THEEARLYASIMOV

Russell Tymball’s eyes were filled with gloomy satisfaction as they gazed at the blackened ruins of what had been a cruiser of the Lhasinuic Fleet a few hours before. The twisted girders, scattered in all directions, were ample witness of the terrific force of the crash.

The pudgy Earthman re-entered his own sleek Strato-rocket and waited. Fingers twisted a long cigar aimlessly for minutes before lighting it. Through the up-drifting smoke, his eyes narrowed and he remained lost in thought

He came to his feet at the sound of a cautious hail. Two men darted in with one last fugitive glance behind them. The door closed softly, and one stepped immediately to the controls. The desolate desert landscape was far beneath them almost at once, and the silver prow of the Strato-rocket pointed for the ancient metropolis of New York.

The man at the controls nodded. “Not a tyrant ship about. It’s quite evident the ‘Grahul’ had not been able to radio for help.”

“We also found,” said the second man bitterly, “one other thing-the last report of Sidi Peller.”

For a moment, Tymball’s round face softened and something almost like pain entered his expression. And then it hardened again, “He died! But it was for Earth, and so it was not death. It was martyrdom!”

He took the single, folded sheet handed him and held it before him. Slowly, he read aloud:

“On September 4, made successful entry into ‘Grahul’ cruiser of the tyrant fleet. Maintained self in hiding during passage from Pluto to Earth. On September 5, located dispatch in question and assumed possession. Have just shorted rocket jets. Am sealing this report in with dispatch. Long live Earth!”

Tymball’s voice was strangely moved as he read the last word. “The Lhasinuic tyrants have never martyrized a greater man than Sidi Peller. But we’ll be repaid, and with interest The Human Race is not quite decadent yet.”

Petri stared out the window. “How did Peller do it all? One man-to stow away successfully upon a cruiser of the fleet and in the face of the entire crew to steal the dispatch and wreck the fleet. How was it done? And we’ll never know; except for the bare facts in his report.”

“He had his orders,’“ said Willums, as he locked controls and turned about. “I carried them to him on Pluto myself. Get the dispatch! Wreck the ‘Grahul’ in the Gobi! He did it! That’s all!” He shrugged his shoulders wearily.

The atmosphere of depression deepened until Tymball himself broke it was a growl. “Forget it. Did you take care of everything at the wreck?”

The other two nodded in unison. Petri’s voice was businesslike, “All traces of Peller were removed and de-atomized. They will never detect the presence of a Human among the wreckage. The document itself was replaced by the prepared copy, and carefully burnt beyond recognition. It was even impregnated with silver salts to the exact amount contained in the official seal of the Tyrant Emperor. I’ll stake my head that no Lhasinu will suspect that the crash was no accident or that the dispatch was not destroyed by it.”

“Good! They won’t locate the wreck for twenty-four hours at least. It’s an airtight job. Let me have the dispatch now.”

He fondled the metalloid container almost with reverence. It was blackened and twisted, still faintly warm. And then with a savage twist of the wrist, he tore off the lid.

The document that he lifted out unrolled with a rustling sound. At the lower left hand corner was the huge silver seal of the Lhasinuic Emperor himself-the tyrant, who from Vega, ruled one third of the Galaxy. It was addressed to the Viceroy of Sol.

The three Earthmen regarded the fine print solemnly. The harshly angular Lhasinuic script glinted redly in the rays of the setting sun.

Night did not really fall. The sky’s black-purple deepened ever so slightly and the stars brightened imperceptibly, but aside from that the stratosphere did not differentiate between the absence and the presence of the sun.

“Yes-long ago. I’m going to visit Paul Kane tomorrow, with this,” and he indicated the dispatch.

“That-that Loarist!” came simultaneously from Willums. “The Loarist,” agreed Tymball. “He is our man!”

“Say rather that he is the lackey of the Lhasinu,” ground out Willums. “Kane-the head of Loarism-consequently the head of the traitor Humans who preach submission to the Lhasinu.”

“That’s right,” Petri was pale but more calm. “The Lhasinu are our known enemies and are to be met in fair fight-but the Loarists are vermin. Great Space! I would rather throw myself on the mercy of the tyrant Viceroy himself than have anything to do with those snuffling students of ancient history, who praise the ancient glory of Earth and encompass its present degradation.”

“You judge too harshly.” There was the trace of a smile about Tymball’s lips. “I have had dealings with this leader of Loarism before. Oh-” he checked the cries of startled dismay that rose, “I was quite discreet about it. Even you two didn’t know, and, as you see, Kane has not yet betrayed me. I failed in those dealings, but I learned a little bit. Listen to me!”

Petri and Willums edged nearer, and Tymball continued in crisp, matter-of-fact tones, “The first Galactic Drive of the Lhasinu ended two thousand years ago just after the capture of Earth. Since then, the aggression has not been resumed, and the independent Human Planets of the Galaxy are quite satisfied at the maintenance of the status quo. They are too divided among themselves to welcome a return of the struggle. Loarism itself is only interested in its own survival against the encroachments of newer ways of thought, and it is no great moment to them whether Lhasinu or Human rules Earth as long as Loarism itself prospers. As a matter of fact, we-the Nationalists-are perhaps a greater danger to them in that respect than the Lhasinu.”

“Then, granting that, it is natural that Loarism assume the role of appeasement. Yet, if it were to their interests, they would join us at a second’s notice. And this,” he slapped the document before him, “is what will convince them where their interests lie.”

Tymball continued, “Our time is short. Not more than three years, perhaps not more than two. And yet you know what the chances of success for a rebellion today are.”

“We’d do it,” snarled Petri, and then in a muffled tone, “if the only Lhasinu we had to deal with were those of Earth.”

“Exactly. But they can call upon Vega for help, and we can call upon no one. No one of the Human Planets would stir in our defense, any more than they did five hundred years ago. And that’s why we must have Loarism on our side.”

“And what did Loarism do five hundred years ago during the Bloody Rebellion?” asked Willums, bitter hatred in his voice. “They abandoned us to save their own precious hides.”

“We are in no position to remember that,” said Tymball. “We will have their help now-and then, when all is over, our reckoning with them-”

Willums returned to the controls, “New York in fifteen minutes!” And then, “But I still don’t like it. What can those filthy Loarists do? Dried out husks fit for nothing but treason and platitudes!”

“They are the last unifying force of Humanity,” answered Tymball. “Weak enough now and helpless enough, but Earth’s only chance.”

They were slanting downwards now into the thicker, lower atmosphere, and the whistling of the air as it streamed past them became shriller in pitch. Willums fired the braking rockets as they pierced a gray layer of clouds. There upon the horizon was the great diffuse glow of New York City.

“See that our passes are in perfect order for the Lhasinuic inspection and hide the document. They won’t search us, anyway.”

Loara Paul Kane leaned back in his ornate chair. The slender fingers of one hand played with the ivory paperweight upon his desk. His eyes avoided those of the smaller, rounder man before him, and his voice, as he spoke, took on solemn inflections.

“I cannot risk shielding you longer, Tymball. I have done so until now because of the bond of common Humanity between us, but-” his voice trailed away.

Kane’s fingers turned his paperweight over and over. “The Lhasinu are growing harsher this past year. They are almost arrogant.” He looked up suddenly. “I am not quite a free agent, you know, and haven’t the influence and power you seem to think I have.”

His eyes dropped again, and a troubled note entered his voice, “The Lhasinu suspect. They are beginning to detect the workings of a tightly-knit conspiracy underground, and we cannot afford to become entangled in it.”

“I know. If necessary, you are quite willing to sacrifice us as your predecessor sacrificed the patriots five centuries ago. Once again, Loarism shall play its noble part.”

“What good are your rebellions?” came the weary reply. “Are the Lhasinu so much more terrible than the oligarchy of Humans that rules Santanni or the dictator that rules Trantor? If the Lhasinu are not Human, they are at least intelligent Loarism must live at peace with the rulers.”

And now Tymball smiled. There was no humor in it- rather mocking irony, and from his sleeve, he drew forth a small card.

“You think so, do you? Here, read this. It is a reduced photostat of-no, don’t touch it-read it as / hold it, and-”

His further remarks were drowned in the sudden hoarse cry from the other. Kane’s face twisted alarmingly into a mask of horror, as he snatched-desperately at the reproduction held out to him.

“What odds? I have it, haven’t I? And yet it cost the life of a brave man, and a ship of His Reptilian Eminence’s navy. I believe you can see that there is no doubt as to the genuineness of this.”

“No-no!” Kane put a shaking hand to his forehead. “That is the Emperor’s signature and seal. It is impossible to forge them.”

“You see. Excellency,” there was sarcasm in the title, “the renewal of the Galactic Drive is a matter of two years-or three-in the future. The first step in the drive comes within the year-and it is concerning that first step,” his voice took on a poisonous sweetness, “that this order has been issued to the Viceroy.”

“Is there the necessity?” cried Tymball, remorselessly. “This is nothing but the fulfillment of my prediction of six months ago, to which you would not listen. Earth, as a Human world, is to be destroyed; its population scattered in groups throughout the Lhasinuic portions of the Galaxy; every trace of Human occupancy destroyed.”

“But Earth, Earth, the home of the Human Race; the beginning of our civilization.”

“Exactly! Loarism is dying and the destruction of Earth will kill it And with Loarism gone, the last unifying force is destroyed, and the human planets, invincible when united, shall be wiped out, one by one, in the Second Galactic Drive. Unless-”

“No more than I said before. Humanity must unite, and can do so only about Loarism. It must have a Cause for which to fight, and that Cause must be the liberation of Earth. I shall fire the spark here on Earth and you must convert the Human portion of the Galaxy into a powder-keg.”

“You wish a Total War-a Galactic Crusade,” Kane spoke in a whisper, “yet who should know better than I that a Total War has been impossible for these thousand years.” He laughed suddenly, harshly, “Do you know how weak Loarism is today?”

“Nothing is so weak that it cannot be strengthened. Although Loarism has weakened since its great days during the First Galactic Drive, you still have your organization and your discipline; the best in the Galaxy. And your leaders are, as a whole, capable men, I must say that for you. A thoroughly centralized group of capable men, working desperately, can do much. It must do much, for it has no choice.”

“Leave me,” said Kane, brokenly, “I can do no more now. I must think.” His voice trailed away, but one finger pointed toward the door.

“What good are thoughts?” cried Tymball, irritably. “We need deeds!” And with that, he left.

The night had been a horrible one for Kane. His face was pale and drawn; his eyes hollow and feverishly brilliant. Yet he spoke loudly and firmly.

Tymball smiled bleakly, took Kane’s outstretched hand for a moment, and dropped it, “By necessity. Excellency, only. I am not your friend.”

“Nor I yours. Yet we may work together. My initial orders have gone out and the Central Council will ratify them. In that direction, at least, I anticipate no trouble.”

“Who knows? Loarism still has its facilities for propaganda. There are still those who will listen from respect and others from fear, and still others from the mere force of the propaganda itself. But who can say? Humanity has slept, and Loarism as well. There is little anti-Lhasinuic feeling, and it will be hard to drum it up out of nothing.”

“Hate is never hard to drum up,” and Tymball’s moon-face seemed oddly harsh. “Emotionalism! Propaganda! Frank and unscrupulous opportunism! And even in its weakened state, Loarism is rich. The masses may be corrupted by words, but those in high places, the important ones, will require a bit of the yellow metal.”

Kane waved a weary hand, “You preach nothing new. That line of dishonor was Human policy far back in the misty dawn of history when only this poor Earth was Human and even it split into warring segments.” Then, bitterly, “To think that we must return to the tactics of that barbarous age.”

Loara Paul Kane rose to his feet and his hands clenched before him, “Fool! You and your plans! Your subtle, secret, snaky, tortuous plans! Do you think that conspiracy is rebellion, or rebellion, victory? What can you do? You can ferret out information and dig quietly at the roots, but you can’t lead a rebellion. I can organize and prepare, but I can’t lead a rebellion.”

“-is nothing, I tell you. You can have every chemical ingredient necessary, and all the proper conditions, and yet there may be no reaction. In psychology-particularly mob psychology-as in chemistry, one must have a catalyst.”

“Can you lead a rebellion?” cried Kane. “A crusade is a war of emotion. Can you control the emotions? Why, you conspirator, you could not stand the light of open warfare an instant. Can I lead the rebellion? I, old and a man of peace? Then who is to be the leader, the psychological catalyst, that can take the dull worthless clay of your precious ‘preparation’ and breathe life into it?”

It was midnight, ship time, and the evening’s festivities were reaching their high point. The grand salon of the superliner Flaming Nova was filled with whirling, laughing, glittering figures, growing more convivial as the night wore on.

“This reminds me of the triply-damned affairs my wife makes me attend back on Lacto,” muttered Sammel Maronni to his companion. “I thought I’d be getting away from some of it, at least out here in hyperspace, but evidently I didn’t.” He groaned softly and gazed at the assemblage with a faintly disapproving stare.

Maronni was dressed in the peak of fashion, from purple headsash to sky-blue sandals, and looked exceedingly uncomfortable. His portly figure was crammed into a brilliantly red and terribly tight tunic and the occasional jerks at his wide belt showed that he was only too conscious of its ill fit.

His companion, taller and slimmer, bore his spotless white uniform with an ease born of long experience, and his imposing figure contrasted strongly with the slightly ridiculous appearance of Sammel MaronnL

The Lactonian exporter was conscious of this fact. “Blast it, Drake, you’ve got one fine job here. You dress like a nob and do nothing but look pleasant and answer salutes. How much do you get paid, anyway?”

“Not enough.” Captain Drake lifted one gray eyebrow and stared quizzically at the Lactonian. “I wish you had my job for a week or so. You’d sing mighty small after that. If you think taking care of fat dowager damsels and curly-headed society snobs is a bed of roses, you’re welcome to it.” He muttered viciously to himself for a moment and then bowed politely to a bejeweled harridan who simpered past. “It’s what’s grayed my hair and furrowed my brow, by Rigel.”

Maronni drew a long Karen smoke out of his waist-pouch and lit up luxuriously. He blew a cloud of apple-green smoke into the Captain’s face and smiled impishly.

“I’ve never heard the man yet who didn’t knock his own job, even when it was the pushover yours is, you hoary old fraud. Ah, if I’m not mistaken, the gorgeous Ylen Surat is bearing down upon us.”

“Oh, pink devils of Sirius! I’m afraid to look. Is that old hag actually moving in our direction?”

“She certainly is-and aren’t you the lucky one! She’s one of the richest women on Santanni and a widow, too. The uniform gets them, I suppose. What a pity I’m married.”

Captain Drake twisted his face into a most frightful grimace, “I hope a chandelier falls on her.”

And with that he turned, his expression metamorphosed into one of bland delight in an instant, “Why, Madam Surat, I thought I’d never get the chance to see you tonight.”

Ylen Surat, for whom the age of sixty was past experience, giggled girlishly, “Be still, you old flirt, or you’ll make me forget that I’ve come here to scold you.”

“Nothing is wrong, I hope?” Drake felt a sinking of the heart. He had had previous experience with Madam Surat’s complaints. Things usually were wrong.

“A great deal is wrong. I’ve just been told that in fifty hours, we shall land on Earth-if that’s the way you pronounce the word.”

“No, it wasn’t. But then, you see, it’s .quite a routine affair. We leave ten hours after landing.”

“But this is insupportable. It will delay me an entire day. It is necessary for me to reach Santanni within the week, and days are precious. Now, I’ve never heard of Earth. My guide book,” she extracted a leather-covered volume from her reticule and flipped its pages angrily, “doesn’t even mention the place. No one, I feel sure, has any interest in a halt there. If you persist in wasting the passengers’ time in a perfectly useless stop, I shall take it up with the president of the line. I’ll remind you that I have some little influence back home.”

