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Title: Subspace Explorers
Author: Smith, Edward E. [Elmer] "Doc" (1890-1965)
Date of first publication: 1965
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Ace Books, [1968]
Date first posted: 25 September 2016
Date last updated: 25 September 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1357

This ebook was produced by Al Haines, Cindy Beyer,
Mark Akrigg & the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada
Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

Chapter VII includes a phrase with two chemical formulas:
"ReS2 and/or Re2S7". The numbers should be read as subscripts,
which is how they appear in the original printed edition.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






SUBSPACE EXPLORERS

by EDWARD E. "DOC" SMITH




For BEN JASON






                            CONTENTS


                I Catastrophe
               II The Zeta Field
              III Deston the Dowser
               IV Organization of the Little Gem
                V Counter-Organization
               VI Maynard Buys the Package
              VII Project Engineer Byrd
             VIII The Battle of New York Spaceport
               IX Rhenia Four
                X The Party
               XI Psiontists
              XII Higher Education
             XIII The Outplanets
              XIV The General Strike
               XV The University of Psionics
              XVI Strategic Withdrawal
             XVII Punsunby's World
            XVIII Hunchers
              XIX Double Agent
               XX The Election
              XXI The Battle of New Russia




                                   I
                               CATASTROPHE


AT TIME zero minus nine minutes First Officer Carlyle Deston, Chief
Electronicist of the starliner _Procyon_, sat attentively at his board.
He was five feet eight inches tall and weighed one hundred sixty two
pounds. Just a little guy, as spacemen go. Although narrow-waisted and,
for his heft, broad-shouldered, he was built for speed and
maneuverability, not to handle freight.

Watching a hundred lights and half that many instruments; listening to
four telephone circuits, two with each ear; hands flashing to toggles
and buttons and knobs; he was completely informed as to the
instant-by-instant condition of everything in his department during
count-down. Everything had been and still was in condition GO.

Nevertheless, he was bothered; bothered as he had never been bothered
before in all his three years of subspacing. He had always had hunches
and they had always been right, but this one was utterly ridiculous. It
wasn't the ship or the trip--nothing was yelling "DANGER!" into his
mind--it was something down in the Middle that was pulling at him like a
cat tractor and it didn't make sense. He _never_ went down into
passenger territory. He had no business there and flirting with
vac-skulled girls was not his dish.

So he fought his hunch down and concentrated on his job. Lift-off was
uneventful; so was the climb out to a safe distance from Earth. At time
zero minus two seconds Deston poised a fingertip over the red button,
but everything stayed in condition GO and immergence into subspace was
perfectly normal. All the green lights except one went out; all the
needles dropped to zero; all four phones went dead; all signals stopped.
He plugged a jack into the socket under the remaining green light and
said:

"_Procyon_ One to Control Six. Flight eight four nine. Subspace radio
test number one. How do you read me, Control Six?"

"Control Six to _Procyon_ One. I read you ten and zero. How do you read
me, _Procyon_ One?"

"Ten and zero. Out." The solitary green light went out and Deston
unplugged.

Perfect signal and zero noise. That was that. From now until
Emergence--unless some robot or computer called for help--he might as
well be a passenger. He leaned back in his seat, lit a cigarette, and
began really to study this wild hunch, that was getting worse all the
time. It was all he could do to keep from calling his relief and going
down there right then; but he couldn't and wouldn't do that. He was on
until plus three hours. He couldn't possibly explain any such break as
that would be, so he stuck it out.

At time zero plus one hundred seventy nine minutes his relief appeared.
"All black, Babe?" the newcomer asked.

"As the pit, Eddie. Take over. You've picked out your girl-friend for
the trip, I suppose?"

While taking the bucket seat, Eddie said, "Not yet. I got sidetracked
watching Bobby Warner..."

A wave of psychic force hit Deston's mind hard enough almost to turn it
inside out; but he clenched his teeth and held his pose.

"... and after seeing her just walk across the lounge once, all the
other women looked like a dime's worth of catmeat. Talk about poetry in
motion!" Eddie rolled his eyes, made motions with his hands, and
whistled expressively. "Oh, _brother_!"

"Okay, okay, don't blow a fuse," Deston said, in what he hoped was his
usual tone and manner. "I know. You'll love her undyingly--all this
trip, maybe."

"Huh? How _dumb_ can you get? D'you think I'd even _try_ to play footsie
with _Barbara Warner_?"

"You play footsie with the pick of the passenger list, so who's Barbara
Warner, to daunt Don Juan Eddie Thompson, the Tomcat of Space?"

"I thought you knew _some_ of the facts of life, Babe. She's Warner's
only child, is all. Warner of WarnOil; the biggest in all space.
Operates in every solar system known to man and never puts down a dry
hole. All gushers that blow their rigs clear up into the stratosphere.
Everybody wonders how come. The poop is, his wife's an oil-witch, is why
he lugs her around with him all the time. Why else would he?"

"Maybe he loves her. It happens, you know."

"Huh? After twenty-some years of her? Comet-gas! Anyway, would _you_
have the sublime gall to make a pass at WarnOil's heiress, with more
millions in her own sock than you've got dimes? If you ever made passes,
I mean."

"Uh-uh. Negative. For sure."

"You nor me neither. But _what_ a dish! _Brother_, what a lovely,
luscious, toothsome _dish_!"

"Cheer up; you'll be raving about another one tomorrow," Deston said
callously, turning away.

"I don't know... maybe; but even if I do, _she_ won't be anything
like _her_," Eddie mourned, to the closing door.

Deston didn't go to his cabin; didn't take off his sidearm. He didn't
even think of it; the .41 automatic at his hip was as much a part of his
uniform as his pants.

Entering the lounge, he did not have to look around. She was playing
contract, and as eyes met eyes and she rose to her feet a shock-wave
went through him that made him feel as though every hair he had was
standing straight on end.

She was about five feet four. Her hair was a startlingly brilliant
artificial yellow; her eyes a deep, cool blue. She could have made the
Miss Western Hemisphere finals. Deston, however, did not notice any of
these details--then.

"Excuse me, please," she said to the other three at her table. "I must
go now." She tossed her cards down onto the table and walked straight
toward him; eyes still holding eyes.

He backed hastily out into the corridor, and as the door closed behind
her they went naturally and wordlessly into each other's arms. Lips met
lips in a kiss that lasted for a long time. It was not a passionate
embrace--passion would come later--it was as though each of them, after
endless years of bootless, fruitless longing, had come at long last
home.

"Come with me, dear, where we can talk," she said finally, eyeing with
disfavor the half-dozen spectators; and, in her suite a few minutes
later, Deston said:

"So _this_ is why I had to come down into passenger territory. You came
aboard at exactly zero seven forty three."

"Uh-uh." She shook her head. "A few minutes before that; that was when I
read your name on the board. First Officer, Carlyle Deston. It simply
unraveled me; I came completely unzipped. It's wonderful that you're so
strongly psychic, too."

"I don't know about that," he said, thoughtfully. "Psionics says that
that the map is the territory, but all my training has been based on the
axiom that it isn't. I've had hunches all my life, but the signal
doesn't carry much information. Like hearing a siren while you're
driving a ground-car. You know you have to pull over and stop, but
that's all you know. It could be police, fire, ambulance--_anything_.
Anybody with any psionic ability at all ought to do a lot better than
that, I should think."

"Not necessarily. You don't _want_ to believe it, so you've been
fighting it; beating it down. So it has to force its way through
whillions and skillions of ohms of resistance to get through to you at
all. But I _know_ you're very strongly psychic, or you wouldn't've come
down here..." she giggled suddenly "... and you'd've jumped clear
out into subspace when a perfectly strange girl attacked you. So...
aren't you going to ask me to marry you?"

"Of course I am." He blushed hotly. "Will you? Right now?"

"You can't without resigning, can you? They'd fire you?"

"What of it? I can get a good ground job."

"But you wouldn't _like_ a ground job!"

"What of that, too. A man grows up. Between you and any job in the
universe there's no choice."

"I knew you'd say that, Carl." She hugged his elbow against her side.
"I'd _love_ to get married right now...." She paused.

"Except for what?" he asked.

"I thought at first I'd tell my parents first--they're aboard, you
know--but I won't. She'd scream and he'd roar and neither of them could
make me change my mind, so we _will_ do it right now."

He looked at her questioningly; she shrugged and went on, "We aren't
what you could call a happy family. She's been trying to make me marry
an old goat of a prince and I finally told her to go roll her hoop--to
get a divorce and marry the foul old beast herself. And he's been
pushing me to marry an oil-man--to consolidate two empires--that it
makes me sick at the stomach just to look at! Last week he _insisted_ on
it and I blew an atomic bomb. I'd keep on finding oil and stuff for him,
I said, but..." She broke off as Deston stiffened involuntarily.

"Oil?" he asked, too quietly. "You're the oil-witch, then; not your
mother. Besides having more megabucks in your own right than any...."

"Don't say it, dearest!" She seized both his hands in hers. "I know how
you feel. I don't like to let you ruin your career, either, but
_nothing_ can come between us now that we've found each other. So I'll
tell you this." Her eyes looked steadily into his. "If it bothers you
that much I'll give every dollar I own to some foundation or other. I
swear it."

He laughed shamefacedly as he took her into his arms. "_That's_ knocking
me for the well-known loop, sweetheart. I'll live with it and like it."

Then, to get away from that subject, he explored with knowing fingers
the muscles of her arms and back. "You're trained down as fine as I am
and it's my business to be--how come?"

"I majored in Phys. Ed. and I love it. And I'm a Newmartian, you know,
so I teach a few courses...."

"Newmartian? But I thought--aren't the headquarters of all the big
outfits, including WarnOil, on Tellus?"

"In a way. Management, yes, but very little property. Everything
possible is owned on Newmars and we Warners have always lived there. The
tax situation, you know."

"I didn't know; taxes don't bother me much. But go ahead. You teach a
few courses. In?"

"Oh, bars, trapeze, ground-and-lofty tumbling, acrobatics, aerialistics,
highwire work, muscle-control, unarmed combat--all that sort of thing."

"Ouch! So if you ever happen accidentally to get mad at me you'll tie me
up into a pretzel?"

She laughed. "A pleasant thought; but you know as well as I do that a
good big man can take a good little one every time."

"But I'm not big. I'm just a little squirt."

"You outweigh me by forty pounds and I know just how good space officers
have to be. You're _exactly_ the right size."

"For the first time in my life I'm beginning to think so." Laughing, he
put his arm around her and led her up to a full-length mirror. "We're a
mighty well-matched pair... I like us immensely... well, shall we
go see the chaplain? Or should we look for a priest--or maybe a rabbi?"

"We _don't_ know each other very well, do we? But we'll have all the
rest of our lives to learn unimportant details. The chaplain, please.
Let's go."

They went; still talking. "You'll live with me in the suite, won't you?"
she asked. "All the time you aren't on duty?"

"I can't imagine anything else."

"Wonderful! Now I want to talk seriously for a minute. You'll never need
a job, nor any of my money, either. Not ever. The thought of dowsing
never even entered your mind, did it?"

"Dowsing? Oh, witching stuff. Of course not."

"Listen, darling. All the time I've been touching you I've been learning
about you--and you've been learning about me."

"Yes but..."

"No buts, buster. You actually have tremendous powers; ever so much
greater than mine. All I can do is feel oil, water, coal, and gas. I'm
no good at all on metals--I couldn't feel gold if I were perched right
on the ridgepole of Fort Knox. But if you'll stop fighting that terrific
power of yours and really _use_ it I'm positive that you can dowse
anything you want to. Even uranium."

He didn't believe it, and the argument went on until they reached the
chaplain's office. Then, of course, it was dropped automatically; and
the next five days were deliciously, deliriously, ecstatically happy
days for them both.

****

At the time of this chronicle starships were the safest means of
transportation ever used by man; but there was, of course, an occasional
accident. Worse than the accidents however--but fortunately much
rarer--were the complete disappearances: starships from which no
distress signal was ever received and of which no trace was ever found.

And on the Great Wheel of Fate the _Procyon_'s number came up.

In the middle of the night Carlyle Deston came instantaneously
awake--deep down in his mind a huge, terribly silent voice was roaring
"DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!" He did not take time to think or to reason: he
grabbed Barbara around the waist and leaped out of bed with her.

"Trouble, Bobby! Get into your suit--quick!"

"But... but I've _got_ to dress!"

"No time! Snap it up!" He stuffed her into her suit; leaped into his
own. "Control!" he snapped into its microphone. "Disaster! Abandon
Ship!"

The alarm bells clanged once; the big red lights flashed once; the
sirens barely started to growl, then quit. The whole vast fabric of the
ship shuddered as though it were being mauled by a thousand and
impossibly gigantic hammers.

And out in the corridor: "Come on, girl, sprint!" He put his hand under
her arm and urged her along.

She tried, but her best wasn't good. "I've never been checked out on
sprinting in space-suits, so you'd better..."

Everything went out. Lights, artificial gravity,
air-circulation--everything.

"You've never been checked out on null-gee, either, so hang on and we'll
travel."

"Where to?" she asked, hurtling through the air faster than she would
have believed possible.

"Baby Two--Lifecraft Number Two, that is--my crash assignment. Good
thing I was down here with you--I don't think anybody'll make it from
the Top. Next turn left, then right. I'll swing you."

At the lifecraft he kicked a lever and a port swung open--to reveal a
blaze of light and a startled gray-haired man who, half-floating in air,
was hanging on to a fixture with both hands.

"What happened?" the man asked. "I didn't know whether..."

"Wrecked. Null-gee and high radiation. I'll have to put you in the safe
for a while." Deston shoved the oldster into a small room, gave him a
line, and turned to Barbara. "My tell-tale reads twenty--pink--so we've
got a few minutes. Wrap a leg around that lever there and I'll see if I
can find some passengers and toss 'em to you. Or is null-gee getting to
you too much?"

"I'm pretty gulpy, but I can take it."

"Good girl--you may have to take a lot of it."

The first five doors he tried were locked. The sixth was not; but the
couple inside the room were very gruesomely dead. So was everyone else
he could find until he came to a room in which a man in a space-suit was
floundering helplessly in the air. He glanced at his tell-tale. Thirty
two. High red. Time to go.

In the lifecraft he closed the port, cut in the launcher, and slammed on
a one-gravity drive away from the ship. Then he shucked Barbara out of
her suit and shed his own. He unclamped a fire-extinguisher-like affair;
opened the door of a tiny room. "In here!" He shut the door behind them.
"Strip, quick!" He cradled the device and opened four valves.

Fast as he was, she was naked and ready for the gush of thick, creamy
foam from the multiplex nozzle. "Oh, Dekon?" she asked. "I've read about
it. I rub it in good, all over me?"

"That's right. Short for 'Decontaminant, Complete; Compound, Absorbant,
and Chelating; Type DCQ.' It takes care of radiation, but speed is of
the essence. All over you is right." He placed the foam-gun on the floor
and went vigorously to work. "Eyes, too, yes. _Everywhere._ Just that.
And swallow six gulps of it... that's it. I slap a gob of it over
your nose and mouth and you inhale once--hard and deep. One good one's
enough, but if it isn't a good one you die of lung cancer, so I'll have
to knock you out and give it to you while you're unconscious, and that
isn't good--complications. So make it good and deep?"

"Will do. Good and deep." She emptied her lungs.

He put a headlock on her and slapped the Dekon on. She inhaled, hard and
deep, and went into paroxysms of coughing. He held her in his arms until
the worst of it was over; but she was still coughing hard when she
pulled herself away from him.

"But--you? Lemme--help--you--quick!"

"No need, sweetheart. The old man won't need it--I got him into the safe
in time--the other guy and I will work on each other. Lie down on the
bunk there and take it easy for half an hour."

Forty minutes later, while all four were still cleaning up the messes of
foam, the chattering sender stopped sending and the communicator came
on. Since everything about a starship is designed to fail safe, they
were of course in normal space. On the screens many hundreds of stars
blazed, in half the colors of the spectrum.

"Baby Three acknowledging," the speaker said. "Jones and
four--deconned--who's calling and how's your subspace communicator?"

"Baby Two, Deston and three. Mine's dead, too. Thank God, Herc! With
_you_ to astrogate us maybe well make it. But how'd you get away? Not
down from the Top, that's for sure."

Vision came on; a big, square-jawed, lean, tanned face appeared upon the
screen. "We were in Baby Three already."

"Oh." Deston was quick on the uptake. "You, too?"

"That's right. But the way the old man chewed you out, I knew he'd slap
me in irons, so we hid out. We found three men before high red. I
deconned Bun, then..."

"Bun?" Barbara exclaimed. "Bernice Burns? How _wonderful_!"

"Bobby!" The face of a silver-haired beauty appeared beside Jones'.
"_Am_ I glad you got away too!"

"Just a sec," Deston said. "Data for rendezvous, Herc.... Hey! My
watch stopped--so did the chron!"

"Here too," Jones said. "So I'll handle it on visual."

"But it's non-magnetic--and _nothing_ can stop an atomichron!" Deston
protested.

"But something did," the gray-haired man said. "A priceless datum.
Observations of fact have already invalidated twenty four of the thirty
eight best theories of hyperspace. I take it that none of you were in
direct contact with the metal of the ship at the time of disaster?"

"We weren't," Deston said. Then, to the younger stranger, "You? And
identity, please."

"I know _that_ much. Henry Newman, crew chief normal space."

"Your passengers, Herc?"

"Vincent Lopresto, financer, and his two bodyguards. They were sleeping
in their suits. Grounders."

"Just so," the old man said. "Insulated, we acquired the charge very
gradually. What did the bodies look like?"

Deston thought for a moment. "Almost as if they had exploded."

"Precisely." Gray-Hair beamed. "That eliminates all the others except
three--Morton's, Rothstein's, and my own."

"You're a specialist in subspace, sir?"

"Oh, no, I'm not a specialist at all. I'm a dabbler; a..."

"In the College?" Deston asked, and the other nodded.

"With doctorates in everything from astronomy to zoology? I'm mighty
glad you were using this lifecraft for an observatory when we got it,
Doctor...?"

"Adams. Andrew Adams. But I have only eight at the moment. Earned
degrees, that is."

"And you have a lot of apparatus in the hold?"

"Less than six tons. Just what I must have in order to..."

"Babe," Jones' voice broke in. "Got you figured. Power two, alpha
eighteen, beta forty three...."

Rendezvous with the _Procyon_'s hulk was made; both lifecrafts hung
motionless relative to it. No other lifecraft had escaped. A conference
was held. Weeks of work would be necessary to determine the ship's
condition. Hundreds of other tasks would have to be performed, and there
were only nine survivors. Everyone would have to work, and work hard.

The two girls wanted to be together. So did the two officers; since, as
long as they lived or until the _Procyon_ made port, all responsibility
rested: first, upon First Officer Carlyle Deston; and second, upon
Second Officer Theodore Jones. Therefore Jones and Bernice came aboard
Lifecraft Two and Deston asked Newman to go over to Lifecraft Three.

"Uh-uh, I like the scenery here a lot better." Newman's eyes raked
Bernice's five feet nine of scantily-clad sheer beauty from ankles to
coiffure.

"As you were, Mister Jones!" Deston rasped, and Jones subsided. Deston
went on, very quietly, "As crew chief, Newman, you know the law. I am in
command."

"You ain't in command of _me_, pretty boy. Not out here where nobody has
ever come back from. I make my own law--with _this_." Newman patted his
side pocket.

"Draw it, then, or crawl." Deston's face was coldly calm; his right hand
still hung motionless at his side.

Newman glanced at the girls, both of whom were frozen; then at Jones,
who smiled at him pityingly. "I... my... but yours is right where
you can get at it," he faltered.

"You should have thought of that sooner. I'm waiting, Newman."

"Just wing him, Babe," Jones said then. "He's strong enough, except in
the head. We may need his back."

"Uh-uh. I'll have to kill him sometime, so it might as well be now.
Square between the eyes. A hundred bucks I'm two millimeters off dead
center?"

Both girls gasped and stared at each other in horror; but Jones said
calmly, without losing any part of his smile, "Not a dime; I've lost too
much that way already,"--at which outrageous statement both girls
realized what was going on and smiled in relief.

And Newman misinterpreted those smiles completely; especially Bernice's.
The words came hard, but he said them. "I crawl."

"Crawl, what?"

"I crawl, sir."

"Your first job will be to build some kind of a brute-force device to
act as a clock. One more break will be your last. Flit."

Newman flitted--fast--and Barbara, who had opened her mouth to say
something, shut it. No, he would have killed the man; he would have had
to. He still might have to. So she said, instead,

"Why'd you let him keep his pistol? The... the _slime_! And after you
saved his life, too!"

"Typical of the type. One gun won't make any difference."

"But you can lock up _all_ their guns, can't you?"

"I'm afraid not. Lopresto's a mobster, isn't he, Herc?"

"If he's a financier I'm an angel--complete with wings and halo. They'll
have guns hidden out all over the place."

"Check. You and I'll go over and..."

"And I," Adams said. "I must tri-di everything, and do some autopsies,
and..."

"Of course," Deston agreed. "With a Big Brain along--oh, excuse that
crack, please, Doctor Adams. It slipped out on me."

Adams laughed. "In context, I regard that as the highest compliment I
have ever received. In these circumstances you need not 'Doctor' me.
'Adams' will do very nicely."

"I'm going to call you 'Uncle Andy'," Barbara said with a grin. "Now,
Uncle Andy, in view of what you said, one of your eight doctorates is in
medicine."

"Naturally."

"Are you any good at obstetrics?"

"In the present instance I feel perfectly safe in saying..."

"Wait a minute!" Deston snapped. "Bobby, you are _not_..."

"I am too! That is, I don't suppose I _am_ yet, but with him aboard I'm
certainly _going_ to. I _want_ to, and if _we_ don't get back both Bun
and I will _have_ to. Castaways' Code. So there!"

Deston started to say something, but Barbara forestalled him. "But for
right now, it's high time we all got some sleep."

It was and they did; and next morning the three men wafted themselves
across a few hundred yards of space to the crippled liner. Floodlights
were rigged.

"What... a... mess." Deston's voice was low and wondering. "The
Top especially... but the Middle and the Tail don't look too bad."

Inside, however, devastation had gone deep into the Middle. Walls,
floors, and structural members were sheared and torn and twisted into
shapes impossible to understand or explain. And, even worse, there were
_absences_. In dozens of volumes, of as many sizes and of shapes
incompatible with any three-dimensional geometry, every solid thing had
simply vanished--vanished without leaving any clue whatever as to how or
where it could possibly have gone.

It took four days to clean the ship of Dekon foam and to treat the hot
spots that the automatics had missed. Four long days of heartbreaking
labor in weightlessness and four too-short nights of sleep in the
heavenly--to seven of them, at least--artificial gravity of the
lifecraft. With the hulk deconned to zero (all ruptured radiators had of
course been blown automatically at the time of catastrophe) Jones and
Deston went over the engine rooms item by item.

The subspace drives were fused ruins. Enough normal-space gear was in
working order, however, so that they could put on one gravity of drive,
which was a vast relief to all. Then Jones began to jury-rig an
astrogation set-up and Deston went to help Adams.

A few evenings later Adams said, "Well, that covers all the preliminary
observations I am equipped to make. Thanks a lot for your help, Babe, I
won't bother you any more for a while."

Deston grinned ruefully. "You'll have to, Doc. I don't mean the
routine--clean-up, bodies, effects, and so on--Lopresto's handling that.
You've learned a lot of stuff that none of the rest of us can make head
or tail of. That makes you the director; we're only the cheap help."

"I've learned scarcely anything yet; only that when we approach any
planet we must do so with extreme--I might almost say
fantastic--precautions."

"Blasting at normal, it'll be a mighty long time before we have to worry
about that."

"Not as long as you think, Babe," Jones said. "We're in toward the
center of the galaxy somewhere; stars are a lot thicker here. It's only
about a third of a light-year to the nearest one. Point three five, I
make it."

"But what's the chance of its having a Tellus-Type planet?"

"Oh, that isn't necessary," Adams said. "Any planet will, it is
virtually certain, enable us to restore subspace communication."

"It'll still be a mighty long haul," Deston said. "The shape the engines
are in, I doubt if they'll stand up under more than about one gee on a
long pull. We can't do much better than that anyway, because we've got
no grav-control--the Q-converters are all shot and we can't fix 'em."

"We'll travel at _one_ gravity," Barbara said. "Babies; remember?"

"I'll figure it that way," Deston said, and went to work with his
slide-rule. A few minutes later he reported, "Neglecting the Einstein
Effect, which is altogether too hairy for a slipstick, I make it about
fourteen months. But since velocity at turnover will be crowding
six-tenths of a light, that neglect makes it just a guess."

"We'll compute it tomorrow morning," Jones said. "For your information,
all, we're heading for that star now."




                                   II
                             THE ZETA FIELD


THE tremendous Chaytor engines of the _Procyon_ were again putting out
their wonted torrents of power. The starship, now a mere spaceship, was
on course at one gravity. The lifecraft were in their berths, but the
five and the four still lived in them rather than in the vast and
oppressive emptiness that the liner then was. And outside of working
hours the two groups did not mix.

In Lifecraft Three, four men sat at two tables. Ferdy Blaine and Moose
Mordan were playing cards for small stakes. Ferdy was of medium size,
lithe and poised, built of rawhide and spring steel. Moose the Muscle
was six feet five and weighed a good two sixty. The two at the other
table had been planning for days. They had had many vitriolic arguments,
but neither had made any motion toward his weapon.

"Play it my way and we've got it made, I tell you!" Newman pounded the
table with his fist. "Seventy five _megabucks_ if it's a dime! Heavier
loot than your second-string syndicate ever even _thought_ of in one
haul! I'm almost as good an astrogator as Jones is and a better
engineer, and at _practical_ electronics I'm just as good as Pretty Boy
Deston is."

"Oh, yeah?" Lopresto sneered. "How come you're only a crew chief, then?"

"_Only_ a crew chief!" Newman yelled. "D'ya think I'm dumb or something?
Or don't know where the big moola is at? Or ain't in exactly the right
spot to collect right and left? Or I ain't got exactly the right
connections? With Mister Big himself? You ain't _that_ dumb!"

"Dumb or not, before I make a move I've got to be _sure_ that we can get
back without 'em."

"You can be _damn_ sure. I got to get back myself, don't I? But paste
this in your hat--_I_ get the big platinum blonde."

"You can have her. Too big. The little yellow-head's my dish."

Newman sneered into Lopresto's hard-held face. "But remember this, you
small-time, chiseling punk. Rub _me_ out after we kill them and you get
nowhere. You're dead. Chew on that awhile and you'll know who's boss."

After just the right amount of holding back and objecting, Lopresto
agreed. "You win, Newman, the way the cards lay. So all that's left
is--when? Tomorrow?"

"Not quite. Let 'em finish figuring course, time, distance,
turnover--all that stuff. They can do it a lot faster and some better
than I can. I'll tell you when."

"Okay, and I'll give the signal. When I yell NOW we give 'em the
business."

Newman went to his cabin and the muscle called Moose said, "I don't like
that ape, boss. Before you gun him, let me work him over a little, huh?"

"We'll let him think he's top dog for a while yet; then you can have
him."

****

A few evenings later, in Lifecraft Two, Barbara said, "You're worried,
Babe, and everything's going so smoothly. Why?"

"Too smoothly altogether. That's why. Newman ought to be doing a slow
burn and goldbricking all he dares, and he isn't. And I wouldn't trust
Lopresto as far as I can throw a brick chimney by its smoke. I smell
trouble. Shooting trouble."

"But they couldn't do _anything_ without you two!" Bernice protested.
"_Could_ they, Ted, possibly?"

"They could, and I think they intend to. Being a crew chief, Newman is a
jackleg engineer, a good practical 'troncist, and a rule-of-thumb
astrogator, and we're computing every element of the flight. And if he's
what I _think_ he is..." Jones paused.

"Could be," Deston said. "One of an organized ring of pirate-smugglers.
But there isn't enough plunder that they could get away with to make it
pay."

"No? Think again. Not plunder; salvage. With either of us alive, none.
With both of us dead, can you guess within ten megabucks of how much
they'll collect?"

"_Blockhead!_" Deston slapped himself on the forehead. "And they aren't
planning on killing the girls until the last act."

Both girls shrank visibly and Barbara said, "I see."

Deston went on, "They know they'll have to get both of us at once--the
survivor would lock the ship in null-G and they'd be sitting ducks...
and it won't be until we've finished the computations. We very seldom
work together. If we make it a point _never_ to be together on
duty..."

"And be sure to always have our talkies turned on," Jones put in,
grimly.

"Check. They'll have to think up some reason for getting everybody
together, which will be the tip-off. Blaine will probably draw on
me..."

"And he'll kill you," Jones said, flatly. "You're fast, I know, but he's
a professional--probably one of the fastest guns in all space."

"Yes, but... I've got a... I mean I think I can..."

Bernice, smiling now, stopped Deston's floundering. "Why don't you
fellows tell each other that you're both very strongly psionic? Bobby
and I let our back hair down long ago."

"Oh--so you'll have warning, too, Babe?" Jones asked.

"That's right; but the girls can't start packing pistols now."

Bernice laughed. "I wouldn't know how to shoot one if I did. I'll throw
things--I'm very good at that."

Jones didn't know his new wife very well yet, either. "What can you
throw hard enough and straight enough to do any good?"

"Anything that weighs less than fifty pounds," she replied, confidently.
"In this case... chairs, I think. Flying chairs are really hard to
cope with. I'll start wearing a couple of knives in leg-sheaths, but I
won't throw 'em unless I absolutely have to. Who will I knock out with
the first chair?"

"I'll answer that," Barbara said. "If it's Blaine against Babe, it'll be
Lopresto against Herc. So you'll throw your chair at that unspeakable
oaf Newman."

"I'd rather brain him than anyone else I know, but that would leave that
gigantic gorilla to... in that case, Bobby, you'll simply _have_ to
go armed."

Barbara held out her hands. "I always do."

"Against a man-mountain like him? You're _that_ good? Really?"

"Especially against a man-mountain like him. I'm that good. Really. And
we should have a signal--an unusual word--so the first one of us to
sense their intent yells 'BRAHMS!' Okay?"

That was okay, and the four went to bed.

Three days later, the intended victims allowed themselves to be
inveigled into the lounge. All was peace and friendship--until suddenly
a four-fold "BRAHMS!" rang out an instant ahead of Lopresto's stentorian
"NOW!"

It was all a very good thing that Deston had had warning for he was
indeed competing out of his class. As it was, his bullet crashed through
Blaine's head, while the gunman's went into the carpet. The other pistol
duel wasn't even close and Newman didn't get to aim his gun at Adams at
all.

Bernice, even while shrieking the battle-cry, leaped to her feet, hurled
her chair, and reached for another; but one chair was enough. It knocked
the half-drawn pistol from Newman's hand and sent his body crashing to
the floor, where Deston's second bullet made it certain that he would
stay there.

If Moose Mordan had had time to get set, he might have had a chance. His
thought processes, however, were lamentably slow; and Barbara Deston was
very, very fast. She reached him before he even realized that this
pint-sized girl actually intended to hit him; thus his belly-muscles
were still completely relaxed when her left fist sank half-forearm-deep
into his solar plexus.

With an agonized "WHOOSH!" he began to double up, but she scarcely
allowed him to bend. The fingers of her right hand, tightly bunched,
were already boring savagely into a spot at the base of his neck. Then,
left hand at his throat and right hand pulling hard at his belt, she put
the totalized and concentrated power of her whole body behind the knee
she drove into his groin.

That ended it. To make sure, however--or to keep Barbara from knowing
that she had killed a man?--Deston and Jones each put a bullet through
the falling head before it struck the floor.

Both girls flung themselves into their husbands' arms.

"Oh, I _killed_ him, Carl!" Barbara sobbed. "And the worst of it is, I
really _meant_ to! I _never_ did anything like that before in..."

"You didn't kill him, Barbara," Adams said.

"Huh?" She raised her head from Deston's shoulder; the contrast between
streaming eyes and dawning relief was almost funny. "Why, I did too! I
_know_ I did!"

"By no means, my dear. Nor did Bernice kill Newman. Fists and knees and
chairs do not kill instantly; bullets through the brain do. The
autopsies will show, I'm quite certain, that these four men died
instantly of gunshot wounds."

****

With the gangsters out of the way, life aboardship settled down, but not
into a routine. When two spacemen and two grounder girls are trying to
do the work of a full crew, no routine is possible. Adams, much older
than the others and working even longer hours, became haggard and thin.

"But this work is _necessary_, my dear children," he informed the two
girls when they remonstrated with him. "This material is all new. There
are many extremely difficult problems involved and I have less than a
year left to work on them. _Less than one year_, and it is a task for
many men and all the resources of a research center."

To the officers, however, he went into more detail. "Considering the
enormous amounts of supplies carried; the scope, quantity, and quality
of the devices employed; it is highly improbable that we are the first
survivors of this type of catastrophe to set course for a planet."

After some discussion, the officers agreed with him.

"While I can not as yet analyze or evaluate it, we are carrying an
extremely heavy charge of an unknown nature; the residuum of a field of
force which is possibly more or less analogous to the electromagnetic
field. This residuum either is or is not dischargeable to an object of
planetary mass. I am now virtually certain that it is; and I am of the
opinion that its discharge is ordinarily of such violence as to destroy
the starship carrying it."

"Good God!" Deston exclaimed. "Oh--_that_ was what you meant by
'fantastic precautions'?"

"Precisely."

"Any idea of what those precautions will have to be?"

"No. This is all so new... and I know _so_ little... and am
working with pitifully inadequate instrumentation... however, we have
months of time yet, and if I am unable to derive a solution before
arrival--I don't mean a rigorous analysis, of course; merely a method of
discharge having a probability of success of at least point nine--we
will remain in orbit around that sun until I do."

****

The _Procyon_ bored on through space at one gravity of acceleration; and
one gravity, maintained for months, builds up to an extremely high
velocity. And, despite the Einstein Effect, that acceleration was
maintained, for there was no lack of power. The _Procyon_'s
uranium-driven Wesleys did not drive the ship, but only energized the
Chaytor Effect engines that tapped the total energy of the universe.

Thus, in seven months of flight, the spaceship had probably attained a
velocity of about six-tenths that of light. The men did not know the day
or date or what their actual velocity was, since the brute-force machine
that was their only clock could not be depended upon for either accuracy
or uniformity. Also, and worse, there was of course no possibility of
determining what, if anything, the Einstein Effect was doing to their
time rate.

At the estimated midpoint of the flight the _Procyon_ was turned end for
end; and, a few days later, Barbara and Deston cornered Adams in his
laboratory.

"Listen, you egregious clam!" she began. "I _know_ that Bun and I both
have been pregnant for at _least_ eight months and we ought to be
_twice_ as big as we are. You've been studying us constantly with a
hundred machines that nobody ever heard of before and all you've said is
blah. Now, Uncle Andy, I want the _truth_. _Are_ we in a lot of
trouble?"

"Trouble?" Adams was amazed. "Of course not. None at all. Perfectly
normal fetuses, both of them. Perfectly."

"But for what _age_?" she demanded. "Four months, maybe?"

"But that's the crux!" Adams enthused. "Fascinating; and indubitably
supremely important. A key datum. If this zeta field is causing it, that
gives me a tremendously powerful new tool, for certain time vectors in
the generalized matrix become parameters. Thus certain determinants,
notably the all-important delta-prime-sub-mu, become manipulable
by... but you aren't _listening_!"

"I'm listening, pops, but nothing is coming through. But I'm _awfully_
glad I'm not going to give birth to a monster," and she led Deston away.
"Carl, have you got the _foggiest_ idea of what he was talking about?"

"Not the foggiest--that was over my head like a cirrus cloud--but if you
gals' slowness in producing will help the old boy lick this thing I'm
all for it, believe me."

Months passed. Two perfect babies--Theodore Warner Deston and Barbara
Bernice Jones--were born, four days apart, in perfectly normal fashion.
Adams made out birth certificates which were unusual in only one
respect; the times, dates, and places of the births were to be
determined later.

A couple of weeks before arrival Adams rushed up to Deston and Jones. "I
have it!" he shouted, and began to spout a torrent of higher--very
_much_ higher--mathematics.

"Hold it, Doc!" Deston protested. "I read you zero and ten. Can't you
delouse your signal?"

"W-e-l-l." The scientist looked hurt, but did abandon the high math.
"The discharge _is_ catastrophic; energy of the order of magnitude of
ten thousand average discharges of lightning. I do not know what it is,
but it is virtually certain that we will be able to discharge it, not in
the one tremendous blast of contact with the planet, but in successive
decrements by the use of long, thin leads extending downward toward a
high point of the planet."

"Wire, you mean? What kind?"

"The material is unimportant except in that it should have sufficient
tensile strength to support as many miles as possible of its own
length."

"We've got dozens of coils of hook-up wire," Deston said, "but not too
many _miles_ and it's soft stuff."

Jones snapped his finger. "_Graham_ wire!"

"Of course," Deston agreed. "Hundreds of miles of it aboard. We'll float
the senser down on a Hotchkiss...."

"Tear-out," Jones objected.

"Bailey it--and spider the Bailey out to eighteen or twenty pads. We can
cannibal the whole Middle for metal."

"Sure. But surges--backlash. We'll have to remote it."

"No, problem there; servos all over the place. To Baby Two."

"Would you mind delousing _your_ signal?" Adams asked caustically.

"'Scuse, please, Doc. A guy _does_ talk better in his own lingo, doesn't
he? Graham wire is used for re-wrapping the Grahams, you know."

"No, I don't know. What are Grahams?"

"Why, they're the intermediates between the Wesleys and the
Chaytors... okay, okay; Graham wire is
one-point-three-millimeter-diameter ultra-high-tensile alloy
wire. Used for re-enforcing hollow containers that have to stand
terrific pressure."

"Such wire is exactly what will be required. Note now that our bodies
will have to be grounded very thoroughly to the metal of the ship."

"You're so right. We'll wrap up to the eyeballs in silver mesh and run
leads as big as my arm to the frame."

They approached their target planet. It was twice as massive as Earth;
its surface was rugged and jagged; its mountain ranges had sharp peaks
over forty thousand feet high.

"There's one more thing we must do," Adams said. "This zeta field may
very well be irreplaceable. We must therefore launch all the lifecraft
except Number Two into separate orbits, so that a properly-staffed and
properly-equipped force may study that field."

It was done; and in a few hours the _Procyon_ hung motionless, a
thousand miles high, directly above an isolated and sharp mountain peak.

The Bailey boom, with its spider-web-like network of grounding cables
and with a large pulley at its end, extended two hundred feet straight
out from the _Procyon_'s side. A twenty-five-mile coil of Graham wire
had been mounted on the remote-controlled Hotchkiss reel. The end of the
wire had been run out over the pulley; a fifteen-pound weight, to act
both as a "senser" and to keep the wire from fouling, had been attached;
and the controls had been tested.

Now, in Lifecraft Two--as far away from the "business district" as they
could be--the human bodies were grounded and Deston started the reel.
The whole coil ran out, as expected, with no action. Then, slowly and
carefully, Deston let the big ship float straight downward. Until,
suddenly, it happened.

There was a blast beside which the most terrific flash of lightning ever
seen on Earth would have seemed like a firecracker. Although she was in
what was almost a vacuum, the _Procyon_ was hurled upward like the cork
of a champagne bottle. And as for what it felt like--the sensation was
utterly indescribable. As Bernice said, long afterward, when she was
being pressed by a newsman, "Just tell 'em it was the living end."

The girls were unwrapped and, after a moment of semi-hysteria and after
making sure that the babies were all right, were as good as new. Then
Deston aimed his plate and gulped. Without saying a word he waved a hand
and the others looked. The sharp tip of the mountain was gone: it had
become a seething, flaming lake of incandescent lava.

"And what," Deston managed, "do you suppose happened to the other side
of the ship?"

The boom was gone. So were all twenty of the grounding cables that had
fanned out in all directions to anchorages welded to the vessel's skin
and frame. The anchorages, too, were gone; and tons upon tons of steel
plating and of structural members for many feet around where each
anchorage had been. Many tons of steel had been completely volatilized;
other tons had run like water.

"Shall I try the subspace radio now, Doc?" Deston asked.

"By no means. This first blast would of course be the worst, but there
will be several more, of decreasing violence."

There were. The second, while it volatilized the boom and its grounding
network, merely fused small portions of the anchorages. The third took
only the boom itself; the fourth, only the dangling miles of wire. At
the fifth trial nothing--apparently--happened; whereupon the wire was
drawn in and a two-hundred-pound mass of steel was lowered into firm
contact with solid rock.

"Now you may try your radio," Adams said.

Deston flipped a switch and spoke into his microphone. "_Procyon_ One to
Control Six. Flight eight four nine. Subspace radio test number nine
five--I think. How do you read me, Control Six?"

The reply was highly unorthodox. It was a wild yell, followed by words
not addressed to Deston at all. "Captain Reamer! Captain French! Captain
Holloway! ANYBODY! It's the _Procyon_, that was lost over a year ago!
IT'S THE _PROCYON_!"

"Line it up! If it's some damn fool's idea of a joke..." a crisp
authoritative voice grew louder as its source approached the distant
pickup "... he'll rot in jail for a hundred years!"

"_Procyon_ One to Control Six," Deston said again. His voice was not
quite steady this time; both girls were crying openly and joyfully. "How
do you read me, Frenchy old horse?"

"It _is_ the _Procyon_--that's the Runt himself--hi, Babe! I read you
nine and one. Survivors?"

"Five. Second Officer Jones, our wives, and Doctor Andrew Adams, a
fellow of the College of Study."

"It can't be a lifecraft after this long--what shape is the hulk in?"

"Bad. Can't immerge. The whole Top is an ungodly mess and some of the
rest of her won't hold air--air, hell! Section Fourteen won't hold
shipping crates! The Chaytors are okay, but five of the Wesleys are
shot, and all of the Q-converters. Most of the Grahams are leaking like
sieves, and..."

"Hold it, Babe. They want this on a recorder down-stairs, too. The
newshawks are knocking the doors down. This marriage bit. The
brides--who are they?"

Deston told him. Just that; no more.

"Okay. They want a lot more than that; especially the sobbers, but that
can wait. What happened?"

"I don't know. You'd better fly a Fellow of the College over there to
talk to Doc Adams. Maybe he can explain it to another Big Brain, but I
wouldn't bet, even on that."

"Okay. Downstairs is hooked in and so is Brass. Give us everything you
know or can guess at."

Deston spoke steadily for thirty minutes. He did not mention the
gangsters, nor psionics, nor the extraordinarily long periods of
gestation; otherwise his report was accurate and complete. When it was
done, French said:

"Mark off. Off the air, Babe--nice job. Now, Herc, on the air. Mark on.
Second Officer Theodore Jones reporting. You're orbiting the fourth
planet of a sun. What sun? Where?"

"I don't know. Unlisted; we're in unexplored territory. Standard
reference data as follows," and Jones read off a long list of
observations; not only of the brightest stars of the galaxy, but also of
the standard reference points, such as S-Doradus, lying outside it.
"When you get that stuff all plotted you'll find a hell of a big
confusion, but I hope there aren't enough stars in it but what you'll be
able to find us sometime."

"Mark off. Don't make me laugh, Herc; your probable center will spear
it. If there's ever more than one star in any confusion _you_ set up
I'll eat all the extras. But there's a dozen Big Brains, gnawing their
nails off to the elbows to talk to Adams. So put him on and let's get
back to sleep, huh? They're cutting this mike now."

"Hold it!" Deston snapped. "I want some information too, dammit! What's
your Greenwich?"

"Zero seven one four plus thirty seven seconds. So go to bed, you
night-prowling owl."

"Of what day, month, and year?" Deston insisted.

"Friday, Sep..." French's voice was replaced by that of a much older
man; very evidently that of a Fellow of the College.

After listening for less than a minute, Barbara took Deston's arm and
led him away. "Any at all of _that_ gibberish is exactly that much too
much, husband mine. So I think we'd better take Captain French's advice,
don't you?"

****

Since there was only one star in Jones' "confusion" (by the book,
"Volume of Uncertainty") finding the _Procyon_ was no problem at all.
High Brass came in quantity and the whole story, except for one bit of
biology, was told. Two huge subspace-going machine-shops also came, and
a battalion of mechanics, who worked on the crippled liner for over
three weeks.

Then the _Procyon_ started back for Earth under her own subspace drive,
under the command of Captain Theodore Jones. His first and only command
for the Interstellar Corporation, of course, since he was a married man.
Deston had tendered his resignation while still a First Officer, but his
superiors would not accept it until after his promotion "for outstanding
services" had come through. Thus Captain Carlyle Deston and his wife and
son were dead-heading, not quite back to Earth, but to the transfer
point for Newmars.

Just before that transfer point was reached, Deston went "up Top" to
take leave of his friend, and Jones greeted him with:

"I've been trying to talk to Doc again; but wherever he starts or
whatever the angle of approach he _always_ boils it down to this:
'Subjective time is measured by the number of learning events
experienced.' I ask you, Babe, what in _hell_ does that mean? If
anything?"

"I know. Me, too. It sounds like it ought to mean _something_, but I'll
be damned if I know what. However, if it makes the old boy happy and
gives the College a toe-hold on subspace, what do _we_ care?"

And at this same time Barbara had been visiting Bernice. They had of
course been talking about the babies, and an awkward silence had fallen.

"Oh," Barbara licked her lips. "So you get those feelings too."

"Too?" Bernice's face paled. "But they're absolutely normal, Bobby.
Perfect. Absolutely perfect in every respect."

"I know... but once in a while... an aura or something... it
scares me simply witless."

"I have them too. Not often, but... well, they began even before she
was born."

"Oh? So did mine! But they _aren't_ monsters, Bun! I just _know_ they
aren't!"

"So do I. Of course they aren't. They aren't even mutants. Look, Bobby,
let's think instead of emoting. All four of us are very strongly
psychic, but each of us got it from only one side of the family. With
both parents psychic the effect would have to be intensified, wouldn't
it?"

"It would, at that. That's the answer, Bun, you solved the mystery. They
have the same thing we have, except more of it. But they _can't_ have
real powers without experience or knowledge, so when they grow up
they'll be stronger than we are and we'll learn from them."

"That's the way it is. I'm sure of it."

"So am I, now. I feel a lot better, Bun. I've got to gallop. This isn't
goodbye, dear--I'll see you soon and often--it's just so long."




                                  III
                            DESTON THE DOWSER


FOR a week the Destons were busy settling down in their low, sprawling
home on Newmars. Deston had not had time to think about a job, and
Barbara did not intend to let him think about one. Wherefore, the first
free evening they had, while they were sitting close together on a
davenport near the fireplace in their living-room, she said:

"I know how much you really want to explore deep space. I do, too. I'm
sure we could accomplish something worth while, and I'd like very much
to leave a size five-bee footprint on the sands of time, too. There's a
way we can do it."

Deston stiffened. "I'd like to believe that, pet. I'd give my right leg
to the hip and one eye--but what's the use of kidding ourselves? Your
last buck, even if I'd lay it on that kind of a line, wouldn't cover the
nut."

