NEUTRON STAR

Larry Niven

The Skydiver dropped out of hyperspace an even million miles above

the neutron star. I needed a minute to place myself against the stellar

background and another to find the distortion Sonya Laskin had

mentioned before she died. It wa s to my left, an area the appare nt size of

the Earth's moon. I swung the ship around to face it. Curdled stars, muddled stars, stars that had been stirred with a spoon. The neutron star was in the cent er , of course, though I couldn't see it

and had n't expe cted to. It was only eleven miles across, and cool. A

billion y ears had passed since B VS-1 had burned by fusion fire. Millions

of y ears, at least, since the cataclysmic two weeks during whic h BVS-1

was an X-ray star , burning at a temperature of five billion degrees

Kelvin. Now it showed only by its mass. The ship began to turn by itself. I felt the pressure of the fusion d rive. W ithout help from me, my faithful metal watchdog was putting me in a

hyperbolic orbit that would take me within one mile of the neut ron star's

surface. T wenty-four hours to fall, twenty-four hours to rise...and during

that time something would try to kill me. As something had killed the

Laskins. The same type o f autopilot, with the same program, had chose n the

Laskins' orbit. It had not caused their ship to collide with the star .

I could

trust the autopilot. I could even change its program. I really ought to. How did I get myself into this hole?

The driv e went of f after ten minutes of maneuvering. My orbit was

established in more ways than o ne. I knew what would happen if I tried

to back out now .

All I'd done was walk into a dr ugstore to get a new battery for my

lighter!

Right in the middle of the store , surrounded by three floors of sales

counters, was the new 2603 Sinclair intrasystem yacht. I'd co me for a

battery , but I sta yed to admire. I t was a beautiful job, small and sleek and

streamlined and blatantly dif fere nt from anything that'd ever bee n built. I

wouldn't have flown it for anyt hing, but I had to admit it was pretty .

I

ducked my head through the door to look at the control panel. Y ou never

saw so many dials. When I pul led my head out, all the customers were

looking in the same direction. The place had gone startlingly quiet. I can't blame the m for staring. A number of aliens were in the store,

mainly shopping for souvenirs, b ut they were staring, too. A puppeteer is

unique. Imagine a headless, three-legged centaur wearing two Cecil the

Seasick Sea Serpent puppets on its arms and you'll have something like

the right picture. But the arms are weaving necks, and the puppets are

real head s, flat and brainless, wi th wide flexible lips. The brain is under a

bony hump set between the bases of the necks. This puppeteer wore only

its own coat of brown hair , with a mane that extended all the way up its

spine to form a thick mat over the brain. I'm told that the way they wear

the man e indica tes their status in society , but to me it could have been

anything from a dockworker to a jeweler to the president of General

Products. I wa tched with the rest as it came across the floor , not becau se I'd

never seen a pu ppeteer but because there is something beautiful about

the dainty way they move on those slender legs and tiny hooves. I

watched it come straight toward me, closer and closer .

It stopped a foot

away , looked me over , and said, "Y ou are Beowulf Shaef fer , former chief

pilot for Nakamura Lines."

Its v oice was a beautiful contralto with not a trace of acce nt. A

puppeteer's mouths are not only the most flexible speech or gans around

but also the mo st sensitive hands. The tongues are forked and pointed;

the wide, thick lips have little fingerlike knobs along the rims. Imagine a

watchmaker W ith a sense of taste in his fingertips...

I cleared my throat. "That's right."

It consid ered me from two direc tions. "Y ou would be interested in a

high-paying job?"

"I'd be fascinated by a high-paying job."

"I am our equiv alent of the reg ional president of General Products. Please come with me, and we will discuss this elsewhere."

I fol lowed it into a displaceme nt booth. Eyes followed me a ll the

way .

It was embarrassing being accosted in a public drugstore by a two-

headed monster .

Maybe the puppeteer knew it. Maybe it was testing me

to see how badly I needed money .

My need was great. Eight mont hs had passed since Nakamura Lines

had folded. For some time before that I had been living very high on the

hog, kno wing th at my back pay would cover my debts. I never saw that

back pay .

It was quite a crash, Nakamura Lines. Respectable middleaged

businessmen took to leaving their hotel windows without their lift belts. Me, I kept spen ding. If I'd star ted living frugally , my creditors would

have done some checking...and I'd have ended in debtor's prison. The puppeteer dialed thirteen fast digits with its tongue. A moment

later we were elsewhere. Air puf fed out when I opened the bo oth door ,

and I swallowed to pop my ears. "W e are on the roof of the G eneral Products building." The rich

contralto voice thrilled along my nerves, and I had to remind m yself that

it was an alien speaking, not a lovely woman. "Y ou must examine this

spacecraft while we discuss your assignment."

I steppe d outside a little cautio usly , but it wasn't the windy season. The roof was at ground level. That's the way we build on W e Made It. Maybe it has something to do with the fifteen-hundred-mile-an-hour

winds w e get in summer and w inter , when the planet's axis of rotation

runs thro ugh its primary , Procyon. The winds are our planet's only tourist

attraction, and it would be a s hame to slow them down by planting

skyscrapers in their path. The ba re, square concrete roof was surrounded

by e ndless square miles of desert, not like the deserts of other inhabited

worlds but an u tterly lifeless expanse of fine sand just crying to be

planted with ornamental cactus .

W e've tried that. The wind blows the

plants away .

The ship lay on the sand beyond the roof. It was a No. 2 General

Products hull: a cylinder three hundred feet long and twenty feet through,

pointed at both ends and with a slight wasp-waist constriction near the

tail. For some re ason it was lyin g on its side, with the landing sh ocks still

folded in at the tail. Ever notice how all ships have begun to look the same?

A good

ninety-five percent of today's spacecraft are built around one of the four

General Produc ts hulls. It's easier and safer to build that way , but

somehow all ships end as they began: mass-produced look-alikes. The hul ls are delivered fully tr ansparent, and you use paint where

you feel like it. Most of this particular hull had been left tra nsparent. Only the nose h ad been painted, around the lifesystem. There was no

major reaction drive. A series of retractable attitude jets had been

mounted in the s ides, and the hu ll was pierced with smaller hole s, square

and round, for observational instruments. I could see them gleaming

through the hull. The pup peteer was moving toward the nose, but something made me

turn toward the stern for a closer look at the landing shocks. T hey were

bent. Behind the curved transparent hull panels some tremendous

pressure had forced the metal to flow like warm wax, back and into the

pointed stem. "What did this?" I asked. "W e do not know .

W e wish strenuously to find out."

"What do you mean?"

"Have you heard of the neutron star BVS-1?"

I had to think a m oment. "First neutron star ever found, and so far the

only .

Someone located it two years ago by stellar displacement."

"BVS-1 was found by the In stitute of Knowledge on Jinx. W e

learned through a go-between that the Institute wished to explore the star .

They ne eded a ship to do it. T hey had not yet suf ficient mo ney .

W e

of fered to supply them with a ship's hull, with the usual guar antees, if

they would turn over to us all data they acquired through using our ship."

"Sounds fair enough." I didn't ask why they hadn't done their own

exploring. Like most sentient vegetarians, puppeteers find discretion to

be the only part of valor .

"T wo humans named Peter Las kin and Sonya Laskin wished t o use

the ship. They intended to come within one mile of the surface in a

hyperbolic orbit. At some point during their trip an unknown force

apparently reach ed through the h ull to do this to the landing sho cks. The

unknown force also seems to have killed the pilots."

"But that's impossible. Isn't it?"

"Y ou see the poi nt. Come with me." The puppeteer trotted towar d the

bow .

I s aw the point, all right. Noth ing, but nothing, can get throu gh a

General Products hull. No kind of electromagnetic ener gy except visible

light. N o kind of matter , from the smallest subatomic particle to the

fastest meteor .

That's what the c ompany's advertisements claim, and the

guarantee backs them up. I've never doubted it, and I've never heard of a

General Products hull being damaged by a weapon or by anything else. On the other hand, a General Products hull is as ugly as it is

functional. The puppeteer -owne d company could be badly hurt if it got

around that something could get thro ugh a company hull. But I didn't see

where I came in. W e rode an escalladder into the nose. The lifes ystem was in two comp artments. Here the Laskins had used

heat-reflective p aint. In the conical control cabin the hull h ad been

divided into windows. The relax ation room behind it was a windowless

reflective silver .

From the back wall of the relaxation room an access

tube ran aft, opening on various instruments and the hyperdrive motors. There w ere two acceleration couches in the control cabin. Both had

been torn loose from their mountings and wadded into the nose like so

much tissue paper , crushing th e instrument panel. The backs of the

crumpled couches were splashe d with rust brown. Flecks of the same

color were all over everything: the walls, the windows, the viewscreens. It w as as if something had hit th e couches from behind: something like a

dozen paint-filled toy balloons striking with tremendous force. "That's blood," I said. "That is correct. Human circulatory fluid."

T wenty-four hours to fall. I s pent most of t he first twelve hours in the relaxation room, tryi ng to

read. No thing significant was happening, except that a few tim es I saw

the phenomenon Sonya Laskin h ad mentioned in her last report .

When a

star went directly behind the inv isible BVS-1, a halo formed. BVS-1 was

heavy enough to bend light around it, displacing most stars to the sides,

but when a sta r went directly behind the neutron star , its l ight was

displaced to all sides at once. Result: a tiny circle which flashed once and

was gone almost before the eye could catch it. I'd know n next to nothing about neutron stars the day the puppeteer

picked me up. N ow I was an expert. And I still had no idea w hat was

waiting for me when I got down there. All the matter you're ever lik ely to meet will be normal matter ,

composed of a nucleus of proto ns and neutrons surrounded by electrons

in quant um ener gy states. In the heart of any star there is a sec ond kind

of m atter , for there the tremen dous pressure is enough to sm ash the

electron shells. The result is degenerate matter nuclei forced together by

pressure and gravity but held apart by the mutual repulsion of the more

or less continuo us electron "gas" around them. The tight circu mstances

may create a third type of matter .

Given: a burned -out white dwarf with a mass greater than 1.44 times

the mass of the sun -- Chandrasekhar's Limit, named for an Indian-

American astronomer of the 1900s. In such a mass the electron pressure

alone would not be able to ho ld the electrons back from th e nuclei. Electrons would be forced against protons -- to make neutron s. In one

blazing explosion most of the star would change from a com pressed

mass of degenerate matter to a closely packed lump of neutrons:

neutronium, theoretically the densest matter possible in this universe. Most of the remaining normal and degenerate matter would be blown

away by the liberated heat. For two weeks t he star would give of f X rays as its core temperature

dropped from five billion degrees Kelvin to five hundred million. After

that it would be a light-emitting body perhaps ten to twelve mile s across:

the n ext best th ing to invisible. It was not strange that BVS-1 was the

first neutron star ever found. Neither is it strange that the Institute of Knowledge on Jinx w ould

have spent a good deal of time and trouble looking. Until BVS-1 was

found, neutronium and neutron stars were only theories. The

examination of an actual neutron star could be of tremendous

importance. Neutron stars might give us the key to true gravity control. Mass of BVS-1: 1.3 times the mass of Sol, approx. Diameter of BVS-1 (estimated): eleven miles of neutronium, covered

by half a mile o f degenerate matter , covered by maybe twelve feet of

ordinary matter .

Nothing else was known of the tiny hidden star until the La skins

went in to look. Now the Institute knew one thing more: the star's spin. "A mas s that lar ge can distort space by its rotation," said the

puppeteer .

"The Laskins' projected hyperbola was twisted across itself in

such a way that we can deduce the star's period of rotation to be two

minutes twenty-seven seconds. The bar was somewhere in the General Products building. I don't

know just where, and with the transfer booth's it doesn't matter .

I kept

staring a t the puppeteer bartender .

Naturally only a puppeteer would be

served b y a puppeteer bartender , since any biped life-form would resent

knowing that his drink had been made with somebody's mou th. I had

already decided to get dinner somewhere else. "I see your problem," I said. "Y our sales will suf fer if it gets ou t that

something can reach through o ne of your hulls and smash a crew to

bloody smears. But where do I come in?"

"W e want to repeat the experiment of Sonya Laskin and Peter Laskin. W e must find-"

"W ith me?"

"Y es. W e must find out what it i s that our hulls cannot stop. Naturally

you may -- "

"But I won't."

"W e are prepared to of fer one million stars."

I was tempted, but only for a moment. "For get it."

"Naturally you will be allowed to build your own ship, starting with a

No. 2 General Products hull."

"Thanks, but I'd like to go on living."

"Y ou w ould dislike being confined. I find that W e Made It has

reestablished the debtor's prison. If General Products made public your

accounts -- "

"Now , just a -- "

"Y ou owe money on the close o rder of five hundred thousand stars. W e will pay your creditors before you leave. If you return -- " I had to

admire the creature's honesty in not saying "When."

" -- we w ill pay you the residue .

Y ou may be asked to speak to news

commentators concerning the v oyage, in which case there will be more

stars."

"Y ou say I can build my own ship?"

"Naturally .

This is not a voya ge of exploration. W e want yo u to

return safely ."

"It's a deal," I said. After al l, the puppeteer had trie d to blackmail me. What happened

next would be its own fault. They built my ship in two weeks flat. They started with a N o. 2

General Products hull, just like the one around the Institute of

Knowledge ship, and the lifesystem was practically a duplicate of the

Laskins', but there the resembla nce ended. There were no instru ments to

observe neutron stars. Instead, th ere was a fusion motor big enough for a

Jinx war liner .

In my ship, which I now called Skydiver , the dri ve woul d

produce thirty gees at the safety limit. There was a laser ca nnon big

enough to punch a hole throug h W e Made It's moon. The puppeteer

wanted me to feel safe, and now I did, for I could fight and I could run. Especially I could run. I heard the Laskins' last broadcast through half a dozen times. Their

unnamed ship had dropped ou t of hyperspace a million mil es above

BVS-1.

Gravity warp would have prevented their getting closer in

hyperspace. While her husband was crawling through the access tube for

an instr ument check, Sonya Laskin had called the Institute of

Knowledge. "...

W e can't see it yet, not by naked eye. But we can see

where it is. Every time some st ar or other goes behind it, there's a little

ring of light. Just a minute. Peter's ready to use the telescope..."

Then the star's m ass had cut th e hyperspatial link. It was expe cted,

and nobody had worried -- then. Later , the same ef fect must have

stopped them from escaping from whatever attacked them into

hyperspace. When would-be rescuers found the ship, only the radar and the

cameras were still running. The y didn't tell us much. There had been no

camera in the cabin. But the forward camera gave us, for one instant, a

speed-blurred v iew of the neutron star .

It was a featureless disk the

orange c olor of perfect barbecue coals, if you know someone who can

af ford to burn wood. This object had been a neutron star a long time. "There'll be no need to paint the ship," I told the president. "Y ou should not make such a trip with the walls transparent. Y ou

would go insane."

"I'm no flatlander .

The mind-wr enching sight of naked space fil ls me

with mi ld but waning interest. I want to know nothing's sneaking up

behind me."

The day before I left, I sat alon e in the General Products bar , letting

the p uppeteer bartender make m e drinks with his mouth. He did it well. Puppeteers were scattered arou nd the bar in twos and threes, with a

couple of men for variety , but the drinking hour had not yet arri ved. The

place felt empty .

I was pleased with myself. My debts were all paid, not that that

would matter where I was going .

I would leave with not a minicredit to

my name, with nothing but the ship...

All told, I was well out of a sticky situation. I hoped I'd like being a

rich exile. I j umpe d when the newcomer sat down across from me. He w as a

foreigner , a middle-aged man wearing an expensive night-black business

suit and a snow -white asymmetrical beard. I let my face fr eeze and

started to get up. "Sit down, Mr .

Shaef fer ."

"Why?"

He t old me by showing me a blue disk. An Earth government ident. I

looked it over to show I was al ert, not because I'd know an ersatz from

the real thing. "My name is Sig mund Ausfaller ," said the government man. "I wish

to say a few words concerning your assignment on behalf of General

Products."

I nodded, not saying anything. "A record of your verbal cont ract was sent to us as a matter of

course. I noticed some peculiar things about it. Mr .

Shaef fer , will you

really take such a risk for only five hundred thousand stars?"

"I'm getting twice that."

"But you only keep half of it. The rest goes to pay debts. Then there

are t axes...But never mind. Wha t occurred to me was that a spa ceship is

a spaces hip, and yours is very well armed and has powerful legs. An

admirable fighting ship, if you were moved to sell it."

"But it isn't mine."

"There a re those who would not ask. On Canyon, for example, or the

Isolationist party of W underland."

I said nothing. "Or you might be planning a career of piracy .

A risky business,

piracy , and I don't take the notion seriously ."

I hadn't even thought about piracy .

But I'd have to give up on

W underland. "What I would like to say is this, Mr .

Shaef fer .

A single entrepreneur ,

if he were suf ficiently dishon est, could do terrible damage to the

reputation of all human beings everywhere. Most species find it

necessary to police the ethics of their own members, and we are no

exception. It occurred to me th at you might not take your ship to the

neutron star at all, that you w ould take it elsewhere and sell it. The

puppeteers do not make invuln erable war vessels. They are pacifists. Y our Skydiver is unique. "Hence, I have asked General Products to allow me to install a

remote-control bomb in the Skydiver .

Since it is inside the hull, the hull

cannot protect you. I had it installed this afternoon. "Now , n otice!

If you have not reported within a week, I will set of f

the bom b. There are several worlds within a week's hyperspace flight of

here, but all recognize the domin ion of Earth. If you flee, you must leave

your ship within a week, so I hardly think you will land on a

nonhabitable world. Clear?"

"Clear ."

"If I am wrong, you may take a lie-detector test and prove it. Then

you may punch me in the nose, and I will apologize handsomely ."

I shook my head .

He stood up, bowed, and left me sitting there cold

sober .

* * *

Four film s had been taken from the Laskins' cameras. In the tim e left

to me I ran thro ugh them several times without seeing anything out of

the way .

If the ship had run through a gas cloud, the impact could have

killed th e Laskin s. At perihelion they were moving at better than half the

speed of light. B ut there would have been friction, and I saw no sign of

heating in the fi lms. If something alive had attacked them, the b east was

invisible to radar and to an enormous range of light frequencies. If the

attitude jets had fired accidental ly -- I was clutching at straws -- the light

showed on none of the films. There would be savage magnetic forces near BVS-1, but that couldn't

have do ne any damage. No such force could penetrate a General

Products hull. Neither could heat, except in special bands of radiated

light, bands visible to at least one of the puppeteers' alien customers. I

hold adv erse opinions on the General Products hull, but they all concern

the d ull anonymity of the design. Or maybe I resent the fact that General

Products holds a near monopoly on spacecraft hulls and isn't owned by

human beings. But if I'd had to t rust my life to, say , the Sinclair yacht I'd

seen in the drugstore, I'd have chosen jail. Jail was one of my three choices. But I'd be there for life. Ausfaller

would see to that. Or I could run for it in the Skydiver But no world w ithin reach would

have me .

If I co uld find an und iscovered Earthlike world withi n a week

of W e Made It...

Fat chance. I preferred BVS-1.

I tho ught that fla shing circle of l ight was getting bigger , but it flashed

so seldo m, I couldn't be sure. BVS-1 wouldn't show even in my

telescope. I gave that up and settled for just waiting. W aiting, I remembered a long-ago summer spent on Jinx. There were

days wh en, unab le to go outsid e because a dearth of clouds had spread

the land with ra w blue-white sunlight, we amused ourselves by filling

party ba lloons with tap water and dropping them on the sidewalk from

three sto ries up. They made lovely splash patterns, which drie d out too

fast. So we put a little ink in each balloon before filling it. Then the

patterns stayed. Sonya Laskin had been in her c hair when the chairs had colla psed. Blood samples showed that it was Peter who had struck th em from

behind, like a water balloon dropped from a great height. What could get through a General Products hull?

T en hours to fall. I un fastened the safety net an d went for an inspection tour .

The

access tu nnel wa s three feet wid e, just right to push through in free-fall. Below me was the length of the fusion tube; to the left, the laser cannon;

to the right, a se t of curved side tubes leading to inspection poin ts for the

gyros, the batteries and genera tor , the air plant, the hyperspa ce shunt

motors. All was in order -- except me. I was clumsy .

My jum ps were

always too short or too long. Th ere was no room to turn at the stern end,

so I had to back fifty feet to a side tube. Six hours to go, and still I coul dn't find the neutron star .

Probably I

would see it only for an instant, passing at better than half the speed of

light. Already my speed must enormous. W ere the stars turning blue?

T wo hours to go -- and I was sure they were turning blue. W as my speed that high?

Then the stars behind should be red. Machinery bloc ked the view be hind me, so I used the gyros. The ship

turned with peculiar sluggishne ss. And the stars behind were blue, not

red. All around me were blue-white stars. Imagine light falling into a savagely steep gravitational well. It won't

accelerate. Light can't move faster than light. But it can gain in ener gy , in

frequency .

The light was falling on me harder and harder as I dropped. I tol d the dictaph one about it. That dictaphone was probably the best-

protected item on the ship. I ha d already decided to earn my money by

using it, just as if I expected to collect. Privately I wondered just how

intense the light would get. Skydiver had drifted back to vertical, with its axis through the

neutron star , but now it faced ou tward. I'd thought I had the ship stopped

horizontally .

More clumsiness. I used the gyros. Again the shi p moved

mushily , until it was halfway through the swing. Then it seemed to fall

automatically into place. It was as if the Skydiver preferred to have its

axis through the neutron star .

I didn't like that. I tried the maneuver again, and again the Skydiver f ou ght back. B ut

this time there was something else. Something was pulling at me. So I unfastened my safety net -- and fell headfirst into the nose. The pull was lig ht, about a ten th of a gee. It felt more like sinking

through honey than falling. I climbed back into my chair , tied myself in

with the net, now hanging facedown, and turned on the dictaphone. I told

my story in such nit-picking de tail that my hypothetical listeners could

not but doubt my hypothetical sanity .

"I think this is what hap pened to

the Laskins," I finished. "If the pull increases, I'll call back."

Think?

I never doubted it. This strange, gentle pull was inexplic able. Something inexplicable had killed Peter and Sonya Laskin. QED. Around the point where the neutron star must be, the stars were like

smeared dots of oil paint, smeared radially .

They glared with an angry ,

painful light. I hung facedown in the net and tried to think. It was an hour before I was sure .

The pull was increasing. And I still

had an hour to fall. Something was pulling on me but not on the ship. No, that was nonsense. What could reach out to me through a

General Products hull?

It must be the other way around. Something was

pushing on the ship, pushing it of f course. If it got worse, I could use the drive to compensate. Meanwhile, the

ship was being pushed away from BVS-1, which was fine by me. But if I was wrong, if the ship was not somehow being pushed away

from BVS-1, the rocket motor would send the Skydiver crashing into

eleven miles of neutronium. And why wasn't the rocket alr eady firing?

If the ship was being

pushed of f course, the autopilot should be fighting back. The

accelerometer w as in good order .

It had looked fine when I had made my

inspection tour down the access tube. Could something be pushing on the ship and on the accelerometer

but not on me?

It came down to the same impossibility: something that

could reach through a General Products hull. T o hell with the ory , said I to myself, said I. I'm getting out of here. T o the dictaphon e I said, "The pull has increased dangerously .

I'm going

to try to alter my orbit."

Of course, once I turned the shi p outward and used the rocket, I'd be

adding my own acceleration to the X-force. It would be a strain, but I

could stand it for a while. If I came within a mile of BVS-1, I'd end like

Sonya Laskin. She must have waited facedown in a net like mine, waited without a

drive unit, waited while the pressure rose and the net cut into her flesh,

waited u ntil the net snapped and dropped her into the nose, to lie crushed

and brok en until the X-force tor e the very chairs loose and dropped them

on her .

I hit the gyros. The gyr os were n't strong enough to turn me. I tried it three times. Each time the ship rotated about fifty degrees and hung there,

motionless, while the whine of the gyros went up and up. Released, the

ship im mediately swung back to position. I was nose dow n to the

neutron star , and I was going to stay that way .

Half an hour to f all, and the X-fo rce was over a gee. My sinuses were

in agony .

My eyes were ripe and ready to fall out...I don't know if I could

have stood a cigarette, but I didn't get the chance. My pack of Fortunados

had fallen out of my pocket when I had dropped into the nose. There it

was, fou r feet beyond my fingers, proof that the X-force acted on other

objects besides me. Fascinating. I cou ldn't take a ny more. If it dropped me shrieking into the ne utron

star , I had to use the drive. And I did. I ran the thrust up un til I was

approximately in free-fall. The blood which had pooled in my

extremities went back where it belonged. The gee dial registered one

point two gee. I cursed it for a lying robot. The soft pack was bobbing arou nd in the nose, and it occurred to me

that a little extra nudge on the throttle would bring it to me. I tried it. The

pack drifted toward me, and I reached, and like a sentient thing it

speeded up to av oid my clutching hand. I snatched at it again as it went

past my ear , and again it was m oving too fast. That pack was going at a

hell of a clip, considering that here I was practically in free-fall. It

dropped through the door to the relaxation room, still picking u p speed,

blurred, and vanished as it entered the access tube. Seconds later I heard

a solid thump .

But that was crazy .

Already the X-force was pulling blood into my

face. I pulled m y lighter out, held it at arm's length, and let go. It fell

gently into the n ose. But the pack of Fortunados had hit like I'd dropped

it from a building .

W ell. I nudged the throttle again. The mutter of fusing hydrogen reminded

me that if I tried to keep this up all the way , I might well put the General

Products hull to its toughest tes t yet: smashing it into a neutron star at

half ligh tspeed. I could see it now: a transparent hull containin g only a

few cubic inches of dwarf-star matter wedged into the tip of the nose. At one point four gee, according to that lying gee dial, the lighter

came loose and drifted toward me. I let it go. It was clearly falling when

it reached the doorway .

I pulled the throttle back. The loss of power

jerked m e violently forward, but I kept my face turned. The lighter

slowed and hesitated at the entrance to the access tube. Decided to go

through. I cocked my ears for th e sound, then jumped as the whole ship

rang like a gong. And the accelerometer was right at the ship's center of mass. Otherwise the ship's mass wo uld have thrown the needle of f. The

puppeteers were fiends for ten-decimal-point accuracy .

I fav ored the dic taphone with a few fast comments, then got to work

reprogramming the autopilot. Luckily what I wanted was simple. The X-

force was but an X-force to me, but now I knew how it behaved. I might

actually live through this. The sta rs were fiercely blue, warped to streaked lines near that

special point. I thought I could see it now , very small and dim and red,

but it might have been imagina tion. In twenty minutes I'd be rounding

the neutron star .

The drive grumbled behind me. In ef fective free-fall, I

unfastened the safety net and pushed myself out of the chair .

A gentle push aft -- and ghostly hands grasped my legs. T en pounds

of weight hung by my fingers from the back of the chair .

The pressure

should drop fast. I'd programme d the autopilot to reduce the thrust from

two gees to zero during the next two minutes. All I had to do was be at

the center of mass, in the access tube, when the thrust went to zero. Something grip ped the ship through a General Products hull. A

psychokinetic life-form stranded on a sun twelve miles in diameter?

But

how could anything alive stand such gravity?

Something might be stranded in orbit. There is life in space: outsiders

and sailseeds and maybe others we haven't found yet. For all I knew or

cared, B VS-1 it self might be alive. It didn't matter .

I knew what the X-

force was trying to do. It was trying to pull the ship apart. There was no pu ll on my fingers .

I pushed aft and landed on the back

wall, on bent legs. I knelt over the door , looking aft/down. W hen free-

fall came, I pu lled myself through and was in the relaxati on room

looking down/forward into the nose. Gravity was changing faster than I liked. The X-force was growing

as zero hour app roached, while the compensating rocket thrust dropped. The X-force tended to pull the s hip apart; it was two gees forward at the

nose, tw o gees backward at the tail, and diminished to zero at t he center

of mass. Or so I hoped. The pack and lighter had behaved as if the force

pulling them had increased for every inch they had moved sternward. The back wall w as fifteen feet away; I had to jump it with gravity

changing in midair .

I hit on m y hands, bounced away .

I'd jum ped too

late. The region of free-fall was moving through the ship like a wave as

the thrus t dropp ed. It had left me behind. Now the back wall was up to

me, and so was the access tube. Under s omething less than half a gee, I jumped for the access tube. For one long m oment I stared into the three-foot tunnel, st opped in

midair a nd alrea dy beginning to fall back, as I realized that t here was

nothing to hang on to. Then I stuck my hands in the tube and spread

them against the sides. It was all I needed. I levered mysel f up and

started to crawl. The dic taphone was fifty feet below , utterly unreachable. If I had

anything more to say to Genera l Products, I'd have to say it in person. Maybe I 'd get the chance. Beca use I knew what force was trying to tear

the ship apart. It was the tide. The motor was of f, and I was at the ship's midpoint. My spread-

eagled position was getting uncomfortable. It was four minutes to

perihelion. Something creak ed in the cabin below me. I couldn't see what it was,

but I could clearly see a red poi nt glaring among blue radial lin es, like a

lantern at the bottom of a well. T o the sides, between the fusion tube and

the t anks and other equipment, the blue stars glared at me wit h a light

that was almost violet. I was af raid to look too. long. I actually thought

they might blind me. There must have been hundreds of gravities in the cabin. I could even

feel the pressur e change. The a ir was thin at this height, one hundred

fifty feet above the control room. And now , almost suddenly , the red dot was more than a dot. My time

was up. A red disk leapt up at me; the ship swung around me; I gasped

and shu t my eyes tight. Giants' hands gripped my arms and legs and

head, ge ntly but with great firmness, and tried to pull me in two. In that

moment it came to me that Peter Laskin had died like this. He'd made the

same guesses I had, and he'd tried to hide in the access tube. But he'd

slipped...as I was slipping...From the control room came a multiple

shriek of tearing metal. I tried to dig my feet into the hard tube walls. Somehow they held. When I got my eyes open, the red dot was shrinking into nothing. The puppeteer president insisted that I be put in a hospital for

observation. I didn't fight the idea. My face and hands were flaming red,

with blisters rising, and I ached as though I'd been beaten. Rest and

tender loving care; that was what I wanted. I was floating between a p air of sleeping plates, hideously

uncomfortable, w hen the nurse c ame to announce a visitor .

I knew who it

was from her peculiar expression. "What can get through a General Products hull?" I asked it. "I ho ped you wo uld tell me." T he president rested on its single back

leg, holding a stick that gave of f green incense-smelling smoke. "And so I will. Gravity ."

"Do not play with me, Beowulf Shaef fer .

This matter is vital."

"I'm not playing. Does your world have a moon?"

"That information is classifie d." The puppeteers are cowards. Nobody knows where they come from, and nobody is likely to find out. "Do you know what happens when a moon gets too close to its

primary?"

"It falls apart."

"Why?"

"I do not know ."

"T ides."

"What is a tide?"

Oho, said I to myself, said I. "I'm going to try to tell you. The Earth's

moon is almost two thousand miles in diameter and does not rotate with

respect to Earth. I want you to pick two rocks on the moon, one at the

point nearest the Earth, one at the point farthest away ."

"V ery well."

"Now , isn't it o bvious that if those rocks were left to themse lves,

they'd fall away from each othe r?

They're in two dif ferent orbits, mind

you, con centric orbits, one almost two thousand miles outside the other .

Y et those rocks are forced to move at the same orbital speed."

"The one outside is moving faster ."

"Good point. So there is a force trying to pull the moon apart. Gravity holds it together .

Bring the moon close enough to Earth, and

those two rocks would simply float away ."

"I see. Then this 'tide' tried to pull your ship apart. It was powerful

enough in the lifesystem of the Institute ship to pull the acc eleration

chairs out of their mounts."

"And to crush a human being. Picture it. The ship's nose wa s just

seven m iles from the center of BVS-1.

The tail was three hundred feet

farther o ut. Left to themselves, they'd have gone in completely dif ferent

orbits. M y head and feet tried to do the same thing when I got close

enough."

"I see. Are you molting?"

"What?"

"I notice you are losing your outer integument in spots."

"Oh, that .

I got a bad sunburn from exposure to starlight. It's not

important."

T wo he ads stared at each other for an eyeblink. A shrug?

The

puppeteer said, "W e have deposited the residue of your pay with the

Bank of W e Made It. One Sigmund Ausfaller , human, has fr ozen the

account until your taxes are computed."

"Figures."

"If you will talk to reporters no w , explaining what happened to the

Institute ship, we will pay you ten thousand stars. W e will pay cash so

that you may use it immediately .

It is ur gent. There have been rumors."

"Bring 'em in." As an afterthought I added, "I can also tell them that

your world is moonless. That should be good for a footnote somewhere."

"I do not understand." But two long necks had drawn back, and the

puppeteer was watching me like a pair of pythons. "Y ou'd k now what a tide was if you had a moon. Y ou couldn't avoid

it."

"W ould you be interested in -- "

"A m illion stars?

I'd be fascinated. I'll even sign a contract if it states

what we're hiding. How do you like being blackmailed for a change?"

A T T H E C O R E

I .

I co uldn't decide whether to call it a painting, a relief mu ral, a

sculpture, or a h ash, but it was the prize exhibit in the art section of the

Institute of Knowledge on Jinx. The Kdatlyno must have strang e eyes, I

thought. My own were watering .

The longer I looked at FTLSP ACE, the

more blurred it got. I'd tentatively decided that it was supposed to look blurred when a set

of to othy jaws c lamped gently on my arm. I jumped a foot in the air .

A

soft, thrilling contralto voice said, "Beowulf Shaef fer , yo u are a

spendthrift."

That voice would have made a singer's fortune. And I thought I

recognized it -- but it couldn't be; that o ne was on W e Made It, light -

years distant. I turned. The pup peteer h ad released my arm. It went on: "And what do you

think of Hrodenu?"

"He's ruining my eyes."

"Naturally .

The Kdatlyno are bli nd to all but radar .

FTLSP ACE is not

meant to be seen but to be touched. Run your tongue over it."

"My ton gue?

N o, thanks." I tri ed running my hand over it. If you

want to know what it felt like, hop a ship for Jinx; the thing's still there. I

flatly refuse to describe the sensation. The puppeteer cocked its head dubiously .

"I'm sure your tongue is

more sensitive. No guards are nearby ."

"For get it. Y ou know , you soun d just like the regional president of

General Products on W e Made It."

"It w as h e who sent me your do ssier , Beowulf Shaef fer .

No doubt we

had the same En glish teacher .

I am the regional president on Jinx, as you

no doubt recognized from my mane."

W ell, not quite. The auburn mop over the brain case between the two

necks is suppose d to show caste once you learn to discount variations of

mere style. T o d o that, you hav e to be a puppeteer .

Instead of admitting

my ignorance, I asked, "Did that dossier say I was a spendthrift?"

"Y ou have spent more than a million stars in the past four years.,'

"And loved it."

"Y es. Y o u will shortly be in de bt again. Have you thought of doing

more writing?

I admired your article on the neutron star BVS-1.

'The

pointy b ottom of a gravity w ell...' 'Blue starlight fell on me like

intangible sleet.' Lovely ."

"Thanks. It paid well, too. But I'm mainly a spaceship pilot."

"It is fortunate, our meeting here. I had thought of having you found. Do you wish a job?"

That w as a loaded question. The last and only time I took a job from

a pu ppeteer , the puppeteer bla ckmailed me into it, knowing it would

probably kill me. It almost did. I didn't hold that against the regional

president of W e Made It, but to let them have another crack at me -- "I'll

give you a conditional maybe. Do you have the idea I'm a professional

suicide pilot?"

"Not at all. If I show details, do you agree that the information shall

be confidential?"

"I d o," I said formally , knowing it would commit me. A v erbal

contract is as binding as the tape it's recorded on. "Good. Come." He pranced toward a transfer booth. The tran sfer booth let us out somewhere in Jinx's vacuum regions. It

was night. High in the sky , Si rius B was a painfully bright pinpoint

casting vivid blue moonlight on a ragged lunar landscape. I looked up

and didn 't see Binary , Jinx's bl oated orange companion planet, so we

must have been in the Farside End. But there was something hanging over us. A No. 4 General Products hull is a transparent sphere a thousand -odd

feet in diameter .

No bigger ship has been built anywhere in the known

galaxy .

It takes a governmen t to buy one, and they are used for

colonization pro jects only .

But t his one could never have been so used; it

was all machinery .

Our transfer booth stood between two of the landing

legs, so that the swelling flank of the ship looked down on us a s an owl

looks do wn at a mouse. An ac cess tube ran through vacuum from the

booth to the air lock. I said, "Does General Products build complete spacecraft

nowadays?"

"W e are thinking of branching out. But there are problems."

From the viewpoint of the pupp eteer -owned company , it must have

seemed high time. General Pr oducts makes the hulls for ninety-five

percent of all sh ips in space, ma inly because nobody else knows how to

build an indestructible hull. But they'd made a bad start with this ship. The only room I could see for crew , car go, or passengers was a few cubic

yards of empty s pace right at th e bottom, just above the air lock and just

big enough for a pilot. "Y ou'd have a hard time selling that," I said. "T rue. Do you notice anything else?"

"W ell..." The hardware that filled the transparent hull was very

tightly p acked. The ef fect was as if a race of ten-mile-tall g iants had

striven to achieve miniaturizatio n. I saw no sign of access tube s; hence,

there could be no in-space repairs. Four reaction motors poked their

appropriately hu ge nostrils through the hull, angled outward from the

bottom. No small attitude jets; hence, oversized gyros inside. Otherwise..."Most of it looks like hyperdrive motors. But that's silly .

Unless you've thought of a good reason for moving moons around."

"At one time you were a commercial pilot for Nakamura Lines. How

long was the run from Jinx to W e Made It?"

"T welve days if nothing broke down." Just long enough to get to

know the prettiest passenger ab oard, while the autopilot did everything

for me but wear my uniform. "Sirius to Procyon is a distance of four light-years. Our ship would

make the trip in five minutes."

"Y ou've lost your mind."

"No."

But that was almost a light-yea r per minute!

I couldn't visuali ze it. Then su ddenly I did visualize it, and my mouth fell open, for w hat I saw

was the galaxy opening before me. W e know so little beyond our own

small neighborhood of the galaxy .

But with a ship like that -- !

"That's goddamn fast."

"As you say .

But the equipmen t is bulky , as you note. It cost seven

billion stars to build that ship, discounting centuries of research, but it

will move only one man. As is, the ship is a failure. Shall we go inside?"

I I .

The life system was two circular rooms, one above the other , with a

small air lock to one side. The lower room was the control ro om, with

banks of switches and dials and blinking lights dominated by a huge

spherical mass pointer .

The upper room was bare walls, tra nsparent,

through which I could see air - and food-producing equipment. "This will be the relaxroom," sa id the puppeteer .

"W e decided to let

the pilot decorate it himself."

"Why me?"

"Let me further explain the pro blem." The puppeteer began to pace

the floor .

I hunkered down aga inst the wall and watched. W a tching a

puppeteer move is a pleasure. E ven in Jinx's gravity the deerl ike body

seemed weightless, the tiny hooves tapping the floor at random. "The

human sphere of colonization is some thirty light-years across, is it not?"

"Maximum. It's not exactly a sphere -- "

"The puppeteer region is much smaller The Kdatlyno sphere is half

the size of yours, and the kzinti is fractionally lar ger .

These are the

important space-traveling species. W e must discount the Outsiders since

they do not use ships. Some sph eres coincide, naturally .

T ravel from one

sphere t o anothe r is nearly nil except for ourselves, since our sphere of

influence extends to all who buy our hulls. But add all these regions, and

you have a region sixty light-years across. This ship could cross it in

seventy-five minutes. Allow six hours for takeof f and six for landing,

assuming no traf fic snarls near the world of destination, and we have a

ship which can go anywhere in thirteen hours but nowhere in less than

twelve, carrying one pilot and no car go, costing seven billion stars."

"How about exploration?"

"W e puppeteers have no taste for abstract knowledge. And how

should w e explore?" Meaning that whatever race flew the ship would

gain the advantages thereby .

A puppeteer wouldn't risk his n ecks by

flying it himself .

"What we need is a great deal of money and a g athering

of intell igences to design something which may go slower but must be

less bulky .

General Products does not wish to spend so m uch on

something that may fail. W e will require the best minds of each sentient

species and the richest investor s. Beowulf Shaef fer , we need to attract

attention."

"A publicity stunt?"

"Y es. W e wish to send a pilot to the center of the galaxy and back."

"Y e...gods!

W ill it go that fast?"

"It w ould require some twenty- five days to reach the center and an

equal time to return. Y ou can see the reasoning behind -- "

"It's perfect. Y ou don't need to spell it out. Why me?"

"W e wish you to make the trip and then write of it. I have a list of

pilots w ho write .

Those I have approached have been reluctant. They say

that writ ing on the ground is sa fer than testing unknown ships. I follow

their reasoning."

"Me, too."

"W ill you go?"

"What am I of fered?"

"One hundred thousand stars fo r the trip. Fifty thousand to write the

story , in addition to what you sell it for ."

"Sold."

From then on my only worry was that my new boss would fin d out

that someone had ghostwritten that neutron star article. Oh, I wondered at first why General Products was willing to trust me. The first time I worked for them, I tried to steal their ship for reasons

which seemed good at the time. But the ship I now called Long Shot

really wasn't worth stealing. Any potential buyer would know it was hot,

and what good would it be to him?

Long Shot could have explored a

globular cluster , but her only other use was publicity .

Sending her to the Core was a masterpiece of promotion. Look: It was twelve days from W e Made It to Jinx by conventional

craft, and twelve hours by Long Shot .

What's the dif ference?

Y ou spent

twelve years saving for the trip .

But the Core!

Ignoring refueling and

reprovisioning problems, my old ship could have reached the galaxy's

core in three hun dred years. No known species had ever seen t he Cor e!

It

hid behi nd layer on layer of tenuous gas and dust clouds. Y ou can find

libraries of literature on those central stars, but they all consist of

generalities and educated guesse s based on observation of other galaxies,

like Andromeda. Three centuries dropped to less than a month!

There's something

anyone can grasp. And with pictures!

The lifesystem was finished in a couple of weeks. I had them leave

the cont rol-room walls transpare nt and paint the relaxroom solid blue, no

windows. When they finished, I had entertainment tapes and ev erything

it takes to keep a man sane for s even weeks in a room the size of a lar ge

closet. On the last day the puppeteer and I spoke the final version of my

contract. I had f our months to r each the galaxy's center and ret urn. The

outside cameras would run constantly; I was not to interfere with them. If th e ship suf fe red a mechanical failure, I could return before reaching

the cente r; other wise, no. There were penalties. I took a copy of the tape

to leave with a lawyer .

"There i s a thing you should know ," the puppeteer said afterw ard. "The direction of thrust opposes the direction of hyperdrive."

"I don't get it."

The pup peteer groped for words. "If you turned on the rea ction

motors a nd the hyperdrive together , the flames would precede your ship

through hyperspace."

I got the picture then. Ass backward into the unknown. W ith the

control r oom at the ship's bottom, it made sense. T o a puppeteer , it made

sense. I I I .

And I was of f. I w ent up under two standard g ees because I like my comfort .

For

twelve hours I used only the reaction motors. It wouldn't do to be too

deep in a gravity well when I used a hyperdrive, espec ially an

experimental on e. Pilots who do that never leave hyperspace. The

relaxroom kept me entertained u ntil the bell rang. I slipped down to the

control room, netted myself dow n against free-fall, turned of f th e motors,

rubbed my hands briskly together , and turned the hyperdrive. It wasn't quite as I'd expected. I couldn't see out, of course. When the hyperdrive goes on, it's like

your bli nd spot expanding to take in all the windows. It's not just that

you don't see anything; you for g et that there's anything to see. If there's a

window between the kitchen control bank and your print of Dali's Spain,

your eye and mind will put the picture right next to the kitchen bank,

obliterating the space between. It takes getting used to, in fact it has

driven people insane, but that wasn't what bothered me. I' ve spent

thousands of manhours in hyperspace. I kept my eye on the mass pointer .

The mass pointer is a big transparent sphere with a number of blue

lines rad iating f rom the center .

The direction of the line is the direction

of a star; its length shows the star's mass. W e wouldn't need pilots if the

mass pointer could be hooked in to an autopilot, but it can't. Dependable

as it is, accurate as it is, the mass pointer is a psionic device. It needs a

mind to work it. I'd been using mass pointers for so long that th ose lines

were like real stars. A star came toward me, and I dodged around it. I thought that

another line that didn't point quite s traight ahead was long enough to

show dangerous mass, so I dodged. That put a blue dwarf right in front

of me. I shifted fast and looked for a throttle. I wanted to slow down. Repeat, I wanted to slow down .

Of cours e there was no throttle. Part of the puppeteer research pr oject

would be designing a throttle. A long fuzzy line reached for me: a

protosun...

Put it this way: I magine one of E arth's freeways. Y ou must have seen

pictures of them from space, a ta ngle of twisting concrete ribbons, empty

and abandoned but never torn do wn. Some lie broken; others are covered

with hou ses. People use the lat er rubberized ones for horseback riding. Imagine the way one of these m ust have looked about six o'cl ock on a

week night in, say , 1970.

Groundcars from end to end. Now , let 's take all those cars and remove the brakes. Further , let 's put

governors on the accelerators so that the maximum speeds are between

sixty an d seven ty miles per ho ur , not all the same. Let something go

wrong with all the governors at once so that the maximum speed also

becomes the minimum. Y ou'll begin to see signs of panic. Ready?

Okay .

Get a radar installed in your car , paint your winds hield

and windows jet black, and get out on that freeway .

It was like that. * * *

It di dn't seem so bad at first. The stars kept coming at me, and I kept

dodging, and after a while it settled down to a kind of routin e. From

experience I could tell at a glan ce whether a star was heavy enough and

close en ough to wreck me. But in Nakamura Lines I'd only had to take

that glan ce every six hours or so. Here I didn't dare look away .

A s I grew

fired, the near misses came close r and closer .

After three hours of it I had

to drop out. The star s had a subtly unfamiliar look. W ith a sudden jar I realized

that I was entirely out of known space. Sirius, Antares -- I'd never

recognize them from here; I wasn't even sure they were visible. I shook it

of f and called home. " Long Shot calling General Products, Long Shot calling -- "

"Beowulf Shaef fer?"

"Have I ever told you what a lovely , sexy voice you have?"

"No. Is everything going welI?"

"I'm afraid not. In fact, I'm not going to make it."

A pause. "Why not?"

"I ca n't keep do dging these stars forever .

One of them's going t o get

me if I keep on much longer .

The ship's just too goddamn fast."

"Y es. W e must design a slower ship."

"I hate to give u p that good pay , but my eyes feel like peeled on ions. I ache all over .

I'm turning back."

"Shall I play your contract for you?"

"No. Why?"

"Y our o nly legal reason for returning is a mechanical fa ilure. Otherwise you forfeit twice your pay ."

I sai d, "Mechanical failure?" Th ere was a toolbox somewhere i n the

ship, with a harnmer in it...

"I did not mention it before, since it did not seem polite, but two of

the c ameras are in the lifesystem .

W e had thought to use films o f you for

purposes of publicity , but -- "

"I se e. T ell me one thing, just on e thing. When the regional pres ident

of W e Made It sent you my name, did he mention that I'd discovered

your planet has no moon?"

"Y es, he did mention that matte r .

Y ou accepted one million sta rs for

your silence. He naturally has a recording of the bar gain."

"I see." So that's why they'd pi cked Beowulf Shaef fer , well-k nown

author .

"The trip'll take longer than I thought."

"Y ou mu st pay a penalty for ev ery extra day over four months. T wo

thousand stars per day late."

"Y our voice has acquired an unpleasant grating sound. Good-bye."

I went on in. Every hour I shifted to normal space for a ten-minute

cof fee break. I dropped out for meals, and I dropped out f or sleep. T welve hours per ship's day I spent traveling, and twelve trying to

recover .

It was a losing battle. By the end of da y two I knew I wasn't going to make the four -m onth

limit. I might do it in six months, forfeiting one hundred and twenty

thousand stars, leaving me almost where I started. Serve me right for

trusting a puppeteer!

Stars were all ar ound me, shining through the floor and between the

banked instrume nts. I sucked co f fee, trying not to think. The Milky W ay

shone gh ostly pa le between my feet. The stars were thick now; t hey'd get

thicker as I approached the Core, until finally one got me. An idea!

And about time, too. The golden voice answered immediately .

"Beowulf Shaef fer?"

"There's nobody else here, honey .

Look, I've thought of something. W ould you send -- "

"Is one of your instruments malfunctioning, Beowulf Shaef fer?"

"No, they all work fine, as far as they go. Look -- "

"Then what could you possibly have to say that would require my

attention?"

"Honey , now is the time to decide. Do you want revenge, or do you

want your ship back?"

A small silence. Then, "Y ou may speak,"

"I can reach the Core much faster if I first get into one of the spaces

between the arms. Do we know enough about the galaxy to kno w where

our arm ends?"

"I will send to the Institute of Knowledge to find out."

"Good."

Four hou rs later I was dragged from a deathlike sleep by the rin ging

of the hyperph one. It was n ot the president but some flunky .

I

remembered calling the puppeteer "honey" last night, tricked by my own

exhaustion and that seductive voice, and wondered if I'd hurt his

puppeteer feelings. "He" might be a male; a puppeteer's sex is one of his

little secrets. The flunky gave me a bearing and distance for the nearest

gap between stars. It took me another day to get there. When the stars began to thin out,

I cou ld h ardly believe it. I turned of f the hyperdrive, and it was true. The

stars we re tens and hundreds of light-years apart. I could see part of the

Core pee king in a bright rim above the dim flat cloud of mixed dust and

stars. I V

From then on it was better .

I was safe if I glanced at the mass pointer

every te n minutes or so. I could for get the rest breaks, eat meal s, and do

isometrics while watching the p ointers. For eight hours a day I slept, but

during the other sixteen I moved. The gap swept toward the Core in a

narrowing curve, and I followed it. As a voy age of exploration the trip would have been a fiasco. I saw

nothing. I stayed well away from anything worth seeing. Stars and dust,

anomalous wispy clusters shin ing in the dark of the gap, invisible

indications that might have been stars -- my cameras picked them up

from a nice safe distance, showing tiny blobs of light. In three weeks I

moved almost seventeen thousand light-years toward the Core. The end of those three weeks was the end of the gap. Before me was an uninteresting wash of stars backed by a wall of

opaque d ust clou ds. I still had thirteen thousand light-years to go before I

reached the center of the galaxy .

I took some pictures and moved in. T en-minute breaks, mealtimes that grew longer and longer fo r the

rest they gave, sleep periods tha t left my eyes red and burning. The stars

were thi ck and the dust was thicker , so that the mass pointer s howed a

blur of blue brok en by sharp blu e lines. The lines began to get less sharp. I took breaks every half hour ...

Three days of that. It was getting near lunchtime on the fourth day .

I sat watchin g the

mass po inter , no ting the fluctuations in the blue blur which .

sh owed the

changing density of the dust around me. Suddenly it faded out

completely .

Gre at, wouldn't it b e nice if the mass pointer went out on

me?

But the sh arp starlines were still there, ten or twenty of them

pointing in all d irections. I went back to steering. The clock c himed to

indicate a rest period. I sighed happily and dropped into normal space. The cloc k showe d that I had half an hour to wait for lunch. I thought

about ea ting any way , decided against it. The routine was all that kept me

going. I wonder ed what the sky looked like, reflexively looked up so I

wouldn't have to look down at the transparent floor .

That big an expanse

of hyperspace is hard even on trained eyes. I remembered I wasn't in

hyperspace and looked down. For a time I just stared. Then, w ithout taking my eyes of f the floor , I

reached for the hyperphone. "Beowulf Shaef fer?"

"No, thi s is Albert Einstein. I stowed away when the Long Shot took

of f, and I've decided to turn myself in for the reward."

"Giving misinformation is an implicit violation of contract. Why

have you called?"

"I can see the Core."

"That is not a reason to call. It was implicit in your contract tha t you

would see the Core."

"Damn it, don't you care?

