 Section 15 of 20 Short Science Fiction Stories by Various Authors. This Libre Box recording is in the public domain. MAJOR FOR A LONER by Jim Harmon. You can measure everything these days—heat, light, gravity, reflexes, force fields, star drives—and now I know there is even a major for a loner. So, General, I came to tell you I found the loneliest man in the world for Space Force. How am I supposed to rate his loneliness for you? In megasaurals are killer fears. I suspect I know quite a library on the subject, but you know more about stripes and bars. Don't try to stop me this time, General. Now that you mention it, I'm not drunk. I had to have something to back me up, so I stopped off at the dispensary and stole a needle. I want you to get off my back with that kind of talk. I've got enough there, and it bends me over like I had bad kidneys. It isn't any of King Kong's little brothers. They overrate the stuff. It isn't the way you've been writing me, either. Never mind what I'm carrying. Whatever it is—and believe me, it is—I have to get rid of it. Let me tell it for God's sake. Then for security's sake, I thought you would let me tell it, General. Been coming in here and giving you pieces of it for months now, but now I want to let you be drenched in the whole thing. You're going to take it all. There were the two of them, the two lonely men, and I found them for you. You remember the way I found them for you. The intercom on my desk made an electronic noise at me, and the words I'd been arranging in my mind for the morning letters splattered into alphabet soup, like a printer dropping a prepared slug of type. I made the proper motion to still the sound. Yes, I grunted. My secretary cleared her throat on my time. Dr. Thorn, she said, there's a Mr. Madison here to see you. He lays claim to be from the Star Project. He could come in and file his claim, I told the girl. I rummaged in the wastebasket and uncrumpled the morning's facsimile newspaper. It was full of material about the Star Project. We were building man's first interstellar spaceship. A surprising number of people considered it important. Flipping from the rear to page one, while Bill Starr in the comics, who had been blasting all the way to 41st subspace universe for decades, was harking back to the good old days of man's first star flight, which he had made himself through the magic of time travel. The editor was calling the man to make the jaunt the Lindbergh of Space, and the staff photographer displayed a still of Space Force pilot in pressure suit up front with his face blotted out by an airbrushed interrogation mark. Who was going to be the Lindbergh of Space? We had used up the Columbus of Space, the Magellan of Space, the Van Rek of Space. Now it was time for the lone eagle, one man who had weighed out the light years to Alpha Centauri. I remembered the first Lindbergh. I rode a bus fifty miles to see him at an Air Force Day celebration when I was a dewey-eared kid. It's funny how kids still worship heroes who did everything before they were even born. Uncle Max had told me about standing outside the hospital with a bunch of boys his own age. Evening Babe Ruth died of cancer. Lindbergh seemed like an old man to me when I finally saw him, but still active. Nobody had forgotten him. When his speech was over I cheered him with the rest just as if I knew what he had been talking about. But I probably knew more about what he meant then as a boy than I did feeling the reality of the newspaper in my hands. Known up I could only smile at myself for wanting to go to the stars myself. Madison wrapped on my office door and breezed in efficiently. I've always thought Madison was a rather irritating man, likeable but irritating. He's too good looking in an assuming masculine way to dress so neatly. It makes him look like a mannequin. The polite way of his using small words slowly and distinctly proves that he loves his fellow man, even if his fellow always does have less brains or authority than Madison himself. That belief would be forgivable in him if it wasn't so often true. Madison folded himself into the canary yellow client's chair at my direction, and took a leather-bound pocket secretary from inside his almost too snug jacket. Dr. Thorn, he said expansively, we need you to help us locate an atavism. I flicked a professional smile, no. Three at him lightly. I'm a historical psychologist, I told him. That sounds in my line. Which of your ancestors are you interested in having me analyze? I used the word atavism to mean a reversion to the primitive. I made a pencil mark on my desk pad. I could make notes as well as he could read them. Yes, I see, I murmured. We don't use the term that way. Perhaps you don't understand my work. It's been an honest way to make a living for a few generations, but it's so specialized it might sound foolish to someone outside the psychological industry. I psychoanalyze historical figures for history books, of course, and scholars, interested descendants, what all, and that's all I do. What you have done, Madison admitted, but your government is certain you can do this new work for them. In fact, that you are one of the few men prepared to locate this esoteric, that is, this odd aberration since I understand you often have to deal with it in analyzing the past. Doctor, we want you to find us a lonely man. I laid my chrome yellow pencil down carefully beside the cream-colored pad. History is full of loneliness. Most of the so-called great men were rather neurotic, but I thought, Madison, that introspection was pretty much a thing of the, well, past. The government representative inhaled deeply and steepled his manicured fingers. Our system of childhood psychoconditioning succeeds in bearing loneliness in the subconscious so completely that even the records can't reveal if it was ever present. I cleared my throat in order to stall, to think. I'm not acquainted with contemporary psychology, Madison. This comes as news to me. You mean people aren't really well adjusted to-day, that they have just been conditioned to act as if they were? He nodded. Yes, that's it. It's ironic. Now we need a lonely man and we can't find him. To pilot the interstellar spaceship? For the evening star, yes, Madison agreed. I picked up my pencil and held it between my two index fingers. I couldn't think of a damn thing to say. The whole problem, Madison was saying, goes back to the early days of space travel. Men were confined in a small area facing infinite space for majorless periods in free fall. Men cracked, and ships, they cracked up. But as space travel advanced, ships got larger, carried more people, more ties and reminders of human civilization. Pilots became more normal. I made myself look up at the earnest young man. But now, I said, now you want me to find you an abnormal pilot who is used to being alone, who can stand it, maybe even like it? Right. I constructed a genuine smile for him for the first time. Madison, do you really think I can find your man when evidently all the government agencies have failed? The government representative pocketed his notebook deftly, then spread his hands clumsily for an instant. At least, doctor, he said, you may know it if you do find him. It was a lonely job to find a lonely man, General, and maybe it was a crooked job to walk a crooked mile to find a crooked man. I had to do it alone. No one else had enough experience in primitive psychology to recognize the phenomenon of loneliness, even as Madison had said. The working condition suited me. I had to think by myself, but I had a comfortable staff to carry out my ideas. I liked my new office and the executive apartment the government supplied me. I had authority and respect and I had security. The government assured me they would find further use for my services after I found them their man. I knew this was to keep me from dragging my tracks, but nevertheless I got right down to work. I found Gordon Maverick exactly five weeks from the day Madison first visited me in my old office. Of course, I planned the whole thing, Dr. Thorn, Gordon said crisply. I knew what he meant, although I hadn't guessed it before. He could tell it to me himself, I decided. Doesn't seem too much to brag about, I said. Anybody who can make up a grocery list should be able to figure out how to isolate himself on Seal Island. He sat forward, a lean Viking with a hot Latin glance, very confident of himself. I reckoned on you locating me, on you hustling me back to pilot the evening star. That's why I hold in here. I can't accept your story, I lied cheerfully. Nobody is going to maroon himself on an island for three years because of a wild possibility like that. Maverick smiled and his sureness swelled out until it almost jabbed me in the stomach. I took a broad gamble, he said, but it hit the wire, didn't it? I didn't reply, but he had his answer. I scanned the report Madison had given me from Intelligence concerning the man's unorthodox behavior. Maverick had quit his post-graduate studies and passed by the secure job that had been waiting for him 18 months in a genial government office to barricade himself in an old shelter on Seal Island. It was hard to know what to make of it. He had brought impressive stores of food with him, books, sound and vision tapes, but not telephone or television. For the next three years he had had no contact with humanity at all. And he said he had planned it all. Sure, he drawled. I knew the government was looking for somebody to steer the interstellar ship that's been gossip for decades. That job, he said distinctly, is one I would give a lot to settle into. I looked at him across my unlittered, brand-new desk and accepted his irritating, blonde masculinity, disliked him, admired him, and continued to examine him to decide on my final evaluation. You've given three years already, I said, examining the sheets of the report with which I was thoroughly familiar. He twitched. He didn't like that, not spending three years. It was spend-thrift, even if a good-bye. He was planning on winding up somewhere important, and to do it he had to invest his years properly. You're trying to make me believe you deliberately extra-plated the government's need for a man who could stand being alone for long periods, and then tried to phony up references for the work by stain on that island? I don't like that word phony, Maverick growled. No? You name your word for it. Maverick unhinged to his full height. It was proof, he said, a test. A man