“To the ‘Friday’ crowd,

To Carol and Nora,

And to lovers

of Other worlds—“

1

Sooee Generis

1

The lecture was really boring.

At the front of the dimly lit conference room, the portly, gray-haired director of the Sahara Institute of Technology paced back and forth—staring at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his back—while he pontificated ponderously on a subject he clearly barely understood.

At least that’s how Dennis Nuel saw it, suffering in silence in one of the back rows.

Once upon a time, Marcel Flaster might have been one of the shining lights of physics. But that had been long ago, before any of the younger scientists present had ever considered careers in reality physics. Dennis wondered what could ever have converted a once-talented mind into a boring, tendentious administrator. He swore he would jump off of Mt. Feynman before it ever happened to him.

The sonorous voice droned on.

“And so we see, people, that by using zievatronics alternate realities appear to be almost within our reach, presenting possibilities for bypassing both space and time. . . .”

Dennis nursed his hangover near the back of the crowded conference room, and wondered what power on Earth could have dragged him out of bed on a Monday morning to come down here and listen to Marcel Flaster expound about zievatronics.

His eyelids drooped. He began to slump in his seat.

“Dennis!” Gabriella Versgo elbowed him in the ribs, whispering sharply. “Will you straighten up and pay attention?”

Dennis sat up quickly, blinking. Now he recalled what power on Earth had dragged him here.

At seven a.m. Gabbie had kicked open the door to his room and hauled him by his ear into the shower, ignoring his howling protests and his modesty. She had kept her formidable grip on his arm until they both were planted here in the Sahara Tech conference room.

Dennis rubbed his arm just above the elbow. One of these days, he decided, he was going to sneak into Gabbie’s room and throw away all the little rubber balls the redhead liked to squeeze while she studied.

She nudged him again. “Will you sit still? You have the attention span of a cranky otter! Do you want to find yourself exiled even farther from the zievatronics experiment?”

As usual, Gabbie hit close to home. He shook his head silently and made an effort to be attentive.

Dr. Flaster finished drawing a vague figure in the holo tank at the front of the seminar room. The psychophysicist put his light-pen down on the podium and unconsciously wiped his hands on his pants, though the last piece of blackboard chalk had been outlawed more than thirty years before.

“That is a zievatron,” he announced proudly. Dennis  looked  at  the light-drawing unbelievingly.   He whispered, “If that’s a zievatron, I’m a teetotaler. Flaster’s got the poles reversed, and the field’s inside out!”

Gabriella’s blush almost matched the shade of her fiery hair. Her fingernails lanced into his thigh.

Dennis winced, but managed an expression of lamblike innocence when Flaster looked up myopically. After a moment the director cleared his throat.

“As I was saying earlier, all bodies possess centers of mass. The

centroid of an object is the balance point, where all net forces

can be said to come to play... where its reality can be ascribed.

“You, my boy,” he said, pointing to Dennis. “Can you tell

me where your centroid is?”

“Umm,” Dennis considered foggily. He hadn’t really been listening all that carefully. “I guess I must have left it at home, sir.”

Snickers came from some of the other postdocs seated around the back of the room. Gabbie’s blush deepened. She sank into her seat, obviously wishing she were elsewhere.

The Chief Scientist smiled vaguely. “Ah, Nuel, isn’t it? Dr. Dennis Nuel?”

Across the aisle, Dennis caught a glimpse of Bernald Brady grinning at his predicament. The tall, beagle-eyed young man had once been his chief rival until managing to have Dennis completely removed from the activity in the main zievatronics laboratory. Brady gave Dennis a smile of pure spite.

Dennis shrugged. After what had happened in the past few months, he felt he had little left to lose.

“Uh, yessir, Dr. Flaster. It’s kind of you to remember me. I used to be assistant director of Lab One, you might recall.”

Gabriella continued her descent into the upholstery, trying very much to look as if she had never seen Dennis before in her life.

Flaster nodded. “Ah, yes. Now I recollect. As a matter of fact, your name has crossed my desk very recently.”

Bernald Brady’s face lit up. Clearly, nothing would please Brady more than if Dennis were sent on a far-away sample-collecting mission . . . say, to Greenland or Mars. So long as he remained, Dennis presented a threat to Brady’s relentless drive to curry favor and climb the bureaucratic ladder. Also, without really wishing to be, Dennis seemed to be an obstacle to Brady’s romantic ambitions for Gabriella.

“In any event, Dr. Nuel,” Flaster continued, “you certainly cannot have ‘left’ your centroid anywhere, I believe if you check you’ll find it somewhere near your navel.”

Dennis looked down at his belt buckle, then beamed back at the Director.

Why, so it is! You can be sure I’ll keep better track of it in the future!

“It’s disappointing to learn,” Flaster said, affecting a hearty tone, “that someone so adept with a makeshift sling knows so little about center of mass!”

He was clearly referring to the incident a week ago, at the staff formal dance, when a nasty little flying creature had come streaking in through a window, terrorizing the crowd around the punch bowl. Dennis had removed his cummerbund, folded it into a sling, and flung a shot glass to bring down the batlike creature before it could hurt someone seriously with its razor-sharp beak.

The improvization had made him an instant hero among the postdocs and techs and got Gabbie started on her present campaign to “save his career.” But at the time all he had really wanted was to get a closer look at the little creature. The brief glimpse he caught had set his mind spinning with possibilities.

Most of those present at the dance had assumed that it was an escaped experiment from the Gene-craft Center, at the opposite end of the Institute. But Dennis had other ideas.

One look had told him that the thing had clearly not come from Earth!

Taciturn men from Security had quickly arrived and crated the stunned animal away. Still, Dennis was certain it had come from Lab One... his old lab, where the main zievatron was kept. . . now off limits to everyone but Flaster’s hand-picked cronies.

“Well, Dr. Flaster,” Dennis ventured, “since you bring up the subject, I’m sure we’re all interested in the centroid of that vicious little varmint that buzzed the party. Can you tell us what it was, at last?”

Suddenly it was very quiet in the conference room. It was an unconventional thing to do, challenging the Chief Scientist in front of everybody. But Dennis didn’t care anymore. Without any apparent reason the man had already reassigned him away from his life’s work. What more could Flaster do to him?

Flaster regarded Dennis expressionlessly. Finally he nodded. “Come to my office an hour after the seminar, Dr. Nuel. I promise I will answer all of your questions then.”

Dennis blinked, surprised. Did the fellow really mean it? He nodded,  indicating he would be there, and Flaster turned back to his holosketch.

“As I was saying,” Flaster resumed, “a psychosomatic reality anomaly has its start when we surround a center of mass by a field of improbability which...”

When attention had shifted fully away from them, Gabriella whispered once more in Dennis’s ear. “Now you’ve done it!” she said.

“Hmm? Done what?” He looked back at her innocently. “As if you don’t know!” she bit. “He’s going to send you to the Qattara Depression to count sand grains! You watch!”

On those rare occasions when he remembered to correct his posture, Dennis Nuel stood a little above average in height. He dressed casually... some might say sloppily. His hair was slightly too long for the current style—more out of a vague obstinacy than out of any real conviction.

Dennis’s face sometimes took on that dreamy expression often associated either with genius or an inspired aptitude for practical jokes. In reality he was just a little too lazy to qualify for the former, and just a bit too goodhearted for the latter. He had curly brown hair and brown eyes that were right now just a little reddened from a poker game that had gone on too late the night before.

After the lecture, as the crowd of sleepy junior scientists dispersed to find secret corners in which to nap, Dennis paused by the department bulletin board, hoping to see an advertisement for another research center working in zievatronics.

Of course, there weren’t any. Sahara Tech was the only place doing really advanced work with the ziev effect. Dennis should know. He had been responsible for many of those advances. Until six months ago.

As the conference room emptied, Dennis saw Gabriella leave, chattering with her hand on Bernald Brady’s arm! Brady looked pumped up, as if he had just conquered Mt. Everest. Clearly he was crazy in love.

Dennis wished the fellow luck. It would be nice to have Gabriella’s attentions focused elsewhere for a while. Gabbie was a competent scientist in her own right, of course. But she was just a bit too tenacious for Dennis to relax with.

He looked at his watch. It was time to go see what Flaster wanted. Dennis brought his shoulders back. He had decided he wouldn’t put up with any further put-offs. Flaster was going to answer some questions, or Dennis was going to quit!

2

“Ah, Nuell Come in!”

Silver-haired and slightly paunched, Marcel Flaster rose from behind the gleamingly empty expanse of his desk. “Take a seat, my boy. Have a cigar? They’re fresh from New Havana, on Venus.” He motioned Dennis to a plush chair next to a floor-to-ceiling lavalamp.

“So tell me, young man, how is it going with that artificial-intelligence project you’ve been working on?”

Dennis had spent the past six months directing a small AI program mandated by an unbreakable old endowment—even though it had been proved back in 2024 that true artificial intelligence was a dead end field.

He still had no idea why Flaster had asked him here. He didn’t want to be gratuitously impolite, so he reported on the recent, modest advances his small group had made.

“Well, there’s been some progress. Recently we’ve developed a new, high-quality mimicry program. In telephone tests it conversed with randomly selected individuals for an average of six point three minutes before they suspect that they’re actually talking to a machine. Rich Schwall and I think. . .”

“Six and a half minutes!” Flaster interrupted. “Well, you’ve certainly broken the old record, by over a minute, I believe! I’m impressed!”

Then Flaster smiled condescendingly. “But honestly, Nuel, you don’t think I assigned a young scientist of your obvious talents to a project with so little long-range potential for no reason, do you?”

Dennis shook his head. He had long ago concluded that the Chief Scientist had shoved him into a corner of Sahara Tech in order to put his own cronies into the zievatronics lab.

Until the death of Dennis’s old mentor, Dr. Guinasso, Dennis had been at the very center of the exciting field of reality analysis.

Then, within weeks of the tragedy, Flaster had moved his own people in and Guinasso’s inexorably out. Thinking about it still made Dennis bitter He had felt sure they were just about to make tremendous discoveries when he was exiled from the work he loved.

“I couldn’t really guess why you transferred me,” Dennis said. “Umm, could it be you were grooming me for better things?”

Oblivious to the sarcasm, Flaster grinned. “Exactly, my boy! You do show remarkable insight. Tell me, Nuel. Now that you’ve had experience running a small department, how would you like to take charge of the zievatronics project here at Sahara Tech?”

Dennis blinked, taken completely by surprise.

“Uh,” he said concisely.

Flaster got up and went to an intricate espresso urn on a sideboard. He poured two demitasses of thick Atlas Mountains coffee and offered one to Dennis. Dennis took the small cup numbly. He barely tasted the heavy, sweet brew.

Flaster returned to his desk and sipped delicately from his demitasse.

“Now, you didn’t think we’d let our best expert on the ziev effect molder in a backwater forever, did you? Of course not! I was planning to move you back into Lab One in a matter of weeks, anyway. And now that the subministry position has opened up...”

“The what?”

“The subministry! Mediterranea’s government has shifted again, and my old friend Boona Calumny is slotted for the Minister of Science portfolio. So when he called me just the other day to ask for help. . .” Flaster spread his hands as if to say the rest was obvious.

Dennis couldn’t believe he was hearing this. He had been certain the older man disliked him. What in the world would motivate him to turn to Dennis when it came to choosing a replacement?

Dennis wondered if his dislike for Flaster had blinded him to some nobler side of the man.

“I take it you’re interested?”

Dennis nodded. He didn’t care what Flaster’s motives were, so long as he could get his hands on the zievatron again.

“Excellent!” Flaster raised his cup again. “Of course, there is one small detail to overcome first—only a minor matter, really. Just the sort of thing that would show the lab your leadership ability and guarantee your universal acceptance by all.”

