53

Tom Rider liked the idea.

Farrington said, "No! It's too dangerous! I don't trust those fragile gasbags. Besides, you'd have to use hydrogen, right? Hydrogen can catch fire like that!"

He snapped his fingers.

"In addition, they're easy prey for strong winds and storms. Also, where are you going to dredge up a blimp pilot? Airplane pilots should be easy to find, though personally I've only run into two. Furthermore, we'd have to be its crew, and that means we'd have to be trained. What if we don't have the knack for it? There's another reason ..."

"A yellow streak?" Tom said, smiling.

Martin reddened, and his hands balled. "How'd you like a few teeth knocked out?"

"It wouldn't be the first time," Tom Rider said. "But take it easy, Frisco, I was just trying to think of more reasons why we can't do it. Help you along, sort of."

Frigate knew that Jack London had never taken any interest in flying. Yet a man who had lived so adventurously, who had always been pugnaciously courageous, and who was also very curious, should have been eager to go up in the newfangled machine.

Was it possible that he was afraid of the air?

It could be. Many a person who seemed to be afraid of nothing on earth was scared of leaving it. It was one of those quirks of human character, nothing to be ashamed of.

Nevertheless, Martin might be ashamed to show fear.

Frigate admitted to himself that he had some of that brand of shame. He had gotten rid of some, but there was too much residue left. He was not afraid to admit a fear if there was a rational reason to do so. To reveal fear if it had an irrational basis wasrstill difficult for him.

Fanington's reaction did have some logic. It could be dangerous, perhaps even foolish, to go in a blimp in the unavoidably uncertain conditions.

Nur and Pogaas were called in to hear Frigate's new idea. Frigate proceeded to tell them what the perils might be.

"Nevertheless, considering the time saved, it's more efficient, more economical, to go in a blimp. Actually, considering the time a blimp would take as against the time a boat would take, you'll encounter many more dangers in a boat."

"Damn it, I'm not afraid of danger! You know better than that! It's just that ..."

Martin's voice trailed off.

Tom smiled.

Farrington said, "What are you grinning about? You look like a skunk eating shit!"

Pogaas grinned also.

"There's no need to get all fired up about this just now," Tom said. "First we have to find out what the Big Cheese, Podebrad, will do for us. More than likely, he won't build us a gasbag. Why should he? But let's mosey on up to his house and see what he has to say about this."

Nur and Pogaas had more pressing business, so the captain, first mate, and deckhand walked toward a large limestone building pointed out to them by a passerby.

"You aren't serious about stealing one of the steamboats?" Frigate said.

"That depends," Tom said.

"Nur will never go along with that,'' Frigate said. "Nor some of the others, either."

"Then we might do without them," Tom said.

They halted at Podebrad's house, which stood on top of a hill, its peaked roof of bamboo almost touching the lower branches of a tall pine tree. The guards passed .them on into a reception room. A secretary listened to them, then disappeared for a minute. Returning, he told them that Podebrad would see them just after lunch two days from now.

They decided to go fishing the rest of the day. Rider and Farrington caught a few striped "bass," but they spent most of their time planning how to capture a steamboat.

Ladislas Podebrad was red headed and of medium height, very broad and muscular, bull necked, thin lipped, massively chinned. Though he had formidable features and an icy demeanor, he permitted the meeting to last longer than the three had expected. It even went well, though not entirely as hoped for.

"Why are you in such a hurry to get to the North Pole? I have heard of this tower that is supposed to be in the middle of a sea behind impassable mountains. I do not know that I believe the story. But it seems possible. Perhaps, even probable.

"This world may have been fashioned originally by God. But it is evident that human beings, or something similar, have remade the surface of this planet. It is also evident to me, a scientist, that our resurrection is caused by physical means, by science, not by a supernatural agency.

"Why, I do not know. But the Church,of the Second Chance has an explanation that sounds somewhat logical. Though they lack much data and even more certainty.

"In fact, the Church seems to me to know more than anyone else about this business, if I may put it that way."

He drummed long, slim fingers on the table as they all fell silent. Frigate, watching them, thought how ill matched they were to his husky physique and broad, thick hands.

Podebrad rose and walked to a cabinet, opened it, and withdrew an object.

He held in his fingers a spiral bone taken from a hornfish.

"You all know what this is. The Chancers wear it as a symbol of their faith, though I wish they had more knowledge to back their faith. But if they had more knowledge, they wouldn't need faith, would they? In this respect they're like all other religions, Terrestrial or Riverworld.

"However, we do know that there is an afterlife.

"Or perhaps I should say, there was an afterlife. Now that people no longer are resurrected after death, we don't know what to expert. Even the Church has no answer to the question of why translation has suddenly ceased. It speculates that,perhaps, people have been given enough time to save themselves, and there is no longer a reason to continue the resurrections. '"Either you are saved by now or you are not.

"I really don't know what the truth is.

"Gentlemen, I was an atheist on Earth, a member of the Czecho-slovakian Communist Party. But here I met a man who convinced me that religion has nothing to do with rationality. At least, its foundation, the basis for its existence, does not.

"After the act of faith comes, of course, the rationalization for the faith, its pseudological justification. However, neither Jesus nor Marx, Buddha nor Mohammed, Hindu nor Confucian, Taoist nor Jew were right about the afterworld. They were even more mistaken about this world than the one we were born in."

He walked to the desk, sat down behind it, and placed the spiral bone on it.

"Sinjoroj, I was going to announce today my conversion to the Church of the Second Chance. And also announce my resignation as head of the state of Nova Bohemujo. Several days afterward, I would embark up The River to journey to Virolando, which, I am assured, does indeed exist. And there I would ask the leader and the founder of the Church, La Viro, some questions. If he answered them satisfactorily, or even if he admitted that he did not know all the answers, I would place myself under his jurisdiction. Go where he said, do what he said.

"But if my information is correct, and I have no reason to believe my informants are liars, Virolando is millions of kilometers away. It would take me half an Earthly lifetime to get mere.

"Now, you suddenly come to me with a proposal. One that I am astounded I did not think of myself. Perhaps because I was really more interested in the voyage than in its end.

"Voyages are always more rewarding in self-discovery than in anything else, are they not? Perhaps that is why the obvious escaped me.

"Yes, gentlemen, I can build a blimp for you.

"There is only one stipulation. You must take me with you."

54

After a long silence, Farrington said, "I dont see how we could say no, Sinjoro Podebrad. I think I speak for all of us."

Frigate and Rider nodded.

"You really.got us by the short hairs. Not that I have anything against your coming along with us. In fact, I am delighted. Only ... well, what if we can't find any experienced blimp men? We'd be crazy to go up there if we don't know how to handle the machine or what we might run into."

"Of course. But it will take a very long time to build the airship. Unless we can find some engineers who know how to design such a ship, or at least can calculate the specifications, we will have to do it from scratch.

"Meanwhile, we can look for a pilot. Though they're very rare, somewhere along The River, within two thousand kilometers either way, there must be the man we're looking for.

"Or perhaps I might say, there could be one. Actually, the odds are high against finding one."

"I was a balloonist, "Frigate said. "And I read a great deal about lighter-than-air craft. I was up in a blimp for two short flights. That doesn't near make me an expert, of course."

"Perhaps we'll have to train ourselves, Sinjoro Frigate. In which case, any knowledge will be of help."

"Of course, that was a long time ago. I've forgotten a lot."

"You don't exactly inspire confidence, Pete," the Frisco Kid said fiercely.

"Confidence comes with experience," Podebrad said. "Now, gentlemen, I will start at once. I'll delay my announcement of my conversion until after the airship is ready to leave. No member of the Church, no one preaching total passive resistance, can be head of this state."

Frigate wondered how deep the man's conversion was. It seemed to him that anybody who really believed in the tenets of the Church would say so at once. No matter what the consequences would be.

"As soon as our conference is over, I'll get the facilities for making hydrogen underway. I think the best method, considering the minerals available, will be by the reaction of dilute sulfuric acid and zinc. Our sulfuric acid industry has been operating for some time. We were fortunate in finding both platinum and vanadium, though not in large quantities.

"I do wish we could make aluminum, but. . ."

"The Schutte-Lanz airships were made of wood," Frigate said. "A blimp wouldn't need much wood, anyway."

Farrington said, "Wood! You want me to go up in a wooden dirigible?"

''The only wood would be in the keel and the car," Frigate said. "The envelope could be made from the intestinal lining of the dragonfish."

"Which requires much fishing," Podebrad said. He stood up.

"I have much work to get done today. But I'll see you gentlemen tomorrow during lunch. We can discuss this in detail men. Meanwhile, good day."

Farrington, looking grave, spoke to Rider as they left the building.

"If you ask me, this is crazy!"

"It sounds great to me," Tom said. "To tell the truth, I'm getting pretty tired of sailing."

"Yeah, but we could get killed while we're bumbling around trying to learn how to fly that damned thing!

"And what if we find it won't work then? We'll have tost a lot of time!"

Frigate said, "That doesn't sound like the man who ferried people through the White Horse rapids in Alaska, time and again, just to pick up a few bucks. Or the man who pirated oysters..."

He turned pale. Rider and Farrington had stopped, and their faces were hard.

Farrington said slowly, "I've told a lot of stories about the Yukon, but I never said anything about the White Horse rapids. Not to you anyway. Have you been eavesdropping?"

Frigate drew a deep bream, and said, "Hell, I don't have to eavesdrop! I recognized you two the first time I saw you!"

Suddenly, Rider was behind him and Farrington had put his hand on the hilt of his flint knife.

Rider spoke in a low monotone. "Okay, whoever you are, just march on ahead of me. Right into the ship. And don't try anything funny."

"I'm not going incognito!" Frigate said. "You are!"

"Just do as I say."

Frigate shrugged, and he tried to grin. "It's evident you two are doing a lot more than just concealing your true identities. All right. I'll go. But you wouldn't kill me, would you?"

"That depends," Rider said.

They walked down the hill and across the plain. At the dock the only crew member present was Nur, who was talking to a woman. Rider said, "Not a word, Pete. And smile."

Frigate, looking straight at the little Moor, grimaced. He hoped that Nur would detect that something was wrong-he was so sensitive to expressions-but Nur only waved at them. When they were in the captain's cabin, Frisco shut the door and made Frigate sit on the edge of the bunk.

Frigate said, "I've been with you twenty-six years. Twenty-six! And I've never told anybody what your real names were."

Farrington sat down in the chair at his desk. Toying with his knife, he said, "That seems against human nature. How could you keep your mouth shut that long? And why?"

"Especially why?" Rider said. He stood near the door, a horn-fish stiletto in his hand.

"It was evident that you didn't want it known, for one thing. So, being your friend, I didn't say anything. Though I will admit I wondered why you were so secretive."

Farrington looked at Rider. "What do you think, Tom?"

Rider shrugged, and said, "We made a mistake. We should have just laughed it off. Admitted who we are and made up some tall tale to account for it."

Farrington put the knife down and lit a cigarette.

"Yeah. That's hindsight. What'll we do now?"

Rider said, "After all this mysterious folderol, Pete must know we got something to hide."

"He already said that."

Rider sheathed the stiletto and lit a cigarette. Frigate wondered if he should make a break for it now. His chances for success were small. Though both men were smaller, they were very strong and quick. Besides, trying to escape would make him look guilty.

