receiver to his ear. Hello, who's this? Sam, this is you, a voice replied. Huh? Said Sam. What's that? This is you, the voice on the wire repeated. You, Sam Yoder. Don't you recognize your own voice? This is you, Sam Yoder, calling from the 12th of July. Don't hang up. Sam hadn't even thought of hanging up. He was annoyed. He was up a telephone pole, trying to do some work, resting in his safety belt and with his climbing irons safely fixed in the wood. Naturally, he thought somebody was trying to joke with him, and when a man is working is no time for jokes. I'm not hanging up, said Sam dourly, but you'd better. The voice was familiar, though he couldn't quite place itif it talked a little more, he undoubtedly would. He knew it just about as well as he knew his own, and it was irritating not to be able to call this joker by name. Sam, it's the 2nd of July where you are and you're up a pole by Bridge's Run. The line's dead in two places. Else I couldn't talk to you. Lucky, ain't it?

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by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Whoever you are, sam said formidably, it ain't going to be lucky for you if you ever need a telephone service and you've kept wasting my time. I'm busy. But I'm you, insisted the voice persuasively. And you're me. We're both the same, Sam Yoder. Only where I am, it's July 12th. Where you are, it's July 2nd. You've heard of time traveling? Well, this is time talking. You're talking to yourself, that's me. And I'm talking to myself. That's you. And it looks like we've got a mighty good chance to get rich. Then something came into Sam's memory and and every muscle in his body went taut and tight even as he was saying to himself, it can't be. But he'd remembered that if a man stands in a corner and talks to the wall, his voice will sound to him just the way it sounds to somebody else. Being in the telephone business, he'd tried it, and now he did recognize the voice. It was his, his own talking to him, which of course was impossible. Look, said hoarsely, I don't believe this. Then listen, the voice said briskly, and Sam's face grew red. It burned. His ears began to feel scorched because the voice, his voice was telling him strictly private matters that nobody else in the world knew. Nobody but himself and Rosie quit it, groaned Sam, somebody might be listening. Tell me what you want and ring off. The voice told him what it wanted. His own voice. It sounded pleased. It told him precisely what it wanted him to do. And then very kindly, it told him exactly where the two breaks in the line were. And then it rang off. He sweated when he looked at the first of the two places. Adjoining was bad and he fixed that. It was where his voice said it would be and that was as impossible as anything else. When he'd fixed the second break, Sam called Central and told her he was sick and was going home and that if there were any other phones that needed fixing today, people were probably better off without phone service anyhow. He went home and washed his face and made himself a brew of coffee and drank it and his memory turned out to be unimpaired. Presently he heard himself muttering. So he said defiantly, there ain't any crazy people in my family, so it ain't likely I've gone out of my head. But God knows nobody but Rosie knows about me. Telling her sentimental that her nose is so cute I couldn't believe she ever had to blow it. Maybe it was me talking to myself. Talking to oneself is not abnormal. Lots of people do it. Sam misdoubt the conclusion to be drawn from the fact that he'd answered himself back. He reasoned painfully, if somebody drove over to Rappahannock past Dunnsville and telephoned back that there was a brush fire at Dunnsville, I wouldn't be surprised to get to Dunnsville and find a brush fire there. So if somebody phones back from next Tuesday that Mr. Broadus broke his leg next Tuesday, why I shouldn't be surprised to get to next Tuesday and find he done it. Going to Rappahannock past Dunnsville and going to next Thursday past next Tuesday ain't so much difference. It's only the difference between a road map and a calendar. Then he began to see implications. He blinked. Yes, sir, he said in awe. I wouldn't a thought of it if I hadn't told myself on the telephone. I But there is money to be made out of this. I must be near as smart as Rosie thinks I am. I'd better get that dinka set up. He'd more or less half heartedly worked out an idea of how a party line telephone conversation could be made private. And just out of instinct, you might say he'd accumulated around his house a lot of stuff that should have been on the phone company's inventory. There were condensers and transmitters and selective ringing bells and resistances and the like. He'd meant to put some of them together some day and see what happened, but he'd been too busy courting Rosie to get at it. Now he did get started. His own voice on the telephone had told him to. It had warned him that one thing he had intended wouldn't work and something else would. But it was essentially simple after all. He finished it and cut off his line from Central and hooked this gadget in. He rang. Half a minute later somebody rang back. Hello, said Sam, quivering. He'd broken the line to Central, remember. In theory he shouldn't have gotten anybody anywhere. But a very familiar voice said hello back at him, and Sam swallowed and said, hello, Sam. This is you in the 2nd of July. The voice the other end said cordially that Sam had done pretty well and and now the two of them, Sam in the here and now and Sam in the middle of the week after next, would proceed to get rich together. But the voice from July 12 sounded less absorbed in the conversation than Sam thought. Quite right, it seemed, even abstracted, and Sam was at once sweating from the pure unreasonableness of the situation and conscious that he rated congratulation for the highly technical device he had built. After all, not everybody could build a time talker, he said with some irony. If you're too busy to talk, I'll tell you, replied the voice from the 12th of July, gratified. I am kind of busy right now. You'll understand when you get to where I am. Don't get mad, Sam. Tell you what, you go see Rosie and tell her about this and have a nice evening. Now. What after? Asked Sam cagily, do you mean by that? Ha ha. You'll find out, said the voice. Knowing what I know, I'll even double it. Ha ha ha ha. There was a click. Sam rang back but got no answer. He may have been the first man in history to take an objective and completely justify dislike to himself, but presently he grumbled. Smart, huh? Two could play at that. I'm the one that's got to do things if we are both going to get rich. He put his gadget carefully away and combed his hair and ate some cold food around the house and drove over to see Rosie. It was a night and an errand which ordinarily would have seemed purely romantic. There were fireflies floating about, and the moon shone down splendidly, and a perfumed breeze carried mosquitoes from one place to another. It was the sort of night on which ordinarily Sam would have thought only of Rosie and and Rosie would have optimistic ideas about how housekeeping could, after all, be done on what Sam made a week. They got settled down in the hammock on Rosie's front porch, and Sam said, rosie, I've made up my mind. To get rich you ought to have everything your little heart desires. Suppose you tell me what you want so I'll know how rich I've got to get. Rosie drew back. She looked sharply at Sam. Do you feel all right? He beamed at her. He'd never been married, and he didn't know how crazy it sounded to Rosy to be queried on how much money would satisfy her. There simply isn't any answer to the question. Listen, said Sam tenderly. Nobody knows it but to night. Joe Hunt and the widow Backus are eloping to North Carolina to get married. We'll find out about it to morrow and day after to morrow. On the 4th of July, Dunnsville is going to win the baseball game with Bradensburg 7 to 5, all tied till the ninth inning. And then George Peeby is going to hit a homer with Fred Holmes on second base. Rosie stared at him. Sam explained complacently the Sam Yoder in the middle of the week after next had told him what to expect. In those particular cases he would tell him other things to expect. So Sam was going to get rich. Rosie said I Sam, somebody was playing a joke on you. Yeah, sam answered comfortably. Who else but me knows what you said to me that time you thought I was mad at you and you were crying out back of the well house, Sam, and nobody else knows about that time we were picnicking and a bug got down the back of your dress and you thought it was a hornet? Sam Yoder wailed Rosie. You never told anybody about that? Nope, said Sam. Truthfully, I never did. But the me in the week after next knew he told me so he had to be me talking to me. Couldn't a been anybody else. Rosie gasped. Sam explained all over again in detail. When he had finished, Rosie seemed dazed. Then she said desperately, sam, either you've t told somebody else everything we ever said or did together, or else there's somebody who knows every word we ever said to each other. That's awful. Do you really and truly mean to tell me? Sure I mean to tell you, said Sam happily. The me in the week after next called me up and talked about things nobody knows but you and me can't be no doubt at all. Rosie shivered. Hehe knows every word we ever said then. He knows every word we're saying now. She gulped Sam Yoder. You go home. Sam gaped at her. She got up and backed away from him. Do you think, she chattered despairingly, that I'm going to talk to you and somebody else listens to every word I say and knows everything I do? Do you think I'm going to m marry you? Then she ran away, weeping noisily, and slammed the door on Sam. Her father came out presently, looking patient, and asked Sam to go home so Rosie could finish crying and he could read his newspaper in peace. On the way back to his own house, Sam meditated darkly. By the time he got there, he was furious. The hymn in the week after next could have warned him about this. He rang and rang and rang on the cut off line with his gadget hooked in to call July 12, but there was no answer. When morning came, he rang again, but the phone was still dead. He loaded his tool kit in the trunk and went off to work, feeling about as low as a man could feel. He felt lower when he reported at the office and somebody told him excitedly that Joe Hunt and the widow Backus had eloped to North Carolina to get married. Nobody would have tried to stop them if they had prosaically gotten married at home, but they had eloped to make it more romantic. It wasn't romantic to Sam. It was devastating proof that there was another him 10 days off, knowing everything he knew and more besides, and very likely laughing his head off at the fix Sam was in, because obviously Rosie would be still more convinced when she heard this news. She'd know Sam wasn't crazy or the victim of a practical joke. He had told the truth. It wasn't the first time a man got in trouble with a woman by telling her the truth, but it was new to Sam, and it hurt. He went over to Bradensburg that day to repair some broken lines, and around noon he went into a store to get something to eat. There were some local sportsmen in the store bragging to each other about what the Bradensburg baseball team would do to the Dunnsville Nine. Sam said peevishly, huh? Dunnsville will win that game by two runs. Have you got any money that agrees with you? A local sportsman demanded pugnaciously. If you have put it up and let somebody cover it. Sam wanted to draw back, but he had roused the civic pride of Bradensburgh. He tried to temporize, and he was jeered at in the end, philosophically, he dragged out all the money he had with him and bet it $11. It was covered instantly amid raucous laughter, and on the way back to Batesville he reflected unhappily that he was going to make $11 out of knowing what was going to happen in the ninth inning of that ball game, but probably at the cost of losing Rosie. He tried to call his other self that night. Again there was no more answer than before. He unhooked the gadget and restored normal service to himself. He rang Rosie's house. She answered the phone. Rosie, sam said yearningly, are you still mad at me? I was never mad at you, said Rosie, gulping. I'm mad at whoever was talking to you on the phone and knows all our private secrets. And I'm mad at you if you told him. But I didn't have to tell him. He's me. All he has to do is just remember I tried to call him last night and again this morning. He he added bitterly, and he don't answer. Maybe he's gone off somewheres. I'm thinkin it might be a. A kind of illusion, maybe. You told me there'd be an elopement last night, retorted Rosie, her voice wobbling. And there was Joe Hunt and the widow Bacchus, just like you said. It could have been a coincidence, suggested Sam, not too hopefully. I'm waiting to see if Donesville beats Bradensburg 7 to 5 to Morrow, tied to the 9th with George Peevey hitting a homer, then with Fred Holmes on second base. If that happens, Ill die.

Why?

Asked Sam. Because it'll mean that I can't marry you ever. Because somebody else'd be looking over your shoulder and we wouldn't ever be by ourselves all. All our lives, night or day. She hung up, weeping, and Sam swore slowly and steadily and with venom while he worked to hook up his device again, which did not make a private conversation on a party line but allowed a man to talk to himself 10 days away from where he was. And then Sam rang and rang and rang, but he got no answer. The following day in the big Fourth of July game, Dunnsville beat Bradensburg 7 to 5. It was tied to the ninth. Then George Peeby hit a homer with Fred Holmes on second base. Sam collected his winnings, but grimly, without joy. He stayed home that night worrying, and every so often trying to call himself up on the device he had invented and been told by himself to modify. It was a nice gadget, but Sam did not enjoy it. It was a nice night, too. There was moonlight, but Sam did not enjoy that either. Moonlight wouldn't do Sam any good so long as there was another him in the middle of the week after next, refusing to talk to him so he could get out of the fix he was in. Next morning, though, the phone woke him. He swore at it out of habit until he got out of bed, and then he realized that his gadget was hooked in and Central was cut off. He made it in one jump to the instrument. Hello? Don't fret, said his own voice patronizingly. Rosie's going to make up with you. How in blazes do you know what she's going to do? Raged Sam. She won't marry me with you hanging around. I've been trying to figure out a way to get rid of you. Quiet. Commanded the voice on the telephone irritably. I'm busy. I've got to go collect the money you've made for us. You collect money? I get in trouble and you collect money. I have to, his voice said with the impatient patience of one speaking to a small idiot child before you can have it. Listen here where you are. It's Wednesday. You're going over to Dunnsville today to fix some phones. You'll be in Mr. Broadus's law office about half past ten. You look out the window and notice a fellow setting in in a car in front of the bank. Notice him good. I won't do it, said Sam defiantly. I ain't takin any orders from you. Maybe you're me, but I make money and you collect it. For all I know, you spend it before I get to it. I'm quitting this business right now. It's cost me my own true love and all my life's happiness and to hell with you. You won't do it? His voice asked nastily. Wait and see. So that morning the manager told Sam, when he reported for work, to drive over to Dunnsville and check on some lines there. Sam balked. He said there were much more important lines needing repair elsewhere. The manager explained politely to Sam that Mr. Broadus over in Dunnsville had been taken drunk at a Fourth of July party and fallen out of a window. He'd broken his leg. Sweet. It was a Christian duty to make sure he had a telephone in working order in his office, and Sam could get over there right away or else. On the way to Dunnsville Sam morosely remembered that he'd known about Mr. Brodus's leg. He had told himself about it on the telephone.

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Click grainger or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. At half past ten he was fixing Mr. Brodus's telephone when he remembered about the man he was supposed to get a good look at sitting in a car in front of the bank. He made an angry resolution, not under any circumstances to glance outside of the lawyer's office. He meditated savagely that by this resolution the schemes of his other self in the future were abolished. Naturally, he presently went to the window and looked to see what he was abolishing. There was a car before the bank with a reddish haired man sitting in it. A haze came out of the exhaust showing that the motor was running. None of this impressed Sam as remarkable. But as he looked. Two other men came running out of the bank. One of them carried a bag and both of them had revolvers out and they piled into the car and the reddish haired man gunned it and it was abruptly a dwindling speck in a cloud of dust getting out of town. Three seconds later old Mr. Blueford, president of the bank, came out yelling and the cashier came after him and it was a first rate bank robbery they were yelling about. The men in the getaway car had departed with $35,000. All of it had taken place so Fast that Sam hardly realized what had happened when he went out to see what it was all about and was instantly seized upon to do some work. The bank robbers had shot out the telephone cable out of town with the shotgun so word couldn't get ahead of them. Sam was needed to re establish communications with the outside world. He did, absorbedly reflecting on the details of the robbery as he'd heard them. He was high up on a telephone pole and the sheriff and enthusiastic citizens were streaking past in cars to make his labors unnecessary when the personal aspect of all this affair hit him. My God. Gasped Sam, shocked that me in the middle of next week told me to come over here and watch a bank robbery. But he didn't let on what was going to happen so's I could stop it. He felt an incredulous indignation come over him. I would a been a hero, he said resentfully. Rosie would a admired me. That other me is a born crook. Then he realized the facts. The other him was himself only a week and a half distant. The other him was so far sunk in dastardliness that he permitted a crime to take place feeling no more than sardonic amusement. And there was nothing he himself could do about it. He couldn't even tell the authorities about this depraved character. They wouldn't believe him unless he could get his other self on the telephone to admit his criminality. Even then, what could they do? Sam felt what little zest had been left in living go trickling out of his climbers. He looked into the future and saw nothing desirable in it. He painstakingly finished the repair of the shot out telephone line. But then he went down to his truck and drove over to Rosie's house. There was but one thing he could do. Rosie came suspiciously to the door. I come to tell you good bye Rosie, said Sam. I just found out I'm a criminal so I aim to go and commit my crimes far away from my home and the friends who never thought I'd turn out this way. Good bye Rosie, Sam, said Rosie. What's happened now? He told her about the bank robbery and how his own self in the week after next had known it was going to happen and told Sam to go watch it without giving him information by which it could have been stopped. He knew it after it happened, said Sam bitterly. And he could have told me about it before he he didn't. So he's a accessory to the crime. And he is me, which makes me a cessary too. Good bye Rosie. My own true love. You'll never see me again. You set right down here, rosie ordered firmly. You haven't done a thing yet. So it's that other you who's a criminal. You haven't got a thing to run away for. But I'm going to have. I'm doomed to be a criminal. It's that me in the week after next. There's nothing to be done. Says who? I'm going to do something. Like what? Asked Sam. I'm going to reform you, said Rosie. Before you start. She was a determined girl, that Rosy. She marched inside and put on her blue jeans, then went to her father's woodshed where he kept his tools and got a monkey wrench and stuck it in her hip pocket when she came to the truck. Sam, what's the idea, Rosie? I'm riding around with you, replied Rosie with a grim air. You won't do anything criminal with me on hand. And if that other you starts talking to you on the telephone, I'm going to climb that pole and tell him where he gets off. If anybody could keep me from turning criminal, acknowledged Sam, it'd be you, Rosie. But that monkey wrench. What's it for? Rosie climbed into the seat beside him. You start having criminal ideas, she told him, and you'll find out. Now you go on about your business and I and the monkey wrench will look after your morals. This tender exchange happened only an hour or so after the robbery and there was plenty of excitement around, but Sam went soberly about his work as telephone lineman. Rosalie simply rode with him as a well, it wasn't a bodyguard but a sort of MP escort morals police where he worked on a line. He called the central office to report, and he heard about the hunt for the bank robbers and told Rosie it was good fortune that he'd been in Dunnsville when the robbery happened because his prompt repair of the phone wires had spoiled the robbers getaway plans. They hadn't gone 10 miles from Dunnsville before somebody fired a load of bucks shot at them as their car roared by Lemon Store. They were past before they realized they'd been shot at, but the buckshot had punctured the radiator and two miles on they were stuck. They pushed their car off the road behind some bushes and struck out on foot, and the sheriff ran right past their car without seeing it. Then rain began to fall and the bank robbers were wet and scared and desperate. They knew there'd be roadblocks set up everywhere, and they had that bag of money part bills but a lot of it silver, and all of Tidewater was up in arms taking evasive action. They hastily stuffed their pockets with small bills. There were no big ones, but dared not take too much lest the pockets bulge. They hid the major part of their loot in a hollow tree. They separated, going to nearby towns while rain fell heavily and covered their trails and went to bed with chest colds. They felt miserable, but the rain washed away the scent they had left, and bloodhounds couldn't do a thing. None of this was known to Sam, of course. Rosie had taken charge of him and she kept charge. She rode with him all the afternoon of the robbery. When quitting time came, he took her home and prepared to retire from the scene. But she said grimly, oh no you don't. You're staying right here. You're going to sleep in my brother's room and my PA is going to put a padlock on the door so you don't go roaming off to call up that no account other you and get in more trouble. I might mess things up if I don't talk to him, sam objected. He's messed things up enough by talking to you. The idea of repeating our private affairs and he hadn't ought to know them. And I'm not sure, she said ominously, that you didn't tell him if you did. Sam Yoder. Sam didn't argue that point, for there was no argument to make. He was practically meek until he discovered after supper that the schedule for the evening was a game of cribbage played in the living room where Rosie's mother and father were. He mentioned unhappily to Rosie the that they were acting like old married people without the fun of getting that way, but he said that only once. Rosie glared at him, and when bedtime came she shooed him into her brother's room and her father padlocked him in. He did not sleep well. Next morning there was Rosie in her blue jeans with the monkey wrench in her pocket, ready to go riding with him. She did, and the next day and the next nothing happened. The State Banking association put up $5,000 reward for the bank robbers, and the insurance company put up some more, but there wasn't a trace of the criminals. There wasn't a trace of criminality about Sam either. Rosie rode with him, but they exchanged not one single hand squeeze nor one melting glance, nor did they even play footsie while they were eating lunch in the truck outside a filling station. Their conduct was exemplary and it wore on Sampossibly. It wore on Rosie, too. One day, Sam said morosely as he chewed on a ham sandwich at lunch, rosie, I'm crazy about you, but this feels like I've been divorced without ever even getting married first. And Rosie snapped, if I told you how I feel, that other you in the week after next would laugh his fool head off. So shut up. Things were bad and they got no better. For nearly a week Rosie rode everywhere with Sam in his truck. They acted in a manner which Rosie's parents would in theory have approved but didn't even begin to believe in. They did nothing the world could not have watched without their being embarrassed, and they said very little that all the world would not have been bored to hear. It must have been the 11th of July when they almost snapped at each other and Rosie said, let me drive awhile. I need to put my mind on something that it don't make me mad to think about. Go ahead, sam invited gloomily. He stopped the truck and got out the door. I don't look for any happiness in this world any more anyway. He went around to the other side of the truck while she slid to the driver's seat. To Morrow's going to be the 12th, she said. Do you realize that? I hadn't given it much thought, admitted Sam, but what's the difference? That's the day where the other you was when he called you up the first time. That's right, said Sam morbidly. It is. And so far, added Rosie, jamming her foot viciously down on the accelerator, I've kept you honest. It if you change into a scoundrel between now and to morrow. She changed the second gear. The truck jerked and bounced. Hey, Cried Sam. Watch your driving. Don't you tell me how to drive. But if I get killed before to Morrow. Rosie changed gear again, but too soon the truck bucked and she jammed down the accelerator again and it almost leaped off the road. If you get killed before tomorrow, raged Rosie, it'll serve you right. I've been thinking and thinking and thinking, and even if I stop you from being a crook, there'll always be that other you knowing everything we say and do. She was hitting 40 miles an hour and speeding up. So there'd still be no use, no hope anyway. She sobbed, partly in fury and partly in grief. The roadway curved sharply, just about there, and she swung the truck cross crazily around it, and there was a car standing only halfway off the road. Sam grabbed for the steering wheel, but there wasn't time. The light half truck, still accelerating, hit the parked car with the noise of dozens of empty oil drums falling downstairs. The truck slewed around, bounced back, and then it charged forward and slammed into the parked car a second time. Then it stalled. Somebody yelled at Sam. He got out of the truck, looking at the damage and trying to figure out how it was that neither he nor Rosie had been killed and trying worriedly to think how he was going to explain to the telephone company that he'd let Rosie drive. The voice yelled louder, Right at the edge of the woodland there was a reddish haired character screaming at him and tugging at his hip pocket. The words he used were not fit for Rosie's shell like ears, even if they probably came near matching the way she felt. The reddish haired man said more nasty words at the top of his voice. His hand came out of his hip pocket with something glittering in it. Sam was swinging when the glitter began and he connected before the gun fired. There was a sort of squashy smacking sound and the reddish haired man lay down quietly in the road. My God, said Sam blankly. This was the fellow in front of the bank. He's one of those robbers. He stared. There was a loud crashing in the brushwood. The accident had happened at the edge of some woodland and Sam did not need a high IQ to know that the friends of the red haired man must be on the way. A second later he saw them from Rosy was just getting out of the car then. She was very pale and there wasn't time to tell her to get started up if possible, and away from there. One of the two running men was carrying a canvas bag with the words bank of Dunnsville on it. The men came at Sam, meanwhile expressing opinions of the state of things, of Sam, of the cosmos, of everything but the weather, in terms even more reprehensible than the first man had used. They saw the reddish haired man lying on the ground. One of them, he'd come out into the road behind the truck and was running toward Sam, jerked out a pistol. He was about to use it on Sam at a range of something like six feet when there was a peculiar noise behind him. It was a sort of hollow clunk which even at such a time needed to have attention paid to it. He jerked his head around to see. The clunk had been made by Rosie's monkey wrench falling imperatively on the head of the second man to come out of the woods. She had carried it to use on Sam, but she used it instead on a total stranger. He fell down and lay peacefully still. Then Sam swung a second time at the second man to draw a pistol on him. Then there was only the sweet singing of birds among the trees and and the whirrings and other insect noises of creatures in the grass and brushwood. Presently there were other noises, but they were made by Rosie. She wept, hanging on to Sam. He unwound her arms from around his neck and thoughtfully went to the back of the truck and got out some phone wire and his pliers. He fastened the three strangers hands together behind them and then their feet and he piled them in the back of the light truck along with the money they had stolen.

