The Perseus snapped out of overdrive near the point of interest and Hilton stared,

motionless and silent.

 Space was full of madly warring ships. Half of them were bare, giant skeletons of steel,

like the "derelict" that had so unexpectedly blasted away from them. The others were

more or less like the Perseus, except in being bigger, faster and of vastly greater

power.

 Beams of starkly incredible power bit at and clung to equally capable defensive

screens of pure force. As those inconceivable forces met, the glare of their

neutralization filled all nearby space. And ships and skeletons alike were disappearing

in chunks, blobs, gouts, streamers and sparkles of rended, fused and vaporized metal.

 Hilton watched two ships combine against one skeleton. Dozens of beams, incredibly

tight and hard, were held inexorably upon dozens of the bulges of the skeleton.

Overloaded, the bulges' screen flared through the spectrum and failed. And bare metal,

however refractory, endures only for instants under the appalling intensity of such

beams as those.

 The skeletons tried to duplicate the ships' method of attack, but failed. They were too

slow. Not slow, exactly, either, but hesitant; as though it required whole seconds for the

commander-or operator? Or remote controller?-of each skeleton to make it act. The

ships were winning.

 "Hey!" Hilton yelped. "Oh-that's the one we saw back there. But what in all space does

it think it's doing?"

 It was plunging at tremendous speed straight through the immense fleet of embattled

skeletons. It did not fire a beam nor energize a screen; it merely plunged along as

though on a plotted course until it collided with one of the skeletons of the fleet and

both structures plunged, a tangled mass of wreckage, to the ground of the planet

below.

 Then hundreds of the ships shot forward, each to plunge into and explode inside one

of the skeletons. When visibility was restored another wave of ships came forward to

repeat the performance, but there was nothing left to fight. Every surviving skeleton had

blinked out of normal space.

 The remaining ships made no effort to pursue the skeletons, nor did they re-form as a

fleet. Each ship went off by itself.

 And on that distant planet of the Stretts the group of mechs watched with amazed

disbelief as light after light after light winked out on their two-miles-long control board.

Frantically they relayed orders to the skeletons; orders which did not affect the losses.

 "Brain-pans will blacken for this . . ." a mental snarl began, to be interrupted by a coldly

imperious thought.

 "That long-dead unit, so inexplicably reactivated, is approaching the fuel world. It is

ignoring the battle. It is heading through our fleet toward the Oman half . . . handle it,

ten eighteen !"

 "It does not respond, Your Loftiness."

 "Then blast it, fool! Ah, it is inactivated. As encyclopedist, Nine, explain the freakish

behavior of that unit."

 "Yes, Your Loftiness. Many cycles ago we sent a ship against the Omans with a new

device of destruction. The Omans must have intercepted it, drained it of power and al-

lowed it to drift on. After all these cycles of time it must have come upon a small source

of power and of course continued its mission."

 "That can be the truth. The Lords of the Universe must be informed."

 "The mining units, the carriers and the refiners have not been affected, Your Loftiness,"

a meth radiated.

 "So I see, fool." Then, activating another instrument, His Loftiness thought at it, in an

entirely different vein, "Lord Ynos, Madam? I have to make a very grave report . . .

 In the Perseus, four scientists and three Navy officers were arguing heatedly;

employing deep-space verbiage not to be found in any dictionary. "Jarve!" Karns called

out, and Hilton joined the group. "Does anything about this planet make any sense to

you?"

 "No. But you're the planetographer. 'Smatter with it?" "It's a good three hundred

degrees Kelvin too hot." "Well, you know it's loaded with uranexite."

 "That much? The whole crust practically jewelry ore?" "If that's what the figures say, I'll

buy it."

 "Buy this, then. Continuous daylight everywhere. Noon June Sol-quality light except

that it's all in the visible. Frank says it's from bombardment of a layer of something, and

Frank admits that the whole thing's impossible."

 "When Frank makes up his mind what 'something' is, I'll take it as a datum."

 "Third thing: there's only one city on this continent, and it's protected by a screen that

nobody ever heard of."

 Hilton pondered, then turned to the captain. "Will you please run a search-pattern, sir?

Fine-toothing only the hot spots?"

