 Hellhounds of the Cosmos by Clifford D. Simac. Reading by Greg Marguerite. Hellhounds of the Cosmos by Clifford D. Simac. Weird are the conditions of the interdimensional struggle faced by Dr. White's 99 Men. The paper had gone to press graphically describing the latest of the many horrible events which had been enacted upon the earth in the last six months. The headlines screamed that six corners—a little hamlet in Pennsylvania—had been wiped out by the horror. Another front-page story told of a terror in the Amazon Valley which had sent the natives down the river in babbling fear. Other stories told of deaths here and there, all attributable to the black horror as it was called. The telephone rang. Hello? said the editor. London Calling came the voice of the operator. All right! replied the editor. He recognized the voice of Terry Masters, special correspondent. His voice came clearly over the transatlantic telephone. The horror is attacking London in force, he said. There are thousands of them and they have completely surrounded the city. All roads are blocked. The government declared the city under martial rule a quarter of an hour ago and efforts are being made to prepare for resistance against the enemy. Just a second, the editor shouted into the transmitter. He touched a button on his desk and in a moment an answering buzz told him he was in communication with the press room. Stop the presses! he yelled into the speaking tube. Get ready for a new front makeup. OK! came faintly through the tube and the editor turned back to the phone. Now let's have it, he said, and the voice at the London end of the wire droned on, telling the story that in another half hour was read by a world which shuddered in cold fear even as it scanned the glaring headlines. Woods, said the editor of the press to a reporter, run over and talk to Dr. Silas White. He phoned me to send someone, something about this horror business. Henry Woods rose from his chair without a word and walked from the office. As he passed the wire machine it was tapping out with a maddeningly methodical slowness the story of the fall of London. Only half an hour before it had wrapped forth the flashes concerning the attack on Paris and Berlin. He passed out of the building into a street that was swarming with terrified humanity. Six months of terror, of numerous mysterious deaths of villages blotted out had set the world on edge. Now with London in possession of the horror and Paris and Berlin fighting hopelessly for their lives the entire population of the world was half insane with fright. Exhorters on street corners enlarged upon the end of the world asking that the people prepare for eternity attributing the horror to the act of a supreme being enraged with the wickedness of the earth. Expecting every moment an attack by the horror people left their work and gathered in the streets. Traffic in places had been blocked for hours and law and order were practically paralyzed. Commerce and transportation were disrupted as fright-ridden people fled from the larger cities seeking doubtful hiding places in rural districts from the death that stalked the land. A loudspeaker in front of a music store blared forth the latest news flashes. It has been learned, came the measured tones of the announcer, that all communication with Berlin has ceased about ten minutes ago. At Paris all efforts to hold the horror at bay have been futile. Explosives blow it apart but have the same effect upon it as explosion has on gas. It flies apart and then reforms again, not always in the same shape as it was before. A new gas, one of the most deadly ever conceived by man, has failed to have any effect on the things. Electric guns and heat guns have absolutely no effect upon them. A news flash which has just come in from Rome says that a large number of the horrors has been sighted north of that city by airmen. It seems they are attacking the capitals of the world first. Word comes from Washington that every known form of defense is being amassed at that city. New York is also preparing. Henry Woods fought his way through the crowd which milled in front of the loudspeaker. The hum of excitement was giving away to silence, the silence of a stunned people, the fearful silence of a populace facing a presence it is unable to understand, and embattled world standing with useless weapons before an incomprehensible enemy. In despair the reporter looked about for a taxi, but realized with a groan of resignation that no taxi could possibly operate in that crowded street. A street car, blocked by the stream of humanity which jostled an elbow to bout it, stood still. A defeated thing. Seemingly the only man with a definite purpose in that whirlpool of terror-stricken men and women, the newspaper man settled down to the serious business of battling his way through the swarming street. Before I go into the crux of the matter, said Dr. Silas White about half an hour later, let us first review what we know of this so-called horror. Suppose you tell me exactly what you know of it. Henry Woods shifted uneasily in his chair. Why didn't the old fool get down to business? The chief would raise hell if this story didn't make the regular addition. He stole a glance at his wristwatch. There was still almost an hour left. Maybe he could manage it if the old chap would only snap into it. I know no more, he said, than his common knowledge. The gimlet eyes of the old white-haired scientist regarded the newspaper man sharply. And that is, he questioned. There was no way out of it, thought Henry. He'd have to humor the old fellow. The horror, he replied, appeared on earth so far as the knowledge of man is concerned about six months ago. Dr. White nodded approvingly. You state the facts very aptly, he said. How so? When you say so far as the knowledge of man is concerned. Why is that? You will understand in due time. Please proceed. Vaguely the newspaper man wondered whether he was interviewing the scientist or the scientist was interviewing him. They were first reported, would said, early this spring. At that time they wiped out a small village in the province of Quebec. All the inhabitants, except a few fugitives, were found dead, killed mysteriously, and half eaten as if by wild beasts. The fugitives were demented, babbling of black shapes that swept down out of the dark forest upon the little town in the small hours of the morning. The next that was heard of them was about a week later when they struck in an isolated rural district in Poland, killing and feeding on the population of several farms. In the next week more villages were wiped out in practically every country on the face of the earth. From the hinterlands came tales of murder done at midnight, of men and women horribly mangled, of livestock slaughtered, of buildings crushed as if by some titanic force. At first they worked only at night and then, seeming to become bolder and more numerous, attacked in broad daylight. The newspaper man paused. Is that what you want? he asked. That's part of it, replied Dr. White. But that's not all. What do these horrors look like? That's more difficult, said Henry. They have been reported as every conceivable sort of monstrosity. Some are large and others are small. Some take the forms of animals, others of birds and reptiles, and some are cast in appalling shapes, such as might be snatched out of the horrid imagery of a thing which resided in a world entirely alien to our own. Dr. White rose from his chair and strode across the room to confront the other. Young man, he asked. Do you think it is possible the horror might have come out of a world entirely alien to our own? I don't know, replied Henry. I know that some of the scientists believe they came from some other planet, perhaps even from some other solar system. I know they are like nothing ever known before on Earth. They are always inky black, something like black tar, you know, sort of sticky looking, a disgusting sight. The weapons of mankind can't affect them. Explosives are useless and so are projectiles. They waved through poison gas and fiery chemicals and seemed to enjoy them. Elaborate electrical barriers have failed. Heat doesn't make them turn a hair. And do you think they came from some other planet, perhaps some other solar system? I don't know what to think, said Henry. If they came out of space they must have come in some conveyance and that would certainly have been cited, picked up long before it arrived by our astronomers. If they came in small conveyances there must have been many of them. If they came in a single conveyance it would be too large to escape detection, that is, unless, unless what? snapped the scientist. Unless it traveled at the speed of light then it would have been invisible. Not only invisible, snorted the old man, but non-existent. A question was on the tip of the newspaper man's tongue, but before it could be asked the old man was speaking again, asking a question. Can you imagine a fourth dimension? No, I can't, said Henry. Can you imagine a thing of only two dimensions? Vaguely, yes. The scientist smote his palms together. Now we're coming to it, he exclaimed. Henry Woods regarded the other narrowly. The old man must be turned. What did fourth and second dimensions have to do with the horror? Do you know anything about evolution? questioned the old man. I have a slight understanding of it. It is the process of upward growth, the stairs by which simple organisms climb to become more complex organisms. Dr. White grunted and asked still another question. Do you know anything about the theory of the exploding universe? Have you ever noted the tendency of the perfectly balanced to run amuck? The reporter rose slowly to his feet. Dr. White, he said. You phoned my paper. You had a story for us. I came here to get it, but all you have done is ask me questions. If you can't tell me what you want to publish, I will say good day. The doctor put forth a hand that shook slightly. Sit down, young man, he said. I don't blame you for being impatient, but I will now come to my point. The newspaper man sat down again. I have developed a hypothesis, said Dr. White, and have conducted several experiments which seem to bear it out. I am staking my reputation upon the supposition that it is correct. Not only that, but I am also staking the lives of several brave men who believe implicitly in me and my theory. After all, I suppose it makes little difference for, if I fail, the world is doomed. If I succeed, it is saved from complete destruction. Have you ever thought that our evolutionists might be wrong? That evolution might be downward instead of upward? The theory of the exploding universe, the belief that all creation is running down, being thrown off balance by the loss of energy, spurred onward by cosmic accidents which tend to disturb its equilibrium to a time when it will run wild and space will be filled with swirling dust of disintegrated worlds would bear out this contention. This does not apply to the human race. There is no question that our evolution is upward, that we have arisen from one-celled creatures wallowing in the slime of primal seas. Our case is probably paralleled by thousands of other intelligences on far-flung planets and island universes. These instances, however, running at cross-purpose to the general evolutionary trend of the entire cosmos are mere flashes in the eventual course of cosmic evolution, comparing no more to eternity than a split second does to a million years. Taking these instances, then, as inconsequential, let us say that the trend of cosmic evolution is downward rather than upward, from complex units to simpler units rather than from simple units to more complex ones. Let us say that life and intelligence have degenerated. How would you say such a degeneration would take place? In just what way would it be manifested? What sort of transition would life pass through in passing from one stage to a lower one? Just what would be the nature of these stages? The scientist's eyes glowed brightly as he bent forward in his chair. The newspaper man said simply, I have no idea. Man! cried the old man. Can't you see that it would be a matter of dimensions? From the fourth dimension to the third, from the third to the second, from the second to the first, from the first to a questionable existence or plane which is beyond our understanding, or perhaps to oblivion and the end of life, might not the fourth have evolved from a fifth, the fifth from a sixth, the sixth from a seventh, and so on, to no one knows what multi-dimension. Dr. White paused to allow the other man to grasp the importance of his statements. Woods failed lamentably to do so. But what has this to do with the horror? he asked. Have you absolutely no imagination? shouted the old man. Why, I suppose I have, but I seem to fail to