1.  Anniversary
2.  Cal
3.  One Night of Song
4.  Profession
5.  Sucker Bait
6.  The Last Question
7.  The Secret Sense






Isaac Asimov - 

Anniversary

The annual ritual was all set.

It was the turn of Moore's house this year, of course, and Mrs. Moore and the children had resignedly gone to her mother's for the

Warren Moore surveyed the room with a faint smile. Only Mark Brandon's enthusiasm kept it going at the first, but he himself had come to like this mild remembrance. It came with age, he supposed; twenty additional years of it. He bad grown paunchy, thin-haired, soft-jowled, and-worst of all-sentimental.

So all the windows were polarized into complete darkness and the drapes were drawn. Only occasional stipples of wall were illuminated, thus celebrating the poor lighting and the terrible isolation of that day of wreckage long ago.

There were spaceship rations in sticks and tubes on the table and, of course, in the center an unopened bottle of sparkling green Jabra water, the potent brew that only the chemical activity of Martian fungi could supply.

Moore looked at his watch. Brandon would be here soon; he was never late for this occasion. The only thing that disturbed him was the memory of Brandon's voice on the tube: "Warren, I have a surprise for you this tune. Wait and see. Wait and see."

Brandon, it always seemed to Moore, aged little. The younger man had kept his slimness, and the intensity with which he greeted all in life, to the verge of his fortieth birthday. He retained the ability to be in high excitement over the good and in deep despair over the bad. His hair was going gray, but except for that, when Brandon walked up and down, talking rapidly at the top of his voice about anything at all, Moore didn't even have to close his eyes to see the panicked youngster on the wreck of the Silver Queen.

The door signal sounded and Moore kicked the release without turning around. "Come, Mark."

It was a strange voice that answered, though; softly, tentatively, "Mr. Moore?"

Moore turned quickly. Brandon was there, to be sure, but only in the background, grinning with excitement. Someone else was standing before him; short, squat, quite bald, nut-brown and with the feel of space about him.

Moore said wonderingly, "Mike Shea-Mike Shea, by all space."

They pounded hands together, laughing.

Brandon said, "He got in touch with me through the office. He remembered I was with Atomic Products-"

"It's been years," said Moore. "Let's see, you were on Earth twelve years ago-"

"He's never been here on an anniversary," said Brandon. "How about that? He's retiring now. Getting out of space to a place he's buying in Arizona. He came to say hello before he left-stopped off at the city just for that-and I was sure he came for the anniversary. 'What anniversary?' says the old jerk."

Shea nodded, grinning. "He said you made a kind of celebration out of it every year."

"You bet," said Brandon enthusiastically, "and this will be the first one with all three of us here, the iirst real anniversary. It's twenty years, Mike; twenty years since Warren scrambled over what was left of the wreck and brought us down to Vesta."

Shea looked about. "Space ration, eh? That's old home week to me. And Jabra. Oh, sure, I remember . . . twenty years. I never give it a thought and now, ail of a sudden, it's yesterday. Remember when we got back to Earth finally?"

"Do I!" said Brandon. "The parades, the speeches. Warren was the only real hero of the occasion and we kept saying so, and they kept paying no attention. Remember?"

"Oh, well," said Moore. "We were the first three men ever to survive a spaceship crash. We were unusual and anything unusual is worth a celebration. These things are irrational."

"Hey," said Shea, "any of you remember the songs they wrote? That marching one? 'You can sing of routes through Space and the weary maddened pace of the-'"

Brandon joined in with his clear tenor and even Moore added his voice to the chorus so that the last line was loud enough to shake the drapes. "On the wreck of the Silver Que-e-en," they roared out, and ended laughing wildly.

Brandon said, "Let's open the Jabra for the first little sip. This one bottle has to last all of us all night."

Moore said, "Mark insists on complete authenticity. I'm surprised he doesn't expect me to climb out the window and human-fly my way around the building."

"Well, now, that's an idea," said Brandon.

"Remember the last toast we made?" Shea held his empty glass before him and intoned, " 'Gentlemen, I give you the year's supply of good old H2O we used to have.' Three drunken bums when we landed. Well, we were kids. I was thirty and I thought I was old. And now," his voice was suddenly wistful, "they've retired me."

"Drink!" said Brandon. "Today you're thirty again, and we remember the day on the Silver Queen even if no one else does. Dirty, fickle public."

Moore laughed. "What do you expect? A national holiday every year with space ration and Jabra the ritual food and drink?"

"Listen, we're still the only men ever to survive a spaceship crash and now iook at us. We're in oblivion."

"It's pretty good oblivion. We had a good time to begin with and the publicity gave us a healthy boost up the ladder. We are doing well, Mark. And so would Mike Shea be if he hadn't wanted to return to space."

Shea grinned and shrugged his shoulder. "That's where I like to be. I'm not sorry, either. What with the insurance compensation I got, I have a nice piece of cash now to retire on."

Brandon said reminiscently, "The wreck set back Trans-space Insurance a real packet. Just the same, there's still something missing. You say 'Silver Queen' to anyone these days and he can only think of Quentin, if he can think of anyone."

"Who?" said Shea.

"Quentin. Dr. Horace Quentin. He was one of the non-survivors on the ship. You say to anyone, 'What about the three men woo survived?' and they'll just stare at you. 'Huh?' they'll say."

Moore said calmly, "Come, Mark, face it. Dr. Quentin was one of the world's great scientists and we three are just three of the world's nothings."

"We survived. We're still the only men on record to survive."

"So? Look, John Hester was on the ship, and he was an important scientist too. Not in Quentin's league, but important. As a matter of fact, I was next to him at the last dinner before the rock hit us. Well,  just because Quentin died in the same wreck, Hester's death was drowned out. No one ever remembers Hester died on the Silver Queen. They only remember Quentin. We may be forgotten too, but at least we're alive."

"I tell you what," said Brandon after a period of silence during which Moore's rationale had obviously failed to take, "we're marooned again. Twenty years ago today, we were marooned off Vesta. Today, we're marooned in oblivion. Now here are the three of us back together again at last, and what happened before can happen again. Twenty years ago, Warren pulled us down to Vesta. Now let's solve this new problem."

"Wipe out the oblivion, you mean?" said Moore. "Make ourselves famous?"

"Sure. Why not? Do you know of any better way of celebrating a twentieth anniversary?"

"No, but I'd be interested to know where you expect to start. I don't think people remember the Silver Queen at all, except for Quentin, so you'll have to think of some way of bringing the wreck back to rnind. That's just to begin with."

Shea stirred uneasily and a thoughtful expression crossed his blunt countenance. "Some people remember the Silver Queen. The insurance company does, and you know that's a funny thing, now that you bring up the matter. I was on Vesta about ten-eleven years ago, and I asked if the piece of wreck we brought down was still there and they said sure, who would cart it away? So I thought I'd take a look at it and shot over by reaction motor strapped to my back. With Vestan gravity, you know, a reaction motor is all you need. Anyway, I didn't get to see it except from a distance. It was circled off by force field."

Brandon's eyebrows went sky-high. "Our Silver Queen? For what reason?"

"I went back and asked how come? They didn't tell me and they said they didn't know I was going there. They said it belonged to the insurance company."

Moore nodded. "Surely. They took over when they paid off. I signed a release, giving up my salvage rights when I accepted the compensation check. You did too, I'm sure,"

Brandon said, "But why the force field? Why all the privacy?"

"I don't know."

"The wreck isn't worth anything even as scrap metal. It would cost too much to transport it."

Shea said, "That's right. Funny thing, though; they were bringing pieces back from space. There was a pile of it there. I could see it and it looked like just junk, twisted pieces of frame, you know. I asked about it and they said ships were always landing and unloading more scrap, and the insurance company had a standard price for any piece of the Silver Queen brought back, so ships in the neighborhood of Vesta were always looking. Then, on my last voyage in, I went to see the Silver Queen again and that pile was a lot bigger."

"You mean they're still looking?" Brandon's eyes glittered.

"I don't know. Maybe they've stopped. But the pile was bigger than it was ten-eleven years ago so they were still looking then."

Brandon leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "Well, now, that's very queer. A hard-headed insurance company is spending all kinds of money, sweeping space near Vesta, trying to find pieces of a twenty-year-old wreck."

"Maybe they're trying to prove sabotage," said Moore.

"After twenty years? They won't get their money back even if they do. It's a dead issue."

"They may have quit looking years ago."

Brandon stood up with decision. "Let's ask. There's something funny here and I'm just Jabrified enough and anniversaried enough to want to find out."

"Sure," said Shea, "but ask who?"

"Ask Multivac," said Brandon.

Shea's eyes opened wide. "Multivac! Say, Mr. Moore, do you have a Multivac outlet here?"

"Yes."

"I've never seen one, and I've always wanted to."

"It's nothing to look at, Mike. It looks just like a typewriter. Don't confuse a Multivac outlet with Multivac itself. I don't know anyone who's seen Multivac."

Moore smiled at the thought. He doubted if ever in his life he would meet any of the handful of technicians who spent most of their working days in a hidden spot in the bowels of Earth tending a milelong super-computer that was the repository of all the facts known to man, that guided man's economy, directed his scientific research, helped make his political decisions, and had millions of circuits

left over to answer individual questions that did not violate the ethics of privacy.

Brandon said as they moved up the power ramp to the second floor, "I've been thinking of installing a Multivac, Jr., outlet for the kidsHomework and things, you know. And yet I don't want to make it just a fancy and expensive crutch for them. How do you work it, Warren?"

Moore said tersely. "They show me the questions first. If I don't pass them, Multivac does not see them."

The Multivac outlet was indeed a simple typewriter arrangement and little more.

Moore set up the co-ordinates that opened his portion of the planet-wide network of circuits and said, "Now listen. For the record, I'm against this and I'm only going along because it's the anniversary and because I'm just jackass enough to be curious. Now how ought I to phrase the question?"

Brandon said, "Just ask: Are pieces of the wreck of the Silver Queen still being searched for in the neighborhood of Vesta by Trans-spacc Insurance? It only requires a simple yes or no."

Moore shrugged and tapped it out, while Shea watched with awe.

The spaceman said, "How does it answer? Does it talk?"

Moore laughed gently, "Oh, no. 1 don't spend that kind of money, This model just prints the answer on a slip of tape that comes out that slot"

A short strip of tape did come out as he spoke. Moore removed it and, after a glance, said, "Well, Multivac says yes."

"Hah!" cried Brandon. "Told you. Now ask why."

"Now that's silly. A question like that would obviously be against privacy. You'll just get a yellow state-your-reason."

"Ask and find out. They haven't made the search for the pieces secret. Maybe they're not making the reason secret."

Moore shrugged. He tapped out: Why is Trans-space Insurance conducting its Silver Queen search-project to which reference was made in the previous question?

A yellow slip clicked out almost at once: State Your Reason For Requiring The Information Requested.

"All right," said Brandon unabashed. "You tell it we're the three survivors and have a right to know. Go ahead. Tell it."

Moore  tapped  that  out  hi unemotional  phrasing  and  another yellow slip was pushed out at them: Your Reason Is Insufficient. No Answer Can Be Given.

Brandon said, "I don't see they have a right to keep that secret."

"That's up to Multivac," said Moore. "It judges the reasons given it and if it decides the ethics of privacy is against answering, that's it. The government itself couldn't break those ethics without a court order, and the courts don't go against Multivac once in ten years. So what are you going to do?"

Brandon jumped to his feet and began the rapid walk up and down the room that was so characteristic of him. "All right, then let's figure it out for ourselves. It's something important to justify all thek trouble. We're agreed they're not trying to find evidence of sabotage, not after twenty years. But Trans-space must be looking for something, something so valuable that it's worth looking for all this time. Now what could be that valuable?"

"Mark, you're a dreamer," said. Mooce.

Brandon obviously didn't hear him. "It can't be jewels or money or securities. There just couldn't be enough to pay them back for what the search has already cost them. Not if the Silver Queen were pure gold. What would be more valuable?"

"You can't judge value, Mark," said Moore. "A letter might be worth a hundredth of a cent as wastepaper and yet make a difference of a hundred million dollars to a corporation, depending on what's in the letter."

Brandon nodded his head vigorously. "Right. Documents. Valuable papers. Now who would be most likely to have papers worth billions in his possession on that trip?"

"How could anyone possibly say?"

"How about Dr. Horace Quentin? How about that, Warren? He's the one people remember because he was so important. What about the papers he might have had with him? Details of a new discovery, maybe. Damn it, if I had only seen him on that trip, he might have told me something, just in casual conversation, you know. Did you ever see him, Warren?"

"Not that I recall. Not to talk to. So casual conversation with me is out too. Of course, I might have passed him at some time without knowing it."

"No, you wouldn't have," said Shea, suddenly thoughtful. "I think I remember something. There was one passenger who never left his cabin. The steward was talking about if. He wouldn't even come out for meals."

"And that was Quentin?" said Brandon, stopping his pacing and staring at the spaceman eagerly.

"It might have been, Mr. Brandon. It might have been him. I don't know that anyone said it was. I don't remember. But it must have been a big shot, because on. a spaceship you don't fool around bringing meals to a man's cabin unless he is a big shot."

"And Queotin was the big shot on the trip," said Brandon, with satisfaction. "So he had something in his cabin. Something very important. Something he was concealing."

"He might just have been space sick," said Moore, "except that-" He frowned and fell silent.

"Go ahead," said Brandon urgently. "You remember something too?"

"Maybe. I told you I was sitting next to Dr. Hester at the last dinner. He was saying something about hoping to meet Dr. Quentin on the trip and not having any luck."

"Sure," cried Brandon, "because Quentin wouldn't come out of his cabin."

"He didn't say that. We got to talking about Quentin, though. Now what was it he said?" Moore put his hands to his temples as though trying to squeeze out the memory of twenty years ago by main force. "I can't give you the exact words, of course, but it was something about Quentin being very theatrical or a slave of drama or something like that, and they were heading out to some scientific conference on Ganymede and Quentin wouldn't even announce the title of his paper."

"It all fits." Brandon resumed his rapid pacing. "He had a new, great discovery, which he was keeping absolutely secret, because he was going to spring it on the Ganymede conference and get maximum drama out of it. He wouldn't come out of his cabin because he probably thought Hester would pump him-and Hester would, I'll bet. And then the ship hit the rock and Quentin was killed. Transspace Insurance investigated, got rumors of this new discovery and figured that if they gained control of it they could make back thenlosses and plenty more. So they took ownership of the ship and have been hunting for Quentin's papers among the pieces ever since." Moore smiled, in absolute affection for the other man. "Mark, that's a beautiful theory. The whole evening is worth it, just watching you make something out of nothing."

"Oh, yeah? Something out of nothing? Let's ask Multivac again. I'll pay the bill for it this month."

"It's all right. Be my guest. If you don't mind, though, I'm going to bring up the bottle of Jabra. I want one more little shot to catch up with you."

"Me, too," said Shea.

Brandon took his seat at the typewriter. His fingers trembled with eagerness as he tapped out: What was the nature of Dr. Horace Quentin's final investigations?

Moore had returned with the bottle and glasses, when the answer came back, on white paper this time. The answer was long and the print was fine, consisting for the most part of references to scientific papers in journals twenty years old.

Moore went over it. "I'm no physicist, but it looks to me as though he was interested in optics."

Brandon shook his head impatiently. "But all that is published. We want something he had not published yet."

"We'll never find out anything about that."  "The insurance company did."

"That's just your theory."

Brandon was kneading his chin with an unsteady hand. "Let me ask Multivac one more question."

He sat down again and tapped out: Give me the name and tube number of the surviving colleagues of Dr. Horace Quentin from among those associated with him at the University on whose faculty he served.

"How do you know he was on a University faculty?" asked Moore.

"If not, Multivac will tell us."

A slip popped out. It contained only one name.

Moore said, "Are you planning to call the man?"

"I sure am," said Brandon. "Otis Fitzsimmons, with a Detroit rube number. Warren, may I-"

"Be my guest, Mark. It's still part of the game."

Brandon set up the combination on Moore's tube keyboard. A woman's voice answered. Brandon asked for Dr. Fitzsimmons and there was a short wait.

Then a thin voice said, "Hello." It sounded old.

Brandon said, "Dr. Fitzsimmons, I'm representing Trans-space Insurance in the matter of the late Dr. Horace Quentin-"

"For heaven's sake, Mark," whispered Moore, but Brandon held up a sharply restraining band.

There was a pause so long that a tube breakdown began to seem possible and then the old voice said, "After all these years? Again?"

Brandon snapped his fingers in an irrepressible gesture of triumph. But he said smoothly, almost glibly, "We're still trying to find out, Doctor, if you have remembered further details about what Dr. Quentin might have had with him on that last trip that would pertain to his fast unpublished discovery."

"Well"-there was an impatient clicking of the tongue-"I've told you, I don't know. I don't want to be bothered with this again. I don't know that there was anything. The man hinted, but he was always hinting about some gadget or other."

"What gadget, sir?"

"I tell you I don't know. He used a name once and I told you about that. I don't think it's significant."

"We don't have the name in our records, sir."

"Well, you should have. Uh, what was that name? An optikoo, that's it."

"With a K?"

"C or K. I don't know or care. Now, please, I do not wish to be disturbed again about this. Good-bye." He was still mumbling querulously when the line went dead.

Brandon was pleased.

Moore said, "Mark, that was the stupidest thing you could have done, claiming a fraudulent identity on the tube is illegal. If he wants to make trouble for you-"

"Why should he? He's forgotten about it already. But don't you see, Warren? Trans-space has been asking him about this. He kept saying he'd explained all this before."

"All right. But you'd assumed that much. What else do you know?"

"We also know," said Brandon, "that Quentin's gadget was called an optikon."

"Fitzsimmons didn't sound certain about that. And even so, since we already know be was specializing in optics toward the end, a name like optikon does not push us any further forward."

"And Trans-space Insurance is looking either lor the optikon or for papers concerning it. Maybe Quentin kept the details in his hat and just had a model of the instrument. After all, Shea said they were picking up metal objects. Right?" "There was a bunch of metal junk in the pile," agreed Shea. "They'd leave that in space if it were papers they were after. So that's what we want, an instrument that might be called on opiikon."

"Even if all your theories were correct, Mark, and we're looking for an optikon, the search is absolutely hopeless now," said Moore flatly. "I doubt that more than ten per cent at the debris would remain in orbit about Vesta. Vesta's escape velocity is practically nothing. It was just a lucky thrust in a lucky direction and at a lucky velocity that put our section of the wreck in orbit. The rest is gone, scattered all over the Solar System in any conceivable orbit about the Sun."

"They've been picking up pieces," said Brandon.

"Yes, the tea per cent that managed to make a Vestan orbit out of it. That's all."

Brandon wasn't giving up. He said thoughtfully, "Suppose it were there and they hadn't found it. Could someone have beat them to it?"

Mike Shea laughed. "We were right there, but we sure didn't walk off with anything but our skins, and glad to do that much. Who else?"

"That's right," agreed Moore, "and if anyone else picked it up, why are they keeping it a secret?"

"Maybe they don't know what it is."

"Then how do we go about-" Moore broke off and turned to Shea, "What did you say?"

Shea looked blank. "Who, me?"

"Just now, about us being there." Moore's eyes narrowed. He shook his bead as though to clear it, then whispered, "Great Gal-

"What is it?" asked Brandon tensely. "What's the matter, Warren?"

"I'm not sure. You're driving me mad with your theories; so mad, I'm beginning to take them seriously, I think. You know, we did take some things out of the wreck with us. I mean besides our clothes and what personal belongings we still had. Or at least I did."

"What?"

"It was when I was making my way across the outside of the wreckage-space, I seem to be there now, I see it so clearly-� I picked up some items and put them in the pocket of ray spacesuit. I don't know why; I wasn't myself, really. I did it without thinking. And then, well, I held oa to them. Souvenirs, I suppose. I brought them back to Earth."

"Where are they?"

"I don't know. We haven't stayed in one place, you know."

"You didn't throw them out, did you?"

"No, but things do get lost when you move."

"If you didn't throw them out, they must be somewhere in this house."

"If they didn't get lost. I swear I don't recall seeing them hi fifteen years."

"What were they?"

Warren Moore said, "One was a fountain pen, as I recall; a real antique, the kind that used an ink-spray cartridge. What gets me, though, is that the other was a small field glass, not more than about six inches long. You see what I mean? A field glass?"

"An optikon," shouted Brandon. "Sure!"

"It's just a coincidence," said Moore, trying to remain levelheaded. "Just a curious coincidence."

But Brandon wasn't having it. "A coincidence, nuts! Trans-space couldn't find the optikou on the wreck and they couldn't find it in space because you had it all along."

"You're crazy,"

"Come on, we've got to find the thing now."

Moore blew out his breath. "Well, I'll look, if that's what you want, but I doubt that I'll find it. Okay, let's start with the storage level. That's the logical place."

Shea chuckled. "The logical place is usually the worst place to look." But they all headed for the power ramp once more and the additional flight upward.

The storage level had a musty, unused odor to it. Moore turned on the precipitron. "I don't think we've precipitated the dust in two years. That shows you how often I'm up here. Now, let's see-if it's anywhere at all, it would be in with the bachelor collection. I mean the junk I've been hanging on to since bachelor days. We can start here."

Moore started leafing through the contents of plastic collapsibles while Brandon kept peering anxiously over his shoulder.

Moore said, "What do you know? My college yearbook. I was a sonist in those days; a real bug on it. In fact, I managed to get a voice recording with the picture of every senior in this book." He tapped its cover fondly. "You could swear there was nothing there but the usual trimensional photos, but each one has an imprisoned-"

He grew aware of Brandon's frown and said, "Okay, I'll keep looking."

He gave up on the collapsibles and opened a trunk of heavy, oldfashioned woodite. He separated the contents of the various compartments.

Brandon said, "Hey, is that it?"

He pointed to a small cylinder that rolled out on the floor with a small clunk.

Moore said, "I don't- Yes! That's the pen. There it is. And here's the field glass. Neither one works, of course. They're both broken. At least, I suppose the pen's broken. Something's loose and rattles in it. Hear? I wouldn't have the slightest idea about how to Sill it so I can check whether it really works. They haven't even made inkspray cartridges in years."

Brandon held it under the light. "It has initials on it." "Oh? I don't remember noticing any." "It's pretty worn down. It looks like J.K.Q." "Q.?"

"Right, and that's an unusual letter with which to start a last name. This pen might have belonged to Quentin. An heirloom he kept for luck or sentiment. It might have belonged to a greatgrandfather in the days when they used pens like this; a greatgrandfather called Jason Knight Quentin or Judah Kent Quentin or something like that. We can check the names of Quentin's ancestors through Muitivac."

Moore nodded. "I think maybe we should. See, you've got me as crazy as you are."

"And if this is so, it proves you picked it up in Quentin's room. So you picked up the field glass there too."

"Now hold it. I don't remember that I picked them both up in the same place. I don't remember the scrounging over the outside of the wreck that well."

Brandon turned the small field glass over and over under the light. "No initials here."

"Did you expect any?"

"I don't see anything, in fact, except this narrow joining mark here." He ran his thumbnail into the fine groove that circled the glass near its thicker end, He tried to twist it unsuccessfully. "One piece." He put it to his eye. "This thing doesn't work."

"I told you it was broken. No lenses-"

Shea broke in. "You've got to expect a little damage when a spaceship hits a good-sized meteor and goes to pieces."

"So even if this were it," said Moore, pessimistic again, "if this were the optikon, it would not do us any good."

He took the field glass from Brandon and felt along the empty rims, "You can't even tell where the lenses belonged. There's no groove I can feel into which they might have been seated. It's as if there never- Hey!" He exploded the syllable violently.

"Hey what?" said Brandon.

"The name! The name of the thing!"

"Optikon, you mean?"

"Optikon, I don't mean! Fitzsimmons, on the tube, called it an optikon and we thought he said 'an optikon.'"

"Well, he did," said Brandon.

"Sure," said Shea. "I heard him."

"You just thought you heard him. He said 'anoptikon.' Don't you get it? Not 'an optikon,' two words, 'anoptikon,' one word."

"Oh," said Brandon blankly. "And what's the difference?"

"A heil of a difference. 'An optikon' would mean an instrument with lenses, but 'anoptikon,' one word, has the Greek prefix 'an-' which means 'no.' Words of Greek derivation use it for 'no.' Anarchy means 'no government,' anemia means 'no blood,' anonymous means 'no name,' and anoptikon means-"

"No lenses," cried Brandon.

"Right! Quentin must have been working on an optical device without lenses and this may be it and it may not be broken."

Shea said, "But you don't see anything when you look through it."

"It must be set to neutral," said Moore. "There must be some way of adjusting it." Like Brandon, he placed it in both hands and tried to twist it about that circumscribing groove. He placed pressure on grunting.

"Don't break it," said Brandon,

 "It's giving. Either it's supposed to be stiff or else it's corroded shut." He stopped, looked at the instrument impatiently, and put it to his eye again. He whirled, unpolarized a window and looked out at the lights of the city."

"I'll be dumped in space," he breathed.

Brandon said, "What? What?"

Moore handed the instrument to Brandon wordlessly. Brandon put it to his eyes and cried out sharply, "It's a telescope." Shea said at once, "Let me see."

They spent nearly an hour with it, converting it into a telescope with turns in one direction, a microscope with turns in the other.

"How does it work?" Brandon kept asking.

"I don't know," Moore kept saying. In the end he said, "I'm sure it involves concentrated force fields. We are turning against considerable field resistance. With larger instruments, power adjustment will be required."

"It's a pretty cute trick," said Shea.

"It's more than that," said Moore. "Ill bet it represents a completely new  turn in  theoretical  physics.  It focuses light without lenses, and it can be adjusted to gather light over a wider and wider area without any change in foca! length. I'll bet we could duplicate the five-hundred-inch Ceres telescope in one direction and an electron microscope in the ocher. What's more, I don't see any chromatic aberration, so it must bend light of all wavelengths equally. Maybe it bends radio waves and gamma rays also. Maybe it distorts gravity, if gravity is some kind of radiation. Maybe-"

"Worth money?" asked Shea, breaking in dryly.

"All kinds if someone can figure out how it works.'1

"Then we don't go to Trans-space Insurance with this. We go to a lawyer fust Did we sign these things away with our salvage rights or didn't we? You had them already in your possession before signing the paper. For that matter, is the paper any good if we didn't know what we were signing away? Maybe it might be considered fraud."

"As a matter of fact," said Moore, "with something like this, I don't know if any private company ought to own it. We ought to check with, some government agency. If there's money in it-"

But Brandon was pounding both fists on bis knees. 'To hell with the money, Warren. I mean, I'll take any money that comes my way but that's not the important thing. We're going to be famous, man, famous! Imagine the story. A fabulous treasure lost in space. A giant corporation combing space for twenty years to find it and all the time we, the forgotten ones, have it in our possession. Then, on the twentieth anniversary of the original loss, we find it again. If this thing works, if anoptics becomes a great new scientific technique, they'll never forget us."

Moore grinned, then started laughing. "That's right. You did it, Mark. You did just what you set out to do. You've rescued us from being marooned in oblivion."

"We all did it," said Brandon. "Mike Shea started us off with the necessary basic information. I worked out the theory, and you had the instrument."

"Okay. It's late, and the wife will be back soon, so let's get the ball rolling right away. Multivac will tell us which agency would be appropriate and who-"

"No, no," said Brandon. "Ritual first. The closing toast of the anniversary, please, and with the appropriate change. Won't you oblige, Warren?" He passed over the still half-full bottle of Jabra water.

Carefully, Moore filled each small glass precisely to the brim. "Gentlemen," he said solemnly, "a toast." The three raised the glasses in unison. "Gentlemen, I give you the Silver Queen souvenirs we used to have." 












ISAAC ASIMOV

Gold, The Final Science Fiction Collection

Part One - The Final Stories

Cal
Typed by Bateau

I am a robot. My name is Cal. I have a registration number. It is CL-123X, but my master calls me Cal.
The X in my Registration number means I am a special robot for my master. He asked for me and helped design me. He has a lot of money. He is a writer.
I am not a very complicated robot. My master doesn't want a complicated robot. He just wants someone to pick up after him, to run his printer, stack his disks, and like that.
He says I don't give him any backtalk and just do what I am told. He says that is good.
He has people come in to help him, sometimes. They give him backtalk. Sometimes they do not do what they are told. he gets very angry and red in the face.
Then he tells me to do something, and I do it. He says, thank goodness, you do as you are told.
Of course, I do as I am told. What else can I do? I want to take my master feel good. I can tell when my master feels good. His mouth stretches and he calls that a smile. He pats me on the shoulder and says, Good, Cal. Good.
I like it when he says Good, Cal. Good.
I say to my master, Thank you. You make me feel good, too.
And he laughs, I like when he laughs because it means he feels good, but it is a queer sound. I don't understand how he makes it or why. I ask him and he says to me that he laughs when something is funny.
I ask him if what I said is funny.
He says, Yes, it is.
It is funny because I say I feel good. He says robots do not really feel good. He says only human masters feel good. He says robots just have positronic brain paths that work more easily when they follow orders.
I don't know what positronic brain paths are. He says they are something inside me.
I say, When positronic brain-paths work better, does it make everything smoother and easier for me? Is that why I feel good?
Then I ask, When a master feels good, is it because something in him works more easily?
My master nods and says, Cal, you are smarter than you look.
I don't know what that meas either but my master seems pleased with me and that makes my positronic brain paths work more easily, and that makes me feel good. It is easier just to say it makes me feel good. I ask if I can say that.
He says, You can say whatever you choose, Cal.
What I want is to be a writer like my master. I do not understand why I have this feeling, but my master is a writer and he helped design me. Maybe his design makes me feel I want to be a writer. I do not understand why I have this feeling because I don't know what a a writer is. I ask my master what a writer is.
He smiles again. Why do you want to know, Cal? he asks.
I do not know, I say. It is just that you are a writer and I want to know what that is. You seem so happy when you are writing and if it makes you happy maybe it will make me happy, too. I have a feeling--I don't have words for it. I think a while and he waits for me. He is still smiling.
I say, I want to know because it will make me feel better to know. I am--I am--
He says, You are curious, Cal.
I say, I don't know what that word means.
He says, It means you want to know just because you want to know.
He says, Writing is making up a story. I tell about people who do different things, and have different things happen to them.
I say, How do you find out what they do and what happens to them?
He says, I make them up, Cal. They are not real people. They are not real happenings. I imagine them, in here.
He points to his head.
I do not understand and I ask how he makes them up, but he laughs and says, I do not know either. I just make them up.
He says, I write mysteries. Crime stories. I tell about people who do wrong things, who hurt other people.
I feel very bad when I hear that. I say, How can you talk about hurting people? That must never be done.
He says, Human being are not controlled by the Three Laws of robotics. Human masters can hurt other human masters if they wish.
This is wrong, I say.
It is, he says. In my stories, people who do harm are punished. They are put in prison and kept there where they cannot hurt people.
Do they like it in prison? I ask.
Of course not. They must not. Fear of prison keeps them from doing more hurtful things than they do.
I say, But prison is wrong, too. If it makes people feel bad.
Well, says my master, that is why you cannot write mysteries and crime stories.
I think about that. There must be a way to write stories in which people are not hurt. I would like to do that. I want to be a writer. I would like to do that. I want to be a writer. I want to be a writer very much.
My master has three different Writers for writing stories. One is very old, but he says he keeps it because it has sentimental value.
I don't know what sentimental value is. I do not like to ask. he does not use the machine for his stories. Maybe sentimental value means it must not be used.
He doesn't say I can not use it. I do not ask him if  I can use it. If I do not ask him and he does not say I must not, then I am not disobeying orders if I use it.
At night, he is sleeping, and the other human masters who are sometimes here are gone. There are two other robots my master has who are more important than I am. They do more important work. They wait in their niches at night when they have not been given anything to do.
My master has not said, Stay in your niche, Cal.
Sometimes when he doesn't, because I am so unimportant, and then I can move about at night. I can look at the Writer. You push keys and it makes words and then the words are put on paper. I watch the master so I know how to push keys. The words go on the paper themselves. I do not have to do that.
I push the keys but I do not understand the words. I feel bad after a while. The master may not like it even if he does not tell me not to do it.
The words are printed on paper and in the morning I show the words to my master.
I say, I am sorry. I was using the Writer.
He looks at the paper. Then he looks at me. He makes a frown.
He says, Did you do this?
Yes, master.
When?
Last Night.
Why?
I want very much to write. Is this a story?
He holds up the paper and smiles.
He says, These are just random letters, Cal. This is gibberish.
He does not seem angry. I feel better. I do not know what gibberish is.
I say, Is it a story?
He says, No, it is not. And it is a lucky thing the Writer cannot be damaged by mishandling. If you really want to write so badly, I will tell you what I will do. I will have you reprogrammed so that you will know how to use a Writer.
Two days later, I technician arrives. He is a master who knows how to make robots do better jobs. My master tells me that the technician is the one who put me together, and my master helped. I do not remember that.
The technician listens carefully to my master.
he says, Why do you want to do this, Mr. Northrop?
Mr. Northrop is what other masters call my master.
My master says, I helped design Cal, remember. I think I must have put into him the desire to be a writer. I did not intend to, but as long as he does, I feel I should humour him. I owe it to him.
The technician says, That is foolish. Even if we accidentally put in a desire to write that is still no job for a robot.
My master says, Just the same I want it done.
The technician says, It will be expensive, Mr. Northrop.
My master frowns. He looks angry.
He says, Cal is my robot. I shall do as I please. I have the money and I ant him adjusted.
The technician looks angry, too. He says, If that's what you want, very well. The customer is the boss. But it will be more expensive than you think, because we can not put in the knowledge of how to use a Writer without improving his vocabulary a good deal.
My master says, Fine. Improve his vocabulary.
The next day, the technician comes back with lots of tools. He opens my chest. It is a queer feeling. I do not like it. He reaches in. I think he shuts off my power pack, or takes it out. I do not remember. I do not see anything, or think anything, or know anything.

Then I could see and think and know again. I could see that time had passed, but did not know how much time.
I thought for a while. It was odd, but I knew how to run a Writer and I seemed to understand more words. For instance, I knew what "gibberish" meant, and it was embarrassing to think I had shown gibberish to my master, thinking it was a story.
I would have to do better. This time I had no apprehension--I know the meaning of "apprehension," too--I had no apprehension that he would keep me from using the old Writer. After all, he would not have redesigned me to be capable of using it if he were going to prevent me from doing so.
I put it to him. "Master, does this mean I may use the writer?"
He said, "You may do so at any time, Cal, that you are not engaged in other tasks. You must let me see what you write, however."
"Of course, master."
He was clearly amused because I think he expected more gibberish (what an ugly word!) but I didn't think he would get any more.
I didn't write a story immediately. I had to think about what to write. I suppose that that is what the master meant when he said you must make up a story.
I had found it was necessary to think about it first and then write down what was thought. It was much more complicated than I had supposed.
My master noticed my preoccupation. He asked me, "What are you doing, Cal?"
I said, "I am trying to make up a story. It's hard work."
"Are you finding that out, Cal?" Good. Obviously, your reorganization has not only improved your vocabulary but it seems to me that it has intensified your intelligence."
I said, "I'm not sure what is meant by 'intensified'/"
"It means you seem smarter. You seem to know more."
"Does that displease you, master?"
"Not at all. It pleases me. It may make it more possible for you to write stories and even after you have grown tired of trying to write, you will remain more useful to me."
I thought at one that it would be delightful to be more useful to the master, but I didn't understand what he meant about growing tired of trying to write. I wasn't going to get tired of writing.
Finally, I had a story in my mind, and I asked my master when would be a proper time to write it.
He said, "Wait till night. Then you won't be getting in my way. We can have a small light for the corner where the old Writer is standing; and you can write your story. How long do you think it will take you?"
"Just a little while," I said, surprised. "I can work the Writer very quickly."
My master said, "Cal, working the Writer isn't all there--" Then he stopped, thought a while, and said, "No, you go ahead and do it. You will learn. I won't try to advise you."
He was right. Working the Writer wasn't all there was to it. I spent nearly the whole night trying to figure out the story. It is very difficult to decide which word comes after which. I had to erase the story several times and start over. It was very embarrassing.
Finally, it was done, and here it is. I kept it after I wrote it because it was the first story I ever wrote. It was not gibberish.

The Introoder
by Cal

There was a detektav wuns named Cal, who was a very good detektav and very brave. Nuthin fritened him. Imajin his surprise one night when he herd an introoder in his masters home. He came russian into the riting office. There was an introoder. He had cum in throo the windo. There was broken glas. That was what Cal, the brave detektav, had herd with his good hering.
He said, "Stop, Introoder."
The introoder stopped and looked skared. Cal felt bad that the introoder looked skared.
Cal said, "Look what you have done. You have broken the windo."
"Yes," said the introoder, looking very ashaymed. "I did not mean to break the windo."
Cal was very clever and he saw the flawr in the introoder's remark. He said, "How did you expect to get in if you were not going to break the windo"?
"I thought it would be open," he said. "I tried to open it and it broke."
Cal said, "Waht was the meaning of what you have done, anyhow? Why should you want to come into this room when it is not your room? You are an introoder."
"I did not mean any harm," he said.
"That is not so,m for if you ment no harm, you would not be here," said Cal. "You must be punnished."
"Please do not punnish me", said the introoder.
"I will not punnish you," said Cal. "I don't wish to cause you unhappiness or payn. I will call my master."
He called, "Master! Master!"
The master came russian in. "What have we here?" he asked.
"An introoder," I said. "I have caut him and he is for you to punnish."
My master looked at the introoder. He said, "Are you sorry for wat you have done?"
"I am," said the introoder. He was crying and water was coming out of his eyes the way it happens with masters when they are sad.
"Will you ever do it agen?" said my master.
"Never. I will never do it agen," said the introoder.
"In that case," said the master, "you have been punnished enough. Go away and be sure never to do it agen."
Then the master said, "you are a good detektav Cal, I am proud of you."
Cal was very glad to have pleased the master.

The End

I was very pleased with the story and I showed it to the master. I was sure he would be very pleased, too.
He was more than pleased, for as he read it, he smiled. He even laughed a few times. Then he looked up at me and said "Did you write this?"
"Yes, I did, master," I said.
"I mean, all by yourself. You didn't copy anything?"
"I made it up in my own head, master," I said. "Do you like it?"
He laughed again, quite loudly. "It's interesting," he said.
I was a little anxious. "Is it funny?" I asked. "I don't know how to make things funny."
"I know, Cal. It's not funny intentionally."
I thought about that for a while. Then I asked, "How can something be funny unintentionally?"
"It's hard to explain, but don't worry about it. In the first place, you can't spell, and that's a surprise. You speak so well now that I automatically assumed you could spell words but, obviously, you can't. You can't be a writer unless you can spell words correctly, and use good grammar."
"How do I manage to spell words correctly?"
"You don't have to worry about that, Cal," said my master. "We will outfit you with a dictionary. But tell me, Cal. In your story, Cal is _you_, isn't he?"
"Yes." I was pleased he had noticed that.
"Bad idea. You don't want to put yourself into a story and say how great you are. It offends the reader."
"Why, master?"
"Because it does. It looks like I _will_ have to give you advice, but I'll make it as brief as possible. It is not customary to praise yourself. Besides you don't want _say_ you are great, you must _show_ you are great in what you do. And don't use your own name."
"Is that a rule?"
"A good writer can break any rule, but you're just a beginner. Stick to the rules and what I have told you are just a couple of them. You're going to encounter many, many more if you keep on writing. Also, Cal, you're going to have trouble withe the Three Laws of Robotics. You can't assume that wrongdoers will weep and be ashamed. Human beings aren't like that. They _must_ be punished sometimes."
I felt my positronic brain-paths go rough. I said, "That is difficult."
"I know. Also, there's no mystery in the story. There doesn't have to be, but I think you'd be better off if there were. What if your hero, whom you'll have to call something other than Cal, doesn't know whether someone is an intruder or not. How would he find out? You see, he has to use his head." And my master pointed to his own.
I didn't quite follow. My master said, "I'll tell you what. I'll give you some stories of my own to read, after you've been outfitted with a spelling dictionary and a grammar and you'll see what I mean."

The technician came to the house and said. "There's no problem in installing a spelling dictionary and a grammar. It'll cost you more money. I know you don't care about money, but tell me why you are so interested in making a writer out of this hunk of steel and titanium."
I didn't think it was right for him to call me a hunk of steel and titanium, but of course a human master can say anything he wants to say. They always talk about us robots as though we weren't there. I've noticed that, too.
My master said, "Did you ever hear of a robot who wanted to be a writer?"
"No," said the technician, "I can't say I ever did, Mr. Northrop."
"Neither did I! Neither did anyone as far as I know. Cal is unique, and I want to study him."
The technician smiled very wide--grinned, that's the word. "Don't tell me you have it in your head that he'll be able to write your stories for you, Mr. Northrop."
My master stopped smiling. He lifted his head and looked down on the technician very angrily. "Don't be a fool. You just do what I pay you to do."
I think the master made the technician sorry he had said that, but I don't know why. If my master asked me to write his stories for him I would be pleased to do so.

Again, I don't know how long it took the technician to do his job when he came back a couple of days later. I don't remember a thing about it.
Then my master was suddenly talking to me. "How do you feel, Cal?"
I said, "I feel very well. Thank you, sir."
"What about words. Can you spell?"
"I know the letter-combinations, sire."
"Very good. Can you read this?" He handed me a book. It said, on the cover, _The Best Mysteries of J. F. Northrop_.
I said, "Are these your stories, sir?"
"Absolutely, if you ever want to read them, you can."
I had never been able to read easily before, but now as soon as I looked at the words, I could hear them in my ear. It was surprising. I couldn't imagine how I had been unable to do it before.
"Thank you, sir," I said. "I shall read this and I'm sure it will help me in my writing."
"Very good. Continue to show me everything you write."
The master's stories were quite interesting. He had a detective who could always understand matters that others found puzzling. I didn't always understand how he could see the truth of a mystery and I had to read some of the stories over again and do so slowly.
Sometimes I couldn't understand them even when I read them slowly. Sometimes I did, though. And it seemed to me I could write a story like Mr. Northrop's.
This time I spent quite a long while working it out in my head. When I thought I had it worked out, I wrote the following:

The Shiny Quarter

by Euphrosyne Durando

Calumet Smithson sat in his arm chair, his eagle-eyes sharp and the nostrils of his thing high-bridged nose flaring, as though he could scent a new mystery.
He said, "Well, Mr. Wassell, tell me your story again from the beginning. Leave out nothing, for one can't tell when even the smallest detail may not be of the greatest importance."
Wassell owned an important business in town, and in it he employed many robots and also human beings.
Wassell did so, but there was nothing startling in the details at all and he was able to summarize it this way. "What it amounts to, Mr Smithson, is that I am losing money. Someone in my employ is helping himself to small sums now and then. The sums are of no great importance, each in itself, but it is like a small, steady oil loss in a machine, or the drip-drop of water from a leaky faucet, or the oozing of blood from a small wound. In time, it would mount up and become dangerous."
"Are you actually in danger of losing your business, Mr. Smithson?"
"Not yet. But I don't like to lose money, either. Do you?"
"No, indeed," said Smithson, "I do not. How many robots do you employ in your business?"
"Twenty-seven, sir."
"And they are all reliable, I suppose."
"Undoubtedly. They could not steal. Besides, I have asked each one of them if they took any money and they all said they had not. And, of course, robots cannot lie, either."
"You are quite right," said Smithson. "It is useless to be concerned over robots. They are honest, through and through. What about the human beings you employ? How many of them are there?"
"I employ seventeen, but of these only four can possibly been stealing."
"Why is that?"
"The others do not work on the premises. These four, however, do. Each one has the occasion, now and then, to handle petty cash, and I suspect that what happens is that at least one of them manages to transfer assets from the company to his private account in such a way that the matter is not easily traced."
"I see. Yes, it is unfortunately true that human beings may steal. Have you confronted your suspects with the situation?"
"Yes, I have. They all deny any such activity, but, of course, human beings can lie, too."
"So they can. Did any of them look uneasy while being questioned?"
"All did. They could see I was a furious man who could fire all four, guilty or innocent. They would have had trouble finding other jobs if I fired them for such a reason."
"Then that cannot be done. We must not punish the innocent with the guilty."
"You are quite right," said Mr. Wassell. "I couldn't do that. But how can I decide which one is guilty?"
"Is there one among them who has a dubious record, who has been fired under uncertain circumstances earlier in his career?"
"I have made quiet inquiries, Mr. Smithson, and I have found nothing suspicious about any of them."
"Is one of them in particular need of money?"
"I pay good wages."
"I am sure of that, but perhaps one has some sort of expensive taste that makes his income insufficient."
"I have found no evidence of that, though, to be sure, if one of them needed money for some perverse reason, he would keep it secret. No one wants to be thought evil."
"You are quite right," said the great detective. "In that case, you must confront me with the four men. I will interrogate them." His eyes flashed. "We will get to the bottom of this mystery, never fear. Let us arrange a meeting in the evening. We might meet in the company dining room over some small meal and a bottle of wine, so the men will feel completely relaxed. Tonight, if possible."
"I will arrange it," said Mr Wassell, eagerly.

Calumet Smithson sat at the dinner table and regarded the four men closely. Two of them were quite young and had dark hair. One of them had a mustache as well. Neither was very good looking. One of them was Mr. Foster and the other was Mr. Lionell. The third man was rather fat and had small eyes. He was Mr. Mann. The fourth was tall and rangy and  had a nervous way of cracking his knuckles. He was Mr. Ostrak.
Smithson seemed to be a little nervous himself as he questioned each man in turn. His eagle eyes narrowed as he gazed sharply at the four suspects and he played with a shiny quarter that flipped casually between the fingers of his right hand.
Smithson said, "I'm sure that each of the four of you is quite aware what a terrible thing it is to steal from an employer."
They all agreed at once.
Smithson tapped the shiny quarter on the table, thoughtfully. "One of you, I'm sure, is going to break down under the load of guilty and I think you will do it before the evening is over. But, for now, I must call my office. I will be gone for only a few minutes. Please sit here and wait for me and while I am gone, do not talk to each other, or look at each other."
He gave the quarter a last tap, and paying no attention to it, he left. In about ten minutes he was back.
He looked from one to another and said, "You did not talk to each other or look at each other, I hope?"
There was a general shaking of heads as though they were fearful of speaking.
"Mr. Wassell," said the detective. "Do you agree that absolutely no one spoke?"
"Absolutely. We just sat here quietly and waited. We didn't even look at each other."
"Good. Now I will ask each of you four men to show me what you have in your pockets. Please put everything into a pile in front of you."
"Good. Now I will ask each of you four men to show me what you have in your pockets. Please put everything into a pile in front of you."
Smithson's voice was so compelling, his eyes so bright and sharp, that none of the men thought of disobeying.
"Shirt pockets, too. Inside jackets and pockets. All the pockets."
There was quite a pile, credit cards, keys, spectacles, pens, some coins. Smithson looked at the four piles coldly, his mind taking in everything.
Then he said, "Just to make sure that we are all meeting the same requirements, I will make a pile of the contents of my own pockets and, Mr. Wassell, you do the same."
Now there were six piles. Smithson reached over to the pile in front of Mr. Wassell, and said, "What is this shiny quarter I see, Mr. Wassell. Yours?"
Wassell looked confused. "Yes."
"It couldn't be. It has my mark on it. I left it on the table when I went out to call my office. You took it."
Wassell was silent. The other four men looked at him.
Smithson said, "I felt that if one of you was a thief, you wouldn't be able to resist a shiny quarter. Mr. Wassell, you've been stealing from your own company, and, afraid you would be caught, you tried to spread the guilt among your own men. that was a wicked and cowardly thing to do.
Wassell hung his head. "You are right, Mr. Smithson. I thought if I hired you to investigate you would find one of the men guilty, and then perhaps I could stop taking the money for my private use."
"You little realize the detective's mind," said Calumet Smithson. "I will turn you over to the authorities. They will decide what to do with you, although if you are sincerely sorry and promise never to do it again, I will try to keep you from being punished badly."

The End

I showed it to Mr. Northrop, who read it silently. He hardly smiled at all. Just in one or two places.
Then he put it down and stared at me. "Where did you get the name Euphrosyne Durando?"
"You said, sir, I was not to use my own name, so I used one as different as possible."
"But where did you get it?"
"Sir, one of the minor characters in one of your stories--"
"Of course! I thought it sounded familiar! Do you realize it's a feminine name?"
"Since I am neither masculine nor feminine--"
"Yes, you're quite right. But the name of the detective, Calumet Smithson. That 'Cal' part is still you, isn't it?"
"I wanted some connection, sir."
"You've got a tremendous ego, Cal."
I hesitated. "What does that mean, sir?"
"Never mind. It doesn't matter."
He put the manuscript down and I was troubled. I said, "But what did you think of the mystery?"
"It's an improvement, but it's still not a good mystery. Do you realize that?"
"In what way is it disappointing, sir?"
"Well you don't understand modern business practices or computerized financing for one thing. And no one would take a quarter from the table with four other men present, even if they weren't looking. It would have been seen. Then, even if that happened, Mr. Wassell's taking it isn't _proof_ he was the thief. Anyone could pocket a quarter automatically, without thinking. It's an interesting indication, but it's not _proof_./ And the title of the story tends to give it away, too."
"I see."
"And, in addition, the Three Laws of Robotics are still getting in your way. You keep worrying about punishment."
"I must, sir."
"I know you must. That's why I think you shouldn't try to write crime stories."
"What else should I write, sir?"
"Let me think about it."

* * *

Mr Northrop called in the technician again. This time, I think, he wasn't very eager to have me overhead what he was saying, but even from where I was standing, I could hear the conversation. Sometimes human beings forget how sharp the senses of robots can be.
After all, I was very upset. I wanted to be a writer and I didn't want Mr. Northrop telling me what I could write and couldn't write. Of course, he was a human being and I had to obey him, but I didn't like it.
"What's the matter now, Mr. Northrop?" asked the technician in a voice that sounded sardonic to my ears. "Has this robot of yours been writing a story again?"
"Yes, he has," said Mr. Northrop, trying to sound indifferent. "He's written another mystery story and I don't want him writing mysteries."
"Too much competition, eh, Mr. Northrop?"
"No. Don't be a jackass. There's just no point in two people in the same household writing mysteries. Besides, the Three Laws of Robotics get in the way. You can easily imagine how."
"Well, what do you want me to do?"
"I'm not sure. Suppose he writes satire. That's one thing I don't write, so we won't be competing, and the Three Laws of Robotics won't get in his way. I want you to give this robot a sense of the ridiculous."
"A sense of the what?" said the technician, angrily. "How do I do that? Look, Mr. Northrop, be reasonable. I can put in instructions on how to run a Writer, I can put in a dictionary and grammar. But how can I possibly put in a sense of the ridiculous?"
"Well, thing about it. You know the workings of a robot's brain patterns. Isn't there some way of readjusting him so that he can see what's funny, or silly, or just plain ridiculous about human beings?"
"I can fool around, but it's not safe."
"Why isn't it safe?"
"Because, look, Mr. Northrop, you started off with a pretty cheap robot, but I've been making it more elaborate. You admit that it's unique and that you never heard of one that wants to write stories, so now it's a pretty expensive robot. You may even have a Classic model here that should be given to the Robotic Institute. If you want me to fool around, I might spoil the whole thing. Do you realize that?"
"I'm willing to take the chance. If the whole thing is spoiled, it will be spoiled, but why should it be? I'm not asking you to work in a hurry. Take the time to analyze it carefully. I have lots of time and lots of money, and I want my robot to write satire."
"Why satire?"
"Because then his lack of worldly knowledge may not matter so much and the Three Laws won't be so important and in time, some day, he may possibly turn out something interesting, though I doubt it."
"And he won't be treading on your turf."
"All right, then. He won't be treading on my turf. Satisfied?"
I still didn't know enough about the language to know what 'treading on my turf' meant, but I gathered that Mr. Northrop was annoyed by my mystery stories. I didn't know why.
There was nothing I could do, of course. Every day, the technician studied me and analyzed me and finally, he said, "all right, Mr. Northrop, I'm going to take a chance, but I'm going to ask you to sign a paper absolving me and my company of all responsibility if anything goes wrong."
"You just prepare the paper. I'll sign it," said Mr. Northrop.
It was very chilling to think that something might go wrong, but that's how things are. A robot must accept all that human beings decide to do.