Guilty of what?

Tom said, "That's better. Forget about getting away. Relax."

"With you two thinking of murder?"

Rider laughed and said, "After all these years you ought to know we can't kill in cold blood. Even a stranger, and we're sort of fond of you, Pete."

"Well, if I were what you think I am, whatever that is, what would you do?"

"Work up a passion so I wouldn't have to kill you in cold blood, I reckon."

"Why?"

"If you aren't really Peter Frigate, then you know."

"Who in hell else could I be?"

There was a long silence. Finally, Farrington ground out his cigarette in an ashtray clamped to the desk.

' "The thing is, Tom," he said, "he has been with us longer man any of our wives. If he was one of Them, why would he stay around so long? Especially since he claims he recognized us the day he met us.

"We would have been scooped up that night, if he's one of Them."

"Maybe," Tom said. "We don't know more than one-quarter of what's going on. One-eightieth, maybe. And what we do know may be a lie. Maybe we've been played for suckers."

"Them? Scooped up?" Frigate said.

Martin Farrington looked at Tom, and he said, "What'll we do now? There isn't any way of identifying Them. We're fools, Tom. We should've just told him a big lie. Now we got to go all the way."

"If he's one of Them, then he already knows," Rider.said. "So we wouldn't be telling him much he doesn't know. Except about the Ethical. And if he is an agent, then he wouldn't have been put on our trail unless They suspected we'd been contacted by Him."

"Yeah, we jumped the gun. And there isn't any gun in the first place. You know, if Pete's an agent, why would he have suggested the blimp? Would an agent want us to get to the tower?"

"That's right. Unless ..."

"Don't keep me hanging."

"Unless there's something haywire, and he's as much in the dark now as we are."

"What do you mean?"

"Listen, Tom, lately I've been doing a lot of thinking when I should've been sleeping or screwing. I've been thinking that there's something mysterious going on. I don't mean what the Ethical told us. I mean this business of there suddenly being no more resurrections.

"Has it ever occurred to you that maybe stopping them wasn't the original plan-whatever that is?"

"You mean, somebody threw a monkey wrench in the machinery? And that blew the fuse and left everybody in the dark?"

"Yes. And the agents don't know what's going on any more than me and you."

"Which could mean that Pete here is an agent. He's just trying to get home."

'' You mean he might've found us but couldn' t do anything about it? So he went along for the ride? And he proposed this blimp idea because it'd help him, not us, get there faster?"

"Something like that."

"So that puts us back where we were. Pete could be one of Them."

"If he is, it's like I said. We won't be telling him anything he don't know."

"Yeah, but he could tell us plenty. Plenty!"

"You going to beat it out of him? What if he really is Frigate?"

"I wouldn't, anyway. Not unless I knew the stakes were really high.. Oh, hell, not even then."

"We could just sail on and leave him behind," Farringtbn said.

Tom smiled crookedly and said, "Yeah? You'd like that, wouldn't you? You wouldn't have to trust your quivering flesh and beating heart to a sky boat.''

"You're getting awful close to making me mad, Tom."

"Okay. I won't ever say another word about that subject. Besides, I know you ain't got a cowardly bone in your body.

"So, what'll we do? Remember, if we did sail on, by the time we got to the North Pole-if we ever did-Pete here would have the whole thing solved."

"Oh, hell," Farrington said. "How could he be one of Them? They're superior to human beings, right? And Pete sure isn't no superman. No offense, Pete."

Tom glanced narrow-eyed at Frigate.

"He could be pretending to be only human. But I don't think anybody could put up a front like that for twenty-six years."

"Let's tell him then. What do we have to lose? Besides, I'm tired of keeping a secret for twenty-nine years."

"You always did talk too much."

"Look who's talking, Old Chief Run-off-at-the-mouth himself."

Farrington lit another cigarette. Rider followed his example, then said, "You want to light up too, Pete?"

"You're trying to kill me with smoke," Frigate said. He drew a cigar out of his over-the-shoulderbag.

"I think I need a drink, too."

"We all do. Tom, you do the honors. Then we'll tell all. God, what a relief!"

55

" 'Twas a dark and stormy night," Tom said. he smiled to acknowledge that he knew he was deliberately imitating the classical opening line of ghost stories.

"Jack and I..."

"Keep it Martin, Tom. Remember? Even when in private."

"Sure, but you were Jack men. Anyway, I knew the Kid here, but we weren't good friends yet. Our huts were close together, both of us were sailors on a patrol sloop in the navy of a local warlord.

"One night, when I was off duty, sleeping in my hut, I suddenly woke up. It wasn't the thunder and lightning that woke me up, either. It was a tap on my shoulder.

"At first, I thought it was Howardine, my woman. You remember her, Kid?"

"She was a beauty," Martin said to Frigate. "A red-headed Scotchwoman."

Frigate stirred, and he said, "I'm anxious to get to the heart of the matter."

"Okay, no frills then. It wasn't her, because she was sound asleep. Then a flash of lightning showed me a dark figure squatting by me. I started to rear up, my hand going under my pillow for my tomahawk. But I couldn't move.

"I guess I was drugged or under a spell of some kind. I thought, Oh, oh! This guy has got it in for me, and he's paralyzed me somehow and now yours truly is going to get it.

"Of course, I'd wake up someplace else, but I didn't feel like leaving.

"Then a couple of flashes showed the outline of the guy in detail. I was startled. Not scared, you realize, just startled. His body was covered in a big black cloak. And the head! There wasn't any. I mean, it was covered by a big globe, like a fishbowl. It was all black so I couldn't see his face. But somehow he could see me.

"If I couldn't move, I could talk. I said, 'Who are you? What do you want?' I spoke loud enough to wake Howardine up, but she didn't stir during the whole parley. I figure she had been drugged, too, but worse man me.

"The stranger spoke in a deep voice, answering me in English.

" 'I don't have much time, so I won't go into much detail. My name doesn't matter. In any event, I couldn't tell you because they might find you and unreel your memory.'

"I wondered what that meant, unreeling my memory. The whole business was beginning to look bizarre. I knew I wasn't dreaming. I wished I was.

' "If they should, they'll know everything that is said and done here,' the hombre said. 'It's like taking a movie of your mind. They can clip out what they don't want you to remember, and you won't. But if they should do that,I'll talk to you again.'

"'Who's they?' I said.

" 'The people who restructured this planet and who resurrected you,' he said. 'Now, listen, and don't talk until I'm finished.'

"You know me, Kid. I don't take crap off nobody. But this guy spoke as if the whole world was a ranch he owned and I was just one of the hands. Anyway, what could I do?

" 'They,' he said, 'live in the tower set in the middle of the north polar sea. You may have heard rumors about this. Some men actually did get through the mountains that surround the sea.'

"Right there I would have asked him if he was the one who left that long rope so they could get up the cliff and bored that tunnel for them. But I didn't know about that story then.

"He continued, 'But they did not get into the tower. One of their party, however, died when he fell off a mountain into the sea. He was allowed to be translated back into the Valley.' "

Tom paused. "He must have had some way of knowing this.

"The stranger continued, 'But the others were not. They ... never mind.'

"So," Tom said, grinning, "he did not know everything about the Egyptians. What he didn't know was that one of them escaped. Or, if he did, he wasn't telling me, for some reason. I don't think, however, he found out about it. Otherwise, he'd have never let him get away. Still. . . maybe he did.

"Anyway, the stranger said, 'The swiftness of verbal communication in the Valley is amazing I believe you call it the grapevine. The man who fell off the mountain told his story after he was translated, and it has spread throughout the Valley. You may speak. Have you heard the story?'

" 'Not until now,' I said.

" 'Well, you will doubtless hear it in the future. You'll be going up-River and will surely encounter it in one distorted form or another. Its essence is true.

" 'Doubtless, you have wondered why you were raised from the dead and placed here?'

"I nodded, and he said, 'My people, the Ethicals, have done this purely as a scientific experiment. They have put all of you here, mixed the races and nations from different times, solely to study your reactions. To record them and to classify them.

" 'Then!'-and here his voice rose to a pitch of great indignation-'after they have subjected you to this experiment, after they have filled you with hope for an eternal life, they will close the project! You will die, forever! There will be no more resurrections for you! You will go down into dust, be dust forever!'

" 'That seems almighty cruel,' I said, forgetting he'd not given me permission to speak.

' "It is inhumanly cruel,' he said. 'They have the power to give you life everlasting! At least, it would last as long as your sun lasted. Longer even, since you could always be transported to another planet with a living sun.

' "But no! They won't do that! They say that you do not deserve immortality!'

" "That's downright unethical,' I said. 'In which case, how come they call themselves the Ethicals?'

' "That seemed to stop him for a moment. Then he said, 'Because they think it would be unethical to permit such a miserable, undeserving species to live forever.'

" They sure don't have a good opinion of us," I said.

" 'I don't either,'' the stranger said. 'But good or bad opinions of humanity, based on en masse consideration, have nothing to do with the ethical aspects.'

" 'How can you love someone you despise?' I said.

" 'It isn't easy,' he said. 'But nothing truly ethical is easy to do. However, this is wasting my time.'

"A bluish fight glowed, and by its light I could see that he had taken his right hand out from under his cloak. Around its wrist was a device larger man a man's pocket watch, and it was emitting the bluish light. I couldn't see what was on its face, but it was also talking, softly, like a radio turned way down.

"I couldn't hear the words, but it all sounded to me like some foreign language I never heard before. And the blue light showed me the globe, which was black and looked glassy. His hand was a big one, broad, but with long, slim fingers.

" 'My time is up,' he said, and he put his hand under the cloak, and the hut was dark again, except for a lightning bolt now and then.

" 'I can't tell you now why I chose you,' he said, 'except to say that your aura shows you're a likely candidate for the job.'

"What's on aura? I thought. I knew what it meant according to the dictionary, but I had the feeling he meant something else. And what job? I thought.

"Suddenly, as if he'd been reading my thought, his hand came out from under the cloak again. The bluish light was bright, very bright, so bright I could hardly see him. But I could see both his hands now, and they lifted the globe off. I though I'd be able to see at least the outlines of his head, maybe something of his features if I squinted hard enough. But all I could see was the big globe above his head. Not the glass globe, because he held that to one side. The thing above his head was whirling, shot with many colors, and was so bright I could see only that.It put out feelers from time to time, feelers that shot out and men shrank back into the whirling thing.

"I don't mind admitting that I was scared men. Well, not really so much scared as awed. It was like seeing an angel face to face, and there's no shame in being afraid of an angel."

"Lucifer was an angel," Frigate said.

"Yeah, I know. I've read the Bible. Shakespeare, too. Maybe I didn't get through grammar school, but I'm self-educated."

"I wasn't intimating that you were ignorant," Frigate said.

Martin snorted, and he said, "You two don't really believe in angels, do you?"

"Not me," Tom said, "But he sure seemed like one. Anyway, I don't think that aura is ordinarily visible. I think he showed me it by means of that thing he wore on his wrist. It suddenly disappeared, and the bluish glow died immediately. Too soon for me to see his face. Another lightning flash silhouetted him men, and I saw he'd put the glass globe back over his head.

"Now I knew what he meant by an aura. I figured from what he said that I had one, too. And it was invisible."

"Next you'll be claiming to be an angel," Martin said.