understand. We are facing an invasion of fourth-dimensional creatures, the old man whispered, almost as if fearful to speak the words aloud. We are being attacked by life which is one dimension above us in evolution. We are fighting, I tell you, a tribe of hellhounds out of the cosmos. They are unthinkably above us in the matter of intelligence. There is a chasm of knowledge between us so wide and so deep that it staggers the imagination. They regard us as mere animals, perhaps not even that. So far as they are concerned, we are just fodder, something to be eaten as we eat vegetables and cereals or the flesh of domesticated animals. Perhaps they have watched us for years, watching life on the world increase, lapping their monstrous jowls over the fattening of the earth. They have awaited the proper setting of the banquet table, and now they are dining. Their thoughts are not our thoughts. Their ideals not our ideals. Perhaps they have nothing in common with us except the primal basis of all life, self-preservation, the necessity of feeding. Maybe they have come of their own free will. I prefer to believe that they have. Perhaps they are merely following the natural course of events, obeying some immutable law legislated by some higher being who watches over the cosmos and dictates what shall be and what shall not be. If this is true, it means that there has been a flaw in my reasoning. For I believed that the life of each plane degenerated in company with the degeneration of its plane of existence, which would obey the same evolution laws which govern the life upon it. I am quite satisfied that this invasion is a well-planned campaign, that some fourth-dimensional race has found a means of breaking through the veil of force which separates its plane from ours. But, pointed out Henry Woods, you say they are fourth-dimensional things. I can't see anything about them to suggest an additional dimension. They are plainly three-dimensional. Of course they are three-dimensional. They would have to be to live in this world of three dimensions. The only two-dimensional objects which we know of in this world are merely illusions, projections of the third dimension like a shadow. It is impossible for more than one dimension to live on any single plane. To attack us they would have to lose one dimension. This they have evidently done. You can see how utterly ridiculous it would be for you to try to attack a two-dimensional thing so far as you were concerned it would have no mass. The same is true of the other dimensions. Similarly a being of a lesser plane could not harm an inhabitant of a higher plane. It is apparent that while the horror has lost one material dimension, it has retained certain fourth-dimensional properties which make it invulnerable to the forces at the command of our plane. The newspaper man was now sitting on the edge of his chair. But he asked breathlessly, it all sounds so hopeless what can be done about it. Dr. White hitched his chair closer and his fingers closed with a fierce grasp upon the other's knee. A militant boom came into his voice. My boy, he said, we are about to strike back. We are going to invade the fourth-dimensional plane of these hellhounds. We are going to make them feel our strength. We are going to strike back. Henry Wood sprang to his feet. How, he shouted, have you? Dr. White nodded. I have found a way to send the third-dimensional into the fourth. Come, and I will show you. The machine was huge, but it had an appearance of simple construction. A large rectangular block of what appeared to be a strange black metal was set on end and flanked on each side by two smaller ones. On the top of the large block was set a half-globe of a strange substance, somewhat, Henry thought, like frosted glass. On one side of the large cube was set a lever, a long-glass panel, two vertical tubes, and three clock-face indicators. The control board it appeared was relatively simple. Beside the mass of the five rectangles, on the floor was a large plate of transparent substance, ground to a concave surface, through which one could see an intricate tangle of wire mesh. Hanging from the ceiling directly above the one on the floor was another concave disk, but this one had a far more pronounced curvature. Wires connected the two disks, and each, in turn, was connected to the rectangular machine. It is a matter of the proper utilization of two forces, electrical and gravitational, proudly explained Dr. White. Those two forces properly used warp the third-dimensional into the fourth. A reverse process is used to return the object of the third. The principle of the machine is the old man was about to launch into a lengthy discussion, but Henry interrupted him. A glance at his watch had shown him press time was drawing perilously close. Just a second, he said, you propose to warp a third-dimensional being into a fourth dimension. How can a third-dimensional thing exist there? You said a short time ago that only a specified dimension could exist on one single plane. You have missed my point, snapped Dr. White. I am not sending a third-dimensional thing to a fourth dimension. I am changing the third-dimensional being into a fourth-dimensional being. I add a dimension, and automatically the being exists on a different plane. I am reversing evolution. This third dimension we now exist on evolved millions of eons ago from a fourth dimension. I am sending a lesser entity back over those millions of eons to a plane similar to one upon which his ancestors lived inconceivably long ago. But, man, how do you know you can do it? The doctor's eyes gleamed, and his fingers reached out to press a bell. A servant appeared almost at once. Bring me a dog, snapped the old man. The servant disappeared. Young man, said Dr. White, I am going to show you how I know I can do it. I have done it before. Now I am going to do it for you. I have sent dogs and cats back to the fourth dimension and return them safely to this room. I can do the same with men. The servant reappeared, carrying in his arms a small dog. The doctor stepped to the control board of his strange machine. All right, George, he said. The servant had evidently worked with the old man enough to know what was expected of him. He stepped close to the floor-disc and waited. The dog whined softly, sensing that all was not exactly right. The old scientist slowly shoved the lever toward the right, and as he did so a faint hum filled the room, rising to a stupendous roar as he advanced the lever. From both floor-disc and upper-disc leaped strange cones of blue light which met midway to form an hourglass shape of brilliance. The light did not waver or sparkle. It did not glow. It seemed hard and brittle, like straight bars of force. The newspaper man, gazing with awe upon it, felt that terrific force was there. What had the old man said? Warp a third-dimensional being into another dimension that would take a force. As he watched petrified by the spectacle, the servant stepped forward and, with a flip, tossed the little dog into the blue light. The animal could be discerned for a moment through the light, and then it disappeared. Looking to the globe, shouted the old man, and Henry jerked his eyes from the column of light to the half-globe atop the machine, he gasped. In the globe, deep within its milky center, glowed a picture that made his brain real as he looked upon it. It was a scene such as no man could have imagined unaided. It was a horribly distorted projection of an eccentric landscape, a landscape hardly analogous to anything on earth. That's the fourth dimension, sir, said the servant. That's not the fourth dimension the old man corrected him. That's a third-dimensional impression of the fourth dimension. It is no more the fourth dimension than a shadow is three-dimensional. It, like a shadow, is merely a projection. It gives us a glimpse of what the fourth plane is like. It's a shadow of that plane. Slowly a dark blotch began to grow in the landscape. Slowly it assumed definite form. It puzzled the reporter. It looked familiar. He could have sworn he had seen it somewhere before. It was alive, for it had moved. That, sir, is the dog. George volunteered. That was the dog. Dr. White again corrected him. God knows what it is now. He turned to the newspaper man. Have you seen enough? He demanded. Henry nodded. The other slowly began to return to lever to its original position. The roaring subsided. The light faded. The projection in the half-globe grew fainter. How are you going to use it? asked the newspaper man. I have ninety-eight men who have agreed to be projected into the fourth dimension to seek out the entities that are attacking us and attack them in turn. I shall send them out in an hour. Where is there a phone? asked the newspaper man. In the next room replied Dr. White. As the reporter dashed out of the door, the light faded entirely from between the two disks and on the lower one a little dog crouched, quivering, softly whimpering. The old man stepped from the controls and approached the disk. He scooped the little animal from where it lay into his arms and patted the silky head. Good dog, he murmured, and the creature snuggled close to him, comforted, already forgetting that horrible place from which it had just returned. Is everything ready, George? asked the old man. Yes, sir, replied the servant. The men are already, even anxious to go. If you ask me, sir, they are a tough lot. They are as brave a group of men as ever graced the earth, replied the scientist gently. They are adventurers, every one of whom has faced danger and will not shrink from it. They are born fighters. My one regret is that I have not been able to secure more like them. A thousand men such as they should be able to conquer any opponent. It was impossible. The others were poor, soft fools. They laughed in my face. They thought I was an old fool, I, the man who alone stands between them and utter destruction. His voice had risen to almost a scream, but it again sank to a normal tone. I may be sending ninety-eight brave men to instant death. I hope not. You can always jerk them back, sir, suggested George. Maybe I can, maybe not, murmured the old man. Henry Woods appeared in the doorway. When do we start? he asked. We exclaimed the scientist. Certainly you don't believe you're going to leave me out of this. Why, man, it's the greatest story of all time. I'm going as special war correspondent. They believed it. They were going to publish it. Cried the old man, clutching at the newspaper man's sleeve. Well, the editor was skeptical at first, but after I swore on all sorts of oaths it was true he aided up. Maybe you think that story didn't stop the presses? I didn't expect them to. I just took a chance. I thought they too would laugh at me. But when do we start? persisted Henry. You are really in earnest. You really want to go? asked the old man, unbelievingly. I am going. Try to stop me. Dr. White glanced at his watch. We will start in exactly thirty-four minutes, he said. Ten seconds to go. George, standing with watch in hand, spoke in a precise manner, the very crispness of his words betraying the excitement under which he labored. The blue light hissing drove from disc to disc. The room thundered with the roar of the machine before which stood Dr. White, his hands on the lever, his eyes glued on the instruments before him. In a line stood the men who were to fling themselves into the light to be warped into another dimension, there to seek out and fight an unknown enemy. The line was headed by a tall man with hands like hams, with a weather-beaten face and a wild mop of hair. Behind him stood a belligerent little cockney. Henry Wood stood fifth in line. They were a motley lot, adventurers every one of them, and some were obviously afraid as they stood before that column of light with only a few seconds of the third dimension left to them. They had answered a weird advertisement and had but a limited idea of what they were about to do. Grimly, though, they accepted it as a job, a bizarre job, but a job. They faced it as they had faced other equally dangerous but less unusual jobs. Five seconds snapped George. The lever was all the way over now. The half-globe showed within its milky interior a hideously distorted landscape. The light had taken on a hard brittle appearance and its hiss had risen to a scream. The machine thundered steadily with a suggestion of horrible power. Time up! The tall man stepped forward. His foot reached the disc, another step, and he was bathed in the light, a third, and he glimmered momentarily, then vanished. Close on his heels followed the little cockney. With his nerves at almost a snapping point, Henry moved on behind the fourth man. He was horribly afraid. He wanted to break from the line and run. It didn't matter where, anyplace to get away from that