Satan gestured-and suddenly Norton was zooming out through space at an accelerating rate that left the planet Earth far behind in a moment, and then the sun itself. He was in deep space, light-hours from his home planet, heading toward the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, watching the stars streak by. He had no discomfort; he seemed to be magically protected, so that he felt pleasantly warm and could breathe; evidently the cloak was protecting him.
He had called Satan’s bluff-and it hadn’t been a bluff! How was that possible? Had he misunderstood the limitations of magic? It certainly seemed so!
There were moments of darkness as he passed through bands of galactic dust. Then he was in a channel of starless space, sliding along a glowing spiral arm of the galaxy, the individual stars shining along its curving length like jewels. He looked up and saw a globular cluster of stars passing overhead, a bright ball orbiting the center of the galaxy at right angles to the plane of the great disk of it. Then he curved up toward that cluster, departing the galactic plane, spiraling in. The tiny cluster swelled enormously, becoming a miniature galaxy-ball itself, with something like a hundred thousand closely packed stars. What a spectacle!
As he came toward it, he decelerated. He entered it- but now it was evident how large it was-many light-years across, the stars thinning out at the edge, so that there really was a good deal of space between them. He coasted on in toward the center, where day was eternal and stars virtually rubbed elbows. He came at last to a magnificent space station shaped like a giant spooked wheel, with tiny spaceships docked around the rim. But as he slowed and came closer, he discovered that these ships were not small, but large; the scale of the station dwarfed them. They were of many types, some being as sleek as needles, others resembling Earthly battleships floating in space, complete with layered armor and projecting cannon, and still others resembling collections of saucers.
It was to one of the needles Norton finally came. He phased through the hull in ghostly fashion and landed on a deck in what he took to be the control region. Windows or screens opened out to provide a panoramic view of the wheel station, the docked ships, and the myriad stars shining beyond.
A spaceman got up from the pilot’s seat. He was tall, lanky, blond, and handsome in a rugged prairie way; his legs bowed out slightly and he wore a blaster at his hip, bolstered for a rapid draw. He eyed Norton appraisingly, a stalk of timothy grass projecting from the comer of his mouth. “So you’re my co-pilot,” he drawled, his lips thinning. “You shore don’t look like much, stranger! Any good with a blaster?”
“No,” Norton confessed. What had Satan gotten him into?
“Ever blast any buggers?”
“What?”
“Bems.”
“Bems?”
“You know-the Bug-Eyed-Monsters who’re trying to take over the Glob. The Geniuses hired us to clean the Bems out of this sector of space. I lost my co on my last mission, but they said they’d send a replacement.” He grinned boyishly and chewed on his timothy. “I was sorta hoping for a Femme.”
“Femme?”
“Pardner, where you been? You don’t know what a Femme is? A human woman, or reasonable facsimile thereof, maybe twenty years old, shaped like that sand dingus you’re holding, hot-blooded and not too smart.”
“Oh. There must be a mistake. Not only am I not a- a young female-I also know next to nothing about spaceships or monsters or Geniuses.”
“A mistake for shore!” the spaceman agreed. He hawked disgustedly, looked about, found no spittoon, and finally swallowed it. “We’ll get this here nonsense cleared pronto!” He strode to a communications console and punched buttons with his dirty thumb.
A head appeared on the screen. The face was small and squeezed together, as if shoved aside by the hugely bulging braincase. The skull was hairless and traversed by purple veins and seemed almost to pulse with the overcapacity of gray matter it enclosed. This, surely, was a Genius-the end product of human evolution, virtually all mind and no body.
“Yes?” the head whispered. It seemed the vocal cords, too, had been largely displaced by brain stuff.
“Bat Dursten here, sir,” the spaceman drawled. “My new co-pilot just moseyed in-but he says he don’t know nothing about ships or blasters or Bems, and he shore don’t look like much. Sending him-that musta been a glitch. I need a replacement pronto-maybe a nice li’l Femme.”
“There is no error, Dursten,” the Genius whispered sibilantly. “Norton is to be your companion for this mission. He is competent.”
“But he’s a greenhorn!” the spaceman protested. , “Never even blasted a Bern!”
“He will suffice,” the Genius insisted, the veins in his forehead turning deeper purple.
“Gol-dang it, sir- “Dursten started rebelliously.
But something strange was happening. The Genius was staring with his two bloodshot orbs intently at Dursten- and the spaceman’s hair was lifting as if drawn by an unseen hand. Smoke began to curl from it, and his timothy wilted.
Dursten felt the heat. “Ow!” he yelled as he slapped at his hair, spitting out the grass. “Okay, okay, sir; he’s the one! We’ll make do somehow.”
“I rather thought you would see it my way,” the Genius said, smiling with his little pursed mouth as he faded off screen.
“What happened?” Norton asked, amazed at this interchange. He could see a dark patch where the man’s hair had frizzed.
“Aw, he used his psi on me,” Dursten said, rubbing out the last of the heat. “They do that when they get riled.”
