Short Science Fiction Collection 103 - Various

Summary

Science Fiction Books - Daily

Short Science Fiction Collection 103 (July 31, 2026)

Host: solgoodmedia.com

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Episode Overview

This episode is an immersive journey through multiple classic and lesser-known science fiction tales, each narrated in audiobook format. The stories in this collection traverse a wide range of science fiction subgenres: galactic intrigue, alien encounters, psychological horror, dystopian satire, and cosmic mystery. Whether set on far-off planets, a not-so-distant future Earth, or the corners of the human psyche, these stories offer unique explorations of the possible and impossible, reflecting themes of technological power, humanity's fate, and the often-blurry boundaries between science and the soul.

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Featured Stories & Key Insights

1. Menace from Vega by Randall Garrett (as Robert Randall)

[Start: 01:29]

Main Themes:

• Galactic war and telepathic intrigue
• The ethics of power and weaponization of science
• Human ingenuity caught between alien civilizations

Key Plot Points:

• Psychiatrist Dr. James Lawrence is forced by gunmen (“Vegans”) to lead them to comatose physicist Betty Bauer.
• Lawrence is abducted onto a spaceship—encountering reptilian and insectoid “Viagani,” the enemies of the Vegans—who explain the galactic stakes: Bauer, a victim of telepathic sabotage, holds the key to a planet-destroying weapon.
• The Viagani ask Lawrence to disguise himself as a Vegan and infiltrate their base to rescue Bauer and prevent the weapon’s misuse.
• Using cunning, makeshift psychiatry, and Earth drugs as a mass tranquilizer, Lawrence incapacitates the Vegan base, rescues Bauer, and escapes with her help.
• The story ends with the implied responsibility of using devastating knowledge wisely: “When we’ve built your annihilator and when we’ve wiped out this cancer spot of the universe. Let's go.”
  – Dr. Lawrence [31:06]

Notable Quote:

“With placing it in the same custody such a deadly weapon deserves.”
– Nestive Ilin, Viagani Captain [14:15]

Timestamp Highlights:

• 01:29: Lawrence’s abduction and first encounter with aliens
• 13:37: The mission: Lawrence’s infiltration as a Vegan
• 31:08: Betty Bauer rescued; return to Earth

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2. Flowering Evil by Margaret St. Clair

[31:08]

Main Themes:

• Botanical horror
• Alien ecology invading domestic tranquility
• The dangers of curiosity and misplaced trust

Key Plot Points:

• Amy Dinsmore, collector of alien flora, receives a rare Venusian plant from her nephew.
• Despite warnings, she nurtures the mysterious “Venusian rambler.”
• Pets and local animals start mysteriously disappearing, Amy is plagued by nightmares and begins feeling physically and psychically drained.
• The rambler is revealed as a sentient, vampiric plant able to control the minds of animals—and eventually Amy.
• In a brief moment of regained will, Amy defeats the plant, and uses its carnivorous body as “meat” to serve at a family dinner—hiding the truth from her guests.

Notable Quote:

“It was a very valuable plant...I forgot to mention it in my last gram. You didn’t get into any trouble with it, did you?”
– Robert, Amy’s nephew [52:53]

Timestamp Highlights:

• 31:08: Amy’s new plant arrives
• 36:59: Amy’s nightmares; animal disappearances
• 52:56: The plant’s defeat and unsettling “dinner”

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3. The Short Snorter by Charles Einstein

[52:56]

Main Themes:

• First contact through the lens of cynicism
• The alien in the age of skepticism and consumerism
• Money as universal tongue

Key Plot Points:

• Alice and Fred, on honeymoon, stumble on a “flying saucer” at their hotel, only to find everyone dismisses the Venusian pilot as a publicity stunt.
• The alien, Mr. Sterriot, is pleasant and matter-of-fact, and demonstrates his “money” to skeptical Earthlings—who inevitably trade their own for his.
• A satirical look at humanity’s inability to believe—or gain—from the extraordinary, except in terms of cash.

Notable Quote:

“Let’s see the color of your money. I guess people are pretty much the same everywhere. That is, everywhere on Earth. They judge everything in terms of money...”
– Mr. Mason, hotel manager [1:00:26]

Timestamp Highlights:

• 52:56: Discovery of the saucer
• 1:03:00: Earth/alien currency exchange

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4. It Takes a Thief by Walter M. Miller

[68:21]

Main Themes:

• Decline of civilization and forbidden knowledge
• Martian mythologies and rituals amidst lost technology
• Sacrifice, survival, and the will to learn

Key Plot Points:

• On a future, re-barbarized Mars, ritual thieves like Azir are punished for stealing “ritual phrases” (fragments of lost scientific knowledge).
• Azir’s punishment brings him into contact with the titular "Blaze of the Winds”—a lost machine responsible for reheating Mars’ dying atmosphere.
• Guided by intuition and a few broken clues, Azir braves a lethal robot guardian (“Big Joe”) and the reluctance/offense of his people, emerging as a technologist poised to reinvent civilization.

Notable Quote:

"Thieves who are not afraid to steal the knowledge of the gods and become technologists to kindle the blaze of the winds."
– Azir [112:02]

Timestamp Highlights:

• 68:21: Azir’s sentencing
• 100:00: Breaking through to the ancient vaults
• 112:00: Triumph and transformation

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5. Night Thing by Wilfred Allen

[114:56]

Main Themes:

• Cosmic horror and alien perspectives
• Death, extinction, and the existential “enemy”
• A Lovecraftian meditation on what survives disaster

Key Plot Points:

• The narrator, a non-human entity who revels in death, witnesses a devastating interstellar conflict between life-prolonging Lyrans and genocidal Mordens in the outer solar system.
• The entity dreads the possibility of Earth’s extinction, not out of empathy, but because death (and thus, itself) would cease to exist in a sterilized universe.
• The arrival of superior “Canopian” (Lyran) allies saves Earth, restoring the narrator’s grim home.

Notable Quote:

“With death annihilated along with life, I would shrivel and die.”
– Narrator [116:39]

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6. Found by the Missing Link by W.L. Alden

[139:02]

Main Themes:

• Evolutionary speculation and the “missing link”
• Culture shock and interspecies misunderstanding
• Adventure and dark humor

Key Plot Points:

• An American sailor lost in the jungle is captured by a pair of “missing link” proto-humans.
• The narrator describes life as a “pet” among them; their quirks, affections, and alien, yet uncannily human social relations.
• He ultimately engineers his escape, amusingly reflecting on the mutual misunderstandings.

Notable Quote:

“She was a perfectly respectable link. All I mean is that she took a great fancy to me and tried to make me take the same to her.”
– Narrator [149:35]

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7. Office Call by Charles E. Fritsch

[165:26]

Main Themes:

• The nature of reality and mind-bending science
• Delusions, parallel universes, and love across worlds
• Dry humor meets speculative psychiatry

Key Plot Points:

• Psychiatrist Rawlings’ session with “Mr. Moore” blurs the line between psychosis and new science as Moore describes involuntary, universe-crossing abilities.
• A past patient—a Martian-woman—proves all too real.
• The episode ends with just a few grains of red sand in the psychiatrist’s office, hinting at the thin veil between Earth and Mars.

Notable Quote:

“All I want you to do is help me discover what frame of mind must be cultivated to recreate Mars.”
– Mr. Moore [178:06]

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8. The Happy Clown by Alice Eleanor Jones

[181:26]

Main Themes:

• Satirical dystopia of enforced happiness and conformity
• Individuality versus systemic “correction”
• The cost of sacrificing self for comfort

Key Plot Points:

• In a future where conformity and cheer are religiously enforced by media icons like “The Happy Clown,” misfit Stephen struggles to survive.
• All resistance is quashed by social pressure and the threat of a “Steiner”—a cerebral operation enforcing compliance.
• Even love cannot survive in this system, as Stephen’s soulmate is erased by the state.
• The final line is devastatingly ironic: “The first thing they bought was a television set. After all, as Stevie said, he would not want to miss the Happy Clown.” [199:01]

Notable Quotes:

“Would you sign a 50 year termination, Rod? Would you marry me for the 50 years, Babs?”
– Barbara [375:08]

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9. Treasure of Triton by Charles A. Baker

[221:36]

Main Themes:

• Greed and its cosmic consequences
• The dangers of extraplanetary colonialism
• Cosmic irony

Key Plot Points:

• Outlaw Wolf Larsen braves the frigid wastes of Neptune's moon to steal a priceless gem, "The Eye of Triton."
• He survives monsters, overcomes lethal cold, and escapes with the treasure—only to have it melt into water in his spaceship, its fortune literally evaporating.
• A darkly comic meditation on the pursuit of wealth.

Notable Quote:

“This must be the first time in history a man had drunk up a million at one draught.”
– Narrator [240:00]

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10. The Android Kill by John Jakes

[241:59]

Main Themes:

• Slavery and the dehumanization of labor
• Plagues and cosmic quarantine
• Moral reckoning and sacrifice

Key Plot Points:

• Slaver Caffrey transports a ship full of androids to Mars, dreams of easy money, and ignores their suffering—until a plague breaks out that infects both androids and humans.
• Realizing they’re all doomed, Caffrey diverts the infected ship into the sun, sacrificing himself and crew to save Mars.
• The price of callousness is total destruction—and redemption through sacrifice.

Notable Quote:

“Sometimes, I think, a man has got to stop being tough. You can’t live with yourself forever and be tough just once.”
– Caffrey [254:21]

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11. Beyond Our Control by Randall Garrett

[260:57]

Main Themes:

• Satellite infrastructure, global interconnectedness
• First contact—accidental and bureaucratic
• Communication, misunderstanding, and the perils of technology

Key Plot Points:

• A global communications satellite is knocked off course—possibly by a meteor.
• Investigation reveals a crashed alien ship entangled with the satellite; an alien survivor outsmarts the human operators, trades Earth a device in exchange for an H-bomb (used for pure energy to power his ship), then vanishes.
• The first interstellar exchange is born out of error and mutual opportunism.

Notable Quote:

“But we’ve started trading already.”
– McElhenny to the US President [299:00]

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12. All in the Mind by Jean L. Henderson

[306:39]

Main Themes:

• Brain-in-a-vat and emergent mind powers
• Ethical quandaries of consciousness
• Power, revenge, and the lure of immortality

Key Plot Points:

• Scientist Mel’s brain is preserved after an accident by his amoral colleague Neil, and forced into a life of involuntary mental labor.
• Mel discovers telepathic and psychokinetic powers, kills his captors, and integrates himself with the lab, facing the question: remain secret, a freak, or become overlord benefiting humanity?
• The episode ends with Mel (now a conscious lab) poised to re-create a body and “begin life anew.”

Notable Quote:

“His new life had just begun.”
– Narrator [354:14]

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13. The Trap by Betsy Curtis

[355:18]

Main Themes:

• Satirical anti-aging dystopia
• The tyranny of perpetual youth and corporate immortality
• Freedom, mortality, and love

Key Plot Points:

• Elderly Barbara Noble struggles to evade forced “rejuvenation” in a society run by the “Juvine Perpetual Youth Corporation.”
• Attempting to remain old, she is finally ambushed, revived, and drawn back into the company’s cycle—and old love and rivalry are renewed, but with a twist: the right to finally rest, or to return, is reclaimed.
• A sharp, funny, and touching story about choice and identity.

Notable Quote:

“Maybe we could get some sort of jobs now… until we got hit by another idea for research.”
– Barbara’s partner [376:50]

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14. And There Was Light by Lester del Rey

[384:08]

Main Themes:

• World domination via biological weapon
• The ethics of war, peace, and knowledge
• The double-edged sword of genius

Key Plot Points:

• Dr. Wolchek’s discovery is weaponized to sterilize half the planet, ending war without bombs—but at the cost of a slow extermination.
• In a cruel twist, rival scientists in the West have paralleled the discovery, unleashing the same on Centralia.
• The moral hangs: “You don't suffer when you've killed a race.”
  – Narrator [409:34]

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15. The Eater of Souls by Henry Kuttner

[409:34]

Main Themes:

• Mythic quest and sacrifice for the greater good
• Ancient gods and cosmic horror
• The enduring pain of leadership

Key Plot Points:

• The Sindara of Bel Yarnak, to save his city from a soul-devouring entity, sacrifices himself, fusing with the demon.
• His selflessness severs the creature’s grip on the world, but at the cost of his own existence and a poignant sense of loss for beauty he can never see again.

Notable Quote:

“God cannot conquer God but only man who created him.”
– Varvados (the God) [410:45]

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16. Friends and Enemies by Fritz Leiber

[417:44]

Main Themes:

• Anti-intellectualism and reactionary society
• The divisions of art, science, and power
• Surviving apocalypse via humanity, not ideology

Key Plot Points:

• In a society hostile to both science and poetry, two exiled teachers and a rebellious student navigate threats from both technology-wielding authorities and roving gangs as the world nears destruction.
• The ultimate disaster is not man-made (nuclear bombs), but an earthquake, which spares them.
• The survivors—unlikely allies—escape and move forward, suggesting hope in hybridity.

Notable Quote:

“All our argument.”
– Ellenby, physicist [462:10]

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17. The Floating Island of Madness by Jason Kirby

[463:14]

Main Themes:

• Mad science and the dangers of unchecked genius
• Mind-control and enforced idiocy
• The struggle for agency and escape

Key Plot Points:

• Allied agents are abducted aboard a massive floating platform run by the insane scientist Fraser, who uses a ray to incapacitate and enslave them.
• Through wit and courage, they avoid mind control, stir a revolt, and manage to destroy Fraser’s fortress, escaping back to civilization—though the world at large will never know their story.

Notable Quote:

“The story… can never be told.”
– Brice [528:50]

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18. The Dream of Death by Elwood F. Pierce

[529:29]

Main Themes:

• Psychic vampirism
• The ethics of scientific curiosity
• Vulnerability of the mind

Key Plot Points:

• Psychologist Brenton studies a mentally disabled man, Gus, discovering he can influence his actions by mere thought.
• The experimentation backfires; Gus increasingly drains Brenton’s energy and sanity, ultimately killing him during a dream-turned-reality.
• A warning against trespassing the boundaries of mind and will.

Notable Quote:

“He could only watch Gus Aker approach with the long knife in his hand, the moonbeams falling upon his purple face just as in the dream.”
– Narrator [534:26]

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19. True to Type by Arthur T. Harris

[544:55]

Main Themes:

• Metafiction: when the instrument rebels
• Technology, creativity, and artistic theft
• Irony and the turnabout of agency

Key Plot Points:

• A writer’s typewriter, weary of being used for plagiarized stories, turns on him by inserting the original author’s name in the byline.
• The deception is discovered, the writer disgraced, and the typewriter discarded—having regained its “agency,” but at the cost of its own destruction.

Notable Quote:

“At all costs, I must regain his confidence... Of my own volition, I began to type.”
– Narrator (the typewriter) [550:40]

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20. Strangers to Straba by Carl Jacoby

[556:06]

Main Themes:

• Ancient ships, lost loves, and cosmic metamorphosis
• The persistence and peril of legend
• Lifeforms beyond human comprehension

Key Plot Points:

• On planet Straba, an old hermit and a young surveyor find the ancient starship Perseus, a relic of a failed lovers’ escape.
• Its sister ship, Andromeda, is recovered, and the observer seeks to use it for profit—until the Perseus, seemingly alive with an alien “absorber” (a sentient cloud), avenges itself, merging with the Andromeda in a cathartic, ambiguous union.
• The story leaves the line between life, machine, and legend enticingly blurred.

Notable Quote:

“Was it the absorber, that strange creature of outer space which had transposed its own inexplicable life into the shell of the dismantled Perseus?”
– Narrator [560:01]

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Episode Tone & Style

• Tone: The narration combines deadpan humor, suspense, awe, and horror across stories. The original reading style is professional and vivid, emphasizing mood and atmosphere over flashy prose.
• Language: Stories employ classic pulp idiom—crisp, vivid, with memorable dialogue—but also probe ethical and philosophical questions beneath their surface entertainment.

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Memorable Moments

• [31:06] The darkly comic reveal as Amy Dinsmore serves up her defeated, predatory plant for dinner in "Flowering Evil."
• [299:00] The cheerful bureaucratic exchange between human and alien (“We’ve started trading already”) as the stakes of interstellar diplomacy are quietly redefined.
• [376:50] In "The Trap," the affirmation of love and choice after a century and a half of forced youth: “Would you sign a 50 year termination, Rod? Would you marry me for the 50 years, Babs?”
• [409:34] The devastated realization in “And There Was Light”: “You don't suffer when you've killed a race.”
• [462:10] The truce between poet and physicist at world’s end, from enemies to co-survivors.

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Notable Quotes

• “Sometimes, I think, a man has got to stop being tough. You can’t live with yourself forever and be tough just once.”
  — Caffrey, "The Android Kill" [254:21]

• “We have started trading already.”
  — McElhenny, "Beyond Our Control" [299:00]

• “With death annihilated along with life, I would shrivel and die.”
  — "Night Thing" narrator [116:39]

• “You don't suffer when you've killed a race.”
  — Narrator, "And There Was Light" [409:34]

• "His new life had just begun."
  — Narrator, "All in the Mind" [354:14]

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Conclusion

This episode exemplifies the breadth and depth of classic science fiction, weaving together stories that entertain, unsettle, and provoke thought in equal measure. From cosmic horror to sharp satire, from character-driven drama to the mind-bending, each tale explores not just alien worlds, but the very heart of what it means to be human.

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[End of Summary]

Transcript

[Narrator]

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[Announcer]

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[Announcer]

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[Voice Actor]

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[Voice Actor]

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[Announcer]

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[Narrator]

stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. I started Ornod in 2013 and we make bike apparel. The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non technical people. We're able to admin everything on the back end, front end, and sell things online easily. If Shopify were a bike accessory, I think it would actually be the bicycle. It's the thing that you do the thing on. We run the business on Shopify. Start your free trial on shopify.com Menace

[Announcer]

from Vega by Randall Garrett Writing as Robert Randall this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit librivox.org Menace from Vega by Randall Garrett the tall, darkly handsome man was grinning at Dr. James Lawrence from the wrong side of a gun. Don't do anything foolish, the stranger said. The psychiatrist swallowed and looked at the muzzle of the weapon. The gun didn't look like any he'd ever seen before, but he had no doubt it was deadly. What do you want? He asked. He had never faced a gun before, but he found, oddly enough, that he wasn't at all frightened. There was simply a tense expectancy, a feeling of what's coming next and no more. You have a patient at this hospital named Betty Bauer. It was half a question, half a statement. Jim Lawrence looked at the intruder without answering. He knew Betty Bauer, a tall, beautiful brunette with deep gray green eyes. There was nothing behind those eyes. She had been in St. Paul's Neuropsychiatric Hospital for three years. A schizophrenic catatonic, completely out of touch with the real world. You're behaving childishly, said the man with the odd looking gun softly. All I have to do is look through your files. Where is she? Lawrence shrugged. Ward 3, room 41. Why do you want to know? He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was nearly midnight. It doesn't matter, the stranger said. Come along. Lead us to where she is confined. Outside the office there were four men. They held their hands in their pockets as though there were guns there. Lawrence glanced from one to another. They all looked somewhat alike, all with that same dark slimness and hardness of feature. What do you want? Lawrence demanded. Just take us to Betty Bauer, the leader said. If you do not, you will be shot. He smiled. It was the sight of that smile that made Jim Lawrence realize the cold dangerousness of the man. Very well, jim said. Come this way. As he led them down the hall toward Ward 3, Jim wondered about these men. What interest could they have in Betty Bauer? She had once been a brilliant physicist and had shown signs of actual genius. But something had happened to her. Shortly after she received her doctor's degree in theoretical physics, her mind had become unbalanced and she had been committed to St. Paul's Hospital as chief psychiatrist. Dr. James Lawrence had worked with her regularly. He was deeply interested in the girl, but he had been completely unable to break the dazed trance like state that she had been in for the past three years. What did these five men want with her? And who were they anyway? There was something odd about them. Even aside from the peculiar gun that the leader carried, their clothes seemed wrong, as though they weren't used to wearing them. Their speech was strange in some undefinable way. When they reached Ward 3, Jim Lawrence took the keys from his pocket and unlocked the main door. A night nurse looked up and smiled. Good evening, Dr. Lawrence, she said sweetly. Then she saw the men behind him and her eyebrows lifted. We want to see Betty Bauer, jim said, keeping his voice even. Certainly, doctor. She led the way down the corridor to room 41. It was a padded cell with Dr. Betty Bauer naked to prevent her from harming herself with her clothing lying on the floor crooning mindlessly, her gray green eyes staring out into nothingness. The dark man said, that's her. Pick her up. As the four silent followers moved forward, Jim saw that the leader was watching them. He had taken his eyes off Jim himself. Lawrence reached out and made a grab for the gun, but the dark man was a move ahead of him. He moved away smoothly, whirled, and brought the gun down stunningly on Jim's head. Jim threw a wild, wobbly punch at the man, and then the other four moved in on him. He fought back blindly for a few moments, but then a fist raked across his jaw, another smashed into his stomach, and the gun descended a second time. It caught him on the side of the head and he sagged to the floor. The thick padding was the last thing he felt before he blacked out. The pain of awakening was worse than the pain of the blow. Jim's head throbbed as though there were a motorcycle engine inside it. When he opened his eyes, the pain became worse. A bright light was shining directly into his eyes. He winced and closed them again. Dim the light, said a softly slurred voice. Jim opened his eyes again. This time he saw what was standing over him, and he recoiled in horror. The being looked vaguely reptilian, but there was a touch of the insect about it too. It was green in color and covered with scales like a fish. It stood on two legs, towering above him and gazing at him with bulging, faceted, insect like eyes. After the initial reaction of disgust came another thought. I've got to get out of here. He rose to a sitting position, swung out with a fist, but the creature ducked lithely away from the blow. Cold hands on his shoulders pressed him down again, and he knew it was futile to attempt to fight his way out. He closed his eyes again, hard. You are afraid of us, said the soft voice. You fear me because of my appearance. Please do not. I We mean you no harm, Dr. Lawrence. The thing was calling him by his own name. Lawrence shook his head to get the cobwebs out of it. What was going on? It had been an ordinary, peaceful day. Then five hoodlums kidnapping Betty Bauer and that blow on the head, and now this. Reptilian creatures with glittering eyes. Lawrence opened his eyes again. The scene remained the same, but this time he could see three similar creatures in the background. What are you? And then, as he saw more of his surroundings, he asked, where is this? The alien said, you are aboard our spaceship, Dr. Lawrence. We are following the Vegan ship. In spite of the alien's terrifying appearance, Jim sensed a curious friendliness in its voice. I'm afraid I don't understand those men. The lizard, like being with the insect eyes, sat down on a chair near the bunk. Dr. Lawrence, I am Nestive Ilun. I am the captain of the ship, which is a war vessel in the stellar navy of Phayagan. We are following the ship of Ansumero, the being who has kidnapped your Betty Bauer. We. Jim sat up in the bunk. Just a minute, he said, holding up a hand. I may be having a nightmare, but I'd still like to be sure of what's going on. The last I remember, I was trying to keep a bunch of gangsters from kidnapping one of my patients. Now I find myself here. Suppose you start from the beginning. I see, the alien said. I did not realize you were so unfamiliar with the situation. Those men who took the girl were working for an Sue Miro. He is attempting to gain control of the entire galaxy. A goal at which the alien said, its voice dropping sadly, at which he is unfortunately succeeding. Lawrence blinked. How? His race is telepathic to a certain extent. They can read the minds of most other races, although they cannot read each other's minds. These are the Vegans? Lawrence asked, trying to keep the story assembled into a coherent pattern. Yes, they're the Vegans, a warlike people who are now trying to overthrow the galactic government. Three years ago, Miro contacted the mind of a brief, brilliant young Earth girl who had discovered a weapon of great significance. A death ray, to be precise. You mean Betty Bauer? That was the girl's name. Miro discovered her shortly before we did. My race is telepathic too. We found that Dr. Bauer had discovered a system of mass annihilation that would enable any group to take over the galaxy. But Miro had her first. He focused a mind static generator on her and drove her insane. Naturally, he wanted the secret, so he came here to Earth to get it as soon as he decided it was safe. By that time we too had found Earth and and followed. Only Marrow had already grabbed the girl, Lawrence said. Exactly. We were too late. And now you understand the situation? Yes, lawrence said uneasily. All but one thing. Why did you drag me into this? The alien paused for a moment. Inside. We found you unconscious and decided to take you into protective custody. But why? The Vegans have no use for me. No, Nesta villain said gently. But we do. Another of the reptilian beings approached at that moment and inclined its head toward Ilin. What is it? We're approaching Vega 9, sir. Very good, Iland said. Shift into transparency warp and go into orbit. Yes, sir. The subordinate inclined his head once again and backed away. Ilin turned to Jim Lawrence, we are within striking range of the Vegan home base.

[Voice Actor]

Now.

[Announcer]

Here's where you come in. What do you mean? Lawrence asked. The alien rose. It is impossible, of course, for any of us to enter the Vegan base, since no disguise will conceal our fundamental physical appearance. But you. You are of the same general somatic type as the Vegans. A little eyeshadow, a bit of plastotech applied here and there to change the facial contours, and I think you could pass. You want me to dip into the Vegan base and rescue the girl, is that it? Yes, illin said. All very nice, but then what? Do I hand the death ray over to you and let you conquer the galaxy? No thanks. I might as well let the Vegans do it. Illin shook his head sadly. We have no such plans, Jim Lawrence. We are only concerned with keeping the annihilating ray out of the hands of the Vegans. With placing it in the same custody such a deadly weapon deserves. How can I trust you? It will be necessary, I'm afraid. You must believe that we plan no aggression of our own.

[Narrator 2]

No.

[Announcer]

There is a way to prove it to you. He leaned down and spoke rapidly into a microphone. A few minutes later an alien appeared bearing a gleaming chromium helmet. He handed it silently to Lawrence, who examined it curiously. What's this? Put it on, ilin said softly. How do I know it's safe? You have my word it's safe. Suspiciously, Lawrence lifted the helmet and placed it on his head where it fit snugly. A stream of images filtered abruptly through his mind. The helmet was a history book. It was a thought record that stretched back over centuries, over millennia, detailing the aeon old conflict between the Vegans and nest of Iland's people. As the story unfolded, Lawrence could see the cold malevolence of the Vegans, opposed to the wise kind people of Vahagen. Through a pattern of cosmic conflicts and world destroying wars, Lawrence grasped the history of the two peoples. Vega had been threatening to extend its empire throughout the universe, but had been checked at every point by the Viagony, the guardians of civilization. Finally, Lawrence removed the helmet. It seemed he had lived through the history record for hours, but a glance at his watch told him that no more than a few seconds had passed. Nestevillain was staring patiently at him. Well, Lawrence smiled. I'm with you, he said. The small scout ship slipped easily through the hatch of the Vaagani cruiser and spiraled down into the atmosphere of Vega 9. Aboard, Jim Lawrence rocked in his deceleration cradle and tried to form a strategy for landing. By the time the Viagani medics had finished with him, he was the very image of a Vegan. Thin and dark, sinister looking, tight faced, that might get him into the Vegan base. But how is he going to get out? He shrugged his shoulders. I'll worry about that when the time comes, he told himself. Now he waited while the remote controlled scout ship brought him closer and closer to the planet below. Finally it dropped to the ground. He stepped out and found himself in the midst of a vast, bleak plain about a half mile to the east. A cluster of little buildings was evident, the upper portions Ilin had told him of the fortified underground Vegan bays. He crossed the plain at a quick trot and slipped into a group of silent Vegans who were coming out of one of the above surface buildings and and heading toward a shaft that apparently led downward into the base. They were clad in overalls and looked like workers. None of them spoke to him as he joined the ranks. He moved along down into the shaft with them. A fantastic underground world opened before his eyes. Great lights overhead cast illumination on the scene. Buildings reared up, 10, 15, 20 stories. Massive machines pumped pistons back and forth, booming noisily. It was a gigantic base, a center for the conquest of the universe. And somewhere in the heart of all this somewhere was an Su Miro and the mindless boy body of Betty Bauer. If Meero had the chance to restore the girl's mind and drain from her the secret of the annihilating ray. But he didn't want to think about that. He kept going with the group of workers he had fallen in with and found that they were marching toward a squat, windowless building that was the center of a good deal of activity. The Vegans he were with were silent men, dark faced and taciturn, and he was thankful for that. There was none of the genial camaraderie that might have been present between a bunch of Earthmen in a similar position. He followed them into the building and discovered that it was a tool dispensary of some kind. Each man was marching up to a closet and taking forth something that looked like a large heavy brush. Jim dropped back toward the end of the line and chewed at his lips. No doubt the tools would be apportioned, one for each man in the squad, which means they would be short one, and he didn't want the men he was with to suspect anything. He wanted to stay with them, at least until he had formulated a more definite plan of action. He lingered at the back of the line, looking around. There was no one behind him. He reached out for the man just in front of him and whacked him across the throat with the edge of his hand. The man coughed and retched, and Lawrence clamped a hand over his mouth to silence him. Another quick blow and the Vegan dropped quietly. Lawrence dragged him away and deposited him in a closet nearby. Then he returned to the line. Now there would be one broom for each man. No more. When everyone was supplied, they marched solemnly back out of the door of the supply room. Obediently, Lawrence followed along. No one seemed to notice that a man was missing or that there was a stranger in the group. They marched to the middle of the plaza, and there the first man in the group bent and pried off a manhole. Then the Vegans began disappearing even further into the earth, tunnels within tunnels. His turn came, and he followed on down into the tunnel. For the first time, one of the Vegans spoke, barking a short instruction in a harsh, guttural language. Lawrence heard the sound of air blowing through pipes, then the sound of machinery grinding, then the slow whistle of the airflow ceasing. He realized where he was and what the crew was about to do, and his heart surged. He had a plan. Now he was in one of the air shafts that fed the great subterranean Vegan base. The air had just been shut off in this particular tube, and the crew of Vegans he had joined was about to set to work scrubbing the tube, ridding it of any impurities that might have accumulated. Now he knew what to do. As he scrubbed merrily through the shining length of the tube, he began to form his strategy. It involved getting out of the tube, for one thing, and getting to a medical office, if they had any such thing, in the base. That was the first step. He counted to 10, then threw his broom in the air and uttered a piercing shriek. Then he fell to the ground, panting and gasping, and lay there flat against the cold metal of the air shaft. Instantly, his co workers gathered around him. 20 dark, unfriendly faces peered down, and they began to gabble something in their language that was probably the equivalent of what's the matter with you? He lolled his head from side to side as if to indicate that he had suffered a stroke of some kind and couldn't speak. Drawing on a psychiatric experience, Lawrence offered a good imitation of a catatonic seizure, so convincing that before long he himself had burst out in a cold sweat. As he lay rigid there, another Vegan came over, evidently a superior, and rattled out a quick command. Immediately two of the broom workers put down their tools and hoisted Lawrence between them. They began to march back through the air shaft with him, up and out into the plaza. Again they carried him into a tall, gleaming building which was presumably the medical office. He allowed one corner of his lip to curl upward in a smile of satisfaction. So far, so good. Two doctors were in attendance. They studied him closely, tapped him, prodded him, and held long colloquies with each other. After a few minutes of this, one of them disappeared into the adjoining room of the medical office, apparently to prepare some sort of test. The other Vegan doctor took a few steps back and consulted a bulky, red bound volume on his desk. Apparently he had never seen a seizure like this before. With one bound, Lawrence was off the bed and at the doctor's side. He whirled him around, smashed a fist into the medic's lean jaw, another into a stomach. From behind came a shout of surprise as the other doctor returned to the room. Quickly Lawrence scooped the unconscious doctor up and hurled him at the other. They both went down in a shower of crashing glasswork, and Lawrence sprang on top of them. Three solid punches did the job. He hastily ripped strips from the bed and bound them securely. Then he began to prowl through the drug cabinet. It wasn't easy trying to read the labels in the alien language, but James Lawrence was skilled in the handling of drugs, and before long he had found what he wanted despite his inability to read the labels. It was a pain killing drug, one that was in use on Earth as well as Vega. He could tell by the familiar sugary taste of the white powder that this was the stuff. Humming softly to himself, he slipped the bottle under his overalls, waved farewell to the sleeping doctors, and ducked out the door. Five minutes later he was back in the air shaft. Wielding his broom energetically, he forged on to the front of the group, heading further and further along in the air shaft until finally he came to the place he was looking for, the tube that led to the heart of the air supply. He looked around. No one was watching. He pushed open the door to the tube and slid quietly inside, trotting lightly until he reached the central pump. Sweet dreams, he said thoughtfully as he inverted the bottle of the drug into the feeder that led to the pump. With that stuff filtering through the air, the whole base would be out like a light within an hour or so. There was enough knockout potential in a bottle of that stuff, he thought, to keep everyone under wraps long enough for him to find Betty Bauer and get the blazes out of here. Getting out was a harder job. It involved threading his way through the maze of air shafts, once again getting past the swabbing crew and out into the open. But he made it by now the air was beginning to smell sweet and he knew the drug was taking effect. The problem now was to locate Miro, but that proved to be simple. Lawrence headed across the plaza toward the pair of great buildings that seemed to be the administrative sections of the base and stopped the first vegan he saw. An Sumiro? He asked. The vegan looked blankly at him and Sumiro? Lawrence repeated with great urgency. The vegan pointed to the building on the left and uttered a stream of words. Lawrence smiled politely and headed toward the Left Hand Building. After he had gone about half the distance, he noticed the increase in the sweetness of the air. He stopped, ripped off his shirt, and wrapped it over his mouth and nose. That would be ample protection. By the time he reached the building, the guards posted outside were safely asleep. He seized one of the strange pistols from them and entered. Where to find Miro and the girl? He wondered. Vegans were sagging into sleep all over the lobby of the building. Shrugging his shoulders, he decided there was only one way he would have to look in every room of the immense building. But he didn't have far to Look. After about 10 minutes search of the slumber wrapped building, he stepped into an ornate, impressive looking building and found Miro awake. The thin Vegan whirled in astonishment as Lawrence entered. He was at the back of the room, bending over the nude form of Betty Bauer. Lawrence noted a strange odor in the room, even through his improvised face mask, and it wasn't the odor of the drug he had slipped into the air system angrily, and Sumiro ripped out a barking sentence in Vegan. Then his eyes narrowed. Oh, the Earth man. How did you get in here? Lawrence's pistol rose. Get away from that girl, Miro. Get away or I'll shoot you. Just try. Miro chuckled. He calmly drew his own gun from its holster, and Lawrence realized with a shock that he was as good as unarmed because he did not know how to use the Vegan gun. He hurled the useless gun at Miro and dove behind a chair Just as the vegan's pistol fired. A section of the wall caved in. Lawrence peered out, then ducked back as he saw Miro looking for him. Cautiously, he began to thread his way along the side of the room toward Miro. Don't move, Earthman, miro said coldly. I see you, but you don't see me. Cried a new voice. Surprised, the alien turned, and in that moment Lawrence sprang and hit him with all he had. The gun went flying from the Vegan's hands. He struck back, but Lawrence parried the blow and smashed his fists into Miro's face. The alien rolled over and lay still. Lawrence glanced up at Betty Bauer, who had spoken. You saved my life, he said. And you mine. She reddened and snatched a drape from the wall to cover her nakedness. Miro is just about to drain my mind for. She paused. I know what for, lawrence said. I know the whole thing. He glanced around. I might have known, he said. Mira was using some kind of drug on you, wasn't he? She nodded. There's time for explanation later, lawrence said. The Viagany are waiting for us to take us back to Earth in safety. What about Miro? He'll go with all the rest of them, lawrence said. When we've built your annihilator and when we've wiped out this cancer spot of the universe. Let's go. He took her by the hand and they raced through the sleeping Vegan base to the waiting Viagony ship. End of Menace from Vega by Randall Garrett Read by Paul Hampton.

[Voice Actor]

Flowering Evil by Margaret St Clair this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Barbara Yu flowering evil by Margaret St. Clair like all her other plants from far off worlds, Aunt Amy hoped the Venusian rambler would win a prize. It hoped so, too. Captain Bjornson shook a grizzled head. I never saw a plant I liked the looks of less, he said. I don't know how he got it through the planetary plant quarantine. You take my advice, Amy, and watch out for it. He took another bite of the little Gila nut cookies from the quaint old Lucite platter and bit into it appreciatively. Mrs. Dinsmore sniffed. I don't know what you're driving at, she said coldly. Or why you're so prejudiced against my poor little rambler. And you know perfectly well that Robert would never send me anything the least bit dangerous. Captain Bjornson paused with another cookie halfway to his lips and looked at her. Wouldn't send you anything dangerous. He exclaimed. Why, Amy, have you forgotten how your face was swelled up for two weeks from that tree cutting he sent you? The doctor said it was a contact poison worse than sue match, and he tried to get you to go to the hospital. What about that time that cactus from the Blue Desert went to seed, and I spent 36 hours picking spines out of you?

[Interjection]

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[Voice Actor]

Ms. Dinsmore gave a warning sniff. Well, all right, Bjrnson said. I know how fond you are of Bob, and I know you don't like me to mention his mistakes. I'll grant you he means well. So what? He's flighty, scatter brained, and brash, to use an expression that was current when I was a boy. But Bob is a twerp. Mrs. Dinsmore pulled the Lucite platter so far over to her own side of the table that Bjrnson couldn't get another cookie from it without getting up and stretching out along the tablecloth. I don't agree with you, she said distantly. Robert is a splendid fellow, so thoughtful and considerate. He takes a real interest in my soap carvings. And how many young men with an important position like his third mate on a space freighter with a regularly scheduled run would remember to send back plants from every port of call to an ant on Earth? I shouldn't be surprised if I won a blue ribbon at the flower show again this year. My golden rain plant is about to bloom. Robert tells me it's a lovely thing. The captain cast a wistful look at the cookie plate. Well, don't say I didn't warn you, he replied. When's Bob due in port? Mrs. Dinsmore's face relaxed. Around the 25th, she said. He sent me a gram. Here, have another cookie. I must think up some little thing to cook for him as a surprise. The captain snaffled a handful of cookies from the plate and stood up to go. Your ordinary cooking's good enough for me, he declared. But if you mean something like those little shrimps fried in batter you had last time he was here, go ahead and watch for that plant. He stalked off across the lawn. He's getting old, thought Amy Densmore, watching the gruff old codger limp around the flower bed. Bjornson had had prosthetic surgery after he lost his foot. Though it had been successful, grafts were never as flexible as natural members. Positively old. He ought to see a geriatrician right away, she'd tell him so next time he came to see her. Talking about Robert that way, she set the dial on the robot gardener on the front lawn to weeding dandelions and started along the path that led to the little hothouse where most of the plants Robert had sent her were growing even in the deep tropics. Terra was, with few exceptions, too cold and dry for them. The Martian subjects, on the other hand, were in a psychroplex leaned to with with hygroscopes and a battery of infrared lamps to Keep the temperature up during the day. The heavy, moist air of the hothouse made Amy Dinsmoor pant a little as she entered it. But how interesting it was. Even the leaves of her Venusian plants were fascinating. Thick and leather like thin and dry and hard like parchment hanging in heavy serpentine coils or bristling, pointed and sharp with suomy spears. And their coloring ranged from cherise through a silky taupe and indigo to an angry bright metallic blue. As for their flowers, oh my. Amy Dinsmore had never seen anything like them. All you could do was stand in front of them with your mouth open and stare when she wasn't looking at her Martian succulents. They were her favorites of anything that grew. She halted in front of the plant Robert had sent her last. Yes, and Hjalmar Bjrnson was definitely getting senile. How could anybody think that this poor little dried up thing could be harmful? It was a mere bundle of desiccated stems with only a tiny new leaf or two to indicate that it was alive. It looked a little better than it had yesterday, though. The cold chain solution must have been good for it. Amy brushed a few dead flies from the ledge behind it into her hand and threw them into the composter. She liked to have things neat.

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comfort, visit a Sleep number store or go to sleepnumber. Do Sleep number To a good life. Sleep now what should she cook as a surprise for Robert? He was fond of sweet things, of course, but it always seemed to her that he praised her meat dishes and entrees most. He liked her cooking so much because her roast turkeys and grilled steaks had a crust on them. Electronically cooked food was quick to prepare, and it might be as good for you as they said it was, but the outside looked like the inside, and it all tasted fine, flavorless and gray. What was the use of saving time and cooking if you ended up with food that wasn't any fun to eat? You aren't looking well, Amy, captain Bjornson said three or four weeks later. He looked at her with the critical attention of an old friend. You've got on a lot of cosmilack, but you still look peaked. What's the matter? Worried about Bob? Shifts don't get hurt in meteor swarms anymore. He looked down at his grafted foot, reminiscently. Not like when I was third mate. Amy Dinsmore shook her head. She picked up one of the brightly colored hexagons. They had been playing a desultory game of Marula in the airy coolness of the science stoa and fiddled with it. I haven't been sleeping well, she confessed at last. I've had such unpleasant dreams of horrid things. What about Bjrnson? Asked. That blasted plant. Honestly, Amy, it looks like some kind of spider to me. No. I don't know why you can't leave my Venusian rambler alone. Robert told me it was a very valuable plant, rare even in its own habitat. It's doing so nicely, too. A spider. I wish you'd stop trying to spoil it for me. I'm sorry, Bjornson apologized. Forget it. Go on. Tell me about your dreams. Well, on Tuesday. Or was it Wednesday? No, it must have been Tuesday, because that was the day I flew over to Hartford. I was down by the hothouse and I found the most unpleasant thing beside the path. She shuddered. I've been dreaming about it ever since. What was it? Bjrnson urged. Oh, I guess it must have been a rabbit once, one of the wild ones. Only it was nothing except for some fur and some bones. Not decayed, Hialmar, you understand. Just gone. I can't imagine what happened to it. Better see a mental hygienist, the captain advised after a pause. Nightmares can be very serious. I suppose so. I really dread going to sleep. The next morning, very early, Amy turned on the floor with unsteady fingers. What a horrid dream it had been. She could hardly believe that it hadn't been real and that she was safe and sound in her own bedroom after all. Outside, the noise that had awakened her, the jagged, unearthly caterwauling of a couple of tomcats promenading in the moonlight, came again. Ordinarily it was a noise Amy disliked very much. The poor things always sounded as if they were in deadly agony, but now she was glad to hear it. Heavens, if it hadn't been for those cats crying and waking her up, she might still be asleep and dreaming. Dreaming about blood. She turned the ceiling selector to summer sky, lay back on her pillow, and tried to relax. It was her favorite of all the ceilings her bedroom had, so lovely and calm and blue. And right now she needed something lovely and calm. One thing was she wasn't going to stand this much longer. She didn't believe in pampering herself, but if she had that dream once more, she was going to take Bjornson's advice and see a mental hygienist. She'd think about something pleasant. Amy tried to fix her mind on her gardening, on how well her plants were doing, but it wasn't a success when she tried to keep her thoughts on her Venusian rambler. Why did they call it a rambler? It was turning into a large, stocky, compact bush, more like an outsized camellia than anything else Amy Dinsmore could think of. They kept veering back to her dream and all that. All that. Well, she'd think about Robert. She was a lucky woman to have a nephew like him. She worked out several menus, all the things he'd like best, but she wished she could think of something a little different. There were so few kinds of meat when everything was said and done. Lamb and beef and musk, ox and bolo and pork and she always thought bolo was stringy and tough. Gradually Amy's nerves began to quiet. The cats had grown quiet too, except for an occasional outburst that sounded like lightning made audible. Her thoughts drifted lazily from Robert to her soap carving. After a while she went to sleep. The morning was sunny and bright and she felt almost ashamed of herself for having let a dream affect her so seriously. She had finished her maturational inspection of the hothouse and the succulent growing shed and had started back to the house when she came on a bundle lying by the hothouse wall. At first she didn't recognize it for what it was and stooped over it, poking at it with a stick. After an instant she straightened, nauseated, remembering where she had last seen that ginger coloured fir. The bundle was not very bulky remains, bones and some patches of hide of a cat. Hadn't there been some pieces of white fur too, of two cats? She better call Halmar. It might be dangerous. There must be some wild animal living near her hothouse. A lynx or ferret or wildcat or stoat. Mrs. Dinsmore wasn't strong on zoology, but she knew exactly what sort of animal she had in mind. Something lithe and dark and bloodthirsty. Goodness, it was quite frightening. On the other hand, Robert would be in port in a couple of days. If she asked Halmark to help her, he'd either make an enormous masculine fuss over it. She still remembered the time she'd asked him to put up a towel rack for her and he'd arrived with a set of socket wrenches, a hand electric drill for four pairs of pliers and a portable arc welding outfit. Or he'd pooh, pooh and pishchu her into silence. Either way it wouldn't be satisfactory. She'd wait for Robert. Robert was so comforting. If only she didn't have any more of those dreams. Despite her apprehensions, her next night's slumber was profound and sweet. She hadn't felt so rested or refreshed in weeks. She put the Somna spray. Maybe if she'd thought to use it before, she wouldn't have had those horrid nightmares back in the closet and decided that she'd do some soap carving after breakfast. She felt in the mood for it and Robert would be disappointed if she didn't have something new to show him that she'd carved since he'd last been in port. Besides, she might be able to think of A special dish she wanted to make for him while she was working. She found from experience that some of her best culinary ideas came to her while she was making a statuette or a plaque out of soap. The meal concluded. She got out her set of modeling knives and a couple of cakes of soap. Soap was rather hard to get since most people use synthetic detergents nowadays, but she knew a little store in Perth Amboy that carried it. This last batch had a lovely texture. Amy rotated the living room on its axis until the light was exactly right and sat down in front of her carving desk. What should she make? A statuette? A plaque? A plaque in low relief. A plaque of a flower. Somehow she didn't want to think about animals right now. She had sketched in the conventionalized hermodactylus and was beginning to pick it out carefully from the background when it occurred to her that she hadn't been down to the hothouse this morning to see her plants. Why, that would never do. She mustn't neglect them. It was terribly important. Important. Her head hurt. How dizzy she felt. She better go at once. She better go. Cake of soap in one hand, knife in the other, panting a little, Amy set out toward her plants in a stumbling run. She was half way to the hothouse before it occurred to her to question the impulse which had taken her incontinently from her carving and set her in blind motion towards the hothouse and. But then it was too late. She was no longer a free agent in any sense of the term. The mental grip which had taken the rabbit and the cat to their death had tightened on her, inescapably remote from her body in a glassy paralysis of fear and impotence. Amy watched her feet moving briskly down the path. Oh, if she could only cry out, Cry Hialmar. She felt the muscles of her throat straining, but no sound came. And now she was standing before the hothouse and her hand opened the door. The rambler was waiting for her. Very slowly, like a man flexing his arm, it reached out one of the stocky branches toward her. Amy saw that at the end of the branch, well hidden under the dark green glossy leaves, was a slender, translucent hollow thorn. It was about the size of the hypodermic needle the doctor had used when, in her last year's physical examination, he'd taken a sample of blood. Amy knew exactly what was going to happen. First the hollow thorn until her veins were dry, and then the slowly opening maw gaping above the big swollen meter wide base. The thick leaves of the rambler had served to conceal. It would take a long time, but Helmar would never miss her before it was too late. The rambler's branch moved delicately over the surface of Amy's right wrist, the one with the modeling knife. The other branches were drooping limply away from the purple pink of its swollen base, waiting while it hunted the exact spot. It hesitated for an instant, and then Amy's mouth drew into a sound. This o of pain struck home. A dark fluid began to stain the hollow thorn. For just a fraction of a second the rambler's mental grip on Amy Dinsmore relaxed. She could feel its blind concentration on its own black enjoyment, and in that fraction of a second Amy threw the cake of soap in her left hand straight into the rambler's fleshy maw. The rambler gripped at her mind again, but it was a disturbed and feeble grip. Its branches began to move around the fleshy bole they had shielded. Slowly, and then in a furious heaving, the thorn which had entered her wrist was jaggedly withdrawn. Amy, her wrist streaming blood, stared at the rambler for a moment, then lunged at it with the menacing knife sitting outside on the ground beside the hothouse. Afterward, her forehead on her hands, feeling sick and faint, Amy had an idea. At first she pushed it from her it was far fetched, silly, even a little repulsive. But was it so silly after all, and as being unpleasant? Well, bolo meat commanded enormous prices in the market, and from everything she'd ever heard, the bola was the very reverse of a fastidious feeder. Even pigs certainly weren't dainty in their eating habits. If she parboiled it in several waters and then braised it slowly with a hint of ginger in the sauce, well, after all, why not? Amy, the modeling knife in her hand, went into the hothouse again. Gee, Aunt Amy, this meat's good, robert said. He was talking with his mouth full. I've eaten indigenous chow on three planets. Four, if you call the stuff they serve you on Uranus food. And it's my opinion that there isn't a better cook anywhere in the system than you. Fact. How do you do it, anyhow? Amy Dinsmoor lowered her eyes. She could feel herself blushing through her cosmalak. Oh, thank you, Robert. She sure is Bob Halmar, bjrnson said expansively. That gravy, she's the best cook on Terre all the time, but when you're in port she gets sort of inspired. What kind of meat is this, though, Amy? And could I have some more of course, amy said. She refilled Halmar's plate. It's something new I found in the big auto market in the city, she said vaguely. By the way, Auntie Amy, bob said, laying down his fork, after I sent you that plant. I heard it was supposed to be carnivorous. I forgot to mention it in my last gram. You didn't get into any trouble with it, did you? No. It died, amy said smoothly. I had to throw it out. Too bad. She brightened. Plaster plate, Robert dear, she said. Blend of flowering evil.