 The planet was approximately the same size as Terra; its atmosphere, except for its

intense radiation, was similar to Terra's. There were two continents; one immense

girdling ocean. The temperature of the land surface was everywhere about 100º F, that

of the water about 90ºF. Each continent had one city, and both were small. One was

inhabited by what looked like human beings; the other by usuform robots. The human

city was the only cool spot on the entire planet; under its protective dome the

temperature was 71 ºF.

 Hilton decided to study the robots first; and asked the captain to take the ship down to

observation range. Sawtelle objected; and continued to object until Hilton started to

order his arrest. Then he said, "I'll do it, under protest, but I want it on record that I am

doing it against my best judgment."

 "It's on record," Hilton said, coldly. "Everything said and done is being, and will

continue to be, recorded."

 The Perseus floated downward "There's what I want most to see," Hilton said, finally.

"That big strip-mining operation . . . that's it . . . hold it!" Then, via throatmike, "Attention,

all scientists! You all know what to do. Start doing it."

 Sandra's blonde head was very close to Hilton's brown one as they stared into Hilton's

plate. "Why, they look like giant armadillos!" she exclaimed.

 "More like tanks," he disagreed, "except that they've got legs, wheels and treads-and

arms, cutters, diggers, probes and conveyors-and look at the way those buckets dip

solid rock!"

 The fantastic machine was moving very slowly along a bench or shelf that it was

making for itself as it went along. Below it, to its left, dropped the other benches being

made by other mining machines. The machines were not using explosives. Hard though

the ore was, the tools were driven so much harder and were driven with such

tremendous power that the stuff might just as well have been slightly-clayed sand.

 Every bit of loosened ore, down to the finest dust, was forced into a conveyor and

thence into the armored body of the machine. There it went into a mechanism whose

basic principles Hilton could not understand. From this monstrosity emerged two

streams of product.

 One of these, comprising ninety-nine point nine percent of the input, went out through

another conveyor into the vast hold of a vehicle which, when full and replaced by a

duplicate of itself, went careening madly cross-country to a dump.

 The other product, a slow, very small stream of tiny, glistening black pellets, fell into a

one-gallon container being held watchfully by a small machine, more or less like a

three-wheeled motor scooter, which was moving carefully along beside the giant miner.

When this can was almost full another scooter rolled up and, without losing a single

pellet, took over place and function. The first scooter then covered its bucket, clamped

it solidly into a recess designed for the purpose and dashed away toward the city.

 Hilton stared slack-jawed at Sandra. She stared back. "Do you make anything of that,

Jarve?"

 "Nothing. T'hey're taking pure uranexite and concentrating-or converting-it a thousand

to one. I hope we'll be able to do something about it."

 "I hope so, too, Chief; and I'm sure we will."

 "Well, that's enough for now. You may take us up now, Captain Sawtelle. And Sandy,

will you please call all department heads and their assistants into the conference

room?"

 At the head of the long conference table, Hilton studied his fourteen department heads,

all husky young men, and their assistants, all surprisingly attractive and well-built young

women. Bud Carroll and Sylvia Bannister of Sociology sat together. He was almost as

big as Karns; she was a green-eyed redhead whose five-ten and one-fifty would have

looked big except for the arrangement thereof. There were Bernadine and Hermione

van der Moen, the leggy, breasty, platinum-blonde twins---both of whom were Cowper

medalists in physics. There was Etienne de Vaux, the mathematical wizard; and

Rebecca Eisenstein, the black-haired, flashing-eyed ex-infant prodigy theoretical

astronomer. There was Beverly Bell, who made mathematically impossible chemical

syntheses-who swam channels for days on end and computed planetary orbits in her

sleekly-coiffured head.

 "First, we'll have a get-together," Hilton said. "Nothing recorded; just to get acquainted.

You all know that our fourteen departments cover science, from astronomy to zoology."

 He paused, again his eyes swept the group. Stella Wing, who would have been a

grand-opera star except for her drive to know everything about language. Theodora

(Teddy) Blake, who would prove gleefully that she was the world's best model-but was

in fact the most brilliantly promising theoretician who had ever lived.

