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Title: The Time Armada

Author: Fox B. Holden

Illustrator: W. E. Terry

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

Language: English

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

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

THE TIME ARMADA

By Fox B. Holden

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

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

5:20 P. M., April 17, 1958

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

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

"Rough going today, eh, Congressman?"

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

"Hey, buddy! Republicans got your tongue?"

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

"Off the record?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What, Carl?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Exactly. Television."

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

"Off the record—"

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

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

"Or Einstein for a hobby."

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

"Yuk, yuk."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am sorry I got into this."

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

"But suppose it works?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Well—she could have something there!"

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

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

"Time for a drink, supper?"

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

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

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

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

"Tired, Doug?"

"I was."

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

"The patter of little feet," Dorothy said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tell us!"

"Is it, Doug?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Doug—"

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

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

CHAPTER II

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

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

He did not understand.

"You—I know you are not—"

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

"Doug?"

"Dot! For God's sake!"

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

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

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

"Doug, the boys—where are the boys?"

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

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

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

"Got us—you mean we're—"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Doug look—through the window!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Doug, don't."

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

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

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

"But then what of—"

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

"But Doug that's—"

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

"Are we—is it the ... the future?"

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

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

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

"Then we'd go back?"

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

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

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

"And then, Doug?"

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

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

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

"How long—"

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

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

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

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

"I—I guess so...."

"Damn, I wish I had a cigarette!"

They went to the front door, swung it open.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's a different planet, Doug!"

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER III

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

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

"Hey!" Terry called.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then they looked at each other. Hard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"8, 1—"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Wish he was here too."

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

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

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

"Bet I could though. Boy—"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You guys been assigned to a quadrant yet?"

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

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

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

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

"What's your name?" Terry asked.

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

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

"Golly, I—"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Gosh no. Not exactly, I mean."

"What's Prelatinate?" Terry asked.

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

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

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

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

"Where are we going?"

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

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

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

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

"Did you ever jump so high before?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where they going now?"

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

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

"On Earth?"

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

"Hey, Jon...."

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

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

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

"Gee. Is everybody here our age?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IV

The price of the paper was $3,000.

"Doug—do we dare—"

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

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

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

Good Lord, he thought, good Lord....

City Cabinet Praises Mayor On Budget Expansion....

Area Industries Vote Shorter Work Week....

Liberals, Conservatives In Accord On Labor Issue....

S-Council Reports Second Arrest In Four Years....

Veteran Civic Leader Admits Wisdom Of Youth Group's Plan....

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

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

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

The mature years....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Shall I?" he hesitated.

"Be careful...."

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

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

He dared not hesitate.

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER V

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

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

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

"Better not, Doug."

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

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

It was empty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relax, mister.

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

And it hurt.

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

Can't do it? That's right—the kids, of course....

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

It's a clean slate.... Pick up the chalk—

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

The 'copter's landing-gear touched.

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

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

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

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

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

It would mean discovery before he had said ten words.

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

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

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

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

Now they were seated, waiting.

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

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

The girl was writing.

The others seemed to be swallowing it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Continue," he said.

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

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

This lad, he thought, wants to be the next Senior Quadrate!

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

Tayne reddened. But he did not sit.

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

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

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

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

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

She startled him when she spoke.

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

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

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

CHAPTER VI

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

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

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

Fatal error be damned!

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

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

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

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

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

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

He seated himself.

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

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

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

"Why, nothing. It is simply that—"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I—yes I know that of course...." Good Lord ...

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

"Doug...."

He said nothing, and she withdrew a little.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But she was taking the bait.

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

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

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

And he waited, tensed. Too far, perhaps—

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

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

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

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

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

"And of course no one dares challenge them!"

"Doug!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

War Games, and she had said there was no war....

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

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

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

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

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

Subject: War Games, 1957: Notes.

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

Force: 1,231,693.

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

Mortality: 483,912.

Wounded In Action (Retrieved): 202,516.

Balance: Minus 200 M; plus 173 WIA.

Remarks: Within forgiveness margin.

Conditioning: 3% held over.

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

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

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

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

Doug shut his eyes.

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

"Jane!"

"Yes, Doug. Something—"

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

"Hit on something already?"

"The strips I said! Now!"

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

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

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

"Verbal commentary desired, sir?"

"Oh—yes, yes of course."

"All ready then, sir."

"Go ahead then, go on."

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

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

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

In full color, the pictures flashed on the screen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, yes sir."

No no no no no!

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

"Yes?"

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

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

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

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

His thoughts spun dizzily. Mike, Terry—no, those were not the names. The other Blair's sons....

This time, thank God, the other Blair's sons....

CHAPTER VII

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

"Was there any suspicion?"

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

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

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

Their sheaf of notes had grown measurably in thickness since the first fact had been written on the first page the night before. The boy had written it slowly as he had begun mastery of the awkward writing machine—1. Washington defeats Cornwallis at Yorktown, Oct. 19, 1781 ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No. No, Douglas."

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

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

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

"Please, Douglas—"

"Yes?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They have space travel, I suppose—"

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

"Yes. Yes I am, Douglas."

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

She did not answer him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Like a rug, Congressman!"

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

"You can substantiate this claim?"

"Do I really have to, Congressman?"

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

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

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

The chance had come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Congressman from California."

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

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

"The Congressman from Ohio."

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

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

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

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

"Are there any further questions?"

There were none.

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

"Permission granted."

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

CHAPTER VIII

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

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

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

"Hail, this is Senior Quadrate Blair again."

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

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

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

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

"As soon as possible, sir."

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

"Doug, can I do anything?"

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

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

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

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

"Just rest awhile, darling," she murmured.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a gentle chiming sound.

"The front door, Doug!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We are sorry, sir."

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

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

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

He went with them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It was Tayne I suppose."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What do you mean, restricted—?"

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

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

"You're accusing me of ordering restricted—"

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

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

"I've warned you, Doug."

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

A peculiar look was on the Attorney's face.

"DO said so."

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

"A—what?"

Reel him in!

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

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

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

There was a second's silence.

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

"Well, thank you."

"Just be careful, Doug."

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

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

CHAPTER IX

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

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

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

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

"You rather do that than go exploring?"

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

"I'd like to get that guy."

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

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

"Aw, come on."

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

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

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

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

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

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

They turned, fell in at either side of him.

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

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

"What's that? Restricted?"

"You should know that!"

"What is it?"

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

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

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

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

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

Jon let his arms drop to his sides.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Deader?"

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

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

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

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

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

"How long are you kept there?"

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

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

"Jon...."

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

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

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

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

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

"Gosh, no, he doesn't—"

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

"Is that how long it lasts?"

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

"Were you scared, Jon?"

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

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

Jon laughed. "Sore at somebody already?"

"I'll cut his ears off!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Rules! Rules!"

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

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

The boy left the field toward the medical tents.

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

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

CHAPTER X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With Dot, one last time, then.

She stirred. Her eyes opened, and she smiled.

"Doug? Did you finish it, Doug?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, I know," she said quietly.

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

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

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

"No, Doug, no...."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Doug, Doug...."

He held her close to him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Your transportation, sir."

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Had almost a minute to spare, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Communications effective?"

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

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

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

"Don't you know, captain?"

"Four months ago, sir."

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

"Sergeant! Prepare communications for inspection!"

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

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

"Your transmission power supply, captain—"

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

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

"Eleven hundred Kemps at 300 milliamperes, sir."

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

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

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

"Yes, sir."

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

The captain was speaking to him.

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

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

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

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

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

"Of course, sir."

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

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

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

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

"Sir,—sir, is there something wrong?"

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

"Sergeant! Three neuro-tablets at once—"

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

"Yes sir, what can I get—"

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

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

"Must—must continue?"

"Why, yes of course, sir."

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

"Of course what, captain?"

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

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

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

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

"Yes, sir."

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

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

CHAPTER XII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The door-signal sounded.

"Yes?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes?"

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

"Why yes, speaking."

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

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

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

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

"Oversights?"

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

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

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

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

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

She sat down. And the chair was cold.

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

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

But Madame Blair—!

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

She reached for the phone.

And again, the door-signal chimed.

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

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

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

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

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

"Why, yes I did. A social call—"

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XIII

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

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

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

"Six minutes, sir."

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

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

"Switch the screen aft, captain."

"As she blasts, sir."

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

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

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

He drew on the gauntlets.

There was a gentle jar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Quadrants to salute!"

Tayne pivoted.

"Division leaders, give your divisions present arms!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"... You who are about to die, go forth ..."

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

"God ..." Doug thought, "God! A blessing!"

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

"Troops pass in review!"

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

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

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

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

"Troops march forward!"

The cadremen and cadets repeated it.

"For-ward—"

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

"MARCH!"

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

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

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

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

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

"Inner columns march to the rear!"

The relay began.

"Inner columns as assigned, to the rear—"

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

"MARCH!"

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

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

CHAPTER XIV

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Carl, how busy are you this afternoon?"

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

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

"I guess I better put the pencil away?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good Lord, Doug—"

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

"But to the point. On the heels of the new Blair Law's invocation, the committee will again make a demand—registration of all youngsters down to and including the age of ten years."

"Doug for God's sake—"

"Sit down, Carl!"

"Sure...."

"I'm quite sane. Worried?"

"Hell yes I'm worried."

"Take it easy. They thought a man called Litvinov was deranged once—around 1913 I think it was, when he predicted World War One, and the fall of the House of Czars."

"But you can't be serious about this—this kid business. Why my God if I think you've been—overworking, let's say, what d'you think the reaction of the man in the street'll be?"

"That, Carl, hasn't mattered for quite some time. You know it, and I know it. He's already swallowed UMT itself, don't forget."

"But—hell, the Blair Committee isn't the only bunch of politicians around here. And they—"

"I told you, Carl, my committee is strong. I picked it that way. Others can yell all they want. But no amount of yelling—even by the most widely-heard commentators and widely-published columnists—has ever really accomplished much when a particularly strong political faction has decided how things are going to be. It's the things that make you sick that have always made the front pages, remember?"

"I—you're crazy, Doug. Crazy as a 1951 tax program. You've gotten bitter about things in the past, sometimes a little cynical. Hell, who doesn't. But you've always been the one man the people knew they could count on—and your fellow-workers, I can even add. If you try to come out with a thing like this—"

"A moment. Just a minute, Carl. I want to ask an easy one. It is really easy. How long before the next world war breaks out?"

"Easy, what d'you mean, easy? Tomorrow, next month, next year maybe. Maybe not until 1960. Nobody knows that—"

"I still say, easy. There's certainty it will be at least by 1960, and probably sooner. That's terrifyingly close enough, isn't it, when you're speaking in terms of the inevitable?"

"I see."

"The world is a pretty desperate place right now, wouldn't you say? Worse even than five or six years ago."

"Desperate, desperate—yes of course it's desperate. And you—you're going to make something of it, is that it? Doug, you're not being very original. I never thought—I never honestly thought the day would come when I'd hear you—"

"Give me a chance, Carl."

"If I do I don't think I'll ever broadcast another word of what you have to say."

"I'll take that chance. But first I'd better clear some things up. First of all, I'll tell you how much I've explained to the committee. I've pointed out to them that there is but one way open—and one way only—of offsetting the Soviets' superiority in arms production, and that's to shock the living daylights out of them. Shock them so that they'll be convinced we're—we're a nation gone mad, perhaps. As you think I've gone mad, this moment. But—what stomach would any foreign enemy have for fighting a madman, armed to the teeth with atomic weapons? They say a lunatic with a gun is a great deal more deadly than a sane man similarly armed.

"So—we shall shock them, Carl. We shall, perhaps before the year is out, not only double our own production regardless of cost, but register every kid in the country down to the ten-year age level. And have a gun ready for each one, too. As I explained to the committee, it won't be even their tremendous numbers that will be frightening. It will be the seemingly crazed desperation of the country that would consider calling them to arms that would throw the scare. And then, of course, we'll take advantage of the scare. We'll produce A-weapons as we never have before. Hell, every parent in the nation will be breaking his back at a defense plant—not just for the ridiculously high wages that a riveter gets, but to insure the safety of their kids' skins."