Don't you want to know what it looks

like?"

"If you wish to describe it now , as a precaution against accid ent, I

will switch you to a dictaphone. However , if your mission is not totally

successful, we cannot use your recording."

I w as thinking up a really sear ing answer when I heard the click. Great; my boss had hooked me into a dictaphone. I said one short

sentence and hung up. The Core. Gone we re the obscuring masse s of dust and gas. A billion year s ago

they must have b een swept up fo r fuel by the hungry , crowded stars. The

Core lay before me like a great jeweled sphere. I'd expected it to be a

gradual thing, a thick mass of stars thinning out into the arms. There was

nothing gradual about it. A clear ball of multicolored light five or six

thousand light-y ears across nestled in the heart of the galaxy , sharply

bounded by the last of the dust clouds. I was 10,400 light-years from the

center .

The red stars w ere the biggest and brightest. I could actually pick

some of them out as individuals. The rest was a finger painting in

fluorescent green and blue. But those red stars...they would have sent

Aldebaran back to kinder garten. It was all so bright .

I neede d the telescope to see b lack between the

stars. I'll show you how bright it was. Is it night wher e you are?

Step outside and look at the stars. What

color are they?

Antares may show red if you're near enough; in the

system, so will Mars. Sirius may show bluish. But all the rest are white

pinpoints. Why?

Because it's dark .

Y our day vision is in color , but at

night you see black and white, like a dog. The Core suns were bright enough for color vision. I'd pick a planet here!

Not in the Core itself but right out here, with

the Core on one side and on the other the dimly starred dust clouds

forming their strange convoluted curtain. Man, wh at a view!

Imagine that flaming jeweled sphere rising in the

east, hundreds of times as big a s Binary shows on Jinx, but without the

constant feeling Binary gives yo u, the fear that the orange world will fall

on you, for the vast, twinkling Core is only starlight, lovely and

harmless. I'd pick my world now and stak e a claim. When the pu ppeteers

got their drive fixed up, I'd have the finest piece of real estate in the

known universe!

If I could only find a habitable planet. If only I could find it twice. Hell, I'd be lucky to find my way home fr om here. I sh ifted into

hyperspace and went back to work. V

An h our and fift y minutes, one lunch break and two rest breaks , and

fifty light-years later , I noticed something peculiar in the Core. It w as e ven clea rer then, if not much bigger; I'd passed through the

almost t ransparent wisps of the last dust cloud. Not too near the center of

the s phere was a patch of whit e, bright enough to make the green and

blue and red loo k dull around it .

I looked for it again at the next break,

and it was a little brighter .

It was brighter again at the next break...

"Beowulf Shaef fer?"

"Y eah."

"Why di d you use the dictaphone to call me a cowardly two-headed

monster?"

"Y ou were of f the line. I had to use the dictaphone."

"That is sensibl e. Y es. W e pup peteers have never understood your

attitude toward a natural cauti on." My boss was peeved, tho ugh you

couldn't tell from his voice. "I'll go into that if you like, but it's not why I called."

"Explain, please."

"I'm all for cauti on. Discretion is the better part of valor and like that. Y ou can even be good business men, because it's easier to survive with

lots of money .

But you're so damn concerned with various kinds of

survival that you aren't even in terested in something that isn't a threat. Nobody but a p uppeteer would have turned down my of fer to describe

the Core."

"Y ou for get the kzinti."

"Oh, the kzinti." Who expects rational behavior from kzinti?

Y ou

whip the m when they attack; y ou reluctantly decide not to exterminate

them; you wait till they build up their strength; and when they attack,

you whip 'em again. Meanwhile you sell them foodstuf fs and buy their

metals and employ them where you need good games theorists. It's not as

if they were a real threat. They'll always attack before they're ready .

"The kzinti are carnivores. W here we are interested in sur vival,

carnivores are interested in me at alone. They conquer because subject

peoples can supply them with food. They cannot do menial work. Animal husban dry is alien to them. They must have slave s or be

barbarians roam ing the forests for meat. Why should they be interested

in w hat you call abstract knowl edge?

Why should any thinking being if

the knowledge has no chance of showing a profit?

In practice, your

description of the Core would attract only an omnivore."

"Y ou'd make a g ood case if it were not for the fact that most sen tient

races are omnivores."

"W e have thought long and hard on that."

Y e cats. I was going to have to think long and hard on that .

"Why did you call, Beowulf Shaef fer?"

Oh, yeah. "Look, I know you don't want to know what the Core looks

like, but I see something that might represent personal danger .

Y ou have

access to information I don't. May I proceed?"

"Y ou may ."

Hah!

I was learn ing to think lik e a puppeteer .

W as that good?

I told

my boss about the blazing, str angely shaped white patch in t he Core. "When I turned the telescope on it, it nearly blinded me. G rade two

sunglasses don't give any detail s at all. It's just a shapeless wh ite patch,

but so bright that the stars in fro nt look like black dots with colored rims. I'd like to know what's causing it."

"It sounds very unusual." Pause .

"Is the white color uniform?

Is the

brightness uniform?"

"Just a sec." I used the scope again. "The color is, but the brightness

isn't. I see dimmer areas inside the patch. I think the center is fading

out."

"Use the telescope to find a nova star .

There ought to be seve ral in

such a lar ge mass of stars."

I tried it. Presently I found something: a blazing disk of a peculiar

blue-white color with a dimmer , somewhat smaller red disk hal f in front

of it. That had to be a nova. In the core of A ndromeda galaxy , and in

what I'd seen of our own Core, the red stars were the big gest and

brightest. "I've found one."

"Comment."

A m oment more and I saw what he meant. "It's the same color as the

patch. Somethin g like the same brightness, too. But what could make a

patch of supernovas go of f all at once?"

"Y ou ha ve studied the Core. The stars of the Core are an average of

half a light-year apart. They are even closer near the center , and no dust

clouds d im their brightness. When stars are that close, they shed enough

light on each oth er to increase materially each other's temperature. Stars

burn faster and age faster in the Core."

"I see that."

"Since the Core stars age faster , a much greater portion are near the

supernova stage than in the arm s. Also, all are hotter consider ing their

respective ages. If a star were a few millennia from the supemo va stage

and a supernova exploded half a light-year away , estimate the

probabilities."

"They m ight both blow .

Then t he two could set of f a third, an d the

three might take a couple more..."

"Y es. Since a su pernova lasts on the order of one human sta ndard

year , the chain reaction would soon die out. Y our patch of light must

have occurred in this way ."

"That's a relief Knowing what did it, I mean. I'll take pictures going

in."

"As you say ." Click. The patch kept e xpanding as I went in, still with no more shape than

a veil nebula, getting brighter and bigger .

It hardly seemed fair , what I

was doing. The light which the patch novas had taken fifty years to put

out, I covered in an hour , moving down the beam at a speed which made

the u niverse itself seem unreal. At the fourth rest period I dropped out of

hyperspace, look ed down through the floor while the cameras t ook their

pictures, glanced away from the patch for a moment, and found myself

blinded by tangerine afterimage s. I had to put on a pair of grade one

sunglasses, out of the packet o f twenty which every pilot carries for

working near suns during takeof f and landing. It made me shiv er to think that the patch was still nearly ten thousand

light-years away .

Already the radiation must have killed all li fe in the

Core if there eve r had been life there. My instruments on the hul l showed

radiation like a solar flare. At t he next sto p I needed grade two sunglasses. Somewhat later ,

grade th ree. Then four .

The patch became a great bright amoeba reaching

twisting tentacles of fusion fire deep into the vitals of the Core. In

hyperspace the sky was jamme d bumper to bumper , so to speak, but I

never th ought of stopping. As th e Core came closer , the patch grew like

something alive, something needing ever more food. I think I knew , even

then. Night came. The control room was a blaze of light. I slept in the

relaxroom to the tune of the laboring temperature control. Morning, and I

was of f again. The radiation me ter snarled its death song, loud er during

each res t break. If I'd been planning to go outside, I would have dropped

that plan. Radiation couldn't get through a General Produ cts hull. Nothing else can, either , except visible light. I sp ent a bad half hour trying to remember whether one o f the

puppeteers' customers saw X-rays. I was afraid to call up and ask. The ma ss pointer began to sho w a faint blue blur .

Gases thrown

outward from the patch. I had to keep changing sunglasses...

Sometime during the morning of the next day I stopped. There was

no point in going farther .

"Beowulf Shaef fer , have you become attached to the sound of my

voice?

I have other work than supervising your progress."

"I would like to deliver a lecture on abstract knowledge."

"Surely it can wait until your return."

"The galaxy is exploding."

There was a strange noise. Then: "Repeat, please."

"Have I got your attention?"

"Y es."

"Good. I think I know the r eason so many sentient races are

omnivores. Interest in abstract knowledge is a symptom of pure curiosity .

Curiosity must be a survival trait."

"Must we discuss this?

V ery well. Y ou may well be right. O thers

have made the s ame suggestion, including puppeteers. But how has our

species survived at all?"

"Y ou must have some substitute for curiosity .

Increased intelligence,

maybe. Y ou've been around long enough to develop it. Our hands can't

compare with your mouths for tool building. If a watchmaker had taste

and smell in his hands, he still w ouldn't have the strength of your jaws or

the delicacy of t hose knobs around your lips. When I want to k now how

old a sentient race is, I watch what he uses for hands and feet."

"Y es. Hu man fee t are still adapti ng to their task of keeping you erect. Y ou propose, then, that our inte lligence has grown suf ficiently to ensure

our survival without depending on your hit-or -miss method of learning

everything you can for the sheer pleasure of learning."

"Not quite. Our method is better .

If you hadn't sent me to the Core for

publicity , you'd never have known about this."

"Y ou say the galaxy is exploding?"

"Rather , it finished exploding some nine thousand years ago. I'm

wearing grade twenty sunglasses, and it's still too bright. A third of the

Core is gone already .

The patch is spreading at nearly the speed of light. I don 't s ee that anything can stop it until it hits the gas clouds beyond the

Core."

There w as no comment. I went on. "A lot of the inside of the patch

has gone out, but all of the surface is new novas. And remember , the

light I'm seeing is nine thousand years old. Now , I'm going to re ad you a

few instruments. Radiation, two hundred and ten. Cabin temperature

normal, but you can hear the wh ine of the temperature control. T he mass

indicator shows nothing but a blur ahead. I'm turning back."

"Radiation two hundred and ten ?

How far are you from the ed ge of

the Core?"

"About four thousand light-ye ars, I think. I can see plumes of

incandescent ga s starting to for m in the near side of the patch , moving

toward galactic north and south. It reminds me of something. Aren't there

pictures of exploding galaxies in the Institute?"

"Many .

Y es, it has happened b efore. Beowulf Shaef fer , this is bad

news. When the radiation from the Core reaches our worlds, it will

sterilize them. W e puppeteers w ill soon need considerable amounts of

money .

Shall I release you from your contract, paying you nothing?"

I laughed. I was too surprised even to get mad. "No."

"Surely you do not intend to enter the Core?"

"No. Look, why do you -- "

"Then by the conditions of our contract, you forfeit."

"W rong again. I'll take pictures of these instruments. When a court

sees the reading s on the radiation meter and the blue blur in the mass

indicator , they'll know something's wrong with them."

"Nonsense. Under evidence drugs you will explain the readings."

"Sure. A nd the court will know you tried to get me to go right t o the

center of that holocaust. Y ou know what they'll say to that?"

"But how can a court of law find against a recorded contract?"

"The point is th ey'll want to. Maybe they'll decide that we're both

lying and the instruments really did go haywire. Maybe they'll find a way

to say the contract was illegal. B ut they'll find against you. W ant to make

a side bet?"

"No. Y ou have won. Come back."

V I .

The Cor e was a lovely multicolo red jewel when it disappeared below

the lens of the g alaxy .

I'd have liked to visit it someday , but there aren't

any time machines. I'd pene trated n early to the Cor e in something like a month. I took

my time coming home, going straight up along galactic north and flying

above th e lens where there were no stars to bother me, and stil l made it

in two. All the w ay I wondered why the puppeteer had tried to cheat me

at the last. Long Shot 's publicity would have been better than ever , yet

the regional president had been willing to throw it away just to leave me

broke. I couldn't ask why , because nobody was answering my

hyperphone. Nothing I knew about puppeteers could tell me. I felt

persecuted. My come-hither brought me do wn at the base in the Farside End. Nobody was there. I took the tr ansfer booth back to Sirius Mat er , Jinx's

biggest city , figuring to contact General Products, turn over the ship, and

pick up my pay .

More surprises awaited me. 1) G eneral Products had paid 1 50,000 stars into my account i n the

Bank of Jinx. A personal note stated that whether I wrote my article was

solely up to me. 2) Gene ral Products has disappeared. They are selling no more

spacecraft hulls. Companies with contracts have had their penalty clauses

paid of f .

It all happened two months ago, simultaneously on all known

worlds. 3) The bar I'm in is on the roof o f the tallest building in Sirius Mater ,

more tha n a mile above the stre ets. Even from here I can hear the stock

market crashing. It started with the collapse of spacecraft companies

with no hulls to build ships. Hundreds of others have followed. It takes a

long tim e for an interstellar ma rket to come apart at the seams, but, as

with the Core novas, I don't see anything that can stop the chain reaction. 4) T he secret o f the indestructible General Products hull is being

advertised for sale. General Products's human representatives will collect

bids for one year , no bid to be less than one trillion stars. Get in on the

ground floor , folks. 5) N obody knows anything. Tha t's what's causing most of the panic. It's been a month since a puppeteer was seen on any known wo rld. Why

did they drop so suddenly out of interstellar af fairs?

I know .

In twenty thousand years a flood of radiation will wash over this

region of space. Thirty thousand light-years may seem a long, safe

distance, but it i sn't, not with this big an explosion. I've asked. T he Core

explosion will make this galaxy uninhabitable to any known form of life. T wenty thousan d years is a long time. I t's four times a s long as

human written history .

W e'll all be less than dust before things get

dangerous, and I for one am not going to worry about it. But the puppete ers are dif ferent. They're scared. They're getting out

right no w .

Payin g of f their pena lty clauses and buying motors and other

equipment to put in their indes tructible hulls will take so much money

that even confiscating my puny salary would have been a step to the

good. Interstella r business can go to hell; from now on the puppeteers

will have no time for anything but running. Where w ill they go?

W ell, the galaxy is surrounded by a halo of

small globular clusters. The ones near the rim might be safe. Or the

puppeteers may even go as far as Andromeda. They have the Long Shot

for exploring if they come back for it, and they can build more .

Outside

the g alaxy is spa ce empty enough even for a puppeteer pilot, if he thinks

his species is threatened. It's a pity .

This galaxy will be dull without puppeteers. Those two-

headed monste rs were not only the most dependable faction in

interstellar business, they were like water in a wasteland of more or less

humanoids. It's too bad they aren't brave, like us. But is it?

I never heard of a puppeteer refusing to face a problem. He may

merely b e decid ing how fast to run, but he'll never pretend the problem

isn't the re. Sometime within the next twenty millennia we humans will

have to move a population th at already numbers forty-three billion. How?

T o where?

When should we star t thinking about this?

When the

glow of the Core begins to shine through the dust clouds?

Maybe men are the cowards -- at the core. F L A T L A N D E R

The most beautiful girl aboard turned out to have a husband with

habits so solitary that I didn't know about him until the second week. He

was about five feet four and middle-aged, but he wore a hellflare tattoo

on his shoulder , which meant h e'd been on Kzin during the war thirty

years ba ck, whi ch meant he'd b een trained to kill adult kzinti with his

bare hands, feet, elbows, knees, and whatnot. When we found out about

each oth er , he very decently gave me a first warning and broke my arm

to prove he meant it. The arm still ached a day later , and every other woman on the

Lensman was ove r two hundred years old. I drank alone. I stared glumly

into the mirror behind the curving bar .

The mirror stared glumly back. "Hey .

Y ou from W e Made It. What am I?"

He w as two cha irs down, and h e was glaring. W ithout the bea rd he

would have had a round, almos t petulant face...I think. The bea rd, short

and blac k and carefully shaped, made him look like a cross between

Zeus and an angry bulldog. The glare went with the beard. His square

fingers wrapped a lar ge drinkin g bulb in a death grip. A bro ad belly

matched broad shoulders to make him look massive rather than fat. Obviously he was talking to me. I asked, "What do you mean, what

are you?"

"Where am I from?"

"Earth." It was obvious. The accent said Earth. So did the

conservatively symmetrical beard. His breathing was uncon sciously

natural i n the ship's standard atmosphere, and his build had been for ged

at one point zero gee. "Then what am I?"

"A flatlander ."

The glare heat i ncreased. He'd obviously reached the bar way a head

of me. "A flatlander!

Damn it, everywhere I go I'm flatlander .

Do you

know how many hours I've spent in space?"

"No. Long enough to know how to use a drinking bulb."

"Funny .

V ery funny .

Everywhe re in human space a flatlander is a

schnook who never gets above t he atmosphere. Everywhere but Earth. If

you're from Earth, you're a flatlander all your life. For the last fifty years

I've bee n runnin g about in hum an space, and what am I?

A f latlander .

Why?"

"Earthian is a clumsy term."

"What is W eMadeItian?" he demanded. "I'm a crashland er .

I wasn't bor n within fifty miles of Crashlanding

City , but I'm a crashlander anyway ."

That got a grin. I think. It was hard to tell with the beard. "L ucky

you're not a pilot."

"I am. W as."

"Y ou're kidding. They let a crashlander pilot a ship?"

"If he's good at it."

"I didn't mean to pique your ir e, sir .

May I introduce myself ?

My

name's Elephant."

"Beowulf Shaef fer ."

He bought me a drink. I bough t him a drink. It turned out we both

played gin, so we took fresh drinks to a card table...

When I was a kid, I used to stand out at the edge of Crashlanding

Port watching the ships come in. I'd watch the mob of passengers leave

the l ock and mo ve in a great clump toward customs, and I'd won der why

they seemed to have trouble navigating. A majority of the starborn would

always w alk in weaving lines, swaying and blinking teary eyes against

the s un. I used to think it was because they came from dif ferent worlds

with dif ferent gravities and dif ferent atmospheres beneath d if ferently

colored suns. Later I learned dif ferent. There ar e no windows in a passenger spacecraft. If there were, half

the passengers would go insane; it takes an unusual mentality to watch

the blind -spot appearance of hyperspace and still keep one's marbles. For

passengers there is nothing to w atch and nothing to do, and if you don't

like read ing six teen hours a day , then you drink. It's best to drink in

company .

Y ou get less lushed, k nowing you have to keep up your side of

a conversation. The ship's 'doc has cured more hangovers than every

other operation combined, right down to manicures and haircuts. The ship grounded at Los Angeles two days after I met Elep hant. He'd ma de a good drinking partner .

W e'd been fairly matched at cards, he

with his sharp c ard sense, I with my usual luck. From the talk ing we'd

done, we knew almost as much about each other as anyone knows about

anyone. In a way I was sorry to see him leave. "Y ou've got my number?"

"Y eah. But like I said, I don't k now just what I'll be doing." I was

telling the truth. When I explore a civilized world, I like to make my own

discoveries. "W ell, call me if you get a chance. I wish you'd change your mind. I'd

like to show you Earth."

"I decline with thanks. Goodbye, Elephant. It's been fun."

Elephant waved and turned thr ough the natives' door .

I went on to

face the smuggler baiters. The last drink was still with me, but I could

cure that at the hotel. I never expected to see Elephant again. Nine days ago I'd been on Jinx. I'd been rich. And I'd been depressed. The money and the depression had stemmed from the same source. The puppeteers, those three-legged, two-headed professional cowards

and busi nessmen, had lured me i nto taking a new type of ship al l the way

to the galactic core, thirty thousand light years away .

The trip was for

publicity purposes, to get research money to iron out the imperfections in

the very ship I was riding. I suppose I sho uld have had more sense, but I never do, an d the

money w as goo d. The trouble was that the Core had exploded by the

time I got there. The Core stars had gone of f in a chain reaction of novas

ten t housand years ago, and a wave of radiation was even then (and even

now) sweeping toward known space. In just over twenty thousand years we'll all be in deadly danger .

Y ou're not worried?

It didn't bother me much, either .

But every

puppeteer in known space vanished overnight, heading for Finagle

knows what other galaxy .

I wa s depressed. I missed the puppeteers and hated knowing I was

responsible for their going. I had time and money and a black

melancholia to work of f. And I'd always wanted to see Earth. Earth sm elled go od. There was a used flavor to it, a breathed flavor ,

unlike anything I've ever know n. It was the dif ference betwee n spring

water and distilled water .

So mewhere in each breath I to ok were

molecules breathed by Dante, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Heinlein, Carter ,

and my own ancestors. T races of past industries lingered in the air ,

sensed i f not smelled: gasoline, coal fumes, tobacco and burnt cigarette

filters, d iesel fum es, ale breweries. I left the customs house with inflated

lungs and a questing look. I could have tak en a transfer booth straight to the hotel. I decid ed to

walk a little first. Everyone on Earth had made the same decision. The pedwalk held a crowd such as I had never imagined. They were

all shapes and all colors, and they dressed in strange and eldritch ways. Shifting colors assaulted the ey e and sent one reeling. On any world in

human space, any world but one, you know immediately who the natives

are. W underland?

Asymmetrical beards mark the nobility , and the

common people are the ones who quickly step out of their way .

W e

Made It?

The pallor of our skins in summer and winter , in sp ring and

fall, the fact that we all race upstairs, above the buried cities and onto the

blooming desert , eager to taste sunlight while the murderous winds are at

rest. Jinx?

The natives are short, wide, and strong; a sweet little old

lady's handshake can crush steel. Even in the Belt, within the solar

system, a Belter strip haircut adorns both men and women. But Earth -- !

No two looked alike. There were reds and blues and greens, yellows

and oran ges, plaids and stripes. I'm talking about hair , you understand,

and skin. All m y life I've used tannin-secretion pills for p rotection

against ultraviolet, so that my skin color has varied from its normal

pinkish-white (I 'm an albino) to (under blue-white stars) tuxedo black. But I'd never known that other skin-dye pills existed. I stood rooted to

the pedw alk, let ting it carry me where it would, watching the incredible

crowd sw arm ar ound me. They were all knees and elbows. T omorrow I'd

have bruises. "Hey!"

The girl was four or five heads away , and short. I'd never have seen

her i f ev eryone e lse hadn't been short, too. Flatlanders rarely top six feet. And the re was this girl, her hair a topological explosion in swirling

orange and silver , her face a faint, subtle green with spa ce-black

eyebrows and lipstick, waving something and shouting at me. W aving my wallet. I for ced my way to her until we were close enough to touch, until I

could hear what she was saying above the crowd noise. "Stupid!

Where 's your address?

Y ou don't even have a place for a

stamp!"

"What?"

She looked startled. "Oh!

Y ou're an of fworlder ."

"Y eah!" My voice would give out fast at this noise level. "W ell, lo ok..." S he shoved her w ay closer to me. "Look, you can't go

around t own with an of fworlder's wallet. Next time someone picks your

pocket he may not notice till you're gone."

"Y ou picked my pocket?"

"Sure!

T hink I found it?

W ould I risk my precious hand und er all

those spike heels?"

"How if I call a cop?"

"Cop?

O h, a stoneface." She la ughed merrily .

"Learn or go under ,

man. There's no law against picking pockets. Look around you."

I l ooked around me, then look ed back fast, afraid she'd disappear .

Not only my cash but my Bank of Jinx draft for forty thousand stars was

in that wallet. Everything I owned. "See them all?

Sixty-four million people in Los Angeles alone. Eighteen billion in the whole world. Suppose there was a law against

picking pockets ?

How would you enforce it?" She deftly extr acted the

cash fro m my wallet and handed the wallet back. "Get yourself a new

wallet, a nd fast. It'll have a place for your address and a window for a

tenth-star stamp .

Put your addre ss in right away , and a stamp, t oo. Then

the next guy wh o takes it can pull out the money and drop your wallet in

the n earest mailbox -- no swea t. Otherwise you lose your cred it cards,

your ident, everything." She s tuf fed two hundred-odd stars in cash

between her breasts, flashing me a parting smile as she turned. "Thanks," I called. Y es, I did .

I was still bewildered, but she'd

obviously stayed to help me. She could just as easily have kept wallet

and all. "No char ge," she called back, and was gone. I stoppe d of f at the first transfe r booth I saw , dropped a half s tar in

the coin slot, and dialed Elephant. The vestibule was intimidating. I'd expe cted a vestibule. Why p ut a transfer booth inside your own

home, w here any bur glar can ge t in just by dialing your number?

Anyone

who can af ford the lease on a private transfer booth can also af ford a

vestibule with a locked door and an intercom switch. There w as a vestibule, but it wa s the size of a living room, furnished

with massage chairs and an autovendor .

There was an interco m, but it

was a flat vidp hone, three hundred years old, restored at p erhaps a

hundred times its original cost. There was a locked door; it was a double

door of what lo oked like polished brass, with two enormous curved

handles, and it stood fifteen feet high. I'd susp ected Elephant was well of f, but this was too much. It

occurred to me that I'd never s een him completely sober , that I had in

fact turn ed down his of fer of guidance, that a simple morning-after

treatment might have wiped me from his memory .

Shouldn't I just go

away?

I had wanted to explore Earth on my own. But I didn't know the rules!

I ste pped out o f the booth and glimpsed the back wall. It was all

picture window , with nothing outside -- just fleecy blue sky .

How

peculiar , I thought, and stepped closer .

And closer .

Elephant lived halfway up a clif f. A sheer mile-high clif f. The phone rang. On t he t hird ear -jarring ring I a nswered, mainly to stop the noi se. A

supercilious voice asked, "Is somebody out there?"

"I'm afraid not," I said. "Does someone named Elephant live here?"

"I'll see, sir ," sa id the voice. T he screen had not lit, but I had the

feeling someone had seen me quite clearly .

Seconds crawled by .

I was half minded to jump back in the transfer

booth an d dial at random. But o nly half; that was the trouble. Then the

screen lit, and it was Elephant. "Bey!

Y ou changed your mind!"

"Y eah. Y ou didn't tell me you were rich."

"Y ou didn't ask."

"W ell, no, of course not."

"How d o you expect to learn th ings if you don't ask?

Don't answer

that. Ha ng on, I'll be right dow n. Y ou did change your mind?

Y ou'll let

me show you Earth?"

"Y es, I will. I'm scared to go out there alone."

"Why?

Don't answer .

T ell me in person." He hung up. Seconds later

the big bronze d oors swung back with a bone-shaking boom. They just

barely g ot out of Elephant's way .

He pulled me inside, giving me no time

to g ape, shoved a drink in my hand, and asked why I was afr aid to go

outside. I told him about the pickpocket, and he laughed, He told me about

the time he trie d to go outside during a W e Made It summer , and I

laughed, though I've heard of outworlders being blown away and to

Hades d oing the same thing. Am azingly , we were of f again. It was just

like it had been on the ship, even to the end of Elephant's anecdote. "They called me a silly flatlander , of course."

"I've been thinking about that," I said. "About what?"

"Y ou sa id you'd give a lot to d o something completely original, so

the n ext time so meone called you a flatlander , you could back him into a

corner and force him to listen to your story .

Y ou said it several times."

"I didn't say just that. But I wo uld like to have some story to tell,

something like your neutron star episode. If only to tell myself. The silly

of fworlder wouldn't know , but I'd know ."

I no dded. I'd talk ed about the ne utron star episode over gin cards -- a

habit I've developed for distrac ting my opponent -- and Elep hant had

been suitably impressed. "I've thought of a couple of things you could do," I said. "Spill."

"One. V isit the puppeteer homeworld. Nobody's been there, but

everyone knows there is one, and everyone knows how dif ficu lt it is to

find. Y ou could be the first."

"Great." He mused a moment. "Great!

And the puppeteers wouldn't

stop me because they're gone. Where is the puppeteer homeworld?"

" I don't know ."

"What's your second idea?"

"Ask the Outsiders."

"Huh?"

"There's not a sy stem in the gal axy that the Outsiders don't kno w all

about. W e don't know how far t he puppeteer empire extended, though it

was way beyond known space , but we do know about the O utsiders. They kn ow the galaxy like the palm of their -- uh...And they trade for

information; it's just about the only business they do. Ask them what's

the most unusual world they know of within reach."

Elephant was nodding gently .

There was a glazed look in his eyes. I

had no t been sure he was serious about seeking some unique

achievement. He was. "The pro blem is ," I said, "That an Outsider's idea of what is u nique

may not -- " I stopped because Elephant was up and half running to a

tridphone. I wasn't sorry .

It gave me an opportunity to gape in private. I've been in bigger homes than Elephant's. Much bigger .

I grew up in

one. But I've never seen a room that soothed the eye as Elephan t's living

room did. It was more than a living room; it was an optical illu sion, the

opposite of those jittering black -and-white images they show in lectures

on how we see. These clinical children of op art give the illusion of

motion, but Elephant's living room gave the illusion of stillness. A

physicist would have loved the soundproofing. Some interior decorator

had become famous for his work here, if he hadn't been famous already ,

in w hich case he had become ric h. How could tall, thin Beowulf Shaef fer

fit in to a chair designed to the measure of short, wide Elephant?

Y et I

was bonelessly limp, blissfully relaxed, using only the muscles that held

a do uble-walled glass of an od d-tasting, strangely refreshing soft drink

called Tzlotz Beer .

A glass which would not empty .

Somewhere in the crystal was a tiny

transfer motor connected to the b ar , but the bent light in the crys tal hid it. Another optical illusion, and one that must have tricked good men into

acute alcoholism. I'd have to watch that. Elephant returne d. He walked a s if he massed tons, as if any kzinti

foolish e nough t o stand in his path would have a short, wide hole in him. "All don e," he said. "Don Cram er'll find the nearest Outsider ship and

make my pitch for me. W e should hear in a couple of days."

"Okay ," said I, and asked him about the clif f. It turned out tha t we

were in the Rock y Mountains and that he owned every square inch of the

nearly vertical clif f face. Why?

I remembered Earth's eighteen billion

and wondered if they'd otherwi se have surrounded him up, do wn, and

sideways. Suddenly Elephant remembered that someone named Dianna must be

home by now .

I followed him into the transfer booth, watched him dial

eleven d igits, and waited in a much smaller vestibule while Elephant

used the more conventional intercom. Dianna seemed dubious about

letting him in until he roared that he had a guest and she should stop

fooling around. Dianna was a small, pretty woman with skin the deep, uniform red of

a M artian sky an d hair like flow ing quicksilver .

Her irises had the same

polished-silver l uster .

She hadn't wanted to let us in because we were

both we aring ou r own skins, bu t she never mentioned it again once we

were inside. Elephant introdu ced me to Dian na and instantly told her he'd acted to

contact the Outsiders. "What's an Outsider?" she asked. Elephant gestured with both hands, looked confused, tu rned

helplessly toward me. "They're hard to describe," I said. "Think of a cat-o'-nine-tails with a

big thick handle."

"They live on cold worlds," said Elephant. "Small, cold, airless worlds like Nereid. They pay rent to use N ereid

as a base, don't they , Elephant?

And they travel over most of th e galaxy

in big unpressurized ships with fusion drives and no hyperdrives."

"They s ell infor mation. They can tell me about the world I wa nt to

find, the most unusual planet in known space."

"They spend most of their time tracking starseeds."

Dianna broke in. "Why?"

Elephant looked at me. I looked at Elephant. "Say!" Elephant exclaimed. "Why don't we get a fourth for bridge?"

Dianna looked thoughtful. Then she focused her silver eyes on me,

examined me from head to foot, and nodded gently to herself. "Sharrol

Janss. I'll call her ."

While s he was phoning, Elephant told me, "That's a good thought. Sharrol's got a tendency toward hero worship. She's a computer analyst

at Donovan's Brains Inc. Y ou'll like her ."

"Good," I said, wondering if we were still talking about a b ridge

game. It struck m e that I was building up a debt to Elephant. "Elephant,

when you contact the Outsiders, I'd like to come along."

"Oh?

Why?"

"Y ou'll need a pilot. And I've dealt with Outsiders before."

"Okay , it's a deal."

The intercom rang from the vestibule. Dianna went to the door and

came ba ck with our fourth for b ridge. "Sharrol, you know Elephant. This

is Beowulf Shaef fer , from W e Made It. Bey , this is -- "

"Y ou!" I said. "Y ou!" she said. It was the pickpocket. My vacation lasted just four days. I hadn't known how long it would last, though I did know h ow it

would end. Consequently I threw myself into it body and soul. If there

was a dull mom ent anywhere in those four days, I slept through it, and at

that I didn't get enough sleep. Elephant seemed to feel the same way .

He

was livi ng life to the hilt; he must have suspected, as I did, that the

Outsiders would not consider da nger a factor in choosing his planet. By

their ow n ethics they were bou nd not to. The days of Elephant's life

might be running short. Buried in those four days were incidents that made me wonder why

Elephant was looking for a weird world. Surely Earth was the weirdest

of all. I remember when we threw in th e bridge hands and decided to go out

for dinn er .

This was more com plicated than it sounds. Elephant hadn't

had a chance to change to flatlander styles, and neither of us was fit to be

seen in public. Dianna had cosmetics for us. I succumbed to an odd impulse. I dressed as an albino. They were body paints, not pi lls. When I finished applying them,

there in the full-length mirror was my younger self. Blood-red irises,

snow-white hair , white skin wit h a tinge of pink: the teenager who had

disappeared age s ago, when I was old enough to use tannin pills. I found

my mind wandering far back ac ross the decades, to the days when I was

a flatlan der myself, my feet fir mly beneath the ground, my head never

higher than seven feet above the desert sands...They found me there

before the mirror and pronounced me fit to be seen in public. I remember that evening when Dianna told me she had known

Elephant forever .

"I was the one who named him Elephant," she bragged. "It's a nickname?"

"Sure," said Sharrol. "His real name is Gregory Pelton."

"O-o-oh." Suddenly all came clear .

Gregory Pelton is known among

the stars .

It is rumored that he owns the thirty-light-year -wi de rough

sphere called human space , that he earns his income by renting it out. It

is rumored that General Products -- the all-embracing puppeteer

company , now defunct for lack of puppeteers -- is a front for Gregory

Pelton. It's a fact that his great-to-die-eighth-grandmother invented the

transfer booth and that he is rich, rich, rich. I asked, "Why Elephant?

Why that particular nickname?"

Dianna and Sharrol looked demurely at the tablecloth. Elephant said, "Use your imagination, Bey ."

"On what?

What's an elephant, some kind of animal?"

Three faces registered annoyance. I'd missed a joke. "T omorrow ," said Elephant, "we'll show you the zoo."

There ar e seven transfer booths in the Zoo of Earth. That'll tel l you

how big it is. B ut you're wrong; you've for gotten the two hund red taxis

on p ermanent duty .

They're ther e because the booths are too far apart for

walking. W e stared down at dusty , compact animals smaller than starseeds or

Bandersnatchi but bigger than anything else I'd ever seen. Elephant said,

"See?"

"Y eah," I said, because the an imals showed a compactness and a

plodding invuln erability very like Elephant's. And then I foun d myself

watching one of the animals in a muddy pool. It was using a hollow

tentacle over its mouth to spray water on its back. I stared at that

tentacle...and stared...

"Hey , look!" Sharrol called, pointing. "Bey's ears are turning red!"

I didn't for give her till two that morning. And I remember reaching over Sharrol to get a tabac stick and seeing

her purse lying on her other things. I said, "How if I picked your pocket

now?"

Orange and silver lips parted in a lazy smile. "I'm not wear ing a

pocket."

"W ould it be in good taste to sneak the money out of your purse?"

"Only if you could hide it on you."

I found a small flat purse with f our hundred stars in it and stuck it in

my mouth. She mad e me go through with i t. Ever make love to a woman w ith a

purse in your mouth?

Unfor gettable. Don't try it if you've got asthma. I rem ember Sharrol. I remember smooth, warm blue skin, silver eyes

with a wealth of expression, orange and silver hair in a swirling abstract

pattern t hat noth ing could mess up. It always sprang back. Her l augh was

silver , too, when I gently extrac ted two handfuls of hair and tied them in

a ha rd d ouble knot, and when I gibbered and jumped up and do wn at the

sight of her hair slowly untying itself like Medusa's locks. And her voice

was a silver croon. I remember the freeways. They we re the first thing that s howed coming in on Earth. If we'd

landed a t night, it would have been the lighted cities, but of c ourse we

came in on the day side. Why el se would a world have three spaceports?

There were the freeways and au tostradas and autobahns, strung in an all-

enclosing net across the faces of the continents. From a few mile s up you still can't see the breaks. But they're there,

where girders and pavement have collapsed. Only two superhighways

are still kept in good repair .

Th ey are both on the same continent: the

Pennsylvania T urnpike and the Santa Monica Freeway .

The rest of the

network is broken chaos. It seems there a re people who c ollect old groundcars and race them. Some ar e actually renovated machines, fifty to ninety percent replaced;

others are handmade reproductio ns. On a perfectly flat surface they'll do

fifty to ninety miles per hour .

I l aughe d when Elephant told me about them, but actually seeing

them was dif ferent. The rodd ers began to appear ab out dawn. They gathered around one

end of the Santa Monica Freeway , the end that used to join the San

Diego Freeway .

This end is a maze of fallen spaghetti, great curving

loops of prestressed concrete that have lost their strength over the years

and sagged to the ground. But you can still use the top loop to reach the

starting line. W e watched from above, hovering in a cab as the

groundcars moved into line. "Their dues cost more than the cars," said Elephant. "I used to drive

one myself. Y ou'd turn white as snow if I told you how much i t costs to

keep this stretch of freeway in repair ."

"How much?"

He told me. I turned white as snow .

They we re of f. I was still wond ering what kick they got drivin g an

obsolete machin e on flat concre te when they could be up here with us. They were of f, weaving slightl y , weaving more than slightly , foolishly

moving at dif ferent speeds, com ing perilously close to each oth er before

sheering of f -- and I began to realize things. Those automobiles had no radar .

They were being steered with a cabin wheel geared directly to four

ground w heels. A mistake in ste ering and they'd crash into each other or

into the concrete curbs. They we re steered and stopped by muscle power ,

but whether they could turn or stop depended on how hard four rubber

balloons could grip smooth concrete. If the tires lost their grip, N ewton's

first law would take over; the fragile metal mass would continue moving

in a straight line until stopped by a concrete curb or another groundcar .

"A man could get killed in one of those."

"Not to worry ," said Elephant. "Nobody does, usually ."

"Usually?"

The race ended twenty minute s later at another tangle of fallen

concrete. I was wet through. W e landed and met some of the racers. One

of them, a thin guy with tangled, glossy green hair and a bony white face

with a widely grinning scarlet mouth, of fered me a ride. I decli ned with

thanks, backing slowly away and wishing for a weapon. This joker was

obviously dangerously insane. I remem ber flatlander food, the best in known space, and an odd,

mildly alcoholic drink called T aittinger Comtes de Champagne '59.

I

remember invading an outworld er bar , where the four of us tal ked shop

with a girl rock miner whose inch-wide auburn crest of hair fell clear to

the sma ll of her back. I remem ber flying cross-country with a lift belt

and seeing nothing but city enc losing widely separated patches of food-

growing land. I remember a su bmer ged hotel of f the Grand B anks of

Newfoundland and a dolphin embassy of f Italy , where a mixed group of

dolphins and flatlanders seemed to be solving the general problem of

sentient beings without hands ( there are many , and we'll prob ably find

more).

It seemed more a cof fee-break discussion than true business. W e were about to break up for bed on the evening of the fourth day

when the tridphone rang. Don Cramer had found an Outsider .

I said, disbelieving, "Y ou're leaving right now ?"

"Sure!" said Elephant. "Here, take one of these pills. Y ou won't feel

sleepy till we're on our way ."

A deal is a deal, and I owed Elephant plenty .

I took the pill. W e

kissed S harrol and Dianna goodbye, Dianna standing on a chair to reach

me, Sharrol climbing me like a beanpole and wrapping her legs around

my waist. I was a foot and a half taller than either of them. Calcutta Base was in daylight. E lephant and I took the transfer booth

there, to find that the ST ¥ had been shipped ahead of us. Her full name was Slower Than Infinity .

S he had been built into a

General Products No. 2 hull, a three-hundred-foot spindle with a wasp-

waist constriction near the tail. I was relieved. I had been afraid Elephant

might own a fla shy , vulnerable dude's yacht. The two-man control room

looked pretty small for a lifesys tem until I noticed the bubble e xtension

folded into the n ose. The rest of the hull held a one-gee fusion drive and

fuel tank, a hyperspace motor , a gravity drag, and belly-landing gear , all

clearly visible through the hull, which had been left transparent. She held fuel, food, and air .

She must have been ready for days. W e

took of f twenty minutes after arriving. Using the fusion drive in Earth 's atmosphere would have gotten us

into the or gan banks, in piece s. Flatlander laws are strict about air

pollution. A robot rocket with huge wings lifted us to orbit, using air

compressed nearly to degenera te matter as a propellant. W e took of f

from there. Now there was plenty of time for sleep. It took us a week at one gee

just to get far e nough out of the solar system's gravity well to use the

hyperdrive. Somewhere in that time I removed my false coloring (it had

been false; I'd continued to take tannin-secretion pills against Earth's

sunlight), and Elephant turned his skin back to light tan and his beard

and hair back to black. For four days he'd been Zeus, with marb le skin, a

metal-gold bear d, and glowing molten-gold eyes. It had fitted him so

perfectly that I hardly noticed the change. Hyperdrive -- and a long, slow three weeks. W e took turns hov ering

over the mass in dicator , though at first-quantum hyperdrive spe eds we'd

have seen a mass at least twelve hours before it became dangerous. I

think I was the only man who knew there was a second quantum, a

puppeteer secret .

The Outsider ship was near the edge of known space,

well beyond T au Ceti. "It was the only one around," Elephant had said. "Number fourteen."

"Fourteen?

That's the same ship I dealt with before."

"Oh?

Good. That should help."

Days later he asked, "How'd it happen?"

"The us ual way .

Number fourteen was on the other side of k nown

space th en, and she sent out an of fer of information exchang e. I was

almost t o W underland, and I caught the of fer .

When I dropped my

passengers, I went back."

"Did they have anything worthwhile?"

"Y ah. They'd found the Lazy Eight II ."

The Lazy Eight II had been one of the old slowboats, a circular -flying

wing ta king colonists to Jinx. Something had gone wrong before

turnover , and the ship had con tinued on, carrying fifty passengers in

suspended animation and a crew of four , presumed dead. W ith a

ramscoop to feed hydrogen to her fusion drive, she could accelerate

forever .

She was five hundred years on her way .

"I remember ," said Elephant. "They couldn't reach her ."

"No. But we'll k now where to f ind her when the state of the art gets

that goo d." Which wouldn't be soon, I thought. A hyperdrive ship not

only wo uld have to reach her but would have to carry fuel to m atch her

speed. H er speed was barely less than a photon's, and she was more than

five hun dred light-years away , seventeen times the diameter of known

space. "Did you have any problems?"

"Their translato r is pretty good. But we'll have to be careful,

Elephant. The thing about buying information is that you don't know

what yo u're getting until you've got it. They couldn't just of fer t o sell me

the prese nt position of the Lazy Eight II .

W e 'd have trac ked their course

by telescope until we saw the light of a fusion drive and gotten the

information free."

The tim e came when only a small green dot glowed in the center of

the mas s indicator .

A star wou ld have shown as a line; no st ar would

have sho wn no dot. I dropped ou t of hyperspace and set the deep radar to

hunt out the Outsider .

The Outsider found us first. Somewhere in the cylindrical metal pod near her center of m ass,

perhaps occupying it completely , was the reactionless drive. It was

common knowledge that that drive was for sale and that the cost was a

full trillion stars. Though nobod y , and no nation now extant, could af ford

to pay it, the price was not exor bitant. In two or three minutes, while we

were still searching, that drive had dropped the Outsider ship from above

point nine lights to zero relative and pulled it alongside the ST ¥ .

One mo ment, nothing but stars. The next, the Outsider ship was

alongside. She was mostly empty space. I knew her population was the siz e of a

small city , but she was much bigger because more strung out. There was

the m inuscule-se eming drive capsule, and there, on a pole two a nd a half

miles long, was a light source. The rest of the ship was metal ribbons,

winding in and out, swooping g iddily around themselves and each other ,

until the ends of each tangled ribbon stopped meandering and joined the

drive capsule. There were around a thousand such ribbons, and each was

the width of a wide city pedwalk. "Like a Christmas tree decoration," said Elephant. "What now , Bey?"

"They'll use the ship radio."

A fe w m inutes o f waiting, and h ere came a bunch of Outsiders. They

looked like black cat-o'-nine-tails with grossly swollen handles. In the

handles were their brains and invisible sense or gans; in the whip ends,

the clusters of motile root tentacles, were gas pistols. Six of them braked

to a stop outside the air lock. The radi o spoke. "W elcome to S hip Fourteen. Please step outside for

conveyance to our of fice. T ake nothing on the outsides of your pressure

suits."

Elephant asked, "Do we?"

I said, "Sure. The Outsiders are nothing if not honorable."

W e went out. The six Outsiders of fered us a tentacle each, and away

we w ent across open space. Not fast. The thrust from the gas pistols was

very low , irritatingly weak. But the Outsiders themselves were weak; an

hour in the gravity of Earth's moon would have killed them. They m aneuvered us through the tangled clutter of silver rib bons,

landing us on a ramp next to the looming convex wall of the drive

capsule. It wasn' t quite like being lost in a giant bowl of noodles. The rigid

ribbons were too far apart for that. Far above us was the ligh t source,

about as small and intense and yellowish-white as Earth's sun seen from

a moon of Neptune. Shining down through the interstellar vacuum, it

cast a network of sharp black shadows across all the thousand looping

strands that made up, the city .

Along every light-shadow borde rline were the Outsiders. Just as their

plantlike ancest ors had done billions of years ago on some unknown

world n ear the galactic core, th e Outsiders were absorbing life ener gy .

Their branched tails lay in shadow , their heads in sunligh t, while

thermoelectricity char ged their biochemical batteries. Some had root

tentacles dipped in shallow food dishes; the trace elements which kept

them alive and growing were in suspension in liquid helium. W e stepped carefully around them, using our headlamps at lowest

intensity , following one of the Outsiders toward a door in the wall ahead. The enclosure was dark until the door closed behind us. Then the

light came on. It was sourceless, the color of normal sunlight, and it

illuminated a cubicle that was b are and square. The only furnishing was

a tra nsparent hemisphere with an Outsider resting inside. Presumably the

hemisphere filtered out excess light going in. "W elcome," said the room. Whatever the Outsider had said was not

sonic in nature. "The air is breathable. T ake of f your helme ts, suits,

shoes, g irdles, a nd whatnot." It was an excellent translator , with a good

grasp of idiom and a pleasant baritone voice. "Thanks," said Elephant, and we did. "Which of you is Gregory Pelton?"

"Gronk."

The wall was n ot confused. "According to your agent, you want to

know ho w to reach that planet which is most unusual inside or within

five mil es of the sixty-light-year wide region you call known space. Is

this correct?"

"Y es."

"W e must know if you plan to go there or to send agents there. Also,

do you plan a landing, a near orbit, or a distant orbit?"

"Landing."

"Are we to guard against danger to your life?"

"No." E lephant's voice was a l ittle dry .

The Outsider ship was an

intimidating place. "What kind of ship would you use?"

"The one outside."

"Do you plan colonization?

Mining?

Growth of food plants?"

"I plan only one visit."

"W e have selected a world for you. The price will be one million

stars."

"That's high," said Elephant. I whistled under my breath. It was, and

it wouldn't get lower .

The Outsiders never dickered. "Sold," said Elephant. The translator gave us a triplet set of coordinates some twenty -four

light-years from Earth along gal actic north. "The star you are looking for

is a protosun w ith one planet a billion and a half miles dist ant. The

system is moving at a point eight lights toward -- " He gave a vector

direction. It seemed the protosu n was drawing a shallow chord through

known space; it would never approach human space. "No good," said Elephant. "No hyperdrive ship can go that fast in

real space."

"Y ou co uld hitch a ride," said the translator , "with us. Moor your ship

to our drive capsule."

"That'll work," said Elephant. He was getting more and more uneasy;

his e yes seemed to be searching the walls for the source of the voice. He

would not look at the Outsider business agent in the vacuum chamber .

"Our ferry fee will be one million stars."

Elephant sputtered. "Just a sec," I said. "I may have information to sell you."

There was a long pause. Elephant looked at me in surprise. "Y ou are Beowulf Shaef fer?"

"Y eah. Y ou remember me?"

"W e find you in our records. Beowulf Shaef fer , we have inform ation

for y ou, already paid. The forme r regional president of General Products

on Jinx wishes you to contact him. I have a transfer -booth number ."

"That's late news," I said. "The puppeteers are gone. Anyway , why

would that two-headed sharpie want to see me?"

"I do not have that information. I do know that not all puppeteers

have left this region. W ill you accept the transfer -booth number?"

"Sure."

I wr ote d own th e eight digits as they came. A moment later Ele phant

was yelling just as if he were a tridee set turned on in the middle of a

program. " -- hell is going on here?"

"Sorry about that," said the translator .

"What happened?" I asked. "I could n't hear anything!

Did that mon -- Did the Outsider have

private business with you?"

"Sort of. I'll tell you later ."

The tran slator s aid, "Beowulf Shaef fer , we do not buy informa tion. W e sell information and use the proceeds to buy territory and food soil."

"Y ou may need this information ," I ar gued. "I'm the only man w ithin

reach who knows it."

"What of other races?"

The pup peteers might have told them, but it was worth taking a

chance. "Y ou're about to leave known space. If you don't deal with me,

you may not get this information in time."

"What price do you set on this item?"

"Y ou set the pri ce. Y ou've got more experience at putting valu es on

inforrnation, and you're honorable."

"W e may not be able to af ford an honest price."

"The price may not exceed our ferry fee."

"Done. Speak."

I tol d him of the Core explosion and how I'd come find out about it. He made me go into detail on what I'd seen: the bright patch of

supernovas, spreading out as my ship caught up with ancient light waves,

until all the bright multicolored ball of the Core was ablaze with

supernovas. "Y ou wouldn't have known this until you got there, and then

it would have been too late. Y ou don't use faster -than-light drives."

"W e kne w from the puppeteers that the Core had exploded. They

were not able to go into detail because they had not seen it for

themselves."

"Oh. Ah , well. I think the expl osion must have started at the back

side of the Core from here. Otherwise it would have seemed to go much

more slowly ."

"Many thanks. W e will waive your ferry fee. Now , there is one more

item. Gregory Pelton, for an ad ditional two hundred thousand stars we

will tell you exactly what is peculiar about the planet you intend to visit."

"Can I find out for myself?"

"It is likely ."

"Then I will."

Silence followed. The Outsider hadn't expected that. I said, "I'm

curious. Y our galaxy is rapidly becoming a death trap. What will you do

now?"

"That information will cost you -- "

"For get it."

Outside, Elephant said, "Thanks."

"For get it. I wonder what they will do."

"Maybe they can shield themselves against the radiation."

"Maybe. But they won't have any starseeds to follow ."

"Do they need them?"

Finagle only knew .

The starseeds followed a highly rigid migr atory

mating pattern out from the Core of the galaxy and into the arms, almost

to the rim, before turning back d own to the Core. They were doomed. As

they returned to the Core, the expanding wave of radiation from the

multiple novas would snuf f out the species one by one. What would the

Outsiders do without them?

What the hell did they do with them?

Why

did they follow them?

Did th ey need starseeds?

Did starseeds need

Outsiders?

The Outsiders would answer these and related questions for

one trillion stars apiece. Personal questions cost high with the Outsiders. A crew was already bringing the ST ¥ into dock. W e watched from the

ramp, with crewmen sunbathing about our feet. W e weren't worried. The

way the Outsiders handled it, our invulnerable hull might have been

made of spun s ugar and sunbeams. When a spiderweb of thi n strands

fastened the ST ¥ to the wall of the drive cap sule, the voice of the

translator spoke in our ears and invited us to step aboard. W e jumped a

few hun dred feet upward through the trace of artificial gravity , climbed

into the air lock, and got out of our suits. "Thanks again," said Elephant. "For get it again," I said magnan imously .

