"My gosh!" I breathed. "What was that?"

  Ginny laughed. "Oh, just one of the Things that's all 'e time flying around. Did it scare you? I used to be scared, but I saw so many of them that I don't care any more, so's they don't light on me."

  "But what in the name of all that's disgusting are they?"

  "Parts." Ginny was all childish savoir-faire.

  "Parts of what?"

  "People, silly. It's some kind of a game, I think. You see, if someone gets hurt and loses something—a finger or an ear or something, why, the ear the inside part of it, I mean, like me being the inside of the 'me' they carried out of here—it goes back to where the person who owned it lived last. Then it goes back to the place before that, and so on. It doesn't go very fast. Then when something happens to a whole person, the `inside' part comes looking for the rest of itself. It picks up bit after bit—Look!" She put out a filmy forefinger and thumb and nipped a flake of gossamer out of the air.

  I leaned over and looked closely; it was a small section of semitransparent human skin, ridged and whorled.

  "Somebody must have cut his finger," said Ginny matter-of-factly, "while he was living in this room. When something happens to um—you see! He'll be back for it!"

  "Good heavens!" I said. "Does this happen to everyone?"

  "I dunno. Some people have to stay where they are—like me. But I guess if you haven't done nothing to deserve bein' kept in one place, you have to come all around pickin' up what you lost."

  I'd thought of more pleasant things in my time.

 

  For several days I'd noticed a gray ghost hovering up and down the block. He was always on the street, never inside.

  He whimpered constantly. He was—or had been—a little inoffensive man of the bowler hat and starched collar type. He paid no attention to me—non of them did, for I was apparently invisible to them. But I saw him so often that pretty soon I realized that I'd miss him if he went away. I decided I'd chat with him the next time I saw him.

  I left the house one morning and stood around for a few minutes in front of the brownstone steps. Sure enough, pressing through the flotsam of my new, weird coexistent world, came the slim figure of the wraith I had noticed, his rabbit face screwed up, his eyes deep and sad, and his swallowtail coat and striped waistcoat immaculate. I stepped up behind him and said, "Hi!"

  He started violently and would have run away, I'm sure, if he'd known where my voice was coming from.

   "Take it easy, pal," I said. "I won't hurt you."

  "Who are you?"

  "You wouldn't know if I told you," I said. "Now stop shivering and tell me about yourself."

  He mopped his ghostly face with a ghostly handkerchief, and then began fumbling nervously with a gold toothpick. "My word," he said. "No one's talked to me for years. I'm not quite myself, you see."

  "I see," I said. "Well, take it easy. I just happen to've noticed you wandering around here lately. I got curious. You looking for somebody?"

  "Oh, no," he said. Now that he had a chance to talk about his troubles, he forgot to be afraid of this mysterious voice from nowhere that had accosted him. "I'm looking for my home."

   "Hm-m-m," I said. "Been looking a long time?"

  "Oh, yes." His nose twitched. "I left for work one morning a long time ago, and when I got off the ferry at Battery Place I stopped for a moment to watch the work on that newfangled elevated railroad they were building down there. All of a sudden there was a loud noise—my goodness! It was terrible—and the next thing I knew I was standing back from the curb and looking at a man who looked just like me! A girder had fallen, and—my word!" He mopped his face again. "Since then I have been looking and looking. I can't seem to find anyone who knows where I might have lived, and I don't understand all the things I see floating around me, and I never thought I'd see the day when grass would grow on lower Broadway—oh, it's terrible." He began to cry.

  I felt sorry for him. I could easily see what had happened. The shock was so great that even his ghost had amnesia! Poor little egg—until he was whole, he could find no rest. The thing interested me. Would a ghost react to the usual cures for amnesia? If so, then what would happen to him?

  "You say you got off a ferryboat?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you must have lived on the Island . . . Staten Island, over there across the bay!"

  "You really think so?" He stared through me, puzzled and hopeful.

  "Why sure! Say, how'd you like me to take you over there? Maybe we could find your house."

  "Oh, that would be splendid! But—oh, my, what will my wife say?"

  I grinned. "She might want to know where you've been. Anyway, she'll be glad to have you back, I imagine. Come on; let's get going!"

 

  I gave him a shove in the direction of the subway and strolled down behind him. Once in a while I got a stare from a passerby for walking with one hand out in front of me and talking into thin air. It didn't bother me very much. My companion, though, was very selfconscious about it, for the inhabitants of his world screeched and giggled when they saw him doing practically the same thing. Of all humans, only I was invisible to them, and the little ghost in the bowler hat blushed from embarrassment until I thought he'd burst.

  We hopped a subway—it was a new experience for him, I gathered—and went down to South Ferry. The subway system in New York is a very unpleasant place to one gifted as I was. Everything that enjoys lurking in the dark hangs out there, and there is quite a crop of dismembered human remains. After this day I took the bus.

  We got a ferry without waiting. The little gray ghost got a real kick out of the trip. He asked me about the ships in the harbor and their flags, and marveled at the dearth of sailing vessels. He tsk, tsk’ed at the Statue of Liberty; the last time he had seen it, he said, was while it still had its original brassy gold color, before it got its patina. By this I placed him in the late '70s; he must have been looking for his home for over sixty years!

  We landed at the Island, and from there I gave him his head. At the top of Fort Hill he suddenly said, "My name is John Quigg. I live at 45 Fourth Avenue!" I've never seen anyone quite so delighted as he was by the discovery. And from then on it was easy. He turned left, and then right, and then left again, straight down for two blocks and again right. I noticed—he didn't—that the street was marked "Winter Avenue." I remembered vaguely that the streets in this section had been numbered years ago.

  He trotted briskly up the hill and then suddenly stopped and turned vaguely. "I say, are you still with me?" "Still here," I said.

  "I'm all right now. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this. Is there anything I could do for you?"

  I considered. "Hardly. We're of different times, you know. Things change."

  He looked, a little pathetically, at the new apartment house on the corner and nodded. "I think I know what happened to me," he said softly. "But I guess it's all right. . . . I made a will, and the kids were grown." He sighed. "But if it hadn't been for you I'd still be wandering around Manhattan. Let's see—ah; come with me!"

  He suddenly broke into a run. I followed as quickly as I could. Almost at the top of the hill was a huge old shingled house, with a silly cupola and a complete lack of paint. It was dirty and it was tumble-down, and at the sight of it the little fellow's face twisted sadly. He gulped and turned through a gap in the hedge and down beside the house. Casting about in the long grass, he spotted a boulder sunk deep into the turf.

  "This is it," he said. "Just you dig under that. There is no mention of it in my will, except a small fund to keep paying the box rent. Yes, a safety-deposit box, and the key and an authorization are under that stone. I hid it"—he giggled—"from my wife one night, and never did get a chance to tell her. You can have whatever's any good to you." He turned to the house, squared his shoulders, and marched in the side door, which banged open for him in a convenient gust of wind. I listened for a moment and then smiled at the tirade that burst forth. Old Quigg was catching real hell from his wife, who'd sat waiting for over sixty years for him! It was a bitter stream of invective, but—well, she must have loved him. She couldn't leave the place until she was complete, if Ginny's theory was correct, and she wasn't really complete until her husband came home! It tickled me. They'd be all right now!

  I found an old pinchbar in the drive and attacked the ground around the stone. It took quite a while and made my hands bleed, but after a while I pried the stone up and was able to scrabble around under it. Sure enough, there was an oiled silk pouch under there. I caught it up and carefully unwrapped the strings around it. Inside was a key and letter addressed to a New York bank, designating only "Bearer" and authorizing use of the key. I laughed aloud. Little old meek and mild John Quigg, I'd bet, had set aside some "mad money." With a layout like that, a man could take a powder without leaving a single sign. The son-of-a-gun! I would never know just what it was he had up his sleeve, but I'll bet there was a woman in the case. Even fixed it up with his will! Ah, well—I should kick!

  It didn't take me long to get over to the bank. I had a little trouble getting into the vaults, because it took quite a while to look up the box in the old records. But I finally cleared the red tape, and found myself the proud possessor of just under eight thousand bucks in small bills—and not a yellowback among 'em!

  Well from then on I was pretty well set. What did I do? Well, first I bought clothes, and then I started out to cut ice for myself. I clubbed around a bit and got to know a lot of people, and the more I knew the more I realized what a lot of superstitious dopes they were. I couldn't blame anyone for skirting a ladder under which crouched a genuine basilisk, of course, but what the heck—not one in a thousand have beasts under them! Anyway, my question was answered. I dropped two grand on an elegant office with drapes and dim indirect lighting, and I got a phone installed and a little quiet sign on the door—Psychic Consultant. And, boy, I did all right.

  My customers were mostly upper crust, because I came high. It was generally no trouble to get contact with people's dead relatives, which was usually what they wanted. Most ghosts are crazy to get in contact with this world anyway. That's one of the reasons that almost anyone can become a medium of sorts if he tries hard enough; Lord knows that it doesn't take much to contact the average ghost. Some, of course, were not available. If a man leads a pretty square life, and kicks off leaving no loose ends, he gets clear. I never did find out where these clear spirits went to. All I knew was that they weren't to be contacted. But the vast majority of people have to go back and tie up those loose ends after they die—righting a little wrong here, helping someone they've hindered, cleaning up a bit of dirty work. That's where luck itself comes from, I do believe. You don't get something for nothing.

  If you get a nice break, it's been arranged that way by someone who did you dirt in the past, or someone who did wrong to your father or your grandfather or your great uncle Julius. Everything evens up in the long run, and until it does, some poor damned soul is wandering around the earth trying to do something about it. Half of humanity is walking around crabbing about its tough breaks. If you and you and you only knew what dozens of powers were begging for the chance to help you if you'll let them! And if you let them, you'll help clear up the mess they've made of their lives here, and free them to go wherever it is they go when they're cleaned up. Next time you're in a jam, go away somewhere by yourself and open your mind to these folks. They'll cut in and guide you all right, if you can drop your smugness and your mistaken confidence in your own judgment.

  I had a couple of ghostly stooges to run errands for me. One of them, an ex-murderer by the name of One-eye Rachuba, was the fastest spook ever I saw, when it came to locating a wanted ancestor; and then there was Professor Grafe, a frog-faced teacher of social science who'd embezzled from a charity fund and fallen into the Hudson trying to make a getaway. He could trace the most devious genealogies in mere seconds, and deduce the most likely whereabouts of the ghost of a missing relative. The pair of them were all the office force I could use, and although every time they helped out one of my clients they came closer to freedom for themselves, they were both so entangled with their own sloppy lives that I was sure of their services for years.

  But do you think I'd be satisfied to stay where I was, making money hand over fist without really working for it? Oh, no. Not me. No, I had to bigtime. I had to brood over the events of the last few months, and I had to get dramatic about that screwball Audrey, who really wasn't worth my trouble. I had to lie awake nights thinking about Happy Sam and his gibes. It wasn't enough that I'd proved Audrey wrong when she said I'd never amount to anything. I wasn't happy when I thought about Sam and the eighteen a week he pulled down driving a light delivery truck. Uh-huh. I had to show them up.

  I even remembered what the little man in the Shottle Bop had said to me about using my "talent" for bragging or for revenge. That didn't make any difference to me. I figured I had the edge on everyone, everything. Cocky, I was. Why, I could send one of my ghostly stooges out any time and find out exactly what anyone had been doing three hours ago come Michaelmas. With the shade of the professor at my shoulder, I could backtrack on any far-fetched statement and give immediate and logical reasons for backtracking. No one had anything on me, and I could out-talk, out-maneuver, and out-smart anyone on earth. I was really quite a feller. I began to think, "What's the use of my doing as well as this when the gang on the West Side don't know anything about it?" and "Man, would that half-wit Happy Sam burn up if he saw me drifting down Broadway in my new eight-thousand-dollar roadster!" and "To think I used to waste my time and tears on a dope like Audrey!" In other words, I was tripping up on an inferiority complex. I acted like a veridam fool, which I was. I went over to the West Side.

  It was a chilly, late winter night. I'd taken a lot of trouble to dress myself and my car so we'd be bright and shining and would knock some eyes out. Pity I couldn't brighten my brains up a little.

  I drove up in front of Casey's pool room, being careful to do it too fast, and concentrating on shrieks from the tires and a shuddering twenty-four-cylinder roar from the engine before I cut the switch. I didn't hurry to get out of the car, either. Just leaned back and lit a fifty-cent cigar, and then tipped my hat over one ear and touched the horn button, causing it to play "Tuxedo Junction" for forty-eight seconds. Then I looked over toward the pool hall.

  Well, for a minute I thought that I shouldn't have come, if that was the effect my return to the fold was going to have. And from then on I forgot about anything except how to get out of here.

  There were two figures slouched in the glowing doorway of the pool room. It was up a small side street, so short that the city had depended on the place, and old institution, to supply the street lighting. Looking carefully, I made out one of the silhouetted figures as Happy Sam, and the other was Fred Bellew. They just looked out at me; they didn't move; they didn't say anything, and when I said, "Hiya, small fry—remember me?" I noticed that along the darkened wall flanking the bright doorway were ranked the whole crowd of them—the whole gang. It was a shock; it was a little too casually perfect. I didn't like it.

  "Hi," said Fred quietly. I knew he wouldn't like the bigtiming. I didn't expect any of them to like it, of course, but Fred's dislike sprang from distaste, and the others' from resentment, and for the first time I felt a little cheap. I climbed out over the door of the roadster and let them have a gander at my fine feathers.

