 Martian, VFW. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Kali. Martian, VFW. by G.L. Vandenberg. There's nothing like a parade, I always say. Of course, I'm a Martian. Mr. Crothers was a busy man. Coordinating the biggest parade in New York's history is not easy. He was maneuvering his two hundred pounds around Washington Square with the agility of a quarter back. He had his hands full, organizing marchers, locating floats, placing the many brass bands in their proper order, and barking commands to his assistants. But Mr. Crothers approached the job with all the zeal of an evangelist at a revival meeting. As he approached the southwest corner of the square, he saw something that jarred his already frayed nerves. He stopped abruptly. The massive clipboards and papers he was carrying fell to the street. There before him were one hundred and fifty ants, each of them at least six feet tall. His first impulse was to turn and run for the nearest doctor. He was certain that the strain of his job was proving too much for him. But one of the ants approached him. It seemed friendly enough, so Mr. Crothers stood his ground. My group is waiting for their assignment. The ants' voices seemed to come from the very core of its thorax, which was a violent red. Good Lord! Mr. Crothers' mouth opened up as wide as an oven door. Mr. Crothers, I believe the parade is about to start, and my group, Mr. Crothers, managed to blurt out, What the devil are you, anyway? This is the parade marking the international geophysical year, is it not? The ants had a pleasant, friendly voice. Well, yes, but, and you are Mr. Crothers, the manager of the parade, is that not correct? Mr. Crothers rubbed his eyes and took another look at the strange creature. Its head was a brilliant yellow. It had two large, google eyes which rolled like itinerant marbles when it spoke. The low-slung abdomen was a burnt brown. It was bad enough, Mr. Crothers thought, that these ants were six feet tall, but it was night-marish to see them in three colors. Mr. Crothers, the ant continued, Haven't you been instructed by the National Academy of Sciences that the Martian VFW is to participate in this parade? The Martian! Mr. Crothers' mouth was open again. Then he realized that when the ant spoke, its mouth didn't move. He picked up his clipboard and papers from the street. His voice was hostile now. What the hell is this? Some kind of gag? What are you trying to do? Scare a man half to death! Oh, we're not joking, Mr. Crothers, the National Academy. They didn't say anything to me about a bunch of clowns dressed up like ants. Mr. Crothers' indignation became intensified. He was loath to admit that he'd been taken in by such obviously animated costumes. Now, look here. I'm a very busy man. The arrangements have been made, Mr. Crothers. If my group has refused a place in this parade, we shall file suit immediately. As manager, you'll be named co-defendant. The ant was gentle, but firm. The thought of being sued softened Mr. Crothers' attitude. Well, I'm very sorry, pal, but every contingent in this parade is listed on my clipboard, and you're not. I know this list by heart. What did you say the name of your group was? Martian V. F. W. Mr. Crothers was amused. Those sure are the craziest outfits I'd ever seen, he chuckled. Where did you get them? Walt Disney make them for you? He followed his own little joke with a long, throaty laugh. The ant was impatient. About the parade, Mr. Crothers, there isn't much time. Oh, yes, the parade. Well, let me see. He thumbed through the clipboard. I guess there's always room for a few laughs. How many in your group? One hundred and fifty. And we also have a float with us. Not a very large one. Get measures twenty by twenty. Tell you what. You move your group to the corner of Thompson Street and Third Street. Get behind the Tiffany Float and follow them, OK? The ant paused a moment to record the instructions in his mind. Then he turned to leave. Oh, wait a minute. Mr. Crothers cried before the ant could rejoin his group. Just, who did you speak to at the National Academy of Sciences? I believe it was a Mr. Canfield. Mr. Crothers' face lit up. Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? I'd have placed you right away. That's perfectly all right, Mr. Crothers. Listen, I don't know what you guys do, but those costumes should certainly bring the house down. There's going to be four million people watching the parade. I bet that's the biggest audience you've ever seen. It certainly is. With that, the ants drove away. Good luck, Mr. Crothers shouted after him. Daddy, daddy, look! Look at the big rocket! The boy jumped up and down gleefully. It must be a whole mile long, Daddy. What kind is it? That's the vanguard, son. An autumn breeze from the East River chilled their vantage point at sixty-first Street and Fifth Avenue. The vanguard? The name meant nothing to the boy. Gee, I bet it can fly all the way to the stars. It's the rocket that carried the first artificial satellite into space. The parade, now three hours old, continued past the reviewing stand. I want to get a better look at the vanguard, the boy shouted. The father lifted the boy onto his shoulders. The little fellow laughed and whooped it up, firing several shots from his Captain Videorega and at the passing missile. The rocket moved on and the noise of the crowd diminished slightly. A one-hundred-piece band was passing in front of them. They were playing the Stars and Stripes Forever. They were followed by the Sacs Fifth Avenue display. Nine small floats, each depicting life on another planet. The National Academy of Sciences had a success on its hands. Wow, Daddy, I want to ride on it. I want to ride on that float and visit all those planets. Can I, Daddy? The boy became all limbs trying to squirm down from his father's shoulders. You stay right where you are, young man. The father struggled to hold his balance. But I want to go to the Stars. I want to watch the rest of the parade from Venus or Mercury. Please, Daddy. The father grinned. Not just yet some, but it won't be long before man will go to the Stars. Who lives up there, Daddy? Oh, there isn't any life up there yet. If no one's living up there, why does anyone want to go there? Well, maybe there'll be too many people on Earth some day and then we'll have to find other planets with more room. Another monstrous band was going by. The boy became restless. He began to toy with his ray gun, half interested in seeing if there were any sparks left in it. Why can't there be something besides so many bands in a parade? I want to see another float. The father tried to interest the boy by pointing out all the famous people who are also there, a variety of statesmen, the world's leading scientists and religious and cultural leaders, and the president of the United States. The boy was interested, but not in what his elder was saying to him. He was looking downtown, his eyes squinting, trying to make out figures as far away as 56th Street. Then his mouth opened, not uttering a sound yet, just waiting to burst with joy at what was coming toward them. His father looked up at him. I wish you'd tell me what you're looking at. I'm all the way down here on street level, remember? Daddy, they look like ants. What? Ants, Daddy. Ants. A whole army of them. Isn't it exciting? What on earth are you talking about? They're doing somersaults and backflips and everything. They're coming right this way. Gee, there's hundreds of them, and they got a float behind them, Daddy. A great big float with something burning on it. The child sitting on his shoulders made mobility impossible for the father, and he couldn't see around the spectators. He resigned himself to stand and wait for this new spectacle to overtake them. The reaction to this new sight had already begun to work its way up town, in the distance, but getting closer every second he could hear unrestrained laughter and rejoicing. Hey, take it easy. The boy was beginning to ride the shoulders like a bronco-buster. By the time they get here I won't have any shoulders left. Where are they now? They're almost here, Daddy, and they aren't ants at all. They're just a bunch of clowns dressed up like it. He began to giggle hysterically. Golly, they're funny. Can you see them yet, Daddy? Before the father could produce an answer, the ants were in view. They were a sight that couldn't fail to stimulate the funny bone. By comparison with real ants, everything about them had been grossly exaggerated to achieve the proper effect. They walked on their two back legs, but the four front apertures were far from idle. Some of them turned somersaults, some did complicated flips consisting of two or three spins in mid-air. Still others, doing a kind of animated catwalk, carried toy ray guns, which they fired at random into the world. The guns were something like the little boy's Captain Video ray gun, only larger. They emitted little streaks of blue sparks which shone brightly but disappeared when contact was made with air. They were easily the head of the parade, a three-ring circles all by themselves as they pranced and clowned their way up Fifth Avenue giving the spectators a wail of a show that was completely new. The guests on the reviewing stand refrained from any hilarity until they saw the float that four of the ants were pulling behind them. It was in keeping with the rest of the nonsense they were perpetrating. The float boasted eight larger ray guns, three on either side and two in the rear, that fired the same fascinating blue sparks. Behind each gun an ant stood on its head, wildly waving six legs in the breeze, begging to be noticed and laughed at. Above the guns emblazoned in fiery orange letters were the words Martian V F W. This was interpreted by one and all as a punchline and was treated accordingly. It was heartwarming to be able to see the President and so many other dignitaries abandon composure in favor of a good old-fashioned belly laugh. Daddy, I can't laugh any more. The boy had to pause between every other word. My stomach hurts. Aren't they the funniest things you ever saw? The father was too convulsed to be able to answer him. Daddy, one of them is coming this way. He's firing his Captain Video Ray Gun at us. The boy squeezed his father and held on tight. The