“Ah,” Dennis said. I knew it! Here it comes! The catch!

Flaster reached under the desk and pulled out a glass box. Within it was a furry-winged, razor-toothed monstrosity, rigid and lifeless.

“After you helped us recapture it last Saturday night, I decided it was more trouble than it was worth. I handed it over to our taxidermist.. . .”

Dennis tried to breathe normally.  The small black eyes stared back at him glassily. Right now they seemed filled less with malevolence than with deep mystery.

“You wanted to know more about this thing,” Flaster said. “As my heir apparent, you have a right to find out.”

“The others think it’s from the Gene-craft Center,” Dennis said.

Flaster chuckled. “But you knew better all along, right? The lifemakers aren’t good enough at their new art to make anything quite so unique,” he said with savor “So very savage.

“No. As you guessed, our little friend here is not from the genetics labs, nor from anywhere in the solar system, for that matter. It came from Lab One—from one of the anomaly worlds we’ve latched onto with the zievatron.”

Dennis stood. “You got it to work! You latched onto something better than vacuum, or purple mist!”

His mind whirled. “It breathed Earth air! It gobbled down a dozen canapes, along with a corner of Brian Yen’s ear, and kept going! The thing’s biochemistry must be...”

“Is... it is almost precisely Terran.” Flaster nodded.

Dennis shook his head. He sat down heavily. “When did you find this place?”,

“We found it during a zievatronics anomaly search three weeks ago. After five months of failure, I’ll freely admit that we finally achieved success only after returning to the search routine you first designed, Nuel.”

Flaster took off his glasses and wiped them with a silk handkerchief. “Your routines worked almost at once. And turned up the most amazingly Earthlike world. The biologists are ecstatic, to say the least.”

Dennis stared at the dead creature in the glass. A whole world! We did it!

Dr. Guinasso’s dream had come true. The zievatron was the key to the stars! Dennis’s personal resentment had disappeared. He was genuinely thrilled by Flaster’s accomplishment.

The Director rose and returned to the coffee urn for a refill. “There’s only one problem,” he said nonchalantly, his back to the younger man.

Dennis looked up, his thoughts still spinning. “Sir? A problem?”

“Well, yes.” Flaster turned around, stirring his coffee. “Actually, it has to do with the zievatron itself.”

Dennis frowned.

“What about the zievatron?”

Flaster raised his demitasse with two fingers. “Well,” he sighed between sips. “It seems we can’t get the darned thing to work anymore.”

3

Flaster wasn’t kidding. The zievatron was busted.

After most of a day spent poking through the guts of the machine, Dennis was still getting used to the changes that had been made in Laboratory One since his banishment.

The main generators were the same, as were the old reality probes he and Dr. Guinasso had laboriously handtuned back in the early days. Flaster and Brady hadn’t dared tamper with those.

But they had brought in so much new equipment that even the cavernous main lab was almost filled to bursting. There were enough electrophoresis columns, for instance, to analyze a Bordeaux bouillabaisse.

The zievatron itself took up most of the chamber. White-coated technicians moved across catwalks along its broad face, making adjustments.

Most of the techs had come down to greet Dennis when he came in. They were obviously relieved to have him back. The backslapping reunion had kept him away from his beloved machine for almost an hour and had irritated the hell out of Bernald Brady.

When, finally, Dennis had been able to get to work, he concentrated on the two huge reality probes. Where they met, deep within the machine, there was a spot in space that was neither exactly here nor quite elsewhere. The anomalous point could be flipped between Earth and Somewhere Else, depending on which probe dominated.

Six months ago there had been a small port through which samples could be taken of the purple mists and strange dust clouds he and Dr. Guinasso had found. But since then it had been replaced by a large, armored airlock.

Working near the heavy hatch, Dennis realized that all a person had to do was walk through that door to be on another world! It was a strange feeling.

“Stumped yet, Nuel?”

Dennis looked up. Bernald Brady’s small mouth always seemed to be slightly pursed in disapproval. The Fellow was under instructions to cooperate, but that apparently didn’t extend to being civil.

Dennis shrugged. “I’ve narrowed the problem down. Something’s cockeyed about the part of the zievatron that’s been pushed into the anomaly world—the return mechanism. It may be that the only way to fix it is from the other end.”

He had come to realize that Marcel Flaster would exact a price for putting him in charge of the lab. If Dennis wasn’t able to figure out a way to repair it from this end, he might have to go through and fix the return mechanism in person.

He hadn’t yet decided whether to be thrilled by the idea, or petrified.

“Flasteria,” Brady said.

“I beg your pardon?” Dennis said, blinking.

“We’ve named the planet Flasteria, Nuel.”

Dennis tried to work his mouth around the word, then gave up. The hell you say.

“Anyway,” Brady went on, “that’s no great discovery, I’d already figured out it was the return mechanism that had broken down.”

Dennis was starting to get irritated with the fellow’s attitude. He shrugged. “Sure you knew it already. But how long did it take you?”

He knew he had struck home when Brady’s face reddened.

“Never mind,” Dennis said as he stood up, brushing off his hands. “Come on, Brady. Take me on a tour of your zoo. If I’m expected to go through and visit this place, I want to know more about it.”

Mammals! The captive animals were air-breathing, four-legged, hairy mammals!

He looked over one that resembled a small ferret, going through a short mental checklist. There were two nostrils above the mouth and below forward-facing hunter’s eyes. There were five clawed toes on each paw, and a long, furry tail. A tomography chart in front of the cage showed a four-chambered heart, a rather Earthly-looking skeleton, and apparently all the right sorts of viscera in all the right places.

Yet it was alien!

The creature stared back at Dennis for a moment, then yawned and turned away.

“The biologists have checked for bad germs and such,” Brady said, answering Dennis’s next question. “The guinea pigs they sent through aboard one of the exploring robots lived on Flasteria for several days and came back perfectly healthy.”

“What about the biochemistry? Are the amino acids the same, for instance?”

Brady picked up a large binder, about five inches thick. “Doc Nelson was called away to Palermo yesterday. Part of the government shake-up, I suppose. But here’s his report.” He dropped the heavy tome into Dennis’s hands. “Study it!”

Dennis was about to tell Brady where he could put the report for the time being. But just then a sharp, snapping sound came from the far end of the row of cages. Both men turned to witness a stout wooden crate begin shaking and rattling.

Brady cursed loudly. “Hot damn! It’s getting out again!” He ran to one wall and slapped an alarm button. At once a siren began to wail.

“What’s getting out?” Dennis backed up. The panic in Brady’s voice had affected him. “What is it?”

“The creature!” Brady shouted into the intercom, hardly encouraging Dennis. “The one we recaptured and put in that temporary box . . . yes, the tricky one! It’s getting out again!”

There was the sound of splintering wood, and a slat fell out of the side of the crate. From the blackness within, a pair of tiny green reflections gleamed at Dennis.

Dennis could only presume they were eyes, small and spaced no more than an inch apart. The green sparks seemed to lock onto him, and he could not look away. They stared at each other—Earth man and alien.

Brady was shouting as a work gang hurried into the room. “Quick! Get the nets in here in case it jumps! Make sure it doesn’t let the other animals loose, like the last time!”

Dennis was growing increasingly uneasy. The green-eyed stare was disconcerting. He looked for a place to put down the heavy book in his hands.

The creature seemed to come to a decision. It squeezed . through the narrow gap between the slats, then leaped just in time to escape a descending net.

In a glimpse Dennis saw that it looked like a tiny, flat-nosed pig. But this pig was one of a kind! In midleap its legs spread wide, snapping open a pair of membranes, creating two gliding wings!

“Block it, Nuel!” Brady shouted.

Dennis didn’t have much choice. The alien creature flew right at him! He tried to duck, but too late. The “flying pig” landed on his head and clung to his hair, squeaking frantically.

As Dennis let go of the biochemistry tome in surprise, the heavy volume landed on his foot.

“Ow!” He hopped, reaching up to grab at his unwelcome passenger.

But the little creature peeped loudly, plaintively. It sounded more frightened than angry. At the last moment, Dennis restrained himself from using force to tear it off. Instead, he managed to peel one webbed paw away from his eye—just in time to duck beneath a wrench swung by Bernald Brady! Dennis cursed and the “piglet” squealed as the bludgeon whistled just overhead.

“Hold still, Nuel! I almost had him!”

“And almost took my head off, too!” Dennis backed away. “Idiot! Are you trying to kill me?”

Brady seemed to contemplate the proposition syllogistically. Finally, he shrugged. “All right, then, Nuel. Come out slowly and we’ll grab him.”

Dennis started forward. But as he approached the other men, the creature squeaked pathetically and tightened its grip.

“Hold off,” Dennis said. “It’s just frightened, that’s all. Give me a minute. I may be able to get it down myself.”

Dennis backed over to a crate and sat down. He reached up tentatively to touch the alien again.

To Dennis’s surprise the shuddering creature seemed to calm under his touch. He spoke softly as he stroked the thin, soft fur that covered its pink sin. Gradually its panicked grip eased. Finally he was able to lift the creature with both hands and bring it down to his lap.

The men and women in the work gang cheered. Dennis smiled back with more confidence than he felt.

It was just the sort of thing that could become a legend. “. . .Yes, boy. I was there the day ol’ Director Nuel tamed a savage alien critter that had him by the eyeballs. . . .”

Dennis looked down at the thing he had “captured.” The creature looked back at him with an expression he was sure he had seen somewhere before. But where?

Then he remembered. For his sixth birthday his parents had given him an illustrated book of Finnish fairy tales. He recalled many of the drawings to this day. And this creature had the sharp-toothed, green-eyed, devilish grin of a pixie.

“A pixolet,” he announced softly as he petted the little creature. “A cross between piglet and pixie. Does the name suit?”

It didn’t appear to understand the words. He doubted it was actually sentient. But something seemed to tell Dennis that it understood him. It grinned back with tiny, needle-sharp teeth.

Brady approached with a gunny sack. “Quick, Nuel. While it’s passive, get it into this!”

Dennis stared at the man. The suggestion wasn’t worthy of a reply. He arose with the pixolet in the crook of his left arm. The creature purred.

“Come on, Brady,” he said, “let’s finish the tour so I can get my equipment list together. Then I’ve got some preparations to make.’

“You may thank our extraterrestrial friend here for making up my mind for me. I’ll go through the zievatron and visit his homeworld for you.”

4

The zievatron had become a one-way road. Anything shoved through the airlock would arrive on the anomaly world, as planned. Robots could still be sent through, as had been done for almost a month. But nothing came back.

Enough faint telemetry came back to show that the machine was still linked to the same anomaly world—the place the flying piglet creature had been taken from.

But the zievatron was incapable of sending even a feather back to Earth.

All machines fail sooner or later, Dennis realized. Undoubtedly the problem could be solved simply by replacing a burned-out module—maybe two minutes’ work. The rub was that it would have to be done in person. Somebody would have to go through the zievatron to do it by hand.

Of course, a manned expedition had been planned anyway. These weren’t exactly the best circumstances for such a first visit, but somebody would have to do it, or the world they had found would be lost forever. Dennis had seen pictures taken by the exploring robots before the failure. They might search for a hundred years before stumbling onto another place so compatible with human life. Anyway, he had made up his mind.

The equipment Dennis had asked for lay in stacks just outside the airlock door. The speed with which the list had been filled showed how anxious Dr. Flaster was to have results soon. Sending Brady after the supplies had also kept the fellow out of his hair while he triple-checked his calculations.

He had insisted on a long list of survival supplies, not that he expected to need them on this first outing. Even replacing every module in the return mechanism shouldn’t take more than an hour, but he wasn’t taking any chances. There were even cases of vitamins in case he was stranded for a while, and the biology report had missed a decimal point in its compatibility rating of the anomaly world.

