1 - between one footstep and the next

Two minutes before he disappeared forever from the face of the Earth he knew, Joseph Schwartz strolled along the pleasant streets of suburban Chicago quoting Browning to himself.

            In a sense this was strange, since Schwartz would scarcely have impressed any casual passer-by as the Browning-quoting type. He looked exactly what he was: a retired tailor, thoroughly lacking in what the sophisticates of today call a “formal education.” Yet he had expended much of an inquisitive nature upon random reading. By the sheer force of indiscriminate voracity, he had gleaned a smattering of practically everything, and by means of a trick memory had managed to keep it all straight.

            For instance, he had read Robert Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra twice when he was younger, so, of course, knew it by heart. Most of it was obscure to him, but those first three lines had become one with the beating of his heart these last few years. He intoned them to himself, deep within the silent fortress of his mind, that very sunny and very bright early summer day of 1949:

            “Grow old along with me!

             The best is yet to be,

            The last of life, for which the first was made...”

            Schwartz felt that to its fullness. After the struggles of youth in Europe and those of his early manhood in the United States, the serenity of a comfortable old age was pleasant. With a house of his own and money of his own, he could, and did, retire. With a wife in good health, two daughters safely married, a grandson to soothe these last best years, what had he to worry about?

            There was the atom bomb, of course, and this somewhat lascivious talk about World War III, but Schwartz was a believer in the goodness of human nature. He didn’t think there would be another war. He didn’t think Earth would ever see again the sunlike hell of an atom exploded in anger. So he smiled tolerantly at the children he passed and silently wished them a speedy and not too difficult ride through youth to the peace of the best that was yet to be.

            He lifted his foot to step over a Raggedy Ann doll smiling through its neglect as it lay there in the middle of the walk, a foundling not yet missed. He had not quite put his foot down again...

            In another part of Chicago stood the Institute for Nuclear Research, in which men may have had theories upon the essential worth of human nature but were half ashamed of them, since no quantitative instrument had yet been designed to measure it. When they thought about it, it was often enough to wish that some stroke from heaven would prevent human nature (and damned human ingenuity) from turning every innocent and interesting discovery into a deadly weapon.

            Yet, in a pinch, the same man who could not find it in his conscience to curb his curiosity into the nuclear studies that might someday kill half of Earth would risk his life to save that of an unimportant fellow man.

            It was the blue glow behind the chemist’s back that first attracted the attention of Dr. Smith.

            He peered at it as he passed the half-open door. The chemist, a cheerful youngster, was whistling as he tipped up a volumetric flask, in which the solution had already been made up to volume. A white powder tumbled lazily through the liquid, dissolving in its own good time. For a moment that was all, and then Dr. Smith’s instinct, which had stopped him in the first place, stirred him to action.

            He dashed inside, snatched up a yardstick, and swept the contents of the desk top to the floor. There was the deadly hiss of molten metal. Dr. Smith felt a drop of perspiration slip to the end of his nose.

            The youngster stared blankly at the concrete floor along which the silvery metal had already frozen in thin splash marks. They still radiated heat strongly.

            He said faintly, “What happened?” Dr. Smith shrugged. He wasn’t quite himself either. “I don’t know. You tell me....What’s been doing here?”

            “Nothing’s been doing here,” the chemist yammered. “That was just a sample of crude uranium. I’m making an electrolytic copper determination....I don’t know what could have happened.” 

            “Whatever happened, young man, I can tell you what I saw. That platinum crucible was showing a corona. Heavy radiation was taking place. Uranium, you say?”

            “Yes, but crude uranium, and that isn’t dangerous. I mean, extreme purity is one of the most important qualifications for fission, isn’t it?” He touched his tongue to his lips quickly. “Do you think it was fission, sir? It’s not plutonium, and it wasn’t being bombarded.”

            “And,” said Dr. Smith thoughtfully, “it was below the critical mass. Or, at least, below the critical masses we think we know.” He stared at the soapstone desk, at the bummed and blistered paint of the cabinets and the silvery streaks along the concrete floor. “Yet uranium melts at about 1800 degrees Centigrade, and nuclear phenomena are not so well known that we can afford to talk too glibly. After all, this place must be fairly saturated with stray radiations. When the metal cools, young man, it had better be chipped up, collected, and thoroughly analyzed.”

            He gazed thoughtfully about him, then stepped to the opposite wall and felt uneasily at a spot about shoulder height.

            “What’s this?” he said to the chemist. “Has this always been here?”

            “What, sir?” The young man stepped up nervously and glanced at the spot the older man indicated. It was a tiny hole, one that might have been made by a thin nail driven into the wall and withdrawn--but driven through plaster and brick for the full thickness of the building’s wall, since daylight could be seen through it.

            The chemist shook his head, “I never saw that before. But I never looked for it, either, sir.”

            Dr. Smith said nothing. He stepped back slowly and passed the thermostat, a parallelopiped of a box made out of thin sheet iron. The water in it moved swirlingly as the stirrer turned in motor-driven monomania, while the electric bulbs beneath the water, serving as heaters, flicked on and off distractingly, in time with the clicking of the mercury relay.

            “Well, then, was this here?” And Dr. Smith scraped gently with his fingernail at a spot near the top of the wide side of the thermostat. It was a neat, tiny circle drilled through the metal. The water did not quite reach it.

            The chemist’s eyes widened. “No, sir, that wasn’t there ever before. I’ll guarantee that.”

            “Hmm. Is there one on the other side?”

            “Well, I’ll be damned. I mean, yes, sir!”

            “All right, come round here and sight through the holes....Shut the thermostat off, please. Now stay there.” He placed his finger on the hole in the wall. “What do you see?” he called out.

            “I see your finger, sir. Is that where the hole is?”

            Dr. Smith did not answer. He said, with a calmness he was far from feeling, “Sight through in the other direction.... Now what do you see?”

            “Nothing now.”

            “But that’s the place where the crucible with the uranium was standing. You’re looking at the exact place, aren’t you?”

            Reluctantly, “I think so, sir.”

            Dr. Smith said frostily, with a quick glance at the name plate on the still-open door, “Mr. Jennings, this is absolutely top-secret. I don’t want you ever to speak about this to anyone. Do you understand?”

            “Absolutely, sir!”

            “Then let’s get out of here. We’ll send in the radiation men to check the place, and you and I will spend a siege in the infirmary.”

            “Radiation burns, you mean?” The chemist paled.

            “We’ll find out.”

            But there were no serious signs of radiation burns in either. Blood counts were normal and a study of the hair roots revealed nothing. The nausea that developed was eventually tabbed as psychosomatic and no other symptoms appeared.

            Nor, in all the Institute, was anyone found, either then or in the future, to explain why a crucible of crude uranium, well below critical size, and under no direct neutronic bombardment, should suddenly melt and radiate that deadly and significant corona.

            The only conclusion was that nuclear physics had queer and dangerous crannies left in it.

            Yet Dr. Smith never brought himself to tell all the truth in the report he eventually prepared. He made no mention of the holes in the laboratory, no mention of the fact that the one nearest the spot where the crucible had been was barely visible, the one on the other side of the thermostat was a trace larger, while the one in the wall, three times as far away from that fearful spot, could have had a nail thrust through it.

            A beam expanding in a straight line could travel several miles before the Earth’s curvature made the surface fall away from it sufficiently to prevent further damage, and then it would be ten feet across. After that, flashing emptily into space, expanding and weakening, a queer strain in the fabric of the cosmos.

            He never told anyone of that fancy.

            He never told anyone that he called for the morning papers next day, while still in the infirmary, and searched the columns with a definite purpose in mind.

            But so many people in a giant metropolis disappear every day. And nobody had gone screaming to the police with vague tales of how, before his eyes, a man (or would it be half a man?) had disappeared. At least no such case was reported.

            Dr. Smith forced forgetfulness, eventually.

            To Joseph Schwartz it had happened between one step and the next. He had lifted his right foot to clear the Raggedy Ann doll and for a moment he had felt dizzy--as though for the merest trifle of time a whirlwind had lifted him and turned him inside out. When he placed his right foot down again, all the breath went out of him in a gasp and he felt himself slowly crumple and slide down to the grass.

            He waited a long time with his eyes closed--and then he opened them.

            It was true! He was sitting on grass, where previously he had been walking on concrete.

            The houses were gone/ The white houses, each with its lawn, squatting there, row on row, all goner

            And it was not a lawn he was sitting on, for the grass was growing rank, untended, and there were trees about, many of them, with more on the horizon.

            That was when the worst shock of all came, because the leaves on those trees were ruddy, some of them, and in the curve of his hand he felt the dry brittleness of a dead leaf. He was a city man, but he knew autumn when he saw it.

            Autumn! Yet when he had lifted his right foot it had been a June day, with everything a fresh and glistening green.

            He looked toward his feet automatically as he thought that and, with a sharp cry, reached toward them....The little cloth doll that he had stepped over, a little breath of reality, a--

            Well, no! He turned it over in his trembling hands, and it was not whole. Yet it was not mangled; it was sliced. Now wasn’t that queer! Sliced lengthwise very neatly, so that the waste-yarn stuffing wasn’t stirred a hair. It lay there in interrupted threads, ending flatly.

            The glitter on his left shoe caught Schwartz’s eye. Still clutching the doll, he forced his foot over his raised knee. The extreme tip of the sole, the part that extended forward past the uppers, was smoothly sliced off. Sliced off as no earthly knife in the hand of an earthly cobbler could have duplicated. The fresh surface gleamed almost liquidly in its unbelievable smoothness.

            Schwartz’s confusion had reached up from his spinal cord and touched the cerebrum, where it finally froze him with horror.

            At last, because even the sound of his own voice was a soothing element in a world otherwise completely mad, he spoke aloud. The voice he heard was low and tense and panting.

            He said, “In the first place, I’m not crazy. I feel inside just the way I’ve always felt....Of course, if maybe I were crazy, I wouldn’t know it, or would I? No--” Inside, he felt the hysteria rise and forced it down. “There must be something else possible.”

            He considered, “ A dream, maybe? How can I tell if it’s a dream or not?” He pinched himself and felt the nip, but shook his head. “I can always dream I feel a pinch. That’s no proof.”

            He looked about him despairingly. Could dreams be so clear, so detailed, so lasting? He had read once that most dreams last not more than five seconds, that they are induced by trifling disturbances to the sleeper, that the apparent length of the dreams is an illusion.

            Cold comfort! He shifted the cuff of his shirt upward and stared at his wrist watch. The second hand turned and turned and turned. If it were a dream, the five seconds was going to stretch madly.

            He looked away and wiped futilely at the cold dampness of his forehead. “What about amnesia?”