Captain Drake sighed inaudibly. It had not been the first time he had been reminded of Ylen Surat’s “little influence.” “My dear madam, you are right, entirely right, perfectly right-but I can do nothing. All ships on the Sirius, Alpha Centauri, and 61 Cygni lines must stop at Earth. It is by interstellar agreement, and even the president of the line, no matter how stimulated he may be by your argument, could do nothing.”

“Besides,” interrupted Maronni, who thought it time to come to the aid of the beleaguered captain, “I believe that we have two passengers who are actually headed for Earth.”

“That’s right. I had forgotten.” Captain Drake’s face brightened a bit. “There! We have concrete reason for the stop as well.”

“You are unfair,” said Maronni, lightly. “After all, it was on Earth that the Human race originated. You know that, I suppose?”

The blank look on her face twisted to one of disdain, “Oh, well, that was all thousands and thousands of years ago. It doesn’t matter any more.”

“Do you mean to say,” sneered the widow, “that there are still people in this enlightened age who go about studying ‘our ancient culture.’ Isn’t that what they’re always talking about?”

“That’s what Filip Sanat is always talking about,” laughed Maronni. “He gave me a long sermon only a few days ago on that very subject. And it was interesting, too. There was a lot to what he said.”

He nodded lightly and continued, “He’s got a good head on him, that Filip Sanat. He might have made a good scientist or businessman.”

“Speak of meteors and hear them whizz,” said the Captain, suddenly, and nodded his head to the right.

“Well!” gasped Maronni. “There he is. But-but what in space is he doing here?”

Filip Sanat did make a rather incongruous picture as he stood framed in the far doorway. His long, dark purple tunic -mark of the Loarist-was a sombre splotch upon an otherwise gay scene. His grave eyes turned toward Maronni and he lifted his hand in immediate recognition.

Astonished dancers made way automatically as he passed, staring at him long and curiously afterwards. One could hear the wake of whispering that he left in his path. Filip Sanat, however, took no notice of this. Eyes fixed stonily ahead of him and expression stolidly immobile, he reached Captain Drake, Sammel Maronni, and Ylen Surat

Filip Sanat greeted the two men warmly and then, in response to an introduction, bowed gravely to the widow, who regarded him with surprise and open disdain.

“Pardon me for disturbing you. Captain Drake,” said the young man, in a low tone. “I only want to know at what time we are leaving hyperspace.”

The captain yanked out a corpulent pocket-chromo. “An hour from now. Not more.”

“If you’re looking in the right direction, it will be-toward the prow of the ship.”

“Hold on there, Filip, you’re not going to leave us, are you? I’m sure Madam Surat here is fairly dying to ask you several questions. She has displayed a great interest in Loarism.” There was more than the suspicion of a twinkle in the Lactonian’s eye.

Filip Sanat turned politely to the widow, who, taken aback for the moment, remained speechless, and then recovered.

“Tell me, young man,” she burst forth, “are there really still people like you left?-Loarists, I mean.”

Filip Sanat started and stared quite rudely at his questioner, but did lose his tongue. With calm distinctness, he said, “There are still people left who try to maintain the culture and way of life of ancient Earth.”

Captain Drake could not forbear a tiny bit of irony, “Even down to the culture of the Lhasinuic masters?”

Ylen Surat uttered a stifled scream, “Do you mean to say Earth is a Lhasinuic world? Is it?” Her voice rose to a frightened squeak.

“Why, certainly,” answered the puzzled captain, sorry that he had spoken. “Didn’t you know?”

“Captain,” there was hysteria in the woman’s voice. “You must not land. If you do, I shall make trouble-plenty of trouble. I will not be exposed to hordes of those terrible Lhasinu-those awful reptiles from Vega.”

“You need not fear. Madam Surat,” observed Filip Sanat, coldly. “The vast majority of Earth’s population is very much human. It is only the one percent that rules that is Lhasinuic.”

“Oh-” A pause, and then, in a wounded manner, “Well, I don’t think Earth can be so important, if it is not even ruled by Humans. Loarism indeed! Silly waste of time, I call it!”

Sanat’s face flushed suddenly, and for a moment he seemed to struggle vainly for speech. When he did speak, it was in an agitated tone, “You have a very superficial view. The fact that the Lhasinu control Earth has nothing to do with the fundamental problem of Loarism which-”

Sammel Maronni drew a long breath as he watched the retreating figure. “You hit him in a sore spot, Madam Surat, I never saw him squirm away from an argument or an attempt at an explanation in that way before.”

Maronni chuckled, “Not by a long shot. We’re from the same planet, that young fellow and I. He’s a typical Lactonian, like me.”

The widow cleared her throat grumpily, “Oh, let us change the subject by all means. That person seems to have cast a shadow over the entire room. Why do they wear those awful purple robes? So unstylish!”

And throwing himself into a chair, Sanat leaned a flushed and frowning face upon one balled fist.

Porin regarded the other with an affectionate smile, “Have you been arguing with Sammel Maronni again, Filip?”

“No, not exactly.” He jerked himself upright. “But what’s the use, Loara Broos? There, on the upper level, are hundreds of Humans, thoughtless, gaily dressed, laughing, frolicking; and there outside is Earth, disregarded. Only we two of the entire ship’s company are stopping there to view the world of our ancient days.”

His eyes avoided those of the older man and his voice took on a bitter tinge, “And once thousands of Humans from every corner of the Galaxy landed on Earth every day. The great days of Loarism are over.”

Loara Broos laughed. One would not have thought such a hearty laugh to be in his spindly figure. “That is at least the hundredth time I have heard that said by you. Foolish! The day will come when Earth will once more be remembered. People will yet again flock. By the thousands and millions they’ll come.”

“Bah! The croaking prophets of doom have said that over and over again through history. They have yet to prove themselves right.”

“This time they will.” Sanat’s eyes blazed suddenly, “Do you know why? It is because Earth is profaned by the reptile conquerors. A woman has just said to me-a vain, stupid, shallow woman-that T don’t think Earth can be so important if it is not even ruled by Humans.’ She said what billions must say unconsciously, and I hadn’t the words to refute her. It was one argument I couldn’t answer.”

“Drive them from Earth! Make it a Human planet once more! We fought them once during the First Galactic Drive two thousand years ago, and stopped them when it seemed as if they might absorb the Galaxy. Let us make a Second Drive of our own and hurl them back to Vega.”

Porin sighed and shook his head, “You young hothead! There never was a young Loarist who didn’t eat fire on the subject. You’ll outgrow it. You’ll outgrow it.”

“Look, my boy!” Loara Broos arose and grasped the other by the shoulders, “Man and Lhasinu have intelligence, and are the only two intelligent races of the Galaxy. They are brothers in mind and spirit. Be at peace with them. Don’t hate; it is the most unreasoning emotion. Instead, strive to understand.”

Filip Sanat stared stonily at the ground and made no indication that he heard. His mentor clicked his tongue in gentle rebuke.

“Well, when you are older, you will understand. Now, forget all this, Filip. Remember that the ambition of every real Loarist is about to be fulfilled for you. In two days, we shall reach Earth and its soil shall be under your feet. Isn’t that enough to make you happy? Just think! When you return, you shall be awarded the title ‘Loara.’ You shall be one who has visited Earth. The golden sun will be pinned to your shoulder.”

Porin’s hand crept to the staring yellow orb upon his own tunic, mute witness of his three previous visits to Earth.

“Loara Filip Sanat,” said Sanat slowly, eyes glistening. “Loara Filip Sanat. It has a wonderful sound, hasn’t it? And only a little ways off.”

“Now, then, you feel better. But come, in a few moments we shall leave hyperspace and we will see Sol.”

Already, even as he spoke, the thick, choking cloak of hyper-stuff that clung so closely to the sides of the Flaming Nova was going through those curious changes that marked the beginning of the shift to normal space. The blackness lightened a bit and concentric rings of various shades of gray chased each other across the port-view with gradually hastening speed. It was a weird and beautiful optical illusion that science has never succeeded in explaining.

Porin clicked off the lights in the room, and the two sat quietly in the dark, watching the feeble phosphorescence of the racing ripples as they sped into a blur. Then, with a terrifying silent suddenness, the whole structure of hyper-stuff seemed to burst apart in a whirling madhouse of brilliant color. And then all was peaceful again. The stars sparkled quietly, against the curved backdrop of normal space.

And up in the corner of the port blazed the brightest spark of the sky with a luminous yellow flame that lit up the faces of the two men into pale, waxen masks. It was Sol!

The birth-star of Man was so distant that it lacked a perceptible disc, yet it was incomparably the brightest object to be seen. In its feeble yellow light, the two remained in quiet thought, and Filip Sanat grew calmer.

Filip Sanat forgot the delicious thrill that had seized him. at the moment when his sandals first came into contact with the firm green sod of Earth, when he caught his first glimpse of a Lhasinuic official.

At first glance, the predominantly Manlike characteristics drowned out all else. The body plan differed in no essential from Man’s. The four-limbed, bipedal body; the middling-well proportioned arms and legs; the well-defined neck, were all astonishingly in evidence. It was only after a few minutes that the smaller details marking the difference between the two races were noticed at all.

Chief of these were the scales covering the bead and a thick line down the backbone, halfway to the hips. The face itself, with its flat, broad, thinly-scaled nose and lidless eyes was rather repulsive, but in no way bestial. Their clothes were few and simple, and their speech quite pleasant to the ear. And, what was most important, there was no masking the intelligence that showed forth in their dark, luminous eyes.

Porin noted Sanat’s surprise at this first glimpse of the Vegan reptiles with every sign of satisfaction.

“You see,” he remarked, “their appearance is not at all monstrous. Why should hate exist between Human and Lhasinu, then?”

Sanat didn’t answer. Of course, his old friend was right. The word “Lhasinu” had so long been coupled with the words “alien” and “monster” in his mind, that against all knowledge and reason, he had subconsciously expected to see some weird life-form.

Yet, overlying the foolish feeling this realization induced was the same haunting hate that clung closely to him, growing to fury as they passed inspection by an over-bearing English-speaking Lhasinu.

The next morning, the two left for New York, the largest city of the planet In the historic lore of the unbelievably ancient metropolis, Sanat forgot for a day the troubles of the Galaxy outside. It was a great moment for him when he finally stood before a towering structure and said to himself, “This is the Memorial.”

The Memorial was Earth’s greatest monument, dedicated to the birthplace of the Human race, and this was Wednesday, the day of the week when two men “guarded the Flame.” Two men, alone in the Memorial, watched over the flickering yellow fire that symbolized Human courage arid Human initiative-and Porin had already arranged that the choice should fall that day upon himself and Sanat, as being two newly-arrived Loarists.

And so, in the fading twilight, the two sat alone in the spacious Flame Room of the Memorial. In the murky semidarkness, lit only by the fitful glare of a dancing yellow flame, a quiet peace descended upon them.

There was something about the brooding aura of the place that wiped all mental disturbance clean away. There was something about the wavering shadows as they weaved through the pillars of the long colonnade on either side, that cast a hypnotic spell.

Gradually, he fell into a half doze, and out of sleepy eyes regarded the Flame intently, until it became a living being of light weaving a dim, silent figure beside him.

But tiny sounds are sufficient to disturb a reverie, especially when contrasted with a hitherto deep silence. Sanat stiffened suddenly, and grasped Porin’s elbow in a fierce grip.

Porin started violently out of a peaceful day-dream, regarded his young companion with uneasy intentness, then, without a word, trumpeted one ear. The silence was thicker than ever-also a tangible cloak. Then the faintest possible scraping of feet upon marble, far off. A low whisper, down at the limits of audibility, and then silence again.

“What is it?” he asked bewilderedly of Sanat, who had already risen to his feet.

“Impossible!” Porin strove to keep his voice coldly steady, but it trembled in spite of itself. “It would be an unheard-of event. We are just imagining things, now. Our nerves are rubbed raw by this silence, that is all. Perhaps it is some official of the Memorial.”

“After sunset, on Wednesday?” came Sanat’s strident voice. “That is as illegal as the entrance of Lhasinuic lizards, and far more unlikely. It is my duty as a Guardian of the Flame to investigate this.”

He made as if to walk toward the shadowed door, and Porin caught his wrist fearfully, “Don’t Filip. Let us forget this until sunrise. One can never tell what will happen. What can you do, even supposing that Lhasinu have entered the Memorial? If you-”

But Sanat was no longer listening. Roughly, he shook off the other’s desperate grasp, “Stay here! The Flame must be guarded. I shall be back soon.”

He was already half way across the wide, marble-floored hall. Cautiously, he approached the glass-paned door to the dark, twisting staircase that circled its way upwards through the twilit gloom into the desert recesses of the tower.

Slipping off his sandals, he crept up the stairs, casting one last look back toward the softly luminous Flame, and toward the nervous, frightened figure standing beside it.

“Dreary old place,” said Threg Ban Sola. His wrist camera clicked three times. “Take down a few of those books on the walls. They’ll serve as additional proof.”

“Do you think we ought to,” asked Cor Wen Hasta. “These Human apes may miss them.”

“Let them!” came the cool response. “What can they do? Here, sit down!” He flicked a hasty glance upon his chronometer. “We’ll get fifty credits for every minute we stay, so we might as well pile up enough to last us for a while.”

“I think,” said Ban Sola, “he’s heard about the soldier torn to pieces last year for looting a European museum. The Humans didn’t like it, though Loarism is filthy rich, Vega knows. The Humans were disciplined, of course, but the soldier was dead. Anyway, what Pirat For doesn’t know is that the Memorial is deserted Wednesdays. This is going to cost him money.”

“Three hundred and fifty credits. Sit down. We’ll play a game of cards and watch our money mount.”

Threg Ban Sola drew forth a worn pack of cards from his pouch which, though they were typically and essentially Lhasinuic, bore unmistakable traces of their Human derivation.

“Put the Atomo-light on the table and I’ll sit between it and the window,” he continued peremptorily, shuffling the cards as he spoke. “Hah! I’ll warrant no Lhasinu ever gamed in such an atmosphere. Why, it will triple the zest of the play.”

Cor Wen Hasta seated himself, and then rose again, “Did you hear anything?” He stared into the shadows beyond the half-open door.

“No,” Ban Sola frowned and continued shuffling. “You’re not getting nervous, are you?”

“Of course not. Still, if they were to catch us here in this blasted tower, it might not be pleasant.”

“Do you know,” said Wen Hasta, studying his cards carefully, “it wouldn’t be so nice if the Viceroy were to get wind of this, either. I imagine he wouldn’t deal lightly with offenders of the Loarists, as a matter of policy. Back on Sirius, where I served before I was shifted, the scum-”

“Scum, all right,” grunted Ban Sola. “They breed like flies and fight each other like mad bulls. Look at the creatures!” He turned his cards downward and grew argumentative. “I mean, look at them scientifically and impartially. What are they? Only mammals! Mammals that can think, in a way; but mammals just the same. That’s all.”

Ban Sola’s grin grew mysterious. “This isn’t supposed to be known, even among us officers, but you know how things leak out.”

“Fact! And we’re starting right here. By Vega, the Viceregal Palace is buzzing with nothing else. Some of the officers have even started a lottery on the exact date of the first move. I’ve got a hundred credits at twenty to one myself. But then, I drew only to the nearest week. You can get a hundred and fifty to one, if you’re nervy enough to pick a particular day.”

“Strategy on the part of the Home Office.” Ban Sola leaned forward. “The position we’re in now has us facing a numerically superior enemy hopelessly divided amongst itself. If we can keep them so, we can take them over one by one. The Human Worlds would just naturally rather cut their own throats than co-operate with each other.”