"Doug, you're either really nuts or—or—"

"So much the committee knows, as of now. And, I've sold it to them. I sold it to them by simply asking them which was less desirable, my plan, or the end of civilization in a few short years. And, by asking them what other solution they had."

"Any straw—any straw at all." The reporter was not speaking to be heard, but Blair heard him.

"You've hit it precisely, Carl. It's come finally to that. Any straw at all."

For a few moments there was silence in the small office, and Carl Grayson just sat, staring at the floor. At length he put a fresh cigarette between his lips, lit it, and smoked automatically. It was half consumed before Doug said, "Now, I want to discuss the rest of the plan with you. The part I've not broached to the committee as yet."

"The—rest? Doug, what are you talking about?"

"The rest of it. You see, sooner or later the initial shock is going to wear off, Carl. Then, perhaps if we're lucky, we'll be evenly matched in armament and personnel under arms, but that will be all. A balance of peace is no good. You convince no one that peace is desired. You simply convince them that for awhile, there's no way they dare break it. But again, sooner or later, the dare is taken and then—"

"I want to go, Doug."

"Not yet. I want you to hear me out. And, I'm going to ask a rather special favor, Carl. Judge the plans on the merits of its logic alone. For the moment, imagine you have no emotion."

"I can, but it won't do any good. Afraid I have emotion, Douglas."

"I see. Tell me, if it is so valuable a thing as to be allowed to cloud your reasoning, why would you instantly throw it away if something called patriotic duty were suddenly thrust upon you?"

"It would shake me up a little of course—"

"Yes, but you'd chuck it. You'd perform the duty."

"All right. I don't know the tricks of debate, you do. Go ahead, I'm listening."

"I'll begin this way. If, we'll say, an infantry captain realized that by sacrificing the lives of three of his men and possibly his own, he could save the lives of his entire company, what would he do, if he were what is termed a 'good' officer?"

"Why, if that were his only alternative—"

"I assure you, it would be, for the purposes of my analogy."

"He'd—he'd save the company. That's happened."

"Even to men with emotions."

"Why—yes of course. Damn you Doug—"

"Even when one of the three to be sacrificed might be a kid who was still in high school when he enlisted—"

"Yes. Yes I guess so."

"Now remember what you've just told me, and switch to this.... What, actually, is the basis for armed conflict between nations? Generally speaking, with the long view of history?"

"I—I suppose covetousness. Materially translated that would mean just plain wanting the grain fields, the ore mines, the sea ports, the wealth someone else has and that you no longer have, doesn't it? Land, then. Hitler called it Lebensraum. One outfit thinks another is stepping on its toes over this chunk of real estate or that. Etcetera, ad nauseum, ad politics."

"Good. And what's the real root of this material covetousness do you think?"

"Grass is always greener, I guess."

"That is motive enough for the small-scale wars, yes. But I'm speaking of the kind nations fight in desperation, not merely for the sake of warring."

"Then, well—they run out of what they've got. Want more. Is that the answer you want?"

"Almost. What makes them run out, Carl?"

"Not enough stuff to take care of their population, not enough work to supply the money to buy what little there is to buy. Too many people, not enough resources to keep 'em happy."

"Now, essentially, you have it. Now, if you'll remember those two things—the captain's sacrifice and Mr. Hitler's fight for Lebensraum—we'll switch again. If I owed you a dollar, Carl, and gave you a bill, you'd accept it. What would it be worth?"

"Why, about—let's see—"

"No, I mean in terms of the metal backing it."

"Well—actually, it could be worthless. But as long as I don't think it is—"

"Correct. As long as you, and everybody else of course, has faith in it, it is of value, and is working currency. Now one more thing. Did you ever have anything really bad happen to you when you were a youngster—say about ten years old, Carl?"

"I don't get this, Doug. You're way over me—"

"No, answer me. Think of something unpleasant that happened—"

"Don't have to think. I still get goose-pimples when I hear a near-by train whistle. Almost got killed once when my father's car got stalled on a railroad crossing. Sort of a—I guess they call it conditioning. Pretty strong with me, I guess."

"Yes. Now—we'll put the four things together, Carl. First of all, according to my plan, the world must somehow be given implicit faith in a method for the elimination of warfare. A method in which they will so strongly believe that, although the supposed reason for such belief may be scientifically quite fallacious, they will practice it nonetheless. To do this, they must be shown a method which, by one means or another, actually works. And, that is possible. There is such a method, based on the sacrifice of the few for the ultimate preservation of the many...."

"Go on. So far you've brought in the dollar-bill idea; the business about conditioning, the captain and his company.... What method?"

"Taking the drafted ten-year-olds—first of just this nation, then of the entire world—placing them once each year in four divisions in the Sahara desert, and setting them at one another with manual weapons."

Carl turned white. He sat, unmoving, silent.

"The accepted theory will be that the horror of death by arms will create so deep a mental scar on the young plastic minds that in adulthood they will never again be able to kill. In actuality, the theory is in many respects fallacious, granted. But it will be accepted, because the practice—the desert fighting—will reduce the basic cause of warfare to flat zero, and there will eventually be no war. How? Through such a plan, many male children of course will die yearly. The number killed will be subject to strict control of course, in exact proportion to annual world birth-rate, and potential multiplication. Such, Carl, that the population of the world will, in terms of future generations as well as those almost immediate, be always stabilized. Of course, since a period of from twenty to fifty years may be needed for practice of the method before the first tangible stabilization results are shown, the 'conditioning' angle must be heavily stressed, before as well as during the actual desert fighting. Backing by the press will greatly help toward this end—you yourself know how terribly potent it can be—and I'm certain, once the method is explained to them in terms of survival, we will also be able to count on the 'corroboration' of the world's most popular scientists.

"However, as absolutely necessary insurance, an influence infinitely more powerful than those combined will be employed to positively insure unquestioning belief in the validity of the plan, not only before and during the first few years, but for all time!

"I have, therefore, already taken steps to bring it into play. I have already issued invitations to one hundred of the world's highest ranking ecclesiastical leaders for a conference here next week. By then, the committee should be rolling with quite a bit of momentum. As we said, these are desperate times...."

Carl remained silent. His question was in his eyes, but he would not give it speech. But Blair saw it.

"The clergy? Their assistance will be essential. I just told you why, didn't I? You see, once they realize that they can materially contribute to lasting peace, I am sure they will cooperate. If necessary, they—all of them—would consent to a merger of church and state. History bears me out."

"The mer—"

"Naturally. How else can I make sure the people are made to believe implicitly in the plan until they can at least see its tangible results? And how better to maintain that belief? Government and politics and all they imply are already worshipped more than God, Carl! So let's put it on a paying basis!"

"And you think—you actually think you'll get the support of the world's clergy in this revolting scheme—"

"I told you that history bears me out, Carl. For instance—from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries, one of the world's most powerful sects was heavily involved in temporal government—because, it said, of necessity to preserve itself. And surely you must remember the cooperation of the church with Constantine and Charlemagne when their empires were in danger of disintegrating, when unity was so sorely needed, and they knew there was but one that could help them? Often the church—the sect to which I referred before—actually took over the powers of government during Charlemagne's rule—not, perhaps, because it wanted involvement in those things which were Caesar's—but because it realized the grave perils which would face it if whole empires were to break apart, and their peoples reduced to pagan savagery as a result.

"I think you see my point. And—I imagine the simile about the captain and his platoon will also be appealing, don't you? The idea of sacrifice that others might live...?"

"You—you son of a bitch!"

"I'm sorry you said that, Carl. Because the plan will work, you know. From telling it to you, I see that its shock-value is valid. From seeing your final reaction, I realize that you are inwardly as sure as I that it will succeed. It is actually all I wanted, to get your immediate reaction."

"Doug, I'm going. But there's just one thing I want to ask you before I smear you from here to damnation. Just what, Congressman, is your cut in this?"

"None. I have not once mentioned money."

"You're a madman, Blair."

"When you've convinced yourself of that, Carl, you may try to smear me if you wish. But first—first, convince yourself!"

CHAPTER XV

As Doug marched, he thought.

There was less than an hour yet of marching to complete the great circle, to devise a plan.

Two boys in five hundred thousand. An impersonation now demanding so complex a knowledge of the situation of which it was the center that to carry it to successful conclusion would be impossible. Even a moment's belief otherwise was rank stupidity. Escape? Yes, by himself somehow, perhaps he could escape in one of the two sleek ships even now being serviced on the plaza; that had been the basis for his original plan. But the plan was junk now. Junk, unless he could find Terry and Mike first. Two boys, in a half-million!

Aircraft were being rolled out on the plaza. The immense aircraft in which he and Tayne would fly as they directed the maneuvers of their quadrants, and the aircraft of the tabulation and evacuation specialists. They were huge, and there were fully a hundred of them. But for all their size and number, they offered no hope. It was like being in a nightmare wherein one had to run for life, but the ground beneath was a sucking, miring bog.

His reason hinted temptingly that the voice he had heard might well not have been that of his son. How many voices were there in all creation that were precise echoes of each other? Thousands? Millions, even. But among them, there was of course the one. And he must know. He had to know.

The Contraption. Again, what had it done? It had transmitted himself and Dot into their physical counterparts on a parallel time-track. If the blue glow of the contraption had touched Terry and Mike, then they too would have been transmitted. But because they had not appeared in the cellar when the transmission was complete, he and Dot had assumed that they had been just outside the Contraption's limited range.

That was it, of course—the cellar. That was what had thrown them off, confused their logic. Through some quirk of coincidence, the other Blair, Senior Quadrate Blair and his wife had been in their cellar at the time of the switch. Had they been anywhere else—anywhere else at all, even just upstairs, the mistake in logic would not have been made. And if Madame Blair had no sons, Terry and Mike would not have been transmitted at all. But Quadrate and Madame Blair had had sons. Two, ten years old. He remembered when Tayne had told him of their transfer from his quadrant to Tayne's own.... Ordered by Gundar Tayne, Director. He remembered. He remembered how thankful he had been that they had not been his. But now—now, fantastically, they were. Because when the switch happened, Ronal and Kurt Blair had not been in the cellar. They had been on Venus.

But it was too much, the coincidences—the marriage of two counterparts; their children, same sex, same age.

And then he remembered what he had told Grayson so terribly long ago. There's a million possible results when you go fooling around with the structure of the universe, Carl ...

Thousands of voices in the universe that were exact echoes of each other. But Terry and Mike were here, and there was no doubting that. And in Tayne's quadrate, the one beside which he was even now marching. Oh, he was doing well with his thinking! He had narrowed the field down to a trifling two hundred fifty thousand!

And he knew that by any direct means that would not arouse Tayne's too-willing suspicion, it was as far down as he would narrow it.

Indirect, then.... Somehow, through Tayne himself, perhaps. Tayne had his boys. Tayne's brother had seen to that, with of course no reason given. Pressure—simple pressure. Doug wondered if the pressure was supposed to break him. He wondered what Tayne's reaction would be—and his brother's—if it did not. Easy enough to guess. If his sons' deaths at Tayne's careful arrangement were not enough to break him, shatter him, make him throw down his office, then the corpses of Kurt and Ronal—Terry and Mike—would somehow end up on the battle area occupied by his quadrant, far enough behind the front lines of fighting to convince any martial court that he had violated the Director's order, had obviously at the last moment brought his sons back within his own quadrant, where they might be in some measure protected.

That was how it would be. If the pressure was not enough, then a simple frame. A simple matter of good timing. Yet if the timing should, by some miracle, go wrong....

If the timing went wrong! God there it was!

Suddenly, the blood was pounding through his body, throbbing in the large veins at his throat. Five minutes more and this thing would end. Three hundred seconds, four hundred strides. Then the final salute as the Prelate General left as he had come. And then thirty minutes for deployment, and the games on the northern mass would begin.

But before those thirty minutes started.... It must be done just as the Prelate General's ship disappeared into the white syrup of the sky. It must be done just before the order to break ranks to prepare for combat deployment.

And then of course it would be a gamble at best. But it was a chance, where before there had been no chance at all.

