 After a few words, by Randall Garrett, he settled himself comfortably in his seat and carefully put the helmet on, pulling it down firmly until it was properly seated. For a moment he could see nothing. When his hand moved up and, with a flick of the wrist, lifted the visor. Ahead of him, in serried array, with Lance's erect and penins flying, was the forward part of the column. Far ahead he knew were the knight's Templars who had taken the advance. Behind the Templars rode the mailed knights of Brittany and Anjou. These were followed by King Guy of Jerusalem and the host of Poitou. He himself, Sir Robert de Buam, was riding with the Norman and English troops just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his saddle. To his right he could see the brilliant red and gold banner of the lion-hearted Richard of England. Gules, in pale three lions, pass and garden to ore. Behind the standard-bearer, his great war-horse moving with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his firm-held shield, was the king himself. Further behind, the knight's hospitalers protected the rear, guarding the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins. By our lady, came a voice from his left, three days out from Acker and the accursed Saracens still elude us. Sir Robert de Buam twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight riding alongside him. Sir Guy-Ton de l'Arcton sat tall and straight in his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun. Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. They are not far off, Sir Guy-Ton. They have been following us, as we march parallel to the sea-coast so they have been marching with us in those hills to the east. Like the jackals they are, said Sir Guy-Ton, they assail us from the rear and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers, and yet they fear to face us in open battle. Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces? Both, said Sir Guy-Ton, flatly. They fear us, else they would not dally to a mass so fearsome a force. If, as our informers tell us, there are uncounted Turks to the fore, and if, as we are aware, our rear is being dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all truly Christian knights. Give them time. We must wait for their attacks, Sir Knight. It were foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must stop us. They will attack before we reach Jerusalem, fear not. We have gask any fear no heathen musclemen, Sir Guy-Ton growled. It's this hellish heat that is driving me mad, he pointed toward the eastern hills. The sun is yet low, and already the heat is unbearable. Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollily within his helmet. Perhaps toward better to be mad when the assault comes, madmen fight better than men of cooler blood. He knew that the others were baking inside their heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable. Sir Guy-Ton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect. In truth, Sir Knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor heat, nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans in your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a gaskon and have sworn no fealty to him, but aside with the Duke of Burgundy against King Richard, he gave a short, barking laugh, I fear no man, he went on, but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard of England. Sir Robert's voice came like a sword, steely, flat, cold, and sharp. My Lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the Holy Land, leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy to remain with us. Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip Augustus, said Sir Gaetan. No, and with good cause, but he allowed his anger against Philip to color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy. The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said, he spoke in haste. And you intervened, said Sir Gaetan. It was my duty, Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. Could we have permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and war-leaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy, too? You did what must be done in honor, the gas-gun conceded, but you have not gained the love of Richard by doing so. Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. My King knows I am loyal. Sir Gaetan said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty of Sir Robert de Bois. Sir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath him. There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger. Sir Robert turned his horse to look. The negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down upon the rear. They clashed with the hospitalers, slamming in like a rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of Bois. There was only the sword against armour, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a thousand anvils. Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off! It was the voice of King Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle. Sir Robert felt his horse move as though it were urging him on toward the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in check. The King had said, Stand fast! And this was no time to disobey the orders of Richard. The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the hospitalers were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they were slowly being forced back. The master of the hospitalers rode to the rear, to the King's standard, which hardly moved in the still desert air, now that the column had stopped moving. The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears. Stand fast! The King bids you all to stand fast, said the Duke, his voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou and the knights' Templars. The master of the hospitalers was speaking in a low urgent voice to the King. My Lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of eternal infamy. We are losing our horses one after the other. Good master, said Richard, it is you who must sustain their attack. No one can be everywhere at once. The master of the hospitalers nodded curtly and charged back into the fray. The King turned to Sir Baldwin to Correo, who sat a horse nearby, and pointed toward the eastern hills. They will come from there, hitting us in the flank. We cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen. A voice very close to Sir Robert said, Richard is right, if we go to the aid of the hospitaler as we will expose the column to a flank attack. It was Sir Gaetan. My Lord the King, Sir Robert heard his voice say, is right in all but one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear there will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank, and the hospitalers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the hospitalers breathing time. Are you with me? Against the orders of the King? The King cannot see everything. There are times when a man must use his own judgment. You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me? After a moment's hesitation Sir Gaetan couched his lance. I'm with you, Sir Knight. Live or die. I follow. Men strike hard. Forward then, Sir Robert heard himself shouting, forward for St. George and for England. St. George and England, the Gaskin echoed. Two great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison the two knights, their horses now at a fast trot lowered their lances, picking their Saracen targets with care. Larger and larger loomed the Egyptian cavalrymen as the horses changed pace to a thundering gallop. The Egyptians tried to dodge as they saw too late the approach of the Christian knights. Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horsemen in the chest. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Sir Gaetan, too, had scored. The Saracen impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear point, and now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand. Another Muslim cavalrymen was charging in now, swinging his curved sabre, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance. There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy broadsword. His hand grasped it, and it came singing from its scabbard. The Egyptians' curved sword clanged against Sir Robert's helm, setting his head ringing. In return the knight's broadsword came about in a sweeping arc, and the Egyptians' horse rode on with the rider's headless body. Behind him Sir Robert heard further cries of, Saint George and England! The hospitalers, taking hard at the charge, were going in. Behind them came the Count of Champagne, the Earl of Lester, and the Bishop of Bouvet, who carried a great war hammer in order that he might not break church law by shedding blood. Sir Robert's own sword rose and fell, cutting and hacking at the enemy. He himself felt a dreamlike detachment, as though he were watching the battle rather than participating in it. But he could see that the Moslems were falling back before the Christian onslaught. And then quite suddenly there seemed to be no foment to swing at. Breathing heavily Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword. Beside him Sir Gaetan did the same, saying, It will be a few minutes before they can regroup, Sir Knight. We may have routed them completely. Aye, but King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end. This is no time to worry about the future, said the Gaskin. Rest for a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here have an old King's. He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand which he proffered to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took that one. Thanks, when the going gets rough I really enjoy an old King's. He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the lighter in Sir Gaetan's hand. Yes, sir, said Sir Gaetan after lighting his own cigarette. Old King's are the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking pleasure. There's no doubt about it. Old King's are a man's cigarette. Sir Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply. That's great. When I want a cigarette I don't want just any cigarette. Nor I, agreed the Gaskin. Old King's is the only real cigarette when you're doing a real man's work. That's for sure. Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air. There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped his cigarette to the ground. The trouble is that doing a real he-man's work doesn't always allow you to enjoy the fine rich tobaccos of Old King's right down to the very end. No, but you can always light another later, said the Gaskin Knight. King Richard on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed rear had realized the danger and had charged through the hospitalers to get into the thick of the fray. Now the Turks were charging down from the hills, hitting not the flank as he had expected, but the rear. Saladin had expected him to hold fast. Sir Robert and Sir Gaetan spurred their chargers toward the flapping banner of England. The fierce warrior king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was cutting down Turks as though they were grain stalks, but still the Saracen Horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came boiling down out of the hills, their glittering scimitar swinging. Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he hacked down the Moslem foes. And then suddenly he found himself surrounded by the Saracens. He was isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces. He glanced quickly around as he slashed another Saracen from paint to breastbone. Where was Sir Gaetan? Where were the others? Where was the red and gold banner of Richard? He caught a glimpse of the fluttering banner far to the rear and started to fall back. And then he saw another knight nearby, a huge man who swung his sparkling blade with power and force, on his steel helm gleamed a golden coronet. Richard, and the great king in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and would within seconds be cut down by the Saracen Horde. Without hesitation Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him. He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the king. They had their hands full with Sir Robert de Bois. He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy, but presently he heard the familiar cry of, for St. George and for England, behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in, bringing with them the banner of England. And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his own broadsword. Its bright edge besmeared with Saracen blood was biting viciously into the foe. The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds the Christian knights were boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat, and for the second time Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight. And then a voice was saying, You have done well this day, Sir Knight, Richard Plantagenet will not forget. Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king. My Lord King, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my sovereign and Leisured. My sword and my life are yours whenever you call. King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. If it please God I shall never ask your life, and Earl Duma waits you when we return to England, Sir Knight. And then the King mounted his horse and was running full gallop after the retreating Saracens. Robert took off his helmet. He blinked for a second to adjust his eyes to the relative dimness of the studio. After the brightness of the desert that the Telavikarian helmet had projected into his eyes, the studio seemed strangely cave-like. How do you like it, Bob? asked one of the two producers of the show. Robert Bowen nodded briskly and padded the Telavik helmet. It was OK, he said. Good show, a little talky at the beginning, and it needs a better fade-out, but the action scenes were fine. The sponsor ought to like it, for a while at least. What do you mean, for a while? Robert Bowen sighed. If this thing goes on the air the way it is, he'll lose sales. Why, commercial not good enough? Too good. Man, I've smoked old kings, and believe me, the real thing never tasted as good as that cigarette did in the commercial. End of After A Few Words by Randall Garrett, recording by Nick Number, and All the Earth Agrave, by CeCe McApp. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Lisa Hirschbach, and All the Earth Agrave, by CeCe McApp. There's nothing wrong with dying, it just hasn't ever had the proper sales pitch. It all began when the new bookkeeping machine of a large Midwestern coffin manufacturer slipped a cog, or blew a transistor or something. It was fantastic that the error, one of two decimal places, should enjoy a straight run of OKs, human and mechanical, clear down the line. But when the figures clacked out at that last clacking out station, there it was. The figures were now sacred, immutable. And it is doubtful whether the President of the Concern or the Chairman of the Board would have dared to question them, even if either of those two gentlemen had been in town. As for the advertising manager, the last thing he wanted to do was question them. He carried them. They were the budget for the coming fiscal year, into his office, staggering a little on the way, and dropped lazily into his chair. They showed the budget for his own department as exactly one hundred times what he'd been expecting. That is to say, fifty times what he'd put in for. When the initial shock began to wear off, his face assumed an expression of intense thought. In about five minutes he leapt from his chair, dashed out of the office with a shouted syllable or two for his secretary, and got his car out of the parking lot. At home he tossed his clothes into a traveling bag and barged towards the door, giving his wife a quick kiss and an equally quick explanation. He didn't bother to call the airport. He meant to be on the next plain east and no nonsense about it. With one thing and another, the economy hadn't been exactly an overdrive that year, and predictions for the Christmas season were gloomy. Early retail figures bore them out, gift-buying dribbled along feebly until thanksgiving, despite brave speeches by the administration. The holiday passed more in self-pity than in thankfulness among owners of gift-orientated businesses. Then on Friday following thanksgiving, the coffin had struck. Struck may be too mild of a word. People on the street saw feverishly working crews at holiday rates, slapping up posters on billboards. The first poster was a dilly, a toothy and toothsome young woman leaning over a coffin she'd been unwrapping. She smiled, as if she had just received overtures of matronomy from an eighty-year-old billionaire. There was a Christmas tree in the background, and the coffin was appropriately wrapped. So was she. She looked as if she had just gotten out of bed, or were ready to get into it. Her armourous young man, and some not so young, the message was plain. The motto? The gift that will last more than a lifetime. Seemed hardly to the point. Those at home were assailed on TV with a variety of bright and clever skits of the same import. Some of them hinted that if the young lady's gratitude were really perceptuous, and the bedroom too far away, the coffin might be comfy. Of course, the more settled elements of the population were not neglected. For the older married man there was the blow directly between the eyes. Do you want your widow to be half safe? And for the spinster, without immediate hopes, I dreamt I was caught dead without my virgin form casket. Newspapers, magazines, and every other medium added to the assault, never letting it cool. It was the most horrendous campaign for sheer concentration that had ever battered at the public mind. The public reeled, blank shook its head to clear it, gawked, and rushed out to buy. Christmas was not going to be a failure after all. Department store managers, who had grudgingly and under strong sales pressure, made space for a single coffin somewhere at the rear of the store, now rushed to the telephones like touts with a direct pronouncement from a horse. Someone who possibly could got into the act. Grocery supermarkets put in casket departments. The Association of Pharmaceutical Retailers, who felt they had some claim to priority, tried to get courting junctions to keep caskets out of service stations, but were unsuccessful because the judges were all out buying caskets. Beauty-prawlers showed real ingenuity in merchandising. Roads and streets clogged with delivery trucks, rented trailers, and whatever else could haul a coffin. The stock market went completely mad. Strikes were declared and settled within hours. Congress was called into session early. The president got authority to ration lumber and other materials suddenly in starvation short supply. State laws were passed against cremation under heavy lobby pressure. A new racket, called boxjacking, blossomed overnight. The advertising manager, who had put the thing over, had been fighting with all the formidable weapons of his breed to make his plant managers build up a stockpile. They had, but went at it like a toupee in a wind tile. Competitive coffin manufacturers were caught napping. But by Wednesday, after Thanksgiving, they, along with the original one, were on a 24-hour, seven-day basis. Still, only a fraction of the demand could be met. Jet passenger planes were stripped of their seats, supplied with the Yankee Gold, and sent to plunder the world of its coffins. It might be supposed that Christmas goods, other than caskets, would take a bad dumping. That was not so. Such was the upsurge of prosperity, and such was the shortage of coffins, that nearly everything, with a few exceptions, enjoyed the biggest season on record. On Christmas Eve the frenzy slumped to a crawl, though on Christmas morning there were still optimists out there prowling the empty stores. The nation sat down to breathe. They sat on coffins, because there wasn't space in living rooms for any other furniture. There was hardly an individual in the United States who didn't have, in case of sudden sharp pains in the chest, several boxes to choose from. As for the rest of the world, it had better not die just now, or it would be literally a case of dust to dust. Of course, everyone expected a doozy of a slump after Christmas. But our advertising manager, who by now was, of course, sales manager and First Vice President also, wasn't settling for any boom and bust. He'd been a frustrated victim of his choice of industries for so many years now. With his teeth in something, he was going to give it the old bite. He gave people a short breathing spell to arrange their coffin pavements, and move the presents out of the front rooms. Then, late in January, his new campaign came down like a hundred megatonner. Within a week, everyone saw quite clearly that his Christmas models were now obsolete. The coffin became the new status symbol. The auto industry was, of course, demolished. Even people who had even had enough money to buy a new car weren't going to trade in the old one and let a new one stand out in the rain. The garages were full of coffins. Petroleum went along with autos, though there were those who whispered knowingly that the same people merely moved over into the new industry. It was noticeable that the center of it became Detroit. A few trucks and buses were still being built, but that was all. Some of the new caskets were true works of art. Others, well, there was a variety. Compact models appeared in which the occupants' feet were to be doubled up alongside his ears. One manufacturer pushed a circular model, claiming that by all the laws of nature, the fetal position was the only right one. At the other extreme were virtual houses, ornate and lavishly equipped. Possibly the largest of all was the togetherness model, triangular, with graduated recesses for father, mother, eight children, plus two playmates, and in the far corner beyond the baby, the cat. The slump was over. Still, economists swore that the new boom couldn't last either. They reckoned without the advertising manager, whose eyes gleamed brighter all the time. People already had coffins, which they polished and kept on display, sometimes in the new coffin ports being added to houses. The advertising manager's reasoning was direct and to the point. He must get people to use the coffins, and now he had all the money to work with that he could use. The new note was woven in so gradually