"I owe you plenty .

Y ou've

been putting me up as a houseguest on the most expensive world in

known space, acting as my guide where the cost of labor is -- "

"Okay o kay oka y .

But you save d me a million stars, and don't you

for get it ." He whopped me on t he shoulder and hurried into th e control

room to set up a million-star credit base for the next Outsider ship that

came by .

"I won't, " I called at his retreating back, and wondered what the hell I

meant by that. Much later I wondered about so mething else. Had Elephant planned

to take me to "his" world?

Or did he think to go it alone, to be th e first to

see it and not one of the first two?

After the Outsider episod e it was

already too late. He couldn't throw me of f the ship then. I wi shed I'd thou ght of it in time. I never wanted to be a batman .

My

stake in this was to gently , tactfully keep Elephant from killing himself if

it became necessary .

For all his vast self-confidence, vast riches, vast

generosity , and vast bulk, he w as still only a flatlander and thus a little

bit helpless. W e were in the expansion bubble when it happened. The bubble had

inflatable seats and an inflatable table and was there for exercising and

killing t ime, but it also supplie d a fine view; the surface was perfectly

transparent. Otherwise we would have missed it. There was no p ressure against the seat of the pants, no crawling

sensation in the pit of the stoma ch, no feel of motion. But Elephant, who

was talking about a Jinxian frail he'd picked up in a Chicago bar , stopped

just as she was getting ready to tear the place apart because some

suicidal idiot had insulted her .

Somebody heavy was sitting down on the universe. He came down slowly , like a f at man cautiously letting his w eight

down on a beach ball. From ins ide the bubble it looked like all the stars

and nebulas around us were squeezing themselves together .

The

Outsiders on the ribbons outside never moved, but Elephant said

something profane, and I steeled myself to look up. The stars overhead were blue-white and blazing. Around us, they

were squashed together; below , they were turning red and winking out

one by one. It had taken us a week to get out of the solar system, but the

Outsider ship could have done it in five hours. The radio spoke. "Sirs, our cre wmen will remove your ship from

ours, after which you will be on your own. It has been a pleasure to do

business with you."

A s warm of O utsider crewmen hauled us through the maze of

basking ramps and left us. Presently the Outsider ship vanish ed like a

pricked soap bubble, gone of f on its own business. In the strange s tarlight Elephan t let out a long, shaky sigh. S ome

people can't take aliens. The y don't find puppeteers graceful and

beautiful; they find them horrifying, wrong. They see kzinti as slavering

carnivores whos e only love is fighting, which is the truth, but t hey don't

see the rigid co de of honor or the self-control which allows a kzinti

ambassador to ride a human-city pedwalk without slashing out with his

claws at the impertinent stabbing knees and elbows. Elephant was one of

those people. He s aid, "Okay ," in amazed relie f. They were actually gone. "I'l l take

the first watch, Bey ."

He d id not say , "Those bastards would take your heart as coll ateral

on a tenth-star loan." He didn't see them as that close to human. "Fine," I said, and went into the control bubble. The Fast Pro tosun

was a week away .

I'd been in a suit for hours, and there was a shower in

the extension bubble. If Elephant's weakness was aliens, mine was relativity .

The trip through hyperspace was routine. I could take the sight o f the

two sma ll windows turning into blind spots, becoming areas of nothing,

which seemed to draw together the objects around them. So could

Elephant; he'd done some flying, though he preferred the com fort of a

luxury liner .

But even the best pilot occasionally has to drop back into

the n ormal universe to get his bearings and to assure his subc onscious

that the stars are still there. And each time it was changed, squashed flat. The crowded blue stars

were all ahead; the sparse, dim red stars were all behind. Four hundred

years ago men and women had lived for years with such a view of the

universe, but it hadn't happened since the invention of hyperdrive. I'd

never seen the universe look like this. It bothered me. "No, it doesn't bug me," said Elephant when I mentioned it. W e were

a day out from our destination. "T o me, stars are stars. But I have been

worried about something. Bey , you said the Outsiders are honorable."

"They ar e. They've got to be. They have to be so far above susp icion

that any species they deal with w ill remember their unimpeachab le ethics

a centur y later .

Y ou can see th at, can't you?

Outsiders don't show up

more often than that."

"Um. Okay .

Why did they try to screw that extra two hundred

kilostars out of me?"

"Uh -- "

"See, the goddamn problem is, what if it was a fair price?

What if we

need to know what's funny about the Fast Protosun?"

"Y ou're right. Knowing the Outsiders, it's probably information we

can use. All right, we'll nose around a little before we land. W e'd have

done that anyway , but now we'll do it better ."

What was peculiar about the Fast Protosun?

Around lunchtim e on the sevent h ship's day a short green line i n the

sphere of the m ass indicator began to extend itself. It was w ide and

fuzzy , just what you'd expect of a protosun. I let it reach almost to the

surface of the sphere before I dropped us into normal space. The squ ashed un iverse looked in the windows, but ahead of us w as a

circular darkening and blurring of the vivid blue-white stars. In the

center of the circle was a dull red glow .

"Let's go into the extension bubble," said Elephant. "Let's not."

"W e'll g et a better view in there." He turned the dial that would make

the bubble transparent. Naturally we kept it opaque in hyperspace. "Repeat, let's not. Think about i t, Elephant. What sense does it make

to use an impermeable hull, then spend most of our time outside it?

Until

we know what's here, we ought to retract the bubble."

He nodd ed his shaggy head and touched the board again. Chugging

noises a nnounced that air and w ater were being pulled out of the bubble. Elephant moved to a window .

"Ever see a protosun?"

"No," I said. "I don't think there are any in human space."

"That could be the peculiarity ."

"It could. One th ing it isn't is the speed of the thing. Outsiders spend

all their time moving faster than this."

"But planets don't. Neither do st ars. Bey , maybe this thing came from

outside the galaxy .

That would make it unusual."

It w as time we made a list. I found a pad and solemnly noted speed

of star , nature of star , and possible extragalactic origin of star .

"I've found our planet," said Elephant. "Whereabouts?"

"Almost on the other side of the protosun. W e can get there faster in

hyperspace."

The plan et was still invisibly sm all where Elephant brought us out. The protosun looked about the same. A protosun is th e fetus of a star: a thin mass of gas and dust, bro ught

together by slow eddies in interstellar magnetic fields or by the presence

of a T ro jan point in some loose cluster of stars, which is collapsing and

contracting due to gravity .

I'd found material on protosuns in the ship's

library , b ut it was all astronomical data; nobody had ever been near one

for a close look. In theory the Fast Protosun must be fairly well along in

its evolution, since it was glowing at the center .

"There it is," said Elephant "T wo days away at one gee."

"Good. W e can do our instrument checks on the way .

Strap down."

W ith the fusion motor pushing us smoothly along, Elephant went

back to the scope, and I started checking the other instruments. One thing

stood out like a beacon. "Elephant. Have you noticed in me a tendency to use profanity for

emphasis?"

"Not really .

Why?"

"It's goddamn radioactive out there."

"Could you be a little more specific, sir?"

"Our suit shields would break down in three days. The extension

bubble would go in twenty hours."

"Okay , add it to your list. Any idea what's causing it?"

"Not on e." I made a note on m y list, then went back to work. W e

were in no danger; the GP hull would protect us from anything but

impact with something big. "No asteroid belts," said Elephant. "Meteor density zero, as far as I

can tell. No other planets."

"The interstellar gas may clean away anything small at these speeds."

"One thi ng's for sure, Bey .

I've got my money's worth. This is a damn

funny system."

"Y eah. W ell, we missed lunch. Shall we get dinner?"

"Philistine."

Elephant ate fast. He was back a t the telescope before I was ready for

cof fee. W atching him move, I was again reminded of a juggernaut, but

he'd never shown as much determination when I knew him on Earth. If a

hungry kzinti had been standing between him and the telescope, he'd

have left footprints in fur .

But the only thing that could get in his way out here was me. "Can't g et a close look at the planet," said Elephant, "but it looks

polished."

"Like a billiard ball?"

"Just that. I don't see any sign of an atmosphere."

"How about blast craters?"

"Nothing."

"They should be there."

"This system's pretty clean of meteors."

"But the space around us shouldn't be. And at these speeds -- "

"Uh huh. That better go on your list."

I wrote it down. W e slep t on the disaster couches. In front of me were the yellow

lights of the control panel; th e stars glowed red through one side

window , blue through the other .

I stayed awake for a long time, staring

through the forward window in to the red darkness of the protosun. The

window was opaque, but I saw the dark red blur clearly in my

imagination. The radi ation he ld steady all th rough the next day .

I did some more

thorough checking, using tempe rature readings and deep radar on both

sun and planet. Everywhere I looked was a new anomaly .

"This sta r definitely shouldn't be glowing yet. It's too spread out; the

gas should be too thin for fusion."

"Is it hot enough to glow?"

"Sure. But it shouldn't be."

"Maybe the theories on protosuns are wrong."

"Then they're way wrong."

"Put it on your list."

And, an hour later:

"Elephant."

" Another peculiarity?"

"Y eah."

From under shaggy brows Elep hant's eyes plainly told me he was

getting sick of peculiarities. "According to the deep-radar s hadow , this planet doesn't have any

lithosphere. It's worn right down to what ought to be the magma but isn't

because it's so cold out here."

"W rite it down. How many entries have you got?"

"Nine."

"Is any one of them worth paying two hundred kilostars to know

about beforehand?"

"The radiation, maybe, if we didn't have a GP hull."

"But," said Elephant, glaring ou t at the huge, dark disk, "they knew

we had a GP hull. Bey , can anything get through a General Products

hull?"

"Light, like a laser beam. Gravity , like tides crushing you into the

nose of a ship w hen you get too close to a neutron star .

Impact won't

harm the hull, but it'll kill what's inside."

"Maybe the planet's inhabited. The more I think about it, the more

sure I am it cam e from outside. N othing in the galaxy could hav e given it

this velo city .

It's diving through the plane of the galaxy; it woul dn't have

to push in from the rim."

"Okay .

What do we do if someone shoots a laser at us?"

"W e perish, I th ink. I had refle ctive paint spread around the c abin,

except for the windows, but the rest of the hull is transparent."

"W e can still get into hyperspace from here. And for the next twenty

hours. Afterward we'll be too close to the planet."

I w ent right to sleep that night, being pretty tired despite the la ck of

exercise. Hours later I slowly realized that I was being examined. I could

see it through my closed eyelids; I could feel the heat of the vast red

glare, the size of the angry eye, the awful power of the mind be hind it. I

tried to struggle away , smacked my hand on something, and woke with a

shock. I lay there in the red darkness. The edge of the protosun peeked

through a window .

I could feel its hostile glare. I said, "Elephant."

"Mngl?"

"Nothing." Morning would be soon enough. Morning. "Elephant, would you do me a favor?"

"Sure. Y ou want Dianna?

My right arm?

Shave of f my beard?"

"I'll keep Sharrol, thanks. Put on your suit, will you?"

"Sure, that makes sense. W e aren't nearly uncomfortable enough just

because we closed of f the bubble."

"Right. A nd because I'm a dedicated masochist, I'm going to put my

suit on this instant. Now , I hate to enjoy myself alone..."

"Y ou got the wind up?"

"A little. Just enough."

"Anything for a friend. Y ou go first."

There was just room to get our suits on one at a time. If the inner air

lock door hadn't been open, th ere wouldn't have been that. W e tried

leaving our helmets thrown bac k, but they got in our way ag ainst the

crash couches. So we taped them to the window in front of us. I felt better that way , but Elephant clearly thought I'd flipped. "Y ou

sure you wouldn't rather eat with your helmet on?"

"I hate suit food syrup. W e can reach our helmets if we get a

puncture."

" What punctur e ?

W e're in a General Pr oducts hull!

"

"I keep remembering that the Outsiders knew that."

"W e've been through that."

"Let's go through it again. Assu me they thought we might be killed

anyway if we weren't prepared. Then what?"

"Gronk."

"Either they expected us to go out in suits and get killed, or they

know of something that can reach through a General Products hull."

"Or both. In which case the suits do us no good at all. Bey , do you

know how long it's been since a General Products hull failed?"

"I've never heard of it happening at all."

"It n ever has. T he puppeteers of fer an enormous guarantee in case

one does. Something in the tens of millions if someone dies as a result."

"Y ou're dead right. I've been stupid. Go ahead and take of f your suit."

Elephant turned to look at me. "And you?"

"I'll keep mine on. Do you believe in hunches?"

"No."

"Neither do I. Except just this once."

Elephant shrugged his shaggy eyebrows and went back to his

telescope. By then we were six hours out from the nameless p lanet and

decelerating. "I think I've found an asteroid crater ," he said presently .

"Let's see." I ha d a look. "Y eah , I think you're right. But it's damn

near disappeared."

He took the telescope back. "It's round enough. Almost has to be a

crater .

Bey , why should it be so eroded?"

"It must be the interstellar dust. If it is, then that's why there 's no

atmosphere or lithosphere. But I can't see the dust being that thick, even

at these speeds."

"Put it -- "

"Y eah." I reached for my list. "If we find one more anomaly , I'll scream."

Half an hour later we found life. By t hen we were close enough to use the gravity drag to slow us. The

beautiful thing about a gravity drag is that it uses very little power .

It

converts a ship's momentum relative to the nearest powerful mass into

heat, an d all you have to do is get rid of the heat. Since the ST ¥ 's hull

would pass only various ranges of radiation corresponding to what the

puppeteers' varied customers considered visible light, the shi pbuilders

had run a great big radiator fin out from the gravity drag. It glowed dull

red b ehind us. And the fusion drive was of f. There was no white fusion

flame to hurt visibility .

Elephant had the scope at highest magnification. At first, as I p eered

into the eyepiece, I couldn't see what he was talking about. There was a

dull white plain, all the same co lor except for a few blobs of blue. The

blobs w ouldn't have stood out except for the uniformity of the surface

around them. Then one of them moved. V ery slowly , but it was moving. "Right," I said. "Let me run a temperature check."

The surface temperature in that region was about right for helium II. And on the rest of the planet as well; the protosun wasn't pu tting out

much ener gy , though it was very gung ho on radiation. "I don't think they match any species I know ."

"I c an't tell," sa id Elephant. He had the telescope and the li brary

screen going at the same time, with a Sirius VIII blob on the library

screen. "There are twenty dif ferent species of helium life in this book,

and they all look exactly alike."

"Not quite. They must have a vacuumproof integument. And you'll

notice those granules in the -- "

"I treasure my ignorance on this subject, Bey .

Anyway , we aren't

going to find an y species we know on this world. Even a stage- tree seed

would explode the moment it hit."

I let the subject die. Once ag ain Elephant ran the scope over "his" planet, this time

looking for the b lobby life-form s. They were fairly big for helium II life,

but not abnormally so. Lots of cold worlds develop life u sing the

peculiar propert ies of helium II, but because it hasn't much use for

complexity , it usually stays in the amoeba stage. There was one p eculiarity , which I duly noted. Every animal w as on

the back side of the planet with relation to the planet's course thr ough the

galaxy .

T hey we ren't afraid of p rotosun sunlight, but they seemed to fear

interstellar dust. "Y ou promised to scream."

"It's not odd enough. I'll wait."

T wo hours passed. The red glow of the radiator fin became more pronounced. So did the

dull uniformity of the planetary surface. The planet was a disk now

beyond the front window; if you watched it for a while you could see it

grow .

T urning ship to face the planet had made no dif ference to the

gravity drag. "Cue Ball," said Elephant. "No good. It's been used. Beta L yrae I."

"Cannonball Express, then."

"Elephant, what are you doing here?"

He turned, startled. "What do you mean?"

"Look, you know by now I'm w ith you all the way .

But I do wonder .

Y ou spe nt a million stars gettin g here, and you'd have spent two if you

had to. Y ou could be home in the Rockies with Dianna or hovering near

Beta L y rae, which is unusual enough and better scenery than this

snowball. Y ou could be sampling oddball drugs in Crashlanding or

looking for Mist Demons on Plateau. Why here?"

"Because it is there."

"What the blazes is that supposed to mean?"

"Bey , once upon a time there wa s a guy named Miller .

Six years ago

he took a ramscoop-fusion drive ship and put a hyperdrive in it and set

out f or the edge of the universe, figuring he could get his hydrogen from

space an d use the fusion plant to power his hyperdrive. He's probably

still going. He'll be going forever unless he hits something. Why?"

"A psychiatrist I'm not."

"He wan ts to be remembered. When you're dead a hundred years,

what will you be remembered for?"

"I'll be the idio t who rode with Gregory Pelton, who spent two

months and more than a million stars to set his ship down on a totally

worthless planet."

"Gronk. All right, what about a bstract knowledge?

This star will be

out of known space in ten years. Our only chance to explore i t is right

now .

What -- "

There w as an almost silent breeze of air , and a strangling pressu re in

my larynx, and a stabbing pain in my ears, simultaneously .

I heard the

bare beg inning o f an alarm, but I was already reaching for my helmet. I

clamped it down hard, spun the collar , and gave vent to an enormous

belch at the same time that the wind went shrieking from my lungs. There was no w ay to realize wh at was happening -- and no time. But

vacuum was around us, and air w as spraying into my suit, frigid air .

Iron

spikes were being driven through my ears, but I was going to live. My

lungs held a ghastly emptiness, but I would live. I turned to Elephant. The fear of death was naked in his face. He had his helmet down , but

he w as having trouble with the collar .

I had to force his hands away to

get i t fas tened ri ght. His helmet misted over , then cleared; he wa s getting

air .

Had it come in time to save his life?

I wa s alive. Th e pain was lea ving my ears, and I was breathing:

inhale, pause, inhale, as the pressure rose to normal. I'd seen what had happened. Now I had time to think it through, to

remember it, to play it back. What had happened was insane. The hull had turned to dust. Just that. All at once and nothing first,

the ship's outside had disintegr ated and blown away on a whispering

breath of breathing air .

I'd seen it. And sur e enoug h, the hull was gone. Only the innards of the ship

remained. Before me, the lighted control board. A little below that, the

manhole to the packed bubble a nd the bubble package itself. A bove the

board, th e half disk of the mystery planet and stars. T o the left, stars. T o

the right, Elephant, looking da zed and scared, and beyond hi m, stars. Behind me, the air lock, the kitchen storage block and dial board, a

glimpse of the l anding legs and glowing radiator fin, and stars. The ST ¥

was a skeleton. Elephant shook his head, then turned on his suit radio. I heard the

magnified click in my helmet. W e looked at e ach other , waiting. But there was nothing to say .

Except, Elephant, look!

W e don't have a hull no mor e!

Isn't that

r emarkable ?

I sighed , turned to the control board, and began nursing the f usion

drive to life. From what I could see of the ship, nothing seemed to be

floating away .

Whatever had be en fixed to the hull must also h ave been

fixed to other things. "What are you doing, Bey?"

"Getting us out of here. Uh, you can scream now ."

"Why?

I mean, why leave?"

He'd flipped. Flatlanders are basically unstable. I got the drive

pushing us at low power , turned of f the gravity drag, and turne d to face

him. "Look, Elephant. No hull." I swept an arm around me. "None."

"But what's left of the ship is still mine?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure."

"I want to land. Can you talk me out of it?"

He was serious .

Completely so. "The landing legs are intact," he

went on. "Our s uits can keep ou t the radiation for three days. W e could

land and take of f in twelve hours."

"W e probably could."

"And we spent going on two months getting here."

"Right."

"I'd feel like an idiot getting th is close and then turning for home. W ouldn't you?"

"I w ould, except for one thin g. And that one thing says you're

landing this ship over my unconscious body ."

"All right, the hull turned to dust and blew away , What does that

mean?

It means we've got a faulty hull, and I'm going to sue the hind

legs of f Genera l Products when we get back. But do you kn ow what

caused it?"

"No."

"So why do you assume it's some kind of threat?"

"T ell yo u what I'll do," I said. I turned the ship until it was tail down

to C annonball Express. "Now .

W e'll be there in three hours if y ou insist

on landing. It's your ship, just as you say .

But I'm going to try to talk you

out of it."

"That's fair ."

"Have you had space-pilot training?"

"Naturally ."

"Did it include a history of errors course?"

"I don't think so. W e got a little history of the state of the art."

"That's s omething. Y ou rememb er that they started out with chemical

fuels and that the first ship to the asteroids was built in orbit around

Earth's moon?"

"Uh huh."

"This you may not have heard. There were three men in that ship,

and whe n they were launched, it was in an orbit that took them just

slightly inside the moon's orbit, then out again and away .

About thirty

hours after launching the men noticed that all their ports wer e turning

opaque. A concentration of dus t in their path was putting little meteor

pits all through the quartz. T wo of the men wanted to continue on, using

instruments to finish their missi on. But the third man was in command. They used their rockets and stopped themselves dead. "Remember , ma terials weren't as durable in those days, and nothing

they were using had been well t ested. The men stopped their sh ip in the

orbit of the moon, which by then was 230,000 miles behind them, and

called base to say they'd aborted the mission."

"Y ou remember this pretty well. How come?"

"They drilled these stories into us again and again. Everything they

tried to teach us was illustrated with something from history .

It stuck."

"Go on."

"They called base and told the m about their windows fogging up. Somebody deci ded it was dust, and someone else suddenly realized

they'd launched the ship through one of the moon's T rojan points."

Elephant laughe d, then coughed. "W ish I hadn't breathed so much

vacuum. I gather you're leading up to something."

"If the ship had n't stopped, it would have been wrecked. The dust

would h ave torn it apart. The moral of this story is, anything y ou don't

understand is dangerous until you do understand it."

"Sounds paranoid."

"Maybe it does to a flatlander .

Y ou come from a planet so ki nd to

you, so seemingly adapted to you, that you think the whole universe is

your oyster .

Y ou might remember my neutron star story .

I'd have been

killed if I hadn't understood that tidal ef fect in time."

"So you would. So you think flatlanders are all fools?"

"No, Elephant. Just not paranoid enough. And I refuse to apologize."

" Who asked you ?"

"I'll land with you if you can tell me what made our hull turn tp

dust."

Elephant crossed his arms and glared forward. I shut up and waited. By and by he said, "Can we get home?"

"I don't know .

The hyperdrive motor will work, and we can use the

gravity drag to slow us down to something like normal. Physi cally we

should be able to do it."

"Okay .

Let's go. But I'll tell yo u this, Bey .

If I were alone, I'd go

down, and damn the hull."

So w e tu rned tai l and ran, under protest from Elephant. In four hours

we were far enough from Can nonball Express's gravity well to enter

hyperspace. I turned on the hyperdrive, gasped, and turned it of f just as fast as I

could. W e sat t here shaking, and Elephant said, "W e can in flate the

bubble."

"But can we get in?"

"It doesn't have an air lock."

W e w orked it, though. There wa s a pressure-control dial in the cabin,

and we set it for zero; the electromagnetic field that folded the bubble

would n ow inflate it without p ressure. W e went inside, pressurized it,

and took of f our helmets. "W e're out of the radiation field," said Elephant. "I looked."

"Good." Y ou can go pretty far in even a couple of second s of

hyperdrive. "No w , there's one th ing I've got to know .

Can you take that

again?"

Elephant shuddered. "Can you?"

"I think so. I can do all the navigating if I have to."

"Anything you can take, I can take."

"Can you take it and stay sane?"

"Y es."

"Then w e can trade of f. But if you change your mind, let me know

that inst ant. A lot of good men h ave left their marbles in the Blind Spot,

and all they had were a couple of windows."

"I believe you. Indeed I do, sir .

How do we work it?"

"W e'll h ave to chart a course th rough the least dense part of space. The nea rest inhabited world is Kzin. I hate to risk asking help from the

kzinti, but we may have to."

"T ell you what, Bey .

Let's at lea st try to reach Jinx. I want to use that

number of yours to give the puppeteers hell."

"Sure. W e can always turn of f to something closer ."

I spe nt an hour or so working o ut a course. When I'd finished, I was

pretty su re we could navigate it without either of us having to leave the

bubble more than once every twenty-four hours to look at the mass

indicator .

W e threw fingers for who got the first watch, and I lost. W e put on our suits and depressurized the bubble. As I crawled

through the manhole, I saw Elephant opaqueing the bubble wall. I squeezed into the crash couch, all alone among the stars. They were

blue ahe ad and red behind when I finished turning the ship. I couldn't

find the protosun. More than half the view was e mpty space. I found myself looking

thoughtfully at the air lock. It w as behind and to the left, a meta l oblong

standing alone at the edge of th e deck, with both doors tightl y closed. The inner door had slammed when the pressure dropped, and now the air

lock me chanisms guarded the pressure inside against the vacuum outside

in both direction s. Nobody inside to use the air , but how do you explain

that to a pressure sensor?

I was procrastin ating. The ship was aimed; I clenched my teeth and

sent the ship into hyperspace. The Blind Spot, they call it. It fits. There are ways to find the blind spot in your eye. Close one eye, put

two dots on a p iece of paper , and bring the paper toward you, focusing

on one of the d ots. If you hold the paper just right, the other dot will

suddenly vanish. Let a ship enter hyperspace with the windows transparent, and the

windows will seem to vanish. So will the space enclosing them. Objects

on either side stretch and draw closer together to fill the missing space. If

you look long enough, the Blind Spot starts to spread; the walls and the

things against the walls draw even closer to the missing space until they

are engulfed. It's all in your mind, they tell me. So?

I t urned the key , and half my vie w was Blind Spot. The control board

stretched and flowed. The ma ss-indicator sphere tried to wrap itself

around me. I re ached for it, a nd my hands were distorted, t oo. W ith

considerable ef fort I put them back at my sides and got a grip on myself. There was one fuzzy green line in the plastic distortion that had been

a m ass indicator .

It was behind and to the side. The ship could fly itself

until Elephant's turn came. I fumbled my way to the manhole and

crawled through. Hyperspace was only half the problem. It was a big problem. Every twenty-four hours one of us had to go

out there , see if there were any dangerous masses around, drop back to

normal space to take a fix and adjust course. I found mysel f getting

unbearably tense during the few hours before each turn. So did Elephant. At these times we didn't dare talk to each other .

On my third trip I had the bad sense to look up -- and went more than

blind. Looking up, there was nothing at all in my field of vision, nothing

but the Blind Spot. It was more than blindness. A bl ind man, a man whose eyes have lost

their fun ction, a t least remembers what things looked like. A man whose

optic brain center has been damaged doesn't. I could remember what I'd

come out here for -- to find out if there were masses near enough to harm

us - - but I couldn't remember how to do it. I touched a curved glass

surface a nd knew that this was the machine that would tell me, if only I

knew its secret. Eventually my neck got sore, so I moved my head. That brought my

eyes back into existence. When we got the bubble press urized, Elephant said, "Where were

you?

Y ou've been gone half an hour ."

"And lucky at that. When you go out there, don't look up."

"Oh."

That wa s the other half of the problem. Elephant and I had sto pped

communicating. He was not interested in saying anything, and he was

not interested in anything I had to say .

It took me a good week to figure out why .

Then I braced him with it. "Elephant, there's a word missing from our language."

He looked up from the reading screen. If there hadn't been a reading

screen i n the bubble, I don't th ink we'd have made it. "More than one

word," he said. "Things have been pretty silent."

"One wo rd. Y ou 're so afraid of using that word, you're afraid to talk

at all."

"So tell me."

"Coward."

Elephant wrinkled his brows, then snapped of f the screen. "All right,

Bey , we'll talk about it. First of all, you said it, I didn't. Right?"

"Right. Have you been thinking it?"

"No. I' ve been thinking euphemisms like 'overcautious' and

'reluctance to risk bodily harm.' But since we're on the subject, why were

you so eager to turn back?"

"I was scared." I let that word soak into him, then went on. "The

people who trained me made certain that I'd be scared in certain

situations. W ith all due respect, Elephant, I've had more training for

space th an you have. I think y our wanting to land was the result of

ignorance."

Elephant sighed .

"I think it would have been safe to land. Y ou don't. W e're not going to get anywhere ar guing about it, are we?"

W e were n't. On e of us was right, one wrong. And if I was wrong,

then a pretty good friendship had gone out the air lock. It was a silent trip. W e cam e out of hyperspace near the two Sirius suns. But that wasn't

the e nd of it, because we still faced a universe squashed by relativity .

It

took us almost t wo weeks to bra ke ourselves. The gravity drag's radiator

fin glow ed oran ge-white for most of that time. I have no idea how many

times we circled around through hyperspace for another run through the

system. Finally we were moving in on Jinx with the fusion drive. I broke a silence of hours. "Now what, Elephant?"

"As soon as we get in range, I'm going to call that number of yours."

"Then?"

"Drop you of f at Sirius Mater with enough money to get you home. I'd take it kindly if you'd use my house as your own until I come back

from Cannonball Express. I'll buy a ship here and go back."

"Y ou don't want me along."

"W ith all due respect, Bey , I don't. I'm going to land. W ouldn't you

feel like a damn fool if you died then?"

"I've spe nt about three months in a small extension bubble because of

that silly planet. If you conque red it alone, I would feel like a damn

fool."

Elephant looked excruciatingly unhappy .

He started to speak, caught

his breath --

If ever I picked the right time to shut a man up, that was it. "Hold it. Let's call the puppeteers first. Plenty of time to decide."

Elephant nodded. In a moment he'd have told me he didn't want me

along because I was overcautious. Instead, he picked up the ship phone. Jinx was a banded Easter egg ahead of us. T o the side was Binary , the

primary to which Jinx is a moon. W e should be close enough to talk...and

the puppeteers' transfer -booth number would also be their phone number .

Elephant dialed. A sweet contralto voice answered. There was no picture, but I could

tell: no woman's voice is quite that good. The puppeteer said, "Eight

eight three two six seven seven oh."

"My General Products hull just failed." Elephant was wasting no

time at all. "I beg your pardon?"

"My name is Gr egory Pelton. T welve years ago I bought a No. 2 hull

from Ge neral Products. A month and a half ago it failed. W e've spent the

intervening time limping home. May I speak to a puppeteer?"

The screen came on. T wo flat, brainless heads looked out at us. "This

is quite serious," said the p uppeteer .

"Naturally we will pay the

indemnity in full. W ould you mind detailing the circumstances?"

Elephant didn't mind at all. He w as quite vehement. It was a pleasure

to listen to him. The puppeteer's silly expressions never wavered, but he

was blinking rapidly when Elephant finished. "I se e," he said. "Our apologies are insuf ficient, of course, bu t you

will understand that it was a natural mistake. W e did not th ink that

antimatter was available anywhere in the galaxy , especially in such

quantity ."

It was as if he'd screamed. I could hear that word echoing from side

to side in my skull. Elephant's booming voice was curiously soft. "Antimatter?"

"Of course. W e have no excuse, of course, but you should have

realized it at on ce. Interstellar gas of normal matter had poli shed the

planet's surface with minuscule explosions, had raised the tempe rature of

the protosun beyond any rational estimate, and was causing a truly

incredible radiat ion hazard. Did you not even wonder about thes e things?

Y ou kne w that the system was from beyond the galaxy .

Humans are

supposed to be highly curious, are they not?"

"The hull," said Elephant. "A G eneral Products hull is an artificially generated molecule with

interatomic bon ds artificially strengthened by a small power plant. The

strengthened molecular bonds a re proof against any kind of impact and

heat into the hundreds of thousands of degrees. But when enough of the

atoms had been obliterated by antimatter explosions, the molecule

naturally fell apart."

Elephant nodded. I wondered if his voice was gone for good. "When may we expect you to collect your indemnity?

I gather no

human was killed; this is fortunate, since our funds are low ."

Elephant turned of f the phone. He gulped once or twice, then turned

to look me in the eye. I think it took all his strength, and if I'd w aited for

him to speak, I don't know what he would have said. "I gl oat," I said. "I gloat. I was right; you were wrong. If we'd landed

on your forsaken planet, we'd have gone up in pure light. At this time it

gives me great pleasure to say , I T old Y ou So."

He smiled weakly .

"Y ou told me so."

"Oh, I did, I did .

T ime after time I said, Don't Go Near That Ha unted

Planet!

It's W orth Y our Life And Y our Soul, I said. There Have Been

Signs in the Heavens, I said, T o W arn Us from This Place -- "

"All righ t, don't overdo it, you bastard. Y ou were dead right all the

way .

Let's leave it at that."

"Okay .

But there's one thing I want you to remember ."

"If you don't understand it, it's dangerous."

"That's the one thing I want you to remember besides I T old Y ou So."

And that should have ended it. But it doesn't. Elephant's going back. He's got a little flag with a UN

insignia, about two feet by two feet, with spring wires to make it look

like it's flapping in the breeze, and a solid rocket in the handle s o it'll go

straight when the flag is furled. He's going to drop it on the antimatter

planet from a great height, as great as I can talk him into. It should make quite a bang. And I'm going along. I've got a solidly mounted tridee camera and a

contract with the biggest broadcasting company in known space. This

time I've got a reason for going!

G R E N D E L

There were the sounds of a passenger starship. Y ou learn those sounds, and you don't for get, even after four years. They are never loud enough to distract, except during takeof f, and most

are t oo l ow to hear anyway , but you don't for get, and you wake knowing

where you are. There were the sensations of being alone. A sleeper field is not a straight no-gee field; there's an imbalance that

keeps yo u more or less centered so you don't float out the edge and fall

to th e floor .

Wh en your field ho lds two, you set two imbalances for the

distance you want, and somehow you feel that in your muscles. Y ou

touch from time to time, you an d your love, twisting in sleep. There are

rustlings and the sounds of breathing. Nobody had touched me this ni ght. Nothing breathed here but me. I

was dead center in the sleeping field. I woke knowing I was alone, in a

tiny sleeping cabin of the Ar gos , bound from Down to Gummidgy .

And where was Sharrol?

Sharrol was on Earth. She cou ldn't travel; some people can't take

space. That was half our probl em, but it did narrow it down, and if I

wanted her , I ne ed only go to Earth and hunt her up in a trans fer -booth

directory .

I didn't want to find her .

Not now .

Our bar gain had been clear , and

also inevitable; and there are ad vantages to sleeping alone. I'll think of

them in a moment. I f ound the field control switch. The sleeper field collapsed, letting

me down easy .

I climbed int o a navy-blue falling jumper , moving

carefully in the narrow sleeping cabin, statted my hair , and went out. Mar go h ailed me in the hall, looking refreshingly trim and lovel y in a

clinging pilot's uniform. Her long, dark hair streamed beh ind her ,

rippling, as if underwater or in freefall. "Y ou're just in time. I was about

to wake everyone up."

"It's only nine-thirty .

Y ou want to get lynched?"

She laug hed. "I'll tell them it was your idea. No, I'm serious, B ey .

A

month a go a starseed went through the Gummidgy system. I'm going to

drop the ship out a light-month away and let everybody watch."

"Oh. Th at'll be nice," I said, tryi ng for enthusiasm. "I've never s een a

starseed set sail."

"I'll give you time to grab a good seat."

"Right. Thanks." I waved and w ent on, marveling at myself. Since

when have I had to work up enthusiasm?

For anything?

Mar go was Captain M. T ellefsen, in char ge of getting the Ar gos to

Gummidgy som etime this evening. W e'd spent many of her of f-duty

hours ta lking shop, since the Ar gos resembled the liners I used to fly

seven years ago, before my boss , Nakamura Lines, collapsed. Mar go was

a bright girl, as good a spacer as I'd been once. Her salary m ust have

been good, too. That free-fal l ef fect is the most dif ficult trick a

hairdresser can attempt. No machine can imitate it. Expensive tastes...I wondered why she'd left Earth. By flatlander

standards she was lovely enough to make a fast fortune on tridee. Maybe she just liked space. Many do. Their eyes hold a dre amy ,

distant look, a look I'd caught once in Mar go's green eyes. This ear ly the lounge held onl y six passengers out of the twenty-

eight. One was a big biped alien, a Kdatlyno touch sculptor named

Lloobee. The chairs were too s hort for him. He sat on a table, with his

great fla t feet brushing the floor , his huge arms resting on hor n-capped

knees. The other nonhumans aboard would have to stay in their ro oms. Rooms 14-16-18 were joined and half-full of water , occupied by a

dolphin. His name was Pszzzz, or Bra-a-ack, or some such unpolite

sound. H uman ears couldn't catch the ultrasonic overtones of that name,

nor coul d a human throat pronounce it, so he answered to Mo by Dick. He was on his way to W underland, the Ar gos 's next stop. Then there

were two sessile grogs in 22 and a flock of jumpin' jeepers in 24, with

the c onnecting door open so the Grogs could get at the jumpin ' jeepers,

which w ere their food supply .

L loobee, the Kdatlyno touch sculptor , had

room 20.

I fou nd Emil at the bar .

He rais ed a thumb in greeting, dialed me a

Bloody Marriag e, and waited in silence for my first sip. The dri nk tasted

good, though I'd been thinking in terms of tuna and eggs. The othe r four passengers, eating breakfast at a nearby table, all wore

the false glow of health one ca rries out of an autodoc tank. Probably

they'd been curing hangovers. But Emil always looked healthy , and he

couldn't get drunk no matter how hard he tried. He was a Jinxian, short

and wide and bull-strong, a to p-flight computer programmer with an

intuitive knack for asking the right questions when everyone else has

been ask ing the wrong ones and blowing expensive circuits in their iron

idiots. "So," he said. "So," I responded, "I'll do you a favor .

Let's go sit by the window ."

He looked puzzled but went. The Ar gos lounge had one picture window .

It was turned of f in

hyperspace, so that it looked lik e part of the wall, but we foun d it from

memory and sat down. Emil asked, "What's the favor?"

"This is it. Now we've got the best seats in the house. In a few

minutes everyone will be fighting for a view because Mar go's stopping

the ship to show us a starseed setting sail."

"Oh?

Okay , I owe you one."

"W e're even. Y ou bought me a drink."

Emil loo ked puz zled, and I realized I'd put an edge in my voice. As if

I did n't want anyone owing me favors. Which I didn't. But i t was no

excuse for being a boor .

I dialed a breakfast to go with the drink: tuna fillet, eggs Florentine,

and double-strength tea. The kitchen had finished delivering it when

Mar go s poke over the intercom, as follows: "Ladies and gentlemen and

other gu ests, we are dropping ou t some distance from CY Aquar ii so that

you may watch a starseed which set sail in the system of Gummidgy last

month. I will raise the lounge screen in ten minutes." Click. In moments we were surrounded .

The Kdadyno sculptor squeezed in

next to me, spiked knees hunche d up against the lack of room, the silver

tip of the horn on his elbow imperiling my eggs. Emil smiled with one

side of his mouth, and I made a face. But it was justice. I'd ch osen the

seats myself. The window went on. Silence fell. Everyone who could move was crowded around the lounge win dow .

The Kdadyno's horned elbow p inned a fold of my sleeve to th e table. I

let it lie. I wasn't planning to move, and Kdatlyno are supposed to be

touchy .

There were stars. Brighter than stars seen through atmosphere, but

you get used to that. I looked fo r CY Aquarii and found a glaring white

eye. W e watched it grow .

Mar go w as giving us a slow telescopic expansion. The brigh t dot

grew to a disk bright enough to make your eyes water , and then no

brighter .

The eyes on a ship's hull won't transmit more than a certain

amount of light. The disk swelled to fill the window , and now dark areas

showed beneath the surface, splitting and disappearing and changing

shape an d size, growing darker and clearer as they rode the sho ck wave

toward space. The core of CY Aquarii exploded every eig hty-nine

minutes. Each time the star grew whiter and brighter , while shock waves

rode the explosion to the surface. Men and instruments watched to learn

about stars. The view swung. A curved e dge of space showed, with cu rling

hydrogen flames tracing arcs big ger than some suns. The star slid out of

sight, an d a dully glowing dot c ame into view .

Still the view expanded,

until we saw an eggshaped object in dead center of the window .

"The starseed," said Mar go via intercom. There was cool authority in

her public-spea king voice. "This one appears to be returning to the

galactic core, having presumably left its fertilized egg near the tip of this

galactic arm. When the egg hatches, the infant starseed will make its own

way home across fifty thousand light-years of space..."

The starseed was moving fast, straight at the sensing eye, wi th an

immediacy that jarred strangely against Mar go's dry lecture voice. Suddenly I knew what she'd done. She'd placed us directly in th e path of

the starseed. If t his one was typi cal of its brethren, it would be moving at

about po int eight lights. The starseed's light image was moving only one-

fifth fas ter than the starseed itself, and both were coming toward us. Mar go had set it up so that we watched it five times as fast as it actually

happened. Quite a showman, Mar go. "...believe that at least some eggs are launched straight out ward,

toward t he Clou ds of Magellan or toward the globular clusters or toward

Andromeda. Thus, the starseeds could colonize other galaxies and could

also prev ent a population explosion in this galaxy ." There were pinpoints

of blue light around the starseed now: newsmen from Down, come to

Gummidgy to cover the event, darting about in fusion ships. This

specimen is over a mile in thickness and about a mile and a half in

length. Suddenly it hit me. Whatinhell was the Kdatlyno watching?

W ith nothing resem bling

eyes, wi th only his radar sense to give form to his surrounding s, he was

seeing nothing but a blank wall!

I turned. Lloobee was watching me. Naturally .

Lloobee was an artist, subsidized by his own w orld

government, selling his touch sculptures to humans and kzinti s o that his

species would acquire interstellar money .

Finagle knew they di dn't have

much else to se ll yet. They'd been propertyless slaves before we took

their world from the kzinti, but now they were building industries. He didn't look like an artist. He looked like a monster .

That brown

dragon skin would have stopped a knife. Curved silver -tipped horns

marked his knees and elbows, and his huge hands, human in design,

nonetheless sho wed eight retractile claws at the knuckles. No silver

there. T hey wer e filed sharp an d then buf fed to a polished glow .

The

hands were strangler's hands, n ot sculptor's hands. His arms w ere huge

even in proporti on to his ten-foot height. They brushed his knees when

he stood up. But his face gave the true nightmare touch. Eyeless, noseless, marked

only by a gash o f a mouth and by a goggle-shaped region above it where

the s kin was stre tched drumhead taut. That tympanum was turned toward

me. Lloobee was memorizing my face. I turned back as the starseed began to unfold. It se emed to tak e forever .

The b ig egg fluttered; its surface grew dull

and crinkly and began to expand. It was rounding the sun now , lighted on

one side , black on the other .

It grew still bigger , became lopsi ded...and

slowly , slowly the sail came free. It streamed away like a comet's tail,

and then it filled , a silver parachute with four threadlike shrouds pointing

at the sun. Where the shrouds met was a tiny knob. This is how they travel. A star seed spends most of its time folded

into a compact egg shape, falling through the galaxy on its own

momentum. Bu t inevitably there come times when it must change

course. T hen the sail unfolds, a silver mirror thinner than the p aint on a

cheap ca r but thousands of mil es across. A cross-shaped thickening in

the material of the sail is the living body of the starseed itself. In the

knob that hangs from the shrouds is more living matter .

There are the

muscles to control the shrouds a nd set the attitude of the sail, an d there is

the egg, fertilized at the Core, launched near the galactic rim. The sail came free, and nobody breathed. The sail expanded, filled

the screen, and swung toward us. A blue-white point crossed in front of

it, a newsman's ship, a candle so tiny as to be barely visible. Now the sail

was fully inflated by the light from behind, belling outward, crimped

along one side for attitude control. The intercom said, "And that's it, ladies and gentlemen and other

guests. W e will make one sho rt hyperspace hop into the s ystem of

Gummidgy and will proceed fr om there in normal space. W e will be

landing in sixteen hours."

There was a col lective sigh. The Kdatlyno sculptor took his horn out

of my sleeve and stood up, improbably erect. And wh at would his next work be like?

I thought of human faces set

in expressions of sheer wonder and grinning incredulity , muscles

bunched and backs arched forward for a better view of a flat wall. Had

Lloobee known of the starseed in advance?

I thought he had. Most of the spe ctators were drifting away , though the starseed still

showed. My tea was icy .

W e'd b een watching for nearly an hou r , though

it felt like ten minutes. Emil said, "How are you doing with Captain T ellefsen?"

I looked blank. "Y ou called her Mar go a while back."

"Oh, that. I'm not really trying, Emil. What would she see in a

crashlander?"

"That girl must have hurt you pretty bad."

"What girl?"

"It shows through your skull, Bey .

None of my business, though." He

looked me up and down, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that my

skull re ally was transparent. "What would she see?

She'd see a

crashlander , yes. Height seven feet, weight one sixty pounds -- close

enough?

White hair , eyes blood-red. Skin darkened with tannin pills, just

like the rest of us. But you must take more tannin pills than anybody ."

"I do. Not, as you said, that it's any of your business."

"W as it a secret?"

I had to grin at that. How do you hide the fact that you're an albino?

"No, bu t it's half my problem. Do you know that the Fertility Board of

Earth won't accept albinos as potential fathers?"

"Earth is hardly the place to raise children, anyway .

Once a

flatlander , always a flatlander ."

"I fell in love with a flatlander ."

"Sorry ."

"She loved me, too. Still does, I hope. But she couldn't leave Earth."

"A l ot o f flatlan ders can't stand space. Some of them never kno w it. Did you want children?"

"Y eah."

In silent sympathy Emil diale d two Bloody Marriages. In silent

thanks I raised the bulb in toast and drank. It was as neat a cleft stick as had ever caught man and woman. Sharrol couldn't leave Earth. On Earth she was born, on Earth s he would

die, and on Earth she would have her children. But Earth wouldn't let me have children. No matter that forty percent

of W e Made It is albino. No m atter that albinism can be cu red by a

simple s upply of tannin pills, wh ich anyone but a full-blooded Maori has

to take anyway if he's visiting a world with a brighter than average star .

Earth ha s to restrict its population, to keep it down to a comfortable

eighteen billion. T o a flatlander that's comfortable. So...prevent the

useless ones from having child ren -- the liabilities, such as paranoia

prones, mental deficients, criminals, uglies, and Beowulf Shaef fer .

Emil said, "Shouldn't we be in hyperspace by now?"

"Up to the captain," I told him. Most of the passengers who ha d watched the starseed were no w at

tables. Sleeping cubicles indu ce claustrophobia. Bridge gam es were

forming, reading screens were b eing folded out of the walls, drinks were

being se rved. I reached for m y Bloody Marriage and found, to my

amazement, that it was too heavy to pick up. Then I fainted. * * *

I woke up thinking, It wasn't that str ong!

And everyone else was waking, too. Something had knocked us all out at once. Which might mea n the

ship had an unconscious captai n!

I left the lounge at full spee d, which

was a wobbly walk. The con trol-room door was open, which is bad practice. I reached to

close it and changed my mind be cause the lock and doorknob w ere gone,

replaced by a smooth hole nine inches across. Mar go drooped in her chair .

I patted her cheeks until she stirred. "What happened?" she wanted to know .

"W e all went to sleep together .

M y guess is gas. Stun guns don't work

across a vacuum."

"Oh!" It was a gasp of outrage. She'd spotted the gaping hole in her

control b oard, a s smooth and rounded as the hole in the door .

The gap

where the hyperwave radio ought to be. "Right," I said. "W e've been boarded, and we can't tell anyone about

it. Now what?"

"That hole..." She touched the rounded metal with her fingertips. "Slaver disintegrator , I think. A digging tool. It projects a beam that

suppresses the char ge on the electron, so that matter tears itself apart. If

that's what it was, we'll find the dust in the air filters."

"There was a sh ip," said Mar go. "A big one. I noticed it just after I

ended th e show .

By then it was inside the mass limit. I couldn't go into

hyperspace until it left."

"I wond er how they found u s." I thought of some other good

questions but let them pass. One I let out. "What's missing?

W e'd better

check."

" That's what I don't understand. W e aren't carrying anything salable!

V aluable, yes. Instruments for the base. But hardly black-market stuf f."

She stood up. "I'll have to go through the car go hold."

"W aste of time. Where's the car go mass meter on this hulk?"

"Oh, of course." She found it somewhere among the dials. "No

change. Nothing missing there, unless they replaced whatever t hey took

with equivalent masses."

"Why , so we wouldn't know they were here?

Nuts."

"Then they didn't take anything."

"Or they took pe rsonal luggage. The lifesystem mass meter won't tell

us. Pass engers m ove around so. Y ou'd think they'd have the courtesy to

stay put just in case some pirates should -- ung."

"What?"

I tas ted t he idea and found it rea sonable. More. "T en to one Lloo bee's

missing."

"Who?"

"Our famous, valuable Kdatlyno sculptor .

The third Kdatlyno in

history to leave his home planet."

"One of the ET passengers?"

Oh, brother .

I left, running. Because Lloobee was the perfect theft. As a well-known alien artist

who had been under the prot ection of Earth, the ransom he could

command was huge. As a hostage his value would be equal. N o special

equipment would be needed; Lloobee could breathe Earth-normal air .

His bod y could even use cer tain human food proteins and certain

gaseous human anesthetics. Lloobee wasn't in the lounge. And his cabin was empty .

* * *

W ith Lloobee missing and with the hyperwave smashed, the Ar gos

proceeded to Gummidgy at normal speed. Normal speed was top speed;

there are few good reasons to dawdle in space. It took us six hours in

hyperdrive to reach the edge of CY Aquarii's gravity well. From there we

had to proceed on reaction drive and gravity drag. Mar go c alled Gummidgy with a com laser as soon as we were out of

hyperspace. By the time we land ed, the news would be ten hours old. W e

would land at three in the morning, ship's time, and at roughly noon

Gummidgy time. Most of us, including me, went to our cabins to get some sleep. An

hour before planetfall I was back in the lounge, watching us come in. Emil didn't want to watch. He wanted to talk. "Have you heard?

The kidnapp ers called the base a couple of hours

ago."

"What'd they have to say?"

"They w ant ten million stars a nd a contract before they turn the

Kdatlyno loose. They also -- " E mil was outraged at their ef frontery .

" --

reminded the base that Kdatlyno don't eat what humans eat. And they

don't have any Kdat foodstuf fs!"

"They must be crazy .

Where would the base get ten million stars in

time?"

"Oh, that's not the problem. If the base doesn't have funds, they can

borrow money from the hunting parties, I'm sure. There's a group down

there with their own private yacht. It's the contract that bothers me."

Gummidgy was blue on blue under a broken layer of white, w ith a

diminutive moon showing behind an arc of horizon. V ery Earthlike but

with non e of the signs that ma rk Earth: no yellow glow of sprawling

cities on the dark side, no tracery of broken freeways across th e day .

A

nice-looking world, from up here. Unspoiled. No transfer booths, no

good nightclubs , no tridee except old tapes and those only on one

channel. Unspoiled --

W ith only half my mind worki ng on conversation, I said, "Be glad

we've got contracts. Otherwise we might get him back dead."

"Obviously you don't know much about Kdatlyno."

"Obviously ." I was nettled. "They'll do it, yo u know .

They'll pay the kidnappers ten million stars

to give Lloobee back, and they'll tape an immunity contract, too. T otal

immunity for the kidnappers. No reprisals, no publicity .

Do you know

what the Kdatlyno will think about that?"

"They'll be glad to have their second-best sculptor back."

"Best."

"Hrodenu is the best."

"It does n't matter .

What they'll think is, they'll wonder why we

haven't taken revenge for the insult to Lloobee. They'll wonder what

we're doing about getting revenge. And when they finally realize we

aren't doing anything at all..."

"Go on."

"They'll blame the whole human race. Y ou know what the kzinti will

think?"

"Who cares what the kzinti think?"

He snorted. Great. Now he had me pegged as a chauvinist. "Why do n't you drop it?" I sugg ested. "W e can't do anything abo ut it. It's up to the base MPs."

"It's up to nobody .

The base MPs don't have ships."

Right about then I should have accidentally bitten my tongue of f. I

didn't have that much sense. I never do. Instead I said, "They don't need

ships. Whoever took Lloobee has to land somewhere."

"The message came in on hyp erwave. Whoever sent it is cir cling

outside the system's gravity well."