  Sam snorted and said, "Jellybean!" very clearly. Someone else giggled, and from the darkness beside the building came a high-pitched, "Woo-woo!"

  I walked up to Sam and grinned at him. I didn't feel like grinning. "I ain't seen you in so long I almost forgot what a heel you were," I said. "How you making?"

  "I'm doing all right," he said, and added offensively, "I'm still working for a living."

  The murmur that ran through the crowd told me that the really smart thing to do was to get back into that shiny new automobile and hoot along out of there. I stayed.

  "Wise, huh?" I said weakly.

  They'd been drinking, I realized—all of them. I was suddenly in a spot. Sam put his hands in his pockets and looked at me down his nose. He was the only short man that ever could do that to me. After a thick silence he said:

  "Better get back to yer crystal balls, phony. We like guys that sweat. We even like guys that have rackets, if they run them because they're smarter or tougher than the next one. But luck and gab ain't enough. Scram."

  I looked around helplessly. I was getting what I'd begged for. What had I expected, anyway? Had I thought that these boys would crowd around and shake my hand off for acting this way? There was something missing somewhere, and when I realized what it was, it hit me. Fred Bellew—he was just standing there saying nothing. The old equalizer wasn't functioning any more. Fred wasn't aiming to stop any trouble between me and Sam. I was never so alone in my life!

 

  They hardly moved, but they were all around me suddenly. If I couldn't think of something quickly, I was going to be mobbed. And when those mugs started mobbing a man, they did it up just fine. I drew a deep breath.

  "I'm not asking for anything from you, Sam. Nothing; that means advice, see?"

  "You're gettin' it!" he flared. "You and your seeanses. We heard about you. Hanging up widow-women for fifty bucks a throw to talk to their 'dear departed'! P-sykik investigator! With a line! Go on; beat it!"

  I had a leg to stand on now. "A phony, huh? Why you gabby Irishman, I'll bet I could put a haunt on you that would make that hair of yours stand up on end, if you have guts enough to go where I tell you to."

  "You'll bet? That's a laugh. Listen at that, gang." He laughed, then turned to me and talked through one side of his mouth. "All right, you wanted it. Come on, rich guy; you're called. Fred'll hold the stakes. How about ten of your lousy bucks for every one of mine? Here, Fred—hold this sawbuck."

  "I'll give you twenty to one," I said half hysterically. "And I'll take you to a place where you'll run up against the homeliest, plumb-meanest old haunt you ever heard of."

  The crowd roared. Sam laughed with them, but didn't try to back out. With any of that gang, a bet was a bet. He'd taken me up, and he'd set odds, and he was bound. I just nodded and put two century notes into Fred Bellew's hand. Fred and Sam climbed into the car, and just as we started, Sam leaned out and waved.

  "See you in hell, fellas," he said. "I'm goin' to raise me a ghost, and one of us is going to scare the other one to death!"

  I honked my horn to drown out the whooping and hollering from the sidewalk and got out of there. I turned up the parkway and headed out of town.

  "Where to?" Fred asked after a while.

  "Stick around," I said, not knowing.

  There must be some place not far from here where I could find an honest-to-God haunt, I thought, one that would make Sam back-track and set me up with the boys again. I opened the compartment in the dashboard and let Ikey out. They was a little twisted imp who'd got his tail caught in between two sheets of steel when they were assembling the car, and had to stay there until it was junked.

  "Hey, Ike," I whispered. He looked up, the gleam of the compartment light shining redly in his bright little eyes. "Whistle for the professor, will you? I don't want to yell for him because those mugs in the back seat will hear me. They can't hear you."

  "O.K., boss," he said; and putting his fingers to his lips, he gave vent to a blood-curdling, howling scream.

  That was the prof's call-letters, as it were. The old man flew ahead of the car, circled around and slid in beside me through the window, which I'd opened a crack for him.

  "My goodness," he panted, "I wish you wouldn't summon me to a location which is traveling with this high degree of celerity. It was all I could do to catch up with you."

  "Don't give me that, professor," I whispered. "You can catch a stratoliner if you want to. Say, I have a guy in the back who wants to get a real scare from a ghost. Know of my around here?"

  The professor put on his ghostly pince-nez. "Why, yes. Remember my telling you about the Wolfmeyer place?"

  "Golly—he's bad."

  "He'll serve your purpose admirably. But don't ask me to go there with you. None of us ever associates with Wolfmeyer. And for Heaven's sake, be careful."

  "I guess I can handle him. Where is it?"

  He gave me explicit directions, bade me good night and left. I was a little surprised; the professor traveled around with me a great deal, and I'd never seen him refuse a chance to see some new scenery. I shrugged it off and went my way. I guess I just didn't know any better.

 

  I headed out of town and into the country to a certain old farmhouse. Wolfmeyer, a Pennsylvania Dutchman, had hanged himself there. He had been, and was, a bad egg. Instead of being a nice guy about it all, he was the rebel type. He knew perfectly well that unless he did plenty of good to make up for the evil, he'd be stuck where he was for the rest of eternity. That didn't seem to bother him at all. He got surly and became a really bad spook. Eight people had died in that house since the old man rotted off his own rope. Three of them were tenants who had rented the place, and three were hobos, and two were psychic investigators. They'd all hanged themselves. That's the way Wolfmeyer worked. I think he really enjoyed haunting. He certainly was thorough about it anyway.

  I didn't want to do any real harm to Happy Sam. I just wanted to teach him a lesson. And look what happened!

  We reached the place just before midnight. No one had said much, except that I told Fred and Sam about Wolfmeyer, and pretty well what was to be expected from him. They did a good deal of laughing about it, so I just shut up and drove. The next item of conversation was Fred's, when he made the terms of the bet. To win, Sam was to stay in the house until dawn. He wasn't to call for help and he wasn't to leave. He had to bring in a coil of rope, tie a noose in one end and string the other up on "Wolfmeyer's Beam"—the great oaken beam on which the old man had hung himself, and eight others after him. This was as an added temptation to Wolfmeyer to work on Happy Sam, and was my idea. I was to go in with Sam, to watch him in case the thing became dangerous. Fred was to stay in the car o hundred yards down the road and wait.

  I parked the car at the agreed distance and Sam and I go out. Sam had my tow rope over his shoulder, already noosed Fred had quieted down considerably, and his face was real serious.

  "I don't think I like this," he said, looking up the road al the house. It hunched back from the highway, and looked like a malign being deep in thought.

  I said, "Well, Sam? Want to pay up now and call it quits?"

  He followed Fred's gaze. It sure was a dreary looking place, and his liquor had fizzed away. He thought a minute, then shrugged and grinned. I had to admire the rat. "Hell, I'll go through with it. Can't bluff me with scenery, phony."

  Surprisingly, Fred piped up, "I don't think he's a phony, Sam. He showed me something one day, over on Tenth Avenue. A little store. There was something funny about it. We had a little scrap afterward, and I was sore for a long time, but—I think he has something there."

  The resistance made Sam stubborn, though I could see by his face that he knew better. "Come on, phony," he said and swung up the road.

  We climbed into the house by way of a cellar door that slanted up to a window on the first floor. I hauled out a flashlight and lit the way to the beam. It was only one of many that delighted in turning the sound of one's footsteps into laughing whispers that ran round and round the rooms and halls and would not die. Under the famous beam the dusty floor was dark-stained.

  I gave Sam a hand in fixing the rope, and then clicked off the light. It must have been tough on him then. I didn't mind, because I knew I could see anything before it got to me, and even then, no ghost could see me. Not only that, for me the walls and floors and ceilings were lit with the phosphorescent many-hued glow of the ever-present ghost plants. For its eerie effect I wished Sam could see the ghost-molds feeding greedily on the stain under the beam.

  Sam was already breathing heavily, but I knew it would take more than just darkness and silence to get his goat. He'd have to be alone, and then he'd have to have a visitor or so.

  "So long, kid," I said, slapping him on the shoulder; and I turned and walked out of the room.

  I let him hear me go out of the house and then I crept silently back. It was without doubt the most deserted place I have ever seen. Even ghosts kept away from it, excepting, of course, Wolfmeyer's. There was just the luxurous vegetation, invisible to all but me, and the deep silence rippled by Sam's breath. After ten minutes or so I knew for certain that Happy Sam had more guts than I'd ever have credited him with. He had to be scared. He couldn't—or wouldn't—scare himself.

  I crouched down against the wall of an adjoining room and made myself comfortable. I figured Wolfmeyer would be along pretty soon. I hoped earnestly that I could stop the thing before it got too far. No use in making this any more than a good lesson for a wiseacre. I was feeling pretty smug about it all, and I was totally unprepared for what happened.

  I was looking toward the doorway opposite when I realized that for some minutes there had been the palest of pale glows there. It brightened as I watched; brightened and flickered gently. It was green, the green of things moldy and rotting away; and with it came a subtly harrowing stench. It was the smell of flesh so very dead that it had ceased to be really odorous. It was utterly horrible, and I was honestly scared out of my wits. It was some moments before the comforting thought of my invulnerability came back to me, and I shrank lower and closer to the wall and watched.

  And Wolfmeyer came in.

  His was the ghost of an old, old man. He wore a flowing, filthy robe, and his bare forearms thrust out in front of him were stringy and strong. His head, with its tangled hair and beard, quivered on a broken, ruined neck like the blade of a knife just thrown into soft wood. Each slow step as he crossed the room set his head to quivering again. His eyes were alight; red they were, with deep green flames buried in them. His canine teeth had lengthened into yellow, blunt tusks, and they were like pillars supporting his crooked grin. The putrescent green glow was a horrid halo about him. He was a bright and evil thing.

  He passed me, completely unconscious of my presence, and paused at the door of the room where Sam waited by the rope. He stood just outside it, his claws extended, the quivering of his head slowly dying. He stared in at Sam, and suddenly opened his mouth and howled. It was a quiet, deadly sound, one that might have come from the throat of a distant dog, but, though I couldn't see into the other room, I knew that Sam had jerked his head around and was staring at the ghost. Wolfmeyer raised his arms a trifle, seemed to totter a bit, and then moved into the room.

  I snapped myself out of the crawling terror that gripped me and scrambled to my feet. If I didn't move fast

  Tiptoeing swiftly to the door, I stopped just long enough to see Wolfmeyer beating his arms about erratically over his head, a movement that made his robe flutter and his whole figure pulsate in the green light; just long enough to see Sam on his feet, wide-eyed, staggering back and back toward the rope. He clutched his throat and opened his mouth and made no sound, and his head tilted, his neck bent, his twisted face gaped at the ceiling as he clumped backward away from the ghost and into the ready noose. And then I leaned over Wolfmeyer's shoulder, put my lips to his ear, and said: "Boo!"

  I almost laughed. Wolfmeyer gave a little squeak, jumped about ten feet, and, without stopping to look around, high-tailed out of the room so fast that he was just a blur. That was one scared old spook!

  At the same time Happy Sam straightened, his face relaxed and relieved, and sat down with a bump under the noose. That was as close a thing as ever I want to see. He sat there, his face soaking wet with cold sweat, his hands between his knees, staring limply at his feet.

  "That'll show you!" I exulted, and walked over to him. "Pay up, scum, and may you starve for that week's pay!" He didn't move. I guess he was plenty shocked.

   "Come on!" I said, "Pull yourself together, man! Haven't you seen enough? That old fellow will be back any second now. On your feet!"

  He didn't move.

  "Sam!"

  He didn't move.

  "Sam!" I clutched at his shoulder. He pitched over sideways and lay still.

  He was quite dead.

  I didn't do anything and for a while I didn't say anything. Then I said hopelessly, as I knelt there. "Aw, Sam. Sam—cut it out, fella."

  After a minute I rose slowly and started for the door. I'd taken three steps when I stopped. Something was happening! I rubbed my hand over my eyes. Yes, it—it was getting dark! The vague luminescence of the vines and flowers of the ghost-world was getting dimmer, fading, fading…

  But that had never happened before!

  No difference. I told myself desperately, it's happening now, all right. I got to get out of here!

  See? You see? It was the stuff—that damn stuff from the Shottle Bop. It was wearing off! When Sam died it . . . it stopped working on me! Was this what I had to pay for the bottle? Was this what was to happen if I used it for revenge?

  The light was almost gone—and now it was gone. I couldn't see a thing in the room but one of the doors. Why could I see that doorway? What was that pale-green light that set off its dusty frame?

  Wolfmeyer!

  I got to get out of here!

  I couldn't see ghosts any more. Ghosts could see me now. I ran. I darted across the dark room and smashed into the wall on the other side. I reeled back from it, blood spouting from between the fingers I slapped to my face. I ran again. Another wall clubbed me. Where was that other door? I ran again, and again struck a wall. I screamed and ran again. I tripped over Sam's body. My head went through the noose. It whipped down on my windpipe, and my neck broke with an agonizing crunch. I floundered there for half a minute, and then dangled.

  Dead as hell, I was. Wolfmeyer, he laughed and laughed.

 

  Fred found me and Sam in the morning. He took our bodies away in the car. Now I've got to stay here and haunt this damn old house. Me and Wolfmeyer.

 

THE ROCKET OF 1955

  Stirring Science Stories April by C. M. Kornbluth (1923-1958)

 

  C. M. Kornbluth was a member of the legendary Futurians, that group of New York kids who were in at the beginning of fandom and from whose ranks came many of the major writers and editors in the field. Kornbluth's solo stories were often grim, reflecting his personality and generally cynical attitude toward the world as he saw it. His collaborations with Frederik Pohl have become classics, but he was a very important individual voice in science fiction, and he has never really been replaced.