can't test himself. A lot you know, the big blonde snorted. I know, I told him dryly. A man who isn't a hopeless, manic depressive can't consciously create a test for himself that he knows he will fail. You proved you could stay alone on an island, Buster. You didn't prove you could stay alone in a spaceship out in the middle of infinity for three years. Why didn't you rent a conventional rocket and try looking at some of our local space? It all looks much the same. Maverick sat down. I don't know why I didn't do that, he whispered. Probably for the first time since he had got clever enough to beat up his big brother, Maverick was doubting himself, just a little for just a time. I don't know whether it was good or bad for him. Contemporary psychology isn't my line, but I knew I couldn't trust a cocky kid. But I had to find out if he could still hit the target uncocked. Johnson was our second lonely man, remember, General? He was stubborn. I questioned him for half an hour the first day, two hours the second, and on the third I turned him over to Madison. Then as I was having my lunch I suddenly thought of something and made steps back to my office. I got there just in time to grab Madison's bony wrist. The thing in his fist was silver and sharp, a hypodermic needle. Madison's forearm was tanned below the torn pastel sleeve. Two sad-faced young men were holding him politely by the shoulders in a canvas chair. Johnson met my glance expressionlessly. I tugged on Madison's arm sharply. What's in that damn sticker? Polypentheum, Madison's face was as blank as Johnson's. Only his body seemed at once tired and taut. What's it for, I rasped. For the psychologist, he said sharply, I met his eyes and held on, but it was impossible to stare him down. I don't know about physical methods, I told you. I've been dealing with people in books, films, tapes all my life, not living men up until now. Can't you absorb that? Apparently I have more experience with these things than you then, Doctor. Shall I proceed? You shall not, I cried omniscibly. I know enough to understand we can't get the results the government wants by drugs. You going to put that away? Madison nodded once. All right, he said. I unshackled my fingers and he put the shiny needle away in his case, in his suitcoat pocket. I understand, Thorn, he said, that the general won't like this. I turned around and looked at him. Did he order you to drug Johnson? The government agent shook his head. I didn't think so. I was beginning to understand government operations. He only wanted it done. Get out. Madison and his assistants marched out in orthodox Euclidean triangle formation. The doors hissed shut. You know what? The words jerked out from Johnson. I think the bunch of you are crazy, crazy. I decided to treat him like a client. Maybe that was the way contemporary psychologists mantled their men. I sat on the edge of the desk, jauntly, confidently, and tried to let the domino mask up a father image. You may as well get a straight stand. The government needs you and is pointless for you to say that need is unconstitutional or anything. Bring it up and it won't be long. When survival is outside the rules, the rules change. The eyes of Johnson were strikingly like Mavericks, darkened and settled. Only this boy, younger, smaller than the Nordic, had an appropriate skin tone, stained by the tropical sun somewhere in his ancestral past. He dropped his gaze, expelled his breath mindily, and pounded one angular knee with a half-closed fist. I'm not complaining about conscription without representation, doctor, but I can't make any sense out of these full questions you keep firing at me. What emblazes are you trying to get at? What kind of reason are you after for my stain by myself? I just do it because I like it that way. With a galvanic jolt, I realized he was telling the painfully simple truth. I groaned at the realization. Maverick had convinced all of us that in our well-adjusted or at any rate well-conditioned world, somebody had to have some purposeful reason in loneliness, solitude. So on that one instance our thinking had already been patterned, discarding all the other evidence of generations that the lonely man was only a personality type, like Johnson. I felt I had achieved at least the quantum state of a fool. Johnson silently studied the half-cupped hands laying in his lap. The hunting lodge in the Andes seemed as good a place as any to live after mother and father were killed. You might think it was lonesome at night in the mountains, but it isn't at all. You aren't alone when you can watch the burning world shadow the bow of God. I cleared my throat. The poor kid sounded like he would begin spouting something akin to poetry next. So I believe you, I told him. That doesn't finish it. We have to convince them. I don't like this, but the simplest way would be to volunteer for their hibbiter injection. I found out Madison and his crowd don't believe men awake, only assorted dopes. Johnson deflated his area of the room with his breath in take. OK, he said at last, I guess so. When Johnson gave us what we needed to clear the problem, it didn't take me long to finish processing the rest of the handful of possible loners we had located. Unlike Johnson, all the rest had reasons for their self-imposed loneliness. Like Maverick, none of their reasons were associated with the interstellar flight. They instead involved literary research, swindles, isolated paranoid insanity, and other things in which the government had no interest. Suddenly I found my job was done and that we had located only two of them. Madison read my final report braced on the edge of my desk. His hand come rattledly on my shoulder. Good job, Doc, he vouched, replacing the papers on my blotter with a final rustle. Now I've got good news for you. The government wants you to test these boys for us now that you've found them for us. I closed my job. That's completely out of line. My line. I know you need a contemporary man for that job. Madison punched me on the bicep. Fast enough to hurt. Doc, after this project you know more about contempt stuff than any professor who got his degree studying the textbooks you wrote. It was impossible to dislike Madison, except for practiced periods. That was probably one reason he had his job. All right, I growled. Get your dirty pants off my clean desk and I'll get out the bottle. We'll celebrate, huh? But you know how I felt, General. You remember how I tried to get out of it. I felt like I had led in the lambs and now I had to help cheer them. As a part-time historian I can tell you there's a word for that. Judas Goat. Give or take a word. It isn't the real thing, Doc. Madison spelled out for me, wearing a lemon twist of a smile. I looked at the twin banks of gauge-facing and circuit-housings in which center TV screens were picturing either Maverick or Johnson. The red and sea-green lights chased each other around the control boards, dyed, were born again. On the screens the three color negatives mixed to purple, shifted through a series of wrong combinations and settled into normal as the stereo oscillation echoed, convexed insanely, and deepened to hold. Video reception is lousy from five hundred thousand miles out. I was too eye-heavy to be surprised. Don't tell me this is the strange flight of Richard Clayton all over again. Madison clapped me on the shoulder and breath minted me, eyes on twittering round faces. Who wrote that, Poe? No, no, mock up to fake-space conditions for them but calculate the cost of the real interstellar ship. We couldn't trust either of them with it yet. You didn't really think we could afford two ships. Why do you think we haven't told one man about his opposite in the second ship? No safety margin allowable in our appropriation, Doc, or so they tell me. There's enough fuel and food to take Johnson and Maverick a long way, but not the distance. He shook his lean head almost wistfully. Dammit, Madison, what do you mean? I've been beating my lobes out for weeks for nothing. I tested them, I checked them out. Either was capable of making the flight successfully, for their own different reasons. Madison took his hand off my shoulder and made a fist of it. I'm not questioning your decision. Will you ram that through your obscene skull, Thorn? Who is, I whispered. Not me, not I, not I. The general, I announced. Just not me. Was he actually trembling? But it wasn't concern about what I thought of him. Somebody closer, maybe. These were building up for him. He jammed his nose almost up against the glass-dial surfaces, swaying gently in his cups, staring slightly cross-eyed at the eriled numbers. You'll continue your tests from here, Madison said. Tell them they're going to die. My face was at once cool and damp. That's a tough examination, I gasped. A lie, Madison told me. The boys at Psycho Center worked out the problems. You told me you wanted me, I screamed at him furiously. Control your passionate, dandy voice. You worked well with those, too. The experts could work through you better. Write through me, like a razor blade through margarine, I said. It's not fair. No, it's science. Psychology is a science, not an art. Don't damn me, I'm not the inventor, Madison continued. I'm one of them, I murmured. But I just as rather you didn't blame me, either. Madison punched the button for me with a pulsed manicured thumb. Guess what, Maverick, I said viciously, you're going to die. What the blazes are you babbling about? The blonde doll snapped at me from the box of the video screen. I scanned the type, stiff-backed idiot-promptors Madison shoved into my fist. It's true, you can't get out alive. What's happened is face perfectly blank. Nothing out of the ordinary, I said. They have just informed me it was planned this way. It wasn't possible to build a round-trip ticket yet. You need a lot of fuel to make coarse adjustments for the curvature of space, so forth. The radio will send back your reports on the Alpha Centurion planets. Undoubtedly, by all rules of probability, they won't support life without a mass of equipment. They suckered me, too, Maverick. I swear. You turning back? No, he said almost immediately. I thought you were after the rewards, trained to get them. You won't be able to enjoy them posthumously. The video blanked, he had turned off his camera. I guess I thought so, Maverick's voice said. But I kind of like it out here, alone. I like people, but back there there's no one to touch. They smother you, but you can't reach