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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy Primes, by Edward Elmer Smith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Galaxy Primes
+
+Author: Edward Elmer Smith
+
+Release Date: March 25, 2007 [EBook #20898]
+
+Date last Updated: August 18, 2007
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY PRIMES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, V. L. Simpson and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    [Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Typographic errors have been corrected.
+
+    This etext was produced from Amazing Stories March, April
+    and May 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any
+    evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was
+    renewed.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+    THE GALAXY PRIMES
+
+    By E. E. SMITH
+
+
+    They were four of the greatest minds in the Universe:
+    Two men, two women, lost in an experimental spaceship
+    billions of parsecs from home. And as they mentally
+    charted the Cosmos to find their way back to earth,
+    their own loves and hates were as startling as the worlds
+    they encountered. Here is E. E. Smith's great new novel....
+
+
+    [Illustration:
+
+    The guardian struggled to immobilize the beast's
+    gigantic talons as the frightened girl leaped to the
+    safety of Garlock's arms.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1
+
+
+Her hair was a brilliant green. So was her spectacularly filled halter.
+So were her tight short-shorts, her lipstick, and the lacquer on her
+finger-and toe-nails. As she strolled into the Main of the starship,
+followed hesitantly by the other girl, she drove a mental probe at the
+black-haired, powerfully-built man seated at the instrument-banked
+console.
+
+Blocked.
+
+Then at the other, slenderer man who was rising to his feet from the
+pilot's bucket seat. His guard was partially down; he was telepathing a
+pleasant, if somewhat reserved greeting to both newcomers.
+
+She turned to her companion and spoke aloud. "So _these_ are the
+system's best." The emphasis was somewhere between condescension and
+sneer. "Not much to choose between, I'd say ... 'port me a tenth-piece,
+Clee? Heads, I take the tow-head."
+
+She flipped the coin dexterously. "Heads it is, Lola, so I get
+Jim--James James James the Ninth himself. You have the honor of pairing
+with Clee--or should I say His Learnedness Right the Honorable Director
+Doctor Cleander Simmsworth Garlock, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of
+Science, Prime Operator, President and First Fellow of the Galaxian
+Society, First Fellow of the Gunther Society, Fellow of the Institute of
+Paraphysics, of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, of the College of
+Mathematics, of the Congress of Psionicists, and of all the other
+top-bracket brain-gangs you ever heard of? Also, for your information,
+his men have given him a couple of informal degrees--P.D.Q. and S.O.B."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The big psionicist's expression of saturnine, almost contemptuous
+amusement had not changed; his voice came flat and cold. "The less you
+say, Doctor Bellamy, the better. Obstinate, swell-headed women give me
+an acute rectal pain. Pitching your curves over all the vizzies in space
+got you aboard, but it won't get you a thing from here on. And for your
+information, Doctor Bellamy, one more crack like that and I take you
+over my knee and blister your fanny."
+
+"Try it, you big, clumsy, muscle-bound gorilla!" she jeered. "_That_ I
+want to see! Any time you want to get both arms broken at the elbows,
+just try it!"
+
+"Now's as good a time as any. I like your spirit, babe, but I can't say
+a thing for your judgment." He got up and started purposefully toward
+her, but both non-combatants came between.
+
+"Jet back, Clee!" James protested, both hands against the heavier man's
+chest. "What the hell kind of show is _that_ to put on?" And,
+simultaneously:
+
+"Belle! Shame on you! Picking a fight already, and with nobody knows how
+many million people looking on! You know as well as I do that we may
+have to spend the rest of our lives together, so act like civilized
+beings--please--both of you! And don't...."
+
+"Nobody's watching this but us," Garlock interrupted. "When pussy there
+started using her claws I cut the gun."
+
+"That's what _you_ think," James said sharply, "but Fatso and his number
+one girl friend are coming in on the tight beam."
+
+"Oh?" Garlock whirled toward the hitherto dark and silent
+three-dimensional communications instrument. The face of a bossy-looking
+woman was already bright.
+
+"Garlock! How _dare_ you try to cut Chancellor Ferber off?" she
+demanded. Her voice was deep-pitched, blatant with authority. "Here you
+are, sir."
+
+The woman's face shifted to one side and a man's appeared--a face to
+justify in full the nickname "Fatso."
+
+"'Fatso', eh?" Chancellor Ferber snarled. Pale eyes glared from the fat
+face. "That costs you exactly one thousand credits, James."
+
+"How much will this cost me, Fatso?" Garlock asked.
+
+"Five thousand--and, since nobody can call me that deliberately,
+demotion three grades and probation for three years. Make a note, Miss
+Foster."
+
+"Noted, sir."
+
+"Still sure we aren't going anywhere," Garlock said. "_What_ a brain!"
+
+"Sure I'm sure!" Ferber gloated. "In a couple of hours I'm going to buy
+your precious starship in as junk. In the meantime, whether you like it
+or not, I'm going to watch your expression while you push all those
+pretty buttons and nothing happens."
+
+"The trouble with you, Fatso," Garlock said dispassionately, as he
+opened a drawer and took out a pair of cutting pliers, "is that all your
+strength is in your glands and none in your alleged brain. There are a
+lot of things--including a lot of tests--you know nothing about. How
+much will you see after I've cut one wire?"
+
+"You wouldn't dare!" the fat man shouted. "I'd fire you--blacklist you
+all over the sys...."
+
+Voice and images died away and Garlock turned to the two women in the
+Main. He began to smile, but his mental shield did not weaken.
+
+"You've got a point there, Lola," he said, going on as though Ferber's
+interruption had not occurred. "Not that I blame either Belle or myself.
+If anything was ever calculated to drive a man nuts, this farce was. As
+the only female Prime in the system, Belle should have been in
+automatically--she had no competition. And to anybody with three brain
+cells working the other place lay between you, Lola, and the other three
+female Ops in the age group.
+
+"But no. Ferber and the rest of the Board--stupidity _uber
+alles_!--think all us Ops and Primes are psycho and that the ship will
+never even lift. So they made a Grand Circus of it. But they succeeded
+in one thing--with such abysmal stupidity so rampant I'm getting more
+and more reconciled to the idea of our not getting back--at least, for a
+long, long time."
+
+"Why, they said we had a very good chance...." Lola began.
+
+"Yeah, and they said a lot of even bigger damn lies than that one. Have
+you read any of my papers?"
+
+"I'm sorry. I'm not a mathematician."
+
+"Our motion will be purely at random. If it isn't, I'll eat this whole
+ship. We won't get back until Jim and I work out something to steer us
+with. But they must be wondering no end, outside, what the score is, so
+I'm willing to call it a draw--temporarily--and let 'em in again. How
+about it, Belle?"
+
+"A draw it is--temporarily." Neither, however, even offered to shake
+hands.
+
+"Smile pretty, everybody," Garlock said, and pressed a stud.
+
+"... the matter? What's the matter? Oh...." the worried voice of the
+System's ace newscaster came in. "Power failure _already_?"
+
+"No," Garlock replied. "I figured we had a couple of minutes of privacy
+coming, if you can understand the meaning of the word. Now all four of
+us tell everybody who is watching or listening _au revoir_ or good-bye,
+whichever it may turn out to be." He reached for the switch.
+
+"Wait a minute!" the newscaster demanded. "Leave it on until the last
+poss...." His voice broke off sharply.
+
+"Turn it back on!" Belle ordered.
+
+"Nix."
+
+"Scared?" she sneered.
+
+"You chirped it, bird-brain. I'm scared purple. So would you be, if you
+had three brain cells working in that glory-hound's head of yours. Get
+set, everybody, and we'll take off."
+
+"Stop it, both of you!" Lola exclaimed. "Where do you want us to sit,
+and do we strap down?"
+
+"You sit here; Belle at that plate beside Jim. Yes, strap down. There
+probably won't be any shock, and we should land right side up, but
+there's no sense in taking chances. Sure your stuff's all aboard?"
+
+"Yes, it's in our rooms."
+
+The four secured themselves; the two men checked, for the dozenth time,
+their instruments. The pilot donned his scanner. The ship lifted
+effortlessly, noiselessly. Through the atmosphere; through and far
+beyond the stratosphere. It stopped.
+
+"Ready, Clee?" James licked his lips.
+
+"As ready as I ever will be, I guess. Shoot!"
+
+The pilot's right hand, forefinger outstretched, moved
+unenthusiastically toward a red button on his panel ... slowed ...
+stopped. He stared into his scanner at the Earth so far below.
+
+"Hit it, Jim!" Garlock snapped. "_Hit_ it, for goodness sake, before we
+_all_ lose our nerve!"
+
+James stabbed convulsively at the button, and in the very instant of
+contact--instantaneously; without a fractional microsecond of
+time-lapse--their familiar surroundings disappeared. Or, rather, and
+without any sensation of motion, of displacement, or of the passage of
+any time whatsoever, the planet beneath them was no longer their
+familiar Earth. The plates showed no familiar stars nor patterns of
+heavenly bodies. The brightly-shining sun was very evidently not their
+familiar Sol.
+
+"Well--we went _somewhere_ ... but not to Alpha Centauri, not much to
+our surprise." James gulped twice; then went on, speaking almost
+jauntily now that the attempt had been made and had failed. "So now it's
+up to you, Clee, as Director of Project Gunther and captain of the good
+ship _Pleiades_, to boss the more-or-less simple--more, I hope--job of
+getting us back to Tellus."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Science, both physical and paraphysical, had done its best. Gunther's
+Theorems, which define the electromagnetic and electrogravitic
+parameters pertaining to the annihilation of distance, had been studied,
+tested, and applied to the full. So had the Psionic Corollaries; which,
+while not having the status of paraphysical laws, do allow computation
+of the qualities and magnitudes of the stresses required for any given
+application of the Gunther Effect.
+
+The planning of the starship _Pleiades_ had been difficult in the
+extreme; its construction almost impossible. While it was practically a
+foregone conclusion that any man of the requisite caliber would already
+be a member of the Galaxian Society, the three planets and eight
+satellites were screened, psionicist by psionicist, to select the two
+strongest and most versatile of their breed.
+
+These two, Garlock and James, were heads of departments of, and under
+iron-clad contract to, vast Solar System Enterprises, Inc., the only
+concern able and willing to attempt the building of the first starship.
+
+Alonzo P. Ferber, Chancellor of SSE, however, would not risk a
+tenth-piece of the company's money on such a bird-brained scheme.
+Himself a Gunther First, he believed implicitly that Firsts were in fact
+tops in Gunther ability; that these few self-styled "Operators" and
+"Prime Operators" were either charlatans or self-deluded crackpots.
+Since he could not feel that so-called "Operator Field," no such thing
+did or could exist. No Gunther starship could ever, possibly, work.
+
+He did loan Garlock and James to the Galaxians, but that was as far as
+he would go. For salaries and for labor, for research and material, for
+trials and for errors; the Society paid and paid and paid.
+
+Thus the starship _Pleiades_ had cost the Galaxian Society almost a
+thousand million credits.
+
+Garlock and James had worked on the ship since its inception. They were
+to be of the crew; for over a year it had been taken for granted that
+would be its only crew.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+As the _Pleiades_ neared completion, however, it became clearer and
+clearer that the displacement-control presented an unsolved, and quite
+possibly an insoluble, problem. It was mathematically certain that, when
+the Gunther field went on, the ship would be displaced instantaneously
+to some location in space having precisely the Gunther coordinates
+required by that particular field. One impeccably rigorous analysis
+showed that the ship would shift into the nearest solar system
+possessing an Earth-type planet; which was believed to be Alpha Centauri
+and which was close enough to Sol so that orientation would be automatic
+and the return to Earth a simple matter.
+
+Since the Gunther Effect did in fact annihilate distance, however,
+another group of mathematicians, led by Garlock and James, proved with
+equal rigor that the point of destination was no more likely to be any
+one given Gunther point than any other one of the myriads of billions of
+equiguntherial points undoubtedly existent throughout the length,
+breadth, and thickness of our entire normal space-time continuum.
+
+The two men would go anyway, of course. Carefully-calculated pressures
+would make them go. It was neither necessary nor desirable, however, for
+them to go alone.
+
+Wherefore the planets and satellites were combed again; this time to
+select two women--the two most highly-gifted psionicists in the
+eighteen-to-twenty-five age group. Thus, if the _Pleiades_ returned
+successfully to Earth, well and good. If she did not, the four selectees
+would found, upon some far-off world, a race much abler than the
+humanity of Earth; since eighty-three percent of Earth's dwellers had
+psionic grades lower than Four.
+
+This search, with its attendant fanfare and studiedly blatant publicity,
+was so planned and engineered that two selected women did not arrive at
+the spaceport until a bare fifteen minutes before the scheduled time of
+take-off. Thus it made no difference whether the women liked the men or
+not, or vice versa; or whether or not any of them really wanted to make
+the trip. Pressures were such that each of them had to go, whether he or
+she wanted to or not.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Cut the rope, Jim, and let the old bucket drop," Garlock said. "Not too
+close. Before we make any kind of contact we'll have to do some
+organizing. These instruments," he waved at his console, "show that ours
+is the only Operator Field in this whole region of space. Hence, there
+are no Operators and no Primes. That means that from now until we get
+back to Tellus...."
+
+"_If_ we get back to Tellus," Belle corrected, sweetly.
+
+"_Until_ we get back to Tellus there will be no Gunthering aboard this
+ship...."
+
+"_What?_" Belle broke in again. "Have you lost your mind?"
+
+"There will be little if any lepping, and nothing else at all. At the
+table, if we want sugar, we will reach for it or have it passed. We will
+pick up things, such as cigarettes, with our fingers. We will carry
+lighters and use them. When we go from place to place, we will walk. Is
+that clear?"
+
+"You seem to be talking English," Belle sneered, "but the words don't
+make sense."
+
+"I didn't think you were that stupid." Eyes locked and held. Then
+Garlock grinned savagely. "Okay. You tell her, Lola, in words of as few
+syllables as possible."
+
+"Why, to get used to it, of course," Lola explained, while Belle glared
+at Garlock in frustrated anger. "So as not to reveal anything we don't
+have to."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Montandon, you may go to the head of the class. All
+monosyllables except two. That should make it clear, even to Miss
+Bellamy."
+
+"You ... you _beast_!" Belle drove a tight-beamed thought. "I was never
+so insulted in my life!"
+
+"You asked for it. Keep on asking for it and you'll keep on getting it."
+Then, aloud, to all three, "In emergencies, of course, anything goes. We
+will now proceed with business." He paused, then went on, bitingly, "If
+possible."
+
+"One minute, please!" Belle snapped. "Just why, Captain Garlock, are you
+insisting on oral communication, when lepping is so much faster and
+better? It's stupid--reactionary. Don't you ever lep?"
+
+"With Jim, on business, yes; with women, no more than I have to. What I
+think is nobody's business but mine."
+
+"What a way to run a ship! Or a project!"
+
+"Running this project is my business, not yours; and if there's any one
+thing in the entire universe it does _not_ need, it's a female
+exhibitionist. Besides your obvious qualifications to be one of the Eves
+in case of Ultimate Contingency...." he broke off and stared at her, his
+contemptuous gaze traveling slowly, dissectingly, from her toes to the
+topmost wave of her hair-do.
+
+"Forty-two, twenty, forty?" he sneered.
+
+"You flatter me." Her glare was an almost tangible force; her voice was
+controlled fury.
