The Stretts' fuel-supply line had been cut long since. Many Strett cargo-carriers had

been destroyed. The enemy would of course have a very heavy reserve of fuel on

hand: But there was no way of knowing how large it was, how many warships it could

supply, or how long it would last.

 Two facts were, however, unquestionable. First, the Stretts were building a fleet that in

their minds would be invincible. Second, they would attack Ardane as soon as that fleet

could be made ready. The unanswerable question was: how long would that take?

 "So we want to get every ship we have. How many? Five thousand? Ten? Fifteen? We

want them converted to maximum possible power as soon as we possibly can,"

Sawtelle said, "and I want to get out there with my boys to handle things."

"You aren't going to. Neither you nor your boys are expendable. Particularly you." Jaw

hard-set, Hilton studied the situation for minutes. "No. What we'll do is take your Oman,

Kedy. We'll re-set the Guide to drive into him everything you and the military Masters

ever knew about arms, armament, strategy, tactics and so on. And we'll add everything

I know of coordination, synthesis and perception. That ought to make him at least a

junior-grade military genius."

 "You can play that in spades. I wish you could do it to me."

"I can-if you'll take the full Oman transformation. Nothing else can stand the

punishment."

 "I know. No, I don't want to be a genius that badly." "Check. And we'll take the resultant

Kedy and make nine duplicates of him. Each one will learn from and profit by the

mistakes made by the preceding numbers and will assume command the instant his

preceding number is killed."

 "Oh, you expect, then . . .?"

 "Expect? No. I know it damn well, and so do you. That's why we Ardans will stay

aground. Why the Kedys' first job will be to make the heavy stuff in and around Ardane

as heavy as it can be made. Why it'll all be on twenty-four-hour alert. Then they can put

as many thousands of Omans as you please to work at modernizing all the Oman ships

you want and doing anything else you say. Check?"

 Sawtelle thought for a couple of minutes. "A few details, is all. But that can be ironed

out as we go along."

 Both men worked then, almost unremittingly for six solid days, at the end of which time

both drew tremendous sighs of relief. They had done everything possible for them to

do. The defense of Ardvor was now rolling at fullest speed toward its gigantic objective.

 Then captain and director, in two Oman ships with fifty men and a thousand Omans,

leaped the world-girdling ocean to the mining operation of the Stretts. There they found

business strictly as usual. The strippers still stripped; the mining meths still roared and

snarled their inch-wise ways along their geometrically perfect terraces; the little carriers

still skittered busily between the various miners and the storage silos. The fact that

there was enough concentrate on hand to last a world for a hundred years made no

difference at all to these automatics; a crew of erector-meths was building new silos as

fast as existing ones were being filled.

 Since the men now understood everything that was going on, it was a simple matter for

them to stop the whole Strett operation in its tracks. Then every man and every Oman

leaped to his assigned job. Three days later, all the meths went back to work. Now,

however, they were working for the Ardans.

 The miners, instead of concentrate, now emitted vastly larger streams of

Navy-Standard pelleted uranexite. The carriers, instead of one-gallon cans, carried

five-ton drums. The silos were immensely larger-thirty feet in diameter and towering two

hundred feet into the air. The silos were not, however, being used as yet. One of the

two Oman ships had been converted into a fuel-tanker and its yawning holds were

being filled first.

 The Orion went back to Ardane and an eight-day wait began. For the first time in over

seven months Hilton found time actually to loaf; and he and Temple, lolling on the

beach or hiking in the mountains, enjoyed themselves and each other to the full.

 All too soon, however, the heavily laden tanker appeared in the sky over Ardane. The

Orion joined it; and the two ships slipped into sub-space for Earth.

 Three days out, Hilton used his sense of perception to release the thought-controlled

blocks that had been holding all the controls of the Perseus in neutral. He informed her

officers by releasing a public-address tape-that they were now free to return to Terra.

