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07.16 Fashion 2017

the galaxy primes chapter 1 her hair was a brilliant green. so was herspectacularly filled halter. so were her tight short-shorts, her lipstick, and the lacqueron her finger-and toe-nails. as she strolled into the main of the starship, followed hesitantlyby the other girl, she drove a mental probe at the black-haired, powerfully-built manseated at the instrument-banked console. blocked. then at the other, slenderer man who was risingto his feet from the pilot's bucket seat. his guard was partially down; he was telepathinga pleasant, if somewhat reserved greeting

to both newcomers. she turned to her companion and spoke aloud."so these are the system's best." the emphasis was somewhere between condescension and sneer."not much to choose between, i'd say ... 'port me a tenth-piece, clee? heads, i take thetow-head." she flipped the coin dexterously. "heads itis, lola, so i get jimâ€”james james james the ninth himself. you have the honor of pairingwith cleeâ€”or should i say his learnedness right the honorable director doctor cleandersimmsworth garlock, doctor of philosophy, doctor of science, prime operator, presidentand first fellow of the galaxian society, first fellow of the gunther society, fellowof the institute of paraphysics, of the institute

of nuclear physics, of the college of mathematics,of the congress of psionicists, and of all the other top-bracket brain-gangs you everheard of? also, for your information, his men have given him a couple of informal degreesâ€”p.d.q.and s.o.b." the big psionicist's expression of saturnine,almost contemptuous amusement had not changed; his voice came flat and cold. "the less yousay, doctor bellamy, the better. obstinate, swell-headed women give me an acute rectalpain. pitching your curves over all the vizzies in space got you aboard, but it won't getyou a thing from here on. and for your information, doctor bellamy, one more crack like that andi take you over my knee and blister your fanny." "try it, you big, clumsy, muscle-bound gorilla!"she jeered. "that i want to see! any time

you want to get both arms broken at the elbows,just try it!" "now's as good a time as any. i like yourspirit, babe, but i can't say a thing for your judgment." he got up and started purposefullytoward her, but both non-combatants came between. "jet back, clee!" james protested, both handsagainst the heavier man's chest. "what the hell kind of show is that to put on?" and,simultaneously: "belle! shame on you! picking a fight already,and with nobody knows how many million people looking on! you know as well as i do thatwe may have to spend the rest of our lives together, so act like civilized beingsâ€”pleaseâ€”bothof you! and don't...." "nobody's watching this but us," garlock interrupted."when pussy there started using her claws

i cut the gun." "that's what you think," james said sharply,"but fatso and his number one girl friend are coming in on the tight beam." "oh?" garlock whirled toward the hithertodark and silent three-dimensional communications instrument. the face of a bossy-looking womanwas already bright. "garlock! how dare you try to cut chancellorferber off?" she demanded. her voice was deep-pitched, blatant with authority. "here you are, sir." the woman's face shifted to one side and aman's appearedâ€”a face to justify in full the nickname "fatso."

"'fatso', eh?" chancellor ferber snarled.pale eyes glared from the fat face. "that costs you exactly one thousand credits, james." "how much will this cost me, fatso?" garlockasked. "five thousandâ€”and, since nobody can callme that deliberately, demotion three grades and probation for three years. make a note,miss foster." "noted, sir." "still sure we aren't going anywhere," garlocksaid. "what a brain!" "sure i'm sure!" ferber gloated. "in a coupleof hours i'm going to buy your precious starship in as junk. in the meantime, whether you likeit or not, i'm going to watch your expression

while you push all those pretty buttons andnothing happens." "the trouble with you, fatso," garlock saiddispassionately, as he opened a drawer and took out a pair of cutting pliers, "is thatall your strength is in your glands and none in your alleged brain. there are a lot ofthingsâ€”including a lot of testsâ€”you know nothing about. how much will you see afteri've cut one wire?" "you wouldn't dare!" the fat man shouted."i'd fire youâ€”blacklist you all over the sys...." voice and images died away and garlock turnedto the two women in the main. he began to smile, but his mental shield did not weaken.

"you've got a point there, lola," he said,going on as though ferber's interruption had not occurred. "not that i blame either belleor myself. if anything was ever calculated to drive a man nuts, this farce was. as theonly female prime in the system, belle should have been in automaticallyâ€”she had no competition.and to anybody with three brain cells working the other place lay between you, lola, andthe other three female ops in the age group. "but no. ferber and the rest of the boardâ€”stupidityuber alles!â€”think all us ops and primes are psycho and that the ship will never evenlift. so they made a grand circus of it. but they succeeded in one thingâ€”with such abysmalstupidity so rampant i'm getting more and more reconciled to the idea of our not gettingbackâ€”at least, for a long, long time."

"why, they said we had a very good chance...."lola began. "yeah, and they said a lot of even biggerdamn lies than that one. have you read any of my papers?" "i'm sorry. i'm not a mathematician." "our motion will be purely at random. if itisn't, i'll eat this whole ship. we won't get back until jim and i work out somethingto steer us with. but they must be wondering no end, outside, what the score is, so i'mwilling to call it a drawâ€”temporarilyâ€”and let 'em in again. how about it, belle?" "a draw it isâ€”temporarily." neither, however,even offered to shake hands.

"smile pretty, everybody," garlock said, andpressed a stud. "... the matter? what's the matter? oh...."the worried voice of the system's ace newscaster came in. "power failure already?" "no," garlock replied. "i figured we had acouple of minutes of privacy coming, if you can understand the meaning of the word. nowall four of us tell everybody who is watching or listening au revoir or good-bye, whicheverit may turn out to be." he reached for the switch. "wait a minute!" the newscaster demanded."leave it on until the last poss...." his voice broke off sharply.

"turn it back on!" belle ordered. "nix." "scared?" she sneered. "you chirped it, bird-brain. i'm scared purple.so would you be, if you had three brain cells working in that glory-hound's head of yours.get set, everybody, and we'll take off." "stop it, both of you!" lola exclaimed. "wheredo you want us to sit, and do we strap down?" "you sit here; belle at that plate besidejim. yes, strap down. there probably won't be any shock, and we should land right sideup, but there's no sense in taking chances. sure your stuff's all aboard?"

"yes, it's in our rooms." the four secured themselves; the two men checked,for the dozenth time, their instruments. the pilot donned his scanner. the ship liftedeffortlessly, noiselessly. through the atmosphere; through and far beyond the stratosphere. itstopped. "ready, clee?" james licked his lips. "as ready as i ever will be, i guess. shoot!" the pilot's right hand, forefinger outstretched,moved unenthusiastically toward a red button on his panel ... slowed ... stopped. he staredinto his scanner at the earth so far below. "hit it, jim!" garlock snapped. "hit it, forgoodness sake, before we all lose our nerve!"

james stabbed convulsively at the button,and in the very instant of contactâ€”instantaneously; without a fractional microsecond of time-lapseâ€”theirfamiliar surroundings disappeared. or, rather, and without any sensation of motion, of displacement,or of the passage of any time whatsoever, the planet beneath them was no longer theirfamiliar earth. the plates showed no familiar stars nor patterns of heavenly bodies. thebrightly-shining sun was very evidently not their familiar sol. "wellâ€”we went somewhere ... but not to alphacentauri, not much to our surprise." james gulped twice; then went on, speaking almostjauntily now that the attempt had been made and had failed. "so now it's up to you, clee,as director of project gunther and captain

of the good ship pleiades, to boss the more-or-lesssimpleâ€”more, i hopeâ€”job of getting us back to tellus." science, both physical and paraphysical, haddone its best. gunther's theorems, which define the electromagnetic and electrogravitic parameterspertaining to the annihilation of distance, had been studied, tested, and applied to thefull. so had the psionic corollaries; which, while not having the status of paraphysicallaws, do allow computation of the qualities and magnitudes of the stresses required forany given application of the gunther effect. the planning of the starship pleiades hadbeen difficult in the extreme; its construction almost impossible. while it was practicallya foregone conclusion that any man of the

requisite caliber would already be a memberof the galaxian society, the three planets and eight satellites were screened, psionicistby psionicist, to select the two strongest and most versatile of their breed. these two, garlock and james, were heads ofdepartments of, and under iron-clad contract to, vast solar system enterprises, inc., theonly concern able and willing to attempt the building of the first starship. alonzo p. ferber, chancellor of sse, however,would not risk a tenth-piece of the company's money on such a bird-brained scheme. himselfa gunther first, he believed implicitly that firsts were in fact tops in gunther ability;that these few self-styled "operators" and

"prime operators" were either charlatans orself-deluded crackpots. since he could not feel that so-called "operator field," no suchthing did or could exist. no gunther starship could ever, possibly, work. he did loan garlock and james to the galaxians,but that was as far as he would go. for salaries and for labor, for research and material,for trials and for errors; the society paid and paid and paid. thus the starship pleiades had cost the galaxiansociety almost a thousand million credits. garlock and james had worked on the ship sinceits inception. they were to be of the crew; for over a year it had been taken for grantedthat would be its only crew.

as the pleiades neared completion, however,it became clearer and clearer that the displacement-control presented an unsolved, and quite possiblyan insoluble, problem. it was mathematically certain that, when the gunther field wenton, the ship would be displaced instantaneously to some location in space having preciselythe gunther coordinates required by that particular field. one impeccably rigorous analysis showedthat the ship would shift into the nearest solar system possessing an earth-type planet;which was believed to be alpha centauri and which was close enough to sol so that orientationwould be automatic and the return to earth a simple matter. since the gunther effect did in fact annihilatedistance, however, another group of mathematicians,

led by garlock and james, proved with equalrigor that the point of destination was no more likely to be any one given gunther pointthan any other one of the myriads of billions of equiguntherial points undoubtedly existentthroughout the length, breadth, and thickness of our entire normal space-time continuum. the two men would go anyway, of course. carefully-calculatedpressures would make them go. it was neither necessary nor desirable, however, for themto go alone. wherefore the planets and satellites werecombed again; this time to select two womenâ€”the two most highly-gifted psionicists in theeighteen-to-twenty-five age group. thus, if the pleiades returned successfully to earth,well and good. if she did not, the four selectees

would found, upon some far-off world, a racemuch abler than the humanity of earth; since eighty-three percent of earth's dwellers hadpsionic grades lower than four. this search, with its attendant fanfare andstudiedly blatant publicity, was so planned and engineered that two selected women didnot arrive at the spaceport until a bare fifteen minutes before the scheduled time of take-off.thus it made no difference whether the women liked the men or not, or vice versa; or whetheror not any of them really wanted to make the trip. pressures were such that each of themhad to go, whether he or she wanted to or not. "cut the rope, jim, and let the old bucketdrop," garlock said. "not too close. before

we make any kind of contact we'll have todo some organizing. these instruments," he waved at his console, "show that ours is theonly operator field in this whole region of space. hence, there are no operators and noprimes. that means that from now until we get back to tellus...." "if we get back to tellus," belle corrected,sweetly. "until we get back to tellus there will beno gunthering aboard this ship...." "what?" belle broke in again. "have you lostyour mind?" "there will be little if any lepping, andnothing else at all. at the table, if we want sugar, we will reach for it or have it passed.we will pick up things, such as cigarettes,

with our fingers. we will carry lighters anduse them. when we go from place to place, we will walk. is that clear?" "you seem to be talking english," belle sneered,"but the words don't make sense." "i didn't think you were that stupid." eyeslocked and held. then garlock grinned savagely. "okay. you tell her, lola, in words of asfew syllables as possible." "why, to get used to it, of course," lolaexplained, while belle glared at garlock in frustrated anger. "so as not to reveal anythingwe don't have to." "thank you, miss montandon, you may go tothe head of the class. all monosyllables except two. that should make it clear, even to missbellamy."

"you ... you beast!" belle drove a tight-beamedthought. "i was never so insulted in my life!" "you asked for it. keep on asking for it andyou'll keep on getting it." then, aloud, to all three, "in emergencies, of course, anythinggoes. we will now proceed with business." he paused, then went on, bitingly, "if possible." "one minute, please!" belle snapped. "justwhy, captain garlock, are you insisting on oral communication, when lepping is so muchfaster and better? it's stupidâ€”reactionary. don't you ever lep?" "with jim, on business, yes; with women, nomore than i have to. what i think is nobody's business but mine."

"what a way to run a ship! or a project!" "running this project is my business, notyours; and if there's any one thing in the entire universe it does not need, it's a femaleexhibitionist. besides your obvious qualifications to be one of the eves in case of ultimatecontingency...." he broke off and stared at her, his contemptuous gaze traveling slowly,dissectingly, from her toes to the topmost wave of her hair-do. "forty-two, twenty, forty?" he sneered. "you flatter me." her glare was an almosttangible force; her voice was controlled fury. "thirty-nine, twenty-two, thirty-five. fiveseven. one thirty-five. if any of it's any

of your business, which it isn't. you shouldbe discussing brains and ability, not vital statistics." "brains? you? no, i'll take that back. asa prime, you have got a brainâ€”one that really works. what do you think you're good for onthis project? what can you do?" "i can do anything any man ever born can do,and do it better!" "okay. compute a gunther field that will putus two hundred thousand feet directly above the peak of that mountain." "that isn't fairâ€”not that i expected fairnessfrom youâ€”and you know it. that doesn't take either brains or ability...."

"oh, no?" "no. merely highly specialized training thatyou know i haven't had. give me a five-tape course on it and i'll come closer than eitheryou or james; for a hundred credits a shot." "i'll do just that. something you are supposedto know, then. how would you go about making first contact?" "well, i wouldn't do it the way you wouldâ€”byknocking down the first native i saw, putting my foot on his face, and yelling 'bow down,you stupid, ignorant beasts, and worship me, the supreme god of the macrocosmic universe'!" "try again, belle, that one missed me by...."

"hold it, both of you!" james broke in. "whatthe hell are you trying to prove? how about cutting out this cat-and-dog act and gettingsome work done?" "you've got a point there," garlock admitted,holding his temper by a visible effort. "sorry, jim. belle, what were you briefed for?" "to understudy you." she, too, fought hertemper down. "to learn everything about project gunther. i have a whole box of tapes in myroom, including advanced gunther math and first-contact techniques. i'm to study themduring all my on-watch time unless you assign other duties." "no matter what your duties may be, you'llhave to have time to study. if you don't find

what you want in your own tapesâ€”and youprobably won't, since ferber and his miss foster ran the selectionsâ€”use our library.it's goodâ€”designed to carry on our civilization. miss montandon? no, that's silly, the waywe're fixed. lola?" "i'm to learn how to be doctor james'...." "jim, please, lola," james said. "and callhim clee." "i'd like that." she smiled winningly. "andmy friends call me 'brownie'." "i see why they would. it fits like a coatof lacquer." it did. her hair was a dark, lustrous brown,as were her eyebrows. her eyes were brown. her skin, tooâ€”her dark red playsuit leftlittle to the imaginationâ€”was a rich and

even brown. originally fairly dark, it hadbeen tanned to a more-than-fashionable depth of color by naked sun-bathing and by practically-nakedoutdoor sports. a couple of inches shorter than the green-haired girl, she too had afigure to make any sculptor drool. "i'm to be dr. jim's assistant. i have a thousandtapes, more or less, to study, too. it'll be quite a while, i'm afraid, before i canbe of much use, but i'll do the best i can." "if we had hit alpha centauri that arrangementwould have been good, but as we are, it isn't." garlock frowned in thought, his heavy blackeyebrows almost meeting above his finely-chiseled aquiline nose. "since neither jim nor i needan assistant any more than we need tails, it was designed to give you girls somethingto do. but out here, lost, there's work for

a dozen trained specialists and there areonly four of us. so we shouldn't duplicate effort. right? you first, belle." "are you asking me or telling me?" she asked."and that's a fair question. don't read anything into it that isn't there. with your attitude,i want information." "i am asking you," he replied, carefully."for your information, when i know what should be done, i give orders. when i don't know,as now, i ask advice. if i like it, i follow it. fair enough?" "fair enough. we're apt to need any numberof specialists." "lola?"

"of course we shouldn't duplicate. what shalli study?" "that's what we must figure out. we can'tdo it exactly, of course; all we can do now is to set up a rough scheme. jim's job isthe only one that's definite. he'll have to work full time on nebular configurations.if we hit inhabited planets he'll have to add their star-charts to his own. that leavesthree of us to do all the other work of a survey. ideally, we would cover all the factorsthat would be of use in getting us back to tellus, but since we don't know what thosefactors are.... found out anything yet, jim?" "a little. tellus-type planet, apparentlystrictly so. oceans and continents. lots of inhabitantsâ€”farms, villages, all sizes ofcities. not close enough to say definitely,

but inhabitants seem to be humanoid, if nothuman." "hold her here. besides astronomy, which isall yours, what do we need most?" "we should have enough to classify planetsand inhabitants, so as to chart a space-trend if there is any. i'd say the most importantones would be geology, stratigraphy, paleontology, oceanography, xenology, anthropology, ethnology,vertebrate biology, botany, and at least some ecology." "that's about the list i was afraid of. butthere are only three of us. the fields you mention number much more." "each of you will have to be a lot of specialistsin one, then. i'd say the best split would

be planetology, xenology, and anthropologyâ€”each,of course, stretched all out of shape to cover dozens of related and non-related specialties." "good enough. xenology, of course, is mine.contacts, liaison, politics, correlation, and so on, as well as studying the non-humanlife formsâ€”including as many lower animals and plants as possible. i'll make a stab atit. now, belle, since you're a prime and lola's an operator, you get the next toughest job.planetography." "why not?" belle smiled and began to act asone of the party. "all i know about it is a hazy idea of what the word means, but i'llstart studying as soon as we get squared away." "thanks. that leaves anthropology to you,lola. besides, that's your line, isn't it?"

"yes. sociological anthropology. i have mym.s. in it, and amâ€”was, i meanâ€”working for my ph.d. but as jim said, it isn't onlythe one specialty. you want me, i take it, to cover humanoid races, too?" "check. you and jim both, then, will knowwhat you're doing, while belle and i are trying to play ours by ear." "where do we draw the line between humanoidand non-human?" "in case of doubt we'll confer. that coversit as much as we can, i think. take us down, jimâ€”and be on your toes to take evasiveaction fast." the ship dropped rapidly toward an airportjust outside a fairly large city. fifty thousandâ€”forty

thousandâ€”thirty thousand feet. "calling strange spaceshipâ€”you must be aspaceship, in spite of your tremendous, hitherto-considered-impossible massâ€”" a thought impinged on all four tellurianminds, "do you read me?" "i read you clearly. this is the tellurianspaceship pleiades, captain garlock commanding, asking permission to land and informationas to landing conventions." he did not have to tell james to stop the ship; james hadalready done so. "i was about to ask you to hold position;i thank you for having done so. hold for inspection and type-test, please. we will not blast unlessyou fire first. a few minutes, please." a group of twelve jet fighters took off practicallyvertically upward and climbed with fantastic

speed. they leveled off a thousand feet belowthe pleiades and made a flying circle. up and into the ring thus formed there lumbereda large, clumsy-looking helicopter. "we have no record of any planet named 'tellus';nor of any such ship as yours. of such incredible mass and with no visible or detectable meansof support or of propulsion. not from this part of the galaxy, certainly ... could itbe that intergalactic travel is actually possible? but excuse me, captain garlock, none of thatis any of my business; which is to determine whether or not you four tellurian human beingsare compatible with, and thus acceptable to, our humanity of hodell ... but you do notseem to have a standard televideo testing-box aboard."

"no, sir; only our own tri-di and teevee." "you must be examined by means of a standardbox. i will rise to your level and teleport one across to you. it is self-powered andfully automatic." "you needn't rise, sir. just toss the boxout of your 'copter into the air. we'll take it from there." then, to james, "take it,jim." "oh? you can lift large masses against muchgravity?" the alien was all attention. "i have not known that such power existed. iwill observe with keen interest." "i have it," james said. "here it is." "thank you, sir," garlock said to the alien.then, to lola: "you've been reading theseâ€”these

hodellians?" "the officer in the helicopter and those inthe fighters, yes. most of them are gunther firsts." "good girl. the set's coming to lifeâ€”watchit." the likeness of the alien being became clearupon the alien screen; visible from the waist up. while humanoid, the creature was veryfar indeed from being human. heâ€”at least, it had masculine rudimentary nipplesâ€”haddouble shoulders and four arms. his skin was a vividly intense cobalt blue. his ears wereblack, long, and highly dirigible. his eyes, a flaming red in color, were large and vertically-slitted,like a cat's. he had no hair at all. his nose

was large and roman; his jaw was square, almostjutting; his bright-yellow teeth were clean and sharp. after a minute of study the alien said: "althoughyour vessel is so entirely alien that nothing even remotely like it is on record, you fourare completely human and, if of compatible type, acceptable. are there any other livingbeings aboard with you?" "excepting micro-organisms, none." "such life is of no importance. approach,please, one of you, and grasp with a hand the projecting metal knob." with a little trepidation, garlock did so.he felt no unusual sensation at the contact.

"all four of you are compatible and we acceptyou. this finding is surprising in the extreme, as you are the first human beings of recordwho grade higher than what you call gunther two ... or gunther second?" "either one; the terms are interchangeable." "you have minds of tremendous developmentand power; definitely superior even to my own. however, there is no doubt that physicallyyou are perfectly compatible with our humanity. your blood will be of great benefit to it.you may land. goodbye." "wait, please. how about landing conventions?and visiting restrictions and so on? and may we keep this box? we will be glad to tradeyou something for it, if we have anything

you would like to have?" "ah, i should have realized that your customswould be widely different from ours. since you have been examined and accepted, thereare no restrictions. you will not act against humanity's good. land where you please, gowhere you please, do what you please as long as you please. take up permanent residenceor leave as soon as you please. marry if you like, or simply breedâ€”your unions with thisplanet's humanity will be fertile. keep the box without payment. as guardians of humanitywe arpalones do whatever small favors we can. have i made myself clear?" "abundantly so. thank you, sir."

"now i really must go. goodbye." garlock glanced into his plate. the jets haddisappeared, the helicopter was falling rapidly away. he wiped his brow. "well, i'll be damned," he said. when his amazement subsided he turned to thebusiness at hand. "lola, do you check me that this planet is named hodell, that it is populatedby creatures exactly like us? arpalones?" "exactly, except they aren't 'creatures'.they are humanoids, and very fine people." "you'd think so, of course ... correctionaccepted. well, let's take advantage of their extraordinarily hospitable invitation andgo down. cut the rope, jim."

the airport was very large, and was dividedinto several sections, each of which was equipped with runways and/or other landing facilitiesto suit one class of craftâ€”propellor jobs, jets, or helicopters. there were even a fewstructures that looked like rocket pits. "where are you going to sit down, jim? withthe 'copters or over by the blast-pits?" "with the 'copters, i think. since i can placeher to within a couple of inches. i'll put her squarely into that far corner, where she'llbe out of everybody's way." "no concrete out there," garlock said. "butthe ground seems good and solid." "we'd better not land on concrete," jamesgrinned. "unless it's terrific stuff we'd smash it. on bare ground, the worst we cando is sink in a foot or so, and that won't

hurt anything." "check. a few tons to the square foot, isall. shall we strap down and hang onto our teeth?" "who do you think you're kidding, boss? eventhough i've got to do this on manual, i won't tip over a half-piece standing on edge." james stopped talking, pulled out his scanner,stuck his face into it. the immense starship settled downward toward the selected corner.there was no noise, no blast, no flame, no slightest visible or detectable sign of whateverforce it was that was braking the thousands of tons of the vessel's mass in its miles-long,almost-vertical plunge to ground.

when the pleiades struck ground the impactwas scarcely to be felt. when she came to rest, after settling into the ground her allotted"foot or so," there was no jar at all. "atmosphere, temperature, and so on, approximatelyearth-normal," garlock said. "just as our friend said it would be." james scanned the city and the field. "ourvisit is kicking up a lot of excitement. shall we go out?" "not yet!" belle exclaimed. "i want to seehow the women are dressed, first." "so do i," lola added, "and some other thingsbesides." both womenâ€”lola through her operator's scanner;belle by manipulating the ship's tremendous

operator field by the sheer power of her primeoperator's mindâ€”stared eagerly at the crowd of people now beginning to stream across thefield. "as an anthropologist," lola announced, "i'mnot only surprised. i am shocked, annoyed, and disgruntled. why, they're exactly likewhite tellurian human beings!" "but look at their clothes!" belle insisted."they're wearing anything and everything, from bikinis to coveralls!" "yes, but notice." this was the anthropologicalscientist speaking now. "breasts and loins, covered. faces, uncovered. heads and feetand hands, either bare or covered. ditto for legs up to there, backs, arms, necks and shouldersdown to here, and torsos clear down to there.

we'll not violate any conventions by goingout as we are. not even you, belle. you first, chief. yours the high honor of setting firstfootâ€”the biggest foot we've got, tooâ€”on alien soil." "to hell with that. we'll go out together." "wait a minute," lola went on. "there's afunny-looking automobile just coming through the gate. the press. three men and two women.two cameras, one walkie-talkie, and two microphones. the photog in the purple shirt is really asharpie at lepping. class three, at leastâ€”possibly a two." "how about screens down enough to lep, boss?"belle suggested. "faster. we may need it."

"check. i'm too busy to record, anywayâ€”i'lllog this stuff up tonight," and thoughts flew. "check me, jim," garlock flashed. "telepathy,very good. on gunther, the guy was rightâ€”no signs at all of any first activity, and veryfew seconds." "check," james agreed. "and lola, those 'guardians' out there. ithought they were the same as the arpalone we talked to. they aren't. not even telepathic.same color scheme, is all." "right. much more brutish. much flatter cranium.long, tearing canine teeth. carnivorous. i'll call them just 'guardians' until we find outwhat they really are." the press car arrived and the tellurians disembarkedâ€”and,accidentally or not, it was belle's green

slipper that first touched ground. there wasa terrific babel of thought, worse, even, than voices in similar case, in being so muchfaster. the reporters, all of them, wanted to know everything at once. how, what, where,when, and why. also who. and all about tellus and the tellurian solar system. how did thevisitors like hodell? and all about belle's green hair. and the photographers were prodigalof film, shooting everything from all possible angles. "hold it!" garlock loosed a blast of thoughtthat "silenced" almost the whole field. "we will have order, please. lola montandon, ouranthropologist, will take charge. keep it orderly, lola, if you have to throw half ofthem off the field. i'm going over to administration

and check in. one of you reporters can comewith me, if you like." the man in the purple shirt got his bid infirst. as the two men walked away together, garlock noted that the man was in fact a secondâ€”hisflow of lucid, cogent thought did not interfere at all with the steady stream of speech goinginto his portable recorder. garlock also noticed that in any group of more than a dozen peoplethere was always at least one guardian. they paid no attention whatever to the people,who in turn ignored them completely. garlock wondered briefly. guardians? the arpalones,out in space, yes. but these creatures, naked and unarmed on the ground? the arpalones werenon-human people. these things wereâ€”what? at the door of the field office the reporter,after turning garlock over to a startlingly

beautiful, leggy, breasty, blonde receptionist-usherette,hurried away. he flecked a feeler at her mind and stiffened.how could a twoâ€”a high two, at thatâ€”be working as an usher? and with her guard downclear to the floor? he probedâ€”and saw. "lola!" he flashed a tight-beamed thought."you aren't putting out anything about our sexual customs, family life, and so on." "of course not. we must know their mores first." "good girl. keep your shield up." "oh, we're so glad to see you, captain garlock,sir!" the blonde, who was dressed little more heavily than the cigarette girls in venusberg'scartier room, seized his left hand in both

of hers and held it considerably longer thanwas necessary. her dazzling smile, her laughing eyes, her flashing white teeth, the many exposedinches of her skin, and her completely unshielded mind; all waved banners of welcome. "captain garlock, sir, governor atterlin hasbeen most anxious to see you ever since you were first detected. this way, please, sir."she turned, brushing her bare hip against his leg in the process, and led him by thehand along a hallway. her thoughts flowed. "i have been, too, sir, and i'm simply delightedto see you close up, and i hope to see a lot more of you. you're a wonderfully pleasantsurprise, sir; i've never seen a man like you before. i don't think hodell ever sawa man like you before, sir. with such a really

terrific mind and yet so big and strong andwell-built and handsome and clean-looking and blackish. you're wonderful, captain garlock,sir. you'll be here a long time, i hope? here we are, sir." she opened a door, walked across the room,sat down in an overstuffed chair, and crossed her legs meticulously. then, still smilinghappily, she followed with eager eyes and mind garlock's every move. garlock had been reading governor atterlin;knew why it was the governor who was in that office instead of the port manager. he knewthat atterlin had been reading himâ€”as much as he had allowed. they had already discussedmany things, and were still discussing.

the room was much more like a library thanan office. the governor, a middle-aged, red-headed man a trifle inclined to portliness, had beenseated in a huge reclining chair facing a teevee screen, but got up to shake hands. "welcome, friend captain garlock. now, tocontinue. as to exchange. many ships visiting us have nothing we need or can use. for such,all services are freeâ€”or rather, are paid by the city. our currency is based upon platinum,but gold, silver, and copper are valuable. certain jewels, also...." "that's far enough. we will pay our wayâ€”wehave plenty of metal. what are your ratios of value for the four metals here on hodell?"

"today's quotations are...." he glanced ata screen, and his fingers flashed over the keys of a computer beside his chair. "oneweight of platinum is equal in value to seven point three four six...." "decimals are not necessary, sir." "seven plus, then, weights of gold. one ofgold to eleven of silver. one of silver to four of copper." "thank you. we'll use platinum. i'll bringsome bullion tomorrow morning and exchange it for your currency. shall i bring it here,or to a bank in the city?" "either. or we can have an armored truck visityour ship."

"that would be better yet. have them bringabout five thousand tanes. thank you very much, governor atterlin, and good afternoonto you, sir." "and good afternoon to you, sir. until tomorrow,then." garlock turned to leave. "oh, may i go with you to your ship, sir,to take just a little look at it?" the girl asked, winningly. "of course, grand lady neldine, i'd like tohave your company." she seized his elbow and hugged it quicklyagainst her breast. then, taking his hand, she walkedâ€”almost skippedâ€”along besidehim. "and i want to see pilot james close

up, too, sirâ€”he's not nearly as wonderfulas you are, sirâ€”and i wonder why planetographer bellamy's hair is green? very striking, ofcourse, sir, but i don't think i'd care for it much on meâ€”unless you'd think i should,sir?" belle knew, of course, that they were coming;and garlock knew that belle's hackles were very much on the rise. she could not readhim, except very superficially, but she was reading the strange girl like a book and wasnot liking anything she read. wherefore, when garlock and his joyous companion reached thegreat spaceshipâ€” "how come you picked up that little man-eatingshark?" she sent, venomously, on a tight band. "it wasn't a case of picking her up." garlockgrinned. "i haven't been able to find any

urbane way of scraping her off. first contact,you know." "she wants altogether too much contact fora firstâ€”i'll scrape her off, even if she is one of the nobler class on this world...."belle changed her tactics even before garlock began his reprimand. "i shouldn't have saidthat, clee, of course." she laughed lightly. "it was just the shock; there wasn't anythingin any of my first contact tapes covering what to do about beautiful and enticing girlswho try to seduce our men. she doesn't know, though, of course, that she's supposed tobe a bug-eyed monster and not human at all. won't xenology be in for a rough ride whenwe check in? wow!" "you can play that in spades, sister." andfor the rest of the day belle played flawlessly

the role of perfect hostess. it was full dark before the hodellians couldbe persuaded to leave the pleiades and the locks were closed. "i have refused one hundred seventy-eightinvitations," lola reported then. "all of us, individually and collectively, have beeninvited to eat everything, everywhere in town. to see shows in a dozen different theatersand eighteen night spots. to dance all night in twenty-one different places, ranging fromdives to strictly soup-and-fish. i was nice about it, of courseâ€”just begged off becausewe were dead from our belts both ways from our long, hard trip. my thought, of course,is that we'd better eat our own food and take

it slowly at first. check, clee?" "on the beam, dead center. and you weren'tlying much, either. i feel as though i'd done a day's work. after supper there's a thingi've got to discuss with all three of you." supper was soon over. then: "we've got to make a mighty important decision,"garlock began, abruptly. "grand lady neldineâ€”that title isn't exact, but closeâ€”wondered whyi didn't respond at all, either way. however, she didn't make a point of it, and i let herwonder; but we'll have to decide by tomorrow morning what to do, and it'll have to be airtight.these hodellians expect jim and me to impregnate as many as possible of their highest-ratedwomen before we leave. by their code it's

mandatory, since we can't hide the fact thatwe rate much higher than they doâ€”their highest rating is only grade two by our standardsâ€”andall the planets hereabouts up-grade themselves with the highest-grade new blood they canfind. ordinarily, they'd expect you two girls to become pregnant by your choices of thetop men of the planet; but they know you wouldn't breed down and don't expect you to. but howin all hell can jim and i refuse to breed them up without dealing out the deadliestinsult they know?" there was a minute of silence. "we can't,"james said then. a grin began to spread over his face. "it might not be too bad an idea,at that, come to think of it. that ball of fire they picked out for you would be a blue-ribbondish in anybody's cook-book. and grand lady

lemphiâ€”" he kissed the tips of two fingersand waved them in the air. "strictly big league material; in capital letters." "is that nice, you back-alley tomcat?" belleasked, plaintively; then paused in thought and went on slowly, "i won't pretend to likeit, but i won't do any public screaming about it." "any anthropologist would say you'll haveto," lola declared without hesitation. "i don't like it, either. i think it's horrible;but it's excellent genetics and we cannot and must not violate systems-wide mores." "you're all missing the point!" garlock snapped.he got up, jammed his hands into his pockets,

and began to pace the floor. "i didn't thinkany one of you was that stupid! if that was all there were to it we'd do it as a matterof course. but think, damn it! there's nothing higher than gunther two in the humanity ofthis planet. telepathy is the only esp they have. high gunther uses hitherto unused portionsof the brain. it's transmitted through genes, which are dominant, cumulative, and self-multiplyingby interaction. jim and i carry more, stronger, and higher gunther genes than any other twomen known to live. can weâ€”dare weâ€”plant such genes where none have ever been knownbefore?" two full minutes of silence. "that one has really got a bone in it," jamessaid, unhelpfully.

three minutes more of silence. "it's up to you, lola," garlock said then."it's your field." "i was afraid of that. there's a way. personally,i like it less even than the other, but it's the only one i've been able to think up. first,are you absolutely sure that our refusalâ€”belle's and mine, i meanâ€”to breed down will be validwith them?" "positive." "then the whole society from which we comewill have to be strictly monogamous, in the narrowest, most literal sense of the term.no exceptions whatever. adultery, anything illicit, has always been not only unimaginable,but in fact impossible. we pairâ€”or marry,

or whatever they do hereâ€”once only. forlife. desire and potency can exist only within the pair; never outside it. like eagles. ifa man's wife dies, even, he loses all desire and all potency. that would make it physicallyimpossible for you two to follow the hodellian code. you'd both be completely impotent withany women whatever except your matesâ€”belle and me." "that will work," belle said. "how it willwork!" she paused. then, suddenly, she whistled; the loud, full-bodied, ear-piercing, tongue-and-teethwhistle which so few women ever master. her eyes sparkled and she began to laugh withunrestrained glee. "but do you know what you've done, lola?"

"nothing, except to suggest a solution. what'sso funny about that?" "you're wonderful, lolaâ€”simply priceless!you've created something brand-new to scienceâ€”an impotent tomcat! and the more i think aboutit...." belle was rocking back and forth with laughter. she could not possibly talk, buther thought flowed on, "i just love you all to pieces! an impotent tomcat, and he'll haveto stay true to meâ€”oh, this is simply killing meâ€”i'll never live through it!" "it does put us on the spotâ€”especially jim,"came garlock's thought. he, too, began to laugh; and lola, as soonas she stopped thinking about the thing only as a problem in anthropology, joined in. james,however, did not think it was very funny.

"and that's less than half of it!" belle wenton, still unable to talk. "think of clee, lola. six twoâ€”over two hundredâ€”hard asnailsâ€”a perfect hunk of hard red meatâ€”telling this whole damn cockeyed region of space thathe's impotent, too! and with a perfectly straight face! and it ties in so beautifully with hismaking no response, yes or no, when she propositioned him. the poor, innocent, impotent lamb justsimply didn't have even the faintest inkling of what she meant! oh, my...." "listenâ€”listenâ€”listen!" james managedfinally to break in. "not that i want to be promiscuous, but...." "there, there, my precious little impotenttomcat," belle soothed him aloud, between

giggles and snorts. "us earth-girls will takecare of our lover-boys, see if we don't. you won't need any nasty little...." belle couldnot hold the pose, but went off again into whoops of laughter. "what a brain you've got,lola! i thought i could imagine anything, but to make these two guys of oursâ€”the twoabsolute tops of the whole solar systemâ€”it's a stroke of genius...." "shut up, will you, you human hyena, and listen!"james roared aloud. "there ought to be some better way than that." "better? than sheer perfection?" belle wasstill laughing but could now talk coherently. "if you can think of another way, jim, themeeting is still open." garlock was wiping

his eyes. "but it'll have to be a dilly. i'mnot exactly enamored of lola's idea, either, but as the answer it's one hundred percentto as many decimal places as you want to take time to write zeroes." there was more talk, but no improvement couldbe made upon lola's idea. "well, we've got until morning," garlock said,finally. "if anybody comes up with anything by then, let me know. if not, it goes intoeffect the minute we open the locks. the meeting is adjourned." belle and james left the room; and, a fewminutes later, garlock went out. lola followed him into his room and closed the door behindher. she sat down on the edge of a chair,

lighted a cigarette, and began to smoke inshort, nervous puffs. she opened her mouth to say something, but shut it without makinga sound. "you're afraid of me, lola?" he asked, quietly. "oh, i don't.... well, that is...." she wouldn'tlie, and she wouldn't admit the truth. "you see, i've never ... i mean, i haven't hadvery much experience." "you needn't be afraid of me at all. i'm notgoing to pair with you." "you're not?" her mouth dropped open and thecigarette fell out of it. she took a few seconds to recover it. "why not? don't you think icould do a good enough job?" she stood up and stretched, to show her splendidfigure to its best advantage.

garlock laughed. "nothing like that, lola;you have plenty of sex appeal. it's just that i don't like the conditions. i never havepaired. i never have had much to do with women, and that little has been urbane, logical,and strictly en passant; on the level of mutual physical desire. thus, i have never takena virgin. pairing with one is very definitely not my idea of urbanity and there's altogethertoo much obligation to suit me. for all of which good reasons i am not going to pairwith you, now or ever." "how do you know whether i'm a virgin or not?you've never read me that deep. nobody can. not even you, unless i let you." "reading isn't necessaryâ€”you flaunt it likea banner."

"i don't know what you mean.... i certainlydon't do it intentionally. but i ought to pair with you, clee!" lola had lost all ofher nervousness, most of her fear. "it's part of the job i was chosen for. if i'd known,i'd've gone out and got some experience. really i would have." "i believe that. i think you would have beensilly enough to have done just that. and you have a very high regard for your virginity,too, don't you?" "well, i ... i used to. but we'd better goahead with it. i've got to." "no such thing. permissible, but not obligatory." "but it was assumed. as a matter of course.anyway ... well, when that girl started making

passes at you, i thought you could have justas much fun, or even moreâ€”she's charming; a real darling, isn't she?â€”without pairingwith me, and then i had to open my big mouth and be the one to keep you from playing gameswith anyone except me, and i certainly am not going to let you suffer...." "bunk!" garlock snorted. "sheer flapdoodle!pure psychological prop-wash, started and maintained by men who are either too weakto direct and control their drives or who haven't any real work to occupy their minds.it applies to many men, of course, possibly to most. it does not, however, apply to all,and, it lacks one whole hell of a lot of applying to me. does that make you feel better?"