"The way things are now, no. But listen. What is the one single thing
that all civilization needs most desperately?"

"Uranium. You know that as well as I do."

"I know; but I want you to think very seriously about the reality, the
intensity, and the importance of that need. So elucidate."

"Okay." Deston shrugged his shoulders. "It's the _sine qua non_ of
interstellar flight; of running the Chaytor engine. While all the
uranium does is trigger the power intake, the bigger the Chaytor the
bigger its Wesley has to be and the faster the uranium gets used up.
Uranium's so scarce that except for controls its price would be
fantastic. Hence the black market, where its price is fantastic. Hence
bribery, corruption, and so forth. Half of the deviltry and skulduggery
on all ninety six planets is due to the hard fact that the supply of
uranium cannot be made to equal the demand. Sufficient?"

"Sufficient. Now for it. I've been hinting, but you've been shying away
from psionics as though it were something to be ashamed of, and it
isn't. In space we were all too horribly busy to do anything about it,
but now I'm going to slug you with it. Carl, I _know_ that you're the
first real metal-dowser that ever lived. Don't ask me how I know; I just
know. If you'll just get serious and really _work_ on your latent
abilities you'll be able to find any metal you please as easily as I can
find oil."

Tightening his arm, he swung her around and stared into her eyes. "I
know all about things that way. Hunches. So how do I go about learning
to dowse metal?"

"Like I did. I started on coal, holding a lump in my hand. I
concentrated on it until I could sense everything about it, clear down
to its atomic structure. Then, looking at a map and spreading it out, I
could see every coal deposit on the planet. So here's a piece of copper
tube and a blueprint of this house. Concentrate as hard as you possibly
can; then you'll know what I mean."

"Oh--so you've been laying for me."

"Of course I have. This is the first time we've had any time."

"Okay. I'll give it the good old college try."

He tried it. He tried over and over again. For half an hour he put
everything he had into the effort. Then, coming out of his near-trance,
he wiped his sweating face and said, "I can't swing it alone, pet. There
must be _some_ way for you to show me how the damn thing goes--if I've
got what it takes."

"Of _course_ you have!" she snapped. "Don't think for a single second
you haven't--I _know_ you have, I tell you!"

"If you know it, it's so and I believe it. But the question still
is--_how?_ But say, you can read my mind, can't you?"

Her eyes widened. "Why, I don't know. I never tried to, of course...
but what good would _that_ do?"

"Just a hunch. With that close a contact, maybe some of your knowledge
will rub off onto me. Especially if you push."

"I'll push, all right; but remember, no resistance. With such a
chilled-steel mind as yours, _nothing_ could get through."

"No resistance. Just the opposite. I'll pull you in with every tractor I
can bring to bear. Across a table?"

"Uh-uh, this is better. Closer."

They gripped hands and stared into each other's eyes. For a long two
minutes nothing happened; then Barbara broke contact. "I got a little,"
she said. "You were fighting with a boy twice your size. A red-haired
boy with a lot of freckles."

"Huh? Spike McGonigle--that was twelve or fifteen years ago and I
haven't thought of the guy since! But I got something, too. You were at
a party, wearing a red dress cut down to here and emerald ear-rings. You
put a slightly pie-eyed chicken colonel flat on his face because he
wouldn't take 'no' for an answer."

"Not on his _face_, surely... oh, yes, I remember. But _this_ isn't
what we wanted, at all. However, it's something; so let's keep on with
it, shall we?"

They kept it up until bedtime, and went at it again immediately after
breakfast next morning. Progress was maddeningly slow, but it was
progress. Progress marked by a succession of stabbing, fleeting pains,
each of which was followed by the opening of an entire vista of
one-ness. They did not complete the operation that day, or in three
more, or in a week; but finally, the last vista opened, they sat for
minutes in what was neither ecstasy nor consternation, but something
having the prime elements of both. For full mental rapport is the
ultimate intimacy; more intimate by far than any other union possible.

Barbara licked her bloodless lips and said, not in words but purely in
thought, "Oh, Carl! So _this_ is what telepathy really is!"

"Must be." He was not speaking aloud, either. "_What_ the people who
talk about telepathy don't know about it!"

"Oh, this is _wonderful_! But it isn't what we were after at all."

"But it may very well be a prerequisite, hon. I won't be just watching
you do it now; we'll be doing it as one. So break out your bottle of
crude oil."

"Oh, that won't be necessary. I know oil so well that we won't need a
sample, not even a map. Look--it goes like this... see?"

"_See!_ Listen, Bobby. How could anybody ever learn such an incredibly
complex technique as that all by himself? How did you ever learn it?"

"Looked at that way... I guess maybe I didn't. I must have been born
with it."

"That makes sense. Now let's link up and take that copper atom apart
clear down to whatever makes up its theta, mu, and pi mesons."

But they didn't. Much to the dismayed surprise of both, their combined
attack was no more effective than Deston's alone had been. He frowned at
the sample in thought, then said, "Okay. The thing's beginning to make
sense."

"What sense?" she demanded. "Not to me, it isn't. Is this another of
your hunches?"

"No. Logic. I'm not sure yet, but one more test and I will be. Water.
You won't need a sample?"

"No more than with oil. It's just about the same technique.
Like this... there. But it doesn't get me anywhere. Does it you?"

"Definitely. Look, Bobby. Water, gas, oil, and coal. Oxygen, hydrogen,
and carbon. Oxygen, the highest, is atomic number eight. Maybe you
can--what'll we call it? 'Handle'?--handle the lower elements, but not
the higher ones. So maybe both of us together can handle 'em all. If
this hypothesis is valid, you already know helium, lithium,
beryllium,..."

"Wait up!" she broke in. "I wouldn't recognize any one of them if it
should stop me on the street and say hello."

"You just think you wouldn't. How about boron, as in boric acid?
Eye-wash, to you?"

Her mind flashed to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. "I _do_ know
it, at that. I've never handled it, but I can."

"Nice. How about sodium, as in common salt?"

"Can do."

"Chlorine, the other half of salt?"

"That hurt a little--took a little time--but I made it."

"Fine! The hypothesis begins to look good. Now we'll tackle calcium
together. In bones--my thick skull, for instance."

"_Ouch!_ That really hurt, Carl. And you did it. I couldn't have,
possibly, but I followed you in and I know it now. But golly, it felt
like... like it was stretching my brain all out of shape. Like giving
birth to a child, something. I _told_ you you're stronger than I am,
Carl, but I want to learn it all. So go right ahead, but take it a
little slower, please."

"Slow it is, sweetheart," and they went ahead.

And in a couple of days they could handle all the elements of the
periodic table.

Then and only then did they go back to what they had started out to do.
Seated side by side, each grasping the short length of metal, they
stared at the blueprint and allowed--or, rather, impelled--their
perception to pervade the entire volume of the house.

"We've _got_ it!" Deston yelled, aloud. "It _is_ a new sense--a sixth
sense--and _what_ a sense!"

They could see--sense--perceive--every bit of copper in, under, and
around the building; the network of tubes and pipes stood out like the
blood-vessels in a plastic model of the human body. While the metal was
not transparent in the optical sense, they could perceive in detail the
outside, the inside, and the ultimately fine structure of the material
of each component part of the whole gas-and-water-supply installation.

"Oh, you _did_ it, Carl!"

"_We_ did it--whatever it is. But I can do it alone now; I know exactly
how it goes. This is really terrific stuff." He lost himself in thought,
then went on, "And the cardinal principle of semantics is that the map
is _not_ the territory. Let's go in the library, roll out the big globe
of Newmars, and give this planet a going-over like no world ever got
before.

"Oh, that'll be fun! Let's!"

"And you wouldn't, by any chance, just happen to have samples of uranium
oxide, pitchblende, and so forth, on hand, would you?"

"Not by chance, no. I done it on purpose. Here they are."

There is no need to go into detail as to the exact fashion in which they
explored the enormous volume of the planet, or as to exactly what they
found. It is enough to say that they learned; and that, having learned,
the techniques became almost automatic and the work itself became
comparatively easy.

The next morning Deston made another suggestion. "Bobby, what do you say
about seeing what we can do with that forty-eight-inch globe of Tellus?"

"_Tellus!_ Light-years and light-years from here? Are you completely out
of your mind?"

"Maybe I'm a little mad with power, but listen. If the map actually is
the territory it's scale that counts, not distance. It's inconceivable,
of course, that there isn't a limit somewhere--but where is it? I've got
an urge to spread our wings a little."

"A highly laudable objective, I'd say, but I'll bet you a cookie that
Tellus is 'way beyond that limit. Drag out the globe... ah, there you
are, sweet mother world of the race! Now watch out, Mom; ready or not,
here we come!"

They went; and when they found out that they could scan and analyze the
entire volume of Earth, mile by plotted cubic mile, as easily and as
completely as they could that of Newmars on whose surface they were,
they stared at each other, appalled.

"Well... I... that is..." Barbara licked her lips and gulped.
"I owe you a cookie, I guess, Carl."

"Yeah." But Deston was not thinking of cookies. "That tears it. It
really does. Wide open. Rips it up and down and sideways."

"It does for a fact. But it makes the objective even more laudable than
ever, I'd say. How do you think we should go about it?"

"There's only one way I can see. I said I'd never spend a dime of your
money, remember? I take it back. I think we'd better charter one of
WarnOil's fast subspacers and buy all the off-Earth maps, star-charts,
and such-like gear we can get hold of."

"Charter? Pfooie! We own WarnOil, silly, subspacers and everything else.
In fee simple. So we'll just take one. I'll arrange that; so you can
take off right now after your maps and charts and whatever. Scoot!"

"Wait up a bit, sweet. We'll have to have Doc Adams."

"Of course. He'll be tickled silly to go."

"And Herc Jones for captain."

"I'm not so sure about that." Barbara nibbled at her lower lip. "A
little premature, don't you think, to unsettle him and Bun--raise hopes
that may very well turn out to be false--before we find out what we can
actually do?"

"Could be. Okay, fellow explorer--the count-down is on and all stations
are in condition GO."

****

Of all the preparations for the first expedition into the unknown, only
one is really noteworthy; the interview with Doctor Adams in his home.
For months he had been concentrating on the subether and his zeta field;
and when he learned what the purpose of the trip was, and that he would
have a free hand and an ample budget, he became enthusiastic indeed.

To a mind of such tremendous power and range as his, it was evident from
the first that his young friends had changed markedly since he had last
seen them. This fact was of course a challenge. Adams was tall and lean
and gray; and, though he was sixty years old, he almost never worked at
a desk. He thought better, he said, on his feet. He had always reminded
Deston of a lean, gray tomcat on the prowl for prey. He was on his feet
now, pacing about.

Suddenly, he stopped, clasped his hands behind his back, and stared at
Deston through the upper sections of his gold-rimmed trifocals. "You two
youngsters," he said flatly, "are using telepathy. Using it consciously,
accurately, and completely informatively--a thing that, to my knowledge,
has never before been demonstrated."

"Oh?" Barbara's eyes widened. "When we thought we were talking did we
sometimes forget to?"

"Only in part. Mainly because of a depth of understanding--deduced, to
be sure, but actual nonetheless--impossible to language." Then,
Adams-like, he went straight to the point. "Will you try to teach it to
me?"

"Why, of course!" Barbara exclaimed. "That, Uncle Andy, was very much on
the agenda."

"Thank you. And Stella, too, please? Her mind is of precisionist grade
and is of greater sensitivity than my own."

"Certainly," Deston assured him. "The more we can spread this ability
around the better it will be for everybody."

Adams left the room then, and in a minute or so came back with his wife;
a slender, graceful, gray-haired woman of fifty-odd.

Both Andrew and Stella Adams had been students all their lives. They
knew how to study. They had the brain capacity--the blocked or latent
cells--to learn telepathy and many other things. They learned rapidly
and thoroughly. Neither of them, however, could or ever did learn how to
"handle" any substance. In fact, very few persons of their time, male or
female, ever did learn more than an insignificant fraction of the
Destons' unique ability to dowse.

In compensation, however, the Adamses had nascent powers peculiarly
their own. Thus, before they went to bed that night, Andrew and Stella
Adams were exploring vistas of reality that neither of the Destons would
ever be able to perceive.

****

Out in deep space, the Destons worked slowly at first. They actually
landed on Cerealia, the most fully surveyed of all the colonized
planets; and on Galmetia, only a little less so, as it was owned _in
toto_ by Galactic Metals; and on Lactia, the dairy planet.

Deston worked first on copper; worked on it so long and so intensively
that he could find and handle and tri-di any deposit of the free metal
or of any of its ores with speed and precision, wherever any such might
be in a planet's crust. Then he went on up the line of atomic numbers,
taking big jumps--molybdenum and barium and tungsten and bismuth--up to
uranium, which was what he was after.

Barbara did not work with him on metals very long; just long enough to
be sure that she could be of no more help. She didn't really like
metals, and she had her own work to do. It was just as important to have
on file all possible data concerning water, oil, gas, and coal.

They worked together, however, at perfecting their techniques. Any
thought of determining the working limits of psionic abilities had been
abandoned long since; they were trying with everything they had to
minimize the necessity of using maps and charts. They succeeded. Just as
Barbara, while still a child, had become able to work without samples;
so both of them learned how to work without maps. All they had to know,
finally, was where a solar system was; they could fix their sense of
perception upon any star they could see, and hence could study all its
planets. They tried to work independently of star-charts--to direct
their attention to any point in space at will--but it was to be years
before they were able to reach that peak of ability.

Deston found many deposits of copper, one of them very large, on the
colonized planets; but he was interested in copper only as a means, not
as an end. What he wanted was a mountain of uranium; and uranium was
just as scarce on all ninety five colonized planets as it was on Earth.

He knew that his sensitivity to his wife's money was the only flaw in
their happiness. He knew what Barbara thought about his attitude, with
the sure knowledge possible only to full mental rapport. She did not
like it; and she, who had never had a money problem in her whole life,
could not fully understand it. He should be big enough, she thought deep
down and a little disappointedly, not to boggle so at such an
unimportant thing as money.

But that attitude was innate and so much a part of Deston's very make-up
that he could not have changed it had he tried, and he would not try.
Almost everyone who knew them had him labelled as a fortune-hunter, and
that label irked him to the core. It would continue to irk him as long
as it stuck, and the only way he could unstick it was to do
something--or make money enough--to make him as important as she was. A
mountain of uranium--even a small mountain--would do it two ways. It
would make him a public benefactor and a multi-millionaire. So--by the
living God!--he would find uranium before he went back to civilization.

Adams and his scientists and engineers had developed an ultra-long-range
detector for zeta fields, and they had not been able to find any other
hazards to subspace flight. Hence they had been constantly stepping up
their vessel's speed. Originally a very fast ship, she was now covering
in hours distances that had formerly required days.

On and on, then, faster and faster, deeper and deeper into the
unexplored immensities of deep space the mighty flyer bored; and Deston
finally found his uranium. They landed upon a mountainous, barren
continent of a lifeless world. They put on radiation armor and labored
busily for nineteen hours.

Then Deston told the captain, "Line out for Newmars, please, and don't
drag your feet."

And that night, in the Destons' cabin: "Why so glum, chum?" Barbara
asked. "That's the best thing for civilization that ever was and the
biggest bonanza there ever was. I'd think you'd be shrieking with
joy--I've almost been--but you look as though you'd just lost your pet
hound."

Deston shrugged off his black mood and smiled. "The trouble is, petsy,
it's _too_ big. Too damned big altogether. And _look_ at our planet
Barbizon. Considering the size of the deposits and what and where the
planet is, nobody except Galactic Metals could handle the project the
way it should be handled."

"Well, would that be bad? To sell it or lease it to them?"

"Not bad, honey; impossible. All those big outfits are murder in the
first degree. Before I could get anywhere with them--if they find out I
found it, even--GalMet would own not only Barbizon, but my shirt and
pants, too."

Barbara laughed gleefully. "How well I know _that_ routine! Do you think
they don't do it in oil, too? But WarnOil's legal eagles know all about
skulduggery and monkey-business and fine print--none better. So here's
what let's do. File by proxy... and maybe you and I had better
incorporate ourselves. Just us two; Deston and Deston, say. Develop it
by another proxy, making darn sure that they don't find any uranium at
all and nothing else that's worth more than three or four dollars a
ton...."

"Huh? Why not?"

"Because GalMet's spy system, darling, is very good indeed."

"All right, but we've _still_ got to make the approach... dammit, I'd
give it to GalMet for _nothing_ if it'd give us a half-hour face-to-face
with Upton Maynard, to show him what you and I together can do."

"Not free. Ever. Just a bargain that he can't possibly resist. You
figure out what that would be and I'll arrange the face-to-face with His
High Mightiness Maynard."

"Oh? Could be, at that, since you're a Big Time Operator yourself. You
could go through the massed underlings like a snow-plow, hurling 'em
kicking, far and wide."

"Oh, no, I won't go through channels at all with a thing as big as this
is. Shock treatment--I'll hit 'em high and hard."

"Fine, gal--fine! So I'll write to Herc; tell him he can start getting
organized. He'll be tickled to death--he doesn't like flying a desk any
better than I do."

"Write? Call him up, right now."

"I'll do that, at that. I'm not used yet to not caring whether a call is
across the street or across half of space."

"And I want to talk to Bun, anyway."

The call was put through and Barbara talked to Bernice for some fifteen
minutes. Then Deston took over, finding that Jones was anything but in
love with his desk job. When Deston concluded, "... family quarters
aboard. Full authority and full responsibility of station. Full
captain's pay and rank plus a nice bonus in stock," Captain Theodore
Jones was fairly drooling.




                                   IV
                     ORGANIZATION OF THE LITTLE GEM


IN comparison with silicon or aluminum, which together make up almost
thirty six percent of the Earth's crust, copper is a very scarce metal
indeed, amounting to only a very small fraction of one percent. Yet it
is one of the oldest-worked and most widely useful of all metals, having
been in continuous demand for well over six thousand Tellurian years.

Yet of all the skills of man, that of mining cuprous ores had perhaps
advanced the least. There had been some progress, of course. Miners of
old could not go down very deep or go in very far; there was too much
water and not enough air. The steam engine helped; it removed water and
supplied air. Electricity helped still more. Tools also had improved;
instead of wooden sticks and animal-fat candles there was a complex
gadgetry of air drills and electric saws and explosives, and there was
plenty of light.

Basically, however, since automation could not be economically applied
to tiny, twisting, erratic veins of ore, the situation remained
unchanged. Men still crawled and wriggled to where the copper was.
Brawny men, by sheer power of muscle, still jackassed the heavy stuff
out to where the automatics could get hold of it.

And men still died, in various horrible fashions and in callously
recorded numbers, in the mines that were trying to satisfy the
insatiable demand for the red metal that is one of the prime bases upon
which the technology of all civilization rests.

And the United Copper Miners, under the leadership of its president,
Burley Hoadman, refused to tolerate any advancement whatever in
automation. Also, UCM was approaching, and rapidly, its goal--the
complete unionization of every copper mine of the Western Hemisphere of
Earth.

A few months before the events recorded in the preceding chapter, then,
in the Little Gem, a comparatively small copper mine in Colorado, a mile
and a half down and some six miles in, Top Miner Grant Purvis
half-lay-half-crouched behind a two-hundred-fifty-pound Sullivan Slugger
air-drill operating under one hundred seventy five pounds per square
inch of compressed air. He was a big man, and immensely strong. He was
six feet two inches tall; most of his two hundred thirty five pounds was
hard meat, gristle, and bone. His leather-padded right knee was jammed
against the wall of his tiny work-space; the hobnail-studded sole of his
left boot was jammed even more solidly into a foot-hole cut into the
hard rock of the floor. With his right shoulder and both huge hands he
was holding the Sullivan to its work--the work of driving an
inch-and-a-quarter steel into the face. And the monstrous, bellowing,
thundering, shrieking Slugger, even though mounted upon a short and very
heavy bar, sent visible tremors through the big man's whole body, clear
down to his solidly-anchored feet.

In his shockingly cramped quarters Purvis changed steel; shifted the
position of his Sullivan's mounting bar; cut new foot-holes; kept on at
his man-killing task until the set of powder-holes was in. Then he
dismounted the heavy drill and, wriggling backwards, lugged it and its
appurtenances out into the main stope to make room for the powderman.

As he straightened up, half paralyzed by the position and the strain of
his recent labors, another big man lunged roughly against him.

"Wot tha hell--sock _me_, willya?" the man roared, and swung his
steel-backed timberman's glove against Purvis' mouth and jaw.

Purvis went down.

"Watcha tryin' ta pull off, Frank?" the shift-boss yelled, rushing up
and jerking his thumb toward the rise. "You know better'n that--fightin'
underground. You're fired--go on top an' get yer time."

"Wha'd'ya mean, fired?" Frank growled. "He started it, the crumb. He
slugged me first."

"You're a goddam liar," the powderman spoke up, setting his soft-leather
bag of low explosive carefully down against the foot of the hanging
wall. "I seen it. Purve didn't do nothin'. Not a goddam thing. Besides,
he wasn't in no shape to. He didn't lift a finger. You socked him fer
nothin'."

"Oh, yeah?" Frank sneered. "Stone blind all of a sudden, I guess? I
leave it to tha rest of 'em--" waving a massive arm at the two muckers
and the electrician, now standing idly by, "--if he didn't sock me
first. They all seen it."

All three nodded, and the electrician said, positively, "Sure Purve
socked him first. We all seen 'im do it."

Purvis struggled to his feet. He shook off a glove, wiped his bleeding
mouth, and stared for a moment at the blood-smeared back of his hand.
Then, and still without a word, he bent over and picked up a three-foot
length of inch-and-a-quarter steel.

"Hold it, Purve--_hold_ it!" The shift-boss put both hands against the
big man's chest and pushed, and the atrocious weapon dropped with a
clang to the hard-rock floor. "Thass better. They's somethin' damn
screwy here. It just don't jibe."

He crossed over to his telephone and dialed. "Say boss, what do I do
when I fire a nape fer startin' a fight underground an' he won't go out
on top? An' three other bastards say somethin' I saw good an' plain with
my own eyes didn't hap... okay, I'll hold... okay... yeah...
but listen. Mr. _Speers'_ office! Thass takin' it awful high up, ain't
it, just to fire a nogoodnik that... okay, okay, now you hold it."
Turning his head, the shift-boss said, "They want us all up on top an'
they wanta know if you wanta go up under yer own air or will they send
down some guards an' drag y'all tha way up there by yer goddam feet?"

They did not want to be dragged, so Shift Boss McGuire said, into the
phone, "Okay, we're on our way up," and hung up.

The seven men wriggled down the rise--the steeply-sloping passage, about
the diameter of a barrel, that was the only opening into the stope--to
the tributary tunnel some three hundred feet below. As they were walking
along this tunnel toward the main drift and its electric cars, Purvis
said:

"You said it, Mac, about it's bein' a hell of a long ways up to have to
take firin' a louse like him. What'd they say?"

"Nothin'," McGuire said. "Nothin' at all."

"The higher the better," the electrician--who had done most of the
talking up in the stope--growled. "The bigger the man we can get up to
with this thing, the harder you three finkin' bastards are goin' ta get
the boots put to ya. You ain't got a prayer. It's four ta three, see?"

"Hold it, Purve--I said _hold it!_" McGuire shouted, grabbing the
miner's right arm with both hands and hanging on--and Purvis did stop
his savage motion. "Like I said, Purve, this whole deal stinks. It don't
add up--noways. An' what surprised me most was that nobody up on top was
surprised at all."

"Huh?" the electrician demanded, with a sudden change in manner and
expression. "Why not? Why wasn't they?"

"I wouldn't know," the shift-boss replied, quietly, "but we'll maybe
find out when we get up there. But I'm tellin' you four apes somethin'
right now. Shut up and stay shut up. If any one of you opens his trap
just one more time I'll let Purve here push a mouthful of teeth down his
goddam throat."

Wherefore the rest of the trip to the office of Superintendent Speers,
the Big Noise of the Little Gem, was made in silence.

Charles Speers was a well-built, well-preserved man nearing sixty. His
hair, although more white than brown, was still thick and bushy. His
eyes, behind stainless-steel-rimmed trifocals, were a clear, sharp gray.
His narrow, close-clipped mustache was brown. When his visitors were all
seated he pushed a button on his desk, looked at the shift-boss and
said:

"Mr. McGuire, please tell me what happened; exactly as you saw it
happen." McGuire told him and he looked at the powderman. "Mr. Bailey, I
realize that no two eyewitnesses ever see any event in precisely the
same way, but have you anything of significance to add to or subtract
from Mr. McGuire's statement of fact?"

"No, sir. That's the way it went."

"Mr. Purvis, did you or did you not strike the first blow?"

"I did not, sir. I'll swear to that. I didn't lift a finger--not 'til
after, I mean. Then I lifted a piece of steel, but Mac here stopped me
before I could hit him with it."

"Thank you. This is interesting. Very." Speers' voice was as clipped as
his mustache. "Now, Mr. Grover C. Shields--or whatever your real name
may be--as a non-participating witness and as spokesman apparent for the
majority of those present at the scene of violence, please give me your
version of the affair."

"They're lyin' in their teeth, all three of 'em," the electrician
growled, sullenly. "But what's that 'real name' crack supposed to mean?
An' say, are ya puttin' all this crap on a record?"

"Certainly. Why not? However, this is not a court of law and you are not
under oath, so go ahead."

"Not me. Not by a damsight, you fine-feathered slicker. Not without a
mouthpiece, an' nobody else does, neither."

"That's smart of you. And you're still sticking to the argot, eh,
Mr.--ah--Shields?" The mine superintendent's smile was exactly as
humorous as the edge of a cut-throat razor. "Such camouflage is of
course to be expected. Come over here to the desk, please. I would like
to glance at your hands."

"Like hell you will!" Shields snarled, leaping to his feet. "We're
gettin' tha hell outa here right now!"

"Mr. Purvis," Speers said, quietly, "I would like to look at that man's
hands. Don't break him up any more than is necessary, but I want those
hands flat on this desk, palms up."

Since Shields was already on his feet, he reached the desk and spread
his hands out flat before Purvis touched him, exclaiming as he did so,
"An' _that's_ on record, too, wise guy!"

"I'm afraid it may not be," Speers said, gently, shaking his head. "This
machine is not a new model; it misses an item occasionally. But you see
what I mean?" Speers paused, and from the ceiling above there came the
almost inaudible click of a camera shutter. "When did those hands ever
do any real work? Resume your seat, please." The alleged electrician did
so. "I have here seven personnel cards, from which I will read certain
data into the record. George J. McGuire, Shift Boss, length of service
twenty four years, black spots--demerits, that is--nineteen. Clinton F.
Bailey, Powderman, fifteen years, ten demerits. Grant H. Purvis, Top
Miner, twelve years, eight demerits. Each of these three has four or
five times as many stars as black spots.

"On the other hand, John J. Smith, Mucker, forty three days and thirty
three demerits. Thomas J. Jones, Mucker, twenty nine days and thirty one
demerits. Frank D. Ormsby, Timberman, twelve days and twenty demerits.
Grover C. Shields, Electrician, five days and eleven demerits. There are
no stars in this group. These data speak for themselves. The discharge
of Ormsby is sustained. I hereby discharge the other three--Sheilds,
Smith, and Jones--myself. You four go back, change your clothes, pick up
your own property, turn in company property, and leave. Your termination
papers and checks will be in the mail tonight. Get out."

They got.

Speers pressed a button and his secretary, a gray-haired, chilled-steel
virgin of fifty, came in. "Yes, sir?"

"Please take Mr. Purvis there," he pointed, "over across and let the
doctors look at him."

"Oh, this ain't nothin'..." the miner began.

"It would be if I had it." Speers smiled; a genuine smile. "You do
exactly what the doctors tell you to do. Okay?"

"Okay, sir. Thanks."

"And Miss Mills, he's on full time until they let him go back to work
full time."

"Yes, sir. Come with me, young man," and she led the big miner out of
the room.

Still smiling, Speers turned to the two remaining men. "Are you
wondering what this is all about, or do you know?"

"I could maybe guess, if there'd been any UCM organizers around,"
McGuire said, "but I ain't heard of any. Have you, Clint?"

"Uh-uh." The powderman shook his head. "I been kinda expectin' some, but
there ain't been even a rumble yet."

"Those four men were undoubtedly UCM goons. They will claim that Ormsby
was assaulted and that all four of them were fired because of talking
about unionization--for merely sounding out our people's attitude toward
unionization. Tomorrow, or the next day at latest, the UCM will bottle
us up tight with a picket line."

"But it'd be a goddam lie!" Bailey protested.

"Sure it would," McGuire agreed. "But they've pulled some awful raw
stuff before now an' got away with it. D'you think they can get away
with it here, Mr. Speers?"

"That's the jackpot question. With the Labor Relations Board, yes.
Higher up, it depends... but I want to do a little sounding out
myself. When we close down, we'll try to place everyone somewhere, of
course; but in the event of a very long shut-down, McGuire, how would
you like to go out to one of the outplanets?"

"I couldn't. I don't know nothin' but copper-minin'."

"I mean at copper mining."

"Huh?" The shift-boss was so amazed as to forget temporarily that he was
talking to the Big Boss. "They ain't none. They ain't gonna be none. The
UCM won't stand fer none."

"But suppose there were some?"

"You mean a knock-down-'n'-drag-out fight with UCM?"

"Precisely."

McGuire pondered this shockingly revolutionary thought for a long
minute, his callused right palm rasping against the stiff stubble on his
chin. "I still couldn't," he decided, finally. "Not just 'cause the
union'd win, neither. I like it a hell of a lot better here on Earth. If
I was young an' single, maybe. But I ain't so young yet--" he was all of
forty two years old, "--an' three of tha kids're still home yet an' my
old woman'd raise hell an' put a chunk under it. Besides, me an' her
both like ta know where we're at. So when they get us organized I'll
join tha union an' work 'til I'm sixty an' then retire an' live easy on
my pension an' old-age benefits. Thataway I'll know all tha time just
where I'm at."

"I see." Speers' voice was almost a sigh. "And you, Bailey?"

"Not fer me," the powderman said, with no hesitation at all. "George
chirped it--" he jerked his left thumb at the shift-boss, "--about
wantin' ta know where yer at. I got nothin' much against tha union. It
costs, but between it an' tha outplanets I'll take the UCM any day in
tha week. Hoady Hoadman takes care of his men, an' out on tha outplanets
ya never know what's gonna happen. Yer takin' awful big chances all tha
time. Too goddam big."

"I see, and thanks, both of you. Call Personnel about replacements and
go ahead as usual--until you run into a picket line. That is all for
now."

As the two men left Speers' office he flipped the switch of his squawk
box. "Get me GalMet, please. Maynard's FirSec, Miss Champ..."

"Miss _Champion_!" The switchboard girl committed the almost incredible
offense of interrupting the Super. "_Herself?_"

"Herself," Speers said, dryly. "As I was about to say, the password in
this case is as follows: 'Gem--Little--Operation'. In that order,
please."

"Oh--excuse me, sir, please. I'll get right at it."

It took seven minutes, but finally Miss Champion's face appeared upon
Speers' screen; a face startlingly young and startlingly comely to be
that of one of the top FirSecs of all Earth.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Speers." Her contralto voice was as smooth and as
rich as whipping cream. "It has broken, then?"

"Yes. Four men made themselves so obnoxious that we had to discharge
them just now. There has been no talk whatever of unionization as yet,
but I expect a picket line tomorrow."

"Thanks for letting us know so promptly, Mr. Speers. I can't get at him
myself for fifteen minutes or so yet, but I'll tell him at the earliest
possible moment."

"That'll be fine, Miss Champion. Good-bye."




                                   V
                          COUNTER-ORGANIZATION


MISS CHAMPION did not wait for Maynard to tell her what to do about the
Little Gem situation. She acted. She sent out seven coded subgrams, to
seven different planets. Then, on her own electric typewriter, she wrote
two short notes, also in code. She addressed and sealed two
envelopes--herself. She pushed a button. A girl came into her office.
Miss Champion said, "Here are two letters, Bessie. One is to Hatfield of
InStell, the other to Lansing of WarnOil. Each is to be delivered by
special messenger. Delivery is to be
strictly-personal-signature-required. Thanks."

So, within a very few days after UCM's picket line had sealed the Little
Gem mine as tight as a bottle, fourteen men and one woman met in
GalMet's palatial conference room in the Metals Building, in New York
City on Earth. Men representing such a tremendous aggregate of power had
never before met in any one room. Maynard called the meeting to order,
then said:

"Many of you know most of the others here, but most of you do not know
us all. Please stand as I introduce you. The lady first, of course. Miss
Champion, my First Secretary."

The lady, seated at a small desk off to one side of the great table,
rose to her feet, bowed gracefully--not directly toward the camera--and
resumed her position.

"Bryce of Metals." A slender man of fifty, with an unruly shock of
graying black hair, rose, nodded, and sat down.

"Wellington of Construction." A tall, loose-jointed, sandy-haired man
did the same.

"Zeckendorff of the Stockmen... Stelling of Grain... Killingsworth
of the Producers... Raymer of Transportation... Holbrook of
Communications... these seven men are the presidents of the seven
largest organizations of the Planetsmen--the organized production and
service men and women of ninety five planets.

"Will you stand up, please, Mr. Speers?... Superintendent Speers, of
the Little Gem, now being struck, one of the very few non-union copper
mines in existence. Speers is sitting on a situation that very well may
develop into the gravest crisis our civilization has ever known.

"Next, Admiral Guerdon Dann of Interstellar... who may or may not,
depending pretty largely upon the outcome of this meeting, become our
Galaxians' Secretary of War."

There was a concerted gasp at this, and Maynard smiled grimly. "I speak
advisedly. Each of us knows something, but not one of us knows it all.
The whole, I think, will shock us all.

"DuPuy of Warner Oil... represents the law; Interplanetary Law in
particular.

"Phelps of Galactic Metals... is our money man.

"Hatfield of Interstellar... Lansing of Warner Oil... and I,
Maynard of Galactic Metals... represent top management.

"Now to business. For almost two hundred years most managements have
adhered to the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest; so that, while
both automation and pay-per-man-hour increased, production per man-hour
increased at such a rate--especially on the planets--that there was no
inflation. In fact, just slightly the opposite; for over a hundred and
fifty years the purchasing power of the dollar showed a slight rising
trend.

"Then, for reasons upon which there is no agreement--each faction
arguing its case according to its own bias--the economic situation began
to deteriorate and inflation set in. It has been spiralling. For
instance, of the present price of copper, about two dollars and a half a
pound, only twenty five cents is... Phelps?"

"Rate One, Anaconda, electrolytic, FOB smelter," the moneyman said, "is
two point four five seven dollars per pound. This breaks down into:
labor, one hundred four point six cents; taxes, ninety three point nine
cents; all other costs, twenty four point nine cents; mark-up, twenty
two point three cents."

Almost everyone looked surprised; many of the men whistled.

Maynard smiled wryly and went on, "Thanks, Desmond. Copper is of course
an extreme case; _the_ extreme case. That is because it is the only
important metal, and one of the very few items of our entire economy,
that is produced exclusively on Tellus. There are two reasons for this.
First, automation cannot be economically applied to copper mining on
Tellus or anywhere else we know of; there are no known lodes or deposits
big enough. Second, the UCM is the only union that has been able to
enforce the dictum that its craft shall be confined absolutely to
Tellus.

"So far, I have stated facts, with no attempt to allocate responsibility
or blame. I will now begin to prophesy. Information has been obtained,
from sources which need not be named..." Most of the men chuckled;
only a few of them only smiled, "... which leads us to believe as
follows:

"Burley Hoadman is in trouble in his UCM--internal trouble. There are
several local leaders, one in particular being very strong, who do not
like him hogging so much of the gravy for himself. They want to get
their own snouts into the gravy trough, and are gathering a lot of
votes. The best way he can consolidate his position is by making a
spectacular play. The Little Gem affair is his opening wedge. If he can
make us fight this issue very hard, he will pull a WestHem-wide copper
strike. He will refuse to settle that strike for less than a seventy
five or one hundred percent increase in scale. Since the UCM's scale is
already the highest in existence, that will make him a tin god on
wheels.

"There hasn't been a really important strike for over fifty years; and
this one will not be important unless we ourselves make it so by putting
up a real fight. Gentlemen, we have two, and only two, alternatives; we
can surrender or we can fight.

"If we surrender, every other union in existence will demand a similar
increase and the Labor Relations Board will grant it--and I don't need
to tell you that WestHem's corrupt judiciary and government will support
the LRB. Neither do I need to dwell upon what these events will do to
the already vicious spiral of inflation.

"It's easy to say 'fight', but how far must we be prepared to go? The
LRB will rule against us. We will appeal. While that appeal is pending,
Hoadman will call all his copper miners out. That strike will be
completely effective, and as all industry slows down the public will
scream for GalMet's blood. All the mass media of WestHem will crucify me
personally. As I said, we will lose the appeal--or perhaps, even before
that, the government will seize the mines and give Hoadman everything he
wants. In either case, if we stop at that point, we will be in even
worse shape than if we had surrendered without fighting at all."

"But how much farther than that can we possibly go?" Zeckendorff
demanded.

"I'm coming to that. If we fight at all, we must be prepared to go the
full route. We'll drag the legal proceedings out as long as we can.
Meanwhile we'll be developing copper mines on the planets. We have maps
and your Metalsmen and Builders will be very good at that. We'll ram
planetary copper down WestHem's collective throat. However, that ramming
will not be easy. The government is very strong and it will do its
utmost to block every move we make. So the most logical conclusion is
that we will have to form a government of the planets and declare our
complete independence of Tellus.

"We are already calling ourselves the Galaxians; that would be as good a
name as any for the new government. That would probably involve a
massive and effective blockade of Tellus, which in turn might cause the
Nameless One of EastHem to launch his thermonuclear bombs. WestHem would
retaliate, and it is dictinctly possible that all Tellus might become a
radioactive wasteland."

The silence, which had been deepening steadily, was broken by an
explosive "_Je-sus Christ!_" from peppery little Bryce of Metals.

"Precisely," Maynard went on. "That is why this meeting was called. This
is--at least I think it will become--the first meeting of the Board of
Directors of the Galaxians, a government which is to adhere strictly to
the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest.

"What we can accomplish remains to be seen. We will have to exert
extreme caution; we must keep ahead of the opposition; above all, we
must be able at all times to pull up short of ultimate catastrophe to
Tellus.

"Whether or not we fight at all depends absolutely upon the attitude of
the Planetsmen. We must have solidarity. Hoadman expects the full
support of Labor, even to the extremity of a general strike of all the
unions of WestHem. This would necessitate the cooperation of the
Planetsmen, and he expects even that. It is psychologically impossible
for any man of Hoadman's stripe to understand that on the planets there
is neither Capital nor Labor; that we Galaxians are all labor and are
all capitalists. Hence it is clear that unless we are sure of virtual
unanimity of all Galaxians we cannot fight Hoadman at all.

"I now ask the supremely vital question--Do the Planetsmen, the most
important segment by far of the Galaxians, want to go the route for a
stable dollar and all that it means? You seven may retire to a private
room for discussion, if you like....

"But I see you don't need to," Maynard went on, as all seven men spoke
practically at once; Holbrook of Communications being first by an
instant. "Peter Holbrook, president of the Associated Wavesmen, has the
floor."

Holbrook of Communications was the youngest man there. He was scarcely
out of his twenties and was so deeply tanned that his crew-cut,
sun-bleached hair seemed almost white. He looked like a professional
football player; or like the expert "pole-climber" he had been until a
year before. He stood up, cleared his throat, and said, "You're right,
Mr. Maynard, we don't need to discuss that point. We've thought about it
and talked about it a lot. We have been and are highly concerned. But
I'm not the one to talk about it here. I yield the floor to Mr. Egbert
Bryce, President of the Society of Metalsmen, who has been coordinating
us all along on this very thing."

"_You_, Eggie?" Maynard asked, with a grin, and the tone of the meeting
became less formal all of a sudden. "And you never let me in on it?"

"Me," the wiry, intense Bryce agreed. "Naturally not. You're always
beating somebody's ears down about presenting a half-developed program
and ours isn't developed yet at all. But you've apparently made plans
for a long time ahead."

"Plenty of them, but they're all fluid. Nothing to go into at this
point. Go ahead."

"All right. On this basic factor there's no disagreement whatever. No
doubt or question. Tellurian labor is a bunch of plain damned fools.
Idiots. Cretins. However, that's only to be expected because everybody
with any brains or any guts left Tellus years ago. There's scarcely any
good breeding stock left, even. So about the only ones with brains
left--except for the connivers, chiselers, boodlers, gangsters, and
bastardly crooked politicians--and that goes for most Tellurian
capitalists, too. Right?"

"Dead right, and we don't like it one bit better than you do. That's why
so much Tellurian capital is all set to join us Galaxians when we leave
Tellus."

"Oh? You've gone that far? That's some of the stuff you'll go into
later?"

"Yes. Go ahead."

"All right. Every time I think of Tellurian labor it makes me so damn
mad...."

"Eggie's the evenest-tempered man alive," Wellington explained to the
group at large. "Mad all the time."

"So what?" the bristly little man snapped. "This is a thing to really
get mad about. Slaves! Not slaves, either--slaves don't necessarily like
slavery and they sometimes rebel. They're _serfs_. They _like_ it that
way. Dead level--advancement by seniority only--security--security,
_hell!_ No change--change scares the pants off of 'em. Don't want to
think. Think? They _can't_ think. One good thought would fracture their
brainless damned skulls. And as long as they get a dollar an hour more
than they're worth they don't give a cockeyed tinker's damn that their
bosses are stealing everything in sight that isn't welded down--and
sometimes even some of that. So you can paste it in your tall silk hat,
Mayn, that the Planetsmen are free men, not brainless stupid serfs.
Burley Hoadman won't get any help at all from us in stealing any more
megabucks than he already has stolen. Not by seven thousand spans of
Steinman truss."

"Serf labor versus free men," Maynard said, thoughtfully. "Very well
put, Eggie. In that connection, Speers of the Little Gem made a tape
that shows the attitude of two of his best men. Will you play it,
please, Miss Champion?"

She played it and Maynard went on, "We have thousands of similar
recordings. The serf attitude is characteristic of non-union, as well as
of union labor, and also of white-collar people as a class. In fact, it
is characteristic of Tellus as a planet. In contrast to that attitude,
Zeckendorff of the Stockmen brought along a tape, of which we will hear
the last few sentences. Scene, a meeting of Local 3856 of the Stockmen.
Occasion, the voting upon a resolution presented by a Tellurian union
organizer after weeks of work. Miss Champion?"

She flipped a switch and the speaker said, "The vote is nine hundred
seventy eight against; none for. That kind of crap doesn't go on the
planets, Gaylord, and if you had the brain God gave a goose you'd know
it. That kind of security is what life-termers on the Rock have and we
don't want any part of it. Nobody but ourselves is _ever_ going to tell
us what we can or can't do; so you'd better get the hell out of here and
back to Tellus before somebody parts your hair with a routing iron."

"I like that," Maynard said. "I like it very much. We knew in general
what the sentiment is. However, pure Galaxianism--everybody pulling
together harmoniously for the common good--is an ideal and as such can
never be realized. The question is, can we approach it nearly enough to
make it work?"

"We can try--and I think we can do it," Bryce said. "Anyway, Mayn, this
first hurdle was the biggest one, and it's solid. We can guarantee
that."

"Wonderful!" Maynard said. "Then we're in business--so let's get on with
it."

And the meeting went on; not only for all the rest of that day, but all
day and every day for two solid weeks.

****

Shortly after the Deston Uranium Expedition got back to Newmars, the
Deston family went to Earth and to the Warner-owned, luxury-type Hotel
Warner; arriving there early of an evening.

Barbara was thoroughly accustomed to red-carpet treatment. She nodded
and smiled; she used first names abundantly in greeting; to a few VIP's
she introduced her "husband and business partner, Carlyle Deston." A
retinue escorted them up to their penthouse suite; the manager himself
made sure that everything was on the beam. Lock, stock, and barrel, the
place was theirs.

Deston was not used to high life, but he made a good stab at it. Even
when, at the imposing portals of the Deep Space Room, the velvet rope
was whisked aside and the crowd of waiting standees was ignored. But
when, at the end of the long and perfect meal and of the magnificent
floor show, no check was presented for signature, Deston did reach for
his wallet; to be stopped by a slight shake of Barbara's head.

"But no tip, even?" he protested, in a whisper.

"Of course not. The office takes care of everything. I never carry any
money on Tellus."

And next morning a Warner limousine took them across town to the immense
skyscraper that was the Warner Building, where they were escorted
ceremoniously up into WarnOil's innermost private office; a huge,
luxuriously business-like office worthy in every respect of being the
_sanctum sanctorum_ of the second-largest firm in existence.

As has been said, Warner Oil was not a corporation. It was not even a
partnership. It had been owned _in toto_ by Barbara's parents as
community property; it was now owned in the same way by Carlyle and
Barbara Deston. Thus, it had no stock and no bonds and published no
reports of any kind. It had no officers, no board of directors. It had
one general manager and a few department heads; men who, despite the
unimportance of their titles, were high on the list of the most powerful
operators of Earth.

The Destons' first appointment was with General Manager Lansing; a big,
bear-like man who picked Barbara up on sight and kissed her vigorously.
"_Mighty_ glad to see you again, Barbry. Glad to meet you, Carl." He
engulfed Deston's hand in a huge, hard paw. "I apologize for thinking
you were something that crawled out from under a rock. What you've been
putting out is the damndest hairiest line of stuff I've seen since the
old gut-cutting days when the old man and I were pups. But go ahead,
Barbry."

"First, I want to assure you, Uncle Paul, that neither Carl nor I will
bother you any more than father did. Not as much, in fact, because
neither of us has any delusions as to who is running WarnOil and we both
want you to keep on running it."

"Thanks, both of you. I was hoping, of course, but I got a little
dubious when Carl here started showing so many long, sharp, curly
teeth."

"I understand. Second, I'm very glad that all of you--all that count, I
mean--approve of Carl's program."

"Should have incorporated long ago. As for the hell-raising--wow!" He
slapped himself resoundingly on the leg. "If we can push _half_ of that
stuff through it'll rock the whole damned galaxy on its foundations."

"Third, how is the probate coming along?"

"I'd better call DuPuy in here for that, I...."

"Uh-uh, listen! We don't want two solid hours of whereases and
hereinbefores. You talk our language."

"We're steam-rollering 'em and it tickles me a foot up..." Lansing
broke off and into a bellow of laughter. "Every damn shyster the
government has got is screaming bloody murder and threatening everything
he can think of, including complete confiscation, but they haven't got a
leg to stand on. They _can't_ tax anything except what little stuff we
have here on Tellus, and the inheritance tax on that will be only a few
megabucks. Everything else belongs to Newmars, where there's no
inheritance tax, no income tax, and hardly any property tax; and the
fact that DuPuy writes Newmars' laws has nothing to do with the case. So
after DuPuy and his crew get tired of quibbling and horsing around we'll
pay it out of petty cash and never miss it."