them. I can't do anything better back there than I can do here. Madison got a bottle, and he and I got sloppily drunk, leaning on each other, singing innocently obscene songs of our youth. The technicians, good government men, were openly disgusted with us. Two hours after we had contacted Maverick, I left Madison snoring on the desk and lurched to the control board, bunching my soil shirt at the throat with my hand. I called Johnson. Going to die, Johnson, tricked you. Can't get back, Johnson, not ever. No fuel. Ha! You can't ever go home again, Johnson. Like that you damned runny nose little poet. His dark face worked weakly. Ah! He sure as thunderation didn't like it. He asked for the bloody details and I fed them to him. Turning back, aren't you? I jeered. I just wanted a place and time for thinking, he said, across the solar system. But I'll die, and I don't know if you can dream in death. Just what I thought, I snared. I'm not turning back, he said slowly. People need me. I've got a job to do, haven't I? Haven't I? No! I screamed at him. You're just using that as an excuse to kill yourself. Don't try to tell me you're not weak. Can't you try to make me think you're strong? Hear me, Johnson? Hear me? But he couldn't hear me. One of the government technicians had broken the contact before that last spurt. This is good, Madison said, punning fuzzily at his pocket. Really good. I studied the three or four watch dials wobbling up and down my elongated wrist. They seemed to say it was almost sunrise. I leered at Madison. Yeah, yeah, what is it? Huh? Huh? He shoved a crumpled card into my lax fingers. Now, he said, now tell them. Yeah, yeah. Tell them the whole thing is useless. My stomach wretched dryly, grinding the sober pills to dust between its ulcerating walls. Maverick, I said, to the empty videotube. They made a mistake. They underestimated the curvature. You can't reach Alpha Centauri. You can't correct enough. Free space is all you'll hit, ever. You may as well come home. The voice came out of nowhere, from nothing. I don't want to come back. I like it here. This is what I've always been trying to get, and I never knew it. Madison grabbed my arm with pronged fingers. Shut up, Doc. That's just the way the government wants him to be. Johnson, I said, to the creased face on the screen. They made a mistake. They underestimated curvature. You can't reach Alpha Centauri. You can't correct enough. Free space is all you'll hit, ever. You may as well come back. Johnson sighed, a whisper of breath across the miles. I'll keep going. No one has ever been so far out before. I can report valuable things. I stood there. The textbooks reported it takes muscular effort to frown, more so than to smile. But my face seemed to flow into the lines of pain so hard it ached, without any effort of my will, and I knew it would hurt to smile. They passed the final test, Madison said at my side, tell them it was a test. I would do it for him. I didn't need to do it for myself. I motioned the technician to open both channels. The ship you are in, I said, with no need to tell them of each other, is not the real evening star. It will not take you to the stars. This has only been a test to credit your fitness to pilot the real interstellar craft of the Star Project. You must return to the lunar satellite. This is a direct order. The two screens remained blank. Only the windless silence of space echoed over Johnson's channel. The tapes later proved that I actually did hear a whispered laugh from Maverick. I faced Madison. They won't come back. They could have passed any test except the fact that what we put them through was only a test. For their own reasons they will keep going, as far as they can. Madison took out his notebook and seemed to look for vital information, except that he never cracked the cover. Of course, we can't get them back if they won't come, he said. If cybernetic remolds functioned operationally at this distance, we wouldn't have to send men at all. He replaced the pocket secretary and looked at me edgewise, speculatively. I touched his arm. Let's find another bottle, I said. He stepped back. You found them. You tested them. You killed them. Then the government man walked away and left me standing with a murderer. You see it now, don't you, General? What I'm carrying around on my back is guilt. Not a guilt complex, not guilt fixation, just plain old Abel Cain guilt. In this nice, well-ordered age I'm a killer and everybody knows it. You see our mistake, General. We sent men with variable amounts of loneliness. These amounts could alter, but now we have a golden opportunity. The evening star is waiting and I have found for you a man with the true measure of loneliness. It is impossible for this man to become any more or any less lonely. It isn't the ultimate possible loneliness. Understand that, General? It's just that by himself or with others, he is always in a crowd of three, no more, no less. The interstellar ship is waiting. So tell me, General, have you ever seen a lonelier man than me, your humble servitor, Dr. Thorn? No, I mean it, have you? End of Section 15. Section 16 of 20 Short Science Fiction Stories by Various Authors. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Walls of Acid by Henry Hasse. Five millenniums have passed since the loathsome termins were eliminated from the world of Dyskra. But what of the other planets? Brain all stirred, throbbed sluggishly once, then like quiescent as his mental self surged up from the deeps of non-entity, and gradually came to know that someone had entered the room, his room, far beneath the city. Now he could feel the vibracurrence through the liquids of the huge tanks where he had lain somnolent for untold eons. It was pleasant, caressing. For a moment he floated there, enjoined to the utmost this strange sensation as the renewed thought life force set his every convolution to pulsing. To be once more aware, oh gloriously aware. The thought came fierce and vibrant. Once more they have awakened me, but how long has it been? Uncuriously, and what can they want this time? The huge brain was alert now, with a supernal sense of keening. Tendentally he set out a thought potential that encompassed the room. They're afraid, he sensed. To have entered here, and they are afraid of me, I shall remedy that. Brain all lured his thought potential to one-eighth of the magnitude, and felt his mind contact theirs. Reach my children, he said kindly. You have nothing to fear from me. I take it you are the imperial messenger sent by her supreme magnificence, the Empress Alizar. He felt the fright slip from their minds, but they were startled. The Empress Udala reigns now, fourth in the royal line, came the thought. Empress Alizar died long ago. I am truly grieved, brain all flashed to them. Alizar may she rest in peace, did not neglect me. How well I remember her interest in the stories I could tell. Stories of the disc of old when we sent men out to glorious adventures on other planets. I, five millenniums ago, it was that we achieved space travel. In those days, brain all seized his reminiscences, aware that these two were trying to get their thoughts through to him. That is why we have come. The Empress Udala, too, wishes a story. The story of the first space flight from Dyskra, and the events that brought it about, and of how you, I, of how I came to be as you see me now. I shall be delighted, my children, to tell it again. But first prepare the trance to Lector so that it may be recorded faithfully. Brain all directed them to a machine on the far side of the room, and instructed them as to its operation. Soon the hundreds of tiny coils were humming, and a maze of tubes fed out of the machine, on which would be recorded brain all's every thought. For the moment he paused, gently swaying, pulsing, a huge independent brain suspended in the pale green liquid. Then he began his story. Your Supreme Beneficence When the imperial messengers came to me, bringing the communication with which you deigned to address my decrepit solitude, it was like a glorious ray of light come to illumine the deepening darkness of my declining years. It is with trepidation that I set about to fulfill your exalted command. Five millenniums, I, even more, have passed, since those who were part of that segment of history into which you inquire, have become but drifting dust. Only within the feeble memory of your humblest servant is there any record of it. Five millenniums, I, that was truly the golden period of our beloved discra. Not that our period under your serene effulgence is not golden indeed. But in that day all discra was under the glorious rule of Paladin. His city on the scarlet shores of our central sea was the wonder of us all. I, we had a sea then, where there is now but desert. The intelligent planets were three. Our own discra, of course. Fourth from the sun. And the nearest the sun, Mirla, that fiery globe, where life apes the quality of our own salamander existing by necessity near the flames. And second from the sun, Vanilla, the cloud-capped world, where life exalts the virtues of the fish. Of the third planet, Terra, we then knew little. Our cities faced the sun in those days, towering in polychromatic splendor. Height was no obstacle then, for we had wings, wings! Think of it, O beneficence! No need had we of clumsy metal vessels. But all that has changed. Now no whore of wings disturbs the air, and our formitech-tural splendors rise within. The history of this change is what your supreme exaltation would know. This then is the record. With the rule of Paladin was born the age of science, not so much due to the intellects of that day, as through the driving urge of ultimate necessity. For Paladin had a brother, Thid. He was, unfortunately, a mutant. Whereas our features were delicate and quite regular, Thiz were gross and stamped with power. His royal head was too large and cumbersome, and instead of our slender waist he was almost asymmetrical in shape. In short, no member of our fairer sex, royal sex could look upon him with thought but horror. And it was because of this that he was, dietetically, conditioned for the realm of science. It was a mistake. As the years passed, the loneliness of his virtual exile tended to derange Thid's prodigious mind. I, prodigious, and dangerous in his manic depressive state. Then one day Paladin called an emergency meeting of the inner council. I, brain-all, was a member of that council. It has come to my attention, Paladin