"Whoever sent it may well be. " I was showing of f. "But whoever

took Llo obee la nded. A Kdatlyno needs lots of room, room he can feel. He s ends out a supersonic whist le -- one tone -- all his life, and when the

echoes hit the tympanum above his mouth, he knows what's around him. On a liner he can feel corridors leading all around the ship. He can sense

the a ccess tubes behind walls a nd the rooms and closets behin d doors. Nothing smaller than a liner is big enough for him. Y ou don't seriously

suggest that the kidnappers borrowed a liner for the job, do you?"

"I apologize. Y ou do seem to know something about Kdatlyno."

"I ac cept your apology .

Now , th e kidnappers have definitely landed. Where?"

"Have to be some rock. Gummidgy's the only planet-sized body in

the system. Look down there."

I looked out the window .

One of Gummidgy's oceans was passing

beneath us. The biggest ocean Gummidgy had, it covered a third of the

planet. "Circle Sea. Round as a ten-star piece. A whale of a big asteroid must

have hit there when Gummidgy was passing through the system. Stopped

it co ld, or almost. All the other rocks in the system are close enough to

the star to be half-molten."

"Okay .

Could they have built th eir own space station?

Or borr owed

one?

Doubtful. So they must have landed on Gummidgy ," I concluded

happily , and waited for the applause. Emil wa s slowly nodding his he ad, up, down, up, down. Suddenly he

stood up. "Let's ask Captain T ellefsen."

"Hold it!

Ask her what?"

"Ask her how big the ship was. She saw it, didn't she?

She'll know

whether it was a liner ."

"Sit dow n. Let's wait till we're aground, then tell the MPs. Let them

ask Mar go."

"What for?"

Belatedly , I was getting cautious .

"Just take my word for it, will you. Assume I'm a genius."

He gave me a peculiar look, but he did sit down. Later , after we landed, we favo red the police with our sugges tions. They'd already asked Mar go abo ut the ship. It was a hell of a lot smaller

than the Ar gos ...about the size of a big yacht. "They aren't trying," Emil said as we emer ged from city hall. "Y ou can't blame them," I told him. "Suppose we knew exactly where

Lloobee was. Suppose that. The n what?

Should we char ge in with lasers

blazing and risk Lloobee catching a stray beam?"

"Y es, we should. That's the way Kdatlyno think."

"I know , but it's not the way I think."

I cou ldn't see Em il's face, which was bent in thought two feet below

eye leve l. But his words came slowly , as if he had picked them with care. "W e could find the ship that brought him down. Y ou can't hide a

spaceship landi ng. The gravity drag makes waves on a spaceport

indicator ."

"Granted."

"He could be right here in the base. So many ships go in and out."

"Most of the base ships don't have hyperdrive."

"Good. Then we can find them w herever they landed." He looked up. "What are we waiting for?

Let's go look at the spaceport records!"

It was a waste of time, but there was no talking him out of it. I tagged

along. The timing was a problem. From where the kidnapping to ok place, any ship in known space

would ta ke six hours to reach th e breakout Point. If it tried to g o farther

in hy perspace, CY Aquarii's gee well would drop it permanently into the

Blind Spot. From br eakout it had taken us ten hours to reach Gummidgy .

That

was at five-gee acceleration, fu sion drive and gravity drag, w ith four

gees com pensated by the internal gee field. CY Aquarii was a hot star ,

and if Gummidgy hadn't been near the edge of the system, it would have

been bo iling roc k. Now , the fa stest ship I'd ever heard of could make

twenty gees...

"Which would take it here in fiv e hours," said Emil. "T otal of eleven. A one-gee ship would -- "

"W ould take too long. Lloobee would go crazy .

They must know

something about Kdatlyno .

In fact, I'll bet they're lying about not having

Kdatlyno food."

"Maybe. Okay , assume they're at least as fast as the Ar gos .

That gives

us five hours to play in. Hmmm...?"

"Nineteen ships ." On the timetable they were listed according to

class. I crossed out fifteen that didn't have hyperdrive, crossed out the

Ar gos itself to leave three. Crossed out the Pr egnant Banana because it

was a car go j ob, flown by computer , ten gee with no internal

compensating fi elds. Crossed out the Golden V oyage , a passenger ship

smaller than the Ar gos , with a one-gee drive. "That's nice," said Emil. " Drunkar d's W alk .

Say!

Remember the

hunting party I told you about, with their own yacht?"

"Y eah. I know that name."

"W ell, that's the yacht. Drunkar d's W alk .

What did you say?"

"The owner of the yacht. Larc hmont Bellamy .

I met him onc e, at

Elephant's house."

"Go on."

By t hen it was too late to bite my tongue, though I didn't know i t yet. "Not much to tell. Elephant's a friend of mine, a flatlander .

He's got

friends a ll over known space. I w alked in at lush hour one afternoon, and

Bellamy was there, with a wom an named...here she is, T anya W ilson. She's in the same hunting party .

She's Bellamy's age."

"What's Bellamy like?"

"He's th ree hundred years old, no kidding. He was wearing a

checkerboard sk in-dye job and a shocking-pink Belter crest. H e talked

well. Old jokes, but he told them well, and he had some new ones, too."

"W ould he kidnap a Kdatlyno?"

I had to think about that. "He might. He's no xenophobe; aliens don't

make him nervous, but he doesn't like them. I remember him telling us

that we ought to wipe out the k zinti for good and all. He doesn't need

money , though."

"W ould he do it for kicks?"

Bellamy .

Pink bushy eyebrows over deep eyes. A mimic's voice, a

deadpan way of telling a story , deadpan delivery of a punch line. I'd

wondered at the time if that was a put-on. In three hundred y ears you

hear the same joke so many times, tell the same story so ma ny ways,

change your politics again and a gain to match a changing unive rse...W as

he d eadpan because he didn't c are anymore?

How much boredom can

you meet in three hundred years?

How many times can you change your morals without losing them

all?

Bel lamy was born before a certain Jinxian biological la boratory

produced booste rspice. He reached maturity when the or gan banks were

the o nly key to long life, when a criminal's life wasn't worth a paper star .

He was at draft age when the kzinti were the only known e xtrasolar

civilization and a fearful alien t hreat. Now civilization included human

and nine known alien life-forms, and criminal rehabilitation accounted

for half of all published work in biochemistry and psychotherapy .

What would Bellamy's morals say about Lloobee?

If he wouldn't

kidnap a Kdatlyno, would he "steal" one?

"Y ou make your own guess there. I don't know Bellamy that well."

"W ell, it's worth checking." Jil son bent over the timetables. "Mist

Demons, he landed a third of th e way around the planet!

Oh, well. Let's

go rent a car ."

"Huh?"

"W e'll need a ca r ." He saw he'd left me behind. "T o get to their c amp. T o f ind out if they rescued Lloobee. Y ou know , the Kdady no touch

sculptor who -- "

"I get the picture. Good-bye and good luck. If they ask who sent you,

for Finagle's sake don't mention me."

"That won't work," Emil said fi rmly .

"Bellamy won't talk to m e. He

doesn't know me."

"Apparently I didn't make it cle ar .

I'll try again. If we knew wh o the

kidnappers were, which we don't , we still couldn't char ge in wit h lasers

blazing."

But he was shaking his head, left, right, left, right. "It's dif ferent now .

These men have reputations to protect, don't they?

What would happen

to t hose reputations if all hu man space knew they'd kidnapped a

Kdadyno?"

"Y ou're not thinking. Even if eve ryone on Gummidgy knew the truth,

the pirates would simply change the contract. A secrecy clause enforced

by monetary penalty ."

Emil sla pped th e table, and the walls echoed. "Are we just going to

sit here while they rob us?

Y ou're a hell of a man to wear a hero's name!"

"Look, you're taking this too personally -- huh?"

"A hero 's name!

Beowulf!

He must be turning over in his barrow

about now ."

"Who's Beowulf?"

Emil stood up, putting us eye to eye, so that I could see his utter

disgust. "Beowu lf was the first epic hero in English literature. He killed

monsters bare-h anded, and he did it to help people who didn't even

belong t o his own country .

And you -- " He turned away .

"I'm going after

Bellamy ."

I sat there for what seemed a long time. Any time seems long, when

you need to make a decision but can't. It probably wasn't mo re than a

minute. But Emil wasn't in sight when I ran outside. I shouted at the man who'd loaned us the timetables. "Hey!

Where do

you go to rent a car?"

"Public rentals. Dial fourteen in the transfer booth, then walk a block

east."

So the base did have transfer booths. I found one, paid my coin, and

dialed. Getting to public rentals gave me my first chance to look at the base. There wasn't much to see. Buildings, half of them semi-permanent; the

base was only four years old .

Apartment buildings, laboratories, a

nursery school. Overhead, the actinic pinpoint of CY Aquarii hit the

weather dome and was dif fused into a wide, soft white glow .

Th ere were

few people about, and all of them were same shade of b lack for

protection against the savage, invisible ultraviolet outside. Most of them

had goggles hung around their necks. That much I saw while running a block at top speed. He was getting i nto a car when I came panting up. He said, "Change

your mind?"

"No, but...hoo!...you're going to change yours. Whew!

The mood

you're in , you'll fly straight int o...Bellamy's camp and...tell him he's a

lousy pirate. Hyooph!

Then if you're wrong, he'll...punch you in the

nose...and if you're right, he'll either ...laugh at you or have you...killed."

Emil climbed into the car .

"If yo u're going to ar gue, get in and ar gue

there."

I go t in. I had so me of my breath back. "W ill you get it through your

thick he ad?

Y ou 've got your life to lose and nothing to gain. I told you

why ."

"I've got to try , don't I?

Fasten your crash web."

I f astene d my crash web. Its str ands were thin as coarse thread and

not muc h strong er , but they had saved lives. Any sharp pull on the crash

web would activate the crash f ield, which would enfold the pilot and

protect him from impact. "If y ou've still got to look for th e kidnappers," I said, "why not do it

here?

There's a good chance Lloobee's somewhere on the base."

"Nuts," said Emil. He turned on the lift units, and we took of f. "Bellamy's yacht is the only ship that fits."

"There's another ship that fits. The Ar gos ."

"Put your goggles on. W e're about to go through the weather d ome. What about the Ar gos ?"

"Think i t throug h. There had to be someone aboard in the first place

to plant the gas bomb that kno cked us out. Why shouldn't t hat same

person have hidden Lloobee somewhere, gagged or unconscious, until

the Ar gos could land?"

"Finagle's gonads!

He could still be on the Ar gos !

N o, he couldn't;

they searched the Ar gos ." Emil glared at nothing. At that moment we

went through the weather dom e. CY Aquarii, which had been a soft

white pa tch, became for an inst ant a tiny bright point of agony .

Then a

spot on each lens of my goggles turned black and covered the sun. "W e'll h ave to check it out later ," said Emil. "But we can call city hall

now and tell them one of the kidnappers was on the Ar gos ."

But we couldn't. Where the car radio should have been was a square

hole. Emil smote his forehead. W ith his Jinxian strength it's a wonder he

survived. "I for got. Car radios won't work on Gummidgy .

Y ou have to

use a ship's com laser and bounce the beam of f one of the orbital

stations."

"Do we have a com laser?"

"Do you see one?

Maybe in ten years someone'll think of pu tting

com lasers in cars. W ell, we'll have to do it later ."

"That's silly .

Let's do it now ."

"First we check on Bellamy ."

"I'm not going."

Emil just grinned. He was right. It had been a futile comment. I had three choices:

Fighting a Jinxian. Getting out and walking home. But we must have gone a mi le up

already , and the base was far behind. V isiting Bellam y , who was a n old friend, and looking ar ound

unobtrusively while we were there. Actually , it would have been rude not

to g o. Actually , it would have b een silly not to at least drop by and say

hello while we were on the same planet. Actually , I rationalize a lot. "Do one thing for me," I said. " Let me do all the talking. Y ou can be

the strong, silent type who smiles a lot."

"Okay .

What are you going to tell him?"

"The truth. Not the whole truth, but some of it."

The four -hour trip passed quickly .

W e found cards and a score pad in

a gl ove compartment. The car blasted quietly and smoothly through a

Mach fo ur wall of air , rising once to clear a magnificent range of young

mountains. "Can you fly a car?"

I looked up from my cards. "Of course." Most people can. E very

world ha s its wilderness areas, and it's not worthwhile to spread transfer

booths a ll throug h a forest, espe cially one that doesn't see twenty tourists

in a year .

When you're tired of civilization, the only way to tra vel is to

transfer to the edge of a planetary park and then rent a car .

"That's good," said Emil, "in case I get put out of action."

"Now it's your turn to cheer me up."

Emil cocked his head at me. "If it's any help, I think I know how

Bellamy's group found the Ar gos ."

"Go on."

"It w as the star seed. A lot of people must have known about it,

including Mar go. Maybe she told someone that she was stopping the ship

so the passengers could get a look."

"Not much help. She had a lot of space to stop in."

"Did sh e?

Think about it. Firs t, Bellamy'd have no trouble at all

figuring when she'd reach the Gummidgy system."

"Right." There's only one speed in hyperdrive. "That means Mar go would have to stop on a certain spherical su rface

to ca tch the ligh t image of the starseed setting sail. Furthermore , in order

to watch it happen in an hour , she had to be right in front of the starseed. That pinpoints her exactly ."

"There'd be a mar gin of error ."

Emil shrugged. "Half a light-hour on a side. All Bellamy had to do

was wait in the right place. He had an hour to maneuver ."

"Bravo," I said. There were thin gs I didn't want him to know yet .

"He

could have done it that way , all right. I'd like to mention just one thing."

"Go ahead."

"Y ou ke ep saying 'Bellamy did this' and 'Bellamy did that.' W e don't

know he's guilty yet, and I'll thank you to remember it. Remember that

he's a friend of a friend and don 't start treating him like a criminal until

you know he is one."

"All righ t," Emi l said, but he didn't like it. He knew Bellamy was a

kidnapper .

He was going to ge t us both killed if he didn't w atch his

mouth. At the last minute I got a break. It was only a bit of misinterpretation

on Emil's part, but one does not refuse a gift from the gods. W e'd crossed six or seven hun dred kilometers of veldt: blue-green

grass with herds grazing at wide intervals. The herds left a clear path, for

the grass (or whatever , we hadn't seen it close up) changed color when

cropped. Now we were coming up on a forest, but not the gloom y green

type of forest n ative to human space. It was a riot of color: patches of

scarlet, green, magenta, yellow .

The yellow patches were polka-dotted

with deep purple. Just this side of the forest was the hunting camp. Like a nudis t at a

tailors' c onvention, it leapt to the eye, flagrantly alien against the blue-

green ve ldt. A bulbous plastic camp tent the size of a mansion dominated

the s cene, creases marring its tr anslucent surface to show where it was

partitioned into rooms. A dimin utive figure sat outside the door , its head

turning to follow our sonic boom. The yacht was some distance away .

The yacht was a gaily decorated playboy's space boat with a bri lliant

orange paint job and garish markings in colors that clashed. Some of the

markings seemed to mean something. Bellamy , one year ago, hadn't

struck m e as the type to own s uch a boat. Y et there it stood, on three

wide landing legs with paddle-shaped feet, its sharp nose pointed up at

us. It looke d ridicu lous. The hull w as too thick and the legs were too

wide, so that th e big businesslike attitude jets in the nose b ecame a

comedian's nostrils. On a slender needle with razor -sharp swept-back

airfoils that paint-job might have passed. But it made the compact,

finless Drunkar d's W alk look like a clown. The cam p swep t under us while we were still moving at Mach two. Emil tilted the car into a wid e curve, slowing and dropping. As we

turned to ward the camp for the second time, he said, "Bellamy's taking

precious little pains to hide himself. Oh, oh."

"What?"

"The yacht. It's not big enough. The ship Captain T ellefsen described

was twice that size."

A gift from the gods. "I hadn't noticed," I said. "Y ou're right. W ell,

that lets Bellamy out."

"Go ahead. T ell me I'm an idiot."

"No need. Why should I gloat over one stupid mistake?

I'd have had

to make the trip anyway , sometime."

Emil sighed. "I s uppose that means you'll have to see Bellamy b efore

we go back."

"Finagle's sake, Emil!

W e're her e, aren't we?

Oh, one thing. Let's not

tell Bellamy why we came. He might be of fended."

"And he might decide I'm a dol t. Correctly .

Don't worry , I won 't tell

him."

The "gra ss" covering the veldt turned out to be kneehigh ferns, dry

and brittle enough to crackle un der our socks. Dark blue-green near the

tips of the plan ts gave way to lighter coloring on the stalk s. Small

wonder the herbivores had left a trail. Small wonder if we'd seen

carnivores treading that easy path. The goggled figure in front of the camp tent was cleaning a mercy

rifle. By the time we were out of the car , he had closed it up and loaded it

with inc h-long slivers of anesthetic chemical. I'd seen such guns before. The slivers could be fired indivi dually or in one-second bursts o f twenty ,

and they dissolved instantly in a nything that resembled blood. One type

of sliver would usually fit all the lifeforms on a given world. The man didn't bother to get u p as we approached. Nor did he put

down the gun. "Hi," he said cheerfully .

"What can I do for you?"

"W e'd like -- "

"Beowulf Shaef fer?"

"Y eah. Larch Bellamy?"

Now he got up .

"Can't recognize anybody on this crazy w orld. Goggles covering half your face, everybody the same color -- you have

to go stark nake d to be recognized, and then only the women kn ow you. Whatinhell are you doing on Gummidgy , Bey?"

"I'll tell you late r .

Larch, this is Emil Home. Emil, meet Larch mont

Bellamy ."

"Pleasure," said Bellamy , grinning as if indeed it were. Then his grin

tried to break into laughter , and he smothered it. "Let's go in side and

swallow something wet."

"What was funny?"

"Don't b e of fend ed, Mr .

Home. Y ou and Bey do make an odd pair .

I

was thinking that the two of you are like a medium-sized beach ball

standing next to a baseball bat. How did you meet?"

"On the ship," said Emil. The camp tent h ad a collapsible revolving door to hold the pres sure. Inside, the tent was almost luxurious, though it was all foldaway stuf f. Chairs a nd sofas were soft, cush iony fabric surfaces, holding their shape

through insulated static char ges. T ables were memory plastic. Probably

they compressed into small cubes for storage aboard ship. Lig ht came

from glow strips in the fabric of the pressurized tent. The bar was a

floating portable .

It came to meet us at the door , took our orders, and

passed out drinks. "All right," Bellamy said, sprawling in an armchair .

When he

relaxed, he relaxed totally , like a cat. Or a tiger .

"Bey , how did you come

to Gummidgy?

And where's Sharrol?"

"She can't travel in space."

"Oh?

I didn't k now .

That can happen to anyone." But his eyes

questioned. "She wanted children. Did yo u know that?

She's always w anted

children."

He took in my red eyes and white hair .

"I...see. So you broke up."

"For the time being."

His eyes questioned. That's not emphatic enough. There was something about

Bellamy ...He ha d a lean body and a lean face, with a straigh t, sharp-

edged nose and prominent chee kbones, all setting of f the dark eyes in

their deep pits beneath black shaggy brows. But ther e was more to it than eyes. Y ou can't tell a man's ag e by

looking at his p hoto, not if he takes boosterspice. But you can tell, to

some extent, by watching him in motion. Older men know where they're

going b efore they start to mov e. They don't dither , they don't waste

ener gy , they don't trip over their feet, and they don't bump into things. Bellamy was old. There was a power in him, and his eyes questioned .

I s hrugg ed. "W e used the best answer we had, Larch. He was a friend

of ours, and his name was Carlos W u. Y ou've heard of him?"

"Mathematician, isn't he?"

"Y ah. A lso playwright and composer .

The Fertility Board gave him

an unlimited breeding license when he was eighteen."

" That young?"

"He's a genius. As I say , he was a good friend of ours. Liked to talk

about sp ace; he had the flatland phobia, like Sharrol. W ell, Sharrol and I

made our decision, and then we went to him for help. He agreed. "So Sha rrol's ma rried him on a two-year contract. In two years I'll go

back and marry her , and we'll raise our fam -- "

"I'll be damned."

I'd been angry about it for too long, with nobody to be angry at. I

flared up. "W ell, what would you have done?"

"Found another woman. But I'm a dirty old man, and you're y oung

and naive. Suppose W u tried to keep her ."

"He won't. He's a friend; I told you. Besides, he's got more women

than ten of him could handle with that license of his."

"So you left."

"I had to. I couldn't stand it."

He was looking at me with something like awe. "I can't reme mber

ever being in lov e that hard. Bey , you're overdue for a drunk, an d you're

surrounded by friends. Shall we switch to something stronger than beer?"

"It's a good of fer , but no, thanks. I didn't mean to cry on your

shoulder .

I've had my drunk. A week on W underland, drinking V ur guuz ."

"Finagle's ears!

V ur guuz ?"

"I sa id to myself , Why mess aro und with half measures?

said I. So --

"

"What does it taste like?"

"Like a hand gr enade with a minted sugar casing. Like you b etter

have a chaser ready ."

Silence threaten ed to settle. No wonder , the way I'd killed the

conversation by spilling my personal problems all over everything. I

said, "So as lon g as I had to d o some traveling, I thought I'd do some

people some favors. That's why I'm here."

"What kind of favors?"

"W ell, a friend of mine happens to be an ET taxidermist. It's a

complicated profession. I told him I'd get him some information on

Gummidgy animals and Gummidgy biochemistry .

Now that the planet's

open to hunters, sooner or later people like you are going to be c arting in

perforated alien bodies."

Bellamy frowne d. "I wish I could help," he said, "but I don't kill the

animals I hunt. I just shoot the m full of anesthetic so they'll hold still

while I photo them. The same goes for the rest of us."

"I see."

"Otherwise I'd of fer to take you along one day ."

"Y eah. I'll do my own research, then. Thanks for the thought."

Then, be ing a good host, Bellamy proceeded to work Emil into the

conversation. Em il was far from being the strong, silent type who smiles

a lot; in fact, we were soon learning all about the latest adv ances in

computer technology .

But he kept his word and did not mention why we

had come. I was grateful. The afternoon passed swiftly .

Dinnertime arrived early .

Most of the

people o n Gumm idgy accommo date to the eighteen-hour day b y having

two meals: brunch and dinner .

W e accepted Bellamy's invitation. W ith dinner arrived a dedicated hunter named W arren, who insisted

on s howing us photos of every thing he'd caught since his arri val. That

day he'd shot a g raceful animal like a white greyhound, "but eve n faster ,"

he sa id; a monke y-like being with a cupped hand for throwing ro cks; and

a flower .

"A flower?"

"See those tooth marks on my boot?

I had to shoot it to get it to let

go. No real sport in it, but as long as I'd already shot the damn thing..."

His only resemblance to Bella my was this: He carried the same

indefinable air of age. Now I was sure it had nothing to do with

appearance. Perhaps it was a matter of individuality .

Bellamy and

W arren were individuals. The y didn't push it, they didn't have to

demonstrate it, but neither were they following anybody's lead. W arren left after dinner .

Going to see how the others were doin g, he

said; they must be hot on the trail of something or they'd have been back

to ea t. Not want ing to wear out our welcome, we said our good- byes and

left, too. It was near sunset when we emer ged from the camp tent. "Let me drive," I said. Emil raised his brows at me but moved around to the passenger seat. He did more than raise his brows when he saw what I was doing. I set the autopilot to take us back to the base and let the car fly itself

until we were below the horiz on. W e were a mile up by th en and a

goodly distance away .

Whereupon I canceled the course, dipped the car

nearly to ground level, and swu ng back toward the forest. I flew almost

at treetop level, staying well below the speed of sound. "T ell me again," I said, "about Beowulf the hero."

"What kind of game are you playing now?"

"Y ou thought the size of the Dru nkard'a W alk cleared Bellamy , didn't

you?"

"It does. It's much too small to be Captain T ellefsen's Pirate."

"So it is. But we already know there was a pirate on boar d the

Ar gos ."

"Right."

"Let's assume it's Mar go."

"The captain ?"

"Why not?"

I'll say this for him, he got it all in one gulp. Mar go to release the gas. Mar go to tell Bellamy where to meet the Ar gos and to hold the ship, in

one place long enough to be met. Mar go to lie about the size of

Bellamy's ship. And me to keep Emil in the dark until now , so he wouldn't blo w his

lines when he met Bellamy .

He gulped, and then he said, "It fits. But I'd swear Bellamy's

innocent."

"Except for one thing. He didn't invite me to go hunting with him."

A ye llow patch o f forest streamed away beneath us. The purple polka

dots we'd seen f rom high up turned out to be huge blossoms sev eral feet

across, serviced by birds the size of storks. Then we were over scarlet

puf fballs that shook in the wind of our passage. I kept us low and slow .

A

car motor is s ilent, but a so nic boom would make us m ore than

conspicuous. "That's y our evidence against him?

He didn't want you hunting with

him?"

"And he gave lousy reasons."

"Y ou sa id he hated ET s. He's a flatlander .

T o some flatlanders we'd

both look like ET s."

"Maybe. But the Drunkar d's W alk is still the only ship that cou ld

have landed Lloobee, and Mar go's still our best bet as the kidnapper on

the Ar gos .

Maybe the pirates could have found the Ar gos by guess and

hope, bu t they'd have a damn sight better chance with Mar go working

with them."

Emil gla red out through the win dshield. "W ere you thinking this all

the time we were in the camp?"

"Not unt il he turned down the chance to take me hunting. Then I was

pretty sure."

"Y ou make a first-class liar .”

I d idn't know how to deny it, so I said nothing. Nonetheless, Emil

was wro ng. If I'd spilled my pe rsonal problems in Bellamy's lap, if I'd

accepted his hospitality , professed friendship, drunk his liquor , laughed

at his jokes and made him lau gh at mine, it was not an act. Bellamy

made yo u like him, and he mad e you want him to like you. A nd Emil

would n ever understand that in my eyes Bellamy had done nothing

seriously wrong. Six years earlier I'd tried to stea l a full-sized spacecraft, fitted more

or less for war , from a group of Pierson's puppeteers. I'd been stopped

before th e plan had gotten started, but so what?

The puppeteers had been

blackmailing me, but again, so what?

Who says the aliens of known

space have to think we're perfect?

W e know we're not. Ask us!

"I'm sorry ," said Emil. "Excuse my mouth. I got you into this

practically over your dead body , and now , when you do your be st to help

out, I jump on you. I'm an ungrateful..." And what he said then about his

anatomic makeup probably wa sn't true. He was married, after all. He

concluded, "Y ou're the boss. Now what?"

"Depends. W e don't have any evidence yet."

"Y ou really think Bellamy's the one?"

"I really do."

"He could be holding Lloobee anywhere. Hundreds of miles away ."

"W e'll never find him thinking that way .

He wasn't in the camp tent. Even Be llamy w ouldn't have that much nerve. If he'd been in the ship,

we'd have seen the air lock open -- "

"Closed."

"Open. Lloobee couldn't sense anything through a ship's hull. In a

closed ship that size he'd go nuts."

"Okay ."

"W e kn ow one thing that m ight be helpful. Bellamy's got a

disintegrator ."

"He does?"

"The holes in the Ar gos .

Y ou didn't see them, did you."

"No. Y ou think he might have dug himself a hideout?"

"Y eah. B ellamy isn't the type to let a tool like that go to waste. I f he's

got a slaver disintegrator , he'll use it. It's a fine digging tool. A big roomy

cave would take you an hour , and even the dust would b e blown

hundreds of miles. Disintegrator dust is nearly monatomic."

"How are you planning to find this cave?"

"Let's see if the car has a deep-radar attachment."

It di dn't. Rent-a-cars usually do on worlds where there are swampy

areas. So now w e knew Gummidgy wasn't swampy .

Everythin g on the

dash had its uses, and not one of them was sonar .

"W e'll have to m ake a sight sear ch," said Emil. "How close are we to

Bellamy's camp?"

"About thirty miles."

"W ell, there's a chance they won't see us." Emil sat forward in his

chair , hands gripping his knees. His smile was thin and tight. Obviously

he had something. "T ake us up to ten miles. Don't cross sonic sp eed until

we've got lots of room. "

"What can we see from ten miles up?"

"Assume I'm a genius."

That served me right. I took the car up without quibbling. T en miles down was the wande ring line of the forest border , sharply

demarcated from the veldt. At this height all the magnificent colors of

Gummidgy vegetation blurred into a rich brown. "Do you see it?"

"No."

"Look for two nearly parallel li nes," said Emil. "A little lighter than

the rest of the forest."

"I still don't see it."

"It shows on the veldt, too."

"Nope. Hah!

Got it." Crossing th e rich brown of the forest was a strip

of faintl y lighter , faintly more uniform brown. "Hard to see, though. What is it?"

"Dust. B lown fo r hundreds of m iles, just like you said. Some of it

settled on the tops of the trees."

So d im was the path that it kep t flickering in and out of the vi sible. But it was strai ght, with edges that slowly conver ged. It cro ssed the

veldt, to o, in a s trip of faintly d immed blue-green. Before its edges met,

the path faded out, but one could extend those edges in the mind's eye. I let the car fall. Unless we were building dream castles, Lloobee's cave must be at the

intersection. When we got too low , the dust path disappeared in the colors of

forest and veldt. Bellamy's hyp othetical cave was half a mile into the

forest. I couldn't land there for reasons involving too many big plants and

too many pirates. I dropped the car in a curve of the forest. Emil had been f umbling in the b ack. Now he pressed something into

my hand and said, "Here, take this." T o my amazement I found myself

holding a sonic stunner .

"That's illegal!" I whispered furiously .

"Why ar e you whispering?

Kidnapping Kdatlyno is illegal, too. W e

may be glad we've got these before we're finished."

"But where did you get police stunners?"

"Let's say some criminal slipped them into my luggage. And if you'll

look at the butts, you'll see they aren't police stunners."

They'd started life as police stun ners, but they weren't anymore. The

butts were hand-carved from big cultured emeralds. Expensive. Dueling

pistols?

Sure, du eling pi stols. Lose a du el with one of these and you'd lose

nothing but face. I hear most Jinxians would rather lose an arm,

permanently .

They were not illegal -- on Jinx. "Remember ," s aid Emil, "they only knock a man out fo r ten

minutes."

"I can run a long way in ten minutes."

Emil loo ked me over rather carefully .

"Y ou've changed. Y ou could

have driven me straight back to base, and I'd never have been the wiser ."

"I never thought of that."

"Bah."

"W ould you believe I've decided to be an epic hero?

Whatever that

is."

Emil shrugged and moved into the forest. I followed. I wa sn't about to explain my motives to Emil. He'd put me in an

unpleasant situation, and if he wanted to worry about my backing out, let

him worry .

Back out?

I couldn't. It was too late. There had been a time when I knew nothing about Lloo bee's

kidnappers. I might suspect Mar go, but I had no evidence. Later , I could suspect Bellamy .

But I had no proof. But Emil had pressured me int o confronting Bellamy , and Bellamy

had been pressured into putting on an act. If I quit now , Bellamy would

continue to think I was a fool. And when Bellamy confronted Mar go, Mar go would continue to

think I was a fool. That would hurt. T o have Mar go and Bella my both

thinking that I had been twice an idiot...

It w asn't Bellamy's fault, except that he had voluntarily kidnap ped a

valuable Kdatly no sculptor .

It was partly my fault and mostly Emil's. I

might be able to leave Mar go ou t of this. But Bellamy would have to pay

for my mistakes. And why shouldn't he?

It was his antisocial act. The vegetation was incredibly lush, infinitely varied. Its chemistry

was not that of terrain life, but the chemical it used for photosynthesis

was similar to chlorophyll. For b illions of years the plants of Gummidgy

had had oversup plies of ultraviolet light. The result was life in plenty , a

profusion of fungi and animals and parasites. On every branch of the

magenta trees was an orchid thing, a sessile beast waiting for i ts dinner

to fly by .

The air was full of life : birdforms, insectforms, and a constant

rain of dust and spores and feath ery seeds and bits of leaf and b ird dung. The soil was dry and spongy an d rich, and the air was rich with oxygen

and alie n smells. Somewhere in the spectrum of odors were valuable

undiscovered perfumes. Once we saw a flower thing like the one in W arren's photo. I found a

dry bran ch and stuck it down the thing's blossom and pulled back half a

branch. Again, four feet of snake flew by .

Emil stunned it. It had two small

fins near the head end, and its h ind end was a huge, leathery delta wing. Its mouth was two-thirds back along the body .

W ith typical abruptness, the flowering magenta trees gave way to a

field of scarlet t ubing. No branches, no leaves; just interlocking cables,

three fee t thick, moving restless ly over each other like too many snakes

in a pit. They w ere four or five deep. Maybe they were all one single

plant or animal; we never did see a head or a tail. And we'd ne ver have

kept our footing if we'd tried to cross. W e circled the area, staying in the magenta trees because we were

getting too close to where th e hypothetical cave ought to be. That

brought us to a small round hill surmounted by a tree that was mostly

wandering roots. W e started around the hill, and Emil gripped my arm. I saw it. A cave mouth, small and round, in the base of the hill. And

leaning against the dirt slope of the hill was a woman with a mercy gun. "All right!

" I whispered. "Come on, let's get out of here!" I pulled at

Emil's arm and turned toward freedom. It w as like tryin g to stop a warship from taking of f. Emil was gone,

running silently toward the cave with his gun held ready , leaving me

with nu mb fingers and a deep appreciation of Finagle's first law .

I

swallowed a groan and started after him. On flat ground I can beat any Jinxian who ever ran the short sprint

My legs were twice the length of Emil's. But Emil moved like a wraith

through the alien vegetation, w hile I kept getting tangled up. My long

legs and arms stuck out too much, and I couldn't catch him. It was such a crying pity .

Because we had it!

W e had it all, or all we

were go ing to get. The guarded cave was our proof. Bellamy and his

hunter friends were the kidnappers. That knowledge would be a powerful

bar gaining point in our negotiations for the return of Lloobee, despite

what I'd told Emil. All we had to do now was get back to base and tell

somebody .

But I couldn't catch Emil!

I couldn't even keep up with him. A ba re area fron ted the cave, a triangular patch of ground bou nded

by tw o t hick, sp rawling roots belonging to the treelike thing on the hill. I'd lo st sight of Emil; when I saw him again, he was running for the cave

at full speed, and the woman w ith the gun was faceup in the d irt. Emil

reached the darkness at the mouth of the cave and disappeared within. And as he vanished into the dark, he was unmistakably falling. W ell, now they had Emil. W ith blazing lasers...!

Proof wasn't

enough. He'd decided to bring back Lloobee himself. Now we'd have to

negotiate for the two of them. W ould we?

Bellamy was back at the hunting camp. When he f ound

out h is m en had Emil, he'd know I was somewhere around. But whoever

was in the cave might think Em il was alone. In which case they might

kill him right now .

I s ettled my back against the tree. As a kind of afterthought I foc used

the dueling pistol on the woman and fired. I'd have to do that every ten

minutes to keep her quiet. Eventually someone would be coming out to see why she hadn't

stopped Emil. I didn't dare try to enter the cave. Be it man or booby trap, whatever

had stopped Emil would stop me. T oo bad the dueling pistols did n't have more power .

The craftsmen

who had carved their emerald butts had scaled them down because, after

all, they would be used only to prove a point. It would take a shopful of

tools to readjust them, because readjusting them to their form er power

would v iolate Ji nxian law .

Real police stunners will knock a man out for

twelve hours or more. I was sitting there waiting for s omeone to come out when I felt the

prickly numbness of a stunner .

The sen sations came separately .

First, a pull in my ankles. Then, in

the calve s of my legs. Then, som ething rough and crumbly sliding under

me. Separate sensations, just above the threshold of consciousness,

penetrating the numbness. A sl iding bump!

bump!

against the back of

my head. Gritty sensation in the backs of my hands, anus trailing above

and behind my head. Conclusion, arrived at after long thought: I was being dragged. I wa s limp as a noodle and nea rly as numb. It was all over .

No body

had wal ked inn ocently out of t he cave. Instead, the man in there with

Lloobee had looked out with a heat sensor , then used his sonic on

anything that might possibly be the temperature of a man. Things t urned dark. I thought I was unconscious, but no, I'd been

dragged into the cave. "That's a relief," said Bellamy .

Unmistakably , Bellamy .

"Bastard," said a woman's voice .

It seemed familiar: rich and fruity ,

with a flatlander accent that was not quite true. Misplaced in time,

probably .

A dialect doesn't stay the same forever .

My eyes fell open. Bellamy stood over me, looking down with no expression. T anya

W ilson sat some distance away , looking sullenly in my direction. The

man nam ed W arren, standing behind her , carefully did something to her

scalp, and she winced. "There," said W arren, "you go back to the camp. If anyone asks -- "

"I w as scratched by a flower bi rd," said T anya. "The rest of you are

out hunting. W ill you please assume I've got a mind."

"Don't b e so damn touchy .

Lar ch, you'd better tie them up, hadn't

you?"

"Y ou do it if you like. It's not necessary .

They'll be out for hours."

Oh, really?

T anya W ilson go t up and went to the cave mouth. Before leaving, she

pulled a cord hanging at the side. W arren, who had followed her , pulled

it again after she was gone. The cord was attached to what l ooked like a police stunner , the same

model a s Emil's guns. The stu nner was mounted on a board, and the

board was fixed in place over the mouth of the cave, aimed downward. A

booby trap. So easy .

The numbness was gone. My problem was the opposite: It was all I

could do to keep from moving. I was stretched full-length on a rocky

floor with my heels a foot higher than my nose and my arms straight

above my head. If I so much as clenched a fist...

"I wonder ," Bellamy said, "what made him turn against me."

"Who?

Shaef fer?"

I could see four in the cave. Bellamy was standing over me; W arren

was nearer the cave mouth. Th e two others were near the back, near a

line of plastic crates. One was a man I'd never seen. The othe r -- huge

and frig htening in the semidark, a monster from man's dimmest past,

when demons and supernatural beings walked the homeworld -- was

Lloobee. They sat silently facing each other , as if each were waiting for

something. "Y es," said Bellamy .

"Beowulf S haef fer .

He seemed such a nice guy .

Why would he go to so much ef fort to get me in trouble?”

"Y ou for get, Larch." W arren spoke with patient understanding. "They

are the good guy s; we are the bad guys. A simple sense of law a nd order

-- "

"T oo m uch law and order ar ound, W arren. There are no more

frontiers. W e sit in our one small area of the universe called known

space, sixty light-years across, and we rot. T oo much security .

Everyone

wants security ."

"That's Shaef fer's motive. He was backing up law and order ."

"I don't think so. Bey's not the type."

"What type is he?"

"Lazy .

A surviva l type, but lazy .

He doesn't start to use his brain until

he's in obvious, overt trouble. But he's got pride."

"Could the other one have talked him into it?"

"I suppose so."

There was an uncomfortable silence. "W ell," said W arren, "it's too bad. What'll we do with them?"

Bellamy looked unhappily dow n at me. He couldn't see my eyes

behind the goggles, not in the dim cave light. "They could be fo und half-

eaten. B y one of those big hopping things, say .

The ones that pr ey on the

gray plains herbivores."

"The ca rnivore that did it woul d be poisoned. It would have to be

found nearby ."

"Right." Bellam y pondered. "It's vital that there be no evidence

against us. If we tried to square a murder rap in the contract, they'd

chivvy our price down to nothi ng. Y ou were bright to use the sonic. A

mercy needle would have left chemicals."

A small , sharp rock was pressing against the side of my nec k. It

itched. I f I was planning to leap to my feet from this ridiculous position,

I co uldn't delay too long. Sooner or later I'd reach to scratch. Sooner or

later Be llamy or W arren would notice the butts of Emil's altered police

stunners and know them for what they were. "First we need a plains carnivo re," said W arren. "Do you thin k we

can starve it into -- "

Lloobee leapt. He was five yards from the man who was guarding him at the back of

the cave .

The man fired instantly , and then he screamed and tried to

dodge. The Kdatlyno slammed into him and knocked him sliding across

the floor .

I d idn't see any more. I was running. I heard panicky shouting and

then Bellamy's roar: "Relax, yo u idiot. He was unconscious b efore he

left the ground." And W arren's, "Relax, hell!

Where's Shaef fer?"

I barely remembered to pull the trigger cord on Bellamy's booby trap. The cave entrance was long and low , sloping upward. I took it at a

crouching run. Behind me was more confusion. Could the first man

through have pulled the trigger cord again ?

Th at w ould gi ve me time I

needed. Outside the cave I turned sharp right. The winding, half-exposed roof

was alm ost Emil's height. I wen t over it like a spider monkey and then

under it, hiding under its protective bulk. CY Aquarii was directly behind me, minutes from sunset. Its white

light threw a sharp black shadow along the side of the root. I s tarted crawling uphill, staying in the shadow .

T wo sets of p elting

footsteps followed me from the other side of the root. V oices came from below , barel y audible. They didn't sound l ike a

search in progress. Why not?

I looked back and saw no pursuit. Halfway

up the hill I slid out of my blue falling jumper , tucked it as far under the

root as it would go, and went on, thinking kindly thoughts about tannin

pills. No w I'd be all but invisibl e if I stayed in the shadows. A ll but my

white hair .

Why ha d Lloob ee made that gr andstand play?

It was as if he'd read

my mind. He m ust have known there was no chance of escape for him. But I'd have had no chance wit hout his diversion. Had he known I was

conscious?

Could Kdatlyno read minds?

At the top of the hill I stopped in a cleft between two huge roots .

The

magenta tree seemed much too small to need all that root area , but the

sunlight was rich, and maybe the soil was poor .

And the roots would hide

me. But where were my pursuers?

I kn ew t hey nee ded me. They co uldn't dispose of Emil until the y had

me. Granted that they could find me as soon as it got dark; I'd stand out

like a beacon on a heat sensor .

But suppose I reached the car first?

The car!

Sure, that was it. While I was crouching somewhe re or

taking a tangled trail that would keep me hidden at all times, Bellamy or

one of his men was taking the shortest, straightest route to my car .

T o

move it before I could reach it. I pounded my h ead to get it working. No use. I was stymied .

The

cave?

I'd find guns in there, hunting guns. The anesthetic slivers

probably wouldn't work on human beings, but they might be poisonous -

- an d they wou ld certainly hurt. But no, I couldn't attack t he cave. There'd be no way around the booby trap. But ther e'd be someone in there to turn the booby trap on and of f and

to guard Lloobee. Another on the way to the car , that made two. The thir d would have found som e high point, chosen days previously

for its view of the surroundings. He'd be waiting now for a gl impse of

my snow-white hair .

I couldn't break and run for the car .

Maybe. And maybe the third man had been the first to come char ging after

me. And maybe he'd snatched at the trigger cord as he passed to turn of f

a police stunner that was alread y of f. And maybe he'd run through the

beam. Maybe. But if anyone reached the car , I was cooked. I spu n it over and over while ha ndfuls of needed seconds passed me

by .

Ther e was no other way to figure it. T anya was back at camp. A

second man was in the cave; a third was on the way to the car .

The fourth

either was waiting for me to show myself or he wasn't. I had to risk it. I came out from under the roots, running. I'm good at sprinting, not so good at a long-distance run. The ed ge of

the forest was half a mile away .

I was walking when I got there and

blowing like a city-sized air pum p. There was no sign of anyone and no

sign of the car .

I stood just within the forest, sucking wind, nerving

myself to run out into the fern grass. Then Be llamy emer ged to my le ft. He dog-trotted fearlessly out onto

the veldt, into the fern grass, and stood looking around. One of Emil's

sonics d angled f rom one hand. He must have known by then that it was

only a dueling pistol, but it was the only sonic he had. He saw something to his right, something hidden from me by a curve

of forest. He turned and trotted toward it. I f ollow ed as best I could. Multicolored things kept tripping me, and

I did n't dare step out into the fe rn grass. Bellamy was going to get there

first...

He w as examining the car when I found him. The car was right out in

the o pen, tens of yards from any cover .

Any second now he'd g et in and

take of f. What was he waiting for?

Me?

I knelt behind a magenta bush, dithering. Bellamy was peering into

the b ackseat. He wanted to know just what we'd planned before he made

his move. Every two seconds h is head would pop up for a lo ng, slow

look around. A black dot in the distance caught my eye. It took me a moment to

realize that it was in the plastic goggles, blotting out the dot o f actinic

sunlight. The sun was right on the horizon. Bellamy was opening the trunk....The sun. I sta rted circling. The magenta b ushes of fered some cover , and I used

it all. Bellamy's eyes maintained their steady sweep, but they hadn't

found me yet. Abruptly he slammed the trunk, circled the car to get in. I wa s w here I wanted to be. My long shadow pointed straight at the

car .

I char ged. He looked up as I started. He looked straight at me, and then his eyes

swept the curve of forest, taking their time. He bent to get into the car ,

and then he saw me. But his gun hand was in the car , and I was close

enough. The dots on his goggl es had covered more than CY Aquarii. They'd covered my approach. My shou lder kn ocked him spinning away from the car , and I he ard a

metal tick .

He got up fast, empty-handed .

No gun. He'd dropped it. I

turned to look in the car , fully expecting to find it on the floor or on the

seat. It was now here to be seen .

I looked back in time to duck, and his

other ha nd caught me and knock ed me away .

I rolled with it and came to

my feet. He was standing in a relaxed boxer stance between me and the car .

"I'm going to break you, Bey ."

"So you can't find the gun, either ."

"I don't need it. Any normal ten-year -old could break you in two."

"Tben c ome on." I dropped into boxer stance, thanking Finagle that

he didn't know karate or ju-whatsis or any of the other illegal killing

methods. Hundreds of years had passed since the usual laws against

carrying a concealed weapon were extended to cover special fighting

methods, but Bellamy had had hundreds of years to learn. I'd come up

lucky .

He c ame toward me, moving li ghtly and confidently , a flatlander in

prime co ndition. He must have f elt perfectly safe. What could h e have to

fear from an attenuated weakling, a man born and raised in W e Made It's

point six gee?

He grinned when he was almost in range, and I hit him in

the mouth. My range was longer than his. He d anced back, and I danced forward and hit him in the nose b efore

he got his guard up. He'd have to get used to the extra reach of my arms. But his guard was up now , and I saw no point in punching his forearms. "Y ou're a praying mantis," he said. "An insect. Overspecialized."

And he moved in. I mo ved back, p unching lightly , staying out of his reach. He'd ha ve to

get used to that, too. His legs were too short. If he tried to move forward

as fast as I could backpedal, he wouldn't be able to keep his guard up. He tried anyway .

I caught him one below the ribs, and his head

jerked up in surprise. I wasn't hurting him much...but he'd been expecting

love pats. Four years in Earth's one point oh gee had put muscle on me,

muscle that didn't show along my long bones. He tried crowding me, and

I caught him twice in the right e ye. He tried keeping his guard intact, and

that was suicide because he couldn't reach me at all. I c aught that eye a third time. He bellowed, lowered his head, and

char ged. I ran like a thief. I'd led him in a half circle. He never had a chance to catch me. He

reached the car just as I slammed the door in his face and locked it. By t he time he reached the left-hand door , I had that locked, too, and

all the windows up. He was ban ging a rock on a window when I turned

on the lift units and departed the field of battle. He'd have to get used to my methods of fighting, too. As I took the car up, I saw him running back toward the hu nting

camp. No radio. No co m laser .

The ba se was a third of the way around the

planet, and I'd have to go myself. I set the autopi lot to take me a thousand miles north of the base,

flying low .

Bellamy was bound to come after me with a car , and I didn't

want to be found. Come to that, did he have a car?

I hadn't seen one. Maybe he'd use --

But that didn't bear thinking about, so I didn't. A glove compartment held a small bar .

Emil and I hadn't depleted it

much on the way out. I ordered something simple and sat sipping it,

The fore st disappeared behind me. I watched the endless plain of fern

grass whipping underneath. Mach four is drifting with the breeze if

you're a spaceman, but try it in a car with the altitude set for fif ty yards. It wasn't frightening; it was hypnotic. The sun had been setting. Now it stayed just where it was, o n the

horizon, a little to my left. The ground was a blur; the sky was a frozen

sphere. It was as if time stopped. I thought of Mar go. What an actress she would hav e made!

The confusion she'd s hown

after the kidnapping. She hadn' t remembered the car go mass m eter; oh,

no!

She hadn't even known Lloobee was one of her passengers!

Sure she

hadn't. She'd taken me for a fool. I had no wish to harm her .

When I told the MPs about Bellamy , she

would not be mentioned. But she'd know that I knew .

I wondered what had brought her into this. Come to that, what had broug ht Bellamy?

He couldn't need the

money that badly .

Simple kicks?

Had he wanted to strike at hum an-alien

relationships?

The races of known space are vastly richer for the

interstellar trade. But Bellamy had lived through at least three human-

kzinti w ars; he'd read of things that looked like Lloobee in his c hildren's

books. He was a man displaced in time. I remembered the way he'd said

"stark na ked." I' d used a nudist' s license myself on Earth, not because I

believed the incredible claims for nudism's health-giving properties but

because I was with friends who did. Come to that, I was nude now .

(W ould I have t o buy a license when I reached the base?) But Bellamy

had laughed when he'd said it. Nudism was funny .

I remembered the archaisms in his speech. Bellamy .

He'd done nothing seriously wrong, not until he had

decided to kill E mil and me. W e could have been friends. Now i t was too

late. I finished my drink and crumpled the cup; it evaporated. A black streak on my goggles at the edge of my right eye....Much too late. The black blotch of Bellamy's fusion flame was far

to the north, passing me. He'd done it. He'd brought the Drunkar d's W alk .

Had he seen me?

The ship curved around toward the sun, slowed, and stopped in my

path. It came down my throat. I swerved; Bellamy swerved to meet me. He flash ed by overhead, and my car , moving at Mach four , bu cked

under the lash of the sonic boom. The crash field gripped m e for an

instant, then went of f. He turned and came from behind. Slam!

And he was disappearing into the blue and green and orange

sunset. W hat was he playing at?

He must know that one touch of fusion

flame would finish me. He could end m e any time he pleased. The Drunkar d's W alk was

moving at twice my speed, and Bellamy moved it about like an extension

of his fingers. He was playing with me. Again h e turned, and again the hypersonic boom slapped me d own. The blur of veldt came up at me , then receded. Another such m ight slap

me into the fern grass at Mach four .

He wasn't playing. He was tryin g to force me to land. My corpse was

to carry no evidence of murder .

Slam!

And again the black blotch shrank against the sunset. It w as no playb oy's yacht he was flying. Such an expensiv e toy

would have been long and slender , with a superfluous needle nose and

low maneuverability due to its heavy angular movement. The Drunkar d's

W alk was sho rt, with big attitude jets showing like nostrils in the stubby

nose. I should have known whe n I saw the landing legs. Big and wide

and heavy , folded now into the hull, but when they were down, they were

comically splay-footed, with a wide reach to hold the ship on almost any

terrain. The playboy's flashy paint job was indirection only .

The ship...

The ship made a wide loop ahead of me and came slashing back. I pulled back hard on the wheel. The blood left m y head, and then the crash field took hold. I was in a

cushioned shell, and the crash field held my shape like an exo skeleton. As I curved up to meet him Bellamy came down my throat. Give him a taste of his own medicine!

If I hadn't been half-loaded, I'd never have done it. A crash now w as the last thing Bellamy wanted. It would leave

evidence not only on the car but on the Drunkar d's W alk .

But space

pilots crack up more cars. They can't get used to the idea that in the

atmosphere of a planet Mach four is fast .

He mu st have been doing Mach

eight himself. He pulled up too late. I sm ashed into t he ship's flank a t a low angle. W ithout the crash field

I'd have been hambur ger .

As it was, I blacked out instantly .

I wo ke in the midst of a flamin g maelstrom, gripped in a vise that

wouldn't let me breathe, with agony tearing at my hands. The car was

diving o ut of the sky at four times sonic speed, with its aero dynamic

stability smashe d to hell. I could feel the terrific deceleration in my inner

ear .

I trie d to use the controls. Not th at they would have worked; the ship

was obviously stone dead. But I tried it anyway , and then the pain came. My hands had been outside the crash field, naturally; how else could I

control the car?