“Psi?”
“Don’t you know nothing? All the Geniuses got psi power. They can’t do nothing with their spindly li’l bodies, so they do it with their hotshot brains. That one tagged me with telekinesis and pyro. Just his way o’making his point. I’m stuck with you.”
“He lifted your hair and burned it-by sheer mind power?”
“That’s what I said, Nort.”
“But he wasn’t even present! He must be somewhere else on the Wheel.”
“Somewhere else in the Glob, you mean. Geniuses don’t never risk their hides in space. Distance don’t matter none to them; if a Genius can see you, he can tag you. If he’d been really mad at me, he’da stopped my heart.”
“If the Geniuses can do that, why do they hire mercenaries?” Norton asked. “They should be able to stop the hearts of the Bems themselves.”
Bat Dursten sighed. “You really are a greenhorn! Okay, since I’m stuck with you, reckon I’d better fill you in on the scene so you’ll be able to cover my flank. The Geniuses share the Glob-that’s this star cluster here-with the alien Bems. Things have been quiet for a century or two, but now the Bems are getting grabby. They rustled several human planets, raped the women, ate the men, and did mean things to the kids. They’re trying to take over the whole dang Glob! Naturally the Geniuses don’t like that- but Geniuses won’t never leave their plush cells deep in their planets for nothing. So they’ve got to hire more regressive types of human critters like us. They pay pretty well, and I reckon it’s a good cause, so we’re for hire. Me, I sorta like blasting Bems anyway; wouldn’t want none o’them to get fresh with my sister, for shore! But Bems are immune to the Genius psi, so we got to use old-fashioned weapons. Which is okay by me; real men don’t use psi. We’re massing for a big battle now; we’re going to raid a Bern planet and give them buggers a taste o’their own snake oil.”
Norton was getting the picture, but still had trouble with an aspect of it. “The Bems-if they’re really bugeyed monsters, their metabolism must be quite different from ours.”
“That’s for shore!” the spaceman agreed readily. “They’re a cross atween bugs and cuttlefish, with huge eyes all over and tentacles and slime dripping. Real yucky!”
“Then how could they have any sexual interest in human women? Surely the women would be as repulsive to the Bems as the Bems are to the women.”
Dursten scratched his tousled head. “Now that there’s a puzzle, now I think on it. But it’s a fact that Bems always chase Femmes,‘ specially the luscious ones in bikinis. We got a lot o’pictures o’that, so we know it’s so. If it wasn’t for us noble spacers to rescue them dolls, there’d be no luscious ones left.” He paused thoughtfully. “Strangest thing, though-some gals seem‘ most as worried‘ bout us as them.”
“There’s no accounting for taste,” Norton said. “I suppose if you want the girls for similar purposes- “
He was interrupted by a siren wail. Red lights flashed on the control panel.
“Yow, that there’s the campaign alert,” Dursten said.
“Get your butt into that there co-pilot’s seat, Nort. It’ll just have to be on-the-job training. I shore hope you’re a fast study.”
Norton got into the seat. Automatic safety clamps fastened him down. Dursten hit the castoff switch, and the ship dropped off its anchorage on the Wheel.
“Watch it, now. I’m throwing her into null-gee for maneuvering,” the spaceman warned. The weight left Norton; only the seat restraints kept him from floating away.
Then the ship accelerated, and he was thrown back against the seat. This needleship had plenty of power!
“One other thing I better tell you about the Bems, just in case,” Dursten said as he concentrated on his piloting, getting his ship into formation. “They’re shape-changers.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Nort. They can take any form, just like that. So if you ain’t certain, fire first.”
“But I don’t have a blaster!” Norton said. “Anyway, if I’m not sure it’s a Bern-I mean, I wouldn’t want to shoot one of our own people.”
“There is that,” Dursten agreed, as if he hadn’t thought of it before. “That’s how my last pardner got it. After I plugged him, I realized he was only green from spacesickness, but it was too late. Had to deep-space him.”
“You killed your partner?” Norton asked, shocked.
The spaceman shrugged. “I thought he was a Bern. These things happen when you got a quick trigger finger.”
Evidently so! “I hope you don’t make any similar little mistakes on this mission,” Norton said sincerely.
“Naw, no chance. You and me’s the only people on this ship. So if you see anyone else, he’s a Bern.”
“How do we know we’re not Bems? I mean, for all I know, you could be one, or for all you know, I could.”
Again Dursten paused for a new thought. His hand twitched near his bolstered blaster, giving Norton a horrible scare. But then the spaceman had another notion. “Say, the robot can tell. Here, I’ll check us out now. Hey, Clankcase!”
A robot trundled up, its feet evidently held to the deck by magnetism. “You yelled, sir?” it rasped.
“Yeah, shore,” Dursten said. “Check out Nort here. Is he human or Bern?”