steady, steely light in front of him. He had seen three men step into it, glow for a second, and then disappear. A fourth man had placed his foot on the disc. Cold sweat stood out on his brow. Like an automaton he placed one foot on the disc. The fourth man had already disappeared. Snap into it, pal! growled the man behind him. Henry lifted the other foot, caught his toe on the edge of the disc, and stumbled headlong into the column of light. He was conscious of intense heat which was instantly followed by equally intense cold. For a moment his body seemed to be under enormous pressure, then it seemed to be expanding, flying apart, bursting, exploding. He felt solid ground under his feet and his eyes snapping open saw an alien land. It was a land of somber color with great gray moors and beatling black cliffs. There was something queer about it, an intangible quality that baffled him. He looked about him, expecting to see his companions. He saw no one. He was absolutely alone in that desolate, brooding land. Something dreadful had happened. Was he the only one to be safely transported from the third dimension? Had some horrible accident occurred? Was he alone? Suddenly panic seized him. If something had happened, if the others were not here, might it not be possible that the machine would not be able to bring him back to his own dimension? Was he doomed to remain marooned forever in this terrible plane? He looked down at his body and gasped in dismay. It was not his body. It was a grotesque caricature of a body, a horrible profane mass of flesh, like a phantasmagoric beast snatched from the dreams of a lunatic. It was real, however. He felt it with his hands, but they were not hands. They were something like hands. They served the same purpose that hands served in the third dimension. He was, he realized, a being of the fourth dimension. But in his fourth dimensional brain still clung hard fighting remnants of that faithful, old third dimensional brain. He could not, as yet, see with fourth dimensional eyes, think purely fourth dimensional thoughts. He had not oriented himself as yet to this new plane of existence. He was seeing the fourth dimension through the blurred lenses of millions of eons of third dimensional existence. He was seeing it much more clearly than he had seen it in the half globe atop the machine in Dr. White's laboratory. But he would not see it clearly until every vestige of the third dimension was wiped from him. That he knew would come in time. He felt his weird body with those things that served his hands. And he found, beneath his groping, unearthly fingers, great rolling muscles, powerful tendons, and hard well conditioned flesh. A sense of well being surged through him and he growled like an animal, like an animal of that horrible fourth plane. But the terrible sounds that came from between his slobbering lips were not those of his own voice. They were the voices of many men. Then he knew he was not alone. Here in this one body were the bodies, the brains, the power, the spirit of those other ninety-eight men. In the fourth dimension all the millions of third dimensional things were one. Perhaps that particular portion of the third dimension called the earth had sprung from or degenerated from one single unit of a dissolving worn out fourth dimension. The third dimension, warped back to a higher plane, was automatically obeying the mystic laws of evolution by reforming in the shape of that old ancestor, unimaginably removed in time from the race he had begot. He was no longer Henry Wood's newspaper man. He was an entity that had given birth in the dim ages when the earth was born to a third dimension. Nor was he alone. This body of his was composed of the other sons of that ancient entity. He felt himself grow, felt his body grow vaster, assumed greater proportions, felt new vitality flow through him. It was the other men, the men who were flinging themselves into the column of light in the laboratory to be warped back to this plane, to be incorporated into his body. It was not his body, however. His brain was not alone. The pronoun he realized represented the sum total of those other men, his fellow adventurers. Suddenly a new feeling came, a feeling of completeness, a feeling of supreme fitness. He knew that the last of the ninety-eight men had stepped across the disc, that all were here in this giant body. Now he could see more clearly. Things in the landscape which had escaped him before became recognizable. Awful thoughts ran through his brain, heavy, ponderous, black thoughts. He began to recognize the landscape as something familiar, something he had seen before, a thing with which he was intimate. Phenomena, which his third-dimensional intelligence would have gasped at, became commonplace. He was finally seen through fourth-dimensional eyes, thinking fourth-dimensional thoughts. Memory seeped into his brain and he had fleeting visions, visions of dark caverns lit by hellish flames, of huge seas that battered remorselessly with mile-high waves against towering headlands that reared Titanic toward a glowering sky. He remembered a red desert scattered with scarlet boulders. He remembered silver cliffs of gleaming metallic stone. Through all his thoughts ran something else, a scarlet thread of hate and all consuming passion, a fierce lust after the life of some other entity. He was no longer a composite thing built of third-dimensional beings. He was a creature of another plane, a creature with a consuming hate, and suddenly he knew against whom this hate was directed and why. He knew also that this creature was near and his great fists closed and then spread wide as he knew it. How did he know it? Perhaps through some sense which he as a being of another plane held but which was alien to the earth. Later he asked himself this question. At the time, however, there was no questioning on his part. He only knew that somewhere near was a hated enemy and he did not question the source of his knowledge. Mumbling in an idiom incomprehensible to a third-dimensional being, filled with rage that wove readily through his brain, he lumbered down the hill onto the moor. His great strides beating up the distance, his footsteps shaking the ground. At the foot of the hill he halted and from his throat issued a challenging roar that made the very crags surrounding the moor tremble. The rocks flung back the roar as if in mockery. Again he shouted and in the shout he framed a lured insult to the enemy that lurked there in the cliffs. Again the crags flung back the insult but this time the echoes booming over the moor were drowned by another voice. The voice of the enemy. At the far end of the moor appeared a gigantic form, a form that shambled on grotesque misshapen feet growling angrily as he came. He came rapidly despite his clumsy gait and as he came he mouthed terrific threats. Close to the other he halted and only then did recognition dawn in his eyes. You mal-shaf? He growled in his guttural tongue and surprise and consternation were written large upon his ugly face. Yes, it is I, mal-shaf, boomed the other. Remember, Uglot, the day you destroyed me and my plane. I have returned to wreak my vengeance. I have solved a mystery you have never guessed and I have come back. You did not imagine you were attacking me again when you sent your minions to that other plane to feed upon the beings there. It was I you were attacking fool and I am here to kill you. Uglot leapt and the thing that had been Henry Wood's newspaper man and ninety-eight other men, but was now mal-shaf of the fourth dimension leaped to meet him. Mal-shaf felt the force of Uglot, felt the sharp pain of a hammering fist, and lashed out with those horrible arms of his to smash at the leering face of his antagonist. He felt his fists strike solid flesh, felt the bones creak and tremble beneath his blow. His nostrils were filled with the terrible stench of the other's foul breath and his filthy body. He teetered on his gnarled legs and sidestepped a vicious kick and then stepped in to gouge with straightened thumb at the other's eye. The thumb went true and Uglot howled in pain. Mal-shaf leapt back as his opponent charged head down and knotted his fist in a thunderous tattoo as the misshapen beast closed in. He felt clawing fingers, seeking his throat, felt ghastly nails ripping at his shoulders. In desperation he struck blindly and Uglot reeled away. With a quick stride he shortened the distance between them and struck Uglot a hard blow squarely on his slavering mouth. Pressing hard upon the reeling figure he swung his fists like sledgehammers and Uglot stumbled, falling in a heap on the sand. Mal-shaf leaped upon the fallen foe and kicked him with his talant feet, ripping him wickedly. There was no thought of fair play, no faintest glimmer of mercy. This was a battle to the death. There could be no quarter. The fallen monster howled, but his voice cut short as his foul mouth with its razor-edged fangs closed on the other's body. His talants seeking a hold clawed deep. Mal-shaf, his brain a screaming maelstrom of weird emotions aimed pile-driver blows at the enemy, clawed and ripped. Together the two rolled, locked tight in titanic battle on the sandy plain, and a great cloud of heavy dust marked where they struggled. In desperation Uglot put every ounce of his strength into a heave that broke the other's grip and flung him away. The two monstrosities surged to their feet, their eyes red with hate, glaring through the dust cloud at one another. Slowly Uglot's hands stole to a black wicked cylinder that hung on a belt at his waist. His fingers closed upon it and he drew the weapon. As he leveled it at Mal-shaf, his lips curled back and his features distorted into something that was not pleasant to see. Mal-shaf, with doubled fists, saw the great thumb of his enemy slowly depressing a button on the cylinder, and a great fear held him rooted in his tracks. In the back of his brain something was vainly trying to explain to him the horror of this thing which the other held. Then a multi-colored spiral, like a corkscrew column of vapor, sprang from the cylinder and flashed toward him. It struck him full on the chest, and even as it did so he caught the ugly fire of triumph in the red eyes of his enemy. He felt a stinging sensation where the spiral struck, but that was all. He was astounded. He had feared this weapon, had been sure it portended some form of horrible death. But all it did was to produce a slight sting. For a split second he stood stock still. Then he surged forward and advanced upon Uglot, his hands outspread like claws. From his throat came those horrible sounds, the speech of the fourth dimension. Did I not tell you foul son of Sargu that I had solved a mystery you have never guessed at? Although you destroyed me long ago, I have returned. Throw away your puny weapon. I am of the lower dimensions, and I am invulnerable to your engines of destruction. You bloated, his words trailed off into a stream of vileness that could never have occurred to a third dimensional mind. Uglot, with every line of his face distorted with fear, flung the weapon from him and turning fled clumsily down the moor, with Mal's shaft at his heels. Steadily Mal's shaft gained, and with only a few feet separating him from Uglot he dived with outspread arms at the other's legs. The two came down together, but Mal's shaft's grip was broken by the fall and the two regained their feet at almost the same instant. The wild moor resounded to their throaty roaring and the high cliffs flung back the echoes of the bellowing of the two gladiators below. It was sheer strength now, and flesh and bone were bruised and broken under the life-shaking blows that they dealt. Great ferros were ploughed in the sand by the sliding of heavy feet as the two fighters shifted two or away from attack. Blood. Blood of the fourth dimensional creatures covered the bodies of the two and stained the sand with its horrible hue. Perspiration streamed from them and their breath came in gulping gasps. The lurid sun slid across the purple sky and still the two fought on. Uglot, one of the ancients, and Mal's shaft, reincarnated. It was a battle of giants, a battle that must have beggared even the titanic tilting of forgotten gods and entities in the ages when the third-dimensional earth was young. Mal's shaft had no conception of time. He may have fought seconds or hours. It seemed an eternity. He had attempted to fight scientifically, but had failed to do so. While one part of him had cried out to elude his opponent to wait for openings to conserve his strength, another part had shouted at him to step in and smash, smash, smash at the hated monstrosity pitted against him. It seemed Uglot was growing in size, had become more agile, that his strength was greater. His punches hurt more. It