" 'You can, you must, be of help to me,' the stranger said. 'I want you to start up-River, toward the tower. But first, you must tell this Jack London what has happened here tonight. And you must convince him that you are telling the truth. And get him to accompany you.

" 'But under no circumstances are you to tell anyone else that I have talked to you. No one. We Ethicals are few and seldom venture from the tower. But my enemies have agents among you. Not many, compared to you. But they are disguised as resurrectees, and they will be looking for me.

" 'Some day, they may even suspect that I have recruited help from you Riverdwellers. So they will be trying to find you. If they do, they will take you to the tower, unroll your memories, read them, and excise the parts relevant to me. And return you to the Valley.

' "London has a tiger-aura, too. So you must convince him to go with you. Tell him that I will see both of you again, and then he will believe. And you two will learn more of what this is all about.'

"He rose, and he said, 'Until then.'

"I watched him as another flash of lightning outlined his dark figure, the cloak, and the globe. I was wondering if I was crazy. I tried to get up but couldn't. After about half an hour, the paralysis wore off, and I went outside. The storm was over then, the clouds were starting to break up. But I couldn't see any sign of him."

Martin took up the story. Tom had come to him the next evening and made him promise to keep silent about what he was going to tell him. Martin did not know whether or not to believe him. What convinced him that he was not lying was that there was no reason for Tom to make up such a fantastic tale.

The incident had happened, but was it a hoax by some unknown party?

Tom thought about that and men wondered if perhaps London himself was the stranger, playing a joke on him. They soon realized that neither they nor anybody else they knew could have had the glass globe or the instrument he'd used. And how could anybody fake that blazing aura?

The Frisco Kid was getting itchy, anyway. He liked the idea of building a sailboat and going on. Whatever the story was, true or not, it gave him an incentive, a meaning to life. Tom felt the same way. The Tower became for them a sort of Holy Grail.

"I felt kind of lousy leaving Howardine without a word. The Kid wasn't getting along too well with his woman, a tall plain jane with a chip on her shoulder-I don't know what he ever saw in her-so he had no regrets about leaving,

"We scooted on up-River for a couple of hundred stones, and then we started to build our schooner. Nur came along and helped us build it. He's the only original member of the crew still with us.''

Tom, holding his finger to his lips, walked softly to the door. His ear against it, he listened for a moment. Then he yanked it open.

The little Moor, Nur el-Musafir, was standing by the door.

56

Nur did not seem startled or afraid. He said, in english, "May I come in?"

"Damn right you will!" Tom roared. He did not offer to drag him in, however. Something about the dark little man promised dire results if he were attacked.

Nur entered. Farrington, glowering, was on his feet.

"You were eavesdropping?"

"Obviously."

"Why?" Tom said.

"Because, when you three went to the ship, I could tell from your expressions that something was wrong. Peter was in danger."

"Thanks, Nur," Frigate said.

Tom Rider closed the door. Martin said, "I need another drink."

Nur sat down upon the top of a cabinet. Martin downed two shots of whiskey. Tom said, "You heard everything?"

Nur nodded.

Martin shouted, "We might as well stand on a deck with a megaphone and tell the whole world!"

Tom said, "For Chrissakes! Now we got another problem on our hands!"

"There's no more need to kill me than there was to kill Peter," Nur said. He removed a cigar from his shoulderbag and lit it.

"I overheard your women saying they'd be coming back soon. We don't have much time."

"He's a cool one, ain't he?" Tom said to Martin.

"Like an experienced agent.''

Nur laughed, and he said, "No. More like one who's been chosen by an Ethical!"

Nur said, "You may well stare. But you should have wondered a long time ago why I joined you from the beginning and have stuck with you through such a wearying journey."

Martin and Tom both opened their mouths.

Nur said, "Yes, I know what you're thinking. If I were an agent, I'd pretend to be one of the Etnicals' recruits. Believe me, I am not an agent."

"How do we know you're not? Can you prove it?"

"How do I know you two aren't agents? Can you prove it?"

The captain and the first mate were flabbergasted.

Frigate said, "When did the mysterious stranger talk to you? And why didn't he tell Tom that you were in oh this?"

Nur shrugged thin shoulders.

"He appeared shortly after his visit to Tom. I don't know exactly when. As for the second question, I don't know the answer.

"I do suspect that the Ethical may not be telling the truth. He may be lying in that he is telling us only a part of the real situation. Why, I don't know. But I am intrigued."

Martin said, "Maybe we should just leave these two behind."

"If you do," Nur said, "Peter and I will take the high road, and we'll be at the tower afore ye."

"He's paraphrasing Bobby Burns's song, the one you sing so often," Tom said to Martin.

Martin grunted, and he said, "They wouldn't be agents of the enemies of your visitor, Tom. Otherwise, we'd have been turned in long ago. So, we have to believe them. I still don't understand why the Ethical didn't tell us about Nur."

Tom proposed a toast to their newfound band, and they drank. By then, they heard the women on deck. The men were laughing at one of Martin's jokes when the women came into the cabin, but they had had time to arrange a meeting later in the hills.

The next day they met with Podebrad, who introduced them to his engineering staff. They launched at once into the specifications of the blimp.

Frigate pointed out that what they would build depended on their goal. If they just wished to get near the headwaters, they would need an airship large enough to carry enough fuel to take them there. It wouldn't have to have a ceiling of more than 4572 meters or 15,000 feet. If they wished to get over the mountains that ringed the polar sea, they'd have to build one which could rise 9144 meters.

That is, if the stories of their height were true. No one really knew.

It would take much longer to design and build a rigid dirigible for the longer, higher flight. It would require a much larger crew and, hence, more training. At higher altitudes, the engines would need supercharging. Besides, the winds there would probably be stronger than the lower winds. Too strong. The zeppelin would have to carry oxygen supplies for personnel and engines. That made the load heavier. And there was. the problem of the engine freezing.

It would be nice if they could use jet engines. These, however, were inefficient at low altitudes and speeds. Airships couldn't use them unless they went ao higher attitudes. Unfortunately, the metals needed for jet engines were lacking. "

Podebrad coldly replied that a big rigid dirigible was out. He was interested only in the smaller nonrigid type. This would go over the mountains, keeping at a height of +3962.4 meters or 13,000 feet. He understood that the mountains sometimes rose to 6096 meters. The ship would just go along them until it came to those of lesser height.

"That would require more fuel, because it would make the trip longer," Frigate said.

"Obviously," Podebrad said. "The ship will have to be big enough to be prepared for that."

It was clear that Sinjoro Podebrad was the boss.

The next day Project Airship was started. It was completed in eight months, four less than estimated. Podebrad was a hard driver.

Nur asked Podebrad how he would find Virolando without charts.

The Czech replied that he'd talked to several missionaries who'd originated mere. According to their accounts, Virolando was near the arctic region in which The River flowed downstream. It was an estimated 50,000 kilometers from the headwaters and shouldn't be too difficult to identify from the air. Since it was on the shores of a very large lake with a rough hourglass shape, and it contained exactly one hundred tall rock spires, it would be impossible to mistake it for another lake.

That is, it would be unless it had a duplicate somewhere else.

Afterward, Frigate said, "I got my doubts about his being a Chancer. Those I've met have been very warm, very compassionate. This guy could give a refrigerator lessons in freezing."

"Perhaps he is an agent," Nur said.

The others went numb at the thought.

"If he were, however," Nur said, "wouldn't he want to build a high-altitude zeppelin to get over the polar mountains?"

"I don't think an airship could get that high," Frigate said.

Whatever he was, Podebrad was efficient. Though be failed to find any airship pilots, he did have enough engineers to man a dozen vessels. And he decided that the pilots would train themselves.

Three crews were picked so that if any person dropped out for any reason, there would be enough replacements. If was during the ground training that Frigate, Nur, Farrington, Rider, and Pogaas began to have their doubts. None of them knew much about engines, which meant they'd have to be trained. Why should Podebrad use them when he had experienced engineers and mechanics?

He planned on a crew of only eight. But, true to his promise, the five from the Razzle Dazzle were assigned to the first crew. Podebrad went along on every trip, though ostensibly only as an observer. Frigate was nervous when he took his first flight, but his experience as a balloonist helped him overcome his stage fright.

One after the other, the crews trained. Then the big, semirigid blimp took several shakedown flights of 600 kilometers roundtrip. It went over the four ranges of mountains, enabling them to see valleys they had never seen before though they were practically next door.

The night before the flight, the crews attended a big party given in their honor. The crew of the Razzle Dazzle, minus the women of the captain, first mate, and Frigate, were there. The women had gotten angry, understandably so, because they were being forsaken. Though they had already taken other lovers, they hadn't forgiven their former cabinmates.

Nur bad-arrived at New Bohemia without a woman, so he had nothing to feel bad about.

Shortly before midnight, Podebrad sent everybody home. The ascent was to be made just before dawn, and the crew had to be' up even earlier. Farrington's party bedded down in a hut near the huge bamboo hangar, and, after some chatter, went to sleep. They had expected Podebrad to announce his resignation and departure at the party. But it was obvious now that he intended to wait until he was in the ship.

"Maybe he thought he'd be lynched," Martin said.

Frigate was the last to fall asleep, or, at least, he supposed he was. Martin might be faking slumber. Though he had not shown any fear, he still did not like being aloft.

Frigate tossed and turned, too high strung to relax. Sleep always came hard before important events, just as it had the nights before he played football or ran in a track meet. Too often, the insomnia had resulted in fatigue the next day, and so he had not been up to his full potential. The very worry about not being good enough had ensured that he would not be.

Besides, having flown airplanes in the U.S. Army Air Corps when young and balloons in his middle age, he knew the dangers they could encounter.

He awoke from a light sleep to hear motors roaring, propellers spinning.

He rolled out of bed and opened the door and looked out. Though he could see only fog, he knew that there could be only one source of the noise.

It took a minute to rouse the others. Clad only in kilts and wearing long, thick towels over their backs, they dashed toward the hangar. Several times, they ran headlong into huts, and many times stumbled. Finally, as they came up the slope of the plains, their heads were above the fog.

In the bright starlight, they saw what they had feared.

Men and women stood around on the ground, sleepily cheering. These had hauled out the big blimp on ropes. Now, their work done, they were watching the ship rise slowly. Suddenly, water ballast was discharged, drenching many of them. More swiftly now, the cigar shape rose, its nose turned up-River. Lights in the cabin, set below the long, triangular keel that ran beneath the vessel, blazed. They could see Podebrad's profile through a port.

Howling, cursing, they ran toward ate dirigible. But they knew they could do nothing to prevent its departure.

Farrington grabbed a spear leaning against the side of the hangar and threw it. It fell far short and almost hit a woman. He threw himself on the ground and beat the grass with his fists.

Mix jumped and yelled and shook his fists.

Nur shook his head.

Pogaas howled curses in his native language.

Frigate wept. Because of him, the others had wasted nine months. If only he had not nought of the blimp, they would be 50,000 kilometers or so farther along on their voyage.

The worst of it was that the Razzle Dazzle had been sold. Not for a song. For five hundred cigarettes and much booze and some personal favors.

Later, they sat gloomily around near a grailstone, waiting for it to erupt and fill their grails. The New Bohemians around them were a noisy crowd, discussing and cursing their late chief. The ex-crew of the Razzle Dazzle and the airship were silent. Finally, Martin Farrington said, "Well, we can always steal my ship back."

