Dillard swung away, ran two steps and smashed into something hard with his hip. The impact drove out his breath, flooded him with pain. He reeled to one side, hearing the growl and rustle of someone on his heels. A hard hand fell on his shoulder and he whirled, knocked the arm aside, threw a frantic punch at the face that loomed up again— and something hard and heavy slammed into the side of his head, sending him sprawling to his knees. He got up, half-blinded with the tears of impact, turned and ran—and smashed face-first into a solid upright, the shock almost knocking him down. Powerful hands grabbed him again. He whimpered helplessly as he was whirled around, right into an exploding blow in the head. The green darkened into black as he fell. He couldn't even put out hands to break his fall. Then something stung his arm. A needle-point. And all sensation slid away.

He came back to a conscious awareness of rhythmic explosions that hurt, that shattered, that were his head bursting, and realized first that he was still alive. He wasn't sure he was happy about that. Second, that his head was not really exploding, it just felt that way. Thirdly, as the crashing agony shrank to the point where it was containable, he discovered that his face felt flat, as if someone had stepped on it. And there was a sour-metal taste in his mouth. He remembered the needle. For dope of any kind he had a repugnance that amounted to phobia, as it posed a threat to his sensibilities, and thus his craft. By reflex, he attempted to twist away, and discovered that he was bound securely, hand and foot.

Stirred into full consciousness, he opened his eyes, the effort setting off new concussions in his skull. He stared at a near ceiling, dark and rugged, as if roughhewn from rock and lighted from the side with weird blue glare. By painful degrees he twisted his neck and head, becoming more aware with each passing moment. And the more conscious he became, the less he could be sure he was not dreaming. This place, wherever it was, looked like nothing he had ever seen before. So far as he could make out from his supine position it was a small chamber, possibly ten feet by six, and about eight feet high. He lay—had been placed—on a flat shelf that hinged out from one wall and was braced with cords to its horizontal position. As if it could be folded back to the wall when not in use. Like a bed? He wriggled, at some cost to the joints of his shoulders, which were strained against his bound hands beneath him, and determined that the shelf was covered in something resilient and slippery. So bed seemed a good guess. With considerable effort he managed to sit up without rolling off the bed, and took stock.

The strange blue light came from the walls—more accurately, from a pattern of interlaced diamonds on the walls. The light-strips seemed to have movement, a curious rippling effect, until he rolled close enough to the wall by his shoulder to see that they were, in fact, cut channels—and the light came from a steady trickling flow of liquid. The stuff had no particular smell that he could detect, nor was it warm. The liquid itself originated in a series of orifices close to the ceiling, all around. Scowling over this odd choice of illumination, he noticed an upright rectangular patch on the narrow wall at his feet, where there was no channeled liquid. In a moment it came to him that this must be a door. He craned over, precariously, and saw that the floor was all one blue glare, with ripples to indicate a steady flow.

The metal taste was almost gone now, and he was acutely aware of a growing ache in his arms and shoulders. In this light his pants looked black, and so did the stuff that was knotted about his ankles. The bonds at his wrists felt slippery smooth, like some kind of plastic, and he had more sense than to try either to burst the stuff or untie it. Only by careful straining could he take the pressure off his wrists enough to permit blood-flow, and the consequent pins-and-needles. And anyway, if this cord was the same as the stuff that supported the shelf, he hadn't a hope of snapping it. Still with caution he wriggled until he could swing his legs over the edge and down, and sit in comparative comfort. He lowered his feet gingerly into the blue. It was about three or four inches deep, cool, and felt just like ordinary water. Phosphorescence? Lifting his feet again he watched the stuff trickle off his scuff-proof plastic shoes, leaving them unaffected. Water with some kind of phosphorescence in it. A smart way of illuminating a place, provided you were not too fussy about the quality of the light. Or if you had supersensitive eyes! Venusians!

Now the shakes came. Dillard had no idea just where he was, but no doubt, now, that he was in the hands of the Venusians. And he could guess why, too. Somehow or other, he had contributed to the disaster that had wiped out that ship, and then added fuel to the flames by being caught in the act of spying—he stopped that notion flat. Couldn't be! He had seen Dekron. And Dekron must have been destroyed in that blast. Surely?

Dillard felt his head start throbbing again. His stomach complained. And this was no sort of posture to sit in for very long. Plagued by too many distractions at once, he gave up trying to make sense out of anything. Except one thing. He was a captive and helpless, and whoever held him was not likely to be gentle.

He called on mental habits that he had developed over the years, and made himself relax. When you don't know, and have no way of finding out, why knock yourself out with wild guesses? Relax. Put it out of your mind. Be patient! Wait! Some of the tension began to drain away. He shut his eyes, got as comfortable as possible—and got the immediate and positive sense that he was inside, and deep inside, some immense and solid structure. And that it was inhabited. With care he tracked down the clues that could be defined. The silent hush, the sense of massiveness, of being deep—those were instincts, without rational tags. But the presence of life was something as tangible as the faint but regular vibration he could now feel, now that he was tuned to it. That was some distant but powerful machine. That argued people, an establishment, and maintainance. And this was no ship, on that he would have staked his life. And yet, when he compared the evidence of his trained senses with the knowledge in his mind, there was no match. Hydro didn't have any structures like this. It was all water, broken only by man-made things. And this cavern, or chamber, whatever it was, was far too solid to be a construct. But he couldn't be off Hydro and down on some other planet, not so quickly. Dillard tucked in his chin and scraped it against his bare chest, and there was a rasp of bristle consonant with some hours since his last shave, but nothing like long enough to transport him on that kind of journey. He was on the point of forgetting his controlled relaxation under the irritation of so many contradictions when his ears picked up a new sound. At first faint, then growing louder, it was a regular slap-splash that baffled his imagination to interpret. Louder still, then it ceased, and that patch of wall that was free of light suddenly slid aside. It was a door, and now it framed two large stone-faced men as they moved in, one after the other, the blue-glow water splashing as they strode. Ugly enough by red light, they were creatures from nightmare now, with the shadows all wrong because the light came from below as well as the sides, and eyes so pale as to seem white, set in cavernous brow-ridges. Dillard cringed as one of them came close, drew a blade from the black plastic loincloth that seemed to be standard wear, and held it threateningly ready as his companion untied the bonds at Dillard's feet.

"Where am I?" he demanded. "What's this all about?" They ignored him until his feet were free. Then the one with the knife made a slicing gesture and spoke in that throaty whisper he had heard before. The words made no sense, but the command tone was obvious, as was the gesture. Dillard slid forward, tried his legs, managed to stand. One captor went ahead to the door, made a gesture to follow. Dillard braced his shoulders but made no other move. "Where are you taking me?" he asked. For reply, and entirely without warning, the other Venusian slid away the knife he held and brought his hand and arm back in the same movement but with the force of a flail. Edge on, it slammed against Dillard's head, to knock him sprawling, jolting down on to the edge of the couch-bed and then to the floor, where, because his arms were still fast behind him, he could have drowned, except that the man who had struck him now took him by the hair and hauled him upright again. Once more there was that harshly whispered command, the gesture, an ungentle shove at his shoulder. Dillard went, utterly cowed and only half-conscious. The man in front did a quick left turn outside the door and went away down a gently sloping passage only just wide enough to have admitted two like him abreast. Dillard, reeling, followed on. Most vivid in his mind was the ease with which the stone-face had hoisted him up. That devil was strong, his hand and flesh almost as hard as the stone it resembled, and he was just two steps behind. Dillard was no stranger to fear, but this was the first time in his life he had known blank despair.

He stumbled on almost in a coma. The passage wound steadily to the left as if circling around some tubular structure, but always going down. The man ahead tramped steadily, with a peculiar high-stepping gait that made the slap-splash noise Dillard had heard. Three inches of glowing blue water ran steadily along the floor they trod. It caught at the feet, made walking a new skill to be learned. Dillard blundered into the walls a time or two before he managed to get something of the hang of it. He learned something else, too. Whenever this passage was joined by another, there was a water-step about an inch down. He found out the hard way, by falling over the first two, agonizing his shoulders and bruising his knees. The first time, shocked by the unexpected, he stayed down there a moment shaking the daze out of his head. The guard who followed had no time to waste on words. He kicked, hard and accurately, to send Dillard plunging forward on his face, then yanked him up by the hair once more. He repeated the lesson at the second step. Dillard began to conceive a murderous hatred, a savage rage that helped to drive out other distresses. Someday, mister, he vowed internally, as he reeled forward from the second lesson. Someday, it might be my turn! But he learned to look out for the tiny furrow of ripples in the underfoot blue, and did not fall any more after that. But still the passage wound and descended, and back came the big problem. Where was this? He could devise no answer that made sense. He plodded on doggedly, and now the way ahead opened out into space under an arch. The lead guard slowed and stood aside, urging Dillard to carry on forward.

His first impression was of similarity with the control room of the Venusian ship, only now he was entering at the arena level and had to look up and around to see the circular tiers. It was difficult to estimate the size of the chamber because of the soft blue lighting, but there was no doubt at all about the concourse of people sitting there in rows and waiting in silence. Blue light trickled down the breaks between the series of steps, and in small channels around each layer, and it could have been a scene from hell. Dillard stared up at the impassive stone-faces and shivered. A solid door slid shut at his back. The two guards moved away on either side to climb to the first level and sit. He was left alone in the middle. The atmosphere was so patently one of trial that he never doubted it. Looking around again, he saw they were not all stone-faces. Curiosity stirred him just a little.

Dead ahead of him was one group of hard impassive people separated from the rest by a distinct gap on either side. And to right and left of this key group, about ten people, were two other groups, but these were the longhaired, lively, purple-eyed ones. Like AnnSmith! All the rest were stone-faces. He swung his head around slowly, taking them all in. Apart from the steady purling of the glow-water, there was silence. Just as he was on the point of shouting out something, anything, to crack the nerve-stretching silence, someone spoke out, a rich and vibrant voice, from the purple-eyed group to Dillard's right.

"You are Dennis Dillard, passenger on Venture Three, from Earth?" It was a statement rather than a question. Peering through the wrong-angle shadows, Dillard was able to identify the young man who stood to speak. There was something familiar about him.

"I am," he said, as steadily as he could manage. "Who are you?"

"I am BilliSmith, of Hesperus."

Dillard fumbled with that for a moment until a fugitive memory came back. So far as Earth was concerned, the word was still Venus, but he had heard that the descendants of the original deportees had decided to rechristen their home Hesperus, the evening star. Getting that clear, he fastened on the other name.

"Didn't I meet a relative of yours, BilliSmith, on that ship?"

"That is correct."

"She was kind to me. I should hate to think anything had happened to her—but as I have seen others, survivors, from that ship…"

"I am fit and well, DenDillard, and I thank you!" That voice came from the left-hand group, and Dillard swiveled his head to see her stand. This foul light, coming from below, threw everything into reverse relief, but he was able to recognize her, and to spot the strong resemblance between her and her brother.

"I'm very glad to see you," he said, and meant it.

"DenDillard!" The young man's voice took on an edge. "You will attend me. This is no time for trivialities!"

Dillard felt an insane desire to laugh. "It's a triviality to be concerned about somebody's safety? To show common politeness? To try to act civilized? All right, I have to admit I'm not surprised. What am I here for?"

"You are in no position to offend." The young man pointed out the obvious with force. "You will cooperate or suffer. Tell me now, what have you done with the recording spool which carries the recording of the ship?"

"That?" Dillard forgot his wry amusement as he pondered the question.

"What do you want that for?"

"Answer the question!"

"All right. I took it out of the machine. I gave it to the pilot of my hydrofoil to look after."

"Why did you do that?"

"Why? Something he said. When that ship blew up, we both saw it. He said he would have to make a report. About me. Just in case I had something to do with it. So I gave him the spool and told him to include it in his report, just to clear me of anything anybody might dream up." BilliSmith received this in silence. Dillard saw him move, cross the gap to go into a huddle with the central group, and now that his eyes were adjusting to the light, he thought he recognized Dekron again. They all looked evil, but the ship commander stood out from the others in the way he kept aiming that deadly stare of his at Dillard. But he was listening to whatever BilliSmith was saying, and so were the others. Dillard wondered why they were so worked up about his recording? It looked as if the ship's explosion had been some kind of fake, or at least a deliberate business for some reason. Dillard chased that idea down the dark alleyways of his mind and reached the suggestion that maybe he had seen something they wanted hidden. But why? If they had something to hide, why let him on the ship in the first place?

He abandoned that fruitless cogitation, to latch on to something that had been nagging at him for some time, and now became a certainty. The stone-faces had not understood a word he had said. BilliSmith wasn't a spokesman, he was an interpreter! Now that he had the tail of it, Dillard saw all sorts of confirmation in the way they sat, the way the words were being transferred by whisper all around the audience. And something else struck him. This startling difference between the Smiths, and their kind—and the others. That stray thought ran into a spark, became a flaring light of surmise in his mind. Two different kinds of people!

Venusians—and what?

Aliens! The word came by itself, rocked him until he forgot his perilous position and his physical distress. Could it be that the Venusians had succeeded where all other ships of Earth had so far failed? Was there, after all, another humanoid culture out there among the stars somewhere? That dream, half-hope, half-fear, had long been present in Man's mind, flourishing with the first mad leap into space, but diminishing fractionally with each ship that came back to report a negative. And yet, the wise ones maintained, the number of possible planets, the very vastness of space itself, made it virtually impossible that Earth alone had the privilege of spawning intelligent life. There must be others, even if we haven't found them yet. Had the Venusians done it?

Dillard rolled the stupendous idea around in his mind and knew bitterness. It would be the supreme irony if the outcasts of Venus, the disinherited, the group that had every reason to hate all that Earth stood for, should be the ones to make first contact with aliens. But it looked like it. It seemed to fit. And this obviously clandestine association on this unlikely water-planet argued no good intentions at all. They had to be hatching something. BilliSmith returned to his place and spoke again.

"DennisDillard. Who employs you?"

"Eh? Don't you know? I told your sister. Didn't I? Anyway, since you have obviously taken my gear, you should know. It's marked, ‘Epic Dramatapes, Inc. Check that, if you doubt me."

"We do not accept that. Why did you seek to inspect the ship?"

"I was not inspecting!" Dillard raised his voice in irritation. "I was just looking. I had never seen a Venusian ship before. Hesperian, if you prefer that. So far as I know, nobody has done, a sensor-tape of that kind of ship. So it would be something new. And valuable, to me. It was only to get the feel…" He swung around to appeal to AnnSmith. "I told you all about it ."

"Why?" BilliSmith demanded, the sharp monosyllable calling Dillard's attention back.

"Why not? I collect sensor-records! It's my job!"

"You said"—the young man's voice hummed now—"that such a recording would be unique, like no other ship. It could be used to identify one ship from another, that ship from others like it?" Dillard stared wonderingly. "Why, yes. It could. If you had an expert, and recordings from other ships for comparison, yes! Don't you see, that was why I deposited that recording with the ‘foil pilot, in case there was going to be an inquiry."

"There will be no inquiry. We want that recording."

"I don't see how you're going to get it," Dillard said. "Not without letting me go to get it for you. And I can't see that." He lifted his chin, stared up at the youth. "Not judging by the way you've treated me so far!" Again BilliSmith crossed over to go into conference, and now it was beyond doubt that he was translating. Dillard turned in on himself in wild surmise. Aliens! They had to be. Language alone indicated that. System-English was the first tongue of three-fifths of Earth, and a second speech to everyone else. If these stony faced people didn't understand it they had to be from somewhere else. Just where else didn't matter for the moment. What was important was this choice of Hydro as a rendezvous planet, and what they were hatching. He quailed as he realized just how deeply involved he was now, through no choice of his own. This was an enormous thing, and the bigger it was, the smaller his chance of escaping from it. He watched BilliSmith with hawk-like anxiety, but the next question caught him completely unawares.

VI

"What is your relationship with the woman, MaraHunt?" For a thick moment Dillard had difficulty breaking up the polysyllable into recognizable fractions. Then he gaped.

"Mara Hunt? What's she got to do with anything?"

"Do you deny you are working together? You came here on the same ship. You went together to the desalination plant. Subsequently, instead of returning to your ship you arranged to keep a secret rendezvous with her in the Green Salon at the Hydro Palace. You cannot deny any of this. You cannot deny that you are working with her."

"I certainly can." Dillard shook his head to try and clear the confusion in it. The way BilliSmith put it, there was a connection, but that was just coincidence. "Just a coincidence," he said. "I didn't even know she was in the Green Salon. It was no rendezvous!"

"You were watched. Commander Dekron and Weaponeer Crade observed you, saw you establish visual contact with her. Then, when you saw you were observed, you tried to escape."

"I did not! You've got it all wrong! I didn't make contact. I was just looking. Sure I saw Dekron, but…"

"And you tried to escape, but you were caught and brought here. It is self-evident. You and the woman MaraHunt are associates."

"We're not! I never saw her before in my life!"

"Then why did she try to follow you here?"

"Huh?" Dillard was caught wrong-footed again. "Follow me? Here?"

"She was intercepted in the act. And taken. And brought here under guard. Do you still deny you are associated?"