 Three days later, one day short of Sol, Sawtelle got Five-Jet Admiral Gordon's office on

the sub-space radio. An officious underling tried to block him, of course.

 "Shut up, Perkins, and listen," Sawtelle said, brusquely. "Tell Gordon I'm bringing in

one hundred twenty thousand two hundred forty-five metric tons of pelleted uranexite.

And if he isn't on this beam in sixty seconds he'll never get a gram of it."

The admiral, outraged almost to the point of apoplexy, came in, "Sawtelle, report

yourself for court-martial at . . ." "Keep still, Gordon," the captain snapped. In sheer

astonishment old Five-Jets obeyed. "I am no longer Terran Navy; no longer subject to

your orders. As a matter of cold fact, I am no longer human. For reasons which I will

explain later to the full Advisory Board, some of the personnel of Project Theta Orionis

underwent transformation into a form of life able to live in an environment of

radioactivity so intense as to kill any human being in ten seconds. Under certain

conditions we will supply, free of charge, F.O.B. Terra or Luna, all the uranexite the

Solar System can use. The conditions are these," and he gave them. "Do you accept

these conditions or not?"

 "I . . . I would vote to accept them, Captain. But that weight! One hundred twenty

thousand metric tons-incredible) Are you sure of that figure?"

 "Definitely. And that is minimum. The error is plus, not minus."

 "This crippling power-shortage would really be over?" For the first time since Sawtelle

had known him, Gordon showed that he was not quite solid Navy brass.

 "It's over. Definitely. For good."

 "I'd not only agree; I'd raise you a monument. While I can't speak for the Board, I'm

sure they'll agree."

 "So am I. In any event, your cooperation is all that's required for this first load." The

chips had vanished from Sawtelle's shoulders. "Where do you want it, Admiral? Aristar-

ehus or White Sands?"

 "White Sands, please. While there may be some delay in releasing it to industry . . ."

 "While they figure out how much they can tax it?" Sawtelle asked, sardonically.

 "Well, if they don't tax it it'll be the first thing in history that isn't. Have you any

objections to releasing all this to the press?"

 "None at all. The harder they hit it the wider they spread it, the better. Will you have

this beam switched to Astrogation, please?"

 "Of course. And thanks, Captain. I'll see you at White Sands."

 Then, as the now positively glowing Gordon faded away, Sawtelle turned to his own

staff. "Fenway-Snowden-take over. Better double-check micro-timing with Astro. Put us

into a twenty-four-hour orbit over White Sands and hold us there. We won't go down.

Let the load down on remote, wherever they want it."

 The arrival of the Ardvorian superdreadnought Orion and the UC-1 (Uranexite Carrier

Number One) was one of the most sensational events old Earth had ever known. Air

and space craft went clear out to Emergence Volume Ninety to meet them. By the time

the UC-1 was coming in on its remote-controlled landing spiral the press of small ships

was so great that all the police forces available were in a lather trying to control it.

 This was exactly what Hilton had wanted. It made possible the completely unobserved

launching of several dozen small craft from the Orion herself.

 One of these made a very high and very fast flight to Chicago. With all due formality

under the aegis of a perfectly authentic Registry Number it landed on O'Hare Field.

Eleven deeply tanned young men emerged from it and made their way to a taxi stand,

where each engaged a separate vehicle.

 Sam Bryant stepped into his cab, gave the driver a number on Oak-wood Avenue in

Des Plaines, and settled back to scan. He was lucky. He would have gone anywhere

she was, of course, but the way things were, he could give her a little warning to soften

the shock. She had taken the baby out for an airing down River Road, and was on her

way back. By having the taxi kill ten minutes or so he could arrive just after she did.

Wherefore he stopped the cab at a public communications booth and dialed his home.

 "Mrs. Bryant is not at home, but she will return at fifteen thirty," the instrument said,

crisply. "Would you care to record a message for her?"