"That wouldn't be honest," Nur said.

"What do you mean, not honest? I wasn't thinking of just taking it without paying for it. We'd leave them just what they paid for it."

"They'd never agree to the deal," Tom said.

"What could they do about it?"

There was a flurry of activity, silencing them for a moment. A man had announced that the council had elected a new head of state. He was Podebrad's second-in-command, Karel Novak. There was some cheering, but most people felt too depressed to work up much emotion.

"Why do you suppose he shafted us?"Martinsaid. "We were as good blimp men as anybody else, and he promised us."

Frigate said, his voice near breaking, "The truth is, I wasn't as good a pilot as Hronov and Zeteny. Podebrad knew that if he rejected me, you'd all raise hell. So he just took off without us."

"The dirty sneak!" Tom said. "Naw. That isn't it. Besides, you're good enough."

"We'll never know,'' Martin said. "Say, do you think Podebrad could be an agent? And he somehow found out about us and so left us behind, our thumbs up our tocuses?"

"I doubt it," Nor said. "He could be one. Perhaps he originally intended to build a fast steamboat to get up The River. Then we came along and put a bee in his bonnet: the blimp. But we're the ones who got stung."

"If he was an agent, how'd he find out about us?"

Frigate raised his head. "That's it! Maybe one of the women we sloughed off overheard you two talking. You did get pretty loud when you were talking in your cabin sometimes. Maybe Eloise or Nadja heard you talking in your sleep. For revenge, they told Podebrad all, and he decided he didn't want us along."

"Neither one of them could keep their mouths shut about it," Tom said. "They'd have spilled the beans to us long ago."

"We'll never know," Martin said, shaking his head.

"Yeah?" Tom said. "Well, if I ever catch up with Podebrad, I'll break his neck."

Farrington said, "First, I'll break his legs."

"No, I want to build a six-story house,'' Frigate said. "With only one window in it, in the top story. Then we'll execute him by a method peculiarly Czech. Defenestration."

"What?" Tom said.

"Throw him out the window."

Nur said, "Fantasy revenge is a good method of relieving anger. It's better, however, not to feel the need for revenge. What we must do is to act, not blow off steam."

Frigate got swiftly to his feet. "I got an idea! Nur, will you take care of my grail for me? I'm going off to see Novak."

"You and your ideas!" Farrington shouted. "They've got us in enough trouble! Come back here!"

Frigate kept on walking.

57

Slowly, majestically, the Parseval moved above the chasm. Its nose was up, and its propellers were angled upward. The wind that ripped out of the hole dipped down when it hit the edge of the canyon top, and the dirigible had to keep from being gripped by the downdraft. Cyrano had to calculate the force exactly, keeping the airship at the same altitude, aimed at the center of the arch-shaped hole. A slight error could result in the great craft's being dashed down against the edge of the canyon and broken in two.

Jill thought that, if she were the captain, she would not have risked this entrance. It would be better to circle the mountain, to search for another gateway. However, that meant using much more fuel. Battling such strong winds, the motors could burn up so much that there would not be enough left to return to Parolando. Perhaps the ship could not even get to the Mark Twain.

Cyrano was sweating, but his eyes were bright and his expression eager. If he were scared, he did not look so. She had to admit to herself that he was, after all, the best one in this situation. His reflexes were the swiftest, and he would not freeze with panic. To him, this must be much like a duel with swords. The wind thrust; he parried; the wind riposted; he counterriposted.

Now they were in the thick clouds raging from the hole.

Suddenly, they were through.

Though still blinded by fog, they could read the radar-scopes. Before them was a sea, 1 kilometer below. Around it circled the mountain. And ahead, in the center of the sea, 48.5 kilometers away, a little over 30 miles, was an object which reared high above the water, though still dwarfed by the mountain.

Cyrano, looking at the CRT on the panel, said, "Behold the tower!"

The radarman, seated before his equipment on the port side, confirmed the sighting.

Firebrass ordered that the ship be taken to 3050 meters altitude, somewhat over 10,000 feet. The propellers could not be swiveled horizontally to lift the ship faster because it had to fight the wind.

However, as they rose, they found that the wind lessened. By the time the ship had reached the desired altitude, it could proceed straight ahead. Now its estimated ground speed was 80.50 km/ph, over 50 mph. As it neared the tower, it picked up more velocity. t

The sky was brighter than at dusk, lit by both the weak sun and the clustered stellar masses.

Now the radars could sweep the entire sea and touch the top of the most distant wall. The nearly circular body of water was 97 kilometers across or somewhat over 60 miles in diameter. The opposite wall was the same height as the nearer one.

"The tower!" Firebrass exploded. "It's 1.7 kilometers tall! And 16 kilometers wide!"

In old-style measurements, that would have been slightly over a mile high and almost 10 miles in diameter.

There was an interruption. The chief engineer, Hakkonen, reported that the hull was collecting ice. It was not, however, on the windscreens of the control room, since they were made of an ice-resistant plastic.

Firebrass said, "Take her down to 1530 meters, Cyrano. The air's warmer there."

The River, entering the sea, still carried much heat even after its passage through the arctic regions. In this deep, cold cup the waters surrendered warmth, so much that the temperature at 1524 meters or 5000 feet was 2 degrees above Centigrade. But higher up, the moisture-heavy air was an ice trap.

While the dirigible was lowered, the radar operator reported that the interior of the mountain was not as smooth as the exterior. There were innumerable holes and bulges, as if the makers of the mountain had not thought it necessary to finish off the inside.

The narrow ledge described by Joe Miller had been detected by the radar. It led from the top of the mountain to the bottom. There was another narrow ledge leading along the base of the sea, ending at a hole about 3 meters wide and 2 meters high.

No one commented on this. But Jill did wonder aloud why the big hole through which the dirigible had entered had been made.

"Maybe it's for their aerial craft, if they have any," Firebrass said. "It could be used to keep from having to fly over the mountain."

That seemed as good a reason as any.

Piscator said, "Perhaps. However, the flash of light that startled Joe Miller so much could not have come from the sun's rays going through the hole. In the first place, the hole is darkened by that cloud stream. In the second place, even if the sun's rays had flashed through, they would not have illuminated the top of the tower. Joe did say that the fog was momentarily blown aside. But even so, the rays would not have reached the top of the tower. And if they had, he would have had to be in a straight line with the rays and the tower.

"He couldn't have been since the ledge on which he stood doesn't exist far enough to put him in the line of sight."

"Maybe that flash of light actually came from the aircraft he saw a minute later," Firebrass said. "It was coming down and perhaps its engines had to release some energy, in some fashion, to check its rate of descent. Joe thought it was the sun's rays."

Cyrano said, "It's possible. Or perhaps the light was a signal from the tower. However, if the tower is big enough to be seen by Joe, and he must have been standing high on that ledge to see 48.5 kilometers away, how could he see a much smaller object, the aerial machine?"

"Maybe it wasn't so small," Firebrass said.

They were silent for a moment. Jill tried to estimate the size of an aircraft that could be seen at that distance! She did not know what it should be, but she thought that it must be at least a kilometer wide.

"I do not like to think of it," Cyrano said.

Firebrass ordered him to send the ship in a circle around the sea. The radar indicated that the sides of the circular tower were smooth and unbroken, except for openings about 243 meters or slightly less than 800 feet below the top.

There was a difference in the height of the exterior top of the tower and the interior. Inside walls 243 meters tall was the smooth surface of a landing field almost 16 kilometers across.

"Those openings at the bottom of the wall are slightly lower than the center,'' Firebrass said.' "That must be so the moisture can drain out through the holes."

What interested them most, however, was the only protuberance on the "landing field." This was located at one end, south-all directions from the tower's center were south-and it was a hemisphere with a diameter of 16 meters and a height of 8 meters.

"If that isn't an entrance, I'll eat my loincloth," Firebrass said. He shook his head. "Sam's going to be disappointed when he hears about this. There is no way that anybody can get into this tower except by air."

"We're not in yet," Piscator murmured. "Yeah? I know. But we're sure as hell going to try. Listen, everybody. Sam ordered that we should make only a scouting trip. I think that trying to get into that tower comes under the definition of scouting."

Firebrass was almost always ebullient, but now his whole body seemed to quiver and his face was lit up as if all his nerves had suddenly become light transmitters. Even his voice shook with excitement.

"There may be defensive weapons, manned or automatic, down there. The only way to find out is to probe. But I don't want to endanger the ship any more than we have to.

"Jill, I'm going down with a small party in a chopper. You'll be in charge, which means you'll be captain, even if only for a short time. Whatever else happens, you've achieved that ambition.

"You keep the ship at about a thousand meters above the tower's top and a thousand meters away from it. If anything should happen to us, you take the ship back to Sam. That's an order.

"If I see anything suspicious, I'll holler. You take off then and let me worry about getting back. Got that?"

Jill said, "Yes, sir."

"If that dome has an entrance, it may take an electronic or mechanical Open Sesame to get in. Maybe not. They wouldn't think there'd be any chance of us ever getting to it. I don't think there's anybody home. Maybe there is, and they're just waiting to see what we do before they take action. Let's hope not."

Cyrano said, "I'd like to go with you, my captain."

"You stay here. You're our best pilot. I'll take you, Anna, and Haldorssori, he can fly a chopper, too, Metzing, Arduino, Chong, and Singh. That is, if they'll volunteer."

Obrenova phoned the others at their posts and then reported that they were more than willing.

Firebrass informed the crew of the radar findings over the general address system. He also told them that a party would be landing shortly.

He had no sooner finished than he got a call from Thorn. Fire-brass listened for a minute, then said, "No, Barry, I have enough volunteers."

Turning away from the phone, he said, "Thorn was very eager to be with me. He sounded unhappy when I turned him down. I didn't know he was so fired up about this."

Jill phoned the hangar section and told Szentes, its chief petty officer, to prepare the No. 1 helicopter for flight.

Firebrass shook hands with everyone in the control room except Jill. He gave her a long hug. She was not sure that she liked that. It seemed unofficerly, and it was also too much like a farewell embrace. Did he have some doubts about being able to return? Or was she just projecting her own anxiety upon him?

Whatever the truth, she was having conflicting emotions. She resented his treating her differently from the others, yet she felt warmed because he was especially fond of her. It was a wonder that she did not have ulcers, she suffered so much and so frequently from opposing feelings. But then she had never heard of anybody having ulcers on this world. Mental and nervous tensions seemed to manifest themselves in psychic forms. Her hallucinations, for instance.

A moment later, she was no longer the exception. Cyrano had asked Piscator to take his post for a minute. Then he had risen and warmly embraced the captain while tears ran down his cheeks.

"My dear friend, you must not look so sad! There may be danger there, but do not fear! I, Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, will be at your side!"

Firebrass released himself, patted the Frenchman on the shoulder, and laughed, "Hey, I didn't mean to make everybody think something will go wrong! I wasn't saying goodbye, just so long! What the hell! Can't I. . . ? Oh, well! No, Cyrano, you get back to your post."

He smiled, his teeth very white in his dark face, and he waved at them. "So long!"

Anna Obrenova, looking very pensive, followed him. Metzing, looking very grim and Teutonic, walked out behind her.