            He did not answer himself, but slowly buried his head in both hands.

            If he had lifted his foot and, as he did so, his mind had slipped the well-worn and well-oiled tracks it had followed so faithfully for so long...If three months later, in the autumn, or a year and three months later, or ten years and three months later, he had put his foot down in this strange place, just as his mind returned...Why, it would seem a single step, and all this...Then where had he been and what had he done in the interval?

            “No!” The word came out in a loud cry. That couldn’t be! Schwartz looked at his shirt. It was the one he had put on that morning, or what should have been that morning, and it was a fresh shirt. He bethought himself, plunged a fist: into his jacket pocket, and brought out an apple.

            He bit into it wildly. It was fresh and still had a lingering coolness from the refrigerator which had held it two hours earlier--or what should have been two hours.

            And the little rag doll, what about that?

            He felt himself beginning to go wild. It had to be a dream. or he really was insane.

            It struck him that the time of day had changed. It was late afternoon, or at least the shadows were lengthening. The quiet desolation of the place flooded down upon him suddenly and freezingly.

            He lurched to his feet. Obviously he would have to find people, any people. And, as obviously, he would have to find a house, and the best way to do that would be to find a road.

            Automatically he turned in the direction in which the trees seemed thinnest, and walked.

            The slight chill of evening was creeping inside his jacket and the tops of the trees were becoming dim and forbidding when he came upon that straight and impersonal streak of macadam. He lunged toward it with sobbing gratitude and loved the feel of the hardness beneath his feet.

            But along either direction was absolute emptiness, and for a moment he felt the cold clutch again. He had hoped for cars. It would have been the easiest thing to wave them down and say--he said it aloud in his eagerness--”Going toward Chicago, maybe?”

            What if he was nowhere near Chicago? Well, any large city; anyplace he could reach a telephone line. He had only four dollars and twenty-seven cents in his pocket, but there was always the police...

            He was walking along the highway, walking along the middle, watching in both directions. The setting of the sun made no impression upon him, or the fact that the first stars were coming out.

            No cars. Nothing’ And it was getting to be really dark.

            He thought that first dizziness might be coming back, because the horizon at his left glimmered. Through the gaps in the trees there was a cold blue shine. It was not the leaping red he imagined a forest fire would be like, but a faint and creeping glow. And the macadam beneath his feet seemed to sparkle ever so faintly. He bent down to touch it, and it felt normal. But there was that tiny glimmer that caught the edges of his eyes.

            He found himself running wildly along the highway, his shoes thudding in blunt and uneven rhythm. He was conscious of the damaged doll in his hand and he tossed it wildly over his head.

            Leering, mocking remnant of life... And then he stopped in a panic. Whatever it was, it was a proof of his sanity. And he needed it! So he felt about in the darkness, crawling on his knees tin he found it, a dark patch on the ultra-faint glow. The stuffing was plumping out and, absently, he forced it back.

            He was walking again--too miserable to run, he told himself.

            He was getting hungry and really, really frightened when he saw that spark to the right.

            It was a house, of course!

            He shouted wildly and no one answered, but it was a house, a spark of reality blinking at him through the horrible, nameless wilderness of the last hours. He turned off the road and went plunging cross-country, across ditches, around trees, through the underbrush, and over a creek.

            Queer thing! Even the creek glowed faintly--phosphorescently! But it was only the tiniest fragment of his mind that noted it.

            Then he was there, with his hands reaching out to touch the hard white structure. It was neither brick nor stone nor wood, but he never paid that the least mind. It looked like a dun, strong porcelain, but he didn’t give a hoot. He was just looking for a door, and when he came to it and saw no bell, he kicked at it and yelled like a demon.

            He heard the stirring inside and the blessed, lovely sound of a human voice other than his own. He yelled again.

            “Hey, in there!”

            There was a faint, oiled whir, and the door opened. A woman emerged, a spark of alarm in her eyes. She was tan and wiry, and behind her was the gaunt figure of a hard-faced man in work clothes....No, not work clothes. Actually they were like nothing Schwartz had ever seen, but, in some indefinable way, they looked like the kind of clothes men worked in.

            But Schwartz was not analytical. To him they, and their clothes, were beautiful; beautiful only as the sight of friends to a man alone can be beautiful.

            The woman spoke and her voice was liquid, but peremptory, and Schwartz reached for the door to keep himself upright. His lips moved, uselessly, and, in a rush, all the clammiest fears he had known returned to choke his windpipe and stifle his heart.

            For the woman spoke in no language Schwartz had ever heard.

2 - the disposal of a stranger

Loa Maren and her stolid husband, Arbin, played cards in the cool of the same evening, while the older man in the motor-driven wheel chair in the corner rustled his newspaper angrily and caned, “ Arbin!”

            Arbin Maren did not answer at once. He fingered the thin, smooth rectangles carefully as he considered the next play. Then, as he slowly made his decision, he responded with an absent, “What do you want, Grew?”

            The grizzled Grew regarded his son-in-law fiercely over the top of the paper and rustled it again. He found noise of that sort a great relief to his feelings. When a man teems with energy and finds himself spiked to a wheel chair with two dead sticks for legs, there must be something, by Space, he can do to express himself. Grew used his newspaper. He rustled it; he gestured with it; when necessary, he swatted at things with it.

            Elsewhere than on Earth, Grew knew, they had telenews machines that issued rolls of microfilm as servings of current news. Standard book viewers were used for them. But Grew sneered silently at that. An effete and degenerate custom!

            Grew said, “Did you read about the archaeological expedition they’re sending to Earth?”

            “No, I haven’t,” said Arbin calmly.

            Grew knew that, since nobody but himself had seen the paper yet, and the family had given up their video last year. But then his remark had simply been in the nature of an opening gambit, anyway.

            He said, “Well, there’s one coming. And on an Imperial grant, too, and how do you like that?” He began reciting in the queer unevenness of tone that most people somehow assume automatically when reading aloud, “ ‘Bel Arvardan, Senior Research Associate at the Imperial Archaeological Institute, in an interview granted the Galactic Press, spoke hopefully of the expected valuable results of archaeological studies which are being projected upon the planet Earth, located on the outskirts of the Sirius Sector (see map). “Earth,” he said, “with its archaic civilization and its unique environment, offers a freak culture which has been too long neglected by our social scientists, except as a difficult exercise in local government. I have every expectation that the next year or two will bring about revolutionary changes in some of our supposed fundamental concepts of social evolution and human history.”  And so on and so on,” he finished with a flourish.

            Arbin Maren had been listening with only half an ear. He mumbled, “What does he mean, ‘freak culture’?”

            Loa Maren hadn’t been listening at all. She simply said. “It’s your play, Arbin.”

            Grew went on, “Well, aren’t you going to ask me why the Tribune printed it? You know they wouldn’t print a Galactic Press release for a million Imperial Credits without a good reason.”

            He waited uselessly for an answer, then said, “Because they have an editorial on it. A full-page editorial that blasts the living daylights out of this guy Arvardan. Here’s a fellow wants to come here for scientific purposes and they’re choking themselves purple to keep him out. Look at this piece of rabble-rousing. Look at it!” He shook the paper at them. “Read it, why don’t you?”

            Loa Maren put down her cards and clamped her thin lips firmly together. “Father,” she said, “we’ve had a hard day, so let’s not have politics just now. Later, maybe, eh? Please, Father.”

            Grew scowled and mimicked, “ ‘Please, Father! Please, Father.’ It appears to me you must be getting pretty tired of your old father when you begrudge him a few quiet words on current events. I’m in your way, I suppose, sitting here in the comer and letting you two work for three....Whose fault is it? I’m strong. I’m willing to work. And you know I could get my legs treated and be as well as ever.” He slapped them as he spoke: hard. savage, ringing slaps, which he heard but did not feel. “The only reason I can’t is because I’m getting too old to make a cure worth their while. Don’t you can that a ‘freak culture’? What else could you can a world where a man can work but they won’t let him? By Space, I think it’s about time we stopped this nonsense about our so-called  ‘peculiar institutions.’ They’re not just peculiar; they’re cracked! I think--”

            He was waving his arms and angry blood was reddening his face.

            But Arbin had risen from his chair, and his grip was strong on the older man’s shoulder. He said, “Now where’s the call to be upset, Grew? When you’re through with the paper, I’ll read the editorial.”

            “Sure, but you’ll agree with them, so what’s the use? You young ones are a bunch of milksops; just sponge rubber in the hands of the Ancients.”

            And Loa said sharply, “Quiet, Father. Don’t start that.” She sat there listening for a moment. She could not have said exactly what for, but...

            Arbin felt that cold little prickle that always came when the Society of Ancients was mentioned. It just wasn’t safe to talk as Grew did, to mock Earth’s ancient culture, to--to--

            Why, it was rank Assimilationism. He swallowed earnestly; the word was an ugly one, even when confined to thought.

            Of course in Grew’s youth there had been much of this foolish talk of abandoning the old ways, but these were different times. Grew should know that--and he probably did, except that it wasn’t easy to be reasonable and sensible when you were in a wheel-chair prison, just waiting away your days for the next Census.

            Grew was perhaps the least affected, but he said no more. And as the moments passed he grew quieter and the print became progressively more difficult to place in focus. He had not yet had time to give the sports pages a detailed and critical perusal when his nodding head lolled slowly down upon his chest. He snored softly, and the paper fell from his fingers with a final, unintentional rustle.

            Then Loa spoke, in a worried whisper. “Maybe we’re not being kind to him, Arbin. It’s a hard life for a man like Father. It’s like being dead compared to the life he used to lead.”

            “Nothing’s like being dead, Loa. He has his papers and his books. Let him be! A bit of excitement like this peps him up. He’ll be happy and quiet for days now.”

            Arbin was beginning to consider his cards again, and as he reached for one the pounding at the door sounded, with hoarse yells that didn’t quite coalesce into words.

            Arbin’s hand lurched and stopped. Loa’s eyes grew fearful; she stared at her husband with a trembling lower lip.

            Arbin said, “Get Grew out of here. Quickly!”

            Loa was at the wheel chair as he spoke. She made soothing sounds with her tongue.

            But the sleeping figure gasped, startled awake at the first motion of the chair. He straightened and groped automatically for his paper.

            “What’s the matter?” he demanded irritably, and by no means in a whisper.

            “Shh. It’s all right,” muttered Loa vaguely, and wheeled the chair into the next room. She closed the door and placed her back against it, thin chest heaving as her eyes sought those of her husband. There was that pounding again.

            They stood close to each other as the door opened, almost defensively so, and hostility peeped from them as they faced the short, plump man who smiled faintly at them.