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by Granger for the ones who get it done. They came to one by one, and Sam explained severely that they must watch their language in the presence of a lady. The three were so dazed, they though, by what had befallen them, that the warning wasn't really necessary. Rosie's parents would have been pleased at how completely proper their behavior was while they took the three bank robbers into town and turned them over to the sheriff. That night, Rosie sat out on the porch with Sam and they discussed the particular event of the day in some detail, but Rosie was still concerned about the other Sam, so Sam decided to assert himself. About half past nine, he said firmly, well, Rosie, I guess I'd better be getting along home. I've got to try one more time to call myself up on the telephone and tell me to mind my own business. Says who? Demanded Rosie. You're staying locked up right here to night, and I'm riding with you to morrow. If I keep you honest this far, I I can keep it up till sundown to morrow. Then maybe it'll stick. Sam protested, but Rosie was adamant not only about keeping him from being a crook but from having any fun to justify his virtue. She shooed him into her brother's room and her father locked him in, and Sam did not sleep very well because it looked as though virtue wasn't even its own reward. He sat up, brooding. It must have been close to dawn when the obvious hit him. Then he gazed blankly at the wall and said, my God. O course he grinned all by himself, practically from head to foot. And at breakfast he hummed contently as he stuffed himself with pancakes and syrup, and Rosie's depressed expression changed to a baffled alarm. He smiled tenderly upon her when she came doggedly out to the truck and wearing her blue jeans and with the monkey wrench in her pocket, they started off the same as any other day, and he told her amiably, rosie, the sheriff says we get $5,000 reward from the Bankers association, and there's more from the insurance company, and there's odd bits of change offered for those fellows for past performances. We're going to be right well off. Rosie looked at him gloomily. There was still the matter of the other Sam, and in the middle of the week after next, and just then Sam, who had been watching the telephone lines beside the road as he drove, pulled off the road and put on his climbing irons. What's this? Asked Rosie frightenedly. You know. You listen, said Sam, completely serene. He climbed zestfully to the top of the pole. He hooked in the little gadget that didn't make private conversations possible on a party line but did make it possible for a man to talk to himself 10 days in the future or the past. Hello? Sam said at the top of the telephone pole. Sam, this is you. A voice he knew perfectly well sounded in the receiver. Huh? Who's that? This is you, said Sam. You, Sam Yoder. Don't you recognize your own voice? This is you, Sam Yoder, calling from 12-7-20. Don't hang up. He heard Rosie gasp. All the way down there in the banged up telephone truck Sam had seen the self evident at last. And now in the 12th of July he was talking to himself on the telephone. Only instead of talking to himself in the week after next he was talking to himself in the week before last, he being back there 10 days before working on this very same telephone line on this very same pole and it was the same conversation word for word. When he came down the polar expansively Rosie grabbed him and wept. Oh Sam, she sobbed. It was you all the time. Ye, said Sam complacently. I figured it out last night that me back there in the 2nd of July he's cussing me out and he's going to tell you about it and you're going to get all wrought up. But I can make that dumb me back yonder do what has to be done and you and me Rosie have got a lot of money coming to us. I'm going to carry on through so he'll earn it for us. But I'm warning you Rosie, he'll be back at my house waiting for me to talk to him to night and I've got to be home to tell him to go over to your house. I'm going to say ha ha ha ha at him. All right, said Rosie wide eyed. You can. But I remember that when I called me up to night back there 10 days ago. I'm going to be right busy here and now I'm going to make me mad because I don't want to waste time talking to myself back yonder. Remember now what? Asked Sam mildly, what I be doing to night that would make me not want to waste time talking to myself 10 days ago. You got any ideas Rosie? Sam Yoder, I wouldn't. I never heard of such a thing. Sam looked at her and shook his head regretfully. Too bad if you won't. I guess I've got to call me up in the week after next and find out what's cooked cooking. Youyou shan't, said Rosy fiercely. I'll get even with you but you shan't talk to that. Then she wailed. Darn you Sam, even if I do have to marry you so you'll be wantin to talk to me instead of that dumb you 10 days back. You're not going to. You're not. Sam grinned. He kissed her, he put her in the truck and they rode off to Batesville to get married. And they did. But you're not supposed to believe all this. And if you ask Sam Yoder about it, he's apt to say it's all a lie. He doesn't want to talk about private party lines either. And there are other matters. For instance, Sam's getting to be a pretty prominent citizen these days. He makes a lot of money one way and another. Nobody around home will ever bet with him on who's going to win at sports and elections anyhow. End of Sam this Is yous by Murray Leinster Recording by Pam Castile. Scrimshaw by Murray Leinster this is the Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Pam Castile Scrimshaw by Murray Leinster the old man just wanted to get back his memory, and the methods he used were gently hellish from the viewpoint of the others. Pop Young was the one known man who could stand life on the surface of the moon's far side, and therefore he occupied the shack on the big crack's edge above the mining colony there. Some people said that no normal man could do it, and mentioned the scar of a ghastly head wound to explain his ability. One man partly guessed the secret, but only partly. His name was Sattell, and he had reason not to talk. Pop Young alone knew the whole truth, and he kept his mouth shut, too. It wasn't anybody else's business. The shack and the job he filled were located in the medieval notion of the physical appearance of hell. By day the environment was heat and torment. By night, lunar night, of course, and lunar day it was frigidity and horror. Once, in two weeks Earth time, a rocket ship came around the horizon from Lunar City with stores for the colony deep underground. Pop received the stores and took care of them. He handed over the product of the mine to be forwarded to Earth. The rocket went away again. Come nightfall, Pop lowered the supplies down the long cable into the big crack to the colony far down inside, and freshened up the landing field marks with magnesium marking powder. If a rocket blast had blurred them, that was fundamentally all he had to do. But without him the mine down in the crack would have had to shut down. The crack, of course, was that gaping rocky fault which stretches 900 miles jaggedly over the side of the moon that Earth never sees. There is one stretch where it is a yawning gulf a full half mile wide and unguessably deep, where Pop Young's shack stood. It was only a hundred yards, but the colony was a full mile down in one wall. There is nothing like it on Earth, of course when it was first found, scientists descended into it to examine the exposed rock strata and learn the history of the moon before its craters were made. But they found more than history. They found the reason for the colony and the rocket landing field. And the shack. The reason for Pop was something else. The shack stood a hundred feet from the big crack's edge. It looked like a dust heap 30ft high. And it was. The outside was surface moon dust piled over a tiny dome to be insulation against the cold of night and shadow and the furnace heat of day. Pop lived in it all alone, and in his spare time he worked industriously at recovering some missing portions of his life that Sattell had managed to take away from him. He thought often of Sattell down in the colony. Underground there were galleries and tunnels and living quarters. Down there there were air tight bulkheads for safety and a hydroponic garden to keep the air fresh and all sorts of things to make life possible for men under, if not on the moon. But it wasn't fun. Even underground, in the moon's slight gravity, a man is really adjusted to existence when he has a well developed case of agoraphobia. With such an aid, a man can get into a tiny coffin like cubbyhole and feel solidity above and below and around him and happily tell himself that it feels delicious. Sometimes it does. But Sattell couldn't comfort himself so easily. He knew about Pop. Up on the surface. He'd chipped out whimpering to the moon to get far away from Pop. And Pop was just about a mile overhead and there was no way to get around him. It was difficult to get away from the mine anyhow. It doesn't take too long for the low gravity to tear a man's nerves to shreds. He has to develop kinks in his head to survive. And those kinks, the first men to leave the colony had to be knocked cold and shipped out unconscious. They'd been underground and in low gravity long enough to be utterly unable to face the idea of open spaces. Even now. There were some who had to be carried, but there were some tougher ones who were able to walk to the rocket ship if Pop put a tarpaulin over their heads so they didn't have to see the sky. In any case, Pop was essential either for carrying or guidance. Sattell got the shakes when he thought of Pop, and Pop rather probably knew it. Of course, by the time he took the job tending the shack, he was pretty certain about Sattell. The facts spoke for themselves. Pop had come back to consciousness in a hospital with a great wound in his head and no memory of anything that had happened before that moment. It was not that his identity was in question. When he was stronger, the doctors told him who he was, and as gently as possible, what had happened to his wife and children. They'd been murdered after he was seemingly killed defending them. But he didn't remember a thing, not then. It was something of a blessing. But when he was physically recovered, he set about trying to pick up the threads of the life he could no longer remember. He met Sattell quite by accident. Sattell looked familiar. Pop eagerly tried to ask him questions, and Sattell turned gray and frantically denied that he'd ever seen Pop before, all of which happened back on Earth and a long time ago. It seemed to Pop that the sight of Sattell had brought back some vague and cloudy memories. They were not sharp, though, and he hunted up Sattell again to find out if he was right, and Sattle went into panic when he returned. Nowadays by the big crack, Pop wasn't so insistent on seeing Sattell, but he was deeply concerned with the recovery of the memories that Sattell helped bring back. Pop was a highly conscientious man. He took good care of his job. There was a warning bell in the shack, and when a rocket ship from Lunar City got above the horizon and could send a tight beam, the gong clanged loudly and Pop got into a vacuum suit and went out the airlock. He usually reached the moon dozer about the time the ship began to brake for landing, and he watched it come in. He saw the silver needle in the sky fighting momentum above a line of jagged crater walls. It slowed and slowed and curved down as it drew nearer. The pilot killed all forward motion just above the field and came steadily and smoothly down to land between the silvery triangles that marked the landing place. Instantly the rockets cut off. Drums of fuel and air and food came out of the cargo hatch, and Pop swept forward with the dozer. It was a miniature tractor with a gigantic scoop in front of he pushed a great mound of talc fine dust before him to cover up the cargo it was necessary, with freight costing what it did. Fuel and air and food came frozen solid in containers barely thicker than foil while they stayed at space shadow temperature. The foil would hold anything, and a cover of insulating moon dust with vacuum between the grains kept even air frozen solid, though in sunlight at such times Pop hardly thought of Sattell. He knew he had plenty of time for that. He started to follow Sattell, knowing what had happened to his wife and children, but it was hearsay only. He had no memory of them at all. But Sattell stirred the lost memories. At first, Pop followed absorbedly from city to city to recover the years that had been wiped out by an axe blow. He did recover a good deal. When Sattell fled to another continent, Pop followed because he had some distinct memories of his wife and the way he felt about her, and some fugitive mental images of his children. When Sattell frenziedly tried to deny knowledge of the murder in Tangier, Pop had come to remember both his children and some of the happiness of his married life. Even when Sattell, whimpering, signed up for Lunar City, Pop tracked him. By that time, he was quite sure that Sattell was the man who'd killed his family. If so, Sattell had profited by less than 2 days pay for wiping out everything that Pop possessed. But Pop wanted it back. He couldn't prove Sattell's guilt. There was no evidence. In any case, he didn't really want Sattell to die. If he did, there'd be no way to recover more lost memories. What's up everybody?

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by Granger for the ones who get it done. Sometimes, in the shack on the far side of the moon, Pop Young had odd fancies about Satell. There was the mine, for example. In each two Earth weeks of working, the mine colony nearly filled up a three gallon canister with greasy seeming white crystals shaped like two pyramids. Base to base, the filled canister would weigh a hundred pounds. On Earth. Here it weighed 18. But on Earth its contents would be computed in carats. And a hundred pounds was worth millions. Yet here on the moon, Pop kept a waiting canister on a shelf in his tiny dome behind the air apparatus. It rattled if he shook it. And it was worth no more than so many pebbles. But sometimes Pop wondered if Sattell ever thought of the value of the mine's production. If he would kill a woman and two children and think he'd killed a man for no more than a hundred dollars. What enormity would he commit for a three gallon quantity of uncut diamonds? But he did not dwell on such speculation. The sun rose very, very slowly. And what by convention was called the east. It took nearly two hours to urge its disk above the horizon. And it burned terribly in emptiness for 14 times 24 hours before sunset. Then there was night. And for 336 consecutive hours there were only stars overhead. And the sky was a hole so terrible that a man who looked up into it, what with the nagging sensation of one sixth grade gravity, tended to lose all confidence in the stability of things. Most men immediately found it hysterically necessary to seize hold of something solid to keep from falling upward. But nothing felt solid. Everything fell too. Wherefore most men tended to scream. But not Pop. He'd come to the moon in the first place because Sattell was here, near Satell. He found memories of times when he was a young man with the young, young wife who loved him extravagantly. Then pictures of his children came out of emptiness and grew sharp and clear. He found that he loved them very dearly. And when he was near Satell, he literally recovered them. In the sense that he came to know new things about them and had new memories of them every day. He hadn't yet remembered the crime which lost them to him until he did. And the fact possessed a certain grisly humor. Pop didn't even hate Sattell. He simply wanted to be near him because it enabled him to recover new and vivid parts of his youth that had been lost. Otherwise he was wholly matter of fact. Certainly so for the far side of the moon. He was a rather fussy housekeeper. The Shack above the big crack's rim was as tidy as any lighthouse or fur trapper's cabin. He tended his air apparatus with a fine precision, and it was perfectly simple. In the shadow of the shack, he had an unfailing source of extreme low temperature. Air from the shack flowed into a shadow chilled pipe. Moisture condensed out of it here and CO2 froze solidly out of it there and on beyond. It collected as restless, transparent liquid air. At the same time, liquid air from another tank evaporated. To maintain the proper air pressure in the shack, every so often, Pop tapped the pipe where the moisture froze and lumps of water ice clattered out to be returned to the humidifier. Less often, he took out the CO2 snow and measured it and dumped an equivalent quantity of pale blue liquid oxygen into the liquid air that had been purified by cold. The oxygen dissolved. Then the apparatus reversed itself and supplied fresh air from the now enriched fluid, while the depleted other tank began to fill up with cold, purified liquid air. Outside the shack, jagged stony pinnacles reared in the starlight and craters complained of the bombardment from space that had made them. But outside, nothing ever happened. Inside, it was quite different. Working on his memories, one day Pop made a little sketch. It helped a great deal. He grew deeply interested. Writing material was scarce, but he spent most of the time between two particular rocket landings getting down on paper exactly how a child had looked while sleeping some 15 years before. He remembered with astonishment that the child had really looked exactly like that. Later, he began a sketch of his partly remembered wife. In time, he had plenty. It became a really truthful likeness. The sun rose and baked the abomination of desolation which was the moonscape. Pop Young meticulously touched up the glittering triangles which were landing guides for the lunar city's ships. They glittered from the thinnest conceivable layer of magnesium marking powder. He checked over the moon dozer. He tended the air apparatus. He did everything that his job and survival required. Ungrudgingly. Then he made more sketches. The images to be drawn came back more clearly when he thought of Sattell. So by keeping Sattell in mind, he recovered the memory of a chair that had been in his forgotten home. Then he drew his wife sitting in it, reading. It felt very good to see her again. And he speculated about whether Sattell ever thought of millions of dollars worth of new mined diamonds knocking about unguarded in the shack. And he suddenly recollected clearly the way one of his children had looked while playing with her doll. He Made a quick sketch to keep from forgetting that there was no purpose in the sketching save that he'd lost all his young manhood through a senseless crime. He wanted his youth back. He was recovering it bit by bit. The occupation made it absurdly easy to live on the surface of the far side of the moon, whether anybody else could do it or not. Sattell had no such device for adjusting to the lunar state of things. Living on the Moon was bad enough anyhow then. But living one mile underground from Pop Young was much worse. Sattell clearly remembered the crime Pop Young hadn't yet recalled. He considered that Pop had made no overt attempt to revenge himself because he planned some retaliation so horrible and lingering that it was worth waiting for. He came to hate Pop with an insane ferocity and fear. In his mind the need to escape became an obsession on top of the other psychotic states. Normal to a Moon colonist. But he was helpless. He couldn't leave. There was Pop. He couldn't kill Pop. He had no chance. And he was afraid. The one absurd, irrelevant thing he could do was write letters back to Earth. He did that. He wrote with the desperate, impassioned, frantic blend of persuasion and information and genius like invention of a prisoner in a high security prison trying to induce someone to help him escape. He had friends of a sort, but for a long time his letters produced nothing. The Moon swung in vast circles about the Earth and the Earth swung sedately about the Sun. The other planets danced their saraband. The rest of humanity went about its own affairs with fascinated attention. But then an event occurred which bore directly upon Popyoung and Sattell and Pop Young's missing years. Somebody back on Earth promoted a luxury passenger line of spaceships to ply between Earth and Moon. It looked like a perfect setup. Three spacecraft capable of the journey came into being with attendant reams of publicity. They promised a thrill and a new distinction for the rich. Guided tours to Lunar the most expensive and most thrilling trip in history. $100,000 for a 12 day cruise through space with views of the Moon's far side and trips through Lunar City and a landing in Aristarchus. Plus sound tapes of the journey and fame hitherto reserved for honest explorers. It didn't seem to have anything to do with Pop or with Sattell. But it did. There were just two passenger tours. The first was fully booked, but the passengers who paid so highly expected to be pleasantly thrilled and shielded from all reasons for alarm. And they couldn't be. Something happens when a self centered and complacent individual unsuspectingly looks out of a spaceship port and sees the cosmos unshielded by mist or clouds or other aids to blindness against reality. It is shattering. A millionaire cut his throat when he saw Earth dwindled to a mere blue green ball in vastness. He could not endure his own smallness in the face of immensity. Not one passenger disembarked even for Lunar City. Most of them cowered in their chairs, hiding their eyes. They were the simple cases of hysteria. But the richest girl on Earth who'd had five husbands and believed that nothing could move her. She went into catatonic withdrawal and neither saw nor heard nor moved. Two other passengers sobbed in improvised straitjackets. The first shipload started home fast. The second luxury liner took off with only four passengers and turned back before reaching the moon. Space pilots could take the strain of space flight because they had work to do. Workers for the lunar mines could make the trip under heavy sedation. But it was too early in the development of space travel for pleasure passengers. They weren't prepared for the more humbling facts of life. Pop heard of the quaint commercial enterprise through the micro tapes put off at the shack for the men down in the mine. Sattell probably learned of it the same way. Pop didn't even think of it again. It seemed to have nothing to do with him. But Sattell undoubtedly dealt with it fully in his desperate writings Back to Earth. Pop matter of factly tended the shack and the landing field and the stores for the big crack mine. Between times he made more drawings in pursuit of his own private objective. Quite accidentally, he developed a certain talent. Professional artists might have approved. But he was not trying to communicate, but to discover drawing, especially with his mind on Sattell. He found fresh incidents popping up in his recollection times when he was happy. One day he remembered the puppy his children had owned and loved. He drew it painstakingly, and it was his again. Thereafter he could remember it any time he chose. He did actually recover a completely vanished past. He envisioned a way to increase that recovery. But there was a marked shortage of artist materials on the Moon. All freight had to be hauled from Earth on a voyage equal to rather more than a thousand times around the equator of the Earth. Artist supplies were not often included. Pop didn't even ask. He began to explore the area outside the shack for possible material no one would think of sending from Earth. He collected stones of various sorts, but when warmed up in the shack, they were useless. He found no strictly lunar material which would serve for modeling or carving portraits in the ground. He found minerals which could be pulverized and used as pigments, but nothing suitable for this new adventure in the recovery of lost youth. He even considered blasting to aid his search. He could. Down in the mine, blasting was done by soaking carbon black from CO2 in liquid oxygen and then firing it with a spark. It exploded splendidly, and its fumes were merely more CO2, which an air apparatus handled easily. He didn't do any blasting. He didn't find any signs of the sort of mineral he required. Marble would have been perfect, but there is no marble on the moon, naturally. Yet Pop continued to search absorbedly for material with which to capture memory. Sattell still seemed necessary. But early one lunar morning he was a good two miles from his shack when he saw rocket fumes in the sky. It was most unlikely. He wasn't looking for anything of the sort. But out of the corner of his eye he observed that something moved, which was impossible. He turned his head and there were rocket fumes coming over the horizon, not in the direction of Lunar City, which was more impossible still. He stared. A tiny silver rocket to the westward poured out monstrous masses of vapor. It decelerated swiftly. It curved downward. The rockets checked for an instant and flamed again more violently, and and checked once more. This was not an expert approach. It was a faulty one, curving surfaceward in a sharply changing parabola. The pilot overcorrected and had to wait to gather down speed, and then overcorrected again. It was an altogether clumsy landing. The ship was not even perfectly vertical. When it settled, not quite in the landing area marked by silvery triangles, one of its tail fins crumpled slightly. It tilted a little when fully landed. Then nothing happened. Pop made his way toward it in the skittering skating gait one uses in one sixth gravity. When he was within half a mile, an airlock door opened in the ship's side, but nothing came out of the lock. No spacesuited figure, no cargo came drifting down with the singular deliberation of fox falling objects on the moon. It was just barely past lunar sunrise on the far side of the moon. Incredibly long and utterly black shadows stretched across the plain, and half the rocket ship was dazzling white, and half was blacker than blackness itself. The sun still hung low indeed in the black star speckled sky. Pop waded through moon dust, raising a trail of slowly settling powder. He knew only that the ship didn't come from Lunar City, but from Earth. He couldn't imagine why. He did not even wildly connect it with what, say Sattell might have written with desperate plausibility about greasy seeming white crystals out of the mine, knocking about Pop Young's shack and canisters containing a hundred earth pounds weight of richness. Pop reached the rocket ship. He approached the big tail fins. On one of them there were welded ladder rungs going up to the opened airlock door. He climbed. The airlock was perfectly normal when he reached it. There was a glass port in the inner door and he saw eyes looking through it at him. He pulled the outer door shut and felt the whining vibration of admitted air. What's up everybody?