Jill immediately gave orders that the ship be taken to the position Firebrass had commanded. The Parseval began to circle downward. When it had plunged into the fog, its searchlights were turned on. Though powerful, these could penetrate only 150 meters or somewhat less than 500 feet. The dirigible took its position, hovering in one place, its nose pointed into the wind, its speed exactly matching the force of the wind. Four tunnels of light were carved into the fog, but these showed nothing but dark-grey clouds. The tower was ahead and below, invisible, yet seeming to radiate a massive ominousness, extending feelers that gripped the ship.

No one spoke. Cyrano lit up a cigar. Piscator stood behind the radar operator and watched the sweeps on the scopes. The radio operator was intent on his dials, running the set through the frequency spectrum. Jill wondered just what he hoped to pick up.

After what seemed an hour but was only fifteen minutes, Szentes called the captain pro tempore. The belly hatch was open, the chopper was wanned up, and take-off would be in one minute.

Szentes sounded strained.

"There's a little problem, Ms. Gulbirra, which is why I called you before take-off. Thorn appeared, and he tried to argue the captain into taking him along. The captain told him to get back to his post."

"Did he do that?"

"Yes, sir. The captain told me to call you to make sure. Mr. Thorn won't have had time to get to the tail section yet, though, sir."

"Very well, Szentes. I'll take care of it."

She switched off, and she swore softly. Here she was, commander for only fifteen minutes, and she was confronted with a disciplinary problem. What had gotten into Thorn?

There was only one thing to do. If she ignored Thorn's behavior, she would lose control of the ship, the respect of the crew.

She phoned the auxiliary control room in the lower tail structure. Salomo Coppename, a Surinamese, the aft second mate, answered.

"Arrest Mr. Thorn. Have him conducted to his cabin by a guard detail, and make sure a guard is posted outside his cabin."

Coppename must have wondered what was going on, but he did not question her.

"And call me as soon as he shows."

"Yes, sir."

A red light on the control panel ceased blinking. The belly hatch had just been closed. The radar had picked up the No. 1 helicopter, heading downward for the top of the tower.

A voice suddenly came over the radio.

"Firebrass here."

"We read you loud and clear," the radio operator said.

"Fine. You're coming in L and C, too. I'm going to land about a hundred meters from the dome. Our radar's working A-OK and so we shouldn't have any problems. I expect that the wall will block off most of the wind when we land.

"Jill? You there?"

"Here, Captain."

"What did you do about Thorn?"

Jill told him, and Firebrass said, "That's what I would've done. I'll ask him why he was so hot to go with us when I get back. If ... if I don't get back, for any reason, you question him. But keep him under guard until this tower business is finished."

Jill ordered Aukuso to tie in the radio with the general address system. There was no reason that everybody should not listen in.

"I'm coming down now. The wind is weaker now. Jill, I. . ."

Cyrano said, "The belly hatch is opening!".

He pointed at a blinking red light on the panel.

"Mon Dieu!"

He pointed out through the windscreen.

That was not necessary. Everybody in the control room was looking at the fiery ball suddenly born in the dark-grey ness.

Jill moaned.

Aukuso said loudly, "Captain! Come in, Captain!"

There was no answer.

58

The intercom was ringing.

Moving slowly, as if the air was cotton candy, Jill pushed the switch to ON.

Szentes said, "Sir, Thorn just stole the other chopper! But I think I got the son of a bitch! I emptied my pistol at him!"

Cyrano said, "He's on the scope!"

"Szentes, what happened?"

She fought to get out of the thick element in which she was drowning. She had to shed this numbness, to recover quickness of analysis and decision.

"Officer Thorn left the hangar bay as the captain ordered. But he came back as soon as the chopper left, and he had a pistol with him. He made us get into the supply compartment, and he shot off the intercom unit. Then he locked us in. He forgot that arms are stored there, too. Or maybe he thought he'd be gone before we could get out.

"Anyway, we shot off the lock, and we rushed out. By then he was in the chopper and lifting it off the landing platform. I shot at him just as the chopper was going down out of the bay. The others shot, too.

"Sir, what's going on?"

"I'll notify the crew just as soon as I know myself," Jill said.

"Sir?"

"Yes."

"It was a funny thing. Thorn was weeping all the time he forced us into the supply room, even when he said he'd shoot us if we tried to stop him."

"Out," Jill said, and switched the intercom off.

The infrared equipment operator said, ' "The fire's still burning, sir."

The radar operator, pale under his dark pigmentation, said, "That fire is the helicopter, sir. It's on the landing deck of the tower."

She looked into the fog. She could see nothing except the swirling clouds.

"I've got the other chopper.," the radarman said. "It's headed down. Toward the base of the tower."

A moment later, he added, "The chopper is on the surface of the sea."

"Aukuso, call Thorn."

The gluey feeling was receding now. She still felt confused, but now she was becoming capable of finding some order in the chaos.

After a minute, Aukuso said, "He doesn't answer."

According to the radar, the amphibious helicopter was now floating on the sea 30 meters from the tower.

"Keep trying, Aukuso."

Firebrass was probably dead. She was the captain now, her ambition achieved.

"God! I didn't want it this way!"

Dully, she called Coppename and told him to come to the control room to take over the duties of the first mate. Alexandras would.be the aft first officer.

"Cyrano, we'll have to take care of Thorn later. As of now, we have to find out what happened to Firebrass . . . and the others."

She paused, and said, "We have to land on top of the tower."

"Certainly, why not?" Cyrano said.

He was pale, and his jaw set. But he seemed in perfect control of himself.

The Parseval moved through the clouds, its radar probing ahead and below. There was a powerful updraft around the tower, but it lost its force as soon as the dirigible was over the top.

The belly searchlights lanced downward, sweeping over the dull grey metal of the vast surface. The people in the control room could see the flames, but they could not distinguish the helicopter itself.

Slowly, the airship slid past the fire. Now its propellers were swiveled horizontally to pull the colossus down.

As gently as possible, its pilot brought it down. Under ideal conditions, there would have been no wind at all. However, the thousands of drainage holes along the base of the wall permitted a breeze of 8 km/ph. This, on the Beaufort scale, was a light breeze. Wind felt on the face. Leaves, if present, rustling. An ordinary wind vane moved by the wind.

A layman would consider it negligible. But the great surface of the buoyant ship was easily pushed by this breeze if no propulsive force countered it. It would be taken up hard against a wall unless something were done to stop it.

Unfortunately, there was no mooring mast. Also, the vessel could not be brought into direct contact with the landing field. Unlike the Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg, the Parseval had no underslung control gondola 'with a wheel on its bottom to keep the lower tail structure from rubbing against the ground when landing. Since the control room of the Parseval was in the nose, the ship could not land without damaging the tail fin. However, there were ropes stored aboard. These had been taken along in case a landing had to be made on a plain alongside The River. They were to be thrown down to the people on the ground, and these, hopefully, would volunteer as a ground crew.

Jill gave a few orders. Cyrano turned the craft broadside to the wind. For several kilometers, he allowe 'the wind, which was decreasing, to push the ship toward the wall. By then it was obvious that the wind was blowing the other way now, its source the nearest apertures.

When radar indicated that the nose was a half-kilometer from the wall, he reversed the propellers at slow speed. The airship halted, and the belly hatch opened.

Ropes were lowered, and, by fours, fifty men climbed down them. As each group touched the ground, the ship lost its weight and became more buoyant. Reluctantly, Jill ordered that hydrogen be released from the cells. This was the only way to balance the lift, and she hated to expend the gas. Ballast could be released later to regain the buoyancy.

Other ropes were thrown down from the nose and the tail. The men on the ground seized these and hung on, bringing their weight to bear.

Cyrano now let the airship sail toward the wall, the propellers unmoving. Before the nose touched the wall, the propellers started up again, and the airship stopped.

Two men ran to the wall and tested the wind at the apertures. Via walkie-talkie, they verified that the wind coming in through these would be strong enough to keep the ship from swinging broadside into the wall.

Other men were let down on ropes, and more hydrogen was valved. These added their weight to the crew holding the aft ropes.

Others hastened to help the men at the nose. After towing the Parseval slowly until its nose almost touched the wall, they passed the ropes through the three holes, using extended hooks to catch the ropes outside and then draw them in. These were tied, and the tail was swung around until the dirigible was parallel to the wall. Then the tail ropes were tied down.

The vessel was now floating about 20 meters away from the wall.

Jill did not expect any change in the wind. If there was, it could be exceedingly damaging. One rub of the ship against the wall could strip off the transmission gears and the propellers on the port side.

A ladder was let down from the belly hatch. Jill and Piscator hastened from the control room, walked swiftly down the passageway, and then went down the ladder. Doctor Graves was waiting for them, his black bag in his hand.

The helicopter had crashed about 30 meters from the dome. With its flames a beacon, they pressed through the fog toward it. Jill's heart beat hard as they neared the wreckage. It seemed impossible that vigorous, flamboyant Firebrass could be dead.

He lay a few meters from the flaming mass where the impact had thrown him. The others were still in the machine, the blackened body of one sitting up in its seat.

Graves handed his lamp to Piscator and bent down over the figure. Smoke mingled with the fog and brought the sickening stench of burning gasoline and flesh to them. Jill felt as if she were going to vomit.

"Hold the light steady!" Graves said sharply.

Jill did so, forcing herself to look at the corpse. His clothes had been blown off him; his skin was seared from top to bottom. Despite the burning, his features were still recognizable. He must not have been in the flames long. Perhaps he had been ejected by the explosion before the machine crashed. The fall would account for the removal of the top of his head.

Jill could not see why the doctor had to examine the body. She was about to tell him so when he stood up. His hand, its palm open, was held out to her.

"Look at this."

She brought the lamp close to his hand. The object in it was a sphere the size of a matchhead.

"It was on his forebrain. I don't know what the hell it is."

After he had wiped it clean of blood, he said, "It's black."

He wrapped the little ball in a cloth and dropped it into his bag.

"What do you want to do with the bodies?" . Jill looked at the blazing mass of crumpled metal. "There's no use wasting foam to put the fire out now," she said in a dull voice. She looked at the men who had followed them. "Peterson, you get the body back to the ship. Wrap it up first. The rest of you follow me."

A few minutes later, they halted before the dome. Searchlights from the dirigible were turned on it, making it look like a ghost of an Eskimo igloo. Using her lamp, Jill saw that the dome was made of the same grey metal as the tower. It seemed to be continuous with the metal of the tower. At least, there was no sign of welding, no seams. It was as if it were a bubble blown from the surface.

The others stood back from its arched entrance, waiting for her to decide what to do. Their lights revealed an opening like a cavern. About 10 meters beyond, the walls curved in, forming a corridor about 3 meters wide and 2.5 meters high. The walls were of the same grey substance. At its end, about 30 meters away, the hall curved abruptly. If there was an entrance down into the tower itself, it had to be just beyond the curve.

Just above the opening were two symbols, both in altorelief. The top one was a semicircle, and it bore the seven primary colors. Below it was a circle inside of which was a looped cross, the Egyptian ankh.

"A rainbow above the emblem of life and resurrection," Jill said.

Piscator said, "Pardon me. The cross within the circle is also the astrological-astronomical symbol for Earth. However, in that symbol, the cross is a simple one, not the looped cross."

"A symbol of hope, that rainbow. And, if you remember the Old Testament, it's God's sign of covenant with His people. It also evokes the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the Emerald City of Oz, and many other things."