            Loa said, “Is there anything we can do for you?” with a ceremonial courtesy, then jumped back as the man gasped and put out a hand to stop himself from falling.

            “Is he sick?” asked Arbin bewilderedly. “Here, help me take him inside.”

            The hours after that passed, and in the quiet of their bedroom Loa and Arbin prepared slowly for bed.

            “Arbin,” said Loa.

            “What is it?”

            “Is it safe?”

            “Safe?” He seemed to avoid her meaning deliberately.

            “I mean, taking this man into the house. Who is he?”

            “How should I know?” was the irritated response. “But, after an, we can’t refuse shelter to a sick man. Tomorrow, if he lacks identification, we’ll inform the Regional Security Board, and that will be the end of it.” He turned away in an obvious attempt at breaking off the conversation.

            But his wife broke the returning silence, her thin voice more urgent. “you don’t think he might be an agent of the Society of Ancients, do you? There’s Grew, you know.”

            “You mean because of what he said tonight? That’s past the limit of reason. I won’t argue about it.”

            “I don’t mean that, and you know it. I mean that we’ve been keeping Grew illegally now for two years, and you know we’re breaking just about the most serious Custom.”

            Arbin muttered, “We’re harming no one. We’re fining our quota, aren’t we, even though it’s set for three people--three workers? And if we are, why should they suspect anything? We don’t even let him out of the house.”

            “They might trace the wheel chair. You had to buy the motor and fittings outside.”

            “Now don’t start that again, Loa. I’ve explained many times that I’ve bought nothing but standard kitchen equipment for that chair. Besides, it does not make any sense at all to consider him an agent of the Brotherhood. Do you suppose that they would go through such an elaborate trickery for the sake of a poor old man in a wheel chair? Couldn’t they enter by daylight and with legal search warrants? Please, reason this thing out.”

            “Well, then, Arbin”--her eyes were suddenly bright and eager--”if you really think so--and I’ve been so hoping you would--he must be an Outsider. He can’t be an Earthman.”

            “What do you mean, he can’t be? That’s more ridiculous still. Why should a man of the Empire come here to Earth, of all places?”

            “I don’t know why! Yes, I do; maybe he’s committed a crime out there.” She was caught up instantly in her own fancy. “Why not? It makes sense. Earth would be the natural place to come to. Who would ever think of looking for him here?”

            “If he’s an Outsider. What evidence do you have for that?”

            “He doesn’t speak the language, does he? You’ll have to grant me that. Could you understand a single word? So he must come from some far-off corner of the Galaxy where the dialect is strange. They say the men of Fomalhaut have to learn practically a new language to be understood at the Emperor’s court on Trantor....But don’t you see what all this can mean? If he’s a stranger on Earth, he will have no registration with the Census Board, and he will be only too glad to avoid reporting to them. We can use him on the farm, in the place of Father, and it will be three people again, not two, who will have to meet the quota for three this next season....He could even help with the harvest now.”

            She looked anxiously at the uncertain face of her husband, who considered long, then said, “Well, go to bed, Loa. We’ll speak further in the common sense of daylight.”

            The whispering ended, the light was put out, and eventually sleep filled the room and the house.

            The next morning it was Grew’s turn to consider the matter. Arbin put the question to him hopefully. He felt a confidence in his father-in-law that he could not muster in himself.

            Grew said, “Your troubles, Arbin, obviously arise from the fact that I am registered as a worker, so that the produce quota is set at three. I’m tired of creating trouble. This is the second year I have lived past my time. It is enough.”

            Arbin was embarrassed...Now that wasn’t the point at an. I’m not hinting that you’re a trouble to us.”

            “Well, after an, what’s the difference? In two years there will be the Census, and I will go anyway.”

            “At least you will have two more years of your books and your rest. Why should you be deprived of that?”

            “Because others are. And what of you and Loa? When they come to take me, they will take you two as well. What kind of a man would I be to live a few stinking/ years at the expense--”

            “Stop it, Grew. I don’t want histrionics. We’ve told you many times what we’re going to do. We’ll report you a week before the Census. “

            “And fool the doctor, I suppose?”

            “We’ll bribe the doctor.”

            “Hmp. And this new man--he’ll double the offense. You’ll be concealing him too.”

            “We’ll turn him loose. For Space’s sake, why bother about this now? We have two years. What shall we do with him?”

            “A stranger,” mused Grew. “He comes knocking at the door. He’s from nowhere. He speaks unintelligibly....I don’t know what to advise.”

            The farmer said, “He is mild-mannered; seems frightened to death. He can’t do us any harm.”

            “Frightened, eh? What if he’s feeble-minded? What if his babbling isn’t a foreign dialect at an, but just insane mouthing?”

            “That doesn’t sound likely.” But Arbin stirred uneasily.

            “You tell yourself that because you want to use him.... All right, I’ll tell you what to do. Take him into town.”

            “To Chica?” Arbin was horrified. “That would be ruin.”

            “Not at all,” said Grew calmly. “The trouble with you is that you don’t read the newspapers. Fortunately for this family, I do. It so happens that the Institute for Nuclear Research has developed an instrument that is supposed to make it easier for people to learn. There was a full-page spread in the Week-end Supplement. And they want volunteers. Take this man. Let him be a volunteer.”

            Arbin shook his head firmly. “You’re mad. I couldn’t do anything like that, Grew. They’ll ask for his registration number first thing. It’s only inviting investigation to have things in improper order, and then they’ll find out about you.”

            “No, they won’t. It so happens you’re all wrong, Arbin. The reason the Institute wants volunteers is that the machine is still experimental. It’s probably killed a few people, so I’m sure they won’t ask questions. And if the stranger dies, he’ll probably be no worse off than he is now....Here, Arbin, hand me the book projector and set the mark at reel six. And bring me the paper as soon as it comes, will you?”

            When Schwartz opened his eyes, it was past noon. He felt that dun, heart-choking pain that feeds on itself, the pain of a wife no longer by his side at waking, of a familiar world lost...

            Once before he had felt such a pain, and that momentary flash of memory came, lighting up a forgotten scene into sharp brilliance. There was himself, a youngster, in the snow of the wintry village...with the sleigh waiting...at the end of whose journey would be the train...and, after that, the great ship...

            The longing, frustrating fear for the world of the familiar united him for the moment with that twenty-year-old who had emigrated to America.

            The frustration was too real. This could not be a dream.

            He jumped up as the light above the door blinked on and off and the meaningless baritone of his host sounded. Then the door opened and there was breakfast--a mealy porridge that he did not recognize but which tasted faintly like corn mush (with a savory difference) and milk.

            He said, “Thanks,” and nodded his head vigorously.

            The farmer said something in return and picked up Schwartz’s shirt from where it hung on the back of the chair. He inspected it carefully from an directions, paying particular attention to the buttons. Then, replacing it, he flung open the sliding door of a closet, and for the first time Schwartz became visually aware of the warm milkiness of the walls.

            “Plastic,” he muttered to himself, using that all-inclusive word with the finality laymen always do. He noted further that there were no corners or angles in the room, all planes fading into each other at a gentle curve.

            But the other was holding objects out toward him and was making gestures that could not be mistaken. Schwartz obviously was to wash and dress.

            With help and directions, he obeyed. Except that he found nothing with which to shave, nor could gestures to his chin elicit anything but an incomprehensible sound accompanied by a look of distinct revulsion on the part of the other. Schwartz scratched at his gray stubble and sighed windily.

            And then he was led to a small, elongated, biwheeled car, into which he was ordered by gestures. The ground sped beneath them and the empty road moved backward on either side, until low, sparkling white buildings rose before him, and there, far ahead, was the blue of water.

            He pointed eagerly. “Chicago?”

            It was the last gasp of hope within him, for certainly nothing he ever saw looked less like that city.

            The farmer made no answer at all.

            And the last hope died.

3 - one world--or many?

Bel Arvardan, fresh from his interview with the press, on the occasion of his forthcoming expedition to Earth, felt at supreme peace with all the hundred million star systems that composed the all-embracing Galactic Empire. It was no longer a question of being known in this sector or that. Let his theories concerning Earth be proven and his reputation would be assured on every inhabited planet of the Milky Way, on every planet that Man had set foot through the hundreds of thousands of years of expansion through space.

            These potential heights of renown, these pure and rarefied intellectual peaks of science were coming to him early, yet not easily. He was scarcely thirty-five, but already his career had been packed with controversy. It had begun with an explosion that had rocked the halls of the University of Arcturus when he first graduated as Senior Archaeologist from that institution at the unprecedented age of twenty-three. The explosion--no less effective for being immaterial --consisted of the rejection for publication, on the part of the Journal of the Galactic Archaeological Society, of his Senior Dissertation. It was the first time in the history of the university that a Senior Dissertation had been rejected. It was equally the first time in the history of that staid professional journal that a rejection had been couched in such blunt terms.

            To a non-archaeologist, the reason for such anger against an obscure and dry little pamphlet, entitled On the Antiquity of Artifacts in the Sirius Sector with Considerations of the Application Thereof to the Radiation Hypothesis of Human Origin, might seem mysterious. What was involved, however, was that from the first Arvardan adopted as his own the hypothesis advanced earlier by certain groups of mystics who were more concerned with metaphysics than with archaeology; i.e., that Humanity had originated upon some single planet and had radiated by degrees throughout the Galaxy. This was a favorite theory of the fantasy writers of the day, and the bête noire of every respectable archaeologist of the Empire.

            But Arvardan became a force to be reckoned with by even the most respectable, for within the decade he had become the recognized authority on the relics of the pre-Empire cultures still left in the eddies and quiet backwaters of the Galaxy.

            For instance, he had written a monograph on the mechanistic civilization of the Rigel Sector, where the development of robots created a separate culture that persisted for centuries, till the very perfection of the metal slaves reduced the human initiative to the point where the vigorous fleets of the War Lord. Moray, took easy control. Orthodox archaeology insisted on the evolution of Human types independently on various planets and used such atypical cultures, as that on Rigel, as examples of race differences that had not yet been ironed out through intermarriage. Arvardan destroyed such concepts effectively by showing that Rigellian robot culture was but a natural outgrowth of the economic and social forces of the times and of the region.

            Then there were the barbarous worlds of Ophiuchus, which the orthodox had long upheld as samples of primitive Humanity not yet advanced to the stage of interstellar travel. Every textbook used those worlds as the best evidence of the Merger Theory; i.e., that Humanity was the natural climax of evolution on any world based upon a water-oxygen chemistry with proper intensities of temperature and gravitation; that each independent strain of Humanity could intermarry; that with the discovery of interstellar travel, such intermarriage took place.