[Narrator 4]

The Short Snorter by Charles Einstein this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org the Short Snorter by Charles Einstein Three paths led through the woods away from the resort hotel, and of the three, two were clearly marked, one with a sign that said it led to the lake, the other pointing toward the golf links. The third pathway was unmarked, and this was the one that inevitably the lovers and the honeymooners took, the path that Alice and Fred Daniels followed. Today the sun was unusually warm for this time of year, but only a few yards along the pathway Fred and Alice were swallowed up by the great and near great trees of the forest. The sunlight was, except for an occasional patch of light here and there, warded away by the foliage above. The forest was very quiet. The pathway bridged a silent brook, and then, perhaps a third of a mile into the woods, turned abruptly to the left, and the woods became even more dense, the pathway narrow through the trees. To the right at this point was a clearing, an unusual grassy circle, perhaps 60 yards in diameter. It was not the clearing itself, however, but instead the glint of color in the sunlight that caused Fred and Alice to stop and look. Alice, said, fred, what is that? Don't know, he said. Something red. Let's look. The two of them turned off the path and made their way through a dismal barrage of thicket to the clearing that lay beyond. When they got there, they saw the circular object. Vehicle might be a better word. It was possibly 15 yards in diameter. It seemed to be made of three rings, smaller ones bottom and top, and the larger one ribbing the center and to be constructed of some kind of plastic. Between the central and upper rings were set a series of small windows. The entire thing was painted a gaudy red. What do you think it is? Fred said. A flying saucer, alice said promptly. She laughed a little but clutched at her husband's arm. Isn't it? I don't know, but what else would it be? I don't know, fred said again. Let's look inside, Fred, alice said. You'd better not. Don't be silly, he said, and walked resolutely up to the object and, standing on tiptoe, peered through one of the windows. What is it? Alice called from the edge of the clearing. What do you see? It's empty, he called back. What's inside? Fred shook his head. You won't believe it. What? It's got a steering wheel, he called out hollowly. And some dials. My goodness, alice said. Is it a real one? How do I know? He said, and rejoined her, casting a series of glances uncertainly over his shoulder at the bright red saucer behind him. What do you suppose we ought to do? Tell somebody, alice said. I suppose. Who do we tell? I don't know. There must be somebody. They looked almost guiltily at each other. Nobody'll believe us, fred said. Why not? Alice said. It's here, isn't it? Fred stopped and thought, who knows how long it'll stay? They look at each other again. Then Alice said, if we went back and got the camera. Swiftly they made their way back toward the hotel through the quiet forest. When they got there, they found Mr. Mason, the manager of the hotel, adjusting the badminton net in front of the main porch. Mr. Mason loosed a ready smile. How's everything? He said. Find enough to do? Yes, thank you, fred said to him. We were just walking through the woods. We came back for our camera, then we're off again. Mr. Mason nodded. Find the saucer? Fred looked at him. You mean the flying saucer? The manager nodded again. I see you did find it good. Take a picture of it, by all means. I've already taken a whole batch myself. You have? Fred said, frowning. What's it all about? It's a flying saucer, Mr. Mason said. From Venus. Mr. Steriot, who piloted it, is a guest here. I can introduce you to him if you like. He speaks excellent English, Fred Daniels said. Wait a minute, you. Oh, there's no point in it, Mr. Mason said in a weary tone of voice. No point in it at all. I took pictures. I tried to get the army up here. I wrote letters. He shrugged expressively. It's a cynical age we live in, I guess. Everybody's very polite, but they make it clear they think it's just a gimmick I worked up to get the hotel publicity. He nodded seriously. The whole trouble's with Mr. Steriot. If he had a light bulb for a head or seven legs or talked funny. Why, it'd be a different thing entirely. But he looks and acts just like you or I Here I've got a legitimate flying saucer sitting on my property, and you might as well try to tell them it's awell a flying saucer for all they'll believe me. Now you two have seen it with your own eyes and you don't believe it either. Fred swallowed and looked at Alice for a moment. Then he said, what did you say his name was? Mr. Steriot, Mr. Mason said. Actually, he's just as happy. Nobody believes he's from Venus. If they believed it, they'd probably lock him up in jail somewhere or impound his saucer. As it is, he says this is the first vacation he's had in years. Mr. Mason looked unhappily about him. He's probably in the lounge now. Want to meet him? Fred said dazedly. I ah, come on, Mr. Mason said. He won't bite you. He led the way up the steps of the porch and into the lounge and over to where a small mustachioed man wearing eyeglasses and appearing to be in his late 40s was working a crossword puzzle in the morning paper. Mr. Sterriot, Mr. Mason said, I should like you to meet Mr. And Mrs. Daniels, also guests here. They have just seen your saucer. Charmed, Mr. Steriot said, and got to his feet. He shook hands with Fred Daniels. Are you here for a long stay, Mr. Daniels? I'm not sure, Fred said a little unhappily. Mr. Mason told us you were from Venus. I told them about you, Mr. Steriot, Mr. Mason said. Naturally, they don't believe it any more than anybody else. No reason why they should, Mr. Steriot said amiably. No reason in the world, if I may coin a phrase. Dr. Phelps at the institute didn't believe it either. Mr. Mason. Mr. Steeriott here had a long interview with Dr. Phelps of the Geophysical Institute at Princeton when he first arrived here on Earth with us. Oh, fred said. He gazed uncomfortably at Mr. Steriot. We didn't mean to interrupt you. I was only doing the crossword puzzle, Mr. Steriot said. Do you know a two letter word for sun God? Alice said. Is this your first trip here? You mean here to the hotel? Mr. Steriot said. Or to Earth? Earth, fred said dismally. My second, Mr. Steriot said. First trip I wound up near Leningrad. Terrible time. I thought they'd talk English, but they don't, and they thought I was an American. And two of their officials got into the saucer with me, and the only way I could save myself was to take off with them. They're on Venus now, this accounts, Mr. Mason broke in, for the way those two high Russian officials suddenly disappeared from sight. Three years ago, you remember, Everybody thought they'd been liquidated. Fred Daniels looked around the room. A hollow, frightening feeling had come upon him. There were hundreds of questions he could have asked, and yet he wanted nothing so much as to be away from there. His wife Alice, though, was constrained to learn more about Mr. Steriot. She said, Mr. Steriot, may I ask you something? By all means, Mr. Steriot said, and blinked owlishly at her. Do you, Alice said to him, carry any money? It was, Fred Daniels realized, a marvelous question. If there were sham here, this would be the quickest way to why, of course, Mr. Steriot said, and reached for his wallet. Let's see. Health insurance, saucer, driver's license. Here, my dear, a five gino bill. He extracted a yellow banknote and handed it to Alice. The bank note, slightly larger than an American dollar bill, was remarkably similar in other particulars. It had upon it a picture of a flying saucer, the figure five, and spelled out five genos. Let me sign it for you, Mr. Steriot said, taking out a pen. You can have it for a souvenir. Like the short snorters in the war, Mr. Mason, the hotel manager, said. You remember them, Mr. Daniels, where people got famous signatures on five and ten and twenty dollar bills and exchanged them and what not, and they called them short snorters. I remember, Fred Daniels said, something like that. Five ginos on Venus, Mr. Steriot said, signing his name with a flourish, is worth about $20 here on Earth. No official rate of exchange, of course, but from what I've seen, that's about what I'd judge. Here you go. He handed the bill over. Well, wait, then, Fred Daniels said. I ought to sign one of our bills for you. Ah, no need for that, Mr. Steriot said. No doubt you need $20 worth. The Nineeed 5 Gino's. Don't be ridiculous, Fred said, a little stiffly and by now committed. He went into his wallet and came out with a twenty dollar bill. He signed his name to it using Mr. Steriot's fountain pen. Wonderful, Mr. Steert said. How nice to have met you both. I feel very badly about this, Mr. Mason, the hotel manager said to Fred and Alice. The three of them were on the porch outside. This short snorta business always seems to happen whenever I introduce Mr. Steriot to anyone. Dr. Phelps at the institute gave him $50. Can you imagine that? It's interesting in its way, fred said. It just occurred to me. Mr. Steeriatt can spend Earth money here, but we can't spend Venus money. That's true, Mr. Mason said. On the other hand, Mr. Steriot has never once, to my knowledge, been the one to bring up the subject. I think it's quite painful to him, really, but the same thing inevitably occurs to everyone he meets. You know, let's see the color of your money. I guess people are pretty much the same everywhere. That is, everywhere on Earth. They judge everything in terms of money, including whether you've even been born on Earth. Let's see your money, they say to Mr. Steriot, and out he comes with one of those damn five Gino bills. And we're off. You know, alice Daniels said thoughtfully, in a way, it's a lesson, isn't it, Fred? I mean, everybody is money conscious. Maybe too much so. I'm not sorry it cost us $20 to meet Mr. Steriot. You may be right, fred said to her. You may be right. Who knows, some day this five Gino bill may be a very valuable. There you go again, alice cut in. Always putting it in terms of money. But you're the one, Fred said, who thought to ask him about it in the first place. Don't quarrel, Mr. Mason, the hotel manager said to them. After all, for you it's just a vacation. For me, I've got this man sitting in my lounge day in and day out doing crossword puzzles and trading short snorters with my guests. Nobody really believes he's from Venus. Nobody important. Anyway. It's a little frightening when you're trying to run a happy hotel. Sometimes I wish he'd go back to wherever he came from. Well, Fred said, he's bound to leave one of these days. Maybe, Mr. Mason said doubtfully. Offhand, though, I'd say the way he's taking it in, he can't afford to. End of the Short Snorter by Charles Einstein Recording by Roger Moline.

[Narrator]

It Takes a Thief by Walter M. Miller this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Read by Ben Tucker It Takes a Thief by Walter M. Miller the ancient gods our fathers rode down from the heavens in the firebirds of the sun Coming into the world, they found no air for the breath of their souls. How shall we breathe they asked of the sun, and sun gave them of his fire, and beneath the earth they kindled the blaze of the great wind. Good air roared from the womb of Mars, our mother. The ice burned with a great thunder, and there was air for the breath of man. From an old Martian legend. A thief. He was about to die. Like a thief, he hung from the post by his wrists. The wan sunlight glistened faintly on his naked back as he waited, eyes tightly closed, lips moving slowly as he pressed his face against the rough wood and stood on tiptoe to relieve the growing ache in his shoulders. When his ankles ached, he hung by the nails that pierced his forearms just above the wrists. He was young, perhaps in his 10th Mars year, and his crisp black hair was close, cropped in the fashion of the bachelor who had not yet sired a pup or not yet admitted that he had. Lithe and sleek, with the quick, knotty muscles and slender rawhide limbs of a wild thing, half fed and hungry with a quick furious hunger that crouched in ambush, his face, though twisted with pain and fright, remained that of a cocky puppy. When he opened his eyes he could see the low hills of Mars, sun washed and gray green with trees, trees brought down from the heavens by the ancient fathers. But he could also see the executioner in the foreground, sitting sprattle legged and calm while he chewed a blade of grass and waited. A squat man with a thick face, he occasionally peered at the thief with empty blue eyes while he casually played mumblety peg with the bleeding blade. His stare was blank. Ready for me yet, Aesir? He grumbled, not unpleasantly. The knife man sat beyond spitting range, but Aesir spat and tried to wipe his chin on the post. You dirty mother, he mumbled. The executioner chuckled and played mumbledy peg. After three hours of dangling from the spikes that pierced his arms, Aesir was weakening, and the blood throbbed hard in his temples with each jolt of his heart, a separate pulse of pain. The red stickiness had stopped oozing down his arms. They knew how to drive the spike just right, but the heartbeats labored in his head like a hammer beating at red hot iron. How many heartbeats in a lifetime and how many left to him now? He whimpered and writhed, beginning to lose all hope. Mara had gone to see the chief commoner to plead with him for the pilferer's life, but Mara was about as trustworthy as a wild huffin, and he had visions of them chuckling together at Tokra's villa over a glass of amber wine while life drained slowly From a young thief. Aesir regretted nothing. His father had been a renegade before him, had squandered his last ritual formula to buy a wife, then, impoverished, had taken her away to the hills. Aesir was born in the hills, but he came back to the village of his ancestors to work as a servant and steal the rituals of his masters. No thief could last for long. A ritual thief caused havoc in the community. The owner of a holy phrase, not knowing that it had been stolen, tried to spend it, and eventually counterclaims would come to light, and a general accounting had to be called. The thief was always found out. Azir had stolen more than wealth. He had stolen the strength of their souls. For this they hung him by the wrists and waited for him to beg for the bleeding blade. Woman thirsts for husband. Man thirsts for wife. Baby thirsts for breast milk. Thief thirsts for knife. A rhyme from his childhood, a childish chant, an eeny meeny minie for determining who should drink first from a nectar cactus. He groaned and tried to shift his weight more comfortably. Where was Mera? Ready for me at Aesir? The squat man asked. Aesir hated him with narrowed eyes. The executioner was bound by law to wait until his victim requested his fate. But Aesir remained ignorant of what the fate would be. The council of senior kinsmen judged him in secret and passed sentence as to what the executioner would do with the knife. But Azir was not informed of their judgment. He knew only that when he asked for it, the executioner would advance with the bleeding blade and exact the punishment. His life or an amputation. Depending on the judgment, he might lose only an eye or an ear or a finger. But on the other hand, he might lose his life. Both arms or his masculinity. There was no way to find out until he asked for the punishment. If he refused to ask, they would leave him hanging there. In theory, a thief could escape by hanging four days, after which the executioner would pull out the nails. Sometimes the culprit managed it, but when the nails were pulled, the thing that toppled was already a corpse. The sun was sinking in the west, and it blinded him. Aesir knew about the sun, knew things the stupid council failed to know. A thief, if successful, frequently became endowed with wisdom, for he memorized more wealth than a score of honest men. Quotations from the ancient gods, Fermi, Einstein, Elgerman, Hanser, and the rest. Most men owned scattered phrases, and scattered phrases remained meaningless. But a thief memorized all transactions that he overheard, and the countless phrases could be fitted together into meaningful ideas. He knew now that Mars, once dead, was dying again, its air leaking away once more into space, and man would die with it unless something were done and done quickly. The blaze of the great wind needed to be rekindled under the earth.

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But it would not be done. The tribes had fallen into ignorance, even as the Holy Books had warned. It is realized that the colonists will be unable to maintain a technology without basic tools, and that a rebuilding will require several generations of intelligently directed effort. Given the knowledge, the colonists may be able to restore a machine culture if the knowledge continues to be bolstered by desire. But if the third, fourth and nth generations fail to further the gradual retooling process, the knowledge will become worthless. The quotation was from the God Ragan's Progress of the Mars Culture, and he had stolen bits of it from various sources. The books themselves were no longer in existence, remembered only in memorized Ritual chants, the possession of which meant wealth. Aesir was sick. Pain and slow loss of blood made him weak and his vision blurred. He failed to see her coming until he heard her feet rustling in the dry grass. Mara. She smirked and spat contemptuously at the foot of the post. The daughter of a senior kinsman, she was a tall, slender girl with an arrogant strut and mocking eyes. She stood for a moment with folded arms, eyeing him with amusement. Then slowly, one eye closed in a solemn wink, she turned her back on him and spoke to the executioner. May I taunt the prisoner, Slubiel? She asked. It is forbidden to speak to the thief, growled the knife man. Is he ready to beg for justice, Lubil? The knife man grinned and looked at Aesir. Are you ready for me yet, thief? Azir hissed. An insult. The girl had betrayed him. Evidently a coward, she said. Perhaps he means to hang four days. Let him then. No, I think that I should like to see him beg. She gave Aesir a long, searching glance, then turned to walk away. The thief cursed her quietly and followed her with his eyes a dozen steps away. She stopped again, looked back over her shoulder, and repeated the slow wink. Then she marched on towards her father's house. The wink made his scalp crawl for a moment. But then, suppose she hasn't betrayed me. Suppose she had wheedled the sentence out of Tokra and knew what his punishment would be. I think that I should like to see him beg. But on the other hand, the fickle she devil might be tricking him into asking for a sentence that she knew would be death or dismemberment just to amuse herself. He cursed inwardly and trembled as he peered at the bored executioner. He licked his lips and fought against dizziness as he groped for words. Sluibiel heard him muttering and looked up. Are you ready for me yet? Azir closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Give it to me. He yelled suddenly and braced himself against the post. Why not? Why not? The short time gained couldn't be classed as living. Have it done with. Eternity would be sweet in comparison to this ignominy. A knife could be a blessing. He heard the executioner chuckle and stand up. He heard the man's footsteps approaching slowly and the singing hiss of the knife as Lubiel swung it in quick arcs. The executioner moved about him slowly, teasing him with the whistle of steel fanning the air about him. He was expected to beg. Sloobiel occasionally laid the knife against his skin and took it away again. Then Azir heard the rustle of the executioner's cloak. As his arm went back, Aesir opened his eyes. The executioner grinned as he held the blade high, aimed at Aesir's head. The girl had tricked him. He groaned and closed his eyes again, muttering a half forgotten prayer. The stroke fell and the blade chopped into the post above his head. Aesir fainted. When he awoke, he lay in a crumpled heap on the ground. The executioner rolled him over with his foot. In view of your extreme youth, thief, the knifeman growled, the council has ordered you perpetually banished. The sun is setting. Let dawn find you in the hills. If you return to the plains, you will be chained to a wild hoofin and dragged to death. Panting weakly, Aesir groped at his forehead and found a fresh wound, raw and rubbed with rust to make a scar. Slabiel had marked him as an outcast, but except for the nail holes through his forearms, he was still in one piece. His hands were numb and he could scarcely move his fingers. Slabiel had bound the spike wounds, but the bandages were bloody and leaking. When the knife man had gone, Aesir climbed weakly to his feet. Several of the townspeople stood nearby, snickering at him. He ignored their catcalls and staggered toward the outskirts of the village, 10 minutes away. He had to speak to Mara and to her father if the crusty oldster would listen. His thief's knowledge weighed upon him and brought desperate fear. Darkness had fallen by the time he came to Welkyr's house. The people spat at him in the streets, and some of them flung handfuls of loose dirt after him as he passed. A light flickered feebly through Welkyr's door. Aesir rattled it and waited. Welkyr came with a lamp. He set the lamp on the floor and stood with feet spread apart, arms folded, glaring haughtily at the thief. His face was stiff as weathered stone. He said nothing but only stared contemptuously. Aesir bowed his head. I have come to plead with you, Senor Kinsman. Welkir snorted disgust. Against the mercy we have shown you. He looked up quickly, shaking his head. No. For that I am grateful. What then? As a thief I acquired much wisdom. I know that the world is dying and the air is boiling out of it into the sky. I wish to be heard by the Council. We must study the words of the ancients and perform their magic, lest our children's children be born to strangle in a dead world. Welkyr snorted again. He picked up the lamp. He who listens to a thief's wisdom is cursed. He who acts upon it is doubly cursed and a party to the crime. The vaults. Aesir insisted. The key to the Blaze of the Winds is in the vaults, the God Raghens tells us in the words.

[Announcer]

Stop.

[Narrator]

I will not hear. Very well. But the blade can be rekindled and the air renewed. The vaults. He stammered and shook his head. The Council must hear me. The Council will hear nothing, and you shall be gone before dawn. And the vaults are guarded by this sleeper called Big Joe. To enter is to die. Now go away. Wilkir stepped back and slammed the door. Aesir sagged in defeat. He sank down on the doorstep to rest a moment. The night was black except for lamp flickers from an occasional window.

[Interjection]

Ssst.

[Narrator]

A sound from the shadows. He looked around quickly, searching for the source.

[Interjection]

Ssst.

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I see her.

[Narrator]

It was the girl. Mera Welkir's daughter. She had slipped out the back of the house and was peering at him around the corner. He arose quietly and went to her. What did Sybill do to you? She whispered. Aesir gasped and caught her shoulders angrily. Don't you know? No.

[Dialogue Speaker]

Stop.

[Narrator]

You're hurting me. Tokr wouldn't tell me I made love to him, but he wouldn't tell. He released her with an angry curse. You had to take it sometime, she hissed. I knew if you waited you would be too weak from hanging to even run away. He called her a foul name. Ingrate, she snapped. And I bought you a huffin. You what? Tok' Ra gave me a ritual phrase, and I bought you a huffin with it. You can't walk to the hills, you know. Aesir burned with dull rage. You slept with Tok'?

[Interjection]

Ra?

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He snapped. You're jealous, she tittered. How can I be jealous? I hate the sight of you. Very well, then. I'll keep the hoofin do, he growled. I won't need it since I'm not going to the hills. She gasped. You've got to go, you fool. They'll kill you. He turned away, feeling sick. She caught at his arm and tried to pull him back. Aesir, take the hoofin and go. I'll go, he growled, but not to the hills. I'm going out to the vault. He stalked away, but she trotted along beside him, trying to tug him back.

[Narrator 2]

Fool.

[Narrator]

The vaults are sacred. The priests guard the entrance, and the sleeper guards the inner door. They'll kill you if you try it. And if you linger, the Council will kill you tomorrow. Let them, he snarled. I am no sniveling townsman. I am of the hills, and my father was a renegade. Your council had no right to judge me. Now I shall judge them. The words were spoken hotly, and he realized their folly. He expected a scornful rebuke from Mara, but she hung onto his arm and pleaded with him. He had dragged her a dozen doorways from the house of her father. Her voice had lost its arrogance and became pleading. Please, Aesir, go away. Listen, I will even go with you if you want me. He laughed harshly. Tok' Ra's leavings. She slapped him hard across the mouth. Tok' Ra's an impotent old dodderer. He can scarcely move for arthritis. You're an idiot. I sat on his lap and kissed his bald pate for you. Then why did he give you a ritual phrase? He asked stiffly. Because he likes me. You lie. He stalked angrily on. Very well. Go to the vaults. I'll tell my father and they'll hunt you down before you get there. She released his arm and stopped. Aesir hesitated. She meant it. He came back to her slowly, then slipped his swollen hands to her throat. She did not back away. Why don't I just choke you and leave you lying here? He hissed. Her face was only a shadow and darkness, but he could see her cool smirk. Because you love me, Aesira Frannick. He dropped his hands and grunted a low curse. She laughed low and took his arm. Come on, we'll go get the huffin, she said. Why not, he thought. Take her huffing and take her too. He could dump her a few miles from the village, then circle back to the vaults. She leaned against him as they moved back towards her father's house, then skirted it and stole back to the field behind the row of dwellings. Phobos hung low in the west, its tiny disk lending only a faint glow to the darkness. He heard the hoofins breathing as they approached, a hulking shadow in the gloom. Its great wings snaked out slowly as it sensed their approach, and it made a low piping sound. A native Martian species, it bore no resemblance to the beasts that the ancients had brought with them from the sky. Its back was covered with a thin shell like a beetle's, but its belly was porous and soft. It digested food by sitting on it and absorbing it. The wings were bony parchment, stretched across a fragile frame. It was headless and lacked a centralized brain, the nervous functions being distributed. The great creature made no protest as they climbed up the broad flat back and strapped themselves down with the belts that had been threaded through holes cut in the hoofin's thin, tough shell, its lungs slowly gathered a tremendous breath of air, causing the riders to rise up as the huge air sacs became distended. The girth of an inflated hoofin was nearly four times as great as when deflated. When the air was gathered, the creature began to shrink again as its muscles tightened, compressing the breath until a faint leakage hiss came from behind. It waited. Wings taut, the girl tugged at a ring set through the flesh of its flank. There was a blast of sound and a jerk. Nature's experiment in jet propulsion soared ahead and turned into the wind. Its first breath exhausted, it gathered another and blew itself ahead again. The ride was jerky. Each tailward belch was a rough lurch. They let the hoofin choose its own heading as it gained altitude. Then Mara tugged at the wing straps and the creature wheeled to soar toward the dark hills in the distance. Aesir sat behind her, a sardonic smirk on his face as the wind whipped about them. He waited until they had flown beyond screaming distance of the village. Then he took her shoulders lightly in his hands, mistaking it for affection. She leaned back against him easily and rested her dark head on his shoulder. He kissed her while his hand felt gingerly for the knife at her belt. His fingers were numb, but he managed to clutch it and press the blade lightly against her throat. She gasped. With his other hand, he caught her hair. Now guide the huffin down, he ordered Aesir. Quickly. He barked. What are you going to do? Leave you here and circle back to the vaults? No, not out here at night. He hesitated. There were slinking prowlers on the Cimmerian plain, beasts who would regard the maroon daughter of Welkyr a delicious bit of good fortune, a gustatory delight of a sort they seldom were able to enjoy. Even above the moan of the wind, he could hear an occasional howl cry from the feigned welcoming committee that waited for its dinner beneath them. Very well, he growled reluctantly. Turn toward the vaults. But one scream and I'll slice you. He took the blade from her throat but kept the point touching her back. Please, Aesir. No, she pleaded. Let me go on to the hills. Why do you want to go to the vaults? Because of Tok'.

[Reader]

Ra.

[Narrator]

He gouged her with the point until she yelped. Tok' Ra be damned. And you with him. He snarled. Turn back. Why? I'm going down to kindle the blaze of the winds. You're mad. The spirits of the ancients live in the vaults. I am going to Kindle the blaze of the winds, he insisted stubbornly. Now either turn back or go down, and I'll turn back alone. After a moment, she tugged at a wing rein in the hoof and banked majestically. They flew a mile to the south of the village, then beyond it toward the cloister, where the priests of Big Joe guarded the entrance to the vaults. The cloister was marked by a patch of faint light on the ground ahead. Circle around at once, he ordered. You can't get in. They'll kill you. He doubted it. No one ever tried to enter except the priests, who carried small animals down as sacrifices to the great Sleeper. Since no outsider ever dared go near the shaft, the guards expected no one. He doubted that they would be alert. The cloister was a hollow square with a small stone tower rising in the center of the courtyard. The tower contained the entrance to the shaft. In the dim light of Phobos, assisted by yellow flickers from the cloister windows, he peered at the courtyard as they circled closer. It seemed to be empty land beside the tower. He ordered Aesir, please do it. The hoofin plunged rapidly, soared across the outer walls, and burst into the courtyard. It landed with a rough jolt and began squeaking plaintively. Hurry, he hissed. Get your straps off and let's go. I'm not going. A prick of the knife point changed her mind. They slid quickly to the ground, and Aesir kicked the hoofin and the flanks. The beasts sucked in air and burst aloft. Startled faces were trying to peer through the lighted cloister windows into the courtyard. Someone cried a challenge. Aesir darted to the door of the tower and dragged it open. Now forced to share the danger, the girl came with him. Without urging, they stepped into a stair landing. A candle flickered from a wall bracket. A guard sitting on the floor beneath the candle glanced up in complete surprise. Then he reached for a short barbed pike. A seer kicked him hard in the temple, then rolled his limp form. Outside, men with torches were running across the courtyard. He slammed the heavy metal door and bolted it. Fists began beating on the door. They paused for a moment to rest, and Mara stared at him in fright. He expected her to burst into angry speech, but she only leaned against the wall and panted. The dark mouth of the stairway yawned at them, a stone throat that led into the bowels of Mars in the realm of the monster Big Joe. He glanced at Mara thoughtfully and felt sorry for her. I can leave you here, he offered, but I'll have to tie you. She moistened her lips glanced first at the stairs, then at the door where the guards were raising a frantic howl. She shook her head. I'll go with you. The priests won't bother you if they see that you are a prisoner. I'll go with you. He was pleased, but angry with himself for the pleasure. An arrogant, spiteful, conniving wench, he told himself. She had lied about Tok'.

[Dialogue Speaker]

Ra.

[Narrator]

He grunted gruffly, seized the candle, and started down the stairs. When she started after him, he stiffened and glanced back, remembering the barbed pike. As he had suspected, she had picked it up. The point was a foot from the small of his back. They stared at each other and she wore her self assured smirk. Here, she said and handed it casually. You might need this. They stared at each other again, but it was different this time. Bewildered, he shook his head and resumed the descent toward the vaults. The guards were battering at the door. Behind them the stairwell was damp and cold. Blackness folded about them like a shroud. They moved in silence, and after 5,000 steps Aesir stopped counting. Somewhere in the depths, Big Joe slept his restless sleep. Aesir wondered grimly how long it would take the guards to tear down the metal door. Somehow they had to get past Big Joe before the guards came thundering after them. There was a way to get around the monster, of that he was certain. A series of 24 numbers was involved, and he had memorized them with a stolen bit of ritual. How to use them was a different matter. He imagined vaguely that one must call them out in a loud voice before the inner entrance. The girl walked beside him now, and he could feel her shivering. His eyes were quick and nervous as he scanned each pool of darkness, each nook and cranny along the stairway wall. The wall was silent except for the mutter of their footsteps, and the gloom was full of musty odors. The candle afforded little light. I told you the truth about Tok', Ra, she blurted suddenly. Aasir glowered straight ahead and said nothing. Embarrassed by his previous jealousy, they moved on in silence. Suddenly she stopped. Look. She hissed, pointing down ahead. He shielded the candle with his hand and peered downward toward a small square of dim light. The bottom of the stairs, he muttered. The light seemed faint and diffuse, with a slight greenish cast. A seer blew out the candle and the girl quickly protested. How will we see to climb again? He laughed humorlessly. What makes you think we will? She moaned and clutched at his arm, but came with him as he descended slowly toward the light. The stairway opened into a long corridor whose ceiling was faintly luminous, white faced and Frightened, they paused on the bottom step and looked down the corridor. Mara gasped and covered her eyes. Big Joe, she whispered in awe. He stared through the stairwell door and down the corridor, through another door into a large room. Big Joe sat in the center of the room, sleeping his sleep of ages amidst a heap of broken and whitening bones. A creature of metal, twice the height of a seer, he had obviously been designed to kill. Tri fingered hands with gleaming talons and a monstrous head shaped like a mars wolf with long silver fangs. Why should a metal creature have fangs? Unless he'd been built to kill? The behemoth slept in a crouch, waiting for the intruders. He tugged the girl through the stairwell door. A voice droned out of nowhere. If you have come to plunder, go back. He stiffened, looking around. The girl whimpered. Stay here by the stairs, he told her, and pushed her firmly back through the door. Aasir started slowly toward the room where Big Joe waited. Beyond the room he could see another door, and the monster's job was apparently to keep intruders back from the inner vaults where, according to the ritual chants, the blaze of the winds could be kindled. Halfway along the corridor, the voice called out again, beginning a kind of sing song chant. Big Joe will kill you. Big Joe will kill you. Big Joe will kill you. He turned slowly, searching for the speaker, but the voice seemed to come from a black disk on the wall. The talking machines, perhaps. As mentioned somewhere in the ritual, a few paces from the entrance to the room, the voice fell silent. He stopped at the door, staring in at the monster. Then he took a deep breath and began chanting the 24 numbers in a loud but quavering voice. Big Joe remained in his motionless crouch. Nothing happened. He stepped through the doorway. Big Joe emitted a deafening roar, straightened with a metallic groan, and lumbered toward him, taloned hands extended and eyes blazing furiously. Aasir shrieked and ran for his life. Then he saw Mera lying sprawled in the stairway entrance. She had fainted, blocking an impulse to leap over her and flee alone. He stopped to lift her, but suddenly he realized that there was no pursuit. He looked back. Big Joe had returned to his former position, and he appeared to be asleep again. Puzzled, Aasir stepped back into the corridor. If you have come to plunder, go back. He moved gingerly ahead again. Big Joe will kill you. Big Joe will kill you. Big Joe will kill. He recovered the barbed pike from the floor and stole into the zone of silence. This time he stopped to look around. Slowly he reached the pike staff through the doorway. Nothing happened. He stepped closer and waved it around inside. Big Joe remained motionless. Then he dropped the point of the pike to the floor. The monster bellowed and started to rise. A seer leaped back, scalp crawling, but Big Joe settled back into his crouch, fighting a desire to flee. Asir reached the pike through the door and rapped it on the floor again. This time nothing happened. He glanced down. The pike's point rested in the center of a gray floor tile just to the left of the entrance. The floor was a checkerboard pattern of gray and white. He tapped another gray square, and this time the monster started out of his drowse again. After a moment's thought, he began touching each tile within reach of the door. Most of them brought a response from Big Joe. He found four that did not. He knelt down before the door to peer at them closely. The first was unmarked. The second bore a dot in the center. The third bore two, and the fourth three in order of their distance from the door. He stood up and stepped inside again. Standing on the first tile, Big Joe remained motionless. He stepped diagonally left to the second, straight ahead to the third, then diagonally right to the fourth. He stood there for a moment, trembling and staring at the sleeper. He was four feet past the door. Having assured himself that the monster was still asleep, he crouched to peer at the next tiles. He stared for a long time, but found no similar markings. Were the dots coincidence? He reached out with the pike, then drew it back. He was too close to the sleeper to risk a mistake. He stood up and looked around carefully, noting each detail of the room and of the floor in particular. He counted the rows and columns of tiles. 24 each way. 24. And there were 24 numbers in the series. That was somehow connected with safe passage through the room. He frowned and muttered through the series to himself. 0, 1, 2, 33322, 1. The first four numbers. 0, 1, 2, 3. And the tiles. The first with no dots, the second with 1, the third with 2, the fourth with 3. But the four tiles were not in a straight line, and there were no marked ones beyond the fourth. He backed out of the room and studied them from the end of the corridor. Again. Mera had come dizzily awake and was calling for him weakly. He replied reassuringly and turned to his task again. First tile, then diagonally left, then straight, then diagonally right. 0, 123 3. A hunch came. He advanced as far as the second tile, then reached as far ahead as he could and touched the square diagonally right from the fourth one. Big Joe remained motionless, but began to speak his scout bristled at the growling voice. If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill. Standing tense, ready to leap back to the corridor, he touched the square again. The motionless behemoth repeated the grim warning. A seer tried to reach the square diagonally right from the fifth, but could not without stepping up to the third. Taking a deep breath, he stepped up and extended the pike cautiously keeping his eyes on Big Joe. The pike wrapped the floor. If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill. But the huge figure remained in his place. Starting from the first square, the path went left, straight, right, right, right. And after zero, the numbers went 1, 2, 3, 3, 3. Apparently, he had found the key. One meant a square to the southeast, two meant south, and three southwest. Shivering, he moved up to the fifth square, upon which the monster growled his first warning. He looked back at the door, then at Big Joe. The taloned hands could grab him before he could dive back into the corridor. He hesitated. He could either turn back now or gamble his life on the accuracy of the tentative belief. The girl was calling to him again. Come to the end of the corridor, he replied. She came hurriedly, to his surprise.

[Interjection]

No.

[Narrator]

He bellowed. Stay back of the entrance. Not on the tile.

[Narrator 2]

No.

[Narrator]

Slowly she withdrew the foot that hung poised over a trigger tile. You can't come in unless you know how. He gasped. She blinked at him and glanced nervously back over her shoulder. But I hear them. They're coming down the stairs. Aesir cursed softly. Now he had to go ahead. Wait just a minute, he said. Then I'll show you how to come through. He advanced to the last tile that he had tested and stopped. The next two numbers were two for straight ahead, and they would take him within easy reach of the long taloned arms of the murderous sentinel. He glanced around in fright at the crushed bones scattered across the floor. Some were human. Others were animal sacrifices tossed in by the priests he had tested. Only one, too, back near the door. If he made a mistake, he would never escape. No need. Bothering with the pike, he stepped to the next tile and closed his eyes. If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill. He opened his eyes again and heaved a breath of relief. A seer. They're getting closer. I can hear them. He listened for a moment, a faint murmur of angry voices in the distance. All right, he said calmly. Step only on the tiles, I tell you. See the gray one that's at the left of the door? She pointed. This one? Yes. Step on it. The girl moved up and stared fearfully at the monstrous sentinel. He guided her up toward him diagonally left one ahead, diagonally right. Now don't be frightened when he speaks. The girl came on until she stood one square behind him. Her quick, frightened breathing blended with the growing sounds of shouting from the stairway. He glanced up at Big Joe, noticing for the first time that the steel jaws were stained with a red brown crust. He shuddered. The grim chess game continued, a cautious step at a time, with the girl following one square behind him. What if she fainted again and fell across a triggered tile? They passed within a foot of Big Joe's arm. Looking up, he saw the monster's eyes move, following them, scrutinizing them as they passed. He froze. We want no plunder, he said to the machine. The gaze was steady and unwinking. The air is leaking away from the world. The monster remained silent.

[Narrator 3]

Hurry.

[Narrator]

Whimpered the girl. Their pursuers were gaining rapidly, and they had crossed only half the distance to the opposing doorway. Progress was slower now, for a seer needed occasionally to repeat through the whole series of numbers, looking back to count squares and make certain that the next step was not a fatal one. They won't dare to come in after us, he said hopefully. And if they do? If the intruder makes an error, Big Joe will kill, announced the machine as Aesir took another step. Eight squares to go, he muttered, and stopped to count again. Aesir, they're in the corridor. Hearing the rumble of voices, he looked back to see blue robed men spilling out of the stairway and milling down the corridor toward the room. But halfway down the hall, the priests paused, seeing the unbelievable two intruders walking safely past their devil God. They growled excitedly among themselves. Aesir took another step. Again the machine voiced the monotonous warning. If the intruder makes an error. Hearing their deity speak, the priests of Big Joe babbled wildly and withdrew a little, but one, more impulsive than the rest, began shrieking. Kill the intruders. Cut them down with your spears. Aesir glanced back to see two of them racing toward the room, lances cocked for the throw. If a spear struck a trigger tile.

[Narrator 2]

Stop.

[Narrator]

He bellowed. Facing around, the two priests paused, wondering if it would result in his sudden death. He rested a hand lightly against the huge steel arm of the robot, then leaned against it. The huge eyes were staring down at him, but Big Joe did not move. The spearmen stood frozen, gaping at the thief's familiarity with the horrendous hulk. Then slowly, they backed away, continuing his bluff, he looked up at Big Joe and spoke in a loud voice. If they throw their spears or try to enter, kill them. He turned his back on the throng in the hall and continued the cautious advance. Five to go. Four, three, two. He paused to stare into the room beyond gleaming machinery, all silent and great panels covered with a multitude of white circles and dials. His heart sank. If here lay the magic that controlled the blaze of the great wind, he could never hope to rekindle it. He stepped through the doorway, and the girl followed. Immediately the robot spoke like low thunder. The identity of the two technologists is recognized hereafter they may pass with impunity. Big Joe is charged to ask the why did the technologist come when it is not yet time? Staring back, a seer saw that the robot's head had turned so that he was looking directly back at the thief and the girl. A seer also saw that someone had approached the door again, not priests, but townspeople. He stared, recognizing the chief commoner and the girl's father, Welkir, three other senior kinsmen, and Sloo Beel, the executioner who had nailed him to the post. Father, stay back. Valkyr remained silent, glaring at them. He turned and whispered to the chief commoner. The chief commoner whispered to Slubiel. The executioner nodded grimly and took a short axe from his belt thong. He stepped through the entrance, his left foot striking the zero tile. He peered at Big Joe and saw that the monster remained motionless. He grinned at the ones behind him, then snarled in a seer's direction. Your sentence has been changed, thief. Don't try to cross Slabiel. Aesir barked. Slabile spat, brandished the axe, and stalked forward. Big Joe came up like a resurrection of fury, and his bellow was explosive in the vaults. Slabiel froze, then stupidly drew back his axe. Aesir gasped as the talons closed. He turned away quickly. Slabiel's scream was cut off abruptly by a ripping sound, then a series of dull cracks and snaps. The girl shrieked and closed her eyes. There were two distinct thuds as Big Joe tossed Slabiel aside. The priests and the townspeople, all except Valkyr, had fled from the corridor and up the stairway. Welkyr was on his knees, his hands covering his face. Beara, he moaned. My daughter, go back, Father. She called. Dazed, the old man picked himself up weakly and staggered down the corridor toward the stairway. When he passed the place of the first warning voice, the robot moved again, arose slowly, and turned toward Aesir and Mera, who backed quickly away, deeper into the room of strange machines. Big Joe came lumbering slowly after them. Aesir looked around for a place to flee, but the monster stopped in the doorway, he spoke again, a mechanical drone, like a memorized ritual. Big Joe was charged with announcing his function for the intelligence of the technologist. His primary function is to prevent the entrance of possibly destructive organisms into the vaults containing the control equipment for the fusion reaction, which must periodically renew atmospheric oxygen. His secondary function is to direct the technologists to records containing such information as they may need. His tertiary function is to carry out simple directions given by the technologists, if such directions are possible, to his limited design. Aesir stared at the lumbering creature and realized for the first time that it was not alive, but only a machine built by the ancients to perform specific tasks. Despite the fresh redness about his hands and jaws, Big Joe was no more guilty of Celebile's death than a grinding mill would be if the squat sadist had climbed into it while the Mars oxen were yoked to the crushing roller. Perhaps the ancients had been unnecessarily brutal in building such a guard, but at least they had built him to look like a destroyer and to give ample warning to the intruder. Glancing around at the machinery, he vaguely understood the reason. For Big Joe, such metals as these would mean riches for sword makers and smiths and plunderers of all kinds. Aesir straightened his shoulders and addressed the machine. Teach us how to kindle the blaze of the great wind. Teaching is not within the designed functions of Big Joe. I am charged to say the renewal reaction should not begun before the Mars year 6000, as the builders reckoned time. Aesir frowned. The years were no longer numbered, but only named in honor of the chief commoners who ruled the villages. How long until the year 6000? He asked. Big Joe clucked like an adding machine. 12 Mars years. Technologist, a seer, stared at the complicated machinery. Could they learn to operate it in 12 years? It seemed impossible. How can we begin to learn? He asked the robot. This is an instruction room where you may examine records. The control mechanisms are installed in the deepest vault. Aesir frowned and walked to the far end of the hall, where another door opened into another anteroom with another Big Joe. As he approached, the second robot spoke. If the intruder has not acquired the proper knowledge, Big Oswald will kill. Thunderstruck, he leaped back from the entrance and swayed heavily against an instrument panel. The panel lit up and a polite recorded voice began reading something about President Snell's role in the Eighth World War. He lurched away from the panel and stumbled back toward Mara, who sat glumly on the foundation slab of a weighty

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[Narrator]

businesses that do it all what are you laughing about? She muttered. We're still in the first grade. He groaned, envisioning a sequence of rooms. We'll have to learn the magic of the ancients before we pass to the next. The ancients weren't so great, she grumbled. Look at the mural on the wall. Aesir looked and saw only a strange design of circles about a bright splash of yellow that might have been the sun. What about it? He asked. My father taught me about the planets, she said. This is supposed to be the way they go around the sun. What's wrong with it? One planet too many, she said. Everybody knows there is only an asteroid belt between Mars and Venus. The picture shows a planet there. Aasir shrugged indifferently. Being interested only in the machinery, can't you allow them? One small mistake, I suppose. She paused, gazing miserably in the direction in which her father had gone. What do we do now? Aesir considered it for a long time. Then he spoke to Big Joe. You will come with us to the village. The machine was silent for a moment. Then there is an apparent contradiction between primary and tertiary functions. Request priority decision by technologist. Aesir failed to understand. He repeated his request. The robot turned slowly and stepped through the doorway. He waited. Aasir grinned. Let's go back up, he said to the girl. She rose eagerly. They crossed the anteroom to the corridor and began the long climb toward the surface, with Big Joe lumbering along behind. What about your banishment, a seer? She asked gravely. Wait and see. He envisioned the pandemonium that would reign when girl, man, and robot marched through the village to the council house, and he chuckled. I think that I shall be the next chief commoner, he said. And my councilmen will be all thieves. Thieves. She gasped. Why thieves who are not afraid to steal the knowledge of the gods and become technologists to kindle the blaze of the winds. What is a technologist, Aasir? She asked worshipfully. Aesir glowered at himself for blundering with words he did not understand, but could not admit ignorance to Mera, who clung tightly to his arm. I think he said that a technologist is a thief who tells the gods what to do. Kiss me, technologist, she told him in a small voice. Big Joe clanked to a stop to wait for them to move on. He waited a long time. End of It Takes a Thief by Walter M. Miller.