+
+"Thirty-nine, twenty-two, thirty-five. Five seven. One thirty-five. If
+any of it's any of your business, which it isn't. You should be
+discussing brains and ability, not vital statistics."
+
+"Brains? You? No, I'll take that back. As a Prime, you _have_ got a
+brain--one that really works. What do _you_ think you're good for on
+this project? What can you do?"
+
+"I can do anything any man ever born can do, and do it better!"
+
+"Okay. Compute a Gunther field that will put us two hundred thousand
+feet directly above the peak of that mountain."
+
+"That isn't fair--not that I expected fairness from you--and you know
+it. That doesn't take either brains or ability...."
+
+"Oh, no?"
+
+"No. Merely highly specialized training that you know I haven't had.
+Give me a five-tape course on it and I'll come closer than either you or
+James; for a hundred credits a shot."
+
+"I'll do just that. Something you _are_ supposed to know, then. How
+would you go about making first contact?"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Well, I wouldn't do it the way _you_ would--by knocking down the first
+native I saw, putting my foot on his face, and yelling 'Bow down, you
+stupid, ignorant beasts, and worship me, the Supreme God of the
+Macrocosmic Universe'!"
+
+"Try again, Belle, that one missed me by...."
+
+"Hold it, both of you!" James broke in. "What the hell are you trying to
+prove? How about cutting out this cat-and-dog act and getting some work
+done?"
+
+"You've got a point there," Garlock admitted, holding his temper by a
+visible effort. "Sorry, Jim. Belle, what were you briefed for?"
+
+"To understudy you." She, too, fought her temper down. "To learn
+everything about Project Gunther. I have a whole box of tapes in my
+room, including advanced Gunther math and first-contact techniques. I'm
+to study them during all my on-watch time unless you assign other
+duties."
+
+"No matter what your duties may be, you'll have to have time to study.
+If you don't find what you want in your own tapes--and you probably
+won't, since Ferber and his Miss Foster ran the selections--use our
+library. It's good--designed to carry on our civilization. Miss
+Montandon? No, that's silly, the way we're fixed. Lola?"
+
+"I'm to learn how to be Doctor James'...."
+
+"Jim, please, Lola," James said. "And call him Clee."
+
+"I'd like that." She smiled winningly. "And my friends call me
+'Brownie'."
+
+"I see why they would. It fits like a coat of lacquer."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+It did. Her hair was a dark, lustrous brown, as were her eyebrows. Her
+eyes were brown. Her skin, too--her dark red playsuit left little to the
+imagination--was a rich and even brown. Originally fairly dark, it had
+been tanned to a more-than-fashionable depth of color by naked
+sun-bathing and by practically-naked outdoor sports. A couple of inches
+shorter than the green-haired girl, she too had a figure to make any
+sculptor drool.
+
+"I'm to be Dr. Jim's assistant. I have a thousand tapes, more or less,
+to study, too. It'll be quite a while, I'm afraid, before I can be of
+much use, but I'll do the best I can."
+
+"If we had hit Alpha Centauri that arrangement would have been good, but
+as we are, it isn't." Garlock frowned in thought, his heavy black
+eyebrows almost meeting above his finely-chiseled aquiline nose. "Since
+neither Jim nor I need an assistant any more than we need tails, it was
+designed to give you girls something to do. But out here, lost, there's
+work for a dozen trained specialists and there are only four of us. So
+we shouldn't duplicate effort. Right? You first, Belle."
+
+"Are you asking me or telling me?" she asked. "And that's a fair
+question. Don't read anything into it that isn't there. With your
+attitude, I want information."
+
+"I am asking you," he replied, carefully. "For your information, when I
+know what should be done, I give orders. When I don't know, as now, I
+ask advice. If I like it, I follow it. Fair enough?"
+
+"Fair enough. We're apt to need any number of specialists."
+
+"Lola?"
+
+"Of course we shouldn't duplicate. What shall I study?"
+
+"That's what we must figure out. We can't do it exactly, of course; all
+we can do now is to set up a rough scheme. Jim's job is the only one
+that's definite. He'll have to work full time on nebular configurations.
+If we hit inhabited planets he'll have to add their star-charts to his
+own. That leaves three of us to do all the other work of a survey.
+Ideally, we would cover all the factors that would be of use in getting
+us back to Tellus, but since we don't know what those factors are....
+Found out anything yet, Jim?"
+
+"A little. Tellus-type planet, apparently strictly so. Oceans and
+continents. Lots of inhabitants--farms, villages, all sizes of cities.
+Not close enough to say definitely, but inhabitants seem to be humanoid,
+if not human."
+
+"Hold her here. Besides astronomy, which is all yours, what do we need
+most?"
+
+"We should have enough to classify planets and inhabitants, so as to
+chart a space-trend if there is any. I'd say the most important ones
+would be geology, stratigraphy, paleontology, oceanography, xenology,
+anthropology, ethnology, vertebrate biology, botany, and at least some
+ecology."
+
+"That's about the list I was afraid of. But there are only three of us.
+The fields you mention number much more."
+
+"Each of you will have to be a lot of specialists in one, then. I'd say
+the best split would be planetology, xenology, and anthropology--each,
+of course, stretched all out of shape to cover dozens of related and
+non-related specialties."
+
+"Good enough. Xenology, of course, is mine. Contacts, liaison, politics,
+correlation, and so on, as well as studying the non-human life
+forms--including as many lower animals and plants as possible. I'll make
+a stab at it. Now, Belle, since you're a Prime and Lola's an Operator,
+you get the next toughest job. Planetography."
+
+"Why not?" Belle smiled and began to act as one of the party. "All I
+know about it is a hazy idea of what the word means, but I'll start
+studying as soon as we get squared away."
+
+"Thanks. That leaves anthropology to you, Lola. Besides, that's your
+line, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes. Sociological Anthropology. I have my M.S. in it, and am--was, I
+mean--working for my Ph.D. But as Jim said, it isn't only the one
+specialty. You want me, I take it, to cover humanoid races, too?"
+
+"Check. You and Jim both, then, will know what you're doing, while Belle
+and I are trying to play ours by ear."
+
+"Where do we draw the line between humanoid and non-human?"
+
+"In case of doubt we'll confer. That covers it as much as we can, I
+think. Take us down, Jim--and be on your toes to take evasive action
+fast."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The ship dropped rapidly toward an airport just outside a fairly large
+city. Fifty thousand--forty thousand--thirty thousand feet.
+
+"Calling strange spaceship--you must be a spaceship, in spite of your
+tremendous, hitherto-considered-impossible mass--" a thought impinged on
+all four Tellurian minds, "do you read me?"
+
+"I read you clearly. This is the Tellurian spaceship _Pleiades_, Captain
+Garlock commanding, asking permission to land and information as to
+landing conventions." He did not have to tell James to stop the ship;
+James had already done so.
+
+"I was about to ask you to hold position; I thank you for having done
+so. Hold for inspection and type-test, please. We will not blast unless
+you fire first. A few minutes, please."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+A group of twelve jet fighters took off practically vertically upward
+and climbed with fantastic speed. They leveled off a thousand feet below
+the _Pleiades_ and made a flying circle. Up and into the ring thus
+formed there lumbered a large, clumsy-looking helicopter.
+
+"We have no record of any planet named 'Tellus'; nor of any such ship as
+yours. Of such incredible mass and with no visible or detectable means
+of support or of propulsion. Not from this part of the galaxy, certainly
+... could it be that intergalactic travel is actually possible? But
+excuse me, Captain Garlock, none of that is any of my business; which is
+to determine whether or not you four Tellurian human beings are
+compatible with, and thus acceptable to, our humanity of Hodell ... but
+you do not seem to have a standard televideo testing-box aboard."
+
+"No, sir; only our own tri-di and teevee."
+
+"You must be examined by means of a standard box. I will rise to your
+level and teleport one across to you. It is self-powered and fully
+automatic."
+
+"You needn't rise, sir. Just toss the box out of your 'copter into the
+air. We'll take it from there." Then, to James, "Take it, Jim."
+
+"Oh? You can lift large masses against much gravity?" The alien was all
+attention. "I have not known that such power existed. I will observe
+with keen interest."
+
+"I have it," James said. "Here it is."
+
+"Thank you, sir," Garlock said to the alien. Then, to Lola: "You've been
+reading these--these Hodellians?"
+
+"The officer in the helicopter and those in the fighters, yes. Most of
+them are Gunther Firsts."
+
+"Good girl. The set's coming to life--watch it."
+
+The likeness of the alien being became clear upon the alien screen;
+visible from the waist up. While humanoid, the creature was very far
+indeed from being human. He--at least, it had masculine rudimentary
+nipples--had double shoulders and four arms. His skin was a vividly
+intense cobalt blue. His ears were black, long, and highly dirigible.
+His eyes, a flaming red in color, were large and vertically-slitted,
+like a cat's. He had no hair at all. His nose was large and Roman; his
+jaw was square, almost jutting; his bright-yellow teeth were clean and
+sharp.
+
+After a minute of study the alien said: "Although your vessel is so
+entirely alien that nothing even remotely like it is on record, you four
+are completely human and, if of compatible type, acceptable. Are there
+any other living beings aboard with you?"
+
+"Excepting micro-organisms, none."
+
+"Such life is of no importance. Approach, please, one of you, and grasp
+with a hand the projecting metal knob."
+
+With a little trepidation, Garlock did so. He felt no unusual sensation
+at the contact.
+
+"All four of you are compatible and we accept you. This finding is
+surprising in the extreme, as you are the first human beings of record
+who grade higher than what you call Gunther Two ... or Gunther Second?"
+
+"Either one; the terms are interchangeable."
+
+"You have minds of tremendous development and power; definitely superior
+even to my own. However, there is no doubt that physically you are
+perfectly compatible with our humanity. Your blood will be of great
+benefit to it. You may land. Goodbye."
+
+"Wait, please. How about landing conventions? And visiting restrictions
+and so on? And may we keep this box? We will be glad to trade you
+something for it, if we have anything you would like to have?"
+
+"Ah, I should have realized that your customs would be widely different
+from ours. Since you have been examined and accepted, there are no
+restrictions. You will not act against humanity's good. Land where you
+please, go where you please, do what you please as long as you please.
+Take up permanent residence or leave as soon as you please. Marry if you
+like, or simply breed--your unions with this planet's humanity will be
+fertile. Keep the box without payment. As Guardians of Humanity we
+Arpalones do whatever small favors we can. Have I made myself clear?"
+
+"Abundantly so. Thank you, sir."
+
+"Now I really must go. Goodbye."
+
+Garlock glanced into his plate. The jets had disappeared, the helicopter
+was falling rapidly away. He wiped his brow.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned," he said.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+When his amazement subsided he turned to the business at hand. "Lola, do
+you check me that this planet is named Hodell, that it is populated by
+creatures exactly like us? Arpalones?"
+
+"Exactly, except they aren't 'creatures'. They are humanoids, and very
+fine people."
+
+"You'd think so, of course ... correction accepted. Well, let's take
+advantage of their extraordinarily hospitable invitation and go down.
+Cut the rope, Jim."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The airport was very large, and was divided into several sections, each
+of which was equipped with runways and/or other landing facilities to
+suit one class of craft--propellor jobs, jets, or helicopters. There
+were even a few structures that looked like rocket pits.
+
+"Where are you going to sit down, Jim? With the 'copters or over by the
+blast-pits?"
+
+"With the 'copters, I think. Since I can place her to within a couple of
+inches. I'll put her squarely into that far corner, where she'll be out
+of everybody's way."
+
+"No concrete out there," Garlock said. "But the ground seems good and
+solid."
+
+"We'd better not land on concrete," James grinned. "Unless it's terrific
+stuff we'd smash it. On bare ground, the worst we can do is sink in a
+foot or so, and that won't hurt anything."
+
+"Check. A few tons to the square foot, is all. Shall we strap down and
+hang onto our teeth?"
+
+"Who do you think you're kidding, boss? Even though I've got to do this
+on manual, I won't tip over a half-piece standing on edge."
+
+James stopped talking, pulled out his scanner, stuck his face into it.
+The immense starship settled downward toward the selected corner. There
+was no noise, no blast, no flame, no slightest visible or detectable
+sign of whatever force it was that was braking the thousands of tons of
+the vessel's mass in its miles-long, almost-vertical plunge to ground.
+
+When the _Pleiades_ struck ground the impact was scarcely to be felt.
+When she came to rest, after settling into the ground her allotted "foot
+or so," there was no jar at all.
+
+"Atmosphere, temperature, and so on, approximately Earth-normal,"
+Garlock said. "Just as our friend said it would be."
+
+James scanned the city and the field. "Our visit is kicking up a lot of
+excitement. Shall we go out?"
+
+"Not yet!" Belle exclaimed. "I want to see how the women are dressed,
+first."
+
+"So do I," Lola added, "and some other things besides."
+
+Both women--Lola through her Operator's scanner; Belle by manipulating
+the ship's tremendous Operator Field by the sheer power of her Prime
+Operator's mind--stared eagerly at the crowd of people now beginning to
+stream across the field.
+
+"As an anthropologist," Lola announced, "I'm not only surprised. I am
+shocked, annoyed, and disgruntled. Why, they're _exactly_ like white
+Tellurian human beings!"
+
+"But _look_ at their _clothes_!" Belle insisted. "They're wearing
+anything and everything, from bikinis to coveralls!"
+
+"Yes, but notice." This was the anthropological scientist speaking now.
+"Breasts and loins, covered. Faces, uncovered. Heads and feet and hands,
+either bare or covered. Ditto for legs up to there, backs, arms, necks
+and shoulders down to here, and torsos clear down to there. We'll not
+violate any conventions by going out as we are. Not even you, Belle. You
+first, Chief. Yours the high honor of setting first foot--the biggest
+foot we've got, too--on alien soil."
+
+"To hell with that. We'll go out together."
+
+"Wait a minute," Lola went on. "There's a funny-looking automobile just
+coming through the gate. The Press. Three men and two women. Two
+cameras, one walkie-talkie, and two microphones. The photog in the
+purple shirt is really a sharpie at lepping. Class Three, at
+least--possibly a Two."
+
+"How about screens down enough to lep, boss?" Belle suggested. "Faster.
+We may need it."
+
+"Check. I'm too busy to record, anyway--I'll log this stuff up tonight,"
+and thoughts flew.
+
+"Check me, Jim," Garlock flashed. "Telepathy, very good. On Gunther, the
+guy was right--no signs at all of any First activity, and very few
+Seconds."
+
+"Check," James agreed.
+
+"And Lola, those 'Guardians' out there. I thought they were the same as
+the Arpalone we talked to. They aren't. Not even telepathic. Same color
+scheme, is all."
+
+"Right. Much more brutish. Much flatter cranium. Long, tearing canine
+teeth. Carnivorous. I'll call them just 'guardians' until we find out
+what they really are."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The press car arrived and the Tellurians disembarked--and, accidentally
+or not, it was Belle's green slipper that first touched ground. There
+was a terrific babel of thought, worse, even, than voices in similar
+case, in being so much faster. The reporters, all of them, wanted to
+know everything at once. How, what, where, when, and why. Also who. And
+all about Tellus and the Tellurian solar system. How did the visitors
+like Hodell? And all about Belle's green hair. And the photographers
+were prodigal of film, shooting everything from all possible angles.