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His vacuum suit went slack about him. The inner door began to open and Pop reached up and gave his helmet the practiced twisting jerk which removed it. Then he blinked. There was a red headed man in the opened door. He grinned savagely at Pop. He held a very nasty hand, weapon trained on Pop's middle. Don't come in, he said mockingly. And I don't give a damn about how you are. This isn't social. It's business. Pop simply gaped. He couldn't quite take it in. This, snapped the red headed man abruptly. Is a stick up? Pop's eyes went through the interlocked door. He saw that the interior of the ship was stripped and bare, but a spiral stairway descended from some upper compartment. It had a handrail of pure transparent or water clear plastic. The walls were bare insulation, but that trace of luxury remained. Pop gazed at the plastic, fascinated. The red headed man leaned forward, snarling. He slashed Pop across the face with the barrel of his weapon. It drew blood. It was wanton, savage brutality. Pay attention. Snarled the red headed man. A stick up, I said. Get it. You go get that can of stuff from the mine. The diamonds. Bring them here. Understand? Pop said numbly. What the hell. The red headed man hit him again. He was nerve wracked and therefore he wanted to hurt. Move. He rasped. I want the diamonds you've got for this ship from Lunar City. Bring em. Pop licked blood from his lips and the man with the weapon raged at him. Then phone down to the mine. Tell Sattell I'M here and he can come on up. Tell him to bring any more diamonds they've dug up since the stuff you've got. He leaned forward. His face was only inches from Pop Young's. It was seamed and hard bitten and nerve racked, but any man would be quivering if he wasn't used to space or the feel of 1/6 gravity on the moon. And he panted and get it straight. You try any tricks and we take off. We swing over your shack. The rocket blast smashes it. We burn you down. Then we swing over the cable down to the mine and the rocket flame melts it. You die and everybody in the mine besides. No tricks. We didn't come here for nothing. He twitched all over the Then he struck cruelly again at Pop Young's face. He seemed filled with fury, at least partly hysterical. It was the tension that space travel then at its beginning produced. It was meaningless savagery due to terror, but of course Pop was helpless to resent it. There were no weapons on the moon and the mention of Sattell's name showed the uselessness of bluff. He'd pictured the complete setup by the edge of the big crack. Pop could do nothing. The red headed man checked himself. Panting, he drew back and slammed the inner lock door. There was the sound of pumping. Pop put his helmet back on and sealed it. The outer door opened. Outrushing air tugged at Pop. After a second or two he went out and climbed down the welded on ladder bars to the ground. He headed back toward his shack. Somehow the mention of Sattell had made his mind work better. It always did. He began painstakingly to put things together. The red headed man knew the routine here, in every detail. He knew Sattell. That part was simple. Sattell had planned this multi million dollar coup as a man in prison might plan his break. The stripped interior of the ship identified was one of the unsuccessful luxury liners sold for scrap, or perhaps it was stolen for the journey here. Sattell's associates had had to steal or somehow get the fuel and somehow find a pilot. But there were diamonds worth at least $5 million waiting for them, and the whole job might not have called for more than two men, with Sattell as a third. According to the economics of crime, it was feasible, and anyhow it was being done. Pop reached the dust heap which was his shack and went in the airlock. Inside. He went to the vision phone and called the mine colony down in the crack. He gave the message he'd been told to pass on Satell to come up with what diamonds had been dug since the regular canister was sent up for the Lunar City ship that would be due presently. Otherwise the ship on the landing strip would destroy Shack and Pop and the colony together. I'd guess, said Pop painstakingly, that Sattell figured it out. He's probably got some sort of gun to keep you from holding him down there. But he won't know his friends are here. Not right this minute, he won't. A shaking voice asked questions from the vision phone. No, said Pop. They'll do it anyhow. If we were able to tell about em, they'd be chased. But if I'm dead and the shack's smashed and the cable burnt through, they'll be back on Earth long before a new cable's been got and let down to you. So they'll do all they can, no matter what I do. He added, I wouldn't tell Sattell a thing about it if I were you. It'll save trouble. Just let him keep on waiting for this to happen. It'll save you trouble. Another shaky question. Me? Asked Pop. Oh, I'm going to raise what hell I can. There's some stuff in that ship I want. He switched off the phone. He went over to his air apparatus. He took down the canister of diamonds, which were worth five millions or more. Back on Earth he found a bucket. He dumped the diamonds casually into it. They floated downward with great deliberation and surged from side to side like a liquid. When they stopped one sixth gravity. Pop regarded his drawings meditatively, a sketch of his wife as he now remembered her. It was very good to remember a drawing of his two children playing together. He looked forward to remembering much more about them. He grinned. That stair rail, he said in deep satisfaction. That'll do it. He tore bed linen from his bunk and worked on the emptied canister. It was a double container with a thermware interior lining. Even on Earth, newly mined diamonds sometimes fly to pieces from internal stress on the moon. It was not desirable that diamonds be exposed to repeated, violent changes of temperature, so a thermware lined canister kept them at mine temperature. Once they were warmed to touchability, Pop packed the cotton cloth in the container. He hurried a little because the men in the rocket were shaky and might not practice patience. He took a small emergency lamp from his spare space suit. He carefully cracked its bulb, exposing the filament within. He put the lamp on top of the cotton and sprinkled magnesium marking powder over everything. Then he went to the air apparatus and took out a flask of the liquid oxygen used to keep his breathing air in balance. He poured the frigid, pale blue stuff into the cotton. He saturated it all. The inside of the shack was foggy when he finished. Then he pushed the canister top down. He breathed a sigh of a leaf when it was in place. He'd arranged for it to break a frozen, brittle switch as it descended. When it came off, the switch would light the lamp with its bare filament. There was powdered magnesium in contact with it and liquid oxygen all about. He went out of the shack by the airlock. On the way, thinking about Sattell, he suddenly recovered a completely new memory. On their first wedding anniversary, so long ago, he and his wife had gone out to dinner to celebrate. He remembered how she looked, the almost smug joy they shared that they would be together for always, with one complete year for proof. Pop reflected hungrily that it was something else, to be made permanent and inspected from time to time. But he wanted more than a drawing of this. He wanted to make the memory permanent and to extend it. If it had not been for his vacuum suit and the canister he carried, the Pop would have rubbed his hands. Tall, jagged crater walls rose from the lunar plane. Monstrous, extended inky shadows stretched enormous distances, utterly black. The sun, like a glowing octopod, floated low at the edge of things and seemed to hate all creation. Pop reached the rocket. He climbed the welded ladder rungs to the airlock. He closed the door. Air whined. His suit sagged against his body. He took off his helmet. When the red headed man opened the inner door, the hand weapon shook and trembled. Pop said calmly, now, I've got to go handle the hoist. If Sattell's coming up from the mine. If I don't do it, he don't come up. The red headed man snarled, but his eyes were on the canister, whose contents should weigh a hundred pounds on Earth. Any tricks, he rasped, and you know what happens. Yeah, said Pop. He stolidly put his helmet back on, but his eyes went past the red headed man to the stair that wound down inside the ship. From some compartment above. The stair rail was pure clear water, white plastic not less than three inches thick. There was a lot of it. The inner door closed. Pop opened. The outer. Air rushed out. He climbed painstakingly down to the ground. He started back toward the shack. There was the most luridly bright of all possible flashes. There was no sound, of course, but something flamed very brightly and the ground thumped under Pop Young's vacuum boots. He turned. The rocket ship was still in the act of flying apart. It had been a splendid explosion. Of course, cotton sheeting in liquid oxygen is not quite as good an explosive as carbon black, which they used down in the mine, even with magnesium powder to start the flame when a bare light filament ignited it. The canister bomb hadn't equaled, say, tnt, but the ship had fuel on board for the trip back to Earth, and it blew too. It would be minutes before all the fragments of the ship returned to the moon's surface. On the moon, things fall slowly. Pop didn't wait. He searched hopefully once. A mass of steel plating fell only yards from him, but it did not interrupt his search. When he went into the shack, he grinned to himself. The call light of the vision phone flickered wildly when he took off his helmet. The bell clanged incessantly. He answered. A shaking voice from the mining colony panted, we felt a shock. What happened? What do we do? Don't do a thing, advised Pop. It's all right. I blew up the ship and everything's all right. I wouldn't even mention it to Sattell if I were you. He grinned happily down at a section of plastic stair rail he'd found not too far from where the ship exploded. When the man down in the mine cut off, Pop got out of his vacuum suit in a hurry. He placed the plastic zestfully on the table where he'd been restricted to drawing pictures of his wife and children. Children in order to recover memories of them. He began to plan gloatingly, the thing he would carve out of a 4 inch section of the plastic. When it was carved, he'd paint it. While he worked, he'd think of Sattell because that was the way to get back the missing portions of his life, the parts Sattell had managed to get away from him. He'd get back more than ever now. He didn't wonder what he'd do if he ever remembered the crime Sattell had committed. And he felt somehow that he wouldn't get that back until he'd recovered all the rest. Gloating. It was amusing to remember what people used to call such artworks as he planned when carved by other lonely men in other faraway places. They called those sculptures scrimshaw, but they were a lot more than that. End of Scrimshaw by Murray Leinster Recording by Pam Castile.

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Shepherd of the Planets by Alan Mattocks this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org shepherd of the Planets by Alan Mattocks the starship came out of space drive for the last time and made its final landing on a scrubby little planet that circled a small and lonely sun. It came to ground gently with the cushion of a retarder field on the side of the world where it was night. In the room that would have been known as the bridge on ships of other days, instrument lights glowed softly on Captain Renner's cropped white hair and upon the planes of his lean, strong face. Competent fingers touched the controls here and there, seeing, seeking a response that he knew would not come. He had known this for long enough so that there was no longer any emotional impact in it for him. He shut off the control panel and stood up. Well, gentlemen, he said, that's it. The fuel pack's gone. Beeson the botanist, a rotund little man with a red, unsmiling face, squirmed in his chair. The engineers on Earth told us it would last a lifetime, he pointed out. If we were just back on Earth, thorn, the ship doctor, said dryly. We could tell them that it doesn't. They could start calculating again. But what does it mean? David asked. He was the youngest member of the crew, signed on as a linguist and librarian to the ship. Just that we're stuck here, wherever that is for good, pharaoh said bitterly. You won't have to run engines any more, Dr. Thorne commented, knowing that remark would irritate Pharaoh. Pharaoh glared at him. His narrow cheekbones and shallow eyes were shadowed by the control room lights. He was good with the engines, which were his special charge, but beyond that he was limited in both sympathy and imagination. Captain Renner looked from face to face. We were lucky to set down safely, he said to them. We might have been caught too far out for a landing. It is night now, and I am going to get some rest. Tomorrow we will see what kind of world this is. He left the control room and went down the corridor towards his quarters. The others watched him go. None of them made a move to leave their seats. What about the fuel pack? David asked. Just what he said, pharaoh answered him. It's exhausted, done for. We can run auxiliary equipment for a long time to come, but no more stardrive. So we just stay here till we're rescued, david said. A fine chance for that. Pharaoh's voice grew bitter again. Our captain has landed us out here on the rim of the galaxy where there won't be another ship for a hundred years. I don't understand that man, beason said suddenly, looking around him belligerently. What are we doing out here anyway? Extended exploration, said Thorne. It's a form of being put out to pasture. Renner's too old for the service, but he's still a strong and competent man. So they give him a ship and a vague assignment and let him do just about what he wants. There you have it. He took a cigar from his pocket and looked at it fondly while they last. Gentlemen, he said, holding it up. He snipped the end and lit it carefully. His own hair had grown grey in the service, and in a way the reason for his assignment to the ship was the same as Renner's.