"oh, it does ... it does. thanks, clee. youknow, i like you, a lot." "do you? kiss me." she did so. "see?" "you tricked me!" "i did not. i want you to see the truth andface it. your idealism is admirable, permanent, and shatter-proof; but your starry-eyed schoolgirl'smawkishness is none of the three. you'll have to grow up, some day. in my opinion, forcingyourself to give up one of your hardest-held idealsâ€”virginityâ€”merely because of theutter bilge that those idiot head-shrinkers

stuffed you with, is sheer, plain idiocy.i suppose that makes you like me even less, but i'm laying it right on the line." "no ... more. i'll argue with you, when wehave time, about some of your points, but the last oneâ€”if it's validâ€”has tremendousforce. i didn't know men felt that way. but no matter what my feeling for you really is,i'm really grateful to you for the reprieve ... and you know, clee, i'm pretty sure you'regoing to get us back home. if anyone can, you can." "i'm going to try to. even if i can't, itwill be belle, not you, that i'll take for the long pull. and not because you'd ratherhave jimâ€”which you would, of course...."

"to be honest, i think i would." "certainly. he's your type. you're not mine;belle is. well, that buttons it up, brownie, except for one thing. to jim and belle andeveryone else, we're paired." "of course. urbanity, as well as to presenta united front to any and all worlds." "check. so watch your shield." "i always do. that stuff is 'way, 'way down.i'm awfully glad you called me 'brownie,' clee. i didn't think you ever would." "i didn't expect toâ€”but i never talked toa woman this way before, either. maybe it had a mellowing effect."

"you don't need mellowingâ€”i do like youa lot, just exactly as you are." "if true, i'm very glad of it. but don't strainyourself; and i mean that literally, not as sarcasm." "i know. i'm not straining a bit, and this'llprove it." she kissed him again, and this time it wasa production. "that was an eminently convincing demonstration,brownie, but don't do it too often." "i won't." she laughed, gayly and happily."if there's any next time, you'll have to kiss me first." she paused and sobered. "but remember. ifyou should change your mind, any time you

really want to ... to kiss me, come rightin. i won't be as silly and nervous and afraid as i was just now. that's a promise. goodnight, clee." "good night, brownie." chapter 2 next morning, garlock was the last one, bya fraction of a minute, into the main. "good morning, all," he said, with a slight smile. "huh? how come?" james demanded, as all fourstarted toward the dining nook. garlock's smile widened. "lola. she broughtme a pot of coffee and wouldn't let me out until i drank it."

"brought?" "yeah. they haven't read their room-tapesyet, so they don't know that room-service is practically unlimited." "why didn't i think of that coffee businessa couple of years ago?" "well, why didn't i think of it myself, tenyears ago?" belle's eyes had been going from one, manto the other. "just what are you two talking about? if it's anybody's business except yourown?" "he is an early-morning grouch," james explained,as they sat down at the table. "not fit to associate with man or beastâ€”not even hisown dog, if he had oneâ€”when he first gets

up. how come you were smart enough to getthe answer so quick, brownie?" "oh, the pattern isn't too rare." she shruggeddaintily, sweeping the compliment aside. "especially among men on big jobs who work under tremendouspressure." "then how about jim?" belle asked. "clee's the big brain, not me," james said. "you're a lot bigger brain than any of themen lola's talking about," belle insisted. "that's true," lola agreed, "but jim probablyisâ€”must beâ€”an icebox raider. eats in the middle of the night. clee probably doesn't.it's a good bet that he doesn't nibble between meals at all. check, clee?"

"check. but what has an empty stomach gotto do with the case?" "everything. nobody knows how. lots of theoriesâ€”enzymes,blood sugar, endocrine balance, what have youâ€”but no proof. it isn't always true.however, six or seven hours of empty stomach, in a man who takes his job to bed with him,is very apt to uglify his pre-breakfast disposition." breakfast over and out in the main: "but when a man's disposition is ugly allthe time, how can you tell the difference?" belle asked, innocently. "i'll let that pass," garlock's smile disappeared,"because we've got work to do. have any of you thought of any improvement on lola's monogamoussociety?"

no one had. in factâ€” "there may be a loop-hole in it," lola said,thoughtfully. "did any of you happen to notice whether they know anything about artificialinsemination?" "d'you think i'd stand for that?" belle blazed,before garlock could begin to search his mind. "i'd scratch anybody's eyes outâ€”if you'dthought of that idea as a woman instead of as a near-ph.d. in anthropology you'd've thrownit into the converter before it even hatched!" "invasion of privacy? that covers it, of course,but i didn't think it would bother you a bit." lola paused, studying the other girl intently."you're quite a problem yourself. callousâ€”utterly savage humorâ€”yet very sensitive in somewaysâ€”fastidious...."

"i'm not on the table for dissection!" bellesnapped. "study me all you please, but keep the notes in your notebook. i'd suggest youstudy clee." "oh, i have been. he baffles me, too. i'mnot very good yet, you...." "that's the unders...." "cut it!" garlock ordered, sharply. "i saidwe had work to do. jim, you're hunting up the nearest observatory." "how about transportation? no teleportation?" "out. rent a car or hire a plane, or both.fill your walletâ€”better have too much money than not enough. if you're too far away tonightto make it feasible to come back here, send

me a flash. brownie, you'll work this townfirst. belle and i will have to work in the library for a while. we'll all want to comparenotes tonight...." "yeah," james said into the pause, "i couldtune in remote, but i don't know where i'll be, so it might not be so good." "check. you can 'port, but be damn sure nobodysees or senses you doing it. that buttons it up, i guess." james and lola left the ship; garlock andbelle went into the library. "if i didn't know you were impotent, clee,"belle shivered affectedly and began to laugh, "i'd be scared to death to be alone with youin this great big spaceship. lola hasn't realized

yet what she really hatched outâ€”the screamingestscreamer ever pulled on anybody!" "it isn't that funny. you have got a savagesense of humor." "perhaps." she shrugged her shoulders. "butyou were on the receiving end, which makes a big difference. she's a peculiar sort ofduck. brainy, but impersonalâ€”academic. she knows all the words and all their meanings,all the questions and all the answers, but she doesn't apply any of them to herself.she's always the observer, never the participant. pure egg-head ... pure? that's it. she looks,acts, talks, and thinks like a virgin.... well, if that's all, she isn't anyâ€”or isshe? even though you've started calling her 'brownie,' like my now-tamed tomcat, you mightnot...." she stared at him.

"go ahead. probe." "why waste energy trying to crack a prime'sshield? but just out of curiosity, are you two pairing, or not?" "tut-tut; don't be inurbane. let's talk aboutjim instead. i thought he'd be gibbering." "no, i'm working under double wrapsâ€”fulldampers. i don't want him in love with me. you want to know why?" "i think i know why." "because having him mooning around underfootwould weaken the team and i want to get back to tellus."

"i was wrong, then. i thought you were outafter bigger game." belle's face went stiff and still. "what doyou mean by that?" "plain enough, i would think. wherever youare, you've got to be the boss. you've never been in any kind of a party for fifteen minuteswithout taking it over. when you snap the whip everybody jumpsâ€”or elseâ€”and you swinga wicked knife. for your information i don't jump, i am familiar with knives, and you willnever run this project or any part of it." belle's face set; her eyes hardened. "whilewe're putting out information, take note that i'm just as good with actual knives as withfigurative ones. if you're still thinking of blistering my fanny, don't try it. you'llfind a rawhide haft sticking up out of one

of those muscles you're so proud ofâ€”clearenough mr. garlock." "why don't you talk sense, instead of suchyak-yak?" "huh?" "i know you're a prime, too, but don't letit go to your head. i've got more stuff than you have, so you can't gunther me. you weighone thirty-five to my two seventeen. i'm harder, stronger, and faster than you are. you'reprobably a bit limbererâ€”not too muchâ€”but i've forgotten more judo than you ever willknow. so what's the answer?" belle was breathing hard. "then why don'tyou do it right now?" "several reasons. i couldn't brag much aboutlicking anybody i outweigh by eighty-two pounds.

i can't figure out your logicâ€”if anyâ€”buti'm pretty sure now it wouldn't do either of us any good. just the opposite." "from your standpoint, would that be bad?" "what a hell of a logic! you have got thefinest brain of any woman living. you're stronger than jim is by a lot more than the prime-to-operatorratioâ€”you've got more initiative, more drive, more guts. you know as well as i do what yourbrain may mean before we get back. why in all hell don't you start using it?" "you are complimenting me?" "no. it's the truth, isn't it?"

"what difference does that make? clee garlock,i simply can't understand you at all." "that makes it mutual. i can't understanda geometry in which the crookedest line between any two given points is the best line. let'sget to work, shall we?" "uh-huh, let's. one more bit of information,though, first. any such idea as taking the project away from you simply never enteredmy mind!" she gave him a warm and friendly smile as she walked over to the file-cabinets. for hours, then, they worked; each scanningtape after tape. at mid-day they ate a light lunch. shortly thereafter, garlock put awayhis reader and all his loose tapes. "are you getting anywhere, belle? i'm not making anyprogress."

"yes, but of course planets are probably prettymuch the same everywhereâ€”tellus-type ones, i mean, of course. is all the xenology ascockeyed as i'm afraid it must be?" "check. the one basic assumption was thatthere are no human beings other than tellurians. from that they derive the secondary assumptionthat humanoid types will be scarce. from there they scatter out in all directions. so i'llhave to roll my own. i've got to see atterlin, anyway. i'll be back for supper. so long." at the port office, grand lady neldine methim even more enthusiastically than before; taking both his hands and pressing them againsther firm, almost-bare breasts. she tried to hold back as garlock led her along the corridor.

"i have an explanation, and in a sense anapology, for you, grand lady neldine, and for you, governor atterlin," he thought carefully."i would have explained yesterday, but i had no understanding of the situation here untilour anthropologist, lola montandon, elucidated it very laboriously to me. she herself, ascientist highly trained in that specialty, could grasp it only by referring back to somewhatsimilar situations which may have existed in the remote pastâ€”so remote a past thatthe concept is known only to specialists and is more than half mythical, even to them." he went on to give in detail the sexual customs,obligations, and limitations of lola's purely imaginary civilization.

"then it isn't that you don't want to, butyou can't?" the lady asked, incredulously. "mentally, i can have no desire. physically,the act is impossible," he assured her. "what a shame!" her thought was a peculiarmixture of disappointment and relief: disappointment in that she was not to bear this man's super-child;relief in that, after all, she had not personally failedâ€”if she couldn't have this perfectlywonderful man herself, no other woman except his wife could ever have him, either. butwhat a shame to waste such a man as that on any one woman! it was really too bad. "i see ... i seeâ€”wonderful!" atterlin'sthought was not at all incredulous, but vastly awed. "it is of course logical that as thepower of mind increases, physical matters

become less and less important. but you willhave much to give us; we may perhaps have some small things to give you. if we couldvisit your tellus, perhaps...?" "that also is impossible. we four in the pleiadesare lost in space. this is the first planet we have visited on our first trial of a newmethodâ€”new to us, at leastâ€”of interstellar travel. we missed our objective, probablyby many millions of parsecs, and it is quite possible that we four will never be able tofind our way back. we are trying now, by charting the galaxies throughout billions of cubicparsecs of space, to find merely the direction in which our own galaxy lies." "what a concept! what stupendous minds! butsuch immense distances, sir ... what can you

possibly be using for a space-drive?" "none, as you understand the term. we travelby instantaneous translation, by means of something we call 'gunther'.... i am not atall sure that i can explain it to you satisfactorily, but i will try to do so, if you wish." "please do so, sir, by all means." garlock opened the highest gunther cells ofhis mind. there was nothing as elementary as telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis,or the like; it was the pure, raw gunther of the gunther drive, which even he himselfmade no pretense of understanding fully. he opened those cells and pushed that knowledgeat the two hodellian minds.

the result was just as instantaneous and justas catastrophic as garlock had expected. both blocks went up almost instantly. "oh, no!" atterlin exclaimed, his face turningwhite. the girl shrieked once, covered her face withher hands, and collapsed on the floor. "oh, i'm so sorry ... excuse my ignorance,please!" garlock implored, as he picked the girl up, carried her across the room to asofa, and assured himself that she had not been really hurt. she recovered quickly. "i'mvery sorry, grand lady neldine and governor atterlin, but i didn't know ... that is, ididn't realize...." "you are trying to break it gently." atterlinwas both shocked and despondent. "this being

the first planet you have visited, you simplydid not realize how feeble our minds really are." "oh, not at all, really, sir and lady." garlockbegan deftly to repair the morale he had shattered. "merely younger. with your system of genetics,so much more logical and efficient than our strict monogamy, your race will undoubtedlymake more progress in a few centuries than we made in many millennia. and in a few centuriesmore you will pass usâ€”will master this only partially-known gunther drive. "esthetically, lady neldine, i would likevery much to father you a child." he allowed his coldly unmoved gaze to survey her charms."i am sorry indeed that it cannot be. i trust

that you, governor atterlin, will be kindenough to spread word of our physical shortcomings, and so spare us further embarrassment?" "not shortcomings, sir, and, i truly hope,no embarrassment," atterlin protested. "we are immensely glad to have seen you, sinceyour very existence gives us so much hope for the future. i will spread word, and everyhodellian will do whatever he can to help you in your quest." "thank you, sir and lady," and garlock tookhis leave. "what an act, my male-looking but impotentdarling!" came belle's clear, incisive thought, bubbling with unrestrained merriment. "forour doctor garlock, the prime exponent and

first disciple of truth, what an act! esthetically,he'd like to father her a child, it says here in fine printâ€”boy, if she only knew! onetiny grain of truth and she'd chase you from here to andromeda! clee, i swear this thingis going to kill me yet!" "anything that would do that i'm very muchin favor of!" garlock growled the thought and snapped up his shield. this one was, quite definitely, belle's round. garlock took the hodellian equivalent of abus to the center of the city, then set out aimlessly to walk. the buildings and theirarrangement, he notedâ€”not much to his surprise nowâ€”were not too different from those ofthe cities of earth.

with his guard down to about the sixth level,highly receptive but not at all selective, he strolled up one street and down another.he was not attentive to detail yet; he was trying to get the broad aspects, the "feel"of this hitherto unknown civilization. the ether was practically saturated with thought.apparently this was the afternoon rush hour, as the sidewalks were crowded with peopleand the streets were full of cars. it did not seem as though anyone, whether in thebuildings, on the sidewalks, or in the cars, was doing any blocking at all. if there wereany such things as secrets on hodell, they were scarce. each person, man, woman, or child,went about his own business, radiating full blast. no one paid any attention to the thoughtsof anyone else except in the case of couples

or groups, the units of which were engagedin conversation. it reminded garlock of a big tellurian party when the punch-bowls wererunning lowâ€”everybody talking at the top of his voice and nobody listening. this whole gale of thought was blowing overgarlock's receptors like a great plains wind over miles-wide fields of corn. he did notaddress anyone directly; no one addressed him. at first, quite a few young women, atsight of his unusual physique, had sent out tentative feelers of thought; and some menhad wondered, in the same tentative and indirect fashion, who he was and where he came from.however, when the information he had given atterlin spread throughout the cityâ€”andit did not take longâ€”no one paid any more

attention to him than they did to each other. probing into and through various buildings,he learned that groups of people were quitting work at intervals of about fifteen minutes.there were thoughts of tidying up desks; of letting the rest of this junk go until tomorrow;of putting away and/or covering up office machines of various sorts. there were thoughtsof powdering noses and of repairing make-up. he pulled in his receptors and scanned thecrowded ways for guardiansâ€”he'd have to call them that until either he or lola foundout their real name. same as at the airportâ€”the more people, the more guardians. what werethey? how? and why? he probed; carefully but thoroughly. whenhe had talked to the arpalone he had read

him easily enough, but here there was nothingwhatever to read. the creature simply was not thinking at all. but that didn't makesense! garlock tuned, first down, then up; and finally, at the very top of his range,he found something, but he did not at first know what it was. it seemed to be a mass-detector... no, two of them, paired and balanced. oh, that was it! one tuned to humanity, oneto the other guardiansâ€”balanced across a sort of bridgeâ€”that was how they kept theratio so constant! but why? there seemed to be some wide-range receptors there, too, butnothing seemed to be coming in.... while he was still studying and still baffled,some kind of stimulus, which was so high and so faint and so alien that he could neitheridentify nor interpret it, touched the arpalone's

far-flung receptors. instantly the creaturejumped, his powerful, widely-bowed legs sending him high above the heads of the crowd and,it seemed to garlock, directly toward him. simultaneously there was an insistent, low-pitched,whistling scream, somewhat like the noise made by an airplane in a no-power dive; andgarlock saw, out of the corner of one eye, a yellowish something flashing downward throughthe air. at the same moment the woman immediately infront of garlock stifled a scream and jumped backward, bumping into him and almost knockinghim down. he staggered, caught his balance, and automatically put his arm around his assailant,to keep her from falling to the sidewalk. in the meantime the guardian, having landedvery close to the spot the woman had occupied

a moment before, leaped again; this time verticallyupward. the thing, whatever it was, was now braking frantically with wings, tail, andbody; trying madly to get away. too late. there was a bone-crushing impact as the twobodies came together in mid-air; a jarring thud as the two creatures, inextricably intertwined,struck the pavement as one. the thing varied in color, garlock now saw,shading from bright orange at the head to pale yellow at the tail. it had a savagely-tearingcurved beak; tremendously powerful wings; its short, thick legs ended in hawk-like talons. the guardian's bowed legs had already immobilizedthe yellow wings by clamping them solidly against the yellow body. his two lower armswere holding the frightful talons out of action.

his third hand gripped the orange throat,his fourth was exerting tremendous force against the jointure of neck and body. the neck, originallyshort, was beginning to stretch. for several seconds garlock had been half-consciousthat his accidental companion was trying, with more and more energy, to disengage hisencircling left arm from her waist. he wrenched his attention away from the spectacular fightâ€”towhich no one else, not even the near-victim, had paid the slightest attentionâ€”and nowsaw that he had his arm around the bare waist of a statuesque matron whose entire costumewould have made perhaps half of a tellurian sun-suit. he dropped his arm with a quickand abject apology. "i should apologize to you instead, captaingarlock," she thought, with a wide and friendly

smile, "for knocking you down, and i thankyou for catching me before i fell. i should not have been startled, of course. i wouldnot have been, except that this is the first time that i, personally, have been attacked." "but what are they?" garlock blurted. "i don't know." the woman turned her headand glanced, in complete disinterest, at the two furiously-battling creatures. garlockknew now that this was the first time, except for that instantly-dismissed thrill of surpriseat being the actual target of an attack, that she had thought of either of them. "orange-yellow?it could be a ... a fumapty, perhaps, but i've no idea, really. you see, such thingsare none of our business."

she thought at him, a half-shrug, half-grimaceof mild distasteâ€”not at the personal contact with the man nor at the savage duel; but ateven thinking of either the guardian or the yellow monsterâ€”and walked away into thecrowd. garlock's attention flashed back to the fighters.the yellow thing's neck had been stretched to twice its natural length and the guardianhad eaten almost through it. there was a terrific crunch, a couple of smacking, gobbling swallows,and head parted from body. the orange beak still clashed open and shut, however, andthe body still thrashed violently. shifting his grips, the guardian proceededto tear a hole into his victim's body, just below its breast-bone. thrusting two armsinto the opening, he yanked out two organsâ€”one

of which, garlock thought, could have beenthe heartâ€”and ate them both; if not with extreme gusto, at least in a workmanlike andthoroughly competent fashion. he then picked up the head in one hand, grabbed the tip ofa wing with another, and marched up the street for half a block, dragging the body behindhim. he lifted a manhole cover with his two unoccupiedhands, dropped the remains down the hole thus exposed, and let the cover slam back intoplace. he then squatted down, licked himself meticulously clean with a long, black, extremelyagile tongue, and went on about his enigmatic business quite as though nothing had happened. garlock strolled around a few minutes longer,but could not recapture any interest in the

doings of the human beings around him. hehad filed away every detail of what had just happened, and it had so many bizarre aspectsthat he could not think of anything else. wherefore he flagged down a "taxi" and wastaken out to the pleiades. belle and lola were in the main. "i saw the damndest thing, clee!" lola exclaimed."i've been gnawing my fingernails off up to the knuckles, waiting for you!" lola's experience had been very similar togarlock's own, except in that her monster was an intense green in color and looked somethinglike a bat about four feet long, with six-inch canine teeth and several stingers....

"did you find out the name of the thing?"garlock asked. "no. i asked half-a-dozen people, but nobodywould even listen to me except one half-grown boy, and the best he could do was that itmight be something he had heard another boy say somebody had told him might be a 'lemart.'and as to those lower-case arpalones, the best i could dig out of anybody was just 'guardians.'did you do any better?" "no, i didn't do as well," and he told thegirls about his own experience. "but i didn't find any detectors or receptors,clee," lola frowned. "where were they?" "'way upâ€”up here," he showed her. "i'llmake a full tape tonight on everything i found out about the guardians and the arpalonesâ€”besidesmy regular report, i meanâ€”since they're

yours, and you can make me one about yourfriend the green bat...." "hey, i like that!" belle broke in. "thatcould be taken amiss, you know, by such a sensitive soul as i!" "check." garlock chuckled. "i'll have to filethat one, in case i want to use it sometime. how're you coming, belle?" "nice!" belle's voracious mind had been sobusy absorbing new knowledge that she had temporarily forgotten about her fight withher captain. "i'm just about done here. i'll be ready tomorrow, i think, to visit theirlibrary and tape up some planetological and planetographicalâ€”notice how insouciantlyi toss off those two-credit words?â€”data

on this here planet hodell." "good going. you've been listening to thisstuff lola and i were chewing onâ€”does any of it make sense to you?" "it does not. i never heard anything to comparewith it." "excuse me for changing the subject," lolaput in, plaintively, "but when, if ever, do we eat? do we have to wait until that confoundedjames boy gets back from wherever it was he went?" "if you're hungry, we'll eat now." "hungry? look!" lola turned herself sidewise,placed one hand in the small of her back,

and pressed hard with the other her flat,taut belly. "see? only a couple of inches from belt-buckle to backboneâ€”dangerouslyclose to the point of utter collapse." "you poor, abused little thing!" garlock laughedand all three crossed the room to the dining alcove. while they were still ordering, jamesappeared beside them. "find out anything?" garlock asked. "yes and no. yes, in that they have an excellentobservatory, with a hundred-eighty-inch reflector, on a mountain only seventy-five miles fromhere. no, in that i didn't find any duplication of nebulary configurations with the stuffi had with me. however, it was relatively coarse. tomorrow i'll take a lot of fine stuffalong. it'll take some timeâ€”a full day,

at least." "i expected that. good going, jim!" all four ate heartily, and, after eating,they taped up the day's reports. then, tired from their first real day's work in weeks,all went to their rooms. a few minutes later, garlock tapped lightlyat lola's door. "come in." she stiffened involuntarily, thenrelaxed and smiled. "oh, yes, clee: of course. you're...." "no, i'm not. i've been doing a lot of thinkingabout you since last night, and i may have come up with an answer or two. also, belleknows we aren't pairing, and if we don't hide

behind a screen at least once in a while,she'll know we aren't going to." "screen?" "screen. didn't you know these four privaterooms are solid? haven't you read your house-tape yet?" "no. but do you think belle would actuallypeek?" "do you think she wouldn't?" "well, i don't like her very much, but i wouldn'tthink she would do anything like that, clee. it isn't urbane." "she isn't urbane, either, whenever she thinksit might be advantageous not to be."

"what a terrible thing to say!" "take it from me, if belle bellamy doesn'tknow everything that goes on it isn't from lack of trying. you wouldn't know about roomservice, either, thenâ€”better scan that tape before you go to sleep tonightâ€”what'll youhave in the line of a drink to while away enough time so she will know we've been playinggames?" "ginger ale, please." "i'll have ginger beer. you do it like so."he slid a panel aside, his fingers played briefly on a typewriter-like keyboard. drinksand ice appeared. "anything you wantâ€”details of the tape."

he lighted two cigarettes, handed her one,stirred his drink. "now, fair ladyâ€”or should i say beauteous dark lady?â€”we will followthe precept of that immortal chinese philosopher, chin on." "you are a prime operator, aren't you?" shelaughed, but sobered quickly. "i'm worried. you said i flaunted virginity like a banner,and now belle.... what am i doing wrong?" "there's a lot wrong. not so much what you'redoing as what you aren't doing. you're too aloofâ€”detachedâ€”egg-headish. you know thescore, words and music, but you don't sing. all you do is listen. belle thinks you'renot only a physical virgin, but a psychic-blocked prude. i know better. you're so full of conflictbetween what you want to doâ€”what you know

is rightâ€”and what those three-cell-brainednincompoops made you think you ought to do that you have got no more degrees of freedomthan a piston-rod. you haven't been yourself for a minute since you came aboard. check?" "you have been thinking, haven't you? youmay be right; except that it's been longer than that ... ever since the first preliminaries,i think. but what can i do about it, clee?" "contact. three-quarters full, say; enoughfor me to give you what i think is the truth." "but you said you never went screens downwith a woman?" "there's a first time for everything. comein." she did so, held contact for almost a minute,then pulled herself loose.

"ug-gh-gh." she shivered. "i'm glad i haven'tgot a mind like that." "and the same from me to you. of course thereal truth may lie somewhere in between. i may be as far off the beam on one side asyou are on the other." "i hope so. but it cleared things up no endâ€”ituntied a million knots. even that other thingâ€”brotherly love? it's a very nice conceptâ€”you see,i never had any brothers." "that's probably one thing that was the matterwith you. nothing warmer than that, certainly, and never will be." "and i suppose you got the thoughtâ€”it musthave jumped up and smacked youâ€”" lola's hot blush was visible even through her heavytan, "how many times i've felt like running

my fingers up and down your ribs and grabbinga handful of those terrific muscles of yours, just to see if they're as hard as they look?" "i'm glad you brought that up; i don't knowwhether i would have dared to or not. you've got to stop acting like a third instead ofan operator; and you've got to stop acting as though you had never been within ten feetof me. now's as good a time as any." he took off his shirt and struck a strong-man's pose."come ahead." "by golly, i'm going to!" then, a moment later,"why, they're even harder! how do you, a scientist, psionicist, and scholar, keep in such hardshape as that?" "an hour a day in the gym, three hundred sixty-fivedays a year. many are betterâ€”but a hell

of a lot are worse." "i'll say." she finished her ginger ale, satdown in her chair, leaned back and put her legs up on the bed. "that was a relief oftension if there ever was one. i haven't felt so good since they picked me as home-towncandidateâ€”and that was a mighty small town and eight months ago. bring on your dragons,clee, and i'll slay 'em far and wide. but i can't actually be like she is...." "thank god for that. deliver me from two suchpretzel-benders aboard one ship." "... but i could have been a pretty good actress,i think." "correction, please. 'outstanding' is theword."

"thank you, kind sir. and womenâ€”men, too,of courseâ€”do bring up certain memories, to ... to...." "to roll 'em around on their tongues and givetheir taste-buds a treat." "exactly. so where i don't have any appropriateactual memories to bring up, i'll make like an actress. check?" "good girl! now you're rollingâ€”we're inlike flynn. well, we've been in screen long enough, i guess. fare thee well, little sisterbrownie, until we meet again." he tossed the remains of their refreshments, trays and all,into the chute, picked up his shirt, and started out.

"put it on, clee!" she whispered, intensely. "why?" he grinned cheerfully. "it'd look stillbetter if i peeled down to the altogether." "you're incorrigible," she said, but her answeringgrin was wide and perfectly natural. "you know, if i had had a brother something likeyou it would have saved me a lot of wear and tear. i'll see you in the morning before breakfast." and she did. they strolled together to breakfast;not holding hands, but with hip almost touching hip. relaxed, friendly, on very cordial andsatisfactory terms. lola punched breakfast orders for them both. belle drove a probe,which bouncedâ€”lola's screen was tight, although her brown eyes were innocent and bland.

but during the meal, in response to a double-edged,wickedly-barbed remark of belle's, a memory flashed into being above lola's shield. itwas the veriest flash, instantly suppressed. her eyes held clear and steady; if she blushedat all it did not show. belle caught it, of course, and winked triumphantlyat garlock. she knew, now, what she had wanted to know. and, prime operator though he was,it was all he could do to make no sign; for that fleetingly-revealed memory was a perfectjob. he would not haveâ€”could not haveâ€”questioned it himself, except for one highly startlingfact. it was of an event that had not happened and never would! and after breakfast, at some distance fromthe others, "that is my girl, brownie! you're

firing on all forty barrels. you're an operator,all right; and it takes a damn good one to lie like that with her mind!" "thanks to you, clee. and thanks a million,really. i'm me againâ€”i think." then, since belle was looking, she took himby both ears, pulled his head down, and kissed him lightly on the lips. the spontaneity andtenderness were perfect at that moment. clee's appreciation was obvious. "i know i said you'd have to kiss me nexttime," lola said, very low, "but this act needs just this much of an extra touch. anyway,such little, tiny, sisterly ones as this, and out in public, don't count."

chapter 3 lola and garlock went to town in the sametaxi. as they were about to separate, garlock said: "i don't like those hell-divers, yellow, green,or any other color; and you, brownie, are very definitely not expendable. are you anygood at mind-bombing?" "why, i never heard of such a thing." "you isolate a little energy in the op field,remembering of course, that you're handling a hundred thousand gunts. transpose it intoplatinum or uraniumâ€”anything good and heavy. for one of these monsters you'd need two orthree micrograms. for a battleship, up to

maybe a gram or so. 'port it to the exactplace you want it to detonate. reconvert and release instantaneously. one-hundred-percent-conversionatomic bomb, tailored exactly to fit the job. very effective." "it would be. my god, clee, can you do that?" "sureâ€”so can you. any operator can." "well, i won't. i never will. besides, i'dprobably kill too many people, besides the monster. no, i'll 'port back to the main ifanything attacks me. i'm chain lightning at that." "do that, then. and if anything very unusualhappens give me a flash."

"i'll do that. 'bye, clee." she turned tothe left. he walked straight on, toward the business center, to resume his study at thepoint where he had left off the evening before. for over an hour he wandered aimlessly aboutthe city; receiving, classifying, and filing away information. he saw several duels betweenguardians and yellow and green-bat monsters, to none of which he paid any more attentionthan did the people around him. then a third kind of enemy appearedâ€”two of them at once,flying wing-and-wingâ€”and garlock stopped and watched. vivid, clear-cut stripes of red and black,even on the tremendously long, strong wings. distinctly feline as to heads, teeth, andclaws. while they did not at all closely resemble

flying saber-toothed tigers, that was thefirst impression that leaped into garlock's mind. two bow-legged guardians came leaping as usual,but one of them was a fraction of a second too late. that fraction was enough. whilethe first guardian was still high in air, grappling with one tiger, the other swungon a dimeâ€”the blast of air from his right wing blowing people in the crowd below thitherand yon and knocking four of them flatâ€”and took the guardian's head off his body withone savage swipe of a frightfully-armed paw. disregarding the carcass both attackers whirledsharply at the second guardian, meeting him in such fashion that he could not come tofirm grips with either of them, and that battle

was very brief indeed. more and more guardianswere leaping in from all directions, however, and the two tigers were forced to the groundand slaughtered. since six guardians had been killed, eightguardians marched up the street, dragging grisly loads. eight bodies, friend and foealike, were dumped into a manhole; eight creatures squatted down and cleaned themselves meticulouslybefore resuming their various patrols. ten or fifteen minutes later, garlock feltlola's half-excited, half-frightened thought. "clee, do you read me?" "loud and clear." "there's something coming that's certainlynone of my businessâ€”maybe not even yours."

"coming," and with the thought he was there."where?" she pointed a thought, he followed it. faraway yet, but coming fast, was an immense flock of flying tigers! lola licked her lips. "i'm going home, ifyou don't mind." "beat it." she disappeared. "jim!" garlock thought. "where are you?" "observatory. need me?" "yes. bombing. two point four microgram loads.focus spot on my rightâ€”teleport in."

"coming in on your right." "and i on your left!" belle's thought drovein as he had never before felt it driven. being a prime, she did not need a focus spotand appeared the veriest instant later than did james. "can you bomb?" garlock snapped. "what do you think?" she snapped back. a moment of flashing thought and the threetellurians disappeared, materializing five hundred feet in air, two hundred feet aheadof the van of that horrible flight of monsters, drifting before it.

belle got in the first shot. not only didthe victim disappearâ€”a couple of dozen around it were torn to fragments and the force ofthe blast staggered all three tellurians. "damn it, belle, cut down or get to hell out!"garlock yelped. "i said two point four micrograms, not milligrams. just kill 'em, don't scatter'em all over hell's half acreâ€”less mess to clean up and i don't want you to kill peopledown below. especially i don't want you to kill usâ€”not even yourself." "'scuse, please, i guess i was a bit enthusiasticin my weighing." there began a series of muffled explosionsalong the front; each followed by the plunge of a tiger-striped body to the ground. fasterand faster the explosions came as the operator

and the primes learned the routine and therhythm of the job. nor were they long alone. the roaring, screaminghowl of jets came up from behind them; four arpalones appeared at their left, strung outalong the front. each held an extraordinarily heavy-duty blaster in each of his four hands;sixteen terrific weapons were hurling death into the flying horde. "slide over, terrestrials," came a calm thought."you three take their left front, we'll take their right and center." as they obeyed the instructions, "they don'tgive a damn where the pieces fly!" belle protested. "why should we be fussy about their street-cleaningdepartment? i'm starting to use fives."

"okay. we'll have to hit 'em harder, anyway,to keep up. five or maybe sixâ€”just be damn sure not to knock us or the arpalones outof the air." carnage went on. the battle-front, while insidethe city limits, was now almost stationary. "ha! helpâ€”i hear footsteps approaching onjet-back," garlock announced. "give 'em hell, boysâ€”shovel on the coal!" a flight of fighter-planes, eight abreastand wing-tips almost touching, howled close overhead and along the line of invasion. theycould not fire, of course, until they reached the city limits. there they opened up as one,and the air below became literally filled with falling monsters. some had only brokenwings; some were dead, but more or less whole;

many were blown to unrecognizable bits andscraps of flesh. another flight screamed into place immediatelybehind the first; then another and another and another until six flights had passed.then came four helicopters, darting and hovering, whose gunners picked off individually whateversurvivors had managed to escape all six waves of fighters. "that's better," came a thought from the arpalonenearest garlock. "situation under control, thanks to you tellurians. supposed to be twosquads of us gunners, but the other squad was busy on another job. without you, thiscould have developed into a fairly nasty little infection. i don't know what you're doingor how you're doing itâ€”we were told that

you weren't like any other humans, and howtrue that isâ€”but i'm in favor of it. i thought there were four of you?" "one of us is not a fighter." "oh. you can knock off now, if you like. we'llpolish off. thanks much." "but don't the boys on the ground need somehelp?" "the arpales? those idiots you have been thinkingof as 'guardians'? which they are, of course. uh-uh. besides, we're air-fighters. groundwork is none of our business. also, these guns would raise altogether too much helldown there. bound to hit some humans." "check. those arpales aren't very intelligent,you arpalones are extremely so. any connection?"

"'way back, they say. common ancestry, anddoing two parts of the same job. killing these fumapties and lemarts and sencors and what-have-you.i don't know what humanity's job is and don't give a damn. probably fairly important, someway or other, though, since it's our job to see that the silly, gutless things keep onliving. we have nothing to do with 'em, ever. the only reason i'm talking to you is you'renot really human at all. you're a fighter, too, and a damn good one." "i know what you mean," and the three telluriansturned their attention downward to the scene on the ground. the heaviest fighting had been over a largepark at the city's edge, which was now literally

a shambles. very few people were to be seen,and those few more moving unconcernedly away from the center of violence. all over thepark thousands of arpales were fighting furiously and hundreds of them were dying. for hundredsof the sencors had suffered only wing injuries, the long fall to ground had not harmed themfurther, and their tremendous fighting ability had been lessened very little if at all. "but i'd think, just for efficiency if nothingelse," garlock argued, "you'd support the arpales some way. lighter guns or something.why, thousands of them must have been killed, just in this last hour or so." "yeah, but that's their business. they breedfast and die fast. everything has to balance,

you know." "perhaps so." garlock was silenced, if notconvinced. "well, it's about over. what happens to the bodies they're dumping down manholes?they can't go down a sewer that way?" "oh, you didn't know? food." "food? for what?" "the arpales and us, of course." "what? you don't meanâ€”you can't mean thattheyâ€”and by your thought, you arpalones, tooâ€”are cannibals!" "cannibals? explain, please? oh, eaters-of-our-own-species.of courseâ€”certainly. why not?"