+
+"Hold it!" Garlock loosed a blast of thought that "silenced" almost the
+whole field. "We will have order, please. Lola Montandon, our
+anthropologist, will take charge. Keep it orderly, Lola, if you have to
+throw half of them off the field. I'm going over to Administration and
+check in. One of you reporters can come with me, if you like."
+
+The man in the purple shirt got his bid in first. As the two men walked
+away together, Garlock noted that the man was in fact a Second--his flow
+of lucid, cogent thought did not interfere at all with the steady stream
+of speech going into his portable recorder. Garlock also noticed that in
+any group of more than a dozen people there was always at least one
+guardian. They paid no attention whatever to the people, who in turn
+ignored them completely. Garlock wondered briefly. Guardians? The
+Arpalones, out in space, yes. But these creatures, naked and unarmed on
+the ground? The Arpalones were non-human people. These things
+were--what?
+
+At the door of the Field Office the reporter, after turning
+Garlock over to a startlingly beautiful, leggy, breasty, blonde
+receptionist-usherette, hurried away.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+He flecked a feeler at her mind and stiffened. How could a Two--a high
+Two, at that--be working as an usher? And with her guard down clear to
+the floor? He probed--and saw.
+
+"Lola!" He flashed a tight-beamed thought. "You aren't putting out
+anything about our sexual customs, family life, and so on."
+
+"Of course not. We must know their mores first."
+
+"Good girl. Keep your shield up."
+
+"Oh, we're so glad to see you, Captain Garlock, sir!" The blonde, who
+was dressed little more heavily than the cigarette girls in Venusberg's
+Cartier Room, seized his left hand in both of hers and held it
+considerably longer than was necessary. Her dazzling smile, her laughing
+eyes, her flashing white teeth, the many exposed inches of her skin, and
+her completely unshielded mind; all waved banners of welcome.
+
+"Captain Garlock, sir, Governor Atterlin has been most anxious to see
+you ever since you were first detected. This way, please, sir." She
+turned, brushing her bare hip against his leg in the process, and led
+him by the hand along a hallway. Her thoughts flowed. "I have been, too,
+sir, and I'm simply delighted to see you close up, and I hope to see a
+lot more of you. You're a wonderfully pleasant surprise, sir; I've never
+seen a man like you before. I don't think Hodell ever saw a man like you
+before, sir. With such a really terrific mind and yet so big and strong
+and well-built and handsome and clean-looking and blackish. You're
+wonderful, Captain Garlock, sir. You'll be here a long time, I hope?
+Here we are, sir."
+
+She opened a door, walked across the room, sat down in an overstuffed
+chair, and crossed her legs meticulously. Then, still smiling happily,
+she followed with eager eyes and mind Garlock's every move.
+
+Garlock had been reading Governor Atterlin; knew why it was the governor
+who was in that office instead of the port manager. He knew that
+Atterlin had been reading him--as much as he had allowed. They had
+already discussed many things, and were still discussing.
+
+The room was much more like a library than an office. The governor, a
+middle-aged, red-headed man a trifle inclined to portliness, had been
+seated in a huge reclining chair facing a teevee screen, but got up to
+shake hands.
+
+"Welcome, friend Captain Garlock. Now, to continue. As to exchange. Many
+ships visiting us have nothing we need or can use. For such, all
+services are free--or rather, are paid by the city. Our currency is
+based upon platinum, but gold, silver, and copper are valuable. Certain
+jewels, also...."
+
+"That's far enough. We will pay our way--we have plenty of metal. What
+are your ratios of value for the four metals here on Hodell?"
+
+"Today's quotations are...." He glanced at a screen, and his fingers
+flashed over the keys of a computer beside his chair. "One weight of
+platinum is equal in value to seven point three four six...."
+
+"Decimals are not necessary, sir."
+
+"Seven plus, then, weights of gold. One of gold to eleven of silver. One
+of silver to four of copper."
+
+"Thank you. We'll use platinum. I'll bring some bullion tomorrow morning
+and exchange it for your currency. Shall I bring it here, or to a bank
+in the city?"
+
+"Either. Or we can have an armored truck visit your ship."
+
+"That would be better yet. Have them bring about five thousand tanes.
+Thank you very much, Governor Atterlin, and good afternoon to you, sir."
+
+"And good afternoon to you, sir. Until tomorrow, then."
+
+Garlock turned to leave.
+
+"Oh, may I go with you to your ship, sir, to take just a little look at
+it?" the girl asked, winningly.
+
+"Of course, Grand Lady Neldine, I'd like to have your company."
+
+She seized his elbow and hugged it quickly against her breast. Then,
+taking his hand, she walked--almost skipped--along beside him. "And I
+want to see Pilot James close up, too, sir--he's not nearly as wonderful
+as you are, sir--and I wonder why Planetographer Bellamy's hair is
+green? Very striking, of course, sir, but I don't think I'd care for it
+much on me--unless you'd think I should, sir?"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Belle knew, of course, that they were coming; and Garlock knew that
+Belle's hackles were very much on the rise. She could not read him,
+except very superficially, but she was reading the strange girl like a
+book and was not liking anything she read. Wherefore, when Garlock and
+his joyous companion reached the great spaceship--
+
+"How come you picked up _that_ little man-eating shark?" she sent,
+venomously, on a tight band.
+
+"It wasn't a case of picking her up." Garlock grinned. "I haven't been
+able to find any urbane way of scraping her off. First Contact, you
+know."
+
+"She wants altogether too much Contact for a First--I'll scrape her off,
+even if she is one of the nobler class on this world...." Belle changed
+her tactics even before Garlock began his reprimand. "I shouldn't have
+said that, Clee, of course." She laughed lightly. "It was just the
+shock; there wasn't anything in any of my First Contact tapes covering
+what to do about beautiful and enticing girls who try to seduce our men.
+She doesn't know, though, of course, that she's supposed to be a
+bug-eyed monster and not human at all. Won't Xenology be in for a rough
+ride when we check in? Wow!"
+
+"You can play _that_ in spades, sister." And for the rest of the day
+Belle played flawlessly the role of perfect hostess.
+
+It was full dark before the Hodellians could be persuaded to leave the
+_Pleiades_ and the locks were closed.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"I have refused one hundred seventy-eight invitations," Lola reported
+then. "All of us, individually and collectively, have been invited to
+eat everything, everywhere in town. To see shows in a dozen different
+theaters and eighteen night spots. To dance all night in twenty-one
+different places, ranging from dives to strictly soup-and-fish. I was
+nice about it, of course--just begged off because we were dead from our
+belts both ways from our long, hard trip. My thought, of course, is that
+we'd better eat our own food and take it slowly at first. Check, Clee?"
+
+"On the beam, dead center. And you weren't lying much, either. I feel as
+though I'd done a day's work. After supper there's a thing I've got to
+discuss with all three of you."
+
+Supper was soon over. Then:
+
+"We've got to make a mighty important decision," Garlock began,
+abruptly. "Grand Lady Neldine--that title isn't exact, but
+close--wondered why I didn't respond at all, either way. However, she
+didn't make a point of it, and I let her wonder; but we'll have to
+decide by tomorrow morning what to do, and it'll have to be airtight.
+These Hodellians expect Jim and me to impregnate as many as possible of
+their highest-rated women before we leave. By their Code it's mandatory,
+since we can't hide the fact that we rate much higher than they
+do--their highest rating is only Grade Two by our standards--and all the
+planets hereabouts up-grade themselves with the highest-grade new blood
+they can find. Ordinarily, they'd expect you two girls to become
+pregnant by your choices of the top men of the planet; but they know you
+wouldn't breed down and don't expect you to. But how in all hell can Jim
+and I refuse to breed them up without dealing out the deadliest insult
+they know?"
+
+There was a minute of silence. "We can't," James said then. A grin began
+to spread over his face. "It might not be too bad an idea, at that, come
+to think of it. That ball of fire they picked out for you would be a
+blue-ribbon dish in anybody's cook-book. And Grand Lady Lemphi--" He
+kissed the tips of two fingers and waved them in the air. "Strictly Big
+League Material; in capital letters."
+
+"Is that nice, you back-alley tomcat?" Belle asked, plaintively; then
+paused in thought and went on slowly, "I won't pretend to like it, but I
+won't do any public screaming about it."
+
+"Any anthropologist would say you'll have to," Lola declared without
+hesitation. "I don't like it, either. I think it's horrible; but it's
+excellent genetics and we cannot and must not violate systems-wide
+mores."
+
+"You're all missing the point!" Garlock snapped. He got up, jammed his
+hands into his pockets, and began to pace the floor. "I didn't think any
+one of you was _that_ stupid! If _that_ was all there were to it we'd do
+it as a matter of course. But _think_, damn it! There's nothing higher
+than Gunther Two in the humanity of this planet. Telepathy is the only
+ESP they have. High Gunther uses hitherto unused portions of the brain.
+It's transmitted through genes, which are dominant, cumulative, and
+self-multiplying by interaction. Jim and I carry more, stronger, and
+higher Gunther genes than any other two men known to live. Can
+we--_dare_ we--plant such genes where none have ever been known before?"
+
+Two full minutes of silence.
+
+"That one has _really_ got a bone in it," James said, unhelpfully.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Three minutes more of silence.
+
+"It's up to you, Lola," Garlock said then. "It's your field."
+
+"I was afraid of that. There's a way. Personally, I like it less even
+than the other, but it's the only one I've been able to think up. First,
+are you absolutely sure that our refusal--Belle's and mine, I mean--to
+breed down will be valid with them?"
+
+"Positive."
+
+"Then the whole society from which we come will have to be strictly
+monogamous, in the narrowest, most literal sense of the term. No
+exceptions whatever. Adultery, anything illicit, has always been not
+only unimaginable, but in fact impossible. We pair--or marry, or
+whatever they do here--once only. For life. Desire and potency can exist
+only within the pair; never outside it. Like eagles. If a man's wife
+dies, even, he loses all desire and all potency. That would make it
+physically impossible for you two to follow the Hodellian Code. You'd
+both be completely impotent with any women whatever except your
+mates--Belle and me."
+
+"That will work," Belle said. "_How_ it will work!" She paused. Then,
+suddenly, she whistled; the loud, full-bodied, ear-piercing,
+tongue-and-teeth whistle which so few women ever master. Her eyes
+sparkled and she began to laugh with unrestrained glee. "But do you know
+what you've done, Lola?"
+
+"Nothing, except to suggest a solution. What's so funny about that?"
+
+"You're wonderful, Lola--simply priceless! You've created something
+brand-new to science--an impotent tomcat! And the more I think about
+it...." Belle was rocking back and forth with laughter. She could not
+possibly talk, but her thought flowed on, "I just love you all to
+pieces! An _impotent tomcat_, and he'll _have_ to stay true to me--Oh,
+this is simply _killing_ me--I'll _never_ live through it!"
+
+"It _does_ put us on the spot--especially Jim," came Garlock's thought.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+He, too, began to laugh; and Lola, as soon as she stopped thinking about
+the thing only as a problem in anthropology, joined in. James, however,
+did not think it was very funny.
+
+"And that's less than half of it!" Belle went on, still unable to talk.
+"Think of Clee, Lola. Six two--over two hundred--hard as nails--a
+perfect hunk of hard red meat--telling this whole damn cockeyed region
+of space that he's impotent, too! And with a perfectly straight face!
+And it ties in so _beautifully_ with his making no response, yes or no,
+when she propositioned him. The poor, innocent, impotent lamb just
+simply didn't have even the faintest inkling of what she meant! Oh,
+my...."
+
+"Listen--_listen_--_listen_!" James managed finally to break in. "Not
+that I want to be promiscuous, but...."
+
+"There, there, my precious little impotent tomcat," Belle soothed him
+aloud, between giggles and snorts. "Us Earth-girls will take care of our
+lover-boys, see if we don't. You won't need any nasty little...." Belle
+could not hold the pose, but went off again into whoops of laughter.
+"_What_ a brain you've got, Lola! I thought I could imagine _anything_,
+but to make these two guys of ours--the two absolute tops of the whole
+Solar System--it's a stroke of genius...."
+
+"Shut up, will you, you human hyena, and _listen_!" James roared aloud.
+"There ought to be _some_ better way than that."
+
+"Better? Than sheer perfection?" Belle was still laughing but could now
+talk coherently.
+
+"If you can think of another way, Jim, the meeting is still open."
+Garlock was wiping his eyes. "But it'll have to be a dilly. I'm not
+exactly enamored of Lola's idea, either, but as the answer it's one
+hundred percent to as many decimal places as you want to take time to
+write zeroes."
+
+There was more talk, but no improvement could be made upon Lola's idea.
+
+"Well, we've got until morning," Garlock said, finally. "If anybody
+comes up with anything by then, let me know. If not, it goes into effect
+the minute we open the locks. The meeting is adjourned."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Belle and James left the room; and, a few minutes later, Garlock went
+out. Lola followed him into his room and closed the door behind her. She
+sat down on the edge of a chair, lighted a cigarette, and began to smoke
+in short, nervous puffs. She opened her mouth to say something, but shut
+it without making a sound.
+
+"You're afraid of me, Lola?" he asked, quietly.
+
+"Oh, I don't.... Well, that is...." She wouldn't lie, and she wouldn't
+admit the truth. "You see, I've never ... I mean, I haven't had very
+much experience."
+
+"You needn't be afraid of me at all. I'm not going to pair with you."
+
+"You're not?" Her mouth dropped open and the cigarette fell out of it.
+She took a few seconds to recover it. "Why not? Don't you think I could
+do a good enough job?"
+
+She stood up and stretched, to show her splendid figure to its best
+advantage.
+
+Garlock laughed. "Nothing like that, Lola; you have plenty of sex
+appeal. It's just that I don't like the conditions. I never have paired.
+I never have had much to do with women, and that little has been urbane,
+logical, and strictly _en passant_; on the level of mutual physical
+desire. Thus, I have never taken a virgin. Pairing with one is very
+definitely not my idea of urbanity and there's altogether too much
+obligation to suit me. For all of which good reasons I am not going to
+pair with you, now or ever."
+
+"How do you know whether I'm a virgin or not? You've never read me that
+deep. Nobody can. Not even you, unless I let you."
+
+"Reading isn't necessary--you flaunt it like a banner."
+
+"I don't know what you mean.... I certainly don't do it intentionally.
+But I ought to pair with you, Clee!" Lola had lost all of her
+nervousness, most of her fear. "It's part of the job I was chosen for.
+If I'd known, I'd've gone out and got some experience. Really I would
+have."
+
+"I believe that. I think you would have been silly enough to have done
+just that. And you have a very high regard for your virginity, too,
+don't you?"
+
+"Well, I ... I used to. But we'd better go ahead with it. I've _got_
+to."
+
+"No such thing. Permissible, but not obligatory."
+
+"But it was assumed. As a matter of course. Anyway ... well, when that
+girl started making passes at you, I thought you could have just as much
+fun, or even more--she's charming; a real darling, isn't she?--without
+pairing with me, and then I had to open my big mouth and be the one to
+keep you from playing games with _anyone except_ me, and I certainly am
+not going to let you suffer...."
+
+"Bunk!" Garlock snorted. "Sheer flapdoodle! Pure psychological
+prop-wash, started and maintained by men who are either too weak to
+direct and control their drives or who haven't any real work to occupy
+their minds. It applies to many men, of course, possibly to most. It
+does not, however, apply to all, and, it lacks one whole hell of a lot
+of applying to me. Does that make you feel better?"
+
+"Oh, it does ... it does. Thanks, Clee. You know, I like you, a lot."