was harder to hit him. Still, Mal's shaft drilled in determinately, head down, fists working like pistons. As the others seemed to grow stronger and larger, he seemed to become smaller and weaker. It was queer. Uglot should be tired, too. His punches should be weaker. He should move more slowly, be heavier on his feet. There was no doubt of it. Uglot was growing larger, was drawing on some mysterious reserve of strength. From somewhere new force and life were flowing into his body. But from where was this strength coming? A huge fist smashed against Mal's shaft's jaw. He felt himself lifted, and the next moment he skidded across the sand. Lying there, gasping for breath, almost too fagged to rise with the black bulk of the enemy looming through the dust cloud before him, he suddenly realized the source of the other's renewed strength. Uglot was recalling his minions from the Third Dimension. They were incorporating in his body, returning to their parent body. They were coming back from the Third Dimension to the Fourth Dimension, to fight a Third Dimensional thing reincarnated in the Fourth Dimensional form it had lost millions of eons ago. This was the end, thought Mal's shaft. But he staggered to his feet to meet the charge of the ancient enemy, and a grim song, a death chant, immeasurably old, suddenly and dimly remembered from out of the mists of countless Millenniums, was on his lips as he swung a pile-driver blow into the suddenly astonished face of the onrushing Uglot. The milky glow betopped the machine in Dr. White's laboratory glowed softly, and within that glow two figures seemed to struggle. Before the machine, his hands still on the controls stood Dr. Silas White. Behind him the room was crowded with newspaper men and photographers. Hours had passed since the ninety-eight men, ninety-nine counting Henry Woods, had stepped into the brittle column of light to be shunted back through unguessed time to a different plane of existence. The old scientist, during all those hours, had stood like a graven image before his machine, eyes staring fixedly at the globe. Through the open windows he had heard the cry of the newsboy as the press put the greatest scoop of all time on the street. The phone had rung like mad, and George answered it. The doorbell buzzed repeatedly, and George ushered in newspaper men who had asked innumerable questions to which he had replied briefly, almost mechanically. The reporters had fought for the use of the one phone in the house and had finally drawn lots for it. A few had raced out to use other phones. Photographers came and flashes popped and cameras clicked. The room was in an uproar. On the rare occasions when the reporters were not using the phone the instrument buzzed shrilly. Authoritative voices demanded Dr. Silas White. George, his eyes on the old man, stated that Dr. Silas White could not be disturbed, that he was busy. From the street below came the heavy-throated hum of thousands of voices. The street was packed with a jostling crowd of awed humanity. Every eye fastened on the house of Dr. Silas White. Lines of police held them back. What makes them move so slowly? asked a reporter, staring at the globe. They hardly seem to be moving. It looks like a slow motion picture. They are not moving slowly, replied Dr. White. There must be a difference in time in the fourth dimension. Maybe what is ours to us is only seconds to them. Time must flow more slowly there. Perhaps it is a bigger place than this third plane. That may account for it. They aren't moving slowly. They are fighting savagely. It's a fight to the death. Watch. The grotesque arm of one of the figures in the Milky Globe was moving out slowly, loafing along, aimed at the head of the other. Slowly the other twisted his body aside, but too slowly. The fist finally touched the head, still moving slowly forward, the body following as slowly. The head of the creature twisted, bent backward, and the body toppled back in a leisurely manner. What does White say? Can't you get a statement of some sort from him? Won't he talk at all? A hell of a fine reporter you are can't even get a man to open his mouth. Ask him about Henry Woods. Get a human interest slant on Woods, walking into the light. Ask him how long this is going to last. Damn it all, man. Do something, and don't bother me again until you have a real story. Yes, I said a real story. Are you hard of hearing? For God's sake, do something. The editor slammed the receiver on the hook. Brooks, he snapped. Get to the War Department at Washington. Ask them if they're going to back up White. Go on, go on. Get busy. How will you get them? I don't know. Just get them. That's all. Get them. Typewriters gibbered like chuckling morons through the roaming tumult of the editorial rooms. Copy boys rushed about, white sheets clutched in their grimy hands. Telephones jangled and strident voices blared through the haze that arose from the pipes and cigarettes of perspiring writers who feverishly transferred to paper the startling events that were rocking the world. The editor, his neck tie off, his shirt open, his sleeves rolled to the elbow, drummed his fingers on the desk. It had been a hectic twenty-four hours and he had stayed at the desk every minute of the time. He was dead tired. When the moment of relaxation came, when the tension snapped, he knew he would fall into an exhausted stupor of sleep. But the excitement was keeping him on his feet. There was work to do. There was news such as the world had never known before. Each new story meant a new front makeup, another extra. Even now the presses were thundering. Even now papers with the ink hardly dry upon them were being snatched by the avid public from the hands of screaming news boys. A man raced toward the city desk, waving a sheet of paper in his hand, sensing something unusual the others in the room crowded about as he laid the sheet before the editor. Just came in, the man gasped. The paper was a wire dispatch. It read, Rome. The black horror is in full retreat, although still apparently immune to the weapons being used against it, it is lifting the siege of the city. The cause is unknown. The editor ran his eye down the sheet. There was another date-line. Madrid. The black horror which has enclosed this city in a ring of dark terror for the last two days is fleeing rapidly, disappearing. The editor pressed a button. There was an answering buzz. Composing Rome, he shouted. Get ready for a new front. Yes, another extra. This will knock their eyes out. A telephone jangled furiously. The editor seized it. Yes, what was that? White says he must have help. I see. Woods and the others are weakening, being badly beaten, eh? More men needed to go out to the other plain. Once reinforcements. Yes, I see. Well, tell them that'll have them. If he can wait half an hour, we'll have them walking by thousands into that light. I'll be damned if we won't. Just tell White to hang on. We'll have the whole nation coming to the rescue. He jabbed up the receiver. Richards, he said. Write a streamer. Help needed. Reinforcements called. Something of that sort. You know, make it scream. Tell the foreman to dig out the biggest type he has. A foot high. If we ever needed big type, we need it now. He turned to the telephone. Operator, he said. Get me the Secretary of War at Washington. The Secretary in Person, you understand? No one else will do. He turned again to the reporters who stood about the desk. In two hours, he explained banging the desktop for emphasis. We'll have the United States Army marching into that light Woods walked into. The bloody sun was touching the edge of the weird world, seeming to hesitate before taking the final plunge behind the towering black crags that hung above the ink pot shadows at their base. The purple sky had darkened until it was almost the color of soft black velvet. Great stars were blazing out. Ooglout loomed large in the gathering twilight, a horrible misshapen ogre of an outer world. He had grown taller, broader, greater. Mal's shaft's head now was on a level with the other's chest. His huge arms seemed toy-like in comparison with those of Ooglout, his legs mere pipe stems. Time and again he had barely escaped as the clutching hands of Ooglout reached out to grasp him. Once within those hands he would be torn apart. The battle had become a game of hide and seek, a game of cat and mouse, with Mal's shaft the mouse. Slowly the sun sank and the world became darker. His brain working feverishly, Mal's shaft waited for the darkness. Adroitly he worked the battle nearer and nearer to the stygian darkness that lay at the foot of the mighty crags. In the darkness he might escape. He could no longer continue this unequal fight. Only escape was left. The sun was gone now. Blackness was dropping swiftly over the land like a great blanket, creating the illusion of a glowering sky descending to the ground. Only a few feet away lay the total blackness under the cliffs. Like a flash, Mal's shaft darted into the blackness, was completely swallowed in it. Roaring, Ooglout followed. His shoulders almost touching the great rock wall that shot straight up hundreds of feet above him. Mal's shaft ran swiftly, fear lending speed to his shivering legs. Behind him he heard the bellowing of his enemy. Ooglout was searching for him. A hopeless search in that total darkness. He would never find him. Mal's shaft felt sure. Fagged and out of breath he dropped panting at the foot of the wall. Blood pounded through his head and his strength seemed to be gone. He lay still and stared out into the less dark moor that stretched before him. For some time he lay there, resting. Aimlessly he looked out over the moor and then he suddenly noted some distance to his right, a hill rising from the moor. The hill was vaguely familiar. He remembered it dimly as being of great importance. A sudden inexplicable restlessness filled him. Far behind him he heard the enraged bellowing of Ooglout, but that he scarcely noticed. So long as darkness lay upon the land, he knew he was safe from his enemy. The hill had made him restless. He must reach the top. He could think of no logical reason for doing so. Obviously he was safer here at the base of the cliff, but a voice seemed to be calling, a friendly voice from the hilltop. He rose on aching legs and forged ahead. Every fiber of his being cried out in protest, but resolutely he placed one foot ahead of the other, walking mechanically. Opposite the hill he disregarded the strange call that pulsed down upon him, long enough to rest his tortured body. He must build up his strength for the climb. He realized that danger lay ahead. Once he quitted the blackness of the cliff's base Ooglout even in the darkness that lay over the land might see him. That would be disastrous. Once over the top of the hill he would be safe. Suddenly the landscape was bathed in light, a soft green radiance. One moment it had been pitch dark, the next it was light as if a giant searchlight had been snapped on. In terror, Mal Schaaf looked for the source of the light. Just above the horizon hung a great green orb which moved up the ladder of the sky even as he watched. A moon. A huge green satellite hurtling swiftly around this cursed world. A great overwhelming fear sat upon Mal Schaaf, and with a high shrill scream of anger he raced forward, forgetful of the aching body and outraged lungs. His scream was answered from far off and out of the shadows of the cliffs towards the far end of the moor a black figure hurled itself. Ooglout was on the trail. Mal Schaaf tore madly up the slope, topped the crest, and threw himself flat on the ground, almost exhausted. A queer feeling stole over him. A queer feeling of well-being. New strength was flowing into him. The old thrill of battle was pounding through his blood once more. Not only were queer things happening to his body but also to his brain. The world about him looked queer, held a sort of intangible mystery he could not understand. A half question formed in the back of his brain. Who and what was he? Queer thoughts to be thinking he was Mal Schaaf. But had he always been Mal Schaaf? He remembered a brittle column of light, creatures with bodies unlike his body, walking into it. He had been one of those creatures. There was something about dimensions, about different planes, a plan for one plane to attack another. He scrambled to his bowed legs and beat his great chest with mighty long-nailed hands. He flung back his head and from his throat broke a sound to curdle the blood of even the bravest. On the moor below Ooglout heard the cry and answered it with one equally ferocious. Mal Schaaf took a step forward, then stopped, stock still. Through his brain went a sharp command to return to the spot where he had stood, to wait there until attacked. He stepped back, shifting