 He punched the RECORD button. "This is Sam, Dolly baby. I'm right behind you. Turn

around, why don't you, and tell your ever-lovin' star-hoppin' husband hello?"

 The taxi pulled up at the curb just as Doris closed the front door; and Sam, after

handing the driver a five-dollar bill, ran up the walk.

 He waited just outside the door, key in hand, while she lowered the stroller handle, took

off her hat and by longestablished habit reached out to flip the communicator's switch.

At the first word, however, she stiffened rigidly-frozen solid.

 Smiling, he opened the door, walked in and closed it behind him. Nothing short of a

shotgun blast could have taken Doris Bryant's attention from that recorder then.

 "That simply is not so," she told the instrument firmly, with both eyes resolutely shut.

"They made him stay on the Perseus. He won't be in for at least three days. This is

some cretin's idea of a joke."

 "Not this time, Dolly honey. It's really me."

 Her eyes popped open as she whirled. "SAM!" she shrieked, and hurled herself at him

with all the pent-up ardor and longing of two hundred thirty-four meticulously counted,

husbandless, loveless days.

 After an unknown length of time Sam tipped her face up by the chin, nodded at the

stroller, and said, "How about introducing me to the little stranger?"

 "What a mother I turned out to bel That was the first thing I was going to rave about,

the very first thing I saw you! Samuel Jay the Fourth, seventy-six days old today." And

so on.

 Eventually, however, the proud young mother watched the slightly apprehensive young

father carry their first-born upstairs, where together, they put him-still sound asleep-to

bed in his crib. Then again they were in each other's arms.

 Some time later, she twisted around in the circle of his arm and tried to dig her fingers

into the muscles of his back. She then attacked his biceps and, leaning backward, eyed

him intently.

 "You're you, I know, but you're different. No athlete or any laborer could ever possibly

get the muscles you have all over. To say nothing of a space officer on duty. And I

know it isn't any kind of a disease. You've been acting all the time as though I were

fragile, made out of glass or something-as though you were afraid of breaking me in

two. So-what is it, sweetheart?"

 "I've been trying to figure out an easy way of telling you, but there isn't any. I am

different. I'm a hundred times as strong as any man ever was. Look." He upended a

chair, took one heavy hardwood leg between finger and thumb and made what looked

like a gentle effort to bend it. The leg broke with a pistol-sharp report and Doris leaped

backward in surprise. "So you're right. I am afraid not only of breaking you in two, but

killing you. And if I break any of your ribs or arms or legs I'll never forgive myself. So if I

let myself go for a second-I don't think I will, but I might-don't wait until you're really hurt

to start screaming. Promise?"

 "I promise." Her eyes went wide. "But tell me!"

 He told her. She was in turn surprised, amazed, apprehensive, frightened and finally

eager; and she became more and more eager right up to the end.

 "You mean that we . . . that I'll stay just as I am for thousands of years?"

 "Just as you are. Or different, if you like. If you really mean any of this yelling you've

been doing about being too big in the hips-I think you're exactly right, myself-you can

rebuild yourself any way you please. Or change your shape every hour on the hour. But

you haven't accepted my invitation yet."

 "Don't be silly." She went into his arms again and nibbled on his left ear. "I'd go

anywhere with you, of course, any time, but this-but you're positively sure Sammy Small

will be all right?"

 "Positively sure."

 "Okay, I'll call Mother . . ." Her face fell. "I can't tell her that we'll never see them again

and that we'll live . . ." "You don't need to. She and Pop-Fern and Sally, too, and their

boy-friends-are on the list. Not this time, but in a month or so, probably."

 Doris brightened like a sunburst. "And your folks, too, of course?" she asked.

 "Yes, all the close ones."

 "Marvelous! How soon are we leaving?"

