 impact. This is a LibreBox recording. All LibreBox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreBox.org. Recording by Tom Weiss. Impact by Irving E. Cox. They were languorous, anarchic, shameless in their pleasures. Were they lower than man, or higher? Over the cabin foam, Anne's voice was crisp with anger. Mr. Lord, I must see you at once. Of course, Anne. Lord tried not to sound incorrigible. It was all part of a trade agent's job to listen to the recommendations and complaints of the teacher. But an interview with Anne Howard was always so arduous, so stiff with unrelieved righteousness. I should be free until. Can you come to the schoolroom, Mr. Lord? If it's necessary. But I told you yesterday. There's nothing we can do to make them take the lessons. I understand your point of view, Mr. Lord. Her words were barely civil, brittle chess advice. However, this concerns Don. He's gone. Gone? Where? Jump ship. Are you sure, Anne? How long ago? I'd rather imagine you'd be interested, she answered, with smug satisfaction. Naturally, you'll want to see this. No. I'll be waiting for you. The phone clicked decisively as she broke the connection. Impotent curate lashed Lord's mind. Anger at Don Howard, because the engineer was one of his key men. And childishly, anger at Don's sister, because she was the one who had broken the news. If it had come from almost anyone else, it would somehow have seemed less disastrous. Don's was the fourth desertion in less than a week, and the loss of trained personnel was becoming serious aboard the series. But what did Anne Howard expect Lord to do about it? This was a trading ship. He had no military authority over his crew. As Lord stood up, his desk chair collapsed with a quiet hiss against the cabin wall, and on grease tubes the desk dropped out of sight beneath the bunk bed, giving Lord the luxury of an uncluttered floor space eight feet square. He had the only private quarters on the ship, the usual distinction reserved for a trade agent in command. From a narrow wardrobe, curved to fit the projectile walls of the ship, Lord took a lightweight jacket marked with the tooled shoulder insignia of command. He smiled a little as he put it on. He was Martin Lord, trade agent and heir to the fabulous industrial trading empire of Hamilton Lord Incorporated. Yet he was afraid to face Anne Howard without the visible trappings of authority. He descended the spiral stairway to the midship airlock, a lead wall chamber directly above the long power tubes of the series. The locked door hung open, making an improvised landing porch fifty feet above the charred ground. Lord paused for a moment at the head of the rung landing ladder. Below him, in the clearing where the ship had come down, he saw the rows of plastic prefabs which his crew had thrown up, laboratories, sleeping quarters, a kitchen, and Anne Howard's schoolroom. Beyond the clearing was the edge of the magnificent Florence which covered so much of this planet. Far away in the foothills of a distant mountain range, Lord saw the houses of a village gleaming in the scarlet blaze of the setting sun, a world at peace, uncrowded, unscarred by the feverish excavation and building of man, a world at the zenith of its native culture, about to be jerked away by the root din of civilization. Lord fell the twinge of the same guilt that had tormented his minds since the series had first landed, and with an effort he drove it from his mind. He descended the ladder and crossed the clearing. Still blackened from the landing blast, he pushed open the sliding door of the schoolroom. It was large and pleasantly yellow wall crowded with projectors, viewbooths, stereo miniatures, and picture books, all the visual aids which Anne Howard would have used to teach the natives the cultural philosophy of the Galactic Federation. But the rows of seats were empty and the gleaming machines still stood in their cases, for no one had come to Anne's school in spite of her extravagant offers of trade goods. Anne sat waiting, ramrod straight in front of a green-tinged projectoscope. She made no compromise with the heat which had driven the men to strip to their fatigue shorts. Anne wore the full formal uniform. A less strong-willed woman might have appeared wilted after a day's work. Anne's face was expressionless, a block of cold ivory. Only a faint mist, the perspiration on her upper lip, betrayed her acute discomfort. You came promptly, Mr. Lord. There was a faint gleam of triumph in her eyes. That was good of you. She unfolded her brother's note and gave it to Lord. It was a clear, straightforward statement of fact. Don Howard said he was deserting the mission, relinquishing his Federation citizenship. I'm staying on this world. These people have something priceless, Anne. All my life I've been looking for it, dreaming of it. You wouldn't understand how I feel, but nothing else, nothing else, matters, Anne. Go home. Leave these people alone. Don't try to make them over. The last lines rang in sympathy with Lord's own feelings, and he knew that was absurd. Change would have to be made when the trade city was built. That was Lord's business. Expansion and progress, the lifeblood of the Federation. What do you want me to do? He demanded. Go after Don and bring him back. And if he refuses, I won't leave him here. I have no authority to force him against his will, Anne. I'm sure you can get help from this, her lit girl, this native girl of yours. What's her name? Niaga. Oh, yes. Niaga. Queen, isn't it? She smiled flatly. He felt an almost irresistible urge to smash his fist into her jaw. Straight laced, hopelessly blind to every standard of her own. What right did Anne have to pass judgment on Niaga? It was a rhetorical question. Anne Howard represented the Federation no less than Lord did himself. By law, the teachers wrote every trading ship. In the final analysis, their certification could make or break any new planetary franchise. Niaga has been very helpful, Anne, cooperative. And oh, I'm sure she has, Mr. Lord. I could threaten to cut off Don's bonus pay, I suppose. But it wouldn't do much good. Money has no meaning to these people. And if Don intends to stay here, it won't mean much to him, either. How you do it, Mr. Lord, is not my concern. But if Don doesn't come home with us, she favored him with another icy smile. I'm afraid I'll have to make an adverse report when you apply for the franchise. You can't, Anne. Lord was more surprised and angry. Only in the case of a primitive and belligerent culture, I've seen no evidence of technology here, she paused, and not the slightest indication that these people have any conception of moral values. Not by our standards, no. But we've never abandoned a planet for that reason alone. I know what you're thinking, Mr. Lord. Men like you, the traders, and the businessmen, and the builders, you've never understood a teacher's responsibility. You make the big noise in the Federation, but we hold it together for you. I'm not particularly disturbed by the superficials I've seen here. The indecent dress of these people, their indolent villages, their congenital irresponsibility, all that disgusts me, but it has not affected my analysis. There's something else here, something far more terrible and more dangerous for us. I can't put it in words. It's horrible, and it's deadly. It's the reason why our men have deserted. They've had attractive women in other worlds, in the trade cities, anything money could buy. But they never jumped ship before. A certain percentage always will and Lord hoped he sounded reassuring, but he felt anything but reassured himself. Not because of what he said. These naive, altogether delightful people were harmless. But could the charming simplicity of their lives survive the impact of civilization? It was this world that was in danger, not by any stretch of the imagination, the Federation. As the thought occurred to him, he shrank from it with a kind of inner terror. It was heresy. The Federation represented the closest approximation of perfection mortal man would ever know. A brotherhood countless species, a union of a thousand planets created by the ingenuity and the energy of man. The Pax Humana. How could it be a threat to any people anywhere? That would be my recommendation. Suddenly and self assurance collapse. She reached for his hand. Her fingers were cold and trembling. But if you bring Don back, I won't report against the franchise. You're offering to make a deal. You know the penalty. Collusion between