Wen Hasta grinned agreement, “That’s typical mammalian behavior for you. Evolution must have laughed when she gave a brain to an ape.”

“But Earth has particular significance. It’s the center of Loarism, because the Humans originated here. It corresponds to our own Vegan system.”

“That’s what they say. I wasn’t here at the time, so I wouldn’t know. But anyway, if we can destroy Earth, we can destroy Loarism, which is centered here. It was Loarism, the historians say, that united the Worlds against us at the end of the First Drive. No Loarism; the last fear of enemy unification is gone; and victory is easy.”

“Well, the word is that they’re going to pack up every last Human on Earth and scatter them through the subject worlds. Then we can remove everything else on Earth that smells of the Mammals and make it an entirely Lhasinuic world.”

“We don’t know; hence the lottery. But no one has placed his bet at a period more than two years in the future.”

“Hurrah for Vega! I’ll give you two to one I riddle a Human cruiser before you do, when the time comes.”

They rose to touch fists in token and Wen Hasta grinned at his chronometer, “Another minute and we’ll have an even thousand credits coming to us. Poor Pirat For. He’ll groan. Let’s go now; more would be extortionate.”

There was low laughter as the two Lhasinu left, long cloaks swishing softly behind them. They did not notice the slightly darker shadow hugging the wall at the head of the stairs, though they almost brushed it as they passed. Nor did they sense the burning eyes focused upon them as they descended noiselessly.

Loara Broos Porin jerked to his feet with a sob of relief as he saw the figure of Filip Sanat stumble across the hall toward him. He ran to him eagerly, grasping both hands tightly.

“What kept you, Filip? You don’t know what wild thoughts have passed through my head this past hour. If you had been gone another five minutes, I would have gone mad for sheer suspense and uncertainty. But what’s wrong?”

It took several moments for Loara Broos’ wild relief to subside sufficiently to note the other’s trembling hands, his disheveled hair, his feverishly-glinting eyes; but when it did, all his fears returned.

He watched Sanat in dismay, scarcely daring to press his question for fear of the answer. But Sanat needed no urging. In short, jerky sentences he related the conversation he had overheard and his last words trailed into a despairing silence.

Loara Broos’ pallor was almost frightening, and twice he tried to talk with no success other than a few hoarse gasps. Then, finally, “But it is the death of Loarism! What is to be done?”

Filip Sanat laughed, as men laugh when they are at last convinced that nothing remains to laugh at. “What can be done? Can we inform the Central Council? You know only too well how helpless they are. The various Human governments? You can imagine how effective those divided fools would be.”

Sanat remained silent for seconds, and then his face twisted agonizedly and in a voice thick with passion, he shouted, “I won’t have it. Do you hear? It shan’t be! I’ll stop it!”

It was easy to see that he had lost control of himself; that wild emotion was driving him. Porin, large drops of perspiration on his brow, grasped him about the waist, “Sit down, Filip, sit down! Are you going crazy?”

“No!” With a sudden push, he sent Porin stumbling backwards into a sitting position, while the Flame wavered and flickered madly in the rush of air, “I’m going sane. The time for idealism and compromise and subservience is gone! The time for force has come! We will fight and, by Space, we will win!”

Porin limped after, “Filip! Filip!” He stopped at the doorway in frightened despair. He could go no further. Though the Heavens fell, someone must guard the Flame.

But-but what was Filip Sanat going to do? And through Porin’s tortured mind flickered visions of a certain night, five hundred years before, when a careless word, a blow, a shot, had lit a fire over Earth that was finally drowned in Human blood.

Loara Paul Kane was alone that night. The inner office was empty; the dim, blue light upon the severely simple desk the only illumination in the room. His thin face was bathed in the ghastly light, and his chin buried musingly between his hands.

And then there was a crashing interruption as the door was flung open and a disheveled Russell Tymball knocked off the restraining hands of half a dozen men and catapulted in. Kane whirled in dismay at the intrusion and one hand flew up to his throat as his eyes widened in apprehension. His face was one startled question.

Tymball waved his arm in a quieting gesture. “It’s all right. Just let me catch my breath.” He wheezed a bit and seated himself gently before continuing, “Your catalyst has turned up, Loara Paul-and guess where. Here on Earth! Here in New York! Not half a mile from where we’re sitting now!”

“Not so you can notice it. I’ll tell you about it, if you don’t mind turning on a light or .two. You look like a ghost in the blue.” The room whitened under the glare of Atomos, and Tymball continued, “Femi and I were returning from the meeting. We were passing the Memorial when it happened, and you can thank Fate for the lucky coincidence that led us to the right spot at the right moment.

“As we passed, a figure shot out the side entrance, jumped on the marble steps in front, and shouted, ‘Men of Earth!’ Everyone turned to look-you know how filled Memorial Sector is at eleven-and inside of two seconds, he had a crowd.”

“Who was the speaker, and what was he doing inside the Memorial? This is Wednesday night, you know.”

“Why,” Tymball paused to consider, “now that you mention it, he must have been one of the two Guardians. He was a Loarist-you couldn’t mistake the tunic. He wasn’t Terrestrial, either!”

“There he stood!” Tymball was warming to his task. “He was some twenty feet above street level. You have no idea what an impressive figure he made with the glare of the Luxites lighting his face. He was handsome, but not in an athletic, brawny way. He was the ascetic type, if you know what I mean. Pale, thin face, burning eyes, long, brown hair.

“And when he spoke! It’s no use describing it; in order to appreciate it really, you would have to hear him. He began telling the crowd of the Lhasinuic designs; shouting what I had been whispering. Evidently, he had gotten them from a good source, for he went into details-and how he put them! He made them sound real and frightening. He frightened me with them; had me standing there scared blue at what he was saying; and as for the crowd, after the second sentence, they were hypnotized. Every one of them had had ‘Lhasinuic Menace’ drilled into them over and over again, but this was the first time they listened-actually listened.

“Then he began damning the Lhasinu. He rang the changes on their bestiality, their perfidy, their criminality-only he had a vocabulary that raked them into the lowest mud of a Venusian ocean. And every time he let loose with an epithet, the crowd stood upon its hind legs and let out a roar. It began to sound like a catechism. ‘Shall we allow this to go on?’ cried he. ‘Never!’ yelled the crowd. ‘Must we yield?’ ‘Never!’ ‘Shall we resist?’ ‘To the end!’ ‘Down with the Lhasinu!’ he shouted. Kill them!’ they howled.

“I don’t know how long it lasted before Lhasinuic guards began closing in. The crowd turned on them, with the Loarist urging them on. Did you ever hear a mob yell for blood? No? It’s the most awful sound you can imagine. The guards thought so, too, for one look at what was before them made them turn and run for their lives, in spite of the fact that they were armed. The mob had grown into a matter of thousands and thousands by then.

“But in two minutes, the alarm siren sounded-for the first time in a hundred years. I came to my senses at last and made for the Loarist, who had not stopped his tirade a moment It was plain that we couldn’t let him fall into the hands of the Lhasinu.

“The rest is pretty much of a mixup. Squadrons of motorized police were charging down on us, but somehow, Ferni and I managed between the two of us to grab the Loarist, slip out, and bring him here. I have him in the outer room, gagged and tied, to keep him quiet.”

During all the last half of the narrative, Kane had paced the floor nervously, pausing every once in a while in deep consideration. Little flecks of blood appeared on his lower lip.

“You don’t think,” he asked, “that the riot will get out of hand? A premature explosion-”

Tymball shook his head vigorously, “They’re mopping up already. Once the young fellow disappeared, the crowd lost its spirit, anyway.”

“There will be many killed or hurt, but- Well, bring in the young firebrand.” Kane seated himself behind his desk and composed his face into a semblance of tranquility.

Filip Sanat was in sad shape as he kneeled before his superior. His tunic was in tatters, and his face scratched and bloody, but the fire of determination shone as brilliantly as ever in his fierce eyes. Russell Tymball regarded him breathlessly as though the previous hour’s magic still lingered.

Kane extended his arm gently, “I have heard of your wild escapade, my boy. What was it that impelled you to do so foolish an act? It might very well have cost you your life, to say nothing of the lives of thousands of others.”

“For the second time that night, Sanat repeated the conversation he had overheard-dramatically and in the minutest detail.

“Just so, just so,” said Kane, with a grim smile, upon the conclusion of the tale, “and did you think we knew nothing of this? For a long time we have been preparing against this danger, and you have come near to upsetting all our carefully laid plans. By your premature appeal, you might have worked irreparable harm to our cause.”

“Exactly,” exclaimed Kane. “Yet, properly directed, you might be of great aid to us. Your oratory and youthful fire might work wonders if well managed. Would you be willing to dedicate yourself to the task?”

Loara Paul Kane laughed and cast a jubilant side-glance at Russell Tymball, “You’ll do. In two days, you shall leave for the outer stars. With you, will go several of my own men. And now, you are tired. You will be taken to where you may wash and treat your cuts. Then, you had better sleep, for you shall need your strength in the days to come.”

“I shall send a messenger to the Memorial immediately. He will tell Loara Broos of your safety and serve as the second Guardian for the remainder of the night. Go, now!”

But even as Sanat, relieved and deliriously happy, rose to go, Russell Tymball leaped from his chair and grasped the older Loarist’s wrist in a convulsive grip.

The shrill, keening whine that pierced to the inner sanctum of Kane’s offices told its own story. Kane’s face turned haggard.

Tymball’s very lips had turned bloodless, “We lost out, after all. They’re using tonight’s disturbance to strike the first blow. They’re after Sanat, and they’ll have him. A mouse couldn’t get through the cordon they’re going to throw about the city now.”

“But they mustn’t have him.” Kane’s eyes glittered. “We’ll take him to the Memorial by the Passageway. They won’t dare violate the Memorial.”

“They have done it once already,” came Sanat’s impassioned cry. “I won’t hide from the lizards. Let us fight.”

And as the panel closed noiselessly behind them, leaving them in the cold glow of a pocket Atomo lamp, Tymball muttered softly, “If they are ready, even the Memorial will yield no protection.”

New York was in ferment. The Lhasinuic garrison had mustered its full strength and placed it in a state of siege. No one might enter. No one might leave. Through the key avenues, rolled the ground cars of the army, while overhead poised the Strato-cars that guarded the airways.

The Human population stirred restlessly. They percolated through the streets, gathering in little knots that broke up at the approach of the Lhasinu. The spell of Sanat lingered, and here and there frowning men exchanged angry whispers.

The Viceroy of New York realized that as he sat behind his desk in the Palace, which raised its spires upon Washington Heights. He stared out the window at the Hudson River, flowing darkly beneath, and addressed the uniformed Lhasinu before him.

“There must be positive action. Captain. You are right in that. And yet, if possible, an outright break must be avoided. We are woefully undermanned and we haven’t more than five third-rate war-vessels on the entire planet.”

“It is not our strength but their own fear that keeps them helpless. Excellency. Their spirit has been thoroughly broken in these last centuries. The rabble would break before a single unit of Guardsmen. That is precisely the reason why we must strike hard now. The population has reared and they must feel the whip immediately. The Second Drive may as well begin tonight.”

“Yes,” the Viceroy grimaced wryly. “We are caught offstride, but the-er-rabble-rouser must be made an example of. You have him, of course.”

The captain smiled grimly, “No. The Human dog had powerful friends. He is a Loarist, you know. Kane-”

“Is Kane standing against us?” Two red spots burnt over the Viceroy’s eyes. “The fool presumes! The troops are to arrest the rebel in spite of him--and him, too, if he objects.”

“Excellency!” the captain’s voice rang metallically. “We have reason to believe the rebel may be skulking in the Memorial.”

The Viceroy half-rose to his feet. He scowled in indecision and seated himself once more, “The Memorial! That presents difficulties!”

“There are some things those Humans won’t stand.” His voice trailed off uncertainly.

The Captain spoke decisively, “The nettle seized firmly does not sting. Quickly done-a criminal could be dragged from the Hall of the Flame itself-and we kill Loarism at a stroke. There could be no struggle after that supreme defiance.”

Filip Sanat re-entered the Hall of Flame, thin face set angrily, “The entire Sector is patrolled by the lizards. All avenues of approach to the Memorial have been shut off.”

Russell Tymball rubbed his jaw, “Oh, they’re not fools, They’ve treed us, and the Memorial won’t stop them. As a matter of fact, they may have decided to make this the Day.”

Filip frowned and his voice was thickly furious. “And we’re to wait here, are we? Better to die fighting, than to die hiding.”

Finally, he said, “If you were to give the signal to strike now, Tymball, how long could you hold out?”

“Until Lhasinuic reinforcements could arrive in sufficient numbers to crush us. The Terrestrial garrison, including, the entire Solar Patrol, is not enough to stop us. Without outside help, we can fight effectively for six months at the very least. Unfortunately it’s out of the question.” His composure was unruffled.

And his face reddened suddenly, as he sprang angrily to his feet, “Because you can’t just push buttons. The Lhasinu are weak. My men know that, but Earth doesn’t. The lizards have one weapon, fear! We can’t defeat them, unless the populace is with us, at least passively.” His mouth twisted, “You don’t know the practical difficulties involved. Ten years, now, I’ve been planning, working, trying. I have an army; and a respectable fleet in the Appalachians. I could set the wheels in motion in all five continents simultaneously. But what good would it do? It would be useless. If I had New York, now-if I were able to prove to the rest of Earth that the Lhasinu were not invincible.”

“You will know when it happens.” Kane was smiling fiercely. “And when it does happen, strike!”

There was a Tonite gun in Tymball’s hand suddenly, as he backed away. His plump face was not at all gentle, “I’ll take a chance, Kane. Good-bye 1”

The captain strode up the deserted marble steps of the Memorial arrogantly. He was flanked on each side by an armed adjutant.

He paused an instant before the huge double-door that loomed up before him and stared at the slender pillars that soared gracefully upwards at its sides.

“And mysteriously dark, too, except for the dim yellow of their Flame. You see its light?” He pointed toward the stained glass of the bottom windows, which glinted flickeringly.

“It’s dark, and mysterious, and impressive-and it is about to fall in ruins.” He laughed, and suddenly brought the butt end of his saber down upon the metal carvings on the door in a clanging salvo.

It echoed through the emptiness within and sounded hollowly in the night, but there was no answer.

The adjutant at his left raised his televisor to his ear and caught the faint words issuing therefrom. He saluted, “Captain, the Humans are crowding into the sector.”

The captain sneered, “Let them! Order the guns placed in readiness and aimed along the avenues. Any Human attempting to pass the cordon is to be rayed mercilessly.”

His barked command was murmured into the televisor, and a hundred yards beyond, Lhasinuic Guardsmen put guns in order and aimed them carefully. A low, inchoate murmur went up-a murmur of fear. Men pressed back.

“If the door does not open,” said the captain, grimly, “it is to be broken down.” He raised his saber again, and again there was the thunder of metal on metal.

Slowly, noiselessly, the door yawned wide, and the captain recognized the stem, purple-clad figure that stood before him.

“Who disturbs the Memorial on the night of the Guarding of the Flame?” demanded Loara Paul Kane solemnly.

“Back!” The words rang out loudly and clearly. “The Memorial may not be approached by the Lhasinu.”

“Yield us our prisoner, and we leave. Refuse, and we will take him by force.”

The Lhasinu growled throatily and became aware of a dim roaring. The streets about him were empty, but a block away in every direction was the thin line of Lhasinuic troops, stationed at their guns, and beyond were the Humans. They were massed in noisy thickness and the whites of their faces shone palely in the Chrome-lights.