  The short-short is one of the most difficult of literary forms, but not for Cyril Kornbluth

 

  (I'm sure that Marty never met Cyril Kornbluth, who died of a heart attack at a tragically young age, but I did. He was, I believe, the youngest of the Futurians, three years younger than myself so that he was only fifteen when the organization was born with both him and myself as members. He was also perhaps the most brilliant of us all—but erratically and morosely brilliant. Of us all, he was closest to Fred Pohl. To me, he was never close at all. As I look back at it. I think he never liked me: because, I think, I was loud and cheerful and so self-centered that I never noticed he never liked me. After he died and I worked it out, I felt bad that I had made no effort to make him like me better, but, of course, it was too late—I.A.)

 

  The scheme was all Fein's, but the trimmings that made it more than a pipe dream and its actual operation depended on me. How long the plan had been in incubation I do not know, but Fein, one spring day, broke it to me in crude form. I pointed out some errors, corrected and amplified on the thing in general, and told him that I'd have no part of it—and changed my mind when he threatened to reveal certain indiscretions committed by me some years ago.

  It was necessary that I spend some months in Europe, conducting research work incidental to the scheme. I returned with recorded statements, old newspapers, and photostatic copies of certain documents. There was a brief, quiet interview with that old, bushy-haired Viennese worshipped incontinently by the mob; he was convinced by the evidence I had compiled that it would be wise to assist us.

  You all know what happened next—it was the professor's historic radio broadcast. Fein had drafted the thing, I had rewritten it, and told the astronomer to assume a German accent while reading. Some of the phrases were beautiful: "American dominion over the very planets! . . . veil at last ripped aside . . . man defies gravity . . . travel through limitless space ... plant the red-white-and-blue banner in the soil of Mars!"

  The requested contributions poured in. Newspapers and magazines ostentatiously donated yard-long checks of a few thousand dollars; the government gave a welcome half-million; heavy sugar came from the "Rocket Contribution Week" held in the nation's public schools; but independent contributions were the largest. We cleared seven million dollars, and then started to build the spaceship.

  The virginium that took up most of the money was tin plate; the monoatomic fluorine that gave us our terrific speed was hydrogen. The takeoff was a party for the newsreels: the big, gleaming bullet extravagant with vanes and projections; speeches by the professor; Farley, who was to fly it to Mars, grinning into the cameras. He climbed an outside ladder to the nose of the thing, then dropped into the steering compartment. I screwed down the soundproof door, smiling as he hammered to be let out. To his surprise, there was no duplicate of the elaborate dummy controls he had been practicing on for the past few weeks.

  I cautioned the pressmen to stand back under the shelter, and gave the professor the knife switch that would send the rocket on its way. He hesitated too long—Fein hissed into his ear: "Anna Pareloff of Cracow, Herr Professor . . ."

  The triple blade clicked into the sockets. The vaned projectile roared a hundred yards into the air with a wobbling curve—then exploded.

  A photographer, eager for an angle shot, was killed; so were some kids. The steel roof protected the rest of us. Fein and I shook hands, while the pressmen screamed into the telephones which we had provided.

  But the professor got drunk, and, disgusted with the part he had played in the affair, told all and poisoned himself. Fein and I left the cash behind , and hopped a freight. We were picked off it by a vigilance committee (headed by a man who had lost fifty cents in our rocket). Fein was too frightened to talk or write so they hanged him first, and gave me a paper and pencil to tell the story as best I could.

  Here they come, with an insulting thick rope.

 

THEY

  Unknown April by Robert A. Heinlein

 

  Robert Heinlein's popularity and skill as a science-fiction writer has obscured his real talent and feel for fantasy. "They" is a stunning accomplishment and one of his finest efforts. It is a story in the tradition of Robert Sheckley and Philip K. Dick before there was one.

 

  (Do you know what "solipsism" is? Any person with a spark of introversion has gone through a period of solipsism and wondered what he (or she) was and how it had happened that he (or she) was the living thing for whom the whole illusion had been created. Generally, as one grows up and becomes involved with the world, one forgets, unless one is "paranoid" in the morbid sense. Well Bob Heinlein has here written the classical tale of solipsism. It can never be done again, and no one who has read this would even dream of trying.—I.A.)

 

EVOLUTION'S END

  Thrilling Wonder Stories April by Robert Arthur (1909-1969)

 

  Robert Arthur (born Robert A. Feder) became a well known Hollywood screenwriter, but he was also a talented (and sadly neglected) author of mystery, fantasy, and science fiction, whose "Murchison Morks" series in Argosy had a devoted following. He was also a neglected editor who "ghosted" several of the books credited to AlfredHitchcock and (under his own name) edited the excellent anthology Davy Jones' Haunted Locker (1965). Unfortunately, his best short fiction has never been collected.

  "Evolution's End" addresses several profound questions, including The Purpose of Man and The Future of Mankind. It also happens to be one of the very best stories of 1941.

 

  (Such is science fiction these days that its stars, and even a number of its second-raters, have no trouble whatever in getting exposure. The world gets to know them and to make much of them.

  Forty years ago, however, even the greatest writers were obscure. The conventions were few and small, and outside the immediate field of science fiction all was dark.

  So it was that Robert Arthur labored without applause. I never met him and knew him only as a name attached to stories. My opinion of his abilities can be measured by this, however. In the first decade of television when I noted that some screenplays were written by Robert Alan Aurthur, I had the vague feeling that it was "my" Robert Arthur with his last name unaccountably misspelled. I.A.)

 

  Aydem was pushing the humming vacuum duster along the endless stone corridors of the great underground Repository of Natural Knowledge when Ayveh, coming up quietly behind him, put her hands over his eyes.

  He whirled, to see Ayveh's laughing face, mischief dancing on it.

  "Ayveh!" he exclaimed eagerly. "But what are you doing here? It is forbidden any woman—"

  "I know." Ayveh threw back her head, her long hair, richly golden, rippling down her shoulders to contrast with the pale apple-green of the shapeless linen robe she wore—a robe identical to Aydem's, the universal garb of the human slaves of the more-than-human Masters who ruled the world. It was an underground world. Generations since, the Masters, their great, thin-skulled heads and mighty brains proving uncomfortably vulnerable to the ordinary rays of the sun, had retreated underground.

  "But Dmu Dran wishes to see you, Aydem," the girl Ayveh went on, "and he sent me to fetch you. There are visitors arriving, and you must convey them from the tube station to his demonstration chambers. They are very important visitors."

  "But why did he not transmit the order to me by directed thinking?" Aydem asked, puzzled. "He knows that even out here, in the Exhibit Section, I would receive it."

  "Perhaps he sent me because he knew I wished to see you." Ayveh suggested happily. "And because he knew you hungered for the sight of me. There are times, Aydem, when Dmu Dran actually seems to understand what feelings are."

  "A Master understand feelings?" Aydem's tone was scornful. "The Masters are nothing but brains. Great machines for thought, which know nothing of joy or sorrow or hunger for another."

  "Shh!" Frightened, Ayveh put her fingers to his lips. "You must not say such things. Generous as Dmu Dran is, he is still a Master, and if his mind should chance to be listening, he would have to punish you. It might even mean the fuel chambers."

  Aydem kissed the fingers that had stopped his speech. Then, seeing the mingled fear and longing in her face, he drew her close and kissed her savagely, tasting the sweetness of her lips until a pulse was beating like a hammer in his throat.

  Shaken, Ayveh freed herself and looked about, fearful that someone might have seen. There was no one. The corridors of the exhibit chambers of this tremendous museum of natural history of which their Master, Dmu Dran, was curator, wound endlessly away in darkness except for the tiny lighted area that enclosed them.

  "There is no one to see," Ayden reassured her. "I alone tend the exhibit chambers, and only I am permitted to leave the Master's quarters without orders. And if any did see, who would tell?"

  "Ekno," the girl whispered. "He would tell. He would like to see you sent into the fuel chambers, because he knows that we—that we—"

  Her voice faltered and trailed off at the look of grimness in the man's face. Aydem stared down at her, at her loveliness, before he spoke. He himself stood nearly six feet tall, and his dark hair was a shaggy mane dropping almost to his shoulders. He was beardless, for all facial hair had been removed by an unguent when he was a youth—a whim of Dmu Dran's, though many Masters were less fastidious.

  His body held the sturdiness of the trunk of an oak—which he had never seen. And though his duties were light in this mechanized, sub-surface world to which man's life on Mother Earth had retreated with the evolution of the Masters, muscles corded his body and were but lightly hidden by the green robe that swathed him.

  And there was a tension in those muscles now, as if they would explode into action if only they had something to seize upon and rend and tear.

  "Ayveh," he said, "I have seen the mating papers. I took them from the machine to the Master a period ago. Our request to be assigned as each other's mate has been denied. On the basis of the Selector Machine rating, I have been assigned to Teema, your assistant in overseeing the Master's household, and you to Ekno, who tends to minor repairs."

  "That ugly hairy one?" Horror almost robbed Ayveh of her voice. "Who smells so bad and is always looking after me when I pass? No! I—I would rather kill myself first."

  "I"—there was savagery in Ayden's words—"would rather kill the Masters!"

  "Oh, no!" the girl whispered in terror. "You must not speak it. If you harmed Dmu Dran—if it became known even that you wished to—we should all be destroyed. Not in the fuel chambers. We should go to the example cells. And we would not die—for a long time."

  "Better that," Aydem said stonily, "than to be slaves, to be mated to those we despise, to keep forever our silence and obey orders, to live and die like beasts!"

  Then, at Ayveh's sudden gasp of terror, Aydem whirled.

  His own features paled as he drew himself to attention. For Dmu Dran, their Master, had come silently up behind them as they spoke, the air-suspended chair which carried him making no sound.

  And Dmu Dran, his great round face blank, his large popping eyes unreadable, stared at Aydem with an unusual intensity. Yet no thoughts were coming from the mind within the huge globular, thin-walled skull over which only a little wispy hair, like dried hay, was plastered.

  Had Dmu Dran heard? Had he caught the emanations of violent emotion which must have been spreading all over the vicinity from Aydem? Was he now probing into their minds for the words they had just spoken? If he knew or guessed them, their fate would be a terrible one.

  But when Dmu Dran spoke—for mental communication with the undeveloped slave mind was fatiguing for a Master—his voice was mild.

  "I fear," he said, in a thin piping tone, "that my servants are not happy. Perhaps they are upset by the mating orders that have arrived?"

  Aydem of course was supposed to know nothing of the contents of the orders, having in theory no ability to read. But since Dmu Dran evidently knew he could read—he had been taught in his boyhood by a wise old slave long dead—boldness seemed the only course.

  "Master," he said, "the girl Ayveh and I hoped to be mates. It is true we are not happy, because we have been assigned to others."

  "Happiness." Dmu Dran spoke the word reflectively. "Unhappiness. Mmm. Those are things not given us to feel. You are aware emotion is not a desirable characteristic in a slave?"

  "Aye, Master," Aydem agreed submissively.

  "The selector machine," Dmu Dran went on, "shows both you and the girl Ayveh to be capable of much emotion. It also indicates in both of you a brain capacity large for a slave. It is for these reasons you have been denied each other. It is desired that slaves should be strong and healthy, intelligent, but not too intelligent, and lacking in emotion so they will not become discontented. You understand these things, do you not?"

  "Aye, Master," Aydem agreed in some astonishment. Ayveh pressed close to him, frightened by the strange conduct of Dmu Dran—for no Master ever spoke so familiarly with a slave.

  Dmu Dran was silent, as if thinking. While he waited, Aydem reflected that Dmu Dran was not exactly as other Masters were. To an untrained eye, all Masters looked much alike—a great, globular head set upon a small neckless body, the neck having disappeared in the course of evolution of the great head, so that the weight might be better rested on the stronger back and shoulder muscles.

  But Dmu Dran was perceptibly taller than other Masters Aydem had seen. Aydem had not seen many—there were only some thousand of them, and they lived in small groups in far-flung underground Centers, if not entirely alone, as did Dmu Dran. Dmu Dran's cranium was also slightly smaller in diameter.

  Now an odd expression touched the flat countenance of the Master.

  "Aydem," he said, "You have seen the contents of these halls many times. But Ayveh has not. So come with me now, both of you. We have a little time, and I wish to view some specimens. It is many years since I last examined them."

  He turned his chair, and Aydem, exchanging a look of puzzlement with Ayveh, followed him down the corridor between the great, glass-enclosed, hermetically sealed exhibits.

  As they went, light sprang on alongside them, activated by the heat of their bodies on thermocouples, and died away behind them. The Master led them several hundred yards, and halted at last in a section devoted to ancient animals of the Earth's youth.

  There were here many beasts, huge and ferocious in appearance, reproduced in their natural environment, seen, save by Aydem, not more than half a dozen times a year. Only six or eight Masters were born each year, just enough to keep the total of a thousand from dwindling. They visited the Repository of Natural Knowledge in the course of their educational studies.

  In the glass cases that lined the miles of corridors were exhibits, many of them animated so cunningly that the artificial replicas of man and animal of the past seemed endowed with life, encompassing all the natural history of the world from the mists of the unknown, millions of years before, to the present day. But since the great brains of the Masters needed to be apprised of a fact but once to make it theirs forever, there was never really occasion for a Master to come here twice.

  Now Dmu Dran, Aydem and Ayveh stood before a great, orange-colored beast with black stripes, a snarl frozen upon his features, huge fangs, many inches in length, protruding from his jaws. Even though he was but a model of a beast dead many millennia, Ayveh instinctively drew closer to Aydem, as if the creature were indeed about to leap, and as if they were part of that group of men and women, much like themselves, that faced it in desperation with long, pointed sticks in their hands.