 At six o'clock next morning, two hundred thirty-five days after leaving Earth, Hilton and

Sawtelle set out to make the Ardans' official call upon Terra's Advisory Board. Both

were wearing prodigiously heavy lead armor, the inside of which was furiously

radioactive. They did not need it, of course. But it would make all Ardans monstrous in

Terran eyes and would conceal the fact that any other Ardans were landing.

 Their gig was met at the spaceport; not by a limousine, but by a five-ton truck, into

which they were loaded one at a time by a hydraulic lift. Cameras clicked, reporters

scurried and tri-di scanners whirred. One of those scanners, both men knew, was

reporting directly and only to the Advisory Board-which, of course, never took anything

either for granted or at its face value.

 Their first stop was at a truck-scale, where each visitor was weighed. Hilton tipped the

beam at four thousand six hundred fifteen pounds; Sawtelle, a smaller man, weighed in

at four thousand one hundred ninety. Thence to the Radiation Laboratory, where it was

ascertained and reported that the armor did not leak-which was reasonable enough,

since each was lined with Masters' plastics.

 Then into lead-lined testing cells, where each opened his face-plate briefly to a sensing

element. Whereupon the indicating needles of two meters in the main laboratory went

enthusiastically through the full range of red and held unwaveringly against their stops.

 Both Ardans felt the wave of shocked, astonished, almost unbelieving consternation

that swept through the observing scientists and, in slightly lesser measure (because

they knew less about radiation) through the Advisory Board itself in a big room halfway

across town. And from the Radiation Laboratory they were taken, via truck and freight

elevator, to the Office of the Commandant, where the Board was sitting.

 The story, which had been sent in to the Board the day before on a scrambled beam,

was one upon which the Ardans had labored for days. Many facts could be withheld.

However, every man aboard the Perseus would agree on some things. Indeed, the

Earthship's communications officers had undoubtedly radioed in already about longevity

and perfect health and Oman service and many other matters. Hence all such things

would have to be admitted and countered.

 Thus the report, while it was air-tight, perfectly logical, perfectly consistent and

apparently complete, did not please the Board at all. It wasn't intended to.

 "We cannot and do not approve of such unwarranted favoritism," the Chairman of the

Board said. "Longevity has always been man's prime goal. Every human being has the

inalienable right to . . ."

 "Flapdoodle!" Hilton snorted. "This is not being broadcast and this room is proofed, so

please climb down off your soapbox. You don't need to talk like a politician here. Didn't

you read paragraph 12-A-2, one of the many marked `Top Secret'?"

 "Of course. But we do not understand how purely mental qualities can possibly have

any effect upon purely physical transformations. Thus it does not seem reasonable that

any except rigorously screened personnel would die in the process. That is, of course,

unless you contemplate deliberate cold-blooded murder."

 That stopped Hilton in his tracks, for it was too close for comfort to the truth. But it did

not hold the captain for an instant. He was used to death, in many of its grisliest forms.

 "There are a lot of things no Terran ever will understand," Sawtelle replied instantly.

"Reasonable or not, that's exactly what will happen. And, reasonable or not, it'll be

suicide, not murder. There isn't a thing that either Hilton or I can do about it."

 Hilton broke the ensuing silence. "You can say with equal truth that every human being

has the right to run a fourminute mile or to compose a great symphony. It isn't a matter

of right at all, but of ability. In this case the mental qualities are even more necessary

than the physical. You as a Board did a very fine job of selecting the BuSci personnel

for Project Theta Orionis. Almost eighty percent of them proved able to withstand the

Ardan conversion. On the other hand, only a very small percentage of the Navy

personnel did so."

 "Your report said that the remaining personnel of the Project were not informed as to

the death aspect of the transformation," Admiral Gordon said. "Why not?"

 "That should be self-explanatory," Hilton said, flatly. "They are still human and still

Terrans. We did not and will not encroach upon either the duties or the privileges of

Terra's Advisory Board. What you tell all Terrans, and how much, and how, must be

decided by yourselves. This also applies, of course, to the other `Top Secret'

paragraphs of the report, none of which are known to any Terran outside the Board."