“What,” gritted the captain to himself, “do the scum yet snarl?” His tough skin ridged at the jaws and the scales upon his head uptilted sharply. He turned to the adjutant with the televisor. “Order a round over their heads.”

The night was split in two by the purple blasts of energy and the Lhasinu laughed aloud at the silence that followed.

He turned to Kane, who remained standing upon the threshold. “So you see that if you expect help from your people, you will be disappointed. The next round will be aimed at head level. If you think that bluff, try me!”

Teeth clicked together sharply, “Make way!” A Tonite was leveled in his hand, and thumb was firm upon the trigger.

Loara Paul Kane retreated slowly, eyes upon the gun. The captain followed. And as he did so, the inner door of the anteroom swung open and the Hall of the Flame stood revealed. In the sudden draft, the Flame staggered, and at the sight of it, there came a huge shout from the distant spectators.

Kane turned toward it, face raised upwards. The motion of one of his hands was all but imperceptible.

And the Flame suddenly changed. It steadied and roared up to the vaulted ceiling, a blazing shaft fifty feet high. Loara Paul Kane’s hand moved again, and as it did so, the Flame turned carmine. The color deepened and the crimson light of that flaming pillar streamed out into the city and turned the Memorial’s windows into staring, bloody eyes.

Long seconds passed, while the captain froze in bewilderment; while the distant mass of Humanity fell into awed silence.

And then there was a confused murmur, which strengthened and grew and split itself into one vast shout.

There was the purple flash of a Tonite from somewhere high above, and the captain came to life an instant too late. Caught squarely, he bent slowly to his death; cold, reptilian face a mask of contempt to the last.

Russell Tymball brought down his gun and smiled sardonically, “A perfect target against the Flame. Good for Kanel The changing of the Flame was just the emotion-stirring thing we needed. Let’s go!”

From the roof of Kane’s dwelling he aimed down upon the Lhasinu below. And as he did, all Hell erupted. Men mushroomed from the very ground, it seemed, weapons in hand. Tonites blazed from every side, before the startled Lhasinu could spring to their triggers.

And when they did so, it was too late, for the mob, white-hot with flaring rage, broke its bounds. Someone shrieked, “Kill the lizards!” and the cry was taken up in one roaring ululation that swelled to the sky.

Like a many-headed monster, the stream of Humanity surged forward, weaponless. Hundreds withered under the belated fury of the defending guns, and tens of thousands scrambled over the corpses, charging to the very muzzles.

The Lhasinu never wavered. Their ranks thinned steadily under the deadly sharp-shooting of the Tymballists, and those that remained were caught by the Human flood that surged over them and tore them to horrible death.

The Memorial sector gleamed in the crimson of the bloody Flame and echoed to the agony of the dying, and the shrieking fury of the triumphant.

It was the first battle of the Great Rebellion, but it was not really a battle, or even madness. It was concentrated anarchy.

Throughout the city, from the tip of Long Island to the mid-Jersey flatlands, rebels sprang from nowhere and Lhasinu went to their death. And as quickly as Tymball’s orders spread to raise the snipers, so did the news of the changing of the Flame speed from mouth to mouth and grow in the telling. All New York heaved, and poured its separate lives into the single giant crucible of the “mob.”

It was uncontrollable, unanswerable, irresistible. The Tymballists followed helplessly where it led, all efforts at direction hopeless from the start.

Like a mighty river, it lashed its way through the metropolis, and where it passed no living Lhasinu remained.

The sun of that fateful morning arose to find the masters of Earth occupying a shrinking circle in upper Manhattan. With the cool courage of born soldiers, they linked arms and withstood the charging, shrieking millions. Slowly, they backed away; each building a skirmish; each block a desperate battle. They split into isolated groups; defending first a building, and then its upper stories, and finally its roof.

With the noonday sun boiling down, only the Palace itself remained. Its last desperate stand held the Humans at bay. The withering circle of fire about it paved the grounds with blackened bodies. The Viceroy himself from his throneroom directed the defense; his own hand upon the butt of a semiportable.

And then, when the mob had finally come to a pause, Tymball seized his opportunity and took the lead. Heavy guns clanked to the front Atomos and delta-rays, from the rebel stock and from the stores captured the previous night, pointed their death-laden muzzles at the Palace.

Gun answered gun, and the first organized battle of machines flared into desperate fury. Tymball was an omnipresent figure, shouting, directing, leaping from gun-emplacement to gun-emplacement, firing his own band Tonite defiantly at the Palace.

Under a barrage of the heaviest fire, the Humans charged once more and pierced to the walls as the defenders fell back. An Atomo projectile smashed its way into the central tower and there was a sudden inferno of fire.

That blaze was the funeral pyre of the last of the Lhasinu in New York. The blackening walls of the palace crumbled in, in one vast crash; but to the very last, room blazing about him, face horribly cut, the Viceroy stood his ground, aiming into the thick of the besieging force. And when his semi-portable expended the last dregs of its power and expired, he heaved it out the window in a last futile gesture of defiance, and plunged into the burning Hell at his back.

Above the Palace grounds at sunset, with a yet-roaring furnace as the background, there floated the green flag of independent Earth.

Russell Tymball was a sorry figure when he entered the Memorial once more that night. Clothes in tatters, and bloody from head to foot from the undressed cut on his cheek, he surveyed the carnage about him with sated eyes.

Volunteer squads, occupied in removing the dead and tending to the wounded had not yet succeeded in making more than a dent in the deadly work of the rebellion.

The Memorial was an improvised hospital. There were few wounded, for energy weapons deal death; and of these few, almost none slightly. It was a scene of indescribable confusion, and the moans of the hurt and dying mingled horribly with the distant yells of celebrating war-drunk survivors.

“The beginning is. The Terrestrial Flag flies over the ruins of the Palace.”

“It was horrible! The day has-has-” He shuddered and closed his eyes, “If I had known in advance, I would rather have seen Earth dehumanized and Loarism destroyed.”

“Yes, it was bad. But the results might have been much more dearly bought, and yet have remained cheap at the price. Where’s Sanat?”

“In the courtyard-helping with the wounded. We all are. It-it-” Again his voice failed him.

There was impatience in Tymball’s eyes, and he shrugged weary shoulders, “I’m not a callous monster, but it had to be done, and as yet it is only the beginning. Today’s events mean little. The uprising has taken place over most of Earth, but without the fanatic enthusiasm of the rebellion in New York. The Lhasinu aren’t defeated, or anywhere near defeated; make no mistake about that Even now the Solar Guard is flashing to Earth, and the forces on the outer planets are being called back. In no time at all, the entire Lhasinuic Empire will converge upon Earth and the reckoning will be a terrible and bloody one. We must have help!”

He grasped Kane by the shoulders and shook him roughly. “Do you understand? We must have help! Even here in New York the first flush of victory will fade by tomorrow. We must have help!”

“I know,” said Kane tonelessly. “I’ll get Sanat and he can leave today.” He sighed, “If today’s action was any criterion of his power as a catalyst, we may expect great events.”

Sanat climbed into the little two-man cruiser half an hour later and took his seat beside Petri at the controls.

He extended his hand to Kane a last time, “When I come back it will be with a navy behind me.”

Kane grasped the young man’s hand tightly, “We depend upon you, Filip.” He paused and said slowly, “Good luck, Loara Filip Sanat!”

Sanat flushed with pleasure at the title as he resumed his seat once more. Petri waved and Tymball called out, “Watch out for the Solar Guard!”

The airlock clanged shut, and then, with a coughing roar, the pigmy cruiser was off into the heavens.

Tymball followed it to where it dwindled into a speck and less and then turned to Kane. “All is now in the hands of Fate. And, Kane, just how was that Changing of the Flame worked? Don’t tell me the Flame turned red of itself.”

Kane shook his head slowly, “No! That carmine blaze was the result of opening a hidden pocket of strontium salts, originally placed there to impress the Lhasinu in case of need. The rest was chemistry.”

Tymball laughed grimly, “You mean the rest was mob psychology! And the Lhasinu, I think, were impressed-and how!”

Space itself gave no warning, but the mass-detector buzzed. It buzzed peremptorily and insistently. Petri stiffened in his seat and said, “We’re in none of the meteor zones.”

Filip Sanat held his breath as the other turned the knob that rotated the peri-rotor. The star-field in the ‘visor shifted with slow dignity, and then they saw it.

It glinted in the sun like half a tiny, orange football, and Petri growled, “If they’ve spotted us, we’re sunk.”

“Ship? That’s no ship! That’s a fifty-thousand ton battle cruiser! What in the Galaxy it’s doing here, I don’t know. Tymball said the Patrol bad made for Earth.”

“Fat chance!” Petri’s fist clenched white on the G-stick. “They’re coming closer.”

The words might have been a signal. The audiomitter jiggled and the harsh Lhasinuic voice started from a whisper and rose to stridence as the radio beam sharpened, “Fire reverse motors and prepare for boarding!”

Petri released the controls and shot a look at Sanat, “I’m only the chauffeur. What do you want to do? We haven’t the chance of a meteor against the sun-but if you like the gamble-”

The other grinned, as the decelerating rockets blasted, “Not bad for a Loarist! Can you shoot a mounted Tonite?”

“Well, then, learn how. Grab that little wheel over there and keep your eye on the small ‘visor above. See anything?” Speed was steadily dropping and the enemy ship was approaching.

“All right, rotate the wheel-go ahead, further. Try the other direction. Do you see the ship now?”

“Good! Now center it. Get it where the hairlines cross, and for the sake of Sol, keep it there. Now I’m going to turn toward the lizard scum,” siderockets blasted as he spoke, “and you keep it centered.”

The Lhasinuic ship was bloating steadily, and Petri’s voice descended to a tense whisper, “I’m dropping our screen and lunging directly at her. It’s a gamble. If they’re sufficiently startled, they may drop their screen and shoot; and if they shoot in a hurry, they may miss.”

“Now the second you see the purple flash of the Tonite, pull back on the wheel. Pull back hard; and pull back fast. If you’re the tiniest trifle late, we’re through.” He shrugged, “It’s a gamble!”

With that, he slammed the G-stick forward hard and shouted, “Keep it centered!”

Acceleration pushed Sanat back gaspingly, and-the wheel in his sweating hands responded reluctantly to pressure. The orange football wobbled at the center of the ‘visor. He could feel his hands trembling, and that didn’t help any. Eyes winced with tension.

The Lhasinuic ship was swelling terribly now, and then, from its prow, a purple sword leaped toward them. Sanat closed his eyes and jerked backwards.

He opened them and started to his feet; for Petri, arms akimbo, was laughing down upon him.

“A beginner’s own luck,” he laughed. “Never held a gun before in his life and knocks out a heavy cruiser in as pretty a pink as I ever saw.”

“Not on the button, but you did disable it. That’s good enough. And now, just as soon as we get far enough away from the sun, we’re going into hyperspace.”

The tall, purple-clad figure standing by the central portview gazed longingly at the silent globe without. It was Earth, huge, gibbous, glorious.

Perhaps his thoughts were just a trifle bitter as he considered the six-month period that had just passed. It had begun with a nova-blaze. Enthusiasm kindled to white heat and spread, leaping the stellar gulfs from planet to planet as fast as the hyper-atomic beam. Squabbling governments, sudden putty before the outraged clamoring of their peoples, outfitted fleets. Enemies of centuries made sudden peace and flew under the same green flag of Earth.

Perhaps it would have been too much to expect this love-feast to continue. While it did the Humans were irresistible, One fleet was not two parsecs from Vega itself; another had captured Luna and hovered one light-second above the Earth, where Tymball’s ragged revolutionaries still held on doggedly.

Filip Sanat sighed and turned at the sound of a step. White-haired Ion Smitt of the Lactonian contingent entered.

Sanat turned away again, “Did you know that we’ve gotten word from Tymball today? They’re fighting on what they can filch from the Lhasinu. The lizards have captured Buenos Aires, and all South America seems likely to go under their heel. They’re disheartened-the Tymballists-and disgusted, and I am, too.” He whirled suddenly, “You say that our new needle-ships insure victory. Then, why don’t we attack?”

“Well, for one thing,” the grizzled soldier planted one booted leg on the chair next to him, “the reinforcements from Santanni are not coming.”

“The Santannian government has decided its fleet is required for home defense.” A wry smile accompanied his words.

“What home defense? Why, the Lhasinu are five hundred parsecs away from them.”

Smitt shrugged, “An excuse is an excuse and need not make sense. I didn’t say that was the real reason.”

Sanat brushed his hair back and his fingers strayed to the yellow sun upon his shoulder, “Even so! We could still fight, with over a hundred ships. The enemy outnumbers us two to one, but with the needle-ships and with Lunar Base at our backs and the rebels harassing them in the rear-” He fell into a brooding reverie.

“You won’t get them to fight, Filip. The Trantorian squadron favors retreat.” His voice was suddenly savage, “Of the entire fleet, I can trust only the twenty ships of my own squadron-the Lactonian. Oh, Filip, you don’t know the dirt of it-you never have known. You’ve won the people to the Cause, but you’ve never won the governments. Popular opinion forced them in, but now that they are in, they’re in only for what they can get.”

“Victory? Victory for whom? It is exactly over that bone that the planets are squabbling. At a secret convention of the nations, Santanni demanded control of all the Lhasinuic worlds of the Sirius sector-none of which have been recognized as yet-and was refused. Ah, you didn’t know that Consequently, she decides that she must take care of her home defense, and withdraws her various squadrons.”

Filip Sanat turned away in pain, but Ion Smitt’s voice hammered on, hard, unmerciful.

“And then Trantor realizes that she hates and fears Santanni more than ever she did the Lhasinu and any day now she will withdraw her fleet to refrain from crippling them while her enemy’s ships remain quietly and safely in port. The Human nations are falling apart,” the soldier’s fist came down upon the table, “like rotten cloth. It was a fool’s dream to think that the selfish idiots could ever unite for any worthy purpose long.”

Sanat’s eyes were suddenly calculating slits, “Wait a while! Things will yet work out all right, if we can only manage to seize control of Earth. Earth is the key to the whole situation.” His fingers drummed upon the table edge. “Its capture would provide the vital spark. It would drum up Human enthusiasm, now lagging, to the boiling point, and the Governments,-well, they would either have to ride the wave, or be dashed to pieces.”

“I know that. If we fought today, you have a soldier’s word we’d be on Earth tomorrow. They realize it, too, but they won’t fight”

“Then-then they must be made to fight. The only way they can be made to fight is to leave no alternative. They won’t fight now, because they can retreat whenever they wish, but if-”

He suddenly looked up, face aglow, “You know, I haven’t been out of the Loarist tunic in years. Do you suppose your clothes will fit me?”

Ion Smitt looked down upon his ample girth and grinned, “Well, they might not fit you, but they’ll cover you all right.

“I’ll tell you. It’s a terrible chance, but- Relay the following orders immediately to the Lunar Base garrison-”

The admiral of the Lhasinuic Solar squadron was a warscarred veteran who hated two things above all else: Humans and civilians. The combination, in the person of the tall, slender Human in ill-fitted clothing, put a scowl of dislike upon his face.

Sanat wriggled in the grasp of the two Lhasinuic soldiers. “Tell them to let go,” he cried in the Vegan tongue. “I am unarmed.”

“Speak,” ordered the admiral in English. “They do not understand your language.” Then, in Lhasinuic to the soldiers, “Shoot when I give the word.”

“I judged as much when you hoisted the white flag. Yet you come in a one-man cruiser from the night side of your own fleet, like a fugitive. Surely, you cannot speak for your fleet.”

“Then I give you one minute. If I am not interested by the end of that time, you will be shot.” His expression was stony.

Sanat tried once more to free himself, with little success. His captors tightened their grips.