"why, self-respect ... common decency ... respectfor one's fellow-man ... family ties...." garlock was floundering; to be called uponto explain his ingrained antipathy to such a custom was new to his experience. "you are silly. worse, squeamish. worst, supremelyillogical." the arpalone paused, then went on as though trying to educate a hopelesslyillogical inferior, "while we do not kill arpales purposelyâ€”except when they over-breedâ€”whywaste good meat as fertilizer? if a diet is wholesome, nutritious, well-balanced, andtasty, what shred of difference can it possibly make what its ingredients once were?" "well, i'll be damned." garlock quit.

belle agreed. "this whole deal makes me sickat the stomach and i think my face is turning green too. but i'm devilishly and gleefullyglad, clee, that i was here to hear somebody give you cards, spaces, and big casino andstill beat the lights and liver out of you at your own game of cold-blooded logic!" "we gunners must go now. would you like tocome along with us and see the end of this particular breeding-hole of sencors?" at high speed the seven flew back along theline of advance of the flying-tiger horde; across a barren valley, toward and to theside of a mountain. an area almost a mile square of that mountain'sside was a burned, blasted, churned, pocked,

cratered and flaming waste; and the four helicopterswere still working on it. high-energy beams blasted, fairly volatilizing the ground asthey struck in as deep as they could be driven. high-explosive shells bored deep and detonated,hurling shattered rock and soil and yellow smoke far and wide; establishing new cratersby destroying the ones existing a moment before. while it seemed incredible that any livingthing larger than a microbe could emerge under its own power from such a hell of energy,many flying tigers did; apparently being blown aloft along with the hitherto undisturbedvolume of soil in which the creatures had been. most of them were not fully grown; somewere so immature as to be unrecognizable to an untrained eye; but from all four helicoptershand-guns snapped and cracked. nothingâ€”but

nothingâ€”was leaving that field of carnagealive. "what are you gunners supposed to be doinghere?" garlock asked. "oh, the 'copters will be leaving pretty soonâ€”they'vegot other places to go. but they won't get them allâ€”some of the hatches are too deepâ€”sous four gunners will stick around for two-three days to kill the late-hatchers as they comeout." "i see," and garlock probed. "there are fourcells they won't reach. shall i bomb 'em out?" "i'll ask." the slitted red eyes widened andhe sent a call. "commander knahr, can you hop over here a minute? i want you to meetthese things we've been hearing about. they look human, but they really aren't. they'rekillers, with more stuff and more brains than

any of us ever heard of." another arpalone appeared, indistinguishableto tellurian eyes from any one of the others. "but why do you want to mix into somethingthat's none of your business?" knahr was neither officious nor condemnatory. he simply couldnot understand. "since you have no concept of our qualityof curiosity, just call it education. the question is, do or do you not want those fourdeeply-buried cells blasted out of existence?" "of course i do." "okay. you've got all of 'em you're goingto get. tell your 'copters to give us about five miles clearance, and we'll all fall back,too."

they drew back, and there were four closely-spacedexplosions of such violence that one raggedly mushroom-shaped cloud went into the stratosphereand one huge, ragged crater yawned where once churned ground had been. "but that's atomic!" knahr gasped the thought."fall-out!" "no fall-out. complete conversion. have yougot a counter?" they had. they tested. there was nothing exceptthe usual background count. "there's no life left underground, so youneedn't keep this squad of gunners tied up here," garlock told the commander. "beforewe go, i want to ask a question. you have visitors once in a while from other solarsystems, so you must have a faster-than-light

drive. can you tell me anything about it?" "no. nothing like that would be any of mybusiness." knahr and the four gunners disappeared; the helicopters began to lumber away. "well, that helpsâ€”i don't think," garlockthought, glumly. "what a world! back to the main?" in the main, after a long and fruitless discussion,garlock called governor atterlin, who did not know anything about a faster-than-lightdrive, either. there was one, of course, since it took only a few days or a few weeks togo from one system to another; but hodell didn't have any such ships. no ordinary planetdid. they were owned and operated by people

who called themselves "engineers." he hadno idea where the engineers came from; they didn't say. garlock then tried to get in touch with thearpalone inspector who had checked the pleiades in, and could not find out even who it hadbeen. the inspector then on duty neither knew or cared anything about either faster-than-lightdrives or engineers. such things were none of his business. "what difference would it make, anyway?" jamesasked. "no drive that takes 'a few weeks' for an intra-galaxy hop is ever going to getus back to tellus." "true enough; but if there is such a thingi want to know how it works. how are you coming

with your calculations?" "i'll finish up tomorrow easily enough." tomorrow came, and james finished up, buthe did not find any familiar pattern of galactic arrangement. the other three watched jamesset up for another try for earth. "you don't think we'll ever get back, do you,clee?" belle asked. "right away, no. some day, yes. i've got thegerm of an idea. maybe three or four more hops will give me something to work on." "i hope so," james said, "because here goesnothing," and he snapped the red switch. it was not nothing. number two was anotherguardian inspector and another planet very

much like hodell. it proved to be so far fromboth earth and hodell, however, that no useful similarities were found in any two of thethree sets of charts. number three was equally unproductive of helpfulresults. james did, however, improve his technique of making galactic charts; and he and garlockdesigned and built a high-speed comparator. thus the time required per stop was reducedfrom days to hours. number four produced a surprise. when garlocktouched the knob of the testing-box he yanked his hand away before it had really made contact.it was like touching a high-voltage wire. "you are incompatible with our humanity andmust not land," the inspector ruled. "suppose we blast you and your jets out ofthe air and land anyway?" garlock asked.

"that is perhaps possible," the inspectoragreed, equably enough. "we are not invincible. however, it would do you no good. if any oneof you four leaves that so-heavily-insulated vessel in the atmosphere of this planet youwill die. not quickly, but slowly and with difficulty." "but you haven't tested me!" belle said. "doyou mean they'll attack us on sight?" "there is no need to test more than one. anyonewho could live near any of you could not live on this planet. nor will they attack you.don't you know what the thought 'incompatible' means?" "with us it does not mean death."

"here it does, since it refers to life forces.the types are mutually, irreconcilably antagonistic. your life forces are very strong. thus, nomatter how peaceable your intentions may be, many of our human beings would die beforeyou would, but you will not live to get back to your ship if you land it and leave itsprotective insulation." "why? what is it? how does it work?" belledemanded. "it is not my business to know; only to tell.i have told. you will go away now." garlock's eyes narrowed in concentration."belle, can you blast? i mean, could you if you wanted to?" "certainly ... why, i don't want to, clee!"

"i don't, eitherâ€”and i'll file that oneaway to chew on when i'm hungry some night, too. take her up, jim, and try another shot." numbers five to nine, inclusive, were neitherproductive nor eventful. all were, like the others, hodell all over again, in everythingfundamental. one was so far advanced that almost all of its humanity were seconds; oneso backwardâ€”or so much youngerâ€”that its strongest telepaths were only fours. the telluriansbecame acquainted with, and upon occasion fought with, various types of man-sized monstersin addition to the three varieties they had seen on hodell. every planet they visited had arpalones andarpales. not by those names, of course. local

names for planets, guardians, nations, cities,and persons went into the starship's tapes, but that welter of names need not be givenhere; this is not a catalogue. every planet they visited was peopled by homo sapiens;capable of inter-breeding with the tellurians and eager to do soâ€”especially with the tellurianmen. their strict monogamy was really tested more than once; but it held. each had beenvisited repeatedly by starships; but all garlock could find out about them was that they probablycame from a world somewhere that was inhabited by compatible human beings of grade two. hecould learn nothing about the faster-than-light drive. number ten was another queerâ€”the tellurianswere found incompatible.

"let's go down anyway." belle suggested. "overcomethis unwillingness of ours and find out. what do you think they've got down there, cleegarlock, that could possibly handle you and me both?" "i don't think it's a case of 'handling' atall. i don't know what it is, but i believe it's fatal. we won't go down." "but it doesn't make sense!" belle protested. "not yet, no; but it's a datum. enough dataand we'll be able to formulate a theory." "you and your theories! i wish we could getsome facts!" "you can call that a fact. but i want youand jim to do some math. we know that we're

making mighty long jumps. assuming that they'reat perfect random, and of approximately the same length, the probability is greater thanone-half that we're getting farther and farther away from tellus. is there a jump number,n, at which the probability is one-half that we land nearer tellus instead of farther away?my jump-at-conclusions guess is that there isn't. that the first jump set up a bias." "ouch. that isn't in any of the books," jamessaid. "in other words, do we or do we not attain a maximum? you're making some bum assumptions;among others that space isn't curved and that the dimensions of the universe are very largecompared to the length of our jumps. i'll see if i can put it into shape to feed tocompy. you've always held that these generators

work at randomâ€”the rest of those assumptionsare based on your theory?" "check. i'm not getting anywhere studyingmy alleged xenology, so i'm going to work full time on designing a generator that willsteer." "you tried to before. so did everybody else." "i know it, but i've got a lot more data now.and i'm not promising, just trying. okay? worth a try?" "sureâ€”i'm in favor of anything that hasany chance at all of working." jumping went on; and garlock, instead of goingabroad on the planets, stayed in the pleiades and worked.

at number forty-three, their reception wasof a new kind. they were compatible with the people of this world, but the inspector advisedthem against landing. "i do not forbid you," he explained, carefully."our humans are about to destroy themselves with fission and fusion bombs. they send missiles,without warning, against visitors. thus, the last starship to visit us here disregardedmy warning and sent down a sensing device as usualâ€”engineers do not land on non-telepathicworlds, you knowâ€”and it was destroyed." "you're a guardian of humanity," garlock said."can't you straighten people out?" "of course not!" the arpalone was outraged."we guard humanity against incompatibles and non-humans; but it is not our business tointerfere with humanity if it wishes to destroy

itself. that is its privilege and its ownbusiness!" garlock probed down. "no telepathy, evenâ€”noteven a seven. this planet is backwardâ€”back to year one. and nothing but firecrackersâ€”we'regoing down, aren't we?" "i'll say we are!" belle said. "this willbreak the monotony, at least," and the others agreed. "you won't object, i take it," garlock saidto the inspector, "if we try to straighten them out. we can postpone the blow-up a fewyears, at least." "no objections, of course. in fact, i cansay that we guardians of humanity would approve such action."

down the pleiades went, into the air of thenation known as the "allied republican democracies of the world," and an atomic-warheaded rocketcame flaming up. "hm ... m ... m. ingenious little gadget,at that," james reported, after studying it thoroughly. "filthy thing for fall-out, though,if it goes off. where'll i flip it, clee? one of their moons?" "check. third one outâ€”no chance of any contaminationfrom there." the missile vanished; and had any astronomerbeen looking at that world's third and outermost moon at the moment, he might have seen a tremendousflash of light, a cloud of dust, and the formation of a new and different crater among the hundredsalready there.

"no use waiting for 'em, jim. all three ofyou toss everything they've got out onto that same moon, being sure not to hurt anybodyâ€”yet.i'll start asking questions." the captain who had fired the first missileappeared in the main. he reached for his pistol, to find that he did not have one. he tensedhis muscles to leap at garlock, to find that he could not move. garlock drove his probe. "who is your superiorofficer?" and before the man could formulate a denial, that superior stood helpless besidehim. then threeâ€”and four. at the fifth: "oh, you are the man i want. prime ministerâ€”euphemismfor dictatorâ€”sovig. missile launching stations

and missile storage? you don't know? who does?" another man appeared, and for twenty minutesthe pleiades darted about the continent. "now submarines, atomic and otherwise, andall surface vessels capable of launching missiles." another man appeared. this job took a little longer, since the crewof each vessel had to be teleported back to their bases. an immense scrap-pile, probablyvisible with a telescope of even moderate power, built up rapidly on the third moon. "now a complete list of your uranium-refiningplants, your military reactors, heavy-water and heavy-hydrogen plants, and so on." anotherman appeared, but the starship did not move.

"here is a list of plants," and garlock namedthem, coldly. "you will remember them. i will return you to your office, and you mayâ€”ormay not, as you pleaseâ€”order them evacuated. look at your watch. we start destroying themin exactly seventy-two of your hours from this moment. any and all persons on the propertieswill be killed; any within a radius of ten of your miles may be killed. our explosivesare extremely powerful, but there is no radioactivity and no danger from the fall-out. the dangeris from flash-blindness, flash-burn, sheer heat, shock-wave, concussion, and flying debrisof all kinds." the officer vanished and garlock turned backto the prime minister. "you have an ally, a nation known as the 'brotherhoodof people's republics.' where is its capital?

slide us over there, jim. now, prime ministersovig, you and your ally, the second and first most populous nations of your world, are combiningto destroyâ€”a pincers movement, let us say?â€”the third largest nation, or rather, group ofnationsâ€”the nations of the north.... oh, i see. third only in population, but firstin productive capacity and technology. they should be destroyed because their ideologydoes not agree with yours. they are too idealistic to strike first, so you will. after you strike,they will not be able to. whereupon you, personally, will rule the world. i will add to that somethingyou are not thinking, but should: you will rule it until one of your friends puts hispistol to the back of your neck and blows your brains out."

they were now over the ally's capitol; whichlaunched five missiles instead of one. garlock collected four more men and studied them. "just as badâ€”if possible, worse. who, lingonor,is the leader of your opposition, if any?" another man, very evidently of the same race,appeared. "idealistic, in a way, but spineless and corrupt,"garlock announced to all. "his administration was one of the most corrupt ever known onthis world. we'll disarm them, too." they did. the operation did not take verylong; as this nationâ€”or group, it was not very clear exactly what it wasâ€”while veryhigh in manpower, was very low in technology. the starship moved to a station high abovethe capitol building of the nations of the

north and moved slowly downward until it hungpoised one scant mile over the building. missiles, jets, and heavy guns were set and ready, butno attack was made. therefore garlock introduced himself to various personages and invitedthem aboard instead of snatching them; nor did he immobilize them after they had beenteleported aboard. "the president, the chief of staff, the chiefjustice, the most eminent scientist, the head of a church, the leaders of the legislativebody and four political bosses, the biggest business man, biggest labor leader, and biggestgangster. fourteen men." as garlock studied them his face hardened. "i thought to leaveyour nations armed, to entrust this world's future to you, but no. only two of you arereally concerned about the welfare of your

peoples, and one of those two is very weak.most of you are of no higher motivation than are the two dictators and your gangster clyden.you are much better than those we have already disarmed, but you are not good enough." garlock's hard eyes swept over the group fortwo minutes before he went on: "i am opening all of your minds, friend andfoe alike, to each other, so that you may all see for yourselves what depths of rottennessexist there and just how unfit your world is to associate with the decent worlds ofthis or any other galaxy. it would take god himself to do anything with such material,and i am not god. therefore, when we have rid this world of atomics we will leave andyou will start all over again. if you really

try, you can not only kill all animal lifeon your planet, but make it absolutely uninhabitable for...." "stop it, clee!" lola jumped up, her eyesflashing. garlock dropped the tuned group, but belle took it over. everyone there understoodevery thought. "don't you see, you've done enough? that now you're going too far? thatthese twenty-odd men, having had their minds opened and having been given insight intowhat is possible, will go forward instead of backward?" "forward? with such people as the prime ministers,the labor and business leaders, the bosses and the gangsters to cope with? do you thinkthey've got spines stiff enough for the job?"

"i'm sure of it. our world did it with nobetter. millions and millions of other worlds did it. why can't this one do it? of courseit can." "may i ask a couple of questions?" this thoughtcame from the tall, trim, soldierly chief of staff. "of course, general cordeen." "we have all been taking it for granted thatyou four belong to some super-human race; some kind or other of homo superior. do iunderstand correctly your thought that your race is homo sapiens, the same as ours?" "why, of course it is," lola answered in surprise."the only difference is that we are a few

thousand years older than you are." "you said also that there were 'millions andmillions' of worlds that have solved the problems facing us. were all these worlds also peopledby homo sapiens? it seems incredible." "true, nevertheless. on any and every worldof this type humanity is identical physically; and the mental differences are due only totheir being in different stages of development. in fact, every planet we have visited exceptthis one makes a regular custom of breeding its best blood with the best blood of othersolar systems. and as to the 'millions and millions,' i meant only a very large but indefinitenumber. as far as i know, not even a rough estimate has ever been madeâ€”has there, clee?"

"no, but it will probably turn out to be millionsof millions, instead of millions and millions; and squared and then cubed at that. my guessis that it'll take another ten thousand years of preliminary surveying such as we're doing,by all the crews the various galaxian societies can put out, before even the roughest kindof an estimate can be made as to how many planets are inhabited by mutually fertilehuman peoples." for a moment the group was stunned. then: "do you mean to say," asked the merchant prince,"that you galaxians are not the only ones who have interstellar travel?" "far from it. in fact, yours is the only worldwe have seen that does not have it, in one

form or another." "oh? more than one way? that makes it stillworse. would you be willing to sell us plans, or lease us ships...?" "so that you could exploit other planets?we will not. you would get nowhere, even if you had an interstellar drive right now. you,personally, are a perfect example of what is wrong with this planet. rapacious, insatiable;you violate every concept of ethics, common decency, and social responsibility. your world'stechnology is so far ahead of its sociology that you not only should be, but actuallyare being, held in quarantine." "what?"

"exactly. one race i know of has been inspectingyou regularly for several hundreds of your years. they will not make contact with you,or allow you to leave your own world, until you grow up to something beyond the irresponsible-babystage. thus, about two and one-half of your years ago, a starship of that race sent downa sensing elementâ€”unmanned, of courseâ€”to check your state of development. brother sovigvolatilized it with an atomic missile." "we did not do it," the dictator declared."it was the war-mongering capitalists." "you brainless, mindless, contemptible idiot,"garlock sneered. "are even you actually stupid enough to try to lie with your mind? to mindslinked to your own and to mine?" "we did do it, then, but it was only a flyingsaucer."

"just as this ship was, to you, only a flyingsaucer, i suppose. so here's something else for you to think about, brother sovig, withwhatever power your alleged brain is able to generate. when you shot down that sensor,the starship did not retaliate, but went on without taking any notice of you. when youtried to shoot us down, we took some slight action, but did not kill anyone and are nowdiscussing the situation. listen carefully now, and rememberâ€”it is very possible thatthe next craft you attack in such utterly idiotic fashion will, without any more warningthan you gave, blow this whole planet into a ball of incandescent gas." "can that actually be done?" the scientistasked. for the first time, he became really

interested in the proceedings. "very easily, doctor cheswick," garlock replied."we could do it ourselves with scarcely any effort and at very small cost. you are familiar,i suppose, with the phenomenon of ball lightning?" "somewhat. its mechanism has never been elucidatedin any very satisfactory mathematics." "well, we have at our disposal a field some...." "hold it, clee," james warned. "do you wantto put out that kind of stuff around here?" "um ... m ... m. what do you think?" james studied cheswick's mind. "better thani thought," he decided. "he has made two really worthwhile intuitionsâ€”a genius type. he'sbeen working on what amounts almost to the

coupler theory for ten years. he's almostgot it, but you know intuitions of that caliber can't be scheduled. he might get it tomorrowâ€”ornever. i'd say push him over the hump." "okay with me. we'll take a voteâ€”one blackballkills it. brownie? just the link, of course. a few hints, perhaps, at application, butno technological data." "i say give it to him. he's earned it. besides,he isn't young and may die before he gets it, and that would lose them two or threehundred years." "belle?" "in favor. shall i drop the linkage? no,"she answered her own question. "no other minds here will have any idea of what it means,and it may do some of them a bit of good to

see one of their own minds firing on morethan one barrel." "thank you, galaxians." the scientist's mindhad been quivering with eagerness. "i am inexpressibly glad that you have found me worthy of so muchhelp." garlock entered cheswick's mind. first heimpressed, indelibly, six symbols and their meanings. second, a long and intricate equation;which the scientist studied avidly. during the ensuing pause, garlock cut thepresident and chief of staff out of the linkage. "we have just given cheswick a basic formula.in a couple of hundred years it will give you full telepathy, and then you will beginreally to go up. there's nothing secret about itâ€”in fact, i'd advise full publicationâ€”buteven so it might be a smart idea to give him

both protection and good working conditions.brains like his are apt to be centuries apart on any world." "but this is ... it could be ... it must be!"cheswick exclaimed. "i never would have formulated that! it isn't quite implicit, of course,but from this there derives the existence of, and the necessity for, electrogravitics!an entirely new field of reality and experiment in science!" "there does indeed," garlock admitted, "andit is far indeed from being implicit. you leaped a tremendous gap. and yes, the resultantis more humanistic than technological." belle's ear-splitting whistle resounded throughoutthe main. "how do you like them tid-bits,

clee?" she asked. "two hundred years in seventy-eightseconds? you folks will have telepathy by the time your present crop of babies growsup. clee, aren't you sorry you got mad and blew your top and wanted to pick up your marblesand go home? three such intuitions in one man's lifetime beats par, even for the geniuscourse." "it sure does," garlock admitted, ruefully."i should have studied these mindsâ€”particularly hisâ€”before jumping at conclusions." "may i say a few words?" the president asked. "you may indeed, sir. i was hoping you would." "we have been discouraged; faced with an insolubleproblem. sovig and lingonor, knowing that

their own lives were forfeit anyway, wereperfectly willing to destroy all the life on this world to make us yield. now, however,with the insight and the encouragement you galaxians have given us, the situation haschanged. reduced to ordinary high explosives, they cannot conquer us...." "especially without an airforce," lola putin. "i, personally, will see to it that every bomber and fighter plane they now have goesto the third moon. it will be your responsibility to see to it that they do not rebuild." "thank you, miss montandon. we will see toit. as for our internal difficultiesâ€”i think, under certain conditions, they can be handled.our lawless element," he glanced at the gangster,

"can be made impotent. the corrupt practicesof both capital and labor can be stopped. we have laws," here he looked at the membersof congress and the judge, "which can be enforced. the conditions i mentioned would be difficultat the moment, since so few of us are here and it is manifest that few if any of ourpeople will believe that such people as you galaxians really exist. would it be possiblefor you, miss montandon, to spend a few daysâ€”or whatever time you can spareâ€”in showing ourcongress, and as many other groups as possible, what humanity may hope to become?" "of course, sir. i was planning on it." "i'm afraid that is impossible," the chiefof staff said.

"why, general cardeen?" lola asked. "because you'd be shot," cardeen said, bluntly."we have a very good secret service, it is true, and we would give you every protectionpossible; but such an all-out effort as would be made to assassinate you would almost certainlysucceed." "shot?" garlock asked in surprise. "what with?you haven't anything that could even begin to crack an operator's shield." "with this, sir." cardeen held out his automaticpistol for inspection. "oh, i hadn't studied it ... a pellet-projector...." "pellet! do you call a four-seventy-five sluga pellet?"

"not much of that, really ... it shoots eighttimesâ€”shoot all eight of them at her. none of them will touch her." "what? i will not! one of those slugs willgo through three women like her, front to back in line." "i will, then." the pistol leaped into garlock'shand. "hold up one hand, brownie, and catch 'em. don't let 'em splashâ€”no deformation,so he can recognize his own pellets." holding the unfamiliar weapon in a clumsy,highly unorthodox gripâ€”something like a schoolgirl's first attemptâ€”garlock glancedonce at lola's upraised palm and eight shots roared out as fast as the gases of explosioncould operate the mechanism. the pistol's

barrel remained rigidly motionless under allthe stress of ultra-rapid fire. lola's slim, deeply-tanned arm did not even quiver underthe impact of that storm of heavy bullets against her apparently unsupported hand. noone saw those bullets strike that gently-curved right palm, but everyone saw them drop intoher cupped left hand, like drops of water dripping rapidly from the end of an icicleinto a bowl. "here are your pellets, general cardeen."lola handed them to him with a smile. "holyâ€”jumpingâ€”snakes!" the general said,and: "wotta torpedo!" came the gangster's enviousthought. "you see, i am perfectly safe from being 'shot,'as you call it," lola said. "so i'll come

down and work with you. you might have yournews services put out a bulletin, though. i never have killed anyone, and am not goingto here, but anyone who tries to shoot me or bomb me or anything will lose both handsat the wrists just before he fires. that would keep them from killing anyone standing nearme, don't you think?" "i should think it would," general cordeenthought, and a pall of awe covered the linked minds. the implications of the naively frankremark just uttered by this apparently inoffensive and defenseless young woman were simply toooverwhelming to be discussed. "anything else on the agenda, clee?" lolaasked. there was not, and the starship's guests werereturned, each to his own home place.

and not one of them, it may be said, was exactlythe same as he had been. chapter 4 "i think i'll come along with you and bodyguardyou, lola," belle said, the following morning after breakfast. "clee's going to be seventhousand miles deep in mathematics and jim's doing his stuff at the observatory, and ican't help either of 'em at the moment. you'd do a better job, wouldn't you, if you couldconcentrate on it?" "of course. thanks, belle. but remember, it'salready been announcedâ€”no death. just hands. i can't really believe that i'll be attacked,but they seem pretty sure of it." "i'd like to separate anyone like that fromhis head instead of his hands, but as it is

published so it will be performed." "how about wearing some kind of half-way-comfortableshoes instead of those slippers?" garlock asked. "that could turn out to be a long,tough brawl, and your dogs'll be begging for mercy before you get back here." "uh-uh. very comfortable and a perfect fit.besides, if i have to suffer just a little bit for good appearance's sake in a matterof intergalactic amity...." "a matter of showing off, you mean." "why, clee!" belle widened her eyes at him."how you talk! but they're ready, lolaâ€”let's go."

the two girls disappeared from the main, toappear on the speakers' stand in front of the capitol building. president benton wasthere, with his cabinet and certain other personages. general cordeen and his staff.and many others. "oh, miss bellamy, too? i'm very glad youare here," benton said, as he shook hands cordially with both. "thank you. i came along as bodyguard. mayi meet your secret service chief, please?" "why, of course. miss bellamy, may i presentmr. avengord?" "you have the hospital room ready?... whereis it, please?" "back of us, in the wing...."

"just think of it, please, and i will followyour thought.... ah, yes, there it is. i hope it will not be used. you agree with generalcordeen that there will be one or more attempts at assassination?" "i'm very much afraid so. this town is literallyriddled with enemy agents, and of course we don't know all of themâ€”especially the bestones. they know that if these meetings go through, they're sunk; so they're desperate.we've got this whole area covered like dewâ€”we've arrested sixteen suspects already this morningâ€”butall the advantage is theirs," avengord finished glumly. "not all of it, sir," belle smiled at himcheerfully. "you have me, and i am a prime

operator. that is, a wielder of power of nosmall ability. oh, you are right. there is an attempt now being prepared." while belle had been greeting and conversing,she had also been scanning. her range, her sensitivity, and her power were immenselygreater than lola's; were probably equal to garlock's own. she scanned by miles againstthe scant yards covered by the secret service. "where?" "give me your thought." the secret serviceman did not know what she meantâ€”telepathy was of course new to himâ€”so she seized hisattention and directed it to a certain window in a building a couple of miles away on ahill.

"but they couldn't, from there!" "but they can. they have a quite efficientengine of destructionâ€”a 'rifle' is their thought. large, and long, with a very goodtelescope on itâ€”with crosshairs. if i scan their minds more precisely you may know theweapon.... ah, they think of it as a 'buford mark forty anti-aircraft rifle'." "a buford! my god, they can hit any buttonon her clothesâ€”get her away, quick!" he tried to jump, but could not move. "as you were," she directed. "there was anotherbuford there, and another over there." she guided his thought. "two men to each buford.there are now six handless men in your hospital

room. if you will send men to those threeplaces you will find the bufords and the hands. your surgeon will have no difficulty in matchingthe hands to the men. if any seek to remove either bufords or hands before your men getthere, i will de-hand them, also." to say that the secret service man was flabbergastedis to put it very mildly indeed. cordeen had told him, with much pounding on his desk andin searing, air-blueing language, what to expect-or, rather, to expect anything, nomatter what and with no limits whateverâ€”but he hadn't believed it then and simply couldnot believe it now. goddamn it, such things couldn't happen. and this beautiful, beautifully-stacked,half-naked womanâ€”girl, rather, she couldn't be a day over twenty-fiveâ€”even if it hadbeen their black-browed, toplofty leader,

captain garlock himself.... "i am twenty-three of your years old, nottwenty-five," she informed him, coldly, "and i will permit no distinction of sex. in yourprimitive culture the women may still be allowing you men to believe in the fallacy of the superiorityof the male, but know right now that i can do anything any man ever born can do and doit better." "oh, i'm ... i'm sure ... certainly...." avengord'sthought was incoherent. "if you want me to work with you you had betterstart believing right now that there are a lot of things you don't know," belle wenton relentlessly. "stop believing that just because a thing has not already happened onthis primitive, backward, mudball planet of

yours, it can't happen anywhere or anywhen.you do believe, however, whether you want to or not, things you see with your own eyes?" "yes. i can not be hypnotized." "i'm very glad you believe that much." avengorddid not notice that she neither confirmed nor denied the truth of his statement. "tothat end you will go now into the hospital room and see the bandaging going on. you willsee and hear the news broadcast going out as i prepared it." he went, and came back a badly shaken man. "but they're sending it out exactly as ithappened!" he protested. "they'll all scatter

out so fast and so far we'll never catch them!" "by no means. you see, the amputees didn'tbelieve that they would lose their hands. their superiors didn't believe it, either;they assured each other and their underlings that it was just capitalistic bluff and nonsense.and since they are all even more materialistic and hidebound and unbelieving than you are,they all are now highly confusedâ€”at a complete loss." "you can say that again. if i, working withyou and having you pounding it into my head, couldn't more than half believe it...." "so they are now very frightened, as wellas confused, and the director of their whole

spy system is now violating rule and precedentby sending out messengers to summon certain high agents to confer with him in his secretplace." "if you'll tell me where, i'll get over tomy office...." "no. we'll both be in your office in plentyof time. we'll watch lola get started. it will be highly instructive for you to watcha really capable operator at work." president benton had been introduced; hadin turn finished introducing lola. the crowd, many thousands strong, was cheering. lolawas stepping into the carefully marked speaker's place. "you may disconnect these," she waved a handat the battery of microphones, "since i do

not use speech. not only do i not know anyof your various languages, but no one language would suffice. my thought will go to everyperson on this, your world." "world?" the president asked in surprise."surely not behind the curtains? they will jam you, i'm afraid." "my thought, as i shall drive it, will notbe stopped," lola assured him. "since this world has no telepathy, it has no mind-blocksand i can cover the planet as easily as one mind. nor does it matter whether it be dayor night, or whether anyone is awake or asleep. all will receive my message. since you wisha record, the cameras may run, although they are neither necessary nor desirable for me.everyone will see me in his mind, much better

than on the surface of any teevee tube." "and i was going to have her address congress!"the president whispered, aside, to general cordeen. then lola put her whole fine personality intoa smile, directed apparently not only at each separate individual within sight, but alsoindividually at every person on the globe; and when brownie montandon set out to makea production of a smile, it had the impact of a pile-driver. then came her smooth, gently-flowing,friendly thought: "my name, friends of this world ormolan, islola montandon. those of you who are now looking at teevee screens can see my imaged likeness.all of you can see me very much better within

your own minds. "i am not here as an invader in any sense,but only as a citizen of the first galaxy of this, our common universe. i have attunedmy mind to each of yours in order to give you a message from the united galaxian societies. "there are four of us galaxians in this explorationteam. as galaxians it is our purpose here and our duty here to open your minds to certainbasic truths, to be of help to you in clearing your minds of fallacies, of lies, and of undefensibleprejudices; to the end that you will more rapidly become galaxians yourselves...." "okay. this will go on and on. that's enoughto give you an idea of what a trained and

polished performer can do. what do you thinkof them comfits, chief?" belle deliberately knocked the secret service man out of hislola-induced mood. "huh? oh, yes." avengord was still groggy."she's phenomenalâ€”goodâ€”i don't mean goody-goody, but sincere and really...." "yeah, but don't fall in love with her. everybodydoes and it doesn't do any of them a bit of good. that's her specialty and she's verygood at it. i told you she's a smooth, smooth worker." "you can say that again." avengord did notknow that he was repeating himself. "but it isn't an act. she means it and it's true."

"of course she means it and of course it'strue. otherwise even she, with all her training, couldn't sell such a big bill of goods." then,in answer to the man's unspoken question, "yes, we're all different. she's the contactor,the spreader of the good old oil, the shining example of purity and sweetness and lightâ€”inshort, the greaser of the ways. i'm a fighter, myself. do you think she could actually havede-handed those men? uh-uh. at the last minute she would have weakened and brought them inwhole. my job in this operation is to knock hell out of the ones lola can't convince,such as those spies you and i are going to interview pretty quick." "even they ought to be convinced. i don'tsee how anybody could help but be."

"uh-uh. it'll bounce off like hailstones offof a tin roof. the only thing to do to that kind of scum is kill them. if you'll giveme a thought as to where your office is we'll hop over and...." belle and avengord disappeared from the stand;and, such was lola's hold, no one on the platform or in the throng even noticed that they weregone. they materialized in avengord's private office; he sitting as usual at his desk, shereclining in legs-crossed ease in a big leather chair. "... get to work." belle's thought had notbeen interrupted by any passage of time whatever. "what do you want to do first?"

"but i thought you were covering miss montandon?" "i am. like a blanket. just as well here asanywhere. i will be, until she gets back to the pleiades. what first?" "oh. well, since i don't know what your limitsareâ€”if you have anyâ€”you might as well do whatever you think best and i'll watchyou do it." "that's the way to talk. you're going to geta shock when you see who the head man is. george t. basil." "basil! i'll say it's a shock!" avengord steadied,frowned in concentration. "could be, though. he would never be suspectedâ€”but they'revery good at that."

"yeah. his name used to be baslovkowitz. hewas trained for years, then planted. none of this can be proved, as his record is perfect.born citizen, highest standing in business and social circles. unlimited entry and topsecurity clearance. right?" "right ... and getting enough evidence, insuch cases as that, is pure, unadulterated hell." "i suppose i could kill him, after we've recordedeverything he knows," belle suggested. "no!" he snapped. "too many people think ofus as a strong-arm squad now. anyway, i'd rather kill him myself than wish the job offontoâ€”you don't like killing, do you?" "that's the understatement of the century.no civilized person does. in a hot fight,

yes; but killing anyone who is helpless tofight backâ€”in cold bloodâ€”ugh! it makes me sick in my stomach even to think of it." "with the way you can read minds, we can getevidence enough to send them all to jail, and that we'll have to do." "how about this?" belle grinned as anothersolution came to mind. "from those first eight top men, we'll find out a lot of others lowerdown, and so on, until we have 'em all locked up here. we'll announce that exactly so manyspies and agentsâ€”giving names, addresses, and facts, of courseâ€”got panicky after lola'saddress. they fired up their hidden planes and flew back behind the curtain. then, whenwe've scanned their minds and recorded everything

you want, i'll pack them all, very snuglyand carefully, into sovig's private office. with the world situation what it then willbe, he won't dare kill themâ€”he simply won't know what to do when faced with it." avengord agreed happily. he reached out andflipped the switch of his intercom. "miss kimling, come in, please." the door burst open. "why, it is you! butyou were on the rostrum just a minute.... oh!" she saw belle, and backed, eyes wide,toward the door she had just entered. "she was there, too, and it's fifteen miles...." "steady, fram. i'd like to present you toprime operator belle bellamy, who is cleaning

out the entire curtain organization for us." "but how did you...." "never mind that. teleportation. it took herhalf an hour to pound it into me, and we can't take time to explain anything now. i'll telleverybody everything i know as soon as i can. in the meantime, don't be surprised at anythingthat happens, and by that i mean anything. such as solid people appearing on this carpetâ€”onthat spot right thereâ€”instantaneously. i want you to pay close attention to everythingyour mind receives, put your phenomenal memory into high gear, listen to everything i record,stop me any time i'm wrong, and be sure i get everything we need."

"i don't know exactly what you're talkingabout, sir, but i'll try." "frankly, i don't, eitherâ€”we'll just haveto roll it as we go along. we're ready for george t. basil now, miss bellamyâ€”i hope.don't jump, fram." basil appeared and fram jumped. she did notscream, however, and did not run out of the office. the master spy was a big, self-assured,affluent type. he had not the slightest idea of how he had been spirited out of his ultra-secretsub-basement and into this room; but he knew where he was and, after one glance at belle,he knew why. he decided instantly what to do about it. "this is an outrage!" he bellowed, hammeringwith his fist on avengord's desk. "a stupid,

high-handed violation of the rights...." belle silenced him and straightened him up. "high-handed? yes," she admitted quite seriously."however, from the galaxian standpoint, you have no rights at all and you are going tobe extremely surprised at just how high-handed i am going to be. i am going to read yourmind to its very bottomâ€”layer by layer, like peeling an onionâ€”and everything youknow and everything you think is going down in mr. avengord's big black book." belle linked all four minds together and directedthe search, making sure that no item, however small, was missed. avengord recorded everypertinent item. fram kimling memorized and

correlated and double-checked. soon it was done, and basil, shouting evenlouder about this last and worst violation of his rightsâ€”those of his own private mindâ€”wasled away by two men and "put away where he would keep." "but this is a flagrant violation of law...."miss kimling began. "you can say that again!" her boss gloated."and if you only knew how tickled i am to do it, after the way they've been kickingme around! "but i wonder ... are you sure we can getaway with it?" "certainly," belle put in. "we galaxians aredoing it, not your government or your secret

service. we'll start you cleanâ€”but it'llbe up to you to keep it clean, and that will be no easy job." "no, it won't; but we'll do it. come aroundagain, say in five or six years, and see." "you know, i might take you up on that? maybenot this same team, but i've got a notion to tape a recommendation for a re-visit, justto see how you get along. it'd be interesting." "i wish you would. it might help, too, ifeverybody thought you'd come back to check. suppose you could?" "i've no idea, really. i'd like to, though,and i'll see what i can do. but let's get on with the job. they're all in what you callthe 'tank' now. which one do you want next?"

the work went on. that evening there was ofcourse a reception; and then a ball. and belle's feet did hurt when she got back to the pleiades,but of course she would not admit the factâ€”most especially not to garlock. exactly at the expiration of the stipulatedseventy-two hours, the galaxians began to destroy military atomic plants; and, shortlythereafter, the starship's crew was again ready to go. and james rammed home the red button thatwould send themâ€”all four wonderedâ€”where? it turned out to be another hodell-type world;and, even with the high-speed comparator, it took longer to check the charts than itdid to make them.

the next planet was similar. so was the next,and the next. the time required for checking grew longer and longer. "how about cutting out this checking entirely,clee?" james asked then. "what good does it do? even if we find a similarity, what couldwe do about it? we've got enough stuff now to keep a crew of astronomers busy for fiveyears making a tank of it." "okay. we probably are so far away now, anyway,that the chance of finding a similarity is vanishingly small. keep on taking the shots,though; they'll prove, i think, that the universe is one whole hell of a lot bigger than anybodyhas ever thought it was. that reminds meâ€”are you getting anywhere on that n-problem? i'mnot."

"i'm getting nowhere, fast. you should havebeen a math prof in a grad school, clee. you could flunk every advanced student you hadwith that one. belle and i together can't feed it to compy in such shape as to get adefinite answer. we think, though, that your guess was rightâ€”if we ever stabilize anywhereit will probably be relative to hodell, not to tellus. but the cold fact of how far awaywe must be by this time just scares the pants off of me." "you and me both, my ripe and old. we're along ways from home." jumping went on; and, two or three planetslater, they encountered an arpalone inspector who did not test them for compatibility withthe humanity of his world.

"do not land," the creature said, mournfully."this world is dying, and if you leave the protection of your ship, you too will die." "but worlds don't die, surely?" garlock protested."people, yesâ€”but worlds?" "worlds die. it is the dilipic. the humansdie, too, of course, but it is the world itself that is attacked, not the people. some ofthem, in fact, will live through it." garlock drove his attention downward and scanned. "you arpalones are doing what looks like amighty good job of fighting. can't you win?" "no, it is too late. it was already too latewhen they first appeared, two days ago. when the dilipics strike in such small force thatnone of theirâ€”agents?â€”devices?â€”whatever

they are?â€”can land against our beaming,a world can be saved; but such cases are very few." "but this thought, 'dilipic'?" garlock asked,impatiently. "it is merely a symbolâ€”it doesn't mean anythingâ€”to me, at least. what arethey? where do they come from?" "no one knows anything about them," came thesurprising answer. "not even their physical shapeâ€”if they have any. nor where they comefrom, or how they do what they do." "they can't be very common," garlock pondered."we have never heard of them before." "fortunately, they are not," the inspectoragreed. "scarcely one world in five hundred is ever attacked by themâ€”this is the firstdilipic invasion i have seen."

