but he was afraid that the NSA could eavesdrop on the conversation with a 
directional microphone or some other high-tech gadget. And if they managed to 
record the push-button tones that he produced by punching in the Cornells’ 
number, they could easily translate those tones into digits and trace the number 
back to Big Sur. He would have to resort to deception to contact Travis and Nora 
safely.
He knew he had better act soon, before Travis or Nora phoned him. These days, 
with the technology available to them, the NSA could trace the call back to its 
origins as fast as Garrison would be able to warn Travis that the line was 
tapped.
So at two o’clock Saturday afternoon, chaperoned by the green Ford, he drove to 
Della Colby’s house in Montecito to take her to his boat, the Amazing Grace, for 
a lazy afternoon in the sun. At least that was what he had told her on the 
phone.
Della was Judge Jack Colby’s widow. She and Jack were Garrison’s and Francine’s 
best friends for twenty-five years before death broke up the foursome. Jack had 
died one year after Francine. Della and Garrison remained very close; they 
frequently went to dinner together, went dancing and walking and sailing. 
Initially, their relationship had been strictly platonic; they were simply old 
friends who had the fortune—or misfortune—to outlast everyone they most cared 
about, and they needed each other because they shared so many good times and 
memories that would be diminished when there was no longer anyone left with whom 
to reminisce. A year ago, when they suddenly found themselves in bed together, 
they had been surprised and overwhelmed with guilt. They felt as if they were 
cheating on their spouses, though Jack and Francine had died years ago. The 
guilt passed, of course, and now they were grateful for the companionship and 
gently burning passion that had unexpectedly brightened their late-autumn years.
When he pulled into Della’s driveway, she came out of the house, locked the 
front door, and hurried to his car. She was dressed in boat shoes, white slacks, 
a blue- and white-striped sweater, and a blue windbreaker. Although she was 
sixty-nine, and though her short hair was snow-white, she looked fifteen years 
younger.
He got out of the Mercedes, gave her a hug and a kiss, and said, “Can we go in 
your car?”
She blinked, “Are you having trouble with yours?”
“No,” he said. “I’d just rather take yours.”
“Sure.”
She backed her Caddy out of the garage, and he got in on the passenger’s side. 
As she pulled into the street, he said, “I’m afraid my car might be bugged, and 
I don’t want them hearing what I’ve got to tell you.”
Her expression was priceless.
Laughing, he said, “No, I’ve not gone senile overnight. If you’ll keep an eye on 
the rearview mirrow as you drive, you’ll see we’re being followed. They’re very 
good, very subtle, but they’re not invisible.”
He gave her time, and after a few blocks Della said, “The green Ford, is it?”
“That’s them.”
“What’ve you gotten yourself into, dear?”
“Don’t go straight to the harbor. Drive to the farmer’s market, and we’ll buy 
some fresh fruit. Then drive to a liquor store, and we’ll buy some wine. By 
then, I’ll have told you everything.”
“Have you some secret life I’ve never suspected?” she asked, grinning at him. 
“Are you a geriatric James Bond?”
 
 
Yesterday, Lem Johnson had reopened a temporary headquarters in a claustrophobic 
office at the Santa Barbara Courthouse. The room had one narrow window. The 
walls were dark, and the overhead lighting fixture was so dim it left the 
corners full of hanging shadows like misplaced scarecrows. The borrowed 
furniture consisted of rejects from other offices. He had worked out of here in 
the day following the Hockney killing, but had closed it up after a week, when 
there was nothing more to be done in the area. Now, with the hope that Dilworth 
would lead them to the Cornells, Lem reopened the cramped field HQ, plugged in 
the phones, and waited for developments.
He shared the office with one assisting agent—Jim Vann—who was an almost 
too-earnest and too-dedicated twenty-five-year-old.
At the moment, Cliff Soames was in charge of the six-man team at the harbor, 
overseeing not only the NSA agents spotted throughout the area, but also 
coordinating the coverage of Garrison Dilworth with the Harbor Patrol and the 
Coast Guard. The shrewd old man apparently realized he was being followed, so 
Lem expected him, to make a break, to try to shake surveillance long enough to 
place a call to the Cornells in private. The most logical way for Garrison to 
throw off his tail was to head out to sea, go up or down the coast, put ashore 
on a launch, and telephone Cornell before his pursuers could relocate him. But 
he would be surprised to find himself accompanied out of the harbor by the local 
patrol; then, at sea, he would be followed by a Coast Guard cutter standing by 
for that purpose.
At three-forty, Cliff called to report that Dilworth and his lady friend were 
Sitting on the deck of the Amazing Grace, eating fruit and sipping wine, 
reminiscing a lot, laughing a little. “From what we can pick up with directional 
microphones and from what we can see, I’d say they don’t have any intention of 
going anywhere. Except maybe to bed. They sure do seem to be a randy old pair.”
“Stay with them,” Lem said. “I don’t trust him.”
Another call came through from the search team that had secretly entered 
Dilworth’s house minutes after he had left. They had found nothing related to 
the Cornells or the dog.
Dilworth’s office had been carefully searched last night, and nothing had been 
found there, either. Likewise, a study of his phone records did not produce a 
number for the Cornells; if he had called them in the past, he always did so 
from a pay phone. An examination of his AT&T credit-card records showed no such 
calls, so if he had used a pay phone, he had not billed it to himself but had 
reversed the charges to the Cornells, leaving nothing to be traced. Which was 
not a good sign. Obviously, Dilworth had been exceedingly cautious even before 
he had known he was being watched.
 
 
Saturday, afraid the dog might be coming down with a cold, Travis kept an eye on 
Einstein. But the retriever sneezed only a couple of times and did not cough at 
all, and he seemed to be fit.
A freight company delivered ten large cartons containing all of Nora’s finished 
canvases that had been left behind in Santa Barbara. A couple of weeks ago, 
using a friend’s return address to insure that no link would exist between him 
and Nora “Aimes,” Garrison Dilworth had shipped the paintings to their new 
house.
Now, unpacking and unwrapping the canvases, creating piles of paper padding in 
the living room, Nora was transported. Travis knew that, for many years, this 
work was what she had lived for, and he could see that having the paintings with 
her again was not only a great joy to her but would probably spur her to return 
to her new canvases, in the spare bedroom, with greater enthusiasm.
“You want to call Garrison and thank him?” he asked.
“Yes, absolutely!” she said. “But first, let’s unpack them all and make sure 
none of them is damaged.”
 
 
Posted around the harbor, posing as yacht owners and fishermen, Cliff Soames and 
the other NSA agents watched Dilworth and Della Colby and eavesdropped on them 
electronically as the day waned. Twilight descended without any indication that 
Dilworth intended to put to sea. Soon night fell, yet the attorney and his woman 
made no move.
Half an hour after dark, Cliff Soames got weary of pretending to fish off the 
stern of a Cheoy Lee sixty-six-foot sport yacht docked four slips away from 
Dilworth’s. He climbed the steps, went into the pilot’s cabin, and pulled the 
headphones off Hank Gorner, the agent who was monitoring the old couple’s 
conversation through a directional mike. He listened for himself.
“. . . the time in Acapulco when Jack hired that fishing boat. .
“. . . yes, the whole crew looked like pirates!”
“. . . we thought we’d have our throats cut, be dumped at sea. .
but then it turned out they were all divinity students . . studying to be 
missionaries. . . and Jack said. .
Returning the headphones, Cliff said, “Still reminiscing!”
The other agent nodded. The cabin light was out, and Hank was illuminated only 
by a small, hooded, built-in work lamp above the chart table, so his features 
looked elongated and strange. “That’s the way it’s been all day. At least they 
have some great stories.”
“I’m going to the john,” Cliff said wearily. “Be right back.”
“Take ten hours if you want. They’re not going anywhere.”
A few minutes later, when Cliff returned, Hank Gorner pulled off his headphones 
and said, “They went below decks.”
“Something up?”
“Not what we’d hope. They’re gonna jump each other’s bones.”
“Oh.”
“Cliff, jeez, I don’t want to listen to this.”
“Listen,” Cliff insisted.
Hank put one earphone to his head. “Jeez, they’re undressing each other, and 
they’re as old as my grandparents. This is embarrassing.”
Cliff sighed.
“Now they’re quiet,” Hank said, a frown of distaste creeping over his face. “Any 
second they’re gonna start moaning, Cliff.”
“Listen,” Cliff insisted. He snatched a light jacket off the table and went 
outside again so he wouldn’t have to listen.
He took up his position in a chair on the stern deck, lifting the fishing pole 
once more.
The night was cool enough for the jacket, but otherwise it could not have been 
better. The air was clear and sweet, scented with just a slight tang of the sea. 
The moonless sky was full of stars. The water slapped lullingly against the dock 
pilings and against the hulls of the moored boats. Somewhere across the harbor, 
on another craft, someone was playing love songs from the forties. An engine 
turned over—whump-whump-whump—and there was something romantic about the sound. 
Cliff thought how nice it would be to own a boat and set out on a long trip 
through the South Pacific, toward palm-shaded islands— Suddenly that idling 
engine roared, and Cliff realized it was the Amazing
Grace. As he rose from his chair, dropping the fishing pole, he saw Dilworth’s 
boat reversing out of its slip recklessly fast. It was a sailboat, and 
subconsciously Cliff had not expected it to move with sails furled, but it had 
auxiliary engines; they knew this, were prepared for this, but still it startled 
him. He hurried back to the cabin, “Hank, get Harbor Patrol. Dilworth’s on the 
move.”
“But they’re in the sack.”
“Like hell they are!” Cliff ran out to the bow deck and saw that Dilworth had 
already swung the Amazing Grace around and was headed toward the mouth of the 
harbor. No lights at the aft end of the boat, the area around
the wheel, just one small light forward. Jesus, he was really making a break for 
it.
 
 
By the time they unpacked all one hundred canvases, hung a few, and carried the 
rest into the unused bedroom, they were starving.
“Garrison’s probably having dinner now, too,” Nora said. “I don’t want to 
interrupt him. Let’s call him after we’ve eaten.”
In the pantry, Einstein released letters from the Lucite tubes and spelled out a 
message: IT’S DARK. CLOSE THE SHUTTERS FIRST.
Surprised and unsettled by his own uncharacteristic inattention to security, 
Travis hurried from room to room, closing the interior shutters and slipping the 
bolt-type latches in place. Fascinated by Nora’s paintings and delighted by the 
pleasure she exhibited in their arrival, he had not even noticed that night had 
arrived.
 
 
Halfway toward the mouth of the harbor, confident that distance and the engine’s 
roar now protected them from electronic eavesdroppers, Garrison said, “Take me 
close to the outer point of the north breakwater, along the channel’s edge.”
“Are you sure about this?” Della asked worriedly. “You’re not a teenager.”
He patted her bottom and said, “I’m better.”
“Dreamer.”
He kissed her on the cheek and edged forward along the starboard railing, where 
he got into position for his jump. He was wearing dark blue swim trunks. He 
should have had a wetsuit because the water would be chilly. But he thought he 
ought to be able to swim to the breakwater, around the point of it, and haul 
himself out on the north side, out of sight of the harbor, all in a few minutes, 
long before the water temperature leached too much body heat from him.
“Company!” Della called from the wheel.
He looked back and saw a Harbor Patrol boat leaving the docks to the south, 
coming toward them on their port side.
They won’t stop us, he thought. They have no legal right.
But he had to go over the side before the Patrol swung in and took up a position 
astern. From behind, they would see him vault the railing. As long as they were 
to port, the Amazing Grace would conceal his departure, and the boat’s 
phosphorescent wake would cover the first few seconds of his swim around the 
point of the breakwater, long enough for the Patrol’s attention to have moved on 
with Della.
They were heading out at the highest speed with which Della felt comfortable. 
The Hinckley Sou’wester jolted through the slightly choppy waters
with enough force to make it necessary for Garrison to hold fast to the railing. 
Still, they seemed to move past the stone wall of the breakwater at a 
frustratingly slow pace, and the Harbor Patrol drew nearer, but Garrison waited, 
waited, because he didn’t want to go into the harbor a hundred yards short of 
its end. If he went in too soon, he would not be able to swim all the way out to 
the point and around it; instead, he would have to swim straight to the 
breakwater and climb its flank, within full sight of all observers. Now the 
patrol closed to within a hundred yards—he could see them when he rose from a 
crouch and looked across the Hinckley’s cabin roof—and began to swing around 
behind them, and Garrison could not wait much longer, could not— “The point!” 
Della called from the wheel.
He threw himself over the railing, into the dark water, away from the boat.
The sea was cold. It shocked the breath out of him. He sank, could not find the 
surface, was seized by panic, flailed, thrashed, but then broke through to the 
air, gasping.
The Amazing Grace was surprisingly close. He felt as if he had been thrashing in 
confusion beneath the surface for a minute or more, but it must have been only a 
second or two because his boat was not yet far away. The Harbor Patrol was 
close, too, and he decided that even the churning wake of the Amazing Grace did 
not give him enough cover, so he took a deep breath and went under again, 
staying down as long as he could. When he came up, both Della and her shadowers 
were well past the mouth of the harbor, turning south, and he was safe from 
observation.
The outgoing tide was swiftly carrying him past the point of the northern 
breakwater, which was a wall of loose boulders and rocks that rose more than 
twenty feet above the waterline, mottled gray and black ramparts in the night. 
He not only had to swim around the end of that barrier but had to move toward 
land against the resistant current. Without further delay, he began to swim, 
wondering why on earth he had thought this would be a snap.
You’re almost seventy-one, he told himself as he stroked past the rocky point, 
which was illuminated by a navigation-warning light. What ever possessed you to 
play hero?
But he knew what possessed him: a deep-seated belief that the dog must remain 
free, that it must not be treated as the government’s property. If we’ve come so 
far that we can create as God creates, then we have to learn to act with the 
justice and mercy of God. That was what he had told Nora and Travis—and 
Einstein—on the night Ted Hockney had been killed, and he had meant every word 
he’d said.
Salt water stung his eyes, blurred his vision. Some had gotten into his mouth, 
and it burned a small ulcer on his lower lip.
He fought the current, pulled past the point of the breakwater, out of sight of 
the harbor, then slashed toward the rocks. Reaching them at last, he hung onto 
the first boulder he touched, gasping, not yet quite able to pull himself out of 
the water.
In the intervening weeks since Nora and Travis went on the run, Garrison had 
plenty of time to think about Einstein, and he felt even more strongly that to 
imprison an intelligent creature, innocent of all crime, was an act of grave 
injustice, regardless of whether the prisoner was a dog. Garrison had devoted 
his life to the pursuit of justice that was made possible by the laws of a 
democracy, and to the maintenance of the freedom that grew from this justice. 
When a man of ideals decides he is too old to risk everything for what he 
believes in, then he is no longer a man of ideals. He may no longer be a man at 
all. That hard truth had driven him, in spite of his age, to make this night 
swim. Funny—that a long life of idealism should, after seven decades, be put to 
the ultimate test over the fate of a dog.
But what a dog.
And what a wondrous new world we live in, he thought.
Genetic technology might have to be rechristened “genetic art,” for every work 
of art was an act of creation, and no act of creation was finer or more 
beautiful than the creation of an intelligent mind.
Getting his second wind, he heaved entirely out of the water, onto the sloped 
north flank of the northern breakwater. That barrier rose between him and the 
harbor, and he moved inland, along the rocks, while the sea surged at his left 
side. He’d brought a waterproof penlight, clipped to his trunks, and now he used 
it to proceed, barefoot, with the greatest caution, afraid of slipping on the 
wet stones and breaking a leg or an ankle.
He could see the city lights a few hundred yards ahead, and the vague silvery 
line of the beach.
He was cold but not as cold as he had been in the water. His heart was beating 
fast but not as fast as before.
He was going to make it.
 
 
Lem Johnson drove down from the temporary HO in the courthouse, and Cliff met 
him at the empty boat slip where the Amazing Grace had been tied up. A wind had 
risen. Hundreds of craft along the docks were wallowing slightly in their 
berths; they creaked, and slack sail lines clicked and clinked against their 
masts. Dock lamps and neighboring boat lanterns cast shimmering patterns of 
light on the dark, oily-looking water where Dilworth’s forty-two-footer had been 
moored.
“Harbor Patrol?” Lem asked worriedly.
“They followed him out to open sea. Seemed as if he was going to turn north, 
swung close by the point, but then he went south instead.”
“Did Dilworth see them?”
“He had to. As you see—no fog, lots of stars, clear as a bell.”
“Good. I want him to be aware. Coast Guard?”
“I’ve talked to the cutter,” Cliff assured him. “They’re on the spot, flanking 
the Amazing Grace at a hundred yards, heading south along the coast.”
Shivering in the rapidly cooling air, Lem said, “They know he might try putting 
ashore in a rubber boat or whatever?”
“They know,” Cliff said. “He can’t do it under their noses.”
“Is the Guard sure he sees them?”
“They’re lit up like a Christmas tree.”
“Good. I want him to know it’s hopeless. If we can just keep him from warning 
the Cornells, then they’ll call him sooner or later—and we’ll have them. Even if 
they call him from a pay phone, we’ll know their general location.”
In addition to taps on Dilworth’s home and office phones, the NSA had installed 
tracing equipment that would lock open a line the moment a connection was made, 
and keep it open even after both parties hung up, until the caller’s number and 
street address were ascertained and verified. Even if Dilworth shouted a warning 
and hung up the instant he recognized one of the Cornells’ voices, it would be 
too late. The only way he could try to foil the NSA was by not answering his 
phone at all. But even that would do him no good because, after the sixth ring, 
every incoming call was being automatically “answered” by the NSA’s equipment, 
which opened the line and began tracing procedures.
“The only thing could screw us now,” Lem said, “is if Dilworth gets to a phone 
we don’t have monitored and warns the Cornells not to call him.”
“It’s not going to happen,” Cliff said. “We’re on him tight.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” Lem worried. As the wind got hold of it, a metal 
clip on a loose line clanged loudly off a spar, and the sound made Lem jump. “My 
dad always said the worst happens when you least expect it.”
Cliff shook his head. “With all due respect, sir, the more I hear you quote your 
father, the more I think he must’ve been just about the gloomiest man who ever 
lived.”
Looking around at the wallowing boats and wind-chopped water, feeling as if he 
was moving instead of standing still in a moving world, a little queasy, Lem 
said, “Yeah . . . my dad was a great guy in his way, but he was also . . . 
impossible.”
Hank Gorner shouted, “Hey!” He was running along the dock from the
Cheoy Lee where he and Cliff had been stationed all day. “I’ve just been on
With the Guard cutter. They’re playing their searchlight over the Amazing
Grace, intimidating a little, and they tell me they don’t see Dilworth. Just
the woman.”
Lem said, “But, Christ, he’s running the boat!”
“No,” Gorner said. “There’s no lights in the Amazing Grace, but the Guard’s 
searchlight brightens up the whole thing, and they say the woman’s at the 
wheel.”
“It’s all right. He’s just below deck,” Cliff said.
“No,” Lem said as his heart started to pound. “He wouldn’t be below deck
at a time like this. He’d be studying the cutter, deciding whether to keep going 
or turn back. He’s not on the Amazing Grace.”
“But he has to be! He didn’t get off before she pulled out of the dock.”
Lem stared out across the crystalline-clear harbor, toward the light near the 
end of the northern breakwater. “You said the damn boat swung out close to the 
north point, and it looked as if he was going north, but then he suddenly swung 
south.”
“Shit,” Cliff said.
“That’s where he dropped off,” Lem said. “Out by the point of the northern 
breakwater. Without a rubber boat. Swimming, by God.”
“He’s too old for that crap,” Cliff protested.
“Evidently not. He went around the other side, and he’s headed for a phone on 
one of the northern public beaches. We’ve got to stop him, and fast.”
Cliff cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted the first names of the four 
agents who were positioned on other boats along the docks. His voice carried, 
echoing flatly off the water, in spite of the wind. Men came running, and even 
as Cliff’s shouts faded away across the harbor, Lem was sprinting for his car in 
the parking lot.
The worst happens when you least expect it.
 
 
As Travis was rinsing dinner dishes, Nora said, “Look at this.”
He turned and saw that she was standing by Einstein’s food and water dishes. The 
water was gone, but half his dinner remained.
She said, “When have you known him to leave a single scrap?”
“Never.” Frowning, Travis wiped his hands on the kitchen towel. “The last few 
days . . . I’ve thought maybe he’s coming down with a cold or something, but he 
says he feels fine. And today he hasn’t been sneezing or coughing like he was.”
They went into the living room, where the retriever was reading Black Beauty 
with the help of his page-turning machine.
They knelt beside him, and he looked up, and Nora said, “Are you sick, 
Einstein?”
The retriever barked once, softly: No.
“Are you sure?”
A quick wag of the tail: Yes.
“You didn’t finish your dinner,” Travis said.
The dog yawned elaborately.
Nora said, “Are you telling us you’re a little tired?”
Yes.
“If you were feeling ill,” Travis said, “you’d let us know right away, wouldn’t 
you, fur face?”
Yes.
Nora insisted on examining Einstein’s eyes, mouth, and ears for obvious signs
of infection, but at last she said, “Nothing. He seems okay. I guess even 
Superdog has a right to be tired once in a while.”
 
 
The wind had come up fast. It was chilly, and under its lash the waves rose 
higher than they had been all day.
A mass of gooseflesh, Garrison reached the landward end of the north flank of 
the harbor’s northern breakwater. He was relieved to depart the hard and 
sometimes jagged stones of that rampart for the sandy beach. He was sure he had 
scraped and cut both feet; they felt hot, and his left foot stung with each 
step, forcing him to limp.
At first he stayed close to the surf, away from the tree-lined park that lay 
behind the beach. Over there, where park lamps lit the walkways and where 
spotlights dramatically highlighted the palms, he would be more easily seen from 
the street. He did not think anyone would be looking for him; he was sure his 
trick had worked. However, if anyone was looking for him, he did not want to 
call attention to himself.
The gusting wind tore foam off the incoming breakers and flung it in Garrison’s 
face, so he felt as if he was continuously running through spiders’ webs. The 
stuff stung his eyes, which had finally stopped tearing from his dunk in the 
sea, and at last he was forced to move away from the surf line, farther up the 
beach, where the softer sand met the lawn but where he was still out of the 
lights.
Young people were on the darkish beach, dressed for the chill of the night:
couples on blankets, cuddling; small groups smoking dope, listening to music. 
Eight or ten teenage boys were gathered around two all-terrain vehicles with 
balloon tires, which were not allowed on the beach during the day and most 
likely weren’t allowed at night.. They were drinking beer beside a pit they’d 
dug in the sand to bury their bottles if they saw a cop approaching; they were 
talking loudly about girls, and indulging in horseplay. No one gave Garrison 
more than a glance as he hurried by. In California, health-food-and-exercise 
fanatics were as common as street muggers in New York, and if an old man wanted 
to take a cold swim and then run on the beach in the dark, he was no more 
remarkable or noteworthy than a priest in a church.
As he headed north, Garrison scanned the park to his right in search of pay 
phones. They would probably be in pairs, prominently illuminated, on islands of 
concrete beside one of the walkways or perhaps near one of the public comfort 
stations.
He was beginning to despair, certain that he must have passed at least one group 
of telephones, that his old eyes were failing him, but then he saw what he was 
looking for. Two pay phones with winglike sound shields. Brightly lighted. They 
were about a hundred feet in from the beach, midway between the sand and the 
street that flanked the other side of the park.
Turning his back to the churning sea, he slowed to catch his breath and
walked across the grass, under the wind-shaken fronds of a cluster of three 
stately royal palms. He was still forty feet from the phones when he saw a car, 
traveling at high speed, suddenly break and pull to the curb with a squeal of 
tires, parking in a direct line from the phones. Garrison didn’t know who they 
were, but he decided not to take any chances. He sidled into the cover provided 
by a huge old double-boled date palm that was, fortunately, not one of those 
fitted with decorative spotlights. From the notch between the trunks, he had a 
view of the phones and of the walkway leading out to the curb where the car had 
parked.
Two men got out of the sedan. One sprinted north along the park perimeter, 
looking inward, searching for something.
The other man rushed straight into the park along the walkway. When he reached 
the lighted area around the phones, his identity was clear—and shocking.
Lemuel Johnson.
Behind the trunks of the Siamese date palms, Garrison drew his arms and legs 
closer to his body, sure that the joined bases of the trees provided him with 
plenty of cover but trying to make himself smaller nevertheless.
Johnson went to the first phone, lifted the handset—and tried to tear it out of 
the coinbox. It had one of those flexible metal cords, and he yanked on it hard, 
repeatedly, with little effect. Finally, cursing the instrument’s toughness, he 
ripped the handset loose and threw it across the park. Then he destroyed the 
second phone.
For a moment, as Johnson turned away from the phones and walked straight toward 
Garrison, the attorney thought that he had been seen. But Johnson stopped after 
only a few steps and scanned the seaward end of the park and the beach beyond. 
His gaze did not appear to rest even momentarily on the date palms behind which 
Garrison hid.
“You damn crazy old bastard,” Johnson said, then hurried back toward his car.
Crouched in shadows behind the palms, Garrison grinned because he knew whom the 
NSA man was talking about. Suddenly, the attorney did not mind the chill wind 
sweeping off the night sea behind him.
Damn crazy old bastard or geriatric James Bond—take your pick. Either way, he 
was still a man to be reckoned with.
 