  "The saber-tooth tiger," Dmu Dran said. "When it reigned on this Earth uncounted years ago, it was Master of Aiden, the world above, a scourge feared and hated by all other animals. For many thousands of years it grew more and more powerful, its dominance contested by few. By its great teeth it was known—terrible weapons for rending and tearing its prey. But in the end it ceased to be. Why did a beast like that, which no natural enemy could oppose, die, think you?"

  "It must indeed have been a fearful opponent that conquered it, Master," Ayveh ventured uncertainly.

  What might have been a smile, had a Master known smiling, rippled over the pale moonface.

  "Nature killed it," Dmu Dran informed them. "Nature destroyed it by her very generosity. Those tusks you see that gave it its name—Nature continued to add to their length and strength. But, alas! In her enthusiasm, she made them so long in the course of time that their possessor could not close its mouth, could not eat, and so eventually starved to death. Aye, Nature evolved her great and dread child right out of existence."

  "That was indeed strange." Aydem frowned. "I do not understand. Why did she do so?"

  "Nature has curious ways." Dmu Dran shrugged. "And having an infinity of time, she can afford an infinity of experiments. What she is not satisfied with, though she has made it supreme, she destroys."

  Dmu Dran shot his chair a few yards to the left.

  "And here," he said, "is another great beast that was once master of the world when it was young."

  The creature he now indicated stood far above a man's head, even a slave's. Three times, four times, five times higher than a slave did it tower.

  "The great dinosaur of the Earth's infancy," Dmu Dran told them. "The hugest beast ever to shake the world with its tread. That one"—he pointed—"the largest land animal ever evolved. The enemies that could conquer it were few or none. Unmolested by the lesser denizens of the day and the night, it ruled the Earth by its very bulk. Yet it too passed. Why, think you?"

  Aydem and Ayveh were silent, so Dmu Dran explained.

  "Again Nature was overgenerous. To this creature whose bulk made it sovereign, it added still more bulk. Mack! In time she so increased the size of the beast that it could not get enough to eat, though it fed twenty-four hours of the day. It simply could not ingest fuel enough for its huge body. So in the end it too passed."

  The man and the girl were still silent, their eyes wide with wonder. Dmu Dran abruptly shot his air car a hundred yards down the corridor and stopped again, the lights coming on automatically the moment he paused.

  He was now before the section devoted to the evolution of man himself, beginning with a creature half man, half beast, and rising to a reproduction of the Masters who now ruled the world.

  Uneducated though they were, Aydem and Ayveh saw and understood the procession of figures, each more erect, each less hairy, each larger-headed than the one before it.

  Near the end of the line was an upright figure which caused Ayveh to gasp, it was so like Aydem.

  "Man of the Early Machine Age"

  Dmu Dran read the inscription on the imperishable metal plate at the foot of the figure. "Aye, your Aydem does look like him. For it was man of that period, balanced between ignorance and knowledge, that we Masters thought it best our slaves should resemble. But here is the exhibit that I have most pondered upon."

  He moved a few feet, and they stood before the last half dozen figures.

  "There"—and Dmu Dran, with one short arm, indicated a figure as tall as Aydem, but differing from the one just before it in that its head was half again as large—"there is the first of the Masters. A mutant, with a brain-weight double anything ever known in man before. John Master, his name was, and it was appropriate. For in the last ten thousand years, all humankind save slaves have been his descendants—not men now, but Masters. I have often speculated upon the chance that saw him born, and wondered if, had he never been conceived and brought to issue, the human species might not have turned in quite another direction."

  Dmu Dran was silent, thinking, and the two slaves did not intrude upon his thoughts. Instead they studied the figures following this John Master of the large head. Each was larger-headed than the one before it, each smaller-bodied, shorter-necked, until the last figure might have been Dmu Dran himself.

  "It is an interesting point on which to wonder," Dmu Dran said after a time. "How would mankind have evolved had not my ancestor been born? The old records show that he was a cold and ruthless man, without sentiment. That by the power of his logical mind, and with the aid of his children, he seized the rule of the world and made his descendants supreme forever. Forever? Well—supreme ever since. So that now we Masters, the highest species of animal ever to evolve, are despotic rulers of the world, and if we wished, of the Solar System—even of the Universe.

  "But we do not wish. The Solar System, save for this world, is lifeless, and it has never been worth our while to consider whether the stars beyond were worth reaching. We feel nothing, we enjoy nothing, for the capacity for those things has been bred out of us—evolved away in the course of yesterday's eons. We merely think, with our almost perfect brains, here in the bowels of the Earth, served by our slaves in a world almost effortless even for them.

  "We are, so far as we know—and there is little we do not know—the Masters, nature's final product, evolution's end!"

  Abruptly Dmu Dran's piping voice ceased, leaving tiny echoes rustling in the corridors. Aydem and Ayveh were alarmed and uneasy. Could Dmu Dran by chance be mad? Madness did sometimes afflict a Master, though rarely one of Dmu Dran's age. Usually they were much younger or much older, when the unexplainable insanity that was the only ailment the Masters had not conquered, took them.

  "I sometimes think," Dmu Dran said after a moment, in a quieter tone now, "that though we consider ourselves the last step in evolution's chain, we may be wrong. Who knows what plans nature has for us? None of us. But we shall. I am going to put it to the test, the momentous test that may decide the whole future of the world, aye, of the Universe itself. For know, my servants, that my visitors today are the Masters of the Supreme Council, come at my invitation to examine a machine that I have made my life's work.

  "It is a matter of electricity and rays that will stimulate the latent change that lies in all plants and animals. So that in one generation, an animal may progress from the form it was born with to the form its descendants a thousand generations away would have. Aye—in less than a generation, in a few periods!

  "And I am going to propose to the Supreme Council that a chosen few of us Masters subject ourselves to the influence of this machine, that we may know what we are to become, in Nature's hidden scheme, in the persons of our grandchildren many times removed. I shall propose to them we raise ourselves now to the glories of the final form destined to the Masters, and I think they will agree.

  "For we Masters, the favored children of nature, will hardly be loath to rise to the final position scarcely lower than gods that our philosophers have foreseen as ultimately ours!"

  Excitement shone in Dmu Dran's popping eyes. But in a moment it died. He gestured.

  "Return to your quarters, my servants. I shall meet my visitors myself, Aydem. Say nothing to anyone, and worry not for the moment concerning the mating assignments. Nothing will be done about such matters until I—know."

  With that cryptic remark, he shot away down the corridor in his air-chair as Aydem and Ayveh stared at each other in perplexity and mounting hope.

  In the periods of waiting that followed, there was tension in the slaves' quarters. All knew of the unprecedented visit of the Supreme Council, and somehow word got about that the mating assignments had come, but had not yet been announced by Dmu Dran.

  Curiosity regarding these matters, however, was not as strong as it might have been had not slaves been for so many generations bred for docility and lack of emotion. Aydem and Ayveh's fellow servants exhibited only mild curiosity about any occurrence, and when not working, for the most part contented themselves with eating, sleeping, and playing simple games.

  Only Ekno, the hairy one who coveted Ayveh, had a brain that busied itself with affairs outside its immediate concern. And Ekno, hatred in his face as he watched Aydem covertly, knew that something of great import was transpiring. He could scarcely contain himself to know what, and even took the great risk, unthinkable to the others, of snooping about Dmu Dran's private quarters under the pretense of making repairs, hoping to pick up some scrap of information.

  In time, after many secret sessions in Dmu Dran's demonstration chambers, the Supreme Council left, each Master boarding his private air-car and being shot away through the great maze of tunnels that honeycombed the earth to his home center. With the President of the Council, the oldest living Master, went a large, heavy package which Aydem transported to his car with great care, little dreaming that the destiny of himself and Ayveh and countless millions of their unborn descendants lay within those careful wrappings.

  After this, for some periods more, nothing happened. The other slaves almost forgot anything unusual had occurred. Only Ekno still watched Aydem's every move, eager for some evidence of wrong-doing he could present to Dmu Dran, or even to the Board of Slave Mating, supreme authority in regard to all slaves.

  But with Dmu Dran's strange words ringing in his mind, Aydem made no move Ekno could seize upon. Save when outside the living quarters, to which Ekno by the nature of his duties was usually confined, Aydem and Ayveh did not even exchange words.

  But Aydem's chief duty was to keep the interminable corridors of the exhibit section free from the natural rock dust that gathered, and only he was permitted to enter it. Ekno dared not follow him there, so it was there he and Ayveh met.

  It was a great risk Ayveh took, for no woman was permitted to leave the living quarters at all. But Dmu Dran's words had given them courage. And it was possible for her, since she was chief of the women, to slip away from her duties for stolen moments from time to time.

  On these occasions they exchanged few words. Their hearts spoke for them, and their tongues could be silent. Aydem eagerly showed the girl through the multitudinous exhibits that traced man's life on the planet.

  Long years these had fascinated him. Countless periods he had spent studying them, and scanning the engraved metal placards that explained each detail of what he saw.

  Though Ayveh could not read, he could interpret for her. And many of the exhibits spoke for themselves. Almost all were animated. A touch of a button set them in motion, and countless replicas of countless types of men who had walked the world and vanished, went through the acts of life again.

  In engrossed silence, Aydem and Ayveh watched hairy men of the Earth's infancy defend themselves with fire and spear and arrow against the attacks of wild animals. They saw other men, higher in the scale of evolution, build simple dwellings, strike fire from flints or produce it from spun sticks, hunt, plant seed, weave cloth, cook, and do all the multitudinous acts that were necessary to existence.

  Most of all, Aydem was fascinated not by the exhibits showing the machine world just before the coming of the Masters, but by the reproductions of man in his younger days. Haltingly he tried to explain to Ayveh that he felt within himself a kinship to those long dead men who had made bows and arrows, planted and reaped their crops with their hands, had tamed wild horses and on their backs ridden down the wild boar and the wolf, had, with spear and arrow, defended themselves against their enemies.

  He stretched his arms, and his mighty muscles coiled and knotted.

  "Sometimes in my sleep," he told Ayveh, his eyes burning, "I am no longer within these underground dominions of the Masters, but am free upon Aiden, the Earth's surface. I know what it must be like, for I can see it all in my dreams. I can feel the warm touch of what they call the sun, and underfoot the roughness of the growing things called grass. Animals, not artificial like these, but alive, roam the land, and in my dreams I combat them."

  "It must be a wonderful place," Ayveh whispered wistfully. "So strange and different from this."

  "Sometimes I feel as if I were going to burst, forever locked away within these walls of rock where the Masters choose to live!" Aydem burst out. "I wish to work, to fight, to conquer—"

  Somewhere nearby there was a scraping noise. Ayveh gasped with terror, and Aydem whirled instantly. The sound of running footsteps sprang up several corridors away. Aydem dashed in that direction, caught a glimpse of a man running toward the living quarters.

  He put on a burst of speed, but the other outdistanced him and ducked through a door before Aydem could get close to identify the spying one.

  "But it was Ekno," he said, his voice grim, as he hurried back to take the frightened Ayveh to her quarters. "It was Ekno, and he was spying on us. He overheard. He will report to Dmu Dran."

  "But the Master," Ayveh faltered, "he did not mind before—"

  Aydem took her hand.

  "There is no telling what a Master will do," he growled. "He may have been amusing himself. We must be prepared. Do not sleep this period. Wait for me behind this door that leads from the quarters to the exhibits. Come if I call. Have food with you."

  "But Aydem!" Ayveh exclaimed, wide-eyed. "You would not question the decree of a Master?"

  "If Dmu Dran condemns me to the fuel chamber," Aydem answered, "I will kill him and we will try to escape. See?"

  From beneath his tunic he withdrew a knife with a long gleaming blade and a heavy handle.

  "I have had this long," he boasted. "It is part of an exhibit that became out of order. I fixed it under Dmu Dran's direction. And stole this unnoticed. I will kill Dmu Dran with it if I must. There are many tunnels that may have been abandoned leading out from this center. I have heard it whispered, by old Temu who taught me when I was young, that one leads to the world above. We will seek it. We will seek escape. If we must, we will die. But I will not go to the fuel chambers."

  He looked at her white face.

  "But I can go alone—" he began.

  Ayveh flung herself into his arms.

  "No, Aydem, no!" she whispered. "Where you go, I will go. If you live, I will live. If you die, I will die."

  He kissed her then strongly, passionately. And as he kissed her, the command came. By directed thinking. To report at once to Dmu Dran.

  With unfaltering stride Aydem entered Dmu Dran's personal quarters. As he went in, he passed Ekno, and there was a smirk of triumph on the hairy one's features. Aydem did not deign to glance at the other. He closed the door behind him, and was in the presence of Dmu Dran.

  The flat, pop-eyed face of the Master was as blank as ever.

  "Aydem, my servant," he piped, "a charge has been placed against you. A serious charge. You merit punishment. If I do not punish you, the charge may come to the attention of the Board of Slave Mating. It will wish to know why. It will send for you, and when you are placed beneath the instruments, it will know I have been guilty of a crime too. It will know that you are far above the allowed intelligence quotient for a slave, and that I have falsified your records since childhood, as I have falsified those of the servant Ayveh."

  Aydem stared at him in speechless astonishment.

  "You are startled, Servant Aydem," the Master said. `But it is true I, a Master, have violated one of the most rigid rules of the few that Masters must observe. I have deliberately preserved from destruction in the fuel chambers a man and a woman of as high a physical and mental level as the world has known since the days of the first Master.