father took a deep breath in order to be able to speak. Take your gun and fire back at him, son. Fire away. Go on, he's just being playful. He broke forth with another gust of laughter. I won't see anything as funny as this again if I live to be a hundred. The ants pressed over to where they were standing, firing its gun in every direction. The boy fired back. The ant took one look at the lad's gun and let out a long cackling laugh which built to a crescendo and then stopped as though it had been turned off. The ants rejoined the group and they continued on their merry way. The boy fired several shots into the float as it passed. He wanted to see if he could knock out those blazing orange letters, Martian VFW. The letters continued to burn, but in the boy's mind he was certain he had made several direct hits. The boy and his father watched the float until it was out of sight. They knew there wouldn't be another attraction like those ants. They must have been real professionals, the father thought. Such teamwork, such precision, each one of them having a specific job to do and each doing it to perfection. After them everything was bound to be anti-climatic. More marchers, more bands, a few more floats. The boy was beginning to tire. It had been a long day. Now everything was dull. Daddy, I don't want to see any more. Let's go home. We'll stay another five minutes. The parade somehow seemed to be slowing down. The father yawned and let his son down from his shoulders. He looked across the street at the president and the other dignitaries on the reviewing stand. All were slowly raising their hands in salute as another color guard drowsily made its way by. Soon the last group in the parade was passing the reviewing stand, another brass band. They were moving with the speed of a glacier, a full five seconds elapsed between each note of music. Everything was happening in slow motion. On the reviewing stand the dignified hands went up, agonizingly slow, to a final salute and they stayed there. The greatest mind in the world stood motionless, unalterably still. Just as each wave of pandemonium had unfurled itself up Fifth Avenue during the parade, so now did silence take command. The little boy tugged at his father's coat. Daddy, daddy! he pleaded. Why has the parade stopped? I want to go home. His words came up more slowly with each passing second like a high speed phonograph playing at thirty-three and a third rpm. Daddy, why don't you answer me? Daddy, why don't his father never heard him? Fifty miles above the Atlantic the fleet of spaceships hung suspended like lanterns. In the lead ship the ant in charge of communications reported to the commander. We've just received the first communique from the advancing guards, sir. Read it to me. The communications chief read from a large perforated paper. Time? Oh, six hundred. Mission accomplished. Manhattan Island cut down the middle, immediate result of supereisonic rays. Four million dead, rays spreading east and west, estimated time of rays full effect, oh, eight hundred. Island will then be neutralized, waiting for their orders. The ant folded the paper and looked up at the commander. Shall I relay further orders, sir? No. The commander of the ant's paws and stroke his chin. We're moving in. The end. End of Martian VFW by G. L. Vandenberg. One shot by James Benjamin Blish. 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 Reynard. One shot by James Benjamin Blish. You can do a great deal if you have enough data and enough time to compute on it by logical methods. But given the situation that neither data nor time is adequate and an answer must be produced, what do you do? On the day that the Polish freighter, Ludmila, laid an egg in New York Harbour, Abner Longmans, one shot, brawn, was in the city going about his normal business, which was making another million dollars. As we found out later, almost nothing else was normal about that particular week for brawn. For one thing, he had brought his family with him. A complete departure from routine. Reflecting the unprecedentedly legitimate nature of the deals he was trying to make. From every point of view, it was a bad weekend for the CIA to mix into his affairs. But nobody had explained that to the master of the Ludmila. I'd better add here that we knew nothing about this until afterward. From the point of view of the storyteller, an organisation like the Civilian Intelligence Associates gets to all its facts backwards. Entering the tail at the payoff. Working back to the hook and winding up with a sheaf of background facts to feed into the computer for next time. It's rough on the various people who've tried to fictionalise what we do, particularly the lazy examples of the breed who come to us expecting that their plotting has already been done for them. But it's inherent in the way we operate. And there it is. Certainly nobody at CIA so much as thought of brawn when the news first came through. Harry Anderson, the Harbour Defence Chief, called us at 0830 Friday to take on the job of identifying the egg. This was when our records show us officially entering the affair. But of course, Anderson had been keeping the wires to Washington's streaming for an hour before that, getting authorisation to spend some of his money on us. Our clearance status was then, and is now, CNR. Clean and routine. I was in the central office when the call came through and had some difficulty in making out precisely what Anderson wanted of us. Slow down, Colonel Anderson, please. I begged him. Two or three seconds won't make that much difference. How did you find out about this egg in the first place? The automatic compartment bulkheads on the Ludmilla were defective, he said. It seems that this egg was buried among a lot of other crates in the dump cell of the hold. What's a dump cell? It's a sea lock for getting rid of dangerous cargo. The bottom of it opens right to Davy Jones. Standard fitting for ships carrying explosives, radioactives, anything that might act up unexpectedly. All right, I said. Go ahead. Well, there was a timer on the dump cell floor, set to drop the egg when the ship came up the river. That worked fine, but the automatic bulkheads that are supposed to keep the rest of the ship from being flooded while the cells open didn't. At least they didn't do a thorough job. The Ludmilla began to list and the captain yelled for help. When the harbour patrol found the dump cell open, they called us in. I see. I thought about it a moment. In other words, you don't know whether the Ludmilla really laid an egg or not. That's what I keep trying to explain to you, Dr. Harris. We don't know what she dropped, and we haven't any way of finding out. It could be a bomb. It could be anything. We're sweating everybody on board the ship now, but it's my guess that none of them know anything. The whole procedure is designed to be automatic. All right, we'll take it, I said. You've got divers down? Sure, but we'll worry about the butts from here on. Get us a direct line from your barge to the big board here so we can direct the work. Better get on over there yourself. Right. You sounded relieved. Official people have a lot of confidence in CIA. Too much in my estimation. Someday the job will come along that we can't handle, and then Washington will be kicking itself. Or more likely some scapegoat for having failed to develop a comparable government department. Not that there was much prospect of Washington doing that. Official thinking had been running in the other direction for years. The precedent was associated universities organization, which ran Brookhaven. CIA had been started the same way, by a loose corporation of universities and industries, all of which had wanted it to own an Ultimac, and no one of which had the money to buy one for itself. The Eisenhower administration, this emphasis on private enterprise and concomitant reluctance to sink federal funds into projects of such size, had turned the two examples into a nice fat trend, which Ultimac herself said wasn't going to be reversed within the practicable lifetime of CIA. I buzzed two staffers, and in five minutes got Clark Cheney and Joan Hadamard, CIA's business manager and social science division chief respectively. The title is almost solely for the benefit of the TO, that is, Clark and Joan do serve in those capacities, but said service takes about two percent of their capacities and their time. I shot them a couple of sentences of explanation, trusting them to pick up whatever else they needed from the tape, and check the line to the diver's barge. It was already open, Anderson had gone to work quickly and with decision once he was sure we were taking on the major question. The television screen lit, but nothing showed on it, but murky light, striped with streamers of darkness, slowly rising and falling. The audio went clonk, oing, oing, bonk, oing. Underwater noises, shapeless and characterless. Hello out there in the harbour, this is CIA, Harris calling, come in please. Monique here, the audio said, boink, oing, oing. Got anything yet? Not a thing Dr Harris, Monique said. You can't see three inches in front of your face down here, it's too silty. We bumped into a couple of crates, but so far no egg. Keep trying. Chaney, looking even more like a bulldog than usual, was setting his stopwatch by one of the eight clocks on Ultimax face. Want me to take the divers? He said, no clock, not yet. I'd rather have Joan do it for the moment. I passed the mic to her. You'd better run a probability series first. Jack. He began feeding tape into the integrator's mouth. What's your angle Peter? The ship. I want to see how heavily shielded that dump cell is. It isn't shielded at all, Anderton's voice said behind me. I hadn't heard him come in, but that doesn't prove anything. The egg might have carried sufficient shielding in itself. Or maybe the commies didn't care whether the crew was exposed or not. Or maybe there isn't any egg. All that's possible, I admitted. But I want to see it anyhow. Have you taken blood tests? Joan asked Anderton. Yes. Get the reports through to me then. I want white cell counts, differentials, platelet counts, hematocrit, and sed rates on every man. Anderton picked up the phone and I took a firm hold on the doorknob. Hey! Anderton said, putting the phone