 
In the basement switching room of the telephone company, Agents Rick Olbier and 
Denny Jones were tending the NSA’s electronic tapping and tracing equipment, 
monitoring Garrison Dilworth’s office and home lines. It was dull duty, and they 
played cards to make the time pass: two-hand pinochle and five-hundred rummy, 
neither of which was a good game, but the very idea of two-hand poker repelled 
them.
When a call came through to Dilworth’s home number at fourteen minutes past 
eight o’clock, Olbier and Jones reacted with far more excitement than
the situation warranted because they were desperate for action. Olbier dropped 
his cards on the floor, and Jones threw his on the table, and they reached for 
the two headsets as if this was World War II and they were expecting to overhear 
a top-secret conversation between Hitler and Goring.
Their equipment was set to open the line and lock in a tracer pulse if Dilworth 
did not answer by the sixth ring. Because he knew the attorney was not at home 
and that the phone would not be answered, Olbier overrode the program and opened 
the line after the second ring.
On the computer screen, green letters announced: NOW TRACING.
And on the open line, a man said, “Hello?”
“Hello,” Jones said into the mike on his headset.
The caller’s number and his local Santa Barbara address appeared on the screen. 
This system worked much like the 911 police emergency computer, providing 
instant identification of the caller. But now, above the address on the screen, 
a company’s rather than an individual’s name appeared: TELEPHONE SOLICITATIONS, 
INC.
On the line, responding to Denny Jones, the caller said, “Sir, I’m pleased to 
tell you that you have been selected to receive a free eight-by-ten photograph 
and ten free pocket prints of any—”
Jones said, “Who is this?”
The computer was now searching data banks of Santa Barbara street addresses to 
cross-check the ID of the caller.
The voice on the phone said, “Well, I’m calling in behalf of Olin Mills, sir, 
the photography studio, where the finest quality—”
“Wait a sec,” Jones said.
The computer verified the identity of the telephone subscriber who placed the 
call: Dilworth was getting a sales pitch, nothing more.
“I don’t want any!” Jones said sharply, and disconnected.
“Shit,” Olbier said.
“Pinochle?” Jones said.
 
 
In addition to the six men who had been at the harbor, Lem called in four more 
from the temporary HQ at the courthouse.
He stationed five along the perimeter of the Oceanside park, a few hundred yards 
apart. Their job was to watch the wide avenue that separated the park from a 
business district, where there were a lot of motels but also restaurants, Yogurt 
shops, gift shops, and other retail enterprises. All of the businesses had 
phones, of course, and even some of the motels would have pay phones in their 
front offices; using any of them, the attorney could alert Travis and Nora 
Cornell. At this hour on a Saturday evening, some stores were closed, but some 
of them—and all of the restaurants—were open. Dilworth must not be permitted to 
cross the street.
The sea wind was stiffening and growing chillier. The men stood with their hands 
in their jackets, heads tucked down, shivering.
Palm fronds were rattled by sudden gusts. Tree-roosting birds shrilled in alarm, 
then resettled.
Lem sent another agent to the southwest corner of the park, out by the base of 
the breakwater that separated the public beach from the harbor on the other 
side. His job was to prevent Dilworth from returning to the breakwater, climbing 
it, and sneaking back across the harbor to phones in another part of the city.
A seventh man was dispatched to the northwest corner of the park, down by the 
water line, to be sure Dilworth did not proceed north onto private beaches and 
into residential areas where he might persuade someone to allow him to use an 
unmonitored phone.
Just Lem, Cliff, and Hank were left to comb through the park and adjoining beach 
in search of the attorney. He knew he had too few men for the job, but these 
ten—plus Olbier and Jones at the telephone company—were the only people he had 
in town. He could see no point ordering in more agents from the Los Angeles 
office; by the time they arrived, Dilworth would either have been found and 
stopped—or would have succeeded in calling the Cornells.
 
 
The roofless all-terrain vehicle was equipped with a roll bar. It had two bucket 
seats, behind which was a four-foot-long cargo area that could accommodate 
additional passengers or a considerable amount of gear.
Garrison was flat on his stomach on the floor of the cargo hold, under a 
blanket. Two teenage boys were in the bucket seats, and two more were in the 
cargo hold on top of Garrison, sprawled as if they were sitting on nothing more 
than a pile of blankets. They were trying to keep the worst of their weight off 
Garrison, but he still felt half-crushed.
The engine sounded like angry wasps: a high, hard buzzing. It deafened Garrison 
because his right ear was flat against the cargo bed, which transmitted and 
amplified every vibration.
Fortunately, the soft beach provided a relatively smooth ride.
The vehicle stopped accelerating, slowed, and the engine noise dropped 
dramatically.
“Shit,” one of the boys whispered to Garrison, “there’s a guy ahead with a 
flashlight, flagging us down.”
They drew to a halt, and over the whispery idling of the engine, Garrison heard 
a man say, “Where you boys headed?”
“Up the beach.”
“That’s private property up there. You have any right up there?”
“It’s where we live,” Tommy, the driver, responded.
“Is that so?”
“Don’t we look like a bunch of spoiled rich kids?” one of them asked, playing 
wiseass.
“What you been up to?” the man asked suspiciously.
“Beach cruisin’, hangin’ out. But it got too cold.”
“You boys been drinking?”
You dolt, Garrison thought as he listened to the interrogator. These are 
teenagers you’re talking to, poor creatures whose hormonal imbalances have 
thrown them into rebellion against all authority for the next couple of years. I 
have their sympathy because I’m in flight from the cops, and they’ll take my 
side without even knowing what I’ve done. If you want their cooperation, you’ll 
never get it by bullying them.
“Drinking? Hell no,” another boy said. “Check the cooler in back if you want. 
Nothing in it but Dr. Pepper.”
Garrison, who was pressed up against the ice chest, hoped to God the man would 
not come around to the back of the vehicle and have a look. If the guy got that 
close he would almost surely see there was something vaguely human about the 
shape under the blanket on which the boys were sitting.
“Dr. Pepper, huh? What kind of beer was in there before you drank it all?”
“Hey, man,” Tommy said. “Why’re you hassling us? Are you a cop or what?”
“Yeah, in fact, I am.”
“Where’s your uniform?” one of the boys asked.
“Undercover. Listen, I’m disposed to let you kids go on, not check your breath 
for liquor or anything. But I have to know—did you see an old white-haired guy 
on the beach tonight?”
“Who cares about old guys?” one of the boys asked. “We were looking for women.”
“You’d have noticed this old character if you’d seen him. He’d most likely have 
been wearing swim trunks.”
“Tonight?” Tommy said. “It’s almost December, man. You feel that wind?”
“Maybe he was wearing something else.”
“Didn’t see him,” Tommy said. “No old guy with white hair. Any you guys see 
him?”
The other three said they had not seen any old fart fitting the description they 
had been given, and then they were allowed to drive on, north from the public 
beach, into a residential area of seaside homes and private beaches.
When they had rounded a low hill and were out of sight of the man who had 
stopped them, they pulled the blanket off Garrison, and he sat up with 
considerable relief.
Tommy dropped the other three boys off at their houses and took Garrison home 
with him because his parents were out for the evening. He lived in a house that 
looked like a ship with multiple decks, slung over a bluff, all glass and 
angles.
Following Tommy into the foyer, Garrison caught a glimpse of himself in a 
mirror. He looked nothing like the dignified silver-haired barrister known by 
everyone in the city’s courts. His hair was wet, dirty, and matted. His face Was 
smeared with dirt. Sand, bits of grass, and threads of seaweed were stuck
to his bare skin and tangled in his gray chest hair. He grinned happily at 
himself.
“There’s a phone in here,” Tommy said from the den.
 
 
After preparing dinner, eating, cleaning up, and then worrying about Einstein’s 
loss of appetite, Nora and Travis had forgotten about calling Garrison Dilworth 
and thanking him for the care with which he had packaged and shipped her 
paintings. They were sitting in front of the fireplace when she remembered.
In the past, when they had called Garrison, they had done so from public phones 
in Carmel. That had proved to be an unnecessary precaution. And now, tonight, 
neither of them was in the mood to get in the car and drive into town.
“We could wait and call him from Carmel tomorrow,” Travis said.
“It’ll be safe to phone from here,” she said. “If they’d made a link between you 
and Garrison, he’d have called and warned us off.”
“He might not know they’ve made a link,” Travis said. “He might not know they’re 
watching him.”
“Garrison would know,” she said firmly.
Travis nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure he would.”
“So it’s safe to call him.”
She was halfway to the phone when it rang.
The operator said, “I have a collect call for anyone from a Mr. Garrison 
Dilworth in Santa Barbara. Will you accept the charges?”
 
 
A few minutes before ten o’clock, after conducting a thorough but fruitless 
search of the park and beach, Lem reluctantly admitted that Garrison Dilworth 
had somehow gotten past him. He sent his men back to the courthouse and harbor.
He and Cliff also drove back to the harbor to the sport yacht from which they 
had based their surveillance of Dilworth. When they put in a call to the Coast 
Guard cutter pursuing the Amazing Grace, they learned that the attorney's lady 
had turned around well short of Ventura and was heading north along the coast, 
back to Santa Barbara.
She entered the harbor at ten thirty-six.
At the empty slip belonging to Garrison, Lem and Cliff huddled in the crisp 
wind, watching her bring the Hinckley smoothly and gently into its mooring. It 
was a beautiful boat, beautifully handled.
She had the gall to shout at them, “Don’t just stand there! Grab the lines and 
help tie her up!”
They obliged primarily because they were anxious to speak with her and could not 
do so until the Amazing Grace was secured.
Once their assistance had been rendered, they stepped through the railing gate. 
Cliff was wearing Top-Siders as part of his boater’s disguise, but Lem was in 
street shoes and not at all sure-footed on the wet deck, especially as the boat 
was rocking slightly.
Before they could say a word to the woman, a voice behind them said, “Excuse me, 
gentlemen—”
Lem turned and saw Garrison Dilworth in the glow of a dock lamp, just boarding 
the boat behind them. He was wearing someone else’s clothes. His pants were much 
too big in the waist, cinched in with a belt. They were too short in the legs, 
so his bare ankles were revealed. He wore a voluminous shirt.
“—please excuse me, but I’ve got to get into some warm clothes of my own and 
have a pot of coffee—”
Lem said, “God damn it.”
“—to thaw out these old bones.”
After a gasp of astonishment, Cliff Soames let out a hard bark of laughter, then 
glanced at Lem and said, “Sorry.”
Lem’s stomach cramped and burned with an incipient ulcer. He did not wince with 
pain, did not double over, did not even put a hand on his gut, gave no 
indication of discomfort because any such sign from him might increase 
Dilworth’s satisfaction. Lem just glared at the attorney, at the woman, then 
left without saying a word.
“That damn dog,” Cliff said as he fell into step at Lem’s side on the dock, 
“sure inspires one hell of a lot of loyalty.”
Later, bedding down in a motel because he was too tired to close the temporary 
field office tonight and go home to Orange County, Lem Johnson thought about 
what Cliff had said. Loyalty. One hell of a lot of loyalty.
Lem wondered if he had ever felt such a strong bond of loyalty to anyone as the 
Cornells and Garrison Dilworth apparently felt toward the retriever. He tossed 
and turned, unable to sleep, and he finally realized there was no use trying to 
switch off his inner lights until he satisfied himself that he was capable of 
the degree of loyalty and commitment that he had seen in the Cornells and their 
attorney.
He sat up in the darkness, leaning against the headboard.
Well, sure, he was damn loyal to his country, which he loved and honored.
And he was loyal to the Agency. But to another person? All right, Karen.
His wife. He was loyal to Karen in every way—in his heart, mind, and gonads.
He loved Karen. He had loved her deeply for almost twenty years.
“Yeah,” he said aloud in the empty motel room at two o’clock in the morning, 
“yeah, if you’re so loyal to Karen, why aren’t you with her now?”
But he wasn’t being fair to himself. After all, he had a job to do, an important 
job.
“That’s the trouble,” he muttered, “you’ve always—always—got a job to do.”
He slept away from home more than a hundred nights a year, one in three. And 
when he was home, he was distracted half the time, his mind on the
latest case. Karen had once wanted children, but Lem had delayed the start of a 
family, claiming that he could not handle the responsibility of children until 
he was sure his career was secure.
“Secure?” he said. “Man, you inherited your daddy’s money. You started out with 
more of a cushion than most people.”
If he was as loyal to Karen as those people were to that mutt, then his 
commitment to her should mean that her desires ought to come before all others. 
If Karen wanted a family, then family should take precedence over career. Right? 
At least he should have compromised and started a family when they were in their 
early thirties. His twenties could have gone to the career, his thirties to 
child-rearing. Now he was forty-five, almost forty-six, and Karen was 
forty-three, and the time for starting a family had passed.
Lem was overcome with a great loneliness.
He got out of bed, went into the bathroom in his shorts, switched on the light, 
and stared hard at himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot and sunken. He 
had lost so much weight on this case that his face was beginning to look 
downright skeletal.
Stomach cramps seized him, and he bent over, holding onto the sides of the sink, 
his face in the basin. He’d been afflicted only for the past month or so, but 
his condition seemed to be worsening with startling speed. The pain took a long 
time to pass.
When he confronted his reflection in the mirror again, he said, “You’re not even 
loyal to your own self, you asshole. You’re killing yourself, working yourself 
to death, and you can’t stop. Not loyal to Karen, not loyal to yourself. Not 
really loyal to your country or the Agency, when it comes right down to it. 
Hell, the only thing you’re totally and unswervingly committed to is your old 
man’s crackpot vision of life as a tightrope walk.”
Crackpot.
That word seemed to reverberate in the bathroom long after he’d spoken it. He 
had loved and respected his father, had never said a word against him. Yet today 
he had admitted to Cliff that his dad had been “impossible.” And now—crackpot 
vision. He still loved his dad and always would. But he was beginning to wonder 
if a son could love a father and, at the same time, completely reject his 
father’s teachings.
A year ago, a month ago, even a few days ago, he would have said it was 
impossible to hold fast to that love and still be his own man. But now, by God, 
it seemed not only possible but essential that he separate his love for his 
father from his adherence to his father’s workaholic code.
What’s happening to me? he wondered.
Freedom? Freedom, at last, at forty-five?
Squinting into the mirror, he said, “Almost forty-six.”
 