Half the joints had been dislocated in the crash. The ground came up, rotating. I tried to pull my hands back, but

deceleration pul led me hard against the crash web, and the crash field

held. I was embedded in glass. I hit. The car was on its nose in high fern grass. All the plastic windows

had become flying shards, including the windshield; they littered the car .

The win dshield frame was crushed and bent. I hung from the cr ash web,

unable to unfasten it with my crippled hands, unable to move even if I

were free. And I watched the Drunkar d's W alk , its fusion drive of f, floating

down ahead of me on its gravity drag. I did n't notice the anomaly then. I was dazed, and I saw what I

expected to see: a spaceship la nding. Bellamy?

He didn't see it, either ,

but he would have if he'd look ed to the side when he came d own the

landing ladder .

He cam e down the ladder with his eyes fixed on mine and Emil's

sonic in his hand. He stepped out into the fern grass, walked ov er to the

car , and peered in through the bent windshield frame. "Come on out."

"I can't use my hands."

"So muc h the better ." Bellamy rested the sonic on the rim o f the

frame and pointed it at my fac e. W ith his other hand he reached in to

unfasten the crash web and pull me out by the arm. "W alk," he said. "Or

be dragged."

I could walk, barely .

I could keep walking because he kept prodding

the small of my back with the gun. "Y ou've helped me, you know .

Y ou had a car crash," he said. "Y ou

and Jilson. Then some predators found you."

It sounded reasonable. I kept walking. W e were halfway to the ship w hen I saw it. The anomaly .

I said,

"Bellamy , what's holding your ship up?"

He prodded me. "W alk."

"Y our gyros. That's what's holding the ship up."

He p rodded me without answeri ng. I walked. Any moment now he'd

see...

"What th e -- " He'd seen it. He stared in pure amazement, and th en he

ran. I stuck out a foot to trip him, lost my balance, and fell on my face. Bellamy passed me without a glance. One of the landi ng legs wasn't down. I'd smashed it into the hu ll. He

hadn't se en it on the indicators, so I must have smashed the sen sors, too. The odd thing was that we'd both missed it, though it was the leg facing

us. The Drunkar d's W alk stood on two legs, wildly unbalanced, like a

ballet da ncer hal fway through a leap. Only her gyros held her monstrous

mass against gravity .

Somewhe re in her belly they must be spinning

faster and faster ...I could hear the whine now , high-pitched, rising...

Bellamy reached the ladder and started up. He'd have to use the

steering jets now , and quickly .

W ith steering jets that size, the gyros --

which served more or less the sa me purpose -- must be small, little more

than an afterthought. Now was my chance!

I str uggled to my feet and staggered a few steps. Bellamy lo oked

down, th en ignored me. He'd take care of me when he had time. Where

could I go?

Where could I hide on this flat plain?

Some chance. I stopped walking. Bellamy had almost reached the air lock when the ship screamed like

a wounded god. The gyros had taken too much punishment. That metal scream must

have been the death agony of the mountings. Bellamy stopped. He

looked d own, an d the ground was too far .

He looked up, and there was

no time. Then he turned and looked at me. I read his mind then, though I'm no telepath. Bey!

What'll I DO?

I h ad no answer for him. The ship screamed, and I hit the dirt. W ell, I

didn't hit it; I allowed myself to collapse. I was on the way down when

Bellamy looked at me, and in the next instant the Drunkar d's W alk spun

end for end, shrieking. The nos e gouge d a narrow furr ow in the soil, but the landing legs

came do wn hard , dug deep, and held. Bellamy sailed high over my head,

and I lost him in the sky .

The ship poised, braced against he r landing

legs, taking spin from her dying flywheels. Then she jumped. The landing legs acted like springs, hurling her somersaulting into

the air .

She la nded and jumped again, screaming, tumbling , like a

wounded jackrabbit trying to flee the hunter .

I wanted to cry .

I'd done it; I

was guilty; no ship should be killed like this. Somewhere in her belly the gyro scope flywheels were coming to rest

in a tangle of torn metal. The ship landed and rolled. Bouncing. Rolling. I watched as she

receded, and finally the Drunkar d's W alk c ame to rest, d ead, far across

the blue-green veldt. I stood up and started walking. I p assed Bellamy on the way .

If you'd like to imagine what he lo oked

like, go right ahead. It was nearly dark when I reached the ship. What I saw was a ship on its si de, with one landing leg up. It's hard

to dam age hul lmetal, especia lly at the low subsonic sp eeds the

Drunkar d's W alk was making when she did all that jumping. I found the

air lock and climbed in. The lifesystem was a scramble d mess. Parts of it, the most ru gged

parts, were almost intact, but t hin partitions between sections showed

ragged, gaping holes. The flywheel must have passed here. The auto doc was near the back. It looked intact, and I needed it badly

to ta ke the pain from my hands and put them back together .

I'd as soon

have stepped into a Bandersnatch's mouth. Y ou can get the willies

thinking about all the things that can go wrong with a 'doc. The bouncing flywheel hadn't reached the control cone. Things l ighted u p when I turned on the communications board. I had

to m anipulate switches with the heel of my hand. I turned on everything

that looked like it had somethin g to do with communications, rolled all

the v olume knobs to maximum between my palms, and let it go at that,

making no attempt to aim a com laser , talk into anything, or tap out code. If anyth ing was working on that board -- and something was delivering

power , even if the machinery to use it was damaged -- then the base

would g et just the impression I wanted them to have. Someone was

trying to communicate with broken equipment. So I settled myself in the control cone and smoked. Using my toes

was less painful than trying to hold a cigarette in my fingers. I

remembered how shocked Sharrol had been the first time she saw me

with a cigarette between my toes. Flatlanders are less than limber .

Eventually someone came. I p icked up the open bulb of gla ss that Mar go had called a snifter and

held it before m e, watching the play of light in the red-brown fluid. It

was a pleasure to use my hands. T welve hours ago they had been useless, swollen, and blackening --

like things long dead. "T o the hero's return," said Mar go. Her green eyes sparkled. She

raised the snifter in a toast and drank. "I've bee n in a 'd oc the past twel ve hours," I said. "Fill me in. A re we

going to get Lloobee back?"

"Lloobee and your friend, too." Satisfaction was rich in her voice;

she was almost purring. "The kidnappers settled for a contract of

amnesty and antipublicity , with a penalty of ten thousand stars to the

man who causes their names to be published anywhere in known space. Penalty to apply to every man, woman, and child on Gummidgy -- you

and me included .

They insisted we list the names. Did you kn ow there

are half a million people on Gummidgy?"

"That's a big contract."

"But the y never made a tenth star .

They were lucky to get what they

did. W ith their ship wrecked, they're trapped here. Lloobee and your

friend should be arriving any minute. "And Bellamy's death should satisfy Kdatlyno honor ."

"Mm hm." She nodded, happy , relaxed. What an actress she could

have been!

How nice it would have been to play along...

"I didn't kill him deliberately ," I said. "Y ou told me."

"That leaves us only one loose end."

She looked up over the snifter .

"What's that?"

"Persuading Emil to leave you out of it."

She drop ped the snifter .

It hit the indoor grass rug and rolled u nder

the cof fe e table while Mar go stared at me as at a stranger .

Finally she

said, "Y ou're hard to read. How long have you known?"

"Practically since your friends took Lloobee. But we weren't sure

until we knew Bellamy really had him. Y ou'd lied about his ship."

"I se e." Her voice was flat, and the sparkle in her eyes was a long

for gotten thing. "Emil Home knows. Who else?"

"Just me. And Emil owes me one. T wo, really ."

"W ell," she said. "W ell." And she went to pick up the snifter .

Right

then, the rest of it fell into place. "Y ou're old."

"Y ou're hard to fool, Bey ."

"I've ne ver seen you move like that before. It's funny; I can tell a

man's ag e within a few decades, but I can't tell a woman's. Why don't

you move like that all the time?"

She laughed. "And have everyone know I'm a crone?

Not likely .

So I

hesitate when I m ove, and I kno ck against things occasionally , and catch

my heel on rugs...Every woman learns to do that, usually long after she's

learned not to. T oo much poise is a giveaway ." She stood with her feet

apart, hands on her hips, challen ging. Now her poise was tremendous, a

shocking, glowing dignity .

Perhaps she had been an actress, so long ago

that her most devoted admirers had died or for gotten her .

"So I'm old. W ell?"

"W ell, now I know why you joined the kidnappers. Y ou and Bellamy

and the rest; you all think alike. No persuasion needed."

She shook her head in mock sadness. "How you simplify .

Do you

really think that everyone over two hundred and fifty is identic al under

the skull?

"Piet Lindstrom disliked the idea from the beginning, but he needed

the mon ey .

He's been of f booste rspice for years. W arren's loved hunting

all his life. He hadn't hunted a civilized animal since the kzi nti wars. T anya was in love with Larch. She'll probably try to kill you."

"And you?"

"Larch would have gone ahead without me. Anything could have

happened. So I s aw to it that I was flying Lloobee's ship, and I declared

myself in."

She was so dam n vivid. I'd th ought she was beautiful before, but

now , with the little-girl mannerisms gone, she glowed. I thought of the brandy .

"Y ou loved him, too," I said. "I'm his mother ."

That jol ted me to my toes. "The brandy ," I said. "What was in the

brandy?"

"Something I developed long ago. Hormones, hypnotics...a love

potion. Y ou're g oing to love me .

T wo years from now I'll abandon you

like an empty b eer bulb. Y ou won't be able to live without me." Her

smile was cruel and cold. "A fitting revenge."

"Finagle help me!" I hadn't drunk the brandy , of course, but wh at the

hell...Then it penetrated. T wo years .

"Y ou know about Sharrol?"

"Y es."

"I didn't drink the brandy ."

"There's nothing in it but alcohol."

W e grin ned at each other across the length of the couch. The n the

ghost was between us, and I said, "What about Bellamy?"

"Larch took his chances. He knew what he was doing."

"I can't understa nd that." I cou ldn't understand why she didn't hate

me. W orse, all m y questions were sure to be the wrong ones. I picked

one that might be right and asked, "What was he doing?"

"Dying. He'd run out of things to do. He'd have taken greater and

greater chances until one of them killed him. One day I'll reach the same

point. Maybe I'll know it in time."

"What will you do then?"

"Don't ask me," she said with finality .

I never did again. "And what will you do now?"

"I have an idea, " she said caref ully , watching me. "Sharrol Janss is

bearing children on Earth for you to raise. I can't have children myself. My ovaries have long since run out of ova. But is there any reason why

we shouldn't spend two years together?"

"I can't think of any .

But what would you get out of it?"

"I've never known a crashlander ."

"And you're curious."

"Y es. Don't be of fended."

"I'm not. Y our flattery has turned my head." After all, there were two

years to fill, and Mar go was lovely .

I wa s alo ne on Jinx two years la ter , waiting for the next ship to E arth. As it turned out, Lloobee's late st works were there, too, on loan to the

Institute of Knowledge. T o the Institute I went, to see what my protege

had produced. Seeing them was a shock. That wa s the first shock: that they should make sense when seen. T ouch sc ulpture is to be felt: it h as no meaning otherwise. But th ese were

busts and statuettes. Someone had even advised Lloobee on color .

I looked closer .

First: a group o f human statuettes, some seated, some standing, all

staring with great intensity at a flat pane of clear glass. Second: a pair of heads. Huma n, humane, handsome, noble as all

hell, but child's play to recogniz e nonetheless. I touched them, and they

felt like warm human faces. My face and Emil's. Third and last: a group of fo ur , a woman and three men. They

showed a definite kinship with the ape and a second admixture of what

must have been demon blood. Y et they were quite recognizable. Three

felt like human faces, though somehow repellent. But the fourth felt

horribly dead. The kid nappers had neglected to include Lloobee in their con tract. And Llo obee has been talking to newsmen, telling them all about how

his latest works had come to be. T H E B O R D E R L A N D O F S O L

Three months on Jinx, marooned. I pla yed tourist for the first couple of months. I never saw the high-

pressure regions around the ocean because the only way dow n would

have be en with a safari of hun ting tanks. But I traveled the habitable

lands on either side of the sea, t he East Band civilized, the W es t Band a

developing front ier .

I wandered the East End in a vacuum suit, toured the

distilleries and other vacuum in dustries, and stared up into th e orange

vastness of Primary , Jinx's big twin brother .

I s pent most of t he second month between the Institute of Know ledge

and the Camelot Hotel. T ourism had palled. For me that's unusual. I'm a born tourist. But --

Jinx's on e point seven eight gravities put an unreasonable restri ction

on elegance and ingenuity in architectural design. The buildings in the

habitable bands all look alike: squat and massive. The East and W est Ends, the vacuum regions, aren't that dif ferent

from any industrialized moon. I never developed much of an interest in

touring factories. As for the ocean shorelines, the only vehicles that go there go to hunt

Bandersnatchi. The Bandersnatchi are freaks: enormous, i ntelligent

white slugs the size of mountains. They hunt the tanks. There are rigid

restrictions to the equipment th e tanks can carry , covenants es tablished

between men and Bandersnatch i, so that the Bandersnatchi win about

forty percent of the duels. I wanted no part of that. And all my tour ing had to be done in three times the gravity o f my

homeworld. I spent the third month in Sirius Mater , and most of that i n the

Camelot Hotel, which has gravity generators in most of the rooms. When

I w ent out, I ro de a floating contour couch. I passed like a n invalid

among the Jinxians, who were amused. Or was that my imagination?

I wa s in a hall of the Institute of Knowledge when I came on Carlos

W u running his fingertips over a Kdatlyno touch sculpture. A da rk, slender man with narro w shoulders and straight black hair ,

Carlos w as lithe as a monkey in any normal gravity , but on Jinx he used

a t ravel couch exactly like mine .

He studied the busts with his head tilted

to one side. And I studied the familiar back, sure it couldn't be him. "Carlos, aren't you supposed to be on Earth?"

He jump ed. But when the couch spun around, he was grinning. " Bey!

I might say the same for you."

I admitted it. "I was headed for Earth, but when all those ships started

disappearing around Sol system, the captain changed his mind and

steered f or Siriu s. Nothing any o f the passengers could do about it. What

about you?

How are Sharrol and the kids?"

"Sharrol's fine, the kids are fine, and they're all waiting for you to

come home." His fingers wer e still trailing over the Lloob ee touch

sculpture called Her oes , feeling the warm, fleshy textures. Her oes was a

most un usual touch sculpture; there were visual as well as textural

ef fects. Carlos studied the two h uman busts, then said, "That's your face,

isn't it?"

"Y eah."

"Not that you ever looked that good in your life. How did a Kda tlyno

come to pick Be owulf Shaef fer as a classic hero?

W as it your name?

And

who's the other guy?"

"I'll tell you about it sometime. Carlos, what are you doing her e ?"

"I...left Earth a couple of weeks after Louis was born." He was

embarrassed. Why?

"I haven't been of f Earth in ten years. I needed the

break."

But he'd left ju st before I was supposed to get home. And...h adn't

someone once said that Carlos W u had a touch of the flatland phobia?

I

began to underst and what was w rong. "Carlos, you did Sharrol and me a

valuable favor ."

He laug hed without looking at me. "Men have killed other men for

such favors. I thought it was...tactful...to be gone when you came home."

Now I knew .

Carlos was here because the Fertility Board on Earth

would not favor me with a parenthood license. Y ou can't really blame the Board for using any excuse at all to reduce

the number of producing parents. I am an albino. Sharrol and I wanted

each other , but we both wanted children, and Sharrol can't leave Earth. She has the flatl and phobia, the fear of strange air and altered days and

changed gravity and black sky beneath her feet. The only solution we'd found had been to ask a good friend to help. Carlos W u is a registered genius with an incredible resistance to

disease and injury .

He carries a n unlimited parenthood license , one of

sixty-odd among Earth's eightee n billion people. He gets similar of fers

every week...but he is a good friend, and he'd agreed. In the last two

years Sharrol and Carlos had h ad two children, who were now waiting

on Earth for me to become their father .

I fel t on ly gratitude for what he'd done for us. "I for give you your

odd idea s on tact," I said magna nimously .

"Now .

As long as we 're stuck

on Jinx, may I show you around?

I've met some interesting people."

"Y ou always do." He hesitated, then, "I'm not actually stuck on Jinx. I've been of fered a ride home. I may be able to get you in on it."

"Oh, really?

I didn't think there were any ships going to Sol system

these days. Or leaving."

"This ship belongs to a governm ent man. Ever heard of a Sigmund

Ausfaller?"

"That sounds vaguely ...W ait!

S top!

The last time I saw Sigmund

Ausfaller , he had just put a bomb aboard my ship!"

Carlos blinked at me. "Y ou're kidding."

"I'm not."

"Sigmund Ausfaller is in the Bureau of Alien Af fairs. Bombing

spacecraft isn't one of his functions."

"Maybe he was of f duty ," I said viciously .

"W ell, it doesn't really sound li ke you'd want to share a spacecraft

cabin with him. Maybe -- "

But I'd thought of something else, and now there just wasn't any way

out of it. "No, let's meet him. Where do we find him?"

"The bar of the Camelot," said Carlos. Reclining luxuriously on our travel couches, we slid on air cushions

through Sirius Mater .

The orange trees that lined the walks were

foreshortened by gravity; their trunks were thick cones, and the oranges

on the branches were not much bigger than Ping-Pong balls. Their w orld had altered them, e ven as our worlds have altered you

and me. And un der ground civilization and point six gravities have made

of m e a pale stick figure of a man, tall and attenuated. The Jin xians we

passed w ere short and wide, designed like bricks, men and women both. Among them the occasional of fworlder seemed as shockingly dif ferent

as a Kdatlyno or a Pierson's puppeteer .

And so we came to the Camelot. The Camelot is a low , two-story structure that sprawls like a cubistic

octopus across several acres of downtown Sirius Mater .

Most

of fworlders stay here for the gravity control in the rooms and corridors

and for access to the Institute of Knowledge, the finest museum and

research complex in human space. The Camelot Bar carries one Earth gravity throughout. W e left our

travel co uches in the vestibule and walked in like men. Jinxians were

walking in like bouncing rubbe r bricks, with big happy grins on their

wide fac es. Jinxians love low gravity .

A good many migrate to other

worlds. W e spotted Ausfaller easily: a rounded, moon-faced flatlander with

thick, dark wavy hair and a thin black mustache. He stood as we

approached. "B eowulf Shaef fer !" he beamed. "How good to see you

again!

I believe it has been eight years or thereabouts. How have you

been?"

"I lived," I told him. Carlos r ubbed his hands together briskly .

"Sigmund!

Why did you

bomb Bey's ship?"

Ausfaller blinke d in surprise. " Did he tell you it was his shi p?

It

wasn't. H e was thinking of steal ing it. I reasoned that he would not steal

a ship with a hidden time bomb aboard."

"But ho w did you come into it ?" Carlos slid into the booth beside

him. "Y ou're not police. Y ou're in the Extremely Foreign Relations

Bureau."

"The ship belonged to General Products Corporation, which is owned

by Pierson's puppeteers, not human beings."

Carlos turned on me. "Bey!

Shame on you."

"Damn i t!

They were trying to blackmail me into a suicide mis sion!

And Au sfaller le t them get away with it!

And that's the least co nvincing

exhibition of tact I've ever seen!"

"Good thing they soundproof these booths," said Carlos. "Let's

order ."

Soundproofing f ield or not, people were staring. I sat down. When

our drinks came, I drank deeply .

Why had I mentioned the bomb at all?

Ausfaller was saying, "W ell, C arlos, have you changed your mind

about coming with me?"

"Y es, if I can take a friend."

Ausfaller frowned and looked at me. "Y ou wish to reach Earth, too?"

I'd made up my mind. "I don't think so. In fact, I'd like to talk you out

of taking Carlos."

Carlos said, "Hey!"

I ov errode him. "Ausfaller , do you know who Carlos is?

He h ad an

unlimited parenthood license at the age of eighteen. Eighteen!

I don't

mind you risking your own life; in fact, I love the idea. But his?"

"It's not that big a risk!" Carlos snapped. "Y eah?

What has Ausfaller got that eight other ships didn't have?"

"T wo th ings," Ausfaller said patiently .

"One is that we will be

incoming. Six of the eight ships that vanished were leaving Sol system. If there are pirates around Sol, t hey must find it much easier to locate an

outgoing ship."

"They caught two incoming. T wo ships, fifty crew members and

passengers, gone. Poof!"

"They would not take me so ea sily ," Ausfaller boasted. "The Hobo

Kelly i s deceptive. It seems to be a car go and passenger ship, but it is a

warship, armed and capable of thirty gees acceleration. In normal space

we can run from anything we can't fight. W e are assuming pirates, are we

not?

Pirates would insist on robbing a ship before they destroy it."

I was intrigued. "Why?

Why a disguised warship?

Are you hoping

you'll be attacked?"

"If there are actually pirates, yes , I hope to be attacked. But not when

entering Sol system. W e plan a substitution. A quite ordinary ca r go craft

will land on Earth, take on car go of some value, and depart for

W underland on a straight-line course. My ship will replace it before it

has pass ed throu gh the asteroids. So you see, there is no risk of losing

Mr .

W u's precious genes."

Palms fl at to the table, arms str aight, Carlos stood looming over us. "Dif fidently I raise the point that they are my futzy genes and I'll do what

I fut zy please w ith them!

Bey , I' ve already had my share of children, and

yours, too!"

"Peace, Carlos. I didn't mean to step on any of your inalie nable

rights." I turned to Ausfaller .

" I still don't see why these disappearing

ships should interest the Extremely Foreign Relations Bureau."

"There were alien passengers aboard some of the ships."

"Oh."

"And w e have wondered if the pirates themselves are a liens. Certainly they have a technique not known to humanity .

Of six outgoing

ships, five vanished after rep orting that they were about to enter

hyperdrive."

I w histl ed. "They can precipitate a ship out of hyperdrive?

That's

impossible. Isn't it?

Carlos?"

Carlos's mouth twisted. "Not if it's being done. But I don't under stand

the princ iple. If the ships were j ust disappearing, that'd be dif ferent. Any

ship does that if it goes too deep into a gravity well on hyperdrive."

"Then...maybe i t isn't pirates at all. Carlos, could there be living

beings in hyperspace, actually eating the ships?"

"For all of me, t here could. I do n't know everything, Bey , contrary to

popular opinion." But after a m inute heshook his head. "I don't buy it. I

might b uy an uncharted mass on the fringes of Sol system. S hips that

came too near in hyperdrive would disappear ."

"No," said Ausfaller .

"No single mass could have caused all of the

disappearances. Charter or not , a planet is bounded by gravity and

inertia. W e ran computer simulations. It would have taken at least three

lar ge m asses, all unknown, all moving into heavy trade routes

simultaneously ."

"How lar ge?

Mars size or better?"

"So you have been thinking about this, too."

Carlos smiled. "Y eah. It may sound impossible, but it isn't. It's only

improbable. There are unbelievable amounts of garbage out there beyond

Neptune. Four known planets and endless chunks of ice and stone and

nickel-iron."

"Still, it is most improbable."

Carlos nodded. A silence fell. I w as still think ing about monsters in hyperspace. The lovely thing

about th at hypothesis was that y ou couldn't even estimate a probability .

W e knew too little. Humanity has been using hyper drive for almost four hundred years

now .

Few ships have disappeare d in that time, except during wars. Now

eight ships in ten months, all around Sol system. Suppose one hyperspace beast had discovered ships in this region,

say duri ng one of the Man-Kzin W ars?

He'd gone to get his friends. Now

they we re preyi ng around Sol s ystem. The flow of ships arou nd Sol is

greater t han that around any th ree colony stars. But if more monsters

came, they'd surely have to move on to the other colonies. I co uldn't imagine a defense ag ainst such things. W e might have to

give up interstellar travel. Ausfaller said, "I would be glad if you would change your mind and

come with us, Mr .

Shaef fer ."

"Um?

Are you sure you want me on the same ship with you?"

"Oh, emphatically!

How else may I be sure that you have not hidden

a bo mb aboard?" Ausfaller laug hed. "Also, we can use a qualified pilot. Finally , I would like the chance to pick your brain, Beowulf Shaef fer .

Y ou have an odd facility for doing my job for me."

"What do you mean by that?"

"General Produc ts used blackmail in persuading you to do a close

orbit around a neutron star .

Y ou learned something about their

homeworld -- we still do not know what it was -- and blackmailed them

back. W e know that blackmail contracts are a normal part of p uppeteer

business practice. Y ou earned their respect. Y ou have dealt with them

since. Y ou have dealt also with Outsiders without friction. But it was

your handling of the Lloobee kidnapping that I found impressive."

Carlos w as sitting at attention. I hadn't had a chance to tell him about

that one yet. I grinned and said, "I'm proud of that myself."

"W ell, you should be. Y ou did m ore than retrieve known space's top

Kdatlyno touch sculptor: you did it with honor , killing one of their

number and leaving Lloobee f ree to pursue the others with publicity .

Otherwise the Kdatlyno would have been annoyed."

Helping Sigmund Ausfaller had been the farthest thing from my

thoughts for these past eight years, yet suddenly I felt damn good. Maybe

it was the way Carlos was listening. It takes a lot to impress Carlos W u. Carlos said, "If you thought it was pirates, you'd come a long,

wouldn't you, Bey?

After all, they probably can't find incoming ships."

"Sure."

"And you don't really believe in hyperspace monsters."

I hedged. "Not if I hear a bette r explanation. The thing is, I'm not

sure I believe in supertechnological pirates, either .

What about those

wandering masses?"

Carlos p ursed h is lips, said, "Al l right. The solar system has a good

number of planets -- at least a dozen so far discovered, four of them

outside the major singularity around Sol."

"And not including Pluto?"

"No, we think of Pluto as a loos e moon of Neptune. It runs Neptune,

Persephone, Ca ina, Antenora, Ptolemea , in order of distance from the

sun. And the or bits aren't flat to the plane of the system. Perse phone is

tilted at 120 degrees to the sys tem and retrograde. If they find another

planet out there, they'll call it Judecca ."

"Why?"

"Hell. T he four innermost divisions of Dante's hell. They form a

great ice plain with sinners frozen into it."

"Stick to the point," said Ausfaller .

"Start with the c ometary halo," Carlos told me. "It's very thin: about

one comet per spherical volume of the Earth's orbit. Mass is denser going

inward: a few planets, some inner comets, some chunks of ice and rock,

all in sk ewed or bits and still spr ead pretty thin. Inside Neptune there are

lots of planets and asteroids an d more flattening of orbits to conform

with So l's rotation. Outside Neptune space is vast and empty .

There

could be uncharted planets. Singularities to swallow ships."

Ausfaller was indignant. "But fo r three to move into main trade lanes

simultaneously?"

"It's not impossible, Sigmund."

"The probability -- "

"Infinitesimal, r ight. Bey , it's da mn near impossible. Any sane man

would assume pirates."

It h ad been a long time since I had seen Sharrol. I was s orely

tempted. "Ausfaller , have you traced the sale of any of the loot?

Have

you gotten any ransom notes?" Convince me!

Ausfaller threw back his head and laughed. "What's funny?"

"W e have hundreds of ransom n otes. Any mental deficient can write

a ransom note, and these disappearances have had a good deal of

publicity .

The demands were a fakes. I wish one or another had been

genuine. A son of the Patriarch of Kzin was aboard W ayfar er when she

disappeared. As for loot -- hm m. There has been a fall in the black

market prices of boosterspice and gem woods. Otherwise -- 2' He

shrugged. "There has been no sign of the Barr originals or the Midas

Rock or any o f the more conspicuous treasures aboard the missing

ships."

"Then you don't know one way or another ."

"No. W ill you go with us?"

"I haven't decided yet. When are you leaving?"

They'd be taking of f tomorrow morning from the East End. That gave

me time to make up my mind. After di nner I went back to my room, feeling depressed. Carlo s was

going, th at was clear enough. Hardly my fault...but he was here on Jinx

because he'd done me and Sharrol a lar ge favor .

If he was killed going

home...

A ta pe f rom Sha rrol was waiting in my room. There were pictur es of

the c hildren, T anya and Louis, and shots of the apartment she'd found us

in the T win Peaks arcology , and much more. I r an through it three times. Th en I called Ausfaller's room. I t had

been just too futzy long. I cir cled Jinx once on the way out. I've always done that, even back

when I was fly ing for Nakamura Lines, and no passenger has ever

objected. Jinx is the clos e moon of a gas giant planet more massive then

Jupiter a nd smaller than Jupiter because its core has been compressed to

degenerate matter .

A billion years ago Jinx and Primary were even

closer , b efore tidal drag moved them apart. This same tidal force had

earlier lo cked Ji nx's rotation to P rimary and forced the moon in to an egg

shape, a prolate spheroid. Whe n the moon moved outward, its shape

became more nearly spherical, but the cold rock surface resisted change. That is why the ocean of Jinx rings its waist, beneath an atmosphere

too c ompressed and too hot to b reathe, whereas the points nearest to and

farthest from Primary , the East and W est Ends, actually rise out of the

atmosphere. From sp ace Jinx looks like God's Own Easter Egg: the Ends bone

white tinged with yellow , then t he brighter glare from rings of glittering

ice f ields at the limits of the atmosphere, then the varying blu es of an

Earthlike world, increasingly overlaid with the white frosting of cloud as

the e yes move in ward, until the waist of the planet-moon is gird led with

pure white. The ocean never shows at all. I took us once around and out. Sirius has its own share of floating miscellaneous matter cluttering

the path to interstellar space. I stayed at the controls for most of five days

for that reason and because I wanted to get the feel of an unfamiliar ship. Hobo Kelly was a belly-landing job, thre e hundred feet long, of

triangular cross section. Beneath an uptilted, forward-thrusting nose were

big clam shell do ors for car go. S he had adequate belly jets, and a much

lar ger fusion motor at the tail, and a line of windows indicating cabins. Certainly she looked harmless enough, and certainly there was deception

involved. The cabin should hav e held forty or fifty , but there w as room

only for four .

The rest of what should have been cabin space was only

windows with holograph projections in them. The drive ran sure and smooth up to a maximum at ten gravitie s: not

a lot for a ship designed to haul massive car go. The cabin gra vity held

without putting out more than a fraction of its power .

When Jinx and

Primary were invisible against the stars, when Sirius was so distant that I

could lo ok direc tly at it, I turned to the hidden control panel Ausfaller

had unlo cked fo r me. Ausfaller w oke up, found me doing that, and began

showing me which did what. He had a big X-ray laser and some smaller laser cannon se t for

dif ferent frequencies. He had four self-guided fusion bombs. He had a

telescope so good that the ostensible ship's telescope was only a finder

for it. He had deep radar .

And none of it showed beyond the discolored hull. Ausfaller was armed for Bandersnatchi. I felt mixed emotions. it

seemed we could fight anything and run from it, too. But what kind of

enemy was he expecting?

An throu gh those four weeks in hyperdrive, while we drove through

the B lind Spot at three days to t he light-year , the topic of the ship eaters

reared its disturbing head. Oh, we spoke o f other things: of music and art and of the latest

techniques in animation, the com puter programs that let you m ake your

own hol o flicks almost for lunc h money .

W e told stories. I told Carlos

why the Kdatly no Lloobee had made busts of me and Emil Home. I

spoke o f the only time the Pie rson's Puppeteers had ever paid of f the

guarantee on a G eneral Products hull, after the supposedly inde structible

hull had been de stroyed by antimatter .

Ausfaller had some good ones...a

lot m ore stories than he was allowed to tell, I gathered, from th e way he

had to search his memory every time. But we kept coming back to the ship eaters. "It boils down t o three possibilities," I decided. "Kzinti, puppe teers,

and humans."

Carlos guf fawed. "Puppeteers?

Puppeteers wouldn't have the guts!"

"I threw them in because t hey might have some interest in

manipulating the interstellar stock market. Look, our hypothetical pirates

have set up an e mbar go, cutting Sol System of f from the outside world. The pup peteers have the capital to take advantage of what that does to

the market. And they need money .

For their migration."

"The puppeteers are philosophical cowards."

"That's right. They wouldn't risk robbing the ships or coming

anywhere near them. Suppose they can make them disappear from a

distance?"

Carlos wasn't laughing now .

"That's easier than dropping them out of

hyperspace to rob them. It wouldn't take more than a great bi g gravity

generator ...and we've never known the limits of puppeteer technology ."

Ausfaller asked, "Y ou think this is possible?"

"Just barely .

The same goes for the kzinti. The kzinti are fero cious

enough. T rouble is, if we ever learned they were preying on o ur ships,

we'd rai se plupe rfect hell. The k zinti know that, and they know we can

beat them. T ook them long enough, but they learned."

"So you think it's humans," said Carlos. "Y eah. If it's pirates."

The piracy theory still looked shaky .

Spectrum telescopes had not

even fou nd concentrations of ship's metals in the space where they have

vanished. W ould pirates steal the whole ship?

If the hyperdri ve motor

was still intact after the attack, the rifled ship could be launc hed into

infinity , but could pirates count on that happening eight time s out of

eight?

And none of the missing ships had called for help via hyperwave. I'd neve r believed pirates. Space pirates have existed, but they died

without successors. Intercepting a spacecraft was too dif ficult. They

couldn't make it pay .

Ships fly themselves in hyperdrive. All a pilot need do is watch for

green ra dial line s in the mass-s ensor .

But he has to do that fr equently ,

because the mass sensor is a psionic device; it must be watched by a

mind, not another machine. As the narrow green line that marked Sol grew longer , I became

abnormally cons cious of the de bris around Sol System. I spen t the last

twelve hours of the flight at the controls, chain-smoking with my feet. I

should a dd that I do that normal ly when I want both hands free, but now

I d id it t o annoy Ausfaller .

I'd seen the way his eyes bugged the first time

he saw me take a drag from a cigarette between my toes. Flatla nders are

less than limber .

Carlos and Ausfaller shared the control room with me as we

penetrated Sol's cometary halo. They were relieved to be nearin g the end

of a long trip. I was nervous. "C arlos, just how lar ge a mass would it take

to make us disappear?"

"Planet size, Mars and up. Beyond that it depends on how clos e you

get and how den se it is. If it's d ense enough, it can be less massive and

still flip you out of the universe. But you'd see it in the mass sensor ."

"Only fo r an instant...and not then, if it's turned of f. What if someone

turned on a giant gravity generator as we went past?"

"For what?

They couldn't rob the ship. Where's their profit?"

"Stocks."

But Ausfaller was shaking hi s head. "The expense of suc h an

operation would be enormous. No group of pirates would hav e enough

additional capita l on hand to make it worthwhile. Of the puppeteers I

might believe it."

Hell, he was right. No human that wealthy would need to turn pirate. The long green line marking Sol was almost touching the surface of

the mass sensor .

I said, "Breakout in ten minutes."

And the ship lurched savagely .

"Strap d own!" I yelled, and glan ced at the hyperdrive monitors. The

motor was drawing no power , and the rest of the dials were going

bananas. I act ivated the w indows. I'd kept them turned of f in byperspac e lest

my flatlander passengers go mad watching the Blind Spot. The screens

came on, and I saw stars. W e were in normal space. "Futz!

They got us anyway ." C arlos sounded neither frightened nor

angry , but awed. As I rais ed the hidden panel Ausfaller cried, "W ait!" I ignored h im. I

threw .

the red s witch, and Hobo Kelly lu rched again as her belly blew

of f. Ausfaller began cursing in some dead flatlander language. Now tw o-thirds of Hobo Kelly rec eded, slowly turning. What was

left must show as what she was: a No. 2 General Produ cts hull,

puppeteer -built, a slender transparent spear three hundred feet long and

twenty f eet wide , with instruments of war clustered along what was now

her belly .

Scree ns that had been blank came to life. And I lit the main

drive and ran it up to full power .

Ausfaller spoke in rage and veno m. "Shaef fer , you idiot, you cow ard!

W e run without knowing what we run from. Now they know exactly

what we are. What chance that they will follow us now?

This ship was

built for a specific purpose, and you have ruined it!"

"I've fre ed your special instruments," I pointed out. "Why don't you

see what you can find?" Meanwhile I could get us the futz out of here. Ausfaller became very busy .

I watched what he was getting on

screens at my si de of the control panel. W as anything chasing us ?

They'd

find us hard to catch and harder to digest. They could hardly have been

expecting a General Products hull. Since the puppeteers stopped making

them, the price of used GP hulls has gone out of sight. There w ere ships out there. Au sfaller got a close-up of them: three

space tugs of the Belter type, shaped like thick saucers, equip ped with

oversized drives and powerful electromagnetic generators. Be lters use

them to tug nickel-iron asteroids to where somebody wants the ore. W ith

those heavy drives they could probably catch us, but would t hey have

adequate cabin gravity?

They weren't trying. They se emed to be neither following nor

fleeing. And they looked harmless enough. But Ausfaller was doing a job on them with his other instruments. I

approved. Hobo Kelly had looked peaceful enough a moment ago. Now

her belly bristled with weaponry .

The tugs could be equally deceptive. From behind me Carlos asked, "Bey?

What happened?"

"How the futz would I know?"

"What do the instruments show?"

He m ust mean the hyperdrive complex. A couple of the indic ators

had gone wild; five more were dead. I said so. "And the drive's drawing

no power at all. I've never heard of anything like this. Carlos , it's still

theoretically impossible."

"I'm...not so sure of that. I want to look at the drive."

"The access tubes don't have cabin gravity ."

Ausfaller had abandoned the receding tugs. He'd found what looked

to be a lar ge comet, a ball of frozen gases a good distance to the side. I

watched as he ran the deep radar over it. No fleet of robber ships lurked

behind it. I asked, "Did you deep-radar the tugs?"

"Of cou rse. W e can examine the tapes in detail later .

I saw nothing. And nothing has attacked us since we left hyperspace."

I'd been driving us in a random direction. Now I turned us to ward

Sol, the brightest star in the heavens. Those lost ten minutes in

hyperspace would add about three days to our voyage. "If t here was a n enemy , you frightened him away .

Shaef fer , this

mission and this ship have cost my department an enormous sum, and we

have learned nothing at all."

"Not quite nothing," said Carlo s. "I still want to see the hyperdrive

motor .

Bey , would you run us down to one gee?"

"Y eah. But...miracles make me nervous, Carlos."

"Join the club."

W e craw led along an access tub e just a little bigger than a big man's

shoulders, between the hyperdrive motor housing and the surrounding

fuel tankage. Carlos reached an inspection window .

He looked in. He

started to laugh. I inquired as to what was so futzy funny .

Still chording, Carlos moved on. I crawled after him and looked in. There was no hyperdrive motor in the hyperdrive motor housing. I went in through a repair hatch and stood in the cylindrical housing,

looking about me. Nothing. Not even an exit hole. The superconducting

cables and the m ounts for the m otor had been sheared so cleanly that the

cut ends looked like little mirrors. Ausfaller insisted on seeing for himself. Carlos and I waited in the

control r oom. Fo r a while Carlo s kept bursting into fits of giggles. Then

he got a dreamy , faraway look that was even more annoying. I wond ered what was going on in his head and reached the

uncomfortable conclusion that I could never know .

Some yea rs ago I

took IQ tests, h oping to get a parenthood license that way .

I am not a

genius. I k new only that Carlos had th ought of something I hadn't, an d he

wasn't telling, and I was too proud to ask. Ausfaller had no pride. He came back looking like he'd seen a ghost. "Gone!

Where could it go?

How could it happen?"

"That I can answ er ," Carlos said happily .

"It takes an extremely high

gravity gradient. The motor hit that, wrapped space around itself, and

took of f at some higher level of hyperdrive, one we can't reach. By now

it could be well on its way to the edge of the universe."

I said, "Y ou're s ure, huh?

An hour ago there wasn't a theory to cover

any of this."

"W ell, I'm sure o ur motor's gone. Beyond that it gets a little hazy .

But

this is one well-established mo del of what happens when a ship hits a

singularity .

At a lower gravity gradient the motor would take the whole

ship with it, then strew atoms of the ship along its path till there was

nothing left but the hyperdrive field itself."

"Ugh."

Now Carlos burned with the lov e of an idea. "Sigmund, I want to use

your hyperwave .

I could still be wrong, but there are things we can

check."

"If we are still within the singu larity of some mass, the hyperwave

will destroy itself."

"Y eah. I think it's worth the risk."

W e'd dr opped out, or been knocked out, ten minutes short of the

singularity around Sol. That added up to sixteen light-hours of normal

space, plus almost five light-hours from the edge of the singularity

inward to Earth. Fortunately , hyperwave is instantaneous, and every

civilized system keeps a hyperwave relay station just outside the

singularity .

Southworth Station would relay our message inward by laser ,

get the return message the same way , and pass it on to us ten hours later .

W e turned on the hyperwave, and nothing exploded. Ausfaller made his own call first, to Ceres, to get the registry of the

tugs we'd spotted. Afterward Ca rlos called Elephant's computer setup in

New Y ork, using a code numbe r Elephant doesn't give to many people. "I'll pay him back later .

Maybe with a story to go with it," he gloated. I lis tened as Ca rlos outlined his needs. He wanted full records on a

meteorite that had touched dow n in T unguska, Siberia, USSR, Earth, in

1908 A. D. He wanted a repris e on three models of the origin of the

universe or lack of same: the big bang, the cyclic universe, and the

steady state universe. He wanted data on collapsars. He wanted names,

career outlines, and addresse s for the best known students of

gravitational phenomena in Sol system. He was smiling when he clicked

of f. I said, "Y ou got me. I haven't the remotest idea what you're after ."

Still smiling, Carlos got up and went to his cabin to catch some sleep. I t urned of f the main thrust mo tor entirely .

When we were de ep in

Sol syst em, we could decelerate at thirty gravities. Meanwhile we were

carrying a hefty velocity picked up on our way out of Sirius system. Ausfaller stayed in the control room. Maybe his motive was the same

as mine. No police ships out here. W e could still be attacked. He s pent the tim e going through his pictures of the three mining tugs. W e didn't talk, but I watched. The tugs seemed ordinary enough. T elescopic photos showed no

suspicious breaks in the hulls, no hatches for guns. In the deep-radar scan

they sho wed like ghosts: we cou ld pick out the massive force-field rings,

the hollo w , equa lly massive drive tubes, the lesser densities of fuel tank

and life-support system. There were no gaps or shadows that shouldn't

have been there. By and by Ausfaller said, "Do you know what Hobo Kelly was

worth?"

I said I could make a close estimate. "It was worth my career .

I thought to destroy a pirate fleet with Hobo

Kelly .

Bu t my pilot fled. Fled!

What have I now , to show for my

expensive T rojan horse?"

I s uppre ssed the obvious answer , along with the plea that my first

responsibility was Carlos's life. Ausfaller wouldn't buy that. Instead,

"Carlos has something. I know him. He knows how it happened."

"Can you get it out of him?"

"I do n't know ." I could put it to Carlos that we'd be safer if we knew

what was out to get us. But Carlos was a flatlander .

It would color his

attitudes. "So," said Ausfaller .

"W e have only the unavailable knowledge in

Carlos's skull."

A weapon beyond human tec hnology had knocked me out of

hyperspace. I'd run. Of course I'd run .

Stayin g in the neigh borhood

would have been insane, said I t o myself, said I. But, unreasonab ly , I still

felt bad about it. T o A usfaller I s aid, "What about the mining tugs?

I can't under stand

what they're doing out here. In the Belt they use them to mov e nickel-

iron asteroids to industrial sites."

"It is the same h ere. Most of what they find is useless -- stony m asses

or balls of ice - - but what little metal there is, is valuable. They must

have it for building."

"For bui lding what?

What kind of people would live here?

Y ou m ight

as well set up shop in interstellar space!"

"Precisely .

There are no tourists, but there are research groups here

where sp ace is flat and empty a nd temperatures are near absolute zero. I

know that the Quicksilver Group was established here to study

hyperspace phenomena. W e do not understand hyperspace, even yet. Remember that we did not invent the hyperdrive; we bought it from an

alien race. Then there is a gene-tailoring laboratory trying to develop a

kind of tree that will grow on comets."

"Y ou're kidding."

"But they are se rious. A photosynthetic plant to use the chem icals

present in all comets...it would be very valuable. The whole cometary

halo co uld be seeded with oxygen-producing plants -- " Ausfaller

stopped abruptly , then, "Never mind. But all these groups need building

materials. It is cheaper to build out here than to ship everyth ing from

Earth or the Belt. The presence of tugs is not suspicious."

"But there was nothing else around us. Nothing at all."

Ausfaller nodded. When Carlos came to join us many hours later , blinking sleep out of

his eyes, I asked him, "Carlos, could the tugs have had anythi ng to do

with your theory?"

"I don't see how .

I've got half a n idea, and half an hour from now I

could look like a half-wit. The theory I want isn't even in fashion

anymore. Now that we know what the quasars are, everyone seems to

like the steady state hypothesis. Y ou know how that works: the t ension in

completely empty space produces more hydrogen atoms, forever .

The

universe has no beginning and no end." He looked stubborn. "But if I'm

right, th en I know where the s hips went to after being robbe d. That's

more than anyone else knows."

Ausfaller jumpe d on him. "W here are they?

Are the passe ngers

alive?"

"I'm sorry , Sigmund. They're all dead. There won't even be bodies to

bury ."

"What is it?

What are we fighting?"

"A grav itational ef fect. A sharp warping of space. A planet wouldn't

do that, and a battery of cabin gravity generators wouldn't do it; they

couldn't produce that sharply bounded a field."

"A collapsar ," Ausfaller suggested. Carlos grinned at him. "That would do it, but there are other

problems. A collapsar can't even form at less than around five solar

masses. Y ou'd think someone would have noticed something that big,

this close to Sol."

"Then what?

"

Carlos shook his head. W e would wait. The relay from Southworth St ation gave us registration for three

space tu gs, used and of varying ages, all three purchased two years ago

from IntraBelt Mining by the Sixth Congregational Church of Rodney .

"Rodney?"

But Carlos and Ausfaller wer e both chortling. "Belters do that

sometimes," Carlos told me. "It's a way of saying it's nobody's business

who's buying the ships."

"That's pretty funny , all right. But we still don't know who owns

them."

"They may be honest Belters. They may not."

Hard on the heels of the first cal l came the data Carlos had asked for ,

playing directly into the shipboard computer .

Carlos called up a list of

names and phone numbers: Sol system's preeminent students of gravity

and its ef fects, listed in alphabetical order .

An address caught my attention:

Julian Forwar d, #1 192326 Southworth Station .

A hyper wave relay tag. He was out here, somewhere in the enor mous

gap between Neptune's orbit an d the cometary belt, out here where the

hyperwave relay could function .

I looked for more Southworth Station

numbers. They were there:

Launcelot Starkey , #1844719 Southworth Station. Jill Luciano, #1844719 Southworth Station. Mariana W ilton, #1844719 Southworth Station. "These people," said Ausfaller .

"Y ou wish to discuss your theory

with one of them?"

"That's right. Sigmund, isn't 1844719 the tag for the Quick silver

Group?"

"I th ink so. I also think that the y are not within our reach now that

our hype rdrive is gone. The Qui cksilver Group was established in distant

orbit around Antenora, which is now on the other side of the sun. Carlos,

has it occurred to you that one of these people may have built the ship-

eating device?"

"What?...Y ou're right. It would take someone who knew something

about gr avity .

But I'd say the Quicksilver Group was beyond s uspicion. W ith upwards of ten thousand people at work, how could anyone hide

anything?"

"What about this Julian Forward?"

"Forward. Y eah. I've always wanted to meet him."

"Y ou know of him?

Who is he?"

"He use d to be with the Institu te of Knowledge on Jinx. I haven't

heard of him in years. He did so me work on the gravity waves from the

galactic core...w ork that turned out to be wrong. Sigmund, let's give him

a call."

"And ask him what?"

"Why ...?" Then Carlos remembe red the situation. "Oh. Y ou think he

might -- Y eah."

"How well do you know this man?"

"I kn ow him by reputation. He's quite famous. I don't see how such a

man could go in for mass murder ."

"Earlier you said that we were l ooking for a man skilled in the study

of gravitational phenomena."

"Granted."

Ausfaller sucked at his lower lip. Then, "Perhaps we can do no more

than talk to him. He could be on the other side of the sun and still head a

pirate fleet."

"No. That he could not."

"Think again," said Ausfaller .

"W e are outside the singularity o f Sol. A pirate fleet would surely include hyperdrive ships."

"If Julia n Forwa rd is the ship eater , he'll have to be nearby .

The, uh,

device won't move in hyperspace."

I s aid, "Carlos, what we don't know can kill us. W ill you quit pl aying

games." But he was smiling, shaking his head. Futz. "All right, we can

still check on Fo rward. Call him up and ask where he is!

Is he likely to

know you by reputation?"

"Sure. I'm famous, too."

"Okay .

I f he's close enough, we might even beg him for a ride h ome. The way things stand we'll be at the mercy of any hyperdrive ship for as

long as we're out here."

"I hope we are attacked," said Ausfaller .

"W e can outfight -- "

"But we can't outrun. They can dodge; we can't."

"Peace, you two. First things first." Carlos sat down at the hyper wave

controls and tapped out a number .

Suddenly Ausfa ller said, "Can y ou contrive to keep my name out of

this exchange?

If necessary you can be the ship's owner ."

Carlos lo oked around in surprise. Before he could answer , the screen

lit. I saw ash-blo nd hair cut in a Belter crest over a lean white face and

an impersonal smile. "Forward Station. Good evening."

"Good e vening. This is Carlos W u of Earth calling long distance. May I speak to Dr .

Julian Forward, please?"

"I'll see if he's available." The screen went on hold. In th e in terval C arlos burst out: "What kind of game are you playing

now?

How can I explain owning an armed, disguised warship?"

But I began to see what Ausfaller was getting at. I said, "Y ou'd want

to avoid explaining that, whatev er the truth was. Maybe he won't ask. I --

" I shut up because we were facing Forward. Julian Forward was a Jinxian, short and wide, with arms as thick as

legs and legs as thick as pillars. His skin was almost as black as his hair:

a Si rius suntan, probably main tained by sunlights. He perched on the

edge of a ma ssage chair .

"Carlos W u!" he said with flattering

enthusiasm. "Are you the same Carlos W u who solved the Sealeyharn

Limits problem?"

Carlos said he was. They went into a discussion of mathemat ics, a

possible application of Carlos's solution to another limits problem, I

gathered. I glanced at Ausfaller -- not obtrusively , because for Forward

he wasn 't suppo sed to exist -- and saw him pensively studying his side

view of Forward. "W ell," Forward said, "what can I do for you?"

"Julian F orward, meet Beowulf Shaef fer ," said Carlos. I bowed. "Bey

was giving me a lift home when our hyperdrive motor disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

I butted in for verisimilitude. "Disappeared, futzy right. The

hyperdrive motor casing is empty .

The motor supports are sheared of f. W e're stuck out here with no hyperdrive and no idea how it happened."

"Almost true," Carlos said happily .

"Dr .

Forward, I do have some

ideas as to what happened here. I'd like to discuss them with you."

"Where are you now?"

I pu lled our po sition and velocity from the computer and fla shed

them to Forward Station. I wasn't sure it was a good idea, but Ausfaller

had time to stop me, and he didn't. "Fine," said Forward's image. " It looks like you can get here a lot

faster th an you can get to Earth. Forward Station is ahead of you, within

twenty a. u. of your position. Y ou can wait here for the next ferry .

Better

than going on in a crippled ship."

"Good!

W e'll work out a course and let you know when to expect

us."

"I w elcome the c hance to meet C arlos W u." Forward gave us his own

coordinates and rang of f. Carlos turned. "All right, Bey .

Now you own an armed and disguised

warship. Y ou figure out where you got it."

"W e've got worse problems th an that. Forward Station is exactly

where the ship eater ought to be."

He nodded. But he was amused. "So what's our next move?

W e can't run from hyperdrive ships .

Not

now .

Is Forward likely to try to kill us?

"If we don't reac h Forward Station on schedule, he might send ships

after us. W e kn ow too much. W e've told him so," said Carl os. "The

hyperdrive motor disappeared completely .

I know half a dozen people

who cou ld figure out how it happened, knowing just that." He smiled

suddenly .