“Your situation,” said the Earthman, “is this. You can’t attack the Human squadron as long as they control Lunar Base, without serious damage to your own fleet, and you can’t risk that with a hostile Earth behind you. At the same time, I happen to know that the order from Vega is to drive the Humans from the Solar System at all costs, and that the Emperor dislikes failures.”

“You have ten seconds left,” said the admiral, but tell-tale red spots appeared above his eyes.

“All right, then,” came the hurried response, “how’s this? What if I offer you the entire Human Fleet caught in a trap?”

There was silence. Sanat went on, “What if I show you how you can take over Lunar Base, and surround the Humans?”

“Go on!” It was the first sign of interest the admiral had permitted himself.

“I am in command of one of the squadrons and I have certain powers. If you’ll agree to our terms, we can have the Base deserted within twelve hours. Two ships,” the Human raised two fingers impressively, “will take it”

“Interesting,” said the Lhasinu, slowly, “but your motive? What is your reason for doing this?”

Sanat thrust out a surly under-lip, “That would not interest you. I have been ill-treated and deprived of my rights. Besides,” his eyes glittered, “Humanity’s is a lost cause, anyway. For this I shall expect payment-ample payment. Swear to that, and the fleet is yours.”

The admiral glared his contempt “There is a Lhasinuic proverb: The Human is steadfast in nothing but his treachery. Arrange your treason, and I shall repay. I swear by the word of a Lhasinuic soldier. You may return to your ships.”

With a motion, he dismissed the soldiers and then stopped them at the doorway, “But remember, I risk two ships. They mean little as far as my fleet’s strength is concerned, but, nevertheless, if harm comes to a Lhasinuic head through Human treachery-” The scales on his head were stiffly erect and Sanat’s eyes dropped beneath the other’s cold stare.

For a long while, the admiral sat alone and motionless. Then he spat ‘This Human filth! It is a disgrace even to fight them!”

The Flagship of the Human fleet lazed one hundred miles above Luna, and within it the captains of the Squadrons sat about the table and listened to Ion Smitt’s shouted indictment.

“-I tell you your actions amount to treason. The battle off Vega is progressing, and if the Lhasinu win, their Solar squadron will be strengthened to the point where we must retreat. And if the Humans win, our treachery here exposes their flank and renders the victory worthless. We can win, I tell you. With these new needle-ships-”

The sleepy-eyed Trantorian leader spoke up. “The needleships have never been tried before. We cannot risk a major battle on an experiment, when the odds are against us.”

“That wasn’t your original view, Porcut. You-yes, and the rest of you as well-are a cowardly traitor. Cowards! Cravens!”

A chair crashed backwards as one arose in anger and others followed. Loara Filip Sanat, from his vantage-point at the central port, from where he watched the bleak landscape of Luna below with devouring concentration, turned in alarm. But Jem Porcut raised a gnarled hand for order.

“Let’s stop fencing,” he said. “I represent Trantor, and I take orders only from her. We have eleven ships here, and Space knows how many at Vega. How many has Santanni got? None! Why is she keeping them at home? Perhaps to take advantage of Trantor’s preoccupation. Is there anyone who hasn’t heard of her designs against us? We’re not going to destroy our ships here for her benefit. Trantor will not fight! My division leaves tomorrow! Under the circumstances, the Lhasinu will be glad to let us go in peace.”

Another spoke up, “And Poritta, too. The treaty of Draconis has hung like neutronium around our neck these twenty years. The imperialist planets refuse revision, and we will not fight a war which is to their interest only.”

One after another, surly exclamations dinned the perpetual refrain, “Our interests are against it! We will not fight!”

And suddenly, Loara Filip Sanat smiled. He had turned away from Luna and laughed at the snarling arguers.

The room was a babble of dismay. Shouting confusion held sway and then one roared above the rest, “What of the garrison?”

“The garrison had destroyed the fortifications and evacuated hours before the Lhasinu took over. The enemy met with no resistance.”

The silence that followed was much more terrifying than the cries that had preceded. “Treason,” whispered someone.

“Who is at the bottom of this?” One by one they approached Sanat. Fists clenched. Faces flushed. “Who did this?”

A moment of stunned disbelief. “Dog!” “Pig of a Loarist!” “Tear his guts out!”

And then they shrank back at the pair of Tonite guns that appeared in Ion Smitt’s fists. The burly Lactonian stepped before the younger man.

“I was in on this, too,” he snarled. “You’ll have to fight now. It is necessary to fight fire with fire sometimes, and Sanat fought treason with treason.”

Jem Porcut regarded his knuckles carefully and suddenly chuckled, “Well, we can’t wriggle out now, so we might as well fight. Except for orders, I wouldn’t mind taking a crack at the damn lizards.”

The reluctant pause was followed by shamefaced shouts- proof-positive of the willingness of the rest.

In two hours, the Lhasinuic demand for surrender had been scornfully rejected and the hundred ships of the Human squadron spread outwards on the expanding surface of an imaginary sphere-the standard defense formation of a surrounded fleet-and the Battle for Earth was on.

A space-battle between approximately equal forces resembles in almost every detail a gigantic fencing match in which controlled shafts of deadly radiation are the rapiers and impermeable walls of etheric inertia are the shields.

The two forces advance to battle and maneuver for position. Then the pale purple of a Tonite beam lashes out in a blaze of fury against the screen of an enemy ship, and in so doing, its own screen is forced to blink out. For that one instant it is vulnerable and is a perfect target for an enemy ray, which, when loosed, renders its ship open to attack for the moment. In widening circles, it spreads. Each unit of the fleet, combining speed of mechanism with speed of human reaction, attempts to slip through at the crucial moment and yet maintain its own safety.

Loara Filip Sanat knew all this and more. Since his encounter with the battle cruiser on the way out from Earth, he had studied space war, and now, as the battle fleets fell into line, he felt his very fingers twitch for action.

Smitt’s eye was on the grand ‘visor, his hand on the etherwave sender, “Go ahead, if you wish, but don’t get in the way.”

Sanat smiled. The captain’s private elevator carried him to the gun levels, and from there it was five hundred feet through an orderly mob of gunners and engineers to Tonite One. Space is at a premium in a battleship. Sanat could feel the crampedness of the room in which individual Humans dovetailed their work smoothly to create the gigantic machine that was a giant dreadnaught.

He mounted the six steep steps to Tonite One and motioned the gunner away. The gunner hesitated; his eye fell upon the purple tunic, and then he saluted and backed reluctantly down the steps.

Sanat turned to the co-ordinator at the gun’s visiplate, “Do • you mind working with me? My speed of reaction has been tested and grouped 1-A. I have my rating card, if you’d care to see it.”

The co-ordinator flushed and stammered, “No, sir! It’s an honor to work with you, sir.”

The amplifying system thundered, “To your stations!” and a deep silence fell, in which the cold purr of machinery sounded its ominous note.

Sanat spoke to the co-ordinator in a whisper, “This gun covers a full quadrant of space, doesn’t it?”

“Good, see if you can locate a dreadnaught with the sign of a double sun in partial eclipse.”

There was a long silence. The co-ordinator’s sensitive hands were on the Wheel, delicate pressure turning it this way and that, so that the field in view on the visiplate shifted. Keen eyes scanned the ordered array of enemy ships.

As the Wheel turned, the space-field reeled, and the enemy flagship wobbled toward the point where the hairlines crossed. The pressure of the co-ordinator’s fingers became lighter and more expert.

“Centered!” he said. Where the hairlines crossed the tiny oval globe remained impaled.

“Keep it that way!” ordered Sanat, grimly. “Don’t lose it for a second as long as it stays in our quadrant. The enemy admiral is on that ship and we’re going to get him, you and I.”

The ships were getting within range of each other and Sanat felt tense. He knew it was going to be close-very close. The Humans had the edge in speed, but the Lhasinu were two to one in numbers.

“First hit,” breathed Sanat. He relaxed. One of the enemy ships drifted off helplessly, its stem a mass of fused and glowing metal.

The opposing ships were not at close grips. Shots were being exchanged at blinding speed. Twice, a purple beam showed at the extreme limits of the visiplate and Sanat realized with a queer sort of shiver down his spine that it was one of the adjacent Tonites of their own ship that was firing.

The fencing match was approaching a climax. Two flashes blazed into being, almost simultaneously, and Sanat groaned. One of the two had been a Human ship. And three times there came that disquieting hum as Atomo-engines in the lower level shot into high gear-and that meant that an enemy beam directed at their own ship had been stopped by the screen.

And, always, the co-ordinator kept the enemy flagship centered. An hour passed; an hour in which six Lhasinu and four Human ships had been whiffed to destruction; an hour in which the Wheel turned fractions of a degree this way, that way; in which it swivelled on its universal socket mere hairlines in half a dozen directions.

Sweat matted the co-ordinator’s hair and got into his eyes; his fingers half-lost all sensation, but that flagship never left the ominous spot where the hairlines crossed.

Twice the flagship had glowed into purple luminosity, its guns blazing and its defensive screen down; and twice Sanat’s finger had quivered on the trigger and refrained. He hadn’t been quick enough.

And then Sanat rammed it home and rose to his feet tensely. The co-ordinator yelled and dropped the Wheel.

In a gigantic funeral pyre of purple-hued energy, the flagship with the Lhasinuic Admiral inside had ceased to exist.

Sanat laughed. His hand went out, and the co-ordinator’s came to meet it in a firm grasp of triumph.

But the triumph did not last long enough for the co-ordinator to speak the first jubilant words that were welling up in his throat, for the visiplate burst into a purple bombshell as five Human ships detonated simultaneously at the touch of deadly energy shafts.

The amplifiers thundered, “Up screens! Cease firing! Ease into Needle formation!”

Sanat felt the deadly pall of uncertainty squeeze his throat. He knew what had happened. The Lhasinu had finally managed to set up their big guns on Lunar Base; big guns with three times the range of even the largest ship guns-big guns that could pick off Human ships with no fear of reprisal.

And so the fencing match was over, and the real battle was to start. But it was to be a real battle of a type never before fought, and Sanat knew that that was the thought in every man’s mind. He could see it in their grim expressions and feel it in their silence.

The Earth squadron had resumed its spherical formation and drifted slowly outwards, its offensive batteries silent. The Lhasinu swept in for the kill. Cut off from power supply as the Earthmen were, and unable to retaliate with the gigantic guns of the Lunar batteries commanding near-by space, it seemed only a matter of time before either surrender or annihilation.

The enemy Tonite beams lashed out in continuous blasts of energy, and tortured screens on Human ships sparked and fluoresced under the harsh whips of radiation.

Sanat could hear the buzz of the Atomo-engines rise to a protesting squeal. Against his will, his eye flicked to the energy gauge, and the quivering needle sank as he watched, moving down the dial at perceptible speed.

“Certainly!” Sanat was far from feeling his expressed confidence. “We need hold out for an hour-provided they don’t fall back.”

And the Lhasinu didn’t. To have fallen back would have meant a thinning of the lines, with a possible break-through and escape on the part of the Humans.

The Human ships were down to crawling speed-scarcely above a hundred miles an hour. Idling along, they crept up the purple beams of energy, the imaginary sphere increasing in size, the distance between the opposing forces ever narrowing.

But inside the ship, the gauge-needle was dropping rapidly, and Sanat’s heart dropped with it. He crossed the gun level to where hard-bitten soldiers waited at a gigantic and gleaming lever, in anticipation of an order that had to come soon-or never.

The distance between opponents was now only a matter of one or two miles-almost contact from the viewpoint of space warfare-and then that order shot over the shielded etheric beams from ship to ship.

A score of hands reached for the lever, Sanat’s among them, and jerked downwards. Majestically, the lever bent in a curving are to the floor and as it did so, there was a vast scraping noise and a sharp thud that shook the ship.

At the prow, a section of armor plate had slid aside and a glittering shaft of metal had lunged outward viciously. One hundred feet long, it narrowed gracefully from a base ten feet in diameter to a needle-sharp diamond point. In the sunlight, the chrome-steel of the shaft gleamed in flaming splendor.

And every other ship of the Human squadron was likewise equipped. Each had become ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty thousand tons of driving rapier.

Somewhere in the Lhasinuic fleet, frantic orders must have been issued. Against this Oldest of all naval tactics-old even in the dim dawn of history when rival triremes had maneuvered and rammed each other to destruction with pointed prows-the super-modem equipment of a space-fleet has no defense.

Sanat forced his way to the visiplate and strapped himself into an anti-acceleration seat, and he felt the springs absorb the backward jerk as the ship sprang into sudden acceleration.

He didn’t bother with that, though. He wanted to watch the battle! There wasn’t one here, nor anywhere in the Galaxy, that risked what he did. They risked only their lives; and he risked a dream that he had, almost single-handed, created out of nothing.

He had taken an apathetic Galaxy and driven it into revolt against the reptile. He had taken an Earth on the point of destruction and dragged it from the brink, almost unaided. A Human victory would be a victory for Loara Filip Sanat and no one else.

He, and Earth, and the Galaxy were now lumped into one and thrown into the scale. And against it was weighed the outcome of this last battle, a battle hopelessly lost by his own purposeful treachery, unless the needles won.

The Lhasinuic ships were jumping aside, but not fast enough. While they were slowly gathering momentum and drifting away, the Human ships had cut the distance by three quarters. On the screen, a Lhasinuic ship had grown to colossal proportions. Its purple whip of energy had gone out as every ounce of power had gone into a man-killing attempt at rapid acceleration.

And nevertheless its image grew and the shining point that could be seen at the lower end of the screen aimed like a glittering javelin at its heart.

Sanat felt he could not bear the tension. Five minutes and he would take his place as the Galaxy’s greatest hero-or its greatest traitor! There was a horrible, unbearable pounding of blood in his temples.

The screen went wild in a chaotic fury of twisted metal. The anti-acceleration seats shrieked as springs absorbed the shock. Things cleared slowly. The screenview veered wildly as the ship slowly steadied. The ship’s needle had broken, the jagged stump twisted awry, but the enemy vessel it had pierced was a gutted wreck.

Sanat held his breath as he scanned space. It was a vast sea of wrecked ships, and on the outskirts tattered remnants of the enemy were in flight, with Human ships in pursuit.

There was the sound of colossal cheering behind him and a pair of strong hands on his shoulders.

He turned. It was Smitt-Smitt, the veteran of five wars, with tears in his eyes.

“Filip,” he said, “we’ve won. We’ve just received word from Vega. The Lhasinuic Home Fleet has been smashed- and also with the needles. The war is over, and we’ve woo

His grip was painful, but Loara Filip Sanat did not mind that. For a single, ecstatic moment, he stood motionless, face transfigured.

For some reason, possibly because of the awful title, for which I emphatically disclaim responsibility, “Black Friar of the Flame” is taken as the quintessence of my early incompetence. At least, fans who come across a copy think they can embarrass me by referring to it.

For one thing, it is an obvious precursor to my successful “Foundation” series. In “Black Friar of the Flame,” as in the “Foundation” series, human beings occupy many planets; and two worlds mentioned in the former, Trantor and Santanni, also play important roles in the latter. (Indeed, the first of the “Foundation” series was to appear only a couple of months after “Black Friar of the Flame,” thanks to the delay in selling the latter.)

Furthermore, there is also a strong suggestion in “Black Friar of the Flame” of my first book-length novel. Pebble in the Sky, which was to appear eight years later. In both, the situation I pictured on Earth was inspired by that of Judea under the Romans. The climactic battle in “Black Friar of the Flame,” however, was inspired by that of the Battle of Salamis, the great victory of the Greeks over the Persians. (In telling future-history I always felt it wisest to be guided by past-history. This was true in the “Foundation” series, too.)