down again. Are you going to duck out just like that? Remember Dr. Harris, we've got to evacuate the city first of all. No matter whether it's a real egg or not. We can't take the chance on it's not being an egg. Don't move a man until you get a go-ahead from CIA, I said. For all we know now, evacuating the city may be just what the enemy wants us to do, so they can grab it unharmed. Or they may want to start a panic for some other reason. Any one of 50 possible reasons. You can't take such a gamble, he said grimly. There are eight and a half million lives riding on it. I can't let you do it. You passed your authority to us when you hired us, I pointed out. If you want to evacuate without our OK, you'll have to fire us first. It'll take another hour to get that cleared from Washington, so you might as well give us the hour. He stared at me for a moment. His lips thinned. Then he picked up the phone again to order Joan's blood count and I got out of the door, fast. A reasonable man would have said that I found nothing useful on the Love Miller except negative information. But the fact is that anything I found would have been a surprise to me. I went down looking for surprises. I found nothing but a faint trail to Abner Longman's brawn, most of which was 15 years out cold. There'd been a time when I'd known brawn, briefly, and no profit to either of us. As an undergraduate majoring in social sciences. I'd taken on a term paper on the old International Longshoreman's Association. A racket-ridden union now formally extinct. Although anyone who knew the signs could still pick up some traces on the docks. In those days, brawn had been the business manager of an insurance firm, the sole visible function of which had been to write policies for the ILA and its individual dock wallopers. For some reason he had been amused by the brash youngster who'd barged in on him and demanded the lowdown and had shown me considerable lengths of ropes, not normally in view of the public. Nothing incriminating, but enough to give me a better insight into how the union operated than I had any right to expect, or even suspect. Hence, I was surprised to hear somebody on the docks remark that brawn was in the city over the weekend. It would never have occurred to me that he still interested himself in the waterfront. For he'd gone respectable with a vengeance. He was still a professional gambler, and according to what he had told the Congressional Investigation Committee last year, took a $30,000 to $50,000 a year at it. But his gambles were no longer concentrated on horses, the numbers or shady insurance deals. Nowadays, what he did was called investment, mostly in real estate. Rialtos knew him well as the man who had almost brought the Empire State Building. The almost in the equation stands for the moment when the shoestring broke. Joan had been following his career, too. Not because she had ever met him, but because for her he was a type study in the evolution of what she called the extra legal ego. With personalities like that, respectability is a disease, she told me. There's always an almost open conflict between the desire to be powerful and the desire to be accepted. Your ordinary criminal is a moral imbecile, but people like Braun are damned with a conscience, and sooner or later they crack trying to appease it. I'd sooner try to crap a Timkin bearing, I said. Braun's 10-point steel all the way through. Don't you believe it? The symptoms are showing all over him. Now he's backing Broadway plays, sponsoring beginning actresses, joining playwrights groups. He's the only member of Buskin and Brush, who's never written a play, acted in one, or so much as pulled the rope to raise the curtain. That's investment, I said. That's his business. Peter, you're only looking at the surface. His real investments almost never fail, but the plays he backs always do. They have to. He's sinking money in them to appease his conscience, and if they were to succeed, it would double his guilt instead of salving it. It's the same way with the young actresses. He's not sexually interested in them. His type never is, because a living, a rigidly orthodox family life is part of the effort towards respectability. He's backing them to pay his debt to society. In other words, they're talismans to keep him out of jail. It doesn't seem like a very satisfactory substitute. Of course it isn't, Joan had said. The next thing he'll do is go in for direct public service, giving money to hospitals or something like that. You watch. She had been right. Within the year, Braun had announced the founding of an association for clearing the Detroit slum area where he had been born. The plain is kind of symbolic suicide. Let's not have any more Abner Longman's Braun's down here. It depressed me to see it happen. For next on Jones and Grant Gender for Braun was an entry into politics as a fighting liberal. A new dealer, 20 years too late. Since I'm mildly liberal myself when I'm off duty, I hated to think what Braun's career might tell me about my own motives if I let it. All of which had nothing to do with why I was prowling around the Ludmilla. Or did it? I kept remembering Anderton's challenge. You can't take such a gamble. There are eight and a half million lives riding on it. That put it up into Braun's normal operating area all right. The connection was still hazy, but on the grounds that any link might be useful, I phoned him. He remembered me instantly. Like most uneducated power-driven men, he had a memory as good as any machines. You never did send me that paper you was going to write, he said. His voice seemed absolutely unchanged, although he was in his 70s now. You promised you would. Kids don't keep their promises as well as they should, I said. But I've still got copies and I'll see to it that you get one this time. Right now I need another favour. Something right up your alley. CIA business? Yes. I didn't know you knew I was with CIA. Braun chuckled. I still know a thing or two, he said. What's the angle? That I can't tell you over the phone, but it's the biggest gamble there ever was, and I think we need an expert. Can you come down to CIA's central headquarters right away? Yeah, if it's that big, if it ain't, I got lots of business here, Andy, and I ain't going to be in town long. You're sure it's top stuff? My word on it. He was silent a moment. Then he said, Andy, send me your paper. The paper? Sure, but then I got it. I'd given him my word. You'll get it, I said. Thanks, Mr. Braun. I called headquarters and sent a messenger to my apartment to look for one of those long, dusty blue folders with the legal length sheets inside them, with orders to scorch it over to Braun without stopping to breathe more than once. Then I went back myself. The atmosphere had changed. Anderson was sitting by the big desk, clenching his fists and sweating. His whole posture telegraphed his controlled helplessness. Cheney was bent over a seismograph, echo sounding for the egg through the river bottom. If that even had a prayer of working, I knew he'd have had the trains of the Hudson and Manhattan stopped. Their rumbling course through the tubes would have blanked out any possible echo pit from the egg. Wild goose chase, Joan said, scanning my face. Not quite. I've got something if I can just figure out what it is. Remember one shot Braun? Yes. What's he got to do with it? Nothing, I said, but I want to bring him in. I don't think we'll lick this project before deadline without him. What could is a professional gamble on a job like this? He'll just get in the way. I looked towards the television screen, which now shown in a morphous black mass jutting up from a foundation of even deeper black. Is that operation getting you anywhere? Nothing's got us anywhere, Anderson interjected harshly. We don't even know if that's the egg. The whole area is littered with crates. Harris, you've got to let me get that alert out. Clark, how's the time going? Cheney consulted to stop watch. Deadline in 20 minutes, he said. All right, let's use those minutes. I'm beginning to see this thing a little clearer. Joan, what we've got here is a one shot gamble, right? In effect, she said cautiously. It's my guest that we're never going to get the answer by diving for it. Not in time, anyhow. Remember when the Navy lost a barge load of shells in the harbor back in 52? They scrambled for them for a year and never pulled up a one. They finally had to warn the public that if it found anything funny looking along the shore, it shouldn't bang said object or shake it either. We're better equipped than the Navy was then, but we're working against the deadline. If you'd admitted that earlier, Anderson said hoarsely. We'd have half a million people out of the city by now, maybe even a million. We haven't given up yet, Colonel. The point is this, Joan, what we need is an inspired guess. Get anything from the prop series Clark? I thought not. On a one shot gamble of this kind, the laws of chance are no good at all. For that matter, the so-called ESP experiments showed us long ago that even the way we construct random tables is full of holes. And that a man with a feeling for the essence of a gamble can make a monkey out of a chance almost at will. And if there ever was such a man, brawn is it. That's why I asked him to come down here. I want him to look at that lump on the screen and play a hunch. You're out of your mind, Anderson said. A decorous knock spared me the trouble of having to deny a firm or ignore the judgment. It was brawn. The messenger had been fast. And the gambler hadn't bothered to read what a college student had thought of him 15 years ago. He came forward and held out his hand, while the others looked over him frankly. He was impressive all right. It would have been hard for a stranger to believe that he was aiming at respectability. To the eye he was already there. He was tall and spare and walked perfectly erect, not without spring despite his age. His clothing was as far from that of a gambler as you could have taken it by design. A black double breasted suit with a thin vertical stripe. A gray silk tie with a pearl stick pin just barely large enough to be visible at all. A black Homburg all perfectly fitted. All worn with proper casualness. One might almost say a formal casualness. It