"That's assuming Forward's the ship eater .

W e don't know that. I think we have a splendid chance to find out one way or the other ."

"How?

Just walk in?"

Ausfaller was nodding approvingly .

"Dr .

Forward expects you and

Carlos t o enter his web unsuspecting, leaving an empty ship. I think we

can prepare a f ew surprises for him. For example, he may not have

guessed that this is a General Products hull. And I will be aboard to

fight."

T rue. Only antimatter could har m a GP hull...though things cou ld go

through it, like light and gravit y and shock waves. "So you'll be in the

indestructible hu ll," I said, "and we'll be helpless in the base. V e ry clever .

I'd rather run for it myself. But then, you have your career to consider ."

"I will not deny it. But there are ways in which I can prepare you."

Behind Ausfaller's cabin, behind what looked like an unbroken wall,

was a room the size of a walk-in closet. Ausfaller seemed quite proud of

it. He didn't show us everythin g in there, but I saw enough to cost me

what remained of my first impression of Ausfaller .

This man did not

have the soul of a pudgy bureaucrat. Behind a glass panel he kept a couple of dozen special-purpose

weapons. A row of four clam ps held three identical hand weapons,

disposable rocke t launchers for a fat slug that Ausfaller billed as a tiny

atomic bomb. The fourth clamp was empty .

There were laser rifles and

pistols, a shotgun of peculiar design with four inches of recoil shock

absorber , throwing knives, an Olympic tar get pistol with a sculpted grip

and room for just one .22 bullet. I wondered what he was doin g with a hobbyist's touch-sculpting

setup. Maybe he could make sculptures to drive a human or an alien

mad. Maybe something less subtle: maybe they'd explode at the touch of

the right fingerprints. He had a compa ct automated tailor's shop. "I'm going to make you

some ne w suits ," he said. Whe n Carlos asked why , he said, "Y ou can

keep secrets?

So can I."

He a sked us for our preference in styles. I played it straight, asking

for a falling jumper in green and silver with lots of pockets. It w asn't the

best I've ever owned, but it fit. "I didn't ask for buttons," I told him. "I hope you don't mind. Carlos, you will have buttons, too."

Carlos c hose a fiery red tunic w ith a green and gold dragon coiling

across the back. The buttons c arried his family monogram. Ausfaller

stood before us, examining us in our new finery , with approval. "Now , watch," he said. "Here I stand before you, unarmed."

"Right."

"Sure you are."

Ausfaller grinned. He took the top and bottom buttons between his

fingers and tugged hard. They came of f. The material between them

ripped open as if a thread had been strung between them. Holding the buttons as if to kee p an invisible thread taut, he moved

them to either side of a crud ely done plastic touch sculpture. The

sculpture fell apart. "Sinclair molecule chain. It will cut through any normal matter if you

pull hard enough. Y ou must be very careful. It will cut your f ingers so

easily th at you will hardly notice they are gone. Notice that th e buttons

are lar ge to give an easy grip." He laid the buttons carefully on a table

and set a heavy weight between them. "This third button down is a sonic

grenade. T en feet away it will kill. Thirty feet away it will stun."

I said, "Don't demonstrate."

"Y ou may want to practice throwing dummy buttons at a tar get. This

second b utton is Power Pill, the commercial stimulant. Break the button

and take half when you need it. The entire dose may stop your heart."

"I never heard of Power Pill. How does it work on crashlanders?"

He w as taken aback. "I don't know .

Perhaps you had better re strict

yourself to a quarter dose."

"Or avoid it entirely ," I said. "There i s one more thing I will not demonstrate. Feel the material of

your gar ments. Y ou feel three l ayers of material?

The middle l ayer is a

nearly p erfect mirror .

It will reflect even X rays. Now you ca n repel a

laser blast for at least the first second. The collar unrolls to a hood."

Carlos was nodding in satisfaction. I guess it's true: all flatlanders think that way .

For a billion and a half years humanity's ancestors had evolved to the

conditions of one world: Earth. A flatlander grows up in an environment

peculiarly suited to him. Instinctively he sees the whole universe the

same way .

W e know better , we who were born on other worlds. On W e Made It

there are the hellish winds of s ummer and winter .

On Jinx, the gravity .

On Plateau, the all-encircling clif f edge and a drop of forty miles into

unbearable heat and pressure. On Down, the red sunlight and plants that

will not grow without help from ultraviolet lamps. But flatlanders think the universe was made for their benefit. T o

them, danger is unreal. "Earplugs," said Ausfaller , ho lding up a handful of soft plastic

cylinders. W e inserted them. Ausfaller said, "Can you hear me?"

"Sure."

"Y eah." They didn't block our hearing at all. "T ransmitter and hearing aid with sonic padding between. If you are

blasted with sound, as by an explosion or a sonic stunner , the he aring aid

will stop transm itting. If you go suddenly deaf, you will know you are

under attack."

T o m e, Ausfaller's elaborate precautions only spoke of what we

might be walkin g into. I said nothing. If we ran for it, our chan ces were

even worse. Back to the co ntrol room, where Ausfaller set up a relay t o the

Bureau o f Alien Af fairs on Eart h. He gave them a condensed version of

what ha d happened to us, plus some cautious speculation. He invited

Carlos to read his theories into the record. Carlos declined. "I could still be wrong. Give me a chance to do

some studying."

Ausfaller went grumpily to his bunk. He had been up too long, and it

showed. Carlos shook his head as Ausfaller disappeared into his c abin. "Paranoia. In his job I guess he has to be paranoid."

"Y ou could use some of that yourself."

He d idn't hear me. "Imagine su specting an interstellar celebrity of

being a space pirate!"

"He's in the right place at the right time."

"Hey , Bey , for get what I said. Th e, uh, ship-eating device has to be in

the right place, but the pirates d on't. They can just leave it loose and use

hyperdrive ships to commute to their base."

That was something to keep in mind. Compared to the inner system,

this volume within the cometar y halo was enormous, but to hyperdrive

ships it was all one neighborhood. I said, "Then why are we visiting

Forward?"

"I st ill w ant to check my ideas with him. More than that: he pro bably

knows the head ship eater without knowing it's him. Probably we both

know hi m. It took something of a cosmologist to find the de vice and

recognize it. Whoever it is, he h as to have made something of a name for

himself."

"Find?"

Carlos grinned at me. "Never mind. Have you thought of an yone

you'd like to use that magic wire on?"

"I've been making a list. Y ou're at the top."

"W ell, watch it. Sigmund knows you've got it, even if nobody else

does."

"He's second."

"How long till we reach Forward Station?"

I'd been rechecking our course. W e were decelerating at thirty

gravities and veering to one side. "T wenty hours and a few m inutes," I

said. "Good. I'll get a chance to do some studying." He began calling up

data from the computer .

I asked permission to read over his shoulder .

He gave it. Bastard. He reads twice as fast as I do. I tried to skim to get some

idea of what he was after .

Collapsars: three known. The nearest was one component of a double

in C ygnus, more than a hundred light-years away .

Expeditions had gone

there to drop probes. The theo ry of the black hole wasn't new to me, though the math was

over my head. If a star is mass ive enough, then after it has burned its

nuclear fuel and started to cool, no possible internal force can hold it

from collapsing inward past its o wn Swartzchild radius. At that point the

escape velocity from the star becomes greater than lightspeed, and

beyond that deponent sayeth not, because nothing can leave the star , not

information, not matter , not radiation. Nothing -- except gravity .

Such a collapsed star can be expected to weigh five solar masses or

more; otherwise its collapse would stop at the neutron star stage. Afterward it can only grow bigger and more massive. There w asn't th e slightest chance of finding anything that ma ssive

out here at the edge of the sola r system. If such a thing were anywhere

near , the sun would have been in orbit around it. The Sib eria meteorite must have been weird enough, to be

remembered for nine hundred years. It had knocked down trees over

thousands of square miles, yet trees near the touchdown point were left

standing. No part of the meteorite itself had ever been found. Nobody

had seen it hit. In 1908, T ungus ka, Siberia, must have been as sparsely

settled as the Earth's moon is today .

"Carlos, what does all this have to do with anything?"

"Does Holmes tell W atson?"

I had real trou ble following the cosmology .

Physics ver ge d on

philosophy here , or vice versa. Basically the big bang theory -- which

pictures the universe as explodin g from a single point mass, like a titanic

bomb -- was in competition with the steady state universe, w hich has

been going on forever and will continue to do so. The cyclic universe is a

succession of big bangs followed by contractions. There are variants on

all of them. When the quasars were first disc overed, they seemed to date fro m an

earlier s tage in the evolution of the universe, which, by the ste ady state

hypothesis, would not be evolving at all. The steady state went out of

fashion. Then, a century ago, Hilbury had solved the myster y of the

quasars. Meanwhile one of the implications of the big bang had not

panned out. That was where the math got beyond me. There was some discussion of whether the universe was op en or

closed i n four -space, but Carlos turned it of f. "Okay ," he said with

satisfaction. "What?"

"I could be right. Insuf ficient data. I'll have to see what Forward

thinks."

"I hope you both choke. I'm going to sleep."

Out here in the broad borderland between Sol system and interstellar

space, J ulian Fo rward had found a stony mass the size of a middling

asteroid. From a distance it seem ed untouched by technology: a lopsided

spheroid, rough- surfaced and dirty white. Closer in, flecks of m etal and

bright paint showed like randomly placed jewels. Air locks, windows,

projecting anten nae, and things less identifiable. A lighted d isk with

something proje cting from the c enter: a long metal arm with half a dozen

ball joints in it and a cup on the end. I studied that one, trying to guess

what it might be...and gave up. I brought Hobo Kelly to rest a fair distance away .

T o Ausfaller I said,

"Y ou'll stay aboard?"

"Of cou rse. I will do nothing to disabuse Dr .

Forward of the notion

that the ship is empty ."

W e crossed to Forward Station on an open taxi: two seats, a fuel tank,

and a rocket motor .

Once I turned to ask Carlos something and asked

instead, "Carlos?

Are you all right?"

His face was white and strained. "I'll make it."

"Did you try closing your eyes?"

"It was worse. Futz, I made it this far on hypnosis. Bey , i t's so

empty ."

"Hang on. W e're almost there."

The blon d Belter was outside one of the air locks in a skintight suit

and a bubble helmet. He used a flashlight to flag us down. W e moored

our taxi to a spur of rock -- the gravity was almost nil -- and went inside. "I'm Harry Moskowitz," the Be lter said. "They call me Ange l. Dr .

Forward is waiting in the laboratory ."

The interior of the asteroid was a network of straight cylindrical

corridors, laser -drilled, pressurized, and lined with cool blue light strips. W e weighed a few pounds near the surface, less in the deep interior .

Angel moved in a fashion new to me: a flat jump from the floor that took

him far down th e corridor to b rush the ceiling, push back to the floor ,

and jum p again. Three jumps an d he'd wait, not hiding his amusement at

our attempts to catch up. "Doctor Forward asked me to give you a tour ," he told us. I sai d, "Y ou see m to have a lot more corridor than you need. Why

didn't you cluster all the rooms together?"

"This ro ck was a mine once up on a time. The miners drilled these

passages. They left big hollows wherever they found air -bearing rock or

ice pockets. All we had to do was wall them of f."

That explained why there was so much corridor between the doors

and why the chambers we saw were so big. Some rooms wer e storage

areas, Angel said; not worth o pening. Others were tool rooms, life-

support systems, a garden, a fai r -sized computer , a sizable fusion plant. A mess room built to hold thirt y actually held about ten, all men, who

looked a t us curiously before they went back to eating. A hanga r , bigger

than need be an d open to the sky , housed taxis and powered s uits with

specialized tools and three identical circular cradles, all empty .

I gambled. Carefully casual, I asked, "Y ou use mining tugs?"

Angel d idn't hesitate. "Sure. W e can ship water and metals up from

the inner system, but it's cheaper to hunt them down ourselves. In an

emer gency the tugs could probably get us back to the inner system."

W e moved back into the tunnel s. Angel said, "Speaking of sh ips, I

don't think I've ever seen one like yours. W ere those bombs lined up

along the ventral surface?"

"Some of them," I said. Carlos laughed. "Bey won't tell me how he got it."

"Pick, p ick, pick .

All right, I stole it. I don't think anyone is going to

complain."

Angel, f rankly curious before, was frankly fascinated as I told the

story of how I had been hired to fly a car go ship in the W underland

system. "I didn't much like the looks of the guy who hired me, but what

do I know about W underlanders?

Besides, I needed the money ." I told of

my surprise at the proportions of the ship: the solid wall behind the

cabin, th e passenger section that was only holographs in blind portholes. By then I was already afraid that if I tried to back out, I'd be made to

disappear .

But when I learned my destination, I got really worried. "It was in the

Serpent Stream -- you know , t he crescent of asteroids in W underland

system?

It's common knowledge that the Free W underland Conspiracy is

all thr ough th ose rocks. When they gave m e my course, I just took of f

and aimed for Sirius."

"Strange they left you with a working hyperdrive."

"Man, they didn't .

They'd ripped out the relays. I had to fix them

myself. It's lucky I looked, beca use they had the relays wired to a little

bomb un der the control chair ." I stopped, then, "Maybe I fixed it wrong. Y ou hea rd what happened?

My hyperdrive motor just plain vanished. It

must ha ve set of f some explosive bolts, because the belly of the ship

blew of f. It was a dummy .

What's left looks to be a pocket bomber ."

"That's what I thought."

"I gu ess I'll have to turn it in to the goldskin cops when we reac h the

inner system. Pity ."

Carlos was smiling and shaking his head. He covered by saying, "It

only goes to prove that you can run away from your problems."

The nex t tunnel ended in a great hemispherical chamber lidded by a

bulging transpar ent dome. A man-thick pillar rose through the r ock floor

to a seal in the center of the dome. Above the seal, gleaming against

night an d stars, a multi-jointed metal arm reached out blindly into space. The arm ended in what might have been a tremendous iron puppy dish. Forward was in a horseshoe-shaped control console near the pillar .

I

hardly n oticed him. I'd seen this arm-and-bucket thing before, coming in

from space, but I hadn't grasped its size .

Forward caught me gaping. "The Grabber ," he said. He app roached us in a bouncing walk, comical but ef fe ctive. "Pleased to meet you, Carlos W u .

Beowulf Shaef fer ." His handshake was

not crippling, because he was being careful. He had a wide, engaging

smile. "T he Grabber is our main exhibit here. After the Grabber there's

nothing to see. I asked, "What does it do?"

Carlos laughed. "It's beautiful!

Why does it have to do anything?"

Forward acknowledged the compliment. "I've been thinking of

entering it in a junk-sculpture show .

What it does is manipulate lar ge,

dense masses. The cradle at the end of the arm is a complex of

electromagnets. I can actually vibrate masses in there to produce

polarized gravity waves."

Six mas sive arcs of girder divid ed the dome into pie sections. Now I

noticed that they and the seal at their center gleamed like mirro rs. They

were reinforced by stasis fields. More bracing for the Grabber?

I tried to imagine forces that w ould

require such strength. "What do you vibrate in there?

A megaton of lead?"

"Lead s heathed in soft iron wa s our test mass. But that was three

years ag o. I haven't worked with the Grabber lately , but we h ad some

satisfactory runs with a sphere of neutronium enclosed in a stasis field. T en billion metric tons."

I said, "What's the point?"

From C arlos I got a dirty look .

Forward seemed to think it was a

wholly reasonable question. "Communication, for one thing. There must

be in telligent species all throug h the galaxy , most of them too far away

for our ships. Gravity waves are probably the best way to reach them."

"Gravity waves travel at lightspeed, don't they?

W ouldn't hyperwave

be better?"

"W e can't count on their having it. Who but the Outsiders would

think to do their experimenting this far from a sun?

If we want to reach

beings who haven't dealt with the Outsiders, we'll have to use gravity

waves once we know how ."

Angel o f fered us chairs and r efreshments. By the time we were

settled, I was already out of it; Forward and Carlos were talking plasma

physics, metaph ysics, and what are our old friends doing?

I gath ered that

they had lar ge numbers of mutual acquaintances. And Carlos was

probing for the whereabouts of cosmologists specializing in gravity

physics. A few were in th e Quicksilver Group. Others were among the colony

worlds, especially on Jinx, trying to get the Institute of Knowledge to

finance various projects, such as more expeditions to the collapsar in

Cygnus. "Are you still with the Institute, Doctor?"

Forward shook his head. "They stopped backing me. Not en ough

results. But I can continue to use this station, which is Institute property .

One day they'll sell it, and we'll have to move."

"I was wonderi ng why they se nt you here in the first place," said

Carlos. "Sirius has an adequate cometary belt."

"But Sol is the o nly system with any kind of civilization this far from

its sun. And I can count on be tter men to work with. Sol system has

always had its fair share of cosmologists."

"I thoug ht you might have come to solve an old mystery .

The

T unguska meteorite. Y ou've heard of it, of course."

Forward laughed. "Of course. Who hasn't?

I don't think we'll ever

know just what it was that hit Siberia that night. It may hav e been a

chunk of antimatter .

I'm told that there is antimatter in known space."

"If it was, we'll never prove it," Carlos admitted. "Shall w e discus s your problem?" Forward seemed to remember my

existence. "Sha ef fer , what does a professional pilot think when his

hyperdrive motor disappears?"

"He gets very upset."

"Any theories?"

I d ecide d not to mention pirates. I wanted to see if Forward would

mention them first. "Nobody s eems to like my theory ," I said, and I

sketched out the ar gument for monsters in hyperspace. Forward heard me out politely .

Then, "I'll give you this; it'd be hard

to disprove. Do you buy it?"

"I'm afraid to. I almost got myself killed once, looking for space

monsters when I should have been looking for natural causes."

"Why would the hyperspace monsters eat only your motor?"

"Um...futz. I pass."

"What do you think, Carlos?

Natural phenomena or space monsters?"

"Pirates," said Carlos. "How are they going about it?"

"W ell, th is busin ess of a hyperd rive motor disappearing and leaving

the ship behind - - that's brand ne w .

I'd think it would take a sharp gravity

gradient with a tidal ef fect as st rong as that of a neutron star o r a black

hole."

"Y ou won't find anything like that anywhere in human space."

"I know .

" Carlos looked frustrated. That had to be faked. Earlier he'd

behaved as if he already had an answer .

Forward said, "I don't think a bl ack hole would have that anyw ay .

If

it di d, y ou'd nev er know it, bec ause the ship would disappear d own the

black hole."

"What about a powerful gravity generator?"

"Hmmm." Forward thought about it, then shook his massive head. "Y ou're talking about a surface gravity in the millions. Any gravity

generator I've ever heard of would collapse itself at that level. Let's see,

with a frame supported by stasi s fields...no. The frame would h old, and

the rest of the machinery would flow like water ."

"Y ou don't leave much of my theory ."

"Sorry ."

Carlos ended a short pause b y asking, "How do you think the

universe started?"

Forward looked puzzled at the change of subject. And I began to get uneasy .

Given al l that I d on't know about cosmology , I do know attitude s and

tones of voice. Carlos was giving out broad hints, trying to lead Forward

to his own conc lusion. Black holes, pirates, the T unguska meteorite, the

origin of the uni verse -- he was of fering them as clues. And Forw ard was

not responding correctly .

He was saying, "Ask a priest. Me, I lean toward the big bang .

The

steady state always seemed so futile."

"I like the big bang, too," said Carlos. There w as something else to w orry about. Those mining tugs: they

almost h ad to belong to Forwa rd Station. How would Ausfaller react

when three familiar spacecraft came cruising into his space?

How did I want him to react?

Forward Station would make a d andy

pirate base. Permeated by laser -drilled corridors distributed almost at

random...could there be two networks of corridors, connected only at the

surface?

How would we know?

Suddenly I didn't want to know .

I wanted to go home. If only Carlos

would stay of f the touchy subjects --

But he was spec ulating about the ship eater again. "That ten b illion

metric tons of ne utronium, now , that you were using for a test m ass. That

wouldn't be big enough or dense enough to give us enough of a gravity

gradient."

"It might, right near the surface." Forward grinned and held his hands

close together .

"It was about that big."

"And that's as dense as matter gets in this universe. T oo bad."

"T rue, but...have you ever heard of quantum black holes?"

"Y eah."

Forward stood up briskly .

"W rong answer ."

I rolled out of m y web chair , trying to brace myself for a jump, while

my finge rs fumb led for the third button on my jumper .

It was no good. I

hadn't practiced in this gravity .

Forward was in midleap. He slapped Carlos alongside the head as he

went past. He ca ught me at the peak of his jump and took me with him

via an iron grip on my wrist. I h ad no leverag e, but I kicked at him. He didn't even try to sto p me. It w as li ke fighting a mountain. He gathered my wrists in one hand and

towed me away .

Forward was busy .

He sat w ithin the horseshoe of his co ntrol

console, talking. The backs of three disembodied heads showed above

the console's edge. Evidently there was a laser phon e in the console. I could hear pa rts of

what Forward was saying. He was ordering the pilots of the dime mining

tugs to destroy Hobo Kelly .

He didn't seem to know about Ausfaller yet. Forward was busy , but Angel was studying us thoughtfully , or

unhappily , or both. W ell he might. W e could disappear , but what

messages might we have sent earlier?

I co uldn't do an ything constructive with Angel watching me. And I

couldn't count on Carlos. I couldn't see Carlos. Forward and Angel had tied us to opposite

sides of the cen tral pillar , beneath the Grabber .

Carlos hadn' t made a

sound since then. He might be dying from that tremendous slap across

the head. I tested the line around my wris ts. Metal mesh of some kind, cool to

the touch...and it was tight. Forward turned a switch. The heads vanished. It was a mo ment

before he spoke. "Y ou've put me in a very bad position."

And Carlos answered. "I think you put yourself there."

"That may be. Y ou should not have let me guess what you knew ."

Carlos said, "Sorry , Bey ."

He sounded healthy .

Good. "That's all right," I said. "But what's all

the excitement about?

What has Forward got ?"

"I think he's got the T unguska meteorite."

"No. Th at I do not." Forward stood and faced us. "I will admit that I

came here to se arch for the T unguska meteorite. I spent seve ral years

trying to trace its trajectory after it left Earth. Perhaps it was a quantum

black ho le. Perh aps not. The In stitute cut of f my funds without warning

just as I had found a real quantum black hole, the first in history ."

I said, "That doesn't tell me a lot."

"Patience, Mr .

Shaef fer .

Y ou know that a black hole may form from

the collapse of a massive star?

G ood. And you know that it takes a body

of at least five solar masses. It may mass as much as a galaxy -- or as

much as the universe. There is some evidence that the universe is an

infalling black hole. But at less t han five solar masses the collap se would

stop at the neutron star stage."

"I follow you."

"In all the histo ry of the univ erse there has been one mome nt at

which smaller black holes mig ht have formed. That moment was the

explosion of the monoblock, the cosmic egg that once contained all the

matter in the universe. In the fe rocity of that explosion there m ust have

been loc i of unimaginable pressure. Black holes could have formed of

mass do wn to two point two times ten to the minus fifth grams, one point

six times ten to the minus twenty-fifth angstroms in radius."

"Of course you'd never detect a nything that small," said Carlos. He

seemed almost cheerful. I wondered why ...and then I knew .

He'd been

right abo ut the way the ships we re disappearing. It must compensate him

for being tied to a pillar .

"But," said Forward, "black holes of all sizes could have formed in

that exp losion, and should have. In more than seven hundred years of

searching no quantum black hole has ever been foun d. Most

cosmologists have given up on them, and on the big bang, too."

Carlos said, "Of course there was the T unguska meteorite. It could

have been a black hole of, oh, asteroidal mass -- "

" -- and roughly molecular size. But the tide would have pulled down

trees as it went past -- "

" - - and the blac k hole would have gone right through the Earth and

headed b ack into space a few tons heavier .

Eight hundred years ago there

was actually a search for the exit point. W ith that they could have

charted a course -- "

"Exactly .

But I had to give up that approach," said Forward. "I was

using a new method when the Institute, ah, severed our relationship."

They must both be mad, I thou ght. Carlos was tied to a pillar and

Forward was about to kill him, yet they were both behav ing like

members of a very exclusive club...to which I did not belong. Carlos was interested. "How'd you work it?"

"Y ou know that it is possible for an asteroid to capture a quantum

black hole?

In its interior?

For instance, at a mass of ten to the twelfth

kilograms -- a billion metric tons," he added for my benefit, "a black

hole would be only one point five times ten to the minus fifth a ngstroms

across. Smaller than an atom. In a slow pass through an asteroid it might

absorb a few billions of atoms, enough to slow it into an orbit. Thereafter

it m ight orbit w ithin the asteroid for eons, absorbing very little mass on

each pass."

"So?"

"If I chance on an asteroid more massive than it ought to be, an d if I

contrive to move it, and some of the mass stays behind..."

"Y ou'd have to s earch a lot of asteroids. Why do it out here?

Wh y not

the asteroid belt?

Oh, of course. Y ou can use hyperdrive out here."

"Exactly .

W e could search a scor e of masses in a day , using very little

fuel."

"Hey .

If it was big enough to e at a spacecraft, why didn't it eat the

asteroid you found it in?"

"It wasn 't that big," said Forward. "The black hole I found was

exactly as I have described it. I enlar ged it. I towed it home a nd ran it

into my neutroniurn sphere. Then it was lar ge enough to absorb an

asteroid. Now it is quite a mas sive object. T en to the twentie th power

kilograms, the mass of one of the lar ger asteroids, and a radius of just

under ten to the minus fifth centimeters."

There was satisfaction in Forward's voice. In Carlos's there was

suddenly nothing but contempt. "Y ou accomplished all that, and then you

used it to rob sh ips and bury the evidence. Is that what's going to happen

to us?

Down the rabbit hole?"

"T o another universe, perhaps. Where does a black hole lead?"

I wondered about that myself. Angel had taken Forward's pl ace at the control console. He had

fastened the seat belt, somethin g I had not seen Forward do, and was

dividing his attention between the instruments and the conversation. "I'm still wondering how you move it," said Carlos. Then, "Uh!

The

tugs!"

Forward stared, then guf fawed. "Y ou didn't guess that?

But of c ourse

the black hole c an hold a char g e. I played the exhaust from an old ion

drive reaction motor into it for nearly a month. Now it holds an

enormous char g e. The tugs can pull it well enough. I wish I had more of

them. Soon I will."

"Just a minute," I said. I'd graspe d one crucial fact as it had gone past

my head. "The tugs aren't armed?

All they do is pull the black hole?"

"That's right." Forward looked at me curiously .

"And the black hole is invisible."

"Y es. W e tug it into the path of a spacecraft. If the craft comes near

enough, it will precipitate into normal space. W e guide the black hole

through its drive to cripple it, board and rob it at our leisure. Then a

slower pass with the quantu m black hole, and the ship simply

disappears."

"Just one last question," said Carlos. "Why?"

I had a better question. Just wha t was Ausfaller going to do when three familiar spacecraft

came near?

They carried no ar maments at all. Their only weapon was

invisible. And it would eat a General Products hull without noticing. W ould Ausfaller fire on unarmed ships?

W e'd know too soon. Up there , near the edge of the dome, I had

spotted three tiny lights in a tight cluster .

Angel h ad seen it, too. He activated the phone. Phantom heads

appeared, one, two, three. I turned back to Forward and was startled at the brooding hate in his

expression. "Fortune's child," he said to Carlos. "Natural aristocrat. Certified

superman. Why would you ever consider stealing anything?

W omen beg

you to give them children, in p erson if possible, by mail if not!

Earth's

resources exist to keep you healthy , not that you need them!"

"This may startle you," said Ca rlos, "but there are people who see

you as a superman."

"W e bred for st rength, we Jinxians. At what cost to other fac tors?

Our lives are short, even with the aid of boosterspice. Longer i f we live

outside Jinx's gravity .

But the p eople of other worlds think we' re funny .

The women...never mind." He brooded, then said it anyway .

"A woman

of Earth once told me she would rather go to bed with a t unneling

machine. She didn't trust my strength. What woman would?"

The thre e brigh t dots had nearl y reached the center of the dome. I

saw nothing between them. I ha dn't expected to. Angel was sti ll talking

to the pilots. Up f rom the edg e of the dome came something I didn't want an yone

to no tice. I said, "Is that your excuse for mass murder , Forward?

Lack of

women?"

"I ne ed g ive you no excuses at all, Shaef fer .

My world will thank me

for w hat I've don e. Earth has sw allowed the lion's share of the interstellar

trade for too long."

"They'll thank you, huh?

Y ou're going to tell them?"

"Julian!" That was Angel calling. He'd seen it...no, he hadn't. One of

the tug captains had. Forward left us abruptly .

He consulted with Angel in low tones, then

turned back. "Carlos!

Did you leave your ship on automatic?

Or is there

someone else aboard?"

"I'm not required to say ," said Carlos. "I could -- no. In a minute it will not matter ."

Angel said, "Julian, look what he's doing."

"Y es. V ery clever .

Only a human pilot would think of that."

Ausfaller had maneuvered the Hobo Kelly betw een us and the tugs. If

the tugs fired a conventional weapon, they'd blast the dome and kill us

all. The tugs came on. "He still does not know what he is fighting," Forward said with some

satisfaction. T rue, and it wou ld cost him. Three unarmed tugs were coming down

Ausfaller's throa t, carrying a we apon so slow that the tugs could throw it

at him, let it abs orb Hobo Kelly , and pick it up a gain long before it was a

danger to us. From my viewpoint Hobo Kelly wa s a bright point with three

dimmer , more distant points arou nd it. Forward and Angel were getting a

better view through the phone. And they weren't watching us at all. I b egan trying to kick of f my shoes. They were soft ship slip pers,

ankle-high, and they resisted. I k icked the lef t foot free just as one of the tugs flared with ruby

light. "He did it!" Carlos didn't know whether to be jubilant or horrified. "He fired on unarmed ships!"

Forward gestured peremptorily .

Angel slid out of his seat. Forward

slid in and fastened the thick seat belt. Neither had spoken a word. A second ship burned fiercely red, then expanded in a pink cloud. The third ship was fleeing. Forward worked the controls. "I have it in the mass indicator ," he

rasped. "W e have but one chance."

So did I. I peeled the other slipp er of f with my toes. Over our heads

the j ointed arm of the Grabber began to swing...and I suddenly realized

what they were talking about. Now there was l ittle to see beyo nd the dome. The swinging Gra bber ,

and the light of Hobo Kelly 's drive, and the two tumbling wrecks, all

against a background of fixed stars. Suddenly one of the tug s winked

blue-white and was gone. Not even a dust cloud was left behind. Ausfaller must have seen it. He was turning, fleeing. Then it was as if

an invisible hand had picked up Hobo Kelly and thrown her away .

The

fusion light streaked of f to one side and set beyond the dome's edge. W ith tw o tugs destroyed and t he third fleeing, the black hole was

falling free, aimed straight down our throats. Now there was nothing to se e but the delicate motions o f the

Grabber .

Angel stood behind Forward's chair , his knuckles white with his

grip on the chair's back. My few pounds of weight wen t away and left me in freefall. T ides

again. T he invisible thing was more massive than this asteroid beneath

me. The Grabber swung a meter more to one side...and somethi ng struck

it a mighty blow .

The floo r sur ged away from be neath me, left me head down above

the Grabber .

The huge soft-iron puppy dish came at me; the jointed metal

arm collapsed like a spring. It slowed, stopped. "Y ou got it!" An gel crowed like a rooster , and slapped at the ba ck of

the chair , holding himself down with his other hand. He turned a gloating

look on us, turned back just as suddenly .

"The ship!

It's getting away!"

"No." F orward was bent over t he console. "I see him. Good, he is

coming back, straight toward us .

This time there will be no tugs to warn

the pilot."

The Grabber swung ponderously toward the point where I'd seen

Hobo Kelly disappear .

It mo ved centimeters at a time, pulling a massive

invisible weight. And Au sfaller w as coming back to rescue us. He'd be a sitting duck

unless --

I rea ched up wit h my toes, grop ing for the first and fourth buttons on

my falling jumper .

The weaponry in my wonderful suit hadn't helped me against Jinxian

strength and speed. But flatlanders are less than limber , and so are

Jinxians. Forward had tied my hands and left it at that. I wrapped two sets of toes around the buttons and tugged. My legs were b ent pretzel-fash ion. I had no leverage. But the first

button tore loose, and then the th read. Another invisible weapon to battle

Forward's portable bottomless hole. The thre ad pulle d the fourth but ton loose. I brought my feet down to

where th ey belonged, keeping the thread taut, and pushed backward. I

felt the Sinclair molecule chain sinking into the pillar .

The Grabber was still swinging. When th e thread was through th e pillar , I could bring it up in back of

me a nd try to cut my bonds. More likely I'd cut my wrists and bleed to

death, bu t I had to try .

I wonder ed if I could do anything before Forward

launched the black hole. A cold breeze caressed my feet. I looked down. Thick fog boiled out around the pillar .

Some very cold gas must be spraying through the hairfine crack. I k ept pushing. More fog formed. The cold was numbing. I fe lt the

jerk as the magic thread cut through. Now the wrists --

Liquid helium?

Forward had moored us to the main superconducting power cable. That wa s probably a mistake. I pulled my feet forward care fully ,

steadily , feeling the thread bite through on the return cut. The Grabber had stopped swinging. Now it moved on its arm like a

blind questing worm as Forwa rd made fine adjustments. Angel was

beginning to show the strain of holding himself upside down. My feet jerked slightly .

I was through. My feet were terribly cold,

almost w ithout sensation. I let the buttons go, left them floating up

toward the dome, and kicked back hard with my heels. Something shifted. I kicked again. Thunder and lightning flared around my feet. I jer ked my kne es up to my chin. The lightning crackled and fla shed

white light into the billowing fog. Angel and Forward turned in

astonishment. I laughed at them, letting them see it. Y es, gentlemen, I did

it on purpose. The lightning stopped. In the sud den silence Forward was screaming,

" -- know what you've done ?"

There was a grinding crunch , a shuddering ag ainst my back. I looked

up. A piece had been bitten out of the Grabber .

I wa s upside down and gettin g heavier .

Angel suddenly pivoted

around h is grip on Forward's chair .

He hung above the dome, a bove the

sky .

He screamed. My legs gripped the pillar hard .

I felt Carlos's feet fumbling for a

foothold and heard Carlos's laughter .

Near the edge of the dome a spear of light was rising. Hobo Kelly 's

drive, decelerat ing, growing lar ger .

Otherwise the sky was clear and

empty .

And a piece of the dome disappeared with a snapping sound. Angel screamed and dropped. Just above the dome he seemed to flare

with blue light. He was gone. Air roared out t hrough the dome -- and more was disappearing into

something that had been invisi ble. Now it showed as a blue pinpoint

drifting toward the floor .

Forward had turned to watch it fall. Loose o bjects fell across the ch amber , looped around the pinpoint at

meteor speed, or fell into it with bursts of light. Every atom of my body

felt the pull of the thing, the ur ge to die in an infinite fall. Now we hung

side by side from a horizontal pillar .

I noted with approval that Carlos's

mouth w as wide open, like mine, to clear his lungs so that they wouldn't

burst when the air was gone. Daggers in my ears and sinuses, pressure in my gut. Forward turned back to the controls. He moved one knob hard over .

Then he opened the seat belt and stepped out and up and fell. Light flared. He was gone. The lightning-co lored pinpoint drifted to the floor and into it. Above

the increasing roar of air I co uld hear the grumbling of ro ck being

pulverized, dwindling as the black hole settled toward the cent er of the

asteroid. The air was deadly thin but no t gone. My lungs thought they were

gasping vacuum. But my blood was not boiling. I'd have known it. So I gasped and kept gasping. It was all I had attention for .

B lack

spots fli ckered b efore my eyes, but I was still gasping and ali ve when

Ausfaller reache d us, carrying a clear plastic package and an enormous

handgun. He cam e in fast, on a rocket backpack. Even as he decelerated, he

was look ing around for something to shoot. He returned in a loo p of fire. He studied us through his faceplate, possibly wondering if we were dead. He flipped the plastic package open. It was a thin sack with a zipper

and a small tank attached. He had to dig for a torch to cut our bonds. He

freed Carlos first, helped him into the sack. Carlos bled from the nose

and ears. He wa s barely mobile. So was I, but Ausfaller got me into the

sack with Carlos and zipped it up. Air hissed in around us. I wo ndered what came next. As an inflated sphere the rescue bag was

too big for the tunnels. Ausfal ler had thought of that. He fired at the

dome, blasted a gaping hole in it, and flew us out on the rocket

backpack. Hobo Kelly was grounded nearby .

I saw that the rescue bag wouldn't

fit the air lock, either , and Ausfaller confirmed my worst fear .

He

signaled us by opening his mouth wide. Then he zipped open the rescue

bag and half carried us into the air lock while the air was still ro aring out

of our lungs. When there was air again, Car los whispered, "Please don't do that

anymore."

"It s hould not be necessary anymore." Ausfaller smiled. "Whatever it

was you did, well done. I have two well-equipped autodocs to repair you. While you are h ealing, I will s ee about recovering the treasures within

the asteroid."

Carlos held up a hand, but no sound came. He looked like something

risen from the dead: blood running from nose and ears, mo uth wide

open, one feeble hand raised against gravity .

"One thi ng," Au sfaller said briskly .

"I saw many dead men; I sa w no

living on es. How many were the re?

Am I likely to meet opposition while

searching?"

"For get it," Carlos croaked. "Get us out of here. Now ."

Ausfaller frowned. "What -- "

"No time. Get us out."

Ausfaller tasted something sour .

"V ery well. First the autodocs ." He

turned, but Carlos's strengthless hand stopped him. "Futz, no. I want to see this," Carlos whispered. Again A usfaller gave in. He tro tted of f to the control room. Carlos

tottered after him. I tottered after them both, wiping blood from my nose,

feeling h alf-dead myself. But I'd half guessed what Carlos expected, and

I didn't want to miss it. W e strap ped down. Ausfaller fired the main thruster .

The rock sur ged

away .

"Far enough," Carlos whispered presently .

"T urn us around."

Ausfaller took care of that. Then, "What are we looking for?"

"Y ou'll know ."

"Carlos, was I right to fire on the tugs?"

"Oh, yes."

"Good. I was worried. Then Forward was the ship eater?"

"Y eah."

"I did not see him when I came for you. Where is he?"

Ausfaller was annoyed when Carlos laughed and more annoyed

when I joined h im. It hurt my throat. "Even so, he saved our lives," I

said. "H e must have turned up the air pressure just before he j umped. I

wonder why he did that."

"W anted to be r emembered," sa id Carlos. "Nobody else knew what

he'd done. Ahh -- "

I looked just as part of the asteroid collapsed into itself, leaving a

deep crater .

"It moves slower at apogee. Picks up more matter ," said Carlos. "What ar e you talking about?"

"Later , Sigmund. When my throat grows back."

"Forward had a hole in his pocket," I said helpfully .

The oth er side of the asteroid collapsed. For a moment lightning

seemed to flare in there. Then the whole dirty snowball was growing smaller .

I t hought of som ething Carlos had probably missed. "Sigmund , has

this ship got automatic sunscreens?"

"Of course we've got -- "

There was a universe-eating flash of light before the screen went

black. When the screen cleared, there was nothing to see but stars. P R O C R U S T E S

Asleep, my mind plays it all back in fragments and dreams. From

time to time a block of nerves wakes:

That's some kind of ARM weapon!

Move it move it too late blam. My

head r o lls loose on black sand. Bones shatter ed, ribs and spine. Fear

worse than the agony .

Agony fading and I'm gone. Legs try to kick. Nothing moves. Again, harder , move!

N o go. The

'doc floats nicely on the lift plate, but its mass is r esisting me. Push!

V oice behind me, I turn, she's holding some kind of tube. Blam. My head

bounces on sand. Agony flaring, sensation fading. T ry to hang on, stay

lucid ...

but everything turns mellow .

My balance swings wildly around my inner ear .

Wher e's the planet's

axis?

Fafnir doesn't have polar caps. The ancient lander is flying itself. Carlos looks worried, but Feather's having the time of her life. Sprawled acr oss the planet's face, a hurricane flattened along one

edge. Un der the vast cloud finge rprint, a ruddy snake divides th e blue of

a world -gir dling ocean. A long, narr ow continent runs almost pole to

pole. The lander r eenters over featur eless ocean. Nothing down ther e

seems to be looking at us. I'm t aking us down fast. Lar ger islands have

low , flat buildings on them. Pick a little one. Hover while flame digs the

lamplighter pit wider and deepe r , until the lander sinks into the hole with

inches to spar e. Plan A is right on track. I rem ember how Plan A ende d. The Sur gery program senses my

distress and turns me of f. I'm in Carlos W u's 'doc, in the intensive care cavity .

The Sur gery

program prods my brain, running me through my memories, maintaining

the patterns lest they fuzz out to nothing while my brain and body heal. I must be terribly damaged. W aking was sudden. My eyes popped open, and I was on my back,

my nose two inches from glass. Sunlight glared through scattere d clouds. Display lights glowed above m y eyebrows. I felt fine, char ged with

ener gy .

Y e gods, how long had I slept?

All those dreams ...

dream memories. I tried to move. I was shrink-wra pped in elastic. I wiggled my arm up

across m y chest , with considerable ef fort, and up to the displays. It took

me a few seconds to figure them out. Biomass tank .

nearly empty .

T r eatment : p ages of data, horrifying ...

terminated, successful. Date : Ohmygod. Four months!

I was out for four

months and eleven days!

I typed, Open :

The dark glass lid retracted, sunlight flared, and I shut my eyes tight. After a while I pulled myself over the rim of the intensive care cavity

and rolled out. My balance was all wrong. I lan ded like a lumpy sack, on sand, and

managed not to yell or swear .

Who might hear?

Sat up, squinting

painfully , and looked around. I was still on the island. It was weathered coral, nearly symmetrical, with a central peak. The

air w as s parkling clear , and the ocean went on forever , with ano ther pair

of tiny islands just touching the horizon. I was stark naked and white as a bone, in the glare of a yellow- white

dwarf sun. The air was salty and thick with or ganic life, sea life. Where was everybody?

I t ried to stand, wobbled, gave it up, and crawled around int o the

shadow of the 'doc. I still felt an amazing sense of well-being, as if I

could solve anything the universe could throw at me. During moments of half wakefulness I'd somehow worked out where

I mu st b e. Here it stood, half cof fin and half chemical lab, massive and

abandoned on the narrow black sand beach. A vulnerable place to leave

such a valuable thing, but this was where I'd last seen it, ready to be

loaded into the boat. Sunlight could damage me in m inutes, kill me in hours, but Carlos

W u's wo nderful 'doc was no ord inary mall autodoctor .

It was sta te of the

art, smarter than me in some respects. It would cure anything the sun

could do to me. I p ulled myself to my feet and took a few steps. Ouch!

The cor al cut

my feet. The 'doc could cure that, too, but it hurt. Standing, I could see most of the island. The center bulged up like a

volcano. Fafnir coral builds a fla t island with a shallow cone rising at the

center , a housing for a symbiote , the lamplighter .

I'd hovered t he lander

above the cone while belly jets scorched out the lamplighter nest until it

was big enough to hold the lander .

Just me and the 'doc and a dead island. I'd have to live in the 'doc. Come out at night, like a vampire. My chance of being found must be

poor if no passing boat had found me in these past four -plus months. I cli mbed. The coral cut my hands and feet and knees. From the cone

I'd be able to see the whole island. The pit was tw o hundred feet across. The bottom was black and

smooth and seven or eight feet below me. Feather had set the lander to

melt itself down slowly , radia ting not much heat over man y hours. Several inches of rainwater now covered the slag, and something

sprawled in the muck. It might be a m an ...

a tall man, possibly raised in low gravity .

T oo

tall to be Carlos. Or Sharrol, or Feather , and who was left?

I jum ped down. Landed clumsi ly on the smooth slag and splashed

full length in the water .

Picked myself up, unhurt. My toes could feel an oblong texture, lines and ridges, the s hapes

within the lander that wouldn't melt. Police could determine what this

thing had been if they ever looked; but why would they look?

The water felt good on my bu rned feet. And on my skin. I was

already burned. Albinos can't take yellow dwarf sunlight. A co rpse was no surprise, given what I remembered. I looked it over .

It had been wearing local clothing for a man: boots, loose pan ts with a

rope tie, a jacket encrusted with pockets. The jacket was pierced with a

great rag ged ho le front and bac k. That could only have been made by

Feather's horrible ARM weapon. This close, the head ...

I'd thought it

must be under the water , but th ere was no head it all. There w ere clean

white bones, and a neck vertebra cut smoothly in half. I wa s hy perventilating. Dizzy .

I sat down next to the skeleton so that

I wouldn't fall. These long bones looked more than four months dead. Y ears,

decades ...

wait, now .

W e'd scorched the nest, but there w ould be

lamplighter sold iers left outside. They would have swarmed d own and

stripped the bones. I found I was trying to push my back through a wall of fused coral. My emp ty stomach heaved. This was much worse than anything I'd

imagined. I knew who this was. Sunlight burned my back. My eyes were going wonky in the g lare. T ime was not on my side: I was going to be much sicker much quicker

than I liked. I m ade myself pull the boots l oose, shook the bones out, an d put

them on. They were too big. The jacket was a sailor's surviv al jacket, local style. The shou lders

looked padded: shoulder floats. The front and sides had been all pockets,

well stuf fed, but front and back had been tom to confetti. I stripped it of f him and began searching pockets. No wallet, no ID. T issue pack .

The shrapnel remains of a hand

computer .

Several pockets were sealed: emer gency gear , stuf f you

wouldn't want to open by accident; and some of those had survived. A knife of exqu isite sharpness in a built-in holster .

Pocket torch. A

ration brick. I bit into the brick a nd chewed while I searched. Mag specs,

one lens shatter ed, but I put them on anyway .

W ithout dark glasses my

pink albino eyes would go blind. Sun bloc k spray , unharmed: good. A pill dispenser , broken, but in a

pocket still airtight. Better!

T annin secretion pills!

The boo ts were shrinking, adapting to my feet. It felt frie ndly ,

reassuring. My most intimate friends on this island. I wa s still dizzy .

Better let the 'doc take care of me now; take the pills

afterward. I shook broken ribs out of the jacket. Shook the pants empty .

Balled the clothing and tossed it out of the hole. T ried to follow it. My fingers wouldn't reach the rim. "After all this, w hat a stupid w ay to die," I said to the memory of

Sharrol Janss. "What do I do no w?

Build a ladder out of bones?" If I got

out of this hole, I'd think it through before I ever did anything .

I k nelt; I yelled and jumped. M y fingers, palms, forearms gripped

rough coral. I p ulled myself out and lay panting, sweating, bleeding,

crying. I lim ped back to the 'doc, wearin g boots now , holding the suit spread

above me for a parasol. I was feverish with sunburn. I cou ldn't take boots into the ICC. W ait. Th ink. W in d?

W aves?

I tied

the clothes in a bundle around the boots, and set it on the 'doc next to the

faceplate. I climbed into the i ntensive care cavity and pulled the lid

down. Sharrol would wait an hour longer , if she was still alive. An d the

kids. And Carlos. I did not expect to fall asleep. Asleep, feverish with sunburn. The Sur gery program tickles blocks

of nerve s, plays me like a complex toy .

In my sleep I feel ragi ng thirst,

hear a thunderclap, taste cinnamon or cof fee, clench a phantom fist. My skin wakes. Piloerection runs in ripples along my body , then a

universal tickle, then pressure ...

like that feather -crested snakeskin

Sharrol put me into for Carlos's party ...

Sharrol, sliding into her own rainbow-scaled bodysuit, stopped

halfway .

"Y ou don't really want to do this, do you?"

"I'll tough it out .

How do I look?" I'd never developed the least sense

of flatlander style. Sharrol picked my clothes. "Half man, half snake," she said. "Me?"

"Like this snake's fitting mate." She didn't really .

No flatlander is as

supple as a cra shlander .

Raised in Earth's gravity , Sharrol wa s a foot

shorter than I, and weighed the same as I did. Stocky .

The apartment was already in child mode: rounded surfaces

everywhere, and all storage was locked or raised to eyeball height

(mine).

T anya was five and Louis was four and both were agile as

monkeys. I scanned for anything that might be dangerous within their

reach. Louis stared at us, solem n, awed. T anya giggled. W e m ust have

looked o dder tha n usual, though given flatlander styles it's a wonder that

any kid can reco gnize its parents. Why do they change their hair and skin

color so often?

When we hugged them goodbye, T anya made a game of

tugging my hair out of shape an d watching it flow back into a feathery

crest. W e set them down and turned on the Playmate program. The lob by transfer booth jumped us three time zones east. W e

stepped out into a vestibule, facing an arc of picture window .

A flock of

rainbow-hued fish panicked at the awful sight and flicked away .

A huge

fish passed in some internal dream. For an instant I felt the weight of all those tons of water .

I looked to see how Sharrol was taking it. She was smiling, admiring. "Carlos lives near the Great Barrier Reef, you said. Y ou didn't say he

lived in it."

"It's a great privilege," Sharrol told me. "I spent my first thirty years

under w ater , but not on the Reef. The Reef's too fragile. The UN protects

it."

"Y ou never told me that!"

She grin ned at my surprise. "My dad had a lobster ranch near Boston .

Later I worked for the Epcot-Atlantis police. The ecology isn't so

fragile there, but -- Bey , I should take you there."

I said, "Maybe it's why we think alike. I grew up under ground. Y ou

can't build aboveground on W e Made It."

"Y ou told me. The winds."

"Sharrol, this isn't like Carlos."

She'd known Carlos W u years longer than I had. "Carlos gets an idea

and he follows it as far as it'll go. I don't know what he's o nto now .

Maybe he's always wanted to share me with you. And he brought a date

for , um --"

"Ever met her?"

"-- balance. No, Carlos won't even talk about Feather Filip. He just

smiles mysteriously .

Maybe it's love."

The childr en!

Pr otect the childr en!

Wher e ar e the childr en?

The

Sur geon must be tickling my adrenal glands. I'm not awake, but I'm

frantic, a nd a bit randy too. The n the sensations ease of f. The Playmate

pr ogram. It guar ds them and teaches them and plays with them. They'll

be fine. Can't take them to Carlos's place ...

not tonight. Sharrol w as their mother and Carlos W u had been their father .

E arth's

Fertility Board won't let an alb ino have children. Carlos's gene pattern

they jud ge perfect; he's one of a hundred and twenty flatlanders who

carry an unlimited birthright. A man can love any child. Tha t's hard-wired into the brain. A man

can raise anothe r man's children. And accept their father as a friend ...

but there's a barrier .

That's wired in, too. Sharrol knows. She's afraid I'll turn prickly and uncivilized. And

Carlos knows. So why ...?

T onight was billed as a foursome, sex and tapas .

That was a

developing custom: dinner strung out as a sequence of small dishes

between bouts of recreational se x. Something inherited from the ancient

Greeks or Italians, maybe. There's something lovers gain from feeding

each other .

Feather --

The memory blurs. I wasn't afraid of her then, but I am now .

When I

remember Feather , the Sur geon puts me to sleep. But the childr en!

I 've got to remember .

W e were down. Sharrol was

out of the 'doc, but we left Loui s and T anya frozen. W e floated their box

into the boat. Fe ather and I dise ngaged the lift plate and slid it under the

'doc. Be neath th at lumpy jacket she moved like a tigress. She s poke my

name; I turned ...

Feather .

Carlos's sleepfield enclosed mos t of the bedroom. He'd hosted bigger

parties t han this in here. T onight we were down to four , and a floating

chaos of dishes Carlos said were Mexican. "She's an ARM," Carlos said. Feather Filip and I were sharing a tamale too spicy for Sh arrol. Feather caught me staring and grinned back. An ARM?

I'd e xpected Feather to be striki ng. She wasn't exactly beautiful. She

was strong: lean, almost gaunt , with prominent tendons in h er neck,

lumps flexing at the corners of her jaws. Y ou don't get strength like that

without training in illegal martial arts. The Amalgamated Regional Mil itia is the United Nations police, and

the U nited Nations took a powerful interest in Carlos W u. What was she,

Carlos's bodyguard?