Piscator looked curiously at her.

She was silent for a minute, overcome with awe and a fear that she hoped would not become overwhelming.

Then she said, "I'm going in. You wait here, Piscator. When I get to the end of the hall, I'll signal you to come on in, too. If there' s no trouble, that is.

"If anything should happen to me, I don't know what, you and the men get to hell back to the ship. And take off. That's an order.

"You'll be the captain. Coppename's a good man, but he doesn't have your experience, and you're the steadiest man I know."

Piscator smiled. "Firebrass ordered you not to land if something happened to him. Yet you did land. Could I allow you to be in a dangerous situation and just leave you?"

"I don't want you to endanger the ship. Or the lives of almost a hundred men."

"We shall see. I'll act as I feel the situation demands. You wouldn't do otherwise. And then there is Thorn."

"One thing at a time," she said.

She turned and walked toward the entrance. As she neared it, she gasped.

A low light had filled the hall.

After hesitating several seconds, she continued. As she passed beneath the arch, she was suddenly in a bright light.

59

Jill stopped. Piscator said, "Where is the light coming from?"

Jill turned and said, "I don't know. There doesn't seem to be any source. Look. I don't have a shadow."

She turned back and started to walk slowly. And then she stopped again.

"What's the matter? You ..."

"I don't bloody know. I feel as if I'm in a thick jelly! I can't breathe, but I have to struggle to take another step!"

Leaning into the palpable, invisible barrier as if she were going against a strong wind, she managed to force herself three more steps. Then, panting, she stopped.

"It must be a field of some sort. There's nothing material here, but I feel like a fly caught in a spider's web!"

"Could it be that the field is affecting the magnetic tabs in your cloths?" he called.

"I don't think so. If that was it, the tabs would be pulling the cloths, and that's not it. I'll try it, though."

Feeling some shyness at stripping in front of fifty men, she pulled the tabs loose. The air temperature was just above freezing. Shivering, teeth chattering, she again tried to force her way into the thick element. She could not go a centimeter beyond the limit of her original advance.

She bent down to pick up her cloths, noting that she could do so easily. The force acted only in a horizontal direction. After backing away two steps, and feeling the force diminish, she put her cloths back on.

Outside the entrance again, she said, "You try it, Piscator.

"You think I could succeed where you can't? Well, it is worth experimenting.''

Naked, he walked in. To her surprise, she saw that he was not affected by the field. Not, at least, until he had gotten several meters from the curve. Then he called back that he was encountering difficulty.

He moved ever more slowly, struggling, his panting so loud that she could hear it. But he did get to the curve, and there he paused to regain his breath.

He said, "There's an open elevator at the end. It seems to be the only way to get down."

"Can you get to it?" she called.

"I'll try."

Moving like an-actor in a slow-motion film, he plowed ahead. And he was gone around the bend.

A minute passed. Two. Jill went into the corridor as far as she could. "Piscator! Piscator!"

Her voice rang strangely, as if the corridor had peculiar acoustical properties.

There was no answer, though if he were just around the curve, he would be able to hear her.

She shouted again and again. Silence replied.

There was nothing she could do except to return to the entrance and let others try.

The men went in by twos to save time. Some progressed a little further than she; some, not as much. All shed their cloths, but this did not help them at all.

Jill used the walkie-talkie to order the men in the ship to make the attempt. If one out of fifty-two could do it, perhaps one of the forty-one in the ship might succeed.

First, though, everybody except herself had to return to the vessel. They trooped off, phantom figures in the dimly lit fog. She had never felt so lonely in all her life, and she had known many hours of the blackest isolation. The mists pressed wet hands against her face, which seemed to be congealing into a mask of ice. The funeral pyre of Obrenova, Metzing, and the others burned fiercely. And there was Piscator, somewhere around the corner. What situation was he in? Was he unable either to go ahead or to go back? Returning had not been difficult for her or the other men. Why should he not be able to retreat?

But then she did not know what other obstacles there were beyond that grim grey hall.

She muttered to herself Virgil's line, "Facilis descensus Averni." ("It is easy to go down into Hell.")

What was the rest of it? After so many years, she found it difficult to remember. If only this world had books, reference materials.

Now it came back.

It is easy to go down into Hell. Night and day, the gates of Death stand wide. But to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air. There's the rub, the task.

The only real trouble with that quotation was that it was not appropriate. It had been very hard to get to the gates, impossible for all but one. And climbing back-except for one-had been easy.

She switched on the walkie-talkie.

"Cyrano. The captain here."

"Yes, what is it, my captain?"

"Are you cry ing?"

"Yes, but of course. Did I not love Firebrass dearly? I am not ashamed of my grief. I am not a cold Anglo-Saxon."

"Never mind that. Get hold of yourself. We have work to do."

Cyrano sniffled, then said, "I know that. And I am willing and able. You will find me no less a man. What are your orders?"

"You know you're to be relieved by Nikitin. I want you to bring along twenty-five kilograms of plastic explosive."

"Yes. I hear you. But do you intend to blow up the tower?"

"No, just the entranceway."

A half-hour passed. The men in the ship had to come out and those out had to go in. This was a long process, since, for every man that left, one had to go in immediately. Taking turns this way slowed the business but was necessary. Forty-eight leaving all at once would make the ship too buoyant. It would rise, leaving the end of the ladder above the reach of those on the ground.

Finally, she saw their lights and heard their voices. She told them what had happened, though they already knew. Then she told them what they were to do, which they expected.

The result was that no one got anywhere as far as Piscator.

"Very well," Jill said.

The plastic explosive was applied against the exterior of the dome opposite a point halfway down the corridor. She would have liked to have set it at the juncture of the back of the dome and the tower wall. She was afraid that the explosive might blow a hole in the dome. If it did so, it might also kill Piscator.

They retreated to the dirigible and the explosives expert pressed a switch on a transmitter. The blast was deafening, though the plastic had been applied to the side of the dome away from them. They ran to it, then stopped, coughing from the fumes. After the air was cleared, Jill looked at the dome.

It was undamaged.

"I thought so," she said to herself.

She had called in to Piscator that he should not come out until after the explosion. There had been no answer. She had a hunch that he was not in the vicinity, but hunches were not certainties.

Jill went back into the dome as far as she could. There was no force against the long-handled hook she thrust ahead of her. And she could throw a cloth weighted with metal to the end of the corridor. So, the field was no barrier to inanimate objects.

If they had a periscope long enough to reach to the end of the corridor, they could see around it. However, a periscope was not part of the ship's supplies.

She was not defeated by this. There was a very small machinist's shop on the Parse vol. A wheeled device which would go to the end of the corridor could be built. A camera could be attached to its end, and the camera could be activated by a radio transmitter.

The chief machinist's mate thought he could construct the "contraption" in an hour. She told him to do so, and then she ordered three men to stand guard in the dome.

"If Piscator shows, radio me."

Having returned to the ship, she phoned the machinist's shop.

"Can you do your work while we're aloft? The air might be rough."

"No sweat, sir. Well, only a little, anyway."

The process of untying the ship and getting it into the air took fifteen minutes. Nikitin took the Parseval up above the tower and then sent her down toward its base. Radar indicated that the helicopter was now against the base of the tower. Though the sea was not violent, its waves were short and choppy, and it had probably smashed the machine against the tower. However, if they were lucky, the damage could be minimal.

Aukuso radioed Thorn again without success.

Because of the updraft by the tower, it was impossible to bring the dirigible close to the helicopter. Nikitin piloted it down close to the surface and held her against the wind. The belly hatch was opened, and three men in an inflatable boat with an outboard motor were lowered. It headed for the tower, guided by the radarman on the ship.

Boynton, the officer in charge, gave a running report.

"We're alongside the chopper now. It's bumping into the tower, but its pontoons have kept the vanes from being damaged. The pontoons don't seem damaged, either. We're having a hell of a time with this pitching sea. Report back in a minute."

Two minutes later, his voice came back on.

"Propp and I are in the chopper now. Thorn's here! He's pretty bloody, looks as if he got a bullet in the left chest and some richocheting fragments got him in the face, too. He's alive, though."

"Is there an opening or entrance of any sort in the tower?"

"Just a minute. Have to light a flare. These lamps aren't strong enough . . . no, there's nothing there but smooth metal."

"I wonder why he landed there?" she said to Cyrano.

He shrugged and said, "I would guess that perhaps he had to land quickly before he passed out."

"But where was he going?"

"There are many mysteries here. We might be able to clear up some of them if we apply certain methods of persuasion to Thorn.''

"Torture?"

Cyrano's long, bony face was grave.

"That would be inhumane, and, of course, the end never justifies the means. Or is that statement a false philosophy?"

"I could never torture anybody, and I wouldn't permit anyone else to do it for me."

"Perhaps Thorn will volunteer information when he realizes that he cannot be free until he does so. I do not really think so, however. That one looks very stubborn."

Boynton's voice came in again. "With your permission. Ms. Gulbirra, I'll fly the chopper out. Everything looks okay. My men can bring Thorn back in the raft."

"Permission granted," Jill said. "If it's operable, take it up to the top of the tower. We'll be along later."

Within ten minutes, the radar operator reported that the helicopter was lifting. Boynton added that everything was running smoothly.

Leaving Coppename in charge, Jill went down to the hangar bay. She arrived in time to see Thorn's cloth-wrapped body being lifted out of the raft. He was still unconscious. She followed the stretcher bearers to the sick bay, where Graves immediately took charge.

"He's in shock, but I think I can pull him through. You can't question him now, of course."

Jill posted two armed guards at the door and returned to the control room. By then the ship was lifting, headed for the tower. A half-hour later, the Parseval was again poised above the landing field. This time, it stayed 200 meters .from the dome. Its nose was pointed against the slight wind, and its propellers spun lazily.

After a while, the little wagon made by the machinists was lowered onto the surface. After being pulled to the entrance, it was pushed as far as two men could get. Then long poles made by the machinists were used to push the wagon deeper. Extensions were added to the poles as needed. In a short time, the forward end of the wagon was against the far wall.

After six photographs were taken, the wagon was pulled back by a long rope. Jill eagerly removed the large plates, which had been developed electronically at the moment of exposure.

She looked at the first one.

"He's not there."

She handed it to Cyrano. He said, "What is this? A short hall and a doorway at its end. It looks like an elevator shaft beyond, yes? But. . . there is no cage and there are no cables."

"I don't think They would have to depend upon such primitive devices as cables," she said. "But it's evident that Piscator got through the field and that he took the elevator."

"But why does he not come back? He must know that we are concerned."

He paused, and then he said, "He must also know that we cannot stay here forever."

There was only one thing to do.

60

She gave the order to tie the ship up again. After this was done, she summoned the entire crew to the hangar bay. The photographs were passed around while she told them in detail everything that had happened.

"We'll wait here a week if we have to. After that, we must leave. Piscator would not willingly stay down there so long. If he doesn't come back within twelve hours we can presume that he's being detained by ... Them. Or perhaps he has had an accident and has been killed or hurt. There's no way of knowing. We can do nothing except wait for a reasonable period of time."

No one would think of deserting Piscator at this time. But it was evident that they did not like the idea of staying seven days in this cold, dark, wet, ominously silent place. It was too much like camping outside the gates of hell.