"Suit yourself," Dillard muttered. "You have this thing so screwed up I don't know what's true and what isn't. All I know is that I never saw her before. Why would I associate with her, anyway?"

BilliSmith did not answer. Once again he went into conference with the chief members of the stone-faces. They were obviously that, Dillard realized. There was much guttural whispering, and then vicious snorts from Dekron, and harsh whisperings and gestures that proved to be orders to Dillard's recent warders. They rose and tramped on out by the door he had come in through. In short order they were back, one leading, then Mara Hunt, then the second. Again the solid door rolled across and the guards spread away to their places. She looked defiant but battered. There was the beginning of a blue bruise on her left cheekbone and red handling-marks on her forearms. She had lost her cape, and her snug-fitting dark blue slacks were soaked, clinging to her legs as she moved. It occurred to Dillard that he, too, was soaking wet, and he wondered why he hadn't noticed it before. But he dismissed that, just to watch her. Battered she might be, but her glossy black hair was neat, her head high, her back straight, and smoldering fury was in her eyes as she raked the assembly with her stare.

Just for one second her blazing eyes held on Dillard and there was a something in that stare that made him stiffen up a bit and lift his chin in instinctive desire to match her slim defiance. Then, as she swung to survey the rest of the audience, he saw that her hands were bound like his own, to drag her shoulders back. BilliSmith spoke, from his original position.

"You are MaraHunt," he declared, and her eyes snapped around to him like sword-blades. Her voice sang as she replied.

"I know you, BilliSmith, just as I know several of you by sight, just as you know me. Yes, I am Mara Hunt."

The stone-faces didn't understand a word. If confirmation was needed, Dillard had it now in the way they sat absolutely unmoved. But the other contingent understood, and writhed.

He could feel them seething under that lashing scorn in her voice.

"What is the nature of your association with this man, DennisDillard?" The question came, and Mara Hunt laughed at it, throwing her head back. "So that's it! Yes, I can see why you think that we are associated. Very well, yes. I am very much associated with Mr. Dillard." There was biting scorn in her voice still. Dillard half-turned to mutter a protest, but she ignored him and went on.

"Oh yes. Mr. Dillard is, as you know, human. Of Earth. So am I. So we have a relationship, in that much. You, BilliSmith, and you, AlanBrown, GregorHoffman, LizWilson, MaryEllis—and the rest of you"—her challenging stare swept the two wing groups of purple-eyes—"also are human. You are of Hesperus, which we call Venus, and you like to nurse in your breasts the idea that you are different. But only five generations ago your ancestors were of Earth, were human. You are human. Don't tell me you have forgotten?"

"We have not forgotten!" BilliSmith shouted in sudden anger, and there was a seething outburst, silent but very real to Dillard, from his companions. "We are not likely to forget that, not ever!"

"No?" she flung the word at him. "Then what in the name of sanity are you doing conspiring, hand-in-glove, with these—things? How do you justify allying yourselves against your own species, with aliens?" There was a silence so complete that the running water sounded like a torrent. Dillard knew, now, something he had been steadfastly trying to deny to himself ever since he had walked into this arena. He was not going to get out of this alive. He knew it, and, somehow, it was a relief just to have it admitted and done with. BilliSmith swept his gaze to and fro to include his kin, then turned to face the prisoners.

"A century and a half ago," he said, "Earth cast out our ancestors. They were all, every man and woman of them, people of the finest kind. They were the cream of Earth's intellectual and philosophical development. They were people who could see, and did see, the way human culture was heading, into mass mechanization and materialism, accumulating neurosis, creeping death. And they gathered, in secret, to rescue humanity from that fate. Their idea was to restore the respect and the virtue of excellence, to bring back hopes and ambitions and goals…"

"To elect themselves as the rulers of all mankind." She interrupted him coldly. "Speak the truth, BilliSmith. They may have meant well, who knows, but they went about it the wrong way, in secret, just as you are doing now."

"Why argue?" he retorted. "The facts are beyond dispute. You cast them out, by the thousand, and you shipped them to Venus, a planet where you had never been able to establish a happy colony, or attractive conditions. You gave each one minimum survival equipment, and you left them to die!"

"Nonsense!" She scorned him. "You know better. They had maximum, not minimum equipment. And they did not die!"

"How little you know!" He smiled now, and it was not a pleasant smile.

"A hundred thousand men and women, and half of them died in the first hundred days. But the rest survived. They were our ancestors. We are not likely to forget that. Would you?"

"Certainly not. BilliSmith, this has been talked out a thousand times since then. Mistakes were made on both sides. Your side did wrong to conspire in secret, and were misunderstood. Our side did wrong in casting out the cream of its intelligence, and Earth has paid a sore price for that since, I assure you. But that wasn't me, BilliSmith. Nor you. That was one hundred and fifty years ago. We have both learned wider sanity since then."

"Are you suggesting we should come together and forget our differences? Make peace and mutual forgiveness?"

"Have you ever thought of trying it?"

"Would Earth open its doors for us to return?"

"Not all of you, no." She was patient. "Be rational. You know that is impossible. We barely have room enough for our own people…"

"And we are no longer your people. You have admitted it. So what does it matter to you who we associate with? Why do you spy on us?"

"I could tell you a tale," she said, "about scientific interest, and the need to study an alien culture, possibly to mutual benefit—and all sorts of other possible plausible things. But I won't. You can have the truth, BilliSmith. I think you are in cahoots with this crowd with some crazy idea of launching an attack on Earth. Conquest. Revenge. You name it, but it's still crazy." She said it flatly and with conviction. Dillard held his breath until the blood roared in his ears. The idea took a long time to get through. He had been taught in school, as had every other sensible citizen, that the outcasts of Venus could never mount a threat to Earth. They were too few. They lacked the technological know-how, being strictly academic types. And even if they had it, the planet lacked the necessary resources to support any such all-out effort. And so on. And he believed it. But add in an alien component, an unknown factor, and the whole idea went wild. Who could know just what kind of weapons, or technology, the stone-faces had? BilliSmith was in urgent conference again. Dillard edged close to Mara.

"Was that straight, what you just said?"

"Do you doubt it?" she muttered back. "Take a good look, Dillard. Do they strike you as amiable?"

The bruises on her face and arms were darker now. He recalled his ungentle shepherding on the way here, and his own bruises.

"You have a point," he admitted. "And you're right about the Veenies being crazy, too. I would just as soon make friends with a cobra as this lot."

He edged away again as Dekron stood and addressed the crowd in his nonvocalized, scrapy whispering. It didn't last long. As he sat the two warders rose and resumed their duties. The door rolled back. Mara went first, Dillard at her heels. He stepped close enough to demand, "What happens now?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. I don't speak the language." The march this time was brief, and brought them to a cell similar to his first one, only larger and with six of the shelf-beds. Briskly the two aliens let down a couple of the shelves. Dillard was allotted one by the simple means of a shove in the chest until he fell. His legs were scooped up, bound securely, and dropped. The guards splashed out silently, and the door rumbled shut. Dillard wriggled up on his elbows to see that Mara was tied just as he was. But her reaction was utterly different. The door was hardly closed before she had arched violently and managed to hurl herself off the shelf into the water on the floor. Another furious effort and she was over, on her knees, then standing.

"Listen!" she commanded urgently. "When I say to, you roll over. That will get your fingers to my belt. See it? That ornamental buckle is no ornament. You grab it, twist it clockwise, and pull. That will get you a knife. Be careful with it, it's sharp. Ready?"

"Yes, hey! What do I do with the knife afterward?"

"You'd better let me take it in my teeth. That way I'll be able to see what I'm doing. I'd just as soon not get sliced by accident."

"All right." He rolled over and wriggled until his bound hands were close to the edge. His fingers met the firm flesh of her stomach.

"Down a bit! More! Right, now twist. And pull. Harder! You've got it. Now, just hold very still while I get it."

He lay still with the angular metal thing in his fingers, felt her breath on his wrists, and then a tug, the brush of her cheek, and let go but kept still otherwise. In a moment he felt movement at his bonds, and then a loosening, and freedom. He moved the upper arm, and had to grit his teeth to cut the groan from torturing sinews. But he was free. He levered himself up and over, turned to face her, to take the slim knife from her grinning teeth. It was a blade about two and a half inches long, and very thin and flat.

"Be careful now," she warned. "It's flexible. Has to be. The curved edge is a razor, the other a diamond-file. Ready?" She wheeled around and he sliced the black ropy cords at her wrists until she was as free as he. Moments later she had the knife again and their feet were free too.

"You must be a very confused man, Dillard," she said. "And I can't say I blame you. Enemy aliens are quite a thing to take in one mouthful."

"I had sort of guessed aliens," he said, "but you seem to know all about it already!"

"Not all," she denied, massaging her wrists. "Only bits and hints, and some guesswork. What I don't understand is how you came to be in the Hydro Palace. I thought you'd gone up with that ship. I never saw you leave it. When I spotted you in the Green Salon I thought I was seeing things. Spooks! I still don't get it."

He scowled in thought, reconstructing the scene. "I think I know how you missed me," he said. "The ship was free-floating, ready to jump, so the exit hatch, and the ‘foil, would be on the far side where you couldn't see. I damn near didn't get off, though."

He told her briefly what had happened and she listened intently. She took him back over a point or two about the interior of the ship, but she was obviously puzzled by something. When he was done explaining he said, "Look, you seem to have a fair idea what this is all about, but me—

nothing! Can't you explain, just a little?"

"There's not much time," she said, flexing her wrists. "We didn't cut these ropes for the fun of it. Soon as I feel fit enough I'm leaving. I'm assuming that suits you too? Right, then you'd better limber up. Space only knows what we might run into." Seeing the sense in that he began stretching and flexing his arms, and trying his feet.

"You got on the ship in the first place," she explained, "because Captain Conway made the request, and they didn't dare do anything to excite any curious reactions. That's obvious, so there had to be something odd about the ship. They didn't know who you were, but once you said your recording was unique, that it could identify it, they flew into a panic, shot you away out of it, evacuated the thing and then blew it by remote. That also explains why they want that recording."

"But why blow the ship? What are they trying to hide?"

"That's something I don't know, yet." Mara Hunt made one more vigorous stretch, flexing her whole body, then declared, "I'm ready. Let's go!"

Dillard turned with her, then said, "What about the door? Suppose it has some kind of catch?"

"I doubt it." She stepped close, and as she moved her eyes in quick examination, it began to rumble. Before either of them could move it was open, to reveal AnnSmith standing there, frozen in surprise. Next moment the surprise broke into quick movement. AnnSmith started to duck back, Mara Hunt struck forward with outstretched hands, grabbed and heaved, dragging the girl inside, spinning her, clamping one hand over her mouth.

"Fix that door, Dillard!" she rapped. "Quickly, before someone comes by to surprise us."

Dillard fumbled for just a moment, until he found a slot cut in the surface where a hand would naturally go. His fingertips encountered a lever within. Heaving on it slid the door shut, and the lever moved, then settled. Some sort of catch, he guessed, and spun around to see Mara still holding the girl securely. AnnSmith did not seem to be offering any resistance.

"It's all right," he said urgently. "We aren't going to hurt you."

"The hell we're not," Mara disagreed. "If she lets out one yell for help, or anything else foolish, I'll break her neck!"

"Then you'll have to break mine too," he declared, surprising himself by his sudden determination. "She's not going to do us any harm, I tell you. Let her go. Give her a chance to explain."

"All right, but let me get my back to the door first." Mara swung her captive around, shoved her away and put her back to the sliding slab. Dillard noted the razor-sharp knife in her hand, then looked at the Venusian girl.

"Why did you come here?" he asked. There was no fear in his mind now. This close, he could once more feel her emotions. He knew she was disturbed, even frightened, but not threatening. Her first words confirmed that.

"I wish you no harm, DenDillard," she said. "I had to tell you. The Roggans say you have discovered too much, and that you must die, both of you. They will kill you. But I had to come and tell you that it is not my wish, person-to-person. Our quarrel is with Earth."

Dillard was confused again. He felt sure there were values and meanings here that were going over his head, but there was no doubt in his mind as to her feelings. Seen now, in this weird blue glow, she looked like a silver goddess. Only the larger irises, and the lambent violet glow of her eyes, served to make her different from any other Earthwoman, and she had a vibrant poise, and a shape, that any Earthwoman would have sold her soul to own. But what was the subtle stress in the way she spoke of

"person-to-person?" Mara Hunt seemed to understand.

"I know about your strong community sense, AnnSmith," she said. "It developed in the bad days, when you had to band together for survival. It was during that time that you all learned to think on two levels. For the communal welfare—and for your own personal satisfaction. And to keep the two in separate compartments in your minds."

"It was necessary then. It is still necessary, sometimes, that I as a member of the group shall agree to and permit things which I as a person do not approve. I am one. The group is all."

"Yes. I know. But it won't work now, my dear." Mara's voice was unusually gentle. "In the name and tradition of Hesperus, you hate all Earth people. But I am an Earth person. Do you hate me? Do you hate Dillard, here? Enough to stand by and let him be killed?"

"For the good of Hesperus—yes!"

"You really mean that," Dillard said slowly. "You'd go along with something you don't agree with, for the sake of a principle. I can understand that. I've done it. I have to do it, often. I have to drive myself into things that I knew were going to scare the hell out of me, because I'd be unable to look myself in the face afterward if I didn't. And so long as I know the outcome is going to be worthwhile."

"You, too?" AnnSmith's eyes were huge as they met his.

"Oh yes. I know what it's like. But you're away off on just one bit of it. The outcome has to be worth it."

"Restitution! My people will walk the face of the Earth again!"

"They won't. Look, if you're really tied up with these aliens—what did you call them, Roggans?—and even if they have something really hot in the line of weapons. And even if you get organized, and attack Earth, you don't stand a chance of winning. Not a chance!"

"If you mean many people will be killed on both sides, I know. I do not like that. I do not like killing. But if you say we cannot succeed, you are wrong. We can. Earth has grown fat and lazy, overcrowded and anarchic. You could not scrape up an army, or a space-force, of any power, not without a lot of time and trouble. And you will not have that time."

"I didn't mean it that way. If you go ahead with your plan there will be people killed, sure. On both sides. Far more than you think. But you can't possibly win. Ann, there are five billion of us. And, if you've read any history at all, you must know that we know how to make war. We may not be much good at anything else, but we do know that."

"We have weapons, too," she declared, but he could feel her pain, the way her mind cringed away from the thought of slaughter.

"Weapons?" Mara Hunt joined in. "My dear, you have no idea just what you could run into. At the time your ancestors were being captured and shipped away to Venus, the armed forces of Earth had weapons powerful enough and awful enough to fry the entire surface of the Earth into a cinder, and to insure the end of all possible forms of life on its surface for ever and ever, amen—ten times over! That very knowledge was one of the reasons why the major powers were so eager to get your ancestors away out of it, before they triggered off doomsday. It looks now like you're all set to do it again!"

"We have weapons!" the girl repeated stubbornly. "And ours are now, not yesterday!"

Dillard stretched out a hand to touch Mara on the shoulder. "Let me," he said, very gently. From some hitherto unsuspected inner resource he felt an upsurge of warm confidence. He knew that AnnSmith, for all her outward assurance, wanted desperately to be persuaded out of her elected role, wanted a good honest reason to change her mind. And he felt sure he had one.

"You have no weapons," he said. "Not really. The Roggans have them. They have the know-how, and, from what I've seen, the right kind of personality. They are the warmongers, aren't they?" She didn't reply, but he knew he had the right answer. "You can do the rest of the sum just as well as I can, now. All right, you go past us somehow. You carry out your plan. You attack Earth. It's one of two things. Win—or lose. Even suppose you win, and inherit what's left of Earth, how long d'you think you'll keep it? Do you really think the Roggans will go away? Or be content with a fair share? You know them better than I do. Can you really believe that?" He had her. He knew he had her suppressed fears and anxieties pushed to breaking point. But he was as surprised as anyone when she suddenly wilted, her eyes flooding with tears. What came next was automatic, and as natural as drawing breath. Her face went up to his chest, her cheek snuggling close, and she clung to him like a lost child. He put his arm around her gently, stroked the shaking silk of her shoulder.

"I have felt this a long time," she choked, "but the others are so hotheaded, so eager to grasp at anything that will offer revenge, they have lost the ability to feel, where the Roggans are concerned. Because the Roggans have no feelings. They have cold blood, no emotions. They know only efficiency and results. What shall I do, DenDillard? I cannot betray my people!"

He held her securely, his hand idly patting her shoulder, and gave thought to her question. But the more he thought, the more he ran into a dead end, and into concern that grew rapidly into tension. He stared at Mara over AnnSmith's shoulder, surprised a savage gleam there that vanished as fast as he saw it, and then Mara shook her head.

"It's too late for that, AnnSmith," she said. "You're already betrayed. Let me put it to you." Her voice was steel hard now. "As you see, we are on our way out. Escaping. You've walked into it. We have to think of our own necks. So what else can we do but eliminate you? Or take you with us? We can't just leave you here."