was only when he opened his mouth that one shot brawn was in the suit with him. I came over as soon as your run had got to me he said. What's a pitch Andy? Mr brawn. This is Joan Hadamard. Clark Cheney. Colonel Anderton. I'll be quick because we need speed now. A Polish ship has dropped something out in the harbour. We don't know what it is. It may be a hellbomb or it may just be somebody's old laundry. Obviously we've got to find out which and we want you to tell us. Brawn's aristocratic eyebrows went up. Me? Hell Andy. I don't know nothing about things like that. I'm surprised with you. I thought CIA had all the brains it needed. Ain't you got machines to tell you answers like that? I pointed silently to Joan who had gone back to work the moment the introductions were over. She was still on the mic to the divers. She was saying. What does it look like? It's just a lump of something Dr Hadamard. Can't even tell its shape. It's buried too deeply in the mud. Clunk oing oing. Try the Geiger. We did. Nothing but background. Sintolation counter? Nothing Dr Hadamard. Could be a shielded. Let us do the guessing Monig. All right. Maybe it's got a clockwork fuse that didn't break with the impact or a gyroscopic fuse. Stick a stethoscope on it and see if you pick up a ticking or anything that sounds like a motor running. There was a lag and I turned back to Brawn. As you can see we're stymied. This is a long shot Mr Brawn. One throw of the dice. One show down hand. We've got to have an expert call it for us. Somebody with a record of hits on long shots. That's why I call you. It's no good he said. He took off the Homburg, took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the hat bad. I can't do it. Why not? It ain't my kind of thing he said. Look I never in my life run odds on anything that make any difference. But this makes a difference. If I guess wrong. Then we're all dead ducks. But why should you guess wrong? Your hunches have been working for 60 years now. Brawn wiped his face. No, you don't get it. I wish he'd listened to me. Look my wife and my kids are in the city. It ain't only my life. It's theirs too. That's what I care about. That's why it's no good. On things that matter to me, my hunches don't work. I was stunned. And so I could see with Joan and Cheney. I suppose I should have guessed it. But it never occurred to me. Ten minutes, Cheney said. I looked up at Brawn. He was frightened. And again, I was surprised without having any right to be. I tried to keep at least my voice calm. Please try it anyhow, Mr. Brawn. As a favour. It's already too late to do it any other way. And if you guess wrong, the outcome won't be any worse than if you don't try at all. My kids, he whispered. I don't think he knew that he was speaking aloud. I waited. Then his eyes seemed to come back to the present. All right, he said. I told you the truth, Andy. Remember that. So is it a bomb or aint it? That's what's up for grabs, right? I nodded. He closed his eyes. An unexpected stab of pure fright went down my back. Without the eyes, Brawn's face was a death mask. The water sounds and the irregular ticking of a guide encounter seemed to spring out from the audio speaker, four times as loud as before. I could even hear the pen of the Stenozmograph scribbling away. Until I looked at the instrument and saw that Clark had stopped it, probably long ago. Droplets of sweat began to form along Brawn's forehead and his upper lip. The handkerchief remained crushed in his hand. Anderton said, of all the fool, Joan said quietly. Slowly, Brawn opened his eyes. All right, he said. You guys wanted it this way. I say it's a bomb. He stared at us for a moment more. And then, all at once, the timkin-bearing burst. Words poured out of it. Now, you guys do something. Do your job like I did mine. Get my wife and kids out of there. Empty the city. Do something. Do something! Anderton was already grabbing for the phone. You all right, Mr. Brawn? If it isn't already too late. Cheney shot out a hand and caught Anderton's telephone arm by the wrist. Wait a minute, he said. What do you mean? Wait a minute. Haven't you already shot enough time? Cheney did not let go. Instead, he looked inquiringly at Joan and said, One minute, Joan. You might as well go ahead. She nodded and spoke into the mic. Monic, unscrew the cap. Unscrew the cap? The audio squawked. But Dr. Hadamard, if that sets it off, it won't go off. That's the one thing you can be sure it won't do. What is this? Anderton demanded. What's this deadline stuff anyhow? The cap's off, Monic reported. We're getting plenty of radiation now. Just a minute. Yeah, Dr. Hadamard. It's a bomb, all right. But it hasn't got a fuse. Now, how could they have made a full mistake like that? In other words, it's a dud, Joan said. That's right. It's a dud. Now, at last, Braun wiped his face, which was quite grey. I told you the truth, he said grimly. My hands just don't work along stuff like this. But they do, I said. I'm sorry we put you through the ringer. And you too, Colonel. But we couldn't let an opportunity like this slip. It was too good a chance for us to test how our facilities would stand up in a real bomb drop. A real drop? Anderton said. Are you trying to say that CIA staged this? You ought to be shot, the whole pack of you. No, not exactly, I said. The enemy's responsible for the drop, all right. We got word last month from our man in Guidina that they were going to do it. And that bomb would be on board the Ludmilla. As I say, it was too good an opportunity to miss. We wanted to find out just how long it would take us to figure out the nature of the bomb, which we didn't know in detail, after it was dropped here. So we had our people in Guidina defuse the thing after it was put on board the ship. But otherwise, leave it entirely alone. Actually, you see, your hunch was right on the button as far as it went. We didn't ask you whether or not the object was a live bomb. We asked whether it was a bomb or not. You said it was. And you were right. The expression on Braun's face was exactly like the one he had worn while he had been searching for his decision. Except that since his eyes were open, I could see that it was directed at me. If this was the old days, he said in an ice cold voice, I might have made the colonel's idea come true. I didn't go in for tricks like this, Andy. It was more than a trick, Clark put in. You'll remember we had a deadline on the test, Mr. Braun. Obviously, in a real drop, we wouldn't have all the time in the world to figure out what kind of thing had been dropped. If we had still failed to establish that when the deadline ran out, we would have had to allow evacuation of the city with all the attendant risk that that was exactly what the enemy wanted us to do. So, so we failed the test, I said. At one minute short of the deadline, Joan had the divers unscrew the cap. In a real drop, that would have resulted in a detonation if the bomb was real. We'd never risk it. That we did do it in the test was concession of failure and admission that our usual methods didn't come through for us in time. And that means that you were the only person who did come through, Mr. Braun. If a real bomb drop ever comes, we're gonna have to have you here as an active part of our investigation. Your intuition for the one-shot gamble was the one thing that bailed us out this time. Next time, it may save eight million lives. There was quite a long silence. All of us, Anderson included, watched Braun intently, but his impassive face failed to show any trace of how his thoughts were running. And he did speak at last, what he said must have seemed insanely irrelevant to Anderson and maybe to Cheney too. And perhaps it meant nothing more to Joan than the final clinical note in a case history. It's funny, he said. I was thinking of running for Congress next year from my district, but maybe this is more important. It was, I believe, the sigh of a man at peace with himself. End of One Shot by James Benjamin Blish. Out Around Rigel. 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 Anton Epp. Out Around Rigel by Robert H. Wilson. The sun had dropped behind the Grimaldi Plateau, although for a day twilight would linger over the oceanous prosal arm. The sky was a hazy blue and out over the deeper tinted waves, the full earth swung. All the long half-month it had hung there above the horizon, its light dim by the sunshine, growing from a thin crescent to its full disc, three times as broad as that of the sun at setting. Now in the dusk it was a great silver lamp hanging over Nardos the Beautiful, the city built on the water. The light glimmered over the tall white towers, over the white, 10-mile long adamantine bridge running from Nardos to the shore and lit up the beach where we were standing with the brightness that seemed almost that of day. Once more, Garth, I said, I'll get that trick yet. The skin of my bare chest still smarted from the blow of his wooden fencing sword. If it had been the real two-handed Lunarian dueling sword with this terrible mass behind a curved razor edge, the blow would have produced a cut deep into the bone. It was always the same, ever since Garth and I had fenced as boys with quick lads. Back to back we could beat the whole school, but I never had a chance against him, perhaps one time in ten. On guard. The silvered sword whirled in the earth-light. I nicked him on one wrist and had to duck to escape his wild swing at my head. The wooden blades were now locked by the hilts above our heads. When he stepped back to get free, I lunged and twisted his weapon. In a beautiful parabola, Garth's sword sailed into the water and he dropped to the sand to nurse his right wrist. Con found your wrestling denial. If you've broken my arm in the eve of my flight, it's not even a sprain, your wrists are weak, and I suppose you've always been considered of me three broken ribs, for half a cent. He was on his feet, and then Calvar came up and laid her hand on his shoulder. Until a few minutes before, she had been swimming in the surf, watching us. The earth-light shimmered over her white skin, still faintly moist, and blazed out in blue sparkles from the jewels of the breast-plates and trunks she had put on. When she touched Garth, and he smiled, I wanted to smash in his dark face