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I think, he said slowly, that Captain Renner is looking for something. But for what? Beeson demanded. He has taken us to every out of the way backward planet on the Rim. And what happens? We land, we find the natives, we are kind to them, we teach them something, leave them a few supplies, and then Renner loses interest and we go on. Perhaps it is for something in himself, david offered. Perhaps he will find it here, thought. Thorn murmured, I'm going to bed. He got up from his seat. David stood up and went over to one of the observation ports. He ran back the radiation screen. The sky outside was very black and filled with alien stars. He could see absolutely nothing of the landscape about them because of the dark. It was a poor little planet. It hadn't even a moon. In the morning they opened up the ship and let down the landing ramps. It was a very old world that they set foot upon. Whatever mountains or hills it ever had had long ago been levelled by erosion, so that now there was only a vaguely undulating plain studded with smooth and rounded boulders. The soil underfoot was packed and barren, and there was no vegetation for as far as they could see. But the climate seemed mild and pleasant, the air warm and dry. With the soft breeze blowing, it was probable that the breeze would be always with them. There were no mountains to interfere with its passage or alter its gentle play. Off to one side a little stream ran crystal clear over the rocks and gravel. Dr. Thorne got a sample bottle from the ship and went over to it. He touched his fingers to the water, then touched them to his lips. Then he filled the sample bottle from the stream and came back with. Seems all right, he said. I'll run an analysis of it and let you know as soon as I can. He took the bottle with him into the ship. Beason stood kicking at the ground with the toe of his boot. His head was lowered. What do you think of it? Renner asked. Beeson shrugged. He knelt down and felt of the earth with his hands. Then he got out a heavy bladed knife and hacked at it until he had pried out a few hard pieces. He stood up again with these in his hands. He tried to crumble them, but they would not crumble. They would only break into bits like sun dried brick. It's hard to tell, he said. There seems to be absolutely no organic material here. I would say that nothing has grown here for a long, long time. Why? I don't know. The lab will tell us something. Renner nodded. For the rest of the day they went their separate ways, Renner to his cabin to make the entries that were needed when a flight was ended, even though that ending was not intentional. Beeson to prowling around the edge of the stream and pecking at the soil with a geologist's pick and farrow, to his narrow little world of engines where he worked at getting ready the traction machines and other equipment that would be needed. David set out on a tour of exploration towards the furthermost nests of boulders. It was there that he found the first signs of vegetation. In and around some of the larger groups of rocks he found mosses and lichens growing. He collected specimens of them to take back with him. It was out there, far from the ship, that he saw the first animate life. When he returned, it was growing. Towards evening he found that the others had brought tables from the ship and sleeping equipment and set it up outside. Their own quarters. Would have been more comfortable, but the ship was always there for their protection if they needed it, and they were tired of its confinement. It was a luxury to sleep outdoors, even under alien stars. Someone had brought food from the synthesizer and arranged it on a table they were eating when he arrived. He handed the specimens of moss and lichen to Captain Renner, who looked at them with interest and then passed them on to Beeson for his study. Sir, david said. What is it, David? Captain Renner asked. I think there are natives here, david said. I believe that I saw one. Renner's eyes lit up with interest. He laid down his knife and fork. Are you sure? He asked. It was just a glimpse, david said, of a hairy face peering around a rock. It looked like one of those pictures of cavemen one used to see in the old texts. Renner stood up. He moved a little way away and stood staring out into the glowing dark across the boulder studded plain. On a barren planet like this, he said, there must lack so many things. I'd swear he looks almost happy, Dr. Thorne whispered to the man next to him. It happened to be Pharaoh. Why shouldn't he be? Pharaoh growled, his mouth full of food. He's got a planet to play with. That's what he's been aiming for. Wait and see. The next days passed swiftly. Dr. Thorne found the water from the little stream not only to be potable but but extremely pure. Pharaoh got his machinery unloaded and ready to run. Among other things, there was a land vehicle on light caterpillar treads, capable of running where there were no roads and carrying a load of several tons. And there was an out and out tractor with multiple attachments. Beeson was busy in his laboratory, working on samples from the soil. David brought in the one new point that was of interest. He had been out hunting among the boulders again, and it was almost dark when he returned. He told Renner about it at the supper table with the others listening in. I think the natives eat the lichen, he said. I haven't seen much else they could eat, beeson muttered. There's more of the lichen that you might think, david said, if you know where to look for it. But even at that there isn't very much. The thing is, it looks like it's been cropped. It's never touched if the plants are small or half grown or very nearly ready. But just as soon as the patch is fully mature, it is stripped bare, and there never seems to be any of it dropped or left behind or wasted. If that's all they have to live on, thorn said, they have it pretty thin. The natives began to be seen nearer to the camp. At first there were just glimpses of them, a hairy face or head seen at the edge of a rock, or the sight of a stocky figure dashing from boulder to boulder. As they grew braver, they came out more into the open. They kept their distance and would disappear into the rocks if anyone made a move toward them, but if no attention was paid to them, they moved about freely. In particular, they would come each evening to stand in a ragged line near one of the nests of boulders. From there they would watch the crewmen eat. There were never more than 12 or 15 of them, a bandy legged lot with thick, heavy torsos and hairy heads. It was on one of Those occasions that Dr. Thorne happened to look up. Oh, he said. Here it comes. Renner turned his head and rose to his feet. The other men rose with him. Three of the natives were coming toward the camp. They came along at a swinging trot, a sense of desperation and dedicated purpose in their manner. One ran slightly ahead. The other two followed behind him, shoulder to shoulder. Farrow reached for a ray gun in a pile of equipment near him and raised it. No weapons, Captain, renner ordered sharply. Pharaoh lowered his arm but kept the gun in his hand. The natives drew near enough for their faces to be seen. The leader was casting frightened glances from side to side and ahead of him as he came. The other two stared straight ahead, their faces rigid, their eyes blank with fear. They came straight to the table. There they reached out suddenly and caught up all the food that they could carry in their hands and turned and fled with it in terror into the night. Somebody sighed with relief. Poor devils, renner said. They're hungry. There was a conference the following morning around one of the tables. We've been here long enough to settle in, renner said. It's time we started to do something for this planet. He looked towards Beeson. How far have you gotten? He asked. Beason was, as usual, brisk and direct. I can give you the essentials, he said. I can't tell you the whole story. I don't know. It turns out to be brief. The soil is highly nitrogen deficient and completely lacking in humus. In a way the two points tie in together. He looked about him sharply and then went on. The nitrates are easily leached from the soil. Without the bacteria that grow around certain roots to fix nitrogen and form new nitrates, the soil was soon depleted. As to the complete lack of organic material, I can hazard only a guess. Time, of course, but back at that probably the usual history of an overpopulation and a depleted soil at the end. Perhaps they ate everything leaves, stems, and roots, and returned nothing to the earth. The nitrates are replaceable? Renner asked. Beeson nodded. The nitrates will have formed deposits, he said. Probably near ancient lakes or shallow seas. It shouldn't be too hard to find some. Renner turned to Pharaoh. How about your department? He he asked. I take it we're thinking of farming, faro said. I've got equipment that will break up the soil for you and I can throw a dam across the stream for water. There are seeds in the ship, renner said, his eyes lighting with enthusiasm. We'll start this planet all over again. There's still one thing, beason reminded him dryly. Humus. Leaves. Roots. Organic material. Something to loosen up the soil, aerate it. Nothing will grow in a brick. Renner stood up. He took a few slow paces and then stood, looking out at the groups of boulders studding the ancient plain. I see, he said. And there's only one place to get it. We'll have to use the lichens and mosses. There'll be trouble with the naces if you do, thorn said. Renner looked at him. He frowned thoughtfully. You'll be taking their only food, the doctor pointed out. We can feed them from the synthesizer, renner answered. We know that they will eat it. Why bother? Pharaoh asked sourly. Venner turned on him. Will the synthesizer handle it? He asked. I guess so, pharaoh grumbled. For a while, at least. But I don't see what good the natives are to us if we take their food, renner said. We are going to feed them, at least until such time as the crops come in and they are able to feed themselves. Are you building this planet for us or for them? Pharaoh demanded. Renner turned away. They put out canisters of food for the natives that night. In the morning it was gone. Each evening someone left food for them near their favourite nest of rocks. The natives took it in the dark, unseen. Gradually, Captain Renner himself took over the feeding. He seemed to derive a personal satisfaction from it. Gradually, too, the natives began coming out into the open to receive it. Before long, they were waiting for him. Every evening as he brought them food, the gathering of the lichen began. They picked it by hand, working singly or in pairs, searching out the rocks and hidden places where it grew. From time to time they would catch glimpses of the natives watching them from a distance. They were careful not to get close. On one of these occasions, Captain Renner and David were working together. Do they have a language, Captain? Renner asked. Yes, sir, david answered. I have heard them talking among themselves. Do you suppose you can learn it? Renner asked. Do you think you could get near enough to them to listen in? I could try, david offered. Then do so, renner said. That's an assignment. Thereafter, David went out alone. He found that getting close to the natives was not too difficult. He tried to keep out of their sight while still getting near enough to them to hear their voices. They were undoubtedly aware of his presence. But with the feeding, they had lost their fear of the men and did not seem to care. Bit by bit he learned their language, starting from a few key roots and sounds. It was a job for which he'd been trained. Time passed rapidly and the work went on. Captain Renner let his beard grow. It came out white and thick, and he did not bother to trim it. The others, too, became careless in their dress, each man following his own particular whim. There was no longer a need for a taut ship. Pharaoh threw a dam across the little stream, and while the water grew behind, it went on to breaking up the soil. With his machines, Beason searched for nitrate and found it. He brought a load of it back, and this, together with the moss and lichen, was chopped into the soil. In the end, it was the lichen that was the limiting factor. There was only so much of it, so the size of the plot they could prepare was small. But it's a start, Venner said. That's all we can hope for. This first year this crop will furnish more material to be chopped back into the soil. Year by year it will grow until the inhabitants here will have a new world to live in. What do you expect to get out of it? Pharaoh asked bitingly. Renner's eyes glowed with an inner light. Renner's beard grew with the passing months until it became a luxuriant thing. He let his hair go untrimmed, too, so that with his tall, spare figure he took on a patriarchal look. And with the passing months there came that time which was to be spring for this planet. The first green blades of the new planting showed above the ground. The natives noticed it with awe and kept a respectful distance. That evening, when it was time for the natives feeding, the men gathered about little by little. The feeding had become a ritual, and they would often go out to watch it. It was always the same. Renault would step forward, away from the others a little way, the load of food in his hands. The natives would come to stand before him in their ragged line, their leader a trifle to the front. There they would bow and begin a chance that had become a part of the ritual. With the passing time, with the first green planting showing. There was a look of deep satisfaction in Renner's eyes as he stepped forward this night. His hair had grown quite long now, and his white beard blew softly in the consonant wind. There was a simple dignity about him as he stood there, his head erect, and looked upon the natives as his children. The natives, began their chant. It became louder to lava, they said, and bowed. As usual, Pharaoh was nettled. What does the man want anyway? He asked out loud. To be God. Renner could not help but hear him. He did not turn his head. David, he said. Sir? David asked, stepping forward. You understand their language now, don't you? Renner asked. Yes, sir, david said. Then translate, renner ordered. Out loud, please, so the others may hear. To Lava. The natives chanted, bowing to lava. Our father, david said, following the chant. Suddenly he swallowed and hesitated for a moment. Then he straightened himself and went sturdily on to larva. Our Father, who art from the heavens, give us this day our bread. End of shepherd of the Planets by Alan Mattocks Recording by Patrick Eaton Kenilworth, Warwickshire, United Kingdom.

Show Business by Boyd Ellenby this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Bill Yally Show Business by Boyd Ellenby Translated by William C. Boyd and Lyle G. Boyd except for old Dworkin, Kotha's bar was deserted when I dropped in shortly after midnight.

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from Earth was still two days away, and the Martian flagship would get in the next morning with 700 passengers for Earth on it. Dworkin must have been waiting in Luna City a whole week. At 6,000 credits a day, that's as steep to me as it is to you. But money never seemed to worry Dworkin. He raised the heavy green lids from his protruding brown eyes as I came in. He waved his his tail. Sit down and join me, he invited in his guttural voice. It is not good for a man to drink alone, for I haf no comeny in this bidy God's deserted hole. A man must something be doing What? I sat down in the booth across from my Venusian friend and stared at him while he punched a new order into the drink board for me. Another shi'tih, he announced. And for you? Same, against my better judgment, for I knew I'd have plenty to do handling that mob of tourists. The first crowd of the season is always the roughest to morrow, I consented. Dworkin had already consumed six of the explosive things, as the empty glasses on the table showed, but he exhibited no effects. I made a mental note, as I'd done so often before, that this time I would not exceed the safe terrestrial level limit of two. You must be in the money again, drinking in port, I Shishich, I remarked. What are you doing in Luna City? This time he merely lifted his heavy eyelids and stared at me without expression. Naw, in de money I am not, dere are too many chisellers in business. Just when I tink I haf a good ting, I am schwindled. It is too bad. He snorted through his ugly snout, making the Venusian equivalent of a sigh. I knew there was a story waiting behind that warty skin, but I was not sure I wanted to hear it, for the next round of drinks would be on me, and Shishich was 150 credits a shot. Still, a man on a moon assignment has to amuse himself somehow. So I said, what's the latest episode in the Dworkin soap opera? What is the merchandise this time? Gems? Pet Mercurian fire? Insects? A new supply of dinkhana? I do not smuggle drugs. That is a base lie, replied my friend stolidly. He knew, of course, that I still suspected him to be the source of the last load of that potent narcotic, although I had no more proof than did the Planetary Bureau of Investigation. He took a long pull at his drink before he spoke again. But the working is never down for long. This time it is show business. You remember how I haf always been by d theatre so fascinated? Well, I decided to open a show here in Luna City, t' ink of all the travelers bored stiff by space and de emptiness thereof who pass through here during the season. Even if only half of them go to my show, it cannot fail. I waited for some mention of free tickets, but none was made. I was about as anxious to see Dworkin's show as I was to walk barefoot across the Mare Imbrium. But I asked with what enthusiasm I could force what sort of act are you putting on, girls? I shuddered as I recalled the pathetic shopworn chorus girls that Sam Lowe had tried to pass off last year on the gullible tourists of the spaceways. That show had lasted 10 nights, nine more than it deserved to. There are limits even to the gullibility of Earth lubbers. Yes, girls, replied DWORKIN but not what you are, perhaps tinking Martian girls. This was more interesting. Even if the girls were now a little too old for the stage in the Martian capital, they would still get loud cheers on the moon. I knew. I started to say so, but the workin interrupted and not de miserable girls, de buy from de slave traders and biassed. These girls I collected myself from the country along the upper canal. I repressed my impulse to show my curiosity. It could be all perfectly true, and if it were not, the opening night would tell. But it sounded a lot like one of Dworkin's taller tales. I had never been able to disprove any one of them, but I found it a little hard to believe that so many improbable things had ever happened to one man. However, I like being entertained, if it doesn't cost me too much. So I finally I suppose you are going to tell me you ventured out into the interior of Mars carrying a six weeks supply of water and oxygen on your back, and visited the exo theatres on the spot. How did you know that? That is just what I did, solemnly affirmed my companion. He snorted again and looked at his glass. It was empty, but he tilted it into his face again in an eloquent gesture. No words were needed. I punched the cymbals for the shi chichig into the drink board on my side of the table. Then, after hesitating, I punched the two in signal. I must remember, though, that this was my second and last. His eighth shi tich seemed to instill some animation into Dworkin. I know you feel skin skeptically. I mean skepticism. After my exploits, you will see tomorrow night that I speak true. Amazing, I said, especially as I just happened to remember that three different expeditions from Earth tried to penetrate more than a hundred kilometers from Behastan. But either they couldn't carry the water and oxygen that far, or they resorted to breathing Mars air and never came back. And they were Earthmen, not Venusians, who were accustomed to two atmospheres of carbon dioxide. My friend, you must not reason it was so. It will always be so. The principle of induction has long exploded. I did indeed breathe Mars air. Wait, I'll tell you how. He took another long swig of the tch'.

Chikh.

What your eart men did not realize was that they cannot acclimate themselves as we Venusians. You know, the character of our planet made adaptability a condition of survival. It is true that our atmosphere is heavy, but on top of our soul high mountains de air is thin. We must live Everywhere de space is so few. I first adapted myself on Earth to live. I was dere a whole year. You vill recollect, den I go further. Your engineers construct air tanks to that made like the air of the mountains thin. So I learn to live in those tanks each day. I haf spent 1, 2, 3 hours in them. I get so I can breathe air at 1/3 pressure of your already thin atmosphere and at 1/6 detention of oxygen. No, my friend, you could not do this. Your lungs burst. But old Dworkin, he has done it. I take wit me only some water, for I know de Martians dey not give water to trade some miniature kerosene lamps. You know, dey got no fuel oil now, only atomics. But dese little lamps dey like for antiques, for sentiment, because their great grandfathers used them. Well, I walk through Valajas and not stop too close by the capital. Too much contact with men of outer planets. I also walk through Bur and Zamet. I come to a small place where they never see foreigner name Tassah. Oh, I tell you, ze men of ze otter planets do not know Mars. How delightful, how unspoiled are ze Martians once you get away from de people by tourists so spoiled. How wonderful across de sands to go free as birds the so friendly greetings of de Martian men, anti Martian women. Ah, well, in t'sah I go to theater. Such lovely girls, you will see. But I saw something else that my friend, you hardly believe. Dworkin looked down at his empty glass and snorted gently. I took the hint, although for myself. I ordered the less lethal Martian Azazani. I was already having difficulty believing parts of his narrative, and it would be interesting to see if the rest were any harder. My companion. They not only have decorus which you have seen on Earth, imported from Mars, and such a chorus, such girls, but they had something else. You recall your terrestrial history. Once your ancestors had performers on the stage who did funny motions and said amusing remarks to spectators to make laugh. I think you called it vaudeville. Well, on Mars they also have vaudeville. He paused and looked at me from under half shut eyelids and grinned widely to show his reptilian teeth. I wondered if he'd really found something new. I would even be willing to pay for a glimpse of Martian vaudeville. I wondered if my Martian was too rusty for me to understand jokes in the spoken lingo. To have not only men and women telling jokes, but they have trained animals acting funny. Dworkin went on, this was too much. I suppose the animals talked too I said sarcastically, do they speak Earth or Martian? He regarded me approvingly. My friend, you catch on quick. He raised a paw. Now don't de conclusions jump. Let me explain. At first I did not believe it either. They sprang with no warning onto the stage came a Tul. You know him, I think. And a shi uchid. The siujid was riding a bicycle. I mean a monocle. One wheel. The tulure moved just as awkward as he always does, and tried to ride a tandem four wheeled vehicle which had been especially for him, made in spite of my resolve. I chuckled the the picture of a tuloule trying to ride a four wheeled bicycle, pumping each of his eight three jointed legs up and down in turn, while maintaining his usual supercilious and indifferent facial expression was irresistibly funny. Wait, said my friend, and again raised a paw. You have as yet nothing heard. They made jokes at the same time. Dishoo it. Who was dat Tula? I saw you wit up at the canal and the tuloul. Dat was no Tallulah, dat was my shikai. I doubled up laughing. Unless you have visited Mars, this may not strike you as funny. But I collapsed into a heap. I put my head on the table and wept with mirth. It seemed like five minutes before I was able to speak. Oh no. Yes, yes, I tell you, yes, insisted my friend. He even smiled himself. If you don't know the social system of the Martians, there is no point in me trying to explain why the idea of a Tuloules being out with that neuter of neuters a shkai is so devastatingly funny. But that suddenly was not quite the point. Did it happen? I had large doubts. Nobody had ever heard a talul make any sort of sound, and it was generally supposed that they had no vocal cords. And no shit you it. They somewhat resemble a big ground hog and live in burrows along the canals of Mars, had ever been heard to make any noise except a high pitched whistle when frightened. Now just a minute, Dworkin, I said. I know, my friend, I know you tink. It is impossible. You tink. The talking is faked. So I taught it too. The vate. It seems Dworkin had inquired among the audience as to who owned the performing animals. The local Martians were not as impressed as he was with the performance, but they guided him to the proprietor of the trained animal act. He was a young Martian, hawk nosed, with flashing black eyes, dusky skin and curly hair. So I say to him, this Martian, Dworkin continued, if your act on the level is I buy I had three small diamonds with, he explained. But de Martian was hard to deal wid. First he said he would not sell his so valuable and so beloved animals. De only talking animals on Mars, he said. De liar. At long last I get him to make a price, but on condition dat he bring ze animals around to my inn in the morning for a private audition. I suppose I interrupted. You were beginning to have some doubts as to the Martian's good faith. After all, a talking ter lul and a talking shijoojid all at one time is quite a lot to ask. I would have. Please, friend, please, interrupted my companion. Do you not tink old Dworkin knows dese things? Of course he does. I t' ink de owner, he is pulling a fake. I guess I know that animals do not really talk. Next morning I t' ink he no show up. But no, I am mistaken. Promptly at nine o' clock he come to my inn with a little dog cart with de animals. He puts dem on de stage in de bar of de inn. They act like before, but they didn't talk, of course. Oh, my friend, dat's where you are wrong. Dey talk like nobody's business. De jokes are funnier than ever, even dirtier maybe. But de workin is not fooled. He t' ink aho. I say to de Martian, you fake dis what de animals not talk. Suppose you have dem do de act while you outside stay what and den I t' ink I have him. De Martian tears. His curly hair flash his black eyes. He take insult that I tink he is fake name of de Martian gods, he cry. But at last he agreed to go away and and tell animals to go ahead. Dworkin, you were a SAP to string along with him even that far. I said wearily, I hope you hadn't paid the guy any money. He shook his head. No, my old and best, he said. Dworkin, no fool is even on Mars. No, no money. But wait. De animals go on widout de owner. Same stage business, same talk, same jokes. And even fun. Funnier yet. What I started at Dworkin. He did not smile, but finished off the 11th Shi Ch the fifth I had bought him. Listen, I said. Are you sitting there telling me we have a tuul and a shihoojid that can really talk? You listen, my friend, like you I t' ink something is wrong. I say to the Martian, my friend, maybe I buy your act if you tell me how it is done. But you know as well as I do dat it is impossible to dese animals to talk. Tell me, what is de trick? The workin lifted his glass and shook it as though he could not believe it was empty, and then looked at me questioningly. I shook my head. He snorted, looked melancholy, writhed up from his chair, and reached for his fur cape.

Vel.

Thanks for the drinks, he said. A dark suspicion crept into my mind, but I could not restrain myself. Wait, Dworkin. I shouted. You can't just leave me up in the air like that. What happened then? Dworkin snorted into his green handkerchief. Demarshan admitted it was a fake after all, he said mournfully. Can you imagine it? What a chiseler. Disheed, he said. Can't really talk. Just throws his voice. End of Show Business By Boyd Ellenby Translated by William C. Boyd and Lyle G. Boyd Recording by Bill Yalliley.

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It's a Small Solar System by Alan Howard this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Pam Castile It's a Small Solar System by Alan Howard Know him well, you might say I practically grew up with him. He was my hero. In those days, I thought few wiser or greater men ever lived. In my eyes he was greater than Babe Ruth, Lindy, or the President. Of course, time and my growing up caused me to bring him into a perspective that I felt to be more consonant with his true position in his field of endeavor. When he died, his friends mourned for fond remembrance of things past, but privately many of them felt that he had outlived his best days. Now, with this glorious vindication, I wonder how many of them are still alive to feel the twinge of conscience. Oh, we're delighted, of course, but it seems incredible even today to us elated oldsters. Although we were always his staunchest admirers, in retrospect we can see now that no one believed more than we that he did it strictly for the dollar. It is likely there was always a small corps of starry eyed adolescents who found the whole improbable saga entirely believable, or at least half believ'd. It might be partly true. The attitude of the rest of us rang'd from a patronizing disparagement that we thought was expected of us through grudging admiration to out and out enthusiasm. Certainly, if anybody had taken the trouble to consider itand why should they have? The landing of the first manned ship on our satellite seemed to render him as obsolete as a horde of other lesser and even greater lights. At any rate, it was inevitable that the conquest of the Moon would be merely a stepping stone to more distant points. Oh, no. I had nothing to do with the selection of the Red Planet. Coming in as head of Project P4 in its latter stages, as I did when Dr. Fredericks died, the selection had already been made. Yes, it's quite likely I may have been plugging for Mars below the conscious level. A combination of chance, expediency and popular demand made Mars the next target rather than Venus, which was in some ways the more logical goal I would have given anything to have gone. But the metaphorical stout heart that one reporter once credited me with is not the same as an old man's actual fatty heart. And there were heartbreak years ahead before the Goddard was finally ready. During this time he slipped further into obscurity while big, important things were happening all around us. You're right that one really big creation of his is bigger than ever. It has passed into the language and meant employment for thousands of people. Too few of them have even heard of him. Of course, he was still known and welcomed by a small circle of acquaintances. But to the world at large, he was truly a forgotten man. It is worthy of note that one of the oldest of these acquaintances was present at blastoff time. He happened to be the grandfather of a certain competent young crewman. The old man was a proud figure during the brief ceremonies of and his eyes filled with tears as the mighty rocket climbed straight up on its fiery tail. He remained there, gazing up at the sky long after it had vanished. He was heard to murmur, I am glad the kid could go, but it is just a lark to him. He never had a sense of wonder. How could he? Nobody reads any more. Afterward, his senile emotions betraying him, he broke down completely and had to be led from the field. It is rumored he did not live long after that. The Goddard drove on until Mars filled the viz screen. It was planned to make at least a half dozen braking passes around the planet for observational purposes before the actual business of bringing the ship in for landfall began. As expected, the atmosphere proved to be thin. The speculated Dead Sea areas, oddly enough, turned out to be just that. To the surprise of some, it was soon evident that Mars possessed, or had possessed, a high civilization. The Canal of Schiaparelli were indeed broad waterways stretching from pole to pole, too regular to be anything but the work of intelligence. But most wonderful of all were the scattered but fairly numerous large walled cities that dotted the world. Everybody was Excited, eager to land and start exercising their specialties. One of the largest of these cities was selected more or less at random. It was decided to set down just outside, yet far enough from the walls to avoid any possibility of damage from the landing jets. In the event, the city was inhabited, even if deserted, the entire scientific personnel would have raised a howl that would have been heard back on Earth if just a section of wall was scorched. When planet fall was completed and observers had time to scan the surroundings, it was seen that the city was very much alive. What? What keeps them up? Marveled Kupchansky, the Aeronautics and Rocketry Authority. The sky swarmed with ships of strange design. The walls were crowded with inhabitants too far away for detailed observation. Even as they looked, an enormous gate opened and a procession of mounted figures emerged. In the event the place was deserted, the captain would have had the honor of being the first to touch Martian soil. While atmospheric and other checks were being run, he gave orders for the previously decided alternative. Captain, semanticist and anthropologist would make the first contact, with all checks agreeing that it was safe to open locks. Soon the three representatives of Earth were walking shoulder to shoulder down the ramp. It was apparent that the two scientists purposely missed stride inches from the end, so that it was the captain's foot that actually touched ground first. The cavalcade, though these beasties were certainly not horses, was now near enough to the ship for details to be seen. Surprise and wonderment filled the crew, for while the multi legged stealth deeds were as alien as anyone might expect to find on an alien world, the riders were very definitely humanoid. Briefly, brightly and barbarically trapped as they were by earthly standards, they seemed to be little distinguishable from home grown Homo sapes. The approaching company appeared to be armed mainly with swords and lances, but also in evidence were some tubular affairs that could very well be some sort of projectile discharging device. The captain suddenly felt unaccountably warm. It was a heavy responsibility. He hoped these Martians wouldn't be the type of madmen who believed in the shoot first, inquire later theory. Even as he stood there, outwardly calm but jittering internally, the Martian riders plain pulled up 10ft from the Earthmen. Their leader, tall, dark haired and subtly lighter in hue than his companions, dismounted and approached the captain with outstretched hand. He took the captain's in a firm grip. Let it be recorded here, to the shame of an Earth where reading for pleasure is virtually a lost pastime, that not one man on the Goddard RA realized the significance of what followed. How do you do? He said in perfect English, with an unmistakable trace of southern accent. Welcome to Barsoom. My name is John Carter. It's a small solar system by Alan Howard Recording by Pam Castile.