The robot oriented on Norton. Its body was cubistic, with a television screen where its face should be. A pair of eyes appeared on the screen, and these inspected Norton closely, though not quite in focus. A nose appeared, and this sniffed him, its nostrils flaring. A mouth formed. “Say‘ Ah,’” it said.
“Argh,” Norton said, suddenly realizing that if the robot decided he was a fake, he could not protect himself; he was bound to the chair.
An ear appeared, sliding to the center of the screen to listen better, shoving the other features to the side. “How’s that again?” the mouth said from the border.
“A R G H H H H!” Norton repeated clearly.
The eyes slid back to the center, squinting thoughtfully. “He’s human,” the mouth said. “Probability of ninety-eight point three-five percent, plus or minus three percent.”
“Plus or minus three percent?” Norton asked, shivering with relief. “Doesn’t that mean ninety-five point three to one-hundred-one point three percent?”
One eye drifted off the screen while the other bore unwaveringly on him. “Correct,” the robot rasped blithely.
“Well, now check Mr. Dursten.”
“Shucks, I know I’m human!” the spaceman protested. But the machine clanked around to focus its screen face on him.
“Human,” Clankcase agreed in due course. “Ninety-six point one percent probability, plus or minus the standard three percent deviation.”
“What?” Dursten lipped thinly. “You gave him a higher rating than met His finger itched toward his blaster.
“He is more human than you,” the robot explained,
“Get out of here, you bucket of bolts!” Dursten growled, and the robot dutifully retreated.
“I suppose you had better explain to me how to pilot this craft,” Norton said. “Just in case.”
“You kidding?” the spaceman exclaimed derisively. “I boned up on piloting for three years afore I even touched my first ship-and I wrecked that! Then it was two more years afore I touched another.”
There was a metallic rattle of laughter from the rear. “That’s why, you silly asteroid!” Clankcase chuckled.
“Get lost, you metal moron!” Dursten snapped.
“Lost? Honest?” the robot asked. “A foolish man said that once to my cousin, and- “
“Cancel that there directive!” Dursten said quickly. Then, privately to Norton: “That‘ Little Lost Robot’got written up as a feature story in the tabloids. But that ain’t part o’this here sequence.”
“Why do you put up with such perversity from the inanimate?”
The spaceman scratched his head, dislodging some dandruff. “I shore don’t know. It’s just always been that way with robots. We need‘ em for routine chores, so- “He shrugged. “Now I think of it, I’d trade Clankcase in a minute for a better assistant, like maybe a nice, plump Femme. A Femme would really be useful.”
Norton realized that opportunities for socializing were limited in space. The spaceman’s mind naturally was on the distaff. “About the piloting-I can’t be a very good co-pilot if I don’t know anything. Maybe if you just showed me how to signal for help- “
“Aw, I’ll show you how to pilot,” Dursten said. “It’ll take‘ bout ten minutes, give or take three percent.”
And indeed, what had taken the spaceman five years to master was transmitted in ten minutes. It was mainly a matter of moving the steering stick and pushing the firing button when a target ship was in the cross hairs on the combat screen. The ship was largely automatic, and what little was not was handled by the robot. An idiot could pilot the ship-which was perhaps fortunate.
However, Dursten explained why it had taken so long for him to qualify. He had been easily distracted by available Femmes at the Academy. Femmes seemed to cause more trouble than Bems did!
The fleet drew into formation and warped through space at Woof-factor 5 toward the enemy planet. Stars streaked by the port like fireflies.
Suddenly a red light flashed. “Oh, fudge!” Dursten swore. “An enemy fleet is intercepting us. We’ll have to fight.”
“But I thought you like blasting Bems,” Norton said.
The spaceman’s handsome face lighted like a nova. “Say, yeah! I forgot about that!”
The Bemships turned out to be warty boulders. They spread out to engage the human fleet. Soon the two formations degenerated into separate dogfights.
A Bern boulder loomed before their own needle, its ports resembling huge, faceted eyes. Light squirted from one of its warts. “The danged zilch is shooting at us!” Dursten exclaimed indignantly. “Well, just for that I’ll blast it out o’space!” His features suffused with righteous anger, Bat Dursten concentrated on the obnoxious enemy craft, getting it in the cross hairs. His thumb jabbed the firing button. “Take that, fertilizer-brain!” he raged.
A beam of light speared out. It struck the boulder. The boulder exploded into smithereens, soundlessly. Norton remembered that sound did not carry well through the vacuum of space.
“Got you, you alien bugger!” Dursten exulted.
But another boulder was bearing down on them. A spurt from a wart just missed their needleship. Quickly the spaceman reoriented, bringing the cross hairs to bear. He punched the button, and the enemy ship smithereened like the last one.
Norton checked the rearview screen. “Bat, there’s one on our tail!” he warned.
“You take it, Nort; I got to watch the front.”
So Norton oriented the aft laser gun, fumbling its cross hairs into place. He fired, but his beam missed. The enemy Squeezed a wart back, coming closer. Norton, his hand shaking, got the wobbly cross hairs aligned and mashed the firing button so hard it bruised his finger.