said, that Thid has been carrying on certain dangerous experiments. Experiments of that sort could well be inimical to us, to our very existence. We well knew to what Paladin referred. But Thid was his brother, one of the imperial ones. No one dared speak. Why was I not made aware of it sooner, Paladin demanded sternly. You, brain-all, you knew of it? Yes, your majesty, I was frightened. I beg to explain. I have tried to dissuade him. Paladin's visage became less stern, as though we understood our reluctance in this matter. True, he said, Thid is my brother. He must be mad. And I tell you now, if he has gone as far in this experiment as I suspect, I shall not hesitate to apply the only remedy dictated by efficiency, death, have him brought to me at once. But Thid was nowhere to be found. He had learned of Paladin's anger, and had fled into the discren desert where the abhorred termines dwelt in myriads despite all our effort to eradicate them. These termines were soft-bodied, subterranean creatures with an obstinate life-force, and we had long realized that they might one day be a menace to us. So into the desert our Thid fled, spurred by the knowledge that his life was forfeit. For a time he was naturally thought dead. Who could survive unprotected the extremes of heat and cold? And if by a miracle he triumphed over the elements, how to survive the appalling anemity of the termines, whose rudimentary brains conceived no mercy? Nevertheless, startling bits of rumor began to drift into our city, rumors that Thid had been seen, leading hordes of gigantic termines across the desert wastes. We laughed, of course, for caravaners are ever the prey of sun mirages, and legends are dear to their souls. A legend was begun concerning Thid. Arriving caravans vied with each other in fantastic reports. Some had seen him with immense hordes of the repulsive termines. Still others had discovered subterranean labyrinths being built by the termines under his command, and had barely escaped with their lives. And still we laughed, blessed by the constant climate on the shores of our sea, and the beneficent rule of our exalted paladin. And then we ceased to laugh. Paladin called together his council of scientists. Can it be, Paladin asked, two whole caravans have vanished on the way to Eskia, beyond the mountains. And he told us more, reports that had arrived from other cities. Survivors had arrived, with the light of madness in their eyes, babbling some nameless fear. Others had died from ghastly wounds, great burns that refused to heal, but spread a kind of disease through the tissues. I, Brainal, examined some of these wounds and reported to Paladin. Only a perverted scientific intellect such as Thids could have evolved weapons to inflict such wounds. If he has organized the termines, suggested another council member, despite their pygmy's size, they will become a menace that cannot be ignored. We have delayed too long, thundered Paladin. Find Thid, I command it. An army, the greatest ever assembled on Diskra, was sent forth to hunt out Thid and exterminate the termines, whom he had managed to organize by heaven only knew what magic. The planet must be cleansed of that leprous form of life, else there would be no peace. But we did not know what depths of horror we were to plumb. Even now, O illustrious emperous, reason reels and taughters at the remembrance, I led one fine division of the imperial guards, armored warriors of the first magnitude. With them I felt able to conquer planets, not to speak of the trivial-sized termines. For many days we trekked, penetrating ever deeper at Red Desert's heart. But of the abhorred termines we caught no sight. There was only the molten downpour of sun by day, and the desiccating numbness of cold at night. But on the sixth day, as we encamped near an underground pool located by our experts, we encountered the termines. The blue wings of dusk were beating down when suddenly, from every rampart of sand dune, every crumbling hillock, out of the variables of the planet itself, they came like an avalanche. They carried slender metal tubes that spewed polychromatic death at us. Whenever the deadly discharge touched, would appear horrible burns that ate away the tissues. But that isn't what paralyzed us. We had known these vermin to be short of twelve inches tall, but now they reared monstrously four feet into the air. Their black-haired limbs lashed in an ecstasy of murder lust, their beady eyes gleamed with fiendish purpose. And they had intelligent leaders. The sight of these monsters grown to such awful size struck terror into the hearts of our legion. Nevertheless we, who are seven feet tall, towered above them as we fought with the strength and ferocity of desperation. Every weapon at our command was brought into play, and they were blasted and ensured by the myriads. Still they came on, blindly, unswervingly, as if driven by a single prodigious force. How these life-forms had grown to such bestial proportions was not known until later. We captured a few and delicately probed them, while still alive, of course, dissecting their anatomy until we found that some genius had managed to control their growth through glandular development. That genius could have only been our Thid. Soon the desert was covered by a sea of their dead, and ours. The stench was unbearable, for the termans exude an odor of their own, particularly in death, which is sheer nausea. But lest I offend your refined sensibilities, O Serene Empress, perhaps it were best that I draw a veil of darkness over that shambles of horror. At last it seemed as if only utter annihilation of both sides would be the outcome. Already the battle had lasted for three obeisances of our discura to its parent son. And then wisely our glorious paladin flashed to us the command to retreat. Already Esca and Crudge have fallen. With all the populace wiped out, said the message, the termans are converging upon our capital city. Return here with all haste. So it was that we retreated. Those who remained of us, to the capital, and prepared to make a formidable stand. The other armies of our empire had done likewise. Who would have thought that this despised, destructive form of life could ever become such a menace? We remembered one of Thid's treatises on the Noxious Pests, in which he had maintained that they had rudimentary intelligence and an interesting, if subprimitive, form of social life. How we had laughed at the thought of imputing a social order to these subterranean aphids. But we weren't laughing now. A race of malignant monsters had sprung up in the twenty years that Thid had vanished into the desert. Of Thid nothing more was seen. But we knew he must still exist somewhere among the termans. Under that baleful, inventive genius their weapons seemed to multiply, and we were forced to tax our scientists to the utmost in order to have weapons of defense. And yes, obeneficence, defense. For now, though we had managed to stem their attack on our capital, they were steadily encroaching on our territory. Underground lakes and streams were damned by these fiends. Vast areas of vegetation were denuded. Precious mines of rare metals were converted by them, under Thid's direction, into sources for their ceaseless attacks. Aye, we died a thousand deaths multiplied a thousand times. Our ethromagnum, by which our telepathic vibrations were amplified for planetary broadcast, became a monotonous recorder of tragedy as city after city fell to the hordes. For untold years this savage struggle went on. How well we realized that this was a war for sole dominance of the planet. Till at last, only our proud capital by the shores of the Scarlet Sea, and its immense valley was left to us. We must evolve the principles of interspatial travel, Paladin told us sadly. The day may come when we shall need it. Hitherto our rare flights to Vanilla and Merla had been primitive affairs in which the dangerous rock a principle was employed, with the terrific effects of acceleration crushing the crews and making landing an even greater hazard than the flight itself. But now, through inconceivable efforts of thought, aye, through sheer desperation, our scientists evolved a system of atomic integration in which free orbital electrons were utilized to create atomic quantities beyond our known table, drawing upon the energy that could be harnessed in the process. It is difficult to describe otherwise than through pure mathematics, though if your serene effulgence wishes, I will be happy to describe it to you at a later date. It will take some little effort to recall the exact formulae. We must send an expedition to Terra, Paladin told us. From what we have been able to gather astronomically, that planet seems habitable. Merla, we know, is out of the question. It is a holocaust of fire. To dwell on the semi-quatic world of Venea, a new environmental adaptation would be necessary. Fantastic, wasn't it, O exalted empress, that we, the rightful lords of Disgra, should be compelled to abandon our beloved homes by a horde of vermin. Indeed it was a tragic day when the first scientific expedition was assembled. And I, brain-all, was honoured beyond my humbled desserts by this supreme magnificence, Paladin. I was assigned as recorder on the expedition. Strapped and cushioned, until not an inch of my body was visible, I was launched into space together with my fellow scientists, within the spheroid confines of our atomic projectile. The agony of enduring, even for seconds, the required acceleration, will forever remain in my mind as the ultimate in torture. But at last the agony was gone, as we travelled at an unimaginable speed toward the planet which we hoped would be our future home. No, not hoped, because meanwhile on Disgra the experiments with acid gas were going on, in a sort of last-ditch defence which we hope might stem the endless hordes. It was on the eleventh day that we really saw Terra in its full prismatic glory. For days it had loomed larger in our three-dimensional electrocone, where we studied its continents and oceans to select the likeliest spot for a landing. Terra was intensely blue now, rivaling in colour the priceless zafferings of our own Disgra. I hope in the humblest depths of my mind, O Empress Udala, that you shall never know the unplumbed abyss of loneliness we all felt. At last we were forced to use the forward atomic beam to break our meteoric entrance to the heavy atmosphere. We had, of course, turned on the neutralizing frigid rectifiers