W as that how they'd met?

But whenever one of us spoke of the ARM that afternoon, Fe ather

changed the subject. I'd have thought Carlos would orchestrate our sleepfield dance. Certified genius that he is, would he not be superb at that, too?

But

Feather had her own ideas, and Carlos let her lead. Her lovemaking was

aggressive and acrobatic. I felt her strength that afternoon. And my own

lack, raised as I was in the lower gravity of W e Made It. And thre e hours passed in that fashion, while the wonderful colo rs of

the reef darkened to light-amplified night. And then Feather reached far out of the field, limber as a snake ...

reached inside her backpurse, an d fiddled, and frowned, and ro lled back

and said, "W e're shielded."

Carlos said, "They'll know ."

"They know me ," Fe ather said, "They're thinking that I let them use

their mo nitors because I'm showing of f, but now we're goin g to try

something a little kinky .

Or may be I'm just putting them on. I've done it

before --"

"Then --"

"Find a glitch so I can block their gear with something new .

Then

they fix it. The y'll fix this on e too, but not tonight. It's just Feather

coming down after a long week."

Carlos accepted that. "Stet. Sharrol, Beowulf, do you want to leave

Earth?

W e'd be traveling as a gr oup, Louis and T anya and the four of us. This is for keeps."

Sharrol said, "I can't." Carlos knew that. He s aid, "Y ou c an ride in cold sleep. Home's rotation period is fifty

minutes shorter than Earth's. Ma ss the same, air about the same. T ectonic

activity is higher , so it'll smell like there's just a trace of smog --"

"Carlos, we talked this to death a few years a go." Sharrol was

annoyed. "Sure, I could live on Home. I don't like the notion of flying

from wo rld to world like a, a corpse, but I'd do it. But the UN doesn't

want me emigrating, and Home won't take flat phobes!"

The flat lander phobia is a bone-deep dread of being cut of f from

Earth. F ear of flying and/or fall ing is an extreme case, but no f lat phobe

can travel in space. Y ou find few flat phobes of f Earth; in fact, E arthborn

are called flatlanders no matter how well they adjust to life elsewhere. But Feat her was grinning at Sha rrol. "W e go by way of Fafnir .

W e'll

get to Home as Shashters. Home has already approved us for

immigration --"

"Under the name Graynor .

W e're all married," Carlos amplified. I said, "Carlos, you've been of f Earth. Y ou were on Jinx for a year ."

"Y eah. B ey , Sigmund Ausfaller and his gnomes never lost track of

me. The United Nations thinks they own my genes. I'm supervised

wherever I go."

But they keep you in luxury , I thought. And the grass is always

greener .

And Feather had her own complaint. "What do you know about

the ARM?" she asked us. "W e listen to the vid," Sharrol said. "Sharrol, dear , we vet that stuf f. The ARM decides what you don't get

to kn ow about us. Most of us tak e psychoactive chemicals to keep us in a

properly paranoid mind frame during working hours. W e stay that way

four day s, then go sane for the w eekend. If it's making us too crazy , they

retire us."

Feather was nervous and trying to restrain it, but now hard-edged

muscles flexed, and her elbows and knees were pulling in protectively

against her torso. "But some of u s are born this way .

W e go off chemicals

when we go to work. The 'd oc doses us back to sanity Thursday

afternoon. I've been an ARM sc hiz for thirty-five years. They're ready to

retire me, but they'd never let me go to some other world, know ing what

I know .

And they don't want a schiz making babies."

I d idn't say that I could see their point. I looked at Sharrol and saw

hope in the set of her mouth, ready to smile but holding of f. W e were

being brought into these plans way late. Rising hackles had pulled me

right out of any postcoital glow .

Feather told me, "They'll never let you go either , Beowulf."

And that wa s nonsense. "Feather , I've been of f Earth three times

since I got here."

"Don't t ry for four .

Y ou know t oo much. Y ou know about the Core

explosion, and diplomatic matters involving alien races --"

"I've left Earth since --"

"-- a nd Julian Fo rward's work." She gave it a dramatic pause. " W e'll

have som e adva nced weaponry out of that. W e would not want t he kzinti

to know about that, or the trino cs, or certain human domains. That last

trip, do you kn ow how much talking you did while you were on

Gummidgy and Jinx?

Y ou're a f riendly , talkative guy with great stories,

Beowulf!"

I shr ugged. "So why trust me w ith this?

Why didn't you and Carlos

just go?"

She gestured at Carlos. He grinned and said, "I insisted."

"And we need a pilot," Feather said. "That's you, Beowulf. But I can

bust us loose. I've set up some thing nobody but an ARM wo uld ever

dream of."

She told us about it. T o the kzinti the world was on ly a number .

Kzinti don't like ocean

sports. The continent was Shash t, 'Burrowing Murder .' Shasht was nearly

lifeless, but the air was breathable and the mines were valuable. The

kzinti had dredged up megatons of sea bottom to fertilize a hunting

jungle, a nd they got as far as seeding and planting before the Fourth

Man-Kzin W ar .

After the war humankind took Shasht as reparations, and named the

world Fafnir .

On F afnir , Feather's investigatio ns found a family of six: two men,

two wom en, two children. The Graynors were ready to emigrate. Local

law wou ld caus e them to leave most of their wealth behind; but then

they'd lost most of it already ba cking some kind of recreational facilities

on the continent. "I've rec orded them twice. The Graynors'll find funding waiting for

them at W underland. They wo n't talk. The other G rayno r family will

emigrate to Home --"

"That's us?"

Feather nodded. Carlos said, "But if you and the kids won't come,

Feather'll have to find someone else."

I sai d, "C arlos, you'll be watched. I don't suppose Feather can protect

you from that."

"No. Feather's taken a much bigger risk --"

"They'll never miss it." She turn ed to me. "I got hold of a little s tealth

lander , Fourth W ar vintage, w ith a cold sleep box in back for you,

Sharrol. W e'll take that down to Fafnir .

I've got an inflatable boat to take

us to the Shasht North spaceport, and we'll get to Home on an O utbound

Enterprises iceliner .

Sharrol, you 'll board the liner already frozen; I know

how to bypass that stage." Feather was excited now .

She gripped my arm

and said, "W e have to go get the lander , Beowulf. It's on Mars."

Sharrol said, "T anya's a flat phobe too."

Feather's fingers closed with bruising force. I sensed that the lady

didn't like seeing her plans altered. "W ait o ne," Carlos said. "W e can fix that. W e're taking my 'doc,

aren't we ?

It wouldn't be plausible , let alon e intelligent, for Carlos W u to

go on vacation without his ' doc. Feather , how big is the lander's

freezebox?"

"Y eah. Right. It'll hold T anya ...

better yet, both children. Sharro l can

ride in your 'doc."

W e talked it around. When we were satisfied, we went home. Three days out, three days returning, and a week on Mars while the

ARM team played with the spacecraft Boy Geor ge .

It had to be Feather

and me. I would familiarize myself with Boy Geor ge , Feather would

supervise the ARM crews ...

and neither of us were flat phobes. I b ought a dime disk, a tourist's guide to Fafnir system, and I st udied

it. Kzinti an d human planetologists call Fafnir a typical water worl d in a

system older than Sol. The sy stem didn't actually retain much more

water th an Earth did; that isn 't the problem. But the core is low in

radioactives. The lithosphere is thick: no continental drift here. Shallow

oceans cover 93 percent of the planet. The oceans seethe with life, five

billion years evolved, twice as old as Earth's. And where the thick crust cracked in early days, magma oozed

through to build the world's single continent. T oday a wanderin g line of

volcanoes and bare rock stretches from the south pole nearly to the north. The continent's mass has been growing for billions of years. On the opposite face of a lopsided planet, the ocean has g rown

shallow .

Fafnir's life presently discovered the advantages of coral

building. That side of the world is covered with tens of thou sands of

coral islands. Some stand up to twenty meters tall: relics of a deeper

ocean. The mines are all on Shasht. So also are all the industry , both

spaceports, and the seat of g overnment. But the life -- re creation,

housing, families -- is all on the islands. Finding the old lander had indeed been a stroke of luck. It was an

identical backup for the craft that set Sinbad Jabar down on Mee rowsk in

the F ourth W ar , where he invaded the harem of the Patriarch's V oice. The

disgrace caused the balance of power among the local kzinti to become

unstable. The human alliance took Meerowsk and renamed the planet,

and it was Jaba r's Prize until a later , pacifistic generation took power .

Jabar's skin is displayed there still. Somehow Feath er had convinced the ARMs that (1) this tw in of

Jabar's lander was wanted for the Smithsonian Luna, and (2) the Belt

peoples would raise hell if they knew it was to be removed from Mars. The project must be absolutely secret. Ultimately the ARM crews grew tired of Feather's supervision, or

else her company .

Rapidly after that, Feather grew tired of watching me

read. "W e'll only be on Fafnir two days, Beowulf. What are you

learning?

It's a dull, dull, dull place. All the land life is Earth imports --"

"Their lifestyle is strange, Feath er .

They travel by transfer booth s and

dirigible balloon s and boats, and almost nothing in between. A very laid-

back society .

Nobody's expected to be anywhere on time --"

"Nobody's watching us here. Y ou don't have to play tourist."

"I kn ow ." If the ARM had Boy Geor ge b ugged ...

but Feather would

have thought of that .

Our ship was in the hands of ARM engineers, and that made for

tension. But we were getting on each other's nerves. Not a go od sign,

with a three-week flight facing us. Feather said, "Y ou're not playing. Y ou ar e a tourist!"

I admitted it. "A nd the first law of tourism is: r ead everything ." But I

switched the screen of f and said, in the spirit of compromise, " All right. Show me. What is there to see on Mars?"

She hated to admit it. "Nothing."

W e left Mars wi th the little stea lth lander in the fuel tank. The A RM

was doin g thing s the ARM didn 't know about. And I continued reading ...

Fafnir's twenty-two-hour day has encouraged an active life. Couch

potatoes court insomnia: it's easier to sleep if you're tired. But hurrying is

something else. There are transfer booths, of course. Y ou can jump

instantly from a home on some coral extrusion to the bare rock of Shasht ...

and buy yourself an eleven-hour time lag. Nobody's in a hu rry to go home .

They go by dirigible. Ultimatel y the

floatliner compa nies wised up and began selling round-trip tickets for the

same price as one-way .

"I do know all this, Beowulf."

"Mph?

Oh, good."

"So wha t's the plan?" Feather asked. "Find an island with nothing

near it and put down, right?

Get out and dance around on the sand while

we blow the boat up and load it and go. How do we hide the lander?"

"Sink it."

"Read about lamplighters," she said, so I did. After the war a nd the settlement, UN advance forces landed on

Shasht, took over the kzinti stru ctures, then began to explore. Halfway

around t he plane t were myriads of little round coral islands, each with a

little pea k at the center .

At nigh t the peaks glowed with a steady yellow

light. La r ger isla nds were chains of peaks, each with its yellow glow in

the cup. Lamplighters were named before anyone knew what they were. Close up ...

w ell, they've been called piranha ant nests. The

bioluminescence attracts scores of varieties of flying fish. Or , lured or

just lost , a swimming thing ma y beach itself, and then the lamplighter

horde flows down to the beach and cleans it to the bones. Y ou can't build a home or beach a boat until the nest has been burned

out. Then you have to wait another twelve days for the soldiers caught

outside the nest to die. Then c over the nest. Use it for a basement, put

your hou se on it. Otherwise the sea may carry a queen to you, to use the

nest again. "Y ou're ahead of me on this," I admitted. "What has this lande r got

for belly rockets?"

"Y our basic hydrogen and oxyg en," Feather said. "High heat a nd a

water -vapor exhaust. W e'll burn the nest out."

"Good."

Y o!

Boy , when Carlos's 'doc is finished with you, you know it!

Open. The sky was a brilliant spraw l of stars, some of them moving-

spacecraft, weather eyes, the wheel -- and a single lopsided moon. The

island was shadow-teeth cutting into the starscape. I slid out carefully ,

into a blackness like the inside of my empty belly , and yelled as I

dropped into seawater .

The water was h ip deep, with n o current to speak of. I wasn't going

to drow n, or be washed away , or lost. Fafnir's moon was a l ittle one,

close in. T ides would be shallow .

Still I'd been lucky: I could have wakened under water .

How did people feel about nudity here?

But my bundle of clothes

hadn't w ashed aw ay .

Now the bo ots clasped my feet like old friends. The

sleeves of the de ad man's survival jacket tailed way past my hands until I

rolled them up, and of course the front and back were in shr eds. The

pants we re bette r: too big, but with elastic ankle bands that I just pulled

up to my knees. I swallowed a tannin secretion dose. I coul dn't have

done tha t earlier .

The 'doc would have read the albino gene in my DNA

and "cured" me of an imposed tendency to tan. There was nothing on all of Fafnir like Carlos's 'doc. I'd have to hide

it before I could ever think about rescue. "Our medical equipment," Car los had called it; and Feather had

answered, "Hardly ours."

Carlos w as patie nt. "It's all we'v e got, Feather .

Let me show you how

to use it. First, the diagnostics --"

The thing was as massive as the inflatable boat that would carry us to

Shasht. Carlos had a gravity lift to shove under it. The inten sive care

cavity was tailored just for Carl os W u, naturally , but any of us could be

served by the te thers and sleeves and hypo-tipped tubes and readouts

along one whole face of the thing: the service wall. "These hookups do your diagnostics and set the chemical feeds

going. F eather , i t'll rebalance body chemistry , in case I ever go schiz or

someone poison s me or someth ing. I've reprogrammed it to tak e care of

you too." I don' t think Carlos noticed the way Feather looked at it, and

him. "Now t he cavity .

It's for th e most serious injuries, but I've

reprogrammed it for you, Sharrol my dear --"

"But it's exactly Carlos's size," Feather told us pointedly .

"The UN

thinks a lot of Carlos. W e can't use it."

Sharrol said, "It looks small. I d on't mean the IC cavity .

I can get into

that. But there's not much room for transplants in that storage space."

"Oh, no. This is advanced stuf f. I had a hand in the design. One day

we'll be able to use these techniques with everyone." Carlos p atted the

monster .

"There's nothing in here in the way of cloned or gans and such. There's the Sur gery program, and a reservoir of or ganic soup, and a

googol o f self-re plicating machi nes a few hundred atoms long. If I lost a

leg or an eye, they'd turn me of f and rebuild it onto me. There's even ...

here, pa y attenti on. Y ou feed th e or ganics reservoir through here, so the

machine doesn't run out of material. Y ou could even feed it Fafn ir fish if

you can catch them, but they're metal-deficient ..."

When he had us thoroughly familiar with the beast, he helped Sh arrol

into the cavity , waited to be sure she was hooked up, and closed it. That

made me nervous as hell. She c limbed out a day later claiming that she

hadn't felt a thing, wasn't hungry , didn't even have to use the bathroom. The 'do c was massive. I had to really heave against it to g et it

moving, and then it wanted to m ove along the shore. I forced it to turn

inland. The proper place to hide it was in the lamplighter nest, of course. I wa s ga sping li ke death itself, a nd the daylight had almost died , and

I just couldn't push that mass uphill. I l eft it on the beach. Maybe the re was an answer .

Let my hindbrain

toy with it for a while. I trudged across sand to rough coral and kept walking to the peak. W e'd pic ked the island partly for its isolation. T wo distant yellow lights,

eastward, marke d two islands I' d noted earlier .

I ran my mag s pecs (the

side that worked ) up to 2OX and scanned the whole horizon, and found

nothing but the twin lamplighter glows. And nothing to do but wait. I sa t with my back against the lip of the dead lamplighter pit. I

pictured her: she looked serious , a touch worried, under a feather crest

and undyed skin: pink shading to brown, an Anglo tanned as if by

Fafnir's yellow-white sun. I said, "Sharrol."

Like the dead she had slept, her face slack beneath the faceplate, like

Sleeping Beauty .

I'd taken to talking to her , wondering if some part of

her heard. I'd never had the chance to ask. "I never wonder ed why you lov ed me. Egotist, I am. But you must

have loo ked like me when you were younger .

Thirty years underwater ,

no s unlight. Y our uncles, your father , they must have looked a lot like

me. Maybe even with white hair .

How old ar e you?

I never asked."

Her memory looked at me. "T anj that. Wher e are you?

Where are T anya and Louis?

Where's

Carlos?

What happened after I was shot?"

Faint smile, shrug of eyebrows. "Y ou sp ent three weeks unconscious in the ICC followed by ten

minutes on your feet. W rong gr avity , wrong air mix, wrong smells. W e

hit you with everything it might take to knock a flat phobe spinning. Then bla m and your love interes t is lying on the sand with a hole through

him. "Maybe you tried to kill her .

I don't think you'd give her much

trouble, but maybe Feather would kill you anyway .

She'd still have the

kids ..."

I sla mmed my fist on coral. "What did she want ?

Th at c razy wo man. I never hurt her at all."

T alking to Sharrol: Lifeless as she was, maybe it wasn't qui te as

crazy a s talking to myself. I couldn't talk to the others. They -- "Y ou

remember that night we planned it all?

Feather was lucid then. Comparatively .

W e were there for her as people .

On the trip to M ars she

was a lot wilder .

She was a hell of an active lover , but I never really got

the feeling that I was ther e for her ."

W e never talked about each other's lovers. In truth, it was easier to

say these things to Sharrol when she wasn't here. "But most of the way to Fafnir , Feather was fine. But she wasn't

sleeping with me. Just Carlos. She could hold a conversation, no problem

there, but I was randy , love, and frustrated. She liked that. I caught a

look whe n C arlos wasn't looking. So I didn't want to talk to her .

And she

was always up against Carlos, and Carlos, he was a bit embarrassed

about it all. W e talked about pl ans, but for anything personal t here was

just you. Sleeping Beauty ."

The nigh t was warm and clear .

By convention, boats would show any

color except lamplighter yellow .

I couldn't miss seeing a boat's lights. "Then, f ifteen h ours out from t he drop point, that night I found her

floating in my sl eeping plates. I suppose I could have sent her to her own

room, I mean it was within the laws of physics, but I didn't. I a cted like

conversation was the last thing I'd be interested in. But so did Feather .

"And the next morning it was all business, and a frantic business it

was. W e came in in devious fas hion, and got of f behind the moon. Boy

Geor ge wen t on alone, decelerating. Pas sed too close to an ARM base o n

Claim 226 that even Feather w asn't supposed to know about. T urned

around and accelerated away in clear and obvious terror , headi ng of f in

the gene ral direction of Hrooshpith -- pithtcha -- of another of those

used-to-be-kzinti systems where they've never got the population records

straightened out. No doubt the ARM is waiting for us there. "And of course you missed the ride down ...

but my point is that

nothing ever got said .

"Okay .

T his whole scheme was schemed by Feather , carried thr ough

by Feather .

It --" I stared into the black night. "Oh." I really sho uld have

seen this earlier .

Why did Feather need Carlos?

Through the ARM spy net Feather Filip had found a family o f six

Shashters ready to emigrate. Wh y not look for one or two?

Whe re Carlos

insisted on taking his children and Sharrol and me, another man might be

more reasonable. "She doe sn't jus t want to be clear of Sol system. Doesn't just want to

make babies. She wants Carlos .

Ca rlos of the perfect genes. Hah!

Carlos

finally saw it. Maybe she told him. He must have let her know he didn't

want chi ldren by an ARM schiz. Angry and randy , she took it out on me,

and then ..."

Then?

W ith my eyes open to the dark, entranced, I remembered that final

night. Y ellow lights sprinkled on a black ocean. Some ar e the wr ong

color , to o bright , too blue. A void those. They'r e houses. Pick one far fr om

the r est. Hover .

O r ganic matter burns lamplighter yellow below the drive

flame, then fades. I sink us in, an egg in an egg cup. Feather b lasts the

r oof loose and we crawl out --

W e h adn't wanted to use artificia l lights. When dawn gave us enough

light, w e inflate d the boat. Fea ther and Carlos used the gravi ty lift to

settle th e freeze box in the boat. They were ar guing in whispers .

I didn't

want to hear that, I thought. I turned of f the doc's "Maintenance" sequence. A minute later Sharrol

sat up, a flat pho be wakened suddenly on an alien world. Snif fe d the air .

Kissed me and l et me lift her out, heavy in Fafnir's gravity .

I s et her on

the sand .

Her nerve seemed to be holding. Feather had procured local

clothing; I pushed the bundle into her arms. Feather came toward me towing the gravity lift. She looked

shapeless, with bulging pockets fore and aft. W e slid the lift into place,

and I pushed the 'doc toward Carlos and the boat. Feather c alled my

name. I turned. Blam. Agony and scrambled senses, but I saw Carlos

leap for the boat, reflexes like a jackrabbit. My head hit the black sand. Then?

"She wa nted ho stages. Our children, but Carlos's children. They're

frozen, t hey wo n't give her any trouble. But me, why would she need

me?

Killing me lets Carlos know she means it. Maybe I told too many

stories: maybe she thinks I'm dangerous. Maybe --"

For an instant I saw just how s up erfluous I w as, from Feather Filip's

psychotic viewpoint. Feather wanted Carlos. Carlos wanted the children. Sharrol came with the children. Beowulf Shaef fer was along because he

was with Sharrol. If Feather shot Beowulf, how much would Carlos

mind?

Blam. Presently I said, "She shot me to prove she would. But it look ed to

me like Carlos ju st ran. There w eren't any weapons in the boat, we'd only

just inflated it. All he could do was start it and go. That takes --" When I

thought about it, it was actually a good move. He'd gotten aw ay with

himself and T anya and Louis, with both hostages. Protect them now ,

negotiate later .

And he'd left Fe ather in a killing rage, with that horrible tube an d one

living tar get. I stopped talking to Sharrol then, because it seemed to me

she must be dead. No!

"Feather had you. She had to have you ." It could happen. It

could. " What el se can she thre aten Carlos with?

She has to keep you

alive." I tried to believe it. "She certainly didn't kill you in the first

minute. Somebody had to put me in the 'doc. Feather had no interest in

doing that."

But she had no interest in letting Sharrol do that either .

"T anj

dammit!

Why did Feather let y ou put me in the 'doc?

She eve n let you ..." What about the biomass reserve?

My dam aged bo dy must have n eeded some major restructuring .

The

biomass reserve had been feedi ng Sharrol, and doing incidental repairs

on u s al l, for the entire three-week trip. Healing me would tak e another ...

fi fty k ilograms?

More?

"She must have let you fill the biomas s reserve

with ..." Fish?

Feather showing Carlos how reasonable she could be ...

too

reasonable. It felt wrong, wrong .

"The other body , the headless one. Why

not just push that in the hopper?

So much easier .

Unless --"

Unless material was even closer at hand. I felt no sudden inspiration. It was a matter of making myself believe. I t ried to remem ber Sharrol ...

pulling her clothes on quickly , shivering

and danc ing on the sand, in the chilly dawn breeze. Hands brushing back

through her hair , hair half grow n out. A tiny grimace for the way the

survival jacket made her look, bulges everywhere. Patting pockets,

opening some of them. The 'doc had sna pped her out of a three week sleep. Like me: awake,

alert, ready .

It didn't go awa y , the answer .

It just ...

I still didn't know where

Sharrol was, or Carlos, or the children. What if I was wrong?

Feather had

mapped my route to Home, eve ry step of the way .

I knew exact ly where

Feather was now , if a line of logic could point my way .

But -- on e wrong

assumption, and Feather Filip could pop up behind my ear .

I could make myself safer , and Sharrol too, if I mapped out a w orst-

case scenario. Feather's Plan B: Kill Shaef fer .

T ake the rest prisoners, to impos e her

will on Carlos ...

but Carlos fle es with the boat. So, Plan B-1: Feather

holds Sh arrol at gunpoint. (Alive.) Some days later she waves down a

boat. Blam, and a stolen boat sails toward Shasht. Or stops to stow

Sharrol somewhere, maybe on another coral island, maybe imprisoned

inside a plastic tent with a live lamplighter horde prowling outside. And Carlos?

He's had four months, now , to find Sharrol and Fe ather .

He's a genius, ask anyone. And Feather wants to get in touch ...

unless

she's given up on Carlos, decided to kill him. If I coul d trace Carlos's path, I w ould find Louis and T anya and even

Sharrol. Carlos Plan B-1 follows Plan A as originally conceived by Feather .

The kid s would be stowed aboard the iceliner as if already re gistered. Carlos would register and be frozen. Feather could follow him to Home ...

maybe on the same ship, if she hustled. But --

No way could Feather get hersel f frozen with a gun in her hand. That

would be the moment to take her , coming out of freeze on Home. There, I had a tar get. On Shasht they could tell me who had boarded

the Zombie Queen for Home. What did I have to do to get to Shasht?

"Feed m yself, th at's easy .

Collect rainwater too. Get of f the island ..."

That, at least, was not a puzzle. I couldn't build a raft. I couldn't swim to

another island. But a sailor lost at sea will die if cast ashore; therefore,

local tradition decrees that he must be rescued. "Collect some money .

Get to Shasht. Hide myself." Whatever else

was lost to me, to us -- whoever had died, whoever still lived -- there was

still the mission, and that was to be free of the United Nations and Earth. And Carlos W u's 'doc would finger me instantly .

It was advanced

nanotechnology: it screamed its Earthly origin. It might be the most

valuable item on Fafnir , and I had no wealth at all, and I was going to

have to abandon it. Come d aylight, I moved the 'doc. I still wanted to hide it in the

lamplighter nest .

The gravity lift would lift it but not push it uphill. But I

solved it. One of the secrets of life: know when and what to give up. I wa ited for low tide and then pushed it out to sea, and turned o f f the

lift. The water came almost to the faceplate. Seven hours later it didn't

show at all. And the next emer g ency might kill me unless it happened at

low tide. The nig hts were as warm as the days. As the tourist material had

promised, it rained just before dawn. I set up my pants to funnel

rainwater into a hole I had chopped in the coral. The tour guide h ad told me how to feed myself. It isn't that rare for a

lamplighter nest to die. Sooner or later an unlit island will be discovered

by any of several species of swimming things. Some ride the waves at

night and spawn in the sand. I s pent the seco nd night running through the shallows and scooping

up s unbunnies in my jacket. B igger flying fish came gliding of f the

crests of the breakers. They wanted the sunbunnies. Three or four wanted

me, but I was able to dodge. One I had to gut in midair .

The tour guide hadn't told me how to clean sunbunnies. I had to fake

that. I poached them in seawate r , using my pocket torch on high; and I

ate until I was bloated. I fed more of them into the biomass reservoir .

W ith some distaste, I fed those long human bones in too. Fafnir fish

meat wa s deficie nt in metals. U ltimately that might kill me; bu t the 'doc

could compensate for a time. There was nothing to build a boat with. The burnt-out lamplighter

nest didn't show by daylight, so any passing boat would be afraid to

rescue me. I th ought of swimming; I thought of riding away on the

gravity lift, wherever the wind might carry me. But I coul dn't feed

myself at sea, and how could I approach another island?

On the fourth evening a great winged shape passed over the island,

then dived into t he sea. Later I heard a slapping sound as that fl yer and a

companion kicked themselves free of the water , soared, passed over the

crater and settled into it. They m ade a great deal of noise. Presently the

big one glided down to the water and was gone. At dawn I fed m yself again, on the clutch of eggs that had been laid

in the body of t he smaller flyer: male or female, whichever .

T he dime

disk had n't told me about this creature. A pity I wouldn't have the chance

to write it up. At just past sunset on the eigh th night I saw a light flicker blue-

green-red. My mag specs showed a boat that wasn't moving. I fire d a flare straight up, and w atched it burn blue-white for tw enty

minutes. I fired another at midnight. Then I stuf fed my boots partway

into my biggest pockets, inflated my shoulder floats, and walked into the

sea until I had to swim. I c ouldn't see th e boat with my eyes this close to water level. I fired

another flare before dawn. One of those had to catch someone awake ...

and if not, I had three more. I kept swimming. It w as p eaceful as a dream. Fafnir's ecology is very old, evolved on a

placid world not prone to dr ifting continents and ice ages, where

earthquakes and volcanoes know their place. The sea had teeth, of course, but the carnivores were specialized;

they knew the sounds of the ir prey .

There were a few terrifying

exceptions. Rea son and logic weren't enough to wash out those

memories, holograms of creatures the match for any white shark. I gre w tired fast. The air felt wa rm enough, the water did too, but it

was leeching the heat from my flesh and bones. I kept swimming. A re scuer should have no way of knowing that I had been on an

island. T he farth er I could get, the better .

I did not want a rescuer to find

Carlos W u's 'doc. At first I saw no thing more of the boat than the great white wings of

its s ails. I set the pocket torch on wide focus and high power , to compete

with wh at was now broad daylight, and poured vivid green light on the

sails. And I waited for it to turn toward me, but for a long time it didn't. It

came in a zigzag motion, aimed by the wind, never straight at m e. It took

forever to pull alongside. A woma n with fluf fy golden hair studied me in some curiosity , then

stripped in two quick motions and dived in. I was numb with cold, hardly capable of wiggling a finger .

This was

the wors t mome nt, and I couldn 't muster the strength to appre ciate it. I

passively let the woman noose me under the armpits, watched the man

lift me aboard, utterly unable to protect myself. Feather could have killed me be fore the 'doc released me. Why wait?

I'd worked out what must have happened to her; it was almost plausible;

but I couldn't s hake the notion that Feather was waiting ab ove me,

watching me come aboard. There w as only a brawny golden man with slanted brown eyes and

golden hair bleached nearly as white as mine. T or , she'd called him, and

she was W il .

H e wrapped m e in a silver bubble blanket and pushed a

bulb of something hot into my hands. My hands shook. A cup would have splashed everything out. I got

the bulb to my lips and sucked. S trange taste, augmented with a splash of

rum. The warmth went to the core of me like life itself. The wom an clim bed up, dripping. She had eyes like his, a golde n tan

like his. He handed her a bulb. They looked me over amiably .

I tried to

say something; my teeth turned into castanets. I sucked and listened to

them ar guing over who and wh at I might be, and what could h ave torn

up my jacket that way .

When I had my teeth under some kind of control, I said, "I'm Persial

January Hebert, and I'm eternally in your debt."

Leaving all our Earthly wealth behind us was a pain. Feather could

help: she contriv ed to divert a stream of ARM funds to Fafnir , replacing

it from Carlos's wealth. Riiight. But Sharrol and I wo uld be sponging of f Carlos ...

and

maybe it wouldn't be Carlos. Feather controlled that wealth for now , and

Feather liked control. She had not said that she expected to ke ep some

for h erself. That bothered me. I t must have bothered Carlos too , though

we never found privacy to talk about it. I wonde red how Carlos would w ork it. Had he known Feather Filip

before he reached Jinx?

I coul d picture him designing something that

would be useless on Earth: say , an upgraded version of the mass driver

system that runs through the vac uum across Jinx's East Pole, replacing a

more normal world's Pinwheel launcher .

Design something, copyright it

on Jinx under a pseudonym, form a company .

Just in case he ev er found

the means to flee Sol system. Me, I went to my oldest frien d on Earth. General Products owed

Elephant a considerable sum, and Elephant -- Gregory Pelton -- owed

me. He got General Products to arrange for credit on Home and Fafnir .

Feather wouldn' t have approved the breach in secrecy , but the al iens who

run General Products don't reve al secrets. W e'd never even loca ted their

homeworld. And Feather must have expec ted to control Carlos's funding and

Carlos with it. And Sharrol ...

was with me. She'd tru sted me .

Now she was a flat phobe broke and stranded on an

alien world, if s he still lived, if she wasn't the prisoner of a homicidal

maniac. Four months, going on five. Long enough to drive her crazy , I

thought. How co uld I hurry to her resc ue?

The word hurry was said to be

for gotten on Fafnir; but perhaps I'd thought of a way .

They let me sleep. When I woke there was soup. I was ravenous. W e

talked while we ate. The boa t was Gullfish .

The owners were W ilhelmin and T oranaga,

brother and sister , both recently separated from mates and enjoying a

certain freedom. Clean air , exercise, celibacy , before they returned to the

mating dance, its embarrassments and frustrations and rewards. There was a curious turn to their accents. I tagged it as Australian at

first, then as Plateau softened by speech training, or by a generation or

two in other com pany .

This was said to be typical of Fafnir .

T here was

no F afnir accent. The planet had been settled too recently and from too

many directions. W il finished her soup, went to a locker , and came back with a jacket. It was not quite like mine, and new , untouched. They helped m e into it

and let me fish through the poc kets of my own ragged garme nt before

they tossed it in the locker .

They ha d given me my life. By Fafnir custom my response would be

a gift expressing my value as perceived by myself ...

but W il and T or

hadn't told me their full names. I hinted at this; they failed to un derstand. Hmm. My dime disk h adn't spoken of this. It might be a new custom : the

rescuer conceals data, so that an impoverished rescuee need not be

embarrassed. He sends no life gift instead of a cheap one. But I was

guessing. I couldn't follow the vibes yet. As for my own history --

"I just gave up," I blurted. "It was so stupid. I hadn't -- hadn't tried

everything at all."

T oranaga said, "What kind of everything were you after?"

"I lost my wife four months ago. A rogue wave -- you know how

waves crossing can build into a mountain of water?

It rolled our boat

under .

A trawler picked me up, the T riton ." A civi l being must be able to

name hi s rescuer .

Surely there m ust be a boat named T riton ?

"There's no

record o f anyone finding Milcenta. I bought another boat and searched. It's b een four mo nths. I was doin g more drinking than looking la tely , and

three nights ago something rammed the boat. A torpedo ray , I think. I

didn't sink, but my power was out, even my lights. I got tired of it all and

just started swimming."

They looked at each other , then at their soup. Sympathy was there,

with a trace of contempt beneath. "Middle of the night, I was cold as the sea bottom, and it crossed my

mind th at maybe Mil was re scued under another name. W e aren't

registered as a p artnership. If Mil was in a coma, they'd check h er retina

prints --"

"Use our caller ," W ilhelmin said. I tha nked them. "W ith your perm ission, I'll establish some credit too. I've run myself broke, but there's credit at Shasht."

They left me alone in the cabin. The caller was s et into a wall in the cabin table. It was a porta ble --

just a projector plate and a few keys that would get me a display of

virtual k eys and a screen -- but a sailor's portable, with a watertight case

and several small cleats. I found the master program unfamiliar but user -

friendly .

I set up a search program for Milcenta Adelaide Graynor , in any

combination. Milcenta was Sharrol and Adelaide was Feather , as

determined by their iceliner tic kets and retina prints. Milcenta's name

popped up at once. I b ellow ed out of the hatch. "T hey saved her!" W il and T or bolted

into the cabin to read over my shoulder .

Hand of Allah , a fishing boat. Milcenta but no t Adelaide!

Sharrol had

been picked up alone. I'd been at least half right: she'd escaped from

Feather .

I realized I was crying. And -- "No life gift." That wa s the other side of it: if she sent a

proper gift, the embarrassment of needing to be rescued at sea need

never become public record. W e'd drilled each other on such matters. "She must have been in bad shape."

"Y es, if she didn't call you," W ilhelmin said. "And she didn't go

home either?"

I told Martin Graynor's story: "W e sold our home. W e were on one

last crui se befor e boarding an ic eliner .

She could be anywhere b y now , if

she thought the wave killed me. I'll have to check."

I di d something about money first. There was nothing aboard

Gullfish t hat could read Persial January Hebert's retina prints, but I could

at least establish that money was there. I tried to summo n passenger records from the iceliner Zombie Queen .

This wa s disallo wed. I showed d isappointment and some impati ence; but

of co urse they w ouldn't be shown to Hebert. They'd be opened t o Martin

W allace Graynor .

They taught me to sail. Gullfish was built for sails, not for people. The floors weren't flat. Ropes lay all over every surfa ce. The mast stood upright thr ough the

middle o f the cabin. Y ou didn't walk in, you climbed. There were no lift

plates; y ou slep t in an odd-sha ped box small enough to let you brace

yourself in storms. I had to learn a peculiar slan g, as if I were learning to fly a

spacecraft, and for the same reason. If a sailor hears a yell, he has to

know what is meant, instantly .

I was working hard and my body was adjusting to the shorter day .

Sure I had insom nia; but nobody sleeps well on a small boat. The idea is

to snap awake instantly , where any stimulus could mean trouble. The

boat was giving my body time to adjust to Fafnir .

Once I passed a mirror , and froze. I barely knew myself. That wa s all to the good. My skin was darkening and, despite sun

block, w ould da rken further .

But when we landed, my hair had been cut

to Fafnir styles. It had grown during four months in the 'doc. The 'doc

had "cured" my depilation treatment: I had a beard too. When we

reached civiliza tion I would be far too conspicuous: a pink-ey ed, pale-

skinned man with long, wild white hair .

My hosts hadn't said anything a bout my appearance. It was easy to

guess what they'd thought. They'd found a neurotic who sailed in search

of his dead wife until his love of life left him entirely .

I we nt to T or in some embarrassment and asked if they had anything

like a styler aboard. They had scissors. Riiight. W il tried to shape my hair , laughed at the

result, and suggested I finish the job at Booty Island .

So I tried to for get the rest of the world and just sail. It was what

W illhelmin and T oranaga were doing. One day at a time. Isl ands and

boats gr ew more common as w e neared the Central Isles. Another day

for Feath er to for get me, or lose me. Another day of safety for S harrol, if

Feather followed me to her .

I'd have to watch for that. And pea ce would have been mine, but that my ragged vest was in a

locker that wouldn't open to my fingerprints. W il and T or talked about themselves, a little, but I still didn't know

their ide ntities. They slept in a locked cabin. I noticed also an absence. W il was a lovel y woman, not u nlike Sharrol herself, but her d emeanor

and body language showed no sign that she considered herself female, or

me male, let alone that she might welcome a pass. It might mean anything, in an alien culture: that my hair style or

shape of nose or skin color was distasteful, or I didn't know the local

body language, or I lacked doc umentation for my gene pattern. But I

wondered if they wanted no life gift, in any sense, from a m an they

might have to give to the police. What wo uld a police detective think of those holes?

Why , he'd think

some kinetic weapon had torn a hole through the occupant, killing him

instantly , after which someone (the killer?) had stolen the vest for

himself. And if W il and T or were thinking that way ...

What I d id at the

caller -- might it be saved automatically?

Now ther e was a notion. I bo rrowed the caller again. I summoned the encyclopedia and set a

search f or a creature with boneless arms. There were several on Fafnir ,

all small. I sought data on the biggest, particularly those local to the

North Coral Quadrant. There were stories ...

no hard evidence. And another day passed, and I learned that I could cook while a

kitchen was rolling randomly .

At dinne r that night W il got to talking about Fafnir sea life. She'd

worked at Pacifica , which I gathered was a kind of underwater zoo; and

had I ever heard of a Kdatlyno lifeform like a blind squid?

"No," I said. "W ould the kzinti bring one here?"

"I w ouldn't think so. The kzin ti aren't surfers," T or said, an d we

laughed. W il didn't. She said, "They meant it for the hunting jungle. On Kdat

the dam n things can come ash ore and drag big animals back into the

ocean. B ut they've pretty well died out around Shasht, and we never

managed to get one for Pacifica ."

"W ell," I said, and hesitated, and, "I think I was attacked by

something like that. But huge. And it wasn't around Shasht, it w as where

you picked me up."

"Jan, you should report it."

"W il, I can't. I was fast asleep and half dead of cold, lost at sea at

midnight. I woke up under wa ter .

Something was squeezing my chest

and back. I got my knife out and slashed. Slashed something rubbery .

It

pulled a part. It pulled my jacket apart. If it had ripped the shoulder floats

I'd still be down there. But I never saw a thing."

Thus are legends born. Booty Island is s everal islands mer ged. I counted eight peaks co ming

in; there must have been more. W e had been sailing for twelve days. Buildings sat on each of the lamplighter nests. They looked like

government buildings or muse ums. No two were alike. Houses were

scattered across the flatlands between. A mile or so of shopping center

ran like a suspe nsion bridge between two peaks. On Earth th is would

have been a park. Here, a center of civilization. A li ne of transfer booths in the mall bore the familiar flickering

Pelton l ogo. Th ey were all big car go booths, and old. I didn't instantly

see the significance. W e stop ped in a hotel and used a coin caller .

The system read my

retina pr ints: Persial January Hebert, sure enough. W il and T or waited

while I moved some money , co llected some cash and a transf er booth

card, an d regist ered for a room .

I tried again for records of Milcenta

Adelaide Graynor .

Sharrol's rescue was still there. Nothing for Feather .

W il said, "Jan, she may have been recovering from a head injury .

See

if she's tried to find you."

I couldn't be Mart Graynor while W il and T or were watching. The net

registered no messages for Jan Hebert. Feather didn't know that name. Sharrol did; but Sharrol thought I was dead. Or maybe she w as crazy , incapacitated. W ith T or and W il watching I

tried two worst-cases. First: ex ecutions. A public 'doc can cure most varieties of madness. Madness is curable, therefore voluntary .

A capital crime committed

during a period of madness h as carried the death penalty for seven

hundred years, on Earth and on every world I knew .

It was true on Fafnir too. But Sharrol had not been executed fo r any

random homicide, and neither , worse luck, had Feather .

Next: There are still centers for the study of madness. The best

known is on Jinx. On Earth there are several, plus one secret b ranch of

the ARM. There was only one mental institution to serve all of Fafnir ,

and that seemed to be half emp ty .

Neither Feather's nor Sharrol's retina

prints showed on the records. The third possibility would have to wait. W e all needed the hotel's styler , though I was the worst of f .

The

device left my hair long at th e neck, and theirs too, a local style to

protect a gainst s unburn. I let it tame my beard without baring my face. The sun had had its way with me: I looked like an older man. I t ook W il and T or to lunch. I found "gullfish" on the menu, and tried

it. L ike much of Fafnir sea life, it tasted like something that had almost

managed to become red meat. I wo rked some points casually into conversation, just checking. It

was their last ch ance to probe m e too, and I had to improvise details of a

childhood in the North Sea. T or found me plausible; W il was harder to

read. No thing was said of a vest or a great sea monster .

In thei r minds I

was already gone. I wa s Schrodinger's cat: I had m urdered and not murdered the owner

of a shredded vest. At the caller in my room I established myself as Martin W a llace

Graynor .

That gave me access to my wives' autodoc records. A public

'doc will correct any of the chemical imbalances we lump under the term

"crazy ," but it also records such service. Milcenta Grayn or -- Sharrol -- had used a 'doc eight times in four -

plus mo nths, starting a week a fter our disastrous landing. The record

showed much improvement ov er that period, beginning at a startling

adrenaline level, acid indigestion and some dangerous lesser symptoms. Eight times within the Central Islands ...

none on Shasht. If sh e'd never re ached the mainland, then she'd never tried to reach

Outbound Enterprises. Never tried to find Carlos, or Louis and T anya. Adelaide Grayno r -- Feather -- had no 'doc record on this world .

The

most ob vious co nclusion was that wherever she was, she must be mad as

a March hare. Boats named Gullfish we re everywhere on Fafni r .

Fifty-one

registries. T went y-nine had sail. T en of those would sleep four .

I scanned

for first names: no W ilhelmin, no T oranaga. Maybe Gullfish belonged to

a parent, or to one of the departed spouses. I'd l earned a ter m for Gullfish 's sa il and mast configuration: " sloop

rig. "

Every one of the ten candidates was a sloop rig!

W ait, now .

W il had worked at Pacifica ?

I d id some research. Pacifica wa sn't just a zoo. It looked more like an

underwater village, with listings for caterers, costume shops, subs, repair

work, travel, hotels ...

but W il had worked with sea life. Might that give

me a handle?

I couldn't see how .

It wasn't that I didn't have an an swer; I just didn't like it. W il and T or

had to hand my vest to the cops. When Persial January Hebert was

reported rescued, I would send them a gift. Feather didn't know my alternate name. But if she had access to the

Fafnir police, she'd tanj sure recognize that vest!

W ith the rest of the afternoon I bought survival gear: a backp urse,

luggage, clothing. On E arth I could have vanished behind a thousand shades of dyes. Here ...

I settled for a double dose of tannin secretion, an unde rdose of

sun bloc k, a darkened pair of mag specs, my height, and a local beard

and hairstyle. Arming myself was a problem. The disk hadn't spoken of weapons on Fafnir .

My safest guess was

that Fafnir was like Earth: they didn't put weapons in the hands of

civilians. Handguns, rifles, martial arts training belong to the police. The goo d news: everyone on the islands carried knives. Those flying

sharks that attacked me during the sunbunny run were one predator out

of thousands. Feather would arm herself som ehow .

She'd look through a spo rting

goods st ore, steal a hunting rifle ...

nope, no hunting rifles. No lar ge prey

on Fafnir , unless in the kzinti jungle, or underwater .

There were listings for scuba stores. I found a stun gun with a big

parabolic reflec tor , big enough to knock out a one-gulp, too big for a

pocket. I took i t home, with m ore diving gear for versimilitude and a

little too l kit for repairing divi ng equipment. W ith that I removed the

reflector .

Now I couldn't use it underwater; it would knock me out, because

water conducts sound very well. But it would fit my pocket. I took my time over a sushi dinner , quite strange. Some time after

sunset I stepped into a transfer booth, and stepped out into a brilliant

dawn on Shasht. Outbound Enterprises was ope n. I let a Ms. Machti take M artin

W allace Graynor's retina prints. "Y our ticket is still good, Mr .

Graynor ,"

Ms. Mac hti said. "The service char ge will be eight hundred stars. Y ou're

four months late!"

"I was shipwrecked," I told her .

"Did my companions make it?"

Iceliner passeng ers are in no hurry .

The ships keep prices down by

launching when they're full. I learned that the Zombie Queen had

departed a week after our landing, about as expected. I gave Ms .

Machti

the n ames. She s et the phone system searching, and presently sa id, "Y our

husband and the children board ed and departed. Y our wives' ti ckets are

still outstanding."

"Both?"

"Y es." She did a double take. "Oh, good heavens, they must think

you're dead!"

"That's what I'm afraid of. At least, John and T weena and N athan

would. They were revived in good shape?"

"Y es, of course. But the women -- could they have waited for you?"

Stet: Carlos, T anya, and Louis w ere all safe on Home and had le ft the

spaceport under their own power .

Feather and Sharrol -- "W aited?

But

they'd have left a message."

She was still looking at her scr een. "Not for you, Mr .

Grayno r , but

Mr .

John Gra ynor has recorded a messag e for Mrs. Graynor ...

for Mrs. Adelaide Graynor ."

For Feather .

"But nothing for Milcenta?

But they both stayed?

How

strange." Ms. Machti seemed the type of person who might wonder about

other people's sexual arrangements. I wanted her curious, because this

next question -- "Can you show me what John had to say to Adelaide ?"

She shook her head firmly .

"I don't see how --"

"Now , J ohn wouldn't have said anything someone else couldn't hear .

Y ou can watch it yourself --" Her head as still turning left, right , left. "In

fact, you should. Then you can at least tell me if there's been, if, well. I

have to know , don't I?

If Milcenta's dead."

That sto pped her .

She nodded, barely , and tapped in the code to

summon Carlos's message to Feather .

She read it all the way through. Her lip curled just a bit; but she

showed only solemn pity when she turned the monitor to face me. It was a posed sc ene. Carlos looked like a man hiding a sickness .

The

view behind him could have been a manor garden in England , a tamed

wilderness. T any a and Louis were playing in the distance, hide-and-seek

in and out of some Earthly tree that dripped a cage of foliag e. Alive. Ever sin ce I had first seen them frozen, I must have been thi nking of

them as dead. Carlos l ooked earnestly out of the monitor screen. "Adelaide , you

can see that the children and I arrived safely .

I have an income. The plans

we made together , half of us hav e carried out. Y our own iceliner slots are

still available. "I know nothing of Mart. I hope you've heard from him, but he

should never have gone sailing alone. I fear the worst. "Addie, I can't p retend to understand how you've changed, how Mil

changed, or why .

I can only hope you'll both change your mind and come

back to me. Bu t understand me, Addie: you are not welcome without

Milcenta. Y our claim on family funds is void without Milcenta. And

whatever relatio nship we can shape from these ashes, I would prefer to

leave the children out of it."

He had the money!

Carlos stood and walked a ha lf circle as he spoke. The camera

followed him on automatic, and now it showed a huge, sprawling house

of architectural coral, pink and slightly rounded everywhere. Carlos

gestured. "I've waited. The hous e isn't finished because you and Milcenta

will have your own tastes. But come soon. "I've set credit with Outbou nd. Messages sent to Home by

hyperwave will be char ged to me. I'll get the service char ges when you

and Milcenta board. Call first. W e can work this out."

The record began to repeat. I heard it through again, then turned the

monitor around. Ms. Machti asked, "Y ou went sailing alone?"

She thou ght I'd tried to commit suicide after our wives had changed

parity and locked the men out: an implication Carlos had shaped with

some skill. I ma de a brush-of f g esture and said, "I've got to tell him I'm

still alive."

"The credit he left doesn't apply --"

"I want to send a hyperwave message, my expense. Let's see ...

does

Outbound Enterprises keep a camera around?"

"No."

"I'll fax it from the hotel. When's the next flight out?"

"At least two weeks, but we can suspend you any time."

I use d a camera at the hotel. Th e first disk I made would go thr ough

Outbound Enterprises. "John, I'm all right. I was on a dead island eating

fish for a while." A slightly be lligerent tone: "I haven't heard a word

from Adelaide or Milcenta. I k now Milcenta better than you do, and

frankly , I believe they must have separated by now .

Home looks like a

new life, but I haven't given up on the old one. I'll let you know when I

know myself."

So much for the ears of Ms. Machti. T ime lag had me suddenly wiped out. I floated between the sleeping

plates ...

exhausted but awake. What should I put in a r eal message?

Carlos's tape was a wonderful le sson in communication. He wants to

talk to Feather .

The children are not to be put at risk. Beowulf is

presumed dead. C'est la vie ; C arlos will no t seek vengeance. But he

wants Sharrol alive. Feather is not to come to Home without Sharrol. Carlos can enforce any agreem ent. He hadn't said so because it's too

obvious. A frozen Feather , arriving at Home unaccompanied, need never

wake. And he had the money!

Not just his own funds, but the money

Feather knew about, "family funds": he must have reached civilization

ahead of her a nd somehow sequestered what Feather had funneled

through the ARM. If Feather was loose on Fafnir , then she was also

broke. S he owne d nothing but th e credit that would get her a hy perwave

call to Home, o r herself and Sharrol shipped frozen. Though Carlos

didn't know it, even Sharrol had escaped. Nearly five months. How was Feather living?

Did she have a job?

Something I could track?

W ith her training she might be better of f as a

thief. Y eah!

I tumbled out of the sleepfield and tapped out my needs in

some ha ste. She hadn't been caught at any capital crime, but an y jail on

Shasht w ould record Adelaide Graynor's retina prints. The caller ran its

search ...

Nothing. Okay , job .

Feather needed something that would allow her time to

take care of a prisoner .

She had to have that if she had Sharrol, or in case

she recaptured Sharrol, or captured Beowulf .

So I looked thro ugh some job listings, but nothing suggested itself. I

turned of f the caller and hoped for sleep. Perhaps I dozed a little. Sometime in the night I realize d that I had nothing more to say to

Carlos. Even Sharrol's escape wasn't information unless she stayed loose. Feather was a trained ARM. I was a self-trained tourist; I couldn't

possibly hunt her down. There was only one way to hunt Feather .

It was still black outside, and I was wide awake. The caller gave me a

listing of all night restaurants. I ord ered an elaborate breakfast, six kinds of fish eggs, gulper b acon,

cappuccino. Five people at a ta ble demanded that I join them, so I did. They were fresh from the cor al isles via dirigible, still tim e-lagged,

looking for new jokes. I tried to oblige. And somewhere in there I for got

all about missing ladies. W e broke up a t dawn. I walk ed back to the hotel alone. I had

sidetracked my mind, hoping it w ould come up with something if I left it

alone; b ut my answer hadn't changed. The way to hunt Feather was to

pretend to be Feather , and hunt Sharrol. Stet, I'm Feather Filip. What do I know about Sharrol?