            Arvardan, however, uncovered traces of the early civilization that had preceded the then thousand-year-old barbarism of Ophiuchus and proved that the earliest records of the planet showed traces of interstellar trade. The final touch came when he demonstrated beyond any doubt that Man had emigrated to the region in an already civilized state.

            It was after that that the /. Gal. Arch. Soc. (to give the Journal its professional abbreviation) decided to print Arvardan’s Senior Dissertation more than ten years after it had been presented.

            And now the pursuit of his pet theory led Arvardan to probably the least significant planet of the Empire--the planet called Earth.

            Arvardan landed at that one spot of Empire on all Earth, that patch among the desolate heights of the plateaus north of the Himalayas. There where radioactivity was not, and never had been, there gleamed a palace that was not of Terrestrial architecture. In essence it was a copy of the viceregal palaces that existed on more fortunate worlds. The soft lushness of the grounds was built for comfort. The forbidding rocks had been covered with topsoil, watered, immersed in an artificial atmosphere and climate--and converted into five square miles of lawns and flower gardens.

            The cost in energy involved in this performance was terrific by Earthly calculations, but it had behind it the completely incredible resources of tens of millions of planets, continually growing in number. (It has been estimated that in the Year of the Galactic Era 827 an average of fifty new planets each day were achieving the dignity of provincial status, this condition requiring the attainment of a population of five hundred millions.)

            In this spot of non-Earth lived the Procurator of Earth, and sometimes, in this artificial luxury, he could forget that he was a Procurator of a rathole world and remember that he was an aristocrat of great honor and ancient family.

            His wife was perhaps less often deluded, particularly at such times as, topping a grassy knoll, she could see in the distance the sharp, decisive line separating the grounds from the fierce wilderness of Earth. It was then that not all the colored fountains (luminescent at night, with an effect of cold liquid fire), flowered walks, or idyllic groves could compensate for the knowledge of their exile.

            So perhaps Arvardan was welcomed even more than protocol might call for. To the Procurator, after all, Arvardan was a breath of Empire, of spaciousness, of boundlessness.

            And Arvardan for his part found much to admire.

            He said, “This is done well--and with taste. It is amazing how a touch of the central culture permeates the most outlying districts of our Empire, Lord Ennius.”

            Ennius smiled. “I’m afraid the Procurator’s court here on Earth is more pleasant to visit than to live in. It is but a shell that rings hollowly when touched. When you have considered myself and family, the staff, the Imperial garrison, both here and in the important planetary centers, together with an occasional visitor such as yourself, you have exhausted all the touch of the central culture that exists. It seems scarcely enough.”

            They sat in the colonnade in the dying afternoon, with the sun glinting downward toward the mist-purpled jags of the horizon and the air so heavy with the scent of growing things that its motions were merely sighs of exertion.

            It was, of course, not quite suitable for even a Procurator to show too great a curiosity about the doings of a guest, but that does not take into account the inhumanity of day-to-day isolation from all the Empire.

            Ennius said, “Do you plan to stay for some time, Dr. Arvardan?”

            “As to that, Lord Ennius, I cannot surely say. I have come ahead of the rest of my expedition in order to acquaint myself with Earth’s culture and to fulfill the necessary legal requirements. For instance, I must obtain the usual official permission from you to establish camps at the necessary sites, and soon.”

            “Oh granted, granted! But when do you start digging? And whatever can you possibly expect to find on this miserable heap of rubble?”

            “I hope, if all goes well, to be able to set up camp in a few months. And as to this world--why, it’s anything but a miserable heap. It is absolutely unique in the Galaxy.”

            “Unique?” said the Procurator stiffly. “Not at all! It is a very ordinary world. It is more or less of a pigpen of a world, or a horrible hole of a world, or a cesspool of a world, or almost any other particularly derogative adjective you care to use. And yet, with all its refinement of nausea, it cannot even achieve uniqueness in villainy, but remains an ordinary, brutish peasant world.”

            “But,” said Arvardan, somewhat taken aback by the energy of the inconsistent statements thus thrown at him, “the world is radioactive.”

            “Well, what of that? Some thousands of planets in the Galaxy are radioactive, and some are considerably more so than Earth.”

            It was at this moment that the soft-gliding motion of the mobile cabinet attracted their attention. It came to a halt within easy hand reach.

            Ennius gestured toward it and said to the other, “What would you prefer?”

            “I’m not particular. A lime twist, perhaps.”

            “That can be handled. The cabinet will have the ingredients....With or without Chensey?”

            “Just about a tang of it,” said Arvardan, and held up his forefinger and thumb, nearly touching.

            “You’ll have it in a minute.”

            Somewhere in the bowels of the cabinet (perhaps the most universally popular mechanical offspring of human ingenuity) a bartender went into action--a non-human bartender whose electronic soul mixed things not by jiggers but by atom counts, whose ratios were perfect every time, and who could not be matched by all the inspired artistry of anyone merely human.

            The tall glasses appeared from nowhere, it seemed, as they waited in the appropriate recesses.

            Arvardan took the green one and, for a moment, felt the chill of it against his cheek. Then he placed the rim to his lips and tasted.

            “Just right,” he said. He placed the glass in the well-fitted holder in the arm of his chair and said, “Thousands of radioactive planets, Procurator, just as you say, but only one of them is inhabited. This one, Procurator.”

            “Well”--Ennius smacked his lips over his own drink and seemed to lose some of his sharpness after contact with its velvet--”perhaps it is unique in that way. It’s an unenviable distinction.”

            “But it is not just a question of statistical uniqueness.” Arvardan spoke deliberately between occasional sips. “It goes further; it has tremendous potentialities. Biologists have shown, or claim to have shown, that on planets in which the intensity of radioactivity in the atmosphere and in the seas is above a certain point life will not develop....Earth’s radioactivity is above that point by a considerable margin.”

            “Interesting. I didn’t know that. I imagine that this would constitute definite proof that Earth life is fundamentally different from that of the rest of the Galaxy....That should suit you, since you’re from Sirius.” He seemed sardonically amused at this point and said in a confidential aside, “Do you know that the biggest single difficulty involved in ruling this planet lies in coping with the intense anti-Terrestrialism that exists throughout the entire Sirius Sector? And the feeling is returned with interest on the part of these Earthmen. I’m not saying, of course, that anti-Terrestrialism doesn’t exist in more or less diluted form in many places in the Galaxy, but not like on Sirius.”

            Arvardan’s response was impatient and vehement. “Lord Ennius, I reject the implication. I have as little intolerance in me as any man living. I believe in the oneness of humanity to my very scientific core, and that includes even Earth. And all life is fundamentally one, in that it is all based upon protein complexes in colloidal dispersion, which we call protoplasm. The effect of radioactivity that I just talked of does not apply simply to some forms of human life, or to some forms of any life. It applies to all life, since it is based upon the quantum mechanics of the protein molecules. It applies to you, to me, to Earthmen, to spiders, and to germs.

            “You see, proteins, as I probably needn’t tell you, are immensely complicated groupings of amino acids and certain other specialized compounds, arranged in intricate three-dimensional patterns that are as unstable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. It is this instability that is life, since it is forever changing its position in an effort to maintain its identity--in the manner of a long rod balanced on an acrobat’s nose.

            “But this marvelous chemical, this protein, must be first built up out of inorganic matter before life can exist. So, at the very beginning, by the influence of the sun’s radiant energy upon those huge solutions we call oceans, organic molecules gradually increase in complexity from methane to formaldehyde and finally to sugars and starches in one direction, and from urea to amino acids and proteins in another direction. It’s a matter of chance, of course, these combinations and disintegrations of atoms, and the process on one world may take millions of years while on another it may take only hundreds. Of course it is much more probable that it will take millions of years. In fact, it is most probable that it will end up never happening.

            “Now physical organic chemists have worked out with great exactness all the reaction chain involved, particularly the energetics thereof; that is, the energy relationships involved in each atom shift. It is now known beyond the shadow of a doubt that several of the crucial steps in the building of life require the absence of radiant energy. If this strikes you as queer, Procurator, I can only say that photochemistry (the chemistry of reactions induced by radiant energy) is a well-developed branch of the science, and there are innumerable cases of very simple reactions which will go in one of two different directions depending upon whether it takes place in the presence or absence of quanta of light energy.

            “In ordinary worlds the sun is the only source of radiant energy, or, at least, by far the major source. In the shelter of clouds, or at night, the carbon and nitrogen compounds combine and recombine, in the fashions made possible by the absence of those little bits of energy hurled into the midst of them by the sun-like bowling bans into the midst of an infinite number of infinitesimal tenpins.

            “But on radioactive worlds, sun or no sun, every drop of water--even in the deepest night, even five miles undersparkles and bursts with darting gamma rays, kicking up the carbon atoms--activating them, the chemists say--and forcing certain key reactions to proceed only in certain ways, ways that never result in life.”

            Arvardan’s drink was gone. He placed the empty glass on the waiting cabinet. It was withdrawn instantly into the special compartment where it was cleaned, sterilized, and made ready for the next drink

            “Another one?” asked Ennius.

            “Ask me after dinner,” said Arvardan. “I’ve had quite enough for now.”

            Ennius tapped a tapering fingernail upon the arm of his chair and said, “you make the process sound quite fascinating, but if an is as you say, then what about the life on Earth? How did it develop?”

            “Ah, you see, even you are beginning to wonder. But the answer, I think, is simple. Radioactivity, in excess of the minimum required to prevent life, is still not necessarily sufficient to destroy life already formed. It might modify it, but, except in comparatively huge excess, it will not destroy it....You see, the chemistry involved is different. In the first case, simple molecules must be prevented from building up, while in the second, already-formed complex molecules must be broken down. Not at all the same thing.”

            “I don’t get the application of that at all,” said Ennius.

            “Isn’t it obvious? Life on Earth originated before the planet became radioactive. My dear Procurator, it is the only possible explanation that does not involve denying either the fact of life on Earth or enough chemical theory to upset half the science.”

            Ennius gazed at the other in amazed disbelief. “But you can’t mean that.”

            “Why not?”

            “Because how can a world become radioactive? The life of the radioactive elements in the planet’s crust are in the millions and billions of years. I’ve learned that, at least, during my university career, even in a pre-law course. They must have existed indefinitely in the past.”

            “But there is such a thing as artificial radioactivity, Lord Ennius--even on a huge scale. There are thousands of nuclear reactions of sufficient energy to create all sorts of radioactive isotopes. Why, if we were to suppose that human beings might use some applied nuclear reaction in industry, without proper controls, or even in war, if you can imagine anything like a war proceeding on a single planet, most of the topsoil could, conceivably, be converted into artificially radioactive materials. What do you say to that?”