“Okay, Nuel,” Brady said. He addressed Dennis from the left side. The pixolet rode Dennis’s other shoulder, surveying the preparations grandly, hissing whenever Brady approached.

“You’ve got almost enough gear to build another damned zievatron when you arrive on Flasteria. You should be able to fix it in five minutes. You’d think you were the Admirable Bird,  lugging all that survival junk around, too.  But that’s your business.”

The fellow actually sounded jealous. Still, Dennis hadn’t noticed him volunteering to go.

“Just remember to fix the machine first!” Brady went on. “Then it won’t matter if something eats you while you’re trying to talk to all the local animals.”

Richard Schwall, one of the techs who had worked with Dennis back in the early days, looked up from checking a schematic and shared a look of commiseration with Dennis. Everyone at S.I.T. appreciated Brady’s sunny attitude.

“Dennis!”

Gabriella Versgo’s valkyrian figure wove toward them through the crowd of technicians. When one tech was slow to get out of the way, he was swept aside by a well-swung pelvis.

Brady beamed as she approached, looking much like a lovestruck puppy. Gabbie gave him a brilliant smile and then took Dennis’s right arm in a grip that partly interrupted the blood supply to his hand.

“Well, Dennis,” she said, sighing happily, “I’m glad you and Bernie are talking to each other again! I always thought it was silly of you two to feud so.”

Actually, she sounded as if she thought it was delightful. Dennis realized that Gabbie was under the mistaken belief that his enmity with Brady was over her. If that really were the case Dennis would have run up a white flag and surrendered long ago!

“I just came ahead to warn you two boys that Dr. Flaster’s on his way down to see Dennis off. And he’s bringing Boona Calumny with him!”

Dennis looked blank for a moment.

“The new Science Minister for Mediterranea!” Gabbie cried. She tugged his elbow sharply, accidentally thumbing his ulnar nerve in the process. Dennis gasped, but Gabbie went on, oblivious to his momentary agony.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” She exclaimed. “Such an eminent man coming down to watch the first human set foot on an anomaly world!” In her final sweeping gesture she released her grip. Dennis stifled a sigh and massaged his arm.

Gabriella cooed at the pixolet, trying to chuck its diminutive chin. The little creature bore it for a few moments, then erupted  into a tremendous yawn,   revealing twin  rows of needle-sharp teeth. She quickly withdrew her hand.

She went around to Dennis’s other side and leaned up to kiss him primly on the cheek. “Gotta run now. I have an important crystal in a float-zone. Have a good trip. Come back a hero and we’ll celebrate special, I promise.” She winked and nudged him with her hip, almost knocking the pixolet from its perch.

The scowling Brady brightened suddenly when Gabriella gave him a peck as well, for equality. Then she sauntered away, doubtless aware that half the men in the lab were watching.

Richard Schwall shook his head and muttered. “... woman could upstage Lady Macbeth . . .” was all Dennis made out.

Brady snorted indignantly and stalked off.

As Dennis returned to his calculations, checking one last time to make sure he had made no mistakes, the pixolet launched itself into a low glide to land on a perch overlooking Richard Schwall. It peered over the balding tech’s shoulder, watching as he adjusted a portable electronic drafting tool for Dennis to take along.

For two days, ever since Dennis had declared the creature tame, the technicians had routinely looked up to find those tiny green eyes staring down at them. Uncannily, the pixolet always seemed to choose the trickiest adjustments to oversee.

As the preparations progressed smoothly, the creature became a status symbol of sorts. The techs used bits of candy to attract it over to their stations. It had become a good luck charm—a company mascot.

When Schwall looked up and saw the pixolet, he grinned and picked up the little alien so it could get a better look. Dennis put down his notes and watched the two interact.

The pixolet appeared less enthralled with what Schwall did than how the tech felt about it, When his face showed pleasure, the creature looked back and forth quickly, from Schwall to the sketch pad and back again.

Although it was clearly not a sentient being, Dennis wondered just how intelligent the little alien really was.

“Hey,  Dennis!” Schwall grew excited.  “Look at this! I’ve made a real neat picture of the launch tower in Ecuador! You know, the Vanilla Needle? I’ve never really noticed how good I am at this! Your little friend here really is lucky!”

There was a commotion at the back of the lab. Dennis nudged his associate. “Come on, Rich,” he said. “Get up. They’re here at last.”

Escorted by Bernald Brady, the lab Director approached the zievatron. With Flaster walked a short, stubby man with dark, intense features, who Dennis realized must be the new Science Minister of Mediterranea.

As he was introduced, Boona Calumny seemed to look right through Dennis. His voice was very high.

“So this is the brave young fellow who’s going to take over your wonderful work here, Marcel? And he’s starting right off by stepping through into that wonderful new place you’ve found?”

Flaster beamed. “Yes, sir! And we certainly are proud of him!” He winked conspiratorially at Dennis. Dennis was starting to realize just how badly Flaster wanted a success to show for his tenure at S.I.T.

“You’ll be careful in there, won’t you, my boy?” Calumny’s finger pointed at the airlock. Dennis wondered if the man really understood what was going on.

“Yessir, I will.”

“Good. We want you to return hale and hearty!”

Dennis nodded pleasantly, automatically translating the politician’s remarks from Executivese to English. He means that if I don’t come back there’ll be some nasty paperwork to fill out.

“I promise, sir.”

“Excellent. You know, bright young men like you are hard to find these days!” (Actually, you squirts are a dime a dozen, but you’re helping my buddy out of a jam.)

“Yessir,” Dennis agreed again.

“We have a real shortage of daring, adventurous types, and I’m sure you’ll go far,” Calumny went on. (We’re a bit low on meatheads this month. Maybe we can use you for a few more suicide missions if you come back from this one.)

“I expect so, sir.”

Calumny gave Dennis a very democratic handshake, then turned to whisper something to Flaster. The director pointed to a door, and the minister waddled out of the lab. Probably to wash his hands, Dennis thought.

“All right, Dr. Nuel,” Flaster said cheerfully, “hoist your little alien friend and let’s be off with you. I expect you back in under two hours . . . less if you can control your inclination to explore. We’ll have champagne chilled by the time you return.”

Dennis caught the pixolet in a midair glide from Rich Schwall’s hands. The little creature chirped excitedly. After all the crates were loaded ahead of him, Dennis stepped over the airlock’s combing.

“Beginning closure procedure,” one of the techs announced. “Good luck, Dr. Nuel!”

Schwall gave him thumbs up.

Bernald Brady came forward to guide the heavy door. “Well, Nuel,” he said lowly as the gears slowly turned, “you checked everything, didn’t you? You poked through the machine from top to bottom, read the biology report, and didn’t need to consult me at all, did you?”

Dennis didn’t like the fellow’s tone. “What are you getting at?”

Brady smiled, speaking softly so only Dennis could hear him. “I never mentioned it to the others, since it seemed so absurd. But it’s only fair to tell you.”

“Tell me about what?”

“Oh, it could be nothing at all, Nuel. Or maybe something pretty unusual. . . like the possibility that this anomaly world has a different set of physical laws than hold sway on Earth!”

By now the hatch had half closed. The timer was running.

This was ridiculous. Dennis wasn’t going to let Brady get to him. “Stuff it, Bernie,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t believe a word of your blarney.”

“Oh? Remember those purple mists you found last year, where gravity repelled?”

“Those were different entirely. No major difference in physical law could endanger me on Pix’s world—not when the biology is so compatible.

“But if there’s something minor you haven’t told me about,” Dennis continued, stepping forward, “you’d better spill it now or I swear I’ll...”

Strangely, Brady’s antagonism seemed to fall away, replaced by apparently genuine puzzlement.

“I don’t know what it is, Nuel. It had to do with the instruments we sent through. Their efficiencies seemed to change the longer they were there! It was almost as if one of the thermodynamic laws was subtly different.”

Too late, Dennis realized that Brady wasn’t just egging him. He really had discovered something that honestly perplexed him. But by now the hatch had closed almost all the way.

“Which law, Brady? Dammit, stop this process until you tell me! What law?”

Through the bare crack that remained, Brady whispered, “Guess.”

With a sigh the seals fell into place and the hatch became vacuum tight.

In the zievatronics lab, Dr. Marcel Flaster watched Brady turn away from the closed hatch of the anomaly machine. “What was that all about?”

Brady started. Flaster could have sworn the fellow grew even paler than normal.

“Oh, it was nothing. We were talking. Just something to pass the time while the hatch closed.”

Flaster frowned. “Well, I hope there won’t be any surprises at this late stage. I’m counting on Nuel to succeed. I need Flasteria badly with my confirmation hearings coming up next month.”

“Maybe he’ll manage to pull it off.” Brady shrugged.

Flaster laughed. “Indeed. From what I’ve seen around here, he’s sure to succeed. In the last few days he’s really got this place humming. I should have brought that young fellow back into this lab months ago!”

Brady shrugged. “Nuel might succeed. Then again, maybe he won’t.”

Flaster smiled archly. “Ah, well. If he fails, we’ll just have to send somebody else, won’t we?”

Brady swallowed and nodded. He watched the lab Director turn and walk away.

I wonder if I did the right thing? Brady thought, giving Nuel the wrong modules for fixing the return mechanism.

Oh, he’ll figure it out eventually and fix them up. All he has to do is swap the right chips around. I made it look like a factory error so they’ll never trace it to me—though he’ll probably suspect.

By the time he’s fixed the modules, I’ll have had time to work on Flaster. And Nuel’s stock won’t be so high when the delay stretches into weeks, whatever his excuse!

Brady felt a little guilty about the stunt, It was kind of a nasty trick to play. But all indications showed that Flasteria was a pretty tame place. The robots hadn’t seen any big animals, and anyway, Nuel was always talking about what a champion Boy Scout he had been. Let him camp out in the wild for a while, then!

Maybe he’d even figure out what had been happening to the robots, too. . . that strange alteration in their efficiency profiles.

Oh, Nuel would come back in lather, all right. But by then he, Brady, would have had a chance to win his way back into the Director’s good graces. He knew, by now, what buttons to push.

Brady looked at his watch. Gabriella had made a luncheon date with him, and he didn’t want to be late.

He straightened his tie and hurried out of the lab. Soon he was whistling.

5

“Which law? you sonova—“ Dennis pounded on the door.  

He stopped. It was useless. By now the sending probe had activated. He was already on the anomaly world—already on...

Dennis stared at the blank door. He felt behind himself and sat heavily on one of the crates. Then, as his situation soaked in, he suddenly found himself beginning to laugh! He couldn’t stop. His eyes filled as he gave in to the giddy feeling.

No one had ever been as cut off as he was, cast from Earth to a faraway world.

People might read about adventures in faraway places, but the truth was that most, at the first hint of anything truly dangerous, would dig a hole and cry out for Mother.

As an initial reaction, then, perhaps laughter wasn’t bad. At least he Felt more relaxed afterward.

From a crate nearby, the pixolet watched, apparently fascinated.

I’m going to have to come up with a new name for this place, Dennis thought as he wiped his eyes. Flasteria just won’t do.

The initial crisis of isolation had passed. He was able to look to his left, to the other door, the only one that would now open—onto another world.

Brady’s talk of a “different set of physical laws” continued to bother Dennis. Brady had probably just been trying to get to him. Even if he was telling the truth, it would have to be something pretty subtle, since biological processes were so compatible on both worlds.

Dennis remembered a science-fiction story he had once read in which a minute change in electrical conductivity resulted in a tenfold increase in human intelligence. Could it be something like that?

Dennis sighed. He didn’t feel any smarter. The fact that he couldn’t remember the story’s title sort of refuted that possibility.