a trade agent and the teacher assigned to his ship. Yes, I know the law, Mr. Lord. You're willing to violate it for Don. Why? Your brother's a big boy now. He's old enough to look after himself. Anne Howard turned away from him and her voice dropped to a whisper. He isn't my brother, Mr. Lord. We had to sign on that way because your company prohibits a man and wife from sailing in the same crew. In that moment, she stripped her soul bare to him. Poor, plain, conscientious Anne Howard. Fighting to hold her man, fighting the unknown odds of an alien world, the stealthy seduction of an immoral people. Lord understood Anne then for the first time. He saw the shadow of madness that crept across her mind and he pitied her. I'll do what I can, he promised. As he left the schoolroom, she collapsed in a straight back chair, thin and unattractive, like Anne herself, and her shoulders shook with silent, bitter grief. Martin Lord took the familiar path to Niagara's village. The setting sun still spread its dying fire across the evening sky, but he walked slowly through the deep, quiet shadows of the forest. He came to the stream where he had met Niagara. He paused to dip his sweat-smeared face into the cool water, cascading over a five-foot fall. A pleasant flood of memory crowded his mind. When he had first met Niagara almost a week before, she had been lying on the sandy bank of the stream, idly plating a garland of red and blue flowers. Niagara, a copper skin goddess, stark naked and unashamed in the bright spotlight of sun filtered through the trees, languorous, laughing lips, long, black hair loosely caught in a net of filmy material that hung across her shoulder. The feeling of guilt and shame had stabbed at Lord's mind. He had come, unasked, into an Eden. He didn't belong here. His presence meant pillage, a rifling of a sacred dream. The landing had been a mistake. Oddly enough, the Ceres had landed here entirely by chance, the result of a boyish fling at adventure. Martin Lord was making a routine tour of representative trade cities before assuming his vice presidency in the central office of Hamilton Lord, Inc. It had been a family custom for centuries, ever since the first domed courts had been built on Mars and Venus. Lord was 26 and, like all the family, tall, slim, yellow haired. As the lords had for generations, Martin had attended the Chicago University of Commerce for four years and the Princeton Graduate School in Interstellar Engineering for more, essential preparations for the successful federation trader. In Chicago, Martin had absorbed the basic philosophy of the federation. The union of planets and diverse peoples created by trade was an economy eternally prosperous and eternally growing because the number of undiscovered and unexploited planets was infinite. The steady expansion of the trade cities kept demand always one jump ahead of supply. Every merchant was assured that this year's profits would always be larger than last. It was the financial millennium from which oppression and recession had been forever eliminated. At Princeton, Lord had learned the practical physics necessary for building, servicing, and piloting the standard interstellar merchant ships. Martin Lord's tour of the trade cities completed his education. It was his first actual contact with reality. The economy of progress, which had seemed so clear cut in the Chicago lecture halls, was translated into a sprawling, vice-ridden frontier city. In the older trade cities, the culture of man had come to dominate the occupied worlds. No trace of what alien peoples had been or had believed survived except this museum oddities. This, Lord admitted to himself, was conquest by whatever innocuous name it passed. But was it for good or evil? In the first shock of reality, Martin Lord had doubted himself and the destiny of the Federation, but only for a moment. What he saw was good. He had been taught to believe that because the Federation was perfection. But the doubt, like a cancer, fed and grew in the darkness of Lord's soul. On the home trip, a mechanical defect of the calibration of the time power carried the series off its course, light years beyond the segment of the galaxy occupied by the Federation. We burned out a relay down how it recorded. Have we replacements? Lord asked. It's no problem to fix, but the repairs would be easier if we could set the ship down somewhere. Lord glanced at the unknown sun and three satellite planets which were plotted electronically on his cabin scanning screen. His pulse leaped with sudden excitement. This was his first and last chance for adventure, the only interstellar flight he would command in his lifetime. When he returned to Earth, he would be chained for the rest of his days to a desk job, submerged in a sea of statistical tables and financial statements. Run an atmosphere analysis on these three worlds, Mr. Howard, he said softly. Driven by its auxiliary nuclear power plant, the ship moved closer to the new solar system. In half an hour, Don Howard brought Lord the lab report. Two of the planets were enveloped in methane, but the third had an earth-normal atmosphere. Lord gave the order for a landing, his voice pulsing with poorly concealed, boyish pleasure. The series settled on a hilltop, its cushioning rockets burning an improvised landing area in the lush foliage. As the airlock swung open, Lord saw half a dozen golden-skinned savages standing on the edge of the clearing. As nearly as he could judge, they were men, but that was not too surprising because a number of planets in the Federation had evolved sentient species which resembled man. The savages were unarmed and nearly naked. Tall, powerfully built men, they seemed neither odd nor frightened by the ship. Over the circle of scorched earth, Lord heard the sound of their voices. For a fleeting second the words seemed to make sense. A clear, unmistakable welcome to the new world. But communication was inconceivable. This planet was far beyond the fringe of the Federation. Lord was letting his imagination run away with him. He flung out his arms in a universally accepted gesture of open-handed friendship. At once the talk of the natives ceased. They stood waiting silently on the burned ground while the men unwound the landing ladder. Lord made the initial contact himself. The techniques which he had learned in the University of Commerce proved enormously successful. Within 10 minutes rapport was established. In 20 the natives had agreed to submit to the linguistic machines. Lord had read accounts of other trailblazing commercial expeditions and he knew he was establishing a record for speed of negotiation. The savages were quite unfrightened as the electrodes were fastened to their skulls, entirely undisturbed by the wearer of the machine. In less than an hour they were able to use the common language of the Federation. Another record. Most species needed a week's indoctrination. Every new development suggested that these half-naked primitives with no machine civilization, no cities, no form of spaceflight, had an intellectual potential superior to man's. The first question asked by one of the broad shoulder savages underscored that conclusion. Have you come to our world as colonists? No mumbo jumbo of superstition, no awe of strangers who had suddenly descended upon them from the sky. Lord answered, we landed in order to repair our ship, but I hope we can make a trade treaty with your government. For a moment the six men consulted among themselves with a silent exchange of glances. Then one of them smiled and said, you must visit our villages and explain the idea of trade to our people. Of course, Lord agree, if you could serve as interpreters our people can learn your language as rapidly as we have if we can borrow your language machine for a time. Lord frown, it's a rather complex device and I'm not sure you see if something went wrong. You might do a great deal of harm. We would use it just as you did. We saw everything you turned to make it run. One of the golden skin primitives made a demonstrate on turning the console of dials with the ease and familiarity of a semantic expert. Again, Lord was impressed by their intelligence and vaguely frightened. You could call this the first trade exchange between your world and ours and other savage added. Give us the machine. We'll send you fresh food from the village. The argument was logical and eventually the natives had their way. Perhaps it was Anne Howard's intervention that decided the point. She vehemently