AnnSmith turned her head. Dillard felt her stiffen. He said, "She wouldn't betray us."

"She doesn't have to. When the Roggans find us gone and her here they will make the obvious conclusion. Wouldn't you?"

AnnSmith swung her head back to stare at Dillard, and now she was full of terror, her face a mask of dread.

"You'll have to come with us," he said. "Help us. There's nothing else for it, not now."

"But—that will mean the destruction of everything we have worked for. I can't do it!"

"You have to. You're dead if you stay, now."

"And we're dead unless we get moving fast," Mara snapped. "We've wasted enough time as it is." She exhibited her knife. "Make up your mind, AnnSmith. Come with us, or we leave you here—for the Roggans to find."

Dillard sensed a moment of extreme tension, then the Venusian girl sagged.

"Very well, I will come with you. I will help as much as I can."

"Right. Lead on, then. You know the way out of here?"

"Yes." She moved to the door, slid it open cautiously and peered out.

"There are several ways. Come!"

"You follow her, Dillard. I'll bring up the rear, just in case we meet opposition. Go ahead, AnnSmith."

Dillard went out into the blue-glare passage close on the heels of the Venusian girl, and for the first time it came home to him that so far they had only escaped from bonds and a cell. They still had the unknown hazards of the building to pass. Whatever it was. AnnSmith had turned right, and now the gradient was upward, but that was the only change. It was still narrow stone walls and rippling blue water all around. She halted, peered around a corner, went on by a side-passage, and he followed, wondering what any of them would do if they suddenly encountered one of the stone-faced aliens. He remembered how strong they were, and how ruthless, and he felt cold. Pressing up close on the girl in front he asked,

"They were going to kill us, you said? How?"

"Drugs first," she whispered over her shoulder, "to make you talk, to discover how much you know and how many others share the knowledge. And then you would be cut up for food."

"For food?" He echoed, hardly able to believe his ears.

"It has been the Roggan custom for many generations, to use their convicted criminals for food. They live in a harsh environment. They cannot afford to waste anything."

He fell back a pace or two and ordered his stomach to stop heaving. Something like this was to be expected, he told himself. The clues were at hand, now he had been alerted to them. For Venusian and Roggan to meet on any equable basis the backgrounds had to be similar, and the Venusian environment was stringent enough. But cannibalism? Cringing away from that thought, he came up close behind her again as she halted at another intersection, and an old question came back to him.

"Where are we, anyway?" he asked. "What is this place?" She turned on him in amazement, but before she could answer, Mara Hunt moved close enough to whisper to him, "We're under the sea, Dillard. Where else?" The shatteringly obvious answer struck him silent. She went on: "Could you think of a better place to hide, on a water-world? Go on, she's away again." He shambled forward following AnnSmith, feeling suddenly that he was walking through a nightmare. And yet, thinking it over, it fitted such a lot of pieces together. Venusians were well accustomed to a watery world, to constant damp. "They swim the way we walk." Mara had said that. And if the alien Roggans came from a similar kind of planet, they too would be at home here. But it must have taken time, and a lot of effort, to build this place. He didn't know the full extent of it, but the parts he had traversed so far would add up to a considerable size. But that slotted something else into place.

"I'm beginning to get it," he muttered over his shoulder to Mara. "You know there's a Venusian ship in and out of here regularly?"

"So?"

"So, does anybody count how many ships depart from Venus, and come back? Does anybody count all the ships that splash down on Hydro, and where they're from? And compare?"

"You're getting smart," she hissed, showing her teeth a grin. "You can see this underwater rabbit warren wasn't put together overnight, can't you? And the Venusians couldn't have done it alone. This controlled water-flow illumination, for instance, is some kind of specially-bred algae, and that means dosing equipment somewhere, and powerful pumping machinery to get the accumulated water out of the basement. That's technology, Dillard, and the Venusians are weak on that."

"With spaceships?"

"Prefabricated parts, built on Earth and shipped out to them. Didn't know that, did you? But if the Roggans have technology, and the wit to make a few of their ships look like Venusian craft—you get the idea?"

"So that's why they blew the ship?"

"And that's why they want your recording, and your hide, Dillard!" He gasped, then cut it off short as AnnSmith hissed a warning and fell back, flattening herself to the wall. He did likewise, and heard the regular splash-slap of feet approaching.

"Back up and in here!" Mara muttered urgently, and he turned, touching AnnSmith. They scattered to a side alley and cowered there, to see five impassive Roggans come striding past, three men and two women. Dillard realized all over again how utterly alien they were and his insides shrank at the thought of what would happen if they fell into those hands again. The aliens went on into the dim blue and the fugitives started moving again, treading cautiously through the purling water. It seemed a lifetime to Dillard since he had seen sun and breathed dry air. A long-forgotten question came to him.

"What about Dr. Stanley?" he asked. "Where does he fit into this?"

" Fons et origo, if you recall any Latin," Mara whispered, "He came here, in the first place, to do some highly important research. That's genuine. But he is by nature a highly inquisitive man. And he can count, add and subtract. He counted the Venusian ships. He knew, as I know, that Venus has only a score of ships altogether, and has to strain to maintain even those. Also, that water-plant processes something like fifteen million gallons of water every hour. It all has to be screened. The perfect spot for finding any debris that might be sculling about. There's quite a bit, naturally, but some of it was queer stuff. Plastics and other materials that did not originate on Earth, or Venus either."

"That file!" he gasped. "Artifacts native to Hydro—"

"A cover only, in case anyone got curious. But there had to be something funny going on. He checked, for instance, the recorded appearances of Venusian ships on other planetary colonies like Castor, Pollux, Lyra, Vega—everywhere there's any excuse for a ship to go. And compared numbers. And they didn't add up. So he sent for me." Dillard absorbed that in silence as he tramped on. They had been going steadily upward for some time now along a straight gallery, and he thought he could see an open chamber showing ahead. AnnSmith was moving faster now. He slowed, turned his head.

"Dr. Stanley sent for you? Who are you?"

She met his stare with a wry grin. "I don't often get asked that, and it's just as well, because it isn't easy to answer. You never heard of the Philosophy Corps, did you?" His blank stare was enough answer. "Never mind. Perhaps I'll be able to explain to you sometime. We're a bunch of people who make it our business to keep a careful eye on various unpleasant things. It's just a job. Leave it for now. I think we're about at the end of our trip."

He moved on to close up to AnnSmith. She stood in an archway that led to a chamber reminiscent of the trial arena, but with differences. It was a lot smaller, for one thing, and from the dished roof descended a thick column of what looked like copper-bronze alloy. The lower end of the column lost itself in a basin some fourteen feet across that was full and steadily overflowing in a chatter of water. Staring in wonder, Dillard saw that the water cascading from the basin was clear, and fell into an annular channel which, in turn, overflowed into another, and then another, descending like an ornamental fountain. But at each leap it grew progressively more luminous, until it ended in a broad circular bed, from which it flowed away through several narrow cuts. As the fugitives stood under the archway they had to go down a few steps to that pool, and where they stood was comparatively dry.

"That the way out?" Mara demanded, and as AnnSmith nodded, she added, "All right, what are we waiting for?"

"There is someone coming," the Venusian girl said, and Dillard started, because he had felt exactly the same intuition. "We had better hide," AnnSmith warned. "Here, in this other archway. It is a tank storage, where the flame-seeds are kept." She led them swiftly to a dimlit chamber where there were several broad-bellied jars of glossy black stuff, and where the only light came from the intense blue glare that spouted up from the jars' mouths. Turning, pressing against the wall, they waited. Mara fidgeted.

"How do you know there's anyone coming?" she demanded, and Dillard frowned. Obviously she couldn't feel it, so there was no point in trying to explain. But he could, quite distinctly. In a moment the intuition was justified. There came a disturbance in the regular chatter of the water, and agitation in the basin as heads bobbed up. For an awful moment Dillard thought he was seeing yet more aliens, of a different kind, until he realized that these were people wearing some kind of aqualung. He watched them climb out and down the cascading terraces, and then begin peeling off the odd harnesses they wore. A transparent face-mask that clung from brow to under the chin was secured by a headband. It fed two tubes that curled back over the shoulders to a small and compact unit between the shoulder blades. From there, like shapeless wings, fell a flapping and saturated quantity of gray-white filmy stuff, secured at either wrist and with a waistband.

The six newcomers were all Venusian, all sober-faced and intent. Their worry was as apparent to Dillard as a strong smell would have been, and he knew AnnSmith could feel it too. He put out a hand to touch hers, to grip gently in reassurance. Within a minute or two the six, four men and two women, had shed their swimming gear and went away by a distant arch, on the other side of the chamber.

"You know anything about a cape-lung?" Mara asked, and Dillard shook his head. She eased out into the chamber, looking around, then beckoned him to follow. "This is where you'll have to learn fast," she said. "Not that there's a lot to it, so long as you keep your head and don't pant. You check me, AnnSmith, just in case I get something wrong. It's been a while." They were across the blue pool now and on the first tier of the cascade. The recently departed Venusians had dunked their equipment in the water, each set secured by a fine line to a hook apparently there for the purpose. Mara hoisted out one. It looked like nothing at all except a gray-white mass of slime until she carefully freed the face-and-tube section.

"Now," she said intently, "this part over the face, make sure the seal is good all around the edge, and the unit square in the middle of your shoulder blades, right? Then you shackle the belt around your waist, here, and these straps around each wrist, so that the rest of it is free to hang in back. In the mask"—she parted it wide to show him— "this ridge sits on your nose, for location. This stiffener tucks against your chin, is a bone-conduction talk unit. That's all the works. This unit merely adjusts the mixture so you won't get CO chokes or nitrogen narcosis. The slimy 2

stuff is permeable membrane, is a lung in actual fact."

"You need to inflate," AnnSmith put in. "You press here, on the right-hand tube, which holds open a non-return valve. You take two or three breaths in, breathing out into the filter-cape with the valve shut…" She paused, stared at him. "What is wrong?"

"You know damned well!" he choked, staring from her to the clammy thing she held. "I can't! I can't! I'm scared! I can't even swim!"

"Oh no!" Mara growled. "Dillard, this is no time to go neurotic on us. You have to swim, there's no other way!"

"You do not have to swim!" AnnSmith corrected, suddenly firm. "You just put this on, remember not to pant or gasp quickly, because the filter-membrane cannot handle that, and just drift. There is this line, see?

You will be linked with myself and MaraHunt. You will not have to do anything at all, except be passive."

"You don't know how I feel—all that water out there—!"

"I know. Your feelings are mine to share. But feeling and doing are different, you know? One cannot help feeling, but one can control one's doing. Be afraid, but come. I was afraid, but I came with you." Her steady words helped him realize that this, after all, was no more than he had done many a hundred times before, cringing inwardly from some fearful prospect, yet driving himself into it just the same.

"All right," he mumbled. "Check me while I put the thing on."

"And move!" Mara urged. "Every moment we lose means the Roggans are that much closer on our heels."

"They will not come this way," AnnSmith contradicted. "I chose it for that reason. They use lower exits and entrances than this, because they go up to the surface very seldom, and then only at night." She watched Dillard get into his mask, saw him breathe enough to inflate the cape-lung at his back, and patted his shoulder in approval. Then, swift and supple, she copied him and went ahead up the cascade terraces and over the edge of the basin. She had the trailing end of his line. She looped and knotted it to her own and let him see it done, then down she went, out of sight. Stiff-kneed and inwardly cringing, he followed, clambered over the edge and felt Mara's hand at his belt. She was knotting her line there, jerked it tight, made a hand gesture to him to go on. He let himself down into the water, felt it rise up and over his head, and the panic was a bursting pressure in his chest. He saw the open end of the column—which was really a tube—and ducked to get under it, then kicked and tried to spring upward. There was no sense of movement, only a plunge into darkness. Banded constriction gripped his chest, the feeling of being caught and crushed. Then his head nudged something solid, and the panic doubled. A door or something! A tube was blocked! In that instant, before he could scream out, a voice said, flute-clear in his head, "It is all right, DenDillard. There is an S-bend in the column. It is an air lock. Follow the line."

"Ann?" His nervous question came out a high-pitched quack that shocked him. He tried again and the result was the same.

"You must pitch your voice low," she said, "because sound-speed in water is fast, much faster than in air, and the tonal values are distorted." To prove it he heard another quacking, shrill and almost impossible to understand, and it was an effort to realize that it was Mara Hunt, urging him on. Forgetting his panic in the novelty, he managed to scrape around the bend, saw ahead of him a ring of blue flame and struggled toward it, through it, and then he was out. He knew, instantly, that there was vast space around him, even though he could see nothing but blue-black void at first. Then, dimly, he saw AnnSmith, in front and moving, looking like a silver dream against the blue twilight. He made motions, tried to swim as he had seen people do in drama, and drew up close to her. It had a dreamy quality, this sense of hanging poised and without motion in a limitless blue-black space. AnnSmith looked like something from a fairytale, the black of her brief loincloth invisible against that backdrop, and her torso and legs like shimmering silver but solid, whereas the cloud of her hair and the billowing gray of her cape-lung were insubstantial mist. Now Mara came to join them and they hung there, all three, slowly revolving. Mara was just a mask with filmy wings and a white body, the rest invisible. Over her shoulder as they spun he saw the blue circle that marked the end of the tube. And as a huge black shadow darker against the blue, he saw the place they had just left. A hillside, irregular and jagged, where long-haired weeds and plants waved in the ceaseless currents. And he was no longer afraid.

"It's a strange feeling," he said, remembering to sink his voice into a growl, and intrigued by the way it came out tenor. "Is this why the Roggans talk the way they do? In that whisper?"

"Not a whisper,‘* AnnSmith corrected, in that flute-like treble her voice was now, "but subsonic, or almost. From twenty to a hundred cycles per second, in air. Low-pitch travels further and more coherently in water." Mara squeaked. Then she tried again, just a note. And again, but now it was better. "Ah—ah—ah—I think I'm getting it, but I shall have a sore throat if I talk too much like this. I'm no contralto. You know where we are, Ann. Better get moving before they miss us and come looking."

"We are moving. Look behind!" Dillard wriggled around in mid-air—it felt like mid-air—and saw that the dark hillside was gone out of sight. "We are in a current flow that will take us part of the way."

"How do you know where we are?" he asked. "It's the middle of nowhere to me. No marks, clues, anything!"

"It is a sense one develops, under pressure of circumstance." He sensed bitterness, although there was none in her voice. "I have many senses you do not have. I am Hesperian!"

Now he felt more than just bitterness. He was suffused by a wash of chokingly lonely, outcast, angry-lost feeling from her that brought sympathetic tears to his eyes in a moment. And he knew why she felt like that.

"It's not true," he said impulsively. "The way you're feeling, it's not right."

"How do you know what I am feeling?"

"But of course I do. You're feeling sick and empty inside, and lost, because you're different from us and all alone, now that you have deserted your own people. And that's just not true, Ann!" Clumsily he propelled himself near enough to be able to offer his hand to grasp hers. "Look, this ability to share my feelings—if that is one of the senses you have that you think makes you different, then you're wrong. I have it, too. And I know people who have orientation sense. You're stuck with this notion that because you're the fifth generation on Venus you are somehow not human, and it isn't true."

"She doesn't share my feelings!"

"Mara? Maybe not, but that's only because she hasn't developed the gift. I have. I suppose it's because I work in that field anyway, sensor-recording helps to fine it up. Ann, you have certain talents. Your home environment helped to develop them, but you had to be born with them in the first place. And they are human, those gifts. Quite well known!"

"He's right!" Mara chimed in, sounding like a very small schoolboy just out of choir practice. "You had me baffled for a while there, you two, but I think I've caught up now. He's right. We humans have all kinds of talents we hardly suspect, because we seldom need to use them. But when it comes to survival, we manage to turn on all kinds of things. Incidentally, survival can be bought at too high a price. How far down are we?"

"About one thousand feet," AnnSmith said. "We are rising slowly. You are quite right to remind me that we should not rise to the surface too rapidly. It would be uncomfortable, even for me."

"The bends, just in case you didn't know, Dillard," Mara explained.

"These lung units overcome most of the hazards. They're designed to do just that, but even they have limits."

Dillard breathed in carefully, suddenly very conscious of the vast waters around him. "Where abouts are you taking us? Where are we, anyway?"

"If we follow the drift for some time longer and then strike off, we will come up by the water-plant. As for where we are"—AnnSmith extended her arm back the way they had drifted. "You saw that hill we came from?

That is one extremity of an island continent about five hundred miles long. The water-plant stands on just such another submerged mountain. Long ago, before the ice caps melted and raised the sea level, there were two large island continents on Roggan. One was called…"

"Just a minute!" Mara's voice sailed up into a squeak of astonishment.

"You mean— this is Roggan? The aliens belong here?"

"Of course. You didn't know that?"

"I certainly didn't. How long have you known?"

"Ever since this planet was first discovered by Solarian ships. It was a ship from Hesperus that found it."

"That's true," Dillard put in. "Captain Conway told me that himself. And that it was your people who built all the establishments."