that formed a network on the outer shell of our sphere. At last we were through. Dipping lower as we circled, we discerned majestic oceans, ice-clad peaks crowning the stark glory of the landscape, and then more inviting lands crisscrossed by rivers and studded with shining lakes. It was to us, O great beneficence, a paradise indeed. Entranced we all but forgot our landing which would require the utmost skill. Brunoge, our greatest navigator, was at the controls, padded and cushioned beyond the possibility of injury. The rest of us retired to the special crash-room. I remember we carried in our laboratory, in a special container of glass-iron, two embalmed specimens of the monstrous termins. These we were to show as a warning to whatever race existed here. One glance at the revolving monsters would have been enough for an intelligent race. Now that would not be necessary. Terrorists seemed uninhabited. We had seen no cities as we circumnavigated the globe. Had intelligent lifeforms failed as yet to materialize on this verdant world. We assumed that fact, in our joyous eagerness to feel the good earth beneath us. Prepare to land came the warning from Brunoge. To this day I cannot say what happened. No one knew. For the brief instant in which I remained conscious, I fell as if Tara had burst asunder under the terrific impact. Nor do I know when I finally struggled upward from oblivion. It may have been hours later, or days. Many of us were dead. I was a hopelessly crushed horror who still lived somehow, miraculously. For many days we remained within our sphere, disposing of the dead, tending to the injured, conserving our strength. I might have been destroyed, but with that frantic will to live which rises within us, I flashed a message to my companions. I still live, place me in the delocalizer. I will still be of use. This was done. The delocalizer reacted on the thalamic region of my brain, intercepted pain currents and allowed me to exist without physical feeling. Only my mind, lucid and intensely alive as never before, continued to record the adventure in this world. It was not until later that my brain was completely dissivered from my crushed body. My companions attested the atmosphere and found no gases that might have been inimical to our organisms. Thus they prepared for the greatest adventure of all, the emergence. The locks were opened. A draft of fragrant, if heavy atmosphere swept through our globe. It was pleasantly invigorating and bright outside, so I was told by their telepathic messages, for I alone remained within. Telepathically they kept me informed, as they wandered up the narrow valley. The soil was firm and amazingly fertile. Vegetation grew thickly everywhere. They reached the far end of the valley at last, and Rocky Ramparts towered over them. Then it was, how can I begin to describe to you, Exalted Empress, from their minds, coming back to me, was a sudden flood of excited, hysterical thought. It seemed filled with intense loathing and fear. Imagine me there, if you can, helpless and in a frenzy of despair, wondering what they could have encountered. Suddenly I extended my potential. I managed to intuit a fierce battle in which they were engaging. Some of my companions were dying. Hordes of fierce denizens from the rocks above were descending upon them. They had taken weapons along, true, but I could sense now by their frantic thought that these warlike creatures of terror numbered in the hundreds, with hordes of them swarming from beyond. For a long while the battle raged, then I sensed that my companions were retreating. Oh, I was glad, glad! At last I would not be left alone. But of the two score who had ventured out, only six returned. As they operated the lock of the ship and tumbled in, I could see, or rather perceive, a long part of the terrain behind them. Then it was that my mind sickened, for the creatures of this bright new world were, termins. Slightly different from those we had battled on Dyskra, true. These were even more monstrous, over six feet tall, with long shaggy mains and reddish fuzz covering their four limbs. Oh, beneficence! I swear it! Sickening blue eyes! They walked upright and carried crude weapons, shafts of wood fitted with sharp-edged stone. But until much later did my returning companions tell me what they had seen through their telescopic lenses. Just beyond this valley were vast plains where the termins seemed to number in the thousands, huge nomadic tribes of them. There were other creatures as well, some massive beyond all belief, others fierce and blood-lusting with huge, saber-like teeth. We could colonize Terra indeed, was the consensus of our thoughts, but at what a price! To be forever battling these creatures, particularly the termins, that abominable genus Homo! Can you imagine, O Empress Udala, how the irony of it bit us! It was almost more than we could bear to think that on Dyskra our own genus Formicae was in life for death struggle with these creatures, and we had found them swarming here as well. Paul! All of this lush, verdant world was defiled. There was nothing we remaining seven could do now. Sadly we set about repairing the ship, so that we could bear the awful tidings back to Dyskra. As we sped again toward our beloved planet, a somber Paul fell upon us. The interchange of thoughts were brief and tinged with a profound despair. This resolved into amazement, however. As we came ever closer to Dyskra. For now, through our Tlectoscope we could see that our planet had been subtly altered. A few symmetrical lines had appeared on the face of Dyskra, as if a cosmic hand had drawn straight lines across with mathematical precision. Not until we had safely landed did we learn the truth. O joyous news! The hordes of termins had been repulsed and were even then being slowly driven back. Our scientists had created in the laboratories a type of formic acid, somewhat similar to the vasectary secretion occurring within our own bodies, but infinitely more deadly. It had been used as a weapon against the termins. And more, huge walls of gaseous formic acid, held unwavering by electronic force fields, were being erected. It was these walls that caused the astronomical illusion we had seen from space. The rest, O illustrious empress, I believe you know well. How the termins never again were able to penetrate our walls. How we waged war on the detestable creatures for a number of years, until finally no trace of them remained on Dyskra. I, five millenniums have passed since the events I have related. Five millenniums since my crushed body was done away with, and I was preserved in my rectangle of glycerin. With a constantly renovated thought life fluid kept exquisitely warm. In this state I have accompanied many other expeditions to the planets, in my capacity of official recorder. But I am yours to command, Exalted Princess, should you wish to hear of them. But I have a warning. Slowly I have developed a new sense that needs not eyes, nor ears, nor sense of touch, no antennae even, such as I once possessed, unites and transcends all these. And I beg of you in my utmost abject humility, do not venture to remove even one formic acid wall, either from above or from its depth into the ground. Rather build more. Perceptively I shudder in the awful remembrance of their occasion, and the day may come when they will be needed once more. Thus I warn humbly, and remain your supreme fertility's most insignificant servant, Braenal. End of Section 16 Section 17 of 20 Short Science Fiction Stories by various authors. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. TEXAS WEEK by Albert Hernhutter Eating the little man who isn't there is rated a horrendous experience, but discovery that the man is there may be even worse. The slick black car sped along the wide straight street. It came to a smooth stop in front of a clean white house. A man got out of the car and walked briskly to the door. Reaching out with a pink hand, he pressed the doorbell with one well manicured finger. The door was answered by a housewife. She was wearing a white blouse, a green skirt, and a green apron trimmed with white. Her feet were tucked into orange slippers. Her blonde hair was done up in a neat bun. She was dressed as the government had ordered for that week. The man said, Are you Mrs. Christopher Nest? Is a trace of anxiety in her voice, as she answered, yes, and you are? My name is Maxwell Handstark. As you may already know, I am the official psychiatrist for this district. My appointment will last until the end of this year. Mrs. Nest invited him in. They stepped into a clean living-room. At one end was the television set. At the other end were several chairs. There was nothing between the set and the chairs except a large gray rug which stretched from wall to wall. They walked to the chairs and sat down. Now, just what is the matter with your husband, Mrs. Nest? Mrs. Nest reached into a large bowl and absently picked up a piece of stale popcorn. She daintly placed it in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully before she answered. I wish I knew. All he does all day long is sit in the backyard and stare at the grass. He insists that he is standing on top of a cliff. Handstark took out a small pad and a short ball-point pen. He wrote something down before he spoke again. Is he violent? Did he get angry when you told him there was no cliff? Mrs. Nest was silent for a moment. A second piece of popcorn joined the first. Handstark's pen was poised above the pad. No, he didn't get violent. Handstark wrote as he asked the next question. Just what was his reaction? He said I must be crazy. Were those his exact words? No. He said that I was. She thought for a moment. Loco. Yes, that was the word. Loco? Yes. He said it just like those cowboys on the television. Handstark looked puzzled. Perhaps you'd better tell me more about this. When did he first start acting this way? Mrs. Nest glanced up at the television set, then back at Handstark. It was right after Texas Week. You remember, they showed all of those old cowboy pictures. Handstark nodded. Well, he stayed up every night watching them. Some nights he didn't even go to sleep. Even after the set was off, he sat in one of the chairs, just staring at the screen. This morning, when I got up, he wasn't in the house. I looked all over, but I couldn't find him. I was just about ready to phone the police when I glanced out the window into the backyard, and I saw him. What was he doing? He was just sitting