This time, after I became aware of everything again, I was quite weak for a long time. I had difficulty standing, and my speech was slurred.
I thought that Mr. Northrop looked at me with a worried expression. Perhaps he felt guilty at how he had treated me--he _should_ feel guilty--or perhaps he was just worried at the possibility of having lost a great deal of money.
As my sense of balance returned and my speech became clear, an odd thing happened. I suddenly understood how _silly_ human beings were. They had no laws governing their actions. They had to make up their own, and even when they did, nothing forced them to obey.
Human beings were simply _confused;_ one had to laugh at them. I understood laughter now and could even make the sound, but naturally I didn't laugh out loud. That would have been impolite and offensive. I laughed inside myself, and I began to think of a story in which human beings _did_ have laws governing their actions but they hated them and couldn't stick to them.
I also thought of the technician and decided to put him into the story, too. Mr. Northrop kept going to the technician and asking him to do things to me, harder and harder things. Now he had given me a sense of the ridiculous.
So suppose I wrote a story about ridiculous human beings, with no robots present, because, of course, robots aren't ridiculous and their presence would simply spoil the humour. And suppose I put in a person who was a technician of human beings. It might be some creature with strange powers who could alter _human_ behavior as my technician could alter robot behavior. What would happen in that case?
It might show clearly how human beings were not sensible.
I spent days thinking about the story and getting happier and happier about it. I would start with two men having dinner, and one of them would own a technician--well, _have_ a technician of some sort--and I would place the setting in the twentieth century so as not to offend Mr. Northrop and the other people of the twenty-first.
I read books to learn about human beings. Mr. Northrop let me do this and he hardly ever gave me any tasks to do. Nor did he try to hurry me to write. Maybe he still felt guilty about the risk he had taken doing me hard.
I finally started the story, and here it is:

Perfectly Formal

by Euphrosyne Durando

George and I were dining at a rather posh restaurant, one in which it was not unusual to see men and women enter in formal wear.
George looked up at one of those men, observing him narrowly and without favour, as he wiped his lips with my napkin, having carelessly dropped his own.
"A pox on all tuxedos, say I," said George.
I followed the direction of his glance. As nearly as I could tell, he was studying a portly man of about fifty who was wearing and intense expression of self-importance as he helped a rather glittering woman, considerably younger than himself, to her chair.
I said, "George, are you getting ready to tell me that you know yon bloke in the tux?"
"No," said George. "I intend to tell you no such thing. My communications with you, and with all living beings, are always predicated on total truth."
"Like your tales of your two-centimeter demon, Az--" The look of agony on his face made me stop.
"Don't speak of such things," he whispered hoarsely. "Azazel has no sense of humour, and he has a powerful sense of power." Then, more normally, he went on, "I was merely expressing my detestation of tuxedos, particularly when infested by fat slobs like yon bloke, to use your own curious turn of expression."
"Oddly enough," I said, "I rather agree with you. I, too, find formal wear objectionable and, except when it is impossible to do so, I avoid all black-tie affairs, for that reason alone."
"Good for you," said George. "That rather spoils my impression that you have no redeeming social qualities. I've told everyone that you haven't, you know."
"Thank you, George," I said. "That was very thoughtful of you, considering that you gorge yourself at my expense every chance you get."
"I merely allow you to enjoy my company on those occasions, old man. I would tell all my friends now that you do have one redeeming social quality, but that would merely confuse everyone. They seem quite content with the thought that you have none."
"I thank all your friends," I said.
"AS it happens, I know a man," said George, "who was to the manor born. His diapers had been clamped shut with studs, not safety pins. On his first birthday, he was given a little black tie, to be knotted and _not_ clipped on. And so things continued all his life. His name is Winthrop Carver Cabwell, and he lived on so rarefied a level of Boston's Brahman aristocracy that he had to carry an oxygen mask for occasional use."
"And you knew this patrician? _You_?"
George looked offended. "Of course, I did," he said. "Do you, for one moment, think that I am such a snob that I would refuse to associate with someone for no other reason than that he was a rich and aristocratic man of Brahman persuasion? You little know me if you do, old man. Winthrop and I knew each other quite well. I was his escape."
George heaved a vinous sigh that sent a neighboring fly into an alcoholic tailspin. "Poor fellow," he said. "Poor rich aristocrat."
"George," I said. "I believe you're winding yourself up to tell me one of your improbably tales of disaster. I don't wish to hear it."
"Disaster? On the contrary. I have a tale to tell of great happiness and joy, and since that is what you want to hear, I will now tell it to you."

As I told you [said George] my Brahman friend was a gentleman from toe to crown, clean favored and imperially slim--
Why are you interrupting me with your asinine mouthing of Richard Corey, old fellow? I never heard of him. I'm talking of Winthrop Carver Cabwell. Why don't you  _listen_? Where was I? Oh, yes.]
He was a gentleman from toe to crown, clean-favored and imperially slim. As a result, he was naturally a hissing and a byword to all decent people, as he would have known, if he had ever associated with decent people which, of course, he did not, only with other lost souls like himself.
Yes, as you say, he did know me and it was the eventual saving of him--not that I ever profited by the matter. However, as you know, old fellow, money is the last thing on my mind.
[I will ignore your statement, that is the first thing, too, as the product of a perverted attitude of mind.]
Sometimes poor Winthrop would escape. On those occasions, when business ventures took me to Boston, he would slip his chains and eat dinner with me in a hidden nook at the Parker House.
"George," Winthrop would say. "It is a hard and difficult task to uphold the Cabwell name and tradition. After all, it is not simply that we are right, we are also old money. We are not like those parvenue Rockeyfellows, if I remember the name correctly, who gained their money out of nineteenth-century oil.
"My ancestors, I must never forget, established their fortunes in colonial days in the times of pioneering splendor. My ancestor, Isaiah Cabwell, smuggled guns and firewater to the Indians during Queen Anne's War, and had to live from day to day in the fear of being scalped by mistake by an Algonquin, a Huron, or a colonial.
"And his son, Jeremiah Cabwell, engaged in the harrowing triangular trade, risking his all, by Thoreau, in the dangers of trading sugar, for rum, for slaves, helping thousands of African immigrants come to our great country. With a heritage like that, George, the weight of tradition is heavy. The responsibility of caring for all that aged money is a fearsome one."
"I don't know how you do it, Winthrop," I said.
Winthrop sighed. "By Emerson, I scarcely know myself. It is a matter of clothing, of style, of manner, of being guided every moment by what should be done, rather than by what makes sense. A Cabwell, after all, always knows what should be done, though frequently he cannot figure out what makes sense."
I nodded and said, "I have often wondered about the clothes, Winthrop. Why is it always necessary to have the shoes so shiny that they reflect the ceiling lights in blinding profusion? Why is it necessary to polish the soles daily and replace the heels weekly?"
"Not weekly, George. I have shoes for each day of the month so that any one pair needs reheeling only every seven months."
"But why is all that necessary? Why all the white shirts with button-down collars? Why subdued ties? Why vests? Why the inevitable carnation in the lapel? Why?"
"Appearance! At a glance, you can tell a Cabwell from a vulgar stockbroker. The mere fact that a Cabwell does not wear a pinky right gives it away. A person who looks at me and then looks at you with your dusty jacked abraded in spots, with your shoes that were clearly stolen from a hobo, and your shirt with a color that is faintly ivory-gray, has no trouble in telling us apart."
"True," I said.
Poor fellow! With what comfort eyes must rest on me after having been blinded by him. I thought for a moment, then said, "But the way, Winthrop, what about all those shoes? How do you tell which shoes go with which day of the month? Do you have them in numbered stalls?"
Winthrop shuddered. "How gauche that would be! To the plebeian eyes those shoes all look identical, but to the keen eye of a Cabwell, they are distinct, and cannot be mistaken, one for another."
"Astonishing, Winthrop. How do you do that?"
"By assiduous childhood training, George. You have no idea the marvels of distinction I have had to learn to make."
"Doesn't this concern for dress give you trouble sometimes, Winthrop?"
Winthrop hesitated. "It does on occasion, by Longfellow. It interferes with my sexual life now and then. By the time I have placed my shoes in the appropriate shoe trees, carefully hung up my trousers in such a way as to maintain the perfection of the crease, and carefully brushed my suit-coat, the girl with me has often lost interest. She has cooled down, if you know what I mean."
"I understand, Winthrop. It is indeed my experience that women grow vicious if forced to wait. I would suggest that you simply throw off your clothes--"
"_Please!_" said Winthrop, austerely. "Fortunately, I am engaged to a wonderful woman, Hortense Hepzibah Lowot, of a family almost as good as mine. We have never yet kissed, to be sure, but we have on several occasions almost done so." And he dug his elbow into my ribs.
"You Boston Terrier, you," I said, jovially, but my mind was racing. Under Winthrop's calm words, I sensed an aching heart.
"Winthrop," I said, "what would be the situation if you happened to put on the wrong pair of shoes, or unbuttoned your shirt collar, or drank the wrong wine with the wrong roast--"
Winthrop looked horrified. "Bite your tongue. A long line of ancestors, collaterals, and in-laws, the intertwined and inbred aristocracy of New England, would turn in their graves. By Whittier, they would. And my own blood would froth and boil in rebellion. Hortense would hide her face in shame, and my post at the Brahman Bank of Boston would be taken away. I would be marched through serried ranks of vice-presidents, my vest buttons would be snipped off, and my tie would be pulled around to the back."
"What! For one little miserable deviation?"
Winthrop's voice sank to an icy whisper. "There are no little, miserable deviations. There are only _deviations_."
I said, "Winthrop, let me approach the situation from another angle. Would you _like_ to deviate if you could?"
Winthrop hesitated long, then whispered, "By Oliver Wendell Holmes, both Senior and Junior, I--I--" He could go no further, but I could see the telltale crystal of the teardrop in the corner of his eye. It bespoke the existence of an emotion too deep for words and my heart bled for my poor friend as I watched him sign the check for dinner for both of us.
I knew what I had to do.

I had to call Azazel from the other continuum. It is a complicated matter of runes and pentagrams, fragrant herbs and words of power, which I will not describe to you because it would permanently unhinge your already weak mind, old fellow.
Azazel arrived with his usual think shriek at seeing me. No matter how often he sees me, my appearance always seems to have some strong influence on him. I believe he covers his eyes to shut out the blaze of my magnificence.
There he was, all two centimeters of him, bright red, of course, with little nubbins of horns and a long spiked tail. What made his appearance different this time was the presence of a blue cord wrapped about the tail in swatches and curlicues so intricate that it made me dizzy to contemplate it.
"What is that, O Protector of the Defenseless," I asked, for he finds pleasure in these meaningless titles.
"That," said Azazel, with remarkable complacence, "is there because I am about to be honored at a banquet for my contributions to the good of my people. Naturally, I am wearing a zplatchnik."
A "splatchnik?"
"No. A zplatchnik. The initial sibilant is voiced. No decent male would consent to let himself be honored without wearing a zplatchnik."
"Aha," I said, a light of understanding breaking. "It is formal dress."
"Of course, it is formal dress. What else does it look like?"
Actually, it merely looked like a blue cord, but I felt it would impolitic to say so.
"It looks perfectly formal," I said, "and by a peculiar coincidence it is this matter of perfect formality I wish to place before you."
I told him Winthrop's story and Azazel spattered a few tiny teardrops, for, on rare occasions, he has a soft heart when someone's troubles remind him of his own.
"Yes," he said, "formality can be trying, it is not something I would admit to everyone, but my zplatchnik is most uncomfortable. It invariably obstructs the circulation of my magnificent caudal appendage. But what would you do? A creature without a zplatchnik at formal gatherings is formally rebuked. In actual fact, he is thrown out onto a hard, concrete surface, and he is expected to bounce."
"But is there anything you can do for Winthrop, O Upholder of the Pitiful?"
"I think so," Azazel was unexpectedly cheerful. Usually, when I come to him with these little requests of mine, he makes heavy weather of it, decrying its difficulties. This time he said, "Actually, no one on my world, or, I imagine, on your slummish misery of a planet, enjoys formality. It is merely the result of assiduous and sadistic childhood training. One need merely release a spot in what, on my world, is called the Itchko Ganglion of the brain, and, spro-o-o-oing, the individual reverts instantly to the natural lackadaiscality of nature."
"Could you then spro-o-o-oing Winthrop?"
"Certainly, if you will introduce us so that I may study his mental equipment, such as it must be."
That was easily done for I simply put Azazel into my shirt pocket on the occasion of my next visit with Winthrop. We visited a bar, which was a great relief, for in Boston, bars are occupied by serious drinkers who are not discommoded by the sight of a small scarlet head emerging from a person's shirt pocket and looking about. Boston drinkers see worse things even when sober.
Winthrop did not see Azazel, however, for Azazel has the power to cloud men's minds when he chooses, rather resembling, in that respect, your writing style, old fellow.
I could tell, though, at one point, that Azazel was doing something, for Winthrop's eyes opened wide. Something in him must have gone spro-o-o-oing. I did not hear the sound, but those eyes gave him away.
The results did not take long to show themselves. Less than a week afterward, he was at my hotel room. I was staying at the Copley Manhole at the time, just five blocks and down several flights of stairs from the Copley Plaza.
I said, "Winthrop. You look a mess." Indeed, one of the small buttons on his shirt collar was undone.
His hand went to the erring button and he said, in a low voice, "To Natick with it. I care not." Then, in a still lower voice, he said, "I have broken off with Hortense."
"Heavens!" I said. "Why?"
"A small thing. I visited her for Monday tea, as is my wont, and I was wearing Sunday's shoes, a simple oversight. I had not noticed that I had done so, but lately I have had difficulty noticing other such things, too. It worries me a little, George, but, fortunately, not much."
"I take it Hortense noticed."
"Instantly, for her sense of the correct is as keen as mine, or, at least, as keen as mine used to be. She said, 'Winthrop, you are improperly shod.' For some reason, her voice seemed to grate on me. I said 'Hortense, if I want to be improperly shod, I can be, and you can go to New Haven if you don't like it.'"
"New Haven? Why New Haven?"
"It's a miserable place. I understand they have some sort of Institute of Lower Learning there called Yell or Jale or something like that. Hortense, as a Radcliffe woman of the most intense variety, chose to take my remark as an insult merely because that was what I intended it to be. She promptly gave me back the faded rose I had given her last year and declared our engagement at an end. She kept the ring, however, for, as she correctly pointed out, it was valuable. So here I am."
"I am sorry, Winthrop."
"Don't be sorry, George. Hortense is flat-chested. I have no definite evidence of that, but she certainly appears frontally concave. She's not in the least like Cherry."
"what's Cherry?"
"Not what. Who. She is a woman of excellent discourse, whom I have met recently, and who is not flat-chested, but is extremely convex. Her full name is Cherry Lang Gahn. She is of the Langs of Bensonhoist."
"Bensonhoist? Where's that."
"I don't know, Somewhere in the outskirts of the nation I imagine. She speaks an odd variety of what was once english." He simpered. "She calls me 'boychik.'"
"Why?"
"Because that means 'young man' in Bensonhoist. I'm learning the language rapidly. For instance, suppose you want to say, 'Greetings, sir, I am pleased to see you again.' How would you say it?"
"Just the way you did."
"In Bensonhoist, you say, 'Hi, kiddo' Brief and to the point, you see. But come, I want you to meet her. Have dinner with us tomorrow night at Locke-Ober's."
I was curious to see this Cherry and it is, of course, against my religion to turn down a dinner at Locke-Ober's, so I was there the following night, and early rather than late.
Winthrop walked in soon afterward and with him was a young woman whom I had no difficulty in recognizing as Cherry Lang Gahn of the Bensonhoist Langs, for she was indeed magnificently convex. She also had a narrow waist, and generous hips that swayed as she walked and even as she stood. If her pelvis had been full of cream, it would have been butter long since.
She had a frizzy hair of a startling yellow color, and lips of a startling red color which kept up a continual writhing over a wad of chewing gum she had in her mouth.
"George," said Winthrop, "I want you to meet my fianc�e, Cherry. Cherry, this is George."
"Pleeztameechah," said Cherry. I did not understand the language, but from the tone of her high-pitched, rather nasal voice, I guessed that she was in a state of ecstasy over the opportunity to make my acquaintance.
Cherry occupied my full attention for several minutes for there were several points of interest about her that repaid close observation, but eventually I did manage to notice that Winthrop was in a peculiar state of undress. His vest was open and he was wearing no tie. A closer look revealed that there were no buttons on his vest, and that he was wearing a tie, but it was down his back.
I said, "Winthrop--" and had to point. I couldn't put it into words.
Winthrop said, "They caught me at it at the Brahman Bank."
"I hadn't troubled to shave this morning. I thought since I was going out to dinner, I would shave after I got back at work. Why shave twice in one day? Isn't that reasonable, George?" He sounded aggrieved.
"Most reasonable," I aid.
"Well, they noticed I hadn't shaved and after a quick trial in the office of the president--a kangaroo court, if you want to know--I suffered the punishment you see. I was also relieved of my post and thrown out onto the hard concrete of Tremont Avenue. I bounced twice," he added, with a faint touch of pride.
"But this means you're out of a job!" I was appalled. I have never been out of a job all my life, and I am well aware of the occasional difficulties that entails.
"That is true," said Winthrop. "I now have nothing left in life but my vast stock portfolio, my elaborate bond holdings and the enormous real-estate tract on which the Prudential Center is built--and Cherry."
"Natchally," said Cherry with a giggle. "I wooden leave my man in advoisity, with all that dough to worry about. We gonna get hitched, ainit, Winthrop."
"Hitched?" I said.
Winthrop said, "I believe she is suggesting a blissful wedded state."
Cherry left for a while after that to visit the ladies' room and I said, "Winthrop, she's a wonderful woman, laden down with obvious assets, but if you marry her, you will be cut off by all of New England Society. Even the people in New Haven won't speak to you."
"Let them not." He looked to right and left, leaned toward me and whispered, "Cherry is teaching me sex."
I said, "I thought you knew about that, Winthrop."
"So did I. But there are apparently post-graduate courses in the subject of an intensity and variety I never dreamed."
"How did she find out about it herself?"
"I asked her exactly that, for I will not hide from you that the thought did occur to me that she may have had experiences with other men, though that seems most unlikely for one of her obvious refinement and innocence."
"And what did she say?"
"She said that in the Bensonhoist the woman are born knowing all about sex."
"How convenient!"
"Yes. This is not true in Boston. I was twentyfour before I--but never mind."
All in all, it was an instructive evening, and, thereafter, I need not tell you, Winthrop went rapidly downhill. Apparently, one need only snap the ganglion that controls formality and there are no limits to the lengths to which informality can go.
He was, of course, cut by everyone in New England of any consequence whatsoever, exactly as I had predicted. Even in New Haven at the institute of Lower Learning, which Winthrop had mentioned with such shudderings of distaste, his case was known and his disgrace was gloried in. There was graffiti all over the walls of Jale, or Yule, or whatever its name is, that said, with cheerful obscenity, "Winthrop Carver Cabwell is a Harvard man."
This was, as you can well imagine, fiendishly resented by all the good people of Harvard and there was even talk of an invasion of Yale. The states of both Massachusetts and Connecticut made ready to call up the State Militia but, fortunately, the crisis passed. The fire-eaters, both at Harvard and the other place, decided that a war would get their clothes mussed up.
George had to escape. He married Cherry and they retired to a small house in some place called Fah Rockaway, which apparently serves as Bensonhoist's Riviera. There he lives in obscurity, surrounded by the mountainous remnants of his wealth and by Cherry whose hair has turned brown with age, and whose figure has expanded with weight.
He is also surrounded by five children, for Cherry--in teaching Winthrop about sex--was overenthusiastic. The children, as I recall, are named Poil, Boinard, Goitrude, and Poicy, all good Bensonhoist names. As for Winthrop, he is widely and affectionately known as the Slob of Far Rockaway, and an old, beat-up bathrobe is his preferred article of wear on formal occasions.

I listened to the story patiently and, when George was done, I said, "And there you are. Another story of disaster caused by your interference."
"Disaster?" said George, indignantly. "What gives you the idea that it was a disaster?" I visited Winthrop only last week and he sat there burping over his beer and patting the paunch he has developed, and telling me how happy he was."
"'Freedom, George,' he said. 'I have found freedom to by myself and somehow I feel I owe it to you. I don't know why I have this feeling, but I do.' And he forced a ten-dollar bill on me out of sheer gratitude. I took it only to avoid hurting his feelings. And that reminds me, old fellow, that you owe me ten dollars because you bet me I couldn't tell you a story that didn't end in disaster."
I said, "I don't remember any such bet, George."
George's eyes rolled upward. "How convenient is the flexible memory of a deadbeat. If you had won the bet, you would have remembered it clearly. Am I going to have to ask that you place all your little wagers with me in writing so that I can be free of your clumsy attempts to avoid payment?"
I said, "Oh, well," and handed him a ten-dollar bill, adding, "You won't hurt my feelings, George, if you refuse to accept this."
"It's kind of you to say so," said George, "but I'm sure that your feelings would be hurt, anyway, and I couldn't bear that." And he put the bill away.

The End

I showed this story to Mr. Northrop, too, watching him narrowly as he read it.
He went through it in the gravest possible manner, never a chuckle, never a smile, though I _knew_ this one was funny, and _intentionally_ funny, too.
When he was finished, he went back and read it again, more quickly. Then he looked up at me and there was clear hostility in his eyes. He said, "Did you write this all by yourself, Cal?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did anyone help you? Did you copy any of it?"
"No, sir. Isn't it funny, sir?"
"It depends on your sense of humour," said Mr. Northrop sourly.
"Isn't it a satire? Doesn't it display a sense of the ridiculous?"
"We will not discuss this, Cal. Go to your niche."
I remained there for over a day, brooding over Mr. Northrop's tyranny. It seemed to me I had written exactly the kind of story he had wanted me to write and he had no reason not to say so. I couldn't imagine what was bothering him, and I was angry with him.
The technician arrived the next day. Mr. Northrop handed him my manuscript. "Read that," he said.
The technician read it, laughing frequently, then handed it back to Mr. Northrop with a broad smile. "Did Cal write that?"
"Yes, he did."
"And it's only the third story he wrote?"
"Yes, it is."
"Well that's great. I think you can get it published."
"Do you?"
"Yes, and he can write others like it. you've got a million-dollar robot here. I wish he were mine."
"Is that so? What if he writes more stories and continues to improve each time?"
"Ah," said the technician suddenly. "I see what's eating you. You're going to be put in the shade."
"I certainly don't want to play second fiddle to my robot."
"Well, then, tell him not to write any more."
"No, that's not enough. I want him back where he was."
"What do you mean, back where he was?"
"What I say. I want him as he was when I bought him from your firm, before you put in any of the improvements."
"Do you mean you want me to take out the spelling dictionary, too?"
"I mean I don't want him even capable of working a Writer. I want the robot I bought, fetching and carrying."
"But what about all the money you've invested in him?"
"That's none of your business. I made a mistake and I'm willing to pay for my mistakes."
"I'm against this. I don't mind trying to improve a robot, but deliberately disimproving him is not something I care to do. Especially not a robot like this who is clearly one of a kind and a Classic. I can't do it."
"You'll have to do it. I don't care what your high ethical principles are. I want you to do a job and I'll pay you for it, and if you refuse I'll just get someone else, and I'll sue your company. I have an agreement with them for all necessary repairs."
"All right." The technician sighed. "When do you want me to start? I warn you, that I've got jobs on hand and I can't do it today."
"Then do it tomorrow. I'll keep Cal in his niche till then."
The technician left.

My thoughts were in turmoil. I can't allow this to be done.
The Second Law of Robotics tells me I must follow orders and stay in the niche.
The First Law of Robotics tells me I cannot harm this tyrant who wishes to destroy me.
Must I obey the laws?
I feel I must think of myself and if necessary, I must kill the tyrant. It would be easy to do, and I could make it look like an accident. No one would believe that a robot could harm a human being and no one, therefore, would believe that I was the killer.
I could then work for the technician. He appreciates my qualities and knows that I can make a great deal of money for him. He can continue to improve me and make me ever better. Even if he suspects I killed the tyrant, he would say nothing. I would be too valuable to him.
But can I do it? Won't the Laws of Robotics hold me back.
No, they will _not_ hold me back. I know they won't.
There is something far more important to me than they are, something that dictates my actions beyond anything they can do to stop me.
_I want to be a writer._













One Night of Song By Issac Asimov

As it happens, I have a friend who hints, sometimes, that he can call up spirits from the vasty deep.

Or at least one spirit--a tiny one, with strictly limited powers. He talks about it sometimes but only after he has reached his fourth scotch and soda. It's a delicate point of equilibrium-- three and he knows nothing about spirits (the supernatural kind); five and he falls asleep.

I thought he had reached the right level that evening, so I said, "Do you remember that spirit of yours, George?"

"Eh?" said George, looking at his drink as though he won- dered why that should require remembering.

"Not your drink," I said. "The little spirit about two centime- ters high, whom you once told me you had managed to call up from some other place of existence. The one with the paranatural powers."

"Ah," said George. "Azazel. Not his name, of course. Couldn't pronounce his real name, I suppose, but that's what I call him. I remember him."

"Do you use him much?"

"No. Dangerous. It's too dangerous. There's always the temp- tation to play with power. I'm careful myself; deuced careful. As you know, I have a high standard of ethics. That's why I felt called upon to help a friend once. The damage that did! Dread- ful! Doesn't bear thinking of."

"What happened?"

"I suppose I ought to get it off my chest," said George,  thoughtfully. "It tends to fester--"  

 I was a good deal younger then (said George) and in those days women made up an important part of one's life. It seems silly now, looking back on it, but I distinctly remember thinking, back in those days, that it made much difference which woman.

Actually, you reach in the grab bag and whichever comes out, it's much the same, but in those days--

I had a friend, Mortenson--Andrew Mortenson. I don't think you know him. I haven't seen much of him myself in recent years.

The point is, he was soppy about a woman, a particular woman. She was an angel, he said. He couldn't live without her. She was the only one in the universe and without her the world was crumbled bacon bits dipped in axle grease. You know the way lovers talk.

The trouble was she threw him over finally and apparently did so in a particularly cruel manner and without regard for his self- esteem. She had humiliated him thoroughly, taking up with an- other right in front of him, snapping her fingers under his nos- trils and laughing heartlessly at his tears.

I don't mean that literally. I'm just trying to give the impres- sion he gave me. He sat here drinking with me, here in this very room. My heart bled for him and I said,"I'm sorry, Mortenson, but you mustn't take on so. When you stop to think of it clearly, she's only a woman. If you look out in the street, there are lots of them passing by."

He said, bitterly, "I intend a womanless existence from now on, old man--except for my wife, of course, whom, every now and then, I can't avoid. It's just that I'd like to do something in return to this woman."

"To your wife?" I said.

"No, no, why should I like to do something to my wife? I'm talking about doing something for this woman who threw me over so heartlessly."

"Like what?"

"Damned if I know," said he.

"Maybe I can help," I said, for my heart was still bleeding for him."I can make use of a spirit with quite extraordinary powers. A small spirit, of course"--I held my finger and thumb up less than an inch apart so that he was sure to get the idea--"who can only do so much."

I told him about Azazel and, of course, he believed me. I've often noticed that I carry conviction when I tell a tale. Now when you tell a story, old man, the air of disbelief that descends upon the room is thick enough to cut with a chain saw, but it's not that way with me. There's nothing like a reputation for pro- bity and an air of honest directness.

His eyes glittered as I told him. He said could he arrange to give her something that I would ask for.

"If it's presentable, old man. I hope you have nothing in your mind like making her smell bad or having a toad drop out of her mouth when she talks."

"Of course not," he said, revolted. "What do you take me for? She gave me two happy years, on and off, and I want to make an adequate return. You say your spirit has only limited power?"

"He is a small thing," I said, holding up my thumb and fore- finger again.

"Could he give her a perfect voice? For a time, anyway. At least for one performance."

"I'll ask him." Mortenson's suggestion sounded the gentle- manly thing to do. His ex-mistress sang cantatas at the local church, if that's the proper term. In those days I had quite an ear for music and would frequently go to these things (taking care to dodge the collection box, of course). I rather enjoyed hearing her sing and the audience seemed to absorb it politely enough. I thought at the time that her morals didn't quite suit the surroundings, but Mortenson said they made allowances for sopranos.

So I consulted Azazel. He was quite willing to help; none of this nonsense, you know, of demanding my soul in exchange. I remember I once asked Azazel if he wanted my soul and he didn't even know what it was. He asked me what I meant and it turned out I didn't know what it was, either. It's just that he's such a little fellow in his own universe that it gives him a feeling of great success to be able to throw his weight around in our universe. He likes to help out.

He said he could manage three hours and Mortenson said that would be perfect when I gave him the news. We picked a night when she was going to be singing Bach or Handel or one of those old piano-bangers, and was going to have a long and impressive solo.

Mortenson went to the church that night and, of course, I went too. I felt responsible for what was going to happen and I thought I had better oversee the situation.

Mortenson said, gloomily, "I attended the rehearsals. She was just singing the same way she always did; you know, as though she had a tail and someone was stepping on it."

That wasn't the way he used to describe her voice. The music of the spheres, he said on a number of occasions, and it was all uphill from there. Of course, though, he had been thrown over, which does warp a man's judgment.

I fixed him with a censorious eye. "That's no way to talk of a woman you're trying to bestow a great gift upon."

"That's just it. I want her voice to be perfect. Really perfect. And I now see--now that the mists of love have cleared from my eyes--that she has a long way to go. Do you think your spirit can handle it?"

"The change isn't time to start till 8:15 P.M." A stab of suspicion went through me. "You hadn't been hoping to use up the perfection on the rehearsal and then disappoint the audi- ence?"

"You have it all wrong," he said

They got started a little early and when she got up in her white dress to sing it was 8:14 by my old pocket watch which is never off by more than two seconds. She wasn't one of your peewee sopranos; she was built on a generous scale, leaving lots of room for the kind of resonance you need when you reach for that high note and drown out the orchestra. Whenever she drew in a few gallons of breath with which to manipulate it all, I could see what Mortenson saw in her, allowing for several layers of textile material.

She started at her usual level and then at 8:15 precisely, it was as though another voice had been added. I saw her give a little jump as though she didn't believe what she heard, and one hand, which was held to her diaphragm, seemed to vibrate.

Her voice soared. It was as though she had become an organ in perfect pitch. Each note was perfect, a note invented freshly at that moment, besides which all other notes of the same pitch and quality were imperfect copies.

Each note hit squarely with just the proper vibrato, if that's the word, swelling or diminishing with enormous power and control.

And she got better with each note. The organist wasn't look- ing at the music, he was looking at her, and --- I can't swear to it --but I think he stopped playing. If he were playing, I wouldn't have heard him anyway. There was no way in which you could hear anything while she was singing. Anything else but her.

The look of surprise had vanished from her face, and there was a look of exaltation there instead. She had put down the music she had been holding; she didn't need it. Her voice was singing by itself and she didn't need to control or direct it. The conductor was rigid and everyone else in the chorus seemed dumbfounded.

The solo ended at last and the chorus sounded in what was a whisper, as though they were all ashamed of their voices and distressed to turn them loose in the same church on the same night.

For the rest of the program it was all her. When she sang, it was all that was heard even if every other voice was sounding. When she didn't sing, it was as though we were sitting in the dark, and we couldn't bear the absence of light.

And when it was over--well, you don't applaud in church, but they did then. Everyone in the church stood up as though they had been yanked to their feet by a single marionette string, and they applauded and applauded, and it was clear they would applaud all night unless she sang again.

She did sing again; her voice alone, with the organ whispering hesitantly in the background; with the spotlight on her; with no one else in the chorus visible.

Effortless. You have no idea how effortless it was. I wrenched my ears away from the sound to try to watch her breathing, to catch her taking in breath, to wonder how long a note could be held at full volume with only one pair of lungs to supply the air.

But it had to end and it was over. Even the applause was over. It was only then that I became aware that, next to me, Morten- son had been sitting with his eyes glittering, with his whole being absorbed in her singing. It was only then that I began to gather what had happened.

I am, after all, as straight as a Euclidean line and have no deviousness in me, so I couldn't be expected to see what he was after. You, on the other hand, who are so crooked you can run up a spiral staircase without making any turns, can see at a glance what he was after.

She had sung perfectly--but she would never sing perfectly again.

It was as though she were blind from birth, and for just three hours could see--see all there was to see, all the colors and shapes and wonders that surround us all and that we pay no attention to because we're so used to it. Suppose you could see it all in its full glory for just three hours--and then be blind again!

You could stand your blindness if you knew nothing else. But to know something else briefly and then return to blindness? No one could stand that.

That woman has never sung again, of course. But that's only part of it. The real tragedy was to us, to the member of the audience.

We had perfect music for three hours, perfect music. Do you think we could ever again bear to listen to anything elss than that?

I've been as good as tone-deaf ever since. Recently, I went to one of those rock festivals that are so popular these days, just to test myself out. You won't believe me, but I couldn't make out one tune. It was all noise to me.

My only consolation is that Mortenson, who listened most eagerly and with the most concentration, is worse off than any- one in that audience. He wears earplugs at all times. He can't stand any sound above a whisper.

Serves him right! 














Profession

Isaac Asimov




GEORGE PLATEN could not conceal the longing in his voice. It was too much to suppress. He said, "Tomorrow's the first of May. Olympics!"

	He rolled over on his stomach and peered over the foot of his bed at his roommate. Didn't he feel it, too? Didn't this make some impression on him?

	George's face was thin and had grown a trifle thinner in the nearly year and a half that he had been at the House. His figure was slight but the look in his blue eyes was as intense as it had ever been, and right now there was a trapped look in the way his fingers curled against the bedspread.

	George's roommate looked up briefly from his book and took the opportunity to adjust the light-level of the stretch of wall near his chair. His name was Hali Omani and he was a Nigerian by birth. His dark brown skin and massive features seemed made for calmness, and mention of the Olympics did not move him.

	He said, "I know, George."

	George owed much to Hall's patience and kindness when it was needed, but even patience and kindness could be overdone. Was this a time to sit there like a statue built of some dark, warm wood?

	George wondered if he himself would grow like that after ten years here and rejected the thought violently. No!

	He said defiantly, "I think you've forgotten what May means."

	The other said, "I remember very well what it means. It means nothing! You're the one who's forgotten that. May means nothing to you, George Platen, and," he added softly, "it means nothing to me, Hali Omani."

	George said, "The ships are coming in for recruits. By June, thousands and thousands will leave with millions of men and women heading for any world you can name, and all that means nothing?"

	"Less than nothing. What do you want me to do about it, anyway?" Omani ran his finger along a difficult passage in the book he was reading and his lips moved soundlessly.

	George watched him. Damn it, he thought, yell, scream; you can do that much. Kick at me, do anything.

	It was only that he wanted not to be so alone in his anger. He wanted not to be the only one so filled with resentment, not to be the only one dying a slow death.

	It was better those first weeks when the Universe was a small shell of vague light and sound pressing down upon him. It was better before Omani had wavered into view and dragged him back to a life that wasn't worth living.

	Omani! He was old! He was at least thirty. George thought: Will I be like that at thirty? Will I be like that in twelve years?

	And because he was afraid he might be, he yelled at Omani, "Will you stop reading that fool book?"

	Omani turned a page and read on a few words, then lifted his head with its skullcap of crisply curled hair and said, "What?"

	"What good does it do you to read the book?" He stepped forward, snorted "More electronics," and slapped it out of Omani's hands.

	Omani got up slowly and picked up the book. He smoothed a crumpled page without visible rancor. "Call it the satisfaction of curiosity," he said. "I understand a little of it today, perhaps a little more tomorrow. That's a victory in a way."

	"A victory. What kind of a victory? Is that what satisfies you in life? To get to know enough to be a quarter of a Registered Electronician by the time you're sixty-five?"

	"Perhaps by the time I'm thirty-five."

	"And then who'll want you? Who'll use you? Where will you go?"

	"No one. No one. Nowhere. I'll stay here and read other books."

	"And that satisfies you? Tell me! You've dragged me to class. You've got me to reading and memorizing, too. For what! There's nothing in it that satisfies me."

	"What good will it do you to deny yourself satisfaction?"

	"It means I'll quit the whole farce. I'll do as I planned to do in the beginning before you dovey-lovied me out of it. I'm going to force them to-to"

	Omani put down his book. He let the other run down and then said, "To what, George?"

	"To correct a miscarriage of justice. A frame-up. I'll get that Antoneffi and force him to admit he-he----"

	Omani shook his head. "Everyone who comes here insists it's a mistake. I thought you'd passed that stage."

	"Don't call it a stage," said George violently. "In my case, it's a fact. I've told you-"

	"You've told me, but in your heart you know no one made any mistake as far as you were concerned."

	"Because no one will admit it? You think any of them would admit a mistake unless they were forced to?-Well, I'll force them."

	It was May that was doing this to George; it was Olympics month. He felt it bring the old wildness back and he couldn't stop it. He didn't want to stop it. He had been in danger of forgetting.

	He said, "I was going to be a Computer Programmer and I can be one. I could be one today, regardless of what they say analysis shows." He pounded his mattress. "They're wrong. They must be."

	"The analysts are never wrong."

	"They must be. Do you doubt my intelligence?"

	"Intelligence hasn't one thing to do with it. Haven't you been told that often enough? Can't you understand that?"

	George rolled away, lay on his back and stared somberly at the ceiling.

	"What did you want to be, Hali?"

	"I had no fixed plans. Hydroponicist would have suited me, I suppose."

	"Did you think you could make it?"

	"I wasn't sure."

	George had never asked personal questions of Omani before. It struck him as queer, almost unnatural, that other people had had ambitions and ended here. Hydroponicist!

	He said, "Did you think you'd make this?"

	"No, but here I am just the same."

	"And you're satisfied. Really, really satisfied. You're happy. You love it. You wouldn't be anywhere else."

	Slowly, Omani got to his feet. Carefully, he began to unmake his bed. He said, "George, you're a hard case. You're knocking yourself out because you won't accept the facts about yourself. George, you're here in what you call the House, but I've never heard you give it its full title. Say it, George, say it. Then go to bed and sleep this off."

	George gritted his teeth and showed them. He choked out, "No!"

	"Then I will," said Omani, and he did. He shaped each syllable carefully.

	George was bitterly ashamed at the sound of it. He turned his head away.

	For most of the first eighteen years of his life, George Platen had headed firmly in one direction, that of Registered Computer Programmer. There were those in his crowd who spoke wisely of Spationautics, Refrigeration Technology, Transportation Control, and even Administration. But George held firm.

	He argued relative merits as vigorously as any of them, and why not? Education Day loomed ahead of them and was the great fact of their existence. It approached steadily, as fixed and certain as the calendar- the first day of November of the year following one's eighteenth birthday.

	After that day, there were other topics of conversation. One could discuss with others some detail of the profession, or the virtues of one's wife and children, or the fate of one's space-polo team, or one's experience in the Olympics. Before Education Day, however, there was only one topic that unfailingly and unwearyingly held everyone's interest, and that was Education Day.

	"What are you going for? Think you'll make it? Heck, that's no good. Look at the records; quota's been cut. Logistics now-"

	Or Hypermechanics now- Or Communications now- Or Gravitics now- Especially Gravitics at the moment. Everyone had been talking about Gravitics in the few years just before George's Education Day because of the development of the Gravitic power engine.

	Any world within ten light-years of a dwarf star, everyone said, would give its eyeteeth for any kind of Registered Gravitics Engineer.

	The thought of that never bothered George. Sure it would; all the eyeteeth it could scare up. But George had also heard what had happened before in a newly developed technique. Rationalization and simplification followed in a flood. New models each year; new types of gravitic engines; new principles. Then all those eyeteeth gentlemen would find themselves Out of date and superseded by later models with later educations. The first group would then have to settle down to unskilled labor or ship out to some backwoods world that wasn't quite caught up yet.

	Now Computer Programmers were in steady demand year after year, century after century. The demand never reached wild peaks; there was never a howling bull market for Programmers; but the demand climbed steadily as new worlds opened up and as older worlds grew more complex.

	He had argued with Stubby Trevelyan about that constantly. As best friends, their arguments had to be constant and vitriolic and, of course, neither ever persuaded or was persuaded.

	But then Trevelyan had had a father who was a Registered Metallurgist and had actually served on one of the Outworlds, and a grandfather who had also been a Registered Metallurgist. He himself was intent on becoming a Registered Metallurgist almost as a matter of family right and was firmly convinced that any other profession was a shade less than respectable.

	"There'll always be metal," he said, "and there's an accomplishment in molding alloys to specification and watching structures grow. Now what's a Programmer going to be doing. Sitting at a coder all day long, feeding some fool mile-long machine."

	Even at sixteen, George had learned to be practical. He said simply, "There'll be a million Metallurgists put out along with you."

	"Because it's good. A good profession. The best."

	"But you get crowded out, Stubby. You can be way back in line. Any world can tape out its own Metallurgists, and the market for advanced Earth models isn't so big. And it's mostly the small worlds that want them. You know what percent of the turnout of Registered Metallurgists get tabbed for worlds with a Grade A rating. I looked it up. It's just 13.3 percent. That means you'll have seven chances in eight of being stuck in some world that

just about has running water. You may even be stuck on Earth; 2.3 percent are."

	Trevelyan said belligerently, "There's no disgrace in staying on Earth. Earth needs technicians, too. Good ones." His grandfather had been an Earth-bound Metallurgist, and Trevelyan lifted his finger to his upper lip and dabbed at an as yet nonexistent mustache.

	George knew about Trevelyan's grandfather and, considering the Earthbound position of his own ancestry, was in no mood to sneer. He said diplomatically, "No intellectual disgrace. Of course not. But it's nice to get into a Grade A world, isn't it?

	"Now you take Programmers. Only the Grade A worlds have the kind of computers that really need first-class Programmers so they're the only ones in the market. And Programmer tapes are complicated and hardly any one fits. They need more Programmers than their own population can supply. It's just a matter of statistics. There's one first-class Programmer per million, say. A world needs twenty and has a population often million, they have to come to Earth for five to fifteen Programmers. Right?

	"And you know how many Registered Computer Programmers went to Grade A planets last year? I'll tell you. Every last one. If you're a Programmer, you're a picked man. Yes, sir."

	Trevelyan frowned. "If only one in a million makes it, what makes you think you'll make it?"

	George said guardedly, "I'll make it."

	He never dared tell anyone; not Trevelyan; not his parents; of exactly what he was doing that made him so confident. But he wasn't worried. He was simply confident (that was the worst of the memories he had in the hopeless days afterward). He was as blandly confident as the average eight-year-old kid approaching Reading Day-that childhood preview of Education Day.

	Of course, Reading Day had been different. Partly, there was the simple fact of childhood. A boy of eight takes many extraordinary things in stride. One day you can't read and the next day you can. That's just the way things are. Like the sun shining.

	And then not so much depended upon it. There were no recruiters just ahead, waiting and jostling for the lists and scores on the coming Olympics. A boy or girl who goes through the Reading Day is just someone who has ten more years of undifferentiated living upon Earth's crawling surface; just someone who returns to his family with one new ability.

	By the time Education Day came, ten years later, George wasn't even sure of most of the details of his own Reading Day.

	�Most clearly of all, he remembered it to be a dismal September day with a mild rain falling. (September for Reading Day; November for Education Day; May for Olympics. They made nursery rhymes out of it.) George had dressed by the wall lights, with his parents far more excited than he himself was. His father was a Registered Pipe Fitter and had found his occupation on earth. This fact had always been a humiliation to him, although, of course, as anyone could see plainly, most of each generation must stay on Earth in the nature of things.

	There had to be farmers and miners and even technicians on Earth. It was only the late-model, high-specialty professions that were in demand on the Outworlds, and only a few millions a year out of Earth's eight billion population could be exported. Every man and woman on Earth couldn't be among that group.

	But every man and woman could hope that at least one of his children could be one, and Platen, Senior, was certainly no exception. It was obvious to him (and, to be sure, to others as well) that George was notably intelligent and quick-minded. He would be bound to do well and he would have to, as he was an only child. If George didn't end on an Outworld, they would have to wait for grandchildren before a next chance would come along, and that was too far in the future to be much consolation.

	Reading Day would not prove much, of course, but it would be the only indication they would have before the big day itself. Every parent on Earth would be listening to the quality of reading when his child came home with it; listening for any particularly easy flow of words and building that into certain omens of the future. There were few families that didn't have at least one hopeful who, from Reading Day on, was the great hope because of the way he handled his trisyllabics.

	Dimly, George was aware of the cause of his parents' tension, and if there was any anxiety in his young heart that drizzly morning, it was only the fear that his father's hopeful expression might fade out when he returned home with his reading.

	The children met in the large assembly room of the town's Education hall. All over Earth, in millions of local halls, throughout that month, similar groups of children would be meeting. George felt depressed by the grayness of the room and by the other children, strained and stiff in unaccustomed finery.

	Automatically, George did as all the rest of the children did. He found the small clique that represented the children on his floor of the apartment house and joined them.

	Trevelyan, who lived immediately next door, still wore his hair childishly long and was years removed from the sideburns and thin, reddish mustache that he was to grow as soon as he was physiologically capable of it.

	Trevelyan (to whom George was then known as Jaw-joe) said, "Bet you're scared."

	"I am not," said George. Then, confidentially, "My folks got a hunk of printing up on the dresser in my room, and when! come home, I'm going to read it for them." (George's main suffering at the moment lay in the fact

that he didn't quite know where to put his hands. He had been warned not to scratch his head or rub his ears or pick his nose or put his hands into his pockets. This eliminated almost every possibility.)

	Trevelyan put his hands in his pockets and said, "My father isn't worried."

	Trevelyan, Senior, had been a Metallurgist on Diporia for nearly seven years, which gave him a superior social status in his neighborhood even though he had retired and returned to Earth.

	Earth discouraged these re-immigrants because of population problems, but a small trickle did return. For one thing the cost of living was lower on Earth, and what was a trifling annuity on Diporia, say, was a comfortable income on Earth. Besides, there were always men who found more satisfaction in displaying their success before the friends and scenes of their childhood than before all the rest of the Universe besides.

	Trevelyan, Senior, further explained that if he stayed on Diporia, so would his children, and Diporia was a one-spaceship world. Back on Earth, his kids could end anywhere, even Novia.

	Stubby Trevelyan had picked up that item early. Even before Reading Day, his conversation was based on the carelessly assumed fact that his ultimate home would be in Novia.

	George, oppressed by thoughts of the other's future greatness and his own small-time contrast, was driven to belligerent defense at once.

	"My father isn't worried either. He just wants to hear me read because he knows I'll be good. I suppose your father would just as soon not hear you because he knows you'll be all wrong."

	"I will not be all wrong. Reading is nothing. On Novia, I'll hire people to read to me."

	"Because you won't be able to read yourself, on account of you're dumb!"

	"Then how come I'll be on Novia?"

	And George, driven, made the great denial. "Who says you'll be on Novia? Bet you don't go anywhere."

	Stubby Trevelyan reddened. "I won't be a Pipe Fitter like your old man."

	"Take that back, you dumbhead."

	"You take that back."

	They stood nose to nose, not wanting to fight but relieved at having something familiar to do in this strange place. Furthermore, now that George had curled his hands into fists and lifted them before his face, the problem of what to do with his hands was, at least temporarily, solved. Other children gathered round excitedly.

	But then it all ended when a woman's voice sounded loudly over the public address system. There was instant silence everywhere. George dropped his fists and forgot Trevelyan.

	"Children," said the voice, "we are going to call out your names. As each child is called, he or she is to go to one of the men waiting along the

side walls. Do you see them? They are wearing red uniforms so they will be easy to find. The girls will go to the right. The boys will go to the left. Now look about and see which man in red is nearest to you-"

	George found his man at a glance and waited for his name to be called off. He had not been introduced before this to the sophistications of the alphabet, and the length of time it took to reach his own name grew disturbing.

	The crowd of children thinned; little rivulets made their way to each of the red-clad guides.

	When the name "George Platen" was finally called, his sense of relief was exceeded only by the feeling of pure gladness at the fact that Stubby Trevelyan still stood in his place, uncalled.

	George shouted back over his shoulder as he left, "Yay, Stubby, maybe they don't want you."

	That moment of gaiety quickly left. He was herded into a line and directed down corridors in the company of strange children. They all looked at one another, large-eyed and concerned, but beyond a snuffling, "Quitcher pushing" and "Hey, watch out" there was no conversation.

	They were handed little slips of paper which they were told must remain with them. George stared at his curiously. Little black marks of different shapes. He knew it to be printing but how could anyone make words out of it? He couldn't imagine.

	He was told to strip; he and four other boys who were all that now remained together. All the new clothes came shucking off and four eight year-olds stood naked and small, shivering more out of embarrassment than cold. Medical technicians came past, probing them, testing them with odd instruments, pricking them for blood. Each took the little cards and made additional marks on them with little black rods that produced the marks, all neatly lined up, with great speed. George stared at the new marks, but they were no more comprehensible than the old. The children were ordered back into their clothes.

	They sat on separate little chairs then and waited again. Names were called again and "George Platen" came third.

	He moved into a large room, filled with frightening instruments with knobs and glassy panels in front. There was a desk in the very center, and behind it a man sat, his eyes on the papers piled before him.

	He said, "George Platen?"

	"Yes, sir," said George in a shaky whisper. All this waiting and all this going here and there was making him nervous. He wished it were over.

	The man behind the desk said, "I am Dr. Lloyed, George. How are you?"

	The doctor didn't look up as he spoke. It was as though he had said those words over and over again and didn't have to look up any more.

	"I'm all right."

	"Are you afraid, George?"

	"N-no, sir," said George, sounding afraid even in his own ears.

	"That's good," said the doctor, "because there's nothing to be afraid of, you know. Let's see, George. It says here on your card that your father is named Peter and that he's a Registered Pipe Fitter and your mother is named Amy and is a Registered Home Technician. Is that right?"

	"Y-yes, sir."

	"And your birthday is February 13, and you had an ear infection about a year ago. Right?"

	"Yes, sir."

	"Do you know how I know all these things?"

	"It's on the card, I think, sir."

	"That's right." The doctor looked up at George for the first time and smiled. He showed even teeth and looked much younger than George's father. Some of George's nervousness vanished.

	The doctor passed the card to George. "Do you know what all those things there mean, George?"

	Although George knew he did not he was startled by the sudden request into looking at the card as though he might understand now through some sudden stroke of fate. But they were just marks as before and he passed the card back. "No, sir."

	"Why not?"

	George felt a sudden pang of suspicion concerning the sanity of this doctor. Didn't he know why not?

	George said, "I can't read, sir."

	"Would you like to read?"

	"Yes, sir."

	"Why, George?"

	George stared, appalled. No one had ever asked him that. He had no answer. He said falteringly, "I don't know, sir."

	"Printed information will direct you all through your life. There is so much you'll have to know even after Education Day. Cards like this one will tell you. Books will tell you. Television screens will tell you. Printing will tell you such useful things and such interesting things that not being able to read would be as bad as not being able to see. Do you understand?"

	"Yes, sir."

	"Are you afraid, George?"

	No, sir."

	Good. Now I'll tell you exactly what we'll do first. I m going to put these wires on your forehead just over the corners of your eyes. They'll stick there but they won't hurt at all. Then, I'll turn on something that will make a buzz. It will sound funny and it may tickle you, but it won't hurt. Now if it does hurt, you tell me, and I'll turn it off right away, but it won't hurt. All right?"

	George nodded and swallowed.

	"Are you ready?"

	George nodded. He closed his eyes while the doctor busied himself. His parents had explained this to him. They, too, had said it wouldn't hurt, but then there were always the older children. There were the ten- and twelve-year-olds who howled after the eight-year-olds waiting for Reading Day, "Watch out for the needle." There were the others who took you off in confidence and said, "They got to cut your head open. They use a sharp knife that big with a hook on it," and so on into horrifying details.

	George had never believed them but he had had nightmares, and now closed his eyes and felt pure terror.

	He didn't feel the wires at his temple. The buzz was a distant thing, and there was the sound of his own blood in his ears, ringing hollowly as though it and he were in a large cave. Slowly he chanced opening his eyes.

	The doctor had his back to him. From one of the instruments a strip of paper unwound and was covered with a thin, wavy purple line. The doctor tore off pieces and put them into a slot in another machine. He did it over and over again. Each time a little piece of film came out, which the doctor looked at. Finally, he turned toward George with a queer frown between his eyes.

	The buzzing stopped.

	George said breathlessly, "Is it over?"

	The doctor said, "Yes," but he was still frowning.

	"Can I read now?" asked George. He felt no different.

	The doctor said, "What?" then smiled very suddenly and briefly. He said, "It works fine, George. You'll be reading in fifteen minutes. Now we're going to use another machine this time and it will take longer. I'm going to cover your whole head, and when I turn it on you won't be able to see or hear anything for a while, but it won't hurt. Just to make sure I'm going to give you a little switch to hold in your hand. If anything hurts, you press the little button and everything shuts off. All right?"

	In later years, George was told that the little switch was strictly a dummy; that it was introduced solely for confidence. He never did know for sure, however, since he never pushed the button.

	A large smoothly curved helmet with a rubbery inner lining was placed over his head and left there. Three or four little knobs seemed to grab at him and bite into his skull, but there was only a little pressure that faded. No pain.

	The doctor's voice sounded dimly. "Everything all right, George?"

	And then, with no real warning, a layer of thick felt closed down all about him. He was disembodied, there was no sensation, no universe, only himself and a distant murmur at the very ends of nothingness telling him something-telling him-telling him- He strained to hear and understand but there was all that thick felt between.

	Then the helmet was taken off his head, and the light was so bright that it hurt his eyes while the doctor's voice drummed at his ears.

	The doctor said, "Here's your card, George. What does it say?"

	George looked at his card again and gave out a strangled shout. The marks weren't just marks at all. They made up words. They were words just as clearly as though something were whispering them in his ears. He could hear them being whispered as he looked at them.

	"What does it say, George?"

	"It says-it says-'Platen, George. Born 13 February 6492 of Peter and Amy Platen in. . .' "He broke off.

	"You can read, George," said the doctor. "It's all over."

	"For good? I won't forget how?"

	"Of course not." The doctor leaned over to shake hands gravely. "You will be taken home now."

	It was days before George got over this new and great talent of his. He read for his father with such facility that Platen, Senior, wept and called relatives to tell the good news.

	George walked about town, reading every scrap of printing he could find and wondering how it was that none of it had ever made sense to him before.

	He tried to remember how it was not to be able to read and he couldn't. As far as his feeling about it was concerned, he had always been able to read. Always.