and then take the beating I would deserve. Yet she preferred him. And the two of us had been friends since before she was born. I put out my hand. Whatever happens, Garth, we'll still be friends. Whatever happens, we clasped hands. Garth, Kevlar said, it's getting dark. Show us your ship before you go. All right. He had always been like that. One minute in a black rage, the next perfectly agreeable. Now he led the way up to a cliff, hanging over the sea. There, said Garth, is the comet, our greatest step in conquering distance. After I've tried it out, we can go in a year to the end of the universe. But for a starter, how about a thousand light-years around Rigel in six months? His eyes were a fire, then he calmed down. Anything I can show you? Editor's note. The manuscript, of which a translation is here presented, was discovered by the rocket ship expedition to the moon three years ago. It was found in its box by the last crumbling ruins of the great bridge mentioned in the narrative. Its final translation is a tribute at once to the phylogical skill of the earth and to the marvelous dictionary provided by Denal the Lunarian. Stars and lunar localities will be given their traditional earth names, and measures of time, weight, and distance have been reduced in round numbers to terrestrial equivalents. Of the spaceship described, the comet, no trace has been found. It must be buried under the rim of one of the hundreds of nearby lunar craters. The result, as some astronomers have long suspected, and as Denal's story verifies, of a great swarm of meteors striking the unprotected, airless moon. I had seen the comet before, but never so close. With the hull of shining helioberyllium, the new light inactive alloy of a metal and a gas, the ship was a cylinder about 20 feet long by 15 in diameter, while a pointed nose stretched five feet farther at each end. Fixed at each point was a telescopic lens. While there were windows along the sides and at the top, all made, Garth informed us, of another form of the alloy, almost as strong as the opaque variety. Running halfway around each end were four fins, which served to apply the power driving the craft. A light inside showed the cylinder to be a single room, 10 feet high at the center of its cylindrical ceiling with a level floor. How do you know this will be the bottom? I asked, giving the vessel a shove to roll it over, but it would not budge. Garth laughed. 500 pounds of mercury and the disintegrators are under that floor. While out in space, I have an auxiliary gravity engine to keep my feet there. You see, since your mathematical friends derived their identical formulas for gravity and electromagnetism, my job was pretty easy. As you know, a falling body follows the line of least resistance in a field of distortion of space caused by mass. I bend space into another such field by electromagnetic means, and a comet flies down the track. Working the mercury disintegrators at full power, I can get an acceleration of 200 miles per second, which will build up the speed at the midpoint of my trip to almost 4,000 times that of light. Then I'll have to start slowing down, but at the average speed, the journey will take only six months or so. But can anyone stand that acceleration, Kelvar asked? I've had it on and felt nothing. With the rocket exhaust shoving the ship, it couldn't be done, but my gravitational field attracts the occupant of the comet just as much as the vessel itself. You're sure, I interrupted, that you have enough power to keep up the acceleration? Easily, there's a two-thirds margin of safety. And you haven't considered that it may get harder to push? You know the increase of mass with velocity. You can't take one half of the relativity theory without the other, and they've actually measured the increase of weight in an electron. The electron never knew it. It's all a matter of reference points. I can't follow the math, but I know that from the electron standards, it stayed exactly the same weight. Anything else is nonsense. Well, there may be a flaw in the reasoning, but as they've worked it out, nothing can go faster than light. As you approach that velocity, the mass keeps increasing, and with it, the amount of energy required for a new increase in speed. At the speed of light, the mass would be infinite, and hence no finite energy could get you any further. Maybe so. It won't take long to find out. A few of the brightest stars had begun to appear. We could just see the parallelogram of Orion with red beetle juice at one corner and a cross from it, Rigel, scintillant like a blue diamond. See, Garth said, pointing at it, three months from now. That's where I'll be. The first man who dared to sail among the stars, only because you won't let anyone else share the glory and the danger. Why should I? But you wouldn't go anyway. Will you let me? I had him there. On your head be it. The comet could hold three or four in a pinch, and I have plenty of provisions. If you really want to take the chance, it wouldn't be the first we've taken together. All right, we'll start in 10 minutes. He went inside the ship. Don't go, Calvar whispered, coming into the comet's shadow. Tell him anything, but don't go. I have to. I can't go back on my word. He'd think I was afraid. Haven't you a right to be? Garth is my friend, and I'm going with him. All right, but I wish you wouldn't. From inside came the throb of engines. Calvar, I said, you didn't worry when only Garth was going. No. And there's less danger with two of us to keep watch. I know, but still. You were afraid for me? I am afraid for you. My arm slipped around her, there in the shadow. And when I come back, Calvar, we'll be married? In answer she kissed me. Then Garth was standing in the doorway of the comet. Donal, where are you? We separated and came out of the shadow. I went up the plank to the door, kicking it out behind me. Calvar waved, and I called something or other to her. Then the door clang shut, seated before the control board at the front of the room. Garth held the switch for the two projectors. Both turned up, he yelled over the roar of the generators. His hand swung over, and the noise died down. But nothing else seemed to have happened. I turned back again to look out the little window fixed in the door. Down far below I could see for a moment the city of Nardos with its great white bridge and a spot that might be Calvar. Then there was only the ocean sparkling in the earthlight, growing smaller, smaller. And then we had shot out of the atmosphere into the glare of the sun and a thousand stars. On and up we went until the moon was accrescent with stars around it. Then Garth threw the power forward. Might as well turn in, he told me, there will be nothing interesting until we get out of the solar system and I can put on real speed. I'll take the first trick. How long watches shall we stand? Eighteen hours ought to match the way we have been living. If you have another preference, no, that will be all right. And I suppose I might as well get in some sleep now. I was not really sleepy, but only dazed a little by the adventure. I fixed some things on the floor by one of the windows and lay down, switching out the light. Through a top window the sunlight slanted down to fall around Garth at his instrument board in a bright glory. From my window I could see the earth and the gleaming stars. The earth was smaller than I had ever seen it before. It seemed to be moving backward a little and even more to be changing phase. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again sleepily the bright area was perceptibly smaller. If I could stay awake long enough there would only be a crescent again, if I could stay awake, but I could not. Only the rattling of dishes as Garth prepared breakfast brought me back to consciousness. I got to my feet sheepishly. How long have I slept? Twenty hours straight. You looked as if you might have gone on forever. It's a lack of disturbance to indicate time. I got in a little myself once we were out of the solar system. A sandwich in one hand I wandered over the vessel. It was reassuringly solid and concrete and yet there was something lacking. Garth, I asked, what's become of the sun? I thought you'd want to know that. He led me to the rear telescope. But I don't see anything. You haven't caught on yet. See that bright yellowish star on the edge of the constellation Scorpio? That's it. Involuntarily I gasped. Then how far away are we? I put on full acceleration fifteen hours ago when we passed Neptune and we have covered thirty billion miles, three hundred times as far as from the moon to the sun, but only one half of one percent of a light year. I was speechless. And Garth led me back to the control board. He pointed out the acceleration control, now turned up to its last notch forward. He also showed me the dials which were used to change our direction. Just keep that star on the crosshairs. That's Pi Orionis, a little out of our course, but a good target since it is only twenty-five light years away. Half the light is deflected on this green, with a delicate photoelectric cell at its center. The instant the light of the star slips off it, a relay is started which lights a red lamp here and in a minute sounds a warning bell. That indicator over there shows our approach to any body. It works by the interaction of the object's gravitational field with that of my projector and we can spot anything sizable an hour away. Sure you've got everything? It all seemed clear. Then I noticed at the top three clock-like dials, one to read days, another to record the speeds of light, and the third to mark the light years traveled. These can't really work, I said. We have no way to check our speed without our space. Not directly. This is geared with clockwork to represent an estimate based on the acceleration. If your theory is right, then the dials are all wrong. And how long do you expect to go ahead without knowing the truth? Until we ought to be at pi orinus, at two weeks and twenty-five light years by the dials. If we aren't there, we'll start back. By your figuring, we shouldn't be yet one light year on the way. Anything more? No I think I can manage it. Wake me if anything's wrong, and look out for dark stars. Then he had left me there at the controls. In five minutes