The pixolet glided from its perch to land on his lap. It purred, looking up at him with emerald eyes.

“Now I’m the alien,” Dennis said. He picked up the little native. “How about it, Pix? Am I welcome? Want to show me around your place?”

Pix squeaked. It sounded eager to be off.

“Okay,” Dennis said. “Let’s go.”

He strapped on his tool belt, with the needlegun bolstered to one side. Then, taking an appropriate “explorerlike” stance, he pulled the lever to unlock the far door. There was a hiss of equalizing pressure, and his ears popped briefly. Then the hatch swung open to let in the sunshine of another world.

2

Cogito, Ergo Tutti Fruitti.

1

The airlock rested on a gentle slope of dry, yellow grass. The meadow fell away toward a green-rimmed watercourse a quarter mile away. Beyond the stream, rows of long, narrow hills rose toward whitecapped mountains. Swards of yellow   interspersed unevenly with carpets of varitone green.

Trees.

Yes, they looked like real trees, and the sky was blue. White cirrus clouds laced across the almost cyan vault overhead.   

For a long moment it was eerily, unnaturally quiet. He realized he had been holding his breath since opening the door. It made him feel lightheaded.

Inhaling, he tasted the crisp, clean air. The breeze brought sounds of brushing grass and creaking branches. It also brought odors . . . the unmistakable mustiness of chlorophyll and humus, of dry grass and what smelled like oak.

Dennis stood in the airlock’s combing and looked at the trees. They sure looked like oak. The countryside reminded him of northern California.

Could this place actually be Earth? Dennis wondered. Had   the ziev effect played another trick on them all and given them teleportation rather than an interstellar drive?

It would be amusing to hitchhike to a pay phone and call Flaster with the news. Collect, of course.

Dennis felt a sharp stab as tiny claws bit into his shoulder.   The pixolet’s wing membranes snapped wide with a sound like a shot, and the creature soared off over the meadow, toward the line of trees,

“Hey.. . Pix! Where are you ...”

Dennis’s voice caught in his throat as he realized this couldn’t be Earth. This was where Pix came from.

He began noticing little things—the shape of the leaves of grass, a huge, fernlike plant by the riverside, a feeling in the air.

Dennis made sure his bolstered sidearm was unencumbered, and his boot cuffs well covered by his gaiters. The dry grass crunched beneath his feet as he stepped out. Tiny, whining insect sounds filled the air.

“Pix!” he called, but the little creature had flown from sight.

Dennis moved cautiously, all senses alert. He guessed the first few moments on an alien world could be the most dangerous of all.

Trying to watch the sky, the forest, and the nearby insects all at once, he didn’t even notice the squat little robot until he tripped over it and fell sprawling to the ground.

Dennis instinctively rolled away into a crouch, the needler suddenly in his hand, his pulse pounding in his ears.

He sighed as he recognized the little Sahara Tech exploration drone.

The ‘bot’s cameras tracked him with a barely discernible whir. Its observing turret slowly turned. Dennis lowered the needler. “Come here,” he commanded.

The robot seemed to consider the order for a moment. Then it approached on spinning treads to halt a meter away.

“What have you got there?” Dennis pointed.

The robot held something in one of its manipulator grips. It was a shiny bit of metal, with a clawed pincer at one end.

“Isn’t that a piece of another robot?” Dennis asked, hoping he was wrong.

Compared with some of the sophisticated machines Dennis had worked with, the exploration ‘bot wasn’t very bright. But it understood a basic vocabulary. A green light on its turret flashed, indicating assent.

“Where did you get it?”

The little machine paused, then swiveled and pointed with one of its other sampling arms.

Dennis got up and looked, but he saw nothing in that direction. He moved cautiously through the tall grass until, at last, he came to a flat area partly hidden by the weeds. There he stopped and stared.

The clearing looked like a wilderness parts store... a Grizzly Adams wrecking yard... a rustic electronics swap meet.

One—no, two—S.I.T. robots had been rather tactlessly disassembled; their parts lay in neat rows among the clumps of grass, apparently ordered and sorted by size and shape.

Dennis knelt and picked up a camera turret. It had been ripped out of its housing, and the pieces had been laid out on the ground, like merchandise for sale.

The trampled mud was strewn with scattered bits of straw, wire, and glass. Dennis looked closer Here and there, mixed in among the tread marks and the torn pieces of plastic machinery, were faint but unmistakable footprints.

Dennis looked down at the neat rows of gears, wheels, panels, and circuit boards—at the faint marks in the clay— and all he could think of was an epitaph he had once read in a New England cemetery.

I knew this would happen someday.

Dennis had always felt he was somehow destined to encounter something really unusual during his life. Well, here it was in front of him—tangible evidence of alien intelligence.

The comforting Earthlike Gestalt finished evaporating around him. He looked at the “grass” and saw it wasn’t like any grass he had ever seen. The line of trees was now a dark, unknown forest filled with malign forces. Dennis felt a crawling sensation on the nape of his neck.

A clicking sound made him whirl, the needler in his hand. But it was only the surviving robot again, poking through-the pieces of its disassembled fellows.

Dennis picked up an electronics board from the ground. It had been pried out of its housing by main force. It could easily have been separated with just a twist, but it had been roughly sheared away, as if the entity doing the dissection had never heard of threaded sleeves or bolts.

Was this the work of primitives, then? Or someone from a race so advanced that they’d forgotten about such simple things as screws?

One thing was certain. The being or beings responsible didn’t have a high regard for other people’s property.

The robots had been made mostly of plastic. He noted that most of the bigger metal pieces seemed to be missing entirely.

Dennis suddenly had a very unpleasant thought. “Oh, no,” he murmured. “Please, don’t let it be!” He rose with feeling of numb dread in the pit of his stomach.

Dennis walked back to the airlock. He rounded the corner and stopped suddenly, groaning out loud.

The access panel to the zievatron return mechanism lay ajar. The electronics cabinet was empty; its delicate components lay on the ground, like pieces on display on a store shelf. Most were clearly broken beyond repair.

With an eloquence borne of irony, Dennis simply said “Argh!” and sagged back against the wall of the airlock.

Another epigram floated around in the despair that seemed to fill his brain—something a friend had once said to him about the phenomenology of life.

‘7 think, therefore I scream.”

The robot “peeped” and played the sequence over again. Dennis concentrated on the three-day-old images displayed on the machine’s tiny video plate. Something very strange was going on here.

The small screen showed shapes that looked like blurry humanoid figures moving around the zievatron airlock. The beings walked on two legs and appeard to be accompanied by at least two kinds of quadrupeds. Beyond that, Dennis could hardly make out any detail from the noisy enlargement.

The miracle was that he could see anything at all. According to its inertia! recorder, the robot had been on a distant ridge, several kilometers away, when it detected activity back at the airlock and turned to photograph the shapes clustered about the zievatron portal. At that distance, the robot shouldn’t have been able to see anything at all. Dennis suspected something was wrong with the ‘bot’s internal tracker. It must have been closer than it thought it was at the time.

Unfortunately, this tape was almost his only source of direct information. The records of the other ‘bots had been ruined when they were so rudely disassembled.

He skimmed over the robot’s record to a point about three days ago, when it all seemed to have begun.

The first to arrive at the airlock was a small figure in white. It rode up upon the back of something like a very shaggy pony—or a very large sheepdog. Dennis couldn’t decide which simile was more appropriate. All he could make out about the humanoid was that it was slender and moved gracefully as it inspected the zievatron from all angles, hardly touching it at all.

The figure in white sat before the airlock and Appeared to begin a long period of meditation. Several hours passed. Dennis skimmed the record at high speed.

Suddenly, from the forest verge, there erupted a troop of mounted natives charging toward the airlock on shaggy beasts. In spite of the blurriness of the image, Dennis could sense the first intruder’s panic as it bounded to its feet, then hurriedly mounted and rode off, bare meters ahead of its pursuers.

Dennis saw no more of the figure in white. But as one detachment of the newcomers gave chase, the rest came to a halt by the airlock.

Most of these humanoids seemed to have large, furry heads, distended high above the shoulders. In their midst there dismounted a smaller, more rotund biped in red wrappings, who approached the airlock purposefully.

Try as he might, Dennis couldn’t make the images resolve any clearer.

By this time, the robot had apparently decided that all this activity merited closer attention. It began descending the hill to return to base and get a closer look. In moments it had dropped down to the level of the trees, and the action at the zievatron was lost from view.

Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—the little ‘bot moved slowly over the rugged terrain. By the time it got back, the creatures had already finished their dissection of the Earth machines and departed.

Perhaps they were in a hurry to help pursue the figure in white.

Dennis let the recording play itself out again. He sighed in frustration.

It had been so tempting, on looking at those blurry shapes, to interpret them as humans. Yet he knew he had better not go into things with any preconceived notions. They had to be alien creatures, more closely akin to the pixolet than to himself.

He slipped the record disk out of the robot and replaced it with a blank one.

“You’re going to have to be my scout,” he ruminated aloud in front of the little drone. “I guess I’ll want to send you ahead to find out about the inhabitants of this world for me. Only this time I’ll want you to put a high priority on stealth and your own survival. You hear? I don’t want you taken apart like your brothers!”

The little green assent light on the probe’s turret lit up. Of course, the ‘bot couldn’t really have understood all that. Dennis had been mostly talking to himself, to gather his own thoughts. He would parse the instructions in carefully phrased Robot-English later, when he had worked out exactly what he wanted the little machine to do.

He faced a real problem, and he still wasn’t quite sure what he could do about it.

Sure, Brady had given him “. .. almost enough gear to build another damned zievatron.. .” But practicality was quite another thing. No one had imagined he would need to bring along spare power cables, for heaven’s sake! Both of the big, high-voltage copper busses had been shredded out at the roots, along with most of the detachable metal in the electronics bay.

Even if he did try to build and calibrate another return mechanism, would Flaster keep the zievatron tied up long enough to let him finish? Dennis felt he understood the S.I.T. chief pretty well. The fellow was anxious for a success to further his ambitions. Dennis might even be cast loose so Lab One could be put to work searching for another anomaly world!

And even if he tried to reassemble the device, would he be left alone by the natives long enough to finish?

Dennis picked up the one alien artifact he had found—a sharp, curve-bladed knife that had fallen into the high grass and apparently been lost by the vandals.

The long, tapered blade had the smooth sharpness of a fine razor, yet it was almost as flexible as hard rubber. The grip was designed for a hand smaller than his, but it was obviously meant to be comfortable and provide a firm grasp.

The butt was carved in what appeared to be the shape of a dragon’s head. Dennis hoped that wasn’t what the natives actually looked like.

He couldn’t fathom what the thing was made of. It was certainly doubtful a better knife could be manufactured on Earth. It seemed to belie the idea that the natives were primitives.

Perhaps the vandals were the local equivalent of criminals or careless children. (Could the chase he had observed have been some sort of game, like hide-and-go-seek?)

What had happened here might be atypical of their society as a whole. Dennis tried to be optimistic. All he really needed was some metal stock and a couple of days in a good machine shop to fix and calibrate some of the larger ruined parts. The knife seemed to indicate the natives had a high enough technology.

They might even know many things men of Earth did not. He tried to be optimistic, and imagined being the first Earthling to make friendly contact with an advanced extraterrestrial culture.

“I might be able to trade my pocket nailclipper-stop-watch for a genuine gompwriszt or a K’k’kglamtring,” he mused. “I could be wealthy in no time!. . . Ambassador Nuel. Entrepreneur Nuel!”

His morale lifted just a little. Who could tell?

The sun was setting in a direction Dennis decided to call west. A tall range of mountains covered that horizon, stretching around to the south and then eastward around this high valley. Sunlight glanced off numerous small glaciers. There were bright highlights from a winding river that weaved through the southeastern mountains.