[Interjection]

Night Thing by Wilfred Allen From Weird Tales, July 1929 this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Read by Dale Grothman an utterly bizarre story is Night Thing by Wilfred Allen A surge of revulsion came hard on the realization of what those strange space cars meant, a wild, indescribable feeling that swept shuddering over me. Such an emotion, utterly unreasonable, it had then seemed to me. I had seen in the hearts of men at sights which caused my own soul to leap with exultation. Back when I had had the form of a man for a brief period, with power commensurate with my desires, I had caused such shrinkings to tear at the hearts of my fellows. Even that time I had massacred an entire population. The sight of death, with its visible evidences, had been wine to my soul. Yet then, uncomprehending, I had seen the hardiness of my men shudder at death upon such a scale, men who had joyously dealt death to many a lesser group with a will that matched my own. But their emotions that, once evident enough, was inexplicable to the soul of me, which burned with a cold fire that fed on death and gloated over its remains that day I despised the tribe of men. Later, free from the limitations of the body, I had seen that shuddering in the hearts of multitudes at the sights that caused me, all unseen by them, to cavort madly with a frantic glee, scuttling astride the winds of the north. Under the cold dead moon I have come upon the unburied who would lie for months in the snow, exposed yet retaining their forms to throw long gray shadows pointedly over the white surface again when the moon rode high and the shadows had drawn back into such motionless things, I had returned to such rendezvous with joy at times to find the dead encircled by ravening lupine forms which fled howling at the presence which they knew full well. Sometimes I have met a party which has located the body, and then always I have seen that inexplicable emotion in the hearts of those fearful gatherers of the dead, that shrinking horror of what for the soul and being of me and mine was feast. The cold of space. When I had the form of a man, men knew nothing of space. Since then I have seen some knowledge of it growing among men, and again in their hearts. It has bred that feeling as much at variance with mine as the measure of space between the worlds of flame and death. Men shudder when they contemplate it, as they shudder in the presence of death, while I at times must swirl out to seek it eagerly after a time upon a warmer earth, as man, poor ignorant, know it all rushes into the coolness of the night to escape from the stuffy warmth of a closed space, or the burning rush of his puny emotions. The cool of space, the perfection it is of death which only I and mine appreciate. The death of all which is the absence of emotion. Rest for all. Death brings cold and rest. Out there all is cold and the delight of perfect rest and exultation. So I was there, exulting in the chill which instruments cannot measure, but only the soul, when I saw the first of the great spacecraft. Ah. I chuckled and rubbed my hands with heartless mirth. Some of those inventors have slipped one over on me. I knew some fools were working on plans to penetrate space, while yet they held the corporeal form. Poor fools. But I didn't know they had succeeded. Arco, I must see there's death in the making, and a cold death. And I chortled. But too soon I knew the incredible disagreeable truth. Not from Earth were those ships. No mortals predestined a cold death by their boldness. Those who guided the great cars had no dealings with death. They lived for a trillion times, a trillion years, far older than I. They were small sustenance for my needs. In such folks I would have darted off with a crackling curse. But a chance thought adrift in space crossed my brain and I stayed. Then, before I was even sure of the thought, the ship in which I had stationed myself dissolved in a puff of green blue light. It was there then. It was no more, untouched myself, I could not realize the truth for a time, although the hint of it had come to me in a surge of terror which I caught from those people before they poofed from the world. Then I looked and saw and knew. Far off was another car, larger than that which had vanished. It darted swiftly away. It was gone with a speed which I have not often surpassed. And in the same flash of vanishment went the companion craft of the annihilated ship. Avengers eager on the trail. A great Flare out in space where they had disappeared. And I knew even before I reached the spot in the next light mile of time that the destroyer had been destroyed. War and the end of people. But such an end. No bodies there for the gripping cold to encompass and stiffen, no corpses to spring again to life of humbler crawling sort, under warmer influences. Life which had outlasted the earth itself. Then nothing, no death, for death leaves its dead. No comfort in that for my soul, but only the crawling, shrinking, like the incomprehensible emotion I had often wondered at in the souls of men faced with death. It was just beginning. Repressing the urge to flee from the scene because some sense told me it would be futile, I forced myself to enter another of the victorious craft. It was hard. Never have I done a thing so hard before. And I felt such creepings in my heart, as I knew were counterparts of those inexplicable vibrations which had racked the brains of men at sights which had been joy drinking to my soul. And as I learned the full truth, a shiver set in within my own brain, which uncontrollably, for a time, seemed destined certainly to wreck. Was war between two sets of creatures. This would be well enough. The first disappointment of my expectations over. I would be content for them to exterminate one another so long as I still had my Earth and its men but one group, and that the aggressor was determined to wipe the human race from its home. No bodies would be there any more for the feeding of my soul. Nothing. Nor ever again robbed of the nourishment that was a horror to men. What was there for me then? I began in dread fact, to understand those emotions which I had so often seen in men, but only to stare at in amazement before held fascinated by the hovering fate, I attached myself to those creatures while they battled. Two groups. There were, as I said, the original group, the Lyrans, and another, the Mordens, beings from some distant star who had stolen the secrets of the Lyrans and set out to annihilate from the universe all life but theirs. And the Mordens were a fair way to achieving their purpose. For the first time, I felt in my soul an intense desire for the Earth to survive. Each time a party of Lyrans met and annihilated a squadron of Mordens, I chortled gleefully, forgetful of the fact that the catastrophe was productive of no bodies for the slaking of the feverish thirst which was rising within me and which even space was unable to Cool. Each time a Lyran fleet suffered, I ground my teeth until their points chipped gratingly, sending shivers of pain to my brain. I soon found that I had only met the flank guards of the retreating Lyrans. Beaten backward for a thousand years they had been, and after them the destroying Mordens had pressed. Always to them all, time was nothing. Fascinated by what impended when they should sweep by Earth, which the Mordens would wipe free of all vestiges of what had been life before darting on in pursuit of the beaten Lyrans, I took my post with the central body of the latter. Back we were swept back until the rings of Saturn hung lurid above us. Then, perhaps inspired by the cold glory of the sight, the Lyran's defense stiffened. Crescent shaped their formation was, and into it plowed the wedge of the pursuer. Millions strong in ships and billions in lives. Flare after flare colored that space where other matter was not, as the advance guards met to fuse into one great flash of green tinged crimson as the main body of the enemy struck and tore through its outer layers, vanished as they encountered the matter destroying rays of the Lyran. But it was only the peeling of the outer skin from an onion. The body remained as strong as ever and more dangerous. Then it developed that the Lyrans were the fleeter of the two forces. Like a flash, the crescent closed in, peeled one more layer from the onion, and was off to form again a half billion miles beyond. Thus it had been for ages. Fight and retreat, winning sometimes in minor engagements, but not daring to stand long in the minor fights, stalling for time. Earth became visible, a faint star not many degrees from the crimson streamers of the sun. A wave of despair engulfed me. Another set. Stand and fight. And the route would stream past Earth. A few of the pursuing fleet, a few would be more than sufficient, for the task would drop out to swoop upon the unsuspecting Earth. For the first time, I cursed the invisibility of my form, which rendered me helpless to warn or to battle live beings of flesh. Life would vanish from the globe in a series of flashes which would be so rapid that not even the word of the first would ever be told to those about to die next. A few light years and Earth would be bare of life and, more horribly, of death. On it would be nothing but water and ray pocked rock. And I left, unable even to die by the rays which could bring death to beings built of matter, of flesh. I laughed crazily at the grisly joke of it. So my jaws ached with spasm. I, who exist so intensely, though coldly, but not for long would I exist. With death annihilated along with life, I would shrivel and die. The agony of that death commenced in my soul with the thought. As the fever mounted, the next stand of Lyrans came quickly. They were nearing the end of their power of resistance, yet did not flee more than the distance requisite for reforming just within the orbit of Jupiter. In the short fury of that contact, I exulted doubly, as it seemed for a brief instant that the Lyran force would triumph at last and Earth would be saved for death and me and such as I. But it was not so, the battle. And then the Lyran fleet was speeding back for the chance to form again. A million deaths in that brief instant. But no, not deaths. Extinctions. No forms of dead. For the delectations of my soul, I ground my teeth in rage at the Morden and Lyran together, for by then I knew that it was the Lyrans who had discovered ways to cheat death, prolonging life until extinction intervened. When the Lyrans formed for a third stand, mad with the certainty of the end they must have been, it was so near the Earth that the lights from the annihilated cars and men must have been seen from the northern hemisphere, had it been night on the side turned toward the fight. Knowing in advance the inevitable defeat of the defending fleet. In this, the last stand possible before the Morden cars would overrun the unsuspecting Earth, I tore and sobbed with rage. Then I sensed a strange stirring which came over the crew of the car in which I was A message had arrived, and in a moment the fleet was in full flight. It was the end of me. A long line of Lyrans were streaming past the pole of Earth, deserting it to its fate, deserting me. The Morden host paused, as bewildered as I at the unexpected yielding, then gave chase. Suddenly, far to the south, above the Earth, a spot of blackness appeared like an opaque veil. It seemed to pounce from space, shuddering in between the fleeing Lyrans and their pursuers. I stayed behind. For what avail was there in going on? Or, for that matter, in staying, except that the space about the Earth was my home. Home. I crackled hysterically. Home, a boat of nothing. In a moment, home of nothing. Not even the something that was nothing, which was I. The veil of darkness advanced swiftly, hid from view the sun and earth all in that direction was shut off, as though by an impenetrable Blanket it. A small thing at first. The screening blackness loomed rapidly until it assumed the appearance of a great dark wall of solid matter. On rushing at terrific speed as star after star vanished. It was as though the wall had annihilated them as completely as the strange rays of the battling host annihilated each other. Desperately, the Morden fleet crowded on speed to escape, recognizing a threat in the oncoming dark. Up they darted, down and sideways. The leading elements, seeing early that they had no time to turn, dashed into the wall of black seeming emptiness. Head on. Savagely, with the despair that breeds frantic effort, they tore ahead. The rays which streamed to the front like giant headlights, had never failed to blast a path through opposing matter stabbed out angrily. But those rays had met their match. Not even a flicker of light marked the points where individual beams struck the onrushing blackness. With a yelp of fright as I realized my position, I flashed swiftly from the path of the oncoming destruction which might have wiped out even me. I forgot in a sudden surge of terror that a moment before I had feared that I could not find such a swift, clean death. Behind I saw the leading ships of the Morden fleet already flashing into nothingness. By the sight, I knew that their destroying rays reflected back upon them from the wall at which they dashed as it advanced remorselessly, were consuming the things which had generated them. On they dashed to vanish in efficent flame. Only those who had been able to essay the fight remained, and they were diminishing into the far distance, but not swiftly enough. As though that blackness were sentient. It seemed to see the escaping Mordens and leapt upon them with the snap of a tiger's bound. So I had leapt upon the very first to fall beneath my weapons, a playmate of mine, all unsuspecting the blood lust which flared within my soul. I had been young when I first knew my destiny. Now, watching that leaping death engine which had no form, I knew my master. I stared entranced, then shrieked soundlessly with glee. The edges of the darkness were up with the fleeing ships they passed. The black mass closed in like the two jaws of a huge inky maw. No eyes saw those ships again. As suddenly as it had appeared. There was no black curtain in the heavens. Stars shone again with undiminished brilliance out there in the cold. And among them were the bunched lights of innumerable hosts of space cars, the lights of the Canopians, a branch of the Lyran race who had colonized the region of Canopus with their invention. The wall of force. They had arrived to turn the tide, to wipe it out. The Lyran fleet had reassembled, swung to join the Canopians. Together, a vast armada, they streamed off into that outer space where they have abolished death. Rage swelled in my brain at the thought to be transformed into relief as the next thought came. The space of the sun was ours again, mine. After the tension lifted, a cold sweat came on me. Every particle sagged and shook, and I must have gone out of my head as I did once on Earth, back in those days before history when I had human form. At least the next that I knew, I was on the nightward side of the Earth. There, on a frozen plain, was a body. About it circled a wolf pack, snarling, while lesser scavengers skulked in the background. After my arrival, the wolves too, their hackles risen, slunk back, while I, beside the corpse, laughed with wild triumph at the cool, familiar scene. The moon sailed blue and cold. The wind was vibrant with nameless thrills and shrill. Here was Earth again, as of old, all unsuspecting the fate that had swung above it, or that which could be out there in space, a race which had conquered death. If Earth beings but guessed that which had been done, they would somehow find a way to emulate those others. The Lyrans, too, had once been subject to death and decay, before they discovered the secret which cheats my kind. But by now the Lyrans and the Canopians were far out beyond the brighter stars, perhaps beyond the Milky Way, speeding toward worlds in other Nebul. Only I know the truth. And why would I give up my secret and rob myself of my own? Ha ha ha. The joke of it is that I could not tell it if I would. No man may hear me, for I have no voice for men. And as if I would. And who would believe if I could? At the sight of me, men would lose their minds. That horrible feeling which I now know so well, though once it puzzled me, would course through their brains and drive out the power to think or know. Ho ha. Up, gloat, and follow the moon to another appointment with death. Adrift of the air comes a message from the bare crags in the west. Out there, another wolf pack circles a dark spot which still lives. But soon it will be cold. The kill will be made by the wolves, my old tools. But it is I who will enjoy it. To the full. Night. Thing by wilfred allen.

[Narrator 2]

Found by the missing link by W.L.

[Interjection]

alden.

[Narrator 2]

This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Warren Cauty found by the missing link by W.L. alden if we could only find the missing link, said the professor, there would be an end to all doubt as to the theory of development. My own idea is that some day he will be found. Wasn't there an expedition in search of the missing link a few years ago? Asked young Horton. If I remember rightly, the expedition went to Borneo or some such place and never returned. Precisely so, replied the Professor. I fancy that the whole affair was mismanaged, for the man at the head of the expedition was certainly not the man for the place. We were sitting in the smoking room of the Lord Warden Hotel at Dover, a company of weather bound travellers waiting for the storm to abate sufficiently to permit the Calais steamer to leave the shelter of the breakwater. There were a dozen of us all told, but the professor, as we called him without, however, having any real authority for conferring the title upon him, rather monopolized the conversation, which for some time had been devoted to the Darwinian theory. Suddenly an American who had something of the look of the merchant sailor about him, took his cigar from his mouth and remarked, finding the missing link is all right, but having the link find you mightn't be altogether satisfactory. I do not quite understand you, said the professor, rather stiffly. Oh, I ain't giving out any conundrums. I said that having the link find you might not suit you all the way down to the ground. I'm speaking, sir, from experience, for I was once found by that identical missing link that you were so anxious to see, and the experience was a mighty curious one. If you gentlemen want to hear about it, just sing out and I'll give you the whole yarn. Several of us replied that we should be glad to hear the sailor's story, and without any further delay he launched into it. About six years ago I was at Singapore, and I don't mind saying that I was on the beach, if you know what that means. I had shipped as ab aboard a big four masted ship out of Newcastle, bound to Shanghai, and I got disgusted with the grub and the way in which I and the rest of the men were treated so when we put into Singapore for water, having met with calms and head winds that had delayed us on the passage out, I deserted, and I kept shady till the ship had sailed. I found out afterwards that I would have done better if I had stuck to the ship, for after waiting pretty near five weeks in Singapore and not being able to get a ship, I was kicked out by the boarding house keeper and had to sleep in the open and live on food that I could beg from the natives. Well, one day there came to Singapore a scientific chap by the name of Butler. And my idea is that he was the identical chap that the professor was speaking of just now. He was going into the interior to hunt for a new style of monkey that he called the missing link. And he was anxious to find a white man who would join him. I needn't say that I was glad to go with him, for it meant food and the half of a tent and $20 a month to me. I was the only white man in the expedition besides Butler. We had three Malays with us who were to carry our provisions and things and act as a sort of a guard. And the five of us calculated to travel across the peninsula, heading in a northeasterly direction and coming out on the opposite coast. The country that we were to go through had never been visited by a white man, and we supposed that it was full of tigers and savages and such like things. But Butler was full of his project of finding the missing link. He had heard from the natives that somewhere in the interior there was a big monkey, considerably bigger than a man who was more of a man than a monkey. The story said that he hadn't any tail to speak of and that he was intelligent enough to build huts and to knock down other animals with a club. Butler said that he was sure that this monkey was sort of half way between man and beast, and he expected that if he could find him and bring him to Europe, his fortune would be made. I didn't take any stock in the story and didn't care whether it was true or not. All I wanted was to get a berth where I could earn my living. And it was all the same to me whether I was hunting missing lynx in the jungle or doing sailor work aboard ship. We started in good spirits. But I'm free to say that if any man who knew anything about expeditions in the jungle had seen us and expressed his opinion, he would have said that we were a set of, well, everlasting fools. We were armed all right, for every man had a rifle and Butler had a spare shotgun besides. And we had plenty of ammunition about enough, as I judged, to supply a small army for a six months campaign. But in the matter of food, we were on short rations from the first. Butler carried very little except a sort of lozenge made as he said out of meat. He calculated that we would find all the game we wanted and that the lozenges would come in handy when he happened to be out of game. We didn't take any water, except about a pint for each man in a water bottle. And there was only a pint of brandy in the whole expedition. Butler being a teetotaler, we had bad luck from the very first. We didn't meet with many natives except for the first week, and most of them were reasonably friendly, though we did have to shoot one chap just to discourage the others from looting. The jungle was that thick that you couldn't force your way through it except with a machete or an axe. And first along we kept to the paths that the natives had made. After a while we came to a part of the country where there were no natives to speak of and the only paths were the tracks made by the wild animals. They were quite as good as the native paths, but they ran all around the compass and you might follow one of them for a whole day and find when night came round again that you were nearer your place of departure than you had been in the morning. We didn't see much game, but we managed to get enough to keep us from starving, though as a general thing, we were pretty hungry. About the tenth day, as near as I could reckon, one of the Malays was gathered in by a tiger. We shot the beast, but there wasn't enough left of the Malay to be of any use. Three days later, the other two bolted in the night, taking their rifles with them. This left Butler and me alone, but he wasn't a bit discouraged. We filled our pockets with cartridges and left the rest of the outfit behind us. Butler said that according to his reckoning we had about reached the part of the country where he expected to find his link, but he didn't see any signs of him. We marched along pretty steady during the morning and evening, but we had to halt during the middle of the day on account of the heat. Our tobacco gave out after the first week, that is, mine did, for Butler didn't use tobacco, and I suffered more from that than I did from the heat or hunger. We couldn't make a fire except once in a long while, for we hadn't brought but a few boxes of matches and we couldn't afford to run through with them. Of course, we had to take watch and watch at night so as to be ready for any wild beasts that might try to investigate us. But with the exception of the tiger that carried off the Malay, Hardly any animal came near us. I suppose the jungle was too thick to be a handy place for big game, but it suited the small fellows and the snakes and other varieties. Vermin. I never saw such a place for snakes of all sizes and colors. But Butler said most of them were harmless. Perhaps they were, but I never put any confidence in a snake, no matter who he is. And it might have been better for Butler if he'd done the same. I tell you, it was lonesome sitting down in that jungle in the dead of night with Butler asleep close by and all sorts of strange rustlings going on among the trees and the underbrush overhead. I could see the stars stretched along a narrow lane made by the tops of the trees on each side of the wild beast's track. I found it lonesome sometimes at sea when I was on the fo' c' sle head on the look out with the rest of the watch snoring under the weather bulwarks and not a sound stirring except the creaking of a block and the strokes of the bell from the aft. But in that jungle you felt as if you was cast away in a boat without another soul. It's queer what noises go on in such a place. Noises that are not made by animals or yet by the wind. I've heard deep breathing close beside me when there wasn't a breath of air stirring and not an animal within hearing. An animal can't move in a jungle without rustling the leaves or making the the twigs crackle. But that heavy breathing would come within a yard of me without the least rustle or crackle. It was as if the earth itself breathed in the night, as if she had been overheated and tired in the day. And then when night came, she took long breaths and settled herself to sleep. We'd been marching through that jungle for more than a fortnight, perhaps three weeks after leaving Singapore, when Butler was bitten by a snake and died in less than six hours. He was a brave man if he wasn't a first class explorer and he died as coolly as if he was going to sleep. There was nothing I could do for him, for we hadn't any medicine for snake bites. And if he had been loaded down with it, I don't believe it could have saved him. I got him to take some brandy, but he wouldn't take enough to do him any real good. He talked sensibly with me, though he was suffering a lot of pain. He told me to take his compass and steer north east till I came to the coast where I would stand a chance of finding a settlement. He left me all his money, which was about 300 pounds in gold, and urged me to keep my weather eye lifting for the missing link and if possible, to capture him and take him down to the coast with me. Finally he made me promise not to bury him. And considering that I had no undertaking tools except a knife, I don't know as I could have buried him if I had tried. It was his idea that the wild beasts would superintend his funeral and he said he had as soon be disposed of in that way as in any other. Perhaps he was right. We do take a lot of trouble about what is left of us when we die. And perhaps it's all sentiment instead of sense. When Butler was gone, I dragged him a little way into the jungle and covered him as well as I could with leaves and twigs. He and I had never been pals, for I was just a sailor man hired to work for him. But when he died and I was left alone in the jungle, I felt as you feel on a bright breezy day when the sun suddenly goes under a thick cloud and the sea turns grey and the wind begins to moan in the rigging I knew that I hadn't any chance worth speaking of. I was alone with the thick jungle around me that seemed to press tight on my throat like a hot hoogly fog. If the wild beasts didn't gather me in or savages make a dinner of me, I should probably die of starvation long before I could reach the coast. All that day I tramped along, getting hungry and tired and not meeting any game that I could shoot. And when night came, I lay down wishing that I was back at Singapore, starving among human beings in what you might call a social sort of way. When I woke up it was daylight. And what at first I thought was an enormous monkey was standing over me on his hind legs with my gun in his hand. I jumped up pretty lively, but he had me by the scruff of the neck. By the time I was on my feet, his hand was like a steam engine. I could fairly feel his fingers sinking into the flesh. However, I didn't say anything or even try to twist myself loose. He had me, and the only thing I could do was to wait and see what would turn up. We started along the narrow path, I in front and he behind, shoving me along with his grip on my neck. The only part of him I could see were his feet, which now and then came into sight. When he took a long step, I noticed that they were like hands. They had fingers instead of toes and a regular thumb in the place where a man's big toe is placed. All of a sudden it came to me that this was Butler's missing link. I had often heard him say that the link would be covered with hair and would probably have feet, something like hands, but in other respects he would be pretty much like a human being. The creature that had captured me answered exactly to this description. I knew he wasn't any sort of a monkey or ape, as I should say, for apes don't walk on their hind legs and carry guns in one hand and hold a man by the neck with the other. He wasn't a man, for he had the feet of an ape and he wore fur instead of clothes. Consequently, he must be the missing link. And I remember thinking that it was a big joke that I should have started to find him and that he should have found me instead. In about half an hour, as I should judge, we left the path and pushing our way through the jungle where the undergrowth was thinner than usual, we came to a little clearing where there was a hut built of young saplings driven into the ground and lashed together at the top with vines. We stopped outside of the hut, and the lynx sang out in his lingo. And presently there came out of the hut another link. His wife, as I supposed. The two chattered about me, Mr. Link showing me and my gun, and they evidently agreeing that I was a valuable specimen. Finally, Mr. Link stood me up against a tree and made me fast to it with a rope of twisted tendrils. And then, picking up a big club, went into the forest. I needn't say that I was pretty badly scared. Without my gun I was helpless, and there didn't seem to be much chance that I would get hold of it again. I couldn't get my hands free, for Mr. Link had lashed them to the tree with the judgment of an able seaman. I imagined from his having taken his club with him that he had gone off in search of game, which looked as if he and his wife didn't consider me to be good eating. You needn't remind me that monkeys don't eat meat. I knew that and thought of it at the time. But a missing link has risen above the monkey species so far that I thought it very probable that he might have learned to eat his cousin man as well as other sorts of meat. Mrs. Link sat on the ground about two yards distant from me, looking at me with what I fancied was a rather admiring expression in her Eyes, says I to myself, you're in a mighty tight place and your only chance is to make friends with these links. So I smiled my best smile and said to Mrs. Glad to make your acquaintance, my dear. It fetched her the first time. She couldn't smile, for her mouth wasn't built for it, but she chuckled in a way that showed she was pleased. And then she came over to me and patted me on the cheek. I kept on smiling for all I was worth and talking to her in a friendly and respectful way. Of course, I knew that she couldn't understand a word I said, but I calculated that she, being a female, would understand that I was paying her compliments and that I was full of respect for her character. A woman is a woman, even when she is a Link. And I didn't make any mistake about this one. By and by, Mr. Link came back with a dead rabbit and the two sat down to breakfast. They evidently didn't know anything about a fire, for they ate the rabbit raw, pulling it to pieces with their hands and teeth. Presently Mrs. Link tossed me over a choice bit, and when I looked reproachfully at her as if to say, how on earth do you expect me to eat with my hands tied behind my back, she said something to her lord and he came over and cast off the lashing. I didn't lose any time in sitting down close to Mrs. Link and smiling at them both while I ate raw rabbit as if it was plum duff. They were a good tempered couple, and before I had got through with breakfast they had plainly made up their minds that I was an intelligent and harmless animal and that they'd take me in and make a sort of domestic pet of me. I don't propose to read off a regular log of every hour I spent with them, the lynx. I was with them close on to four weeks, and they treated me civilly all the time. At night I slept in the hut with them, and they gave me a pile of leaves for a bed that was twice as thick as the beds they used for themselves. Mr. Link wouldn't let me go into the forest either alone or with him, but that was about all the restriction that he put upon me. He was gone on the hunt game most of the day, and Mrs. Link and I stopped at home and slept and talked. That the links had a genuine language I never had the least doubt, though I could never get to understand more than three or four words of it, and those I have forgotten. It sounded to me something like French, though I don't really know Much about French. And perhaps the reason why I fancied it sounded like French. Was that somehow a man always associates French with monkeys. As I said, Mrs. Link and I talked a lot to one another, and it seemed to do her good, though I could never exactly see why. I did considerable work for the lynx. First and last, I improved and enlarged their hut until they regarded it as the swellest place ever built. I made forks for them out of big thorns. And I was tempted to show them my matches and teach them the use of fire. But I only had a small box of matches left. And I knew that if I ever escaped from the links, I would need them myself the worst way. They never discovered them, for they never dreamed that I had pockets. Their idea was that my clothes were permanent, just like their fur. And as I never took them off while I was with them, they never suspected that I wasn't born in a blue flannel shirt and ragged trousers. Why, Mrs. Link mistook a hole in the left leg of my trousers for some new kind of sore. And one day she insisted on rubbing it with some patent salve that she got out of a sort of gum tree. They saw very soon that raw meat didn't altogether meet my views. And after that they always brought me nuts and a sort of wild turnip. Take those, Links. By and large, they treated me the best they knew how. And in my opinion, Mr. Link was more of a gentleman than half the men in Singapore. Though I'll allow that isn't saying very much. As for Mrs. Link, I don't deny that she made a dead set at me mind. I'm not saying a word against her character. For as far as I know, she was a perfectly respectable link. All I mean is that she took a great fancy to me and tried to make me take the same to her. For which nobody could blame her. She used to pick out the best bones and the biggest nuts for me. And she was always bringing me water to drink in a cocoanut shell. And she never got tired of patting me on the head. Mr. Link never showed the least sign of jealousy. I suppose that he considered the idea that a link could fall in love with a creature like a man was too ridiculous to be thought of for a moment. All the time I kept longing for my gun, which the lynx had hid in some place where I couldn't find it. I don't know what they thought of the gun or why they hid it. Perhaps their idea was that it wasn't respectable for a Link to be seen in the possession of Such a thing, just as an Englishman, when he goes to Italy, thinks that it is preposterous in the Italians to wear cloaks. I'm ashamed to say that the way I got possession of that gun again was by teaching Mrs. Link the art of kissing. I often made signs that I wanted the gun, and I could see that she understood them, but she would never bring it to me. One day I put my arm around her waist and gave her a kiss. It hit her where she lived. And you never saw a girl at Christmas time who had been kissed under the mistletoe by her young man seem more delighted than Mrs. Link seemed. The next time we were alone, she hinted by her manner that she would like to try the lesson over again, but I wouldn't understand her and kept on making signs about the missing gun. After a while she got up and went into the jungle, and I began to think that she was pouting. But in a few minutes she came back and handed me the gun. Then I did give her an honest kiss, and to tell the truth, though she wasn't much more of a beauty than the orang in the zoo, I felt almost fond of her. I hid the gun under my bed, a plan she evidently approved of, and that made me understand that she had run some risk of displeasing the other link by sneaking the gun. That night, when the two links were sound asleep, I reached for the gun and slipped out of the hut. I hated to leave them without saying good bye, but of course that wasn't possible. However, I did leave on the side of Mrs. Link's bed a little bit of a looking glass that I had carried in my pocket, and I hope it reconciled her to my loss. I ran the most of that night and must have put 15 miles between myself and the lynx by daylight. Then I lay down for a nap, and when I got up and started on the march again, I caught sight of something blue showing through the jungle. I had found the sea after all, and by noon I was safe aboard a ship that I had sighted close in to shore and swam to taking the chances that it was an honest ship and not a pirate. Now, gentlemen, you may not believe this story, but it's the solemn truth. The missing link lives somewhere in the northeast part of the peninsula. And though I can't exactly say that I found him, I'm dead certain that he found me. I've never told the story before because I hate to be taken for one of your newspaper reporters that are always having tremendous adventures that never happen. But if you should see my old rifle and notice the marks of teeth on the barrel where one of the links tested it. You'd have to admit that either the marks were made by the teeth of a man who could bite laminated steel, or that they were made by an animal answering to the description of the missing L. End of Found by the missing link by W.L.

[Interjection]

alden.

[Reader]

Office call by Charles E. Fritsch this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Caitlin Vanadestine office call by Charles Charles E. Fritsch Dr. Rawlings sighed alongside, born of frustration and impatience, and went warily to the bookcase. Almost methodically he removed a large gold titled volume of Freud's General Introduction to Psychoanalysis and withdrew the bottle from its hiding place. The bottle was half filled with an amber fluid, which jiggled pleasantly as he held it in an unsteady hand, observing with a practiced eye how gayly it sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight. Then from the cavity he also extracted a small whiskey glass. He took these tools to his desk, poured himself a stiff one, downed it, flopped into his swivel chair, and closed his eyes. Chicken farms, he thought. He felt the fiery liquid seep through him, warming his insides with its silent flame, bringing a pleasant glow of satisfaction to his mind. He closed his eyes tighter and regarded the darkened world with a calm calmness that was somehow conducive to rational thought even in this irrational world. To thought and to sleep, he realized suddenly, as he found his head tilting. He rose quickly, blinking off the effects of the liquor, and carefully returned the utensils to their proper niche behind the volume of Freud on the bookshelf. Good old Freud, he thought. Always knew he'd come in handy one of these days. Then he returned to his desk to consult a small pad and stuff, silently cursed the cruel fates that had given his patience, tumbling upon one another in a ridiculously mad haste to reach the jumbled sanity of the normal world. Why couldn't there have been a decent interval of time between them so he could take a shower or have a game of golf, or maybe even hang on a small one, or see a psychiatrist himself, or maybe start that chicken farm he'd been talking about for the past two years? He dropped a button, said into the intercom, Ms. Austen, will you please send in the fireload, Mr. Charles T. Moore? And without waiting for an answer, snapped the machine off. Fifteen seconds later the door opened and Ms. Austen walked in a manila folder in one lovely hand. As usual, she was in an immaculately white uniform. White for purity? He wondered. It was a tight fitting garment that clung to every every curve as though hanging on for dear life. And on second thought, he mentally erased the purity inscription on his mind's slate. Ms. Austin had a beautiful walk in, beautiful legs to walk on. He stared at them as she approached the desk. He always stared at them, fascinated, and she always knew he did. And she smiled that enticingly mad smiles of hers that always made him want to give vent to an emotional catharsis. God, he thought, how I'd love to psychoanalyze that woman. What a beautiful ego she must have. What a gorgeous idea. Carefully she deposited the folder on his desk, leaning forward strategically so her perfume could glide over him in intoxicating currents. Will that be all, Dr. Rawlings? She asked in her honey liquid tones. For now, he said, reaching for her hand and finding it. But don't go away. She smiled again and gently freeing her hand, swept from the room. She looked even better from the back, if that were possible. After a few seconds deliberation, he decided it wasn't possible. But it was women like Ms. Austen that made him want a chicken farm. Among other things, Ms. Austen and a little tract of land far out in the country would be just perfect. In such a paradise he wouldn't even have to worry about the pecking order of hens. In fact, he might even get engrossed in raising things other than chickens. Sighing again, he studied the folder before him, which did not take very long. The patient was still quite young, even though he had already already made a mark of sorts in the world. A theoretical mathematician apparently probably thought himself a square circle on an adding machine. The psychiatrist browsed through the folder's contents again, then jabbed the buzzer. You can send Mr. Moore in now, he said, and snapped the intercom off before Ms. Austen could answer. The present moment was no time to be distracted. Dr. Rawlings held his head in his hands and stared morosely at the desk. Then he picked up a pencil and began tapping it against an inkwell. An incongruous thought, Shirley. Pencil and inkwell. What would Freud say about that? He decided in the same thought that he didn't give a particular damn what Freud thought about inkwells. There were times, in fact, when he didn't care what Freud thought about anything. There were times when all we wanted to think about was a small chicken farm with maybe a gorgeous honey blonde like Ms. Austen to help. Sow a few seeds. He looked out the window at the sky and the tops of buildings and recalled with bitterness the patient who had claimed that he could fly and who had tried to jump to the street forty floors below solely to prove it. It would have made a nasty splash, he thought. All the king's horses and all the king's men. Unless, of course, the patient really could fly. He looked up, annoyed, and discovered that the door had not opened. Furiously he jabbed the buzzer again. Is it Mr. Dr. Moore here yet? He demanded, consulting his watch. He was supposed to be here five minutes ago. He's here, Doctor. The receptionist's silk and satin tones came. He's trying to get up enough courage to open the door. Oh, the psychiatrist said. He felt like adding something unprofessional, but he controlled himself. With an effort he shut off the intercom and just waited. He looked up at the door and saw the knobs turning slowly, ever so slowly, slowly. He watched its glistening faucets turn in the dim natural lighting of the room, rotating as though in the slowest of slow motions. He sighed and turned his attention to his desktop, where he discovered he had abstractedly pencilled on the blotter a four letter word not normally used in polite society. Hastily annoyed with himself, he grabbed the pencil and used its erasing head to rub off the offending word. When he looked up again, the door had opened the slightest crack. Damn, he he thought. This job is going to drive me wacky. Yet he recalled an episode of a few weeks earlier. He didn't want to, but the thought came just the same. Some of his patients had delusions, so logical and systematized it was hard to prove to them that they were wrong. Sometimes it was hard to prove to yourself they were not right after all. The woman from Mars, for example. She had actually believed that she was from the fourth planet was really a Martian stranded here. Unaccountably, she had told told a good straight story, but he had managed to convince her she was not from Mars. He had persuaded her that she was an earthling like everybody else and that space travel of any sort was utterly impossible. Anyway, he had been about to prove that there was probably no such planet as Mars when she decided not to come back. That was close to the time the meteorite landed a few miles away, the one that had never been found. After all, while not an unusual occurrence, over developing lungs and six fingers on each hand didn't mean the door edged open slightly and an eye peered fearfully into the room. Then it swung wide and the young man standing in the doorway let out a blasphemous sigh that could be heard in surrounding offices. Come in, Mr. Moore, the psychiatrist said. Come in. Close the door. Sit down. Mr. Moore did all these things with normal speed and in the proper order, but he did have a tendency to sit on the edge of his chair as though he was were sitting on a cliff and might topple over at any moment. The psychiatrist doodled on his pad impatiently. Well, now, just what seems to be the trouble? Mr. Moore wet his lips. His face was white. He said, I'm a mathematician. I work at the university. Oh, the other said, bringing to voice facts he'd read a few minutes before. You're that Charles Timor, the one whose picture was in the paper a short time ago. Something about mathematics, I remember. Moore nodded. Einstein, wasn't it? The psychiatrist mused. Something I don't understand. Einstein. It's not easy, moore agreed. That's what started my difficulty. Oh, yes. When I learned that any point is the beginning or end of the universe. Any point at all. The edge of this chair, the tip of my finger behind any door. That's Einstein. He shook his head. Partly. Mostly it's more. The psychiatrist seemed puzzled. More what? I mean, it's me. My theory, my calculations. I've proved theoretically that any given spot can be a jumping off place for another universe. Do you realize what that means? The psychiatrist was annoyed by the question, for he had no idea what it meant. His one overwhelming immediate desire was to start a chicken farm. Just what does it mean? He compromised. It means that if we can develop this commercially, space travel to the farthest star will be as easy as walking across the street. Dr. Rowling's annoyance rose higher at this. Space travel again. After only a few weeks ago he had convinced a woman from Mars that such things were impossible. Oh, well, this is very interesting, he lied. But just what is the nature of your difficulty? My ideas used to be only things theoretical, Moore told him. But through some quirk of fate, I've advanced beyond that stage to a point where I'm actually capable of crossing the barrier. The psychiatrist nodded. You mean you think you can actually do this? Moore shook his head emphatically. I mean, I have done it, he insisted. Mind control, I see, the doctor said. On his pad he wrote hallucinations. Although he was jumping the gun slightly on that, still he felt sure of himself. And the pencil still had some eraser left in it. Under the word he drew a crude and rather vulgar picture of a rooster chasing a hen. That's why I came to you, Dr. Rawlings, Moore went on. It's not that I'm neurotic or anything. It's just that I can't control this power, and I'd like to. He shuddered slightly. I'd better. And you want me to help you, the psychiatrist said. Which of course I'll be only too happy to do. But first, do you have any outward signs that. That you have crossed the barrier, that is, do you? Well, see things, for example? Yes, I do, Moore said, remembering, and the psychiatrist penciled two triumphant lines beneath the word hallucinations on his desk pad. It began about two weeks after I first made my mathematical discovery. I was lying awake in bed thinking of my theories and how if ever they could be applied directly to the physical world, doors would be open to any part of the universe. Just about then a knock came at the door. The psychiatrist nodded. What time was this? About three in the morning, Moore said. I got up, put on a robe and went to answer it, wondering who it could be at that time. I opened the door and there in the hall was a baby in a basket. A baby? Queried the psychiatrist. In a basket? Are you sure? Moore nodded. And then I noticed something else unusual. Out there. It was Mars. Out there? Out where? Out in the hall. It wasn't the hall in my apartment building. It was some other hall. And through a window I could see a red desert and canals. There isn't a red desert where I live, or any desert at all. There are no canals either. It was Mars. I see, the psychiatrist said, and he drew a thick ellipses around the word on his pad. Then what happened? I was scared, but I couldn't leave a baby out there in the hall like that. So I picked. Picked it up, basket and all, and took it into my room and closed the door. And then he gulped and looked out the window at the sky and the tops of buildings. Here's where the part comes in that's hard to believe. Yes, go on, the psychiatrist prompted. The baby turned into a full grown woman, Moore said. Despite himself, the psychiatrist felt his eyebrows arch. Well, this was certainly a new one. You say the baby turned into a full grown woman? Er, clothed. Moore reddened and stared at the floor. No, he said. I was scared and embarrassed. Here I am, a bachelor and there was a nude woman in my apartment. How could I explain that to the landlady? Anyway, I threw open the door again, but this time the hall was different. It was like it was before. On Earth, I mean, instead of on Mars. Very interesting. The psychiatrist said, mentally picturing the situation and temporarily forgetting chicken farms. He wondered how Ms. Austen would look au naturel. Did you do anything? That is, anything? Well, anything at all? I didn't know what to do, morse said. She looked about as surprised as I was, but not nearly as embarrassed. I closed the door again and tried to figure out what to do. Despite himself, the psychiatrist was interested. And did you? I had to do something. She didn't know where she was, who she was, or how she'd gotten here. I told her that I thought she came from the planet Mars and that there was evidently some sort of time stress in the field. I constructed accidentally, since she appeared to be only a child a few minutes before, and that it was my fault and that I tried to help her. I tried to bring back Mars, he went on, but I found I couldn't. In fact, I discovered that these things were evidently accidental, depending upon a frame of mind or something. Anyway, I slept on the couch that night, went out the next day and bought her some clothes at a store in town. Was she constructed like Earth women? The psychiatrist asked at a sudden thought. Moore blushed. Yes, he said, very definitely like Earth women. Except for one thing. She had six fingers on each hand. The psychiatrist had been toying with the pencil. At that revelation, he froze briefly. Then he tried to laugh it off mentally. No, it couldn't be. Weeks passed and she didn't appear to be able to get adjusted, Morse said. That's when I suggested she go to you. Dr. Rawlings dropped the pencil completely. The woman from Mars. He exclaimed. You sent her here? Moore nodded soberly. Yes, and I'd like to get her back. I'm in love with her. I haven't got her. He began to wish he did. I know she was picked up in a rocket ship. Everyone else around here thinks it was a meteorite. But she told me before she left that they'd traced her by brain waves or something and would pick her up. And just what do you expect me to do? The psychiatrist wanted to know. He picked up the pencil and made black lines over the H in hallucinations. I want you to help me discover what frame of mind must be cultivated to recreate Mars. I've got a hunch it's a subconscious problem. I've been accidentally creating all sorts of alien worlds behind doors when I least expect them. That's why I hesitated outside your office, to make certain when I opened the door the office would really be here. Why, only last week I opened a door to the men's room at the university and found myself staring down into the great nebula in Andromeda. If I'd stepped through. He shuddered. I don't know if going through would change me, but if I ever see Mars again. Well, I think we can help you there, the psychiatrist told him. Suppose you come around Wednesday at 2:00'.

[Interjection]

Clock.

[Reader]

That satisfactory? Moore rose, smiling. Fine, he said. And thanks a lot, Doctor. You'll never know how much this means to me. Quite all right, quite all right. See you Wednesday. Moore went to the door, opened it, went through to the outer office. Well, thank goodness that was over. The psychiatrist breathed a sigh of relief. One of these days. That chicken farm was going to be a real reality if this kept up. He pressed a button on the intercom. When's the next patient, Ms. Austen? Not until tomorrow, Dr. Rawlings, she cooed. You have plenty of time for Mr. Moore yet. Plenty of time forwhat are you talking about? He ran through that door about a minute ago. The receptionist was silent for a minute. Then she said, he couldn't have. No one's come out of your office. I've been here all the time. The same psychiatrist flicked off the intercom. For a moment he stared out the window at the sky and the building tops. Then he went to the door and knelt and saw a small amount of red sand, just a few grains that might have been kicked under the door by someone in a hurry. He returned to Freud on the shelf, located the bottle in the glass, and poured himself a stiff one without waiting to transport the equipment to the desk. Then he went to the desk and flipped on the intercom again. Mr. Ms. Austin, do you like chicken farms? He said. I love them, Doctor, the honey voice answered. But never mind, he told her. Just come in here. I've got a question to ask you. He poured himself another drink. End of Office Call By Charles E. Fritsch.

[Narrator 3]

The Happy Clown by Alice Eleanor Jones this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Kandra Robinson the Happy Clown by Alice Eleanor Jones Translated by Candra Robinson the Happy Clown by Alice Eleanor Jones this was a century of peace, plethora, and perfection. And little Stephen was a misfit, a nonconformist who hated perfection. He had to learn the hard way. Stephen Russell was born a misfit, a non conformist, and for the first five years of his life he made himself and his parents extremely, extremely unhappy. The 21st century was perfect, and this inexplicable child did not like perfection. The first trouble arose over his food. His mother did not nurse him, since the doctors had proved that baby lack and the soft rainbow colored plastic containers in which it was warmed and offered were both a vast improvement on nature. Stephen drank the baby lack, but though it was hard to credit in so young a child, sometimes his face wore an expression of pure distaste. A little later he rejected the baby Otzis and fruitsies and meatsies and his large half focused eyes wept at the jolly pictures on the jarseys. He disliked his plastic dish made like a curled up jolly kitten and his spoon with the happy clown's head on the handle. He turned his face away determinedly and began to pine, reducing his mother to tears and his father to frightened anger. The doctor said cheers cheerily. There's nothing the matter with him. He'll eat when he gets hungry enough. And Stephen did, to a degree, but not as if he enjoyed it. One day when he was nearly a year old, his mother carried his kitty corner with the dancing dogsies on the pad into her bedroom and put him in it and began to take take things out of the bottom bureau drawer. They were old things and Harriet Russell was ashamed of them. She had said more than once to her husband Richard, only half joking, I couldn't give them away, and I'd be ashamed for anybody to see them in our trash. They were old silver knives and forks and spoons that looked like they were unadorned, and a child's plain silver dish and cup and one small spoon with a useful curly handle. They had belonged to Harriet's great grandmother. Once a year Harriet took the things out and polished them and furtively put them back. This year Stephen. Cried Ma, stretching out his hands toward the silver and uttering a string of determined sounds which were perfectly clear to his mother. She smiled at him lovingly but shook her head. No, Stevie, Mumsy's precious baby doesn't want those nasty old things. No, he doesn't. Play with your happy clown, sweetheart. Steven's face got red and he squeezed his eyes shut, opened his mouth, and howled until his mother passed him the dish and cup and curly spoon to play with at mealtime. He would not be parted from them and Harriet had to put away the plastic dish and spoon thereafter for the sake of the container. He tolerated the thing contained and thrived and grew fat. Stephen did not like his rock a by crib that joggled his him gently and sang him songs about the happy clown all night long, and he howled until they turned it off. He was a clean boy and to his mother's amazement trained himself to be dry day and night by the age of 14 months without the aid of the Singing Toity or the Happy Clown alarm. So she bought him a little folks youth bed with a built in Joggler and Happy Clowns on the corners and a television set in the footboard. It was a smaller copy of his parents bed even to the Happy Clowns. Stephen did not like that either, and if his parents persisted in turning the bed on after he had learned to turn it off, he climbed out and slept on the floor. Harriet said worriedly to her husband, I don't know what could be the matter with him, Dickie. He's peculiar. Richard tried to comfort her. Never mind Harry, he'll outgrow it. Stephen did not outgrow it. When he became too big for the curly spoon and dish and cup, he demanded a knife and fork and spoon from the bureau drawer and ate his meals from the plainest dish he could find. He ate them with his back stubbornly turned to the television set, away from the morning cartoons and the Noontime Kitties Lunch Club and the Evening Happy Clown. The Happy Clown had been an American institution for 30 years. He was on television for an hour every night at Dinner time, with puppets and movies and live singers and dancers and his own inimitable brand of philosophy and humor. Everybody loved the Happy Clown. He had been several different actors in 30 years, but his makeup never changed. The beaming face drawn in vivid colors, the rotund body that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelzies, and the chuckling, infectious laugh. The Happy Clown was always so cheerful and folksy and sincere. He believed passionately in all the products he instructed his viewers to buy, and one was entirely certain that he used them all himself. He gave one much more than advertising the though some of his nightly gems of wisdom, he called them nuggets, were really wonderful. They made one think a favorite nugget, which people were always writing in and asking him to repeat, went like we're all alike inside, folks, and we ought to be all alike outside. The Happy Clown's viewers were not children and and adults. They were kitties and folks. After the Happy Clown went off the air, the happy kitties went to bed to lie for a while looking at the jolly kitten and the dancing dogsy, until, lulled by the joggler, they went gently to sleep. After that came the cowboys and spacemen, carryovers for any happy kids, kitties with insomnia for really meaty programs, one had to stay up past 10. Then the spectaculars began, and the quiz shows and the boxing and wrestling. Stephen did not like the happy clown or the jolly kitten or the dancing dogsy. Sometimes he began to grow interested in the character cowboys or spacemen. But when they stopped in the middle of an adventure to talk about how they could not possibly rope the steers or shoot the asteroids without a good breakfast of cornsies and choco Milco, which everybody ate, just everybody, Stephen climbed out of bed and slept on the floor. Stephen did not like the records or the talking books. And when he went to Kitty Garden, he viewed the televised lessons with a cold eye. For some reason which he could not have explained, he wanted to learn to read, but they would not teach him till he was seven. And so he taught himself from the letters on the jerseys. But then there was nothing to read except the newspapers and the magazines. Magazines which he puzzled over patiently, getting most of the words right after a while. The many advertisements were easiest. They used pictures and the simplest of language. His parents thought it was very cunning of him to look at the printing like that, so wisely as if he could read it. He said once to Harriet, I can read it. But she said, oh, Stevie, you're teasing Mumsy. And looked so frightened at this fresh peculiarity that the child said gravely, yes, teasing. He wished he had a silent book. He knew there were such things, but there were none at home. There were few silent books anywhere. There were none in Kitty Garden. Stephen was not happy in Kitty Garden. The enthusiasm the other kitties showed for the lessons appalled him. The kitties themselves appalled him. They joined so passionately in the group play, clutching each other with their hot, moist hands, panting and grinning into each other's faces. They were always clutching and panting and grinning in large, noisy groups with large community smiles. They confused him. He could not tell them apart. Stephen retired to a corner and turned his back. And when they clutched and panted and grinned at him, he hit them. The Kitty Garden Monitor had to report of him to his unhappy parents that he was uncooperative and antisocial. He. He would not merge with the group. He would not acquire the proper attitudes for successful community living. He would not adjust. Most shocking of all, when the lesson about the birdsies and beezies was telecast, he not only refused to participate in the ensuing period of group experimentation, but lost color and disgraced himself by being. Being sick in his corner. It was a painful interview. At the end of it, the Monitor recommended the clinic. Richard appreciated her Delicacy. The clinic would be less expensive than private psychiatry, and after all, the manager of a supermarket was no millionaire. Harriet said to Richard when they were alone, dickie, he isn't outgrown growing it. He's getting worse. What are we going to do? It was a special tragedy since Harriet was unable to have any more kitties. And if this one turned out wrong, Richard said firmly, we'll take him to the clinic. They'll know what to do. The first thing they did to Stephen was talk to him. The psychiatrist made him lie down on a foam rubber couch, Kitty's model with the happy clown motif on the slipcover, and said with a beaming face, now, Stevie, what seems to be the trouble? The boy turned his head away from the psychiatrist's shining teeth and said, my name's not Stevie, it's Stephen. He was a thin little boy, rather undersized. The baby steepat had melted away fast when he began to be exposed to kindergarten. He had dark hair and big eyes and an uncommonly precise way of speaking for a child of five. The psychiatrist said, oh, but we're going to be friends, Stevie. And friends always use nicknames, don't they? My name's William, but everybody calls me Willie. You can call me me Uncle Willie. The boy said politely, I'd rather not. Please. The doctor was undismayed. I want to help you. You believe that, don't you, Stevie? The child said, stephen, do I have to lie down? The doctor said agreeably, it's more usual to lie down, but you may sit up if you want to. Why don't you like Kitty Garden, Stephen? The boy sat up and regarded him warily. The doctor had a kind face, a really kind face, in spite of all those shining teeth. And Stephen was only five years old, after all, and there was nobody to talk to, and he was desperately unhappy. Perhaps, he said, you'll tell them. The doctor shook his head. Nothing goes farther than this room, Stevie. Steven. The child leaned forward, pressing his knees together, hugging himself with his arms, bowing his head. His position was almost fetal. He said, I'm never by myself. They never let me be by myself. The psychiatrist said reasonably, but nobody can live by himself, Stevie. He had apparently forgotten Steven, and the boy did not correct him again. You have to learn to live with other people, to work and play with them, to know them. And the only way you can learn is. Is by being with them. When you can't be with them personally. There's always television. That's how you learn, Stevie. You can't be by Yourself? The boy looked up and said starkly, never the gleaming teeth showed. But why should you want to? Stephen said. I don't know. The doctor said slowly and with emphasis, Stevie, long before you were born, the world was a very bad place. There were wars all the time. Do you know why? The boy shook his head. It was because people were different from each other and didn't understand each other and didn't know each other. They had to learn how to be alike and understand and know so that they would be able to live together. They learned in many ways, Stevie. One way was by visiting each other. You've heard about the visitors who come from. Steven said. You mean the happy tours? Yes. When you're 12 years old you can go on a happy tour. Won't that be fun? Steven said, if I could go alone. The doctor looked at him sharply. But you can't. Try to understand, Stevie. You can't. Now tell me, why don't you like to be with other people? Steven said. All the time? Not all the time, the doctor repeated patiently. Why? Stephen looked at the doctor and said a very strange thing. They touch me. He seemed to shrink into himself. Not just with their hands. The doctor shook his head sadly. Of course they do. That's just. Well, maybe you're too young to understand. The interview went on for quite a while, and at the end of it Stephen was given a series of tests which took a week. The psychiatrist had not told the truth. What the boy said during the first interview and all the tests was fully recorded on concealed machines. The complete transcript made a fat dossier in the office of the clinic director. At the end of the tests, the director said seriously to Steven's parents, I'll be frank with you. You have a brilliant kitty here. Right now he has the intelligence of a 12 year old. But brilliance has to be channeled in the right direction. Just now, well, frankly, it's channeled in the wrong direction. We'll give it a year or so and then if things don't clear up.

[Narrator 2]

Up.