disapproved. A gift of technique should be withheld until she had examined their cultural traditions. But Martin Lord was a trade agent and he had no intention of allowing his mission to be wrecked by the ephemeral doubts of a teacher. Here at the onset was the time to make it clear that he was in command. He gave the natives the machine. As the six men trudged across the burned earth carrying the heavy apparatus easily on their shoulders, Lord wondered if either he or Anne Howard had much to do with the negotiations. He had an unpleasant feeling that, from the very beginning, the natives had been in complete control of the situation. Less than an hour after the six men had departed, a band of natives emerged from the forest bearing gifts of food, straw baskets, heat with fruit, fresh meat wrapped in grass mats, hampers of bread, enormous pottery jars filled with a sweet cold milky liquid. Something very close to the miraculous had occurred. Every native had learned to use the Federation language. A kind of fiesta began in the clearing beside the staries. The natives built fires to cook the food. The women, scantily dressed if they were clothed at all, danced sensuously in the bright sunlight to a peculiarly exotic, minor keyed music played on reed and percussion instruments. Laughing gaily, they enticed members of the Lord's crew to join them. The milky drink proved mildly intoxicating, yet different from the stimulants used in the Federation. Lord drank a long draught from a mug brought him by one of the women. The effect was immediate. He felt no dulling of his reason, however. No loss of muscular control, but instead a stealthy relaxation of mental strain joined with a satisfying sense of physical well-being. A subtle shifting in perspective and accepted values. The savage feast, which grew steadily more boisterous, Lord would have called an orgy under other circumstances. The word did occur to him, but it seemed fantastically inapplicable. Normally the behavior of his men would have demanded the severest kind of disciplinary action, but here the old code of rules simply didn't apply and he didn't interfere with their enjoyment. The afternoon sun blazed in the western sky. Heat in shimmering waves hung over the clearing. Lord went into the ship and stripped off his uniform. Somehow the glittering insignia, the ornamental braid, the stiff collar designed to be impressive symbols of authority, seemed garish and out of place. Lord put on the shorts which he wore when he exercised in the capsule gym aboard ship. Outside again he found that most of the men had done the same thing. The sun felt warm on his skin. The air was comfortably bombing, entirely free of the swarms of flies and other insects, which made other newly contacted frontier wolves so rugged. As he stood in the shelter of the landing ladder and sipped a second mug of the white liquor, Lord became slowly aware of something else. Divested of their distinguishing uniforms, he and his crew seemed puny and ill-fed besides the natives. If physique were any index to the sophistication of a culture, but that was a ridiculous generalization. He saw Ann Howard coming toward him through the crowd, stern faced, hard-jawed, stiffly dignified in her uniform. The other women among the crew had put on their lightest dress but not Ann. Lord was in no frame of mind just then to endure an interview with her. He knew precisely what she would say. Ann was kind of a walking encyclopedia of the conventions. Lord slid out of sight in the shadow of the ship, but Ann had seen him. He turned blindly into the forest, running along the path toward the village. In a fern-banked glen beside the miniature waterfall he had met Niagara. No woman he had ever known seemed so breathtakingly beautiful. Her skin had been caressed by a lifetime's freedom in the sun. Her long dark hair had the sheen of polished ebony, and in the firm healthy curves of her body he saw the sensuous grace of a Venus or an Aphrodite. She stood up slowly and faced him, smiling. A bright shaft of sunlight fell on the liquid bow of her lips. I am Niagara, she said. You must be one of the men who came on the ship. Martin Lord, he answered huskily, I am the trade agent in command. I am honored. Impulsively she took the garland of flowers which she had been making and put it around his neck. When she came close the subtle perfume of her hair was unmistakable, like the smell of pine needles on a mountain trail, new grass during a spring rain, or the crisp winter air after a fall of snow. Perfume sharply symbolic of freedom, heading and intoxicating, numbing his mind with the ghosts of half-remembered dreams. I was coming to your ship with the others, she said, but I stopped here to swim as I often do. I'm afraid I stayed too long, daydreaming on the bank. Time means so little to us. Shiley, she put her hand in his. But perhaps no harm is done, since you are still alone. If you have taken no one else, will I do? I don't understand. You are strangers. We want you to feel welcome. Niaga? People don't. That is, he floundered badly. Intellectually, he knew he could not apply the code of his culture to hers. Emotionally, it was a difficult concept to accept. If his standards were invalid, his definitions might be too. Perhaps the society was no more primitive than, no, a mature people would always develop more or less the same mechanical techniques, and these people had nothing remotely like a machine. You sad us again, she said. It is only proper for us to return the kindness. You have made a rather miraculous use of the language machine in a remarkably short period of time. We applied it to everyone in the village. We knew it would help your people feel at ease if we could talk together in a common tongue. You go to great pains to welcome a shipload of strangers. Naturally, consideration for others is the first law of humanity. After a pause, she added very slowly with her eyes fixed on his. Mr. Lord, do you plan to make a colony here? Eventually, after we repair the ship, I hope to negotiate a trade treaty with your government. But you don't intend to stay here yourself? I couldn't. Have we failed in our welcome? Is there something more? No, Niaga, nothing like that. I find your world very, very beautiful. The word very inadequately expressed what he really felt, but I'm not free to make the choice. She drew in her breath sharply. Your people, then, hold you enslaved? He laughed uneasily. I'm going home to manage Hamilton Lord. It's the largest trading company in the Federation. We have exclusive franchises to develop almost 500 planets. It's my duty, Niaga, my responsibility. I can't shirk it. Why not? If you wanted to. Because I'm Martin Lord. Because I've been trained. No, it's something I can't explain. You'll just have to take my word for it. Now tell me, how should I go about negotiating a treaty with your people? You spoke of the government, Martin Lord. I suppose you used the word in a symbolic sense. Your chieftain, your tribal leader, whatever name you have for them. For big, dark eyes, widened in surprise. Then you meant actual men? It's a rather unusual use of the word, isn't it? For us, government is a synonym for law. Of course, but you must have leaders to interpret it and enforce it. Enforce a law? This seemed to amuse her. How? A law is a statement of truth and human relationship. It doesn't have to be enforced. What same person would violate a truth? What would you do, Martin Lord, if I told you we had no government in your sense of the word? You can't be that primitive, Niaga. Would it be so terribly wrong? That's anarchy. There'd be no question, then, of granting us a trade franchise. We'd have to set up a trusteeship and let the teachers run your planet until you had learned the basic processes of social organization. Niaga turned away from him. Her hands twisted together. She said in a soft whisper that was flat and emotionless. We have a council of elders, Martin Lord. You can make your treaty with them. Then, imperceptibly, her voice brightened. It will take a week or more to bring the council together, and that is all to the good. It will give your people time to visit in our villages and to get better acquainted with us. Niaga left him then. She said she would go to the village and send out the summons for the council. By a roundabout path, Lord returned to the clearing around the series. The forest fascinated him. It was obviously cultivated like a park, and he was puzzled that a primitive society should practice