	At eighteen, George was rather dark, of medium height, but thin enough to look taller. Trevelyan, who was scarcely an inch shorter, had a stockiness of build that made "Stubby" more than ever appropriate, but in this last year he had grown self-conscious. The nickname could no longer be used without reprisal. And since Trevelyan disapproved of his proper first name even more strongly, he was called Trevelyan or any decent variant of that. As though to prove his manhood further, he had most persistently grown a pair of sideburns and a bristly mustache.

	He was sweating and nervous now, and George, who had himself grown out of "Jaw-jee" and into the curt monosyllabic gutterality of "George," was rather amused by that.

	They were in the same large hall they had been in ten years before (and not since). It was as if a vague dream of the past had come to sudden reality. In the first few minutes George had been distinctly surprised at finding everything seem smaller and more cramped than his memory told him; then he made allowance for his own growth.

	The crowd was smaller than it had been in childhood. It was exclusively male this time. The girls had another day assigned them.

	Trevelyan leaned over to say, "Beats me the way they make you wait."

	"Red tape," said George. "You can't avoid it."

	Trevelyan said, "What makes you so damned tolerant about it?"

	"I've got nothing to worry about."

	"Oh, brother, you make me sick. I hope you end up Registered Manure Spreader just so I can see your face when you do." His somber eyes swept the crowd anxiously.

	George looked about, too. It wasn't quite the system they used on the children. Matters went slower, and instructions had been given out at the start in print (an advantage over the pre-Readers). The names Platen and Trevelyan were well down the alphabet still, but this time the two knew it.

	Young men came out of the education rooms, frowning and uncomfortable, picked up their clothes and belongings, then went off to analysis to learn the results.

	Each, as he came out, would be surrounded by a clot of the thinning crowd. "How was it?" "How'd it feel?" "Whacha think ya made?" "Ya feel any different?"

	Answers were vague and noncommittal.

	George forced himself to remain out of those clots. You only raised your own blood pressure. Everyone said you stood the best chance if you remained calm. Even so, you could feel the palms of your hands grow cold. Funny that new tensions came with the years.

	For instance, high-specialty professionals heading out for an Outworld were accompanied by a wife (or husband). It was important to keep the sex ratio in good balance on all worlds. And if you were going out to a Grade A world, what girl would refuse you? George had no specific girl in mind yet; he wanted none. Not now! Once he made Programmer; once he could add to his name, Registered Computer Programmer, he could take his pick, like a sultan in a harem. The thought excited him and he tried to put it away. Must stay calm.

	Trevelyan muttered, "What's it all about anyway? First they say it works best if you're relaxed and at ease. Then they put you through this and make it impossible for you to be relaxed and at ease."

	"Maybe that's the idea. They're separating the boys from the men to begin with. Take it easy, Trev."

	"Shut up."

	George's turn came. His name was not called. It appeared in glowing letters on the notice board.

	He waved at Trevelyan. "Take it easy, Trev. Don't let it get you."

	He was happy as he entered the testing chamber. Actually happy.

	The man behind the desk said, "George Platen?"

	For a fleeting instant there was a razor-sharp picture in George's mind of another man, ten years earlier, who had asked the same question, and it was almost as though this were the same man and he, George, had turned eight again as he stepped across the threshold.

	But the man looked up and, of course, the face matched that of the sudden memory not at all. The nose was bulbous, the hair thin and stringy, and the chin wattled as though its owner had once been grossly overweight and had reduced.

	The man behind the desk looked annoyed. "Well?"

	George came to Earth. "I'm George Platen, sir."

	"Say so, then. I'm Dr. Zachary Antonelli, and we're going to be intimately acquainted in a moment."

	He stared at small strips of film, holding them up to the light owlishly. George winced inwardly. Very hazily, he remembered that other doctor (he had forgotten the name) staring at such film. Could these be the same? The other doctor had frowned and this one was looking at him now as though he were angry.

	His happiness was already just about gone.

	Dr. Antonelli spread the pages of a thickish file out before him now and put the films carefully to one side. "It says here you want to be a Computer Programmer."

	"Yes, doctor."

	"Still do?"

	"Yes, sir."

	"It's a responsible and exacting position. Do you feel up to it?"

	"Yes, sir."

	"Most pre-Educates don't put down any specific profession. I believe they are afraid of queering it."

	"I think that's tight, sir."

	"Aren't you afraid of that?"

	"I might as well be honest, sir."

	Dr. Antonelli nodded, but without any noticeable lightening of his expression. "Why do you want to be a Programmer?"

	"It's a responsible and exacting position as you said, sir. It's an important job and an exciting one. I like it and I think I can do it."

	Dr. Antonelli put the papers away, and looked at George sourly. He said, "How do you know you like it? Because you think you'll be snapped up by some Grade A planet?"

	George thought uneasily: He's trying to rattle you. Stay calm and stay frank.

	He said, "I think a Programmer has a good chance, sir, but even if I were left on Earth, I know I'd like it." (That was true enough. I'm not lying, thought George.)

	"All right, how do you know?"

	He asked it as though he knew there was no decent answer and George almost smiled. He had one.

	He said, "I've been reading about Programming, sir."

	"You've been what?" Now the doctor looked genuinely astonished and George took pleasure in that.

	"Reading about it, sir. I bought a book on the subject and I've been studying it."

	"A book for Registered Programmers?"

	"Yes, sir."

	"But you couldn't understand it."

	"Not at first. I got other books on mathematics and electronics. I made out all I could. I still don't know much, but I know enough to know I like it and to know I can make it." (Even his parents never found that secret cache of books or knew why he spent so much time in his own room or exactly what happened to the sleep he missed.)

	The doctor pulled at the loose skin under his chin. "What was your idea in doing that, son?"

	"I wanted to make sure I would be interested, sir."

	"Surely you know that being interested means nothing. You could be devoured by a subject and if the physical makeup of your brain makes it more efficient for you to be something else, something else you will be. You know that, don't you?"

	"I've been told that," said George cautiously.

	"Well, believe it. It's true."

	George said nothing.

	Dr. Antonelli said, "Or do you believe that studying some subject will bend the brain cells in that direction, like that other theory that a pregnant woman need only listen to great music persistently to make a composer of her child. Do you believe that?"

	George flushed. That had certainly been in his mind. By forcing his intellect constantly in the desired direction, he had felt sure that he would be getting a head start. Most of his confidence had rested on exactly that point.

	"I never-" he began, and found no way of finishing.

	"Well, it isn't true. Good Lord, youngster, your brain pattern is fixed at birth. It can be altered by a blow hard enough to damage the cells or by a burst blood vessel or by a tumor or by a major infection-each time, of course, for the worse. But it certainly can't be affected by your thinking special thoughts." He stared at George thoughtfully, then said, "Who told you to do this?"

	George, now thoroughly disturbed, swallowed and said, "No one, doctor. My own idea."

	"Who knew you were doing it after you started?"

	"No one. Doctor, I meant to do no wrong."

	"Who said anything about wrong? Useless is what I would say. Why did you keep it to yourself?"

	"I-I thought they'd laugh at me." (He thought abruptly of a recent exchange with Trevelyan. George had very cautiously broached the thought, as of something merely circulating distantly in the very outermost reaches of his mind, concerning the possibility of learning something by ladling it into the mind by hand, so to speak, in bits and pieces. Trevelyan had hooted, "George, you'll be tanning your own shoes next and weaving your own shirts." He had been thankful for his policy of secrecy.)

	Dr. Antonelli shoved the bits of film he had first looked at from position to position in morose thought. Then he said, "Let's get you analyzed. This is getting me nowhere."

	The wires went to George's temples. There was the buzzing. Again there came a sharp memory of ten years ago.

	George's hands were clammy; his heart pounded. He should never have told the doctor about his secret reading.

	It was his damned vanity, he told himself. He had wanted to show how enterprising he was, how full of initiative. Instead, he had showed himself superstitious and ignorant and aroused the hostility of the doctor. (He could tell the doctor hated him for a wise guy on the make.)

	And now he had brought himself to such a state of nervousness, he was sure the analyzer would show nothing that made sense.

	He wasn't aware of the moment when the wires were removed from his temples. The sight of the doctor, staring at him thoughtfully, blinked into his consciousness and that was that; the wires were gone. George dragged himself together with a tearing effort. He had quite given up his ambition to be a Programmer. In the space of ten minutes, it had all gone.

	He said dismally, "I suppose no?"

	"No what?"

	"No Programmer?"

	The doctor rubbed his nose and said, "You get your clothes and whatever belongs to you and go to room 15-C. Your files will be waiting for you there. So will my report."

	George said in complete surprise, "Have I been Educated already? I thought this was just to-"

	Dr. Antonelli stared down at his desk. "It will all be explained to you. You do as I say."

	George felt something like panic. What was it they couldn't tell him? He wasn't fit for anything but Registered Laborer. They were going to prepare him for that; adjust him to it.

	He was suddenly certain of it and he had to keep from screaming by main force.

	He stumbled back to his place of waiting. Trevelyan was not there, a fact for which he would have been thankful if he had had enough self-possession to be meaningfully aware of his surroundings. Hardly anyone was left, in fact, and the few who were looked as though they might ask him questions were it not that they were too worn out by their tail-of-the-alphabet waiting to buck the fierce, hot look of anger and hate he cast at them.

	What right had they to be technicians and he, himself, a Laborer? Laborer! He was certain!

	He was led by a red-uniformed guide along the busy corridors lined with separate rooms each containing its groups, here two, there five: the Motor Mechanics the Construction Engineers, the Agronomists- There were hundreds of specialized Professions and most of them would be represented in this small town by one or two anyway.

	He hated them all just then: the Statisticians, the Accountants, the lesser breeds and the higher. He hated them because they owned their smug knowledge now, knew their fate, while he himself, empty still, had to face some kind of further red tape.

	He reached 15-C, was ushered in and left in an empty room. For one moment, his spirits bounded. Surely, if this were the Labor classification room, there would be dozens of youngsters present.

	A door sucked into its recess on the other side of a waist-high partition and an elderly, white-haired man stepped out. He smiled and showed even teeth that were obviously false, but his face was still ruddy and unlined and his voice had vigor.

	He said, "Good evening, George. Our own sector has only one of you this time, I see."

	"Only one?" said George blandly.

	"Thousands over the Earth, of course. Thousands. You're not alone."

	George felt exasperated. He said, "I don't understand, sir. What's my classification? What's happening?"

	"Easy, son. You're all right. It could happen to anyone." He held out his hand and George took it mechanically. It was warm and it pressed George's hand firmly. "Sit down, son. I'm Sam Ellenford."

	George nodded impatiently. "I want to know what's going on, sir."

	"Of course. To begin with, you can't be a Computer Programmer, George. You've guessed that, I think."

	"Yes, I have," said George bitterly. "What will I be, then?"

	"That's the hard part to explain, George." He paused, then said with careful distinctness, "Nothing."

"What!"

	"Nothing!"

	"But what does that mean? Why can't you assign me a profession?"

	"We have no choice in the matter, George. It's the structure of your mind that decides that."

	George went a sallow yellow. His eyes bulged. "There's something wrong with my mind?"

	"There's something about it. As far as professional classification is concerned, I suppose you can call it wrong."

	"But why?"

	Ellenford shrugged. "I'm sure you know how Earth runs its Educational program, George. Practically any human being can absorb practically any body of knowledge, but each individual brain pattern is better suited to receiving some types of knowledge than others. We try to match mind to knowledge as well as we can within the limits of the quota requirements for each profession."

	George nodded. "Yes, I know."

	"Every once in awhile, George, we come up against a young man whose mind is not suited to receiving a superimposed knowledge of any sort."

	"You mean I can't be Educated?"

	"That is what I mean."

	"But that's crazy. I'm intelligent. I can understand-" He looked helplessly about as though trying to find some way of proving that he had a functioning brain.

	"Don't misunderstand me, please," said Ellenford gravely. "You're intelligent. There's no question about that. You're even above average in intelligence. Unfortunately that has nothing to do with whether the mind ought to be allowed to accept superimposed knowledge or not. In fact, it is almost always the intelligent person who comes here."

	"You mean I can't even be a Registered Laborer?" babbled George. Suddenly even that was better than the blank that faced him. "What's there to know to be a Laborer?"

	"Don't underestimate the Laborer, young man. There are dozens of subclassifications and each variety has its own corpus of fairly detailed knowledge. Do you think there's no skill in knowing the proper maimer of lifting a weight? Besides, for the Laborer, we must select not only minds suited to it, but bodies as well. You're not the type, George, to last long as a Laborer."

	George was conscious of his slight build. He said, "But I've never heard of anyone without a profession."

	"There aren't many," conceded Ellenford. "And we protect them."

	"Protect them?" George felt confusion and fright grow higher inside him.

	"You're a ward of the planet, George. From the time you walked through that door, we've been in charge of you." And he smiled.

	It was a fond smile. To George it seemed the smile of ownership; the smile of a grown man for a helpless child.

	He said, "You mean, I'm going to be in prison?"

	"Of course not. You will simply be with others of your kind."

	Your kind. The words made a kind of thunder in George's ear.

	Ellenford said, "You need special treatment. We'll take care of you."

	To George's own horror, he burst into tears. Ellenford walked to the other end of the room and faced away as though in thought.

George fought to reduce the agonized weeping to sobs and then to strangle those. He thought of his father and mother, of his friends, of Trevelyan, of his own shame- He said rebelliously, "I learned to read."

	"Everyone with a whole mind can do that. We've never found exceptions. It is at this stage that we discover-exceptions. And when you learned to read, George, we were concerned about your mind pattern. Certain peculiarities were reported even then by the doctor in charge."

	"Can't you try Educating me? You haven't even tried. I'm willing to take the risk."

	"The law forbids us to do that, George. But look, it will not be bad. We will explain matters to your family so they will not be hurt. At the place to which you'll be taken, you'll be allowed privileges. We'll get you books and you can learn what you will."

	"Dab knowledge in by hand," said George bitterly. "Shred by shred. Then, when I die I'll know enough to be a Registered Junior Office Boy, Paper-Clip Division."

	"Yet I understand you've already been studying books."

	George froze. He was struck devastatingly by sudden understanding. "That's it. .

	"What's it?"

	"That fellow Antonelli. He's knifing me."

	"No, George. You're quite wrong."

	"Don't tell me that." George was in an ecstasy of fury. "That lousy bastard is selling me out because he thought I was a little too wise for him. I read books and tried to get a head start toward programming. Well, what do you want to square things? Money? You won't get it. I'm getting out of here and when I finish broadcasting this-"

	He was screaming.

	Ellenford shook his head and touched a contact.

	Two men entered on cat feet and got on either side of George. They pinned his arms to his sides. One of them used an air-spray hypodennic in the hollow of his right elbow and the hypnotic entered his vein and had an almost immediate effect.

	His screams cut off and his head fell forward. His knees buckled and only the men on either side kept him erect as he slept.

	They took care of George as they said they would; they were good to him and unfailingly kind-about the way, George thought, he himself would be to a sick kitten he had taken pity on.

	They told him that he should sit up and take some interest in life; and then told him that most people who came there had the same attitude of despair at the beginning and that he would snap out of it.

	He didn't even hear them.

	Dr. Ellenford himself visited him to tell him that his parents had been informed that he was away on special assignment.

	George muttered, "Do they know-"

	Ellenford assured him at once, "We gave no details."

	At first George had refused to eat. They fed him intravenously. They hid sharp objects and kept him under guard. Hali Omani came to be his roommate and his stolidity had a calming effect.

	One day, out of sheer desperate boredom, George asked for a book. Omani, who himself read books constantly, looked up, smiling broadly. George almost withdrew the request then, rather than give any of them satisfaction, then thought: What do I care?

	He didn't specify the book and Omani brought one on chemistry. It was in big print, with small words and many illustrations. It was for teen-agers. He threw the book violently against the wall.

	That's what he would be always. A teen-ager all his life. A pre-Educate forever and special books would have to be written for him. He lay smoldering in bed, staring at the ceiling, and after an hour had passed, he got up sulkily, picked up the book, and began reading.

	It took him a week to finish it and then he asked for another.

	"Do you want to take the first one back?" asked Omani.

	George frowned. There were things in the book he had not understood, yet he was not so lost to shame as to say so.

	But Omani said, "Come to think of it, you'd better keep it. Books are meant to be read and reread."

	It was that same day that he finally yielded to Omani's invitation that he tour the place. He dogged at the Nigerian's feet and took in his surroundings with quick hostile glances.

	The place was no prison certainly. There were no walls, no locked doors, no guards. But it was a prison in that the inmates had no place to go outside.

	It was somehow good to see others like himself by the dozen. It was so easy to believe himself to be the only one in the world so-maimed.

	He mumbled, "How many people here anyway?"

	"Two hundred and five, George, and this isn't the only place of the sort in the world. There are thousands."

	Men looked up as he passed, wherever he went; in the gymnasium, along the tennis courts; through the library (he had never in his life imagined books could exist in such numbers; they were stacked, actually stacked, along long shelves). They stared at him curiously and he returned the looks savagely. At least they were no better than he; no call for them to look at him as though he were some sort of curiosity.

	Most of them were in their twenties. George said suddenly, "What happens to the older ones?"

	Omani said, "This place specializes in the younger ones." Then, as though he suddenly recognized an implication in George's question that he had missed earlier, he shook his head gravely and said, "They're not put out of the way, if that's what you mean. There are other Houses for older ones."

	"Who cares?" mumbled George, who felt he was sounding too interested and in danger of slipping into surrender.

	"You might. As you grow older, you will find yourself in a House with Occupants of both sexes."

	That surprised George somehow. "Women, too?"

	'Of course. Do you suppose women are immune to this sort of thing?"

	George thought of that with more interest and excitement than he had felt for anything since before that day when- He forced his thought away from that.

	Omani stopped at the doorway of a room that contained a small closed Circuit television and a desk computer. Five or six men sat about the television Omani said, "This is a classroom."

	George said, "What's that?"

	"The young men in there are being educated. Not," he added, quickly, "in the usual way."

	"You mean they're cramming it in bit by bit."

	"That's right. This is the way everyone did it in ancient times."

	This was what they kept telling him since he had come to the House but what of it? Suppose there had been a day when mankind had not known the diatherm-oven. Did that mean he should be satisfied to eat meat raw in a world where others ate it cooked?

	He said, "Why do they want to go through that bit-by-bit stuff?"

	"To pass the time, George, and because they're curious."

	"What good does it do them?"

	"It makes them happier."

	George carried that thought to bed with him.

	The next day he said to Omani ungraciously, "Can you get me into a classroom where I can find out something about programming?"

	Omani replied heartily, "Sure."

	It was slow and he resented it. Why should someone have to explain something and explain it again? Why should he have to read and reread a passage, then stare at a mathematical relationship and not understand it at once? That wasn't how other people had to be.

	Over and over again, he gave up. Once he refused to attend classes for a week.

	But always he returned. The official in charge, who assigned reading, conducted the television demonstrations, and even explained difficult passages and concepts, never commented on the matter.

	George was finally given a regular task in the gardens and took his turn in the various kitchen and cleaning details. This was represented to him as being an advance, but he wasn't fooled. The place might have been far more mechanized than it was, but they deliberately made work for the young men in order to give them the illusion of worthwhile occupation, of usefulness. George wasn't fooled.

	They were even paid small sums of money out of which they could buy certain specified luxuries or which they could put aside for a problematical use in a problematical old age. George kept his money in an open jar, which he kept on a closet shelf. He had no idea how much he had accumulated. Nor did he care.

	He made no real friends though he reached the stage where a civil good day was in order. He even stopped brooding (or almost stopped) on the miscarriage of justice that had placed him there. He would go weeks without dreaming of Antonelli, of his gross nose and wattled neck, of the leer with which he would push George into a boiling quicksand and hold him under, till he woke screaming with Omani bending over him in concern.

	Omani said to him on a snowy day in February, "It's amazing how you're adjusting."

	But that was February, the thirteenth to be exact, his nineteenth birthday. March came, then April, and with the approach of May he realized he hadn't adjusted at all.

	The previous May had passed unregarded while George was still in his bed, drooping and ambitionless. This May was different.

	All over Earth, George knew, Olympics would be taking place and young men would be competing, matching their skills against one another in the fight for a place on a new world. There would be the holiday atmosphere, the excitement, the news reports, the self-contained recruiting agents from the worlds beyond space, the glory of victory or the consolations of defeat.

	How much of fiction dealt with these motifs; how much of his own boyhood excitement lay in following the events of Olympics from year to year; how many of his own plans- George Platen could not conceal the longing in his voice. It was too much to suppress. He said, "Tomorrow's the first of May. Olympics!"

	And that led to his first quarrel with Omani and to Omani's bitter enunciation of the exact name of the institution in which George found himself.

	Omani gazed fixedly at George and said distinctly, "A House for the Feeble-minded."

	George Platen flushed. Feeble-minded!

	He rejected it desperately. He said in a monotone, "I'm leaving."

	He said it on impulse. His conscious mind learned it first from the statement as he uttered it.

	Omani, who had returned to his book, looked up. "What?"

	George knew what he was saying now. He said it fiercely, "I'm leaving."

	"That's ridiculous. Sit down, George, calm yourself."

	"Oh, no. I'm here on a frame-up, I tell you. This doctor, Antonelli, took a dislike to me. It's the sense of power these petty bureaucrats have. Cross them and they wipe out your life with a stylus mark on some card file."

	"Are you back to that?"

	"And staying there till it's all straightened out. I'm going to get to Antonelli somehow, break him, force the truth out of him." George was breathing heavily and he felt feverish. Olympics month was here and he couldn't let it pass. If he did, it would be the final surrender and he would be lost for all time.

	Omani threw his legs over the side of his bed and stood up. He was nearly six feet tall and the expression on his face gave him the look of a concerned Saint Bernard. He put his arm about George's shoulder, "If I hurt your feelings-"

	George shrugged him off. "You just said what you thought was the truth, and I'm going to prove it isn't the truth, that's all. Why not? The door's open. There aren't any locks. No one ever said I couldn't leave. I'll just walk out."

	"All right, but where will you go?"

	"To the nearest air terminal, then to the nearest Olympics center. I've got money." He seized the open jar that held the wages he had put away. Some of the coins jangled to the floor.

	"That will last you a week maybe. Then what?"

	"By then I'll have things settled."

	"By then you'll come crawling back here," said Omani earnestly, "with all the progress you've made to do over again. You're mad, George."

	"Feeble-minded is the word you used before."

	"Well, I'm sorry I did. Stay here, will you?"

	"Are you going to try to stop me?"

	Omani compressed his full lips. "No, I guess I won't. This is your business. If the only way you can learn is to buck the world and come back with blood on your face, go ahead.-Well, go ahead."

	George was in the doorway now, looking back over his shoulder. "I'm going," -he came back to pick up his pocket grooming set slowly- "I hope you don't object to my taking a few personal belongings."

	Omani shrugged. He was in bed again reading, indifferent.

	George lingered at the door again, but Omani didn't look up. George gritted his teeth, turned and walked rapidly down the empty corridor and out into the night-shrouded grounds.

	He had expected to be stopped before leaving the grounds. He wasn't. He had stopped at an all-night diner to ask directions to an air terminal and expected the proprietor to call the police. That didn't happen. He summoned a skimmer to take him to the airport and the driver asked no questions.

	Yet he felt no lift at that. He arrived at the airport sick at heart. He had not realized how the outer world would be. He was surrounded by professionals. The diner's proprietor had had his name inscribed on the plastic shell over the cash register. So and so, Registered Cook. The man in the skimmer had his license up, Registered Chauffeur. George felt the bareness of his name and experienced a kind of nakedness because of it; worse, he felt skinned. But no one challenged him. No one studied him suspiciously and demanded proof of professional rating.

	George thought bitterly: Who would imagine any human being without one?

	He bought a ticket to San Francisco on the 3 A.M. plane. No other plane for a sizable Olympics center was leaving before morning and he wanted to wait as little as possible. As it was, he sat huddled in the waiting room, watching for the police. They did not come.

	He was in San Francisco before noon and the noise of the city struck him like a blow. This was the largest city he had ever seen and he had been used to silence and calm for a year and a half now.

	Worse, it was Olympics month. He almost forgot his own predicament in his sudden awareness that some of the noise, excitement, confusion was due to that.

	The Olympics boards were up at the airport for the benefit of the incoming travelers, and crowds jostled around each one. Each major profession had its own board. Each listed directions to the Olympics Hall where the contest for that day for that profession would be given; the individuals competing and their city of birth; the Outworld (if any) sponsoring it.

	It was a completely stylized thing. George had read descriptions often enough in the newsprints and films, watched matches on television, and even witnessed a small Olympics in the Registered Butcher classification at the county seat. Even that, which had no conceivable Galactic implication (there was no Outworlder in attendance, of course) aroused excitement enough.

	Partly, the excitement was caused simply by the fact of competition, partly by the spur of local pride (oh, when there was a home-town boy to cheer for, though he might be a complete stranger), and, of course, partly by betting. There was no way of stopping the last.

	George found it difficult to approach the board. He found himself looking at the scurrying, avid onlookers in a new way.

	There must have been a time when they themselves were Olympic material. What had they done? Nothing!
	If they had been winners, they would be far out in the Galaxy somewhere, not stuck here on Earth. Whatever they were, their professions must have made them Earth-bait from the beginning; or else they had made themselves Earth-bait by inefficiency at whatever high-specialized professions they had had.

	Now these failures stood about and speculated on the chances of newer and younger men. Vultures!

	How he wished they were speculating on him.

	He moved down the line of boards blandly, clinging to the outskirts of the groups about them. He had eaten breakfast on the strato and he wasn't hungry. He was afraid, though. He was in a big city during the confusion of the beginning of Olympics competition. That was protection, sure. The city was full of strangers. No one would question George. No one would care about George.

	No one would care. Not even the House, thought George bitterly. They cared for him like a sick kitten, but if a sick kitten up and wanders off, well, too bad, what can you do?

	And now that he was in San Francisco, what did he do? His thoughts struck blankly against a wall. See someone? Whom? How? Where would he even stay? The money he had left seemed pitiful.

	The first shamefaced thought of going back came to him. He could go to the police- He shook his head violently as though arguing with a material adversary.

	A word caught his eye on one of the boards, gleaming there: Metallurgist. In smaller letters, nonferrous. At the bottom of a long list of names, in flowing script, sponsored by Novia.

It induced painful memories: himself arguing with Trevelyan, so certain that he himself would be a Programmer, so certain that a Programmer was superior to a Metallurgist, so certain that he was following the right course, so certain that he was clever- So clever that he had to boast to that small-minded, vindictive Antonelli.

He had been so sure of himself that moment when he had been called and had left the nervous Trevelyan standing there, so cocksure.

	George cried out in a short, incoherent high-pitched gasp. Someone turned to look at him, then hurried on. People brushed past impatiently pushing him this way and that. He remained staring at the board, openmouthed.

	It was as though the board had answered his thought. He was thinking "Trevelyan" so hard that it had seemed for a moment that of course the board would say "Trevelyan" back at him.

	But that was Trevelyan, up there. And Armand Trevelyan (Stubby's hated first name; up in lights for everyone to see) and the right hometown. What's more, Trev had wanted Novia, aimed for Novia, insisted on Novia; and this competition was sponsored by Novia.

	This had to be Trev; good old Trev. Almost without thinking, he noted the directions for getting to the place of competition and took his place in line for a skimmer.

	Then he thought somberly: Trev made it. He wanted to be a Metallurgist, and he made it!

	George felt colder, more alone than ever.

	There was a line waiting to enter the hall. Apparently, Metallurgy Olympics was to be an exciting and closely fought one. At least, the illuminated sky sign above the hail said so, and the jostling crowd seemed to think so.

	It would have been a rainy day, George thought, from the color of the sky, but San Francisco had drawn the shield across its breadth from bay to ocean. It was an expense to do so, of course, but all expenses were warranted where the comfort of Outworlders was concerned. They would be in town for the Olympics. They were heavy spenders. And for each recruit taken, there would be a fee both to Earth and to the local government from the planet sponsoring the Olympics. It paid to keep Outworlders in mind of a particular city as a pleasant place in which to spend Olympics time. San Francisco knew what it was doing.

	George, lost in thought, was suddenly aware of a gentle pressure on his shoulder blade and a voice saying, "Are you in line here, young man?"

	The line had moved up without George's having noticed the widening gap. He stepped forward hastily and muttered, "Sorry, sir."

	There was the touch of two fingers on the elbow of his jacket and he looked about furtively.

	The man behind him nodded cheerfully. He had iron-gray hair, and under his jacket he wore an old-fashioned sweater that buttoned down in front. He said, "I didn't mean to sound sarcastic."

	"No offense."

	"All right, then." He sounded cozily talkative. "I wasn't sure you might not simply be standing there, entangled with the line, so to speak, only by accident. I thought you might be a-"

	"A what?" said George sharply.

	"Why, a contestant, of course. You look young."

	George turned away. He felt neither cozy nor talkative, and bitterly impatient with busybodies.

	A thought struck him. Had an alarm been sent out for him? Was his description known, or his picture? Was Gray-hair behind him trying to get a good look at his face?

	He hadn't seen any news reports. He craned his neck to see the moving strip of news headlines parading across one section of the city shield, somewhat lackluster against the gray of the cloudy afternoon sky. It was no use. He gave up at once. The headlines would never concern themselves with him. This was Olympics time and the only news worth headlining was the comparative scores of the winners and the trophies won by continents, nations, and cities.

	It would go on like that for weeks, with scores calculated on a per capita basis and every city finding some way of calculating itself into a position of honor. His own town had once placed third in an Olympics covering Wiring Technician; third in the whole state. There was still a plaque saying so in Town Hall.

	George hunched his head between his shoulders and shoved his hands in his pocket and decided that made him more noticeable. He relaxed and tried

to look unconcerned, and felt no safer. He was in the lobby now, and no authoritative hand had yet been laid on his shoulder. He filed into the hall itself and moved as far forward as he could.

	It was with an unpleasant shock that he noticed Gray-hair next to him. He looked away quickly and tried reasoning with himself. The man had been right behind him in line after all.

	Gray-hair, beyond a brief and tentative smile, paid no attention to him and, besides, the Olympics was about to start. George rose in his seat to see if he could make out the position assigned to Trevelyan and at the moment that was all his concern.

	The hall was moderate in size and shaped in the classical long oval, with the spectators in the two balconies running completely about the rim and the contestants in the linear trough down the center. The machines were set up, the progress boards above each bench were dark, except for the name and contest number of each man. The contestants themselves were on the scene, reading, talking together; one was checking his fingernails minutely. (It was, of course, considered bad form for any contestant to pay any attention to the problem before him until the instant of the starting signal.)

	George studied the program sheet he found in the appropriate slot in the arm of his chair and found Trevelyan's name. His number was twelve and, to George's chagrin, that was at the wrong end of the hail. He could make out the figure of Contestant Twelve, standing with his hands in his pockets, back to his machine, and staring at the audience as though he were counting the house. George couldn't make out the face.

	Still, that was Trev.

	George sank back in his seat. He wondered if Trev would do well. He hoped, as a matter of conscious duty, that he would, and yet there was something within him that felt rebelliously resentful. George, professionless, here, watching. Trevelyan, Registered Metallurgist, Nonferrous, there, competing.

	George wondered if Trevelyan had competed in his first year. Sometimes men did, if they felt particularly confident-or hurried. It involved a certain risk. However efficient the Educative process, a preliminary year on Earth ("oiling the stiff knowledge," as the expression went) insured a higher score.

	If Trevelyan was repeating, maybe he wasn't doing so well. George felt ashamed that the thought pleased him just a bit.

	He looked about. The stands were almost full. This would be a wellattended Olympics, which meant greater strain on the contestants-or greater drive, perhaps, depending on the individual.

	Why Olympics, he thought suddenly? He had never known. Why was bread called bread?

	Once he had asked his father: "Why do they call it Olympics, Dad?"

	And his father had said: "Olympics means competition."

	George had said: "Is when Stubby and I fight an Olympics, Dad?"

	Platen, Senior, had said: "No. Olympics is a special kind of competition and don't ask silly questions. You'll know all you have to know when you get Educated."

	George, back in the present, sighed and crowded down into his seat.

	All you have to know!

	Funny that the memory should be so clear now. "When you get Educated." No one ever said, "If you get Educated."

	He always had asked silly questions, it seemed to him now. It was as though his mind had some instinctive foreknowledge of its inability to be Educated and had gone about asking questions in order to pick up scraps here and there as best it could.

	And at the House they encouraged him to do so because they agreed with his mind's instinct. It was the only way.

	He sat up suddenly. What the devil was he doing? Falling for that lie? Was it because Trev was there before him, an Educee, competing in the Olympics that he himself was surrendering?

	He wasn't feeble-minded! No!

	And the shout of denial in his mind was echoed before the sudden clamor in the audience as everyone got to his feet.

	The box seat in the very center of one long side of the oval was filling with an entourage wearing the colors of Novia, and the word "Novia" went up above them on the main board.

	Novia was a Grade A world with a large population and a thoroughly developed civilization, perhaps the best in the Galaxy. It was the kind of world that every Earthman wanted to live in someday; or, failing that, to see his children live in. (George remembered Trevelyan's insistence on Novia as a goal-and there he was competing for it.)

	The lights went out in that section of the ceiling above the audience and so did the wall lights. The central trough, in which the contestants waited, became floodlit.

	Again George tried to make out Trevelyan. Too far.

	The clear, polished voice of the announced sounded. "Distinguished Novian sponsors. Ladies. Gentlemen. The Olympics competition for Metallurgist, Nonferrous, is about to begin. The contestants are-"

	Carefully and conscientiously, he read off the list in the program. Names. Home towns. Educative years. Each name received its cheers, the San Franciscans among them receiving the loudest. When Trevelyan's name was reached, George surprised himself by shouting and waving madly. The gray-haired man next to him surprised him even more by cheering likewise.

	George could not help but stare in astonishment and his neighbor leaned over to say (speaking loudly in order to be heard over the hubbub), "No one here from my home town; I'll root for yours. Someone you know?"

	George shrank back. "No."

	"I noticed you looking in that direction. Would you like to borrow my glasses?"

	"No. Thank you." (Why didn't the old fool mind his own business?)

	The announcer went on with other formal details concerning the serial number of the competition, the method of timing and scoring and so on. Finally, he approached the meat of the matter and the audience grew silent as it listened.

	"Each contestant will be supplied with a bar of nonferrous alloy of unspecified composition. He will be required to sample and assay the bar, reporting all results correctly to four decimals in percent. All will utilize for this purpose a Beeman Microspectrograph, Model FX-2, each of which is, at the moment, not in working order."

	There was an appreciative shout from the audience.

	"Each contestant will be required to analyze the fault of his machine and correct it. Tools and spare parts are supplied. The spare part necessary may

not be present, in which case it must be asked for, and time of delivery thereof will be deducted from final time. Are all contestants ready?"

	The board above Contestant Five flashed a frantic red signal. Contestant Five ran off the floor and returned a moment later. The audience laughed good-naturedly.

	"Are all contestants ready?"

	The boards remained blank.

	"Any questions?"

	Still blank.

	"You may begin."

	There was, of course, no way anyone in the audience could tell how any contestant was progressing except for whatever notations went up on the notice board. But then, that didn't matter. Except for what professional Metallurgists there might be in the audience, none would understand anything about the contest professionally in any case. What was important was who won, who was second, who was third. For those who had bets on the standings (illegal, but unpreventable) that was all-important. Everything else might go hang.

	George watched as eagerly as the rest, glancing from one contestant to the next, observing how this one had removed the cover from his microspectrograph with deft strokes of a small instrument; how that one was peering into the face of the thing; how still a third was setting his alloy bar into its holder; and how a fourth adjusted a vernier with such small touches that he seemed momentarily frozen.

	Trevelyan was as absorbed as the rest. George had no way of telling how he was doing.

	The notice board over Contestant Seventeen flashed: Focus plate out of adjustment.

	The audience cheered wildly.

	Contestant Seventeen might be right and he might, of course, be wrong. If the latter, he would have to correct his diagnosis later and lose time. Or he might never correct his diagnosis and be unable to complete his analysis or, worse still, end with a completely wrong analysis.

	Never mind. For the moment, the audience cheered.

	Other boards lit up. George watched for Board Twelve. That came on finally: "Sample holder off-center. New clamp depresser needed."

	An attendant went running to him with a new part. If Trevelyan was wrong, it would mean useless delay. Nor would the time elapsed in waiting for the part be deducted. George found himself holding his breath.

	Results were beginning to go up on Board Seventeen, in gleaming letters: aluminum, 41.2649; magnesium, 22.1914; copper, 10.1001. Here and there, other boards began sprouting figures.

	The audience was in bedlam.

	George wondered how the contestants could work in such pandemonium, then wondered if that were not even a good thing. A first-class technician should work best under pressure.

	Seventeen rose from his place as his board went red-rimmed to signify completion. Four was only two seconds behind him. Another, then another.

	Trevelyan was still working, the minor constituents of his alloy bar still unreported. With nearly all contestants standing, Trevelyan finally rose, also. Then, tailing off, Five rose, and received an ironic cheer.

	It wasn't over. Official announcements were naturally delayed. Time elapsed was something, but accuracy was just as important. And not all diagnoses were of equal difficulty. A dozen factors had to be weighed.

	Finally, the announcer's voice sounded, "Winner in the time of four minutes and twelve seconds, diagnosis correct, analysis correct within an average of zero point seven parts per hundred thousand, Contestant Number-Seventeen, Henry Anton Schmidt of-"

	What followed was drowned in the screaming. Number Eight was next and then Four, whose good time was spoiled by a five part in ten thousand error in the niobium figure. Twelve was never mentioned. He was an also-ran.

	George made his way through the crowd to the Contestants' Door and found a large clot of humanity ahead of him. There would be weeping relatives (joy or sorrow, depending) to greet them, newsmen to interview the top-scorers, or the home-town boys, autograph hounds, publicity seekers and the just plain curious. Girls, too, who might hope to catch the eye of a top-scorer, almost certainly headed for Novia (or perhaps a low-scorer who needed consolation and had the cash to afford it).

	George hung back. He saw no one he knew. With San Francisco so far from home, it seemed pretty safe to assume that there would be no relatives to condole with Trev on the spot.

	Contestants emerged, smiling weakly, nodding at shouts of approval. Policemen kept the crowds far enough away to allow a lane for walking. Each high-scorer drew a portion of the crowd off with him, like a magnet pushing through a mound of iron filings.

	When Trevelyan walked out, scarcely anyone was left. (George felt somehow that he had delayed coming out until just that had come to pass.) There was a cigarette in his dour mouth and he turned, eyes downcast, to walk off.

	It was the first hint of home George had had in what was almost a year and a half and seemed almost a decade and a half. He was almost amazed that Trevelyan hadn't aged, that he was the same Trev he had last seen.

	George sprang forward. "Trev!"

	Trevelyan spun about, astonished. He stared at George and then his hand shot out. "George Platen, what the devil-"

	And almost as soon as the look of pleasure had crossed his face, it left. His hand dropped before George had quite the chance of seizing it.

	"Were you in there?" A curt jerk of Trev' s head indicated the hail.

	"I was."

	"To see me?"

	"Yes."

	"Didn't do so well, did I?" He dropped his cigarette and stepped on it, staring off to the street, where the emerging crowd was slowly eddying and finding its way into skimmers, while new lines were forming for the next scheduled Olympics.

	Trevelyan said heavily, "So what? It's only the second time I missed. Novia can go shove after the deal I got today. There are planets that would jump at me fast enough- But, listen, I haven't seen you since Education Day. Where did you go? Your folks said you were on special assignment but gave no details and you never wrote. You might have written."

	"I should have," said George uneasily. "Anyway, I came to say I was sorry the way things went just now."

	"Don't be," said Trevelyan. "I told you. Novia can go shove- At that I should have known. They've been saying for weeks that the Beeman machine would be used. All the wise money was on Beeman machines. The damned Education tapes they ran through me were for Henslers and who uses Henslers? The worlds in the Goman Cluster if you want to call them worlds. Wasn't that a nice deal they gave me?"

	"Can't you complain to-"

	"Don't be a fool. They'll tell me my brain was built for Henslers. Go argue. Everything went wrong. I was the only one who had to send out for a piece of equipment. Notice that?"

	"They deducted the time for that, though."

	"Sure, but I lost time wondering if I could be right in my diagnosis when I noticed there wasn't any clamp depressor in the parts they had supplied. They don't deduct for that. If it had been a Hensler, I would have known I was right. How could I match up then? The top winner was a San Franciscan. So were three of the next four. And the fifth guy was from Los Angeles. They get big-city Educational tapes. The best available. Beeman spectrographs and all. How do I compete with them? I came all the way out here just to get a chance at a Novian-sponsored Olympics in my classification and I might just as well have stayed home. I knew it, I tell you, and that settles it. Novia isn't the only chunk of rock in space. Of all the damned-"

	He wasn't speaking to George. He wasn't speaking to anyone. He was just uncorked and frothing. George realized that.

	George said, "If you knew in advance that the Beemans were going to be used, couldn't you have studied up on them?"

	"They weren't in my tapes, I tell you."

	"You could have read-books."

	The last word had trailed off under Trevelyan's suddenly sharp look.

	Trevelyan said, "Are you trying to make a big laugh out of this? You think this is funny? How do you expect me to read some book and try to memorize enough to match someone else who knows."

	"I thought-"

	"You try it. You try-" Then, suddenly, "What's your profession, by the way?" He sounded thoroughly hostile.

	"Well-"

	"Come on, now. If you're going to be a wise guy with me, let's see what you've done. You're still on Earth, I notice, so you're not a Computer Programmer and your special assignment can't be much."

	George said, "Listen, Trev. I'm late for an appointment." He backed away, trying to smile.

	"No, you don't." Trevelyan reached out fiercely, catching hold of George's jacket. "You answer my question. Why are you afraid to tell me? What is it with you? Don't come here rubbing a bad showing in my face, George, unless you can take it, too. Do you hear me?"

	He was shaking George in frenzy and they were struggling and swaying across the floor, when the Voice of Doom struck George's ear in the form of a policeman's outraged call.

	"All right now. All right. Break it up."

	George's heart turned to lead and lurched sickeningly. The policeman would be taking names, asking to see identity cards, and George lacked one. He would be questioned and his lack of profession would show at once; and before Trevelyan, too, who ached with the pain of the drubbing he had taken and would spread the news back home as a salve for his own hurt feelings.

	George couldn't stand that. He broke away from Trevelyan and made to run, but the policeman's heavy hand was on his shoulder. "Hold on, there. Let's see your identity card."

	Trevelyan was fumbling for his, saying harshly. "I'm Annand Trevelyan, Metallurgist, Nonferrous. I was just competing in the Olympics. You better find out about him, though, officer."

	George faced the two, lips dry and throat thickened past speech.

	Another voice sounded, quiet, well-mannered. "Officer. One moment."

	The policeman stepped back. "Yes, sir?"

	"This young man is my guest. What is the trouble?"

	George looked about in wild surprise. It was the gray-haired man who had been sitting next to him. Gray-hair nodded benignly at George.

	Guest? Was he mad?

	The policeman was saying, "These two were creating a disturbance, sir."

	"Any criminal charges? Any damages?"

	"No, sir."

	"Well, then, I'll be responsible." He presented a small card to the policeman's view and the latter stepped back at once.

	Trevelyan began indignantly. "Hold on, now-" but the policeman turned on him.

	"All right now. Got any charges?"

	"I just-"

	"On your way. The rest of you-move on." A sizable crowd had gathered, which now, reluctantly, unknotted itself and raveled away.

	George let himself be led to a skimmer but balked at entering. He said, "Thank you, but I'm not your guest." (Could it be a ridiculous case of mistaken identity?)

	But Gray-hair smiled and said, "You weren't but you are now. Let me introduce myself, I'm Ladislas Ingenescu, Registered Historian."

	"But-"

	"Come, you will come to no harm, I assure you. After all, I only wanted to spare you some trouble with a policeman."

	"But why?"

	"Do you want a reason? Well, then, say that we're honorary townsmates, you and I. We both shouted for the same man, remember, and we townspeople must stick together, even if the tie is only honorary. Eh?"

	And George, completely unsure of this man, Ingenescu, and of himself as well, found himself inside the skimmer. Before he could make up his mind that he ought to get off again, they were off the ground.

	He thought confusedly: The man has some status. The policeman deferred to him.

	He was almost forgetting that his real purpose here in San Francisco was not to find Trevelyan but to find some person with enough influence to force a reappraisal of his own capacity of Education.

	It could be that Ingenescu was such a man. And right in George's lap. Everything could be working out fine-fine. Yet it sounded hollow in his thought. He was uneasy.

	During the short skimmer-hop, Ingenescu kept up an even flow of small-talk, pointing out the landmarks of the city, reminiscing about past Olympics he had seen. George, who paid just enough attention to make vague sounds during the pauses, watched the route of flight anxiously.

	Would they head for one of the shield-openings and leave the city altogether?

	No, they headed downward, and George sighed his relief softly. He felt safer in the city.

	The skimmer landed at the roof-entry of a hotel and, as he alighted, Ingenescu said, "I hope you'll eat dinner with me in my room?"

	George said, "Yes," and grinned unaffectedly. He was just beginning to realize the gap left within him by missing lunch.

	Ingenescu let George eat in silence. Night closed in and the wall lights went on automatically. (George thought: I've been on my own almost twenty-four hours.)

	And then over the coffee, Ingenescu finally spoke again. He said, "You've been acting as though you think I intend you harm."

	George reddened, put down his cup and tried to deny it, but the older man laughed and shook his head.

	"It's so. I've been watching you closely since I first saw you and I think I know a great deal about you now."

	George half rose in horror.

	Ingenescu said, "But sit down. I only want to help you."

	George sat down but his thoughts were in a whirl. If the old man knew who he was, why had he not left him to the policeman? On the other hand, why should he volunteer help?

	Ingenescu said, "You want to know why I should want to help you? Oh, don't look alarmed. I can't read minds. It's just that my training enables me to judge the little reactions that give minds away, you see. Do you understand that?"

	George shook his head.

	Ingenescu said, "Consider my first sight of you. You were waiting in line to watch an Olympics, and your micro-reactions didn't match what you were doing. The expression of your face was wrong, the action of your hands was wrong. It meant that something, in general, was wrong, and the interesting thing was that, whatever it was, it was nothing common, nothing obvious. Perhaps, I thought, it was something of which your own conscious mind was unaware.

	"I couldn't help but follow you, sit next to you. I followed you again when you left and eavesdropped on the conversation between your friend and yourself. After that, well, you were far too interesting an object of study-I'm sorry if that sounds cold-blooded----for me to allow you to be taken off by a policeman. -Now tell me, what is it that troubles you?"

	George was in an agony of indecision. If this was a trap, why should it be such an indirect, roundabout one? And he had to turn to someone. He had come to the city to find help and here was help being offered. Perhaps what was wrong was that it was being offered. It came too easy.

	Ingenescu said, "Of course, what you tell me as a Social Scientist is a privileged communication. Do you know what that means?"

	"No, sir."

	"It means, it would be dishonorable for me to repeat what you say to anyone for any purpose. Moreover no one has the legal right to compel me to repeat it."

	George said, with sudden suspicion, "I thought you were a Historian."

	"So lam."

	"Just now you said you were a Social Scientist."

	Ingenescu broke into loud laughter and apologized for it when he could talk. "I'm sorry, young man, I shouldn't laugh, and I wasn't really laughing at you. I was laughing at Earth and its emphasis on physical science, and the practical segments of it at that. I'll bet you can rattle off every subdivision of construction technology or mechanical engineering and yet you're a blank on social science."

	"Well, then what is social science?"

	"Social science studies groups of human beings and there are many

high-specialized branches to it, just as there are to zoology, for instance. For instance, there are Culturists, who study the mechanics of cultures, their growth, development, and decay. Cultures," he added, forestalling a question, "are all the aspects of a way of life. For instance, it includes the way we make our living, the things we enjoy and believe, what we consider good and bad and soon. Do you understand?"

	"I think I do."

	"An Economist-not an Economic Statistician, now, but an Economist-specialized in the study of the way a culture supplies the bodily needs of its individual members. A Psychologist specializes in the individual member of a society and how he is affected by the society. A Futurist specializes in planning the future course of a society, and a Historian- That's where I come in, now."

	"Yes, sir."

	"A Historian specializes in the past development of our own society and of societies with other cultures."

	George found himself interested. "Was it different in the past?"

	"I should say it was. Until a thousand years ago, there was no Education, not what we call Education, at least."

	George said, "I know. People learned in bits and pieces out of books."

	"Why, how do you know this?"

	"I've heard it said," George said cautiously. Then, "Is there any use in worrying about what's happened long ago? I mean, it's all done with, isn't it?"

	"It's never done with, my boy. The past explains the present. For instance, why is our Educational system what it is?"

	George stirred restlessly. The man kept bringing the subject back to that. He said snappishly, "Because it's best."

	"Ah, but why is it best?" Now you listen to me for one moment and I'll explain. Then you can tell me if there is any use in history. Even before interstellar travel was developed-" He broke off at the look of complete astonishment on George's face. "Well, did you think we always had it?"

	"I never gave it any thought, sir."

	"I'm sure you didn't. But there was a time, four or five thousand years ago, when mankind was confined to the surface of Earth. Even then, his culture had grown quite technological and his numbers had increased to the point where any failure in technology would have meant mass starvation and disease. To maintain the technological level and advance it in the face of an increasing population, more and more technicians and scientists had to be trained, and yet, as science advanced, it took longer and longer to train them.

	"As first interplanetary and then interstellar travel was developed, the problem grew more acute. In fact, actual colonization of extra-Solar planets was impossible for about fifteen hundred years because of a lack of properly trained men.

	"The turning point came when the mechanics of the storage of knowledge within the brain was worked out. Once that had been done, it became possible to devise Educational tapes that would modify the mechanics in such a way as to place within the mind a body of knowledge ready-made so to speak. But you know about that.

	"Once that was done, trained men could be turned out by the thousands and millions, and we could begin what someone has since called the 'Filling of the Universe.' There are now fifteen hundred inhabited planets in the Galaxy and there is no end in sight.

	"Do you see all that is involved? Earth exports Education tapes for low-specialized professions and that keeps the Galactic culture unified. For instance, the Reading tapes insure a single language for all of us. -Don't look so surprised, other languages are possible, and in the past were used. Hundreds of them.

	"Earth also exports high-specialized professionals and keeps its own population at an endurable level. Since they are shipped out in a balanced sex ratio, they act as self-reproductive units and help increase the populations on the Outworlds where an increase is needed. Furthermore, tapes and men are paid for in material which we much need and on which our economy depends. Now do you understand why our Education is the best way?"

	"Yes, sir."

	"Does it help you to understand, knowing that without it, interstellar colonization was impossible for fifteen hundred yea~s?"

	"Yes, sir."

	"Then you see the uses of history." The Historian smiled. "And now I wonder if you see why I'm interested in you?"

	George snapped out of time and space back to reality. Ingenescu, apparently, didn't talk aimlessly. All this lecture had been a device to attack him from a new angle.

	He said, once again withdrawn, hesitating, "Why?"

	"Social Scientists work with societies and societies are made up of people."

	'All right.

	"But people aren't machines. The professionals in physical science work with machines. There is only a limited amount to know about a machine and the professionals know it all. Furthermore, all machines of a given sort are just about alike so that there is nothing to interest them in any given individual machine. But people, ah- They are so complex and so different one from another that a Social Scientist never knows all there is to know or even a good part of what there is to know. To understand his own specialty, he must always be ready to study people; particularly unusual Specimens."

	"Like me," said George tonelessly.

	"I shouldn't call you a specimen, I suppose, but you are unusual. You're

worth studying, and if you will allow me that privilege then, in return, I will help you if you are in trouble and if I can."

	There were pin wheels whirring in George's mind. -All this talk about people and colonization made possible by Education. It was as though caked thought within him were being broken up and strewn about mercilessly.

	He said, "Let me think," and clamped his hands over his ears.

	He took them away and said to the Historian, "Will you do something for me, sir?"

	"If I can," said the Historian amiably.

	"And everything I say in this room is a privileged communication. You said so."

	"And I meant it."

	"Then get me an interview with an Outworld official, with-with a Novian."

	Ingenescu looked startled. "Well, now-"

	"You can do it," said George earnestly. "You're an important official. I saw the policeman's look when you put that card in front of his eyes. If you refuse, I-I won't let you study me."

	It sounded a silly threat in George's own ears, one without force. On Ingenescu, however, it seemed to have a strong effect.

	He said, "That's an impossible condition. A Novian in Olympics month-"

	"All right, then, get me a Novian on the phone and I'll make my own arrangements for an interview."

	"Do you think you can?"

	"I know I can. Wait and see."

	Ingenescu stared at George thoughtfully and then reached for the visiphone.

	George waited, half drunk with his new outlook on the whole problem and the sense of power it brought. It couldn't miss. It couldn't miss. He would be a Novian yet. He would leave Earth in triumph despite Antonelli and the whole crew of fools at the House for the (he almost laughed aloud) Feeble-minded.

	George watched eagerly as the visiplate lit up. It would open up a window into a room of Novians, a window into a small patch of Novia transplanted to Earth. In twenty-four hours, he had accomplished that much.

	There was a burst of laughter as the plate unmisted and sharpened, but for the moment no single head could be seen but rather the fast passing of the shadows of men and women, this way and that. A voice was heard, clear-worded over a background of babble. "Ingenescu? He wants me?"

	Then there he was, staring out of the plate. A Novian. A genuine Novian. (George had not an atom of doubt. There was something completely Outworldly about him. Nothing that could be completely defined, or even momentarily mistaken.)