Narrator/Various Characters

Salomon's Orbit by William Carroll this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by James Maitland Solomon's Orbit by William Carroll Comrades, said the senior technician, notice the clear view of North North America. From here we watch everything. Rivers, towns, almost the people. And see. Our upper lens shows the dark spot of a meteor in space. Comrades, the meteor gets larger. It is going to pass close to our wondrous machine. Comrades. Comrades, turn to my channel. It is no meteor. It is square. The accursed Americans have said sent up a house. Comrades, an ancient automobile is flying toward our space machine. Comrades, it's going to. Ah, the picture is gone. Moscow reported the conversation verbatim. To prove their space vehicle was knocked from the sky by a capitalistic plot. Motion pictures clearly showed an American automobile coming toward the Russian side satellite Russian astronomers ordered to seek other strange orbiting devices. We've observed cars for weeks have been exiling technicians and photographers to Siberia for making jokes of Soviet science. If television proves ancient automobiles are orbiting the world, Americans are caught in obvious attempt to ridicule our efforts to probe mysteries of space. Confusion was also undermining American scientific study of the heavens. At Mount Palomar, the busy 200 inch telescope was photographing a strange new object. But plates returned from the laboratory caused astronomers to explode angrily in full glory. The photograph showed a tiny image of an ancient car. This first development only affected two photographers of Mount Palomar. They were fired for playing practical jokes on the astronomers. Additional exposures of other new found objects were made. Again the plates were returned, this time with three little old cars parading proudly across the heavens as though they truly belonged among the stars. The night the Russian protest crossed trails with the Palomar Report, Washington looked like a king kid with chicken pox. As dozens of spotty yellow windows marked midnight meetings of the nation's greatest minds. The military denied responsibility for cars older than 1942. Civil aviation proved they had no projects involving motor vehicles. Central Intelligence swore on their classification manual they were not dropping junk over Cuba in an attempt to hit California. Castro disgusted, the President established a civilian commission which soon located three more reports. Two were from flyers. The pilot of Flight 26, New York to Los Angeles had two weeks before reported a strange object rising over southern California. About 10 the evening of April 3, a week after this report, a private pilot un his way from Las Vegas claimed seeing an old car flying over Los Angeles. His statement was ignored as he was arrested later while trying to drink himself silly because no one believed his story. Fortunately, at the approximate times, both pilots claimed sighting unknown objects. Radar at Los Angeles International recorded something rising from earth's surface into the stratosphere. Within hours after the three reports met in the president's commission's office, mobile radar was spotted on Southern California hilltops in 24 hour watches for unscheduled flights not involving aircraft. Number seven stationed in the Mount Wilson Television Tower parking lot, caught one first.

Hey fellows.

Came his excited voice. Check 124 degrees, vector 6. 2 now rising. 124 degrees, vector 66 rising 9 and 4. Caught it moments later. Then 3. Army long range radar picked it up. Okay, we're on it. It's still rising. Leaving the atmosphere. It's gone. Anyone else catch it? Negative responses came from all but 7, 9 and 4, so well spread were they that with within minutes, headquarters had laid four lines over Southern California. They crossed where the unsuspecting community of Fullerton was more or less sound asleep, totally unaware of the making of history in its backyard. The history of what astronomers call Solomon's orbit had its beginnings about three months ago.

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Solomon, who couldn't remember his first name, was warming tired bones in the sun in front of his auto wrecking yard a mile south of Fullerton. Though sitting, he was propped against the office, a tin shed decorated like a Christmas tree with hundreds of hubcaps dangling from sagging wooden rafters. The back door opened on two acres of what Solomon happily agreed was the finest junk in all California. Fords on the left, Chevys on the right, right and across the sagging back fence, a collection of honorable sedans whose makers left the business world years ago. They were known as Solomon's classics. The bright sun had Solomon's tiny eyes burrowed under a shaggy brown, which added to An Einstein like shock of white hair gave him the appearance of a professor on sabbatical. Eyes closed, Solomon was fondling for favorite memories when as a lad he repaired steam tractors and followed wheat across central plains of the United States. Happiness faded as the reverie was broken by spraying gravel signaling arrival of a customer's car. There's Uncle Solomon, Dad, a boy's voice was saying. He gives us kids good deals on hot rod parts. You've just got to take a look at his old cars. Cause if you want a classic, Uncle Solomon would make you a good deal too. I just know he would. Sure, son, let's go in and see what he's got, replied a man's voice as Solomon opened his eyes, the two popped into reality. Heaving himself out of the sports car bucket seat that was his office chair, Solomon stood, awaiting approach of the pair. Mr. Solomon, Georgie here tells me you have some fine old cars for sale.

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Narrator/Various Characters

Sure, sure.

They're in back. Come along, I'll show you the shortcuts. Without waiting for a reply, Solomon started, head bent, white hair blowing through the office, out the back door and down passages hardly wide enough for a boy, let alone a man. He disappeared around a hearse and surfaced on the other side of a convertible, leading the boy and his father a chase that was more a guided tour of Solomon Solomon's yard than a shortcut. Yes, sir. Here they are, announced Solomon over his shoulder. Stepping aside, he made room for the boy and his father to pass between a couple of Ford tutors. Three pair of eyes, one young, one old, the other tired, were faced by two rows of hulks proud in the silent agony of their fate. Sold, resold, and sold again, used until exhaust exhaustion set in. They reached Solomon's for a last brave stand, no matter what beauties they were to Solomon's prejudiced eyes, missing fenders, rusted body panels, broken wheels, and rotted woodwork bespoke the utter impossibility of restoration. See, dad?

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Georgie gleefully asked. He could just imagine shaking the guys at school with the old Packard after after dad restored it. Are you kidding? Georgie's dad exploded. Those wrecks aren't good for anything but shooting at the moon.

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Not another word did he say. Heading back to the car parked outside Solomon's office, his footsteps were echoed by those of a crestfallen boy. Solomon, a figure of lonely dejection in the gloom overshadowing his un loved old cars, was troubled with smog, causing his eyes to water as tired feet aimlessly found their way back to his seat in the sun that night. To take his mind off worrisome old cars, Solomon began reading the previous Sunday's newspaper. There were pictures of moon shots, rockets and astronauts, which started Solomon to thinking. So my classics are good only for shooting at the moon. This thing called an ion engine, which creates a force field to move satellites. Seems like a lot of equipment could do it easier with one of my old engines, I bet. As Solomon told the people in Washington several months later, he was only resting his eyes, thinking about shop manuals and parts in the backyard, when suddenly he figured there was an easier way to build a satellite power plant. But as it was past his bedtime, he'd put one together tomorrow. It was late the next afternoon before Solomon had a chance to try his satellite power plant idea. Customers were gone, and he was free of interruption. The engine of his elderly Moorland tow truck was brought to life by Solomon. Almost hidden behind the huge wooden steering wheel, the truck lumbered carefully down rows of cars to an almost completely stripped wreck, holding only a broken engine. In a few minutes, Solomon had the engine waving behind the truck while he reversed to a clear space near the center of his yard. Once the broken engine was blocked upright on the ground, Solomon backed his moorland out of the way, carried a tray of tools to the engine, and squatted in the dirt to work first. The intake manifold came off and was was bolted to the clutch housing so the carburetor mounting flange faced skyward. Solomon stopped for a minute to worry. If it works, he thought, when I get them nearer each other, it'll go up in my face. Scanning the yard, he thought of fenders, doors, wheels, hubcaps, and that was it. A hubcap would do the trick. At his age, running was a senseless act activity. But walking faster than usual, Solomon took a direct route to his office. From the ceiling of hubcaps, he selected a small cap from an old Chevy truck. Back at the engine, he punched a hole in the cap through which he tied a length of strong twine. The cap was laid on the carburetor flange and stuck in place with Painter's masking tape. He then bolted the exhaust manifold over the intake so the muffler connection barely touched the hubcap. Solomon stood up, kicked the manifolds with his heavy boots to make sure they were solid, and grunted with satisfaction of a job well done. He moved his tray of tools away and trailed the hubcap twine behind the solid body of a big old Ford station wagon. He'd read of scientists in blockhouses when they shot rockets and was taking no chances. Excitement glistened Solomon's old eyes, as what blood pressure there was rose a point or two with happy thoughts. If his idea worked, he would be free of the old cars, yet not destroy a single one. Squatting behind the station wagon to watch the engine, Solomon gingerly pulled the twine to eliminate slack as it tightened. He tensed, braced himself, himself with a free hand on the wagon's bumper and, taking a deep breath, jerked the cord. Tired legs failed, and Solomon slipped backwards when the hubcap broke free of the tape and sailed through the air to clang against the wagon's fender. Lying on his back, struggling to rise, Solomon heard a slight swish, as though a whirlwind had come through the yard. The scent of airborne dust bit his nostrils as he struggled to his feet. Deep in the woods behind Solomon's yard, two boys were hunting crows. Eyes high, they scanned branches and horizons for game. Look, there goes one. The younger cried as a larger, dark object majestically rose into the sky and rapidly disappeared into high clouds. Yeah, maybe so, said the other, but it's flying too high for us. I must be a silly old man, Solomon thought, scanning the cleared space behind his tow truck. Where he remembered an engine, there was nothing there, and, as Solomon now figured, it never had been. Heart heavy with belief in the temporary foolishness of age, Solomon went to the hubcap, glittering the sun where it lit after bouncing off the fender. It was untied from the string and it in the tool tray before Solomon realized he'd not been daydreaming. In the cleared area were two old manifold gaskets, several rusty nuts, and dirt blown smooth in a wide circle around greasy blocks on which he'd propped the now missing engine. That night was a whirlwind of excitement for Solomon. He had steak for dinner, then sat back to consider future success. Once the classic cars were gone, he could use the space for more profitable Fords and Chevys. All he'd have to do would be bolt manifolds from spare engines on a different car every night, and he'd be rid of it. All he used was vacuum in the intake manifold, drawing pressure from the outlet side of the exhaust. The resulting automatic power flow raised anything they were attached to. Some Solomon couldn't help but think the newspaper said scientists were losing rockets and space capsules so a few old cars could get lost in the clouds without hurting anything. Early the next morning he towed the oldest hunk in Essex to the cleared space. Manifolds from junk Engines were bolted to the wheels, but this time carburetor flanges were covered by wooden shingles. Solomon Solomon figured he couldn't afford to ruin four salable hubcaps just to get rid of his old sedans. Each shingle was taped in place so they could be pulled off in unison with a strong pull of the twine. The tired Essex was pretty big, so Solomon waited until bedtime before stumbling through the dark to the launching pad in his yard. Light from kitchen matches helped collect the shingle cords as he crouched behind the Ford wagon. He held the cords in one calloused hand, a burning match in the other, so he could watch the Essex. Solomon tightened his fist, gave a quick tug to jerk all shingles at the same time, and watched in excited satisfaction as the old sedan rose in a soft swish of midsummer air, flowing through ancient curves of four rusty manifold assemblies. Day after day, only a mile from Fullerton, Solomon busied himself buying wrecked cars and selling usable parts. Each weekday night, Solomon never worked. On Sunday, another old car from his back lot went silently heavenward with the aid of Solomon's unique combination of engine vacuum and exhaust pressure. His footsteps were light with accomplishment as he thought, in four more days they'll all be gone. While the Fullerton radar net smoked innumerable cigarettes and cursed luck, ruining the evening, Solomon scrambled two eggs, enjoyed his coffee, and relaxed with a newly found set of old 1954 Buick shop manuals. As usual, when the clock neared 10, he closed his manuals and let himself out the back door. City lights reflected in low clouds brought frightened the way Solomon knew well. He was soon kneeling behind the Ford wagon without having stumbled once. Only two kitchen matches were needed to collect the cords from a big Packard, handsome in the warmth of a moonless summer night. With a faint God bless you, Solomon pulled the shingles and watched its massive hulk rise and disappear into orbit with the other orphans. If you'd been able to see it all, you'd have worried. The full circle of radar and communications crews around Fullerton had acted as though the whole town were going to pussyfoot away at sundown. Nine was hidden in a curious farmer's orange grove. Seven was tucked between station wagon in the back row of a used car lot. Four was assigned the loading dock of a meatpacking plant, but the night watchman wouldn't allow them to stay. They moved across the street behind a fire station. Three was too big to hide, so it opened for business inside the National Guard armory. They all caught the Packard's takeoff degree lines from the four stations around Fullerton were crossed on the map long before Solomon reached his back door. By the time bedroom lights were out and covers under his bristly chin, a task force of quiet men was speeding on its way to surrounding four blocks of country land, including a chicken ranch, Solomon's junkyard, and a small frame house. Dogs stirred, yapping at sudden activity they alone knew of. Then, nose to tail, returned to sleep when threats of intrusion failed to materialize. The sun was barely up when the chicken farmer was stopped a block from his house. Highway patrolmen slowly inspected his truck from front to back while three cars full of civilians by the side of the road watched every move. Finding nothing unusual, a patrolman reported to the first civilian car, then returned to wave the farmer on his way. When the widow teacher from the frame house started for school, she, too was stopped. After a cursory inspection, the patrolman passed her on. Two of the three accounted for. What of the third? Quietly, a cavalcade formed, converged in Solomon's front yard and parked facing the road, ready for quick departure. Some dozen civilians muddied shoes and trousers, circling the junkyard, taking stations so they could watch all approaches. Once they were in position, a highway patrolman and two civilians went to Solomon's door. His last cup of coffee was almost gone as Solomon heard the noise of their shoes, followed by knuckles thumping his front door. Wondering who could be in such a hurry so early in the morning, he pulled on boots and buttoned a denim jacket as he went to answer. Hello, said Solomon to the patrolman while opening the door. Why you bother me so early? You know I only buy cars from owners. No, Mr. Solomon, we're not worried about your car buying. This man from Washington wants to ask you a few questions. Sure, come in, solomon replied. The questions were odd. Do you have explosives here? Can you weld metal tanks? What is your education? Were you ever an engineer? What were you doing last night? To these and bewildering others, Solomon told the the truth. He had no explosives, couldn't weld, didn't finish school, and was here in bed all night. Then they wanted to see his cars through the back door so he'd not have to open the office. Solomon led the three men into his yard. Once inside, and without asking permission, they began searching. Like a hungry hound trailing a fat rabbit, Solomon's eyes, blinking in the glare of early morning sun, watched invasion of his privacy. What they want?

He wondered.

He'd broken no laws in all the years he'd been in the United States. For what do they bother a wrecking yard? He asked himself. His depressing thoughts were rudely shattered by a hail from the larger civilian standing at the back of Solomon's yard. There, three old cars stood in an isolated row. Solomon, come here a moment. He shouted. Solomon trudged back, followed by short civilian and patrolman, who left their curious searching to follow Solomon's lead. When he neared, the tall stranger asked, I see where weeds grew under other cars, which from the tracks have been moved out in the past few weeks. How many did you have? 20, but these are all I have left, solomon eagerly replied, hoping at last he'd a customer for the best of his old cars. They make classic cars if you'd take the time to fix them up. That one, the Hump Mobile, is the last. Who bought the others? The big man interrupted. No one, quavered Solomon, terror gripping his throat with a nervous hand. Had he done wrong to send cars into the sky? Everyone else was sending things up. Newspapers said Russians and Americans were racing to send things into the air. What had he done that was wrong? Surely there was no law he'd broken. Wasn't the air free like the seas? People dumped things into the ocean. Then where did they go? Snapped his questioner. Up there, pointed Solomon. I needed the space. They were too good to cut up. No one would buy them, so I sent them up the newspapers. You did what? I sent them into the sky, quavered Solomon. So this is what he did wrong. Would they lock him up? What would happen to his cars and his business? How did you know? Wait a minute. Don't say a word, Officer. Go and tell my men to prevent anyone from approaching or leaving this place. The patrolman almost saluted, thought better of it, and left, grumbling about being left out of what must be something big. Solomon told the civilians of matching vacuum in intake manifolds to pressure from exhaust manifolds, a logical way to make an engine engine that would run on pressure like satellite engines he'd read about in newspapers. It worked on a cracked engine block, so he'd use scrap manifolds to get rid of old cars no one would buy. It hadn't hurt anything, had it? Well, no, it hadn't. But as you can imagine, things happened rather fast. They let Solomon get clean denims and his razor, then without a by your leave, hustled him to the the Ontario airport, where an unmarked jet flew him to Washington and a hurriedly arranged meeting with the President. They left guards posted inside the fence of Solomon's yard. So they'll cause no attention while protecting his property. A rugged individual sits in the office and tells buyers and sellers alike that he is Solomon's nephew. The old man had to take a trip in a hurry because he knows nothing of of the business. They'll just have to wait till Solomon returns. Where's Salomon now? Newspaper stories have him in Nevada showing the Air Force how to build gigantic intake and exhaust manifolds, which the Strategic Air Command is planning to attach to a stratospheric decompression test chamber. They figure if they can throw it into the sky, they can move anything up to what astronomers now call Solomon's orbit, where, at last count, 16 of the 17 cars are still merrily circling the Earth. As you know, one recently hit the Russian television satellite. The Russians, we're told, they're still burning their fingers trying to orbit a car. They can't figure how to control vacuum and pressure from the manifolds. Solomon didn't tell many people about the shingles he used for control panels, and the Russians think control is somehow related to kitchen matches a newspaper reporter found scattered behind a station wagon in Solomon's junkyard. End of Solomon's Orbit by William Carroll Recording by James Maitland.