Five hundred thousand swords flashed in final salute as the Prelate General's glittering ship leapt skyward, trailing a satisfactorily impressive wake of flame and thunder as it ascended into invisibility. And the sprawling headquarters building was at once denuded of its steeple. The Director had taken his place in the balcony. Divinity had withdrawn, entrusting its mission at length to the obedient officer of its lay hosts.

The swords were sheathed. And in a moment, the Director of the games would signal dismissal.

Now!

Suddenly, Doug was striding from his post at the point of the flying wedge, the thin flanks of which still joined the two quadrants, heading unerringly for a point directly before the balcony itself. And as suddenly he stopped, stiffly raised his open palm in salute. His cloak fluttered in the warm breeze.

"Your Very Grand Excellence! Senior Quadrate Blair wishes to report a suspected breach of command!" And he held his breath, but not intentionally, for suddenly breath would not come.

His salute was returned. And the field behind him was again still as though carven from stone.

"Report, Quadrate!"

He mustered all the wavering strength in his body, for each word must be crisp, clear, strong and flowing with confidence.

"Your Very Grand Excellence, it has come to this officer's attention that there exists the possibility of failure to execute a quadrant reassignment as prescribed in your command of June 3, in which Ronal Blair and Kurt Blair, identification numbers 28532 and 28533, were ordered transferred from the quadrant which I command to that of Quadrate Tayne. In order that such a failure be rectified at once if, in actuality, it has transpired, I request permission to order an immediate inspection of the units concerned!"

His muscles were rigid and his throat felt like so much wadded sandpaper. Everything hinged on what happened now. Everything.

"In the interests of military efficiency and discipline, your unprecedented request must be granted, Quadrate Blair. I will expect, however, a full report in writing concerning the basis of your suspicion of such failure at your earliest convenience. Order the inspection; you may have ten minutes!"

"At once, sir!"

He saluted, about-faced, and strode, the single animate figure in a great open amphitheater of statues, toward the Post Tayne held behind his own. And as he walked the foreboding silence was suddenly shattered by the roar of starting aircraft engines. The tabulation and evacuation planes, readying for warm-up flights, last-minute terrain checks. There was so little time. And the Director's flat, superbly confident tone had been enough to tell him that only a naive fool could hope to win. In it there had been no trace of surprise, no trace of suspicion, no trace of hesitation. It could mean that he was already beaten. Or, there was the thread-slim chance that it meant the Director had seen no threat in the request to the subtle plan against him. For, regardless of the inspection's outcome, the sons of Quadrate Blair would end up where they belonged, under Quadrate Tayne. And so the plan would thence go forward.

But for the record, the Director had demanded a report!

A report, Doug knew, which one way or the other, he would never write.

Somewhere behind him a flight of tab planes thundered into the air.

And then suddenly, he was facing Tayne, and it was time to play out the gamble to the end.

"Quadrate Tayne, in order to satisfy the Director and myself that the transfer of my sons to your quadrant has been effected as ordered by the Director's command dated June 3, you will order forward for inspection the unit within your quadrant to which they were assigned."

"Yes, sir."

Tayne pivoted.

"Divisions Six and Eighteen, forward—march!" Again, the familiar relay of command. Then the two great masses surged forward, one behind the other, leaving the two behind them still in formation. "Six by the left flank, march!" Six had cleared the quadrant formation, moved off as commanded to the left. "Eighteen by the right flank, march!" And Eighteen did the same. "Divisions, halt! Six, right, face! Eighteen, left, face!" And as quickly as Tayne's commands were relayed, the way was methodically cleared for the rear rank division he called next. There were perhaps seven minutes left.... "Division Thirty forward, march!"

And it came forward, and Doug realized at once that in this formation, this Division Thirty, were his sons, if they were anywhere among the five hundred thousand at all.

"Division, halt!" A second flight of evac ships roared over them, and Tayne waited. Six minutes.... "'A' Company, First Battalion, Second Regiment, forward—" This time, the unit Tayne wanted was in the very front, and at once, two hundred boys were separated from a division of over five thousand, as the division itself had been picked from among forty-eight others in a quadrant of a quarter-million.

And then—

"Squad leaders Kurt and Ronal Blair, front center!" And from the squads of a rear platoon, two bare-torsoed, helmeted youngsters rushed forward on the double!

They halted three paces from Tayne, saluted. And to Doug, their young faces were completely unrecognizable.

Curiously pinched, worried young faces, drawn taut with the tension of bewilderment and sudden fear.

Tayne pivoted, faced Doug.

"Sir, Kurt and Ronal Blair, as assigned by command! At your orders, sir!"

Doug returned the salute, said nothing. He walked with a careful nonchalance to where the two boys, swords and maces still swinging at their sides, stood at attention. Their arms rose in salute. There was no sign of recognition in their eyes.

He dared linger near them but a moment, the fleeting moment it would take for him to identify his own sons beyond doubt. And again, it would be a matter of timing. For until the right moment, Tayne could hear every word.

"How long have you boys been in your present unit?"

"Since—since June the third I think, sir." Terry's voice. And it was Terry's way of saying words. It was Terry, and it was Mike beside him.

But he remained silent. He waited, and he prayed.

The silence drew into seconds, and it was deadly.

And then suddenly a third flight of evac ships thundered their paen of power as they fought for altitude above him!

And with the prayer still at his lips lest his words be either too loud or drowned altogether, Doug shouted almost in their faces: "Terry, Mike! It's Dad! The Contraption's done all of this! Watch for me—I'll pick you up off the field!"

Their eyes were suddenly wide but the roar was already subsiding. He had managed about twenty quick words. He turned to Tayne. And Tayne's sword was not drawn. On his face was the masked look of hatred, but not the unveiled one of sudden comprehension. He had not heard....

"My sons, without doubt, Quadrate. You may order them to fall in, and reform your ranks. You shall receive my apology of record as soon as practicable."

He saluted stiffly and took his post at the apex of the wedge.

Tayne bellowed his commands for the reformation of his quadrant between the fourth and fifth ascending flights of tab and evac planes. And then, once again, there was the fantastic tableau of helmeted statues.

And through the speakers came the Director's command to deploy for combat.

As their quadrants were marched off to take the field under the ground command of the Junior Quadrates of the headquarters cadre, Doug and Tayne were escorted by an honor guard of cadets to the hangar-sections of the headquarters building where their command planes waited in the dank heat, engines idling. Huge aircraft, powerful, but not built for speed. Propeller-driven instead of jet, and the reason was obvious enough—the great, broad-winged craft had been designed for observation, not pursuit. Although there was no sign of a rotor assembly on either ship, Doug knew that for all their size, they were capable, in the thick atmosphere of Venus, of hovering at very little more than the speed of a slow human run. Everything, planned to the last detail. Everything, irrevocably woven into the unchangeable fabric of destiny itself.

The last half of what little plan he had remained only partially within the pattern, and after that, it would simply be a race between fugitive and pursuer—a fully-committed race between hunter and hunted. Nothing more, he knew, than a desperate attempt at escape where there could be no escape. But at least there would be the brief, red-hot satisfaction of trying—there was always that, when there was nothing else....

It would be simple. As Senior Quadrate, his was the duty of over-seeing the campaign not only of his own quadrant, but that of Tayne, Vladkow, Klauss. His was the prerogative of flying his ship over or landing it among any of the troops, wherever they fought. He could land in any quadrant—in Tayne's quadrant. The detailed campaign maps, kept in constant conformation with each phase of the battle as it progressed by picked tabulation personnel, would show him where to land. Wherever he found A Company, First Battalion, Second Regiment, Division Thirty.... And if the boys had understood, they would be watching, waiting. And after that, back to the plaza, the ship, with the prayer that its return trajectory was already plotted, its autorobot already reset for the return journey to Earth.

That was where he must break the pattern. That was when the hopeless, foolish race would begin.

And inwardly, Doug smiled an ironic, tight little smile. So funny, so tragically funny. A down-to-Earth, practical man like Congressman Douglas Blair, running for his life from a fantasy that could not possibly exist! As the people of Hiroshima had run on the day of the atomic bomb....

Their cloaks started to whip in the slipstreams of the waiting aircraft. Another ten strides and he would have been aboard the plane.

But before he had taken five of them, the speeding surface-vehicle had drawn up beside them and stopped scant feet short of the plane's opening port. Cadremen leapt from it, swords drawn. And behind them came the Director himself.

The formation halted as though it had suddenly struck an invisible wall.

As he walked between his flanks of guards, the hulking Gundar Tayne drew his own sword. And Doug knew what the gesture meant.

"Senior Quadrate Blair, as lawful husband of Madame Lisa Blair, who was taken into custody by the S-Council of Earth at 1300 hours Earth Standard Time today, I hereby place you under official arrest. Guards! Disarm this man."

CHAPTER XVI

Doug stood motionless as his dress sword was whipped from its scabbard, snapped across the bent knee of one of the Director's guards, and cast at his feet. A second denuded him of the wide belt and narrow scabbard which had held it.

"Sir, unless you are able to cite well-founded charges for this outrageous action, I can assure you it will be reported to the Prelate General at once!" Doug bit the words out knowing that as a defensive threat they were hopelessly impotent, but he had to know what they had done to Dot. He had to know that even if they were to kill him within the next second. He sensed Tayne's presence behind him, could all but feel his sword-point at his back. The cadets, a moment before formed as a guard of honor, were suddenly in a bristling ring about him as though from some melodrama from the pages of Roman history. Their faces were impassive, their feet wide-spread, their swords hip-high, and pointed unwaveringly at him.

And the sneer in the Director's voice was only carelessly concealed.

"This is hardly the time for jests, Quadrate. I hardly think I need quote the Commandment sub-section setting forth the law concerning the status of husband and wife when either is found guilty of heresy. Your rank permits you to deny your wife's collusion if you wish, but—unfortunately, Madame Blair has been unquestionably linked with one of the pitiful but vicious little underground groups of men and women whose constant and sole aim is not only to abolish the war games, but to accomplish the eventual destruction of our sacred government. She—as well as yourself, I might add—has been under painstaking scrutiny for almost a year. I am informed that a carefully guarded but all too unwise series of tele-calls to your home has at last established the necessary link. Ever hear of the Saint Napoleon Culture Society, Quadrate? No? No, of course you haven't! Quadrate Tayne!"

"Yes, your Very Grand Excellence!"

"I'm putting this man in your custody for the trip to Earth. Your orders are to deliver him in person to the S-Council—you'll take-off immediately. The games will be under my personal supervision until you return. Any questions?"

"I am to deliver this man in person to the S-Council. No questions, sir."

"Carry on, then." He returned Tayne's salute with a perfunctory dip of his sword-point, then sheathed the weapon and followed Doug into the waiting vehicle.

Take-off black-out was but momentary and wore off quickly. Escaping Venus' lesser gravity was noticeably easier, and the fog-shrouded planet still filled the viewscreen when Doug got to his feet. He was half surprised to discover that there were no steel cuffs at his wrists, and that he had not been bound other than by the safety belts to the acceleration hammock. But it was logical enough. A robot-guided ship in Space was quite efficiently escape-proof. It had been an effective trap before, and now it was an equally effective prison. And Tayne, who had already opened trajectory compensation communications with Venus headquarters, was the one who had the sword.

Tayne's back was to him. A sudden leap—

No. With Tayne unconscious or dead, it would make little difference. His presence aboard the ship was apparently only for the satisfaction of protocol. Placed aboard it alone, Doug reasoned, he would have been as well secured a prisoner as had he been accompanied by a guard of one hundred men. It was not Tayne, but the autorobot guiding the ship that was his jailer. Yet, Tayne had not removed his sword....

Doug watched the white mass of Venus as it receded with torturing slowness in the screen, let it half-hypnotize him. There was something stirring uneasily somewhere far back in his brain—something, something—but it did not matter. Nothing at all mattered now. The race—the great, hopeless race he had planned for freedom had never even begun!

They had denied him even that satisfaction. Yes, he could attack Tayne, and Tayne would kill him. But that would not be a fight. It would be simply the choice of suicide, at the hands of the man who would derive the most satisfaction from being its prime instrument. The man who already signed the death warrants for Mike and Terry....