This time he scored. The light lanced forth. The alien vessel burst apart, splatting some of its garbage on his viewscreen. Norton wrinkled his nose; he could almost smell the alien stench.
He turned back to Dursten-just in time to see a young woman approaching the spaceman. She was absolutely luscious in her scanty costume, and her flesh jiggled like gelatin as she walked.
The spaceman looked up at her. “Say, sweetie- where’d you come from?” he asked, ogling her attributes.
“I replaced your robot,” she said with a phenomenal smile. “How can I be of service?”
Dursten glanced at Norton. “Say, co-pilot-why don’t you take over the reins while I catch an errand in the back?” he suggested, unbuckling his safety harness.
“But-but how could there be a replacement when we’re in deep space?” Norton asked.
The spaceman paused to scratch his head, his eyes remaining on the Femme. “Say, I never thought o’that!”
“The Genius teleported me in, of course,” the Femme said. “Did you think of a way I can serve you?”
“Well, as a matter o’fact- “Dursten began, floating from his chair.
“I’ll thank the Genius,” Norton said, touching the communicator. His brief course of instruction had included this, too. The panel had few controls besides an on-off switch.
“You do that,” Dursten agreed, drifting toward the back. He had forgotten to turn the gravity back on, so he had to hold on to the Femme for support.
The head of the Genius appeared on the screen. “Yes, Norton,” the pursed lips said.
“Uh, sir, did you teleport a buxom young human woman to this ship? A, er, Femme?”
“Certainly not! Spaceman Dursten becomes combat unready when distracted by temptations of fair flesh.”
An accurate assessment! “But there’s one here!”
The Genius frowned. “Yes, now I detect an alien presence there. It is immune to my power. Destroy it immediately.” He faded out.
So the shape-changing Bems had infiltrated this fleet, and one was aboard this ship! Norton looked for a blaster, but found none. He spied a loose support rod in his chair, evidence of slipshod construction, and wrenched it out. It would have to do as a weapon.
He set out for the rear of the ship-but his feet left the deck in the null-gee, just as Dursten’s had. He didn’t know how to turn on the gravity, so had to put up with it. Pilots, he thought irately, should wear magnetic shoes, just as the robots did! Clankcase had had no problem getting around.
Clankcase? The Femme said she had replaced the robot. And her feet had been firm on the deck. Bems, as he understood it, could not teleport or do other psi, but they could change shape. The Bern must have been in the shape of the robot before!
Norton grabbed his chair and pulled himself down close to the floor. Sure enough, there were moist sucker marks where robot and Femme had passed. No doubt about it- there was a Bern aboard.
Norton used the chair as a brace and shoved himself forcefully toward the rear of the ship. In a moment he sailed into the back chamber, where Dursten was in the process of scrambling out of his space suit while the voluptuous Femme giggled and jiggled gelatinously.
“Halt, alien!” Norton cried, brandishing his rod.
Dursten glanced about. “What alien?”
“That Femme,” Norton said. “She’s a Bern!”
“How can you say a mean thing like that!” the Femme cried.
Norton did feel like a heel, for she was an eye-popping morsel of pulchritude, but he had to answer. “Because your sucker feet stick to the floor! We float in free-fall.”
She glanced down at her firmly anchored feet. “Curses-foiled again!” she cried. She charged him, arms extended.
Norton knew he should hit her with his rod, but three things prevented him. First, she remained the most lusciously curvaceous item of distaff flesh he had ever seen, and it was against his instinct to brutalize that. Second, when he tried to ready the rod, he lost his grip on the case of stored cans of beans that had anchored him, so he could not strike effectively. Third, she was on him before he could do anything.
Her mass carried him right back into the control room. She was naked now, and felt every bit as luscious as she looked. Her hand struck his rod and it flew free. Now he was weaponless!
Bat Dursten was unable to help; he was too busy climbing back into his space suit. “To think-I almost kissed it!” the spaceman muttered, looking sick. “A Bem Femme!”
Norton was unable to gain any purchase, for the Bem Femme had hold of him and lifted him aloft. This was easy enough for her to do, since he weighed nothing at the moment, while she had good sucker purchase on the deck. He found himself captive as the woman’s shape melted beneath him. Her pretty face sagged into putty; her lovely breasts became great blisters of flesh. She metamorphosed into a mass of gelatin surmounted by three enormous bug eyes. Her two arms became three tentacles, still holding him tight. Her torso quivered in jelly like ripples, as it had before, but somehow the effect was less aesthetic.
“Just wait till I form some good, hard teeth!” she said from the gaping orifice that was all that was left of her once-human mouth. “I’ll chomp you to bits!”
Helpless, Norton stalled for time by engaging in dialogue, hoping Dursten would complete his dressing soon and recover his blaster. “How did you get aboard, Bern?”
“I stowed away while the ship was in port,” she said. Already fierce teeth were growing in the orifice.