he was asleep and the whole ship was in my hands. For hours nothing happened. Without any control of mind the ship went straight ahead. I could get up and walk about, with a weather eye on the board, and never was there the flash of a danger light. But I was unable to feel confident, and went back to look out through the glass. The stars were incredibly bright and clear. Right ahead were Betelgeuse and Rigel, and the great nebula of Orion still beyond. There was no twinkling, but each star a bright, steady point of light, and if Garth's indicators were correct, we were moving toward them at a speed, now 75 times that of light itself, if they were correct. How could one know before the two long weeks were over? But before I could begin to think of any plan, my eye was caught by the red lamp flashing on the panel. I pressed the attention button before the alarm could ring, then started looking for the body we were in danger of striking. The position indicators pointed straight ahead, but I could see nothing. After ten minutes I peered through the telescope, and still no sign. The dials put the thing off a degree or so to the right now, but that was too close. In five more minutes I would swing straight up and give whatever it was a wide berth. I looked out again. In the angle between the crosshairs, wasn't there a slight haze? In a moment it was clear. A comet, apparently the two of us racing toward each other. Bigger it grew, and bigger hurtling forward. Would we hit it? The dials put it up a little and far off to the right, but it was still frightening. The other light had come on too, and I saw that we had been pulled off our course by the comet's attraction. I threw the nose over, passed on the other side for leeway, then straighten up as the side distance dial gave a big jump away. Though the gaseous globe, tailless of course away from the sun, showed as big as the full earth, the danger was passed. As I watched, the comet vanished from the field of the telescope. Five minutes perhaps, with the red danger light flickering all the time. Then with a gassed flair through the right hand windows it had passed us. Garth sat up. What happened? He yelled. Just a comet. I got by all right. He settled back, having been scarcely awake, and I turned to the board again. The danger light had gone out, but the direction indicator was burning. The near approach of the comet had thrown us off our course by several degrees. Straightened the ship up easily, and then had only a little more difficulty in stopping a rocking motion. Then again the empty hours of watching, gazing into the stars. Precisely at the end of eighteen hours Garth awakened, as if the consummation of a certain number of internal processes had set off a little alarm clock in his brain. We were forty-one hours out, with a speed, according to the indicator, of one hundred and twenty-eight times that of light, and a total distance covered a slightly over one quarter of a light year. A rather small stretch, compared to the four hundred and sixty-six light years we had to go, but when I went back for a look out of the rear telescope the familiar stars seemed to have moved, the least bit closer together, and the sun was no brighter than a great number of them. I slept like a log, but awakened a little before my trick was due. Exactly on schedule, fourteen days and some hours after we had started off, we passed Pi Orionis. For long there had been no doubt in my mind that, whatever the explanation, our acceleration was holding steady. In the last few hours the stars swept up the brilliance of the sun, then faded again until it was no brighter than Venus. Venus, our sun itself, had been a mere dot in the rear telescope until the change in our course threw it out of the field of vision. At sixty-five light years, twenty-three days out, Beta Aaron Denny was almost directly in our path for Rigel, slightly less than a third of the distance to the midpoint in over half the time, but our speed was still increasing two hundred miles per second every second, almost four times the speed of light in an hour. Our watches went on with a not altogether disagreeable monotony. There was no star to mark the middle of our journey, only toward the close of one of my watches, a blue light which I had never noticed came on beside the indicator dials, and I saw that we had covered two hundred and thirty-three light years, half the estimated distance to Rigel. The speed marker indicated three thousand nine hundred and seventy-five times the speed of light. I wakened Garth. You could have done it yourself, he complained sleepily, but I suppose it's just as well. He went over to the board and started warming up the rear gravity projector. We'll turn one off as the other one goes on. Each take one control and go a notch at a time. He began counting, one, two, three. On the twentieth count my dial was down to zero, his up to a maximum deceleration, and I pulled out my switch. Garth snapped sideways a lever on the indicators, though nothing seemed to happen. I knew that the speed dial would creep backward, and the distance dial progressed at a slower and slower rate. While I was trying to see the motion, Garth had gone back to bed. I turned again to the glass and looked out at Rigel on the crosshairs, and Kappa Orionis over to the left, and the great nebula reaching over a quarter of the view with its faint gaseous streamers. And so we swept on through space, with Rigel, a great blue gloria ahead, and new stars invisible at greater distance flaring up in front of us and then fading into the background as we passed. For a long time we had been able to see that Rigel, as inferred from spectroscopic evidence was a double star, a fainter, greener blue companion revolving with it around their common center of gravity. Beyond Kappa Orionis, three hundred light-years from the sun, the space between the two was quite evident. Beyond four hundred light-years, the brilliance of the vast star was so great that it dimmed all the other stars by comparison and made the nebula seem a mere faint gaseous. And yet, even with this gradual change, our arrival was a surprise. When he relieved me at my watch, Garth seemed dissatisfied with our progress. It must be further than they figured. I'll stick at twenty-five times light speed, and slow down after we get there by taking an orbit. I'd have said it was nearer than that estimate, I tried to argue, but was too sleepy to remember my reasons. Propbed up on one elbow, I looked around and out at the stars. There was a bright splash of light, I noticed, where the telescope concentrated the radiation of Rigel at one spot on the screen. I slept, and then Garth was shouting in my ear. Where there, I opened my eyes, blinked, and shut them again in the glare. I've gone around three or four times trying to slow down. Where there, and there's a planet to land on. At last I could see. Out the window opposite me, Rigel was a blue-white disk, half the size of the sun, but brighter, with the companion star a sort of faint reflection five or ten degrees to one side. And still beyond, as I shaded my eyes, I could see swimming in the black, a speck with the unmistakable glow of reflected light. With both gravity projectors and readiness, we pulled out of our orbit and straight across toward the planet, letting the attraction of Rigel fight against our still tremendous speed. For a while the pull of the big star was almost overpowering. Then we got past and into the gravitational field of the planet. We spiraled down into it, looking for a landing place and trying to match our speed with its rotational velocity. From rather unreliable observations the planet seemed a good deal smaller than the moon, and yet so dense as to have a greater gravitational attraction. The atmosphere was cloudless and the surface a forbidding expanse of sand. The globe whirled at a rate that must give it a day of approximately five hours. We angled down, picking a spot just within the lighted area. A landing was quite feasible. As we broke through the atmosphere we could see that the sand, although blotch with dark patches here and there, was comparatively smooth. At one place there was a level outcropping of rock, and over this we hung. It was hard work watching through the single small port in the floor as we settled down. Finally the view was too small to be of any use. I ran to the side window only to find my eyes blinded by Rigel's blaze. Then we had landed, and almost at the same moment Rigel set. Half overlapped by the greater star, the faint companion had been hidden in its glare. Now in the dusk a corner of it hung ghost-like on the horizon, and then too had disappeared. I flashed on our lights while Garth cut out the projector and the floor gravity machine. The increase in weight was apparent, but not particularly unpleasant. After a few minutes of walking up and down, I got used to it. Through a stopcock in the wall Garth had drawn in a tube of gas from the atmosphere outside and was analyzing it with a spectroscope. We can go out, he said. It's unbreathable, but we'll be able to use the space suits. Mostly fluorine. It would eat your lungs out like that. And the suits? Fortunately, they've been covered with Helioberyllium paint, and the helmet glass is the same stuff. Not even that atmosphere can touch it. I suppose there can be no life on the place. With all this sand it would have to be based on silicon instead of carbon, and it would have to breathe fluorine. He got out the suits, rather like a divers with the body of metal painted cloth, and the helmet of the metal itself. On the shoulders was an air supply cylinder. The helmets were fixed with radio, so we could have talked to each other even in airless space. We said almost anything to try it out. Glad you brought two, and we don't have to explore in shifts. Yes, I was prepared for emergencies. Shall we wait for daylight to go out? I can't see why, and these outfits will probably feel better in the cool. Let's see. We shot a searchlight beam out the window. There was a slight drop down from the rock where we rested, then the sandy plains stretching out. Only far off were those dark patches that looked like old seaweed on a dried-up ocean bed, and might prove dangerous footing. The rest seemed hard-packed. My heart was pounding as