such full-scale conservation. Normally, savages took nature for granted or warred against it. He came upon a brown gash torn in the hillside above the stream, a place where natives were apparently working to build up the bank against erosion. In contrast to the beauty that surrounded it, the bare earth was indescribably ugly, like a livid scar in a woman's face. In his mind, Lord saw this scar multiplied a thousand times, no, a million times, when the machines of the galaxy came to rip out resources for the trade cities. He envisioned the trade cities that would rise against the horizon, the clutter of suburban subdivisions choking out the forest. He saw the pall of industrial smoke that would soil the clean air, the great machines clattering over asphalt streets. For the first time, he stated the problem honestly to himself. This world must be saved exactly as it was. But how? How could Lord continue to represent Hamilton Lord Inc. as a reputable trade agent, and at the same time save Niagara's people from the impact of civilization? It was sunset when he returned to the series. On the clearing, the festivities were still going on, but at a slower pace. Anne Howard was waiting for Lord at the door of his cabin. She registered her official disapproval of the revelry, which Lord had expected, and then she added, we can't make a treaty with them. These people have no government with the authority to deal with us. You're wrong, Anne. There's a council of elders. I beg to differ, Mr. Lord. Her lips made a flat grim line against her teeth. This afternoon, I made a point of talking to every native in the clearing. Their idea of government is something they call the law of humanity. Whether it is written down or not, I have no way of knowing, but certainly they have no such thing as a central authority. This rather indicates a teacher trusteeship for the planet, I believe. You've made a mistake, Anne. I'll have to check for myself. Lord and Anne Howard moved together through the clearing and he began to talk to the natives. In each case, he elicited the same information that Anne had given him. The mention of a governing council seemed to amuse the savages. Lord and Anne were still conducting their puzzling inquest when Niagara returned from the village. She said that the council had been called and would meet within a week. There seems to be some difference of opinion, Anne told her coldly between you and your people. Yes, Lord added, uncertainly. I've been asking about the council and but you didn't phrase the question clearly. Niagara put in smoothly. We're not quite used to using your words yet with your definitions. To make her point, she called the same natives whom Anne and Lord had questioned. And this time, without exception, they reversed their testimony. Lord was willing to believe the language had caused the difficulty. Niagara's people were entirely incapable of deception. What reason did they have had? From that hour, the clearing was never altogether free of native guests. The deluged Lord's crew with kindness and entertainment. Lord never left the ship day or night without having Niagara slip up beside him and put her arm through his. Because Anne Howard had made her objection so clear, the native women in an effort to please the teacher had taken to wearing more clothing than they were accustomed to. But they rejected the sack-like plastics which Anne dispensed in the schoolroom and put on the mis-like pastel-colored netting which they used normally to decorate their homes. If anything, the addition of clothing made the women more attractive than ever. The scientists among Lord's men analyzed the planetary resources and found the planet unbelievably rich in metals. The botanists determined that the seeds for the exotic fruits and flowers were exportable. All told, Niagara's world could develop into the richest franchise in the Federation. Niagara took Lord to visit the villages which were close to the landing site. Each town was exactly like its neighbors. A tiny cluster of small, yellow-walled, flat-roofed houses nestled among the tall trees close to a cleared farmland which was worked cooperatively by everyone in the village. No single town was large, yet judging from the number that he saw, Lord estimated the planetary population in the billions. Continuously, Niagara tried to persuade him to stay and build a colony in the new world. Lord knew that the other natives were being as persuasive with the rest of the crew and the temptation was very real to trade the energetic, competitive, exhausting routine that he knew for the quiet peace and relaxation here. As the days passed, the rigid scheduling of exploratory activities always practiced by a trade mission began to break down. The charming savages of this new world put no monetary value on time and something of their spirit began to infect Lord's crew. They stopped fucking for overtime. Most of them applied for accumulated sick leave so they could walk in the forest with the native women or swim in the forest pools. Even Lord found time to relax. One afternoon, after a swim with Niagara, they lay in the warm sun on a grassy bank of a stream. Niagara picked a blue, delicately scented water lily and gently worked it into his hair. Slowly, she bent her face close until her lips brushed his cheek. Must you really go away when the treaty is made? I'm a Lord, Niagara. Does that matter if you like it here? Niagara, I wish. I wish. He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. Why is it so important for you to build your trade cities? As he sought for words to answer her question, the spell of her presence was broken. He saw her for what she was, an extremely beautiful woman, sensuously very lovely, yet nonetheless a primitive, a forlorn child without any conception of the meaning of civilization. We keep our union of planets economically sound, he explained patiently, and at peace, like constantly expanded. I have visited the schoolroom your teacher has put up beside the ship. I have seen her mothless of the many machines your people know how to build. But why do you do it, Martin Lord? The machines make our lives easier and more comfortable. They are more comfortable than this? She gestured toward the stream and the cultivated forest. Your world moves at a pace of a walk, Niagara. With our machines, you could rise above your trees, reach your destination in minutes, when now it takes you days. And miss all the beauty on the way? What point is there in saving time and losing so much that it really matters? Do your machines give you anything new as a person, Martin Lord, that you couldn't have here without them? The question was unanswerable. It symbolized the enormous gulf that lay between Niagara and himself. More than that, Lord saw clearly that the trade cities would destroy her world utterly. Neither Niagara nor her way of life could survive the impact of civilization. And the exotic charm, the friendly innocence, was worth saving. Somehow, Lord had to find a way to do it. Lord was by no means surprised when the first three men jumped ship and went to live in one of the quiet villages. Subconsciously, he envied them. Subconsciously, he wished he had the courage to make the same decision. Although Anne Howard demanded it, Lord couldn't seriously consider taking measures to stop further desertions. When Don Howard jumped ship, he brought the issue to a head. Anne maneuvered Lord so that he would have to take a stand. What and how, he didn't know. It was the first time since the landing that Niagara had not been waiting outside the ship for Lord. At his request, she had gone to the village to find out what progress had been made in calling the Council of Elders. Lord knew where to find her, but after his talk with Anne, he walked slowly along the forest path. He stopped to dip his face in the stream where he had first met Niagara. Anything to put off the showdown. Lord was trying desperately to understand and evaluate his own motivation. He accepted the fact that he had not stopped the desertions because, if enough men jumped ship, the Ceres would be unable to take off again. Lord could then have embraced Niagara's temptation without having to make the decision for himself. But that was a coward's way out and no solution. There would always be people like Anne Howard who would not accept the situation. They would eventually make radio communication with the Federation and the location of Niagara's world would no longer be a secret. Fundamentally, that was the only