"oh, you arpalones don't die with your worlds,then?" lola asked. she was badly shaken. "but i suppose the arpales do, of course." "practically all of the arpales will die,of course. most of us arpalones will also die, in the battles now going on. those ofus who survive, however, will stay aloft until the rehabilitation fleet arrives, then wewill continue our regular work." "rehab?" belle exclaimed. "you mean you canrestore planets so badly ruined that all the people die?" "oh, yes. it is a long and difficult work,but the planet is always re-peopled." "let's go down," garlock said. "i want toget all of this on tape."

they went down, over what had been one ofthat world's largest cities. the air, the stratosphere, and all nearby space were fullof battling vessels of all shapes and sizes; ranging from the tremendous globular spaceshipsof the invaders down to the tiny, one-man jet-fighters of the arpalones. the dilipics were using projectile weaponsonlyâ€”ranging in size, with the size of the vessels, from heavy machine guns up to seventy-five-millimeterquick-firing rifles. they were also launching thousands of guided missiles of fantasticspeed and of tremendous explosive power. the arpalones were not using anything solidat all. each defending vessel, depending upon its type and class, carried from four up toa hundred or so burnished-metal reflectors

some four feet in diameter; each with a smallblack device at its optical center and each pouring out a tight beam of highly effectiveenergy. it was at these reflectors, and particularly at these tiny devices, that the small-armsfire was directed, and the marksmanship of the dilipics was very good indeed. however,each projector was oscillating irregularly and each fighter-plane was taking evasiveaction; and, since a few bullet-holes in any reflector did not reduce its efficiency verymuch, and since the central mechanisms were so small and were moving so erratically, agood three-quarters of the arpalonian beams were still in action. there was no doubt at all that those beamswere highly effective. invisible for the most

part, whenever one struck a dilipic ship orplane everything in its path flared almost instantly into vapor and the beam glared incandescently,blindingly white or violet or high blueâ€”never anything lower than blue. almost everythingmaterial, that is; for guns, ammunition, and missiles were not affected. they did not evenexplode. when whatever fabric it was that supported them was blasted away, all suchthings simply dropped; simply fell through thousands or hundreds of thousands of feetof air to crash unheeded upon whatever happened to be below. the invading task force was arranged in awhirling, swirling, almost cylindrical cone, more or less like an earthly tornado. thelargest vessels were high above the stratosphere;

the smallest fighters were hedge-hoppinglyclose to ground. each dilipic unit seemed madly, suicidally determined that nothingwould get through that furious wall to interfere with whatever it was that was coming downfrom space to the ground throughâ€”along?â€”the relatively quiet "eye" of the pseudo-hurricane. on the other hand, the arpalones were madly,suicidally determined to break through that vortex wall, to get into the "eye," to wreakall possible damage there. group after group after group of five jet-fighters each camedriving in; and, occasionally, the combined blasts of all five made enough of openingin the wall so that the center fighter could get through. once inside, each pilot stoodhis little, stubby-winged craft squarely on

her tail, opened his projectors to absolutemaximum of power and of spread, and climbed straight up the spout until he was shot down. and the arpalones were winning the battle.larger and larger gaps were being opened in the vortex wall; gaps which it became increasinglydifficult for the dilipics to fill. more and more arpalone fighters were getting inside.they were lasting longer and doing more damage all the time. the tube was growing narrowerand narrower. all four galaxians perceived all this in seconds.garlock weighed out and detonated a terrific matter-conversion bomb in the exact centerof one of the largest vessels of the attacking fleet. it had no effect. then a larger one.then another, still heavier. finally, at over

a hundred megatons equivalent, he did getresultsâ€”of a sort. the invaders' guns, ammunition, and missiles were blown out of the ship andscattered outward for miles in all directions; but the structure of the dilipic ship itselfwas not harmed. belle had been studying, analyzing, probingthe things that were coming down through that hellish tube. "clee!" she drove a thought. "cut out themonkey-business with those damn firecrackers of yours and look hereâ€”pure, solid force,like ball lightning or our op field, but entirely differentâ€”see if you can analyze the stuff!" "alive?" garlock asked, as he drove a probeinto one of the thingsâ€”they were furiously-radiating

spheres some seven feet in diameterâ€”andbegan to tune to it. "i don't knowâ€”don't think soâ€”if they are,they're a form of life that no sane human being could even imagine!" "let's see what they actually do," garlocksuggested, still trying to tune in with the thing, whatever it was, and still followingit down. this particular force-ball happened to hitthe top of a six-story building. it was not going very fastâ€”fifteen or twenty milesan hourâ€”but when it struck the roof it did not even slow down. without any effort atall, apparently, it continued downward through the concrete and steel and glass of the building;and everything in its path became monstrously,

sickeningly, revoltingly changed. "i simply can't stand any more of this," lolagasped. "if you don't mind, i'm going to my room, set all the gunther blocks it has, andbury my head under a pillow." "go ahead, brownie," james said. "this istoo tough for anybody to watch. i'd do the same, except i've got to run these cameras." lola disappeared. garlock and belle kept on studying. neitherhad paid any attention at all to either lola or james. instead of the structural material it hadonce been, the bore that the thing had traversed

was now full of a sparkling, bubbling, writhing,partly-fluid-partly-viscous, obscenely repulsive mass of something unknown and unknowable onearth; a something which, garlock now recalled, had been thought of by the arpalone inspectoras "golop." as that unstoppable globe descended throughoffice after office, it neither sought out people nor avoided them. walls, doors, windows,ceilings, floors and rugs, office furniture and office personnel; all alike were absorbedinto and made a part of that indescribably horrid brew. nor did the track of that hellishly wantonglobe remain a bore. instead, it spread. that devil's brew ate into and dissolved everythingit touched like a stream of boiling water

being poured into a loosely-heaped pile ofgranulated sugar. by the time the ravening sphere had reached the second floor, the entireroof of the building was gone and the writhing, racing flood of corruption had flowed downthe outer walls and across the street, engulfing and transforming sidewalks, people, pavement,poles, wires, automobiles, people-anything and everything it touched. the globe went on down, through basement andsub-basement, until it reached solid, natural ground. then, with its top a few inches belowthe level of natural ground, it came to a full stop andâ€”apparentlyâ€”did nothing atall. by this time, the ravening flood outside had eaten far into the lower floors of thebuildings across the street, as well as along

all four sides of the block, and tremendousmasses of masonry and steel, their supporting structures devoured, were subsiding, crumbling,and crashing down into the noisome flood of golopâ€”and were being transformed almostas fast as they could fall. one tremendous mass, weighing hundreds orperhaps thousands of tons, toppled almost as a whole; splashing the stuff in all directionsfor hundreds of yards. wherever each splash struck, however, a new center of attack cameinto being, and the peculiarly disgusting, abhorrent liquidation went on. "can you do anything with it, clee?" belledemanded. "not too muchâ€”it's a mess," garlock replied."besides, it wouldn't get us far, i don't

think. it'll be more productive to analyzethe beams the arpalones are using to break them up, don't you think?" then, for twenty solid minutes, the two primeoperators worked on those enigmatic beams. "we can't assemble that kind of stuff withour minds," belle decided then. "i'll say we can't," garlock agreed. "tenmegacycles, and cycling only twenty per second." he whistled raucously through his teeth. "myguess is it'd take four months to design and build a generator to put out that kind ofstuff. it's worse than our op field." "i'm not sure i could ever design one," bellesaid, thoughtfully, "but of course i'm not the engineer you are...." then, she couldnot help adding, "... yet."

"no, and you never will be," he said, flatly. "no? that's what you think!" even in suchcircumstances as those, belle bellamy was eager to carry on her warfare with her projectchief. "that's exactly what i thinkâ€”and i'm soclose to knowing it for a fact that the difference is indetectible." belle almostâ€”but not quiteâ€”blew up. "well,what are you going to do?" "unless and until i can figure out somethingeffective to do, i'm not going to try to do anything. if you, with your vaunted and flauntedbelief in the inherent superiority of the female over the male, can dope out somethinguseful before i do, i'll eat crow and help

you do it. as for arguing with you, i'm alldone for the moment." belle gritted her teeth, flounced away, andplumped herself down into a chair. she shut her eyes and put every iota of her mind towork on the problem of finding somethingâ€”anythingâ€”that could be done to help this doomed world andto show that big, overbearing jerk of a garlock that she was a better man than he was. whichof the two objectives loomed more important, she herself could not have told, to save herlife. and garlock looked around. the air and thesky over the now-vanished city were both clear of dilipic craft. the surviving arpalone fightersand other small craft were making no attempt to land, anywhere on the world's surface.instead, they were flying upward toward, and

were being drawn one by one into the bowelsof, huge arpalonian space-freighters. when each such vessel was filled to capacity, itflew upward and set itself into a more-or-less-circular orbit around the planet. around and around and around the ruined worldthe pleiades went; recording, observing, charting. fifty-eight of those atrocious dilipic vorticeshad been driven to ground. every large land-mass surrounded by large bodies of water had beenstruck once, and only once; from the tremendous area of the largest continent down to therelatively tiny expanses of the largest islands. one land-mass, one vortex. one only. "what d'you suppose that means?" james asked."afraid of water?"

"damfino. could be. let's check ... mountains,too. skip us back to where we startedâ€”oceans and mountains both fairly close there." the city had disappeared long since; for hundredsof almost-level square miles there extended a sparkling, seething, writhing expanse ofâ€”ofwhat? the edge of that devouring flood had almost reached the foot-hills, and over thatgnawing, dissolving edge the pleiades paused. small lakes and ordinary rivers bothered thegolop very little if at all. there was perhaps a slightly increased sparkling, a slight stiffening,a little darkening, some freezing and breaking off of solid blocks; but the thing's forwardmotion was not noticeably slowed down. it drank a fairly large river and a lake onemile wide by ten miles long while the two

men watched. the golop made no attempt to climb eitherfoot-hills or mountains. it leveled them. it ate into their bases at its own level;the undermined masses, small and large, collapsed into the foul, corrosive semi-liquid and wereconsumed. nor was there much raising of the golop's level, even when the highest mountainswere reached and miles-high masses of solid rock broke off and toppled. there was someraising, of course; but the stuff was fluid enough so that its slope was not apparentto the eye. then the pleiades went back, over the placewhere the city had been and on to what had once been an ocean beach. the original waveof degradation had reached that shore long

since, had attacked its sands out into deepwater, and there it had been stopped. the corrupt flood was now being reinforced, however,by an ever-rising tide of material that had once been mountains. and the slope, whichhad not been even noticeable at the mountains or over the plain, was here very evident. as the rapidly-flowing golop struck water,the water shivered, came to a weirdly unforgettable cold boil, and exploded into drops and streamersand jagged-edged chunks of something that was neither water nor land; or rock or soilor sand or satan's unholy brew. nevertheless, the water won. there was so much of it! eachbarrel of water that was destroyed was replaced instantly and enthusiastically; with no loweringof level or of pressure.

and when water struck the golop, the golopalso shivered violently, then sparkled even more violently, then stopped sparkling andturned dark, then froze solid. the frozen surface, however, was neither thick enoughnor strong enough to form an effective wall. again and again the wave of golop built uphigh enough to crack and to shatter that feeble wall; again and again golop and water metin ultimately furious, if insensate, battle. inch by inch the ocean's shoreline was drivenbackward toward ocean's depths; but every inch the ocean lost was to its tactical advantage,since the advancing front was by now practically filled with hard, solid, dead blocks of itsown substance which it could neither assimilate nor remove from the scene of conflict.

hence the wall grew ever thicker and solider;the advance became slower and slower. then, finally, ocean waves of ever-increasingheight and violence rolled in against the new-formed shore. what caused those tremendouswavesâ€”earthquakes, perhaps, due to the shifting of the mountains' masses?â€”no tellurian eversurely knew. whatever the cause, however, those waves operated to pin the golop down.whenever and wherever one of those monstrous waves whitecapped in, hurling hundreds ofthousands of tons of water inland for hundreds of yards, the battle-front stabilized thenand there. all over that world the story was the same.wherever there was water enough, the water won. and the total quantity of water in thatworld's oceans remained practically unchanged.

"good. a lot of people escaped," james said,expelling a long-held breath. "everybody who lives on or could be flown to all the islandssmaller than the biggest ones ... if they can find enough to eat and if the air isn'tpoisoned." "air's okayâ€”so's the waterâ€”and they'llget food," garlock said. "the arpalones will handle things, including distribution. whati'm thinking about is how they're going to rehabilitate it. that, as an engineering project,is a feat to end all feats." "brother! you can play that in spades!" jamesagreed. "except that it'll take too many months before they can even start the job, i'd liketo stick around and see how they go about it. how does this kind of stuff fit into thattheory you're not admitting is a theory?"

"not worth a damn. however, it's a datumâ€”and,as i've said before and may say again, if we can get enough data we can build a theoryout of it." then it began to rain. for many minutes theclouds had been piling upâ€”black, far-flung, thick and high. immense bolts of lightningflashed and snapped and crackled; thunder crashed and rolled and rumbled; rain fell,and continued to fall, like a cloud-burst in colorado. and shortly thereafterâ€”firstby square feet and then by acres and then by square milesâ€”the surface of the golopbegan to die. to die, that is, if it had ever been even partially alive. at least it stoppedsparkling, darkened, and froze into thick skins; which broke up into blocks; which inturn sankâ€”thus exposing an ever-renewed

surface to the driving, pelting, relentlesslycascading rain. "well, i don't know that there's anythingto hold us here any longer," garlock said, finally. "shall we go?" they went; but it was several days beforeany of the wanderers really felt like smiling; and lola did not recover from her depressionfor over a week. chapter 5 supper was over, but the four were still atthe table, sipping coffee and smoking. during a pause in the casual conversation, jamessuddenly straightened up. "i want an official decision, clee," he said,abruptly. "while we're out of touch with united

worlds you, as captain of the ship and directorof the project, are boss, with a capital b. the lord of justice, high and low. the works.check?" "on paper, yes; with my decisions subjectto appeal and/or review when we get back to base. in practice, i didn't expect to haveto make any very gravid rulings." "i never thought you'd have to, either, butbelle fed me one with a bone in it, so...." "just a minute. how official do you want it?full formal, screens down and recorded?" "not unless we have to. let's explore it first.as of right now, are we under the code or not?" "of course we are."

"not necessarily," belle put in, sharply."not slavishly to the letter. we're so far away and our chance of getting back is soslight that it should be interpreted in the light of common sense." garlock stared at belle and she stared back,her eyes as clear and innocent as a baby's. "the code is neither long enough nor complicatedenough to require interpretation," garlock stated, finally. "it either applies in fulland exactly or not at all. my ruling is that the code applies, strictly, until i declarethe state of ultimate contingency. are you ready, belle, to abandon the project, findan uninhabited tellurian world, and begin to populate it?"

"well, not quite, perhaps." "yes or no, please." "no." "we are under the code, then. go ahead, jim." "i broke pairing with belle and she refusedto confirm." "certainly i refused. he had no reason tobreak with me." "i had plenty of reason!" james snapped. "i'mfed up to hereâ€”" he drew his right forefinger across his forehead, "â€”with making so-calledlove to a woman who can never think of anything except cutting another man's throat. she'sa heartless conniver."

"you both know that reasons are unnecessaryand are not discussed in public," garlock said, flatly. "now as to confirmation of abreak. in simple pairing there is no marriage, no registration, no declaration of intentor of permanence. thus, legally or logically, there is no obligation. morally, however,there is always some obligation. hence, as a matter of urbanity, in cases where no injuryexists except as concerns chastity, the code calls for agreement without rancor. if eitherparty persists in refusal to confirm, and cannot show injury, that party's behavioris declared inurbane. confirmation is declared and the offending party is ignored." "just how would you go about ignoring primeoperator belle bellamy?"

"you've got a point there, jim. however, shehasn't persisted very long in her refusal. as a matter of information, belle, why didyou take jim in the first place?" "i didn't." she shrugged her shoulders. "itwas pure chance. you saw me flip the tenth-piece." "am i to ignore the fact that you are oneof the best telekineticists living?" "i don't have to control things unless i wantto!" she stamped her foot. "can't you conceive of me flipping a coin honestly?" "no. however, since this is not a screens-downinquiry, i'll give youâ€”orally, at leastâ€”the benefit of the doubt. the next step, i presume,is for lola to break with me. lola?" "well ... i hate to say this, clee.... i thoughtthat mutual consent would be better, but...."

lola paused, flushing in embarrassment. "she feels," james said, steadily, "as i do,that there should be much more to the sexual relation than merely releasing the biologicaltensions of two pieces of human machinery. that's hardly civilized." "i confirm, lola, of course," garlock said;then went on, partly thinking aloud, partly addressing the group at large. "ha. reasonsagain, and very well putâ€”not off the cuff. evasions. flat lies. something very unfunnyhereâ€”as queer as a nine-credit bill. in sum, indefensible actions based upon unwarrantedconclusions drawn from erroneous assumptions. the pattern is not clear ... but i won't orderscreens down until i have to ... if the reason

had come from belle...." "me?" belle flared. "why from me?" "... instead of jim...." ignoring belle'sinterruption, garlock frowned in thought. after a minute or so his face cleared. "jim," he said, sharply, "have you been consciouslyaware of belle's manipulation?" "why, no, of course not. she couldn't!" "that's really a brainstorm, clee," bellesneered. "you'd better turn yourself in for an overhaul." "nice scheme, belle," garlock said. "i underestimatedâ€”atleast, didn't consider carefully enoughâ€”your

power; and overestimated your ethics and urbanity." "what are you talking about, chief?" jamesasked. "you lost me ten parsecs back." "just this. belle is behind this whole operation;working under a perfectly beautiful smokescreen." "i'm afraid the boss is cracking up, kids,"belle said. "listen to him, if you like, but use your own judgment." "but nobody could make jim and me really loveeach other," lola argued, "and we really do. it's real love." "admitted," garlock said. "but she could havehelped it along; and she's all set to take every possible advantage of the situationthus created."

"i still don't see it," james objected. "why,she wouldn't even confirm our break. she hasn't yet." "she would have, at the exactly correct psychologicalmoment; after holding out long enough to put you both under obligation to her. there wouldhave, also, been certain strings attached. her plan was, after switching the pairings...." "i wouldn't pair with you," belle broke inviciously, "if you were the only man left in the macrocosmic universe!" "part of the smokescreen," garlock explained."the re-pairings would give her two lines of attack on me, to be used simultaneously.first, to work on me in bed...."

"see?" belle interrupted. "he doesn't thinki've got any heart at all." "oh, you may have one, but it's no softerthan your head, and that could scratch a diamond. second, to work on you two, with no holdsbarred, to form a three-unit team against me. her charges that i am losing my grip madea very smart opening lead." "do you think i'd let her work on me?" jamesdemanded. "she's a primeâ€”you wouldn't know anythingabout it. however, nothing will happen. nor am i going to let her confuse the real issue.belle, you are either inside the code or a free agent outside it. which?" "i have made my position clear."

"to me, yes. to jim and lola, decidedly unclear." "unclear, then. you can not coerce me!" "if you follow the code, no. if you don't,i can and will. if you make any kind of a pass at jim james from now on, i'll lock youinto your room with a gunther block." "you wouldn't dare!" she breathed. "besides,you couldn't, not to another prime." "don't bet on it," he advised. after a full minute of silence garlock's attitudechanged suddenly to his usual one of casual friendliness. "why not let this one drop righthere, belle? i can marry them, with all the official trimmings. why not let 'em reallyenjoy their honeymoon?"

"why not?" belle's manner changed to matchgarlock's and she smiled warmly. "i confirm, jim. you two are really serious, aren't you?marriage, declarations, registration, and everything? i wishâ€”i sincerely and reallywish youâ€”every happiness possible." "we really are serious," james said, puttinghis arm around lola's waist. "and you won't ... won't interfere?" "not a bit. i couldn't, now, even if i wantedto." belle grinned wryly. "you see, you kids missed the main feature of the show, sinceyou can't know exactly what a prime operator is. especially you can't know what cleandersimmsworth garlock really isâ€”he's an out-and-out tiger on wheels. the three of us could havesmacked him bow-legged, but of course all

chance of that blew up just now. so if youtwo want to take the big jump you can do it with my blessing as well as clee's. i'll clearthe table." that small chore taken care ofâ€”a quick folding-upof everything into the tablecloth and a heave into the chute did itâ€”belle set up the recorder. "are you both fully certain that you wantthe full treatment?" garlock asked. both were certain, and garlock read the briefbut solemn marriage lines. as the newlyweds left the room, belle turnedto garlock with a quizzical smile. "are you going to ask me to pair with you, clee?" "i certainly am." he grinned back at her."i owe you that much revenge, at least. but

seriously, i'd like it immensely and we fitlike grace and poise. look at that mirror. did you ever see a better-matched couple?will you give me a try, belle?" "i will not," she said, emphatically. i'lltake back what i said a while agoâ€”if you were really the only man left, i wouldâ€”butas it is, the answer is a definite, resounding, and final 'no'." "'definite' and 'resounding,' yes. 'final,'i won't accept. i'll wait." "you'll wait a long time, buster. my doorwill be locked from now on. good night, doctor garlock, i'm going to bed." "so am i." he walked with her along the corridorto their rooms, the doors of which were opposite

each other. "in view of the code, lockingyour door is a meaningless gesture. mine will remain unlocked. i invite you to come in wheneveryou like, and assure you formally that no such entry will be regarded as an invasionof privacy." without a word she went into her room andclosed the door with a firmness just short of violence. her lock clicked sharply. the next morning, after breakfast, james followedgarlock into his room and shut the door. "clee, i want to tell you.... i don't wantto get sloppy but...." "want to lep it?" "hell, no!"

"it's about brownie, then." "uh-huh. i've always liked you immensely.admired you. hero, sort of...." "yeah. i quote. 'harder than pharaoh's heart.''colder than frozen helium,' and all the rest. but this thing about brownie...." he reachedout; two hard hands met in a crushing grip. "how could you possibly lay off? just thestrain, if nothing else." "a little strain doesn't hurt a man unlesshe lets it. i've done without for months at a stretch, with it running around loose onall sides of me." "but she's so ... she's got everything!" "there speaketh the ensorcelled bridegroom.for my taste, she hasn't. she told you, i

suppose, when explaining a certain fact, thati told her she wasn't my type?" "yes, but...." "she still isn't. she's a very fine person,with a very fine personality. she is one of the two most nearly perfect young women ofher race. her face is beautiful. her body is an artist's dream. her mind is one of thevery best. besides all that, she's a very good egg and a mighty tasty dish. but putyourself in my place. "here's this paragon we have just described.she has extremely high ideals and she's a virgin; never really aroused. also, she'sso full of this sickening crap they've been pouring into usâ€”propaganda, rocket-oil,prop-wash, and psychological gobbledygookâ€”that

it's running out of her ears. she's so stuffedwith it that she's going to pair with you, ideals and virginity be damned, even if itkills her; even though she's shaking, clear down to her shoesâ€”scared yellow. also, sheis and always will be scared half to death of youâ€”she thinks you're some kind of robot.she's a starry-eyed, soft-headed sissy. a sapadilla. a sucker for a smooth line of balloon-juiceand flapdoodle. no spine; no bottom. a gutless doll-baby. strictly a petâ€”you could no morelove her, ever, than you could a half-grown kitten...." "that's a hell of a picture!" james brokein savagely. "even with your cold-blooded reputation."

"people in love can't be objective, is all.if i saw her through the same set of filters you do, i'd be in love with her, too. so let'ssee if you can use your brain instead of your outraged sensibilities to answer a hypotheticalquestion. if the foregoing were true, what would you do, junior?" "i'd pass, i guess. i'd have to, if i wantedto look at myself in the mirror next morning. but that's such an ungodly cockeyed picture,clee.... but if that's actually your picture of brownieâ€”and you're no part of a liarâ€”justwhat kind of a woman could you love? if any?" "belle." "belle! belle bellamy? hell's flaming furies!that iceberg? that egomaniac? that jezebel?

she's the hardest-boiled babe that ever wentunhung." "right, on all counts. also she's crookedand treacherous. she's a ground-and-lofty liar by instinct and training. i could adda lot more. but she's got brains, ability, and gutsâ€”guts enough to supply the women'sarmy corps. she's got the spine and the bottom and the drive. so just imagine her thawedout and really shoveling on the coalâ€”blasting wide open on all forty torches. back to backwith you when you're surrounded; she wouldn't cave and she wouldn't give. or wing and wingâ€”holdingthe beam come hell or space-warps. roll that one around on your tongue, jim, and give yourtaste-buds a treat." "well, maybe ... if i've got that much imagination... that's a tough blueprint to read. i can't

quite visualize the finished article. however,you're as hard as she isâ€”even harder. you've got more of what it takes. maybe you can makea christian out of her. if so, you might have something; but i'm damned if i can see exactlywhat. whatever it turned out to be, i wouldn't care for any part of it. you could have itall." "exactly; and you can have your brownie." "i'm beginning to see. i didn't think youhad anything like that in your chilled-steel carcass. and i want to apolo...." "don't do it, boy. if the time ever comeswhen you go so soft on me as to quit laying it on the line and start sifting out yourlanguage...." garlock paused. for one of the

very few times in his life, he was at a lossfor words. he thrust his hands into his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. "hell, i don'twant to get maudlin, either ... so ... well, how many men, do you think, could have gonethe route with me on this hellish job without killing me or me killing them?" "oh, that's not...." "lay it on the line, jim. i know what i am.just one. you. one man in six thousand million. okay; how many women could live with me fora year without going crazy?" "lots of 'em; but, being masochists, they'dprobably drive you nuts. and you can't stand 'stupidity'; which, by definition, lets everybodyout. nope, it's a tough order to fill."

"check. she'd have to be strong enough andhard enough not to be afraid of me, by any trace. able and eager to stand up to me andslug it out. to pin my ears back flat against my skull whenever she thinks i'm off the beam.do it with skill and precision and nicety, with power and control; yet without doingherself any damage and without changing her basic feeling for me. in short, a female jimjames nine." "huh? hell's blowtorches! you think i'm likebelle bellamy?" "not by nine thousand megacycles. like bellebellamy could be and should be. like i hope she will be. i'd have to give, too, of courseâ€”maybewe can make christians out of each other. it's quite a dream, i admit, but it'll bebelle or nobody. but i'm not used to slopping

over this wayâ€”let's go." "i'm glad you did, big fellowâ€”once in alifetime is good for the soul. i'd say you were in love with her right nowâ€”except thatif you were, you couldn't possibly dissect her like a specimen on the table, the wayyou've just been doing. are you or aren't you?" "i'll be damned if i know. you and browniebelieve that the poets' concept of love is valid. in fact, you make a case for its validity.i never have, and don't now ... but under certain conditions ... i simply don't know.ask me again sometime; say in about a month?" "that's the surest thing you know. oh, brother!this is a thing i'm going to watch with my

eyes out on stalks!" for the next week, belle locked her door everynight. for another few nights, she did not lock it. then, one night, she left it ajar.the following evening, the two again walked together to their doors. "i left my door open last night." "i know you did." "well?" "and have you scream to high heaven that iopened it? and put me on a tape for willful inurbanity? for deliberate intersexual invasionof privacy?"

"blast and damn! you know perfectly well,clee garlock, i wouldn't pull such a dirty, lousy trick as that." "maybe i should apologize, then, but as amatter of fact i have no idea whatever as to what you wouldn't do." he stared at her,his face hard in thought. "as you probably know, i have had very little to do with women.that little has always been on a logical level. you are such a completely new experience thati can't figure out what makes you tick." "so you're afraid of me," she sneered. "isthat it?" "close enough." "and i suppose it's you that cartoonist what's-his-nameis using as a model for 'timorous timmy'?"

"since you've guessed it, yes." "you ... you weasel!" she took three quicksteps up the corridor, then back. "you say my logic is cockeyed. what system are youusing now?" "i'm trying to develop one to match yours." "oh ... i invited that one, i guess, sincei know you aren't afraid of god, man, woman, or devil ... and you're big enough so youdon't have to be proving it all the time." she laughed suddenly, her face softening markedly."listen, you big lug. why don't you ever knock me into an outside loop? if i were you andyou were me, i'd've busted me loose from my front teeth long ago."

"i'm not sure whether i know better or amafraid to. anyway, i'm not rocking any boat so far from shore." "says you. you're wonderful, cleeâ€”simplypriceless. do you know you're the only man i ever met that i couldn't make fall for melike a rock falling down a cliff? and that the falling is altogether too apt to be theother way?" "the first, i have suspected. the second ischemically-pure rocket-oil." "i hope it is.... i wish i could be as certainof it as you are.... you see, clee, i really expected you to come in, last night, and therereally wasn't any bone in it. surely, you don't think i'm going to invite you into myroom, do you?"

"i can't see why not. however, since no validsystem of logic seems to apply, i accept your decision as a fact. by the same reasoningâ€”howeverinvalidâ€”if i ask you again you will again refuse. so all that's left, i guess, is forme to drag you into my room by force." he put his left arm around her and applieda tiny pressure against her side; under which she began to move slowly toward his door. "you admit that you're using force?" she asked.her face was unreadable; her mental block was at its fullest force. "that i'm beingcoerced? definitely?" "definitely," he agreed. "at least ten dynesof sheer brute force. not enough to affect a tape, but enough, i hope, to affect you.if it isn't, i'll use more."

"oh, ten dynes is enough. just so it's force." she raised her face toward his and threw botharms around his neck. his right arm went into action with his left, and cleander garlockforgot all about dynes and tapes. after a time she disengaged one arm; reachedout; opened his door. he gathered her up and, lips still locked to lips, carried her overthe threshold. a few jumps later they met their first reallyold arpalone. this inspector was so old that his skin, instead of the usual bright, clearcobalt blue, was dull and tending toward gray. the old fellow was strangely garrulous, fora guardian; he wanted them to pause a while and gossip.

"yes, i am lonesome," he admitted. "it hasbeen a long time since i exchanged thoughts with anyone. you see, nobody has visited thisplanetâ€”groobe, its name isâ€”since almost all our humanity was killed, a few periodsago...." "killed? how?" garlock asked sharply. "notdilipic?" "oh, you have seen them? i never have, myself.no, nothing nearly that bad. merely the ozobes. the world itself was scarcely harmed at all.rehabilitation will be a simple matter, so there's no real reason why some of those engineers...." "the beast!" lola shot a tight-beam thoughtat her husband. "who cares anything about the rock and dirt of a planet? it's the peoplethat count and his are dead and he's perfectly

complaisant about itâ€”just lonesome!" "don't let it throw you, pet," james soothed."he's an arpalone, you know; not a sociological anthropologist." "... shouldn't come out here and spend a fewhours once in a while, but they don't. too busy with their own business, they say. butwhile you are physically human, mentally you are not. you're all too ... too ... i can'tput my thought exactly on it, but ... more as though you were human fighters, if sucha thing could be possible." "we are fighters. where we come from, mosthuman beings are fighters." "oh? i never heard of such a thing. wherecan you be from?"

this took much explanation, since the arpalonehad never heard of inter-galactic travel. "you are willing, then, to fight side by sidewith us arpalones against the enemies of humanity? you have actually done so, at times, and won?" "we certainly have." "i am glad. i am expecting a call for helpany time now. will you please give me enough of your mental pattern, doctor garlock, sothat i can call you in case of need? thank you." "what makes you think you're going to getan s.o.s. so soon? where from?" "because these ozobe invasions come in cycles,years apart, but there are always several

planets attacked at very nearly the same time.we were the first, this time; so there will be one or two others very shortly." "do they always ... kill all the people?"lola asked. "oh, no. scarcely half of the time. dependson how many fighters the planet has, and how much outside help can get there soon enough." "your call could come from any of the othersolar systems in this neighborhood, then?" garlock asked. "yes. there are fifteen inhabited planetswithin about six light-years of us, and we form a close-knit group."

"what are these ozobes?" "animals. warm-blooded, but egg-layers, notmammals. like this," and the inspector spread in their minds a picture of a creature somewhatlike the flying tigers of hodell, except that the color was black, shading off to iridescentgreen at the extremities. also, it was armed with a short and heavy, but very sharp, sting. "they say that they come from space, but idon't believe it," the old fellow went on. "what would a warm-blood be doing out in space?besides, they couldn't find anybody to lay their eggs in out there. no, sir, i thinkthey live right here on groobe somewhere, maybe holed up in caves or something for tenor thirteen years ... but that wouldn't make

sense, either, would it? i just don't know...." garlock finally broke away from the lonesomeinspector and the pleiades started down. "that's the most utterly horrible thing iever heard of in my life!" lola burst out. "like waspsâ€”only worseâ€”people aren't bugs!why don't all the planets get together and develop something to kill every ozobe in everysystem of the group?" "that one has got too many bones in it forme to answer," james said. "i'm going to get hold of that engineer assoon as we land," lola said, darkly, "and stick a pin into him." they found the engineering office easily enough,in a snug camp well outside a large city.

they grounded the starship and went out onfoot; enjoying contact with solid ground. the head engineer was an arpalone, tooâ€”engineerswere not a separate race, but dwellers on a planet of extremely high technologyâ€”buthe did know anything about space-drives. his specialty was rehabilitation; he was top bossof a rehab crew.... then lola pushed garlock aside. yes, the ozobescame from space. he was sure of it. yes, they laid eggs in human bodies. yes, they probablystayed alive quite a whileâ€”or might, except for the rehab crew. no, he didn't know whatwould hatch outâ€”he'd never let one live that long, but what the hell else could hatchexcept ozobes? no, not one. not one single damn one. if just one ever did, on any worldwhere he bossed the job, he'd lose his job

as boss and go to the mines for half a year.... "ridiculous!" lola snapped. "if ozobes hatched,they couldn't possibly have come from space. if they did come from space, the adult formwould have to be something able to get back into space, some way or other. that is simpleelementary biology. don't you see that?" he didn't see it. he didn't give a damn, either.it was none of his business; he was a rehab man. lola ran back to the ship in disgust. "something else is even more ridiculous, andis your business," james told the head engineer. "garlock and i are both engineersâ€”top ones.we know definitely that a one-hundred-percent

clean-up on such a job as thisâ€”millionsâ€”simplycan't be done. ever. under any conditions. are you lying in your teeth or are you dumbenough to believe it yourself?" "neither one," the engineer insisted, stubbornly."i've wondered, myself, at how i could get 'em all, but i always doâ€”every time so far.that's why they give me the big job. i'm good at it." "ohâ€”lola's right, jim," garlock said. "it'sthe adult form that hatches; something so different they don't even recognize it. somethingable to get into space. enough survivors to produce the next generation." "sure. i'll tell brownieâ€”she'll be tickled."

"she'll be more than tickledâ€”she'll wantto hunt up somebody around here with three brain cells working and give 'em an earful."then, to the engineer, "do you know how they rehab a planet that's been leveled flat bythe golop?" "you've seen one? i never have, but of coursei've studied it. slow, but not too difficult. after killing, the stuff weathers down ina few yearsâ€”wonderful soil it makesâ€”what makes it slow is that you have to wait fiftyor a hundred years for the mountains to get built up again and for the earthquakes toquit...." "excuse me, pleaseâ€”i've got a callâ€”wehave to leave, right now." the call was from the inspector. the nearestplanet, clamer, was being invaded by the ozobes

and needed all the help they could get. in seconds the pleiades was at the port ofentry. "where is this clamer?" garlock asked. the inspector pointed a thought; all fourfollowed it. "let's go, jim. maybe...." "just a minute!" lola snapped. she was breathinghard, her eyes were almost shooting sparks as she turned to the old arpalone and drovea thought so forcibly that he winced. "do you so-called 'guardians of humanity'care at all about the humanity you're supposed to be protecting?" she demanded viciously,the thought boring in and twisting, "or are

you just loafing on the job and doing as littleas you possibly can without getting fired?" belle and garlock looked at each other andgrinned. james was surprised and shocked. this woman blowing her top was no browniemontandon any of them knew. "we do everything we possibly can," the inspectorwas not only shocked, but injured and abused. "if there's any one possible thing we haven'tdone, even the tiniest...." "there's plenty!" she snapped. "plain, dumbstupidity, then, it must be. there must be somebody around here who has been at leastexposed to elementary biology! you should have exterminated these ozobe vermin agesago. all you have to do is find out what its life cycle is. how many stages and what theyare. how the adults get into space and where

they go," and she went on, in flashing thoughts,to explain in full detail. "are you smart enough to understand that?" "oh, yes. your thought may be the truth, atthat." "and are you interested enough to find outwhose business it would be, and follow through on it?" "yes, of course. if it works, i'll be quitefamous for suggesting it. i'll give you part of the credit...." "keep the creditâ€”just see to it that itgets done!" she whirled on james. "this loss of human life is so appallingly unnecessary!this time we're going to clamer, and nowhere

else. push the button, jim." "all i can do is set up for it, pet. whetherwe...." "we'll get there!" she blazed. "it's hightime we got a break. punch it! this time the ship's going to clamer, if we have to allget out and push it there! now punch that button!" james pushed the button, glanced into hisscanner, and froze; eyes staring. he did not even whistle. belle, however, did; with ear-shatteringvolume. garlock's mouth fell open in the biggest surprise of his life. they were in the samegalaxy! all three had studied charts of nebular configurationsso long and so intensely that recognition

of a full-sphere identity was automatic andinstantaneous. lola, head buried in scanner, had alreadychecked in with the port inspector. "it is clamer!" she shrieked aloud. "i toldyou it was time for our luck to change, if we pulled hard enough! they are being invadedby ozobes and they did call for help and they didn't think we could possibly get here thisfast and we don't need to be inspected because we're compatible or we couldn't have landedon groobe!" for five long minutes garlock held the starshipmotionless while he studied the entire situation. then he drove a probe through the mental shieldof the general in charge of the whole defense operation.

"battle-cruiser pleiades, captain garlockcommanding, reporting for duty in response to your s.o.s. received on groobe." the general, furiously busy as he was, droppedall other business. "but you're human! you can't fight!" "watch us. you don't know, apparently, thatthe ozobe bases are on the far side of your moon. they're bringing their fighters in mostof the way in transports." "why, they can't be! they're coming in fromall directions from deep space!" "that's what they want you to think. they'rebuilt to stand many hours of zero pressure and almost absolute zero cold. question: ifwe destroy all their transport, say in three

hours, can you handle all the fighters whowill be in the air or in nearby space at that time?" "very easily. they've hardly started yet.i appoint you admiral-pro-tem garlock, in command of space operations, and will referto you any other space-fighters who may come. i thank you, sir. good luck." the general returned his attention to hisboiling office. his mind was seething with questions as to what these not-human beingswere, how or if they knew so much, and so on; but he forced them out of his mind andwent, fast and efficient, back to work. james shot the pleiades up to within a thousandmiles or so of the moon.

"how long does it take to learn this bombingbusiness, jim?" lola asked. "about fifteen seconds. all you have to dois want to. do you, really?" "i really do. if i don't do something to helpthese people," it did not occur to her that she had already done a tremendous job, "i'llnever forgive myself." james showed her; and, much to her surprise,she found it very easy to do. the vessels transporting the invading forceswere huge, spherical shells equipped with short-range drivesâ€”and with nothing else.no accommodations, no facilities, no food, no water, not even any air. each transport,when filled to the bursting-point with as-yet-docile cargo, darted away; swinging around to approachclamer from some previously-assigned direction.

it did not, however, approach the planet'ssurface. at about two thousand miles out, great ports opened and the load was dumpedout into space, to fall the rest of the way by gravity. then the empty shell, with onlyits one pilot aboard, rushed back for another load. "how heavy shots, clee?" james asked. he andlola were getting into their scanners. "wouldn't take as much as a kiloton equivalent, wouldit?" "half a kilo is plenty, but no use being toofussy about precision out here." garlock and belle were already bombing; jamesand lola began. slow and awkward at first, lola soon picked up the technique and wasfiring blast for blast with the others. no

more loaded transport vessels left the moon.no empty one, returning toward the moon, reached there. in much less than the three hours garlockhad mentioned, every ozobian transport craft had been destroyed. "and now the real job begins," garlock said,as james dropped the starship down to within a few miles of the moon's surface. that surface was cratered and jagged, exactlylike that of the half always facing clamer. no sign of activity could be seen by eye,nor anything unusual. even the immense trap-doors, all closed now, matched exactly their surroundings.underground, however, activity was violently intense; and, now, confused in the extreme.