his feet impatiently. He was growing larger. Every second fresh vitality was pouring into him. Before his eyes danced a red curtain of hate and his tongue roared forth a series of insulting challenges to the figure that was even now approaching the foot of the hill. As Ooglout climbed the hill, the night became an insane bedlam. The challenging roars beat like surf against the black cliffs. Ooglout's lips were flecked with foam. His red eyes were mere slits. His mouth worked convulsively. They were only a few feet apart when Ooglout charged. Mal Schaaf was ready for him. There was no longer any difference in their size and they met like the two forward walls of contending football teams. Mal Schaaf felt the soft throat of the other under his fingers and his grip tightened. Maddened, Ooglout shot terrific blow after terrific blow into Mal Schaaf's body. Try as he might, however, he could not shake the other's grip. It was silent now. The night seemed brooding, watching the struggle on the hilltop. Larger and larger grew Mal Schaaf until he overtopped Ooglout like a giant. Then he loosened his grip and as Ooglout tried to scuttle away reached down to grasp him by the nape of the neck. High above his head he lifted his enemy and dashed him to the ground. With a leap he was on the prostrate figure, trampling it apart, smashing it into the ground. With wild cries he stamped the earth, treading out the last of Ooglout, the black horror. When no trace of the thing that had been Ooglout remained he moved away and viewed the trampled ground. Then for the first time he noticed that the crest of the hill was crowded with other monstrous figures. He glared at them half in surprise, half in anger. He had not noticed their silent approach. It is Mal Schaaf, cried one. Yes, I am Mal Schaaf. What do you want? But Mal Schaaf Ooglout destroyed you once long ago. I just now replied Mal Schaaf have destroyed Ooglout. The figures were silent, shifting uneasily. Then one stepped forward. Mal Schaaf, it said, we thought you were dead. Apparently it was not so. We welcome you to our land again. Ooglout, who once tried to kill you and apparently failed, you have killed, which is right and proper. Come and live with us again in peace. We welcome you. Mal Schaaf bowed. Gone was all thought of the third dimension. Through Mal Schaaf's mind raced strange, haunting memories of a red desert scattered with scarlet boulders, of silver cliffs, of gleaming metallic stone, of huge seas battering against towering headlands. There were other things, too—great palaces of shining jewels and weird knights of inhuman joy where hellish flames lit deep black caverns. He bowed again. I thank you, Balthazar, he said. Without a backward look he shambled down the hill with the others. Yes, said the editor. What's that you say? Dr. White is dead? A suicide. Yeah, I understand. Worry? Hey, here, Roberts, take this story. He handed over the phone. When you write it, he said, play up the fact that he was worried about not being able to bring the man back to the third dimension. Give him plenty of praise for ending the black horror. It's a big story. Sure, said Roberts, then spoke into the phone. All right, Bill, shoot the works. End of Hellhounds of the Cosmos by Clifford D. Simac The Huffer by Walter M. Miller This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Bologna Times The Huffer by Walter M. Miller Jr. A way for his return from a far country to his wife and family may be a shining experience, a kind of second honeymoon, or it may be so shadowed by time's relentless tyranny that the changes which have occurred in his absence can lead only to tragedy and despair. This rarely discerning, warmly human story, by a brilliant newcomer to the science-fantasy field, is told with no pulling of punches, and its adroit unfolding will astound you. The Spacerover has no business with the family, but what can a man in the full vigor of youth do if his heart cries out for a home? They all knew he was a spacer because of the white goggle marks on his son's gorge face, and so they tolerated and helped him. They even made allowances for him when he staggered and fell in the aisle of the bus while pursuing the harassed little housewife from seat to seat and controlling her to sit and talk with him. Having fallen, he decided to sleep in the aisle. Two men helped him to the back of the bus, dumped him on the rear seat, and tucked his gen and bottle safely out of sight. After all, he had not seen earth for nine months, and judging by the crusted matter about his eyelids he couldn't have seen it too well now even if he had been sober. Glare-blindness, gravity legs, and agoraphobia were excuses for a lot of things when a man was just back from big bottomless, and who could blame a man for acting strangely? Minutes later he was back up the aisle and swaying giddily over the little housewife. How, he said, me chief broken-wing, you want a Indian wrestle? The girl, who sat nervously staring at him, smiled wandily and shook her head. Quiet little pigeon, aren't you? he burbled, affectionately, crashing into the seat beside her. The two men slid out of their seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder. Come on, broken-wing, let's go back to bed. My name's Hogi, he said. Big Hogi Parker. I was just kidding about being an Indian. Yeah, come on, let's go have a drink. They got him on his feet and let him stumbling back down the aisle. My Ma was half-cherriky, see? That's how come I said it. You want to hear a war-woop? Real stuff. Never mind. He kept his hands to his mouth and favored them with a blood-curdling proof of his ancestry, while the female passengers stirred restlessly and hunched in their seats. The driver stopped the bus and went back to warn him against any further display. The driver flushed a deputies badge and threatened to turn him over to a countstable. I got to get home, Big Hogi told him. I got me a son now, that's why, you know, a little baby pigeon of a son haven't seen him yet. Will you just sit still and be quiet then, eh? Big Hogi nodded emphatically. Shari officer, I didn't mean to make any trouble. When the bus started again, he fell on his side and lay still. He made retching sounds for a time, then rested, snoring softly. The bus driver woke him again at Kane's Junction, retrieved his gen-bottle from behind the seat, and helped him down the aisle and out of the bus. Big Hogi stumbled about for a moment that sat down hard in the gravel at the shoulder of the road. The driver paused with one foot on the step, looking around. There was not even a store at the road junction, but only a freight building next to the railroad track, a couple of farmhouses at the edge of a side road, and, just across the way, a deserted filling station with a sagging roof. The land was great plains-country, treeless, barren, and rolling. Big Hogi got up and staggered around in front of the bus, clutching at it for support, losing his duffel bag. Hey, watch the traffic, the driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome compassion, he trotted around after his troublesome passenger, taking his arms as he sagged again. You crossing? Yeah, Hogi muttered. Let me along, I'm OK. The driver started across the highway with him. The traffic was sparse, but fast and dangerous, in the central ninety-mile lane. I'm OK, Hogi kept protesting. I'm a tumbler, you know. Gravity's got me. Damn gravity. I'm not used to gravity, you know. I used to be a tumbler. Huh. Only now I gotta be a Huffer. Count of Little Hogi. You know about Little Hogi? Yeah, your son. Come on. Say, you got a son? I bet you got a son. Two kids, said the driver, catching Hogi's bag as it slipped from his shoulder. Both girls. Say, you ought to be home with them kids. Man ought to stick with his family. You ought to get another job. Hogi eyed him outishly, waggled a moralistic finger, skidded on the gravel as they stepped onto the opposite shoulder, and sprawled again. The driver blew a weary breath, looked down at him, and shook his head. Maybe it'd be kinder to find accountable after all. This guy could get himself killed, wandering around loose. Is somebody supposed to meet you? He asked, squinting around at the dusty hills. Huck. Who me? Hogi giggled, belched, and shook his head. Nope. Nobody knows I'm coming. Surprise. I'm supposed to be here a week ago. He looked up at the driver with a pained expression. Week late, you know. Marie's gonna be sore. Woo-hoo! Is she gonna be sore? He waggled his head severely at the ground. Which way are you going? The driver grunted impatiently. Hogi pointed down the side road that led back into the hills. Marie's pops place. You know where? About three miles from here. Gotta walk, I guess. Don't, the driver warned. You sit there by the culvert till you get a ride, OK? Hogi nodded for lonely. Now, stay out of the road, the driver warned, then hurried back across the highway. Moments later, the atomic battery-driven motors droned mournfully, and the bus pulled away. Big Hogi blinked after it, rubbing the back of his neck. Nuss people, he said. Nuss bunch of people, all hooffers. With a grunt and a lurch, he got to his feet, but his legs wouldn't work right. With his tumblers' reflexes, he fought to ride himself with frantic arm motions, but gravity clamped him, and he went stumbling into the ditch. Damn legs! Damn crazy legs! he cried. The bottom of the ditch was wet, and he crawled up the embankment, with mud-soaked knees, and sat on the shoulder again. The gen-bottle was still intact. He had himself a long, fiery drink, and it warmed him deep down. He blinked around at the gaunt and treeless land. The sun was almost down, forged red on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked sky faded into sulfurous yellow, toward the zenith, and the very air that hung over the land seemed full of yellow smoke, the omnipresent dust of the planes. A farm-truck turned onto the side road and moaned away, its driver hardly glancing at the dark young man who sat swaying on his duffel-bag near the culvert. Hogi scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just kept staring at the crazy sun. He shook his head. It wasn't really the sun. The sun, the real sun, was a hateful, eye-sizzling horror and the dead black pit. It painted everything with pure white pain, and you saw things by the reflected pain-light. The fat red sun was strictly a phony, and it didn't fool him any. He hated it for what he knew it was behind the gory mask, and for what it had done to his eyes. With a grunt he got to his feet, managed to shoulder the duffel-bag, and started to off down the middle of the farm road, lurching from side to side and keeping his eyes on the rolling distances. Another car turned onto the side road, honking angrily. Hogi tried to turn around to look at it, but he forgot to shift his footing. He staggered and went down on the pavement. The car's tires screeched on the hot asphalt. Hogi lay there for a moment, groaning. That one had hurt his hip. A car door slammed, and a big man with a florid face got out and stuck toward him, looking angry. What the hell's the matter with you, fella? he drawled. You soused. Man, you've really got a load. Hogi got up doggedly, shaking his head to clear it. Space legs, he bevaricated, got space legs, can't stand the gravity. The burly farmer retrieved his gin bottle for him, still miraculously unbroken. Here's your gravity, he grunted. Listen, fella, you better get home pronto. Pronto? Hey, I'm no mechs. Honest, I'm just space burned, you know. Yeah. Say, who are you anyway? Do you live around here? It was obvious that the big man had taken him for a hobo or tramp. Hogi pulled himself together. Going to the hopman's place. Marie, you know Marie? The farmer's eyebrows went up. Marie Hopman? Sure, I know her. Only she's Marie Parker now. Has been nine on six years. Say, he passed, then gasped. You ain't her husband by any chance. Hogi, that's me. Big Hogi Parker. Well, I'll be getting the car. I'm going right past John Hopman's place. Boy, you're in no shape to walk it. He grinned riley, waggled his head, and helped Hogi and his bag into the backseat. A woman with a sun wrinkled neck set rigidly beside the farmer in the front, and she neither greeted the passenger nor looked around. They don't make cars like this anymore, the farmer called over the growl of the ancient gasoline engine and the grind of gears. You can have them new atomics with their loads of hot isotopes under the seat. Ain't safe, I say. Eh, Martha? The woman with the sun-baked neck quivered her head slightly. A car like this was good enough for paw, and I reckon it's good enough for us, she drawled, mournfully. Five minutes later, the car drew into the side of the road. I reckon you can walk it from here, the farmer said. That's Hopman's road, just up ahead. He