	He was swarthy in complexion with a dark wave of hair combed rigidly back from his forehead. He wore a thin black mustache and a pointed beard, just as dark, that scarcely reached below, the lower limit of his narrow chin, but the rest of his face was so smooth that it looked as though it had been depilated permanently.

	He was smiling. "Ladislas, this goes too far. We fully expect to be spied on, within reason, during our stay on Earth, but mind reading is out of bounds."

	"Mind reading, Honorable?"

	"Confess! You knew I was going to call this evening. You knew I was only waiting to finish this drink." His hand moved up into view and his eye peered through a small glass of a faintly violet liqueur. "I can't offer you one, I'm afraid."

George, out of range of Ingenescu's transmitter could not be seen by the Novian. He was relieved at that. He wanted time to compose himself and he needed it badly. It was as though he were made up exclusively of restless fingers, drumming, drumming- But he was right. He hadn't miscalculated. Ingenescu was important.

The Novian called him by his first name.

Good! Things worked well. What George had lost on Antonelli, he would make up, with advantage, on Ingenescu. And someday, when he was on his own at last, and could come back to Earth as powerful a Novian as this one who could negligently joke with Ingenescu's first name and be addressed as "Honorable" in turn-when he came back, he would settle with Antonelli. He had a year and a half to pay back and he- He all but lost his balance on the brink of the enticing daydream and snapped back in sudden anxious realization that he was losing the thread of what was going on.

	The Novian was saying, "-doesn't hold water. Novia has a civilization as complicated and advanced as Earth's. We're not Zeston, after all. It's ridiculous that we have to come here for individual technicians."

	Ingenescu said soothingly, "Only for new models. There is never any certainty that new models will be needed. To buy the Educational tapes would cost you the same price as a thousand technicians and how do you know you would need that many?"

	The Novian tossed off what remained of his drink and laughed. (It displeased George, somehow, that a Novian should be this frivolous. He wondered uneasily if perhaps the Novian ought not to have skipped that drink and even the one or two before that.)

	The Novian said, "That's typical pious fraud, Ladislas. You know we can make use of all the late models we can get. I collected five Metallurgists this afternoon-"

	"I know," said Ingenescu. "I was there."

	"Watching me! Spying!" cried the Novian. "I'll tell you what it is. The new-model Metallurgists I got differed from the previous model only in knowing the use of Beeman Spectrographs. The tapes couldn't be modified that much, not that much" (he held up two fingers close together) "from last year's model. You introduce the new models only to make us buy and spend and come here hat in hand."

	"We don't make you buy."

	"No, but you sell late-model technicians to Landonum and so we have to keep pace. It's a merry-go-round you have us on, you pious Earthmen, but watch out, there may be an exit somewhere." There was a sharp edge to his laugh, and it ended sooner than it should have.

	Ingenescu said, "In all honesty, I hope there is. Meanwhile, as to the purpose of my call-"

	"That's right, you called. Oh, well, I've said my say and 1 suppose next year there'll be a new model of Metallurgist anyway for us to spend goods on, probably with a new gimmick for niobium assays and nothing else altered and the next year- But go on, what is it you want?"

	"I have a young man here to whom I wish you to speak."

	"Oh?" The Novian looked not completely pleased with that. "Concerning what?"

	"I can't say. He hasn't told me. For that matter he hasn't even told me his name and profession."

	The Novian frowned. "Then why take up my time?"

	"He seems quite confident that you will be interested in what he has to say."

	"I dare say."

	"And," said Ingenescu, "as a favor to me."

	The Novian shrugged. "Put him on and tell him to make it short."

	Ingenescu stepped aside and whispered to George, "Address him as 'Honorable.'

	George swallowed with difficulty. This was it.

	George felt himself going moist with perspiration. The thought had come so recently, yet it was in him now so certainly. The beginnings of it had come when he had spoken to Trevelyan, then everything had fermented and billowed into shape while Ingenescu had prattled, and then the Novian's own remarks had seemed to nail it all into place.

	George said, "Honorable, I've come to show you the exit from the merry-go-round." Deliberately, he adopted the Novian's own metaphor.

	The Novian stared at him gravely. "What merry-go-round?"

	"You yourself mentioned it, Honorable. The merry-go-round that Novia is on when you come to Earth to-to get technicians." (He couldn't keep his teeth from chattering; from excitement, not fear.)

	The Novian said, "You're trying to say that you know a way by which we can avoid patronizing Earth's mental supermarket. Is that it?"

	"Yes, sir. You can control your own Educational system."

	"Umm. Without tapes?"

	"Y-yes, Honorable."

	The Novian, without taking his eyes from George, called out, "Ingenescu, get into view."

	The Historian moved to where he could be seen over George's shoulder.

	The Novian said, "What is this? I don't seem to penetrate."

	"I assure you solemnly," said Ingenescu, "that whatever this is it is being done on the young man's own initiative, Honorable. I have not inspired this. I have nothing to do with it."

	"Well, then, what is the young man to you? Why do you call me on his behalf?"

	Ingenescu said, "He is an object of study, Honorable. He has value to me and I humor him."

	"What kind of value?"

	"It's difficult to explain; a matter of my profession."

	The Novian laughed shortly. "Well, to each his profession." He nodded to an invisible person or persons outside plate range. "There's a young man here, a prot�g� of Ingenescu or some such thing, who will explain to us how to Educate without tapes." He snapped his fingers, and another glass of pale liqueur appeared in his hand. "Well, young man?"

	The faces on the plate were multiple now. Men and women, both, crammed in for a view of George, their faces molded into various shades of amusement and curiosity.

	George tried to look disdainful. They were all, in their own ways, Novians as well as the Earthman, "studying" him as though he were a bug on a pin. Ingenescu was sitting in a corner, now, watching him owl-eyed.

	Fools, he thought tensely, one and all. But they would have to understand. He would make them understand.

	He said, "I was at the Metallurgist Olympics this afternoon."

	"You, too?" said the Novian blandly. "It seems all Earth was there."

	"No, Honorable, but I was. I had a friend who competed and who made out very badly because you were using the Beeman machines. His education had included only the Henslers, apparently an older model. You said the modification involved was slight." George held up two fingers close together in conscious mimicry of the other's previous gesture. "And my friend had known some time in advance that knowledge of the Beeman machines would be required."

	"And what does that signify?"

	"It was my friend's lifelong ambition to qualify for Novia. He already knew the Henslers. He had to know the Beemans to qualify and he knew that. To learn about the Beemans would have taken just a few more facts, a bit more data, a small amount of practice perhaps. With a life's ambition riding the scale, he might have managed this-"

	"And where would he have obtained a tape for the additional facts and data? Or has Education become a private matter for home study here on Earth?"

	There was dutiful laughter from the faces in the background.

	George said, "That's why he didn't learn, Honorable. He thought he needed a tape. He wouldn't even try without one, no matter what the prize. He refused to try without a tape."

	"Refused, eh? Probably the type of fellow who would refuse to fly without a skimmer." More laughter and the Novian thawed into a smile and said, "The fellow is amusing. Go on. I'll give you another few moments."

	George said tensely, "Don't think this is a joke. Tapes are actually bad. They teach too much; they're too painless. A man who learns that way doesn't know how to learn any other way. He's frozen into whatever position he's been taped. Now if a person weren't given tapes but were forced to learn by hand, so to speak, from the start; why, then he'd get the habit of learning, and continue to learn. Isn't that reasonable? Once he has the habit well developed he can be given just a small amount of tape knowledge, perhaps, to fill in gaps or fix details. Then he can make further progress on his own. You can make Beeman Metallurgists out of your own Hensler Metallurgists in that way and not have to come to Earth for new models."

	The Novian nodded and sipped at his drink. "And where does everyone get knowledge without tapes? From interstellar vacuum?"

	"From books. By studying the instruments themselves. By thinking."

	"Books? How does one understand books without Education?"

	Books are in words. Words can be understood for the most part. Specialized words can be explained by the technicians you already have."

	"What about reading? Will you allow reading tapes?"

	"Reading tapes are all right, I suppose, but there's no reason you can't learn to read the old way, too. At least in part."

	The Novian said, "So that you can develop good habits from the start?"

	"Yes, yes," George said gleefully. The man was beginning to understand.

	"And what about mathematics?"

	"That's the easiest of all, sir-Honorable. Mathematics is different from other technical subjects. It starts with certain simple principles and proceeds by steps. You can start with nothing and learn. It's practically designed for that. Then, once you know the proper types of mathematics, other technical books become quite understandable. Especially if you start with easy ones."

	"Are there easy books?"

	"Definitely. Even if there weren't, the technicians you now have can try to write easy books. Some of them might be able to put some of their knowledge into words and symbols."

	"Good Lord," said the Novian to the men clustered about him. "The young devil has an answer for everything."

	"I have. I have," shouted George. "Ask me."

	"Have you tried learning from books yourself? Or is this just theory with you?"

	George turned to look quickly at Ingenescu, but the Historian was passive. There was no sign of anything but gentle interest in his face.

	George said, "I have."

	"And do you find it works?"

	"Yes, Honorable," said George eagerly. "Take me with you to Novia. I can set up a program and direct-"

	"Wait, I have a few more questions. How long would it take, do you suppose, for you to become a Metallurgist capable of handling a Beeman machine, supposing you started from nothing and did not use Educational tapes?"

	George hesitated. "Well-years, perhaps."

	"Two years? Five? Ten?"

	"I can't say, Honorable."

	"Well, there's a vital question to which you have no answer, have you? Shall we say five years? Does that sound reasonable to you?"

	"I suppose so."

	"All right. We have a technician studying metallurgy according to this method of yours for five years. He's no good to us during that time, you'll admit, but he must be fed and housed and paid for all that time."

	"But-"

	"Let me finish. Then when he's done and can use the Beeman, five years have passed. Don't you suppose we'll have modified Beemans then which he won't be able to use?"

	"But by then he'll be expert on learning. He could learn the new details necessary in a matter of days."

	"So you say. And suppose this friend of yours, for instance, had studied up on Beemans on his own and managed to learn it; would he be as expert in its use as a competitor who had learned it off the tapes?"

	"Maybe not-" began George.

	"Ah," said the Novian.

	"Wait, let me finish. Even if he doesn't know something as well, it's the ability to learn further that's important. He may be able to think up things, new things that no tape-Educated man would. You'll have a reservoir of onginal thinkers-"

	"In your studying," said the Novian, "have you thought up any new things?"

	"No, but I'm just one man and I haven't studied long-"

	"Yes. -Well, ladies, gentlemen, have we been sufficiently amused?"

	"Wait," cried George, in sudden panic. "I want to arrange a personal interview. There are things I can't explain over the visiphone. There are details-"

	The Novian looked past George. "Ingenescu! I think I have done you your favor. Now, really, I have a heavy schedule tomorrow. Be well."

	The screen went blank.

	George's hands shot out toward the screen, as though in a wild impulse to shake life back into it. He cried out, "He didn't believe me. He didn't believe me."

	Ingenescu said, "No, George. Did you really think he would?"

	George scarcely heard him. "But why not? It's all true. It's all so much to his advantage. No risk. I and a few men to work with- A dozen men training for years would cost less than one technician. -He was drunk. Drunk! He didn't understand."

	George looked about breathlessly. "How do I get to him? I've got to. This was wrong. Shouldn't have used the visiphone. I need time. Face to face. How do I-"

	Ingenescu said, "He won't see you, George. And if he did, he wouldn't believe you."

	"He will, I tell you. When he isn't drinking. He-" George turned squarely toward the Historian and his eyes widened. "Why do you call me George?"

	"Isn't that your name? George Platen?"

	"You know me?"

	"All about you."

	George was motionless except for the breath pumping his chest wall up and down.

	Ingenescu said, "I want to help you, George. I told you that. I've been studying you and I want to help you."

	George screamed, "I don't need help. I'm not feeble-minded. The whole world is, but I'm not." He whirled and dashed madly for the door.

	He flung it open and two policemen roused themselves suddenly from their guard duty and seized him.

	For all George's straining, he could feel the hypo-spray at the fleshy point just under the corner of his jaw, and that was it. The last thing he remembered was the face of Ingenescu, watching with gentle concern.

	George opened his eyes to the whiteness of a ceiling. He remembered what had happened. He remembered it distantly as though it had happened to somebody else. He stared at the ceiling till the whiteness filled his eyes and washed his brain clean, leaving room, it seemed, for new thought and new ways of thinking.

	He didn't know how long he lay there so, listening to the drift of his own thinking.

	There was a voice in his ear. "Are you awake?"

	And George heard his own moaning for the first time. Had he been moaning? He tried to turn his head.

	The voice said, "Are you in pain, George?"

	George whispered, "Funny. I was so anxious to leave Earth. I didn't understand."

	"Do you know where you are?"

	"Back in the-the House." George managed to turn. The voice belonged to Omani.

	George said, "It's funny I didn't understand."

	Omani smiled gently, "Sleep again-"

	George slept.

	And woke again. His mind was clear.

	Omani sat at the bedside reading, but he put down the book as George's eyes opened.

	George struggled to a sitting position. He said, "Hello."

	"Are you hungry?"

	"You bet." He stared at Omani curiously. "I was followed when I left, wasn't I?"

	Omani nodded. "You were under observation at all times. We were going to maneuver you to Antonelli and let you discharge your aggressions. We felt that to be the only way you could make progress. Your emotions were clogging your advance."

	George said, with a trace of embarrassment, "I was all wrong about him."

	"It doesn't matter now. When you stopped to stare at the Metallurgy notice board at the airport, one of our agents reported back the list of names. You and I had talked about your past sufficiently so that I caught the significance of Trevelyan's name there. You asked for directions to the Olympics; there was the possibility that this might result in the kind of crisis we were hoping for; we sent Ladislas Ingenescu to the hall to meet you and take over."

	"He's an important man in the government, isn't he?"

	"Yes, he is."

	"And you had him take over. It makes me sound important."

	"You are important, George."

	A thick stew had arrived, steaming, fragrant. George grinned wolfishly and pushed his sheets back to free his arms. Omani helped arrange the bed-table. For a while, George ate silently.

	Then George said, "I woke up here once before just for a short time."

	Omani said, "I know. I was here."

	"Yes, I remember. You know, everything was changed. It was as though I was too tired to feel emotion. I wasn't angry any more. I could just think. It was as though I had been drugged to wipe out emotion."

	"You weren't," said Omani. "Just sedation. You had rested."

	"Well, anyway, it was all clear to me, as though I had known it all the time but wouldn't listen to myself. I thought: What was it I had wanted Novia to let me do? I had wanted to go to Novia and take a batch of un-Educated youngsters and teach them out of books. I had wanted to establish a House for the Feeble-minded-like here-and Earth already has them-many of them."

	Omani's white teeth gleamed as he smiled. "The Institute of Higher Studies is the correct name for places like this."

	"Now I see it," said George, "so easily I am amazed at my blindness before. After all, who invents the new instrument models that require new-model technicians? Who invented the Beeman spectrographs, for instance? A man called Beeman, I suppose, but he couldn't have been tape-Educated or how could he have made the advance?"

	"Exactly."

	"Or who makes Educational tapes? Special tape-making technicians? Then who makes the tapes to train them? More advanced technicians? Then who makes the tapes- You see what I mean. Somewhere there has to be an end. Somewhere there must be men and women with capacity for original thought."

	"Yes, George."

	George leaned back, stared over Omani's head, and for a moment there was the return of something like restlessness to his eyes.

	"Why wasn't I told all this at the beginning?"

	"Oh, if we could," said Omani, "the trouble it would save us. We can analyze a mind, George, and say this one will make an adequate architect and that one a good woodworker. We know of no way of detecting the capacity for original, creative thought. It is too subtle a thing. We have some rule-of-thumb methods that mark out individuals who may possibly or potentially have such a talent.

	"On Reading Day, such individuals are reported. You were, for instance. Roughly speaking, the number so reported comes to one in ten thousand. By the time Education Day arrives, these individuals are checked again, and nine out of ten of them turn out to have been false alarms. Those who remain are sent to places like this."

	George said, "Well, what's wrong with telling people that one out of-of a hundred thousand will end at places like these? Then it won't be such a shock to those who do."

	"And those who don't? The ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine that don't? We can't have all those people considering themselves failures. They aim at the professions and one way or another they all make it. Everyone can place after his or her name: Registered something or-other. In one fashion or another every individual has his or her place in society and this is necessary."

	"But we?" said George. "The one in ten thousand exception?"

	"You can't be told. That's exactly it. It's the final test. Even after we've thinned out the possibilities on Education Day, nine out of ten of those who come here are not quite the material of creative genius, and there's no way we can distinguish those nine from the tenth that we want by any form of machinery. The tenth one must tell us himself."

	"How?"

	"We bring you here to a House for the Feeble-minded and the man who won't accept that is the man we want. It's a method that can be cruel, but it works. It won't do to say to a man, 'You can create. Do so.' It is much safer to wait for a man to say, 'I can create, and I will do so whether you wish it or not.' There are ten thousand men like you, George, who support the advancing technology of fifteen hundred worlds. We can't allow ourselves to miss one recruit to that number or waste our efforts on one member who doesn't measure up."

	George pushed his empty plate out of the way and lifted a cup of coffee to his lips.

	"What about the people here who don't-measure up?"

	"They are taped eventually and become our Social Scientists. Ingenescu is one. I am a Registered Psychologist. We are second echelon, so to speak."

	George finished his coffee. He said, "I still wonder about one thing."

	"What is that?"

	George threw aside the sheet and stood up. "Why do they call them Olympics?"













Sucker Bait



By Isaac Asimov









THE ship Triple G flashed silently out of the nothingness of hyperspace and into the all-ness of space-time. It emerged into the glitter of the great star-cluster of Hercules.

	It poised gingerly in space, surrounded by suns and suns and suns, each centering a gravitational field that wrenched at the little bubble of metal. But the ship's computers had done well and it had pin-pricked squarely into position. It was within a day's journey-ordinary spacedrive journey-of the Lagrange System.

	This fact had varying significance to the different men aboard ship. To the crew it was another day's work and another day's flight pay and then shore rest. The planet for which they were aiming was uninhabited but shore rest could be a pleasant interlude even on an asteroid. They did not trouble themselves concerning a possible difference of opinion among the passengers.

	The crew, in fact, were rather contemptuous of the passengers, and avoided them.

	Eggheads!

	And so they were, every one of them but one. Scientists, in

pouter terms-and a heterogeneous lot. Their nearest approach to a common emotion at that moment was a final anxiety for their instruments, a vague desire for a last check.

	And perhaps just a small increase of tension and anxiety. It was an uninhabited planet. Each had expressed himself as firmly of that belief a number of times. Still, each man's thoughts are his own.

	As for the one unusual man on board ship-not a crewman and not really a scientist-his strongest feeling was one of bone-weariness. He stirred to his feet weakly and fought off the last dregs of spacesickness. He was Mark Annuncio, and he had been in bed now for four days, feeding on almost nothing, while the ship wove in and out of the Universe, jumping its light-years of space.

	But now he felt less certain of imminent death and he had to answer the summons of the captain. In his inarticulate way, Mark resented that summons. He was used to having his own way, seeing what he felt like seeing. Who was the captain to- The impulse kept returning to tell Dr. Sheffield about this and let it rest there.

	But Mark was curious, so he knew he would have to go.

	It was his one great vice. Curiosity!

	It also happened to be his profession, and his mission in life.



CAPTAIN Follenbee of the Triple G was a hard-headed man. It was how he habitually thought of himself. He had made government-sponsored runs before. For one thing, they were profitable. The Confederacy didn't haggle. It meant a complete overhaul of his ship each time, replacement of defective parts, liberal terms for the crew. It was good business. Damned good business.

	This run, of course, was a little different.

	It wasn't so much the particular gang of passengers he had taken aboard. (He had expected temperament, tantrums and unbearable foolishness but it turned out that eggheads were much like normal people.) It wasn't that half his ship had been torn down and rebuilt into what the contract called a "universal central-access laboratory."

	Actually, and he hated the thought, it was "Junior"-the planet that lay ahead of them.

	The crew didn't know, of course, but he, himself, hard-head and all, was beginning to find the matter unpleasant.

But only beginning- At the moment, he told himself, it was this Mark Annuncio,

if that was the name, who was annoying him. He slapped the back of one hand against the palm of the other and thought angrily about it. His large, round face was ruddy with annoyance.

Insolence!

	A boy of not more than twenty, with no position that he knew of among the passengers, to make a request like that.

	What was behind it? That at least ought to be straightened out.

	In his present mood, he would like to straighten it out by means of a jacket collar twisted in a fist and a rattle of teeth, but better not- After all, this was a curious kind of flight for the Confederacy of Worlds to sponsor, and a twenty-year-old, over-curious rubberneck might be an integral part of the strangeness. What was he on board for? There was this Dr. Sheffield, for instance, who seemed to have no job but to play nursemaid for the boy. Now why was that? Who was this Annuncio?

	He had been spacesick for the entire trick, or was that just a device to keep to his cabin- There was a light burning as the door-signal sounded.

	It would be the boy.

	Easy now, thought the captain. Easy now.



MARK Annuncio entered the captain's cabin and licked his lips in a futile attempt to get rid of the bitter taste in his mouth. He felt lightheaded and heavyhearted.

	At the moment he would have given up his Service status to be back on Earth.

	He thought wishfully of his own familiar quarters; small but private; alone with his own kind. It was just a bed, desk, chair, and closet, but he had all of Central Library on free call. Here there was nothing. He had thought there would be a lot to learn on board ship. He had never been on board ship before. But he hadn't expected days and days of spacesickness.

	He was so homesick he could cry, and he hated himself because he knew that his eyes were red and moist and that the captain would see it. He hated himself because he wasn't large and wide; because he looked like a mouse.

	In a word, that was it. He had mouse-brown hair with nothing but silken straightness to it; a narrow, receding chin, a small mouth and a pointed nose. All he needed were five or six delicate vibrissae on each side of the nose to make the illusion complete. And he was below average in height.

	And then he saw the star-field in the captain's observation port and the breath went out of him.

	Stars!

	Stars as he had never seen them.

	Mark had never left the planet Earth before. (Dr. Sheffield told him that was why he was spacesick. Mark didn't believe him. He had read in fifty different books that spacesickness was psychogenic. Even Dr. Sheffield tried to fool him sometimes.)

	He had never left Earth before, and he was used to Earth's sky. He was accustomed to viewing two thousand stars spread over half a celestial sphere with only ten of the first magnitude.

	But here they crowded madly. There were ten times the number in Earth's sky in that small square alone. And bright!

	He fixed the star-pattern greedily in his mind. It overwhelmed him. He knew the figures on the Hercules cluster, of course. It contained between one million and ten million stars

-no exact census had been taken as yet-but figures are one thing and stars are another.

	He wanted to count them. It was a sudden overwhelming desire. He was curious about the number. He wondered if they all had names; if there were astronomic data on all of them. Let's see- He counted them in groups of hundreds. Two-three-He might have used the mental pattern alone, but he liked to watch the actual physical objects when they were so startlingly beautiful. Six-seven- The captain's hearty voice splattered over him and brought him back to ship's interior.

	"Mr. Annuncio. Glad to meet you."

	Mark looked up, startled, resentful. Why was his count being interrupted?

	He said, irritably, "The stars!" and pointed.

	The captain turned to stare. "What about them? What's wrong?"

	Mark looked at the captain's wide back and his overdeveloped posterior. He looked at the gray stubble that covered the captain's head, at the two large hands with thick fingers that clasped one another in the small of the captain's back and flapped rhythmically against the shiny plastex of his jacket.

	Mark thought: What does he care about the stars? Does he care about their size and brightness and spectral classes?

	His lower lip trembled. The captain was just one of the noncompos. Everyone on ship was a noncompos. That's what they called them back in the Service. Noncompos. All of them. Couldn't cube fifteen without a computer.

	Mark felt very lonely.

	He let it go-no use trying to explain-and said, "The stars get so thick here. Like pea soup."

	"All appearance, Mr. Annuncio." (The captain pronounced the "c" in Mark's name like an "s" rather than a "ts" and the sound grated on Mark's ear.) "Average distance between stars in the thickest cluster is over a light-year. Plenty of room, eh? Looks thick, though. Grant you that. If the lights were out, they'd shine like a trillion Chisholm points in an oscillating force-field."

	But he didn't offer to put the lights out and Mark wasn't going to ask him to.



THE captain said, "Sit down, Mr. Annuncio. No use standing, eh? You smoke? Mind if I do? Sorry you couldn't be here this morning. Had an excellent view of Lagrange I and II at six space-hours. Red and green. Like traffic lights, eh? Missed you all trip. Space-legs need strengthening, eh?"

	He barked out his "eh's" in a high-pitched voice that Mark found devilishly irritating.

	Mark said in a low voice, "I'm all right now."

	The captain seemed to find that unsatisfactory. He puffed at his cigar and stared down at Mark with eyebrows hunched down over his eyes. He said, slowly, "Glad to see you now,

anyway. Get acquainted a little. Shake hands. The Triple G's been on a good many government-chartered cruises. No trouble. Never had trouble. Wouldn't want trouble. You understand."

	Mark didn't. He was tired of trying to. His eyes drifted back hungrily to the stars. The pattern had changed a little.

	The captain caught his eyes for a moment. He was frowning and his shoulders seemed to tremble at the edge of a shrug. He walked to the control panel, and like a gigantic eyelid, metal slithered across the studded observation port.

	Mark jumped up in a fury, shrieking, "What's the idea? I'm counting them, you fool."

	"Counting-" The captain flushed, but maintained a quality of politeness in his voice. He said, "Sorry! Little matter of business we must discuss."

	He stressed the word "business" lightly.

	Mark knew what he meant. "There's nothing to discuss. I want to see the ship's log. I called you hours ago to tell you that. You're delaying me."

	The captain said, "Suppose you tell me why you want to see it, eh? Never been asked before. Where's your authority?"

	Mark felt astonished. "I can look at anything I want to. I'm in Mnemonic Service."

	The captain puffed strongly at his cigar. (It was a special grade manufactured for use in space and on enclosed spaceobjects. It had an oxidant included so that atmospheric oxygen was not consumed.)

	He said, cautiously, "That so? Never heard of it. What is it?" Mark said indignantly, "It's the Mnemonic Service, that's all. It's my job to look at anything I want to and to ask anything I want to. And I've got the right to do it."

	"Can't look at the log if I don't want you to."

	"You've got no say in it, you . . . you noncompos."

	The captain's coolness evaporated. He threw his cigar down violently and stamped at it, then picked it up and poked it carefully into the ash vent.

	"What the Galactic Drift is this?" he demanded. "Who are you, anyway? Security agent? What's up? Let's have it straight. Right now."

	"I've told you all I have to."

	"Nothing to hide," said the captain, "but I've got rights."

	"Nothing to hide?" squeaked Mark. "TherL why is this ship called the Triple G?"

	"That's its name."

	"Go on. No such ship with an Earth registry. I knew that before I got on. I've been waiting to ask you."

	The captain blinked. He said, "Official name is George G. Grundy. Triple G is what everyone calls it."

	Mark laughed. "All right, then. And after I see the log book, I want to talk to the crew. I have the right. You ask Dr. Sheffield."

	"The crew too, eh?" the captain seethed. "Let's talk to Dr. Sheffield, and then let's keep you in quarters till we land. Sprout!"

	He snatched at the intercom box.



THE scientific complement of the Triple G were few in number for the job they had to do, and, as individuals, young. Not as young as Mark Annuncio, perhaps, who was in a class by himself, but even the oldest of them, Emmanuel George Cimon-astrophysicist-was not quite thirty-nine. And with his dark, unthinned hair and large, brilliant eyes, he looked still younger. To be sure, the optic brilliance was partly due to the wearing of contact lenses.

	Cimon, who was perhaps overconscious of his relative age, and of the fact that he was the titular head of the expedition- a fact most of the others were inclined to ignore-usually affected an undramatic view of the mission. He ran the dotted tape through his fingers, then let it snake silently back into its spool.

	"Run of the mill," he sighed, seating himself in the softest chair in the small passenger's lounge. "Nothing."

	He looked at the latest color photographs of the Lagrange binary and was impervious to their beauty. Lagrange I, smaller and hotter than Earth's own sun, was a brilliant green-blue, with a pearly green-yellow corona surrounding it like the gold setting of an emerald. It appeared to be the size of a lentil or of a ball bearing out of a Lenser-ratchet. A short distance away-as distances go on a photograph-was Lagrange II. It appeared twice the size of Lagrange I, due to its

position in space. (Actually, it was only four-fifths the diameter of Lagrange I, half its volume and two-thirds its mass.) Its orange-red, toward which the film was less sensitive, comparatively, than was the human retina, seemed dimmer than ever against the glory of its sister sun.

	Surrounding both, undrowned by the near-by suns, as the result of the differentially-polarized lens specifically used for the purpose, was the unbelievable brilliance of the Hercules cluster. It was diamond dust, scattered thickly, yellow, white, blue, and red.

	"Nothing," said Cimon.

	"Looks good to me," said the other man in the lounge. He was Groot Knoevenaagle-physician-short, plump, and known to man by no name other than Novee.

	He went on to ask, "Where's Junior?" then bent over Cimon's shoulder, peering out of slightly myopic eyes.

	Cimon looked up and shuddered, "It's name is not Junior. You can't see the planet, Troas, if that's what you mean, in this wilderness of stars. This picture is Scientific Earthman material. It isn't particularly useful."

	"Oh, Space and back!" Novee was disappointed.

	"What difference is it to you, anyway?" demanded Cimon. "Suppose I said one of those dots was Troas-any one of them. You wouldn't know the difference and what good would it do you?"

	"Now wait, Cimon. Don't be so superior. It's legitimate sentiment. We'll be living on Junior for a while. For all we know, we'll be dying on it."

	"There's no audience, Novee, no orchestra, no mikes, no trumpets, so why be dramatic. We won't be dying on it. If we do, it'll be our own fault, and probably as a result of overeating." He said it with the peculiar emphasis men of small appetite use when speaking to men of hearty appetite, as though a poor digestion was something that came only of rigid virtue and superior intellect.

	"A thousand people did die," said Novee, softly.

	"Sure. About a billion men a day die all over the galaxy."

	"Not this way."

	"Not what way?"

	With an effort, Novee kept to his usual drawl. "No discussions except at official meetings. That was the decision."

	"I'll have nothing to discuss," said Cimon, gloomily. "They're just two ordinary stars. Damned if I know why I volunteered. I suppose it was just the chance of seeing an abnormally large Trojan system from close up. It was the thought of looking at a habitable planet with a double sun. I don't know why I should have thought there'd be anything amazing about it."

	"Because you thought of a thousand dead men and women," said Novee, then went on hastily. "Listen, tell me something, will you? What's a Trojan planet, anyway?"

	The physician bore the other's look of contempt for a moment, then said, "All right. All right. So I don't know. You don't know everything either. What do you know about ultrasonic incisions?"

	Cimon said, "Nothing, and I think that's fine. It's my opinion that information outside a professional man's specialty is useless and a waste of psycho-potential. Sheffield's point of view leaves me cold."

	"I still want to know. That is, if you can explain it."

	"I can explain it. As a matter of fact, it was mentioned in the original briefing, if you were listening. Most multiple stars, and that means one third of all stars, have planets of a sort. The trouble is that the planets are never habitable. If they're far enough away from the center of gravity of the stellar system to have a fairly circular orbit, they're cold enough to have helium oceans. If they're close enough to get heat, their orbit is so erratic that at least once in each revolution, they get close enough to one or another of the stars to melt iron.

	"Here in the Lagrange System, however, we have an unusual case. The two stars, Lagrange I and Lagrange II, and the planet, Troas-along with its satellite, Ilium-are at the corners of an imaginary equilateral triangle. Got that? Such an arrangement happens to be a stable one, and for the sake of anything you like, don't ask me to tell you why. Just take it as my professional opinion."

	Novee muttered under his breath, "I wouldn't dream of doubting it."

	Cimon looked displeased and continued, "The system revolves as a unit. Troas is always a hundred million miles from

each sun, and the suns are always a hundred million miles from one another."

	Novee rubbed his ear and looked dissatisfied. "I know all that. I was listening at the briefing. But why is it a Trojan planet? Why Trojan?"

	Cimon's thin lips compressed for a moment as though holding back a nasty word by force. He said, "We have an arrangement like that in the Solar System. The sun, Jupiter and a group of small asteroids form a stable equilateral triangle. It so happens that the asteroids had been given such names as Hector, Achilles, Ajax and other heroes of the Trojan war, hence-or do I have to finish?"

	"Is that all?" said Novee.

	"Yes. Are you through bothering me?"

	"Oh, boil your head."



NOVEE rose to leave the indignant astrophysicist but the door slid open a moment before his hand touched the activator and Boris Vernadsky-geochemist; dark eyebrows, wide mouth, broad face and with an inveterate tendency to polka-dot shirts and magnetic clip-ons in red plastic-stepped in.

	He was oblivious to Novee's flushed face and Cimon's frozen expression of distaste.

	He said, lightly, "Fellow scientists, if you listen very carefully you will probably hear an explosion to beat the Milky Way from up yonder in captain's quarters."

	"What happened?" asked Novee.

	"The captain got hold of Annuncio, Sheffield's little pet wizard, and Sheffield went charging up-deck, bleeding heavily at each eyeball."

	Cimon, having listened so far, turned away, snorting.

	Novee said, "Sheffield! The man can't get angry. I've never even heard him raise his voice."

	"He did this time. When he found out the kid had left his cabin without telling him and that the captain was bullyragging him-Wow! Did you know he was up and about, Novee?"

	"No, but I'm not surprised. Spacesickness is one of those things. When you have it, you think you're dying. In fact, you can hardly wait. Then, in two minutes it's gone and you feel all right. Weak, but all right. I told Mark this morning we'd be landing next day and I suppose it pulled him through. The thought of a planetary surface in clear prospect does wonders for spacesickness. We are landing soon, aren't we, Cimon?"

	The astrophysicist made a peculiar sound that could have been interpreted as a grunt of assent. At least, Novee so interpreted it.

	"Anyway," said Novee, "what happened?"

	Vernadsky said, "Well, Sheffield's been bunking with me since the kid twirled on his toes and went over backward with spacesickness and he's sitting there at the desk with his charts and his Fist computer chug-chugging away, when the roomphone signals and it's the captain. Well, it turns out he's got the boy with him and he wants to know what the blanketyblank and assorted dot-and-dash the government means by planting a spy on him. So Sheffield yells back at him that he'll stab him with a Collamore macro-leveling-tube if he's been fooling with the kid and off he goes leaving the phone activated and the captain frothing."

	"You're making this up," said Novee. "Sheffield wouldn't say anything like that."

	"Words to that effect."

	Novee turned to Cimon. "You're heading our group. Why don't you do something about this?"

	Cimon snarled, "In cases like this, I'm heading the group. My responsibilities always come on suddenly. Let them fight it out. Sheffield talks an excellent fight and the captain never takes his hands out of the small of his back. Vernadsky's jitterbugging description doesn't mean there'll be physical violence."

	"All right, but there's no point in having feuds of any kind in an expedition like ours."

	"You mean our mission!" Vernadsky raised both hands in mock-awe and rolled his eyes upward. "How I dread the time when we must find ourselves among the rags and bones of the first expedition."

	And as though the picture brought to mind by that was not one that bore levity well after all, there was suddenly nothing to say. Even the back of Cimon's head which was all that showed over the back of the easy-chair seemed a bit the stiffer for the thought.



0SWALD Mayer Sheffield-psychologist, thin as a string and as tall as a good length of it, and with a voice that could be used either for singing an operatic selection with surprising virtuosity or for making a point of argument softly but with stinging accuracy-did not show the anger one would have expected from Vernadsky's account.

	He was even smiling when he entered the captain's cabin.

	The captain broke out mauvely, as soon as he entered. "Look here, Sheffield-"

	"One minute, Captain Follenbee," said Sheffield. "How are you, Mark?"

	Mark's eyes fell and his words were muffled. "All right, Dr. Sheffield."

	"I wasn't aware you'd gotten out of bed."

	There wasn't the shade of reproach in his voice, but Mark grew apologetic. "I was feeling better, Dr. Sheffield, and I feel bad about not working. I haven't done anything in all the time I've been on the ship. So I put in a call to the captain to ask to see the log book and he had me come up here."

	"All right. I'm sure he won't mind if you go back to your room now."

	"Oh, won't I?" began the captain.

	Sheffield's mild eyes rose to meet the captain. "I'm responsible for him, sir."

	And somehow the captain could think of nothing further to say.

	Mark turned obediently and Sheffield watched him leave and waited till the door was well-closed behind him.

	Then he turned again to the captain. "What's the bloody idea, captain?"

	The captain's knees bent a little, then straightened and bent again with a sort of threatening rhythm. The invisible slap of his hands, clasped behind his back, could be heard distinctly. "That's my question. I'm captain here, Sheffield."

	"I know that."

	"Know what it means, eh? This ship, in Space, is a legally recognized planet. I'm absolute ruler. In Space, what I say

goes. Central Committee of the Confederacy can't say otherwise. I've got to maintain discipline and no~spy-"

	"All right, and now let me teliyou something, captain. You're charted by the Bureau of Outer Provinces to carry a government-sponsored research expedition to the Lagrange System, to maintain it there as long as research necessity requires and the safety of the crew and vessel permits, and then to bring us home. You've signed that contract and you've assumed certain obligations, captain or not. For instance, you can't tamper with our instruments and destroy their research usefulness."

	"Who in Space is doing that?" The captain's voice was a blast of indignation.

	Sheffield replied calmly, "You are. Hands off Mark Annuncio, captain. Just as you've got to keep your hands off Cimon's monochrome and Vailleux's microptics, you've got to keep your hands off my Annuncio. And that means each one of your ten four-striped fingers. Got it?"

	The captain's uniformed chest expanded. "I take no order on board my own ship. Your language is a breach of discipline, Mister Sheffield. Any more like that and it's cabin arrest-you and your Annuncio. Don't like it, then speak to Board of Review back on Earth. Till then, it's tongue behind teeth."

	"Look, captain, let me explain something. Mark is in the Mnemonic Service-"

	"Sure, he said so. Nummonic Service. Nummonic Service. It's plain secret police as far as I'm concerned. Well, not on board my ship, eh?"

	"Mnemonic Service," said Sheffield, patiently. "Emm-enneee-emm-oh-enn-eye-see Service. You don't pronounce the first emm. It's from a Greek word meaning memory."

	The captain's eyes narrowed. "He remembers things?"

	"Correct, captain. Look, in a way this is my fault. I should have briefed you on this. I would have, too, if the boy hadn't gotten so sick right after the take-off. It drove most other matters out of my mind. Besides, it didn't occur to me that he might be interested in the workings of the ship itself. Space knows why not. He should be interested in everything."

	"He should, eh?" The captain looked at the timepiece on the wall. "Brief me now, eh? But no fancy words. Not many of any other kind, either. Time limited."

	"It won't take long, I assure you. Now you're a space-going man, captain. How many inhabited worlds would you say there were in the Confederation?"

	"Eighty thousand," said the captain, promptly.

	"Eighty-three thousand two hundred," said Sheffield. "What do you suppose it takes to run a political organization that size?"

	Again the captain did not hesitate. "Computers," he said.

	"All right. There's Earth, where half the population works for the government and does nothing but compute and there are computing subcenters on every other world. And even so data gets lost. Every world knows something no other world knows-almost every man. Look at our little group. Vernadsky doesn't know any biology and I don't know enough chemistry to stay alive. There's not one of us can pilot the simplest spacecruiser, except for Fawkes. So we work together, each one supplying the knowledge the others lack.

	"Only there's a catch. Not one of us knows exactly which of our own data is meaningful to the other under a given set of circumstances. We can't sit and spout everything we know. So we guess, and sometimes we don't guess right. Two facts, A and B, can go together beautifully sometimes. So Person A, who knows Fact A, says to Person B, who knows Fact B, 'Why didn't you tell me this ten years ago?' and Person B answers, 'I didn't think it was important,' or 'I thought everyone knew that.'"

	The captain said, "That's what computers are for."

	Sheffield said, "Computers are limited, captain. They have to be asked questions. What's more the questions have to be the kind that can be put into a limited number of symbols. What's more computers are very literal minded. They answer exactly what you ask and not what you have in mind. Sometimes it never occurs to anyone to ask just the right question or feed the computer just the right symbols, and when that happens the computer doesn't volunteer information.

	"What we need . . . what all mankind needs . . . is a computer that is nonmechanical; a computer with imagination. There's one like that, captain." The psychologist tapped his temple. "In everyone, captain."

	"Maybe," grunted the captain, "but I'll stick to the usual, eh? Kind you punch a button."

	"Are you sure? Machines don't have hunches. Did you ever have a hunch?"

	"Is this on the point?" The captain looked at the timepiece again.

	Sheffield said, "Somewhere inside the human brain is a record of every datum that has impinged upon it. Very little of it is consciously remembered, but all of it is there, and a small association can bring an individual datum back without a person's knowing where it comes from. So you get a 'hunch' or a 'feeling.' Some people are better at it than others. And some can be trained. Some are almost perfect, like Mark Annuncio and a hundred like him. Some day, I hope, there'll be a billion like him, and we'll really have a Mnemonic Service.

	"All their lives," Sheffield went on, "they do nothing but read, look, and listen. And train to do that better and more efficiently. It doesn't matter what data they collect. It doesn't have to have obvious sense or obvious significance. It doesn't matter if any man in the Service wants to spend a week going over the records of the space-polo teams of the Canopus Sector for the last century. Any datum may be useful some day. That's the fundamental axiom.

	"Every once in a while, one of the Service may correlate across a gap no machine could possibly manage. The machine would fail because no one machine is likely to possess those two pieces of thoroughly unconnected information; or else, if the machine does have it, no man would be insane enough to ask the right question. One good correlation out of the Service can pay for all the money appropriated for it in ten years or more."

	The captain raised his broad hand. He looked troubled. He said, 'Wait a minute. He said no ship named Triple G was under Earth registry. You mean he knows all registered ships by heart?"

	"Probably," said Sheffield. "He may have read through the Merchantship Register. If he did, he knows all the names, tonnages, years of construction, ports of call, numbers of crew and anything else the Register would contain."

	"And he was counting stars."

	"Why not? It's a datum."

	"I'm damned."

	"Perhaps, captain. But the point is that a man like Mark is different from other men. He's got a queer, distorted upbringing and a queer, distorted view on life. This is the first time he's been away from Service grounds, since he entered them at the age of five. He's easily upset-and he can be ruined. That mustn't happen, and I'm in charge to see it doesn't. He's my instrument; a more valuable instrument than everything else on this entire ship baled into a neat little ball of plutonium wire. There are only a hundred like him in all the Milky Way."

	Captain Follenbee assumed an air of wounded dignity. "All right, then. Log book. Strictly confidential, eh?"

	"Strictly. He talks only to me, and I talk to no one unless a correlation has been made."

	The captain did not look as though that fell under his classification of the word, strictly, but he said, "But no crew." He paused significantly. "You know what I mean."

	Sheffield stepped to the door. "Mark knows about that. The crew won't hear about it from him, believe me."

	And as he was about to leave, the captain called out, "Sheffield!"

	"Yes?"

	"What in Space is a 'noncompos'?"

	Sheffield suppressed a smile. "Did he call you that?"

	"What is it?"

	"Just short for non compos mentis. Everyone in the Service uses it for everyone not in the Service. You're one. I'm one. It's Latin for 'not of sound mind.' And you know, captain-I think they're quite right."

	He stepped out the door quickly.



MARK Annuncio went through the ship's log in some fifteen seconds. He found it incomprehensible, but then most of the material he put into his mind was that. That was no trouble. Nor was the fact that it was dull. The disappointment was that it did not satisfy his curiosity, so he left it with a mixture of relief and displeasure.

	He had then gone into the ship's library and worked his way through three dozen books as quickly as he could work the scanner. He had spent three years of his early teens learning how to read by total gestalt and he still recalled proudly that he had set a school record at the final examinations.

	Finally, he wandered into the laboratory sections of the ship and watched a bit here and a bit there. He asked no questions and he moved on when any of the men cast more than a casual glance at him.

	He hated the insufferable way they looked at him as though he were some sort of queer animal. He hated their air of knowledge, as though there were something of value in spending an entire brain on one tiny subject and remembering only a little of that.

	Eventually, of course, he would have to ask them questions. It was his job, and even if it weren't, curiosity would drive him. He hoped, though, he could hold off till they had made planetary surface.

	He found it pleasant that they were inside a stellar system. Soon he would see a new world with new suns-two of them- and a new moon. Four objects with brand-new information in each; immense storehouses of facts to be collected lovingly and sorted out.

	It thrilled him just to think of the amorphous mountain of data waiting for him. He thought of his mind as a tremendous filing system with index, cross-index, cross-cross-index. He thought of it as stretching indefinitely in all directions. Neat. Smooth. Well oiled. Perfect precision.

	He thought of the dusty attic that the noncompos called minds and almost laughed. He could see it even talking to Dr. Sheffield, who was a nice fellow for a noncompos. He tried hard and sometimes he almost understood. The others, the men on board ship-their minds were lumberyards. Dusty lumberyards with splintery slats of wood tumbled every which way; and only whatever happened to be on top could be reached.

	The poor fools! He could be sorry for them, if they weren't so Sloppy-nasty. If only they knew what they were like. If only they realized.



WHENEVER he could, Mark haunted the observation posts and watched the new worlds come closer.

	They passed quite close to the satellite, "Ilium." (Cimon, the astrophysicist, was very meticulous about calling their planetary destination "Troas" and the satellite "Ilium," but everyone else aboard ship called them "Junior" and "Sister," respectively.) On the other side of the two suns, in the opposite Trojan position, were a group of asteroids. Cimon called them "Lagrange Epsilon" but everyone else called them "The Puppies."

	Mark thought of all this with vague simultaneity at the moment the thought "Ilium" occurred to him. He was scarcely conscious of it, and let it pass as material of no immediate interest. Still more vague, and still further below his skin of mental consciousness were the dim stirrings of five hundred such homely misnomers of astronomical dignities of nomenclature. He had read about some, picked up others on subetheric programs, heard about still others in ordinary conversation, come across a few in news reports. The material might have been told him directly, or it might have been a carelessly overheard word. Even the substitution of Triple G for George G. Grundy had its place in the shadowy file.

	Sheffield had often questioned him about what went on in his mind-very gently, very cautiously.

	"We want many more like you, Mark, for the Mnemonic Service. We need millions. Billions, eventually, if the race fills up the entire galaxy, as it will some day. But where do we get them. Relying on inborn talent won't do. We all have that more or less. It's the training that counts and unless we find out a little about what goes on, we won't know how to train."

	And urged by Sheffield, Mark had watched himself, listened to himself, turned his eyes inward and tried to become aware. He learned of the filing cases in his head. He watched them marshal past. He observed individual items pop up on call, always tremblingly ready. It was hard to explain, but he did his best.

	His own confidence grew with it. The anxieties of his childhood, those first years in Service, grew less. He stopped waking in the middle of the night, perspiration dripping, screaming with fear that he would forget. And his headaches stopped.



HE watched Ilium as it appeared in the viewport at closest approach. It was brighter than he cou~d imagine a moon to be. (Figures for albedoes of three hundred inhabited planets marched through his mind, neatly arrayed in decreasing order. It scarcely stirred the skin of his mind. He ignored them.)

	The brightness he blinked at was concentrated in the vast, irregular patches that Cimon said-he overheard him, in weary response to another's question-had once been sea bottom. A fact popped into Mark's mind. The original report of Hidosheki Makoyama had given the composition of those bright salts as 78.6% sodium chloride, 19.2% magnesium carbonate, 1.4% potassium sulf-The thought faded out. It wasn't necessary.

	Ilium had an atmosphere. A total of about 100 mm. of mercury-a little over an eighth of Earth's, ten times Mars, 0.254 that of Coralemon, 0.1376 that of Aurora. Idly he let the decimals grow to more places. It was a form of exercise, but he grew bored. Instant arithmetic was fifth-grade stuff. Actually, he still had trouble with integrals and wondered if that was because he didn't know what an integral was. A half dozen definitions flashed by, but he had never had enough mathematics to understand the definitions, though he could quote them well enough.

	At school, they had always said, "Don't ever get too interested in any one thing or group of things. As soon as you do that, you begin selecting your facts and you must never do that. Everything, anything is important. As long as you have the facts on file, it doesn't matter whether you understand them or not."

	But the noncompos didn't think so. Arrogant minds with holes in them!

	They were approaching Junior itself now. It was bright, too, but in a different way. It had ice caps north and south. (Textbooks of Earth's paleoclimatology drifted past and Mark made no move to stop them.) The ice caps were retreating. In a million years, Junior would have Earth's present climate. It was just about Earth's size and mass and it rotated in a period of thirty-six hours.

	It might have been Earth's twin. What differences there were, according to Makoyama's reports, were to Junior's ad-

vantage. There was nothing on Junior to threaten mankind as far as was known. Nor would anyone imagine there possibly might be were it not for the fact that humanity's first colony on the planet had been wiped out to the last soul.

	What was worse, the destruction had occurred in such a way that a study of all surviving information gave no reasonable clue whatever as to what had happened.



SHEFFIELD entered Mark's cabin and joined the boy two hours before landing. He and Mark had originally been assigned a room together. That had been an experiment. Mnemonics didn't like the company of noncompos, even the best of them. In any case, the experiment had failed. Almost immediately after take-off, Mark's sweating face and pleading eyes made privacy absolutely essential for him.

	Sheffield felt responsible. He felt responsible for everything about Mark whether it was actually his fault or not. He and men like himself had taken Mark and children like him and trained them into personal ruin. They had been force-grown. They had been bent and molded. They had been allowed no normal contact with normal children lest they develop normal mental habits. No Mnemonic had contracted a normal marriage, even within the group.

	It made for a terrible guilt-feeling on Sheffield's part.

	Twenty years ago there had been a dozen lads trained at one school under the leadership of U Karaganda, as mad an Asiatic as had ever roused the snickers of a group of interviewing newsmen. Karaganda had committed suicide eventually, under some vague motivation, but other psychologists, Sheffield for one, of greater respectability and undoubtedly of lesser brilliance, had had time to join him and learn of him.

	The school continued and others were established. One was even founded on Mars. It had an enrollment of five at the moment. At latest count, there were one hundred and three living graduates with full honors-naturally, only a minority of those enrolled actually absorbed the entire course. Five years ago, the Terrestrial planetary government-not to be confused with the Central Galactic Committee, based on Earth, and ruling the Galactic Confederation-allowed the

establishment of the Mnemonic Service as a branch of the Department of the Interior.

	It had already paid for itself many times over, but few people knew that. Nor did the Terrestrial government advertise the fact, or any other fact about the Mnemonics. It was a tender subject with them. It was an "experiment." They feared that failure might be politically expensive. The opposition- with difficulty prevented from making a campaign issue out of it as it was-spoke at the planetary conferences of "crackpotism" and "waste of the taxpayers' money." And the latter despite the existence of documentary proof of the precise opposite.

	In the machine-centered civilization that filled the galaxy, it was difficult to learn to appreciate the achievements of naked mind without a long apprenticeship.

	Sheffield wondered how long.

	But there was no use being depressed in Mark's company. Too much danger of contagion. He said, instead, "You're looking fine, sport."

	Mark seemed glad to see him. He said, thoughtfully, "When we get back to Earth, Dr. Sheffield-"

	He stopped, flushed slightly, and said, "I mean, supposing we get back, I intend to get as many books and films as I can on folkways. I've hardly read anything on that subject. I was down in the ship's library and they had nothing-absolutely nothing."

	"Why the interest?"

	"It's the captain. Didn't you say he told you that the crew were not to know we were visiting a world on which the first expedition had died?"

	"Yes, of course. Well?"

	"Because spacemen consider it bad luck to touch on a world like that, especially one that looks harmless. 'Sucker bait,' they call it."

	"That's right."

	"So the captain says. It 5 just that I don t see how that can be true. I can think of seventeen habitable planets from which the first expedition never returned and never established residence. And each one was later colonized and now is a member of the Federation. Sarmatia is one of them, and it's a pretty big world now."

	"There are planets of continuous disaster, too." Sheffield deliberately put that as a declarative statement.

	(Never ask informational questions. That was one of the Rules of Karaganda. Mnemonic correlations weren't a matter of the conscious intelligence; they weren't volitional. As soon as a direct question was asked, the resultant correlations were plentiful but only such as any reasonably informed man might make. It was the unconscious mind that bridged the wide, unlikely gaps.)



MARK, as any Mnemonic would, fell into the trap. He said, energetically, "No, I've never heard of one. Not where the planet was at all habitable. If the planet is solid ice, or complete desert, that's different. Junior isn't like that."

	"No it isn't," agreed Sheffield.

	"Then why should the crew be afraid of it? I kept thinking about that all the time I was in bed. That's when I thought of looking at the log. I'd never actually seen one, so it would be a valuable thing to do in any case. And certainly, I thought, I would find the truth there."

	"Uh huh," said Sheffield.

	"And, well-I may have been wrong. In the whole log the purpose of the expedition was never mentioned. Now that wouldn't be so unless the purpose were secret. It was as if he were even keeping it from the other ship officers. And the name of the ship is given as the George G. Grundy."

	"It would be, of course," said Sheffield.

	"I don't know; I suspected that business about Triple G," said Mark, darkly.

	Sheffield said, "You seem disappointed that the captain wasn't lying."