thing that counted. To preserve this world from the impact of civilization. Then suddenly, as he listened to the stream of music, Lord saw how that could be done. Anne Howard had offered him a deal. She would keep her word. Everything hinged on that. Don Howard had to be brought back. If persuasion failed, then by force. Martin Lord ran back to the clearing. From a supply shed, he took a pair of deadly atomic pistols. Their invisible pinpoint knife of exploding energy could slice through 18 feet of steel, transform a mountain into a cloud of radioactive dust. He ran through the forest to the village. As usual, the children were playing games on the grass while the adults lounged in front of their dwellings and enjoyed community singing and dancing to the pulsing rhythm of their music. The sound of gaiety suddenly died as Lord walked between the rows of houses. Strange, he thought, they seemed to guess what was in his mind. Niagara ran from the quiet crowd and took his hand. No, Martin Lord, you must not interfere, wears Howard. He is a free man. He has a right to choose. I'm going to take him back. He drew one of his guns. She looked at him steadily, without fear, and she said, We made you welcome. We have given you our friendship. And now you, he pushed her aside brutally because her gentleness, her lack of anger, tightened the constriction of his own sense of guilt. Lord fired his weapon at the trunk of a tree. The wood flamed red for a moment, and the sound of the explosion rocked the air, powdering the grass with black ash. This is the kind of power controlled by men, he said. His voice was harsh, shrill with shame and disgust for the role he had to play. I shall use this weapon to destroy your homes, each one of them, one by one, unless you surrender Don Howard to me. As he turned the pistol slowly toward the closest yellow wall, Niagara whispered, Violence is a violation of the law of humanity. We offer Don Howard sanctuary and peace, as we offer it to all of you. Stay with us, Martin Lord, make your home here. He clenched his jaw. I want Don, and I want him now. But why must you go back? Your world is powerful. Your world is enormous with cities and machines. But what does it hold for you as a man, Martin Lord? Here we give you the dreams of your own soul, peace and beauty, laughter and dignity. Surrender Don. Although he was vaguely aware of it, he had no time to consider consciously the strangely sophisticated wording of her argument. When she continued to talk in the same gentle voice, the temptation caressed his mind like a narcotic. Against his will, the tension began to wash from his muscles. Driven by a kind of madness to escape the sound of her voice, he pulled the trigger. The yellow wall exploded. Concussion throbbed in his ears, deafening him, but he still heard her whisper in the depths of his soul, like the music of a forest stream. Then, at the end of the village street, he saw Don Howard coming out of one of the houses with his hands held high. You win, Lord. Leave them alone. It was victory, but Lord felt no triumph, only a crushing bitterness. He motioned Howard to take the path back to the ship. To Niagara, he said, if your council of elders ever gets around to meeting, you might tell them that, as far as I'm concerned, you've already signed the trade treaty with me. We're leaving in the morning to register the franchise. You break your own law? You said the negotiations had to be. Our men will come shortly to build the first trade city. I advise you not to resist them. They'll be armed with guns more powerful than mine. She reached for his hand, but Lord turned away from her quickly, so that she could not again open the raw wound of shame in his soul. He followed Don Howard into the forest. You won't get away with it, Lord, Howard said grimly. No trade agent can impose a treaty. Would a trusteeship be any better? Lord, no. There are only two alternatives, and a Hamilton Lord trade city is by far the better. Yes, for Hamilton Lord. No, for these people. Don't forget, I'll be running Hamilton Lord. The exclusive franchise will keep out the other traders, and I can see to it that our trade city does no harm. We've a thousand planets in the Federation. Who's going to know if one of the cities doesn't really function? I get it, but why the hell did you have to bring me back? To make a deal with your wife. After a long pause, Don Howard said virally, if Hamilton Lord can sacrifice the richest franchise in the galaxy, I suppose I can do my bit, too. At dawn, the serious departed. Lord drove his men to work throughout the night, stowing the prefabs and the trade goods aboard the ship. Just before the power tube stabbed the launching fire into the earth, a delegation of villagers came into the clearing. Niagara led them, and she spoke to Lord at the foot of the landing ladder. We still want you to stay among us, Martin Lord. We have come again to offer it as impossible. She put her arms around his neck and drew his lips against hers. The temptation washed over his mind, shattering his resolution and warping his reason. This was what he wanted, the golden dream of every man. But for Lord, only one idea held fast. Niagara's primitive, naive world had to be preserved exactly as it was. If he gave in to the dream, he would destroy it. Only in the central office of Hamilton Lord could he do anything to save what he had found here. He wrenched himself free of her arms. It's no use, Niagara. She knew that she had lost, and she moved away from him. One of the other golden skin savages pushed a small car box into his hands. Parting gift, Niagara said. Open it when you are aboard your ship, Martin Lord. Long after the series had blasted off, he sat alone in his cabin, looking at the box. Small, delicately carved from a strange material, like a soft plastic. It seemed somehow alive, throbbing with the memory of the dream he had left behind. With a sigh, he opened the box. A billow of white dust came from it. The box fell apart, and the pieces, like disintegrating gelatin, began to melt away. A printed card made of the same unstable material lay in Lord's hand. You have three minutes, Martin Lord, he read. The drug is painless, but before it wipes memory from the minds of you and your crew, I want you to understand why we felt it necessary to do this to you. When you first landed, we realized that you came from a relatively immature culture because you made no response to our telepathy of welcome. We did our best after that to simplify your adjustment to our way of life. Because we knew you would have to stay among us. Of course, we never really learned your language, we simply gave you the illusion that we had. Nor is there any such thing as a council of elders. We had to invent that to satisfy you. We truly wanted you to stay among us. In time, you could have grown up enough, most of you, to live with us as equals. We knew it would be disastrous for you to carry back to your world your idea of how we live. We are the tomorrow of your people. You must grow up to us. There is no other way to maturity. We could not, of course, keep you here against your will. Nor could we let you go back like a poison into your world. We could do nothing else but use this drug. The impact of civilization upon a primitive people like yours. The words haze and fade it as the note disintegrated. Lord felt a moment of desperate yearning, a terrible weight of grief. With an effort, he pushed himself from his chair and pulled open the door into the corridor. He had to order the ship back while he could still remember. He had to find Niagara and tell her. Tell her. Tell whom? Tell what? Lord stood in the corridor, staring blankly at the metal wall. He was just a little puzzled as to why he was there. What he had meant to do. He saw Ann Howard coming toward him. Did you notice the lurch in the ship, Mr. Lord? She asked. Yes, I suppose I did. Was that why he had left his cabin? I thought we were having trouble with the time power calibration, but I checked with Don and he says everything's all right. She glanced through the open door of his cabin at the electronic pattern on the standing screen. Well, we'll be home in another 20 hours, Mr. Lord. It's a pity we didn't contact any new planets in this mission. It would have been a good experience for you. Yes, I rather hope so too. He went back to his desk. Strange, he couldn't remember what it was he wanted to do. He shrugged his shoulders and laughed a little to himself. It definitely wouldn't do, not at