helped Hogi out of the car and drove away without looking back to see if Hogi stayed on his feet. The woman with the sun-baked neck was suddenly talking garelessly in his direction. It was twilight. The sun had set, and the yellow sky was turning gray. Hogi was too tired to go on, and his legs would no longer hold him. He blinked around at the land, got his eyes focused, and found what looked like Hopman's place on a distant hillside. It was a big frame house, surrounded by a wheat field, and a few scrawny trees. Having located it, he stretched out in the tall grass beyond the ditch to take a little rest. Somewhere, dogs were barking, and a cricket sang creaking monotony in the grass. Once there was the distant thunder of a rocket blast from the launching station six miles to the west, but it faded quickly. An A-motored convertible wind passed on the road, but Hogi went unseen. When he awoke, it was night, and he was shivering. His stomach was screeching and his nerves dancing with high voltages. He sat up and groped for his watch, then remembered he had pondered after the poker game. Remembering the game and the results of the game made him wince, and bite his lip and groped for the bottle again. He sat breathing heavily for a moment after the stiff drink. Equating time to position had become second nature with him, but he had to think for a moment because his defective vision prevented him from seeing the Earth crescent. Vega was almost straight above him in the late August sky, so he knew it wasn't much after sundown, probably about eight o'clock. He braced himself with another swallow of djinn, picked himself up, and got back to the road, feeling a little sobered after the nap. He limped on up the pavement and turned left at the narrow drive that led between barbed wire fences toward the Holtman farmhouse, five hundred yards or so from the farm road. The fields on his left belonged to Marie's father, he knew. He was getting close, close to home and woman and child. He dropped the bag suddenly and leaned against a fence post, rolling his head on his forearms, and choking in spasms of air. He was shaking all over, and his belly rived. He wanted to turn and run. He wanted to crawl out in the grass and hide. What were they going to say? And Marie, Marie most of all, how was he going to tell her about the money? Six hitches in space, and every time the promise had been the same. One more tour, baby, and we'll have enough dough, and then I'll quit for good one more time, and we'll have our steak enough to open a little business, or buy a house with a mortgage and get a job. And she had waited, but the money had never been quite enough until this time. This time the tour had lasted nine months, and he had signed on for every run from station to moon base to pick up the bonuses. And this time he'd made it. Two weeks ago there had been forty-eight hundred in the bank. And now, why, he groaned, striking his forehead against his forearms. His arms slipped, and his head hit the top of the fence post, and the pain blinded him for a moment. He staggered back into the road with a low roar, wiped blood from his forehead, and savagely kicked his bag. It rolled a couple of yards up the road. He leaped after it, and kicked it again. When he had finished with it he stood padding and angry, but feeling better. He shouldered the bag and hiked on toward the farmhouse. There are hooffers. That's all. Just an earth-chain bunch of hooffers. Even Marie. And I'm a tumbler. A born tumbler. Know what that means? It means—God, what does it mean? It means out in big bottomless, where earth's like a fat moon with fuzzy mold drawing on it. Mold. That's all you are. Just mold. A dog barked, and he wondered if he had been muttering aloud. He came to a fenced gap and paused in the darkness. The road wound around, and came up the hill in front of the house. Maybe they were sitting on the porch. Maybe they'd already heard him coming. Maybe. He was trembling again. He fished the fifth of Jen out of his coat pocket and slushed it. Still over half a pint. He decided to kill it. It wouldn't do to go home with a bottle sticking out of his pocket. He stood there in the night when, sipping at it, and watching the reddish moon come up in the east, the moon looked as phony as the setting sun. He straightened and sudden determination. It had to be some time. Get it over with. Get it over with now. He opened the fenced gap, slipped through, and closed it firmly behind him. He retrieved his bag, and waited quietly through the tall grass until he reached the hedge, which divided an area of sickly peach trees from the field. He got over the hedge somehow, and started through the trees toward the house. He stumbled over some old boards, and they clattered. Shhh! he hissed, and moved on. The dogs were barking angrily, and he heard a screen door slam. He stopped. Oh, there! a melt voice called, and experimentally from the house. One of Marie's brothers. Hogy stood frozen in the shadow of a peach tree, waiting. Anybody out there? The man called again. Hogy waited, then heard the man muttering. Sick'em, boy. Sick'em. The hounds barked, became eager. The animal came chasing down the slope, and stopped ten feet away to crouch and bark frantically at the shadow. In the gloom he knew the dog. Hucky, he whispered. Hucky, boy. Here! The dog stopped barking, sniffed, trotted closer, and went. Then he started sniffing, suspiciously again. Easy, Hucky! Here, boy! he whispered. The dog came forward silently, sniffed his hand, and whined in recognition. Then he trotted around Hogy, panting, doggy affection, and dancing and invitation to romp. The man whistled from the porch. The dog froze. Then trotted quickly, back up the slope. Nothing, eh, Hucky? The man on the porch said. Chasing armadillos again, eh? The screen door slammed again, and the porch light went out. Hogy stood there, staring, unable to think. Somewhere beyond the window lights were his woman, his son. What the hell was a tumbler doing with a woman and a son? After, perhaps, a minute, he stepped forward again. He tripped over a shovel, and his foot plunged into something that went squelch, and swallowed the foot past the ankle. He fell forward into a heap of sand, and his foot went deeper into the sloppy wetness. He lay there with his stinging forehead on his arms, cursing softly and crying. Finally he rolled over, pulled his foot out of the mess, and took off his shoes. They were full of mud, sticky, sandy mud. The dark world was reeling about him, and the wind was dragging at his breath. He folk back against the sandpile, and let his feet sink in the mud-hole, and wriggle his toes. He was laughing soundlessly, and his face was wet in the wind. He couldn't think. He couldn't remember where he was and why, and he stopped caring, and after a while he felt better. The stars were swarming over him, dancing crazily, and the mud cooled his feet, and the sand was soft behind him. He saw a rocket go up on a tail of flame from the station, and waited for the sound of its blast, but he was already asleep when it came. It was far past midnight when he became conscious of the dog licking wetly at his ear and cheek. He pushed the animal away with a low curse, and mopped at the side of his face. He stirred and ground. His feet were burning up. He tried to pull them toward him, but they wouldn't budge. There was something wrong with his legs. For an instant he stared wildly around in the night. Then he remembered where he was, closed his eyes, and shuddered. When he opened them again, the moon had emerged from behind a cloud, and he could see clearly the cruel trap into which he had accidentally stumbled. A pile of old boards, a careful stack of new lumber, a pick and shovel, a sandpile, heaps of fresh turned earth, and a concrete mixer. Well, it added up. He gripped his ankles and pulled, but his feet wouldn't budge. In sudden terror he tried to stand up, but his ankles were clutched by the concrete, too, and he fell back in the sand with a low moan. He lay still for several minutes, considering carefully. He pulled at his left foot. It was locked in a vise. He tugged even more desperately at his right foot. It was equally immovable. He sat up with a whimper and clawed at the rough concrete until his nails tore and his fingertips bled. The surface still felt damp, but it had hardened while he slept. He sat there stunned until Hookie began licking at his scuffed fingers. He shouldered the dog away and dug his hands into the sandpile to stop the bleeding. Hookie looked at his face, panting, love. Get away! he croaked savagely. The dog whined softly, trotted a short distance away, circled, and came back to crouch down in the sand directly before Hookie, inching forward experimentally. Hookie crept fistfuls of the dry sand and cursed between his teeth, while his eyes wandered over the sky. They came to rest on the sliver of light, the space station, rising in the west, floating out in big bottomless where the gang was, nickels, and guerrera, and love rente, and fats. And he wasn't forgetting Keesey, the rookie who'd replaced him. Keesey would have a rough time for a while, rough as a cob. The pit was no playground. The first time you went out of the station in a suit, the pit got you. Everything was falling, and you fell with it. Everything. The skeletons of steel, the tire-shaped station, the spheres, and docks, and nightmare shapes, all tied together by umbilical cables and flexible tubes, like some crazy seething they seemed, floating in a black ocean with its tentacles bound together by drifting strands in the dark tide that bore it. Everything was pain-bright, or dead black, and it wheeled around you, and you went nuts trying to figure which way was down. In fact, it took months to teach your body that all ways were down, and that the pit was bottomless. He became conscious of a plaintive sound in the wind, and froze to listen. It was a baby crying. It was nearly a minute before he got the significance of it. It hit him where he lived, and he began jerking frantically at his encased feet and sobbing low in his throat. They'd hear him if he kept that up. He stopped and covered his ears to close out the cry of his firstborn. A light went on in the house, and when it went off again, the infant's cry had ceased. Another rocket went up from the station, and he cursed it. Space was a disease, and he had it. Help! he cried out suddenly. I'm stuck! Help me! Help me! He knew he was yelling hysterically at the sky, and fighting the relentless concrete that clutched his feet, and after a moment he stopped. The light was on in the house again, and he heard faint sounds. The stirring about woke the baby again, and once more the infant's wail came on the breeze. Make the kid shut up! Make the kid shut up! But that was no good. It wasn't the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's fault. No fathers allowed in space, they said, but it wasn't their fault either. They were right, and he had only himself to blame. The kid was an accident, but that didn't change anything. Not a thing in the world. It remained a tragedy. A tumbler had no business with a family, but what was a man going to do? Take a skinning knife, boy, and make yourself a eunuch. But that was no good, either. They needed bulls out there in the pit, not steers. And when a man came down from a year's hitch, what was he going to do? Live in a lonely shack and read books for kicks? Because you were a man, you sought out a woman. And because she was a woman, she got a kid, and that was the end of it. It was nobody's fault. Nobody's fault. Nobody's at all. He stared at the red-eye of Mars, low in the southwest. They were running out there now, and next year he would have been on the long, long run. But there was no use thinking about it. Next year, and the years after, belonged to little hokey. He sat there with his feet locked in the solid concrete of the footing, staring out and to a big bottomless, while his son's cry came from the house, and the hopman menfolk came waiting through the tall grass in search of someone who had cried out. His feet were stuck tight, and he wouldn't ever get them out. He was sobbing softly when they found him. End of The Huffer by Walter M. Meller All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Jupiter Weapon by Charles L. Fontane. He was a living weapon of destruction, immeasurably powerful, utterly invulnerable? There was only one question. Was he human? Trella feared she was in for trouble even before Motwick's head dropped forward on his arms in a drunken stupor. The two evil-looking men at the table nearby had been watching her surreptitiously, and now they shifted restlessly in their chairs. Trella had not wanted to come to the golden satellite. It was a squalid saloon in the rougher section of Jupiter's view, the