The Destons, during the next few days, held conference after conference,
during which hundreds of details were ironed out; and as a by-product of
which the news spread abroad that the heiress was very active indeed in
the management of civilization-wide Warner Oil.

One morning, then, at nine o'clock, Barbara herself punched the series
of letters and numerals that was the unlisted and close-held number of
Doris Champion, the First Secretary of Upton Maynard, the president of
Galactic Metals, the largest firm that civilization had ever known.
Barbara's yellow-haired self appeared up on the FirSec's screen; Barbara
saw a tall, cool, svelte brunette seated at something less than forty
square feet of cluttered-seeming desk.

"Yes?" the FirSec asked, pleasantly, then stared--and lost a little of
her cool poise. For every FirSec on Earth knew that yellow-haired woman
by sight... and she was on the com _in person_ and there had been
nothing preliminary, through channels, at all....

"That's right," Barbara confirmed the unspoken thought. "I'm Barbara
Warner Deston of WarnOil. Please arrange a half-hour face-to-face for
Mr. Deston and me with Mr. Maynard. There's no _great_ hurry about it;
any time today will do."

"A half _hour_! _Today?_ I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Deston, but it's
simply impossible. Why, he's booked solid for..."

"I know he's busy, Miss Champion, but so are we. Just tell him, please,
that he is the first metals man we have called, and that tomorrow
morning we will call Ajax."

"Very well. If you'll give me a ten-second brief I'll see what we can
possibly do and call you back."

"No briefing. You have my private number. We'll be here until twelve
o'clock." Barbara's hand moved toward the cut-off switch; but Miss
Champion, being a really smart girl, smelled a deal so big that even a
top-bracket FirSec should duck--and _fast_. Wherefore:

"Hold the beam for fifty seconds, please, Mrs. Deston," she said, and
snapped down the button that made her office as tight as the vault of a
bank. Then, "I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr. Maynard, but Mrs. Deston of
WarnOil is on." She cut the audio then, but kept on speaking rapidly.

In thirty seconds the keen, taut face of Upton Maynard appeared upon
Barbara's plate. "Good morning, Mrs. Deston. Something about metal, I
gather? A little out of your line, isn't it?"

"That's right, Mr. Maynard," Barbara agreed. She added nothing and for a
moment he, too, was silent. Then:

"It'll have to be after closing," Maynard said.

"That's quite all right. We'll fit our time to yours and you may name
the place."

"Seventeen ten. Your office. Satisfactory?"

"Perfectly. Thank you, Mr. Maynard," and as Barbara's hand moved to cut
com Maynard's voice went on:

"Get my wife, Miss Champion. Tell her I'll be late again getting home
this evening."




                                   VI
                        MAYNARD BUYS THE PACKAGE


At ten minutes past five Upton Maynard--a tall, lean, gray-haired man of
fifty-odd, with a fringe of gray-brown hair on the sides and back of an
otherwise completely bald head--was ushered into the Destons' private
office.

"How do you do, Mister Maynard." Barbara shook his hand cordially. "You
haven't met my husband. Carlyle Deston of Deston and Deston,
Incorporated."

As the two men shook hands, Maynard said, "Incorporated, eh? This room
is spy-proof, of course."

"Solid," Deston assured him.

"Okay, Mrs. Deston; what have you got?"

"Oh, it's Carl's party, really. My part of this project was just to
bring you two men together," and Deston took over.

"This is such a weirdie, Mr. Maynard, that I'll have to give it to you
in stages." He opened a bulging accordion-pleated case and began to
spread its contents out over the table. "Barbara and I discovered a
planet that's thousands of parsecs beyond where any human being had ever
been before. We named it 'Barbizon'. We did, by proxy, all the
development work necessary to establish full ownership of the entire
planet.

"Here's an envelope-full of astronautic and planetological data. Here's
the file on registration, work, prove-up, transfer, and so on. Here's
the certification, by Earth's most eminent firm of consulting
engineers--Littleton, Bayless, Clifton, and Snelling itself, no
less--that said planet Barbizon is a new discovery; that it is exactly
where we said it was; that all required work has been done; that the
bodies of manganese ore actually exist; that the _in situ_ values run as
high as three dollars and seventy one cents per ton; that...."

"_Suckered_, by God!" Maynard smacked his right hand flat down against
the table's top. "You _mouse-trapped_ us--and that hasn't been done
before for twenty five years." His sharp gray eyes bored into Deston's
with rapidly-mounting respect. "To skip the rest of the preliminaries
for the moment, what have you two actually got?"

"I told you he's quick on the uptake, Carl," Barbara laughed, and Deston
said, "Uranium, Mr. Maynard. Solid enough for full automation and enough
of it to supply every possible demand of all civilization from now on."

"My... good... God." Maynard almost collapsed back into his chair.
"I knew it would have to be something big... but _automated
uranium_--okay. Go ahead. Somebody told you I like fully-developed
presentations?"

"That's right. So here are the applications complete, and here are the
final patents--not only from Tellus, but also from Galmetia and Newmars
as well. All this is proof of ownership; with--according to DuPuy of
WarnOil--no possibility whatever of successful challenge."

The tycoon, who had begun to examine the documents, replaced them in the
envelope and nodded approvingly. "If Pete DuPuy says it's ironclad it
really is. So I'm ready for Stage Two."

"Here's a large-scale tri-di, in dilometers, of the largest ore-body.
There are a lot of others, but this whole plateau is one solid mass of
jewelry ore. It isn't pure pitchblende or pure anything else; it's been
altered down by heat and pressure to an average specific gravity of
about ten point one. So it will run well over ten metric gigatons to the
cubic kilometer, and you can read the cubage for yourself. Do you wonder
that we wouldn't talk to anyone except you in person about it?"

"That's evident--quite." For ten silent minutes Maynard scanned data
with practised ease. Then, "There are a few points that need
clarification. I know that there are a lot of crackpot planetary claims
allowed every year; on planets so worthless that they lapse into the
public domain as soon as the crackpots lose interest, go broke, or die.
Some of the discoverers, crackpots of the purest ray, even get _LitBay_
certification for their junkballs. But how in _hell_ did you mousetrap
_LitBay_ into certifying for worthless manganese ore a planet so reeking
with radiation that any high-school girl with a handful of loose wire
would have been shrieking 'URANIUM!' half an hour before you landed? You
know and I know that any field man of _theirs_ who didn't read his
scintillometer every time he goes into a strange restaurant for lunch
would get fired right then."

"That did take a little doing," Deston admitted, and Barbara laughed
again. "Our development work was done by the stupidest people we could
find, and the man we made foreman was the stupidest one of the whole
lot. We didn't appear at any Bureau of Planets ourselves, of course. Our
proxies were a couple of very good actors who had studied being
crackpots until they were letter-perfect. Then we waited until all
_LitBay_'s field men were out on jobs. Our proxies were in such a
tearing rush to get Barbizon nailed down that they opened negotiations
by offering double fees--and you know what _LitBay_'s usual fees
are--for fast action. So since it was so obviously just another crackpot
location, who was ever to know or care that it was a couple of
office-boys who went out? And, some way or other, their scintillometers
happened to get swapped temporarily for a pair of slightly finagled ones
we had on board."

"I see." Maynard shook his head admiringly. "So the thing never got
upstairs in their office... and I can't twit Littleton about it
because it never got anywhere near me, either. Okay. Barbizon is of
course lifeless--and the whole planet reeks--this ninety-hour limit on
the manganese location is the coolest spot on the planet, I suppose."

"That's right. We couldn't put anybody in armor, so we didn't let
anybody work over ten six-hour days."

"Refresh my memory." Maynard flipped pages; came up with a single sheet
of paper. "Ah. All your men were over sixty five--and the _LitBay_ kids
were on the ground only nine hours. So when this is over you'll notify
them that they've had ten percent of a year's permissible radiation, I
suppose."

Barbara smiled meaningly. "No, Mr. Maynard. It has just occurred to me
that you might like to tell Mr. Littleton about that yourself."

"So he'll think I mouse-trapped him?" Maynard blushed to the top of his
bald head. "And I'm small-souled enough to take advantage of that
face-saving offer. Thanks. But to get on with it, there's a glaring
vacancy in these data--about that incredible tri-di...."

"It's there, Mr. Maynard," Barbara put in. "It really is."

"I know it is. With a planet whose radiation would trip a scanner at
four or five astronomical units out, and what it has cost you to nail it
down, faking would be completely pointless. No, the missing information
is, how did you make that tri-di? We know of _one_ honest-to-God
oil-witch..." He paused and looked pointedly at Barbara, "but I've
never heard of anyone who ever witched enough virgin ore of any kind to
load a shotgun shell. Do you, Deston, claim to be the first metal-witch?
Excuse me--'warlock', I suppose I should have said."

"I most emphatically do not. Such crackpot stuff as that? No: 'Improved
instrumentation and techniques' is the full explanation. Secret, of
course--obviously. And whatever made you think Barbara is an oil-witch?
They're sinking as many dry holes as anybody."

"Yeah." As Maynard said it, the word was the essence of disbelief.
"Lately. I've noticed. You don't want to get her shot. Smart boy--if I
were you I wouldn't either."

"But sir, I assure..."

"Yeah," Maynard said again. "I'm assured, and I don't leak. So go ahead
with Stage Three."

"Thank you. Stage Three is to sell you the planet Barbizon, lock, stock,
and barrel, for the sum of one dollar and other valuable
considerations."

Maynard's whole body tensed, but his voice came calm and quiet as he
asked, "Such as?"

"Two million shares of today's Class B GalMet common at today's close;
to be delivered when the net profit of Project Barbizon amounts to two
megabucks more than the cost of the shares."

"_What?_" Maynard was shaken, and this time he could not help showing
it. "Less than two hundred megabucks, paid _after_ we clear it...
You're telling me there _is_ a Santa Claus, making us a
free-gratis-for-nothing Christmas present of God-knows-how-many
mega--hell, no; not megabucks, it'll be billions. With production
equalling full demand and the price set by the PESI formula it'll be
God-knows-how-many gigabucks over the long pull. So you'll have to do
some more explaining, Deston."

"I was going to; but first, who else could possibly handle a project
that big the way it should be handled?"

"Granted. We're geared for it; no one else is. But you know and I know
that with Barbizon nailed down tight you can set and get any royalty you
please."

"I know." Deston smiled suddenly. "We just did. We toyed with the idea
of socking you, but everything was against it and nothing for it. First;
we, too, adhere to the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest."

"I see." Maynard relaxed and his mien lightened tremendously. "That
shaft, son, dead-centered the gold. Go ahead."

"Second; since metal isn't our dish, our take will be pure gravy, and
the easier the bite we put on you and the deeper you get into the planet
Barbizon, the more convinced you will become that we knew what we're
doing."

"It's beginning to make sense. All this will soften me up for the real
whingo. So what will Santa Claus, as represented by Deston and Deston
Ink, do then?"

"Having established the fact beyond question that we have, by means of
our highly advanced instrumentation and techniques, found an immense
amount of one highly desirable natural resource, we will ask you what
you want next. We will look for it and we will probably find it."

"And, having found it?"

"Are you sold, up to this point?"

"Definitely." Maynard's fingers drummed lightly upon the soft plastic
covering of the arm of his chair. "If the stuff were not there you
wouldn't be here: none of this would make any sense at all."

"We will then prove to you that we have found whatever it was that you
wanted. The next step will be to merge GalMet and WarnOil--Barbara
thinks that 'Metals And Energy' would be a good name for the new
corporation. Now, considering..."

"You're leaving out one element, Carl," Barbara put in.

"Not exactly. That's speculation, and at the moment I'm..."

"He'll be interested in that particular speculation," Barbara broke in,
"so I'll tell him. Mr. Maynard, DuPuy says that while it is not yet
politically feasible to even suggest including InStell in this proposed
merger, he thinks that the present gentlemen's agreement would not only
continue, but would become even more so."

Maynard nodded. "I was beginning to think along that same line myself.
Go ahead, Deston."

"Considering the size and scope of the proposed firm, and the fact that
it would not have to explore, but would have at its command any amount
of any natural resource--how fast could it grow?"

"_What_ a program... what a _program!_" Rock-still, Maynard thought
for minutes. "I've always insisted on a fully-developed presentation,
but _this_... the three biggest firms in existence, all pulling
together and with everything they need...." He paused.

"Lansing and DuPuy both said the trouble would be to keep it from
growing too fast--getting all porous and falling apart. But that you
knew that as well as they did, and wouldn't expand any faster than you
could get top-bracket people, and that such executives are damned
scarce."

"They're _so_ right. However, I'm ready--I'll go into that later. It
won't be as long as you think. What's WarnOil's thought on
organization?"

"To have some widely-known VIP as president, with actual management
staying right where it is now; with you running Metals and Lansing
running Energy and both of you playing footsie with Hatfield of
InStell--with the figurehead president not necessarily knowing quite
everything that goes on."

"That sounds good. Lansing's an operator, and so is Hatfield."

"Last, the stock classes will be such, and Deston and Deston's payments
will be such, that voting control will be... oh, yes, 'conserved' was
the word DuPuy used. That's all, sir."

"Not by several stages that isn't all. You've done altogether too much
work on this to have it stop at this point. Next stage, please."

Deston looked baffledly at Barbara; who gave him an I-told-you-so smile
and said, "You knew darn well you'd have to tell him the whole wild
thing, so go right ahead and do it."

"You certainly will, son," Maynard agreed. He had thought that Deston,
like so many other space officers, had used the glamor of his status to
marry money. That idea was out. He wasn't the type. Neither was Barbara;
glamor-boys by the score had been trying to marry her ever since she was
fifteen... and they _could_ find metal... and this whole deal
showed honest-to-God _brains_. After a very brief pause he went on,
"Neither of you cares any more about money _as money_ than I do. So it's
something else. I'm beginning to think, Barbara, that you were right in
ascribing most of this to Carl, here."

"Of course I was." Barbara grinned wickedly; she had known exactly what
Maynard had been thinking. "_My_ mind doesn't work that way at all. It
really doesn't."

"Okay, okay; don't rub it in," Maynard answered her grin, not her words.
"I'm sure we'll go along, but after all this you'll _have_ to tell me
what you're really after."

"The trouble is, I can't, at all exactly." Deston spread out both hands.
"Too much extrapolation--altogether too many unknowns--at this point the
picture becomes ver-_ee_ unclear."

"Okay. Your thinking so far has been eminently precise; I'd like to hear
your extrapolations and speculations."

"Okay. MetEnge, or whatever the new firm turns out to be, will employ
DesDes as consulting geologists; that is, we would work independently
of, and eventually replace, your geological staff and your prospectors
and wildcatters and so on. If you should wish to employ us on an
exclusive basis...?"

"That goes without saying."

"We would require a very substantial annual fee, payable in MetEnge
voting stock at the market. All of our new discoveries, including the
find not theretofore revealed, will be leased, not sold, to MetEnge."

"Ah. 'Conserve' is right. Pete has a very fine Italian hand indeed. I'm
going to like this. Not money at all, but power."

"Not exactly--or rather, we want power back of us. We want to explore
subspace and deep space in ways and to depths that have never even been
thought of before. There must be thousands of things not only
undiscovered, but not even imagined yet. Barbara and I want to go out
after some of them; and, since nobody can have any idea whatever of what
we may run into, it is clear that the highly special ship may turn out
to be the smallest part of what we'll need. So we'll want the full
backing of the biggest private organization it is possible to build. A
firm big enough and strong enough to operate on a scale now possible
only to governments--one able and willing to handle anything we may stir
up. Our present thought is that when MetEnge gets big enough we will
offer it a fifty-fifty share of the expedition, build the ship, and take
off. As I said, there's nothing clear about it."

"It's clear enough for me to like it. You'd be surprised at the way the
first part of the program ties in with stuff I've been working on for a
long time. As for the other--untrammeled research into the completely
unknown--you realize, of course, that if MetEnge participates
fifty-fifty, DesDes will be on a non-retainer basis all the time you are
out and will have to split fifty-fifty."

"But there isn't going to be anything the least bit commercial about
it!" Barbara protested.

"You're wrong there, young lady. Research always has paid off big, in
hard dollars. So I'll buy the package." Maynard got up and shook hands
with them both. "I'll take this stuff along. WarnOil's legal department
is acting for you, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"In the morning we'll send them a check for one dollar, with a firm
binder, by special messenger and start things rolling."

"Oh, you don't think it's silly, then?" Barbara asked. "I was awfully
afraid you'd think this last part of it was."

"Far from it. I'm sure it will be immensely profitable."

"In that case we have some more news for you." Both Destons were smiling
happily. "We also found a deposit of native copper and copper ores big
enough and solid enough for full automation."

"_Copper!_" Maynard yelled, jumping out of his chair. "Why the hell
didn't you bring that up first?"

"When would this other thing have been settled if we had?"

"You've got a point there. Where is it?"

"Belmark. Strulsa Three, you know."

"_Belmark!_ We _prospected_ Belmark--it's colonized--fairly well along.
We didn't find any more copper there than anywhere else."

"It'd be impossible to find by any usual method, and it's over five
hundred miles from the nearest town. Our finding it was a... not an
accident, but a byproduct--while we were training for uranium. If we'd
known then what we know now I'd've found you a big one, but we weren't
interested in copper."

"How big is this one?"

"It'll smelt something over a hundred million tons of metal. It'll tide
you over, but I don't know about amortizing the plant."

"We can cut the price in half and still amortize in months... but
amortization cuts no ice here... let's see, production of primary
copper runs about six million tons... but if we cut the price to the
bone, God knows what the sales potential is...."

Maynard immersed himself in thought, then went on, "Definitely. That's
the way to do it. Hit 'em hard. Really slug 'em... that is, if...
how sure are you, Carl, that you can find us another big deposit?
Within, say, a year?"

Deston's mind flashed back over the comparatively few copper surveys he
had made. "Copper isn't too scarce and it tends to aggregate. I'll
guarantee to find you one at least three times that big within thirty
days."

"Good! Let's cut the chatter, then. I can use your com?"

"Of course," Barbara said; but Maynard's question had been purely a
matter of form. He was already punching his call.

"Miss Champion," Maynard said, when his FirSec's face showed on the
screen. "I hope you don't have any engagements for tonight."

"I have a date, but it's with Don, so he'll understand perfectly when I
break it." She did not ask any questions; she merely raised her
perfectly-sculptured black eyebrows.

"I want him, too, so bring him downtown as soon as you can. And please
get hold of Quisenberry and Felton and tell them to get to the office
jet-propelled. That's all for now."

"I'll get right at it, Mr. Maynard."

Maynard punched off and turned to Deston. "I almost forgot--what are you
charging for this?"

"Nothing. Free gratis for nothing."

"_Huh?_"

"We have no claim on it. Nobody has. It's never even been surveyed; so
call it DesDes's contribution toward knocking Burley Hoadman and his UCM
off of the Christmas tree."

"You've got the dope on it here in your office?"

"Yes." Deston went to his desk and brought back a briefcase. "Here's
everything necessary."

"Thanks immensely. We'll own it shortly. As for your royalties, we've
been accused of claim-stealing, but we usually pay discoverers'
royalties and we'll be glad to on this one. _Brother_, will we be glad
to! So Phelps will--no, he'd take it for nothing, the skinflint, and
lick his chops. I'll have Don Smith take care of it tonight. And now
that that's settled," Maynard smiled as he had not smiled in weeks,
"about that trip of yours. I envy you. If we were twenty five years
younger I'd talk my wife into going along with you. I'd better call her;
and I'd like to have her meet both of you."

"Why, we'd be _delighted_ to meet her!" Barbara exclaimed.

Mrs. Maynard proved to be a willowy, strong-featured, gracious woman
with whom the years had dealt very lightly. She was as glad to meet the
Destons, about whom she had heard so much, as they were to meet her. And
so on.

"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Maynard," Barbara said, finally, "that we had to
keep your husband so..."

"Think nothing of it," Maynard interrupted, briskly. "Just one of those
things. If you'd like to come downtown to the office, Floss, I'll take
you out to dinner sometime during the evening."

"I would like to, Upton, thanks. I'll be down in an hour or so."

The Destons escorted Maynard up to the roof and to his waiting aircar;
and after it had taken off:

"What do you suppose he meant by that 'just one of those things' crack?"
Deston asked.

"Why, he was on a _com_, silly, so he was _afraid_ to say anything! Even
that he was going to work all night!" Barbara explained, excitedly.
"_That's_ how big he knows it is!" and the two went enthusiastically
into each other's arms.




                                  VII
                          PROJECT ENGINEER BYRD


MISS CHAMPION was as efficient as she was ornamental, and all of
GalMet's top people were on call every minute of every day on the
calendar. Therefore she and Executive Vice-President Eldon Smith and
Project Engineers Quisenberry and Felton got to GalMet's main office
almost as soon as Maynard himself did. When the two engineers came in
Maynard looked at them with the well-known expression of the
canary-containing cat.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he said, with a wide and cryptic grin. "I
trust that your hearts are in good shape? And your nerves? That you are
both sufficiently well integrated to withstand the shock of your
trouble-making young lives?"

"Try us," Quisenberry said. He was a black-haired, black-eyed,
deeply-tanned man, a little past thirty, who had worked himself up the
hard way; clear up from the lowest low of a copper mine. He looked--if
not exactly sullen, at least as though he was very sure that what he had
been doing on his own was vastly more important than any piffling,
niggling conference with THE BIG BOSS. "I'll live through it, I'm sure."

"Okay. Each of you take a table; you'll need lots of room. Quisenberry,
here's everything you'll need on a deposit of copper. Felton, ditto,
uranium. I want preliminary roughouts of those projects as fast as you
can get them. Very rough: plus-or-minus twenty five percent will be
close enough. Now, Don and Miss Champion, what we'll have to do tonight
is rough out a full operational on copper in the light of information
that has just come to hand."

After what may have been an hour Mrs. Maynard came in and Quisenberry
came up for air. His table was littered with hand-books, machine-tapes
of various kinds, graphs, charts, and wadded-up scratch-paper; much of
which had overflowed onto the floor.

"But this is _incredible_, sir." It was the first time either engineer
had called Maynard "sir" in over a year. "Of course I can't say that
it's absolutely impossible for any such deposit as this to occur,
but..." Quisenberry paused.

Maynard grinned again, but pleasantly, this time. "Do you think I'd have
all that stuff faked up and then come down here and work all night
myself just to put you two through the wringer?"

"Put that way, of course not... but..." Quisenberry paused again
and Felton, who had stopped work and was listening with both ears, came
in with:

"Quizz said it, Mr. Maynard, and mine's ten to the fourth as hard to
swallow as his. I can't make myself believe that there's that much
uranium in one place anywhere in the universe."

"I know exactly how you feel," Maynard assured them. "I was
flabbergasted myself. You may take it as a fact, however, that all that
data is accurate to within the appropriate limits of error. I myself am
so convinced of its reliability that I am going to give you two men all
the authorization you'll need and full authority to build and to operate
fully-automated plants. Satisfactory? That's what you've been getting
ready for all this time, isn't it?"

"Yes, _sir_!" Quisenberry said, and:

"You _said_ it, sir!" Felton agreed.

At seven fifty five Maynard asked the group at large, "Everybody ready
to eat? I'll call Beardsley's."

Neither engineer would leave his job; so, after Miss Champion had
ordered up two one-gallon hot-pots of coffee and a good spread of
smorgasbord, the two couples went to Beardsley's for dinner--a dinner
that lasted for an hour and a half and cost Maynard exactly forty
dollars (including tip). Then a GalMet aircar took Mrs. Maynard home and
another one took the other three back to the office.

Along toward morning Quisenberry stood up, stretched, looked with
distaste at his umpteenth cup of coffee, and said, "I've made some
assumptions, boss, that I'd better check with you before I give you the
bad news. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Rush all possible. That means twenty-four hours a day, Saturdays,
Sundays, and holidays. All the personnel that can work efficiently, all
the time. Crash priorities on material, which means no time for
competitive bidding, so we'll have to pay top prices and bonuses. Check
to here?"

"Check and okay."

"Plant capacity. Assuming that you want to cut the price down to
somewhere between eleven and twelve cents...."

"You're right on the beam, Quizz. Nearer eleven, I think."

"Extrapolating on that basis, my guessometer says that we'll have to be
producing at the rate of fifteen million tons by the end of the first
year. That's a mighty big plant, boss. That's one supreme _hell_ of a
big plant."

"I know. I like those figures very much."

"You won't like these next ones, I'm afraid. On this rush-and-bonus
basis it'll take pretty close to twenty five megabucks in the first
couple of months, and the total--well, it's a very rough guess at this
point. All I'm sure of is the order of magnitude, but the total to first
pour will probably run somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy five
megabucks."

"Thanks. That's close enough for now. Just so we don't get caught short
of cash in the till."

"But listen--sir--Phelps will have a litter of lizards!"

"He'll be amenable to reason when he finds out that we are entering a
completely new era in metals. Felton, how about you?"

Felton--a brawny youth with butch-cut straw-colored hair and blue
eyes--could not answer immediately because his mouth was full of _shrimp
a la Creole_. He swallowed hastily, then said:

"Since this will have to be a crash-pri job, too, everything Quizz said
will apply. Add high radiation to all that, and a hostile dead planet
clear out to hellangone beyond anywhere, and the tab gets no smaller
fast. My best guesstimate as of now is that the total will crowd a
hundred megabucks."

"Fair enough. Thanks a..."

"One thing first," Felton interrupted. "Are you sure enough of
this--this super-bonanza--for me to roust Bassler out right now? Tell
him to cut out all this ten-cent petty-larceny rock-scratching we're
doing now, break out all the armor we've got and order more, and
start--but quick--jassacking some of that high-grade out of there and
hauling it to Galmetia?"

"An excellent idea. Splendid! If I'd thought of it I would have
suggested it hours ago. Go ahead."

Felton did so and Maynard went on, "Since you fellows made these
estimates in hours instead of weeks I'll give you plenty of leeway. Miss
Champion, please issue two preliminary authorizations: Quisenberry,
seventy five megabucks; Felton, a hundred."

Preliminaries! Not maxes! Staring at each other as though they could not
believe their ears, the two engineers shook hands solemnly with each
other, and then with all three of the others. Then they poured
themselves two more cups of strong black coffee and went back to work.

Work went on until half past five. Then, since each would have to be on
the job by nine o'clock, Maynard broke it up so that each could get
three hours' sleep. All top-echelon private offices were equipped for
that. Night work was an essential part of such man-killing jobs as
theirs; a part that envious underlings knew nothing about. It had
happened before and it would happen again. And again and again.

This entire episode was just another one of those things.

****

A couple of months later, Miss Champion showed Deston into Maynard's
office. The tycoon, although showing the effects of too little sleep,
was in very fine fettle indeed.

"Good morning, chief," Deston said. "We're about ready to cut gravs. How
are the projects coming along?"

"Fine! Quizz is really rolling it, and no leaks. And we cut the price of
uranium another half a buck yesterday."

"Nice going. Are you sure we can stay out a few months? I'll locate
enough copper while we're gone, of course, to last you for a thousand
years."

"Positive. Well drop the price of copper to where Hoadman will think
he's been hit by a pile-driver."

"So solly... and the effect on all industry of cheap and plentiful
copper--added to your widely-advertised fact that in a few months
everybody can buy all the uranium they want for less than thirty cents
per pound--will take the curse off of the public image GalMet will get
when you smash UCM flat?"

"Not quite all of it, perhaps, but it will certainly help."

"That's for sure. Okay; what do you want fastest and mostest of, now
that copper and uranium are out of the way?"

"I wish I could tell you." Maynard's fingers drummed quietly on his
desk. "You thought it would be simple? It isn't. It's all fouled up in
the personnel situation I told you I'd tell you about. We have six good
people--damned good people--each of whom wants a planetary project so
passionately that if I stack the deck in favor of any one of them, all
the others will blast me to a cinder and run, not walk, to the nearest
exit."

Deston did not say anything and after a moment the older man went on,
"Platinum and iridium, of course. Osmium, tungsten..."

"Tungsten isn't too scarce, is it?"

"For the possible demand, very much so. I'd like to sell it for fifteen
cents a pound. Beryllium, tantalum, titanium, thorium, cerium--and, for
the grand climax to end all climaxes--_rhenium_."

"Huh? I don't think I've ever heard rhenium even mentioned since my
freshman chemistry."

"Not too many people have, but right now I'm as full of information as
the dog that sniffed at the third rail. It's so rare that no mineral of
it is known; it exists only as a trace of impurity in a very few
minerals. Strangely enough, practically only in molybdenite."

"Just a minute." Deston went to a book-case, took out a hand-book, and
flipped pages. "Um... um... mm. Dwimanganese. _Not_ usually
associated with manganese. _Maybe_ it occurs in molybdenite as the
sulphide--ReS2 and/or Re2S7--commercial source, flue dust from
the roasting of Arizona molybdenite...."

"Right. We own the outfit. That's _why_ we own it. It produces a few
tons a _year_ of Cottrell dust, which yields just about enough rhenium
to irritate one eyeball. Production cost, five dollars and seventeen
cents per gram."

"But what's it _good_ for? Contact points... cat mass...
heavy-duty igniters, it says here." Deston tapped the page with his
forefinger. "No tonnage outlet there."

"What would you think of an alloy that had a yield point--not ultimate
tensile, mind you, but _yield_--of well over a million pounds, and yet
an elongation of better than five percent?"

Deston whistled. "I _would_ have said it was a pure pipe dream. What
else is in it?"

"Mostly tungsten. A lot of tantalum. Rhenium around ten percent. The
research isn't done yet, but they're far enough along to know that
they'll have something utterly fantastic. The problem, Byrd tells me, is
to determine the optimum formula and environment for the growth and
matting of single crystals of metal--tungsten 'whiskers', you know--you
know about them."

"A little, of course, but not too much. I'm a 'troncist."

"I know. Well, they're playing around now with soak-pit times and
temperatures and fractional percentages of this and that. The curve is
still rising."

"So you'll need tungsten and tantalum, too, by the gigaton, since that's
a thing that the Law of Diminishing Returns would apply to exactly."

"I didn't think I'd have to plot you a graph. So now, apart from the
personnel problem, what do you think?"

Before replying, Deston studied the hand-book for minutes. Then: "The
three atomic numbers are in order; seventy three, four, and five. But in
the Earth's crust rhenium runs less than one part in billions. So if
there is any big mass of it anywhere the others are apt to be there too,
and a hell of a lot more of 'em."

"All the better, even from a project standpoint. Two prime sources of
anything are a lot better than one."

"I didn't mean that. All that stuff is terrifically heavy, and it's got
to be close enough to the surface to get at. I simply can't visualize
what kind of a planet could possibly have what we want. It _won't_ be
Tellus-Type, that's for damn certain sure."

"I couldn't care less about that. We can set up automation on anything
that isn't hotter than dull red."

"Okay. That brings us back, then, to personnel. This Byrd--has he got
what it takes to run such a weirdie as this rhenium thing will almost
have to be?"

"Definitely, but Doctor Cecily Byrd isn't a man. Very much the opposite,
which is exactly what is thickening the soup. If we could get hold of as
little as one megaton of rhenium, so as to add this new alloy leybyrdite
to cheap uranium and copper, it would make MetEnge such a public
benefactor that it'd be a case of 'the King can do no wrong'. But if I
deal one card from the bottom of the deck to 'Curly' Byrd all hell will
be out for noon."

"That sounds like something more than ordinary sex antagonism."

"It is. Much more. She not only uses weapons men don't have--and she's
got 'em, believe me--but she brags about it. She's a carrot-topped,
freckle-faced, shanty-Irish mick, with the shape men drool about and
itching to use it--with a megavac for a brain and an ice-cube for a
heart. She's half cobra, half black widow, half bitch, and one hundred
percent hell-cat on wheels."

"She must be quite a gal, to add up to two hundred and fifty percent."

"She adds up to all that. So do the others. I would have fired her a
year ago--she hadn't been on the job three weeks before she started
making passes at me--but I haven't been able to find anyone else nearly
as good as she is."

"That's a mighty tough signal to read."

"It's a unique situation. I've been gathering those people for over two
years, getting ready to expand, and we haven't found anything big enough
to expand into. I had eight of them. They were hard enough to handle
before I gave Felton and Quisenberry their projects, but ever since then
the other six have been damn near impossible. Each has tremendous
ability and drive; each is as good as either Felton or Quisenberry and
knows it. All working at about ten percent load; with nowhere in the
galaxy to go to do any better. Frustrated--tense--sore as boils and
touchy as fulminate--knives out, not only for each other, but also for
Smith and me. Four men and two women. Purdom hasn't got any sex-appeal
at all; Byrd oozes it at every pore. So I tell you rhenium first and the
sex-pot is first out. So the other five _know_ she got it by sleeping
with me, and she--the God damned bitch!--grins like the Chesire cat and
rubs it in that _she_ has got what it takes to land the big ones."

"That's a hell of a picture, chief. I simply can't visualize top-bracket
executives acting that way."

"You haven't handled enough people for years enough. They can't act any
other way. What I've been wanting to do, every time she sticks her
damned sexy neck out, is wring it... wait a minute; that gives me an
idea... yes, that'll work. The minute they find out for sure--they
must all suspect it already--that you're an honest-to-God metal-wizard I
can kick their teeth right down their throats. They'll all tear into
their jobs like that many hundred-ton cat tractors."

"But listen! You _can't_ tell 'em--we've got to keep it dark, the way we
find the stuff."

"From most people, yes; but from anybody with a brain? One, of course,
could be luck. Two might--just barely--be coincidence. But the next one?
I won't have to tell them, even now. I'll make the method certain the
same way you did--by denying its possibility."

"Could be, at that... so maybe we'd better make it a straight tri-di
survey for everything you're interested in. That would save time, in
fact, over all. What kind of a list would that be?"

"Here." Maynard reached into a drawer and sailed a sheet of paper across
his desk. "The full want list, which we boiled down to the must-haves."

Deston caught the paper and read it. "Is that all?"

"Isn't that enough? You're a brute for punishment."

"I'm surprised, is all, that gold isn't on it."

"_Gold!_" Maynard snorted. "Besides currency base, jewelry, and show,
what's it good for? We've never touched it and never intend to--produce
a few tons too much and you upset the economy instead of benefitting
it."

"I never thought of it that way, but that's right. Okay, chief, we'll
flit. I'll keep you posted. 'Bye."

Deston strode out and Maynard flipped a switch. "Please get Wharton,
Bender, Camp, Byrd, Train, and Purdom and bring 'em into the conference
room. No note-pads and no recorder."

"Very well, sir," Miss Champion said; and in a few minutes four men and
three women were walking toward the long table at the head of which
Maynard sat.

"I for one was _busy_, Mister Maynard!" Cecily Byrd snapped. She was
something under thirty, five feet ten in her nylons, and beautifully
built. She moved with the lithe grace of a trained dancer. Her thick,
brick-red, medium-bobbed hair was naturally and stubbornly curly; with a
curliness no hair-dresser had ever been able to subdue. Her untannable
skin was heavily freckled and, except for a touch of lipstick, she wore
no make-up. Her features, while regular enough, were too bold and too
strong by far for prettiness. Her mien was sullen and defiant; her
eyes--smoldering green fires--swept the bare expanse of table. "What? No
pads and pencils? No mikes? Isn't this conference going to be of such
gravid and world-shaking import that its every word and nuance should be
preserved for the edification of all ages to come?"

"Shut up, Byrd, and all of you sit down."

The red-head gasped and all the others stared; for this was something
new. President Maynard had never before spoken to any one of them except
in formal terms. Wondering and silent, they all sat down and Maynard
smiled at them wolfishly one by one. After a long half minute of this he
spoke.

"I've been looking forward to this moment for a long long time," he
gloated. "But first, I wonder if any one of you has any idea of why I
put up with all eight of you so long? Such intractable, intransigent
hellions; such knuckle-dusting, back stabbing, rampaging jerks as you
all have been?"

"That's easy!" the red-head snapped, before any one of the eager others
could say a word. "Hog-the-talent. Dog-in-the-manager. Standard
Operating Procedure."

"Wrong. You're also wrong in claiming to be busy. Not one of you has
even the remotest inkling of what the word means. But you are all going
to find out. _How_ you'll find out! As soon as this meeting is over each
of you will be handed a planetary-project authorization and will..."

"_What?_" "Huh?" "Where?" "How come?" Six voices shouted or shrieked
almost as one.

"Whereupon each of you will proceed to design and staff a full-scale,
optimum-tonnage plant, exactly as you want it. Each of you will have
full authority and full responsibility...."

"Full authority. Yeah," Percival Train broke in, bitingly. He was a big,
handsome, hard-bodied young man, with bushy, crew-cut brown hair and
highly cynical--at the moment--gray eyes. "Except that I'll be told
exactly what to do and exactly how to do it and then it'll be my fault
when the whole damned operation goes stinko. Full authority, hell! I've
heard that song, words and music, before."

"From me?" Maynard asked quietly.

"Well... no."

"Nor will you. You'll be on your own; subject to Top Management only in
matters of policy--such as no pirating of personnel from each other, for
instance. That's so none of you can come around later, bitching and
belly-aching that your flop was due to the way we cramped your style. If
each of you does a job, and I hope you will; fine. Anybody who doesn't
will get fired. I would enjoy firing you, Train, and Byrd. Any
questions?"

The six looked at each other, almost in consternation. Even "Curly" Byrd
was mute. Finally Train spoke.

"Maybe... to be tossing out _that_ kind of money... this, on top
of Barbizon and Belmark, really blows the plug. But I still don't think
that Mrs. Deston is a metal-witch. It doesn't make sense."

"Of course she isn't," Rose Purdom, a plumpish, fortyish blonde put in.
"Or she'd have done it before. It's a new talent. _Mister_ Deston. Those
huge finds were just to prove to a certain hard-nosed tycoon that he
could do it. That's what's really back of this gigantic super-merger."

"If any or all of you want to believe in that supernatural twaddle it's
all right with me," Maynard said, dryly. "What I am authorized to say is
that the firm of Deston and Deston Incorporated has, by marked
improvements in instrumentation and techniques, been able to take
noteworthy strides in the science or art of locating large deposits of
certain metals."

"Comet-gas!" Train rasped. "You're right, Rose, it's Deston. _Es macht
mir garnichts aus_ who finds the stuff, or how; but just one question,
Mr. Maynard. Are you going to play this straight, on a
first-found-first-out basis?"

"Absolutely. Thus, either Wharton or Camp will probably be first, the
lady Byrd here last. Probably all of you, however, except Byrd, will
have your locations before you're ready for them."

"But if probability governs, I _might_ come in first," Cecily Byrd said,
looking pointedly at Maynard.

"The possibility, although vanishingly small, does exist," Maynard
admitted. "Therefore, _if_ that event occurs, I want you all to know now
as a fact that it will be because rhenium is discovered first in a
non-selective survey, and _not_ because...." He paused and his icy
gray eyes scanned as much of a highly-sculptured green garment as was
visible above the table's top, "I repeat, _not_ because of our Doctor
Byrd's generosity with her charms; which, by the exercise of super-human
self-control, I have managed so far to resist. Now go back to your
offices, all of you, and start earning part of your pay."

The red-head flushed hotly--it was the first time anyone there had seen
her blush--but not even that blast could dampen the enthusiasm of the
melee that followed. They shook hands all around; they whacked each
other--including Maynard and Miss Champion--on the back; the men kissed
the women--including Miss Champion--vigorously; and they all babbled
excitedly. In fact, it took fifteen minutes for Maynard to get them out
of the conference room.

And the six engineer-scientist-executives who finally left that room
were very different from the six who had entered it such a short time
before.

****

The Destons and MetEnge, on a fifty-fifty basis, had bought from InStell
the _Procyon_'s hulk, as is, at its appraised value for machinery and
scrap. InStell had been glad to sell her on that basis; for in the
still-somewhat-superstitious public mind she was, and under any possible
disguise would remain, an irreparably jinxed and hoodooed death-ship.

She was now completely reconditioned; not as a passenger liner, but as
an armed and armored, completely self-contained, subspace-going
independent worldlet with a population of just under a thousand people.
There were no unmarried men or women aboard, and most of the couples had
children. Every man and every woman had passed a series of physical,
mental, and psychological examinations.

With this special ship, then, and with this super-special crew, the
Destons set out.

In the con-room there was now a forty-foot tri-di of the galaxy, with an
eight-inch, roughly globular cluster of red dots in a spiral arm, much
nearer to one edge than to the center of the huge lens. The Destons sat
at two bewildering-instrumented desks. Behind them stood big, hard,
tough Captain Theodore Jones, with his platinum-blonde wife Bernice. Her
left hand rested upon his right shoulder; her spectacular head rested
thoughtfully upon her hand.

At Jones' left, toward the massed control-boards of the ship, his
fifteen top officers stood at ease; at his right was a group of
twenty-odd scientists.

"So _that's_ what all explored space amounts to," Jones pointed at the
tiny globe in the enormous, discus-shaped, light-point-filled volume
which represented the galaxy. "I simply would not have believed it. Damn
it, Babe, are you _sure_ that thing is to scale?"

"To within one percent, yes. That's why Bobby and I are going to work
fourteen hours a day instead of six. I'm not going to try to tell any of
you what to do"--Deston's eyes swept both groups--"because each of you
knows more about his own job than I do. So let's get at it."

The _Procyon_ flashed to the nearest one of the ninety five colonized
planets and Carlyle and Barbara Deston taped their three-dimensional
surveys; the man on metals, the woman on oil, coal, water and natural
gas. Nor was her part any less important than his. The use of fuels as
such, while large, was insignificant in comparison with their use in
petrochemistry. Led by Plastics, that industry had grown so fast that
not even WarnOil's fantastic expansion had been able to keep up with it.

Day after day, planet after planet, they surveyed the ninety five
colonized and all the virgin planets they had scanned so sketchily on
their first trip. Deston found immense deposits of several of the
"wanted" metals, including copper, and Barbara found plenty of water and
fuels. Tungsten and tantalum, however, were no more abundant on any of
those planets than they were on Earth; and rhenium existed only in
almost imperceptible traces. Therefore the _Procyon_ set out, on an
immensely helical course, toward the center of the galaxy.

On their first expedition the Destons had learned so much that they
could work any planet whose sun they could see. Now, as their psionic
powers kept on increasing, their astronomers had to push the _Procyon_'s
telescopes farther and farther out into the immensity of space to keep
them busy.

Days lengthened into weeks, and life aboard the immense sky-rover
settled down into a routine. Adults worked, read, studied, loafed, and
tuned in programs of entertainment and of instruction. Children went to
school and/or played just as though they were at home. In fact, they
_were_ at home. Except that physical travel outside the hull was
forbidden, life aboard the starship was very similar to, and in many
ways more rewarding than, life in any village of civilization.

Deston and Barbara, however, worked and slept and ate--and that was all.
Fourteen hours per day every day of every week is a brutal shift to
work, especially at such grueling tasks as theirs; but the entire
expedition had been built around those two and they wanted to get the
job done.




                                  VIII
                    THE BATTLE OF NEW YORK SPACEPORT


GALACTIC METALS moved its main office from Earth to Galmetia. WarnOil's
was already on Newmars. InStell moved to Newmars. Many other very large
firms moved from Earth to various "outplanets." Thus, while there was a
great deal of objection to the formation of such a gigantic "trust" as
METALS AND ENERGY, INCORPORATED, there was nothing that WestHem's
government could do about it. While GalMet was now a wholly-owned
subsidiary of MetEnge, neither its name nor its operation had been
changed in any way.

In GalMet's vast new building on Galmetia, President Upton Maynard sat
at the head of a conference table. At his left sat Executive
Vice-President Eldon Smith and Comptroller Desmond Phelps. At his right
were Darrell Stearns, head of GalMet's legal staff, and Ward Q. Wilson,
Chief Mediator of WestHem. Miss Champion sat at her desk, off to one
side. Wilson was speaking.

"... no over-riding authority, of course, since MetEnge is a Newmars
corporation and GalMet's legal domicile and principal place of business
is here on Galmetia. While such tax evasion is not..."

"Let's keep the record straight, Mr. Wilson," Maynard said sharply. "Not
evasion; avoidance. Avoidance of Earth's ruthlessly confiscatory
taxation was necessary to our continued existence. Under such taxation
our basic principle of operation, which the founders of GalMet
inaugurated over two hundred years ago, could not possibly have remained
implemented.

"Do you think it's accidental that we are the largest firm in existence?
It isn't; it is due absolutely to the fact that, very unlike capital in
general, we have adhered strictly to the Principle of Enlightened
Self-Interest. Simply stated, that Principle is: Don't be a hog. You
make more, over the long pull, by letting the other fellows make
something, too. Most important, it's non-inflationary, even though the
standard of living is continually rising. If we had stayed on Earth and
gone along all these years with blind, stupid, greedy, grasping
conventional Capital, what would the price of steel have been today?
What would the dollar have been worth?"

"Nevertheless, there has been some inflation..."

"How well we know it!" Phelps, the moneyman, broke in. "Whose fault is
it? Your government's deficit spending--cradle-to-grave
security--reckless, foolhardy installment buying--the whole inflated
credit situation. We, on the other hand, do not use credit. We buy
sight-draft-attached-to-bill-of-lading and sell the same way. Hard money
and cash on the barrelhead. We have it before we spend it."

"I'm not saying that your principle hasn't worked very well for you, up
to now. You haven't had a real strike for half a century, until now. Not
because of the stable dollar or of your principle of operation, however,
but simply because no union was strong enough to fight you to a finish.
Now, there is one. The UCM controls all copper mining and Burley Hoadman
controls the UCM. The situation, gentlemen, is now desperate; it is a
civilization-wide emergency. It is intolerable that all industry should
come to a halt because of your refusal to settle this strike. You know
that all industry must have at least some new copper to operate at all."

"We do," Maynard said. "You are saying that since Hoadman will not
settle for anything less than double the present scale--already tops--we
must cave in and pay it? And surrender to all the other unions that will
jump onto the gravy train? That the subsequent inevitable surge of
inflation won't hurt? You know exactly what the spiral will be."

Wilson glanced at his microphone and said nothing. Miss Champion entered
a couple of pot-hooks in her notebook. Maynard went on:

"Your opinion is not for the record. I understand. This is an election
year, and because the dear pe-pul are getting out of hand the
administration sent you here to tell us to give Hoadman everything he
wants--or else. They're junking financial stability completely to get
themselves re-elected."

"No, I was not going to..."

"Not so crudely, of course; but nobody has put any pressure at all on
Hoadman."

"We can't." Wilson spread his hands out helplessly and Miss Champion
made a few more marks in her book. "All popular sentiment is for the
union and against you. You are altogether too big."

"Or not big enough--yet," Maynard said, savagely.

"Also, in the public mind, the salaries of all you tycoons are
altogether too high."

"High, hell!" Smith snarled. "How about Hoadman's take? He drags down
more than all four of us put together!"

"Whether or not it is true, that point is irrelevant. The pertinent fact
is that Senator Wrigley of California is preparing a bill to annex both
Newmars and Galmetia to the Western Hemisphere."