            The sun had expired in blood on the mountains, and Ennius’s thin face was ruddy in the reflection of that process. The gentle evening wind stirred, and the drowsy murmur of the carefully selected varieties of insect life upon the palace grounds was more soothing than ever.

            Ennius said, “It sounds very artificial to me. For one thing, I can’t conceive using nuclear reactions in war or letting them get out of control to this extent in any manner--”

            “Naturally, sir, you tend to underestimate nuclear reactions because you’re living in the present, when they’re so easily controlled. But what if someone--or some army--used such weapons before the defense had been worked out? For instance, it’s like using fire bombs before anyone knew that water or sand would put out fire.”

            “Hmm,” said Ennius, “you sound like Shekt.”

            “Who’s Shekt?” Arvardan looked up quickly.

            “An Earthman. One of the few decent ones--I mean, one that a gentleman can speak to. He’s a physicist. He told me once that Earth might not always have been radioactive.”

            “Ah....Well, that’s not unusual, since the theory is certainly not original with me. It’s part of the Book of the Ancients, which contains the traditional, or mythical, history of prehistoric Earth. I’m saying what it says, in a way, except that I’m putting its rather elliptical phraseology into equivalent scientific statements.”

            “The Book of the Ancients?” Ennius seemed surprised, and a little upset. “Where did you get that?”

            “Here and there. It wasn’t easy, and I only obtained parts. Of course all this traditional information about non-radioactivity, even where completely unscientific, is important to my project....Why do you ask?”

            “Because the book IS the revered text of a radical sect of Earthmen. It is forbidden for Outsiders to read it. I wouldn’t broadcast the fact that you did, either, while you’re here. Non-Earthmen, or Outsiders, as they call them, have been lynched for less.”

            “You make it sound as if the Imperial police power here is defective.”

            “It is in cases of sacrilege. A word to the wise, Dr. Arvardan!”

            A melodious chime sounded a vibrant note that seemed to harmonize with the rustling whisper of the trees. It faded out slowly, lingering as though in love with its surroundings.

            Ennius rose. “I believe it is time for dinner. Will you join me, sir, and enjoy such hospitality as this husk of Empire on Earth can afford?”

            An occasion for an elaborate dinner came infrequently enough. An excuse, even a slim one, was not to be missed. So the courses were many, the surroundings lavish, the men polished, and the women bewitching. And, it must be added, Dr. B. Arvardan of Baronn, Sirius, was lionized to quite an intoxicating extent.

            Arvardan took advantage of his dinner audience during the latter portion of the banquet to repeat much of what he had said to Ennius, but here his exposition met with markedly less success.

            A florid gentleman in colonel’s uniform leaned toward him with that marked condescension of the military man for the scholar and said, “If I interpret your expressions rightly, Dr. Arvardan, you are trying to tell us that these hounds of Earth represent an ancient race that may once have been the ancestors of all humanity?”

            “I hesitate, Colonel, to make the flat assertion, but I think there is an interesting chance that it might be so. A year from now I confidently hope to be able to make a definite judgment.”

            “If you find that they are, Doctor, which I strongly doubt,” rejoined the colonel, “you will astonish me beyond measure. I have been stationed on Earth now for four years, and my experience is not of the smallest. I find these Earthmen to be rogues and knaves, every one of them. They are definitely our inferiors intellectually. They lack that spark that has spread humanity throughout the Galaxy. They are lazy, superstitious, avaricious, and with no trace of nobility of soul. I defy you, or anyone, to show me an Earthman who can in any way be an equal of any true man--yourself or myself, for instance--and only then will I grant you that he may represent a race who once were our ancestors. But, until then, please excuse me from making any such assumption.”

            A portly man at the foot of the table said suddenly, “They say the only good Earthman is a dead Earthman, and that even then they generally stink,” and laughed immoderately.

            Arvardan frowned at the dish before him and said, without looking up, “I have no desire to argue racial differences, especially since it is irrelevant in this case. It is the Earthman of prehistory that I speak of. His descendants of today have been long isolated, and have been subjected to a most unusual environment--yet I still would not dismiss them too casually.”

            He turned to Ennius and said, “My Lord, I believe you mentioned an Earthman before dinner.”

            “I did? I don’t recall.”

            “A physicist. Shekt.”

            “Oh yes. Yes.”

            “Affret Shekt, perhaps?”

            “Why, yes. Have you heard of him?”

            “I think I have. It’s been bothering me all through dinner, ever since you mentioned him, but I think I’ve placed him. He wouldn’t be at the Institute of Nuclear Research at--Oh, what’s the name of that damned place?” He struck at his forehead with the heel of his palm once or twice. “ At Chica?”

            “You have the right person. What about him?”

            “Only this. There was an article by him in the August issue of Physical Reviews. I noticed it because I was looking for anything that had to do with Earth, and articles by Earthmen in journals of Galactic circulation are very rare....In any case, the point I am trying to make is that the man claims to have developed something he calls a Synapsifier, which is supposed to improve the learning capacity of the mammalian nervous system.”

            “Really?” said Ennius a bit too sharply. “I haven’t heard about it.”

            “I can find you the reference. It’s quite an interesting article; though, of course, I can’t pretend to understand the mathematics involved. What he has done, however, has been to treat some indigenous animal form on Earth--rats, I believe they call them--with the Synapsifier and then put them to solving a maze. You know what I mean: learning the proper pathway through a tiny labyrinth to some food supply. He used non-treated rats as controls and found that in every case the Synapsified rats solved the maze in less than one third the time....Do you see the significance, Colonel?”

            The military man who had initiated the discussion said indifferently, “No, Doctor, I do not.”

            “I’ll explain, then, that I firmly believe that any scientist capable of doing such work. even an Earthman, is certainly my intellectual equal, at least, and, if you’ll pardon my presumption, yours as well.”

            Ennius interrupted. “Pardon me, Dr. Arvardan. I would like to return to the Synapsifier. Has Shekt experimented with human beings?”

            Arvardan laughed. “I doubt it, Lord Ennius. Nine tenths of his Synapsified rats died during treatment. He would scarcely dare use human subjects until much more progress has been made.”

            So Ennius sank back into his chair with a slight frown on his forehead and, thereafter, neither spoke nor ate for the remainder of the dinner.

            Before midnight the Procurator had quietly left the gathering and, with a bare word to his wife only, departed in his private cruiser on the two-hour trip to the city of Chica, with the slight frown still on his forehead and a raging anxiety in his heart.

            Thus it was that on the same afternoon that Arbin Maren brought Joseph Schwartz into Chica for treatment with Shekt’s Synapsifier. Shekt himself had been closeted with none less than the Procurator of Earth for over an hour.

4 - the royal road

Arbin was uneasy in Chica. He felt surrounded. Somewhere in Chica, one of the largest cities on Earth--they said it had fifty thousand human beings in it--somewhere there were officials of the great outer Empire.

            To be sure, he had never seen a man of the Galaxy: yet here, in Chica, his neck was continually twisting in fear that he might. If pinned down, he could not have explained how he would identify an Outsider from an Earthman, even if he were to see one, but it was in his very marrow to feel that there was, somehow, a difference.

            He looked back over his shoulder as he entered the Institute. His biwheel was parked in an open area, with a six-hour coupon holding a spot open for it. Was the extravagance itself suspicious?...Everything frightened him now. The air was full of eyes and ears.

            If only the strange man would remember to remain hidden in the bottom of the rear compartment. He had nodded violently--but had he understood? He was suddenly impatient with himself. Why had he let Grew talk him into this madness?

            And then somehow the door was open in front of him and a voice had broken in on his thoughts.

            It said, “What do you want?”

            It sounded impatient; perhaps it had already asked him that same thing several times.

            He answered hoarsely, words choking out of his throat like dry powder, “Is this where a man can apply for the Synapsifier?”

            The receptionist looked up sharply and said, “Sign here.”

            Arbin put his hands behind his back and repeated huskily, “Where do I see about the Synapsifier?” Grew had told him the name, but the word came out queerly, like so much gibberish.

            But the receptionist said, with iron in her voice, “I can’t do anything for you unless you sign the register as a visitor. It’s in the rules.”

            Without a word, Arbin turned to go. The young woman behind the desk pressed her lips together and kicked the signal bar at the side of her chair violently.

            Arbin was fighting desperately for a lack of notoriety and failing miserably in his own mind. This girl was looking hard at him. She’d remember him a thousand years later. He had a wild desire to run, run back to the car, back to the farm...

            Someone in a white lab coat was coming rapidly out of another room, and the receptionist was pointing to him. “Volunteer for the Synapsifier, Miss Shekt,” she was saying. “He won’t give his name.”

            Arbin looked up. It was still another girl, young. He looked disturbed. “ Are you in charge of the machine, miss?”

            “No, not at all.” She smiled in a very friendly fashion, and Arbin felt anxiety ebb slightly.

            “I can take you to him, though,” she went on. Then, eagerly, “Do you really want to volunteer for the Synapsifier?”

            “I just want to see the man in charge,” Arbin said woodenly.

            “All right.” She seemed not at all disturbed by the rebuff. She slipped back through the door from which she had come. There was a short wait. Then, finally, there was the beckon of a finger...

            He followed her, heart pounding, into a small anteroom. She said gently, “If you will wait about half an hour or less. Dr. Shekt will be with you. He is very busy just now....If you would like some book films and a viewer to pass the time. I’ll bring them to you.”

            But Arbin shook his head. The four walls of the small room closed about him, and held him rigid, it seemed. Was he trapped? Were the Ancients coming for him?

            It was the longest wait in Arbin’s life.

            Lord Ennius, Procurator of Earth, had experienced no comparable difficulties in seeing Dr. Shekt, though he had experienced an almost comparable excitement. In his fourth year as Procurator, a visit to Chica was still an event. As the direct representative of the remote Emperor, his social standing was, legalistically, upon a par with viceroys of huge Galactic sectors that sprawled their gleaming volumes across hundreds of cubic parsecs of space, but, actually, his post was little short of exile.

            Trapped as he was in the sterile emptiness of the Himalayas, among the equally sterile quarrels of a population that hated him and the Empire he represented, even a trip to Chica was escape.

            To be sure, his escapes were short ones. They had to be short, since here at Chica it was necessary to wear lead-impregnated clothes at all times, even while sleeping, and, what was worse, to dose oneself continually with metaboline.

            He spoke bitterly of that to Shekt.

            “Metaboline,” he said, holding up the vermilion pill for inspection, “is perhaps a true symbol of all that your planet means to me, my friend. Its function is to heighten all metabolic processes while I sit here immersed in the radioactive cloud that surrounds me and which you are not even aware of.”