	"Not disappointed. Relieved, I think. I thought . . . I thought-" He stopped and looked acutely embarrassed, but Sheffield made no effort to rescue him. He was forced to continue, "I thought everyone might be lying to me, not just the captain. Even you might, Dr. Sheffield. I thought you just didn't want me to talk to the crew for some reason."

	Sheffield tried to smile and managed to succeed. The occu

pational disease ofthe Mnemonic Service was suspicion. They were isolated, these Mnemonics, and they were different. Cause and effect were obvious.

	Sheffield said lightly, "I think you'll find in your reading on folkways that these superstitions are not necessarily based on logical analysis. A planet which has become notorious has evil expected of it. The good which happens is disregarded; the bad is cried up, advertised, and exaggerated. The thing snowballs."

	He moved away from Mark. He busied himself with an inspection of the hydraulic chairs. They would be landing soon. He felt unnecessarily along the length of the broad webbing of the straps, keeping his back to the youngster. So protected, he said, almost in a whisper, "And, of course, what makes it worse is that Junior is so different."

	(Easy now, easy. Don't push. He had tried that trick before this and-)

	Mark was saying, "No, it isn't. Not a bit. The expeditions that failed were different. That's true."

	Sheffield kept his back turned. He waited.

	Mark said, "The seventeen other expeditions that failed on planets that are now inhabited were all small exploring expeditions. In sixteen of the cases the cause of death was shipwreck of one sort or another and in the remaining case, Coma Minor that one was, the failure resulted from a surprise attack by indigenous life-forms, not intelligent, of course. I have the details on all of them-"

	(Sheffield couldn't forebear holding his breath. Mark could give the details on all of them. All the details. It was as easy for him to quote all the records on each expedition, word for word, as it was to say yes or no. And he might well choose to. A Mnemonic had no selectivity. It was one of the things that made ordinary companionship between Mnemonics and ordinary people impossible. Mnemonics were dreadful bores by the nature of things. Even Sheffield, who was trained and inured to listen to it all, and who had no intention of stopping Mark if he were really off on a talk-jag, sighed softly.)

	"But what's the use," Mark continued, and Sheffield felt rescued from a horror. "They're just not in the same class with the Junior expedition. That consisted of an actual settlement of seven hundred eighty-nine men, two hundred seven women and fifteen children under the age of thirteen. In the course of the next year, three hundred fifteen women, nine men and two children were added by immigration. The settlement survived almost two years and the cause of death isn't known, except that from their report, it might be disease.

	"Now that part is different. But Junior itself has nothing unusual about it, except, of course-"

	Mark paused as though the information were too unimportant to bother with and Sheffield almost yelled. He forced himself to say calmly, "That difference. Of course."

	Mark said, "We all know about that. It has two suns and the others only have one."

	The psychologist could have cried his disappointment. Nothing!

	But what was the use. Better luck next time. If you don't have patience with a Mnemonic, you might as well not have a Mnemonic.

	He sat down in the hydraulic chair and buckled himself in tightly. Mark did likewise. (Sheffield would have liked to help, but that would have been injudicious.) He looked at his watch. They must be spiraling down even now.

	Under his disappointment, Sheffield felt a stronger disturbance. Mark Annuncio had acted wrongly in following up his own hunch that the captain and everybody else had been lying. Mnemonics had a tendency to believe that because their store of facts was great, it was complete. This, obviously, is a prime error. It is therefore necessary-thus spake Karaganda

-for them to present their correlations to properly constituted authority and never to act upon it themselves.

	Well, how significant was this error of Mark's? He was the first Mnemonic to be taken away from Service headquarters; the first to be separated from all of his kind; the first to be isolated among noncompos. What did that do to him? What would it continue to do to him? Would it be bad? If so, how to stop it?

	To all of which questions, Dr. Oswald Mayer Sheffield knew no answer.

THE men at the controls were the lucky ones. They and, of course, Cimon who, as astrophysicist and director of the expedition, joined them by special dispensation. The others of the crew had their separate duties, while the remaining scientific personnel preferred the relative comfort of their hydraulic seats during the spiral around and down to Junior.

	It was while Junior was still far enough away to be seen as a whole that the scene was at its grandest.

	North and south, a third of the way to the equator, lay the ice caps, still at the start of their millennial retreat. Since the Triple G was spiraling on a north-south great circle-deliberately chosen for the sake of viewing the polar regions, as Cimon, at the cost of less than maximum safety, insisted-each cap in turn was laid out below them.

	Each burnt equally with sunlight, the consequence of Junior's untilted axis. And each cap was in sectors, cut like a pie with a rainbowed knife.

	The sunward third of each was illuminated by both suns simultaneously into a brilliant white that slowly yellowed westward, and as slowly greened eastward. To the east of the white sector lay another, half as wide, which was reached by the light of Lagrange I only, and the snow there blazed a response of sapphire beauty. To the west, another half-sector, exposed to Lagrange II alone, shone in the warm orange-red of an Earthly sunset. The three colors graded into one another band-wise, and the similarity to a rainbow was increased thereby.

	The final third was dark in contrast, but if one looked carefully enough, it, too, was in parts-unequal parts. The smaller portion was black indeed, but the larger portion had a faint milkiness about it.

	Cimon muttered to himself, "Moonlight. Of course." Then looked about hastily to see if he were overheard. He did not like people to observe the actual process by which conclusions were brought to fruition in his mind. Rather they were to be presented to his students and listeners, to all about him in short, in a polished perfection that showed neither birth nor growth.

	But there were only spacemen about and they did not hear him. Despite all their space-hardening, they were fixing whatever concentration they could spare from their duties and instruments upon the wonder before them.

	The spiral curved, veered way from north-south to northeast-southwest, finally to the east-west in which a safe landing was most feasible. The dull thunder of atmosphere carried into the pilot room, thin and shrill at first, but gathering body and volume as the minutes passed.

	Until now, in the interests of scientific observation-and to the considerable uneasiness of the captain-the spiral had been tight, deceleration slight, and the planetary circumnavigations numerous. As they bit into Junior's air-covering, however, deceleration pitched high and the surface rose to meet them.

	The ice caps vanished on either side and there began an equal alternation of land and water. A continent, mountainous on either seacoast and flat in between, like a soup plate with two ice-topped rims, flashed below at lengthening intervals. It spread halfway around Junior and the rest was water.

	Most of the ocean at the moment was in the dark sector, and what was not lay in the red-orange light of Lagrange II. In the light of that sun, the waters were a dusky purple with a sprinkling of ruddy specks that thickened north and south. Icebergs!

	The land was distributed at the moment between the redorange half-sector and the full white light. Only the eastern seacoast was in the blue-green. The eastern mountain range was a startling sight, with its western slopes red and its eastern slopes green.

	The ship was slowing rapidly now; the final trip over ocean was done.

	Next-landing!



THE first steps were cautious enough. Slow enough, too. Cimon inspected his photochromes of Junior as taken from space with minute care. Under protest, he passed them among the others of the expedition and more than a few groaned inwardly at the thought of having placed comfort before a chance to see the original of that.

	Boris Vernadsky bent over his gas-analyzer interminably, a symphony in loud clothes and soft grunts.

	"We're about at sea level, I should judge," he said, "going by the value of g."

	Then, because he was explaining himself to the rest of the group, he added negligently, "The gravitational constant, that is," which didn't help most of them.

	He said, "The atmospheric pressure is just about eight hundred millimeters of mercury which is about five per cent higher than on Earth. And two hundred forty millimeters of that is oxygen as compared to only one hundred fifty on Earth. Not bad."

	He seemed to be waiting for approval, but scientists found it best to comment as little as possible on data in another man's specialty.

	He went on, "Nitrogen, of course. Dull, isn't it, the way Nature repeats itself like a three-year-old who knows three lessons, period. Takes the fun away when it turns out that a water world always has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Makes the whole thing yawn-worthy."

	"What else in the atmosphere?" asked Cimon, irritably. "So far all we have is oxygen, nitrogen, and homely philosophy from kindly Uncle Boris."

	Vernadsky hooked his arm over his seat and said, amiably enough, "What are you? Director or something?"

	Cimon, to whom the directorship meant little more than the annoyance of preparing composite reports for the Bureau flushed and said, grimly, "What else in the atmosphere, Dr. Vernadsky?"

	Vernadsky said, without looking at his notes, "Under one per cent and over a hundredth of one per cent: hydrogen, hehum, and carbon dioxide in that order. Under a hundredth of one per cent and over a ten thousandth of one per cent: methane, argon, and neon in that order. Under a ten thousandth of one per cent and over a millionth of a per cent: radon, krypton, and xenon in that order.

	"The figures aren't very informative. About all I can get out of them is that Junior is going to be a happy hunting ground for uranium, that it's low in potassium and that it's no wonder it's such a lovely little double ice cap of a world."

	He did that deliberately, so that someone could ask him how he knew, and someone, with gratifying wonder, inevitably did.

	Vernadsky smiled blandly and said: "Atmospheric radon is ten to a hundred times as high here as on Earth. So is helium. Both radon and helium are produced as by-products of the radioactive breakdown of uranium and thorium. Conclusion:

Uranium and thorium minerals are ten to a hundred times as copious in Junior's crust as in Earth's.

	"Argon, on the other hand, is over a hundred times as low as on Earth. Chances are Junior has none of the argon it originally started with. A planet of this type has only the argon which forms from the breakdown of K40, one of the potassium isotopes. Low argon; low potassium. Simple, kids."

	One of the assembled groups asked, "What about the ice caps?"

	Cimon, who knew the answer to that, asked, before Vernadsky could answer the other, "What's the carbon dioxide content exactly?"

	"Zero point zero one six emm emm," said Vernadsky.

	Cimon nodded, and vouchsafed nothing more.

	"Well?" asked the inquirer impatiently.

	"Carbon dioxide is only about half what it is on Earth, and it's the carbon dioxide that gives the hothouse effect. It lets the short waves of sunlight pass through to the planet's surface, but doesn't allow the long waves of planetary heat to radiate off. When carbon dioxide concentration goes up as a result of volcanic action, the planet heats up a bit and you have a carboniferous age with oceans high and land surface at a minimum. When carbon dioxide goes down as a result of the vegetation refusing to let a good thing alone, fattening up on the good old see-oh-two and losing its head about it, temperature drops, ice forms, a vicious cycle of glaciation starts, and voil�-"

	"Anything else in the atmosphere?" asked Cimon.

	"Water vapor and dust. I suppose there are a few million airborne spores of various virulent diseases per cubic centimeter in addition to that." He said it lightly enough, but there was a stir in the room. More than one of the bystanders looked as though he were holding his breath.

	Vernadsky shrugged and said, "Don't worry about it for now. My analyzer washes out dust and spores quite thoroughly. But then, that's not my angle. I suggest Rodriguez grow his cultures under glass right away. Good thick glass."



MARK Annuncio wandered everywhere. His eyes shone as he listened, and he pressed himself forward to hear better. The group suffered him to do so with various degrees of reluctance, in accordance with individual personalities and temperaments. None spoke to him.

	Sheffield stayed close to Mark. He scarcely spoke, either. He bent all his effort on remaining in the background of Mark's consciousness. He wanted to refrain from giving Mark the feeling of being haunted by himself give the boy the illusion of freedom, instead. He wanted to seem to be there, each time, by accident only.

	It was a most unsuccessful pretense, he felt, but what could he do? He had to keep the kid from getting into trouble.



MIGUEL Antonio Lopez y Rodriguez-microbiologist; small, tawny, with intensely black hair which he wore rather long, and with a reputation which he did nothing to discourage, of being a Latin in the grand style as far as the ladies were concerned-cultured the dust from Vernadsky's gas-analyzer trap with a combination of precision and respectful delicacy.

	"Nothing," he said, eventually. "What foolish growths I get look harmless."

	It was suggested that Junior's bacteria need not necessarily look harmful; that toxins and metabolic processes could not be analyzed by eye, even by microscopic eye.

	This was met with hot contempt, as almost an invasion of professional function. He said, with an eyebrow lifted, "One gets a feeling for these things. When one has seen as much of the microcosm as I have, one can sense danger-or lack of danger."

	This was an outright lie, and Rodriguez proved it by carefully transferring samples of the various germ colonies into buffered, isotonic media and injecting hamsters with the concentrated result. They did not seem to mind.

	Raw atmosphere was trapped in large jars and several specimens of minor animal life from Earth and other planets were

allowed to disport themselves within. None of them seemed to mind, either.



NEVILE Fawkes-botanist; a man who appreciated his own handsomeness by modeling his hair style after that shown on the traditional busts of Alexander the Great, but from whose appearance the presence of a nose, far more aquiline than Alexander ever possessed, noticeably detracted- was gone for two days, by Junior chronology, in one of the Triple G's atmospheric coasters. He could navigate one like a dream and was, in fact, the only man outside the crew who could navigate one at all, so he was the natural choice for the task. Fawkes did not seem noticeably overjoyed about that.

	He returned, completely unharmed and unable to hide a grin of relief. He submitted to irradiation for the sake of sterilizing the exterior of his flexible air-suit-designed to protect men from the deleterious effect of the outer environment where no pressure differential existed; the strength and jointedness of a true spacesuit being obviously unnecessary within an atmosphere as thick as Junior's. The coaster was subjected to a more extended irradiation, and pinned down under a plastic cover-all.

	Fawkes flaunted color photographs in great number. The central valley of the continent was fertile almost beyond Earthly dreams. The rivers were mighty, the mountains rugged and snow-covered-with the usual pyrotechnic solar effects. Under Lagrange II alone, the vegetation looked vaguely repellant, seeming rather dark, like dried blood. Under Lagrange I, however, or under the suns together, the brilliant, flourishing green and the glisten of the numerous lakes-particularly north and south along the dead rims of the departing glaciers-brought an ache of homesickness to the hearts of many.

	Fawkes said, "Look at these."

	He had skimmed low to take a photochrome of a field of huge flowers, dripping with scarlet. In the high-ultraviolet radiation of Lagrange I, exposure times were of necessity extremely short and despite the motion of the coaster, each blossom stood out as a sharp blotch of strident color.

	"I swear," said Fawkes, "each one of those was six feet across."

	They admired the flowers unrestrainedly.

	Fawkes then said, "No intelligent life whatever, of course."

	Sheffield looked up from the photographs, with instant sharpness. Life and intelligence, after all, were by way of being his province. "How do you know?"

	"Look for yourself," said the botanist. "There are the photos. No highways, no cities, no artificial waterways, no signs of anything manmade."

	"No machine civilization," said Sheffield. "That's all."

	"Even ape-men would build shelters and use fire," said Fawkes, offended.

	"The continent is ten times as large as Africa and you've been over it for two days. There's a lot you could miss."

	"Not as much as you'd think," was the warm response. "I followed every sizable river up and down and looked over both seacoasts. Any settlements are bound to be there."

	"In allowing seventy-two hours for two eight-thousand-mile seacoasts ten thousand miles apart, plus how many thousand miles of river, that had to be a pretty quick lookover."

	Cimon interrupted, "What's this all about? Homo sapiens is the only intelligence ever discovered in the galaxy through a hundred thousand and more explored planets. The chances of Troas possessing intelligence is virtually nil."

	"Yes?" said Sheffield. "You could use the same argument to prove there's no intelligence on Earth."

	"Makoyama," said Cimon, "in his report mentioned no intelligent life."

	"And how much time did he have? It was a case of another quick feel through the haystack with one finger and a report of no needle."

	"What the eternal universe," said Rodriguez, waspishly.

	"We argue like madmen. Call the hypothesis of indigenous intelligence unproven and let it go. We are not through investigating yet, I hope."



COPIES of those first pictures of Junior's surface were added to what might be termed the open files. After a

second trip, Fawkes returned in more somber mood and the meeting was correspondingly more subdued.

	New photographs went from hand to hand and were then placed by Cimon himself in the special safe that nothing could open short of Cimon's own hands or an all-destroying nuclear blast.

	Fawkes said, "The two largest rivers have a generally northsouth course along the eastern edges of the western mountain range. The larger river comes down from the northern ice cap, the smaller up from the southern one. Tributaries come in westward from the eastern range, interlacing the entire central plain. Apparently, the central plain is tipped, the eastern edge being higher. It's what ought to be expected maybe. The eastern mountain range is the taller, broader and more continuous of the two. I wasn't able to make actual measurements, but I wouldn't be surprised if they beat the Himalayas. In fact, they're a lot like the Wu Ch'ao range on Hesperus. You have to hit the stratosphere to get over them, and rugged-Wow!

	"Anyway," he brought himself back to the immediate subject at hand, with an effort, "the two main rivers join about a hundred miles south of the equator and pour through a gap in the western range. They make it to the ocean after that in just short of eighty miles.

	"Where it hits the ocean is a natural spot for the planetary metropolis. The trade routes into the interior of the continent have to converge there so it would be the inevitable emporium for space-trade. Even as far as surface trade is concerned, the continental east coast has to move goods across the ocean. Jumping the eastern range isn't worth the effort. Then, too, there are the islands we saw when we were landing.

	"So right there is where I would have looked for the settlement even if we didn't have a record of the latitude and longitude. And those settlers had an eye for the future. It's where they set up shop."

	Novee said in a low voice, "They thought they had an eye for the future, anyway. There isn't much left of them, is there?"

	Fawkes tried to be philosophic about it. "It's been over a century. What do you expect? There's a lot more left of them than I honestly thought there would be. Their buildings were mostly prefab. They've tumbled and vegetation has forced its way over and through them. The fact that the climate of Junior is glacial is what's preserved it. The trees-or the objects that rather look like tree s-are~ small and obviously very slowgrowing.

	"Even so, the clearing is gone. From the air, the only way you could tell there had once been a settlement in that spot was that the new growth had a slightly different color and and, well, texture, than the surrounding forests."

	He pointed at a particular photograph. "This is just a slag heap. Maybe it was machinery once. I think those are burial mounds."

	Novee said, "Any actual remains? Bones?"

	Fawkes shook his head.

	Novee said, "The last survivors didn't bury themselves, did they?"

	Fawkes said, "Animals, I suppose." He walked away, his back to the group. "It was raining when I poked my way through. It went splat, splat on the flat leaves above me and the ground was soggy and spongy underneath. It was dark, gloomy-There was a cold wind. The pictures I took didn't get it across. I felt as though there were a thousand ghosts, waiting-"

	The mood was contagious.

	Cimon said, savagely, "Stop that!"

	In the background, Mark Annuncio's pointed nose fairly quivered with the intensity of his curiosity. He turned to Sheffield, who was at his side, and whispered, "Ghosts? No authentic case of seeing-"

	Sheffield touched Mark's thin shoulder lightly. "Only a way of speaking, Mark. But don't feel badly, that he doesn't mean it literally. You're watching the birth of a superstition, and that's something, isn't it?"



A semi-sullen Captain Follenbee sought out Cimon the evening after Fawkes' second return, and said in his harumphy way, "Never do, Dr. Cimon. My men are unsettled. Very unsettled."

	The port-shields were open. Lagrange I was six hours gone, and Lagrange II's ruddy light, deepened to crimson in setting,

flushed the captain's face and tinged his short gray hair with red.

	Cimon, whose attitude toward the crew in general and the captain in particular was one of controlled impatience, said, "What is the trouble, captain?"

	"Been here two weeks, Earth-time. Still no one leaves without suits. Always irradiate before you come back. Anything wrong with the air?"

	"Not as far as we know."

	"Why not breathe it then?"

	"Captain, that's for me to decide."

	The flush on the captain's face became a real one. He said, "My papers say I don't have to stay if ship's safety is endangered. A frightened and mutinous crew is something I don't want."

	"Can't you handle your own men?"

	"Within reason."

	"Well, what really bothers them? This is a new planet and we're being cautious. Can't they understand that?"

	"Two weeks and still cautious. They think we're hiding something. And we are. You know that. Besides, surface leave is necessary. Crew's got to have it. Even if it's just on a bare rock a mile across. Gets them out of the ship. Away from the routine. Can't deny them that."

	"Give me till tomorrow," said Cimon, contemptuously.



THE scientists gathered in the observatory the next day. Cimon said, "Vernadsky tells me the data on air is still negative, and Rodriguez has discovered no airborne pathogenic organism of any type."

	There was a general air of dubiety over the last statement. Novee said, "The settlement died of disease. I'll swear to that."

	"Maybe so," said Rodriguez at once, "but can you explain how? It's impossible. I tell you that and I tell you. See here. Almost all Earth-type planets give birth to life and that life is always protein in nature and always either cellular or virus in organization. But that's all. There the resemblance ends.

	"You laymen think it's all the same; Earth or any planet. Germs are germs and viruses are viruses. I tell you, you don't understand the infinite possibilities for variation in the pro-

tein molecule. Even on Earth, every species has its own diseases. Some may spread over several species but there isn't one single pathogenic life form ~ any type on Earth that can attack all other species.

	"You think that a virus or a bacterium developing independently for a billion years on another planet with different amino-acids, different enzyme systems, a different scheme of metabolism altogether, is just going to happen to find Homo sapiens succulent like a lollipop. I tell you it is childishness."

	Novee, his physician's soul badly pierced at having been lumped under the phrase, "you laymen," was not disposed to let it go that easily. "Homo sapiens brings its own germs with it wherever it goes, Rod. Who's to say the virus of the common cold didn't mutate under some planetary influence into something that was suddenly deadly. Or influenza. Things like that have happened even on Earth. The 2755 para-meas-"

	"I know all about the 2755 para-measles epidemic," said Rodriguez, "and the 1918 influenza epidemic, and the Black Death, too. But when has it happened lately? Granted the settlement was a matter of a century and more ago; still that wasn't exactly pre-atomic times, either. They included doctors. They had supplies of antibiotics and they knew the techniques of antibody induction. They're simple enough. And there was the medical relief expedition, too."

	Novee patted his round abdomen and said, stubbornly, "The symptoms were those of a respiratory infection; dyspnea-"

	"I know the list; but I tell you it wasn't a germ disease that got them. It couldn't be."

	"What was it, then?"

	"That's outside my professional competence. Talking from inside, I tell you it wasn't infection. Even mutant infection. It couldn't be. It mathematically couldn't be." He leaned heavily on the adverb.

	There was a stir among the listeners as Mark Annuncio shoved his thin body forward into the space immediately before Rodriguez.

	For the first time, he spoke at one of these gatherings.

	"Mathematically?" he asked, eagerly.

	Sheffield followed after, his long body all elbows and knees as he made a path. He murmured "Sorry" half a dozen times.

	Rodriguez, in an advanced stage of exasperation thrust out his lower lip and said, "What do you want?"

	Mark flinched. Less eagerly, he said, "You said you knew it wasn't infection mathematically. I was wondering how .

mathematics-" He ran down.

	Rodriguez said, "I have stated my professional opinion."

	He said it formally, stiltedly, then turned away. No man questioned another's professional opinion unless he was of the same specialty. Otherwise the implication, clearly enough, was that the specialist's experience and knowledge was sufficiently dubious to be brought into question by an outsider.

	Mark knew this, but then he was of the Mnemonic Service. He tapped Rodriguez's shoulder, while the others standing about listened in stunned fascination, and said, "I know it's your professional opinion, but still I'd like to have it explained."

	He didn't mean to sound peremptory. He was just stating a fact.

	Rodriguez whirled. "You'd like to have it explained? Who the eternal Universe are you to ask me questions?"

	Mark was startled at the other's vehemence, but Sheffield had reached him now, and he gained courage and with it, anger. He disregarded Sheffield's quick whisper and said shrilly, "I'm Mark Annuncio of Mnemonic Service and I've asked you a question. I want your statement explained."

	"It won't be explained. Sheffield, take this young nut out of here and tuck him into bed, will you? And keep him away from me after this. Young jackass." The last was a clearly-heard aside.

	Sheffield took Mark's wrist but it was wrenched out of his grasp. The young Mnemonic screamed, "You stupid noncompos. You . . . you moron. You forgettery on two feet. Sievemind. Let me go, Dr. Sheffield-You're no expert. You don't remember anything you've learned, and you haven't learned much in the first place. You're not a specialist; none of you-"

	"For space's sake," cried Cimon, "take the young idiot out of here, Sheffield."

	Sheffield, his long cheeks burning, stooped and lifted Mark bodily into the air. Holding him close, he made his way out of the room.

	Tears squeezed out of Mark's eyes and just outside the door, he managed to speak with difficulty. "Let me down, I want to hear-I want to hear what they say."

	Sheffield said, "Don't go back in. Please, Mark."

"I won't. Don't worry. But-" He didn't finish the but.



INSIDE the observatory room, Cimon, looking haggard, said, "All right. All right. Let's get back to the point. Come on, now. Quiet! I'm accepting Rodriguez's viewpoint. It's good enough for me and I don't suppose there's anyone else here who questions Rodriguez's professional opinion."

	("Better not," muttered Rodriguez, his dark eyes hot with sustained fury.)

	Cimon went on. "And since there's nothing to fear as far as infection is concerned, I'm telling Captain Follenbee that the crew may take surface leave without special protection against the atmosphere. Apparently the lack of surface leave is bad for morale. Are there any objections?"

	There weren't any.

	Cimon said, "I see no reason also why we can't pass on to the next stage of the investigation. I propose that we set up camp at the site of the original settlement. I appoint a committee of five to trek out there. Fawkes, since he can handle the coaster; Novee and Rodriguez to handle the biological data; Vernadsky and myself to take care of the chemistry and physics.

	"The rest of you will, naturally, be apprised of all pertinent data in your own specialties, and will be expected to help in suggesting lines of attack, et cetera. Eventually, we may all be out there, but for the while only this small group. And until further notice, communication between ourselves and the main group on ship will be by radio only, since if the trouble, whatever it is, turns out to be localized at settlement site, five men are enough to lose."

	Novee said, "The settlement lived on Junior several years before dying out-over a year, anyway. It could be a long time before we are certain we're safe."

	"We," said Cimon, "are not a settlement. We are a group of specialists who are looking for trouble. We'll find it if it's there to find, and when we do find it, we'll beat it. And it won't take us a couple of years either. Now, are there any objections?"

	There were none, and the meeting broke up.



MARK Annuncio sat on his bunk, hands clasped about his knee, chin sunken and touching his chest. He was dryeyed now, but his voice was heady with frustration.

	"They're not taking me," he said. "They won't let me go with them."

	Sheffield was in the chair opposite the boy, bathed in an agony of perplexity. He said, "They may take you later on."

	"No," said Mark, fiercely, "they won't. They hate me. Besides, I want to go now. I've never been on another planet before. There's so much to see and find out. They've got no right to hold me back if I want to go."

	Sheffield shook his head. Mnemonics were so firmly trained into this belief that they must collect facts, and that no one or nothing could or ought to stop them. Perhaps when they returned, he might recommend a certain degree of counter-indoctrination. After all, Mnemonics had to live in the real world, occasionally. More and more with each generation, perhaps, as they grew to play an increasing role in the galaxy.

	He tried an experiment. He said, "It may be dangerous, you know."

	"I don't care. I've got to know. I've got to find out about this planet. Dr. Sheffield, you go to Dr. Cimon and tell him I'm going along."

	"Now, Mark."

	"If you don't, I will." He raised his small body from the bed in earnest of leaving that moment.

	"Look, you're excited."

	Mark's fists clenched. "It's not fair, Dr. Sheffield. I found this planet. It's my planet."

	Sheffield's conscience hit him badly. What Mark said was true in a way. No one, except Mark, knew that better than Sheffield. And no one, again except Mark, knew the history of Junior better than Sheffield.

	It was only in the last twenty years that, faced with the rising tide of population pressure in the older planets and the recession of the Galactic frontier from those same older plan-

ets, that the Confederation of Worlds began exploring the galaxy systematically. Before that, human expansion went on hit or miss. Men and women in search of new land and a better life followed rumor as to the existence of habitable planets or sent out amateur groups to find something promising.

	A hundred ten years before, one such group found Junior. They didn't report their find officially because they didn't want a crowd of land speculators, promotion men, exploiters and general riffraff following. In the next months, some of the unattached men arranged to have women brought in, so the settlement must have flourished for a while.

	It was a year later when some had died and most or all the rest were sick and dying that they beamed a cry of help to Pretoria, the nearest inhabited planet. The Pretorian government was in some sort of crisis at the time and relayed the message to the Sector Government at Altmark. Pretoria then felt justified in forgetting the matter.

	The Altmark government, acting in reflex fashion, sent out a medical ship to Junior. It dropped anti-sera and various other supplies. The ship did not land because the medical officer diagnosed the matter, from a distance, as influenza, and minimized the danger. The medical supplies, his report said, would handle the matter perfectly. It was quite possible that the crew of the ship, fearing contagion, had prevented a landing, but nothing in the official report indicated that.

	There was a final report from Junior three months later to the effect that only ten people were left alive and that they were dying. They begged for help. This report was forwarded to Earth itself along with the previous medical report. The Central Government, however, was a maze in which reports regularly were forgotten unless someone had sufficient personal interest, and influence, to keep them alive. No one had much interest in a far-off, unknown planet with ten dying men and women on it.

	Filed and forgotten-and for a century, no human foot was felt on Junior.

	Then, with the new furore over Galactic exploration, hundreds of ships began darting through the empty vastness, probing here and there. Reports trickled in, then flooded in.

Some came from Hidosheki Mikoyama, who passed through the Hercules Cluster twice-dying in a crash landing the second time, with his tight and despairing voice coming over the subether in a final message: "Surface coming up fast now; ship-walls frictioning into red he-" and no more.

	Last year, the accumulation of reports, grown past any reasonable human handling, was fed into the over-worked Washington computer on a priority so high that there was only a five-month wait. The operators checked out the data for planetary habitability and lo, Abou ben Junior led all the rest.



SHEFFIELD remembered the wild hurrah over it. The stellar system was enthusiastically proclaimed to the galaxy and the name, Junior, was thought up by a bright young man in the Bureau of Outer Provinces who felt the need for personal friendliness between man and world. Junior's virtues were magnified. Its fertility, its climate-"a New England perpetual spring"-and most of all, its vast future, were put across without any feeling of need for discretion. For the next million years, propagandists declared, Junior will grow richer. While other planets age, Junior will grow younger as the ice recedes and fresh soil is exposed. Always a new frontier; always untapped resources.

	For a million years!

	It was the Bureau's masterpiece. It was to be the tremendously successful start of a program of government-sponsored colonization. It was to be the beginning, at long last, of the scientific exploitation of the galaxy for the good of humanity.

	And then came Mark Annuncio, who heard much of all this and was as thrilled at the prospect as any Joe Earthman, but who one day thought of something he had seen while sniffing idly through the "dead-matter" files of the Bureau of Outer Provinces. He had seen a medical report about a colony on a planet of a system whose description and position in space tallied with that of the Lagrange group.

	Sheffield remembered the day Mark came to him with that news.

	He also remembered the face of the Secretary for the Outer Provinces when the news was passed on to him. He saw the

secretary's square jaw slowly go slack and a look of infinite trouble come into his eyes.

	The government was committed! It was going to ship millions of people to Junior. It was going to grant farmland and subsidize the first seed supplies, farm machinery, factories. Junior was going to be a paradise for numerous voters and a promise of more paradise for a myriad others.

	If Junior turned out to be a killer planet for some reason or other, it would mean political suicide for all government figures concerned in the project. That meant some pretty big men, not least the Secretary for the Outer Provinces.

	After days of checking and indecision, the secretary had said to Sheffield, "It looks as though we've got to find out what happened, and weave it into the propaganda somehow. Don't you think we could neutralize it that way?"

	"If what happened isn't too horrible to neutralize."

	"But it can't be, can it? I mean, what can it be?" The man was miserably unhappy.

	Sheffield shrugged.

	The secretary said, "See here. We can send a ship of specialists to the planet. Volunteers only and good reliable men, of course. We can give it the highest priority rating we can move, and Project Junior carries considerable weight, you know. We'll slow things up here, and hold on till they get back. That might work, don't you think?"

	Sheffield wasn't sure, but he got the sudden dream of going on that expedition, of taking Mark with him. He could study a Mnemonic in an off-trail environment, and if Mark should be the means of working out the mystery- From the beginning, a mystery was assumed. After all, people don't die of influenza. And the medical ship hadn't landed; they hadn't really observed what was going on. It was fortunate, indeed, that that medical man was now dead thirtyseven years, or he would be slated for court-martial now.

	If Mark should help solve the matter, the Mnemonic Service would be enormously strengthened. The government had to be grateful.

	But now- Sheffield wondered if Cimon knew the story of how the matter of the first settlement had been brought to light. He was fairly certain that the rest of the crew did not. It was not something the Bureau would willingly speak about.

	Nor would it be polite to use the story as a lever to pry concessions out of Cimon. If Mark's correction of Bureau "stupidity"-that would undoubtedly be the opposition's phrasing-were overpublicized, the Bureau would look bad. If they could be grateful, they could be vengeful, too. Retaliation against the Mnemonic Service would not be too petty a thing to expect. Still-Sheffield stood up with quick decision. "All right, Mark. I'll get you out to the settlement site. I'll get us both out there. Now you sit down and wait for me. Promise you'll try nothing on your own."

	"All right," said Mark. He sat down on his bunk again.



"WELL, now, Dr. Sheffield, what is it?" said Cimon. The astrophysicist sat at his desk, on which papers and film formed rigidly arranged heaps about a small Macfreed integrator and watched Sheffield step over the threshold.

	Sheffield sat carelessly down upon the tautly yanked topsheet of Cimon's bunk. He was aware of Cimon's annoyed glance in that direction and it did not worry him. In fact, he rather enjoyed it.

	He said, "I have a quarrel with your choice of men to go to the expedition site. It looks as though you've picked two men for the physical sciences, and three for the biological sciences. Right?"

	"Yes."

	"I suppose you think you've covered the ground like a Danielski ovospore at perihelion."

	"Oh, space! Have you anything to suggest?"

	"I would like to come along myself."

	"Why?"

	"You have no one to take care of the mental sciences."

	"The mental sciences! Good galaxy! Dr. Sheffield, five men are quite enough to risk. As a matter of fact, doctor, you and your . . . uh . . . ward were assigned to the scientific personnel of this ship by order of the Bureau of Outer Provinces without any prior consultation of myself. I'll be frank-if I had been consulted, I would have advised against you. I don't see the function of mental science in an investig~ition such as this, which, after all, is purely physical. It is too bad that the Bureau wishes to experiment with Mnemonics on an occasion such as this. We can't afford scenes like that one with Rodriguez."

	Sheffield decided that Cimon did not know of Mark's connection with the original decision to send out the expedition.

	He sat upright, hands on knees, elbows cocked outward and let a freezing formality settle over him. "So you wonder about the function of mental science in an investigation such as this, Dr. Cimon. Suppose I told you that the end of the first settlement might possibly be explained on a simple, psychological basis."

	"It wouldn't impress me. A psychologist is a man who can explain anything and prove nothing." Cimon smirked like a man who had made an epigram and was proud of it.

	Sheffield ignored it. He said, "Let me go into a little detail. In what way is Junior different from every one of the eightythree thousand inhabited worlds?"

	"Our information is as yet incomplete. I cannot say."

	"Oh, cobber-vitals. You had the necessary information before you ever came here. Junior has two suns."

	"Well, of course." But the astrophysicist allowed a trace of discomfiture to enter his expression.

	"Colored suns, mind you. Colored suns. Do you know what that means? It means that a human being, yourself or myself, standing in the full glare of the two suns, would cast two shadows. One blue-green, one red-orange. The length of each would naturally vary with the time of day. Have you taken the trouble to verify the color distribution in those shadows? The what-do-you-call-em-reflection spectrum?"

	"I presume," said Cimon, loftily, "they'd be about the same as the radiation spectra of the suns. What are you getting at?"

	"You should check. Wouldn't the air absorb some wavelengths? And the vegetation? What's left? And take Junior's moon, Sister. I've been watching it in the last few nights. It's in colors, too, and the colors change position."

	"Well, of course. It runs through its phases independently with each sun."

	"You haven't checked its reflection spectrum, either, have you?"

	"We have that somewhere. There are no points of interest about it. Of what interest is it to you, anyway?"

	"My dear Dr. Cimon. It is a well established psychological fact that combinations of red and green colors exert a deleterious effect on mental stability. We have a case here where the red-green chromopsychic picture-to use a technical term-is inescapable and is presented under circumstances which seem most unnatural to the human mind. It is quite possible that chromopsychosis could reach the fatal level by inducing hypertrophy of the trinitarian follicles with consequent cerebric catatonia."

	Cimon looked floored. He said, "I never heard of such a thing."

	"Naturally not," said Sheffield-it was his turn to be lofty. "You are not a psychologist. Surely you are not questioning my professional opinion."

	"No, of course not. But it's quite plain from the last reports of the expedition that they were dying of something that sounded like a respiratory disease."

	"Correct, but Rodriguez denies that and you accepted his professional opinion."

	"I didn't say it was a respiratory disease. I said it sounded like one. Where does your red-green cromothingumbob come in?"

	Sheffield shook his head. "You laymen have your misconceptions. Granted that there is a physical effect, it still does not imply that there may not be a mental cause. The most convincing point about my theory is that red-green chromopsychosis has been recorded to exhibit itself first as a psychogenic respiratory infection. I take it you are not acquainted with psychogenics."

	"No. It's out of my field."

	"Well, yes. I should say so. Now my own calculations show me that under the heightened oxygen tension of this world the psychogenic respiratory infection is both inevitable and partic

ularly severe. For instance, you've observed the moon-Sister, I mean-in the last few nights."

	"Yes, I have observed Ilium."~ Cimon did not forget Sister's official name, even now.

	"You watched it closely and over lengthy periods? Under magnification?"

	"Yes." Cimon was growing uneasy.

	"Ah," said Sheffield, "now the moon colors in the last few nights have been particularly virulent. Surely you must be noticing just a small inflammation of the mucous membrane of the nose, a slight itching in the throat. Nothing painful yet, I imagine. Have you been coughing or sneezing? Is it a little hard to swallow?"

	"I believe I-" Cimon swallowed, then drew in his breath sharply. He was testing.

	Then he sprang to his feet, fists clenched and mouth working. "Great galaxy, Sheffield, you had no right to keep quiet about this. I can feel it now. What do I do, Sheffield? It's not incurable, is it? Damn it, Sheffield"-his voice went shrill- "why didn't you tell us this before?"

	"Because," said Sheffield, calmly, "there's not a word of truth in anything I've said. Not one word. There's no harm in colors. Sit down, Dr. Cimon. You're beginning to look rather foolish to say the least."

	"You said," said Cimon, thoroughly confused, and in a voice that was beginning to strangle, "that it was your professional opinion that-"

	"My professional opinion! Space and little comets, Cimon, what's so magic about a professional opinion? A man can be lying or he can just plain be ignorant, even about the final details of his own specialty. A professional can be wrong because he's ignorant of a neighboring specialty. He may be certain he's right and still be wrong.

	"Look at you. You know all about what makes the universe tick and I'm lost completely except that I know that a star is something that twinkles and a light-year is something that's long. And yet you'll swallow gibberish-psychology that a freshman student of mentics would laugh his head off at. Don't you think, Cimon, it's time we worried less about professional opinion and more about over-all co-ordination?"

THE color washed slowly out of Cimon's face. It turned waxy-pale. His lips trembled. He whispered, "You used professional status as a cloak to make a fool of me."

	"That's about it," said Sheffield.

	"I have never, never-" Cimon gasped and tried a new start. "I have never witnessed anything as cowardly and unethical."

	"I was trying to make a point."

	"Oh, you made it. You made it." Cimon was slowly recovering; his voice approaching normality. "You want me to take that boy of yours with us."

	"That's right."

	"No. No. Definitely no. It was no before you came in here and it's no a million times over now."

	"What's your reason? I mean, before I came in."

	"He's psychotic. He can't be trusted with normal people."

	Sheffield said, grimly, "I'll thank you not to use the word, 'psychotic.' You are not competent to use it. If you're so precise in your feeling for professional ethics, remember to stay out of my specialty in my presence. Mark Annuncio is perfectly normal."

	"After that scene with Rodriguez? Yes. Oh, yes."

	"Mark had the right to ask his question. It was his job to do so and his duty. Rodriguez had no right to be boorish about it."

	"I'll have to consider Rodriguez first, if you don't mind."

	"Why? Mark Annuncio knows more than Rodriguez. For that matter, he knows more than you or I. Are you trying to bring back an intelligent report or to satisfy a petty vanity?"

	"Your statements about what your boy knows do not impress me. I am quite aware he is an efficient parrot. He understands nothing, however. It is my duty to see to it that data are made available to him, because the Bureau has ordered that. They did not consult me, but very well. I will co-operate that far. He will receive his data here in the ship."

	Sheffield said, "Not adequate, Cimon. He should be on the spot. He may see things our precious specialists will not."

	Cimon said, freezingly, "Very likely. The answer, Sheffield, is no. There is no argument that can possibly persuade me." The astrophysicist's nose was pinched and white.

	"Because I made a fool of you?"

	"Because you violated the most fundamental obligation of a

professional man. No respectable professional would ever use his specialty to prey on the innocence of a non-associate professional."

	"So I made a fool of you."

	Cimon turned away. "Please leave. There will be no further communication between us, outside the most necessary business, for the duration of the trip."

	"If I go," said Sheffield, "the rest of the boys may get to hear about this."

	Cimon started. "You're going to repeat our little affair?" A cold smile rested on his lips, then went its transient and contemptuous way. "You'll broadcast the dastard you were."

	"Oh, I doubt they'll take it seriously. Everyone knows psychologists will have their little jokes. Besides, they'll be so busy laughing at you. You know-the very impressive Dr. Cimon scared into a sore throat and howling for mercy after a few mystic words of gibberish."

	"Who'd believe you?" cried Cimon.

	Sheffield lifted his right hand. Between thumb and forefinger was a small rectangular object, studded with a line of control toggles.

	"Pocket recorder," he said. He touched one of the toggles and Cimon's voice was suddenly saying, "Well, now, Dr. Sheffield, what is it?"

	It sounded pompous, peremptory, and even a little smug.

	"Give me that!" Cimon hurled himself at the lanky psychologist.

	Sheffield held him off. "Don't try force, Cimon. I was in amateur wrestling not too long ago. Look, I'll make a deal with you."

	Cimon was still writhing toward him, dignity forgotten, panting his fury. Sheffield kept him at arm's length, backing slowly.

	Sheffield said, "Let Mark and myself come along and no one will ever see or hear this."

	Slowly, Cimon simmered down. He gasped, "Will you let me have it, then?"

	"After Mark and I are out at the settlement site."

	"I'm to trust you." He seemed to take pains to make that as offensive as possible.

	"Why not? You can certainly trust me to broadcast this if you don't agree. I'll play it off for Vernadsky first. He'll love it. You know his corny sense of humor."

	Cimon said in a voice so low it could hardly be heard, "You and the boy can come along." Then, vigorously, "But remember this, Sheffield. When we get back to Earth, I'll have you before the Central Committee of the G.A.A.S. That's a promise. You'll be de-professionalized."

	Sheffield said, "I'm not afraid of the Galactic Association for the Advancement of Science." He let the syllables resound. "After all, what will you accuse me of? Are you going to play this recording before the Central Committee as evidence? Come, come, let's be friendly about this. You don't want to broadcast your own . . . uh . . . mistake before the primmest stuffed shirts in eighty-three thousand worlds."

	Smiling gently, he backed out the door.

	But when he closed the door between himself and Cimon, his smile vanished. He hadn't liked to do this. Now that he had done it, he wondered if it were worth the enemy he had made.



SEVEN tents had sprung up near the site of the original settlement on Junior. Nevile Fawkes could see them all from the low ridge on which he stood. They had been there seven days now.

	He looked up at the sky. The clouds were thick overhead and pregnant with rain. That pleased him. With both suns behind those clouds, the diffused light was gray-white. It made things seem almost normal.

	The wind was damp and a little raw, as though it were April in Vermont. Fawkes was a New Englander and he appreciated the resemblance. In four or five hours, Lagrange I would set and the clouds would turn ruddy while the landscape would become angrily dim. But Fawkes intended to be back in the tents by then.

	So near the equator, yet so cool! Well, that would change with the millennia. As the glaciers retreated, the air would warm up and the soil would dry out. Jungles and deserts would make their appearance. The water level in the oceans would slowly creep higher, wiping out numberless islands. The two large rivers would become an inland sea, changing the

configuration of Junior's one large continent; perhaps making several smaller ones out of it.

	He wondered if the settlement site would be drowned. Probably, he decided. Maybe that would take the curse off it.

	He could understand why the Confederation were so anxious to solve the mystery of that first settlement. Even if it were a simple matter of disease, there would have to be proof. Otherwise, who would settle the world? The "sucker bait" superstition held for more than merely spacemen.

	He, himself-Well, his first visit to the settlement site hadn't been so bad, though he had been glad to leave the rain and the gloom. Returning was worse. It was difficult to sleep with the thought that a thousand mysterious deaths lay all about, separated from him only by that insubstantial thing, time.

	With medical coolness, Novee had dug up the moldering graves of a dozen of the ancient settlers. (Fawkes could not and did not look at the remains.) There had been only crumbling bones, Novee had said, out of which nothing could be made.

	"There seem to be abnormalities of bone deposition," he said. Then on questioning, he admitted that the effects might be entirely owing to a hundred years' exposure to damp soil.

	Fawkes had constructed a fantasy that followed him even into his waking hours. It concerned an elusive race of intelligent beings dwelling underground, never being seen but haunting that first settlement a century back with a deadly perseverance.

	He pictured a silent bacteriological warfare. He could see them in laboratories beneath the tree roots, culturing their molds and spores, waiting for one that could live on human beings. Perhaps they captured children to experiment upon.

	And when they found what they were looking for, spores drifted silently out over the settlement in venomous clouds- Fawkes knew all this to be fantasy. He had made it up in the wakeful nights out of no evidence but that of his quivering stomach. Yet alone in the forest, he whirled more than once in a sudden horror-filled conviction that bright eyes were staring out of the duskiness of a tree's Lagrange I shadow.

	Fawkes' botanist's eye did not miss the vegetation he

passed, absorbed as he was. He had deliberately struck out from camp in a new direction, but what he saw was what he had already seen. Junior's forests were neither thick nor tangled. They were scarcely a barrier to travel. The small trees- few were higher than ten feet, although their trunks were nearly as thick as the average Terrestrial tree-grew with considerable room between them.

	Fawkes had constructed a rough scheme for arranging the plant-life of Junior into some sort of taxonomic order. He was not unaware of the fact that he might be arranging for his own immortality.

	There was the scarlet "bayonet tree," for instance. Its huge, scarlet flowers attracted insectlike creatures that built small nests within it. Then-at what signal or what impulse Fawkes had not divined-all the flowers on some one given tree would grow a glistening white pistil over night. Each pistil stood two feet high, as though every bloom had been suddenly equipped with a bayonet.

	By the next day, the flower had been fertilized, and the petals closed shut-about pistil, insects and all. The explorer, Makoyama, had named it the "bayonet tree," but Fawkes had made so bold as to rename it Migrania Fawkesii.



ONE thing the trees had in common. Their wood was incredibly tough. It would be the task of the biochemist to determine the physical state of the cellulose molecule and that of the biophysicist to determine how water could be transported through the wood's impervious texture. What Fawkes knew from experience was that blossoms would break if pulled, that stems would bend only with difficulty and break not at all. His pocketknife was blunted without as much as making a scratch.

	The original settlers, in order to clear land, had obviously had to dig out the trees, root and all.

	Compared to Earth, the woods were almost free of animal life. That might be due to the glacial slaughter. Fawkes didn't know.

	The insectlike creatures were all two winged. And those wings were feathery little fronds that beat noiselessly. None, apparently, was a bloodsucker.

	The only major experience with animals that they had had was the sudden appearance of a large flying creature over the camp. It took high-speed photography td reveal the actual shape of the beast, for the specimen they observed, apparently overcome with curiosity, swooped low over the tents, again and again, at speeds too great for comfortable, naked-eye observation.

	It was four-winged, the forward wings terminating in powerful claws, being membranous and nearly naked, serving the office of gliding planes. The hind pair, covered with a hairlike fuzz, beat rapidly.

	Rodriguez suggested the name Tetrapierus.

	Fawkes paused in his reminiscence to look at a variety of grass he had not seen before. It grew in a dense patch and each stem forked in three toward the top. He brought out his magnifying glass, and felt one of the stems gingerly with his finger. Like other grasses on Junior, it- It was here that he heard the rustle behind him-unmistakable. He listened for a moment, his own heartbeat drowning the sound, then whirled. A small manlike object dodged behind a tree.

	Fawkes' breathing nearly stopped. He fumbled for the blaster he wore and his hand seemed to be moving through molasses.

	Was his fantasy no fantasy at all? Was Junior inhabited after all?

	Numbly, Fawkes found himself behind another tree. He couldn't leave it at this. He knew that. He could not report to the rest: I saw something alive. It might have been the answer to everything. But I was afraid and let it get away.

	He would have to make some attempt.

	There was a "chalice tree" just behind the tree that hid the creature. It was in bloom, the white and cream flowers lifted turgidly upward, waiting to catch the rain that would soon fall. There was the sharp tinkle of a breaking flower and cream slivers twisted and turned downward.

	It wasn't imagination. Something was behind the tree.

	Fawkes took a deep breath and dashed out, holding his blaster before him, nerving himself to shoot at the slightest sign of danger.

	But a voice called out, "Don't. It's only I." A frightened, but definitely human face looked out from behind the tree.

	It was Mark Annuncio.

	Fawkes stopped in mid-stride and stared. Finally, he managed to croak, "What are you doing here?"

	Mark said, staring at the blaster in the other's hand, "I was following you."

	"Why?"

	"To see what you would do. I was interested in what you might find. I thought if you saw me, you would send me away."

	Fawkes became conscious of the weapon he was still holding and put it away. It took three tries to get it into the holster.

	The first fat drops of rain began to fall. Fawkes said, harshly, "Don't say anything about this to the others."

	He glared hostilely at the youngster and they walked back to camp separately and in silence.



A central hall of pre-fab had been added to the seven tents now, and the group was together within it, sitting about the long table.

	It was a great moment, but a rather subdued one. Vernadsky, who had cooked for himself in his college days, was in charge. He lifted the steaming stew off the short-wave heater and said, "Calories, anyone?"

	He ladled the stuff lavishly.

	"It smells very good," said Novee, doubtfully.

	He lifted a piece of meat with his fork. It was purplish and still felt tough despite internal heating. The shredded herbs that surrounded it seemed softer, but looked less edible.

	"Well," said Vernadsky, "eat it. Put it in your mouth. I've tasted it and it's good."

	He crammed his mouth and chewed. He kept on chewing. "Tough, but good."

	Fawkes said, gloomily, "It'll probably kill us."

	"Nuts," said Vernadsky. "The rats have been living on it for two weeks."

	"Two weeks isn't much," said Novee.

	Rodriguez said, "Well, one bite won't kill. Say, it is good." And it was. They all agreed, eventually. So far, it seemed that whenever Junior's life could be eaten at all, it was good.

The grains were almost impossible to grind into flour, but that done, a protein-high cake could be baked. There was some on the table now; dark and heavy.. It wasn't ba~d, either.

	Fawkes had studied the herb life on Junior and come to the conclusion that an acre of Junior's surface, properly seeded and watered, could support ten times the number of grazing animals that an acre of Earthly alfalfa could.

	Sheffield had been impressed; spoke of Junior as the granary of a hundred worlds, but Fawkes dismissed his own statements with a shrug.

	He said, "Sucker bait."

	About a week earlier, the party had been agitated by the sudden refusal of the hamsters and white rats to touch certain new herbs Fawkes had brought in. Mixing small quantities with regular rations had resulted in the death of those that fed on it.

	Solution?

	Not quite. Vernadsky came in a few hours later and said, calmly, "Copper, lead, and mercury."

	"What?" said Cimon.

	"Those plants. They're high in heavy metals. Probably an evolutionary development to keep from being eaten."

	"The first settlers-" began Cimon.

	"No. That's impossible. Most of the plants are perfectly all right. Just these, and no one would eat them."

	"How do you know?"

	"The rats didn't."

	"They're just rats."

	It was what Vernadsky was waiting for. He said, dramatically, "You may hail a modest martyr to science. I tasted the stuff."

	"What?" yelled Novee.

	"Just a lick. Don't worry. I'm the careful-type martyr. Anyway, the stuff is as bitter as strychnine. What do you expect? If a plant is going to fill itself with lead just to keep the animals off, what good does it do the plant to have the animal find out by dying after he's eaten it? A little bitter stuff in addition acts as a warning. The combination warning and punishment does the trick."

	"Besides," said Novee, "it wasn't heavy metal poisoning that killed the settlers. The symptoms aren't right for it."

	The rest knew the symptoms well enough. Some in lay terms and some in more technical language. Difficult and painful breathing that grew steadily worse. That's what it amounted to.

	Fawkes put down his fork. "Look here, suppose this stuff contains some alkaloid that paralyzes the nerves that control the lung muscles."

	"Rats have lung muscles," said Vernadsky. "It doesn't kill them."

	"Maybe it's a cumulative thing."

	"All right. All right. Any time your breathing gets painful, go back to ship rations and see if you improve. But no fair counting psychosomatics."

	Sheffield grunted, "That's my job. Don't worry about it."

	Fawkes drew a deep breath, then another. Glumly, he put another piece of meat into his mouth.

	At one corner of the table, Mark Annuncio, eating more slowly than the rest, thought of Norris Vinograd's monograph on "Taste and Smell." Vinograd had made a taste-smell classification based on enzyme inhibition patterns within the taste buds. Annuncio did not know what that meant exactly but he remembered the symbols, their values, and the descriptive definitions.