  "I have done this for reasons of my own. I think we shall soon know whether I have been right to—"

  He did not finish, for behind him a section of the wall grew luminous, and a figure began to appear, seemingly within it.

  Dmu Dran made a gesture. Aydem withdrew quickly to one side, beyond the seeing range of the communicator panel, and the Master turned. A voice, piping but stern, spoke from the wall:

  "Dmu Dran! Nalu Tah, president of the Supreme Council, speaks."

  "Dmu Dran listens."

  "Dmu Dran! Of the ten subjects upon whom the Supreme Council has been testing the apparatus devised by you for the precipitating of evolutionary change, the last has just gone mad. The brain capacity of all increased by fifty per cent, and the skulls enlarged during their subjection to the rays of your apparatus. Each, however, after reaching an increase of approximately fifty per cent in brain size, was afflicted by the dread madness. All have been destroyed. Dmu Dran, you are ordered to report at once to Judicial Center to make explanation, and be judged."

  "Dmu Dran hears."

  The glow in the wall died. The great-headed figure of the president of the Supreme Council vanished. Dmu Dran let out a little sigh.

  "Mad," he whispered. "All went mad. As some are going mad already, and as in a hundred thousand years all will, the entire race of Masters. So that they will be no more. In a hundred thousand years, the supreme creation of Nature, the mightiest thinking machine she has ever produced, will be destroyed. By the irresistible force of Nature herself, adding always to the gift she has given, until the weight of it crushes us out of existence. Yes, crushes us literally out of existence."

  He turned, faced the wondering Aydem.

  "Aydem, my servant," he said, "I have been right. I have feared a certain thing, and I have learned that my fears are well founded. I have concentrated the evolutionary development of a hundred thousand years in certain selected Masters, and all have gone mad. The reason I can easily guess. Their brains grew in size, until the very weight of the brain crushed many of its own cells. The very multiplicity of the cells piled layer upon top of layer destroyed the more delicate. The process can already be seen at work occasionally now. In time it will encompass all.

  "The bulk of the dinosaur, which made it supreme, killed it. The teeth of the saber-tooth tiger destroyed it. And the brain of the Masters, which has made them supreme, is foredestined to destroy them just as utterly.

  "Aydem, you are a man as men were before the sudden branching that produced the Masters. A branching that I now know was but another experiment on Nature's part, leading nowhere. Hark you—the ultimate evolution of man is yet to come. Yes, yet to come.

  "Yet, if the Masters live out their existence, Nature may well be foiled, or at the least, set back a thousand million years in her plans. For in a hundred thousand years, when the Masters are gone, man may well be gone too.

  "Yet, if the Masters were to vanish now, while you and Ayveh lived, from your loins might spring the line that will yet reach upward to the stars."

  Dmu Dran's voice piped off into silence. But he was not finished speaking, for after a moment he shook himself and continued.

  "What man will be like in the end I do not know. He will not be a great-headed thinking machine, I am sure. He will have a mind, yes, but soul too, and body, all balanced into a whole that will far surpass us, the Masters.

  "What I am going to do is hard. Yet perhaps I am but a tool of Nature's too. Perhaps she designed me for this very purpose—to put evolution back upon its proper track.

  "Aydem, you may never understand. That does not matter. These are my last orders. Take Ayveh. Go to the very end of the exhibit section. There, in a section where the rooms have been crushed by falling rock, you will find one stone perfectly round and seemingly too great for a thousand men to move. Upon one side is a red spot. Push at this spot. The rock will roll aside and you will see an entrance. Descend. A passageway will lead you upward and in time you will come out upon Aiden, the surface of the Earth above—a region into which we Masters have not chosen to venture save but fleetingly for a thousand years.

  "You will have the half of one period in which to do this. Then I will press a button here beside me. The details you would not understand. But when I do, every inch of these vast tunnels that we Masters have created throughout the Earth's interior will collapse. Every Master will die at the same instant. And every slave—for there are none living save yourselves whose blood may go into the lifestream of the Man to come. It would take centuries for them to evolve again as a group to your level. So you two, Aydem and Ayveh, will be, to all historical appearance, the first man and woman. The gap between you and your ancestors will be broken when I press this button.

  "You will not understand my reasons, I say. But you will survive above, for you have long studied the great exhibit chambers and know what you must do to wrest a living from Nature. In time you will forget that such things as Masters ever existed. And your kind will mount upward toward the stars, on a true course which has been sidetracked for only a little while."

  Dmu Dran fell silent, as if musing, and his pale round face seemed sad. Aydem, in truth, understood but little. Yet he understood Dmu Dran's instructions, and his heart leaped within his breast.

  Dmu Dran looked up.

  "Go now," he ordered.

  Aydem forced his way through the tangle of weeds and roots that choked the entrance of the cave, in which the long tunnel he and Ayveh had traversed for an interminable time ended. He stood upright, and drew Ayveh after him.

  They had emerged upon the surface of the Earth at night. The moon, a thing of wondrous beauty to them, rode the heavens low in the east, a great orange ball. A summer night's wind breathed through the great masses of tangled vegetation that surrounded them, and the scent of flowers was carried by it.

  The man and the woman breathed deep, speechless with wonder and joy. Somewhere near a nightbird was trilling, and from farther away came the cry of an unknown animal. Both sounds alike were music to their ears.

  "Free!" Aydem whispered exultingly. "Ayveh, we are free! We are slaves no more!"

  Bathed by the moonlight, caressed by the night breeze, they stood close together, his arm about her, and feasted their eyes and ears on the world.

  "The knife I stole," Aydem said, "I will keep. With it we will make what we need, kill what we need. Ayveh, Ayveh—"

  His words broke off. Of a sudden the very earth beneath them had begun to tremble. It seemed to shudder. One long-drawn puff of air, like a hollow death-gasp, seemed forced from the cavern before which they stood, and the ground under them shook, Ayveh was thrown into Aydem's arms, and he held her close until the violent tremor had passed.

  "Dmu Dran has pressed the button," he said, understanding. "The Masters are no more. Ayveh, my mate, the Masters are no more! We are free, and there is no one to come after us. We will know struggle and conflict and labor, but we are free!"

  He held her close and kissed her. Then at last, hand in hand, they set out together into the world Dmu Dran had given them. Aydem—the first man. And Ayveh—the first woman.

 

MICROCOSMIC GOD

  Astounding Science Fiction April by Theodore Sturgeon

 

  There are many who feel that this is the finest story to come from the typewriter of Theodore Sturgeon. It was selected by the Science Fiction Writers of America for their Hall of Fame short story volume, and it has received critical acclaim from numerous quarters.

  The theme of survival has a long history in science fiction, but no one ever surpassed the Sturgeon who wrote this inventive and convincing story.

 

  (Finest story? Yes, I am among those that Marty refers to as "many." However, truth is truth. I think this is the best of his science fiction stories. I placed both "It" and "Bianca's Hands" above it, but they are both fantasies. I must say that what struck me most about the story, was pity and sorrow for the small creatures and indignation at the "god" who, in my mind, at the time I read the book was very much like the "God" we were so busily taught to love and admire. Remember what 1941 was like!—I.A.)

 

  Here is a story about a man who had too much power, and a man who took too much, but don’t worry; I’m not going political on you. The man who had the power was named James Kidder and the other was his banker.

  Kidder was quite a guy. He was a scientist and he lived on a small island off the New England coast all by himself. He wasn’t the dwarfed little gnome of a mad scientist you read about. His hobby wasn’t personal profit, and he wasn’t a megalomaniac with a Russian name and no scruples. He wasn’t insidious, and he wasn’t even particularly subversive. He kept his hair cut and his nails clean and lived and thought like a reasonable human being. He was slightly on the baby-faced side; he was inclined to be a hermit; he was short and plump and—brilliant. His specialty was biochemistry, and he was always called Mr. Kidder. Not “Dr.” Not “Professor.” Just Mr. Kidder.

  He was an odd sort of apple and always had been. He had never graduated from any college or university because he found them too slow for him, and too rigid in their approach to education. He couldn’t get used to the idea that perhaps his professors knew what they were talking about. That went for his texts, too. He was always asking questions, and didn’t mind very much when they were embarrassing. He considered Gregor Mendel a bungling liar, Darwin an amusing philosopher, and Luther Burbank a sensationalist. He never opened his mouth without leaving his victim feeling breathless. If he was talking to someone who had knowledge, he went in there and got it, leaving his victim breathless. If he was talking to someone whose knowledge was already in his possession, he only asked repeatedly, “How do you know?” His most delectable pleasure was cutting a fanatical eugenicist into conversational ribbons. So people left him alone and never, never asked him to tea. He was polite, but not politic.

  He had a little money of his own, and with it he leased the island and built himself a laboratory. Now I’ve mentioned that he was a biochemist. But being what he was, he couldn’t keep his nose in his own field. It wasn’t too remarkable when he made an intellectual excursion wide enough to perfect a method of crystallizing Vitamin B1 profitably by the ton—if anyone wanted it by the ton. He got a lot of money for it. He bought his island outright and put eight hundred men to work on an acre and a half of his ground, adding to his laboratory and building equipment. He got to messing around with sisal fiber, found out how to fuse it, and boomed the banana industry by producing a practically unbreakable cord from the stuff.

  You remember the popularizing demonstration he put on at Niagara, don’t you? That business of running a line of the new cord from bank to bank over the rapids and suspending a ten-ton truck from the middle of it by razor edges resting on the cord? That’s why ships now moor themselves with what looks like heaving line, no thicker than a lead pencil, that can be coiled on reels like garden hose. Kidder made cigarette money out of that, too. ‘He went out and bought himself a cyclotron with part of it.

  After that money wasn’t money any more. It was large numbers in little books. Kidder used little amounts of it to have food and equipment sent out to him, but after a while that stopped, too. His bank dispatched a messenger by seaplane to find out if Kidder was still alive. The man returned two days later in a bemused state, having been amazed something awesome at the things he’d seen out there. Kidder was alive, all right, and he was turning out a surplus of good food in an astonishingly simplified synthetic form. The bank wrote immediately and wanted to know if Mr. Kidder, in his own interest, was willing to release the secret of his dirtless farming. Kidder replied that he would be glad to, and enclosed the formulas. In a P.S. he said that he hadn’t sent the information ashore because he hadn’t realized anyone would be interested. That from a man who was responsible for the greatest sociological change in the second half of the twentieth century—factory farming. It made him richer; I mean it made his bank richer. He didn’t give a rap.

  Kidder didn’t really get started until about eight months after the messenger’s visit. For a biochemist who couldn’t even be called ”Doctor” he did pretty well. Here is a partial list of the things that he turned out:

  A commercially feasible plan for making an aluminum alloy stronger than the best steel so that it could be used as a structural metal. . .

  An exhibition gadget he called a light pump, which worked on the theory that light is a form of matter and therefore subject to physical and electromagnetic laws. Seal a room with a single source, beam a cylindrical vibratory magnetic field to it from the pump, and the light will be led down it. Now pass the light through Kidder’s “lens”—a ring which perpetuates an electric field along the lines of a high-speed iris-typo camera shutter. Below this is the heart of the light pump—a ninety-eight-per-cent efficient light absorber, crystalline, which, in a sense, loses the light in its internal facets. The effect of darkening the room with this apparatus is slight but measurable. Pardon my layman’s language, but that’s the general idea.

  Synthetic chlorophyll—by the barrel.

  An airplane propeller efficient at eight times sonic speed.

  A cheap goo you brush on over old paint, let harden, and then peel off like strips of cloth. The old paint comes with it. That one made friends fast.

  A self-sustaining atomic disintegration of uranium’s isotope 238, which is two hundred times as plentiful as the old stand-by, U-235.

  That will do for the present. If I may repeat myself; for a biochemist who couldn’t even be called “Doctor,” he did pretty well.

  Kidder was apparently unconscious of the fact that he held power enough on his little island to become master of the world. His mind simply didn’t run to things like that. As long as he was left alone with his experiments, he was well content to leave the rest of the world to its own clumsy and primitive devices. He couldn’t be reached except by a radiophone of his own design, and the only counterpart was locked in a vault of his Boston bank. Only one man could operate it. The extraordinarily sensitive transmitter would respond only to Conant’s own body vibrations. Kidder had instructed Conant that he was not to be disturbed except by messages of the greatest moment. His ideas and patents, what Conant could pry out of him, were released under pseudonyms known only to Conant— Kidder didn’t care.

  The result, of course, was an infiltration of the most astonishing advancements since the dawn of civilization. The nation profited—the world profited. But most of all, the bank profited. It began to get a little oversize. It began getting its fingers into other pies. It grew more fingers and had to bake more figurative pies. Before many years had passed, it was so big that, using Kidder’s many weapons, it almost matched Kidder in power.

  Almost.

  Now stand by while I squelch those fellows in the lower left-hand corner who’ve been saying all this while that Kidder’s slightly improbable; that no man could ever perfect himself in so many ways in so many sciences.

  Well, you’re right. Kidder was a genius—granted. But his genius was not creative. He was, to the core, a student. He applied what he knew, what he saw, and what he was taught. When first he began working in his new laboratory on his island he reasoned something like this:

  “Everything I know is what I have been taught by the sayings and writings of people who have studied the sayings and writings of people who have—and so on. Once in a while someone stumbles on something new and he or someone cleverer uses the idea and disseminates it. But for each one that finds something really new, a couple of million gather and pass on information that is already current. I’d know more if I could get the jump on evolutionary trends. It takes too long to wait for the accidents that increase man’s knowledge—my knowledge. If I had ambition enough now to figure out how to travel ahead in time, I could skim the surface of the future and just dip down when I saw something interesting. But time isn’t that way. It can’t be left behind or tossed ahead. What else is left?