Smith whistled. "_Brother!_ They went a hell of a long ways out after
_that_ one!"

Wilson said nothing.

Stearns stared thoughtfully at the mediator, then said, "It's
unconstitutional. Obviously. It violates every principle of
Interplanetary law."

"Better yet, it's unenforceable," Smith said. "Admiral Porter knows as
well as we do that his handful of tomato-juice cans wouldn't stand the
chance of the proverbial nitrocellulose cat in hell."

"One more thing," Maynard said. "Ninety five other planets wouldn't like
it, either. Have you thought about what a good, solid boycott would do
to Earth?"

"The possibility has been considered, and the concensus is that there
can be no effective boycott. Labor will hold..."

"Hold it!" Maynard snapped. "You know--at least you should--that the
organizations of the Planetsmen are no more like the labor unions of
Tellus than black is like white. They are in favor of automation. They
want change. They want advancement by ability, not seniority. As opposed
to that attitude, what do your unions want, Mr. Wilson?"

Wilson pursed his lips in hesitation and Smith said, "I'll answer that
for you, then, Mr. Wilson. They want security, period, but they don't
want to have to earn it. They want everything handed to them on a
platter. Advancement by seniority only--all they have to do is stay
alive. No changes allowed except more pay and more benefits for fewer
hours of exactly the same work. Strictly serf labor and that's the way
they like it. Security, hell! It's exactly the same kind of security, if
they had brains enough to realize it, as they'd have in jail."

"It has been computed," Wilson said, ignoring Smith's barbed opinion,
"that in an emergency outplanet Labor will support that of Earth.
Furthermore, public opinion is very strongly opposed to such gigantic
trusts, combines, and monopolies as you are. And finally, at the worst,
the inevitable litigation would take a long time, which would...?"
Wilson paused, delicately.

"It would," Maynard agreed, grimly. "It would cramp us plenty and cost
us plenty; and the administration could and would pull a lot of other
stuff just as slimy."

Wilson neither confirmed nor denied the statement and Maynard went on.
"Okay. We'll sign up for everything Hoadman demands; even the voice in
management and the feather-bedding. Also, we'll make the wage scales and
fringe benefits retroactive to cover all hours worked on and after July
first."

"May I ask why? They might yield that one point."

"Why should they?" Smith sneered. "It's just out of the goodness of our
hearts. You may quote me on that."

"And that isn't all," Maynard went on. "We wanted a three-year contract,
but Hoadman wouldn't add a day to his one-year position. So we'll do
even better than that. Type a memo, please, Miss Champion. What we've
said, and add, 'Cancellable by either party on ten days' notice in
writing'!"

"_What?_" The mediator was shaken out of his calm. When Maynard handed
him the signed memorandum he handled it as though it might bite. "Just
what have you robber barons got up your sleeves?"

"Nothing but our arms," Smith assured him. "What _could_ we have?
Haven't your spies kept you informed of our every move?"

(No outsider as yet knew anything about Project Belmark, which was ready
to go into full production.)

"I don't like this at all--not any part of it," Wilson said,
thoughtfully. "I don't think I will recommend signing any contract
containing a cancellation clause. Even though I can't see it, I know
there's a hook in it somewhere... and I think I know what it is...
but Hoadman is perfectly sure that...?"

"Go ahead, ask me," Smith said. "I'll answer--I'm not under oath. You
smell something because you can think. Hoadman can't. Even if he could,
and even if there were a hook in the thing, he'll grab it. He'll have
to. If he doesn't, the miners will throw him out on his ear. Besides,
he'll love it. Imagine the headlines--'BURLEY HOADMAN, GIANT BRAIN OF
LABOR, BRINGS MIGHTY GALMET TO ITS KNEES'."

"Mr. Maynard," Wilson said, "please erase Mr. Smith's remarks and this
sentence from the record."

"By no means. Hoadman will of course listen to this supposedly top
secret recording, and to hear this bit may--just conceivably--be good
for what ails him."

Wilson wriggled uncomfortably and Miss Champion wrote another line of
shorthand.

Discussion continued for another hour or so, after which Wilson took his
leave.

The union signed, in spite of Wilson's objections, because Burley
Hoadman _knew_ that copper mining could not be automated except at
prohibitive cost. Then Hoadman announced to THE PRESS:

"This shows what a really tightly organized union can do. We are
perfectly free to keep ahead of the cost of living and we'll keep it
that way, since we can tie them up again any time we please."

Everything remained quiet then--except for some rumblings in other
unions, none of which had time to develop into serious strikes--for a
couple of weeks. Then GalMet cancelled its contract with the UCM.
Simultaneously it announced a reduction in the price of copper to eleven
point three six one cents per pound FOB spaceport and began to supply
all its competitors with all the copper they wanted. (It did not develop
until later that Ajax, Revere, and all other large producers were
merging with MetEnge). All mines worked by United Copper Miners shut
down. Salaried people were transferred. All machinery was scrapped. All
properties and buildings were either sold or simply abandoned. Then
Maynard talked to the reporters who had for many days been demanding a
statement.

"In an economy subscribing fully to the Principle of Enlightened
Self-Interest neither stupidly avaricious capital nor serf labor would
exist. Nor would such a corrupt government as we now have. While it may
be true that any people deserves the government it gets, this
three-pronged blight now threatening all civilization is intolerable and
something must be done about it. We have begun doing something about it
by making an example of Burley Hoadman and his unconscionably greedy
United Copper Miners, who..."

"One question, Mr. Maynard!" a reporter broke in. "In using the word
'we' do you claim to be represent...."

"I claim nothing!" Maynard snapped. "I state as a fact that I am
speaking for the Galaxians--the free men and women and the intelligent
capital of the planets. These two component halves of production,
eternally irreconcilable on Earth, work together on the planets for the
best good of all. To resume: the closed copper mines will not be
re-opened. There will never, in the foreseeable future, be any
employment anywhere for the skilled craftsmen known as copper miners. We
have deliberately automated the entire craft out of existence.

"We do not know whether Hoadman will believe this statement or not. Nor
do we care. If he wishes to use up his union's funds in supporting the
men in idleness rather than in expediting their absorption into other
industries, that is his privilege.

"It has been threatened that other unions will, in spite of contractual
obligations, walk out in sympathy with the UCM, to enforce Headman's
demand that we pay four men double-scale wages to sit on cushioned
chairs and play stud poker while one machine does the work. In reply to
these threats I say now that we are prepared to cope with such
retaliation at any level of action required.

"We are ready even for a complete general strike by all the unions of
WestHem. In that case all imports to and all exports from Earth will
stop. Earth will stew in its own juice until the vast majority of
WestHem's people, the unorganized people, decide to get themselves out
of the mess into which, by their own stupidity, laziness, and lack of
interest, they got themselves."

This blast was broadcast immediately; and in less than an hour Antonio
Grimes, president of the Brotherhood of Professional Drivers, was on
Miss Champion's com, demanding access to Maynard.

Since she was expecting the call, he was put on at once.

"Good morning, Mr. Maynard," he began. He was a short man, inclined to
fat, with heavy jowls and small, piercing eyes. At the table with him
were his three major lieutenants and--not much to Maynard's
surprise--WestHem's Secretary of Labor Deissner and Chief Mediator
Wilson. "You overlooked the fact that nothing can replace the truck and
the freight-copter. The situation, however, is not beyond repair. For a
nominal sum, say a quarter-mega, I might not pull the boys off tomorrow
morning."

"The trouble with you, Grimes," Maynard said, quietly, "is that while
you're smart, clever, and cunning, you can't really think. You haven't
got the brain for it."

"That crack'll _cost_ you, Big Shot!" Grimes roared, shedding in the
instant his veneer of gentility. "I'll _show_ you who's got a brain,
you..."

"Shut up and listen!" Maynard snapped. "If you had had any fraction of a
brain you would have known that we knew exactly what you would do."

"Like hell you knew! If you did you wouldn't've..." Grimes paused; it
became evident that his train of thought had all of a sudden been
derailed.

"The only question is, how big a battle do you want for an opener? All
over WestHem at once, or just one spaceport at first, to see what we
have? If you can think at all you'd better start doing it, because the
bigger a flop you make the deader you'll be when it's over."

"Comet-gas! You can't scare _me_!"

"I can't? That's nice."

"Who'd want to shoot the whole wad at once? One at a time; one day
apart. Tomorrow morning I seal New York Spaceport so tight a cockroach
can't get in or out."

"And we'll open it. Here's your one and only warning. Before we send our
freight-copters in..."

"Just how do you think you'll get any copters off the ground?"

"Wait and see. Before a copter lofts we'll come in on the ground. East
on Carter Avenue. Through Gate Twelve. Along Way Twelve to the _Cygnus_.
I'm telling you this because I don't want our machines to kill anybody.
They'll be fully automatic, so programmed that we won't be able to stop
them ourselves. Hence any goons along that designated route who can't
get out of the way in time will be committing suicide. If you shoot down
any of our copters your gun-crews will be killed. That is all."

"Hot-dog!" Grimes gloated. "Drawing us a map--handing it to us on a
platter! What you'll run into along..."

Miss Champion flipped a switch and the screen went blank.

Carter Avenue became a very busy street. The biggest and heaviest trucks
available, loaded to capacity with broken concrete and rock, were jammed
into that avenue, blocking it solidly--pavement, parkway, and
sidewalk--from building wall to building wall for one full mile.
Riflemen with magnums sat at windows; fifty-caliber machine-guns and
forty-millimeter quick-firing rifles peered down from roofs; anti-tank
weapons of all kinds commanded every yard of that soon-to-be-disputed
mile.

Grimes and his strategists had expected a fleet of heavy tanks. What
appeared, however, exceeded their expectations by ten raised to a power.
They were--in a way--tanks; but tanks of a size, type, and heft never
before seen on Earth. There were only two of them; but each one was
twenty feet high, sixty feet wide, and a hundred and eighty feet long.
They were not going fast, but when they reached the barricade, side by
side and a couple of feet apart, they did not even pause. Both front
ends reared up as one, but they did not climb very high. Under that
terrific tonnage the blocking trucks were crushed flat; the steel of
their structures and the concrete and stone of their loads subsided
noisily to form a compacted mass only a few feet thick.

Guns of all calibers yammered and thundered, but there was nothing to
shoot at except blankly invulnerable expanses of immensely thick
high-alloy armor-plate. Flames-throwers, flammable gels, and
incendiaries were of no avail. Inside those monstrosities there was
nothing of life, nor anything to be harmed by any ordinary heat. Nor did
those monstrous tanks fight back--then.

Gate Twelve was narrower than the avenue; its anchorages were
eight-foot-square pillars of reenforced concrete. Nevertheless the two
super-tanks did not slow down; and, after they had passed, the places
where those hugely massive abutments had been were scarcely to be
distinguished from the rest of the scarred and beaten way.

Suddenly there was a terrific explosion, followed by horizontal sheets
of fiercely-driven pulverized pavement and soil. Then another, and
fifteen more. But not even the heaviest mines could stop those
land-going superdreadnoughts. They wallowed a little in the craters, but
that was all. They were simply too big and too heavy and too stable to
lift or to tip over; their belly-armor was twelve inches thick and was
buttressed and braced internally to withstand anything short of atomic
energy. Nor could their treads be blown; since all that was exposed to
blast were their stubby, sharply pyramidal, immensely strong driving
teeth.

Along Way Twelve the strike-breakers rumbled, and up to GalMet's
subspacer _Cygnus_. They stopped. A GalMet copter began to descend, to
pick up its load of copper. There was a blast of anti-aircraft fire. The
copter disintegrated in air.

This time, however, GalMet struck back. Gun-ports snapped open along the
nearer behemoth's grim side and a dozen one-hundred-five-millimeter
shells lobbed in high arcs across the few hundreds of yards of
intervening distance. They exploded, and a few parts recognizable as
arms, legs, and heads, together with uncountable grisly scraps of flesh
and bone, were mingled with the shattered remains of the anti-aircraft
battery.

That ended it.

In Maynard's conference room this time there were, in addition to the
GalMet men, Lansing and DuPuy of Warner Oil, Hatfield and Spehn of
Interstellar, and seven other men. With Grimes and his minions, were, as
before, Deissner and Wilson of WestHem.

Secretary of Labor Deissner looked once at the fourteen men seated at
Maynard's table and his ruddy complexion paled.

"Have you had enough, Grimes, or do you want to go the route?" Maynard
asked. "You _may_ be able to hold your Drivers after this one beating,
but one more will plow you under."

"You're _murderers_ now and you'll hang!" Grimes snarled.

"What will you use for law, fat-head?"

"To hell with law. I've got WestHem's law in my pants pocket and you'll
hang higher than..."

"Close your fat mouth, Tony," Deissner said, bruskly. "With WarnOil,
InStell, and all the labor of the outplanets in on this, it may be a
little..." He paused.

"You're wrong, Deissner, it'll be much worse," Smith sneered. "Your
computations will all have to be recomputed."

After a short silence Maynard said, "Mr. Secretary; besides WarnOil and
InStell, I see that you recognize the presidents of the seven largest
organizations of the Planetsmen. Mr. Bryce, President of the Metalsmen,
has something to say."

And fiery little Bryce said it. "This Committee of Seven, of which I am
the chairman, represents the Planetsmen, the organized production and
service personnel of the ninety five planets of the Galactic Federation.
Our present trip has two purposes. First, here on Galmetia, to tell you
Tellurians that the organized personnel of the planets--not the
_out_-planets, you will note, but the _planets_--will not support the
purely Tellurian institution of serf labor. We do no feather-bedding and
we will not support the practice anywhere. We welcome any innovation
that will produce more goods or services at lower cost by using our
brains more and our muscles less.

"Our second objective is to let the people of Tellus know that there is
plenty of room on the planets for any of them who want to advance by
using their brains and their abilities instead of being coddled,
protected, and imprisoned from the cradle to the grave."

There was a moment of tense silence; then Maynard said, "That was very
well put, Egbert; thanks. Now, Grimes, as to your having WestHem's law
in your pants pocket. You haven't, but the hoodlums, gangsters, and
racketeers who are your bosses do have it in theirs. We Galaxians--the
combined personnel and capital of the planets--know exactly what
WestHem's law is: a hood-bossed, hood-riddled mob of abysmally corrupt
snolly-gosters. We also know that static, greedy capital is as bad
as--yes, even worse than--serf labor. Therefore we Galaxians have formed
a new government, the Galactic Federation; that, among other things,
will not--I repeat, NOT--permit any spiral of inflation."

"But _some_ inflation is now necessary!" Deissner protested.

"It is not. We're not asking you; we're telling you. If you do not
stabilize the dollar we will stabilize it for you."

"Delusions of grandeur, eh? How do you think you can?"

"By isolating Earth until the resulting panic puts the dollar back where
it belongs. Earth can't stand a blockade. The planets can, and would
much rather have a complete severance from Earth than have a dollar that
will not mail a letter from one town to the next. Hence we of the
Galactic Federation hereby serve notice upon the governments and upon
the peoples of Earth: it will be either a stable dollar or a strict
blockade of every item of commerce except food. Take your choice."

"Serve notice!" Deissner gasped. "Surely you don't mean... you can't
_possibly_ mean..."

"We do mean. Just that." Maynard smiled; a thin, cold smile. "This has
not been a secret meeting. You tell 'em, Steve."

And Stevens Spehn, Executive Vice-President of vast Interstellar, told
them. "This whole conference has been on every channel, line, wavelength
and station that InStell operates--ether and subether, radio and teevee,
tri-di and flat, in black-and-white and in color."

And Miss Champion flipped her switch.




                                   IX
                               RHENIA FOUR


FAR OUT in deep space although the _Procyon_ was, her communications
officers monitored all four of the most important channels, and
everything that came in on "I-S One" was taped off. Thus, even though
the "Battle of New York Spaceport" and the conference that followed it
took place in the middle of the starship's "night", both were played in
full on the regular morning news program. So was one solid hour of
bi-partisan and extremely heated discussion by the big-name commentators
of Earth.

To say that this news created a sensation is the understatement of the
month. Nor was sentiment entirely in favor of GalMet, even though all
the men aboard except Deston, and many of the women, were salaried
employees and the whole expedition was on MetEnge-DesDes business.

"Shocking!" "Outrageous!" "Cold-blooded murder!"

"Who murdered first?" "Land-mines, Seventy fives, and Bofors!" "Shot
down the copter and killed everybody aboard!"

"But they should have settled the strike!" "GalMet was utterly lawless!"

"I suppose it's lawful to use land-mines and anti-aircraft guns and make
a full-war-scale battlefield inside New York City?"

And so on.

The top echelon was, of course, solidly in favor of Maynard, and Captain
Jones summed up their attitude very neatly when he said, "What the
hoodlums are belly-aching about is that they were out-guessed,
out-thunk, and outgunned in the ratio of a hundred and five millimeters
to seventy five."

"But listen," Bernice said. "Do you think, Babe, that there were any men
aboard that copter?"

"One gets you a thousand there weren't. Maynard didn't say there were
any."

"He didn't say there weren't any, either," Barbara argued, "like he did
for the tanks. What makes you so sure?"

"He knew what was going to happen--he let them think it was manned,
probably as a deterrent--so you can paste it in your Easter bonnet, pet,
that the only brains aboard that copter were tapes."

Time wore on; the strife on Earth, which did not flare into the news
again, was just about forgotten. Deston found several enormous deposits
of copper. He found all the other most-wanted metals except rhenium in
quantity sufficient to supply even the most extravagant demand. But of
rhenium he still found only insignificant traces.

Each tremendous deposit of metal had been reported as soon as it was
found. Crew after crew had been sent out. Plant after plant had been
built; each one of which would be not only immensely profitable, but
also of inestimable benefit to humanity as a whole, since all those
highly important metals would soon be on the market at a mere fraction
of their former high prices.

Still rhenium did not appear. "I don't believe there _is_ any such damn
thing, anywhere in the whole galaxy," Deston said, over and over, but he
did not give up.

The starship bored along on its hugely helical course, deeper and deeper
into unexplored space toward the Center. Until, after weeks of futile
seeking, Deston did find rhenium. After a quick once-over, without
waiting to get close enough to the planet for the physical scientists to
make any kind of survey, he called Galmetia and Miss Champion.

"Hi, Doris!" he greeted her happily. "I've got some good news for you at
last. We found it."

"Oh? Rhenium? In quantity? How wonderful!"

"Yes. Oodles and gobs of it. All anybody and everybody can ever use. So
how about busting in on the Chief Squeeze, huh?"

To Deston's surprise, since he had _always_ had instant access to
Maynard, the girl hesitated, tapping her teeth with a pencil. "I...
just... don't... know." Indecision, in one of the top FirSecs of
all space, was an amazing thing indeed. "He's all tied up with Plastics,
Synthos, Pharmics, and half a dozen others, and he told me..."

"Okay, skip it and give me a buzz. It's been here for a couple of
billion years, anyway, so another hour or..."

"That's what _you_ think. Usually, Babe--practically _always_--he gives
me my head, but this time he swore he'd shoot me right through the brain
and hang my carcass out of the window on a hook if I cut in on him with
anything whatever or anybody whoever until this brawl is over... but
I know _damn_ well he'll boil me in oil if I hold _this_ up for even a
minute.... Well, I think I'd rather be shot. Wouldn't you?"

"It'd be quicker, anyway."

"Well, a girl can die only once." She shrugged her shapely shoulders and
cut Deston in.

"What the _hell_, Champion!" Maynard blazed; then, as he saw what was on
the screen, his expression and attitude changed completely. "Okay. Tell
you-know-who to roll. Cut."

Deston's image flipped back onto Miss Champion's screen and breathed a
deep sigh of relief. "Believe me, Babe, that was one brass-bound toughie
to guess."

"Check. But you're a smartie, doll, or you wouldn't be holding _that_
fort. So let's get you-know-who and tell her to cut her gravs, huh?"

"Cutting her shoulder-straps would be enough. _B-z-z-z-z-zzt!_ She'd
take off without an anti-grav, let alone a ship."

"She's been taking it big?"

"'Immense' would be a much better word... Doctor Byrd, they have
found your rhenium. Here's Mister Deston."

It was evident that "The Byrd" had been fighting with someone and was
still in a vicious mood. When she saw Deston, however, her stormy face
cleared and she became instantly the keen, competent executive. "Have
you _really_ found some?" she demanded. "Enough of it to make a
fully-automated plant pay out?"

"Well, since the stuff runs well over twenty billion metric tons to the
cubic kilometer and it's here by the hundreds of cubic kilometers in
solid masses, what do _you_ think?"

"Oh my God! What's the planet like? A stinker, as expected?"

"All of that. No survey yet, but it's vicious. Several gees. Super-dense
atmosphere, probably bad. No listing for it or anything like
it--mountains and mesas of solid metal. You'll need personal armor,
anti-gravs, skyhooks--the works. Pretty much like theory, from this
distance. Closer up, it may get worse."

"Everything anybody has suggested is aboard. But Deston; they tell me
you're Top Dog on this. Is it actually true that the sky's the limit?
And that I'm running it without interference?"

"Not even the sky is the limit on this one. No limit. Yes, except in
matters of policy, you are the Complete Push."

She glanced at Miss Champion, who said, "If Mr. Deston says so, it is
so; he has over-riding authority in this. In two minutes you will be
handed an _unlimited_ authorization, Doctor Byrd--the first one I ever
heard of."

"Oh, wonderful! Thanks a million, both of you! Now if you'll transfer
him over here, Miss Cham..." Deston's image appeared upon Byrd's
screen, "... pion--thanks. Mr. Deston, if you'll give Astrogation,
here, the coords, we'll..." A hand phone rang; she snatched it up.
"Byrd... Yes, Lew, good news. At last, thank God, they've found our
rhenium and we're jetting. Activate the whole project. Get Crew One
aboard the _Rhene_ as though the devil was on your tail with a
pitchfork... I know it's sudden, but God damn it, what did you
expect?... You've all been under notice for a month to be ready
to blast off on fifteen minutes' notice... Me? I'll be aboard and
ready in _ten_ minutes!"

Wherefore it was not long until the giant starship _Rhene_ joined the
_Procyon_ in orbit around the forbidding planet Rhenia Four; in such an
orbit as to remain always directly above a tiny valley surrounded by
torn and jagged bare-metal-and-rock mountains; and Cecily Byrd came
aboard the exploring vessel.

"I'm very glad to meet you in the flesh, Doctor Byrd," Deston said, and
as soon as she was out of her space-suit they shook hands cordially.

"Doctor Livingstone, I presume?" She giggled infectiously. "You'll never
know how glad I am to be here." There was nothing sullen or morose or
venomous about her now; she was eager, friendly, and intense. "And no
formality, Babe. I'm 'Curly' to my friends."

"Okay, Curly--now meet the gang. My wife, Bobby... Herc Jones and his
wife, Bun... Andy Adams, our Prime Brain, and his wife, Stella...
This planet is a tough baby; a prime stinker."

"So I gathered, and the more you find out about it the tougher and
stinkier it gets. We've fabricated all the stuff you suggested, for
which thanks, by the way, so, unless there have been new developments in
the last couple of hours, I'll go back and we'll go down. Okay?"

"Okay except for an added feature. Herc and I are going along as safety
factors. We have built-in danger alarms."

"Oh? Oh, yes, I remember now. Welcome to our city."

Aboard the _Rhene_, Deston said, "But as chief of the party, Curly, you
ought to stay up here, don't you think?"

"Huh?" The woman's whole body stiffened. "_As_ chief of the party,
buster, I'm the best man on it. What would _you_ do? Stay home?"

"Okay," and preparations went on.

Extreme precautions were necessary, for this was a fantastic planet
indeed. In size it was about the same as Earth, but its surface gravity
was almost four times Earth's. Its atmosphere, which was at a pressure
of over forty pounds to the square inch, was mostly xenon, with some
krypton, argon, and nitrogen, with less than seven percent by volume of
oxygen. Its rivers were few and small, as were its lakes. Its three
oceans combined would not equal the Atlantic in area, and what was
dissolved in those oceans no one knew. The sun Rhenia was a Class B7
horror, so big and so hot that Rhenia Four, although twice as far away
from Rhenia as Mars is from Sol, was as hot as Mars is cold. Even at
latitude fifty north, where the starships were, and at an altitude of
over fifteen thousand feet, at which the floor of the little valley was,
the noon temperature in the shade was well over forty degrees
Centigrade.

And there was life. Just what kind of life it was, none of the
biologists could even guess. They had been arguing ever since arrival,
but they hadn't settled a thing. There were things of various shapes and
sizes that might or might not be analogous to the grasses, shrubs, and
trees of the Tellus-Type planets; but no one could say whether they were
vegetable, mineral, or metalo-organic in nature. There were things that
ran and leaped and fought; and things that flew and fought--all of which
moved with the fantastic speed and violence concomitant with near-four
gees--but if they were animals they were entirely unlike any animals
ever before seen by man.

No one aboard the _Procyon_ had even tried to land, of course. They
didn't have the equipment; and besides, it was "Curly" Byrd's oyster and
she had repeatedly threatened mayhem upon the person of anyone who tried
to open it before she got there.

The personal armor of the landing party--or rather, the observation
party, since they did not intend to land--was built of heavy gauge
high-alloy steel, and each suit was equipped with drivers and with
anti-gravs. Their craft was much more like a bathyscaphe than a
space-to-ground vehicle. Its walls were two inches of hard alloy; its
ports were five inches of fused silica. It could, everyone agreed, take
anything that Rhenia Four could dish out. In view of that agreement,
Cecily had protested against wearing armor of proof inside the shuttle,
but Deston had put his foot down there. Something _might_ happen.

Counting the pilot, five persons composed the party. Director Byrd and
Assistant Director Leyton were completely encased. Deston and Jones,
however, had left their hands bare, as each was carrying a .475
semi-automatic rifle. Magnums, these, of tremendous slugging power; and
all their cartridges--each gunner had three extra fifty-round
drums--were loaded with armor-piercers, not soft-nosed stuff. They went
down, talking animatedly and peering eagerly, until two silent inner
alarms went off at once.

"Hold it!" Jones yelled, and Deston's even louder command was, "High it
at max, fly-boy!"

The craft darted upward, but even at full blast she was not fast enough
to escape from a horde of flying things that looked something like
wildcats' heads mounted on owls' bodies, but vastly larger than either.
They attacked viciously; their terrible teeth and even more terrible
talons tearing inches-deep gouges into the shuttle's hard, tough armor.
As the little vessel shot upward, however, higher and higher into the
ever-thinning atmosphere, the things began to drop away--they _did_ have
to breathe.

Several of them, however, stayed on. They had dug holes clear through
the armor; out of which the shuttle's air was whistling. The creatures
were breathing ship's air--and liking it!--and were working with
ferocious speed and power and with appalling efficiency.

Deston and Jones began shooting as soon as the first two openings were
large enough to shoot through, but even those powerful weapons--the
hardest-hitting shoulder-guns built--were shockingly ineffective. Both
monsters had their heads inside the ship and were coming in fast. The
others had dropped away for lack of air.

"Hercules" Jones, big enough and strong enough to handle even a .475 as
though it were a .30-30, put fifty hard-nosed bullets against one spot
of his monster's head and thus succeeded in battering that head so badly
out of shape that the creature died before gaining entrance. Died and
hung there, half in and half out.

But Deston, although supremely willing, simply did not have the weight
and sheer brute strength to take that brutal magnum's recoil and hold it
steady on one point. Thus when his drum was empty the creature was still
coming. It was dying, however, almost dead, because of the awful
pounding it had taken and because there was almost no air at all left in
the shuttle.

Both men were changing drums, but they were a few seconds late. The
thing had life enough left so that as it came through the wall and fell
to the floor it made one convulsive flop, and in its dying convulsions
it sank one set of talons into Cecily Byrd's thigh and the other into
the calf of Lewis Leyton's leg. The woman shrieked once and, for the
first time in her life, fainted dead away. The man swore sulphurously.

By this time they were almost back to the _Rhene_. The landing craft was
taken aboard and a team of surgeons tried for a few minutes to get those
incredible talons out of the steel and the flesh; then for a few minutes
more they tried to amputate those equally incredible feet. Then they
anesthetized both victims and carried the inseparable trio into the
machine-shop; where burly mechanics ground the beast's legs in two with
high-speed neotride wheels and, using tools designed to handle
high-tensile bar stock, curled those ghastly hooks back out of flesh and
armor. Thence and finally to the sick-bay, where the doctors put
everything they could think of into those deep, but not ordinarily
dangerous, wounds.

As soon as the doctors became fairly sure that no alien germs were at
work in the human flesh, Deston strode up to Cecily's bed.

"We'll get one thing straight right now, Curly," he said. "I'm all done
suggesting; I'm telling you. You don't go down there again until I say
so."

She straightened up angrily; she was not too sore to fight. "Think
again, buster. We're on the job now, not at HQ. It's my job and I'll run
it any way I damn well please."

"At HQ or anywhere else, my curly-haired friend, my authority over-rides
on matters of policy and this is a matter of policy. You'll take it and
you'll like it."

"Over-rides, hell! I'll..."

"You'll nothing!" he snapped. "Did you ever get socked on the jaw hard
enough to lay you out stiff for fifteen minutes?"

Instead of becoming even more furious at that, she relaxed and grinned
up at him. "No, I never did. That would be a brand-new experience."

"Okay. Much more of this sticking out of your beautiful neck and you'll
get that brand-new experience. Now let's do some thinking on what to do
next. I shot in an order for a special elsie[A]...."

"Can you... those kittyhawks went through super-stainless like so
much cheese. What plating--neotride?"

"That's right. Here's the funny-picture." He spread a blueprint out on
the bed. "I didn't have much of anything to do with it, though; it's
mostly Lew's work."

She studied the drawing for a couple of minutes. "That ought to do it;
it'd stop a diamond drill cold... it'd hold a neotride drill for a
while... but what _are_ those monstrosities, Babe? All that the
croakers will give out with is gobbledegook, soothing syrup, and pure
pap."

"Nobody knows. All the biologists aboard are going not-so-slowly nuts.
They can't do anything from up here."

"All of us. Nice." She bit her lip. "Without rhenium we can't work down
there and we have to work down there to get rhenium. Strictly circular
progress."

"It isn't that bad, Curly. There are dozens of nice big chunks of the
clear quill--thousands of tons of it--right out in the open down there.
That's the special elsie's job, to go down and get 'em and bring 'em out
here to us. The chief wants a good mess of it rushed in to Galmetia, but
there's plenty of it lying around loose to take care of him and build
five of your installations besides."

"Wonderful! That makes me feel a lot better, Babe--I'll talk to you now
until the croakers throw you out."

-----

[A] Elsie--L C--Landing Craft. EES.




                                   X
                                THE PARTY


CECILY AND LEYTON were both up and at work, their wounds completely
healed, when the special elsie arrived. This landing craft was special
indeed, for the first abortive attempt to approach that fantastically
inimical planet had made it perfectly clear that they would have to have
hundreds of tons of rhenium before they could begin to work.

This little ship was to get it. Her inner layer of armor was four inches
thick, forged of the stubbornest super-steel available. The outer layer,
electronically fused to the inner, was one full inch of neotride, the
synthetic that was the hardest substance known to man--five numbers
Rockwell harder than the diamond.

The starship carrying the elsie also brought two formally-typed
notices--things almost unknown in a day of subspace communicators and
tapes. The one addressed to "Cecily Byrd, Ph.D., Sc.D., F.I.A." (Fellow
of the Institute of Automation) read in part: "You are hereby
instructed, under penalty of discharge and blacklist, to stay aloft
until complete safety of operation has been demonstrated," and the gist
of Deston's was: "I cannot give you orders, but if you have half the
brain I think you have, you _know_ enough to stay aloft until safety of
operation has been demonstrated."

Cecily's nostrils flared; then her whole body slumped. "He'd do it, too,
the damned old tiger... and this is the biggest job I ever dreamed
about... and I suppose _you'll_ go down anyway."

"Uh-uh. He makes sense. Actually, neither of us should take the chance.
Anyway, the stuff is right out in the open, where they can sit right
down on it and grapple it... and besides, my mother told me it isn't
sporting to kick a lady in the face when she's down. It isn't done, she
said."

"She did? How nice of her! Thanks, Babe, a lot," and she held out her
hand.

Thus it was that Assistant Director Leyton and Captain Jones led the
down-crew. They both, and two other big, strong men as well, carried
.475's; but this time the magnums were not needed. The neotride held up
long enough. In spite of everything the rabidly hostile "animals" could
do, the elsie grappled five-hundred-ton chunks of the stuff and lugged
them up into orbit.

In the meantime the metallurgists, by subjecting the teeth and claws of
the dead kittyhawks to intensive study, had solved their biggest basic
problem. Or rather, they found out that Nature had solved it for them.

"The composition at maxprop--to get the best mat of longest single
crystals, you know--is extremely complex and almost unbelievably
critical," Leyton told Deston, happily. "It would have taken us years,
and even then we wouldn't have hit it exactly on the nose except by pure
luck."

"Well, how do you expect to do in a couple of years what it took Old
Mother Nature millions of years? Billions even, maybe."

"It's been done. Anyway, we're 'way ahead of Old Mother in one
respect--heat-treating. We've got a growth-cycle already that makes the
original look sick."

The new and improved leybyrdite was poured, forged, neotride-ground, and
heat-treated. A tailored-to-order mining head was built; and, in spite
of the frantic and highly capable opposition of the local life-forms,
was driven into the mountainside.

This first unit took a long time, since everyone had to work in armor
and anti-grav. After it was in place, however, the job went much faster,
as air was run in and the whole installation was gravved down to nine
eighty--Earth-normal gravity--and people could work in ordinary working
clothes.

Section after section was attached; the whole gigantic assembly was
jacked forward, inch by inch.

Adams and his crew developed a super-flame-thrower which, instead of
chemical flames, projected a plasma jet--the heat of nuclear, not
chemical, reaction. Cecily had twenty of them made and installed at
strategic points. It took a couple of weeks for the various fauna to
learn that such heat was quickly and inevitably fatal; but, having
learned the fact, they kept their distance and the work went easier and
faster.

But the director brushed aside the scientists' pleas for elsies in which
to study. "I'm sorry, Adams, but first things have got to come first.
When we get a full stream of rhenium coming out of that hole in the
ground I'll build you anything you want, but until then absolutely
_nothing_ goes that isn't geared directly to production."

And she herself was everywhere. Dressed in leybyrdite helmet, leather
packet, leather breeches, and high-laced boots, she was in the point, in
the middle, in the tail, and in all stations, for whatever purpose
intended. And, since no two operations are ever alike and this one was
like nothing else ever built, she was carrying the full load. But she
knew what she was doing, and hers was a mind that did not have to follow
any book. She ordered special machinery and equipment so regardlessly of
cost that Desmond Phelps almost had heart failure. When she wanted ten
extra-special units, each of which would cost over a hundred thousand
dollars to build, she ordered them as nonchalantly as though they were
that many ballpoint pens; and Maynard okayed her every requisition
without asking a single question.

She had her troubles, of course, but only one of them was with her
personnel--the revolt of her section heads. Some of them resented the
fact that she was a woman; some of them really believed that they knew
more about some aspects of the job than she did. She called a meeting
and told them viciously to do the job her way and quit dragging their
feet--or else. Next day, in four successive minutes, she fired four of
them; whereupon the others decided that Byrd was a hard-rock man after
all and began to play ball.

She had her troubles, of course--what big job has ever gone strictly
according to plan?--but she met them unflinchingly head on and flattened
them flat. She knew her stuff and she held her crew and her job right in
the palm of her hand. Even Maynard was satisfied; not too many men could
have run such a hairy job as smoothly as she was doing it.

The last element was installed. The last tape was checked, rechecked,
and double-checked. Maynard, Smith, and Phelps, all in person--a truly
unprecedented event, this!--inspected and approved the whole project.
Project Rhenia Four, fully automatic, was ready to roll in its vast
entirety.

Maynard stared thoughtfully at his project chief. Her helmet was under
her left arm. She hadn't seen a hair-dresser for five months; her
rebellious brick-dust-red curls were jammed into a nylon net. Her
jacket, breeches, and boots were scuffed, stained, scarred, and worn.
She had lost pounds of weight; faint dark rings encircled both eyes. But
those eyes fairly sparkled; her whole mien was one of keen anticipation.
Maynard had never seen her in any such mood as this.

"Okay, Byrd; push the button," he said.

"Uh-uh, chief, you push it. It's your honor, really; nobody else in all
space would have stood back of me the way you have."

"Thanks. It'd tickle me to; I've never started a big operation yet," and
the whole immense project went smoothly to work.

Strained and tense, they watched it for half an hour. Then Maynard shook
her hand.

"You _were_ worth saving, Byrd. You're an operator; a real performer. I
hope you've got over that ungodly insecurity complex of yours. You know
what I'm going to do to you if you ever start that hell-raising again?"

She laughed. "You and Babe both seem to have the same idea; he says
he'll knock me as cold as ice-cream. You, too?"

"No, I don't think that's the indicated treatment. I'll get you pie-eyed
on the best brandy in Beardsley's cellar."

"Don't tempt me, chief!" she laughed again as Smith, Phelps, Leyton,
Deston, Jones, and the others came up to add their congratulations to
Maynard's.

They kept on watching the tremendous installation, less and less tensely
and with more and more eating and sleeping, for fifty more hours, during
which time a hundred freighters departed with their heavy loads. Then
all tension disappeared. Having run this long, it would continue to run;
with only normal supervision and maintenance.

"Now for the usual party," Smith said. "Unusual, it should be, since
this is a highly unusual installation. How about it, everybody?"

"Let's have a big dance," Barbara suggested. "Dress up and everything."

"Oh, let's!" Cecily almost squealed. She was still in her scuffed
leathers, still ready for any emergency. Her hair was still a
tightly-packed mop. "We're all rested enough--I just had fourteen hours'
sleep and two big steaks. Let's go!"

"We're off, Curly." Bernice took her arm. "We'll help each other get all
prettied up. Herc, how about locking the ships together, so we won't get
all mussed up in those horrible suits?"

"Can do, pet." Jones gave his wife the smile reserved for her alone; a
smile that softened wonderfully his hard, craggy, deeply-tanned face.
"For beauty in distress we'd do even more than that."

In about an hour, then, the party began. Bernice and Cecily were
standing together when Jones and Leyton came up to them. The red-head
was a good inch taller than tall Bernice; she would have stood five feet
ten without her four-inch heels. Both gowns were as tight as they could
be without showing stress-patterns; both were strapless, backless, and
almost frontless; both hemlines bisected kneecaps.

The two men were just about of a size--six feet three, and twenty pounds
or so over two hundred. Leyton was handsome; Jones very definitely was
not. Leyton was the softer; it was not part of his job to keep himself
at the peak of physical fitness. He was, however, by no means soft.
Being "softer" than Theodore Jones left a lot of room for a man to be in
very good shape indeed, and Lewis Leyton was.

Both men stopped and Jones whistled expressively; a perfectly-executed
wolf-whistle. "_This_ must be _Miss_ Byrd." He smiled as he took her
hand and bowed over it--and, as a space-officer, he really knew how to
bow. "Miss Byrd, may I have the honor and the pleasure of the second
number, please?"

She dipped a half-curtsy and laughed. "You may indeed, sir," and Leyton
swept her away.

Jones danced first with his wife, of course; then led Cecily out onto
the floor. For a minute they danced in silence, each conscious of what a
superb performer the other was and of how perfectly they matched. She
was the first to speak.

"You're looking at my hair. Don't, Herc, please. Nobody in all space can
do anything with it, and I didn't have time to let your beauty-shop even
try."

"Do you really mean that, Curly, or are you just fishing?"

"Of course I mean it! Look at Bun's hair, or Bobby's, or _anybody's!_
They can fix it any way they please and change it any time they please.
But _this_ stuff?" She shook her intractable mop. "This
carroty-pink-sorrel mess of rusty steel-turnings? Nobody can do anything
with it whatever. I can't even bleach it or dye it--or even wear a wig.
It's bad enough, the color and the way it is now, but with it anything
else, with my turkey-egg face, I look just simply like the wrath of God.
Honestly."

"If that's really the way you look at it, I think I'll tell a tale out
of school. You know Bun isn't the jealous type."

"Of course she isn't. My God, with what _she's_ got, why should she be?
How _could_ she be?"

"Okay. Since she met you she's told me a dozen times that if anybody in
all space could make a hair-piece like that--nobody can, she says--she'd
shave her head and get one tomorrow."

Cecily leaned back--she had been dancing very close--far enough to look
into his eyes. "Why, you great big damn liar...."

"Ask her, next time you see her."

"I'll do just that. In the meantime, for the prize-winning big lie of
the year, tell me that next to Bun I'm the prettiest girl here; not a
hard-boiled hard-rock man in a ball gown."

"I'll tell you something a lot better than that. You've got stuff by the
cubic mile that no merely pretty girl ever did have or ever will have."

"Such as?" she scoffed.

"If you really don't know, take a complete inventory of yourself
sometime."

"I have, thousands of times."

"Wrong system, then. Change it."

She leaned still farther away from him. "You sound as though you really
mean that."

"I do, Scout's Honor. And Bun agrees with me."

"She does? I'll bet she does. You've got a nice line, Herc."

"No line, Curly; believe me."

"It'd be nice if I could... but Herc, the chief thinks I have a
terrific case of inferiority complex... except he called it
'insecurity'... and Babe said... do you think so?"

"I'm no psych, so I wouldn't know. But why in all the hells of space
should you have?"

She actually missed a step. "Why _should_ I have! Just _look_ at me! Or
can't you imagine what it's like, being the ugliest duckling in the pond
all your life?"

"Can't I? You _have_ got a complex. Look at _me_, you dumb... what do
you think _I've_ been all my life?"

She stared at him in amazement. "Why, _you're_ positively
distinguished-looking!"

"Comet-gas! I've always been the homeliest guy around, but I got so I
didn't let it throw me."

"Anyway, men don't have to be good-looking."

"Neither do women. Look at history."

"Let's look at Bun instead--one of the most beautiful women who ever
lived. You wouldn't have..."

"I certainly would have. Beauty helps, of course--and I admit that I
like it, that she's a beauty--but over the long route it isn't a drop in
the bucket and you know it. She'll still be a charmer at ninety, and so
will you. She's prettier than you are, but you've got a lot of stuff she
hasn't. What did you think I was talking about, a minute ago?"

"Sex. Anybody can throw that around."

"Not the way you can. But that wasn't it, at all; that's only one phase.
It's the total personality that carries the wallop. You've got it. So
has Bun. And Bobby. Who else aboard? Nobody."

"I wonder..." They danced in silence for a time. "You could be right,
I suppose... after all, you and Maynard and Babe are certainly three
of the smartest men I know."

"You know we're right. So why don't you cut the jaw-flapping and get
down to reality?"

"Maybe you _are_ right. Thanks, Herc, the thought is one to dwell on.
You know what I'm going to do?" She giggled suddenly. "I haven't done it
since my Freshman Frolic." She drew herself up very close to him,
snuggled her head down onto his shoulder, and closed both eyes.

And thus they finished the dance. He brought her back to a place beside
his wife, thanked her, and turned away toward Barbara.

Cecily stared after his retreating figure. "That's a lot of man you have
there, Bun," she breathed, as Smith and Phelps came up to claim them.

"I know," Bernice agreed.

Ten minutes later, in the improvised powder room, Bernice continued the
conversation quite as though it had not been interrupted. "You wouldn't
by any chance have it in mind to do anything about it, would you,
darling?"

Each woman studied the other. Both were tall and superb of figure. Each
projected in quantity--and not only unconsciously--the tremendous basic
force that is sex appeal. But there all resemblance ceased. Bernice, as
has been said, was one of the most beautiful women of her time. And
besides beauty of face and figure, besides strength of physique and of
character, she had the poise and confidence of her status and of her
sure knowledge of her husband's love. Cecily Byrd, on the other hand,
radiated a personality that was uniquely hers and that made itself
tellingly felt wherever she was. In addition, she had the driving force,
the sheer willpower, and the ruthlessly competent brain of the
top-bracket executive she had so fully proved herself to be.

"It'd be fun," the red-head said, thoughtfully. "That would really be a
battle."

"As Herc likes to say, you chirped it that time, birdie."

"Ordinarily, that would make it all the more fun, but I'll be working
like a dog yet for quite a while--I'll hardly have time enough in bed
even to sleep. So let's take a rain-check on it, shall we, my dear?"

"Any time, darling. Any time at all. Whenever you please." Blue eyes
stared steadily into eyes of Irish green.

Then Cecily shook her head. "I'm not going to try, Bun. I think too much
of both of you... and besides, I might not be able to... You know,
Bun...." She paused, then went on, slowly, "I never have liked women
very much; they're such flabby, gutless things... but you're a lot of
woman yourself."

"We're a lot alike in some ways, Curly--there _aren't_ very many women
like you and me and Barbara--for which fact, of course, most men would
say 'Thank God!'"

"You're _so_ right!"

Not being men, the two almost-antagonists did not shake hands; but at
that moment the ice began definitely to melt.

"But listen," Bernice said. "There are hundreds of men around here. Good
men and big ones."

Cecily grinned. "But not usually both; and just being big isn't enough
to make me come apart at the seams. He has to have a brain, too; and
maybe what Herc just called a 'total personality'."

"That _does_ narrow the field... just about to Lew, I guess... but
I suppose Executives' Code cuts both ways."

"It's supposed to, probably, but I wouldn't care about that if he
weren't such a stuffed shirt... but I'm getting an idea. Let's go
hunt Babe up." Then, as Bernice looked at her quizzically, "My God,
no--who except a half-portion like Bobby would want him? I just want to
ask him a question."

They found Deston easily enough. "Babe," Cecily said, "you said there's
a lot of tantalum here. As much as on Tantalia Three?"

"More. Thousands of times as much. Why?"

"Then Perce Train ought to come out here and look it over. I'll tell the
chief so. Thanks, Babe."

"Perce Train?" Bernice asked, the next time they sat together. "The boy
friend?"

"Not yet. We were knifing each other all over the place, back at HQ, but
we're both on top now. He'll be good for what ails me. Wait 'till you
see _him_, sister--and hang on to your hat."

"I'll have no trouble doing _that_, I'm positive," Bernice said, a
little stiffly; just as Jones came up, again to dance her away.

Percival Train appeared in less than a week. He was, as has been said, a
big bruiser. He was just about Leyton's size, and even handsomer. As
soon as he got over the shock of discovering what a hellish planet
Rhenia Four was, he became enthusiastic about its possibilities. He
also, Bernice was sure, became enthusiastic about Project Engineer Byrd.

"But there's nothing flagrant about it that I can see, pet," Jones
argued one night, just before going to sleep. "What makes you think so
except Curly's jaw-flapping?"

"I just _know_ they are," Bernice said, darkly. "She really meant it,
and she's the type to. She ought to be ashamed of herself, but she
isn't. Not the least little tiny bit."

"Well, neither of 'em's married, so what's the dif? Even if they are
stepping out, which is a moot point, you know."