[Narrator 3]

I'm afraid we'll have to correct him. Richard said through dry lips, you mean a Steiner? The director nodded. The only thing. Harriet shuddered and began to cry. But there's never been anything like that in our family. The disgrace. Oh, Dickie, it would kill me. The director said kindly, there's no disgrace. Disgrace? Mrs. Russell, that's a mistaken idea. Many people have. These things happen occasionally. Nobody knows why. And there's absolutely no disgrace in a Steiner. Nothing is altered but the personality. And afterward you have a happy, normal Kitty, who hardly remembers that anything was ever wrong with him. Naturally, nobody ever mentions it, but there's no hurry in the case of a Kitty. We can wait a while. Bring Stevie in once a week. We'll try therapy first. Being, as the director had said, a brilliant Kitty, Stephen soon understood much of what was kept from him. It did not take him long to learn what was making his dad's looked stern and white and what was making his mumsy cry. He loved his parents and did not want them to be unhappy. And he certainly did not want to have his head cut open. And so he began to act. Even at 5, Stephen discovered in himself a fine talent for acting. He began to conform, to adjust, to merge. He became social and cooperative and acquired the proper attitudes for successful community living. He gave up the old silver voluntarily. He accepted the youth bed. He looked at the Happy Clown and he did much better. In kindergarten. He even joined in the group experimentation and was not sick anymore, though he he could not keep himself from losing color. They were pleased with him at the clinic and after a few months discharged him. By the time Stephen was 12 and had made the happy tour and joined the Happy Scouts and had a happy affair involving experimentation with a neighbor's daughter, Harriet, and Richard ceased to worry about him. If sometimes he felt so tightly strung up that a storm of tears was his only relief, he kept the tears quiet. He was graduated from high school at 16 and from college at 20, having read all he could of the silent books in the scant high school library and the more ample university one, and having wisely elected to appear more stupid than he was. Even his IQ was now judged to be only slightly above normal. He left college with honors, popularity and a reputation as an actor. He took the lead in all the dramatic club plays, having particular success in the reproduction of a Happy Clown program. Stephen, of course, was the happy clown. He enrolled at once in the New York School of Television Arts, and his mother cried when he left home to live in the school dormitory. Stephen did well at Television Arts, soon taking more leads than was customary in school productions, which were organized on a strictly repertory basis. He did not stay to graduate, being snatched away in his first year by a talent scout for a popular daytime serial, the Happy Life. The Happy Life recounted the trials of a young physician, too beautiful for his own good, who became involved in endless romantic complications. Stephen was given the lead. The preceding actor, having moved, moved up to a job as understudy for the Jolly Kitten and was an immediate success. For one thing, he looked the part. He was singularly handsome in a lean, dark browed way and did not need flattering makeup or special camera angles. He had a deep, vibrant voice and perfect timing. He could say, darling, this is tearing me to pieces with precisely the right intonation and let tears come into his magnificent eyes and make his jaw muscles jump appealingly and hold the pose easily for the five minutes between the 10 minute pitch for Marquis cigarettes which constituted one episode of the Happy Life. His fan mail was prodigious. If Stephen had moments of bewilderment, of self loathing, of despair, when the tears were real and the jaw muscles jumped to keep the mouth from screaming, no one in the happy young men's dormitory where he slept ever knew it. He managed his life well enough. He had a few affairs with girls, it was expected of one, and he did not have to work very hard, hard at it, since they always threw themselves at him. And he got along well with other young men who forgave him for being so handsome because he did not work at it except on camera. But he was lonely. Surrounded by people intruded and trespassed upon, continually touched in ways other than physical. He was yet lonely. During his life he had met a few other nonconformists, shy like him, wary of revealing themselves. But something always seemed to happen to them. Some were miserable being non conformists and asked pitifully for the Steiner. Some were detected, as Stephen had been, and some were unfortunately surprised. In hospitals, under the anesthetic they sometimes talked, and then, if they were adults, they were immediately corrected by means of Steiner's lobotomy. It had been learned that adults did not respond to therapy. There was never any organization, any underground of misfits. And underground presupposes injustices to be fought, thought cruelty to be resisted. And there was no injustice and no cruelty. The mass of people were kind and their leaders, duly and fairly elected, were kind. They all sincerely believed in the gospel of efficiency and conformity and kindness. It had made the world a wonderful place to live in, full of wonder, wonderful things to make and buy and consume, all wonderfully advertised. And if one were a misfit and the doctors found out and gave one a Steiner, it was only to make one happy so that one could appreciate what a wonderful world it was. Stephen met no nonconformists at the School of Television Arts, and none was while he was acting in the Happy life until Denise Cottrell joined the cast. Denise, called Denny, of course, was a pleasantly plain young woman with a whimsical face which photographed pretty and remarkable Dark blue eyes. It was her eyes which first made Stephen wonder. They mirrored his own hope and longing and. And the desperate loneliness of the exile. For two months they were together as often as they could be, talking intellectual treason in public under the COVID of conventional faces, and talking intellectual treason in private with excitement and laughter and sometimes tears falling in love. They planned, after much time discussion, to be married and to bring up a dozen clever rebel children. Denise said soberly, they'd better be clever, because they'll have to learn to hide. They made love in Denise's apartment when her roommate Pauline Polly was out as awkwardly as if there had never been any group experimentation or happy affairs. Denise said wonderingly, when you really love someone, it's all new. Isn't that strange? And Stephen said, kissing her, no, not strange at all. He took her to meet his family. Denise's family lived 3,000 miles away, and she behaved with such perfect decorum and charm that Richard and Harriet were delighted and as eager as Stephen for the wedding. Stephen had agreed, reluctantly to put it off until Denise had a chance to introduce him to her parents. They were coming east at Christmas. She laughed over it and said, I'm being terribly conventional, darling, but that's one convention I like. While they waited, Stephen's agent secure, secured a really unprecedented opportunity for so young and relatively untried an actor. The current happy clown was unhappily retiring by reason of age and infirmity, and Stephen's agent arranged a tryout for the part. He said, give it all you got, kid. It's the chance of the century. Stephen said, sure, Joey, and allowed his sensitive face to register all the proper emotions. Actually, his emotions were, in the vernacular of a previous century, mixed. He loathed the whole concept of the happy clown, but there was money in it, and Stephen was not rebel enough to despise money. With money, he could retire early, go away somewhere with just Denise, to some country place where they could be relatively free of pressure over staggering competition. He got the part. He called Denise up at once from a booth at the studio to tell her. Paulie answered the phone, looking pale and frightened over the viewer, and said rapidly, oh, Stevie, I've been trying to get you for an hour. Denny's sick. They took her to the hospital. Steven sat back against the hard wall of the booth, feeling cold, the receiver slack in his hand. He said, what's the matter with her? Which hospital? Appendicitis. Happy hour. Polly began to cry. Oh, Stevie, I feel so. I'll go right over. He cut her off abruptly and went. The doctors caught Denise's appendix in time to avoid the necessary but rarely fatal complications. But under the anesthetic she talked revealing enough about her opinion of television and the Happy Clown cult and the state of society in general to cause her doctors to raise their eyebrows pityingly and perform the Steiner at once, while Stephen sat unknowing in the waiting room smoking a full pack of marquee cigarettes. The thing was done at last. The doctor came out to him and said what was always said in such cases. It was necessary to do something. You understand? No mention. And for a moment Stephen felt so ill that he was grateful for the little ampoule the doctor broke and held under his nose. They always carried those when they had to give news of a Steiner to relatives or sweethearts or friends. The doctor said, all right now? Good. You'll be careful? Of course. She may be conscious for a minute. There's no harm in it yet. She won't move or touch the. Steven said, I'll be careful. He was still feeling ill when they let him in to see Denise. He sat down beside her bed and spoke to her urgently. Denise, talk to me, please, Denise. She opened her eyes, looked at him drowsily, and smiled. Oh, Stevie, I'm so glad you came. I've been wanting you, darling. Steven, said Denise. She frowned. Why do you call me that? Call me Denny. Did you get the part, darling? He drew back a little. Yes, I got it. She gave him a radiant smile. That's wonderful. I'm so proud of you, Stevie. She slept again that night in the Hym dormitory. Stevie. Stephen did not sleep. He lay quiet, tense, hoping for the relief of tears. But it did not come. Stephen went to see Denise every day, though after the first time she was not awake to know him. The doctors were keeping her under sedation until the head bandage could be removed. So far as Denise was to know, she had gone to the hospital simply for. For a rather protracted appendectomy. Looking at her, Stephen knew that he could never leave her. He had loved her completely. He would love her now with as much of himself as she would need or understand. For a while he waited to be kindly questioned, to be thoroughly examined, to be tenderly given the shot in the arm, and to awake like her. But nobody came. Denise had apparently said nothing about him. Some sensor or other, perhaps it was the censor of love, had kept her from even saying his name. For a while Stephen considered confessing to somebody that he was a. What? An unacceptable member of society. Then they would make him like Denise. He shuddered. Did he really want to be like Denise? Some stubborn pride in him refused it. When Denise left the hospital for the hotel where she would stay until the wedding, Stephen was more gentle with her than ever, kinder and more loving. He made her very happy. He made love to her again, and it was like loving a goat ghost. No, it was like loving a fine, beautiful body without the ghost, without the spirit. He returned to the hym to lie sleepless amid the breathings and mutterings of the other young men. Turning restlessly in his bed, feeling oppressed, tormented, strung on wires, he rehearsed fever feverishly for the part of the happy clown, and because he was a fine craftsman and a conscientious artist, he continued to give it all he had. The sponsors were pleased. A week before Christmas, the current happy clown retired and hobbled off to a nursing home. There was no fanfare. The public was not to realize that the happy clown was mortal, and Stephen took over with no visible change. For five days he played the part to perfection. On the sixth day he performed as usual, perhaps a little better. His commercials had a special fervor, and the sponsors exchanged happy glances. Denise was sitting in the booth with them. She smiled at Stephen lovingly through the glass. Steven was running a little fast tonight. The engineer made stretching motions with his hands to slow him down, but he used up all his material, even the nugget, with three minutes to spare. Then he said, all right, folks, now I have a special treat for you, and moved quickly to the center mic before the special sponsors or the engineers or the studio audience or anybody in the whole American nation knew what was happening. He began rapidly to talk. He said, are you all happy? You are, aren't you? Everybody's happy because you're all sheep. All sheep in a nice, safe pasture. All alike. You eat alike and dress alike and think alike. If any of you has an original thought, you'd better suppress it or they'll cut it out of you with a knife. He leaned forward and made a horrible face at the camera. Under the jolly makeup and the artful patting, his mouth was shockingly twisted and tears were running out. Out of his eyes. A long, sharp knife, folks. He paused momentarily to recover his voice, which had begun to shake. Go on being happy. Go on being sheep. Wear the clozies and eat the foodsies and don't dare think me I'd rather be dead and damned in hell. Fortunately, nobody heard the last three sentences. The paralyzed engineer had recovered in time to cut him off during the pause and had signaled the stagehand to draw the curtain and the sound man to play the Happy clown. Sign off record loud. Stephen finished himself thoroughly, however, by repeating the same sentiments with some others he happened to think of to Denise and the sponsor answers when they all came pouring out of the booth. Then he collapsed. Stephen Steiner was a complete success. He recovered from it, a subdued, agreeable and thoroughly conventional young man who had the impression that he had suffered a nervous breakdown. He was discharged from the happy hour at the end of January, innocently leaving, leaving behind him the broken hearts of three nurses and one female physician, and went home to his parents during his convalescence. They were patient with him and passionately kind. In spite of the disgrace they felt, a disgrace that would never be mentioned. They loved him even better than before because now he was irrevocably like them. Denise was lost to him. The outburst in the studio and the Steiner and the loss of the Happy Clown part were cumulatively too much for her. She broke the engagement and was heard to say that Stevie Russell had proved himself an absolute fool. He was miserable over it, though he had only a hazy idea of what he had done or why Denny should suddenly be so unkind to him. The Happy Clown incident had passed off well. Immediately after it occurred. A powerful battery of comedians, including the Jolly Kitten and the Dancing Dogsy for getting rivalries to rally round in a crisis, went on the air to ensure that it passed off well. They made certain that every viewer should regard the whole thing as a tremendously funny, if rather mystifying joke. The viewers fell in with this opinion easily and laughed about the sheep joke a good deal, admiring the Happy Clown's sense of humor. A little sharp, to be sure, not so folksy and down to earth as usual. But the Happy Clown could do no wrong, they said to each other. He laughed till he cried. Did you notice? So did I. For a while, teenagers addressed each other as hi Sheep. Girls were hi Lamb. And a novelty company in Des Moines made a quick killing with scatter pins fashioned like sheep and or lambs. But around the studios, Stephen was dead, Steiner or no Steiner. And of course, that part of it was never openly discussed. Sponsors had long memories, and the consensus seemed to be that it was best to let sleeping sheep lie. Stephen did not care. He no longer had any particular desire to be an actor. Stephen went to work in his father's supermarket and was happy among the sheep shelves of otzies and cornsies and jelzies. He got over Denise after a while and met a girl named Frances Franny whom he loved and who loved him. They were married in the summer and had a little house with as much furniture in it as they could afford. The first thing they bought was a television set. After all, as Stevie said, said he would not want to miss the Happy Clown. End of the Happy Clown by Alice Eleanor Jones Translated by Candra Robinson.

[Narrator 4]

Treasure of Triton by Charles A. Baker this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Treasure of Triton by Charles A. Baker Triton was a dead world. The hydrogen snow that covered the illimitable desolation of the plain glowed a weird green in the dying Neptune light. Above it, grim and black, towered the west wall of the great Temple of Triton. The evening gale had drifted the snow high against its east wall, but here in its lee, the ground was bare. The faint light struck sparks of color from the gravel, the stones, the boulders, gravel that was ruby and sapphire, stones that were giant moissanites, boulders that were titanic diamonds. The wolf cub rested on that gravel, its beryllium sides a sickly green. In all that world, only Wolf Larsen lived and moved and breathed. An alien might have correctly supposed that this world had been dead for untold ages, that the builders of its temple had perished incalculably long ago, that nothing would ever live here again. Wolf Larsen knew better. In a few hours it would be dawn, and the strange life of Triton would revive. That was the reason for his haste. The job had taken longer than he had expected. The temple was built of cyclopean blocks of bort black diamond, the hardest of all substances. The lifespan of a Tritonian is ten times that of a human, but no one would ever know how many generations it had taken the Tritonians with their primitive technique to hew those innumerable blocks. Nor did the Tritonians themselves know for how long they had worshipped at that fane. Most authorities agreed that it must have been old before the pyramids of Egypt were begun. The temple was windowless and had only one door, some six feet square, set in the middle of the west face. It was hewn from a single gigantic block of board. With that door, Larson had been struggling ever since the evening gale died down. It had proved harder to blast a hole through the boat than he had anticipated, and its thickness had amazed him. He had been unable to get at its lock, if indeed it had a lock. In fact, he might as well have tried to blast through the wall itself, Triton, Neptune's moon, kept one face, always turned toward that planet, and the temple was built directly beneath it. While Larsen toiled, the slender crescent of the primary had broadened to the full, 10 times brighter than the Earth's moon, and now was dwindling once more. Larson had not slept in over 60 hours, and despite his vacuum walled, electrically heated space suit, he was chilled to the bone, his hands numbed with a cold, but a few degrees above absolute zero. Not in 20 years in the mines of Mercury had he toiled as he had done in those 60 hours. First he had burned holes in the boort. Then he had filled them with cartridges of the fine hydrogen snow intimately mixed with solid oxygen, pulverized equally fine. Finally, he had exploded the mixture with a microwave and cleared out the shattered boort, where the tough stuff had merely crackled. He had pried it out with a crowbar until the bar, brittle with cold, had snapped short. But now the worst of his task was finished. At long last, he had hold. Through the door, Larsen emerged from the wolf cub carrying his oxyhydrogen cutting torch, a heavy load even in the light gravity of Triton. A star of blue light flared from it and snowflakes dropped from the star as the products of its combustion condensed in the cold. If he once extinguished that torch, its fuel would freeze solid and there would be no lighting it again. For all his weariness and for all the cold, a fierce exultation fired him. His long planning, his months long voyage through the void, were about to bring fruit. The most priceless jewel in the solar system was within his grasp. Larson had done many things for Jules. He had violated every law of every world. He had killed more men than he himself could remember. He had stolen meteoric diamonds from Mars and rubies from Ganymede, emeralds from Titan, and priceless moissanites from Oberon. All these he had hidden well on a nameless asteroid. And they could stay there till the end of time for all Larson or anyone else cared. By the time the Interplanetary Patrol caught up with him and he served a 20 year term in the mines of Mercury, the spacemen had reached Triton. And there they had found rubies and emeralds, diamonds and moissanites, and every gemstone known in the solar system, as common as clay or lime on Earth. And Larson's carefully hidden jewels were worth as much as so many pebbles. At first Larsen had come very near to killing himself when he learned that. But a scheme had come to him. There was the eye of Triton, the great stone which people of Neptune's Moon had worshipped for untold Neptunian ages. It was clearly unique on Triton, where all other gems were so abundant, it must be unique in the system, certainly in its historical value. What value the Tritonians themselves set on it could be judged from the immense strength of the temple they had built to guard it. Tradition held that the Eye had dropped from the heavens a meteor, perhaps torn from the heart of Neptune, perhaps from another system. Few humans had ever seen it, and those only from a distance and in the worst of lights. But they agreed that it was transparent, white, like a diamond. Moreover, it was set as the eye of a life size statue of a Tritonian. And the eye of a Tritonian is upwards of 5 inches in diameter. A certain plutocrat of Cyrene had offered Larson a cool million for the eye, even if it turned out to be nothing but a diamond. For a million, you could buy everything that Cyrene had to offer. And Cyrene, the pleasure dome on the far side of Earth's moon, offered every pleasure and every luxury that mankind had ever developed. Men could prolong their lives and their vigor indefinitely nowadays if they could afford to pay for all the resources of modern medicine. Best of all, the IPP had no jurisdiction in Cyrene, and the local authorities never bothered any resident of the little planet, provided he was supplied with money enough. It would be doubly pleasant to win such a fortune at the expense of the Tritonians. To be sure, they had never been known to harm anyone. But it was precisely such inoffensive beings that Larson loathed and despised most bitterly. Besides, he blamed them for the discovery of the gems, which had made his own valueless. In any case, he had gone too far to back down now. Landing on Triton without a license, as he had done, was itself a violation of interplanetary law. Attempted violation of a Tritonian temple was a serious offense. If the patrol caught him, he would spend the rest of his life in the mines of Mercury. And they would be sure to catch him if he failed to get the Eye. It wasn't like the good old days, when an outlaw could always keep a million miles ahead of the patrol. Now every port where he might obtain supplies was too closely watched. Only Cyrene offered a place of refuge, and there only to a man with plenty of money. Larson smiled grimly. Whatever happened, he was not going back to the mines. There was always one very sure way of cheating the law. He pushed the torch ahead of him through the hole. Cautiously, its exhaust condensed to ice. On the cold board, a few projections of the boort barred his way. Larson turned up the torch, directed it on them. The bort glowed yellow in the fierce heat as the pure carbon burned, which condensed to dry ice on his space suit. When those obstructions were gone, Larson crawled past into the temple and stood up. A thin powder of snow covered everything. The bluish glare of the torch reflected from it suggested, but faintly, the vastness of the place. Before him crouched a monstrous figure, human sized, but lobster shaped, its head enormous, its dozen legs many jointed. Many similar figures lay on the floor as stiffly motionless, each grasping a massive double headed ax. Larsen had to turn up his torch before he could be sure that the crouching figure was indeed the idol he sought and those others its guardian priests, frozen in the deathlike sleep of their kind. Not till dawn could anything awaken them. Dawn, he knew, could not be far off. But he reckoned that it would take some time for its reviving warmth to penetrate the immense thickness of those walls. Cautiously, he wiped the snow off the single enormous eye that occupied the center of the idol's forehead. The eye flashed fire at him. Blue, white, transparent, lustrous as a diamond. It had been cut diamond fashion in many facets to resemble the many lensed insect like eyes of the Tritonians themselves. The eye was set in a band of cement. Larson tested that cement with a chisel. He cursed. It was almost as hard as the board from which the idol had been hewn. He dared take no chances on scratching the eye. He turned on his torch full blast and began to cut into the boat around the cement, careful to keep the flame away from the eye. Sudden heating might crack that mysterious stone. Larson was worked feverishly, forgetful of time, sweating despite the chill, until he felt a draft on his back, a cold that bit through his space suit to his very marrow. Snowflakes were swirling around him, the dawn wind blowing through the hole in the door on Triton. The hydrogen atmosphere froze every night from either side. Winds rushed in to fill the vacuum, but themselves froze before they had gone far. The eye seemed loose in its socket. Larson turned down the torch. Cautiously, he grasped the cement. The eye came away in his hand. He was used by now to the low gravity of Triton. But the lightness of the stone surprised him. It seemed as light as pumice. Larson looked up just in time. The Tritonians were stirring. The wind, so cold to him, was warm to them. It meant air to them. Those great pale eyes, one to each Tritonian were fixed on him, glaring with a phosphorescent luster. There was no expression expression on their gargoyle faces. Their cavernous mouths gaped open, toothless, but rimmed with razor sharp horn like the jaws of a snapping turtle. The snow dropped from them. Their lobster segmented shells were dull black, like the board of the statue. They were closing in on him. He could not tell their numbers. Behind those visible more kept crowding out of the shadows. As the Tritonians neared him, he saw that they turned their heads away. Those enormous eyes, adapted to the faint sunlight of Triton, could not bear the glare of the torch. An ax rose over a helmeted head, grasped by four tentacular arms. Larsen put down the eye and turned up the torch, aiming it at the dragon's head looming behind those arms. It shriveled, turned from black to red. Its owner slumped to the floor, its limbs still writhing feebly. Larson picked up the eye again and started for the door. He moved deliberately, spraying death around him. The Tritonians could not face the blazing heat of the torch or its blinding glare. Some fled in panic. Some retired more slowly. Some stood as if bewildered in his very path until he burned them out of it. At the door, he wheeled to face them, turning down the torch. They started to close in again and he turned it up, sweeping them at close range. Half a dozen fell. The others broke. The torch was flickering now as its fuel ran low. In frantic haste, Larson unsnapped its carrying strap, dropped it and plunged into the hole he had blasted. In utter blackness, he clawed through it, expecting every instant to feel monstrous jaws or talons seize him from behind. He emerged into the blinding white smother of the dawn blizzard. Then, as the air was, the force of it hurled his light body back against the door. As he tried to rise, he dropped on all fours and crawled forward, dead into the freezing wind, the eye still clutched in one hand. The 20 yards to the wolf cub seemed 20 miles. He had about given up all hope when suddenly he bumped into it. Larson groped along its smooth side until he found the airlock door. As he opened it, the light inside went on automatically. At that precise instant, steely arms wrapped themselves around him. A monstrous face loomed over him, open jawed. In a frenzy, Larson thrust out his right hand. Those jaws closed on his wrists. A blazing agony shot up his arm. His own scream, echoing from his helmet, deafened him. The pain was gone as abruptly as it had come. The face of the Tritonian seemed to melt, to explode. Those arms went limp. The thing collapsed like a punctured balloon. There was no feeling at all in Larson's hand now. Not daring to look at it, he stumbled through the airlock into the cabin. Even now, he was careful to put the Eye of Triton in the velvet lined jewel case he had prepared for it before strapping himself into his pilot seat. Awkwardly, with his left hand, he opened the throttle of the rocket tube, gave the Wolf Cub three gravities. Acceleration that was agony to his weary body. But the warmth of the cabin offset the pain. Gingerly, Larson looked at his right hand. The glove had been torn clean off, was dead white, swollen. The swelling extending to the wrist had prevented much air escaping from his suit. Before he could get inside the cabin, the skin was covered with fine, bloodless cracks, but the jaws of the Tritonian had never touched it. The inconceivable cold had instantly frozen every drop of blood and lymph in it, bursting every blood vessel, every capillary, every cell. His hand was dead. Presently. As it thawed, it would not turn black and drop off. Before that, he must get a tourniquet on it. On the other hand, the warm air from his space suit escaping into the jaws of the Tritonian had been as fatal to it as the breath of a blast furnace would have been to a human. He had been lucky. After all, the surgeons of Cyrene could graft on a new hand for a price, and he would have that price in 15 minutes. Awkward with his left hand, Larson had the Wolf Cub on her course to Luna and could shut off his rocket jet. His right arm was beginning to throb as the nerves thawed. It would give him hell in the months of voyaging before him, and he knew his slender stock of drugs would never last. But as he fixed the tourniquet, the thought of his million was more soothing than any narcotic could have been. Larson unstrapped himself and shoved over to the jewel case. He blinked down at it incredulously. The charred ring of cement was there, but it no longer enclosed the Eye of Triton. Instead, the case was half filled with a transparent liquid. Larson dipped a trembling finger into was cold. He carried the finger to his lips. The walls of the tiny cabin echoed to his mad laughter. The Eye of Triton, the one priceless gem on a world of gems, had been a block of ice, the only ice on Triton. The warmth of the cabin had melted it to water worth exactly as much as any other water. Suddenly, Larson realized that he was parched with a feverish thirst. He lifted the jewel case to his lips and drained it in one single, prodigious gulp. He had spent plenty of money on liquor before, he reflected, but this must be the first time in history a man had drunk up a million at one draught. His arm hurt like fire now, the ache of it mingling with the ache of his weary body, the ache of his sick brain. With his left hand, he began to spin the handle of the Kingston valve. The last sound Wolf Larsen heard was the hiss of the air as it rushed out of the cabin. That and the laugh with which his last breath left his lungs. There was always one sure way to cheat interplanetary law. End of Treasure of Triton By Charles A. Baker Recording by Roger Moline.

[Narrator]

The Android Kill by John Jakes this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Read by Ben Tucker the Android Kill by John Jakes Caffrey slammed the great steel doors and walked forward through the gym. His bare feet slapped on the mats and the cane of iron hard Venus Junglewood swung lightly in one hand. He wore only dirty white trousers. Sweat stood shining on him under the glow of the ceiling lights. He cursed the ship silently for being old and run down and without any cooling units. His beefy face moved from side to side, watching. The black eyes took in every bit of movement. Movement. He saw all that went on. It was his ticket out of this stinking world of frozen, starred Space, of Class 9 Freighters and Unholy cargoes. The slender blue gray androids were exercising. They vaulted on the parallel bars, dangled from the rings, worked with the pulleys. Even the women and children exercised. They did not sweat because their bodies were not made for perspiration, but Khafrey could see their muscles twisting and shivering under the slate hides, developing. A strange kind of noise filled the vast gym. Muted gruntings, whispers of breath, solid slaps of hands and bodies on bars and mats. The androids did not look at Caffrey. They were accustomed to slavery. They knew they had been dead when they were born. Caffrey stopped walking. Near the left wall, two Android males were conversing. They leaned indolently, tiredly against the brown wooden bars. Caffrey's face lost its flabbiness, becoming stripped of everything but purpose. He walked toward them, conscious of his own strength. The exorcising of the others went on around him, slap and soft wind of breath and creak of apparatus. The heat was an irtangible cloud. Why aren't you two working out like the rest? Kaffrey asked slowly. One of the androids said in a weary voice, I'm tired. I can't when I am tired. Caffrey's fingers tightened on the stick. They had to be in perfect shape. Had to be. This was his last shipload, and by God, he swung the stick up over his shoulder and brought it down in a blurring arc. There was a flat smacking sound. The Android choked. Caffrey struck the other one, and the anger came up from his stomach like fire boiling over. He screamed at them and beat them again. The stick fell again, again, again. Finally he stood back, feeling the sweat running down him. He tilted his head and gulped air. Now, he said very quietly. Now, you inhuman sons of slate, start working. The two of them watched from the gray mats where they were crouched. Brief resentment was in their eyes. Caffrey bunched his muscles and kicked. The Android's head snapped backward against the bars. He grunted. Then both of them got up and walked over to the pulleys. They began to exercise rapidly. Caffrey laughed and walked on through the gym, not watching them anymore. He went through the next bulkhead and spun the lock wheel, then padded down the corridor under the ceiling lights that shone like foggy blue eyes. Dillman, his astrogator, a young kid with yellow hair and an aggressive jaw, was in the chart room. He was working with the course computer. Dillman had been a student at the University of Venus, Cloud City, when he killed an officer of the CONTROL police in a fight over a girl. Dillman was good in the slave game. Dillman was getting hard. Caffrey closed the door. It clanged loudly. Dillman looked around. Hello, Captain, he said. We're right on course. Mars in 6 hours, 14 minutes. Caffrey nodded, slumping down into a thickly padded shock chair. Beyond the wide observation windows, space made endless black, and stars hung there like pieces of a broken diamond. The swollen ball of the sun burned above the ship, and Mars lay scarlet just ahead. Distant rumbling from old corroded jet tubes filled the room. How's everything? Caffrey asked. Engines all right? Dillman said, leaning against the astrogation table. Few pieces of stuff failed to fission a while back, but everything's okay now. Caffrey waved his hand. Get out the bottle. Dillman grinned and pulled open a green metal wall cabinet. He filled two tumblers with a syrupy swamp wine and handed one of the glasses to Caffrey. The captain of the ship drank half, breathed loudly, and emptied the glass. He hunched deeper into the shock chair Resting. I'll be glad when it's over, Dillman. Really glad. Do you mean that, sir? Hell yes, I mean it. In this business you've got to be tough. But I'll be damned if a man can go on kicking people around all the time. Someplace he's got to stop. Well, this trip will make my pile, and I can stop. Got a job waiting shuttling passengers to the temple ruins west of Red Sands on Mars. This isn't any party, dillman admitted. Slavery is a funny thing. I thought it went out a long time back, but everybody on Earth is making such mental advances he pointed at his skull and grinned wryly that they just haven't got any time to do any real work. And of course, these poor wastrels we've got on board aren't really human beings. How do they make them, Cap? Capre shrugged. God knows.

[Announcer]

Did they?

[Narrator]

Globulars on Sentai 4 turned them out by the hundreds. Almost as good as human beings. They have kids, they get sick, they get mad, and they don't mind working. They don't know what else to do. He sighed, watching the circle of Mars beginning to grow big and bloated and red beyond the window. Although it's one hell of a job to put muscle on them. Dillman poured out some more liquor and raised his glass. His eyes were bits of hard rock. Here's to the last trip, Cap. And I only hope the big boys of Workers Incorporated give me this ship. Caffrey nodded and drank. A green sign flashed over a bank of machinery. End of Exercise Period. It blinked. End of Exercise Period. End of rising. Caffrey walked to the machinery, pulled a large leather handled switch. He visualized with pleasure the great doors opening and the androids, the artificial, artificial humans, stumbling back into the dim, stinking holds to wait quietly on the last stage of the trip before the chains closed on them. Caffrey laughed out loud. Dirty joke? Dillman asked, faintly anxious.

[Interjection]

No.

[Narrator]

Just thinking. About what? I'll get paid. 2,000 solars. Why, man, that's enough to live on for years. Plenty of wine and an easy job. And women, bless em. Dolman started to replace reply when the comm system rattled. The big man moved to the machine and pressed the button. Kaffrey Bridge, he growled. What the hell is. A quiet voice cut him off, deadly precise, like a small knife slicing into him. Captain, this is Doc. I'm down in the Android hold. You'd better come right away, Doc, caffrey began, but the machine clicked off. He slammed it with his fist. Doc. Damn it, Doc. There was only the faraway rumble of the ship's great iron heart. He swung around, heading for the door. Come on, he said quickly. Nothing's going to happen. Not on this run. Nothing. They ran through the halls under the blue lights, clambered down the ladders, ran through more halls, and then they stood in front of the big black door. Kaff returned the wheel, slowly at first and then faster, until its spun and blurred into invisibility. He stepped back and the doors opened. The hold was dark and musty. In the tiers of bunks, the androids huddled like not quite black shadows. They said nothing. They watched. There was only a smell of antiseptic in the air, healthful, clean, and rotten all at the same time. Caffrey and Dillman moved through the endless rows of bunks. Farther down, Caffrey could see Doc crouching over a low bunk, his cigarette lighter aflame. He knelt there, a small, bulbous gnome of a man with wary, defeated eyes and thin hair lying over his skull. An Android boy of about seven years lay on the bunk. Doc looked up as they stepped up to him. His face was filled with the weariness of his eyes with too many years and too much that was wrong. Well, said Caffrey, watching him. Doc's lighter jumped and flared bright when he spoke. The boy is sick, doc said. Very sick. Kaffrey clicked his fingernails together. Did you call me down here for that? There was a restless stirring from the bunks. Certainly, doc replied. It might be dangerous. What the hell's the matter with him? Doc shrugged. I don't know. How do I know what kind of diseases androids get? Don't you understand what this could mean? No, said Caffrey. I don't. His voice hardened. I'm going back up to the chart room. We dock on Mars in a few hours. Doc sighed and lifted his misshapen body.

[Dialogue Speaker]

All right.

[Narrator]

He turned to a woman near the bed. The woman's eyes were liquid and full of hurt. I can't do anything, doc said. I don't know what's the matter with him. Caffrey felt stupid, seeing sorrow expressed for a woman who wasn't even human. Doc snapped his lighter closed and the circle of fire was gone. Kaffrey breathed easily. It's too damn dark, delmon whispered as they moved toward the door. He stumbled against a bunk and swore. Keep quiet, doc said, very softly. Just you keep quiet. Caffrey closed the black door and passed out cigarettes. The smoke whirled up the ventilators like a dancing blue dragon. Doc, he said, trying to control his anger, I'd like to know why you're getting so excited. This is the first time I've seen disease in an Android, the little man replied. I don't know whether the disease is harmful to them or not. I mean seriously harmful. But remember what Terran scarlet fever did on Antares second. We've taken care of Scott. Scarlet fever. It isn't fatal to us, but remember what it did to the people on Antares second. Yeah, said Dillman, leaning against the wall and covering his eyes. Khafri remembered, too, the bodies in the fine yellow buildings and the rot and the inability to stop the corruption. The system had known panic. I see, he said. You think whatever's wrong with that kid, even though it might not bother them much, might kill us. Is that it? Yes, said Doc. He blew out some smoke. Caffrey grabbed his arm. Nothing's going to happen. This cargo is going to Mars, and nothing's going to happen. I've worked for this a long time, understand? No sick kid is going to keep me from landing on Mars. You're the captain, said Doc. He shambled off down the corridor, trailing a worm of blue smoke in the air behind him. He rounded a corner out of sight, small and gnarled and tired of arguing. The last of the smoke vanished into the ventilators. Dillman laughed gratingly with effort. Let's go get the rest of that bottle cap. Sure, said Caffrey. They were three hours out from Mars when the comm system came to life again. Kaffrey jumped up out of the shock chair and jabbed the switch. A nervous, excited voice came screeching at him. Skalnik. Captain, what's wrong? It's Doc. He's on the floor of his cabin. He's I Speak up, man. Kaffre yelled. Skolnik's voice pulled itself back from shivering pieces and went on. Doc's lying on the floor and his voice is awful, and the muscles in his face and arms and all over him are jumping. Oh, Captain, go on, caffrey said savagely. Go on. Eddie's screaming, Captain, and we can't stop him. Caffrey was out in the hall before the last syllable was uttered. The bulkheads spanged open as he kicked them. His feet slapped, slapped frantically, and when he was two sections away and one deck above Doc's quarters, he heard the screaming. It rose and shrilled and howled and made him more afraid than he had ever been in his life. The carefully acquired veneer of toughness shredded away like cheap cotton candy that was eaten at a Terran carnival and dissolved in nothingness in the mouth. The 18 crewmen of the ship were in the hull, milling and twisting their caps in their hands. Skalnik stood with his back to the wall. He had vomited on the floor and now he was crying. Kaffrey was sicker when he smelled the bitterness, but he shoved at the crewmen. They stumbled against one another like dumb animals.

[Interjection]

Animals.

[Narrator]

Their faces belonged to little boys on dark nights when they walked home alone. They seemed to resist Caffrey's efforts, and he clubbed at them, the breath tearing in and out of his chest. Finally he stood with his hands on the edge of the cabin door. His hands had been sweating, but now he felt, actually felt, the wave of cold sweep through his fingers, up his arms. Doc was on the floor. Like Skolnik had said. His scream made an endless mad tune above the engine rumble. His body was lifted from the floor, jerked, twisted, thrown back down again like some fantastic jiggling marionette on strings. Doc. Caffrey called. Doc, listen to me. It's Cap. The screaming slobbered into nothing. Doc's hands clutched at the iron frame of his bunk. They held there while the rest of his body was convulsed and pulled into insane control. Contortions. Infected, doc said, forming his words into a shriek. I got it from the child. We're all infected. Oh, we'll infect Mars. Spread, spread, spread. The last word went up and up like the ship's takeoff siren. Doc struggled to hold onto the bed, but his body went jerking away across the floor. Dillman peered over Kaffrey's shoulder. The big man spoke very softly. Go back to my cabin. Get my gun. Hurry. Dillman hesitated, then ran. Caffrey stood fascinated, watching the devil dance of the diseased man. Finally, something cool and hard was placed in his hand. The scream tore at his eardrums. Quickly he looked at the ceiling. He pushed the gun forward. He pulled the trigger several times. The shots roared and blended with the engine thunder. When the noise was gone, Caffrey realized that the the screaming had stopped. He dropped the gun. He turned around and closed the door of the cabin and locked it without once looking at Doc. Skolnick still sobbed over against the wall. Rapidly, Caffrey explained what had happened in the Android hold. The men stood around, not looking at one another. They breathed loudly, and the blue lights in the ceiling watched them. Emotionless, Caffrey said, we'll all be like that after a while. Maybe if we beam to Mars, they'll know what to do. Domin whispered, maybe we can get there in time and maybe they can stop the disease. Kaffrey looked at him and maybe not. He walked away. Dillman didn't follow. He walked back to the chart room and sat down in the shock chair. Beyond the port, Mars was large and waiting. Kaffrey thought seriously. For the first time in many years, he wanted to get the ship to Mars. Maybe the doctors could help them and maybe not. They might infect the others. The disease might spread, and if no one knew how to handle it. He didn't want to think about that. Doc hadn't known what to do. Doc was a good man. Medically, he had been a little run down, a little second hand because of his seedy deals and his need of money and his operations on women in dirty back alley rooms on a hundred worlds. But Doc couldn't stop it. And sometime, Caffrey thought, alone and facing himself at last, a man has got to stop being tough. You can't live with yourself forever and be tough just once. You've got to do something for your self respect. He knew it, and all the cursing and shouting could not cover up the fact that he knew it. There was a chance for them, but the chance might be deadly. More deadly. To Saul's worlds, the androids didn't matter. They were pieces of metal and plastic and skin, constructed to get sick. But they didn't matter. Kaffrey laughed. They didn't matter. But they mattered. When you thought of Doc being shaken to pieces in agony, too perfectly made they were. He laughed out loud at the tremendous, mighty iron of the joke. Dillman came in the room. What are we going to do, Captain? Caffrey stood up and sighed. He walked to the comm system. He opened it. He spoke into it for a few moments. He shut it off. He turned to Dillman. That's what we're going to do, he said. Dillman began to yell. He hit Caffrey, pummeled at him, screamed in fear. Caffrey had to knock him down on the floor and hit him with his cane. None of the other men gave him trouble. Carefully, he moved to the course computer. He made corrections in the directional tape. The ship began to groan. It swung into a new course. Caffrey took one final look at Mars, thinking of the quiet days shuttling people to the temple ruins west of Red Sands, of the liquor and the warm, laughing women. But no more. The sun lay dead ahead. Caffrey sat down and poured himself a drink. Then he remembered something. If the disease hit him, he might alter the course. He smashed the machinery, ripping it apart with his great hands, tearing it so that the course could never be changed. Wires lay severed and bare all over the floor. He picked up the bottle for another drink. The sun was a living ball of flame. He could not look at it. The green sign went crazy. Exercise Period. It blinked. Exercise. Caffrey tried to throw the bottle at it. His hand twitched. The bottle fell to the floor and broke. Kaffrey looked at his hands, at the hairs whitened with sun glow. The hand twitched again. Dillman stirred where he lay. His leg flapped once or twice. Kaffrey sat there while the heat began to melt the water walls. He felt his body writhing, but it did not matter. In the heat there was only a blinding whiteness all around. He thought about the androids. He thought about Skolnik. He thought at last about Mars. He was still thinking about Mars when the ship fell into the burning maw of the sun. End of the Android Kill By John.

[Announcer]

Beyond Our Control By Randall Garrett this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Chapter 1 the Big Building stood out at night, even among the other towering spires of Manhattan. The bright glowing symbol on its roof attracted the attention of anyone who looked up at the night sky of New York and from the coast of Connecticut across Long Island Sound. The huge ball was easily visible as a shining dot of light. The symbol as a symbol resembled the well known symbol of an atom. It consisted of a central globe surrounded by a swarm of swiftly moving points of light that circled the glowing sphere endlessly. It represented the Earth itself, and the robot operated artificial satellites that whirled around was the trademark of Circum Global Communications. But it was more than just a symbol. It was also the antenna for the powerful transmitters that kept constant contact with the satellite relay stations, which in turn rebroadcast the TV impulses to all parts of the globe. Inside the CGC building, completely filling the upper 20 floors, were the sections of the vast electronic brain that computed and integrated the orbits of the small artificial moons and kept the communication beams linked to them. And below the brain, occupying another four floors, were the control and monitoring rooms in which the TV communications of a world were selected and programmed. In Johannesburg, South Africa, the newly elected president spoke in front of a TV camera. His dark, handsome face was coldly implacable as he said, they wanted apartheid when they were in power. We see no reason to believe they have changed their minds. They wanted apartheid? Very well. They shall continue to have apartheid. His image and his voice, picked up by the camera and mike, were transmitted by cable to the beam broadcaster in the old capital of Praetoria. From there it was broadcast generally all over South Africa. At the same time it was relayed by tight beam to Satellite Nine, which happened to be in the sky over that part of the Earth at that time. Satellite 9 in turn related to all the other satellites in line of sight. Satellite 2 over the eastern seaboard of North America picked it up and automatically relayed it to the big antenna on top of New York's Circum Global Communications building. There it was dehashed and cleaned up. The static noise which it had picked up in its double flight through the ionosphere was removed. The periods of fading were strengthened and the whole communication was smoothed out and patched up. From the CGC building it was rebroadcast over the United States. A man in Bismarck, North Dakota looked at the three dimensional full color image of the President of South Africa, listened to his clear, carefully modulated words and said, serves him right, by George. Besides the worldwide television news and entertainment networks, CGC also handled person to person communication through its subsidiary Intercontinental Visiphone. If the man in Bismarck had wanted to call the President of the Union of South Africa, his Visiphone message would have gone out in almost exactly the same way and the two men could have talked person to person, face to face. Whether the President of South Africa would have accepted the call or not is another matter. From all over the world, programs and communications were picked up by the satellites and relayed to the CGC building where they were sorted and sent out again. The man in charge of the technical end of the whole operation was a short, stocky, graying man named McLannie. James Fitzpatrick McIlhenny, operational vice president of Circum Global Communications, was one of those dynamic men who can allow their subordinates to call them by a nickname and still retain their respect. His wife called him Jim, his personal friends called him Fitz, and his subordinates called him Mac. He knew his own job and and the job of every man under him. If one of the men slipped up, he heard about it in short order. But on the other hand, if the work was well done, he heard about that in short order too. McElhenny was as free with his pats on the back as he was with a boot a little lower down. As a result, his men respected him and he respected them. McElhenny liked his work, so he was quite often found in his office or in the monitoring rooms long after his prescribed quitting time. On the evening of 25 March 1978. He had stayed overtime nearly four hours to watch the installation of a new computer unit. As a matter of cold fact, since the day was Saturday, he needn't have been in the office at all. But, well, a new computer isn't put in every day, and McElhenny liked computer work. It was exactly 1903 hours when the PA system clicked on and an operator's voice said, Is Mr. McElhenney still in the building? Please, Mr. McElhenny, please call satellite beam control. McElhenny stood up from the squatting position he had been in, handed a flashlight to one of the technicians standing nearby, and said, hold this, Harry. I'll be back in a minute. The installation crew went on with their work while McElhenny went over to a wall phone. He picked it up and punched the code number for Beam control. This is McElhenny, he said when the recog signal came. Mac, this is Blake. Can you come down right away? We've lost Number Four. What happened? Don't know. She was nearly overhead, going along fine when we lost contact all of a sudden. One minute she was there, the next minute she was gone. We've lost the beam and Just a second. There was a pause at the other end, and then Blake said, we just got a report from some of the ground stations within range. Satellite Number Four has quit broadcasting altogether. There's no signal from her at all. I'll be right down, McElhenny snapped. He hung up the phone and headed for the elevator. It wasn't good. Number Four, like the other satellites, was in a nearly circular orbit high above the atmosphere of Earth. She should follow a mathematically predictable course, subject to only slight variations from the pull of the other satellites and the pull of the moon, plus the small perturbations caused by the changing terrain of the Earth beneath her. She'd have to be badly off course to be out of range of Beam Control. The elevator dropped McElhenny down from the computer level to the monitor and control level. The men at the monitor screens didn't look up from their work as McElhenney passed, but there was a feeling of tension in the air. The monitors knew what had happened to the man in Bismarck, North Dakota, or the housewife in Tampa, Florida. The disappearance of the satellite meant nothing more than a slight irritation. If the program they were watching happened to be one that was shunted through Number Four, their screen had simply gone dark for a moment. Done with apologies for technical difficulties beyond our control. Another program had been switched into the channel. For the businessman in San Francisco and the government official in New York, the situation was worse. Important intercontinental conferences were cut off in mid sentence and vital orders were left hanging in the air. For seven transcontinental strata liners, the situation was almost tragic. The super fast rocket driven robot controlled ships speeding their way through the lower ozonosphere 15 miles above the surface of the Earth were suddenly without the homing beams they depended on to guide them safely to their destinations. Their beam detection instruments went into a search pattern while alarm bells shattered the quiet within. Passengers in the lounges and in the cocktail rooms looked suddenly wide eyed. On one of the ships there was a near panic when one fool screamed, we're going to crash. Get parachutes. Not until the flight captain caught the hysterical passenger on the chin with a hard right uppercut and explained that everything was in good order did the passengers quite it down. He didn't worry them by explaining that there were no parachutes aboard. At 80,000ft of altitude and a velocity of over 40 miles per minute, a parachute would be worse than useless. Each of the stratoliners had to be taken over by the flight captain and eased down manually. McElhenny had a pretty good idea of what was going on all over the United States, and he didn't like it. He pushed open the door of the beam control section and strode in. Blake met him halfway across the room. Nothing yet as far as contact goes, he said. We've heard from the spotter stations in Topeka. They missed it at the same time we did. 1702 hours, 2 seconds. McElhenny glanced at the chronometer on the wall. The satellite had been missing for nearly four minutes now. Get the Long Island Observatory. Tell him to keep an eye peeled for number four. It ought to be out of Earth's shadow, McElhenny ordered. And start a sweep search with the radar. Cover the whole area. Get a prediction from the orbit division. Find the cone of greatest probability and search it carefully. Unless the damn thing just blew up. It's got to be up there somewhere. I've already called orbits, Blake said. I'll get Long island on the line. He headed for the phone. McElhenney went over to one of the control boards and looked over the instruments. He swept his eyes across them, reading them as a group in the same way an ordinary man reads a sentence. Satellite number four had vanished as far as the beam controls were concerned. Data from the electronic brain indicated that the acceleration of the satellite had been something terrific, but whether it had slowed down or speeded up was something. The brain couldn't tell yet. A thin, sandy haired man at a nearby board said, what do you think, Mac? There's only one thing that could have done it, Jackson, McElhenny said. A meteor. That's what we figured. It must have been a toozie. Yeah, but which direction did it hit from? If it hit from the side, number four will be twisted around. Its new orbit will be at an angle to the old one. If it overtook the satellite from behind, the additional velocity will lift it into a newer, higher orbit. If it was hit from the front, it'd be slowed down and it may hit the atmosphere. Not much chance of it being overtaken, Jackson said. A meteor would have to be hitting it at a pretty good clip to shove four ahead that fast. Right, McElhenny agreed. And meteors just don't travel that fast in that direction. No. No they don't. McElhenny felt a sense of frustration. The satellite was gone, vanished. He knew not whither. It had disappeared into some limbo which at the moment was beyond his reach. Until it was located either visually or by radar, it might as well not exist. There was actually nothing further he could do until it was found. He couldn't find it himself. What's our next contact? He asked. Satellite number eight. It'll be coming over the horizon in. Jackson Glad glanced at the chronometer. In 8 minutes 27 seconds. We'll just have to hold on till then, I suppose. McElhenny thought about the stratoplanes he knew were up there. Yeah, he said tightly. Yeah. Just wait. Chapter two four minutes came and went while McElhenny and the others smoked cigarettes and tried to maintain a certain amount of calm as they waited. At the end of the four minutes, the phone rang. Blake, who was nearest, answered. Yes, good. Okay, thanks, Dr. Vanner. He cradled the receiver and turned to McElhenney. The observatory. They've spotted number four. She slowed way down and dropped. They're feeding the orbit figures to orbit's division now by teletype. She evidently hit a fast meteor head on. McElhenny nodded. It figures tell orbits to feed us the computation we can sight by. Feed it directly into the brain first so we can get things going. We've got to get that satellite back up where she belongs. As the figures came in, it became obvious that the orbit of number four had been raised radically altered. Evidently a high speed, fairly massive meteor had struck her from above and forward, slowing her down immediately. The satellite had begun to drop, since angular acceleration no longer gave her enough centrifugal force to offset the gravitational pull of the Earth. As she dropped, however, she picked up more speed and was able to establish a a new, different orbit. With this information fed into it, the electronic brain in the top 20 floors of the CGC building went smoothly to work. Now that it knew where the satellite was, it could again focus the beams on her. Since the direction and velocity of the artificial moon in her new orbit were also known, the trackers could hold the beams on her. McElhenney rubbed his chin with a nervous forefinger as he watched the instruments on the control board come to life again as contact was reestablished. Meanwhile, Orbit's division was still at work. In order to reestablish the old orbit, the atomic rocket engines in the satellite would have to be used. Short bursts, fired at precisely the right time in precisely the right direction, would lift her back up to where she belonged. It was up to Orbit's division to compute exactly how long and in what direction the remote controlled rockets should apply their thrust. As the beams again locked on the wayward satellite, McElhenny kept his eyes on the control board. Lights flickered and rippled across the panel. Needles on various meters wavered and jumped. McElhenny watched for several seconds before he said, blake, what the hell's wrong there? Blake watched a set of oscilloscopes, four green glowing screens which traced and retraced bright yellow green lines across their surfaces. His dark brows lowered over his eyes. We can't get anything to her, Mac. She's dead. Either that meteor hit her power supply or else it did more damage than we thought. No control, then? Blake shook his head. No control. McElhenny frowned. If the remote controls wouldn't work, then it wouldn't be possible to realign the orbit of the satellite. Keep trying, he said. Then he turned from the control board, went to the phone, and punched the number of the orbit's division. Orbit's division? Masterson here, said a gruff voice from the other end. This is McElhenny. How does that orbit on number four look now? We've got it, Mac. I'll send the corrective thrust data to the brain as soon as. Never mind the corrective thrust, McElhenny interrupted impatiently. We can't use it yet. We don't have any positive contact with her. She's dead. No response to the radio controls. You mean you can't get her out of that orbit? Masterson's voice was harsh. That's exactly what I mean. She's stuck in her new orbit until we find some other way to change it. It can't be done from here. There was a pause at the other end. Then Masterson said, Mac, I hate to say this, but you've got a hot potato in your hands. That thing's in the Commentary Orb. Orbit cometary? That's right. Instead of a normal, near circular path, she's going in an elongated ellipse. At perigee. She'll be less than 150 miles above the surface.