Dennis watched the reflections from the distant river. The beauty of this alien twilight took some of the sting out of being stranded on a strange world.

Then he frowned.

Something was wrong with the way the river ran through the hills. It seemed to rise and fall. . . rise and fall. . . .

It’s not a river, he realized at last.

It’s a road.

3

Nothing could bring home the tangibility of a world better than trying to dig a hole in it. Exertion, the clank of metal against earth, sweat smell and the musty, dry dust of abandoned insect nests all verified the reality of the place like nothing else ever could.

Dennis leaned on his spade and wiped perspiration. Hard work had broken his numb reaction to the shocks of the day before. It was good to be active, doing something about his situation.

He scattered dirt around the flat mound, patting it down, then covered the cairn with a scattering of grass.

He couldn’t take most of his supplies with him on his journey. But locking them in the airlock wouldn’t do either. Leaving as much as a gram inside would prevent the people back at Lab One from sending another envoy.

He had used electrical tape to write a message on the side of the lock, telling where his detailed report was buried with the equipment.

Still, if he knew Flaster and Brady, they would dither a long time before deciding on a follow-up mission. Realistically, Dennis knew if anyone was going to fix the return mechanism it would be himself. He couldn’t afford anymore slip-ups.

He had already made one big mistake. This morning, when he had opened the airlock and stepped out into the misty dawn, he found that the robot was gone. After an hour of worried searching, he realized that the little drone had departed during the night. He found its tracks leading westward.

It must have set out on the trail of the humanoids—apparently to find out all it could about them, pursuant to his instructions.

Dennis cursed himself for thinking aloud in the robot’s presence the day before. But honestly, who would have expected the machine to accept orders in anything but prim Robot-English? It should have rejected the commands as too flexible and inspecific!

He hadn’t even given the robot a time limit. It would probably stay out until its tapes were full!

The ‘bot must have a wire loose somewhere. Brady wasn’t kidding when he said something had gone flaky with the machines they had sent here.

Now Dennis had lost two companions since coming to this world. He wondered what had become of the pixolet.

Probably it was back in its own element, glad to be away from the crazy aliens who had captured it.

As the golden-white sun rose above the eastern treeline, Dennis made ready to go. He would make do alone.

He had to tie knots in the straps of his backpack to keep them from slipping. Apparently Brady had bought the cheapest equipment possible. Dennis muttered comments on his rival’s probable parentage as he hoisted the pack and set off southeastward toward the road he had seen the day before.

4

Dennis hiked along narrow game paths, always watching out for possible dangers. But the forest was peaceful. In spite of the squeaky noises from his awkward pack, he found himself enjoying the sunshine and the fresh air.

He took bearings as well as he could with the cheap compass Brady had provided. When he took breaks by the banks of small streams he kept up a notebook on the ways this world differed from home. So far the list was brief.

The vegetation was very Earthlike, The predominant trees in this area looked a lot like beech, for instance.

It could be a sign of parallel evolution. Or the zievatron might open onto alternate versions of Earth itself. Dennis knew as much about the ziev effect as anybody back home did. But he admitted that that wasn’t all that much. It was a very new field.

He kept reminding himself to move with caution. Still, as the forest became more familiar, he found himself passing the time playing with the anomaly equations in his head, trying to find some explanation.

The animals of the forest watched suspiciously from cover as a preoccupied Earthman hiked their narrow paths in the direction of morning.

When evening finally came, Dennis camped under the trees by a brook. Not wanting to risk a fire, he tinkered with the rickety little gas stove Brady had provided. A weak flame finally sputtered to life and he was able to stir up a lukewarm batch of freeze-dried stew.

I’ll have to start hunting soon, he realized. The favorable biochemistry report notwithstanding, Dennis was still uncomfortable with the idea of shooting any local creatures. What if the “rabbits” here were philosophers? Could he be so sure anything he aimed at wasn’t intelligent?

When the tepid meal was done, Dennis activated his camp-watch alarm. It was no bigger than a deck of cards, with a small display screen and a tiny rotating antenna. He had to tap it several times to get it started.

Apparently Brady had been saving Sahara Tech money again. “It may give me two seconds’ warning if something the size of an elephant comes rooting through my pack,” Dennis sighed.

With the needler by his side, he laid back in his sleeping bag and watched through the gaps in the branches overhead as the constellations came out. The configurations were utterly alien.

That finished off the parallel Earth theory once and for all. Dennis scratched three lines of equations from his mental chalkboard.

While waiting for sleep to come, he watched the sky and named the constellations.

Toward the southern mountains, Alfresco the Mighty wrestled with the great snake, Stethoscope. The hero’s piercing eyes shone unevenly, one red and twinkling, the other bright green and steady. The green eye might be a planet, Dennis decided. If it moved over the next few nights, he would give it a name of its own.

Above Alfresco and Stethoscope, the Chorus of Twelve Virgins sang backup to Cosell the Loquacious as he chanted a monotonous description of Alfresco’s mighty struggle. It didn’t matter that the combatants hadn’t budged in millennia. The announcer found color to fill out the time.

Overhead, the Robot rolled, squat and imperturbable upon a highway made up of a billion tiny numbers, pursuing the Man of Grass . . . the Alien.

Dennis stirred. He wanted to look at the destination the Man of Grass so doggedly sought. He wanted to turn his head. But he finally realized, with the complacency that comes in dreams, that he had been asleep for some time.

5

He came to the road late on the afternoon of his fourth day.

His journal bulged with notes on everything from trees to insects, from rock formations to the local varieties of birds and snakes. He had even tried to drop rocks from a cliff, to time their fall and measure the local force of gravity. Everything seemed to support the idea that this place was not Earth but was an awful lot like it.

About half of the animals seemed to have close cousins back home. The other half were unlike anything he had ever seen.

Already Dennis felt he was becoming a seasoned explorer— like Darwin or Wallace or Goodall. And best of all, his boots were beginning to wear in.

He had hated them at first. But after the initial painful blisters, they seemed to become more comfortable day by day. The rest of his equipment still caused him aggravation, but he seemed to be getting used to the stuff, gradually.

The camp-watch still awakened him several times every night, but he apparently was getting the hang of its tiny controls. It no longer went off every time a leaf blew through his camp.

Last night, though, he had started awake to see a troop of hairy-hoofed quadrupeds skirting the edge of his camp. They stared into the beam of his flashlight while his heart pounded. Then they scampered off.

On reflection they had seemed harmless enough, but why hadn’t the alarm warned him?

Dennis’s equipment worries dropped from his mind as he eagerly skidded down the last gravelly slope to the highway. He dropped his pack and approached to kneel by the shallow curb.

It was an odd road, barely wide enough for a small Earth landcar to pass. Uneven and twisty, it followed the contours of the land instead of cutting straight through, as a highway on Earth would have done. And its edges were ragged, as if no one had bothered to trim them when the bed was laid.

The shiny pavement felt smooth and yet tough. Dennis scuffed it and walked a few paces. He tried to scratch it with a metal buckle and dribbled water from his canteen. It seemed skidproof and weatherproof, and offered resilient traction.

Two narrow grooves—exactly one point four two meters apart—ran down its center, following every twist and turn. Dennis knelt to peer into one of the thin channels, its cross section a near-perfect semicircle. The inside surface was almost slippery smooth to the touch.

Dennis sat down on a nearby stump, whistling softly to himself.

This road was a very advanced artifact, He doubted a surface like it could be made on Earth.

But why the ragged edges? Why the grooves, or the twisty, inefficient path?

It was perplexing, like the illogical way in which the return mechanism and the robots had been taken apart. The locals seemed to think differently than men.

Back at the airlock, Dennis had found most of the metal parts taken away from the zievatron. He thought this might mean he had arrived on a metal-poor world. But in the past few days he had seen at least three areas where iron and copper ores lay open and available.

It was a mystery. And there was only one way to find out more.

To the west, the road climbed higher into the mountains. Eastward, it seemed to descend into a broad watershed. Dennis picked up his pack and started off along the road, away from the afternoon sun—toward what he hoped would be civilization.

6

It wasn’t an easy idea to get used to, but Dennis was coming to the conclusion that he had misjudged Bernald Brady.

The night after encountering the highway, Dennis thought about it as he stirred a pot of soup over his little stove. Perhaps he had been unfair to his old S.I.T. nemesis. During his first few days on this new world, he had complained a lot about the quality of his equipment, blaming Brady for his blisters, his chafed shoulders, and his tepid meals. But those problems had all abated with time. Obviously he had needed time to adapt. Brady and the equipment must have merely been a convenient set of scapegoats for his initial misery.

Now that he had apparently found the knack, the little stove seemed to work just fine. Its first fuel canister had been used up in a day. But the second had lasted much longer and heated his food better All it seemed to have taken was a bit of practice. That, he confessed a bit immodestly, and a little mechanical aptitude.

While the soup cooked, Dennis examined the little camp-watch alarm with new respect. It had taken him days, but he had finally found out that the colors of the little lights on its screen corresponded roughly with the carnivority of the creatures nearby. The correlation had been made clear when he witnessed a pack of foxlike creatures stalking a covey of small birds and watched the counterparts on the screen. Maybe it had to do with body temperature, but somehow the alarm had distinguished the two separate groups clearly into red and yellow dots on the screen.

It bothered Dennis a little that it had taken him so long to notice all this. Perhaps he had spent too much of the journey playing with equations in his head.

Anyway, the trip would be over soon. All this day he had passed signs of quarrying in the surrounding hills. And the road had broadened somewhat. Soon, perhaps tomorrow, he knew he would, come upon the creatures who ruled this world.

The camp-watch hummed in his hands, and its little antenna suddenly swung about to point westward. The pale screen came alight and an alarm began to buzz softly.

Dennis cut off the sound and reached over to draw the needler from its holster. He turned off the stove. When its faint sigh died away, Dennis could hear only the soft, rustling wind in the branches.

The forest night was a thick maze of black shadows. Only a few wan stars winked overhead through a thickening overcast.

A small cluster of tiny dots appeared in the lower left corner of the camp-watch screen. They formed a twisting band, snaking slowly toward the center of the screen.

Finally he heard faint creakings, and soft snorting sounds in the distance.

The points on the screen sorted themselves into colors. Over a dozen large yellow dots moved along in a procession, apparently following the path of the highway.

Yellow was the color he had learned was assigned for herbivores. Interspersed among the yellow points were a large number that glowed pink, and even bright red. And in the center of the procession were two tiny green lights. Dennis had no idea what those meant.

Trailing some distance behind the end of the procession, there followed another small green pinpoint.

His camp was uphill from the road a bit. He laid the watch-alarm aside and moved carefully downslope. The night seemed to amplify the snap of every twig as he tried to move silently toward a better vantage point.

After a brief wait, a faint glow appeared to his left. It brightened, then became a painful, piercing white light, spearing through the trees by the road:

Headlights! Dennis blinked. Now, why does that surprise me? Did I think the makers of a road like this one wouldn’t be able to illuminate it?

Hidden by the undergrowth, he squinted against the bright beam. Vague figures marched behind it, bipedal, with swinging arms.

The procession passed below his blind. He heard the low, chuffing snorts of beasts. Shading his eyes, he made out giant quadrupeds pulling hulking vehicles that slid soundlessly along the road. Each conveyance sent a bright beam spearing ahead of it into the gloom.

Behind each came a formation of striding bipeds. Dennis caught glimpses of heavy, coweled clothing and what seemed to be sharp, glinting weapons, held at high port.

But each time his night vision began to return, another giant sled came around the corner to the west, its bright beam dazzling him and sending him flat against the ground again. It was frustrating, but there didn’t seem to be any way to get a better look!