that it's not easy to put a finger on any one ad and say, it began here. One of the first was surely the widely printed one, showing a tattooed, smiling young man with his chin thrust out manfully, lying in a coffin. He was rugged looking and likeable, not too rugged for the spindly limb to identify with. And he oozed, even though obviously dead, virility at every pore. He was probably the finest looking corpse since Richard the Lion-hearted. Neither must one overlook the singing commercials. Possibly the catchiest of these, a really cute little thing, was achieved by jazzing up the funeral march. It started gradually, and it was also unviolent that few saw it as suicide. Teenagers began having popping off parties. Some of their elders protested a little, but adults were taking it up to. The tired, the unappreciated, the ill, and the heavy laden lay down in growing numbers and expired. A black market and poisons operated for a little while, but soon pinched out. Such was the pressure of persuasion that few needed artificial aids. The boxes were very comfortable. People just closed their eyes and exited smiling. The Beatniks, who had their own models of coffin, moldy, scroungy, and without lids, since the Beatniks insisted on being seen, placed their boxes on the Grant Avenue in San Francisco. They died with highly intellectual expressions, and eventually were washed by the gentle rain. Of course there were voices shouting calamity, when aren't there, but in the long run, and not a very long one at that, they availed not. It isn't so hard to imagine the reactions of the rest of the world. So let us imagine a few. The Communist bloc immediately gave its stamp of disapproval, denouncing the movement as the capitalist imperialist pig plot. Red China, which had been squabbling with Russia for some time about a matter or method, screamed for immediate war. Russia exposed this as patent stupidity, saying that if the capitalist wanted to die, warring upon them would only help them. China surreptitiously tried out the thing as an answer to excess population, and found it good. It also appealed to the well-known melancholy facet of Russian nature. Besides, after pondering for several days, the red bloc decided it could not afford to fall behind in anything, so it started its own program, explaining with much logic how it differed. An elderly British philosopher endorsed the movement on the grounds that a temporary setback in evolution was preferable to facing up to anything. The free bloc, the red bloc, the neutral bloc, and some scraps, as had been to obtruse to find themselves a bloc, were drawn into the whirlpool in an amazingly short time, if in a variety of ways. In less than two years the world was rid of most of what had been bedeviling it. Oddly enough, the country where the movement began was the last to succumb to completely. Or perhaps it is not so odd. Coffin-maker to the world, the American casket industry, had by now almost completely automated box-making and grave-digging, with some interesting assembly lines and packaging arrangements. There still remained the jobs of management and distribution. The president of General Mortuary, an ebullient fellow, originally called sarcophagus Sam, put it well. As long as I have a single prospective customer and a single stockholder, he said, mangling a stoogey and beatling his brows at the one reporter who showed up for the press conference. I'll try and put him in a coffin so I can pay him a dividend. Finally, though, a man who thought he must be the last living human, wandered contentedly about the city of Denver looking for the coffin he liked best. He settled at last upon a rich mahogany number with platinum trimmings, an automatic, self-adjusting, cadaver contour, interspring, wherever plastic-covered mattress with a built-in bar. He climbed in, drew himself a generous slug of fine scotch, giggled as the mattress prodded him exploringly, closed his eyes and sighed in solid comfort. Soft music played as the lid closed itself. From a building nearby, a turkey-buzzard swooped down, calling in a raucous anger because it had let its attention wander for a moment. It was too late. A clod screaming at the solid cover, hissing in frustration and finally gave up. It flapped into the air again still grumbling. It was tired of living on dead small rodents and coyotes. It thought it would take a swing over to Los Angeles, where the pickings weren't pretty good. As it moved westward over parched hills, it espied two black dots a few miles to its left. It circled over for a closer look, then grunted and went on its way. It had seen them before. The old prospector and his bureau had been out in the mountains for so long the buzzard had concluded they didn't know how to die. The prospector, whose name was Adams, trudged behind his bureau towards the buildings that simmered in the heat, humming to himself now and then or addressing some remark to the beast. When he reached the outskirts of Denver, he realized something was amiss. He stood and gazed at the quiet sing. Nothing moved except some skinny pack rats and a few sparrows foraging for grain among the unburied coffins. Tarnation, he said to the borough. Martians? A half-buried piece of newspaper fluttered in the breeze. He walked forward slowly and picked it up. It told him enough so that he understood. They're gone, Evie, he said to the borough. All gone. He put his arm affectionately around her neck. I reckon it's up to me and you again. We got to start all over. He stood back and gazed at her with mild approach. I sure hope they don't favor your side of the house so much this time. CeCe MacApp. The End of And All the Earth a Grave. Buy CeCe MacApp. Recording by Lisa Hirschbach. Big Lake, Alaska. The Bramble Bush by Randall Garrett. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Nick Number. The Bramble Bush by Randall Garrett. There was a man in our town, and he was wonderous wise. He jumped into a Bramble Bush and scratched out both his eyes. Old nursery rhyme. Peter de Hoek was dreaming that the moon had blown up when he awakened. The room was dark except for the glowing night light near the door, and he sat up trying to separate the dream from reality. He focused his eyes on the glow plate. What had awakened him? Something had, he was sure, but there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary now. The explosion in his dream had seemed extraordinarily realistic. He could still remember vividly the vibration and the crump of the noise, but there was no sign of what might have caused the dream sequence. Maybe something fell, he thought. He swung his legs off his bed and padded barefoot over to the light switch. He was so used to walking under the light lunar gravity that he was no longer conscious of it. He pressed the switch and the room was suddenly flooded with light. He looked around. Everything was in place, apparently. There was nothing on the floor that shouldn't be there. The books were all in their places in the bookshelf. The stuff on his desk seemed undisturbed. The only thing that wasn't as it should be was the picture on the wall. It was a reproduction of a painting by Peter de Hoek, which he had always liked, aside from the fact that he had been named after the 17th century Dutch artist. The picture was slightly a skew on the wall. He was sleepily trying to figure out the significance of that when the phone sounded. He walked over and picked it up. Yeah? Guzz? Guzz? Get over here quick! Sam Willow's voice came excitedly from the instrument. What's the matter, Puss? He asked, blurrily. Number two just blew. We need help, Guzz, fast! I'm on my way, de Hoek said. Take C corridor, Willow's warned. A and B caved in and the bulkheads have dropped. Make it snappy! I'm gone already, de Hoek said, dropping the phone back into place. He grabbed his vacuum suit from its hanger and got into it as though his own room had already sprung in air leak. Number two has blown, he thought. That would be the one that Ferguson and Metty were working on. What had they been cooking? He couldn't remember right off the bat. Something touchy, he thought. Something pretty hot. But that wouldn't cause an atomic reactor to blow. It obviously hadn't been a nuclear blow-up of any proportions, or he wouldn't be here now zipping up the front of his vac suit. Still it had been powerful enough to shake the lunar crust a little where he wouldn't have been wakened by the blast. These new reactors could get out a lot more power and they could do a lot more than the old ones could, but they weren't as safe as the old heavy metal reactors by a long shot. None had blown up yet, quite, but there was still the chance. That's why they were built on Luna instead of on Earth. Considering what they could do, de Hoek often felt that it would be safer if they were built out on some nice safe asteroid, like the one in the Jovian Trojan sector. He clamped his fishbowl on tight, opened the door, and sprinted toward Corridor C. The trouble with the Ditmar's Horst reactor was that it lacked any automatic negative feedback system. If a DH decided to go wild, it went wild. Fortunately, that rarely happened. The safe limits for reactions were quite wide, wider usually than the reaction limits themselves, so that there was always a margin of safety, and within the limits a nicety of control existed to make the cionics almost an esoteric branch of chemistry, cookbook chemistry, practically. Want deuterium? Recipe. To 1.00813 grams, purest hydrogen-1, add slowly and with care 1.00896 grams fine-grade neutrons, cook until well done in a Ditmar's Horst reactor. Yield 2.01471 grams rare old deuterium, plus some 2 million million million ergs of raw energy. Now you're cooking with gas. All you had to do was keep the reaction going at a slow enough rate so that the energy could be bled off and there was nothing to worry about, usually. But control of the Fiebelizer field still wasn't perfect because the fields that enfeebled the reactions and made them easy to control weren't yet too well understood. Peter de Hoek turned into Corridor C and kept on running. There was plenty of air still in this corridor and there was apparently little likelihood of his needing his vac suit, but on the moon nobody responds to an emergency call without a vac suit. He was troubled about corridors A and B. The explosion must have been pretty violent to have sealed off two of the four corridors leading from the living quarters to the reaction labs. Two corridors went directly to one of the reactors, two went directly to the second, two more connected the reactor labs themselves, putting the labs in the living quarters at the corners of an equilateral triangle. Peter had never been able to figure out why A and B corridors led to reactor two while C and D led to reactor one. Logically he thought it should have been the other way around. Oh well. Going down C meant that he'd have to get to reactor two the long way around. What had the damage been, he asked himself. Had anyone been hurt or killed? He pushed the questions out of his mind. There was no point in speculating. He'd have the information soon enough. He took the cut off to the left at a 60-degree angle to Corridor C, which led him directly to Corridor E, bypassing