“Black Friar of the Flame” cured me forever, by the way, of attempting repeated revisions. There may well be a connection between the consensus that the story is a poor one and the fact that it was revised six times. I know that there are writers who revise and revise and revise, polishing everything to a high gloss, but I can’t do that.

It is my habit now to begin by typing a first draft without an outline. I compose freely on the typewriter though I am frequently questioned about this by readers who seem to think an initial draft can be only in pencil. Actually, writing by hand begins to hurt my wrist after fifteen minutes or so, is very slow, and is hard to read. I can type, on the other hand, ninety words a minute and keep that up for hours without difficulty. As for outlines, I tried one once and it was disastrous, like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket.

Having completed the first draft, I go over it and correct it in pen and ink. I then retype the whole thing as the final copy. I revise no more, of my own volition. If ah editor asks for a clearly defined revision of a minor nature, with the philosophy of which I agree, I oblige. A request for a major, top-to-bottom revision, or a second revision after the first, is another matter altogether. Then I do refuse.

This is not out of arrogance or temperament. It is just that too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process. (Doing a revision is something like chewing used gum.) Failures are therefore put to one side and held for possible sale elsewhere-for what is a failure to one editor is not necessarily a failure to another.

About the time I was working on “Black Friar of the Flame” I was becoming enmeshed in fan activities. I had joined an organization called “The Futurians,” which contained a group of ardent science fiction readers, almost all of whom were to become important in the field as writers or editors or both. Included among them were Frederik Pohl, Donald A. Wollheim, Cyril Kornbluth, Richard Wilson, Damon Knight, and so on.

As I had occasion to say before, I became particularly friendly with Pohl. During the spring and summer of 1939, he visited me periodically, looking over my manuscripts and announcing that I had the “best bunch of rejected stories” he had ever seen.

The possibility began to arise that he might be my agent. He was no older than myself, but he had a great deal more practical experience with editors and knew a great deal more about the field. I was tempted, but was afraid this might mean I would not be allowed to see Campbell any more, and I valued my monthly visits with him too much to risk it.

In May 1939 I wrote a story I called “Robbie,” and on the twenty-third of that month I submitted it to Campbell. It was the first robot story I had ever written and it contained the germ of what later came to be known as the “Three Laws of Robotics.” Fred read my carbon and at once said it was a good story but that Campbell would reject it because it had a weak ending plus other shortcomings. Campbell did reject it on June 6, for precisely the reasons Pohl had given me.

I was very impressed by that, and any hesitation I had with respect to letting him represent me vanished-but I specified that his agentship must be confined to editors other than Campbell.

I gave him “Robbie” after the rejection, but he didn’t succeed in selling it either, though he even submitted it to a British science fiction magazine (something I would myself never have thought of doing). In October 1939, however, he himself became editor of Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories, and he therefore ceased being my agent. [A decade later he became my agent again for a few years. I never enjoyed being represented, however, and except for Pohl on these two occasions, I have never had an agent, despite the vast and complicated nature of my writing commitments. Nor do I intend ever having one.]

On March 25, 1940, however, he did as editor what he couldn’t do as agent. He placed the story-by taking it himself.

It appeared in Super Science Stories under a changed title. (Pohl was always changing titles.) He called the story “Strange Playfellow,” a miserable choice, in my opinion. Eventually the story was included as the first of the nine connected “positronic robot” series that made up my book I, Robot. In the book, I restored the/title to the original “Robbie,” and it has appeared as “Robbie” in every form in which the story has been published since.

Fifteen years later, a daughter was born to me. She was named Robyn and I call her Robbie. I have been asked more than once whether there is a connection. Did I deliberately give her a name close to “robot” because I made such a success of my robot stories? The answer is a flat negative. The whole thing is pure coincidence.

One more thing- In the course of my meeting with Campbell on June 6, 1939 (the one in which he rejected “Robbie”), I met a by then quite well established science fiction writer, L. Sprague de Camp. That started a close friendship -perhaps my closest within the science fiction fraternity-• that has continued to this day.

In June 1939 I wrote “Half-Breed” and decided to give Fred Pohl a fair chance. I did not submit it to Campbell, but gave it to Pohl directly to see what he could do with it. He tried Amazing, which rejected it. So I took it back and tried Campbell in the usual direct fashion. Campbell rejected it, too.

When Pohl became an editor, however, he announced the fact to me (on October 27, 1939) by saying that he was taking “Half-Breed.” In later months he also took first “Robbie,” then “The Callistan Menace.” He bought seven stories from me altogether during his editorial tenure.

Half-Breed

Jefferson Scanlon wiped a perspiring brow and took a deep breath. With trembling finger, he reached for the switch-and changed his mind. His latest model, representing over three months of solid work, was very nearly his last hope. A good part of the fifteen thousand dollars he had been able to borrow was in it. And now the closing of a switch would show whether he won or lost

Scanlon cursed himself for a coward and grasped the switch firmly. He snapped it down and flicked it open again with one swift movement. And nothing happened-his eyes, strain though they might, caught no flash of surging power. The pit of his stomach froze, and he closed the switch again, savagely, and left it closed. Nothing happened: the machine, again, was a failure.

He buried his aching head in his hands, and groaned. “Oh, God! It should work-it should. My math is right and I’ve produced the fields I want. By every law of science, those fields should crack the atom.” He arose, opening the useless switch, and paced the floor in deep thought.

His theory was right. His equipment was cut neatly to the pattern of his equations. If the theory was right, the equipment must be wrong. But the equipment was right, so the theory must... . “I’m getting out of here before I go crazy,” he said to the four walls.

He snatched his hat and coat from the peg behind the door and was out of the house in a whirlwind of motion, slamming the door behind him in a gust of fury. ‘

The two words repeated themselves over and over again, singing a monotonous, maddening song in his brain. A siren song! It was luring him to destruction; for this dream he had given up a safe and comfortable professorship at M.I.T. For it, he had become a middle-aged man at thirty-the first flush of youth long gone,-an apparent failure.

And now his money was vanishing rapidly. If the love of money is the root of all evil, the need of money is most certainly the root of all despair. Scanlon smiled a little at the thought-rather neat.

Of course, there were the beautiful prospects in store if he could ever bridge the gap he had found between theory and practice. The whole world would be his-Mars too, and even the unvisited planets. All his. All he had to do was to find out what was wrong with his mathematics-no, he’d checked that, it was in the equipment. Although- He groaned aloud once more.

The gloomy train of his thoughts was broken as he suddenly became aware of a tumult of boyish shouts not far off. Scanlon frowned. He hated noise especially when he was in the dumps.

The shouts became louder and dissolved into scraps of words, “Get him, Johnny!” “Whee-look at him run!”

A dozen boys careened out from behind a large frame building, not two hundred yards away, and ran pell-mell in Scanlon’s general direction.

In spite of himself, Scanlon regarded the yelling group curiously. They were chasing something or other, with the heartless glee of children. In the dimness he couldn’t make out just what it was. He screened his eyes and squinted. A sudden motion and a lone figure disengaged itself from the crowd and ran frantically.

Scanlon almost dropped his solacing pipe in astonishment, for the fugitive was a Tweenie-an Earth-Mars half-breed. There was no mistaking that brush of wiry, dead-white hair that rose stiffly in all directions like porcupine-quills. Scanlon marvelled-what was one of those things doing outside an asylum?

The boys had caught up with the Tweenie again, and the fugitive was lost to sight. The yells increased in volume, Scanlon, shocked, saw a heavy board rise and fall with a thud. A profound sense of the enormity of his own actions in standing idly by while a helpless creature was being hounded by a crew of gamins came to him, and before he quite realized it he was charging down upon them, fists waving threateningly in the air.

“Seat, you heathens! Get out of here before I-” the point of his foot came into violent contact with the seat of the nearest hoodlum, and his arms sent two more tumbling.

The entrance of the new force changed the situation considerably. Boys, whatever their superiority in numbers, have an instinctive fear of adults,-especially such a shouting, ferocious adult as Scanlon appeared to be. In less time than it took Scanlon to realize it they were gone, and he was left alone with the Tweenie, who lay half-prone, and who between panting sobs cast fearful and uncertain glances at his deliverer.

“No, sir.” The Tweenie rose unsteadily, his high silver crest of hair swaying incongruously. “I twisted my ankle a bit, but I can walk. I’ll go now. Thank you very much for helping me.”

“Hold on! Wait!” Scanlon’s voice was much softer, for it dawned on him that the Tweenie, though almost full-grown, was incredibly gaunt; that his clothes were a mere mass of dirty rags; and that there was a heart-rending look of utter weariness on his thin face.

“Here,” he said, as the Tweenie turned towards him again, “‘Are you hungry?”

The Tweenie’s face twisted as though he were fighting a battle within himself. When he spoke it was in a low, embarrassed voice. “Yes-I am, a little.”

“You look it. Come with me to my house,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You ought to eat Looks like you can do with a wash and a change of clothes, too.” He turned and led the way.

He didn’t speak again until he had opened his front door and entered the hall. “I think you’d better take a bath first, boy. There’s the bathroom. Hurry into it and lock the door before Beulah sees you.”

His admonition came too late. A sudden, startled gasp caused Scanlon to whirl about, the picture of guilt, and the Tweenie to shrink backwards into the shadow of a hat-rack.

Beulah, Seanlon’s housekeeper, scurried towards them, her mild face aflame with indignation and her short, plump body exuding exasperation at every pore.

“Jefferson Scanlon! Jefferson!” She glared at the Tweenie with shocked disgust. “How can you bring such a thing into this house! Have you lost your sense of morals?”

The poor Tweenie was washed away with the flow of her anger, but Scanlon, after his first momentary panic, collected himself. “Come come, Beulah. This isn’t like you. Here’s a poor fellow-creature, starved, tired, beaten by a crowd of boys, and you have no pity for him. I’m really disappointed in you, Beulah.”

“Disappointed!” sniffed the housekeeper, though touched. “Because of that disgraceful thing. He should be in an institution where they keep such monsters!”

“All right, we’ll talk about it later. Go ahead, boy, take your bath. And, Beulah, see if you can’t rustle up some old clothes of mine.”

“Don’t mind her, boy,” Scanlon said when she left “She was my nurse once and she still has a sort of proprietary interest in me. She won’t harm you. Go take your bath.”

The Tweenie was a different person altogether when he finally seated himself at the dining-room table. Now that the layer of grime was removed, there was something quite handsome about his thin face, and his high, clear forehead gave him a markedly intellectual look. His hair still stood erect, a foot tall, in spite of the moistening it had received. In the light its brilliant whiteness took an imposing dignity, and to Scanlon it seemed to lose all ugliness.

“Then pitch in. And when you finish that, you can have more. Take anything on the table.”

The Tweenie’s eyes glistened as he set his jaws to work; and, between the two of them, the table was bare in a few minutes.

“Well, now,” exclaimed Scanlon when the repast had reached its end, “I think you might answer some questions now. What’s your name?”

The Tweenie shrugged his shoulders. “They never called me anything but Max-when they spoke to me at all. I don’t suppose a half-breed needs a name.” There was no mistaking the bitterness in his voice.

“But what were you doing running wild through the country? Why aren’t you where you live?”

“I was in a home. Anything is better than being in a home-even the world outside, which I had never seen. Especially after Tom died.”

“He was the only other one like me. He was younger- fifteen-but he died.” He looked up from the table, fury in his eyes. “They killed him, Mr. Scanlon. He was such a young fellow, and so friendly. He couldn’t stand being alone the way I could. He needed friends and fun, and-all he had was me. No one else would speak to him, because he was a half-breed. And when he died I couldn’t stand it anymore either. I left”

“They meant to be kind. Max. You shouldn’t have done that You’re not like other people; they don’t understand you. And they must have done something for you. You talk as though you’ve had some education.”

“I could attend classes, all right,” he assented gloomily. “But I had to sit in a corner away from all the others. They let me read all I wanted, though, and I’m thankful for that.”

Max lifted his head and stared at the other suspiciously. “You’re not going to send me back, are you?” He half rose, as though ready for instant flight.

Scanlon coughed uneasily. “Of course, if you don’t want to go back I won’t make you. But it would be the best thing for you.”

“Well, have it your own way. Anyway, I think you’d better go to sleep now. You need it. We’ll talk in the morning.”

He led the still suspicious Tweenie up to the second floor, and pointed out a small bedroom. “That’s yours for the night I’ll be in the next room later on, and if you need anything just shout.” He turned to leave, then thought of something. “But remember, you mustn’t try to run away during the night”

Scanlon retired thoughtfully to the room he called his study. He lit a dim lamp and seated himself in a worn armchair. For ten minutes he sat without moving, and for the first time in six years thought about something besides his dream of atomic power.

A quiet knock sounded, and at his grunted acknowledgment Beulah entered. She was frowning, her lips pursed. She planted herself firmly before him.

“Oh, Jefferson! To think that you should do this! If your dear mother knew...”

“Sit down, Beulah,” Scanlon waved at another chair, “and don’t worry about my mother. She wouldn’t have minded.”

“No. Your father was a good-hearted simpleton, too. You’re just like him, Jefferson. First you spend all your money on silly machines that might blow the house up any day-and now you pick up that awful creature from the streets. . . . Tell me, Jefferson,” there was a solemn and fearful pause, “are you thinking of keeping it?”

Scanlon smiled moodily. “I think I am, Beulah. I can’t very well do anything else.”

A week later Scanlon was in his workshop. During the night before, his brain, rested by the change in the monotony brought about by the presence of Max, had thought of a possible solution to the puzzle of why his machine wouldn’t work. Perhaps some of the parts were defective, he thought. Even a very slight flaw in some of the parts could render the machine inoperative.

He plunged into work ardently. At the end of half an hour the machine lay scattered on his workbench, and Scanlon was sitting on a high stool, eying it disconsolately.

He scarcely heard the door softly open and close. It wasn’t until the intruder had coughed twice that the absorbed inventor realized another was present.

“Oh-it’s Max.” His abstracted gaze gave way to recognition. “Did you want to see me?”

“If you’re busy I can wait, Mr. Scanlon.” The week had not removed his shyness. “But there were a lot of books in my room. . .”

“Books? Oh, I’ll have them cleaned out, if you don’t want them. I don’t suppose you do,-they’re mostly textbooks, as I remember. A bit too advanced for you just now.”

“Oh, it’s not too difficult,” Max assured him. He pointed to a book he was carrying. “I just wanted you to explain a bit here in Quantum Mechanics. There’s some math with Integral Calculus that I don’t quite understand. It bothers me. Here- wait till I find it.”

He ruffled the pages, but stopped suddenly as he became aware of his surroundings. “Oh say-are you breaking up your model?”

The question brought the hard facts back to Scanlon at a bound. He smiled bitterly. “No, not yet. I just thought there might be something wrong with the insulation or the connections that kept it from functioning. There isn’t-I’ve made a mistake somewhere.”

“That’s too bad, Mr. Scanlon.” The Tweenie’s smooth brow wrinkled mournfully.

“The worst of it is that I can’t imagine what’s wrong. I’m positive the theory’s perfect-I’ve checked every way I can. I’ve gone over the mathematics time and time again, and each time it says the same thing. Space-distortion fields of such and such an intensity will smash the atom to smithereens. Only they don’t.”

Scanlon gazed at his ward quizzically, but could see nothing in his face other than the most serious interest He shrugged his shoulders. “There they are-under that ream of yellow paper on the desk. I don’t know if you can read them, though. I’ve been too lazy to type them out, and my handwriting is pretty bad.”

Max scrutinized them carefully and flipped the sheets one by one. “It’s a bit over my head, I guess.”