And Dot. Dot, after some awful agony would see him again perhaps, but she would see with uncomprehending eyes, hear with unrecognizing ears. If she lived through what they did to her, she would no longer be Dot at all.

Dully, he could hear Tayne's words in a background that was a thousand miles away. "Reconciled and steady as she blasts. This is QT to Control, C-Limit check—trajectory secure. Out."

And again, there was something far back in Doug's brain, struggling harder....

Then even as Tayne turned toward him from the dial consoles, it burst into the forefront of his mind like a flare in the darkness. Twelve hundred Kemps at three hundred milliamperes, sir.... Genemotor, type A-26-F modified.... Sergeant! The neuro-tablets at once.... Commandments Four, Part 3, Sub-section 12 as amended ... all space craft shall be robot-controlled and shall fly predetermined trajectories, save (1) when bearing members of the Science Council and/or their certified representatives, to whom manual operation and navigation at will is singularly permissible, or (2) when insurmountable emergency shall occur....

And suddenly, Doug's brain vaulted from the lethargy of hopelessness and it was again at his command, a sharp, poised weapon of battle. For Tayne knew! Yet he would die before he would tell—unless, somehow....

"Such confidence, Quadrate Tayne! Admirable! But you would look so much more fit for your role with your sword in your hand, not in your scabbard!"

Tayne reddened. "If it were not for my orders, Blair—"

"Why, such a lack of conditioning, Quadrate! Don't you know killing me is supposed to be so repulsive to you that you couldn't even stomach the thought of it? Tell me, don't I make you sick, Quadrate?"

Tayne's hand went to the hilt of his weapon. He half-drew it, slammed it back in its scabbard.

"Blair, we have twenty hours aboard this ship together. We can be at each other's throats like children. Or not, as you please."

Doug sat down on the edge of the acceleration hammock. Perhaps it would not be so difficult. Carefully, he entered the role further. He must have just the right kind of smile.

"Ah, but think of all the trouble I can get you in if I make you lose your temper and kill me! And you have got to admit, where I'm going, it doesn't make much difference—to me, I mean."

Tayne turned back to the instrument panel as though to signify that he had suddenly become a deaf man. And Doug kept talking, as though to signify a complete lack of interest in whether Tayne was a deaf man or not.

"As the matter stands, they took my sword away. So you'd never get anywhere with a self-defense alibi. Lord, how they'd make you sweat! By Saint Napoleon's mother I like the thought of that! And, after all, since this is going to be my last flight, I really think I'm entitled to a little amusement."

Silence.

"You know, Quadrate," Doug kept on relentlessly, "I don't imagine you expected even me to act like this, did you? No, of course not. Not very much the officer and gentleman. But that makes us more or less even. You don't know what a gentleman is. You're so stupid you don't even know who the next President of the United States is going to be!—Oh, sorry. I keep forgetting—I don't think I ever told you that I'm not the real Senior Quadrate Blair, and that I'm not from your universe at all, did I, Tayne? Ever hear of the World Series? Oh, there I—"

Tayne turned his head.

"Easy does it! I imagine you must think I've gone mad. Don't blame you. I don't act at all like the Blair you know. Of course if I am mad, you'd better be careful. And if I am from another universe, you'd better be even more careful. As a matter of fact, at the moment, Quadrate, your life may not be worth very much."

Doug rubbed his fingernails on his tunic, inspected their new sheen. Then he looked up at Tayne.

Tayne stood, face mottled, an uneasy little thread of uncertainty deep under the surface of his eyes.

"Very well, just to make it easy for you, Mr. Tayne, we shall say I am mad, because that's easy to believe, and I can see you're quite sure of it already. Yet just the same I can outwit you, Quadrate. That is, I think that in the twenty hours of our flight together I can reduce you to a gibbering idiot, far worse off than myself! Why, I may even have you mumbling that you're Saint Napoleon himself! Now wouldn't that be a picture!" Blair slapped his right hand to his tunic-front.

And Tayne drew his sword.

"If you killed me, Quadrate, you would have no proof of my madness for the others—and I'm sure that our standing enmity would be reasoned as the far more credible motive. Reasonable people, yours. Very. So much so that they're all above making a rather ridiculous harangue like this. Face the S-Council rather stoically, I should imagine. Quietly, as befits their dignity. Right?"

Tayne almost jumped clear of the deck.

"By jingo, you're nervous, man! Sweating, too. And twenty more hours. Let's see—what'll we talk about?"

Tayne was tense, immobile, undisguisedly confused.

"I bet you're thinking that if you could get me in a state of—shall we say, unconsciousness, your troubles would be over. But you'd have to get close to me to do that. And we both know that sword of yours is no threat. Besides, I'm a madman. Either mad, or from another universe—ha!—and then I might be able to kill you with a glance! Of course, you can suppose this is all just an act, but even if I told you it was you wouldn't be exactly sure, would you? Would you, now?"

Tayne sheathed the sword. And slowly, as though he had reached some desperate decision, he turned to the control panels. But not to the ones at which he'd stood before. He touched one of a row of white studs above which were the words S-C ONLY. And a rectangle of metal hardly more than a foot in length and half as much in width slid back beneath his fingertips, exposing a compact console of control keys.

Or (2) when an insurmountable emergency should occur....

Tayne was pressing buttons, and Doug knew that the trajectory had been broken, and that the ship was free of its autorobot and under Tayne's sole command.

The manual control console. Tayne had had enough! Were he an Earthman as Doug was an Earthman—but he was not! He was a creature of pattern, and there was only the pattern to follow. And an 'insurmountable emergency' had indeed arisen. Flight with a madman who spoke of other universes, and who, by definition of orders, dare not be killed.

Doug, still seated, braced his feet on the hammock's bottom edge, and checked his spring even with his muscles tensed.

For Tayne turned suddenly. And the fear, the confusion were gone!

"Thank you, Quadrate Blair!" he said. "Madman, I am convinced—yet brilliant to the last! I admit, I may not have thought of our personal enmity as a motive for my actions—as a motive, I mean, that would justify them!"

Something turned to ice in Doug's stomach. It was going wrong, somehow.

Tayne drew the sword slowly. "I shall kill you now. You see, you hated me so much that I am afraid your hatred broke its bounds. And you not only attacked me but—but I'm afraid you also attempted to take over manual control of the ship in your madness. And for that of course—"

The sword was descending even as Doug launched his body from the hammock.

They went down then, and the sword clattered from Tayne's grasp. The blade-edge was speckled with red, and there was a searing pain across Doug's back. But his hands were on Tayne's throat, and they were closing.

And then they opened. The whistle of air into Tayne's lungs as he fought for breath and for consciousness told Doug he had only seconds before there was full life in the Quadrate's body again.

But the seconds were enough, for within them, he had the sword's hilt firmly in his own hand. And then he had its tip at the Quadrate's swollen, pulsing throat.

"You damn near threw me off schedule, Grand Imperial Wizard. Come on get up."

Doug felt little rivulets of blood trickle down his spine. The wound still stung, but it was not deep.

Slowly, Tayne rose, the sword-point beneath his chin.

"Don't make me nervous," Doug said. "Sudden moves get me all jittery, and sometimes when I'm jittery I kill stuffed shirts just to ease the tension. Back up. Now around—slow, Noble Grand Knight, or you'll fall down without your head." The sword-point traced a thin line of red half-way around Tayne's neck as the man turned. "Now we're going to have some fun—only wish you were a tax-writer and I'd get a bigger kick out of this. Venus, James. And at the first peculiar maneuver—such as maybe cutting out the pseudograv or dumping us on the carpet without enough back-blast and your nice uniform will get all gooked up. Blood, you know." He dug the point deeper into Tayne's flesh until some of it was red, the rest white with pain.

And again, there was nothing to do but play the gamble out. How brave, Doug wondered, was a creature of pattern?

Venus filled the viewscreen, the white sea of the planet's sky stretching unruffled beneath them.

"Northern land mass, Tayne. Your Quadrant. Thirtieth Division, Second Regiment, First Battalion, Company 'A'."

Tayne still said nothing. Doug kept the steady pressure on the sword point.

The round, black buttons were arranged like an inverted T. Beneath them were three square, flush-set dials. One was easily recognizable as an artificial horizon-ecliptic indicator. The second, Doug thought, indicated both plus and minus acceleration. And the third, simple velocity and altitude.

Tayne's fingers had not punched the buttons, but had played them almost as though they were the keys of a musical instrument. The horizontal row was for change of direction to either left or right. The vertical, change in axial thrust, for either upward accelerations or forward, depending upon flight attitude. A slow turn executed by pressing the buttons of desired intensity of power in both horizontal and vertical columns simultaneously, with turn sharpness simply a matter of coordinated button selection.

The top button was for full thrust—full speed in level flight, blast-off from take-off position, or full deceleration in landing attitude. Those below it were for power in progressively lesser amounts. A twist of a fingertip would lock any of the buttons at any degree of power output desired. With practiced co-ordination, simple enough. Yet—what about climb or dip from the horizontal? Or inversion for landing? That was something for which he must wait.

The cut across his back throbbed now, and he dared not brush his hands across his eyes to smear the sweat from them.

And suddenly, Tayne's voice grated, "You had better drop the sword, Blair." There was the tightness of pain in his words, but they were clear. "I refuse to invert the ship. If we are to land, it must be inverted in sixty seconds. If you kill me, you kill yourself, for you do not know how to operate the panel beyond what you have seen—and you have not seen the operation for inversion. If you give me the sword, you will land alive."

"You're out of your head, Mr. Tayne! I'm Senior Quadrate Blair, remember? I know how to operate the panel as well or better than you do. Get going!" He dug the tip deeper, and fresh blood started.

But, Tayne's fingers remained immobile.

"Mad or sane, Senior Quadrate Blair or—or something else, if you knew how to use the panel, you would not have taken the risk of forcing me to do it! I would already be dead—"

There was a sudden, empty space in Doug's stomach.

"Thirty seconds, Blair."

The white mass of the sky was scant miles below them. He would need all of the thirty seconds, and there was no time to think—only time to realize that if he were to live, he must kill Tayne. It was like that time so long ago on the beaches of Normandy....

With all his strength he plunged the sword through Tayne's neck. And his own hands were at the control panel before Tayne's gurgling corpse had slumped to the deck. The life-blood seeped from it far more slowly than the seconds slipped beneath Doug's taut fingers.

Not the buttons, not the dials, for he had seen them. But part of the panel itself—it had to be!

The panel itself!

He pressed one side, the other. Nothing. Ten seconds perhaps....

The bottom or the top next. But which? If it moved on a lateral axis—that would be it, for elevation or depression from the horizontal! But to accomplish what would amount to a half-loop....

He pressed the top of the panel. And it gave beneath his touch. In the viewscreen, the white mass which rushed to envelop him seemed to shift—

Further down—that was it, all the way around!

Slowly, against an unseen source of pressure, he revolved the panel a half-revolution about its lateral axis. Already he could see its reverse side—on it in the same pattern there was an identical set of control buttons, dials.

In the viewscreen there was a half-second's glimpse of the blackness of Space before the inverted ship tumbled tail-first into the white ocean of the Venus sky.

And again there was the awful sensation of falling through infinity. Desperately, he pushed the top button.

CHAPTER XVII

He locked the top button at full depression and struggled to keep his legs straight beneath him, braced as they were now against a bulkhead which but a few minutes before had been, not a floor, but a wall. The ship's gyro system was no longer functioning as a pseudograv unit, but rather as a vertical stabilizer, and the second dial said four gravities.

The acceleration needle dropped with agonizing slowness. Four gravities, three point seven. The altimeter said one hundred thousand feet, then ninety thousand, eighty, seventy-five.

Three point five gravities. Three point three. Even three at last.

Fifty thousand feet, forty-five, forty-two, forty thousand.

Two point six gravities.

Thirty-five thousand.

Two. One point nine. Point eight, seven, six, five.

Twenty-three thousand.

One gravity.

And the ship was hovering balanced by her gyros, at twenty-one thousand feet above boundless reaches of Venusian sea.

Gingerly, Doug pressed the top of the panel, released the top button.