reactor one. He noticed as he went by that the operations lamp was out. Nobody was working with reactor one. As he pounded on down the empty corridor he suddenly realized that he hadn't seen anyone else running with him. There were five other men in the reactor station, and so far he had seen no one. He knew where Willows was, but where were Ferguson, Medi, Lainard, and Quillen? He pushed those questions out of his mind, too, for the time being. A head popped out of the door at the far end of the corridor. Guzz, hurry, Guzz! Dehoc didn't bother to answer Willows. He was short of breath as it was. He knew besides that no answer was expected. He had known Willows for years and knew how he thought. It was Willows who had first tagged Dehoc with that silly nickname, Guzzle. Not because Peter was such a heavy drinker, although he could hold it like a gentleman, but because he had thought Guzzle-Dehoc was so uproariously funny. Nobody likes a Guzzle as well as Dehoc, he'd say, with an idiot grin. As a result, everybody called Peter Guzz now. The head had vanished back into the control room of reactor two. Dehoc kept on running, his breath rasping loudly in the confines of the fishbowl helmet. Running four hundred yards isn't the easiest thing in the world, even if a man is in good physical condition. There was less weight to contend with, but the mass that had to be pushed along remained the same. The notion that running on Luna was an effortless breeze was one that only earth-huggers clung to. He ran into the control room and stopped, panting heavily. What happened? Sam Willows' normally handsome face looked drawn. Something went wrong, I don't know what. I was finishing up with reactor one when I heard the explosion. They were both, he gestured toward the reactor, both in there. Still alive? I think so, one of them, anyway. Take a look. Dehoc went over to the periscope and put his eyes to the binoculars. You could see two figures in heavy, dull-gray, radiation-proof suits. They were lying flat on the floor and neither was moving. Dehoc said as much. The one on the left was moving his arm, just a little, Willows said, all swear he was. Something in the man's voice made Dehoc turn his head away from the periscope's eyepieces. Willows' face was gray, and a thin film of greasy perspiration reflected the light from the overhead plates. The man was on the verge of panic. Calm down, Puss, Dehoc said gently. Where's Quillen and Lainard? They're in their rooms, Willows said in a tight voice. Trapped. The bulkheads have closed them off in A. No air in the corridor. We'll have to dig them out. I called them both on the phone. They're all right, but they're trapped. Did you call base? Yes, they haven't got a ship. They sent three moon-cats, though. They ought to be here by morning. Dehoc looked up at the chronometer on the wall. O-1-12, Greenwich Time. Morning meant any time between eight and noon. The position of the sun up on the surface had nothing to do with lunar time. As a matter of fact, there was a full earth shining at the moment, which meant that it wouldn't be dawn on the surface for a week yet. If the cats from base get here by noon, we'll be OK, won't we? Dehoc asked. Look at the instruments, Willows said. Dehoc ran a practiced eye over the console and swallowed. What were they running? Mercury-203, Willows said. Half-life 46.5 days, beta and gamma emitter, converts to thallium-203, stable. What did they want with a kilogram of the stuff? Special order, shipment to earth for some reason. Have you checked the endpoint? She's building up fast. No, no, I haven't. He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. Check it, said Dehoc. Do any of the controls work? I don't know. I didn't want to fiddle with them. You start giving them a rundown. I'm going to get into a suit and go pull those two out of there, if they're still alive. He opened the locker and took his radiation-proof suit out. He checked it over carefully and began shucking his vac suit. A few minutes delay in getting to the men in the reactor's anti-room didn't matter much. If they hadn't been killed outright and were still alive, they would probably live a good deal longer. The shells of the radiation suits didn't look damaged, and the instruments indicated very little radiation in the room. Whatever it was that had exploded had done most of its damage at the other end of the reactor. Evidently a fissure had been opened to the surface, forty feet above. A fissure big enough to let all the air out of A and B corridors and activate the automatic bulkheads to seal off the airless section. What troubled him was Willows. If he hadn't known the man so well, Dehoc would have verbally blasted him where he stood. His reaction to trouble had been typical. Dehoc had already seen Willows in trouble three times, and each time the reaction had been the same, near panic. Every time his first thought had been to scream for help rather than to do anything himself. Almost anyone else would have made one call and then climbed into a radiation suit to get Ferguson and Medi out of the anti-room. There was certainly no apparent immediate danger, but all that Willows had done was yell for someone to come and do his thinking and acting for him. He had called base, he had called Dehoc, he had called Quillen and Laynard, but he hadn't done anything else. Now he had to be handled with kid gloves. If Dehoc didn't act calm, if he didn't go about things just right, Willows might very likely go over the line into total panic. As long as he had someone to depend on, he'd be all right, and Dehoc didn't want to lose the only help he had right now. Firmium-256 said Willows in a tight, flat voice. What? Dehoc asked calmly. Firmium-256, Willows repeated, that's what the stuff is going to start building towards, spontaneous fission, half-life of three hours. He took a deep breath. The reactor won't be able to contain it, we haven't got that kind of bleed-off control. No, Dehoc agreed. I suggest we stop it. The freezer control isn't functioning, Willows said. I guess that's what they went in there to correct. I doubt it, Dehoc said carefully. They wouldn't have needed suits for that. They must have had something else bothering them. I'd be willing to bet they went in to pull a sample and something went wrong. Why, what makes you think so? If there had been trouble they'd have called for someone to stay here at the console. Both of them wouldn't have gone in if there was any trouble. Yeah, yeah, I guess you're right. He looked visibly relieved. What do you suppose went wrong? Look at your meters, four of them aren't registering. Willows looked. I hadn't noticed. I thought they were just registering low. You're right, though. Yeah, you're right. The surface bleed-off, hydrogen loss, blew a valve is all, yeah. He grinned a little. Must have been quite a volcano for a second or two. Dehoc grinned back at him. Yeah, must have. Give me a hand with these clamps. Willows began fastening the clamps on the heavy suit. Do you think Ferguson and Meddy are okay, Guz? He asked. Dehoc noticed it was the first time he had used the names of the two men. Now that there was a chance that they were alive, at least in his own mind, he was willing to admit that they were men he knew. Willows didn't want to think that anyone he knew had done such a terrible thing as die. It hit too close to home. The man wasn't thinking. He was willing to grasp at anything that offered him a chance. Dream straws. The idea was to keep him busy, keep his mind on trivia, keep him from thinking about what was going on inside that reactor. He should have known automatically that it was building toward Firmium 256. It was the most logical, easiest, and simplest way for a DH reactor to go off the deep end. A Ditmar's Horst reactor took advantage of the fact that any number can be expressed as the sum of powers of two, and the number of nucleons in an atomic nucleus was no exception to that mathematical rule. Building atoms by adding nucleons wasn't as simple as putting marbles in a bag because of the energy differential, but the energy derived from the fusion of the elements lighter than iron 56 could be compensated for by using it to pack the nuclei heavier than that. The trick was to find a chain of reactions that gave the least necessary energy transfer. The method by which the reactions were carried out might have driven a mid-20th century physicist to trifle GaGa, but most of the reactions themselves would have been recognizable. There were several possible reactions which Ferguson and Medi could have used to produce Hg203, but DeHoke was fairly sure he knew which one it was. The five-branched double-alpha addition scheme was the one that was easiest to use, and it was the only one that started the damnable doubling chain reaction where the nuclear weights went up exponentially under the influence of the peculiar conditions within the reactor. Two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one, twenty-eight, two, fifty-six. Hydrogen two and helium four were stable, so were oxygen sixteen and sulfur thirty-two. The reaction encountered a sticky spot at beryllium eight, which is highly unstable, with a half-life of ten to the minus sixteenth seconds, spontaneously fissioning back into two helium four nuclei. Past sulfur thirty-two there was a lot of positron emission as the nuclei fought to increase the number of neutrons to maintain a stable balance. Germanium sixty-four is not at all stable, and neither is neodymium one twenty-eight, but the instability can be corrected by positive beta emission. When two nuclei of the resulting xenon one twenty-eight are forced together, the positron emission begins long before the coalescence is complete, resulting in fermium two fifty-six. But not even a Ditmar's Horst reactor can stand the next step, because matter itself won't stand it, not even in a DH reactor. The trouble is that a DH reactor tries. Mathematically it was assumed that the resulting nucleus did exist, for an infinitesimal instant of time. Literally, mathematically infinitesimal, so close to zero that it would be utterly impossible to measure it. Someone had dubbed the hypothetical stuff instantanium five twelve. Whether instantanium five twelve had any real existence as an argument for philosophers only, the results in any case were catastrophic. The whole conglomeration came apart in a grand splatter of neutrons, protons, negatrons, positrons, electrons, neutrinos, a whole slew of Greek-lettered mesons of various charges and masses, and a fine collection of strange and ultra-strange particles. Energy, just oodles and gobs. Peter de Hoek had heard about the results. He had no desire to experience them first hand. Fortunately the reaction that led up to them took time. It could be stopped at any time up to the FM-256 stage. According to the instruments, that wouldn't be for another six hours yet, so there was nothing at all to worry about. Even after that it could be stopped, provided one had a way to get rid of the violently fissioning fermium. Connection's OK, Willow's asked. His voice came over the earphones inside the ponderous helmet of the radiation suit. Fine, said de Hoek, he adjusted the double periscope so that his vision was clear. Perfect! He tested