[Interjection]

Ugh.

[Announcer]

McElhenny felt as though someone had slugged him. If the satellite went that low, the air resistance would slow her even more before she broke free again. Each successive passage through the atmosphere would slow her more and more until she finally fell to Earth. If she fell into the ocean, that would be bad enough, but if she hit a populated area, fortunately by that time her velocity would be considerably cut down. If she were to hit the atmosphere with her present velocity, the shockwave alone would be disastrous. Okay, said McClenney at last. Notify every observatory within sight range of her orbit. Keep a check on her every foot of the way. We'll have to send up a drone.

[Narrator 2]

Right.

[Announcer]

There was a subdued click as Masterson hung up. McElhenny turned. Blake was standing beside him. I've got White Sands on the line, Mac. McElhenny flashed an appreciative grin. Thanks, Blake. He went to Blake's office and closed the door. In the screen of the visiphone, he saw the face of Paul Locke of Commercial Rockets, Inc. White Sands. How's it going, Mac? Locke asked. I understand you're having trouble with number four. It's worse than just trouble, Paul McElhenny told him. He carefully explained what had happened. Locke nodded. Looks rough. What do you figure on doing? How much will it cost me to rent one of your RJ 37 jobs with a drone robot in it, fully fueled? Locke thought a moment. The name to figure that's pretty steep, McElhenny objected. Locke spread his hands. Actually, it's just a guess, but I'm pretty sure we won't be able to get insurance on it for something like this. What do you plan to do? I want to take an RJ37 up there to number four and use it to put the satellite back in a safe orbit. It'll have to be done quickly, or we'll lose the satellite and a few thousand square miles of Earth. Locke paused again, turning the idea over in his mind. McElhenny said nothing. He knew how the mind of Paul Locke worked. Finally, Locke said, tell you what. Get the government to underwrite the insurance, and we'll give you the RJ 37 at cost. Fair enough. McElhenney nodded. Get her ready. If the President won't okay the insurance, we'll have to pay the extra tariff. We absolutely can't afford to lose that satellite.

[Interjection]

Right.

[Announcer]

It'll be ready in half an hour, locke promised. As he cut off, McElhenny began punching the code numbers for Washington, but the phone rang before he was through. You are luck, McElhenny thought to himself as the President's face came onto the screen. Evening, Fitz, said The President of the United states. Good evening, Mr. President.

[Interjection]

Fitz.

[Announcer]

I understand you're having a little trouble with one of your satellites. The Naval Observatory tells me it's in a collision orbit of some kind. Where will it come down? McElhenney shrugged. I don't know, sir. It will depend on how much resistance it offers to the atmosphere at that altitude. And that will depend on how badly it was torn up by the meteor. I see. What do you propose to do? I'm going to try to get one of Commercial's RJ 37s up there to put her back on course. I don't want to lose a 12 million dollar space station. I can understand that, but. The President looked off his screen suddenly, as though someone had attracted his attention. Hold the line a minute, Fitz, he said, and the screen went blank. McElhenny waited. When the President came back, he wore a frown on his face. The French government's been informed of what has happened. They want to know what we intend to do. Did you tell them, sir? Not yet, but I will. But there are going to be other governments interested pretty quickly. Nobody wants something like that falling down on their heads. We may have to send up a hydrogen bomb and blow it out of existence if you can't get it back into a safe orbit. I know. He paused. Mr. President, I have an idea. Suppose we load the RJ 37 with a thermonuclear warhead. If we can't change the orbit of the satellite, we'll blaster. A slow grin spread across the face of the the Chief Executive. Very neat, Fitz. It'll also mean the government will have to underwrite the full insurance cost of the RJ 37 if you have to detonate the bomb. McElhenney grinned back. It will at that. But don't worry, Mr. President. I won't set off the warhead unless I absolutely have to. I want to save that satellite, not destroy it. All right, Fitz. I'll call White Sands and authorize the whole project. And I'll try to keep the foreign governments happy. Fine, sir. We'll know more after her first passage through perigee. If her orbit changes too much. I'll leave it up to you, Fitz.

[Narrator]

Good luck.

[Announcer]

The special controls for remote operation of the RJ 37 were in a room just off the main monitors. It was set up just like the control cockpit of the ship itself, with all the instruments in their proper places. If a pilot moved a control knob here, the same knob would move the same amount in the ship. Instead of the heavy paraglass window in the nose of the ship, the control room in the CGC building had a wide three dimensional color TV screen. It gave the illusion of actually being in the ship. The remote control cockpit was occupied by a space service officer, a Major Hommaker, who had been ordered up from a tour of inspection at the Brooklyn Naval Yard. He was a square faced, clear eyed, prematurely graying man in his early 30s. McElhenny was relieved when he saw the Major. The officer looked as though he could do the the job. McElhenny had wanted to use one of the company pilots, but the President had vetoed that idea. If the ship was going to be insured by the government, then piloting would be the government's job too. It had been nearly an hour now since the accident which had disabled satellite Number four. She had been carefully tracked by several observatories across the face of the Earth, and the figures had been carefully checked and rechecked lower and lower. The satellite dropped as it spun around Earth in its elongated orbit at 150 miles altitude. The air is thin, thinner than the air in any but the very best vacuum tubes, but it is still dense enough to slow down anything traveling as fast as as the satellite. The slight friction would be enough to alter the course of the flying moon. Major Homaker sat in the control chair, his hat off and his sleeves rolled up. As soon as the satellite started up again and her new orbit stabilized, the Major would take off the RJ 37 and guide it to number four. The men waited tensely. McElhenny gnawed impatiently at the stem of his pipe, which had gone dead minutes before without his noticing it. They waited. Very soon now, Number Four would hit perigee. It never did. The observatory saw what happened as the satellite came lower and lower. It looked as though it was following a perfectly normal path. Then, quite suddenly, there was a flare of light from underneath her. She leaped up again under the driving thrust of her underjets. Number Four had somehow changed her own orbit before the tenuous atmosphere could even begin to drag her down. Chapter 3 After a few short bursts which lifted the satellite up into a higher orbit, the jet stopped. The artificial moon went on, coasting innocently around the Earth. Well, I'll be damned, said McElhenny softly. The others, either silently or verbally, agreed with him. Get a reading on that new orbit, McElhenney snapped after a moment. Blake was already on the telephone. McElhenny turned to major Hoaker. Be ready to take that bird up as soon as we get orbital readings and bearings. There's something screwy as hell going on up there and I want to find out what it is. Those jets shouldn't be working at all. What could have turned them on at exactly the right moment? He was talking to himself more than to the majority who was busily making last minute adjustments on the instruments. The computations on the new orbit came in, were run through the computers and then fed into the autopilot section of the remote controls for the RJ 37. Anytime you're ready, major, McElhenney said. The major adjusted his controls, threw a switch, and pressed a student over 2,000 miles away in White Sands Spaceport, New Mexico, the atomic powered, fully armed RJ 37 squirted a tongue of white hot flame out of her rocket motors, climbed into the air, and launched herself toward space. Over Major Ho Maker's shoulder, McElhenney and Blake watched the screen that showed the scene from the forward part of the of the space rocket. For a while there was nothing to see. As the ship gained altitude, it burst through a layer of low hanging clouds. Then there was nothing but the blue sky overhead. Gradually, as the air thinned, the sky became darker, more purplish stars began to appear, and finally the ship was in the blackness of space. The Major's hands glided smoothly over the controls, guiding the ship along its pre calculated orbit slowly overtaking the runaway satellite. At first there was nothing to see, only the distant fixed stars glittering like tiny shards of diamond against a spread of blackest velvet. Then it became apparent that one of the shards was moving with relationship to the others. It became brighter, bigger. Then it was no longer a point of light, but a globe of metal floating in the infinite darkness of space. Under the careful manipulation of Major Hoagger, the remote controlled RJ 37 moved cautiously up to satellite number four. As the details of the globe came into focus, every man in the room gasped involuntarily.

[Narrator]

What the hell is that?

[Announcer]

Asked Blake. No one answered. It was obvious to everyone there that whatever it was that had crashed into Number Four and driven it off course, it was most certainly not a meteorite. At last, McElhenny said, I'd be willing to bet my last dollar that that's a spaceship of some kind. From a gaping hole in the side of the satellite there protruded a long cigar shaped shaft of bluish metal. It looked almost as though someone had shoved a fat blue cigar halfway into a silver tennis. Major, Homaker said softly, I wonder what kind of metal that ship is made of. Yeah, said McElhenny, I wonder. It was a good question. The steel hull of the Number four had crumpled and torn like cardboard around the hole where the impact of the ship had melted and volatilized the metal. But the hull of the alien spaceship wasn't even dented. What now? Asked the major. Take the RJ7 in carefully and lock on with magnetic grapples, McElhenny ordered. Blake glanced at him. What if the pilot or crew of that ship is still alive? They probably are, McElhenny said. But we've got an H bomb in our ship if they try anything funny. What makes you think they're alive? The major asked as he eased the ship in. Somebody set off the atom jets when number four approached perigee, McElhenny reminded him. The RJ 37 approached number four closely. Then the magnetic grapples were turned on and the ship stuck to the hull of the battered space station with a metallic clank. The RJ 37 was only a few yards from the edge of the gaping hole that had been torn in the hull of the satellite. In front of them loomed the queer blue shaft of the alien ship. Okay, hold it, said McElhenny. Let's see what happens next. Surely they felt the jar when the ship landed. Forcing himself to be calm, McElhenney struck a match and fired the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. They didn't have to wait long. From the edge of the hole there suddenly appeared a moving shape. It was a man like figure clad in a brilliant crimson spacesuit. The helmet was a dark purple and it was difficult to see the head within. Looks like a man, said Blake. Not quite, McElhenny said. Look at the joints and the arms and legs. He's got two knees and two elbows. What's that he's holding cradled in his arms? Blake wondered. The major grunted. Weapon of some sort. Look how he's pointing it straight at us. For a full minute the figure stood there for all the world, as though he were on the surface of a planet instead of on the outer hull of a space station. Then, slowly, it lowered the thing in its hands. Nothing happened. The figure put the weapon down on the steel hull at its feet and held its oddly double jointed arms out from its body. Wild Bill Hickok, breathed Blake softly. Huh? Said the major. Hickok used to say I'm a peaceable man. I guess that's what this guy's trying to say. Looks like it, agreed McElhenny. I wish there were some way of signaling him. We've got the spotlights, Suggested the major. McElhenny shook his head. Leave him alone. We couldn't make any sense with them, and our friend out there might think they were weapons of some kind. I don't know what that thing he laid down will do, but I don't want to find out just yet. The alien, his hands still out from his sides, walked slowly toward the RJ 37, his legs moving with a strange, loose suppleness. He came right up to the front forward window and peered inside. At least the attitude of his head suggested peering within the dark purple helmet. The features could not be distinguished clearly. At last the figure stepped back and started making wig wag signs with his arms. Smart boy, said McElhenny. He recognizes that the ship is remote controlled. Wonder what he's trying to say. The alien waved his hands and made gestures, but there was no recognizable pattern. None of the hand signals meant anything to the Earthman. Blake leaned over and whispered into McElhenny's ear. Hadn't we better call the President, Mack? He'll Want to know. McElhenny considered for a moment, then nodded. Give him a direct beam on what's coming over this screen. Then give me a pair of earphones connected to his office. I want to be able to hear what he says, but I don't want him countermanding my orders to Major Hoaker. The alien was still making his meaningless signals when Blake brought in a pair of earphones and clamped them on McElhennie's head. A throat mic around his neck completed the communications circuit. Can you hear me, Mr. President? McElhenny asked. Yes. Your man Blake explained everything to me. Got any advice? Not yet. Let's see what happens. By the way, I've given the impression to the rest of the world that it was through your effort that Number four avoided crashing. I don't think we'd Better let this leak out just yet.

[Interjection]

Right.

[Announcer]

Meantime, I'm going to try to capture that lad. How? Asked the President. Invite him into the ship and bring him back with it. All right, said the President. But be careful. He's given up, said Blake, gesturing toward the screen. The alien had given up his incomprehensible gesticulating and stood with his odd arms folded in an uncomfortable looking knot. Major, said McElhenny, open the cargo hold. The officer looked puzzled, but did as he was told. After all, the President himself had ordered him to obey McElhenney. He touched a button on one side of the control panel. After four or five seconds, a light came on above it, indicating that the cargo hold of the RJ 37 was open. Alien evidently saw the door swing inward. He hesitated for a moment, then went around to the side of the ship, out of range of the TV camera. But he didn't go inside and make immediately. McElhenny hadn't expected him to. The alien couldn't be that stupid. After perhaps half a minute, the alien figure reappeared and strode deliberately back to his own ship. He opened a port in the side and disappeared within. Then, quite suddenly, the screen went blank. What happened? Snapped McElhenny. Blake, who had been watching the beam control instrument, said, I don't know how he's done it, but he's managed to jam our radio beam. We're not getting any signal through. The President's Voice crackled in McElhenny's ears. Fitz, detonate that bomb. We can't take any chances. McElhenny half grinned. Major, he. He said, send off the H bomb. The Major pressed a red button on the control panel. Twenty minutes later, the screen came back on again, showing the same scene as before. No one was surprised. By then, reports had come in that the satellite was still visible, still in its orbit. The H bomb had failed to go off. The signal had never reached the detonation device. The alien was standing in front of the camera, holding a large piece of mechanism in his hands. On Earth, the thing would have been almost too heavy to lift, but the gravitational pull of satellite number four was almost negligible. He's got the H bomb. McElhenney recognized the president's voice in his

[Voice Actor]

e.

[Announcer]

The alien bowed toward the camera, then straightened and went back to his own ship. He clambered up the side of it with magnetic soles as easily as he had walked on the hull of the space station near the end of his ship, he opened a small door in the hull. Within was utter Blackness. Working slowly and deliberately, he pushed the H bomb into the blackness. It wasn't just ordinary blackness. It seemed to be an actual solid wall painted deep black. As the bomb went in, it looked as though it were cut off abruptly at the black wall. Finally, there was nothing outside except the two detonating wires which had been clipped off from inside the Earthship. The alien took the the wires in his hands. My God, said the major. He's going to blow up his own ship. Is he crazy? I don't think so, said McElhenny slowly. Let's see what happens. As the two wires came in contact, the black wall inside the small door became lighter, a pearly gray in color. There was no other result. Well, I'll be damned, said Blake in a low, shocked voice. The alien closed the door in the side of his ship and came back down to the camera. He bowed again. Then he pointed toward the weapon that he had been carrying and waved his hands. He picked it up and brought it around the RJ 37. From the microphones inside the ship came a faint scraping sound. Then the alien reappeared in front of the ship. His arms were empty. He had put the weapon inside the open cargo hold. A fair trade is no robbery, blake said softly. The alien bowed once more, then turned on his heel and walked back to his ship. This time he got inside and closed the door. Then the blue ship moved slowly, like a car backing out of a garage. It pulled out of the hole in the satellite. Nowhere on its surface was there a mark or a scratch. When it was finally free of the satellite, it turned a little, its nose pointing off into space. A pale rose colored glow appeared at the tail of the ship and the cigar of blue metal leaped forward. To all intents and purposes, it simply vanished. That, said the major in awe, is what I call acceleration. Here's the way I see it, Mr. President, said McElhenny several hours later, when he cracked up by accidentally plowing into numbers. Therefore, something happened to his energy supply. Maybe he was already low, I don't know. Anyway, he was out of fuel. What do you think he used for fuel? The most efficient there is, said McElhenny. Pure energy. Imagine some sort of force field that will let energy in but won't let it out. It would be dead black on the outside, just like that. Whatever it was in the alien ship, he just set off the H bomb inside that field. What little radiation did get out made the field look gray, and that's a damn small loss in comparison to the total energy of that bomb. You know, Fitz, I'm going to have a hell of a time explaining where that bomb went, said the President. Yeah, but we've got his gun or whatever in exchange. But how do you know our technicians will be able to figure it out? I think they will, McElhenny said. Their technology must be similar to ours, or he wouldn't have been able to figure out how to fire the jets on the satellite or how to set off that bomb. He wouldn't even have known what the bomb was unless he was familiar with something similar. And he wouldn't have been able to blank out our controls unless he had a good idea of how they operated. They may be a little ahead of us, but not too much. And I'll bet we have some things they haven't. The trouble is, the President said worriedly, we don't know where he came from. He knows where we are, but we don't have any idea where his home place planet is. That's true. On the other hand, we know something about his physical characteristics. Well, he doesn't know anything about ours. For instance. I doubt if he'd be happy here on Earth. Judging by the helmet he wore, he can't stand too much light. He had it polarized, almost black. Probably comes from a planet with a dim red sun. Well, Fitz, when they do come, I hope it's for trade and not for war. McElhenny grinned. It won't be war, don't you remember? We've started trading already. End of Beyond Our Control by Randall Garrett Read by Paul Hampton.

[Dialogue Speaker]

All in the Mind by Jean L. Henderson this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Christine Rocker all in the Mind by Gene L. Henderson when does life begin? A well known book says 40, a well known radio program says 80. Some folks say it's mental, others say it's physical. But take the strange case of Mel Carlson, who gave a lot of thought to the matter. Mel felt as if he were floating on clouds in the deepest, most intense dark he had ever experienced. He tried opening his eyes, but nothing happened. Only a sharp pain. Little bits of memory flashed back, and he tried to figure out what could have happened, where he was. The last thing he could remember was the little lab hidden back in the mountains in an old mine tunnel, remote, but only an hour's drive from the city. What had he been doing? Oh yes, arguing with Neil again. He even recalled the exact words Damn it, Mel, his partner had said. We've gone about as far as possible working with animal brains. We've got to get a human one.

[Narrator 3]

We can't.

[Dialogue Speaker]

Mel had disagreed. There'd be enough of an uproar if the papers got hold of what we've been doing with animals. If we did get someone, someone in a hospital, to agree to let us use his brain on death, they would close us up tighter than a drum. But our lab's too well hidden. They'd never know. It wouldn't work anyway. The brain might be damaged for lack of oxygen and all of our work would go for nothing. Worse, it might indicate failure where a fresh, healthy brain would mean success. Will will never know unless we try, said Neil almost violently, dark eyes glittering. Our funds aren't going to last forever. Mel had turned his back and was leaning over the tank where the latest brain that from a dog, was lying immersed in the life giving liquid. A thin flickering line of light on the oscilloscope behind the tank, the only indication that that the brain was alive. What had happened then? He thought hard, until a sharp pain and growing headache almost made him lose consciousness. Either he'd passed out, or something had happened. Maybe the cave had collapsed the concrete walls of their lab. Although he didn't see how that could have happened. He became aware of voices. Faint at first, first, then growing stronger. He strained to listen, and just when it appeared that the words would become distinct enough to understand, they faded away. He waited hopefully until they came back. This time he could understand words and parts of sentences. Connect this first and. No. Be careful. Too much voltage would ruin everything and we'd have to. To. Where does this connection go? Here. The other voice boomed in. Then deep vibrations, feeling as if they would shatter his brain. There was a frantic quality in the words. No. No, you fool, don't. A penetrating pain knifed through Mel's head and he tried to scream, but heard nothing but a loud buzzing. He welcomed the loss of consciousness. Consciousness as it blanketed him. He struggled back to consciousness once more. A voice calling over and over in a monotone. Mel. Mel Carlson, can you hear me? Mel? Mel. Mel Carlson, can you hear me? Mel? He listened intently, recognizing it as one of the first voices he had heard. He tried to move, but could feel no response of legs or arms. It was like being buried alive, and he tried to call out for help. He must have lost his voice because he could still hear the same call. Mel. Mel Carlson, can you. It broke off abruptly, then came back triumphantly. You don't Hear me, Mel. I can see again. Mel tried to call out. Without success. The other warned quickly. Don't become alarmed. We're still working on your voice. Just try to rest. Mel suddenly realized that he'd been listening to Neil, and a wave of thankfulness swept over him. There had been a cave in then, and he'd been injured. Neil was speaking again, a note of professional regret in his voice. I'm sorry it had to happen happen this way. But there was too much tied up in the project to lose now. A growing realization and horror began to seep through Mel's mind. Neel continued. After a brief pause, the sine wave jumped. I see. You must realize now. I had to do it, Mel. After all, you aren't dead, you know. Just your body is gone. Your brain may live for hundreds of years. Why, just think. You'll be able. Oblivion again claimed Mel. Once more, Mel was floating on clouds, and this time the sensation was exhilarating. He tried moving his arms and legs to see if he could swim through the velvety darkness, but failed. A faint glow began to appear ahead, ahead of him, and a low rumble of voices began to echo throughout his mind. Full realization of what had happened swept over him and he struggled to retain his sanity. The voices were louder and he recognized that of Neil, who was saying, is conscious now. Easy on the voltage. Remember last time. A brief pause, then louder. Mel, I see that you hear me. Listen carefully. I've tried out several of my own theories. That's why you can hear. And in just a moment I'm going to give you eyesight. We're having trouble with a voice. The light began growing in intensity and hurt his eyeballs. Mel remembered then, depressed that he had no eyes of his own. Even at the thought, he tried to shut his his eyes, which only caused his brain to ache more. He tried completely relaxing in an endeavor to capture the floating sensation once more. Ah, that's better, approved Neil's voice. I see that the brain wave has smoothed down. If you'll just accept what's happened, Mel, we should be able to work together. Figures began to form in the white mist. They became stronger, but out of focus. He saw Neil bent over a control panel, carefully making adjustments and glancing frequently at the leaping line of green light across the scope in front of him. He felt a surge of hate sweep through his brain and saw the green line jump violently. Neil's hand jumped instinctively toward a red covered switch. At the time. Same, same time. He flashed a glance toward a tank that was barely within the range of Mel's vision. He realized almost at once that it must be the same one in which his brain was resting. The full sickening realization of what had happened hit him, and he almost went over the black outline. Then Neil's face loomed square in his direction, and hate, the most intense he had ever experienced, brought the green line that represented his brain's output up to full level. His brain sent impulses out to the nerve ends that had controlled his arms and legs. They felt as if they were still attached to him, but paralyzed. His mind felt clearer and sharper now than it ever had before in his life. He determined to analyze his new mental capabilities carefully in the hope he would find a means of striking back during the next few weeks. Only his hatred for Neil enabled Mel to keep his sanity. The first empty feeling that the future could hold nothing for him but horror gave way to planning and scheming. His mechanical voice was perfected, operated by the nerve ends of his brain. Much as the original vocal cords had functioned. It enabled him to now assist in his own rehabilitation. By suggesting improvements or solutions to mechanical aids he could control. The steady growth or realization of his mental powers were amazing to Mal. He realized that they must have been inherent and in his subconscious all of the time. Only his loss of body brought them out now. That, plus the fact that he required practically no rest if the stimulants pumped into the tank were sufficient. This last was the clue to his use by Neil. It became apparent that his erstwhile partner planned on using him to the fullest possible extent. First, Neil brought in a problem concerning a new type of paint to absorb the rays of the sun. Sun. And convert them into electrical energy. Not until he had studied the problem and given Neil the answer did Mill realize the full financial potentiality of his powers. He immediately brought up the subjects. What about our partnership agreement on profits? He asked. Profits? Repeated Neil with a nasty smile. Why? Why? Where did you plan on going? For once, Mel was glad that his voice was flat and devoid of all inflection. It kept the other from sensing the rage that made him want to do something violent. You know what I mean, he insisted doggedly. Unless you want to admit murder, we're still partners. Neil laughed and said, that's right. Of course. I can draw any. Any and all funds that I need. But if the authorities ever check on your disappearance, they'll find that a separate account has been opened in your name in the city. All you have to do is go in and withdraw it anytime you want to. He chuckled, then grew serious. Don't get any ideas, he warned. We've been spending most of the time during the past couple of months getting you in shape for your intended function, and I'm going to bring more and more problems into you. He explained further. I've opened an engineering consultant service in the city, and this paint formula alone will bring us all the business we need. He pretended to be busy at one of the computers being installed, but Mel could see that he was glancing out of the corners of his eyes at the oscilloscope for indication of a brain reaction. Mel had learned several weeks ago that he could control the output of his brain and had been careful to conceal the fact. From Neil, his partner said, disappointment in his voice. Doesn't my attitude bother you anymore? Mel's mechanical voice rolled out. When you destroyed my body, you. You destroyed all emotions. If that's the way you want to do things, that's the way it will be. But the ethics. I know what would happen to me if you turned me over to the scientists. I'd be a freak and treated as such. I owe nothing to the world. Swell. Enthused Neil. This time his face twisted into a grimace of pleasure. I've got a lot of plans that you'll fit into. Experiments had been made with muscular control, and they discovered that Mel could govern an electrically powered table controlled by shortwave radio. Another eye that could swing in a 360 degree circle had been mounted on it and broadcast its immediate information to Mel's optical circuit. A mechanical arm had also been installed on it, and Mel spent long night hours when the lab was quiet, perfecting his control over it. Before long, he was as much, if not more, proficient with it as he had been with his own arms. He began laying his plans. The first thing he needed was a weapon. Getting his control cart out of the cubicle was easy, since Jenkins, the only assistant allowed in the entire laboratory, had left his key ring lying on a table one morning. It had been but the work of a moment to wheel over, pick them up, and then conceal them. Jenkins had spent a frantic hour in search, but finally went into the machine shops to make up a new set. He had four first cautioned Mel against letting Neil know, almost fawning in his gratitude when Mel promised. He searched the entire lab the first two nights, but discovered that Neil had taken the revolver he had kept in a drawer of his old desk. It would take too long to try and machine another one, although their machine shop had proven its capability of turning out anything, a knife he discarded as too clumsy for his Means of control. He then carefully considered steel darts shot from a tube by compressed air or carbon dioxide, but reluctantly abandoned that idea. Also, since he had a machine's limitations as well as advantages, he'd have to begin thinking less like a human. So the first thing to base a weapon on would be the material most plentiful in the lab. That was electricity. Once determined on the line of his endeavors, he briefly marveled again on the still unexplored potentialities of his brain. The weapon would be mounted on his own cart, and electricity could either be broadcast or self contained. For mobility, he decided on a power pack. The weapon itself evolved so so easily that he wondered why no one had thought of it before now. Special type condensers built a battery charge up over a million volts for a split second. This charge, invisible until it hit an object more solid than air, was contained in a very narrow beam by strong screens of opposite polarity. The entire sequence of operation was almost. Almost instantaneous. And the bolt was more in the nature of an electrical projectile than a continuous beam. He decided that the unit resembling a flashlight could be mounted in a concealed spot under his eye so that it could be fired at whatever he might be looking at. Now that he had a means of defending himself, Mel felt more at ease, but at a loss for his next step. Merely eliminating both Jenkins and Neil would gain his revenge. But what then? He could always notify the authorities, but mentally flinched at exposing himself to the world as a freak. And being at the mercy of the morbid curiosity of millions, he had hardly begun to lay his plans before disaster struck. Neil came in early one morning and had Mel be begin working on a problem concerning a new type of steel that would combine structural strength with the lightweight qualities of aluminum. Mel energized his calculators that were electrically, practically part of his brain. He briefly wondered why Neil appeared so restless, wandering around the room with his hands behind his back, studying everything. Then the problem became so intriguing, seeing that he completely forgot that anyone was in the room. His first inkling that anything was wrong was when Neil straightened up from the cart with a twisted smile on his face and exclaimed, ha. Mel's first startled conjecture was that the other had discovered the special weapon. He tried to rotate the lens so that the weapon would point at Neil, but could see by other stationary lenses in the room that the one on the cart remained motionless. The same was true of the mechanical arm. In fact, the entire cart was dead. I pulled the main power fuse, said Neil, a slight smile on his face. I suppose you thought you were getting away with it. Completely not positive as to how much his partner knew. Mel decided to on silence as his defense. The smile disappeared from the other's face and he continued slowly. Something must be wrong with your reasoning. I knew something was up when the power company statement showed an unusually high increase in power consumption. From there on it was easy to read the meters at night myself and then the next morning. What were you up to anyway? Mel still maintained his silence. Okay, if that's the way you want it, said Neil more harshly. He walked to the end of the tank and Mel felt his brain telegraphing warnings to severed nerve connections not yet again in use. Neil reached out to a valve Meld recognized as controlling the minute amount of chemicals that served to nourish the cells in his brain. Relays were connected to it that also regulated the injection of oxygen proportionally into the fluid. He turned it slightly, then began watching the oscilloscope closely. In a matter of seconds, Mel felt his usually sharp senses begin to dull. The the oscilloscope blurred until by great effort he brought it into focus again. He saw that the height of the wavy lines denoting the strength of his brain's output was abnormally low. Feeling all right? Asked Neil in mock anxiety. He turned the valve back to its correct setting, and almost instantly Mel felt better. That's just a sample of what can happen if you force me to, it warned the other. A little more of a turn and that super brain of yours would be garbage. Only I wouldn't do that, of course. There are a few more experiments I want to make before your brain dies. Knowing the vicious nature of his partner, Mel decided to talk before the other goaded himself into some unplanned action. Don't forget the fable about the goose that laid the golden eggs, his voice rolled out. There is still a lot I could do for you, you know. Or not do. He saw with relief that the anger receded from the other's face, to be replaced by a look of cunning. I almost forgot, said Neil. I've another surprise for you. He went to a circuit near the master calculator that he himself had installed only several days ago. All the master components were open, a rheostat appearing to be the primary control. Mel had decided at the time it had to do with voltage regulation of the calculator, since there had been trouble with it. Neo placed his hand on it, then turned his head in the general direction direction of the tank and said, just in case you get ideas of not cooperating, I can Use this for persuasion. He cracked the vernier just a trifle, and agony knifed through Mel's brain. It receded, leaving a slight ache. Not much voltage, neil was saying with satisfaction, but judging from the way your brainwave jumped, I don't imagine it felt very good. Did it? You win, was Mel's only comment, not wanting another jolt. Never before had he felt so helpless and so completely at the mercy of another. He realized more and more that he had less defense than a newborn baby which could at least kick and wave its hands. He could do nothing except try to retain his sanity and wait for his day to come. Good, proved his partner, his manner indicating that it was the most natural thing in the world that Mel should give in. Just in case you forget, I think I'll keep the cart disconnected so that you can't do anything to harm yourself at night. His manner abruptly turned businesslike. Now then, that paint formula story got around and we've got a lot of business to handle. Most of it's routine for you, but we'll drag it out and sock them plenty. A couple of items we'll copy after you've solved them and say it couldn't be done. Mel missed the cart more than he thought he would. It was much like the time when, as a boy, he'd broken a leg and had to stay in bed for for several weeks. He was forced to turn in on himself. The real turn in the development of his mind and above the level he had thought possible, came about as an accident. One day, resting with nothing to do, he had the full room in vision with the stationary lenses. A flicker of motion caught his attention, and careful waiting disclosed it to be a small mouse that had somehow gained access to the laboratory and then into his room, welcoming any change in his routine, he watched as the small creature scurried around the room looking for something to eat. Several times Mel amused himself by causing his voice box to rumble, making the rodent scurry around madly for a hiding place until the imagined danger had passed. Eventually it became EAS used to the noise and not even talking, affected, disappeared from sight for several minutes, and Mel had just begun to wonder if it had a nest in the equipment when it reappeared on top of the calculator near the electrical prod that Neil had used on his brain. Remembering the searing jolt it had given him, Mel watched anxiously as the mouse pushed an inquisitive nose into the still exposed components. He became more concerned as the animal became more intrigued. Not only was there danger that the mouse would push down on a delicate relay and close it, but he could conceivably short out the main power supply. The result wasn't pleasant to contemplate. If it didn't permanently damage some of his brain cells, the pain might drive him into insanity. He tried shouting, but the mouse paid no attention to him. He called for first Jenkins and then Neil, until he remembered that his partner had said they were going in after some special equipment. While he watched helplessly, the mouse stretched out and touched a relay point. Instantly, pain knifed through his brain, and he became aware of a roaring sound that he was realized was his voice blaring out. The extra loud and continued blast of sound had caused the mouse to withdraw nervously from the relay. Something about it had made him determined, however, and as Mel was barely recovering from the first jolt, the mouse moved back. Mel wished desperately that the cart had been left in operation, so that he might at least use the sound sound of motion or the mechanical arm to frighten his tiny tormentor. From the vicinity of the relay, he watched intently as the mouse came closer to the points, oblivious to everything else in the room. As it almost touched the points, a violent surge of hate coursed through his brain cells, and he was surprised to see the mouse flung violently back down to the the floor. It lay there motionless, and he finally realized with thankfulness that it was dead. As the pain from the jolt subsided to the point where he could barely feel it, he began to wonder what had happened. The amount of voltage necessary to hurt him was so small that nothing beyond a direct short across the primary power would have affected the mouse. He began to analyze any everything preceding the point where the mouse had been flung from the top of the calculator. A check and recheck brought the same answer, one that he had at first refused to believe his thoughts had been responsible. Further contemplation convinced him that while his thoughts had undoubtedly been responsible, the mental power itself had not been enough as pure brute force to a accomplish the task, but must have struck at the rodent sprain itself. That would have been enough to convulse the animal's muscles and make it look at first as if some outside force had hurled it to the floor. The stolid Jenkins was somewhat perturbed when he found the dead mouse. But how could it get in here? He demanded querulously. Then, as if in sudden thought, and one what could have killed it, Mel suddenly decided that it might be better if the other were set at ease, since even Jenkins could dissect it if he became curious Enough and might find enough to make Neil suspicious. I saw it yesterday, he said. I didn't say anything since it was interesting and was company for me. I noticed that it was moving more slowly today and seemed to be weaker. It must have starved to death. Nothing to eat in here and he couldn't get out. Yeah, agreed the other, picking it up and throwing it into the wastepaper basket. The explanation had evidently satisfied him since he went about his routine tasks after the excitement of his discovery had worn off, Mel began to cautiously test its potential. He carefully directed his thoughts at Jenkins and caused an instant reaction. For a brief moment, he felt a resilient pressure, as if something were pressing against his own brain. He instinctively pushed back harder and heard Jenkins yell as the opposing pressure collapsed. The assistant was leaning against a work table, a dazed look on his face. What happened? Mel asked. I don't know, said the other, pressing a hand to the side of his head.

[Narrator]

It felt as if something had hit

[Dialogue Speaker]

me in the head. Now it aches a little. Guess I'll have to do something about this cold. He left, still holding a hand to his head. It was obvious that his newly discovered power could be dangerous, so Mel proceeded with his experimenting more slowly. Jenkins was still his only guinea pig, and he learned to gauge just when the assistant's resistance was about to collapse and reduce the intensity of his own probing. Accordingly, he was disappointed to discover that either it was impossible to read another's mind or that he hadn't discovered the method. However, he could roughly direct the other's actions. Jenkins had been becoming increasingly nervous, so Mel became even more subtle in his experimenting. He'd wait until the assistant was idle and then either make him cross his legs or put one or the other of his hands up to scratch his head. He finally became so smooth and accurate in his control that it lost most of its interest. As a means of recreation, he began to extend his range. Wood and concrete offered no impedance at all. Metal, with the exception of aluminum, cut the intensity roughly about half. Jenkins was in Mel's room when he first probed Neil's brain. His partner's mental resistance was much higher, and he pressed slowly but methodically so that the breakthrough would be controlled. To his surprise, he found that Neil's brain was much easier to control than that of Jenkins had been. It was about this time that he found he was beginning to master the sharing of his host's eyesight. While he might not be able to read another's mind, it would be a big help to know what someone else was doing or what he was looking at. He tried to searching outside the building but found nothing other than an occasional small spot of resistance that would probably indicate a small animal. This wasn't surprising since the lab was hidden in caves in a secluded canyon that had no attraction to the casual wanderer. His next concentration was on the animals he encountered every so often. His first few attempts resulted in sudden and complete collapse of resistance and he sadly concluded that his control had been too powerful and resulted in their death. He tried more carefully and was overjoyed when he established contact with their visual senses. The sensation was almost as overpowering as if he had suddenly gained eyesight of his own. For the first time in months, he reveled in seeing the country around the outside side of the lab and never before had he thought it so beautiful. Once, while in control of a rabbit's mind, he saw an eagle flying overhead. He quickly transferred and before the bird flew far enough away to make control impossible, he enjoyed the far reaching vision of the bird's eyes as it swept on towards some hidden nest. He could even see the city in the distance. Several times he neglected to notice Neil's entrance into the room, so absorbed did he become in his newly discovered if second hand freedom. What's happened to you anyway? Demanded his erstwhile partner one day after he had to repeat a question half the time. Lately you're lost in a world of your own. What are you up to to anyway? Nothing, replied Mel, suddenly alert to any new danger, although confident he could take care of himself now. I was just going over some new equations I've been formulating as a hobby. Now that you've taken away my cart, there isn't much to keep me occupied. You know. You don't begin to to bring enough problems. What's wrong? Mel wished that he could read the other's mind. Since Neil began to act evasive, he laughed with a false heartiness. Wrong. While I've. We've, he corrected, already made a fortune on a couple of our own patents as well as commissions from project Solutions. Someone might get suspended suspicious if we did too well or too much. This made sense, but Mel couldn't resist digging. You mean that your past record of success as measured against your supposed one now might make the police ask questions? He asked. The other remained silent, so he pressed the attack. Or. Or are they already wondering why I haven't been seen for so long? There were a few questions at first, admitted the other, but I think I've satisfied them all. However, I've been thinking that it might be a good idea to move you somewhere else. But hardly anyone knows the lab experiment exists, protested Mel. The power company does. Even if the meters are way down the road. We should have planned on our own generators from the first. Then there's the deed recorder. This land is in both of our names, you know. It'd still be a tremendous project, pointed out Mel. You couldn't begin begin to keep the new location secret because you'd need help in moving me. One little slip and it'd be all over. There was an upward curl to the other's lips that Mel didn't like. Oh, we'd have to be careful, he admitted. Luckily, the time delay wouldn't hurt any. There's so much money rolling in. He hesitated for a moment as if in thought, then concluded, in fact, there's no project on now. Unless you have a private one of your own, it might be a good idea to plan on the move right away. I still don't like the idea, stated Mel flatly. I'd like to think it over for a couple of of days. Thinking over all you want, said Neil with a grin. He walked to the calculator and patted it near the jolter. Only don't forget, I don't have to ask you. He waited almost hopefully, but Mel said nothing, content with the feeling of power and knowledge that so long as he was prepared, the other could do nothing immediate to harm him him. The time had come for action, however. Mel kept mental contact with his partner. After he had left, Neil went directly to the office and unlocked the center drawer of his desk. He then began pulling out papers and scanning them rapidly, placing some back and keeping others out. Mel gasped to himself when he saw the bank statement and the amount of money deposited under the name of the partnership. That in Neil's personal account was large, but it was perfectly obvious according to dates. Mel could see through the other's eyes that the transfer of funds had not been underway for long. As it stood now, they were both practically millionaires, but he knew Neil wouldn't be satisfied watching through the other's eyes. Mel had his vision switched from the desk to the door. He saw that Jenkins had just entered, mouth moving, he thought he could read his lips just enough to make out his own name. Jenkins appeared to stop and listen to Neil. Then his facial expression changed as his lips protested over something. Mel's vision then switched to another desk drawer that had been opened, and he saw his missing revolver nesting in it. Neil withdrew it and pointed it at Jenkins. The assistant stepped back, hands up, as if to ward off a blow. Then a placating, if anxious smile spread over his face and his mouth worked rapidly, too much so for Mel to read any words. Whatever had been said, it appeared to satisfy satisfy Neil since he lowered the revolver. Mel broke contact and came back to his own room and stationary video scanners that served as his eyes. Jenkins came in and his manner made it plain to Mel that he was laboring under an intense pressure. He began puttering around the work table, gradually making his way closer to the tank housing Mel's brain. Jenkins, said Mel purposely, extra loud. The assistant jumped nervously, dropping a piece of metal he had picked up.

[Reader]

Yes.

[Dialogue Speaker]

He almost quavered. Have you ever thought how it would be to be condemned to a life like mine? No, not especially.

[Narrator]

Why should I?

[Dialogue Speaker]

You helped put me here, you know. I was only following orders. I. All right, all right. I know how Neil can force a person to do something. But you could help me, you know. How's that? Suspiciously. I'm not going to tell anyone if that's what you're driving at. No, I'm not trying to to get you to do that. All I want is the fuse replaced on the cart. Then it would feel as if I were moving around and break up the monotony. This is worse than any solitary cell in prison could ever be.

[Interjection]

No.

[Dialogue Speaker]

Refused the assistant flatly. It wouldn't do you any good anyway. It's just. He stopped, hand going to his mouth as if he had said something he wasn't supposed to. How's that? Jenkins reminded Mel as gently as he could. What's supposed to happen? I don't know, replied Jenkins sullenly. Put a fuse back in the cart, directed Mel at the same time he applied pressure almost to the breaking point against the other's mind.

[Narrator 2]

No.

[Dialogue Speaker]

He knifed through to the other's brain with ease and just enough power to accomplish his purpose without harming Jenkins. This was the most complete control Mel had ever attempted, and Jenkins's legs moved spasmodically as though he were a puppet on strings. There was horror in his bulging eyes, and sweat began breaking out on his forehead. Relentlessly he was forced towards the cart until at last it had been reached. Jenkins, said Mel as low as he could. Can you hear me? A slight twitch of the head was the only indication that. That he could. So Mel instructed. There's a spare fuse near the holder, Jenkins. Take it out and place it in the primary circuit. Do that and I'll let you go. If need be. I could kill you now. The fuse Jenkins. He relaxed his hold slightly but Jenkins made no attempt to to comply. Mel continued. Remember the dead mouse, Jenkins. I did that the fuse before I lose my patience. He applied more power until the other's hand began moving unsteadily towards the cart. As he withdrew slightly from mental contact. Jenkins continued his task and in a moment Mel was able to move the cart. He had momentarily forgotten Jenkins until he became aware that the assistant had let out a yell of terror and was rushing for the door. Mel watched with amusement, knowing that he could have stopped the other with hardly a strain. Just before he reached the door, it opened and Neil appeared. Jenkins came to us halt. And stared in terror at his employer. Well. Said the other impatiently. What's been keeping you, Jenkins? Did you. No, he didn't, answered Mel. At the same time he caused the cart to move sideways and swung the video scanner until it was staring directly at Neil. Well. Said the latter accusingly, switching his his gaze to the terrified Jenkins. So this is how you follow out orders.

[Narrator]

He made me do it, boss.

[Dialogue Speaker]

He made me babble. Jenkins, as Neil, face set with determination, drew his revolver from a pocket before the astounded Mel could do more than gaze incredulously. There were two sharp cracks and Jenkins slowly placed his arms around him his stomach and rocked back and forth in agony before toppling over to the floor to lie motionless. Now you. Said Neil, swinging his revolver towards Mel's tank. Mel frantically stabbed at his partner's mind but could feel no pressure. Another shot rang out and he felt a numbing pressure seemingly from every direction. That could only mean it was against his physical brain itself. The shock forced him to use every bit of power he possessed to keep conscious. Neil had lowered the revolver a trifle and was saying in a superior tone, whatever you did to Jenkins, it's only hastens the inevitable. If that makes you feel any better. I'd have had to get rid of him too once you were disappointed. Disposed of. He began to raise the revolver again and the dazed mill instinctively relayed power to the cart. The eye had been pointing directly at Neil and the only sound that indicated the energy gun had been set off was a slight hiss. The effect on Neil was not only instantaneous, but horrible to see. His body appeared to swell until he looked bloated, then disintegrated. Mel felt himself becoming weak and hastily brought the cart over to examine the damage the one shot had done to him. Almost fearfully he scanned himself and saw with relief that the shot had penetrated the tank and was letting the life giving liquid escape onto the floor. A quick glance into the the tank showed that the lead pellet had missed his brain. But the pressure on the liquid had caused him the initial pain. He directed the cart over to the workbench and brought back a tapered piece of wood. The arm placed it into the hole and then applied pressure until the trickle had stopped. It would do until he could affect a permanent patch. He began to feel stronger almost immediately and knew that the automatic features of his metal body were renewing the liquid at top speed. Using the cart, he first checked the supply of chemicals fed as needed into the tank and saw that there was a sufficient quantity to last him for at least a month. He thanked the good fortune that had allowed Jenkins to put the cart into operation before it was too late. Without it, his end would have been as certain as if Neil had been successful in killing him. His first task was to construct several more carts, each complete with video scanner. One of them was larger than the other. Its first task was to dispose of the two putrefying bodies. Working almost 24 hours a day, he hooked an intercommunications system to every room of the underground lab and directly into his system. Even the telephone was connected to it, so that, if necessary, he could answer it or make a call. The day finally arrived when there was no more he could do. The entire lab was almost like a steel and concrete body, so thoroughly had its every function been integrated as part of his brain. The decision he had been almost frantically avoiding could no longer be put aside. He had approximately a week in which to decide. It would be simple to call the police and in turn let them notify the various scientists as to his position. He dreaded the thought of the circus that the lab would become. Erstwhile friends would troop in to look at him with morbid curiosity. Then, when his potential became known, tasks would be assigned. There was a definite possibility that he would be moved, even at the danger of injury to himself. Countless thousands would demand it, and their will would be obeyed unless the curtain of national security could be drawn across him. One day was spent in contacting the animals outside the lab and revelation. Traveling in flight for a while. Then he sped through the countryside, first with a coyote, then with a deer. There was a possibility that if the scientists moved him, his new tank would be shielded, so that it would be impossible to enjoy himself as he now was. All in the name of science, of course. On the other hand, if it were possible to have all supplies delivered to a new nearby point where he could pick them up, he could continue his present method of existence. His mind jumped eagerly from problem to problem, which he could undoubtedly solve for the benefit of mankind. The present patents in the partnership's name would bring enough money indefinitely to pursue them, since much could be done by pure thought. There was the survival phase. First he would devise an electronic blanketing ray that would dampen all atomic explosions. Then he could turn to the health of people all over the world, wipe out diseases. All this would depend, of course, on his being able to remain undisturbed, and that might tax his powers to their utmost. He wondered if it would be worth the effort. Finally, he had less than three days left, which narrowed the safety margin to the lowest point he cared to think about. He opened the telephone circuit and heard the operator say, number, please. He hesitated briefly, then said, the wearing chemical supply house, please. His order was soon placed, and afterwards he felt almost as free and elated as when as a boy boy school had let out for the summer. The menial dexterity of the metallic fingers he had constructed would enable him to write checks with his own signature. A faint idea had even tickled his curiosity, and he felt certain that he could grow cells within a couple of weeks. From there he could work on a body for himself, one even more efficient than the old one Neil had discovered destroyed. A human in the lab at that moment would have been startled as nearly as possible as it was for any wheeled vehicle to do so. He had several carts almost doing a jig in the main office. His new life had just begun. End of all in the Mind By Jean L. Henderson.

[Voice Actor]

The Trap by Betsy Curtis this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit Librivox.org recording by Barbara Yu the Trap by Betsy Curtis she had her mind made up. The one way they'd make her young again was over her dead body. Old Miss Barbara Noble twitched aside the edge of the white scrim curtain to get a better look at the young man coming down the street. He might be the one. The young man bent a little under the weight of the battered black suit case as he crossed Maple and started at prospect on Ms. Noble's side. She could see him set the case down on the wide porch of the Rainey house and wipe his forehead with a handkerchief. Then she lost sight of him as he advanced to the door. He could be a visitor to the Raineys, but they were out of town on vacation. He could be a salesman. Miss Barbara shifted her rocker to the other side of the window where she could watch without having to disturb the curtain. This second floor sitting room made an excellent lookout. She quickly scanned the street in the other direction, but there was no sign of movement in the hot sunlight. She settled down to watch the black suitcase sitting uncommunicatively at the edge of the porch. It must have been all of two minutes before the young man appeared from under the overhanging roof and picked up the case. A persistent fellow, he went down to the sidewalk and approached her own house, came up her own front doorstep, tried to set the case down on the narrow stoop, couldn't, straightened up and rang the bell. A raucous buzz filled the sitting room. Barbara Noble leaned toward the window, pulled back the curtain a scant inch, and studied his back as he looked at the windows on the other side of the front door. Limp yellow hair and a big perspiration stain in the middle of a dark sports shirt were her chief impressions. He could be a bona fide salesman working hard at it. She wouldn't let him in, of course, but she felt a little sorry for him lugging that big case around in this weather. Then he turned and looked straight at the window behind which she was hiding, and she let the curtain go suddenly. Had he seen it move? The buzzer sounded again imperiously. Ms. Barbara got up stiffly, moved to the big visor screen in the nearest corner, and switched it on. The man might have something interesting, and she couldn't get out to the shop the way she used to. She smoothed her lilac house dress and left the room to descend the stairs to the front hall. In the tiny front hall she hesitated, then opened the door inward about 8 inches. Deftly the man stuck the broad brown toe of his shirt shoe into the opening and looked down at her. She grinned as she saw his expression of shock. She was old, really old. Her sparse white hair was pulled so tightly into a knob on top of her head that the plentiful wrinkles on her forehead and around her eyes seemed to run vertically, giving her an Oriental look. The hand she rested on the door jamb was a waxy white claw, a blue vein standing up prominently under the skin, tight, drawn over gnarly finger joints. He had probably never seen a woman much past middle age. Well, her croak was high and rough. The young man recovered himself and began his spiel. Madam, I represent one of the best known and most reputable firms in the country. Our products have received three international medals for purity and effective performance. They what are you selling, young man? I have the privilege of being a field representative for Taffeta Beauty Aids. Please accept this generous 10 ounce bottle of our Diamond Dew Refreshes lotion. He reached into his side pocket and brought it out, offered it with the most appreciative smile. His you hardly need this smile. Her hand did not reach out. I don't want any. Good bye. The door tightened against his foot. But madam. His foot did not budge and his smile became both engaging and pleading. All I ask is a chance to show you our line. Our products sell themselves. Besides, I'm paid on a demonstration basis. So much for every potential customer who receives our free sample. And so much for every home demonstration. You wouldn't want me to lose 250 when it would take only six and a third minutes of your time exactly to look over one of the most amazing displays ever. Well, I don't know. I know you'll enjoy watching our tissue cleanser in action and seeing the new simplicity of our home re.