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The Star by H.G. wells this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Recording by John Segrist the Star by H.G. wells it was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made almost simultaneously from three observatories that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune. Nor outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint, remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause any very great excitement. Scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough even before it became known that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter, that its motion was quite different from the orderly progress of the planets, and that the deflection of Neptune and its satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind. Few people without a training in science can realize the huge isolation of the solar system. The sun, with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and its impact impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that Almost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune, there is space vacant so far as human observation has penetrated without a warmth or light or sound. Blank emptiness for 20 million times a million miles. That is the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed before the very nearest of the stars is attained. And saving a few kinds of comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame. No matter had ever to human knowledge crossed this gulf of space. Until early in the 20th century. This strange wanderer appeared, a vast mass of matter. It was bulky, heavy, rushing without warning out of the black mystery of the sky into the radiance of the sun. By the second day, it was clearly visible to any decent instrument as a speck with a barely sensible diameter in the constellation Leo near Regulus. In a little while, an opera glass could attain it. On the third day of the new year, the newspaper readers of two hemispheres were made aware for the first time of the real importance of this unusual apparition in the heavens. A planetary collision. One London paper headed the news and proclaimed Duquesne's opinion that this strange new planet would probably collide with Neptune. The leader writers enlarged upon the topic so that in most of the capitals of the world on January 3, there was an expectation, however vague, of some imminent phenomenon in the sky. And as the night followed the sunset round the globe, thousands of men turned their eyes skyward to see the old familiar stars, just as they had always been. Until it was dawn in London and Pollux setting and the stars overhead head grown pale. The winter's dawn. It was a sickly filtering accumulation of daylight, and the light of gas and candles shone yellow in the windows to show where people were astir. But the yawning policemen saw the thing. The busy crowds in the market stopped agape. Workmen going to their work betimes, milkmen, the drivers of new carts dissipation going home, jaded and pale. Homeless wanderers, sentinels on their beats and in the country, laborers trudging a field, poachers slinking home all over the dusky, quickening country. It could be seen and out at sea by seamen watching for the day. A great white star comes suddenly into the westward sky. Brighter it was than any star in our skies, brighter than the evening star at its brightest. It still glowed out white and large. No mere twinkling spot of light, but a small, round, clear, shining disk. An hour after the day had come, and where science has not reached, men stared and feared, telling one another of the wars and pestilences that are foreshadowed by these fiery signs. In the heavens, sturdy boars, dusky Hottentots, Gold Coast Negroes, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, stood in the warmth of the sunrise, watching the setting of this street. Strange new star. And in a hundred observatories there had been suppressed excitement, rising almost to shouting pitch as the two remote bodies had rushed together and a hurrying to and fro together photographic apparatus and spectroscope, and this appliance in that to record this novel, astonishing sight, the destruction of a world. For it was a world, a sister planet of our Earth, far greater than our Earth indeed, that had so suddenly flashed into flaming death. Neptune, it was, had been struck fairly and squarely by the strange planet from outer space, and the heat of the concussion had incontinently turned two solid globes into one vast mass of incandescence. Round the world that day, two hours before the dawn, went the pallid great white star, fading only as it sank westward and the sun mounted above it. Everywhere men marveled at it. But of all those who saw it, none could have marveled more than those sailors, habitual watchers of the stars, who, far away at sea had heard nothing of its advent and saw it now rise like a pygmy moon and climb zenithward and hang overhead and sink westward with the passing of the night. And when next it rose over Europe, everywhere were crowds of watchers on hilly slopes, on house roofs, in open spaces, staring eastward for the rising of the great new star.

Howard Isherwood

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It rose with a white glow in front of it like the glare of a white fire. And those who had seen it come into existence the night before cried out at the sight of Is larger. They cried, it is brighter. And indeed the moon, a quarter full and sinking in the west, was in its apparent size beyond comparison. But scarcely in all its breadth had it as much brightness now as the little circle of the strange new star. It is brighter. Cried the people clustering in the streets. But in the dim observatories the watchers held their breath and peered at one another. It is nearer. They said, nearer. And voice after voice repeated, it is nearer. And the clicking telegraph took that up, and it trembled along telephone wires. And in a thousand cities grimy compositors fingered the type of it is nearer. Men writing in offices, struck with a strange realization, flung down their pens. Men talking in a thousand places suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility. In those words, it is nearer. It hurried along awakening streets. It was shouted down the frost stilled ways of quiet villages. Men who had read these things from the throbbing Tapes stood in yellow lit doorways, shouting the news to the passers by. It is nearer. Pretty women, flushed and glittering, heard the news told jestingly between the dances, and feigned an intelligent interest. They did not feel nearer indeed. How curious, how very, very clever people must be to find out things like that. Lonely tramps faring through the wintry night murmured those words to comfort themselves. Looking skyward. It has need to be nearer, for the night's as cold as charity. Don't seem much warmth from it. If it is nearer all the same, what is a new star to me? Cried the weeping woman, kneeling beside her dead. The schoolboy, rising early for his examination work, puzzled it out for himself with the great white star shining broad and bright through the frost flowers of his window. Centrifugal, centripetal, he said with his chin on his fist. Stop a planet in its flight, rob it of its centrifugal force. What then? Centripetal has it, and down it falls into the sun. And this? Do we come in the way, I wonder? The light of that day went the way of its brethren, and with the later watches of the frosty darkness rose the strange star again, and it was now so bright that the waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost of itself, hanging huge in the sunset. In the South African city a great man had married, and the streets were alight to welcome his return with his bride. Even the skies have illuminated, said the flatterer under Capricorn, two negro lovers, daring the wild beasts and evil spirits for love of one another, crouched together in a cane brake where the fireflies hovered. That is our star, they whispered, and felt strangely comforted by the sweet, sweet brilliance of its light. The master mathematician sat in his private room and pushed the papers from him. His calculations were already finished. In a small white vial there still remained a little of the drug that had kept him awake and active for four long nights each day. Serene, explicit, patient as ever, he had given his lecture to his students and then come back at once to his momentous calculation. His face was grave, a little drawn and hectic from his drugged activity. For some time he seemed lost in thought. Then he went to the window, and the blind went up with a click. Halfway up the sky, over the clustering roofs, chimneys, and steeples of the city, hung the star. He looked at it as one might look into the eyes of a brave enemy. You may kill me, he said after a silence, but I can hold you and all the universe for that matter, in the grip of this little brain. I would not change even now. He looked at the little file. There will be no need of sleep again, he said. The next day at noon, punctual to the minute, he entered his lecture theater, put his hat on the end of the table as his habit was, and carefully selected a large piece of chalk. It was a joke among his students that he could not lecture without the piece of chalk to find fumble in his fingers, and once he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply, he came and looked under his gray eyebrows at the rising tears of fresh young faces, and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness of phrasing. Circumstances have arisen, circumstances beyond my control, he said, and paused. Which will debar me from completing the course I have designed. It would seem, gentlemen, if I may put the thing clearly and briefly, that man has lived in vain. The students glanced at one another. Hanging out at the pool is great.

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play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Had they heard a right mad raised eyebrows and grinning lips? They were. But one or two faces remained intent upon his calm, gray fringed face. It will be interesting, he was saying, to devote this morning to an exposition, so far as I can make it clear to you of the calculations that have led me to this conclusion. Let us assume he turned toward the blackboard, meditating a diagram in the way that was usual to him. What was that about? Lived in vain, whispered one student to another. Listen, said the other, nodding towards the lecturer, and presently they began to understand. That night the star rose later, for its proper eastward motion had carried it some way across Leo towards Virgo, and its brightness was so great that the sky became a luminous blue as it rose, and every star was hidden in its turn, save only Jupiter near the zenith, Capella, Aldebaran, Sirius, and the pointers of the bear. It was very white and beautiful in many parts of the world that night. A pallid halo encircled it about it was perceptibly larger in the clear, refractive sky of the tropics it seemed as if it were nearly a quarter of the size of the moon. The frost was still on the ground in England, but the world was as brightly lit as if it were a midsummer moonlight one could see to read quite ordinary print by that cold clear light. And in the cities the lamps burnt yellow and wan. And everywhere the world was awake that night, and throughout Christendom a somber murmur hung in the keen air over the countryside like the belling of bees in the heather. And this murmurous tumult grew to a clangor. In the cities it was the tolling of the bells in a million belfry towers and steeples, summoning the people to sleep no more to sin no more but to gather in their churches and pray. And overhead, growing larger and brighter as the earth rolled on its way and the night passed, rose the dazzling star, and the streets and houses were alight. In all the cities the shipyards glared, and whatever roads led to high country were lit and crowded all night long. And in all the seas about the civilized lands, ships with throbbing engines and ships with bellying sails crowded with men and living creatures were standing out to ocean and the north. For already the warning of the master mathematician had been telegraphed all, all over the world and translated into a hundred tongues. The new planet and Neptune, locked in a fiery embrace, were whirling headlong, ever faster and faster towards the sun. Already every second this blazing mass flew a hundred miles, and every second its terrific velocity increased as it flew. Now indeed it must pass a hundred million miles wide of the Earth and scarcely affect it. But near its destined path, as yet only slightly perturbed, spun the mighty planet Jupiter and his moons, sweeping splendid round the sun. Every moment now, the attraction between the fiery star and the greatest of the planets grew stronger. And the result of that attraction, inevitably Jupiter would be deflected from its orbit into an elliptical path. And the burning star swung by. His attraction, wide of its sunward rush, would describe a curved path and perhaps collide with, and certainly pass very close to our Earth. Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea waves, floods, and a steady rise in temperature to I know not what limit. So prophesied the master mathematician, and overhead, to carry out his words, lonely and cold and livid, blazed the star of the coming doom. To many who stared at it that night until their eyes ached, it seemed that it was visibly approaching. And that night too, the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all central Europe and France and England softened towards a thaw. But you must not imagine, because I have spoken of people praying through the night and people going aboard ships and people fleeing towards mountainous country, that the whole world was already in a terror because of the star. As a matter of fact, use and wants to still ruled the world, and save for the talk of idle moments and the splendor of the night, nine human beings out of ten were still busy at their common occupations. And all the cities the shops saved one here and there, opened and closed at their proper hours. The doctor and the undertaker plied their trades. The workers gathered in the factories. Soldiers drilled, scholars studied, lovers sought one another. Thieves lurked and and fled. Politicians planned their schemes. The presses of the newspapers roared through the nights, and many a priest of this church in that would not open his holy building to further what he considered a foolish panic. The newspapers insisted on the lesson of the year 1000. For them, too, people had anticipated the end. The star was no star, mere gas, a comet. And were it a star, it could not possibly strike the earth. There was no precedent for such a thing. Common sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. That night at 7:15, by Greenwich time, the star would be at its nearest to Jupiter. Then the world would see the turn things would take. The master mathematician's grim warnings were treated by many as so much mere elaborate self. Advertisement Common sense at last, a little heated by argument, signified its unaltered convictions by going to bed. So, too, barbarism and savagery, already tired of the novelty, went about their nightly business. And save for the howling dog here and there, the beast world left the star unheeded. And yet, when at last the watchers in the European states saw the star rise an hour later, it is true, true, but no larger than it had been the night before, there were still plenty awake to laugh at the master mathematician to take the danger as if it had passed. But hereafter the laughter ceased. The star grew. It grew with a terrible steadiness, hour after hour, a little larger each hour a little nearer the midnight zenith, and brighter and brighter, until it had turned night into a second day. Had it come straight to the Earth, instead of in a curved path? Path had it lost no velocity to Jupiter, it must have leapt the intervening gulf in a day. But as it was, it took five days altogether to come by our planet. The next night it had become a third the size of the moon before it set to English eyes, and the thaw was assured. It rose over America near the size of the moon, but blinding white to look at, and hot. And a breath of hot wind blew now with its rising and gathering strength. And in Virginia and Brazil and down the St. Lawrence Valley, it shone intermittently through a driving reek of thunderclouds, flickering, violent lightning and hail. Unprecedented in Manitoba was a thaw and devastating floods. And upon all the mountains of the earth. The snow and ice began to melt that night. And all the rivers coming out of the high country flowed thick and turbid. And soon, in the upper reaches, with swirl swirling trees and the bodies of beasts and men, they rose steadily, steadily in the ghostly brilliance and came trickling over their banks at last, behind the flying population of their valleys and along the coast of Argentina and up the South Atlantic. The tides were higher than had ever been in the memory of man. And the storms drove the waters, in many cases, scores of miles inland, drowning whole cities. And so great grew the heat during the night that the rising of the sun was like the cold coming of a shadow. The earthquakes began and grew until all down America, from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, hillsides were sliding, fissures were opening and houses and walls crumbling to destruction. The whole side of Cotopaxi slipped out in one vast convulsion. And a tumult of lava poured out so high and broad and swift and liquid that in one day it reached the sea. So the star, with the wayne moon in its wake marched across the Pacific, trailed the thunderstorms like the hem of a robe. And the growing tidal wave that toiled behind it, frothing in eager, poured over island and island and swept them clear of men until that wave came at last in a blinding light. And with the breath of a furnace, swift and terrible, it came, a wall of water 50ft high, roaring hungrily upon the long coast of Asia and swept inland across the plains of China for a space. The star, hotter now and larger and brighter than the sun in its strength, showed with pitiless brilliance the wide and populous country. Towns and villages with their pagodas and trees, roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky. And then, low and growing, came the murmur of the flood. And thus it was with millions of men that night. A flight now hither with limbs heavy with heat and breath fierce and scant, and the flood like a wall, swift and white behind. And then death. China was lit glowing white. But over Japan and Java and all the islands of eastern Asia, the great star was a ball of dull red fire. Because of the steam and smoke and ashes, the volcanoes were spouting forth to salute its coming. Above was the lava, hot gases and ash, and below the seething floods. And the whole earth swayed and rumbled with the earthquake shocks. Soon the immemorial snows of Tibet and the Himalaya were melting and pouring down by 10 million deepening, converging channels upon the plains of Burma. And hidden stand the tangled summits of the Indian jungles were were aflame in a thousand places. And below the hurrying waters around the stems were dark objects that still struggled feebly and reflected the blood red tongues of fire. And in a rudderless confusion, a multitude of men and women fled down the broad river ways to that one last hope of men, the open sea. Larger grew the star, and larger, hotter and brighter with a terrible swiftness. Now the tropical ocean had lost its phosphorescence, and the whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths from the black waves that plunged incessantly speckled with storm tossed ships. And then came a wonder. It seemed to those who in Europe watched for the rising of the star that the world must have ceased its rotation. In a thousand open spaces of down and upland, the people who had fled thither from the floods and the falling houses and sliding slopes of hill watched for that rising in vain. Hour followed hour through a terrible suspense, and the star rose not. Once again men set their eyes upon the old constellations they had counted lost to them forever. In England it was hot and clear. Overhead, though the ground quivered perpetually. But in the tropics, Sirius and Capella and Aldebaran showed through a veil of steam. And when at last the great star rose, near 10 hours late, the sun rose close upon upon it. And in the center of its white heart was a disk of black. Over Asia it was the star had begun to fall behind the movement of the sky. And then suddenly, as it hung over India, its light had been veiled. All the plain of India, from the mouth of the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges, was a shallow waste of shining water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces, mounds and hills black with people. Every minaret was a cloth clustering mass of people who fell one by one into the turbid waters. As heat and terror overcame them, the whole land seemed a wailing. And suddenly there swept a shadow across the furnace of despair and a breath of cold wind and a gathering of clouds out of the cooling air. Men looking up near blinded at the star, saw that a black disk was creeping across the light. It was the moon, coming between the star and the earth. And even as men cried to God at this respite out of the east, with a strange, inexplicable swiftness sprang the sun. And then star, sun and moon rushed together across the heavens. So it was that presently to the European watchers, star and sun rose close upon each other, drove headlong for a space and then slower, and at last came to rest. Star and sun merged into one glare of flame at the zenith of the the sky. The moon no longer eclipsed the star, but was lost to sight in the brilliance of the sky. And though those who were still alive regarded it for the most part with that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat and despair engender, there were still men who could perceive the meaning of these signs. Star and earth had been at their nearest, had swung about one another, and the star had passed. Already it was receding swifter and swifter in the last stage of its headlong journey downward into the sun. And then the clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the sky. The thunder and lightning wove a garment around the world. All over the earth was such a downpour of rain as men had never before seen. And where the volcanoes flared red against the cloud canopy, there descended torrents of mud. Everywhere the waters were pouring off the land, leaving mud, silted ruins, and the earth littered like a storm worn beach with all that had floated and the dead bodies of the men and brutes, its children. For days the water streamed off the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses in the way and piling huge dikes and scooping out titanic gullies over the countryside. Those were the days of darkness that followed the star and the heat all through them. And for many weeks in the months the earthquakes continued but the star had passed, and men, hunger driven and gathering courage only slowly, might creep back to their ruined cities, buried granaries and sodden fields. Such few ships as had escaped the storms of that time came, stunned and shattered and sounding their way cautiously through the new marks and shoals of once familiar ports. And as the storm subsided, men perceived that everywhere the days were hard, hotter than of yore, and the sun larger and the moon shrunk to a third of its former size, took now fourscore days between its new and new. But of the new brotherhood that grew presently among men, of the saving of laws and books and machines, of the strange change that had come over Iceland and Greenland and the shores of Baffin's Bay, so that the sailors coming there presently found them green and gracious and could scarce believe their eyes. This story does not tell nor of the movement of mankind now that the Earth was hotter northward and southward towards the poles of the Earth. It concerns itself only with the coming and the passing of the star. The Martian astronomers. For there are astronomers on Mars, although they are very different beings from men, were naturally profoundly interested by these things. They saw them from their own standpoint. Of course, considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung through our solar system into the sun, one wrote, it is astonishing what little damage the Earth which it missed so narrowly has sustained. All the familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas remain intact, and indeed the only difference seems to be the shrinkage of the frozen water around either pole, which only shows how small the vastness of human catastrophe may seem at a distance of a few million miles. End of The Star by H.G. wells.