            He swallowed it. “There’ Now my heart will beat more quickly; my breath will pump a race of its own accord; and my liver will boil away in those chemical syntheses that, medical men tell me, make it the most important factory in the body. And for that I pay with a siege of headaches and lassitude afterward.”

            Dr. Shekt listened with some amusement. He gave a strong impression of being nearsighted, did Shekt, not because he wore glasses or was in any way afflicted, but merely because long habit had given him the unconscious trick of peering closely at things, of weighing all facts anxiously before saying anything. He was tall and in his late middle age, his thin figure slightly stooped.

            But he was well read in much of Galactic culture, and he was relatively free of the trick of universal hostility and suspicion that made the average Earthman so repulsive even to so cosmopolitan a man of the Empire as Ennius.

            Shekt said, “I’m sure you don’t need the pill. Metaboline is just one of your superstitions, and you know it. If I were to substitute sugar pills without your knowledge, you’d be none the worse. What’s more, you would even psychosomaticize yourself into similar headaches afterward.”

            “You say that in the comfort of your own environment. Do you deny that your basal metabolism is higher than mine?”

            “Of course I don’t, but what of it? I know that it is a superstition of the Empire, Ennius, that we men of Earth are different from other human beings, but that’s not really so in the essentials. Or are you coming here as a missionary of the anti-Terrestrians?”

            Ennius groaned. “By the life of the Emperor, your comrades of Earth are themselves the best such missionaries. Living here, as they do, cooped up on their deadly planet, festering in their own anger, they’re nothing but a standing ulcer in the Galaxy.

            “I’m serious, Shekt. What planet bas so much ritual in its daily life and adheres to it with such masochistic fury? Not a day passes but I receive delegations from one or another of your ruling bodies for the death penalty for some poor devil whose only crime has been to invade a forbidden area, to evade the Sixty, or perhaps merely to eat more than his share of food.”

            “Ah, but you always grant the death penalty. Your idealistic distaste seems to stop short at resisting.”

            “The Stars are my witness that I struggle to deny the death. But what can one do? The Emperor will have it that all the subdivisions of the Empire are to remain undisturbed in their local customs--and that is right and wise, since it removes popular support from the fools who would otherwise kick up rebellion on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays. Besides, were I to remain obdurate when your Councils and Senates and Chambers insist on the death, such a shrieking would arise and such a wild howling and such denunciation of the Empire and all its works that I would sooner sleep in the midst of a legion of devils for twenty years than face such an Earth for ten minutes.”

            Shekt sighed and rubbed the thin hair back upon his skull. “To the rest of the Galaxy, if they are aware of us at all, Earth is but a pebble in the sky. To us it is home, and all the home we know. Yet we are no different from you of the outer worlds, merely more unfortunate. We are crowded here on a world all but dead, immersed within a wall of radiation that imprisons us, surrounded by a huge Galaxy that rejects us. What can we do against the feeling of frustration that bums us? Would you, Procurator, be willing that we send our surplus population abroad?”

            Ennius shrugged. “Would I care? It is the outside populations themselves that would. They don’t care to fall victim to Terrestrial diseases.”

            “Terrestrial diseases!” Shekt scowled. “It is a nonsensical notion that should be eradicated. We are not carriers of death. Are you dead for having been among us?”

            “To be sure,” smiled Ennius, “I do everything to prevent undue contact.”

            “It is because you yourself fear the propaganda created, after all, only by the stupidity of your own bigots.”

            “Why, Shekt, no scientific basis at all to the theory that Earthmen are themselves radioactive?”

            “Yes, certainly they are. How could they avoid it? So are you. So is everyone on every one of the hundred million planets of the Empire. We are more so, I grant you, but scarcely enough to harm anyone.”

            “But the average man of the Galaxy believes the opposite, I am afraid, and is not desirous of finding out by experiment. Besides--”

            “Besides, you’re going to say, we’re different. We’re not human beings, because we mutate more rapidly, due to atomic radiation, and have therefore changed in many ways.... Also not proven.”

            “But believed.”

            “And as long as it is so believed, Procurator, and as long as we of Earth are treated as pariahs, you are going to find in us the characteristics to which you object. If you push us intolerably, is it to be wondered at that we push back? Hatina us as you do, can you complain that we hate in our turn? No, no, we are far more the offended than the offending.”

            Ennius was chagrined at the anger he had raised. Even the best of these Earthmen, he thought, have the same blind spot, the same feeling of Earth versus all the universe.

            He said tactfully, “Shekt, forgive my boorishness, will you? Take my youth and boredom as excuse. You see before you a poor man, a young fellow of forty--and forty is the age of a babe in the professional civil service--who is grinding out his apprenticeship here on Earth. It may be years before the fools in the Bureau of the Outer Provinces remember me long enough to promote me to something less deadly. So we are both prisoners of Earth and both citizens of the great world of the mind in which there is distinction of neither planet nor physical characteristics. Give me your hand, then, and let us be friends.”

            The lines on Shekt’s face smoothed out, or, more exactly, were replaced by others more indicative of good humor. He laughed outright. “The words are the words of a suppliant, but the tone is still that of the Imperial career diplomat. You are a poor actor, Procurator.”

            “Then counter me by being a good teacher, and tell me of this Synapsifier of yours.”

            Shekt started visibly and frowned. “What, you have heard of the instrument? You are then a physicist as well as an administrator?”

            “All knowledge is my province. But seriously, Shekt, I would really like to know.”

            The physicist peered closely at the other and seemed doubtful. He rose and his gnarled hand lifted to his lip, which it pinched thoughtfully. “I scarcely know where to begin.”

            “Well, Stars above, if you are considering at which point in the mathematical theory you are to begin, I’ll simplify your problem. Abandon them all. I know nothing of your functions and tensors and what not.”

            Shekt’s eyes twinkled. “Well, then, to stick to descriptive matter only, it is simply a device intended to increase the learning capacity of a human being.”

            “Of a human being? Really! And does it work?”

            “I wish we knew. Much more work is necessary. I’ll give you the essentials, Procurator, and you can judge for yourself. The nervous system in man--and in animals--is composed of neuroprotein material. Such material consists of huge molecules in very precarious electrical balance. The slightest stimulus will upset one, which will right itself by upsetting the next, which will repeat the process, until the brain is reached. The brain itself is an immense grouping of similar molecules which are connected among themselves in all possible ways. Since there are something like ten to the twentieth power--that is, a one with twenty zeros after it--such neuroproteins in the brain, the number of possible combinations are of the order of factorial ten to the twentieth power. This is a number so large that if all the electrons and protons in the universe were made universes themselves, and all the electrons and protons in all of these new universes again made universes, then all the electrons and protons in all the universes so created would still be nothing in comparison....Do you follow me?”

            “Not a word, thank the Stars. If I even attempted to, I should bark like a dog for sheer pain of the intellect.”

            “Hmp. Well, in any case, what we call nerve impulses are merely the progressive electronic unbalance that proceeds along the nerves to the brain and then from the brain back along the nerves. Do you get that?”

            “Yes.”

            “Well, blessings on you for a genius, then. As long as this impulse continues along a nerve cell, it proceeds at a rapid rate, since the neuroproteins are practically in contact. However, nerve cells are limited in extent, and between each nerve cell and the next is a very thin partition of non-nervous tissue. In other words, two adjoining nerve cells do not actually connect with each other.”

            “Ah,” said Ennius, “and the nervous impulse must jump the barrier.”

            “Exactly! The partition drops the strength of the impulse and slows the speed of its transmission according to the square of the width thereof. This holds for the brain as well. But imagine, now, if some means could be found to lower the dialectric constant of this partition between the cells.”

            “That what constant?”

            “The insulating strength of the partition. That’s all I mean. If that were decreased, the impulse would jump the gap more easily. You would think faster and learn faster.”

            “Well, then, I come back to my original question. Does it work?”

            “I have tried the instrument on animals.”

            “And with what result?”

            “Why, that most die very quickly of denaturation of brain protein-coagulation, in other words, like hard-boiling an egg.”

            Ennius winced. “There is something ineffably cruel about the cold-bloodedness of science. What about those that didn’t die?”

            “Not conclusive, since they’re not human beings. The burden of the evidence seems to be favorable, for them....But I need humans. You see, it is a matter of the natural electronic properties of the individual brain. Each brain gives rise to microcurrents of a certain type. None are exactly duplicates. They’re like fingerprints, or the blood-vessel patterns of the retina. If anything, they’re even more individual. The treatment, I believe, must take that into account, and, if I am right, there will be no more denaturation....But I have no human beings on whom to experiment. I ask for volunteers, but--” He spread his hands.

            “I certainly don’t blame them, old man,” said Ennius. “But seriously, should the instrument be perfected, what do you intend doing with it?”

            The physicist shrugged. “That’s not for me to say. It would be up to the Grand Council, of course.”

            “You would not consider making the invention available to the Empire?”

            “I? I have no objections at all. But only the Grand Council has jurisdiction over--”

            “Oh,” said Ennius with impatience, “the devil with your Grand Council. I have had dealings with them before. Would you be willing to talk to them at the proper time?”

            “Why, what influence could I possible have?”

            “You might tell them that if Earth could produce a Synapsifier that would be applicable to human beings in complete safety, and if the device were made available to the Galaxy, then some of the restrictions on emigration to other planets might be broken down.”

            “What,” said Shekt sarcastically, “and risk epidemics and our differentness and our non-humanity?”

            “You might,” said Ennius quietly, “even be removed en masse to another planet. Consider it.” The door opened at this point and a young lady brushed her way in past the book-film cabinet. She destroyed the musty atmosphere of the cloistered study with an automatic breath of spring. At the sight of a stranger she reddened slightly and turned.

            “Come in, Pola,” called Shekt hastily. “My Lord,” he said to Ennius, “I believe you have never met my daughter. Pola this is Lord Ennius, Procurator of Earth.”

            The Procurator was on his feet with an easy gallantry that negated her first wild attempt at a curtsy.

            “My dear Miss Shekt,” he said, “you are an ornament I did not believe Earth capable of producing. You would, indeed, be an ornament on any world I can think of.”

            He took Pola’s hand, which was quickly and somewhat bashfully extended to meet his gesture. For a moment Ennius made as if to kiss it, in the courtly fashion of the past generation, but the intention, if such it was, never came to fruition. Half lifted, the hand was released--a trace too quickly, perhaps.

            Pola, with the slightest of frowns, said, “I’m overwhelmed at your kindness, my Lord, to a simple girl of Earth. You are brave and gallant to dare infection as you do.”