 "No other force like this has ever been assembled," Hilton went on. "In more ways than

one. Sawtelle wanted Jeffers to head this group, instead of me. Everybody thought he

would head it."

 "And Hilton wanted Eggleston and got me," Sandra said. "That's right. And quite a few

of you didn't want to come at all, but were told by the Board to come or else."

 The group stirred. Eyes met eyes, and there were smiles.

 "I myself think Jeffers should have had the job. I've never handled anything half this big

and I'll need a lot of help. But I'm stuck with it and you're stuck with me, so we'll all take

it and like it. You've noticed, of course, the accent on youth. The Navy crew is normal,

except for the commanders being unusually young. But we aren't. None of us is thirty

yet, and none of us has ever been married. You fellows look like a team of professional

athletes, and you girls-well, if I didn't know better I'd say the Board had screened you

for the front row of the chorus instead of for a top-bracket brain-gang. How they found

so many of you I'll never know."

 "Virile men and nubile women!" Etienne de Vaux leered enthusiastically. "Vive le

Board!"

 "Nubile! Bravo, Tiny! Quelle delicatesse de nuance!" "Three rousing cheers for the

Board!"

 "Keep still, you nitwits! Let me ask a question!" This came from one of the twins.

"Before you give us the deduction, Jarvis-or will it be an intuition or an induction or a . .

."

 "Or an inducement," the other twin suggested, helpfully. "Not that you would need very

much of that."

 "You keep still, too, Miney. I'm asking, Sir Moderator, if I can give my deduction first?"

 "Sure, Bernadine: go ahead."

 "They figured we're going to get completely lost. Then we'll jettison the Navy, hunt up a

planet of our own and start a race to end all human races. Or would you call this a see-

duction instead of a dee-duction?"

 This produced a storm of whistles, cheers and jeers that it took several seconds to

quell.

 "But seriously, Jarvis," Bernadine went on. "We've all been wondering and it doesn't

make sense. Have you any idea at all of what the Board actually did have in mind?"

 "I believe that the Board selected for mental, not physical, qualities, for the ability to

handle anything unexpected or unusual that comes up, no matter what it is."

 "You think it wasn't double-barreled?" asked Kincaid, the psychologist. He smiled

quizzically. "That all this virility and nubility and glamor is pure coincidence?"

 "No," Hilton said, with an almost imperceptible flick of an eyelid. "Coincidence is as

meaningless as paradox. I think they found out that-breaking freaks-the best minds are

in the best bodies."

 "Could be. The idea has been propounded before."

 "Now let's get to work." Hilton flipped the switch of the recorder. "Starting with you,

Sandy, each of you give a twominute boil-down. What you found and what you think."

 Something over an hour later the meeting adjured and Hilton and Sandra strolled

toward the control room.

 "I don't know whether you convinced Alexander Q. Kincaid or not, but you didn't quite

convince me," Sandra said.

 "Nor him, either."

 "Oh?" Sandra's eyebrows went up.

 "No. He grabbed the out I offered him. I didn't fool Teddy Blake or Temple Bells, either.

You four are all, though, I think."

 "Temple? You think she's so smart?"

 "I don't think so, no. Don't fool yourself, chick. Temple Bells looks and acts sweet and

innocent and virginal. Maybe-probably-she is. But she isn't showing a fraction of the

stuff she's really got. She's heavy artillery, Sandy. And I mean heavy."

 "I think you're slightly nuts there. But do you really believe that the Board was playing

Cupid?"

 "Not trying, but doing. Cold-bloodedly and efficiently. Yes."

 "But it wouldn't workl We aren't going to get lost!" "We won't need to. Propinquity will

do the work."

 "Phooie. You and me, for instance?" She stopped, put both hands on her hips, and

glared. "Why, I wouldn't marry you if you..."

 "I'll tell the cockeyed world you won't!" Hilton broke in. "Me marry a damned female

Ph.D.? Uh-uh. Mine will be a cuddly little brunette that thinks a slipstick is some kind of

lipstick and that an isotope's something good to eat."

 "One like that copy of Murchison's 'Dark Lady' that you keep under the glass on your

desk?" she sneered.

 "Exactly . . ." He started to continue the battle, then shut himself off. "But listen, Sandy,

why should we get into a fight because we don't want to marry each other? You're doing

a swell job. I admire you tremendously for it and I like to work with you."