There was a sickening drop as from somewhere deep inside the ship new sets of engines rumbled automatically to life as her nose came down, her belly-jets belching, breaking the drop on their cushion of power. And again the craft hovered, but now horizontally.

Tayne's corpse tumbled grotesquely off the bulkhead to the deck, made Doug miss his footing, and he fell.

But nothing happened. The panel, without pressure, had returned automatically to zero setting, and the belly-jets held steady.

Swiftly then, cursing himself for his awkwardness, Doug tore at Tayne's cloak, the blood-soaked tunic beneath it. Somewhere he must have it—logically, he must have it.

Something crackled. Doug smeared stinging sweat from his eyes as he bent closer, found the neatly-hidden pocket, thrust a hand inside.

It was hard to keep the thin, bound packet of wide plastisheets steady. Clumsily, he flicked to blank pages of Tayne's unused record tablet. In those he had examined at his office the campaign maps had been in the back.

And he found them there. Estimated deployment, Phase One, First Hour.

No good ... two, perhaps three hours had elapsed. Gamble on Phase Three.

Division Thirty, Second Regiment, First Battalion, 'A' Company. There.

He stood up, locked a deep breath inside him, and placed his fingers on the inverted T of control buttons for a second time.

North was the top of the viewscreen. What shown in it then must slide from the top down.

His fingertip caressed the bottom-most button. And there was a gentle surge of acceleration, and the screen picture was moving diagonally. First button on the right....

The picture swung slowly around. And then it was moving from top to bottom of the screen. He pushed the bottom button all the way in, and the velocity needles swung slowly up. A touch on the button above it, and the needle quivered five hundred ten.

And then on the horizon there was suddenly a light blue blur, and he braced himself against the shock of forward acceleration as he pushed the button all the way in. Its limit was close to two thousand miles per hour, and he locked it there.

Moments later he released it, eased pressure on it as the blue blur shaped itself into the coastline of the northern land mass. Gradually, he depressed the panel a full ninety degrees.

And the hurtling craft swung again on her blazing tail. Doug let the panel return to zero and held the bottom button in. The belly-jets had automatically cut out, and again he hovered, sinking slightly, this time not above the dark blue waste of the Venusian sea, but above the place where fantastic young armies with ten-year-old soldiers were writhing, dying.

The altimeter needle showed five thousand feet, and already he was able to discern the battle-lines of the two quadrants, no longer in close marching formation, but now spread wide to cover an irregular area of more than one hundred square miles. The lines surged first forward then back, as though joined in some Gargantuan tug-of-war—shifted, changed, like a great wounded serpent in its death-throes.

The lines were little more than a hundred yards in depth because deployment for the games provided for no rear echelons—there were only the battle echelons, with their ends defended mightily against encirclement, attack from the rear.

Eventually, Doug knew, the flank defenses of both lines would give way, and the centers of each would rupture, and then, until the hovering tab and evac planes gave the signal that the Phase Three limit had been reached, the battle would wage in a great undulating mass, without formation, without plan, without reason. He had to reach Mike and Terry before then, for once the lines disintegrated into Final Phase—deployment at will—they'd be lost to him for good.

And Phase Three lasted at best for three hours. Final Phase, when it begun, would last as many days.

Somehow, he had to jockey the hovering ship over the area where the map-estimate indicated that Mike and Terry would be fighting. And when he landed, he must somehow halt the carnage momentarily—just long enough for them to see him, to run....

Doug tilted the great ship at an angle of about seventy degrees, compensated it on the main drive and the single bank of bow belly-jets that automatically checked in as the ship left vertical balance. And the terrain below him moved slowly, canted oddly between horizon and sky.

Slowly, toward the area designated on the map—slowly, sinking slightly, so that he could see their faces now, watch as their maces shattered the glittering helmets into junk, smashed into living flesh, as their broadswords glistened red and swung, struck....

Momentarily hypnotized by the horror that screamed below him and by the sickening realization that what he saw was real even though his reason rebelled through force of habit from admission that such reality could exist, Doug watched the tilted battlefield as it stretched but hundreds of feet below him now, watched as a smoothly-oiled, carefully calculated device preserved the peace of a planet.

A small, sweating body was hewn in two.

A helmeted head fell; an arm dropped grotesquely beside it.

A boy's boot was bathed in blood as he kicked viciously at his opponent's chest to withdraw his sword from it.

A brief, two-handed struggle with sword and mace—a sword stroke was parried, the swinging mace was not, and a splintered rib with shreds of flesh still sticking to it clung to the mace-pikes as an adversary fell, the left side of his body gone.

And the dead, still-quivering masses of flesh and bone were trampled as they fell, to be swiftly covered by other still-dying bodies which collapsed, writhing, atop them, to be trampled in their turn....

Doug shuddered uncontrollably. Kids, dying on a battlefield like this!

A pair of helmeted heads suddenly disappeared in a twin red gush from two pairs of sweating shoulders, and a group of twenty boys converged on the spot, fought for almost a minute, and then the heads were covered, and one boy at length dragged himself away, arms limp, helpless. He died while an evac ship was landing. The swinging mace that broke his back had not been necessary. He who wielded it fell also an instant later, his spine severed in a long, diagonal gash. And Doug thought how odd it was that a sword-cleft could look so like the tearing wound which a flying chunk of shrapnel would gouge.

He was so low now that he had long since lost sight of the lines' ends, had no way of knowing when encirclement at last would begin, when the center of each line would give way, when Final Phase would begin. But it seemed that the fighting had become less orderly, more closely-grouped, more frenzied. Within minutes the Third Phase map would be useless, and in Final Phase, there would be no knowing. No knowing until long after the end.

The altimeter needle said two hundred feet, when, if he had read the map with any degree of accuracy, he was over the area assigned to Tayne's Thirtieth Division. He had the ship straightened and descending when the blue light inset in the communications panel began to blink. He would let it blink. Yet if he answered, at least he would know their intentions....

Bloody young warriors sought desperately to give the great craft room as he descended. Some were incinerated in its back-blast, and Doug murmured a prayer that they had been among the already-dying. He would not let himself think that of all he had seen die, any two could have been Terry and Mike. He refused to let himself think that of the dozen turned to cinders by his descending jets, any two could have been Terry and Mike....

The blue-red ground came slowly up to meet him. The blue light kept blinking. He increased pressure on the bottom button—hovered, sank, hovered again, sank.

And when the ground was obliterated with the searing flame of his drive tubes, there was a gentle jar, and Doug let the button snap from beneath his finger. He was down, and there was not even time to feel relief.

He tripped over Tayne's body, fell heavily against the communications panel. His fingers fumbled for a switch near the inset microphone. The words blurred.... FIELD ADDRESS. RADIO-SEND. RADIO-REC. FLEET INTERCOM.

He twisted the knob to RADIO-REC. and the blue light stopped blinking.

"... D to QT, D to QT, over...."

He turned the dial to RADIO-SEND.

"This is QT," he said. He switched back, waited.

"Larsen, this is Gundar! What in Napoleon's name are you doing? What did you do with Blair?"

Doug tore a plastisheet leaf from Tayne's note tablet, thrust it over the mike-face.

"I had to kill him."

"Kill him? Larsen you fool.... You know what they'll say—"

"He tried to get at the manual controls ... succeeded in wrecking the autorobot, so I had to use them. And I had to kill him when he tried to take over by force. Give you a—"

"Larsen, something wrong with your communications? You're coming in badly—didn't read your last. Say again please."

"He wrecked the robot-control," Doug repeated. His lips were dry across his teeth and it was hard to keep his voice even. "I had to break out the manual. He tried to take them over, too, so I had to kill him. He was like a maniac—you know how he hated me. Must have figured out the whole plan somehow, and went berserk. I'll file a complete report when this is finished. Over." He waited, sweat rolling in icy rivulets the length of his arms. The wound on his back stung, and his muscles were trembling with fatigue.

"What do you mean, when this is finished? Got to be immediate, man! There'll be hell to pay as it is. I was afraid something would go wrong—he was a smarter man than you thought, and I told you as much. Take care of whatever you're checking on down there immediately and then get back to headquarters and draw up a form 312-L-5. File for my office and the PG's. You should've done that at once. Out."

"Yes, sir, right away. Out."

There was a silent prayer on Doug's lips as he turned the knob to FIELD ADDRESS. It was worth a try....

There was a humming sound. However it functioned, it was ready.

"This is Senior Quadrate Blair. All units within range of this command will cease battle immediately...."

He twisted a control under the viewscreen, kept twisting until its scope had undergone a ninety degree shift. And then he saw them, waves of them, slowing, stopping, turning to face the ship. Unbelievably, the sound of his voice had somehow been carried for a radius of at least a mile, and thousands of them, their blood mingled with their muddied sweat, were suddenly still, listening. Some fell, untouched, as a last wound belatedly took its toll. But all that could remained standing. There could be no sitting rest, for none knew when the command to resume battle would come, and when it did, it would be death to be sitting.

Within a half minute, a great circle of them was still, battle continuing only at its periphery where his command was either being defended or had gone unheard.

"Attention, troops of Division Thirty, Second Regiment, First Battalion, A Company. If—" and he dared not hesitate, must say it quickly, and then wait, "—Ronal Blair and Kurt Blair are able, they will report to this ship on the double! Terry, Mike—" and there was a sudden catch in his voice that he could not help. Then, "Come running."

And he watched the viewscreen, turned the knob slowly to revolve its range, a complete 360 degrees.

Nothing, nothing as he turned slowly.

In moments Gundar Tayne would contact him again, question him, and he would have no convincing answer. And then it would be too late. He would have the choice of punching the top button and catapulting himself to safety, not knowing even if Mike and Terry still lived somewhere down there, or staying to carry out a gamble that should have been lost a dozen times already.

Suddenly, he saw it. The huge ship of the Director, in a long, circling glide. And the boys were moving again, raising their swords, circling their maces. He had been countermanded—

The blue light was blinking.

Another ten degrees of turn—

There was a terrible clattering at the stern of the ship as though it was being rent apart plate by plate. The screen would not depress that far. He revolved it back. Tayne's ship had landed a scant hundred yards away and a guard had already been flung around it. And men were approaching on the run, strange devices in their hands. Then they stopped, were putting the devices in position on the ground.

The clanging grew louder now.

It would be one of them. One of them with a warning, and if he did not open up, surrender.... But the blue light still blinked.

He could have missed them. As he swung the screen, they could have been running in an area yet untouched—the last ten degrees....

The clanging was lessening.

He hauled down the knife-switch marked "STERN PORT."

The clanging ceased.

And then, muffled almost to inaudibility, a wild, far-off yell. "Shut it, Dad, for the luvva mike, SHUT it!"

And he jammed the switch home.

There was an awful racket then. An awful, wonderful racket. Mike, Terry, clambering hell-bent up the spiraling cat-walks! Mike, Terry, safe aboard....

A movement in the viewplate stilled the cry that had formed in his throat. The strange devices—there was a bluish-white flash, and the viewscreen was suddenly white with a ball of coruscating brilliance. Short....

Had to blast-off—but the kids, not braced on the cat-walks.... Still clambering, maybe only half-way up....

Another streak, but no flash. Over. They were bracketing.

The next one, whatever it was, the next one would be a bulls-eye.

With all his voice he bellowed "HANG ON!" even as Mike and Terry burst, breathless, into the control room.

His finger hesitated only a moment. And then he jammed the bottom button in and his knees bent, but they held.

And in the corner of his eye he saw the blue-white flash erupt dead-center below.

He eased the button pressure and hovered, out of range.

In a moment Gundar Tayne's craft would be in the air. Then....

"Kids—kids, you O.K.?" He locked the ship in its hover and then he was beside them, scanning their half-naked, bruised bodies in quick glances, then holding them to him with all the strength of both arms.

"Dad?"

"Yes. Me, your old man...."

"We been dodgin' and watchin' for hours, Dad. Let's get out of here!"

He held them to him a second longer, then turned to the communications panel, Mike at his left, Terry at his right. "... They almost caught us at the door down there.... Dad I—I think I killed one...."