+
+"Do you? Kiss me."
+
+She did so.
+
+"See?"
+
+"You _tricked_ me!"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"I did not. I want you to see the truth and face it. Your idealism is
+admirable, permanent, and shatter-proof; but your starry-eyed
+schoolgirl's mawkishness is none of the three. You'll have to grow up,
+some day. In my opinion, forcing yourself to give up one of your
+hardest-held ideals--virginity--merely because of the utter bilge that
+those idiot head-shrinkers stuffed you with, is sheer, plain idiocy. I
+suppose that makes you like me even less, but I'm laying it right on the
+line."
+
+"No ... more. I'll argue with you, when we have time, about some of your
+points, but the last one--if it's valid--has tremendous force. I didn't
+know men felt that way. But no matter what my feeling for you really is,
+I'm really grateful to you for the reprieve ... and you know, Clee, I'm
+pretty sure you're going to get us back home. If anyone can, you can."
+
+"I'm going to try to. Even if I can't, it will be Belle, not you, that
+I'll take for the long pull. And not because you'd rather have
+Jim--which you would, of course...."
+
+"To be honest, I think I would."
+
+"Certainly. He's your type. You're not mine; Belle is. Well, that
+buttons it up, Brownie, except for one thing. To Jim and Belle and
+everyone else, we're paired."
+
+"Of course. Urbanity, as well as to present a united front to any and
+all worlds."
+
+"Check. So watch your shield."
+
+"I always do. That stuff is 'way, 'way down. I'm awfully glad you called
+me 'Brownie,' Clee. I didn't think you ever would."
+
+"I didn't expect to--but I never talked to a woman this way before,
+either. Maybe it had a mellowing effect."
+
+"You don't _need_ mellowing--I do like you a lot, just exactly as you
+are."
+
+"If true, I'm very glad of it. But don't strain yourself; and I mean
+that literally, not as sarcasm."
+
+"I know. I'm not straining a bit, and this'll prove it."
+
+She kissed him again, and this time it was a production.
+
+"That was an eminently convincing demonstration, Brownie, but don't do
+it too often."
+
+"I won't." She laughed, gayly and happily. "If there's any next time,
+you'll have to kiss me first."
+
+She paused and sobered. "But remember. If you should change your mind,
+any time you really want to ... to kiss me, come right in. I won't be as
+silly and nervous and afraid as I was just now. That's a promise. Good
+night, Clee."
+
+"Good night, Brownie."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2
+
+
+Next morning, Garlock was the last one, by a fraction of a minute, into
+the Main. "Good morning, all," he said, with a slight smile.
+
+"Huh? How come?" James demanded, as all four started toward the dining
+nook.
+
+Garlock's smile widened. "Lola. She brought me a pot of coffee and
+wouldn't let me out until I drank it."
+
+"_Brought?_"
+
+"Yeah. They haven't read their room-tapes yet, so they don't know that
+room-service is practically unlimited."
+
+"Why didn't I think of that coffee business a couple of years ago?"
+
+"Well, why didn't I think of it myself, ten years ago?"
+
+Belle's eyes had been going from one, man to the other. "Just _what_ are
+you two talking about? If it's anybody's business except your own?"
+
+"He is an early-morning grouch," James explained, as they sat down at
+the table. "Not fit to associate with man or beast--not even his own
+dog, if he had one--when he first gets up. How come you were smart
+enough to get the answer so quick, Brownie?"
+
+"Oh, the pattern isn't too rare." She shrugged daintily, sweeping the
+compliment aside. "Especially among men on big jobs who work under
+tremendous pressure."
+
+"Then how about Jim?" Belle asked.
+
+"Clee's the Big Brain, not me," James said.
+
+"You're a lot Bigger Brain than any of the men Lola's talking about,"
+Belle insisted.
+
+"That's true," Lola agreed, "but Jim probably is--must be--an icebox
+raider. Eats in the middle of the night. Clee probably doesn't. It's a
+good bet that he doesn't nibble between meals at all. Check, Clee?"
+
+"Check. But what has an empty stomach got to do with the case?"
+
+"Everything. Nobody knows how. Lots of theories--enzymes, blood sugar,
+endocrine balance, what have you--but no proof. It isn't always true.
+However, six or seven hours of empty stomach, in a man who takes his job
+to bed with him, is very apt to uglify his pre-breakfast disposition."
+
+Breakfast over and out in the Main:
+
+"But when a man's disposition is ugly all the time, how can you tell the
+difference?" Belle asked, innocently.
+
+"I'll let that pass," Garlock's smile disappeared, "because we've got
+work to do. Have any of you thought of any improvement on Lola's
+monogamous society?"
+
+No one had. In fact--
+
+"There may be a loop-hole in it," Lola said, thoughtfully. "Did any of
+you happen to notice whether they know anything about artificial
+insemination?"
+
+"D'you think I'd stand for _that_?" Belle blazed, before Garlock could
+begin to search his mind. "I'd scratch anybody's eyes out--if you'd
+thought of that idea as a woman instead of as a near-Ph.D. in
+anthropology you'd've thrown it into the converter before it even
+hatched!"
+
+"Invasion of privacy? That covers it, of course, but I didn't think it
+would bother you a bit." Lola paused, studying the other girl intently.
+"You're quite a problem yourself. Callous--utterly savage humor--yet
+very sensitive in some ways--fastidious...."
+
+"I'm not on the table for dissection!" Belle snapped. "Study me all you
+please, but keep the notes in your notebook. I'd suggest you study
+Clee."
+
+"Oh, I have been. He baffles me, too. I'm not very good yet, you...."
+
+"That's the unders...."
+
+"_Cut_ it!" Garlock ordered, sharply. "I said we had work to do. Jim,
+you're hunting up the nearest observatory."
+
+"How about transportation? No teleportation?"
+
+"Out. Rent a car or hire a plane, or both. Fill your wallet--better have
+too much money than not enough. If you're too far away tonight to make
+it feasible to come back here, send me a flash. Brownie, you'll work
+this town first. Belle and I will have to work in the library for a
+while. We'll all want to compare notes tonight...."
+
+"Yeah," James said into the pause, "I could tune in remote, but I don't
+know where I'll be, so it might not be so good."
+
+"Check. You can 'port, but be _damn_ sure nobody sees or senses you
+doing it. That buttons it up, I guess."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+James and Lola left the ship; Garlock and Belle went into the library.
+
+"If I didn't know you were impotent, Clee," Belle shivered affectedly
+and began to laugh, "I'd be scared to death to be alone with you in this
+great big spaceship. Lola hasn't realized yet what she really hatched
+out--the screamingest screamer ever pulled on anybody!"
+
+"It isn't _that_ funny. You have got a savage sense of humor."
+
+"Perhaps." She shrugged her shoulders. "But you were on the receiving
+end, which makes a big difference. She's a peculiar sort of duck.
+Brainy, but impersonal--academic. She knows all the words and all their
+meanings, all the questions and all the answers, but she doesn't apply
+any of them to herself. She's always the observer, never the
+participant. Pure egg-head ... pure? _That's_ it. She looks, acts,
+talks, and thinks like a _virgin_.... Well, if that's all, she isn't
+any--or is she? Even though you've started calling her 'Brownie,' like
+my now-tamed tomcat, you might not...." She stared at him.
+
+"Go ahead. Probe."
+
+"Why waste energy trying to crack a Prime's shield? But just out of
+curiosity, are you two pairing, or not?"
+
+"Tut-tut; don't be inurbane. Let's talk about Jim instead. I thought
+he'd be gibbering."
+
+"No, I'm working under double wraps--full dampers. I don't want him in
+love with me. You want to know why?"
+
+"I think I know why."
+
+"Because having him mooning around underfoot would weaken the team and I
+want to get back to Tellus."
+
+"I was wrong, then. I thought you were out after bigger game."
+
+Belle's face went stiff and still. "What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Plain enough, I would think. Wherever you are, you've got to be the
+Boss. You've never been in any kind of a party for fifteen minutes
+without taking it over. When you snap the whip everybody jumps--or
+else--and you swing a wicked knife. For your information I don't jump, I
+am familiar with knives, and you will never run this project or any part
+of it."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Belle's face set; her eyes hardened. "While we're putting out
+information, take note that I'm just as good with actual knives as with
+figurative ones. If you're still thinking of blistering my fanny, don't
+try it. You'll find a rawhide haft sticking up out of one of those
+muscles you're so proud of--clear enough Mr. Garlock."
+
+"Why don't you talk sense, instead of such yak-yak?"
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"I know you're a Prime, too, but don't let it go to your head. I've got
+more stuff than you have, so you can't Gunther me. You weigh one
+thirty-five to my two seventeen. I'm harder, stronger, and faster than
+you are. You're probably a bit limberer--not too much--but I've
+forgotten more judo than you ever will know. So what's the answer?"
+
+Belle was breathing hard. "Then why don't you do it right now?"
+
+"Several reasons. I couldn't brag much about licking anybody I outweigh
+by eighty-two pounds. I can't figure out your logic--if any--but I'm
+pretty sure now it wouldn't do either of us any good. Just the
+opposite."
+
+"From your standpoint, would that be bad?"
+
+"What a _hell_ of a logic! You have got the finest brain of any woman
+living. You're stronger than Jim is by a lot more than the
+Prime-to-Operator ratio--you've got more initiative, more drive, more
+guts. You know as well as I do what your brain may mean before we get
+back. Why in all hell don't you start _using_ it?"
+
+"_You_ are complimenting _me_?"
+
+"No. It's the truth, isn't it?"
+
+"What difference does that make? Clee Garlock, I simply can't understand
+you at all."
+
+"That makes it mutual. I can't understand a geometry in which the
+crookedest line between any two given points is the best line. Let's get
+to work, shall we?"
+
+"Uh-huh, let's. One more bit of information, though, first. Any such
+idea as taking the Project away from you simply _never_ entered my
+mind!" She gave him a warm and friendly smile as she walked over to the
+file-cabinets.
+
+For hours, then, they worked; each scanning tape after tape. At mid-day
+they ate a light lunch. Shortly thereafter, Garlock put away his reader
+and all his loose tapes. "Are you getting anywhere, Belle? I'm not
+making any progress."
+
+"Yes, but of course planets are probably pretty much the same
+everywhere--Tellus-type ones, I mean, of course. Is all the Xenology as
+cockeyed as I'm afraid it must be?"
+
+"Check. The one basic assumption was that there are no human beings
+other than Tellurians. From that they derive the secondary assumption
+that humanoid types will be scarce. From there they scatter out in all
+directions. So I'll have to roll my own. I've got to see Atterlin,
+anyway. I'll be back for supper. So long."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+At the Port Office, Grand Lady Neldine met him even more
+enthusiastically than before; taking both his hands and pressing them
+against her firm, almost-bare breasts. She tried to hold back as Garlock
+led her along the corridor.
+
+"I have an explanation, and in a sense an apology, for you, Grand Lady
+Neldine, and for you, Governor Atterlin," he thought carefully. "I would
+have explained yesterday, but I had no understanding of the situation
+here until our anthropologist, Lola Montandon, elucidated it very
+laboriously to me. She herself, a scientist highly trained in that
+specialty, could grasp it only by referring back to somewhat similar
+situations which may have existed in the remote past--so remote a past
+that the concept is known only to specialists and is more than half
+mythical, even to them."
+
+He went on to give in detail the sexual customs, obligations, and
+limitations of Lola's purely imaginary civilization.
+
+"Then it isn't that you don't want to, but you _can't_?" the lady asked,
+incredulously.
+
+"Mentally, I can have no desire. Physically, the act is impossible," he
+assured her.
+
+"What a shame!" Her thought was a peculiar mixture of disappointment and
+relief: disappointment in that she was not to bear this man's
+super-child; relief in that, after all, she had not personally
+failed--if she couldn't have this perfectly wonderful man herself, no
+other woman except his wife could ever have him, either. But what a
+shame to waste such a man as that on _any_ one woman! It was really too
+bad.
+
+"I see ... I see--wonderful!" Atterlin's thought was not at all
+incredulous, but vastly awed. "It is of course logical that as the power
+of mind increases, physical matters become less and less important. But
+you will have much to give us; we may perhaps have some small things to
+give you. If we could visit your Tellus, perhaps...?"
+
+"That also is impossible. We four in the _Pleiades_ are lost in space.
+This is the first planet we have visited on our first trial of a new
+method--new to us, at least--of interstellar travel. We missed our
+objective, probably by many millions of parsecs, and it is quite
+possible that we four will never be able to find our way back. We are
+trying now, by charting the galaxies throughout billions of cubic
+parsecs of space, to find merely the direction in which our own galaxy
+lies."
+
+"What a concept! What stupendous minds! But such immense distances, sir
+... what can you possibly be using for a space-drive?"
+
+"None, as you understand the term. We travel by instantaneous
+translation, by means of something we call 'Gunther'.... I am not at all
+sure that I can explain it to you satisfactorily, but I will try to do
+so, if you wish."
+
+"Please do so, sir, by all means."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Garlock opened the highest Gunther cells of his mind. There was nothing
+as elementary as telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis, or the like; it
+was the pure, raw Gunther of the Gunther Drive, which even he himself
+made no pretense of understanding fully. He opened those cells and
+pushed that knowledge at the two Hodellian minds.
+
+The result was just as instantaneous and just as catastrophic as Garlock
+had expected. Both blocks went up almost instantly.
+
+"Oh, no!" Atterlin exclaimed, his face turning white.
+
+The girl shrieked once, covered her face with her hands, and collapsed
+on the floor.
+
+"Oh, I'm _so_ sorry ... excuse my ignorance, please!" Garlock implored,
+as he picked the girl up, carried her across the room to a sofa, and
+assured himself that she had not been really hurt. She recovered
+quickly. "I'm very sorry, Grand Lady Neldine and Governor Atterlin, but
+I didn't know ... that is, I didn't realize...."
+
+"You are trying to break it gently." Atterlin was both shocked and
+despondent. "This being the first planet you have visited, you simply
+did not realize how feeble our minds really are."
+
+"Oh, not at all, really, sir and lady." Garlock began deftly to repair
+the morale he had shattered. "Merely younger. With your system of
+genetics, so much more logical and efficient than our strict monogamy,
+your race will undoubtedly make more progress in a few centuries than we
+made in many millennia. And in a few centuries more you will pass
+us--will master this only partially-known Gunther Drive.
+
+"Esthetically, Lady Neldine, I would like very much to father you a
+child." He allowed his coldly unmoved gaze to survey her charms. "I am
+sorry indeed that it cannot be. I trust that you, Governor Atterlin,
+will be kind enough to spread word of our physical shortcomings, and so
+spare us further embarrassment?"
+
+"Not shortcomings, sir, and, I truly hope, no embarrassment," Atterlin
+protested. "We are immensely glad to have seen you, since your very
+existence gives us so much hope for the future. I will spread word, and
+every Hodellian will do whatever he can to help you in your quest."
+
+"Thank you, sir and lady," and Garlock took his leave.
+
+"What an act, my male-looking but impotent darling!" came Belle's clear,
+incisive thought, bubbling with unrestrained merriment. "For our Doctor
+Garlock, the Prime Exponent and First Disciple of Truth, _what_ an act!
+_Esthetically_, he'd like to father her a child, it says here in fine
+print--Boy, if she only knew! One tiny grain of truth and she'd chase
+you from here to Andromeda! Clee, I _swear_ this thing is going to kill
+me yet!"