"My father was a young man on that first ship, was one of the men who planned and built the water-plant basis, with the idea of establishing a base and a fueling station. Our people did all the pioneer work. We tried to claim rights on Hydro in the name of Hesperus. It was hard work, and dangerous, but we did it. And then there was a legal dispute over territorial rights. We were cheated, somehow, out of everything except a minimum royalty on the operation of the plant. A legal quibble about sovereign rights, and territorial rights. Now it is owned and operated by an independent body of profiteers!"

"Conway told me a bit about that, too. You had a raw deal, Ann!"

"There's quite a lot about this whole thing that is raw," Mara snapped.

"Earth has much to be ashamed of. I can only assure you, my dear, that we are not all cursed with the same idiocy. There are quite a few of us working to bring about some kind of understanding between us. You could help a lot, if you will."

"So you say. It does not matter very much now, one way or the other. My life is forfeit. I cannot go back." AnnSmith said it quietly, then put out her arm again, in another direction. "It is time to strike away from the current now," she said. "Follow me."

She spun and then leaned forward into flight, her slim arms reaching out and stroking the blue. It was flight, Dillard realized, as he made an awkward attempt to mimic her movements and fell into a lazy, dreamlike action in which he was weightless, but without the falling terror of zero-gravity. His breathing no longer troubled him. Now that his eyes were adjusted he glided at the indeterminate interface between a dark purple "sky" and bottomless blue-black. And—surely—those were lights, away down there?

"That couldn't be a city down there, beneath us?" He asked.

"It is. At least, I can tell you only what I have been told, not what I have seen. Some of our people have been down there, with special equipment, but the strain is very great and we cannot endure it for long."

"You mean the Roggans can stand it, down there, without pressure suits?"

"They have had two thousand years and more of learning how. It is not easy to work out the time scale exactly, but it must be that long since they fought their last war. Two nations, one against the other. Fire-bombs melted the ice caps and Roggan died. All except one ship, a warship that had been crippled and blown into cometary about their sun. When it got back, Roggan was wiped out. But that handful of people refused to give in. They took the ship down, made landfall down there, lived in it—and learned, by degrees, how to reclaim their submerged city. They sealed it off, bit by bit, restarted industries, food supplies, relearned technology. They hollowed out whole mountains and hills. It was on one of those that our people lowered the first pylons and embedded them, for the water-plant. That's where we met the Roggans for the first time."

"And for fifty years you've been dealing with them, swapping secrets with them, and not saying a word about it?" Mara accused.

"Why should we tell you?" AnnSmith demanded, very simply. "What would you have done? Would you have had any mutual sympathy for a people who had lost their home planet through hazards of the distant past?"

"You learned their history," Dillard put in. "You knew they had wiped themselves out in a suicidal war. And yet you made friends with them?"

"Ancestors," AnnSmith retorted. "Theirs, and ours. History! Must I suffer for what someone did a hundred years ago? Or a thousand? Two thousand?"

"Yes, but," he argued, "surely you can see what the Roggans are?"

"We know that they are a hard and ruthless people. They would not have survived otherwise. And we Hesperians tend to be soft. Did you know that? We come from a line of thinkers and idealists, not workers and pragmatists. We were a defeated and hopeless people until we met them and learned how it is possible to survive far worse things than we had known. And fight back."

"Ye-es," Mara commented. "We'd better talk about that a bit more later on. Frankly I think you were psychologically ripe to be fooled. You had a raw deal from Earth, but it's nothing to what the Roggans will do to you, once you've served their purpose."

"So you say," AnnSmith retorted. "You are judging them in human terms, and they are not human. For one thing, they have no dreamers, no theoreticians. No parasites. Everyone earns a living somehow. No one is idle."

"Like an anthill? And they do have dreamers, believe me, if they think they are going to take over Earth. Whoever started that crazy nonsense?"

"I am not sure." AnnSmith sounded indifferent as they swam steadily on. Dillard kept staring down, seeing the tiny, faraway lights, trying to visualize cities similar to those on Earth, but all watertight and populated by hordes of stone-faces all busily working. All he could get was a blurred vision of swarms of gray beetles squirming through ooze.

"We met and talked," AnnSmith said. "In the process of learning their tongue we exchanged ideas, and a few skills. These lung-capes are an improved form of something we had, but the sonic units are theirs entirely. We had a few solid-state tricks new to them. They have fabrication processes adapted to underwater and high humidity which are completely new to us. They also have biological techniques we do not have. A fecundity serum, for instance, which gives them total and positive control of breeding and population. And they know a trick or two about getting power from water. And minerals from water, too. And we compared histories; in telling them about our world as it is, we had to tell them how it had been once. The idea that one day we would earn the right to walk the Earth again— hush!" Her gentle tone sharpened suddenly in warning. "Please be absolutely still, and silent. There's someone near." VII

Dillard didn't ask how she knew. He wasn't even curious. The utter certainty in her voice was enough to make him freeze at once. In the same instant the beautiful blue-violet vastness that had seemed so wonderful now became a trap. He was defenseless, out in the open, vulnerable. Then, over the hammer of blood in his ears, he heard a distant rhythmic noise, a steady thumping for all the world like a crowd of people hand-clapping in unison with gloves on. It grew louder. He saw, not too far below and ahead, vague movement that at first was no more definite than a curtain fluttering in a breeze, but solidified, by degrees, into a wedge-shaped formation of things. White bodies. People swimming.

They swam in perfect stroke like a squad of marching men, arrowing in the dark blue like so many white geese. It was the beat of their multiple arms and legs that he heard, and his mind served him up the answer to the riddle even as he stared and froze and tried to wish himself invisible. That steady beat was well below the audible range, but the bone-conduction speakers were designed to alter that, to facilitate speech under water. So he could "hear" that squad swimming by. And now he remembered reading, somewhere, that the larger predators of the fish world could also hear their prey in the water. But these were Roggans. He counted them. Fifteen, all in step, and dragging something in their midst that was not a man at all, but some kind of cylinder. They went by down there, cold and intent about their business, and Dillard found time to be glad they hadn't been Venusian. Had they been, they would have sensed the fugitives. That thought stayed with him as the marching beat faded slowly into the distance, and AnnSmith murmured, "They are gone. It is safe to move again."

"If that had been a squad of your people," he said, "we'd have been detected. They'd have felt us."

"That's right. Empathy works even in water."

"I wasn't thinking along those lines," he retorted, stung by her mocking.

"I was thinking—they can't feel you, or me, at a distance, can they? Can you feel them?"

"No," she said. "Not in the way you mean. I can sense something there, but only as you would be aware of a solid object like a stone, or a wall. Not personally, not with feelings."

"That's what I thought. And it only goes to point up the thing. We are human, all of us. All the same kind. They are different, alien. Do you still think you'd get a better deal from them than you would from us, your own flesh and blood?"

"That is a silly argument, and a stupid question," she answered. "An appeal to the emotions. I give you facts: we have been cast out by Earth; the people of Earth have robbed us, cheated us; even now they believe us to be monsters. These are facts. From the Roggans, however, we have had understanding, sympathy even, in their style, and help. These also are facts. I prefer them to your talk of what might be." With that she rolled over vigorously and began to swim, reaching for the distance with long powerful strokes, her cape-lung shimmering above and behind her shoulders like the Stardust robe of some Valkyr, the. twin curves of her bosom lifting and sliding to the pull of her pectoral muscles. He rolled and scissored and tried to emulate, but was aware of his awkwardness. Then Mara came up and to one side of him, drew ahead, and he was in the humiliating position of being towed by the pair of them. Below—he snatched a glance—it was now as black as midnight. He couldn't keep up. He struggled to remember that he must not gasp and pant, but it was effort piled on effort, and he was on the point of calling out for a rest when he realized they were heading into the side of another hill, swooping up to it. Ahead, he saw AnnSmith disappear into a gully fringed with waving weeds. He followed, into the steep-sided cleft that must have once been a swiftly flowing stream-bed.

It was black-dark here, with only now and again the glint of blue from a cluster of writhing fronds, or the quick scuttle of a cloud of little fish all alight, but he knew they were climbing steadily. His groping hands met weeded rock again and again. Then, overhead, the water was brighter blue and he could see as they arched over an edge and on to a gently sloping plain. The blue brightened, faded into vivid green. AnnSmith slackened her pace.

"Soon," she said, "we will come to a pylon-foot. We go straight up. The water-plant is directly above."

"We should take it easy," Mara warned. "Give time to adjust."

"If you think it is wise," AnnSmith agreed, but with a bite in her voice.

"You should know that the squad we saw must have come from here. There is nowhere else they could have been in this direction. Where one squad is, others may be, or may come. If we are caught in the water the end will be certain, and violent."

"We don't seem to have a lot of choice. And there's the pylon now. What do you say, Dillard?"

"Are you asking me?" he panted, shaking with the effort to keep his breaths long and steady. "That's a laugh. Nobody has bothered about my opinion so far. For what it's worth, I can't get out on to dry land fast enough!"

"All right. Lead the way, Ann. Better the devil we know." He saw AnnSmith reach out to touch the silvery column of the pylon-leg and then dart upward, paddling along its surface. He followed, using the rivet-heads like handgrips to propel himself after her. The water grew more and more bright, a green that was a flame and dazzle. But then, all at once, the light went out, became a dim twilight, and he reasoned that they were now in the shadow of the plant itself. His fingertips hurt from the constant shift along the metal. Then it was his whole hands. And his toes throbbed, and there grew a steel band around his neck just above his shoulder muscles. Now he was seeing dancing fire-spots on his retina, like the grandfather of all the bilious attacks he had ever had. Cramp knotted his fingers, locked his elbows and knees. And wrists and ankles. It was as if some invisible demon had hold of all his joints and was crushing them in a vice. He wanted to scream, but his throat was bloated so that every breath was a scorching agony.

Past the streaking fireballs in his vision he saw the twilight green changing to blue again, to ripples and movement. And then his head broke the surface and he peered, half-blind, at a weed-stained wall of rubberized concrete. His shoulders screeched rustily as he hoisted his arms, got his knotted claw-fingers over the edge, and heaved. And almost passed out from the hellish pain, plus the shattering fact that he now had weight again, that his bent and broken body weighed like lead. Strong fingers grabbed his wrists and pulled. He scrambled out and lay helpless as those fingers ripped the mask and fittings from his face, dragged away the belt and straps. He could do nothing to help. His entire body was one huge wire-tight convulsion of fiery agony, each breath a torment, movement a torture. Through a red haze he saw Mara come out and flop and writhe into spasms as AnnSmith stripped her of her cape-lung. He knew exactly how she felt, and wished he didn't.

From some buried source he recovered enough sanity to remember what to do, what he had always done to rescue himself from nerve-knotting tensions. There was a certain hillside that he knew, where the sun always shone kindly and the breezes coolly whispered, where the grass was thick enough to sink into and there was no alarm. In his mind he went there, relaxed in that peace, made himself relax, melt, go so limp that the nerve-tension could get nothing to grip on, the ache nothing to bite into. The therapy worked. It was like surrendering teeth, but it worked. The agony lessened, became bearable, and then subsided to the point where he could face it, and struggle up on to an elbow to take notice. His lungs felt red-raw on the inside, but he could breathe. He saw Mara arched backward like a bow, wrenched into a spasm as if she had swallowed cyanide, with a rictus grin of torment on her face. By her side, squatting and impassive, AnnSmith watched, looked up to stare with her violet eyes as he moved, achingly, to come near.

"Relax!" he advised, his voice a croak. He grasped Mara's shoulders and said it again, firmly, "Relax. Don't fight it. Yield. Forget effort. Go slack all over!"

Her eyes slit open to stare, and the tendons stood out on her neck as she gasped, "I can't—breathe! Can't—"

"Breathe out! Deflate. Let go!" he ordered, and massaged his fingers into her shoulders, into the soft places at her neck. By grudging degrees her wire-taut tension slackened, her splayed nostrils twitched and she began to snort and gasp, her chest heaving mightily as she managed to get her throat working again. "Whoa now!" he warned. "Never mind about filling up. Get it all out. Breathe out—out—out—as far as you can. Breathe out all the knots, the aches, the agonies, breathe them out. Let go. Melt!

Like a soft jelly." For a moment longer her instinct fought his advice, then she got it and surrendered all her tensions in one huge sigh. And another. And again, and she was quite still for a moment. He released her shoulders, watched, saw her pull in a tremulous breath, and then another, and then a mighty heave that stretched and lifted the firm contours of her bosom until they threatened to burst. Within moments after that she was able to sit up, and to stare at Dillard in open curiosity.

"I owe you, for that. Thank you. Where did you learn it?"

"All sorts of places. I'm the original coward. I get scared even at my own imagination. But that is exactly what the customers are paying for, so I have to go through with it, whatever it is. As much as ever I can stand. So I need a rescue technique, and that's it. Panic, nerves, fear and pain, they all use tension one way or another. Can't happen if you relax." He rocked back on his heels and turned to AnnSmith. "Where are we, anyway? This doesn't look like the water-plant to me."

"It's water level. A kind of basement. These are some of the intake pipes, see? And look there!"

Where she pointed he saw that the rubberized concrete flooring, a narrow walkway between the bulky pipes, was wet. Splotchy wet, as if many wet feet had walked there recently. He looked back at her.

"You didn't make those patches?"

"No. Apart from taking the cape-lungs to sling from the handrails, there—they should be kept moist, you see, and they are now hanging in the water—no, I haven't been along there."

"That swimming squad which passed us," Mara declared.

"What the devil were they after? What was it they took away?"

"That's right." Dillard nodded. "They were towing something."

"Let's go see." Mara climbed to her feet. "That way to the elevator shaft, I imagine. Very convenient, that. Come on."

As they rode upward Dillard realized that, although all his wracking agonies were gone, he was utterly and staggeringly exhausted. And hungry, too. He wondered how long it had been since that meal in the Green Salon. In terms of experience, that was almost a past life! As they left the elevator at the top, Mara marched straight into the office, but Dillard stayed where he was, waited for her to return.

"Wet feet went thataway," he told her, pointing to the laboratory and feeling slightly light-headed at the thought of a squad of Roggans robbing Stanley's laboratory. Of what? She had the same thought.

"What the hell would they take from here?" she demanded, as she stared angrily around the gleaming glass and chrome. The answer came to Dillard in a bright flash of nonsense.

"Your friend Dr. Stanley, of course," he said. "You can't find him. No one knows where he is, or why he should go away. So what else? The Roggans have got him!" He was definitely light-headed now, not caring what reaction Mara turned on, a silly grin already settling itself on his face. But then he saw AnnSmith's expression, saw a curtain fall across it, and felt the way she drew in her reactions as if hiding. The truth shocked him into clarity, into grabbing Mara's arm, as she was framing a violent retort. "By the stars!" he muttered. "Look at her. She knows! It's true. They have got him!"

Mara whirled, and from somewhere she had that knife again, so smoothly that Dillard never saw it done. A breath later and it was aimed meaningly at AnnSmith's naked stomach, and the corded intensity of the arm holding it left no doubt as to intention.

"All right," Mara said, very softly. "Dillard's intuitions have a way of being accurate, I've noticed. I'm buying this one. You have some talking to do, AnnSmith. Better start!"

The Venusian girl held quite still for a moment, then she curled her lip and moved forward until the razor tip of the blade touched her flesh. Mara inched back. AnnSmith smiled more coldly.

"You will make me talk? You will cut me if I don't? You human!"

"Your friends would have drugged us to get the same result!" Mara shot back at her, furious at having her bluff called. "Have you forgotten which side you're on, traitor?"

"You forget what little you know of our ways, MaraHunt. You cannot make me do anything. My life is mine, or for Hesperus, not for anyone else." AnnSmith hesitated, and Dillard sensed the simmering indecision under her sneering calm. "I came with you because I felt our plan, with the Roggans, was all wrong. But now—with this"—and she flicked a gaze down at the knife—"I am not so sure that humans are any better."

"Hold on!" Dillard spoke up from inner conviction. "Suppose you put away the knife and we all act like reasonable people. Will you tell us about Dr. Stanley, Ann?"

Her violet eyes swiveled to him, lingered a moment, then, "Of course!

Why not? There is nothing you can do about it."

Mara sucked in a furious breath but before she could speak he carried on the line of thought. "All right, then. Suppose we all relax, get out of these wet rags, have something to eat, act civilized, huh?"

"No!" Mara snapped. "I want to know about Stanley. Now! We can relax later. Now!"

Dillard sagged back against the wall and felt his knees begin to tremble with deflation and fatigue, but AnnSmith nodded calmly.

"Very well, I will tell you. My people caught Dr. Stanley some time ago, caught him underwater, snooping about the water-plant. We turned him over to the Roggans as a sample of what humans could be like."

"You lie! What about those wet patches? He hasn't been gone that long!"

"Hold on again," Dillard said wearily. "Whatever else, she's not lying. Don't ask me to explain how I know. I know, that's all."

"The wet patches are recent, yes. But a wet foot makes a wet mark. You can identify Dr. Stanley's footprint? I have not seen or met him. I know only by report at second-and third-hand. Apparently Stanley has told the Roggans a lot. We knew, for instance, that he was expecting assistance, which is why we were suspicious of you two. We have heard rumors, even, that Stanley is cooperating with the Roggans!"