  “Well, there’s the proposition of speeding intellectual evolution so that I can observe what it cooks up. That seems a bit inefficient. It would involve more labor to discipline human minds to that extent than it would to simply apply myself along those lines. But I can’t apply myself that way. No man can.

  “I’m licked. I can’t speed myself up, and I can’t speed other men’s minds up. Isn’t there an alternative? There must be—somewhere, somehow, there’s got to be an answer.”

  So it was on this, and not on eugenics, or light pumps, or botany, or atomic physics, that James Kidder applied himself. For a practical man he found the problem slightly on the metaphysical side; but he attacked it with typical thoroughness, using his own peculiar brand of logic. Day after day he wandered over the island, throwing shells impotently at sea gulls and swearing richly. Then came a time when he sat indoors and brooded. And only then did he get feverishly to work.

  He worked in his own field, biochemistry, and concentrated mainly on two things—genetics and animal metabolism. He learned, and filed away in his insatiable mind, many things having nothing to do with the problem at hand, and very little of what he wanted. But he piled that little on what little he knew or guessed, and in time had quite a collection of known factors to work with. His approach was characteristically unorthodox. He did things on the order of multiplying apples by pears, and balancing equations by adding log V-i to one side and °° to the other. He made mistakes, but only one of a kind, and later, only one of a species. He spent so many hours at his microscope that he had quit work for two days to get rid of a hallucination that his heart was pumping his own blood through the mike. He did nothing by trial and error because he disapproved of the method as sloppy.

  And he got results. He was lucky to begin with and even luckier when he formularized the law of probability and reduced it to such low terms that he knew almost to the item what experiments not to try. When the cloudy, viscous semifluid on the watch glass began to move itself he knew he was on ‘the right track. When it began to seek food on its own he began to be excited. When it divided and, in a few hours, redivided, and each part grew and divided again, he was triumphant, for he had created life.

  He nursed his brain children and sweated and strained over them, and he designed baths of various vibrations for them, and inoculated and dosed and sprayed them. Each move he made taught him the next And out of his tanks and tubes and incubators came amoebalike creatures, and then ciliated animalcules, and more and more rapidly he produced animals with eye spots, nerve cysts, and then— victory of victories—a real blastopod, possessed of many cells instead of one. More slowly he developed a gastropod, but once he had it, it was not too difficult for him to give it organs, each with a specified function, each inheritable.

  Then came cultured molluskilke things, and creatures with more and more perfected gills. The day that a nondescript thing wriggled up an inclined board out of a tank, threw flaps over its gills and feebly breathed air, Kidder quit work and went to the other end of the island and got disgustingly drunk. Hangover and all, he was soon back in the lab, forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep, tearing into his problem.

  He turned into a scientific byway and ran down his other great triumph—accelerated metabolism. He extracted and refined the stimulating factors in alcohol, cocoa, heroin, and Mother Nature’s prize dope runner, cannabis indica. Like the scientist who, in analyzing the various clotting agents for blood treatments, found that oxalic acid and oxalic acid alone was, the active factor, Kidder isolated the accelerators and decelerators, the stimulants and soporifics, in every substance that ever undermined a man’s morality and/or caused a “noble experiment.” In ‘the process he found one thing he needed badly—a colorless elixir that made sleep the unnecessary and avoidable waster of time it should be. Then and there he went on a twenty-four-hour shift.

  He artificially synthesized the substances he had isolated, and in doing so sloughed away a great many useless components. He pursued the subject along the lines of radiations and vibrations. He discovered something in the longer reds which, when projected through a vessel full of air vibrating in the supersonics, and then polarized, speeded up the heartbeat of small animals twenty to one.

  They ate twenty times as much, grew twenty times as fast, and—died twenty times sooner than they should have.

  Kidder built a huge hermetically sealed room. Above it was another room, the same length and breadth but not quite as high. This was his control chamber. The large room was divided into four sealed sections, each with its individual miniature cranes and derricks—handling machinery of all kinds. There were also trapdoors fitted with air locks leading from the upper to the lower room.

  By this time the other laboratory had produced a warmblooded, snake-skinned quadruped with an astonishingly rapid life cycle—a generation every eight days, a life span of about fifteen. Like the echidna, it was oviparous and mammalian. Its period of gestation was six hours; the eggs hatched in three; the young reached sexual maturity in another four days. Each female laid four eggs and lived just long enough to care for the young after they hatched. The male generally died two or three hours after mating. The creatures were highly adaptable. They were small— not more than three inches long, two inches to the shoulder from the ground. Their forepaws had three digits and a triple-jointed, opposed thumb. They were attuned to life in an atmosphere, with a large ammonia content. Kidder bred four of the creatures and put one group in each section of the sealed room.

  Then he was ready. With his controlled atmospheres he varied temperatures, oxygen content, humidity. He killed them off like flies with excesses of, for instance, carbon dioxide, and the survivors bred their physical resistance into the next generation. Periodically he would switch the eggs from one sealed section to another to keep the strains varied. And rapidly, under these controlled conditions, the creatures began to evolve.

  This, then, was the answer to his problem. He couldn’t speed up mankind’s intellectual advancement enough to have it teach him the things his incredible mind yearned for. He couldn’t speed himself up. So he created a new race—a race which would develop and evolve so fast that it would surpass the civilization of man; and from them he would learn.

  They were completely in Kidder’s power. Earth’s normal atmosphere would poison them, as he took care to demonstrate to every fourth generation. They would make no attempt to escape from him. They would live their lives and progress and make their little trial-and-error experiments hundreds of times faster than man did. They had the edge on man, for they had Kidder to guide them. It took man six thousand years really to discover science, three hundred to put it to work. It took Kidder’s creatures two hundred days to equal man’s mental attainments. And from then on—Kidder’s spasmodic output made the late, great Tom Edison look like a home handicrafter.

  He called them Neoterics, and he teased them into working for him. Kidder was inventive in an ideological way; that is, he could dream up impossible propositions providing he didn’t have to work them out. For example, he wanted the Neoterics to figure out for themselves how to build shelters out of porous material. He created the need for such shelters by subjecting one of the sections to a high-pressure rainstorm which flattened the inhabitants. The Neoterics promptly devised waterproof shelters out of the thin waterproof material he piled in one corner.

  Kidder immediately blew down the flimsy structures with a blast of cold air. They built them up again so that they resisted both wind and rain. Kidder lowered the temperature so abruptly that they could not adjust their bodies to it. They heated their shelters with tiny braziers. Kidder promptly turned up the beat until they began to roast to death. After a few deaths, one of their bright boys figured out how to build a strong insulant house by using three-ply rubberoid, with the middle layer perforated thousands of times to create tiny air pockets.

  Using such tactics, Kidder forced them to develop a highly advanced little culture. He caused a drought in one section and a liquid surplus in another, and then opened the partition between them. Quite a spectacular war was fought, and Kidder’s notebooks filled with information about military tactics and weapons. Then there was the vaccine they developed against the common cold—the reason why that affliction has been absolutely stamped out in the world today, for it was one of the things that Conant, the bank president, got hold of. He spoke to Kidder over the radiophone one winter afternoon with a voice so hoarse from laryngitis that Kidder sent him a vial of vaccine and told him briskly not to ever call him again in such a disgustingly inaudible state. Conant had it analyzed and again Kidder’s accounts and the bank’s swelled.

  At first, Kidder merely supplied the materials he thought they might need, but when they developed an intelligence equal to the task of fabricating their own from the elements at hand, he gave each section a stock of raw materials. The process for really strong aluminum was developed when he built in a huge plunger in one of the sections, which reached from wall to wall and was designed to descend at the rate of four inches a day until it crushed whatever was at the bottom. The Neoterics, in self-defense, used what strong material they had in hand to stop the inexorable death that threatened them. But Kidder had seen to it that they had nothing but aluminum oxide and a scattering of other elements, plus plenty of electric power. At first they ran up dozens of aluminum pillars; when these were crushed and twisted they tried shaping them so that the soft metal would take more weight. When that failed they quickly built stronger ones; and when the plunger was halted, Kidder removed one of the pillars and analyzed it. It was hardened aluminum, stronger and tougher than molybdenum steel.

  Experience taught Kidder that he had to make certain changes to increase his power over the Neoterics before they got too ingenious. There were things that could be done with atomic power that he was curious about; but he was not willing to trust his little superscientists with a thing like that unless they could be trusted to use it strictly according to Hoyle. So he instituted a rule of fear. The most trivial departure from what he chose to consider the right way of doing things resulted in instant death of half a tribe. if he was trying to develop a Diesel-type power plant, for instance, that would operate without a flywheel, and a bright young Neoteric used any of the materials for architectural purposes, half the tribe immediately died. Of course, they had developed a written language; it was Kidder’s own. The teletype in a glass-enclosed area in a corner of each section was a shrine. Any directions that were given on it were obeyed, or else. . . . After this innovation, Kidder’s work was much simpler. There was no need for any indirection. Anything he wanted done was done. No matter how impossible his commands, three or four generations of Neoterics could find a way to carry them out.

  This quotation is from a paper that one of Kidder’s highspeed telescopic cameras discovered being circulated among the younger Neoterics. It is translated from the highly simplified script of the Neoterics.

  “These edicts shall be followed by each Neoteric upon pain of death, which punishment will be inflicted by the tribe upon the individual to protect the tribe against him.

  Priority of interest and tribal and individual effort is to be given the commands that appear on the word machine.

  “Any misdirection of material or power, or use thereof for any other purpose than the carrying out of the machine’s commands, unless no command appears, shall be punishable by death.

  “Any information regarding the problem at hand, or ideas or experiments which might conceivably bear upon it, are to become the property of the tribe.

  “Any individual failing to cooperate in the tribal effort, or who can be termed guilty of not expending his full efforts in the work, or the suspicion thereof shall be subject to the death penalty.”

  Such are the results of complete domination. This paper impressed Kidder as much as it did because it was completely spontaneous. It was the Neoterics’ own creed, developed by them for their own greatest good.

  And so at last Kidder had his fulfillment. Crouched in the upper room, going from telescope to telescope, running off slowed-down films from his high speed cameras, he found himself possessed of a tractable, dynamic source of information. Housed in the great square building with its four half-acre sections was a new, world, to which he was god.

 

  Conant’s mind was similar to Kidder’s in that its approach to any problem was along the shortest distance between any two points, regardless of whether that approach was along the line of most or least resistance. His rise to the bank presidency was a history of ruthless moves whose only justification was that they got him what he wanted. Like an over-efficient general, he would never vanquish an enemy through sheer force of numbers alone. He would also skillfully flank his enemy, not on one side, but on both. Innocent bystanders were creatures deserving no consideration.

  The time he took over a certain thousand-acre property, for instance, from a man named Grady, he was not satisfied with only the title to the land. Grady was an airport owner—had been all his life, and his father before him. Conant exerted every kind of pressure on the man and found him unshakable. Finally judicious persuasion led the city officials to dig a sewer right across the middle of the field, quite efficiently wrecking Grady’s business. Knowing that this would supply Grady, who was a wealthy man, with motive for revenge, Conant took over Grady’s bank at half again its value and caused it to fold up. Grady lost every cent he had and ended his life in an asylum. Conant was very proud of his tactics.

  Like many another who had had Mammon by the tail, Conant did not know when to let go. His vast organization yielded him more money and power than any other concern in history, and yet he was not satisfied. Conant and money were like Kidder and knowledge. Conant’s pyramided enterprises were to him what the Neoterics were to Kidder. Each had made his private world, each used it for his instruction and profit. Kidder, though, disturbed nobody but his Neoterics. Even so, Conant was not wholly villainous. He was a shrewd man, and had discovered early the value of pleasing people. No man can rob successfully over a period of years without pleasing the people he robs. The technique for doing this is highly involved, but master it and you can start your own mint.

  Conant’s one great fear was that Kidder would some day take an interest in world events and begin to become opinionated. Good heavens—the potential power he had! A little matter like swinging an election could be managed by a man like Kidder as easily as turning over in bed.

  The only thing he could do was to call him periodically and see if there was anything that Kidder needed to keep himself busy. Kidder appreciated this. Conant, once in a while, would suggest something to Kidder that intrigued him, something that would keep him deep in his hermitage for a few weeks. The light pump was one of the results of Conant’s imagination. Conant bet him it couldn’t be done. Kidder did it.

  One afternoon Kidder answered the squeal of the radiophone’s signal. Swearing-mildly, he shut off the film he was watching and crossed the compound to the old laboratory. He went to the radiophone, threw a switch. The squealing stopped.

  “Well?”

  “Hello,” said Conant. “Busy?”

  “Not very,” said Kidder. He was delighted with the pictures his camera had caught, showing the skillful work of a gang of Neoterics synthesizing rubber out of pure sulphur. He would rather have liked to tell Conant about it, but somehow he had never got around to telling Conant about the Neoterics, and he didn’t see why he should start now.

  Conant said, “Er . . . Kidder, I was down at the club the other day and a bunch of us were filling up an evening with loose talk. Something came up which might interest you.”

  “What?”

  “Couple of the utilities boys there. You know the power setup in this country, don’t you? Thirty per cent atomic, the rest hydroelectric, Diesel and steam?”

  “I hadn’t known,” said Kidder, who was as innocent as a babe of current events.