terrestrial dome colony on Ganymede. Motwick, already drunk, had insisted. A woman could not possibly make her way through these streets alone to the better section of town, especially one clad in a silvery evening dress. Her only hope was that this place had a telephone. Perhaps she could call one of Motwick's friends. She had no one on Ganymede she could call a real friend herself. Tentatively, she pushed her chair back from the table and arose. She had to brush close by the other table to get to the bar. As she did, the dark, slick-haired man reached out and grabbed her around the waist with a steely arm. Trella swung with her whole body and slapped him so hard he nearly fell from his chair. As she walked swiftly toward the bar, he leaped up to follow her. There were only two other people in the golden satellite, the fat, moustached bartender and a short, square-built man at the bar. The latter swung around at the pistol-like report of her slap, and she saw that, though no more than four and a half feet tall, he was as heavily muscled as a lion. His face was clean and open, with close cropped, blonde hair and honest blue eyes. She ran to him. Help me, she cried. Please help me. He began to back away from her. I can't, he muttered in a deep voice. I can't help you. I can't do anything. The dark man was at her heels. In desperation, she dodged around the short man and took refuge behind him. Her protector was obviously unwilling, but the dark man, faced with his massiveness, took no chances. He stopped and shouted, Craig! The other man at the table arose, ponderously, and lumbered toward them. He was immense, at least six and a half feet tall, with a brutal vacant face. Evading her attempts to stay behind him, the squat man began to move down the bar away from the approaching Craig. The dark man moved in on Trella again, as Craig overtook his quarry and swung a huge fist like a sledgehammer. Exactly what happened, Trella wasn't sure. She had the impression that Craig's fist connected squarely with the short man's chin before he dodged to one side in her movement so fast it was a blur. But that couldn't have been, because the short man wasn't moved by that blow that would have fell the steer, and Craig roared in pain, grabbing his injured fist. The bar, yelled Craig, I hit the damn bar! At this juncture, the bartender took a hand. Leaning far over the bar, he swung a full bottle in a complete arc. It smashed on Craig's head, splashing the floor with the liquor, and Craig sank stunned to his knees. The dark man, who had grabbed Trella's arm, released her and ran for the door. Moving agilely around the end of the bar, the bartender stood over Craig, holding the jagged-edged bottleneck in his hand, menacingly. Get out! rumbled the bartender. I'll have no copper's rating my place for the likes of you. Craig stumbled to his feet and staggered out. Trella ran to the unconscious Montwick's side. That means you, too, lady, said the bartender beside her. You and your boyfriend get out of here. You oughtn't have come here in the first place. May I help you? Miss? asked a deep, resonant voice behind her. She straightened from her anxious examination of Montwick. The squat man was standing there, an apologetic look on his face. She looked contemptuously at the massive muscles whose help had been denied her. Her arm ached where the dark man had grasped it. The broad face before her was not unhandsome, and the blue eyes were disconcertingly direct, but she despised him for a coward. I'm sorry I couldn't fight those men for you, Miss, but I just couldn't, he said miserably, as though reading her thoughts. But no one will bother you on the street if I'm with you. A lot of protection you'd be if they did, she snapped. But I'm desperate. You can carry him to the stellar hotel for me. The gravity of Ganymede was hardly more than that of Earth's moon, but the way the man picked up the limp Montwick with one hand and tossed him over his shoulder was startling, as though he lifted a feather pillow. He followed Trella out the door of the golden satellite and fell in step beside her. Immediately she was grateful for his presence. The dimly lighted street was not crowded, but she didn't like the looks of the men she saw. The transparent dome of Jupiter's view was faintly visible in the reflected nightlights of the colonial city, but the lights were overwhelmed by the giant, very colored disc of Jupiter itself, riding high in the sky. I'm Quest Mansart, Miss, said her companion. I'm just in from Jupiter. I'm Trella Nussfar, she said, favoring him with a green eyed glance. You mean Io, don't you? Or Moon Five? No, he said, grinning at her. He had an engaging grin with even white teeth. I meant Jupiter. You're lying, she said flatly. No one has ever landed on Jupiter. It would be impossible to blast off again. My parents landed on Jupiter and I blasted off from it, he said, soberly. I was born there. Have you ever heard of Dr. Ericland Mansart? I certainly have, she said, her interest taking a sudden upward turn. He developed the surgescope, didn't he? But his ship was drawn into Jupiter and lost. It was drawn into Jupiter, but he landed it successfully, said Quest. He and my mother lived on Jupiter until the oxygen equipment wore out at last. I was born and brought up there, and I was finally able to build a small rocket with a powerful enough drive to clear the planet. She looked at him. He was short, half a head shorter than she, but broad and powerful as a man might be who had grown up in heavy gravity. He trod the street with a light, controlled step, seeming to deliberately hold himself down. If Dr. Mansart succeeded in landing on Jupiter, why didn't anyone ever hear from him again, she demanded. Because, said Quest, his radio was sabotaged, just as his ship's drive was. Jupiter's strength, she murmured, looking him over coolly. You wear motwick on your shoulder like a scarf, but you couldn't bring yourself to help a woman against two thugs? He flushed. I'm sorry, he said, that's something I couldn't help. Why not? I don't know. It's not that I'm afraid, but there's something in me that makes me back away from the prospect of fighting anyone. Trella sighed. Cowardice was a state of mind. It was particularly inappropriate, but not unbelievable, that the strongest and most agile man on Ganymede should be a coward. Well, she thought with a rush of sympathy, he couldn't help being what he was. They had reached the more brightly lighted section of the city now. Trella could get a cab from here, but the stellar hotel wasn't far. They walked on. Trella had the desk clerk call a cab to deliver the unconscious motwick to his home. She and Quest had a late sandwich in the coffee shop. I landed here only a week ago, he told her, his eyes frankly admiring her honey-colored hair and cuddly face. I'm headed for Earth on the next spaceship. We'll be traveling, companions. Then, she said, I'm going back on that ship, too. For some reason, she decided against telling him that the assignment on which she had come to the Jupiter system was to gather his own father's notebooks and take them back to Earth. Motwick was an irresponsible playboy whom Trella had known briefly on Earth, and Trella was glad to dispense with his company for the remaining three weeks before the spaceship blasted off. She found herself enjoying the steadier companionship of Quest. As a matter of fact, she found herself enjoying his companionship more than she intended to. She found herself falling in love with him. Now this did not suit her at all. Trella had always liked her men tall and dark. She had determined that when she married it would be to a curly-haired six-footer. She was not at all happy about being so strongly attracted to a man several inches shorter than she. She was particularly unhappy about being drawn to a man who was a coward. The ship that they boarded on Moon 9 was one of the newer ships that could attain a hundred-mile-per-second velocity and take a hyperbolic path to Earth, but it would still require 54 days to make the trip. So Trella was delighted to find that the ship was the comet fire, and that Skipper was her old friend, dark-eyed, curly-haired Jectane Gill. Jectane, she said, flirting with him with her eyes as in days gone by. I need to chaperone this trip, and you're ideal for the job. I never thought of myself in quite that light, but maybe I'm getting old, he answered, laughing. What's your trouble, Trella? I'm in love with that huge chunk of man who came aboard with me, and I'm not sure I ought to be, she confessed. I may need protection against myself till we get to Earth. If it's to keep you out of another fella's clutches, I'm your man, agreed Jectane heartily. I always had a mind to save you for myself. I'll guarantee you won't have a moment alone with him the whole trip. You don't have to be that thorough about it, she protested hastily. I want to get a little enjoyment out of being in love, but if I feel myself weakening too much, I'll haul her for help. The comet fire swung around Great Jupiter in an opening arc and plummeted ever more swiftly toward the tight circles of the inner planets. There were four crew members and three passengers aboard the ship's tiny personnel sphere, and Trella was thrown with quest almost constantly. She enjoyed every minute of it. She told him only that she was a messenger, sent out to Ganymede to pick up some important papers and take them back to Earth. She was tempted to tell him what the papers were. Her employer had impressed upon her that her mission was confidential, but surely Dom Blessing could not object to Dr. Mansard's son knowing about it. All these things had happened before she was born, and she did not know what Dom Blessing's relation to Dr. Mansard had been, but it must have been very close. She knew that Dr. Mansard had invented the surgical scope. This was an instrument with a three-dimensional screen as its heart. The screen was a cubicle frame in which an apparently solid image was built up of an object under an electron microscope. The actual cutting instrument of the surgical scope was an ion stream. By operating a tool in the three-dimensional screen, corresponding movements were made by the ion stream on the object under the microscope. The principle was the same as that used in the operation of remote control hands in atomic laboratories to handle hot material, and with the surgical scope, very delicate operations could be performed at the cellular level. Dr. Mansard and his wife had disappeared into the turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter just after his invention of the surgical scope, and it had been developed by Dom Blessing. Its success had built spaceway instruments, incorporated, which Blessing headed. Through all the years since Dr. Mansard's disappearance, Blessing had been searching the Jovian moons for a second hidden laboratory of Dr. Mansard. When it was found at last, he sent Trella, his most trusted secretary, to Ganymede to bring back to him the notebooks found there. Blessing would, of course, be happy to learn that the son of Dr. Mansard lived, and would see that he received his rightful share of the inheritance. Because of this, Trella was tempted to tell Quest the good news herself, but she decided against it. It was Blessing's privilege to do this his own way, and he might not appreciate her meddling. At mid-trip, Trella made a rueful confession to Jack Dane. It seems I was taking unnecessary precautions when I asked you to be a chaperone. She said, I kept waiting for Quest to do something, and when he didn't, I told him I loved him. What did he say? It was very peculiar, she said unhappily. He said he can't love me. He says he wants to love me, and he feels that he should, but there's something in him that refuses to permit it. She expected Jack Dane to salve her wounded feelings with a sympathetic pleasantry, but he did not. Instead, he just looked at her very thoughtfully and said no more about the matter. He explained his attitude after Azrange ran amok. Azrange was the third passenger. He was a lean, sadder nine individual who said little and kept to himself as much as possible. He was distantly polite in his relations with both crew and other passengers, and never showed the slightest spark of emotion until the day Quest squirted coffee on him. It was one of those accidents that can occur easily in space. The passengers and the two crewmen on that particular waking shift, including Jack Dane, were eating lunch on the center deck. Quest picked up his bulb of coffee, but inadvertently pressed it before he got it to his lips. The coffee squirted all over the front of Azrange's clean, white tunic. I'm sorry, exclaimed Quest in distress. The man's eyes went wide and he snarled. So quickly it seemed impossible. He had unbuckled