More of the swaggering, coweled figures passed, then more quadrupeds, pulling hulking, eerily silent wagons. Dennis tried to make out how they moved. He neither heard nor saw any turning wheels. Yet hovercraft would give out blasts of compressed air, wouldn’t they?

Antigravity? Nothing else seemed to fit. But if that was so, why were they using animal power?

Could these be descendants of some fallen civilization, patching their commerce together with rude fragments of their forefathers’ science? It seemed to fit what he observed.

The idea of antigravity excited Dennis. Might that be the difference in physical laws Brady had talked about during those last moments on Earth?

A last troop of the hooded “warriors” passed below. These rode rather than walked. Their mounts tossed thickly maned heads and nickered, seeming to him so much like shaggy ponies that Dennis mistrusted his observation. It would be too tempting to interpret what he saw in Terran terms.

He rubbed his eyes and stared. But silhouettes were all he could make out.

One animal among the riders carried a smaller figure, coweled in a cloak of faded white—standing out in the deep gloom outside of the headlights. Something he saw in the smaller entity’s carriage told him that this one was a prisoner. It carried no shiny weapons, and its arms lay motionless on the animal’s neck. The hooded head slumped forward dejectedly.

As the riders passed below, the white-hooded prisoner’s head lifted, then started to turn as if to look up into the undergrowth where he was hiding! Dennis ducked down, feeling his throat suddenly go dry.

One of the dark silhouettes ahead turned around in its saddle and pulled on a tether. The prisoner’s mount stumbled forward, and the party passed below.

Dennis blinked and shook his head to clear it. For a moment, in the glare and confusion, he had experienced a queer illusion. It had seemed to him that the prisoner’s white cloak had opened—for a brief, timeless instant—and the starlight had shown him the sad, forlorn face of a beautiful girl.

7

For a long while the image lingered in his brain—so long, in fact, that Dennis hardly noticed the end of the procession.

He felt a bit lightheaded. Yeah, that must have been it. Too much excitement had gotten him seeing things.

Dennis watched the last glimmer of the caravan pass around the far bend to the east. He still knew next to nothing about the technology and culture of the locals. All he had learned was that the natives shared some of humanity’s less savory habits—such as the way they treated one another.

A moment later a tiny mutter of sound drifted up from the road below.

Dennis suddenly remembered the image on the camp-watch display. There had been one more tiny green dot, following the caravan from behind. In all the excitement he had forgotten about it!

He crept forward to get a better view. There were no more bright, blinding lights. Now he might get a good look!

He slid quietly to within feet of the road itself. At first he saw nothing. Then a tiny noise made him look to the right.

A glint of glass and plastic reflected the faint glow of the departing procession. A tiny articulated arm waved in the dim starlight. On almost silent, spinning treads, the Sahara Tech exploration robot whizzed down the alien highway eastward. . . following Dennis’s instructions to the letter.

. . . finding out about the natives.

Dennis barely stifled a shout. Idiot machine! He rushed out onto the highway, tripping over a tree root and rolling most of the way. He made it to his feet in time to see the robot, one of its arms waving as if in farewell, pass around the bend and out of sight.

Dennis cursed softly but soundly. That robot’s tapes doubtless carried all the information he needed. But he couldn’t chase it or call out without bringing himself to the attention of the caravan guards!

He was still muttering softly, standing there in the middle of the dark road, when something alive dropped onto his head from an overhanging branch. Dennis gasped in alarm as the thing wrapped itself tightly over his eyes, sending him stumbling, reeling into the trees.

8

“What was the big idea, scaring me half to death?” Dennis accused hoarsely. “I might have run into something and hurt both of us!”

The object of his ire watched him from a rock a few feet away, green eyes gleaming in the light from the camp stove. The pixolet yawned complacently, apparently of the opinion Dennis was making a big deal out of nothing.

“Damn all machines and natives! Just where have you been the past four days, anyway? Here I rescue you from a fate worse than boredom at the hands of Bernald Brady, and in return all I ask is a friend who knows the neighborhood.

What happens? That ‘friend’ up and leaves me all alone, until isolation eventually gets me so I’m talking to myself. . . or worse, to a stubby little flying pig who can’t understand a word I’m saying. . . !”

Dennis found he could hold his hands steady at last. He poured a cup of soup for himself. Blowing on it, he muttered as his temper slowly wound down, “Stupid, practical joking E.T.s. . . damned fickle aliens .. .”

He glanced over his cup at the diminutive native animal. Its tongue was hanging out. Its eyes met his.

Dennis let out a sigh of surrender. He poured some soup into the overturned pot cover. The pixolet hopped over and lapped at it daintily, looking up at him from time to time.

When both had finished, Dennis rinsed out the utensils and crawled back into his sleeping bag. He picked up the camp-alarm and worked on its settings. Pix leaped over beside him and watched.

Dennis tried to ignore it but couldn’t maintain his ire for long—not with it looking at him that way, purring, watching with apparent fascination the adjustments he made to the little machine.

Dennis shrugged and picked up the small creature. “What is it about you and machines? You sure can’t use them. See?” He shook its little paws. “No hands!”

With the stove turned off, the forest night settled in around. In a little island in the quiet, Dennis soon found himself telling the pixolet about the constellations and all the other things he had discovered.

And he realized it was good to have company again, even if it was an alien creature who didn’t understand a single word he said.

3

Nom de Terre

1

The next day the road began to descend into a broad river valley.

Riding on Dennis’s shoulder, the pixolet peeped and grabbed a cluster of berries from an overhanging branch. It munched on a few of the purple fruits, and juice ran down its jaws. When it offered some to Dennis, he politely declined.

Dennis was feeling pretty good. His old camping skills had obviously come back. His backpack was snug now that he had found the right knots. His boots—broken in now—felt like supple extensions of his own feet as he stepped along the resilient highway. He was making good time.

But he could tell the forest would end soon. He still faced the problem of what he would do when he found civilization.

What sort of creatures were the autochthones? Would they have the technology to help him rebuild his half of the zievatron?

More important, would they decide to arrange his pieces neatly, by size and color, like someone had already done to the zievatron?

Maybe it might be a good idea to spy on the natives, as a first step.

“Easily suggested,” Dennis mocked himself. If their facial features are a little different, I’ll just use some river mud to make fake antennae and eye stalks and be in business! I might have to remove my nose and lengthen my neck a bit, of course, but only a few inches, at most.

“I wonder if I’ll need scales

As he hiked along, a number of fantasy scenarios occurred to him.

I know! I’ll keep my eye out for the country estate of the eccentric squire scientist G’zvreep, I’ll recognize it by the observatory dome protruding prominently from the west wing of his manor house.

Right, Dennis. When you knock, the kindly old native savant will answer the door himself, having sent the servants to bed while he scans the skies for comets. On seeing you he’ll flap his thorax in momentary revulsion at your two hideously flat eyes, your millions of tiny cranial tendrils. But when you raise your hand in the universal gesture of peace, he’ll hustle you inside and say, “Enter quickly! Thank Gixgax you came here first!”

In a meadow by the road, Dennis found the remains of a campsite. Coals were still warm in the firepit.

Dennis put down his pack. He set up the campwatch on one large stone and the pixolet on another. “All right, bright eyes,” he said to the creature, “let’s see if you’re good for anything but company. You can keep a lookout while I do some serious detective work.”

Pix cocked its head quizzically, then yawned.

“Hmmph. Well, it just goes to show how little you know. I’ve found something already!” Dennis pointed to the ground. “Look. Footprints!”

Pixolet sniffed, apparently unimpressed. Dennis sighed. Where was an appreciative audience when you needed one?

There were many deep impressions in the ground—apparently made by the large draft animals—and smaller hoofprints like those an unshod pony might leave. The droppings, too, indicated that this world must indeed have close analogs to horses.

After finishing with the animals, he searched for a clear set of bipedal prints and soon realized that everyone in the caravan had worn shoes.

From the sharp outlines of the corrugated tread, it was apparent these people used boots not unlike his own! Here certainly was evidence of technology. The tread patterns were all identical... as if some computer had come up with the perfect design that was mass-produced thereafter. He hurried about looking at the prints until a thought occurred to him.

Dennis grabbed his own left foot. Awkwardly, he tried to look at the sole of his own boot. Moving too quickly, he overbalanced and fell on his backside.

He stared at the pattern of his own boot and sighed. It was identical! Either the computers here had come up with the same design as those on Earth had, or...

He looked around. The bootprints were everywhere. No doubt nearly all of them were his own.

There was a peeping that sounded suspiciously like laughter. Dennis turned and glared at the pixolet. It wore its accustomed grin.

“Don’t you dare say one word!” Dennis warned the creature.

For once, Pix did as told.

There weren’t many more clues. By the firepit he found a few crumbly sticks of dried meat. Over where the animals had been staked there were scatterings of spilled grain.

By a tall tree Dennis found a red stain in the earth. It felt sticky, like blood.

There were scuffmarks in the ground, and loose tufts of fur. Then he found one long golden strand that glinted in the morning light. He looked at it for a long moment, then carefully stuffed it into a button-down shoulder pocket.

A bit closer to the forest, he found a dead animal.

It looked like a larger cousin of the pixolet’s. It had the snub nose and needle teeth, but it was the size and build of a mastiff.

The head stared at him dully from a spot three feet from the rest of the body. It had been sheared off, along with part of the shoulder, as if by a guillotine—or a high-power laser.

He stared at the carnage until the buzzing of the watch-alarm carried over from the firepit. Dennis looked up anxiously. What was coming?

He turned just as six ragged doglike things suddenly emerged from the line of trees. He did not have time to form a more accurate impression. They snarled—a low, gravelly sound—then charged.

The needler was in his hand before he had time to think. He had practiced drawing and blasting knots in tree trunks during the past few days of hiking. The exercise probably saved his life.

Balanced, legs apart, Dennis aimed just ahead of the beasts and fired.

The ground in front of the pack exploded, but the crazed things charged straight through the spray of dirt and grass single-mindedly. Dennis had no choice. He lifted his aim and fired again.

The pack tumbled into a howling mass. It divided almost instantly into the fleeing and the dead.

Dennis watched the survivors stumble away, howling in pain, their fellows bloody and still behind them. He looked down at the small weapon in his hand.

Powered by stored sunlight, the needler could peel tiny slivers off of any odd-shaped lump of metal he crammed into its ammo chamber, and fire them at high velocity. Dennis had thought it little better than a toy when he started out from the zievatron but he had begun to gain confidence in it with all the practice on the trail.

Now he stared at it in amazement.

What a killer, he thought.

2

Soon he could tell he was drawing near civilization.

The highway perceptibly widened as it dropped from the mountain pass. Some of the hillside meadows now showed signs of cultivation. A thick hedgerow now separated the highway from open fields on both sides. Through the branches he could see herds of grazing animals on the slopes.

He would run into traffic soon. A happenstance encounter on the road wasn’t the best kind of first contact. He didn’t want to face the sort of weapon that had severed the head of the beast back at the campsite. Dennis decided it might be best to continue his travels off the road for a while.

He searched for a break in the hedge, Pix awakened from its nap atop his backpack when Dennis drew his machete and started to chop at a thin spot in the windbreak.

The little beast leaped for a high branch, then crouched and looked down at Dennis reproachfully for interrupting its siesta.

Dennis didn’t find the going easy. The heavy blade bounced back from the branches, barely chipping them.

He looked at it in disgust. He had not used the machete much until now. It was covered with rust spots and the edge was dull. Dennis cursed Bernald Brady, taking what consolation he could from the fact that he had not misjudged the fellow after all.

As he sucked at scratches on the back of his right hand, he had an idea. What about the beautiful native knife he had found by the airlock? He shrugged out of his pack and retrieved the cloth-wrapped artifact from one of the bottom pouches. With a wary glance up and down the highway, he laid the cloth on the ground and unfolded it.