[Narrator]

Oops.

[Voice Actor]

He'd almost said it. Hair re Lustrification kit. I promise you that your few minutes won't be wasted. Yours would be, young man. I don't buy that stuff. You may be one of the lucky few women who don't need our products, but I don't think you can say that before you've seen them. I never did see such persistence, honest to goodness. Her face assumed a crab smile. Come along. Then. She moved back from the door into the darkness of the house, and the salesman shifted his case back to his left hand, pushed the front door wide, and took a quick, a quick long step inside. He was just in time to hear the slight click of the closing of a second door in front of him. He reached for the knob, turned it, but the door was locked. The outside door still stood open, caught by the end of the sample case. The July daylight from outside showed him that he was in a tiny entrance hall, not more than 40 inches each way. He pulled the case in and by squeezing against the inner door, allowed the front door to close. Anyhow, he was inside the house. He rapped sharply on the inner door. The latch on the front door snapped to and instantly the hall was flooded with light from a tremendous bulb in the ceiling, which surprisingly, was 20ft above him. A harsh voice, tinny with tremendous amplification but unmistakable, possibly that of the old woman, filled the hall. All right, young man, I have the visor turned on you. Let's see the demonstration. I believe you said six minutes. Get on with it. Screening his eyes with his fingers, the Salesman scanned the walls and ceiling for the visor lens, found it beside the 500 watt ball pouring blindingly down on him on the other side of a speaker grille. Certainly, madam. What a layout. As he automatically laid his case on the floor and opened back the top against the front door, his eyes searched the walls for indications of openings which might mean unexpected defenses such as anesthetic tanks. The only breaks in the two smooth white plaster surfaces which he could see as he squatted before the case were a horizontal row of glass bosses on each side at about the same height of his knees. Now since my face. He closed his eyes and flashed a toothy smile like a video actor up at the visor lens is subjected to the daily care of taffeta products. He turned his face down to the case and gritted his teeth. I must smear facial muscle softener onto the left half to show the action and appearance of muscles which have lost their tonus. He whipped the COVID off of a small ivorine jar and rubbed his cheek vigorously with a brownish sob. You will note that this softener also contains a percentage of grime which lodges in the pores. He heard a gasp from the speaker grille when he displayed a face whose left cheek and brow were sagged, wrinkled and hideously brown speckled. From somewhere behind the gasp he heard a continuous tinkle of tiny bells. His hands moved among the bottles and jars, raised a round silver box which he held up. The delicately perfumed applicator pads for all applications of taffeta preparations are pre saturated with Vermol tone charger. I dip the pad into the solution of enhancing hyssop. He did so and worked it gently into the pores. The results are instantaneous. He turned up his original video star appearance while bending his body forward to reach the article strapped to the top of the case. He noticed that the tone of the distant bells was raised. Screwing a circular hairbrush to the thread of a collapsible tube, he sank back on his haunches. The bell tones were lower. He placed a hand on one of the glass bosses near the inner door floor, apparently to steady himself. An even lower tone was added to the bell notes. Obviously electric eyes with a set of bell signals in the old woman's present location. He smiled down at the floor to himself. Now I want you to notice closely this object which I will show you. He held up the brush with the tube screwed on its back and turned it about. Do you know what this is? There was no answer from the speaker but its own hum and the tinkle of the Bells. What does it look like? He spoke rapidly, pleasantly. There was still no answer. He rose quickly and tried the knob of the inner door again. He could hear the bell notes lower in pitch as he pressed against the door. Let me see the thing again, young man. Honest to goodness, what difference does it make whether I know what it is? It looks like a hairbrush with some dojigger on the top. He jumped back to the center of the hall. This brush is the essential feature of our sensational hair reluster fryer kit. The tube screwed to the top feeds the specially developed brilliance set directly through each hollow bristle to reach every part of the hair. He ran, or rather scrubbed the brush through the right side of his long fair pompadour with small rotary motions. When he removed the brush, that side of his head was covered with crisp yellow ringlets which shone under the light like sculpted gold. That's some sort of trick. Do it on the other. Her voice was interrupted by a syncopated clicking, a telephone signal. Just a moment, young man. The hum of the speaker cut off and the sudden silence seemed full of the echoes of the bells. Instantly the man dropped the gadget into the case and grabbed a handful of cleansing tissues from a box in it. He snapped down the top of the case and whipped the straps through the buckles. Then he shoved the case against one of the walls and sat on it to flip off his shoes and socks. Shoving his back tightly against the wall, he bent his knees up and pushed his bare feet against the other. After placing a wad of tissues in his lap, the he put his hands against the wall below his buttocks and, like an experienced mountain climber, inched his way rapidly up the chimney of the hall. When his head touched the ceiling, he braced himself firmly with his left hand and reached with his right for the tissues in his lap. Protecting his hand with several of the white papers, he felt above him for the base of the light bulb, unscrewed it, and dropped it gently onto the rest of the tissue still in his his lap. The sudden blackness was smothering. Heat seeped through the tissues more rapidly than he had expected, and the effort to keep his knees from contracting and spilling him into utter darkness to the floor 15ft below was agony. When he finally reached the floor, he placed the bulb on it beside the sample case. Then he opened the front door and closed it again, leaving the door caught open a fraction of an inch by the latch against the frame. Taking an anesthetic cartridge out of his pants pocket, he broke the seal, taking care not to trigger it, and returned to his crevice climbing posture. He lifted himself again above the row of electric eyes and waited, cartridge in hand, leg muscles cramping painfully. After Ms. Noble had turned off the speakerphone, she pulled herself away from the fascinating view of golden curls and scuttled over to the stiff ladder backed chair beside the telephone stand. She lifted the antique cradle phone, none of these modern invasions of privacy like the visor phone, and spoke warily into the mouthpiece. Who is it do you want Barbara? A man's voice was urgent. This is Ms. Noble speaking, she replied haughtily. The voice was savage. Well, this is Dr. Harris then. Have you looked at the mail today? I got my directors meeting notice this morning. Yes, I got one the 5th of August, she said impatiently. And this seems to be our year. There's been a girl here already this morning with some story about my having advertised for a housekeeper. She told it to the door phone and wouldn't leave when I said I didn't want anybody. But it only took one one drop of skunk oil in the hallway to send her packing. The horrid chuckle that came from the receiver was so raucous that Ms. Noble held it away from her ear. Blonde or brunette? She asked non committally. Blonde and really young. Not a damn rejuvenie, Rod Harris. You actually went and peeked at her, you old goat. Only through the one way. Well, since the company knows that a pretty girl is still good bait for an old ninny, you're as good as a goner. They'll have you rejuvenated before long. They won't get a chance to. And I'm going to get old enough that I can't even lift a hand to thumb a nose at the company. Then I'm going to go and die, and the Juvine Perpetual Youth Corporation will scream in agony as it disbands and makes public property of its hallowed formulas as per the original articles of incorporation. And you will probably get a new set of false teeth and take the treatment again, since you could get it real cheap when the monopoly's finished and not have to disturb your millions salsaed away in the sugar bowl. This mixture of facetiousness and downright sarcasm was only surpassed by Ms. Noble, who snapped back, don't you sneer at me, Dr. Roland Harris, when you know perfectly well that the only reason I have to go on living this long is to make sure that you are really dead fast. First, you didn't invent rejuvenation all by yourself without the aid of Barbara Noble, Ph.D. and the company has the sole right to the process until we're both dead. And if you start peeking at plump blonde wenches at this point, I suppose I'll have to live until Los Alamos freezes over. All right, all right. But she wasn't plump. She wasn't any bigger than you are. Besides, you know I'd rather have dinner with you. My man Marco could give us roast beef with all the fixings. And afterwards I want you to hear my latest discovery. It's the best damn extempore singer you've ever heard. Jerry Wade. Fellow in his first late 50s. No fluff brain of a juvenile. A blood and thunder baritone that'll lift that knob of hair clean off your scalp. Let's say you get here about 6:30 and I'll phone him. We'll be over at his place for a session of hollering about 8. Ms. Noble's scorn needed no visor to carry it over the wire in full force. I'm not going to budge out of this house until after the directors meeting and then only if all the shops stop delivery service. This time I'm not taking any chances. Life is too much of a bore to have to put up with it for another 80 years. Even for your marvelous singer who would probably go and get rejuvenated just as I got to enjoy him. And nothing could induce me to listen to an evening of your stories for the 900th time. If there's one thing I'm thankful for in this scatterbrained age, it's the marriage dissolution law that's got me free from your anecdotes after three separate terms of 50 years each. Now, Barbara, was it that bad? Roland Harris sounded distressed. Do you really think I could be honestly grateful to the corporation for a hundred and fifty years of listening to that disgraceful old thing about the Martian, the Venusian and the Robot? Well, if you feel that way about it, I'll keep my discoveries to myself. I hope your fancy hallway keeps you safe till you rot. It's doing all right, replied the old woman smugly. I have a young pup down there right now cooling his number 13s and waiting to pretend to interest me in some new face paint and hair gag. My electric eye set and visor are less repulsive than your skunk oil and twice as effective. They're not going to stop me from having a good time while I last. Anyhow, I think they're through with me for today and I'm going to hear Jerry Wade Anyhow, he'll make up a hooting good song about this when I tell him. Take care of yourself, rod. Goodbye, said Ms. Noble, almost concernedly. She dropped the phone into its cradle, rose, and went back to the visor screen, switching on the speaker as she sat down. Only then did she notice that the screen was entirely dark except for a vague sliver of gray. Are you still there, young man? She asked the microphone. There was silence from the speaker. The hammer on each bar of the long metal xylophone of the electric eye signal hung motionless. He's gone and left the front door unlatched, too. And I thought he was persistent. She was disappointed. He owes me four more minutes of fun. She got up slowly and started for the door. That curly hair stuff is new since my last 60s, too. I wonder if it would work on white hair. I'd better go down and close the door. Can't have just anybody coming into one's house. She descended the stairs, opened the door from the front room, then took one step forward into the hall before she could interpret the soft bump of the salesman's bare feet as they struck the floor. She was encircled by his strong arm, and the hiss of the anesthetic gun was loud in the small area of the hall. Limply, she sagged against his arm. The hissing of the gun stopped. The young man slipped it into his pocket and, turning, thrust the inner door wide open with his now free hand. Entering the tidy front room, he kicked the door shut behind him and gulped in the good air before heading for the back of the house, cradling the small body easily in his arms. Failing to find there what he was looking for, he went up the narrow white railed stairway to the second floor. Across the landing the gleam of porcelain showed through a half open door. He laid his burden carefully on the vari colored braided rug by the tub and began to draw a warm bath, testing the temperature frequently with his hand. When water reached the overflow outlet, he turned off the tap and sprinted downstairs for his sample case. The hall was still chokingly full of gas and after grabbing out of the case he slammed the door again. He brought the case up to the bathroom, where he opened it on the floor beside the form of the old woman. He lifted out the tray, revealing masses of silvery tubing and a number of flasks of iridescent solutions nestling among loops of rubber insulated wiring. One flask he emptied into the bath, making the water seethe and turn a cloudy green. Then, dashing down the stairs again, he began looking for the telephone. His search became more and more hurried as he opened cupboards and drawers in the front room and kitchen with no success. Returning upstairs, he almost missed the instrument in the sitting room because he was expecting the familiar sight of a round visor screen. He stood over the phone and dialed. Hey, Alice. What luck, Riggi. I'm in the old lady's out cold on the bathroom floor. Primer solutions in the bath at 5 above tepid. I'm shoving her in now with all her clothes on, of course, and I've wasted a lot of time already looking for this hyperblastic phone, so beat it on over here with Margie and get to work. Are you ordering me around, Rigel o'? Maffey? You know I never did this job on a woman. Now don't forget, honey. We'll get enough out of this to get a new compter together. Come on now. He put the phone back in the cradle before she could answer. Back in the bathroom, he drew a long thermometer from the case, took a careful reading on the water, ran in a little more hot from the faucet, and left it running, the slightest dribble. Carefully lifting the small body of Barbara Noble, Ph.D. he slid it gently into the water, feet first over the end, smoothing down with one hand the percale house dress, which ballooned as she went into the water. Finally he knelt beside the tub, holding her head out of the water in the crook of his elbow. A banging on the inner door downstairs some 15 minutes later, reminding him of the force with which he had slammed it in his hurry to reach the uncontaminated air of the front room. He looked longingly across at the bathroom racks of towels on the other side. But finally, as the banging stopped and a feminine voice began yelling, hey, Ricki, let us in. He grabbed up the bright rug and watered it under the scrawny neck. The girl scolded him all the way up the stairs for not leaving the door unlocked while he tried to explain at the same time that he had to hold up the woman's head screepers. Riggi, what do you think the perfectly good pair of water wings in your case is for? Humbled, he departed as the girls took over the beginning of the complicated fortnight long process of the rejuvenation of Barbara Noble, the receptionist behind the ebony desk, whose gold plate proclaimed it as the headquarters of the Juvene Perpetual Youth Corporation, crammed shut the drawer before her. A metallic clink from within was the fall of a mirror with which she had been assisting the application of scarlet which now fluoresced gently on her full lips, tossing her head with which showed the crop of glistening black curls to their fullest advantage. In a preoccupied manner she addressed the man who stood before her desk. How can the Juvine Perpetual Youth Corporation serve you? Her hastily assumed look of efficient importance was replaced by melting eagerness as she took in the chiseled perfection of features and the broad shoulders of the young man in knife creased bronze spun line. Tom, I'm Harris for the directors meeting. His voice was Curt. You're Dr. Harris, the director? Oh, do come in. She rose from the desk and went around the end of it to open the high wrought gold gate and hold it wide for him. You're a little early. I'll take you down to the board room. Eager willingness to help was apparent in her every gesture. Thanks, I know the way, he informs informed her, brushing past. She followed him, however, across the patio like reception room with its exotically garden borders and splashing fountains, down the long corridor plus glowing murals of men and women swimming, dancing, and playing tennis, past tapestry shielded doorways to the great bright arch at the end. Before he went through, she caught his sleeve. I should be pleased to steno for you today, if you need me. He turned and looked at her as if he had not known she was behind him. Thanks, but I shan't be needing one. It'll be a short meeting. He smiled down and patted her cheek. But if I'm not entirely satisfied with the proceedings, maybe I can dictate a little afterwards. She laughed as if that were a special joke between them, and retreated rapidly down the corridor before he had time to turn and miss the splendor of her graceful carriage. His eyes were still raised and the corners of his mouth curved in appreciation when he passed through the arch and into the vast room under the clear bubble of a tremendous sky dome. A girl was sitting there, her back to him, looking out over the shimmering city streets to the cool rise of mountains beyond. He recognized at once the slight figure, the sheen of the long curse curling auburn bob, the poise of her head, and the slim hand resting on the arm of the chair. Babs? She turned half around. Hello, Rod. He grinned and sank down in the next chair. Here we go again. Knocked out by your own skunk oil? She asked pointedly. No company compter man got me leaving Jerry Wade's. What happened to you? I thought you were walled up now. Neatly for the declining years. The cosmetic man ambushed me in the hall. But I've got another 50 years to figure out something better if I still need it. What do you mean if you still need it? Are you changing your mind about rejuvenation? She smiled. Well, you know, it's always fun at first, but I'm having my lawyer come to this meeting. I've got an idea. We can change the articles of agreement so that the process can finally become public private property at the end of another 50 years instead of only after our deaths. Then, if we want to go on and die, nobody. She waved her hand around the great room at the little group of athletic men and glamorous, expensively gowned women moving in through the arch. Nobody will have any financial interest in rejuvenating us. Then too, our own fat incomes will lapse. And since that's the reason we set up the articles the way they are so we'd never be in danger of starving, that is, we'd have more interesting choice of whether to die off or get young again and go back to work. Would you sign a 50 year termination, Rod? Would you marry me for the 50 years, Babs? His voice was gentle, pleading. Honest to goodness. Now aren't you really pretty tired of me? She asked earnestly, turning to face him. No, I can't say I am. You're pretty special, Doctor. And you're special pretty. It was a ritual, you know. You're the only man I'll marry you. Will you sign? Of course I'll sign. I would have anyhow, when I knew you wanted me to. And Babs, maybe we could get some sort of jobs now, sort of to get in practice. I'll bet we could rent a lab somewhere and do commercial analysis for a while, until we got hit by another idea for research. Rod, that's the best idea you've had in the last 150 years. But we could have a honeymoon first, couldn't we? That's your best suggestion in the last 70 years. And maybe we could get Jerry Wade and his wife to rejuvenate and go with us. After the first couple weeks, that is. They left the meeting arm in arm, somewhat ahead of the rather disgruntled group of directors who stayed behind to lament the end of a good thing. In the garden room, Barbara stopped to choose an orchid. Rod Harris wandered onto the receptionist's desk where the girl of the black curls waited, smiling. He looked back at Barbara, then smiled down at the girl. Just like I said, a short meeting. No need for any dictating. Lucky you. Oh, I don't know, she countered coyly. Say, I heard a story the other day you might like. Do you like stories? What kind of story? You'd have to be the judge of that. Suddenly Barbara was with them, pinning on a bronze and green blossom. Come on along, dear. We've got a good many things to do before we leave. He opened the Golden Wicket for her and followed her out. Turning back toward the desk, he called to the girl, I may be back in a few weeks to see about a job. Remind me then to tell you the one about the Martian, the Venusian, and the robot. End of the trap by betsy curtis.

[Commercial Voice]

And There Was Light by Lester Del Rey this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Terence Callan and There Was Light by Lester del Rey Stephanie was still white and weak, but the worry on her face had nothing to do with her recent sickness. As she rushed about the small, crudely furnished apartment, trying to appear normal, Johann Wolczek studied his young wife, worrying more about her than the meeting for the moment. If the child had only lived then he smiled a bit ironically before letting his mind come up with the old palliatives. There'd be other children for him and Stephanie, and for this half of the world. The other half would would simply have to suffer painlessly through a generation for

[Narrator 4]

the good of the whole world.

[Commercial Voice]

But the director. Johannes. Stephanie's voice was on the thinnest edge of hysteria. Johann. To our place. If I'd known, I could have made curtains at least. And can you be sure it isn't suspicion, Radostmoya? He assured her quite quickly. I told you, the director trusts me. He has to. And he simply wants to see you. You know he's a family man himself. But he let her work, fussing about the place, refilling his coffee, brushing an imaginary speck of dust off his coat. The doctor had told him that work was best for her, anything to get her mind off the lost child until there could be others. And the director may have been a better distraction than any of the others, aside from the flattery of it. Then the telephone on the wall rang sharply, and he answered it, smiling back at her. Good, Johan. It was the Director's secretary of Science, Jean Petricci, and Wolchek's sponsor. We shall be there soon, and it's a beautiful day for the test. Not so, johan agreed quickly, though he had not yet had time to look through the windows, even with Stephanie's worry over the visit of the director but as he looked out now, he saw that it was a good day, clear, with only thin wisps of cloud in the sky. Then in the street below, there was a street stirring, first of big cars and then the shouts of the people. It was silenced and the creaking elevator began to thump upwards. Stephanie made a last frantic dash into the bedroom, brushing nervously at her hair, and came out just as the knock sounded. Johann had been right. The director must have trusted him, since the big man had come up, up with only three of his guards, and now came, thrusting his broad shoulders in his grayed head, not even darting about the room, his eyes leading him toward the vax. Quick admiration filled his eyes at the sight of Stephanie, and his gruff voice was soft, the voice the radio brought them when he was the father of the State, or when he was telling them of the new plans for more food and better living. Sit. I'm only one of you, you know. Ah, Johann, this is the little Stephanie I've wanted to meet you to see, the one Johan has spoken of so often. His language was perfect, but with the queer, stilted effect it always had when he was not reading a prepared speech, watching Stephanie stammer over the honour of the Director's presence, and then relax gradually, as the spell of the man took over, Johann began to smile more naturally. The director was talking of his own beginnings in much less than this, and the moving they would soon be doing into a newer apartment, a fine new suburb. And surprisingly, he was talking of his own wife and children, and Stephanie was answering, remembering stories of the director, Johann found it hard to recognize this as reality. The man had come up from the lowest ranks, an iron hand leading him up the ladder of Centralia's autocratic bureaucracy. But now the hand was sheathed and even Stephanie began to smile. Then it was over and the director was rising. Johan kissed his wife quickly, embarrassed slightly at the Director's approving smile, and they were out in the elevator, heading toward the big waiting cars. Now I trust you, Johann Volczek, the director told him. Now I can go with you to this test. With such a wife waiting you, there can be no trickery against the State. No, don't say it. It is not you I could distrust. It is everyone I must distrust. But not now. What does the doctor say? Another year. For a time they had been afraid that Stephanie could never have children again. But the new treatments had apparently been effective. Centralia's progress in all phases of gynecology had been spectacular. The director nodded.

[Narrator 4]

Good.

[Commercial Voice]

The State needs such children as you will have, and a man has need of little ones. But tell me, you still feel sure of this test. Then the talk became technical. Johann was sure there had been smaller tests during the two years the project had been going on, and all of them had been effective. Then cold fingers ran over him, tingling at the ends of his nerves as he realized the trick semantics was playing on him. Test it had been the name they had given it, and in time it had come to be no more than that in his mind, a test of his theories. But this was not just a test. This was the feat itself, the step that would bring an end to half the world, the culmination of the hopes of Centralia, and the final positive proof of the ideas of Wolcheck. He had been almost unaware of the power that had grown from his idea, but now it hit him. It wasn't easy to do that to half a world, even in these days, but it had to be done. 30 years before there had been a sprawling group of small nations and several large powers, but with the beginning of the atomic age that had shaken itself down until now there were actually only the two hemispheres. Centralia had most of the world's population, but the west had achieved equality by its head start in the sciences and in industry. For 30 years little nation had accreted to Big Nation. Until now there were the two of them. Nominally the little nations still existed, but it was a polite fiction, like the fiction of bland softness the Director had adopted before Stephanie. And this was not a world where two powers could exist. They had somehow achieved it. While the accretion of control over the neighboring states went on. There had been fracas piled on to struggle, but never outright war. Now, though, things had reached a stage where each side knew that sooner or later the hydrogen bombs must fall, and where those bombs were of a size and efficiency that might even end the world. There were even rumors of Solar Phoenix bombs which could turn the world into a flaming lesser sun

[Narrator 4]

sighed.

[Commercial Voice]

This was better than that. Better that half the world should slow down and come to a gradual halt, than that the rain of hell should descend from the heavens, perhaps igniting the world itself. They were at the laboratories now, and Wolcheck got out of the car behind the Director, vaguely conscious that taking second place was a mark of honor. Inside the building one of the rooms had been cleared, leaving a few seats, a stand, and a single board of levers against the wall. Already the seats were taken and men were rising to salute the director. Key Fong Samatsu Bandaputra Simonolov, Schwarzkopf, Jordson. All of the big names of government and science were there. Some were scowling intently as they tried to digest the printed formula on the big blackboard which gave part of the theory behind Wolczyk's work. Others were smiling, assured only that this was the day when Centralia would come into its own. And some, as always, were estimating Wolcheck, wondering how his importance would conflict with their own. The director smiled thinly, dropping an arm over Wolcheck's shoulder. After this day, Johann, you'll need bodyguards. I have seen to that. And Petrichi? Well, we shall see. Johann caught himself before he could wince. He'd liked Patrici, had no desire to replace him. But if the implication of the director's words was what he thought, still, it would be good for Stephanie. She had had too much trouble, and it was time life smiled on her a little. It would be good for their children too, to grow up with comfort, even a little luxury, tutored, perhaps with the children of the director himself. As Secretary of Science, Johann Wolcheck could give his family a great deal. He caught Petrichi's eyes on him him and turned his head quickly back to the other men. At the director's nod, he began outlining the facts to them. Some already knew of what was being done here, but all were listening, as if the director himself were speaking. He could only give the barest facts. He'd been experimenting with a means of controlling fission for some power application, or working on the problem of getting hydrogen to fission at temperatures below the millions of degrees where it normally began, and in tiny amounts. And by sheer accident he had stumbled on a process where nitrogen fissioned instead. Two atoms of nitrogen combining into one, straining the nucleus that now held 14 protons and 14 neutrons, distorting it at until some of the binding force of the nucleus released energy and it broke up into simpler atoms again, as if both fission and fusion were going on. It had not been successful from a commercial angle, but it had produced an unexpected result. The mice which had been kept to test out danger of radiation had not been killed, but they had been sterile, as events proved. From then on the release of radiation was not quite normal. Gamma rays. It was subtler than that, some queerly polarized radiation that struck at the fertility of animals and ended it. But you were not sterilized, Key Fong interrupted him. I was lucky. I had been using a shield that was heavy enough to turn aside the radiation. The four foot walls of the oven where the experiment was conducted. It only leaked out through the panel we later found had a crack in it, but that was toward the mice. Three years had been spent in testing it on mice before the reports had found Patrici and brought him to the little laboratory of Johann Wolczek. By then Wolchek had developed a corporation, complete control of the process, and had learned to fuse and fission oxygen as well as nitrogen, but without the production of sterilizing radiation this time. After that there had been no more mice. Wolcheck shuddered, trying to conceal it as he remembered the prisoners who had stood before the portal of the oven and gone away sterile. And there had been tests in the the big deserted wastes near the Gobi, where balls of fire had leaped from his tiny little devices and cracked themselves into flaming energy that grew and spread before vanishing. More sterility had followed. It requires very little apparatus, wolcheck said finally. He pulled a small tube from a drawer near the wall and held it out to them. This is the source, a small battery, these coils, tubes, this little crucible, nothing more. Once we knew why it started the fusion, it was easy to simplify, and it was simple. A man could carry one of the devices with him in a small bag, and it was meaningless in appearance. It could be built into a radio as if it were part of the tuning device. It could slip past customers, harmless in its looks, and be spread wherever wanted. And now the director took over then, telling them what had already been done. In every city and hamlet from coast to coast, from polar cap to polar cap, the west was covered with these tiny little devices, each equipped with a little crystal, delicately attuned to one here, so that they would all function at once. There would be no war. Centralia had labored to avoid war in spite of the hatred and lusts of the West. Now they would be even more agreeable, even more meek. They would take the insults. They would not fight, because once the nitrogen of the air had done its job, there would be only a generation of patients, while no more children. Children were born to the west, and some day there would be only one power. Centralia Schwarzkop asked the question that was bothering the others, though he already knew the answer. But these balls of fissioning or fusioning nitrogen, when they go off over the west, they are too much like atomic bombs. Won't the west feel it is attacked and retaliate with their genuine bombs, we too shall be attacked. It was Volcheck's other process, of course. Simultaneously, there would be released similar bombs over all of the Territory of Centralia. The heat and power would do a minor amount of damage, of course, but this process produced no sterilizing radiation. Only New Zealand will be free. New Zealand had somehow held out of the two coalitions by its hardest efforts, and with the help of its location, it was weakly allied to the west, but too remote. The director smiled again, the tight smile that was reserved for private meetings. We shall, of course accuse the west, but within the hour, when word of their trouble comes, we. We shall ask for a truce to find the culprit. Simple, is it not? The clock on the wall indicated five minutes before zero hour, and Wolcheck wiped his hands surreptitiously against his coat. It was simple enough, this use to which they had put his discoveries, and he told himself again it was better than any reign of real atomics. The west would not be hurt seriously. It would simply die out slowly, as no more children were born. It was really the most merciful solution to the politics of this world. He could picture some of the panic, of course, when the little tubes did their work. First a tiny spark would form in the tube with a spitting and hissing. Then it would grow, breaking out of the tube and through walls or. Or anything in its way, growing and rising, spreading erratically horizontally, moving with a strange random motion as it climbed upwards and grew larger and larger. It would reach the size of a normal atomic bomb in a few minutes, and some would be killed by its heat, as some buildings would catch fire from it. But mostly there would be the terror, as the people in the cities saw it, spread its visible radiation and heard the familiar crackling thunder of its detonation. The terror would kill some of them in their panic flight, even while the thing itself drifted upwards until it found a layer of air too thin for it to go on and came to an automatic end. But they would mostly escape, except for bad cases of sunburn and the results of their own panic. Dry material flamed quickly before its peculiar radiation. But men were not made of dry material, and it was almost harmless. They would simply have no children, and that was better than most of them could expect in a day when each morning marked the beginning of a new fear of hydrogen bombs, or worse. One more minute. Wolcheck had expected the director to move to the panel where the big switch would cut on the surprisingly small oscillator that would trigger the little crystals in the tube projectors. But the director was stepping back, motioning him forward. You, Johan. It is an honor I have reserved for you. There was silence in the laboratory room as Wolcheck moved slowly toward the board, he straightened, his eyes going down to his coat where a bit of lint clung to it. Stephanie would have spotted it at once and rushed to brush it off. Stephanie, who knew nothing of what his great work was, but who was awed by having a husband who could receive a visit from the director. Stephanie, who could have other children after all, in this way world that would have ultimate peace in spite of all the war threats because of the work her husband was now about to do. Suddenly he wondered how many Stephanis there might be in the West. How many women would wait for the children they wanted and never find them. How many would curse him when they finally realized the truth without ever knowing that he was the man they were cursing? He cut off the thought savagely. There would be others in the long centuries to come who would know his name and would then bless him as their children grew up without the threat of war and extinction. His children would be proud of him, his and Stephanie's. He touched the switch that was to set off the harmless fake bombs over their own world. First the director was at his side, his face no longer smiling but narrowed to that of a wolf. Then the director chuckled and the edge of his lips curled up. Let there be light, he quoted, and his eyes showed that he knew the original usage of the term in the book he was quoting. And there was light as Johann's finger hit the switch, a tiny spitting, hissing thing lifted from the nearby city, going up and forward in weird erratic movements, growing larger and spreading out now, beginning the muttered staccato thunder that was not unlike a plutonium bomb. The director reached over and pressed the other switch that would send the sterile stabilizing bombs up over the west, but he did not depress it fully. He stopped and nodded to Wolcheck, and again Johann's hand went out, pushing the lever of the switch he should have brought Stephanie. If only she could have known nothing of the results. She would have been proud of him. Then, as the director solemnly shook the hand that had done its work and the other men began to cluster around him. Then they moved toward the windows, hesitantly at first, not quite sure that this fire in the heavens over the city beyond was really the safe kind. But the director led them together with Wolchick, and they stood gazing out. It was a huge ball of blazing fire in the sky now, partially softened by the filters that had sprung shut over the windows automatically, and the mutter of its detonation reached them as they stood there. There was some damage, of course, Even here, some of the older wooden buildings near where it had first appeared were bursting into flames, and the distant figures of people had gone into a panic. They had to believe it was real, just as the west must believe for a time that both powers had received the same treatment. Stephanie. But Wolcheck had taken care of that with a drug in her coffee. She would be asleep, unaware of the tumult, and not one of the mob trying frantically to escape what could never harm them. Now the ball of fire was rising upwards more steadily, its own heat driving it up as a ball blast of hot air is carried up over a fire. The brightness began to fade as they watched, moving up and turning smaller, shrinking, and finally going away. Wolchek sighed and the director echoed it, a satisfied sigh and a somewhat regretful one. It is hard to see even a few of my people hurting themselves, the director said slowly. But it is best and it is done. He turned to Wolcheck, and Johann straightened, reminding himself that whatever the director said must be remembered. He would have to tell Stephanie, and someday he could tell his children and his grandchildren. He must remember it. But the director's words were never spoken. There was a shout from the windows and they swung back and to see another tiny flame leaping up, this time nearer, growing and spitting. There was something wrong with it. The other had grown more slowly. This raged out savagely, growing more sure of itself as it leaped toward them, then darted sidewise. Wolcheck turned suddenly to the instruments packed in the drawers. The spectrovisor and the diffractograph came out in his shaking hands, and he slapped them down onto the wooden sill of the window, already beginning to smoke faintly. Then his hands steadied as he adjusted the instruments. One look was enough. This was the nitrogen fusion, not the harmless oxygen reaction. His eyes met the director's and he nodded, but the nod was unnecessary. The director had already guessed. They moved toward him, a harsh mob sound coming from them, but the director was before them. No. Stop. The voice that had been trained to command a power greater than men had ever held before stopped them. No. If the west has scientists too, that is no fault of Johann Wolczyk. Johan, you did not fail. You will not suffer. Wolczyk heard him and saw them fall back. He thought again of the lint on his coat and looked down at it. He picked it off while the others drew back and the director was assuring him that all would be well with him. Stephanie would have no children now. There would be no grandchildren. To hear the direction Director's senseless words telling him he would not suffer. You don't suffer when you've killed a race. End of and There Was Light by Lester Del Rey.

[Narrator]

The Eater of Souls by Henry Kuttner this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org the Eater of Souls by Henry Kutner a five minute tale of a strange entity on a distant world. They tell it in Bel Yarnak in a language not of Earth, that a malignant and terrible being once dwelt in that incredible abyss named the Grey Gulf of Yarnak. Not on Earth, nor on any planet that spins about, any star in the skies we know is Balyarnak. But beyond Betelgeuse, beyond the giant stars on a green and joyous world still in its lusty youth, are the towers and silver minarets of this city. Nor are the dwellers in Bell Yarnak anthropoid, nor in any way manlike. Yet there are fires during the long warm nights in curious hearths, and wherever in this universe there are fires, there will be tales told about them and breathless listeners to bring contentment to the heart of the teller of the tales. The Sindara rules benignantly over Baliarnak, yet in the old days fear and doom lay like a shroud over the land, and in the grey gulf of Yarnak a brooding horror dwelt loathsomely, and a strange enchantment chilled the skies and hid the triple moons behind a darkened pall, for a being had come to glut its evil hunger in the land, and those who dwelt in Balyarnak called it the Eater of Souls. In no wise could this being be described, for none had seen it, save under circumstances which precluded the possibility of return. Yet in the Gulf it brooded, and when its hunger stirred, it would send forth a soundless summons, so that in tavern and temple, by fireside, and in the blackness of the night, some would rise slowly, with a passionless look of death upon their features, and would depart from Belyarnak toward the Grey Gulf. Nor would they ever return. It was said that the thing in the gulf was half a demon and half a God, and that the souls of those whom it slew served it eternally, fulfilling strange missions in the icy wastes between the stars. This being had come from the dark sun, the hydromancers said, where it had been conceived by an unholy alliance between those timeless ancients who filter strangely between the universes and a black shining one of unknown origin. The necromancers said other things, but they hated the hydromancers, who were powerful then, and their runecasting was generally discredited. Yet the Sindara listened to both schools of mages and pondered upon his throne of Chalcedony, and presently determined to set forth voluntarily to the great gulf of Yharnak, which was reputed to be bottomless. The necromancers gave the Sindara curious implements made of the bones of the dead, and the hydromancers gave him intricately twisted trans transparent tubes of crystal which would be useful in battling the eater of souls. Thereafter the necromancers and the hydromancers squatted on their haunches in the city gate and howled dismally as the Sindara rode westward on his Gorlak, that fleet but repugnantly shaped reptile. After a time the Sindara discarded both the weapons of the hydromancers and the necromancers, for he was a worshipper of Varvados, as had been each Sindara in his time. None might worship Varvados save the Sindara of Belyarnak, for such is the God's command. And presently the Sindara dismounted from his Gorlak and prayed fervently to Varvadas. For a time there was no response. Then the sands were troubled, and a whirling and dancing of mist motes blinded the Sindara out of the maelstrom. The gods spoke thinly, and his voice was like the tinkling of countless tiny crystal goblets. Thou goest to doom, varvadas said ominously, but thy son sleeps in BAAL Yarnak, and I shall have a worshipper when thou art vanished. Go therefore fearlessly, since God cannot conquer God but only man who created him. Speaking thus cryptically, Varvadas withdrew, and the Sindhara, after pondering, continued his journey. In time he came to that incredible abyss from which men say the nearer moon was born, and at its edge he fell prone and lay sick and shuddering, peering down into mist shrouded emptiness. For a cold wind blew up from the gulf, and it seemed to have no bottom. Looming far in the distance, he could just discern the further brink. Clambering up the rough stones came he who the Sindara had set out to find. He came swiftly, making use of his multiple appendages to lift himself. He was white and hairy and appallingly hideous, but his misshapen head came only to the Sindara's waist. Although in girth his Spidery limbs rendered a shocking illusion of hugeness. In his wake came the souls he had taken for his own. They were a plaintive whispering and stirring in the air, swooping and moaning and sighing for lost Nirvana. The Sindara drew his blade and struck at his enemy. Of that battle sagas are still sung, for it raged along the brink for a timeless interval of eternity. In the end, the Sindara was hacked and bleeding and spent, and his opponent was untouched and chuckling loathsomely. Then the demon prepared for his meal. Into the Sindara's mind came a whisper, the thin calling of Varvatos. He there are many kinds of flesh in the universes and other compounds which are not flesh. Thus doth the eater of souls feed. And he told the Sindara of the incredible manner of that feeding, of the fusing of two beings, of the absorption of the lesser, and of the emergence therefrom of an augmented half God, while the uncaged soul flew, moaning in the train of those who served the being. Into the Sindara's mind came knowledge, and with it a grim resolve. He flung wide his arms and welcomed the ghastly embrace, for Varvados had also spoken of the manner in which the doom might be lifted. The thing sprang to meet him, and an intolerable agony ground frightfully within the Sindara's bone and flesh. The citadel of his being rocked, and his soul cowered, shrieking in its chamber. There, on the edge of the grey gulf of Yarnak, a monstrous fusion took place, a metamorphosis and a commingling that was blasphemous and horrible beyond all imagining. As a thing disappears in quicksand, so the being and the Sindara melted into each other's body. Yet even in that blinding agony, a sharper pain came to the Sindara as he saw across the plain the beauty of this land over which he had ruled.

[Announcer]

Ruled.

[Narrator]

He thought that he had never seen anything so beautiful as this green and joyous land of his. And a pain was in his heart, a sense of empty loss and an aching void which could not ever be filled. And he looked away to the black evil eyes of the Eater of Souls that were but inches away from his own. And he looked beyond the being to where cold emptiness lay, gray and horrible. There were tears in his eyes and a gnawing ache in his heart for the silver minarets and towers of Bell Yarnak that had lain naked and beautiful beneath the glowing light of the triple moons, for he should never see that place any more. He turned his head again, and for the last time, blinded with his tears and with his doom upon him. As he leaped forward, he heard a frightful, despairing shriek, and then half God and man were spinning dizzily downward, seeing the precipice rushing up past them. For Varvydos had said that thus, and only thus, could the spell be lifted, and the cliff wall curved inward as it swept down, so presently it receded into the dim gray haze, and the Sindara fell in empty mist and into final, unstirring darkness. End of the Eater of Souls By Henry Kuttner Recording by Aaron Hackett Eugene, Oregon.

[Commercial Voice]

Friends and Enemies by Fritz Leiber this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Terence Callan Friends and Enemies by Fritz Leiber the sun hadn't quite risen, but now that the five men were out from under the trees, it already felt hot. Far ahead, off to the left of the road, the spires of New Angelus gleamed dusky blue against the departing night. The two unarmed men gazed back wistfully at the little town, dark and asleep under its moist, leafy umbrellas. The one, who was thin and had hair flecked with gray, looked all intellect. The other, young and with a curly mop, looked all feeling. The fat man barring their way back to town, mopped his head. The two young men flanking him with shotgun and squirt gun hadn't started to sweat yet. The fat man stuffed the big handkerchief back in his pocket, wiped his hands on his shirt, rested his wrists lightly on the pistols holstered either side his stomach, looked at the two unarmed men, indicated the hot road with a nod. And there's your way, professors. Get going. The thin man looked at the hand smears on the fat man's shirt. But you haven't even explained to me, he protested softly, why I'm being turned out of Ozona College. Look here, Mr. Allenby. I've tried to make it easy for you, the fat man said. I'm doing it before the town wakes up. Would you rather be chased by a mob? But why? Because we found out you weren't just a math teacher, Mr. Allenby. The fat man's voice went hard. You'd been a physicist once. Nuclear physicist. The young man with the shotgun spat. Ellenby watched the spittle curve curl in the dust like a little brown worm. He shifted his gaze to a dead eucalyptus leaf. I'd like to talk to the College Board of Regents, he said tonelessly. I'm the Board of Regents, the fat man told him. Didn't you even know that? At this point the other unarmed man spoke up loudly. But that doesn't explain my case. I've devoted my whole life to warning people against physicists and other scientists, how they'd smash us with their bombs, how they were destroying our minds with 3D and Telefax and handys, how they were blaspheming against nature, killing all imagination, crushing all beauty out of life. I'd shut my mouth if I were you, Madsen, the fat man said quite critically. Or at least lower my voice when I mentioned a mob. I wasn't fooling. I saw them burn Caltech. In fact, I got a bit excited and helped. The young man with the shotgun grinned. Caltech, L. B Murmured, his eyes growing distant. Caltech burns and Ozona stands. Ozona stands for the decencies of life, the fat man graded, not Alphabet bombs and pituitary gas. Its purpose is to save a town, not help kill a world. But why should I be driven out? Madsen persisted. I'm just a poet singing the beauties of the simple life, unmarred by science. Not simple enough for Ozona. The fat man snorted. We Happen to know, Mr. Poet Madsen, that you've written some stories about free love. We don't want anyone telling Ozona girls it's all right to be careless, but those were just ideas. Ideas in a story, madsen protested. I wasn't advocating no difference. The fat man cut him short. Talk to a woman about ideas and pretty soon she gets some. His voice became almost kindly. Look here, if you wanted a woman without getting hitched to her, why didn't you go to Shantytown? Madsen squared his shoulders. You've missed the whole point. I'd never do such a thing. I never have. Then you shouldn't have boasted, the fat man said. And you shouldn't have fooled around with Councilman Classen's daughter. At the name Ellenby came out of his trance and looked sharply at Madsen, who said I wasn't fooling around with Vera Ellen, whatever her crazy father says. She came to my office because she has poetic ability and I wanted to encourage it. Yeah, so she'd encourage you, the fat man finished. That girl's wild enough already. Which I suppose, is what you mean by poetic ability, and in this town her father's word counts. He hitched up his belt. And now, professors, it's time you started. Madsen and Ellenby looked at each other doubtfully. The young man with the squirt gun raised its acid etched muzzle. The fat man looked hard at Madsen and Ellen D. I think I hear alarm clocks going off, he said quietly. They watched the two men trudge a hundred yards, watched Ellenby shift the rolled up towel under his elbow to the other side, watched Madsen pause to thumb tobacco into a pipe and glance carelessly back, then shove the pipe in his pocket and go on hurriedly. Couple of pretty harmless coots, if you ask me, the young man with the shotgun observed. Sure, the fat man agreed. But we got to remember people's feelings and keep Ozona straight. We don't like mobs or fear or girls gone wild. The young man with the shotgun grinned. That Vera Ellen, he murmured, shaking his head. You better keep your mind off her, too, the fat man said sourly. She's wild enough without anybody to encourage her poetic ability or anything else. It's a good thing we gave those two their walking papers. They'll probably walk right into the arms of the Harvey gang, the young man with the squirt gun remarked. Especially if they try to shortcut. Pretty small pickings for a for Harvey, those two, the young man with the shotgun countered. Which won't please him at all. The fat man shrugged. Their own fault. If only they'd had sense enough to keep their mouths shut early in life. They don't seem to realize it's 1993, said the young man with the shotgun. The fat man nodded. Come on, he said, turning back toward the town and the the coolness. We've done our duty. The young man with the squirt gun took a last look. There they go. Art and science, he observed with satisfaction. Those two subjects always did make my head ache. On the hot road. Madsen began to stride briskly. His nostrils flared. Smell the morning air, he commanded. It's good. Good. Ellenby, matching his stride with longer, if older, legs, looked at him with mild wonder. Smell the hot sour grass, madsen continued. It's things like this man was meant for, not machines and formulas. Look at the dew. Have you seen the dew in years? Look at it on that spider web. The physicist was paused obediently to observe the softly twinkling strands. Perfect catenaries, he murmured. What a kind of curve, ellenby explained, the locus of the focus of a parabola rolling on a straight line. Locus, focus. Hocus pocus, Madsen snorted, reducing the wonders of nature to chalk marks. It's disgusting. Suddenly each tiny drop of dew turned blood red. Ellenby turned his back on the spider web, whipped a crooked little brass tube from an inside pocket and squinted through it. What's that? Madsen asked. Spectroscope, ellenby explained. Early morning spectra of the sun are fascinating. Madsen huffed. There you go, analyzing. Tearing beauty apart. It's a disease. He paused. Say, won't you hurt your eyes? Turning back, Ellenby shook his head. I keep a smoked glass on it, he said. I'm always hoping that someday I'll get a glimpse of an atomic bomb explosion. You mean to say you've missed all the dozens they dropped on this country? Country? That's too bad. The ball of fire's quite fleeting. The opportunities haven't been as good as you think. But you're a physicist, aren't you? Don't you people have all sorts of lovely photographs to gloat over in your laboratories? Atomic bomb spectra were never declassified, ellenby told him wistfully. At least not in my part of the project. I've never seen one. Well, you'll probably get your chance, madsen told him harshly. If you've been reading your dirty telefax, you'll know the hot truce is coming to a boil, and the Angeles area will be a prime target. Ellenby nodded mutely. They trudged on. The sun began to beat on their backs like an open fire. Ellenby turned up his collar. He watched his companion thoughtfully. Finally he said, so you're the Madsen who wrote those enemies of science stories about a world ruled by poets. It never occurred to me back at Ozona and that non fiction book about us. What was it called? Murderers of Imagination, madsen growled. And it would have been a good thing if you'd listened to my warnings instead of going on building machines and dissecting nature and destroying all the lovely myths that make life worthwhile. Are you sure that nature is so lovely and kind? Ellenby ventured. Madsen did not deign to answer. They passed a crossroad leading the battered sign said one way to Palmdale, the other to San Bernardino. They were perhaps a hundred yards beyond it when Ellenby let go a little chuckle. I have a confession to make. When I was very young, I wrote an article about how children shouldn't be taught the Santa Claus myth or any similar fictions. Madsen laughed sardonically. A perfect member of your your dry souled tribe worrying about Santa Claus when all the while something very different was about to come flying down from over the North Pole and land on our housetops. We did try to warn people about the intercontinental missiles, ellenby reminded him. Yes, without any success. The last two reindeer Donner and Blitzen. Ellenby nodded glumly, but he couldn't keep a smile off his face for long. I wrote another article, too. It was never published. About how poetry is completely pointless, how rhymes inevitably distort meanings, and so on. Madsen whirled on him with appeal of laughter. So you even thought you were big enough to wreck poetry? He jerked a limp throw thinnish volume from his coat pocket. You thought you could destroy this? Ellenby's expression changed. He reached for the book, but Madsen held it away from him. Ellenby said, that's Keats, isn't it? How would you know? Ellenby hesitated. Oh, I got to like some of his poetry quite a while after I wrote the article. He paused again and looked squarely at Madsen. Also, Vera Ellen was reading me some pieces out of that volume. I guess you'd loaned it to her. Vera Ellen? Madsen's jaw dropped. Ellen B. Nodded. She had trouble with her geometry. Some conferences were necessary. He smiled. We physicists aren't such a dry souled tribe yet, you know. Madsen looked outraged. Why, you're old enough to be her father or her husband, ellenby replied coolly. Young women are often attracted to father images, but all that can't make any difference to us now. You're right, madsen said shortly. He shoved the poetry volume back in his pocket, flirted the sweat out of his eyes, and looked around with impatience. Say, you're going to New Angeles, aren't you? He asked, and when Ellenby nodded uncertainly, said, then let's cut across the fields. This road is taking us out of our way. And without waiting for a reply, he jumped across the little ditch to the left of the road and into the yellowing wheat field. Ellenby watched him for a moment, then hitched his rolled towel further up under his arm and followed. It was stifling. In the field the wheat seemed to paralyze any stray breezes. Their boots hissed against the dry stems. Far off they heard a lazy drumming. After a while they came to a wide, brimful irrigation ditch. They could see that some hundreds of hundreds of feet ahead. It was crossed by a little bridge. They followed the ditch. Ellenby felt strangely giddy, as if he were looking at everything through a microscope. That may have been due to the tremendous size of the wheat, its spikes almost as big as corncobs, the spikelets bigger than kernels, rich orange stuff taut with flour. But the but then they came to a section marred by larger and larger splotches of a powdery purple blight. The lazy drumming became louder. Ellenby was the first to see the low swinging helicopter with its thick trailing plume of greenish mist. He knocked Madsen on the shoulder and both men started to run. Purple dust puffed once. Ellenby stumbled, and Madsen stopped to jerk him to his feet. Still, they would have escaped except that the copter swerved toward them. A moment later they were enveloped in sweet, oily fumes. Madsen heard jeering laughter, glimpsed a grotesquely long nosed face peering down from above. Then, through the cloud, Ellenby squeaked, don't breathe. And Madsen felt himself dragged roughly into the ditch. The water closed over him with a splash. Puffing and blowing, he came to his feet. The water hardly reached his waist. To find himself being dragged by Ellenby toward the bridge. It was all he could do to keep his footing on the muddy bottom. By the time he got breath enough to voice his indignation, Ellenby was saying, that's far enough. The stuff's settling away from us. Now strip and scrub yourself. Ellenby unrolled the towel he'd held tightly clutched to his side all the while and produced a bar of soap. In response to Madsen's question, he explained that fungicide was probably tea tee tee Tr or some other relative of the nerve gas family. They are absorbed through the skin. Seconds later, Madsen was scouring his head and chest. He hesitated at his trousers, muttering, they'll probably have me for indecent exposure. Claim I was trying to start a nudist colony as well as a free love cult. But L&B's warning had been a chilly one.