 
NINE
1
Sunday, Travis noted that Einstein still had less of an appetite than usual, but 
by Monday, November 29, the retriever seemed fine. On Monday and Tuesday, 
Einstein finished every scrap of his meals, and he read new books. He sneezed 
only once and did not cough at all. He drank more water than in the past, though 
not an excessive amount. If he seemed to spend more time by the fireplace, if he 
padded through the house less energetically . . . well, winter was swiftly 
settling upon them, and animals’ behavior changed with the seasons.
At a bookstore in Carmel, Nora bought a copy of The Dog Owner’s Home Veterinary 
Handbook. She spent a few hours at the kitchen table, reading, researching the 
possible meanings of Einstein’s symptoms. She discovered that listlessness, 
partial loss of appetite, sneezing, coughing, and unusual thirst could signify a 
hundred ailments—or mean nothing at all. “About the only thing it couldn’t be is 
a cold,” she said. “Dogs don’t get colds like we do.” But by the time she got 
the book, Einstein’s symptoms had diminished to such an extent that she decided 
he was probably perfectly healthy.
In the pantry off the kitchen, Einstein used the Scrabble tiles to tell them:
FIT AS A FIDDLE.
Stooping beside the dog, stroking him, Travis said, “I guess you ought to know 
better than anyone.”
WHY SAY FIT AS A FIDDLE?
Replacing the tiles in their Lucite tubes, Travis said, “Well, because it 
means—healthy.”
BUT WHY DOES IT MEAN HEALTHY?
Travis thought about the metaphor—fit as a fiddle—and realized he was not sure 
why it meant what it did. He asked Nora, and she came to the pantry door, but 
she had no explanation for the phrase, either.
Pawing out more letters, pushing them around with his nose, the retriever asked: 
WHY SAY SOUND AS A DOLLAR?
“Sound as a dollar—meaning healthy or reliable,” Travis said.
Stooping beside them, speaking to the dog, Nora said, “That one’s easier. The 
United States dollar was once the soundest, most stable currency in the World. 
Still is, I suppose. For decades, there was no terrible inflation in the dollar 
like in some other currencies, no reason to lose faith in it, so folks
said, ‘I’m as sound as a dollar.’ Of course, the dollar isn’t what it once was, 
and the phrase isn’t as fitting as it used to be, but we still use it.”
WHY STILL USE IT?
“Because . . . we’ve always used it,” Nora said, shrugging.
WHY SAY HEALTHY AS A HORSE? HORSES NEVER SICK?
Gathering up the tiles and sorting them back into their tubes, Travis said, “No, 
in fact, horses are fairly delicate animals in spite of their size. They get 
sick pretty easily.”
Einstein looked expectantly from Travis to Nora.
Nora said, “We probably say we’re healthy as a horse because horses look strong 
and seem like they shouldn’t ever get sick, even though they get sick all the 
time.”
“Face it,” Travis told the dog, “we humans say things all the time that don’t 
make sense.”
Pumping the letter-dispensing pedals with his paw, the retriever told them:
YOU ARE A STRANGE PEOPLE.
Travis looked at Nora, and they both laughed.
Beneath YOU ARE A STRANGE PEOPLE, the retriever spelled: BUT I LIKE YOU ANYWAY.
Einstein’s inquisitiveness and sense of humor seemed, more than anything else, 
to indicate that, if he had been mildly ill, he was now recovered.
That was Tuesday.
On Wednesday, December 1, while Nora painted in her second-floor studio, Travis 
devoted the day to inspecting his security system and to routine weapons 
maintenance.
In every room, a firearm was carefully concealed under furniture or behind a 
drape or in a closet, but always within easy reach. They owned two Mossberg 
pistol-grip shotguns, four Smith & Wesson Model 19 Combat Magnums loaded with 
.357s, two .38 pistols that they carried with them in the pickup and Toyota, an 
Uzi carbine, two Uzi pistols. They could have obtained their entire arsenal 
legally, from a local gun shop, once they purchased a house and established 
residence in the county, but Travis had not been willing to wait that long. He 
had wanted to have the weapons on the first night they settled into their new 
home; therefore, through Van Dyne in San Francisco, he and Nora had located an 
illegal arms salesman and had acquired what they needed. Of course, they could 
not have bought conversion kits for the Uzis from a licensed gun dealer. But 
they were able to purchase three such kits in San Francisco, and now the Uzi 
carbine and pistols were fully automatic.
Travis moved from room to room, checking that the weapons were properly 
positioned, that they were free of dust, that they did not need to be oiled, and 
that their magazines were fully loaded. He knew that everything would be in 
order, but he just felt more comfortable if he conducted this inspection once a 
week. Though he had been out of uniform for many years, the old military 
training and methodology were still a part of him, and under pressure they 
surfaced more quickly than he had expected.
Taking a Mossberg with them, he and Einstein also walked around the
house, stopping at each of the small infrared sensors that were, as much as 
possible, placed inconspicuously against backdrops of rocks or plants, snug 
against the trunks of a few trees, at the corners of the house, and beside an 
old rotting pine stump at the edge of the driveway. He had bought the components 
on the open market, from an electronics dealer in San Francisco. It was dated 
stuff, not at all state-of-the-art security technology, but he chose it because 
he was familiar with it from his days in Delta Force, and it was good enough for 
his purposes. Lines from the sensors ran underground, to an alarm box in one of 
the kitchen cupboards. When the system was switched on at night, nothing larger 
than a raccoon could come within thirty feet of the house—or enter the barn at 
the back of the property—without tripping the alarm. No bells would ring, and no 
sirens would blare because that would alert The Outsider and might run it off. 
They didn’t want to chase it away; they wanted to kill it. Therefore, when the 
system was tripped, it turned on clock radios in every room of the house, all of 
which were set at low volume so as not to frighten off an intruder but high 
enough to warn Travis and Nora.
Today, all the sensors were in place, as usual. All he had to do was wipe off 
the light film of dust that had coated the lenses.
“The palace moat is in good repair, m’lord,” Travis said.
Einstein woofed approval.
In the rust-red barn, Travis and Einstein examined the equipment that, they 
hoped, would provide a nasty surprise for The Outsider.
In the northwest corner of the shadowy interior, to the left of the big rolling 
door, a pressurized steel tank was clamped in a wall rack. In the diagonally 
opposite southeast corner at the back of the building, beyond the pickup and 
car, an identical vessel was bolted to an identical rack. They resembled large 
propane tanks of the sort people used at summer cabins for gas cooking, but they 
did not hold propane. They were filled with nitrous oxide, which was sometimes 
inaccurately called “laughing gas.” The first whiff did exhilarate you and make 
you want to laugh, but the second whiff knocked you out before the laugh could 
escape your lips. Dentists and surgeons frequently used nitrous oxide as an 
anesthetic. Travis had purchased it from a medical-supply house in San 
Francisco.
After switching on the barn lights, Travis checked the gauges on both tanks. 
Full pressure.
In addition to the large rolling door at the front of the barn, there was a 
smaller, man-size door at the rear. These were the only two entrances. Travis 
had boarded over a pair of windows in the loft. At night, when the alarm system 
was engaged, the smaller rear door was left unlocked in the hope that The 
Outsider, intending to scout the house from the cover of the barn, would let 
itself into the trap. When it opened the door and crept into the barn, it would 
trigger a mechanism that would slam and lock the door behind it. The front door, 
already locked from outside, would prevent an exit in that direction.
Simultaneous with the springing of the trap, the large tanks of nitrous oxide 
Would release their entire contents in less than one minute because Travis
had fitted them with high-pressure emergency-release valves tied in with the 
alarm system. He had caulked all of the draft-admitting cracks in the barn and 
had insulated the place as thoroughly as possible in order to insure that the 
nitrous oxide would be contained within the structure until one of the doors was 
unlocked from outside and opened to vent the gas.
The Outsider could not take refuge in the pickup or the Toyota, for they would 
be locked. No corner in the barn would be free of the gas. Within less than a 
minute, the creature would collapse. Travis had considered using poisonous gas 
of some kind, which he probably could have obtained on the underground market, 
but he had decided against going to that extreme because, if something went 
wrong, the danger to him and Nora and Einstein would be too great.
Once gas had been released and The Outsider had succumbed, Travis could simply 
open one of the doors, vent the barn, enter with the Uzi carbine, and kill the 
beast where it lay unconscious. At worst, even if the time taken airing out the 
building gave The Outsider a chance to regain consciousness, it would still be 
groggy and disoriented and easily dispatched.
When they had ascertained that everything in the barn was as it should be, 
Travis and Einstein returned to the yard behind the house. The December day was 
cool but windless. The forest surrounding the property was preternaturally 
still. The trees stood motionless under a low sky of slate-colored clouds.
Travis said, “Is The Outsider still coming?”
With a quick wag of the tail, Einstein said, Yes.
“Is it close?”
Einstein sniffed the clean, winter-crisp air. He padded across the yard to the 
perimeter of the northern woods and sniffed again, cocked his head, peered 
intently into the trees. He repeated this ritual at the southern end of the 
property.
Travis had the feeling that Einstein was not actually employing his eyes, ears, 
and nose in search of The Outsider. He had some way of monitoring The Outsider 
that was far different from the means by which he would track a cougar or 
squirrel. Travis perceived that the dog was employing an inexplicable sixth 
sense—call it psychic or at least quasi-psychic. The retriever’s use of its 
ordinary senses was probably either the trigger by which it engaged that psychic 
ability—or mere habit.
At last, Einstein returned to him and whined curiously.
“Is it close?” Travis asked.
Einstein sniffed the air and surveyed the gloom of the encircling forest, as if 
he could not decide on an answer.
“Einstein? Is something wrong?”
Finally, the retriever barked once: No.
“Is The Outsider getting close?”
A hesitation. Then: No.
“Are you sure?”
Yes.
“Really sure?”
Yes.
At the house, as Travis opened the door, Einstein turned away from him, padded 
across the back porch, and stood at the top of the wooden steps, taking one 
final look around at the yard and at the peaceful, shadowed, soundless forest. 
Then, with a faint shiver, he followed Travis inside.
Throughout the inspection of the defenses during the afternoon, Einstein had 
been more affectionate than usual, rubbing against Travis’s legs a great deal, 
nuzzling, seeking by one means or another to be petted or patted or scratched. 
That evening, as they watched television, then played a three-way game of 
Scrabble on the living-room floor, the dog continued to seek attention. He kept 
putting his head in Nora’s lap, then in Travis’s. He seemed as if he would be 
content to be stroked and have his ears gently scratched until next summer.
From the day of their first encounter in the Santa Ana foothills, Einstein had 
gone through spells of purely doggy behavior, when it was hard to believe that 
he was, in his own way, as intelligent as a man. Tonight, he was in one of those 
moods again. In spite of his cleverness at Scrabble—in which his score was 
second only to Nora’s, and in which he took devilish pleasure forming words that 
made sly references to her as yet unnoticeable pregnancy— he was nonetheless, 
this night, more of a dog than not.
Nora and Travis chose to finish the evening with a little light reading— 
detective stories—but Einstein did not want them to bother inserting a book in 
his page-turning machine. Instead, he lay on the floor in front of Nora’s 
armchair and went instantly to sleep.
“He still seems a little draggy,” she said to Travis.
“He ate all his dinner, though. And we did have a long day.”
The dog’s breathing, as it slept, was normal, and Travis was not worried. 
Actually, he was feeling better about their future than he had for some time. 
The inspection of their defenses had given him renewed confidence in their 
preparations, and he believed they would be able to handle The Outsider when it 
arrived. And thanks to Garrison Dilworth’s courage and dedication to their 
cause, the government had been stymied, perhaps for good, in its efforts to 
track them down. Nora was painting again with great enthusiasm, and Travis had 
decided to use his real-estate license, under the name of Samuel Hyatt, to go 
back to work once The Outsider had been destroyed. And if Einstein was still a 
little draggy . . . well, he was certainly more energetic than he had been for a 
while and was sure to be himself by tomorrow or the day after, at the latest.
That night, Travis slept without dreaming.
In the morning, he was up before Nora. By the time he showered and dressed, she 
was up, too. On her way into the shower, she kissed him, nibbled On his lip, and 
mumbled sleepy vows of love. Her eyes were puffy, and her hair was mussed, and 
her breath was sour, but he would have rushed her
straight back into bed if she had not said, “Try me this afternoon, Romeo. Right 
now, the only lust in my heart is for a couple of eggs, bacon, toast, and 
coffee.”
He went downstairs and, starting in the living room, opened the interior 
shutters to let in the morning light. The sky looked as low and gray as it had 
been yesterday, and he would not be surprised if rain fell before twilight.
In the kitchen, he noticed that the pantry door was open, the light on. He 
looked in to see if Einstein was there, but the only sign of the dog was the 
message that he had spelled out sometime during the night.
FIDDLE BROKE. NO DOCTOR. PLEASE. DON’T WANT TO GO BACK TO LAB. AFRAID. AFRAID.
Oh shit. Oh Jesus.
Travis stepped out of the pantry and shouted, “Einstein!”
No bark. No sound of padding feet.
The shutters still covered the kitchen windows, and most of the room was not 
illuminated by the glow from the pantry. Travis snapped on the lights.
Einstein was not there.
He ran into the den. The dog was not there, either.
Heart pounding almost painfully, Travis climbed the stairs two at a time, looked 
in the third bedroom that would one day be a nursery and then in the room that 
Nora used as a studio, but Einstein was not in either place, and he was not in 
the master bedroom, not even under the bed where Travis was desperate enough to 
check, and for a moment he could not figure out where in the hell the dog had 
gone, and he stood listening to Nora singing in the shower—she was oblivious of 
what was happening—and he started into the bathroom to tell her that something 
was wrong, horribly wrong, which was when he thought of the downstairs bath, so 
he ran out of the bedroom and along the hall and descended the stairs so fast he 
almost lost his balance, almost fell, and in the first-floor bath, between the 
kitchen and the den, he found what he most feared to find.
The bathroom stank. The dog, ever considerate, had vomited in the toilet but had 
not possessed the strength—or perhaps the clarity of mind—to flush. Einstein was 
lying on the bathroom floor, on his side. Travis knelt next to him. Einstein was 
still but not dead, not dead, because he was breathing; he inhaled and exhaled 
with a rasping noise. He tried to lift his head when Travis spoke to him, but he 
did not have the strength to move.
His eyes. Jesus, his eyes.
Ever so gently, Travis lifted the retriever’s head and saw that those 
wonderfully expressive brown eyes were slightly milky. A watery yellow discharge 
oozed from the eyes; it had crusted in the golden fur. A similar sticky 
discharge bubbled in Einstein’s nostrils.
Putting a hand on the retriever’s neck, Travis felt a laboring and irregular 
heartbeat.
“No,” Travis said. “Oh, no, no. It’s not going to be like this, boy. I’m not 
going to let it happen like this.”
He lowered the retriever’s head to the floor, got up, turned toward the
door—and Einstein whimpered almost inaudibly, as if to say that he did not want 
to be left alone.
“I’ll be right back, right back,” Travis promised. “Just hold on, boy. I’ll be 
right back.”
He ran to the stairs and climbed faster than before. Now, his heart was beating 
with such tremendous force that he felt as if it would tear loose of him. He was 
breathing too fast, hyperventilating.
In the master bathroom, Nora was just stepping out of the shower, naked and 
dripping.
Travis’s words ran together in panic: “Get dressed quick we’ve got to get to the 
vet now for god’s sake hurry.”
Shocked, she said, “What’s happened?”
“Einstein! Hurry! I think he’s dying.”
He grabbed a blanket off the bed, left Nora to dress, and hurried downstairs to 
the bathroom. The retriever’s ragged breathing seemed to have gotten worse in 
just the minute that Travis had been away. He folded the blanket twice, to a 
fourth of its size, then eased the dog onto it.
Einstein made a pained sound, as if the movement hurt him.
Travis said, “Easy, easy. You’ll be all right.”
At the door, Nora appeared, still buttoning her blouse, which was damp because 
she had not taken time to towel off before dressing. Her wet hair hung straight.
In a voice choked with emotion, she said, “Oh, fur face, no, no.” She wanted to 
stoop and touch the retriever, but there was no time to delay. Travis said, 
“Bring the pickup alongside the house.”
While Nora sprinted to the barn, Travis folded the blanket around Einstein as 
best he could, so only the retriever’s head, tail, and hind legs protruded. 
Trying unsuccessfully not to elicit another whimper of pain, Travis lifted the 
dog in his arms and carried him out of the bathroom, across the kitchen, out of 
the house, pulling the door shut behind him but leaving it unlocked, not giving 
a damn about security right now.
The air was cold. Yesterday’s calm was gone. Evergreens swayed, shivered, and 
there was something ominous in the way their bristling, needled branches pawed 
at the air. Other leafless trees raised black, bony arms toward the somber sky.
In the barn, Nora started the pickup. The engine roared. Travis cautiously 
descended the porch steps and went out to the driveway,
walking as if he were carrying an armload of fragile antique china. The blustery 
wind stood Travis’s hair straight up, flapped the loose ends of the blanket, and 
ruffled the fur on Einstein’s exposed head, as if it were a wind with a 
malevolent consciousness, as if it wanted to tear the dog away from him.
Nora swung the pickup around, heading out, and stopped where Travis Waited She 
would drive.
It was true what they said: sometimes, in certain special moments of crisis, in 
times of great emotional tribulation, women are better able to bite the
bullet and do what must be done than men often are. Sitting in the truck’s
passenger seat, cradling the blanket-wrapped dog in his arms, Travis was in no 
condition to drive. He was shaking badly, and he realized that he had been 
crying from the time he had found Einstein on the bathroom floor. He had seen 
difficult military service, and he had never panicked or been paralyzed with 
fear while on dangerous Delta Force operations, but this was different, this was 
Einstein, this was his child. If he had been required to drive, he’d probably 
have run straight into a tree, or off the road into a ditch. There were tears in 
Nora’s eyes, too, but she didn’t surrender to them. She bit her lip and drove as 
if she had been trained for stunt work in the movies. At the end of the dirt 
lane, they turned right, heading north on the twisty Pacific Coast Highway 
toward Carmel, where there was sure to be at least one veterinarian.
During the drive, Travis talked to Einstein, trying to soothe and encourage him. 
“Everything’s going to be all right, just fine, it’s not as bad as it seems, 
you’ll be good as new.”
Einstein whimpered and struggled weakly in Travis’s arms for a moment, and 
Travis knew what the dog was thinking. He was afraid that the vet would see the 
tattoo in his ear, would know what it meant, and would send him back to 
Banodyne.
“Don’t you worry about that, fur face. Nobody’s going to take you away from us. 
By God, they aren’t. They’ll have to walk through me first, and they aren’t 
going to be able to do that, no way.”
“No way,” Nora agreed grimly.
But in the blanket, cradled against Travis’s chest, Einstein trembled violently.
Travis remembered the lettered tiles on the pantry floor: FIDDLE
BROKE. . . AFRAID. . . AFRAID.
“Don’t be afraid,” he pleaded with the dog. “Don’t be afraid. There’s no reason 
to be afraid.”
In spite of Travis’s heartfelt assurances, Einstein shivered and was afraid— and 
Travis was afraid, too.
 
 
2
Stopping at an Arco service station on the outskirts of Carmel, Nora found the 
vet’s address in a phone book and called him to be sure he was in. Dr. James 
Keene’s office was on Dolores Avenue at the southern end of town. They pulled up 
in front of the place at a few minutes before nine.
Nora had been expecting a typically sterile-looking veterinary clinic and was 
surprised to find that Dr. Keene’s offices were in his home, a quaint two-story 
Country English house of stone and plaster and exposed timbers with a roof that 
curved over the eaves.
As they hurried up the stone walk with Einstein, Dr. Keene opened the door 
before they reached it, as if he had been on the lookout for them. A
sign indicated that the entrance to the surgery was around the side of the 
house, but the vet took them in at the front door. He was a tall, 
sorrowful-faced man with sallow skin and sad brown eyes, but his smile was warm, 
and his manner was gracious.
Closing the door, Dr. Keene said, “Bring him this way, please.”
He led them swiftly along a hallway with an oak parquet floor protected by a 
long, narrow oriental carpet. On the left, through an archway, lay a pleasantly 
furnished living room that actually looked lived-in, with footstools in front of 
the chairs, reading lamps, laden bookshelves, and crocheted afghans folded 
neatly and conveniently over the backs of some chairs for when the evenings were 
chilly. A dog stood just inside the archway, a black Labrador. It watched them 
solemnly, as if it understood the gravity of Einstein’s condition, and it did 
not follow them.
At the rear of the large house, on the left side of the hail, the vet took them 
through a door into a clean white surgery. Lined along the walls were 
white-enameled and stainless-steel cabinets with glass fronts, which were filled 
with bottles of drugs, serums, tablets, capsules, and the many powdered 
ingredients needed to compound more exotic medicines.
Travis gently lowered Einstein onto an examination table and folded the blanket 
back from him.
Nora realized that she and Travis looked every bit as distraught as they would 
have if they’d been bringing a dying child to a doctor. Travis’s eyes were red, 
and though he was not actively crying at the moment, he continually blew his 
nose. The moment she had parked the pickup in front of the house and had pulled 
on the hand brake, Nora had ceased to be able to repress her own tears. Now she 
stood on the other side of the examination table from Dr. Keene, with one arm 
around Travis, and she wept quietly.
The vet was apparently used to strong emotional reactions from pet owners, for 
he never once glanced curiously at Nora or Travis, never once indicated by any 
means that he found their anxiety and grief to be excessive.
Dr. Keene listened to the retriever’s heart and lungs with a stethoscope, 
palpated his abdomen, examined his oozing eyes with an ophthalmoscope. Through 
those and several other procedures, Einstein remained limp, as if paralyzed. The 
only indications that the dog still clung to life were his faint whimpers and 
ragged breathing.
It’s not as serious as it seems, Nora told herself as she blotted her eyes with 
a Kleenex.
Looking up from the dog, Dr. Keene said, “What’s his name?”
“Einstein,” Travis said.
“How long have you owned him?”
“Only a few months.”
“Has he had his shots?”
“No,” Travis said. “Damn it, no.”
“Why not?”
“It’s . . . complicated,” Travis said. “But there’re reasons that shots couldn’t 
be gotten for him.”
“No reason’s good enough,” Keene said disapprovingly. “He’s got no license, no 
shots. It’s very irresponsible not to see that your dog is properly licensed and 
vaccinated.”
“I know,” Travis said miserably. “I know.”
“What’s wrong with Einstein?” Nora said.
And she thought-hoped-prayed: It’s not as serious as it seems.
Lightly stroking the retriever, Keene said, “He’s got distemper.”
 
 
Einstein had been moved to a corner of the surgery, where he lay on a thick, 
dog-size foam mattress that was protected by a zippered plastic coverlet. To 
prevent him from moving around—if at any time he had the strength to move—he was 
tethered on a short leash to a ringbolt in the wall.
Dr. Keene had given the retriever an injection. “Antibiotics,” he explained. “No 
antibiotics are effective against distemper, but they’re indicated to avoid 
secondary bacteriological infections.”
He had also inserted a needle in one of the dog’s leg veins and had hooked him 
to an IV drip to counteract dehydration.
When the vet tried to put a muzzle on Einstein, both Nora and Travis objected 
strenuously.
“It’s not because I’m afraid he’ll bite,” Dr. Keene explained. “It’s for his own 
protection, to prevent him from chewing at the needle. If he has the strength, 
he’ll do what dogs always do to a wound—lick and bite at the source of the 
irritation.”
“Not this dog,” Travis said. “This dog’s different.” He pushed past Keene and 
removed the device that bound Einstein’s jaws together.
The vet started to protest, then thought better of it. “All right. For now. He’s 
too weak now, anyway.”
Still trying to deny the awful truth, Nora said, “But how could it be so 
serious? He showed only the mildest symptoms, and even those went away over a 
couple of days.”
“Half the dogs who get distemper never show any symptoms at all,” the vet said 
as he returned a bottle of antibiotics to one of the glass-fronted cabinets and 
tossed a disposable syringe in a waste can. “Others have only a mild illness, 
symptoms come and go from one day to the next. Some, like Einstein, get very 
ill. It can be a gradually worsening illness, or it can change suddenly from 
mild symptoms to . . . this. But there is a bright side here.”
Travis was crouched beside Einstein, where the dog could see him without lifting 
his head or rolling his eyes, and could therefore feel attended, watched over, 
loved. When he heard Keene mention a bright side, Travis looked up eagerly. 
“What bright side? What do you mean?”
“The dog’s condition, before it contracts distemper, frequently determines the 
course of the disease. The illness is most acute in animals that are ill-kept 
and poorly nourished. It’s clear to me that Einstein was given good care.”
Travis said, “We tried to feed him well, to make sure he got plenty of 
exercise.”
“He was bathed and groomed almost too often,” Nora added.
Smiling, nodding approval, Dr. Keene said, “Then we have an edge. We have real 
hope.”
Nora looked at Travis, and he could meet her eyes only briefly before he had to 
look away, down at Einstein. It was left to her to ask the dreaded question: 
“Doctor, he’s going to be all right, isn’t he? He won’t—he won’t die, will he?”
Apparently, James Keene was aware that his naturally glum face and drooping eyes 
presented, merely in repose, an expression that did little to inspire 
confidence. He cultivated a warm smile, a soft yet confident tone of voice, and 
an almost grandfatherly manner that, although perhaps calculated, seemed genuine 
and helped balance the perpetual gloom God had seen fit to visit upon his 
countenance.
He came to Nora, put his hands on her shoulders. “My dear, you love this dog 
like a baby, don’t you?”
She bit her lip and nodded.
“Then have faith. Have faith in God, who watches over sparrows, so they say, and 
have a little faith in me, too. Believe it or not, I’m pretty good at what I do, 
and I deserve your faith.”
“I believe you are good,” she told him.
Still squatting beside Einstein, Travis said thickly, “But the chances. What’re 
the chances? Tell us straight?”
Letting go of Nora, turning to Travis, Keene said, “Well, the discharge from his 
eyes and nose isn’t as thick as it can get. Not nearly. No pus blisters on the 
abdomen. You say he’s vomited, but you’ve seen no diarrhea?”
“No. Just vomiting,” Travis said.
“His fever’s high but not dangerously so. Has he been slobbering excessively?”
“No,” Nora said.
“Fits of head-shaking and chewing on air, sort of as if he had a bad taste in 
his mouth?”
“No,” Travis and Nora said simultaneously.
“Have you seen him run in circles or fall down without reason? Have you seen him 
lie on his side and kick violently, as if he were running? Aimless wandering 
around a room, bumping into walls, jerking and twitching—anything like that?”
“No, no,” Travis said.
And Nora said. “My God, could he get like that?”
“If he goes into second-stage distemper, yes,” Keene said. “Then there’s brain 
involvement. Epileptic-like seizures. Encephalitis.”
Travis came to his feet in a sudden lurch. He staggered toward Keene, then 
stopped, swaying. His face was pale. His eyes filled with a terrible fear. 
“Brain involvement? If he recovered, would there be . . . brain damage?”
An oily nausea rippled in Nora. She thought of Einstein with brain damage—as 
intelligent as a man, intelligent enough to remember that he had once been 
special, and to know that something had been lost, and to know that he was now 
living in a dullness, a grayness, that his life was somehow less than what it 
had once been. Sick and dizzy with fear, she had to lean against the examination 
table.
Keene said, “Most dogs in second-stage distemper don’t survive. But if he made 
it, there would, of course, be some brain damage. Nothing that would require he 
be put to sleep. He might have lifelong chorea, for instance, which is 
involuntary jerking or twitching, rather like palsy, and often limited to the 
head. But he could be relatively happy with that, lead a pain-free existence, 
and he could still be a fine pet.”
Travis almost shouted at the vet: “To hell with whether he’d make a fine pet or 
not. I’m not concerned about physical effects of the brain damage. What about 
his mind?”
“Well he’d recognize his masters,” the doctor said. “He’d know you and remain 
affectionate towards you. No problem there. He might sleep a lot. He might have 
periods of listlessness. But he’d almost certainly remain housebroken. He 
wouldn’t forget that training—”
Shaking, Travis said, “I don’t give a damn if he pisses all over the house as 
long as he can still think!”
“Think?” Dr. Keene said, clearly perplexed. “Well . . . what do you mean 
exactly? He is a dog, after all.”
The vet had accepted their anxious, grief-racked behavior as within the 
parameters of normal pet-owner reactions in a case like this. But now, at last, 
he began to look at them strangely.
Partly to change the subject and dampen the vet’s suspicion, partly because she 
simply had to know the answer, Nora said, “All right, but is Einstein in 
second-stage distemper?”
Keene said, “From what I’ve seen so far, he’s still in the first stage. And now 
that treatment has begun, if we don’t see any of the more violent symptoms 
during the next twenty-four hours, I think we have a good chance of keeping him 
in first stage and rolling it back.”
“And there’s no brain involvement in first stage?” Travis asked with an urgency 
that again caused Keene to furrow his brow.
“No. Not in first stage.”
“And if he stays in first stage,” Nora said, “he won’t die?”
In his softest voice and most comforting manner, James Keene said, “Well, now, 
the chances are very high that he’d survive just first-stage distemper— and 
without any aftereffects. I want you to realize that his chances of recovery are 
quite high. But at the same time, I don’t want to give you false hope. That’d be 
cruel. Even if the disease proceeds no further than first stage . . . Einstein 
could die. The percentages are on the side of life, but death is possible.”
Nora was crying again. She thought she had gotten a grip on herself. She thought 
she was ready to be strong. But now she was crying. She went to
Einstein, sat on the floor beside him, and put one hand on his shoulder, just to 
let him know that she was there.
Keene was becoming slightly impatient with—and thoroughly baffled by— their 
tumultuous emotional response to the bad news. A new note of sternness entered 
his voice as he said, “Listen, all we can do is give him top-flight care and 
hope for the best. He’ll have to remain here, of course, because distemper 
treatment is complex and ought to be administered under veterinary supervision. 
I’ll have to keep him on the intravenous fluids, antibiotics .
and there’ll be regular anticonvulsants and sedatives if he begins to have 
seizures.”
Under Nora’s hand, Einstein shivered as if he had heard and understood the grim 
possibilities.
“All right, okay, yes,” Travis said, “obviously, he’s got to stay here in your 
office. We’ll stay with him.”
“There’s no need—” Keene began.
“Right, yes, no need,” Travis said quickly, “but we want to stay, we’ll be okay, 
we can sleep here on the floor tonight.”
“Oh, I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Keene said.
“Yes, it is, oh yes, entirely possible,” Travis said, babbling now in his 
eagerness to convince the vet. “Don’t worry about us, Doctor. We’ll manage just 
fine. Einstein needs us here, so we’ll stay, the important thing is that we 
stay, and of course we’ll pay you extra for the inconvenience.”
“But I’m not running a hotel!”
“We must stay,” Nora said firmly.
Keene said, “Now, really, I’m a reasonable man, but—”
With both hands, Travis seized the vet’s right hand and held it tightly, 
startling Keene. “Listen, Dr. Keene, please, let me try to explain. I know this 
is an unusual request. I know we must sound like a couple of lunatics to you, 
but we’ve got our reasons, and they’re good ones. This is no ordinary dog, Dr. 
Keene. He saved my life—”
“And he saved mine, too,” Nora said. “In a separate incident.”
“And he brought us together,” Travis said. “Without Einstein, we would never 
have met, never married, and we’d both be dead.”
Astonished, Keene looked from one to the other. “You mean he saved your 
lives—literally? And in two separate incidents?”
“Literally,” Nora said.
“And then brought you together?”
“Yes,” Travis said. “Changed our lives in more ways than we can count or ever 
explain.”
Held fast in Travis’s hands, the vet looked at Nora, lowered his kind eyes to 
the wheezing retriever, shook his head, and said, “I’m a sucker for heroic dog 
stories. I’ll want to hear this one, for sure.”
“We’ll tell you all about it,” Nora promised. But, she thought, it’ll be a 
carefully edited version.
“When I was five years old,” James Keene said, “I was saved from drowning by a 
black Labrador.”
Nora remembered the beautiful black lab in the living room and wondered if it 
was actually a descendant of the animal that had saved Keene—or just a reminder 
of the great debt he owed to dogs.
“All right,” Keene said, “you can stay.”
“Thank you.” Travis’s voice cracked. “Thank you.”
Freeing his hand from Travis, Keene said, “But it’ll be at least forty-eight 
hours before we can be at all confident that Einstein will survive. It’ll be a 
long haul.”
“Forty-eight hours is nothing,” Travis said. “Two nights of sleeping on the 
floor. We can handle that.”
Keene said, “I have a hunch that, for you two, forty-eight hours is going to be 
an eternity, under the circumstances.” He looked at his wristwatch and said, 
“Now, my assistant will arrive in about ten minutes, and shortly after that 
we’ll open the office for morning hours. I can’t have you underfoot in here 
while I’m seeing other patients. And you wouldn’t want to wait in the patient 
lounge with a bunch of other anxious owners and sick animals; that would only 
depress you. You can wait in the living room, and when the office is closed late 
this afternoon, you can return here to be with Einstein.”
“Can we peek in on him during the day?” Travis asked.
Smiling, Keene said, “All right. But just a peek.”
Under Nora’s hand, Einstein finally stopped shivering. Some of the tension went 
out of him, and he relaxed, as if he had heard they would be allowed to remain 
close by, and was immensely comforted.
 