the controls moving his arms and legs to see if the suit responded. The suit was so heavy that, without powered joints controlled by servomechanisms, he would have been unable to move, even under lunar gravity. With the power on, though, it was no harder than walking underwater in a diving suit. All's well, puss, he said. I'll keep an eye on you, said Willow's. Fine. Well, here goes Colossus de Hoek. He began walking toward the door that led into the corridor which connected the reactor anti-room to the control room. It took time to drag the two inert figures out of the anti-room. All de Hoek could do was grab them under the armpits, apply power, and drag them out. He went out the same way he had come in, traversing the separate chambers in reverse order. First came the decontamination chamber, where the radioactive dust that might have settled on the suits was sluiced off by the detergent sprays. When the radiation detectors registered low enough, de Hoek dragged Ferguson into the outer chamber, then went back and got Metty and put him through the same process. Then he dragged them on into the control room so that Willow's could get them out of the heavy suits. Can you help me, Guz? Willow's asked. It was obvious that he didn't want to open the suits. He didn't want to see what might be inside. De Hoek helped him. They were both alive but unconscious. Bones had been broken and Metty appeared to be suffering from concussion. They were badly damaged, but they'd live. De Hoek and Willow's made two trips down E and C corridors, carrying the men on a stretcher to get them in bed. De Hoek splinted the broken bones as best he could and gave each of them a shot of Narcodyne. He had to do the medical work because Quillen, the medic, was trapped in corridor A. He called Quillen on the phone to tell him what had happened. He described the signs and symptoms of the victims as best he could, and then did what Quillen told him to do. They ought to be all right, Quillen said. With that dope in them they'll be out cold for the next twelve hours, and by that time the boys from base will be here. Just leave them alone and don't move them anymore. Right. I'll call you back later. Right now Puss and I are going to see what's wrong with the control linkages on number two. Right. Bio. De Hoek and Willow's walked back to the control room of number two reactor in silence. Once inside the control room De Hoek said, how are those control circuits? Willow's was supposed to have been checking them while he'd been dragging Ferguson and Metty out of the anti-chamber. Well, I... I'm not sure. I'll show you what I've found so far, Gus. You ought to take a look at them. I... I'd like you to take a look-see. I think... he gestured toward the console. I think they're all right except for the freezer vernier and the pressure release control. He doesn't trust his own work, De Hoek thought. Well, that's all right. Neither do I. Painstakingly the two of them went over the checking circuits. Willow's was right. The freezer and pressure controls were inoperable. Damn, said De Hoek. Double damn. They're probably both stuck at the firewall, Willow said. Sure, where else? I'll have to go in there and unstick them. Help me get back into that two-legged tank again. He wished he knew more about what Ferguson and Metty had been doing. He wished he knew why the two men had gone into the anti-room in the first place. He wished a lot of things, but wishing was a useless pastime at this stage of the game. If only one of the two men had been in a condition to talk. He got back into his radiation-proof suit again, took one last look at the instruments on the console, and headed for the reactor. Through the first radiation trap, left turn, right turn, right turn, left turn, through the cold room, through the second radiation trap, through the decontamination chamber, and through the third radiation trap into the anti-room. Now that Ferguson and Metty were safely out of the way, he could give his attention to the damage that had been done. Did Ferguson and Metty actually come in to tap off a sample as he had suggested to Willows? He looked around at the wreckage in the anti-chamber. Quite obviously, the heavy door of the sample chamber was wide open, and it certainly appeared that the wreckage was scattered from that point. Cautiously, he went over to look at the open sample chamber. It looked all right, except that the bottom was covered with a bright metallic dust. He rubbed his finger over it and looked at the fingertip, a very fine dust, and yet it hadn't been scattered very much by the explosion. Heavy, very likely Osmium. Osmium-187 was stable, but it wasn't a normally used step toward Mercury-203. Four successive Alpha captures would give Polonium-203, not Mercury. Ditto for an oxygen fusion. It could be Iridium or Platinum, of course. Whatever it was, the instruments in his helmet told him it wasn't hot. He had a hunch that Ferguson and Meti had been building Mercury-203 from Halfnium-179 by the process of successive fusions with Hydrogen-3, and that something had gone wrong with the H3 production. It appeared that the explosion had been a simple chemical blast caused by the air oxidation of H2. But the bleeder vent at the other end of the reactor had apparently kicked at the same time. An enormous amount of unused energy had been released, blowing the entire emergency bleeder system out. Something didn't seem right. Something stuck in his craw, and he couldn't figure out what it was. He opened up the conduit boxes that led through the anti-chamber from the control console to the reactor beyond the firewall. Everything looked fine. That meant that whatever it was that had fouled up the controls was on the other side of the firewall. How does it look? Willow's voice came worriedly over the earphones. Have I already said damn? DeHoke asked. You have, Willow said with forced lightness. You even said double damn. Factorial damn, then, said DeHoke. What's the matter? Apparently the foul-up is on the other side of the firewall. Are you going in? I'll have to. All right. Watch yourself. I will. He went over to the periscope that surveyed the part of the reactor beyond the firewall. Everything looked normal enough. He carefully checked the pressure gauge. Normal. Check the spectro for me, will you? He asked. Make sure that's just the normal helium atmosphere in there. Sure. A pause. Nothing but helium, guzz. What were you expecting? I don't think I'd care to walk into a hydrogen atmosphere at 300 centigrade. Neither would I, but how could there be hydrogen in there? There shouldn't be, but there's something screwy going on here and I can't put my finger on it. Well, whatever it is, it isn't hydrogen in the reactor room. Okay, stand by. I'm going in. He walked over to the firewall door. On the other side of it was a small chamber where the oxygen and nitrogen of normal air would be swept out before he opened the inner door to go into the inner chamber itself. There was no need for an airlock since small amounts of impurities in the HE-4 didn't bother anything. It was just as he turned the lever that undogged the firewall door that he realized his mistake. But it was too late. The door jerked outward and a hot wind picked him up and slammed him against the far wall. There was a moment of pain. Then, nothing. There was something familiar about the man who was turning the wheel, but the hook couldn't place it. The man was wearing a black hood as befitted a torturer and executioner. Idiot! said the hooded man, giving the wheel of the rack a little more pressure. Explain the following. If a half plus a half is equal to a whole, why is half-mium plus half-mium not equal to whole-mium? Stretched as he was on the rack, Dehook could not think straight because of the excruciating pain. Because a half is 8.28% heavier than a whole, said Dehook. You're an idiot, nonetheless, said the torturer. He gave the wheel another twist. Dehook wanted to scream, but he couldn't. Try again, said the torturer. What is a half plus four plus four plus four plus four plus— Stop! screamed Dehook. Stop! Stop at the osmium! Ah, but it didn't stop at the osmium, said the hooded man. It went on and on and on. Plus four plus four plus four plus four plus four. Until there were so many plus fours in there that the place looked like an old-fashioned golf course. My legs hurt, said Dehook. The man was no longer wearing a hood, but Dehook couldn't tell if it was Willow's or himself. We will all go together when we go, said the man. Dehook turned his head away and looked at the ceiling, and he realized that it was the ceiling of the anti-chamber. My legs hurt, he repeated, and he could hear the horse whisper inside the helmet. He realized that he was lying flat on his back. He had been jarred around quite a bit in the suit. He wondered if he could sit up. He managed to get both arms behind him and push himself into a sitting position. He wiggled his feet. The servos responded. He hurt all over, but a little experiment told him that he was only bruised. Nothing was broken. He hadn't been hit as hard as Ferguson and Metty had been. Willow's, he said. Willow's! There was no answer from the earphones. He looked at the chronometer dial inside his helmet. O-249. He had been unconscious less than ten minutes. At one glance brought his eyes to two other dials. The internal radiation of the suit was a little high, but nothing to worry about. But the dial registering the external radiation was plenty high. Without the protection of the suit, he wouldn't have lived through those ten minutes. Where was Willow's? And then he knew, and he pushed any thought of further help from that quarter out of his mind. What had to be done would have to be done by Peter Dehook alone. He climbed to his feet. His head hurt, and he swayed with nausea and pain. The massive weight of the suit's shoes kept him upright. Then it passed, and he blinked his eyes and shook his head to clear it. He found he was holding his breath, and he let it out. The trouble had been so simple, and yet he hadn't seen it. Oh, yes he had. He must have, subconsciously. Otherwise, how would he have guessed that the stuff in the sampling chamber was Osmium-187? Ferguson and Metty had been trying to make Mercury-203 by adding eight successive tritium nuclei to Halfnium-179, progressing through Tantalum-182, Tungsten-185, Rhenium-188, Osmium-191, Eurydium-194, Platinum-197, and Gold-200, all of which were unstable. But the Hydrogen-3 reaction had gone wrong. The doubling had set in, producing Helium-4. Successive additions of the alpha particles to Halfnium-179 had produced first Tungsten-183, and then Osmium-187, both of which were stable. Ferguson and Metty, seeing that something was wrong, drew off a sample and then reset the reaction to produce the Hg-203 they wanted. Then they had come down to pick up the sample. They hadn't realized that the Helium production had gone wild. Much more Helium than necessary was being produced, and the Bleeder Valve had failed. When they opened the sample chamber, they got a blast of high-pressure Helium right in the face. The shock of that sudden release had jarred the whole atmosphere inside the reaction chamber, and the Bleeder Valve had let go. But the violence of the