"Well... maybe. One good thing about it, she isn't making any passes
at _you_, and she'd better not. I'll scratch both her green eyes out if
she tries it, the hussy--so help me!"

"Oh, she was just chomping her choppers, sweetheart. Besides, I'm as
prejudiced as I am insulated. I've never seen anyone within seven
thousands parsecs of being _you_."

"You're a darling, Herc, and I love you all to pieces." She snuggled up
close and closed her eyes; but she did not drop easily, as was her wont,
to sleep.

If that red-headed, green-eyed vixen--that sex-flaunting
power-house--_had_ unlimbered her heavy artillery... but she
hadn't... and it was just as well for all concerned, Bernice thought,
just before she did go to sleep, that that particular triangular issue
had not been joined.




                                   XI
                               PSIONTISTS


SECRETARY OF LABOR DEISSNER was very unhappy. The United Copper Miners,
as a union, had been wiped out of existence. Mighty Drivers' all-out
effort at New York Spaceport had been smashed with an ease that was, to
Deissner's mind, appalling. Worse, it was inexplicable; and, since no
one else really knew anything, either, he was being buffeted, pushed,
and pulled in a dozen different directions at once.

The Dutchman, however, was nobody's push-over. He merely set his
stubborn jaw a little more stubbornly. "I want _facts_!" he bellowed,
smashing his open hand down onto the top of his desk. "I've got to have
_facts_! Until I get _facts_ we can't move--I _won't_ move!"

For weeks, then, and months, "Dutch" Deissner studied ultraconfidential
reports and interviewed ultra-secret agents--many of whom were so
ultra-ultra-secret as to be entirely unknown to any other member of
WestHem's government... and the more he worked the less secure he
felt and the more unhappy he became. He was particularly unhappy when,
late one night and very secretly, he conferred with a plenipotentiary
from EastHem.

"The Nameless One is weary of meaningless replies to his questions," the
Slav said, bruskly. "I therefore demand with his mouth a plan of action
and its date of execution."

"Demand and be damned," Deissner said, flatly. "I will not act until I
know what that _verdammte_ Maynard has got up his sleeve. Tell Nameless
that."

"In that case you will come with me now."

"You talk like a fool. One false move and you and your escort die where
you sit. Tell Nameless he does not own me yet and it may very well be he
never will. If he wants to talk to me I will arrange a meeting in South
Africa."

"You are rash. Are you fool enough to believe that he will condescend to
meet you at any place of your choosing?"

"I don't care whether he does or not. If he knows as much as I do, he
will."

The messenger went away; and, a long time later, the Nameless One did
meet Deissner--with due precautions on each side, of course--in South
Africa.

"Don't you know, fool," the dictator opened up, "that you will die for
this?"

"No. Neither do you. Glance over this list of the real names of some men
who have died lately in accidents of various kinds."

If the Slav's iron control was shaken as he read the long list, it was
scarcely perceptible. Deissner went on:

"As long as it was to my advantage I let you think that I was just
another one of your puppets, but I'm not. If you insist on committing
suicide by jumping in the dark, count me out."

"In the dark? My information is that..."

"Have you any information as to where those so-huge tanks came from?
Where they could possibly have been built?"

"No, but..."

"Then whatever information you have is completely useless," the Dutchman
drove relentlessly on. "Maynard has been ready. What more is he ready
for? That thought made me think. How did he get that way? I
investigated. Do you know that computers and automation to the amount of
hundreds of millions of dollars have been paid for by and delivered to
non-existent firms?"

"No, but what...?"

"From that fact I drew the tentative conclusion that MetEnge has
industrialized a virgin planet somewhere; one that we know nothing
whatever about."

"Ridiculous! MetEnge builds its own automation... but to save time
they might... but such a planet would have to be staffed, and that
could not be done tracelessly."

"It was done tracelessly enough so that we did not suspect it. I find
that about sixty thousand male graduate engineers and scientists, and
about the same number of young and nubile females of the same types,
have disappeared from the ninety six planets."

"So?" This information had little visible effect.

"So those disappearances prove beyond any reasonable doubt that my
tentative conclusion is a fact. Maynard is not bluffing; he is ready.
Now, if MetEnge has worked that long and hard in complete secrecy it
should be clear even to you that you and your missiles are precisely as
dangerous to them as a one-week-old kitten would be. Before we can act
we must find that planet and bomb it out of existence."

"It is impossible to hide so many people, especially young..."

"Do you think my agents didn't check? They did, thoroughly, and could
find..."

"Bah! Your agents are stupid!"

"They were smart enough to put the arm on your men on that list, and if
you think Maynard is stupid you had better think again. The worst fact
is that twenty eight of my agents have disappeared, too, all of whom had
worked up into good jobs with MetEnge and any one of whom could have and
would have built a subspace communicator had it been humanly possible.
The situation is bad. Very bad. That is why I have not acted. I will not
act until I have enough facts to act on."

"_My_ agents would have found that planet if it exists. I will send my
own men and they will find it if it exists."

"You think you've got a monopoly on brains?" Deissner sneered. "Send
your men and be damned. You'll learn. Here are copies of everything I
have found out," and he handed The Nameless One a bulging briefcase.

Nameless took it without thanks. "In three months I will know all about
everything and I will act accordingly."

"You _hope_. In the meantime you must agree that a general strike is out
of the question."

"Until I investigate, yes. Harassing tactics merely."

"Exactly what I am doing. Plan M."

"As good as any. Your status in my organization will depend upon my
findings," and the Nameless One of EastHem strode out.

****

The tremendous new starship, the _Explorer_, built of leybyrdite and
equipped for any foreseeable eventuality, was ready to fly. The Destons
and the Joneses were holding their last pre-flight conference. No one
had said anything for a couple of minutes; yet no one had suggested that
the meeting was over.

"Well, that covers it... I guess...." Deston said, finally.
"Except maybe for one thing that's been niggling at me... but it
makes so little sense that I'm afraid to say it out loud. So if any of
you can think of anything else we might need, no matter how wild it
sounds... I'm playing a hunch. Write it down on a slip of paper and
put it face-down on the table... here's mine... it'll be three out
of four, I think... read 'em and weep, Bun."

Bernice turned the four slips over. "Four out of four. Perce Train and
Cecily Byrd. But what in _hell_ do we want 'em _for_?"

"Search me; just a hunch," Deston said, and:

"Me neither; just intuition." Barbara nodded her head. "But why didn't
we say anything... oh, I see. You and I didn't, Babe, because we
thought Bun wouldn't want her along. Bun didn't because she thought we'd
think it was so she could kick her teeth out. Herc didn't because Bun
might think he wanted her along for monkey business. Right?"

That was right, and Deston called Maynard. "You can have 'em both and
welcome," was the tycoon's surprising reaction to Deston's request.
"They're the two hardest cases I ever tried to handle in my life, and
I've got troubles enough without combing _them_ out of my hair every
hour on the hour. They did such good jobs on their projects that they
haven't got enough to do. I'd like to fire them both--their assistants
are a lot better for their present jobs than they are--but of course I
can't. But listen, son. Why lead with your chin? If I can't handle those
two damned kittyhawks, how do you expect to?"

"I don't know, chief; I'm just playing a hunch. Thanks a lot, and
so-long."

Percival Train and Cecily Byrd boarded the _Explorer_ together. "What
can you four want of us?" the red-head asked, as soon as the six were
seated around a table. "Particularly, what can you _possibly_ want of
me?"

"We haven't the foggiest idea," was Deston's surprising answer. "But
four solid hunches can't be wrong. So suppose you break down and tell
us."

"In that case I think I can. That must mean that you and Bobby are a lot
more than just a wizard and a witch; and that both Herc and Bun are
heavy-duty psionicists, too--I've more than suspected just that of Herc.
Right?"

"That's right," Barbara agreed. "So you and Perce both are too." Train's
jaw dropped and he looked at Barbara in pop-eyed astonishment. "Which I
didn't suspect consciously for a second. How long have you had it,
Curly--_known_ that you had it, I mean?"

"Just since the dance. You gave me hell, Herc, remember? And before
that, the chief and Babe had worked me over, too...."

"I remember." Jones began to grin. "All I'm surprised at..."

"Hush, you." Cecily grinned back at him. "I don't get these moments of
truth very often, so you just listen. Anyway, after the dance I felt
lower than a snake's feet. I didn't feel even like going-over to my
hand-bag after a cigarette, so I just sat there and looked at it and
pretty soon I could see everything perfectly plainly and one jumped out
of my case inside my bag and into my mouth and lit itself. Then I knew,
of course, and started working on it and I got pretty good at it. Watch.
I'm over here in the corner and now back in my chair. Now--count the
cigarettes in your case, Babe."

"He doesn't need to," Train put in. "Twelve King Camfields. Stainless
steel case--not the one you carried on Rhenia, by the way--right-hand
shirt pocket." A king-size Camfield appeared between Cecily's lips and
came alight. "One gone, eleven left."

"Oh?" "Ah!" "So," came three voices at once; and Deston, after counting
his cigarettes, said, "Eleven is right. That's a neat trick, Curly--just
a minute."

Grasping his case he stared fixedly at it and a Camfield appeared in his
mouth, too; but it did not light up. "How do you concentrate the energy
without burning the end of your..." He broke off as Barbara shot him
a thought, then went on, "... yeah, that can come later. Go ahead,
Perce."

"You four are using _telepathy_!" Train declared.

"Uh-huh. It's easy, we'll show you how it goes. Go ahead."

"There's not much to tell. I've had it all my life, but I've never let
on about it until now and I've never used it except on the job; I've
been afraid to. I read up on psionics, but it's never been demonstrated
scientifically and I didn't want the psychs to start with me. So I kept
still. I knew you two were witches, of course--even though that is
impossible, too--but I wasn't in your class, so I still kept still. Oh,
I could see the stuff plainly enough when I knew exactly where to look,
but that was all."

"How do you know that was all? You've been fighting the whole concept,
haven't you, the same way I was?"

"Could be, I guess... maybe I _have_ got something... latent, I
mean... at that."

"I don't suppose we really need to ask you two, then, if you want to
come along with us."

"I'll say you don't--and thanks a million for asking us," Cecily
breathed; and Train agreed fervently. He went on, "You have room enough,
I suppose? And when's your zero?"

"Plenty. Nineteen hours today was announced, but we can hold it up
without hurting anything a bit."

"No need to. That gives us over seven hours and we won't need half that.
Except for our bags at the hotel all our stuff's in the shed. We'll be
seeing you--let's jet, Curly."

Train called an aircab and they were whisked across the city. Nothing
was said until they were in the girl's room. He put both arms around her
and looked straight into her eyes; his hard but handsome face strangely
tender. "This hasn't been enough, Sess. I asked you once before to marry
me...."

"I'm glad you brought that up, Perce. I was just going to ask you if you
still harbored the idea."

There is no need to go into exactly what happened then. After a time,
however, he said, "I knew why you wouldn't, before."

"Of course," she replied, soberly. "We would have been at each other's
throats half the time--we would have hurt each other unbearably."

"And this changes things completely," he said, just as soberly.
"Exploring the universe with _those_ four... as well as the unknown
universe of psionics...."

"Oh, wonderful!" she breathed. "Just the thought of it--especially that
you're so strongly psionic, too--rocks me. It changes my whole world.
And besides," her expression changed completely; she gave him a bright,
quick grin, "children, especially such super-children as yours and mine,
ought to have two parents. Married. To each other. You know?"

"Children!" Train gasped. "Why, I didn't know... you didn't tell me
you were..."

"Of course not, silly. I'm not. I'm talking about the ones we're _going_
to have. Super-children. Half a dozen of 'em."

"Oh." Train gulped. "Okay. But why the 'super'?"

"Have you ever scanned Teddy Deston and Babbsy Jones?"

"No. Why should I have? Or any other little toddlers?"

"They aren't ordinary little toddlers, Perce. Not by seven thousand rows
of apple trees. I got a flash once. Just a flash and just once, but I
know _damn_ well it was a mind-block. They scare me witless. Babe and
Herc think they're ordinary babies, too, but Bobby and Bun know very
well they aren't. They won't admit it, of course, even to themselves, to
say nothing of to each other--Bobby and Bun, I mean, not the kids--so
don't _ever_ breathe a word of this to _anybody_--besides, they'd snatch
you bald-headed if you did. So--_verbum sap_."

"I _think_ you're more than somewhat nuts, presh, but I'll be as verbum
sappy as you say. Now, one for the road," which turned out to be
several, "and we'll go hunt us up a preacher."

"But we _can't_!" she wailed. "I forgot--just thought of it. Three
days--those blood tests and things!"

"That's right... but with the physicals we've been taking every ten
days--proof enough of perfect health so they'll waive 'em."

"One gets you ten they won't. Did you ever hear of a small-type
bureaucrat cutting one inch of his damned red tape?"

"I sure have. All you got to have to push bureaucrats around is weight,
and we're heavyweights here... it'd be quicker, though, to do it the
sneaky way--some starship's chaplain."

"Oh, let's!" She squealed like a schoolgirl. "I know you meant 'sneaky'
in its engineering sense, but I don't. She has as much cat blood in her
as I have. Maybe more."

"She?" Train raised his eyebrows. "Better break that up into smaller
pieces, presh. Grind it a little finer."

"Comet-gas! You know who, and why, Bun. If you don't tell her who the
chaplain was or what world he was from--registry, you know--she'll
_never_ find out when we were married."

Train laughed "I see, kitten--but I always did like cats, and I don't
leak. Okay, little squirt--let's jet."

Long before nineteen hours, then, the Trains and their belongings
arrived at the _Explorer_'s dock. Leaving her husband at the freight
hoist, Cecily went up in the passenger elevator and looked Bernice up.
"Where's our room, Bun?" she asked, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone
and without turning a hair.

Bernice started to say something; but, as she saw the heavy, plain,
yellow-gold band--Cecily had never worn a ring on either hand--she said
instead, "Why, I didn't know you were--when did _this_ happen?"

"Oh, we've been married quite a while. We didn't want it to get out
before, of course, but I thought sure you'd guessed."

"I guessed something, but not that. I'm awfully sorry, Curly, really,
but..."

"You needn't be, Bun, at all; you had every right to. But I'll tell you
one thing right now that I really mean--there'll be no more
monkey-business for me. Ever."

"Oh, I'm _so_ glad, Curly," and this time the two women did kiss each
other. This was the beginning of a friendship that neither had thought
would ever be.

At exactly nineteen hours the _Explorer_ cut gravs. No one aboard her
knew where they were going. Or what they were looking for. Or how long
they would be gone.

****

When Maynard told Deston that he did not have time to cope with two such
trouble-makers as Train and Byrd, he was stating the exact truth; for he
was busier than ever he had ever been before. It was a foregone
conclusion that the opposition, which included the most corrupt and
farthest-left government WestHem had ever known, would not and could not
accept its two minor defeats as having decided the issue.

The crucial question was--Would they call one more local,
single-business strike--in an industry that could not possibly be
automated--before taking the supreme gamble of a general strike?

The Galaxians had been trying for a long time to answer that question.
As has been said, GalMet's spy system (officially, it did not exist;
actually, it was an invisible division of the Public Relations
Department) was very good. So was WarnOil's; and InStell's, by the very
nature of things, was better than either. And, long before, Maynard had
engineered a deal whereby Stevens Spehn had been put in charge of the
combined "Information Services" of the Galactic Federation--and it is
needless to say what kind of coverage this new service provided.

Six men now sat at Maynard's conference table. Maynard, as usual, was at
its head. Lansing of WarnOil sat at his left. Spehn sat at his right.
Next to Spehn was a newcomer to the summit table--Vice-President Guerdon
Dann, the Admiral of InStell's far-flung fleet of private-police
battleships. In full uniform, he was the typical officer of space: big,
lean, hard, poised, and thoroughly fit. While older, of course, than a
line officer, his stiff, crew-cut red hair was only lightly sprinkled
with gray and he did not as yet wear lenses. Side by side, below
Lansing, sat two other newcomers, Feodr Ilyowicz and Li King Wong,
Russian and Chinese directors on the Board.

"Yes, it'll be milk," Spehn was saying. "Impossible to automate, easy to
make one hundred percent effective, and of extremely high emotional
value."

"Right," Maynard agreed. "_How_ the sobbers will shriek and scream about
our starving helpless babies to death by the thousands. Any idea yet as
to time?"

"Nothing definite, but it'll be fairly soon and the general strike won't
be. They're holding that up while they're looking for our base, and
nobody is even close yet to suspecting where Base is. Deissner and
Nameless are all steamed up about the vanishing boys and girls and
automation, but they're looking for them on a new planet out in space
somewhere, not on an island on Galmetia. Are the kids still happy in
Siberia?"

"Very much so; the bonuses take care of the isolation angle very nicely.
They're making a game of being Siberians. They know it won't be too long
and they know why we have to be absolutely sure that a lot of stuff
stays hush-hush."

"Good. Next, Dutch Deissner is making independent noises and is getting
big ideas. Full partnership, no less."

"He'll get himself squashed like a bug."

"Maybe, but so far he's been doing most of the squashing and Mister Big
is burning like a torch."

"Umm... um... mm." Maynard thought for a moment. "So you think
EastHem actually will bomb?"

"They're sure to." Spehn glanced across the table at Ilyowicz and Li who
both nodded. "Not too long, I think, after the general strike is
called--especially when we foul it up. Extra-heavy stuff on all our
military installations, and really dirty
stuff--one-hundred-percent-lethal nerve gas--on all our biggest cities.
Wait a couple of months and take over."

"But retaliation--oh, sure, evacuation of the upper strata, they figure
they have too many people, anyway."

"Check. They figure on losing millions of peasants and workers. They
plan on getting a lot of people away, but I can't get even an inkling as
to where. Do either of you fellows have any ideas on that?"

Li shook his head and Ilyowicz said, "No. I do not believe it can be a
developed planet; I do not think that such a project could have been
carried out so tracelessly. My thought is that it is a temporary
hide-out merely, on some distant virgin planet."

"That makes sense," Spehn said. "How are you making out on the subs and
the big jets, Guerd?"

"Satisfactory," the admiral replied. "Everybody with half a brain is
with us. We'll be ready as soon as those missile-killers come through.
How are they doing on them, Mr. Maynard?"

"It took a long time to develop controls rigid enough to stand the
gravs, but they're in full production now. You can start picking them up
at Base next Thursday morning."

"Fine!" Dann glanced at the two Asiatics. "How are you two doing? Your
jobs are tougher than ours."

"Different, but easier, if anything," Ilyowicz said, and Li nodded
twice. "All really intelligent persons are opposed to government by
terrorism. A surprisingly large number of such persons proved to have
enough psionic ability so that our so-called mystics could teach them to
receive and to transmit thought. Thus we have no cells, no meetings, the
absolute minimum of physical contact, and no traceable or detectable
communications. Thus, the Nameless One has not now and will not have any
suspicion that he and five hundred seventy three of his butchers will
die on signal."

The Westerners gasped. East was vastly different from West. "But if you
can do that, why...?" Dann began, but shut himself up. That was their
job, not his.

"Right." Maynard approved the unspoken thought. "Well, does that cover
it?"

"Not quite--one thing bothers me," Spehn said. "The minute we blockade
Earth the whole financial system of the galaxy collapses."

"You tell him, Paul," Maynard said. "You're Deston and Deston."

"Covered like a sucker's bet." Lansing laughed and slapped himself
zestfully on the leg. "That's the prize joker of the whole business.
GalBank--the First Galaxian Bank of Newmars--opens for business day
after tomorrow. Have you got any idea of what a solid-cash basis even
one installation like Project Barbizon is? Or especially Rhenia Four,
that's bringing in a net profit of a megabuck an hour? And DesDes owns
'em by the dozen. Hell, we could fight an interstellar war out of petty
cash and never miss it from the till. Son, if Dutch and Slobski had any
idea of how much hard-cash money we've got it'd scare the bastards right
out of their pants."

"I see." Spehn thought for a moment. "I never thought of it before, but
the way leybyrdite is taking everything over, no ordinary bank could
handle it, at that. And Maynard, I've studied the material you gave us
on your board-of-directors government of the Galactic Federation and
I'll vote for it. Nothing else has ever worked, so it's time something
different was tried."

"It won't be easy, but I'm pretty sure it can be made to work. After
all, there have been quite a few self-cleaning boards of directors that
have lasted for generations; showing substantial profits, yet adhering
rigorously to the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest. Examples, the
largest firms in existence.

"To succeed, our board must both adhere to that Principle and show a
profit--the profit in this case being in terms of the welfare of the
human race as a whole. Is there anything else to come before this
meeting?"

There was nothing else.

"That's it, then. Round it off neatly, Miss Champion--the adjournment
and so forth--as usual."




                                  XII
                            HIGHER EDUCATION


ANDREW ADAMS had what was probably the finest mind of any strictly human
being of his age. He had a voracious and insatiable appetite for
knowledge; his brain was an unfilled and unfillable reservoir. He was
without prejudice, inhibition, or bias. He could, and frequently did,
toss a laboriously-developed theory or hypothesis of his own down the
drain in favor of someone else's--_anyone_ else's--that gave even
slightly better predictions than did his own.

Being what he was, it was inevitable that when the Destons gave Adams
his first real insight into telepathy and, through it, into the
unimaginably vast and theretofore almost hermetically sealed universe of
psionics, he dropped his old researches in favor of the new. He and his
wife studied, more and ever more intensively, the possibilities and
potentialities of the mind as _the mind_. Scholar-like, however, they
needed to analyze and digest all the information available having any
bearing upon the subject. Therefore, since there was no esoterica of
that type in the _Procyon_'s library, they went back to Earth.

The Adams apartment was a fairly large one; five rooms on the sixteenth
floor of Grantland Hall in Ann Arbor, overlooking the somewhat crowded
but beautifully landscaped campus of the University of Michigan. Their
living-room was large--seventeen by twenty five feet--but it was the
Adams, not the ordinary, concept of a living room. Almost everything in
it was designed for books and tapes; everything in it was designed for
study.

First, they went through their own library's stores of philosophy, of
metaphysics, of paraphysics, of occultism, of spiritualism, of
voodooism, of scores of kinds of cultism and even more kinds of
crackpotism, from Forteanism up--or down. They studied thousands of
words to glean single phrases of truth. Or, more frequently, bits of
something that could be developed into truth or into something having to
do with truth. Then they exhausted the resources of the University's
immense library; after which they requested twenty two exceedingly rare
tomes from the Crerar Library of Chicago. This was unusual, since
scholars usually came to the Crerar instead of vice-versa, but Adams was
Andrew Adams of the College; one of the very biggest of the Big Brains.
Wherefore:

"It can be arranged, Dr. Adams," Crerar's head librarian told him, as
one bibliophile to another. "These are replicas, of course--most of the
originals are in Rome--and not one of them has been consulted for over
five years. I'm glad to have you study these volumes, if for no other
reason than to show that they are not really dead wood."

Thus it came finally about that Andrew and Stella Adams sat opposite
each other, holding hands tightly across a small table, staring into
each other's eyes and thinking at and with each other in terms and
symbols many of which cannot be put into words.

"But it _has_ to be some development or other of Campbell's Fourth
Nume," she insisted. "It simply _can't_ be anything else."

"True," he agreed. "However, Campbell had only a glimmering of a few of
the--facets? Basics?--of that nume. So let's go over the prime basics
again--the takeoff points--the spring-boards--to see if possible where
our thinking has been at fault."

"Very well. Fourth Nume, the--Level? Region? Realm?--of belief, of
meaning, of ability to manipulate and to understand--of understanding of
and manipulation of the phenomena of reality existing in the
no-space-no-time continuum of..."

"A moment," Adams broke in. "Non-space-non-time is preferable, I
believe. And aren't those symbols contradictory and mutually exclusive?"

"By no means. In the totality of universes it is not only possible but
necessary to manipulate both the immaterial and the material aspects of
energy without reference to either time or space. Like this--" and her
symbology went far beyond language.

"I see. My error. I was fouling it up. Shall we try again?"

"Not yet. We may find more. Non-space-non-time manipulation, then, and
also n-s-n-t attributes, phenomena, and being. Most important--the _sine
qua non_--is the ultimate basic sex. Prerequisite, a duplex pole of
power; two very-strongly-linked and very powerful poles, one masculine
and one feminine..."

"A moment, Stella, I'll have to challenge that nuance of thought. If we
are dealing with pure, raw, elemental force--as I think we are--we've
been thinking too nicely-nicey on that, especially you. The thought
should be, I'm pretty sure, neither masculine and feminine nor manly and
womanly but starkly male and just as starkly female."

"You're probably right, Andy... you _are_ right. So I'll think
starkly female; as starkly so as an alley cat in heat. Shall we...
no, let's finish checking the list."

They finished checking, and neither could perceive any other sources of
error in the nuances of their thoughts. They tried it again, and this
time it--whatever it was--clicked. Or rather, the result was not a
click, but a sonic boom. Both bodies went rigid for seconds; then each
drew a tremendously deep breath; as much from relaxation of tension as
from realization of accomplishment. Then, poring over a street map of
Calcutta, they went mentally to India; to the home of Mahatma Rajaras
Molandru, who was one of the greatest sages then alive and who was also
a Fellow of the College of Study.

"Is it permitted, Mahatma, that we converse with you and learn?" the
fused minds asked.

So calm, so serene was the Great Soul's mind that he neither showed nor
felt surprise, even at this almost incredible full meeting of minds.
"You are very welcome, friends Andrew and Stella. You have now attained
such heights, however, that I have little or nothing to give you and
much to receive from you."

While the old Mahatma did get much more than he gave, the Adamses got
enough new knowledge from him so that when they left India they no
longer needed maps. Their linkage had a sureness and a dirigibility that
not even the Destons were to match for many years.

From India they went to China, where they had a long and somewhat
profitable interview with Li Hing Wong. Thence to Russia and Feodr
Ilyowicz; where results were negligible.

"Andy, I never did like that man," Stella said, when the short and
unsatisfactory interview was over. "And on such contact as this I simply
can't stand him. Secretive--sly--he wouldn't really open up at all--all
take and no give--that is _not_ the way a good psiontist should act."

"I noticed that; but the loss is really his. It made it impossible for
us to give him anything... but that attitude is perhaps natural
enough--his whole heritage is one of secretiveness. Where next, my
dear?"

They went to Tibet and to the Gobi and to Wales and to Rome and to
Central Africa and to Egypt and to various other places where ancient,
unpublished lore was to be found. They sifted this lore and screened it;
then, after having sent a detector web of thought throughout the space
and subspace of half the galaxy, they found and locked minds with
Carlyle and Barbara Deston.

"Do not be surprised, youngsters," the Adams duplex began.

"Huh?" Deston yelped. "Clear to hellangone out here? And in subspace
besides?"

"Distance is no longer important. Neither is the nature of the
environment. Moreover, we are about to visit you in person."

"Without a locus of familiarity? You can't."

"That is no longer necessary, either. Here we are." Seated side by side
on a love-seat facing the Destons, the Adamses spoke the last three
words aloud, in perfect unison.

Deston did not jump clear off of the davenport--quite. "Out here into
the middle of subspace and we're doing God-knows-how-many megaparsecs a
minute relative to anything? So you've mastered absolute trans-spatial
perception?"

"By no means. We have, however, been able to enlarge significantly our
hyper-sphere of action. We have learned much."

"That's the understatement of the century. But before you try to teach
us any such advanced stuff as that, there's something simple--that is,
it _should_ be simple--that's been bothering me no end. You got a little
time now, Doc?"

"Lots of it, Babe. Go ahead."

"Okay. Well, since I never got beyond calculus, and not very advanced
calc at that, I don't know any more about high math than a pig does
about Sunday. But you and I both know what we mean by plain, common,
ordinary, every-day reality. We know what we mean when we say that
matter exists. Check, to here?"

"In the sense in which you are using the terms 'reality' and 'matter',
yes."

"Okay. Matter exists in plain, ordinary, three-dimensional space. Matter
is composed of atoms. Therefore _atoms_ must exist and must have reality
in three-dimensional space. So why can't any atomic physicist tri-di a
working model of an atom? One that will work? One that human eyes can
_watch_ work? So that the ordinary human mind can understand how and why
it works?"

"That's rank over-simplification, my boy. Why, the very concept of
subatomic phenomena and of subspace is so..."

"I know it is. That's exactly what I'm bitching about. Basically, nature
is simple, and yet you Big Brains can't handle it except by inventing
mathematics so horribly complex that it has no relationship at all to
reality. You can't understand it yourselves. You don't--at least I'm
pretty sure you don't--really understand--like I understand that chair
there, I mean--time or subspace or space or anything else that's really
fundamental. So do you mind if I stick my amateur neck 'way out and make
a rank amateur's guess as to why and why not?"

"I'm listening, Babe, with my mind as well as my ears."

Barbara grinned suddenly. "Out of the mouths of babes--one Babe in this
case--_et cetera_," she said.

"Okay, little squirt, that'll be enough out of you. Doc, I think there's
one, and probably more than one, fundamental basic principle that nobody
knows anything about yet. And that when you find them, and work out
their laws, everything will snap into place so that even such a dumbster
as I am will be able to see what the real score is. So you think I'm a
squirrel food, don't you?"

"By no means. Many have had similar thoughts...."

"I know that, too, but now we jump clear off the far end. Do you read
science fiction?"

"Of course."

"You're familiar, then, with the triangle of electromagnetics,
electro-gravities, and magneto-gravities. That's just a wild stab, of
course, but one gets you a hundred that there's something, somewhere,
that will tie everything up together--subspace, hunches, telekinetics,
witches, and all that stuff."

Adams leaned forward eagerly. "Have you done any work on it?"

"Who, _me_? What with?" Deston laughed, but there was no trace of levity
in the sound. "What would I be using for a brain? That's _your_
department, Doc."

Adams smiled and started to say something, but broke off in the middle
of a word. His smile vanished. He sat immobile, eyes unfocussed, for
minute after minute. He sat there for so long that Deston, afraid to
move, began to think that he had suffered some kind of a seizure.

Finally, however, Adams came out of his trance. He and Stella got up as
one and, without a word, turned to leave the room.

"Hey!" Deston protested. "Wait up, Doc! What gives?"

Adams licked his lips. "I can't tell you, Babe. I'd be the
laughing-stock of the scientific world--especially since I can't
conceive of any possible instrumentation to test it."

"After that, you've _got_ to talk. So start."

"The trigger was your flat statement--axiomatic to you--that the atom
exists in three dimensions. Since that alleged fact can not be
demonstrated, it probably is not true. If it is not true, the
reverse--the Occam's-Razor explanation--would almost have to be that
space possesses at least four physical dimensions."

"Hell's... flaming... afterburners..." Deston breathed.

"Exactly. The fact that this theory--to my knowledge, at least--has
never been propounded seriously does not affect its validity. It
explains every phenomena with which I am familiar and conflicts with
none."

There was a long silence, which Deston broke. "Except one, maybe.
According to that theory, psionic ability would be the ability to
perceive and to work in the fourth physical dimension of space.
Sometimes in time, too, maybe. But in that case, if anybody's got it why
hasn't everybody? Can you explain that?"

"Quite easily. Best, perhaps, by analogy. You'll grant that to primitive
man it was axiomatic that the Earth was flat? Two-dimensional?"

"Granted."

"That belief became untenable when it was proved conclusively that it
was 'round'. At that point cosmology began. The Geocentric Theory was
replaced by the Heliocentric. Then the Galactic. Where are we now? We
don't know. Note, however, that with every advance in science the
estimated size of the physical universe has increased."

"But what has that got to do with psionics?"

"I'm coming to that. While _intelligence_ may not have increased very
greatly over the centuries, mental _ability_ certainly has. My thought
is that the process of evolution has been, more and more frequently,
activating certain hitherto-dormant portions of the brain; specifically,
those portions responsible for the so-called 'supra-normal' abilities."

"Oh, _brother_! You really went out into the wild blue yonder after that
one, professor."

"By no means. It may very well be that not all lines of heredity carry
any of the genes necessary to form the required cells, even in the
dormant state, and it is certain that there is a wide variation in the
number and type of those cells. But have you ever really considered Lee
Chaytor? Or George Wesley?"

"Just what everybody knows. They were empiricists--pure experimenters,
like the early workers with electricity. They kept on trying until
something worked. The theory hasn't all been worked out yet, is all."

"'Everybody knows' something that, in all probability, simply is not
true. I believed it myself until just now; but now I'm almost sure that
I know what the truth is. They both were--they must have
been--tremendously able psiontists. They did not publish the truth
because there was no symbology in which they _could_ publish it. There
still is no such symbology. They concealed their supra-normal abilities
throughout their lives because they did not want to be laughed at--or
worse."

Deston thought for a minute. "That's really a bolus... what can
we--any or all of us--do about it?"

"I'm not sure. Data insufficient--much more work must be done before
that question can be answered. As we said, Stella and I have learned
much, but almost nothing compared to what is yet to be learned. To that
end--but it is long past bedtime. Shall all eight of us meet after
breakfast and learn from each other?"

"It'll be a one-way street, professor," Deston said, "but thanks a
million for the compliment, anyway. We shall indeed."

The Adamses left the room and Carlyle Deston stared unseeingly at the
doorway through which they had passed.

And next morning after breakfast the four couples sat at a round table,
holding hands in a circle.

Very little can be said about what actually went on. It cannot be told
in either words or mathematics. There is no symbology except the
esoteric jargon of the psiontist--as meaningless to the non-psionic mind
as the proverbial "The gostak distims the doshes"--by the use of which
such information can be transmitted.

Results, however, were enormous and startling; and it must be said here
that not one of the eight had any suspicion then that the Adams fusion
had any help in doing what it did. Andrew Adams' mind was admittedly the
greatest of its time; combining with its perfect complement would
enhance its power; everything that happened was strictly logical and
only to be expected.

The physical results of one phase of the investigation, that into
teleportation, can be described. Each pair of minds was different, of
course. Each had abilities and powers that the others lacked; some of
which were fully developable in the others, some only partially, some
scarcely at all. Thus, when it came to the upper reaches of the Fourth
Nume, even Adams was shocked at the power and scope and control that
flared up instantly in the Trains' minds as soon as the doors were
opened.

"Ah," Adams said, happily, "That explains why you would not start out
without them."

"And _how_!" Deston agreed; and it did.

It is also explained why Cecily had always been, in Bernice's words,
"such a sex-flaunting power-house." It accounted for Train's years of
frustration and bafflement. At long, long last, they had found out what
they were for.

"You two," Adams said, "have, among other things, a power of
teleportation that is almost unbelievable. You could teleport, not
merely yourselves, but this entire starship and all its contents, to any
destination you please."

"They could, at that," Deston marveled. "Go ahead and do it, so Bobby
and I can see how much of the technique we can learn."

"I'm afraid to." Cecily licked her lips. "Suppose we--I, my part of it,
I mean--scatter our atoms all over total space?"

"We won't," Train said. Although he had not known it before, he was in
fact the stronger of the two. "Give us a target, Babe. We'll hit it to a
gnat's eyeball."

"Galmetia. GalMet Tower. Plumb with the flagpole. One thousand point
zero feet from the center of the ball to our center of gravity."

"Roger." The Trains stared into each other's eyes and their muscles set
momentarily. "Check it for dex and line."

Deston whistled. "One thousand point zero _zero_ feet and plumb to a
split blonde hair. You win the mink-lined whatsits. Now back?"

"As we were, Sess," Train said, and the starship disappeared from
Galmetia's atmosphere, to reappear instantaneously at the exact point it
would have occupied in subspace if the trip had not been interrupted.

The meeting went on. There is no need to report any more of its results;
in fact, nine-tenths of those results could not be reported even if
there were room.

An hour or so after the meeting was over, Adams sat at his desk,
thinking; staring motionlessly at the sheet of paper upon which he had
listed eighteen coincidences. He knew, with all his mathematician's
mind, that coincidence had no place in reality; but there they were. Not
merely one or two, but _eighteen_ of them... which made the
probability a virtually absolute certainty.

There _was_ an operator. The babies? Barbara? Of all the people he knew,
they were... but why should it be anyone he knew, or any given one or
thing in this or any other galaxy? There were no data. A mutant, hiding
indetectably behind his own powers? An attractive idea, but there was no
basis whatever for any assumption at all... anything to be both
necessary and sufficient must of necessity be incomprehensible.
Anything... anywhere... anywhen....

At this point in his cogitations Barbara knocked on his door and came
in, with her mind-blocks full on. He knew what was on her mind; he had
perceived it plainly during the wide-open eight-way they had just held.
Nevertheless:

"Something is troubling you, my dear?"

"Yes." Barbara nibbled at her lip. "... it's just... well, are you
positively _sure_, Uncle Andy, that the babies are... well..." She
paused, wriggling in embarrassment.

"Normal? Of course I'm sure, child. Positive. I have a file four inches
thick to prove it. Have you any grounds at all for suspecting that they
may not be?"

"Put that way, no, I haven't. It's just that... well, once in a while
I get a... a _feeling_... Indescribable..." she paused again.

"It is possible that there is an operator at work," he said, quietly.
The girl's eyes widened, but she didn't say anything and he went on,
"However, I can find no basis whatever for any assumption concerning
such a phenomenon. It is much more logical, therefore, to assume that
these new and inexplicable 'feelings' are in fact products of our newly
enlarged minds, which we do not as yet fully understand."

"Oh?" she exclaimed. "_You_ have them, too? _You've_ been working on it?
Watching it?"

"I have been and am working on it."

"Oh, wonderful! If there's anything to it, then, you'll get it!" She
hugged him vigorously, kissed him on the ear, and ran out of the room.

Adams stared thoughtfully at the closed door. That let Barbara out--or
did it? It did not. Nor did it put her in any deeper. The operator, if
any, was supernormal; super-psionic. The problem was, by definition,
insoluble; one more of the many mysteries of Nature that the mind of man
could not yet solve. Therefore he would not waste any more time on it.

He shrugged his shoulders, crumpled the sheet of paper up into a ball,
dropped the ball into his wastebasket, and went to work on a problem
that he might be able to solve.




                                  XIII
                             THE OUTPLANETS


WHILE no one knows when man first appeared upon Earth, it is generally
agreed that it required many hundreds of thousands of years for the
human population of Earth to reach the billion mark, which it probably
did sometime in the eighteen twenties. In the next scant century,
however, it doubled. In another seventy five or eighty years it doubled
again, to four billions. Then, due to limitation of births in most
cultures and to famine and pestilence in the few remaining backward
ones, the rate of increase began to drop; and early in the twenty second
century Earth's population seemed to be approaching seven billions as a
limit.

Although cities had increased tremendously in size there was still much
farmland, and every acre of it--including the Sahara, irrigated by
demineralized and remineralized water from the ocean--was cultivated and
fertilized to the maximum possible constant yield. There were also vast
hydroponics installations. Complete diet had been synthesized long
since; hence Earthly fare for many years had been synthetic for most,
vegetarian-and-synthetic for almost all of the upper twenty percent.
Cow's milk and real meat were for millionaires only.

The dwindling of Earth's reserves of oil and coal had forced the price
of hydrocarbons up to where it became profitable to work oil shale, and
it was from the immense deposits of that material that most of Earth's
oil was being produced. Very little of this oil, however, was being used
as fuel; almost every ton of it was going into the insatiable conversion
plants of the plastics and synthetics industries.

Of power, fortunately, there was no lack. It was available everywhere,
at relatively low cost and in infinite amount.

Infinite? Well, not quite, perhaps. Inexhaustible, certainly. Also
incalculable, since no two mathematicians ever agreed even approximately
in estimating the total kinetic energy of the universe. And that
super-genius Lee Chaytor, in developing the engine that still bears her
name--the engine that taps that inexhaustible source of energy--gave to
mankind one of the two greatest gifts it has ever received. The other,
of course, was Wesley's Subspace Drive; by virtue of which man peopled
the planets of the stars.

However, it was only the bold, the hardy, and the independent, and the
discontented who went. Nor was there at first any such thing as Capital:
the bankers of Earth were, then as now, highly allergic to risking their
money in any venture less certain than a
fifty-percent-of-appraised-value first mortgage upon a practically sure
thing. Hence everything was on shares.

Elbridge Warner, Barbara Deston's great-great-great-and-so-on
grandfather, a multi-millionaire oil-man and a rabid anti-union
capitalist, was the first big operator to go off-Earth. Following the
"hunches" that had made him what he was, he hired a crew of the hardest,
toughest, most intransigent men he could find and sniffed out a
fantastically oil-rich planet, theretofore unknown to man. He named this
planet "Newmars" and claimed it _in toto_ as his own personal private
property.

Then, having put down a tremendously productive well, he built and
populated a balanced-economy colony. He then put down a few more gushers
and built an arms plant and a couple of battleships, after which he: 1)
Moved everything he owned that was movable from Earth to Newmars, and 2)
Fired every union man in his employ. The United Oil Workers struck, of
course, whereupon he made or stole--the record is not clear upon this
point--some Chaytor superfusers and destroyed every Warner well on
Earth. Destroyed them so thoroughly (everyone has seen a tri-di of what
a superfuser does) that not one of them could be made to produce again
for years, if ever. He then sat back on his wholly-owned,
self-sufficient, fortified planet and waited.

The result was inevitable. Even with Warner Oil at full production, the
demand had been crowding the supply. And, because of the meagerness of
Earth's reserves and because the shale-oil people would not expand their
plants--they knew that Warner could undersell them by any margin he
chose--Earth had to make terms with Elbridge Warner. The Chamber of
Commerce and the government of the United States of America forced the
United Oil Workers to surrender; whereupon Warner graciously allowed
fleets of tankers to haul oil from Newmars to Earth--at shale oil's
exact delivered price.

Elbridge never did put down another well on Earth. In fact, as far as is
known, he did not even visit Earth throughout the remainder of his
hundred years of life. He was not bitter, exactly; he was stubborn,
hard-headed, fiercely independent, and contumaceous; and he surrounded
himself by preference with people of his own hard kind. Which, with that
start and with Warner Oil always dominating the business, is why the
oil-men of the planets have never been a gentle breed.

The Asteroid Mining Company followed WarnOil's lead. Iron and nickel, of
course, and a few other metals, were available in plenty in Sol's
asteroid belt; but a great many other highly important metals,
particularly the heavier ones, were not. Wherefore the Asteroid Mining
Company changed its name to Galactic Metals, Incorporated, and sent
hundreds of prospectors out to explore new solar systems. These men,
too--hard-muscled, hard-fighting, hard-playing hard-rock men all--were
rugged, rough, and tough.

They found a sun with an asteroid belt so big and so full of chunks of
heavy metal that it was all but unapproachable along any radial line
anywhere near the plane of the ecliptic. This sun's fourth planet, while
it was Tellus-Type as to gravity, temperature, water, air, and so forth,
was much richer than Earth in metals heavier than nickel. Whereupon
Galactic Metals pre-empted this metalliferous planet, named it
"Galmetia", and proceeded to stock it with metalsmen--a breed perhaps
one number Brinnell harder even than Elbridge Warner's oil-men.

With colonization an actuality, and productive of profits far beyond
anything possible on Earth, a few of the most venturesome capitalists of
Earth decided to dip into this flowing fountain for themselves. Lactia
Incorporated, the leading-milk-and-meat producer, was the first
banker-backed, consumer-oriented firm to take the big plunge. Knowing
that it could fly a fifty-thousand-ton tanker from an out-planet to
Earth in little more time and at little more expense than was required
to ship a five-gallon container from Trempealeau, Wisconsin, to Chicago,
Illinois, it found and claimed a Tellus-Type planet whose tremendous
expanses of fertile plains and whose equable climate made it ideal for
the production of milk and meat. It named its planet Lactia. Then Lactia
the firm colonized Lactia the planet with feed-raisers, dairymen, and
stockmen, and began to spend money hand over fist.

It required years, of course, to build up the herds, and an immense
amount of money, but when many hundreds of millions of cattle lived upon
hundreds of millions of fertile acres, the retail price of milk had come
down from twenty five dollars a pint to the mythically-old figure of
twenty cents per quart. Beef, pork, and mutton were available in every
marketplace. Clothing of real wool and of real leather was being sold at
prices almost anyone could afford. For, then as now, the businessmen of
the planets adhered as closely as they possibly could to the Law of
Diminishing Returns.

Dozens of other industries followed Milk's lead. Wheatfields were
measured by the "square" (one hundred square kilometers) instead of by
the acre and bread again became a basic food. Rice became available in
full supply and at low cost. Breakfast cereals reappeared upon the
shelves of even the smallest foodstores. All of this came about because,
with all due respect to the biochemical engineers, natural food tasted
better than synthetic and "felt" better in the mouth, and vast numbers
of consumers were willing to pay a premium for it.

(With increasing automation, ever-mounting demand, and ever-increasing
production as costs were lowered, planetary agriculture eventually, of
course, put the synthetic-food industry completely out of business.)

These subsidiary planets, unlike Newmars and Galmetia, were at first
dependent upon Earth. However, each one grew in population at an
exponential rate. For, despite all the automation that is economically
feasible, it takes a lot of men to work even as small a holding as a
hundred squares of land. Men need women and women go with their men. Men
and women have children--on the planets, as many children as they want.
Families need services--all kinds of services--and get them. Factories
came into being, and schools--elementary schools, high schools,
colleges, and universities. Stores of all kinds, from shoppes to
supermarkets. Restaurants and theaters. Cars and trucks. Air-cars.
Radio, teevee, and tri-di. Boats and bowling lanes. Golf, even--on the
planets there was _room_ for golf! And so on. The works.

At first, all this flood of adult population came from Earth; drawn, not
by any urge to pioneer, but by that mainspring of free enterprise,
profit. Profit either in the form of high wages or of opportunity to
enlarge and to advance, each entrepreneur in his own field. And not one
in a hundred of those emigrants from Earth, having lived on an outplanet
for a year, ever moved back. "Tellus is a nice place to visit, but
_live_ there? If the Tellurians like that kind of living--if they call
it living--they can have it."

But the lessening of Earth's population was of very short duration.
Assured of cheap and abundant food, and of more and more good, secure
jobs, more and more women had more and more children and cities began to
encroach upon what had once been farmland.

One of the most important effects of this migration, although it was
scarcely noticed at the time, was the difference between the people of
the planets and those of Earth. The planetsmen were, to give a thumbnail
description, the venturesome, the independent, the ambitious, the
chance-taking. Tellurians were, and became steadily more so, the stodgy,
the unimaginative, the security-conscious.

Decade after decade this difference became more and more marked, until
finally there developed a definite traffic pattern that operated
continuously to intensify it. Young Tellurians of both sexes who did not
like regimentation--and urged on by the blandishments of planetary
advertising campaigns--left Earth for good. Conversely, a thin stream of
colonials who preferred security to competition flowed to Earth. This
condition had existed for over two hundred years. (And, by the way, it
still exists.)

For competition was and is the way of life on the planets. The labor
unions of Earth tried, of course; but the Tellurian brand of unionism
never did "take", because of the profoundly basic difference in attitude
of the men involved. Some Tellus-Type unions were formed in the early
years and a few strikes occurred; only one of which, the last and the
most violent and which neither side won, will be mentioned here.