His eyes went wide.

A week ago he had put away a beautiful, sharp, resilient knife, an obvious product of high-tech craftsmanship.

What lay before him was still impressive, but it looked a lot more like a finely chipped piece of obsidian tied to a wooden handle by tightly wound leather strips. It was sharp and well made, but a far cry from the advanced tool he remembered first picking up.

His head felt light. A phenomenon, he remarked internally, touching the object lightly.

He was brought back to the present by a peeping cry from above. The pixolet chirped at him twice, shaking its head vigorously. Then it soared off into the thicket.

Dennis reached into his thigh pocket and pulled out the camp-watch. The little screen showed red lights on the road, coming this way.

He rewrapped the artifact. The mystery would keep. He hefted the pack once more and set to hacking in earnest with the machete. He had to get off the road!

Brambles caught at his pack and at the arm he kept up to protect his face as he bulled his way through the thicket. Finally, like a pip squeezed from a melon, he flew into the meadow and sprawled onto the grass.

Dennis rolled over, breathing heavily.

At least this time I’ll get a good look at them, he thought as he crawled away from the break in the hedge. At last I’ll find out what the natives look like!

He drew out the camp-watch again. The display showed a great many yellow lights, apparently depicting the herds of grazing animals Dennis had seen on the hillsides. To one side of the screen he saw two red dots and two yellow, coming this way down the road.

A pair of riders.

Pix’s green marker was nowhere to be seen. The fickle creature must have left him again.

He was concentrating so hard on the red dots on the road that it took him a moment to notice that two small pink lights had detached themselves from a nearby herd of yellows to the south. They were moving rapidly toward the center of the screen.

Toward the center, Dennis realized. . . that’s me.

“Haaaa-aayy-oooaaoo!!”

It came from behind him, a high, shrill cry that sent a shiver down his back. With the ululation came the sound of running footsteps. Someone was charging down on him from the rear!

Dennis clawed at his holster, holding little hope he could scramble about in time., At any instant he expected the sudden flash of some alien death ray to cut him down.

“Haaayyoo-oh!”

Encumbered by the pack, he rolled over onto his stomach, trying to bring his weapon up. He held the needler out in two shaky hands ready to fire at... the dog.

He blinked, poised to shoot. . . the small dog that growled at him, then hopped back to take cover behind a pair of small legs... the stubby, scuff-kneed legs of a small boy.

Dennis looked up and stared. The most ominous weapon in sight was a shepherd’s crook held by a four-foot-tall towhead with a dirty face.

The first sapient extraterrestrial with whom Dennis had made contact wiped a lock of untidy brown hair out of his eyes and panted. “. . .Ayoo-missuh. . .” The boy breathed excitedly. “Ooowan’ seem’pop?”

A bit numb from surprise, Dennis realized he probably looked silly laying there. Slowly, so as not to frighten the child; he picked himself up.

He decided not even to think about the incongruity of finding a human boy—apparently about eight years old— here on an alien world. There was no profit in it. He made himself concentrate on the language problem. Something about the sounds spoken by the boy had sounded strangely familiar, as if he had heard them somewhere before.

He tried to remember a few facts from the linguistics course he had taken in college in order to get out of the infamous Professor LaBelle’s English 7. There were a few sounds, he had learned, that were nearly universal in meaning among human beings. Anthropologists used to use them at the beginning of contact with newly discovered tribes,

He swallowed, then ventured one of them.

“Huh?” he said.

By now the boy had caught his breath. With a sigh of exaggerated patience he repeated himself.

“You wanna see my pop, misser?”

Dennis gulped. He did manage, at last, to make his head go up and down in a nod.

3

The pup ran around them, yapping about their feet. The boy—who said his name was Tomosh—walked earnestly beside Dennis, leading him over the hilly meadow toward his home.

As they walked, Dennis saw a pair of riders pass by on the highway. Seen through breaks in the hedge, the sources of the threatening red dots that had sent him plunging into hiding minutes before turned out to be a couple of farmers cantering past on shaggy ponies.

He was just starting to adjust to all this. Of all possible first contacts, this one had to be the most benign and the most confusing. Dennis couldn’t even begin to imagine how there had come to be humans here.

“Tomosh,” he began.

“Yessirrr?” The boy rolled his “r’s” in an accent that Dennis was only just getting used to. He looked up expectantly.

Dennis paused. Where could he even begin? There was so much to ask. “Er, will your flock be all right while you escort me to meet your folks?”

“Oh, the rickels will be fine. The dogs watch ‘em. I just gotta go out an’ count ‘em twice a day an’ give an alarrm if one’s missin’.”

They walked on in silence for a few more steps. Dennis didn’t have much time to prepare for his first meeting with adults. Suddenly he felt very nervous about it.

Before running into the boy he had resigned himself to standing out as an alien and taking his chances. To be slain on sight by mammal-hating antmen, for instance, would have merely been unavoidable bad luck. Nothing he could have done about that.

But small details of his own behavior could affect the way local humans reacted to him. A simple mistake in courtesy—a careless slip—might cost him everything. And in that case the fault would be his.

Perhaps he could ask a child questions that would only cause an adult to become suspicious.

“Tomosh, are there many other farms around here?”

“Nossirr, only a few.” The boy sounded proud. “We’re almost the farthest! The King only wants miners an traders to go into the mountains where the L’Toff live.

“Baron Kremer feels different, o’ course. M’pop says th’ Baron’s got no right to send in lumbermen an’ soldiers. . . .”

Tomosh rambled on about how tough and mean the local overlord was and how the King, who lived far away to the east, would put the Baron in his place someday. The story broke down into gossip that sounded a bit sophisticated for a small boy. . .how “Lord Hern” was slowly taking over all the mines in the Baron’s name and how no circuses had come to the region in more than two years because of the troubles with the King. Although it was hard to follow all the details, Dennis gathered that the local setup was a feudal aristocracy, and apparently war was not uncommon.

Unfortunately, the story didn’t tell him anything about the crucial question of the world’s technology. The boy’s clothes, though dusty, looked well made. There were no pockets, but the belt of button-down pouches looked like it came straight out of a Kelty catalogue. Tomosh’s shoes looked a lot like the tough old sneakers Dennis had worn as a child.

A rambling farmstead came into view as they crested a low hill. A house, barn, and storehouse lay about a hundred meters back from the windbreak along the road. The yard was surrounded by a high stockade. To Dennis the place looked prosperous enough. Tomosh grew excited and pulled on Dennis’s hand. Dennis uneasily followed the boy down the hill.

The farmhouse was a low, rambling earth-sheltered structure with a shallow, sloping roof that gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. At first Dennis thought the reflection came from aluminum siding. But as they came closer he saw that the walls were actually laminated wooden panels, beautifully joined and vanished.

The barn was similarly constructed. Both buildings looked like pictures out of a magazine.

Dennis stopped just outside the gate. It was his last chance to ask stupid questions.

“Uh, Tomosh,” he said, “I’m a stranger hereabouts. . . .”

“Oh, I could tell that. You talk funny!”

“Umm, yes. Well, in fact, I’m from a land far away to the. . .to the northwest.” Dennis had gathered from the boy’s ramblings that it was a direction about which the locals knew little.

“Naturally, I’m a bit curious about your country,” he went on. “Uh, could you tell me, for instance, the name of your land here?”

Without hesitation the boy “answered, “It’s Coylia!”

“So your King is the King of Coylia?”

Tomosh nodded with an expression of exaggerated patience. “Right!”

“Good. You know, it’s a funny thing about names, Tomosh. People in different lands call the world by different names. What do your people call it?” Dennis was determined to put “Flasteria” to rest.

“The world?” The boy looked puzzled.

“The whole world.” He motioned at the earth, the sky, the hills. “All the oceans and kingdoms. What do you call it?”

“Oh. Tatir,” he replied earnestly. “That’s the name of the world.”

“Tatir,” Dennis repeated. He tried not to smile. It wasn’t much of an improvement on “Flasteria.”

“Tomosh!”

The shrill cry came from the farmhouse. A rather husky young woman stepped out onto the front porch and shouted again, “Tomosh! Come here!”

The boy frowned. “It’s Aunt Biss. What’s she doin’ here? An’ where’s Mom an’ Pop?” He took off toward the farmhouse, leaving Dennis standing at the gate.

Something was obviously wrong. The boy’s aunt looked worried. She knelt and held his shoulders as she explained something earnestly. To mush was soon fighting back tears.

Dennis felt awkward. To approach before he was invited by the adult didn’t seem wise. But he couldn’t see just walking away, either.

Nothing looked awry about the house and yard. Real chickens pecked at the ground alongside what looked like a flock of tiny tame ostriches.

The paths about the farmyard apparently were made of the same resilient, hi-tech material as the highway. They had the same raggedy edges, almost blending into the surrounding dirt and grass.

That seemed to be the way the whole farm was put together. The windows in the house were clear and well fitted, but they were inserted at various rough approximations to level and square. Big and small windows were set side by side in no apparent pattern.

Tomosh clutched his aunt’s skirt, now fully in tears. Dennis was concerned. Something must have happened to the boy’s parents.

Finally he decided to approach a few steps. The woman looked up.

“Yourr name is Dennis?” She asked coolly, in the queer local dialect.

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Is Tomosh all right? Is there anything I can do to help?”

The offer seemed to surprise her. Her expression thawed just a little. “The boy’s parents are gone. I’ve come to take him to my home. You are welcome to sup and stay until my man comes to gather the goods and lock up.”

Dennis wanted to ask more questions, but her severe look kept him quiet. “Set here on the steps an’ wait,” she said. She led the boy inside.

Dennis wasn’t offended by the woman’s suspicion of a stranger. His accent probably didn’t help any. He sat on the steps where she had indicated.

There was a rack of tools on the porch just outside the front door. At first Dennis looked them over complacently, thinking about other things. Then he looked closer and frowned. “Curiouser and curiouser,” he said.

It was the strangest assortment of implements he had ever seen.

Near the door were a hoe, an ax, a rake, and a spade, all apparently shiny and new. He touched a pair of shears next to them. The edges were sharp, and they looked quite strong.

The handles had grips of smooth, dark wood, as one might expect. But the cutting edges didn’t seem to be made of metal. The razor-sharp blades were translucent and showed faint veins and facets within.

Dennis gaped. “They’re stone!” he whispered. “Some sort of gemstone, I do believe! Why, they may even be single crystals!”

He was staggered. He couldn’t imagine the technology that could provide such tools for a country farmer. The implements near the door were unbelievable!

But that wasn’t the last surprise. As he scanned the toolrack, Dennis felt a growing sense of strangeness, for although the tools farthest from the door seemed also to be made of stone, that was all they had in common with the beautiful blades near the entrance.

Dennis blinked at the incongruity. On the far left was another ax. And this one might have come straight out of the late Stone Age!

The crude wooden handle had been rubbed smooth in two places, but it still had bits of bark attached to it in spots. The blade appeared to be a piece of chipped flint held on by leather thongs.

The rest of the tools fell between these extremes. Some were as crude as could be imagined. Others were obviously the products of an extremely high materials science, and computer-aided design.

He touched the flint-headed ax, lost in thought. It might have been made by the same hand that put together the mysterious knife that lay wrapped in his pack.

“Stivyung’s the best practicer in these parts,” a voice behind him said.

He turned. Lost in thought, he hadn’t heard Aunt Biss come out onto the porch. The woman proffered a bowl and spoon, which he took automatically. Steamy aroma sparked a sudden hunger.

“Stivyung?” He repeated the name with difficulty. “The boy’s father?”

“Yah. Stivyung Sigel. A fine man, sergeant of the Royal Scouts before marryin’ my sister Surah. His reputation for practice was his downfall. That an’ the fact that he’s built just like the Baron—both height an’ weight. The Baron’s men came for him this mornin’.”