 "You've got a point there, Jarve, at that, and I'm one of the few who know what kind of

a job you're doing, so I'll relax." She flashed him a gamin grin and they went on into the

control room.

 It was too late in the day then to do any more exploring; but the next morning, early,

the Perseus lined out for the city of the humanoids.

 Tula turned toward her fellows. Her eyes filled with a happily triumphant light and her

thought a lilting song. "I have been telling you from the first touch that it was the

Masters. It is the Masters! The Masters are returning to us Omans and their own home

world!"

 "Captain Sawtelle," Hilton said, "please land in the cradle below."

 "Land!" Sawtelle stormed. "On a planet like that? Not by . . ." He broke off and stared;

for now, on that cradle, there flamed out in screaming red the Perseus' own

Navy-coded landing symbols!

 "Your protest is recorded," Hilton said. "Now, sir, land." Fuming, Sawtelle landed.

Sandra looked pointedly at Hilton. "First contact is my dish, you know."

 "Not that I like it, but it is." He turned to a burly youth with sun-bleached, crew-cut hair,

"Still safe, Frank?"

 "Still abnormally low. Surprising no end, since all the rest of the planet is hotter than

the middle tail-race of hell." "Okay, Sandy. Who will you want besides the top linguists?"

"Psych-both Alexa and Temple. And Teddy Blake. They're over there. Tell them, will

you, while I buzz Teddy?" "Will do," and Hilton stepped over to the two psychologists

and told them. Then, "I hope I'm not leading with my chin, Temple, but is that your real

first name or a professional?" "It's real; it really is. My parents were romantics: dad says

they considered both 'Golden' and 'Silver'!"

 Not at all obviously, he studied her: the almost translucent, unblemished perfection of

her lightly tanned, old-ivory skin; the clear, calm, deep blueness of her eyes: the long,

thick mane of hair exactly the color of a field of dead-ripe wheat. "You know, I like it," he

said then. "It fits you." "I'm glad you said that, Doctor . . ."

 "Not that, Temple. I'm not going to 'Doctor' you."

 "I'll call you 'boss', then, like Stella does. Anyway, that lets me tell you that I like it

myself. I really think that it did something for me."

 "Something did something for you, that's for sure. I'm mighty glad you're aboard, and I

hope . . . here they come. Hi, Hark! Hi, Stella!"

 "Hi, Jarve," said Chief Linguist Harkins, and:

"Hi, boss-what's holding us up?" asked the assistant, Stella Wing. She was about five

feet four. Her eyes were a tawny brown; her hair a flamboyant auburn mop. Perhaps it

owed a little of its spectacular refulgence to chemistry, Hilton thought, but not too much.

"Let us away! Let the lions roar and let the welkin ring!"

 "Who's been feeding you so much red meat, little squirt?" Hilton laughed and turned

away, meeting Sandra in the corridor. "Okay, chick, take 'em away. We'll cover you.

Luck, girl."

 And in the control room, to Sawtelle, "Needle-beam cover, please; set for minimum

aperture and lethal blast. But no firing, Captain Sawtelle, until I give the order."

 The Perseus was surrounded by hundreds of natives. They were all adult, all naked

and about equally divided as to sex. They were friendly; most enthusiastically so.

 "Jarve!" Sandra squealed. "They're telepathic. Very strongly so! I never imagined-I

never felt anything like it!".

 "Any rough stuff?" Hilton demanded.

 "Oh, no. Just the opposite. They simply love us . . . in a way that's simply

indescribable. I don't like this telepathy business . . . not clear . . . foggy, diffuse . . , this

woman is sure I'm her long-lost great-great-a-hundred-times grandmother or

something-You! Slow down. Take it easy! They want us all to come out here and live

with . . . no, not with them, but each of us alone in a whole house with them to wait on

us! But first, they all want to come aboard . . ."

 "What?" Hilton yelped. "But are you sure they're friendly?" "Positive, chief."

 "How about you, Alex?"

 "We're all sure, Jarve. No question about it." "Bring two of them aboard. A man and a

woman."