"We did as you said, Dad. We watched as much as we could, but most of the time we had to stay on the ground, playing dead...."

The communications dial was still at FIELD ADDRESS.

He looked at it, then looked at the viewscreen. Thousands of them, stilled for so short a moment, now surging, tearing at each other's vitals again. There was a terrible hurt somewhere deep inside him, and he wanted to voice it, to get it out, to tell them somehow.

But they would not understand him if he were to speak for a minute or for an hour. These whom he watched had been lost from the day of their birth.

But, thank Heaven, not the two at his side.

"Get in those hammocks, kids," he said.

They did, and he braced himself against the bulkhead. He was twisting the top button even as he punched it home, and it caught.

The deck rushed up with smashing force.

CHAPTER XVIII

The white, sterile room seemed to have closed in upon itself since she had been first brought to it so many hours before, and the heavy desk was now just a great mass of steel, its curved lines no longer distinct, but trailing off somewhere in an incomprehensible geometry of their own. There was movement behind the desk, white, blurry movement that blended with the walls, but the flesh-colored mask that hovered above it did not seem to move at all. Dot's eyes could no longer focus for the fatigue of the tests had sucked the well of her physical energy dry, but she knew the face.

He was Mannix, director of the S-Council, they had told her.

The tests had torn her soul from her, turned it inside out, stripped it naked, examined it beneath their microscopes of unending questions asked in a thousand different ways with a thousand different inflections, connotations.... The sterile white rooms, the lights, the darkness....

To hear what she and they had known from the beginning, and what the blurred, unmoving face was telling her now.

"... tests have been evaluated according to Section 679, Sub-section B of Commandment Seventeen, Part E, as amended, and you have been found to be unquestionably sane. It is my duty therefore to interpret the law with a finding of guilty of acts of heresy, as charged in each of the counts cited, committed with the premeditated deliberation of a sound, and therefore fully responsible mind."

Dot no longer felt fear, only a terrible tiredness. It did not matter what Mannix said. Nor of course, could it matter what she might say. There was the truth, of course, but it would be doubly incriminating, and would spell disaster for Doug.

She would never see Doug again.

"... entitled, by rank, to denial...."

Or know him if she did.

"... may speak, now as privileged, before you are sentenced...."

Never see her Earth, her Terry or her Mike again!

"... and in the absence of remonstrance as privileged...."

Or know that the sun and the stars above the alien planet upon which she would walk were not those under which she had been born....

"... hereby sentence you, Madame Lisa Blair, to loss of privilege to breed offspring through sterilization, and to the complete loss of all ego and all memory therewith connected through psychomutation, which treatment shall immediately follow the first. In the name of the Prelatinate, the Prelate General, and the party hosts, I do so pronounce sentence."

A panel had opened noiselessly behind her.

The blurred face nodded imperceptibly, and arms suddenly were lifting her to her feet, leading her from the white, sterile room....

There was an empty roaring in his ears as he struggled for consciousness, and he could only half-feel the tugging at his body, half-hear the frightened sound of Terry's voice.

"Dad—dad, you've got to get up, dad!"

Painfully, he made his shaking muscles take over the burden of his weight, forced himself to his feet.

The viewscreen was black save for the receding white disk that was Venus. The acceleration needle quivered at just under two gravities.

"—Dad, everything feels funny. So heavy. For a long time we couldn't even move out of those bed-things."

His head hurt and there was drying blood on the side of his face. His body felt as though it had been flailed by a thousand of the maces, and his back wound was a long, throbbing ache, and it was sticky-wet again.

He tried to force a grin to his face, and even that drew tiny shards of pain.

"Wish I could've gotten to one of those bed-things, Mike! Believe me I never want to hear the expression 'hit the deck' again."

"Well you sure hit it. Anything feel busted?"

"Everything sure does! But I'll be O.K. in a minute." He sat heavily on the edge of a hammock, fought against the tugging urge to sink back into unconsciousness. But when the acceleration needle said one gravity and the gyros took over, he had to get back on his feet.

"Dad! Where the heck are we going?"

"And when you get us there, will you tell us what the contraption did to get us in this place, and make us all—even you—look all different? We thought it was one of those scary dreams until you got us out in front of everybody ... and I still ain't so sure...."

Doug still hurt, but the dizziness was going, and there was Terry's question to answer. It was a good question.

"Earth, that's where we're going! Ever hear of it?"

"This is a real space-ship, Dad?"

Doug smiled down at him. "It's pretty real," he said.

They watched him in silence as he began his search.

He wasted twenty minutes at it before he was forced to the conclusion that there were no astronomical charts, no star maps. The Science Council would have its own, and the robot didn't need any....

He was glad the boys were with him. Glad, because without them, the cold panic that welled inside might have taken hold. Glad, because with them, he could muster the will it took to keep from telling himself how terribly big and empty infinity was.

Maybe you should've stuck with the MIT degree after all, Carl Grayson had said. And, he had stuck himself with it! But, if the things he had learned to get it had gotten him into this, then they would damn well have to get him out!

Doug ripped the blank plastisheets from Tayne's unused notebook, tossed them to the flat surface of the console. There was an ink-stylus in another pocket of the dead man's tunic.

He pointed to a bulkhead chronometer. "Tell me when an hour's up, boys," he said.

He must have his answers within the hour, for in computing them he would need a constant to represent known navigation error, and the hour would represent it, once he determined its value. And if he should exceed that time, its value would be changed—and the constant, the calculations, worthless.

With the viewscreen, he began his search of space for the bright, blue-white planet that would be Earth. When he found it, he would use twenty minutes of the hour to establish the plane of its ecliptic. Then, if he could remember what the books had said, remember its orbital speed, its orbital arc for the month of August and its resultant distance from the sun. And then of course the same mathematical equivalents for Venus, and subsequent establishment of the necessary relationships. And then interjected in it must be his own speed and relative direction for the space of one hour.

And when he had his dead-reckoning solution, it would still be like shooting ducks—with Earth the biggest duck that a man ever had to bag. And with a sling-shot—his stylus—not the finely-machined shotgun that would be the slide-rule and calculator which he didn't have.

He kept turning the screen. In six precious minutes he found it, like a bright new jewel pinned to the white silk scarf of the Milky Way.

Earth.

He reached for the ink-stylus, the blank plastisheets....

There was a searing, bright light above her and it sent stabbing tentacles of pain through her head, and they lashed at her flagging brain.

They had lain her prone on a cold, flat surface, and their faces circled her, blurred as Mannix' had been, and infinitely far above her.

There was the murmur of voices, and the bright light was divided and divided again into myriads of white, stabbing lances as it was broken into glittering bits upon the edges of the slender instruments they held.

Let them, let them....

No, scream—scream or something, you idiot!

In a second there would be the hypodermic or the anaesthesia and she would not be able to scream—

"You're so—so stupid ..." she heard her voice saying, a dimly audible echo off the edges of infinity itself. "Sterilize me. Keep me from breeding. What I want, you fools! They all do, they all do, you know. And you, yourselves, give the answer to it. To our question, how much longer, how many, many more...."

She could not be sure if she spoke waking or dreaming, in the delirium of exhaustion or in the unintelligibility of anaesthesia. But she was thinking the words, and she could still feel the motion of her tongue, its fuzzy touch against her teeth.

The glittering instruments were immobile.

"If heresy brings us this—this relief from a fear of forever being only a machine of flesh and blood to produce—to produce as any machine with no value whatever other than to produce until it falls into wreckage—then, then heresy will some day flourish, and you'll all be wrinkled and old, and there will be no young voices."

She let the words bubble from her, not caring, yet somehow caring, somehow fighting with all her being. But it was not a clever ruse, for there was still not strength enough to consciously pit her wits against them. It was something else, this strange fight, something else that stemmed from deep within her.

And now the murmur of voices above her had changed tenor, oddly interrupted by jagged bits of silence.

Done something. What she had said had done something, and they were hearing her. Hearing her, so she must speak louder, must open her eyes wide and let the bright light send the stabbing flashes of pain deep into her brain, whip it stingingly into consciousness.

It hurt, it hurt....

Colored circles, drifting, but it was from the light—and she was thinking now, and in a moment she would be seeing their faces more clearly. Had to talk again....

Dot lurched up on her elbows, felt the curious relaxation of a smile on her lips. "Go ahead! The rest of the women know what you're going to do to me! And pretty soon they'll let you do it to them! If we're no good as an underground to stop you, we'll let you use us to stop yourselves—think that one over before next election!"

From somewhere very near her a voice said "Madame Blair, please. You are interfering with the operation!"

But now the words were coming more easily. Her hands and feet were cold and wet, and her muscles shook, but now she was fighting with the last of the energy in her, she was fighting because she had found the chink in their armor, and she could widen it, could break through!

"Oh, very well—I wouldn't do that! Because I've been looking forward to this for so very long. Just to think, I'll be comfortably dried up, and—it'll be legal! No more fear!"

"You must be silent, Madame Blair."

"Is there some new amendment to the precious Commandments that says I must be silent? The last one I heard was just before I was brought here—Yes, have you heard the latest, gentlemen? An amendment prohibiting the execution of a sentence on an official's wife, until that official is present as a legal witness? But no, I can see you haven't, and hope you get into all kinds of trouble! Chapter—Chapter 580, gentlemen—Book 631, Section 451, Paragraph A, Sub-paragraph 34, Sentence."

And abruptly she let the bitter spurt of words taper into silence, and her eyes were wide. Only one of them was at her side—the rest were suddenly grouped around the one in charge, who was nervously fingering a telecall dial.

Like children! Doug said they were creatures of pattern, and something had suddenly smashed the pattern to smithereens, and they dared do nothing until they had a firm hold on the torn-up ends again. She had got them scared stiff!

This is it, girl! Move!

The last of her strength. A swift, sidewise kick, and she buried the heel of one bare foot into the groin of the man who had stayed to guard her. She had braced her other leg on the edge of the low operating table, and thus anchored, the kick carried all the merciless impact that was needed. She did not wait to see the quick look of agony that mottled his face and she was off the table and running before he had sunk silently to his knees. The surgical robe was short and did not hamper her legs, and for the first time since she was a little girl, she ran for the sake of pure, uninhibited speed. She had reached the door marked EXIT ONLY before the rest of them realized what she had done, and then they were after her, their howling voices a mixture of disbelief and dismayed anger.

It was a long, wide corridor. The enraged shouts of alarm behind her had already turned it into a thunderously echoing cacophony of pure and terrible noises, and she knew that within moments, around some turn ahead of her there would be more of them, and she would be trapped, and it would be all over.

She would have let the sudden pain in her side double her when, less than a hundred feet ahead of her, more of them did appear; her flagging strength would have let her fall at their feet had she not seen it at the last moment, hardly twenty feet from her—the thing for which she'd been so desperately looking, had not been able to see through the stinging mist that still made things blur uncertainly.... Another door. Another door marked SERVICE EXIT at the top.

She ran through it, breath sucking painfully into her lungs, the surgical gown already wet and clinging to her with ice-cold sweat. A long steel ramp, forty feet above the ground, curving in a gentle half-spiral to the broad street below.

She fled the curving length of it, swiftly past other service exits, her flight becoming more of a fall each split-second than a run, for her legs would not keep up. And then her momentum pitched her headlong into the street and she struggled desperately for balance.

She heard them behind her, feet thundering on the ramp, thundering in her ears.

A silver vehicle sped by, missed her, its undertow plucking at the sodden fabric of her garment. Another, and then suddenly the thundering grew louder and there was no more strength left.

The speeding golden-hued vehicle bore down on her, and Dot screamed, fell headlong in its path.

Doug's error was wide, but mercifully, he had led his target by too great a distance rather than by too little, and the ecliptic had been right. It would not be a chase, but a meeting. He brought Ship QT into a sharp, angling turn when he was sure, and there was silent thanksgiving at his lips as the moon of Earth rolled slowly far below him. And Earth itself became a pale blue bull's eye, growing perceptibly larger with each minute in the viewscreen.

He did not unlock the top button. He could be already many, many hours too late, but there was no knowing.