"why, there isn't a single adult anywhere!"lola exclaimed. "i thought the whole place would be full of 'em!" "so did i," belle said. "however, by hindsight,it's plain enough. their job done, they were killed and eaten. last meal, perhaps." "i'm afraid so. whatever they were, they hadhands and brains. just look at those shops and machines!" "what do we do, boss?" james asked. "run asearch pattern first?" "we'll have to, i guess, before we can laythe job out." it was run and garlock frowned in thought."almost half the moon coveredâ€”honeycombed.

we'll have to fine-tooth it. around the peripheryfirst, then spiral into the center. this moon isn't very big, but even so this is goingto be a hell of a long job. any suggestions, anybody? jim?" "the only way, i guess. you can't do it hit-or-miss.i'm damn glad we've got plenty of stuff in our op field and plenty of hydride for theengines. the horses will all know they've been at work before they get the field filledup again." "so will you, junior, believe me.... ready,all? start blasting." then, for three hours, the pleiades movedslowlyâ€”for herâ€”along a plotted and automatically-controlled course. it was very easy to tell where shehad been; the sharply-cut, evenly-spaced,

symmetrical pits left by the galaxian's full-conversionblasts were entirely different from the irregularly-cratered, ages-old original surface. "knock off, brownie," garlock said then. "goeat all you can hold and get some sleep. come back in three hours. jim, cut our speed toseventy-five percent." lola shed her scanner, heaved a tremendoussigh of relief, and disappeared. three silent hours laterâ€”all three weretoo intensely busy to think of anything except the work in handâ€”lola came back. "take belle's swath, brownie. okay, belle,you can lay off. three hours." "i'll stay," belle declared. "go yourself;or send jim."

"don't be any more of a damn fool than youhave to. i said beat it." "and i said i wouldn't. i'm just as good...." "chop it off!" garlock snapped. "it isn'ta case of being just as good as. it's a matter of physical reserves. jim and i have moreto draw on for the long shifts than you have. so get the hell out of here or i'll stop theship and slap you even sillier than you are now." belle threw up her head, tossing her shoulder-lengthgreen mop in her characteristic gesture of defiance; but after holding garlock's hardstare for a moment she relaxed and smiled. "okay, cleeâ€”and thanks for the kind words."

she disappeared and the work went on. and finally, when all four were so groggythat they could scarcely think, the job was done and checked. clamer's moon was as devoidof life as any moon had ever been. lola pitched her scanner at its rack and threwherself face-down on a davenport, sobbing uncontrollably. james sat down beside herand soothed her until she quieted down. "you'd better eat something, sweetheart, andthen for a good, long sleep." "eat? why, i couldn't, jim, not possibly." "let her sleep first, i think, jim," bellesaid, and followed with her eyes as jim picked his wife up and carried her into the corridor.

"we'd better eat something, i suppose," bellesaid, thoughtfully. "i don't feel like eating, either, but i never realized until this minutejust how much this has taken out of me and i'd better start putting it back in.... shedid a wonderful job, clee, even if she couldn't take it full shift toward the last." "i'll say she did. i hated like the devilto let her work that way, but ... you knew i was scared witless every second until wetopped off." exhausted and haggard as she was, belle laughed."i know damn-blasted well you weren't; but i know what you mean. fighting something youdon't know anything about, and can't guess what may happen next, is tough. seconds count."side by side, they strolled toward the alcove.

"i simply didn't think she had it in her,"belle marveled. "she didn't. she hasn't. it'll take her aweek to get back into shape." "right. she was going on pure nerve at thelastâ€”nothing else ... but she did a job, and she's so sweet and fine.... i wonder,clee, if ... if i've been missing the boat...." "you have not." garlock sent the thought sosolidly that belle jumped. "if you'd just let yourself be, you'd be worth a millionof her, just as you stand." "yes? you lie in your teeth, cleander, buti love it.... oh, i don't know what i want to eatâ€”if anything." "i'll think up yours, too, along with mine."

"please. something light, and just a little." "yeah. sit down. just a light snackâ€”a two-poundsteak, rare; a bowl of mushrooms fried in butter; french fries, french dips, salad,and a quart of coffee. the same for me, except more of each. here we are." "why, clee, i couldn't possibly eat half ofthat...." then, after a quarter of it was gone, "i am hungry, at thatâ€”simply ravenous.i could eat a horse and saddle, and chase the rider." "that's what i thought. i knew i could, andfigured you accordingly." they ate those tremendous meals slowly, enjoyingevery bite and sip; in an atmosphere of friendliness

and good fellowship; chatting on a wide varietyof subjects as they ate. neither was aware of the fact that this was the first time theyhad ever been on really friendly terms. and finally every dish and container was empty,almost polished clean. "one hundred percent capacityâ€”can chew butcan't swallow," garlock said then, lighting two cigarettes and giving belle one. "how'sthat for a masterly job of calibration?" "me, too. it'll pass." belle sighed in repletion."your ability to estimate the exact capacity of containers is exceeded only by your goodlooks and by the size of your feet. and now to hit the good old sack for an indefinitebut very long period of time." "you chirped it, birdie." still eminentlyfriendly, the two walked together to their

doors. belle put up a solid block and paused,irresolute, twisting the toe of one slipper into the carpet. "clee, i ... i wonder ... if...." her voicedied away. "i know what you mean." he put his arms aroundher gently, tenderly, and looked deep into her eyes. "i want to tell you something, belle.you're a woman, not in seven thousand million women, but in that many planets full of women.what it takes, you very definitely and very abundantly have got. and you aren't the onlyone that's pooped. i don't need company tonight, either. i'm going to sleep until i wake up,if it takes all day. or say, if you wake up first, why not punch me and we'll have breakfasttogether?"

"that's a thought. do the same for me. goodnight, clee." "good night, ace." he kissed her, as gentlyas he had been holding her, opened her door, closed it after her, and stepped across thecorridor into his own room. "what a man!" belle breathed to herself, behindthe solid screens of her room. "he thought i was too tired, not just scared to deathtoo. what a man! belle bellamy, you ought to be kicked from here to tellus...." thenshe threw back her head, drove a hard little fist into a pillow, and spoke aloud throughclenched teeth. "no, damn and blast it, i won't give in. i won't love him. i'll takethe project away from him if it's the last thing i ever do in this life!"

she woke up the next morningâ€”not morning,either, since it was well after noonâ€”a little before garlock did, but not much. when shewent into his room he was shaved and fully dressed except for one shoe, which he wasputting on. "hi, boss! better we eat, huh? not only ami starving by inches, but if we don't eat pretty quick we'll get only one meal todayinstead of three. did you eat your candy bar?" "i sure did, ace." "oh, i'm still 'ace'? you can kiss me, then,"and she raised her face toward his. he kissed her, still tenderly, and they strolledto and through the main and into the alcove. james and lola, the latter looking terriblystrained and worn, had already eaten, but

joined them in their after-breakfast coffeeand cigarettes. "you've checked, of course," garlock said."everything on the beam?" "dead center. even to lola and her biologists.everybody's full of joy and gratitude and stuffâ€”as well as information. and we managedto pry ourselves loose without waking you two trumpet-of-doom sleepers up. so we'reready to jump again. i wonder where in hell we'll wind up this time." "i'm glad you said that, jim." garlock said."it gives me the nerve to spring a thing on you that i've been mulling around in my mindever since we landed here." "nerve? you?" james asked, incredulously."pass the coffee-pot around again, brownie.

if that character there said what i heardhim say, this'll make your hair stand straight up on end." "on our jumps we've had altogether too muchpower and no control whatever...." garlock paused in thought. "like a rookie pitcher," belle suggested. "uh-uh," lola objected. "it couldn't be thatwild. he'd have to stand with his back to the plate and pitch the ball over the center-fieldstands and seven blocks down-town." "cut the persiflage, you two," garlock ordered."consider three things. first, as you all know, i've been trying to figure out a generatorthat would give us intrinsic control, but

i haven't got any farther with it than wedid back on tellus. second, consider all the jumps we've made except this last one. everytime we've taken off, none of us has had his shield really up. you, jim, were concentratingon the drive, and so were wide open to it. the rest of us were at least thinking aboutit, and so were more or less open to it. not one of us has ever ordered it to take us toany definite place; in fact, i don't believe that anyone of us has ever even suggesteda destination. each one of us has been thinking, at the instant of energization of the fields,exactly what you just said, and with exactly the same emphasis. "third, consider this last jump all by itself.it's the first time we've ever stayed in the

same galaxy. it's the first time we've evergone where we wanted to. and it's the first timeâ€”here's the crux, as i see itâ€”thatany of us has been concentrating on any destination at the moment of firing the charge. browniewas willing the pleiades to this planet so hard that we all could taste it. the restof us, if not really pushing to get here, were at least not opposed to the idea. check?" "check." "that's right." "yes, i was pushingwith all my might," came from the three listeners, and james went on: "are you saying the damn thing's alive?" "no. i'm saying i don't believe in miracles.i don't believe in coincidenceâ€”that concept

is as meaningless as that of paradox. i certainlydo not believe that we hit this planet by chance against odds of almost infinity toone. so i've been looking for a reason. i found one. it goes against my grainâ€”againsteverything i've ever believedâ€”but, since it's the only possible explanation, it mustbe true. the only possible director of the gunther drive must be the mind." "hell's blowtorchesâ€”now you're insistingthat the damn thing's alive." "far from it. it's brownie who's alive. itwas brownie who got us here. nothing elseâ€”repeat, nothing elseâ€”makes sense." james pondered for a full minute. "i wouldn'tbuy it except for one thing. if you, the hardest-boiled

skeptic that ever went unhung, can feed yourselfthe whole bowl of such a mess as that, i can at least take a taste of it. shoot." "okay. you know that we don't know anythingreally fundamental about either teleportation or the drive. i'm sure now that the driveis simply mechanical teleportation. if you tried to 'port yourself without any idea ofwhere you wanted to go, where do you think you'd land?" "you might scatter yourself all over spaceâ€”no,you wouldn't. you wouldn't move, because it wouldn't be teleportation at all. destinationis an integral part of the concept." "exactly soâ€”but only because you've beenconditioned to it all your life. this thing

hasn't been conditioned to anything." "like a new-born baby," lola suggested. "life again," james said. "i can't see itâ€”toomany bones in it. pure luck, even at those odds, makes a lot more sense." "and to make matters worse," garlock wenton as though neither of them had spoken. "just suppose that a man had four minds insteadof one and they weren't working together. then where would he go?" this time, james simply whistled; the girlsstared, speechless. "i think we've proved that my school of mathematicswas rightâ€”the thing was built to operate

purely at random. fotheringham was wrong.however, i missed the point that if control is possible, the controller must be a mind.such a possibility never occurred to me or anyone working with me. or to fotheringhamor to anybody else." "i can't say i'm sold, but it's easy to testand the results can't be any worse. let's "how would you test it?" "same way you would. only way. first, eachone of us alone. then pairs and threes. then all four together. fifteen tests in all. no.three destinations for each set-up; near, medium, and far. except tellus, of course;we'd better save that shot until we learn all we can find out. everybody not in theset should screen up as solidly as they can

set their blocksâ€”eyes shut, even, and concentratingon something else. check?" james did not express the thought that tellusmust by now be so far away that no possible effort could reach it; but he could not repressthe implication. "check. i'll concentrate on a series of transfinitenumbers. belle, you work on the possible number of shades of the color green. lola, on howmany different perfumes you can identify by smell. jim, hit the button." chapter 6 since the tests took much time, and were strictlyroutine in nature, there is no need to go into them in detail. at their conclusion,garlock said:

"first: either jim alone, or lola alone, orjim and lola together, can hit any destination within any galaxy, but can't go from one galaxyto another. "second: either belle or i, or any combinationcontaining either of us without the other, has no control at all. "third: belle and i together, or any combinationcontaining both of us, can go intergalactic under control. "in spite of confession being supposed tobe good for the soul, i don't like to admit that we've put gravel in the gear-boxâ€”doyou, belle?" garlock's smile was both rueful and forced.

"you can play that in spades." belle lickedher lips; for the first time since boarding the starship she was acutely embarrassed."we'll have to, of course. it was all my faultâ€”it makes me look like a damned stupid juveniledelinquent." "not by nineteen thousand kilocycles, sinceneither of us had any idea. i'll be glad to settle for half the blame." "will you please stop talking sanskrit?" jamesasked. "or lep it, so we two innocent bystanders can understand it?" "will do," and garlock went on in thought."remember what i said about this drive not being conditioned to anything? i was wrong.belle and i have conditioned it, but badly.

we've been fighting so much that somethingor other in that mess down there has become conditioned to her; something else to me.my part will play along with anyone except belle; hers with anybody except me. anti-conditioning,you might call it. anyway, they lay back their ears and balk." "oh, hell!" james snorted. "talk about gobbledygook!you are still saying that that conglomeration of copper and silver and steel and insulationthat we built ourselves has got intelligence, and i still won't buy it." "by no means. remember, jim, that this conceptof mechanical teleportation, and that the mind is the only possible controller, areabsolutely new. we've got to throw out all

previous ideas and start new from scratch.i postulate, as a working hypothesis drawn from original data as modified by these tests,that that particular conglomeration of materials generates at least two fields about the propertiesof which we know nothing at all. that one of those properties is the tendency to becomepreferentially resonant with one mind and preferentially non-resonant with another.clear so far?" "as mud. it's a mighty tough blueprint toread." james scowled in thought. "however, it's no harder to swallow than sanderson'stheory of teleportation. or, for that matter, the actual basic coupling between mind andordinary muscular action. does that mean we'll have to rebuild half a million credits' worthof ... no, you and belle can work it, together."

"i don't know." garlock paced the floor. "isimply can't see any possible. mechanism of coupling." "subconscious, perhaps," belle suggested. "for my money that whole concept is invalid,"garlock said. "it merely changes 'i don't know' to 'i can't know' and i don't want anypart of that. however, 'unconscious' could be the answer ... if so, we may have a lever....belle, are you willing to bury your hatchet for about five minutesâ€”work with me likea partner ought to?" "i certainly am, clee. honestly. screens downflat, if you say so." "half-way's enough, i thinkâ€”you'll knowwhen we get down there." her mind joined his

and he went on, "ignore the machines themselvescompletely. consider only the fields. feel around with meâ€”keep tuned!â€”see if there'sanything at all here that we can grab hold of and manipulate, like an op field exceptprobably very much finer. i'll be completely damned if i can see how this type of gunthergenerator can put out a manipulable field, but it must. that's the onlyâ€”o-w-r-c-h-h!" this last was a yell of pure mental agony.both hands flew to his head, his face turned white, sweat poured, and he slumped down unconscious. he came to, however, as the other three werestretching him out on a davenport. belle was mopping his face with a handkerchief.

"what happened, clee?" all three were exclaimingat once. "i found my manipulable field, but a bombwent off in my brain when i straightened it out." he searched his mind anxiously, thensmiled. "but no damage doneâ€”just the opposite. it opened up a gunther cell i didn't knowi had. didn't it sock you, too, belle?" "uh-uh," she said, more than half bitterly."i must not have one. that makes you a super-prime, if i may name a new classification." "nonsense! of course you've got it. unconscious,of course, like me, but without it you couldn't have conditioned the field. but why.... oh,what bit me was the one conditioned to me." "oh, nice!" belle exclaimed. "come on, cleeâ€”let'sgo get mine!"

"do you want a bit of knowledge that badly,belle?" lola asked. "besides, wait, he isn't strong enough yet." "of course he's strong enough. a little knocklike that? want it! i'd give my right leg and ... and almost anything for it. it didn'tkill him, so it won't kill me." "there may be an easier way," garlock said."i wouldn't wish a jolt like that onto my worst enemy. but that had two hundred kilovoltsand four hundred kilogunts behind it. since i know now where and what the cell is, i thinki can open it up for you without being quite so rough." "oh, lovely. come in, quick! i'm ready now."

garlock went in; and wrought. it took longerâ€”halfan hour, in factâ€”but it was very much easier to take. "what did it feel like, belle?" lola asked,eagerly. "you winced like he was drilling teeth and struck a couple of nerves." "uh-uh. more like being stretched all outof shape. like having a child, maybe, in a small way. let's go, clee!" they joined up and went. "ha, there you are, you cantankerous littlefabrication of nothings!" belle said aloud, in a low, throaty, gloating voice. "take thatâ€”andthat! and now behave yourself. if you don't,

mama spankâ€”but good!" then, breaking connection,"thanks a million, clee; you're tall, solid gold. do you want to run some more tests,to see which of us is the intergalactic transporter?" "not unless you do." "who, me? i'll be tickled to death not to;just like i'd swallowed an ostrich feather. back to tellus, then?" "tellus, here we come," garlock said. "jim,what are the tellurian figures for exactly five hundred miles up?" "i'll punch 'emâ€”got 'em in my head." jamesdid so. "shall brownie and i set our blocks?" "no," belle said. "nothing can interfere withus now."

"ready." garlock sat down in the pilot's seat."cluster 'round, chum." belle leaned against the back of the chairand put both arms around garlock's neck. "i'm clustered." "the spot we're shooting at is exactly overthe exact center of the middle blast-pit at port gunther. in sync?" "to a skillionth of a whillionth of a microphase.i'm exactly on and locked. shoot." "now, you sheet-iron bucket of nuts and bolts,jump!" and garlock snapped the red switch. earth lay beneath them. so did port gunther. "hu-u-u-uh!" garlock's huge sigh held muchmore of relief than of triumph.

"they did it! we're home!" lola shrieked;and, breaking into unashamed and unrestrained tears, went into her husband's extended arms. "cry ahead, sweet. i'd bawl myself if garlockwasn't looking. maybe i will, anyway," james said. then, extending his right arm to garlockand to belle, "i was scared to death you couldn't make it except by back tracking. good going,you two primes," but his thoughts said vastly more than his words. belle's eyes, too, were wet; garlock's ownwere not quite dry. "you weren't as sure as you looked, then,that we could do it the hard way," belle said. "all inside, i was one quivering mass of jelly."

"afterward, you mean. you were solid as gibraltarwhen i fired the charge. you're the kind of woman a man wants with him when the going'stough. slide around here a little, so i can get hold of you." garlock released belleâ€”finallyâ€”and turnedto the pilot, who was just pulling a data-sheet from compy the computer. "how far did we misstarget, jim?" james held up his right hand, thumb and forefingerforming a circle. "you're one point eight seven inches high, and off center point fivethree inches to the north northeast by east. i hereby award each of you the bronze medalof marksman first. shall i take her down now or do you want to check in from here first?"

"neither ... i think. what do you think, belle?" "right. not until you-know-what." "check. until we decide whether or not tolet them know just yet that we can handle the ship. if we do, how many of our tapedreports we turn in and how many we toss down the chute." "i get it!" james exclaimed, with a spreadinggrin. "that, my dear people, is something i never expected to live long enough to seeâ€”ourstraight-laced doctor garlock applying the bugger factor to a research problem!" "i prefer the term 'monk's coefficient,' myself,"garlock said, "from the standpoint of mathematical

rigor." "at polytech we called it 'finagle's formula',"belle commented. "the most widely applicable operator known." "have you three lost your minds?" lola demanded."that's nothing to joke aboutâ€”you wouldn't destroy official reports! all that astronomyand anthropology that nobody ever even dreamed of before? you couldn't! not possibly!" "each of us knows just as well as you do howmuch data we have, exactly how new and startling it is; but we've thought ahead farther thanyou have. none of us likes the idea of destroying it a bit better than you do. we won't, either,without your full, unreserved, wholehearted

consent, nor without your fixed, iron-clad,unshakable determination never to reveal any least bit of it." "that language is far too strong for me. i'dlike to be able to go along with you, but on those terms, i simply can't." "i think you can, when you've thought it through.you've met alonzo p. ferber, haven't you? read him?" "one glimpse; that was all i could stand.he pawed me mentally and wanted to paw me physically, the first time i ever saw him." "check. so i'm going to ask you two questions,which you may answer as an anthropologist,

as lola montandon, as mrs. james james jamesthe ninth, as a member of our team, or as any other character you choose to assume.remembering that ferber's a gunther firstâ€”and pretends to be an operator whenever he canget away with itâ€”should he, or anyone like him, ever be allowed to visit hodell? secondquestion: if there is any possible way for him to get there, can he be made to stay away?" "oh ... grand lady neldine and that perfectlystunning grand lady lemphi they picked out for jim ... they're such nice people ... andthe gunther genes...." as lola thought on, her expressive face showed a variety of conflictingemotions before it hardened into decision. "the answer to both questionsâ€”the only possibleanswerâ€”is no. i subscribe; on the exact

terms you stipulated. and you don't believe,clee, that my thesis had anything to do with my holding out at first?" "certainly i don't. besides...." "what thesis?" belle asked. "for my ph.d. in anthropology. i thought ihad it made, but it just went down the chute. and i don't know if any of you realize justhow nearly impossible it is to make a really worthwhile original contribution to sciencein that field." "as i started to tell you, brownie," garlocksaid, "i don't think you've lost a thing. there's a bigger and better one coming up."

"sh-h-h-h," belle stage-whispered. "he's gota theoryâ€”such a weirdie that he won't talk about it to anybody." "it isn't a theory yetâ€”at least, not ripeenough to pickâ€”but it's something more than a hunch," garlock said. "but what could possibly make as good a thesisas those extra-galactic tapes?" lola wailed. "they would have made my thesis a summer breeze." "more like a hurricaneâ€”the hottest thingsince doctorate disputations first started," garlock said. "however, as i started to saytwice before, it still will be. intra-galactic tapes will be just as good. in this case,better."

"w-e-l-l ... possibly. but we haven't any." "that is what this conference is about. wecan't destroy the stuff we have unless we can replace it with something better. my ideais that we should visit a fewâ€”say fiftyâ€”tellus-type planets in this galaxy; the ones closest totellus. i'm pretty sure they'll be inhabited by homo sapiens. there's a chance, of course,that they'll be like hodell and the others we've seen; in which case i don't see howwe can keep gunther genes confined to earth. however, i'm pretty sure in my own mind thatwe'll find them all very much like tellus, gunther and all. what would you think of thatfor a thesis, lola?" "oh, wonderful!"

"okay. now to get back to whether we wantto check in or not. i don't like to duck out without letting them know we can handle thisheapâ€”after a fashion, that is; they don't need to know we can really handle itâ€”butwe've got nothing we can report and fatso will blow his stackâ€”oh-oh! should've rememberedtellus isn't hodell; the tri-di's setting up! belle, you take it. she'd give me fatso,because he wants to chew me out, but she won't put him on for you. cut her throat, but good!brownie, hide somewhere! jim, set up for beta centauriâ€”not alpha, but betaâ€”and fast!give her hell, belle!" garlock sent this last thought from behind a davenport, from whichhiding-place he could see the tri-di screen and both belle and james; but anyone on thescreen could not see him.

miss foster's likeness appeared upon the screen.chancellor ferber's secretary was a big woman, but not fat; middle-aged, gray-haired, wearingconsciously the aura and the domineering, overbearing expression of a woman who hasgreat power and an even greater drive to exert her authority. "why haven't you reported in?" miss fostersnapped, with a glare that was pure frost. "you arrived thirteen minutes ago. such delayis inexcusable. get garlock." "captain garlock is off-watch; asleep. i,commander bellamy, am in command." standing stiffly at attention, belle paused to exchangeglares with the woman across the big desk. if miss foster's was frost, commander bellamy'swas helium ice.

"ready to go, jim?" belle flashed the thought. "half a minute yet." "any time after i sign off. pick your ownspot." then aloud into the screen: "i will report to chancellor ferber. i will not reportto chancellor ferber's secretary." "doctor james!" miss foster's voice was neitheras cold nor as steady as it had been. "bring that ship down at once!" james made no sign that he had heard the order.belle stood changelessly stiff. she had not for an instant taken her coldly competenteyes from those of the woman on the ground. her emotionless, ultra-refrigerated voicewent, as ever, directly into the screen.

"i trust that this conversation is being recorded?" "it certainly is!" "good. i want it on record that we, the personnelof the starship pleiades, are not subject to the verbal orders of the chancellor's secretary.you will now connect me with chancellor ferber, please." "the chancellor is in conference and is notto be disturbed. i have authority to act for him. you will report to me, and do it rightnow." foster's voice rose almost to a scream. "that ground has been covered. since you havetaken it upon yourself to exceed your authority to such an extent as to refuse to connectthe officer in command of the pleiades with

the chancellor, i cannot report to him eitherthe reasons why we are not landing at this time or when we expect to return to tellus.you are advised that we may leave at any instant, just like that!" belle snapped her fingerunder the imaged nose. "you may inform the chancellor, or not inform him if you prefer,that our control of the starship pleiades is something less than perfect. i do not knowexactly how many seconds longer we will be here. commander bellamy signing off. overand out." "commander bellamy, indeed! commander my leftfoot!" miss foster was screaming now, in thwarted fury. "you're no more a commander than mylowest office-girl is! just wait 'till you get down here, you green-haired hussy, youshameless notor...." the set went instantaneously

from full volume to zero sound as james drovethe red button home. "belle, you honey!" garlock scrambled outfrom behind the davenport, seized her around the waist, and swung her, feet high in air,through four full circles before he let her down and kissed her vigorously. "you littlesweetheart! you're the first living human being ever to really pull foster's cork!" "what a goat-getting!" james applauded. "thatwill go down in history as the star-spangled act of the century." belle was, however, unusually diffident. "istuck my neck out a mileâ€”worse, clee's. i'm sorry, clee. i had to have some weightto throw around, and i had only a second to

think, and that was the first thing i thoughtof, and after half a minute she made me so damn mad that i went entirely too far." "uh-uh. just far enough. that was a perfectjob." "but she'll never forget that, and she'llcrucify you, as well as me, when we land. she knows i'm not a commander." "she just thinks you ain't. the official logwill show, though, that after only one day out i discovered that we should all be officersâ€”onecaptain and three commandersâ€”with pay and perquisites of rank. i'll think up good andsufficient reasons for it between now and when i make up the log."

"but you can't! or can you, really?" "well, nobody told me i couldn't, so i assumedthe right. besides, you didn't tell her commander of what, so i'll make it stick, tooâ€”seeif i don't. or else i'll tear two or three offices apart finding out why i can't. youcan be sure of that." "all that may not be necessary," lola said."that tape will never be heard. i'll bet she's erased it already." "perhaps; but ours isn't going to be erasedâ€”itwill be heard exactly where it will do the most good." "i'm awfully glad you don't think we're onthe hook. all that's left, then, is that second-in-command

business. both of you know, of course, thatthat was just window-dressing." "you were telling the truth and didn't knowit," james said, cheerfully. "you have actually been second-in-command ever since the drivetests." "i haven't, and i won't. surely you don'tthink i'm enough of a heel, jim, to step on your toes like that?" "nothing like that involved. you tell her,clee." "gunther ability is what counts. you're aprime, jim's an operator; so, now that we can handle the heap, you'll have to be second-in-commandwhether you like it or not. any time you can out-gunther me we'll trade places. and youwon't have to take the job away from meâ€”i'll

give it to you." "but ... no hard feelings, jim? no reservations?screens down?" "none whatever. in fact, i'm relieved. i'mgunthered for this board hereâ€”for that one i'm not. come in and look; and shake on it." belle looked; and while they were shakinghands, she flashed a thought at lola. "do you know that we've got two of the finestmen that ever lived?" "i've known that for a long time," lola flashedback, "but you've hardly started to realize what they really are." "well, shall we start earning our pay andperquisites by getting to work on this planet,

that we haven't even lookedâ€”wait a minute!we're just about to open up the galaxy, aren't we?" they were. "then there'll have to be some kind of a unifyingand correlating authorityâ€”a galactic council or somethingâ€”and the quicker it's set upthe better; the less confusion and turmoil and jockeying-for-position there will be.question: should this authority be political?" "it should not!" james declared. "it takesunited worlds seven solid days of debate to decide whether or not to buy one lead pencil." "militaryâ€”or naval, i suppose it'd beâ€”that'swhat clee's driving at," belle said. "you're

wonderful, cleeâ€”simply priceless! we'reofficers of the brand-new galactic navy. subject to civilian control, of course, but the civilianswill be the united galaxian societies of the galaxy, and nobody else. beautiful, clee!there are ten operators, jim. right?" "check. brownie and i are here; the othereight are running the galaxian society under clee. and the whole society eats out of hishand." "i don't know about that, but belle and itogether could swing it, i think." "i'll say we could," belle breathed. "andi simply can't wait to see you kick fatso's teeth in with this one!" "i don't like the word 'navy'," garlock said."it's tied definitely to warfare. how about

calling it the 'galactic service'? applicableto either war or peace. brass hats will think of us in terms of war, even though we willactually work for peace. any objections?" there were no objections. "about the uniforms," lola said, eagerly."space-black and star-white, with chromium comets and things on the shoulders...." "to hell with uniforms," garlock broke in."why do women have to go off the deep end on clothes?" "she's rightâ€”you're wrong, clee," jamessaid. "without a uniform you won't get off the ground, not even with the society. andyou'll be talking to top planetary brass.

also, they're gunthered plentyâ€”you can feeltheir op field clear out here." "could be," garlock conceded. "okay, you girlsdope it out to suit yourselves. but think you can stand it, belle, to wear more thantwelve square inches of clothes?" "wait 'til you see it, chum. i've been designinga uniform for myself for positively years." "i can't wait. and you're a captain, of course." "huh? you can't have two cap.... oh, i see.primes. i appreciate that, clee. thanks." "hold on, both of you," james said. "you haven'tthought this through far enough. suppose we meet forces already organized? better starthigh than low. you've got to be top admiral, clee."

"rocket-oil! suppose we don't find anythingat all?" "you're right, jim," belle said. "clee, youtalk like a man with a paper nose. it's you who's been yowling for two solid years aboutbeing ready for anything. we've got to do just that." "correction accepted. brief me." "ranks should be different from those of unitedworlds. they should be descriptive, but impressive. tops could be galactic admiral. that's you.vice galactic admiral; me...." "galactic vice admiral would be better," lolasaid. "accepted. those two we'll make stick comehell or space-warps. right?"

garlock did not reply immediately. "up toeither one of two points," he agreed, finally. "what points?" "war, or being out-gunthered. top gunthertakes top place; man, woman, bird, beast, fish, or bug-eyed monster." "oh." belle was staggered for a moment. "nowar, of course. as to the other ... i hadn't thought of that." "there are a lot of things none of us hasthought of, but as amended i'll buy it." "then several regional admirals, each withhis regional vice admiral. then system admirals and vices, and world or planetaryâ€”namingthe planet, you knowâ€”admirals and vices.

let the various galaxian societies take overfrom there down. how do you like them potatoes, buster?" "nice. and formal address, intra-ship, willbe mister and miss. jim and brownie?" they liked it. "where do we fit in?" jamesasked. "pick your own spots," garlock said. "if we stick to the solar system we aren'tso apt to get bumped by primes. so make me solar system admiral and brownie my vice." "okay. how long will it take you, belle, tomaterialize those uniforms?" "fifteen seconds longer than it takes theconverter to scan us. lola's color scheme

is right, and i've got everything else downto the last curlicue of chrome. let's go." they went: and came back into the main inuniform. belle had really done a job. that of the men, while something on the spectacularside, was more or less conventional, with stiff-visored, screened, heavily-chromed caps;but the women's! slippers, overseas caps, shorts and jacketsâ€”but what jackets! "well...." garlock said, after examining thetwo girls speechlessly for a good half minute. "it doesn't look exactly like a spray-on job;but if you ever take a deep breath it'll split from here to there. fly offâ€”leave you nakedas a jay-bird." "oh, no. the fabric stretches a little. see?nothing like a sweater, but a similar effectâ€”perhaps

a bit more so." "quite a bit more so, i'd say. however, sinceoperators and primes are automatically stacked like tennick towers, i don't suppose yourrecruits will be unduly perturbed at, or will squawk too much about, overexposure. are wefinally ready to go down and get to work?" "i am," james said. "how do you want to handleit?" "run a search pattern. belle and i will centertheir op field and check on ops and primes. you two probe at will." around and around the planet, in brief burstsof completely incomprehensible speed, the huge ship darted; the biggest, solidest, yetmost elusive and fantastic "flying saucer"

ever to visit that world. the tremendous oceansand six great continents were traversed; the ice-caps; the frigid, the temperate, and thetorrid zones. wherever she went, powerful and efficient radar scanned and tracked her;wherever she went, excitement seethed. "beta centauri five," garlock reported, aftera few minutes. "margonia, they call it. biggest continent and nation named nargoda. capitalcity margon; margon base on coast nearby. lots of gunther firsts. all the real gunther,though, is clear across the continent. they're building a starship. fourteen ops and twoprimesâ€”man and woman. deggi delcamp's a big bruiser, with a god-awful lot of stuff.ugly as hell, though. he's a bossy type." "i'm amazed," james played it straight. "ithought all male primes would be just like

you. timorous timmies." "huh? oh...." garlock was taken slightly aback,but went on quickly, "what do you think of your opposite number, belle?" he whistleda wolf-call and made hour-glass motions with his hands. "i'd thought of trading you inon a new model, but fao talaho is no bargain, eitherâ€”and nobody's push-over." "trade! you tomcat!" belle's nostrils flared."you know what that bleached-blonde tried to do? high-hat me!" "i noticed. when we four get down to business,face to face, there should be some interesting by-products."

"you chirped it, boss. primes seem to be suchnice people." james rolled his eyes upward and steepled his hands. "if you've got allthe dope, no use finishing this search pattern." "go ahead. window dressing. the brass hasn'tany idea of what's going on, any more than ours did." the search went on until, "this is it," jamesreported. "where? over margon base?" "check. kick us over there, ten or twelvehundred miles up." "on the way, boss. looks like your theoryis about ready to pick." "it isn't much of a theory yet; just thatcultural and evolutionary patterns should be more or less homogeneous within galaxies.until it can explain why so many out-galaxies

are just alike it doesn't amount to much.by the way, i'm glad you people insisted on organization and rank and uniforms. the brassis going to take a certain amount of convincing. take over, brownieâ€”this is your dish." "i was afraid of that." the others watched lola drive her probeâ€”adiamond-clear, razor-sharp bolt of thought that no gunther first could possibly eitherwield or stopâ€”down into the innermost private office of that immense and far-flung base.through lola's inner eyes they saw a tall, trim, handsome, fiftyish man in a resplendentuniform of purple and gold; they watched her brush aside that officer's hard-held mentalblock.

"i greet you, supreme grand marshal entlore,highest commander of the armed forces of nargoda. this is the starship pleiades, of system sol,planet tellus. i am sol-system vice-admiral lola montandon. i have with me as guests threeof my superior officers of the galactic service, including the galactic admiral himself. weare making a good-will tour of the tellus-type planets of this region of space. i requestpermission to land and information as to your landing conventions. the landing padâ€”bottomâ€”ofthe pleiades is flat; sixty feet wide by one hundred twenty feet long. area loading isapproximately eight tons per square foot. solid, dry ground is perfectly satisfactory.while we land vertically, with little or no shock impact, i prefer not to risk damagingyour pavement."

they all felt the marshal's thoughts race."starship! tellusâ€”sol, that insignificant type g dwarf! interstellar travel a commonplace!a ship that size and weightâ€”an organized, uniformed, functioning galaxy-wide navy andthey don't want to damage my pavement! my god!" "good going, brownie! kiss her for me, jim."garlock flashed the thought. entlore, realizing that his every thoughtwas being read, pulled himself together. "i admit that i was shocked, admiral montandon.but landingâ€”really, i have nothing to do with landings. they are handled by...." "i realize that, sir; but you realize thatno underling could possibly authorize my landing.

that is why i always start at the top. besides,i do not like to waste time on officers of much lower rank than my own, and," lola alloweda strong tinge of good humor to creep into her thought, "the bigger they are, the lessapt they are to pass the well-known buck." "you have had experience, i see," the marshallaughed. he did have a sense of humor. "while landing here is forbiddenâ€”top secret, youknowâ€”would my refusal mean much to you?" "having made satisfactory contact, i introduceyou to galactic admiral garlock. take over, sir, please." entlore winced, for the probe garlock usedthen compared to lola's very much as a diamond drill compares to a piece of soft brass pipe.

"it would mean everything to us," garlockassured him. "our mission is a perfectly friendly one. we will have a friendly visit or none.if you do not care for our friendship, another nation will." "that wouldn't do, either, of course." entlorepaused in thought. "it boils down to this: i must either welcome you or destroy you." "you may try." garlock grinned in franklyself-satisfied amusement. "however, the best you can do is lithium-hydride fusion missilesin the hundreds-of-megatons range. firecrackers. every once in a while a planet has to trya few such things on us before it will believe that we are powerful as well as friendly.would you like to test our defenses? if so,

i will neither take offense nor retaliate." supreme grand marshal entlore was floored."why ... er ... not at all. i read in your mind...." he broke off, to quell an invasioninto his own private office. "damn it, keep still!" all four "heard" him yell. "i knowthey ran a search pattern. i know that, too. i know everything about it, i tell you! i'min full rapport with their supreme grand admiral. there's only the one ship, they're friendly,and i'm inviting them to land here on margon base. give that to the press. say also thatentrance restrictions to margon base will not be relaxed at present. grand marshal holsonand comoff flurnoy, stay here and tune in. the rest of you get out and stay out! throwall reports about any alien vessel or flying

saucer or what-have-you into the waste-basket!" "resume command, please, miss montandon,"garlock directed; and withdrew his probe from entlore's mind. "i thank you, supreme grand marshal entlore,for your welcome," lola sent. "i'm sorry that our visits cause so much disturbance, buti suppose it can't be helped. our gunther blocks are down. would you and your two assistantslike to teleport out here to us, and con us down yourselves?" lola knew instantly thatthey could not, and covered deftly for them. "but of course you can't, without knowinga focus spot here in the main. shall i teleport you aboard?"

comoff flurnoy's faceâ€”she was an attractive,nicely-built red-head wearing throat-mike, earphone, and recorderâ€”turned so pale thata faint line of freckles stood out across the bridge of her nose. she very evidentlywanted to scream a protest, but would not. both men, strangely enough, were eager togo. instantly all three were standing in line on the deep-piled rug of the main, facingthe four tellurians. seven bodies came rigidly to attention, seven right hands snapped intotwo varieties of formal salute. standing thus, each party studied the other for a coupleof seconds. there was no doubt at all as to which twoof the visitors the two nargodian men were studying; but neither of them could quitemake up his mind as to which of the black-and-white-clad

women to study first or most. the red-head'sglance, too, flickered between belle and garlockâ€”incredulous envy and equally incredulous admiration lither eyes. "at rest, please, fellow-officers," garlocksaid, and lola performed the necessary introductions, adding, "we do not, however, use titles aboardship. mister and miss are customary and sufficient." behind each row of officers a long davenportappeared; between them a table loaded with sandwiches, olives, pickles, relishes, fruits,nuts, soft drinks, cigars, and cigarettes. "help yourselves," garlock invited. "we serveneither intoxicants nor drugs, but you should find something there to your taste." "indeed we shall, and thank you," entloresaid. "is there any objection, mr. garlock,

to miss flurnoy transmitting information ofthis meeting and of this ship to our base?" "none whatever. send as you please, miss flurnoy,or as mr. entlore directs." "i'm glad i didn't quite scare myself outof coming up here," the communications officer said. "this is the biggest and nicest thrilli ever had. such a thrill that i don't know just where to begin." she cocked an eyebrowat her commanding officer. "as usual. whatever you think should be sent."entlore sent her a steadying thought. then, as the girl settled back with a sandwich inone hand and a tall glass of ginger-ale in the other, he went on, to garlock, "she isa very fine and very strong telepathâ€”by our standards, at least."