 
The morning passed at an agonizingly slow pace. Dr. Keene’s living room had a 
television set, books, and magazines, but neither Nora nor Travis could get 
interested in TV or reading.
Every half hour or so, they slipped down the hall, one at a time, and peeked in 
at Einstein. He never seemed worse, but he never seemed any better, either.
Keene came in once and said, “By the way, feel free to use the bathroom. And 
there’s cold drinks in the refrigerator. Make coffee if you want.” He smiled 
down at the black lab at his side. “And this fella is Pooka. He’ll love you to 
death if you give him a chance.”
Pooka was, indeed, one of the friendliest dogs Nora had ever seen. Without 
encouragement, he would roll over, play dead, sit up on his haunches, and then 
come snuffling around, tail wagging, to be rewarded with some petting and 
scratching.
All morning, Travis ignored the dog’s pleas for affection, as if petting Pooka 
would in some way be a betrayal of Einstein and would insure Einstein’s death of 
distemper.
However, Nora took comfort from the dog and gave it the attention it desired. 
She told herself that treating Pooka well would please the gods and that the 
gods would then look favorably upon Einstein. Her desperation produced in her a 
superstition just as fierce as—if different from—that which gripped her husband.
Travis paced. He sat on the edge of a chair, head bowed, his face in his hands. 
For long periods, he stood at one of the windows, staring out, not seeing the 
street that lay out there but some dark vision of his own. He blamed himself for 
what had happened, and the truth of the situation (which Nora recalled for him) 
did nothing to lessen his irrational sense of guilt.
Facing a window, hugging himself as if he were cold, Travis said quietly, “Do 
you think Keene saw the tattoo?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not.”
“Do you think there’s really been a description of Einstein circulated to vets? 
Will Keene know what the tattoo means?”
“Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe we’re too paranoid about this.”
But after hearing from Garrison and learning of the lengths to which the 
government had gone to prevent him from getting a warning to them, they knew 
that an enormous and urgent search for the dog must be still under way. So there 
was no such thing as being “too paranoid.”
 
 
From noon until two, Dr. Keene closed the office for lunch. He invited Nora and 
Travis to eat with him in the big kitchen. He was a bachelor who knew how to 
take care of himself, and he had a freezer stocked with frozen entrées that he 
had prepared and packaged himself. He defrosted individually wrapped slabs of 
homemade lasagna and, with their help, made three salads. The food was good, but 
neither Nora nor Travis was able to eat much of it.
The more Nora knew of James Keene, the more she liked him. He was lighthearted 
in spite of his morose appearance, and his sense of humor ran toward 
self-deprecation. His love of animals was a light within that gave him a special 
glow. Dogs were his greatest love, and when he spoke of them his enthusiasm 
transformed his homely features and made of him a handsomer and quite appealing 
man.
The doctor told them of the black lab, King, that had saved him from drowning 
when he was a child, and he encouraged them to tell him how Einstein saved their 
lives. Travis recounted a colorful story about going hiking and almost walking 
into an injured and angry bear. He described how Einstein warned him off and 
then, when the half-mad bear gave chase, how Einstein challenged and repeatedly 
foiled the beast. Nora was able to tell a story closer to the truth: harassment 
by a sexual psychopath whose attack had been interrupted by Einstein and who had 
been held by the retriever until the police arrived.
Keene was impressed. “He really is a hero!”
Nora sensed that the stories about Einstein had so completely won the vet Over 
that, if he did spot the tattoo and knew what it meant, he might conceivably put 
it out of his mind and might let them go in peace once Einstein was recovered. 
If Einstein recovered.
But as they were gathering up the dishes, Keene said, “Sam, I’ve been wondering 
why your wife calls you ‘Travis.’
They were prepared for this. Since assuming new identities, they had decided 
that it was easier and safer for Nora to continue calling him Travis, rather 
than trying to use Sam all the time and then, at some crucial moment, slipping 
up. They could claim that Travis was a nickname she’d given him, that the origin 
was a private joke; with winks at each other and foolish grins, they could imply 
there was something sexual about it, something much too embarrassing to explain 
further. That was how they handled Keene’s question, but they were in no mood to 
wink and grin foolishly with any conviction, so Nora was not sure they carried 
it off. In fact she thought their nervous and inept performance might increase 
Keene’s suspicions if he had any.
 
 
Just before afternoon office hours were to begin, Keene received a call from his 
assistant, who’d had a headache when she had gone to lunch, and who now reported 
that the headache had been complicated by an upset stomach. The vet was left to 
handle his patients alone, so Travis quickly volunteered his and Nora’s 
services.
“We’ve got no veterinary training, of course. But we can handle any manual labor 
involved.”
“Sure, “Nora agreed, “and between us we’ve got one pretty good brain. We could 
do just about anything else you showed us how to do.”
They spent the afternoon restraining recalcitrant cats and dogs and parrots and 
all sorts of other animals while Jim Keene treated them. There were bandages to 
be laid out, medicines to be retrieved from the cabinets, instruments to be 
washed and sterilized, fees to be collected and receipts written. Some pets, 
afflicted with vomiting and diarrhea, left messes to be cleaned up, but Travis 
and Nora tended to those unpleasantnesses as uncomplainingly and unhesitatingly 
as they performed other tasks.
They had two motives, the first of which was that, by assisting Keene, they had 
a chance to be in the surgery with Einstein throughout the afternoon. Between 
chores, they stole a few moments to pet the retriever, speak a few encouraging 
words to him, and reassure themselves that he was getting no worse. The downside 
of being around Einstein continuously was that they could see, to their dismay, 
that he did not seem to be getting any better, either.
Their other purpose was to further ingratiate themselves with the vet, to give 
him a reason to be beholden to them, so he would not reconsider his decision to 
allow them to stay the night.
The patient load was far greater than usual, Keene said, and they were not able 
to close the office until after six o’clock. Weariness—and the labor they
shared—generated a warm feeling of camaraderie. As they made and ate dinner 
together, Jim Keene entertained them with a treasure of amusing animal stories 
culled from his experiences, and they were almost as comfortable and friendly as 
they would have been if they had known the vet for months instead of less than 
one day.
Keene prepared the guest bedroom for them, and provided a few blankets with 
which to make a crude bed on the floor of the surgery. Travis and Nora would 
sleep in the real bed in shifts, each spending half the night on the floor with 
Einstein.
Travis had the first shift, from ten o’clock until three in the morning. Only 
one light was left on in the far corner of the surgery, and Travis alternately 
sat and stretched out on the piled blankets in the shadows where Einstein lay.
Sometimes, Einstein slept, and the sound of his breathing was more normal, less 
frightening. But sometimes he was awake, and his respiration was horribly 
labored, and he whimpered in pain and—Travis somehow knew—in fear. When Einstein 
was awake, Travis talked to him, reminiscing about experiences they had shared, 
the many good moments and happy times over the past six months, and the 
retriever seemed to be at least slightly soothed by Travis’s voice.
Unable to move at all, the dog was of necessity incontinent. A couple of times 
he peed on the plastic-covered mattress. With no distaste whatsoever, with the 
same tenderness and compassion a father might show in caring for a gravely ill 
child, Travis cleaned up. In a curious way, Travis was even pleased by the mess 
because, every time Einstein peed, it was proof that he still lived, still 
functioned, in some ways, as normally as ever.
Rainsqualls came and went during the night. The sound of rain on the roof was 
mournful, like funeral drums.
Twice during the first shift, Jim Keene appeared in pajamas and a robe. The 
first time, he examined Einstein carefully and changed his IV bottle. Later, he 
administered an injection after the examination. On both occasions, he assured 
Travis that right now they did not have to see signs of improvement to be 
encouraged; right now, it was good enough that there were no indications of 
deterioration in the dog’s condition.
Frequently during the night, Travis wandered to the other end of the surgery and 
read the words of a simply framed scroll that hung above the scrub sink:
 
TRIBUTE TO A DOG
The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the 
one that never deserts him, the one that never proves Ungrateful or treacherous, 
is his dog. A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health 
and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow 
and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will 
kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that 
come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his 
pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. 
When riches take wing and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his 
love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.
—Senator George Vest, 1870
Each time he read the tribute, Travis was filled anew with wonder at Einstein’s 
existence. What fantasy of children was more common than that their dogs were 
fully as perceptive and wise and clever as any adult? What gift from God would 
more delight a young mind than to have the family dog prove able to communicate 
on a human level and to share triumphs and tragedies with full understanding of 
their meaning and importance? What miracle could bring more joy, more respect 
for the mysteries of nature, more sheer exuberance over the unanticipated 
wonders of life? Somehow, in the very idea of a dog’s personality and human 
intelligence combined in a single creature, one had a hope of a species at once 
as gifted as humankind but more noble and worthy. And what fantasy of adults was 
more common than that, one day, another intelligent species would be found to 
share the vast, cold universe and, by sharing it, would at last provide some 
relief from our race’s unspeakable loneliness and sense of quiet desperation?
And what other loss could be more devastating than the loss of Einstein, this 
first hopeful evidence that humankind carried within it the seeds not merely of 
greatness but of godhood?
These thoughts, which Travis could not suppress, shook him and drew from him a 
thick sob of grief. Damning himself for being an emotional basket case, he went 
into the downstairs hall, where Einstein would not be aware of— and perhaps be 
frightened by—his tears.
 
 
Nora relieved him at three in the morning. She had to insist that he go 
upstairs, for he was reluctant to leave Keene’s surgery.
Exhausted but protesting that he would not sleep, Travis tumbled into bed and 
slept.
He dreamed of being pursued by a yellow-eyed thing with wicked talons and 
foreshortened alligator jaws. He was trying to protect Einstein and Nora, 
pushing them in front of him, encouraging them to run, run, run. But somehow the 
monster got around Travis and tore Einstein to pieces, then savaged Nora—it was 
the Cornell Curse, which could not be avoided by a simple change of name to 
Samuel Hyatt—and at last Travis stopped running and fell to his knees and 
lowered his head because, having failed Nora and the dog, he wanted to die, and 
he heard the thing approaching—click-click-click
and he was afraid but he also welcomed the death that it promised—
Nora woke him shortly before five in the morning. “Einstein,” she said urgently. 
“He’s having convulsions.”
 
 
When Nora led Travis into the white-walled surgery, Jim Keene was crouched over 
Einstein, ministering to him. They could do nothing but stay out of the vet’s 
way, give him room to work.
She and Travis held each other.
After a few minutes, the vet stood up. He looked worried, and he did not make 
his usual effort to smile or try to lift their hopes. “I’ve given him additional 
anticonvulsants. I think . . . he’ll be all right now.”
“Has he gone into the second stage?” Travis asked. “Maybe not,” Keene said.
“Could he be having convulsions and still be in first stage?” “It’s possible,” 
Keene said.
“But not likely.”
“Not likely,” Keene said. “But . . . not impossible.” Second-stage distemper, 
Nora thought miserably.
She held Travis tighter than ever.
Second stage. Brain involvement. Encephalitis. Chorea. Brain damage. Brain 
damage.
 
 
Travis would not return to bed. He remained in the surgery with Nora and 
Einstein the rest of that night.
They turned on another light, brightening the room somewhat but not enough to 
bother Einstein, and they watched him closely for signs that the distemper had 
progressed to the second stage: the jerking and twitching and chewing movements 
of which Jim Keene had spoken.
Travis was unable to extract any hope from the fact that no such symptoms were 
exhibited. Even if Einstein was in the first stage of the disease and remained 
there, he appeared to be dying.
 
 
The next day, Friday, December 3, Jim Keene’s assistant was still too sick to 
come to work, so Nora and Travis helped out again.
By lunchtime, Einstein’s fever had not fallen. His eyes and nose continued to 
ooze a clear though yellowish fluid. His breathing was slightly less labored, 
but in her despair Nora wondered if the dog’s respiration only sounded easier 
because he was not making as great an effort to breathe and was, in fact, 
beginning to give up.
She could not eat even a bite of lunch. She washed and ironed both Travis’s
clothes and her own, while they sat around in two of Jim Keene’s spare 
bathrobes, which were too big for them.
That afternoon, the office was busy again. Nora and Travis were kept in constant 
motion, and Nora was glad to be overworked.
At four-forty, a time that she would never forget for as long as she lived, just 
after they finished helping Jim deal with a difficult Irish setter, Einstein 
yipped twice from his bed in the corner. Nora and Travis turned, both gasping, 
both expecting the worst, for this was the first sound other than whimpers that 
Einstein had made since his arrival at the surgery. But the retriever had lifted 
his head—the first time he’d had the strength to lift it— and was blinking at 
them; he looked around curiously, as if to ask where on earth he was.
Jim knelt beside the dog and, while Travis and Nora crouched expectantly behind 
him, he thoroughly examined Einstein. “Look at his eyes. They’re slightly milky 
but not at all like they were, and they’ve stopped actively leaking.” With a 
damp cloth, he cleaned the crusted fur beneath Einstein’s eyes and wiped off his 
nose; the nostrils no longer bubbled with fresh excretions. With a rectal 
thermometer he took Einstein’s temperature and, reading it, said, “Falling. Down 
two full degrees.”
“Thank God,” Travis said.
And Nora discovered that her eyes were filling with tears again.
Jim said, “He’s not out of the woods yet. His heartbeat is more regular, less 
accelerated, though still not good. Nora, get one of those dishes over there and 
fill it with some water.”
Nora returned from the sink a moment later and put the dish down on the floor, 
at the vet’s side.
Jim pushed it close to Einstein. “What do you think, fella?”
Einstein raised his head off the mattress again and stared at the dish. His 
lolling tongue looked dry and was coated with a gummy substance. He whined and 
licked his chops.
“Maybe,” Travis said, “if we help him—”
“No,” Jim Keene said. “Let him consider it. He’ll know if he feels up to it. We 
don’t want to force water that’s going to make him vomit again. He’ll know by 
instinct if the time is right.”
With some groaning and wheezing, Einstein shifted on the foam mattress, rolling 
off his side, half onto his belly. He put his nose to the dish, sniffed the 
water, put his tongue to it tentatively, liked the first taste, had another, and 
drank a third of it before sighing and lying down again.
Stroking the retriever, Jim Keene said, “I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t 
recover, fully recover, in time.”
 
 
In time.
That phrase bothered Travis.
How much time would Einstein require for a full recovery? When The
Outsider finally arrived, they would all be better off if Einstein was healthy 
and if all of his senses were functioning sharply. The infrared alarms 
notwithstanding, Einstein was their primary early-warning system.
After the last patient left at five-thirty, Jim Keene slipped out for half an 
hour on a mysterious errand, and when he returned he had a bottle of champagne. 
“I’m not much of a drinking man, but certain occasions demand a nip or two.”
Nora had pledged to drink nothing during her pregnancy, but even the most solemn 
pledge could be stretched under these circumstances.
They got glasses and drank in the surgery, toasting Einstein, who watched them 
for a few minutes but, exhausted, soon fell asleep.
“But a natural sleep,” Jim noted. “Not induced with sedatives.”
Travis said, “How long will he need to recover?”
“To shake off distemper—a few more days, a week. I’d like to keep him here two 
more days, anyway. You could go home now, if you want, but you’re also welcome 
to stay. You’ve been quite a help.”
“We’ll stay,” Nora said at once.
“But after the distemper is beaten,” Travis said, “he’s going to be weak, isn’t 
he?”
“At first, very weak,” Jim said. “But gradually he’ll get most if not all of his 
old strength back. I’m sure now that he never went into second-stage distemper, 
in spite of the convulsions. So perhaps by the first of the year he’ll be his 
old self, and there should be no lasting infirmities, no palsied shaking or 
anything like that.”
The first of the year.
Travis hoped that would be soon enough.
 
 
Again, Nora and Travis split the night into two shifts. Travis took the first 
watch, and she relieved him in the surgery at three o’clock in the morning.
Fog had seethed into Carmel. It roiled at the windows, softly insistent.
Einstein was sleeping when Nora arrived, and she said, “Has he been awake much?”
“Yeah,” Travis said. “Now and then.”
“Have you . . . talked to him?”
“Yeah.”
“Well?”
Travis’s face was lined, haggard, and his expression was grave. “I’ve asked him 
questions that can be answered with a yes or no.”
“And?”
“He doesn’t answer them. He just blinks at me, or yawns, or he goes back to 
sleep.”
“He’s very tired yet,” she said, desperately hoping that was the explanation for 
the retriever’s uncommunicative behavior. “He doesn’t have the strength even for 
questions and answers.”
Pale and obviously depressed, Travis said, “Maybe. I don’t know . . . but I 
think . . . he seems . . . confused.”
“He hasn’t shaken the disease yet,” she said. “He’s still in the grip of it, 
beating the damn stuff, but still in its grip. He’s bound to be a little 
muddleheaded for a while yet.”
“Confused,” Travis repeated.
“It’ll pass.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it’ll pass.”
But he sounded as if he believed that Einstein would never be the same again.
Nora knew what Travis must be thinking: it was the Cornell Curse again, which he 
professed not to believe in but which he still feared in his heart of hearts. 
Everyone he loved was doomed to suffer and die young. Everyone he cared about 
was torn from him.
That was all nonsense, of course, and Nora did not believe in it for a moment. 
But she knew how hard it was to shake off the past, to face only toward the 
future, and she sympathized with his inability to be optimistic just now. She 
also knew there was nothing she could do for him to haul him out of that pit of 
private anguish—nothing except kiss him, hold him for a moment, then send him 
off to bed to get some sleep.
When Travis was gone, Nora sat on the floor beside Einstein and said, “There’re 
some things I have to tell you, fur face. I guess you’re asleep and can’t hear 
me, and maybe even if you were awake you wouldn’t understand what I’m saying. 
Maybe you’ll never again understand, which is why I want to say these things 
now, while there’s at least still hope that your mind’s intact.”
She paused and took a deep breath and looked around at the still surgery, where 
the dim lights gleamed in the stainless-steel fixtures and in the glass of the 
enameled cabinets. It was a lonely place at three-thirty in the morning.
Einstein’s breath came and went with a soft hiss, an occasional rattle. He 
didn’t stir. Not even his tail moved.
“I thought of you as my guardian, Einstein. That’s what I called you once, when 
you saved me from Arthur Streck. My guardian. You not only rescued me from that 
awful man—you also saved me from loneliness and terrible despair. And you saved 
Travis from the darkness within him, brought us together, and in a hundred other 
ways you were as perfect as any guardian angel might hope to be. In that good, 
pure heart of yours, you never asked for or wanted anything in return for all 
you did. Some Milk-Bones once in a while, a bit of chocolate now and then. But 
you’d have done it all even if you’d been fed nothing but Dog Chow. You did it 
because you love, and being loved in return was reward enough. And by just being 
what you are, fur face, you taught me a great lesson, a lesson I can’t easily 
put into words . .
For a while, silent and unable to speak, she sat in the shadows beside her 
friend, her child, her teacher, her guardian.
“But damn it,” she said at last, “I’ve got to find words because maybe this
is the last time I can even pretend you’re able to understand them. It’s like 
this . . . you taught me that I’m your guardian, too, that I’m Travis’s 
guardian, and that he is my guardian and yours. We have a responsibility to 
stand watch over one another, we are watchers, all of us, watchers, guarding 
against the darkness. You’ve taught me that we’re all needed, even those who 
sometimes think we’re worthless, plain, and dull. If we love and allow ourselves 
to be loved . . . well, a person who loves is the most precious thing in the 
world, worth all the fortunes that ever were. That’s what you’ve taught me, fur 
face, and because of you I’ll never be the same.”
The rest of the long night, Einstein lay motionless, lost in a deep sleep.
 
 
Saturday, Jim Keene kept hours only in the morning. At noon he locked the office 
entrance at the side of his big, cozy house.
During the morning, Einstein had exhibited encouraging signs of recovery. He 
drank more water and spent some time on his belly instead of lying limply on his 
side. Head raised, he looked around with interest at the activity in the vet’s 
surgery. He even slurped up a raw-egg-and-gravy mixture that Jim put in front of 
him, downing half the contents of the dish, and he did not regurgitate what he 
had eaten. He was now entirely off intravenous fluids.
But he still dozed a lot. And his responses to Travis and Nora were only those 
of an ordinary dog.
After lunch, as they were sitting with Jim at the kitchen table, having a final 
cup of coffee, the vet sighed and said, “Well, I don’t see how this can be put 
off any longer.” From an inner pocket of his old, well-worn corduroy jacket, he 
withdrew a folded sheet of paper and put it on the table in front of Travis.
For a moment, Nora thought it-was the bill for his services. But when Travis 
unfolded the paper, she saw that it was a wanted flyer put out by the people 
looking for Einstein.
Travis’s shoulders sagged.
Feeling as if her heart had begun to sink down through her body, Nora moved 
closer to Travis so they could read the bulletin together. It was dated last 
week. In addition to a description of Einstein that included the three-number 
tattoo in his ear, the flyer stated the dog would most likely be found in the 
possession of a man named Travis Cornell and his wife, Nora, who might be living 
under different names. Descriptions—and photographs—of Nora and Travis were at 
the bottom of the sheet.
“How long have you known?” Travis asked.
Jim Keene said, “Within an hour after I first saw him, Thursday morning. I’ve 
been getting weekly updates of that bulletin for six months—and I’ve had three 
follow-up calls from the Federal Cancer Institute to make sure I’ll remember to 
examine any golden retriever for a lab tattoo and report it at
Once.”
“And have you reported him?” Nora asked.
“Not yet. Didn’t seem any point arguing about it until we saw whether he was 
going to pull through.”
Travis said, “Will you report him now?”
His hound-dog face settling into an expression that was even more glum than 
usual, Jim Keene said, “According to the Cancer Institute, this dog was at the 
very center of extremely important experiments that might lead to a cancer cure. 
Says there that millions of dollars of research money will have been spent for 
nothing if the dog isn’t found and returned to the lab to complete their 
studies.”
“It’s all lies,” Travis said.
“Let me make one thing very clear to you,” Jim said, leaning forward in his 
chair and folding his large hands around his coffee cup. “I’m an animal lover to 
the bone. I’ve dedicated my life to animals. And I love dogs more than anything 
else. But I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who believe that 
we should stop all animal experimentation, people who think medical advancements 
that help save human lives are not worth harming one guinea pig, one cat, one 
dog. People who raid labs and steal animals, ruining years of important research 
. . . they make me want to spit. It’s good and right to love life, to dearly 
love it in all its most humble forms. But these people don’t love life—they 
revere it, which is a pagan and ignorant and perhaps even savage attitude.”
“This isn’t like that,” Nora said. “Einstein was never used in cancer research. 
That’s just a cover story. The Cancer Institute isn’t hunting for Einstein. It’s 
the National Security Agency that wants him.” She looked at Travis and said, 
“Well, what do we do now?”
Travis smiled grimly, and said, “Well, I sure can’t kill Jim here to stop him—”
The vet looked startled.
“—so I guess we’ve got to persuade him,” Travis finished.
“The truth?” Nora asked.
Travis stared at Jim Keene for a long time, and at last said, “Yeah. The truth. 
It’s the only thing that might convince him to throw that damn wanted poster in 
the trash.”
Taking a deep breath, Nora said, “Jim, Einstein is as smart as you or me or 
Travis.”
“Smarter, I sometimes think,” Travis said.
The vet stared at them, uncomprehending.
“Let’s make another pot of coffee,” Nora said. “This is going to be a long, long 
afternoon.”
 