Like a great torpedo, the ship hurtled toward its target as though to blast it from Space. In eight minutes it would be midway between Earth and its moon, and in nine, Doug would invert, cutting the difference between crash and controlled landing perilously thin.

"Terry, get the dead man's sword and belt. Mike, help me find some tools—anything that even looks like a wrench."

When two of the nine minutes were gone, Doug had found a tool that would serve. When a portion of the third was gone he had a section of the communications panel naked. When seven of them were gone he had its high-kempage pack loose on its bearers, and when there were but seconds left in the ninth, he had it free, and lashed with torn strips of his cloak to one of the hammocks.

"Hold on, now," he said then. His voice was raw and it hurt to talk. There was a dryness in his mouth that made his words fuzzy and indistinct, and his tongue felt swollen enough to choke him. "I want both of you on that hammock—get that thing between you, strap yourselves down, and then hold onto it for all your life. When we land, get the straps off quickly, and—" he clenched his teeth, had to push the words through them, "—and have your swords ready. I'll take care of the rest; you just follow me. Understand, boys?"

They nodded silently, strapping themselves securely to the hammock.

Three seconds ... two, one. Release the top button. Press the panel full around, all the way ... there go the bow belly-jets—stern jets topside.... Top button, all the way in, twist it—

The Moon swam into the viewscreen, was shrinking fast, too fast. No, slowing a little....

He swung the screen to full stern, and Earth was rushing up, not quite yet filling it.

Speed in thousands per second ... sixteen ... fifteen point five—fifteen. The needle fell so slowly. Gravs were coming up, one point five—two full. Over two now, and speed falling a little faster.

Earth filled the screen.

And then he took his eyes from the dials, for he knew that whatever they read, he was at the full mercy of the ship itself. The top button was all the way in, and locked. She was giving all she had.

When the grav indicator quivered at four, Doug slumped to the deck, unable to stand. He rolled to his back, winced, and tried to keep his eyes on the grav needle.

They blurred, stung in oceans of hot tears. The shrill siren-scream of atmosphere pierced the thick, heavily insulated hull and Doug knew what was coming—heat, unbearable heat.

His short gasps seared his mouth, and his heart was like a gigantic pile-driver inside him, struggling to burst its way through his chest.

And then as though it had all been but part of a timed experiment in some weird laboratory, the sensation of being crushed to death began to abate. He could see the grav needle again, and it had already fallen back to two. Speed was now in unit miles per hour, and the figures were dropping from nine hundred.

Doug forced himself to his feet.

"Dad ... Dad, are we O.K.? Dad?"

"Maybe," he said.

When the grav needle was steady at One, Doug reduced thrust to hold them hovering at a little more than two hundred thousand feet over the Atlantic, with the coastline of what to him was France almost directly below.

A sickening, quick drop and the horizon-ecliptic indicator showed parallel flight, and Doug could feel the thrust of the belly engines beneath his feet. Then he pressed the bottom button, then the middle, and the Atlantic was rushing beneath them. Carefully, he depressed the next one up. All the way in, he locked it. The velocity figure in unit miles per hour was fifteen thousand.

Eleven minutes later he cut the power again, slowed, brought the ship once more on its stern, and began his descent over Washington.

Within moments they would spot him, would be ready.

It would have to be fast, miles from the central space-port—a suburb, near a highway.

He let her fall fast. Ten thousand. Eight. Four.

He tilted, angled a little north and west, then dropped again.

At five hundred feet he trebled the power, and it was as though a great 'chute had snapped open above them.

Three hundred feet—the highway perhaps a quarter of a mile distant.

No one down there, but they could be hiding, waiting.

Fifty feet. Had to time it just so, now....

The last ten feet they fell.

CHAPTER XIX

He estimated that there would be five minutes at the most before the area was flooded with S-men. The rest of the gamble hinged entirely on what they succeeded in doing, or failed to do, within the space of a few hundred heart-beats.

They made the roadside in little more than a minute after leaving the ship. Terry and Mike lay prone in the wide drainage gutter, their swords drawn, their bodies camouflaged by a few handfuls of hastily hacked scrub brush.

Doug stood at the side of the superhighway, the power-pack at his feet, his shredded cloak in his hands to wave.

The traffic seemed light for so late in the afternoon. The sun was hot, and he was breathing heavily from the stumbling, desperate run across the small, rutted field. The ship towered above what few trees there were, and it marked them for a target.

A streamlined shape was racing toward him. It seemed to take all the strength he had left to wave the cape, and he wondered if he were waving it at searching S-men....

The vehicle sped by, whipping the cape in its undertow. It was going nearly two hundred miles an hour, and there was no driver inside it. A robot carrier.

Thirty seconds went by before the next one came. It was going slower, and it too was driverless.

Doug glanced at the sky. To the west, high, tiny dots—

It was a full minute before the next one came. With both hands, cloak dropped because it was too heavy, Doug waved, and the vehicle was slowing.

"Ready, boys...." There was a slight rustle behind him as they came to their knees.

The driver stopped his car almost abreast of him, and opened the passenger door.

"What's the trouble? You crack up? While we're riding you can use the autophone—"

Doug moved into the vehicle slowly, then lashed out at the man's head with the smooth, heavy rock that was in his left hand. In his exhaustion he struck only a glancing blow, and there was barely time for a second, but the second connected, and the driver slumped, jammed behind his semi-circular steering wheel.

"Mike, Terry—"

In a moment the helicopter would have him spotted, or an S-Council patrol car would be braking beside him.

They hauled the driver out, left him at the road side. He was not dead, and Doug was curiously thankful for that. He had killed one man already....

He wasted a second for another glance at the sky. Closer now, and it was obvious that they had spotted the ship. He had to get the vehicle in motion somehow. A robot sped by, its air wake rocking them slightly. He had the pack on the seat beside him, and Terry was slamming the door.

No clutch or brake pedal. Only one pedal, and it could only be an accelerator. But pivoted in the middle. There was no sound to the engine, no way to tell if it were running because the only dash instrument was a speed indicator.

He pressed the pedal forward. And they did not move. Backward, then....

It moved. In five seconds the speed needle was climbing past eighty, going smoothly upward.

He wondered if they had been seen.

In a dash mirror he saw Terry and Mike turning their heads up, looking through the curved transparent metal top.

"Must be a hunnerd of 'em—they're starting to land I think!"

"All of them?"

"I guess so—wait! Yeah, he's gonna land, too, I guess. I can't see 'em anymore. Gosh, we're sure moving."

"Creepers, a hundred and eighty! Hey Dad, where are we going, anyway?"

"To the headquarters hospital building. I think—I think that's where your mother is."

"Is she hurt?"

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

He pressed his heel to the floor-board. He was glad for Tayne's sword at his side. Even for the ones the boys carried.

The sign said City of Washington, District of Columbia, Population 531,423. Speed Limit 55 MPH.

Doug raised his heel, the car slowed. He frowned. No road-blocks, no pursuit! There had been plently of time since the helicopters had landed—five, six minutes perhaps. They knew where he was going, and were going to let him walk right into it, some neatly conceived trap at the hospital. So they'd be sure to have him alive ... alive, to be used as an example!

Savagely, he heeled the pedal down. Let them be waiting—they were fools if they hadn't figured on the swords! Or—or he was a fool, for counting on them.

The car's tires wailed as he rounded the long, curving turn that brought him onto St. Jefferson Way, past the Payne Monument, and within two blocks of the headquarters building hospital wing.

The traffic was thickening, planned of course to make things look as natural as possible—not to arouse his suspicion at the last moment....

"Get those swords ready, kids...."

He heard them scrape from their scabbards.

And without warning the form of a woman darted into his path. He swerved, jammed the pedal forward, and the car rocked sickenly.

And he had seen her face in that one awful second—it was Dot who had fallen in the street behind him!

The boys were at his heels as he leapt from the car. There were white-clad men rushing toward them, and he had Dot's form in his arms as the first of them closed in.

There was the quick blink of sunlight on steel as Mike and Terry swung their weapons.

And as though stunned, the men in white stopped short, suddenly silent, awkwardly-poised statues.

Doug knew the spell would last for seconds at best. The half-naked boys stood grimly, feet wide apart, sword-hilts grasped in both hands.

Doug, with Dot's limp body in his arms, broke for the car.

"Come on!"

And Terry and Mike were at his heels. The men in white broke their frozen ranks then and swarmed over the small area of street that the two broadswords had commanded for the telling few seconds.

Doug bolted the vehicle into motion. And then they were free.

"What dopes," Mike was saying. "Were they scared! I bet they didn't figure we'd be ready to fight 'em! But who did we—?"

"Boys, see what you can do for your mother. It is your mother, she just looks different, like we do...."

"Mother—"

"Hurry up. She's just fainted, that's all. We didn't hit her."

Dot was conscious when they arrived at the house, and she was managing to speak.

"Are they—"

"The boys, yes Dot. Our boys. Now look, we've got to run for it. I'll carry you, and you hang on to the pack.... Mike, Terry—"

"Ready, Dad. Will there be many?"

"I don't know. Maybe none, but if there aren't, it'll only be for a very few minutes. Let's go!"

They ran, and the boys burst through the front door with their swords lunging at emptiness.

"The cellar!"

He heard them clamber down the steel stairs.

"It's O.K. Dad—come on!"

Dot's face was white, and her eyes were open wide. He carried her as gently as he could, but she had never been so terribly heavy in his arms.

It happened at the cellar doorway, at the top of the stairs.

He stumbled, fought for balance, fell to one knee, clutched hard and Dot screamed.

But he held her, and her arms were choking at his neck.

And there was a crashing, clanging noise as the power-pack fell from her, caromed from step to step, and lay finally in a shattered ruin on the cellar floor.

CHAPTER XX

Slowly, Doug straightened, descended the stairs with Dot's trembling body still in his arms. The boys stood motionless.

There was only the sound of Dot's quiet sobbing, and that of Doug's boots as they struck hollow sounds from the steel stair treads, moved heavily as though fitted to the legs of an awkward robot to scatter the shattered bits of the power-pack tubes and crush them as they came underfoot.

Gently, he put her down. The boys knelt at either side of her, Doug himself before her.

"Don't, please don't, Dot," he said.

"Oh, Doug—"

And then she clung to him, and her face was wet against his own, but they were the last of her tears.

"Afraid?"

"No. Scared a little, but just scared. I don't fear them, Doug ... they're not worth enough to fear."

Mike and Terry had gone over to where the Contraption was, had pulled off its dust-cover, and stood looking at it as though puzzled, as though wondering why, so suddenly, it had become a worthless thing.

"Nobody's touched it, Dad," Doug heard Mike saying. "I don't think anybody's done anything to it."

Doug didn't answer, for he did not know how to tell them, how to make them know that there was no way.

"I just—just dropped it, Doug...."

He tried to smile, and his face felt old and tired. "We were overdue anyway," he said. "Way overdue. I guess it's against the rules to beat the odds forever."

"I just ... just dropped it...."

"Don't, don't my darling. It wasn't you, don't you understand? It wasn't you, or me—the little fight we made just prolonged things for awhile. Sort of like living itself, I guess. The big system. You can let it sweep you along as it will or you can fight it if you're fool enough...."

"Doug! Doug, you don't believe those things!"

He felt the muscles of his face tighten, and he said nothing. No, no he did not believe them, but what difference did that make? It was the ways things were that mattered!

He picked up the broadsword Terry had let fall.

"How long—how long will it be, Doug?"

Her voice was calm; there was even a faint flush of color in her face again.

"I don't know," he said. "For awhile at least, this might seem the least logical place."

"Dad, what's in this big box? Hey, Dad!"

He stood up, turned toward them. The kids—so full of life and the love of living, so full of the myriad curiosities that made living a colorful vibrant thing.

"This one here. Over here—a big tall wooden one."

Doug heard her quick intake of breath, turned to her.

"Before the telecall, Doug. Before they took me. A helicopter came, from the electronics place ... they brought that box, and I—"

In quick strides he was beside Mike and Terry, and everything inside him was suddenly churned up, cold, hot....

Mike had wrenched a section of planking loose, had reached inside.