"by galactic standards also." garlock hadof course been checking. "accurate, sharp, wide-range, clear-thinking, and fast. notone of us four could do it any better." "i thank you, mr. garlock," the girl said,with a blush of pleasureâ€”and with scarcely a perceptible pause in her work. a tour of the ship followed; and as it progressed,the more confused and dismayed the two nargodian commanders became. "but no crew at all?" holson demanded incredulously."how can a thing like this possibly work?" "it's fully gunthered," lola explained. "itworks itself. that is, almost all the time. whenever we land on any planet for the firsttime, one of us has to control it. or for

any other special job not in its memory banks.when you're ready for us to land i'll show youâ€”it's my turn to work." "miss flurnoy, have they cleared the air overpylon six?" "yes, sir. clearance came through five minutesago. they are holding it clear for us." "thank you. miss montandon, you may land atyour convenience." "thank you, sir." lola took the pilot's chair."this is the scanner. i pull it over my face and head, so. since i am always in tune withthe field...." "what does that mean?" entlore asked, darkforeboding in his mind. "i was afraid of that. you can't feel an operatorfield. i'm sorry, sir, but that means you

can't handle these forces and never will beable to. certain gunther areas of your brain are inoperative. on our scale you are a guntherfirst...." "on ours, i'm an esper ten, the highest ratingin the worldâ€”except for a few theoretical crackpots who.... excuse me, please, i shouldn'thave said that, in view of what i see happening here." "no offense taken, sir. those who developedthe gunther drive were crackpots until they got the first starship out into space. butwith this scanner on, i think of where i want to look and i can see it. i then think theship a few miles sidewiseâ€”soâ€”and we are now directly over your pylon six. i'm startingdown, but i won't go into free fall."

apparent weight grew less and less, until:"this is about enough for you, miss flurnoy?" "just," the comoff agreed, with a gulp. "onepound less and i'm afraid i'll upchuck that lovely lunch i just ate." "we're going fast enough now. everyone sittingdown? brace yourselves, please. you'll be about fifty percent overweight for a while." as bodies settled deeper into cushions entloresent garlock a thought. "we three weigh about five hundred pounds. you lifted usâ€”instantaneouslyor nearly so, but i'll pass the question of acceleration for the momentâ€”eleven hundredmiles straight up. how did you repeal the law of conservation?"

"we didn't. we have fusion engines of twentymillion horsepower. our operator field, which has a radius of fifteen thousand miles andis charged to an electrogravitic potential of one hundred thousand gunts, stores energy.its action is not exactly like that of an electrical condenser or of a storage battery,but is more or less analogous to both. thus, the energy required to lift you three camefrom the field, but the amount was so small that it did not lower the potential of thefield by any measurable amount. setting this ship downâ€”call it sixty thousand tons fora thousand miles at one gravityâ€”will increase the field's potential by approximately one-tenthof one gunt. have you studied paraphysics?" "it wasn't practical, eh?" garlock smiled."then i can't make even a stab at explaining

instantaneous translation to you. i'll justsay that there is no acceleration involved, no time lapse. there is no violation of thelaw of conservation since departure and arrival points are equi-guntherial. but what i amreally interested in is that small group of high espers you mentioned." "yes, i inferred that from miss montandon'scomments." entlore fell silent and garlock watched his somber thoughts picture margonbase and his nation's capital being attacked and destroyed by a fleet of invincible andinvulnerable starships like this pleiades. "you are wrong, sir," garlock put in, quietly."the galactic service has not had, does not and will not have, anything to do with intra-planetaryaffairs. we have no connection with, and no

responsibility to, any world or any groupof worlds. we are an arm of the united galaxian societies of the galaxy. our function is tocontrol space. to forbid, to prevent, to rectify any interplanetary or interstellar aggression.above all, to prevent, by means of procedures up to and including total destruction of planetsif necessary, any attempt whatever to form any multi-world empire." the three nargodians gasped as one, as muchat the scope of the thing as at the calmly cold certainty of ability carried by the thought. "you are transmitting this precisely, missflurnoy?" entlore asked. "precisely, sir; including background, fringes,connotations, and implications; just as he

is giving it to us." "let us assume that your nargodian governmentdecides to conquer all the other nations of your planet margonia. assume farther thatit succeeds. we will not object; in fact, we will, as a usual thing, not even be informedof it. if then, however, your government decides that one world is not enough for it to ruleand prepares to conquer, or take aggressive action against, any other world, we will beinformed and we will step in. first, warning will be given. second, any and all vesselsdispatched on such a mission will be annihilated. third, if the offense is continued or repeated,trial will be held before the galactic council and any sentence imposed will be carried out."

in spite of garlock's manner and message,both marshals were highly relieved. "you're in plenty of time, with us, sir," entloresaid. "we have just sent our first rocket to our nearer moon ... that is, unless thatgroup ofâ€”of espers gets their ship off the ground." "how far along are they?" "the ship itself is built, but they are havingtrouble with their drive. the hull is spherical, and much smaller than this one. it has atomicengines, but no blasts or ion-plates ... but neither has this one!" "exactly; they may be pretty well along. i'dlike to get in touch with them as soon as

possible. may i borrow a 'talker' like missflurnoy for a few days? you have others, i suppose?" "yes, but i'll let you have her; it is ofthe essence that you have the best one available. miss flurnoy?" "yes, sir?" besides reporting, she had beenconversing busily with james and belle. "would you like to be assigned to mr. garlockfor the duration of his stay on margonia?" "oh, yes, sir!" she replied, excitedly. "you are so assigned. take orders from himor from any designate as though i myself were issuing them."

"thank you, sir ... but what limits? and doi transmit to and/or record for you, sir?" "no limit. these four galaxians are herebygranted nation-wide top clearance. transmit as usual whatever is permitted." "full reporting is not only permitted, buturged," garlock said. "there is nothing secret about our mission." as the pleiades landed: "if you will giveus your focus spot, mr. entlore, we can all 'port to your office and save calling staffcars." "and cause a revolution?" entlore laughed."apparently you haven't been checking outside." "afraid i haven't. i've been thinking."

"take a look. i got orders from the cabinetto put guards wherever people absolutely must not go, and open everything else to the public.i hope there are enough guards to keep a lane open for us, but i wouldn't bet on it." garlockwas very glad that the military men's stiff formality had disappeared. "you galaxianstook this whole planet by storm while you were still above the stratosphere." there is no need to go into detail concerningthe reception and celebration. on earth, one inauguration of a president and one coronationof a monarch were each almost as well covered by broadcasters, if not as turbulently andenthusiastically prolonged. from the pleiades they went to the administration building,where an informal reception was held. thence

to the capitol, where the reception was veryformal indeed. thence to the grand ballroom of the city's largest hotel, where a tremendousâ€”andlong-windedâ€”banquet was served. at garlock's request, all sixteen membersof the "crackpot" groupâ€”the most active members of the deep space clubâ€”had beeninvited to the banquet. and, even though garlock was a very busy man, his talker tuned in toeach one of the sixteen, tuned them all to the galactic admiral, and in odd moments agreat deal of business was done. after being told most of the storyâ€”in tight-beamedthoughts that comoff flurnoy could not receiveâ€”the whole group was wildly enthusiastic. theywould change the name of their club forthwith to the galaxian society of margonia. theylaid plans for a world-wide organization which

would have tremendous prestige and tremendousincome. they already had a fieldâ€”garlock knew about their shipâ€”they wanted the pleiadesto move over to it as soon as possibleâ€”yes, garlock thought he could do it the followingdayâ€”if not, as soon as he could.... the pleiades had landed at ten o'clock inthe forenoon, local time; the banquet did not come to an end until long after midnight.throughout all this time the four galaxians carried on, without a slip, the act that allthis was, to them, old stuff. it was just a little before daylight whenthey returned, exhausted, to the ship. comoff flurnoy went with them. she was still agogat the wonder of it all as belle and brownie showed her to her quarters.

chapter 7 since everyone, including the ebullient comoff,slept late the following morning, they all had brunch instead of breakfast and lunch.all during the meal garlock was preoccupied and stern. "hold everything for a while, jim," he said,when everyone had eaten. "before we move, belle and i have got to have a conference." "not a fatso ferber nine-o'clock type, i hope."james frowned in mock reproach and comoff flurnoy cocked an eyebrow in surprise. "monkey-businesson company time is only for big shots like him; not for small fry such as you."

"well, it won't be exclusively monkey-business,anyway. while we're gone you might clear with the control tower and take us up into take-offposition. come on, belle." he took her by one elbow and led her away. "why, doctor garlock." mincing along besidehim, pretending high reluctance, she looked up at him wide-eyed. "i'm surprised, i reallyam. i'm shocked, too. i'm not that kind of a girl, and if i wasn't afraid of losing myjob i would scream. i never even suspected that you would use your position as my bossto force your unwelcome attentions on a poor and young and innocent and suffering...." inside his room garlock, who had been grinning,sobered down and checked every gunther blockâ€”a

most unusual proceeding. belle stopped joking in the middle of thesentence. "yeah, how you suffer," he said. "i was justchecking to be sure we're prime-proof. i'm not ready for deggi delcamp yet. that guy,belle, as you probably noticed, has got one god-awful load of stuff." "not as much as you have, clee. nor as muchpush behind what he has got. and his shield wouldn't make patches for yours." "huh? how sure are you of that?" "i'm positive. i'm the one who is going toget bumped, i'm afraid. that fao talaho is

a hard-hitting, hard-boiled hellcat on wheels." "i'll be damned. you're wrong. i checked herfrom stem to gudgeon and you lay over her like a circus tent. what's the answer?" "oh? do i? i'm mighty glad ... funny, bothof us being wrong ... it must be, clee, that it's sex-based differences. we're used toeach other, but neither of us has ever felt a prime of the same sex before, and theremust be more difference between ops and primes than we realized. suppose?" "could beâ€”i hope. but that doesn't changethe fact that we aren't ready. we haven't got enough data. if we start out with thisgrandiose galactic service thing and find

only two or three planets gunthered, we makejackasses of ourselves. on the other hand, if we start out with a small organizationor none, and find a lot of planets, it'll be one continuous cat-fight. on the thirdhand...." "three hands, clee? what are you, an octopussyor an arpalone?" "keep your beautiful trap shut a minute. onthe third hand, we've got to start somewhere. any ideas?" "i never thought of it that way.... hm-m-m-m... i see." she thought for a minute, then went on, "we'll have to start without starting,then ... quite a trick.... but how about this? suppose we take a fast tour, with you andi taking quick peeks, without the peekees

ever knowing we've been peeking?" "that's using the brain, belle. let's go."then, out in the main, "jim, we want to hit a few high spots, as far out as you can reachwithout losing orientation. beta centauri here is pretty bright, rigel and canopus arereal lanterns. with those three as a grid, you could reach fifteen hundred or two thousandlight-years, couldn't you?" "more than that. that many parsecs, at least." "good. belle and i want to make a fast, random-samplingcheck of primes and ops around here. we'll need five minutes at each planetâ€”quite aways out. so set up as big a globe as you can and still be dead sure of your locations;then sample it."

"not enough data. how many samples do youwant?" "as many as we can get in the rest of today.six or seven hours, sayâ€”eight hours max." "call it seven.... brownie on the guns, meon compy.... five minutes for you.... i should be able to lock down the next shot in five... one minute extra, say, for safety factor ... that'd be ten an hour. seventy planetsenough?" "that'll be fine." "okay. we're practically at number one now,"and james and lola donned their scanners, ready for the job. "miss flurnoy," garlock said, "you might tellmr. entlore that we're...."

"oh, i already have, sir." "you don't have to come along, of course,if you'd rather stay here." "stay here, sir? why, he'd kill me! i'm offthe air for a minute," this last thought was a conspiratorial whisper. "besides, do youthink i'd miss a chance to be the first personâ€”and just a girl, tooâ€”of a whole world to seeother planets of other suns? unless, of course, you invite mr. entlore and mr. holson along.they're both simply dying to go, i know, but of course won't admit it." "you'd be just as well pleased if i didn't?" "what do you think, sir?"

"we'll be working at top speed and they'dbe very much in the way, so they'll get theirs laterâ€”after you've licked the cream offthe top of the...." "ready to roll, clee," james announced. "roll." "why, i lost contact!" miss flurnoy exclaimed. "naturally," garlock said. "did you expectto cover a distance it takes light thousands of years to cross? you can record anythingyou see in the plates. you can talk to jim or lola any time they'll let you. don't bothermiss bellamy or me from now on." garlock and belle went to work. all four galaxiansworked all day, with half an hour off for

lunch. they visited seventy planets and gotback to margonia in time for a very late dinner. comoff flurnoy had less than a quarter ofone roll of recorder-tape left unused, and the primes had enough information to startthe project they had in mind. and shortly after dinner, all five retired. "in one way, clee, i'm relieved," belle pondered,"but i can't figure out why all the primesâ€”the grown-up ones, i meanâ€”on all the worldsare just about the same cantankerous, you-be-damned, out-and-out stinkers as you and i are. howdoes that fit into your theory?" "it doesn't. too fine a detail. my guess isâ€”atleast it seems to me to make senseâ€”it's because we haven't had any competition strongenough to smack us down and make christians

out of us. i don't know what a psychologistwould say...." "and i know exactly what you'd think of whateverhe did say, so you don't need to tell me." belle laughed and presented her lips to bekissed. "good night, clee." "good night, ace." and the next morning, early, garlock and belleteleported themselvesâ€”by arrangement and appointment, of courseâ€”across almost thefull width of a nation and into the private office in which deggi delcamp and fao talahoawaited them. for a time which would not have been consideredpolite in tellurian social circles the four primes stood still, each couple facing theother with blocks set tight, studying each

other with their eyes. delcamp was, as garlockhad said, a big bruiser. he was shorter and heavier than the tellurian. heavily muscled,splendidly proportioned, he was a man of tremendous physical as well as mental strength. his hair,clipped close all over his head, was blonde; his eyes were a clear, keen, cold dark blue. fao talaho was a couple of inches shorterthan belle; and a good fifteen pounds heavier. she was in no sense fat, however, or evenplumpâ€”actually, she was almost lean. she was wider and thicker than was the earthwoman;with heavier bones forming a wider and deeper frame. she, too, was beautifullyâ€”yes, spectacularlyâ€”built.her hair, fully as thick as belle's own and worn in a free-falling bob three or four incheslonger than belle's, was bleached almost white.

her eyes were not really speckled, nor reallymottled, but were regularly patterned in lighter and darker shades of hazel. she was, garlockdecided, a really remarkable hunk of woman. both nargodians wore sandals without eithersocks or stockings. both were dressedâ€”insofar as they were dressed at allâ€”in yellow. fao'ssingle garment was of a thin, closely-knitted fabric, elastic and sleek. above the waistit was neckless, backless, and almost frontless; below, it was a very short, very tight andclinging skirt. delcamp wore a sleeveless jersey and a pair of almost legless shorts. garlock lowered his shield enough to sendand to receive a thin layer of superficial thought; delcamp did the same.

"so far, i like what i see," garlock saidthen. "we are well ahead of you, hence i can help you a lot if you want me to and if youwant to be friendly about it. if you don't, on either count, we leave now. fair enough?" "fair enough. i, too, like what i have seenso far. we need help, and i appreciate your offer. thanks, immensely. i can promise fullcooperation and friendship for myself and for most of our group; and i assure you thati can and will handle any non-cooperation that may come up." "nicely put, deggi." garlock smiled broadlyand let his guard down to a comfortable lepping level. "i was going to bring that upâ€”thefaster it's cleared the better. belle and

i are paired. some dayâ€”unless we kill eachother firstâ€”we may marry. however, i'm no bargain and she's one-third wildcat, one-thirdvixen, and one-third cobra. how do you two stand?" "you took the thought right out of my ownmind. your custom of pairing is not what you call 'urbane' on this world. nevertheless,fao and i are paired. we had to. no one else has ever interested either of us; no one elseever will. we should not fight, but we do, furiously. but no matter how vigorously wefly apart, we inevitably fly together again just as fast. no one understands it, but youtwo are pretty much the same." "check. just one more condition, then, andwe can pull those women of ours apart." belle

and fao were still staring at each other,both still sealed tight. "the first time fao talaho starts throwing her weight at me, i'mnot going to wait for you to take care of herâ€”i'm going to give her the surprise ofher life." "it'd tickle me silly if it could be done,"delcamp smiled and was perfectly frank, "but the man doesn't live that can do it. how wouldyou go about trying it?" "set your block solid." delcamp did so, and through that blockâ€”thesupposedly impenetrable shield of a prime operatorâ€”garlock insinuated a probe. hedid not crack the screen or break it down by force; he neutralized and counter-phased,painlessly and almost imperceptibly, its every

component and layer. "like this," garlock said, in the depths ofthe margonian's mind. "my god! you can do that?" "if i tell her, this deep, to play ball orelse, do you think she'd need two treatments?" "she certainly oughtn't to. this makes yougalactic admiral, no question. i'd thought, of course, of trying you out for top gunther,but this settles that. we will support you, sir, wholeheartedlyâ€”and my heartfelt thanksfor coming here." "i have your permission, then, to give faoa little discipline when she starts rocking the boat?"

"i wish you would, sir. i'm not too easy toget along with, i admit, but i've tried to meet her a lot more than half-way. she's justtoo damned cocky for anybody's good." "check. i wish somebody would come along whocould knock hell out of belle." then, aloud, "belle, delcamp and i have the thing going.do you want in on it?" delcamp spoke to fao, and the two women slowly,reluctantly, lowered their shields to match those of the men. "your galaxian shaking of the handsâ€”handshake,i meanâ€”is very good," delcamp said, and he and garlock shook vigorously. then the crossed pairs, and lastly the twogirlsâ€”although neither put much effort into

the gesture. "snap out of it, belle!" garlock sent a tight-beamedthought. "she isn't going to bite you!" "she's been trying to, damn her, and i'm goingto bite her right backâ€”see if i don't." garlock called the meeting to order and allfour sat down. the tellurians lighted cigarettes and the othersâ€”who, to the earthlings' surprise,also smokedâ€”assembled and lit two peculiar-looking things half-way between pipe and cigarette.and both pairs of smokers, after a few tentative tests, agreed in not liking at all the other'staste in tobacco. "you know, of course, of the trip we tookyesterday?" garlock asked. "yes," delcamp admitted. "we read comoff flurnoy.we know of the seventy planets, but nothing

of what you found." "okay. of the seventy planets, all have opfields and all have two or more operators; one planet has forty-four of them. only sixty-oneof the planets, however, have primes old enough for us to detect. each of these worlds hastwo, and only two, primesâ€”one male and one femaleâ€”and on each world the two primesare of approximately the same age. on fifteen of these worlds the primes are not yet adult.on the forty-six remaining worlds, the primes are young adults, from pretty much like usfour down to considerably younger. none of these couples is married-for-family. noneof the girls has as yet had a child or is now pregnant.

"now as to the information circulating allover this planet about us. part of it is false. part of it is misleadingâ€”to impress themilitary mind. thus, the fact is that the pleiades, as far as we know, is the only starshipin the whole galaxy. also, the information is very incomplete, especially as to the all-importantfact that we were lost in space for some time before we discovered that the only possiblecontroller of the gunther drive is the human mind...." "what!!!!" and argument raged until garlockstopped it by declaring that he would prove it in the margonians' own ship. then garlock and belle together went on toexplain and to describeâ€”not even hinting,

of course, that they had ever been outsidethe galaxy or had even thought of trying to do soâ€”their concept of what the galaxiansocieties of the galaxy would and should do; or what the galaxian service could, should,and would becomeâ€”the service to which they both intended to devote their lives. it wasn'teven in existence yet, of course. fao and deggi were the only other primes they hadever talked to in their lives. that was why they were so eager to help the margoniansget their ship built. the more starships there were at work, the faster the service wouldgrow into a really tremendous.... "fao's getting ready to blow her top," delcampflashed garlock a tight-beamed thought. "if i were doing it i'd have to start right now."

"i'll let her work up a full head of steam,then smack her bow-legged." "cheers, brother! i hope you can handle her!" ... organization. then, when enough shipswere working and enough galaxian societies were rolling, there would be the regionalorganizations and the galactic council.... "so, on a one-planet basis and right out ofyour own little fat head," fao sneered, "you have set yourself up as grand high chief mogul,and all the rest of us are to crawl up to you on our bellies and kiss your feet?" "if that's the way you want to express it,yes. however, i don't know how long i personally will be in the pilot's bucket. as i told you,i will enforce the basic tenet that top gunther

is top bossâ€”man, woman, snake, fish, ormonster." "top gunther be damned!" fao blazed. "i don'tand won't take orders from any manâ€”in hell or in heaven or on this earth or on any planetof any...." "fao!" delcamp exclaimed, "please keep stillâ€”please!" "let her rave," garlock said, coldly. "thisis just a three-year-old baby's tantrum. if she keeps it up, i'll give her the damnedestjolt she ever got in all her spoiled life." belle whistled sharply to call fao's attention,then tight-beamed a thought. "if you've got any part of a brain, slick chick, you'd betterstart using it. the boy friend not only plays rough, but he doesn't bluff."

"to hell with all that!" fao rushed on. "wedon't have anything to do with your organizationâ€”go on back home or anywhere else you want to.we'll finish our own ship and build our own organization and run it to suit ourselves.we'll...." "that's enough of that." garlock penetratedher shield as easily as he had the man's, and held her in lock. "you are not going towreck this project. you will start behaving yourself right now or i'll spread your mindwide open for belle and deggi to look at and see exactly what kind of a half-baked jerkyou are. if that doesn't work, i'll put you into a gunther-blocked cell aboard the pleiadesand keep you there until the ship is finished and we leave margonia. how do you want it?"

fao was shocked as she had never been shockedbefore. at first she tried viciously to fight; but, finding that useless against the appallingpower of the mind holding hers, she stopped struggling and began really to think. "that's better. you've got what it takes tothink with. go ahead and do it." and fao talaho did have it. plenty of it.she learned. "i'll be good," she said, finally. "honestly.i'm ashamed, really, but after i got started i couldn't stop. but i can now, i'm sure." "i'm sure you can, too. i know exactly howit is. all us primes have to get hell knocked out of us before we amount to a whoop in hades.deggi got his one way, i got mine another,

you got yours this way. no, neither of theothers knows anything about this conversation and they won't. this is strictly between youand me." "i'm awfully glad of that. and i think i ... yes,damn you, thanks!" garlock released her and, after a few sobs,a couple of gulps, and a dabbing at her eyes with an inadequate handkerchief, she said:"i'm sorry, deggi, and you, too, belle. i'll try not to act like such a fool any more." delcamp and belle both stared at garlock;belle licked her lips. "no comment," he thought at the man; and,to belle, "she just took a beating. will you sheathe your claws and take a lot of painsto be extra nice to her the rest of the day?"

"why, surely. i'm always nice to anybody whois nice to me." "says you," garlock replied, skeptically,and all four went to work as though nothing had happened. they went through the shops and the almost-finishedship. they studied blueprints. they met all the operators and discussed generators andfields of force and mathematics and paraphysics and guntherics. they argued so hotly aboutmental control that garlock had james bring the pleiades over to new-christened galaxianfield so that he could prove his point then and there. entlore and holson came along this time, aswell as the comoff; and all three were nonplussed

and surprised to see each member of the "crackpot"group hurl the huge starship from one solar system to any other one desired, apparentlymerely by thinking about it. and the "crackpots" were extremely surprised to find themselveshopelessly lost in uncharted galactic wildernesses every time they did not think, definitelyand positively, of one specific destination. then garlock took a chance. he had to takeit sometime; he might just as well do it now. "see if you can hit andromeda, deggi," hesuggested. while belle, james, and lola held their breaths,delcamp tried. the starship went toward the huge nebula, but stopped at the last suitableplanet on the galaxy's rim. "can you hit andromeda?" delcamp asked, morethan half jealously, and belle tensed her

muscles. "never tried it," garlock said, easily. "isuppose, though, since you couldn't kick the old girl out of our good old home galaxy,she'll just sit right here for me, too." he went through the motions and the pleiadesdid sit right thereâ€”which was exactly what he had told her to do. and everybodyâ€”eventhe "crackpots"â€”breathed more easily. and belle was "nice" to fao; she didn't useher claws, even once, all day. and, just before quitting timeâ€” "does he ... i mean, did he ever ... well,sort of knock you around?" fao asked. "i'll say he hasn't!" belle's nostrils flaredslightly at the mere thought. "i'd stick a

knife into him, the big jerk." "oh, i didn't mean physically...." "through my blocks? a prime's blocks? don'tbe ridiculous, fao!" "what do you mean, 'ridiculous'?" fao snapped."you tried my blocks. what did they feel like to youâ€”mosquito netting? what i thoughtwas.... oh, all he really said was that all primes had to have hell knocked out of thembefore they could be any good. that he had had it one way, deggi another, and me a third.i seeâ€”you haven't had yours yet." "i certainly haven't. and if he ever triesit, i'll...." "oh, he won't. he couldn't, very well, becauseafter you're married, it would...."

"did the big lug tell you i was going to marryhim?" "of course not. no fringes, even. but whoelse are you going to marry? if the whole universe was clear full of the finest menimaginableâ€”pure dreamboats, no lessâ€”can you even conceive of you marrying any oneof them except him?" "i'm not going to marry anybody. ever." "no? you, with your prime's mind and yourprime's body, not have any children? and you tell me not to be ridiculous?" that stopped belle cold, but she wouldn'tadmit it. insteadâ€”"i don't get it. what did he do to you, anyway?"

fao's block set itself so tight that it tookher a full minute to soften it down enough for even the thinnest thought to get through."that's something nobody will ever know. but anyway, unless ... unless you find anotherprime as strong as clee isâ€”and i don't really think there are any, do you?" "of course there aren't. there's only oneof his class, anywhere. he's it," belle said, with profound conviction. "that makes it tough for you. you'll havethe toughest job imaginable. the very toughest. i know." "huh? what job?"

"since clee won't do it for you, and sincenobody else can, you'll have to just simply knock hell out of yourself." and in garlock's room that night, gettingready for bed, belle asked suddenly, "clee, what in hell did you do to fao talaho?" "nothing much. she's a mighty good egg, really." "could you do it, whatever it was, to me?" "i don't know; i never tried it." "would you, then, if i asked you to?" "why not?"

"answer that yourself." "and it was 'nothing much,' it says here infine print. but i think i know just about what it was. don't i?" "i wouldn't be surprised." "you knocked hell out of yourself, didn'tyou?" "i lied to her about that. i'm still tryingto." "so i've got to do it to myself. and i haven'tstarted yet?" "check. but you're several years younger thani am, you know." belle thought it over for a minute, then stubbedout her cigarette and shrugged her shoulders.

"no sale. put it back on the shelf. i likeme better the way i am. that is, i think i do.... in a way, though, i'm sorry, clee darling." "darling? something new has been added. iwish you really meant that, ace." "i'm still 'ace' after what i just said? i'mglad, clee. 'ace' is ever so much nicer than 'chum.'" "ace. the top of the deck. you are, and alwayswill be." "as for meaning it, i wish i didn't." readyfor bed, belle was much more completely and much less revealingly dressed than duringher working hours. she slid into bed beside him, pulled the covers up to her chin, andturned off the light by glancing at the switch.

"if i thought anything could ever come ofit, though, i'd do it if i had to pound myself unconscious with a club. but i wouldn't behere, then, eitherâ€”i'd scoot into my own room so fast my head would spin." "you wouldn't have to. you wouldn't be here." "i wouldn't, at that. that's one of the thingsi like so much about you. but honestly, cleeâ€”seriously, screens-down honestlyâ€”can you see any possiblefuture in it?" "no. neither of us would give that much. neitherof us can. and there's nothing one-sided about it; i'm no more fit to be a husband than youare to be a wife. and god help our childrenâ€”they'd certainly need it."

"we'd never have any. i can't picture us livingin marriage for nine months without committing at least mayhem. why, in just the little timewe've been paired, how many times have you thrown me out of this very room, with thefervent hope that i'd drown in deep space before you ever saw me again?" "at a guess, about the same number of timesas you have stormed out under your own power, slamming the door so hard it sprung half theseams of the ship and swearing you'd slice me up into sandwich meat if i ever so muchas looked at you again." "that's what i mean. but how come we got offon this subject, i wonder? because when we aren't fighting, like now, it's purely wonderful.so i'll say it again. good night, clee, darling."

"good night, ace." in the dark his lips soughthers and found them. the fervor of her kiss was not only much moreintense than any he had ever felt before. it was much, very much more intense than bellebellamy had either wanted it or intended it to be. next morning, at the workman's hour of eighto'clock, the four tellurians appeared in the office of margonia's galaxian field. "the first thing to do, deggi, is to go overin detail your blueprints for the generators and the drive," garlock said. "i suppose so. the funny pictures, eh?" delcamphad learned much, the previous day; his own

performance with the pleiades had humbledhim markedly. "by no means, my friend," garlock said, cheerfully."while your stuff isn't exactly like oursâ€”it couldn't be, hardly; the field is so big andso newâ€”that alone is no reason for it not to work. james can tell you. he's the solarsystem's top engineer. what do you think, jim?" "what i saw in the ship yesterday will work.what few of the prints i saw yesterday will fabricate, and the fabrications will work.the main trouble with this project, it seems to me, is that nobody's building the ship." "what do you mean by that crack?" fao blazed.

"just that. you're a bunch of prima donnas;each doing exactly as he pleases. so some of the stuff is getting done three or fourtimes, in three or four different ways, while a lot of it isn't getting done at all." "such as?" delcamp demanded, andâ€” "well, if you don't like the way we are doingthings you can...." fao began. "just a minute, everybody." lola came in,with a disarming grin. "how much of that is hindsight, jim? you've built one, you knowâ€”andfrom all accounts, progress wasn't nearly as smooth as your story can be taken to indicate." "you've got a point there, lola," garlockagreed. "we slid back two steps for every

three we took forward." "well ... maybe," james admitted. "so why don't you, fao and deggi, put jimin charge of construction?" fao threw back her silvery head and glared,but delcamp jumped at the chance. "would you, "sureâ€”unless miss talaho objects." "she won't." delcamp's eyes locked with fao's,and fao kept still. "thanks immensely, jim. and i know what you mean." he went over toa cabinet of wide, flat drawers and brought back a sheaf of drawings. not blueprints,but original drawings in pencil. "such as this. i haven't even got it designed yet,to say nothing of building it."

james began to leaf through the stack of drawings.they were full of erasures, re-drawings, and such notations as "see sheets 17-b, 21-a,and 27-f." halfway through the pile he paused, turned backward three sheets, and studiedfor minutes. then, holding that one sheet by a corner, he went rapidly through the restof the stack. "this is it," he said then, pulling the onesheet out and spreading it flat. "what we call unit eightâ€”the heart of the drive."then, tight-beamed to garlock: "this is the thing that you designed in totoand that i never could understand any part of. all i did was build it. it must generatethose prime fields." "probably," garlock flashed back. "i didn'tunderstand it any too well myself. how does

it look?" "he isn't even close. he's got only half ofthe constants down, and half of the ones he has got down are wrong. look at this messhere...." "i'll take your word for it. i haven't youraffinity for blueprints, you know, or your eidetic memory for them." "do you want me to give him the whole works?" "we'll have to, i think. or the ship mightnot work at all." "could beâ€”but how about intergalactic hops?" "he couldn't do it with the pleiades, so hewon't be able to with this. besides, if we

change it in any particular he might. yousee, i don't know very much more about unit eight than you do." "that could be, too." then, as though justemerging from his concentration on the drawings, james thought at delcamp and fao, but on theopen, general band. "a good many errors and a lot of blanks, butin general you're on the right track. i can finish up this drawing in a couple of hours,and we can build the unit in a couple of days. with that in place, the rest of the ship willgo fast. "if miss talaho wants me to," he concluded,pointedly. "oh, i do, jimâ€”really i do!" at long last,stiff-backed fao softened and bent. she seized

both his hands. "if you can, it'd be too wonderfulfor words!" "okay. one question. why are you buildingyour ship so small?" "why, it's plenty big enough for two," delcampsaid. "for four, in a pinch. why did you make yours so big? your main is big enough almostfor a convention hall." "that's what we figured it might have to be,at times," garlock said. "but that's a very minor point. with yours so nearly ready toflit, no change in size is indicated now. but belle and i have got to have another conferencewith the legal eagle. so if you and brownie, jim, will 'port whatever you need out of thepleiades, we'll be on our way. "so longâ€”see you in a few days," he added,and the pleiades vanished; to appear instantaneously

high above the stratosphere over what wasto become the galaxian field of earth. "got a minute, gene?" he sent a thought. "for you two primes, as many as you like.we haven't started building or fencing yet, as you suggested, but we have bought all thereal estate. so land the ship anywhere out there and i'll send a jeep out after you." "thanks, but no jeep. nobody but you knowsthat we've really got control of the pleiades, and i want everybody else to keep on thinkingit's strictly for the birds. we'll 'port in to your office whenever you say." "i say now."

in no time at all the two primes were seatedin the private office of eugene evans, head of the legal department of the newly re-incorporatedgalaxian society of sol, inc. evans was a tall man, slightly thin, slightly stooped,whose thick tri-focals did nothing whatever to hide the keenness of his steel-gray eyes. "the first thing, gene," garlock said, "isthis employment contract thing. have you figured out a way to break it?" "it can't be broken." the lawyer shook hishead. "huh? i thought you top-bracket legal eaglescould break anything, if you really tried." "a good many things, yes, especially if they'relong and complicated. the standard employment

contract, however, is short, explicit, andiron-clad. the employer can discharge the employee for any one of a number of offenses,including insubordination; which, as a matter of fact, the employer himself is allowed todefine. on the other hand, the employee cannot quit except for some such fantastic reasonas the non-tenderingâ€”not non-payment, mind you, but non-tenderingâ€”of salary." "i didn't expect thatâ€”it kicks us in theteeth before we get started." garlock got up, lighted a cigarette, and prowled aboutthe big room. "okay. jim and i will have to get ourselves fired, then." "fired!" belle snorted. "clee, you talk likea man with a paper nose! who else could run

the project? that is," her whole manner changed;"he doesn't know i can run it as well as you canâ€”or betterâ€”but i could tell himâ€”andmaybe you think i wouldn't!" "you won't have to. gene, you can start spreadingthe news that belle bellamy is a real, honest-to-god prime operator in every respect. that sheknows more about project gunther than i do and could run it better. ferber undoubtedlyknows that belle and i have been at loggerheads ever since we first metâ€”spread it thickthat we're fighting worse than ever. which, by the way, is the truth." "fighting? why, you seemed friendly enough...." "yeah, we can be friendly for about fifteenminutes if we try real hard, as now. the cold

fact is, though, that she's just as much three-quartershellcat and one-quarter potassium cyanide as she...." "i like that!" belle stormed. she leaped toher feet, her eyes shooting sparks. "all my fault! why, you self-centered, egotistical,domineering jerk, i could write a book...." "that's enoughâ€”let it goâ€”please!" evanspleaded. he jumped up, took each of the combatants by a shoulder, sat them down into the chairsthey had vacated, and resumed his own seat. "the demonstration was eminently successful.i will spread the word, through several channels. chancellor ferber will get it all, rest assured." "and i'll get the job!" belle snapped. "andmaybe you think i won't take it!"

"yeah?" came garlock's searing thought. "you'ddo anything to get it and to keep it. yeah. i do think." "oh?" belle's body stiffened, her face hardened."i've heard stories, of course, but i couldn't quite ... but surely, he can't be that stupidâ€”tothink he can buy me like so many pounds of calf-liver?" "he surely is. he does. and it works. thatis, if he's ever missed, nobody ever heard of it." "but how could a man in such a big job possiblyget away with such foul stuff as that?" "because all the sse is interested in is money,and alonzo p. ferber is a tremendously able

top executive. in the big black-and-red moneybooks he's always 'way, 'way up in the black, and nobody cares about his conduct." belle, even though she was already convinced,glanced questioningly at evans. "that's it, miss bellamy. that's it, in aprecise, if somewhat crude, nutshell." "that's that, then. but just how, cleeâ€”ifhe's as smart as you say he isâ€”do you think you can make him fire you?" "i don't knowâ€”haven't thought about it yet.but i could be pretty insubordinate if i really tried." "that's the understatement of the century."

"i'll devote the imponderable force of theintellect to the problem and check with you later. now, gene, about the proposed galacticservice, the council, and so on. what is the reaction? yours, personally, and others?" "my personal reaction is immensely favorable;i think it the greatest advance that humanity has ever made. i have been very cautious,of course, in discussing, or even mentioning the matter, but the reaction of everyone ihave soundedâ€”good men; big men in their respective fieldsâ€”has been as enthusiasticas my own." "good. it won't surprise you, probably, tobe told that you are to be this system's councillor andâ€”if we can swing it and i think we canâ€”thefirst president of the galactic council?"

evans was so surprised that it was almosta minute before he could reply coherently. then: "i am surprisedâ€”very much so. i thought,of course, that you yourself would...." "far from it!" garlock said, positively. "i'mnot the type. you are. you're better than anyone else of the galaxiansâ€”which meansthan anyone else period. with the possible exception of lola, and she fits better onour exploration team. check, belle?" "check. for once, i agree with you withoutreservation. that's a job we can work at all the rest of our lives, and scarcely startit." "trueâ€”indubitably true. i appreciate yourconfidence in me, and if the vote so falls i will do whatever i can."

"we know you will, and thank you. how longwill it take to organize? a couple of weeks? and is there anything else we have to covernow?" "a couple of weeks!" evans was shocked. "youare naive indeed, young man, to think anything of this magnitude can even be started in sucha short time as that. and yes, there are dozens of mattersâ€”hundredsâ€”that should be discussedbefore i can even start to work intelligently." hence discussions went on and on and on. itwas three days before garlock and belle 'ported themselves up into the pleiades and the starshipdisplaced itself instantaneously to margonia. meanwhile, on margonia, james james jamesthe ninth went directly to the heart of his job by leading lola and fao into delcamp'soffice and setting up its gunther blocks.

"you said you want me to build your starship.okay, but i want you bothâ€”fao especiallyâ€”to realize exactly what that means. i know whatto do and how to do it. i can handle your operators and get the job done. however, ican't handle either of you, since you both out-gunther me, and i'm not going to try to.but there can't be two bosses on any one job, to say nothing of three or seventeen. so eitheri run the job or i don't. if either of you steps in, i step out and don't come back in.and remember that you're not doing us any favorsâ€”it's strictly vice versa." "jim!" lola protested. fao's hackles werevery evidently on the rise; delcamp's face was hardening. "don't be so rough, jim, please.that's no way to...."

"if you can pretty this up, pet, i'll be gladto have you say it for me. here's what you have to work on. if i do the job they'll havetheir starship in a few weeks. the way they've been going, they won't have it in twenty-fiveyears. and the only way to get that bunch out there to really work is to tell each oneof them to cooperate or elseâ€”and enforce the 'or else.'" "but they'd quit!" delcamp protested. "they'llall quit!" "with suspension or expulsion from the societythe consequences? hardly." james said. "but you wouldn't do thatâ€”you couldn't." "i wouldn't?"