 
Hours later, at ten minutes past five, Saturday afternoon, Nora and Travis and 
Jim Keene crowded in front of the mattress on which Einstein lay.
The dog had just taken a few more ounces of water. He looked at them with 
interest, too.
Travis tried to decide if those large brown eyes still had the strange depth, 
uncanny alertness, and undoglike awareness that he had seen in them so many 
times before. Damn. He was not sure—and his uncertainty scared him.
Jim examined Einstein, noting aloud that his eyes were clearer, almost normal, 
and that his temperature was still falling. “Heart’s sounding a little better, 
too.”
Worn out by the ten-minute examination, Einstein flopped onto his side and 
issued a long weary sigh. In a moment, he dozed again.
The vet said, “He sure doesn’t seem much like a genius dog.”
“He’s still sick,” Nora said. “All he needs is a little more time to recover, 
and he’ll be able to show you that everything we’ve said is true.”
“When do you think he’ll be on his feet?” Travis asked.
Jim thought about that, then said, “Maybe tomorrow. He’ll be very shaky at 
first, but maybe tomorrow. We’ll just have to see.”
“When he’s on his feet,” Travis said, “when he’s got his sense of balance back 
and is interested in moving around, that ought to indicate he’s clearer in his 
head, too. So when he’s up and about—that’s when we’ll give him a test to prove 
to you how smart he is.”
“Fair enough,” Jim said.
“And if he proves it,” Nora said, “you’ll not turn him in?”
“Turn him in to people who’d create this Outsider you’ve told me about? Turn him 
in to the liars who cooked up that baloney wanted flyer? Nora, what sort of man 
do you take me for?”
Nora said, “A good man.”
 
 
Twenty-four hours later, on Sunday evening, in Jim Keene’s surgery, Einstein was 
tottering around as if he were a little old four-legged man.
Nora scooted along the floor on her knees beside him, telling him what a fine 
and brave fellow he was, quietly encouraging him to keep going. Every step he 
took thrilled her as if he were her own baby learning to walk. But what thrilled 
her more was the look he gave her a few times: it was a look that seemed to 
express chagrin at his infirmity, but there was also a sense of humor in it, as 
if he were saying, Hey, Nora, am I a spectacle—or what? Isn’t this just plain 
ridiculous?
Saturday night he had eaten a little solid food, and all day Sunday he had 
nibbled at easily digestible vittles that the vet provided. He was drinking 
well, and the most encouraging sign of improvement was his insistence on going 
Outside to make his toilet. He could not stay on his feet for long periods of 
time, and once in a while he wobbled and plopped backward on his butt; however, 
he did not bump into walls or walk in circles.
Yesterday, Nora had gone shopping and had returned with three Scrabble
games. Now, Travis had separated the lettered tiles into twenty-six piles at one 
end of the surgery, where there was a lot of open floor space.
“We’re ready,” Jim Keene said. He was sitting on the floor with Travis, his legs 
drawn up under him Indian-style.
Pooka was lying at his master’s side, watching with baffled dark eyes. Nora led 
Einstein back across the room to the Scrabble tiles. Taking his head in her 
hands, looking straight into his eyes, she said, “Okay, fur face. Let’s prove to 
Dr. Jim that you’re not just some pathetic lab animal involved in cancer tests. 
Let’s show him what you really are and prove to him what those nasty people 
really want you for.”
She tried to believe that she saw the old awareness in the retriever’s dark 
gaze.
With evident nervousness and fear, Travis said, “Who asks the first question?”
“I will,” Nora said unhesitatingly. To Einstein, she said, “How’s the fiddle?”
They had told Jim Keene about the message that Travis had found the morning 
Einstein had been so very ill—FIDDLE BROKE—SO the vet understood what Nora was 
asking.
Einstein blinked at her, then looked at the letters, blinked at her again, 
sniffed the letters, and she was getting a sick feeling in her stomach when, 
suddenly, he began to choose tiles and push them around with his nose.
FIDDLE JUST OUT OF TUNE.
Travis shuddered as if the dread he had contained was a powerful electric charge 
that had leapt out of him in an instant. He said, “Thank God, thank you God,” 
and he laughed with delight.
“Holy shit,” Jim Keene said.
Pooka raised his head very high and pricked his ears, aware that something 
important was happening but not sure what it was.
Her heart swelling with relief and excitement and love, Nora returned the 
letters to their separate piles and said, “Einstein, who is your master? Tell us 
his name.”
The retriever looked at her, at Travis, then made a considered reply.
NO MASTER. FRIENDS.
Travis laughed. “By God, I’ll settle for that! No one can be his master, but 
anyone should be damned proud to be his friend.”
Funny—this proof of Einstein’s undamaged intellect made Travis laugh with 
delight, the first laughter of which he had been capable in days, but it made 
Nora weep with relief.
Jim Keene looked on in wide-eyed wonder, grinning stupidly. He said, “I feel 
like a child who’s sneaked downstairs on Christmas Eve and actually seen the 
real Santa Claus putting gifts under the tree.”
“My turn,” Travis said, sliding forward and putting a hand on Einstein’s head, 
patting him. “Jim just mentioned Christmas, and it’s not far away.
Twenty days from now. So tell me, Einstein, what would you most like to have 
Santa bring you?”
Twice, Einstein started to line up the lettered tiles, but both times he had 
second thoughts and disarranged them. He tottered and thumped down on his butt, 
looked around sheepishly, saw that they were all expectant, got up again, and 
this time produced a three-word request for Santa.
MICKEY MOUSE VIDEOS.
 
 
 
 
They didn’t get to bed until two in the morning because Jim Keene was 
intoxicated, not drunk from beer or wine or whiskey but from sheer joy over 
Einstein’s intelligence. “Like a man’s, yes, but still the dog, still the dog, 
wonderfully like, yet wonderfully different from, a man’s thinking, based on 
what little I’ve seen.” But Jim did not press for more than a dozen examples of 
the dog’s wit, and he was the first to say that they must not tire their 
patient. Still, he was electrified, so excited he could barely contain himself. 
Travis would not have been too surprised if the vet had suddenly just exploded.
In the kitchen, Jim pleaded with them to retell stories about Einstein: the 
Modern Bride business in Solvang; the way he had taken it upon himself to add 
cold water to the first hot bath that Travis had given him; and many more. Jim 
actually retold some of the same stories himself, almost as if Travis and Nora 
had never heard them, but they were happy to indulge him.
With a flourish, he snatched the wanted flyer off the table, struck a kitchen 
match, and burned the sheet in the sink. He washed the ashes down the drain. “To 
hell with the small minds who’d keep a creature like that locked up to be poked 
and prodded and studied. They might’ve had the genius to make Einstein, but they 
don’t understand the meaning of what they themselves have done. They don’t 
understand the greatness of it, because if they did they wouldn’t want to cage 
him.”
At last, when Jim Keene reluctantly agreed that they were all in need of sleep, 
Travis carried Einstein (already sleeping) up to the guest room. They made a 
blanket-cushioned place for him on the floor next to the bed.
In the dark, under the covers, with Einstein’s soft snoring to comfort them, 
Travis and Nora held each other.
She said, “Everything’s going to be all right now.”
“There’s still some trouble coming,” he said. He felt as if Einstein’s recovery 
had weakened the curse of untimely death that had followed him all of his life. 
But he was not ready to hope that the curse had been banished altogether. The 
Outsider was still out there somewhere . . . coming.
 
 
 
TEN
1
On Tuesday afternoon, December 7, when they took Einstein home, Jim Keene was 
reluctant to let them go. He followed them out to the pickup and stood at the 
driver’s window, restating the treatment that must be continued for the next 
couple of weeks, reminding them that he wanted to see Einstein once a week for 
the rest of the month, and urging them to visit him not only for the dog’s 
medical care but for drinks, dinner, conversation.
Travis knew the vet was trying to say he wanted to remain a part of Einstein's 
life, wanted to participate in the magic of it. “Jim, believe me, we’ll be back. 
And before Christmas, you’ll have to come out to our place, spend the day with 
us.”
“I’d like that.”
“So would we,” Travis said sincerely.
On the drive home, Nora held Einstein in her lap, wrapped in a blanket once 
more. He still did not have his old appetite, and he was weak. His immune system 
had taken severe punishment, so he would be more than usually susceptible to 
illness for a while. He was to be kept in the house as much as possible and 
pampered until he had regained his previous vigor— probably after the first of 
the year, according to Jim Keene.
The bruised and swollen sky bulged with saturated dark clouds. The Pacific Ocean 
was so hard and gray that it did not appear to be water but looked more like 
billions of shards and slabs of slate being continuously agitated by some 
geological upheaval in the earth below.
The bleak weather could not dampen their high spirits. Nora was beaming, and 
Travis found himself whistling. Einstein studied the scenery with great 
interest, clearly treasuring even the somber beauty of this nearly colorless 
winter day. Perhaps he had never expected to see the world outside Jim Keene’s 
office again, in which case even a sea of jumbled stone and a contusive sky were 
precious sights.
When they reached home, Travis left Nora in the pickup with the retriever and 
entered the house alone, by the back door, carrying the .38 pistol they kept in 
the truck. In the kitchen, where the lights had been on ever since their hasty 
departure last week, he immediately took an Uzi automatic pistol from its hiding 
place in a cabinet, and put the lighter gun aside. He proceeded cautiously from 
room to room, looking behind every large item of furniture and in every closet.
He saw no signs of burglary, and he expected none. This rural area was 
relatively crime-free. You could leave your door unlocked for days at a time 
without risking thieves who would take everything down to the wallpaper.
The Outsider, not a burglar, worried him.
The house was deserted.
Travis checked the barn, too, before driving the pickup inside, but it was also 
safe.
In the house, Nora put Einstein down and pulled the blanket off him. He tottered 
around the kitchen, sniffing at things. In the living room he looked at the cold 
fireplace and inspected his page-turning machine.
He returned to the kitchen pantry, clicked on the light with his foot pedal, and 
pawed letters out of the Lucite tubes.
HOME.
Stooping beside the dog, Travis said, “It’s sure good to be here, isn’t it?”
Einstein nuzzled Travis’s throat and licked his neck. The golden coat was fluffy 
and smelled clean because Jim Keene had given the dog a bath, in his surgery, 
under carefully controlled conditions. But as fluffy and fresh as he was, 
Einstein still did not look himself; he seemed tired, and he was thinner, too, 
having lost a few pounds in less than a week.
Pawing out more letters, Einstein spelled the same word again, as if to 
emphasize his pleasure: HOME.
Standing at the pantry door, Nora said, “Home is where the heart is, and there’s 
plenty of heart in this one. Hey, let’s have an early dinner and eat it in the 
living room while we run the videotape of Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Would you 
like that?”
Einstein wagged his tail vigorously.
Travis said, “Do you think you could handle your favorite food—a few weenies for 
dinner?”
Einstein licked his chops. He dispensed more letters, with which he expressed 
his enthusiastic approval of Travis’s suggestion.
HOME IS WHERE THE WEENIES ARE.
 
 
 
 
When Travis woke in the middle of the night, Einstein was at the bedroom window, 
on his hind feet with his forepaws braced on the sill. He was barely visible in 
the second-hand glow of the night-light in the adjoining bathroom. The interior 
shutter was bolted over the window, so the dog had no view of the front yard. 
But perhaps, for getting a fix on The Outsider, sight was the sense on which he 
least depended.
“Something out there, boy?” Travis asked quietly, not wanting to wake Nora 
unnecessarily.
Einstein dropped from the window, padded to Travis’s side of the bed, and put 
his head up on the mattress.
Petting the dog, Travis whispered, “Is it coming?”
Replying with only a cryptic mewl, Einstein settled down on the floor beside the 
bed and went to sleep again.
In a few minutes, Travis slept, too.
He woke again near dawn to find Nora sitting on the edge of the bed, petting 
Einstein. “Go back to sleep,” she told Travis.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she whispered drowsily. “I woke up and saw him at the window, but 
it’s nothing. Go to sleep.”
He did manage to fall asleep a third time, but he dreamed that The Outsider had 
been smart enough to learn how to use tools during its six-month-long pursuit of 
Einstein and now, yellow eyes gleaming, it was smashing its way through the 
bedroom shutters with an ax.
 
 
 
2
They gave Einstein his medicines on schedule, and he swallowed his pills 
obediently. They explained to him that he needed to eat well in order to regain 
his strength. He tried, but his appetite was returning only slowly. He would 
need a few weeks to regain the pounds he had lost and to recover his old 
vitality. But day by day his improvement was perceptible.
By Friday, December 10, Einstein seemed strong enough to risk a short walk 
outside. He still wobbled a little now and then, but he no longer tottered with 
every step. He’d had all of his shots at the veterinary clinic; there was no 
chance of picking up rabies on top of the distemper he’d just beaten.
The weather was milder than it had been in recent weeks, with temperatures in 
the low sixties and no wind. The scattered clouds were white, and the sun, when 
not hidden, laid a warm life-giving caress on the skin.
Einstein accompanied Travis on an inspection tour of the infrared sensors around 
the house and the nitrous-oxide tanks in the barn. They moved a bit more slowly 
than the last time they had walked this line together, but Einstein seemed to 
enjoy being back on duty.
Nora was in her studio, working diligently on a new painting: a portrait of 
Einstein. He was not aware that he was the subject of her latest canvas. The 
picture was to be one of his Christmas gifts and would, once opened on the 
holiday, be hung above the fireplace in the living room.
When Travis and Einstein came out of the barn, into the yard, he said, “Is it 
getting closer?”
Upon being asked that question, Einstein went through his usual routine, though 
with less exertion, less sniffing of the air, and less study of the shadowy 
forest around them. Returning to Travis, the dog whined anxiously.
“Is it out there?” Travis asked.
Einstein gave no answer. He merely surveyed the woods again—puzzled.
“Is it still coming?” Travis asked.
The dog did not reply.
“Is it nearer than it was?”
Einstein padded in a circle, sniffed the ground, sniffed the air, cocked his 
head one way and then the other. Finally he returned to the house and stood at 
the door, looking at Travis, waiting patiently.
Inside, Einstein went directly to the pantry.
MUZZY.
Travis stared at the word on the floor. “Muzzy?”
Einstein dispensed more letters and nosed them into place.
MUFFLED. FUZZY.
“Are you talking about your ability to sense The Outsider?” A quick tail wag: 
Yes.
“You can’t sense it any more?”
One bark: No.
“Do you think ... it’s dead?”
DON’T KNOW.
“Or maybe this sixth sense of yours doesn’t work when you’re sick—or debilitated 
like you are now.”
MAYBE.
Gathering up the lettered tiles and sorting them into the tubes, Travis thought 
for a minute. Bad thoughts. Unnerving thoughts. They had an alarm system around 
the property, yes, but to some extent they were depending on Einstein for an 
early warning. Travis should have felt comfortable with the precautions he had 
taken and with his own abilities, as a former Delta Force man, to exterminate 
The Outsider. But he was tormented by the feeling that he had overlooked a hole 
in their defenses and that, come the crisis, he would need Einstein’s full 
powers and strength to help him deal with the unexpected.
“You’re going to have to- get well as fast as you can,” he told the retriever. 
“You’re going to have to try to eat even when you have no real appetite. You’re 
going to have to sleep as much as you can, give your body a chance to knit up, 
and don’t spend half the night at the windows, Worrying.”
CHICKEN SOUP.
Laughing, Travis said, “Might as well try that, too.”
A BOILERMAKER KILLS GERMS DEAD.
“Where’d you get that idea?”
BOOK. WHAT’S BOILERMAKER?
Travis said, “A shot of whiskey dropped into a glass of beer.”
Einstein considered that for a moment.
KILL GERMS BUT BECOME ALCOHOLIC.
Travis laughed and ruffled Einstein’s coat. “You’re a regular comedian, fur 
face.”
MAYBE I SHOULD PLAY VEGAS.
“I bet you could.”
HEADLINER.
“You certainly would be.”
ME AND PIA ZADORA.
He hugged the dog, and they sat in the pantry laughing, each in his own way.
In spite of the joking, Travis knew that Einstein was deeply troubled by the 
loss of his ability to sense The Outsider. The jokes were a defensive mechanism, 
a way to hold off fear.
That afternoon, exhausted from their short walk around the house, Einstein slept 
while Nora painted feverishly in her studio. Travis sat by a front window, 
staring out at the woods, repeatedly going over their defenses in his mind, 
looking for a hole.
 
 
On Sunday, December 12, Jim Keene came out to their place in the afternoon and 
stayed for dinner. He examined Einstein and was pleased with the dog’s 
improvement.
“Seems slow to us,” Nora said fretfully.
“I told you, it’ll take time,” Jim said.
He made a couple of changes in Einstein’s medication and left new bottles of 
pills.
Einstein had fun demonstrating his page-turning machine and his 
letter-dispensing device in the pantry. He graciously accepted praise for his 
ability to hold a pencil in his teeth and use it to operate the television and 
the videotape recorder without bothering Nora and Travis for help.
Nora was at first surprised that the veterinarian looked less sad-eyed and 
sorrowful than she remembered. But she decided his face was the same; the only 
thing that had changed was her perception of him. Now that she knew him better, 
now that he was a friend of the first rank, she saw not only the glum features 
nature had given him but the kindness and humor beneath his somber surface.
Over dinner, Jim said, “I’ve been doing a little research into tattooing— to see 
if maybe I can remove the numbers in his ear.”
Einstein had been lying on the floor nearby, listening to their conversation. He 
got to his feet, wobbled a moment, then hurried to the kitchen table and jumped 
into one of the empty chairs. He sat very erect and stared at Jim expectantly.
“Well,” the vet said, putting down a forkful of curried chicken that he’d lifted 
halfway to his mouth, “most but not all tattoos can be eradicated. If! know what 
sort of ink was used and by what method it was embedded under the skin, I might 
be able to erase it.”
“That would be terrific,” Nora said. “Then even if they found us and tried to 
take Einstein back, they couldn’t prove he’s the dog they lost.”
“There’d still be traces of the tattoo that would show up under close 
inspection,” Travis said. “Under a magnifying glass.”
Einstein looked from Travis to Jim Keene as if to say, Yeah, what about that?
“Most labs just tag research animals,” Jim said. “Of those that tattoo, there’re 
a couple of different standard inks used. I might be able to remove it and leave 
no trace except a natural-looking mottling of the flesh. Microscopic examination 
wouldn’t reveal traces of the ink, not a hint of the numbers. It’s a small 
tattoo, after all, which makes the job easier. I’m still researching techniques, 
but in a few weeks we might try it—if Einstein doesn’t mind some discomfort.”
The retriever left the table and padded into the pantry. They could hear the 
pumping of the letter-dispensing pedals.
Nora went to see what message Einstein was composing.
DON’T WANT TO BE BRANDED. AM NOT A COW.
His desire to be free of the tattoo went deeper than Nora had thought. He wanted 
the mark removed in order to escape identification by the people at the lab. But 
evidently he also hated carrying those three numbers in his ear because they 
marked him as mere property, a condition that was an affront to his dignity and 
a violation of his rights as an intelligent creature.
FREEDOM.
“Yes,” Nora said respectfully, putting a hand on his head, “I do understand. You 
are a . . . a person, and a person with”—this was the first time she had thought 
of this aspect of the situation—”a soul.”
Was it blasphemous to think Einstein had a soul? No. She did not think blasphemy 
entered into it. Man had made the dog; however, if there was a God, He obviously 
approved of Einstein—not least of all because Einstein’s ability to 
differentiate right from wrong, his ability to love, his courage, and his 
selflessness made him closer to the image of God than were many human beings who 
walked the earth.
“Freedom,” she said. “If you’ve got a soul—and I know you do—then you were born 
with free will and the right to self-determination. The number in your ear is an 
insult, and we’ll get rid of it.”
After dinner, Einstein clearly wanted to monitor—and participate in—the 
conversation, but he ran out of energy and slept by the fire.
Over a short brandy and coffee, Jim Keene listened as Travis outlined their 
defenses against The Outsider. Encouraged to find holes in their preparations, 
the vet could think of nothing except the vulnerability of their power supply. 
“If the thing was smart enough to bring down the line that runs in from the main 
highway, it could plunge you into darkness in the middle of the night and render 
your alarm useless. And without power those tricky mechanisms in the barn 
wouldn’t slam the door behind the beast or release the nitrous oxide.”
Nora and Travis took him downstairs, into the half-basement under the rear of 
the house, to show him the emergency generator. It was powered by a forty-gallon 
tank of gasoline buried in the yard, and it would restore electricity to the 
house and barn and alarm system after only a ten-second delay following the loss 
of the main supply.
“As far as I can see,” Jim said, “you’ve thought of everything.”
“I think we have, too,” Nora said.
But Travis scowled. “I wonder . .
 
 
On Wednesday, December 22, they drove into Carmel. Leaving Einstein with Jim 
Keene, they spent the day buying Christmas gifts, decorations for the house, 
ornaments for a tree, and the tree itself.
With the threat of The Outsider moving inexorably closer to them, it seemed 
almost frivolous to make plans for the holiday. But Travis said, “Life is short. 
You never know how much time you’ve got left, so you can’t let Christmas slide 
by without celebrating, no matter what. Besides, my Christmases haven’t been so 
terrific these last few years. I intend to make up for that.”
“Aunt Violet didn’t believe in making an event of Christmas. She didn’t believe 
in exchanging gifts or putting up a tree.”
“She didn’t believe in life,” Travis said. “And that’s just one more reason to 
do this Christmas up right. It’ll be your first good one, as well as Einstein’s 
first.”
Starting next year, Nora thought, there’ll be a baby in the house with which to 
share Christmas, and won’t that be a hoot!
Aside from suffering a little mild morning sickness and having put on a couple 
of pounds, she’d not yet shown any signs of pregnancy. Her belly was still flat, 
and Dr. Weingold said that, considering her body type, she had a chance of being 
one of those women whose abdomen underwent only moderate distension. She hoped 
she was lucky in that regard because, after the birth, getting back into shape 
would be a lot easier. Of course, the baby was not due for six months yet, which 
gave her plenty of time to get as big as a walrus.
Returning from Carmel in the pickup—the back of which was filled with packages 
and a perfectly formed Christmas tree—Einstein slept half on Nora’s lap. He was 
worn out from his busy day with Jim and Pooka. They got home less than an hour 
before dark. Einstein led the way toward the house—
—but suddenly stopped and looked around curiously. He sniffed the chilly air, 
then moved across the yard, nose to the ground, as if tracking a scent.
Heading toward the back door with her arms full of packages, Nora did not at 
first see anything unusual in the dog’s behavior, but she noticed that Travis 
had halted and was staring hard at Einstein. She said, “What is it?”
“Wait a second.”
Einstein crossed the yard to the edge of the woods on the south side. He stood 
rigid, head thrust forward, then shook himself and moved on along the perimeter 
of the forest. He stopped repeatedly, standing motionless each time, and in a 
couple of minutes he came all the way around to the north.
When the retriever returned to them, Travis said, “Something?”
Einstein wagged his tail briefly and barked once: Yes and no.
Inside, in the pantry, the retriever laid out a message.
FELT SOMETHING.
“What?” Travis asked.
DON’T KNOW.
“The Outsider?”
MAYBE.
“Close?”
DON’T KNOW.
“Are you getting your sixth sense back?” Nora asked.
DON’T KNOW. JUST FELT.
“Felt what?” Travis asked.
The dog composed an answer only after considerable deliberation.
BIG DARKNESS.
“You felt a big darkness?”
Yes.
“What’s that mean?” Nora asked uneasily.
CAN’T EXPLAIN BETTER. JUST FELT IT.
Nora looked at Travis and saw a concern in his eyes that probably mirrored the 
expression in her own.
A big darkness was out there somewhere, and it was coming.
 