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The Soul Spectroscope by Edward Page Mitchell this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Tommy Howell the Soul Spectroscope by Edward Page Mitchell the singular materialism of a progressive thinker. Professor Tyndall's views more than justified by the experiments of the celebrated Professor Dumcaught of Boston, Massachusetts. Boston, December 13 Professor Dumkopf, a German gentleman of education and ingenuity, at present residing in this city, is engaged in experiments which, if successful, will work a great change both in metaphysical science and in the practical relationships of life. The professor is firm in the conviction that modern science has narrowed down to almost nothing, the border to territory between the material and the immaterial. It may be some time, he admits, before any man shall be able to point his finger and say with authority, here mind begins, here matter ends. It may be found that the boundary line between mind and matter is as purely imaginary as the equator that divides the northern from the southern hemisphere. It may be found that mind is essentially objective, as is matter, or that matter is as entirely subjective as is mind. It may be that there is no matter except as conditioned in mind. It may be that there is no mind except as conditioned in matter. Professor Dumkopf's views on this broad topic are interesting, although somewhat bewildering. I can cordially recommend the great work in nine volumes, KP Helle Hegel Swissenschaft, to any reader who may be inclined to follow up the subject. The work can undoubtedly be obtained in the original Leipzig edition through any responsible importer of foreign books. Great as is the problem suggested above, Professor Dumkopf has no doubt whatever that it will be solved, and at no distant day he himself has taken a masterly stride toward a solution. By the brilliant series of experiments I am about to describe. He not only believes with Tyndall that matter contains the promise and potency of all life, but he believes that every force, physical, intellectual and moral, may be resolved into matter, formulated in terms of. Of matter and analyzed into its constituent forms of matter. That motion is matter, mind is matter, law is matter, and even that abstract relations of mathematical abstractions are purely material. Photographing Smell in accordance with an invitation extended to me at the last meeting of the Radical Club, an organization, by the way, which is doing a noble work in extending our knowledge of the unknowable, I dallied yesterday at Professor Dumkopf's rooms in Joy street at the west end. I found the professor in his apartment on the upper floor, busily engaged in an attempt to photograph Smell. You see, he said as he stirred up a beaker from which strongly marked fumes of sulphuretide hydrogen were arising and filling the room. You see that having demonstrated the objectiveness of sensation, it has now become my privilege and easy task to show that the phenomena of sensation are equally material. Hence I am attempting to photograph Smell. The professor then darted behind a camera which was levelled upon the vessel in which the suffocating fumes were generated, and busied himself a while with the plate. A disappointed look stole over his face as he brought the negative to the light and examined it anxiously. Not yet, not yet, he said sadly. But patience and improved appliances were will finally bring it. The trouble is in my tools, you see, and not in my theory. I did fancy the other day that I obtained a distinctly marked negative from the odor of a hot onion stew, and the thought has cheered me ever since. But it's bound to come. I tell you, my worthy friend, the actinic ray wasn't made for nothing. Could you accommodate me with a dollar and a quarter to buy some more collodion? The bottle theory of sound. I expressed my cheerful readiness to be banker to genius. Thanks, said the professor, pocketing the script and resuming his position at the camera. When I have pictorially captured smell, the most palpable of the senses, the next thing will be to imprison sound, vulgarly speaking, to bottle it. Just think a moment. Force is as imperishable as matter. Indeed, as I have been somewhat successful in showing, it is matter. Now, when a sound wave is once started, it is only lost through an indefinite extension of its circumference. Catch that sound wave, sir. Catch it in a bottle. Then its circumference cannot extend. You may keep the sound wave forever if you will only Keep it corked up tight. The only difficulty is in bottling it in the first place. I shall attend to the details of that operation just as soon as I have managed to photograph the confounding rotten egg smell of sulfadric acid. The professor stirred up the offensive mixture with a glass rod. And while my object in bottling sound is mainly scientific, I must confess that I see in success in that direction a prospect of considerable pecuniary profit. I shall be prepared at no distant day to put operas in quart bottles, labelled and assorted, and contemplate a series of light and popular airs in ounce vials at prices to suit the times. You know very well that it costs a ten dollar bill now to take a lady to hear Martha or Mignon rendered in first class style by the bottle system. The same notes may be heard in one's own parlour at a comparatively trifling expense. I could put the operas into the market at from 80 cents to a dollar a bottle. For oratorios and symphonies I should use demijohns and the cost would of course be greater. I don't think that ordinary bottles would hold Wagner's music. It might be necessary to employ carboys, sir. If I were of the sanguine habit of you Americans, I should say that there were millions in it. Being a phlegmatic Teuton accustomed to the precision and moderation of scientific language, I will merely say that in the success of my experiments with sound I see a comfortable income as well as great renown. A scientific marvel. By this time the professor had another negative, but an eager examination of it yielded nothing more satisfactory than above. He sighed. And having photographed smell and bottled sound, I shall proceed to a project as much higher than this as the reflective faculties are higher than the perceptive, as the brain is more exalted than the ear or nose, I am perfectly satisfied that elements of mind are just as susceptible of detection and analysis as elements of matter. Why, mind is matter. The sol spectroscope, or as it will better be known, Dumkopf's duplex self registering sol spectroscope, based on the broad fact that whatever is material may be analyzed and determined by the position of the Fraunhofer lines upon the spectrum. If soul is matter, soul may thus be analyzed and determined. Place the subject under the light and the minute exhalations or emanations proceeding from his soul, and these exhalations or emanations are, of course, matter will be represented by their appropriate symbols upon the face of a properly arranged spectroscope this, in short, is my discovery. How shall I arrange the spectroscope and how shall I locate the subject with reference to the light is of course my secret. I have applied for a patent. I shall explain, exploit the instrument and its practical workings at the Centennial. Till then I must decline to enter into any more explicit description of the invention, the importance of the discovery. What will be the bearing of your great discovery? In its practical workings? I can go so far as to give you some idea of what those practical workings are. The effects of the sol spectroscope upon everyday affairs will be prodigious, simply prodigious. All lying, deceit, double dealing, hypocrisy will be abrogated under its operation. It will bring about a millennium of truth and sincerity. A few practical illustrations. No more bell punches on the horse railroad. The superintendent, with a smattering of scientific knowledge and one of my sole spectroscopes in his office, will examine with the eye of infallible science every applicant for the position of conductor and will determine by the markings on his spectrum whether there is dishonesty in his soul. And this as readily as the chemist decides whether there is iron in a meteorite or hydrogen in Saturn's ring. No more courts, judges or juries hereafter. Justice will be represented. With both eyes wide open and with one of my duplex self registering soul spectroscopes in her right hand, the inmost nature of the accused will read at a glance and he will be acquitted, imprisoned for 30 days or hung. Just as the Fraunhofer lines which lay bare his soul may determine no more official corruption or politicians lies. The important element in every campaign will be one of my sole spectroscopes and it will effect the most radical and at the same time the most practicable of civil service reforms. No more young stool pigeons in tall towers. No man will subscribe for a daily newspaper until a personal inspection of its editor's soul by means of one of my spectroscopes has convinced him that he is paying for truth, honest conviction and uncompromising independence, rather than for the false utterances of a hired conscience and a bought judgment. No more unhappy marriages. The maiden will bring her glibly promising lover to me before she accepts or rejects his proposal. And I shall tell her whether his spectrum exhibits the markings of pure love, constancy and tenderness, or of sordid avarice, vacillating affections and post nuptial cruelty. I shall be the angel with shining sword, or rather spectroscope, who shall attend Hymen and guard the entrance to his paradise. No more shame, for if anything be wanting in the character of a mean. No amount of brazen pretension on his part can place the missing line in his spectrum. If anything is lacking in him, it will be lacking there, I found by a long series of experiments upon the imperfectly constituted minds of the patients in the lunatic asylum at Taunton. Then you have been at Taunton? Yes, for two years. I pursued my studies among the unfortunate inmates of that institution. Not exactly as a patient myself, you understand, but as a student of the phenomena of morbid intellectual developments. But I see I am wearying you, and I must resume my photography before this stuff stops smelling. Come again. Having bid the professor farewell, and having wished him abundant success in his very interesting experiments, I went home and read again for the 39th time Professor Tyndall's address at Belfast end of the SOL. Spectroscope.

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Vital Ingredient by Charles V. De Wet this is the Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Pam Castile Vital Ingredient by Charles V. De Wet now watch, rim said, indicating the native. Macker had been absent, exploring the countryside in the immediate vicinity of their landing place, and had not witnessed the capture of the native or the test his two companions made on it. Macker followed Rem's gaze to where the biped native sat hunched. The creature was bent into an ungainly position, its body crooked at incongruous angles in such a way as to allow most of its weight weight to rest on a packing box at the base of a middle angle. Its stubby feet, on the ends of thin pipe like legs, rested against the floor of the spaceship. Its body was covered almost entirely with an artificial skin material of various colors. Some of the colors hurt Macker's eyes. In the few places where the flesh showed through the skin was an unhealthy, pallid white Happy Birthday, America. It's time to celebrate and play your favorite Las Vegas casino games by American

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Slowly the creature's head swiveled on its short neck until it faced them. Those orifices in the upper part of its skull are evidently organs of sight, rem said. It sees that we are quite a distance away. It will probably attempt to escape again. Slowly, slowly, slowly. The native's head rotated away from them in a half circle until it faced Tools working over his instruments on the far side of the room. Then it turned its head back until it faced the door of the ship. It is setting itself for flight now, rem said. Notice the evidence of strain on its face. The creature leaned forward and the appendages on the ends of its upper limbs clutched the sides of the box as it propelled its body forward. It raised its right foot in a slow arc, employing a double jointed braking action of its leg. For a long moment it rested its entire weight on its lumpy right foot while its momentum carried its body sluggishly forward. Then it repeated the motion with its left leg, then again its right, all the while evidencing great exertion and concentration of effort. It is making what it considers a mad dash for freedom, Rem said. Probably at the ultimate speed of which it is capable. That would be ridiculous, except that it's normal for its own environment. This is definitely a slow motion world. The creature was a third way to the door now. Once again its head turned in its slow quarter circle to look at them. As it saw that Rim and Macker had not moved, it altered the expression on its face. It seems to express its emotions through facial contortions, Rem said. Though I suspect that the sounds it makes with the upper part of its trachea during moments of agitation are also outlets of emotional structure distress rather than efforts at communication. He called across the room to Tools. What did you find out about its speech? Extremely primitive, Tools replied. Incredible as it may appear to us, it uses combinations of sounds to form word symbols. Each word indicates some action or object, or denotes degree, time, or shades of meaning. Other words are merely connectives. It seems to make little use of inflections, the basis of a rational language. Thoughts which we can project with a few sounds would take it dozens of words to express. Just how intelligent is it? Macker asked. Only as intelligent as a high degree of self preservation instinct would make it. Are you certain that it is a member of the dominant species? Species of life on the planet? There's no doubt about it, Tools replied. I've made very careful observations. This attempt at escape is a pretty good example of its intelligence, Rem said. This is the sixth time it has tried to escape in exactly the same way as soon as it sees that we are farther away from it than it is to the door, it makes its dash. The creature was one step away from the spaceship's open portal now, and bringing its foot up to cross the threshold, Wren walked over and lifted it off the floor. Its legs are still moving in a running motion, Macker said. Doesn't it realize yet that you've picked it up? Its nervous system and reflexes are evidently as slow as its motor muscles, Rim replied. There has not been time for the sensation of my picking it up to reach the brain, and for the brain to send back its message to the legs to stop their running motion. How heavy is it? Macker asked. Only a few ounces, rim replied. But that's logical, considering that this is a light planet. If we took it back to our own heavy world, gravity would crush crush it to a light film of the liquid which comprises the greater part of its substance. Rim set the creature down on the box in its former queerly contorted position. Tools had left his instruments and strolled over beside them to observe the native. One of its appendages seems bent at a peculiar angle, Macker said. I noticed that, rim answered. I think that I may have broken the bone in several places when I first came captured it. I was not aware then of how fragile it was. But now that you mention it, I should be able to use that injury to give you a good illustration of the interplay of emotional expressions on its face. Observe now as I touch it. Rem reached over and touched very lightly the broken portion of the native's appendage. The muscles of the creature's face pulled its flaccid flesh flesh into distorted positions, bunching some and stretching others. It is very probably registering pain, Rem said. Suddenly the starch seemed to leave the native's body, and it slowly slumped across the packing box. Why is it doing that? Tools? Rem asked. Tools concentrated for a minute, absorbing the feelings and thought pulsations emanating from the creature. The conscious, plain plane of its mind has blanked out, he said. I presume the pain you caused by touching its wounded member resulted in a breakdown of its nervous system. The only thought waves I receive now are disjointed impressions and pictures following no rational series. However, I'm certain that it will be only temporary. Don't you think that in justice to the Creature, we should repair its wound before we free it? Macker asked. I had intended to have it done, Rem replied. You shouldn't have any trouble fixing it, should you, Tools no, tools answered. I may as well attend to it right now. He rolled the portable converter over beside the creature and carefully laid its arm in the pan. The converter automatically set its gauges and instruments of calculation and gave its click of ready tools, fed a short length of basic into the machine, and it began its work. The native was still unconscious. The bone of the wounded arm slowly evaporated, beginning with the wrist joint. The evaporated portion was instantly replaced by the manufactured bone of the converter. At the same time it repaired all ruptured blood vessels and damaged literature, ligaments, and muscles. It was not possible, of course, for me to replace the bone with another of the same composition as its own, toole said after the machine had completed its work. But I gave it one of our heavy ones. There would be no force on this planet powerful enough to break it again. The native's first evidence of a return to consciousness was a faint fluttering of the lids that covered its orchestration organs of vision. The lids opened and it looked up at them. Its eyesight is as slow as its muscular reactions, rem said. Watch. Rem raised his hand and waved it slowly in front of the native's face. The eyes of the native, moving in odd jerking movements, followed the hand's progress. Rem raised the hand, speeding its action slightly, and the eyesight followed, faltered, and lost it. The native's eyes rolled wildly until once again they located the hand. Rem took three steps forward. The native's eyes were unable to follow his change of position. Its gaze wandered about the room until again it settled on Rem's waiting figure. Can you imagine anything being so slow? Rem said. And still Suddenly Macker interrupted. Something is wrong. It is trying to get up, but it can't. The native was registering signs of distress, kicking its legs and twisting its body into new positions of contortion. I see what the trouble is, tool said. It's unable to lift the appendage with the new bone in. I never thought of that before, but its light muscles aren't strong enough to lift the limb. We've got the poor creature pinned to the box by the weight of its own arm. We can't do that to it, Rem said. Isn't there any way you can give it a lighter bone? None that wouldn't take a retooling of the converter, Toole said. I'm not certain that I could do it, and even if I could, we don't have the time to spare. I could give it stronger muscles in the arm, but that May throw off the metabolism of the whole body. If it did, the result would be fatal. I'd hate to chance it. I have an idea, macker said. By the inflections of his tones, the others knew that some incongruity of the situation had aroused Macker's sense of humor. Why don't we give the creature an entirely new body? We could replace the flesh and viscera as well as the cartilaginous structure with our own type. Substance in it would probably be an indestructible being as far as its own world is concerned, and it would be as powerful as their mightiest machines. We'd leave behind us a superman that could change the course of this world's history. You could do it, couldn't you, Tools? Quite simply, our policy has always been not to interfere in any way with the races we study, rem protested. But our policy has also been never to harm any of them if at all possible. Possible to avoid it, Macker insisted. In common justice. You have to complete the job Tools began on the arm, or you're condemning this poor thing to death. But do we have the right to loose such an unpredictable factor as it would be among them? Rem asked. After all, our purpose is exploration and observation, not playing the parts of gods to the primitives we encounter. True, that is the rule which we have always followed in the past, Mackerel agreed. But it is in no way a requirement. We are empowered to use our judgment in all circumstances, and in this particular instance, I believe I can convince you that the course I suggest is the more just one. He turned to Tools. Just what stage of cultural development would you say this creature's race has attained? It still retains more of an animal like adaptation to its rare surroundings than an intellectual one, tools replied. Its civilization is divided into various sized units of cooperation, which it calls governments. Each unit vies with the others for a greater share of its world's goods. That same rivalry is carried down to the individual within the unit. Each strives for acquisition against his neighbor. Further, they retain many of their tribal instincts, such as gregariousness, emotional rather than intellectual propagation, and worship of the mightiest fighter. This last, however, is manifested by reverence for individuals attaining position of authority or acquiring large amounts of their medium of exchange rather than by physical superiority. That's what I mean, Macker said. Our policy in the past has been to avoid tampering suffering only because of the fear of bringing harm. If we created a super being among them to act as a controlling and harmonizing force, we'd hasten their development by thousands of years. We'd be granting them the greatest possible boon. I don't know, rem said, obviously swayed by Macker's logic. I'm still hesitant about introducing a being into their midst whose thought processes would be so subtle and superior to their own. How do you feel about it, Tools? What would they have to lose? Tools asked, with his penchant for striking the core of an argument. The right or wrong of such moral and philosophical considerations has always been a delicate thing to decide. Rim requests reluctantly. Go ahead if you think it is the right thing to do. All finished? Macker asked. That depends on how much you want me to do, tools replied. I've substituted our heavy substances for his entire body structure, including the brain, at the same time transferring his former memory and habit impressions. That was necessary if he is to be able to care for himself. Also, I brought his muscular reaction time up to our norm and speeded his reflexes. Have you implanted any techniques which he did not possess before, such as far seeing or mental insight? Macker asked. No, tool said. That is what I want your advice about. Just how much should I reveal about ourselves and our background? Or should he be left without any knowledge of us? Well, now that the others had deferred to Macker's arguments, he had lost much of his certainty. Perhaps we should at least let him know who we are and and what we have done. That would save him much alarm and perplexity when it comes time to reorient himself. On the other hand, perhaps we should go even farther and implant the knowledge of some of our sciences. Then he could do a better job of advancing his people. But maybe I'm wrong. What do you think about it, Rem? My personal opinion, rem said, is that we can't give him much of our science. And because it would be like giving a baby a high explosive to play with, his race is much too primitive to handle it wisely. Either he or someone to whom he imparts what we teach him would be certain to bring catastrophe to his world. And if we let him learn less but still remember his contact with us in time, his race would very likely come to regard us as gods. I would hesitate to drag in any metaphysical confusion to to add to the uncertainties you are already engendering. My advice would be to wipe his mind of all memory of us. Let him explain his new found invincibility to himself in his own way. Macker had no criticism to offer to the suggestion. Does he retain any of his immunity to this world's malignant germs? He asked. They are too impotent to represent any hazard to his present body mechanism, tools replied. If and when he dies, it will not be from disease. He will be subject to the deterioration of old age the same as we are, won't he? Macker asked. Of course, toole said. But that's the only thing that will be able to bring him down. He cannot be harmed by any force this Light world can produce. He is impervious to sickness, and he will live indefinitely. Indefinitely, as his world reckons time. Their normal life span is less than a hundred years. Ours is over 5,000. He will probably live approximately twice that long because he will be subjected to less stress and strain, living as he does on a world of lighter elements. Then we have truly made a superman. Macker's tones inflicted satisfaction. I wish we were returning this way in a thousand years or so. I'd like to see the monumental changes he will effect. We may at that, rhym said. Or others of our people will. He will probably be a living legend by then. I'd like to hear what his race has to say about him. Do they have names with which to differentiate individuals? Yes, toole said. This one has a family designation of Polnow and a member designation of Orville. It will be necessary for us to leave in exactly 10 minutes, reminded them. Our next stopping place, the Red Star, will reach its nearest conjunction with this planet by the time we meet it out in space. Then we will have time to do nothing more for him before we go, macker said. But as far as I can see, we've forgotten nothing, have we? Tools? Nothing, Tools answered. No, we forgot nothing. But Tools was wrong. They had forgotten one thing, a minor detail relatively on Tools's world. His race, in the course of its evolution, had adjusted itself to its own particular environment. Logically, the final result was that they evolved into beings best able to survive in that environment. As such, their food, a heavy, highly concentrated food, was ideally suited to supply the needs of their heavy, tremendously avid organisms. Orville Ponow had no such food available. His body, no larger than before, had an earth mass of 180,000 pounds. 180,000 pounds, the weight of 1200 average sized men of fiercely burning, intense virility. Even continuous evil eating of his own world's food could not supply the demands of that body. 24 hours after the aliens left, Polnow was dead of starvation. End of Vital Ingredient By Charles V. De Wet Recording by Pam Castile.

Howard Isherwood

Wheels within by Charles Duvet this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Reading by Matt Berardi Wheels Within By Charles de Vet Never ask who am I and where do I come from? The answers may not be what you'd expect. When did the headaches first start? Asked the neurologist Dr. Hall. About six months ago, Bennett replied. What is your occupation, Mr. Bennett? I am a contractor. Are you happy in your work? Very. I prefer to any other occupation I know of. When your headaches become sufficiently severe, you say that you have hallucinations, hall said. Can you describe what you see during those hallucinations? At first I had only the impression that I was in a place completely unlike anything I had ever known, bennett answered. But each time my impressions became sharper and I carried a fairly clear picture. When my mind returned to normal the last time, I felt then that I had been in a room in a tall building that towered thousands of feet over a great city. I even remembered that the name of the city was Thone. There were other people in the room with me. One person especially. I remembered her very clearly. Her? Hall asked. Yes. Was there anything unusual about this woman? Well, yes, there was, bennett said after a brief and almost embarrassed pause. This will sound pretty adolescent, but hall leaned forward attentively. It may be relevant. You're not here to be judged, you know. I'm trying to help you. Bennett nodded and spoke rapidly, as though trying to finish before he could stop himself. She was a woman who exactly fitted an image I've had in my mind for as long as I can remember. She was tall, fair, though brunette, very beautiful, very vivid, very well poised. I seemed to have known her all my life, but only in my dreams, from my very earliest way ones to the present. She's never changed in all that time. He halted as suddenly as he had begun to talk, either having nothing more to say or unwilling to say it. Have you ever been married, Mr. Bennett? Hall prodigiously. No, I never have. Again Bennett st stopped, adding nothing more to his blunt answer. May I ask why not? Bennett turned his face away. I was hoping you wouldn't ask that. It makes me sound like a romantic kid. He looked at the doctor, almost in defiance. I've always felt that some day I would meet this girl, or at least someone very much like her. I know it's not a rational feeling. Maybe I've even used it as an excuse not to get married. But it's like spilling salt and throwing a pinch over our shoulder. We aren't superstitious yet we don't take any chances. Dr. Hall didn't comment. He ended the questioning period and put Bennett through a series of tests. Then they sat down again, and hall offered his dyke. The neurological examination is essentially negative, Mr. Bennett. In other words, there is no organic reason that I can find for your headaches. That leaves only one other possibility. An emotional disturbance. I'm a neurologist, remember, not a psychoanalyst. I can only give an opinion about the cause of your complaint. Bennett waited expectantly. Headaches without organic causes are generally the result of repressed anger, hall went on. That anger can stem from any number of traumatic situations or attitudes, all deeply buried in the unconscious, of course, or they would not have the power to hurt us. From what we know of you, however, it seems to be the result of frustration. In other words, you have created a fantasy image of a completely unattainable woman, and therefore none of the women you meet can fulfill your expectations. Since she is unattainable, you naturally feel a sense of frustration. But who could she be? Bennett asked anxiously. Someone you knew in childhood, perhaps a composite of real and imaginary women? Usually it is an idealized image of your own mother. Bennett sat frowning. All right, let's say that's so. But where did the hallucinations of the City of Thone fit in? This is something that has has to be tracked down in a series of analytical sessions. So all I can do is guess. If one is unable to reach a goal in a real environment, the obvious answer is to create a fantasy world. That's what you appear to be doing. It's a dangerous situation, Mr. Bennett. Potentially, at least. How so? Bennett asked, alarmed. The general tendency is toward great greater and greater divorcement from reality. I suggest immediate treatment by a competent analyst. If you don't know of one, I can recommend several. I'd like to think it over. Do that, hall said. And call me when you've decided. The third day after he consulted the neurologist, Bennett's headache returned. As before, Hal, drugs were of no help. When the pain became blinding, he lay back on his bed, placed a cold cloth on his forehead, and closed his eyes. Suddenly the realities he knew were gone and he was back in the dream city of Thon. Persons and objects were much clearer now. Bennett saw that he lay in a receptacle shaped like a rectangular metal box. It was padded, reminding him unpleasantly of a coffin. The woman he had seen before was again with him, but now he knew that her name was Lima. Behind her stood a man, a tall dark man whose eyebrows joined over the bridge of his nose and whose forehead was creased in a permanent frown. The woman held out her arms to Bennett. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. Bennett's spirit seemed to rise from the flesh. He could see his body still lying there, and he followed the woman. As he approached, she retreated, and try as he would to reach her, she remained just beyond his grasp. After what seemed hours of futile pursuit, a cloud formed between him and the woman. When it dissipated, he had left the world of Thon. He was in a trolley bus in his own world, and vaguely he recalled having left his room, gone down to the street, and boarded the trolley. During the time he had followed Lima in his hallucination it seemed that he had a definite destination then, but now he could not recall the what it had been. His attention was drawn to the outside by the flickering of lights that flashed in through the bus windows. Bennett looked out and saw that he was in the pleasure section of the city, traveling through the street of carnivals. He watched the fronts of the amusement buildings pass before him, and he read their advertisements listlessly. Suddenly one sign seemed to spring out from all the others. Lima, mystic of the Mind. He left the trolley at the next corner and made his way through the crowd to the brightly lit carnival building. Inside he found a chair and seated himself. The show's act appeared about half over. It was pretty, evidently Charlotte stuff, Bennett decided, but the black hooded mystic on the stage held his attention. She was a tall woman with a slender figure and fair flesh. She was poised, or perhaps it was indifference to the crowd. A runner went through the audience touching articles of clothing or ornaments, and the woman without hesitation named each one he touched. The act was slightly different for most Bennett had seen, in that the runners said nothing, merely touching the articles to be named. The next portion of the show consisted of a mind reading act. Bennett expected the usual routine of writing a question on paper which would be sealed in an envelope and placed in a container on the stage. He was surprised when the runner returned to the crowd and asked for a volunteers for thought reading. A short man with a bright yellow necktie raised his hand. The runner made his way through the crowd to the man and touched him on the shoulder before turning back to the mystic. He still said nothing. This man is thinking that he should have stayed at home tonight, the mystic said. There are rustling mountains matches on the teletone, and he would have enjoyed them more than this show. Besides, he would have spent less money that way than he has tonight, and he does not like to spend money unless he must. A titter of amusement went through the crowd as the man blushed a dull crimson. The runner touched a second man. This man wishes to know the winner in the eighth round race at the horse tracks to Morrow, she said. I am sorry, but because of Public Law 1032, Section 5A, I am prohibited from answering a question of that nature. The third person contacted was a woman. She raised her hand, then half changed her mind when she saw that the runner was turning toward her, but then she defiantly tossed her brown hair back from her face and allowed him to touch her shoulder. This woman is wondering if her lover is true to her and if her husband will find out about them this time the crowd laughed when the embarrassed woman turned pale and rushed up the aisle toward the exit. No further hands were raised and the show ended with a short address by the runner. I hope you have enjoyed these truly marvelous and mysterious demonstrations. Now the Mystic Lima is available for a short time for personal interviews. The fee is very reasonable. $1aminute. Anyone wishing an interview, please step forward. The mystic pulled the hood from her head, smiled, bowed at the crowd, and left the stage. Bennett gasped the woman of the City of Thone. You have paid in advance for 25 minutes of my time, lima said as she smiled in amusement.