all, for a lord to have lapses of memory. This is the end of Impact by Irving E. Cox. Read by Tom Weiss. LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Betsy Bush in Marquette, Michigan, December 2008. Longevity by Therese Windsor. A morality tale, 1960 style. Legend had it that many thousands of years ago, right after the great horror, the whole continent of the West had slowly sunk beneath the West water, and that once every century it arose during a full moon. Still, Captain Heinrich clung to the hope that the legend would not be born out by truth. Perhaps the West continent still existed. Perhaps dare he hope, with civilization. The crew of the Semalunus thought him quite mad. After all, hadn't the East and South continents been completely annihilated from the great sky fires? And wasn't it said that they had suffered from a fraction of what the West continent had endured? The Semalunus anchored at the mouth of a great river. The months of fear and doubt were at end. Here at last was the West continent. A small party of scouts was sent ashore, with many cautions to be alert for luminescent areas, which meant certain death for those who remained too long in its vicinity. Armed with bow and arrow, the party made its way slowly up the great river. Nowhere was to be seen the color green. Only dulled browns and grays, and no sign of life, save for an occasional patch of lichen on a rock. After several days of rowing, the food and water supply was almost half depleted, and still no evidence of either past or present habitation. It was time to turn back, to travel all the weary months across the West water, the journey all in vain. What a small reward for such an arduous trip. Just proof of the existence of a barren land mass, ugly and useless. On the second day of the return to the Semalunus, the scouting party decided to stop and investigate a huge opening in the Rocky Mountainside. How suspiciously regular and even it looked, particularly in comparison to the rest of the countryside, which was jagged and chaotic. They entered the cave apprehensively, torches aflare, and weapons in hand. But all was darkness and quiet. Still, the regularity of the cave walls led them on. Some creature, man, or otherwise, must have planned and built this. But to what end? Now the cave divided into three forks. The torches gave only a hint of the immensity of the chambers that lay at the end of each. They selected the center chamber, approaching cautiously. Breath caught in awe and excitement. The torches reflected on a dull black surface, which was divided into many, many little squares. The sameness of them stretched for uncountable yards in all directions. What were these ungodly looking edifices? The black surface was cold and smooth to the touch, and quite regular except for a strange little hole at the bottom of each square in a curious row of pictures along the top. They would copy these strange pictures. Perhaps back home there would be a scholar who would understand the meaning behind these last remains of the people of the West Continent. The leader took out his slate and painstakingly copied. Safeguard your valuables at Allegheny Mountain Vaults, box number 4544356782. End of Longevity by Therese Windsor. The Measure of a Man by Randall Garrett What is desirable is not always necessary, while that which is necessary may be most undesirable. Perhaps the measure of man is the ability to tell one from the other and act on it. Alfred Pendray pushed himself along the corridor of the battleship Shane, holding the flashlight in one hand, and using the other hand in his good leg to guide and propel himself by. The beam of the torch reflected clearly from the pastel green walls of the corridor, giving him the uneasy sensation that he was swimming underwater, instead of moving through the blasted hulk of a battleship, a thousand light years from home. He came to the turn in the corridor and tried to move to the right, but his momentum was greater than he had thought, and he had to grab the corner of the wall to keep him going on by. That swung him around, and his springed angle slammed agonizingly against the other side of the passageway. Pendray clenched his teeth and kept going. But as he moved down the side passage, he went more slowly, so that the friction of his palm against the wall could be used as a break. He wasn't used to maneuvering without gravity. He'd been taught it in cadets, of course, but that was years ago, and parsecs away. When the pseudo-grav generators had gone out, he'd ratched all over the place, but now his stomach was empty and the nausea had gone. He had automatically oriented himself in the corridors so that the doors of the various compartments were to his left and right, with the ceiling above and the deck below. Otherwise, he might have lost his sense of direction completely in the complex maze of the interstellar battleship. Or, he corrected himself, what's left of a battleship, and what was left, just Al Pendray and less than half of the once mighty Shane. The door to the lifeboat-hole loomed ahead in the beam of the flashlight, and Pendray braked himself to a stop. He just looked at the dogged port for a few seconds. Let there be a boat in there, he thought. Just a boat, that's all I ask. And air, he added as an afterthought. Then his hand went out to the dog handle and turned. The door cracked easily. There was air on the other side. Pendray breathed a sigh of relief, braced his good foot against the wall, and pulled the door open. The little lifeboat was there and nestled tightly in her cradle. For the first time, since the Shane had been hit, Pendray's face broke out into a broad smile. The fear that had been within him faded a little, and the darkness of the crippled ship seemed to be lessened. Then the beam of his torch caught the little red tag on the airlock of the lifeboat. Repair under way. Do not remove this tag without proper authority. That explained why the lifeboat hadn't been used by the other crewmen. Pendray's mind was numb as he opened the airlock of the small craft. He didn't even attempt to think. All he wanted to see was exactly how the vessel had been disabled by the repair crew. He went inside. The lights were working in the lifeboat. That showed that its power was still functioning. He glanced over the instrument and control panels. No red tags on them, at least, just to make sure he opened them up one by one and looked inside. Nothing wrong, apparently. He went through the door in the tiny cabin that led to the engine compartment, and he saw what the trouble was. His shielding had been removed from the automatic. Atomic motors. He just hung there in the air, not moving. His lean, dark face remained expressionless. The tears welled up in his eyes and spilled over, spreading their dampness over his lids. The motors would run all right. The ship would take him to earth. But the radiation leakage from those motors would kill him long before he made it home. It would take ten days to make it back to base, and twenty-four hours of exposure to the deadly radiation from those engines would be enough to ensure his death from radiation sickness. His eyes were blurring from the film of tears that covered them. Without gravity to move the liquid it just pooled there, distorting his vision. He blinked the tears away, then wiped his face with his free hand. Now what? He was the only man left alive on the shame, and none of the lifeboats had escaped. The rat-cruisers had seen to that. They weren't really rats, those people, not literally. They looked humanoid enough to enable plastic surgeons to disguise a human being as one of them, although it meant sacrificing the little fingers and little toes to imitate the four digit rats. The rats were at a disadvantage there. They couldn't add any fingers, but the rats had other advantages. They bred and fought like, well, like rats. Not that human beings couldn't equal them or even surpass them in ferocity, if necessary. But the rats had nearly a thousand years of progress over Earth. Their industrial revolution had occurred while the Anglos and the Saxons and the Jutes were pushing the Britons into whales. They had put their first artificial satellites into orbit while King Alfred the Great was fighting off the Danes. They hadn't developed as rapidly as man had. It took them roughly twice as long to go from one step to the next, so that their actual superiority was only a matter of five hundred years, and man was catching up rapidly. Unfortunately, man hadn't