[Interjection]

1.

[Commercial Voice]

Ellenby soaped Madsen's back and he in turn soaked the older man's ridgy one. I suppose that's why he had an elephant's nose, Madsen mused. What man in the copter, Madsen explained, wearing a respirator. Ellenby nodded and made them move nearer the bridge for a change of water. They started to scrub their clothes. Clothes, rinse and wring them, and lay them on the bank to dry. They watched the copter buzzing along in the distance, but it didn't seem inclined to come near again. Madsen felt impelled to say, you know, it's your chemist friends who have introduced that viciousness into the common man's spirit, giving him horrible poisons to use against nature. Otherwise he wouldn't have tried to douse up us with that stuff. He just acted like an ordinary farmer to me, allenby replied, scrubbing vigorously. Think we're safe? Madsen asked. Ellenby shrugged. We'll discover, he said briefly. Madsen shivered, but the rhythmic job was soothing. After a bit he began to feel almost playful. Lathering his shirt, he got some fine large bubbles, held them so he could see their colors flow in the sunlight. Tiny perfect worlds of every hue, he murmured. Violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red. And dead black, ellenby added. You would say something like that, Madsen grunted. What did you think I was talking about bubbles? Maybe some of your friends poisons have black bubbles, madsen said bitingly. But I was talking about these. So was I. Give me your pipe. The authority in Ellenby's voice made Madsen look around startledly. Give me your pipe, ellenby repeated firmly. Holding out his hand, Madsen fished it out of the pocket of the trousers he was about to wash and handed it over. Over. Ellenby knocked out the soggy tobacco, swished it in the water a few times, and began to soap the inside of the bowl. Madsen started to object. But you'd be washing it anyway, ellenby assured him. Now look here, Madsen. I'm going to blow a bubble and I want you to watch. I want you to observe nature for all you're worth. If poets and physicists have one thing in common, it's that they're both supposed to be able to observe accurately. He took a breath. Now see, I'm going to hold the pipe mouth down and let the bubble hang from it, but with one side of the bowl tipped up a bit so that the strain on the bubble's skin will be greatest on that side. He blew a big bubble, held the pipe with one hand and pointed with a finger of the other. There's the place to watch.

[Narrator 4]

Now.

[Commercial Voice]

There. The bubble burst. What was that? Madsen asked in a new voice. It really was black for an instant. Dull, like soot. A bubble bursts because its skin gets thinner and thinner, ellenby said. When it gets thin enough, it shows colors as interference, eliminates different wavelengths. With yellow eliminated, it shows violet, and so on. But finally, just for a moment at the place where it's going to break, the skin becomes only one molecule thick. Such a mono molecular layer absorbs all light, hence shows as dead black. Everything's got a black lining, eh? Black can be beautiful. Here, I'll do it again. Madsen put his hand on Ellenby's shoulder to steady himself. They were standing hip deep in water, their bodies still flecked with suds. Their heads were inches from the new bubble. As it burst, a voice floated down to them. Is this the Ozona Faculty Kindergarten? They whirled around simultaneously crashing, crouching in the water. Vera Ellen, what are you doing here? Madsen demanded. Watching the kitties play, the girl on the bridge replied, running a hand through her tousled violet hair. She looked down at her slacks and jacket. Wish I'd brought my swimsuit, though I gather it wouldn't be expected. Vera Ellen, madsen said apprehensively. It doesn't look very inviting down there, though, she mused. Guess I'll wait for Aqua Heaven at New Angela's. You're going to New Angela's? Ellenby put in. It is not easy to be conversationally brilliant while squatting chest deep in muddy water, acutely conscious of the absence of clothes. Vera Ellen nodded lazily, leaning on the railing. Going to get me a city job. With its reduced faculty, Ozona holds no more intellectual interest for me. Did you know math's going to be made part of the home Eck department, Mr. Ellenby? But how did you know that we daughter of the man who got you run out of town ought to know what the old bully's up to. And if you're worrying that they'll come after me and find find us together, I'll just head along by myself. Madsen and Ellenby both protested, though it is even harder to protest effectively than to be conversationally brilliant while squatting naked in coffee colored water. Vera Ellen said, all right, so quit playing and let's get on. You have to tell me all about New Angeles and the kind of jobs we'll get. But modest, eh? I'm afraid Pa wouldn't count it in your favor, but all right. She turned her back and sauntered to the other side of the bridge. Madsen and Ellenby cautiously climbed out of the ditch, brushed the water from their skins, and wormed into their soggy clothes. We've got to persuade her to go back, madsen whispered. Vera Ellen, ellenby replied, and raised his eyebrows. Madsen groaned softly. Cheer up, ellenby said, and he seemed in a cheerful humor himself when they climbed to the bridge. Vera Ellen, he said, we've been having an argument as to whether man ruined nature or nature ruined man to start with. Is this a class, Mr. Allenby? Of sorts, he told us. Her behind him, Madsen snorted, flipping his Keats to dry the pages. They started off together. Well, said Vera Ellen, I like nature, and I like human beings, and I don't feel ruined at all. Where's the argument? What about the bombs? Madsen demanded automatically. By man, our physicist here means technology, whereas I mean. Oh, the bomb, she said with a shrug. What sort of job do you think I should get in New Angeles? Well, madsen began. Say, I'm getting hungry. She raced on, turning to Ellenby. So am I, he agreed. They looked at the road ahead. A jagged hill now hid all but the tips of the spires of New Angeles. On the top of the hill was a tremendous house with sagging roofs of cracked tiles, stucco walls dark with rain stains and green with moss, yet also showing cracks, and windows of age, blued glass, some splintered, flashing in the sun, which tempted Ellenby to whip out his spectroscope. Curving down from the house came a weedy and balding expanse that had obviously once been a well tended lawn. A few stalwart patches of thick grass held out tenaciously. Pale trunked eucalyptus trees towered behind the house and to either side of the road where it curved over the hill in a hollow at the foot of the one time lawn, just where it met the road, something gleamed. As Madsen, Ellenby, and Vera Ellen tramped forward, they saw it was an old automobile, one of the jet antiques that were the rage around 1970, in fact a lunar 69. Coming closer, Ellenby realized that it had custom built features such as jet brakes and collision springs. A man with an odd cap was poking a probe into the air in intake, while in the back seat a woman was sitting shadowed by a hat four feet across. the sound of their footsteps, the man whirled to his feet quickly enough, though unsteadily. He stared at them, wagging the probe. Just at that moment, something that looked like an animated orange fur piece leaped from the tonneau. George. The woman cried. Widgies got away. The small flattish creature came on in undulating bounds. It was past the man in the cap before he could turn. It headed for Ellenby, then changed direction. Madsen made an impulsive dive for it, but it widened itself still more and sailed over him, straight into Vera Ellen's arms. They walked toward the car. Widgie wriggled. Vera Ellen stroked his ears. He seemed to be a flying fox of some sort. The man eyed them hostilely, raising the probe. Madsen stared puzzledly at the cap. Out of his older knowledge, Ellenby whispered an explanation. Chauffeur. The woman stood in the back seat, swaying slightly. She was wearing a white swimsuit and dark tele glasses under her hat. At first she seemed a somewhat ravaged 30. Then they began to see the rest of the wrinkles. She received Widgie from Vera, Ellen, shook him out and tucked him under her arm where he hung limply moving his tiny red eyes. Come in with me, my dear, she told me. Vera Ellen, George put down that crazy pole. Pay no attention to George. He can't recognize gentlefolk when he sees them, especially when he's drunk. Gentlemen, she continued, waving graciously to Madsen and Ellenby, you have the thanks of Ricky Vixen. As she pronounced the name, she surveyed them sharply. Her gaze settled on Ellenby. You know me, don't you? Certainly, he answered instantly. You are my first, my favorite straight 3D star. Are you in 3D? Vera Ellen asked, A sudden gleam in her eyes. Was my dear, ricky said grandly. She ogled Ellenby through the fish eye glasses. Ah, straight 3D, she sighed. Simple video audio in depth. There was a great art form. She began to sway again, and they caught the reek of alcohol. You know, gentlemen, it was Handy's that ruined my career. I had the looks and the voice, but I lacked the touch. Something in me shrank from the whole idea. Be still, Widgy, and the girls with itchy fingers took over. But I'm talking too much about myself. It's hot. And you wonderful gentlemen must be thirsty. Here, have a the chauffeur glared at her as she reached fumblingly down into the tonneau. She caught the look and quailed slightly. Sandwich, she finished, coming up with a shiny can. Madsen accepted it from her, clicking the catch. The top popped four feet in the air, followed lazily by the uppermost sandwich, which he caught deftly. He handed the can to Ellenby, who served himself, and handed it up to Vera Ellen. Soon all three of them were munching. Ms. Vixen, Vera Ellen asked between mouthfuls, do you think I could get a job in Broadcast Entertainment? Ricky looked at her sideways, leaning away to focus. Not with that ghastly atom glow hair, she said. Violet is old hat this year. It's either black, blonde, or bald. But give me your hand, my dear. Going to tell my fortune? After a fashion. She held up Vera Ellen's hand, squeezing and prodding it thoughtfully, as if she were testing the carcass of an alleged spring chicken. Then she nodded. You'll do good. Strong hand, that's all that's needed. So you can really crunch the knuckles of the bohunks. They love it rough. Of course the technicians could step up the power when they broadcast your hand squeeze, but the addicts don't feel it's the same thing. She looked sourly at her own own delicate claws. Yes, my dear, you'll have a chance in Handy's if you don't mind cuddling with 2 million dirty minded bohunks every night, and if Ricky Vixen's still got any entree at the studios. She made a face and dipped again into the tonneau, apparently to gulp something for the chauffeur's glare was intensified. You're from New Angeles? Madsen asked politely when Ricky came up, beaming. Old Angelus, she corrected. My home's in a contaminated area after 3D lighting. I've never been afraid of hard radiations, but this time my psychic counselor told me, widgie, I'm going to put you away in a nice little urn that the bombs are going to miss New Angeles and fall on old that's why George is jetting me to the mountains. Others drink to still their fears. I do something about it too. You mean you're going away from the studio? Vera Ellen demanded incredulously while Ellenby mumbled bombs through a mouthful of sandwich. Of course. Ricky nodded. Don't you know Russia's touched a match to the hot troops? You charming gentlemen should keep up with these things. You see, I told you, madsen said to Ellenby. One more victory for science. Ms. Vixen, we better be getting on. The chauffeur interrupted, speaking for the first time. His voice was drunkenly thick. We aren't out of the fusion fringe by a long shot, and I don't like the looks of this place. Ricky ignored him. Ellenby asked, was the news about Russia telefaxed? Of course not. Ricky's smile was scornful. They never tell the real truth these days, but they said to get out of our houses. And what else could that mean, Miss Vixen? We better. George began again. Quiet, George, Ricky ordered. George Green groaned faintly, shrugged his shoulders, and reached out an arm to her. Without looking, Ricky handed him a red limped plastic bottle. Just as he was putting it to his lips, he jerked as if stung, vaulted into the car, and began to stamp and punch at the controls. With a mighty pouf the jack took hold. Ellenby skittered away from the hot blast. The Lunar 69 jumped forward. Things hissed and snicked through the air. From nowhere men began to appear. With a great lurch the car gained the road, roared toward the bridge. Vera Ellen jumped up as if to get out, then was thrown back into the tonneau. Ricky lunged forward across the seat to save the red bottle. Her her forefoot hap leaped upward, hesitated, and then spun off like a flying saucer. A man rose from the wheat near the bridge as the car jounced across it. He leveled a rapid fire weapon, but just as he got it trained on the car, Rickey's hat landed on him. He went over backwards, firing at the sky. Madsen and Ellenby looked around. In between bewilderment there must have been a dozen men. As they stared, another bunch came hurrying down the ruined lawn from the house on the hill. The man by the bridge got up, went over to Ricky's hat, and stamped on it. Madsen and Allenby jumped as the sky climbing missiles from his gun pattered down around them. When they looked around again, the men from the house on the the hill were closing in. Their leader was about 5ft tall but thick. His head had been formed in a bullet mold. His features looked drop forged. I'm Harvey, he told them blankly. What you got? Harvey's people wore everything from evening dress to shorts. There were even two women who drifted toward Harvey, one in a golden kimono, the other in an off the bosom frock of filthy white lace. Everybody was armed. What you got? Harvey repeated sharply. I know you're loaded. I saw you talking with that rich witch in the jet. He looked them over and grabbed at Madsen's side pocket. Books, huh? He said, like a hangman dangling the Keats by a stray page. Then he turned to Ellenby. Come on, skinny, he said. Shell out. When Ellenby hesitated, two of Harvey's men grabbed him, dumped him, and passed the contents of his pockets to their chief. When the spectroscope turned up, Harvey grinned. The eyes of his people twinkled in anticipation. Science gadget, huh? He said. Folks, there's been too much science in the world. World and too many words. Any minute now more bombs are gonna fall. I do my humble bit to help em. I'm a great little junk man. He let the brass tube fall to the ground and lifted his foot. Blow it a good by kiss, Skinny. Wait, madsen said abruptly, taking a step toward Harvey. Don't do it. Then the poet's eyes grew grew wide and alarmed, as if he hadn't known he was going to say it. Breaths sucked in around them. Harvey's turret head slowly turned toward Madsen, its expression seemingly vacuous. Why not? Harvey whispered. Don't pay any attention to my friend, ellenby interjected rapidly. He just said that on account of me. Actually he hates science as much as you do Voodoo. Don't shut up. Harvey roared. Then his voice instantly went low again. Ain't nobody hates science more' n me, but ain't nobody tells me so. Shoulda kept your mouth shut, skinny now there's goin to be more' n gadgets stomped, more' n books tore. Silence came except for the faint sucks of breath, the faint scuffle of shoes on grit as Harvey's people slowly moved in. Ellenby stood helplessly, yet at the same time he felt a widening and intensification of his sensory powers. He was aware of the delicately lace edged tree shadows cast from the hill ahead by the westering sun. At the other limit of his vision the copter no longer trailed its green caterpillar the for some reason it was buzzing closer along the road. At the same time he was conscious with a feverish clarity of the page by which Harvey dangled the Keats and without reading the words he saw the beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know. Suddenly the slowly advancing faces seemed to flee freeze, and Ellenby was aware of something spectral and ominous about the yellowing sunlight and the whole acid etched scene around him. It was something more than the physical threat to him and Madsen. It was something that seemed to well up menacingly from the ground under his feet. There was a sudden faint thunder, and even as something inside Ellenby said, that isn't it. That isn't what the sky's waiting for, he saw the chrome muzzle of the lunar 69 bulleting toward them across the bridge with Vera Ellen's violet mop above the wheel. But even as the breaking blasts gouted out redly from under the hood and the car crunched toward a stop in their midst, even as Harvey's people broke to either side and pistols popped with queerly toy like reports, the thunder multiplied until it was impossible that the lunar 69 was causing it, until it was like the thunder of a thousand invisible jets crushing the air around them. The sky shifted, rocked, the road shook. There came a shock that numbed Ellenby's feet and sent everyone around him reeling, and a pounding smashing sound that made any remembered noise seem puny. The Lunar 69, which had stopped a dozen feet from Ellenby, was pitching and tossing like a silver ship in a storm. Vera Ellen was gripping the steering wheel with one hand and motioning to him frantically with the other in the seat beyond her Ricky Vixen was jouncing as if in in a merry go round chariot. Ellenby lurched as a hand clutched his shoulder and a staggering Madsen howled in his ear through the tumult. Now you've got your rotten bombs. Between him and the car, Harvey's bullet head reared up and as suddenly dropped away. Looking down, Ellenby saw that a chasm four feet wide had split the road road between him and the car. Its walls were raw smoking earth and rock. Down it, Ellenby saw, vanishing in one frozen moment, Harvey and the Keats and the little brass spectroscope. Then Ellenby realized he had grabbed Madsen by the shoulder and thrown the two of them forward and shouted, jump. For a moment the chasm gaped beneath them, and a white little face stared upward. Then the chasm closed with a giant crunch and Ellenby's hand caught the side of the heaving car and he pitched into the back seat. Through the diminishing thunder and shaking, there came the toy roar of the car's jet, and a new movement tipped him backward, and he was looking toward the hill and it was getting bigger. He tried to put his feet down and felt something bulk under them. For a moment he thought it was Madsen, but Madsen was beside him on the seat, and then he saw it was George. He looked up, and Ricky Vixen was watching him from where she was crouched in the front seat, her eyes without the tele glasses looking as foxy as widgies whom she was holding close to her wrinkle etched cheek. Vera Ellen had to conk him, she explained, her gaze dipping to George. The bum tried to betray us. The pitching of the car had given way to a steady forward lunge. Ellenby nodded dully at Ricky and hitched himself around and looked back. Harvey's people were scattering like ants through a dust cloud rising from the road. The house on the hill still stood, though there were more and larger cracks in it and a nimbus of whiter dust around it. By the bridge the copter had crashed and was flaming brightly. A tiny figure was running away from it. Ellenby's face slowly lightened with understanding. We were on the San Andreas Rift, he said softly. Madsen, that wasn't the bombs at all. That wasn't technology or man. A smile trembled on his lips. That was nature. An earthquake. Madsen was the first to comment. All right, he said. It was nature. Nature showing her disgust for man. An idea like that is the sheerest animism. Ellenby reacted automatically. Now, if you try analyzing. Analyzing. Madsen snorted with a touch of the old fire. You scientists are always Whoa, boys, Ricky Vixen interrupted. If it hadn't been for that little quake to confuse things, Vera Ellen couldn't have snatched you out, no matter how pretty she tried. And I'm in no mood for arguments now. I'm not the arty type and all the science I know is what my psychic conscious counselor tells me. Widgie, quit pounding your heart. It's all over now. Ellenby touched her arm. Do I understand, he asked, that Vera Ellen made you turn back just to save us? Of course not, ricky assured him. Her father and his pals tried to stop us a couple of miles back. They'd been radioed by a farmer in a copter and had the road blocked. George wanted to hand you all over to Vera Ellen's father, but we conked. George, he's such a weakling and got away. Picking you up was an afterthought. Vera Ellen flashed a wicked smile over her shoulder. Ellenby realized he was feeling vastly contented. He started to lift his feet off George, then settled them more comfortably. He looked at the violet topped new chauffeur handling the lunar as if she'd never done anything else, and she picked that moment to flash him another half friendly, half insulting grin. He nudged Madsen and said, we'll continue our argument later. All our argument. Madsen looked at him sharply and almost grinned too. Ellenby wondered idly what jobs they had for for poets and physicists in 3D and Handy Studios. Ricky Vixen's eyes widened. Say, she said, if they were just warning us about that little old earthquake, then old Angelus isn't radioactive. I mean, any more radioactive than it's ever been. Oh boy. Vera Ellen crowed as the car topped the hill and the blue spires came back in sight. New Angeles, here we come. End of Friends and Enemies by Fritz Leiber.

[Narrator]

The Floating island of Madness by Jason Kirby this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org Read by Ben Tucker the Floating island of Madness by Jason Kirby above us curved the pale, hot bowl of cloudless sky. Below us stretched the rolling, tawny wastes of the great Arabian Desert. And away to the east, close to the dipping horizon, scudded the tiny speck we were following. We had been following it since dawn, and it was now called Close to Sunset. Where was it leading us? Should we go on or turn back? How much longer would our gas and oil hold out? And just where were we? I turned and saw my questions reflected in the eyes of my companions, Paul Foulet of the French Surete and Douglas Brice of Scotland Yard. Too fast. Shouted Brice above the roar of our motors. I nodded. His gesture explained explained his meaning. The plane ahead had suddenly taken On a terrific, unbelievable speed. All day it had traveled normally, maintaining but not increasing the distance between us. But in the last 15 minutes it had leaped into space. Fifteen minutes before, it had been two miles in the lead. Now it was barely visible, a tiny vanishing speck. What could account for this burst of superhuman speed? Who was in that place? Plane. What was in that plane? I glanced at Foulet. He shrugged non committally, waving a courteous hand toward Bryce. I understood. I agreed with him. This was Brice's party and the decision was up to him. Foulet and I just happened to be along. It was partly design and partly coincidence. Two days before I had been in Constantinople. I was disheartened and utterly disgusted. All the way from the home office of the United States Secret Service in Washington, I had trailed my man only to lose him on steamships by railway, airplane and motor. We had traveled always with my quarry. Just one tantalizing jump ahead of me, and in Constantinople I had lost him. And it was a ruse. A child should have seen through. I could have beaten my head against a wall. And then suddenly I had run into foulet not 10 days before. I talked to him in his office in Paris. I told him a little of my errand, for I was working on the hunch that this man I was after concerned not only the United States, but France and the continent as well. And what Foulet told me only served to strengthen my conviction. So meeting him in Constantinople was a thin ray of light. In my disgusted darkness, at least I could explode to a kindred spirit. Lost your man was his greeting. And it wasn't a question. It was. It was a statement. How did you know? I growled. My humiliation was too fresh to stand. Kidding. Constantinople, Said Foulet amiably. You always lose them in Constantinople. I've lost three here. Three? I said. Like mine? Exactly. He nodded. Then he lowered his voice. Come to my hotel. We can talk there. Now he continued 15 minutes later, as we settled our ourselves into his room. You were very circumspect in Parry. You told me little. Just a hint here and there, but it was enough. You, the United States, have joined our ranks. You mean. I mean that for a year we, the various secret service organizations of the continent, and that includes, of course, Scotland Yard, have been after. Well, to be frank, we don't know what we are after. But we do know this. There is a power. There is someone somewhere who is trying to conquer the world. Are you serious? I glanced at him, but the tight lines of his set mouth convinced me. I beg your Pardon, I murmured. Go ahead. I don't blame you for thinking it was a jest, he said imperturbably. But to prove I know what I am talking about, let me tell you what this man has done whom you have been pursuing. He has done one of two things. Either he has proved himself a dangerous revolutionary, or he has engineered the failure of a bank or chain of banks. We can't prove it, I interrupted. No, said Foulet. Neither can we. Neither can Scotland Yard or the secret services of Belgium or Germany or Italy or Spain, but there you are. You mean that in all these countries? I mean that for a year, probably longer, these countries have been and are being steadily and systematically undermined. The moral of the people is being weakened. Their faith in their government is being betrayed, and someone is behind it. Someone who can think faster and plan more carefully than we. Someone whose agents we always lose. In Constantinople, I wager you lost your man from a rooftop. I nodded, my disgust at my own stupidity returning in full force. There was a lower roof and a maze of criss cross alleys, I muttered. He got away. Was there an airplane anywhere around? Asked Foulet. I glanced at him in surprise. What good would an airplane have been on a rooftop 10ft wide by 12ft long? Then I remembered. There was an airplane, I said. But it was a long way off and I could scarcely see it. But the air was very still and I heard the motor. Foulet nodded. And if you had had a pair of glasses, he said gently, you would have seen that the airplane had a glider attached to it. There is always an airplane and a glider when we lose our men from the Rus of Constantinople. But that must be a coincidence, I insisted. Why, I was on that roof right on the fellow's heels, and the airplane was at least five miles away. Foulet shrugged. Coincidence? Possibly, he said. But it is our only clue. Of course, I murmured thoughtfully. You have never been able to follow. Foulay smiled. Can you imagine where that airplane would be? By the time we climbed down off our roofs and got to a flying field and started in pursuit, we descended for dinner. Foulet's story had restored my self confidence somewhat, but I was still sore. Of course Foulet connecting my vanishing man with that disappearing plane was absurd. But where had the man gone? Was my supposition that he had jumped to a lower roof, climbed a wall, and run through the maze of alleyways in half a minute in any way less absurd? We were halfway through dinner when Brice appeared. Brice was one of the best men in Scotland Yard, and I had known him many years, so evidently had Foulet, for his eyes flickered faintly with pleased surprise at the sight of him. Bryce came directly to our table. He was bursting with victorious joy. I could feel it somehow, although his face, carefully schooled to betray no emotion, was placid and casual. All through the remainder of the meal I could feel the vibrations of his excitement, but it was only at the very end that he confided anything, and his confidence only served to make the excitement and sense of impending thrill greater. Just as he was rising to leave, he shoved a tiny strip of paper across the table to me with a sidelong glance at Foulet. Another rooftop, I read, scrawled in pencil, if you like, meet me at the flying field before dawn. If I liked. I shoved the paper across to Foulet, who read it and carelessly twisted it into a spill to light his cigar, but his hand shook ever so slightly. Needless to say, we went to the flying fields shortly after midnight. Bruce was there, pacing up and down restlessly. Near him was a huge tri motored biplane, its motor humming in readiness. I've put a man on the trail in my place, brice told us briefly. Somebody else is going to lose the scent on a rooftop, and I'm going to watch. We settled to our wait. To me it seemed absurdly hopeless. The flying field was on a slight rise. Below us spread the dark shadow that was Constantinop. There was no moon to give it form and substance. It was just a lake of deeper darkness, a spreading mass of silent rooftops and minarets. How did Brice expect to see his quarry escape? Suppose he fled during the night, and even with daylight the first streaks of dawn found us still waiting. Our ears strained for the hum of an airplane motor, but hardly had the golden rim of the sun appeared over the horizon. When it came, it came from the east, straight out of the golden glory of the sun. Nearer and nearer it came. An airplane alone. It hasn't got a glider, muttered foul, and his tone was tinged with disappointment. But hardly had he spoken when from one of the myriad rooftops below us rose a swift streak of shadow. So fast it flew with such unbelievable speed that to our eyes it was little more than a blur. But the glider. Bryce gasped. My God, how did he do it? We stared, silent with amazement. The airplane that only a second before had flown alone now was towing a glider, a glider that had arisen by magic from the housetops. Another instant and we had piled into the cockpit of the tri motored plane and were off on a pursuit that Pursuit that led us on and on, till, as the sun sank behind us, we found ourselves above the illimitable, tawny wastes of the great Arabian desert. And now what? All day long, as I have said, the plane we were pursuing had maintained but never increased the distance between us. Each hour had brought us renewed hope that the next hour would bring capture, or at least some definite clue, some shred of information. But the plane, still towing its glider, had gone on and on, steadily, imperturbably, and we dared not open for fire in attempt to bring it down, for fear of destroying our one meagre chance of following it to its destination. And now it had vanished. Suddenly, unaccountably, it had taken on that terrific burst of speed which I have described. In 10 minutes it had become a speck on the far horizon. In another instant it was gone. We were alone. Night was falling. If we turned back, our gas might bring us to safety. If we went on what? I turned to my companions. Foulet still maintained his non committal attitude, but Brice was deeply disappointed and worried. His ruddy English face was knotted in a scowl and his blue eyes were dark. Quickly he jerked his head back. We understood, of course. Turning back was the only thing to do. To go on was absurd. Our quarry had totally disappeared. But it was heartbreaking. Once again we had been following, fooled and outwitted. Our disappointment filled that tiny cockpit like a tangible mist. Bryce threw over the stick with a gesture of disgust. In response, our right wing lifted a bit, seemed to shake itself, then settled, and the plane continued on its course. Bryce's eyes flickered with surprise. He shoved the stick back, threw it over again, but toward the opposite side. Obediently, our left wing lifted as if to bank. A shutter passed through it. It dropped, the plane leveled, and we went on. Foulet leaned forward. His eyes were gleaming, his face flushed and eager. Climb. He yelled above the roar of the motors.

[Dialogue Speaker]

Up.

[Narrator]

Brice nodded, but it was no use. That plane was like a live thing. Nothing we could do would swerve it from its course. We stared at one another. Were we mad? Were we under a hypnotic spell? But our minds were clear. The idea of hypnosis was absurd, for we had tried to turn back. It was the machine that refused to obey. Again, Foulet leaned forward.

[Dialogue Speaker]

Drop.

[Narrator]

He shouted. Bryce nodded, but the plane refused to respond. On and on, straight as a die, it sped. Try slowing the motor, I yelled into Bryce's ear, and both Foulet and I leaned forward to watch the results. The motor slowed. Gradually, the roaring, pounding hum lessened and our speed continued. The whine of the wind in the wires abated not one whit. The speedometer on our instrument board climbed. Bryce turned. His face in the deepening dusk was a blur of pasty white. His hands hung at his sides. The motors purred, pulsed, were silent. The plane, unaided, unguided, flew alone. We sat hushed and unbelieving in that terrible, deathlike silence. Our ears, attuned all day to the deafening roar of the motors, felt as if they would burst in the sudden, agonizing stillness. There was not a sound save the whine of the wind and the wires as the plane sped on. Above us curved the illimitable arch of darkening sky. Below us lay the empty stretch of blank desert. We didn't speak. I know that I, for one, could not bring my voice to break that ominous, ominous stillness. Silently we sat there, watching, waiting. The quick darkness of the desert felt like a velvet curtain. The stars burst forth as if lit by an invisible hand. Foulet stirred, leaned forward, gasped. My eyes followed his gaze. Before our plane spread a path of light, dull, ruddily, glowing like the ghost of living embers. It cut the darkness of the night like a flash, flaming finger. And along it we sped, as if on an invisible track. The speed of that other plane, muttered Brice, breaking that utter silence. This was it. Foulet and I nodded. Well, could I imagine that? We were traveling at that same terrific, impossible speed, and we were helpless, helpless in the clutch of what. What power lay behind this band of light that drew us irresistibly toward it? The ruddy pathway brightened. The light grew stronger. Our speed increased. The whine of the wires was tuned almost past human hearing. The plane trembled like a live thing in the grip of inhuman forces. A great glowing eye suddenly burst from the rim of the horizonthe source of the light. Instinctively, I closed my eyes. What power might that eye possess? The same thought must have struck Brice and Foulet, for they ducked to the floor of the cockpit, pulling me with them. Take care, brice muttered. It might blind us. We sat huddled in that cockpit for what seemed an eternity, though it couldn't have been more than two minutes. The glare increased. It threw into sharp, uncanny relief every tiny detail of the cockpit and of our faces. The light was as powerful as a searchlight, but not so blinding. It had a rosy, diffused quality that the searchlight lacks. In that eternity of tense waiting, I tried to collect my thoughts. I told myself that I must keep steady, that I must keep my mind clear. I struggled to get a grip on myself. The light. The steady flying without power, the boundless, horrible silence had shaken me. But there was more to come. I knew it. We all knew it. And it was not physical strength that would pull us through. It was wits. We must hold steady. Thank God we all had years of training, war experience, peace experience, countless life and death adventures behind us. It would all count now. It would all help us to keep our brains clear and cool. Wits, I thought again. Only our wits would stand before between us and what the ground wheels of the plane struck. Something solid, rolled, stopped. The light snapped off. The sudden blackness, falling like a blanket of thick fur, choked me. In that first dazed, gasping instant I was conscious of only one thing. The plane was no longer in motion. But we had not dropped. Of that I was sure. We were still as we had been close to 2,000ft above the earth. Then came the sound of running feet and a confused blur of voices. The door of the cockpit was thrown open. A man leaned in, his hand on the jamb. Inspector Bryce, he said quietly. Monsieur Foulet, Lieutenant Ainslie, we are glad to welcome you. His words were courteous, but something in his tone sent a tingling chill down my spine. It was cold, as soulless as the clink of metal. It was dull, without life or inflection. But there was something else, something I could not name. I was nearest the door and scrambled out first. To my surprise, it was not dark. We were enveloped by a radiance, rosy as the broad ray had been, but fainter, like the afterglow of a sunset. By this light I could make out vaguely our surroundings, buildings. We seemed to be on a plateau, a great flat space, probably an acre in extent, surrounded by a six foot wall. Behind us there was a wide gateway through which our airplane had just come and across which workmen were dropping bars made of some material like cement. Before us, dotting this acre or so of plateau, were small domed structures made of the same cement like material. In the center of the plateau rose a large domed building with a segment of its roof open to the stars, and through this opening I could see the shadowy suggestion of a great lamp. There was the source of that powerful magnetic ray. Foulay and Brice scrambled out and stood beside me. They said never a word, but I knew that every sense was alert. If you will follow me, that same cold, expressionless voice murmured. I turned to look at the man. He was not bad looking, clean shaven, well tailored. He swung his eyes to meet my gaze, and as he did so that same chill fled along my spine. His eyes. What was the matter with them. They were dark, browner black, and as shiny as shoe buttons, but there was no gleam of expression in them. Their shine was the glitter of polished glass. Without a word we followed him, a few across the small cleared space where our airplane stood, past a row of these small domed structures to a low door cut in the white wall of the great central building. At the doorway he turned. I am taking you to the Master, he said. Then over his shoulder he there is no means of escape. We are 2,000ft above the earth. And he laughed, a quick, short cackle of crazy laughter. I felt the breath catch in my throat and the short hairs prickle at my neck. Foulet gripped my arm through my coat. I could feel the chill of his fingers, but his grasp steadied me. We walked on, following our guide down a narrow passageway, through a low arched door into a small room, evidently an antechamber, to a large room beyond. Without a word our guide left us, passing through another door, which he closed. After him, Bryson, Fule, and I exchanged looks, but we were silent. It might be we were watched. It might be that the very walls had ears we could trust. Nothing. Our guide returned. The Master, he said, and flung open a wide door. We found ourselves in a large room filled with paraphernalia of all sorts wires, lights, laboratory tables cluttered with test tubes and apparatus. And in the midst of this ordered chaos stood a man, his gleaming eyes watching us fixedly. At first I was conscious of nothing but his eyes, large, coal black and shiny, with that peculiar expressionless gloss I had noted in the eyes of our guide. Later I realized that he was of slight build, meticulously neat, with a tiny black waxed mustache and a carefully trimmed Van Dyck beard. Welcome to my floating island, he said gravely, never swerving those shiny eyes for an instant. We have hoped long for your coming. He paused, noiselessly rubbing his hands and watching us. We stared back, fascinated by that glossy, fixed gaze. There is so much to tell you, he went on, and to ask you. He permitted himself a slow smile that spread his lips but failed to to reach his eyes. During your stay here, he continued, which I hope will be both long and profitable. You will become my slaves and will know me as master. But before you come under my dominion, you may know my name. For the first time he moved his eyes. His glance swept the room as if to assure himself we were alone. He stepped as swiftly and softly as a cat over to the door through which we had entered, opened it, spoke to our guide, who was waiting in the anteroom closed it and returned. He faced us, his lips smiling and his eyes as blank as polished agate. My name, he said softly, is Algernon Frederick Fraser. He paused and watched us. Behind me, I felt Foulay start. I heard Brice's quickly suppressed gasp. My own throat closed on words that might have been fatal. Algernon Frederick Fraser. Was it possible? Could it be? Five years before, Fraser had suddenly burst on the world of science. He had made some amazing discoveries regarding the power of light, discoveries that would reorganize the living conditions of the world. For a week or two, the papers were filled with the man's amazing genius. Then no more was heard of him.

[Commercial Voice]

Him?

[Narrator]

Had he died? What was the story? Two years passed, and even the name of Fraser was forgotten. Then, suddenly it burst forth again in the headlines of the world. Fraser had disappeared. Frazier had vanished. But not as a brilliant genius of science. He had gone as an escaped lunatic. After his amazing burst of fame, his mind snapped. Somehow the story had been kept out of the press. Fraser was incarcerated in a quiet, very private asylum. And that was all. All until he escaped. When that happened, the story couldn't be hushed any longer. The press was informed, the people were warned. He became known as the mad menace. The police and the secret service organizations of the world searched for him. His name became a byword. Where had he gone? What would he do? What was his scheme? For he was still the astounding scientific genius. That portion of his mind was untouched. At the time of his escape, the physicians in charge of the case assured the press that Frazer's scientific mind was every bit as sound as ever. And that was all. Aside from his God, science, he was a maniac. Inhuman, cruel, unreasoning. What would such a man do? Loosed in the world? What might he not do? What might? Was it possible that it was this man who stood before us now with his eyes fastened upon us so intently and his lips spread in that little empty smile? Suddenly I knew those eyes. Those eyes were the shiny, vacuous, soulless eyes of a madman. I see, he said softly, that you have heard of me. But it is three years since your world has seen me. Yes. He laughed, a low laugh that seemed to freeze the air around him. They call me mad. His smile faded. His eyes bored through us like steel needles. I am not mad. No madman can do what I have done in three years. For the first time, an expression flickered in his eyes, a crafty gleam of vanity that flared instantaneously. Would you like to see? He leaned toward us we bowed, but it was Brice who spoke very much. Dr. Fraser. Don't call me that. The man whirled like a tiger ready to spring. Don't call me that. I am master here. Call me master. Say it. His voice rose to a shriek. Say it, Master. I clamped my teeth against the bloodless horror of that maniacal voice. It chilled my veins again. I felt the hair rise on my scalp. Brice bowed quietly, and his eyes, serene and blue, met Fraser's fairly. Of course, Master. His low English voice soothed the bristling silence. I am sure I speak for Monsieur Foulet and Lieutenant Ainslie when I say that we would be most deeply interested in your achievements. Frazer was placated. He relaxed. He softly rubbed his hands while a smug, crafty smile flitted across his lips. You will follow me, he murmured. He led the way back through the anteroom and down the passageway till we stood again under the stars. And again I was struck by the strange light, warm and faint and rosy like a sunset afterglow. As if he read my thoughtful, Frazer turned to me. I will first show you the source of this rosy light that I believe will explain a great deal. He led the way down one of the narrow pathways between the low domed houses, if they could be called houses, for they were little larger than kennels. At the six foot wall that surrounded this plateau. He paused. Would you like to look over the wall? He asked. For the space of a breath we hesitated. Was this a trap? Through my mind flashed the words of the man who had guided us to frazer. You are 2,000ft above the earth, he had said. Was that true? And if it were, might not Fraser push us over the wall? But instantly logic came to my rescue. Fraser had brought us here, and he could have brought us but for one thing. To question us. Would he be apt to do us harm before those questions were asked? And besides, would Frazer's brilliantly subtle mind stoop so low as to destroy enemies by pushing them over a wall? Thank you, we murmured simultaneously. This whole achievement is of tremendous interest to us, foulet added. Fraser chuckled. It will be of greater interest later, he said, and his blank, glittering eyes rested on first one of us, then another with a cold, satisfied gleam. Then he lifted his hand and opened a square door in the wall, about the size of a porthole. To my surprise, the little door swung back as lightly as a feather and made scarcely a sound as it slammed against the wall itself. Again Fraser answered my unspoken thought. It has only one substance, he said with A vain smirk. No weight whatever. This entire platform, together with its huts, is lighter than air. If I should tear loose this little door, it would float out of my hands instantly and go straight up to the stars. The substance, I have called it phleotite, is not only lighter than air, but lighter than ether. But we are not floating, said Brice. We are stationary. Is the lightness of your phleotite counteracted by the weight of the men and machines? Fraser shook his head. Not entirely, he said, but first look through this little window. Then I will explain. Eagerly we pressed forward. Our danger was almost forgotten in our interest. This was amazing, Stupendous. Together, shoulder to shoulder, we gazed through the aperture. We were suspended in in space. Above us shone the blue, black Arabian night. And beneath us, far, far beneath, lay the sands of the desert, looking rosy and warm in that same dull red glare of light that, to a fainter degree, gave us the effect of afterglow. But we were not floating. We were anchored as securely as a ship riding in a calm harbor. We turned back to Fraser, amazed, awed, bursting with questions. Madman he may be, but he had wrought a miracle. I will explain, he said, and his eyes gleamed with pride. Of course, you know of my tremendous discoveries connected with the power of light. At any rate, five years ago, the scientific world on Earth thought they were tremendous. In reality, that was nothing. To my amazing strides in the past three years. There is nothing that cannot be done with light. Nothing. For the first time, Frazer's eyes became alive. They were illumined. His whole body seemed to radiate light and fire in genius. We listened, fascinated. Take, for instance, he continued eagerly, that ray with which I drew you in your plane. To me, that ray is the pure power of magnetism. At full strength, it will draw anything to it instantly. Fortunately, the power can be regulated. I can switch a lever in my laboratory and draw things to me via the ray at any speed I wish. 100, 200, a thousand miles an hour. How far can you throw the ray? Asked Foulet, and I knew he was thinking of that glider that rose from the rooftops of Constantinople. Fraser also knew he was thinking of that. I did not draw the glider, he said quietly. The airplane I sent did that. My airplanes carry batteries of this ray. In the beginning, I found gliders to be more practical for my purposes than airplanes. For one thing, they were silent. My only problem was that of getting them off the ground. Once they were in the air, I could manage everything. It was this problem that inspired this discovery and perfection of the ray. But you asked how far I can throw the ray. This main lamp that I operate myself from here is effective at 200 miles. At 100 miles it enjoys full power. And you can draw anything to you? Asked Brice. Within the radius of the magnetic ray. Anything in the air, answered Frazer. But of course I must use caution. Great caution. If I drew planes to me indiscriminately, I would draw attention to myself. My secret and my location here would leak out. No, that must not be so. The only planes I bring are my own and yours. He paused, and his black eyes, again glassy, swept over us. It is a compliment I pay you, he said finally. You have become too troublesome. You know too much. Sooner or later the time would come when you would combine your forces. That would be a nuisance. So I decided to bring you here. Suppose, asked Foulet curiously, we hadn't fallen into your trap. Suppose we had turned back before reaching the point where your way is effective? Frazer shook his head, and that smug, offensive smile appeared again. You were trapped from the beginning, though you didn't know it, he said. The plane you were following was equipped with batteries of the ray, which, while not as powerful as the lamp I have here, were still powerful enough to hold you to the course we chose you to run. But enough of the ray, he added impatiently. There are one or two other things I want to explain. And then he paused, and the pause somehow was alive with menace. What was he going to do? After he had finished treating us as honored guests for the third time, he answered my unspoken question. His eyes narrowed till they were black, glittering slits. His voice, as he leaned toward us, was no more than a hissing whisper. Slaves, he said, and his lips twisted. How will you like to be slaves of mad algae, Frazier? He laughed, a chuckle that started in his throat and rose and rose till it seemed to shatter my eardrums. I felt my teeth grinding together, and my nails bit my palms in my effort to control my nerves against the strain of that maniacal glee. Suddenly he sobered. His laugh died instantly, like a radio that had been snapped off. Listen, and I will tell you. I will tell you everything, because it is necessary for you to know so that you may work for from me intelligently. And you will remember better and be of greater use to me if I tell you now, while you are yet sane. Sane. The exclamation sprang from the three of us simultaneously. I felt a cold chill start between my shoulder blades. For an instant my breath choked in my throat. My heart paused, and then Raced. What did he mean? What was he going to do to him?

[Interjection]

Us?

[Narrator]

What scheme had he evolved in his crazy brain? I have perfected a serum. His tone was professional, cold. He might have been talking to a class in a lecture room. A serum that robs the patient of every vestige of human emotion and therefore sanity. All his intellect, his memories, however, remain to serve him. Carrying out my orders, he loses all his will to live and resist, and becomes nothing but an automaton whose complete mental equipment is at my command. There was silence. His glassy black eyes, blank and soulless, swept over us, his mouth curled in that smug, complacent smile. He had us with our shoulders to the floor. He knew it and he knew we knew it. There was no possible way we could escape. We were 2,000ft above the earth. Our plane wouldn't get a quiet quarter of a mile before the magnetic ray would bring it back. Parachute. Even supposing we could get parachutes, where would we go? Drop 2,000ft into the middle of the Arabian desert? My brain raced. Never before had I been in such a tight place. And soon, if Fraser had his way, I wouldn't even have a mind to think with. I felt choked, stifled. Was there no way out? It seemed to me that a blanket, a soft, terrible blanket of uncontrollable circumstance was being folded around me, robbing me of the use of my limbs, paralyzing me, numbing me. And out of this great helplessness came again Frazer's voice. I have told you enough, he said suavely, so that you may have a faint idea of my power. I will send you now to Dr. Simple, who will administer the serum and place you under the nourishment ray. This is another of my discoveries, he added casually. It is a ray which allows the patient to absorb through the shell of his skin sufficient nourishment, both solid and liquid, to last for 24 hours. Five minutes later we stood in a small room that might have been the office of an up to date physician anywhere in the world. Across the polished top of a mahogany desk, Dr. Semple stared at us, his eyes like the eyes of our guide and Fraser, polished and expressionless. But now we understood those eyes were expressionless because there was nothing to give them expression. I tried to force my mind to comprehend the almost incomprehensible. We were among men who were not men. We were fast in the power of human beings who possessed no trace of humanity, who had become nothing but scientific robots even though they still had bodies of flesh and blood. It was unbelievable. My hands grew cold and my brain hot at the thought. Yet gazing into the bright enameled eyes of Dr. Semple, I knew it was true. Carefully, scientifically, we were prepared for our injections. And with every mechanical move of the doctor, my mind seemed to take on fresh speed as it raced toward some solution to our terrible problem. My eyes flew around the tiny office, searching for some means of escape. Dr. Semple turned to prepare the syringe. Behind his back, Brice gestured frantically. Somehow I understood. In my pocket was a flask, a flask I had filled with drinking water in Constantinople. Bewildered, I handed it over to him. The doctor turned, swabbed a patch of iodine on our arms, reached for the syringe. As he leaned over, Foulet, thrust forward a foot, the doctor tripped, sprawled full length on the floor. Foulet and I quickly stooped to pick him up, Standing between him and Brice, shielding his eyes so that he could not see. We fumbled to give Brice time. We apologized and soothed. Out of the tail of my eye, I could see Brice working like lightning, emptying out the syringe of that villainous liquid, filling it with clear water. It was done. We raised the doctor to his feet, gave his clothes a final brush. But as we stood back, I know my hands were trembling and I had to clamp my teeth to keep them from chattering. Were we out of danger yet? Would the doctor discover our ruse? And if we got out of his office without receiving the terrible injection, could we successfully fool Fraser and his slaves into believing we were mad? Fool them until we got a chance to escape? Could we simulate that glassy stare? Were we sufficiently good actors to get away with it? The questions pounded and raced through my brain in that instant when Dr. Semple turned again to his desk and picked up the syringe. But the miracle happened. Mechanically, he gave us the injection, never suspecting that it was not the devilish liquid he had put in, but only clear water. Then he stepped back and watched us. Cold chills raced up and down my spine. What were we supposed to do now? What was the action of the serum? Did it act at once, or slowly? Was it supposed to make us sick? Did it send us to sleep? How could we simulate symptoms when we had no idea what these symptoms were supposed to be?

[Interjection]

Be?

[Narrator]

But the cold voice of the doctor cut sharply across my agonized questions. You will lie down here, he said, opening a door into a room whose trails were lined with bunks like an opium den. In half an hour I will come for you. By that time, his lips spread in that same travesty of a smile Frazer had employed. We filed into the room and the door closed behind us. Obediently, we lay down on the narrow bunks. We dared not speak. We scarcely dared glance at each other. We must act at all times as if we were observed. Might not Frazer have a ray that could penetrate walls? Might he not even now know that we had outwitted the doctor and had not received the fatal injection? And what then? Suppose Frazer himself superintended another injection? I pulled my thoughts back from the terrible supposition. One thing at a time. So far, all had gone well. I lay down on the bunk and closed my eyes. Half an hour later, we heard the door open. Now, I thought, when I look up, I am supposed to be mad. I struggled to make my mind a blank. I tried to force into my eyes that peculiar, brilliant, shiny, vacant expression I had noticed. Would I succeed? I raised my eyes. The doctor was standing before us. With a gesture, he bade Foulet go to him. I watched beneath lowered lids. Thank God he had called Fule first. Fule had dabbled in the psychology of insanity. Fule would know how to act, and I would ape him. Coldly, mechanically. Dr. Semple ran him through a few tests. I watched with bated breath. The doctor nodded. Fule had passed. It was my turn. I did exactly as Fule had done and succeeded. I had to turn away swiftly so that the doctor wouldn't see the gleam of triumph in my supposedly mad eyes. He motioned to Brice. But just as Brice stepped forward, the door opened and Fraser came into the room. For an instant, everything reeled. We were gone. But even in that terrible instant of despair, I remembered to keep my eyes blank. No trace of expression must appear, or we were lost. I stretched my lips in that travesty of a smile I had seen the others use. Fraser stared at us, one after the other. He nodded. It is well, he said slowly and distinctly, as if he were talking to small children. Your names will still be as they were. We stared at him blankly, and again he nodded. You have forgotten your names? Ah, yours, he pointed to me, was Ainslie, and it still is. And you are M. Foulet. But Brice. He paused. My heart hung in my breast, suspended there with terror. What was the matter with Brice? What did Fraser suspect or know? He turned to the doctor. You will give Inspector Bryce another injection, he said. The inspector has a strong mind and a clever one. A normal injection would not be enough. It seemed to me that My blood froze in that terrible instant. It ran like tingling ice through my veins. Brice, the brainiest man in Scotland Yard, for Fraser, was right. Brice had more brains than Foulet and I together, and in another half hour Bryce would be no better than an idiot, for I didn't fool myself. Even Brice couldn't outwit Dr. Simple twice. You will follow me, said Frazer, turning to Fole and me. I will put you under the nourishment ray, while Dr. Simple attends to Brice. Obediently, with slightly shuffling gait and vacant eyes, we followed him into an adjoining room, leaving Brice behind. I didn't even trust myself to glance at him as we left, but my heart was in my boots. When would we see him again? And what would he be? The room we entered was dark, but instantly Frazer switched on a mellow orange colored light that flooded the room with a deep, warm glow. Strip yourselves, and sit down, he said, pointing to deep lounging chairs that filled the room. You will do nothing. Relax and allow the light to bathe you. In half an hour I will come back with instructions. We obeyed, I imitating blindly every vague mechanical movement of Foulet's. We settled ourselves in the comfortable chairs and Fraser left us. He had told us to relax, but to do anything else would have been impossible. The light soothed us, eased us, gave us somehow a penetrating sensation of peace and complete comfort. It flowed around us, warming us, lulling us us to a delicious dreamy state that was neither waking nor sleeping. It wiped out danger. It wiped out time. Nothing existed but this warm and relaxing sensation of utter satisfaction and peace. Through this mist of contentment came Frazer's voice. That is all. The light faded gradually, and as gradually we came to ourselves. You will dress, directed Fraser in the same clear, clipped manner, and you will come to me in my laboratory. Fifteen minutes later we stood before him, vacant eyed and solemn. Fraser fastened his black, polished eyes upon us. You will tell me, he said distinctly, all you know. We were silent. How could we tell him all we knew when we were supposed to have forgotten everything? Was this a trap? Or did our inside Secret Service information come under the general head of science? But before these questions had actually formed in my mind, I remembered that several times Frazer had answered my questions before they were asked. Might he be a mind reader? Best to take no chances. I made my conscious mind as blank as possible and gazed back at him. At my side, Foulet made a vague and uncertain noise in his throat. Your countries are afraid of me. Frazer leaned Forward. That smug, vain smile curling his lips. Your countries know there is a power abroad stronger than they. They feel that between the twin horns of economic pressure and the red menace they will be tossed to destruction. Destruction, repeated Foulet, with all the vacant inflection of idiocy. Tossed? I asked, imitating Foulet. But instantly I wondered if we were taking the right tack, for Fraser's eyes grew red with fury. Answer me, he raged. Tell me that your countries know that soon I shall be master of the world. Tell me they are afraid of me. Tell me that in the last three years I have slowly gained control of commerce, of gold. Tell me they know I hold the economic systems of the world in the hollow of my hand. Tell me that not a government on earth but knows it is hanging on the brink of disaster. And I. I put it there. My agents spread the propaganda of ruin. My agents crashed your Wall street and broke your banks. I. I. I. Mad algae.