pressure release had caused a fault to the surface to open up and had closed the valve again, jammed it, probably. There had been enough pressure left in there to blow to hook up against the nearest wall when he opened the door. Since the pressure indicator system was connected to the release system, when one had failed, the other had failed. That's why the pressure gauge had indicated normal. And, of course, it had been the pressure differential that had caused the controls to stick. Well, they ought to be all right now, then. He decided he'd better take a look. The firewall door was still open. He walked over to it and stepped into the smaller chamber that led to the inner reactor room. The inside door, much weaker than the outer firewall door, had been blown off its hinges. He stepped past it and went on in. What he saw made him jerk his glance away from the periscope in his helmet and check his radiation detectors again. Not much change. Relief swept over him as he looked back at the reactor itself. The normally dead black walls were glowing a dull red. It was pure thermal heat, but it shouldn't be doing that. Moving quickly, he went over to the place where the control cables came in through the firewall. It took him several minutes to assure himself that they would function from the control room now. There was nothing more to do but get out of here and get that reaction damped. He went out again, closing the firewall door behind him and dogging it tight. There would be no more helium production now. He went through the radiation trap to the decontamination chamber to wash off whatever it was he had picked up. The decontamination room was a mess. Dehook stared at the twisted pipes and the stream of water that gushed out of a cracked valve. The blast had jarred everything loose. Well, he could still scrub himself off. Except that the scrubbers weren't working. He swore under his breath and twisted the valve that was supposed to dispense detergent. It did, thank heaven. He doused himself good with it and then got under the flowing water. The radiation level remained exactly where it was. He walked over and pulled one of the brushes off the defunct scrubber and suds'd it up. It wasn't until he started to use it that he got a good look at his arms. He hadn't paid any attention before. He walked over to the mirror to get a good look. You look magnificent, he told his reflection acidly. The radiation-proof armor looked as though it had been chrome-plated. But Dehook knew better than that. He knew exactly what had happened. He was nicely plated all over with a film of mercury which had amalgamated itself with the metallic surface of the suit. He was thoroughly wet with the stuff and no amount of water and detergent would take it off. There was something wrong with No. 2 Reactor, all right. It had leaked out some of the Mercury 203 that Ferguson and Metty had been making. He thought a minute. It hadn't been leaking out just before he opened the door in the firewall because Willows would certainly have noticed the bright mercury line when he checked with the spectroscope. The stuff must have been released when the pressure dropped. He walked back to the anti-room and looked at the sampling chamber. There were a few droplets of mercury around the inlet. Thus far the three pressure explosions had wrecked about everything that was wreckable, he thought. No, not quite. There was still the chance that the whole station would go if he didn't get back into the control room and stop that Powers of Two chain. The detonation of Instantanium 512 would finish the job by doing what high-pressure helium could never do. He glanced at the thermometer. The temperature behind the firewall had risen to 240 centigrade. It wasn't supposed to be above 200. It wasn't too serious, really, because a little heat like that wouldn't bother a Ditmar's Horst reactor, but it indicated that things back there weren't working properly. He turned away and walked back to the decontamination chamber. There must be some way he could get the mercury off the suit, because he couldn't take the suit off until the mercury was gone. First he tried scrubbing. That was what showed him how upset he really was. He had actually scrubbed the armor on his left arm free of mercury when he realized what he was doing and threw the brush down in disgust. Use your head to hoke, he told himself. What good would it do to scrub the stuff off of the few places he could reach? In the bulky armor he was worse than muscle-bound. He couldn't touch any part of his back. He couldn't bend far enough to touch his legs. His shoulders were inaccessible even. Scrubbing was worse than useless. It was time-wasting. He picked up the brush again and began scrubbing at the other arm. It gave him something to do while he thought. While he was thinking he wasn't wasting time. What would dissolve mercury? Nitric acid. Good old HNO3. Fine, except that the hot lab was at the other end of the reactor, where the fissure had led all the air out. The bulkheads had dropped and he couldn't get in. And naturally the nitric acid would be in the lab. For the first time he found himself hating Willow's guts. If he were around he could get some acid from the cold lab or even from the other hot lab at number one. If Willow's... He stood up and dropped the brush. Dolt, boob, moron, idiot. Not Willow's, himself. There was no reason on earth, or Luna, why he couldn't walk over to number one hot lab and get the stuff himself. The habit of never leaving the lab without thorough decontamination was so thoroughly ingrained in him that he had simply never thought about it until that moment. But what did a little contamination with radioactive mercury mean in a time like this? He could take f-corridor to number one, use the decontamination chamber and the acid from the lab, shuck off his armor there and come back through e-corridor. F could be cleaned up later. So simple. He went through the light trap to the next chamber and turned the handle on the sliding door. The door wouldn't budge. It had been warped by the force of the helium blast and it was stuck in its grooves. Well, there were tools. The thing could be unstuck. Peter de Hoek was a determined man, a strong man, and a smart man, but the door was more determined and stronger than he was and his intelligence didn't give him much of an edge right then. After an hour's hard work he managed to get the door open about eighteen inches. Then it froze fast and refused to move again. All the power and leverage he could bring to bear was useless. The door had opened all it was going to open. Beyond it he could see the next radiation trap and freedom. Eighteen inches would have been plenty of space for him to get through if he had not been wearing the radiation-proof suit, but he didn't dare take that suit off. By the time he got out of the suit the intensely radioactive mercury on its surface would have made his death only a matter of time and not much time at that. He told himself that if it were simply a matter of running to the control room to shut off the DH reactor he'd do it. That could have been done before he lost consciousness, but it wasn't that easy. Damping the reaction took time and control. The stuff had to be eased back slowly. Shutting off the Dittmar's horse would simply blow a hole in the crust of Luna and kill everyone if he did it now. There were four or five men out there who would die if he pulled anything foolish like that. The explosion wouldn't be as powerful as the instantaneous 512 reaction would be, but it would be nonetheless deadly for all that. There had to be either a way to scrape the mercury off the suit or a way to open the door another six inches. Or, he added suddenly, a way to get safely out of the suit. At the end of another twenty minutes he had still thought of nothing. He wandered around the decontamination room looking at everything hoping he might see something that would give him a clue. He didn't. He went into the anti-chamber of the reactor and glared at the door in the firewall. The instrument said that things were getting pretty fierce on the other side of that wall. Temperature 295 and still rising. Pressure? He carefully cracked the inlet of the sampling chamber and got a soft hiss. The helium was expanding from the heat, that was all. Part of the trouble with the reactor, he thought, was the high percentage of oxygen and nitrogen that had mixed in during the ten minutes or so that the door was open. All hell was fixing to bust loose in there, and he, Peter DeHoke, was right next to it. He walked back into the decontamination chamber. What would dissolve Mercury? Mercury would dissolve gold. Would gold dissolve Mercury? Very funny. He was like a turtle, DeHoke thought, perfectly safe as long as he was in his shell, but take him out of it and he would die. Hell of a way to spend the night, he thought, a knight in shining armor. That struck him as funny. He began to laugh and laugh. He almost lapped himself sick before he realized that it was fear and despair that were driving him into hysteria, not a sense of humor. He forced himself to calmness. He must be calm. He must think. Yes. How do you go about getting rid of a radioactive metal that is in effect welded to the outside of your suit? The trouble was he was a nucleonics engineer, not a chemist. He remembered quite a bit of his chemistry, of course, but not as much as he would have liked. Could the stuff be neutralized? Sure, he told himself. Very simple. All he had to do was go climb into the reactor and let the reactor do the job. Mercury 203 plus an alpha particle gives nice, stable lead 207. Just go climb right into the Ditmar's Horst and let the helium-4 do the job. But the thought stuck in his mind. He kept telling himself not to panic as Willows had done. And several minutes later, chuckling to himself in a half-demented fashion, he opened the firewall door and went in to let the helium do the job. It was nearly eight in the morning, Greenwich time when the three surface vehicles with their wide caterpillar treads lumbered to a halt near the kiosk that marked the entrance to the underground site of the laboratories. OK, said one of the men in the first machine, holding a microphone to his lips. Let's go in. If what Willows said is true, the whole place may blow any minute now, but I'm not asking for volunteers. Nobody will be any safer up here than they will down there, and we have to do a job. Besides, Willows wasn't completely rational. Nobody would put on a vac suit and run away like that if he was in his right mind, so we can discount a lot of what he said when we picked him up on the road. The five of us in this car are going straight to No. 1 Reactor to see what can be done to stop whatever is going on. The rest of you start trying to see if you can get those trapped men out of A and B corridors. All right, let's move in. Less than five minutes later, five men went into the control room of No. 1 Reactor. They found Peter de Hoek's sound asleep in the control chair, and the instruments showed that the Dittmar's Horst Reactor was inactive. One of the men shook de Hoek gently, awakening him in the middle of a snore. What? he said groggily. We're here, Gus. Everything's OK. Sure everything's OK. Nothing