By then, helicopter No. 1 had quit burning. A work party went out to recover the bodies and to investigate the cause of the explosion. Mechanics began checking the other copter for pontoon damage and replacing the bullet-torn windshield and port door.

A three-man guard was posted just inside the dome. Just before Jill went to the messroom, she got a call from Doctor Graves.

"Thorn's still unconscious, but he's rallying. I've also looked at what's left of Firebrass' brain. I can't do much since I don't have a microscope. But I'd swear that that little black sphere was attached to the neural system of the forebrain. I considered the possibility that it was extraneous and had been injected by the force of explosion into his brain. But the mechanics tell me there wasn't any such thing in the copter's equipment."'

"You mean that you think that sphere had been surgically implanted in his brain?"

Graves said, "There isn't enough frontal skull left to say for certain. But I'm going to cut the others open, too. In fact, I'm going to do a complete dissection on all the victims. That'll take time, especially since I have to keep an eye on Thorn."

Trying to keep her voice from trembling, she said, "You realize the implications of that sphere?"

"I've been doing some thinking about it. I don't know what the hell it means except that it's important. Now, Jill, I've been doing dissections for years, not because I had to but just to keep my hand in. And I've never found anything out of the ordinary in a thousand corpses.

"But I'll tell you this. I think I know why Firebrass insisted on X-raying the skulls of his crew. He was looking for people with black spheres on, or in, their forebrains.

"I'll tell you something else. I think he rushed Stern's corpse off to The River because he knew that Stern had a ball in his brain.

"It's like Alice said, 'Mysteriouser and mysteriouser,' isn't it?"

Her heart pounding hard and her hand shaking, Jill switched off the intercom.

Firebrass was one of Them.

A moment later she called Graves back.

"Firebrass said he'd tell us why he wanted us X-rayed. But he never did, not to me, anyway. Did he tell you?"

"No. I asked him to tell me, and he just put me off."

"Then you don't know whether or not Thorn has a sphere in his head. If he should die, open him up, Doc."

"I'll do that. Of course, I could expose the brain, anyway. But not now. He has to get well first."

"Wouldn't that kill him? I know that the top of the skull is removed in operations, but can you expose Thorn's forebrain?"

"It won't hurt me a bit."

Twenty-four hours passed. Jill tried to keep the crew busy, but there was very little to do except unnecessary cleaning and polishing. She wished that she had brought along some of the movies made in Parolando. Except for talking and playing checkers, chess, and card games and throwing darts, there was little to occupy them. She did organize exercise periods to tire them out, but only so much of this could be done, and it was almost as boring as doing nothing.

Meanwhile, the dark and the cold seemed to seep into their bones. And the thought that below them there might be those mysterious beings who had made this world for them was nerve stretching. What were They doing? Why had They not come out?

Above all, what had happened to Piscator?

Cyrano de Bergerac seemed to be especially affected. His long silences and obvious brooding could be caused by the death of Firebrass. It seemed to her, howdver, that something else was bothering him.

Doctor Graves asked her to come to his office. On entering it, she found him sitting on the edge of his desk. Silently, he held out his palm. In it was a tiny black sphere.

"They were all so badly burned that I couldn't even determine the sex by exterior observation. Obrenova was the smallest, though, so I dissected the smallest corpse first. I found this at once. I didn't say anything to you because I wanted to examine all of them first.

"She was the only one to have this."

"Two of them!"

"Yeah. And it makes me wonder about Thorn."

Jill sat down and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. Graves said, "Listen. The only liquor aboard is in my locker. It's for medical purposes, but I think you need some medicine. I know I do."

While he got a bottle out, she told him about overhearing the quarrel between Thorn and Obrenova.

He handed her a cup of the purplish fluid, saying, "So they weren't just nodding acquaintances?"

"I don't think so. But I don't know what all this means."

"Who does? Except maybe Thorn. Cheers!"

Jill downed the wanning, fruity liquor, and she said, "We found nothing suspicious in the quarters of any of them, Firebrass", Obrenova's, or Thorn's."

She paused, then said, "There was one thing, significant not by its presence but by its absence. Like the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story who didn't bark. Thorn's grail wasn't in his chopper or in his cabin. I have, however, ordered a more thorough search of the chopper.

"You told me a few hours ago that Thorn's conscious now. Can he be questioned?"

"Not for very long. I'd advise waiting until he's stronger. Just now, if he doesn't want to talk, he can pretend to fall asleep."

The intercom rang. Graves flipped on the switch.

"Doctor? C.P.O. Cogswell here. I'd like to speak to the captain."

Jill said, "Captain here."

"Captain, we just found a bomb in the No. 2 chopper! It's plastic explosive. Looks like it weighs about two kilograms, and the fuse is connected to a radio receiver. It's on the underside of the arms locker in the rear."

"Don't do anything until I get down there. I want to see it before it's removed."

She stood up. "I don't think there's any doubt that Thorn set off a bomb in Firebrass' chopper. The investigating crew hasn't determined the cause of the explosion, but the chief said he thought it might have been a bomb."

"Yes," Graves said. "The question is why Thorn would want to do that."

Jill started to walk toward the door, then stopped. "My God! If Thorn planted bombs in both choppers, he could have hidden some on the ship, too!"

"You never found a transmitter when you searched his quarters," the doctor said. " Maybe he hid one, or several, on the ship."

Jill immediately alerted all personnel. After giving orders to Coppename to organize the search parties, she left for the hangar bay. The bomb was where the chief had said it was. She got down on her knees and looked at it with the aid of a flashlight. Then she left the machine.

"Remove the fuse and receiver. Put the plastic in the explosives hold. Call the electronics officer and tell him I'd like to know what frequency the receiver is set on.

"No, wait, I'll call him myself."

She wanted to make sure that his experimenting would be done in a shielded room. The various bombs-if any-would have been planted at the same time, but Thorn would set the receiver of each to respond to its own wavelength. Still, there was no use taking a chance.

After making sure that Deruyck, the electronics officer, understood why he should use a shielded room, she went to the control room. Coppename was at the intercom, listening to the reports of the search parties.

Cyrano was in the pilot's chair staring at the panel as if the ship were in flight. He looked up at her as she entered.

"Is it permitted to ask what Doctor Graves found?"

So far, she had not concealed anything from the crew. She felt that they had a right to know as much as she did.

Cyrano said nothing for some time after she had finished. His long fingers drummed on the panel while he looked upward as if something were written on the overhead. Finally, he stood up.

"I think we should have a little talk. In private. Now, if possible."

"With all this going on?"

"We can step into the chart room."

He followed her in and closed the door. She sat down and lit another cigarette. He began pacing back and forth, his hands locked behind him.

"It is evident that Firebrass, Thorn, and Obrenova were agents of Them. I find it hard to believe that Firebrass could have been. He was so human! Yet it is possible that They are human, too.

"Still, that being who called himself an Ethical said that neither he nor the agents were violent. They detested and abhorred violence. But Firebrass could be very violent; he certainly did not act like a pacifist. And then there's the incident of the newcomer Stern. It seems from what you tell me that Firebrass may have attacked him, instead of Stern assaulting Firebrass."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jill said. "It would be better to begin at the beginning."

''Very well. I will tell you what I promised to keep secret. I do not easily break my word, in fact, this is the first time. But I may have given my word to someone who is my enemy, my secret enemy.

"It was seventeen years ago. How long ago that has been, yet how recently! I was at that time living in an area of which most of the people were of my country and time. On the right bank, you understand. The left was populated by brown-skinned savages. Indians who had lived on the island of Cuba before Columbus found it, though I believe its inhabitants were not aware that their country had been lost. They were fairly peaceful, and after some initial struggles and difficulties, our area had settled down.

"My own little state was, in fact, headed by the great Conti, under whom I had the honor to serve at the siege of Arras. Where I received a thrust through the throat, the second of the serious wounds that convinced me, along with all else I had seen of war's miseries and horrors, that Mars was the stupidest of the gods. Also, I was delighted to find there my good friend and mentor, the so justly famed Gassendi. He, as you no doubt know, opposed the infamous Descartes and revived Epicurus, whose physics and morals he so splendidly presented. Not to mention his influence on Moliere, Chapelle, and Dehenault, all my good friends, by the way. He persuaded them to translate Lucretius, the divine Roman atom-ist ..."

"Stick to the point. Give me only the undecorated truth."

"As for the truth, what is it, to paraphrase slightly another Roman ..."

"Cyrano!"

61

"Very well. To the breach. It was late at night. I was sleeping soundly next to my so lovely Livy, when I was suddenly awakened. The only illumination was the night light seeping in through the wooden bars of our open window. A huge figure was standing over me, a black mass with a tremendous round head like a burned-out moon. I sat up, but before I could bring up my spear, which always lay by my side, the figure spoke."

"In what language?"

"Eh? In the only one in which I was then fluent, my native speech, the most beautiful of all the tongues of Earth. The thing spoke not the most correct of French, but I understood him.

' "Savinien de Cyrano II de Bergerac,' he said., giving me my full nomenclature.

" 'You have the advantage of me, sir,' I said. Though my heart was pounding hard and I felt the most intense need of pissing, I conducted myself most admirably. By then I could see, even in that faintly starlit darkness, that he was not overtly belligerent. If he had a weapon, he had concealed it under his huge cloak. Though I was somewhat distracted, I could not but wonder why Livy, a light sleeper, had not been awakened. But she slept on, snoring lightly and prettily.

" 'You may call me whatever you wish,' he said. 'My name is not important at this time. And if you wonder why your woman is not also awake, it is because I have made sure that she will not. Oh, no!' he said, as, furious, I tried to get up, 'she is not harmed in the least. She has been drugged and will awake in the morning without even a headache.'

"By that time, I discovered that I, or at least apart of me, had also been drugged. My legs would not function, though, strangely, they did not feel leaden or numb. They just wouldn't work. Naturally, I was furious at the liberties taken with my person, but there was little I could do about it.

"The stranger then pulled up a stool and sat down by me.

" 'Listen, and then determine for yourself if I am not worth listening to,' he said.

"And he told me a most amazing tale, Jill, the like of which it is evident that you have not heard. He said that he was one of the beings who had resurrected us. They called themselves Ethicals. He would not go into detail about their background or where they came from or anything like that. He did not have enough time for that. In fact, if he were caught-by his own people, mind you-it would be bad indeed for him.

"I had many questions, of course, but when I opened my mouth, he told me to keep quiet and listen. He would visit me again, he said, perhaps more than once. Then he would answer most of my questions. Meanwhile, I was to understand this! We had not been given life so that we could live forever. We were just subjects of scientific experiments, and when the experiments were finished, we would be finished. We'd die for the last time, forever."

"What kind of experiments?"

"Well, it was more than just experiments. It was also a historical project. His people wanted to collect data on history, on anthropology, and so forth. They were also interested in finding out what kind of societies we humans would form when we were so mixed together. How would people change under certain conditions?

"He said that many groups would be allowed to develop without any interference from his people at all. But some would be influenced, some subtly, some by more outright methods. The project would take a long time, perhaps several hundred years. Then it would be finit for the project and finit for us. Back to dust we would go-forever.

"I said, "That does not sound so ethical to me, sir. Why do they deny to us what they have-eternal life?'

"He said, 'That is because they are not truly ethical. Despite their high opinions of themselves, they are cruel, as the scientist who tortures animals to advance science is cruel. But he has his justifications, his rationalization.