himself from his seat and hurled himself backward from the table with an incoherent cry. He seized the first object his hand touched. It happened to be a heavy wooden cane leaning against Jack Dane's bunk. Propelled himself like a projectile at Quest. Quest rose from the table in a sudden uncoiling of movement. He did not unbuckle his safety belt. He rose and it snapped like a string. For a moment, Trellof thought he was going to meet Azrange's assault. But he fled in a long leap toward the companionway leading to the astrogation deck above. Landing feet first in the middle of the table and rebounding, Azrange pursued with the stick upraised. In his haste, Quest missed the companionway in his leap and was cornered against one of the bunks. Azrange descended on him like an avenging angel and, holding onto the bunk with one hand, rained savage blows on his head and shoulders with the heavy stick. Quest made no effort to retaliate. He cowered under the attack, holding his hands in front of him as if to ward it off. In a moment, Jack Dane and the other crewmen had reached Azrange and pulled him off. When they had Azrange in irons, Jack Dane turned to Quest, who was now sitting unhappily at the table. Take it easy, he advised. I'll wake the psychosurgeon and have him look you over. Just stay there. Quest shook his head. Don't bother him, he said. It's nothing but a few bruises. Bruises! Man, that club could have broken your skull or a couple of ribs, at the very least. I'm all right, insisted Quest, and when the skeptical Jack Dane insisted on examining him carefully, he had to admit it. There was hardly a mark on him from the blows. If it didn't hurt you any more than that, why didn't you take that stick away from him, demanded Jack Dane? You could have, easily. I couldn't, said Quest miserably and turned his face away. Later, along with Trella on the control deck, Jack Dane gave her some sober advice. If you think you're in love with Quest, forget it, he said. Why? Because he's a coward? I know that ought to make me despise him, but it doesn't anymore. Not because he's a coward, because he's an android. What? Jack Dane, you can't be serious. I am. I say he's an android, an artificial imitation of a man. It all figures. Look, Trella, he said he was born on Jupiter. A human could stand the gravity of Jupiter inside a dome or a ship, but what human could stand the rocket acceleration necessary to break free of Jupiter? Here's a man strong enough to break a spaceship safety belt just by getting up out of his chair against it, tough enough to take a beating with a heavy stick without being injured. How can you believe he's really human? Trella remembered the thug Craig, striking Quest in the face, and then crying that he had injured his hand on the bar. But he said Dr. Mansard was his father, protested Trella. Robots and androids frequently look on their makers as their parents, said Jack Dane. Quest may not even know he's artificial. Do you know how Mansard died? The oxygen equipment failed, Quest said. Yes, do you know when? No, Quest never did tell me that I remember. He told me a year before Quest made his rocket flight to Ganymede. If the oxygen equipment failed, how do you think Quest lived in the poisonous atmosphere of Jupiter if he's human? Trella was silent. For the protection of humans, there are two psychological traits built into every robot android, said Jack Dane gently. The first is that they can never, under any circumstances, attack a human being, even in self-defense. The second is that, while they may understand sexual desire objectively, they can never experience it themselves. Those characteristics fit your man, Quest, to a T. Trella, there is no other explanation for him. He must be an android. Trella did not want to believe Jack Dane was right. But his reasoning was unassailable. Looking upon Quest as an android, many things were explained. His great strength, his short, broad build, his immunity to injury, his refusal to defend himself against a human, his inability to return Trella's love for him. It was not inconceivable that she should have unknowingly fallen in love with an android. Humans could love androids with real affection, even knowing that they were artificial. There were instances of android nursemaids who were virtually members of the family's owning them. She was glad now that she had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard's son, but an android had no legal right of inheritance from his owner. She would leave it to Dom Blessing to decide what to do about Quest. Thus she did not, as she had intended originally, speak to Quest about seeing him again after she had completed her assignment. Even if Jack Dane was wrong and Quest was human, as now seemed unlikely, Quest had told her that he could not love her. Her best course was to try to forget him. Nor did Quest try to arrange with her for a later meeting. It has been pleasant knowing you, Trella, he said when they left the G-Boat at White Sands. A far away look came into his blue eyes, and he added, I'm sorry things couldn't have been different, somehow. Let's don't be sorry for what we can't help, she said gently, taking his hand in farewell. Trella took a fast plane from White Sands, and 24 hours later walked up the front steps of the familiar Bronstone House on the outskirts of Washington. Dom Blessing himself met her at the door, a stooped, graying man who peered at her over his spectacles. You have the papers, eh? he said, spying the briefcase. Good, good, come in and we'll see what we have, eh? She accompanied him through the bare, windowless anti-room, which always seemed to her such a strange feature of this luxurious house. And they entered the big living room. They sat before a fire in the old-fashioned fireplace, and Blessing opened the briefcase with trembling hands. There are things here, he said, his eyes sparkling as he glanced through the notebooks. Yes, there are things here. We shall make something of these, Miss Trella, eh? I'm glad there's something you can use, Mr. Blessing, she said. There's something else I found on my trip that I think I should tell you about. She told him about Quest. He thinks he's the son of Dr. Mansard, she finished, but apparently he is, without knowing it, an android Dr. Mansard built on Jupiter. He came back to Earth with you, eh? Asked Blessing intently. Yes, I'm afraid it's your decision whether to let him go on living as a man, or to tell him he's an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard's heir. Trella planned to spend a few days resting in her employer's spacious home, and then to take a short vacation before resuming her duties as his confidential secretary. The next morning when she came down from her room, a change had been made. Two armed men were with Dom Blessing at breakfast, and accompanied him wherever he went. She discovered that two more men with guns were stationed in the bare anti-room, and a guard was stationed at every entrance to the house. Why all the protection, she asked Blessing. A wealthy man must be careful, said Blessing cheerfully. When we don't understand all the implications of new circumstances, we must be prepared for anything, eh? There was only one new circumstance Trella could think of. Without actually intending to, she exclaimed, You aren't afraid of quest? Why, an android can't hurt a human. Blessing peered at her over his spectacles. And what if he isn't an android, eh? And what if he is? What if old Mansard didn't build in the prohibition against harming humans that's required by law? What about that, eh? Trella was silent, shocked. There was something here she hadn't known about, hadn't even suspected. For some reason, Dom Blessing feared Dr. Ericland Mansard, or his heir, or his mechanical servant. She was sure that Blessing was wrong, that quest, whether man or android, intended no harm to him. Surely, quest would have said something of such bitterness during their long time together on Ganymede and A Space, since he did not know of Trella's connection with Blessing. But, since this was to be the atmosphere of Blessing's house, she was glad that he decided to assign her to take the Mansard papers to the New York laboratory. Quest came the day before she was scheduled to leave. Trella was in the living room with Blessing, discussing the instructions she was to give to the laboratory officials in New York. The two bodyguards were with them. The other guards were at their posts. Trella heard the doorbell ring. The heavy, oaken front door was kept locked now, and the guards in the anti-room examined callers through a tiny window. Suddenly alarm bells rang all over the house. There was a terrific crash outside the room as the front door splintered. There were shouts and the sound of a shot. The steel doors cried Blessing, turning white. Let's get out of here. He and his bodyguards ran through the back of the house out of the garage. Blessing, ahead of the rest, leaped into one of the cars and started the engine. The door from the house shattered and Quest burst through. The two guards turned and fired together. He could be hurt by bullets. He staggered momentarily. Then, in a blur of motion, he sprang forward and swept the guards aside with one hand, with such force that they skidded across the floor and lay in an unconscious heap against the rear of the garage. Trella had opened the door of the car, but it was wrenched from her hand as Blessing stepped on the accelerator and it leaped into the driveway with spinning wheels. Quest was after it, like a chunky deer, running faster than Trella had ever seen a man run before. Blessing slowed for the turn at the end of the driveway and glanced back over his shoulder. Seeing Quest almost upon him, he slammed down the accelerator and twisted the wheel hard. The car whipped into the street, careened, and rolled over and over, bringing up against a tree on the other side in a twisted tangle of wreckage. With a horrified gasp, Trella ran down the driveway toward the smoking heap of metal. Quest was already beside it, probing it. As she reached his side, he lifted the torn body of Dawn Blessing. Blessing was dead. I'm lucky, said Quest soberly. I would have murdered him. But why, Quest? I knew he was afraid of you, but he didn't tell me why. He was conditioned into me, answered Quest. I didn't know it until just now, when it ended. But my father conditioned me psychologically from my birth to the task of hunting down Dawn Blessing and killing him. It was an unconscious drive in me that wouldn't release me until the task was finished. You see, Blessing was my father's assistant on Ganymede. Right after my father completed the development of the surgescope, he and my mother blasted off for Isle. Blessing wanted the valuable rights to the surgescope, and he sabotaged the ship's drive so it would fall into Jupiter. But my father was able to control it in the heavy atmosphere of Jupiter and landed it successfully. I was born there, and he conditioned me to come to Earth and track down Blessing. I know now that it was part of the conditioning that I was unable to fight any other man until my task was finished. It might have gotten me in trouble and diverted me from that purpose. More gently than Trella would have believed possible for his Jupiter-strong muscles, Quest took her in his arms. Now I can say I love you, he said. That was part of the conditioning, too. I couldn't love any woman until my job was done. Trella disengaged herself. I'm sorry, she said. Don't you know this, too, now, that you're not a man, but an android? He looked at her in astonishment, stunned by her words. What in space makes you think that, he demanded? Why, Quest, it's obvious, she cried, tears in her eyes. Everything about you, your build, suited for Jupiter's gravity, your strength, the fact that you were able to live in Jupiter's atmosphere after the oxygen equipment failed. I know you think Dr. Mansard was your father, but androids often believed that. He grinned at her. I'm no android, he said confidently. Do you forget my father was the inventor of the search-escope? He knew I'd have to grow up on Jupiter, and he operated on the genes before I was born. He altered my inherited characteristics to adapt me to the climate of Jupiter, even to being able to breathe a chlorine atmosphere as well as an oxygen atmosphere. Trello looked at him. He was not badly hurt, any more than an elephant would have been, but his tunic was stained with red blood where the bullets had struck him. Normal android blood was green. How can you be sure, she asked doubtfully. Androids are made, he answered with a laugh. They don't grow up? And I remember my boyhood on Jupiter very well. He took her in his arms again, and this time she did not resist. His lips were very human. End of The Jupiter Weapon by Charles L. Fontenay