to it. All I did was wait until the temperature got above 357 centigrade, above the boiling point of Mercury. Then I went in and let the hot helium boil the stuff off me. Nothing to it. Near boiled myself alive, but it did the trick. What? asked the man in a puzzled voice. Are you talking about? I am a knight in dull armor, said Peter de Hoek, dozing off again. Then he roused himself a little and said without opening his eyes, Hio, quick silver away! And he was sound asleep again. And when he saw what he had done, with all his might in Maine, he jumped back in that bramble bush and scratched them in again. End of The Bramble Bush by Randall Garrett Recording by Nick Number The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce By the light of a tallow candle which had been placed on one end of a rough table, a man was reading something written in a book. It was an old account book, greatly worn. It's not apparently very legible. For the man sometimes held the page close to the flame of the candle to get a stronger light upon it. The shadow of the book would then throw into obscurity a half of the room, darkening a number of faces and figures. For besides the reader, eight other men were present. Seven of them sat against the rough log walls, silent and motionless, while not very far from the table. By extending an arm, any one of them could have touched the eighth man who lay on the table, face upward, partly covered by a sheet, his arms at his sides. He was dead. The man with the book was not reading aloud and no one spoke. All seemed to be waiting for something to occur. The dead man only was without expectation. From the blank darkness outside came in through the aperture that served for a window, for unfamiliar noises of night in the wilderness. The long nameless note of a distant coyote, the stillly pulsing thrill of tireless insects in trees, strange cries of night birds so different from those birds of day, the drone of great blundering beetles, and all that mysterious chorus of small sounds that seem always to have been but half heard when they have suddenly ceased as if conscious of an indiscretion. But nothing of all this was noted in that company. Its members were not over much addicted to idle interest in matters of no practical importance. That was obvious in every line of their rugged faces, obvious even in the dim light of the single candle. They were evidently men of the vicinity, farmers and woodmen. The person reading was a trifle different. One would have said of him that he was of the world, worldly. Albeit there was that in his attire which attested a certain fellowship in the organisms of his environment. His coat would hardly have passed muster in San Francisco. His foot gear was not of urban origin and the hat that lay by him on the floor he was the only one uncovered was such that if one had considered it as an article of mere personal adornment he would have missed its meaning. In countenance the man was rather prepossessing with just a hint of sternness, though that he may have assumed or cultivated as appropriate to one in authority was a coroner. It was by virtue of his office that he had possession of the book in which he was reading. It had been found among the man's effects in his cabin where the inquest was now taking place. When the coroner had finished reading he put the book into his breast pocket. At that moment the door was pushed open and a young man entered. He clearly was not of the mountain birth and breeding. He was classed as those who dwell in cities. He had, in fact, been writing hard to attend the inquest. The coroner nodded. No one else greeted him. We have waited for you, said the coroner. It is necessary to have done with this business tonight. The young man smiled. I am sorry to have kept you, he said. I went away not to evade your summons but to post to my newspaper an account of what I suppose I am called back to relate. The coroner smiled. The account that you posted to your newspaper, he said, differs probably from that which you would give here under oath. That, replied the other rather hotly and with a visible flush, is as you choose. I used manifold paper and have a copy of what I sent. It was not written in his news for it is incredible, but as fiction. It may go as part of my testimony under oath, but you say it is incredible. That is nothing to you, sir, if I also swear that it is true. The coroner was apparently not greatly affected by the young man's manifest resentment. He was silent for some moments, his eyes upon the floor. The men about the sides of the cabin talked and whispers, but seldom withdrew their gaze from the face of the corpse. Presently the coroner lifted his eyes and said, we will resume the inquest. The men removed their hats. The witness was sworn. What is your name? William Hocker, age 27. You know the deceased, your Morgan? Yes. You were with him when he died? Near him. How did that happen, your presence, I mean? I was visiting him at this place to shoot and fish. Part of my purpose, however, was to study him and his odd, solitary way of life. He seemed a good model for a character in fiction. I sometimes write stories. I sometimes read them. Thank you. Stories in general, not yours. Some of the jurors laughed. Against a summer background, humor shows high lights. Soldiers in the intervals of battle laugh easily and a jest in the death chamber conquers by surprise. Relate the circumstances of this man's death, said the coroner. You may use any notes of amaranth that you please. The witness understood. The manuscript from his breast pocket, he held it near the candle and turning the leaves until he found the page that he wanted began to read. The sun had hardly risen when we left the house. We were looking for quail each with a shotgun, but we had only one dog. Morgan said that our best ground was beyond a certain ridge that he pointed out and we crossed it by a trail through the chaperral. On the other side was comparatively level ground, thickly covered with wild grass. As we emerged from the chaperral, Morgan was a few yards in advance. Suddenly we heard at a little distance to our right and partly in front a noise of some animal thrashing about in the bushes, which we could see were violently agitated. We started a deer, said. I wished we had brought a rifle. Morgan, who had stopped and was intently watching the agitated chaperral, said nothing, but it cocked both barrels of his gun and was holding it in readiness to aim. I thought him a trifle excited, which surprised me, for he had a reputation for exceptional coolness, even in moments of sudden and imminent peril. Oh, come, I said, you are not going to fill up a deer with a quail shot, are you? Still he did not reply. But catching a sight of his face as he turned it slightly toward me, I was struck by the pallor of it. Then I understood that it was serious business on hand. And my first conjecture was that we had jumped a grizzly. I advanced to Morgan's side, cocking my piece as I moved. The bushes were now quiet, and the sounds had ceased. But Morgan was as attentive to the place as before. What is it? What the devil is it, I asked. That damned thing, he replied. Without turning his head, his voice was husky and unnatural. He trembled visibly. He was about to speak further when I observed the wild oats near the place of the disturbance moving in their most inexplicable way. I could hardly describe it. It seemed as if stirred by a streak of wind, but not only bent, but pressed it down, crushed it so that it did not rise. And this movement was slowly prolonging itself directly toward us. Nothing that I had ever seen had affected me so strangely as a son familiar, an phenomenon. Yet I am unable to recall any sense of fear. I remember and tell it here because singularly enough I recollected it then, that once in looking carelessly out an open window I momentarily mistook a small tree close at hand for one of a group of larger trees at a little distance away. It looked the same size as the others, but being more distinctly and sharply defined in mass and detail seemed out of harmony with them. It was a mere falsification of the law of aerial perspective. But it startled almost terrified me. We so rely upon the orderly operation of familiar natural laws that any seeming suspension of them is noted as a menace to our safety, a warning of unthinkable calamity. So now the apparently causeless movement of the urbage and the slow and deviating approach of the line of disturbance was distinctly disquieting. My companion appeared actually frightened, and I could hardly credit my senses when I saw him suddenly throw his gun to his shoulders and fire both barrels at the agitated grass. Before the smoke of the discharge had cleared away, I heard a loud savage cry, a scream like that of a wild animal. And flinging his gun upon the ground Morgan sprang away and ran swiftly from the spot. The same instant I was thrown violently to the ground by the impact of something unseen and spoke some soft heavy substance that seemed thrown against me with great force. Before I could get upon my feet and recover my gun, which seemed to have been struck from my hands, I heard Morgan crying out as if in mortal agony, and mingling with his cries, were such savage sounds as one hears from fighting dogs, inexpressibly terrified, I struggled to my feet and looked in the direction of Morgan's retreat, and may heaven in mercy spare me from another fight like that. At a distance of less than thirty yards was my friend, down upon one knee, his head thrown back at a frightful angle, hatless, his long hair and disorder, and his whole body and violent movement from side to side, backward and forward. His right arm was lifted and seemed to lack the hand, at least I could see none. The other arm was invisible, at times as my memory now reports this extraordinary scene, I could discern but a part of his body. It was like he had been partly blotted out. I could not otherwise express it. Then a shifting of his position would bring it all into view again. All this must have occurred within a few seconds. Yet in that time Morgan assumed all the postures of a determined wrestler vanquished by superior weight and strength. I saw nothing but him, and him not always distinctly. During the entire incident his shouts and curses were heard as if through an enveloping drawer of such sounds of rage and fury as I had never heard from the throat of man or brute. For a moment only I stood resolute, then throwing down my gun I ran forward to my friend's assistance. I had a vague belief that he was suffering from a fit or some form of convulsion. Before I could reach his side he was down and quiet. All sounds had ceased, but with the feeling of such terror as even these awful events had not inspired, I now had a mysterious movement of wild oats prolonging itself from the trampled area about the prostrate man toward the edge of a wood. It was only when it had reached the wood that I was able to withdraw my eyes and look at my companion. He was dead. The corner rose from his seat and stood beside the dead man. Lifting an edge of the sheet he pulled it away, exposing the entire body altogether naked and showing in delight a clay-like yellow. It had, however, broad maculations