"of course he wouldn't," lola put in, soothingly,"except as a very last resort. and, even at worst, jim could build it almost as easilywith common labor. you primes don't really have to have any operators at all, you know;but all your operators together would be perfectly helpless without at least one prime." "how come?" and "in what way?" delcamp andfao demanded together. "oh, didn't you know? after the ship is builtand the fields are charged and so on, everything has to be activatedâ€”the hundred and onethings that make it so nearly aliveâ€”and that is strictly a prime's job. even jim can'tdo it." "i see ... or, rather, i don't see at all,"fao said, thoughtfully. she was no longer

either excited or angry. "a few weeks againsttwenty-five years ... what do you think of his time estimate, deg my dear?" "i hadn't thought it would take nearly thatlong; but this 'activation' thing scares me. nothing in my theory even hints at any suchthing. soâ€”if there's so much i don't know yet, even in theory, it would take a longtime. maybe i'd never get it." "well, anyway, i want our celestial queendone in weeks, not years," fao said, extending her hand to james and shaking his vigorously."so i promise not to interfere a bit. if i feel any such urge coming on, i'll dash homeand lock myself up in a closet until it dies. fair enough?"

since fao really meant it, that was fair enough. for a whole day james did nothing except studyblueprints; going over in detail and practically memorizing every drawing that had been made.he then went over the ship, studying minutely every part, plate, member, machine and instrumentthat had been installed. he noted what each man and woman was doing and what they intendedto do. he went over material on hand and material on order, paying particular attention to timesof delivery. he then sent a fewâ€”surprisingly fewâ€”telegrams. finally he called all fourteen operators together.he told them exactly what the revised situation was and exactly what he was going to do aboutit. he invited comments.

there was of course a riot of protest; butâ€”inview of what james had said anent suspensions and expulsions from the galaxian societyâ€”notone of them actually did quit. four of them, however, did appeal to delcamp, considerablyto his surprise, to oust the interloper and to put things back where they had been; butthey did not get much satisfaction. "james says that he can finish building thisstarship in a few weeks," delcamp told them, flatly. "specifically, three weeks, if wecan get the special stuff made fast enough. fao and i believe him. therefore, we haveput him in full charge. he will remain in charge unless and until he fails in performance.you are all good friends of fao's and mine, and we hope that all of you will stay withthe project. if, however, we must choose now

between youâ€”any one of you or all of youâ€”andjames, there is no need to tell you what the choice will be." wherefore all fourteen went back to work;grudgingly at first and dragging their feet. in a very few hours, however, it became evidentto all that james did in fact know what he was doing and that the work was going fasterand smoother than ever before; whereupon all opposition and all malingering disappeared.they were operators, and they were all intensely interested in their ship. morale was at ahigh. thus, when the pleiades landed beside thenow seething celestial queen, garlock found james with feet on desk, hands in pockets,and scanner on head; doingâ€”apparentlyâ€”nothing

at all. nevertheless, he was a very busy man. "hey, jim!" a soprano shriek of thought emanatedfrom a gorgeous seventeen-year-old blonde. "i can't read this funny-picture, it's beenfolded too many times. where does this lead go to?" "data insufficient. careful, vingie; i'd hateto have to send you back to school." "'scuse, please, junior. unit six, sub-assemblytee dash ni-yun. terminal fo-wer. from said terminal, there's a leadâ€”bee sub something-or-otherâ€”goessomewhere. where?" "b sub four. it goes to unit seven, sub-assemblyq dash three, terminal two. and watch your insulationâ€”that's a mighty hot lead."

"uh-huh, i got that. double sink mill mill;class albert dog kittens. thanks, boss!" "hi, jim," garlock said. then, to delcamp."i see you're rolling." "he's rolling, you mean." delcamp had notyet recovered fully from a state of near-shock. "so that's what an eidetic memory is? he knowsevery nut, bolt, lead, and coil in the ship!" "more than that. he's checking every moveeverybody makes. when they're done, you won't have to just hope everything was put togetherrightâ€”you'll know it was." jim was their man. and fao sidled over toward belle. there wassomething new about the silver-haired girl, belle decided instantly. the difference wasslightâ€”belle couldn't put her finger on

it at first. she seemedâ€”quieter? softer?more subdued? no, definitely. more feminine? no; that would be impossible. more ... moreadult? belle hated to admit it, even to herself, but that was what it was. "deg and i got married day before yesterday,"fao confided, via tight beam. "ohâ€”so you're pregnant!" "of course. i saw to that the first thing.i knew you'd want to be the first one to know. oh, isn't it wonderful?" she seized belle'sarm and hugged it ecstatically against her side. "just too perfectly marvelous for anything?" "oh, i'm sure it is; and i'm so happy foryou, fao!" and it would have taken the mind

of a garlock to perceive anything either falseor forced in thought or bearing. nevertheless, when belle went into garlock'sroom that night, storm signals were flying high in her almost-topaz eyes. "fao talaho-delcamp is pregnant!" she stormed,"and it's all your fault!" "uh-huh," he demurred, trying to snap herout of her obviously savage mood. "not me, ace. not a chance in the world. it was deggi." "you ... you weasel! you know very well, cleegarlock, what i meant. if you hadn't given her that treatment she'd have kept on fightingwith him and they wouldn't have been married and had any children for positively years.so now she'll have the first double-prime

baby and it ought to be mine. i'm older thanshe isâ€”our group is 'way ahead of theirsâ€”we have the first and only starshipâ€”and thenyou do that. and you wouldn't give me that treatment. oh, noâ€”just to her, that bleached-blonde!i'd like to strangle you to death with my own bare hands!" "what a hell of a logic!" garlock had beentrying to keep his own temper in leash, but the leash was slipping. "assume i tried towork on youâ€”assume i succeededâ€”what would you be? what would i have? what age do youthink this isâ€”that of the vikings? when sop in getting a wife was to beat her unconsciouswith a club and drag her into the longboat by her hair? hardly! i do not want and willnot have a conquered woman. nor a spoiled-rotten,

mentally-retarded brat...." "you unbearable, conceited, overbearing jerk!why, i'd rather...." "get out! and this time, stay out!" belle got outâ€”and if door and frame hadnot been built of super-steel, both would have been wrecked by the blast of energy sheloosed in closing the door behind her. in her own room, with gunther blocks fullon, she threw herself face down on the bed and cried as she had not cried since she wasa child. and finally, without even taking off her clothes,she cried herself to sleep. chapter 8

next morning, early, belle tapped lightlyon garlock's door. "come in." she did so. "have you had your coffee?" "yes." "so have i." neither belle nor garlock had recovered; bothfaces showed strain and drain. "i think we'd better break this up," bellesaid, quietly. "check. we'll have to, if we expect to getany work done." belle could not conceal her surprise.

"oh, not for the reason you think," garlockwent on, quickly. "your record as a man-killer is still one hundred point zero zero zeropercent. i've been in love with you ever since we paired. before that, even." "flapdoodle!" she snorted, inelegantly. "why,i...." "keep still a minute. and i'm not going tofight with you again. ever. i'm not going to touch you again until i can control myselfa lot better than i could last night." "oh? that was mostly my fault, of course.but in love? uh-uh, i've seen men in love. you aren't. i couldn't make you be, not withthe best i could do. not even in bed. you aren't, cleeâ€”if you are, i'm an australianbushman."

"perhaps i'm an atypical case. i'm not ravingabout your perfect bodyâ€”you know what that is like already. nor about your mind, whichis the only one i know of as good as my own. maybe i'm in love with what i think you oughtto be ... or what i hope you will be. anyway, i'm in love with something connected withyouâ€”and with no other woman alive. shall we go eat?" "uh-huhâ€”let's." they joined lola and james at the table; andif lola noticed anything out of the ordinary, she made no sign. and after breakfast, in the mainâ€”

"about three weeks, jim, you think?" garlockasked. "give or take a couple of days, yes." "and belle and i would just be in the wayâ€”atleast until time to show deggi about the activation ... and all those primes to organize ... we'dbetter leave you here, don't you think, and get going?" "i'll buy that. we'll finish as soon as possible." lola and james moved a few personal belongingsplanetside; garlock and belle shot the pleiades across a vast gulf of space to one of theplanets they had scanned so fleetingly on their preliminary survey. its name was, bothremembered, lizoria; its two primes were named

rezdo semolo and mirea mitalaâ€”male and female,respectively. after sending down a very brief and perfunctoryrequest for audienceâ€”which was in effect a declaration of intent and nothing elseâ€”garlockand belle teleported themselves down into semolo's office, where both lizorian primeswere. both got up out of peculiar-looking chairsto face their visitors. both were tall; both were peculiarly thin. not the thinness ofemaciation, but that of bodily structure. "on them it looks good," belle tight-beameda thought to garlock. both moved fast and with exquisite control;both were extraordinarily graceful. "snaky" was belle's thought of the woman; "sinuous"was garlock's of the man. both were completely

hairless, of body and of headâ€”not by nature,but via electric-shaver clipping. both wore sandals. the man wore shorts and a shirt-likegarment of nylon or its like; the woman wore just enough ribbons and bands to hold a hundredthousand credits' worth of jewels in place. she appeared to be about twenty yearsâ€”tellurianequivalentâ€”old; he was probably twenty-three or twenty-four. "we did not invite you in and we do not wantyou here," semolo said, coldly. "so get out, both of you. if you don't, when i count threei'll throw you out, and i won't be too careful about how many of your bones i break. one....two...." "pipe down, rezdo!" the girl exclaimed. "theyhave something we haven't, or they wouldn't

be here. whatever it is, we want it." "oh, let him try, miss mitala," garlock said,through her hard-held block, in the depth of her mind. "he won't hurt us a bit and itmay do him some good. while he's wasting effort i'll compare notes with my partner here, galacticvice-admiral belle bellamy. i'm glad to see that one of you has at least a part of a brain." "... three!" semolo did his best, with everythinghe had, without even attracting garlock's attention. he then tried to leap at the intruderphysically, despite the latter's tremendous advantage in weight and muscle, but foundthat he could not move. then, through belle's solidly-set blocks,"how are you doing, ace? getting anywhere?"

"my god!" came belle's mental shriek. "whatâ€”howcanâ€”but no, you didn't give that to fao, surely!" "i'll say i didn'tâ€”nor to delcamp. but you'regoing to need it, i'm thinking." "but can you? even if you wouldâ€”and i'mjust beginning to realize how big a man you really areâ€”can that kind of stuff be taught?i probably haven't got the brain-cells it takes to handle it." "i'm not sure, but i've reworked our primefields into one and made a couple of other changes. theoretically, it ought to work.shall i come in and try it?" "don't be an idiot, darling. of course!"

as impersonally as a surgeon exploring anorgan, garlock went into belle's mind. "tune to the field ... that's itâ€”fine! thenâ€”i'lldo it real slow, and watch me closeâ€”you do like so ... get it?" "uh-huh!" belle breathed, excitedly. "gotit!" "then this ... and this ... and there youare. you can try it on me, if you like." "uh-uh. no sale. i don't need practice andi'd like to preserve the beautiful illusion that maybe i could crack your shield if iwanted to. i'll work on miss snake-hips here, the serpentine charmerâ€”but say, i'll betthere's a bone in it. you can block it, can't "yes. it goes like this." he showed her. "ittakes full mastery of the prime field, but

you've got that." "oh, wonderful! thanks, clee darling. butdo you mean to actually say i can now completely block you or any other prime out?" "you're going too far, ace. me, yesâ€”butdon't forget that there very well may be peopleâ€”or thingsâ€”as far ahead of us as we are aheadof pointer pups." "huh! balloon-juice and prop-wash! i justknow, clee, that you're the absolute tops of the whole, entire, macrocosmic universe." "well, we can dream, of course." garlock withdrewhis mind from belle's and turned his attention to the now quiet semolo. "well, my over-confidentand contumacious young squirt; are you done

horsing around or do you want to keep it upuntil you addle completely what few brains you have?" the lizorian made no reply; but merely glared. "the trouble with you half-baked, juvenileâ€”ialmost added 'delinquent' to that, and perhaps i should haveâ€”primes is that you know toodamned much that isn't true. as an old tellurian saying hath it, 'you're altogether too bigfor your britches.' "thus, simply because you have lived a fewyears on one single planet and haven't encountered anyone able to stand up to you, you've soldyourself on the idea that there's nobody, anywhere, who can. you're wrongâ€”you couldn'tbe more so if you had an army to help you.

"what, actually, have you done? what, actually,have you got? practically nothing. you haven't even started a starship; you've scarcely startedmaking plans. you realize dimly that the theory is not in any of the books, that you'll haveto slug it out for yourself, but that is work. so you're still just posing and throwing yourweight around. "as a matter of fact, you're merely a dropin a lake. there are thousands of millions of planets, and thousands of millions of primeoperators. most of them are probably a lot stronger than you are; many of them may bestronger than my partner and i are. i am not at all certain that you will pass even thefirst screening; but since you are without question a prime operator, i will deliverthe message we came to deliver. miss mitala,

do you want to listen or shall we drive itinto you, too?" "i want to listen to anyone or anything whohas a working starship and who can do what you have just done." "very well," and garlock told the general-distributionversion of the story of the galactic service. "quite interesting," semolo said loftily,at its end. "whether or not i would be interested depends, of course, on whether there's a positionhigh enough for...." "i doubt very much if there's one low enough,"garlock cut in sharply. "however, since it's part of my job, i'll get in touch with youlater. okay, belle." and in the mainâ€”"what a jerk!" belle exclaimed."what a half-cooked, half-digested pill! i

simply marvel at your forbearance, clee. youshould have turned him inside out and hung him up to dryâ€”especially behind the ears!"then, suddenly, she giggled. "but do you know what i did?" "i can guess. a couple of shots in the arm?" "uh-huh. next time he pitches into her she'llslap his ears right off. oh, brother!" "check and double-check. but let's hop tonumber two.... here it is." "oh, yes," came a smooth, clear, diamond-sharpthought in reply to garlock's introductory call. "this world, as you have perceived,is falne. i am indeed baver 14wd27, my companion prime is indeed glarre 12wd91. you are, weperceive, bearers of the truth; of great skill

and of high advancement. your visit here will,i am sure, be of immense benefit to us and possibly, i hope, of some small benefit toyou. we will both be delighted to have you both 'port yourselves to us at once." the tellurians did soâ€”and in the very instantof appearance garlock was met by a blast of force the like of which he had never evenimagined. the two falnian primes, capable operators both, had built up their highestpossible potentials and had launched both terrific bolts without any hint of warning. belle's mind, however, was already fused withgarlock's. their combined blocks were instantaneous in action; their counter-thrust was nearlyso. both falnians staggered backward until

they were stopped by the room's wall. "ah, yes," garlock said, then. "you are indeed,in a small and feeble way, seekers after the truth; of which we are indeed bearers. lesserbearers, perhaps, but still bearers. you will indeed profit greatly from our visit. youerr, however, in thinking that we may in any respect profit from you. you have nothingwhatever that we have not had for long. now let us, if you please, take a few secondsof time to get acquainted, each with the other." "that, indeed, is the logical and seemly thingto do." both falnians straightened up and stepped forward; neither arrogantly nor apologetically,but simply as though nothing at all out of the ordinary had taken place.

each pair studied the other. physically, thetwo pairs were surprisingly alike. baver was almost as big as garlock; almost as heavilymuscled. glarre could have been cast in belle's own mold. with that, however, all resemblance ceased. both falnians were naked. the man wore onlya belt and pouch in lieu of pockets; the woman only a leather carryall slung from one shoulderâ€”bigenough, garlock thought, to hold a week's supplies for an explorer scout. his hair was thick, bushy, unkempt; sun-bleachedto a nondescript blend of pale colors. hersâ€”long, heavy, meticulously middle-parted and dressedâ€”wasa startling two-tone job. to the right of

the part it was a searingly brilliant red;to the left, an equally brilliant royal blue. his skin was deeply tanned. the color of herswas completely masked by a bizarrely spectacular overlay of designs done in semi-indelible,multi-colored dyes. "ah, you are worthy indeed of receiving anincrement of truth. hear, then, the message we bring," and again garlock told the story. "we thank you, sir and madam, from our hearts.we will accept with joy your help in finishing our ship; we will do all that in us lies tofurther the cause of the galactic service. until a day, then?" "until a day." then, to belle, "okay, ace.ready? go!"

and up in the mainâ€”"sweet sin!" belle exclaimed."what a pair they turned out to be! clee, that simply scared me witless." "you can play that in spades." garlock jammedhis hands into his pockets and prowled about the room, his face a black scowl of concentration. until, finally, he pulled himself out of thebrown study and said: "i've been trying to think if there's any other thing, howeverslight, that i have and you haven't. there isn't. you've got it all. you're just as fastas i am, just as sharp and as accurateâ€”and, since we now draw on the same field, justas strong." "why clee! you're worrying about me? you'vedone altogether too much for me, already."

"anything i can do, i've got to do ... well,shall we go?" "we shall." they visited four more planets that day. andafter supper that night, standing in the corridor between their doors, belle began to softenher shield, as though to send a thought. almost instantly, however, she changed her mind andsnapped it back to full on. "good night, clee," she said. "good night, belle," and each went into hisown room. the next day they worked nine planets, andthe day after that they worked ten. they ate supper in friendly fashion; then strolledtogether across the main, to a davenport.

"it's funny," belle said thoughtfully, "havingthis tremendous ship all to ourselves. to have a private conference right out here inthe main ... or is it?" he triggered the shields, she watched himdo it. "it is now," he assured her. "prime-proof? not ordinary gunther blocks?" "uh-huh. two hundred kilovolts and four hundredkilogunts. backed by all the force of the prime and op fields and the full power ofthe engines. i told you i'd made some changes in the set-up." "private enough, i guess ... what a mess thoseprimes are! and we'll have to make the rounds twice moreâ€”when we alert 'em and when wepick 'em up."

"not necessarily. this new set-up ought togive us a galaxy-wide reach. let's try semolo, on lizoria, shall we?" "uh-huhâ€”let's." "tune in, then ace." "ace, darling?" "ace, darling?" "darling. you said you weren't going to fightwith me any more. okayâ€”i'm not going to try any more to lick you until after i'velicked myself. i'm tunedâ€”you may fire when ready, gridley."

they firedâ€”and hit the mark dead center.top-lofty and arrogant and belligerent as ever, the lizorian prime took the call. "ithought all the time you wanted something. well, i neither want nor need...." "cut it, you unlicked cub, until you can beginto use that half-liter of golop you call a brain," garlock said, harshly. "we're justtrying out a new ultra-communicator. thanks for your help." on the fourth day they worked eleven planets;the fifth day saw the forty-sixth planet done and the immediate job finished. all duringsupper, it was very evident that belle had something on her mind.

after eating, she went out into the main andslumped down on a davenport. garlock followed her. a cigarette leaped out of a closed boxand into place between her lips. it came alight. she smoked it slowly, without relish; almostas though she did not know that she was smoking. "might as well get it out of your system,belle," garlock said aloud. "what are you thinking about at the moment?" belle exhaled; the half-smoked butt vanished."at the moment i was thinking about gunther blocks. specifically, their total inabilityto cope with that new prime probe of yours." she stared at him, narrow-eyed. "it goes throughthem just like nothing at all." she paused; eyed him questioningly.

"no comment." "and yet you gave it to me. freely, of yourown accord. even before i needed it. why?" "still no comment." "you'd better comment, buster, before i blowmy top." "there is such a thing as urbanity." "i've heard of it, yes; even though you neverdid believe i ever had any. you talk a good game of urbanity, but your brand of it wouldnever carry you that far...." she paused. he remained silent. she went on. "of course, it does put a lot of pressureon me to develop myself."

"i'm glad you used the word 'develop' insteadof 'treat.'" "oh, sometimesâ€”at rare intervalsâ€”i'm notexactly dumb. but you knewâ€”you must have knownâ€”what a horrible risk you took in makingme as tremendously powerful as you are." "some, perhaps, but very definitely less riskythan not doing it." "getting information out of you is harderthan pulling teeth. clee garlock, i want you to tell me why!" "very well." garlock's jaw set. "you've hadit in mind all along that this is some kind of a lark; that you and i are gunther topsof the universe. or did that belief weaken a bit when we met baver 14wd27?"

"well, perhapsâ€”a little. however, the probabilityis becoming greater with every planet we visit. after all, some race has to be tops. why shouldn'tit be us?" "what a logicâ€”excuse me, skip it...." "oh, you really meant it when you said youweren't going to fight with me any more?" "i'm going to try not to. now, rememberingthat i don't consider your premise valid, just suppose that when we visit some planetsome day, you get your mind burned out and i don'tâ€”solely because i had something icould have given you and wouldn't. what then?" "oh. i thought that was what you ... but supposei can't...." "we won't suppose anything of the kind. butthat wasn't all that was on your mind. nor

most." "how true. those primes. the women. honestly,clee, i never sawâ€”never imaginedâ€”such a bunch of exhibitionistic, obstreperous,obnoxious, swell-headed, hussies in my whole life. and every day it was borne in on memore and more that i wasâ€”amâ€”exactly like the rest of them." garlock was wise enough to say nothing, andbelle went on: "i've been talking a good game of licking myself, but this time i'm goingto do it." she jumped up and doubled her fists. "if youcan do it, i can," she declared. "like the ancient balladâ€”'anything you can do i cando better.'" she tried to be jaunty, but the

jauntiness did not ring quite true. "that's an unfortunate quotation, i'm afraid.the trouble is, i haven't." "huh? don't be an idiot, clee. you certainlyhaveâ€”what else do you suppose put me so far down into the dumps?" "in that case, you certainly will. so comeon up out of the dumps." "wilcoâ€”and i certainly will. but for a womanwho has been talking so big, i feel low in my mind. a good-night kiss, clee, darling?just oneâ€”and just a little one, at that?" "sweetheart!" there were more than one, and none of themwas little. eventually, however, the two stood,

arms still around each other, in the corridorbetween their doors. "but kissing's as far as it goes, isn't it,"belle said. the remark was not a question; nor was it quite a statement. "that's right." "so good night, darling." and when they next saw each other, at thebreakfast table, belle was apparently her usual dauntless self. "hi, darlingâ€”sit down," she said, gaily."your breakfast is on the table. bacon, eggs, toast, strawberry jam, and a liter of coffee."

"nice! thanks, ace." they ate in silence for a few minutes; thenher hand crept tentatively across the table. he pressed it warmly. "you look a million,belle. out of the dumps?" "pretty muchâ€”in most ways. one way, though,i'm in deeper than ever. you see, i know exactly what you did to fao talaho; and why neitheryou or anybody else could do it to me. or if they could, what would happen if they did." "i was hoping you would. i couldn't very welltell you, before, but...." "of course not. i see that." "... the fact is that fao, and all the otherswe've met, are young enough, unformed enoughâ€”plastic

enoughâ€”yes, damn it, weak enoughâ€”to bend.but you are tremendously strong, and twelve rockwell numbers harder than a diamond. youwouldn't bend. if enough stress could be appliedâ€”and that's decidedly questionableâ€”you wouldn'tbend. you'd break, and i can't figure it. you're a little older, of course, but notenough to...." "how about the fact that i've been bangingmyself for eight years against cleander garlock, the top prime of the universe and the hardest?that might have something to do with it, don't you think?" garlock said, "indefensible conclusions drawnfrom insufficient data. that's just what i've been talking about. no matter how we got theway we are, though, the fact is that you and

i have got to fight our own battles and buryour own dead." "check. like having a baby, but worse. there'snothing anybody else can doâ€”even youâ€”except maybe hold my hand, like now." "that's about it. but speaking of holdinghands, would it help if we paired again?" belle studied the question for two full minutes;her fine eyes clouded. "no," she said, finally. "i would enjoy it too much, and you'd ... well,you wouldn't...." "huh?" he demanded. "oh, physically, of course; but that isn'tenough, or good enough, now. you see, i know what your personal code is. it's unbelievable,almostâ€”i never heard of one like it, except

maybe a priest or twoâ€”but i admire you tremendouslyfor it. you would never, willingly, pair with a woman you really loved. that was why youwere so glad to break ours off. you can't deny it." "i won't try to deny it. but you can't bluffme, belle, so please quit trying. basically, your code is the same as mine. why else didyou initiate our break?" belle's block went solid, and garlock saidhastily, aloud, "excuse it, please. cancel. i've just said, and know as an empirical fact,that you've got to do the job aloneâ€”but i can't seem to help putting my big, flatfoot in it by blundering in anyway. let's get to work, shall we?"

"what at? interview the primes, i'd sayâ€”tellthem to hold themselves in readiness to attend...." "on very short notice...." "yes. to attend the big meeting on tellus.we'll have to make a schedule. it shouldn't be held until after fao and deggi get theirship builtâ€”it can't be held, of course, until after you and jim are out of sse. haveyou got that figured out yet?" "pretty much." he told her his plan. belle giggled, then burst into laughter. "soi'm in it, too? wonderful!" "you have to be. if we make him mad enough,he'll fire you, too." "without hiring me first? he couldn't."

"he could, very easily. he doesn't know one-tenthof one percent of his people. if we work it right he'll assume that you're one of us wage-slaves,too. lola, too, for that matter." "careful, clee. you and i think this is funny,but lola wouldn't. she'd be shocked to her sweet little core, and she'd louse up thewhole deal. so be very sure she doesn't get in on it." "i guess you're right ... well, shall we goout and insult our touchy young friend semolo? ready.... go!" "oh, it's you again. i tell you...." the lizorianbegan. "you will tell me nothing. you will listen.link your mind to mitala's," and the linked

tellurian minds enforced the order. "in abouttwo weeks the primes of many worlds will meet in person on tellus. arrange your affairsso that on ten minutes' notice you both can leave lizoria for tellus aboard our starship,the pleiades. that is all." "he'll come, too," belle chortled. "he'llwrithe and scream, but he'll come." "you couldn't keep him away," garlock agreed. on the next planet, falne, the procedure wasa little different. the information was the same, butâ€”"one word of warning," garlockadded. "it is to be a meeting of minds; not a contest to set up a pecking-order. if youtry any such business you will be disciplined; sharply and in public."

"suppose that, under such conditions, we refuseto attend the meeting?" "that is your right. there is no coercionwhatever. whether or not you come will depend upon whether or not you two are in realityseekers after truth. until a day." and so it went. planet after planet. on notone of those worlds had any prime changed his thinking. not one was really interestedin the galactic service as an instrument for the good of all mankind. there were almostas many attitudes as there were primes; but all were essentially self-centered and selfish. "that tears it, belleâ€”busts it wide open.i canâ€”i mean we together can do either job. that is, either be top boss and run the thingor put in full time beating some sense into

those hard skulls. we can't do both." "on paper, we should," belle said, thoughtfully."you're galactic admiral; i'm your vice. one job apiece. but we're not going to be separated.besides...." "two (minds) (brains) are much better thanone," both said, except for one word, in unison. belle laughed. "that settles that. the garlock-bellamyfusion is galactic admiralâ€”so we need a good vice. who? deggi and fao? they're cooperativeand idealistic enough, but.... oh, i don't know exactly what it is they lack. do you?" "no; i can't put it into words or thoughts.probably the concept is too new for pigeon-holing. it isn't exactly strength or hardness or toughnessor resilience or brisanceâ€”maybe a combination

of all five. what we need is a pair like usbut better." "there aren't any." "don't be too sure." belle glanced at himin surprise and he went on: "not that we've seen, no. but each of those worlds centersa volume of space containing thousands of planets. including the tellurian and the margonian,we now have forty-eight regions defined. let's run a very fast search-pattern of region forty-nineand see what we come up with." "all right ... but suppose we do find somebodywho out-gunthers us?" "i'd a lot rather have it that way than theway it is now. i'll do the hopping, you the checking. here's the first oneâ€”what do youread?"

"n. g." "and this one?" "the same." "and this?" "ditto." until, finally: "clee, just how long are yougoing to keep this up?" "until we find something or run out of timefor the meeting. belle, i really want to find somebody who amounts to something." "so do i, really, so go ahead."

but they did not run out of time. at planetnumber four-hundred-something, belle suddenly emitted a shriekâ€”vocally as well as mentally."clee! hold it! here's something, i think!" "i'm sure there is, and i'm gladder to seeyou two people than can possibly be expressed." belle whirled; so did garlock. a man stoodin the middle of the main; a man shaped very much like garlock, but with long, badly-tousledhair and a bushy wilderness of fiery-red whiskers. "please excuse this intrusion, admiralâ€”orshould it be plural? improper address, i'm sure, but your joint tenure is a concept sonew and so vast that i am not yet able to grasp it fullyâ€”but you are working at suchhigh speed that i had to do something drastic. you will, i trust, remain here long enoughto discuss certain matters with my wife and

me?" "we'll be very glad to." "thank you. i will return, then, more decorously,and bring her. one moment." he disappeared. "wife!" belle exclaimed, more than half indismay. "they must be, then...." "yeah." the thought of a wife did not bothergarlock at all. "talk about power! and speed! to get all that stuff and 'port up here inthe millisecond or so we had the screens open? baby doll, there's a guy who is what a primeoperator ought to be!" in less than a minute the man reappeared,accompanied by a woman who was very obviously pregnantâ€”eight months or so. like the man,she was dressed in tight-fitting coveralls.

her hair, howeverâ€”it was a natural red,tooâ€”was cut to a uniform length of eight inches, and each hair individually stood out,perfectly straight and perfectly perpendicular to the element of the scalp from which itsprang. "friends belle and clee of tellus, i presenttherea, my wife; and alsyne, myself; of this planet thaker. we have numbers, too, but theyare never used among friends." acknowledgments were made and a few minutesof conversation ensued, during which the two couples studied each other. "this looks mighty good to me," garlock saidthen. "shall we go screens half-down, alsyne, and cry in each other's beer?"

in thirty seconds of flashing communicationeach became thoroughly informed. those minds could send, and could receive, an incrediblyvast amount of information in an incredibly brief space of time. "your ship should work and doesn't," garlocksaid. "show me; in detail." alsyne showed him. "oh, i see. you didn't work out quite allthe theory. it has to be activated. like this...." garlock showed alsyne. "i see. thanks." alsyne disappeared and wasgone for some ten minutes. he reappeared, grinning hugely behind his flaming wildernessof beard. "it works perfectly; for which our

heartfelt thanks. and now that my mind isat complete peace with the universe, we will consider the utterly fascinating subject ofyour proposed galactic service. you two tellurians, immature although you are, have made two tremendouscontributions to the advancement of the scheme of thingsâ€”three, if you count the starship,which is comparatively unimportantâ€”each of such import that no human mind can foreseeany fraction of its consequences. first, your prime field, the probe and its screen...." "clee!" belle drove the thought. "you didn'tgive him that, surely!" "tut-tut, my child," therea soothed her. "youare alarming yourself about nothing." "the only trouble with you two youngstersis that you aren't quiteâ€”very nearly, of

course, but very definitely not quiteâ€”grownup." alsyne smiled again; not only with mouth and eyes, but with his whole hairy face. "tothe mature mind there is no such thing as status. each knows what he can do best anddoes it as a matter of course. rank is not necessary. "second, the unimaginably important contributionof the ability to combine two dissimilar but intimately compatible minds into one tremendouslyeffective fusion. while therea and i have had only a few moments to play with it, werealize some of its possibilities. thus, since she is a doctor of humanities...." "oh," belle interrupted. "that's why you knewwhat i was thinking about, even though i tight-beamed

the thought and my screens were tight?" "exactly so. but to continue. with her sympathyand empathy, and my driving force and so on, the job of licking these young primes intoshape is, as your idiom has it, 'strictly our dish.' it is a truly delicious thought. "you two, on the other hand, have much thatwe lack. breadth and depth and scope of imagination and of vision; yet almost incredible will-powerand stamina and resolve...." "that's the word i was trying to think ofâ€”will-power,"belle flashed a thought at garlock. "... qualities virtually always mutually exclusive;but the combination of which makes your fusion uniquely qualified to lead and direct thisnew and magnificent movement. but therea and

i have been idle and frustrated far too long.we can be of most use, at the moment, on margonia; working with the fao-deggi unit. therefore,with renewed deep thanks, we go." man and wife disappeared; and, ten secondslater, the thakern starship vanished from its world. "well, what do you think of that?" belle gasped."i was actually afraid to think, even behind a prime screen. i don't know yet whether iwant to kiss 'em or kill 'em." "i do. that guy is really a prime, belle.he's older, bigger, and a lot better than i am." "uh-uh," she demurred, positively. "older,yes. more matureâ€”you baby, you!" she snickered

gleefully. "if he hadn't included you in thatcrack i'd've stabbed him, so help me, even though it wasn't true. he said himself it'syou who has got what it takes to lead and direct, not him." "us. we, i mean," he corrected, absently. "uh-huh; us-we. one, now and forever. hotdog! anyway, he wants us to and we want to so everything's lovely and so let's get towork on fatso and his foster. i think we ought to have some fun for a change and that'llbe a lot. when do we want to hit him?" "any day monday through friday. nine-fifteena.m. eastern daylight time. plus or minus one minute."

"nice! catch him in flagrante delicto. lovelyâ€”shovelon the coal, my intrepid engineer!" on a wednesday morning, then, at twelve minutespast nine edt, the pleiades hung poised, high over the chancellery of solar system enterprises,incorporated. "remember, belle!" garlock was pacing themain. "to keep 'em staggering we'll have to land slugging and beat 'em to every punch.you did a wonderful job on her last time, and it's been eating on her ever since. she'sprobably been rehearsing in front of a mirror just how she's going to tear you apart nexttime and just how she's going to spit out the pieces. last time, you were cold, stiff,rigidly formal, and polite. so this time it'll be me, and i'll be hot and bothered, dirty,low, coarse, lewd, and very, very rough."

belle threw back her head and laughed. "rough?yes. vicious, contemptuous, or ugly; yes. a master of fluent, biting, and pyrotechnicprofanity; yes. but low or dirty or coarse or lewd, clee? or any one of the four, tosay nothing of them all? uh-uh. ferber's a filthy beast, of course; but even he knowsyou're one of the cleanest men that ever lived. they'd know it was an act." "not unless i give 'em time to thinkâ€”orunless you do, before he fires jimâ€”in which case we'll lose the game anyway. but how aboutyou? if i can knock 'em too groggy to think, will you carry on and keep 'em that way?" "watch my blasts!" belle giggled gleefully."i never tried anything like thatâ€”any more

than you haveâ€”but i'll guarantee to be justas low, dirty, coarse, lewd, and crude as you are. probably more so, because in thisparticular case it'll be fun. you see, you're a manâ€”you can't possibly despise and detestthat slimy stinker either in the same way or as much as i do." "this ought to be good. cut the rope, jim." even before the starship came to rest, garlockdrove a probe into the sanctum sanctorum of the chancelleryâ€”an utterly unheard-of actof insolence. "foster! this is the pleiades coming in. garlockcalling. hot up the tri-di and the recorder, toots. put fatso on, and snap into it....i said shake a leg!"

"why, i.... you...." "stop stuttering and come to life, you half-wittedbag! gimme ferber and hurry it upâ€”this ship's tricky." "why, you ... i never...." ferber's outragedfirst secretary could scarcely talk. "he ... he is...." "i know, babe, i knowâ€”i could set that tomusic and sing it, with gestures. 'chancellor ferber is in conference and cannot be disturbed,'"he mimicked, savagely. "put him on nowâ€”but quick!" the tri-di tank brightened up; chancellorferber's image appeared. he was disheveled,

surprised and angry, but garlock gave himno chance to speak. "well, fatsoâ€”at last! where the hell haveyou been all morning? i want some stuff, just as fast as god will let you get it together,"and he began to read off, as fast as he could talk, a long list of highly technical items. ferber tried for many seconds to break in,and garlock finally allowed him to do so. "are you crazy, garlock?" he shouted. "whatin hell's name are you bothering me with that stuff for? you know better than thatâ€”makeout your requisitions and send them through channels!" "channels, hell!" garlock shouted back. "hasn'tit got through your four-inch-thick skull

into your idiot's brain yet that i'm in ahurry? i don't want this stuff today; i want it day before yesterdayâ€”this damned junk-heapis apt to fall apart any minute. so quit goggling and slobbering at me, you wall-eyed, slimy,fat toad. get that three hundred weight of suet into action. hump yourself!" "you ... you ... why, i was never so insulted...." "insulted? you?" garlock out-roared him. "listen,fatso. if i ever set out to really insult you, you'll know itâ€”it'll blister all thepaint off the walls. all i'm trying to do now is get you off that fat butt of yoursand get some action." ferber became purple and pounded his deskin consuming anger.

garlock yelled louder and pounded harder."start rounding up this stuffâ€”but fastâ€”or i'll come down there and take your job awayfrom you and do it myselfâ€”and for your own greasy hide's sake you'd better believe i'mnot just chomping my choppers, either." "you'll what?" ferber screamed. "you're fired!" "you fire me?" garlock mimicked the scream."and make it stick? you'd better write that one up for the funnies. why, you lard-brain,you couldn't fire a cap-pistol." "foster!" ferber yelled. "terminate garlockas of now. insubordination, and misconduct, abuse of position, incompetence, malfeasanceâ€”everythingelse you can think of. blacklist him all over the system!"

at the word "fired" belle, had leaped to herfeet and had stopped laughing. "miss bellamy!" ferber snapped. "yes, sir?" she answered, sweetly. "you are hereby promoted to be head of the...." "oh, yeah?" belle sneered, her voice cuttinglike a knife. "you unprincipled, lascivious, lecherous hitler! have you got the unmitigatedgall to take me for a floozie? to think you can add me to your collection of bootlicking,round-heeled tramps?" "you're fired and blacklisted too!" "how nice! you know, i don't know of anythingi'd rather have happen to me?"

"get james on thereâ€”you, james...." "you don't need to fire me, you fat-headedold goat," james said, contemptuously. "i've already quitâ€”the exact second you firedclee." "no you didn't!" ferber screamed. "resignationnot accepted. you're fired! dishonorably dischargedâ€”blacklisted everywhereâ€”you'll never get another jobâ€”anywhere!and here's your slip, too!" miss foster was very fast on the machines. james 'ported his slip up into the pleiades,just as garlock and belle had done with theirs, and disappeared with it as they had; reappearingalmost instantly. "montandon!"

"chancellor ferber, are you completely outof your mind? you can't discharge either miss bellamy or me." "i can't?" he gloated. "why not?" "because neither of us is employed. by anybody." "that's right, fatso," belle said. "we justcame along. just to keep the boys company. it's lonesome, you know, 'way out in deepspace." miss foster ripped a half-filled-out terminationform out of her machine and hurled it into a waste-basket. ferber's jaw dropped and hiseyes stared glassily, but he rallied quickly. "i can blacklist her, though, and maybe youthink i won't. belle bellamy will never get

another job in this whole solar system aslong as she lives, except through me! maybe i'll hire her some day, for something, andmaybe i won't. are you listening, bellamy?" "not only listening, i'm reveling in everyword." belle laughed derisively. "i hate to shatter such wonderful dreamsâ€”or do i? yousee, the pleiades really works, and the galaxians own her; lock, stock, and barrel. you wouldn'thave any part of her, remember? insisted on payment for every nut, wire, and service?now, they want to hire us four for a big operation with this starship. since you only loanedgarlock and james to them, you might have made some legal trouble on that score, butnow that you've fired them bothâ€”and in such conclusive language!â€”we're all set. so whenyou blacklist us with the society, please

let me knowâ€”i want to take a tri-di in technicolorof you doing it. how do you like them parsnips, your royal fatness?" "i'll see about that!" ferber stormed. "we'llhave an injunction out in an hour!" "go ahead," garlock said, with a wide grin."have funâ€”the galaxians have legal eagles too, you know. one thing belle forgot. justin case you recover consciousness some time and want to steal our termination papers backâ€”especiallybelle's; what a howler that was!â€”don't try it. they're in a gunther-blocked safe." then, as comprehension began to dawn on ferber'sface: "s-u-c-k-e-r," garlock drawled.

the pleiades disappeared. chapter 9 the pleiades landed on margonia's galaxianfield, where the tellurians found the project running smoothly, a little ahead of schedule.delcamp and fao were working at their fast and efficient pace, but the hairy pair fromthaker seemed to be, literally, everywhere at once. "hi, belle." fao 'ported up and shook handswarmly. "i thought i was going to have the first double-prime baby, until she appearedon the scene." "didn't it make you mad? i'd've been furious."