He looked around the littered room, and a sudden sense of anger came over him. Why wouldn’t the thing work? Abruptly he got up and snatched his coat “I’m going out of here. Max,” he said. “Tell Beulah not to make me anything hot for lunch. It would be cold before I got back.”

It was afternoon when he opened the front door, and hunger was sharp enough to prevent him from realizing with a puzzled start that someone was at work in his laboratory. There came to his ears a sharp buzzing sound followed by a momentary silence and then again the buzz which this time merged into a sharp crackling that lasted an instant and was gone.

He bounded down the hall and threw open the laboratory door. The sight that met his eyes froze him into an attitude of sheer astonishment-stunned incomprehension.

Slowly, he understood the message of his senses. His precious atomic motor had been put together again, but this time in a manner so strange as to be senseless, for even his trained eye could see no reasonable relationship among the various parts.

He wondered stupidly if it were a nightmare or a practical joke, and then everything became clear to him at one bound, for there at the other end of the room was the unmistakable sight of a brush of silver hair protruding from above a bench, swaying gently from side to side as the hidden owner of the brush moved.

“Max!” shouted the distraught inventor, in tones of fury. Evidently the foolish boy had allowed his interest to inveigle him into idle and dangerous experiments.

At the sound, Max lifted a pale face which upon the sight of his guardian turned a dull red. He approached Scanlon with reluctant steps.

“What have you done?” cried Scanlon, staring about him angrily. “Do you know what you’ve been playing with? There’s enough juice running through this thing to electrocute you twice over.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Scanlon. I had a rather silly idea about all this when I looked over the equations, but I was afraid to say anything because you know so much more than I do. After you went away, I couldn’t resist the temptation to try it out, though I didn’t intend to go this far. I thought I’d have it apart again before you came back.”

There was a silence that lasted a long time. When Scanlon spoke again, his voice was curiously mild, “Well, what have you done?”

“It’s a little too late for that. You couldn’t have made it much worse, anyway.”

“Well, I noticed here in your equations,” he extracted one sheet and then another and pointed, “that whenever the expression representing the space-distortion fields occurs, it is always referred to as a function of x* plus y’ plus z”. Since the fields, as far as I could see, were always referred to as constants, that would give you the equation of a sphere.”

Scanlon nodded, “I noticed that, but it has nothing to do with the problem.”

“Well, I thought it might indicate the necessary arrangement of the individual fields, so I disconnected the distorters and hooked them up again in a sphere.”

The inventor’s mouth fell open. The mysterious rearrangement of his device seemed clear now-and what was more, eminently sensible.

“I’m not quite sure. The parts haven’t been made to fit this arrangement so that it’s only a rough set-up at best. Then there’s the constant error-”

“But does it work? Close the switch, damn it!” Scanlon was all fire and impatience once more.

“All right, stand back. I cut the power to one-tenth normal so we won’t get more output than we can handle.”

He closed the switch slowly, and at the moment of contact, a glowing ball of blue-white flame leaped into being from the recesses of the central quartz chamber. Scanlon screened his eyes automatically, and sought the output gauge. The needle was climbing steadily and did not stop until it was pressing the upper limit. The flame burned continuously, releasing no heat seemingly, though beside its light, more intensely brilliant than a magnesium flare, the electric lights faded into dingy yellowness.

Max opened the switch once more and the ball-of flame reddened and died, leaving the room comparatively dark and red. The output gauge sank to zero once more and Scanlon felt his knees give beneath him as he sprawled onto a chair.

He fastened his gaze on the flustered Tweenie and in that look there was respect and awe, and something more, too, for there was fear. Never before had he really realized that the Tweenie was not of Earth or Mars but a member of a race apart. He noticed the difference now, not in the comparatively minor physical changes, but in the profound and searching mental gulf that he only now comprehended.

“Atomic power!” he croaked hoarsely. “And solved by a boy, not yet twenty years old.”

Max’s confusion was painful, “You did all the real work, Mr. Scanlon, years and years of it. I just happened to notice a little detail that you might have caught yourself the next day.” His voice died before the fixed and steady stare of the inventor.

“Atomic power-the greatest achievement of man so far, and we actually have it, we two.”

Both-guardian and ward-seemed awed at the grandeur and power of the thing they had created.

Jefferson Scanlon sucked at his pipe contentedly. Outside, the snow was falling and the chill of winter was in the air, but inside, in the comfortable warmth, Scanlon sat and smoked and smiled to himself. Across the way, Beulah, likewise quietly happy, hummed softly in time to clicking knitting needles, stopping only occasionally as her fingers flew through an unusually intricate portion of the pattern. In the corner next the window sat Max, occupied in his usual pastime of reading, and Scanlon reflected with faint surprise that of late Max had confined his reading to light novels.

Much had happened since that well-remembered day over a year ago. For one thing, Scanlon was now a world-famous and world-adored scientist, and it would have been strange had he not been sufficiently human to be proud of it. Secondly, and scarcely less important, atomic power was remaking the world.

Scanlon thanked all the powers that were, over and over again, for the fact that war was a thing of two centuries past, for otherwise atomic power would have been the final ruination of civilization. As it was, the coalition of World Powers that now controlled the great force of Atomic Power proved it a real blessing and were introducing it into Man’s life in the slow, gradual stages necessary to prevent economic upheaval

Already, interplanetary travel had been revolutionized. From hazardous gambles, trips to Mars and Venus had become holiday jaunts to be negotiated in a third of the previous time, and trips to the outer planets were at last feasible.

Scanlon settled back further in his chair, and pondered once more upon the only fly in his wonderful pot of ointment Max had refused all credit; stormily and violently refused to have his name as much as mentioned. The injustice of it galled Scanlon, but aside from a vague mention of “capable assistants” he had said nothing; and the thought of it still made him feel an ace of a cad.

A sharp explosive noise brought him out of his reverie and he turned startled eyes towards Max, who had suddenly closed his book with a peevish slap.

Max tossed the book aside and stood up, his underlip thrust out in a pout, “I’m lonely, that’s all.”

Scanlon’s face fell, and he felt at an uncomfortable loss for words. “I guess I know that. Max,” he said softly, at length. “I’m sorry for you, but the conditions-are so-”

Max relented, and brightening up, placed an affectionate arm about his foster-father’s shoulder, “I didn’t mean it that way, you know. It’s just-well, I can’t say it but it’s that-you get to wishing you had someone your own age to talk to- someone of your own kind.”

Beulah looked up and bestowed a penetrating glance upon the young Tweenie but said nothing.

Scanlon considered, “You’re right, son, in a way. A friend and companion is the best thing a fellow can have, and I’m afraid Beulah and I don’t qualify in that respect. One of your own kind, as you say, would be the ideal solution, but that’s a tough proposition.” He rubbed his nose with one finger and gazed at the ceiling thoughtfully.

Max opened his mouth as if he were going to say something more, but changed his mind and turned pink for no evident reason. Then he muttered, barely loud enough for Scanlon to hear, “I’m being silly!” With an abrupt turn he marched out of the room, banging the door loudly as he left.

The older man gazed after him with undisguised surprise, “Well! What a funny way to act. What’s got into him lately, anyway?”

Beulah halted the nimbly-leaping needles long enough to remark acidly, “Men are born fools and blind into the bargain.”

“Is that so?” was the somewhat nettled response, “And do you know what’s biting him?”

“I certainly do. It’s as plain as that terrible tie you’re wearing. I’ve seen it for months now. Poor fellow!”

The housekeeper laid her knitting aside and glanced at the inventor wearily, “It’s very simple. The boy is twenty. He needs company.”

“Good land, Jefferson. Has it been so long since you were twenty yourself? Do you mean to say that you honestly think he’s referring to male company?”

“Oh,” said Scanlon, and then brightening suddenly, “Oh!” He giggled in an inane manner.

“That’s a fine way to speak of our ward, when you’re rich enough to buy five hundred orphan asylums from basement to roof and never miss the money. It should be the easiest thing in the world to find a likely-looking young lady Tweenie to keep him company.”

Scanlon gazed at her, a look of intense horror on his face, “Are you serious, Beulah? Are you trying to suggest that I go shopping for a female Tweenie for Max? Why-why, what do I know about women-especially Tweenie women. I don’t know his standards. I’m liable to pick one he’ll consider an ugly hag.”

“Don’t raise silly objections, Jefferson. Outside of the hair, they’re the same in looks as anyone else, and I’ll leave it to you to pick a pretty one. There never was a bachelor old and crabbed enough not to be able to do that.”

The words struck the inventor forcibly, “I owe it to him,” he repeated. “You’re right there, more right than you know.” He sighed, “I guess it’s got to be done.”

Scanlon shifted uneasily from one trembling foot to the other under the piercing stare of the vinegar-faced official, whose name-board proclaimed in large letters-Miss Martin, Superintendent.

Scanlon cleared his throat. He had lost count of the asylums visited up to now and the task was rapidly becoming too much for him. He made a mental vow that this would be the last-either they would have a Tweenie of the proper sex, age, and appearance or he would throw up the whole thing as a bad job.

“I have come to see,” he began, in a carefully-prepared, but stammered speech, “if there are any Twee-Martian half-breeds in your asylum. It is-.”

“All females,” she replied, and her eye glittered with disapproving suspicion.

Miss Martin’s cold glance did not weaver, “Pardon me, but before we go any further, I would like to know whether you’re thinking of adopting a half-breed.”

“I would like to take out guardianship papers if I am suited. Is that so very unusual?”

“It certainly is,” was the prompt retort. “You understand that in any such case, we must first make a thorough investigation of the family’s status, both financial and social. It is the opinion of the government that these creatures are better off under state supervision, and adoption would be a difficult matter.”

“I know, madam, I know. I’ve had practical experience in this matter about fifteen months ago> I believe I can give you satisfaction as to my financial and social status without much trouble. My name is Jefferson Scanlon-.”

“Jefferson Scanlon!” her exclamation was half a scream. In a trice, her face expanded into a servile smile, “Why of course. I should have recognized you from the many pictures I’ve seen of you. How stupid of me. Pray do not trouble yourself with any further references. I’m sure that in your case,” this with a particularly genial expression, “no red tape need be necessary.”

She sounded a desk-bell furiously. “Bring down Madeline and the two little ones as soon as you can,” she snapped at the frightened maid who answered. “Have them cleaned up and warn them to be on their best behavior.”

With this, she turned to Scanlon once more, “It will not take long, Mr. Scanlon. It is really such a great honor to have you here with us, and I am so ashamed at my abrupt treatment of you earlier. At first I didn’t recognize you, though I saw immediately that you were someone of importance.”

If Scanlon had been upset by the superintendent’s former harsh haughtiness, he was entirely unnerved by her effusive geniality. He wiped his profusely-perspiring brow time and time again, answering in incoherent monosyllables the vivacious questions put to him. It was just as he had come to the wild decision of taking to his heels and escaping from the she-dragon by flight that the maid announced the three Tweenies and saved the situation.

Scanlon surveyed the three half-breeds with interest and sudden satisfaction. Two were mere children, perhaps ten years of age, but the third, some eighteen years old, was eligible from every point of view.

Her slight form was lithe and graceful even in the quiet attitude of waiting that she had assumed, and Scanlon, “dried-up, dyed-in-the-wool bachelor” though he was, could not restrain a light nod of approval.

Her face was certainly what Beulah would call “likely looking” and her eyes, now bent towards the floor in shy confusion, were of a deep blue, which seemed a great point to Scanlon.

Even her strange hair was beautiful. It was only moderately high, not nearly the size of Max’s lordly male crest, and its silky-white sheen caught the sunbeams and sent them back in glistening highlights.

The two little ones grasped the skirt of their elder companion with tight grips and regarded the two adults in wide-eyed fright which increased as time passed.

“I believe. Miss Martin, that the young lady will do,” re-» marked Scanlon. “She is exactly what I had in mind. Could you tell me how soon guardianship papers could be drawn up?”

“I could have them ready for you tomorrow, Mr. Scanlon. In an unusual case such as yours, I could easily make special arrangements.”

“Thank you. I shall be back then-,” he was interrupted. by a loud sniffle. One of the little Tweenies could stand it no longer and had burst into tears, followed soon by the other.

“Madeline,” cried Miss Martin to the eighteen-year-old. “Please keep Rose and Blanche quiet This is an abominable exhibition.”

Scanlon intervened. It seemed to him that Madeline was rather pale and though she smiled and soothed the youngsters he was certain that there were tears in her eyes.

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “the young lady has no wish to leave the institution. Of course, I wouldn’t think of taking her on any but a purely voluntary basis.”

Miss Martin smiled superciliously, “She won’t make any trouble.” She turned to the young girl, “You’ve heard of the great Jefferson Scanlon, haven’t you?”

“Let me handle this. Miss Martin,” urged Scanlon. ‘Tell me, girl, would you really prefer to stay here?”

“Oh, no,” she replied earnestly, “I would be very glad to leave, though,” with an apprehensive glance at Miss Martin, “I have been very well treated here. But you see-what’s to be done with the two little ones? I’m all they have, and if I left, they-they-”

She broke down and snatched them to her with a sudden, fierce grip, “I don’t want to leave them, sir!” She kissed each softly, “Don’t cry, children. I won’t leave you. They won’t take me away.”

Scanlon swallowed with difficulty and groped for a handkerchief with which to blow his nose. Miss Martin gazed on with disapproving hauteur.

“Don’t mind the silly thing, Mr. Scanlon,” said she. “I believe I can have everything ready by tomorrow noon.”

Scanlon left precipitately, leaving both Madeline and Miss Martin petrified, the latter with utter stupefaction, the former in a sudden upsurge of happiness. Even the ten-year-olds sensed the change in affairs and subsided into occasional sobs.

Beulah’s surprise, when she met them at the airport and saw three Tweenies where she had expected one, is not to be described. But, on the whole, the surprise was a pleasant one, for little Rose and Blanche took to the elderly housekeeper immediately. Their first greeting was to bestow great, moist kisses upon Beulah’s lined cheeks at which she glowed with joy and kissed them in turn.

With Madeline she was enchanted, whispering to Scanlon that he knew a little more about such matters than he pretended.

“If she had decent hair,” whispered Scanlon in reply, “I’d marry her myself. That I would,” and he smiled in great self• satisfaction.

The arrival at home in mid-afternoon was the occasion of great excitement on the part of the two oldsters. Scanlon inveigled Max into accompanying him on a long walk together in the woods, and when the unsuspecting Max left, puzzled but willing, Beulah busied herself with setting the three newcomers at their ease.

They were shown over the house from top to bottom, the rooms assigned to them being indicated. Beulah prattled away continuously, joking and chaffing, until the Tweenies had lost all their shyness and felt as if they had known her forever.

Then, as the winter evening approached, she turned to Madeline rather abruptly and said, “It’s getting late. Do you want to come downstairs with me and help prepare supper for the men?”

Madeline was taken aback, “The men. Is there, then, someone besides Mr. Scanlon?”

Beulah saw in a moment the thoughts passing through her head and added in a softer voice, “Don’t worry, dear. He won’t mind your being a Tweenie. He’ll be glad to see you.”

It turned out, though, that “glad” was an entirely inadequate adjective when applied to Max’s emotions at the first sight of Madeline.

He tramped into the house in advance of Scanlon, taking off his overcoat and stamping the snow off his shoes as he did so.

“Oh, boy,” he cried at the half-frozen inventor who followed him in, “why you were so anxious to saunter about on a freezer like today I don’t know.” He sniffed the air appreciatively, “Ah, do I smell lamb chops?” and he made for the dining-room in double-quick time.

It was at the threshold that he stopped suddenly, and gasped for air as if in the last throes of suffocation. Scanlon dipped by and sat down.