            Shekt cleared his throat and interrupted. “My daughter, Procurator, is completing her studies at the University of Chica and is obtaining some needed field credits by spending two days a week in my laboratory as a technician. A competent girl, and though I say it with the pride of a father, she may someday sit in my place.”

            “Father,” said Pola gently, “I have some important information for you.” She hesitated.

            “Shall I leave?” said Ennius quietly.

            “No, no,” said Shekt. “What is it, Pola?”

            The girl said, “We have a volunteer, Father.”

            Shekt stared, almost stupidly. “For the Synapsifier?”

            “So he says.”

            “Well,” said Ennius, “I bring you good fortune, I see.”

            “So it would seem. “ Shekt turned to his daughter. “Tell him to wait. Take him to Room C, and I’ll be with him soon.”

            He turned to Ennius after Pola left. “Will you excuse me, Procurator?”

            “Certainly. How long does the operation take?”

            “It’s a matter of hours, I’m afraid. Do you wish to watch?”

            “I can imagine nothing more gruesome, my dear Shekt. I’ll be in the State House till tomorrow. Will you tell me the result?”

            Shekt seemed relieved. “Yes, certainly.”

            “Good....And think over what I said about your Synapsifier. Your new royal road to knowledge.”

            Ennius left, less at ease than when he had arrived; his knowledge no greater, his fears much increased.

5 - the involuntary volunteer

Once alone, Dr. Shekt, quietly and cautiously, touched the summoner, and a young technician entered hurriedly, white robe sparkling, long brown hair carefully bound back.

            Dr. Shekt said, “Has Pola told you--”

            “Yes, Dr. Shekt. I’ve observed him through the visiplate, and he must undoubtedly be a legitimate volunteer. He’s certainly not a subject sent in the usual manner.”

            “Ought I refer to the Council, do you suppose?”

            “I don’t know what to advise. The Council wouldn’t approve of any ordinary communication. Any beam can be tapped, you know.” Then, eagerly, “Suppose I get rid of him. I can tell him we need men under thirty. The subject is easily thirty-five.”

            “No, no. I’d better see him.” Shekt’s mind was a cold whirl. So far things had been most judiciously handled. Just enough information to lend a spurious frankness, but no more. And now an actual volunteer--and immediately after Ennius’s visit. Was there a connection? Shekt himself had but the vaguest knowledge of the giant misty forces that were now beginning to wrestle back and forth across the blasted face of Earth. But, in a way, he knew enough. Enough to feel himself at the mercy of them, and certainly more than any of the Ancients suspected he knew.

            Yet what could he do, since his life was doubly in danger?

            Ten minutes later Dr. Shekt was peering helplessly at the gnarled farmer standing before him, cap in hand, head half averted, as though attempting to avoid a too-close scrutiny. His age, thought Shekt, was certainly under forty, but the hard life of the soil was no flatterer of men. The man’s cheeks were reddened beneath the leathery brown, and there were distinct traces of perspiration at the hairline and the temples, though the room was cool. The man’s hands were fumbling at each other.

            “Now, my dear sir,” said Shekt kindly, “I understand you refuse to give your name.”

            Arbin’s was a blind stubbornness. “I was told no questions would be asked if you had a volunteer.”

            “Hmm. Well, is there anything at all you would like to say? Or do you just want to be treated immediately?”

            “Me? Here, now?” in sudden panic. “It’s not myself that’s the volunteer. I didn’t say anything to give that impression.”

            “No? You mean someone else is the volunteer?”

            “Certainly. What would I want--”

            “I understand. Is the subject, this other man, with you?”

            “In a way,” said Arbin cautiously.

            “All right. Now, look, just tell us whatever you wish. Everything you say will be held in strict confidence, and we’ll help you in whatever way we can. Agreed?”

            The farmer ducked his head, as a sort of rudimentary gesture of respect. “Thank you. It’s like this, sir. We have a man about the farm, a distant--uh--relative. He helps, you understand--”

            Arbin swallowed with difficulty, and Shekt nodded gravely.

            Arbin continued. “He’s a very willing worker and a very good worker--we had a son, you see, but he died--and my good woman and myself, you see, need the help--she’s not well--we could not get along without him, scarcely.” He felt that somehow the story was a complete mess.

            But the gaunt scientist nodded at him. “ And this relative of yours is the one you wish treated?”

            “Why, yes, I thought I had said that--but you’ll pardon me if this takes me some time. You see, the poor fellow is not-exactly-right in his head.” He hurried on, furiously. “He is not sick, you understand. He is not wrong so that he has to be put away. He’s just slow. He doesn’t talk, you see.”

            “He can’t talk?” Shekt seemed startled.

            “Oh--he can. It’s just that he doesn’t like to. He doesn’t talk well.”

            The physicist looked dubious. “ And you want the Synapsifier to improve his mentality, eh?”

            Slowly, Arbin nodded. “If he knew a bit more, sir, why, he could do some of the work my wife can’t, you see.”

            “He might die. Do you understand that?”

            Arbin looked at him helplessly, and his fingers writhed furiously.

            Shekt said, “I’d need his consent.”

            The farmer shook his head slowly, stubbornly. “He won’t understand.” Then, urgently, almost beneath his breath, “Why, look, sir, I’m sure you’ll understand me. You don’t look like a man who doesn’t know what a hard life is. This man is getting old. It’s not a question of the Sixty, you see, but what if, in the next Census, they think he’s a half-wit and --and take him away? We don’t like to lose him, and that’s why we bring him here.

            “The reason I’m trying to be secret-like is that maybe--maybe”--and Arbin’s eyes swiveled involuntarily at the walls, as if to penetrate them by sheer will and detect the listeners that might be behind--”well, maybe the Ancients won’t like what I’m doing. Maybe trying to save an afflicted man can be judged as against the Customs, but life is hard, sir....And it would be useful to you. You have asked for volunteers.”

            “I know. Where is your relative?”

            Arbin took the chance. “Out in my biwheel, if no one’s found him. He wouldn’t be able to take care of himself if anyone has--”

            “Well, we’ll hope he’s safe. You and I will go out right now and bring the car around to our basement garage. I’ll see to it that no one knows of his presence but ourselves and my helpers. And I assure you that you won’t be in trouble with the Brotherhood.”

            His arm dropped in friendly fashion to Arbin’s shoulder, who grinned spasmodically. To the farmer it was like a rope loosening from about his neck.

            Shekt looked down at the plump, balding figure upon the couch. The patient was unconscious, breathing deeply and regularly. He had spoken unintelligibly, had understood nothing. Yet there had been none of the physical stigmata of feeblemindedness. Reflexes had been in order, for an old man.

            Old! Hmm.

            He looked across at Arbin, who watched everything with a glance like a vise.

            “Would you like us to take a bone analysis?”

            “No,” cried Arbin. Then, more softly, “I don’t want anything that might be identification.”

            “It might help us--be safer, you know--if we knew his age,” said Shekt.

            “He’s fifty,” said Arbin shortly.

            The physicist shrugged. It didn’t matter. Again he looked at the sleeper. When brought in, the subject had been, or certainly seemed, dejected, withdrawn, uncaring. Even the Hypno-pills had apparently aroused no suspicion. They had been offered him; there had been a quick, spasmodic smile in response, and he had swallowed them.

            The technician was already rolling in the last of the rather clumsy units which together made up the Synapsifier. At the touch of a push button the polarized glass in the windows of the operating room underwent molecular rearrangement and became opaque. The only light was the white one that blazed its cold brilliance upon the patient suspended, as he was, in the multihundred-kilowatt diamagnetic field some two inches above the operating table to which he was transferred.

            Arbin still sat in the dark there, understanding nothing, but determined in deadly fashion to prevent, somehow, by his presence, the harmful tricks he knew he had not the knowledge to prevent.

            The physicists paid no attention to him. The electrodes were adjusted to the patient’s skull. It was a long job. First there was the careful study of the skull formation by the Ullster technique that revealed the winding, tight-knit fissures. Grimly, Shekt smiled to himself. Skull fissures weren’t an unalterable quantitative measure of age, but they were good enough in this case. The man was older than the claimed fifty.

            And then, after a while, he did not smile. He frowned. There was something wrong with the fissures. They seemed odd--not quite...

            For a moment he was ready to swear that the skull formation was a primitive one, a throwback, but then...Well, the man was subnormal in mentality. Why not?

            And suddenly he exclaimed in shock, “Why, I hadn’t noticed! This man has hair on his face!” He turned to Arbin. “Has he always been bearded?”

            “Bearded?”

            “Hair on his face! Come here! Don’t you see it?”

            “Yes, sir.” Arbin thought rapidly. He had noticed it that morning and then had forgotten. “He was born like that,” he said, and then weakened it by adding, “I think.”

            “Well, let’s remove it. You don’t want him going around like a brute beast, do you?”

            “No, sir.”

            The hair came off smoothly at the application of a depilatory salve by the carefully gloved technician.

            The technician said, “He has hair on his chest too, Dr. Shekt.”

            “Great Galaxy,” said Shekt, “let me see! Why, the man is a rug! Well, let it be. It won’t show with a shirt, and I want to get on with the electrodes. Let’s have wires here and here, and here.” Tiny pricks and the insertion of the platinum hair-lets. “Here and here.”

            A dozen connections, probing through skin to the fissures, through the tightness of which could be felt the delicate shadow echoes of the microcurrents that surged from cell to cell in the brain.

            Carefully they watched the delicate ammeters stir and leap, as the connections were made and broken. The tiny needlepoint recorders traced their delicate spider webs across the graphed paper in irregular peaks and troughs.

            Then the graphs were removed and placed on the illuminated opal glass. They bent low over it, whispering.

            Arbin caught disjointed flashes: remarkably regular ...look at the height of the quinternary peak...think it ought to be analyzed...clear enough to the eye...”

            And then, for what seemed a long time, there was a tedious adjustment of the Synapsifier. Knobs were turned, eyes on vernier adjustments, then clamped and their readings recorded. Over and over again the various electrometers were checked and new adjustments were made necessary.

            Then Shekt smiled at Arbin and said, “It will all be over very soon.”

            The large machinery was advanced upon the sleeper like a slow-moving and hungry monster. Four long wires were dangled to the extremities of his limbs, and a dull black pad of something that looked like hard rubber was carefully adjusted at the back of his neck and held firmly in place by clamps that fitted over the shoulders. Finally, like two giant mandibles, the opposing electrodes were parted and brought downward over the pale, pudgy head, so that each pointed at a temple.

            Shekt kept his eyes firmly on the chronometer; in his other hand was the switch. His thumb moved; nothing visible happened--not even to the fear-sharpened sense of the watching Arbin. After what might have been hours, but was actually less than three minutes, Shekt’s thumb moved again.