“Are there many of you in the fleet?”
“Sorry-that information is classified.”
How like a military creature! “If you’re going to consume me anyway, why can’t you tell me?”
She scratched behind a bug eye with the tip of a free tentacle. “I suppose it’s because I don’t know the answer.”
Oh. “Why didn’t you kill us before we suspected your identity?” Where was Dursten?
“Too risky to tackle two at once. I planned to eat Dursten first, then do you when I got hungry again. It takes a while to digest a man; go too fast, and you get gas.”
Norton could see why a gelatinous creature would not want to get gas. “But you could have eaten him when we were both strapped in our seats!”
The Bern blinked all three bug eyes. “Say, I never thought of that! Why didn’t you speak sooner?”
“Why didn’t you eat him the moment you got him alone?”
“Well, he is a handsome man, and not too bright- “
“You mean you’d actually-?” Norton asked, shocked.
“Oh, we do it all the time to beautiful Femme humans. I thought it would be a nice change to do it to a handsome Manne human this time.”
“But you’re a completely different species!”
“True. But space duty does get dull, and novelty is the vinegar of life.”
“Spice of life.”
“Whatever. Now I’m ready to eat you.”
Norton, set back by the dialogue, could not think of another question. This was unfortunate, because now the teeth were thoroughly formed and the orifice was ready to commence consumption. “Help, Bat!” he screamed.
“I can’t get my foot into this $&%!! space boot!” the spaceman swore from the back room.
The Bern’s orifice gaped. The huge, gleaming, new saw teeth glistened with saliva. The three tentacles hauled Norton down into the maw. “Bat, forget the boot!” he yelled. “The monster’s eating me!”
“Be there in two shakes of a croggle’s tail,” Dursten called back. “My blaster floated away; got to find it.”
Norton struggled, but still had no purchase. He kicked the monster in an eye, shattering the orb. “Oh, you mean thing!” the Bern complained. “Why did you have to do that?”
“All’s fair in war,” Norton said, trying to kick at another eye, but he could not get correctly aimed.
“Well, no matter,” the Bern said philosophically, blinking her two remaining eyes. “I will grow a new one as soon as I digest you.” She sprouted several more tentacles to pin his extremities, rendering him completely helpless. The monster was surprisingly strong.
“Bat!” Norton yelled desperately, but heard only a muttered curse as the spaceman still searched for his missing blaster.
The descent into the maw resumed. In her natural shape, the Bern seemed larger; she really could consume him entire. He continued to think of the monster as female, because of the Femme form it had assumed. Was this the end?
The teeth closed on his boots and began to crunch through them. Saliva washed over the leather. Apparently the Bern could digest these, too.
Then Norton had an inspiration of sorts. “Sning!” he cried. “What should I do?”
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
So much for that. “Well, save yourself, anyway,” he said to the little snake. “Get out of here before the maw reaches my hands and chews them and you up.”
Sning uncoiled and slid from Norton’s finger. He floated a moment in air, also being subject to free-fall, then wriggled forward, using the air itself to slide against. He moved to Norton’s pocket where the compressed Hourglass was and tapped it meaningfully with his nose.
The Hourglass! Of course! Would it work when folded away? According to Lachesis, it was unchanged, merely seeming different. Norton willed its sand to turn red. Travel! In time! he thought fiercely.
Suddenly he was in space, alone. He had traveled, but the ship had not. He realized that the ship was not a planet; the spell did not align him with it automatically. The other way! he thought, hoping this command sufficed.
Evidently it did. In a subjective moment, he was back in the ship, homing in on his prior situation. Stop.
He stopped. He was floating in the control room, behind the two pilot seats. Dursten and Norton himself were discussing the mechanism for controlling the ship. Neither saw the new Norton. Neither robot nor Femme was in evidence; this must be the time right between their appearances.
The prospect of paradox overwhelmed him for the moment. Could he interfere with the events of his past self and change events he had already experienced? He had been told he was an entity apart, in control of time- but he had never consciously tested paradox. He might change the lives of other people-but how could he change his own? Yet if he did not, he would be consumed by the Bern. This did not appeal any more than the prospect of paradox did.
Now he saw the Femme approaching. Hastily he willed the sand and slid forward a few minutes, managing to keep his place within the ship. He floated behind the Bern as she held his former self aloft. This was what he had come to undo.
He remembered how he had been wrenched when he turned over the Hourglass, because that reversed his own timeline. Would it do that now, returning him to this point, or a point before the Bern had grabbed him? He had to try!
He turned the glass-and found himself moving backward, along with the scene. The Bern retreated with her burden to the back room, while he-
He turned the Hourglass over again, and forward progress resumed. The Bern returned.
This wasn’t getting him anywhere, because it wasn’t changing reality, just his present perception of it. Reality was like a holo he could run forward or backward but could not change. But change was what he needed.
Still, if he could affect reality one way, he could affect it another. He concentrated on the Hourglass, turning the sand black.