+
+"Anything that would do that I'm very much in favor of!" Garlock growled
+the thought and snapped up his shield.
+
+This one was, quite definitely, Belle's round.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Garlock took the Hodellian equivalent of a bus to the center of the
+city, then set out aimlessly to walk. The buildings and their
+arrangement, he noted--not much to his surprise now--were not too
+different from those of the cities of Earth.
+
+With his guard down to about the sixth level, highly receptive but not
+at all selective, he strolled up one street and down another. He was not
+attentive to detail yet; he was trying to get the broad aspects, the
+"feel" of this hitherto unknown civilization.
+
+The ether was practically saturated with thought. Apparently this was
+the afternoon rush hour, as the sidewalks were crowded with people and
+the streets were full of cars. It did not seem as though anyone, whether
+in the buildings, on the sidewalks, or in the cars, was doing any
+blocking at all. If there were any such things as secrets on Hodell,
+they were scarce. Each person, man, woman, or child, went about his own
+business, radiating full blast. No one paid any attention to the
+thoughts of anyone else except in the case of couples or groups, the
+units of which were engaged in conversation. It reminded Garlock of a
+big Tellurian party when the punch-bowls were running low--everybody
+talking at the top of his voice and nobody listening.
+
+This whole gale of thought was blowing over Garlock's receptors like a
+Great Plains wind over miles-wide fields of corn. He did not address
+anyone directly; no one addressed him. At first, quite a few young
+women, at sight of his unusual physique, had sent out tentative feelers
+of thought; and some men had wondered, in the same tentative and
+indirect fashion, who he was and where he came from. However, when the
+information he had given Atterlin spread throughout the city--and it did
+not take long--no one paid any more attention to him than they did to
+each other.
+
+Probing into and through various buildings, he learned that groups of
+people were quitting work at intervals of about fifteen minutes. There
+were thoughts of tidying up desks; of letting the rest of this junk go
+until tomorrow; of putting away and/or covering up office machines of
+various sorts. There were thoughts of powdering noses and of repairing
+make-up.
+
+He pulled in his receptors and scanned the crowded ways for
+guardians--he'd have to call them that until either he or Lola found out
+their real name. Same as at the airport--the more people, the more
+guardians. What were they? How? And why?
+
+        *           *           *
+
+He probed; carefully but thoroughly. When he had talked to the Arpalone
+he had read him easily enough, but here there was nothing whatever to
+read. The creature simply was not thinking at all. But that didn't make
+sense! Garlock tuned, first down, then up; and finally, at the very top
+of his range, he found something, but he did not at first know what it
+was. It seemed to be a mass-detector ... no, two of them, paired and
+balanced. Oh, that was it! One tuned to humanity, one to the other
+guardians--balanced across a sort of bridge--_that_ was how they kept
+the ratio so constant! But why? There seemed to be some wide-range
+receptors there, too, but nothing seemed to be coming in....
+
+While he was still studying and still baffled, some kind of stimulus,
+which was so high and so faint and so alien that he could neither
+identify nor interpret it, touched the Arpalone's far-flung receptors.
+Instantly the creature jumped, his powerful, widely-bowed legs sending
+him high above the heads of the crowd and, it seemed to Garlock,
+directly toward him. Simultaneously there was an insistent, low-pitched,
+whistling scream, somewhat like the noise made by an airplane in a
+no-power dive; and Garlock saw, out of the corner of one eye, a
+yellowish something flashing downward through the air.
+
+At the same moment the woman immediately in front of Garlock stifled a
+scream and jumped backward, bumping into him and almost knocking him
+down. He staggered, caught his balance, and automatically put his arm
+around his assailant, to keep her from falling to the sidewalk.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+In the meantime the guardian, having landed very close to the spot the
+woman had occupied a moment before, leaped again; this time vertically
+upward. The thing, whatever it was, was now braking frantically with
+wings, tail, and body; trying madly to get away. Too late. There was a
+bone-crushing impact as the two bodies came together in mid-air; a
+jarring thud as the two creatures, inextricably intertwined, struck the
+pavement as one.
+
+The thing varied in color, Garlock now saw, shading from bright orange
+at the head to pale yellow at the tail. It had a savagely-tearing curved
+beak; tremendously powerful wings; its short, thick legs ended in
+hawk-like talons.
+
+The guardian's bowed legs had already immobilized the yellow wings by
+clamping them solidly against the yellow body. His two lower arms were
+holding the frightful talons out of action. His third hand gripped the
+orange throat, his fourth was exerting tremendous force against the
+jointure of neck and body. The neck, originally short, was beginning to
+stretch.
+
+For several seconds Garlock had been half-conscious that his accidental
+companion was trying, with more and more energy, to disengage his
+encircling left arm from her waist. He wrenched his attention away from
+the spectacular fight--to which no one else, not even the near-victim,
+had paid the slightest attention--and now saw that he had his arm around
+the bare waist of a statuesque matron whose entire costume would have
+made perhaps half of a Tellurian sun-suit. He dropped his arm with a
+quick and abject apology.
+
+"I should apologize to you instead, Captain Garlock," she thought, with
+a wide and friendly smile, "for knocking you down, and I thank you for
+catching me before I fell. I should not have been startled, of course. I
+would not have been, except that this is the first time that I,
+personally, have been attacked."
+
+"But what _are_ they?" Garlock blurted.
+
+"I don't know." The woman turned her head and glanced, in complete
+disinterest, at the two furiously-battling creatures. Garlock knew now
+that this was the first time, except for that instantly-dismissed thrill
+of surprise at being the actual target of an attack, that she had
+thought of either of them. "Orange-yellow? It could be a ... a fumapty,
+perhaps, but I've no idea, really. You see, such things are none of our
+business."
+
+She thought at him, a half-shrug, half-grimace of mild distaste--not at
+the personal contact with the man nor at the savage duel; but at even
+thinking of either the guardian or the yellow monster--and walked away
+into the crowd.
+
+Garlock's attention flashed back to the fighters. The yellow thing's
+neck had been stretched to twice its natural length and the guardian had
+_eaten_ almost through it. There was a terrific crunch, a couple of
+smacking, gobbling swallows, and head parted from body. The orange beak
+still clashed open and shut, however, and the body still thrashed
+violently.
+
+Shifting his grips, the guardian proceeded to tear a hole into his
+victim's body, just below its breast-bone. Thrusting two arms into the
+opening, he yanked out two organs--one of which, Garlock thought, could
+have been the heart--and ate them both; if not with extreme gusto, at
+least in a workmanlike and thoroughly competent fashion. He then picked
+up the head in one hand, grabbed the tip of a wing with another, and
+marched up the street for half a block, dragging the body behind him.
+
+He lifted a manhole cover with his two unoccupied hands, dropped the
+remains down the hole thus exposed, and let the cover slam back into
+place. He then squatted down, licked himself meticulously clean with a
+long, black, extremely agile tongue, and went on about his enigmatic
+business quite as though nothing had happened.
+
+Garlock strolled around a few minutes longer, but could not recapture
+any interest in the doings of the human beings around him. He had filed
+away every detail of what had just happened, and it had so many bizarre
+aspects that he could not think of anything else. Wherefore he flagged
+down a "taxi" and was taken out to the _Pleiades_. Belle and Lola were
+in the Main.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"I saw the _damndest_ thing, Clee!" Lola exclaimed. "I've been gnawing
+my fingernails off up to the knuckles, waiting for you!"
+
+Lola's experience had been very similar to Garlock's own, except in that
+her monster was an intense green in color and looked something like a
+bat about four feet long, with six-inch canine teeth and several
+stingers....
+
+"Did you find out the name of the thing?" Garlock asked.
+
+"No. I asked half-a-dozen people, but nobody would even listen to me
+except one half-grown boy, and the best he could do was that it might be
+something he had heard another boy say somebody had told him might be a
+'lemart.' And as to those lower-case Arpalones, the best I could dig out
+of anybody was just 'guardians.' Did you do any better?"
+
+"No, I didn't do as well," and he told the girls about his own
+experience.
+
+"But I didn't find any detectors or receptors, Clee," Lola frowned.
+"Where were they?"
+
+"'Way up--up here," he showed her. "I'll make a full tape tonight on
+everything I found out about the guardians and the Arpalones--besides my
+regular report, I mean--since they're yours, and you can make me one
+about your friend the green bat...."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Hey, I _like_ that!" Belle broke in. "That _could_ be taken amiss, you
+know, by such a sensitive soul as I!"
+
+"Check." Garlock chuckled. "I'll have to file that one, in case I want
+to use it sometime. How're you coming, Belle?"
+
+"Nice!" Belle's voracious mind had been so busy absorbing new
+knowledge that she had temporarily forgotten about her fight with
+her captain. "I'm just about done here. I'll be ready tomorrow, I
+think, to visit their library and tape up some planetological and
+planetographical--notice how insouciantly I toss off those two-credit
+words?--data on this here planet Hodell."
+
+"Good going. You've been listening to this stuff Lola and I were chewing
+on--does any of it make sense to you?"
+
+"It does not. I never heard anything to compare with it."
+
+"Excuse me for changing the subject," Lola put in, plaintively, "but
+when, if ever, do we eat? Do we _have_ to wait until that confounded
+James boy gets back from wherever it was he went?"
+
+"If you're hungry, we'll eat now."
+
+"_Hungry?_ Look!" Lola turned herself sidewise, placed one hand in the
+small of her back, and pressed hard with the other her flat, taut belly.
+"See? Only a couple of inches from belt-buckle to backbone--dangerously
+close to the point of utter collapse."
+
+"You poor, abused little thing!" Garlock laughed and all three crossed
+the room to the dining alcove. While they were still ordering, James
+appeared beside them.
+
+"Find out anything?" Garlock asked.
+
+"Yes and no. Yes, in that they have an excellent observatory, with a
+hundred-eighty-inch reflector, on a mountain only seventy-five miles
+from here. No, in that I didn't find any duplication of nebulary
+configurations with the stuff I had with me. However, it was relatively
+coarse. Tomorrow I'll take a lot of fine stuff along. It'll take some
+time--a full day, at least."
+
+"I expected that. Good going, Jim!"
+
+All four ate heartily, and, after eating, they taped up the day's
+reports. Then, tired from their first real day's work in weeks, all went
+to their rooms.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+A few minutes later, Garlock tapped lightly at Lola's door.
+
+"Come in." She stiffened involuntarily, then relaxed and smiled. "Oh,
+yes, Clee: of course. You're...."
+
+"No, I'm not. I've been doing a lot of thinking about you since last
+night, and I may have come up with an answer or two. Also, Belle knows
+we aren't pairing, and if we don't hide behind a screen at least once in
+a while, she'll know we aren't going to."
+
+"Screen?"
+
+"Screen. Didn't you know these four private rooms are solid? Haven't you
+read your house-tape yet?"
+
+"No. But do you think Belle would actually peek?"
+
+"Do you think she wouldn't?"
+
+"Well, I don't like her very much, but I wouldn't think she would do
+anything like that, Clee. It isn't urbane."
+
+"She isn't urbane, either, whenever she thinks it might be advantageous
+not to be."
+
+"What a _terrible_ thing to say!"
+
+"Take it from me, if Belle Bellamy doesn't know everything that goes on
+it isn't from lack of trying. You wouldn't know about room service,
+either, then--better scan that tape before you go to sleep
+tonight--what'll you have in the line of a drink to while away enough
+time so she will know we've been playing games?"
+
+"Ginger ale, please."
+
+"I'll have ginger beer. You do it like so." He slid a panel aside, his
+fingers played briefly on a typewriter-like keyboard. Drinks and ice
+appeared. "Anything you want--details of the tape."
+
+He lighted two cigarettes, handed her one, stirred his drink. "Now, fair
+lady--or should I say beauteous dark lady?--we will follow the precept
+of that immortal Chinese philosopher, Chin On."
+
+"You _are_ a Prime Operator, aren't you?" She laughed, but sobered
+quickly. "I'm worried. You said I flaunted virginity like a banner, and
+now Belle.... What am I doing wrong?"
+
+"There's a lot wrong. Not so much what you're doing as what you aren't
+doing. You're too aloof--detached--egg-headish. You know the score,
+words and music, but you don't sing. All you do is listen. Belle thinks
+you're not only a physical virgin, but a psychic-blocked prude. I know
+better. You're so full of conflict between what you want to do--what you
+know is right--and what those three-cell-brained nincompoops made you
+think you ought to do that you have got no more degrees of freedom than
+a piston-rod. You haven't been yourself for a minute since you came
+aboard. Check?"
+
+"You _have_ been thinking, haven't you? You may be right; except that
+it's been longer than that ... ever since the first preliminaries, I
+think. But what can I _do_ about it, Clee?"
+
+"Contact. Three-quarters full, say; enough for me to give you what I
+think is the truth."
+
+"But you said you _never_ went screens down with a woman?"
+
+"There's a first time for everything. Come in."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+She did so, held contact for almost a minute, then pulled herself loose.
+
+"Ug-gh-gh." She shivered. "I'm glad I haven't got a mind like that."
+
+"And the same from me to you. Of course the real truth may lie somewhere
+in between. I may be as far off the beam on one side as you are on the
+other."
+
+"I hope so. But it cleared things up no end--it untied a million knots.
+Even that other thing--brotherly love? It's a very nice concept--you
+see, I never had any brothers."
+
+"That's probably one thing that was the matter with you. Nothing warmer
+than that, certainly, and never will be."
+
+"And I suppose you got the thought--it must have jumped up and smacked
+you--" Lola's hot blush was visible even through her heavy tan, "how
+many times I've felt like running my fingers up and down your ribs and
+grabbing a handful of those terrific muscles of yours, just to see if
+they're as hard as they look?"
+
+"I'm glad you brought that up; I don't know whether I would have dared
+to or not. You've got to stop acting like a Third instead of an
+Operator; and you've got to stop acting as though you had never been
+within ten feet of me. Now's as good a time as any." He took off his
+shirt and struck a strong-man's pose. "Come ahead."
+
+"By golly, I'm _going_ to!" Then, a moment later, "Why, they're even
+_harder_! How do you, a scientist, psionicist, and scholar, keep in such
+hard shape as that?"
+
+"An hour a day in the gym, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Many
+are better--but a hell of a lot are worse."
+
+"I'll say." She finished her ginger ale, sat down in her chair, leaned
+back and put her legs up on the bed. "That was a relief of tension if
+there ever was one. I haven't felt so good since they picked me as
+home-town candidate--and that was a mighty small town and eight months
+ago. Bring on your dragons, Clee, and I'll slay 'em far and wide. But I
+can't actually _be_ like she is...."
+
+"Thank God for that. Deliver me from _two_ such pretzel-benders aboard
+one ship."
+
+"... but I could have been a pretty good actress, I think."
+
+"Correction, please. 'Outstanding' is the word."
+
+"Thank you, kind sir. And women--men, too, of course--do bring up
+certain memories, to ... to...."
+
+"To roll 'em around on their tongues and give their taste-buds a treat."
+
+"Exactly. So where I don't have any appropriate actual memories to bring
+up, I'll make like an actress. Check?"
+
+"Good girl! Now you're rolling--we're in like Flynn. Well, we've been in
+screen long enough, I guess. Fare thee well, little sister Brownie,
+until we meet again." He tossed the remains of their refreshments, trays
+and all, into the chute, picked up his shirt, and started out.