"I got the label, Dad.... High-Speed Blower-Rack, With Double Blower, Model 4-L532, two each—"

The final, hellish irony. As though it were not enough to fail, but to be mocked as he failed, as though Fate—or was it Providence?—could not close the incident without at least a gentle laugh at him, a cruel laugh to make light of all his confusion, his efforts and all that had driven him to make them. Doug wondered if there would be enough of the strength he would need, when he died, to laugh back.

The planking squawked as Terry pried with Mike's broadsword.

"Maybe it can help, Dad ... maybe it can," Terry said, and he continued the prying. Mike pulled at it, and there were louder squawks as the nails protestingly surrendered.

Doug wanted to stop them, to tell them, but there could be such a little time left, and if it kept them busy there might not be time for them to become afraid.

He watched them as they ripped the top from the crate, eagerly began hauling out its contents.

Four large, wide-bladed fans, each perhaps sixteen inches in diameter, and each driven by a compact electric motor. They were coaxially mounted on tall, slender chromium plated racks and could be adjusted on them to meet any conceivable experiment in ventilation engineering.

Doug said nothing, let them continue. It might not even be necessary to tell them that their discovery was nothing more than two ingeniously designed air conditioning units.

He wondered why they had come at all. The Prelatinate-Attorney's idea, perhaps, of a not-too-subtle jest. That, or even a veiled warning.

There was more squawking of wood, and in a few moments Mike and Terry had each of the units placed beside each other on the cellar floor.

"There's other junk here too," Terry was saying. "Pulleys and stuff, Dad. And a sheet of directions or something. Here, look Dad ... maybe it'll help."

Doug looked at the smudged sheet of plastisheet that Terry had thrust in his hand. Only simple diagrams, indicating the use and assembly of the pulleys for desired variations in blower speeds. Even the simple rheostat, Doug mused, was taboo....

He crumpled the sheet, let it fall to the floor.

And suddenly grabbed it up again, smoothed it, looked again at the last sentence! ... each motor operates on regular household direct current of 250 Kemps, as authorized by ...

Two hundred fifty Kemps—and there were four of the motors!

"Dot! Dot those tools by the Contraption! And any scrap wire there—hurry!"

He worked with inhuman swiftness of desperation. Dot knelt beside him, handed him tool by tool as he asked for it, as though she were a scrub nurse and he the surgeon, with a patient that might have but moments to live.

And silently, Terry and Mike watched, eyes wide with wonderment. They watched as Doug equipped two of the motors with the large pulleys, the two others with pulleys of less than half their diameter. Then he linked them with the flat rubber belts.

"See if you can get the insulation off the ends of those wires—the ones a couple feet long are all right."

He moved the racks next to the bench, brought them close together, and when Dot handed him the wire, he had the two motors on which he had placed the small pulleys denuded of their streamlined jackets. It was between those two that he made a simple connection in series.

"Terry, Mike—while I'm making connections to the Contraption, see if you can get the fan blades off their shafts."

Two connections—two simple connections....

He finished the second connection.

"One more fan to go, Dad—"

He plugged the two outer motors with the large pulleys into the wall outlets above the bench. Then his fingers waited on the switches.

"But Doug, the fan motors will only work on house current—"

"Yes, that's right, but I've geared—pulleyed, I mean—two of them up, so that they'll turn the other two at least twice their normal armature speed. And the simple electric motor works—"

"—in reverse, too, doesn't it! If you turn it by mechanical means, it generates electric current!"

"That's about it. I ought to get about five hundred volts from each, with the pulley ratio I'm using. And they're both connected in series, so—a thousand volts, I hope. Childish, isn't it—"

There was sudden chaos above them.

"Doug—"

Terry dropped the last fan-blade to the floor.

Doug pressed the switches, and the two electric motors spun into humming, whirring motion, driving the other two at a speed he knew might burn them out in minutes. Then he closed the Contraption's main switch, and pulled Terry and Mike bodily to him with one arm as he held tightly to Dot with the other.

S-men swarmed down the cellar stairs.

CHAPTER XXI

A dozen men clad in white uniforms of the S-Council surrounded them, and there were weapons in their hands.

Senior Quadrate Blair understood. Partially, he understood. He had been reading a banner headline, and then suddenly—suddenly there had been an indescribable moment of utter dark, of awful timelessness—and cold. And there was still the cold, tangible and fluorescing in a green-blue flame about him. Through it he could see the white blurs—the men in white. S-men....

"Lisa—" He felt her beside him, crushing their two sons to her trembling body. He could see their faces, then—upturned to his, pleading, afraid. "The change. Somehow my counterpart, my imposing alter-ego has succeeded, Lisa! He has found his way back, and in so doing he has returned the four of us...."

And then the green glow and the cold was gone, and there was no more time to speak.

"Stand where you are! You have only to move to—Madame Blair!"

The leader of the white-uniformed band had half-succeeded in masking his initial amazement, but now the surprise on his heavy face was a naked thing. The others stood as statues to each side of him.

There was an awful moment of silence, and the weapon-muzzles held steady, even if the dozen hands that gripped them were momentarily incapable of flexing trigger-fingers.

And then the Senior Quadrate had found his full voice.

"There has of course been some error. S-men do not enter the home of a Senior Quadrate—"

And Lisa's voice cut across her husband's.

"They—Douglas, these aren't—aren't S-men! I recognize him—the leader! Mylor Kuun...."

"Of course, Madame," the heavy-faced one said rapidly. "The disguises—a desperate necessity, I assure you. There is very little time, however. Once informed of your escape from the hospital, and of the Senior Quadrate's violation of arrest, it was necessary to act at once to find you. Genuine S-squads cannot be much behind us. We're but one of a number of our groups in the search, and we came to your home only so no possibility might be overlooked. Yet I don't understand—" For a moment a look of puzzled doubt flickered on the underground leader's heavy features. His nervous gaze touched the strange array of forbidden equipment which but moments before had been bathed in the green-blue glow.

"There will be time for explanations later!" Lisa said. She caught herself as she was about to add that what the agent was saying made little sense.

She put a protective arm around each of her still, frightened children. There must be great trouble or the group would not have so brazenly exposed itself, and come here to her home. Something desperate enough so that added confusion might serve only to make a dangerous situation an impossible one.

"But I don't—you said violation of arrest," her husband was saying stubbornly. "I demand a thorough—"

"Your lives are in danger, sir. If we do not move immediately, it will very probably be not at all. Gundar Tayne is relentless, and is reported enroute from Venus to join this search himself."

"Tayne!" Blair's face blanched, then reddened. "The Taynes, you mean! Gundar and Larsen, with Larsen behind it—"

"Sir? You're being tracked down for—they say, for murdering Larsen. Please follow us sir, Madame...." The look of puzzled bewilderment deepened on the underground leader's face as he motioned his men in screening flanks surrounding the four. One of the men handed him a white bundle from a compact equipment-pack on his back.

"You had better get these on. We would say we have captured your boys—"

They were S-Council uniforms, and the Quadrate and his wife donned them quickly; Blair doing so more in hesitant imitation of Lisa's frantic haste than from the desperation of a situation which he only half-understood.

Murdered Larsen Tayne? Then ... yes of course. The other Blair. But why should the other Blair hate Tayne so? He was of a different Earth, of course.... He would think like those of his own world. He would hate all this world stood for. Hate Tayne for his overbearing, brutish use of authority—criminal cleverness at deception.

Suddenly, he knew the confusion of panic for the first time in his life. Suddenly, his mind was a boiling thing, and all the brilliant solutions that had been forming in it with split-second rapidity were inexplainably invalid, wrong....

And then they were at a half-run, leaving the house, heading for a 'copter painted with the S-Council insigne, counterfeit serial code-numbers beneath it.

In moments, the craft was airborne, and Washington was falling away below them, fading away behind. And now any small thing—an incorrectly acknowledged radio challenge—would undo them, the Quadrate realized, but that was only a part of this terrible gamble they were taking. Gamble, on their very lives, yes—only why? Why?

Slowly, bit by bit, the thing pieced itself together as they flew. A great forest stretched ten miles beneath them, faded, wilted at last into desert as the first shadows of a day dying crept silently upward to engulf them.

In low tones, he and Lisa talked with the heavy-faced leader, and they talked for a long time.

"If it were not for the boys—" Blair murmured finally.

"The boys will be safe with us," Lisa answered. She looked at them, and they were sleeping, hardly looking the part now of young warriors of broadsword and mace. "We will teach them a different way...."

He was silent for long moments. Then: "I cannot understand. I cannot, Lisa. That I have always believed as I have—and he, as we know he did. Yet that we should both have mortal hatred for the same men; he to the point of doing what I did not have courage to do. And now, regardless of what I believe, my own kind are hunting me down."

"They would have, had you had the courage of which you speak—the courage of that conviction. And was it, Douglas, simply a conviction about a single man?"

"I—I don't know." He looked through a port; it was night, and they were speeding silently westward. Then he was looking back to her, and deep into her eyes. He had never felt lost, alone, hunted before. There was something very wrong.

"With us, Douglas ... will you try? To understand—with us?"

"Not because I am hunted."

"No. No. But now is the time for that wanting courage. Another man, too, hated a Tayne, and killed him. Can you help us kill the things that all Taynes stood for? In our way?"

Great mountains were looming before them, and the 'copter was beginning to lower into their darkened maw. And suddenly he felt a new strength in him from depths of his being that were opening to him for the first time. Another man had killed Tayne. And could he—

"But what of the other man?" he suddenly heard himself asking. "What have I done to him? What have I done to his world?"

"He must be a man of great courage." Lisa answered slowly. "I think—I think such a man will find a way to undo what you have done. For such a man, and for such others as he, there is always great hope."

"You will help me, Lisa."

"All of us, Douglas."

"Then that is all I shall need," he said softly.

The 'copter vanished into the mountains.

Terry and Mike came running from Doug's den, a welter of books open on the floor behind them which they had not opened.

Dot was coming from her bedroom. A pistol Doug owned had been in her hand, and she put it in its place in the open drawer from which she had taken it.

"Dot! Kids—the living-room, I'm in the living-room! Dot!"

In a moment they were around him, and they were the Dot and the Mike and the Terry whose faces had been so familiar so long ago.

"I must've—he—I must've been reading this final—look, Dot, my God look—"

She saw the Page One streamer.

"Then he was—he was trying, here, he was trying, Doug.... That was why. When I arrived, I had a pistol in my hand...."

The headline read BLAIR BILL GOES TO HOUSE TOMORROW. And in the three-column drop beneath it: Unanimous Passage Seen—Senate Reported Favorable—President Says He'll Sign Immediately—Draft Of 13's Would Begin Nov. 15—Soviet Terms Measure 'Fantastic.'

"Doug—"

"He's begun it all right. How, I don't know, unless—And beneath the centerfold he read CLERGY LAUDS BLAIR BILL AT PARLEY HERE.

"Had them falling for it, had 'em mainlined all the way!" Doug said.

And then he was going swiftly toward the den, almost at a run.

He pulled a battered chair up to the big desk, lifted his telephone from its cradle almost in a single motion.

Quietly, Dot shut the door behind him. It would be a long time, she knew, before it would open again.

CHAPTER XXII

The night was quiet, and the air was warm and still.

The man and the woman walked close together, and with slow, unmeasured steps, as though the great, slumbering city was a garden, and they were exploring it for the first time.

They did not speak, for their eyes were wide, engrossed simply in seeing.

A soldier passed them, then a man who might have been a store-clerk, a student, a salesman, a clergyman, a scientist.

A young couple approached from the opposite direction, saying quiet things to each other, perhaps deciding intimate, very important plans for some near future time.

They passed an all-night drug store, its gaudy light washing the sidewalk to the curb, limning the wide racks of newspapers and magazines which told their stories in a dozen languages, on a thousand themes.

The streets were wide and empty, but they were not lonely, for in them were the silent echoes of the struggles and victories, big and small, that had been fought, won and lost in them in a day just dying, just to be born again in a few short hours.

The man and woman walked for a long time.

And Douglas Blair thought of what would not happen tomorrow.

Not tomorrow or, perhaps with great care and the forgiveness of the Almighty, not even the day after that.

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