The scene froze, except for himself. The Bern held the prior Norton aloft, both of them like statues.
Funny-he didn’t remember being frozen before. But, of course, the objects were not aware of that, and his prior self was now an object. When they resumed action, they thought it had proceeded uninterrupted. So he could have been frozen...
Norton stepped forward, wind milling in air when his feet lacked traction, grabbed a tentacle, and wrenched it off his other self’s arm. The tentacle was cold, slimy, and repulsive, but he was able to unwind it. Then he tackled the others. Soon he had his former self free. They were floating, the now-self animate, the then-self a statue.
Very well. He had rescued himself from the Bern. But how could he recombine?
One way to find out. He concentrated on the Hourglass, turning the sand white again. Normal time resumed.
The Bern waved her tentacles. “Hey, where’d you go?” she exclaimed indignantly.
“I’m not sure,” the then-Norton said.
“Don’t worry about it,” the now-Norton said. “We’ve got to get rid of this monster before she eats us both!”
“My thought exactly,” the other Norton agreed. “No sense giving her gas.” He floated to the drifting rod, grabbed it, and tried to stalk the Bern. This wasn’t very successful.
Then the Bern helped. She shot out a tentacle and grabbed the other Norton around the waist. Thus anchored, then-Norton raised the rod with both hands and brought it down on what passed for the Bern’s head. An eye shattered; now-Norton wasn’t certain whether it was the one he had kicked in before, a new one, or whether this was happening before he had kicked that eye.
“Ooooh, that smarts!” the Bern exclaimed, retreating toward the control panel.
Then another strange thing happened. Norton’s position jumped. He found himself in the other body, the tentacle around his waist, the rod in his hands.
He had recombined! Time had progressed beyond the point at which he had commenced his time travel, so now there was only one of him. His experience had combined, too; he remembered being mysteriously freed from the clutch of the Bern, as well as remembering doing it while time was frozen. He had been in two halves, and now was whole again. One half was longer than the other, having never been frozen in time, but both were himself. That slight difference in the experience of the two selves gave him a special perspective, like binocular vision, providing a new perception of the depth of reality.
The Bern, however, was righteously angry about her shattered eye. “You struck me!” she screamed. She shot out another tentacle to grab the rod and wrest it from Norton’s grasp.
“I bashed your head in,” Norton said. “How come you aren’t unconscious?”
“I have no head,” the Bern explained. “You hit my apex.”
Norton brought up his foot and kicked the monster in the crotch. But the Bern did not react. “Why aren’t you doubled over in pain?” he asked. “Male or female, that should hurt!”
“I have no crotch,” the Bern said, gesturing with the rod. “That’s merely a nether bifurcation.”
Norton grabbed the rod back. The tentacles did not let go, so he wrestled the rod about until it was endwise and shoved it violently through the jellylike central mass of the monster. Still there was no reaction.
“But I just stabbed you through the heart!” he cried.
“I have no heart,” the Bern said.
Three more tentacles whipped forward. One of them grabbed the Hourglass, which was now floating next to Norton. “Hey, that’s mine!” he shouted. “Give it back!”
“Make me!” the Bern sneered.
But Norton couldn’t make her, for she dangled the Hourglass just out of his reach. He couldn’t change time, because he didn’t have the Hourglass. He was in trouble again.
The Bern slid her maw forward until it intersected the rod that was still stuck through her body. Then she used the maw to spit out the rod. Being gelatinous certainly had its advantages!
“Now it’s your turn,” the monster said, focusing a bug eye on Norton and hauling him in toward the maw again.
He kicked her in the teeth. Ouch! His whole foot felt numb from the shock. Furthermore, the maw caught his boot again and the teeth crunched into it.
There was a blast of terrible heat. “Ooooh, you shouldn’t have!” the Bern gasped, collapsing against the control panel.
Norton pulled his boot free of the crumbling teeth and twisted out of the failing grasp of the tentacles. Now he saw Bat Dursten, blaster in hand. The spaceman had finally gotten his boots on, his weapon back, and had blasted the Bern!
“In the nick o’time, as usual,” Dursten said, blowing the smoke from his muzzle and bolstering his weapon with practiced flair.
“I should have finished you when I had the chance mphnn,” the Bern said, trailing off into gibberish as her mouth melted. In fact, the entire monster was dissolving, her substance bubbling across the control panel and dripping to the floor.
“Nonsense,” Dursten said briskly. “The good guys always win. It’s in the script.” He glanced carelessly at Norton. “You okay, Nort?”
“I think so.” Norton decided not to comment on the spaceman’s inordinate delay in appearing.
“Well, let’s get back into action,” Dursten said briskly. Then he looked at the control panel. “Yaup! The cussed critter’s melted into it! That gook’ll ruin the wiring!”
The Bern marshaled enough animation to form a small mouth in the dribble near the floor. “That’s what happens, you klutz, when you blubb-drip-popple-ugh.” The rest of her plopped to the floor inertly.