Feather must

have researched her; she sure as tanj had researched me!

Back up. How did Sharrol get loose?

The sim plest possible answer was that Sharrol dove into the water

and swa m away .

Feather could beat her at most things, but a woman who

had lived beneath the ocean for thirty years would swim just fine. Eventually a boat would find her .

Eventually , an island. Penniless .

She needs work now .

Wh at k ind of

work is that?

It has to suit a flat phobe. She's being hunted by a murderer ,

and the alien planet around he r forces itself into her awarene ss every

second. Dirigib le stewardness is probably out. Hotel work would be

better .

Feather , days behind her , seeks work for herself, but the listings will

tell her Sharrol 's choices too. And now I was back in the room and

scanning through work listings. Qualifications -- I couldn't remember what Milcenta Graynor was

supposed to be able to do. Shar rol's skills wouldn't match anyway , any

more than mine matched Mart Graynor's. So look for unskilled. Low salaries, of course. Except here: servant, kzinti embassy .

W as

that a joke?

No: here was museum maintenance , must work with kzinti .

Some of them h ad stayed with the embassy , or even become citizens. Could Sharrol handle that?

Sh e got along with strangers ev en near -

aliens, like me. Fishing boats. Period of training needed. Hotel work. Underwater

porter work, unskilled labor in Pacifica --

Pacifica .

Of cou rse. Briefly I co nsidered putting in for the porte r job. Sharrol and/or Feather must hav e done that, grabbed whatever was to be

had ...

but I told myself that Fea ther thought I had no money .

She'd never

look for me in Pacifica's second-best ...

ah, best hotel. The truth is, I prefer playing tourist. I s canne d price listings for hote ls in Pacifica; called and negotiated

for a room at the Pequod. Then I left Shasht in untraditional fas hion, via

oversized transfer booth, still in early morning. It w as night in Pacifica. I checked in, crawled between sle eping

plates and zonked out, my time-lagged body back on track. I wo ke late, fully rested for the first time in days. There was a little

round window next to my nose. I gazed out, floating half mes merized,

remembering the Great Barrier Reef outside Carlos W u's apartment. The strangeness and variety of Earth's sea life had stunned me then. But these oceans were older .

Evolution had filled ecological niches not

yet dreamed of on Earth. It was shady out there, under a wonderful variety of seaweed

growths, like a forest in fog. L ife was everywhere. Here a s chool of

transparent bel l jars, nearly invisible, opened and closed to jet

themselves alon g. Quasi-terrest rial fish glowed as if alien graf fiti had

been scrawled across them in Day-Glo ink to identify them to potential

mates. P redators hid in the gre en treetops: torpedo shapes dived from

cover an d disap peared back into the foliage with prey wriggling in long

jaws. A bo neless arm swept straight d own from a floating seaweed is land,

toward t he oran ge neon fish sw imming just above the sandy bottom. Its

stinger -armed ha nd flexed and fell like a net over its wrigglin g prey ...

and a great mouth flexed wider and closed over the wrist. The k iller was

dark and massive, shaped like a ray of Earth's sea. The smaller fish was

painted o n its back; it moved with the motion of the ray .

The ray chewed,

reeling the arm in, until a one-a rmed black oyster was ripped out of the

seaweed tree and pulled down to death. One big beast, like a long dolp hin with gills and great round eyes,

stopped to look me over .

Owl rams were said to be no brighter than a

good dog, but Fafnir scientists had been hard put to demonstrate that, and

Fafnir fishers still didn't believe it. I wa ved solemnly .

It bowed ...

w ell, bobbed in place before it flicked

away .

My gear was arrayed in a tidy ro w , with the stunner nearest my hand. I'd put the reflec tor back on. I could reach it in an instant. Y our H onor , of

course it 's for scuba sw imming. Why else would I be in possession o f a

device that can knock Feather F ilip into a coma before she can blow a

great bloody hole through my torso?

I didn't actually want to go scuba swimming. Sharrol swam like a fish; she could be out there right now .

Still, at a

distance and underwater , would I know her?

And Feather might know

me, and Feather would certainly swim better than me, and I cou ld hardly

ignore Feather .

Sharrol had to be living underwater .

It was the only way she could

stay sane. Life beyond the glas s was alien, stet, but the life o f Earth's

seas see ms alien too. My slow wits hadn't seen that at first, but Feather's

skills would solve that puzzle. And Be owulf Shaef fer had to be underwater , to avoid sun light. Feather could find me for the wrong reasons!

And the police of Fafnir , of who m I knew nothing at all, might well

be s tudying me in bemused interest. He's bou ght a weapon!

But why , if

he has the blast er that blew a hole thr ough this vest?

And it's a fishing

weapon, and he's gone to Pacifi ca ...

which might cause them to hold of f

a few hours longer .

So, with time breathing hot on m y neck, I found the hotel restaurant

and took my time over fruit, fish eggs in a baked potato, and cappuccino. My time wasn't wasted. The w indow overlooked a main street of

Pacifica 's village-size collection of bubbles. I saw swims uits, and

casually dressed people carrying diving or fishing gear .

Almost nobody

dressed formally .

That would be for Shasht, for going to work. In the

breakfast room itself I saw four business tunics in a crowd of a hundred. And two men in dark blue polic e uniforms that left arms and legs bare:

you could swim in them. And on e long table, empty , w ith huge chairs widely spaced. I

wondered how often kzinti came in. It was hard to believe they'd be

numerous, forty years after mankind had taken over .

Back in the room I fished out the little repair kit and set to wo rk on

my transfer booth card. W e lea rned th is as kids. Th e idea is to make a bridge of

superconductor wire across the central circuits. T ransport companies

char ge citizens a quarterly fee to cover local jumps. The authori ties don't

get u pset if you stay away from the borders of the card. The borders are

area codes. W ell, it looked l ike the kind of card we'd used then. Fafnir's booth

system s erved a small population that didn't use booths much. It could

well be decades old, long due for replacement. So I'd try it. I got into casuals. I rolled my wet suit around the rest of my scuba

gear and stuf fed the stunner in to one end where I could grab it fast. Stuf fed the bundle into my back purse -- it stuck way out -- an d left the

room. Elevators led to the roof. Admis sions was here, and a line of th e big

transfer booths, and a transparen t roof with an awesome view up into the

sea f orest. I stepped into a booth and inserted my card. The random walk

began. A shopping mall, high up above a central well. Booths in a line, just

inside a big wat er lock. A resta urant; another; an apartment building. I

was jumping every second and a half. Nobody noticed me flicking in; would they notice how quickly I

flicked o ut?

Nobody gets upset at a random walk unless the k ids do it

often en ough to tie up circuits. But they might remember an ad ult. How

long before someone called the police?

A dozen kzinti, lying about in cool half darkness gnawing o ddly

shaped bones, rolled to a defensive four -footed crouch at the sight of me. I couldn 't help it: I threw myself against the back wall. I m ust have

looked crazed with terror when the random walk popped me into a

Solarico Omni center .

I was trying to straighten my face when the jump

came. Hey -- A travel terminal of some kind; I turned and saw the

dirigible, like an underpressured planet, before the scene changed -- Her!

Beyond a thick g lass wall, the se aweed forest swarmed with men and

women wearing fins: farmers picking spheres that glowed softly in oil-

slick colors. I w aited my moment and snatched my card out of the slot. W as it r eally -- I tap ped quickly to get an i nstant billing, counted two

back alo ng the booth numbers. I couldn't use the jimmied card for this,

so I'd picked up a handful of coins.-- Her?

Solarico Omni, top floor .

I stepped out of the booth, and saw the

gates that would stop a shoplifter , and a stack of lockers. For the first time I had second thoughts about the way I was dre ssed. Nothing wrong with the clothes, but I couldn't carry a mucking great

package of diving gear into a shopping center , with a stunner so handy .

I

pushed my backpurse into a locker and stepped through the gates. The who le com plex was visible from the rim of the central w ell. It

was dar ker dow n there than I was used to. Pacifica citizens must like

their underwater gloom, I thought. T wo floors down, an open fast-f ood center: wasn't that where I'd seen

her?

Sh e was gone now .

I'd seen only a face, and I could h ave been

wrong. At least she'd never spot me , not before I was much closer .

But whe re was she?

Dressed h ow?

Employee or customer?

It was

midmorning: she couldn't be on lunch break. Customer , then. Only ,

Shashters kept poor track of time. Three fl oors down, the sports de partment. Good enough. I rode down

the escalator .

I'd buy a spear g un or another stunner , shove ev erything

into the bag that came with it. Then I could start window shopping for

faces. The Sports Department aisles were pleasantly wide. Most of what it

sold was fishing gear , a daunti ng variety .

There was skiing eq uipment

too. And hunting, it looked like: huge weapons built for hands bigger

than a baseball mitt. The smalle st was a fat tube as long as my forearm,

with a grip no bigger than a kzin ti kitten's hand. Oh, sure, kzinti just love

going to humans for their wea pons. Maybe the display was there to

entertain human customers. The clerks were leaving me alo ne to browse. Customs dif fer .

What

the tanj was that ?

T wo kzinti in th e aisle, spaced three yards apart, hissing the H ero's

T ongue at each other .

A handfu l of human customers watched in some

amusement. There didn't seem to be danger there. One wore what might

be a loose dark blue swimsu it with a hole for the tail. The other

(sleeveless brown tunic) took down four yards of disassembled fishing

rod. A kzinti clerk ?

The corner of my eye caught a clerk's hands (human) opening the

case and reaching in for that sm aller tube, with a grip built for a kzin

child. Or a man -- My breath froze in my throat. I was look ing into

Feather's horrible ARM weapon. I looked up into the clerk's face. It came out as a whisper .

"No, Sharrol, no no no. It's me .

It's

Beowulf."

She didn't fire. But she was pale with terror , her jaw set like rock, and

the black tube looked at the bridge of my nose. I e ased two inches to the right, very slowly , to put myself between

the tube and the kzin cop. That wasn't a swimsuit he was wearing: it was

the same sleeve less, legless police uniform I'd seen at breakfast. W e wer e eye to eye. The whit es showed wide around her iri ses. I

said, "My face. Look at my face. Under the beard. It's Bey , love. I'm a

foot shorter .

Remember?"

She remembered. It terrified her .

"I w ouldn't fit. T he cavity was built for Carlos. My heart and lungs

were shredded, my back was shattered, my brain was dying, and you had

to get me into the cavity .

But I wouldn't fit, remember?

Sharrol, I have to

know ." I looked around quickly .

An aisle over , kzinti noses came up,

smelling fear .

"Did you kill Feather?"

"Kill Fe ather ." She set the tube down carefully on the display case. Her brow wrinkled. "I was going through my pockets. It was d istracting

me, kee ping me sane. I needed that. The light was wrong, the gravity

was wrong, the Earth was so far away --"

"Shh."

"Survival gear , always know what you have, you taught me that."

She beg an to tremble. "I heard a sonic boom. I looked up jus t as you

were blo wn bac kward. I thought I must be c-crazy .

I couldn't h ave seen

that."

It was my back that felt vulnera ble now .

I felt all those floors behind

and abov e me, all those eyes. The kzin cop had lost interest. If there was

a moment for Feather Filip to take us both, this was it. But the ARM weapon was in Sharr ol's hands --

"But Carlos jumped into the boat and roared of f, and Fe ather

screamed at him, and you were all blood and sprawled out like -- like

dead -- and I, I can't remember ."

"Y es, de ar ." I took her hand, greatly daring. "But I have to kn ow if

she's still chasing us."

She sho ok her head violently .

"I jumped on her back and cu t her

throat. She tried to point that tube at me. I held her arm down, she

elbowed me in the ribs, I hung on, she fell down. I cut her head of f. But

Bey , the re you were, and Carlo s was gone and the kids were too, and

what wa s I going to do ?" She came aro und the counter and put her arms

around me and said, "W e're the same height. Futz!"

I was starting to relax. Feather w as nowhere. W e were free of her .

"I

kept telling myself you must hav e killed her .

A trained ARM psychotic,

but she didn't take you seriously .

She couldn't have guessed how quick

you'd wake up. "I fed her -into the or ganics reservoir ."

"Y eah. There was nowhere else all that biomass could have come

from. It had to be Feather --"

"And I couldn't lift your body , and you wouldn't fit anyway .

I had to

cut of f your h-h --" She pulled cl ose and tried to push her head under my

jaw , but I wasn't tall enough any more. "Head. I cut as low as I could. T anj, we're the same height .

Did it work?

Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. I'm jus t short. The 'do c rebuilt me from my DNA, from the

throat down, but it built me in Fafnir gravity .

Good thing, too, I guess."

"Y eah." She was trying to laugh, gripping my arms as if I might

disappear .

"The re wouldn't have been room for your feet. Bey , we

shouldn't be talking here. That kzin is a cop, and nobody kn ows how

good their hearing is. Bey , I get of f at sixteen hundred."

"I'll shop. W e're both overdue on life gifts."

"How do I look?

How should I look?"

I h ad posed us on the roof of the Pequod, with the camera lo oking

upward past us into the green s eaweed forest. I said, "Just righ t. Pretty ,

cheerful, the kind of woman a man might drown himself for .

A little

bewildered. Y ou didn't contact me because you got a blow to the head. Y ou're only just healing. Y ou ready?

T ake one, now ." I key ed the

vidcamera. Me: "W i lhelmin, T oranaga, I hope you're feeling as good as we are. I

had no trouble finding Milcenta once I got my head on straight --"

Sharrol (bubbling): "Hello!

Thank you for Jan's life, and thank you

for teaching him to sail. I never could show him how to do that. W e're

going to buy a boat as soon as we can af ford it."

Me: "I'm ready to face the human race again. I hope you are too. This

may help." I turned the camera of f. "What are you giving them?" Sharrol asked. "Silverware, service for a dozen. Now they'll have to develop a social

life."

"Do you think they turned you in?"

"They had to. They did well by me, love. What bothers me is, t hey'll

never b e sure I'm not a murderer .

Neither will the police. This i s a

wonderful plane t for getting ri d of a corpse. I'll be looking over my

shoulder for that kzinti cop --"

"No, Bey --"

"He smelled our fear ."

"They smell everyone's fe ar .

They mak e wonderful police, but they

can't react every time a kzin m akes a human nervous. He m ay have

pegged you as an outworlder , though."

"Oop. Why?"

"Bey , the kzinti are everywhere on Fafnir , mostly on the mainland,

but they're on site at the fishing sources too. Fafnir sea life feeds the

whole Patriarchy , and it's strictly a kzinti operation. Shashters are used to

kzin. But kids a nd wimps and o utworlders all get twitchy around them,

and they're used to that."

He might have smelled more than our fear , I thought. Our genetic

makeup, our diet ...

but we'd been eating Fafnir fish for over a month,

and Fafnir's people were every breed of man. "Stet. Shall we deal with the Hand of Allah ?"

Now she looked nervous. "I must have driven them half crazy .

And

worried them sick. It's a good gift, isn't it?

Shorfy and Isfah an were

constantly complaining about fish, fish, fish --"

"They'll love it. It's about five o unces of red meat per crewman -- I

suppose that's --"

"Free-range life-forms from the hunting parks."

"And fr esh vegetables to match. I bet the kzinti don't grow those .

Okay , take one --"

Sharrol: "Captain Muh'mad, I was a long time recovering my

memory .

I expect the 'docs did more repair work every time I went

under .

My husband's found m e, we both have jobs, and this is to

entertain you and your crew in my absence."

Me: "Fo r my wife's life, blessings and thanks." I turned it of f. "Now

Carlos."

Her han d stopped me. "I can't leave, you know ," Sharrol said. "I'm

not a coward --"

"Feather learned that!"

"It's just ...

overkill. I've been through too much."

"It's all right. Carlos has Louis a nd T anya for awhile, and that's fine,

they love him. W e're free of the UN. Everything went just as we planned

it, more or less, except from Feather's viewpoint."

"Do you mind?

Do you like it here?"

"There a re trans fer booths if I want to go anywhere. Sharrol, I was

raised un der ground. It feels just like home if I don't look out a w indow .

I

wouldn't mind spending the rest of our lives here. Now , this is for Ms. Machti at Outbound, not to mention any watching ARMs. Ready?

T ake

one .

Me: "Hi, John!

Hello, kids!

W e've got a more or less happy ending

here, brought to you with some ef fort."

Sharrol: "I'm pregnant. It happened yesterday morning. That's why

we waited to call."

I w as calling as Martin W allace Graynor .

Carlos/John could reach us

the same way .

W e wanted no connection between Mart Grayno r and Jan

Hebert ...

V isuals were important to the message. The undersea forest was

behind us. I stoo d next to Sharrol, our eyes exactly level. That'd give him

a jolt. Me: "Jo hn, I know you were worried about Mil, and so was I, but

she's recovered. Mil's a lot tougher than even Addie gave her credit for ."

Sharrol: "Still, the situation was sticky at first. Messy ." She rubbed

her hands. "But that's all over .

Mart's got a job working outside in the

water orchards --"

Me: "It's just like working in free-fall. I've got a real knack for it."

Sharrol: "W e've got some mone y too, and after the baby's born I'll

take Mart's job. It'll be just like I'm back in my teens."

Me: "Y o u did the right thing, pro tecting the children first. It's worked

out very well."

Sharrol: "W e're happy here, Jo hn. This is a good place to ra ise a

child, or several. Some day we'll come to you, I think, but not now .

The

changes in my life are too new .

I couldn't take it. Mart is w illing to

indulge me."

Me (sorrowfully): "Addie is gone, John. W e never expect to see her

again, and we're just as glad, but I feel she'll always be a part of me." I

waved the camera of f. Now let's see Carlos figure that out. He does like puzzles. G H O S T

( This is the 'framing' story for   the   1994   collection   Crashlander)

W e had wonderful seats ten rows back from the glass. T wo hundred feet below the oc ean's surface sunlight flooded down

through seaweed forests in a thousand flickering golden beams. Players

swirled in shoals among the for est roots like half a hundred color -coded

fighting fish. Grandstands had been set against the city dome. Beyond the glass

was the playing domain for ten color -marked teams, each team being

five humans and a dolphin. Sixty players, down to fifty now , the humans

using breathers and oversized fins. The pre y were local life-forms, three flattened turtles armed with

hind flippers as wide as wings. Their painted shells glowed like captured

suns, re d, yellow , violet. The p oint was to move the prey through the

arches, parabolo ids painted in the same blazing colors. A play er might

pull a prey against his chest to swim with it, or hold it at arm's length and

steer by the strength of his arm s while the prey did the work, or even

leave it swimming toward the sand during a melee, hoping a teammate

could get it before it disappeared. Sharrol was entranced. When a swarm of Entertainment Guild

Players carried the violet prey th rough the violet arch, she bello wed with

the rest. I don't understand water war .

She watched the game; I watched her .

Sharrol was dressed Shashter style, a fancy cloak over a body

stocking with windows in it that would serve for swimming. She was

small even by f latlander standards, beginning to bulge with our second

child. Strong jaw , pale skin, straight black hair: the real Sha rrol. On

Earth she'd worn many fantastic images, in flatlander style. For too long fear had lurked beneath her surface emotions. Sharrol

wasn't m ade for this world. B ut we'd lived beneath Fafnir's world-

spanning ocean for a year and a half, we'd conceived and birth ed Jeena

and started a sis ter for her , and we'd come to see this place as our own. Gradually the fear had been etch ed away .

I saw no sign of it now .

Sharrol

was at home. Light be ams danced down through the water and played over the

wonderful landscape of Sharrol Janss. But I'd missed brunch. I nudged

her and said, "I'm going for provisions."

She didn't turn. "Good!

Handm eal, red, yes on veggies. Pop corn. Juice, any ."

I lef t my backp urse in the seat .

I glanced back when I reached the

aisle. Sharrol was lovely in profile, and entirely absorbed in the game. The stan ds didn 't include food s talls. Y ou had to go under the s tands

and all the way a cross the Strand, by elevated slidebridge, and into a fair -

sized food court. Or y ou c ould wa lk twenty yards along the glass, use a transfer booth,

and save fifteen minutes. I flic ked in on the second-floor balcony .

I looked over the railing at

several long lines. The longest was a window for handmeals. My

attention snagged on a face below .

He caught me looking. Or n ot. I didn't wait to be sure. I stepped to the lone phone boo th at

the end of the row of transfer bo oths. Found a coin and dialed. I did not

want this call registered on my pocket phone. W e might have had a whole life time, I thought. W e'd been promised

that, but it had been a lie. But we'd had our year and a half. The glass at the back of the booth reflected the top of the slidestair if

I held my head right. I watched while Sharrol's phone chimed six times. She was looking past her phone, watching the game. "Bey?

W hat?" S he showed flat i n one of the walls. Her pocket p hone

wasn't sophisticated enough to give me a hologram. I said, "I saw a face."

"Who?" Now she looked at me. "Not her .

T ell me it's not her ."

"No, of course not, but it's not good. He was my ghostwriter -- "

"Bey?

Y our what ?"

"Dear one, I'm s hort of time. Ander Smittarasheed shouldn't be here. I think he knew me -- "

"Unlikely!"

"I w as l ooking o ver a balcony .

He saw just my head and shoulders,

foreshortened. B ut maybe he do esn't know about you. So book a single

for m e at the Pequod as Persial January Hebert." It was a name I hadn't

used in a while, but she knew it, and we'd stayed at the Pequod once. Furnish the room a little?

Lugg age?

No, but -- "I left my back purse on

my seat. Leave it in the room. Nothing else."

"Next?"

The man I'd seen hadn't appeared yet. She was taking it all in, but mu scles were flexing at the corners of

her jaw and her eyes were wide and frightened. I asked, "How tough are

you?"

Her eyes slid aw ay , watching the game, because someone might be

watching her .

She said again, "Next?"

"If y ou can. Get Jeena. Go to S hasht. Get Outbound Enterpris es to

freeze you for transfer to Home, sign me in, too, and pay the extra to ship

Jeena. I'll be there when I can."

Her jaw set. Sharrol was a flat phobe, and the continent Shasht wasn't

just half way rou nd the world; it was the surface. I couldn't guess whether

she was strong enough to get through this. I said, "If you can't do it,

leave word -- "

"When can you join us?"

"If I'm not on the same ship, go to Carlos. I'll get to you soonest."

"Y ou'd b etter ha ve one tanj of a good story for me when you do,"

Sharrol said, and then a head ca me into view , reflected in the glass. W ith

my head still tur ned away .

I flicked of f the phone, my back blo cking the

action, and wiggled out my pocket phone. It w as him. Sq uare face, thin blond hair , jaw like a prey turtle,

muscles rippling under the shirt. He was puf fing a little. Ander was born

of E arth, and he 'd kept a flatlan der's wild taste in dress and appearance. T oday his drawstring pants were a miracle of wriggling colored lines. He

wore a tunic in solid colors, green and brown with a jagged b lack line

across chest and back. Classical cartoon characters kept peeking over the

black lin e, chattering to each other about what they saw , then dropping

back. He wore a backpurse, disappointingly drab. He was taking his time, looki ng puzzled but determined, coming

right at me. So I let him see me pocket my unused phone as I turned and ste pped

out of the booth and right into him. I yelped. "Aghh!"

"Sorry .

B eowulf, how you've changed!" He looked me over , v isibly

shocked, blocking me in the booth. I shied back, wimp intimidated by a street thug, a bit of fended and a

bit afraid. "Sorry , man, I didn't mean to nudge you."

He stepped forward and took my hand in both of his, despite lack of

encouragement, and pumped it and hung on. He bellowed over the crowd

noise. "Ander Smittarasheed. W e made two travelogue vids together .

Beowulf, all I can say is you must have a hell of a tale to tell."

He h ad no doub ts: he knew me. I said, "Hide. Hell of a tale to hide,

Ander ."

"Not anymore."

I shouted, "Y eah. Right. Are you with anyone?"

"No, on my own."

"Come watch the game with me. I think there's an empty seat next to

mine." There'd better be. He was still sta ring. Whatever he'd known, whatever had bro ught

him here, he hadn't expected what he was seeing. I h ugged that th ought to me. H e was seeing me for the first time in

twelve y ears. I dared to hope tha t Ander hadn't prepared for this meeting. There was no backup. Just him. As we passed the booths, his hand closed on my upper arm. He might

not thin k it likely t hat I'd dive into a transfer bo oth and vanish, but he

wasn't risking it. He shouted, "Why a phone booth to use a pocket

phone?"

And I showed myself astonis hed at his stupidity and bellowed,

"Noise!"

Then the crowd roar drowned out any hope of conversation , we

moved onto the slidebridge, and I had a few moments to think. There's only one spaceport on W e Made It, and the ships don't land

every day .

Some of us kids used to watch them take of f and land. I'm the

only one who became a pilot. What I noticed about the tourists was muscle. I wa sn't undermuscled for a loc al. Some of the tourists hailed from

worlds n o more massive than m ine, but we got Jinxians and flatlanders,

too. The y walke d like they exp ected us to shy away from their moving

mass. W e tall, narrow , fragile c rashlander men and women did as they

expected, and resented it a little. Nakamura Lines ran their ships at one Earth gravity .

I had to train

hard jus t to walk around on my own ship. Thus trained, I was a superbly

muscled athlete by W e Made It standards. It was still true that too many

passengers look ed at my albino pallor and tall, skeletal frame and saw a

sickly ghoul. I'd gotten used to that. Maybe it had left me touchy .

V isceral memory had come flooding back when Ander's hand c losed

on m y arm like a predator's jaw s. I hadn't known Ander well. I'd seen

him twice in fo urteen years, for periods of intense activity of a few

weeks each. Now I needed a story to tell to Ander Smittarasheed; but

what I remembered best was that I'd disliked him on sight. Sharrol's seat was empty .

Ander settled into it. "Y ou really like these

water wars?

What guild do you favor?"

"No, An der , it's not like that. Y ou've seen my homeworld. Th ere's

only one ocean on W e Made It, and it's all one storm. Nobody swims."

"So what are we doing here?"

I h ad come her e following a w oman's whim, but Ander shouldn't

know that. "I don't care who wins. I just get a kick out of watching how

good they are."

But I'd listened to enough of Sharrol's prattling. W ater war derived

from a game the kzinti played on the continent, on land. In both forms

the gam e is local to Fafnir .

No o f fworld tourist would know of it. I need

only open my mouth and let Sharrol speak. "They all swim like dolphins, do n't they?

But the dolphins can't grab

the prey , they can only push th e other players around, except that the

Structure T eam dolphin has han ds. It's an option. But the rig is slowing

her down; can y ou tell?

Do you know anything about strategy?

They're

down to seven t eams, looks like -- " I saw that he was only w aiting for

me to stop talking. "Ander , what are you doing on Fafnir?"

"Looking for you."

"Y eah, I always thought so. Y ou 're with the United Nations poli ce." I

need not pretend to like it. Ander frowned. "Not...exactly .

I'm not an ARM. I'm with Sigmund

Ausfaller , and Sigmund is an ARM, but he has his own agenda. By

which I mean to say I'm not here to bring you back, Beowulf."

"That's g ood. I don't want to go back." I didn't have my story yet, but

it would not include wanting to return to Earth. "Why , then?"

"Can you tell me what happened to Feather Filip?"

"It's long and ugly ."

"No problem. I'll take you to dinner ."

"Thanks." It might help me, now or later , if Ander thought I was

short of money .

Better yet -- "There's an item of great value involved,

Ander .

O ne I can't touch myself. That, and Feather , and the wa y I look:

they're all linked."

"Y es. Go od," he said absently .

" And, though he never said so to me ,

Sigmund may have wanted you to know that if you outsmarted the

ARM, you did not outsmart Sigmund ."

"I expect he did. Anything else?"

"Oh, yes. I got into this because we were talking about Pierson's

puppeteers. Sigm und and I decided that you, Beowulf Shaef fer , know as

much about these aliens as any ARM."

"Hah. W ere you sober?"

"And the n we worked out where you must be. No, not sober then , but

we talked the ne xt morning and didn't change our minds. Beowulf, how

did you first learn of the puppeteers?"

"School and the holo cube. W e w atched a lot of travelogues whe n we

were kid s. And we hung around the spaceport, so I knew they make the

General Products ships."

"And your first contact?"

"W e wrote that up together .

Oh, tanj, Ander!

Y ou're recording, aren't

you?"

He s aid, "Y es," giving me an in stant to object, daring me. Who was

he recording for ?

W ho w as invo lved in hunting Beowulf Shaef fer?

If it

was Sigmund Ausfaller ...I'd never outguessed Sigmund yet. Ander said, "W e'll pay you a consultant's fee. T en per hour , Beowulf. W ill you accept?"

"How m any hou rs do you need?

" It was generous, but my yes w ould

be a verbal contract. I'd be his prisoner .

He w aved it of f. "Until midnight. Then we can renegotiate. I nee d the

recording for Sigmund."

Ouch. "Until midnight," I said , "present time being ten to noon

local."

"Y our first contact with Pierson's puppeteers?"

Fifteen years flying passengers between the worlds. Then Nakamura

Lines collapsed, and I was on the street...on W e Made It, because the

bankruptcy cou rts allowed us transport home. T wo years later I was

ready to accept an of fer from anyone. Anyone...

* * * * *

~ N e u t r o n S t a r ~

* * * * *

I t ried to script the story myse lf, of course. There was a computer

program that would do it as an interview .

I made lots of notes...t oo many

notes, because any time I tried to write text for myself, I blocked. So I advertised for a ghost. Ander Smittarasheed answered. His type was fam iliar enough. He was a gaudy flatlander athlete , too

aware o f the limps and lames a round him, very aware that any woman

was his for the asking. It all showed in his words and body language. Maybe I wouldn 't even have hi red him, but he just pushed into the

situation without giving me a chance to react. Before my caution caught

up, I was telling him everything...nearly everything. He turned it into a

one-act play between me and the interview program, all in one afternoon. W e spent two days polishing b efore we filmed it. The record ing sold

instantly to the nets. He could write. That in itself was amazing. I said, "I couldn't tell you abou t the blackmail aspect." W e weren't

shouting now .

The undersea do me isn't really glass; it's somet hing that

absorbs shock waves, including sound, not to mention tsunamis. Ander Smittarasheed grinned at me patronizingly .

"Did you think

you were putting something over on General Products!"

"At the time. I s till don't know for sure. Maybe I was crazy to think

that a spacegoing species wouldn't understand tides."

"Maybe. But why would they send a human pilot to learn what they

already knew?"

"Mmm...Ander , look at it this way .

A university team sets out to

investigate a cold neutron star .

They make a mistake, probably without

informing General Products, but they're using a GP hull. The sh ip comes

back with the pilots dead in vividly gory fashion. General Products

works out how it happened, but they'd rather not be seen as making

excuses. Why not let someone of the same species solve the pro blem and

then talk for them?"

"They seem to have had a good deal of faith in you."

I lau ghed as if I hadn't a care in the world. "Oh, Ander .

I wonder how

many times they tried it."

He t hought it over .

"No. They showed Sigmund you r co ntract. T hey

would have had to do that several times."

"Y eah."

"Beowulf, Sigmund would not have participated while they killed

one pilot after another ."

I sai d, "Mad Bomber Sigmund?

Ander , I never had any intention of

stealing that ship." I saw his look, but I went on. "Now , that could imply

that Sig mund is a bad judge of character .

Or it could mean that he

braced...oh, a dozen pilots, each in turn. The odds of one of us stealing a

ship get pretty good. Remember , if each of us does our job, the hull

comes back at the end of the orbit. Those things cost."

Ander's jaw set. He said, "No."

All right , no. I'd try again later .

Beowulf Shaef fer is a misunder stood

innocent. Sigmund Ausfaller isn 't quite trustworthy .

Change the subject -

- "O r do you mean they trusted me to write my own script?

I t ried that,

Ander ."

"Y ou really needed help. 'Firs t neutron star ever discovered,'" he

quoted. First old , cold neutron star .

Good thing he'd spotted that

embarrassment. I said, "Y ou couldn't dive that close to a pulsar .

Even a

GP hull couldn't bash through the accretion disk. I've gotten better at

explaining things, Ander ."

I was scampering about inside my head, seeking any hole that might

of fer an escape. Monitoring a citizen can be eas y , or cheap, or foolproof; take your

choice. Ausfaller was backing Ander with UN money .

The United

Nations didn't have authority o utside Sol system, but Ander could be

using ARM funds or equipment. But he'd seen m e on the balcony for the very first time. He'd sprinted

up the slidestairs to intercept me without pausing a moment to call for

backup. I'd stake our freedom on that -- their fr eedom .

The UN had no

claim on me, but they might w ell extradite Carlos, or Sharrol, or the

children. So I was shaping a bribe to of f er Ander , and telling myself that he

wasn't to o big to be killed if thi ngs broke right, and hoping tha t none of

that showed at all while I played for time. I asked, "What's your concern with puppeteers?

They're harmless. They're cowards."

"Are cowards harmless?"

"And they're gone."

Ander smiled at me. "And you were the one who sent them. Beowulf,

why would they deal with you a second time?

Y ou blackmailed them."

"They d on't mind blackmail; they use it themselves. And what I

thought I knew might not be true." I caught that smirk a gain and

snapped, "All right, what ?"

"T ides," Ander said. "W e've been watching their , ah, retreat. The

Pierson's puppet eers understand tides very well, Beowulf, wheth er or not

they ever had a moon."

"All right." I believed him and wasn't surprised. "By the way , that information is absolutely proprietary -- "

"Man with a sec ret, hah?

Even so, I think they were taking a shot at

me when they hired me the second time."

* * * * *

~ A t t h e C o r e ~

* * * * *

I s aid, "And there you were in Sirius Mater , all ready to write my

story for me. I guessed then that Ausfaller must have sent you both

times."

"So why did you hire me?"

"I di dn't care mu ch. The big qu estion was, How do I tell the human

race abo ut the Core explosion?

How do I make them believe?

I hoped

you were an ARM. Maybe you could do something."

Ander sa id, "I should have asked you then. There's supposed to be a

huge black hole in there, millions of solar masses. Did you see it?"

I s hook my head. "Maybe the shell of novas hid it, if it's there a t all. Maybe i t even caused the chain reaction. Sucking gas and dust and stars

for fiftee n billion years, maybe its mass passed some kind of threshold

and boom!

Ma ybe you'd even find it if yo u processed the recordings I

took. They're proprietary , Ander .

Get them from General Products."

"W ell, but they're gone." But he had that smirk again. "Where did

you go after that?"

"Earth. After the galactic core, what else could measure up?"

Ander laughed. Five teams were fighting ov er two prey turtles that glowed

intermittently among thrashing bodies. The crowd was standing, yelling

their hea ds of f. And Ander pulle d a flat portable out of his backp urse, ten

inches by ten inc hes by a quarter inch thick, and opened it in my lap. He

tapped rapidly .

A pi cture stood above my lap. F ive blue-white points rotated against

a b lack background. They pulled apart, growing slowly brighter , coming

toward me. Suddenly they blos somed into blue and white gl obes; the

starscape wheel ed; the spheres went murky red and began to recede. Ander tapped, and the picture froze. T iny suns circled four of the glo bes. The fifth glowed of itself, as if

the continents of a world had caught fire. Flying planets!

And nobody

around us was looking at anyt hing but the miniature war beyond the

glass. Ander said, "The puppeteers are still in known space. Receding at

relativistic speeds, and they took their planets with them." He snapped

his portable shut. "Five worlds all about the same size, orbiting in a

pentagon around each other .

Do the math yourself. Y ou'll find that you

can put a sun at the center , or not, and the orbits are stable either way .

They understand tides just fine , Beowulf. That's what they hid from

you."

My min d lurche d. Cowards or n ot, peaceable or not, I could see how

the trad itionally paranoid ARM might react to so much sheer brute

power .

" What a re they like?

O xygen worlds?

Natural or terraformed?

How -- "

"Sigmund says we've dropped cameras in their path, not too close. The system goes flying by at point eight lights. W e haven't learned much. Free oxy gen, liquid water , fusion light sources redder than Sol , and we

don't know why the odd one looks so odd. There's nothing el se in the

system, no asteroids, no cometary halo, just chains of spacecraft moving

between the five worlds."

"Where are they going?"

"Straight north along the galactic axis."

"That's what I did, coming back from the Core. Get clear of occupied

space and then turn...turning five planets could be a bitch."

"W ell, there's nothing but empty space where they're going."

"Maybe that's what they want."

Ander mulled it. "Possible...Mea nwhile, we've got to guard them and

keep the ir secre t. They won't p ass all that close to the Patriarchy , but

that's too cl ose. It's not that they can't def end themselves. It's that they're

cowards."

I began to see what he meant. "Free enterprise."

"No species can control all its members."

"If som e futzer published their location, you could see pirates of

every shape and size."

"Y es, and reporters and news anchors likewise. Any entrepreneur

with a money-making of fer .

Any undertrained ARM out to make a name. Whole f leets lying in wait for the puppeteer worlds to pass. Any kind of

fool mig ht cause the puppeteer government to defend themselves in

some dr astic fas hion, with power like that," Ander said. "So we have to

stop any passing ships from in terfering with the fleet and gu ard their

secret, too. Meanwhile, they ha ven't all left. There are business matters,

loose ends being wrapped up."

"I know .

I had dealings with one of their agents myself."

He perked up. "How did that come about?"

"I had a complaint about a General Products hull."

"Again?"

* * * * *

~ F l a t l a n d e r ~

* * * * *

"But he never went back," I said. "It h appens I kno w why ," Ander said, and then the crowd drown ed us

out. Administration and Structure swirled together; Entertainment saw a

chance and arrowed into the d ance behind its dolphin. The depleted

fourth team, Police, hung back in a nervous arc. All the teams looked to

be milling without purpose, and from listening to Sharrol I could guess

why .

So I said, "Prey submer ged." The last of the prey turtles must have

escaped into the sand. For the next few minutes I watched the game with

a concentration that would have surprised Sharrol. This was the story I was telling Ander: If I hadn't been led here by a

woman, why was I her e ?

I must love the game!

"There!

Y ellow prey!" I

shouted as sand stirred. An insta nt later the glowing mock turtle emer ged

outside the melee and flapped clownishly toward safety .

A Police

swimmer dove to capture it, his dolphin keeping station to block for him,

and ever yone co nver ged too late: he was swimming like mad, and so was

the prey; he was through the yellow arch at the point of a great angry

cloud --

And that was the end. I bellowed over the crowd's roar: "Dinner!"

"Oh?"

"I missed brunch. I'm starving."

I did n't want to fight the crow ds trying to leave. W e crosse d the

slidebridge inste ad, this time in comparative quiet. The booths lined

below us were whirlpools in a sur ging sea of escapees. Ander's hand was above my elb ow , companionably .

I was a prisoner ,

and that was hard to ignore. Mak e conversation?

I asked, "Did y ou know

there's an ice age going on Earth?"

"Sure."

"W ell, I never even wondered. I did wonder why Cuba wasn't much

hotter than Nome."

Ander said, "The whole planet's a web of superconductor cable .

W e

had to restart the Gulf Stream five hundred years ago, and it just went

from there. Nome imports heat; Cuba imports cold. Even so, Earth would

be pretty cold if we weren't getting so much power from the orbiting

satellites."

"Uh huh. What are you going to do when the ice age turns of f?"

"Move." Ander grinned. "Whe re did you go after the antimatter

system?"

"I moved in with Sharrol in Nome."

He looked at me. "Y ou?

Settled down like a Grog on a rock?"

Maybe he had the right to sne er .

Ander and I had toured singles

nodes to gether on two worlds, blowing of f steam after marathon work

sessions. I held my temper and said, "Y ou can spend a lifetim e seeing

Earth."

"Where do you want to eat?"

I sa id, "The Pequod Grill is good." Good and expensive, an d an

of fworlder woul d have heard of it. Just the place a destitute B. Shaef fer

might p ick if someone else w as paying. And nobody would ask me

where Sharrol was. W e had almost reached the transfer booths. Just to pull Ander's chain,

I turned suddenly into the phone booth to see if I could break his grip. He pulled me back ef fortlessly .

"What?"

"I th ought I'd phone and see if the Grill's full up," I said, and

remembered. I couldn't use my pocket phone. It was in the wrong name. "I'll do it." He used a card. It took him ten seconds to get a

reservation. There are mistakes you don't pay for .

W e p ushed into a transfer booth. He said, "So there you were, nesting

-- "

I s aid, "It was l ove, stet?

W e weren't lockstepped...well, we were, a

little. I didn't kn ow any women on Earth. Sharrol had some pl aymates,

but a lot of the men she knew were moaning and clutching themselves." I

grinned, remembering. "Rasheed. 'Lockstepped, sure, but you can't mean

me!' wit h a great dramatic wav e of his arms, like he could h ave been

joking. There were some coupl es we played with, but not so much of

that, either , after a while. W e talked about having children. Then we

looked into it."

Ander sa id, "Y o u?" I wasn't sur e how to read his expression. A little

disgust, a little pity .

I dialed the Pequod. W e flicked in on the roof, under a rolling curve of greenblack water .

The daylight was fading. Ande r led of f toward the restauran t twelve

floors do wn. He seemed to be familiar with the Pequod. Migh t even be

registered here. T est that. "I need to visit a 'cycler , Ander .

Long day ."

"Me, too," he said. "This way ."

In the 'cycler he maneuvered himself between me and the door , and I

let him. Amusing scenarios cam e to mind: If I needed a booth, he could

watch the door , but what if he needed a booth?

Not that it mattered. I

didn't want to escape, not until I could know I w as l oose. I wanted to

speak of lost treasure. But I needed to know how much he already knew .

Why was I here?

Who had come with me?

How?

How was I surviving?

I waited in the

hope tha t he might speak of th ose things, and of Carlos W u's autodoc,

too. So w e didn't tal k much until we were settled at a table, with drinks. Ander wasn't interested in lo cal cuisine. He ordered beef -- no

imagination. I found crew snap per on the menu, billed as an order for

two. Heh heh. I asked, "What happened to Greg Pelton's expedition?"

Ander said, "Antimatter planet .

The more he thought about it, the

more he needed to know .

He kept expanding his plans until some

government gno me took notice. After that it just inflated. Government

projects can do t hat. Everyone wants in; they always think there 's infinite

money , and suddenly it's gone from science fiction to fantasy .

I do n't e ven know if Pelton's still involved. The UN has probes in the

system. Meanwhile the current plan calls for a base on the planet."

I laughed. "Oh, sur e!

"

He grinned at m e. "Set on a metal dish in stasis, inside a roller s phere

also in stasis. It is antimatter , after all."

He w asn't making it up. He was too amused. "Civil servants love

making plans. Y ou can't get caught in a mistake if you're only making

plans, an d it can pay your salary for life. And I shouldn't have heard that

much, Beowulf, nor should you. If a terrorist knew where to find infinite

masses of antimatter , things could get sticky ."

"And th at is why you weren't a sked to ghostwrite the tour guid e," I

surmised. Ander sm iled. He said, "Back to work. Y ou've met Outsiders. W ould

you consider them a threat?"

"No."

He waited. I said, "They're fragile. Superfluid helium metabolism

and no real skeleton, I think. Any place we consider interesting, they die. But never mind that, Ander -- "

"They've got the technology t o take accelerations that would reduce

you or me to a film of neutrons."

"Not the point. Can you tell me why they honor contracts?

Th ey've

got ships to run away from any obligation. I think it must be built into

their bra ins, Ander .

They honor contracts, and they keep their promises. They're trustworthy ."

He nodded, in no way dissatisfied. "Grogs?

Are they dangerous?"

"T anj straight they're dangerous."

He laughed. "W ell, finally!

Kzinti?"

"Sure."

"Puppeteers. Where are they going?"

"Anywhere they want to." He kept looking, so I said, "Clouds of

Magellan?

That's not the interesting question. The Outsiders can boost a

ship or a planet to near lightspeed. Can the puppeteers do that too?

Or

will they have to summon Outsiders to change their course?"

"And stop."

"Y eah. I 'd say they have the Ou tsider drive. They bought it or they

built it."

"Or they've got a research project that'll get it for them."

"I...futz." Hire Outsiders to pu sh five planets up to four -fift hs of

lightspeed, then try to figure out how to slow them down. W as that as

risky as it sounded?

I began to believe it wasn't. Ther e was nothing

danger ous in the path of the puppeteer fleet .

They had thousands of years

to solve the puzzle. Ander asked again: "Are the puppeteers a threat?"

He had generated in me a mulish ur ge to defend them. "They honor

their contracts."

"They're manipulative bastards, Beowulf. Y ou know that."

"So are the ARMs. Y our people have been in my face since I rea ched

Earth. D o you know what Sh arrol and I had to go through to have

children?"

"The Fertility Board turned you down, of course."

"Y eah."

"What did you do?"

"Sharrol used to play with a Carlos W u. Carlos had an open

birthright. So we worked something out. Then I went traveling."

He was, from the look of him, learning far more about Beowulf

Shaef fer than he had ever wanted to. He tried to stick to what he knew .

"T raveling. Any contact at all with Pierson's puppeteers during that

period?"

"No."

"Other aliens?

Aliens the puppeteers dealt with?"

That made me smile. "I'm a celebrity among the Kdatlyno..."

* * * * *

~ G r e n d e l ~

* * * * *

"Can I ghost that story for you?

" Ander asked. "Might be mon ey in

it."

"Old new s. Eve ryone's seen Lloobee's version," I said, thinking that

my story , even e dited, could call too much attention to Mar go. Lloobee

hadn't known of Mar go's involvement in the kidnapping, and I hadn't

told Ander .

I watched him, wondering if he knew .

"I've never turned on to a...matu re woman," he said. "What's it like?

Why did you break up?"

I shrug ged. "It was supposed to be temporary .

It stayed that

way ...didn't hav e to, just did. Ander , it boggles me a little, too , Mar go

contracting for a two-year date the way I used to angle for a hot

weekend. Aliens scare you; do you ever worry about elderly humans?"

"No."

"They've learned too much. They don't like change. If they could

stop civilization in its tracks, they would."

He didn 't exactl y think that over; he disliked the taste, so he spit it

out. "I always figure, if you can't lick 'em, join 'em. So I've decided to get

older .

Beowulf, General Products gave you a number -- "

"I take it as being for my use only ."

His eyes narrow ed, but he let it slide. "But you could use it if we

needed to know something."

"I might ask a properly phrased question. Ander Smittarasheed, I am

out of the aliens business."

Again he let it slide. "After Mar go, where?"

"Earth. I had a hell of a time getting back."

"Did you go back for Sharrol Janss?"

I stared. "Of course , for Sharrol and the children."

"Carlos W u's children!"

I s tood up, knowing it was a m istake, and so what?

"I'm leaving. If

you want to apologize, my phone is -- "

"Beowulf Shaef fer , I just can't see you losing your head over a

woman."

I lost my breath. It was as if he'd punched me in the belly .

I sat down,

but my vision w as still graying. Ander watched in amazement. When my

eyes would focus again, he asked, "What was that about?"

"Not now ." I couldn't breathe. He sighed. He t apped at the me nu board. A squeezebulb popped up,

and he handed it across. I found my hand massaging my throat, removed

it, took the bulb, and drank. Brandy and soda. Just right. He w atched me drink again. "S tet. Sigmund told me how you got

back to Sol system."

"He might possibly have left something out."

"Go ahead."

* * * * *

~ T h e B o r d e r l a n d o f S o l ~

* * * * *

"Sigmund Ausfaller killed three miners without a thought," I said. "He was right, though."

"That weapons shop he built aboard Hobo Kelly : h e was in love with

it. No sane man toys with such things."

"Saved your life."

"He was wearing an asymmetri cal beard when I first saw him. He's

too short and stocky to pass for a W underlander .

I've wondered about

that for twelve years."

"None o f my business, nor your s," Ander said. "Maybe someone was

supposed to take him for a gullible tourist, or a fool, or a crazy ."

"He's not to be trusted, Ander ."

Ander la ughed suddenly .

Stared me in the face and laughed harder .

"That's i t!

He needed to look crazy .

He needed to look crazy enough to

plant a bomb aboard a crashlander's ship!"

All I had for an swer was a wordless snarl. T anj, he could eve n be

right. Our dinners arrived, and Ander's chuckle died. He stared at what was

on my plate. Cr ew snapper is a sea creature as big as a short m an's leg,

with rows of fins down each side and a jaw built to crush bones. It took

up most of the table. It was hideous. "Have some," I said. "It's an order for two."

W e ate in silence for a bit. Ander's eyes kept straying to the crew

snapper .

He wouldn't touch it. He wouldn't speak of it. Presently he said,

"For the record, any further contact with Pierson's puppeteers?"

I sai d, "A nder , t his was an amaz ing expenditure just so you can hear

Beowulf Shaef fer's barroom des cription of a species that no longer deals

with any known world."

Ander Smittara sheed nodded. "What if I say I talked Sigmund

Ausfaller out of a free vacation?"

"Maybe, if I didn't know you were recording."

He was losing patience. "Any further contact -- "

"None. I 've seen enough kzinti t o last me. Don't they scare the A RM

anymore?"

Ander Smittarasheed said, "Y ou wouldn't remember the old Soviet

Union?

They used a technical t erm that translates as 'neutral.' 'Neutral'

was any nation that could not conceivably damage the Sovie t Union. Puppeteers think like that. If you can hurt them, you have to be rendered

neutral."

"Better k eep an eye on the plan ets they'll be passing on their way to

nowhere."

"They'll be in range of some Patriarchy worlds, including at least

three slave species. After that they're out of known space."

"And the Core explosion is twen ty thousand years away .

They'll have

to turn first. Plenty of time."

"Y eah -- "

"Ander?" I set down my hashi. "Never mind."

"What?"

"They're movin g at near lightspeed through normal space?

Everything com es on as gamma rays at that velocity!

Those planets are

repelling gamma rays that'll make the Core explosion look sickly!"

He stare d. "But. They could have built ...whatever ...built it and

never ...If they can shield planets against gamma rays, they didn 't need to

go!"

I felt a g rin pulling my lips way-y-y back. Ander had lost his aplomb. I wondered, "What are they running from, then?

What are they up to?"

"Maybe it's not dependable, this shield. No, that's stupid," he said. I

dug into my fish, letting him run on. "So...what ar e they running from?"

I said, enjoying myself, "Consider this. Puppeteers don't like

hyperdrive. Humans do. Kzinti do. By the time their traveling worlds

reach th e Clouds of Magellan, we'll have been there for thousands of

years. After all, the Core explosion is coming for us , too."

"W e wo ndered if they didn't li ke the kzinti for neighbors," Ander

said. "Or humans. Or all of us together .

Known space seems to be packed

with sapient species. Maybe the rest of the universe isn't like that."

"They could even be running fr om their own reputation, but th ey're

not, And er .

They 're going too slo wly .

They'd find all of us waiting, every

species that uses hyperdrive, or else something tougher that ate us. And

they're not going to where territory is cheap."

"Cheap?"

"W ell, t hey've got their own p lanets, but even Outsiders pay rent

when they use somebody's sunlight. The Clouds will be packed with

refugee species and locals, too. If...Ander , I can't see why they would

want the Clouds of Magellan a t all. They could find somethin g closer .

Something in the plane of the g alaxy , for the shielding ef fect, maybe a

spherical cluster .

Did I mention I was out of the aliens business?"

He s cowled. "Y eah, and settled down forever , except you weren't. What happened?"

I thought it through before I spoke. Here was my tale, and whatever

Ander could check had better be the truth. "W e ran," I said .

"Bad mistake, but I still don't know what I could

have done dif ferently .

Puppete ers don't come into it. Or ...we ll, I got

money from them years ago. I thought the ARM couldn't trace that."

Of cours e the ARM had, and it wasn't much. But General Pro ducts

had inde mnified Elephant for his hull, and Elephant had given that to me

when we were ready to flee Earth. They wouldn't trace that .

Ander s aid, "Beowulf, what if they've got a low-thrust drive big

enough for a pla net?

The Outsiders could boost them up to spee d. They'd

use thei r own drive to turn an d then stop over the next two hundred

thousand years."

I t hought it ove r .

"They wouldn't have to depend on anyone else,

then. Y eah. Puppeteers wouldn't trust Outsiders for their species