there in the middle of the yard, staring. I went out and tried to bring him into the house. He told me he had to watch for someone. When I asked him what he was talking about, he told me that I was crazy. That was when I phoned you, Mr. Handstark. A very wise move, Mrs. Nest. And would you show me where your husband is right now? He nodded her head and they both got up from the chairs. They walked through the dining-room and kitchen. On the back porch Handstark came to a halt. You'd better stay here, Mrs. Nest. He walked to the door and opened it. Mr. Handstark, Mrs. Nest called. Handstark turned and saw her standing next to the automatic washing machine. Yes? Please be careful. Handstark smiled. I shall be, Mrs. Nest. He walked out of the door and down three concrete steps. Looking a little to his right, he saw a man squatted on his heels. He walked up to the man. You are Mr. Christopher Nest? Man looked up and stared for a moment at Handstark. Yep, he answered. Then he turned and stared at the grass again. And may I ask you what you were doing? Nest answered without looking up. Arden the pass. Handstark scribbled something in his notebook. And why are you guarding the pass? Nest rose to his feet and stared down at Handstark. Just what are you asking all these questions for, stranger? Handstark saw Nest was bigger than he and decided to play along for a while. After all, strategy. I'm just interested in your welfare, Mr. Nest. Nest shrugged his shoulders. He reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out a sack of tobacco and some paper. Holding a piece of paper in one hand, he carefully poured a little tobacco into it. In one quick movement he rolled the paper and tobacco into a perfect cylinder. He put the sack of tobacco and paper back into his pocket and took out a wooden kitchen match. He scraped it to life on the sole of his shoe and applied the flame to the tip of the cigarette. He puffed it into life and threw the match away. It burned for a few moments in the moist grass. Then went out. A thin trail of smoke rose from it and then was gone. Why are you guarding the pass? Handstark asked again. Nest resumed his crouch on the grass. News is around that dirty Dan the cattle rustler is going to try to steal some of my cattle. He patted an imaginary holster at his side and I aimed to stop him. Handstark thought for a moment. Strategy! He must use strategy! Mr. Nest! He waited until Nest had turned to him. Mr. Nest! What would you say if I told you that there was no pass down there? Why, shucks partner, I'd say you'd been chewing some local weed. And if I could prove it? Nest answered after a moment's pause. Why, then I guess I'd be local. Handstark thought it was going to be easy. After Nest it is a well-known fact that no one can walk in mid-air. Is that not true? Nest took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke out of his nostrils. Sure. Then if I were to walk out above your pass you'd have to admit there is no pass. Reckon so. Handstark began to walk in the direction of Nest's cliff. Nest jumped to his feet and grabbed the official psychiatrist by the arm. What are you trying to do? Nest said angrily. Kill yourself? Handstark shook free of his grasp. Mr. Nest, I'm not going to kill myself. I'm merely going to walk in that direction. He pointed to where the cliff was supposed to be. To you it will look as if I were walking in mid-air. Nest dropped his hands to his sides. Shucks, I don't care if you kill yourself, it's just that it's liable to make the cattle nervous. Handstark gave him a cold glare and began to walk. He took three paces and stopped. You see, Mr. Nest, there is no cliff. Nest looked at him and laughed. You just take one more step and you find there is a cliff. Handstark took another step, a long one. His face bore a surprised look as he disappeared beneath the grass. His screams could be heard for a moment before he landed on the rocks below. Nest walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the mangled body. He took off his hat in respect. Little Feller had a lot of guts. Then he added, poor little Feller, he put his hat back on and looked down at the entrance to the valley. A horse and rider appeared from behind several rocks. Dirty Dan, Nest exclaimed, he reached down and picked up his rifle. End of Section 17, Section 18 of 20 Short Science Fiction Stories by various authors. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Smiler by Albert Hernhunter. Have you ever written science fiction? Have your stories been rejected? Herein may lie the reason. Your name? Cole, Martin Cole. Your profession? A very important one. I'm a literary agent specializing in science fiction. I sell the work of various authors to magazine and book publishers. The coroner paused to study Cole. To ponder the thin, mirthless smile. The coroner said, Mr. Cole, this inquest has been called to look into the death of one Sanford Smith, who was found near your home with a gun in his hand and a bullet in his brain. The theory of suicide has been rather hard to rationalize. The coroner blinked. You could put it that way. I would put it even stronger. The theory is obviously ridiculous. It was a weak cover-up. The best I could do under the circumstances. You're saying that you killed Sanford Smith? Of course. The coroner glanced at his six-man jury, at the two police officers, at the scattering of spectators. They all seemed stunned. Even the reporter sent to cover the hearing made no move toward the telephone. The coroner could think of only the obvious question. Why did you kill him? He was dangerous to us. Whom do you mean by us? We Martians who plan to take over your world. The coroner was disappointed. A lunatic. But a lunatic can murder. Best to proceed, the coroner thought. I was not aware that we have Martians to contend with. If I'd had the right weapon to use on Smith, you wouldn't be aware of it now. We still exercise caution. The coroner fell to certain pity. Why did you kill Smith? We Martians have found science fiction writers to be our greatest danger. Through the medium of imaginative fiction, such writers have more than once revealed our plans. If the public suddenly realized that, the coroner broke in. You kill Smith because he revealed something in his writings? Yes, he refused to take my word that it was unsailable. He threatened to submit it direct. It was vital material. But there are many other such writers. You can't control. We control 90% of the output. We have concentrated on the field and all of the science fiction agencies are in our hands. This control was imperative. I see, the coroner spoke in the gentle tones one uses with the insane. Any writing dangerous to your cause is deleted or changed by the agents. Not exactly. The agent usually persuades the writer to make any such changes, as the agent is considered an authority on what will or will not sell. The writers always agree? Not always. If stubbornness is encountered, the agent merely shelves the manuscripts and tells the writer it has been repeatedly rejected. The coroner glanced at the two policemen. Both were obviously puzzled. They returned the coroner's look, apparently ready to move on his order. The thin, mirthless smile was still on Cole's lips. Moniacal violence could lie just behind it. Possibly Cole was armed. Better to play for time. Try to quiet the madness within. The coroner continued speaking. You Martians have infiltrated other fields also? Oh yes, we are in government, industry, education. We are everywhere. We have, of course, concentrated mainly upon the ranks of labor and in the masses of ordinary everyday people. It is from these sources that we will draw our shock troops when the time comes. That time will be? Soon, very soon. The coroner could not forbear a smile. You find the science fiction writers more dangerous than the true scientists? Oh yes, the scientific mind tends to reject anything science disproves. There was now a mocking edge to Cole's voice. Science can easily prove we do not exist. But the science fiction writer, the danger from the imaginative mind cannot be overestimated. The coroner knew he must soon order the officers to lay hands upon this madman. He regretted his own lack of experience with such situations. He tried to put a soothing, confidential note into his voice. You said a moment ago that if you'd had the right kind of weapon to use on Smith, Cole reached into his pocket and brought out what appeared to be a fountain pen. This, it kills instantly and leaves no mark whatever. Hard failure is invariably stated as the cause of death. The coroner felt better. Obviously, Cole was not armed. As the coroner raised a hand to signal the officers, Cole said, you understand, of course, that I cannot let you live. Take this man into custody. The police officers did not move. The coroner turned on them sharply. They were smiling. Cole pointed the fountain pen. The coroner felt a sharp chill on his flesh. He looked at the injury, at the newspaper man, the spectators. They were all smiling cold, thin, terrible smiles. A short time later, the newspaper man phoned in his story. The afternoon additions carried it. Coroner Bell dies of heart attack. Shortly after this morning's inquest, which resulted in a jury verdict of suicide in the case of Sanford Smith, Coroner James Bell dropped dead of heart failure in the hearing room of the county building. Mr. Bell leaves a wife and... End of section 18. Section 19 of 20 short science fiction stories by various authors. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Day of the Dog by Anderson Horne. They came home from a strange journey, and heroes they might have been. A little dog and a man. Carol stared glumly at the ship to short transmitter. I hate being out here in the middle of the Caribbean with no radio communication. Can't you fix it? This is a year for sunspots, and transmission usually gets impossible around dusk, Bill explained. It will be all right in the morning. If you want to listen to the radio, you can use the portable radio directional finder. That always works. I want to catch the five o'clock news and hear the latest on our satellite, Carol replied. She went to the RDF and switched it on to the standard broadcast channel. Anyhow, I'd feel better if we could put out a signal. The way we're limping along with the water in our gas is no fun. It will take us 20 hours to get back to Nassau the way we're losing RPMs. Bill Anderson looked at his young, pretty wife and smiled. You're behaving like a tenderfoot. We have plenty of gas, a good boat and perfect weather. Tomorrow morning I'll clean out our carburetors and we'll pick up speed. Meantime, we're about to enter one of the prettiest harbors in the Bahamas. Throw over anchor. The RDF ground him out. The world is anxiously awaiting the return of the chamber from the world's first man satellite launched by the United States 10 days ago. The world also awaits the answers to two questions. Is there any chance that Robert Joy, the volunteer scientist who went up in the satellite, is still living? There seems to be little hope for a survival since radio communication from him stopped three days ago. Timing mechanism for the ejection of Joy are set for tonight. And that's the second question. Will the satellite, still in its orbit, eject the chamber containing Joy? Will it eject the chamber as scheduled and will the chamber arrive at earth at the designated place? There are so many ifs to this project which is shrouded in secrecy. The president himself has assured us of a free flow of news once the chamber has been recovered and this station will be standing by to bring you a full report. Carol switched the radio off. Do you think he's still alive? She suppressed a shutter. God, think of a human being up there in that thing. Well, the dog lived for several days. It was just a question of getting it back, which the Russians couldn't do. I don't know about Joy. He sounded real cheerful and healthy until his broadcast stopped. Bill peered into the fading twilight. Come on now, let's put our minds to getting the hook over. They concentrated on the tricky entrance to the lee side of Little Harbor Key. It meant finding and passing a treacherous coral head north of the joining frozen key. Little Harbor Key was midway in the chain of the Barry Islands, which stretched to the north-like beads in a necklace. There's the Cove, called Carol. About a mile of coastline ahead was the small native settlement. Once the center of a thriving sponge industry, the island was now practically deserted. A handful of cottages, a pile of conch shells on the beach, and two fishing smacks gave evidence of a remaining, though sparse, population. Dusk was rapidly approaching and Carol strained her eyes against the failing light. Bill Herter called his name and saw her pointing, not a head to their anchorage, but amid ships and toward the sky. He turned his eyes to where she was indicating and saw a dollish object in the sky, some thousand feet up. The object seemed to be falling leisurely towards earth. What in the world is that, asked Bill? It's not a bird, that's for sure. The object seemed to be parachuting, not free-falling. The breezes were blowing it towards the island. Before they could study it further, it was lost in the lowering dusk and darkness of the shoreline. Looks like a ball on a parachute, Bill finally said. However, the business at hand was to make secure the seven seas, and together they spent the next quarter hour anchoring. After setting the hook securely, Carol and Bill donned swimsuits, dove overboard and swam lazily the 300 yards into shore. Let's try to find that thing we saw. It shouldn't be too far from here, said Carol, the moment they hit the beach. They climbed inland on the rocky island. Little green lizards scooted underfoot and vines scratched at their ankles. Bill was leading when suddenly he called, Carol, I see something up ahead. There's something lying on the ground. He hurried toward what he had seen. The dying sun reflected on a luminescent fold of cloth, somewhat like a spun aluminum fabric. Thin wires were entangling in it, and about 10 feet away lay three fragments of what appeared to have been a dull metal box. Carol knelt at the closest piece, evidently a corner of the box. It was lined with wiring and tubes. It looks like electronic equipment, decided Carol, peering intently at the strange piece. Bill had approached the second and largest fragment. He carefully turned it over. It was filled with black and yellow fur. Oh no, he cried, knowing in a flash, yet denying it in his mind at the same time. Stunned, he stared at the perky ears, the dull staring and unseen eyes, the leather thongs that held the head and body of a dog to the metal encasement. Carol saw it the next instant. It's some horrible joke, she gasped. It couldn't be the second Russian satellite. It couldn't be Mutnik. My God, no, it couldn't be. Bill kept staring, his thoughts racing. There were rumors of an ejection chamber for Mutnik, but they had been denied by the Russians. But suppose the Russians had planned an ejection chamber for the dog, Lyka, when they launched the satellite and had only denied it after they thought it had failed. But if it had worked, why had it taken so long to find its way to earth? The satellite itself was supposed to have disintegrated months ago. Damn, thought Bill, I wish I were a scientist right now instead of a know-nothing artist. He touched the dog with his toe. It was perfectly preserved, as though it had died just a few hours before. It was rigid, but it had not started to decompose. Carol, are we crazy? Is this some dream, or do you believe we're looking at the ejection chamber of the Russian satellite? He asked, doubting even what he was saying. I don't know, Carol was wide-eyed. But what shall we do now? We'd better contact the authorities immediately. Bill tried to keep reason from overcoming his disbelief of their discovery. But how, Carol? Our radio transmitter isn't working. It won't till morning. And there's certainly no other way to communicate with anyone. We can't even take the boat anywhere with the speed we're making. We'll have to wait till morning. What shall we do with the dog? Asked Carol. Do you think we ought to bury it? Lord know, Carol. The body of the dog will be extremely valuable to science. We've got to get someone here as quickly as possible. Bill was trying to steady his nerves. Let's go back and try to raise someone on the radio. Let's try again. It may work, called Carol, running in the direction of the boat. Bill followed her. They stumbled on the craggy rocks and exposed sea-grape roots. But together in the darkness, they struck out for the boat. Bill was first on board and went directly to the ship to shore radio. Try the Nassau Marine Operator first, Carol panted as she clambered aboard. He's a lot closer to us than Miami. As the receiver warmed up, static filled the cabin. Bill depressed the transmitting button. This is yacht seven seas calling the Nassau Marine Operator, he called into the phone. Only static answered. Bill, Carol said, in sudden inspiration. Give a May Day. Try every channel with a May Day. If anyone picks up a May Day call, you'll get emergency action. May Day, May Day, this is the yacht seven seas, come in any one. Bill called urgently into the mouthpiece. He switched to the Coast Guard Channel, then to the Miami Marine Operator's Channel. Only static filled the cabin. No welcome voice acknowledged their distress call. Bill flipped the switch desperately to the two ship to ship channels. May Day, come in any boat. Still static, nothing but static. It was night, a night without a moon. The island loomed dark against the black waters. The dark was relieved only by a small fire burning at the native settlement a half mile down the coast and the cabin lights of the seven seas. What will we do now? Carol tried to sound unconcerned, but her voice sounded thin and wavering. I don't know what we can do, except wait until daybreak. I'm sure we can get a signal out then, Bill replied, calmly as he could. He hoped she wouldn't hear the pounding of his heart. What about the dog, she asked. Will it be all right there? Should we bring it aboard? We better leave everything untouched. Our best bet is to get some sleep and place our call as soon as day breaks. Neither of them could eat much supper and after putting the dishes away, they made up their bunks and climbed in. After a very few minutes, Bill handed a lighted cigarette across the narrow chasm between the bunks. I can't sleep. My head is spinning. Do you really believe that's what we found? Carol's voice sounded small. Yes, I do. I believe we found the Russian ejection unit, complete with a dog, Leica, and instrumentation. They lay quietly, the glow of two cigarettes occasionally reflecting on the bulkhead. Bill finally arose. I can't think of another thing but what's sitting out there on Little Harbor Key. He walked up to the main cabin and switched on the RDF. For a few minutes there was music and then. Flash, the United States government has just officially released the news that at 10.09 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the U.S. satellite ejection chamber was successfully returned to earth at the designated location. This was some six hours earlier than expected. The chamber, into which Robert Joy voluntarily had himself strapped, has landed at an undisclosed site and is being raced under heavy guard to the Walter Reed Hospital at Washington, D.C. There is no hope that Joy is still living. Word has just been released by Dr. James R. Killian that instruments measuring Joy's pulse rate indicated three days ago that all Joy's bodily processes ceased to function at that time. We repeat, all hope of the survival of Robert Joy is now abandoned as the result of scientific data just released by Dr. Killian. The satellite is being brought in tact to Walter Reed Hospital and leading physiologists and scientists are racing to the scene to be on hand for the opening of the unit scheduled for six a.m. tomorrow morning. Further reports will be given as received. This station will remain on the air all night. Stay tuned for further developments. We repeat, the U.S. satellite's ejection chamber, containing the first human being ever to go into space, has been successfully returned to earth as predicted, though all hope has been abandoned for the survival of Robert Joy, the man in the moon. The chamber will be open for scientific study tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for further news. Bill turned down the music that ensued and returned to his bunk. You heard that, Carol? He knew she wasn't asleep. Yes, and it makes this whole thing that we've found seem more plausible. I've been lying here trying to make myself believe it's some sort of dream, but it isn't. If we could only, Carol's voice faded softly into the night. There was absolutely nothing they could do. Nothing but