"maybe a little at first, but not after i'dtalked with her for half a minute. she'd never even thought of that angle. besides, she thinksthe whole galaxy is fairly crawling with double-primes." "that's funnyâ€”so does clee. but there areother thingsâ€”strictly not anglesâ€”that she hasn't thought of, too. if those coverallswere half an inch tighter they'd choke her to death. you'd think she'd...." "huh?" fao interrupted. "you should screamâ€”oh,that ridiculous tellurian prud...." "it isn't ridiculous!" belle snapped. "andit isn't prudishness, eitherâ€”not with me, anyway. it's just that," she ran an indicativeglance over fao's lean, trim flanks and hard, flat abdomen, "it spoils your figure. it'sonly temporary, of course, but...."

"spoils it! why, how utterly idiotic! why,it's magnificent! just as soon as it starts to show on me, belle, i'm going to start wearingonly half as many clothes as i've got on now." "you couldn't." belle eyed the other girl'sbathing-suit-like garment. except for being blue instead of yellow, it was the same asthe one she had worn before. "not without the league for public decency sending thewagon out after you." "oh, miss experience? well, three-quarters,maybe...." "hey, you two!" came delcamp's hail. "howabout cutting the gab and getting some work done?" "coming, boss! 'scuse it, please!" and twofast and skillful women went efficiently to

work. with six prime operators on the job the workwent on very rapidly, yet without error. the celestial queen was finished, tested, andfound perfect, one full day ahead of james' most optimistic estimate for constructionalone. the six primes conferred. "do you want us to help you pick up the otherprimes?" delcamp asked. "your main, big as it is, will be crowded, and we have threeships here now instead of one." "i don't think so ... no," garlock decided."we told 'em we'd do it, and in the pleiades, so we'd better. unless, alsyne, you don'tagree?" "i agree. the point, while of course minor,is very well taken. we and our operatorsâ€”we

brought six along; experts in their variousfieldsâ€”can serve best by working on tellus with its galaxian society in getting readyfor the meeting." "oh, of course," fao said. "probably deg andi should do the same thing?" "that would be our thought." the two thakernswere thinkingâ€”and leppingâ€”in fusion. "however," they went on carefully, "it must not be andis not our intent to sway you in any action or decision. while not all of you four, perhaps,are as yet fully mature, not one of you should be subjected to any additional exterior stresses." "i hope you don't think that way about allprimes," garlock said, grimly. "i'm going to smack some of those kids down so hard thattheir shirt-tails will roll up their backs

like window shades." "if you find such action either necessaryor desirable, we will join you quite happily in it. we go." the four remaining primes looked at each otherin puzzled surprise. "what do you think about that?" garlock askedfinally, of no one in particular. "i don't understand them," fao said, "butthey're mighty nice people." "do you suppose, clee," belle nibbled at herlower lip, "that we're getting off on the wrong foot with uniforms and admirals andthings? that with really adult primes running things the galactic service would run itself?no bosses or anything?"

"umnngk." garlock grunted as though bellehad slugged him. "i hope not. or do i? anyway, not enough data yet to make speculation profitable.but i wonder, miss bellamy, if it would be considered an unjustifiable attempt to swayyou in any action or decision if i were to suggestâ€”oh, ever so diffidently!â€”thatif we're going to saddle up our bronks and ride out on roundup tomorrow morning we oughtto be logging some sack-time right now?" "considering the source, as well as and/orin connection with the admittedly extreme provocation," belle straightened up into aregal pose, "you may say, mister garlock, without fear of successful contradiction,that in this instance no umbrage will be taken, at least for the moment." she broke the poseand giggled infectiously. "'night, you two

lovely people!" belle was still sunny and gay when the pleiadesreached lizoria; garlock was inwardly happy and outwardly content. semolo, however, washis usual intransigent self. in fact, if it had not been for mirea mitala, and the factthat sheâ€”metaphoricallyâ€”did pin semolo's ears back, garlock would not have taken himaboard at all. thus, after loading on only one pair of primes,that auspiciously-beginning day had lost some of its luster; and as the day wore on it gotno better fast. baver of falne had not learned anything, eitherâ€”only garlock's interventionsaved the cocky and obstreperous semolo from a mental blast that would have knocked himout cold.

then there were onthave and lerthe of crenna;korl and kirl of gleer; parleof and ginseona of pasquerone; atnim and sotara of flandoon,and eighty others. very few of them were as bad as semolo; some of them, particularlythe pasqueronians and the gleerans, were almost as good as delcamp and fao. this was the first time that any pair of themhad ever come physically close to any other prime. many of them had not really believedthat any primes abler than themselves existed. the pleiades was crowded, and garlock andbelle were not giving to any of them the deference and consideration and submissive respect whicheach considered his unique due. wherefore the undertaking was neither easynor pleasant; and both tellurians were tremendously

relieved when, the last pair picked up, theyflashed the starship back to tellus and delcamp, fao, and the thakerns 'ported themselves aboard. "give me your attention, please," garlocksaid, crisply. then, after a moment, "any and all who are not tuned to me in five secondswill be returned immediately to their home planets and will lose all contact with thisgroup.... "that's better. for some of you this has beena very long day. for all of you it has been a very trying day. you were all informed previouslyas to what we had in mind. however, since you are young and callow, and were thoroughlyconvinced of your own omniscience and omnipotence, it is natural enough that you derived littleor no benefit from that information. you are

now facing reality, not your own fantasies. "each pair of you has been assigned a suiteof rooms in galaxian hall. each suite is furnished appropriately; each is fully gunthered forself-service. "this meeting has not been announced to thepublic and, at least for the present, will not be. therefore none of you will attemptto communicate with anyone outside galaxian hall. anyone making any such attempt willbe surprised. "the meeting will open at eight o'clock tomorrowmorning in the auditorium. the thakerns and the margonians will now inform you as to yourquarters." there was a moment of flashing thought. "dismissed."

at one second before eight o'clock the auditoriumwas empty. at eight o'clock, ninety-eight human beings appeared in it; six on the stage,the rest occupying the first few rows of seats. "good morning, everybody," garlock said, pleasantly."everyone being rested, fed, and having had some time in which to consider the changedreality faced by us all, i hope and am inclined to believe that we can attain friendship andaccord. we will spend the next hour in becoming acquainted with each other. we will walk around,not teleport. we will meet each other physically, as well as mentally. we will learn each other'sforms of greeting and we will use them. this meeting is adjourned until nine o'clockâ€”or,rather, the meeting will begin then." for several minutes no one moved. all blockswere locked at maximum. each prime used only

his eyes. physically, it was a scene of almost overpoweringperfection. the men were, without exception, handsome, strong, and magnificently male.the women, from heroically-framed fao talaho upâ€”or down?â€”to surprisingly slender mireamitala, all were arrestingly beautiful; breathtakingly proportioned; spectacularly female. clothing varied from complete absence to almostcomplete coverage, with a bewildering variety of intermediate conditions. color was rampant. hairâ€”or lack of itâ€”was also an individualand highly variant matter. some of the women, like belle and fao, were content with onesolid but unnatural shade. one shaven headâ€”mirea

mitala'sâ€”was deeply tanned, but unadorned,even though the rest of her body was almost covered by precious stones. another was decoratedwith geometrical and esoteric designs in eye-searing colors. a third supported a structureâ€”itcould not possibly be called a hatâ€”of spun metal and gems. among the medium-and long-hairs there weretwo-, three-, and multi-toned jobs galore. some of the color-combinations were harmonious;some were sharply contrasting, such as black and white; some looked as though their wearershad used the most violently-clashing colors they could find. the prize-winner, however, was therea of thaker'senormous, inexplicable mop; and it was that

phenomenon that first broke the ice. the girl with the decorated scalp had beenglancing questioningly at neighbor after neighbor, only to be met by uncompromising stares. finally,however, her gaze met another, as interested as her own. this second girl, whose coiffurewas a high-piled confection of black, white, yellow, red, blue, and green, half-mastedher screen and said: "oh, thanks, jethay of lodie-yann. i'm gladeverybody isn't going to stay locked up all day. i'm ginseona of pasquerone. they callme 'jin' whenever they want to call me anything printable. and this," she dug a knuckle intoher companion's short ribs, whereupon he jumped, whirled around, lowered his screen, and grinned,"is my ... the boy friend, parleof. also of

pasquerone, of course. par, both jethay andi...." "call me 'jet'â€”everybody does," jethay said:almost shyly, for a prime. "both jet and i have been wondering aboutthat woman's hairâ€”over there. how could you possibly give a head of hair a staticcharge of fifty or a hundred kilovolts and not have it leak off?" "you couldn't, unless it was a perfectly-insulatedwig ... but it looks as though she did, at that...." and parleof paused in thought. "maybe byuk would have an idea or two," andjet uttered aloud a dozen or so crackling syllables that sounded as though they couldhave been ladylike profanity. whatever they

were, byuk jumped, too, and tuned in withthe other three. "oh, it's quite easy, really," therea saidthen. "look." her mass of hair cascaded gracefully down around her neck and shoulders. "lookagain." each hair stood fiercely out all by itself, exactly as before. "all you youngpeople will learn much more difficult and much more important things before this meetingis over. i cannot tell you how glad i am that so many of you are here." and so it went, all over the auditorium. oncecracked, the ice broke up fast. fao and delcamp worked hard; so did belleand garlock. alsyne was a potent force indeedâ€”his abounding vitality and his tremendous smilebroke down barriers that logic could not affect.

and therea worked near-miracles; did morethan the other five combined. her sympathy, her empathy, her understanding and feeling,were as great as lola's own; her operative ability was as much greater than lola's aslola's was greater than that of a bobby-soxed babysitter. thus, when half of the hour was gone, garlockheaved a profound sigh of relief. he wouldn't have half the trouble he had expectedâ€”itwas not going to be a riot. and when he called the meeting to order he was pleasanter andfriendlier than belle had ever before seen him. "while i am calling this meeting to order,it is only in the widest possible sense that

i am its presiding officer, for we have asyet no organization by the delegated authority of which any man or any woman has any rightto preside. yesterday i ruled by force; simply because i am stronger than any one of youor any pair of you. today, in the light of the developments of the last hour, that ruleis done; except, perhaps, for one or two isolated and non-representative cases which may developtoday. by this time tomorrow, i hope that we will be forever done with the law of clawand fang. for, as a much abler man has saidâ€”'to the really mature mind, the concept of statusis completely invalid.'" "he's putting that as a direct quote, alsyne,and it isn't." belle lanced the thought. "he thinks it is," alsyne flashed back. "thatis the way his mathematician's mind recorded

"this meeting is informal, preliminary andexploratory. a meeting of minds from which, we hope, a useful and workable organizationcan be developed. since you all know what we think it basically should be, there isno need to repeat it. "i must now say something that a few of youwill construe as a threat. you are all prime operators. each pair of you is the highestdevelopment of a planet, perhaps of a solar system. you can learn if you will. you cancooperate if you will. any couple here who refuses to learn, and hence to cooperate,will be returned to its native planet and will have no further contact with this group. "i now turn this meeting over to our firstmoderators, alsyne and therea of thaker; the

oldest and ablest prime operators of us all." "thank you, garlock of tellus. one correction,however, if you please. i who speak am neither this man nor this woman standing here, butboth. i am the prime unit of thaker. for brevity, and for the purposes of this meeting only,i could be called simply 'thaker.' before calling for general discussion i wish to callparticular attention to two points, neither of which has been sufficiently emphasized. "first, the purpose of a prime operator isto serve, not to rule. thus, no prime should be or will be 'boss' of anything, except possiblyof his own starship. "second, since we have no data we do not knowwhat form the proposed galactic service will

assume. one thing, however, is sure. whateverpower of enforcement or of punishment it may have will derive, not from its primes, butfrom the fact that it will be an arm of the galactic council, which will be composed ofoperators only. no prime will be eligible for membership." thaker went on to explain how each pair couldobtain instruction and assistance in many projects, including starships. how each pairwould, when they were mature enough, be coached in the use of certain abilities they did notas yet have. he suggested procedures and techniques to be employed in the opening up of each pair'svolume of space. he then asked for questions and comments.

semolo was the first. "if i'm a good littleboy," he sneered, "and do exactly as i'm told, and take over the region you tell me to andnot the one i want to, what assurance have i that some other prime, just because he'sa year older than i am, won't come along and take it away from me?" "your question is meaningless," thaker replied."since you will not 'take over,' or 'have,' or 'own,' any region, it cannot be 'takenaway from you.'" "then i will...." semolo began. "you will keep still!" came a clear, incisivethought, just as garlock was getting ready to intervene. miss mitala then switched fromthought, which everyone there could understand,

and launched a ten-second blast of furiousspeech. semolo wilted and the girl went on in thought: "he'll be goodâ€”or else." a girl demanded recognition and got it. "semolo'sright. what's the use of being primes if we can't get any good out of it? we're the strongestpeople of our respective worlds. i say we're bosses and should keep on being bosses." garlock got ready to shut her up, then paused;holding his fire. "ah, yes, friend garlock, you are maturingfast," came thaker's thought and, in answer to garlock's surprise, it went on, "this situationwill, i think, be self-adjusting; just as will be those in the as yet unexplored regionsof space."

the girl kept on. "i, at least, am going tokeep on bossing my own planet, milking it just as i...." her companion had been trying to crack hershield. failing in that, he stepped in close and tapped herâ€”solidly, but with carefully-measuredforceâ€”behind the ear. before she could fall, he 'ported her back up into their quarters."this happens all the time," he explained to the group at large. "carry on." discussion went on, with less and less acrimony,all the rest of the day. and the next day, and the next. then, argument having reachedthe point of diminishing returns, the three starships took the forty-six couples home.

the six primes went into evans' office, wherethe lawyer was deeply engaged with gerald banks, the galaxians' public relations chief.banks was holding his head in both hands. "garlock, maybe you can tell me," banks demanded."how much of this stuff, if any, can i publish? and if so, how?" "nothing," garlock said, flatly. "what do you think, thaker?" belle asked."you're smarter than we are." "what thaker thinks has no bearing," garlocksaid. belle, fao, and delcamp all began to protestat once, but they were silenced by thaker himself.

"garlock is right. my people are not yourpeople; i know not at all how your people think or what they will or will not believe.i go." "that lets deg and me out too; then, double-plus,"fao said with a grin, "so we'll leave that baby on your laps. we go, too." "well, little miss weisenheimer," garlocksmiled quizzically at belle, "you grabbed the ballâ€”what are you going to do with it?" "nothing, i guess...." belle thought for aminute. "we couldn't stuff any part of that down the throat of a simple-minded six-year-old.we haven't really got anything, anyway. time enough, i think, when we have six or sevenhundred planets in each region, instead of

only one planet. maybe we'll know somethingby then. does that make sense?" "it does to me," garlock said, and the othersagreed. "that thakern 'we go' business sounds roughat first, but it's contagious. fao and deggi caught it, and i feel like i'm coming downwith it myself. how about you, clee?" "we go," belle and garlock said in unison,and vanished. aboard the pleiades, the next few days passedquietly enough. james set up, in the starship's memory banks, a sequence to mass-produce instructiontapes and blueprints. garlock and belle began systematically to explore the tellurian region.now, however, their technique was different. if either prime of any world was not enthusiasticabout the projectâ€”

"very well. think it over," they would say."we will get in touch with you again in about a year," and the starship would go on to thenext planet. on earth, however, things became less andless tranquil with every day that passed. for, in deciding not to publish anything,garlock had not considered at all the basic function and the tremendous ability, power,and scope of the press. and galaxian hall had never before been closed to the public;not for any hour of any day of any year of its existence. a non-profit organization,dependent upon the public for its tremendous income, the galaxian society had always courtedthat public in every possible ethical way. thus, in the first hour of closure, a boredreporter came out, read the smoothly-phrased

notice, and lepped it in to the desk. it mightbe worth, he thought, half an inch. later in the day, however, the world's mostsensitive news-nose began to itch. did, or did not, this quiet, unannounced closing smellever-so-slightly of cheese? wherefore, benjamin bundy, the newscaster who had covered thestarship's maiden flight, went out himself to look the thing over. he found the wholefield closed. not only closed, but gunther-blocked impenetrably tight. he studied the announcement,his sixth senseâ€”the born newsman's sense for newsâ€”probing every word. "regret ... research ... of such extreme delicacy... vibration ... temperature control ... one one-hundredth of one degree centigrade...."

he sought out his long-time acquaintance banks;finding him in a temporary office half a block away from the hall. "what's the story, jerry?"he asked. "the real story, i mean?" "you know, as much about it as i do, ben.garlock and james don't waste time trying to detail me on that kind of business, youknow." this should have satisfied any newshawk, butbundy's nose still itched. he mulled things over for a minute, then probed, finding thathe could read nothing except banks' outermost, most superficial thoughts. "well ... maybe ... but...." then bundy plunged."all you have to do, jerry, is tell me screens-half-down that your damn story is true."

"and that's the one thing i can't do," banksadmitted; and bundy could not detect that any part of his sheepishness was feigned."you're just too damned smart, ben." "ohâ€”one of those things? so that's it?" "yup. i told evans it might not work." that should have satisfied the reporter, butit didn't. "now it doesn't smell just a trifle cheesy; it stinks like rotten fish. you won'tgo screens down on that one, either." "oh, joy!" bundy exulted. "so big that geraldbanks, the top press-agent of all time, actually doesn't want publicity! the starship worksâ€”thislack-of-control stuff is the bunkâ€”from here to another star in nothing flatâ€”garlock'sback, and he's broughtâ€”what have you got

in there, jerry?" "the only way i can tell you is in confidence,for evans' release. i'd like to, ben, believe me, but i can't." "confidence, hell! do you think we won't getit?" "in that case, no comment." the interviewended and the siege began. newshounds and detectives questioned and peeredand probed. they dug into morgues, tabulating and classifying. they recalled and taped andsifted all the gossip they had heard. they got a picture of sorts, but it was maddeninglyconfusing and incomplete. and, since it was certain that inter-systemic matters were involved,they could not extrapolateâ€”any guess was

far too apt to be wrong. thus nothing wenton the air or appeared in print; and, although the surface remained calm, all newsdom seethedto its depths. wherefore haggard banks and harried evansgreeted garlock with shouts of joy when the four wanderers came back to spend the weekend on earth. "i'll talk to 'em," garlock decided, afterthe long story had been told. "have somebody get hold of bundy and ask him to come out." "get hold of him!" banks snorted. "he's here.twenty-four hours a day. eating sandwiches and cat-napping on chairs in the lobby. allyou have to do is unseal that door." garlock flung the door wide. bundy rushedin, followed by a more-or-less steady stream

of some fifty other top-bracket newspeople,both men and women. "well, garlock, perhaps you will give us somescreens-down facts?" bundy asked, angrily. "i'll give you all the screens-down...." "clee!" "you're crazy!" "you can't!" "don't!"belle and all the operators protested at once. ignoring the objections, garlock cut his shieldto half and gave the whole group a true account of everything that had happened in the galaxy.then, while they were all too stunned to speak, a grin of saturnine amusement spread overhis dark, five-o'clock-shadowed face. "you pestiferous gnats insisted on grabbingthe ball," he sneered. "now let's see you run with it."

bundy came out of his trance. "what a story!"he yelled. "we'll plaster it...." "yeah," garlock said, dryly. "what a story.exactly." "oh." bundy deflated suddenly. "you'll haveto prove itâ€”demonstrate itâ€”of course." "of course? you tickle me. not only do i nothave to prove it, i won't. i won't even confirm bundy glared at garlock, then whirled on banks."if you don't give me this in shape to use, you'll never get another line or mention anywhere!" "oh, no?" for the first time in his professionallife banks gloated, openly and avidly. "from now on, my friend, who is in the saddle? whois going to come to whom? oh, brother!" when the fuming newsmen had gone, garlocksaid, "it'll leak, of course."

"of course," banks agreed. "'it is rumored...' 'from a usually reliable source ...' and so on. nothing definite, but each one of themwill want to put out the first and biggest." "that's what i figured. it'll have to breaksometime and i thought easing it out would be best ... but wait a minute...." he thoughtfor two solid minutes. "but we're going to need a lot of money, and we're just aboutbroke, aren't we?" this thought was addressed to frank macey, the galaxians' treasurer. "worse than brokeâ€”much worse." "i could loan you a couple of credits, frank,"belle said, brightly. "but go ahead, clee." "people like to be sidewalk superintendents.suppose they could watch the construction

of an outpost so far away that nobody everdreamed of ever getting there. could you do anything with that, jerry?" "could i! just!" and banks, went into a rhapsody. "that's the first good idea any one of youcrackpots has had for five years," macey said, suddenly. "but wouldn't transportation ofmaterial and so on present problems?" "no; just buying it," garlock said, soberly."oh, rather, paying for it." "no trouble there...." "what?" belle exclaimed. "'no trouble,' itsays here in fine print? how the old skinflint has changedâ€”instead of screaming his headoff about spending money he's actually offering

to. frank, i'll loan you three credits!" "hush, honey-chile, the men-folks are talkingman-business. look, clee. we'll use the pleiades at first, while we're building a regular transport.a hundred passengers per trip, one thousand credits one way...." "wow!" belle put in. "our ex-skinflint isnow a bare-faced, legally-protected robber." "by no means, belle," evans said. "how muchwould that be per mile?" "say ten round trips per day. that would betwenty million a day gross for a small ship not intended for passenger service. when weget ships built ... and the extras...." the money-man went into a financial revel of hisown.

"lots of extras," banks agreed. "and oh, brother,what a public-relations dream of heaven!" "maybe i'm dumb," garlock broke in, "but justwhat are you going to use for money to get started?" "the minute we confirm any part of the story,the credit of the galaxian society will jump from x-o to aa-a1." "oh. so belle and i will have to lose ourpleiades for a while. i don't like that, but we do need the money ... but we can have herfor this coming week?" "of course." "so maybe we'd better break the story now,instead of letting it leak."

"can you, after what you just told them?" "sure i can." he set his mind and searched."bundy, this is garlock...." "so what am i supposed to doâ€”burst intotears of joy?" "save it. i changed my mind. you can breakit as fast and as hard as you like. i'll play along." "yeah? why the switch? what's the angle?" "strictly commercial. get it from banks." "and you'llâ€”personallyâ€”go on my hour withit?" "yes. also, we'll demonstrateâ€”take you toany star-system in the galaxy. you and all

the rest of the newshawks who were here andany fifty vip's you want to invite. tomorrow morning all right with you?" "you, personally, in the pleiades?" bundyinsisted. "better than that. the other two starships,too. you've got themâ€”particularly those four primesâ€”clearly in mind?" "not exactly, there was so much of it. spreadit on me now, huh?" garlock did so. "thanks, pal, for the scoop. i'll crash it right now,and follow up with banks. 'bye!" "think you can deliver on that, clee?" banksasked. "sure. both deggi and alsyne will need a lotof extra money, fast. they'll play along."

they did; and that three-starship tourâ€”whichvisited twenty solar systems instead of oneâ€”was the most sensational thing old earth had everspawned. belle and garlock did not spend that weekend on earth. "we go," they said, as soon as the pleiades was empty of pressmen, andthey took james and lola along. "if we never see another such brawl as this is going tobe," belle told banks, who was basking in glory and entreating them to stay on for theshow, "it will be exactly twenty minutes too soon." thus it came about that earth's first fourdeep-spacemen were completely out of reach when unexpected developments began.

alonzo p. ferber was one of the vip's on bundy'spersonally-conducted tour of the stars. as has been said, he was a very able executive.he had an extremely keen profit-sense. this new thing smelledâ€”simply reekedâ€”of money.sse would have to get in on it. ferber was not thin-skinned; where money wasconcerned it would never even occur to him to cherish grudges or to retain animosities.wherefore sse's purchasing department suggested to the galaxian society that negotiationsbe opened concerning licenses, franchises, royalties, and so on. these suggestions werepolitely but firmly brushed off. then emissaries were sent, of ever-increasing caliber andweight. next, ferber himself tried the tri-di; and finally, he came in person.

rebuffed, he made such legally-sound threatsthat evans and macey agreed to a meeting; stating flatly, however, that no commitmentscould possibly be made without the knowledge and approval of the society's president, cleandergarlock. thus, at the meeting, the galaxians made only two statements that were even approximatelydefinite. one was that garlock would probably return to earth during the afternoon or eveningof the following friday; the other that they would take the matter up with garlock as soonas they could. after that meeting macey was unperturbed,but evans was a deeply worried man. "you see," he explained, "the real crux wasnot even mentioned." "no? what is it, then?"

"operators, primes, and the practically non-existentlaws pertaining to their ... what? labor? skill? genius? for instance, could garlockbe forced to do whatever it is that he does? on the other hand, if ferber offered bellebellamy five million credits a year to 'work' for sse, is there anything we could do aboutit?" "oh. i thought all there was to it was thatyou'd delay 'em for a year or so and that'd be it." "far from it. to date i have listed fifty-eightpoints for which, as far as we can learn, there are no precedents," and the lawyer calleda meeting of his staff. for belle and garlock, the week went fast.on friday afternoon, high above earth's galaxian

field, garlock said, more than half regretfully,"no more fun. back to the desk. back to the salt-mines." "i weep for you," belle snickered. "sob, sob.shed him a tear, lola." "one tear coming up. oh, woe; oh, woe...." "oh, whoa!" james snorted. "why the sob-and-moanroutine, clee, from a guy who's going to be monarch of all he surveys?" "his conscience aches him," belle explained."this monarching business is tough if you haven't thought about how to monarch, andhe hasn't. have you, clee?" "not a lick." garlock smiled slightly. "ibeen busy."

"you better start to," she advised, darkly."you aren't busy now and we have an hour. we better conferâ€”i'll make like a slave-driver." they 'ported into his room and he set theblocks. his attitude changed instantly. "nice act, belle. what was it all about?" "that theory of yours. your predictions aretoo uncannily accurate to be guesswork, and the more times you dead-center the bullseyethe worse scared i get. i really want to know, "okay. it isn't completeâ€”i need a lot moredataâ€”but i'll show you what i have. it's fairly strong medicine and it comes in bigchunks." "it would have toâ€”it covers the whole macrocosmicuniverse, doesn't it?"

"yes. i'll start with the striking fact that,on every out-galaxy planet we visited, the human beings were homo sapiens to n decimalplaces. fertile with each other and, according to expert testimony, with us. all planetshad humanoid 'guardians,' the arpalones and arpales. some, but not all, had one or morenon-human, more-or-less-intelligent races, such as the fumapties, the lemarts, the sencors,and so on. these other races never seemed to fight each other, but both races of guardiansfought any and all of them, on sight and to the death. what do those facts mean to you?" "nothing beyond face value. i've thought aboutthem but i haven't been able to come up with anything."

"i have." he unrolled a sheet of draftingpaper covered with diagrams, symbols, and equations. "but before i go into this stuff,consider the human body. how many red cells are there in your blood stream?" "billions, i suppose." "and there are billions of human beings onbillions of planets; each having red blood cells identical, as far as we know, with yoursand mine. also white cells. also, sometimes, various kinds of pathogenic micro-organisms,such as staphs, streps, viruses, spiros, and so on. "okay. my thought is that the lemarts, ozobes,and the like are analogous to disease-producing

organisms. we saw the full range of effectsâ€”fromnone at all up to death itself." "but theyâ€”the ozobes and so onâ€”died, too." "how long do disease germs live in a humanbody after they've killed it?" "but that horrible dilipicâ€”the golop. theydon't seem to fit." "try that on for size as cancer. also, thearpalones typed us before they'd let us land on any planet. why didn't we blast them outof the way and land anyway?" "why, we didn't want to. it wasn't worth while." "we couldn't. psychic block. and if we had,we would have died. different blood-types don't mix."

"so you and i are merely two red cells inthe bloodstream of a super-dooper-galactic super-monster? phooie!" she jeered. "thatchestnut was propounded a thousand years ago. are you trying to take me for a ride on thatold sawhorse?" "that's the attitude i had at first. so nowwe're ready for the chart." he pointed to a group of symbols. "we start with symboliclogic; manipulating like so to get this." there was a long mathematical dissertation;a mind-to-mind, rigorous, point-by-point proof. "q. e. d." garlock concluded. "i see your math, and if i believed half ofit i'd be scared witless. those few pieces fit, but they're scattered around in vastareas of blankness and you're jumping around

like the swiss miss leaping from alp to alp.and how about our own galaxy, the most important piece of all? it's different, and we're different,mentally. that wrecks your whole theory." "no. i told you i need a lot more data. also,beyond a certain point the analogy appears to get looser." "appears to! it's as loose as a goose!" "think a minute. is it actually loose, orare we getting up into concepts that no human mind can grasp? that might be the case, youknow." "oh.... you're quite a salesman, clee, buti'm still not buying." "our galaxy is a bit of specialized tissueâ€”partof a ganglion, maybe. over here, see? i'll

have to leave it dangling until we find somemore like it." "i see. but anyway, you haven't a tenth'sworth of real material on that whole sheet. feed everything you have there into a computerand it'd just laugh at you." "sure it would. the great advantage of thehuman brain is its ability to arrive at valid conclusions from incomplete data. for instance,what would your computer do with the figures you shot at me the day we started out? 'thirty-nine,twenty-two, thirty-nine. five seven. one thirty-five.' yet they're completely informative." "to anyone interested in that kind of figures,yes." "which includes practically all adults. thentake the figure three point one four one five

nine. compy would still be baffled; but, unlikethe first set, most people would be, too." "yes. perhaps two out of ten would get yourmessage." "now take something really new, like the originalwork on gravitation or relativity. no possible computer would be of any use. that takes abrain!" "the brain of a newton or an einstein, yes."belle thought for a minute, then grinned at him impishly. "now watch the brain of a bellamyperform. get into high gear, brain.... i wish i knew something about biochemical embryology;but i read somewhere that ova are sterile, so our galaxy is an ovum. therefore our super-galooperis a galâ€”which incontrovertible fact accounts for and explains rigorously the long-knowntruth that women always have been, are now,

and always will be vastly superior to menin every quality, aspect, and...." "hold it!" garlock snapped. his face hardenedinto intense concentration. then: "do you think you're kidding, belle?" "why, of course i'm kidding, you big...." "look here, then." he picked up a pencil andfilled in blank after blank after blank. "i'm making one unjustifiable assumptionâ€”thatthe pleiades is the first intergalactic starship. the super-being is a female, and she is justbecoming pregnant...." "flapdoodle! there are no blood cells in asperm, and i don't think there are any in an ovum."

"i didn't mention either sperm or ovum. theanalogy is so loose here that it holds only in the broadest, most general terms. the actualprocess of reproduction is unknowable. but wherever we went, we changed things. not onlyby what we actually did, but also as a catalystâ€”no...." "no, not a catalyst. a hormone." "exactly. each of these changes would causeothers, and so on. an infinite series. calling the first three terms alpha, beta, and gamma,we operate like this...." garlock's pencil was flying now. "following me?" "on your tail." belle was breathing hard;as the blank spaces became fewer and fewer her face began to turn white.

"from this we get that ... and that makesthe whole bracket tie into the same conclusion i had before. so, except for that one assumption,it's solid." "my lord, clee!" belle studied the chart."i mentioned newton and einstein ... add to that 'the brain of a garlock, better thaneither.'" then, seeing his reaction, "you're blushing. i didn't think...." "cut the comedy. you know i couldn't carryeither of their hats to a dog-fight." "and i would never have believed that youare basically modest." "i said cut out the kidding, belle." "i'm deadly serious. a brain that could dothat," she waved at the chart, "... well,

even i am not enough of a heel to belittleone of the most tremendous intuitions ever achieved by man. not that i like it. it'shorrible. it denies mankind everything that made him come up from the slimeâ€”everythingthat made him man." "not at all. nothing is changed, in man'sown frame of reference. it merely takes our thinking one step farther. that step, of course,isn't easy." "that is the understatement of all time. whatit will do, though, is set up an inferiority complex that would wipe out the whole humanrace." "there might be some slight tendency. also,since my basic assumption can't be justified, the whole thing may be fallacious. so i'mnot going to publish it." he glanced at the

chart and it vanished. "clee!" belle stared, almost goggle-eyed."with your name? the tremendous splash ... i see. you're really grown up." "not all the way, probably; but pretty nearlyâ€”ihope." "but some of the ... not exactly corollaries,but...." belle's face, which had regained some of its color, began again to pale. "which one of the many?" "the most shattering one, to me, concernsintelligence. if it is true that our vaunted mentality is only that of one blood cell comparedto that of a whole brain ... and that intelligence

is banked, level upon level ... well, it'ssimply mind-wrecking. i've been trying madly not to think of that concept, at all, buti can't put it off much longer." "now's as good a time as any. i'll hold yourhand." "you'd better hold more of me than that, ithink." "i'll do even that, in a good cause." he puthis arms around her; held her close. "go ahead. face it. all the way down and all the wayup. you've got what it takes. you'll come back sane and it'll never bother you again." she closed her eyes, put her head on his shoulder.her every muscle went tense. neither of them ever knew how long they stoodthere, close-clasped and motionless in silence;

but finally her muscles loosened. she liftedher head; raised her brimming eyes. "all the way down?" he asked. "to almost a geometrical point." "and all the way up?" "i touched the fringe of infinity." "intelligence all the way?" "all the way. i couldn't understand any ofthem, of course, but i looked each one squarely in the eye." "good girl. and you're still sane."

"as much so as ever ... more so, maybe." shedisengaged herself, sat down on the bed, lighted a cigarette, and smoked half of it. then shestood up. "clee, if anything in the whole universe ever knocked hell out of anything,that did out of me. i'm going to do something that will take about ten minutes. will youwait right here?" "of course. take all the time you want." when she came back garlock leaped to his feetand stared speechlessly. he could not even whistle. belle's hair was now its naturaldeep, rich chestnut, her lipstick was red, her nails were bare, and she wore a whiteshirt and an almost-knee-length crimson skirt. "here's what i'm going to do," she said, quietly."i'm going to be a plain, ordinary brownette.

i'm going to marry you as soon as we land;registered permanent family. i'm going to have six kids and spoil them rotten. in short,i have grown upâ€”partly up, at leastâ€”too." "plain?" he managed, finally. "ordinary? you?yesâ€”like a super-nova going off under a man's feet!" with a visible effort, garlockpulled himself together. "i don't need to tell you what a surprise this is, and can'ttell you what it means to me. but you never have said you love me. hadn't you better?" "i'm afraid to. our next kiss will be different.i'd spoil all this nice new make-up." she tried to grin in her old-time fashion, butfailed. she sobered, then, and went on with a completely new intensity. "listen, clee.i'm all doneâ€”foreverâ€”lying and pretending

to you. i love you so much that ... well,there simply aren't any thoughts. and when i think of how i acted, it hurtsâ€”lord, howit hurts! i don't see how you can love me at all. it'd take a miracle." "miracles happen, then." he put both armsaround her, very gently. "for the first time in my life i'm cutting my screens to zero.come in." "what?" for a moment she was unable to believethe thought. then, cutting her own shield, she went fully into his mind. "oh, i didn'tdare hope you could possibly feel.... oh, this is wonderful, cleeâ€”simply wonderful!" as the two fully-opened minds met and joinedshe threw both arms around him and their embrace

tightened as though their bodies were tryingto become as nearly one as were their minds. finally she pulled herself away and put upa solid block. "what a mess!" she said, shakily. "lipstickall over you." "why words, sweetheart? that was perfect." "oh, it was ... but wide open, with such amind as yours...." she paused, then came back to normal almost with a snap. "... but say;i'll bet that's what therea and alsyne were doing. that 'fusion' thing. we'll practiseit tonight." he pondered briefly. "sure it was." "but he said they learned it from us. howcould he have, when we.... oh, we did, of

course, in moments of high stress ... butwe didn't actually know it...." she paused. "we wouldn't admit it, you mean, even to ourselves." "maybe; and of course it never occurred tousâ€”callow youngsters we were then, weren't we?â€”that it could be done for more thana microsecond at a time. or that two people could ever, possibly, live that way." "or what a life it would be. so let's chopthis and get back to you and me." "uh-huh, let's," she agreed, but in a severelypractical tone. "you've got lipstick even on your shirt. so change it and i'll go puton a new face and bring over some stuff and clean you up."

while she cleaned, she talked. "i told youour next kiss would be different, but i had no idea ... wow! that will be as much different,too, i'm sure.... hm-h-h-nh?" again she pressed herself against him; this time in a somewhatdifferent fashion. "stop that, you little devil, or i'll...."his arms came up of themselves, but he forced them back down. "... no, i won't. we'll savethat for tonight, too." "i'll behave myself!" she laughed, pure joyin voice, eyes, and smile. "i bet myself you wouldn't and i won! you're tall, solid gold,clee darlingâ€”the absolute top." "thanks, sweetheart. i wish that were true,"he said, soberly. "but i can't help wondering if two such hellions as you and i are canmake a go of marriageâ€”no, cancel that. we'll

do itâ€”all we have to figure out is how." "i know what you mean. not at firstâ€”it'llbe purely wonderful then. after five years, say, when the glamor has worn off and i'vehad three of our six children and two of them are in bed with the epizootic and i'm allfrazzled out and you're strung up tight as a bowstring with overwork and...." "hold it! uh-uh. no. if we can live togethersix monthsâ€”or even six weeksâ€”without killing each other, we'll have it made. it's at firstthat it'll be rugged. no matter how rugged it gets, though, we'll know one thing forcertain sure. we couldn't live apart. that'll give us enough leverage. check?"

"and double check." she giggled sunnily. "i'lltake care of any and all situations, whatever they are, that arise in the first six months.you'll be responsible for the next sixty years. that's a perfectly fair and equitable divisionof responsibility. now kiss me and we'll go." when garlock cut the gunther blocks, however,james' thought came instantly in. "been trying to get you for twenty minutes," and in a coupleof seconds he brought garlock and belle up to date. "so fatso's been waiting in evans'office. he's throwing fits all over the place and evans and macey are going quietly mad." "he'll have to wait," garlock decided instantly."no matter how many fits he has, no such decision is going to be made until there's enough ofa galactic council to make it."

"well, you'll have to tell him that yourself.in person." "i'll do just that, and tell him so he'llstay told." "okay, but shake a...." belle and garlock 'ported out into the main,arms around each other like a couple of college freshmen. "... leg-gâ€”ugâ€”gug...." james gurgled. "belle!" lola shrieked. "whyâ€”belleâ€”bellamy!" "what goes on here?" james demanded. "nothing much," garlock replied, althoughhe blushed almost as deeply as belle did.

"we just decided to quit fighting, is all.cut the rope, junior, and let the old bucket drop."

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