of bluish-black, obviously caused by extroversated blood from contusions. The chest and sides looked as if they had been beaten with a bludgeon. There were dreadful acerations. The skin was torn in strips and shreds. The corner moved round to the end of the table and undid a silk handkerchief which had been passed under the chin and knotted on top of the head. When the handkerchief was drawn away it exposed what had been the throat. Some of the jurors who had risen to get a better view repented their curiosity and turned away their faces. Witness Harker went to the open window and leaned out across the sill, faint and sick. Dropping the handkerchief upon the dead man's neck, the corner stepped to an angle of the room and from a pile of clothing produced one garment after another, each of which he held up a moment for torn and stiff with blood. The jurors did not make a closer inspection. They seemed rather uninterested. They had in truth seen all this before, the only thing that was new for them being Harker's testimony. Gentlemen, the corner said, We have no more evidence, I think. Your duty has been already explained to you. If there is nothing you wish to ask, you may go outside and consider your verdict. The foreman rose, a tall-bearded man of honesty, coarsely clad. I should like to ask one question, Mr. Coroner. He said, What asylum did this year last witness escape from? Mr. Harker said the corner gravely and tranquilly. From what asylum did you last escape? Harker flushed crimson again but said nothing and the seven jurors rose and solemnly filed out of the cabin. If you have done insulting me, sir, said Harker as soon as he and the dead man. I suppose I am at liberty to go. Yes. Harker started to leave but paused with his hand on the door latch. The habit of his profession was strong in him, stronger than his sense of personal dignity. He turned about and said, The book that you have there, I recognize it is Morgan's diary. You seem greatly interested in it. You read it while I was testifying. May I see it? The public would like the book will appear in this matter, replied the official, slipping into his coat pocket. All the entries in it were made before the writer's death. As Harker passed out of the house, the jury re-entered and stood about the table on which the now covered corpse showed under the sheet was sharp definition. The foreman seated himself near the candle produced from his breast pocket a pencil and a scrap of paper and wrote rather laboriously the verdict, which with various degrees of effort all signed. We the jury do find that the remains come to their death at the hands of a mountain line, but some of us thinks all the same they had fits. In the diary of the late Hugh Morgan are certain interesting entries, having possibly a scientific value as suggestions. At the inquest upon his body the book was not in evidence. Possibly the coroner thought it not worthwhile to confuse the jury. The date of the first of the entries mentioned cannot be ascertained. The upper part of the leaf is torn away. The part of the entry remaining is as follows. Would run on a half circle keeping his head torn away toward the center and again he would stand still, barking furiously. At last he ran away into the brush as fast as he could go. I thought at first that he had gone but on returning to the house found no other alteration in his manner than what was obviously due to fear of punishment. Can a dog see with his nose? Do odors impress some olfactory center with images that things emitted them? September 2. Looking at the stars last night as they rose above the crest of the ridges to the house I observed them successfully disappear from left to right. Each was eclipsed but an instant and only a few at the same time but along the entire length of the ridge all that were within a degree or two of the crest were blotted out. It was as if something had passed along between me and them but I could not see it and the stars were not thick enough to define its outline. Oh I don't like this. Several weeks entries are missing three leaves being torn from the book. September 27. There's been about here again. I find evidence of its presence every day. I watched again all of last night in the same cover gun in hand, double charged with buckshot. In the morning the fresh footprints were there as before yet I have sworn that I did not sleep. Indeed I hardly sleep at all. It's terrible. Insupportable. These amazing experiences are real. I shall go mad. If they are fanciful, I'm mad already. October 3. I shall not go. It shall not drive me away. No, this is my house, my land. God hates a coward. October 5. I can stand it no longer. I've invited Harker to pass a few weeks with me. He has a level head. I can judge from his manner if he thinks me mad. October 7. I have the solution of the problem. It came to me last night only as by revelation. How simple. How terribly simple. There are sounds that we cannot hear. At either end of the scale are notes that stir no chord of that imperfect instrument, the human ear. They are too high or too grave. I have observed a flock of blackbirds occupying an entire treetop, tops of several trees and all in full song. Suddenly in a moment at absolutely the same instant all spring into the flyaway. How? They could not all see one another, whole treetops intervened. At no point could a leader have been visible to all. There must have been a signal of warning or command. High and shrill above the den, but by me unhurt. I have observed too the same simultaneous flight, when all were still among not only blackbirds but other birds, quail, for example, widely separated by bushes, even opposite sides of a hill. It is known to seaman that a school of whales basking or sporting on the surface of the ocean miles apart with the convexity of the earth between them will sometimes die at the same instant, all gone out of sight in a moment. The signal has been sounded too grave for the ear of the sailor at the mast head or his comrades on the deck, who nevertheless feel its vibrations in the ship as the stones of a cathedral are stirred by the base of the organ. As with sounds, so with colors. At each end of the solar spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known as actinic rays. They represent colors, integral colors in the composition of light, which we are unable to discern. The human eye is an imperfect instrument. Its range is but a few octaves of the real chromatic scale. There are colors that we cannot see and God help me the damned thing is of such a color. End of The Damned Thing by Ambrose Beers read by Mary Schneider in Havana, Florida. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org. Earth men bearing gifts by Frederick Brown. Dar Rye sat alone in his room meditating. From outside the door he caught a thought wave equivalent to a knock and glancing at the door he willed it to slide open. It opened. Enter my friend, he said. He could have projected the idea telepathically, but with only one person's present speech was more polite. Ejan Ki entered. You are up late tonight, my leader he said. Yes, Ki, within an hour the earth rocket is due to land and I wish to see it. I know it will land a thousand miles away if their calculations are correct beyond the horizon. But if it lands even twice that far the atomic explosion should be visible and I have waited long for first contact that even though no earth men will be on this rocket it will still be first contact for them. Of course our telepath teams have been reading their thoughts for many centuries but this will be the first physical contact between Mars and earth. Ki made himself comfortable on one of the low chairs. True, he said. I have not followed recent reports too closely though. Why are they using an atomic warhead? I know they suppose our planet is uninhabited but still. They will watch the flash through their lunar telescopes and get what do they call it a spectroscopic analysis. That will tell them more than they know now or think they know much of it is erroneous about the atmosphere of our planet and the composition of its surface. It is call it a sighting shot Ki. They'll be here in person within a few oppositions and then Mars was holding out waiting for earth to come. What was left of Mars that is this one small city of about 900 beings. The civilization of Mars was older than that of earth but it was a dying one. This was what remained of it one city 900 people. They were waiting for earth to make contact for a selfish reason and for an unselfish one. Martian civilization had developed in a quite different direction from that of earth. It had developed no important physical sciences, no technology. But it had developed social sciences to the point where there had not been a single crime, let alone a war on Mars for 50,000 years. And it had developed fully the parapsychological sciences of the mind which earth was just beginning to discover. Mars could teach earth much how to avoid crime and war to begin with. Those simple things lay telepathy, telekinesis, empathy, earth would, Mars hoped teach them something even more valuable to Mars. How, by science and technology which it was too late for Mars to develop now, even if they had the type of minds which would enable them to develop these things, to restore and create a dying planet so that an otherwise dying race might live and multiply again. Each planet would gain greatly and neither would lose. And tonight was the night when earth would make its first sighting shot. Its next shot, a rocket containing earthmen, or at least an earthman would be at the next opposition, two earth years or roughly four Martian years hence. The Martians knew this because their paths were able to catch at least some of the thoughts of the earthmen, enough to know their plans. Unfortunately at that distance the connection was one way. Mars could not ask earth to hurry its program or tell earth scientists the facts about Mars' composition and atmosphere which would have made this preliminary shot unnecessary. Tonight Rai, the leader or as nearly as that Martian word and Ki, his administrative assistant and closest friend sat and meditated together until the time was near. Then they drank a toast to the future, a beverage based on menthol which had the same effect on Martians as alcohol on earthmen and climbed to the roof of the building in which they had been sitting. They watched toward the north where the rocket should land, the stars shown brilliantly and thinkingly through the atmosphere. An observatory number one on earth's moon, Raj Everett, his eye at the eyepiece of the spotterscope, said triumphantly, darsher blue willie, and now as soon as the films are developed we'll know the score on that old planet Mars. He straightened up, there'd be no more to see now, and he and willie Sanger shook hands solemnly it was an historical event. But didn't kill anybody, any Martians that is. Raj did it hit dead center of Circus Major? Near as matters, I'd say it was maybe a thousand miles off to the south, and that stand close on a 50 million mile shot. Willie, do you think there are any Martians? Willie thought a second and then said no. He was right. End of Earthmen bearing gifts by Frederick Brown. Read by Mary S. in Heaven.