	While he placed the taste of the stew to three subclassifications, he finished his helping. His jaws ached faintly because of the difficult chewing.



EVENING was approaching and Lagrange I was low in the sky. It had been a bright day, reasonably warm, and Boris Vernadsky felt pleased. He had made interesting measurements and his brilliantly colored sweater had showed fascinating changes from hour to hour as the suns' positions shifted.

	Right now, his shadow was a long red thing, with the lowest third of it gray, where the Lagrange II shadow coincided. He held out one arm and it cast two shadows. There was a smeared orange one some fifteen feet away and a denser blue

one in the same direction but only five feet away. If he had time, he could work out a beautiful set of shadowgrams.

	He was so pleased with the thought that he felt no resentment at seeing Mark Annuncio skirting his trail in the distance.

	He put down his nucleometer and waved his hand. "Come here!"

	The youngster approached diffidently. "Hello."

	"Want something?"

	"Just . . . just watching."

	"Oh? Well, go ahead and watch. Do you know what I'm doing?"

	Mark shook his head.

	"This is a nucleometer," said Vernadsky. "You jab it into the ground like this. It's got a force-field generator at the top so it will penetrate any rock." He leaned on the nucleometer as he spoke, and it went two feet into the stony outcropping. "See?"

	Mark's eyes shone, and Vernadsky felt pleased. The chemist said, "Along the sides of the uniped are microscopic atomic furnaces, each of which vaporizes about a million molecules or so in the surrounding rock and decomposes them into atoms. The atoms are then differentiated in terms of nuclear mass and charge and the results may be read off directly on the dials above. Do you follow all that?"

	"I'm not sure. But it's a good thing to know."

	Vernadsky smiled, and said, "We end up with figures on the different elements in the crust. It's pretty much the same on all oxygenlwater planets."

	Mark said, seriously, "The planet with the most silicon I know of is Lepta with 32.765 per cent. Earth is only 24.862. That's by weight."

	Vernadsky's smile faded. He said, dryly, "You have the figures on all the planets, pal?"

	"Oh, no. I couldn't. I don't think they've all been surveyed. Bischoon and Spenglow's 'Handbook of Planetary Crusts' only lists figures for twenty-one thousand eight hundred and fiftyfour planets. I know all those, of course."

	Vernadsky, with a definite feeling of deflation, said, "Now Junior has a more even distribution of elements than is usually met up with. Oxygen is low. So far my average is a lousy

42.113. So is silicon, with 22.722. The heavy metals are ten to a hundred times as concentrated as on Earth. That's not just a local phenomenon, either, since Junior's over-all density is five per cent higher than Earth's."

	Vernadsky wasn't sure why he was telling the kid all this. Partly, he felt, because it was good to find someone who would listen. A man gets lonely and frustrated when there is no one of his own field to talk to.

	He went on, beginning to relish the lecture. "On the other hand, the lighter elements are also better distributed. The ocean solids aren't predominantly sodium chloride as on Earth. Junior's oceans contain a respectable helping of magnesium salts. And take what they call the 'rare lights.' Those are the elements lithium, beryllium, and boron. They're lighter than carbon, all of them, but they are of very rare occurrence on Earth, and in fact, on all planets. Junior, on the other hand, is quite rich in them. The three of them total almost fourtenths of a per cent of the crust as compared to about fourthousandths on Earth."

	Mark plucked at the other's sleeve. "Do you have a list of figures on all the elements? May I see?"

	"I suppose so." He took a folded piece of paper out of his hippocket.

	He grinned as Mark took the sheet and said, "Don't publish those figures before I do."

	Mark glanced at them once and returned the paper.

	"Are you through?" asked Vernadsky in surprise.

	"Oh, yes," said Mark, thoughtfully, "I have it all." He turned on his heel and walked away with no word of parting.

	The last glimmer of Lagrange I faded below the horizon.

	Vernadsky gazed after Mark and shrugged. He plucked his nucleometer out of the ground, and followed after, walking back toward the tents.



SHEFFIELD was moderately pleased. Mark had been doing better than expected. To be sure, he scarcely talked but that was not very serious. At least, he showed interest and didn't sulk. And he threw no tantrums.

	Vernadsky was even telling Sheffield that last evening Mark had spoken to him quite normally, without raised voices on

either side, about planetary crust analyses. Vernadsky had laughed a bit about it, saying that Mark knew the crust analyses of twenty thousand planets and some day he'd have the boy repeat them all just to see how long it would take.

	Mark, himself, had made no mention of the matter. In fact, he had spent the morning sitting in his tent. Sheffield had looked in, seen him on his cot, staring at his feet, and had left him to himself.

	What he really needed at the moment, Sheffield felt, was a bright idea for himself-a really bright one.

	So far, everything had come to nothing-a whole month of everything. Rodriguez held fast against any infection. Vernadsky absolutely barred food poisoning. Novee shook his head with vehement negativeness at suggestions of disturbed metabolism. "Where's the evidence?" he kept saying.

	What it amounted to was that every physical cause of death was eliminated on the strength of expert opinion. But men, women, and children had died. There must be a reason. Could it be psychological?

	He had satirized the matter to Cimon for a purpose before they had come out here, but it was now time and more than time to be serious about it. Could the settlers have been driven to suicide? Why? Humanity had colonized tens of thousands of planets without its having seriously affected mental stability. In fact, the suicide rate, as well as the incidence of psychoses, were higher on Earth than anywhere else in the galaxy.

	Besides, the settlement had called frantically for medical help. They didn't want to die.

	Personality disorders? Something peculiar to that one group? Enough to affect over a thousand people to the death? Unlikely. Besides, how could any evidence be uncovered? The settlement site had been ransacked for any films or records, even the most frivolous. Nothing. A century of dampness left nothing so fragile as purposeful records.

	So he was working in a vacuum. He felt helpless. The others, at least, had data; something to chew on. He had nothing.

	He found himself at Mark's tent again and looked inside automatically. It was empty. He looked about and spied Mark walking out of the camp and into the woods.

	Sheffield cried out after him, "Mark! Wait for me!"

	Mark stopped, made as though to go on, thought better of it, and let Sheffield's long legs consume the distance between them.

	Sheffield said, "Where are you off to?" (Even after running, it was unnecessary to pant in Junior's rich atmosphere.)

	Mark's eyes were sullen. "To the air-coaster."

	"Oh?"

	"I haven't had a chance to look at it."

	"Why, of course you've had a chance," said Sheffield. "You were watching Fawkes like a hawk on the trip over."

	Mark scowled. "Everyone was around. I want to see it for myself."

	Sheffield felt disturbed. The kid was angry. He'd better tag along and try to find out what was wrong. He said, "Come to think of it, I'd like to see the coaster myself. You don't mind having me along, do you?"

	Mark hesitated. Then he said, 'We-ell. If you want to." It wasn't exactly a gracious invitation.

	Sheffield said, "What are you carrying, Mark?"

	"Tree branch. I cut it off with the buzz-field gun. I'm taking it with me just in case anyone wants to stop me." He swung it so that it whistled through the thick air.

	"Why should anyone want to stop you, Mark? I'd throw it away. It's hard and heavy. You could hurt someone."

	Mark was striding on. "I'm not throwing it away." Sheffield pondered briefly, then decided against a quarrel at the moment. It would be better to get to the basic reason for this hostility first. "All right," he said.

	The air-coaster lay in a clearing, its clear metal surface throwing back green highlights. (Lagrange II had not yet risen.)

	Mark looked carefully about.

	"There's no one in sight, Mark," said Sheffield. They climbed aboard. It was a large coaster. It had carried seven men and the necessary supplies in only three trips.

	Sheffield looked at its control panel with something quite close to awe. He said, "Imagine a botanist like Fawkes learning to run one of these things. It's so far outside his specialty."

	"I can run one," said Mark, suddenly.

	Sheffield stared at him in surprise. "You can?"

	"I watched Dr. Fawkes when we came. I know everything he did. And he has a repair manual for the coaster. I sneaked that out once and read it."

	Sheffield said lightly, "Well, that's very nice. We have a spare navigator for an emergency, then."

	He turned away from Mark then, so he never saw the tree limb as it came down on his head. He didn't hear Mark's troubled voice saying, "I'm sorry, Dr. Sheffield." He didn't even, properly speaking, feel the concussion that knocked him out.



IT was the jar of the coaster's landing, Sheffield later thought, that first brought consciousness back. It was a dim aching sort of thing that had no understanding in it at first.

	The sound of Mark's voice was floating up to him. That was his first sensation. Then as he tried to roll over and get a knee beneath him, he could feel his head throbbing.

	For a while, Mark's voice was only a collection of sounds that meant nothing to him. Then they began to coalesce into words. Finally, when his eyes fluttered open and light entered stabbingly so that he had to close them again, he could make out sentences. He remained where he was, head hanging, one quivering knee holding him up.

	Mark was saying in a breathless, high-pitched voice, ". . . A thousand people all dead. Just graves. And nobody knows why."

	There was a rumble Sheffield couldn't make out. A hoarse deep voice.

	Then Mark again, "It's true. Why do you suppose all the scientists are aboard?"

	Sheffield lifted achingly to his feet and rested against one wall. He put his hand to his head and it came away bloody. His hair was caked and matted with it. Groaning, he staggered toward the coaster's cabin door. He fumbled for the hook and yanked it inward.

	The landing ramp had been lowered. For a moment, he stood there, swaying, afraid to trust his legs.

	He had to take in everything by installments. Both suns were high in the sky and a thousand feet away, the giant steel

cylinder of the Triple G reared its nose high above the runty trees that ringed it.

	Mark was at the foot of the ramp, semicircled by members of the crew. The crewmen were stripped to the waist and browned nearly black in the ultraviolet of Lagrange I. (Thanks only to the thick atmosphere and the heavy ozone coating in the upper reaches for keeping UV down to a livable range.)

	The crewman directly before Mark was leaning on a baseball bat. Another tossed a ball in the air and caught it. Many of the rest were wearing gloves.

	"Funny," thought Sheffield, erratically, "Mark landed right in the middle of a ball park."

	Mark looked up and saw him. He screamed, excitedly, "All right, ask him. Go ahead, ask him. Dr. Sheffield, wasn't there an expedition to this planet once and they all died mysteriously?"

	Sheffield tried to say: Mark, what are you doing? He couldn't. When he opened his mouth only a moan came out.

	The crewman with the bat said, "Is this little gumboil telling the truth, mister?"

	Sheffield held on to the railing with two perspiring hands. The crewman's face seemed to waver. The face had thick lips on it and small eyes buried under bristly eyebrows. It wavered very badly.

	Then the ramp came up and whirled about his head. There was ground gripped in his hands suddenly and a cold ache on his cheekbone. He gave up the fight and let go of consciousness again.



HE came awake less painfully the second time. He was in bed now and two misty faces leaned over him. A long, thin object passed across his line of vision and a voice, just heard above the humming in his ears, said, "He'll come to now, Cimon."

	Sheffield closed his eyes. Somehow he seemed to be aware of the fact that his skull was thoroughly bandaged.

	He lay quietly for a minute, breathing deeply. When he opened his eyes again, the faces above him were clear. There was Novee's round face, a small, professionally-serious line

between his eyes that cleared away when Sheffield said, "Hello, Novee."

	The other man was Cimon, jaws set and angry, yet with a look of something like satisfaction in his eyes.

	Sheffield said, "Where are we?"

	Cimon said, coldly, "In space, Dr. Sheffield. Two days out in space."

	"Two days, out-" Sheffield's eyes widened and he tried to rise.

	Novee interposed. "You've had a bad concussion, nearly a fracture, Sheffield. Take it easy."

	"Well, what hap-Where's Mark? Where's Mark ?"

	"Easy. Easy now." Novee put a hand on each of Sheffield's shoulders and pressed him down.

	Cimon said, "Your boy is in the brig. In case you want to know why, he deliberately caused mutiny on board ship, thus endangering the safety of five men. We were almost marooned at our temporary camp, because the crew wanted to leave immediately. He persuaded them, the captain did, to pick us up.',

	Sheffield remembered now, very vaguely. There was just that fuzzy memory of Mark and a man with a bat. Mark saying "...A thousand people all dead-"

	The psychologist hitched himself up on one elbow with a tremendous effort. "Listen, Cimon, I don't know why Mark did it, but let me talk to him. I'll find out."

	Cimon said, "No need of that. It will all come out at the trial."

	Sheffield tried to brush Novee's restraining arm to one side. "But why make it formal? Why involve the Bureau? We can settle this among ourselves."

	"That's exactly what we intend to do. The captain is empowered by the laws of space to preside over trials involving crimes and misdemeanors in deep space."

	"The captain. A trial here? On board ship? Cimon, don't let him do it. It will be murder."

	"Not at all. It will be a fair and proper trial. I'm in full agreement with the captain. Discipline demands a trial."

	Novee said, uneasily, "Look, Cimon, I wish you wouldn't. He's in no shape to take this."

	"Too bad," said Cimon.

	Sheffield said, "But you don't understand. I'm responsible for the boy."

	"On the contrary, I do understand," said Cimon. "It's why we've been waiting for you to regain consciousness. You're standing trial with him."

	"What!"

	"You are generally responsible for his actions. Specifically, you were with him when he stole the air-coaster. The crew saw you at the coaster's cabin door while Mark was inciting mutiny."

	"But he cracked my skull in order to take the coaster. Can't you see that's the act of a seriously disturbed mind? He can't be held responsible."

	"We'll let the captain decide, Sheffield. You stay with him, Novee." He turned to go.

	Sheffield called on what strength he could muster. "Cimon," he shouted, "you're doing this to get back at me for the lesson in psychology I taught you. You're a narrow . . . petty-"

	He fell back on his pillow, breathless.

	Cimon, from the door, said, "And by the way, Sheffield, the penalty for inciting mutiny on board ship is death!"



WELL, it was a kind of trial, Sheffield thought grimly. Nobody was following accurate legal procedure, but then, the psychologist felt certain, no one knew the accurate legal procedure, least of all the captain.

	They were using the large assembly room where, on ordinary cruises, the crew got together to watch subetheric broadcasts. At this time, the crew was rigidly excluded, though all the scientific personnel were present.

	Captain Follenbee sat behind a desk just underneath the subetheric reception cube. Sheffield and Mark Annuncio sat by themselves at his left, faces toward him.

	The captain was not at ease. He alternated between informal exchanges with the various "witnesses" and sudden super-judicial blasts against whispering among the spectators.

	Sheffield and Mark, having met one another in the "courtroom" for the first time since the flight of the air-coaster, shook hands solemnly on the former's initiative. Mark had hung back at first, looking up briefly at the crisscross of tape still present on the shaven patch oh Sheffield's skull.

	"I'm sorry, Dr. Sheffield. I'm very sorry."

	"It's all right, Mark. How have they been treating you?"

	"All right, I guess."

	The captain's voice boomed out, "No talking among the accused."

	Sheffield retorted in a conversational tone, "Listen, captain, we haven't had lawyers. We haven't had time to prepare a case."

	"No lawyers necessary," said the captain. "This isn't a court trial on Earth. Captain's investigation. Different thing. Just interested in facts, not legal fireworks. Proceedings can be reviewed back on Earth."

	"And we can be dead by then," said Sheffield, hotly.

	"Let's get on with it," said the captain, banging his desk with an aluminum T-wedge.

	Cimon sat in the front row of the audience, smiling thinly. It was he that Sheffield watched most uneasily.

	The smile never varied as witnesses were called upon to state that they had been informed that the crew was on no account to be told of the true nature of the trip; that Sheffield and Mark had been present when told. A mycologist testified to a conversation he had had with Sheffield which indicated the latter to be well aware of the prohibition.

	It was brought out that Mark had been sick for most of the trip out to Junior, that he had behaved erratically after they had landed on Junior.

	"How do you explain all that?" asked the captain.

	From the audience, Cimon's calm voice suddenly sounded. "He was frightened. He was willing to do anything that would get him off the planet."

	Sheffield sprang to his feet. "His remarks are out of order. He's not a witness."

	The captain banged his T-wedge and said, "Sit down!"

	The trial went on. A crew member was called in to testify that Mark had informed him of the first expedition and that Sheffield had stood by while that was done.

	Sheffield cried, "I want to cross-examine!"

The captain said, "You'll get your chance later." The crewman was shooed out.



SHEFFIELD studied the audience. It seemed obvious that their sympathy was not entirely with the captain. He was psychologist enough to be able to wonder, even at this point, how many of them were secretly relieved at having left Junior, and actually grateful to Mark for having precipitated the matter as he did. Then, too, the obvious kangaroo nature of the court didn't sit well with them. Vernadsky was frowning darkly, while Novee stared at Cimon with obvious distaste.

	It was Cimon who worried Sheffield. He, the psychologist felt, must have argued the captain into this and it was he who might insist on the extreme penalty. Sheffield was bitterly regretful of having punctured the man's pathological vanity.

	But what really puzzled Sheffield above all was Mark's attitude. He was showing no signs of spacesickness or of unease of any kind. He listened to everything closely but seemed moved by nothing. He acted as though nothing mundane concerned him at the moment; as though certain information he himself held made everything else of no account.

	The captain banged his T-wedge and said, "I guess we have it all. Facts all clear. No argument. We can finish this."

	Sheffield jumped up again. "Hold on. Aren't we getting our turn?"

	"Quiet," ordered the captain.

	"You keep quiet." Sheffield turned to the audience. "Listen, we haven't had a chance to defend ourselves. We haven't even had the right to cross-examine. Is that just?"

	There was a murmur that buzzed up above the sound of the T-wedge.

	Cimon said, coldly, "What's there to defend?"

	"Maybe nothing," shouted back Sheffield, "in which case what have you to lose by hearing us? Or are you afraid we have considerable to defend?"

	Individual calls from the audience were sounding now. "Let him talk!"

	Cimon shrugged. "Go ahead."

	The captain said, sullenly, "What do you want to do?"

	Sheffield said, "Act as my own lawyer and call Mark Annuncio as my principal witness."

	Mark stood up, calmly enough. Sheffield turned his chair to face the audience and motioned him down again.

	Sheffield decided there was no use in trying to imitate the courtroom dramas he had watched on the subether. Pompous questions on name and condition of past life would get nowhere. Better to be direct.

	So he said, "Mark, did you know what would happen when you told the crew about the first expedition?"

	"Yes, Dr. Sheffield."

	"Why did you do it then?"

	"Because it was important that we all get away from Junior without losing a minute. Telling the crew the truth was the fastest way of getting us off the planet."

	Sheffield could feel the bad impression that answer made on the audience, but he could only follow his instinct. That, and his psychologist's decision that only special knowledge could make Mark or any Mnemonic so calm in the face of adversity. After all, special knowledge was their business.

	He said, "Why was it important to leave Junior, Mark?"

	Mark didn't flinch. He looked straight at the watching scientists. "Because I know what killed the first expedition, and it was only a question of time before it killed us. In fact, it maybe too late already. We may be dying now. We may, every one of us, be dead men."

	Sheffield let the murmur from the audience well up and subside. Even the captain seemed shocked into T-wedge immobility while Cimon's smile grew quite faint.

	For the moment, Sheffield was less concerned with Mark's "knowledge," whatever it was, than that he had acted independently on the basis of it. It had happened before. Mark had searched the ship's log on the basis of a theory of his own. Sheffield felt pure chagrin at not having probed that tendency to the uttermost then and there.

	So his next question, asked in a grim enough voice, was, "Why didn't you consult me about this, Mark?"

	Mark faltered a trifle. "You wouldn't have believed me. It's why I had to hit you to keep you from stopping me. None of them would have believed me. They all hated me."

	"What makes you think they hated you?"

	"Well, you remember about Dr. Rodriguez."

	"That was quite a while ago. The others had no arguments with you."

	"I could tell the way Dr. Cimon looked at me. And Dr. Fawkes wanted to shoot me with a blaster."

	"What?" Sheffield whirled, forgetting in his own turn any formality due the trial. "Say, Fawkes, did you try to shoot him?"

	Fawkes stood up, face crimson, as all turned to look at him. He said, "I was out in the woods and he came sneaking up on me. I thought it was an animal and took precautions. When I saw it was he, I put the blaster away."

	Sheffield turned back to Mark. "Is that right?"

	Mark turned sullen again. "Well-I asked Dr. Vernadsky to see some data he had collected and he told me not to publish it before he did. He tried to make out that I was dishonest."

	"For the love of Earth, I was only joking," came a yell from the audience.

	Sheffield said, hurriedly, "Very well, Mark, you didn't trust us and you felt you had to take action on your own. Now, Mark, let's get to the point. What did you think killed the first settlers?"

	Mark said, "It might have killed the explorer Makoyama, too, for all I know except that he died in a crash two months and three days after reporting on Junior, so we'll never know."

	"All right, but what is it you're talking about?"

	A hush fell over everyone.

	Mark looked about and said, "The dust."

	Sheffield said, "What do you mean?"

	"The dust! The dust in the air. It has beryllium in it. Ask Dr. Vernadsky."

	Vernadsky stood up and pushed his way forward. "What's this?"

	"Sure," said Mark. "It was in the data you showed me. Beryllium was very high in the crust, so it must be in the dust in the air as well."

	Sheffield said, "What if beryllium is there? Let me ask the questions, Vernadsky. Please."

	"Beryllium poisoning, that's what. If you breathe beryllium

dust, non-healing granulomata, whatever they are, form in the lungs. Anyway, it gets hard to breathe and then you die."



A new voice, quite agitated, joined the melee. "What are you talking about? You're no physician."

	"I know that," said Mark, earnestly, "but I once read a very old book about poisons. It was so old, it was printed on actual sheets of paper. The library had some and I went through them, because it was such a novelty, you know."

	"All right," said Novee, "what did you read? Can you tell me?"

	Mark's chin lifted, "I can quote it. Word for word. 'A surprising variety of enzymatic reactions in the body are activated by any of a number of divalent metallic ions of similar ionic radius. Among these activators are magnesium, manganous zinc, ferrous, cobaltous, and nickelous ions, as well as others. Against all of these, the beryllium ion, which has a similar charge and size, acts as an inhibitor. Beryllium, therefore, serves to derange a number of enzyme-catalyzed reactions. Since the lungs have, apparently, no way of excreting beryllium, diverse metabolic derangements causing serious illness and death can result from inhaling dust containing certain beryllium salts. Cases exist in which one known exposure has resulted in death. The onset of symptoms is insidious, being delayed sometimes for as long as three years after exposure. Prognosis is not good.'"

	The captain leaned forward in agitation. "Novee, is he making sense?"

	Novee said, "I don't know if he's right or not, but there's nothing absurd in what he's saying."

	Sheffield said sharply, "You mean you don't know if beryllium is poisonous or not."

	"No, I don't," said Novee.

	"Isn't beryllium used for anything?" Sheffield turned to Vernadsky. "Is it?"

	Vernadsky said in vast surprise, "No, it isn't. Damn it, I can't think of a single use. I tell you what, though. In the early days of atomic power, it was used in the primitive uranium piles as a neutron decelerator, along with other things like paraffin and graphite. I'm almost sure of that."

	"It isn't used now, though?" asked Sheffield.

	An electronics man said, quite suddenly, "I think beryllium-zinc coatings were used in the first fluorescent lights."

	"No more, though?" asked Sheffield.

	"No."

	Sheffield said, "Well, then, listen, all of you. In the first place, anything Mark quotes is accurate. That's what the book said, if he says so. It's my opinion that beryllium is poisonous. In ordinary life it doesn't matter because the beryllium content of the soil is so low. When man concentrates beryllium to use in nuclear piles or in fluorescent lights or even in alloys, he comes across the toxicity and looks for substitutes.

	"He finds substitutes, forgets about beryllium, and eventually forgets about its toxicity. And then we come across an unusual beryllium-rich planet like Junior and we can't figure out what hits us. It takes a Mnemonic to remember the old, forgotten data."

	Cimon didn't seem to be listening. He said, in a low voice, "What does that mean, 'prognosis is not good'?"

	Novee said, abstractedly, "It means that if you've got beryllium poisoning, you won't recover."

	Cimon fell back in his chair, chewing his lip.

	Novee said to Mark, "I suppose the symptoms of beryllium poisoning-"

	Mark said at once, "I can give you the full list. I don't understand the words but-"

	"Was one of them 'dyspnea'?"

	"Yes."

	Novee sighed and said, "I say that we get back to Earth as quickly as possible and get under medical investigation."

	Cimon said, weakly, "But if we won't recover, what use is it?"

	Novee said, "Medical science has advanced since the days of books printed on paper. Besides, we may not have received the toxic dose. The first settlers survived for over a year of continuous exposure. We've had only a month, thanks to Mark Annuncio's quick and drastic action."

	Fawkes, miserably unhappy, yelled, "Captain, get us back to Earth."

	It amounted to the end of the trial. Sheffield and Mark walked out among the first.

	Cimon was the last, with thegait of a man already dead in all but fact.



THE Lagrange system was only a star lost in the receding cluster. Sheffield looked at that large patch of light and said, "So beautiful a planet." He sighed. "Well, let's hope we live. In any case, the government will watch out for berylliumhigh planets in the future. There'll be no catching mankind with that particular variety of sucker bait any more."

	Mark did not respond to that idealism. The trial was over; the excitement was gone. There were tears in his eyes. He could only think that he might die; and that if he did, there were so many things, so many, many things in the universe that he would never learn.








Sucker Bait



By Isaac Asimov









THE ship Triple G flashed silently out of the nothingness of hyperspace and into the all-ness of space-time. It emerged into the glitter of the great star-cluster of Hercules.

	It poised gingerly in space, surrounded by suns and suns and suns, each centering a gravitational field that wrenched at the little bubble of metal. But the ship's computers had done well and it had pin-pricked squarely into position. It was within a day's journey-ordinary spacedrive journey-of the Lagrange System.

	This fact had varying significance to the different men aboard ship. To the crew it was another day's work and another day's flight pay and then shore rest. The planet for which they were aiming was uninhabited but shore rest could be a pleasant interlude even on an asteroid. They did not trouble themselves concerning a possible difference of opinion among the passengers.

	The crew, in fact, were rather contemptuous of the passengers, and avoided them.

	Eggheads!

	And so they were, every one of them but one. Scientists, in

pouter terms-and a heterogeneous lot. Their nearest approach to a common emotion at that moment was a final anxiety for their instruments, a vague desire for a last check.

	And perhaps just a small increase of tension and anxiety. It was an uninhabited planet. Each had expressed himself as firmly of that belief a number of times. Still, each man's thoughts are his own.

	As for the one unusual man on board ship-not a crewman and not really a scientist-his strongest feeling was one of bone-weariness. He stirred to his feet weakly and fought off the last dregs of spacesickness. He was Mark Annuncio, and he had been in bed now for four days, feeding on almost nothing, while the ship wove in and out of the Universe, jumping its light-years of space.

	But now he felt less certain of imminent death and he had to answer the summons of the captain. In his inarticulate way, Mark resented that summons. He was used to having his own way, seeing what he felt like seeing. Who was the captain to- The impulse kept returning to tell Dr. Sheffield about this and let it rest there.

	But Mark was curious, so he knew he would have to go.

	It was his one great vice. Curiosity!

	It also happened to be his profession, and his mission in life.



CAPTAIN Follenbee of the Triple G was a hard-headed man. It was how he habitually thought of himself. He had made government-sponsored runs before. For one thing, they were profitable. The Confederacy didn't haggle. It meant a complete overhaul of his ship each time, replacement of defective parts, liberal terms for the crew. It was good business. Damned good business.

	This run, of course, was a little different.

	It wasn't so much the particular gang of passengers he had taken aboard. (He had expected temperament, tantrums and unbearable foolishness but it turned out that eggheads were much like normal people.) It wasn't that half his ship had been torn down and rebuilt into what the contract called a "universal central-access laboratory."

	Actually, and he hated the thought, it was "Junior"-the planet that lay ahead of them.

	The crew didn't know, of course, but he, himself, hard-head and all, was beginning to find the matter unpleasant.

But only beginning- At the moment, he told himself, it was this Mark Annuncio,

if that was the name, who was annoying him. He slapped the back of one hand against the palm of the other and thought angrily about it. His large, round face was ruddy with annoyance.

Insolence!

	A boy of not more than twenty, with no position that he knew of among the passengers, to make a request like that.

	What was behind it? That at least ought to be straightened out.

	In his present mood, he would like to straighten it out by means of a jacket collar twisted in a fist and a rattle of teeth, but better not- After all, this was a curious kind of flight for the Confederacy of Worlds to sponsor, and a twenty-year-old, over-curious rubberneck might be an integral part of the strangeness. What was he on board for? There was this Dr. Sheffield, for instance, who seemed to have no job but to play nursemaid for the boy. Now why was that? Who was this Annuncio?

	He had been spacesick for the entire trick, or was that just a device to keep to his cabin- There was a light burning as the door-signal sounded.

	It would be the boy.

	Easy now, thought the captain. Easy now.



MARK Annuncio entered the captain's cabin and licked his lips in a futile attempt to get rid of the bitter taste in his mouth. He felt lightheaded and heavyhearted.

	At the moment he would have given up his Service status to be back on Earth.

	He thought wishfully of his own familiar quarters; small but private; alone with his own kind. It was just a bed, desk, chair, and closet, but he had all of Central Library on free call. Here there was nothing. He had thought there would be a lot to learn on board ship. He had never been on board ship before. But he hadn't expected days and days of spacesickness.

	He was so homesick he could cry, and he hated himself because he knew that his eyes were red and moist and that the captain would see it. He hated himself because he wasn't large and wide; because he looked like a mouse.

	In a word, that was it. He had mouse-brown hair with nothing but silken straightness to it; a narrow, receding chin, a small mouth and a pointed nose. All he needed were five or six delicate vibrissae on each side of the nose to make the illusion complete. And he was below average in height.

	And then he saw the star-field in the captain's observation port and the breath went out of him.

	Stars!

	Stars as he had never seen them.

	Mark had never left the planet Earth before. (Dr. Sheffield told him that was why he was spacesick. Mark didn't believe him. He had read in fifty different books that spacesickness was psychogenic. Even Dr. Sheffield tried to fool him sometimes.)

	He had never left Earth before, and he was used to Earth's sky. He was accustomed to viewing two thousand stars spread over half a celestial sphere with only ten of the first magnitude.

	But here they crowded madly. There were ten times the number in Earth's sky in that small square alone. And bright!

	He fixed the star-pattern greedily in his mind. It overwhelmed him. He knew the figures on the Hercules cluster, of course. It contained between one million and ten million stars

-no exact census had been taken as yet-but figures are one thing and stars are another.

	He wanted to count them. It was a sudden overwhelming desire. He was curious about the number. He wondered if they all had names; if there were astronomic data on all of them. Let's see- He counted them in groups of hundreds. Two-three-He might have used the mental pattern alone, but he liked to watch the actual physical objects when they were so startlingly beautiful. Six-seven- The captain's hearty voice splattered over him and brought him back to ship's interior.

	"Mr. Annuncio. Glad to meet you."

	Mark looked up, startled, resentful. Why was his count being interrupted?

	He said, irritably, "The stars!" and pointed.

	The captain turned to stare. "What about them? What's wrong?"

	Mark looked at the captain's wide back and his overdeveloped posterior. He looked at the gray stubble that covered the captain's head, at the two large hands with thick fingers that clasped one another in the small of the captain's back and flapped rhythmically against the shiny plastex of his jacket.

	Mark thought: What does he care about the stars? Does he care about their size and brightness and spectral classes?

	His lower lip trembled. The captain was just one of the noncompos. Everyone on ship was a noncompos. That's what they called them back in the Service. Noncompos. All of them. Couldn't cube fifteen without a computer.

	Mark felt very lonely.

	He let it go-no use trying to explain-and said, "The stars get so thick here. Like pea soup."

	"All appearance, Mr. Annuncio." (The captain pronounced the "c" in Mark's name like an "s" rather than a "ts" and the sound grated on Mark's ear.) "Average distance between stars in the thickest cluster is over a light-year. Plenty of room, eh? Looks thick, though. Grant you that. If the lights were out, they'd shine like a trillion Chisholm points in an oscillating force-field."

	But he didn't offer to put the lights out and Mark wasn't going to ask him to.



THE captain said, "Sit down, Mr. Annuncio. No use standing, eh? You smoke? Mind if I do? Sorry you couldn't be here this morning. Had an excellent view of Lagrange I and II at six space-hours. Red and green. Like traffic lights, eh? Missed you all trip. Space-legs need strengthening, eh?"

	He barked out his "eh's" in a high-pitched voice that Mark found devilishly irritating.

	Mark said in a low voice, "I'm all right now."

	The captain seemed to find that unsatisfactory. He puffed at his cigar and stared down at Mark with eyebrows hunched down over his eyes. He said, slowly, "Glad to see you now,

anyway. Get acquainted a little. Shake hands. The Triple G's been on a good many government-chartered cruises. No trouble. Never had trouble. Wouldn't want trouble. You understand."

	Mark didn't. He was tired of trying to. His eyes drifted back hungrily to the stars. The pattern had changed a little.

	The captain caught his eyes for a moment. He was frowning and his shoulders seemed to tremble at the edge of a shrug. He walked to the control panel, and like a gigantic eyelid, metal slithered across the studded observation port.

	Mark jumped up in a fury, shrieking, "What's the idea? I'm counting them, you fool."

	"Counting-" The captain flushed, but maintained a quality of politeness in his voice. He said, "Sorry! Little matter of business we must discuss."

	He stressed the word "business" lightly.

	Mark knew what he meant. "There's nothing to discuss. I want to see the ship's log. I called you hours ago to tell you that. You're delaying me."

	The captain said, "Suppose you tell me why you want to see it, eh? Never been asked before. Where's your authority?"

	Mark felt astonished. "I can look at anything I want to. I'm in Mnemonic Service."

	The captain puffed strongly at his cigar. (It was a special grade manufactured for use in space and on enclosed spaceobjects. It had an oxidant included so that atmospheric oxygen was not consumed.)

	He said, cautiously, "That so? Never heard of it. What is it?" Mark said indignantly, "It's the Mnemonic Service, that's all. It's my job to look at anything I want to and to ask anything I want to. And I've got the right to do it."

	"Can't look at the log if I don't want you to."

	"You've got no say in it, you . . . you noncompos."

	The captain's coolness evaporated. He threw his cigar down violently and stamped at it, then picked it up and poked it carefully into the ash vent.

	"What the Galactic Drift is this?" he demanded. "Who are you, anyway? Security agent? What's up? Let's have it straight. Right now."

	"I've told you all I have to."

	"Nothing to hide," said the captain, "but I've got rights."

	"Nothing to hide?" squeaked Mark. "TherL why is this ship called the Triple G?"

	"That's its name."

	"Go on. No such ship with an Earth registry. I knew that before I got on. I've been waiting to ask you."

	The captain blinked. He said, "Official name is George G. Grundy. Triple G is what everyone calls it."

	Mark laughed. "All right, then. And after I see the log book, I want to talk to the crew. I have the right. You ask Dr. Sheffield."

	"The crew too, eh?" the captain seethed. "Let's talk to Dr. Sheffield, and then let's keep you in quarters till we land. Sprout!"

	He snatched at the intercom box.



THE scientific complement of the Triple G were few in number for the job they had to do, and, as individuals, young. Not as young as Mark Annuncio, perhaps, who was in a class by himself, but even the oldest of them, Emmanuel George Cimon-astrophysicist-was not quite thirty-nine. And with his dark, unthinned hair and large, brilliant eyes, he looked still younger. To be sure, the optic brilliance was partly due to the wearing of contact lenses.

	Cimon, who was perhaps overconscious of his relative age, and of the fact that he was the titular head of the expedition- a fact most of the others were inclined to ignore-usually affected an undramatic view of the mission. He ran the dotted tape through his fingers, then let it snake silently back into its spool.

	"Run of the mill," he sighed, seating himself in the softest chair in the small passenger's lounge. "Nothing."

	He looked at the latest color photographs of the Lagrange binary and was impervious to their beauty. Lagrange I, smaller and hotter than Earth's own sun, was a brilliant green-blue, with a pearly green-yellow corona surrounding it like the gold setting of an emerald. It appeared to be the size of a lentil or of a ball bearing out of a Lenser-ratchet. A short distance away-as distances go on a photograph-was Lagrange II. It appeared twice the size of Lagrange I, due to its

position in space. (Actually, it was only four-fifths the diameter of Lagrange I, half its volume and two-thirds its mass.) Its orange-red, toward which the film was less sensitive, comparatively, than was the human retina, seemed dimmer than ever against the glory of its sister sun.

	Surrounding both, undrowned by the near-by suns, as the result of the differentially-polarized lens specifically used for the purpose, was the unbelievable brilliance of the Hercules cluster. It was diamond dust, scattered thickly, yellow, white, blue, and red.

	"Nothing," said Cimon.

	"Looks good to me," said the other man in the lounge. He was Groot Knoevenaagle-physician-short, plump, and known to man by no name other than Novee.

	He went on to ask, "Where's Junior?" then bent over Cimon's shoulder, peering out of slightly myopic eyes.

	Cimon looked up and shuddered, "It's name is not Junior. You can't see the planet, Troas, if that's what you mean, in this wilderness of stars. This picture is Scientific Earthman material. It isn't particularly useful."

	"Oh, Space and back!" Novee was disappointed.

	"What difference is it to you, anyway?" demanded Cimon. "Suppose I said one of those dots was Troas-any one of them. You wouldn't know the difference and what good would it do you?"

	"Now wait, Cimon. Don't be so superior. It's legitimate sentiment. We'll be living on Junior for a while. For all we know, we'll be dying on it."

	"There's no audience, Novee, no orchestra, no mikes, no trumpets, so why be dramatic. We won't be dying on it. If we do, it'll be our own fault, and probably as a result of overeating." He said it with the peculiar emphasis men of small appetite use when speaking to men of hearty appetite, as though a poor digestion was something that came only of rigid virtue and superior intellect.

	"A thousand people did die," said Novee, softly.

	"Sure. About a billion men a day die all over the galaxy."

	"Not this way."

	"Not what way?"

	With an effort, Novee kept to his usual drawl. "No discussions except at official meetings. That was the decision."

	"I'll have nothing to discuss," said Cimon, gloomily. "They're just two ordinary stars. Damned if I know why I volunteered. I suppose it was just the chance of seeing an abnormally large Trojan system from close up. It was the thought of looking at a habitable planet with a double sun. I don't know why I should have thought there'd be anything amazing about it."

	"Because you thought of a thousand dead men and women," said Novee, then went on hastily. "Listen, tell me something, will you? What's a Trojan planet, anyway?"

	The physician bore the other's look of contempt for a moment, then said, "All right. All right. So I don't know. You don't know everything either. What do you know about ultrasonic incisions?"

	Cimon said, "Nothing, and I think that's fine. It's my opinion that information outside a professional man's specialty is useless and a waste of psycho-potential. Sheffield's point of view leaves me cold."

	"I still want to know. That is, if you can explain it."

	"I can explain it. As a matter of fact, it was mentioned in the original briefing, if you were listening. Most multiple stars, and that means one third of all stars, have planets of a sort. The trouble is that the planets are never habitable. If they're far enough away from the center of gravity of the stellar system to have a fairly circular orbit, they're cold enough to have helium oceans. If they're close enough to get heat, their orbit is so erratic that at least once in each revolution, they get close enough to one or another of the stars to melt iron.

	"Here in the Lagrange System, however, we have an unusual case. The two stars, Lagrange I and Lagrange II, and the planet, Troas-along with its satellite, Ilium-are at the corners of an imaginary equilateral triangle. Got that? Such an arrangement happens to be a stable one, and for the sake of anything you like, don't ask me to tell you why. Just take it as my professional opinion."

	Novee muttered under his breath, "I wouldn't dream of doubting it."

	Cimon looked displeased and continued, "The system revolves as a unit. Troas is always a hundred million miles from

each sun, and the suns are always a hundred million miles from one another."

	Novee rubbed his ear and looked dissatisfied. "I know all that. I was listening at the briefing. But why is it a Trojan planet? Why Trojan?"

	Cimon's thin lips compressed for a moment as though holding back a nasty word by force. He said, "We have an arrangement like that in the Solar System. The sun, Jupiter and a group of small asteroids form a stable equilateral triangle. It so happens that the asteroids had been given such names as Hector, Achilles, Ajax and other heroes of the Trojan war, hence-or do I have to finish?"

	"Is that all?" said Novee.

	"Yes. Are you through bothering me?"

	"Oh, boil your head."



NOVEE rose to leave the indignant astrophysicist but the door slid open a moment before his hand touched the activator and Boris Vernadsky-geochemist; dark eyebrows, wide mouth, broad face and with an inveterate tendency to polka-dot shirts and magnetic clip-ons in red plastic-stepped in.

	He was oblivious to Novee's flushed face and Cimon's frozen expression of distaste.

	He said, lightly, "Fellow scientists, if you listen very carefully you will probably hear an explosion to beat the Milky Way from up yonder in captain's quarters."

	"What happened?" asked Novee.

	"The captain got hold of Annuncio, Sheffield's little pet wizard, and Sheffield went charging up-deck, bleeding heavily at each eyeball."

	Cimon, having listened so far, turned away, snorting.

	Novee said, "Sheffield! The man can't get angry. I've never even heard him raise his voice."

	"He did this time. When he found out the kid had left his cabin without telling him and that the captain was bullyragging him-Wow! Did you know he was up and about, Novee?"

	"No, but I'm not surprised. Spacesickness is one of those things. When you have it, you think you're dying. In fact, you can hardly wait. Then, in two minutes it's gone and you feel all right. Weak, but all right. I told Mark this morning we'd be landing next day and I suppose it pulled him through. The thought of a planetary surface in clear prospect does wonders for spacesickness. We are landing soon, aren't we, Cimon?"

	The astrophysicist made a peculiar sound that could have been interpreted as a grunt of assent. At least, Novee so interpreted it.

	"Anyway," said Novee, "what happened?"

	Vernadsky said, "Well, Sheffield's been bunking with me since the kid twirled on his toes and went over backward with spacesickness and he's sitting there at the desk with his charts and his Fist computer chug-chugging away, when the roomphone signals and it's the captain. Well, it turns out he's got the boy with him and he wants to know what the blanketyblank and assorted dot-and-dash the government means by planting a spy on him. So Sheffield yells back at him that he'll stab him with a Collamore macro-leveling-tube if he's been fooling with the kid and off he goes leaving the phone activated and the captain frothing."

	"You're making this up," said Novee. "Sheffield wouldn't say anything like that."

	"Words to that effect."

	Novee turned to Cimon. "You're heading our group. Why don't you do something about this?"

	Cimon snarled, "In cases like this, I'm heading the group. My responsibilities always come on suddenly. Let them fight it out. Sheffield talks an excellent fight and the captain never takes his hands out of the small of his back. Vernadsky's jitterbugging description doesn't mean there'll be physical violence."

	"All right, but there's no point in having feuds of any kind in an expedition like ours."

	"You mean our mission!" Vernadsky raised both hands in mock-awe and rolled his eyes upward. "How I dread the time when we must find ourselves among the rags and bones of the first expedition."

	And as though the picture brought to mind by that was not one that bore levity well after all, there was suddenly nothing to say. Even the back of Cimon's head which was all that showed over the back of the easy-chair seemed a bit the stiffer for the thought.



0SWALD Mayer Sheffield-psychologist, thin as a string and as tall as a good length of it, and with a voice that could be used either for singing an operatic selection with surprising virtuosity or for making a point of argument softly but with stinging accuracy-did not show the anger one would have expected from Vernadsky's account.

	He was even smiling when he entered the captain's cabin.

	The captain broke out mauvely, as soon as he entered. "Look here, Sheffield-"

	"One minute, Captain Follenbee," said Sheffield. "How are you, Mark?"

	Mark's eyes fell and his words were muffled. "All right, Dr. Sheffield."

	"I wasn't aware you'd gotten out of bed."

	There wasn't the shade of reproach in his voice, but Mark grew apologetic. "I was feeling better, Dr. Sheffield, and I feel bad about not working. I haven't done anything in all the time I've been on the ship. So I put in a call to the captain to ask to see the log book and he had me come up here."

	"All right. I'm sure he won't mind if you go back to your room now."

	"Oh, won't I?" began the captain.

	Sheffield's mild eyes rose to meet the captain. "I'm responsible for him, sir."

	And somehow the captain could think of nothing further to say.

	Mark turned obediently and Sheffield watched him leave and waited till the door was well-closed behind him.

	Then he turned again to the captain. "What's the bloody idea, captain?"

	The captain's knees bent a little, then straightened and bent again with a sort of threatening rhythm. The invisible slap of his hands, clasped behind his back, could be heard distinctly. "That's my question. I'm captain here, Sheffield."

	"I know that."

	"Know what it means, eh? This ship, in Space, is a legally recognized planet. I'm absolute ruler. In Space, what I say

goes. Central Committee of the Confederacy can't say otherwise. I've got to maintain discipline and no~spy-"

	"All right, and now let me teliyou something, captain. You're charted by the Bureau of Outer Provinces to carry a government-sponsored research expedition to the Lagrange System, to maintain it there as long as research necessity requires and the safety of the crew and vessel permits, and then to bring us home. You've signed that contract and you've assumed certain obligations, captain or not. For instance, you can't tamper with our instruments and destroy their research usefulness."

	"Who in Space is doing that?" The captain's voice was a blast of indignation.

	Sheffield replied calmly, "You are. Hands off Mark Annuncio, captain. Just as you've got to keep your hands off Cimon's monochrome and Vailleux's microptics, you've got to keep your hands off my Annuncio. And that means each one of your ten four-striped fingers. Got it?"

	The captain's uniformed chest expanded. "I take no order on board my own ship. Your language is a breach of discipline, Mister Sheffield. Any more like that and it's cabin arrest-you and your Annuncio. Don't like it, then speak to Board of Review back on Earth. Till then, it's tongue behind teeth."

	"Look, captain, let me explain something. Mark is in the Mnemonic Service-"

	"Sure, he said so. Nummonic Service. Nummonic Service. It's plain secret police as far as I'm concerned. Well, not on board my ship, eh?"

	"Mnemonic Service," said Sheffield, patiently. "Emm-enneee-emm-oh-enn-eye-see Service. You don't pronounce the first emm. It's from a Greek word meaning memory."

	The captain's eyes narrowed. "He remembers things?"

	"Correct, captain. Look, in a way this is my fault. I should have briefed you on this. I would have, too, if the boy hadn't gotten so sick right after the take-off. It drove most other matters out of my mind. Besides, it didn't occur to me that he might be interested in the workings of the ship itself. Space knows why not. He should be interested in everything."

	"He should, eh?" The captain looked at the timepiece on the wall. "Brief me now, eh? But no fancy words. Not many of any other kind, either. Time limited."

	"It won't take long, I assure you. Now you're a space-going man, captain. How many inhabited worlds would you say there were in the Confederation?"

	"Eighty thousand," said the captain, promptly.

	"Eighty-three thousand two hundred," said Sheffield. "What do you suppose it takes to run a political organization that size?"

	Again the captain did not hesitate. "Computers," he said.

	"All right. There's Earth, where half the population works for the government and does nothing but compute and there are computing subcenters on every other world. And even so data gets lost. Every world knows something no other world knows-almost every man. Look at our little group. Vernadsky doesn't know any biology and I don't know enough chemistry to stay alive. There's not one of us can pilot the simplest spacecruiser, except for Fawkes. So we work together, each one supplying the knowledge the others lack.

	"Only there's a catch. Not one of us knows exactly which of our own data is meaningful to the other under a given set of circumstances. We can't sit and spout everything we know. So we guess, and sometimes we don't guess right. Two facts, A and B, can go together beautifully sometimes. So Person A, who knows Fact A, says to Person B, who knows Fact B, 'Why didn't you tell me this ten years ago?' and Person B answers, 'I didn't think it was important,' or 'I thought everyone knew that.'"

	The captain said, "That's what computers are for."

	Sheffield said, "Computers are limited, captain. They have to be asked questions. What's more the questions have to be the kind that can be put into a limited number of symbols. What's more computers are very literal minded. They answer exactly what you ask and not what you have in mind. Sometimes it never occurs to anyone to ask just the right question or feed the computer just the right symbols, and when that happens the computer doesn't volunteer information.

	"What we need . . . what all mankind needs . . . is a computer that is nonmechanical; a computer with imagination. There's one like that, captain." The psychologist tapped his temple. "In everyone, captain."

	"Maybe," grunted the captain, "but I'll stick to the usual, eh? Kind you punch a button."

	"Are you sure? Machines don't have hunches. Did you ever have a hunch?"

	"Is this on the point?" The captain looked at the timepiece again.

	Sheffield said, "Somewhere inside the human brain is a record of every datum that has impinged upon it. Very little of it is consciously remembered, but all of it is there, and a small association can bring an individual datum back without a person's knowing where it comes from. So you get a 'hunch' or a 'feeling.' Some people are better at it than others. And some can be trained. Some are almost perfect, like Mark Annuncio and a hundred like him. Some day, I hope, there'll be a billion like him, and we'll really have a Mnemonic Service.

	"All their lives," Sheffield went on, "they do nothing but read, look, and listen. And train to do that better and more efficiently. It doesn't matter what data they collect. It doesn't have to have obvious sense or obvious significance. It doesn't matter if any man in the Service wants to spend a week going over the records of the space-polo teams of the Canopus Sector for the last century. Any datum may be useful some day. That's the fundamental axiom.

	"Every once in a while, one of the Service may correlate across a gap no machine could possibly manage. The machine would fail because no one machine is likely to possess those two pieces of thoroughly unconnected information; or else, if the machine does have it, no man would be insane enough to ask the right question. One good correlation out of the Service can pay for all the money appropriated for it in ten years or more."

	The captain raised his broad hand. He looked troubled. He said, 'Wait a minute. He said no ship named Triple G was under Earth registry. You mean he knows all registered ships by heart?"

	"Probably," said Sheffield. "He may have read through the Merchantship Register. If he did, he knows all the names, tonnages, years of construction, ports of call, numbers of crew and anything else the Register would contain."

	"And he was counting stars."

	"Why not? It's a datum."

	"I'm damned."

	"Perhaps, captain. But the point is that a man like Mark is different from other men. He's got a queer, distorted upbringing and a queer, distorted view on life. This is the first time he's been away from Service grounds, since he entered them at the age of five. He's easily upset-and he can be ruined. That mustn't happen, and I'm in charge to see it doesn't. He's my instrument; a more valuable instrument than everything else on this entire ship baled into a neat little ball of plutonium wire. There are only a hundred like him in all the Milky Way."

	Captain Follenbee assumed an air of wounded dignity. "All right, then. Log book. Strictly confidential, eh?"

	"Strictly. He talks only to me, and I talk to no one unless a correlation has been made."

	The captain did not look as though that fell under his classification of the word, strictly, but he said, "But no crew." He paused significantly. "You know what I mean."

	Sheffield stepped to the door. "Mark knows about that. The crew won't hear about it from him, believe me."

	And as he was about to leave, the captain called out, "Sheffield!"

	"Yes?"

	"What in Space is a 'noncompos'?"

	Sheffield suppressed a smile. "Did he call you that?"

	"What is it?"

	"Just short for non compos mentis. Everyone in the Service uses it for everyone not in the Service. You're one. I'm one. It's Latin for 'not of sound mind.' And you know, captain-I think they're quite right."

	He stepped out the door quickly.



MARK Annuncio went through the ship's log in some fifteen seconds. He found it incomprehensible, but then most of the material he put into his mind was that. That was no trouble. Nor was the fact that it was dull. The disappointment was that it did not satisfy his curiosity, so he left it with a mixture of relief and displeasure.

	He had then gone into the ship's library and worked his way through three dozen books as quickly as he could work the scanner. He had spent three years of his early teens learning how to read by total gestalt and he still recalled proudly that he had set a school record at the final examinations.

	Finally, he wandered into the laboratory sections of the ship and watched a bit here and a bit there. He asked no questions and he moved on when any of the men cast more than a casual glance at him.

	He hated the insufferable way they looked at him as though he were some sort of queer animal. He hated their air of knowledge, as though there were something of value in spending an entire brain on one tiny subject and remembering only a little of that.

	Eventually, of course, he would have to ask them questions. It was his job, and even if it weren't, curiosity would drive him. He hoped, though, he could hold off till they had made planetary surface.

	He found it pleasant that they were inside a stellar system. Soon he would see a new world with new suns-two of them- and a new moon. Four objects with brand-new information in each; immense storehouses of facts to be collected lovingly and sorted out.

	It thrilled him just to think of the amorphous mountain of data waiting for him. He thought of his mind as a tremendous filing system with index, cross-index, cross-cross-index. He thought of it as stretching indefinitely in all directions. Neat. Smooth. Well oiled. Perfect precision.

	He thought of the dusty attic that the noncompos called minds and almost laughed. He could see it even talking to Dr. Sheffield, who was a nice fellow for a noncompos. He tried hard and sometimes he almost understood. The others, the men on board ship-their minds were lumberyards. Dusty lumberyards with splintery slats of wood tumbled every which way; and only whatever happened to be on top could be reached.

	The poor fools! He could be sorry for them, if they weren't so Sloppy-nasty. If only they knew what they were like. If only they realized.



WHENEVER he could, Mark haunted the observation posts and watched the new worlds come closer.

	They passed quite close to the satellite, "Ilium." (Cimon, the astrophysicist, was very meticulous about calling their planetary destination "Troas" and the satellite "Ilium," but everyone else aboard ship called them "Junior" and "Sister," respectively.) On the other side of the two suns, in the opposite Trojan position, were a group of asteroids. Cimon called them "Lagrange Epsilon" but everyone else called them "The Puppies."