“What did you call me?” the spaceman demanded ferociously.
One more bubble popped from the subsiding mass. “Gludz!” it breathed, and was no more.
“Why, you sidewinding bugger!” Dursten shouted, stomping the gook with his boot. “You take that back, hear?” But the muck only squished under his boot with the sound of a chuckle.
“How is it that the Bern falls to the floor, while we drift in free-fall?” Norton asked.
“Forget that!” Dursten snapped, drifting. “The fool stuff’s shorted the wiring! We’re out of control! We’ll crash on the dang alien planet!”
“But we’re in deep space!” Norton protested. Then, as he peered out the front viewport, he saw that there was indeed a planet rushing up below.
“Hang on, pardner!” Dursten cried, grabbing onto the pilot’s seat and hauling himself into it.
Norton followed suit, though a dribble of Bern had splatted across his chair. In a moment they were both securely buckled in, watching the ground rush up. Norton caught a glimpse of seas, continents, mountains, jungles, and shining prismatic cities. It looked very much like the kind of planet he’d like to visit-but not at this velocity.
There was a jolt that flung them forward against the restraints. “The retros,” Dursten explained. “They’re on automatic, to brake us so we don’t crash so hard.”
“That’s nice,” Norton gasped. Indeed, they were no longer falling as fast-but the descent remained harrowing.
Then the ship crashed, and everything went up in smoke.
Norton shook his head, clearing it. He was hung up on the branch of a giant, serpentine, purple tree, miraculously unhurt. Bat Dursten was strewn over another branch. The wreckage of their needleship was below, sinking slowly into a bubbling gray-green bog. This was obviously a Bern landscape!
Dursten hauled himself upright. “Looks like the Bern planet we came to raid,” he remarked. “It’s the scum of the Glob! Well, let’s get going.”
“Get going where?” Norton asked. “To hijack a Bemship and go home, of course.” It seemed to Norton that would be easier said than done. On the other hand, he had no better suggestion. They climbed down the tree to the ground. A giant antlike thing rushed up, its mandibles clacking menacingly. Dursten’s hand was a blur as he drew his blaster and blasted the thing. It exploded, and pieces of it splatted into the trunk of the tree. “Guess I fixed that creep,” the spaceman remarked, bolstering his weapon.
“But how do you know it wasn’t friendly?” Norton asked, appalled at the wanton killing.
“You kidding? Ain’t nothing friendly on a bugger planet,” the spaceman assured him. He led the way away from the tree, scouting for a suitable enemy to hijack.
Norton followed. There still wasn’t much else to do. He wished he could linger long enough to study the exotic alien wilderness, but Dursten wasn’t waiting. Spacemen, it seemed, had no interest in wilderness.
They skirted an arm of the bog. The gray-green gook hissed, menacing them. Eyeballs sprouted all over it. Instantly Dursten’s blaster was in his hand.
“Don’t- “Norton warned.
He was too late. The spaceman had hair-trigger reflexes. He fired. The gook puffed into noxious fog that spread out, threatening to envelop them. The eyeballs were hazier now, but still managed to focus on the prey.
Dursten backed off. “That thing ain’t dying!” he exclaimed. “It’s worse’n it was! Why didn’t you say something, Nort?”
“I tried to warn- “
“Well, let’s mosey on. We got a long way to go afore night.”
“But there’s no night, here in the Glob,” Norton pointed out. “Too many close stars- “
The spaceman scratched his head with the muzzle of his blaster. “There is that,” he opined. “We’d better eat something so we don’t get hungry.” He grabbed a rich red fruit from a nearby tree.
The fruit hissed and squirted brown juice at him. Dursten jumped back, but got some on his space suit. There was a sizzle, and smoke curled up as the acid etched channels in the material. “Then again, I reckon I ain’t that hungry yet.”
They came to a large, clear, glassy crystal standing on a block in the jungle. “Wonder what this bauble is?” Dursten said, reaching out to tap it with the butt of his blaster.
“Don’t- “Norton cried.
Too late, of course. His protective reactions were just not as fast as the spaceman’s whims. Dursten’s butt touched the side of the crystal. The crystal vibrated. Light emanated from it. A humming sound developed, waxing and waning rhythmically as the light pulsed.
“Better get on out of here!” Dursten cried.
Norton’s sentiments exactly! The two men fled as a Bern spaceball came into sight on the horizon.
“It was a signal station!” Norton gasped. “Now they know we’re here!”
Ahead loomed a huge saurian shape. It looked somewhat like a green carnivorous dinosaur with a toothache and somewhat like a twenty-ton grasshopper with teeth on its knees. It opened its ponderous and marbled jaws.
This time Norton did not cry warning. He grabbed Dursten by the collar and hauled him around behind the bright yellow trunk of a tree.
The saurhopper bounded forward-just as the pursuing Bern sailed up on its antigrav saucer. The two crashed together.