 "But you haven't said anything about the method of selection," another Advisor

complained. "Why, that will take all the psychologists of the world, working full time;

continuously."

 "We said we would do the selecting. We meant just that," Hilton said, coldly. "No one

except the very few selectees will know anything about it. Even if it were an unmixed

blessing which it very definitely is not-do you want all humanity thrown into such an

uproar as that would cause? Or the quite possible racial inferiority complex it might set

up? To say nothing of the question of how much of Terra's best blood do you want to

drain off, irreversibly and permanently? No. What we suggest is that you paint the

picture so black, using Sawtelle and me and what all humanity has just seen as horrible

examples, that nobody would take it as a gift. Make them shun it like the plague. Hell, I

don't have to tell you what your propaganda machines can do."

 The Chairman of the Board again mounted his invisible rostrum. "Do you mean to

intimate that we are to falsify the record?" he declaimed. "To try to make liars out of

hundreds of eyewitnesses? You ask us to distort the truth, to connive at .

 .

 "We aren't asking you to do anything!" Hilton snapped. "We don't give a damn what

you do. Just study that record, with all that it implies. Read between the lines. As for

those on the Perseus, no two of them will tell the same story and not one of them has

even the remotest idea of what the real story is. I, personally, not only did not want to

become a monster, but would have given everything I had to stay human. My wife felt

the same way. Neither of us would have converted if there'd been any other way in

God's universe of getting the uranexite and doing some other things that simply must be

done."

 "What other things?" Gordon demanded.

 "You'll never know," Hilton answered, quietly. "Things no Terran ever will know. We

hope. Things that would drive any Terran stark mad. Some of them are hinted at-as

much as we dared-between the lines of the report."

 The report had not mentioned the Stretts. Nor were they to be mentioned now. If the

Ardans could stop them, no Terran need ever know anything about them.

 If not, no Terran should know anything about them except what he would learn for

himself just before the end. For Terra would never be able to do anything to defend

herself against the Stretts.

 "Nothing whatever can drive me mad," Gordon declared, "and I want to know all about

it-right now!"

 "You can do one of two things, Gordon," Sawtelle said in disgust. His sneer was plainly

visible through the six-ply, plasti-backed lead glass of his face-plate. "Either shut up or

accept my personal invitation to come to Ardvor and try to go through the wringer.

That's an invitation to your own funeral." Five-Jet Admiral Gordon, torn inwardly to

ribbons, made no reply.

 "I repeat," Hilton went on, "we are not asking you to do anything whatever. We are

offering to give you, free of charge but under certain conditions, all the power your

humanity can possibly use. We set no limitation whatever as to quantity and with no

foreseeable limit as to time. The only point at issue is whether or not you accept the

conditions. If you do not accept them we'll leave now-and the offer will not be repeated."

 "And you would, I presume, take the UC-1 back with you?"

 "Of course not, sir. Terra needs power too badly. You are perfectly welcome to that

one load of uranexite, no matter what is decided here."

 "That's one way of putting it," Gordon sneered. "But the truth is that you know damned

well I'll blow both of your ships out of space if you so much as . . .

 "Oh, chip-chop the jaw-flapping, Gordon!" Hilton snapped. Then, as the admiral began

to bellow orders into his microphone, he went on: "You want it the hard way, eh? Watch

what happens, all of you!"

 The UC-1 shot vertically into the air. Through its shallow dense layer and into and

through the stratosphere. Earth's fleet, already on full alert and poised to strike, rushed

to the attack. But the carrier had reached the Orion and both Ardvorian ships had been

waiting, motionless, for a good half minute before the Terran warships arrived and

began to blast with everything they had.

 "Flashlights and firecrackers," Sawtelle said, calmly. "You aren't even warming up our

screens. As soon as you quit making a damned fool of yourself by wasting energy that

way, we'll set the UC-1 back down where she was and get on with our business here."