“Come on,” he said, enjoying the other’s brick-red visage. ‘Sit down. We have company today. This is Madeline and this s Rose and this is Blanche. And this,” he turned to the seated girls and noted with satisfaction that Madeline’s pink face was burning a fixed glance of confusion upon the plate before her, “is my ward. Max.”

“How do you do,” murmured Max, eyes like saucers, “I’m pleased to meet you.”

Rose and Blanche shouted cheery greetings in reply but Madeline only raised her eyes fleetingly and then dropped them again.

The meal was a singularly quiet one. Max, though he had complained of a ravenous hunger all afternoon, allowed his chop and mashed potatoes to die of cold before him, while Madeline played with her food as if she did not know what it was there for. Scanlon and Beulah ate quietly and well, exchanging sly glances between bites.

Scanlon sneaked off after dinner, for he rightly felt that the more tactful touch of a woman was needed in these matters, and when Beulah joined him in his study some hours later, he saw at a glance that he had been correct.

“I’ve broken the ice,” she said happily, “they’re telling each other their life histories now and are getting along wonderfully. They’re still afraid of each other, though, and insist on sitting at opposite ends of the room, but that’ll wear off-and pretty quickly, too.”

“A finer one I’ve never seen. And little Rose and Blanche are angels. I’ve just put them to bed.”

There was a short silence, and then Beulah continued softly, “That was the only time you were right and I was wrong- that time you first brought Max into the house and I objected -but that one time makes up for everything else. You are a credit to your dear mother, Jefferson.”

Scanlon nodded soberly, “I wish I could make all Tweenies on earth so happy. It would be such a simple thing. If we treated them like humans instead of like criminals and gave them homes built especially for them and calculated especially for their happiness-”

Scanlon turned a serious eye upon the old housekeeper, “That’s exactly what I was leading up to.” His voice lapsed into a dreamy murmur, “Just think. A town of Tweenies-run by them and for them-with its own governing officials and its own schools and its own public utilities. A little world within a world where the Tweenie can consider himself a human being-instead of a freak surrounded and looked down upon by endless multitudes of pure-bloods.”

He reached for his pipe and filled it slowly, “The world owes a debt to one Tweenie which it can never repay-and I owe it to him as well. I’m going to do it. I’m going to create Tweenietown.”

That night he did not go to sleep. The stars turned in their grand circles and paled at last. The grey of dawn came and grew, but still Scanlon sat unmoving-dreaming and planning.

At eighty, age sat lightly upon Jefferson Scanlon’s head. The spring was gone from his step, the sturdy straightness from his shoulders, but his robust health had not failed him, and his mind, beneath the shock of hair, now as white as any Tweenie’s, still worked with undiminished vigor.

A happy life is not an aging one, and for forty years now, Scanlon had watched Tweenietown grow, and in the watching, had found happiness.

He could see it now stretched before him like a large, beautiful painting as he gazed out the window. A little gem of a town with a population of slightly more than a thousand, nestling amid three hundred square miles of fertile Ohio land.

Neat and sturdy houses, wide, clean streets, parks, theatres, schools, stores-a model town, bespeaking decades of intelligent effort and co-operation.

The door opened behind him and he recognized the soft step without needing to turn, “Is that you, Madeline?”

“Yes, father,” for by no other title was he known to any inhabitant of Tweenietown. “Max is returning with Mr. Johanson.”

“That’s good,” he gazed at Madeline tenderly. “We’ve seen Tweenietown grow since those days long ago, haven’t we?”

“Don’t sigh, dear. It’s been well worth the years we’ve given to it. If only Beulah had lived to see it now.”

He shook his head as he thought of the old housekeeper, dead now a quarter of a century.

“Don’t think such sad thoughts,” admonished Madeline in her turn. “Here comes Mr. Johanson. Remember it’s the fortieth anniversary and a happy day; not a sad one.”

Charles B. Johanson was what is known as a “shrewd” man. That is, he was an intelligent, far-seeing person, comparatively well-versed in the sciences, but one who was wont to put these good qualities into practice only in order to advance his own interest. Consequently, he went far in politics and was the first appointee to the newly created Cabinet post of Science and Technology.

It was the first official act of his to visit the world’s greatest scientist and inventor, Jefferson Scanlon, who, in his old age, still had no peer in the number of useful inventions turned over to the government every year. Tweenietown was a considerable surprise to him. It was known rather vaguely in the outside world that the town existed, and it was considered a hobby of the old scientist-a harmless eccentricity. Johanson found it a well-worked-out project of sinister connotations.

His attitude, however, when he entered Scanlon’s room in company with his erstwhile guide. Max, was one of frank geniality, concealing well certain thoughts that swept through his mind.

“Ah, Johanson,” greeted Scanlon, “you’re back. What do you think of all this?” his arm made a wide sweep.

Scanlon chuckled, “Glad to hear it. We have a population of 1154 now and growing every day. You’ve seen what we’ve done already but it’s nothing to what we are going to do in the future-even after my death. However, there is something I wish to see done before I die and for that I’ll need your help.

“And that is?” questioned the Secretary of Science and Technology guardedly.

“Just this. That you sponsor measures giving these Tweenies, these so long despised half-breeds, full equality,-political,- legal,-economic,-social,-with Terrestrials and Martians.”

Johanson hesitated, “It would be difficult. There is a certain amount of perhaps understandable prejudice against them, and until we can convince Earth that the Tweenies deserve equality-” he shook his head doubtfully.

“Deserve equality!” exclaimed Scanlon, vehemently, “Why, they deserve more. I am moderate in my demands.” At these words. Max, sitting quietly in a corner, looked up and bit his lip, but said nothing as Scanlon continued, “You don’t know the true worth of these Tweenies. They combine the best of Earth and Mars. They possess the cold, analytical reasoning powers of the Martians together with the emotional drive and boundless energy of the Earthman. As far as intellect is concerned, they are your superior and mine, every one of them. I ask only equality.”

The Secretary smiled soothingly, “Your zeal misleads you perhaps, my dear Scanlon.”

“It does not. Why do you suppose I turn out so many successful gadgets-like this gravitational shield I created a few years back. Do you think I could have done it without my Tweenie assistants? It was Max here,” Max dropped his eyes before the sudden piercing gaze of the Cabinet member, “that put the final touch upon my discovery of atomic power itself.”

Scanlon threw caution to the winds, as he grew excited, “Ask Professor Whitsun of Stanford and he’ll tell you. He’s a world authority on psychology and knows what he’s talking about. He studied the Tweenie and he’ll tell you that the Tweenie is the coming race of the Solar System, destined to take the supremacy away from us pure-bloods as inevitably as night follows day. Don’t you think they deserve equality in that case?”

“Yes, I do think so,-definitely,” replied Johanson. There was a strange glitter in his eyes, and a crooked smile upon his Ups, “This is of extreme importance, Scanlon. I shall attend to it immediately. So immediately, in fact, that I believe I had better leave in half an hour, to catch the 2:10 strato-car.”

Johanson had scarcely left, when Max approached Scanlon and blurted out with no preamble at all, “There is something I have to show you, father-something you have not known about before.”

“Come with me, please, father. I shall explain.” His grave expression was almost frightening. Madeline joined the two at the door, and at a sign from Max, seemed to comprehend the situation. She said nothing but her eyes grew sad and the lines in her forehead seemed to deepen.

In utter silence, the three entered the waiting Rocko-car and were sped across the town in the direction of the Hill o’ the Woods. High over Lake Clare they shot to come down once more in the wooded patch at the foot of the hill.

A tall, burly Tweenie sprang to attention as the car landed, and started at the sight of Scanlon.

“Good afternoon, father,” he whispered respectfully, and cast a questioning glance at Max as he did so.

“Same to you, Emmanuel,” replied Scanlon absently. He suddenly became aware that before him was a cleverly-camouflaged opening that led into the very hill itself.

Max beckoned him to follow and led the way into the opening which after a hundred feet opened into an enormous manmade cavern. Scanlon halted in utter amazement, for before him were three giant space-ships, gleaming silvery-white and equipped, as he could plainly see, with the latest atomic power.

“I’m sorry, father,” said Max, “that all this was done without your knowledge. It is the only case of the sort in the history of Tweenietown.” Scanlon scarcely seemed to hear, standing as if in a daze, and Max continued, “The center one is the flagship-the Jefferson Scanlon. The one to the right is the Beulah Goodkin and the one to the left the Madeline.”

Scanlon snapped out of his bemusement, “But what does this all mean and why the secrecy?”

“These ships have been lying ready for five years now, fully fuelled and provisioned, ready for instant take-off. Tonight. we blast away the side of the hill and shoot for Venus -tonight. We have not told you till now, for we did not wish to disturb your peace of mind with a misfortune we knew long ago to be inevitable. We had thought that perhaps,” his voice sank lower, “its fulfillment might have been postponed until after you were no longer with us.”

“Speak out,” cried Scanlon suddenly. “I want the full details. Why do you leave just as I feel sure I can obtain full equality for you?”

“Exactly,” answered Max, mournfully. “Your words to Johanson swung the scale. As long as Earthmen and Martians merely thought us different and inferior, they despised us and tolerated us. You have told Johanson we were superior and would ultimately supplant Mankind. They have no alternative now but to hate us. There shall be no further toleration; of that I can assure you. We leave before the storm breaks.”

The old man’s eyes widened as the truth of the other’s statements became apparent to him, “I see. I must get in touch with Johanson. Perhaps, we can together correct that terrible mistake.” He clapped a hand to his forehead.

“Oh, Max,” interposed Madeline, tearfully, “why don’t you come to the point? We want you to come with us, father. In Venus, which is so sparsely settled, we can find a spot where we can develop unharmed for an unlimited time. We can establish our nation, free and untrammeled, powerful in our own right, no longer dependent on-”

Her voice died away and she gazed anxiously at Scanlon’s face, now grown drawn and haggard. “No,” he whispered, “no! My place is here with my own kind. Go, my children, and establish your nation. In the end, your descendants shall rule the System. But I-I shall stay here.”

“Then I shall stay, too,” insisted Max. “You are old and someone must care for you. I owe you my life a dozen times over.”

Scanlon shook his head firmly, “I shall need no one. Dayton is not far. I shall be well taken care of there or anywhere else I go. You, Max, are needed by your race. You are their leader. Go!”

Scanlon wandered through the deserted streets of Tweenietown and tried to take a grip upon himself. It was hard. Yesterday, he had celebrated the fortieth anniversary of its founding-it had been at the peak of its prosperity. Today, it was a ghost town.

Yet, oddly enough, there was a spirit of exultation about him. His dream had shattered-but only to give way to a brighter dream. He had nourished foundlings and brought up a race in its youth and for that he was someday to be recognized as the founder of the superrace.

It was his creation that would someday rule the system. Atomic power-gravity nullifiers-all faded into insignificance. This was his real gift to the Universe.

As in “The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use,” the story dealt with racial prejudice on an interplanetary scale. I kept coming back to this theme very frequently-something not surprising in a Jew growing up during the Hitler era.

Once again my naiveté shows, since I assume not only an intelligent race on Mars, where such a thing is most unlikely even by 1939 evidence, but assume the Martians to be sufficiently like Earthmen to make interbreeding possible. (I can only shake my head wearily. I knew better in 1939;

I really did. I just accepted science fictional clichés, that’s all. Eventually, I stopped doing that.)

My treatment of atomic power was also primitive in the extreme, and I knew better than that, too, even though at the time I wrote the story, uranium fission had not been discovered. The Tweenie’s mysterious reference to “a function of x² plus y² plus z²” merely means that I had taken analytic geometry at Columbia not long before and was flaunting my knowledge of the equation for the sphere.

This was the first story in which I tried to introduce the romantic motif, however light. It had to be a failure. At the time of the writing of this story, I had still never had a date with a girl.

And yet the greatest embarrassment in a story simply littered with embarrassments was the following line in the seventh paragraph: “... For it, he had become a middle-aged man at thirty-the first flush of youth long gone-”

Well, I wrote it at nineteen. To me, the first flush of youth was long gone by the time one reached thirty. I know better now, of course, since more than thirty years later, I find that I am still in the first flush of youth.

There was some reason for self-congratulation in connection with “Half-Breed,” however. My fourth published story, it was the longest to appear up to then. With a length of nine thousand words, it was listed on the table of contents as a “novelette,” my first published story in that class.

My name also appeared on the cover of the magazine. It was the first time that had ever happened.

Almost immediately after finishing “Half-Breed,” I began “The Secret Sense,” submitting it to John Campbell on June 21, 1939, and receiving it back on the twenty-eighth. Pohl could not place it either.

Toward the end of 1940, however, a pair of sister magazines, Cosmic Stories and Stirring Science Stories, were being planned, with Don Wollheim, a fellow Futurian, selected as editor. The magazines were starting on a microbudget, however, and the only way they could come into being was to get stories for nothing-at least for the initial issues. For the purpose, Wollheim appealed to the Futurians and they came through. The first issues consisted entirely (I think) of stories by Futurians, under their own names or pseudonyms.

I, too, was asked, and since by that time I was convinced I could sell “The Secret Sense” nowhere, I donated it to Wollheim, who promptly accepted it.

That was that, except that, at the time, yet another magazine, Comet Stories, was coming into existence, under the editorship of F. Orlin Tremaine, who had been Campbell’s predecessor at Astounding.

I went to see Tremaine several times, since I thought I might sell him a story or two. On the second visit, on December 5, 1940, Tremaine spoke with some heat concerning the forthcoming birth of Wollheim’s magazines. While he himself was paying top rates, he said, Wollheim was getting stories for nothing and with these could put out magazines that would siphon readership from those magazines that paid. Any author who donated stories to Wollheim, and thus contributed to the destruction of competing magazines who paid, should be blacklisted in the field.

I listened with horror, knowing that I had donated a story for nothing. It was a story, to be sure, that I had felt to be worth nothing, but it had not occurred to me that I was undercutting other authors by setting up unfair competition.

I did not quite have the nerve to tell Tremaine I was one of the guilty ones, but as soon as I got home I wrote to Wollheim asking him to accept one of two alternatives: either he could run the story under a pseudonym so that my guilt would be hidden, or if he insisted on using my name he could pay me five dollars so that if the question ever arose I could honestly deny having given him the story for nothing.

Wollheim chose to use my name and sent me a check for five dollars, but did so with remarkably poor grace (and, to be sure, he was not, in those days, noted for any suavity of character). He accompanied the check with an angry letter that said, in part, that I was being paid an enormous word rate because it was only my name that had value and for that I was receiving $2.50 a word. Perhaps he was correct. If so, the word rate was indeed a record, one that I have not surpassed to this very day. On the other hand, the total payment also set a record. No other story I have written commanded so low a payment.

Years later, the well-known science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz wrote a short biography of me, which appeared in the April 1962 Amazing. In the course of the biography, he describes a version of the above events and mistakenly states that it was John Campbell who was angry at the donation of stories without pay and that it was he who threatened me with blacklisting.

Campbell had nothing to do with it, and, what’s more, would have been incapable of making threats. If he had known in advance that I intended to donate a story for nothing to a competing magazine, he would have pointed out my stupidity to me in a perfectly friendly way and would have let it go at that.

As a matter of fact, while I tried to keep my guilt a secret from Tremaine, I had no intention of hiding it from Campbell. On my very next visit to him, on December 16, 1940, I confessed in full, and he shrugged it off.

“Campbell, I imagine, was quite certain that no magazine that had to depend on free stories could last for long, since the only stories so available would have been rejected by everyone else. And he would be right. Cosmic Stories lasted only three issues, and Stirring Science Stories only four. “The Secret Sense” remained the only story of mine they published.

As for Comet Stories, that lasted five issues, and though Tremaine hesitated over a couple of my stories, he never bought one.