caught up yet. The first meeting of the two races had taken place in interstellar space and had seemed friendly enough. Two ships had come within detector distance of each other, and it circled warily. It was almost a perfect example of the Leinster hypotheses. Neither knew where the other's home world was located, and neither could go back home for fear that the other would be able to follow. But the Leinster hypotheses couldn't be followed to the end. Leinster's solution had been to have the party's trade ships and go home, but that only works when the two civilizations are fairly close in technological development. The rats certainly weren't going to trade their ship for the inferior craft of the Earthmen. The rats, conscious of their superiority, had a simpler solution. They were certain, after a while, that Earth posed no threat to them, so they invited the Earthship to follow them home. The Earthmen had been taken on a carefully conducted tour of the rat's home planet, and the captain of the Earthship, who had gone down in history as Sucker Johnson, was convinced that the rats meant no harm, and agreed to lead a rat ship back to Earth. If the rats had struck then, there would never have been a rat-human war. It would have been over before it started. But the rats were too proud of their superiority. Earth was too far away to bother them for the moment. It wasn't in their line of conquest, just yet. In another fifty years, the planet would be ready for picking off. Earth had no idea that the rats were so widespread. They had taken and colonized over thirty planets, completely destroying the indigenous intelligent races that had existed on five of them. It wasn't just pride that had made the rats decide to wait before hitting Earth. There was a certain amount of prudence, too. None of the other races they had met had developed space travel. The Earthmen might be a little tougher to beat. Not that there was any doubt of the outcome as far as they were concerned, but why take chances? But, while the rats had fooled Sucker Johnson and some of his officers, the majority of the crew knew better. Rat crewmen were little short of slaves, and the rats made the mistake of assuming that the Earth crewmen were the same. They hadn't tried to impress the crewmen as they had the officers. When the interrogation officers on Earth questioned the crew of the Earth's ship, they, too, became suspicious. Johnson's optimistic attitude just didn't jive with the facts. So, while the rat officers were having the red carpet rolled out for them, Earth intelligence went to work. Several presumably Austrian men were allowed to take a conducted tour of the rat's ship. After all, why not? The twentieth century Russians probably wouldn't have minded showing their rocket-plants to an American of Captain John Smith's time, either. But there's a difference. Earth's government knew Earth was being threatened, and they knew they had to get as many facts as they could. They were also aware of the fact that if you know a thing can be done, then you will eventually find a way to do it. During the next fifty years, Earth learned more than it had during the previous hundred. The race expanded, secretly moving out to other planets in that sector of the galaxy, and they worked to catch up with the rats. They didn't make it, of course, when, after fifty years of presumably peaceful but highly limited contact, the rats hit Earth. They found out one thing, that the mass and energy of a planet armed with the proper weapons cannot be outclassed by any conceivable concentration of space ships. Throwing rocks at an army armed with machine guns may seem futile, but if you hit them with an avalanche, they'll go under. The rats lost three quarters of their fleet to planet-based guns and had to go home to bandage their wounds. The only trouble was that Earth couldn't counterattack. Their ships were still outclassed by those of the rats. And the rats, their racial pride badly stung, were determined to wipe out man, to erase the stain on their honor wherever man could be found. Somehow, some way, they must destroy Earth. And now, Al Pendre thought bitterly, they would do it. The Shane had sneaked in past rat patrols to pick up a spy on one of the outlying rat planets, a man who'd spent five years playing the part of a rat slave, trying to get information on their activities there. And he had had one vital bit of knowledge. He'd found it and held on to it for over three years until the time came for the rendezvous. The rendezvous had almost come too late. The rats had developed a device that could make a star temporarily unstable, and they were ready to use it on Saul. The Shane had managed to get off-planet with the spy, but they'd been spotted in spite of the detector nullifiers that Earth had developed. They'd been jumped by rat cruisers and blasted by the superior rat weapons. The lifeboats had been picked out of space one by one, as the crew tried to get away. In a way, Alfred Pendre was lucky. He'd been in the sick bay with a springed ankle when the rats hit, sitting in the x-ray room. The shot that had knocked out the port engine had knocked him unconscious, but the shielded walls of the x-ray room had saved him from the blast of radiation that had cut down the crew in the rear of the ship. He'd come too in time to see the rat cruisers cut up the lifeboats before they could get well away from the ship. They'd taken a couple of parting shots at the dead hawk and then left it to drift in space and leaving one man alive. In the small section near the rear of the ship there were still compartments that were airtight. At least, Pendre decided, there was enough air to keep him alive for a while. If only he could get a little power into the ship, he could get the rear air purifiers to working. He left the lifeboat and closed the door behind him. There was no point in worrying about a boat he couldn't use. He made his way back toward the engine room. Maybe there was something salvageable there. Swimming through the corridors was becoming easier with practice. His cadet training was coming back to him. Then he got a shock that almost made him faint. The beam of his light had fallen full on the face of a rat. It took him several seconds to realize that the rat was dead, and several more to realize that it wasn't a rat at all. It was a spy they had been sent to pick up. He'd been in the sick bay for treatments that the ulcers on his back gained from five years of frequent lashings as a rat slaying. Pendre went closer and looked him over. He was still wearing the clothing he'd had on when the shame picked him up. Poor guy, Pendre thought. All that hell for nothing. Then he went around the corpse and continued toward the engine room. The place was still hot. But it was thermal heat, not radioactivity. A dead atomic engine doesn't leave any residual effects. Five out of the six engines were utterly ruined, but the six seemed to be in working condition. Even the shielding was intact. Again, hope rose in Alfred Pendre's mind. If only there were tools. A half hour's search killed that idea. There were no tools aboard capable of cutting through the hard shielding. He couldn't use it to shield the engine on the lifeboat, and the shielding that had been on the other five engines had melted and run. It was worthless. Then another idea hit him. Would the remaining engine work at all? Could it be fixed? It was the only hope he had left. Apparently the only thing wrong with it was the exciter circuit leads, which had been sheared off by a bit of flying metal. The engine had simply stopped instead of exploding. That ought to be fixable. He could try. It was something to do, anyway. It took him the better part of two days according to his watch. There were plenty of smaller tools around for the job, although many of them were scattered and some had been ruined by the explosions. Replacement parts were harder to find, but he managed to pirate some of them from the ruined engines. He ate and slept as he felt the need. There was plenty of food in the sick bay kitchen, and there is no need for a bed under gravity-less conditions. After the engine was repaired he set about getting the rest of the ship ready to move, if it would move. The hull was still solid, so the infraspace field should function. The air purifiers had to be reconnected and repaired in a couple of places. The lights ditto. The biggest job was checking all the broken leads to make sure there weren't any short circuits anywhere. The pseudo-gravity