The Stockmen's Strike, on Lactia, was the worst strike in all history.
Some three thousand men and over five million head of stock lost their
lives; about eight billion dollars of invested capital went down the
drain. Neither side would give an inch. Warfare and destruction went on
until, driven by the force of public opinion--affected no little by the
virtual absence of meat and milk from civilization's every table--the
massed armed forces of all the other planets attacked Lactia and took it
by storm. Martial law was declared. Capital was seized. Labor either
worked or faced a firing squad. This condition would continue, both
Capital and Labor were told, until they got together and worked out a
formula that would work.

Experts from both sides, in collaboration with a board of the most
outstanding economists of the time, went to work on the problem. They
worked for almost a year.

Capital must make enough profit to attract investors, and wants to make
as much more than that minimum as it can. Labor must make a living, and
wants as much more than the minimum as it can get. Between those two
minima lies the line of dispute, which is the locus of all points of
reasonable and practicable settlement. Somewhere on that line lies a
point, which can be computed from the Law of Diminishing Returns as
base, at which Capital's net profit, Labor's net annual income, and the
public's benefit, will all three combine to produce the maximum summated
good.

Thus was enunciated the Principle of Enlightened Self-Interest. It
worked. Wherever and whenever it has been given a chance to work, it has
worked ever since.

The planet-wide adoption of this Principle (it never did gain much favor
on Earth) ended hourly wages and full annual salaries. Every employee,
from top to bottom, received an annual basic salary plus a bonus. This
bonus varied with the net profit of the firm and with each employee's
actual ability. And the Planetsmen, as the production and service
personnel of the planets came to be called, liked it that way. They were
independent. They were individualists. Very few of them wanted to be
held down in pay or in opportunity to any dead level of mediocrity just
to help some stupid jerks of incompetents hang onto their jobs.

The Planetsmen liked automation, and not only because of the perennial
shortage of personnel on the outplanets. And, week after week, union
organizers from Earth tried fruitlessly to crack the Planetsmen's united
front. One such attempt, representative of hundreds on record, is quoted
in part as follows:

Organizer: "But listen! You Associated Wavesmen are organized already;
organized to the Queen's taste. All you have to do is use your brains
and join up with us and it wouldn't take hardly any strike at all
to..."

Planetsman: "Strike? You crazy in the head? What in hell would we strike
for?"

Org: "For more money, of course. You ain't dumb, are you? You could be
getting a lot more money than you are now."

Plan: "I could like hell. I'd be getting less, come the end of the
quarter."

Org: "Less? How do you figure that?"

Plan: "I don't. I don't have to. We've got expert computermen figuring
for us all the time, and they keep Top Brass right on the peak of the
curve, too, believe me. You never heard of the Law of Diminishing
Returns, I guess."

Org: "I did so; but what has that got to do with...?"

Plan: "Everything. It works like this, see? My basic is six
thousand--and say, how much to Tellurian pole-climbers get?"

Org: "Well, of course we would..."

Plan: "Not with our help you won't. You'll dig your own spuds, brother.
Anyway, say we strike--and that's saying a hell of a lot--ever hear of
Lactia? But say we do, and say they raise our basic to--and that's
saying a hell of a lot, too, believe me--but say they do, to--hell, to
anything you please. Okay. So costs go up, so Top Brass has to raise
prices...."

Org: "Uh-uh. Let 'em take it out of their profits."

Plan: "They ain't makin' that much. Anyway, it'd stack up the same, come
to the end of the quarter. The point would slide off of the peak and my
bonus would get a bad case of the dropsy and I'd wind up the year making
less than I will the way things are now."

Org: "Well, skipping that for just a minute, how about this automation
that's putting so many of you men out of jobs?"

Plan: "It ain't, that are worth a damn. If a man can't keep on top of
the machines, to hell with him. Let him take a lower-basic job or go to
Tellus and live on security. The more automation we can make work the
more production per man-hour and the bigger my bonus gets. And pretty
quick I can jump a level and raise my basic, too. It's just that simple.
See?"

Org: "I see that it don't make sense. What you don't see is that Capital
has been suckering you all along. They've been giving you the business.
Feeding you the old boloney and giving you the shaft clear to the hilt
and you're dumb enough to take it."

Plan: "Not by seven thousand tanks of juice, chum, and needling won't
make us let you lean on us a nickel's worth, either. We get the straight
dope and our officers don't dip into the kitty, either, the way yours
do. So what you'd better do, meathead, is roll your hoop back to Tellus,
where maybe you can make somebody believe part of that crap."

****

Aboard the _Explorer_, the Adamses and the Destons were discussing the
course of civilization. Adams had prepared tables of figures, charts,
and graphs. He had determined trends and had extrapolated them into
future time. His conclusions were far from cheerful.

"This unstable condition has lasted far longer than was to have been
expected two centuries ago," Adams said, definitely. "The only reason
why it has lasted so long is because of the stabilizing effect of the
planets siphoning off so many of Earth's combative and aggressive
people. The situation is now, however, deteriorating; and, considering
the ability, the quality, and the state of advancement of the
Planetsmen, it will continue to deteriorate at an ever-increasing rate
to the point of catastrophe."

"Huh?" Deston asked. "Grind that up a little finer, will you,
professor?"

"It's inevitable. The original aim of Communism was to master all Earth.
It failed. It also failed to gain any foothold upon any of the
outplanets because the basic tenets of Communism are completely
unacceptable to the independent and self-reliant peoples of the planets.
The fact is, therefore, that Communism is bottled up on something over
half of the land surface of one planet, while we 'contemptible
capitalist warmongers' are spreading at an exponential rate over a
constantly increasing number of planets. The question is, what will this
present Nameless One of EastHem--who is none too stable a character--do
about this state of affairs?"

Deston whistled, and after a short silence Barbara said, "He will bomb,
I suppose you mean."

"Could be, at that," Deston agreed. "Especially since EastHem never will
catch up with our production technology. The most important thing, as I
see it, is when."

"Within a very few years, I think," Adams said. "By these charts, five
years at most, and probably much less than that."

"Nice," Deston said, and thought for moments. "And he won't stick around
for the fallout. He and the hard core of the Party will take off for
some unknown planet--maybe they've been working on it for years--with
the idea of bombing _all_ our planets. Is that your idea?"

"That is one of many, but I do not have enough data to give a high
probability to any one of them."

"But Uncle Andy," Barbara put in, "Since you never have been anybody's
professional crepe-hanger, you've already decided what to do about it.
So give."

"I have been able to find only one solution having a probability of
success of point nine nine. In psionics, I think, lies the only possible
answer. Such masters as Li Hing Wong and the mahatmas can do much, but
not nearly enough. What we should do is find and train all the latent
psiontists we can. I know of many who are not so latent,
either--Maynard, Smith, and Champion of GalMet; Lansing and DuPuy of
WarnOil; Hatfield, Spehn, and Dann of InStell; to name only a few of
those whom I know personally. There must be thousands of others, none of
whom any one of us has ever heard of. Such a force would almost
certainly be able to cope with EastHem and its bombs; therefore it seems
to me that the best course to pursue is to set up a school for psionic
development."

"Sounds good to me," Deston approved. "Have you got it going? We'll all
get behind it and push."

"How could we have, young man? Even starting in a small way, such a
school would require an investment of at least a hundred thousand
dollars--which might as well be a million, as far as the Adams resources
are concerned."

"A megabuck wouldn't more than start it, the way it ought to be." Deston
glanced at Barbara, who nodded. He took a sheet of paper out of a
drawer, wrote a couple of lines, and went on, "Doc, for a man with your
brains, you've got absolutely the least sense of anybody I know. Any
nitwit would know that DesDes would back any such project as that clear
up to the hilt. Here, give this to Lansing. It's for twenty five
megabucks now, and as much more as you want, whenever you want it."




                                  XIV
                           THE GENERAL STRIKE


IN their suite, Percival Train put his arm around his wife's supple
waist, swung her around, and kissed her lingeringly. "Let's sit down and
talk this thing out. We both scanned both kids. We agree that they're
both normal--apparently so, anyway--now. So what? Shoot me the load of
what's bothering you."

"So a hell of a lot." A cigarette appeared between Cecily's lips, lit
itself, and she burned a quarter of it in one long inhalation. "I'll
give you both barrels. They _had_ mind-blocks. Both of them did. Now
they either haven't any or are able to hide the fact that they have and
I know damn well which one it is. Now. How could a baby who can scarcely
walk yet--to say nothing of two of them--have anything to hide or want
to? Or be able to if they did? Here's how. They were both conceived in
subspace...."

"So what? Don't you think that ever happened before?"

"Not in any ship that ever picked up a zeta charge, it didn't. No woman
ever lived through _that_ before to become a mother. And both periods of
gestation were impossibly long. And all four parents were powerful
psiontists; just how powerful you and I don't know and can't guess. And
they both, at an age when normal babies are completely dependent, have
super-normal intelligence and super-normal powers...."

"Hold it, presh, you're just guessing at that."

"Guessing your left eyeball! Look at what happened! Could any normal man
alive, of his own ability, do what we know Upton Maynard did? Or Eldon
Smith? Or Guerdon Dann? And look at Steve Spehn. You know as well as I
do, Perce, that it's starkly _impossible_ to hide an operation as big as
that from a spy system as good as EastHem's. And look at me. I never had
even a trace of psionic ability before--how did I get it? And so all of
a sudden? And those are only a few of the stickers, big boy; if you
aren't convinced yet I can go on for half an hour."

Train, his face set hard in concentration, thought for minutes; then
said, "I'm convinced that..."

"Good! I didn't expect you to admit it."

"Hold on, Sess! I'm convinced that there's an operator. I never thought
about those things before in that way, but the way you pile them up
leaves no room for doubt. But you got off on the wrong foot and never
corrected yourself--so you went clear out to the Pleiades, by way of
Canopus, Rigel, and S-Doradus, to hit Venus next door. Didn't you ever
hear of Occam's-Razor?"

"Why, of course, but..."

"Use it, then, and that functional as well as beautiful red-thatched
head of yours."

It took her only a couple of seconds. "Why, it's _Barbara_!" she
shrieked then. "It's been _Barbara_ all the time!"

"Right. So let's examine Barbara. She's been an honest-to-God witch all
her life. The greatest and probably the only one-hundred-percenter ever.
She's known it and worked at it. That much we know for sure. What else
she is we'll never know, but we can do some freehand guessing. She's had
her own way all her life. How? Yet it never spoiled her. Why not? Even
as a teen-ager, nobody's line ever fooled her. Why not? Above all, why
wasn't she ever shot or strangled or blown up with dynamite?"

Cecily nodded her spectacular head. "Competition _must_ have tried. That
has always been the cut-throatingest of all cut-throat games. And,
underneath, she really is hard."

"Hard! She's harder than the superneotride hubs of hell itself. Whenever
she has wanted anything she has taken it. Including Carlyle Deston. And
speaking of Deston, look at what happened to him--and me. He didn't used
to have any more psionic ability than I did--not as much. Then, all of a
sudden--both of us--_bam-whingo!_ And you can't say the kids did
that--not to him, anyway. Not only they weren't born yet--you might
claim they could work pre-natally--they weren't conceived yet...
probably, that is..."

She laughed. "You can delete the 'probably', Perce. They got married
right after their first meetings, you know. Anyway, virgin brides or
not, they certainly were not pregnant ones. They both knew the facts of
life."

"Okay. She made full-scale, high-powered psionic operators out of Herc
and Bun, too; long before the kids were born and probably before they
were conceived. So, for my money, it was Bobby who worked all of us over
and pulled the strings on the Adamses and on Maynard And Company and did
everything else that was done."

"But those babies are _not_ normal babies, Perce..." She paused, then
went on, "But of course..." She paused again.

"Of course," he agreed. "With cat-tractor-psiontist parents on both
sides, how could they be? Especially with said parents working on
them--just like we'll be working on ours--from the day they were born?
Or maybe even before? I'll buy it that they have a lot more stuff than
any normal kids could possibly have; up to and including mind-blocks and
even the ability to hide them. When they grow up they'll probably have a
lot more stuff than any of us. But now? And _that_ kind of stuff? Uh-uh.
No sale, presh; wrap it back up and put it back up on the shelf."

"I'll do just that." She drew a deep breath of relief and wriggled
herself into closer and fuller contact. "Just the thought of such little
monsters as that simply petrified me."

"I know what you mean. You almost gave me goose-flesh there for a minute
myself."

"But we can understand Bobby's doing it and play along."

"You're so right. Actually, we owe her a vote of thanks for what she's
done for us."

"We certainly do. I'd tell her so myself, too, if it wouldn't... but
say... s'pose she's reading us right now?"

The man stiffened momentarily, then said, "We haven't said a word I
wouldn't want her to hear. If you _are_ on us, Bobby, I say
this--thanks; and you can put it down in your book that we're both with
you until the last clang of the gong. Check, Cecily?"

"_How_ I check!" She kissed him fervently. "You were right; I should
have talked to you before. I didn't have a leg to stand on."

"_That_ allegation I deny." He laughed, put his right hand on her
well-exposed left leg, and squeezed. "This, in case nobody ever told you
before--I thought I had--is one of the only perfect pair of such ever
produced."

She put her hand over his, pressed it even tighter against her leg, and
grinned up at him; and for a time action took place of words. Then she
pulled her mouth away from his and leaned back far enough to ask, "You
don't suppose she's watching us _now_, do you?"

"No. Definitely not. She's no Peeping Thomasina. But even if she
were--now that you're you again, my red-headed bundle of joy, we have
unfinished business on the agenda. And anyway, you're not exactly a
shrinking violet."

"Why, I am too!" She widened her eyes at him in outraged innocence.
"That's a vile and base canard, sir. I'm just as much of a Timid Soul as
you are, you Fraidy Freddie, you--why, I'm absodamlutely the
shrinkingest little violet you ever laid your cotton-pickin' eyes on!"

"Okay, Little Vi, let's jet." He got up and helped her to her feet;
then, arms tightly around each other and savoring each moment, they
moved slowly toward a closed door.

The cold-war stalemate that had begun sometime early in the twentieth
century had become a way of life. Contrary to the belief of each side
over the years, the other had not collapsed. Dictatorship and so-called
democracy still coexisted; both were vastly stronger than they had ever
been before. Each had enough super-powerful weapons to destroy all life
on Earth, but neither wanted a lifeless and barren world; each wanted to
rule the Earth as it was. Therefore the Big Bangs had not been launched;
each side was doing its subtle best to outwit, to undermine, and/or to
overthrow the other.

WestHem was expanding into space; EastHem, as far as WestHem's
Intelligence could find out, was waiting, with characteristic Oriental
patience, for the capitalistic and imperialistic government of the West
to fall apart because of its own innate weaknesses.

This situation existed when the Galactic Federation was formed;
specifically to give all the peoples of all the planets a unified,
honest, and just government; when Secretary of Labor Deissner, acting
through Antonio Grimes, called all the milk-truck drivers of
Metropolitan New York out on strike.

At three forty five of the designated morning all the milk-delivery
trucks of Depot Eight--taking one station for example; the same thing
was happening at all--were in the garage and the heavy steel doors were
closed and locked. The gates of the yard were locked and barricaded. The
eight-man-deep picket line was composed one-tenth of drivers,
nine-tenths of heavily-armed, heavy-muscled hoodlums and plug-uglies.
They were ready, they thought, for anything.

At three fifty a fleet of armored half-tracks lumbered up and began to
disgorge armored men. Their armor, while somewhat reminiscent of that
worn by the chivalry of old, was not at all like it in detail. Built of
leybyrdite, it was somewhat lighter, immensely stronger, and very much
more efficient. Its wide-angle visors, for instance, were made of
bullet-proof, crack-proof, scratch-proof neo-glass. Formation was made
and from one of the trucks an eighty-decibel voice roared out:

"Strikers, attention! We are coming through; the regular deliveries are
going to be made. We don't want to kill any more of you than we have to,
so those of you with only clubs, brass knucks, knives, lead pipes, and
such stuff, we'll try to only knock out as cold as frozen beef. You guys
with the guns, every one of you who lets go one burst will get shot.
Non-fatally, we hope, but we can't guarantee it. Now, you damn fool
bystanders"--it is remarkable how quickly a New York crowd can gather,
even at four o'clock in the morning--"keep right on crowding up, as
close as you can get. Anybody God damned fool enough to stand gawking in
the line of fire of fifty machine-guns _ought_ to get killed--so just
keep on standing there and save some other fool-killer the trouble of
sending you to the morgue in baskets. Okay, men, give 'em hell!"

To give credit to the crowd's intelligence, most of it did depart--and
at speed--before the shooting began. New Yorkers were used to being
chivvied away from scenes of interest; they were _not_ used to being
invited, in such a loud tone of such savage contempt, to stay and be
slaughtered. Of the few who stayed, the still fewer survivors wished
fervently, later, that they had taken off as fast as they could run.

Armored men strode forward, swinging alloy-sheathed fists, and men by
the dozens went down flat. Then guns went into action and the armored
warriors fell down and rolled hap-hazardly on the pavement; for no man,
however strong, can stand up against the kinetic energy of a stream of
heavy bullets. Except for a few bruises, however, they were not injured.
They were not even deafened by the boiler-shop clangor within their
humbly resounding shells of metal--highly efficient earplugs had seen to
that.

Those steel-jacketed bullets, instead of penetrating that armor,
ricocheted off in all directions--and it was only then that the
obdurately persistent bystanders--those of them that could, that is--ran
away.

The machine-gun phase of the battle didn't last very long, either. In
the assault-proof half-tracks expert riflemen peered through telescopic
sights and.30-caliber rifles barked viciously. The strikers' guns went
silent.

Leybyrdite-shielded mobile torchers clanked forward and the massed
pickets fled: no man in his right mind is _ever_ going to face willingly
the sixty-three-hundred-degree heat of the oxy-acetylene flame. The
gates vanished. The barriers disappeared. The locked doors opened. Then,
with an armored driver aboard, each delivery truck was loaded as usual
and went calmly away along its usual route; while ambulances and
meat-wagons brought stretchers and baskets and carried away the wounded
and the dead.

Nor were those trucks attacked, or even interfered with. It had been
made abundantly clear that it would be the attackers who would suffer.

But what of the source of New York's milk? The spaceport and Way
Nineteen? Pickets went there, too, of course; but what they saw there
stopped them in their tracks. Just inside the entrance, one on each side
of the Way, sat those two tremendous, invulnerable, enigmatic
super-tanks. They did not do anything. Nothing at all. They merely sat
there; but that was enough. No one there knew what those things could or
would do; and no one there wanted to find out. Not, that is, the hard
way.

Nor did the Metropolitan Police do anything. There was nothing they
could do. This was, most definitely, not their dish. This was war. War
between the Galaxians on one side and Labor, backed by WestHem's servile
government, on the other. The government's armed forces, however, did
not take part in the action. At the first move of the day, Maynard had
taken care of that.

"Get the army in on this if you like," he had told Deissner, flatly.
"Anything and everything you care to, up to and including the heaviest
nuclear devices you have. We are three long subspace jumps ahead of
anything you can do, and the rougher you want to play it the more of a
shambles New York will be when it's over."

Therefore, after that one brief but vicious battle, everything
remained--on the surface--peaceful and serene. Milk-deliveries were
regular and punctual, undisturbed by any overt incident. The only
difference--on the surface--was that the milk-truck drivers wore
leybyrdite instead of white duck.

Beneath that untroubled surface, however, everything seethed and boiled.
Grimes and his lieutenants raved and swore. Deissner gritted his teeth
in quiet, futile desperation. The Nameless One of EastHem, completely
unaccustomed to frustration and highly allergic to it, went almost mad.
He now knew that the Galaxians had the most powerful planet in the
galaxy and _he could not find it_.

This situation was, of course, much too unstable to endure, and Nameless
was the first to crack. He probably went completely mad. At any rate,
his first move was to liquidate both Secretary of Labor Deissner and
Chief Mediator Wilson. Nor was there anything of finesse about these
assassinations. Two multi-ton blockbusters were detonated, one in each
of two apartment hotels, and the fact that over three thousand persons
died meant nothing to EastHem's tyrant. His second move was to make
Antonio Grimes the boss of all WestHem. Whereupon Grimes called a
general strike; every union man of the Western Hemisphere walked out;
and all hell was out for noon.

The union people, however, were not the only ones who walked out.
Executives, supervisors, engineers, and topbracket technicians did too,
in droves, and disappeared from Earth; and they did not go empty-handed.
For instance, the top technical experts of Communications Incorporated
(a wholly-owned subsidiary of InStell) worked for an hour or so apiece
in the recesses of their switch-banks and packed big carrying-cases
before they left.

Grimes knew and counted upon the fact that WestHem's economy, half
automated though it was, could not function without his union men and
women at work. He must also have known the obverse; that it could not
function, either, without the brains that had brought automation into
being in the first place and that kept it running--the only brains that
understood what those piled-up masses of electronic gear were doing. He
must also have known that in any fight to the finish Labor would suffer
with the rest; hence he did not expect a finish fight. He was superbly
confident that Capital, this time as always before, would surrender. He
was wrong.

When Grimes found every one of his own communications channels dead, he
tried frantically to restore enough service to handle Labor's campaign,
but there was nothing he or his union operators could do. (They were
still called "operators", although there were no longer any routine
manual operations to be performed).

These operators, although highly skilled in the techniques of keeping
the millions of calls flowing smoothly through the fantastically complex
mazes of their central exchanges, were limited by their own unions'
rules to their own extremely narrow field of work. An operator reported
trouble, but she must not, under any conditions, try to fix it. Nor
could if she tried. No operator knew even the instrumentation necessary
to locate any particular failure, to say nothing of being able to
interpret the esoteric signals of that instrumentation.

There were independent experts, of course, and Grimes found them and put
them to work. These experts, however, could find nothing with which to
work. The key codes, the master diagrams, and the all-important
frequency manuals had vanished. They could not even find out what, or
how much, of sabotage had been done. It would be quicker, they reported,
to jury-rig a few channels for Labor's own use. They could do that in a
day or so; in just a little longer than it would take to fly technicians
to the various cities he wanted in his network. Grimes told them to go
ahead; but before the Labor leaders could accomplish much of anything,
EastHem launched every intercontinental ballistic missile it had.

WestHem's warning systems and defenses were very good indeed. The
Department of Defense had its own communications system, which of course
was not affected by the strike. In seconds, then, after the first
Eastern missile left the ground, the retaliatory monsters of the West
began to climb their ladders.

And in minutes the Nameless One and hundreds of the hard core of the
Party died; and thousands of his lesser minions were in vehicles
hurtling toward subspacers which had for many months been ready to go
and fully programmed for flight.




                                   XV
                       THE UNIVERSITY OF PSIONICS


EARTH as such did not have a space navy; there was no danger of attack
from space and, as far as Earth was concerned, the outplanets could take
care of themselves. Nor did either WestHem or EastHem; with their ICBM's
they did not need or want any subspace-going battleships. Nor did any of
the planets. Newmars and Galmetia were heavily armed, but their armament
was strictly defensive.

Thus InStell had been forced, over the years, to develop a navy of its
own, to protect its far-flung network of merchant traffic lines against
piracy; which had of course moved into space along with the richly-laden
merchantmen. As traffic increased, piracy increased; so protection had
to increase, too. Thus, over the years and gradually, there came about a
very peculiar situation:

The only real navy in all the reaches of explored space--the only
law-enforcement agency of all that space--was a private police force not
responsible to any government!

It hunted down and destroyed pirate ships in space. It sought out and
destroyed pirate bases. Since no planetary court had jurisdiction,
InStell set up a space-court, in which such few marauders as were
captured alive were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. For over a
century there had been bitter criticism of these "high-handed tactics,"
particularly on Earth. However, InStell didn't like it, either--it was
expensive. Wherefore, for the same hundred years or so, InStell had been
trying to get rid of it; but no planet--particularly Earth--or no
Planetary League or whatever--would take it over. Everybody wanted to
run it, but nobody would pick up the tab. So InStell kept on being the
only Law in space.

This navy was small, numbering only a hundred capital ships; but each of
those ships was an up-to-the-minute and terribly efficient engine of
destruction, bristling with the most modern, most powerful weapons known
to man.

****

High above Earth's surface, precisely spaced both vertically and
horizontally, hung poised the weirdest, the motleyest fleet ever
assembled. InStell's entire navy was there, clear down to tenders,
scouts, and gigs; but they were scarcely a drop in the proverbial
bucket. InStell's every liner, freighter, lofter, and shuttle that could
be there was there; MetEnge's every ore-boat, tanker, scout and scow
that could possibly be spared; all the Galaxians' every available vessel
of every type and kind, from Hatfield's palatial subspace-going private
yacht down to Maynard's grandsons' four-boy flitabout. More, every
spaceyard of the planets had been combed; every clunker, and every
junker not yet cut completely up, was taken over. Drives and controls
had been repaired or replaced. Hulls had been made air-tight. Many of
these derelicts, however, were in such bad shape that they could not be
depended upon to stay air-tight; hence many of those skeleton crews
worked, ate, and slept in space-suits complete except for helmets--and
with those helmets at belts at the ready.

But each unit of that vast and ridiculously nondescript fleet could
carry men, missile-killers, computer-coupled locators, and launchers,
and that was all that was necessary. Since there was so much area to
cover, it was the number of control stations that was important, not
their size or quality. The Galaxians had had to use every craft whose
absence from its usual place would not point too directly at Maynard's
plan.

The fleet was not evenly distributed, of course. Admiral Dann knew the
location of every missile-launching base on Earth, and his coverage
varied accordingly. Having made formation, he waited. His flagship
covered EastHem's main base; he personally saw EastHem's first
Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile streak upward.

"This is it, boys, go to work," he said quietly into his microphone, and
the counter-action began. A computer whirred briefly and a leybyrdite
missile-killer erupted from a launcher. Erupted, and flashed away on
collision course at an acceleration so appallingly high that it could
not be tracked effectively even by the radar of that age.

That acceleration can be stated in Tellurian gravities; but the figure,
by itself, would be completely meaningless to the mind. Everyone knows
all about one Earthly gravity. Everyone has seen a full-color tri-di of
hard-trained men undergoing ten and fifteen gees; has seen what it does
to them. But ten thousand gravs? Or a hundred thousand? Or two hundred
thousand? Such figures are entirely meaningless.

Consider instead the bullet in the barrel of a magnum rifle at, and
immediately after, the instant of ignition of the propellant charge.
This concept is much more informative. Starting from rest, in a time of
a little over one millisecond and in a distance of less than three feet,
that bullet attains a velocity of more than four thousand feet per
second. Those missile-killers moved like that, except more so and
continuously. They were the highest-acceleration things ever put into
production by man.

The first killer struck its target and both killer and target vanished
into nothingness; a nothingness so inconceivably hot that the first
thing to become visible was a fire-ball some ten miles in diameter. But
there was nothing of fission about that frightfulness; GalFed's warheads
operated on the utterly incomprehensible heat generated by dead-shorted
Chaytor engines during the fractional microsecond each engine lasted
before being whiffed into subatomic vapor by the stark ferocity of its
own performance.

Missiles by the hundreds were launched; from EastHem, from WestHem, from
the poles and from the oceans and from the air; and in their hundreds
they were blown into submolecular and subatomic vapor. Thus it made no
difference what kind of a warhead any missile had carried. Fission,
fusion, chemical, or biological; all one: no analysis, however precise
and thorough, could ever reveal what any of those cargoes had originally
been. Nor did any missile reach its destination. Admiral Dann had ships
enough, and missile-killers in thousands to spare.

Meanwhile hundreds of small, highly-specialized vessels had been flying
hither and yon above certain areas of the various oceans. They were
hunting, with ultra-sensitive instrumentation, all Earth's
missile-carrying submarines. They didn't bother about the missiles
launched by the subs--the boys and girls upstairs would take care of
them--they were after the pig-boats themselves. Their torpedoes were
hunters, too. Once a torpedo's finders locked on, the sub had no chance
whatever of escape. There was a world-jarring concussion where each
submarine had been, and a huge column of water and vapor drove upward
into and through the stratosphere.

This furious first phase of the "police action" lasted--except for the
sub-hunt--only minutes. Then every missile-launching site on Earth was
blasted out of existence. So also were a few subspacers attempting to
leave EastHem--all Earth had been warned once and had been told that the
warning would not be given twice.

Then the immense fleet re-formed, held position, and waited a few hours;
after which time Dann ordered all civilian ships to return to their
various ports. The navy stayed on in its entirety. It would continue to
destroy all ships attempting to leave Earth.

Twelve hours after Earth's last missile had been destroyed,
two-hundred-odd persons met in the main lounge of the flagship of the
fleet. Maynard, his face haggard and drawn, called the meeting to order.
After the preliminaries were over, he said:

"One part of the operation, the prevention of damage to any important
part of Earth, was one hundred percent successful. Second, the
replacement of EastHem's dictatorship by a board of directors was also
successful--at least, the first objectives were attained. Third, our
attempt to replace WestHem's government by a board of directors which,
together with that of EastHem, would form a unified and
properly-motivated government of all Earth, was a failure. The
Westerners did not try to leave Earth, but decided to stay and fight it
out. For that reason many key men changed their minds at the last minute
and remained loyal to WestHem's government instead of supporting us.
Thus, while we succeeded in evacuating most of our personnel, we lost
one hundred four very good men.

"The fault, of course, was mine. I erred in several highly important
matters. I underestimated the power of nationalism and patriotism; of
loyalty to a government even though that government is notoriously
inefficient, unjust, and corrupt. I underestimated the depth and
strength of the anti-Galaxian prejudice that has been cultivated so
assiduously throughout the great majority of Earth's people; I failed to
realize how rigidly, in the collective mind of that vast group,
Galaxianism is identified with Capitalism. I overestimated the
intelligence of that group; its ability to reason from cause to effect
and its willingness to act for its own good. I thought that, when the
issue was squarely joined, those people would abandon their attitude of
'Let George do it' and take some interest in their own affairs.

"Because of these errors in judgment I hereby tender my resignation,
effective as of now, from the position of Chairman of this Board. I turn
this meeting over to Vice-Chairman Bryce for the election of my
successor."

He left the room; but was recalled in five minutes.

"Mr. Maynard, your tendered resignation has been rejected by an almost
unanimous vote," Bryce told him. "It is the concensus that no one else
of us all could have done as well. You will therefore resume your place
and the meeting will proceed."

Maynard sat down and said, "I thank you, fellow Galaxians, for your vote
of confidence; which, however little deserved, I am constrained to
accept. Mr. Eldon Smith will now speak."

The meeting went on for hours. Discussion was thorough and heated; at
times acrimonious. Eventually, however, the main areas of discord were
hammered out to substantial agreement. The Board of Directors of the
Galactic Federation concluded its first really important meeting.

Earth's communications systems were restored to normal operating
conditions and Maynard, after ample advance notice, spoke to every
inhabitant of Earth who cared to listen. He covered the situation as it
then was; what had brought it about, and why such drastic action had
been necessary. Then he said:

"At present there are ninety five planets in the Galactic Federation.
Earth will be admitted to the Federation if and when it adopts a
planetary government acceptable to the Federation's Board of Directors.
We care nothing about the form of that government; but we insist that
its prime concern must be the welfare of the human race as a whole.
Earth now has two directors on our board, Li Ming Wong and Feodr
Ilyowicz. Earth is entitled to three more directors, to represent the
regions now being so erroneously called the Western Hemisphere. They
must be chosen by an honest, stable, and responsible authority, not by
your present government of corrupt, greedy, and self-serving gangsters
and plunderers.

"We will allow enough freighters to land on WestHem's spaceports to
supply WestHem's people with its usual supply of food and of certain
other necessities, but that is all. Our milk-truck drivers have been
recalled and we will do nothing whatever about the general strike. If
you wish to let an organized minority starve you to death, that is your
right. You got yourselves into this mess; you can get yourselves out of
it or not, as you please.

"We will not broadcast again until three qualified representatives of
WestHem have been accepted by us as members of the Board of Directors of
the Galactic Federation. Until then, do exactly as you please. That is
all."

There is no need to go into what happened then throughout the nations of
WestHem; the many nations whose only common denominator had been their
opposition to the East. Too much able work has been done, from too many
different viewpoints, to make any real summary justifiable. It suffices
to say here that the adjustment was not as simple as Maynard's statement
indicated that it should be, nor as easy as he really thought it would
be. The strife was long, bitter, and violent; and, as will be seen
later, certain entirely unexpected events occurred.

In fact, many thousand persons died and the Galaxians themselves had to
straighten WestHem out before its three directors were seated on the
Board.

There is no agreement as to whether or not the course that was followed
was the right course or the best course. Many able scholars hold that
the Directorate was just as much of a dictatorship, and just as
intolerant of and just as inimical to real liberty and freedom, as was
any dictatorship of old.

It is the chronicler's considered opinion, however, that what was done
was actually the best thing--for humanity as a whole--that could have
been done; considering what the ordinary human being intrinsically is.
By "ordinary" is meant, of course, the person to whom the entire field
of psionics is a sealed realm; the person in whose tightly closed and
rigidly conventional mind no supra-normal phenomenon can possibly occur
or exist. And the present state of galactic civilization seems to show
that if what was done was not the best that could have been done it was
a very close approximation indeed thereto.

At what exact point does liberty become license? What is Freedom? Is
Ethics an absolute? Can any system of ethics ever become an absolute?
The conclusion seems unavoidable that until human beings have progressed
much farther than they have at present--until supra-normal abilities
have become normal--the "liberties" and the "freedoms" of many will have
to be abridged if the good of all is to be served.

****

Newmars was the first planet to be colonized and it was designed from
the first to become completely independent of Earth in as short a time
as possible. Thus, as well as being longer-established than the other
planets, it grew faster in population. Therefore Newmars had a
population of about a billion, whereas the next most populous, planet,
Galmetia, had scarcely half that many people and all the rest of the
colonized planets together did not have many more people than did Earth
alone.

Geographically, Newmars had somewhat more land than Earth and somewhat
less water, but the land masses were arranged in an entirely different
pattern. There was one tremendous continent, Warneria; which, roughly
rectangular in shape and lying athwart the equator, covered on the
average about ninety degrees of latitude and about one hundred fifty of
longitude. There were half a dozen other, much smaller continents, and
many hundreds of thousands of islands ranging in size from coral atolls
up to near-continents as large as Australia.

Most of Newmars' people lived on "The Continent," and some seven
millions of them lived in and around the coastal city of Warnton, the
planet's only real business center and the capital city of both the
Continent and the whole Warner-owned world.

In establishing the University of Psionics, then, Adams did not have to
think twice to decide where to put it. Earth, even though it would
furnish most of the students, was out of the question; the U of Psi
would have to be in Warnton, Newmars.

Within a day of landing, however, Adams realized that the business of
starting such a project as that was not his dish. He simply could not
spend important money. He had never bought even an expensive scientific
instrument; he had always requistioned them from some purchasing
department or other. He had never in his life written a check for more
than a few hundred bucks; he had no knowledge whatever of the use of
money as a tool. Wherefore the _Explorer_ landed at Warnton Spaceport
and Barbara Deston took over. It had been Adams' idea to buy--or
preferably to rent--a small apartment house to start with, but Barbara
put her foot down hard on that.

She bought outright a brand-new forty-story hotel that covered half of a
square block, saying, "We don't want large class-rooms--the smaller the
better, since it will be small-group work--so this will suit us well
enough until the architects get our real university built. Then we can
either sell it or form an operating company and merge it into the hotel
chain."

When the project was running smoothly, and after the eight had developed
a nucleus of some fifty psiontists, the Destons took the _Explorer_ to
Earth and the Joneses and the Trains, in two Warner-owned subspacers,
started out to cover the other planets, in descending order of
population.

The Destons took up residence in their suite in the Hotel Warner and
went to work. They scanned colleges and universities, whether or not any
such institution of learning had ever shown any interest in psionics.
They scanned Institutes of this and that, including several of Psychic
Research. They scanned science fiction fan clubs and flying-saucer
societies and crackpot groups and cults of all kinds and psychic mediums
and fortune-tellers. They attended--unfelt--meetings of the learned
societies. They scanned the trades and the professions, from aardvark
keepers and aerialists through electricians and jewelers and
ophthalmologists and spacemen to zymurgists.

Detecting a psionic latent, however weak, was now easy enough. There was
an aura, if not an actual radiation, that was perceptible to the
triggered mind at almost any distance. Any mind possessing that unique
and unmistakable characteristic could and did feel and respond to the
touch of a directed thought. Or, more exactly perhaps, a focussed or
tuned thought. Any such mind could and did (under such expert tutelage
as theirs now was) learned telepathy in seconds; and, with very few
exceptions, all persons with such minds became Galaxians and went to
Newmars.

Since the operators knew what to do and exactly how to do it, the work
went fast; and, very shortly after its beginning, a definite pattern
began to form. Every possessor of a strong latent talent was at or near
the top of his or her heap. If a performer, he or she had top billing.
If a milliner, she got a hundred dollars per copy for her hats. If a
mechanic, he was the best mechanic in town.

It need scarcely be said that Maynard, Lansing, Dann, Smith, Phelps,
DuPuy, Hatfield, Spehn, Miss Champion, the seven leaders of the
Planetsmen and their assistants and hundreds of others of the Galaxians
were found to be very strong latents. Or that, even though most of them
were too busy to go to Newmars to study, each was given everything that
he could then take that his teachers could then give.

On the other hand, not even the Adamses could at that time get into
touch with a non-psionic mind. It was not that that mind refused contact
or blocked the exploring feelers of thought; it was as though there was
nothing there to feel. It was like probing with sentient fingers
throughout the reaches of an unbounded, undefined, completely empty and
utterly dark space.

And the conservative ("Hidebound", according to Deston), greedy
capitalists of Earth were non-psionic to a man.

The response to this psionic survey was so tremendous that the hotel
building, immense as it was, was jammed to overflowing before the first
real University building was ready for use.

As Barbara had foreseen, the psionics classes were small, but there were
plenty of teachers; people whose former titles ranged from
Instructress-In-Kindergarten to Professor Emeritus of Advanced
Nucleonics. And these classes were being driven. They wanted to be
driven. Each person there had been--more or less unconsciously--unhappy,
discontented, frustrated. The few who had known that they had psionic
power had been hiding it or disguising it; the others had known, either
definitely or vaguely, that they wanted something out of life that they
were not getting. Thus, when their minds were opened to the incredible
vistas of psionics, they wanted to be driven hard and they drove
themselves hard. They graduated fast, and either went right to work or
formed advanced-study groups--and in either case they kept on driving
hard.

When the _Explorer_ emerged near Newmars, Barbara did not wait for the
slow maneuvering of landing at the spaceport and then taking the
monorail into town, but 'ported herself directly into the main office of
the University. Five minutes later she drove a thought to her husband.
"Babe, come here, quick! Here's something you've simply got to see!"

He appeared beside her and she went on, "I knew they were working fast,
but I certainly didn't expect anything like _that_ so soon." Her mind
took his up into a small room on the thirtieth floor. "Just _look_ at
_that_!"

Deston "looked" at the indicated group of four; who, heads almost
touching, were seated at a small square table. One was a gangling,
coltish, teen-age girl in sweater, slacks, and loafers, with braces on
her teeth and her hair in a ponytail. The second was an old friend of
Deston's--a big, taut, trim space-officer in a uniform sporting the
insignia of a full captain. The third was a lithe and lissome brunette
made up to the gills; the fourth was a bald and paunchy ex-banker of
seventy.

"And _that_ combination picked _itself_ out?" Deston marveled.

"Uh-huh," she said, gleefully, pressing his arm tightly against her
side. "All out of their own little pointed heads and Stella says they're
the prize group of the whole University. Dig in. Look. Just see what
they're actually _doing_."

"Uh-uh. I don't want to derail their train of thought."

"You won't. Maybe if you grabbed 'em by the scruff of the neck and the
seat of the pants and slammed 'em against the wall a few times you
could, but nothing any gentler than that."

"They're _that_ solid?" He went in and looked, and his whole body
stiffened. He stayed in for five long minutes before he came back to
Barbara and whistled through his teeth. "Wow and _wow_ and WOW!" he said
then. "All of us Big Wheels are going to have to look a little bit
out--we're going to have competition. We may have to demonstrate our
fitness to lead--if any."

"That's what I mean, and isn't it just _wonderful_? The University
doesn't need us any more, so we can start doing whatever it is that
we're going to do right now instead of waiting so long, like we thought
we'd have to."

"They've done a grand job, that's sure. Let's do some long-distance
checking--see how Spehn and Dann are making out."

They were making out all right. Since both were now psiontists,
Intelligence and Navy were barreling right along. Graduates from the
University of Psionics had been pouring into both services for weeks.
Both services were expanding rapidly, in both numbers and quality; and,
since the opposition was practically non-psionic, the Galaxians'
advantage (Spehn and Dann agreed) was increasing all the time. Also, the
opposition was not really united and could never be united except
superficially because its factions were, by their very natures,
immiscible. How effective _could_ such opposition be?

Unfortunately, Spehn and Dann were wrong; and so were the Destons. It is
a sad but true fact that a college graduate at graduation knows more
than he ever did before or ever will again; and so it was with these
young new psiontists. They thought they knew it all, but they didn't.
They had a long way to go.




                                  XVI
                          STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL


SINCE the Galactic Federation claimed authority over all explored
off-planet space, and since InStell still wanted to get rid of the job
of policing all that space, GalFed took the navy over. (It had a
tremendous war-chest, and the financial details of the transaction are
of no importance here.) What had been the Interstellar Patrol was now
the Grand Fleet of the Galactic Federation.

Fleet Admiral Guerdon Dann, being a psiontist, could understand and
could work in subspace. Therefore he could perceive subspace-going
vessels before they emerged into normal space, a feat no non-psionic
observer could perform. Thus he perceived a very large number of vessels
so maneuvering in subspace as to emerge in a roughly globular formation
well outside his own globe of warships. He perceived that they were
warcraft and really big stuff--superdreadnoughts very much like his
own--and that there were four or five hundred of them. That wasn't good;
but, since their purpose was pellucidly clear, he'd have to do
something. What could he do? His mind raced.

He wasn't a war admiral--pirates didn't fight in fleets. He didn't know
any more about fleet action in space than a pig did about Sunday.
There'd never been any. Missile-killers were new and had extreme range,
and no repulsor except a planet-based super-giant could stop one after
fifteen seconds of flight at 175,000 gravities. However, they carried no
screen, so they'd be duck soup for beams, especially lasers--if they
could spot them soon enough, and he'd have to assume that they could.

Torps had plenty of screen, but they were slow; hence they were duck
soup for repulsors. What he _ought_ to have, dammit, was something with
the legs of a killer and the screens of a torp, and there was nothing
like that even on the drawing boards. Before leybyrdite nothing like
that had been possible.

Beams, then? Uh--_uh_! They'd englobe shipwise, four or five to one. His
ships could then immerge--if they were fast enough--or get whiffed out.

He got into telepathic touch with his officers. "I don't know whether we
can do anything to those boys or not. Probably not. We certainly can't
if we let them get close to us--they'll englobe us four or five to one
if we make like heroes, so we won't. Be ready to immerge when I give the
word. Try killers at fifteen seconds range as they emerge and send out
some torps on general principles, but that's all. We're going to execute
a strategic withdrawal--in other words, run like hell."

Computers computed briefly; impressed data upon mechanical brains.
Missile-killers and torpedoes hurtled away. The first strange warship
emerged and the first missile-killer flashed into a raging,
space-wracking fire-ball miles short of objective.

"I was afraid of that," Dann thought on, quietly. "I don't think they'll
follow us--I think I know what they're after--so we'll run. Numbers one
to fifty, to Galmetia; fifty one to one hundred, to Newmars; and
everybody, get under an umbrella, just in case they do follow us."

En route to Galmetia--the flagship _Terra_ was of course Number
One--Dann had a long telepathic conversation with Maynard, and on
landing he went straight to GalMet's main office. Maynard was waiting
for him, with a staff of some fifty people. Maynard said:

"You all know that the purpose of the enemy fleet was not specifically
to attack our fleet or our planets, but to break our blockade of Earth.
They broke it, and announced that any planet refusing to resume full
trade with Earth would be bombed. So," he shrugged his shoulders and
grimaced wryly, "we give in and it is now business as usual. We have of
course taken the obvious steps; we are beefing up our repulsors and are
developing a laser that will cut an eighty-mile asteroid up into thin
slices at half a million miles. We've also started on your special torp,
Guerd, on a crash-pri basis. 'TIMPS' is the name: Torpedo, Improved,
Missile-Propelled, Screened. But we haven't been able to do anything
more than guess at the answers to such questions as: Who are they? Where
do they come from? No known planet, of that we are sure. Capital,
Communism, Labor, or what? Hatfield, have you anything to offer?"

The meeting went on for four hours; but beyond the obvious fact that
there was a planet--and not a Johnny-Come-Lately planet, either, but one
long-enough established to have plenty of people, plenty of industry,
and plenty of money or its equivalent--the meeting got nowhere. At
adjournment time Maynard flashed Deston a thought to stay behind, and
after the others had gone he said:

"You told me you didn't know anything. I didn't ask you then and I'm not
asking you now what you're figuring on doing about it. But you're going
to do something. Correct?"

"Correct. I don't know what anybody _can_ do, but we're going to work on
it. They have leybyrdite; but they almost certainly did not develop it
themselves."

"Cancel the 'almost'. We've never limited its sale--we can't. Anyone
could have bought any amount of it. Dummy concerns--untraceable--is my
guess on that. We know that a lot of Tellurian capital has always
operated on the old grab-everything-in-sight principle, and everyone
knows what Communism does. Either of them could and would run a planet
as that one has obviously been run for many years--in a way that would
make the robber barons of old sick at the stomach. But since it doesn't
make sense that Labor has been doing it... it almost has to be either
Capital or Communism."

"It looks that way." Deston frowned in thought. "But I don't know any
sure-fire way of finding out which, if either... so I'd better go get
hold of some people to help me think. 'Bye."

Deston did not walk out of the room, but 'ported himself to Barbara's
side in the University office. "Hi, pet," he said, kissing her lightly.
"I got troubles. How about busting in on that squirrelsome foursome that
Horse French is in? I want to cry in their beer."

"Uh-uh, let's not bust in; they'll have to come up for air pretty soon.
Let's wait 'til they do, then 'port up there with some lemon sour and
Gulka fizz and cherry sloosh and stuff for a break."

The foursome did and the Destons did and Deston said:

"Well, well, Frenchy old horse, fancy meeting _you_ here!" and four
strong hands gripped and shook hard. This was the Communications Officer
to whom Deston had reported the survival of the liner _Procyon_ so long
before. "Nobody ever even suspected you of having a brain in your head.
All beef--nothing but muscle to keep your ears apart, I always thought."

"Hi, Runt! You? Think? What with? But I'll tell you how it was. So many
captains got married that they couldn't find room for enough desks for
'em all to sit at, so they loaned me to this here Adams project--on pay,
too. Nice of 'em, what?--but you've never met my wife. Paula, this
renegade fugitive from InStell is Babe Deston--the unabashed hero of
subspace, you know."