	Mark thought of all this with vague simultaneity at the moment the thought "Ilium" occurred to him. He was scarcely conscious of it, and let it pass as material of no immediate interest. Still more vague, and still further below his skin of mental consciousness were the dim stirrings of five hundred such homely misnomers of astronomical dignities of nomenclature. He had read about some, picked up others on subetheric programs, heard about still others in ordinary conversation, come across a few in news reports. The material might have been told him directly, or it might have been a carelessly overheard word. Even the substitution of Triple G for George G. Grundy had its place in the shadowy file.

	Sheffield had often questioned him about what went on in his mind-very gently, very cautiously.

	"We want many more like you, Mark, for the Mnemonic Service. We need millions. Billions, eventually, if the race fills up the entire galaxy, as it will some day. But where do we get them. Relying on inborn talent won't do. We all have that more or less. It's the training that counts and unless we find out a little about what goes on, we won't know how to train."

	And urged by Sheffield, Mark had watched himself, listened to himself, turned his eyes inward and tried to become aware. He learned of the filing cases in his head. He watched them marshal past. He observed individual items pop up on call, always tremblingly ready. It was hard to explain, but he did his best.

	His own confidence grew with it. The anxieties of his childhood, those first years in Service, grew less. He stopped waking in the middle of the night, perspiration dripping, screaming with fear that he would forget. And his headaches stopped.



HE watched Ilium as it appeared in the viewport at closest approach. It was brighter than he cou~d imagine a moon to be. (Figures for albedoes of three hundred inhabited planets marched through his mind, neatly arrayed in decreasing order. It scarcely stirred the skin of his mind. He ignored them.)

	The brightness he blinked at was concentrated in the vast, irregular patches that Cimon said-he overheard him, in weary response to another's question-had once been sea bottom. A fact popped into Mark's mind. The original report of Hidosheki Makoyama had given the composition of those bright salts as 78.6% sodium chloride, 19.2% magnesium carbonate, 1.4% potassium sulf-The thought faded out. It wasn't necessary.

	Ilium had an atmosphere. A total of about 100 mm. of mercury-a little over an eighth of Earth's, ten times Mars, 0.254 that of Coralemon, 0.1376 that of Aurora. Idly he let the decimals grow to more places. It was a form of exercise, but he grew bored. Instant arithmetic was fifth-grade stuff. Actually, he still had trouble with integrals and wondered if that was because he didn't know what an integral was. A half dozen definitions flashed by, but he had never had enough mathematics to understand the definitions, though he could quote them well enough.

	At school, they had always said, "Don't ever get too interested in any one thing or group of things. As soon as you do that, you begin selecting your facts and you must never do that. Everything, anything is important. As long as you have the facts on file, it doesn't matter whether you understand them or not."

	But the noncompos didn't think so. Arrogant minds with holes in them!

	They were approaching Junior itself now. It was bright, too, but in a different way. It had ice caps north and south. (Textbooks of Earth's paleoclimatology drifted past and Mark made no move to stop them.) The ice caps were retreating. In a million years, Junior would have Earth's present climate. It was just about Earth's size and mass and it rotated in a period of thirty-six hours.

	It might have been Earth's twin. What differences there were, according to Makoyama's reports, were to Junior's ad-

vantage. There was nothing on Junior to threaten mankind as far as was known. Nor would anyone imagine there possibly might be were it not for the fact that humanity's first colony on the planet had been wiped out to the last soul.

	What was worse, the destruction had occurred in such a way that a study of all surviving information gave no reasonable clue whatever as to what had happened.



SHEFFIELD entered Mark's cabin and joined the boy two hours before landing. He and Mark had originally been assigned a room together. That had been an experiment. Mnemonics didn't like the company of noncompos, even the best of them. In any case, the experiment had failed. Almost immediately after take-off, Mark's sweating face and pleading eyes made privacy absolutely essential for him.

	Sheffield felt responsible. He felt responsible for everything about Mark whether it was actually his fault or not. He and men like himself had taken Mark and children like him and trained them into personal ruin. They had been force-grown. They had been bent and molded. They had been allowed no normal contact with normal children lest they develop normal mental habits. No Mnemonic had contracted a normal marriage, even within the group.

	It made for a terrible guilt-feeling on Sheffield's part.

	Twenty years ago there had been a dozen lads trained at one school under the leadership of U Karaganda, as mad an Asiatic as had ever roused the snickers of a group of interviewing newsmen. Karaganda had committed suicide eventually, under some vague motivation, but other psychologists, Sheffield for one, of greater respectability and undoubtedly of lesser brilliance, had had time to join him and learn of him.

	The school continued and others were established. One was even founded on Mars. It had an enrollment of five at the moment. At latest count, there were one hundred and three living graduates with full honors-naturally, only a minority of those enrolled actually absorbed the entire course. Five years ago, the Terrestrial planetary government-not to be confused with the Central Galactic Committee, based on Earth, and ruling the Galactic Confederation-allowed the

establishment of the Mnemonic Service as a branch of the Department of the Interior.

	It had already paid for itself many times over, but few people knew that. Nor did the Terrestrial government advertise the fact, or any other fact about the Mnemonics. It was a tender subject with them. It was an "experiment." They feared that failure might be politically expensive. The opposition- with difficulty prevented from making a campaign issue out of it as it was-spoke at the planetary conferences of "crackpotism" and "waste of the taxpayers' money." And the latter despite the existence of documentary proof of the precise opposite.

	In the machine-centered civilization that filled the galaxy, it was difficult to learn to appreciate the achievements of naked mind without a long apprenticeship.

	Sheffield wondered how long.

	But there was no use being depressed in Mark's company. Too much danger of contagion. He said, instead, "You're looking fine, sport."

	Mark seemed glad to see him. He said, thoughtfully, "When we get back to Earth, Dr. Sheffield-"

	He stopped, flushed slightly, and said, "I mean, supposing we get back, I intend to get as many books and films as I can on folkways. I've hardly read anything on that subject. I was down in the ship's library and they had nothing-absolutely nothing."

	"Why the interest?"

	"It's the captain. Didn't you say he told you that the crew were not to know we were visiting a world on which the first expedition had died?"

	"Yes, of course. Well?"

	"Because spacemen consider it bad luck to touch on a world like that, especially one that looks harmless. 'Sucker bait,' they call it."

	"That's right."

	"So the captain says. It 5 just that I don t see how that can be true. I can think of seventeen habitable planets from which the first expedition never returned and never established residence. And each one was later colonized and now is a member of the Federation. Sarmatia is one of them, and it's a pretty big world now."

	"There are planets of continuous disaster, too." Sheffield deliberately put that as a declarative statement.

	(Never ask informational questions. That was one of the Rules of Karaganda. Mnemonic correlations weren't a matter of the conscious intelligence; they weren't volitional. As soon as a direct question was asked, the resultant correlations were plentiful but only such as any reasonably informed man might make. It was the unconscious mind that bridged the wide, unlikely gaps.)



MARK, as any Mnemonic would, fell into the trap. He said, energetically, "No, I've never heard of one. Not where the planet was at all habitable. If the planet is solid ice, or complete desert, that's different. Junior isn't like that."

	"No it isn't," agreed Sheffield.

	"Then why should the crew be afraid of it? I kept thinking about that all the time I was in bed. That's when I thought of looking at the log. I'd never actually seen one, so it would be a valuable thing to do in any case. And certainly, I thought, I would find the truth there."

	"Uh huh," said Sheffield.

	"And, well-I may have been wrong. In the whole log the purpose of the expedition was never mentioned. Now that wouldn't be so unless the purpose were secret. It was as if he were even keeping it from the other ship officers. And the name of the ship is given as the George G. Grundy."

	"It would be, of course," said Sheffield.

	"I don't know; I suspected that business about Triple G," said Mark, darkly.

	Sheffield said, "You seem disappointed that the captain wasn't lying."

	"Not disappointed. Relieved, I think. I thought . . . I thought-" He stopped and looked acutely embarrassed, but Sheffield made no effort to rescue him. He was forced to continue, "I thought everyone might be lying to me, not just the captain. Even you might, Dr. Sheffield. I thought you just didn't want me to talk to the crew for some reason."

	Sheffield tried to smile and managed to succeed. The occu

pational disease ofthe Mnemonic Service was suspicion. They were isolated, these Mnemonics, and they were different. Cause and effect were obvious.

	Sheffield said lightly, "I think you'll find in your reading on folkways that these superstitions are not necessarily based on logical analysis. A planet which has become notorious has evil expected of it. The good which happens is disregarded; the bad is cried up, advertised, and exaggerated. The thing snowballs."

	He moved away from Mark. He busied himself with an inspection of the hydraulic chairs. They would be landing soon. He felt unnecessarily along the length of the broad webbing of the straps, keeping his back to the youngster. So protected, he said, almost in a whisper, "And, of course, what makes it worse is that Junior is so different."

	(Easy now, easy. Don't push. He had tried that trick before this and-)

	Mark was saying, "No, it isn't. Not a bit. The expeditions that failed were different. That's true."

	Sheffield kept his back turned. He waited.

	Mark said, "The seventeen other expeditions that failed on planets that are now inhabited were all small exploring expeditions. In sixteen of the cases the cause of death was shipwreck of one sort or another and in the remaining case, Coma Minor that one was, the failure resulted from a surprise attack by indigenous life-forms, not intelligent, of course. I have the details on all of them-"

	(Sheffield couldn't forebear holding his breath. Mark could give the details on all of them. All the details. It was as easy for him to quote all the records on each expedition, word for word, as it was to say yes or no. And he might well choose to. A Mnemonic had no selectivity. It was one of the things that made ordinary companionship between Mnemonics and ordinary people impossible. Mnemonics were dreadful bores by the nature of things. Even Sheffield, who was trained and inured to listen to it all, and who had no intention of stopping Mark if he were really off on a talk-jag, sighed softly.)

	"But what's the use," Mark continued, and Sheffield felt rescued from a horror. "They're just not in the same class with the Junior expedition. That consisted of an actual settlement of seven hundred eighty-nine men, two hundred seven women and fifteen children under the age of thirteen. In the course of the next year, three hundred fifteen women, nine men and two children were added by immigration. The settlement survived almost two years and the cause of death isn't known, except that from their report, it might be disease.

	"Now that part is different. But Junior itself has nothing unusual about it, except, of course-"

	Mark paused as though the information were too unimportant to bother with and Sheffield almost yelled. He forced himself to say calmly, "That difference. Of course."

	Mark said, "We all know about that. It has two suns and the others only have one."

	The psychologist could have cried his disappointment. Nothing!

	But what was the use. Better luck next time. If you don't have patience with a Mnemonic, you might as well not have a Mnemonic.

	He sat down in the hydraulic chair and buckled himself in tightly. Mark did likewise. (Sheffield would have liked to help, but that would have been injudicious.) He looked at his watch. They must be spiraling down even now.

	Under his disappointment, Sheffield felt a stronger disturbance. Mark Annuncio had acted wrongly in following up his own hunch that the captain and everybody else had been lying. Mnemonics had a tendency to believe that because their store of facts was great, it was complete. This, obviously, is a prime error. It is therefore necessary-thus spake Karaganda

-for them to present their correlations to properly constituted authority and never to act upon it themselves.

	Well, how significant was this error of Mark's? He was the first Mnemonic to be taken away from Service headquarters; the first to be separated from all of his kind; the first to be isolated among noncompos. What did that do to him? What would it continue to do to him? Would it be bad? If so, how to stop it?

	To all of which questions, Dr. Oswald Mayer Sheffield knew no answer.

THE men at the controls were the lucky ones. They and, of course, Cimon who, as astrophysicist and director of the expedition, joined them by special dispensation. The others of the crew had their separate duties, while the remaining scientific personnel preferred the relative comfort of their hydraulic seats during the spiral around and down to Junior.

	It was while Junior was still far enough away to be seen as a whole that the scene was at its grandest.

	North and south, a third of the way to the equator, lay the ice caps, still at the start of their millennial retreat. Since the Triple G was spiraling on a north-south great circle-deliberately chosen for the sake of viewing the polar regions, as Cimon, at the cost of less than maximum safety, insisted-each cap in turn was laid out below them.

	Each burnt equally with sunlight, the consequence of Junior's untilted axis. And each cap was in sectors, cut like a pie with a rainbowed knife.

	The sunward third of each was illuminated by both suns simultaneously into a brilliant white that slowly yellowed westward, and as slowly greened eastward. To the east of the white sector lay another, half as wide, which was reached by the light of Lagrange I only, and the snow there blazed a response of sapphire beauty. To the west, another half-sector, exposed to Lagrange II alone, shone in the warm orange-red of an Earthly sunset. The three colors graded into one another band-wise, and the similarity to a rainbow was increased thereby.

	The final third was dark in contrast, but if one looked carefully enough, it, too, was in parts-unequal parts. The smaller portion was black indeed, but the larger portion had a faint milkiness about it.

	Cimon muttered to himself, "Moonlight. Of course." Then looked about hastily to see if he were overheard. He did not like people to observe the actual process by which conclusions were brought to fruition in his mind. Rather they were to be presented to his students and listeners, to all about him in short, in a polished perfection that showed neither birth nor growth.

	But there were only spacemen about and they did not hear him. Despite all their space-hardening, they were fixing whatever concentration they could spare from their duties and instruments upon the wonder before them.

	The spiral curved, veered way from north-south to northeast-southwest, finally to the east-west in which a safe landing was most feasible. The dull thunder of atmosphere carried into the pilot room, thin and shrill at first, but gathering body and volume as the minutes passed.

	Until now, in the interests of scientific observation-and to the considerable uneasiness of the captain-the spiral had been tight, deceleration slight, and the planetary circumnavigations numerous. As they bit into Junior's air-covering, however, deceleration pitched high and the surface rose to meet them.

	The ice caps vanished on either side and there began an equal alternation of land and water. A continent, mountainous on either seacoast and flat in between, like a soup plate with two ice-topped rims, flashed below at lengthening intervals. It spread halfway around Junior and the rest was water.

	Most of the ocean at the moment was in the dark sector, and what was not lay in the red-orange light of Lagrange II. In the light of that sun, the waters were a dusky purple with a sprinkling of ruddy specks that thickened north and south. Icebergs!

	The land was distributed at the moment between the redorange half-sector and the full white light. Only the eastern seacoast was in the blue-green. The eastern mountain range was a startling sight, with its western slopes red and its eastern slopes green.

	The ship was slowing rapidly now; the final trip over ocean was done.

	Next-landing!



THE first steps were cautious enough. Slow enough, too. Cimon inspected his photochromes of Junior as taken from space with minute care. Under protest, he passed them among the others of the expedition and more than a few groaned inwardly at the thought of having placed comfort before a chance to see the original of that.

	Boris Vernadsky bent over his gas-analyzer interminably, a symphony in loud clothes and soft grunts.

	"We're about at sea level, I should judge," he said, "going by the value of g."

	Then, because he was explaining himself to the rest of the group, he added negligently, "The gravitational constant, that is," which didn't help most of them.

	He said, "The atmospheric pressure is just about eight hundred millimeters of mercury which is about five per cent higher than on Earth. And two hundred forty millimeters of that is oxygen as compared to only one hundred fifty on Earth. Not bad."

	He seemed to be waiting for approval, but scientists found it best to comment as little as possible on data in another man's specialty.

	He went on, "Nitrogen, of course. Dull, isn't it, the way Nature repeats itself like a three-year-old who knows three lessons, period. Takes the fun away when it turns out that a water world always has an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Makes the whole thing yawn-worthy."

	"What else in the atmosphere?" asked Cimon, irritably. "So far all we have is oxygen, nitrogen, and homely philosophy from kindly Uncle Boris."

	Vernadsky hooked his arm over his seat and said, amiably enough, "What are you? Director or something?"

	Cimon, to whom the directorship meant little more than the annoyance of preparing composite reports for the Bureau flushed and said, grimly, "What else in the atmosphere, Dr. Vernadsky?"

	Vernadsky said, without looking at his notes, "Under one per cent and over a hundredth of one per cent: hydrogen, hehum, and carbon dioxide in that order. Under a hundredth of one per cent and over a ten thousandth of one per cent: methane, argon, and neon in that order. Under a ten thousandth of one per cent and over a millionth of a per cent: radon, krypton, and xenon in that order.

	"The figures aren't very informative. About all I can get out of them is that Junior is going to be a happy hunting ground for uranium, that it's low in potassium and that it's no wonder it's such a lovely little double ice cap of a world."

	He did that deliberately, so that someone could ask him how he knew, and someone, with gratifying wonder, inevitably did.

	Vernadsky smiled blandly and said: "Atmospheric radon is ten to a hundred times as high here as on Earth. So is helium. Both radon and helium are produced as by-products of the radioactive breakdown of uranium and thorium. Conclusion:

Uranium and thorium minerals are ten to a hundred times as copious in Junior's crust as in Earth's.

	"Argon, on the other hand, is over a hundred times as low as on Earth. Chances are Junior has none of the argon it originally started with. A planet of this type has only the argon which forms from the breakdown of K40, one of the potassium isotopes. Low argon; low potassium. Simple, kids."

	One of the assembled groups asked, "What about the ice caps?"

	Cimon, who knew the answer to that, asked, before Vernadsky could answer the other, "What's the carbon dioxide content exactly?"

	"Zero point zero one six emm emm," said Vernadsky.

	Cimon nodded, and vouchsafed nothing more.

	"Well?" asked the inquirer impatiently.

	"Carbon dioxide is only about half what it is on Earth, and it's the carbon dioxide that gives the hothouse effect. It lets the short waves of sunlight pass through to the planet's surface, but doesn't allow the long waves of planetary heat to radiate off. When carbon dioxide concentration goes up as a result of volcanic action, the planet heats up a bit and you have a carboniferous age with oceans high and land surface at a minimum. When carbon dioxide goes down as a result of the vegetation refusing to let a good thing alone, fattening up on the good old see-oh-two and losing its head about it, temperature drops, ice forms, a vicious cycle of glaciation starts, and voil�-"

	"Anything else in the atmosphere?" asked Cimon.

	"Water vapor and dust. I suppose there are a few million airborne spores of various virulent diseases per cubic centimeter in addition to that." He said it lightly enough, but there was a stir in the room. More than one of the bystanders looked as though he were holding his breath.

	Vernadsky shrugged and said, "Don't worry about it for now. My analyzer washes out dust and spores quite thoroughly. But then, that's not my angle. I suggest Rodriguez grow his cultures under glass right away. Good thick glass."



MARK Annuncio wandered everywhere. His eyes shone as he listened, and he pressed himself forward to hear better. The group suffered him to do so with various degrees of reluctance, in accordance with individual personalities and temperaments. None spoke to him.

	Sheffield stayed close to Mark. He scarcely spoke, either. He bent all his effort on remaining in the background of Mark's consciousness. He wanted to refrain from giving Mark the feeling of being haunted by himself give the boy the illusion of freedom, instead. He wanted to seem to be there, each time, by accident only.

	It was a most unsuccessful pretense, he felt, but what could he do? He had to keep the kid from getting into trouble.



MIGUEL Antonio Lopez y Rodriguez-microbiologist; small, tawny, with intensely black hair which he wore rather long, and with a reputation which he did nothing to discourage, of being a Latin in the grand style as far as the ladies were concerned-cultured the dust from Vernadsky's gas-analyzer trap with a combination of precision and respectful delicacy.

	"Nothing," he said, eventually. "What foolish growths I get look harmless."

	It was suggested that Junior's bacteria need not necessarily look harmful; that toxins and metabolic processes could not be analyzed by eye, even by microscopic eye.

	This was met with hot contempt, as almost an invasion of professional function. He said, with an eyebrow lifted, "One gets a feeling for these things. When one has seen as much of the microcosm as I have, one can sense danger-or lack of danger."

	This was an outright lie, and Rodriguez proved it by carefully transferring samples of the various germ colonies into buffered, isotonic media and injecting hamsters with the concentrated result. They did not seem to mind.

	Raw atmosphere was trapped in large jars and several specimens of minor animal life from Earth and other planets were

allowed to disport themselves within. None of them seemed to mind, either.



NEVILE Fawkes-botanist; a man who appreciated his own handsomeness by modeling his hair style after that shown on the traditional busts of Alexander the Great, but from whose appearance the presence of a nose, far more aquiline than Alexander ever possessed, noticeably detracted- was gone for two days, by Junior chronology, in one of the Triple G's atmospheric coasters. He could navigate one like a dream and was, in fact, the only man outside the crew who could navigate one at all, so he was the natural choice for the task. Fawkes did not seem noticeably overjoyed about that.

	He returned, completely unharmed and unable to hide a grin of relief. He submitted to irradiation for the sake of sterilizing the exterior of his flexible air-suit-designed to protect men from the deleterious effect of the outer environment where no pressure differential existed; the strength and jointedness of a true spacesuit being obviously unnecessary within an atmosphere as thick as Junior's. The coaster was subjected to a more extended irradiation, and pinned down under a plastic cover-all.

	Fawkes flaunted color photographs in great number. The central valley of the continent was fertile almost beyond Earthly dreams. The rivers were mighty, the mountains rugged and snow-covered-with the usual pyrotechnic solar effects. Under Lagrange II alone, the vegetation looked vaguely repellant, seeming rather dark, like dried blood. Under Lagrange I, however, or under the suns together, the brilliant, flourishing green and the glisten of the numerous lakes-particularly north and south along the dead rims of the departing glaciers-brought an ache of homesickness to the hearts of many.

	Fawkes said, "Look at these."

	He had skimmed low to take a photochrome of a field of huge flowers, dripping with scarlet. In the high-ultraviolet radiation of Lagrange I, exposure times were of necessity extremely short and despite the motion of the coaster, each blossom stood out as a sharp blotch of strident color.

	"I swear," said Fawkes, "each one of those was six feet across."

	They admired the flowers unrestrainedly.

	Fawkes then said, "No intelligent life whatever, of course."

	Sheffield looked up from the photographs, with instant sharpness. Life and intelligence, after all, were by way of being his province. "How do you know?"

	"Look for yourself," said the botanist. "There are the photos. No highways, no cities, no artificial waterways, no signs of anything manmade."

	"No machine civilization," said Sheffield. "That's all."

	"Even ape-men would build shelters and use fire," said Fawkes, offended.

	"The continent is ten times as large as Africa and you've been over it for two days. There's a lot you could miss."

	"Not as much as you'd think," was the warm response. "I followed every sizable river up and down and looked over both seacoasts. Any settlements are bound to be there."

	"In allowing seventy-two hours for two eight-thousand-mile seacoasts ten thousand miles apart, plus how many thousand miles of river, that had to be a pretty quick lookover."

	Cimon interrupted, "What's this all about? Homo sapiens is the only intelligence ever discovered in the galaxy through a hundred thousand and more explored planets. The chances of Troas possessing intelligence is virtually nil."

	"Yes?" said Sheffield. "You could use the same argument to prove there's no intelligence on Earth."

	"Makoyama," said Cimon, "in his report mentioned no intelligent life."

	"And how much time did he have? It was a case of another quick feel through the haystack with one finger and a report of no needle."

	"What the eternal universe," said Rodriguez, waspishly.

	"We argue like madmen. Call the hypothesis of indigenous intelligence unproven and let it go. We are not through investigating yet, I hope."



COPIES of those first pictures of Junior's surface were added to what might be termed the open files. After a

second trip, Fawkes returned in more somber mood and the meeting was correspondingly more subdued.

	New photographs went from hand to hand and were then placed by Cimon himself in the special safe that nothing could open short of Cimon's own hands or an all-destroying nuclear blast.

	Fawkes said, "The two largest rivers have a generally northsouth course along the eastern edges of the western mountain range. The larger river comes down from the northern ice cap, the smaller up from the southern one. Tributaries come in westward from the eastern range, interlacing the entire central plain. Apparently, the central plain is tipped, the eastern edge being higher. It's what ought to be expected maybe. The eastern mountain range is the taller, broader and more continuous of the two. I wasn't able to make actual measurements, but I wouldn't be surprised if they beat the Himalayas. In fact, they're a lot like the Wu Ch'ao range on Hesperus. You have to hit the stratosphere to get over them, and rugged-Wow!

	"Anyway," he brought himself back to the immediate subject at hand, with an effort, "the two main rivers join about a hundred miles south of the equator and pour through a gap in the western range. They make it to the ocean after that in just short of eighty miles.

	"Where it hits the ocean is a natural spot for the planetary metropolis. The trade routes into the interior of the continent have to converge there so it would be the inevitable emporium for space-trade. Even as far as surface trade is concerned, the continental east coast has to move goods across the ocean. Jumping the eastern range isn't worth the effort. Then, too, there are the islands we saw when we were landing.

	"So right there is where I would have looked for the settlement even if we didn't have a record of the latitude and longitude. And those settlers had an eye for the future. It's where they set up shop."

	Novee said in a low voice, "They thought they had an eye for the future, anyway. There isn't much left of them, is there?"

	Fawkes tried to be philosophic about it. "It's been over a century. What do you expect? There's a lot more left of them than I honestly thought there would be. Their buildings were mostly prefab. They've tumbled and vegetation has forced its way over and through them. The fact that the climate of Junior is glacial is what's preserved it. The trees-or the objects that rather look like tree s-are~ small and obviously very slowgrowing.

	"Even so, the clearing is gone. From the air, the only way you could tell there had once been a settlement in that spot was that the new growth had a slightly different color and and, well, texture, than the surrounding forests."

	He pointed at a particular photograph. "This is just a slag heap. Maybe it was machinery once. I think those are burial mounds."

	Novee said, "Any actual remains? Bones?"

	Fawkes shook his head.

	Novee said, "The last survivors didn't bury themselves, did they?"

	Fawkes said, "Animals, I suppose." He walked away, his back to the group. "It was raining when I poked my way through. It went splat, splat on the flat leaves above me and the ground was soggy and spongy underneath. It was dark, gloomy-There was a cold wind. The pictures I took didn't get it across. I felt as though there were a thousand ghosts, waiting-"

	The mood was contagious.

	Cimon said, savagely, "Stop that!"

	In the background, Mark Annuncio's pointed nose fairly quivered with the intensity of his curiosity. He turned to Sheffield, who was at his side, and whispered, "Ghosts? No authentic case of seeing-"

	Sheffield touched Mark's thin shoulder lightly. "Only a way of speaking, Mark. But don't feel badly, that he doesn't mean it literally. You're watching the birth of a superstition, and that's something, isn't it?"



A semi-sullen Captain Follenbee sought out Cimon the evening after Fawkes' second return, and said in his harumphy way, "Never do, Dr. Cimon. My men are unsettled. Very unsettled."

	The port-shields were open. Lagrange I was six hours gone, and Lagrange II's ruddy light, deepened to crimson in setting,

flushed the captain's face and tinged his short gray hair with red.

	Cimon, whose attitude toward the crew in general and the captain in particular was one of controlled impatience, said, "What is the trouble, captain?"

	"Been here two weeks, Earth-time. Still no one leaves without suits. Always irradiate before you come back. Anything wrong with the air?"

	"Not as far as we know."

	"Why not breathe it then?"

	"Captain, that's for me to decide."

	The flush on the captain's face became a real one. He said, "My papers say I don't have to stay if ship's safety is endangered. A frightened and mutinous crew is something I don't want."

	"Can't you handle your own men?"

	"Within reason."

	"Well, what really bothers them? This is a new planet and we're being cautious. Can't they understand that?"

	"Two weeks and still cautious. They think we're hiding something. And we are. You know that. Besides, surface leave is necessary. Crew's got to have it. Even if it's just on a bare rock a mile across. Gets them out of the ship. Away from the routine. Can't deny them that."

	"Give me till tomorrow," said Cimon, contemptuously.



THE scientists gathered in the observatory the next day. Cimon said, "Vernadsky tells me the data on air is still negative, and Rodriguez has discovered no airborne pathogenic organism of any type."

	There was a general air of dubiety over the last statement. Novee said, "The settlement died of disease. I'll swear to that."

	"Maybe so," said Rodriguez at once, "but can you explain how? It's impossible. I tell you that and I tell you. See here. Almost all Earth-type planets give birth to life and that life is always protein in nature and always either cellular or virus in organization. But that's all. There the resemblance ends.

	"You laymen think it's all the same; Earth or any planet. Germs are germs and viruses are viruses. I tell you, you don't understand the infinite possibilities for variation in the pro-

tein molecule. Even on Earth, every species has its own diseases. Some may spread over several species but there isn't one single pathogenic life form ~ any type on Earth that can attack all other species.

	"You think that a virus or a bacterium developing independently for a billion years on another planet with different amino-acids, different enzyme systems, a different scheme of metabolism altogether, is just going to happen to find Homo sapiens succulent like a lollipop. I tell you it is childishness."

	Novee, his physician's soul badly pierced at having been lumped under the phrase, "you laymen," was not disposed to let it go that easily. "Homo sapiens brings its own germs with it wherever it goes, Rod. Who's to say the virus of the common cold didn't mutate under some planetary influence into something that was suddenly deadly. Or influenza. Things like that have happened even on Earth. The 2755 para-meas-"

	"I know all about the 2755 para-measles epidemic," said Rodriguez, "and the 1918 influenza epidemic, and the Black Death, too. But when has it happened lately? Granted the settlement was a matter of a century and more ago; still that wasn't exactly pre-atomic times, either. They included doctors. They had supplies of antibiotics and they knew the techniques of antibody induction. They're simple enough. And there was the medical relief expedition, too."

	Novee patted his round abdomen and said, stubbornly, "The symptoms were those of a respiratory infection; dyspnea-"

	"I know the list; but I tell you it wasn't a germ disease that got them. It couldn't be."

	"What was it, then?"

	"That's outside my professional competence. Talking from inside, I tell you it wasn't infection. Even mutant infection. It couldn't be. It mathematically couldn't be." He leaned heavily on the adverb.

	There was a stir among the listeners as Mark Annuncio shoved his thin body forward into the space immediately before Rodriguez.

	For the first time, he spoke at one of these gatherings.

	"Mathematically?" he asked, eagerly.

	Sheffield followed after, his long body all elbows and knees as he made a path. He murmured "Sorry" half a dozen times.

	Rodriguez, in an advanced stage of exasperation thrust out his lower lip and said, "What do you want?"

	Mark flinched. Less eagerly, he said, "You said you knew it wasn't infection mathematically. I was wondering how .

mathematics-" He ran down.

	Rodriguez said, "I have stated my professional opinion."

	He said it formally, stiltedly, then turned away. No man questioned another's professional opinion unless he was of the same specialty. Otherwise the implication, clearly enough, was that the specialist's experience and knowledge was sufficiently dubious to be brought into question by an outsider.

	Mark knew this, but then he was of the Mnemonic Service. He tapped Rodriguez's shoulder, while the others standing about listened in stunned fascination, and said, "I know it's your professional opinion, but still I'd like to have it explained."

	He didn't mean to sound peremptory. He was just stating a fact.

	Rodriguez whirled. "You'd like to have it explained? Who the eternal Universe are you to ask me questions?"

	Mark was startled at the other's vehemence, but Sheffield had reached him now, and he gained courage and with it, anger. He disregarded Sheffield's quick whisper and said shrilly, "I'm Mark Annuncio of Mnemonic Service and I've asked you a question. I want your statement explained."

	"It won't be explained. Sheffield, take this young nut out of here and tuck him into bed, will you? And keep him away from me after this. Young jackass." The last was a clearly-heard aside.

	Sheffield took Mark's wrist but it was wrenched out of his grasp. The young Mnemonic screamed, "You stupid noncompos. You . . . you moron. You forgettery on two feet. Sievemind. Let me go, Dr. Sheffield-You're no expert. You don't remember anything you've learned, and you haven't learned much in the first place. You're not a specialist; none of you-"

	"For space's sake," cried Cimon, "take the young idiot out of here, Sheffield."

	Sheffield, his long cheeks burning, stooped and lifted Mark bodily into the air. Holding him close, he made his way out of the room.

	Tears squeezed out of Mark's eyes and just outside the door, he managed to speak with difficulty. "Let me down, I want to hear-I want to hear what they say."

	Sheffield said, "Don't go back in. Please, Mark."

"I won't. Don't worry. But-" He didn't finish the but.



INSIDE the observatory room, Cimon, looking haggard, said, "All right. All right. Let's get back to the point. Come on, now. Quiet! I'm accepting Rodriguez's viewpoint. It's good enough for me and I don't suppose there's anyone else here who questions Rodriguez's professional opinion."

	("Better not," muttered Rodriguez, his dark eyes hot with sustained fury.)

	Cimon went on. "And since there's nothing to fear as far as infection is concerned, I'm telling Captain Follenbee that the crew may take surface leave without special protection against the atmosphere. Apparently the lack of surface leave is bad for morale. Are there any objections?"

	There weren't any.

	Cimon said, "I see no reason also why we can't pass on to the next stage of the investigation. I propose that we set up camp at the site of the original settlement. I appoint a committee of five to trek out there. Fawkes, since he can handle the coaster; Novee and Rodriguez to handle the biological data; Vernadsky and myself to take care of the chemistry and physics.

	"The rest of you will, naturally, be apprised of all pertinent data in your own specialties, and will be expected to help in suggesting lines of attack, et cetera. Eventually, we may all be out there, but for the while only this small group. And until further notice, communication between ourselves and the main group on ship will be by radio only, since if the trouble, whatever it is, turns out to be localized at settlement site, five men are enough to lose."

	Novee said, "The settlement lived on Junior several years before dying out-over a year, anyway. It could be a long time before we are certain we're safe."

	"We," said Cimon, "are not a settlement. We are a group of specialists who are looking for trouble. We'll find it if it's there to find, and when we do find it, we'll beat it. And it won't take us a couple of years either. Now, are there any objections?"

	There were none, and the meeting broke up.



MARK Annuncio sat on his bunk, hands clasped about his knee, chin sunken and touching his chest. He was dryeyed now, but his voice was heady with frustration.

	"They're not taking me," he said. "They won't let me go with them."

	Sheffield was in the chair opposite the boy, bathed in an agony of perplexity. He said, "They may take you later on."

	"No," said Mark, fiercely, "they won't. They hate me. Besides, I want to go now. I've never been on another planet before. There's so much to see and find out. They've got no right to hold me back if I want to go."

	Sheffield shook his head. Mnemonics were so firmly trained into this belief that they must collect facts, and that no one or nothing could or ought to stop them. Perhaps when they returned, he might recommend a certain degree of counter-indoctrination. After all, Mnemonics had to live in the real world, occasionally. More and more with each generation, perhaps, as they grew to play an increasing role in the galaxy.

	He tried an experiment. He said, "It may be dangerous, you know."

	"I don't care. I've got to know. I've got to find out about this planet. Dr. Sheffield, you go to Dr. Cimon and tell him I'm going along."

	"Now, Mark."

	"If you don't, I will." He raised his small body from the bed in earnest of leaving that moment.

	"Look, you're excited."

	Mark's fists clenched. "It's not fair, Dr. Sheffield. I found this planet. It's my planet."

	Sheffield's conscience hit him badly. What Mark said was true in a way. No one, except Mark, knew that better than Sheffield. And no one, again except Mark, knew the history of Junior better than Sheffield.

	It was only in the last twenty years that, faced with the rising tide of population pressure in the older planets and the recession of the Galactic frontier from those same older plan-

ets, that the Confederation of Worlds began exploring the galaxy systematically. Before that, human expansion went on hit or miss. Men and women in search of new land and a better life followed rumor as to the existence of habitable planets or sent out amateur groups to find something promising.

	A hundred ten years before, one such group found Junior. They didn't report their find officially because they didn't want a crowd of land speculators, promotion men, exploiters and general riffraff following. In the next months, some of the unattached men arranged to have women brought in, so the settlement must have flourished for a while.

	It was a year later when some had died and most or all the rest were sick and dying that they beamed a cry of help to Pretoria, the nearest inhabited planet. The Pretorian government was in some sort of crisis at the time and relayed the message to the Sector Government at Altmark. Pretoria then felt justified in forgetting the matter.

	The Altmark government, acting in reflex fashion, sent out a medical ship to Junior. It dropped anti-sera and various other supplies. The ship did not land because the medical officer diagnosed the matter, from a distance, as influenza, and minimized the danger. The medical supplies, his report said, would handle the matter perfectly. It was quite possible that the crew of the ship, fearing contagion, had prevented a landing, but nothing in the official report indicated that.

	There was a final report from Junior three months later to the effect that only ten people were left alive and that they were dying. They begged for help. This report was forwarded to Earth itself along with the previous medical report. The Central Government, however, was a maze in which reports regularly were forgotten unless someone had sufficient personal interest, and influence, to keep them alive. No one had much interest in a far-off, unknown planet with ten dying men and women on it.

	Filed and forgotten-and for a century, no human foot was felt on Junior.

	Then, with the new furore over Galactic exploration, hundreds of ships began darting through the empty vastness, probing here and there. Reports trickled in, then flooded in.

Some came from Hidosheki Mikoyama, who passed through the Hercules Cluster twice-dying in a crash landing the second time, with his tight and despairing voice coming over the subether in a final message: "Surface coming up fast now; ship-walls frictioning into red he-" and no more.

	Last year, the accumulation of reports, grown past any reasonable human handling, was fed into the over-worked Washington computer on a priority so high that there was only a five-month wait. The operators checked out the data for planetary habitability and lo, Abou ben Junior led all the rest.



SHEFFIELD remembered the wild hurrah over it. The stellar system was enthusiastically proclaimed to the galaxy and the name, Junior, was thought up by a bright young man in the Bureau of Outer Provinces who felt the need for personal friendliness between man and world. Junior's virtues were magnified. Its fertility, its climate-"a New England perpetual spring"-and most of all, its vast future, were put across without any feeling of need for discretion. For the next million years, propagandists declared, Junior will grow richer. While other planets age, Junior will grow younger as the ice recedes and fresh soil is exposed. Always a new frontier; always untapped resources.

	For a million years!

	It was the Bureau's masterpiece. It was to be the tremendously successful start of a program of government-sponsored colonization. It was to be the beginning, at long last, of the scientific exploitation of the galaxy for the good of humanity.

	And then came Mark Annuncio, who heard much of all this and was as thrilled at the prospect as any Joe Earthman, but who one day thought of something he had seen while sniffing idly through the "dead-matter" files of the Bureau of Outer Provinces. He had seen a medical report about a colony on a planet of a system whose description and position in space tallied with that of the Lagrange group.

	Sheffield remembered the day Mark came to him with that news.

	He also remembered the face of the Secretary for the Outer Provinces when the news was passed on to him. He saw the

secretary's square jaw slowly go slack and a look of infinite trouble come into his eyes.

	The government was committed! It was going to ship millions of people to Junior. It was going to grant farmland and subsidize the first seed supplies, farm machinery, factories. Junior was going to be a paradise for numerous voters and a promise of more paradise for a myriad others.

	If Junior turned out to be a killer planet for some reason or other, it would mean political suicide for all government figures concerned in the project. That meant some pretty big men, not least the Secretary for the Outer Provinces.

	After days of checking and indecision, the secretary had said to Sheffield, "It looks as though we've got to find out what happened, and weave it into the propaganda somehow. Don't you think we could neutralize it that way?"

	"If what happened isn't too horrible to neutralize."

	"But it can't be, can it? I mean, what can it be?" The man was miserably unhappy.

	Sheffield shrugged.

	The secretary said, "See here. We can send a ship of specialists to the planet. Volunteers only and good reliable men, of course. We can give it the highest priority rating we can move, and Project Junior carries considerable weight, you know. We'll slow things up here, and hold on till they get back. That might work, don't you think?"

	Sheffield wasn't sure, but he got the sudden dream of going on that expedition, of taking Mark with him. He could study a Mnemonic in an off-trail environment, and if Mark should be the means of working out the mystery- From the beginning, a mystery was assumed. After all, people don't die of influenza. And the medical ship hadn't landed; they hadn't really observed what was going on. It was fortunate, indeed, that that medical man was now dead thirtyseven years, or he would be slated for court-martial now.

	If Mark should help solve the matter, the Mnemonic Service would be enormously strengthened. The government had to be grateful.

	But now- Sheffield wondered if Cimon knew the story of how the matter of the first settlement had been brought to light. He was fairly certain that the rest of the crew did not. It was not something the Bureau would willingly speak about.

	Nor would it be polite to use the story as a lever to pry concessions out of Cimon. If Mark's correction of Bureau "stupidity"-that would undoubtedly be the opposition's phrasing-were overpublicized, the Bureau would look bad. If they could be grateful, they could be vengeful, too. Retaliation against the Mnemonic Service would not be too petty a thing to expect. Still-Sheffield stood up with quick decision. "All right, Mark. I'll get you out to the settlement site. I'll get us both out there. Now you sit down and wait for me. Promise you'll try nothing on your own."

	"All right," said Mark. He sat down on his bunk again.



"WELL, now, Dr. Sheffield, what is it?" said Cimon. The astrophysicist sat at his desk, on which papers and film formed rigidly arranged heaps about a small Macfreed integrator and watched Sheffield step over the threshold.

	Sheffield sat carelessly down upon the tautly yanked topsheet of Cimon's bunk. He was aware of Cimon's annoyed glance in that direction and it did not worry him. In fact, he rather enjoyed it.

	He said, "I have a quarrel with your choice of men to go to the expedition site. It looks as though you've picked two men for the physical sciences, and three for the biological sciences. Right?"

	"Yes."

	"I suppose you think you've covered the ground like a Danielski ovospore at perihelion."

	"Oh, space! Have you anything to suggest?"

	"I would like to come along myself."

	"Why?"

	"You have no one to take care of the mental sciences."

	"The mental sciences! Good galaxy! Dr. Sheffield, five men are quite enough to risk. As a matter of fact, doctor, you and your . . . uh . . . ward were assigned to the scientific personnel of this ship by order of the Bureau of Outer Provinces without any prior consultation of myself. I'll be frank-if I had been consulted, I would have advised against you. I don't see the function of mental science in an investig~ition such as this, which, after all, is purely physical. It is too bad that the Bureau wishes to experiment with Mnemonics on an occasion such as this. We can't afford scenes like that one with Rodriguez."

	Sheffield decided that Cimon did not know of Mark's connection with the original decision to send out the expedition.

	He sat upright, hands on knees, elbows cocked outward and let a freezing formality settle over him. "So you wonder about the function of mental science in an investigation such as this, Dr. Cimon. Suppose I told you that the end of the first settlement might possibly be explained on a simple, psychological basis."

	"It wouldn't impress me. A psychologist is a man who can explain anything and prove nothing." Cimon smirked like a man who had made an epigram and was proud of it.

	Sheffield ignored it. He said, "Let me go into a little detail. In what way is Junior different from every one of the eightythree thousand inhabited worlds?"

	"Our information is as yet incomplete. I cannot say."

	"Oh, cobber-vitals. You had the necessary information before you ever came here. Junior has two suns."

	"Well, of course." But the astrophysicist allowed a trace of discomfiture to enter his expression.

	"Colored suns, mind you. Colored suns. Do you know what that means? It means that a human being, yourself or myself, standing in the full glare of the two suns, would cast two shadows. One blue-green, one red-orange. The length of each would naturally vary with the time of day. Have you taken the trouble to verify the color distribution in those shadows? The what-do-you-call-em-reflection spectrum?"

	"I presume," said Cimon, loftily, "they'd be about the same as the radiation spectra of the suns. What are you getting at?"

	"You should check. Wouldn't the air absorb some wavelengths? And the vegetation? What's left? And take Junior's moon, Sister. I've been watching it in the last few nights. It's in colors, too, and the colors change position."

	"Well, of course. It runs through its phases independently with each sun."

	"You haven't checked its reflection spectrum, either, have you?"

	"We have that somewhere. There are no points of interest about it. Of what interest is it to you, anyway?"

	"My dear Dr. Cimon. It is a well established psychological fact that combinations of red and green colors exert a deleterious effect on mental stability. We have a case here where the red-green chromopsychic picture-to use a technical term-is inescapable and is presented under circumstances which seem most unnatural to the human mind. It is quite possible that chromopsychosis could reach the fatal level by inducing hypertrophy of the trinitarian follicles with consequent cerebric catatonia."

	Cimon looked floored. He said, "I never heard of such a thing."

	"Naturally not," said Sheffield-it was his turn to be lofty. "You are not a psychologist. Surely you are not questioning my professional opinion."

	"No, of course not. But it's quite plain from the last reports of the expedition that they were dying of something that sounded like a respiratory disease."

	"Correct, but Rodriguez denies that and you accepted his professional opinion."

	"I didn't say it was a respiratory disease. I said it sounded like one. Where does your red-green cromothingumbob come in?"

	Sheffield shook his head. "You laymen have your misconceptions. Granted that there is a physical effect, it still does not imply that there may not be a mental cause. The most convincing point about my theory is that red-green chromopsychosis has been recorded to exhibit itself first as a psychogenic respiratory infection. I take it you are not acquainted with psychogenics."

	"No. It's out of my field."

	"Well, yes. I should say so. Now my own calculations show me that under the heightened oxygen tension of this world the psychogenic respiratory infection is both inevitable and partic

ularly severe. For instance, you've observed the moon-Sister, I mean-in the last few nights."

	"Yes, I have observed Ilium."~ Cimon did not forget Sister's official name, even now.

	"You watched it closely and over lengthy periods? Under magnification?"

	"Yes." Cimon was growing uneasy.

	"Ah," said Sheffield, "now the moon colors in the last few nights have been particularly virulent. Surely you must be noticing just a small inflammation of the mucous membrane of the nose, a slight itching in the throat. Nothing painful yet, I imagine. Have you been coughing or sneezing? Is it a little hard to swallow?"

	"I believe I-" Cimon swallowed, then drew in his breath sharply. He was testing.

	Then he sprang to his feet, fists clenched and mouth working. "Great galaxy, Sheffield, you had no right to keep quiet about this. I can feel it now. What do I do, Sheffield? It's not incurable, is it? Damn it, Sheffield"-his voice went shrill- "why didn't you tell us this before?"

	"Because," said Sheffield, calmly, "there's not a word of truth in anything I've said. Not one word. There's no harm in colors. Sit down, Dr. Cimon. You're beginning to look rather foolish to say the least."

	"You said," said Cimon, thoroughly confused, and in a voice that was beginning to strangle, "that it was your professional opinion that-"

	"My professional opinion! Space and little comets, Cimon, what's so magic about a professional opinion? A man can be lying or he can just plain be ignorant, even about the final details of his own specialty. A professional can be wrong because he's ignorant of a neighboring specialty. He may be certain he's right and still be wrong.

	"Look at you. You know all about what makes the universe tick and I'm lost completely except that I know that a star is something that twinkles and a light-year is something that's long. And yet you'll swallow gibberish-psychology that a freshman student of mentics would laugh his head off at. Don't you think, Cimon, it's time we worried less about professional opinion and more about over-all co-ordination?"

THE color washed slowly out of Cimon's face. It turned waxy-pale. His lips trembled. He whispered, "You used professional status as a cloak to make a fool of me."

	"That's about it," said Sheffield.

	"I have never, never-" Cimon gasped and tried a new start. "I have never witnessed anything as cowardly and unethical."

	"I was trying to make a point."

	"Oh, you made it. You made it." Cimon was slowly recovering; his voice approaching normality. "You want me to take that boy of yours with us."

	"That's right."

	"No. No. Definitely no. It was no before you came in here and it's no a million times over now."

	"What's your reason? I mean, before I came in."

	"He's psychotic. He can't be trusted with normal people."

	Sheffield said, grimly, "I'll thank you not to use the word, 'psychotic.' You are not competent to use it. If you're so precise in your feeling for professional ethics, remember to stay out of my specialty in my presence. Mark Annuncio is perfectly normal."

	"After that scene with Rodriguez? Yes. Oh, yes."

	"Mark had the right to ask his question. It was his job to do so and his duty. Rodriguez had no right to be boorish about it."

	"I'll have to consider Rodriguez first, if you don't mind."

	"Why? Mark Annuncio knows more than Rodriguez. For that matter, he knows more than you or I. Are you trying to bring back an intelligent report or to satisfy a petty vanity?"

	"Your statements about what your boy knows do not impress me. I am quite aware he is an efficient parrot. He understands nothing, however. It is my duty to see to it that data are made available to him, because the Bureau has ordered that. They did not consult me, but very well. I will co-operate that far. He will receive his data here in the ship."

	Sheffield said, "Not adequate, Cimon. He should be on the spot. He may see things our precious specialists will not."

	Cimon said, freezingly, "Very likely. The answer, Sheffield, is no. There is no argument that can possibly persuade me." The astrophysicist's nose was pinched and white.

	"Because I made a fool of you?"

	"Because you violated the most fundamental obligation of a

professional man. No respectable professional would ever use his specialty to prey on the innocence of a non-associate professional."

	"So I made a fool of you."

	Cimon turned away. "Please leave. There will be no further communication between us, outside the most necessary business, for the duration of the trip."

	"If I go," said Sheffield, "the rest of the boys may get to hear about this."

	Cimon started. "You're going to repeat our little affair?" A cold smile rested on his lips, then went its transient and contemptuous way. "You'll broadcast the dastard you were."

	"Oh, I doubt they'll take it seriously. Everyone knows psychologists will have their little jokes. Besides, they'll be so busy laughing at you. You know-the very impressive Dr. Cimon scared into a sore throat and howling for mercy after a few mystic words of gibberish."

	"Who'd believe you?" cried Cimon.

	Sheffield lifted his right hand. Between thumb and forefinger was a small rectangular object, studded with a line of control toggles.

	"Pocket recorder," he said. He touched one of the toggles and Cimon's voice was suddenly saying, "Well, now, Dr. Sheffield, what is it?"

	It sounded pompous, peremptory, and even a little smug.

	"Give me that!" Cimon hurled himself at the lanky psychologist.

	Sheffield held him off. "Don't try force, Cimon. I was in amateur wrestling not too long ago. Look, I'll make a deal with you."

	Cimon was still writhing toward him, dignity forgotten, panting his fury. Sheffield kept him at arm's length, backing slowly.

	Sheffield said, "Let Mark and myself come along and no one will ever see or hear this."

	Slowly, Cimon simmered down. He gasped, "Will you let me have it, then?"

	"After Mark and I are out at the settlement site."

	"I'm to trust you." He seemed to take pains to make that as offensive as possible.

	"Why not? You can certainly trust me to broadcast this if you don't agree. I'll play it off for Vernadsky first. He'll love it. You know his corny sense of humor."

	Cimon said in a voice so low it could hardly be heard, "You and the boy can come along." Then, vigorously, "But remember this, Sheffield. When we get back to Earth, I'll have you before the Central Committee of the G.A.A.S. That's a promise. You'll be de-professionalized."

	Sheffield said, "I'm not afraid of the Galactic Association for the Advancement of Science." He let the syllables resound. "After all, what will you accuse me of? Are you going to play this recording before the Central Committee as evidence? Come, come, let's be friendly about this. You don't want to broadcast your own . . . uh . . . mistake before the primmest stuffed shirts in eighty-three thousand worlds."

	Smiling gently, he backed out the door.

	But when he closed the door between himself and Cimon, his smile vanished. He hadn't liked to do this. Now that he had done it, he wondered if it were worth the enemy he had made.



SEVEN tents had sprung up near the site of the original settlement on Junior. Nevile Fawkes could see them all from the low ridge on which he stood. They had been there seven days now.

	He looked up at the sky. The clouds were thick overhead and pregnant with rain. That pleased him. With both suns behind those clouds, the diffused light was gray-white. It made things seem almost normal.

	The wind was damp and a little raw, as though it were April in Vermont. Fawkes was a New Englander and he appreciated the resemblance. In four or five hours, Lagrange I would set and the clouds would turn ruddy while the landscape would become angrily dim. But Fawkes intended to be back in the tents by then.

	So near the equator, yet so cool! Well, that would change with the millennia. As the glaciers retreated, the air would warm up and the soil would dry out. Jungles and deserts would make their appearance. The water level in the oceans would slowly creep higher, wiping out numberless islands. The two large rivers would become an inland sea, changing the

configuration of Junior's one large continent; perhaps making several smaller ones out of it.

	He wondered if the settlement site would be drowned. Probably, he decided. Maybe that would take the curse off it.

	He could understand why the Confederation were so anxious to solve the mystery of that first settlement. Even if it were a simple matter of disease, there would have to be proof. Otherwise, who would settle the world? The "sucker bait" superstition held for more than merely spacemen.

	He, himself-Well, his first visit to the settlement site hadn't been so bad, though he had been glad to leave the rain and the gloom. Returning was worse. It was difficult to sleep with the thought that a thousand mysterious deaths lay all about, separated from him only by that insubstantial thing, time.

	With medical coolness, Novee had dug up the moldering graves of a dozen of the ancient settlers. (Fawkes could not and did not look at the remains.) There had been only crumbling bones, Novee had said, out of which nothing could be made.

	"There seem to be abnormalities of bone deposition," he said. Then on questioning, he admitted that the effects might be entirely owing to a hundred years' exposure to damp soil.

	Fawkes had constructed a fantasy that followed him even into his waking hours. It concerned an elusive race of intelligent beings dwelling underground, never being seen but haunting that first settlement a century back with a deadly perseverance.

	He pictured a silent bacteriological warfare. He could see them in laboratories beneath the tree roots, culturing their molds and spores, waiting for one that could live on human beings. Perhaps they captured children to experiment upon.