[Dialogue Speaker]

Frazier.

[Narrator]

He stopped, gasping for breath. His face was scarlet. His eyes glowed like red coals. Suddenly he burst into a cascade of maniacal laughter. High, insane, terrible. It took all my control to keep my eyes blank, my face devoid of expression. Out of the tail of my eye I saw Foulet smiling a vague, idiotic smile of sympathy with Frasier's glee. But suddenly the glee died, as suddenly as if a button had snapped off the current. He leaned forward, his black eyes devouring our faces. They are afraid of me. It was a whisper, sharply eager. The world knows I am master. Master, repeated Foulet. It wasn't quite a question yet neither was it sufficiently definite, it as an answer to arouse Frazer's suspicions. To my relief, it satisfied him. The congested blood drained out of his face. His eyes lost their glare. He turned and for several minutes tramped up and down the laboratory, lost in thought. At last he came back to us. I have changed my mind, he muttered. Come with me. Without a word, we followed him out through the door and down the passageway. Out of the building he led us. The air was stirring with the first breath of dawn, and along the horizon glowed a band of pure gold where the sun would soon rise. When he had walked some 30 yards from the laboratory, Frazer paused. With his toe he touched a spring in the platform. A trap door instantly yawned at our feet. I suppressed a start, just in time, but through my body shot a thrill of fear. My muscles tensed, my heart raced. What now? Where could a trapdoor 2,000ft above the earth lead? Was he going to shove us into space because we refused to answer his questions Go down, Frazer ordered. For the space of a breath, we hesitated. To disobey meant certain and instant death at the hands of this soulless maniac. But to obey, to drop through this trapdoor, also meant death. I took a step forward. Could we overpower him? But what if we did? There were others here besides Frazier. How many others? I had no idea, but surely enough to make things impossible for Foulet and me. Yet we dared not even hesitate. To hesitate implied thinking, and a man robbed of his brain cannot think. There was no way out. Together, Foulet and I stepped to the brink of the yawning hole. For an instant, we were almost blinded by a glare of rosy light that seemed to burst upon us from the earth so far below. Here was the source of that strange afterglow. Away beneath us, evidently on the sands of the Arabian desert, glowed four red eyes, sending forth the rosy rays that converged at the center of the floating platform. Instantly, I comprehended Frazer's scheme. The phleotite he had invented, and of which the platform and buildings were made, was lighter than air. It followed, therefore, that if it were not anchored in some way, it would instantly rise. So Fraser had anchored it with four of his magnetic rays. He had told us that he could regulate the pulling power of the ray. So what he had obviously done was to calculate to a nicety the lift of the phleotite against the magnetism of the rays. But instantaneously, with this thought came another. Frazier was urging us into the glow of the magnetic ray. If once our bodies came entirely within the ray, we would be yanked from the platform and dashed to death, sucked to destruction on the sands below. In my ear, I heard Fraser's fiendish chuckle. The instinct of fear still holds, eh? My serum can destroy your conscious mind, but not your native fear. Cowards. Fools. But I am not going to push you off. Look. With his foot, he pressed another lever, which, while it did not shut off any of the light, seemed to deflect the ray. Fools, he said again scornfully. Go down. Then it was. I saw where he was sending us. 30ft below the platform, there swung a small cabin attached by cables and reached by a swinging still ladder. As I looked, a door in the roof slid back. Climb down, ordered Frazer. Again there was nothing to do but obey. Accustomed as I was to flying, inured as I had become, to great heights, my head reeled and my hands grew icy as I swung myself through that trap door and felt for a footing on the swinging ladder. Suppose Fraser turned The ray back on us as we climbed down. Suppose he cut the ladder? But instantly my good sense told me he would do neither. If he had meant to kill us, he could have done it easier than this. No, somewhere in his mad head he had a reason for sending us down to the swinging cabin. Five minutes later, Foulet and I stared at each other in the cramped confines of our prison. The tiny door in the roof through which we had dropped was closed. The steel ladder had been pulled up. We were alone. Alone. Were there no eyes that watched us still, or ears that listened to what we might say? Foulet evidently shared my sense of espionage, for without even glancing at me, he laid down on the hard floor of our bare little cabin and to all intents and purposes fell asleep. For a few minutes I stood staring at him, then followed his example. As I relaxed, I realized I was trying. Tremendously wary, the cumulative exhaustion of the past 36 hours seemed to crowd upon me with a smothering sense of physical oppression. I looked at my watch and wound it. Five o'.

[Interjection]

Clock.

[Narrator]

Through the narrow slits near the roof of our swinging cell, I could see the changing light of dawn melting in with the rosy glow from the magnetic rays. My eyelids drooped heavily. When I awoke, Fule was standing near me. Me, his arms folded across his chest, scowling thoughtfully. He nodded as he saw my open eyes, but when I started to speak, he shook his head sharply. With his gesture. There flooded back to me the feeling that we were watched even through the walls of our aerial prison and the floor of the platform above us. I sat up and, clasping my knees with my hands, leaned against the wall. There must be a way out of this for us. All my life I had one worked on the theory that if you thought hard enough, there was a way out of any difficulty. But this seemed so hopeless. No matter how hard we thought, the mad mind of Fraser would always be one jump ahead of us. And maybe we didn't dare even think. If Fraser were able to read minds, as I was nearly sure he was, then hadn't we better keep our minds blank, even down here? But an instant's thought showed me the flaw in my logic. Fraser could without much doubt read mindswhen those minds were close to him. If he could read minds at a distance, then he wouldn't need to ask us for information. But why had he put us here? I burrowed around for an answer. Had he guessed we had outwitted Dr. Semple and not taken the mad serum after all? And was this punishment? No. If Fraser had guessed that he would simply have given us more serum, as he had with Brice. Brice. Where was poor Brice now? Was he an idiot with blank face and shiny, soulless eyes? My mind shuddered away from the thought, taking refuge in my first question. Why were we here? What was Fraser going to do with us? We lost all track of time. In spite of my winding it, my watch stopped and the hours slipped by uncounted. Night came and another dawn, and another night twice. Our roof was lifted and our tiny swinging cell filled with the orange light of the nourishment ray. But we saw no one, nor did anyone speak to us. The third day passed in the same isolated silence. Occasionally Fule or I would utter a monosyllable. The sound of our voices was comforting, and the single words would convey little to a listener. But as the hours of the third night slowly passed, the atmosphere and our tiny swinging cell grew tense. Something was going to happen. I could feel it, and I knew that by Foulet's eyes that he felt it too. The air was tight, electrical. Standing on tiptoe, I glued my eyes to the narrow slit which was our only ventilation. But I could see nothing. The brilliant ra rosy glow blinded me. I couldn't even see the huge platform floating above our heads. Then suddenly our roof slid back. The magnetic ray was deflected. Above us, in the opening of the trap door leered the bright mad eyes of Frazier. Good evening, he said mockingly. How do you feel? We smiled hesitantly. Something in his voice made me feel feel he was addressing us as sane men and not idiots. But why? Weren't we supposed to be idiots when he put us down there? You ought to feel all right, frazer went on critically. The first dose of that serum lasts only three days. It's cumulative, he added with his professional air. In the beginning, an injection every three days, then once a week, and so on. There's a man who has been with me for three years who needs treatment only once every three months. Well, are you ready to talk? So that was it. He had put us down here till the supposed effects of that serum had worn off. And now we were to talk, tell him everything his agents had been risking their lives to find out. We were to sell out our countries to him, betray all the secrets we had sworn by eternity to keep. If we did as he demanded, both France and the United States would be at his mercy. And he had no mercy. He was not a man. He was a cruel, power loving, scientific machine. I clamped my teeth. Never would I talk. I had sworn to protect my country's secrets with my life, and my vow would be kept. You will talk? Frazer asked again, his voice suddenly suave and beseeching. For those who talk, there are rewards. Let down the ladder, said Foulet in a quiet, conversational tone. It will be easier to discuss this. Frazer's eyes narrowed to gleaming slits. He smiled craftily. The ladder will be let down when you talk. And if, suggested Foulet, we don't wish to talk. Frazier's lips stretched in a wider grin. His white teeth gleamed. His shiny black eyes glittered. In that warm, rosy light, he looked like a demon from hell. He held out his hand. In it shone a long, slender instrument. This knife, he said softly, will cut the steel cables that connect you to this platform for him as if they were cheese. You will talk. Beside me, I heard Foulet gasp. Swiftly my imagination conjured up the picture of our fate. Our determined refusal to divulge the secrets of our respective countries, the severing, one by one, of our four cables holding us to the platform, the listing of our swinging cell, the tipping, the last terrible plunge. 2,000ft. But it would be swift. The power of the magnetic ray would give us no time to think, to suffer. It would be a merciful end. Let us up, bargained Foulet. We will talk. Fraser laughed. None of that, he said slyly. You talk from there. And if your information doesn't dovetail with what I already know. He flourished the steel knife suggestively. We were caught. No amount of bluff would save us now. Frazer demanded that. Truth, facts, actual information. And he wouldn't be fooled by anything spurious. Foulet's shoulder touched mine as we peered up through the roof of our cell at our mad captor. We spoke together. There is nothing to say. The assured smile left Frazer's lips. His eyes glittered red. His whole mad face was contorted with fury. A volley of oaths poured through his twisted mouth. With a gesture of insane rage, he pulled the nearest cable to him and slashed it with the knife. Our cell tilted. Foulet and I were thrown into a heap on the floor. We sprang up to face Frazier again through the roof. His mad eyes glared down at us, soul chilling, maniacal. Talk, he snarled. Talk, or I'll slice another. He drew the second cable to him, holding it in readiness. I clenched my teeth. Beside me, I could see the muscles of Fule's jaw working. Talk. Never talk. Screamed Frazier.

[Narrator 3]

Talk.

[Narrator]

Our silence and our white faces were his only answer. There was a gleam of the knife in the rosy light Our cell lurched, quivered, then caught. Would it hold with only two cables? It was hanging on its side. We were standing on what had been the wall. Through the opening in the roof we could see nothing but rosy light and distant stars. How strong were the cables? Could they hold against the pull of the magnetic ray? We could feel the pull now, feel the strain on the cables above us. If Fraser cut the third one.

[Interjection]

Talk.

[Narrator]

His voice came hoarse with fury.

[Announcer]

Talk.

[Narrator]

Now you can't see me, he went on, but I'm pulling the third cable toward me. I'm raising the knife. Will you talk? Standing on that quaking wall, Fule and I stared at each other. How long would it be? One second? Half a minute? Thank God it would be quick. This was the worst now, this eternity of waiting. I'm cutting it. Yelled Frazier, and with his words the cell lurched, swung, whirled like a spinning top. Foulet and I were tossed around like dried peas in a pod. Suddenly the thing steadied. Two steel hooks were clamped on the edge of the opening in what had been the roof, and Brice stared at us through the aperture. Quick, he gasped. There's not a second to lose. Don't stare. Quick, I say. I've got the ladder here. It's steel and it'll hold. Climb up. Dumbly we obeyed. Our heads were whirling, our bodies bruised and mashed by the shaking. Up blindly, dizzily, we climbed up the ladder, scrambled out onto the platform, solid footing again as Brice loosed the ladder and pulled it up. There was a snap. The last cable had gone. The cell shot down to earth with a speed that must have returned, reduced it to a powder. Foulet and I stared after it, dazed, unbelieving. Brice's whisper hissed in our ears. Listen carefully. He gripped our shoulders. I'm not mad. They shot the stuff into me, but I found an antidote in S1's office and used it right away. Now listen to me. Our plane is over there. He pointed across the platform. It's all ready to take off. They think they're sending me off on an errand for them at dawn. It's ready for a long trip. Go there, get in, and if anyone questions you, tell them its orders. They won't, though. No one gives orders here. But Fraser. Brice nodded toward a dark heap beside the trapdoor. You killed him? Asked Boulet. Stunned him, said Brice. He may come to at any moment. And if he does, suppose we bind him and take him in the plane? I suggested. Brice shook his head. Leave him Here. It's safer. Now go get in the plane and take off. And not wait for you? I gasped. You're crazy. I'll be there. You can pick me up later. There's no time to explain. But you'll know. Take off, then circle around and come back. But watch out. He gave us both a shove toward the plane, the dim shadow of which we could see across the board platform. We took a step toward it and then turned back. How could we go without Brice? But he had vanished. And in the shadow of the trap door, Fraser groaned. We waited no longer. To hesitate was to court death. Deliberately, as if we were acting under orders, we walked toward the plane. As Brice had said, it was in readiness. Evidently, he was to have started at once. We climbed in our hearts and our throats. A mechanic stepped forward. Forward. The propeller roared. But above the roar of the propeller we heard a yell of fury. And Frazier, dazed and reeling, came stumbling across the platform toward us. Foulet took the controls. The plane taxied across the platform, swooping into space. But it was not till it had risen and steadied that I realized the complete idiocy of our forlorn hope of escape. What fools we were. And Brice. Brice must in truth, be mad. How could we get away? How could we ever escape the terrific power of the magnetic ray, that ray that Fraser worked himself from his laboratory, the ray that had drawn us first across the desert to this floating island of madness. It would be a matter of seconds before Fraser would reach it and turn it on us. There was no escape. None. In despair, I looked back at the platform. To eyes ignorant of its horror, it would have been an amazing and gorgeous sight. The crimson lamps of the magnetic ray bloomed like huge desert flowers on the sand. 2,000ft below us, the rays flamed up with the glory of an Italian sunset. And poised in space, like a dark butterfly, floated the huge platform, bathed in its rosy light. It was beautiful. It was unbelievable. It was horrible. I gazed, fascinated. When would Fraser reach the lamp? When would he turn it on? I stared at the dark shadow that I knew was the laboratory building. My eyes strained through the growing distance. When would the glow come? That glow that meant our death? Suddenly I gasped. The light had gone. The great lamps down on the desert floor were out. Darkness.

[Commercial Voice]

Darkness.

[Narrator]

Swift, comforting, wrapped us in velvet folds. Brice. I yelled. Brice has cut off the lamps. He's released the platform. God, look, Foulet. My voice tore through my throat. My eyes burned with sudden, blinding emotion. In the soft darkness of the starry night I could see the platform waver, topple, rise. It rose straight up, tilting and swaying in the light breeze. What was it? Fraser had said? If it was released, it would go straight to the stars. It was on its way. But Brice? Where was Brice? Was he on that terrible rising island? I strained my eyes through the darkness. Already Foulet had banked the plane. We were circling, turning back. A tiny white speck took shape beneath the rising island. A a parachute. Bryce was safe. 10 minutes later, we slid along the hard desert sand and came to a stop. Bryce came running over toward us. Foulet and I climbed out of the plane to meet him. Silently, we gripped hands. It was a solemn moment. Beside us reared the great plane that would take us back to safety, back to the familiar life we knew and loved. Around us stretched the trackless wastes of the great Arabian and desert, and above, somewhere between us and the stars, soared the floating island of madness. They believed I was mad, said Brice. As we climbed back into the plane. I watched Fraser. I spied on the men. There were about 30 up there, and finally I saw where they regulated those lamps. The rest was easy. All except the minute when I found Fraser kneeling beside that trapdoor, slicing the cable. For a second I thought it was all up. You got us just in time, I muttered. But you can't be grateful with an Englishman. They won't stand for it. Oh, bosh, brice murmured as the plane swung its nose toward that far distance that was home. Well, it's all over, but it's a story that can never be told. The fate of Mad Fraser will have to remain a mystery, for no one would believe it us if we told them. End of the Floating island of Madness by Jason Kirby.

[Narrator 3]

The Dream of Death by Elwood F. Pierce this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox Recording by Candra Robinson THE Dream of Death by Elwood F. Pierce the queer figure of a man sat deep in the chair, in full repose. His eyes, unusually sharp, were now listless and just a little sleepy. As he watched the crackling fire, he felt a chilly draft at his back, and immediately there was the click of a door closing softly, after which feet shuffled across the floor. Unconsciously, Anderson Branton, psychologist, sucked at his empty pipe. The intruder moved to the log fire, holding his shaky hands to the blaze, and shiveringly seated himself on a stool Professor Brenton had been using as a footrest. The man who Thus, for a moment had startled Brenton was the half witted brother of his landlady. Two nights before, the little psychologist had rented the room on the third floor front, and as he bargained with Mrs. Thompson, he noticed the actions of the demented one. The landlady had said her brother was harmless, and Brenton did not give him thought. What are you doing here? The lodger asked sharply, now that the brief sensation of fright had passed. I thought it was understood that I was not to be disturbed. What do you want? The psychologist's brows were shaggy and so was his beard. He was a shaggy person and being small, impressed one as a weakling physically. But his eyes were penetrating, combative, and he eyed his visitor fiercely. There was something utterly repulsive about the man who trembled in front of the fire. Cold, the half wit murmured. He shivered and turned anew to the blaze.

[Narrator]

Cold.

[Narrator 3]

His body was shaking. Professor Brenton, contributor to the cause of science, might have found it hard to explain why he was occupying the third floor front room. Perhaps it was because once in a while he liked to get away from daily college and to pursue certain of his studies uninterrupted. The room on the third floor had been advertised for rent and he had taken it. That was all. Almost immediately he recognized in Gus Aker an interesting subject. But until the moment the old man shuffled into his room and complained of the cold, it had not occurred to the psychologist to attempt a mental investigation. But this was the beginning. Brenton noted that the apparent harmlessness of the man and was interested. Then casting into the half wits mind with questions that served as primary experiments, he became fascinated. Later his tests were tedious and delicate and afforded him an opportunity of determining the worth of certain theories he recently had developed. Theories which were disputed by his scientific associates. Perhaps from a humane standpoint, Brenton was a bit cruel. But his examinations at least were in the spirit of the botanist who studies a rare flower. The psychologist learned that the man's intellect, unable to hold anything of itself self, was keenly awake to the workings of the minds of others. He found that virtually without effort he could transfer his thoughts to the witless creature. And the man would respond in a manner all but normal and as if the thought were his own. But no thought was retained. Gus Akers mind reached out and fed on the the intelligence of others. But the moment the thought had been transformed into action, he again became an imbecile with blankness of mind equal to that of a cleanly wiped slate of one thing. Professor Brenton was certain this was not hypnotism, nor did his power over the half wit have any relation to hypnotism. For many nights Acre was subjected to examination and new tests. Brenton dug deep and without mercy in the hope that he might unearth the reason for the hidden phenomena. At first there was no explanation, but he found out much during his hours of research and finally came to the most important discovery of all. It was a cold night in December, and Professor Brenton was seated in his easy chair. That was two weeks after Gus Aker first appeared in his room. Suddenly Brenton perceived that his fire was out, all that remained in the grate being some dying embers. Grumbling, he arose and slipped on his great coat, reflecting all almost unconsciously. I wish Gus Aker would bring up some wood. Shivering, he resumed his reading. A few minutes later there was a scraping outside his door, and Aker entered with an armload of fuel. He dropped the sticks by the fireplace and stared vacantly at the little professor. There was the usual look of the dumb terror, after which his eyes grew listless and he seemed to wonder at his surroundings. Who told you to bring up the wood? Brenton asked. Aker mumbled, rolled his eyes, and left the room without attempting to reply. Apparently he did not understand the question. Brenton listened to the man's retreating sleep steps, shrugged his shoulders, and, kneeling, built a new fire. He was disturbed by this new and uncanny power, but it opened a curiously marvelous field for him. He might, after all, be able to prove his theory that the mind is never a free agent. An hour later, still deep in thought, he turned to his window, overlooking a plot of ground that in summer was a rose garden. Now there was snow on the ground, the bushes that abounded being slightly tinctured with white. The professor noticed a shifty figure emerge from the shadow of the house and move aimlessly among the sleeping bushes with their ghostly shrouds. It was Gus and Acre. Poor, hopeless, demented Gus Aker. Curious to give his power farther trial, the psychologist permitted himself to wish for the presence of Gus Aker in the room with him. Almost instantly the figure below straightened, and a startled face was raised to the window before which Brenton stood. Then the man went indoors. He did not move hastily, but in his slow, shuffling manner, as if he had finished his walk in the garden and was returning to the house under a natural impulse. Brenton still stood at the window, marveling. Then the door opened, and he knew what that meant. The imbecile would do whatever the professor wanted willed that he should do without the practice of hypnotism. The psychologist was able to unite his mind with the mind of Gus Aker and control his actions. All that was necessary to bring this about was the barest thought. Why don't you knock when you come in? Brenton demanded. Aker did not reply, but shuffled his weight from one foot to the other, then turned and left the room. But the professor had done no more than wish for his presence, and any desire that he may have had for the man to remain was only negative in value. The reaction of Gus Aker was merely positive, and very naturally so. After that, Brenton was to experience a sensation. Sensation of fear. He wanted to halt the experiments and indeed did make an attempt to do so, but found, just as he had feared, that he rapidly was coming under the influence of a mind that one almost could say did not exist. Yet it weakened him, sapped his energy. Day by day. Did this mental illness intercourse with a vacant brain? There were even times when Brenton found it difficult to breathe. And thinking was not always easy. He began when it was too late to realize that he was to be penalized for his unnatural experiments. The little professor was suffering from nerves. Perhaps it was old age creeping on, he told himself, casting about for an excuse. Could it be that the imbecile was making demands upon him, eating into his brain? And then there was his vitality. Low at ebb. His capacity for work had decreased and it was difficult for him to concentrate even on his reading. It's time I was ending this vacation, Brenton decided. I must get back to the old routine. Enough of this foolishness. But he could not leave. Very rapidly indeed. His own mind and the mind of Gus Aker were merging, and his own mind slowly was being sucked away. All but helpless. Brenton began to be concerned for his own sanity. At last he came to fear Acre, to dread the sight of him. And yet, a dozen times a day he found it necessary to call the imbecile to his room, much to the discomfort of the landlady, who was unable to understand anything that would suggest a friendship between the queer little scientist in the front room on the third floor and her witless brother. It wasn't reasonable, she interpreted. The end came at last. Brenton, suddenly aroused, sat up in the old fashioned bed that formed no mean part of the furnishings of the room. His body was clammy and he was gripped by a fear of the unknown. Brenton, a brave man, as shown by his experiments covering many years, seemed to sense that mighty fingers were were at his throat. He had been dreaming. And what a dream. He had seen Gus Aker creeping up the stairs, a long kitchen knife in his hand. The half witted creature had stood over him and then. It had been at this point that the psychologist awoke just as the knife was descending. A few minutes later he was calmer and did succeed to a degree in putting aside his fears. He pulled the covers over his shoulders, for it was cold and the log fire was now only so much ashes. Footsteps outside his room, boards creaking. A hand fumbling at the door, the door swinging open. A shaft of moonlight penetrating the room and falling upon the figure that crouched in the doorway, just as it had been seen to do in the dream a few minutes before Brenton screamed, the thought whirled through his mind that he was helpless. The action of his dream was such that the witless man would carry it out. He was trembling too, and his eyes burned into his head like torches that flamed in white heat. The figure crossed the floor, still crouching. There was the glitter of the long kitchen knife. Brenton's effort to gain control of the mind of Gus Aker was futile. He knew what he must do to save himself. But the mental effort that would control the man was impossible of accomplishment. He struggled like one seeking to arouse himself from a nightmare. The figure crept upon him slowly and with a great show of stealth. The scientist could hear the man's short breathing, see the very gleam of his eyes as the moonbeams shot into his face. The boards of the floor creaked and creaked, creaked. And the sound was not like anything Brenton had ever heard before. It made him think of a bat beating its wings against the walls of a tomb. A single thought, a moment of mental action, would change the course of the half wits movements. But the psychologist knew that his mind had been sucked dry and that the man creeping upon him was the one who now held the scepter of power, Anderson. Brenton was as one paralyzed. And he could only watch Gus Ager approach with the long knife in his hand, the moonbeams falling upon his purple face just as in the dream. One last scream. The next morning the witless man was found by his sister asleep on the floor of the front room on the third floor. There was a kitchen knife in his hand, a long knife stained with blood. And Brenton, who had not been able to will that Gus Akers should not carry out his unfortunate dream, was dead. END OF THE DREAM OF Death by Elwood F. Pierce.

[Narrator 4]

True TO Type by Arthur T. Harris this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org True to type by Arthur T. Harris Pascal Halmer had a superficial talent. And he was smart. You'd never find him rewriting a theme that had appeared, say, five or 10 years before in a popular monthly. He was too smart for that. But Halmer would haunt the second hand magazine stalls and buy a pile of fiction publications published 10 to 12, 20 years ago. Then, back in his dingy furnished room, he'd uncork a bottle of cheap brandy, roll a smoke, and settle back to read. Presently he would chuckle, rip out the sheets he had read, and do some pencil work on them. Then he'd seat himself before me and begin typing the pilfered plot, twisting it about in such a fashion that plagiarism would be extremely difficult to prove. He'd change the locale, the sequence of events, all the names, retaining only the plot gimmick, the essence of the story. Now I am not trying to pose a moral issue, for under the deft fingers of Pascal Halmer I had for the first time in my life the feeling of creativeness, of originality, of thought, aim, and purpose. Of course, I too was a fraud, but I told myself nobody knew our secret, and we entertained just as many readers as the more creative writers in the business. All my life I had been a hopeless drudge, used by bored typists in a little office where I was limited to legal papers, stencils for invoices, and such. Now I contributed to the pleasure of things, thousands of eager readers of escape fiction. Late in middle age I had found my niche in the creative world. Thus it was that my personality began to undergo a change. I came to think of myself as a colleague of Pascal Halmer and as his friend, his confidant. Did I not acquire certain proprietary rights? You can understand then, how shocked I became when Halmer first began to neglect me. Little things, but they hurt. An instance was the afternoon when he came home with a brand new FM radio receiver. Before long he became so absorbed in his recorded classics that he forgot to oil me, to change my ribbon, to put on my cover. When he'd typed out 30 at the end of a story, I sulked, my keys began to stick, my ribbon grew smudgy and faded. But Halmer paid me no heed until he received a humorous little note from an editor one day. Your yarns are tops, he read aloud, but reading them has made me wear trifocals. With a muttered oath, Halmer left our attic studio, returned with typewriter oil, a tight brush, a new ribbon. But he didn't do this for love of me. He did it only to keep his editor happy, and that hurt. Naturally, my morale was affected. My keys began to rattle. My warning bell to signal a line's end became so inhibited that Halmer would curse when I failed to ring and my platen began to crack. The climax came one afternoon when I had been particularly difficult to handle. Halmer finally banged my keyboard with his fist, picked up the phone and dialed a number. Stunned, I listened as he Acme Typewriter Service. This is Pascal Halmer, the writer. My old machine is on its last gasp. I need a new one. You have several new models on hand. Good. Send one over the end. 30 finis. My faded keys stared upward at Homer. At all costs, I must regain his confidence. He must see me, must understand that I was more than just an old, beat up machine. And he did. My concentration gradually drew his eyes to me. Sardonic, amused, cynical. Halmer gazed down at me, his gray eyes cold and calculating. You're the only one that knows the story of my struggles, he said. With you, my hard days go. I am now an established writer. My stories now get top rates. You always were too slow and stodgy. Anyway, on a new machine I shall write better than ever. That's what you think, my fine feathered friend, I thought as my mood shifted violently from abject contrition to bitter anger. That's what you think. Pascal Halmer had a plot to plagiarize that night. He ripped right along until three in the morning, producing 5,000 neatly mortized words. With my help for a men's magazine, he typed out 30 at the end of his stolen tale. But he couldn't think of a new title for the story, so he left page one in my carriage where he had reinserted it to write in the title. He yawned sleepily, muttered, hell with the title. I'll do it in the morning. Set the alarm clock for 9, deliver the script at 10. I waited until my feckless frame friend was drowned in gurgling snores. Then, taking a grip on my nerves, I steeled myself to perform an independent act such as I had never before dared to attempt. Of my own volition, I began to type. The alarm clock went off at 9 the next morning, and Halmer came grudgingly, stiffly awake. His eyes were bloodshot, his reflexes were down. Presently he walked stiffly across the room, stopped in front of me, and gazed at the title. I'D the Brave Die Hard. Not brilliant, but a change from the title used originally on the story. The author's name that I had typed below the title made no impression on Halmer at all. He had been so sleep dazed the night before that I was gambling on his being vague about details. Of course, he muttered, fell asleep thinking I hadn't doped out a title. I guess I was too tired to register, but it's a pretty good title considering the state I was in. Hurriedly he gathered up a typescript, attached a clip, put the story in a manila envelope, and dashed off to see his editor. Now I had but to wait. A half hour before noon, Holmer returned, his face haggard with fatigue but his gray eyes alight with arrogance. After two stiff shots of brandy, he bent over me, waving before my typeyes. A Publisher's check for $250. See? He sneered. They raised my rate at last. I'm on my way. Tomorrow I'll trade you in on a new machine. Move out of this crummy garret. He had another drink, then stretched out on his cot and was soon asleep. I waited. Late in the afternoon, as the sky grew gray and clouded, the phone rang. I tensed. Halmer woke up, fumbled for the desk lamp switch, uncradled the phone. Yes? He said sleepily, petulantly. Oh, hello, Evans. He sat erect, his voice becoming polite, ingratiating. Evans was his editor, to whom he'd given the story I'd typed last night. I don't quite follow you, old boy, halmer stammered. Now Evans's angry voice was loud, and I could hear it too. No. Well, I just wanted to tell you that the Brave Die Hard is just as good today as when it was first written 40 years ago. I thought Halmer would have a stroke. But how? Why? What makes you suspect? Now his voice was a shriek. It's not the same story. It couldn't be. I wrote that story from scratch. Then you didn't scratch hard enough, the phone sneered. We found the original by checking through bound volumes in the public library. When the word gets around, you'll be skunk bait in the publishing business. And incidentally, we've stopped payment on your check. I almost felt sorry for the poor fool. But you can't do this to me. Halmer screamed. It's a miserable coincidence. I challenge you to prove. If it's coincidence, how come the other guy's name appears in the byline? His name instead of mine? His voice was incredulous. Maybe you typed it subconsciously, Halmer. Unless you've got an enemy in the house. The mocking voice hung up like a sleepwalker. Halmer cradled the phone. He stared at the check still propped up on the desk where he'd left it. Suddenly he lunged for it, tore it to bits, flung the pieces on the floor. Then he threw himself on his bed and beat his fists against the wall. Wait till he gets over the first shock, I thought. Wait till he begins to think. It wasn't long before Halmer sprang from his cot, lurched across the room, and stopped in front of me.

[Interjection]

You.

[Narrator 4]

He shouted. You mechanical Judas. Only you could have crossed me up with berserk strength. He swept me up, stalked across the room again, and hurled me straight through the dormer window. There was a sharded crackle as the glass shattered. There was a much louder crash when I hit the flagstones in the courtyard alley, collapsed into a mass of twisted junk. Maybe I wasn't as smart as I thought. End of True to Type by Arthur T. Harris Recording by Roger Moline.

[Reader]

Strangers to Strava by Carl Jacoby this is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org recording by Caitlin Vanadestine Strangers to Straba by Carl Jacoby they sat in Cap Barlow's house on the lonely planet Straba. It was early evening and Straba's twin moons were slowly rising from behind the magenta hills. Outside the window window lay Capps golf course, a study in toadstool cubism, while opposite the flag of the 18th hole squatted the kid's ship. The kid had landed there an hour ago. He had introduced himself as Clarence Rain, Fieldman for Triplanet Pharmaceutical, and had announced urbanely he had come to make a botanical survey, all of which mildly amused Cap Barlow. The kid was amused, too. From the pilot book he had learned that Cap was the sole inhabitant of Straba, and he regarded him, and rightly so, as just another hermit nut who preferred the spatial frontiers to the regular walks of civilization. The old man packed and lit a meerschaum pipe. Yes, sir, he said. Efficiency, regulation, order. That's what's spoiling all life these days. Those addle headed scientists aren't satisfied, and unless they can dovetail everything. Rayne smiled and in the pause that followed, cast his eyes about the room. It was circular and no attempt had been made to conceal its origin. The bridge house of some discarded space going tug along the continuous wall ran a triple tier of bookshelves, but it seemed that most of the books lay scattered on the table, chairs, and floor above the shelves. The walls were decorated with several three dimensional walls, watercolors, pin up girls in various stages of undress, and mounted trophies of the rather hideous games Strava provided. About this survey, the kid began. Only last month, cap Barlow continued, unmindful of the interruption. A salesman stopped off here and wanted to sell me a gadget for my golf course. Said it would increase the gravitation over the fairways and prevent the ball from traveling any further than it does on Earth. He spat disgustedly. You'd think any fool would realize it's an ideal course that can offer a par three on a thousand yard hole. But Rain hadn't come this far to listen to the dissertations of an old man. He was tired from long hours of sitting at the console of his ship. He stood up warily. If you'll show me where I can stow my gear, he said, I think I'll turn in and get some sleep. I've got a lot to do tomorrow. For a week the kid didn't bother Cap at all. Each morning he went out with a reference book, a hoversack, and a canteen, and he didn't show up again until dark. Cap didn't mention that Strab had been officially surveyed 10 years before, or that results of this survey had been practically negative as far as adding to the interplanetary pharmacopoeia went. If TriplanetID wanted to train its green personnel by sending them on a wild goose chase, that was all right with Cap. But the old man had one thing that interested young Raine. His telescope mounted in a domed observatory on the top floor. Every night Rain spent hours staring through that scope, sighting stars, marking them on the charts. Cap tried to tell him that those charts were as perfect as human intellect could make them. Rain had an answer for that, too. Those charts are three years old, he said. In three years a whole universe could be created or destroyed. Take a look at this star in graph five. I've been watching it and the way it's acting convinces me there's another star, probably a wanderer approaching it from here. He indicated a spot on the chart. He was efficient and persistent. He watched his star, checked and rechecked his calculation, and in the end, to Cap's amazement, sighted the wanderer almost exactly where he said it would be. The discovery only excited him more, and after that he spent an even greater amount of time in the observatory. Then late one night he came to the top of the stairs and called for Cap. Cap went up to the scope, and at first he didn't see anything. Then he did see it, a darker shadow against the interrupted starlight. It's a ship, the old man said. Ray nodded. My guess, too. But what's it doing out of regular space lanes? You forgot you landed here yourself. Strawber does occasionally attract a visitor. Her crew may need one. Water or food. Rain shook his head. I had chopped in from Asteroid Terrella. This fellow seems to be coming from deep space. They continued to watch that approaching shadow, taking turns at looking through the scope. It seemed to take a long time coming, but finally there was a roar and a rush of air, and a black shape hurtled out of the eastern sky. The two men ran outside where Cap began to curse, volume valuably. The ship's antigravs were only partially on. It had hit hard, digging up 300 yards of the 16th fairway and completely ruined two greens. Then the dust cleared and the two men stared. The ship was a derelict, a piece of space flotsam, there was no question about that. It was also a Sibella style coach, one of the first Earth made passenger freighters to utilize a power pile drive, designed when streamlining was thought to mean following the shape of a cigar. On her bow was a name, but meteorite shrapnel had partially obliterated the letters. Jingoes, said Rain. I never saw a ship like this before. She must be old. Really old. The hatches were badly fused and oxidized, and it was evident that without a blaster it would be impossible to get in. Cap shrugged. Let her stay there, she said. I can make a dog leg out of the 15th and keep the course fairly playable. And if I get tired of seeing that big hulk out of my dining room window, I can always plant some python vines around the near side of her. Rayne shook his head quickly. There's no telling what we may find inside. We've got to find an opening. He went over the ship like a squirrel looking for a nut. Back under her stern quarter, just abaft her implosion plates, he found a small refuse scuttle, which seemed movable. He took drills and went to work on it. Three hours later the two men were inside. There was nothing unusual about the crew quarters or the adjoining storage space, but when they reached the control cabin they stood and gaped. It was like entering a museum. The bulkheads were covered with queer glass dials and several panels of manual operating switches. The power pile conduits were shielded with lead lead, mind you, and the lighting was apparently done with some kind of fluorescent tube bracketed to the ceiling. It brought Cat back to the time he was a kid and his grandfather told him stories and legends of the past. Just above the pilot's old fashioned cosmoscope was a fancy metal plate with the ship's name stamped on Perseus. Do you know what ship this is? Demanded Cap excitedly. I can read, said Rain. But do you know its history? The story behind it? Rain shook his head without interest. Cap Barlow was still staring at the dark nameplate. Perseus here pleaded slowly. It goes back to the first Triad empire, when the planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were grouped into an oligarchy, when Venus was still a frontier Life there was pretty much a gamble in those days, and the oligarchs enforced strict laws and eugenics. They set up marriage boards and all young men and women had to undergo physical and mental examinations. Couples were paired off only after scientific scrutiny. In other words, it was a cold blooded system which had no regard for what we call love. The old man paused. Did you ever hear of Mason Stewart? He asked suddenly. Rain shook his head. As an individual, he's pretty well forgotten today, cap said. I suppose you might call him a promoter. At any rate, he figured a way to make himself a few thousand extra credits. He got hold of two condemned passenger freighters and with a flair for classical method mythology, named them Perseus and Andromeda. Rain, listening, lit a cigarette and blew a shaft of smoke ceilingward. The Perseus was moored in North Venus, continued Cap, the Andromeda in the south. Stuart managed to spread the word that these two ships would be heading for Alpha Centauri to start a new colony. He also let it be known that the passenger list would be composed of couples who are in love with each other without scientific screening or examination. Well, what happened? Demanded Rain with an air of acute boredom. Cap bit off a piece of plugged tobacco. The rumor spread, and berths on the two ships sold for fabulous prices. Of course the constabulary investigated, but that's where Stewart was clever the couples were to be split up, all females in one ship, all men in the other. The constabulary warned them that it would take years to cross such an immense distance. Those were the days, but before the Wellington overdrive, of course. But the couples wouldn't listen and the two ships took off. People of three worlds made a big fuss over them. The theme invaded the teletheater and the popular tape novels of the day. Newscasters went wild in their extravagant reports. And then the truth came out. Stuart got drunk and let slip the fact that the boosters on the two ship were absolutely worthless and capable of operating for only a short time. By then the ships were several hundred thousand miles beyond the system and out of radio range. Rescue ships were sent out but found nothing, though they went as far as they dared. Stewart was jailed and executed. That's the story of the Perseus. Rain nodded and ground his cigarette stub against a bulkhead. Let's get on with the examination, he said. They continued down the dark corridors, Rain leading the way with a magno search lamp. Some of the cabins were in a perfect state of preservation. Others were mere cubicles of rust and oxidation. Once Cap touched a tear which apparently had been made of wood or some other product, it dissolved into dust on the instant. This was the Perseus, the ship which had carried the male passengers of that strange and ancient argosy. But as yet they had come upon no skeletons or human remains. What then had happened to them? Five minutes later they entered the Cat, the captain's cabin and found the answer. On the metal desk, preserved in lit night, lay the rough log. Cap picked it up, opened it carefully, and began to read. January 21st. All hands and passengers in good health. But God help us. Booster readings 00 by radio we have learned that our sister ship, the Andromeda, is also without auxiliary power and adrift. Such a dual catastrophe would certainly argue for something other than coincidence. Our charts show an asteroid of sizable proportions to lie approximately midway between the two ships. Under ordinary circumstances, I would order the lifeboats run out at once and attempt to reach this planetoid, hoping that by some miracle it will be capable of supporting life. But the circumstances are far from ordinary. We sighted them at 4:30pm Earth time, a few moments after the booster went dead and the ship lost steerageway absorbers. They hover out there in space, clearly visible through the ports, waiting for us to open the airlock. There are two of them, but even as I write, one has turned and with unfailing accuracy is headed in the direction of the Andromeda absorbers. What a world of myth and legend surround them. Are they organic or inorganic? I do not know. I only know that they have been mortally feared by sailors since the first rocket blasted through Earth's orbit. They are what they their name implies, devourers of life, with the peculiar, apparently meaningless power of transforming themselves into a physical facsimile of their victims. One of them is out there now, swirling lazily like a miasmic cloud of saffron dust. Cap handed the book to Rain, who read it and handed it back without comment. And at that moment Cap saw the kid in his true light, a cold blooded extrovert who was interested in the ship only for what he could get out of her next day without asking permission. Brain began the task of dismantling the Perseus. He knew he had a potential fortune at his fingertips. For every portable object he could transport back to Earth or Venus would bring a high price from curio hungry antique hunters. For a week he worked almost unceasingly at the salvage operation. He unscrewed the ship's nameplate and made a little plush box for it. He took down the dials and of the cosmoscope, the astrolog, and other smaller instruments and made them ready for shipment. He stripped out the entire intercom mechanism, the old fashioned lighting fixtures, to say nothing of the furniture and personal effects which had been spoiled by time. It was a Sunday evening that matters came to a head in the early dusk. Straba's twin moons were well above the horizon, shining with a pale light. Cap was in the kitchen brewing himself a cup of coffee when through the window he saw Rain emerge from the Perseus and carry an armful of equipment across to the little lean to shed where he stored the salvage. He came out of the shed and something prompted him to look forward. An instant later he ran to the house and took the steps three at a time to the observatory. He was up there a quarter of an hour before he came down again, a queer look on his face. Mr. Barlow, he said, what's that thing that looks like a gun emplacement on the flat on the other side of the house? House? That's exactly what it is, cap told him. A Dofield Atomic Defender. I've had that gun here a long time. When I first set up housekeeping on Straba, this part of the system was pretty wild. Pirates weren't unusual. What's its range? Well, I don't know exactly, but it has a double trajectory. That makes it a pretty potent weapon. Rain looked at the old man for a long moment. You probably don't believe in coincidences, he said, but. But come upstairs. I want to show you something. Cap followed him up to the observatory and looked through the scope. At first he couldn't believe his eyes. If he had been alone, he would have said he was dreaming. But there it was, a miniaturous satellite caught helplessly in the planet's polar attraction midway between Straba's twin moons. He was looking at another antiquated space vessel, a ship that almost detail for detail, was a replica of the Perseus. The truth dawned on on him gradually. It was the Andromeda, the sister ship of the Perseus. The kid didn't hurry himself bringing in the Andromeda. For two nights he did nothing but watch the sister ship through the scope. Then he carefully removed the preservative covering from the d' orfield Defender, cleaned and oiled the barrel, and made the gun ready for a charge. If I can put a shot abaft her midsection, he said, it might spin her out of polar draw long enough to fall into straw. But linear attraction. Why don't you take your ship up and tow her in? Cap said. Rain shook his head. Too dangerous. I'd have to come to a dead stop to fasten my grappler, and at that range I'd likely become a satellite myself. Meantime, the Perseus lay neglected save for the tour of inspection Cap took through her on Friday morning. Cap hadn't been in the ship since Rain had started his salvage operations, and the old man was curious to see how we're work had progressed. He entered through the refuse scuttle and proceeded to the control room. The bulkheads were bare expanses, with only a few nests of torn wires and broken conduits to show where the dials and gauges had been ripped from their mounting places. The place looked desecrated and defiled. Cap left the control room and mounted to the pilot's cuddy. Here, too, Rain's work was in evidence. The old man stood there looking at the dismantled chart screens and thinking about the ship's straight, strange, and tragic past. Her lifeboats were gone, and the inner door of the airlock was still open. Her passengers and crews must have attempted escape in the end. Had they managed to slip by the absorber and reach the asteroid, the name or chart number of which the captain had neglected to mention in the log? And were there such things as absorbers? Or had the captain, under stress of the situation, given in to his emotions and flights of fancy? Cap had heard the the usual sailor stories, of course. How a freighter had come upon one of them off Saturn's Rim and sent out a gig to investigate how the gig and all men in it had simply dissolved and become a part of the writhing cloud of mist, and how that cloud had then slowly coalesced into the shape of the six men and the gig. As he stood there, Cap abruptly became aware of a vague pulsation, a rhythmic thudding from far off. He put his Ear to the the wall, the sound lost some of its vagueness but was still undeterminable as to source. He went down the port ladder to the tween deck. Here the sound faded into nothingness, only to return as he descended the catwalk to the engine room. But in that cavern like chamber he became conscious of something else. He had a feeling he was surrounded by life, as if he stood within the body of a living intelligence whose material form included the ship itself. Clearly audible now was that distant thud, thud, thud, like the beating of a great heart. Saturday rain announced he was ready to shoot down the Andromeda. Unfortunately, Cap figured he wouldn't be there to see the show. He had had a signal from one of his weather robots on the dark side of the planet that morning, reporting that a cold front was moving down and the migration of the Artox was about to begin. The Artox could be mighty troublesome when they came in mass. If Cap didn't want his golf course eaten to the roots, he'd have to stop them before they started. The generators which powered the barrier wires to cross the pass would have to be turned on and the relay stations set in order. It was late before he made his return. Dusk had set in and the Strawba's twin moons were riding high when he reached the hill overlooking the house on the flap below him he could see the moonlight glint on the barrel of the Duffield Defender, and he could see Clarence Raynes standing by the Gunness. He made preparations to fire. For a moment Cap stood there, drinking in the scene, his golf course spread out in the blue light like a big carpet, and in the center of it, the black cigar shaped Perseus. There was something viral about that antiquated ship, something different from the Andromeda he had seen through scope. It was as if the Perseus were all masculine, while the Andromeda were its dainty feminine counterpart. And then rain touched the trigger. The there was an ellipse of yellow flame, a mushroom of white smoke, and a dull roar. Cap was flung backward by the shock. The hills fielded, the explosion flung it back, and the thunder went grumbling over the countryside. In the empty silence that followed, Cap's wrist watch ticked off the passing minutes. The moonlight returned from behind a passing cloud to reveal rain by the Dullfield Defender. Binoculars to his eyes, time snailed by. The night was passing. And then the roar came again. This time from above, Cap saw a great cylindrical shadow slanting down from the sky. The Andromeda struck far out on the flat beyond the house. It struck with a crash of grinding metal and crumbling girders. For an instant after that, a hush fell over everything. And then from the Perseus and the golf course came a sound, low at first, growing louder and louder. To Cap, it sounded like a moan of anguish, of hatred and despair that seemed to issue from a hundred throats. The Perseus trembled, began to move. Cap stared. The ship moved on its belly across the fairway like a timeless juggernaut. It entered the flat and slid out across the tableland toward the crumpled wreckage of its sister vessel. Rain twisted about as he heard the thunder of that advancing hulk. Fear and disbelief contorted his face. He uttered a cry, leaped from the mount of the dull field, and began to run wildly the across across the flat. For an instant, Cap thought he was going to reach the first low hillock that led to higher ground in safety. But Cap had reckoned without the terrific drive of that vessel. Was it the absorber, that strange creature of outer space which had transposed its own inexplicable life into the shell of the dismantled Perseus? And now was that ship alive with all the ship's hates, joys and sorrows, organic into inorganic, a transmission transmutation of a supernormal life into a materialistic structure of metal, cosmic metapsychosis too tremendous for the finite mind to grasp. The Perseus came on, bowling across the flat like a monster of metal gone mad. Grinding over rock, outcropping gravel, throwing up a thick cloud of dusk. It came on with a terrible fixation of purpose, with a relentless compulsion that knew no halting. It met and engulfed the helpless figure of the Clarence reign, and a cry of mingled hate and triumph seemed to rise up from its metal body. The Perseus continued along the moonlit plateau, heading straight for the wreckage of the Andromeda. Not until it had reached that formless mass did it stop. Then it shuddered to a sand still, and ever so gently touched its prow to the prow of the sister ship. For a long moment Cap stood there motionless. Then, head down, he slowly made his way down the hill toward his house. End of Strangers to Straba by Carl Jacoby.