circuits were hopeless. He'd have to do without gravity. On the third day he decided he'd better clean the place up. There were several corpses floating around and they were beginning to be noticeable. He had to tow them one by one to the rear starboard airlock and seal them between the inner and outer doors. He couldn't dump them since the outer door was partially melted and welded shut. He took the personal effects from the men. If he ever got back to earth their next akin might want to stop. On the body of the imitation rat he found a belt pouch full of microfilm. The report on the rat's new weapon? Possibly. He'd have to look it over later. On the morning of the fourth day he started the single remaining engine. The infraspace field came on and the ship began moving at multiples of the speed of light. Pendre grinned. Half gone will travel, he thought gleefully. If Pendre had had any liquor aboard he would have gotten mildly drunk. Instead he sat down and read the spools of microfilm using the projector in the sick bay. He was not a scientist in the strict sense of the word. He was a navigator and a fairly good engineer so it didn't surprise him any that he couldn't understand a lot of the report. The mechanics of making a semi-nova out of a normal star were more than a little bit over his head. He'd read a little and then go out and take a look at the stars, checking their movement so that he could make an estimate of his speed. He'd cherry-rig to kind of control on the hull field so he could aim the hull easily enough. He'd only have to get within signaling range anyway, and their ship would pick him up. If there was any earth left by the time he got there, he forced his mind away from thinking about that. He was not until he reached the last spool of microfilm that his situation was forcibly brought to focus in his mind. Thus far, he had thought only about saving himself. But the note at the end of the spool made him realize that there were others to say. The note said, These reports must reach earth before 22 June, 2287. After that it will be too late. 22 June? That was, let's see, this is the 18th of September he got. June of next year is surely I can make it in that time? I've got to. The only question was, how fast was the hull of the shame moving? It took him three days to get the answer accurately. He knew the strength of the field around the ship, and he knew the approximate thrust of the single engine by that time. He had also measured the motions of some of the nearest stars. Thank heaven he was a navigator and not a mechanic or something. At least he knew the direction and distance to earth, and he knew the distance of the brighter stars from where the ship was. He had two checks to use then, star motion against engine thrust and field strength. He checked them, and rechecked them, and hated the answer. He would arrive in the vicinity of Sol sometime in late July, a full month too late. What could he do? Increase the output of the engine? No, it was doing the best it could now. Even shutting off the lights wouldn't help anything. They were a microscopic drain on that engine. He tried to think, tried to reason on the solution, but nothing would come. He found time to curse the fool who had decided the shielding on the lifeboat would have to be removed and repaired. That little craft, with its lighter mass and more powerful field concentration, could make the trip in ten days. The only trouble was that ten days and that radiation hell would be impossible. He'd be a very well preserved corpse in half that time, and there'd be no one aboard to guide her. Maybe he could get one of the other engines going. Sure, he must be able to get one more going somehow, anything to cut down on that time. He went back to the engines again, looking them over carefully. He went over them again. Not a single one could be repaired at all. Then he rechecked his velocity figures, hoping against hope that he'd made a mistake. Somewhere dropped a decimal pointer, forgotten to divide by two. Anything, anything. But there was nothing. His figures had been accurate the first time. For a while he just gave up. All he could think of was a terrible blaze of heat that would wipe out Earth when the rats set off the sun. Man might survive. There were colonies that the rats didn't know about, but they'd find them eventually. Without Earth the race would be set back five hundred, maybe five thousand years. The rats would have plenty of time to hunt them out and destroy them. And then he forced his mind away from that train of thought. There had to be a way to get there on time. Something in the back of his mind told him that there was a way. He had to think. Really think. On 7 June 2287 a signal officer on the Earth destroyer Muldoon picked up a faint signal coming from the general direction of the constellation of Sagittarius. It was a standard emergency signal for distress. The broadcaster only had a very short range, so the source couldn't be too far away. He made his report to the ship's captain. We're within easy range of her, sir, he finished. Shall we pick her up? Might be a rat trick, said the captain. But we'll have to take the chance. Beam a call to Earth and let's go out there dead slow. Let the detectors show anything funny we turn tail and run. We're in no position to fight a rat ship. You think this might be a rat trap, sir? The captain grinned. If you are referring to the Muldoon as a rat trap, Mr. Blake, you're both disrespectful and correct. That's why we're going to run if we see anything funny. This ship is already obsolete by our standards. You can imagine what it is by theirs. He paused. Get that call into Earth. Tell him this ship is using a distress signal that was obsolete six months ago. And tell him we're going out. Yes, sir, said the signal officer. It wasn't a trap. Does the Muldoon approach the source of the signal? Their detectors picked up the ship itself. It was a standard lifeboat from a battleship of the Shannon class. You don't suppose that's from the Shane, do you? The captain said softly as he looked at the plate. She's the only ship of that class that's missing. But if that's a Shane lifeboat, what took her so long to get here? She's cut her engine, sir, said the observer. She evidently knows we're coming. All right. Put her in as soon as we're close enough. Put her in number two lifeboat rack. It's empty. When the door of the lifeboat opened, the captain of the Muldoon was waiting outside the lifeboat rack. He didn't know exactly what he had expected to see, but it somehow seemed fitting that a lean, bearded man in a badly worn uniform and a haggard look about him should step out. The specter saluted. Attendant Alfred Pendray of the Shane. He said in a voice that had almost no strength. He held up a pouch. Microfilm, he said. Must get to earth immediately. No delay. Hurry. Catch him, the captain shouted. He's falling. But one of the men nearby had already caught him. In the sick bay, Pendray came to again. The captain's questioning gradually got the story out of Pendray. So I didn't know what to do then, he said, his voice a breath of whisper. I knew I had to get that stuff home. Somehow. Go on, said the captain frowning. Simple matter, said Pendray. Nothing to it. Two equations. Little ship goes 30 times as fast as big ship, big hawk. Had to get here before 22 June. Had to. Only way, you understand? Anyway, two equations. Simple. Work them in your head. Big ship takes 10 months. Little one takes 10 days. But can't stay in a little ship 10 days. No shielding. Be dead before you got here, see? I see. Said the captain patiently. But here's a important point. If you stay on that big ship for eight and a half months, then you only got to be in the little ship for a day and a half to get here. Man can live that long. Even under that radiation. See? And with that, he closed his eyes. Do you mean you exposed yourself to the full leakage radiation from a lifeboat engine for 36 hours? But there was no answer. Let him sleep, said the ship's doctor. If he wakes up again, I'll let you know. But he might not be very lucid from here on in. Is there anything you can do, the captain asked? No. Not after a radiation dosage like that. He looked down at Pendray. His problem was easy mathematically. But not psychologically. That took real guts to solve. Yeah, said the captain gently. All he had to do was get here alive. The problem said nothing about his staying that way. This is the end of the measure of a man by Randall Garrett.