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Perhaps you had better begin your questions instead of merely speaking staring at me. Bennett brought his thoughts back with an effort. Your performance was exceptionally good, he said very soberly. I enjoyed it and so apparently did the other customers. It is a clever routine, I'll admit. I can't figure out how you do it. Remember what Barnum said, lima replied. Replied lightly. At least you do not take yourself too seriously, bennett observed. On the contrary, lima countered, I take myself very seriously. You, however, do not. You are paying for my time and the customer is always right. Tell me, bennett asked abruptly. Have we ever met before? Not to my knowledge. Have you any objections to telling me about yourself during our interview. Who are you? What is your background? I will be glad to tell you about myself if you think it will be interesting, she replied after a barely perceptible pause. How I came by this exceptional ability of mine, I have no slightest conception. I only remember that when I was young and still without the intellect to evaluate social mores and customs, I was often placed in positions of awkwardness by my ability to read minds. At an early age, however, through the counsel of my parents, I learned to keep this knowledge to myself. By the time I reached my 20th birthday, my parents were both dead and I was alone in the world. I had never learned any occupation. I made some attempts to use my mind reading to some advantage to myself, but soon found that I encountered the opposition of the medical associations as well as the law. As a consequence, I turned to show business as the one means of earning a legitimate livelihood. There is not much more to tell. Can you actually read minds? Bennett asked insistently. I can. Then what am I thinking now? You are thinking, lima said, with no semblance of a trance or any of the usual antics of professional mystics, that I look exactly like a woman you have never seen but whose image you have carried buried in your mind since your childhood. For just a moment, the startling accuracy disconcerted Bennett. I have a problem which is quite annoying. He pushed on almost frantically. Can you tell me what my problem is? You have been subject to extremely severe headaches which you have been unable to remedy either by sedatives or with the help of a neurologist. Am I correct? More than you could possibly know. Look, I came here believing you were a fake. That didn't matter. It was the fact that you looked like this other woman that counted. I'm convinced now. I want your help. Can you help me? Or at least tell me whether the neurologist is right about the cause of my head headaches? He is wrong, lima said. I can tell you what causes them, but I am afraid that I will have to ask for another hundred dollars for that extra service. Bennett was momentarily irritated at this evidence that their relationship, at least as far as she was concerned, was strictly business. But he shrugged off the feeling. He drew five twenty dollar bills from his pocketbook and placed them on the table before her. If you remember, leama said, folding the money carefully and tucking it into the neck of her dress, Five months ago a building which you had contracted to build fell when it was nearly completed and two workmen were killed. I remember very well. You found that the collapse of of the building was caused by faulty material which you had bought through a subcontractor you are still investigating to determine where to place the blame and are on the point of doing so. Go on, bennett breathed softly. You are quite certain that the person responsible is John Turney, ostensibly a reputable contractor, but actually an unscrupulous scoundrel. You have a choice of exposing him with great personal danger to yourself. Tourney is a dangerous and ruthless man, or remaining silent and knowing that you are a coward. The difficulty of that choice is causing your headaches. You may be right, bennett admitted without having hesitation. I haven't had time to think the matter through quite that far. What would you advise me to do? That is something which cannot be advised. The answer lies within yourself. You are either a big enough man to do the right thing, which you yourself recognize, or you are a small man and will take the safer, less honorable course. The decision and the integrity lie within yourself. Bennett slumped. I see that. Then there's nothing more that you can do for me. But there is, lima replied. I can cure your headaches if you wish. For an additional hundred dollars, that would be a cheap price. Bennett drew his wallet from his pocket. My cash is rather low. Would you accept a personal check? Certainly, lima said. But first let me explain about my cure. There is some mental unpleasantness involved which you may consider worse than the ailment. I doubt that. I can't imagine anything worse than this agony. Your mind will be placed under my control and led through a dream sequence. I will follow a logical progression of events, using your actual past as a background. While you are under my control, your experiences will be far from pleasant. I will allow your mind to follow its own anticipated course of events, influencing your thoughts only slightly, directing them into as unpleasant channels as possible. In fact, to make the cure certain, at least, the culmination must be quite devastating. Do you agree to undergo such rigorous mental punishment? But why do I have to? Bennett asked, astonished and worried that pattern will act in the manner of a counter irritant. Your mind is like a spoiled child, rejecting anticipated unpleasantness under my influence. It is subjected to possible alternative experiences which are so much more worse than the one it originally feared that it will gratefully accept the lesser evil. That sounds reasonable, bennett agreed. When could we begin this treatment? Immediately, if you are willing. I see no reason for waiting. Then, if you are ready, lima told him. Lie on this couch. Keep your eyes on mine. She spoke slowly, evenly. Remember that you are doing this of your own free will, that you trust me. I am your friend and would do you no harm. Her voice droned on as Bennet looked into her eyes. They merged until they became one large placid pool of restfulness, and he found himself drawn into them. He sank peacefully, quietly, completely. When the telephone rang, Bennett knew it was the district attorney returning his call and that the die was cast. Until this ugly business was brought to a conclusion, his life would be in constant danger. Leroy Bennett speaking, he said. I have had collected some information that I think will be of very great interest to your office. Information about what? The voice of the other end asked briskly. I have proof that John Turning is responsible for the death of two men in an action involving criminal collusion. If what you say is true, I will be glad to see your evidence, the district attorney said. Could you deliver in person? There may be some questions I would like to ask you about it. Certainly, bennett replied. When would be the most convenient time? Later in the day. I have a case going on. How would 4:30 this afternoon suit you? That would be fine. The rest of the day dragged slowly. At four o' clock Bennett left his office and took the elevator to the ground floor. Under his arm he clutched the briefcase which might spell death for him. A moment after he left his office building, he knew he had made a mistake. A fatal one. Idly at first, his mind's eye watched the driver of a long gray sedan parked at the curb start up its motor as he approached. The car pulled away from the curb when he came along. Through an open rear window, Bennett saw a man with a dark, brooding face with black eyebrows that joined over the bridge of the nose glowering at him. At the same instant he saw the blunt nose of an automatic resting on the lowered glass of the window just below the chin of the frowning man. Incredibly, even as he realized that he was, of course, about to die, Bennett's first thought was not one of fear, but rather that this dark man was the other person he had seen in his hallucinations of a city of Thon. Then, as one part of his mind drew back in terror at what it knew was about to happen, another part wondered at the mystery of Thon and the people in it. Where did that hallucination fit in this mist of life which was about to end? He felt three hard, solid blows punch shockingly into his body. There was pain, but greater than that was the terror that whipped his panicked mind. Lima, bennett whispered with his last stark thought as he dropped to his knees. He groped for the sidewalk with one hand to the to steady himself and never reached It. It's over now, bennett heard the mystic say. Please try to relax. He found himself fighting with awful exertion to raise himself from the sidewalk, which had turned into a couch. His clothes clung to him with a clammy wetness that chilled him. He flung his arms out in a frantic gesture that knocked a lamp from an end table and sent it crashing to the floor. Not until then did he feel the Mystic's firmly gentle hands on his shoulders, urging him down, and know that he was not actually dying. He lay back for a moment, gasping great gulps of welcome air into his lungs. I think you will be all right now, lima said. You were right when you said the experience would not be pleasant, bennett said, still battling for breath. I hope the results will be worth it. I believe you will find that they are, lima told him reassuringly. Also, it can be of assistance to you in still another way. The sequence your dream followed being unnatural, perhaps even a probable aftermath of your past decisions and movements could actually happen. Therefore, it would be wise to avoid such decisions in real life. At the end of two weeks, Bennett had collected all the information he needed on Tourney's illegal activities. The investigator he hired was very thorough and unearthed several other incriminating skills schemes in Turney's past. With the evidence he had on hand, Bennett was certain that Tourney would be convicted in any court. This time he intended to evade the fate he had suffered in the dream by acting differently. He hired a shrewd lawyer, the best obtainable, had him draw up the evidence in legal form and presented it to to the district attorney with a demand for Tourney's immediate arrest. He knew that immediate action would be his best protection. That evening when he left his office building, he felt the peace of a man whose task had been well done. It took almost a full second before the sight of the long gray car jerked his thoughts from their pleasant introspection and back to dread reality. Ternay's black browed face leered at him as it had in the dream, and he felt his body tense as it waited for the pistol slugs to strike. His mind scurried in its trap within its head, and strangely, it turned to the mystic for help. Lima, he called desperately. Again. Bennett felt himself struggling with that awful exertion to drag his body from the couch on which it lay. It's all over now, he heard Lima say. He sat up. What happened? This will be hard to believe, lima said, and I will not try to prove it to you. But it is true. The mind has many powers which cannot even be imagined by any. Anyone who has not lived with those powers as I have. When you called me, your mind attuned itself with mine, and its need and its demand were so powerful that together we turned time backward. You are now back in my dressing room, and it is the exact time at which you originally came out of your dream. That's it.

Narrator/Various Characters

Impossible.

Howard Isherwood

Bennett protested. Nevertheless, it happened. I only asked you to keep in mind one Some day, when your mind has been made more facile, you will understand how I am able to do this. It will even appear logical to you. Now, however, the only thing I can tell you is believe it. Bennett had no intention of muffing the Second Chance. After he had collected the information about Tourney's criminal activities, he also dug into his past. For a man who had cause to hate the contractor, he found the man he sought, a man as ruthless and unscrupulous as Tourney himself, one who could fight him on his own ground. Roger Clarkson had been the controller of a string of bookie joints before he had been framed by Tornay and convicted to serve 10 years in prison. Clarkson had been released from prison six days before he found that Tornay had gained control of his former criminal empire. Everyone, including Ternay, knew that the only thing preventing Clarkson from taking revenge was the opportunity. Bennett sent his information to Clarkson and sat back to await the results. That evening, as he was about to leave his office building, some inner caution warned him to take no chances. He stepped cautiously out into the street, looked both ways for the gray sedan, and saw that the street was empty before he walked to the corner. He arrived there just in time to meet the long gray sedan as it drove up. Once more, he fought the awful exertion on the mystic's couch. This time, he came out of the blackness with his mind clear. You've saved me again, he said to Lima. Have you turned time backward again? Yes, she replied, but I have given you all the help I can. The next attempt you make, you will have nothing on which to lean except your own strength. But why do I always, always arrive at the point where I'm being shot by turning, regardless of what course I choose? Is there no way I can beat him? If you believe in fate as strongly as I do, you will accept that conclusion as inevitable. The long gray sedan is the symbol of your death. You cannot avoid it. At least not as long as you persist in passive action. What do you mean by that? Just this. You wish to see turning punished. Your sense of justice demands it. But each time you try to have someone else administer that punishment. It appears to me that the only possibility of your breaking this fatal progression of events is for you to administer the punishment. Punishment yourself. You probably realize the danger of trying that, but I can't see where you have any other choice. In other words, you feel that the only chance I have of preventing Tornay from killing me is to kill him first? Yes, lena said. Are you strong and hard enough to do it? Bennett thought for only a brief moment before he nodded. I'm desperate enough. At any rate, this time he did not leave immediately. He had to find out something first. He put his arms around Lima's shoulders and drew her toward him. She put her face up and he kissed her waiting lips. They were sweet, and if she did not return the ardor of his kiss, he did not notice it. Mr. Tornay is not in, the girl at the desk told Bennett. You might try his home. At a pay booth in the lobby, Bennett called Ternay's home. The voice that answered was that of a tired woman, one who has given up hope. Mr. Tierney called me a short time ago and said that he would be in the office of a Mr. Leroy Bennett in the Lowry Building if anyone called, the tired voice said. Bennett hung up and caught a cab. His quarry had walked into an ideal place for their meeting. For better or for worse, he would soon bring this conflict to an end. In his office, Bennett found that Terne had been there and gone. He had left a message. Tell Mr. Bennett that Lima sent me. So that was it. Lima had used Bennett as a dupe. He could not figure out her purpose, but he knew that he could never trust her again. She had been against him from the first. Perhaps even she, rather than Tourney, was the prime menace. He decided that he must kill them both before they had the chance to to kill him. Touching the small flat pistol snuggling in his shoulder holster, he knew the pursuit must continue. Immediately he rode the elevator to the ground floor and felt his mind working with a clarity and a precision which he had seldom experienced before. This time he knew he would win shrewdly. Before leaving the building, Bennett looked out through the glass pane in the door. First he waited only a moment before he saw the long gray sedan. As he had expected, they would not trap him again. Ducking back, he walked rapidly toward a side exit. Night had fallen by the time he reached the Carnival Building. He did not ring the bell. Instead, he walked to the rear, climbed the stairs of a fire escape, and softly opened the window of a bedroom he stepped inside just as softly and stood listening for breathing. He heard none. This was probably too early for Lima to be in bed. The bedroom door was open. Bennett could see a light coming from another part of the apartment, probably the living room. He paused to steel himself for what he must do.

Narrator/Various Characters

Do?

Howard Isherwood

The time had come when he would have to be savagely ruthless. He found Lima sitting on a couch, reading a book. He suspected that she still had some control over his mind, and he had no intention of letting her influence him. She must be killed before she could read his intention. It didn't work. Bennett spoke just like loudly enough to startle Lima into raising her head. As she looked up, he shot her squarely between the eyes. In an agony of frustration, Bennett saw the flesh of her forehead remain clear and undisturbed. He knew he could not miss at this range, yet she was unhurt. He lowered his sights and shot at the white neck beneath the fair head. She still sat there, returning his gaze, unperturbed, unmarked by the bullets. He pumped the four remaining bullets into her body. The only part of her that moved was her lips. It's no use, Leroy, she said. Haven't you guessed? You are still in your dream. You can't kill me there. Suddenly the implication struck him with its awful simplicity. Good God. His voice rose. Do you mean I've never been out of my dream? He hesitated while the thought sank in. My remembrance of coming out of it was only part of the dream itself, he murmured. That was why you were able to turn time backward at will. A cold calmness returned. To tell me, he said. Am I still in the dream? Yes, lima replied. Then I demand that you free me now. As you wish, lima said sadly. And may God help you. Bennett wrenched his body from the couch on which it lay and struggled to his feet. Though the dream had seemed real enough, he could look back on it now and see it as any other dream. He breathed easier and then stopped abruptly when he heard a voice behind him. Say you are still a dead man. Bennett whirled and found himself facing Terne, and Terna held a pistol aimed at his heart. Bennet turned desperately back to Lima. His lips formed her name, but the sound died almost before it was uttered. This time he saw she would not help him. Her features had hardened and no mercy or compassion registered on them. There is no escape, she said. A fleeting thought went through his mind of springing a Tourney and trying to reach him before the gun could be fired. But one glance at Tourney's face made him realize how futile and fatal that would be. Tourney's finger tightened on the trigger of his gun, and Bennett thought ahead in despair to what was to come. One thing he knew he did not want to die. Was there no way out? The answer came like a cry of relief. There was a way. Thone the city of his enigma, Terna and Lima could not harm him there. For just an instant, Bennett's vision blurred. Time paused, and the next moment he knew he had returned to Thon. The sounds of the alien city floated up to him, and he stirred. He grasped the sides of his coffin like bed with fingers that had lost their sense of touch. He pulled himself up to a sitting position and looked about him. On one side stood Lima, though now her features were not those of the implacable, merciless mystic, but rather those of a woman in love. She smiled happily and said, at last you have returned. Bennet strove to move his tongue and lips to to ask questions, but they refused, as though numbed by long inaction. He turned to his other side and gazed questioningly at the replica of Ternay, who stood there. Tournay's image spoke. We had quite a time bringing you back, sire, but now it has been accomplished for good. Striving to move his throat muscles, Bennet finally forced to sweep sound and then words through his lips. Tell me, he pleaded. Who are you? And more important, who am I? He turned to Lima for an answer, realizing that now she would help him if anyone would. Dr. Ternay will explain it to you, lima replied, indicating the dark man imploringly. Bennett turned back to face Turnay. I see that very little of your memory has returned yet, ternay said. In a short while, everything, all your past, will come back to you. Until then, perhaps I had better explain to you who you are. My words will help trigger your returning memory and speed up the process. Please do, bennett begged. You are Ben et Leroy of the city State of Thun. In the year 4526 AD six months ago, the strain of governing the city began to undermine your health. Acting under my advice, you decided to take a Somno rescure. This rescure, the doctor continued, is quite standard practice in our time. We had a little difficulty bringing you out of it. At the end of six months, evidently your Somno existence must have been very pleasant. Do you mean that the existence I remember was merely an induced figment of my imagination? Yes. You see, the best rest that can be given a mind is to give it not slight sleep, but pleasant work. Therefore, under my manipulation, you were given a pseudo existence in a past era of history, you were led to conceive yourself as occupying a position which, after close study, I deduced, would be the most suitable and relaxing for you. But if that is true, why did my dream have to end so unpleasantly? I might say so nearly fatally? Bennett demanded. The more successful I am in choosing a pleasant existence for a patient in the Somno, the more difficult it is to bring him out of it, the doctor replied. Your unconscious mind, realizing how happy you were in your simulated existence and how it would have to return to the rigor and stress which unnerved it before, fought with all its strength to remain where the Somno had placed it. The usual practice in bringing a patient back to reality is for the doctor to enter the dream and convince him, by whatever means may be necessary, to return. Sometimes, however, the patient is so firmly tied to his Somno existence that drastic measures must be used. This is usually done by means of making the Somno existence so anxiety producing that the patient is glad to return. Your particular release was one of the most difficult that I have ever encountered. In fact, I was unable to bring you back myself and asked your wife, Lima, to enter the Somno with me and help force you to return. Bits of recollection which had been edging into Bennett's memory burst through in full force, and he remembered it was true. He was Binet Leroy of the city state of Thun. He turned to Lima, and as he read the glad light in her eyes, he knew that she had witnessed the return of his complete memory. Welcome home, she said. End of wheels within by charles v. De vet.

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