+
+"Put it _on_, Clee!" she whispered, intensely.
+
+"Why?" He grinned cheerfully. "It'd look still better if I peeled down
+to the altogether."
+
+"You're incorrigible," she said, but her answering grin was wide and
+perfectly natural. "You know, if I had had a brother something like you
+it would have saved me a lot of wear and tear. I'll see you in the
+morning before breakfast."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+And she did. They strolled together to breakfast; not holding hands, but
+with hip almost touching hip. Relaxed, friendly, on very cordial and
+satisfactory terms. Lola punched breakfast orders for them both. Belle
+drove a probe, which bounced--Lola's screen was tight, although her
+brown eyes were innocent and bland.
+
+But during the meal, in response to a double-edged, wickedly-barbed
+remark of Belle's, a memory flashed into being above Lola's shield. It
+was the veriest flash, instantly suppressed. Her eyes held clear and
+steady; if she blushed at all it did not show.
+
+Belle caught it, of course, and winked triumphantly at Garlock.
+She knew, now, what she had wanted to know. And, Prime Operator
+though he was, it was all he could do to make no sign; for that
+fleetingly-revealed memory was a perfect job. He would not have--_could_
+not have--questioned it himself, except for one highly startling fact.
+It was of an event that had not happened and never would!
+
+And after breakfast, at some distance from the others, "That is my girl,
+Brownie! You're firing on all forty barrels. You're an Operator, all
+right; and it takes a damn good one to lie like that with her mind!"
+
+"Thanks to you, Clee. And thanks a million, really. I'm me again--I
+think."
+
+Then, since Belle was looking, she took him by both ears, pulled his
+head down, and kissed him lightly on the lips. The spontaneity and
+tenderness were perfect at that moment. Clee's appreciation was obvious.
+
+"I know I said you'd have to kiss me next time," Lola said, very low,
+"but this act needs just this much of an extra touch. Anyway, such
+little, tiny, sisterly ones as this, and out in public, don't count."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3
+
+
+Lola and Garlock went to town in the same taxi. As they were about to
+separate, Garlock said:
+
+"I don't like those hell-divers, yellow, green, or any other color; and
+you, Brownie, are very definitely not expendable. Are you any good at
+mind-bombing?"
+
+"Why, I never heard of such a thing."
+
+"You isolate a little energy in the Op field, remembering of course,
+that you're handling a hundred thousand gunts. Transpose it into
+platinum or uranium--anything good and heavy. For one of these monsters
+you'd need two or three micrograms. For a battleship, up to maybe a gram
+or so. 'Port it to the exact place you want it to detonate. Reconvert
+and release instantaneously. One-hundred-percent-conversion atomic bomb,
+tailored exactly to fit the job. Very effective."
+
+"It would be. My God, Clee, can _you_ do _that_?"
+
+"Sure--so can you. Any Operator can."
+
+"Well, I _won't_. I _never_ will. Besides, I'd probably kill too many
+people, besides the monster. No, I'll 'port back to the Main if anything
+attacks me. I'm chain lightning at that."
+
+"Do that, then. And if anything very unusual happens give me a flash."
+
+"I'll do that. 'Bye, Clee." She turned to the left. He walked straight
+on, toward the business center, to resume his study at the point where
+he had left off the evening before.
+
+For over an hour he wandered aimlessly about the city; receiving,
+classifying, and filing away information. He saw several duels between
+guardians and yellow and green-bat monsters, to none of which he paid
+any more attention than did the people around him. Then a third kind of
+enemy appeared--two of them at once, flying wing-and-wing--and Garlock
+stopped and watched.
+
+Vivid, clear-cut stripes of red and black, even on the tremendously
+long, strong wings. Distinctly feline as to heads, teeth, and claws.
+While they did not at all closely resemble flying saber-toothed tigers,
+that was the first impression that leaped into Garlock's mind.
+
+Two bow-legged guardians came leaping as usual, but one of them was a
+fraction of a second too late. That fraction was enough. While the first
+guardian was still high in air, grappling with one tiger, the other
+swung on a dime--the blast of air from his right wing blowing people in
+the crowd below thither and yon and knocking four of them flat--and took
+the guardian's head off his body with one savage swipe of a
+frightfully-armed paw. Disregarding the carcass both attackers whirled
+sharply at the second guardian, meeting him in such fashion that he
+could not come to firm grips with either of them, and that battle was
+very brief indeed. More and more guardians were leaping in from all
+directions, however, and the two tigers were forced to the ground and
+slaughtered.
+
+Since six guardians had been killed, eight guardians marched up the
+street, dragging grisly loads. Eight bodies, friend and foe alike, were
+dumped into a manhole; eight creatures squatted down and cleaned
+themselves meticulously before resuming their various patrols.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Ten or fifteen minutes later, Garlock felt Lola's half-excited,
+half-frightened thought. "Clee, do you read me?"
+
+"Loud and clear."
+
+"There's something coming that's certainly none of my business--maybe
+not even yours."
+
+"Coming," and with the thought he was there. "Where?"
+
+She pointed a thought, he followed it. Far away yet, but coming fast,
+was an immense flock of flying tigers!
+
+Lola licked her lips. "I'm going home, if you don't mind."
+
+"Beat it."
+
+She disappeared.
+
+"Jim!" Garlock thought. "Where are you?"
+
+"Observatory. Need me?"
+
+"Yes. Bombing. Two point four microgram loads. Focus spot on my
+right--teleport in."
+
+"Coming in on your right."
+
+"And I on your left!" Belle's thought drove in as he had never before
+felt it driven. Being a Prime, she did not need a focus spot and
+appeared the veriest instant later than did James.
+
+"Can you bomb?" Garlock snapped.
+
+"What do _you_ think?" she snapped back.
+
+A moment of flashing thought and the three Tellurians disappeared,
+materializing five hundred feet in air, two hundred feet ahead of the
+van of that horrible flight of monsters, drifting before it.
+
+Belle got in the first shot. Not only did the victim disappear--a couple
+of dozen around it were torn to fragments and the force of the blast
+staggered all three Tellurians.
+
+"Damn it, Belle, cut down or get to hell out!" Garlock yelped. "I said
+two point four _micrograms_, not milligrams. Just kill 'em, don't
+scatter 'em all over hell's half acre--less mess to clean up and I
+_don't_ want you to kill people down below. Especially I don't want you
+to kill us--not even yourself."
+
+"'Scuse, please, I guess I was a bit enthusiastic in my weighing."
+
+There began a series of muffled explosions along the front; each
+followed by the plunge of a tiger-striped body to the ground. Faster and
+faster the explosions came as the Operator and the Primes learned the
+routine and the rhythm of the job.
+
+Nor were they long alone. The roaring, screaming howl of jets came up
+from behind them; four Arpalones appeared at their left, strung out
+along the front. Each held an extraordinarily heavy-duty blaster in each
+of his four hands; sixteen terrific weapons were hurling death into the
+flying horde.
+
+"Slide over, Terrestrials," came a calm thought. "You three take their
+left front, we'll take their right and center."
+
+As they obeyed the instructions, "_They_ don't give a damn where the
+pieces fly!" Belle protested. "Why should we be fussy about their
+street-cleaning department? _I'm_ starting to use fives."
+
+"Okay. We'll have to hit 'em harder, anyway, to keep up. Five or maybe
+six--just be damn sure not to knock us or the Arpalones out of the air."
+
+Carnage went on. The battle-front, while inside the city limits, was now
+almost stationary.
+
+"Ha! Help--I hear footsteps approaching on jet-back," Garlock announced.
+"Give 'em hell, boys--shovel on the coal!"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+A flight of fighter-planes, eight abreast and wing-tips almost touching,
+howled close overhead and along the line of invasion. They could not
+fire, of course, until they reached the city limits. There they opened
+up as one, and the air below became literally filled with falling
+monsters. Some had only broken wings; some were dead, but more or less
+whole; many were blown to unrecognizable bits and scraps of flesh.
+
+Another flight screamed into place immediately behind the first; then
+another and another and another until six flights had passed. Then came
+four helicopters, darting and hovering, whose gunners picked off
+individually whatever survivors had managed to escape all six waves of
+fighters.
+
+"That's better," came a thought from the Arpalone nearest Garlock.
+"Situation under control, thanks to you Tellurians. Supposed to be two
+squads of us gunners, but the other squad was busy on another job.
+Without you, this could have developed into a fairly nasty little
+infection. I don't know what you're doing or how you're doing it--we
+were told that you weren't like any other humans, and how true _that_
+is--but I'm in favor of it. I thought there were four of you?"
+
+"One of us is not a fighter."
+
+"Oh. You can knock off now, if you like. We'll polish off. Thanks much."
+
+"But don't the boys on the ground need some help?"
+
+"The Arpales? Those idiots you have been thinking of as 'guardians'?
+Which they are, of course. Uh-uh. Besides, we're air-fighters. Ground
+work is none of our business. Also, these guns would raise altogether
+too much hell down there. Bound to hit some humans."
+
+"Check. Those Arpales aren't very intelligent, you Arpalones are
+extremely so. Any connection?"
+
+"'Way back, they say. Common ancestry, and doing two parts of the same
+job. Killing these fumapties and lemarts and sencors and what-have-you.
+I don't know what humanity's job is and don't give a damn. Probably
+fairly important, some way or other, though, since it's our job to see
+that the silly, gutless things keep on living. We have nothing to do
+with 'em, ever. The only reason I'm talking to you is you're not really
+human at all. You're a fighter, too, and a damn good one."
+
+"I know what you mean," and the three Tellurians turned their attention
+downward to the scene on the ground.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The heaviest fighting had been over a large park at the city's edge,
+which was now literally a shambles. Very few people were to be seen, and
+those few more moving unconcernedly away from the center of violence.
+All over the park thousands of Arpales were fighting furiously and
+hundreds of them were dying. For hundreds of the sencors had suffered
+only wing injuries, the long fall to ground had not harmed them further,
+and their tremendous fighting ability had been lessened very little if
+at all.
+
+"But I'd think, just for efficiency if nothing else," Garlock argued,
+"you'd support the Arpales _some_ way. Lighter guns or something. Why,
+thousands of them must have been killed, just in this last hour or so."
+
+"Yeah, but that's their business. They breed fast and die fast.
+Everything has to balance, you know."
+
+"Perhaps so." Garlock was silenced, if not convinced. "Well, it's about
+over. What happens to the bodies they're dumping down manholes? They
+can't go down a sewer that way?"
+
+"Oh, you didn't know? Food."
+
+"Food? For what?"
+
+"The Arpales and us, of course."
+
+"What? You don't mean--you _can't_ mean that they--and by your thought,
+you Arpalones, too--are cannibals!"
+
+"Cannibals? Explain, please? Oh, eaters-of-our-own-species. Of
+course--certainly. Why not?"
+
+"Why, self-respect ... common decency ... respect for one's fellow-man
+... family ties...." Garlock was floundering; to be called upon to
+explain his ingrained antipathy to such a custom was new to his
+experience.
+
+"You are silly. Worse, squeamish. Worst, supremely illogical." The
+Arpalone paused, then went on as though trying to educate a hopelessly
+illogical inferior, "While we do not kill Arpales purposely--except when
+they over-breed--why waste good meat as fertilizer? If a diet is
+wholesome, nutritious, well-balanced, and tasty, what shred of
+difference can it _possibly_ make what its ingredients once were?"
+
+"Well, I'll be damned." Garlock quit.
+
+Belle agreed. "This whole deal makes me sick at the stomach and I think
+my face is turning green too. But I'm devilishly and gleefully glad,
+Clee, that I was here to hear _somebody_ give you cards, spaces, and big
+casino and still beat the lights and liver out of you at your own game
+of cold-blooded logic!"
+
+"We gunners must go now. Would you like to come along with us and see
+the end of this particular breeding-hole of sencors?"
+
+At high speed the seven flew back along the line of advance of the
+flying-tiger horde; across a barren valley, toward and to the side of a
+mountain.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+An area almost a mile square of that mountain's side was a burned,
+blasted, churned, pocked, cratered and flaming waste; and the four
+helicopters were still working on it. High-energy beams blasted, fairly
+volatilizing the ground as they struck in as deep as they could be
+driven. High-explosive shells bored deep and detonated, hurling
+shattered rock and soil and yellow smoke far and wide; establishing new
+craters by destroying the ones existing a moment before.
+
+While it seemed incredible that any living thing larger than a microbe
+could emerge under its own power from such a hell of energy, many flying
+tigers did; apparently being blown aloft along with the hitherto
+undisturbed volume of soil in which the creatures had been. Most of them
+were not fully grown; some were so immature as to be unrecognizable to
+an untrained eye; but from all four helicopters hand-guns snapped and
+cracked. Nothing--but _nothing_--was leaving that field of carnage
+alive.
+
+"What are you gunners supposed to be doing here?" Garlock asked.
+
+"Oh, the 'copters will be leaving pretty soon--they've got other places
+to go. But they won't get them all--some of the hatches are too deep--so
+us four gunners will stick around for two-three days to kill the
+late-hatchers as they come out."
+
+"I see," and Garlock probed. "There are four cells they won't reach.
+Shall I bomb 'em out?"
+
+"I'll ask." The slitted red eyes widened and he sent a call. "Commander
+Knahr, can you hop over here a minute? I want you to meet these things
+we've been hearing about. They look human, but they really aren't.
+They're killers, with more stuff and more brains than any of us ever
+heard of."
+
+Another Arpalone appeared, indistinguishable to Tellurian eyes from any
+one of the others.
+
+"But why do you want to mix into something that's none of your
+business?" Knahr was neither officious nor condemnatory. He simply could
+not understand.
+
+"Since you have no concept of our quality of curiosity, just call it
+education. The question is, do or do you not want those four
+deeply-buried cells blasted out of existence?"
+
+"Of course I do."
+
+"Okay. You've got all of 'em you're going to get. Tell your 'copters to
+give us about five miles clearance, and we'll all fall back, too."
+
+They drew back, and there were four closely-spaced explosions of such
+violence that one raggedly mushroom-shaped cloud went into the
+stratosphere and one huge, ragged crater yawned where once churned
+ground had been.
+
+"But that's _atomic_!" Knahr gasped the thought. "Fall-out!"
+
+"No fall-out. Complete conversion. Have you got a counter?"
+
+They had. They tested. There was nothing except the usual background
+count.
+
+"There's no life left underground, so you needn't keep this squad of
+gunners tied up here," Garlock told the commander. "Before we go, I want
+to ask a question. You have visitors once in a while from other solar
+systems, so you must have a faster-than-light drive. Can you tell me
+anything about it?"
+
+"No. Nothing like that would be any of my business." Knahr and the four
+gunners disappeared; the helicopters began to lumber away.
+
+"Well, _that_ helps--I don't think," Garlock thought, glumly. "_What_ a
+world! Back to the Main?"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+In the Main, after a long and fruitless discussion, Garlock called
+Governor Atterlin, who did not know anything about a faster-than-light
+drive, either. There was one, of course, since it took only a few days
+or a few weeks to go from one system to another; but Hodell didn't have
+any such ships. No ordinary planet did. They were owned and operated by
+people who called themselves "Engineers." He had no idea where the
+Engineers came from; they didn't say.
+
+Garlock then tried to get in touch with the Arpalone Inspector who had
+checked the _Pleiades_ in, and could not find out even who it had been.
+The Inspector then on duty neither knew or cared anything about either
+faster-than-light drives or Engineers. Such things were none of his
+business.