 "You won't bring any!" Sawtelle thundered. "Hilton, I bad enough of your stupid,

starry-eyed, ivory-domed blundering long ago, but this utterly idiotic brainstorm of letting

enemy aliens aboard us ends all civilian command. Call your people back aboard or I

will bring them in by force!"

 "Very well, sir. Sandy, tell the natives that a slight delay has become necessary and

bring your party aboard."

 The Navy officers smiled-or grinned-gloatingly; while the scientists stared at their

director with expressions ranging from surprise to disappointment and disgust. Hilton's

face remained set, expressionless, until Sandra and her party had arrived.

 "Captain Sawtelle," he said then, "I thought that you and I bad settled in private the

question of who is in command of Project Theta Orionis at destination. We will now

settle it in public. Your opinion of me is now on record, witnessed by your officers and

by my staff. My opinion of you, which is now being similarly recorded and witnessed, is

that you are a hidebound, mentally ossified Navy mule; mentally and psychologically

unfit to have any voice in any such mission as this. You will now agree, on this

recording and before these witnesses, to obey my orders unquestioningly or I will now

unload all Bureau of Science personnel and equipment onto this planet and send you

and the Perseus back to Terra with the doubly-sealed record of this episode posted to

the Advisory Board. Take your choice."

 Eyes locked, and under Hilton's uncompromising stare Sawtelle weakened. He

fidgeted; tried three timesunsuccessfully-to blare defiance. Then, "Very well, sir," he

said, and saluted.

 "Thank you, sir," Hilton said, then turned to his staff. "Okay, Sandy, go ahead."

 Outside the control room door, "Thank God you don't play poker, Jarve!" Karns

gasped. "We'd all owe you all the pay we'll ever get!"

 "You think it was the bluff, yes?" de Vaux asked. "Me, I think no. Name of a name of a

name! I was wondering with unease what life would be like on this so-alien planet!"

 "You didn't need to wonder, Tiny," Hilton assured him. "It was in the bag. He's

incapable of abandonment."

 Beverly Bell, the van der Moen twins and Temple Bells all stared at Hilton in awe; and

Sandra felt much the same way. "But suppose he had called you?" Sandra demanded.

"Speculating on the impossible is unprofitable," he said. "Oh, you're the most

exasperating thing!" Sandra stamped a foot. "Don't you-ever-answer a question

intelligibly?"

 "When the question is meaningless, chick, I can't."

 At the lock Temple Bells, who had been hanging back, cocked an eyebrow at Hilton

and he made his way to her side. "What was it you started to say back there, boss?"

 "Oh, yes. That we should see each other oftener."

 "That's what I was hoping you were going to say." She put her hand under his elbow

and pressed his arm lightly, fleetingly, against her side. "That would be indubitably the

fondest thing I could be of."

 He laughed and gave her arm a friendly squeeze. Then he studied her again, the most

baffling member of his staff. About five feet six. Lithe, hard, trained down fine-as a

tennis champion, she would be. Stacked-how she was stacked! Not as beautiful as

Sandra or Teddy . . . but with an ungodly lot of something that neither of them had . . .

nor any other woman he had ever known.

 "Yes, I am a little difficult to classify," she said quietly, almost reading his mind.

 "That's the understatement of the year! But I'm making some progress."

 "Such as?" This was an open challenge. "Except possibly Teddy, the best brain

aboard." "That isn't true, but go ahead."

 "You're a powerhouse. A tightly organized, thoroughly integrated, smoothly functioning,

beautifully camouflaged Juggernaut. A reasonable facsimile of an irresistible force."

 "My God, Jarvis!" That had gone deep.

 "Let me finish my analysis. You aren't head of your department because you don't want

to be. You fooled the top psychs of the Board. You've been running ninety per cent

submerged because you can work better that way and there's no gloryhound blood in

you."

 She stared at him, licking her lips. "I knew your mind was a razor, but I didn't know it

was a diamond drill, too. That seals your doom, boss, unless . . . no, you can't possibly

know why I'm here."

 "Why, of course I do."

 "You just think you do. You see, I've been in love with you ever since, as a gangling,

bony, knobby-kneed kid. I listened to your first doctorate disputation. Ever since then,

my purpose in life has been to !and you."