She seemed to think she was making sense. Dennis didn’t dare tell her otherwise. Much of his confusion might be due to the woman’s thick accent, anyway.

“What about the boy’s mother?” Dennis asked. He blew on a spoonful of stew. It was bland but compared favorably to the survival rations he had been eating for over a week.

Aunt Biss shrugged. “When they took Stivyung, Surah ran over to fetch me, then packed up an’ headed for the hills. She wanted to ask the L’Toff for help.” Biss snorted. “Lot o’ good that’ll do.”

Dennis was getting dizzy with all the references to things he didn’t understand. Who were the L’Toff? And what in the world was a practicer?

As for the story of the boy’s father being arrested, Dennis could see how a farmer’s pride might get him in trouble with the local strongman, but why would Stivyung Sigel be seized for being “built just like” his overlord? Was that a crime here?

“Is Tomosh all right?”

“Yah. He wants to tell you good-bye before you go.”

“Go,” Dennis repeated. He had sort of been hoping for some down-home hospitality, including a real bed and some trial conversation, before he tackled a larger settlement. Things didn’t sound too peaceful hereabouts. He wanted to find out who made the marvelous hi-tech items and head straight for that element in society, avoiding the Baron Kremers of this world.

Aunt Biss nodded firmly. “We got no room at my place. An’ my husban’ Bim is locking up this stockade tomorrow. If you want work, you’ll find it in Zuslik.”

Dennis stared down at the bowl. Suddenly he did not want to face another night in the wilderness. Even the clucking chickens made him feel homesick.

Aunt Biss was silent for a moment, then she sighed. “Oh, wha’ the hey. Tomosh thinks you’re a genuine pilgrim an’ not one of those layabouts we sometimes get in from th’ east. I don’t suppose it’ll do any harm to let you sleep th’ night in th’ barn. So long as you behave an’ promise to go peaceful in th’ morn in’.”

Dennis nodded quickly. “Perhaps there are some chores I can help with. .. ?”

Biss thought about it. She turned and picked up the flint-headed ax from the porch rack. “I don expect it’ll do any good, but you might as well chop some firewood.”

Dennis took the crude ax dubiously.

“Well... I guess I could try.. .” He glanced over at the beautiful gemstone ax by the door.

“Use this one,” Biss emphasized. “We’ll want to sell it off quick, now that Stivyung’s gone. There’s a pile o’ logs aroun’ back.

“Good practice to you.” She nodded and turned to go inside.

There was that word again. Dennis felt sure he was missing something important. But he judged it would be best not to ask Aunt Biss any more questions.

First things first, then. He finished the stew and licked the bowl clean. It felt like the kind of unbreakable dinnerware found in homes all over Earth. But on closer examination he realized that the bowl was made of wood, fashioned wafer thin and varnished to perfection.

If I ever get the zievatron fixed, and if we ever start trading with this culture, they’ll be able to sell us millions of these! Their factories will be working overtime!

Then he remembered draft animals pulling sledges that slid noiselessly through the night.

What’s going on here?

Casting a wistful glance at the beautiful gemstone ax near the door, he resignedly picked up the caveman special and walked around to the woodpile in back of the house.

4

The Best Way to Carnegie Hall

1

The town of Zuslik lay at the bottom of a wide valley, where low hills on both sides crowded close to a broad, sluggish river. The land was heavily wooded, with cultivated fields evenly scattered among thick patches of forest. The riverside town sat at the junction of several roads.

From a slope west of Zuslik, Dennis could see that the walled settlement was built around a hill overlooking a bend in the river. Atop this eminence, towering above the town, stood a dark, squat tower, built in a series of flat layers like a dark, brooding wedding cake.

Through his Sahara Tech monocular, Dennis could make out antlike columns of men marching in the yards surrounding the fortress. Sunlight occasionally flashed from ranks of upheld weapons. Pennants riffled from the high tower, blown by the breeze that swept up the valley.

There was no mistaking the home of the chief honcho. Dennis hoped his search wouldn’t require that he go there. Not after what he had heard about the man.

The evening before last, while Dennis settled into the hayloft of the Sigels’ farm, the little boy Tomosh had come out to the barn. Ostensibly it was to wish the visitor good night, but Dennis realized that the young fellow actually had come for sympathy and comfort. He didn’t imagine Tomosh got much of it from his cool aunt.

Tomosh had wound up staying for a couple of hours, exchanging stories with Dennis. It had been a fair trade

Dennis had a chance to practice his accent—familiarizing himself with the muddy, strange Coylian version of English— and Tomosh, much to his delight, learned a great deal about the ways of Brer Rabbit and of flying elephants.

Dennis didn’t find out much about Coylian technology—he hadn’t expected to, talking with a small boy. But he listened attentively as Tomosh told “scary” stories about “Bleckers” and other fabled bogeymen, and about ancient, kindly dragons that let people ride them through the sky. Dennis filed away the tales in his memory, for one never knew what would turn out to be useful information.

More relevant, he imagined, were the tidbits Tomosh told about Baron Kremer, whose grandfather had led a tribe of hillmen out of the north to take Zuslik from the old Duke a generation ago. Kremer sounded like a good man to stay away from, according to Tomosh, especially after what the fellow had done to the boy’s family.

Much as he wanted to learn more, Dennis knew Baron Kremer wasn’t the best topic to dwell on. He distracted the boy from his troubles with an old camp song that soon had him laughing and clapping. By the time Tomosh fell asleep on the hay nearby, the boy had forgotten about the day’s traumas.

It left Dennis feeling as if he had done a good deed. He only wished he could have done more for the little tyke.

Aunt Biss, taciturn to the end, gave Dennis a cloth-wrapped lunch of cheese and bread for his departure early the next morning. Tomosh manfully rubbed back tears when he said farewell. It had taken only a day and another morning to hike here from the farmhouse.

On the trek to town Dennis had kept a lookout for a small pinkish creature with bright green eyes. But the pixolet never showed up. It looked like the little creature really had abandoned him this time.

Dennis examined Zuslik from the bluff outside of town. Somewhere in that citadel, the boy’s father was being held for mysterious crimes Dennis still didn’t understand. . . because he was “built just like” his overlord and was good with tools. . . . Dennis was relieved to find out that he, at least, didn’t resemble the warlord at all.

He decided he wouldn’t learn any more about Zuslik by studying it from a distance. He got up and started putting on his pack.

Just then he caught a flicker of motion in his peripheral vision. He turned to look. . .and saw something huge, black, and fast come swooping straight down on him over the treetops!

Dennis flung himself to the grassy slope as the giant flying thing shot by just overhead. Its shadow was huge, and a flapping, whistling sound sent chills of expectant disaster up his back as he burrowed into the turf.

The moment of terror passed. When nothing disastrous appeared to happen, he finally raised his head, looking around frantically for the monster. But the thing was gone!

Last night Tomosh had spoken of dragons—great ferocious creatures that had once supposedly defended mankind on Tatir against deadly enemies. But Dennis had been under the impression they were of the distant past, where the fanciful creatures of children’s fairy tales belonged!

He scanned the horizon and finally found the black shape. It was settling down toward the town. His throat was still dry as he pulled out the monocular and managed to focus it on the castle grounds.

Dennis blinked. It took a moment for him to realize— somewhat to his relief—that it was no “dragon” after all. His ebony monster was a flying machine. Small figures ran to the aircraft from a line of sheds in the castle’s yard as the craft drifted to rest, light as a feather. Two small figures—presumably the pilots—dismounted and strode quickly toward the castle without looking back.

Dennis lowered the ocular. He felt a little foolish for coming to overly dramatic conclusions when there was another, simpler explanation. It wasn’t really so surprising the locals had flight, was it? There had been plenty of signs of high technology.

Still, the aircraft had hardly made a sound as it passed overhead. There were no growling engine noises. It was puzzling. Perhaps antigravity merited another consideration.

There was only one way to find out more. He got up and brushed himself off, then shouldered his pack and headed down to town.

2

The market outside the city wall was like almost any small riverfront bazaar on Earth. There were shouts and calls and sudden gangs of running boys obviously up to no good. Shops and warehouses gave off pungent aromas, from rich food to the high musk of the grunting draft animals.

He entered the bazaar with what he hoped was an expression of somebody going confidently about his business. By the variety of clothing he saw, Dennis didn’t feel outlandishly dressed. Boots, shirt, and trousers seemed to be conventional attire here. Some people even carried burdens on their backs, as he did.

He passed men lounging at the tables of a sidewalk cafe and gathered a few looks. But nobody seemed to stare with more than passing curiosity.

Dennis began to breathe more easily. Maybe I can bluff my way all the way to whatever passes for a university in these parts, he thought hopefully. He had a clear idea of the type of individuals he wanted to contact in this culture.

Even in ancient and feudal societies on Earth there had always been patches of enlightenment, and these people clearly enjoyed higher technology and culture than that. The aircraft had definitely raised Dennis’s hopes of finding the kind of help he needed.

The sharp odors of drying fish and tanning hides hit him as he reached the dockyards. The piers were solid-looking structures of dowel and peg construction. They looked almost new, right down to the glossy pilings. The upper surfaces were coated with the same resilient stuff that made up the Coylian roads.

He stopped to look over one of the boats. Dennis had sailed enough to recognize a sophisticated ship design when he saw one. The hull was thin, light, and sleek. Its mast was stepped elegantly and a little rakishly over the center of gravity.

Once again, it was built of beautifully glossy laminated wood.

But if they had the technology to build boats like these, why did they use sails? Did the people of Coylia have some sort of taboo against engines? Perhaps their only machinery was in the factories where they produced these wonderful things.

Dennis wanted very much to find one of those factories and talk to the people who ran them.

Not far away, a workgang carried heavy sacks from a warehouse to the hold of a waiting boat. The sacks must have weighed forty kilos each. The stocky, barrel-chested men hummed as they shuttled along the wharf, stooped under their heavy loads.

Dennis shook his head. Could it be against their religion to use wheelbarrows?

After each stevedore deposited his sack in the hold, he did not return down the narrow ramp but climbed the boat’s gunnels instead. In time with the groaning beat of his comrades, he chanted a brief verse, then dove into the water to make room for the next man.

It did seem like a good idea, taking a dip before swimming around the pier for another of those heavy loads, Dennis made his way around bales of waiting cargo until he was close enough to hear the chant. It seemed to be a repetitious variant of the phrase “Ah Hee Hum!”

The workers shuffled along to the steady beat. Dennis approached as a giant with a blue-black moustache dropped his load into the hold, then leaped lightly onto the railing. With one hand on the shrouds, he slapped his sweat-glistened chest as the men chanted.

“Ah Hee Hum!”

The giant sang:

The Mayor is wise, but we all know The fact is—

(Ah Wee Hoom?)

What he misses in wisdom he makes Up in mass!

(Ah Hee Hum!)

Only two parts of him get enough practice—

(Ah Wee Hoom?)

One part is his mouth and the Other’s his. . .

The last part was drowned out by a hasty “Ah Hee Hum!” from the gang. The big fellow let himself fall into the water with a great splash. As he swam over to a ladder, his place on the gunnels was taken by a tall man with a thin fringe of hair. His voice was curiously deep.

Oh, the wife stays at home, in front of The mirror—

(Ah Wee Hoom?)

She must think she’s a. hat, or a broom, Or a door!

(Ah Hee Hum!)

Things practice good, but people Are poorer—

(Ah Wee Hoom?)

She primps, but still she looks Like a who—

(Ah! Hee-e-e Hoom!)

Dennis smiled weakly, like a person who could tell a pretty good joke was being told but who couldn’t quite understand the punch line.