 
3
Christmas was joyous and fine.
In the morning, sitting around the light-bedecked tree, drinking milk and eating 
homemade cookies, they opened presents. As a joke, the first gift that Nora gave 
Travis was a box of underwear. He gave her a bright orange and yellow muumuu 
obviously sized for a three-hundred-pound woman: “For March, when you’ll be too 
big for anything else. Of course, by May you’ll have outgrown it.” They 
exchanged serious gifts, also—jewelry and sweaters and books.
But Nora, like Travis, felt the day belonged to Einstein more than to anyone 
else. She gave him the portrait on which she had been working all month, and the 
retriever seemed stunned and flattered and delighted that she had seen fit to 
immortalize him in paint. He got three new Mickey Mouse videotapes, a pair of 
fancy metal food and water bowls with his name engraved on them to replace the 
plastic dishes he had been using, his own small battery powered clock that he 
could take with him to any room in the house (he was showing an increasing 
interest in time), and several other presents, but he Was repeatedly drawn to 
the portrait, which they propped against the wall for his inspection. Later, 
when they hung it above the living-room fireplace, Einstein stood on the hearth 
and peered up at the picture, pleased and proud.
Like any kid, Einstein perversely took almost as much pleasure in playing With 
empty boxes, crumpled wrapping paper, and ribbons as he did with the gifts 
themselves. And one of his favorite things was a joke gift: a red Santa
cap with a white porn-porn on the tip, which was held on his head by an elastic 
strap. Nora put it on him just for fun. When he saw himself in a mirror, he was 
so taken with his appearance that he objected when, a few minutes later, she 
tried to take the cap off him. He kept it on most of the day.
Jim Keene and Pooka arrived in the early afternoon, and Einstein herded them 
straight into the living room to look at his portrait above the mantel. For an 
hour, watched over by Jim and Travis, the two dogs played together in the back 
yard. That activity, having been preceded by the excitement of the morning’s 
gift-giving, left Einstein in need of a nap, so they returned to the house, 
where Jim and Travis helped Nora prepare Christmas dinner.
After his nap, Einstein tried to interest Pooka in Mickey Mouse cartoons, but 
Nora saw that he met with only limited success. Pooka’s attention span didn’t 
even last long enough for Donald or Goofy or Pluto to get Mickey into trouble. 
In respect of his companion’s lower 10, and apparently not bored with such 
company, Einstein turned the television off and engaged in strictly doggy 
activities: some light wrestling in the den and a lot of lying around, nose to 
nose, silently communing with each other about canine concerns.
By early evening, the house was filled with the aromas of turkey, baked corn, 
yams, and other goodies. Christmas music played. And in spite of the interior 
shutters that had been bolted over the windows when the early-winter night had 
fallen, in spite of the guns near at hand, in spite of the demonic presence of 
The Outsider that always lurked in the back of her mind, Nora had never been 
happier.
During dinner, they talked about the baby, and Jim asked if they had given any 
thought to names. Einstein, eating in the corner with Pooka, was instantly 
intrigued by the idea of participating in the naming of their firstborn. He 
dashed immediately to the pantry to spell out his suggestion.
Nora left the table to see what name the dog thought suitable.
MICKEY.
“Absolutely not!” she said. “We’re not naming my baby after a cartoon mouse.”
DONALD.
“Nor a duck.”
PLUTO.
“Pluto? Get serious, fur face.”
GOOFY.
Nora firmly restrained him from pushing the letter-dispensing pedals any more, 
gathered up the used tiles and put them away, turned off the pantry light, and 
went back to the table. “You may think it’s hilarious,” she told Travis and Jim, 
who were choking with laughter, “but he’s serious!”
After dinner, sitting around the tree in the living room, they talked about many 
things, including Jim’s intention of getting another dog. “Pooka needs to have 
another of his kind,” the vet said. “He’s almost a year and a half old now, and 
I’m of the belief that human companionship isn’t enough for them after they’re 
well past the puppy stage. They get lonely like we do. And since I’m going to 
get him a companion, I might as well get a female purebred lab
and maybe wind up with some nice puppies to sell later. So he’s going to have 
not only a friend but a mate.”
Nora had not noticed that Einstein was any more interested in that part of the 
conversation than in any other. However, after Jim and Pooka had gone home, 
Travis found a message in the pantry and called Nora over to have a look at it.
MATE. A COMPANION, PARTNER, ONE OF A PAIR.
The retriever had been waiting for them to notice the carefully arranged tiles. 
Now he appeared behind them and regarded them quizzically.
Nora said, “Do you think you’d like a mate?”
Einstein slipped between them, into the pantry, disarranged the tiles, and made 
a reply.
IT’S WORTH THINKING ABOUT.
“But, listen, fur face,” Travis said, “you’re one of a kind. There’s no other 
dog like you, with your JO.”
The retriever considered that point but was not dissuaded.
LIFE IS MORE THAN INTELLECT.
“True enough,” Travis said. “But I think this needs a lot of consideration.”
LIFE IS FEELINGS.
“All right,” Nora said. “We’ll think about it.”
LIFE IS MATE. SHARING.
“We promise to think about it and then discuss it with you some more,” Travis 
said. “Now it’s getting late.”
Einstein quickly made one more message.
BABY MICKEY?
“Absolutely not!” Nora said.
 
 
That night, in bed, after she and Travis made love, Nora said, “I’ll bet he is 
lonely.”
“Jim Keene?”
“Well, yes, I bet he’s lonely, too. He’s such a nice man, and he’d make someone 
a great husband. But women are just as choosy about looks as men are, don’t you 
think? They don’t go for husbands with hound-dog faces. They marry the 
good-looking ones who half the time treat them like dirt. But I didn’t mean Jim. 
I meant Einstein. He must get lonely now and then.”
“We’re with him all the time.”
“No, we’re really not. I paint, and you do things in which poor Einstein doesn’t 
get included. And if you do go back to real estate eventually, there’ll be a lot 
of time when Einstein’s without anyone.”
“He has his books. He loves books.”
“Maybe books aren’t enough,” she said.
They were silent for so long that she thought Travis had fallen asleep. Then he 
said, “If Einstein mated and produced puppies, what would they be like?”
“You mean—would they be as smart as he is?”
“I wonder . . . Seems to me there’s three possibilities. First, his intelligence 
isn’t inheritable, so his puppies would just be ordinary puppies. Second, it is 
inheritable, but the genes of his mate would dilute the intelligence, so the 
puppies would be smart but not as smart as their father; and each succeeding 
generation would get dimmer, duller, until eventually his 
great-great-greatgrandpups would just be ordinary dogs.”
“What’s the third possibility?”
“Intelligence, being a survival trait, might be genetically dominant, very 
dominant.”
“In which case his puppies would be as smart as he is.”
“And their puppies after them, on and on, until in time you’d have a colony of 
intelligent golden retrievers, thousands of them all over the world.”
They were silent again.
Finally she said, “Wow.”
Travis said, “He’s right.”
“What?”
“It is something worth thinking about.”
 
 
4
Vince Nasco had never anticipated, back in November, that he would need a full 
month to get a whack at Ramon Velazquez, the guy in Oakland who was a thorn in 
the side of Don Mario Tetragna. Until he wasted Velazquez, Vince would not be 
given the names of people in San Francisco who dealt in false ID and who might 
help him track down Travis Cornell, the woman, and the dog. So he had an urgent 
need to reduce Velazquez to a hunk of putrefying meat.
But Velazquez was a goddamn shadow. The man did not make a step without two 
bodyguards at his side, which should have made him more rather than less 
conspicuous. However, he conducted his gambling and drug enterprises—infringing 
on the Tetragna franchise in Oakland—with all the stealth of Howard Hughes. He 
slipped and slithered on his errands, using a fleet of different cars, never 
taking the same route two days in a row, never meeting in the same place, using 
the street as an office, never staying anywhere long enough to be made, marked, 
and wiped out. He was a hopeless paranoid who believed everyone was out to get 
him. Vince couldn’t keep the man in sight long enough to match him with the 
photograph that the Tetragnas had supplied. Ramon Velazquez was smoke.
Vince didn’t get him until Christmas Day, and it was a hell of a mess when it 
went down. Ramon was at home with a lot of relatives. Vince came at the 
Velazquez property from the house behind it, over the high brick wall between 
one big lot and the other. Coming down on the other side, he saw Velazquez and 
some people at a barbecue on the patio near the pool, where they were roasting 
an enormous turkey—did people barbecue turkeys anywhere but in
California?—and they all spotted him immediately though he was half an acre 
away. He saw the bodyguards reaching for weapons in their shoulder holsters, so 
he had no choice but to fire indiscriminately with his Uzi, spraying the entire 
patio area, taking out Velazquez, both bodyguards, a middle-aged woman who must 
have been somebody’s wife, and an old dame who had to be somebody’s grandmother.
Ssssnap.
Ssssnap.
Ssssnap.
Ssssnap.
Ssssnap.
Everyone else, inside and outside of the house, was screaming and diving for 
cover. Vince had to climb the wall back into the yard of the house next 
door—where nobody was home, thank God—and as he was hauling his ass over the 
top, a bunch of Latino types at the Velazquez place opened fire on him. He 
barely got away with his hide intact.
The day after Christmas, when he showed up at a San Francisco restaurant owned 
by Don Tetragna, to meet with Frank Dicenziano, a trusted Family capo who 
answered only to the don himself, Vince was worried. The fratellanza had a code 
about assassinations. Hell, they had a code about everything—probably even bowel 
movements—and they took their codes seriously, but the code of assassination was 
maybe taken a little more seriously than others. The first rule of that code 
was: You don’t hit a man in the company of his family unless he’s gone to ground 
and you just can’t reach him any other way. Vince felt fairly safe on that 
score. But another rule was that you never shot a man’s wife or kids or his 
grandmother in order to get at him. Any hit man who did such a thing would 
probably wind up dead himself, wasted by the very people who had hired him. 
Vince hoped to convince Frank Dicenziano that Velazquez was a special case—no 
other target had ever eluded Vince for a month—and that what had happened in 
Oakland on Christmas Day was regrettable but unavoidable.
Just in case Dicenziano—and by extension, the don—was too furious to listen to 
reason, Vince went prepared with more than a gun. He knew that, if they wanted 
him dead, they would crowd him and take the gun away from him before he could 
use it, as soon as he walked into the restaurant and before he knew the score. 
So he wired himself with plastic explosives and was prepared to detonate them, 
wiping out the entire restaurant, if they tried to fit him for a coffin.
Vince was not sure if he would survive the explosion. He had absorbed the life 
energies of so many people recently that he thought he must be getting close to 
the immortality he had been seeking—or was already there—but he could not know 
how strong he was until he put himself to the test. If his choice was standing 
at the heart of an explosion . . . or letting a couple of Wiseguys pump a 
hundred rounds into him and encase him in concrete for a dunk in the bay . . . 
he decided the former was more appealing and, perhaps, offered him a marginally 
better chance of survival.
To his surprise, Dicenziano—who resembled a squirrel with meatballs in his 
cheeks—was delighted with how the Velazquez contract had been fulfilled. He said 
the don had the highest praise for Vince. No one searched Vince when he entered 
the restaurant. At a corner booth, as the first men in the room, he and Frank 
were served a special lunch of dishes not on the menu. They drank 
three-hundred-dollar Cabernet Sauvignon, a gift from Mario Tetragna.
When Vince cautiously raised the issue of the dead wife and grandmother, 
Dicenziano said, “Listen, my friend, we knew this was going to be a hard hit, a 
demanding job, and that rules might have to be broken. Besides, these people 
were not our kind of people. They were just a bunch of wetback spics. They don’t 
belong in this business. If they try to force their way into it, they can’t 
expect us to play by the rules.”
Relieved, Vince went to the men’s room halfway through lunch and disconnected 
the detonator. He didn’t want to set the Plastique off accidentally now that the 
crisis was past.
At the end of lunch, Frank gave Vince the list. Nine names. “These people— who 
are not all Family people, by the way—pay the don for the right to operate their 
ID businesses in his territory. Back in November, in anticipation of your 
success with Velazquez, I spoke to these nine, and they’ll remember that the don 
wants them to cooperate with you in any way they can.”
Vince set out the same afternoon, looking for someone who would remember Travis 
Cornell.
Initially, he was frustrated. Two of the first four people on the list could not 
be reached. They had closed up shop and gone away for the holidays. To Vince, it 
seemed wrong that the criminal underworld would take off for Christmas and New 
Year’s as if they were schoolteachers.
But the fifth man, Anson Van Dyne, was at work in the basement beneath his 
topless club, Hot Tips, and at five-thirty, December 26, Vince found what he was 
after. Van Dyne looked at the photograph of Travis Cornell, which Vince had 
obtained from the back-issue files of the Santa Barbara newspaper. “Yeah, I 
remember him. He’s not one you forget. Not a foreigner looking to become an 
instant American like half my customers. And not the usual sad-assed loser who 
needs to change his name and hide his face. He’s not a big guy, and he doesn’t 
come on tough or anything, but you get the feeling he could mop up the floor 
with anyone who crossed him. Very self-contained. Very watchful. I couldn’t 
forget him.”
“What you couldn’t forget,” said one of the two bearded boy wonders at the 
computers, “is that gorgeous quiff he was with.”
“For her, even a dead man could get it up,” the other one said.
The first said, “Yeah, even a dead man. Cake and pie.”
Vince was both offended and confused by their contributions to the conversation, 
so he ignored them. To Van Dyne, he said, “Is there any chance you’d remember 
the new names you gave them?”
“Sure. We got it on file,” Van Dyne said.
Vince could not believe what he had heard. “I thought people in your line
of work didn’t keep records? Safer for you and essential for your clients.”
Van Dyne shrugged. “Fuck the clients. Maybe one day the feds or the locals hit 
us, put us out of business. Maybe I find myself needing a steady flow of cash 
for lawyers’ fees. What better than to have a list of a couple of thousand bozos 
living under phony names, bozos who’d be willing to be squeezed a little rather 
than have to start all over again with new lives.”
“Blackmail,” Vince said.
“An ugly word,” Van Dyne said. “But apt, I’m afraid. Anyway, all we care about 
is that we are safe, that there aren’t any records here to incriminate us. We 
don’t keep the data in this dump. Soon as we provide someone with a new ID, we 
transmit the record of it over a safe phone line from the computer here to a 
computer we keep elsewhere. The way that computer is programmed, the data can’t 
be pulled out of it from here; it’s a one-way road; so if we are busted, the 
police hackers can’t reach our records from these machines. Hell, they won’t 
even know the records exist.”
This new high-tech criminal world made Vince woozy. Even the don, a man of 
infinite criminal cleverness, had thought these people kept no records and had 
not realized how computers had made it safe to do so. Vince thought about what 
Van Dyne had told him, getting it all sorted out in his mind. He said, “So can 
you take me to this other computer and look up Cornell’s new
ID?”
“For a friend of Don Tetragna’s,” Van Dyne said, “I’ll do just about anything 
but slit my own throat. Come with me.”
 
 
Van Dyne drove Vince to a busy Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. The place must 
have seated a hundred and fifty, and every table was occupied, mostly by Anglos 
rather than Asians. Although the joint was enormous and was decorated with paper 
lanterns, dragon murals, imitation rosewood screens, and strings of brass wind 
chimes in the shapes of Chinese ideograms, it reminded Vince of the kitschy 
Italian trattoria in which he had murdered the cockroach Pantangela and the two 
federal marshals last August. All ethnic art and decor—from Chinese to Italian 
to Polish to Irish—were, when boiled down to their essence, perfectly alike.
The owner was a Chinese man in his thirties, who was introduced to Vince simply 
as Yuan. With bottles of Tsingtao provided by Yuan, Van Dyne and Vince went into 
the owner’s basement office, where two computers stood on two desks, one out in 
the main work area and the other shoved into a corner. The one in the corner was 
switched on, though nobody was working at it.
“This is my computer,” Van Dyne said. “No one here ever works with it. They 
never even touch it, except to open the phone line to put the modem in operation 
every morning and to close it at night. My computers at Hot Tips are linked to 
this one.”
“You trust Yuan?”
“I got him the loan that started this business. He owes me his good fortune.
And it’s pretty much a clean loan, nothing that can be linked to me in any way, 
or to Don Tetragna, so Yuan remains an upstanding citizen who’s of no interest 
to the cops. All he does for me in return is let me keep the computer here.”
Sitting in front of the terminal, Van Dyne began to use the keyboard. In two 
minutes he had Travis Cornell’s new name: Samuel Spencer Hyatt.
“And here,” Van Dyne said as new data flickered up. “This is the woman who was 
with him. Her real name was Nora Louise Devon of Santa Barbara. Now, she’s Nora 
Jean Aimes.”
“Okay,” Vince said. “Now wipe them off your records.”
“What do you mean?”
“Erase them. Take them out of the computer. They’re not yours any more. They’re 
mine. Nobody else’s. Just mine.”
 
 
A short while later, they were back at Hot Tips, which was a decadent place that 
revolted Vince.
In the basement, Van Dyne gave the names Hyatt and Aimes to the bearded boy 
wonders who seemed to live down there around the clock, like a couple of trolls.
First, the trolls broke into the Department of Motor Vehicle computers. They 
wanted to see whether, in the three months since acquiring new identities, Hyatt 
and Aimes had settled down somewhere and filed a change of address with the 
state.
“Bingo,” one of them said.
An address appeared on the screen, and the bearded operator ordered a printout.
Anson Van Dyne tore the paper off the printer and handed it to Vince. Travis 
Cornell and Nora Devon—now Hyatt and Aimes—were living at a rural address on 
Pacific Coast Highway south of the town of Carmel.
 