lie there and smoke and pretend to sleep. They didn't talk much, and keenly felt the terrible frustration of their enforced silence on the ship to shore. They heard several more news reports and several analyses of the news, but nothing new was added throughout the night. The radio only reiterated that the ejection unit had been recovered, that hope had faded for Joy's survival, and that the chamber was to be opened in the morning as soon as scientists had convened in Washington. Dawn, long incoming, broke about 4.30. With the lifting dark, the sunspots which interfered with the radio reception miraculously lifted also. Bill and Carol sat next to the ship to shore and turned it on. This time they heard the reassuring hum of the transmitter, not drowned out by the awful static of the night before. Bill switched to the Coast Guard channel. Mayday, mayday, this is Seven Seas calling the United States Coast Guard, come in please. And a voice, almost miraculously answered, this is the U.S. Coast Guard, come in Seven Seas. What is your position? Come in, Seven Seas. This is the yacht, Seven Seas, back to the Coast Guard. We are located at the Barry Islands at Little Harbor Key. We want to report the discovery of what we believe to be the second Russian satellite. This is the Coast Guard to the Seven Seas. Do we read you correctly? Are you reporting discovery of the Russian satellite? Please clarify, over. A stern voice crackled through the speaker. Last evening on entering the harbor here we saw an object fall to the ground. On inspection it was a metal box which was broken apart on impact. In it are electronic equipment and the body of a small dog. Over. Bill tried to be calm and succinct. Coast Guard to Seven Seas, is your boat in distress? Over. No, no, did you read me about the Russian satellite? Ask Bill, impatience in his voice. Will you state your name and address? Will you state the master's full name and the call letters and registration of your craft? Over, crackled the voice from the speaker. Oh, my lord, we're not going to have red tape at a time like this, are we? Carol asked, exasperatedly. This is Bill Anderson of Fort Lauderdale, owner and skipper. Our call letters are William George, 3176, Coast Guard registration number 235465483. What are your instructions regarding dog satellite? Please stand by. Bill and Carol stared at each other while the voice on the radio was silent. This is the United States Coast Guard calling the yacht Seven Seas. Seven Seas standing by. We wish to remind you that it is illegal and punishable by a fine or imprisonment to issue false reports to the Coast Guard. We are investigating your report and wish you to stand by. Investigating our report? Bill fairly shouted into the phone. Good God, man, the thing to investigate is here, lying in three pieces on the middle of Little Harbor Key. This is no joke. Despite the emotion in Bill's voice, the answer came back routine and cold. Please stand by. We will call you. Do not, we repeat. Do not make further contact anywhere. Please stand by. Coast Guard standing by with Seven Seas. Seven Seas standing by, shouted Bill, almost apoplectic, his face reddening in anger. Now what? It looks like they're going to take their time in believing us. At least until they find out who we are and if we're really here, said Carol. Bill paced the deck in frustration. Suddenly he decided, Carol, you stick with the radio. I'm going ashore again and take another look at our muttonick. It seems so incredible I'm not even sure of what I saw last night. Once they believe us, they'll want to know as much about it as we can tell them. Bill hurriedly put on a swimsuit and heard Carol shout as he dove overboard. Hurry back, Bill. I don't like you leaving me here alone. Bill swam with sure even strokes to the shore where they had gone last night. The water felt cool. It soothed his nerves which jangled in the excitement of the discovery and in the anger of the disbelieving authorities. He reached shallow water and waited towards the shore. Suddenly he stopped dead, his ankles in five inches of water. His eyes stared ahead in disbelief. His brain was numbed. Only his eyes were alive, staring, wide in horror. Finally his brain pieced together the image that his vision sent to it. Pieced it together but made no comprehension of it. His brain told him that there was a blanket of fur laying unevenly twenty feet back from the shoreline. A blanket of yellow and black fur covering the earth, covering mangrove roots, fitted neatly around the bent palm tree trunks, lying over the rocks that had cut his feet last night, smothering, suffocating, hugging the earth. Bill shut his eyes and still the vision kept shooting to his brain. All yellow and black and fuzzy, with trees or tall mangrove bush or sea grapevine sticking up here and there. He opened his eyes and wanted to run, for the scene was still there. It hadn't disappeared as a nightmare disappears when you wake up. Thick yellow and black fur lay on the ground like dirty snow, covering everything low, hugging the base of taller things. Run, his mind told him. Yet he stood rooted to the spot, staring at the carpet of fur near him. It was only ten feet away, ten feet? His every muscle jumped. The lock that had held his muscles and brain in a tight vise gave loose and a flood of realization hit him. It's moving, he realized in horror, it's growing. As he watched, slowly, slowly, as the petals of a morning glory unfold before the eye, the yellow and black fur carpet stretched itself in ever-increasing perimeter. Saw it approach a rock near the beach. The mind, when confronted with a huge shock, somehow concentrates itself on a small detail. Perhaps it tries to absorb itself in a small thing, because the whole thing is too great to comprehend all at once. So with Bill's mind. He saw the yellow and black fur grow toward the rock. It seemed to ooze around it and then up and over the top of it. Bill saw, when it reached the top of the rock, that it dropped a spiny tendril into the ground. Like a root, the tendril buried itself into the earth below the jutting rock, and slowly the rock was covered with the growing fur. Bill's thought sped ahead of his reason. The dog, the dog, growing like a plant. Its height covering the ground, putting out roots, suffocating everything, smothering everything, growing, growing. With almost superhuman effort, he turned his back on the awful side and swam desperately out to the seven seas. Bill, what's happened? cried Carol, when she saw his wide and terrified face. Carol, the dog, it must have had some cosmic reaction to its cellular structure, some cancerous reaction, when the chamber broke open and the cells were exposed to our atmosphere again, it started some action, started to grow, doesn't stop growing, it's horrible. Bill's words were disjointed and hysterical. Carol stared at him. Bill, what are you saying? Bill pointed mutely to the shore. Carol rushed to the cockpit. She stared at the island. She ran back to the cabin where Bill was sitting, holding his head in his hands. She grabbed the binoculars from the bookshelf and turned them to the island. Bill, it's, oh no! The whole island looks as though it's covered with fur! She screamed. Bill grabbed the binoculars and ranged the island with them. A quarter of a mile down he could see small figures in the water floundering around, climbing aboard the two fishing smacks. All around, the black and yellow mounds of fur carpeted the pretty green island with the soft rug of yellow and black. Get the Coast Guard, Carol. They called back while you were gone. They're sending a plane over immediately. All of them, Carol, Bill shouted at her. Don't you realize what this could mean? Don't you realize that something, only God knows what, has happened to the cellular structure of this animal, has turned it into a voracious, plant-like thing that seems to grow and grow once it hits our atmosphere. Don't you realize that today they're going to open that satellite, that other one in Washington. Suppose this is what happens when living tissue is exposed to cosmic rays, or whatever's up there. Don't you see what could happen? Bill was hoarse from fright and shouting. Smother everything, grow and grow and smother! Carol was at the ship to shore. What time is it, Carol? I don't know, five-thirty, I guess. They plan to open the ejection chamber at six. We've got to tell them what happened here before they open it. Hurry with the damned Coast Guard! Mayday, mayday! Coast Guard, come in! This is the Seven Seas. Come in and hurry! Coast Guard to the Seven Seas, come in! Bill grabbed the phone. Listen carefully, he said, in a quiet, determined voice. This is God's own truth. I repeat, this is God's own truth. The remains of the dog we discovered last night started to grow. It's growing as we look at it. It has covered the entire island as far as we can see, with fur. Stinking yellow and black fur. We've got to get word to Washington before they open up the satellite. The same thing could happen there. Do you understand? I must get in touch with Washington immediately. There was no mistaking the urgency and near panic in Bill's voice. The Coast Guard returned with, We understand you, Seven Seas. We will clear a line directly to Dr. Killian in Washington. Stand by. With his hand shaking, Bill turned on the standard broadcast band of the portable RDF. A voice cut in. Latest reports from Walter Reed General Hospital where the first human man satellite ejection chamber has just been opened. All leading physiologists and physicists were assembled at the hospital by midnight last night and plans to open the ejection chamber at 6 a.m. this morning were moved up. The chamber was opened at 4 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, today. Our first report confirmed that volunteer moon traveler, the man in the moon, Robert Joy, was no longer alive. Hope had been abandoned for him some 80 hours previous when recording instruments on his body processes indicated no reactions. Of scientific curiosity is the fact that though dead for more than three days, his body is in a perfect state of preservation. Flash, we interrupt this special newscast for a late bulletin. The body of Robert Joy has begun to shoot out unexplained appendages like rapidly growing cancerous growths. His entanglement appears to be enlarging, growing away from his body. Hello, seven seas, broken the ship to shore. We are still trying to locate Dr. Killian. End of section 19.