  “Well, we were arguing about what chance a new power source would have. One of the men there said it would be smarter to produce a new power and then talk about it Another one waived that; said he couldn’t name that new power, but he could describe it. Said it would have to have everything that present power sources have, plus one or two more things. It could be cheaper, for instance. It could be more efficient. It might supercede the others by being, easier to carry from the power plant to the consumer. See what I mean? Any one of these factors might prove a new source of power competitive to the others. What I’d like to see is a new power with all of these factors. What do you think of it?”

  “Not’ impossible.”

  “Think not?”

  “I’ll try it.”

  “Keep me posted.” Conant’s transmitter clicked off. The switch was a little piece of false front that Kidder had built into the set, which was something that Conant didn’t know. The set switched itself off when Conant moved from it. After the switch’s sharp crack, Kidder heard the banker mutter, “If he does it, I’m all set. If he doesn’t, at least the crazy fool will keep himself busy on the island.”

  Kidder eyed the radiophone, for an instant with raised eyebrow; and then shrugged them down again with his shoulders. It was quite evident that Conant had something up his sleeve, but Kidder wasn’t worried. Who on earth would want to disturb him? He wasn’t bothering anybody. He went back to the Neoterics’ building, full of the new power idea.

  Eleven days later Kidder called Conant and gave specific instructions on how to equip his receiver with a facsimile set which would enable Kidder to send written matter over the air. As soon as, this was done and Kidder informed, the biochemist for once in his life spoke at some length.

  “Conant—you implied that a new power source that would be cheaper, more efficient and more easily transmitted than any now in use did not exist. You might be interested in the little generator I have just set up.

  “It has power, Conant—unbelievable power. Broadcast. A beautiful little tight beam. Here—catch this on the facsimile recorder.” Kidder slipped a sheet of paper under the clips of his transmitter and it appeared on Conant’s set. “Here’s the wiring diagram for a power receiver. Now listen. The beam is so tight, so highly directional, that not three-thousandths of one per cent of the power would be lost in a, two-thousand-mile transmission. The power system is closed. That is, any drain on the beam returns a signal along it to the transmitter, which automatically steps up to increase the power output. It has a limit, but it’s way up. And something else. This little gadget of mine can send out eight different beams with a total horsepower output of around eight thousand per minute per beam. From each beam you can draw enough power to turn the page of a book or fly a superstratosphere plane. Hold on—I haven’t finished yet. Each beam, as I told you before, returns a signal from receiver to transmitter. This not only controls the power output of the beam, but directs it. Once contact is made, the beam will never let go. It will follow the receiver anywhere. You can power land, air or water vehicles with it, as well as any stationary plant. Like it?”

  Conant, who was a banker and not a scientist, wiped his shining pate with the back of his hand and said, “I’ve never known you to steer me wrong yet, Kidder. How about the cost of this thing?”

  “High.” said Kidder promptly. “As high as an atomic plant. But there are no high-tension lines, no wires, no pipelines, no nothing. The receivers are little more complicated than a radio set. Transmitter is—well, that’s quite a job.”

  “Didn’t take you long,” said Conant.

  “No,” said Kidder, “it didn’t, did it?” It was, the lifework of nearly twelve hundred highly cultured people, but Kidder wasn’t going into that. “Of course, the one I have here’s just a model.”

  Conant’s voice was strained. “A—model? And it delivers—”

  “Over sixty-thousand horsepower,” said Kidder gleefully. “Good heavens! In a full sized machine—why, one transmitter would be enough to—” The possibilities of the thing choked Conant for a moment. “How is it fueled?”

  “It isn’t,” said Kidder. “I won’t begin to explain it I’ve tapped a source of power of unimaginable force. It’s—well, big. So big that it can’t be misused.”

  “What?” snapped Conant. “What do you mean by that?” Kidder cocked an eyebrow. Conant had something up his sleeve, then. At this second indication of it, Kidder, the least suspicious of men, began to put himself on guard. “I mean just what I say,” he said evenly. “Don’t try too hard to understand me—I barely savvy it myself. But the source of this power is a monstrous resultant caused by the unbalance of two previously equalized forces. Those equalized forces are cosmic in quantity. Actually, the forces are those which make suns, crush atoms the way they crushed those that compose the companion of Sirius. It’s not anything you can fool with.”

  “I don’t—” said Conant, and his voice ended puzzledly.

  “I’ll give you a parallel of it,” said Kidder. “Suppose you take two rods, one in each hand. Place their tips together and push. As long as your pressure is directly along their long axes, the pressure is equalized; right and left hands cancel each other. Now I come along; I put out one finger and touch the rods ever so lightly where they come together. They snap out of line violently; you break a couple of knuckles. The resultant force is at right angles to the original forces you exerted. My power transmitter is on the same principle. It takes an infinitesimal amount of energy to throw those forces out of line. Easy enough when you know how to do it. The important question is whether or not you can control the resultant when you get it. I can.”

  “I—see.” Conant indulged in a four-second gloat. “Heaven help the utility companies. I don’t intend to. Kidder—I want a full-size power transmitter.”

  Kidder clucked into the radiophone. “Ambitious, aren’t you? I haven’t a staff out here, Conant—you know that. And I can’t be expected to build four or five thousand tons of apparatus myself.”

  “I’ll have five hundred engineers and laborers out there in forty-eight hours.”

  “You will not. Why bother me with it? I’m quite happy here, Conant, and one of the reasons is that I’ve got no one to get in my hair.”

  “Oh, now, Kidder—don’t be like that—I’ll pay you—”

  “You haven’t got that much money,” said Kidder briskly. He flipped the switch on his set. His switch worked.

  Conant was furious. He shouted into the phone several times, then began to lean on the signal button. On his island, Kidder let the thing squeal and went back to his projection room. He was sorry he had sent the diagram of the receiver to Conant. It would have been interesting to power a plane or a car with the model transmitter he had taken from the Neoterics. But if Conant was going to be that way about it—well, anyway, the receiver would be no good without the transmitter. Any radio engineer would understand the diagram, but not the beam which activated it. And Conant wouldn’t get his beam.

  Pity he didn’t know Conant well enough.

 

  Kidder’s days were endless sorties into learning. He never slept, nor did his Neoterics. He ate regularly every five hours, exercised for half an hour in every twelve. He did not keep track of time, for it meant nothing to him. Had he wanted to know the date, or the year, even, he knew he could get it from Conant. He didn’t care, that’s all. The time that was not spent in observation was used in developing new problems for the Neoterics. His thoughts just now ran to defense. The idea was born in his conversation with Conant; now the idea was primary, its motivation something of no importance. The Neoterics were working on a vibration field of quasi-electrical nature. Kidder could see little practical value in such a thing— an invisible wall which would kill any living thing which touched it. But still—the idea was intriguing.

  He stretched and moved away from the telescope in the upper room through which he had been watching his creations at work. He was profoundly happy here in the large control room. Leaving it to go to the old laboratory for a bite to eat was a thing he hated, to do. He felt like bidding it good-by each time he walked across the compound, and saying a glad hello when he returned. A little amused at himself, he went out.

  There was a black blob—a distant power boat—a few miles off the island, toward the mainland. Kidder stopped and stared distastefully at it. A white petal of spray was affixed to each side of the black body—it was coming toward him. He snorted, thinking of the time a yachtload of silly fools had landed out of curiosity one afternoon, spewed themselves over his beloved island, peppered him with lame-brained questions, and thrown his nervous equilibrium out for days. Lord, how he hated people!

  The thought of unpleasantness bred two more thoughts that played half-consciously with his mind as he crossed the compound and entered the old laboratory. One was that perhaps it might be wise to surround his buildings with a field of force of some kind and post warnings for trespassers. The other thought was of Conant and the vague uneasiness the man had been sending to him through the radiophone these last weeks. His suggestion, two days ago, that a power plant be built on the island—horrible idea!

 

  Conant rose from a laboratory bench as Kidder walked in.

  They looked at each other wordlessly for a long moment Kidder hadn’t seen the bank president in years. The man’s presence, he found, made his scalp crawl.

  “Hello,” said Conant genially. “You’re looking fit.”

  Kidder grunted. Conant eased his unwieldy body back onto the bench and said, “Just to save you the energy of asking questions, Mr. Kidder, I arrived two hours ago on, a small boat. Rotten way to travel. I wanted to be a surprise to you; my two men rowed me the last couple of miles. You’re not very well equipped here for defense, are you? Why, anyone could slip up on you the way I did.”

  “Who’d want to?” growled Kidder. The man’s  voice edged annoyingly into his brain. He spoke too loudly for such a small room; at least, Kidder’s hermit’s ears felt that way. Kidder shrugged and went about preparing a light meal for himself.

  “Well,” drawled the banker. “I ‘might want to.” He drew out a Dow-metal cigar case. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “I do,” said Kidder sharply.

  Conant laughed easily and put the cigars away. “I might,” he said, “want to urge you to let me build that power station on this island.”

  “Radiophone work?”

  “Oh, yes. But now that I’m here you can’t switch me off. Now—how about it?”

  “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  “Oh, but you should, Kidder, you should. Think of it— think of the good it would do for the masses of people that are now paying exorbitant power bills!”

  “I hate the masses! Why do you have to build here?”

  “Oh, that. It’s an ideal location. You own the island; work could begin here without causing any comment whatsoever. The plant would spring full-fledged on the power markets of the country, having been built in secret. The island can be made impregnable.”

  “I don’t want to be bothered.”

  “We wouldn’t bother you. We’d build on the north end of the island—a mile and a quarter from you and your work. Ah—by the way—where’s the model of the power transmitter?”

  Kidder, with his mouth full of synthesized food, waved a hand at a small table on which stood the model, a four-foot, amazingly intricate device of plastic and steel and tiny coils.

  Conant rose and went over to look at it. “Actually works, eh?” He sighed deeply and said, “Kidder, I really hate to do this, but I want to build that plant rather badly.

  “Carson! Robbins!”

  Two bull-necked individuals stepped out from their hiding places in the corners of the room. One idly dangled a revolver by its trigger guard. Kidder looked blankly from one to the other of them.

  “These gentlemen will follow my orders implicitly, Kidder. In half an hour a party will land here—engineers, contractors. They will start surveying the north end of the island for the construction of the power plant. These boys here feel about the same way I do as far as you are concerned. Do we proceed with your cooperation or without it? It’s immaterial to me whether or not you are left alive to continue your work. My engineers can duplicate your model.”

  Kidder said nothing. He had stopped chewing when he saw the gunmen, and only now remembered to swallow. He sat crouched over his plate without moving or speaking.

  Conant broke the silence by walking to the door. “Robbins—can you carry that model there?” The big man put his gun away, lifted the model gently, and nodded. “Take it down to the beach and meet the other boat. Tell Mr. Johansen, the engineer, that this is the model he is to work from.” Robbins went out. Conant turned to Kidder.

  “There’s no need for us to anger ourselves,” he said oilily. “I think you are stubborn, but I don’t hold it against you. I know how you feel. You’ll be left alone: you have my promise. But I mean to go ahead on this job, and a small thing like your life can’t stand in my way.”

  Kidder said, “Get out of here.” There were two swollen veins throbbing at his temples. His voice was low, and it shook.

  “Very well. Good day, Mr. Kidder. Oh—by the way—you’re a clever devil.” No one had ever referred to the scholastic Mr. Kidder that way before. “I realize the possibility of your blasting us off the island. I wouldn’t do it if I were you. I’m willing to give you what you want—privacy. I want the same thing in return. If anything happens to me while I’m here, the island will be bombed by someone who is working for me; I’ll admit they might fail.

  If they do, the United States government will take a hand. You wouldn’t want that, would you? That’s rather a big thing for one man to fight. The same thing goes if the plant is sabotaged in any way after I go back to the mainland.

  You might be killed. You will most certainly be bothered interminably. Thanks for your . . . er. . . cooperation.” The banker smirked and walked out, followed by his taciturn gorilla.

  Kidder sat there for a long time without moving. Then he shook his head, rested it in his palms. He was badly frightened; not so much because his life was in danger, but because his privacy and his work—his world—were threatened. He was hurt and bewildered. He wasn’t a businessman. He couldn’t handle men. All his life he had run away from human beings and what they represented to him. He was like a frightened child when men closed in on him.

  Cooling a little, he wondered vaguely what would happen when the power plant opened. Certainly, the government would be interested. Unless—unless by then Conant was the government. That plant was an unimaginable source of power, and not only the kind of power that turned wheels. He rose and went back to the world that was home to him, a world where his motives were understood, and where there were those who could help him.

  Back at the Neoterics’ building, he escaped yet again from the world of men into his work.

 

  Kidder called Conant the following week, much to the banker’s surprise. His two days on the island had got the work well under way, and he had left with the arrival of a shipload of laborers and material. He kept in close touch by radio with Johansen, the engineer in charge. It had been a blind job for Johansen and all the rest of the crew on the island. Only the bank’s infinite resources could have hired such a man, or the picked gang with him.

  Johansen’s first reaction when he saw the model had been ecstatic. He wanted to tell his friends about this marvel; but the only radio set available was beamed to Conant’s private office in the bank, and Conant’s armed guards, one to every two workers, had strict orders to destroy any other radio transmitter on sight. About that time he realized that he was a prisoner on the island. His instant anger subsided when he reflected that being a prisoner at fifty thousand dollars a week wasn’t too bad; Two of the laborers and an engineer thought differently, and got disgruntled a couple of days after they arrived. They disappeared one night— the same night that five shots were fired down on the beach. No questions were asked, and there was no more trouble.