+
+"What difference would it make, anyway?" James asked. "No drive that
+takes 'a few weeks' for an intra-galaxy hop is ever going to get us back
+to Tellus."
+
+"True enough; but if there is such a thing I want to know how it works.
+How are you coming with your calculations?"
+
+"I'll finish up tomorrow easily enough."
+
+Tomorrow came, and James finished up, but he did not find any familiar
+pattern of Galactic arrangement. The other three watched James set up
+for another try for Earth.
+
+"You don't think we'll ever get back, do you, Clee?" Belle asked.
+
+"Right away, no. Some day, yes. I've got the germ of an idea. Maybe
+three or four more hops will give me something to work on."
+
+"I hope so," James said, "because here goes nothing," and he snapped the
+red switch.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+It was not nothing. Number Two was another guardian Inspector and
+another planet very much like Hodell. It proved to be so far from both
+Earth and Hodell, however, that no useful similarities were found in any
+two of the three sets of charts.
+
+Number Three was equally unproductive of helpful results. James did,
+however, improve his technique of making galactic charts; and he and
+Garlock designed and built a high-speed comparator. Thus the time
+required per stop was reduced from days to hours.
+
+Number Four produced a surprise. When Garlock touched the knob of the
+testing-box he yanked his hand away before it had really made contact.
+It was like touching a high-voltage wire.
+
+"You are incompatible with our humanity and must not land," the
+Inspector ruled.
+
+"Suppose we blast you and your jets out of the air and land anyway?"
+Garlock asked.
+
+"That is perhaps possible," the Inspector agreed, equably enough. "We
+are not invincible. However, it would do you no good. If any one of you
+four leaves that so-heavily-insulated vessel in the atmosphere of this
+planet you will die. Not quickly, but slowly and with difficulty."
+
+"But you haven't tested _me_!" Belle said. "Do you mean they'll attack
+us on sight?"
+
+"There is no need to test more than one. Anyone who could live near any
+of you could not live on this planet. Nor will they attack you. Don't
+you know what the thought 'incompatible' means?"
+
+"With us it does not mean death."
+
+"Here it does, since it refers to life forces. The types are mutually,
+irreconcilably antagonistic. Your life forces are very strong. Thus, no
+matter how peaceable your intentions may be, many of our human beings
+would die before you would, but you will not live to get back to your
+ship if you land it and leave its protective insulation."
+
+"Why? What is it? How does it work?" Belle demanded.
+
+"It is not my business to know; only to tell. I have told. You will go
+away now."
+
+Garlock's eyes narrowed in concentration. "Belle, can you blast? I mean,
+could you if you wanted to?"
+
+"Certainly ... why, I don't _want_ to, Clee!"
+
+"I don't, either--and I'll file that one away to chew on when I'm hungry
+some night, too. Take her up, Jim, and try another shot."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Numbers Five to Nine, inclusive, were neither productive nor eventful.
+All were, like the others, Hodell all over again, in everything
+fundamental. One was so far advanced that almost all of its humanity
+were Seconds; one so backward--or so much younger--that its strongest
+telepaths were only Fours. The Tellurians became acquainted with, and
+upon occasion fought with, various types of man-sized monsters in
+addition to the three varieties they had seen on Hodell.
+
+Every planet they visited had Arpalones and Arpales. Not by those names,
+of course. Local names for planets, guardians, nations, cities, and
+persons went into the starship's tapes, but that welter of names need
+not be given here; this is not a catalogue. Every planet they visited
+was peopled by _Homo Sapiens_; capable of inter-breeding with the
+Tellurians and eager to do so--especially with the Tellurian men. Their
+strict monogamy was really tested more than once; but it held. Each had
+been visited repeatedly by starships; but all Garlock could find out
+about them was that they probably came from a world somewhere that was
+inhabited by compatible human beings of Grade Two. He could learn
+nothing about the faster-than-light drive.
+
+Number Ten was another queer--the Tellurians were found incompatible.
+
+"Let's go down anyway." Belle suggested. "Overcome this unwillingness of
+ours and find out. What do you think they've got down there, Clee
+Garlock, that could possibly handle you and me both?"
+
+"I don't think it's a case of 'handling' at all. I don't know what it
+is, but I believe it's fatal. We won't go down."
+
+"But it doesn't make sense!" Belle protested.
+
+"Not yet, no; but it's a datum. Enough data and we'll be able to
+formulate a theory."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"You and your theories! I wish we could get some _facts_!"
+
+"You can call that a fact. But I want you and Jim to do some
+math. We know that we're making mighty long jumps. Assuming that they're
+at perfect random, and of approximately the same length, the probability
+is greater than one-half that we're getting farther and farther away
+from Tellus. Is there a jump number, N, at which the probability is
+one-half that we land nearer Tellus instead of farther away? My
+jump-at-conclusions guess is that there isn't. That the first jump set
+up a bias."
+
+"Ouch. _That_ isn't in any of the books," James said. "In other words,
+do we or do we not attain a maximum? You're making some bum assumptions;
+among others that space isn't curved and that the dimensions of the
+universe are very large compared to the length of our jumps. I'll see if
+I can put it into shape to feed to Compy. You've always held that these
+generators work at random--the rest of those assumptions are based on
+your theory?"
+
+"Check. I'm not getting anywhere studying my alleged Xenology, so I'm
+going to work full time on designing a generator that will steer."
+
+"You tried to before. So did everybody else."
+
+"I know it, but I've got a lot more data now. And I'm not promising,
+just trying. Okay? Worth a try?"
+
+"Sure--I'm in favor of anything that has any chance at all of working."
+
+Jumping went on; and Garlock, instead of going abroad on the planets,
+stayed in the _Pleiades_ and worked.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+At Number Forty-three, their reception was of a new kind. They were
+compatible with the people of this world, but the Inspector advised them
+against landing.
+
+"I do not forbid you," he explained, carefully. "Our humans are about to
+destroy themselves with fission and fusion bombs. They send missiles,
+without warning, against visitors. Thus, the last starship to visit us
+here disregarded my warning and sent down a sensing device as
+usual--Engineers do not land on non-telepathic worlds, you know--and it
+was destroyed."
+
+"You're a Guardian of Humanity," Garlock said. "Can't you straighten
+people out?"
+
+"Of course not!" The Arpalone was outraged. "We guard humanity against
+incompatibles and non-humans; but it is not our business to interfere
+with humanity if it wishes to destroy itself. That is its privilege and
+its own business!"
+
+Garlock probed down. "No telepathy, even--not even a Seven. This planet
+_is_ backward--back to Year One. And nothing but firecrackers--we're
+going down, aren't we?"
+
+"I'll say we are!" Belle said. "This will break the monotony, at least,"
+and the others agreed.
+
+"You won't object, I take it," Garlock said to the Inspector, "if we try
+to straighten them out. We can postpone the blow-up a few years, at
+least."
+
+"No objections, of course. In fact, I can say that we Guardians of
+Humanity would approve such action."
+
+Down the _Pleiades_ went, into the air of the nation known as the
+"Allied Republican Democracies of the World," and an atomic-warheaded
+rocket came flaming up.
+
+"Hm ... m ... m. Ingenious little gadget, at that," James reported,
+after studying it thoroughly. "Filthy thing for fall-out, though, if it
+goes off. Where'll I flip it, Clee? One of their moons?"
+
+"Check. Third one out--no chance of any contamination from there."
+
+The missile vanished; and had any astronomer been looking at that
+world's third and outermost moon at the moment, he might have seen a
+tremendous flash of light, a cloud of dust, and the formation of a new
+and different crater among the hundreds already there.
+
+"No use waiting for 'em, Jim. All three of you toss everything they've
+got out onto that same moon, being sure not to hurt anybody--yet. I'll
+start asking questions."
+
+The captain who had fired the first missile appeared in the Main. He
+reached for his pistol, to find that he did not have one. He tensed his
+muscles to leap at Garlock, to find that he could not move.
+
+Garlock drove his probe. "Who is your superior officer?" and before the
+man could formulate a denial, that superior stood helpless beside him.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Then three--and four. At the fifth:
+
+"Oh, you are the man I want. Prime Minister--euphemism for
+Dictator--Sovig. Missile launching stations and missile storage? You
+don't know? Who does?"
+
+Another man appeared, and for twenty minutes the _Pleiades_ darted about
+the continent.
+
+"Now submarines, atomic and otherwise, and all surface vessels capable
+of launching missiles." Another man appeared.
+
+This job took a little longer, since the crew of each vessel had to be
+teleported back to their bases. An immense scrap-pile, probably visible
+with a telescope of even moderate power, built up rapidly on the third
+moon.
+
+"Now a complete list of your uranium-refining plants, your military
+reactors, heavy-water and heavy-hydrogen plants, and so on." Another man
+appeared, but the starship did not move.
+
+"Here is a list of plants," and Garlock named them, coldly. "You will
+remember them. I will return you to your office, and you may--or may
+not, as you please--order them evacuated. Look at your watch. We start
+destroying them in exactly seventy-two of your hours from this moment.
+Any and all persons on the properties will be killed; any within a
+radius of ten of your miles may be killed. Our explosives are extremely
+powerful, but there is no radioactivity and no danger from the fall-out.
+The danger is from flash-blindness, flash-burn, sheer heat, shock-wave,
+concussion, and flying debris of all kinds."
+
+The officer vanished and Garlock turned back to the Prime Minister.
+
+"You have an ally, a nation known as the 'Brotherhood of People's
+Republics.' Where is its capital? Slide us over there, Jim. Now, Prime
+Minister Sovig, you and your ally, the second and first most populous
+nations of your world, are combining to destroy--a pincers movement, let
+us say?--the third largest nation, or rather, group of nations--the
+Nations of the North.... Oh, I see. Third only in population, but first
+in productive capacity and technology. They should be destroyed because
+their ideology does not agree with yours. They are too idealistic to
+strike first, so you will. After you strike, they will not be able to.
+Whereupon you, personally, will rule the world. I will add to that
+something you are not thinking, but should: You will rule it until one
+of your friends puts his pistol to the back of your neck and blows your
+brains out."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+They were now over the ally's capitol; which launched five missiles
+instead of one. Garlock collected four more men and studied them.
+
+"Just as bad--if possible, worse. Who, Lingonor, is the leader of your
+opposition, if any?" Another man, very evidently of the same race,
+appeared.
+
+"Idealistic, in a way, but spineless and corrupt," Garlock announced to
+all. "His administration was one of the most corrupt ever known on this
+world. We'll disarm them, too."
+
+They did. The operation did not take very long; as this nation--or
+group, it was not very clear exactly what it was--while very high in
+manpower, was very low in technology.
+
+The starship moved to a station high above the Capitol Building of the
+Nations of the North and moved slowly downward until it hung poised one
+scant mile over the building. Missiles, jets, and heavy guns were set
+and ready, but no attack was made. Therefore Garlock introduced himself
+to various personages and invited them aboard instead of snatching them;
+nor did he immobilize them after they had been teleported aboard.
+
+"The president, the chief of staff, the Chief Justice, the most eminent
+scientist, the head of a church, the leaders of the legislative body and
+four political bosses, the biggest business man, biggest labor leader,
+and biggest gangster. Fourteen men." As Garlock studied them his face
+hardened. "I thought to leave your Nations armed, to entrust this
+world's future to you, but no. Only two of you are really concerned
+about the welfare of your peoples, and one of those two is very weak.
+Most of you are of no higher motivation than are the two dictators and
+your gangster Clyden. You are much better than those we have already
+disarmed, but you are not good enough."
+
+Garlock's hard eyes swept over the group for two minutes before he went
+on:
+
+"I am opening all of your minds, friend and foe alike, to each other, so
+that you may all see for yourselves what depths of rottenness exist
+there and just how unfit your world is to associate with the decent
+worlds of this or any other galaxy. It would take God Himself to do
+anything with such material, and I am not God. Therefore, when we have
+rid this world of atomics we will leave and you will start all over
+again. If you really try, you can not only kill all animal life on your
+planet, but make it absolutely uninhabitable for...."
+
+"Stop it, Clee!" Lola jumped up, her eyes flashing. Garlock dropped the
+tuned group, but Belle took it over. Everyone there understood every
+thought. "Don't you _see_, you've done enough? That now you're going too
+far? That these twenty-odd men, having had their minds opened and having
+been given insight into what is possible, will go forward instead of
+backward?"
+
+"Forward? With such people as the Prime Ministers, the labor and
+business leaders, the bosses and the gangsters to cope with? Do you
+think they've got spines stiff enough for the job?"
+
+"I'm sure of it. Our world did it with no better. Millions and millions
+of other worlds did it. Why can't this one do it? Of course it can."
+
+"May I ask a couple of questions?" This thought came from the tall,
+trim, soldierly Chief of Staff.
+
+"Of course, General Cordeen."
+
+"We have all been taking it for granted that you four belong to some
+super-human race; some kind or other of _Homo Superior_. Do I understand
+correctly your thought that your race is _Homo Sapiens_, the same as
+ours?"
+
+"Why, of course it is," Lola answered in surprise. "The only difference
+is that we are a few thousand years older than you are."
+
+"You said also that there were 'millions and millions' of worlds that
+have solved the problems facing us. Were all these worlds also peopled
+by _Homo Sapiens_? It seems incredible."
+
+"True, nevertheless. On any and every world of this type humanity is
+identical physically; and the mental differences are due only to their
+being in different stages of development. In fact, every planet we have
+visited except this one makes a regular custom of breeding its best
+blood with the best blood of other solar systems. And as to the
+'millions and millions,' I meant only a very large but indefinite
+number. As far as I know, not even a rough estimate has ever been
+made--has there, Clee?"
+
+"No, but it will probably turn out to be millions _of_ millions, instead
+of millions _and_ millions; and squared and then cubed at that. My guess
+is that it'll take another ten thousand years of preliminary surveying
+such as we're doing, by all the crews the various Galaxian Societies can
+put out, before even the roughest kind of an estimate can be made as to
+how many planets are inhabited by mutually fertile human peoples."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+For a moment the group was stunned. Then:
+
+"Do you mean to say," asked the merchant prince, "that you Galaxians are
+not the only ones who have interstellar travel?"
+
+"Far from it. In fact, yours is the only world we have seen that does
+not have it, in one form or another."
+
+"Oh? More than one way? That makes it still worse. Would you be willing
+to sell us plans, or lease us ships...?"
+
+"So that you could exploit other planets? We will not. You would get
+nowhere, even if you had an interstellar drive right now. You,
+personally, are a perfect example of what is wrong with this planet.
+Rapacious, insatiable; you violate every concept of ethics, common
+decency, and social responsibility. Your world's technology is so far
+ahead of its sociology that you not only should be, but actually are
+being, held in quarantine."
+
+"_What?_"
+
+"Exactly. One race I know of has been inspecting you regularly for
+several hundreds of your years. They will not make contact with you, or
+allow you to leave your own world, until you grow up to something beyond
+the irresponsible-baby stage. Thus, about two and one-half of your years
+ago, a starship of that race sent down a sensing element--unmanned, of
+course--to check your state of development. Brother Sovig volatilized it
+with an atomic missile."
+
+"We did not do it," the dictator declared. "It was the war-mongering
+capitalists."
+
+"You brainless, mindless, contemptible idiot," Garlock sneered. "Are
+even you actually stupid enough to try to lie with your mind? To minds
+linked to your own and to mine?"