 "You will order a cease-fire at once, Admiral," the chairman said, "or the rest of us will,

as of now, remove you from the Board." Gordon gritted his teeth in rage, but gave the

order.

 "If he hasn't had enough yet to convince him," Hilton suggested, "he might send up a

drone. We don't want to kill anybody, you know. One with the heaviest screening he's

got just to see what happens to it."

 "He's had enough. The rest of us have had more than enough. That exhibition was not

only uncalled-for and disgusting-it was outrageous!"

 The meeting settled down, then, from argument to constructive discussion, and many

topics were gone over. Certain matters were, however, so self-evident that they were

not even mentioned.

 Thus, it was a self-evident fact that no Terran could ever visit Ardvor; for the

instrument-readings agreed with the report's statements as to the violence of the

Ardvorian environment, and no Terran could possibly walk around in two tons of lead.

Conversely, it was self-apparent to the Terrans that no Ardan could ever visit Earth

without being recognized instantly for what he was. Wearing such armor made its

necessity starkly plain. No one from the Perseus could say that any Ardan, after having

lived on the furiously radiant surface of Ardvor, would not be as furiously radioactive as

the laboratory's calibrated instruments had shown Hilton and Sawtelle actually to be.

 Wherefore the conference went on, quietly and cooperatively, to its planned end.

 One minute after the Terran battleship Perseus emerged into normal space, the Orion

went into sub-space for her long trip back to Ardvor.

 The last two days of that seven-day trip were the longest seeming that either Hilton or

Sawtelle had ever known. The sub-space radio was on continuously and Kedy-One

reported to Sawtelle every five minutes. Even though Hilton knew that the Oman

commander-in-chief was exactly as good at perceiving as he himself was, he found

himself scanning the thoroughly screened Strett world forty or fifty times an hour.

However, in spite of worry and apprehension, time wore eventlessly on. The Orion

emerged, went to Ardvor and landed on Ardane Field.

 Hilton, after greeting properly and reporting to his wife, went to his office. There he

found that Sandra had everything well in hand except for a few tapes that only he could

handle. Sawtelle and his officers went to the new Command Central, where everything

was rolling smoothly and very much faster than Sawtelle had dared hope.

 The Terran immigrants had to live in the Orion, of course, until conversion into Ardans.

Almost equally of course-since the Bryant infant was the only young baby in the

lot-Doris and her Sammy Small were, by popular acclaim, in the first batch to be

converted. For little Sammy had taken the entire feminine contingent by storm. No

Oman female had a chance to act as nurse as long as any of the girls were around.

Which was practically all the time. Especially the platinum-blonde twins; for several

months, now, Bernadine Braden and Hermione Felger.

 "And you said they were so hard-boiled," Doris said accusingly to Sam, nodding at the

twins. On hands and knees on the floor, head to head with Sammy Small between

them, they were growling deep-throated at each other and nuzzling at the baby, who

was having the time of his young life. "You couldn't have been any wronger, my sweet,

if you'd had the whole Octagon helping you go astray. They're just as nice as they can

be, both of them."

 Sam shrugged and grinned. His wife strode purposefully across the room to the playful

pair and lifted their pretended prey out from between them.

 "Quit it, you two," she directed, swinging the baby up and depositing him a-straddle her

left hip. "You're just simply spoiling him rotten."

 "You think so, Dolly? Uh-uh, far be it from such." Bernadine came lithely to her feet.

She glanced at her own taut, trim abdomen; upon which a micrometrically precise topo-

graphical mapping job might have revealed an otherwise imperceptible bulge. "Just you

wait until Junior arrives and I'll show you how to really spoil a baby. Besides, what's the

hurry?"

 "He needs his supper. Vitamins and minerals and hard radiations and things, and then

he's going to bed. I don't approve of this no-sleep business. So run along, both of you,

until tomorrow."