“This way!” Dursten cried, taking charge of the situation, undismayed by the sheer coincidence of their escape. He ran for the alien ship that now rested in a small glade to the rear.
“But suppose there are other Bems inside?” Norton asked.
“I’ll plug‘ em,” the spaceman said confidently. He was, of course, a man of action and quick decision.
Sure enough, a second Bern loomed in the irising door aperture. Dursten drew and fired in a single motion-but his blaster made a little, stupid pfft! and sagged in his hand. Its charge was gone.
The Bern had no hands, so it didn’t carry a blaster. But it started to change shape.
“We’d better hide,” Norton said cautiously.
But stalwart Dursten was already charging the ship. Norton had to follow or let him go alone. He followed.
The Bern had sprouted half a dozen tentacles by the time they reached the ship. Dursten made a flying tackle that knocked the monster off its nether tentacles. Norton came up and shoved the mass out of the door-iris to the ground. He caught hold of one of the spaceman’s legs and hauled him inside the ship.
“Thanks, pardner,” Dursten drawled as he got up and thumbed the button to close the iris. “Next time I’ll get me a six-shooter blaster so it don’t poop out so fast.” He forged to the control section of the ship. “Good thing I studied how to operate Bemships too,” he remarked.
To Norton, the controls looked similar to those of the needleship. He could probably operate them himself. Perhaps the Bems weren’t, after all, so different from humans.
The acceleration couches were like saucers. Dursten and Norton seated themselves within them, and automatic safety harnesses came out to secure the men. Dursten punched buttons, and the ship lifted from the ground and hovered over the purple tree.
Another Bemball loomed close. Dursten’s hand struck the firing button. A wart spat a shot of something-and the other ship exploded.
“Did you have to do that?” Norton demanded. “We’re in a Bemship now; maybe the other one was just being neighborly.”
“The only good Bern is a blasted Bern,” the spaceman said, hawking and looking for a spittoon. As usual, there was none; this was, after all, the space age.
“Maybe if you just got to know a Bern, you’d find it pretty similar to our own kind. They speak our language and chase our women and breathe the same kind of air we do.”
Dursten scratched his head as he piloted the ship offplanet. “Never thought of it that way. Got to admit that one on the needle was interesting when she took Femme form.”
That wasn’t precisely what Norton had meant, but he let it pass. At least he had made progress.
Dursten glanced down at the dwindling disk of the planet. “Well, I reckon it’s time.” He slapped a red button.
“Time for what?”
“Time to blow up the planet, of course.”
“Blow up the planet!” Norton exclaimed, horrified.
“That’s what we came for, you know, Nort.”
“But it would be so much better to-to conquer it and exploit its resources! Or to make a peace treaty with the Bems so they won’t bother human planets any more. Maybe they could teach us how to shape-change.”
“There is that,” the spaceman agreed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let that bomb drop.”
“Bomb?”
“Sure, the planetbuster bomb. It’ll blow any moment now.”
“Any-?” Norton said, freshly appalled.
Then the bomb detonated. There was a burst of light. The planet split into two halves that flew apart.
Norton stared, sheerly horrified. “The planet’s broken!”
“Sure,” Dursten drawled carelessly. “Bems make good bombs, I’ll say that for‘ em.”
“But why would one of their own ships carry such a devastating weapon?”
Dursten shrugged. “Guess they planned to use it on one o’ours. Now let’s get on home, mission accomplished.”
Norton turned away, grief-stricken for the death of an entire world and all the wilderness on it. He spied something behind them, in the ship, and blinked.
It was another Bern. But this one was small, with rather cute little tentacles and prettily shining eye facets. The spaceman was preoccupied by his task of setting course for home, so Norton unbuckled himself quietly and got out of his dish. He went to meet the little Bern. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m Baby Bern,” the creature piped from a mouth that formed in the top part of its globe. As if to illustrate the point, it started sucking on a tentacle.
“You mean those were your folks who- “Norton stopped.
“We’re going on a family picnic,” Baby Bern said, blinking two or three wide eyes.
Not any more, Norton thought grimly. There was no longer a planet to picnic on, and no other Bems to picnic with. This baby was an orphan. “Just a moment. Baby,” he said.
He turned to Dursten. “How do you feel about orphans?”
“Poor things need a foster parent or something,” the spaceman said promptly.‘“ Specially orphans o’the void.”
“Would you take care of an orphan child?”
“Me? I ain’t no family man!”
“But you are a spaceman, embodying the best and brightest and noblest qualities of the human species.”
“There is that,” Dursten agreed.
“So if an orphan of any type needed protection- “
“Aw, shore, I reckon so.”
“Well, turn around and meet the orphan.”
Bat Dursten, the pride of the space fleet, started to turn.
Norton abruptly sailed through the wall of the ship and out into space. Helplessly he accelerated, feeling no physical discomfort. He zoomed between the stars of the globular cluster and on out into deep space, heading for the Galaxy-proper.
He was, he realized, on his way back to Earth; his sample excursion was over.