 
5
On Wednesday, December 29, Nora drove into Carmel alone for an appointment with 
Dr. Weingold.
The sky was overcast, so dark that the white seagulls, swooping against the 
backdrop of clouds, were by contrast almost as bright as incandescent lights. 
The weather had been much the same since the day after Christmas, but the 
promised rain never came.
Today, however, it came in torrents just as she pulled the pickup into one of 
the spaces in the small parking lot behind Dr. Weingold’s office. She was 
wearing a nylon jacket with a hood, just in case, and she pulled the hood
over her head before dashing from the truck into the one-story brick building. 
Dr. Weingold gave her the usual thorough examination and pronounced
her fit as a fiddle, which would have amused Einstein.
“I’ve never seen a woman at the three-month mark in better shape,” the doctor 
said.
“I want this to be a very healthy baby, a perfect baby.”
“And so it shall be.”
The doctor believed that her name was Aimes and her husband’s name was Hyatt, 
but he never once indicated disapproval of her marital status. The situation 
embarrassed Nora, but she supposed that the modern world, into which she had 
fluttered from the cocoon of the Devon house, was liberal-minded about these 
things.
Dr. Weingold suggested, as he had done before, that she consider a test to 
determine the baby’s sex, and as before she declined. She wanted to be 
surprised. Besides, if they found out they were going to have a girl, Einstein 
would start campaigning for the name “Minnie.”
After huddling with the doctor’s receptionist to schedule the next appointment, 
Nora pulled the hood over her head again and went out into the driving rain. It 
was coming down hard, drizzling off a section of roof that had no gutters, 
sluicing across the sidewalk, forming deep puddles on the macadam of the parking 
lot. She sloshed through a miniature river on her way to the pickup, and in 
seconds her running shoes were saturated.
As she reached the truck, she saw a man getting out of a red Honda parked beside 
her. She didn’t notice much about him—just that he was a big guy in a small car, 
and that he was not dressed for the rain. He was wearing jeans and a blue 
pullover, and Nora thought: The poor man is going to get soaked to the skin.
She opened the driver’s door and started to get into the truck. The next thing 
she knew, the man in the-blue sweater was coming in after her, shoving her 
across the seat and clambering behind the wheel. He said, “If you yell, bitch, 
I’ll blow your guts out,” and she realized that he was jamming a revolver into 
her side.
She almost yelled anyway, involuntarily, almost tried to keep on going across 
the front seat and out the door on the passenger’s side. But something in his 
voice, brutal and dark, made her hesitate. He sounded as if he would shoot her 
in the back rather than let her escape.
He slammed the driver’s door, and now they were alone in the truck, beyond help, 
virtually concealed from the world by the rain that streamed down the Windows 
and made the glass opaque. It didn’t matter: the doctor’s parking lot was 
deserted, and it could not be seen from the street, so even out of the truck she 
would have had no one to whom to turn.
He was a very big man, and muscular, but it was not his size that was most 
frightening. His broad face was placid, virtually expressionless; that serenity, 
completely unsuited to these circumstances, scared Nora. His eyes were worse. 
Green eyes—and cold.
“Who are you?” she demanded, trying to conceal her fear, sure that visible 
terror would excite him. He seemed to be balanced on a thin line. “What do you 
want with me?”
“I want the dog.”
She had thought: robber. She had thought: rapist. She had thought: psychopathic 
thrill killer. But she had not for a moment thought that he might be a 
government agent. Yet who else would be looking for Einstein? No one else even 
knew the dog existed.
“What’re you talking about?” she said.
He pushed the muzzle of the revolver deeper into her side, until it hurt.
She thought of the baby growing within her. “All right, okay, obviously you know 
about the dog, so there’s no point playing games.”
“No point.” He spoke so quietly that she could hardly hear him above the roar of 
the rain that drummed on the roof of the cab and snapped against the windshield.
He reached over and pulled down the hood of her jacket, opened the zipper, and 
slid his hand down her breasts, over her belly. For a moment she was terrified 
that he was, after all, intent on rape.
Instead, he said, “This Weingold is a gynecologist-obstetrician. So what’s your 
problem? You have some damn social disease or are you pregnant?” He almost spit 
out the words “social disease,” as if merely pronouncing those syllables made 
him sick with disgust.
“You’re no government agent.” She spoke entirely from instinct.
“I asked you a question, bitch,” he said in a voice barely louder than a 
whisper. He leaned close, digging the gun into her side again. The air in the 
truck was humid. The all-enveloping sound of rain combined with the stuffiness 
to create a claustrophobic atmosphere that was nearly intolerable. He said, 
“Which is it? You got herpes, syphilis, clap, some other crotch rot? Or are you 
pregnant?”
Thinking that pregnancy might gain her a dispensation from the violence of which 
he seemed so capable, she said, “I’m going to have a baby. I’m three months 
pregnant.”
Something happened in his eyes. A shifting. Like movement in a subtle 
kaleidoscopic pattern that was composed of bits of glass all the same shade of 
green.
Nora knew that admitting pregnancy was the worst thing she could have done, but 
she did not know why.
She thought about the .38 pistol in the glove compartment. She could not 
possibly open the glove box, grab the gun, and shoot him before he pulled the 
trigger of the revolver. Still, she’d have to remain constantly on the lookout 
for an opportunity, for a laxness on his part, that would give her a chance to 
go for her own weapon.
Suddenly he was climbing on top of her, and again she thought he was going to 
rape her in broad daylight, in the veiling curtains of rain but still daylight. 
Then she realized he was just changing places with her, urging her
behind the wheel while he moved into the passenger’s seat, keeping the muzzle of 
the revolver on her the whole time.
“Drive,” he said.
“Where?”
“Back to your place.”
“But—”
“Keep your mouth shut and drive.”
Now she was at the opposite side of the cab from the glove box. To get to it, 
she would have to reach in front of him. He would never be that lax.
Determined to keep a rein on her galloping fear, she now found that she had to 
rein in despair as well.
She started the truck, drove out of the parking lot, and turned right in the 
street.
The windshield wipers thumped nearly as loud as her heart. She wasn’t sure how 
much of the oppressive sound was made by the impacting rain and how much of it 
was the roar of her own blood in her ears.
Block by block, Nora searched for a cop—although she had no idea what she should 
do if she saw one. She never had to figure it out because no cops were anywhere 
to be seen.
Until they were out of Carmel and on the Pacific Coast Highway, the blustering 
wind not only drove rain against the windshield but also flung bristling bits of 
cypress and pine needles from the huge old trees that sheltered the town’s 
streets. South along the coast, as they headed into steadily less populated 
areas, no trees overhung the road, but the wind off the ocean hit the pickup 
full force. Nora frequently felt it pulling at the wheel. And the rain, slashing 
straight at them from the sea, seemed to pummel the truck hard enough to leave 
dents in the sheet metal.
After at least five minutes of silence, which seemed like an hour, she could no 
longer obey his order to keep her mouth shut. “How did you find us?”
“Been watching your place for more than a day,” he said in that cool, quiet 
voice that matched his placid face. “When you left this morning, I followed you, 
hoping you’d give me an opening.”
“No, I mean, how did you know where we lived?”
He smiled. “Van Dyne.”
“That double-crossing creep.”
“Special circumstances,” he assured her. “The Big Man in San Francisco Owed me a 
favor, so he put pressure on Van Dyne.”
“Big man?”
“Tetragna.”
“Who’s he?”
“You don’t know anything, do you?” he said. “Except how to make babies, huh? You 
know about that, huh?”
The hard taunting note in his voice was not merely sexually suggestive: it Was 
darker, stranger, and more terrifying than that. She was so frightened
of the fierce tension that she sensed in him each time he approached the subject 
of sex that she did not dare reply to him.
She turned on the headlights as they encountered thin fog. She kept her 
attention on the rain-washed highway, squinting through the smeary windshield.
He said, “You’re very pretty. If I was going to stick it into anyone, I’d stick 
it into you.”
Nora bit her lip.
“But even as pretty as you are,” he said, “you’re like all the others, I’ll bet. 
If I stuck it into you, then it’d rot and fall off because you’re diseased like 
all the others—aren’t you? Yeah. You are. Sex is death. I’m one of the few who 
seem to know it, even though proof is everywhere. Sex is death. But you’re very 
pretty . .
As she listened to him, her throat got tight. She was having difficulty drawing 
a deep breath.
Suddenly his taciturnity was gone. He talked fast, still soft-voiced and 
unnervingly calm, considering the crazy things he was saying, but very fast:
“I’m going to be bigger than Tetragna, more important. I’ve got scores of lives 
in me. I’ve absorbed energies from more than you’d believe, experienced The 
Moment, felt The Snap. It’s my Gift. When Tetragna’s dead and gone, I’ll be 
here. When everyone now alive is dead, I’ll be here because I’m immortal.”
She didn’t know what to say. He had come out of nowhere, somehow knowing about 
Einstein, and he was a lunatic, and there seemed to be nothing she could do. She 
was as angry about the unfairness of it as she was afraid. They had made careful 
preparations for The Outsider, and they had taken elaborate steps to elude the 
government—but how were they supposed to have prepared for this? It wasn’t fair.
Silent again, he stared at her intently for a minute or more, another eternity. 
She could feel his icy green gaze on her as surely as she would have felt a 
cold, fondling hand.
“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” he said.
“No.”
Perhaps because he found her pretty, he chose to explain. “I’ve only ever told 
one person before, and he made fun of me. His name was Danny Slowicz, and we 
both worked for the Carramazza Family in New York, biggest of the five Mafia 
Families. Little muscle work, once in a while killing people who needed killed.”
Nora felt sick because he was not merely crazy and not merely a killer but a 
crazy professional killer.
Unaware of her reaction, switching his gaze from the rain-swept road to her 
face, he continued. “See, we were having dinner in this restaurant, Danny and 
me, washing down clams with Valpolicella, and I explained to him that I was 
destined to lead a long life because of my ability to acquire the vital energies 
of people I wasted. I told him, ‘See, Danny, people are like batteries,
walking batteries, filled with this mysterious energy we call life. When I off 
someone, his energy becomes my energy, and I get stronger. I’m a bull, Danny,’ I 
says. ‘Look at me—am I a bull or what? And I got to be a bull ‘cause I have this 
Gift of being able to take the energy from a guy.’ And you know what Danny 
says?”
“What?” she asked numbly.
“Well, Danny was a serious eater, so he kept his attention on his plate, face in 
his food, until he scarfs a few more clams. Then he looks up, his lips and chin 
dripping clam sauce, and he says, ‘Yeah, Vince, so where’d you learn this trick, 
huh? Where’d you learn how to absorb these life energies?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s 
my Gift,’ and he said, ‘You mean like from God?’ So I had to think about that, 
and I said, ‘Who knows where from? It’s my Gift like Mantle’s hitting was a 
gift, like Sinatra’s voice was a gift.’ And Danny says, ‘Tell me this—suppose 
you waste a guy who’s an electrician. After you absorb his energy, would you all 
of a sudden know how to rewire a house?’ I didn’t realize he was putting me on. 
I thought it was a serious question, so I explained how I absorb life energy, 
not personality, not all the stuff the guy knows, just his energy. And then 
Danny says, ‘So if you blew away a carnival geek, you wouldn’t all of a sudden 
get the urge to bite the heads off chickens.’ Right then I knew Danny thought I 
was either drunk or nuts, so I ate clams and didn’t say any more about my Gift, 
and that’s the last time I told anyone until I’m here telling you.”
He had called himself Vince, so now she knew his name. She did not see what good 
it would do her to know it.
He had told his story without any indication that he was aware of the insane 
black humor in it. He was a deadly serious man. Unless Travis could deal with 
him, this guy was not going to let them live.
“So,” Vince said, “I couldn’t risk Danny going around telling anyone what I’d 
told him, because he’d color it up, make it sound funny, and people would think 
I was nuts. The big bosses don’t hire crazy hit men; they want cool, logical, 
balanced guys who can do the work clean. Which is what I am, cool and balanced, 
but Danny would have had them thinking the other way. So that night I slit his 
throat, took him to this deserted factory I knew, cut him into pieces, put him 
in a vat, and poured a lot of sulfuric acid over him. He was a favorite nephew 
of the don’s, so I couldn’t take a chance of anyone finding a body that might be 
traced back to me. Now, I got Danny’s energy in me, along with a lot of others.”
The gun was in the glove box.
Some small hope could be taken from the knowledge that the gun was in the glove 
box.
 
 
While Nora was visiting Dr. Weingold, Travis whipped up and baked a double batch 
of chocolate cookies with peanut-butter chips. Living alone, he
had learned to cook, but he had never taken pleasure in it. During the past few 
months, however, Nora had improved his culinary skills to such an extent that he 
enjoyed cooking, especially baking.
Einstein, who usually hung around dutifully throughout a baking session, in the 
anticipation of receiving a sweet morsel, deserted him before he had finished 
mixing the batter. The dog was agitated and moved around the house from window 
to window, staring out at the rain.
After a while, Travis got edgy about the dog’s behavior and asked if something 
was wrong.
In the pantry, Einstein made his reply.
I FEEL A LITTLE STRANGE.
“Sick?” Travis asked, worried about a relapse. The retriever was recovering 
well, but still recovering. His immune system was not in condition for a major 
new challenge.
NOT SICK.
“Then what? You sense . . . The Outsider?”
NO. NOT LIKE BEFORE.
“But you sense something?”
BAD DAY.
“Maybe it’s the rain.”
MAYBE.
Relieved but still edgy, Travis returned to his baking.
 
 
The highway was silver with rain.
The daytime fog grew slightly thicker as they drove south along the coast, 
forcing Nora to slow to forty miles an hour, thirty in some places.
Using the fog as an excuse, could she slow the truck enough to risk throwing 
open her door and leaping out? No. Probably not. She would have to let their 
speed drop below five miles an hour in order not to hurt herself or her unborn 
child, and the fog simply was not dense enough to justify reducing speed that 
far. Besides, Vince kept the revolver pointed at her while he talked, and he 
would shoot her in the back as she turned to make her exit.
The pickup’s headlamps and those of the few oncoming cars were refracted by the 
mist. Halos of light and scintillate rainbows bounced off the shifting curtains 
of fog, briefly seen, then gone.
She considered running the truck off the road, over the edge in one of the few 
places where she knew the embankment to be gentle and the drop endurable. But 
she was afraid she would misjudge where she was and, by mistake, drive off the 
brink into a two-hundred-foot emptiness, crashing with terrible force into the 
rocky coastline below. Even if she went over at the right point, a calculated 
and survivable crash might knock her unconscious or induce a miscarriage, and if 
possible she wanted to get out of this with her life and the life of the child 
within her.
Once Vince started talking to her, he could not stop. For years he had husbanded 
his great secrets, had hidden his dreams of power and immortality from the 
world, but his desire to speak of his supposed greatness evidently had never 
diminished after the fiasco with Danny Slowicz. It was as if he had stored up 
all the words he had wanted to say to people, had put them on reels and reels of 
mental recording tape, and now he was playing them back at high speed, spewing 
out all this craziness that made Nora sick with dread.
He told her how he had learned of Einstein—the killing of the research 
scientists in charge of various programs under the Francis Project at Banodyne. 
He knew of The Outsider, too, but was not afraid of it. He was, he said, on the 
brink of immortality, and gaining ownership of the dog was one of the final 
tasks he had to complete in order to achieve his Destiny. He and the dog were 
destined to be together because each of them was unique in this world, one of a 
kind. Once Vince had achieved his Destiny, he said, nothing could stop him, not 
even The Outsider.
Half the time, Nora didn’t understand what he was saying. She supposed that if 
she did understand it, she would be as insane as he clearly was.
But though she did not always grasp his meaning, she knew what he intended to do 
to her and to Travis once he had the retriever. At first, she was afraid of 
speaking about her fate, as if putting it into words would somehow make it 
irrevocable. At last, however, when they were no more than five miles from the 
dirt lane that turned off the highway and led up to the bleached-wood house, she 
said, “You won’t let us go when you’ve got the dog, will you?”
He stared at her, caressing her with his gaze. “What do you think, Nora?”
“I think you’ll kill us.”
“Of course.”
She was surprised that his confirmation of her fears did not fill her with 
greater terror. His smug response only infuriated her, damping her fear while 
increasing her determination to spoil his neat plans.
She knew, then, that she was a radically changed woman from the Nora of last 
May, who would have been reduced to uncontrollable shudders by this man’s bold 
self-assurance.
“I could run this truck right off the road, take my chances with an accident,” 
she said.
“The moment you pulled on the wheel,” he said, “I’d have to shoot you and then 
try to regain control.”
“Maybe you couldn’t. Maybe you’d die, too.”
“Me? Die? Maybe. But not in anything as minor as a traffic accident. No, no. 
I’ve got too many lives in me to go that easily. And I don’t believe you’ll try 
it anyway. In your heart of hearts, you believe that man of yours will pull a 
sharp one, save you and the dog and himself. You’re wrong, of course, but you 
can’t stop believing in him. He won’t do anything because he’ll be afraid of 
hurting you. I’ll go in there with a gun in your belly, and that will paralyze 
him long enough for me to blow his head off. That’s why I’ve only got the 
revolver. It’s all I need. His caring for you, his fear of hurting you, will get 
him killed.”
Nora decided it was very important that she not let her fury show. She must try 
to look frightened, weak, utterly unsure of herself. If he underestimated her, 
he might slip up and give her some small advantage.
Taking her eyes off the rainy highway for only a second, she glanced at him and 
saw that he was staring at her not with amusement or psychopathic rage, as she 
would have expected, and not with his usual bovine placidity either, but with 
something that looked very much like affection and maybe gratitude.
“I’ve dreamed for years of killing a pregnant woman,” he said, as if that was a 
goal no less worthwhile and commendable than wanting to build a business empire 
or feed the hungry or nurse the sick. “I have never been in a situation where 
the risk of killing a pregnant woman was low enough to justify it. But in that 
isolated house of yours, once I’ve dealt with Cornell, the conditions will be 
ideal.”
“Please, no,” she said shakily, playing the weakling, though she didn’t have to 
fake the nervous quiver in her voice.
Still speaking calmly but with a trace more emotion than before, he said, 
“There’ll be your life energy, still young and rich, but in the instant you die, 
I’ll also receive the energy of the child. And that’ll be perfectly pure, 
unused, a life that’s unsoiled by the many contaminants of this sick and 
degenerate world. You’re my first pregnant woman, Nora, and I’ll always remember 
you.,,
Tears shimmered at the corners of her eyes, which was not just good acting, 
either. Although she did believe Travis would find some way to handle this man, 
she was afraid that, in the turmoil, she or Einstein would die. And she did not 
know how Travis would be able to cope with his failure to save all of them.
“Don’t despair, Nora,” Vince said. “You and your baby will not entirely cease to 
exist. You’ll both become a part of me, and in me you’ll live forever.”
 
 
Travis took the first tray of cookies out of the oven and put them on a rack to 
cool.
Einstein came sniffing around, and Travis said, “They’re too hot yet.”
The dog returned to the living room to look out the front window at the rain.
 
 
Just before Nora turned off the Coast Highway, Vince slid down on the seat, 
below the window level, out of sight. He kept the gun on her. “I’ll blow that 
baby right out of your belly if you make the slightest wrong move.”
She believed him.
Turning onto the dirt lane, which was muddy and slippery, Nora drove up
the hill toward the house. The overhanging trees shielded the road from the 
worst of the rain but collected the water on their branches and sent it to the 
ground in fatter droplets or rivulets.
She saw Einstein at a front window, and she tried to come up with some signal 
that would mean “trouble,” that the dog would instantly understand. She couldn’t 
think of anything.
Looking up at her, Vince said, “Don’t go all the way to the barn. Stop right 
beside the house.”
His plan was obvious. The corner of the house where the pantry and cellar stairs 
were located had no windows. Travis and Einstein would not be able to see the 
man getting out of the truck with her. Vince could hustle her around the corner, 
onto the back porch, and inside before Travis realized something was wrong.
Maybe Einstein’s canine senses would detect danger. Maybe. But . . . Einstein 
had been so ill.
 
 
Einstein padded into the kitchen, excited.
Travis said, “Was that Nora’s truck?”
Yes.
The retriever went to the back door and did a dance of impatience—then stood 
still, cocked his head.
 
 
Nora’s stroke of luck came when she least expected it.
When she parked alongside the house, engaged the hand brake, and switched off 
the engine, Vince grabbed her and dragged her across the seat, out of his side 
of the truck because that was the side against the back end of the house and 
most difficult to see from windows at the front corner of the structure. 
Climbing from the pickup, pulling her by one hand, he was looking around to be 
sure Travis was not nearby; distracted, he couldn’t keep his revolver on Nora as 
closely as before. As she slid across the seat, past the glove box, she popped 
open the door and snatched up the .38 pistol. Vince must have heard or sensed 
something because he swung toward her, but he was too late. She jammed the .38 
into his belly and, before he could raise his gun and blow her head off, she 
squeezed the trigger three times.
With a look of shock, he slammed back against the house, which was only three 
feet behind him.
She was amazed by her own cold-bloodedness. Crazily, she thought that no one was 
so dangerous as a mother protecting her children, even if one child was unborn 
and the other was a dog. She fired once more, point-blank, at his chest.
Vince went down hard, face-first on the wet ground.
She turned from him and ran. At the corner of the house she almost collided
with Travis, who vaulted over the porch railing and landed in a crouch in front 
of her, holding the Uzi carbine.
“I killed him,” she said, hearing hysteria in her voice, fighting to control it. 
“I shot him four times, I killed him, my God.”
Travis rose from a crouch, bewildered. Nora threw her arms around him and put 
her head against his chest. As chilling rain beat upon them, she reveled in the 
living warmth of him.
“Who—” Travis began.
Behind Nora, Vince issued a shrill breathless cry and, rolling onto his back, 
fired at them. The bullet struck Travis high in the shoulder and knocked him 
backward. If it had been two inches to the right, it would have hit Nora in the 
head.
She was almost pulled off her feet when Travis fell because she was holding him. 
But she let go fast enough and went to the left, in front of the truck, out of 
the line of fire. She got only a quick look at Vince, who was holding his 
revolver in one hand and clutching his stomach with the other, trying to get off 
the ground.
In that glimpse before she cowered down in front of the pickup, she had not seen 
any blood on the man.
What was happening here? He could not possibly have survived three rounds in the 
stomach and one in the chest. Not unless he actually was immortal.
Even as Nora scrambled for the cover of the truck, Travis had been getting off 
his back, sitting up in the mud. Blood was visible on him, spreading across his 
chest from his shoulder, soaking his shirt. He still had the Uzi in his right 
hand, which functioned in spite of the wound in that shoulder. As Vince pulled 
off a wild second shot, Travis opened fire with the Uzi. His position was no 
better than Vince’s; the spray of bullets snapped into the house and ricocheted 
along the side of the truck, indiscriminate fire.
He stopped shooting. “Shit.” He struggled onto his feet.
Nora said, “Did you get him?”
“He made it around the front of the house,” Travis said, and headed that way.
 
 
Vince figured he was approaching immortality, almost there, if he had not 
already arrived. He was in need of—at most—only a few more lives, and his only 
concern was that he would be snuffed out when he was that close to his Destiny. 
As a result, he took precautions. Like the latest and most expensive model 
Kevlar bulletproof vest. He was wearing one under his sweater, which was what 
had stopped the four shots the bitch had tried to pump into him. The slugs had 
flattened against the vest, drawing no blood whatsoever. But, Jesus, they had 
hurt. The impact had knocked him against the wall of the house and had driven 
the breath out of him. He felt as if he had lain on a
giant anvil while someone repeatedly pounded a blacksmith’s hammer into his gut.
Hunched over his pain, hobbling toward the front of the house, trying to get out 
of the way of the damn Uzi, he was sure he was going to be shot in the back. But 
somehow he made it to the corner, climbed the porch steps, and got out of 
Cornell’s line of fire.
Vince took some satisfaction in having wounded Cornell, though he knew it wasn’t 
mortal. And having lost the element of surprise, he was in for a protracted 
battle. Hell, the woman looked to be almost as formidable as Cornell himself—a 
crazy Amazon.
He could have sworn there was something of the timid mouse in the woman, that it 
was her nature to submit. Obviously, he misjudged her—and that spooked him. 
Vince Nasco was not accustomed to making such mistakes; mistakes were for lesser 
men, not for the child of Destiny.
Scuttling across the front porch, certain that Cornell was coming fast behind 
him, Vince decided to go into the house instead of heading for the woods. They 
would expect him to run for the trees, take cover, and reconsider his strategy. 
Instead, he’d go straight into the house and find a position from which he could 
see both the front and rear doors. Maybe he’d take them by surprise yet.
He was passing a large window, heading for the front door, when something 
exploded through the glass.
Vince cried out in surprise and fired his revolver, but the shot went into the 
porch ceiling, and the dog—Jesus, that’s what it was, the dog—hit him hard. The 
gun flew out of his hand. He was knocked backward. The dog clung to him, claws 
snagged in his clothes, teeth sunk in his shoulder. The porch railing 
disintegrated. They tumbled out into the front yard, into the rain.
Screaming, Vince hammered at the dog with his big fists until it squealed and 
let go of him. Then it went for his throat, and he just knocked it off in time 
to prevent it tearing open his windpipe.
His gut still throbbed, but he hitched and stumbled back to the porch, looking 
for his revolver—and found Cornell instead. Bleeding from his shoulder, Cornell 
was on the porch, looking down at Vince.
Vince felt a great wild surge of confidence. He knew that he had been right all 
along, knew that he was invincible, immortal, because he could look straight 
into the muzzle of the Uzi without fear, without the slightest fear, so he 
grinned up at Cornell. “Look at me, look! I’m your worst nightmare.”
Cornell said, “Not even close,” and opened fire.
 
 
In the kitchen Travis sat in a chair, with Einstein at his side, while Nora 
dressed his wound. As she worked, she told him what she knew about the man who 
had forced his way into the truck.
“He was a damn wild card,” Travis said. “No way we could ever have known he was 
out there.”
"I hope he’s the only wild card.”
Wincing as Nora poured alcohol and iodine into the bullet hole, wincing again as 
she bound the wound with gauze by passing it under his armpit, he said, “Don’t 
worry about making a great job of it. The bleeding’s not that bad. No artery’s 
been hit.”
The bullet had gone through, leaving a hideous exit wound, and he was in 
considerable pain, but for a while yet he would be able to function. He would 
have to seek medical attention later, maybe from Jim Keene to avoid the 
questions that any other doctor would surely insist on having answered. For now, 
he was only concerned that the wound be bound tight enough to allow him to 
dispose of the dead man.
Einstein was battered, too. Fortunately, he had not been cut when he smashed 
through the front window. He did not seem to have any broken bones, but he had 
taken several hard blows. Not in the best of shape to begin with, he looked 
bad—muddy and rain-soaked and in pain. He would need to see Jim Keene, too.
Outside, rain was falling harder than ever, pounding on the roof, gurgling 
noisily through gutters and downspouts. It was slanting across the front porch 
and through the shattered window, but they did not have time to worry about 
water damage.
“Thank God for the rain,” Travis said. “No one in the area will have heard the 
gunfire in this downpour.”
Nora said, “Where will we dump the body?”
“I’m thinking.” And it was hard to think clearly because the pain in his 
shoulder throbbed up and into his head.
She said, “We could bury him here, in the woods—”
“No. We’d always know he was there. We’d always worry about the body being dug 
up by wild animals, found by hikers. Better . . . there’re places along the 
Coast Highway where we could pull over, wait until there’s no traffic, drag him 
out of the bed of the truck, and toss him over the side. If we pick a place 
where the sea comes in right to the base of the slope, it’ll carry him out, move 
him away, before anyone notices him down there.”
As Nora finished the bandage, Einstein abruptly got up, whined. He sniffed the 
air. He went to the back door, stood staring at it for a moment, then 
disappeared into the living room.
“I’m afraid he’s hurt worse than he seems to be,” Nora said, applying a final 
strip of adhesive tape.
“Maybe,” Travis said. “But maybe not. He’s just been acting peculiar all day, 
ever since you left this morning. He told me it smelled like a bad day.”
“He was right,” she said.
Einstein returned from the living room at a run and went straight to the pantry, 
switching on the lights and pumping the pedals that released lettered tiles.
“Maybe he has an idea about disposing of the body,” Nora said.
As Nora gathered up the leftover iodine, alcohol, gauze, and tape, Travis 
painfully pulled on his shirt and went to the pantry to see what Einstein had to 
say.
THE OUTSIDER IS HERE.
 