  Conant covered his surprise at Kidder’s call and was as offensively jovial as ever. “Well, now! Anything I can do for you?”

  “Yes,” said Kidder. His voice was low, completely without expression. “I want you to issue a warning to your men not to pass the white line I have drawn five hundred yards north of my buildings, right across the island.”

  “Warning? Why, my dear fellow, they have orders that you are not to be disturbed on any account.”

  “You’ve ordered them. All right. Now warn them. I have an electric field surrounding my laboratories that will kill anything living which penetrates it. I don’t want to have murder on my conscience. There will be no deaths unless there are trespassers. You’ll inform your workers?”

  “Oh, now, Kidder,” the banker expostulated. “That was totally unnecessary. You won’t be bothered. Why—” but he found he was talking into a dead mike. He knew better than to call back. He called Johansen instead and told him about it. Johansen didn’t like the sound of it, but he repeated the message and signed off. Conant liked that man. He was, for a moment, a little sorry that Johansen would never reach the mainland alive.

  But that Kidder—he was beginning to be a problem. As long as his weapons were strictly defensive he was no real menace. But he would have to be taken care of when the plant was operating. Conant couldn’t afford to have genius around him unless it was unquestionably on his side. The power transmitter and Conant’s highly ambitious plans would be safe as long as Kidder was left to himself. Kidder knew that he could, for the time being, expect more sympathetic treatment from Conant than he could from a horde of government investigators.

  Kidder only left his own enclosure once after the work began on the north end of the island, and it took all of his unskilled diplomacy to do it. Knowing the source of the plant’s power, knowing what could happen if it were misused, he asked Conant’s permission to inspect the great transmitter when it was nearly finished. Insuring his own life by refusing to report back to Conant until he was safe within his own laboratory again, he turned off his shield and walked up to the north end.

  He saw an awe-inspiring sight. The four-foot model was duplicated nearly a hundred times as large. Inside a massive three-hundred-foot tower a space was packed nearly solid with the same bewildering maze of coils and bars that the Neoterics had built so delicately into their machine. At the top was a globe of polished golden alloy, the transmitting antenna. From it would stream thousands of tight beams of force, which could be tapped to any degree by corresponding thousands of receivers placed anywhere at any distance. Kidder learned that the receivers had already been built, but his informant, Johansen, knew little about that end of it and was saying less. Kidder checked over every detail of the structure, and when he was through he shook Johansen’s hand admiringly.

  “I didn’t want this thing here,” he said shyly, “and I don’t. But I will say that it’s a pleasure to see this kind of work.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet the man that invented it”, Kidder beamed. “I didn’t invent it,” he said. “Maybe someday I’ll show you who did. I—well, good-by.” He turned before he had a chance to say too much and marched off down the path.

  “Shall I?” said a voice at Johansen’s side. One of Conant’s guards had his gun out.

  Johansen knocked the man’s arm down. “No.” He scratched his head. “So that’s the mysterious menace from the other end of the island. Eh! Why, he’s a hell of a nice little feller!”

 

  Built on the ruins of Denver, which was destroyed in the great Battle of the Rockies during the Western War, stands the most beautiful city in the world—our nation’s capital, New Washington. In a circular room deep in the heart of the White House, the president, three army men and a civilian sat. Under the president’s desk a dictaphone unostentatiously recorded every word that was said. Two thousand and more miles away, Conant hung over a radio receiver, tuned to receive the signals of the tiny transmitter in the civilian’s side pocket.

  One of the officers spoke.

  “Mr. President, the ‘impossible claims’ made for this gentleman’s product are absolutely true. He has proved beyond doubt each item on his prospectus.”

  The president glanced at the civilian, back at the officer. “I won’t wait for your report,” he said. “Tell me—what happened?”

  Another of the army men mopped his face with a khaki bandanna. “I can’t ask you to believe us, Mr. President, but it’s true all the same. Mr. Wright here has in his suitcase three or four dozen small . . . er . . . bombs—”

  “They’re not bombs,” said Wright casually.

  “All right. They’re not bombs. Mr. Wright smashed two of them on an anvil with a sledge hammer. There was no result. He put two more in an electric furnace. They burned away like so much tin and cardboard. We dropped one down the barrel of a field piece and fired it. Still nothing.” He paused and looked at the third officer, who picked up the account:

  “We really got started then. We flew to the proving grounds, dropped one of the objects and flew to thirty thousand feet. From there, with a small hand detonator no bigger than your fist, Mr. Wright set the thing off. I’ve never seen anything like it. Forty acres of land came straight up at us, breaking up as it came. The concussion was terrific—you must have felt it here, four hundred miles away.”

  The president nodded. “I did. Seismographs on the other side of the Earth picked it up.”

  “The crater it left was a quarter of a mile deep at the center. Why, one plane load of those things could demolish any city! There isn’t even any necessity for accuracy!”

  “You haven’t heard anything yet,” another officer broke in. “Mr. Wright’s automobile is powered by a small plant similar to the others. He demonstrated it to us. We could find no fuel tank of any kind, or any other driving mechanism. But with a power plant no bigger than six cubic inches, that car, carrying enough weight to give it traction, outpulled an army tank!”

  “And the other test!” said the third excitedly. “He put one of the objects into a replica of a treasury vault. The walls were twelve feet thick, super-reinforced concrete. He controlled it from over a hundred yards away. He . . . he burst that vault! It wasn’t an explosion—it was as if some incredibly powerful expansive force inside filled it and flattened the walls from inside. They cracked and split and powdered, and the steel girders and rods came twisting and shearing out like. . . like—whew! After that he insisted on seeing you. We knew it wasn’t usual, but he said he has more to say and would say it only in your presence.”

  The president said gravely, “What is it, Mr. Wright?”

  Wright rose, picked up his suitcase, opened it and took out a small cube, about eight inches on a side, made of some light-absorbent red material. Four men edged nervously away from it.

  “These gentlemen,” he began, “have seen only part of the things this device can do. I’m going to demonstrate to you the delicacy of control that is possible with it.” He made an adjustment with a tiny knob on the side of the cube, set it on the edge of the president’s desk.

  “You have asked me more than once if this is my invention or if I am representing someone. The latter is true. It might also interest you to know that the man who controls this cube is right now several thousand miles from here. He and he alone, can prevent it from detonating now that I—” He pulled his detonator out of the suitcase and pressed a button— “have done this. It will explode the way the one we dropped from the plane did, completely destroying this city and everything in it, in just four hours. It will also explode-” He stepped back and threw a tiny switch on his detonator—”if any moving object comes within three feet of it or if anyone leaves this room but me—it can be compensated for that. If, after I leave, I am molested, it will detonate as soon as a hand is laid on me. No bullets can kill me fast enough to prevent me from setting it off.”

  The three army men were silent. One of them swiped nervously at the beads of cold sweat on his forehead. The others did not move. The president said evenly:

  “What’s your proposition?”

  “A very reasonable one. My employer does not work in the open, for obvious reasons. All he wants is your agreement to carry out his orders; to appoint the cabinet members he chooses, to throw your influence in any way he dictates. The public—Congress——anyone else--need never know anything about it. I might add that if you agree to this proposal, this ‘bomb,’ as you call it, will not go off.

  But you can be sure that thousands of them are planted all over the country. You will never know when you are near one. If you disobey, it beams instant annihilation for you and everyone else within three or four square miles.

  “In three hours and fifty minutes—that will be at precisely seven o’clock—there is a commercial radio program on Station RPRS. You will cause the announcer, after his station identification, to say ‘Agreed.’ It will pass unnoticed by all but my employer. There is no use in having me followed; my work is done. I shall never see nor contact my employer again. That is all. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”

  Wright closed his suitcase with a businesslike snap, bowed, and left the room. Four men sat staring at the little red cube.

  “Do you think he can do all he says?” asked the president.

  The three nodded mutely. The president reached for his phone.

  There was an eavesdropper to all of the foregoing Conant, squatting behind his great desk in the vault, where he had his sanctum sanctorum, knew nothing of it. But beside him was the compact bulk of Kidder’s radiophone. His presence switched it on, and Kidder, on his island, blessed the day he had thought of the device. He had been meaning to call Conant all morning, but was very hesitant.

  His meeting with the young engineer Johansen had impressed him strongly. The man was such a thorough scientist, possessed of such complete delight in the work he did, that for the first time in his life Kidder found himself actually wanting to see someone again. But he feared for Johansen’s life if he brought him to the laboratory, for Johansen’s work was done on the island, and Conant would most certainly have the engineer killed if he heard of his visit, fearing that Kidder would influence him to sabotage the great transmitter. And if Kidder went to the power plant he would probably be shot on sight.

  All one day Kidder wrangled with himself, and finally determined to call Conant. Fortunately he gave no signal, but turned up the volume on the receiver when the little red light told him that Conant’s transmitter was functioning. Curious, he heard everything that occurred in the president’s chamber three thousand miles away. Horrified, he realized what Conant’s engineers had done. Built into tiny containers were tens of thousands of power receivers. They had no power of their own, but, by remote control, could draw on any or all of the billions of horsepower the huge plant on the island was broadcasting.

  Kidder stood in front of his receiver, speechless. There was nothing he could do. If he devised some means of destroying the power plant, the government would certainly step in and take over the island, and then what would happen to him and his precious Neoterics?

  Another sound grated out of the receiver—a commercial radio program. A few bars of music, a man’s voice advertising stratoline fares on the installment plan, a short silence, then:

  “Station RPRS, voice of the nation’s Capital, District of South Colorado.”

  The three-second pause was interminable.

  “The time is exactly . .. er . . . agreed. The time is exactly seven P.M., Mountain Standard Time.”

  Then came a half-insane chuckle. Kidder had difficulty believing it was Conant. A phone clicked. The banker’s voice:

  “Bill? All set. Get out there with your squadron and bomb up the island. Keep away from the plant, but cut the rest of it to ribbons. Do it quick and get out of there.”

  Almost hysterical with fear, Kidder rushed about the room and then shot out the door and across the compound. There were five hundred innocent workmen in barracks a quarter mile from the plant Conant didn’t need them now, and he didn’t need Kidder. The only safety for anyone was in the plant itself, and Kidder wouldn’t leave his Neoterics to be bombed. He flung himself up the stairs and to the nearest teletype. He banged out, “Get me a defense. I want an impenetrable shield. Urgent!”

  The words ripped out from under his fingers in the functional script of the Neoterics. Kidder didn’t think of what he wrote, didn’t really visualize the thing he ordered. But he had done what he could. He’d have to leave them now, get to the barracks; warn those men. He ran up the path toward the plant, flung himself over the white line that marked death to those who crossed it.

  A squadron of nine clip-winged, mosquito-nosed planes rose out of a cover on the mainland. There was no sound from the engines, for there were no engines. Each plane was powered with a tiny receiver and drew its unmarked, light-absorbent wings through the air with power from the island. In a matter of minutes they raised the island. The squadron leader spoke briskly into a microphone.

  “Take the barracks first. Clean ‘em up. Then work south.”

  Johansen was alone on a small hill near the center of the island. He carried a camera, and though he knew pretty well that his chances of ever getting ashore again were practically nonexistent, he liked angle shots of his tower, and took innumerable pictures. The first he knew of the planes was when he heard their whining dive over the barracks. He stood transfixed, saw a shower of bombs hurtle down and turn the barracks into a smashed ruin of broken wood, metal and bodies. The picture of Kidder’s earnest face flashed into his mind. Poor little guy—if they ever bombed his end of the island he would—But his tower! Were they going to bomb the plant?

  He watched, utterly appalled, as the planes flew out to sea, cut back and dove again. They seemed to be working south. At the third dive he was sure of it. Not knowing what he could do, he nevertheless turned and ran toward Kidder’s place. He rounded a turn in the trail and collided violently with the little biochemist. Kidder’s face was scarlet with exertion, and he was the most terrified-looking object Johanson had ever seen.

  Kidder waved a hand northward. “Conant!” he screamed over the uproar. “It’s Conant! He’s going to kill us all!”

  “The plant?” said Johansen, turning pale.

  “It’s safe. He won’t touch that! But. . . my place . . what about all those men?”

  “Too late!” shouted Johansen.

  “Maybe I can—Come on!” called Kidder, and was off down the trail, heading south.

  Johansen pounded after him. Kidder’s little short legs became a blur as the squadron swooped overhead, laying its eggs in the spot where they had met.

  As they burst out of the woods, Johansen put on a spurt, caught up with the scientist and knocked him sprawling not six feet from the white line.

  “Wh. . . wh—”

  “Don’t go any farther, you fool! Your own damned force field——it’ll kill you!”

  “Force field? But—I came through it on the way up— Here. Wait. If I can—” Kidder began hunting furiously about in the grass. In a few seconds he ran up to the line, clutching a large grasshopper in his hand. He tossed if over. It lay still.

  “See?” said Johansen. “It—”

  “Look! It jumped. Come on! I don’t know what- went wrong, unless the Neoterics shut if off. They generated that field—I didn’t.”

  “Nec-—huh?”

  “Never mind,” snapped the biochemist, and ran.

  They pounded gasping up the steps and into the Neoterics’ control room. Kidder clapped his eyes to a telescope and shrieked in glee. “They’ve done it! They’ve done it!”

 

  “My little people! The Neoterics! They’ve made the impenetrable shield! Don’t you see—it cut through the lines of force that start up the field out there. Their generator is still throwing it up, but the vibrations can’t get out! They’re safe! They’re safe!” And the overwrought hermit began to cry. Johansen looked at him pityingly and shook his head.