"I know." The slender, graceful, black-haired, black-eyed girl with the
almost theatrical make-up, who had been watching and listening to this
underplayed meeting as intently as Barbara had, gave him a firm, warm
handshake and turned to Barbara. "And you're Bobby, of course. These men
of ours...." She raised one carefully-sculptured eyebrow, "but _we_
don't have to insult each other to prove that we're..."

"Hey!" Deston broke in then. He had been studying the way Paula
walked--he'd never seen anybody except Barbara move with such perfect,
automatic, unconscious coordination as that--"Wha'd'ya mean, _Paula_?"
he demanded. "She's Angelique de St. Aubin!"

"_In Person_, not a tri-di," French bragged. "But Paula's her real name.
The only things about her that are French are the name she married and
her professional accent. This psionics stuff is the only way I could
lure her down off of the highwire--she wouldn't come to ground, even
after she got her Mrs. degree, just for the honor and privilege of being
Mrs. Captain Horace French."

"Let's spread this around a little, huh, and give the rest of us a
chance." The coltish but attractive teen-ager, having gulped the last
syrupy bits of a full half-liter of cherry sloosh, came in. "I'm May
Eberly. I can't tell you two wonderful people how glad I am that you
started this and let me in--I never _dreamed_--well, anyway, it's
_exactly_ what I was born for. The others, too. You know what they call
us? The Effeff--the Funny Four, no less--but I don't care. I _love_ it!
And this," she waved a hand at the oldster, "is Titus Fleming. He's got
pots of money, so we call him 'Tite', but of course he isn't, just the
opposite, in fact he spoils us all rotten, and..."

"Hush, child," Fleming said, with an affectionate smile. Then, to
Deston, "May has an extraordinarily brilliant and agile mind, but she is
inclined to natter too much."

"Well, why not?" the youngster demanded, engagingly. "When we're en
rapport I don't talk at all, so I have to make up for it sometime, don't
I? And Mr. Deston--no, I think I'll call you 'Babe', too. Okay?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Horse, there--I never heard him called that before, but I like it--says
if everybody's forbearing enough to let me keep on living long enough to
grow up, which will surprise him a megabuck's worth, I'll be a gorgeous
hunk of woman some day." She executed a rather awkward pirouette. "I
can't do this anywhere near like Paula does yet, but I'm going to
sometime, just see if I don't."

"I'd hate to bet one buck against Horse's megabuck that you won't."
Deston agreed. The girl was certainly under fourteen, but the promise
was there. Unmistakably there. "Or that you won't live to break a
hundred, either."

"Oh, thanks, Babe. Oh, I just _can't wait_! I'm going to be a _femme
fatale_, you know--all slinky and everything--but you prob'ly didn't
come all the way out here just to chatter--I think Tite's word 'natter'
is cute, don't you?--so maybe before Horse bats my ears down again I'd
better keep still awhile. S'pose?"

"Could be--we're in a jam," Deston said, and told them what the jam was.
"So you see, to get anywhere at all, we've got to do some really
intensive spying, and the only way to do that is to learn how to read
non-psionic minds, and the poop is that if anybody in total space can
deliver the goods on that order, you four are most apt to be the ones."

"Oh?" May exclaimed. "That's a really funny one, Babe--we must _really_
be psychic...." She broke off with a giggle as the others began to
laugh. "No, I mean really--much more so even than we thought--because
that's _exactly_ what we've just been working on--not to be just snoopy
stinkers, either--or stinky snoopers?--but just to find out why nobody
could ever do it before--we aren't very good at it yet, but it goes like
this--no, let's all link up and we'll show you. Oh, this is going to
_really_ be fun!"

The four linked up and went to work, and the Destons tuned themselves
in; very slowly at first; more as observers than as active participants
in the investigation. The subject this time was a middle-echelon
executive, the traffic manager of one division of far-flung Warner Oil.
He was a keen-looking young man, sharp-featured, with a very good head
for figures. His king-size desk was littered with schedules, rate-books,
and revision sheets. From time to time his fingertips flicked rapidly by
touch over the keys of a desk-type computer.

The four were getting a flash of coherent thought once in a while, but
that was all.

The Destons watched, studied, analyzed, and compared notes until their
fusion finally said, in thought, "Okay, Effeff, come up for air and take
a break. Time out for discussion." They emerged as individuals and
Deston said, "You aren't making contact and I think I know why. Horse,
do either you or Paula know consciously that you're trying to work the
Fourth Nume?"

"My God, no," Paula said. "We were exposed to that stuff a long time
ago, but it didn't take."

"You weren't ready, so Doc wouldn't have tried to give it to you, so who
did?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Throckmorton."

"They would," Barbara said then. "Fortunately, they've learned better
now."

"But _you_ two can give it to us."

"We could make a stab at it, but we'd rather not. We need more practice.
We'll call Adams and Stella and watch."

The Adamses came in, and wrought; and this time, since the pupils were
ready, the lesson "took."

"_Now_ we'll git 'im!" May exclaimed. "Come on, what's holding us up?"

"I am," Deston said. "Don't go off half-cocked; we've got a lot to do
yet. Before anyone can do a job he has to know exactly what the job is
and exactly how to do it, and we don't know either one. So let's examine
your four-ply entity--the tools you're using. There's no
three-dimensional analogy, but we can call Horace and Paula an engine,
with two vital parts missing--the spark-plug and the flywheel...."

"But I want to learn that fourth-nume stuff _now_!" May declared. She
was, as usual, 'way out ahead. "I don't _want_ to wait until I'm old and
decrepit and..."

"Tut-tut, youngsters." Fleming reached out and put his hand lightly over
the girl's mouth. "That attitude is precisely what makes you the
spark-plug; but if you and I had the abilities we lack instead of the
ones we have, neither of us would be in this particular engine at all."

"That's right," Deston said. "Now as to what this engine does.
Postulating a two-dimensional creature, you could pile a million of him
up and still have no thickness at all. Similarly, no three-dimensional
material body can be compressed to zero thickness. The analogy holds in
three and four dimensions. However, there are discontinuities,
incompatibilities, and sheet logical impossibilities. Hence, ordinarily,
a four-dimensional mind, which all psionic minds are, cannot engage any
three-dimensional, non-psionic mind at all. All possible points of
contact are of zero dimensions...."

"But wait up, Babe," French broke in. "We can see three-dimensional
objects, so why can't we..."

"We can't really see 'em," Deston said, flatly. "We can see what and
where they are, but they're absolutely immaterial to us. So forces,
already immaterial, become imperceptible. Clear?"

"As mud," French said, dubiously. "There's a..."

Paula broke in, "_I_ see! The Fourth--they just showed us--remember?
Manipulate--immaterial... non-space-non-time?"

"Oh, sure," French's face cleared. "What we were doing, Babe, was
blundering around in the Fourth, making a contact once in a blue moon by
luck?"

"That's about it. Now, another analogy. Consider transformation of
coordinates--polar into Cartesian, three-dimensional into
two-dimensional, and so on. What a competent operator in the Fourth
actually does is manipulate non-space-non-time attributes in such a way
as to construct a matrix that is both three- and four-dimensional.
Analogous to light--particle and/or wave. You follow?"

"Perfectly," the Frenches said in unison. "Four on our side, three on
the non-psi's side, with perfect coupling."

"You lost May and me there," Fleming said. "However, you would, of
course... but I understand much better now why we four work together
so well. I'll venture an analogy--poor, perhaps--May scouts out ahead,
in a million directions at once. I follow behind, sometimes pushing and
sometimes putting on the brakes."

"And steering the sled!" May exclaimed. "I see, now, too--that's the way
it works!"

"Close enough," Deston said. "Now. Thought patterns are as individual as
fingerprints or the shape of one snowflake or one instantaneous pattern
in a kaleidoscope. What two telepaths do is _not_ tune one mind to the
other. Instead, each one of a very large number of filaments of
thought--all under control, remember--touches its opposite number, thus
setting up a pattern that has never existed before and will never exist
again...."

"I get it!" French exclaimed. "Reading a non-psi's mind will be a
strictly one-way street. We'll have to go _through_ the matrix--which
doesn't exist in telepathy--and match whatever pattern we find on the
other side--which won't change."

"That's right--we hope! Now you can go."

They went; and this time the traffic-manager's mind was wider open to
inspection than any book could possibly be. To be comparable, every page
of such a book would have to be placed in perfect position to read--and
all at once!

Paula stood it for something over one second, then broke the linkage
with what was almost a scream. "Stop it!"

She drew a deep breath and went on, more quietly, "I'm glad it's you who
will have to do that, Babe, not I. That was a worse thing than anything
a Peeping Tom could ever do. It's shameful--monstrous--it's positively
obscene to do a thing like that to anyone, for any reason."

"Why, Paula, that was _fun_!" May exclaimed.

"But Babe," Paula said, "that was _nothing_ like telepathy... but of
course if wouldn't be."

"Of course. In telepathy the exchange of information is voluntary and
selective. This way, the poor devil doesn't stand a chance. He doesn't
even know it's happening."

Paula frowned. "'Poor devil' is the exactly correct choice of words. Are
you going to have to use us like that on the other poor devils you are
going to... I can't think of a word bad enough."

"No. I just tried it. I can do it alone now, perfectly. But that's the
way it is; opening new cells and learning new techniques. I had the
latent capabilities. You others did, too."

"I _can_, but if you think I ever _will_ you're completely out of your
mind," Barbara declared, and Paula agreed vigorously.

"But I want to and I _can't_!" May wailed. "Why oh why can't I grow up
_faster_!"

"We don't want you to grow up at all, sweetie," French said. "We don't
want to lose our spark-plug. Ever think of that angle?"

"Babe, will I _really_ have to leave this Funny Four then?"

"You'll not only have to, you'll want to," Deston replied, soberly.
"That is one of the immutable facts of life."

"Okay, this is lots more fun than being old would be, anyway. What'll we
try next, Paula?"

"I'd like to go back up into the Fourth Nume and really explore it--turn
it inside out--that is, if there's nothing more important at the
moment?" Paula quirked an eyebrow at Deston.

There was not. Goodbyes were said, and promises were made to meet soon
and often, and the Destons 'ported themselves away.

****

Maynard called a special meeting of the Board to order and said, "Since
you all know what the Tellurian situation is, politically and otherwise,
I won't go into it. It seems to some of us, however, that this recent
disaster may not be a disaster at all; that, if we play our cards
properly, we may be able to secure much better results than if our
blockade of Tellus had succeeded.

"With all threat of nuclear warfare removed, WestHem's so-called defense
spending will stop; in fact, much of it has already stopped. Ordinarily,
this would not be a blessing, since business would slump into a rapidly
accelerating downward spiral. A bad recession, or even a severe panic,
would follow. Any such result _could_ be avoided, of course, if
WestHem's government would cut taxes in the full amount of defense
spending; but has any one of you an imagination sufficiently elastic to
encompass the idea of that government giving up half its income and
firing _that_ many hundreds of thousands of political hangers-on?"

There was a burst of scornful laughter.

"Mine isn't, either. As you know, defense stocks are already plummeting.
They are dropping the limit every day. Due to public panic, they will
continue to drop to a point below--in some cases to a point much
below--the actual value of the properties. I propose that we start
buying before that point is reached. Not enough to support the market,
of course; just enough to control it at whatever rate of decline the
specialists will compute as being certain to result in our gaining
control.

"Having gained control of the largest--excuse me, I'm getting ahead of
myself. I assure you that this program is financially feasible. I am
authorized to say that in addition to GalBank, whose statements you all
get, Deston and Deston, Warner Oil, InterStellar, and Galactic Metals
will all put their treasuries behind this project."

There was a burst of applause.

"Since we are very large holders of these stocks already, there is no
doubt that we can obtain control. We will then re-hire all the personnel
who have been laid off and convert to the production of luxury goods,
preferably of the more expensive and less durable types. We will finance
the purchase of these goods ourselves..."

This time, they clapped and whistled and stamped their feet.

"... and put on a massive advertising campaign for such basic spending
as modernization, new housing, and so on. All of this, however, will be
secondary to our main purpose. None of you have realized as yet that
this is the first chance we have ever had of forming a political party
and actually _electing_ a government of WestHem that will govern
it...."

There was a storm of applause that lasted for five minutes. Then Maynard
went on:

"The Board seems to be in favor of such action. Mr. Stevens Spehn, who
has done a great deal of work on the political aspects of this idea,
will now take the floor."




                                  XVII
                            PUNSUNBY'S WORLD


MANY parsecs distant from the remotest outpost of civilization there was
a planet known to its inhabitants only as The World. The World and
everything pertaining to it, including the People and the Sun and the
Moons and the little night-lights in the sky, had been created by The
Company on Compday, January First in the Year One; and this day--also a
Compday, of course--was the two hundred twenty sixth anniversary of that
date: Jan. 1, 226. There was no celebration or ceremony--in fact, there
were no words in the language to express any such concept--but, since it
was Compday, all Operators worked only half a shift.

In the Beginning the Company had decreed that there were to be three
hundred eighty four days (plus an extra Compday, to be announced by the
Highest Agent, once every few years) in each year. Each year had twelve
months; each month four weeks; each week eight days--Compday, Sonday,
Monday, Tonday, Wonday, Thurday, Furday, and Surday. All Operators were
to work exactly half of each of those days except Compday, upon which
they were to work only a quarter; the other quarter was to be devoted to
being happy and to thinking pleasant thoughts of the Company, of its
goodness in furnishing them all with happiness and with life and its
comforts.

No other World had ever been created or ever would be, nor any other
People. The Company and The World comprised the Cosmic All.

The World had not changed and it never would change; The Company had so
decreed. Not to the People directly, of course; the Company was an
immaterial, omniscient, omnipotent entity that, except in the matter of
punishment, dealt with People only through Company Agents. These Agents
were not People, but were supermen and superwomen far above People; so
far above People that the lowest-caste Company Agents had qualities that
not even the highest-caste People could understand.

Upon very rare occasions the Company, whose symbol was A A A A A A A,
appeared in a form of flesh to the Highest Agent, the Comptroller
General of The World, whose symbol was A A A A A A B; and, emitting the
pure mercury-vapor Light of the Company and in the sight and the hearing
of the highest-caste Company Agents, uttered sacred Company Orders.

Company Agents of various high castes transmitted these Orders to the
Managers, who told the Assistant Managers, who told the Chiefs, who told
the Assistant Chiefs, who told the Heads, who told the Assistant Heads,
who told the Foremen, who told the Shift Bosses, who told the
lower-caste People who were the Operators what to do and saw to it that
they did it.

At the time of the World's creation The Company had issued a three-fold
Prime Directive; which was immutable and eternal: ALL PEOPLE MUST: 1) Be
happy. 2) Produce more and more People. 3) Produce more and more Goods.

If a Person obeyed these three injunctions all his life, his immaterial
Aura--the thing that made him alive, not dead, and that made him
different from all other Persons--when he became dead was absorbed into
the Company and he would be happy forever.

On the other hand, there were a few who did not follow the Prime
Directive literally and exactly. These were the mals--the malcontents,
the maladjusts, the malefactors--the thinkers, the questioners, the
unbelievers--the unhappy for any cause. They were blasted out of
existence by the Company itself and that was the end of them, auras and
all.

And that was fair enough. Every Person was born into a caste. He grew up
in that caste. He was trained to do what his ancestors had done and what
his descendants would do. He had children in that caste, all of whom
became of it. He lived his whole life in that caste and died in it. That
was, is, and ever shall be the way of life, and that is precisely the
way it should be: for in pure order, and only in pure order, lies
security; and in security, and only in security, lies happiness; and
happiness is the First Consideration of the Prime Directive. Mals of all
kinds are threats to order, to security, and to happiness; therefore all
mals must die. So it was, is, and ever shall be. Selah. It is written.

Following the Prime Directive was easy enough; for most people, in fact,
easier than not following it.

Since happiness was simply the state of not being unhappy, and there was
nothing in the normal life to be unhappy about, happiness was the norm.

Producing People, too, was a normal part of life. Furthermore, since the
Company punished pre-family sexual experience with Company wrath just a
few volts short of death, the family state brought a new and different
kind of happiness. Every female Person's job assignment was to produce,
between the ages of eighteen and thirty, ten children, and then to keep
on running her family unless and until she was transferred to some other
job. Since every nubile girl wanted a man of her own, and since children
were a source of happiness on their own account, not one woman in a
thousand had to be brainwashed at all to really like the job of running
a family.

And as for producing Goods--why not? That was what People were created
for, and that was all that men were good for--except, of course, for
fathering children. Also, there was much happiness to be had in keeping
a machine right at the peak of performance, turning out, every shift, an
over-quota of passes and an under-permittance of rejects--zero rejects
being always the target.

No Person in his right mind ever even thought of wondering what the
Goods he produced were for, or what became of them. That was Company
business and thus incomprehensible by definition.

On this Compday forenoon, then, in a vast machine-shop in City One of
the World, a young man was hard at work--sitting at ease in a
form-fitting chair facing an instrument-board having a hundred-odd
dials, meters, gauges, lights, bells, whistles, buzzers, and
what-have-you.

Occasionally a green light would begin to shade toward amber and a
buzzer would begin to talk to him in Morse code; whereupon he would get
up, walk around back of the board to his machine, and make almost
imperceptible manual adjustments until the complaining monolog stopped.
If, instead of stopping, the signal had turned into a Klaxon blare, he
would have been manufacturing rejects, but he was far too good a
machiner to make any such error as that. He hadn't turned out a single
reject in eighteen straight shifts. He knew everything there was to be
known about his machine--and the fact that he knew practically nothing
whatever else had never bothered him a bit. Why should it have? That was
precisely the way it should be in this, the perfect World: that was
precisely what the all-powerful Company had decreed.

He was of medium height and medium build; trimly, smoothly muscular;
with large, strong, and exquisitely sensitive hands. He had a shock of
rather unkempt brown hair, clear gray eyes, and a lightly-tanned,
unblemished skin. He wore the green-and-white-striped coveralls of his
caste--Machiner Second--and around his neck, on a hard-alloy chain,
there hung a large and fairly thick locket. This locket, which had been
put on him one minute after he was born and which his body would wear
into the crematorium, and which--he firmly believed--could not be opened
or removed without causing his death, had seven letters of the English
alphabet cut deeply into its face. This group of
letters--V T J E S O Q--was his symbol. As far as he knew, the only
purpose of the locket was to make him permanently and unmistakably
identifiable.

At twelve o'clock noon the machine stopped; for the first time in
exactly one week. At the same time he heard the sound of fast-stepping
hard heels and turned to see a Company Agent approaching him--the first
Agent to come to him in all his twenty years of life. This Agent was a
young female, whose spectacular build was spectacularly displayed by a
sleeveless, very tight yellow sweater and even tighter black tights. Her
boots, laced to the knees, were of fire-engine-red leather. Her
short-bobbed hair was deep russet brown in color. Low on her forehead
blazed the green jewel of her rank. This jewel, which resembled more
than anything else a flaring green spotlight about the size of a
half-dollar piece and not much thicker, was mounted in platinum on the
platinum drop-piece of a plain platinum headband. Under her sweater she,
too, wore a locket; upon which was engraved the symbol A C B A A B A.

"Be happy, Veety!" the Agent snapped.

"Be happy, Agent." The machiner raised his arms and put both hands flat
on the top of his head.

"At ease, Veety! Follow me!"

Whirling on the ball of her left foot, she led the way clown a narrow
corridor; sharp right into a wider one; sharp left into the main hall
and straight into the crowd of operators going off shift. She did not
even slow down--the crowd dissolved away from her like magic. They fell
all over themselves to get out of her way; for to touch, a Company
Agent, however accidentally or however lightly, was to receive a blast
of Company wrath that, while not permanently harmful, was as intolerable
as it was inexplicable.

Through the huge archway, along a wide walkway she led him, to the
second archway on the right. She stopped and whistled sharply through
her teeth. The exiting operators stopped in their tracks, put hands on
heads, and stood motionless.

"V T J R S Y X--forward!" she snapped, and a green-and-white-coveralled,
well-built girl--People had to be good physical specimens or they did
not live to grow up--came up to within a few feet of the Agent and
stopped. She was neither apprehensive nor pleased; merely acquiescent.

"Be happy, Veety!"

"Be happy, Agent."

"Job transfer. Come with me and this other veety to that aircar over
there."

The Agent slipped lithely into the single front seat of the vehicle, at
the controls; the two Machiners Second got into the back seat. The
aircar bulleted upward, screamed across City One to Suburb Ten, and
dropped vertically downward to a high-G landing on the beautifully-kept
grounds of a small plastic house.

"Out," the Agent said, and led the couple into a large,
comfortably-furnished living room. "Stand there... hold hands...
V T J R S Y X--job transfer. You're eighteen today, so you stop
machinering and start running a family. Permanent assignment. The
Company knows that you two know each other and like each other. That
liking will now become love. The Company knows all."

"The Company knows all," the two intoned in unison, solemnly.

"Press your right thumbs here... you are mated for life. This house
is yours--permanently. Four rooms and bath to start. It's expandable;
one additional room per child. Here are your family coupon books; throw
your single-person ones into the disposer. This special mating coupon
gives you free time from now until hour seventeen, when you go to the
band concert at Shell Nineteen. Amuse yourselves, you two." The Agent
smiled suddenly, a smile that made her hard young face human and
beautiful. "Have fun--in the bedroom, perhaps? Be happy, both of you."
The Company Agent executed a snappy about-face and strode toward the
door.

"Be happy, Agent," the newlyweds said; and, as the door closed, went
into each other's arms.

They amused themselves and were very happy indeed. They were still very
happy while, as hour seventeen neared, they walked, arms around each
other, toward Bandshell Nineteen. A man of their own caste, an older
man, fell into step beside them.

"I'm V T B L Q Q M," he introduced himself. "I found out a thing after
bed-hour last night that _everybody_ has got to know...."

"Shut up!" the young man barked. "We don't want to know one single damn
thing that we don't know already."

"But listen!" the stranger whispered, intensely. "This is _important_!
The most important thing that ever happened in the World! There's a
meeting tonight--I'll pick you up--but I tell you this right now. There
ain't any such thing as the Company. It's just those damn snotty Agents
and they're just as human as we are; they've been suckering us all our
lives. If we had the gadgetry they've got we could knock them all off
and take..."

"_Shut up!_" the girl screamed, and sprang away from him in horror.
"You're a mal--you're unhappy--that means _death_!"

"Death, hell!" came the whispered snarl. "I got the straight dope--the
real poop--last night and I'm still alive, ain't I? We're going to get
some special insulation tonight and I'm going to grab one of those
high-nosed bitches of Agents and choke her plumb to death after I..."

The man stopped whispering and screamed in utterly unbearable agony. His
every muscle writhed and twisted, convulsively and impossibly. After a
few seconds his body slumped bonelessly to the pavement; limp,
motionless, dead.

"How terrible," the girl remarked, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone of
voice. Then, with arms again around each other and as blissful as
before, the two lovers stepped over the body and went on their
interrupted way. Mals had no right whatever to live. Therefore the
All-Wise, All-Powerful Company had put that mal to death. Everything was
perfect, in this their perfect World.

And in one minute flat a ground-car, a light-truck type, came up beside
the corpse and stopped. Two husky men, wearing the
dark-gray-on-light-gray of Sanitationers Fourth, got out of it, picked
the body up, and tossed it nonchalantly into the back of their truck.

****

Perce and Cecily Train 'ported the _Explorer_ to a point in space well
outside Pluto's orbit; well out of detector range of any of the strange
warships englobing Earth. Aboardship this time, in addition to the
regular complement of spacemen and psiontists, were a couple of dozen
graduates of the University, who were making the trip for advanced
study.

"If any of us'd thought of it and if we'd stayed and if we'd had the
techniques we've got now, we could've 'ported bombs aboard those jaspers
and blown 'em clear out of the ether," Train said, while they were
getting ready to go to work.

"One if's enough, why use three?" Deston countered. "But I got a lot
better idea than that one, especially since Bobby is just slightly
allergic to killing people in job lots. We'll find out where they come
from, 'port each one of 'em back to his own house, tuck him gently into
his own bed and present all those nice subspacers to Fleet Admiral
Guerdon Dann, with the compliments of the University of Psionics--for a
small consideration, of course."

"_Now_ you're chirping, birdie!" Barbara exclaimed. "You _do_ get an
idea once in a while, don't you? That one is really a dilly. Ready,
everybody? Let's go."

They went... and they studied... and the more they studied the
more baffled they became. The captains of the ships were, to a man, from
Tellus. They were based on Teneriffe....

Deston shot the linked minds to the planet Teneriffe. The base was
there--an immense one--but that was all it was. Just a base. There were
no facilities to build much of anything; to say nothing of such an
immense complex as would be necessary to produce any important part of
that fleet.

Few of the captains had even wondered where the war-ships had been
built. What difference did that make? That, or anything else pertaining
to logistics or supply, was none of their business.

The Vice-Admirals and Admirals had wondered; but, since they had not
been told, none of them had ever asked. Asking impertinent questions was
a thing that simply was not done.

The Fleet Admiral did not know; neither did the Base Commander on
Teneriffe. They got their orders via non-directional subspace radio from
the Company of the World--"World," of course, meaning Earth. It wasn't
only a company, really, it was a new government, still very QT and TS,
that was going to take over Tellus and all the planets, they both
supposed. They had the power to do it, so why not? To any hard-nosed man
of war might is right, and if they wanted to play it cosy and call
themselves The Company of the World that was all right, too.

And as for the lower echelons...

"My... God...." Cecily said slowly, aloud, into the dense silence
that had lasted through a long fifteen minutes of stupefied
investigation. "The Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent Company
created the World and the People on Compday--Company Day, that
is--January First of the Year One. No other World nor any other
People--capitalized, please note, even in thought--ever were created or
ever will be. Will some or one of you nice people please tell me what in
all the infinite reaches of all the incandescent and viridescent hells
of all total space we have got ourselves into now?"

"I'll never know, Curly." Deston, who had been holding his breath for a
good two minutes, let it all out at once. "And the poor dumb meatheads
_believe_ that comet-gas with every cell of their minds... and take
everything that's going on right in stride--it's all Company business
and as such is naturally incomprehensible to the mind of man... 'My
God!' is correct, Curly. Check."

"But look! Look in here!" Barbara put in, excitedly. "Not the caste
system--above it--Company Agents! Angels, suppose? Or something? None
here with the Fleet; all back on the World. Those
spotlight-jewels--_gorgeous_! I'd love to wear one of those myself.
Powerpacks, do you think?"

"Maybe," Jones said. "That's certainly something we'll have to look
into. But what do we do now, Babe?"

"I know what _I'm_ going to do--report to the boss in person--you people
stay right here 'til I get back." Deston disappeared.

Maynard was alone, so Deston 'ported himself unceremoniously into the
private office. "I don't want even Doris in on this until you let her
in," he explained, then reported everything.

As he listened, Maynard's face turned gray.

"So you see, chief," Deston concluded, "it's an unholy mess. What was it
you said? A planet... 'run for years in a way that would make the
robber barons of old sick at the stomach.' You said it. You _certainly_
said it. Have you got any idea as to who could be monster enough to pull
a stunt like that?"

"More than an idea, son. This explains a lot of things I've wondered
about, but I couldn't let my mind run wild enough. Two of 'em are why
Plastics, one of the biggest of the big, never played ball, and how they
got that way. It's Plastics, and Lord Byron Punsunby is head man."

"That makes sense, so I'll do a flit...."

"Not yet... that's such a staggering thing... what year is it, of
theirs?"

"Two hundred twenty six."

"Um... um... m. Call it nine generations. At their breeding rate,
with a start of only a few hundred thousand, they'll have population.
The first three or four generations would know something, but by
falsification of records, history, and so on... and no press...
brainwashing and hypnosis... it could be done. Definitely. So they've
had at least five generations of... of..."

"Of serfs. A perfect serf set-up."

"Check. And one of their castes is of top-notch engineers who don't know
anything else and put everything they've got into it. And castes of
scientists and so on."

"That's right. As a 'troncist I'm here to testify that that locket is
one beautiful job of work. Transmits everything except what the guy ate
for breakfast, and maybe even that."

"To Central Intelligence... each checked as frequently as desired...
or even recorded... God, what a system!" Maynard shook his
head. "And those Company Agents. Special castes, too. Charged, of
course. Insulated boots. Magic no end. They could even _live_ in a
charged environment."

"Could be. I told you, it's a mell of a hess."

"One more thing. You've never thought of the real problem here,
apparently. How can we--how can _anybody_--rehabilitate any race that
has been driven that far off course?"

Deston's jaw dropped. "Huh? Wow! It's a little soon, though, isn't it,
to have to think about that?"

"I'll have to think about it, I'm afraid, whether I want to or not...
but that's more in my department than yours, I suppose... well, I'll
let you go now. Thanks for reporting. Good luck."

"Luck, chief. 'Bye," and Deston 'ported himself back into the main
lounge of the _Explorer_.

Since the Plastics Building was one of the largest office buildings on
Earth, it was very easy to find; and it was even easier to find the
blatantly magnificent private office of "Lord" Byron Punsunby, the
president of Plastics Incorporated. Deston got into his mind and put it
through the wringer. Punsunby knew a great deal that was new. He knew
all about the business end--by what devious routes the goods were
smuggled into the markets of Earth, how and through what underground
channels they were sold, how incredibly vast the hidden holdings of
Plastics were, and how all this skullduggery had been performed--but
even he did not know the general direction from Sol of Plastics'
ultra-secret planet, The World, which had never been given a name.

It was and had always been Company policy that no Tellurian should know
The World's coordinates. Only two living men were to know them; the
Comptroller General of the World, who came to Earth to report to
Punsunby after the close of business of each of The World's calendar
quarters; and the captain--who was also the only navigating officer--of
the one ship that ever made the direct run from The World to Earth and
back. There were only two records of those figures in existence; one in
each of the personal safe-deposit boxes of those two men.

Deston kept on reading. Yes, there were a few unscheduled vists; more
than he liked of late... he didn't like to use subspace radio, it
_could_ be tapped... changing conditions... trouble...

Ah! That was what Deston wanted. There hadn't been enough generations
yet to wipe out all the genes of throwbacks to the independent,
intractable type. Conditioning might not hold; it was possible that some
of them were even smart enough to pose as tractable, although the
electronicists swore that their instruments were far too sensitive and
comprehensive for that. Whatever the cause, in any case of real trouble
checking the lockets even once every day wasn't enough. Occasionally
Punsunby himself had to go to The World to order whatever steps might
have to be taken to be sure of the elimination of all mals before too
much harm was done.

Deston pulled back and set his jaw. "Now ain't _that_ a damn something!"
he gritted. "Well, the regular quarterly visit is only twelve days
away--and maybe there'll be an emergency--I hope!--so we'll sit here and
keep Lord Byron under surveillance every minute. I know you girls don't
like this kind of Peeping Tomming, so you'll be excused. Perce?"

"Sure."

"Herc?"

"Okay by me."

"That's three. Talk to some of the graduates, will you, Perce, so we
won't have to make the shifts too long? I'll take the first shift,
starting now."




                                 XVIII
                                HUNCHERS


COMPANY Agent A C B A A B A was a busy girl. She mated a dozen more
couples that afternoon, then shot her aircar out to Suburb Fourteen,
which was under construction. It was a beautiful layout, the girl
thought, as she brought her car to a halt and looked the suburb over
from a height of ten thousand feet. Rolling, heavily-wooded hills, a
nice lake sparkling in the sunshine, and two winding streams. Lovely
landscaping and curving, contoured drives. Over sixteen hundred of its
two thousand homes should be done now--but were they? There wasn't a
single house on Thirtieth Drive yet!

Frowning, she took a map of the suburb out of a compartment and scanned
it. Then she compared it carefully with the terrain below. There was no
one at work there this afternoon, of course, but she knew the call-code
of the foreman of the project, so she punched it forthwith.

Her screen brightened, showing the head and shoulders of a man, who put
both hands flat on his head and said, "Be happy, Agent."

"Be happy, Kubey! You're 'way, _'way_ behind sked on Sub Fourteen. How
come?"

"I know, Agent, but there wasn't a thing I could do about it. Five of my
best people went mal on me last week and the replacements they sent me
were absolute gristleheads. All five of 'em fouled up their machines so
bad I had to get a whole crew of..."

"That's enough. Be happy, Kubey!"

"Be happy, Agent."

She snapped the set off and gnawed at her lower lip. An Agent didn't yap
at damn stupid dumb jerks of People--it wouldn't do any good to, anyway,
they didn't know anything--A B F A D A A was the lout who'd let this job
get all fouled up--she'd do her yapping high enough up so it might do
some good. She punched buttons viciously and a blue-jeweled,
billiard-ball-bald man grinned at her.

"Keep your tights on, Acey," the Blue advised her, before she could say
a word. "The World is _not_ coming to an end."

"But what the hell's with it, Sub Fourteen being so damn far minus on
sked?" she demanded. "Keep on fouling off and I'm going to have to start
installing on it before it's finished!"

"So what? There'll be all the finished houses you'll need, long before
you'll need 'em, so..."

"'So _what_?'" she almost screamed. "Because it never happened before
with anybody else and because it's absolutely contra-Regs, _that's_
what! And you know it as well as I do! It's your business to keep ahead
of me, and by..."

"Shut up!" The man's grin had disappeared; his face was stern and cold.
"I know my business as well as you know yours, Acey."

"Well, then, why... Oh! But Abie, if you're having as much mal
trouble as _that_, why didn't you tell me?"

"You just said why not. It's Abie business, not Acey, so just keep your
tights on. And keep all this under your headband if you don't want to
get bopped bow-legged." He cut com; and after a moment of lip-biting
indecision, she did the same.

Then, shrugging her shapely shoulders, she set course for Suburb One and
the immense apartment house in which she and eight-hundred-odd other
AC's lived. She landed on the roof, parked her little speedster in its
stall, and walked a hundred yards or so to a canopied, but unguarded
hole with a stainless-steel pipe emerging from it. She slid
unconcernedly down the slide-pole's three-hundred-foot length to the
thirty fourth floor, where the general offices were. She walked seventy
yards along a main corridor, turned left into a narrower one, went fifty
yards along that, and turned left again into a large room half full of
desks. Some twenty girls, of about her own age and size--and with pretty
much her own spectacular shape--and as many young men, were already
there. Some were at desks, working; some were at scanners, studying;
some were sitting or standing by couples or in groups, talking or
playing games; some singles were reading. All wore the headlight-like
green jewels. The girls all wore the same uniform she did; the men all
wore yellow whipcord battle-jackets, black whipcord breeches, and
high-laced red-leather boots.

"Hi, Bee-ay!" one of the men called. (Since everyone in the house was an
Acey, other letters of each symbol were used intra-house). "You jump a
mean knight; come on over and play me some chess."

"Not enough time on the chron, Apey, I've got to red-tape it for a good
hour yet," and she strode purposefully to her desk.

She had hardly seated herself, however, when a big, good-looking,
fair-haired young fellow came over and perched hip-wise on the corner of
her desk.

"Hi, beautiful," he said, swinging one big boot in a small arc. "What do
you know for real sure that's new?"

"Hi, Crip--mental, that is--nothing at all. Should I?"

"Nope. Everything is perfect in this our perfect World." He squared his
shoulders as though he had made a momentous decision and glanced quickly
around. No one was within earshot; no one was paying any attention to
their customary _tête-à-tête_.

Reaching into his pocket, he took out two soft, almost transparent
pouches. He bent over, pulled his locket out from under his jacket,
said, "Well, beautiful, I'll see you after," slipped one of the pouches
over his locket, tightened its drawstring, and put the now insulated
locket back where it had been. Then, handing her the other pouch, he
indicated silently that she was to do the same.

The girl's eyes widened and her face went suddenly stiff, but she
pouched her locket and replaced it under her sweater, between her boldly
outstanding breasts. "So we're _both_ mals," she said, quietly. "Mals of
the worst type--hunchers. I've been afraid you were, too... and you,
too, for me, I suppose... well, there goes the last secret between
us--I hope? Except I mean of course..."

He managed a grin. "Of course. As far as I know, sweetheart. What held
me up was--well, I may get flamed for this, and I didn't want you to be,
too... but you've been flirting with the flamers and if you go
there's nothing left for me. That's the way you look at it, too, isn't
it?"

"Of course, darling. I wouldn't live an hour, after. You came out
because you noticed I was going off the beam?"

"How could I help but notice? But I wonder--is your hunch the same as
mine? Something so wild--so utterly utter--that there are no words for
it? That goes, some way or other, clear up to the Company itself?"

"That sounds like the same pattern, so I guess it's the same hunch.
Something _'way_ out; beyond all understanding, sense or reason. I can't
get even a clue to it. But these...?" She indicated the lockets.
"Coms? Up to the Three-A's, maybe? And you blocked 'em? I'd never have
thought of anything like that--but of course girl Sciencers First don't
really...."

"I don't _know_ that they're coms; I was afraid to do any testing. But I
knew something was riding you and I had to do something. But all I
blocked was audio--if anybody is on us they're getting everything else
and the well-known fact that we're in love will account for tension and
so on--I think. I suppose you've heard the gossip that twelve Aceys from
this house went absento--probably mal and probably flamed?"

"I've heard--and with that and this horrible hunch I've been jittering
like a witch. It got so bad that I yapped at a Blue this afternoon-Old
Baldy A B F A D A A himself."

"Almighty Company fend you!" he gasped. "You _are_ asking for a flame!"

"Not in that, Beedy. No fear of _him_ howling. He _can't_ howl. He's so
far minus sked on Sub Fourteen that I'm going to have to go
contra-Regs...." She explained the housing situation, "... so I
could kick him right in the face and he couldn't even kick me back
because I'm strictly on sked. He _said_ he'd bop me bow-legged if I
leaked about it, but that was all."

The man whistled softly through his teeth. "_That_ much mal trouble?" He
thought for a moment, then threw off his dark mood. "Retrieve the
insulator and slip it to me when I get back."

He moved quietly away, then came back with appropriate noise. He resumed
his former position, put both pouches into his pocket, and said, "I just
had a cogent and gravid idea, my proud and haughty beauty. How about us
taking five and going down stairs and tilting us a couple of flagons?"

"I'd love to, my courteous and sprightly knave, but I've simply _got_ to
get this red tape out first. An hour, say?"

"An hour's a date, you beautiful thing, you." He took his leg off the
desk and straightened up. "I've got some-red-taping of my own to do. So,
as Old Baldy would say, keep your..."

"_Beedy!_ Is _that_ nice?" She laughed up at him; two deep dimples
appeared. "Besides, as you very well know, I _always_ do!"

In an hour the paper-work was done. (While People all got half a shift
off on Compday, Company Agents got theirs on any day other than
Compday). Bee-ay and Beedy tilted their flagons, ate supper together,
and went to their rooms. Not only to separate rooms, but to separate
wings of the immense building.

She, however, did not sleep at all well; and when she went to work
Sonday morning she was still keyed up and tense--for no real reason
whatever.

The job went along strictly as usual until, at hour sixteen plus fifty,
she had just finished installing her last pair of newmates of the day
and was getting into her aircar to go home. While she was getting into
the front seat a pair of heavily-insulated arms went around her and a
strong gloved hand went over her mouth. She bit and fought, but the
glove was bite-proof and the man was big and fast and immensely strong.
He dragged her out of the driver's seat and into the back, where he let
her struggle; holding her only tightly enough to prevent her escape. In
the meantime a smaller man, also dressed in a full-coverage suit that
looked like asbestos but wasn't, cut three wires of the aircar's power
supply and got into the front seat. The car shot straight up out of
sight of the ground, darted northward, and came to ground on the flat
top of a high, bare-rock mesa.

"Are you going to behave yourself?" the big man asked.

She nodded behind the glove and he released her completely.

"What the hell goes on?" she demanded, sitting up properly and putting
her hair to rights with her fingers. "You'll get the flame for this."

"I think not," he said, quietly. "You're not frightened, I'm very glad
to see."

"_Frightened? Me?_ Of any person or People ever born? High Company
beyond!"

"Good girl. We've made a few poor picks, but you and your friend A C B D
will make out."

"Beedy? You've got him, too? Where are you taking us, if I may ask?" The
last phrase was pure sneer.

"You may not ask," was the calm reply.

Then the big man, working deftly despite his heavy gloves, lifted the
girl's locket and cut its chain with a heavy angle-nose cutter. He then
twitched the band from her head, tied the locket to the band with the
chain, and threw the bundle, in a high arc, out and away. When it came
down there was a flare of greenish brilliance brighter than the sun, the
white glare of a small pool of incandescent lava, and after a few
seconds, the odor of volatilized rock.

"So?" the girl asked, quietly. "So there goes a bit of Company power.
But you... Oh!" She broke off sharply as she saw the smaller man
touching the aircar here and there with the looped end of a heavy wire
held in one gloved hand. "Oh? High resistance? How high?"

"One point two five megohms," the big man said. "We have no intention
whatever of doing you any harm whatever."

"You know, some way or other, I've rather gathered that?" and she
extended a beautifully-shaped bare arm for the wire's touch. A minute
later, while both men were shedding their insulation, she spoke again.
"You're going to give me some explanation of all this, I suppose?"

"We are indeed, Miss Acey Bee-ay, as soon as we get to where we're going
and your friend joins us. It's altogether too long and too deep and too
involved to go into twice for the two of you. We'll take off now."

The aircar went straight up to twelve thousand feet, then hurtled north
northeast at its top speed. It held course and speed for over three
hours. It crossed mountain ranges, lakes, forests, and rivers. Finally,
however, it slanted sharply downward, slowed, stopped, and descended
vertically into a canyon--a crevasse, rather--but little wider than the
car was long and half a mile deep.

It landed near a man wearing a greenish-gray uniform, who had a sidearm
in a holster at his hip. This guard saluted crisply and put his hand
against a slight projection of the rock, whereupon a section of the
canyon's wall swung inward, revealing a long, straight, brightly-lighted
tunnel. The three got out of the car and the guard stepped aside,
drawing his weapon as he did so.

"As usual," the big man told the guard. "It's harmless and its
transmitters have been cut. You won't need the artillery." He glanced
quizzically at the girl. "Will he?"

"No," she said, flatly. "I know that you can handle me alone. You know
as much judo as I do and you're a lot bigger."

"Excellent! In, then. It's about a mile. We walk."

The three walked into and along the tunnel; with the girl, under no
restraint, between the two men.

After walking the indicated mile they came to what looked like--and in
fact was--the entrance to a thoroughly modern building. They went in and
the big man, after dismissing his smaller companion, ushered the girl
into a small, plainly-furnished office.

"They aren't here yet, I see. Take a chair, please." He sat down behind
the desk. "We'll wait here; it won't be very long."

Nor was it. In about fifteen minutes the door opened and three
gray-uniformed men, one of them pushing a wheeled chair, entered the
office. Beedy, without headband or locket, was chained to the chair. His
uniform was torn off, both eyes would soon be black-and-blue "shiners,"
and his flesh was puffy and bruised, but he was still full of fight.
When he saw the girl, however, he stopped struggling instantly and
stopped her with a word as she leaped to her feet, screamed, and ran
toward him.

"If you'd used your brain, meathead," he said, glaring between swollen
lids at the man behind the desk, "and told your gorillas to tell me you
had _her_ here, it would've saved all five of us some lumps."

"Well, I can't think of everything," the big man admitted. "I did tell
her we had you, come to think of it, which perhaps accounts for her
cooperation." He studied his three men. The smallest one of them was of
B D's size, but each of the three bore more marks of battle than did the
captive. "I was not informed that you are such an expert at unarmed
combat. Free him, you, and get out. With the chair."

"_Free_ him?" one of the captors protested. "Why, he'll..." and one
of the others broke in:

"But he damn near _killed_ Big Pietr, boss--they're taking him up to
sick-bay now, and..."

"You heard me," the boss said, without raising his voice a fraction of a
decibel, and the three obeyed.

As the door closed, the two went into each other's arms, the girl
moaning over her lover's wounds.

"It's all right, now that I know _you_ aren't hurt. You aren't, are
you?"

"No, not the least bit, in any way," she assured him. "But they hurt
_you_, and if you think..."

"Hush, sweetheart, listen. I got more of them than they did of me, so,
with you here safe, if they won't carry a grudge I won't." He cocked a
blood-clotted eyebrow--with a slight wince--at the man behind the desk.
"No grudge, I take it?"

"Splendid! No grudge at all."

B D turned to B A. "Wasn't this in your hunch?" he asked.

"Your getting all beat up certainly wasn't, but the rest of it...
well, I guess it could fit the pattern... but don't try to tell me it
was that clear in yours, either!"

"I won't; but it does fit the pattern."

"You two are far and away the best we've found yet," the man at the desk
said then. "Since I'm going to be your instructor, you may as well start
calling me 'Basil'."

"Bay-sill? That doesn't make sense," the girl said.

"It's my name. We don't use symbols--I'll go into that later. You are
beginning to realize that your knowledge and experience have left you
almost entirely ignorant of man, of nature, and of the cosmos. Exposure
to that knowledge will be such a shock to your minds that you will feel
much better together than apart. To that end, would you like to be
married--'mate,' is your word for it--immediately?"

"But we can't," the girl said. "Not for half a year yet."

"Sure we can, and we will," B D said. "My hunch is that the Company is
getting the flame...." He hesitated slightly and shivered, but went
on doggedly, "and that you have already captured at least twelve other
Company Agents without getting flamed yourselves. Is that right,
Bay-sill?"

"Very pleasingly right. Twenty, so far, have been able to withstand the
impact of the truth and remain sane... but none of them are anything
like in your class... you must both be mals."

He glanced at them questioningly, but neither made any response and he
went on. "If so, I hope to persuade you to help us look for others like
you. Now, before I take you upstairs to the sick-bay and thence to your
suite, where you will find clothing and so on, I am going to give you
some of the basic elements of the truth. I shall give them to you
brutally straight. You will be shocked as you have never believed it
possible to be shocked. You will not be able to understand any part of
it at first, but you must not ask me any questions until tomorrow
morning, when I will begin instructing you in detail. By that time you
will have given the matter sufficient thought so that you will be able
to ask intelligent questions. You wish to marry each other, you said?"

"We certainly do!"

"Splendid! You can make decisions, as well as think. I have very high
hopes indeed of you two. After the short visits I mentioned I will
arrange for your wedding. Then, if you wish, you may dine and retire to
your suite until eight hours tomorrow.

"Now for your first introduction to the truth. This world is not the
only world in existence and you people--you upper echelons are just as
much people as those you call People--are not the only people. There are
thousands of millions of other worlds, more or less like this one,
throughout an immensity of space so vast as to be beyond imagining.
There are thousands of millions of human beings--members of the human
race, to which both you and we belong--inhabiting many of those worlds.
One such world, my native planet Earth, has a population of almost seven
thousand million people.