we went into the airlock and fastened the inner door behind us. We go straight out now, Garth explained. Coming back it will be necessary to press this button and let the pump get rid of the poisonous air before going in. I opened the outer door and started to step out, then realized that there was a five-foot drop to the ground. Go ahead and jump, Garth said. There's a ladder inside I should have brought, but it would be too much trouble to go back through the lock for it. Either of us can jump eight feet at home, and we'll get back up somehow. I jumped, failing to allow for the slightly greater gravity and fell sprawling. Garth got down more successfully in spite of a long package of some sort he carried in his hand. Scrambling down from the cliff and walking out on the sand, I tried to get used to the combination of greater weight and the awkward suit. If I stepped very deliberately it was all right, but an attempt to run sank my feet in the sand and brought me up staggering. There was no trouble seeing through the glass of my helmet over wide angles. Standing on the elevation by the comet, his space suit shining in the light from the windows, Garth looked like a metallic monster, some creature of this strange world. And I must have presented him much the same appearance, silhouetted, dark and forbidding against the stars. The stars I looked up and beheld the most marvelous sight of the whole trip. The great nebula of Orion seemed from a distance of less than 150 light-years its own width. A great luminous curtain, 50 degrees across, I could just take it all in with my eye. The central brilliancy as big as the sun, a smaller one above it, and then the whole mass of gas stretching over the sky, the whole thing aglow with the green light of nebulum and blazing with the stars behind it. It was dependis beyond words. I started to call Garth, then saw that he was looking up as well. For almost half an hour I watched as the edge of the nebula sank below the horizon. Then its light began to dim, turning I saw that the sky opposite was already gray, the dawn. Why the sun had just set, then I realized. It was over an hour since we were landed, and a full night would be scarcely two hours and a half. If we were in a summer latitude, the shorter period of darkness was natural enough. Yet it was still hard to believe as, within 10 minutes, it was as bright as Earth's light on the moon. Still clearer and clearer grew the light. The stars were almost gone, the center of the nebula only a faint wisp. There were no clouds that give the colors of sunrise, but a bluish-white radiance seemed to be trembling on the eastern horizon. And then, like a shot, Rigel came up into the sky. The light and heat struck me like something solid, and I turned away, even with my suit reflecting most of the light away I felt noticeably warm. The comet shone like a blinding mirror, so that it was almost impossible to see Garth on the plane below it. Stumbling and shielding my eyes with my hand, I made my way toward him. He was standing erect. In his hands, two old Lunarian-dueling swords, there was hate in his voice as the ray you brought it to my ears. Danal, only one of us is going back to the moon. I stared. Was the heat getting him? Hadn't we better go inside, I said, quietly and somewhat soothingly? He made no reply, but only held out one of the hilt's. I took it, dumbly. In that instant he could have struck my head from my body if he wished. But Garth, old friend. No friend to you. You shall win Calvar now, or I. I'm giving you a sporting chance. One of your light cuts letting the flooring inside will be as deadly as anything I can do. The one who does go back will tell of an accident, making repairs out in space. Damn you, if you don't want me to kill you where you stand, come on and fight. Garth, you've gone mad. I've been waiting ever since I got you here to leave the moon, on guard. With the rush of anger I was upon him, he tried to step back, stumbled, had one knee to the ground, then hurled himself forward with a thrust at my waist that I dodged only by an inch. I had to cover, and in spite of myself, with the cool work of peering, my animosity began to disappear. And so began one of the strangest battles that the universe has ever seen. Lumbering with our suits and the extra gravity, we circled each other under the blazing sky. The blue-white of Rigel shimmered off our suits and the arcs of our blades as well as we cut and guarded, each wary now realizing that a touch meant death. As that terrible sun climbed upward in the sky, its heat was almost overpowering. The sweat poured off every inch of my body, and I gasped for breath, and still we fought on, two glittering metal monsters under the big blue star sweeping up to its noon. I knew now that I could never kill Garth. I could not go back to Calvar with his blood, yet if I simply defended sooner or later he would wear me down. There was just one chance. If I could disarm him, I could rustle him into submission, then he might be reasonable, or I could take him homebound. I began leading for the opening I wanted, but with no result. He seemed resolved to tire me out. Either I must carry the fight to him, or I would be beaten down. I made a wide opening, counting on dodging his slow stroke. I did, but he recovered too soon. Again on the other side, with no better result. Still again, just getting in for a light tap on Garth's helmet. Then I stepped back, with guard low, and this time he came on. The sword rose in a gleaming arc, and hung high for a moment. I had him. There were sparks of clashing, locked steel. Damn you, Donal. He took a great step back, narrowly keeping his balance on the sand. On another chance I would trip him. My ears were almost deafened by his roar. Come on and fight. I took a step in and to the side, and had him in the sun. He swung blindly, trying to cover himself with his whirling point, but I had half a dozen openings to rip his suit. When he moved to try to see, I would lock with him again. I watched his feet. And as I watched, I saw an incredible thing. Near one of Garth's feet, the sand was moving. It was not a slide caused by his weight. Rather, why, it was being pushed up from below. There was a little hump, and suddenly it had burst open, and a stringy mass, like seaweed, was crawling towards his leg. Look out, Garth, I yelled. How he could see through that terrible sun I do not know, but Garth swung through my forgotten guard with a blow square across my helmet glass. The force threw me to the ground, and I looked up, dazed. The beryllium glass had not broken to let in the fluorine filled air, but Garth was standing over me. That's your last trick, Donal. His blade rose for the kill. I was unable even to get up, but with one hand I pointed to the ground. Look, I shouted again, and on the instant the thing wound itself around Garth's foot. He swung down, hacking it loose. I had got to my feet. Run for the ship, I cried, and started off. Not that way. I looked back, and saw that I had run in the wrong direction, but it made no difference. Over a whole circle around us the sand was rising, and directly between us and the comet there was a great green-brown mass. We were surrounded. We stood staring at the creatures. Spread out to full dimensions each one made a sphere about four feet in diameter. In the center a solid mass whose outlines were difficult to discern, and spreading out from this a hundred long, thin, many-jointed arms, or legs, or branches, or whatever one would call them. The things were not yet definitely hostile. Only their circle, of perhaps fifty yards radius, grew continually thicker and more impenetrable. In the enclosed area the only ripples we could see in the sand were heading outward. There was to be no surprise attack from below at least, only one in mass. What I wondered might be the sign of friendship, to persuade them to let us go. And then the circle began to close in. The things rolled over and over and over on themselves, like gigantic tumbleweeds. At one point to the right of the direct route to the comet, the line seemed thinner. I pointed the place out to Garth. Take through there, and make a run for it. We charged into the midst of them with swinging blades. The very suddenness of our rush carried us halfway through their midst. Then something had my legs from behind. I almost fell, but succeeded in turning and cutting myself free. The creatures from the other side of the circle must have made the hundred yards in four or five seconds, and the rest had now covered the breach in front. It was hopeless. And so we stood back to back, hewing out a circle of protection against our enemies. They seemed to have no fear, and in spite of the destruction our blades worked among them, they almost overcame us by sheer numbers and weight. It was a case of whirling our swords back and forth interminably in the midst of their tentacles. Against the light the long arms were a half-transparent brown. Our swords broke them in bright slivers. Formed from the predominant silicon of the planet, the creatures were living glass. For perhaps a quarter of an hour we're in the thick of them, hewing until I thought my arms must fall, slashing and tearing at the ones that I had got underfoot and were clamping their tentacles around our legs. Only for the spacesuits we should have by this time been overpowered and torn into bits, and yet these garments could not be expected to hold on indefinitely. But at last there was a breathing space. The crippled front ranks dragged themselves away, and there was left around us a brief area of sand, covered with coarsicating splinters of glass. Gareth got the breath to say something or other encouraging. It was like the old days at school. Only this time the odds were all against us. We were still a good hundred yards from the comet, and in our paths stood a solid wall of the creatures. Even if we got free they could outrace us to the goal. And with our limited strength we could not hope to kill them all. In a minute or two they would attack us again. Somehow we must fight our way as long as we lasted. Perhaps they might be frightened. We threw ourselves at the side next to our goal. The line gave perhaps a yard, then stiffened, and we found ourselves swallowed up in a thick cloud of brown smoke. Poisoned