Mara's knife-hand trembled. "You bitch!"

"Cut that out!" Dillard shouted in sudden rage. "How the hell do you expect to get information if you keep threatening to chop her when she gives it? She's telling you the truth. And it makes sense to me, too. That's why I'm in this mess up to my eyebrows. You and your damned Stanley. I thought I was through with him years ago, and now look at it."

"Stanley wouldn't cooperate with them!"

"No? What're the odds he sent some of them to get apparatus for him, from his laboratory? That's what the footmarks are. Want to bet?" For all the indignant heaving of her breast he saw that she was shaken. "Why don't you go and look? Me, I'm going to find out what this place has in the way of food and refreshment. Ann?"

The Venusian girl nodded and followed him as he shambled wearily into the living section. Mara, presumably, took his advice and went to study the laboratory. He wasn't too interested. By the time she reappeared he had shed his pants, delivered them along with AnnSmith's loincloth to the auto-clean, and the pair of them were nakedly debating program recipes on the autochef.

"I can't be sure," Mara confessed. "It looks as if there's a thing or two missing but I can't tell what. You checked in there, Dillard. Go look, will you, and see if you can spot what's been taken?"

"All right, anything for peace. Mine's the citrus juice, cereal and mixed grill. Suspend it if I'm not back in time. She seems surprised that it is all syntho. What did she expect?"

He went away heavily, clutching a tall and cool vodka-and-lemon in one hand. Though wobbly from almost total exhaustion his mind was pinpoint clear. A quick stroll up and down the benches showed him that two items were missing, but nothing else he could define. He went back frowning, and found the two females in a momentary truce as they handled and held out various pieces of wispy fabric at each other. The sight snatched him back into the insane values of a society only recently absolute, a society he knew better than most because Epic Dramatapes had a regular line of so-called "historical romances" that he helped work on when he wasn't out on an assignment somewhere else.

Dress. Fashion. Drapery. Prudery and taboo. Exposure and neurosis. Insecurity and identity-failure. Jargon terms had been tossed about with great freedom by many a wiseacre in the attempt to explain why such things had lived so long, and why they had so suddenly all vanished. Dillard knew the jargon, didn't believe half of it, but he did know the facts. He knew the headaches that went with trying to supply sensor programs to match a cast all dressed up in those old clothes. The constrictions of collars and belts and gripping elastic, the awful hamper and drag of many-layered trappings, had to be toned down for modern audiences. Players complained bitterly and audiences were put off unless the story-line included long stretches of comfortable undress to compensate. But those old-timers had worn clothes on top of clothes all the time, even in bed! They wore clothes under clothes, and called them, uninspiredly,

"underclothes."

But then, almost overnight, sanity had come. Some said it was the impact of new materials available, new synthetics with new versatility. Or the overall spread of better environmental control. Or the new age of leisure. Some pointed to the long delayed end of the sex war and quoted the shrinking and final disappearance of the skirt in the late 1970's as a sign that women, at last, were no longer second-class citizens. Emancipation and the truth about sex—whereas others, more prosaically, called it only simple economics. Who could afford, nowadays, to carry a whole wardrobe of various social uniforms, half of which would go out of date regularly every few months? To be thrown away? But you couldn't throw away modern stuff, either in fabric or packaging or anything else, because there was no longer any spare space left to throw it!

Arguments from hindsight, he thought, and doubted all of them. What he did know was the fact that everyone, nowadays, wore one simple day-cover to fit the job, occupation or conditions—and in leisure hours there were no rules at all, but only the free dictates of fancy and inclination. Mood colors, mood music, mood styles—there came a gentle ping of completion from the autochef to break his reverie, to bring Mara's head around. She saw him, swirled a cob-webby handful of green stuff about her shoulders toga-style and came to demand, "Did you spot what it was?"

"Eh? Oh. Yes. There was a small demonstration model of the water-plant. A trick model. It's gone."

"The water-plant?" She stared at him blankly. "What would anybody want that for?"

"How would I know?" He shrugged, and turned to take his platter from the machine. "Look," he said over his shoulder as an idea came to him,

"you're supposed to be some sort of associates, aren't you? Philosophy Corps, wasn't it? Well, wouldn't he leave some kind of trick clue for you, something that you'd spot and I would miss?"

For his guess he had the reward of seeing her total discomfiture.

"I'm a fool!" she snorted. "You're quite right. Where the devil are my wits? Stick mine in the warmer, will you? I'll be back!" She went away at a trot. Dillard shrugged, took his platter over to the table to sit by AnnSmith. She had chosen a shimmering gold cloud of stuff to drape around her shoulders and it suited her, but he was more interested in what she'd said earlier.

"Don't you have syntho-food on Venus, then? I'd have thought you'd need it more than we do. On Earth, I mean."

"For technology one needs hardware," she said, chewing none too happily on a syntho-steak. "That's not very practical in our hot humid climate. You should see what airborne fungus can do even to sealed-cabinet electronics. Even if we could afford the devices in the first place, we couldn't maintain them afterward. We learned that in the early days, when our survival gear perished so quickly."

"You have a point. But what do you do for food, then?"

"We grow it, of course. Hybrid strains, mutations, successful adaptations, all sorts of ways. We have fresh eggs from waterfowl. Fresh meat from a kind of whale we have domesticated fairly well. The females yield us milk. We have many kinds of fruit. Even a kind of coffee bean, better than this stuff!" She sipped at the turgid brown liquid in her cup and made a face. Dillard's stomach protested momentarily at the thought of eating things that had grown from dirt, or lumps cut from dead animals. He knew it had once been commonplace, but all the same—

Mara came back wearing a black frown and radiating angry suspicion. She took her platter and sat, eating with little regard for the food. Dillard gave her a moment to settle then asked, "Did you find your message, clues, anything?"

"Yes," she muttered. "You were right. And you." She flashed a hard glance at AnnSmith. "Stanley is cooperating with the aliens. But not against Earth. As far as I can figure it."

"Whatever that may mean." Dillard took his platter over to the washer, ditched it, dialed himself another vodka-and-lemon. "You and Stanley and the Philosophy Corps can sort it out among yourselves. Me. I've had it." He took a healthy sip of his drink and wandered across to the bed nook, patted the resilient surface, then sat on it. "This is for me." He finished the drink and had reached up for the deep-sleep headset that hung on the wall over the pillow, when he found Mara standing before him, feet planted astride, hands on hips and eyes blazing down.

"What sort of thing are you?" she demanded. "A man, or what?"

"Back off," he told her. "Biology doesn't come into this. I'm male. That's as obvious as the fact that you two are female. What you mean is am I a crusader, a death-or-glory hound, a hero? The answer is no!"

"You're in this mess, up to your eyebrows. You said so."

"I was. And who got me in? You and Stanley between you. Who got me out? Me. And I'm staying out. I've been slugged by cold-blooded aliens, lined up for drugging, interrogation and destruction. I've escaped. I've had the bends. I've lost valuable equipment and some unique records, and all my personal documents. That's enough, sister. I'm out. You want to go ahead and save Earth, or rescue your comrade, you do that. But leave me out, huh?"

"Resigning from the human race now, eh?"

Her acid scorn got through, stung him into irritation. "I was never invited into the race the first place, nor have I been welcomed by it, nor impressed by it, since. You'll have to find another arm to twist."

"You spineless louse!"

"Cool it!" he warned. "I came up to where I am now the hard way. I'm no idealist. Prod me with that kind of needle and I am just capable of smashing your pretty face in. Don't think you can ride on your big bust and your curves. They don't mean a thing to me." He warmed to his subject as long pent irritations spilled over. "You and your Philosophy Corps! Phony ideals. Empty abstractions. Earth! The human race! What the hell do you know about it? You had the good life, position, security, comfort, something to lose. What do you know about somebody like me?

I'm a nobody-nothing who got caught in the machine. I have a built-in sensitivity to phenomena which is another name for a talent for suffering. And nobody to give a damn."

He sat up angrily. "This is no play for sympathy. You can keep that. I'm one of the lucky ones. I made it up and out. But I've been down there among the pointless, hopeless, brainless and futureless millions, and I know. You think you know. There's a difference. Do you think they give a damn for, quote, the human race? If you do, all right. You do something about it!"

She backed off half a step, startled by his vehemence. "You know what will happen, don't you, if the Roggans have their way?"

"I know." He looked from her to AnnSmith, who stood by in distressed silence. He spoke to her now. "With, or without Stanley's help, if you and the Roggans start any kind of offensive against Earth"—He hesitated, feeling for adequate words—"millions of people will be killed and millions more will be injured, maimed, crippled, ruined, made miserable, homeless and wretched. There will be misery and starvation, disease and bloody riots, a reversion to savagery. It will set back the story of mankind a thousand years and more."

"That's not true!" the Venusian girl cried out in pain, but he shook his head slowly at her.

"You know it's true, what I'm saying. And here's why. Earth, right now, is one vast village, a sprawling slum, strangling in pollution, shambling over piles of refuse, barely managing to get along, and very very slowly hauling itself back from the edge of total collapse. I know. So do lots of others. The main mass doesn't, because it is tranked and doped up to the gills to make the misery bearable. But that's the truth. Isn't it?" He threw the question at Mara Hunt and she nodded silently.

"So," he want on, "if you put a firecracker under that lot it will all fall apart. And that's just one side. Why do you think anybody who can scrape the cash and the permits together is madly heading out into the stars?

Why do you imagine we have syntho-food? Why do I serve a firm that makes total-sensation dramatapes for a bottomless market? Life isn't worth living anymore. Nor is it worth saving, in my opinion, but the responsibility isn't mine, thank the stars! You go ahead!"

"But we do not intend all that destruction, that killing!" AnnSmith argued desperately. "We want only our right to live on Earth again!"

"Never mind what you want. I know what you'll get. Remember this, that a hefty percentage of Earth's production and occupation goes into the military. It has to. There'd be economic collapse, otherwise. So we have immense war potential. Enough to destroy Earth entirely ten times over. I mean destroy, just like that. You strike at us, and you'll get it. Venus would be annihilated as a place for life in a matter of hours. Totally and for evermore. And as for this planet, there wouldn't be anything to it. A concentrated rain of depth bombs and goodbye Roggan. Forever." Where she had been the white of warm ivory before, she was now chill as marble, cringing away from the awful picture.

"That's not what we want," she mumbled.

"You wouldn't be the first to start a war for some good reason, some ideal concept. But that's what will happen. Venus destroyed. Roggan destroyed. Earth crippled and spinning back into barbarism. Just like that."

She went back and back until her seat nudged her legs and then she sat heavily, stunned and shaking. Mara heaved a deep breath.

"You know all that, and you still think it's none of your affair. You won't raise a hand to save it?"

"Save what?" he snarled. "A planet-wide blight? A biological error? You make me tired. Have you seen the suicide figures lately?" The shaft was a good one. The steady increase in suicide rates was Earth's number one headache for those who concerned themselves with social matters, ranking just a little ahead and closely linked with the accelerating use of dream drugs. "You want to save something? You do that, and the best of luck!" He reached for the deep-sleep headset again, slid it over his head and swiveled to extend his legs and stretch out. "Good night!" he said firmly, and pushed the button. In a matter of seconds he was fast asleep. Two hours under the machine were more than equivalent to eight hours so-called normal sleep, so Dillard expected to awake refreshed. He did not expect to find the two women stretched out on the floor beside the bed, each on an air-mat, each wearing a spare headset.

In the scant seconds before switching out he had hoped they would manage to decide on something and be gone. But there they were, still, Mara flat on her back with one knee flexed, the posture of the confident personality, while AnnSmith was curled up instinctively on the defensive. He sat up, slipped off the headset and racked it, feeling refreshed physically but realizing that his problems had not gone away. Catlike, Mara came awake as soon as he moved. She yawned, stretched luxuriously, and said, "I needed that. Coffee, Dillard?" He nodded, saw her nudge AnnSmith awake then go over to the autochef and start dialing. She looked at him over her shoulder. "We talked, after you switched out. We decided something. You might be interested."

"Cooperation? You two?"

"We have common interests," AnnSmith murmured, sitting up and shaking the pleats out of the gold gauze she had wrapped around herself.

"We have to go back down there."

"To do what?"

Mara handed him a steaming cup, passed one to Ann-Smith, held one herself. "Ann feels she must, if only to try to get it across to her people what a disaster they are heading for. Very few of them realize the way things really are, the way you told it. You made an impression, there!" He chose to ignore that. "And you, I suppose, have to be loyal to your colleague, Dr. Stanley?"

"Old-fashioned, isn't it? Put it this way. I know him very well. If he really has thrown in with the Roggans, then he is either doped, brainwashed, under some devilish kind of duress, completely off his trolley, or something. And he needs help."

"But just you? Don't you call up the heavy brigade, reinforcements?"

"We don't work like that. We move in where authority and force have failed, where there's a situation getting out of control, building up to danger. We use brains, initiative, inspiration, knowledge, whatever. And we are thin on the ground. Stanley sent for me, for help. So I'm going to help."

Sleep, and recent practice, had sharpened his intuitive faculties.

"You know it's virtually suicide, don't you?"

"I'm going to help, Dillard. The odds are stupendous, yes, but you could pull them down just a bit, if you helped too."

AnnSmith came to sit beside him, to put a hand timidly on his arm.

"You can help a great deal. You could convince my people of their error, the enormous crime they are contemplating, just as you convinced me. Please?"

"You heard me on that," he said, making the words with difficulty, his inner senses in turmoil because of the warm embrace that came from her aura. "What do I care, one way or the other?"

"Perhaps you have nothing to care for. Or no one who cares about you?

Nothing to look forward to? But I care. Hesperus is a strange place, in some ways a hard place to live, but I think, from what I have learned from you about Earth, it is a happier place to live than that unfortunate planet. And you could live there, DenDillard. With me…"

He wrenched up and away, shaking off her hand, to march out, along the corridor and into the silent sterile sanity of the laboratory, his emotions in chaos. Stalking over to the great window he stared out unseeing for a moment, until the sheer beauty of the purple and gold sunset claimed his eyes. Then he saw that Venture was gone, on her way, without him. His link with the raw-edged and ugly real world was gone. And so was that world, like a lifetime past. All was different now. He was in love with a purple-eyed Venusian girl, and there was no future in it, not for him, nor her, nor anyone. She did right to sneer at an Earth stalked by the three plagues of population, pollution and psychosis, but how could he help it? What did she want?

He started at the breath of a presence at his elbow, and knew it was Mara. Her hand touched his shoulder, and her feeling was kind.

"You need to know something," she said, very gently. "Not about the way she feels for you. You'd have to be stupid not to know that for yourself. Nor about the way you care for her, because that's your business. But you do need to know who she is."

"Who?" he grunted.

"Her father is AlastairMcLarenSmith. President of Hesperus, just to fill in the fine lines. He has tremendous influence with his people, even if he is something of an idealist, and ineffective in himself. They respect him. Now, you've made a hell of an impact on Ann. She's close to her father. He listens to her—and to her brother Billi, who is something of a firebrand, like most young men. Through her you can get to the old man, and, through him, all the rest. That makes you a pretty important person, Dillard. You are involved in this whether you like it or not."

"That is just what I needed," he growled. "For the first time in my life I run into a girl I care for. I'm in love. And she cares for me, too. And it gets snarled up in a political issue!"

"Not just a political issue. This is life and death. Your life, if you want to be narrow about it. And a stake in the future."

"But what can we do? Three of us!" He turned on her, and she met his stare soberly.

"We can try. On your own showing, what is there to lose?" Over her shoulder he saw AnnSmith come in at the far end of the laboratory and stand there, just watching. There was no need for her to say anything.

"All right!" he surrendered. "We can try. I might as well go all the way with this crazy pitch. What do we do?"

Mara wheeled and went away, leaving him to follow. Ann-Smith touched his hand as he went by, caught it and went with him. Words were unnecessary.

"First of all," Mara declared, rummaging in her bag, "we get rid of the bare-handed image. I've had to co-opt local aide before. I always carry spares. Here!" She held out a broad black belt similar to her own. He took it, watched as AnnSmith got one too.

"Only time for one quick run-through, so pay attention. Knife!" She produced it dexterously. "This edge is razor sharp, the other is diamond-dust studded, makes a very useful file against almost anything. These"—the knife went away and out came what looked like a string of plastic beads—"are Detonite. Extremely powerful. You nip one off, dispose of it, and it explodes exactly thirty seconds later. This"—a slim plastic tube no bigger or impressive looking than a ball-point pen—"fires mini-darts. Accurate up to about thirty feet. Absorbent. Knockout dose for a full-sized man. Fast. You thumb this end. And these"—she zipped open a slim compartment to show silvery blobs like peas in a pod—"are retch bombs. Smoke and gas, and nothing that breathes air can get past them. That's the crop. Questions?"