 
 
 
Travis slammed a new magazine into the butt of the Uzi carbine, put an extra in 
one pocket, and gave Nora one of the Uzi pistols that was kept in the pantry.
Judging by Einstein’s sense of urgency, they had no time to go through the 
house, closing and bolting shutters.
The clever scheme to gas The Outsider in the barn had been built upon the 
certainty that it would approach at night and reconnoiter. Now that it had come 
in daylight and had reconnoitered while they were distracted by Vince, that plan 
was useless.
They stood in the kitchen, listening, but nothing could be heard above the 
relentless roar of the rain.
Einstein was not able to give them a more precise fix on their adversary’s 
location. His sixth sense was still not working up to par. They were just lucky 
that he had sensed the beast at all. His morning-long anxiety had evidently not 
been related to any presentiment about the man who had come home with Nora but 
had been, even without his knowledge, caused by the approach of The Outsider.
“Upstairs,” Travis said. “Let’s go.”
Down here, the creature could enter by doors or windows, but on the second floor 
they would at least have only windows to worry about. And maybe they could get 
shutters closed over some of those.
Nora climbed the stairs with Einstein. Travis brought up the rear, moving 
backward, keeping the Uzi aimed down at the first floor. The ascent made him 
dizzy. He was acutely aware that the pain and weakness in his injured shoulder 
was slowly spreading outward through his entire body like an ink stain through a 
blotter.
On the second floor, at the head of the stairs, he said, “If we hear it come in, 
we can back off, wait until it starts to climb toward us, then step forward and 
catch it by surprise, blow it away.”
She nodded.
. They had to be silent now, give it a chance to creep into the downstairs, give 
it time to decide they were on the second floor, let it gain confidence, let it 
approach the stairs with a sense of security.
A strobe-flash of lightning—the first of the storm—pulsed at the window at the 
end of the hall, and thunder cracked. The sky seemed to have been shattered by 
the blast, and all the rain stored in the heavens collapsed upon the earth in 
one tremendous fall.
At the end of the hallway, one of Nora’s canvases flew out of her studio and 
crashed against the wall.
Nora cried out in surprise, and for an instant all three of them stared stupidly 
at the painting lying on the hall floor, half thinking that its poltergeist-like 
flight had been related to the great crash of thunder and the lightning.
A second painting sailed out of her studio, hit the wall, and Travis saw the 
canvas was shredded.
The Outsider was already in the house.
They were at one end of the short hall. The master bedroom and future nursery 
were on the left, the bathroom and then Nora’s studio on the right. The thing 
was just two doors away, in Nora’s studio, demolishing her paintings.
Another canvas flew into the hallway.
Rain-soaked, muddied, battered, still somewhat weak from his battle with 
distemper, Einstein nevertheless barked viciously, trying to warn off The 
Outsider.
Holding the Uzi, Travis moved one step down the hall. Nora grabbed his arm. 
“Let’s not. Let’s get out.”
“No. We’ve got to face it.”
“On our terms,” she said.
“These are the best terms we’re going to get.”
Two more paintings flew out of the studio and clattered down on top of the 
growing pile of wrecked canvases.
Einstein was no longer barking but growling deep in his throat.
Together, they moved along the hall, toward the open door of Nora’s studio.
Travis’s experience and training told him they ought to split up, spread out, 
instead of grouping into a single target. But this was not Delta Force. And 
their enemy was not a mere terrorist. If they spread out, they would lose some 
of the courage they needed to face the thing. Their very closeness gave them 
strength.
They were halfway to the studio door when The Outsider shrieked. It was an icy 
sounnformation was detailed.”

“Good. We will begin operations. It will take generations, Roi, but in the end, we will be in the Deep of a new, warm world, in pleasant caverns where the controlled environment will be conducive to the growth of every culture and refinement.”

“And,” added Roi, “no contact whatever with the surface creatures.”

Gan said, “Why that? Primitive though they are, they could be of help to us once we establish our base. A race that can build aircraft must have some abilities.”

“It isn't that. They're a belligerent lot, sir. They would attack with animal ferocity at all occasions and—”

Gan interrupted. “I am disturbed at the psychopenumbra that surrounds your references to the aliens. There's something you are concealing.”

Roi said, “I thought at first we could make use of them. If they wouldn't allow us to be friends, at least, we could control them. I made one of them close contact inside the cube and that was difficult. Very difficult. Their minds are basically different.”

“In what way?”

“If I could describe it, the difference wouldn't be basic. But I can give you an example. I was in the mind of an infant. They don't have maturation chambers. The infants are in the charge of individuals. The creature who was in charge of my host—-”

“Yes.”

“She (it was a female) felt a special tie to the young one. There was a sense of ownership, of a relationship that excluded the remainder of their society. I seemed to detect, dimly something of the emotion that binds a man to an associate or friend, but it was far more intense and unrestrained.”

“Well,” said Gan, “without mental contact, they probably have no real conception of society and subrelationships may build up. Or was this one pathological?”

“No, no. It's universal. The female in charge was the infant's mother.”

“Impossible. Its own mother?”

“Of necessity. The infant had passed the first part of its existence inside its mother. Physically inside. The creature's eggs remain within the body. They are inseminated within the body. They grow within the body and emerge alive.”

“Great caverns,” Gan said weakly. Distaste was strong within him. “Each creature would know the identity of its own child. Each child would have a particular father—-”

“And he would be known, too. My host was being taken five thousand miles, as nearly as I could judge the distance, to be seen by its father.”

“Unbelievable!”

“Do you need more to see that there can never be any meeting of minds? The difference is so fundamental, so innate.”

The yellowness of regret tinged and roughened Gan's thought train. He said, ”It would be too bad. I had thought—“

“What, sir?”

“I had thought that for the first time there would be two intelligences helping one another. I had thought that together we might progress more quickly than either could alone. Even if they were primitive technologically, as they are, technology isn't everything. I had thought we might still be able to learn of them.”

“Learn what?” asked Roi brutally. “To know our parents and make friends of our children?”

Gan said, “No. No, you're quite right The barrier between us must remain forever complete. They will have the surface and we the Deep, and so it will be.”

Outside the laboratories Roi met Wenda.

Her thoughts were concentrated pleasure. ”I'm glad you're back.”

Roi’s thoughts were pleasurable too. It was very restful to make clean mental contact with a friend.


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Sucker Bait

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ONE
Contents - Next

The ship Triple G. flashed silently out of the nothingness of hyperspace and into the allness 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 space-drive 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 politer 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 space-sickness. 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.


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TWO
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Captain Follenbee of the Triple G. was a hardheaded 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-better not—-

After all, this was a curious kind of flight for the Confederacy of Worlds to sponsor, and a twenty-year-old, overcurious 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 space-sick for the entire trip, or was that just a device to keep to his cabin—

There was a light buzzing as the door signal sounded.

It would be the boy.

Easy now, thought the Captain. Easy now.


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THREE
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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 space-sickness.

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. A! 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 space-sick. Mark didn't believe him. He had read in fifty different books that space-sickness 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 duster, 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 al 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 non-compos. 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 ch and the sound grated on Mark’s ear.) “Average distance between stars in the thickest duster 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 paints 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 Ms cigar. (It was a special grade manufactured for use in space and on enclosed space objects. 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 a 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 nomcompos.”

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. “Then 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 logbook, 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.


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FOUR
Contents - Prev/Next

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 passengers' 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 settling 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. “Its name is not Junior. You can't see the planet, Troas, if that’s what you mean, in this damned 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 damned 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 were 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 die 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 updeck, 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. Space-sickness 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 dear prospect does wonders for space-sickness. 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 space-sickness and he's sitting there at the desk with his damn charts and his fist computer chug-chugging away, when the room phone signals and it's the Captain. Well, it turns out he's got the boy with him and he wants to know what the blankety-blank 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 in the groin with a Collamore macro-levelling-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 jitter-bugging 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!” Vemadsky 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.


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Oswald 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 wasnt 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 logbook 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 tell you something, Captain. You're chartered 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 repied calmly, “You are. Hands off Mark Annuncio, Captain. Just as you've got to keep your bands 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. ”Em-en-ee-em-oh-en-eye-see Service. You don't pronounce the first em. It's from the 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 space cruiser, 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 every thing 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’s 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. Someday, I hope, there’ll be a billion like him, and we’l 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 someday. 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 them, 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. Annuncio 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 Merchant-Ship Register. If he did, he knows all the names, tonnages, years of construction, ports of call, numbers of crews, 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 of 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. Logbook. 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.


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Mark Annuncio went through 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 someday. 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 could imagine a moon to be. (Figures for albedos 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 sails as 78.6 per cent sodium chloride, 19.2 per cent magnesium carbonate, 1.4 per cent 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 icecaps north and south. (Textbooks of Earth’s paleo-climatology drifted past and Mark made no move to stop them.) The icecaps 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 advantage. 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.


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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 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 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 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.”

“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’s just that I don’t see how that can be true. I can think of seventeen habitable planets from which the first expeditions never returned and never established residence. And each one was later colonized and now is a member of the Confederation. 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’s 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 occupational disease of the 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 other 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 forbear holding his breath. Mark could give the details on all of them. All the details. It was as easy for him to quote al 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 789 men, 207 women, and fifteen children under the age of thirteen. In the course of the next year, 315 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.


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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 icecaps, 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 burned 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 beauity. To the west, another half sector, exposed to Lagrange II alone, shone in the warn orange red of an Earthly sunset. The three colors graded into one another bandwise, 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 had been 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 away 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 interest 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 die surface rose to meet them.

The icecaps 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 red-orange half sector and the full white light. Only the eastern sea-coast 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!


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NINE
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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 5 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 1 per cent and over a hundredth of 1 per cent: hydrogen, helium, and carbon dioxide in that order. Under a hundredth of 1 per cent and over a ten thousandth of 1 per cent: methane, argon, and neon in that order. Under a ten thousandth of 1 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 icecap 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 icecaps?”

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 em em,” 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 vegetation refusing to let a good thing alone, fattening up on the good old CO2 and losing its head about it, temperature drops, ice forms, a vicious cycle of glaciation starts, and voila—”

“Anything else in the atmosphere?” asked Cimon.

“Water vapor and dust. I suppose there are a few million air-borne 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 damn cultures under glass right away. Good thick glass.”


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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.


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Miguel Antonio Rodriguez y Lopez (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 Vemadsky’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.


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TWELVE
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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 space suit 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 coverall.

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 repellent, 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 ultra-violet 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 man-made.”

“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.”


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THIRTEEN
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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 north-south course along the eastern edges of the western mountain range. The larger river comes down from the northern icecap, 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 on 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 if glacial is what’s preserved it. The trees-or the objects that rather look like trees-are small and obviously very slow growing.

“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 don’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?”


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FOURTEEN
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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.


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FIFTEEN
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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 air-borne 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 protein 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 of any type on Earth that can attack all other species.

“You think that a virus or a bacterium developing independently for a billion yeans 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 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 for space’ sake, 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 his 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. 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. Damn 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 non-compos. You-you moron. You forgettery on two feet. Sieve-mind. 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’ 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.


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SIXTEEN
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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’ viewpoint. It’s good enough for me and I don’t suppose there’s anyone else here who questions Rodriguez’ 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. Well 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.


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SEVENTEEN
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Mark Annuncio sat on his bunk, hands clasped about his knee, chin sunken and touching his chest. He was dry-eyed 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 counterindoctrination. 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 planets, 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 furor 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 overworked 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 hoorah 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 thirty-seven 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 politic 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 pretty 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.


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EIGHTEEN
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“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 investigation 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 wave lengths? 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, damn it. 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 chromothingumbob 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 psycho-genics.”

“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 particularly 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 mucus 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 colours. Sit down, Dr. Cimon. You’re beginning to look foolish.”

“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 is 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 astrophysist’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 know psychologists will have their little jokes. Besides, they’ll be so busy laughing at you. You know-the every 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 primest 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.


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NINETEEN
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Seven tents had sprung up near the site of the original settlement on Junior. Nevile Pawkes 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 settlement site would be drowned. Probably, he decided. Maybe that would take the curse off it.

He could understand why the Confederation were so damned anxious to solve the mytsery 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 insect-like 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, Mako-yama, had named it the “bayonet tree,” but Fawkes had made so bold as to rename it Migrania Fawkesü..

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 the blossoms would break if pulled, that the stems would bend only with difficulty and break not at all. His pocketknife was blunted without so much as making a scratch.

The original settlers, in order to clear land, had obviously had to dig out the trees, roots 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 insect-like creatures were all two winged. And those wings were feathery little fronds that beat noiselessly. None, apparently, were bloodsuckers.

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 to 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 Tetrapterus.

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 a 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.


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TWENTY
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A central hall of prefab 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 Vemadsky. “The rats have been living on it for two weeks.”

“Two weeks isn’t much,” said Noveee.

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 bread could be baked. There was some on the table now, dark and heavy. It wasn’t bad, 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; had spoken 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 person 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 she 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 Vemadsky. “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.


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TWENTY-ONE
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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 oxygen-water 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 Spenglov’s Handbook of Planetary Crusts only lists figures for 21,854 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 5 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 four tenths of a per cent of the crust as compared to about four thousandths 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 hip pocket.

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.


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TWENTY-TWO
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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 someday 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 nothing. 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 haying seriously affected mental stability. In fact, the suicide rate, as well as the incidence of psychoses, was 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 necessary 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 if 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 if off with the buss-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 high lights (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.


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TWENTY-THREE
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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 instalments. Both suns were high in die 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, semi-circled 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.


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TWENTY-FOUR
Contents - Prev/Next

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.

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 tried to brush Novee’s restraining arm to one side. 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 tralls. He followed Hastings with little more than a moment's hesitation, grabbing the rope and swinging out over nothingness, his hand clenched fiercely around the thin lifeline.
    He had been on the pulley a minute when Mace said, “It's happening to him as well. Look there!”
    Immanuli was swaying erratically, shaking his head as if fighting off hands that gripped his skull and attempted to drag him into the rocky ravine below.
    He was halfway now.
    “He's a strong lad,” Richter said. “Whatever it is, perhaps he can manage it.”
    At that moment, the dark Immanuli let go with both hands and fell like a stone into the depths of the gorge, slammed head-first into a thrust of granite and burst like an over-ripe fruit before tumbling along to a final resting spot.
    “It's a Shaker doing this!” Richter said. “One of your brothers, Shaker Sandow.”
    “I have thought of the same possibility, and I have been ranging lightly with a minimal power output. There is no other Shaker. The accidents were not caused by evil magic.”
    “Well, let us see how the cargo bears. It does not have fingers to become weak or will power to give out under some strange curse.” The commander looked gloomily across the divide as the men on the other side attached the first parcels to the pulley lines.
    But pessimism turned to optimism again as the bundles began to arrive without disaster. One after another, a steady stream of them crossed the scar in the land, until everything was at last on the eastern edge of the canyon.
    “Now that apprentice of yours,” Richter said. “And let us all say prayers for his crossing.”
    “Wait,” Mace said. “I require more than prayers.”
    “What?”
    “Certainly,” the giant said, “the cargo crossed without incident. But it is not our supplies the assassins want. They too must eat. They are after flesh, after human lives. I do not trust to Gregor's passage.”
    “He can't very well climb,” the commander said. “If he tries to come back with the last foot team—with those men manning the pulley over there—he'll die and take them with him. There is no hope of an amateur climbing under that overhang, even with the help of a professional team. It's the rope or nothing.”
    “Then I'll test the rope,” Mace said. “I'll go over there and back.”
    “Risk a man already safe?” Richter asked incredulously. “Out of the question!”
    “Either that or all of us return,” Mace snarled. He towered over the old officer, and his physique and expression did not permit much argument.
    “Master Sandow, argue sense to him!” Richter said turning to the Shaker.
    Sandow smiled. “Mace here is a minor magician. With quick reactions, quicker than any normal man could hope for—quicker even than Gregor's, for the boy is undeveloped as yet. He will have a greater chance than anyone of seeing what it was that caused those two fall —and he will have a greater chance of returning here alive. Besides, when Mace makes up his mind—well, it remains where he puts it.”
    “Well . . .”
    “There is no time to waste,” Mace said. “Signal the far side as to our intentions.”
    The flagman was brought forth, did his colorful chore In another minute, Mace was riding toward the far ledge from which he had departed not so terribly long ago. He arrived without incident, checked the pulley system over there and had a short conversation with Gregor to ascertain whether the youth felt fit. Inside of five minutes, he was on his way back, and he made that trip in good health as well.
    “Apparently accidents,” he told the Shaker. “I see no treachery. I felt nothing unusual coming either way. Gregor says he feels fine, though he was about to take a swig of brandy to settle his nerves for the crossing.”
    “Here he comes,” Richter said. “He's just lifted off the other side there.”
    Everyone turned to stare openly at the apprentice who then seemed like a hapless insect out of its season, soon to perish from the cold. He swung gently back and forth on the pulley rope, drawing toward safety at too slow a pace to please anyone on the east of the chasm.
    “It's happening!” Belmondo gasped, his voice thin and worried, not at all the competent, cool manner of a trained mountaineer.
    And certainly enough, Gregor was losing his grip but a third of the distance along the two hundred-foot ride. He fought desperately to regain that handhold, finally latching fingers around the thin line. But it was evident by the sluggishness of his movements, by the angle of his weary head, that he could not maintain his position for very long.
    “Put another man or two on your drawing team,” Mace told Richter. “They're going to be needing extra strength to drag in two of us.”
    “You can't go out there!” Belmondo gasped. “The line won't hold that weight. It'll snap against the pulley wheels!”
    Mace smiled, but not in a friendly or even tolerant fashion, patted the young officer on the head. “You let me fret about that,” he said. He turned to Richter. “Now!” he shouted.
    Without waiting to see if the old man did as he had suggested, Mace stepped from the eastern edge of the canyon, grasped the topmost rope of the double line. Whereas the lower rope was coming toward the east, the upper rope was returning to the west, and it drew Mace inexorably onward toward the apprentice Gregor.
    “He won't make it,” Richter told the Shaker. “I'm not one for glorying in bad news, but neither am I one for coloring the truth to make it prettier.”
    “Perhaps he won't,” the Shaker said. “Then again, perhaps he will. You do not know Mace as well as I, and if you did you might have more hope than you do.”
    Unsatisfied with the rate of progression of the line, Mace added to his speed by going hand-over-hand along the upper-most rope even as it drew him toward Gregor. Before leaving the cliffside, he had shed his gloves, and now his hands took the brutal burning of that moving, jerking rope as he slid along it. The lower rope, taut and speeding the opposite direction, whistled against his leather coat, snapped sharply against him now and then though he seemed hardly to notice it.
    Gregor lost his grip with his left hand and hung seven hundred feet above disaster by the power of his right hand alone.
    Mace was now little more than fifty feet away from the apprentice, coming fast toward him, trying not to jar the lower rope and thereby add woe to the young man' already perilous situation.
    Gregor floundered about ungracefully, swinging more wildly back and forth now as he attempted to reach up and clutch the lost rope with his left hand. He made a valiant effort of it, but his movements seemed improperly coordinated, and he could not find the line.
    “Hold on!” Mace called urgently. He was no mon than thirty feet from the boy now, his large face strained and flushed, even though most of his abnormal strength and will power was as yet untapped.
    Gregor looked up at his step-brother, his face a mask of stupidity. He was, Mace could see, like a drunken man on the verge of stupor. His face was slack, his eyes heavily lidded. His mouth hung open as if his jaw had been unhinged, and curls of steaming breath rose dumbly through his lips, like smoke snakes in the cold air. He shook himself, aware of the danger, but the sleepiness remained.
    Fifteen feet now.
    Mace's hands burned with the pain of torn skin.
    Ten feet.
    At that moment, Mace was suddenly aware of what was happening to the fingers of Gregor's right hand, his last hold on safety: the fingers were loosening their grip uncurling . . .
    The apprentice would drop in but an instant, in the blink of an eye, and that would be the end of it.
    The giant thought quickly and wasted no time at all in pressing those thoughts into definite action. He released his hold on the highest line as he reached the inward point of his wind-blown arc. Flailing blindly for the bottom, east-bound rope with one arm, he used his other hand to reach out and dig long, strong fingers into the bulky clothing the apprentice wore, found a belt and gripped it.
    No sooner had Mace's fingers taken the younger man's weight than Gregor lost consciousness altogether and released his last tenuous hold on the pulley line. But for the larger man, he would have finished his life at that instant of time.
    Mace's other arm caught the lower line and wrapped desperately around it. Now the giant hung with the line cutting through the inner crease of his elbow joint. If he had not been wearing a sturdy mountain coat, the rope would have torn his flesh with a vengeance. Even so, it was going to be difficult to maintain such a precarious hold all the way back to the eastern ledge, even though he was more than halfway there by this time.
    Or at least he supposed he was.
    He dared not turn his head over his shoulder to look, for such an action might send them both plummeting downward. He faced the western side of the gorge, where only six men manned the pulley rope and the platform.
    Though it seemed that his leap from the top line to the bottom one and his rescue of Gregor had taken centuries, little more than two or three seconds had transpired. And now as he felt the worst moments had passed, he saw that such was not the case. Calamity struck again.
    On the western side of the chasm, the added weight of Mace at the same drag-point as Gregor—combined with the sudden snap of his weight being dropped from the top to the bottom rope—became too much for the four anchor men who were trying to hold the pulley platform down. The device bucked, skidded across granite, ten feet closer to the precipice. One of the anchor men fell struck his head on a pulley stanchion and rolled the last five feet to the brow of the cliff, fell over and away to the hard death below.
    “Just fine,” Mace muttered. “Just wonderful.”
    The three remaining anchor men were fighting a losing battle with the rollicking platform. It tossed like a ship on rough seas and began coming apart at its temporary seams. In desperation, the two men on the pulley ropes left their post and flung themselves onto the platform. The device ceased its frantic skittering and was still no more than a yard from the sharp edge of the cliff.
    The pulley ropes ceased their thrumming, and some pressure was taken off Mace's tortured arm.
    Now there was only one team reeling in the two men suspended near the center of the line, and the pace of the retrieval operation abruptly slowed. A lesser man than Mace might have given up in despair at the feel of that sudden slacking, but the giant clung stubbornly, gripping Gregor below him, and waited it out.
    There was no thought in Mace's mind to correspond with: “I may die!” But there was a thought, a deep fear which verbalized as: “Gregor may die!”
    There was an almost graveyard silence in the air. He could not hear the voices of the men on the east side; everyone there seemed stunned into silence. He was too far from the west brink to hear the labored breathing of the men there.
    It was not many more seconds before he began to feel the pain in his left arm as the lower pulley line's pressure made itself felt even through his bulky coat. A dull ache had spread up his shoulder and as far down his arm as his wrist. His hand and his fingers were totally numb— and that frightened him more than the pain. He could withstand pain, but if he lost all feeling in that arm, he could no longer maintain enough muscle control to keep them safe.
    Yet he could not shift and grasp the line with his hand, for his position was so awkward that the slightest relaxation in that clenched arm would spell the end of this adventure. All the spell songs of all Shakers would do nothing for their bloodied corpses.
    He could hear the creak of the pulley wheels, which meant the eastern bank could not be terribly far from them.
    He wished he could look.
    But he couldn't.
    The fingers clutching Gregor by the belt of his coat were shot full of needles which were tipped with acid. Or so they seemed. And already, paralysis was affecting his grip.
    The lower rope slipped out of the elbow joint crease as he lost some of the pressure he had at first been able to apply. Desperately, he jerked his arm against his body, forced the sliding, tight line back to the nook where it had been.
    “Not long, Gregor. Not long at all,” Mace said, but he was speaking for his own benefit, and no one else's.
    If they died, what Mace would regret the most was letting Shaker down. The sorcerer had done so much for a small, orphaned child named Mace—so much then and so much in the intervening twenty years. To repay all that kindness and goodwill with failure was despicable.
    Suddenly, he felt himself pulled loose of the line, felt his weight slipping. He tried to flail out to save them before he realized that his weight was being taken by two brawny Banibaleers on the eastern ledge. His shoulder and back had grown so numb under the wracking exertion he had forced his body to, that he had not felt the pressure of their hands on him.
    He gave himself over to the solicitous rescuers and finally permitted himself to pass out.
    

    
10



When Mace had come around some five minutes after his faint, he loudly proclaimed his fidelity and subservience to a variety of gods, major and minor, and he confided to everyone clustered about him that his safety and the safety of the apprentice Gregor was purely the result of an air sprite's whim. He explained that the fairies of the atmosphere favored those who had lived their lives in high elevations, as both he and Gregor had, nestled in the mountainous village of Perdune.
    Aside, Commander Richter said, “I was not aware that the great barbarian there was such a religious man.”
    “The last time I saw him in such a mood was six years ago—when he lit a candle for a dead friend's soul.” The Shaker was barely able to suppress a smile, and the lingering traces of it curled the corners of his thin mouth.
    “Then why does he—” Richter began.
    At that moment, a group of five enlisted men returned from the giant. One of them was entertaining the others, and as they passed, he could be heard to say: “. . . how a great, simple lummox like that could have done it! It was the sheerest luck—unless his air sprites are more substantial than the air from the giant's mouth!” Those around him broke into pleasant laughter.
    “I see,” Richter said. He looked at Mace with more admiration than before. “He plays his role even more completely than I had thought. Or perhaps he plays it so well that I had forgotten his true nature.”
    “He is a complex lad,” the Shaker said. Then he turned from his boys and faced the old officer next to him. “Tell me, how will we discover what caused those accide