' "You see, the scientist is doing some good, being ethical in one sense. It is true that as a result of this project, a few of you will become immortal. But only a few.'

" 'How is that?' I said.

"And then he told me about the entity which the Church of the Second Chance calls the ka. You know of this, Jill?"

Jill said, "I've attended many of their lectures."

"Then you know all about the ka and the akh and the other stuff. This person said that the Chancer's theology was partly true. Mainly because one of the Ethicals had visited the man called La Viro and had thus caused him to found the Church."

"I thought that was just one of the wild tales those visionaries had invented," Jill said. "I didn't put any more credence in it than I did in the ravings of Earth prophets. Moses, Jesus, Zoroaster, Mohammed, Buddha, Smith, Eddy, the whole sick crew."

"No more did I," Cyrano said. "Though, when I was dying, I did repent. But that was to make my poor unhappy sister and my friend Le Bret happy. Besides, it couldn't hurt if I made a deathbed conversion. And, to tell the truth, I was scared of hellfire. After all . . ."

"Your childhood conditioning."

"Exactly. But here was a being who said that there was such a thing as a soul. And I had proof positive that there could be a life after death. Still, I could not help wondering if I was the butt of a joke. What if this man were just one of my neighbors, pretending to be a visitor from the gods, as it were? I would believe him, and then tomorrow I would be laughed at. What? De Bergerac, the rationalist, the atheist, to be taken in so completely by this fantastic tale?

"But. . . who would do this to me? I knew no one who would have the motive or the means for such a joke. And what about the drug which made Livy sleep and which paralyzed my legs? I had never heard of such a drug. Also, where would a practical joker get that sphere which enclosed his head? There was just enough light to see that it was black and opaque. Still . . .

"And then, as if he perceived my lack of belief, he handed me a lens of some material. 'Put this in front of your eye,' he said. 'Look at Livy.'

"I did so, and I gasped with astonishment. Just beyond the top of her head was a globe of many colors. It shone brightly, as if illuminated by itself. It spun and swelled and expanded and put out arms from time to time, six-sided tentacles, and these shrank back into the globe arid then other arms came out.

"The being then reached out and told me to drop the lens into his hand. He did not say so, but it was evident that he did not want me to touch him. I obeyed, of course.

"The lens went back into his cloak, and he said, 'What you saw is the wathan. That is the immortal part of you.'

"Then he said, 'I have chosen a few of you to help me fight against this monstrous evil my people are committing. I picked you because of your wathans. You see, we can read wathans as easily as you can read a children's book. A person's character is reflected in his wathan. Perhaps I shouldn't say reflected, since the wathan is the character. But I don't have the time to explain that. The point is, only a minute fraction of humanity will reach the final, the desired ultimate stage, of wathanhood, unless humanity is given much more time.'

"He then went on to sketch what the Chancers expound in such detail. That the unfulfilled wathan of a dead person wanders through space forever, containing all that is human but unconscious. Only the complete evolved wathan has consciousness. And this stage is attained only by those who achieve an ethical perfection while alive. Or near perfection, anyway.

" 'What?' I said. "The ultimate in attaining ethical perfection is to wander like a ghost through space, to bounce off the walls of the universe like a cosmic handball, back and forth, yet be conscious of this horrible state and unable to communicate with anyone but one's self? That is a desirable state?'

' "You must not interrupt,' the stranger said. 'But I will tell you this. The being who attains perfect wathanhood or akhhood, goes beyond. He does not stay in this world. He goes beyond!'

" 'And where?' I said, 'is beyondT

" 'To go beyond is to be absorbed into the Overwathan. To become one with the only Reality. Or God, if you wish to name the Reality that. To become one of God's cells and to experience the eternal and infinite ecstasy of being God.'

"I was more than half-convinced then that I was dealing with an insane pantheist. But I said, 'And this absorption means the loss of one's individuality?'

" 'Yes,' he said. 'But you then become the Overwathan, God. To trade your individuality, your self-consciousness, for that of the Supreme Being is surely no loss. It is the greatest gain possible, the ultimate.'

' "It is horrible!' I cried. 'What kind of monstrous joke is this that God plays on His creatures? How is the afterlife, immortality, any better than death?

" 'No! It does not make sense! Speaking logically, why should the wathan, or the soul, be created in the first place? What sense is there to this creation when most wathans will be wasted, as if they were so many flies hatched only to be eaten or swatted? And those wathans who do survive, in a manner of speaking. What about those who achieve near perfection, sainthood, if you will, only to be cheated in the end? For surely to lose your self-consciousness, your individuality, your humanity, is to be cheated?

" 'No, I want to stand as myself, Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, if I am to be immortal. I do not want this spurious immortality, this beingness as an unknowing, brainless cell of God's body! Nameless and brainless!'

" 'Like most of your breed you talk too much.'he said. 'However ...'

"He hesitated, then said, "There is a third alternative, one which you will like. I did not want to tell you ... I won't, now. I do not have time, nor is this the best time. Perhaps the next time. I must leave shortly.

" 'First, though, is the matter of your loyalty and your aid. Are you with me?'

" 'How can I pledge my support when I do not know if you are worth supporting? For all I know, you may be Satan himself!' He chuckled hollowly, and he said, 'You are the one who denied both God and the Devil. I am not the Devil or any analog to him. I am in fact on your side, on the side of deluded, suffering humanity. I can't prove that to you. Not now. But think of this. Have my colleagues approached you? Have they done anything but bring you back from the dead for purposes they do not condescend to tell you? Have I not chosen you from many billions to help in this secret struggle? You and eleven others? Why have I honored you? I'll tell you. Because I know that you are one of the few who can aid me. Because your wathan tells me that you will be on my side.'

" 'It is, then, predetermined?' I said. 'I do not believe in predeterminism.'

" ' No. There' s no such thing, except in a sense which you would not understand or would find difficult to accept.

" 'All I can tell you at the moment is that I am on your side. Without me, you and most of your kind are doomed. You must have faith in me.'

" 'But,' I cried. 'What can we pitiful few humans do? We are pitted against superhumans with superpowers.'

"He replied that we twelve could do nothing without a friend in court. He was that friend. We twelve must get together and journey to the North Pole, to the tower in the middle of the sea. We must get there on our own, however. He could not fly us there. He could not tell me at the moment why not.

" 'I must proceed slowly and cautiously,' he said. 'And you must promise not to reveal this conversation to anyone. To no one except one of the twelve I've picked.

' "To do so might result in your being detected by an agent. That would mean that you would be stripped of all memory of your meetings with me. And I would be placed in even graver danger.'

" 'But how will I recognize these others?' I said. 'How will Iget to where they are or they to me? Where are they?'

"While asking these questions, I felt awed and elated at the same time. That one of the beings who had raised us from the dead and made this world should be asking for my help! I, Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, who am just a human-being, however great certain of my talents are. That he should pick me from many billions!

"He knew his man, knew I would not be able to resist his challenge. If I could have stood up, I'd have crossed swords with him-if swords were available-and I'd have pledged my loyalty with a toast-if wine had been handy.

" 'You'll do as I ask?' he said.

" 'But certainly!'I said. 'You have my word, and I never go back on that!'

"Jill, I won't go into any more detail about what else he said. Except... he did say that I was to tell Sam Clemens that he should be on the lookout for a man named Richard Francis Burton. He was one of those chosen. And we were to wait for a year in Virolando for all of us to get together. If some didn't show, then we were to go ahead. And we would be hearing from him-the Stranger-in the near future.

"He gave me directions to find Clemens, who was down-River about ten thousand leagues. Clemens would be building a great boat made of ore from a meteorite. I knew who Clemens was though I'd died one hundred and eighty-one years before he was born. After all, was not his Earthly wife sleeping in my bed? I told him that, and he chuckled and said, 'I know.'

" 'Is this not embarrassing for me?' I said. 'And especially for Livy? Would the great Clemens even admit me aboard his so grand boat in this situation?'

''' Which is more important to you ?' he said with some degree of impatience. 'A woman or the salvation of the world?'

" 'That would depend upon how I felt about the woman,' I said. ' Objectively and humanely, there is no argument. I am humane but I am not objective.'

" 'Go there and find out what happens,' he said. 'Perhaps this woman will prefer you.'

' "When Cyrano is on fire with love,' I said, 'he does not cool off at command.'

"Then he stood up, and said, 'I will see you,' and he was gone. I dragged myself with my arms, my dead legs trailing uselessly, to the door, and pushed it open. There was no sign of him. The next morning, I announced to Livy that I was tired of this place. I wanted to travel, to see this brave new world. She said that she was tired of traveling. But if I went, she would go with me. So we set out. The rest you know."

Jill felt a sense of unreality. She believed Cyrano's story, but it nevertheless made her feel as if she were a player on a stage, the sets of which concealed something frightening. And she was also an actor who had not been given the script.

"No, I don't know the rest. What about you and Clemens? What did he know that you didn't? And did any of the others this Ethical had chosen show up?"

"Clemens was visited twice by the Ethical. Clemens calls him X or the Mysterious Stranger."

Jill said, "He wrote a book once titled The Mysterious Stranger. A very sad, bitter story, overwhelmingly pessimistic. The Stranger was Lucifer."

'' He told me about it. However, he did not know much more than I did. Except that this X had somehow deflected a meteorite so that it would fall where Clemens could find it."

"Do you realize the energy that would take?"

"It was explained to me. Anyway, Sam broke his word to the Stranger. He told Joe Miller and Lothar von Richthofen about him. He said that he could not help telling them.

"Also, there were two more. A giant red-haired savage of a man named John Johnston. And . . . Firebrass!"

She almost dropped her cigarette. "Firebrass! But he ... !"

Cyrano nodded. "Exactly. He would seem to be one of these agents whom the Ethical mentioned but did not explain. I never saw the Ethical again, so I did not get any answers to my many questions. But I think, though I can't be sure, that he would have been surprised to learn that Firebrass claimed to be one of the twelve. Perhaps Firebrass was an infiltrator. But that does not explain Thorn and Obrenova."

"Did Johnston or Firebrass add anything to your knowledge?"

"Of the Ethical? No, Johnston was visited only once. Firebrass, of course, was not one of the twelve chosen. I doubt that the Ethical knew he was an agent. How could he unless he himself had been disguised and in our midst? Which perhaps he may have been. But if he knew that Firebrass was an agent, he had reasons not to tell us.

"What worries me, among many things, is that the Ethical hasn't visited us again."

Jill sat upright.

"Could Piscator be an agent?"

Cyrano stopped walking, lifted his shoulders and eyebrows, and spread out his extended palms upward.

"Unless he returns, we may never know."

"Purposes, cross-purposes, counter-cross-purposes. Wheels within wheels within wheels," Jill said. "Maya lowers seven veils of illusion between us and them."

"What? Oh, you are referring to the Hindu concept of illusion.''

"I don't think Piscator was an agent. If he had been, he wouldn't have said anything to me about his suspicions that something dark and secret was going on."

A knocking on the door startled them.

"Captain! Greeson here, head of Search Group Three. All areas in this section except for the chart room have been searched. We can come back later."

Jill, rising, said, "Come on in."

To Cyrano she said, "I'll talk with you later. There's so much to puzzle out, so many questions."

"I doubt I'll have any answers."