"No questions," AnnSmith murmured, "but I have a contribution." She brought her now dry loincloth, groped in a pocket and produced a small vial of greenish-blue fluid. "This is a skin-friction inhibitor. You need a drop or two, like this," she said as she shook the vial against a finger tip and applied it, "on hair, shoulders, elbows, knees—and it spreads itself from there to make a body-covering film in about ten minutes. It reduces drag in the water by a factor of thirty to thirty-five percent."

"That's something I've heard about," Mara said, taking the vial and using it. "First time I've seen the actual product though."

"This is one of the things we have not as yet revealed to the Roggans. We do have some secrets left."

Dillard took the oily stuff in turn and was dabbing it on his knees when it occurred to him to ask, "Surely clothes will hamper the effect?"

"That's more like it," Mara approved. "Your mind will work, once you get around to it, Dillard. I suggest we wear just the battle-belts. We'll move a lot easier."

He had it in mind to utter something trenchant on a paraphrase of an old saying, something like, "Never was so much risked by so few wearing so little," but it didn't sound so very keen anyway, so he saved it. And then there was nothing more to do but go. On the way down in the elevator, Mara asked AnnSmith, "Do you know where Dr. Stanley is likely to be?"

"Oh yes. He is in The Ship." The capitals were obvious in her tone. "It is the preserved hull of the original ship the ancestors went down in. The Roggans maintain it as a sort of memorial. And it is fairly high on the side of a hill. Since their relationship with us it has been a kind of gateway to them and us. A common ground."

Dillard was only half listening, still bemused by the fantastic plight he had walked into, but there came a note into AnnSmith's voice now that made him prick his ears.

"You say Dr. Stanley is cooperating with the Roggans. He left you a message about that? How?"

"Very simply. It was coded into the computer-store. It's an old dodge, and I'm a fool for not having thought of it quicker. There was a sequence of messages. First the suspicion that you people were up to something, and that it had to be underwater, somehow, then that he was going to investigate. Then a brief note to the effect that he had detected signs of an alien kind of intelligence. And the last one was in number-code. He must have punched it in while they were there watching him, while he was pretending to do something else. Translated, it said that he had been caught, but was in process of working a deal with the aliens. The way it cut off short, I suspect it was incomplete. That's what has me worried. Ah, here we are. Now, where did you cache those lungs?"

Ten minutes later the three of them sank into the oily water, with AnnSmith leading the way. On the surface it was almost dusk. Underneath it was blue darkness, but Dillard had no difficulty sensing where he was now. Neither had he any of his habitual tension and fear. Instead his mind was clear, with a harsh, tight-nerved edge. They moved steadily along just below the bulk of a water tank, heading for the billet-space usually occupied by visiting Venusian ships. Ann Smith's mellow whisper explained, "There is an access tube five hundred feet directly below the billet. It leads directly into The Ship."

With the cape-lung sizzling quietly in his ears and the ghost-touch of body-warm water all around him, Dillard's whole attention was constricted into the immediate now. His mind refused to look even a little way ahead. He sensed AnnSmith, in the lead, surging up to the surface for a final check. And then a blast of urgent fear from her, and a shout as she turned and arrowed back.

"Go down!" she screamed. "Go down! A ship is coming in to land!" VIII

Dillard turned instantly, forewarned by her alarm even before she spoke. He clawed his way frantically through the water in pursuit. Within seconds he felt the link line come taut and knew he was holding her back. He struggled harder, trying not to get in a panic about his breathing. A ship! How close was it? he wondered. In another ten seconds he had his answer. Faintly at first, but rapidly growing louder, came a deep throbbing shudder through the water. It climbed from a subsonic growl up into a scream and beyond, itching his skin, stabbing painfully at his ears. He abandoned any notion about conserving his breath and hurled himself down crazily, flailing at the water, plunging into the dark. There came an almighty crash that hurt him all over, like a multiple giant fist punching him from all directions at once. That murderous punch came again, and again, savagely now, hammering him cruelly to the accompaniment of a hellish slam-bam barrage of shattering explosions. Above him, white-hot jets ripped the water into instant steam, which collapsed in the next instant in condensation, and sent out a pulsating series of shock waves that drove him down and around, helpless, stunned, reeling and only half-conscious. In the inferno he caught a blurry eyed glimpse of a ghostly blue something down there and he struggled crazily toward it, racked with cramps and spasms as the fiendish barrage diminished, fell away into separate bangs, and then pops, and then an echoing stillness. Pops and squeaks lingered in his head and ears as he dragged himself painfully down to that blue thing. It grew, became a ring of cold light, and then, as he came close enough, was a domed metal surface.

A drifting, spinning shadow crossed between him and the light, and he knew it was AnnSmith, reached out a hand to touch, and her panic burst in on him like a scalding flood. Instantly he knew she was in trouble with her breathing, that she was trying to say something.

"Tell me what to do," he demanded, grabbing her arm. He heard a choke, a gasp, and the one word, "Squeeze!"

The picture formed in his mind and he accepted it without question. No time for doubt. Hauling her around, kicking madly, he took her shoulder in a firm grip, scooped the slimy surface of her lung out of the way and passed his other arm across and around her back to seize the other shoulder. The mass of the lung billowed up against his chest, obscured his view. He drew her close, squeezing the lung between them, to drive enough pressure into her face-mask to lift it clear. He heard her gasp, and knew that he had done right. She coughed once and was able to say, "Good!

Thank you. I can breathe now."

"Sure you're all right?"

"Yes. In a moment. And this is the entrance."

"Hang on a bit. Where's Mara?"

He probed the swirling dark frantically, then remembered his line and hauled on it, the stolid resistance telling him what his senses had already guessed. AnnSmith coughed once more then went arrowing past him to grasp the lifeless figure as it spun down on the end of the line. In a moment she called, "Help me, Dennis. My arms are not long enough." He let go his grip on the metal edge and kicked upward, groping, to grasp a limp ankle.

"Just as you did with me," AnnSmith gasped, "and I will squeeze from in front, try to knock out a breath. Quickly!"

In the almost total darkness it was a nightmare. Mara floated absolutely limply, her arms trailing up over her head, her lung billowing, getting in his way. At last he was able to get himself properly positioned at her back, and reaching around in front, managed to match his fingertips over her rib cage, then to link them. And squeeze, gently, to gain enough to be able to lock his hands, and squeeze again. And he heard bubbles escaping from her face-mask.

"You'll have to bump her, Ann!" he gasped. "She's not breathing at all!" He held on, sensing AnnSmith's actions, the way she backed off and then launched herself, head down, at Mara's midriff. He felt the impact, felt also the sudden shudder and convulsive gasp in the ribs he held. She began to kick and struggle. He held on grimly.

"Take it easy!" he snapped. "Little breaths, damn it!" She was strong. In the frenzy of choking and struggling for breath she threw herself about until he almost lost his grip. Then there came a sound of impact, and stillness, and then a grunt from Mara.

"Gark!" she said. "Kark! Hark! Whoo! All-right! Whoever— Dillard? All right. You can—let go, now. I'm all right! I think!" A minute later they were all three clinging to the metal edge, in a blue glow, while she coughed and whistled and got her breathing under control again.

"That was close!" she muttered. "Damn near died. Be in your debt for evermore, Dillard. And you, Ann. What the hell was it, a ship?"

"It has just landed. We cannot risk being caught here. My people may be coming down at any minute. It must be something urgent, because there is no ship scheduled for this time, to my knowledge. Can you manage?"

"I'll have to, won't I? You lead on, I'll try to keep up." AnnSmith went down and under. Dillard, following, found himself at the mouth of a tube some seven feet in diameter, with the metal dome acting as a cupola for it. She went down into it headfirst. He followed, found that there were handholds, barred loops of metal, at regular intervals, each one suffused with the phosphorescent glow. He began to climb, moving rapidly to keep up with AnnSmith. It was like climbing, at first. But then, very soon, he lost all real sense of direction. And time. And speed. And he was moving in an unreal Alice-well where a blue thing showed up and he pushed it past, and another and he pushed that, and so it went on. And he might have been at rest and shoving the world past him for all the difference he could feel. He had time to wonder where all his nervous fears had gone. Perhaps, he mused, that incredible hammering, the knowledge of near annihilation, had finally smashed all his responses into numbness. He didn't know whether to be glad or sorry at the thought. It would be a relief not to feel terrifying fear any more. But then, surely, the world would become a dull, neutral gray sort of place?

An urgent warning thrust from AnnSmith snapped him out of his waking dream and he slowed just in time to avoid running into her feet.

"We are almost there," she said, in that silver piping that was her voice in water. "You stay here a moment. There is a U-bend into the reception pool. I will go ahead and check up to see if it is clear." She went away out of sight but not out of range of his empathy. Mara surged up to grasp his shoulder.

"Hold it," he told her. "We're about to land. It's just around the corner from here." In a moment he felt AnnSmith's relief, and a quick tug on the line. "All clear. Here we go!" he said, and surged forward. He groped around the bend into a mauve glow that became pink as he broke surface. He lifted arms that were suddenly heavy, grabbed a rail and hauled himself out of a basin very like the one by which they had all escaped from the hill, only this one was of some white stone like marble, and was flush with the floor. He heaved himself upright, acutely aware of his body weight, then lent Mara a hand to scramble out after him. She winced as she straightened out to a standing posture on the dull gray metal floor, and he saw the first beginnings of purple bruisings on her chest and stomach.

"Sorry about those," he said, pointing. "There was no time to be delicate back there. Hurt much?"

She inflated her chest, reached down to test the marks with fingertips and then grinned. "Forget it. I'm glad to be here and know about it. What now, Ann? This place seems to have nothing but doors!" AnnSmith opened her mouth to answer then shut it again, rapidly. He felt it too, almost as fast as she.

"Somebody coming!"

"The pump room, quickly!" She pointed and ran. All three of them dashed to an arch and inside, into red gloom where a squat machine purred busily to itself and took up most of the floor space, leaving them just room to turn around and peep out of the opening. That pool, flush with the floor, overflowed steadily into an annular gutter, which drained back to this busy machine. The whole of that room there was curves and bends. Like a nosecone? Dillard forgot the speculation as he saw movement in an archway on the far side. A Venusian youth appeared, followed by two gaunt and impassive Roggan females. Dillard stared hard.

"That's BilliSmith. Your brother. Isn't it?"

"Infold!" she hissed, grabbing his arm. "Infold!" He guessed what she meant, could feel her doing it, contracting her living aura until he hardly knew she was there. He had no idea how to do it himself. Fortunately the youth out there was too engrossed in his own thoughts to be paying very much attention. The two aliens swung open a wall locker and produced a light metal structure which they opened out, with clicks and snaps, into a ladder and platform. This they lowered into the pool and locked into stability. Dillard was horribly fascinated by their movements, by their alien quality. It wasn't so much their ruggedness, the overdeveloped brow-ridges, the pallor of their skins, or even the tint of color. Nor were they ugly. They had shape and curve that would have qualified them as attractive, had it not been for the stonily repellent way in which they moved. He was reminded of the guard who had kicked him. Not from cruelty or sadism, but simply because it was the most efficient way. And Stanley was cooperating with these?

There was a rippling movement in the pool. Heads appeared. AnnSmith's grip on his arm tightened as she saw the first faces come out from under the lung masks. "Oh, no!" She sounded betrayed.

"Oh, yes!" Mara muttered, beside her. "It's the big man himself, the McLarenSmith of Venus."

"Your father?" Dillard turned to her wonderingly, and her eyes were mauve pools in this light as she nodded.

"There must be something desperately urgent here to bring my father." Dillard watched the dignified old man stand and sigh, waiting for the six oldsters who had come with him. They all wore a simple gold band on the left wrist. BilliSmith placed the back of his left hand to his brow in some ceremonial greeting, then said, "I'm sorry it was necessary to send for you, sir."

"Was it necessary?"

"Yes, sir. The Earthman, Stanley, seems to have driven some kind of wedge between us and the Roggans. I can't find out just what."

"It's enough. Will the Rogganor see me?"

"The conference is all arranged to start as soon as you are ready." The small gathering began to move toward the far arch. They heard BilliSmith going on faintly, "There is another piece of bad news, sir. There were some interfering Earth people… prisoners… escaped…"

Then the words were too faint to catch. Dillard felt her grip slacken. He reached for her hand. "Your brother will tell him about you?"

"It doesn't matter," she mumbled, but her words were hollow.

"No time for grieving," Mara said. "Let's get going." AnnSmith moved out into the chamber again. "This was the forward gun room, once," she explained, as they passed through, "and the pipe comes in by what was a gun port. Below this is an ammunition store, and the next deck is crew living quarters. None of it is used now, of course, and it's all closed up. I've been around it, but that's all." They followed her along narrow corridors and down steep zigzag ladders. At every turn there were mysterious boxes and fittings embedded in the walls, strange and massive hatchways, old and faded marks and instructions in oddly angular characters. "The next deck below is a huge chamber, originally intended for crushing rock and extracting metal ores. This ship used to go asteroid mining. Roggan is poor in metals. That was, partly, what brought about the final war. That, and pressure on living room."

"It has a familiar sound," Dillard muttered. "Earth all over again, except that we have stopped short of destroying ourselves."

"So far," Mara qualified. "It could be altered once the Roggans step into the overall picture."

"The big chamber will be used for the conference, by long tradition," the Venusian girl explained. "So we must go carefully as we pass it by the side galleries. On the level below that is what used to be the hospital and sick quarters. That is where they have Dr. Stanley installed. Because there is space there for equipment."

She went ahead as cautiously as a cat stalking birds, stopping to test the environment and listen at each intersection. Dillard's own perceptions seemed to stand out from his skin like porcupine quills, probing the mental ether. Yet, for all their wariness, they were surprised. Dillard got the message as Mara spun around and thrust away from the metal wall alertly. He wheeled in time to see her fall into a crouch with her hands advanced, and, over her shoulder, two stone-faced Roggans came stalking forward. She surged to meet them, veered to plunge full-tilt at the left-hand one. Her left arm came up and across her chest, then flailed out in a palm chop straight for a Roggan throat. The alien croaked, reeled aside, and she spun, using the blow as a drive, aimed for the other. But this one was fast, had reached out for her arm, grabbed it, and poked out his other hand for her throat.

By this time Dillard, remembering certain kicks of the recent past, was mixing in. He launched a balled left fist, rejoiced as it thudded home on alien ribs, then whirled his right hand in an arc, smashing at the junction of neck and shoulder. Mara, clinging to the arm that held her, ran around, heaved, and the Roggan buckled forward rather than dislocate his shoulder. Dillard reached up for that ridge-browed head, dragged it down to meet his upswinging knee.

The first Roggan lumbered back into the fray, but staggered as AnnSmith sprang on his back and locked her fingers at his throat. As he staggered, Mara swung her foot like a dancer to trip him. Down he went, hard, face-first, AnnSmith clinging, using ears to grip and hammer that face into the floor. Then Mara stood back, her dart-pistol ready. Seconds later both aliens were taken care of, and she grinned at Dillard as she slid the weapon away again.

"I enjoyed that," she said. "Cancels a grudge or two."

"True," he said. "But as soon as this pair is missed there'll be hell to pay, and us in the middle of it."

"We can hide them in here for a while." AnnSmith indicated a niche in the bulkhead where stood some ancient piece of equipment, a canister, but which afforded enough room to stuff the two unconscious Roggans. They went on in haste, and at last she halted them by a door where there was a capstan-lock. The spokes gleamed from recent usage.

"He is in here," she said. "And this door seems to be free. The outer bars are not in place."

"You mean he isn't a prisoner, don't you?" Mara made a grim face, then grabbed a spoke, spun the wheel, heaved, and the door swung silently open. She darted in, Dillard at her heels. This was a long low-ceilinged room, glowing pink and with more of the wall-beds, six this time. At the far end was a sturdy bench littered with gadgetry, but Dillard had time for only one glance, then his attention went to the man stretched out on the first bed to the right, a man who stared up in amazement at their precipitous entry. That first glance took Dillard back into his juvenility. Dr. Edmund Stanley, lean and awkward, sour-faced, with a disconcerting trick of tucking in his chin and glaring up at the world from under jutting eyebrows. He did it now as he sat up.

"I'll be damned! Mara! What the devil are you doing here? Like that?

And—you're AnnSmith, aren't you?" He scowled in thought. "The grand Council has been searching for you."

"You know me?" she cried, backing off a step.

"Of course. You're too much like your brother to be anyone else. But what is this… ?" Stanley swung his legs down from the bed and stood. Dillard felt a moment's disadvantage, because his former tyrannical tutor was fully clad in poncho and pants, but then the sensation reversed itself in a most odd way, because he could not look down on this insignificant man. Years had given him an advantage in sheer size. Stanley was a little man.

"You left me a message," Mara put in, "that you were trying to pull some kind of deal with the Roggans."

"So?" he craned his head around to her.

"So you must be out of your mind, chief. That, or you've been doped, which amounts to the same thing. I'm told the Roggans are good at that." Stanley stared at her, then moved slowly to the door, shoved it shut, came back, swept the three of them with a sour gaze, and snorted.

"I'm a scientist. My training is to accept facts as they stand, and I try to. But this is well-nigh unbelievable. Am I right in assuming that you three have come here with some insane notion of rescuing me?"