gas. It must be shot out of their bodies, at a cost so great that it was kept as a last resort. Through the rolling vapor it was just possible to see our opponents, but they made no forward move. They were waiting for us to be overcome. Suppose their compound could eat through even our helioberyllium, but it did not. We were safe. Stand still, Garth, I whispered, counting on the radio to carry my voice. Let them think we're dead, and then give them a surprise. All right. Long, long minutes. If only they did not know that it was the customary thing for a dead man to fall. Slowly they began to move in. Then Garth and I were upon them. They halted as if stupefied. We had hacked our way through half their mass. The rest fled, and we began running toward the comet, praying that we might reach the ship before they could get organized again, how we floundered through the sand in wild and desperate haste. Before we had covered half the distance, the pursuit began. There was no attempt to drag us down directly, but the two wings raced past to cut us off in front. At the base of the little cliff where the comet lay, the circle closed. Jump, I called, and threw myself up over them toward the stone. Garth would have fallen back, but I cut his hand and pulled him to safety. We had won. But had we joined by reinforcements from somewhere, the creatures were packed all around the base of the cliff and had begun to climb its walls, to cut us off from the ship. We rushed separately toward the two sides, and they backed away, but those in front were now established on the top. We stepped backward, and the whole line came on, but now we turned and ran for the comet. We were just able to turn again and clear them away with our swords. In a moment others would be climbing up from behind over the ship, and the door to safety was on a level with our heads. There was just one chance. Stamping threateningly, we cleared the things out for ten feet in front of us, but once we turned our backs for a running start, they were at us again. Boost you up, Donal, said Garth pantingly. No, you first. But in the midst of my words he almost threw me into the doorway. I turned to pull him up after me. They were around his legs, and one had jumped down on his helmet. He must have known it would happen. Go back to her, he cried, and slam shut the door. There was no time to help him, to interfere with the way of expiation he had chosen. I tried to look away, but a sort of fascination kept me watching him through the glass. He had been dragged to his knees. Then he was up again, whirling to keep them away on all sides in a mad, gallant fight. But the creatures knew it was the kill. Now they were around his knees, now up to his waist in their overpowering mass. It was only a matter of minutes. Garth took a staggering step backwards, dragging them all with him. He was facing me, and swung up his sword in the old lunar salute. Good luck, Donal. The words coming clearly over the radio had a note of exaltation. Then flashing his blade over his head, he turned it into the midst of the accursed things. With a tremendous effort Garth tore the protecting helmet from his head and plunged backward over the cliff. There was nothing to do but get in out of the lock and start for home, and little on the trip is worthy of recounting. Without unsurpassable difficulty I was able to operate the machinery in steer, first for Betelgeuse, then for the sun. Counting on the warning bells to arouse me, I managed to get in snatches of sleep at odd intervals. At times the strain of the long watches was almost maddening. By the time the midpoint had passed I was living in a sort of waking dream, or rather a state of synambulism. I ate, my hands moved the controls, and yet all the while my mind was wandering elsewhere. Out to Garth's body under the blazing light of Rigel, back to the moon and Calvar, or else in an unreal, shadowy world of dreams and vague memories. With perfect mechanical accuracy I entered the solar system and adjusted the projectors for the sun's attraction. Running slower and slower I watched Venus glide by, and then gradually everything faded, and I was walking along the great Nardo's bridge with Calvar. The ocean was so still that we could see mirrored in it the reflection of each white column, and our own faces peering down, and beyond that the stars. I shall bring you a handful for your hair, I told her, and leaned over, farther, farther, reaching out. Then I was falling, with Calvar's face growing fainter, and in my ears a horrible ringing like the world coming to an end. Just before I could strike the water I wakened to find the alarm bell jangling, and the object indicator light flashing away. Through the telescope the moon was large in the sky. It was an hour, perhaps two, before I approached the sun's surface and hovered over the shore by Nardo's. Try as I would, my sleep-drug body could not handle the controls delicately enough to get the comet quite in step with the moon's rotation. Always a little too fast, or a little too slow. I slid down until I was only 10 or 15 feet off the ground that seemed to be moving out from under me. In another minute I should be above the water. I let everything go, and the comet fell. There was a thud, a sound of scraping over the sand, a list to one side. I thought for an instant that the vessel was going to turn over, but with the weight of the reserve mercury in the fuel tanks it managed to write itself on a slope of 10 or 15 degrees. From the angle I could barely see out the windows, and everything looked strange. The water under the bridge seemed too low. The half-full earth had greenish black spots on it, and the sky? So dead with sleep that I could scarcely move I managed to cram my neck around to see better. There was no sky, only a faint gray haze through which the stars shone, and yet the sun must be shining. I stretched still further. There the sun burned, and around it was an unmistakable corona. It was like airless space. Was I dreaming again? With a jerk I got to my feet and climbed up the sloping floor to the atmosphere tester. My fingers slipped off the stopcock, then turned it, and the air pressure needle scarcely moved. It was true. Somehow, as the scientists had always told us would be the case, eventually the air of the moon with so little gravity to hold it back had evaporated into space. But in six months it was unthinkable. Surely someone had survived the catastrophe. Some people must have been able to keep themselves alive in caves where the last of the atmosphere would linger. Calvary must still be alive. I could find her and bring her to the comet. We would go to some other world. Frantically I pulled on my spacesuit and clambered through the airlock. I ran until the cumbersome suit slowed me down to a staggering walk through the sand beside the oceanus procellarum. Ledin and Dahl, the great sea lay undisturbed by the thin atmosphere still remaining, it had shrunk by evaporation far away from its banks, and where the water once had been there was a dark incrustation of impurities. On the land side all was a great white plain of glittering alkali without a sign of vegetation. I went on toward Nardos, the beautiful. Even from far off I could see that it was desolate, visible now that the water had gone down. The pillars supporting it rose gaunt and skeletal. Towers had fallen in, and the gleaming white was dimmed. It was a city of the dead, under an earth leprous looking with black spots where the clouds apparently had parted. I came nearer to Nardos and the bridge, nearer to the spot where I had last seen Calvary. Below the old water level the columns showed a greenish stain, and halfway out the whole structure had fallen in a great gap. I reached the land terminus of the span, still glorious and almost beautiful in its ruins. Full blocks of stone had fallen to the sand, and the adamantine pillars were cracked and crumbling with the erosion of ages. Then I knew. In our argument as to the possible speed of the comet, Garth and I had both been right. In our reference frame the vessel had put on an incredible velocity and covered the nine hundred odd light years around Rigel in six months, but from the viewpoint of the moon it had been unable to attain a velocity greater than that of light. As the accelerating energy pressed the vessel's speed closer and closer toward that limiting velocity, the mass of the ship and its contents had increased toward infinity. In trying to move laboriously with such vast mass, our clocks and bodies had been slowed down until to our leaden minds a year of moon time became equivalent to several hours. The comet had attained an average velocity of perhaps one hundred and seventy-five thousand miles per second, and the voyage that seemed to me six months had taken a thousand years. A thousand years the words went ringing through my brain. Calvary had been dead for a thousand years. I was alone in a world uninhabited for centuries. I threw myself down and battered my head in the sand. More to achieve, somehow, my own peace of mind than in any hope of its being discovered, I have written this narrative. There are two copies, this to be placed in a heliobrillion box at the terminus of the bridge, the other within the comet. One at least should thus be able to escape the meteors which, unimpeded by the thin atmosphere, have begun to strike everywhere, tearing up great craters in the explosion that follows as a result of the impact. My time is nearly up. Air is still plentiful in the comet, but my provisions will soon run short. It is now slightly over a month since I collapsed on the sands into merciful sleep, and I possess food and water for perhaps another. But why go on in my terrible loneliness? Sometimes I waken from a dream in which they are all so near, Calvary, Garth, all my old companions, and for a moment I cannot realize how far away they are, beyond years and years, and I, trampling back and forth over the dust of our old life, staring across the waste, waiting for what? No, I shall wait only until dark. When the sun drops over the Grimaldi Plateau, I shall put my manuscripts in their safe places, then tear off my helmet and join the other two. An hour ago the bottom edge of the sun touched the horizon. End of Out Around Rigel by Robert H. Wilson