	And when they found what they were looking for, spores drifted silently out over the settlement in venomous clouds- Fawkes knew all this to be fantasy. He had made it up in the wakeful nights out of no evidence but that of his quivering stomach. Yet alone in the forest, he whirled more than once in a sudden horror-filled conviction that bright eyes were staring out of the duskiness of a tree's Lagrange I shadow.

	Fawkes' botanist's eye did not miss the vegetation he

passed, absorbed as he was. He had deliberately struck out from camp in a new direction, but what he saw was what he had already seen. Junior's forests were neither thick nor tangled. They were scarcely a barrier to travel. The small trees- few were higher than ten feet, although their trunks were nearly as thick as the average Terrestrial tree-grew with considerable room between them.

	Fawkes had constructed a rough scheme for arranging the plant-life of Junior into some sort of taxonomic order. He was not unaware of the fact that he might be arranging for his own immortality.

	There was the scarlet "bayonet tree," for instance. Its huge, scarlet flowers attracted insectlike creatures that built small nests within it. Then-at what signal or what impulse Fawkes had not divined-all the flowers on some one given tree would grow a glistening white pistil over night. Each pistil stood two feet high, as though every bloom had been suddenly equipped with a bayonet.

	By the next day, the flower had been fertilized, and the petals closed shut-about pistil, insects and all. The explorer, Makoyama, had named it the "bayonet tree," but Fawkes had made so bold as to rename it Migrania Fawkesii.



ONE thing the trees had in common. Their wood was incredibly tough. It would be the task of the biochemist to determine the physical state of the cellulose molecule and that of the biophysicist to determine how water could be transported through the wood's impervious texture. What Fawkes knew from experience was that blossoms would break if pulled, that stems would bend only with difficulty and break not at all. His pocketknife was blunted without as much as making a scratch.

	The original settlers, in order to clear land, had obviously had to dig out the trees, root and all.

	Compared to Earth, the woods were almost free of animal life. That might be due to the glacial slaughter. Fawkes didn't know.

	The insectlike creatures were all two winged. And those wings were feathery little fronds that beat noiselessly. None, apparently, was a bloodsucker.

	The only major experience with animals that they had had was the sudden appearance of a large flying creature over the camp. It took high-speed photography td reveal the actual shape of the beast, for the specimen they observed, apparently overcome with curiosity, swooped low over the tents, again and again, at speeds too great for comfortable, naked-eye observation.

	It was four-winged, the forward wings terminating in powerful claws, being membranous and nearly naked, serving the office of gliding planes. The hind pair, covered with a hairlike fuzz, beat rapidly.

	Rodriguez suggested the name Tetrapierus.

	Fawkes paused in his reminiscence to look at a variety of grass he had not seen before. It grew in a dense patch and each stem forked in three toward the top. He brought out his magnifying glass, and felt one of the stems gingerly with his finger. Like other grasses on Junior, it- It was here that he heard the rustle behind him-unmistakable. He listened for a moment, his own heartbeat drowning the sound, then whirled. A small manlike object dodged behind a tree.

	Fawkes' breathing nearly stopped. He fumbled for the blaster he wore and his hand seemed to be moving through molasses.

	Was his fantasy no fantasy at all? Was Junior inhabited after all?

	Numbly, Fawkes found himself behind another tree. He couldn't leave it at this. He knew that. He could not report to the rest: I saw something alive. It might have been the answer to everything. But I was afraid and let it get away.

	He would have to make some attempt.

	There was a "chalice tree" just behind the tree that hid the creature. It was in bloom, the white and cream flowers lifted turgidly upward, waiting to catch the rain that would soon fall. There was the sharp tinkle of a breaking flower and cream slivers twisted and turned downward.

	It wasn't imagination. Something was behind the tree.

	Fawkes took a deep breath and dashed out, holding his blaster before him, nerving himself to shoot at the slightest sign of danger.

	But a voice called out, "Don't. It's only I." A frightened, but definitely human face looked out from behind the tree.

	It was Mark Annuncio.

	Fawkes stopped in mid-stride and stared. Finally, he managed to croak, "What are you doing here?"

	Mark said, staring at the blaster in the other's hand, "I was following you."

	"Why?"

	"To see what you would do. I was interested in what you might find. I thought if you saw me, you would send me away."

	Fawkes became conscious of the weapon he was still holding and put it away. It took three tries to get it into the holster.

	The first fat drops of rain began to fall. Fawkes said, harshly, "Don't say anything about this to the others."

	He glared hostilely at the youngster and they walked back to camp separately and in silence.



A central hall of pre-fab had been added to the seven tents now, and the group was together within it, sitting about the long table.

	It was a great moment, but a rather subdued one. Vernadsky, who had cooked for himself in his college days, was in charge. He lifted the steaming stew off the short-wave heater and said, "Calories, anyone?"

	He ladled the stuff lavishly.

	"It smells very good," said Novee, doubtfully.

	He lifted a piece of meat with his fork. It was purplish and still felt tough despite internal heating. The shredded herbs that surrounded it seemed softer, but looked less edible.

	"Well," said Vernadsky, "eat it. Put it in your mouth. I've tasted it and it's good."

	He crammed his mouth and chewed. He kept on chewing. "Tough, but good."

	Fawkes said, gloomily, "It'll probably kill us."

	"Nuts," said Vernadsky. "The rats have been living on it for two weeks."

	"Two weeks isn't much," said Novee.

	Rodriguez said, "Well, one bite won't kill. Say, it is good." And it was. They all agreed, eventually. So far, it seemed that whenever Junior's life could be eaten at all, it was good.

The grains were almost impossible to grind into flour, but that done, a protein-high cake could be baked. There was some on the table now; dark and heavy.. It wasn't ba~d, either.

	Fawkes had studied the herb life on Junior and come to the conclusion that an acre of Junior's surface, properly seeded and watered, could support ten times the number of grazing animals that an acre of Earthly alfalfa could.

	Sheffield had been impressed; spoke of Junior as the granary of a hundred worlds, but Fawkes dismissed his own statements with a shrug.

	He said, "Sucker bait."

	About a week earlier, the party had been agitated by the sudden refusal of the hamsters and white rats to touch certain new herbs Fawkes had brought in. Mixing small quantities with regular rations had resulted in the death of those that fed on it.

	Solution?

	Not quite. Vernadsky came in a few hours later and said, calmly, "Copper, lead, and mercury."

	"What?" said Cimon.

	"Those plants. They're high in heavy metals. Probably an evolutionary development to keep from being eaten."

	"The first settlers-" began Cimon.

	"No. That's impossible. Most of the plants are perfectly all right. Just these, and no one would eat them."

	"How do you know?"

	"The rats didn't."

	"They're just rats."

	It was what Vernadsky was waiting for. He said, dramatically, "You may hail a modest martyr to science. I tasted the stuff."

	"What?" yelled Novee.

	"Just a lick. Don't worry. I'm the careful-type martyr. Anyway, the stuff is as bitter as strychnine. What do you expect? If a plant is going to fill itself with lead just to keep the animals off, what good does it do the plant to have the animal find out by dying after he's eaten it? A little bitter stuff in addition acts as a warning. The combination warning and punishment does the trick."

	"Besides," said Novee, "it wasn't heavy metal poisoning that killed the settlers. The symptoms aren't right for it."

	The rest knew the symptoms well enough. Some in lay terms and some in more technical language. Difficult and painful breathing that grew steadily worse. That's what it amounted to.

	Fawkes put down his fork. "Look here, suppose this stuff contains some alkaloid that paralyzes the nerves that control the lung muscles."

	"Rats have lung muscles," said Vernadsky. "It doesn't kill them."

	"Maybe it's a cumulative thing."

	"All right. All right. Any time your breathing gets painful, go back to ship rations and see if you improve. But no fair counting psychosomatics."

	Sheffield grunted, "That's my job. Don't worry about it."

	Fawkes drew a deep breath, then another. Glumly, he put another piece of meat into his mouth.

	At one corner of the table, Mark Annuncio, eating more slowly than the rest, thought of Norris Vinograd's monograph on "Taste and Smell." Vinograd had made a taste-smell classification based on enzyme inhibition patterns within the taste buds. Annuncio did not know what that meant exactly but he remembered the symbols, their values, and the descriptive definitions.

	While he placed the taste of the stew to three subclassifications, he finished his helping. His jaws ached faintly because of the difficult chewing.



EVENING was approaching and Lagrange I was low in the sky. It had been a bright day, reasonably warm, and Boris Vernadsky felt pleased. He had made interesting measurements and his brilliantly colored sweater had showed fascinating changes from hour to hour as the suns' positions shifted.

	Right now, his shadow was a long red thing, with the lowest third of it gray, where the Lagrange II shadow coincided. He held out one arm and it cast two shadows. There was a smeared orange one some fifteen feet away and a denser blue

one in the same direction but only five feet away. If he had time, he could work out a beautiful set of shadowgrams.

	He was so pleased with the thought that he felt no resentment at seeing Mark Annuncio skirting his trail in the distance.

	He put down his nucleometer and waved his hand. "Come here!"

	The youngster approached diffidently. "Hello."

	"Want something?"

	"Just . . . just watching."

	"Oh? Well, go ahead and watch. Do you know what I'm doing?"

	Mark shook his head.

	"This is a nucleometer," said Vernadsky. "You jab it into the ground like this. It's got a force-field generator at the top so it will penetrate any rock." He leaned on the nucleometer as he spoke, and it went two feet into the stony outcropping. "See?"

	Mark's eyes shone, and Vernadsky felt pleased. The chemist said, "Along the sides of the uniped are microscopic atomic furnaces, each of which vaporizes about a million molecules or so in the surrounding rock and decomposes them into atoms. The atoms are then differentiated in terms of nuclear mass and charge and the results may be read off directly on the dials above. Do you follow all that?"

	"I'm not sure. But it's a good thing to know."

	Vernadsky smiled, and said, "We end up with figures on the different elements in the crust. It's pretty much the same on all oxygenlwater planets."

	Mark said, seriously, "The planet with the most silicon I know of is Lepta with 32.765 per cent. Earth is only 24.862. That's by weight."

	Vernadsky's smile faded. He said, dryly, "You have the figures on all the planets, pal?"

	"Oh, no. I couldn't. I don't think they've all been surveyed. Bischoon and Spenglow's 'Handbook of Planetary Crusts' only lists figures for twenty-one thousand eight hundred and fiftyfour planets. I know all those, of course."

	Vernadsky, with a definite feeling of deflation, said, "Now Junior has a more even distribution of elements than is usually met up with. Oxygen is low. So far my average is a lousy

42.113. So is silicon, with 22.722. The heavy metals are ten to a hundred times as concentrated as on Earth. That's not just a local phenomenon, either, since Junior's over-all density is five per cent higher than Earth's."

	Vernadsky wasn't sure why he was telling the kid all this. Partly, he felt, because it was good to find someone who would listen. A man gets lonely and frustrated when there is no one of his own field to talk to.

	He went on, beginning to relish the lecture. "On the other hand, the lighter elements are also better distributed. The ocean solids aren't predominantly sodium chloride as on Earth. Junior's oceans contain a respectable helping of magnesium salts. And take what they call the 'rare lights.' Those are the elements lithium, beryllium, and boron. They're lighter than carbon, all of them, but they are of very rare occurrence on Earth, and in fact, on all planets. Junior, on the other hand, is quite rich in them. The three of them total almost fourtenths of a per cent of the crust as compared to about fourthousandths on Earth."

	Mark plucked at the other's sleeve. "Do you have a list of figures on all the elements? May I see?"

	"I suppose so." He took a folded piece of paper out of his hippocket.

	He grinned as Mark took the sheet and said, "Don't publish those figures before I do."

	Mark glanced at them once and returned the paper.

	"Are you through?" asked Vernadsky in surprise.

	"Oh, yes," said Mark, thoughtfully, "I have it all." He turned on his heel and walked away with no word of parting.

	The last glimmer of Lagrange I faded below the horizon.

	Vernadsky gazed after Mark and shrugged. He plucked his nucleometer out of the ground, and followed after, walking back toward the tents.



SHEFFIELD was moderately pleased. Mark had been doing better than expected. To be sure, he scarcely talked but that was not very serious. At least, he showed interest and didn't sulk. And he threw no tantrums.

	Vernadsky was even telling Sheffield that last evening Mark had spoken to him quite normally, without raised voices on

either side, about planetary crust analyses. Vernadsky had laughed a bit about it, saying that Mark knew the crust analyses of twenty thousand planets and some day he'd have the boy repeat them all just to see how long it would take.

	Mark, himself, had made no mention of the matter. In fact, he had spent the morning sitting in his tent. Sheffield had looked in, seen him on his cot, staring at his feet, and had left him to himself.

	What he really needed at the moment, Sheffield felt, was a bright idea for himself-a really bright one.

	So far, everything had come to nothing-a whole month of everything. Rodriguez held fast against any infection. Vernadsky absolutely barred food poisoning. Novee shook his head with vehement negativeness at suggestions of disturbed metabolism. "Where's the evidence?" he kept saying.

	What it amounted to was that every physical cause of death was eliminated on the strength of expert opinion. But men, women, and children had died. There must be a reason. Could it be psychological?

	He had satirized the matter to Cimon for a purpose before they had come out here, but it was now time and more than time to be serious about it. Could the settlers have been driven to suicide? Why? Humanity had colonized tens of thousands of planets without its having seriously affected mental stability. In fact, the suicide rate, as well as the incidence of psychoses, were higher on Earth than anywhere else in the galaxy.

	Besides, the settlement had called frantically for medical help. They didn't want to die.

	Personality disorders? Something peculiar to that one group? Enough to affect over a thousand people to the death? Unlikely. Besides, how could any evidence be uncovered? The settlement site had been ransacked for any films or records, even the most frivolous. Nothing. A century of dampness left nothing so fragile as purposeful records.

	So he was working in a vacuum. He felt helpless. The others, at least, had data; something to chew on. He had nothing.

	He found himself at Mark's tent again and looked inside automatically. It was empty. He looked about and spied Mark walking out of the camp and into the woods.

	Sheffield cried out after him, "Mark! Wait for me!"

	Mark stopped, made as though to go on, thought better of it, and let Sheffield's long legs consume the distance between them.

	Sheffield said, "Where are you off to?" (Even after running, it was unnecessary to pant in Junior's rich atmosphere.)

	Mark's eyes were sullen. "To the air-coaster."

	"Oh?"

	"I haven't had a chance to look at it."

	"Why, of course you've had a chance," said Sheffield. "You were watching Fawkes like a hawk on the trip over."

	Mark scowled. "Everyone was around. I want to see it for myself."

	Sheffield felt disturbed. The kid was angry. He'd better tag along and try to find out what was wrong. He said, "Come to think of it, I'd like to see the coaster myself. You don't mind having me along, do you?"

	Mark hesitated. Then he said, 'We-ell. If you want to." It wasn't exactly a gracious invitation.

	Sheffield said, "What are you carrying, Mark?"

	"Tree branch. I cut it off with the buzz-field gun. I'm taking it with me just in case anyone wants to stop me." He swung it so that it whistled through the thick air.

	"Why should anyone want to stop you, Mark? I'd throw it away. It's hard and heavy. You could hurt someone."

	Mark was striding on. "I'm not throwing it away." Sheffield pondered briefly, then decided against a quarrel at the moment. It would be better to get to the basic reason for this hostility first. "All right," he said.

	The air-coaster lay in a clearing, its clear metal surface throwing back green highlights. (Lagrange II had not yet risen.)

	Mark looked carefully about.

	"There's no one in sight, Mark," said Sheffield. They climbed aboard. It was a large coaster. It had carried seven men and the necessary supplies in only three trips.

	Sheffield looked at its control panel with something quite close to awe. He said, "Imagine a botanist like Fawkes learning to run one of these things. It's so far outside his specialty."

	"I can run one," said Mark, suddenly.

	Sheffield stared at him in surprise. "You can?"

	"I watched Dr. Fawkes when we came. I know everything he did. And he has a repair manual for the coaster. I sneaked that out once and read it."

	Sheffield said lightly, "Well, that's very nice. We have a spare navigator for an emergency, then."

	He turned away from Mark then, so he never saw the tree limb as it came down on his head. He didn't hear Mark's troubled voice saying, "I'm sorry, Dr. Sheffield." He didn't even, properly speaking, feel the concussion that knocked him out.



IT was the jar of the coaster's landing, Sheffield later thought, that first brought consciousness back. It was a dim aching sort of thing that had no understanding in it at first.

	The sound of Mark's voice was floating up to him. That was his first sensation. Then as he tried to roll over and get a knee beneath him, he could feel his head throbbing.

	For a while, Mark's voice was only a collection of sounds that meant nothing to him. Then they began to coalesce into words. Finally, when his eyes fluttered open and light entered stabbingly so that he had to close them again, he could make out sentences. He remained where he was, head hanging, one quivering knee holding him up.

	Mark was saying in a breathless, high-pitched voice, ". . . A thousand people all dead. Just graves. And nobody knows why."

	There was a rumble Sheffield couldn't make out. A hoarse deep voice.

	Then Mark again, "It's true. Why do you suppose all the scientists are aboard?"

	Sheffield lifted achingly to his feet and rested against one wall. He put his hand to his head and it came away bloody. His hair was caked and matted with it. Groaning, he staggered toward the coaster's cabin door. He fumbled for the hook and yanked it inward.

	The landing ramp had been lowered. For a moment, he stood there, swaying, afraid to trust his legs.

	He had to take in everything by installments. Both suns were high in the sky and a thousand feet away, the giant steel

cylinder of the Triple G reared its nose high above the runty trees that ringed it.

	Mark was at the foot of the ramp, semicircled by members of the crew. The crewmen were stripped to the waist and browned nearly black in the ultraviolet of Lagrange I. (Thanks only to the thick atmosphere and the heavy ozone coating in the upper reaches for keeping UV down to a livable range.)

	The crewman directly before Mark was leaning on a baseball bat. Another tossed a ball in the air and caught it. Many of the rest were wearing gloves.

	"Funny," thought Sheffield, erratically, "Mark landed right in the middle of a ball park."

	Mark looked up and saw him. He screamed, excitedly, "All right, ask him. Go ahead, ask him. Dr. Sheffield, wasn't there an expedition to this planet once and they all died mysteriously?"

	Sheffield tried to say: Mark, what are you doing? He couldn't. When he opened his mouth only a moan came out.

	The crewman with the bat said, "Is this little gumboil telling the truth, mister?"

	Sheffield held on to the railing with two perspiring hands. The crewman's face seemed to waver. The face had thick lips on it and small eyes buried under bristly eyebrows. It wavered very badly.

	Then the ramp came up and whirled about his head. There was ground gripped in his hands suddenly and a cold ache on his cheekbone. He gave up the fight and let go of consciousness again.



HE came awake less painfully the second time. He was in bed now and two misty faces leaned over him. A long, thin object passed across his line of vision and a voice, just heard above the humming in his ears, said, "He'll come to now, Cimon."

	Sheffield closed his eyes. Somehow he seemed to be aware of the fact that his skull was thoroughly bandaged.

	He lay quietly for a minute, breathing deeply. When he opened his eyes again, the faces above him were clear. There was Novee's round face, a small, professionally-serious line

between his eyes that cleared away when Sheffield said, "Hello, Novee."

	The other man was Cimon, jaws set and angry, yet with a look of something like satisfaction in his eyes.

	Sheffield said, "Where are we?"

	Cimon said, coldly, "In space, Dr. Sheffield. Two days out in space."

	"Two days, out-" Sheffield's eyes widened and he tried to rise.

	Novee interposed. "You've had a bad concussion, nearly a fracture, Sheffield. Take it easy."

	"Well, what hap-Where's Mark? Where's Mark ?"

	"Easy. Easy now." Novee put a hand on each of Sheffield's shoulders and pressed him down.

	Cimon said, "Your boy is in the brig. In case you want to know why, he deliberately caused mutiny on board ship, thus endangering the safety of five men. We were almost marooned at our temporary camp, because the crew wanted to leave immediately. He persuaded them, the captain did, to pick us up.',

	Sheffield remembered now, very vaguely. There was just that fuzzy memory of Mark and a man with a bat. Mark saying "...A thousand people all dead-"

	The psychologist hitched himself up on one elbow with a tremendous effort. "Listen, Cimon, I don't know why Mark did it, but let me talk to him. I'll find out."

	Cimon said, "No need of that. It will all come out at the trial."

	Sheffield tried to brush Novee's restraining arm to one side. "But why make it formal? Why involve the Bureau? We can settle this among ourselves."

	"That's exactly what we intend to do. The captain is empowered by the laws of space to preside over trials involving crimes and misdemeanors in deep space."

	"The captain. A trial here? On board ship? Cimon, don't let him do it. It will be murder."

	"Not at all. It will be a fair and proper trial. I'm in full agreement with the captain. Discipline demands a trial."

	Novee said, uneasily, "Look, Cimon, I wish you wouldn't. He's in no shape to take this."

	"Too bad," said Cimon.

	Sheffield said, "But you don't understand. I'm responsible for the boy."

	"On the contrary, I do understand," said Cimon. "It's why we've been waiting for you to regain consciousness. You're standing trial with him."

	"What!"

	"You are generally responsible for his actions. Specifically, you were with him when he stole the air-coaster. The crew saw you at the coaster's cabin door while Mark was inciting mutiny."

	"But he cracked my skull in order to take the coaster. Can't you see that's the act of a seriously disturbed mind? He can't be held responsible."

	"We'll let the captain decide, Sheffield. You stay with him, Novee." He turned to go.

	Sheffield called on what strength he could muster. "Cimon," he shouted, "you're doing this to get back at me for the lesson in psychology I taught you. You're a narrow . . . petty-"

	He fell back on his pillow, breathless.

	Cimon, from the door, said, "And by the way, Sheffield, the penalty for inciting mutiny on board ship is death!"



WELL, it was a kind of trial, Sheffield thought grimly. Nobody was following accurate legal procedure, but then, the psychologist felt certain, no one knew the accurate legal procedure, least of all the captain.

	They were using the large assembly room where, on ordinary cruises, the crew got together to watch subetheric broadcasts. At this time, the crew was rigidly excluded, though all the scientific personnel were present.

	Captain Follenbee sat behind a desk just underneath the subetheric reception cube. Sheffield and Mark Annuncio sat by themselves at his left, faces toward him.

	The captain was not at ease. He alternated between informal exchanges with the various "witnesses" and sudden super-judicial blasts against whispering among the spectators.

	Sheffield and Mark, having met one another in the "courtroom" for the first time since the flight of the air-coaster, shook hands solemnly on the former's initiative. Mark had hung back at first, looking up briefly at the crisscross of tape still present on the shaven patch oh Sheffield's skull.

	"I'm sorry, Dr. Sheffield. I'm very sorry."

	"It's all right, Mark. How have they been treating you?"

	"All right, I guess."

	The captain's voice boomed out, "No talking among the accused."

	Sheffield retorted in a conversational tone, "Listen, captain, we haven't had lawyers. We haven't had time to prepare a case."

	"No lawyers necessary," said the captain. "This isn't a court trial on Earth. Captain's investigation. Different thing. Just interested in facts, not legal fireworks. Proceedings can be reviewed back on Earth."

	"And we can be dead by then," said Sheffield, hotly.

	"Let's get on with it," said the captain, banging his desk with an aluminum T-wedge.

	Cimon sat in the front row of the audience, smiling thinly. It was he that Sheffield watched most uneasily.

	The smile never varied as witnesses were called upon to state that they had been informed that the crew was on no account to be told of the true nature of the trip; that Sheffield and Mark had been present when told. A mycologist testified to a conversation he had had with Sheffield which indicated the latter to be well aware of the prohibition.

	It was brought out that Mark had been sick for most of the trip out to Junior, that he had behaved erratically after they had landed on Junior.

	"How do you explain all that?" asked the captain.

	From the audience, Cimon's calm voice suddenly sounded. "He was frightened. He was willing to do anything that would get him off the planet."

	Sheffield sprang to his feet. "His remarks are out of order. He's not a witness."

	The captain banged his T-wedge and said, "Sit down!"

	The trial went on. A crew member was called in to testify that Mark had informed him of the first expedition and that Sheffield had stood by while that was done.

	Sheffield cried, "I want to cross-examine!"

The captain said, "You'll get your chance later." The crewman was shooed out.



SHEFFIELD studied the audience. It seemed obvious that their sympathy was not entirely with the captain. He was psychologist enough to be able to wonder, even at this point, how many of them were secretly relieved at having left Junior, and actually grateful to Mark for having precipitated the matter as he did. Then, too, the obvious kangaroo nature of the court didn't sit well with them. Vernadsky was frowning darkly, while Novee stared at Cimon with obvious distaste.

	It was Cimon who worried Sheffield. He, the psychologist felt, must have argued the captain into this and it was he who might insist on the extreme penalty. Sheffield was bitterly regretful of having punctured the man's pathological vanity.

	But what really puzzled Sheffield above all was Mark's attitude. He was showing no signs of spacesickness or of unease of any kind. He listened to everything closely but seemed moved by nothing. He acted as though nothing mundane concerned him at the moment; as though certain information he himself held made everything else of no account.

	The captain banged his T-wedge and said, "I guess we have it all. Facts all clear. No argument. We can finish this."

	Sheffield jumped up again. "Hold on. Aren't we getting our turn?"

	"Quiet," ordered the captain.

	"You keep quiet." Sheffield turned to the audience. "Listen, we haven't had a chance to defend ourselves. We haven't even had the right to cross-examine. Is that just?"

	There was a murmur that buzzed up above the sound of the T-wedge.

	Cimon said, coldly, "What's there to defend?"

	"Maybe nothing," shouted back Sheffield, "in which case what have you to lose by hearing us? Or are you afraid we have considerable to defend?"

	Individual calls from the audience were sounding now. "Let him talk!"

	Cimon shrugged. "Go ahead."

	The captain said, sullenly, "What do you want to do?"

	Sheffield said, "Act as my own lawyer and call Mark Annuncio as my principal witness."

	Mark stood up, calmly enough. Sheffield turned his chair to face the audience and motioned him down again.

	Sheffield decided there was no use in trying to imitate the courtroom dramas he had watched on the subether. Pompous questions on name and condition of past life would get nowhere. Better to be direct.

	So he said, "Mark, did you know what would happen when you told the crew about the first expedition?"

	"Yes, Dr. Sheffield."

	"Why did you do it then?"

	"Because it was important that we all get away from Junior without losing a minute. Telling the crew the truth was the fastest way of getting us off the planet."

	Sheffield could feel the bad impression that answer made on the audience, but he could only follow his instinct. That, and his psychologist's decision that only special knowledge could make Mark or any Mnemonic so calm in the face of adversity. After all, special knowledge was their business.

	He said, "Why was it important to leave Junior, Mark?"

	Mark didn't flinch. He looked straight at the watching scientists. "Because I know what killed the first expedition, and it was only a question of time before it killed us. In fact, it maybe too late already. We may be dying now. We may, every one of us, be dead men."

	Sheffield let the murmur from the audience well up and subside. Even the captain seemed shocked into T-wedge immobility while Cimon's smile grew quite faint.

	For the moment, Sheffield was less concerned with Mark's "knowledge," whatever it was, than that he had acted independently on the basis of it. It had happened before. Mark had searched the ship's log on the basis of a theory of his own. Sheffield felt pure chagrin at not having probed that tendency to the uttermost then and there.

	So his next question, asked in a grim enough voice, was, "Why didn't you consult me about this, Mark?"

	Mark faltered a trifle. "You wouldn't have believed me. It's why I had to hit you to keep you from stopping me. None of them would have believed me. They all hated me."

	"What makes you think they hated you?"

	"Well, you remember about Dr. Rodriguez."

	"That was quite a while ago. The others had no arguments with you."

	"I could tell the way Dr. Cimon looked at me. And Dr. Fawkes wanted to shoot me with a blaster."

	"What?" Sheffield whirled, forgetting in his own turn any formality due the trial. "Say, Fawkes, did you try to shoot him?"

	Fawkes stood up, face crimson, as all turned to look at him. He said, "I was out in the woods and he came sneaking up on me. I thought it was an animal and took precautions. When I saw it was he, I put the blaster away."

	Sheffield turned back to Mark. "Is that right?"

	Mark turned sullen again. "Well-I asked Dr. Vernadsky to see some data he had collected and he told me not to publish it before he did. He tried to make out that I was dishonest."

	"For the love of Earth, I was only joking," came a yell from the audience.

	Sheffield said, hurriedly, "Very well, Mark, you didn't trust us and you felt you had to take action on your own. Now, Mark, let's get to the point. What did you think killed the first settlers?"

	Mark said, "It might have killed the explorer Makoyama, too, for all I know except that he died in a crash two months and three days after reporting on Junior, so we'll never know."

	"All right, but what is it you're talking about?"

	A hush fell over everyone.

	Mark looked about and said, "The dust."

	Sheffield said, "What do you mean?"

	"The dust! The dust in the air. It has beryllium in it. Ask Dr. Vernadsky."

	Vernadsky stood up and pushed his way forward. "What's this?"

	"Sure," said Mark. "It was in the data you showed me. Beryllium was very high in the crust, so it must be in the dust in the air as well."

	Sheffield said, "What if beryllium is there? Let me ask the questions, Vernadsky. Please."

	"Beryllium poisoning, that's what. If you breathe beryllium

dust, non-healing granulomata, whatever they are, form in the lungs. Anyway, it gets hard to breathe and then you die."



A new voice, quite agitated, joined the melee. "What are you talking about? You're no physician."

	"I know that," said Mark, earnestly, "but I once read a very old book about poisons. It was so old, it was printed on actual sheets of paper. The library had some and I went through them, because it was such a novelty, you know."

	"All right," said Novee, "what did you read? Can you tell me?"

	Mark's chin lifted, "I can quote it. Word for word. 'A surprising variety of enzymatic reactions in the body are activated by any of a number of divalent metallic ions of similar ionic radius. Among these activators are magnesium, manganous zinc, ferrous, cobaltous, and nickelous ions, as well as others. Against all of these, the beryllium ion, which has a similar charge and size, acts as an inhibitor. Beryllium, therefore, serves to derange a number of enzyme-catalyzed reactions. Since the lungs have, apparently, no way of excreting beryllium, diverse metabolic derangements causing serious illness and death can result from inhaling dust containing certain beryllium salts. Cases exist in which one known exposure has resulted in death. The onset of symptoms is insidious, being delayed sometimes for as long as three years after exposure. Prognosis is not good.'"

	The captain leaned forward in agitation. "Novee, is he making sense?"

	Novee said, "I don't know if he's right or not, but there's nothing absurd in what he's saying."

	Sheffield said sharply, "You mean you don't know if beryllium is poisonous or not."

	"No, I don't," said Novee.

	"Isn't beryllium used for anything?" Sheffield turned to Vernadsky. "Is it?"

	Vernadsky said in vast surprise, "No, it isn't. Damn it, I can't think of a single use. I tell you what, though. In the early days of atomic power, it was used in the primitive uranium piles as a neutron decelerator, along with other things like paraffin and graphite. I'm almost sure of that."

	"It isn't used now, though?" asked Sheffield.

	An electronics man said, quite suddenly, "I think beryllium-zinc coatings were used in the first fluorescent lights."

	"No more, though?" asked Sheffield.

	"No."

	Sheffield said, "Well, then, listen, all of you. In the first place, anything Mark quotes is accurate. That's what the book said, if he says so. It's my opinion that beryllium is poisonous. In ordinary life it doesn't matter because the beryllium content of the soil is so low. When man concentrates beryllium to use in nuclear piles or in fluorescent lights or even in alloys, he comes across the toxicity and looks for substitutes.

	"He finds substitutes, forgets about beryllium, and eventually forgets about its toxicity. And then we come across an unusual beryllium-rich planet like Junior and we can't figure out what hits us. It takes a Mnemonic to remember the old, forgotten data."

	Cimon didn't seem to be listening. He said, in a low voice, "What does that mean, 'prognosis is not good'?"

	Novee said, abstractedly, "It means that if you've got beryllium poisoning, you won't recover."

	Cimon fell back in his chair, chewing his lip.

	Novee said to Mark, "I suppose the symptoms of beryllium poisoning-"

	Mark said at once, "I can give you the full list. I don't understand the words but-"

	"Was one of them 'dyspnea'?"

	"Yes."

	Novee sighed and said, "I say that we get back to Earth as quickly as possible and get under medical investigation."

	Cimon said, weakly, "But if we won't recover, what use is it?"

	Novee said, "Medical science has advanced since the days of books printed on paper. Besides, we may not have received the toxic dose. The first settlers survived for over a year of continuous exposure. We've had only a month, thanks to Mark Annuncio's quick and drastic action."

	Fawkes, miserably unhappy, yelled, "Captain, get us back to Earth."

	It amounted to the end of the trial. Sheffield and Mark walked out among the first.

	Cimon was the last, with thegait of a man already dead in all but fact.



THE Lagrange system was only a star lost in the receding cluster. Sheffield looked at that large patch of light and said, "So beautiful a planet." He sighed. "Well, let's hope we live. In any case, the government will watch out for berylliumhigh planets in the future. There'll be no catching mankind with that particular variety of sucker bait any more."

	Mark did not respond to that idealism. The trial was over; the excitement was gone. There were tears in his eyes. He could only think that he might die; and that if he did, there were so many things, so many, many things in the universe that he would never learn.














THE SECRET SENSE by Isaac Asimov

 (Author of "Homo Sol," "Trends," etc.) The Martians couldn't taste and their hearing was bad, but they had a secret  sense all of their own.

THE LILTING strains of a Strauss waltz filled the room. The music waxed and  waned beneath the sensitive fingers of Lincoln Fields, and through half-closed  eyes he could almost see whirling figures pirouetting about the waxed floor of  some luxurious salon.

Music always affected him that way. It filled his mind with dreams of sheer  beauty and transformed his room into a paradise of sound. His hands flickered  over the piano in the last delicious combinations of tones and then slowed  reluctantly to a halt.

He sighed and for a moment remained absolutely silent as if trying to extract  the last essence of beauty from the dying echoes. Then he turned and smiled  faintly at the other occupant of the room.

Garth Jan smiled in turn but said nothing. Garth had a great liking for Lincoln  Fields, though little understanding. They were worlds apart--literally--for  Garth hailed from the giant underground cities of Mars while Fields was the  product of sprawling Terrestrial New York.

"How was that, Garth, old fellow?" questioned Fields doubtfully.

Garth shook his head. He spoke in his precise, painstaking manner, "I listened  attentively and can truly say that it was not unpleasant. There is a certain  rhythm, a cadence of sorts, which, indeed, is rather soothing. But beautiful?  No!"

There was pity in Fields' eyes--pity almost painful in its intensity. The  Martian met the gaze and understood all that it meant, yet there was no  answering spark of envy. His bony giant figure remained doubled up in a chair  that was too small for him and one thin leg swung leisurely back and forth.

Fields lunged out of his seat impetuously and grasped his companion by the arm.  "Here! Seat yourself on the bench."

Garth obeyed genially. "I see you want to carry out some little experiment."

"You've guessed it. I've read scientific works which tried to explain all about  the difference in senseequipment between Earthman and Martian, but I never could  quite grasp it all."

He tapped the notes C and F in a single octave and glanced at the Martian  inquiringly.

"If there's a difference," said Garth doubtfully, "it's a very slight one. If I  were listening casually, I would certainly say you had hit the same note twice."

The Earthman marvelled. "How's this?" He tapped C and G.

"I can hear the difference this time."

"Well, I suppose all they say about your people is true. You poor fellows �to  have such a crude sense of hearing. You don't know what you're missing."

The Martian shrugged his shoulders fatalistically. "One misses nothing that one  has never possessed."

Garth Jan broke the short silence that followed. "Do you realize that this  period of history is the first in which two intelligent races have been able to  communicate with each other? The comparison of sense equipment is highly  interesting--and rather broadens one's views on life."

"That's right," agreed the Earthman, "though we seem to have all the advantage  of the comparison. You know a Terrestrial biologist stated last month that he  was amazed that a race so poorly equipped in the matter of sense-perception  could develop so high a civilization as yours."

"All is relative, Lincoln. What we have is sufficient for us."

Fields felt a growing frustration within him. "But if you only knew, Garth, if  you only knew what you were missing.

"You've never seen the beauties of a sunset or of dancing flelds of flowers. You  can't admire the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, the yellow of ripe  corn. To you the world consists of shades of dark and light." He shuddered at  the thought. "You can't smell a flower or appreciate its delicate perfume. You  can't even enjoy such a simple thing as a good, hearty meal. You can't taste nor  smell nor see color. I pity you for your drab world."

"What you say is meaningless, Lincoln. Waste no pity on me, for I am as happy as  you." He rose and reached for his cane--necessary in the greater gravitational  field of Earth.

"You must not judge us with such easy superiority, you know." That seemed to be  the galling aspect of the matter. "We do not boast of certain accomplishments of  our race of which you know nothing."

And then, as if heartily regretting his words, a wry grimace overspread his  face, and he started for he door.

FIELDS sat puzzled and thoughtful for a moment, then jumped up and ran after the  Martian who was stumping his way towards the exit. He gripped Garth by the  shoulder and insisted that he return.

"What did you mean by that last remark?"

The Martian turned his face away as if unable to face his questioner. "Forget  it, Lincoln. That was just a moment of indiscretion when your unsolicited pity  got on my nerves."

Fields gave him a sharp glance. "It's true, isn't it? It's logical that Martians  possess senses Earthmen do not, but it passes the bounds of reason that your  people should want to keep it secret."

"That is as it may be. But now that you've found me out through my own utter  stupidity, you will perhaps agree to let it go no further?"

"Of course! I'll be as secret as the grave, though I'm darned if I can make  anything of it. Tell me, of what nature is this secret sense of yours?"

Garth Jan shrugged listlessly. "How can I explain? Can you define color to me,  who cannot even conceive it?"

"I'm not asking for a definition. Tell me its uses. Please," he gripped the  other's shoulder, "you might as well. I have given my promise of secrecy."

The Martian sighed heavily. "It won't do you much good. Would it satisfy you to  know that if you were to show me two containers, each filled with a clear  liquid, I could tell you at once whether either of the two were poisonous? Or,  if you were to show me a copper wire, I could tell instantly whether an electric  current were passing through it, even if it were as little as a thousandth of an  ampere. Or I could tell you the temperature of any substance within three  degrees of the true vaalue even � if you held it as much as five yards away. Or  I could--well, I've said enough."

"Is that all?" demanded Fields, with a disappointed cry.

"What more do you wish?"

"All you've described is very useful-but where is the beauty in it? Has this  strange sense of yours no value to the spirit as well as to the body?"

Garth Jan made an impatient movement. "Really, Lincoln, you talk foolishly. I  have given you only that for which you asked--the uses I put this sense to. I  certainly didn't attempt to explain its nature. Take your color sense. As far as  I can see its only use is in making certain fine distinctions which I cannot.  You can identify certain chemical solutions, for instance, by something you call  color when I would be forced to run a chemical analysis. Where's the beauty in  that?"

Field opened his mouth to speak but the Martian motioned him testily into  silence. "I know. You're going to babble foolishness about sunsets or something.  But what do you know of beauty? Have you ever known what it was to witness the  beauty of the naked copper wires when an AC current is turned on? Have you  sensed the delicate loveliness of induced currents set up in a solenoid when a  magnet is passed through it? Have you ever attended a Martian pogrtwem?"

Garth Jan's eyes had grown misty with the thoughts he was conjuring up, and  Fields stared in utter amazement. The shoe was on the other foot now and his  sense of superiority left him of a sudden.

"Every race has its own attributes," he mumbled with a fatalism that had just a  trace of hypocrisy in it, "but I see no reason why you should keep it such a  blasted secret. We Earthmen have kept no secrets from your race."

"Don't accuse us of ingratitude," cried Garth Jan vehemently. According to the  Martian code of ethics, ingratitude was the supreme vice, and at the insinuation  of that Garth's caution left him. "We never act without reason, we Martians. And  certainly it is not for our own sake that we hide this magnificent ability."

The Earthman smiled mockingly. He was on the trail of something--he felt it in  his bones--and the only way to get it out was to tease it out.

"No doubt there is some nobility behind it all. It is a strange attribute of  your race that you can always find some altruistic motive for your actions."

GARTH JAN bit his lip angrily "You have no right to say that." For a moment he  thought of pleading worry over Fields' future peace of mind as a reason for  silence, but the latter's mocking reference to "altruism" had rendered that  impossible. A feeling of anger crept over him gradually and that forced him to  his decision.

There was no mistaking the note of frigid unfriendliness that entered his voice.  "I'll explain by analogy." The Martian stared straight ahead of him as he spoke,  eyes half-closed.

"You have told me that I live in a world that is composed merely of shades of  light and dark. You try to describe a world of your own composed of infinite  variety and beauty. I listen but care little concerning it. I have never known  it and never can know it. One does not weep over the loss of what one has never  owned.

"But--what if you were able to give me the ability to see color for five  minutes? What if, for five minutes, I reveled in wonders undreamed of? What if,  after those five minutes, I have to return it forever? Would those five minutes  of paradise be worth a lifetime of regret afterwards--a lifetime of  dissatisfaction because of my own shortcomings? Would it not have been the  kinder act never to have told me of color in the first place and so have removed  its ever-present temptation?"

Fields had risen to his feet during the last part of the Martian's speech and  his eyes opened wide in a wild surmise. "Do you mean an Earthman can possess the  Martian sense if so desired?"

"For five minutes in a lifetime," Garth Jan's eyes grew dreamy, "and in those  flve minutes sense--"

He came to a confused halt and glared angrily at his companion, "You know more  than is good for you. See that you don't forget your promise."

He rose hastily and hobbled away as quickly as he could, leaning heavily upon  the cane. Lincoln Fields made no move to stop him. He merely sat there and  thought.

THE GREAT height of the cavern shrouded the roof in misty obscurity in which, at  fixed intervals, there floated luminescent globes of radite. The air, heated by  this subterranean volcanic stratum, wafted past gently. Before Lincoln Fields  stretched the wide, paved avenue of the principal city of Mars, fading away into  the distance.

He clumped awkwardly up to the entrance of the home of Garth Jan, the  six-inch-thick layer of lead attached to each shoe a nuisance unending. Though  it was still better than the uncontrollable bounding Earth muscles brought about  in this lighter gravity.

The Martian was surprised to see his friend of six months ago but not altogether  joyful. Fields was not slow to notice this but he merely smiled to himself. The  opening formalities passed, the conventional remarks were made, and the two  seated themselves.

Fields crushed the cigarette in the ash-tray and sat upright suddenly serious.  "I've come to ask for those five minutes you claim you can give me! May I have  them?"

"Is that a rhetorical question? It certainly doesn't seem to require an answer."  Garth's tone was openly contemptuous.

The Earthman considered the other thoughtfully. "Do you mind if I outline my  position in a few words?"

The Martian smiled indifferently. "It won't make any difference," he said.

"I'll take my chance on that. The situation is this: I've been born and reared  in the lap of luxury and have been most disgustingly spoiled. I've never yet had  a reasonable desire that I have not been able to fulfill, and I don't know what  it means not to get what I want. Do you see?"

There was no answer and he continued, "I have found my happinese in beautiful  sights, beautiful words, and beautiful sounds. I have made a cult of beauty. In  a word, I am an aesthete."

"Most interesting," the Martian's stony expression did not change a whit, "but  what bearing has all this on the problem at hand?"

"Just this: You speak of a new form of beauty--a form unknown to me at present  and entirely inconceivable even, but one which could be known if you so wished.  The notion attracts me. It more than attracts me--it makes its demands of me.  Again I remind you that when a notion begins to make demands of me, I yield--I  always have."

"You are not the master in this case," reminded Garth Jan. "It is crude of me to  remind you of this, but you cannot force me, you know. Your words, in fact, are  almost offensive in their implications."

"I am glad you said that, for it allows me to be crude in my turn without  offending my conscience."

Garth Jan's only reply to this was a self-confident grimace.

"I make my demand of you," said Fields, slowly, "in the name of gratitude."

"Gratitude?" the Martian started violently.

Fieids grinned broadly, "It's an appeal no honorable Martian can refuse--by your  own ethics. You owe me gratitude, now, because it was through me you gained  entrance into the houses of the greatest and most honorable men of Earth."

"I know that," Garth Jan flushed angrily. "You are impolite to remind me of it."

"I have no choice. You acknowledged the gratitude you owe me in actual words,  back on Earth. I demand the chance to possess this mysterious sense you keep so  secret--in the name of this acknowledged gratitude. Can you refuse now?"

"You know I can't," was the gloomy response. "I hesitated only for your own  sake."

The Martian rose and held out his hand gravely, "You have me by the neck,  Lincoln. It is done. Afterwards, though, I owe you nothing more. This will pay  my debt of gratitude. Agreed?"

"Agreed!" The two shook hands and Lincoln Fields continued in an entirely  different tone. "We're still friends, though, aren't we? This little altercation  won't spoil things?"

"I hope not. Come! Join me at the evening meal and we can discuss the time and  place of your--er--five minutes."

Lincoln Fields tried hard to down the faint nervousness that filled him as he  waited in Garth Jan's private "concert"-room. He felt a sudden desire to laugh  as the thought came to him that he felt exactly as he usually did in a dentist's  waiting room.

He lit his tenth cigarette, puffed twice and threw it away, "You're doing this  very elaborately, Garth."

The Martian shrugged, "You have only five minutes so I might as well see to it  that they are put to the best possible use. You're going to 'hear' part of a  portwem which is to our sense what a great symphony (is that the word?) is to  sound."

"Have we much longer to wait? The suspense, to be trite, is terrible."

"We're waiting for Novi Lon, who is to play the portwem, and for Done Vol, my  private physician. They'll be along soon."

Fields wandered on to the low dais that occupied the center of the room and  regarded the intricate mechanism thereupon with curious interest. The fore-part  was encased in gleaming aluminum leaving exposed only seven tiers of shining  black knobs above and five large white pedals below. Behind, however, it lay  open and within there ran crossings and recrossings of fine wires in incredibly  complicated paths.

"A curious thing, this," remarked the Earthman.

The Martian joined him on the dais, "It's an expensive instrument. It cost me  ten thousand Martian credits."

"How does it work?"

"Not so differently from a Terrestrial piano. Each of the upper knobs controls a  different electric circuit. Singly and together an expert portwem player could,  by manipulating the knobs, form any conceivable pattern of electric current. The  pedals below control the strength of the current."

Fields nodded absently and ran his fingers over the knobs at random. Idly, he  noticed the small galvanometer located just above the keys kick violently each  time he depressed a knob. Aside from that, he sensed nothing.

"Is the instrument really playing?"

The Martian smiled, "Yes, it is. And a set of unbelievably atrocious discords  too."

He took a seat before the instrument and with a murmured "Here's how!" his  fingers skimmed rapidly and accurately over the gleaming buttons.

The sound of a reedy Martian voice crying out in strident accents broke in upon  him, and Garth Jan ceased in sudden embarrassment. "This is Novi Lon," he said  hastily to Fields, "As usual he does not like my playing."

Fields rose to meet the newcomer. He was bent of shoulder and evidently of great  age. A fine tracing of wrinkles, especially about eyes and mouth, covered his  face.

"So this is the young Earthman," he cried, in strongly-accented English. "I  disapprove your rashness but sympathize with your desire to attend a portwem. It  is a great pity you can own our sense for no more than five minutes. Without it  no one can truly be said to live."

Garth Jan laughed, "He exaggerates, Lincoln. He's one of the greatest musicians  of Mars, and thinks anyone doomed to damnation who would not rather attend a  portwem than breathe." He hugged the older man warmly, "He was my teacher in my  youth and many were the long hours in which he struggled to teach me the proper  combinations of circuits."

"And I have failed after all, you dunce," snapped the old Martian. "I heard your  attempt at playing as I entered. You still have not learned the proper fortgass  combination. You were desecrating the soul of the great Bar Danin. My pupil!  Bah! It is a disgrace!"

The entrance of the third Martian Done Vol, prevented Novi Lon from continuing  his tirade. Garth, glad of the reprieve, approached the physician hastily.

"Is all ready?"

"Yes," growled Vol surlily, "and a particularly uninteresting experiment this  will be. We know all the results beforehand." His eyes fell upon the Earthman,  whom he eyed contemptuously. "Is this the one who wishes to be inoculated?"

Lincoln Fields nodded eagerly and felt his throat and mouth go dry suddenly. He  eyed the newcomer uncertainly and felt uneasy at the sight of a tiny bottle of  clear liquid and a hypodermic which the physician had extracted from a case he  was carrying.

"What are you going to do?" he demanded.

"He'll merely inoculate you. It'll take a second," Garth Jan assured him. "You  see, the sense-organs in this case are several groups of cells in the cortex of  the brain. They are activated by a hormone, a synthetic preparation of which is  used to stimulate the dormant cells of the occasional Martian who is born--er--  'blind.' You'll receive the same treatment."

"Oh!--then Earthmen possess those cortex cells?"

"In a very rudimentary state. The concentrated hormone will activate them, but  only for five minutes. After that time, they are literally blown out as a result  of their unwonted activity. After that, they can't be re-activated under any  circumstances."

Done Vol completed his last-minute preparations and approached Fields. Without a  word, Fields extended his right arm and the hypodermic plunged in.

With the operation completed, the Terrestrial waited a moment or two and then  essayed a shaky laugh, "I don't feel any change."

"You won't for about ten minutes," explained Garth. "It takes time. Just sit  back and relax. Novi Lon has begun Bar Danin's 'Canals in the Desert'--it is my  favorite--and when the hormone begins its work you will find yourself in the  very mid dle of things."

Now that the die was cast irrevocably, Fields found himself stonily calm. Novi  I,on played furiously and Garth Jan, at the Earthman's right, was already lost  in the composition. Even Done Vol, the fussy doctor, had forgotten his  peevishness for the nonce.

Fields snickered under his breath. The Martians listened attentively but to him  the room was devoid of sound and--almost--of all other sensation as well.  What--no, it was impossible, of course--but what if it were just an elaborate  practical joke. He stirred uneasily and put the thought from his mind angrily.

The minutes passed; Novi Lon's fingers flew; Garth Jan's expression was one of  unfeigned delight. Then Lincoln Fields blinked his eyes rapidly. For a moment a  nimbus of color seemed to surround the musician and his instrument. He couldn't  identify it--but it was there. It grew and spread until the room was full of it.  Other hues came to join it and still others. They wove and wavered; expanding  and con tracting; changing with lightning speed and yet staying the same.  Intricate patterns of brilliant tints formed and faded, beating in silent bursts  of color upon the young man's eyeballs.

Simultaneously, there came the impression of sound. From a whisper it rose into  a glorious, ringing shout that wavered up and down the scale in quivering  tremolos. He seemed to hear every instrument from fife to bass viol  simultaneously, and yet, paradoxically, each rang in his ear in solitary  clearness.

And together with this, there came the more subtle sensation of odor. From a  suspicion, a mere trace, it waxed into a phantasmal field of flowers. Delicate  spicy scents followed each other in ever stronger succession; in gentle wafts of  pleasure.

Yet all this was nothing. Fields knew that. Somehow, he knew that what he saw,  heard, and smelt were mere delusions--mirages of a brain that frantically  attempted to interpret an entirely new conception in the old, familiar ways.

Gradually, the colors and the sounds and the scents died. His brain was  beginning to realize that that which beat upon it was something hitherto  unexperienced. The effect of the hormone became stronger, and suddenly--in one  burst--Fields realized what it was he sensed.

He didn't see it--nor hear it--nor smell it--nor taste it--nor feel it. He knew  what it was but he couldn't think of the word for it. Slowly, he realized that  there wasn't any word for it. Even more slowly, he realized that there wasn't  even any concept for it.

Yet he knew what it was.

There beat upon his brain something that consisted of pure waves of  enjoyment--something that lifted him out of himself and pitched him headlong  into a univeise unknown to him earlier. He was falling through an endless  eternity of--something. It wasn't sound or sight but it was--something.  Something that enfolded him and hid his surroundings from him--that's what it  was. It was endless and infinite in its variety and with each crashing wave, he  glimpsed a farther horizon, and the wonderful cloak of sensation became thicker  --and softer--and more beautiful.

Then came the discord. Like a little crack at first--marring a perfect beauty.  Then spreading and branching and growing wider, until, finally, it split apart  thunderously--though without a sound.

Lincoln Fields, dazed and bewildered, found himself back in the concert room  again.

He lurched to his feet and grasped Garth Jan by the arm violently, "Garth! Why  did he stop? Tell him to continue! Tell him!"

Garth Jan's startled expression faded into pity, "He is still playing, Lincoln."

The Earthman's befuddled stare showed no signs of understanding. He gazed about  him with unseeing eyes. Novi Lon's fingers sped across the keyboard as nimbly as  ever; the expression on his face was as rapt as ever. Slowly, the truth seeped  in, and the Earthman's empty eyes filled with horror.

He sat down, uttering one hoarse cry, and buried his head in his hands.

The five minutes had passed! There could be no return!

Garth Jan was smiling--a smile of dreadful malice, "I had pitied you just a  moment ago, Lincoln, but now I'm glad--glad! You forced this out of me--you made  me do this. I hope you're satisfied, because I certainly am. For the rest of  your life," his voice sank to a sibilant whisper, "you'll remember these five  minutes and know what it is you're missing--what it is you can never have again.  You are blind, Lincoln,--blind!"

The Earthman raised a haggard face and grinned, but it was no more than a  horrible baring of the teeth. It took every ounce of will-power he possessed to  maintain an air of composure.

He did not trust himself to speak. With wavering step, he marched out of the  room, head held high to the end.

And within, that tiny, bitter voice, repeating over and over again, "You entered  a normal man! You leave blind--blind--BLIND."



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