"That's no more insane than your collaborating with these gooks, chief. If that's the way you see it then we're taking you out of here for your own good!"

Now there came that acid smile that Dillard remembered so well. "You really mean that, don't you? Lord knows how you managed to get this far, but to imagine you can take me out, by force…" He began to snigger, and Dillard moved forward, boiling. He balled a fist in readiness.

"We came down here to get you, mister, and that's what we're going to do. It would be a pleasure for me to slug you." Mara touched his arm but he shook off her fingers angrily. This was the acme of farce, that the man they had risked life and limb to save should stand there and snigger. "It would be a pleasure, I assure you," he repeated.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Stanley backed off warily. "I tell you I don't want to be rescued. You'll ruin everything if you try anything so silly. I am about to conclude an agreement with the Roggans…"

"You can't mean that," Mara interrupted in anguish. "Would you rather they went through with their plan in cooperation with Venus?" Stanley snapped. "Do you know about that?"

"They know." AnnSmith spoke up. "I told them. I did not approve. I do not approve now. I have come with these two in the hopes of being able to turn my people away from such a suicidal path."

"Indeed?" Stanley had his skin-scraping tongue going now. "Do you really believe the Roggans will let you back out, now? You know what they are after, don't you? Land. Dry surface. Somewhere to live. Do you really believe they will forget all about it, abandon a drive that has inspired them for more than two thousand years, just because you change your mind?" He sneered at AnnSmith as she backed away. Clasping his hands at his back he hunched his shoulders in a familiar pose.

"What about the half million Roggans already settled on Venus? What are you going to tell them?"

"Half a million!" Mara cried. "But that's impossible. They can't have transported that many in the time. They haven't the ships!"

"No, but the Roggans have bio-genetic skills and techniques for breeding control and accelerated development. They can, and do, control their numbers precisely according to capacity. You fools!" He withered them with a look, settled his bleak eyes on Mara. "You!" he scorned. "You should know me better than this!"

"I still can't see a deal with the Roggans," she said stubbornly. "I wouldn't trust any one of them as far as I could spit!"

"And you're a sociologist? Use your brains! Think!"

"You don't change much," Dillard growled. "I'm not surprised that you'd find the stone-and-ice Roggans congenial. Just your mark, they are." Stanley swung his head to frown upward. "Yes, I thought we'd met. No, don't tell me. There's something about your choice of emotionally loaded words—Good Lord! It's young Dillard!"

"You're not so smart. You saw my name on that equipment over there. That's my sensor-recorder, and it has my name on it."

"Distrustful as ever, I see. So that's yours, is it? Pointless to say I never even looked at the owner's name. You wouldn't believe it. But it's exactly what I would have expected of you. If I can quote one of your outbursts,

‘Feelings are more important than facts. Facts just are. It is we who make rights and wrongs out of them, and you can't do that without feelings.' Am I right? I think so. And, of course, it's a point of view. But it stands or falls on whether one really has the facts in the first place, doesn't it? And for those you have to depend on unfeeling people like me, you know." He made his sneering grin again. "But that's a fascinating toy you have there. I think you, and it, may be able to help me. Do you know how it works?" He wandered away to the bench as unconcernedly as if he were lecturing in some classroom. Dillard followed.

"How did you get it?" he demanded.

"That was inevitable, wasn't it? The Venusians took it from you—they said a suspected spy, and of course I didn't know any different—but they are shockingly inept at technology. Brilliantly intelligent, of course, but with almost no practical application. We did wrong to expel them, you know. Earth needs dreamers and idealists as never before, now. But, as I was saying, they could make nothing of it. Nor could the Roggans. Oh, they could comprehend the mechanics of it readily enough, but not the use. They have glandular and sensual reactions, of course, but totally different from ours. For this to affect them, it would have to be modulated—"

His thinly pedantic tone stopped abruptly. Engrossed in his own ideas, he had not noticed Mara stealing up by his side. He never saw the flailing blow that snatched him into insensibility. Mara caught him as he slumped.

"We'll have to carry him," she snapped. "It's a good thing he's no great size. Try the door, Ann."

"We'll never make it," Dillard protested.

"We've got to. Look, Dillard, doped or not, Stanley is a brilliant brain. With him in their pocket the Roggans are ten times as dangerous as they were. We have got to get him out, or kill him!"

AnnSmith went to the door, and it heaved open in her face, sending her reeling back. In surged a grim-faced swarm of massive Roggans. Dillard saw the Venusian girl go staggering away from a blow. He charged forward desperately and met a crashing fist with his cheekbone. His angry blows were blocked. Another exploding fist smashed into his ribs, and one at his back. He went down, retching. A foot took him in the belly, lifting him up and over, and something very hard slammed against the back of his head. The room went dark and foggy. Something needle-sharp bit into his arm, and the room went away altogether.

The shattering ache in his head was painfully familiar. He lay still and waited for it to gather into a lump. There was a bitter taste in his mouth. He stirred cautiously, and felt the bond at his wrist. Here we go again, he thought, and tried his other hand, but it was free. Surprised, he made a great effort, squeezed his eyes open and sat up. A blue-glow room. A wall-bed. A black plastic cord fastened to his left wrist. But the other end went away, was clutched in a massive hand. The hand belonged on the end of an arm, to a Roggan guard who squatted at the end of his bed, impassively. Dillard shook his head carefully, swallowed, and said, "All right, I'm awake. Now what?"

The muscle movements to produce the sounds brought lancing pain to his face, made it feel as if he had been stepped on. The Roggan turned to stare at him in ice-eyed indifference. A shaky voice closed by said,

"Dillard? It's me, Mara. I've been awake some time. Far as I can tell there's just the two of us. What do you suppose happens now?"

"You took the words out of my mouth," he mumbled, and then the guard stirred, stood, and he saw that there was a black cable in both hands, the other one leading to the next wall-bed. He just had time to notice that, then the Roggan heaved powerfully, and Dillard slid down from the bed to his feet. It was that or be dragged off in a heap. He saw Mara descend in a similar scramble. The alien marched for the door without any attempt to warn or explain, and they had to go along.

"Taken your belt," she muttered. "Mine too. Stanley seems to have gone. AnnSmith, too. I'm none too steady, Dillard. Drugs, maybe?"

"I have a queer taste in my mouth." He tucked in close to her as they negotiated the door in the wake of the Roggan. "If you've any idea of muscling this character, leave it, huh?" He felt his face loosening up a bit, and went on. "Let's see what they want with us first. Admit it, if they wanted to kill us they could have done it long ago."

"Corny line," she muttered, "but there are fates worse than death." Their captor marched on as sublimely indifferent as a machine hauling freight. He led them up a steep ladder, through an archway, and into a huge room thick with the surf-roar of many voices. As they marched unwittingly down an aisle between packed benches and into a central, clear space, the roar of gossip halted momentarily, then swelled up again on a different note. Dillard looked around with sinking heart, sensing the inimical atmosphere. To his right was a highly ornamented rostrum where sat a group of hard-faced aliens. They had color stripes painted across their foreheads, just above the brow-ridges. Most were blue. The man in the middle wore gold. Off to one side of him was the hatefully familiar face of Dekron, glaring under a double blue stripe. It was not a time to ask for explanations. This was, had to be, the ruling body of the aliens. Straight ahead stood another rostrum, not quite so ornate, and here Dillard saw the massed might of Venus. He recognized McLarenSmith and the other elders. And BilliSmith. Backing them a solid gathering of Venusian people stared at the prisoners. Then there was no time for more, as their guard led them a quick left turn and up to yet another rostrum, in dark stone and smooth plastic stuff. The stone-faces were here, but ranged at a wary distance, leaving the center place clear. Here, rising from a seat, was Dr. Stanley. By his side, gloomy faced, was AnnSmith. One look at her and Dillard estimated they were all in the doghouse, so he did his best to radiate a sense of encouragement and cheer to her. To his gratified surprise she smiled instantly and sent back spontaneous affection like the shivering of a struck gong.

"At last!" Stanley snapped at the aching pair, fussy with impatience. "I have been stalling like a lunatic, here. Fortunately there was quite a deal of formal ceremony to go through."

"Waiting for us?" Mara muttered. "Why? Is this some new crazy idea of yours? Are you going to co-opt us into the Roggan cause too?"

"Shut up and listen," he ordered. "I had a tentative scheme worked out, but you and your insane heroics have upset that, so I've had to modify. You don't seem to know very much. For instance that it has taken me hours of hard work to get it into the Roggan heads that we humans can be just as logical—and reliable— as they are. They are, believe me. They keep their word. It's not honor, not as we understand it. It's more that having once worked out the logical thing to do, they declare it, and do it. And it would never occur to them to do otherwise. And just when I had got it across to them that we can work like that too, you had to come and spoil it. Fortunately you attacked me, otherwise they'd have believed I was trying to escape. They're a very interesting phenomenon…" His nervous chatter cut off as a stentorian whistle-scrape voice began from the center of the floor. As they turned to watch, AnnSmith interpreted.

"This is the Astrogator, asking if all the data is in. It means, are you all ready to present your cases. Including us."

"We'll be ready, when it comes to our turn. You hear that? Astrogator, the man who gives the signal to proceed according to data. Relic of ship-life values. But never mind that for the moment. Listen!" Dillard found himself torn by contradictions. Stanley was still the acid voiced and sneering pedant he had hated from long ago, but there was something else too, discernible under the appearance and manner. It was an urgent flame, a sizzling drive of power and ability. And it commanded respect. The petulant sourness, the irritating mannerisms, those were the outcome of having to live with a bunch of people who dragged their mental feet and couldn't keep up. This was a frustrated man, but working at top output right now. Dillard listened.

"I am not mad. Nor a traitor. Nor anything undesirable, believe me. I urge you to play this exactly as I give you the cues. If you do, we'll walk out of this with honor, maybe even glory. But try any tricks, and we will all wind up as edible protein. Understand?"

Mara still had an edge of resistance. Dillard nudged her. "We'll go along, Mara. We have to. And I think he's got something."

"You and your intuition. All right, chief. This once!"

"Thank you." Stanley sounded relieved. He shot a sharp glance at Dillard. "This young lady has told me a good deal about you, my boy. I hope it is at least substantially true. Now, we'd better sit and look as if we are ready."

The seats felt like stone under a thin layer of slippery stuff. Stanley had AnnSmith on one side of him and Mara on the other. Dillard found a seat at the end alongside Ann. In the middle of the floor a tall Roggan with blue and yellow blazons across his forehead swung away from his own contingent and put a finger out toward the Venusians.

"He has called all the ‘officers' of Roggan to judgment, to decide on a course. The ship faces hazard. There is a decision to be made which concerns all. The Captain will hear all the data and ask for a decision. That's him. His name is Orsonon. At any other time he is the Rogganor, the ruler of all Roggan. Now, however, he is the captain of The Ship."

"Traditional," Stanley leaned across to whisper. "Fascinating instance of one-culture evolution. Fascinating!" he leaned back as BilliSmith started.

"McLarenSmith, our leader and representative, comes in person to the conference chamber to remind the Rogganor of Roggan of the long-standing agreement between his people and the people of Hesperus. There has been cooperation between us, understanding between us, obligations shared by both sides, agreements entered into for the furtherance of both and the assurance of a brave future. President McLarenSmith at this time wishes also to warn Roggan to be on guard against those who profess to speak for Earth, and those who are of Earth. As we know and can prove, they are a treacherous and untrustworthy people, seeking only their own gain."

BilliSmith stopped there, took a breath, and started repeating what he had just said, but in the grotesque speech noises of the aliens. So AnnSmith said. Dillard was fascinated to learn that any human throat could make such unlikely noises. Then, thoughtfully, he leaned across to Stanley.

"They have a case, sir. They have their own history as evidence!"

"I know, but there is also the opposite side. Better than two thousand years of Roggan history. And drive. You'll see."

BilliSmith ended his speech and sat. The commanding finger swung and AnnSmith said, "It is now for us to say. What do you wish me to tell them?"

"I'll say it. You translate as we go, right?" Stanley stood up and took a moment to scan the audience, as confidently as if he were addressing a faculty dinner group.

"Captain of The Ship, Rogganor; President McLarenSmith; people of Roggan; people of Hesperus…" He halted, and Dillard was again astounded to hear those noises coming now from AnnSmith's throat. "It is my intention to show you, here and now, to your satisfaction, that, first of all, your proposed Roggan-Hesperus plan to ally and attack Earth by force is doomed to failure." When the buzz from that had abated he added, "I shall show that if the plan is followed, Roggan, the planet and the people, will be destroyed utterly. That Hesperus, the planet and the people, will be destroyed utterly. That Earth, the planet and the people, will be so badly hurt that it may, in turn, be destroyed. At the least it will be plunged into chaos and be unfit to occupy for several decades. This I propose to show, so that you may all reconsider the merit of a plan that will surely bring disaster, and will benefit no one."

He gave that time to settle, time to build up a tension, then went on as calmly as before. "I will then show you a different plan, and offer proof of a way in which the people of Roggan may once more have a planet fit to live on, fresh air to breathe, dry land to walk on, and with no one to dispute the right, or to fight them for the privilege. I intend to show how, with the cooperation of Earth, the people of Roggan may regain their own planet!" Dillard sagged back, dumbfounded, as AnnSmith labored through the translation. His new-found confidence in Stanley began to shake, but before he could get it into acceptable words, Stanley sat, his eyes gleaming. AnnSmith offered to translate the general hullabaloo that had broken out, but he shook his head at her.

"Quite all right, my dear. I can follow it well enough. Can't speak the stuff, but I can understand it."

"You can?" She stared in wide-eyed amazement. "But it took me three years to learn…"

"I did it in three weeks. Never mind. Listen carefully, I need you and Dillard here for this next bit. It could be tricky, so let me check up. You can tell, can't you, whether Dillard here is lying or not? Can't you?"

"Oh yes!" She nodded. "And you, too!"

"Just as well I'm honest then, isn't it!" He grinned, and Dillard was staggered by the difference in the man now. All the bitter pedantry was gone. Stanley was literally enjoying this crucial moment, a challenge to his abilities. And he simmered like a potent brew as he swung on Dillard. "I need you, my boy," he said. "AnnSmith will be right beside you. Her people will be tuned in to her. They will know, through her, that you are telling the strict truth. They will feel it, through her. They will know! But there's more. Here!" He produced from a box between his feet Dillard's own sensor headset. "It's your own gadget, but I've modified it a bit and I've managed to rig up a mass transmitter that is beamed right at the Roggans right now. It's all been tested out, quite safe. Never again will I say hard words about emotional values, Dillard. They are going to turn this trick for us, you'll see. Put it on!"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Put it on. Stand up. Tell them, tell me, tell his Eminence over there and all the other benighted Hesperians, exactly what you told AnnSmith—and feel it, man—about what will happen should they launch a war against us. Just that. Take your time, make it good. AnnSmith will translate for the aliens—but this gadget will give them your feelings in terms they can really understand. All right?"

Dillard cringed. He had never addressed an audience before in his life. He had never wanted to declare his feelings to anyone before. Always he had tried to hide them, to mask them. "I can't do it," he muttered. AnnSmith touched his arm. "You can," she said softly. "You told me, once. Just tell me again. Come on, stand up and tell me. And I will tell them."

BilliSmith had just completed a passionate rebuttal, repeating his warning about lies and deceit. As he sat, Stanley rose, urging his two helpers to stand with him. He aimed his stare at the Venusian delegation.

"Pay attention," he said. "AnnSmith is known to you, is one of you. It is within your power, right now, to tell whether she speaks true or not. This young man is of Earth, yet he shares something of your sensitivity. You can tell whether he lies or not, too. You can say, with words, as loud as you like, that it is all lies—but you will know, inside, that it isn't. I ask you to listen, now, and, if you value anything at all, be honest with yourselves." He turned to tap Dillard on the shoulder. "It's all yours, my boy. Give it to them hot and strong."

It took a moment to get his voice going, and he would never have started at all had it not been for the warmth by his side, but once he did start the passionate convictions boiled up in him of themselves. Because it was the way he felt, he made no secret of the fact that he didn't care, personally, whether civilization survived or not, but once that declaration was out of the way he felt sufficiently detached from the issue to be able to call up the honrid realities with all their hideous impact. He threw gigantic figures at them, population densities, transport snarls, mass production miracles of achievement slowly but inexorably falling behind the remorseless law of logarithmic progression, the creeping blight of pollution and waste—and then the enormous slumbering potential for destruction, the war machine that each major power had to keep in motion simply to sop up otherwise surplus manpower, to provide employment—the whole fantastically insecure structure of an economy stuck in the rut of expansion, when there was nowhere to expand to. He painted them a spine-chilling picture of the results that would come from invasion, or the threat of invasion. And then the crazy retaliation of a war potential almost beyond imagining. He pictured for them two immense nations shaking atomic doom at each other, suddenly diverted toward an outside enemy. And then Venus, scantily populated, hampered by technoligical ignorance, handicapped by climate—Venus ripped apart by weapons from which there could be no escape, and against which there could be no defense. Then he switched to Roggan, calling on his own experiences of depth, and pressure, and darkness down there; the agony of a few shock waves from a ship in splash-down; magnify that a million times, and then a million times again, as the vengeful ships of Earth orbited the planet and released multi-megaton depth bombs. Roggan dies. The people die, smashed into pulp by incredible forces released before they have so much as a chance to call out. He was limp and sweating when he sat down.