            His assistant bent over the still-sleeping Schwartz hurriedly, then looked up triumphantly. “He’s alive.”

            There remained yet several hours, during which a library of recordings were taken, to an undertone of almost wild excitement. It was well past midnight when the hypodermic was pressed home and the sleeper’s eyes fluttered.

            Shekt stepped back, bloodless but happy. He dabbed at his forehead with the back of a hand. “It’s all right.”

            He turned to Arbin firmly. “He must stay with us a few days, sir.”

            The look of alarm grew madly in Arbin’s eyes. “But--but --”

            “No, no, you must rely on me,” urgently. “He will be safe; I will stake my life on it. I am staking my life on it. Leave him to us; no one will see him but ourselves. If you take him with you now, he may not survive. What good will that do you?...And if he does die, you may have to explain the corpse to the Ancients.”

            It was the last that did the trick. Arbin swallowed and said, “But look, how am I to know when to come and take him? I won’t give you my name!”

            But it was submission. Shekt said, “I’m not asking you for your name. Come a week from today at ten in the evening. I’ll be waiting for you at the door of the garage, the one we took in your biwheel at. You must believe me, man; you have nothing to fear.”

            It was evening when Arbin arrowed out of Chica. Twenty-four hours had passed since the stranger had pounded at his door, and in that time he had doubled his crimes against the Customs. Would he ever be safe again?

            He could not help but glance over his shoulder as his biwheel sped along the empty road. Would there be someone to follow? Someone to trace him home? Or was his face already recorded? Were matchings being leisurely made somewhere in the distant files of the Brotherhood at Washenn, where all living Earthmen, together with their vital statistics, were listed, for purposes of the Sixty.

            The Sixty, which must come to all Earthmen eventually. He had yet a quarter of a century before it came to him, yet he lived daily with it on Grew’s account, and now on the stranger’s account.

            What if he never returned to Chica?

            No! He and Loa could not long continue producing for three, and once they failed, their first crime, that of concealing Grew, would be discovered. And so crimes against the Customs, once begun, must be compounded.

            Arbin knew that he would be back, despite any risk.

            It was past midnight before Shekt thought of retiring, and then only because the troubled Pola insisted. Even then he did not sleep. His pillow was a subtle smothering device, his sheets a pair of maddening snarls. He arose and took his seat by the window. The city was dark now, but there on the horizon, on the side opposite the lake, was the faint trace of that blue glow of death that held sway over all but a few patches of Earth.

            The activities of the hectic day just past danced madly before his mind. His first action after having persuaded the frightened farmer to leave had been to televise the State House. Ennius must have been waiting for him, for he himself had answered. He was still encased in the heaviness of the lead-impregnated clothing.

            “Ah, Shekt, good evening. Your experiment is over?”

            “And nearly my volunteer as well, poor man.”

            Ennius looked ill...1 thought well when I thought it better not to stay. You scientists are scarcely removed from murderers, it seems to me.”

            “He is not yet dead, Procurator, and it may be that we will save him, but--” And he shrugged his shoulders.

            “I’d stick to rats exclusively henceforward, Shekt.... But you don’t look at all your usual self, friend. Surely you, at least, must be hardened to this, even if I am not.”

            “I am getting old, my Lord,” said Shekt simply. “ A dangerous pastime on Earth,” was the dry reply. “Get you to bed, Shekt.”

            And so Shekt sat there, looking out at the dark city of a dying world.

            For two years now the Synapsifier had been under test, and for two years he had been the slave and sport of the Society of Ancients, or the Brotherhood, as they called themselves.

            He had seven or eight papers that might have been published in the Sirian Journal of Neurophysiology, that might have given that Galaxy-wide fame to him that he so wanted. These papers moldered in his desk. Instead there was that obscure and deliberately misleading paper in Physical Reviews. That was the way of the Brotherhood. Better a half-truth than a lie.

            And still Ennius was inquiring. Why?

            Did it fit in with other things he had learned? Was the Empire suspecting what he himself suspected?

            Three times in two hundred years Earth had risen. Three times, under the banner of a claimed ancient greatness, Earth had rebelled against the Imperial garrisons. Three times they had failed--of course--and had not the Empire been, essentially, enlightened, and the Galactic Councils, by and large, statesmanlike, Earth would have been bloodily erased from the roll of inhabited planets.

            But now things might be different,...Or could they be different? How far could he trust the words of a dying madman, three quarters incoherent?

            What was the use? In any case, he dared do nothing. He could only wait. He was getting old, and, as Ennius had said, that was a dangerous pastime on Earth. The Sixty was almost upon him, and there were few exceptions to its inevitable grasp.

            And even on this miserable, burning mud ball of Earth, he wanted to live.

            He went to bed once more at that point, and just before falling asleep he wondered feebly if his call to Ennius might have been tapped by the Ancients. He did not know at the time that the Ancients had other sources of information.

            It was morning before Shekt’s young technician had completely made up his mind.

            He admired Shekt, but he knew well that the secret treatment of a non-authorized volunteer was against the direct order of the Brotherhood. And that order had been given the status of a Custom, which made disobedience a capital offense.

            He reasoned it out. After all, who was this man who had been treated? The campaign for volunteers had been carefully worked out. It was designed to give enough information about the Synapsifier to remove suspicion on the part of possible Imperial spies without giving any real encouragement to volunteers. The Society of Ancients sent their own men for treatment. and that was enough.

            Who had sent this man, then? The Society of Ancients in secret? In order to test Shekt’s reliability?

            Or was Shekt a traitor? He had been closeted with someone earlier in the day--someone in bulky clothes, such as Outsiders wore in fear of radioactive poisoning.

            In either case Shekt might go down in doom, and why should he himself be dragged down as well? He was a young man with nearly four decades of life before him. Why should he anticipate the Sixty?

            Besides, it would mean promotion for him....And Shekt was so old, the next Census would probably get him anyway, so it would involve very little harm for him. Practically none at all.

            The technician had decided. His hand reached for the communicator, and he punched the combination that would lead directly to the private room of the High Minister of all Earth, who, under the Emperor and Procurator, held the power of life and death over every man on Earth.

            It was evening again before the misty impressions within Schwartz’s skull sharpened through the pink pain. He remembered the trip to the low, huddling structures by the lakeside, the long crouching wait in the rear of the car.

            And then--what? What? His mind yanked away at the sluggish thoughts....Yes, they had come for him. There was a room, with instruments and dials, and two pills.... That was it. They had given him pills, and he had taken them cheerfully. What had he to lose? Poisoning would have been a favor.

            And then--nothing.

            Wait! There had been flashes of consciousness...People bending over him...Suddenly he remembered the cold motion of a stethoscope over his chest....A girl had been feeding him.

            It flashed upon him that he had been operated upon and, in panic, he flung the bed sheets from him and sat up.

            A girl was upon him, hands on his shoulders, forcing him back onto the pillows. She spoke soothingly, but he did not understand her. He tensed himself against the slim arms, but uselessly. He had no strength.

            He held his hands before his face. They seemed normal. He moved his legs and heard them brush against the sheets. They couldn’t have been amputated..

            He turned to the girl and said, without much hope, “Can you understand me? Do you know where I am?” He scarcely recognized his own voice.

            The girl smiled and suddenly poured out a rapid patter of liquid sound. Schwartz groaned. Then an older man entered, the one who had given him the pills. The man and the girl spoke together, the girl turning to him after a while, pointing to his lips and making little gestures of invitation to him.

            “What?” he said.

            She nodded eagerly, her pretty face glowing with pleasure, until, despite himself, Schwartz felt glad to look at it.

            “You want me to talk?” he asked.

            The man sat down upon his bed and motioned him to open his mouth. He said, “ Ah-h-h,” and Schwartz repeated “Ah-h-h” while the man’s fingers massaged Schwartz’s Adam’s apple.

            “What’s the matter?” said Schwartz peevishly, when the pressure was removed. “ Are you surprised I can talk? What do you think I am?”

            The days passed, and Schwartz learned a few things. The man was Dr. Shekt--the first human being he knew by name since he had stepped over the rag doll. The girl was his daughter, Pola. Schwartz found that he no longer needed to shave. The hair on his face never grew. It frightened him. Did it ever grow?

            His strength came back quickly. They were letting him put on clothes and walk about now, and were feeding him something more than mush.

            Was his trouble amnesia, then? Were they treating him for that? Was all this world normal and natural, while the world he thought he remembered was only the fantasy of an amnesic brain?

            And they never let him step out of the room, not even into the corridor. Was he a prisoner, then? Had he committed a crime?

            There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save. There never was a man so helpless as one who cannot remember.

            Pola amused herself by teaching him words. He was not at all amazed at the ease with which he picked them up and remembered. He remembered that he had had a trick memory in the past; that memory, at least, seemed accurate. In two days he could understand simple sentences. In three he could make himself understood.

            On the third day, however, he did become amazed. Shekt taught him numbers and set him problems. Schwartz would give answers, and Shekt would look at a timing device and record with rapid strokes of his stylus. But then Shekt explained the term “logarithm” to him and asked for the logarithm of two.

            Schwartz picked his words carefully. His vocabulary was still minute and he reinforced it with gestures. “I--not--say. Answer--not--number.”

            Shekt nodded his head excitedly and said, “Not number. Not this, not that; part this, part that.”

            Schwartz understood quite well that Shekt had confirmed his statement that the answer was not an even number but a fraction and therefore said, “Point three zero one zero three --and--more--numbers.”

            ”Enough!”

            Then came the amazement. How had he known the answer to that? Schwartz was certain that he had never heard of logarithms before, yet in his mind the answer had come as soon as the question was put. He had no idea of the process by which it had been calculated. It was as if his mind were an independent entity, using him only as its mouthpiece.

            Or had he once been a mathematician, in the days before his amnesia?

            He found it exceedingly difficult to wait the days out. Increasingly he felt he must venture out into the world and force an answer from it somehow. He could never learn in the prison of this room, where (the thought suddenly came to him) he was but a medical specimen.

            The chance came on the sixth day. They were beginning to trust him too much, and one time when Shekt left he did not lock the door. Where usually the door so neatly closed itself that the very crack of its joining the wall became invisible, this time a quarter inch of space showed.

            He waited to make sure Shekt was not returning on the instant, and then slowly put his hand over the little gleaming light as he had seen them often do. Smoothly and silently the door slid open....The corridor was empty.

            And so Schwartz “escaped.”

            How was he to know that for the six days of his residence there the Society of Ancients had its agents watching the hospital, his room, himself?