"Your concept of the Company is completely false. There are hundreds of
thousands of companies, each a self-perpetuating group of men. Not
supermen in any sense, but ordinary men like me. Your company was and is
only one of the multitude of companies of Earth. It was founded by and
is still operated by a group of greedy, utterly callous
capitalists--money men--of Earth. It was founded and is being operated
specifically as a world of slave labor. Every person born on this world
is a slave; a slave without freedom, liberty, or personal rights of any
kind.

"We, on the other hand, represent a society of worlds of freedom-loving
people. We have come here to liberate all the inhabitants of this world
from slavery; to enable you to take your rightful place--and that place
_is_ yours by right--in the fellowship of all the civilized worlds. Our
creed, the creed of all free peoples everywhere, is this:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
Happiness.

"These things I have told you, young friends, are fundamental. They are
basic. They are absolutely necessary prerequisites for any learning of
the truth; so think them over very carefully until tomorrow morning.

"When your instruction is complete, I am sure that you will be glad to
work side by side with us to unite your world with our society--The
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."




                                  XIX
                              DOUBLE AGENT


BACK on Earth, affairs political and financial moved so fast and in such
quantity that Upton Maynard had more work on his hands than any one man
could possibly do. He _had_ to sleep five or six hours almost every
night. Also, he could handle those Tellurian affairs much better if he
were there in person--especially if he could drop GalMet entirely for a
while--and why not? Young Smith had plenty of jets... wherefore he
called Smith and Miss Champion into his inner office.

"Miss Champion, take notes, please. Mr. Eldon Jay Smith I believe, the
Executive Vice-President of Galactic Metals, Incorporated?"

"That is precisely what I have the honor and privilege of being, sir."
Smith put his right hand over his heart and bowed. "As of the present
moment, sir; that is, sir, I mean, sir."

"You'll start executing as of the present moment, sir," and Maynard told
him what he had in mind, concluding, "So sit on the throne, bub, 'til I
get back--and don't let the block line drop down through the bottom of
the chart."

"Drop? You kidding? Now we can get something done--it'll zoom right up
through the top. How about it, Dorry?" He winked at Miss Champion, who,
always the perfect First Secretary--always, that is, in Maynard's
presence--did not wink back. She merely smiled.

"But suppose I take her along?"

"Go ahead. Do that. Wreck the outfit. I've been wanting to quit and go
fishing, anyway."

"Yeah. I know. I know just what I'd be wrecking--anyway, I'd bet on the
fish. 'Bye, Don; 'bye, Doris," and Maynard strode blithely out.

The girl gave Smith a long, level look. "You're the only human being
alive with the sublime nerve to give _him_ the needle that way. Just
suppose he climbs your frame for it some day?"

"He set the pace, didn't he? Anyway, I'd get along."

"Pfooie! Nobody could blast you out of here with an atomic bomb and
everybody knows it. You really know him don't you? I've always thought I
was the only one who did."

"I know he's the universe's best--and that these damned yesmen and
toadies around here make him just as sicka da bel' as they do me--and
that's a great God's plenty."

"That's what I meant, Don... and you're not _too_ bad a stinker
yourself, in some ways." For weeks, ever since they had become psionic,
a current of something--like electricity plus--had been flowing between
these two, and it was getting stronger all the time.

"Thanks for them kind words, Dorry. You're slipping. First thing you
know you'll..."

"I'm not slipping and whatever it was you were going to say, I won't. No
telepathy, no rapport. I've been a career business woman ever since I
was fifteen--a good one--and I'm going to keep on being just that."

He smiled; more a grin than a smile. "That's the way to talk, Dorry.
Strictly business. If there's any one thing in this wide fat world I
really love, it's business."

"Let's get at it, then." Miss Champion, now all briskly efficient
FirSec, picked up her book. "I'll remind you, Mister Smith, that you are
wasting time that is costing the company a dollar a minute. In exactly
four and one half minutes you have an appointment with Felton of
Barbizon about enlarging the operation there; at nine plus forty five
with Quisenberry of Belmark, ditto; at ten plus ten with Andersen of
Pharmics...."

****

Maynard landed on Earth at Chicago Spaceport. He took a copter to the
big old building on Michigan Avenue that was GalFed's headquarters.
Stevens Spehn's office was on the twenty sixth floor, in front,
affording a splendid view of Lake Michigan--all water clear out to the
horizon.

Having sent a thought ahead, Maynard strode straight through the main
office and the FirSec's office. That smart girl, who of course listened
in on everything, even--or especially?--on thought, merely glanced up
with a smile from the tape she was reading and exchanged greetings in
thought with him as he went past.

Spehn's office, vastly unlike his previous one, was small and plainly
furnished. Even his desk was small; he could, with a little stretching,
reach anything on its plate-glass top. He was leaning 'way back in his
swivel chair, with both feet perched up on the corner of his desk. When
Maynard came in Spehn pointed his cigarette at a huge overstuffed chair
near the desk, but facing the huge front window. Maynard sat down,
lighted a long, thin cigar, crossed his legs, and spoke aloud. "So
you're rolling, Steve. So you like your PsiCor, eh?"

"Oh, brother!" Spehn got up, walked around to the older man, shook him
solemnly by the hand, and resumed seat and pose. Then: "Oh... broth...
_therr!_ One hundred percent convictions so far and not a possible
miss in sight. Psionic Intelligence agents are things that... well,
maybe some cloak-and-dagger men have dreamed about such things, but
we've _got_ 'em. Over ten thousand already and more coming and they're
all batting a thousand. Boss, the Big Brains claim that while ethics is
related to psionics, ethics is not and cannot be made an absolute. Do
you buy that?"

"In the abstract, as a generalization, yes. In practice, and in the
specific case of our own culture as it now is, perhaps not. I might
almost say probably not."

"Very, very cautious about going out on a limb, aren't you? So bite
yourself off a piece of this and chew on it and give your taste-buds a
treat. The opposition hasn't got any psiontists worth a tinker's toot
and never will have any."

Maynard did not question this statement. All experience had shown that
any psychics of much ability, immediately upon perceiving the vastnesses
of psionics, went to Newmars and the University of Psionics as a matter
of course. Spehn went on:

"It's a truly wonderful thing to _know_, for certain damn sure,
everything that goes on. So we're steam-rolling 'em to the queen's own
taste. This next election will be honest; the kind of election the
Founding Fathers had in mind. GalFed should be in the saddle shortly
after that. Of course there'll be some fuss, but Guerd should be ready
by then. You're sticking around?"

Maynard nodded. "Longer than that, Stev. Until GalFed is, both in name
and in fact, THE GALACTIC FEDERATION; until Tellus--a united Tellus--is
both in name and in fact the capital of all civilization."

Spehn thought for a moment. "That's a big order, boss, but I wouldn't
wonder if we might be able to deliver the goods."

After half an hour more of discussion, Maynard went up one floor and had
a long discussion with Fleet Admiral Guerdon Dann.

He then tuned his mind to that of Li Hing Wong, who brought Feodr
Ilyowicz in for a three-way. Things were going as well as was to be
expected. The Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain, which had faced
outward, had been replaced by Psionic Curtains facing inward. Since the
fleet englobing Earth, whatever it really was, did not seem to care what
happened to either Russia or China, there had not been very much
effective opposition. People were dying, but that couldn't be helped.
The only way progress could be made was by killing off the commissars
and the warlords and all such corruptionists; and, since corruption had
been the way of life for centuries, reclamation would necessarily be a
slow process.

As each district was reclaimed and put under a psionic Peace-lord its
people were given as much self-government as they could handle--which
wasn't very much. They would have to grow up to self-government, and
that would take a long time. If famine and pestilence did not take care
of the population problem, population control would; by birth-control
and logic if possible, by sterilization if necessary.

It was not a cheerful report; but Maynard had not expected it to be. He
shrugged his shoulders and went on to interview every one of the men and
women who were handling the political campaign. Then, last of all, he
turned his attention to the financiers who were operating in the stock
market.

****

The Plastics Building, in Chicago, Illinois, WestHem, Tellus, occupied
the entire eight hundred block west; bounded by Halsted and Peoria
Streets on the east and west, and by Washington and Randolph Boulevards
on the south and north. Its main bulk, built of steel-reenforced
synthetics of various kinds, was eighty five stories high, and a
comparatively slender tower reached up fifteen stories higher still.
This tower housed the private offices of the Biggest of the Big of
Plastics, Incorporated; and its entire top floor, the one hundredth of
the building, was devoted to the series of exceedingly private offices,
in ascending order of privacy from the private elevator, of the least
accessible man on Earth--President Byron Punsunby himself.

To say that these offices were sumptuous is to make the understatement
of the year, but that is all that will be said. At three o'clock one
Wednesday afternoon, while President Punsunby was sitting at his most
sumptuous desk, alone in his most sumptuous, most private office, clear
across the tower from the elevator, a call came in on a communicator
that was his alone, in a mish-mash of noise and herringbone that he
alone could unscramble. He stared at it angrily for a few seconds; his
big, fat body tensing, his big, fat face stiffening, and his small blue
eyes growing even harder than their hard wont.

He'd been getting altogether too damned many calls on that com of late
and he hadn't liked any one of them. And this was the worst. It wasn't
subspace, or even long distance; it was _local_--and this was one purely
sweet-scented _hell_ of a time for him to have to leave Earth... why
couldn't the ape handle a few things himself?

He unscrambled the mish-mash; Erskine Cantwell, the Comptroller General
of The World, appeared.

"Where are you?" Punsunby snapped. "Spaceport?"

"Yes. Just landing."

"Come in. I'll be alone."

Cantwell did not enter the Plastics Building by any of the usual routes.
He approached it via subway, opened an almost invisible door into the
second subbasement, walked along a deserted hall, opened a completely
invisible door by speaking a series of six coined words, and took the
ultra-secret elevator straight up into Punsunby's ultra-private office.

"Well?" Punsunby demanded, savagely. "I told you to take whatever steps
might prove necessary. Why the hell didn't you do it, instead of coming
here again?"

"What do _you_ think?" Cantwell sneered. "That I'm here for the fun of
it? I'm only the Highest Agent, remember? Six A's and a B, with only a
violet headlight. It takes the one and only discarnate God Himself--the
one and only holder of seven straight A's--the All-Powerful and
Eternal--the one and only being able to pour the pure mercury-vapor
light of God onto his poor dumb creatures--_you_, you fat-head, are the
only living human being who can modify Article Ninety of your precious
Second Directive, and by all the devils in hell you..."

"Christ almighty!" Punsunby broke in. He had been turning not-so-slowly
purple as he listened to this _lese-majeste_, but at the words "Second
Directive" his face began to pale. "But that's the basis of the whole
caste system--it's _never_ been modified. Things _can't_ be that bad,
Ersk--there _must_ be some other way of handling this trouble."

"It's exactly that bad, and if you can find any other way to clean up
the mess I'll roll a peanut from here to Buckingham Fountain with my
nose. And I've had it. You can take this..."

"Don't say it, Ersk." Punsunby got up, walked around the desk, and put a
big hand on the slender man's shoulder. "We couldn't operate without
you. But such a change as that... God knows where a thing like that
would end."

"You're so right. That's the trouble with any rigid system," Cantwell
said, much more calmly. "When it starts to crack it's apt to shatter.
But that's the way you Tops have always wanted it, so you're stuck with
it. So let's get at it."

"All right. I'll have to make a couple of calls."

There was no more talk of business until they were in SUITE ONE of the
subspacer. Then Punsunby said, "Go ahead, Ersk. What do you think it
is?"

"I know what it is, now. Sabotage. Expert, organized, directed, and
highly efficient sabotage. Worthy of the Commies at their very best."

"The Commies? But I..."

"I didn't say it was and I don't think it is. I don't see how it could
be. I can see only one possibility. I never have believed in
mindreading; but what else can it be?"

"The Galaxians." Punsunby thought for minutes. "Mental stuff--that's why
you want our mentalists to work openly with operators without losing
caste. But no person has ever--knowingly, that is--has ever even seen a
three-A, Ersk. It'd scare 'em to death."

"It'll have to be worse than that. They'll have to shed their pretty
colored spotlights, put on lockets, and _become_ operators. How the hell
else can we find out what is going on? All we're doing now is knocking
hell out of production by killing thousands of dumb bastards who don't
know whether Christ was crucified or shot in a crap game."

"Well, how about hiring some of their psychics away from 'em? Price
would be no object."

"We can't. They're _ethical_. And if WestHem ever finds out what we're
doing they'll stop the Earth in its tracks and throw us the hell off
bodily. Don't kid yourself about this, Lord Byron, or you'll wind up
square behind the eight-ball."

Punsunby wriggled and squirmed all the way to The World; but his every
idea was crushed by Cantwell's relentless logic. Therefore, as soon as
the starship landed, the two Supreme Beings of The World went directly
to the immense building housing Information Central and donned the
gorgeously-colored, heavily-jeweled regalia of their respective
positions. Punsunby sat on the splendidly ornate Throne of The Company;
Cantwell on a much smaller and somewhat plainer throne at his master's
feet.

Punsunby put on a wisely beneficent smile, Cantwell pressed a hidden
switch, and each of the thousands of Agents in Information Central's
vast building was bathed both in the pure mercury-vapor Light of the
Company and in the warmth and abundance of the Company's good will. Each
put hands on head; each was suffused with happiness at this all-too-rare
personal contact with The Company Itself.

"Children of the Company--_my_ children--be happy," Punsunby told the
raptly-listening thousands. "In view of the unprecedented difficulties
which the World is now experiencing, The Company decrees that Article
Ninety of its Second Directive is amended by the addition to it of
Section Fifty Six, as follows: 'All members of all Mentalist castes in
category A A A are permitted and directed to work, with no effect upon
caste, at whatever undertakings and in whatever fashions Highest Agent
A A A A A A B shall set up and direct.' Be happy children."

The Company lights all went out, the golden thrones sank down through
the golden floor, and Punsunby whirled on Cantwell.

"I hope to _hell_ that does it!" he snapped. "Now let's shed this junk
and get me going back to Earth!"

****

Deston and his crew were not interested in Punsunby himself. What they
wanted was the coordinates of The World. Thus they were on the lookout
for, and were checking up on, every starship approaching Tellus. Thus,
even before Cantwell's subspacer landed, they had learned everything
that Cantwell himself had ever known about The World and had put the
_Explorer_ into orbit around The World's sun. And thus, long before the
disguised psychologists of The World had made any significant progress
in their investigations, the Galaxians were ready to go to work.

"Shall we take a quick peek at Information Central?" Deston asked, "To
see which of those colored-headlamped buzzards are doing what to whom?"

"We shall _not_!" Barbara declared. "If I _never_ know exactly which
button a murderer pushes to kill a perfectly innocent person it will be
three days too soon. We can cripple all the instrumentation of that
whole Information Central without..." She paused and frowned.

"Exactly," Jones said. "That _would_ tear it."

"Well, maybe," Barbara conceded. "So well hunt up whoever's causing it
and put _them_ out of business, and _then_ stop it. We know it isn't the
Galaxians, so it must be the Communists."

"If we couldn't find the place, how could they?" Deston asked. His
thoughts took a new turn then, and as he thought his mind-blocks began
unconsciously to go up. "Okay, we'll hunt 'em up. We know how they work.
They won't be close in--too easy to spot. They'll be 'way out somewhere,
and quite possibly underground. It will be a job, fine-toothing that
much territory, but there's a lot of us. We'll divide it up... like
this...."

It was super-sensitive Bernice who finally found the Russians'
carefully-concealed, deeply-buried headquarters.

"Good going, Bun!" Deston applauded. Then, after a quick probe, he went
on. "_New_ Russia! That's really one for the book. First thing, let's
get those Company Agents up here--those two there, I think, are going to
be the answer to Maynard's prayer. Their language has been sort
of--censored?--let's see how they take to telepathy."

A C B A and A C B D, being very strong latents and well on the way to
making psiontists of themselves without even knowing that such a science
as psionics existed, learned telepathy in seconds. More, they went into
a hammer-and-tongs mind-to-mind session with the Funny Four even while
the six leaders were arguing with the other ex-Agents. All these were
latents, however; hence, after the University of Psionics had been
explained to them, they were more or less eager to go. They knew less of
reality than even the little that the two "hunchers" knew; but, like
latents everywhere, they did want to learn.

Wherefore, after Barbara had had a flashing exchange of thought with
Stella Adams, the new recruits were delivered to her in her office in
the University. Beedy was still bruised and battered, but no one--except
his new wife, of course--paid any more attention to that than he did
himself. Everyone knew all about what had happened, and they all
approved of him and he knew it.

"Babe!" Barbara burst out then. "What's on your mind? You've been
blocking solid--give!"

"I didn't mean to, actually, but I wouldn't wonder. I don't like the
only possible answer a bit, and you won't either. We never even _heard_
of that planet New Russia. And how did they find this world? I've been
racking my brains and the only possible answer I can come up with is
that Feodr Ilyowicz has always been a double agent--suckering us but
good, all along."

"Oh, no!" came a storm of protest, and Jones added, "I can't buy that
bundle, Babe. There isn't a psiontist in the outfit. He'd be here
himself--no, he couldn't, at that--but he'd have somebody on the job
here."

"You're wrong, Herc, he couldn't." Cecily shook her head. "Perfect
Commie technique. When did a commissar ever trust a psychic as far as he
could throw him? He'd use his knowledge, yes, but he wouldn't let him
get out of sight."

"That's true, Curly," Deston said. "Anyway, all..."

"But just look at what he's doing to Communist Russia!" Bernice broke
in.

"He has to, or he wouldn't last an hour," Jones said, grimly. "All that
means is that, compared to a planet and years of time, EastHem's
expendable--for as many years as is necessary. So I'll buy it after all.
What do we do next? Scout New Russia?"

"I don't think so, we need dope first, and, as I started to say, we can
find out. Flit us to one of Jupiter's moons, you Trains, and we'll
put..."

"High it, fly-boy, and find the beam!" Jones snapped. "We can't 'port
those jaspers down there back to New Russia and we can't leave 'em here
and we can't very well kill 'em in cold blood."

"Okay, Control Six, I'll try it again," Deston agreed.
"Um... um... mm. How about putting 'em--being sure we get 'em all, of
course--into an empty hold here in the _Explorer_? Keep 'em in durance
vile for the duration? Intern 'em?"

"That's a cogent thought, friend," Barbara said, and the others agreed.
"I wish we could do a lot worse to 'em than that."

It was done.

"Can I land now, Control Six?" Deston asked, plaintively, and the others
laughed.

"Okay, fly-boy, you're on the beam now."

"Thank you, Control Six. As I was saying when I was so rudely
interrupted, let's flit to somewhere near Tellus and put the snatch on
Ilyowicz and see if our guesses are any good. No, better let me do the
grabbing alone--if he has any warning whatever we'll never get him, and
if I'm wrong about him I'll apologize abjectly."

The Russian had no warning whatever. Before he could begin to thing
about setting up the psionic barrier through which no psionic force
could act, he was in the _Explorer_. Nor did Deston have occasion to
apologize. It became evident instantly that Ilyowicz would fight to the
death, and in another instant six of the most powerful minds known to
man were tearing at his mental shields.

He held those shields with everything he had, but he did not have
enough. No human mind could have had enough. His shields failed; and, a
moment after their failure, such was the irresistible flood of mental
energy driving inward, Feodr Ilyowicz died. In that moment before death,
however, the six learned much.

He had always been a double agent. He had always lived for Russia, he
was dying for Russia. Not the Russia of Earth--that was expendable--no
one cared what happened there for a few years or a few decades--but the
great New Russia that already possessed one whole planet, was taking
possession of another at this moment, and would very soon possess all
the populated planets of civilization. Everything he had learned he had
passed on to New Russia. It had a University of Psionics that would soon
surpass that of Newmars. He had traced Punsunby to The World long ago,
and had advised the Premier himself as to what should be done about it.
If it had not been for that stupid oaf Ovlovetski he would have gone to
The World himself and made such arrangements as to...

That was all. Feodr Ilyowicz was dead.

Thoughts flew for minutes; then Deston said, "There may not have to be
any scandal. I'll yank his first assistant--his nephew, Stepan Ilyowicz,
you know--and we'll see what _he's_ like."

The nephew was deeply shocked at what had happened, but he opened his
mind fully and completely. While his uncle had always been a solitary,
secretive sort of man, one who never opened his screens fully to anyone,
he had always believed him to be thoroughly loyal to the Galaxian cause.
He had always acted that way; had never given any grounds whatever for
suspicion.

Yes, he himself believed fully in Galaxianism and was completely loyal
to it. Yes, if acceptable to the Board, he would be very glad indeed to
take his uncle's place on the Board.

It was agreed that Maynard would have to know the whole truth, and would
have to decide what to do with it.

Maynard was shocked, too; and for minutes deeply thoughtful. "Well," he
said, finally, "that teaches us something. There'll be no more
gentlemanliness or courtesy on the Board with respect to mental privacy.
Never again. No, we can't have a scandal at this point; it would be
disastrous. I'll take care of it. Thanks, all of you--both for this and
for the fine job you've done on the whole project."

And Maynard did take care of it. It was announced with due pomp that
Feodr Ilyowicz, the beloved, revered, and highly honored Second
Tellurian Member of the Directorate of the Galactic Federation, had died
almost instantly in his sleep of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.




                                   XX
                              THE ELECTION


"ON, Babe, look!" Barbara laughed delightedly and hugged Deston's arm
against her side. "And she's four months pregnant, too."

Deston "looked." Cecily Train was romping like a schoolgirl with Teddy
and Babbsy. She was on her hands and knees on the rug in the main
lounge, shaking her head and growling deep in her throat; the kids, with
all four hands buried in her thick red mop of curls, were tugging at it
and shrieking with glee.

"Uh-huh; nice," Deston agreed. "And you aren't quite as sylph-like
yourself as you were a while back." He glanced down at a slight bulge.

"Uh-huh. Bun, too. It's catching, I guess. There's some kind of a germ
around, must be. S'pose we'd better fumigate the ship or something?" Her
voice was solemn, but her eyes danced. "But that wasn't what I meant,
that she might hurt herself--I'm _so_ happy for her. Who'd ever have
thought that such an out-and-out stinker as she used to be would turn
out to be such a wonderful person? Why, even Bun loves her now."

"Something made her change her ways, that's for sure. Love? Psionics?
It's a shame to break that joyous roughhouse up, but we've got a lot
of..."

"We don't have to yet, my sweet and impetuous. It can wait a few
minutes. I'm going to join that roughhouse myself--the kids _need_
exercise, you big dope."

Wherefore it was fifteen minutes later that the Big Six went to work.
The fleet englobing Earth was the first thing on the agenda, and
disposing of the multitude of People aboard those hundreds of huge
starships was a problem. So Deston shot a thought across space and--much
to his surprise--Bee-ay and Beedy materialized beside him in the
_Explorer_.

"You're _that_ good already?" Deston marveled. The two were in perfect
fusion. He had recovered fully from his fight with the Russians. Her
face was no longer hard; it was beautiful. Both were again wearing
platinum headbands mounting shining green jewels, but no lockets. "And
those? Reasonable facsimiles, I suppose?"

"No, duplicates. We felt--well, undressed--so the Four--we _won't_ call
those wonderful people funny even in fun--showed us all about 'em and we
made 'em in about a minute. We aren't charged, though, now, of course;
but we _could_ be. On most things we're getting to be pretty good--the
Fourth Nume, even. We can't do long-distance 'porting yet, except on
ourselves, but Stella says we'll be ready for anything in a couple of
weeks. Then Mr. Maynard says we can go back to The World. He said, 'See
if you can work out a program of rehabilitation that will begin to show
results in the generation now being born.' He's wonderful, isn't he?"

"He's wonderful at putting people to work, that's for sure. But what we
wanted to know is, how can we put all those people back on your world
without lousing everything up over there?"

"Oh, easy--that'll be perfect! It won't bother them a bit--'Acts of the
Company,' you know. There'll be enough of them, maybe..." the fusion
scanned the fleet, "... almost enough, anyway, to put everything back
to normal. The Three-A's will instruct and take care of caste, and the
Aceys will give them all job transfers, housing coupon books, and so on.
Everything will be perfect. And that was a good idea, putting a psionic
shield around The World, in case the Russians--but wouldn't it be a good
idea to release it long enough to blow up their headquarters?"

"It would indeed...." Deston began.

"But no atomics!" Barbara said, sharply.

"Maybe not, at that. Half a dozen two-thousand-pound charges of
cyclodetonite will do the trick, with no more jar than a very small
earthquake, and I know where they keep the demolition stuff...."

They placed the bombs; then watched a small mountain on The World erupt
and then subside. They could find no trace of what had once been there.

"That's it," Deston said then. "Now if you two will show us exactly
where to put each one of--but listen! There are _thousands_ of 'em--your
Aceys will be running themselves ragged--and those three-A's will
smell--hell, _everybody_ will smell a rat--they can't help but smell
such a rough job as that."

"Oh, no," the two assured him, but they did grin at each other. "The
Ways of The Company are just as inscrutable to them as to everyone else.
And after such a mal--such a disaster--it would be perfectly natural,
wouldn't it, for The Company to do whatever is necessary to get its
World right back into full production?"

"My... God..." Cecily breathed. "But that does make a weird kind
of sense, at that."

"Another thing," the Aceys went on. "It'd take simply forever to 'port
them one at a time to the homes they used to have, even if they still
have 'em. There's a great big recreation park back of our house--I'll
show you where--so you can 'port 'em there in what you call job lots.
That would be even more impressive and Company-like, don't you think?"

"I'll tell that whole cockeyed world it would," Deston agreed, and that
was how the job was done.

After it was done Train, who had been looking around on his own,
laughed, suddenly. "Somebody did smell your rat, Babe. Cantwell. He
called Punsunby and they're both having litters of kittens all over the
place."

They all looked, and Jones and Deston laughed, too; but the girls didn't
think it was funny to see even two such men as those suffer so much.

"Well, whatever they decide to do, it'll keep 'em out of mischief for a
while," Deston said, "so let's clean it up. Thanks a lot, you two," and
the Aceys 'ported themselves back to the University.

Then the six turned the entire fleet, together with its Tellurian
officers--and also together with the whole group of Russian saboteurs to
be interned--over to Fleet Admiral Guerdon Dann. All this, of course,
was very much contrary to International and Interplanetary Law--but what
else could they have done?

Deston turned then to Bernice. "Bun, you're our super-sensitive. We'd
like to have you find out all you possibly can about New Russia without
touching off any psychic alarms--I doubt very much if they've got
anybody in your class for delicacy of touch. The rest of us will go
along, to cover you if we have to, but you'll do all the feeling around.
Okay?"

"I'll give it the good old college try, Babe," silver-haired Bernice
said, and Operation New Russia was begun.

****

While all these things were going on, and for some time before, the
political campaign throughout all WestHem had been waxing warmer and
warmer. It was now in full, hot swing. With full prosperity
restored--and everyone who could either see or hear knew how that had
come about and who had brought it about--the Galaxians were really
making hay.

They had made so much hay that the Sociocrats and the Consercans, the
two major parties before this unprecedented break-up, had merged as the
only way of beating the snowballing Galaxians; and the Communists and
the Liberals had joined them after being promised a place at the trough.
This fusion party, the Party of Freedom and Liberty, was called the
"FreeLibs."

"That old cliche about 'strange bedfellows' was never truer," Spehn said
to Maynard one day. "I never thought I'd live long enough to see
renegade capital, labor, Commies, gangsters, radicals, and facists all
eating out of the same dish. How long can such an alliance as that last,
even if they beat us this time?"

"It's up to us to see to it that they don't beat us even this time,"
Maynard replied, comfortably, and lit another cigar.

Time went on; the campaign grew hotter and hotter, and at the calculated
time the Galaxians filed criminal charges against almost a hundred Big
Names of the opposition.

The "Ins" screamed and howled, of course. They'd been framed. They'd
been jobbed. Swivel-tongued demagogues ranted and raved about freedom
and liberty and patriotism and motherhood; about tyranny and oppression
and muzzling and dictatorship and fascism and slavery and corruption and
soullessness and greed. They accused the "upstairs" of everything they
themselves had been doing and were still doing.

The Galaxian psiontists, however, had the facts. Events, names, dates,
places, and amounts. They knew exactly what had been done, who had done
it, and for how much, and they could prove their every allegation.

Truth and honesty and facts are much easier to present and to prove than
are lies. Wherefore the Galaxians, in addition to publicizing their
facts in newspapers, magazines, tapes, brochures, pamphlets, and flyers,
also took a lot of time on the communications networks of vast InStell.
According to law, InStell had to allot as much time to the FreeLibs as
to the Galaxians--but it was probably neither accidental nor
coincidental that little or no "network" trouble ever developed on
Galaxian time.

Psiontist-lawyers took solid facts to court and inserted them solidly
into jurors' heads. Corruptionists, extortioners, boodlers, political
and legal, and big-shot racketeers--lords of vice and crime--began to go
one by one behind bars.

And the vast, lethargic, unorganized public began to stir... began
finally to move....

As Election Day drew near, the "fuss" predicted by Spehn did indeed
develop. Nor was it merely "some" fuss; there was a lot of it. There was
a great deal of violence; there were more than a few deaths. Intrenched
and corrupt power does not yield easily to displacement. The deeper it
is intrenched and the more corrupt it is, the more difficult its ouster
is, and WestHem's government had been corrupt to the core for a very
long time. Thus, while some of the former incumbents were now in jail
and more were on the way, the vacancies had been filled by people of the
same stripe and the lower echelons, the boys and girls who got out the
vote, had not been touched.

It was a thoroughly dirty campaign; nor were the Galaxians exactly
lily-white. While most of the mud they threw was true--even though some
of it could not be proved except by psionic evidence, which of course
was not admissible in court--they did at times do quite a little
extrapolating: but not when they could get caught at it very easily.

The Galaxians had another great advantage in that every important
political meeting was attended by at least one high-powered psiontist;
and at these rallies, Galaxian or FreeLib, those experts inserted the
truth into minds theretofore closed to reason. These minds thought, of
course, that they had perceived the truth for themselves.

Registration soared to an all-time high of ninety eight point nine
percent of all eligible voters.

Maynard knew that the Galaxians would lose every stronghold of organized
Labor and every district controlled by ward heelers. He knew that they
would win in all suburbs and "out in the sticks." It was in the middle
regions that the issue would be decided, and he knew exactly where those
regions were. He also knew that, in spite of all the illegal work the
Galaxians had done in those regions, they would lose a lot of them. The
decision would be close: altogether too close.

On the morning of Election Day, then, especially in those doubtful
regions, tension hit its peak. Voting was far from clean, on both sides,
but in that skullduggery the Galaxians again had two great advantages.
First, their ringers and repeaters had been set up so far in advance and
so carefully as to avoid suspicion. Second, they had the psiontists. Not
one in every precinct, of course, but one could 'port to any
polling-place in less than one second of time.

And whenever a mind-reader stared into an imposter's eyes and told him
who he really was, where he really lived, when and where and who had
paid him how much, and dared him to sign that false name, the impostor
ran: but fast.

Even so, it was very close. It see-sawed back and forth all night.
Maynard and his staff were worn and drawn when, at ten o'clock next
morning, it became mathematically certain that the Galaxians had lost
the presidency and had not won control of either the Senate or the
House.

"I can't say that I'm not disappointed," Maynard said then,
"but--considering the lethargy of John and Mary Public, that we are a
completely new party, and what the FreeLibs promised everybody--we did
very well. We elected such a strong minority that the opposition will
have to maintain a solid front, which will be very hard for them to do.
If we keep on working, and we will, we should be able to win next time."




                                  XXI
                        THE BATTLE OF NEW RUSSIA


BERNICE sat on the rostrum, at Maynard's right, when he called the Board
to order and said, aloud for the record:

"Mrs. Jones, who is by far the most sensitive perceiver known to us, has
made an intensive psionic study of New Russia. Her report is already on
tape; but, since you are all psiontists, I have asked her to give you,
mind to mind, everything she found out, so that you will be able to
perceive and to feel the many sidebands, connotations, and implications
that can not possibly be put into words. Mrs. Jones, will you take the
floor, please?"

Bernice took Maynard's place in the speaker's box and an almost absolute
silence fell; a silence that, even at the speed of thought, lasted
almost half an hour. When she sat down, all two-hundred-odd members of
the Board breathed gustily and stared at each other with emotions and
expressions that simply cannot be described. Maynard resumed his place
at the speaker's stand and spoke into the microphone:

"You see that Communism has not changed one iota in over two hundred
years. It is a rule based solely upon violence and fear. It is a rule of
terror, of spies, of informers, of secret police of the lowest, most
brutal type--police who use by choice the most callous, the most hideous
techniques of all the older regimes of the iron heel; those of the
GESTAPO and the OGPU and the SLRESK and the KARSH. There are no civil
liberties, no rights of any kind except those based upon the power to
kill. There have been, there are now, and there will continue to be
assassinations and purges; slaughter at the whim of one power-mad man or
of a group of such men.

"It is my considered opinion that Communism should have been wiped out
before atomic energy was developed. It has never been willing to
cooperate with any decent civilization. It was forced into a kind of
coexistence by the certain knowledge that if it did not at least pretend
to accept coexistence it itself would be destroyed in the world-wide
holocaust that would inevitably follow any attempt at conquest by armed
force. Its basic drive, its prime tenet, however, has not changed. Not
in any particular. Its insane lust for dominance will never be satisfied
until all civilization lies prostrate under its spike-studded clubs.
Before colonization, it devoted its every effort, fair and foul, to the
mastery of the entire Earth; since the first planet was colonized its
innate compulsion was, now is, and will continue to be the complete
mastery of civilization everywhere; whereever in total space our
civilization may go.

"It is my carefully-considered personal opinion that this cancer in the
body politic, if it is not extirpated now, will soon become inoperable.
At the time when we acquired the fleet that had been englobing Earth,
the Communists had built on their hidden planet a warfleet almost as
large as our own. They were and still are building more
superdreadnoughts. They intended to attack us as soon as their
superiority was sufficient to warrant an all-out bid for supremacy. It
was only the acquirement of that fleet that gave us overwhelming
superiority as of now. How long will our superiority last? They are
building much faster than we can without converting to a war footing.
Shall we do that, and try to perpetuate the cold-war? An attempt that
will certainly fail sooner or later? The only question, as I see it, is:
Do we want war now, while by luck we have the means to win; or later,
when we very probably will not have?

"I use the words 'very probably will not' advisedly; with reference to
our ultra-high-acceleration screened battle torpedoes, against which we
ourselves have no defense except a planet-based repulsor. It is
practically certain that the Russians do not have them in production
yet. Ilyowicz knew about them and passed the information along; but he
himself was neither an engineer nor a scientist, and--fortunately--we
kept the whole TIMPS project top secret and under psionic guard. The
Russians will develop them in time, certainly; possibly in months, or
even weeks. If we wait until they have them in production we may still
be able to win, but I need not tell you at what appalling cost in lives.

"Mrs. Jones showed you the large portions of certain munitions plants,
and entire areas that are probably munitions plants, that are hidden
under psionic shields. The meaning of that is clear.

"I now ask the supremely vital question: Ladies and gentlemen of the
Board--Shall we fight now or not?"

There was some discussion, but not very much. Every person in the hall
knew the whole story with psionic certainty, and the spirit of Patrick
Henry still lived. The vote was unanimous for immediate war.

****

The Galaxians' Grand Fleet, six hundred thirty five superdreadnoughts
strong, was in subspace on its way to New Russia. Fleet Admiral Dann, in
his flagship _Terra_, felt happy, proud, and confident. Since bombs
could not be teleported though competent psionic screening and the
Communists had plenty of competent psiontists, the battle would have to
be fought along conventional lines. However, that was all right. He now
had overwhelming superiority. He also had the TIMPS; which, he was sure,
would win the battle. The worst that could happen was that he couldn't
get them all. A lot of them would get away by immerging... unless
that thing Deston and Adams were working on would... maybe...

That was the only thing about this whole operation he didn't like. He
called Adams, aboard the _Explorer_; which subspace-going laboratory,
while traveling in the same direction as the fleet and at the same
velocity, was in no sense any part of it.

"Doc," Dann thought at him, "I'm going to try again. I know there are
only fourteen of you aboard this time, but God damn it, there's only one
Andrew Adams. You're the most important man alive, and nobody in his
right mind would call the Big Six expendable, either. The rest of us
are--that's our business--but if _you_ get killed there'll be hell to
pay and no pitch hot. I'd probably have to take cyanide or face a firing
squad. So won't you please, _please_ go back home and stay there?"

"We will not," Adams replied. "Your solicitude for us does not impress
me, and that for yourself is absurd--it is on record that we are working
independently of your fleet and against your wishes. We are conducting a
scientific investigation, which may or may not result in the destruction
of one or more Communist warships. It may or may not result in the loss
of one or all of our lives, although we believe that we have a rather
high probability of safety. In any case, the data we obtain will be
preserved, which is all that is important. Whatever else happens is
immaterial--the results of this investigation, young man, are necessary
to science," and Adams cut the telepathic line.

Dann sat back appalled. He had heard of selfless devotion to a cause,
but this... and not only himself, but also his wife and the other
twelve top psiontists of all known space...

But Admiral Dann had very little time to ponder abstractions. Grand
Fleet emerged. Not in tight formation, of course--really fine control
was to come later--but most of the subspacers came out within a few
thousand miles of where they had intended to. And every Galaxian ship,
as it emerged, hurled death and destruction. The TIMPS were launched
first, of course; they were the Sunday punch. Thousands of killers
erupted, too, and hundreds of ordinary torps. They were not expected to
do much damage--and they didn't--but they would fill the ether full of
fireworks and they might keep the Communist needlemen busy enough with
their lasers so that some of them might get through. At least, they'd
give the enemy sharpshooters something to do.

Then, long before the end of the fifteen seconds it would take for the
first TIMPS and killers to reach their targets, the big Galaxian
battlewagons put out their every course of battle screen, torched up
their every battle beam, and tore in at full drive to englobe the Commie
ships and blast them out of the ether.

All space became filled with the unbearable brilliance, the
incomprehensible energies of hundred-megaton warheads exploding as thick
as sparks from a forging ram, and eight of the Communist ships of war
were volatilized at that first blast.

But fifteen seconds at battle tension is a long time; plenty of time for
a smart commander--especially one who has been warned that the enemy may
have a weapon against which he has no defense--to push his IMMERGE
button and flit for the protection of an umbrella. Therefore, five
seconds after the first Commie ship had been blown to atoms--twenty
seconds after the battle's beginning and long before Grand Fleet could
begin englobing tactics against individual Communist ships--the Battle
of New Russia was over. Not one Communist warship remained in space.

There was some defensive action, of course. The Commies had launched a
lot of long-range stuff, too, but it was all ordinary stuff; stuff that
could be handled. Defensive and repulsor screens flared white and
beamers and lasermen were very busy men indeed for a few minutes, but
not one Galaxian vessel was very badly damaged or had to immerge.

Admiral Dann had followed the last few Commies into subspace with his
sense of perception, but they had simply disappeared--with no sign of
damage or of violence. Okay: if they re-emerged to continue the battle
that would be all right; if they never re-emerged that would be still
better. Wherefore, after ordering full detection alert, both up and
down, he relaxed--still strapped down at his con-board--and waited to
hear from Maynard.

****

It is exceedingly difficult, as all psiontists know, to work the Fourth
Nume of Total Reality. What, then, of the Fifth? It had been known,
theoretically, for many years, as the realm of two abysmally fundamental
and irreconcilably opposed aspects of that Reality.

First, there was DISCONTINUITY. This was the aspect of complete
unpredictability. The infinity-to-the-infinitieth power of all possible
and impossible events could and would happen; simultaneously, in regular
or in irregular sequence, or at complete random, or in all of these ways
at once; completely without justification, reason, or cause.

Second, there was something that was called, for lack of a better term,
CREATIVITY. This was the hyper-volume locus of the basic male principle,
although sex as such was only an infinitesimal part of it. It was the
aspect or phase--Quality? Ability? Primal Urge? Power? Force?--backing
and binding all being and all doing. It was the--the Will? The Drive?
The Compulsion?--to be, to do, to develop, to grow--TO CREATE. It was
the enormous "natural tendency" toward the continuing existence of a
universe of order and of law. Call it what you please, it is that
without which--or without the application of which: language is _so_
helpless in psionics!--this our universe could not have come into being
and would not even momentarily endure.

Carlyle Deston, the only human being of his time to work the Fifth,
reached it the hard way. He had a hunch, but he could neither show it
nor explain it to his fellows. They got behind him a few times and
pushed, but nothing happened. He, however, did not forget it. It kept on
niggling at him, and he kept on nibbling at it, until the two Aceys
graduated. They had something he needed and lacked; a subconscious--and
therefore ineradicable by experience, education, or knowledge--innate
conviction of superiority to any other race of man. He added them, and
the Funny Four--_nobody_ knew what that uninhibited foursome could
do!--to his pushers; and the thirteen strongest psiontists of his time
rammed his questing ego into and through the psionic barriers in the
direction he _knew_ he had to go.

He went: came back in zero time: and lay in a deep coma for forty hours.
He could not explain, even to hysterical Barbara or to eagerly
inquisitive Adams, where he had been or what he had done or what he had
learned. However, he knew what he knew: wherefore a crew of the finest
technicians of Galmetia, working under his minute supervision, built a
machine.

It was like no other machine ever built by man. Everything, apparently,
was input. It could take half the power of the gigantic leybyrdite-built
generators of the gigantic leybyrdite-built _Explorer_, but there was no
visible or perceptible output of any kind. There were no controls; no
buttons or meters or dials or gauges. All the immense power of that
machine would be controlled purely by thought. If that machine performed
at all, it would perform at the immeasurable speed of thought.

His hunch was that the thing would work. Since he could work the Fifth
Nume alone (no woman can even perceive that Nume) as well as he and
Barbara together could work the Fourth, he was practically certain that
it would work. Certain enough to let the others who had insisted on
coming along, even Barbara, do so: but no one else. And most certainly
not the kids. Something might happen.

Shortly after Dann's last protest to Adams, the psiontists aboard the
_Explorer_ gathered in the control room, around Deston's enigmatic
"Z-gun."

"But what _could_ happen, Babe?" Bernice asked, nervously.

"Don't worry, Bun. What is going to happen, as nearly as I can express
it, is that I'm going to transform the coordinates of those ships from
the continuous phase to the discontinuous phase of Reality; using just
enough energy to control the balance."

"You are not answering her question," Adams said. "There is an
indeterminate and at present indeterminable probability that any
disturbance of equilibrium will initiate an irreversibly accelerating
transformation of the entire cosmos, so that..."

"Wow!" Cecily exclaimed. "It's bad enough, thinking of destroying one
whole planet, but the whole _cosmos_!"

"Compared to the discontinuous imbalances always there?" Deston
protested. "Have a heart, Doc! And you two gals, listen--what Doc calls
a probability isn't even an actual possibility--it's out beyond nine
sigmas--exactly as possible as that an automatic screw machine running
six-thirty-two hex nuts would accidentally turn out a cash-register full
of money. If it wasn't safe do you think I'd have Bobby here? Hell, I
wouldn't be here myself!"

"Young man, your reasoning is deplorable," Adams said. "Your data is
entirely insufficient for the computation of sigma in this case.
Furthermore, the term 'probability,' in its meaningful sense, is defined
by..."

"Meaningful sense and all, we'll drop all that stuff right now," Barbara
said, unusually sharply for her. "Besides, it's about time to, isn't
it?"

It was, and Deston stretched out on a davenport and closed his eyes.
When the first Communist warship appeared in subspace he stiffened
suddenly and it vanished. As more and more warships immerged and were
caught in whatever it was that Deston and his Z-gun were doing, nothing
seemed to be happening in the _Explorer_ at all. The machine never had
done anything, apparently, and Deston's body was stiffly rigid all the
time.

Adams, leaving Stella behind, bored into that psionic murk with every
iota of his psionic might. He perceived much--no two of those
disappearances occurred in exactly the same way--and he would remember
every detail of everything he perceived.

When the ghastly performance was over Deston got up, jerked his head at
Barbara, and the two walked out of the room with their arms tightly
around each other. No words passed between them; or any thoughts except
the knowledge of complete oneness. Neither words nor thoughts would do
any good. It had had to be done and he was the only one who could do it.
So he had done it.

They would have to live with it. That was the way it was. Nothing could
be done about it.

Adams, on the other hand--tall, lean, gray-haired, gray-eyed, gray-clad
Adams--was purring like a tomcat full of canaries. "Fabulous! Utterly
priceless!" he enthused, to anyone who cared to listen. "Thus is
probably the greatest break-through of all time! The data we have
obtained here will undoubtedly be the basis for a completely new system
of science!"

****

Just before the adjournment of the board meeting following the fall of
New Russia, Maynard said:

"Since science has not yet devised a recorder of thought, I will sum up
briefly, for the minutes, the sense of this meeting.

"The political situation on Earth, while better than it was, is still
bad. We have discussed strategy and have formulated plans by virtue of
which we expect to win the next election.

"Plastics' serf world presents many problems, but they appear to be more
a matter of time than of intrinsic impossibility. The psiontists of that
world are working out a program of rehabilitation that promises
excellent results.

"The ordinary citizens of New Russia will not present any problems. The
non-psionic commissars and hard-core Party members will not be allowed
to present any problems. The New Russian psiontists do, however, present
a very serious problem; one that has taken up practically all of the
time of this meeting.

"Psionics is necessarily ethical, but ethics is not at present an
absolute. Thus most of the New Russian psiontists, steeped from infancy
in Communist doctrine and never exposed to any except Communist thought,
are as thoroughly convinced that Communism is right as we are that it is
wrong. This difference of opinion in these cases, while total at
present, is probably not irreconcilable. It is believed that when these
uninformed persons have studied all aspects of the truth they will of
their own accord come around to our way of thinking.

"There are some well-informed Communists psiontists, however, who
believe so thoroughly that Communism is right that they would rather
become martyrs to its cause than renounce it. Feodr Ilyowicz, a man of
wide learning, knowledge, and experience, was one. What can be done
about such men as he was?

"Are we right? We do not know. We cannot know.

"All we can do--what we must do--is what eighty percent or more of this
Board believes to be right.

"Our prime tenet, the solid bed-rock foundation upon which the Galactic
Federation is being built, defines 'right' as that which, in the opinion
of at least four fifths of the membership of its Board of Directors, is
for the best good of humanity as a whole.

"It is a fact that about seventy percent of all known human population
is non-Communist. This Board is in virtually unanimous agreement that
about ninety six percent of all people now under Communist rule as we
know it would be vastly better off under Galaxianism; would live much
fuller, freer, and better lives than under Communism. Thus, we believe
that Galaxianism is for the best good of about ninety eight and eight
tenths percent of all humanity known to us.

"More than the required four fifths of us have agreed upon three points.
First: each such psiontist as Feodr Ilyowicz was will be watched.
Second: no general ruling will be made, but each such case will be
decided upon its own merits. Third, the penalty of death will not be
imposed.

"If there is no other business requiring our attention at this time, a
voiced motion for adjournment is now in order."






[End of Subspace Explorers, by Edward E. Smith]