There was a silence within the chamber that could have been cut into cubes, it was so dense. BilliSmith heaved to his feet, but his face was gray and his eyes glazed. He tried, once or twice, to make sounds, but nothing would come. The entire Venusian contingent looked stunned. Dillard stared at them, then swung his gaze to the Roggans, as he slipped off the headset. He could make little of the hard faces, but he did see that Dekron was leaning back with his eyes shut, as if in thought. Then the Rogganor spoke, just a few brief sounds. AnnSmith stirred, but Stanley already had it.

"I think we've got them," he muttered. "He's asked to hear the alternative suggestion. Nice work, Dillard. It's up to me, now. Ann, tell those two characters there to bring in the apparatus." As she made the necessary noises Stanley stood again, and his manner was still confident, but Dillard felt the cracking tension in him, just under the surface.

"I'll take this easy," he said to Ann. "Give you time to get the right terms. Technical stuff. Ready?" As she nodded, he faced the Roggan bench.

"As you know, I am skilled in scientific and technological matters. You have such people also, and I have had dealings with them. We understand each other. Your technical people are very skilled and have my admiration for the things they have achieved and their capabilities. Quite naturally, you have a highly developed technology for the use and handling of water. You can purify it, extract valuable substances from it, derive power from it, just as we do. This apparatus"—he gestured to the trolley the two aliens were hauling in—"is not in any way strange to you, except for one thing. It is, as you see, a miniature model of the much larger plant which floats on the surface up there. In many ways it is similar to plants you already use. Seawater enters here"—he was down on the floor now, demonstrating

—"and passes through a series of carefully designed membranes which extract minerals, also power, and discharge pure water. A power source is needed to start the cycle, but once that is done the reaction is self-sustaining, driven by the power extracted from the water itself. It is a well-known principle. It gives water, mineral extracts, power. But—please observe!" He took hold of the trolley and pushed it back to the edge of the arena, then did things with a series of quick movements. The trolley separated into two. He pushed half of it all the way across to the other side, some fifteen feet, and everyone present could see, now, that the water-plant model was in two halves, separated by thin air. And that the seawater level diminished in one half, and grew in the other. Dillard stared. This he had seen before. It was a trick, surely? But Stanley was going on.

"You are seeing something quite new, a discovery with which I had the privilege to be associated, although I do not claim the honor of discovering all of it. Two lines of research came together here. One, the search for a better membrane substance; the other simply to feed back the generated power into the cycle to see what would happen. What did happen is what you see. The two membrane sheets are a perfectly tuned

transmitter-receiver couple. The recycled power breaks down the water molecule into microwave patterns at this end. The microwaves are transmitted, coherently, and converted here into water again. The theory behind this is not too well developed at the moment, but that need not concern us now. Nor the speculation that it may be possible, eventually, to transmit other molecular patterns. For the moment all I want to show you is the fact, that it is possible to transmit water, by radio wave, from here to there. From here to any point within the effective microwave range. And that, as far as has been established, lies far beyond measurable distance. The theoretical estimate is that it compares with the transmission of coherent light."

He left it there, turned and stalked back to the rostrum, sent his gaze around the silent audience again. "The application is obvious. You call your system-debris the Million Moons, I believe. There was a time when you used to travel among them, seeking minerals and rare substances. You can do it again, with Earth ships to help out. Only, this time, you will be planting water-receivers on every moon that you touch. And over the seas of Roggan will float gigantic water-transmitters, self-powered. I have discussed this with your technicians and skilled people. We have performed calculations. We agree that within one year the mountaintops of Roggan will once more raise above the sea. Within ten years you will have all the land your ancestors had. And it is entirely up to you how much more you can have. The polar landmasses? Other islands? It is within your own choice. Your own planet. And we of Earth will help, this I guarantee." IX

Dillard missed almost all of the debate that followed. He was distantly aware of the argument the Venusians tried to put up, an argument that was hopeless right from the start. He knew that Stanley had made it inevitable that the Roggans would overwhelmingly accept his proposition. He knew relief, even a small degree of pride, that he had helped to avert a catastrophe. And he had the happy, warm feeling from AnnSmith to make everything that much more worthwhile. But there was a small cold worm down inside him that would not rest, would not be comforted. Nobody knew it but him. No one saw the worm in the apple but him, or so he thought. So he sat on it, choked it down as formalities were observed, as the Roggans did what they believed to be friendly things and the Venusians did their best to hide their discomfiture. Through it all AnnSmith clung to his hand as if she were afraid he would vanish should she let go. And she knew, but she didn't say anything until they were all foregathered in the main lounge of the Venusian ship that had so nearly been their destruction.

They were six. They had been escorted back to the ship in style and comfort, with much whistle-croaking and assurances of cooperation, and the Roggans had gone back. The elders had dispersed. There was only McLarenSmith and his two children, Mara Hunt, Dr. Stanley, and Dillard.

"Within this group," McLarenSmith said bitterly, "I can speak openly. Again we have been betrayed by Earth. You feel self-satisfied, EdmundStanley, but you have betrayed us just as surely as my daughter there."

"You mean you didn't believe Dillard? That your plan, if you'd gone on with it, would have been a total disaster?"

"No. I accept that. We were criminally foolish there. No, Billi, it is only the hot blood of youth which believes in death before dishonor. A nation cannot afford such gestures. We were wrong to think that we could be allied with the Roggans in such an insane enterprise. There is no doubt in my mind of that, thanks to you, young man." He nodded to Dillard, who appreciated the thought but said nothing.

"Exactly how have you been betrayed?" Stanley prodded deliberately, and his attitude was one Dillard knew from old times, that of provoking the other person into a statement, only to crush him with some logical contradiction. As if the President of all Venus were no more than a thickheaded student.

"You have given the Roggans back their planet," McLarenSmith said. "I do not doubt that for one moment. I know what applied technology can do. But—Dr. Stanley, why couldn't you Earth people have offered us this minor miracle? Venus, too, has a water problem. You could have come to us with this technology. You could have said to us, ‘We will help you reduce the perpetual humidity of your planet until it is tolerable, so that you will be able to live like reasonable beings, to look at the sun and walk the dry surface, and hold up your heads again.' You could have done this. But no, you kept the secret in reserve. And now you give it away, to aliens!" His voice was bitter with the history of long years of struggle against inclement conditions. "I call that betrayal. Don't you?" Stanley lolled back in his contour chair perfectly at ease. The mess steward of the Venusian officers' quarters had provided them with refreshment. Stanley took a contemplative sip from his glass now, and smiled. Dillard knew that smile, too, the way a cat would smile before pouncing. If a cat could smile. McLarenSmith shifted uneasily in the light of that smile, and adjusted his silks. The Venusian ship had been able to produce suitable covering for the unexpected guests. Dillard himself was in dark blue silk, the natural stuff, and he was still strongly aware of its unusual tactile impression. Mara Hunt was openly luxuriating in her swirling robe of some shimmering pearly stuff. AnnSmith looked completely at home in a brief grecian of paper-white satin. But Stanley was still in his own clothes, just as he had been all through. A formidable and unpredictable man.

"If the matter was just as you have stated it, sir," he said now, "I'd agree that my action was unethical, at least. Nor would I want to defend it by pointing out that I had to use whatever I could to prevent a wholesale disaster, because that is bad ethics too. Circumstances do not justify cases, any more than the end justifies the means. But it isn't quite like that. The microwave conversion effect is very new. Although I am an official of an obscure and clandestine power group of Earth's security services, I am also a research scientist. When I have the chance. And I did, perfectly honestly, leap at this chance to perform some basic research, here on Hydro. And the microwave transmission effect was that research. So it is very new." He paused to take a sip from his glass again.

"The full potential is immense, of course, and others have speculated on various aspects of it. One of those speculations had to do with beaming water to Mars. As we all know, that planet has been singularly difficult to colonize, much more so than Venus. With a copious supply of pure-by-definition water, most of the difficulty will be canceled. And what better place to take it from than Venus? That proposition is already in the pipeline. So you're wrong to think that we kept it from you." He paused again, and then grinned.

"You know, it is refreshing to debate with a man who you know can tell whether you're trying to deceive him or not. It cuts out a whole spectrum of dialectical tricks. But it also serves its purpose. You know that what I just said is true, don't you?"

The president nodded uncomfortably. He also knew, as Dillard knew, that there was more to come, that Stanley had a brickbat up his sleeve.

"Now, then. The process has been developed to the point where we can apply it, where we—meaning Earth Government—can approach you and your people, and make the offer I have just outlined. But can we?" Stanley put an edge on his voice now. "Can we deal with you? You know, better than I can tell you, the climate of savage distrust that exists among your people against anything of Earth. I will admit that, among the masses of Earth at least, a similar feeling exists toward you. But not at executive level. Our higher executives would be only too willing to meet you, to offer the hand of common friendship and welfare. But how far would we get?"

"You would break down on one thing, Earthman!" BilliSmith burst out angrily. "For all your clever talk, you know this, that if my people ask the one thing that is theirs by right, that they be allowed to return to the planet of their origin, to return to live on Earth, you would refuse. You know this, so how can you pretend that you come in friendship?"

"Exactly!" Stanley nodded as if some point had been made for him.

"You have one fixed idea. Almost a neurosis. You want to come back to Earth. And we can't have that."

"The hand of friendship!" BilliSmith snarled.

"No, not at all. The dictates of common sense. You were there. You heard Dillard speak out. You felt the truth of what he told you, about our disgusting planet. And you still want to come and live there?"

"Amplified suggestion and exaggeration!"

"No it wasn't!" Dillard objected, stung in his professional capacity. "The amplification was for the Roggans, not you. You got what I was feeling through Ann, here. Your own sister!"

"Face it," Stanley advised. "You got the truth. There just is not the room on Earth for any kind of considerable contingent from Venus. At all! I'll go further. Never mind that you'd be acutely miserable if you did come to Earth to live, to sniff up stinking air, huddle in noisy, close quarters with millions of others, chomp your way through syn-tho-food and drink recycled water. Never mind that. Think of this. I've visited your planet, as a touring lecturer. So has Mara, there. Check us on this: if the people of Earth knew what a pleasant place Venus is to live on—in the few places you have been able to convert, that is—they would be flocking to go there. And I mean just that!"

Into a thick silence McLarenSmith said, "There is a great deal of rethinking to do here. If I understand you, Dr. Stanley, you are saying that we can have the water beaming technique, and technical assistance, but only if we can convert our people into a more rational attitude toward Earth."

"It will have to be like that, sir, otherwise, before you know it, the story would be about and raging, that we of Earth are once again imposing some sort of tyranny on your people. You know that. But it's up to us, too. We have the job of selling the truth about Venus to our people. There are lots of odds and ends to be tied off, too. We shall have to recompense you for the loss of your percentage, here. We have to make adjustments in giving Roggan back to its rightful people. There will be swarms of scientists here to meet and study real aliens. A thousand things. But those two stand above the others. We have to change the attitudes of our two peoples."

There was another thick silence, and a sigh from McLarenSmith. "It will not be easy, that."

"Let me offer a suggestion." Stanley spoke casually, but Dillard became tense as he detected the underlying simmer of cynical amusement there.

"You have a powerful weapon to your hand, right here, Dillard."

"What now?" Dillard growled. "No more heroics for me."

"Not at all. Just your job that's all. Make him your chief propaganda merchant, sir. I feel sure his parent firm will back him to the hilt once the idea takes root. Do you see it? Dillard established on Venus, sending back dramatapes complete with sensory effects, to let Earth people know exactly what kind of place it is, and what kind of people live there. You could do that, Dillard, couldn't you?"

"Me? Live on Venus?"

"Yes," AnnSmith said, very softly. "Oh yes. With me to help." Now, for the first time, McLarenSmith realized how it was between his daughter and the Earthman, and he stared. And then surrendered to what he could sense. But then he nodded, thoughtfully. "It would work, Dr. Stanley. And, like all good coins, it has a reverse side. Dillard could import dramatapes from Earth, to let us see and know what conditions are like there. It is a good thought. You have a real talent, young man. What say you?"

Dillard didn't know what to say for quite a long while. The chaos in his mind was without pattern, but two things held fast in it. One was the nerve-tingling clean warmth that surged from the girl by his side to envelop him in a glow of total rapport. The other was the canker-worm that he still held, down deep. At last he said, "All right, I'm willing to give it a try. But…"

"Something has been worrying you all this time," AnnSmith said gently.

"You must tell us what it is."

"All right. What about the Roggans?"

The question was aimed at Stanley, who half-closed his eyes and took on a crafty look of anticipation. McLarenSmith spoke into the breach with great confidence.

"You need have no fears about them, my boy. They will be eager to leave Hesperus—I suppose we must cease to use that silly name now—but anyway, they will be keen to return to their own planet. Nothing to worry about."

"I mean," Dillard said it stubbornly, "the Roggans right here! On this their own planet."

"What about them?" Stanley purred, and Dillard frowned, sensing he was being outguessed again. But he went through with his worry just the same.

"I'm no sociologist, let's face it. But I do know people. And I know a bit about our aliens down there. They are alien. You know that, too. You can't feel them, can you? They don't think the way we do. Don't talk to me about logic. That's not thinking, or feeling. That's a set of values, a mathematical thing. A machine can do that."

"Go on!" Stanley urged.

"We don't know how they think. But we do know this, from their own history: for more than two thousand years they held fast to one supreme drive. To get back to the surface somehow. They were prepared to do it the hard way, via Venus, and a smash attack on Earth. They've been talked out of it, for the moment. They are going to get back their own planet. That's fine. But how long are they going to stay content with that? They've seen Venus, and Earth. They know about us, and how vulnerable we are. They have a hell of a drive. How do we know what they will do, once they've got their own culture going again? Remember what they did, long ago? They destroyed themselves in a war. They could do it again. Or us. So —as I said—what about the Roggans?"

The ship's lounge went chill as his reasoning took hold of the rest. All except Dr. Stanley, who smiled.

"You have a very good point, Dillard. A very good point indeed. I always said, did I not, that you had brains? And you can use them, when you choose to do so."

"Forget that," Dillard snarled. "What about the issue? You've handed the Roggans back their planet. You're responsible for what they may do in ten, twenty, fifty years' time. To us!"

"You're quite right." Stanley nodded, and sat back. "Responsible is the word. I accept it. I'm a scientist, Dillard. Like you, I know a little about people. I believe the Roggans to be logical. Or, shall we say, they have been, so far. They chose their own planet by way of peace, rather than an abortive effort to take ours from us. That was rather obvious. What they will do in time, in new conditions, with development and change, I don't know. But they will be watched, I assure you. And if they show the signs you quite rightly point out, they will be destroyed." All at once this lounging little man was cold, like inexorable fate. "We talk a lot about human nature, and the sanctity of human life, and so on. But are the Roggans human? Do they feel as we do? I doubt it."

"You're building up to another war," Dillard accused. "More accurately, you've simply postponed it."

"No. I didn't say we would fight them. I said they would be destroyed. In fact, they will destroy themselves. I will tell you how, with your assurance that the knowledge must not be repeated outside this room. Not until the right moment. Yes? Very well. It has to do with rock, and pressure, and the process of planetary core-formation. It's highly technical, but I can give you the simple facts. Like this. Above a certain gross mass, all planets have a core. The characteristics are common, the process well-known —to those who study such things. Above a certain given pressure the rocks which form the interior body of a planet are forced—deformed—into a closely packed lattice pattern. This is quite standard. Earth has a core. So does Venus. Venus, in fact, is just slightly more massive than the lowest critical possible. Mars, on the other hand, does not have a core. Nor does the moon. Nor Mercury. Now, this planet we call Hydro happens to be very close to the critical limit. It has a core. But should it in some way lose sufficient mass—to decrease the internal gravity pressure, to reduce it below a certain point, to upset the balance of pressures —should that happen—"

"Yes?" Dillard forced the word through a dry throat.

"The core will disappear. The molecular collapse will reverse itself. The overall energy release will be on the order of ten to the thirty-sixth power ergs. I know that's an unthinkable figure. It's enormous. It will be enough to shatter the mantle, to throw the entire surface into chaos, even to throw off continent-sized landmasses into space."

Dillard sagged into his chair, completely stunned by the prospect, as Stanley went on: "I had this all worked out. By my calculations, the Roggans have something like ten years. In that time they should have reclaimed all the land they had before, and a trifle more. I shall stay here, of course, to guide and assist. And watch. Let's hope they change their ways. That's up to us. All of us, human and Venusian alike. We have a big job ahead of us. You've lived with the Roggans, sir, a lot longer than I have. Your people have a part to play, here. We all have a part to play. We can start in a small way, by showing the Roggans that we can cooperate, forget our differences, work together. Do you agree?"

"I have to." McLarenSmith sighed. "It looks as if I am going to have an Earthman son-in-law!"

The End