+
+"We did do it, then, but it was only a flying saucer."
+
+"Just as this ship was, to you, only a flying saucer, I suppose. So
+here's something else for you to think about, Brother Sovig, with
+whatever power your alleged brain is able to generate. When you shot
+down that sensor, the starship did not retaliate, but went on without
+taking any notice of you. When you tried to shoot _us_ down, we took
+some slight action, but did not kill anyone and are now discussing the
+situation. Listen carefully now, and remember--it is very possible that
+the next craft you attack in such utterly idiotic fashion will, without
+any more warning than you gave, blow this whole planet into a ball of
+incandescent gas."
+
+"Can that actually be done?" the scientist asked. For the first time, he
+became really interested in the proceedings.
+
+"Very easily, Doctor Cheswick," Garlock replied. "We could do it
+ourselves with scarcely any effort and at very small cost. You are
+familiar, I suppose, with the phenomenon of ball lightning?"
+
+"Somewhat. Its mechanism has never been elucidated in any very
+satisfactory mathematics."
+
+"Well, we have at our disposal a field some...."
+
+"Hold it, Clee," James warned. "Do you want to put out that kind of
+stuff around here?"
+
+"Um ... m ... m. What do you think?"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+James studied Cheswick's mind. "Better than I thought," he decided. "He
+has made two really worthwhile intuitions--a genius type. He's been
+working on what amounts almost to the Coupler Theory for ten years. He's
+almost got it, but you know intuitions of that caliber can't be
+scheduled. He might get it tomorrow--or never. I'd say push him over the
+hump."
+
+"Okay with me. We'll take a vote--one blackball kills it. Brownie? Just
+the link, of course. A few hints, perhaps, at application, but no
+technological data."
+
+"I say give it to him. He's earned it. Besides, he isn't young and may
+die before he gets it, and that would lose them two or three hundred
+years."
+
+"Belle?"
+
+"In favor. Shall I drop the linkage? No," she answered her own question.
+"No other minds here will have any idea of what it means, and it may do
+some of them a bit of good to see one of their own minds firing on more
+than one barrel."
+
+"Thank you, Galaxians." The scientist's mind had been quivering with
+eagerness. "I am inexpressibly glad that you have found me worthy of so
+much help."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Garlock entered Cheswick's mind. First he impressed, indelibly, six
+symbols and their meanings. Second, a long and intricate equation; which
+the scientist studied avidly.
+
+During the ensuing pause, Garlock cut the President and Chief of Staff
+out of the linkage. "We have just given Cheswick a basic formula. In a
+couple of hundred years it will give you full telepathy, and then you
+will begin really to go up. There's nothing secret about it--in fact,
+I'd advise full publication--but even so it might be a smart idea to
+give him both protection and good working conditions. Brains like his
+are apt to be centuries apart on any world."
+
+"But this is ... it could be ... it _must_ be!" Cheswick exclaimed. "I
+_never_ would have formulated _that_! It isn't quite implicit, of
+course, but from this there derives the existence of, and the necessity
+for, electrogravitics! An entirely new field of reality and experiment
+in science!"
+
+"There does indeed," Garlock admitted, "and it is far indeed from being
+implicit. You leaped a tremendous gap. And yes, the resultant is more
+humanistic than technological."
+
+Belle's ear-splitting whistle resounded throughout the Main. "How do you
+like _them_ tid-bits, Clee?" she asked. "Two hundred years in
+seventy-eight seconds? You folks will have telepathy by the time your
+present crop of babies grows up. Clee, aren't you sorry you got mad and
+blew your top and wanted to pick up your marbles and go home? _Three_
+such intuitions in one man's lifetime beats par, even for the genius
+course."
+
+"It sure does," Garlock admitted, ruefully. "I should have studied these
+minds--particularly his--before jumping at conclusions."
+
+"May I say a few words?" the president asked.
+
+"You may indeed, sir. I was hoping you would."
+
+"We have been discouraged; faced with an insoluble problem. Sovig and
+Lingonor, knowing that their own lives were forfeit anyway, were
+perfectly willing to destroy all the life on this world to make us
+yield. Now, however, with the insight and the encouragement you
+Galaxians have given us, the situation has changed. Reduced to ordinary
+high explosives, they cannot conquer us...."
+
+"Especially without an airforce," Lola put in. "I, personally, will see
+to it that every bomber and fighter plane they now have goes to the
+third moon. It will be your responsibility to see to it that they do not
+rebuild."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Montandon. We will see to it. As for our internal
+difficulties--I think, under certain conditions, they can be handled.
+Our lawless element," he glanced at the gangster, "can be made impotent.
+The corrupt practices of both capital and labor can be stopped. We have
+laws," here he looked at the members of Congress and the judge, "which
+can be enforced. The conditions I mentioned would be difficult at the
+moment, since so few of us are here and it is manifest that few if any
+of our people will believe that such people as you Galaxians really
+exist. Would it be possible for you, Miss Montandon, to spend a few
+days--or whatever time you can spare--in showing our Congress, and as
+many other groups as possible, what humanity may hope to become?"
+
+"Of course, sir. I was planning on it."
+
+"I'm afraid that is impossible," the Chief of Staff said.
+
+"Why, General Cardeen?" Lola asked.
+
+"Because you'd be shot," Cardeen said, bluntly. "We have a very good
+Secret Service, it is true, and we would give you every protection
+possible; but such an all-out effort as would be made to assassinate you
+would almost certainly succeed."
+
+"Shot?" Garlock asked in surprise. "What with? You haven't anything that
+could even begin to crack an Operator's Shield."
+
+"With this, sir." Cardeen held out his automatic pistol for inspection.
+
+"Oh, I hadn't studied it ... a pellet-projector...."
+
+"_Pellet!_ Do you call a four-seventy-five slug a pellet?"
+
+"Not much of that, really ... it shoots eight times--shoot all eight of
+them at her. None of them will touch her."
+
+"_What?_ I _will_ not! One of those slugs will go through three women
+like her, front to back in line."
+
+"I will, then." The pistol leaped into Garlock's hand. "Hold up one
+hand, Brownie, and catch 'em. Don't let 'em splash--no deformation, so
+he can recognize his own pellets."
+
+Holding the unfamiliar weapon in a clumsy, highly unorthodox
+grip--something like a schoolgirl's first attempt--Garlock glanced once
+at Lola's upraised palm and eight shots roared out as fast as the gases
+of explosion could operate the mechanism. The pistol's barrel remained
+rigidly motionless under all the stress of ultra-rapid fire. Lola's
+slim, deeply-tanned arm did not even quiver under the impact of that
+storm of heavy bullets against her apparently unsupported hand. No one
+saw those bullets strike that gently-curved right palm, but everyone saw
+them drop into her cupped left hand, like drops of water dripping
+rapidly from the end of an icicle into a bowl.
+
+"Here are your pellets, General Cardeen." Lola handed them to him with a
+smile.
+
+"Holy--Jumping--Snakes!" the general said, and:
+
+"Wotta torpedo!" came the gangster's envious thought.
+
+"You see, I am perfectly safe from being 'shot,' as you call it," Lola
+said. "So I'll come down and work with you. You might have your news
+services put out a bulletin, though. I never have killed anyone, and am
+not going to here, but anyone who tries to shoot me or bomb me or
+anything will lose both hands at the wrists just before he fires. That
+would keep them from killing anyone standing near me, don't you think?"
+
+"I should _think_ it would," General Cordeen thought, and a pall of awe
+covered the linked minds. The implications of the naively frank remark
+just uttered by this apparently inoffensive and defenseless young woman
+were simply too overwhelming to be discussed.
+
+"Anything else on the agenda, Clee?" Lola asked.
+
+There was not, and the starship's guests were returned, each to his own
+home place.
+
+And not one of them, it may be said, was exactly the same as he had
+been.
+
+    [Illustration:
+
+    The deepest Gunther block was at last penetrated and
+    Belle became conscious of a heretofore unknown mental
+    alignment with the ship.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4
+
+
+"I think I'll come along with you and bodyguard you, Lola," Belle said,
+the following morning after breakfast. "Clee's going to be seven
+thousand miles deep in mathematics and Jim's doing his stuff at the
+observatory, and I can't help either of 'em at the moment. You'd do a
+better job, wouldn't you, if you could concentrate on it?"
+
+"Of course. Thanks, Belle. But remember, it's already been announced--no
+death. Just hands. I can't really believe that I'll be attacked, but
+they seem pretty sure of it."
+
+"I'd like to separate anyone like that from his head instead of his
+hands, but as it is published so it will be performed."
+
+"How about wearing some kind of half-way-comfortable shoes instead of
+those slippers?" Garlock asked. "That could turn out to be a long, tough
+brawl, and your dogs'll be begging for mercy before you get back here."
+
+"Uh-uh. Very comfortable and a perfect fit. Besides, if I have to suffer
+just a little bit for good appearance's sake in a matter of
+intergalactic amity...."
+
+"A matter of showing off, you mean."
+
+"Why, Clee!" Belle widened her eyes at him. "How you talk! But they're
+ready, Lola--let's go."
+
+The two girls disappeared from the Main, to appear on the speakers'
+stand in front of the Capitol Building. President Benton was there, with
+his cabinet and certain other personages. General Cordeen and his staff.
+And many others.
+
+"Oh, Miss Bellamy, too? I'm _very_ glad you are here," Benton said, as
+he shook hands cordially with both.
+
+"Thank you. I came along as bodyguard. May I meet your Secret Service
+Chief, please?"
+
+"Why, of course. Miss Bellamy, may I present Mr. Avengord?"
+
+"You have the hospital room ready?... Where is it, please?"
+
+"Back of us, in the wing...."
+
+"Just think of it, please, and I will follow your thought.... Ah, yes,
+there it is. I hope it will not be used. You agree with General Cordeen
+that there will be one or more attempts at assassination?"
+
+"I'm very much afraid so. This town is literally riddled with enemy
+agents, and of course we don't know all of them--especially the best
+ones. They know that if these meetings go through, they're sunk; so
+they're desperate. We've got this whole area covered like dew--we've
+arrested sixteen suspects already this morning--but all the advantage is
+theirs," Avengord finished glumly.
+
+"Not all of it, sir," Belle smiled at him cheerfully. "You have me, and
+I am a Prime Operator. That is, a wielder of power of no small ability.
+Oh, you are right. There is an attempt now being prepared."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+While Belle had been greeting and conversing, she had also been
+scanning. Her range, her sensitivity, and her power were immensely
+greater than Lola's; were probably equal to Garlock's own. She scanned
+by miles against the scant yards covered by the Secret Service.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Give me your thought." The Secret Service man did not know what she
+meant--telepathy was of course new to him--so she seized his attention
+and directed it to a certain window in a building a couple of miles away
+on a hill.
+
+"But they couldn't, from there!"
+
+"But they can. They have a quite efficient engine of destruction--a
+'rifle' is their thought. Large, and long, with a very good telescope on
+it--with crosshairs. If I scan their minds more precisely you may know
+the weapon.... Ah, they think of it as a 'Buford Mark Forty
+Anti-Aircraft Rifle'."
+
+"A Buford! My God, they can hit any button on her clothes--get her away,
+quick!" He tried to jump, but could not move.
+
+"As you were," she directed. "There was another Buford there, and
+another over there." She guided his thought. "Two men to each Buford.
+There are now six handless men in your hospital room. If you will send
+men to those three places you will find the Bufords and the hands. Your
+surgeon will have no difficulty in matching the hands to the men. If any
+seek to remove either Bufords or hands before your men get there, I will
+de-hand them, also."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+To say that the Secret Service man was flabbergasted is to put it very
+mildly indeed. Cordeen had told him, with much pounding on his desk and
+in searing, air-blueing language, what to expect-or, rather, to expect
+_anything_, no matter what and with no limits whatever--but he hadn't
+believed it then and simply could not believe it now. Goddamn it, such
+things _couldn't_ happen. And this beautiful, beautifully-stacked,
+half-naked woman--girl, rather, she couldn't be a day over
+twenty-five--even if it had been their black-browed, toplofty leader,
+Captain Garlock himself....
+
+"I am twenty-three of your years old, not twenty-five," she informed
+him, coldly, "and I will permit no distinction of sex. In your primitive
+culture the women may still be allowing you men to believe in the
+fallacy of the superiority of the male, but know right now that I can do
+anything any man ever born can do and do it better."
+
+"Oh, I'm ... I'm sure ... certainly...." Avengord's thought was
+incoherent.
+
+"If you want me to work with you you had better start believing right
+now that there are a lot of things you don't know," Belle went on
+relentlessly. "Stop believing that just because a thing has not already
+happened on this primitive, backward, mudball planet of yours, it can't
+happen anywhere or anywhen. You do believe, however, whether you want to
+or not, things you see with your own eyes?"
+
+"Yes. I can _not_ be hypnotized."
+
+"I'm very glad you believe that much." Avengord did not notice that she
+neither confirmed nor denied the truth of his statement. "To that end
+you will go now into the hospital room and see the bandaging going on.
+You will see and hear the news broadcast going out as I prepared it."
+
+He went, and came back a badly shaken man.
+
+"But they're sending it out exactly as it happened!" he protested.
+"They'll all scatter out so fast and so far we'll _never_ catch them!"
+
+"By no means. You see, the amputees didn't believe that they would lose
+their hands. Their superiors didn't believe it, either; they assured
+each other and their underlings that it was just capitalistic bluff and
+nonsense. And since they are all even more materialistic and hidebound
+and unbelieving than you are, they all are now highly confused--at a
+complete loss."
+
+"You can say _that_ again. If I, working with you and having you
+pounding it into my head, couldn't more than half believe it...."
+
+"So they are now very frightened, as well as confused, and the director
+of their whole spy system is now violating rule and precedent by sending
+out messengers to summon certain high agents to confer with him in his
+secret place."
+
+"If you'll tell me where, I'll get over to my office...."
+
+"No. We'll both be in your office in plenty of time. We'll watch Lola
+get started. It will be highly instructive for you to watch a really
+capable Operator at work."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+President Benton had been introduced; had in turn finished introducing
+Lola. The crowd, many thousands strong, was cheering. Lola was stepping
+into the carefully marked speaker's place.
+
+"You may disconnect these," she waved a hand at the battery of
+microphones, "since I do not use speech. Not only do I not know any of
+your various languages, but no one language would suffice. My thought
+will go to every person on this, your world."
+
+"World?" the President asked in surprise. "Surely not behind the
+Curtains? They will jam you, I'm afraid."
+
+"My thought, as I shall drive it, will not be stopped," Lola assured
+him. "Since this world has no telepathy, it has no mind-blocks and I can
+cover the planet as easily as one mind. Nor does it matter whether it be
+day or night, or whether anyone is awake or asleep. All will receive my
+message. Since you wish a record, the cameras may run, although they are
+neither necessary nor desirable for me. Everyone will see me in his
+mind, much better than on the surface of any teevee tube."
+
+"And I was going to have her address _Congress_!" the President
+whispered, aside, to General Cordeen.
+
+Then Lola put her whole fine personality into a smile, directed
+apparently not only at each separate individual within sight, but also
+individually at every person on the globe; and when Brownie Montandon
+set out to make a production of a smile, it had the impact of a
+pile-driver. Then came her smooth, gently-flowing, friendly thought:
+
+"My name, friends of this world Ormolan, is Lola Montandon. Those of you
+who are now looking at teevee screens can see my imaged likeness. All of
+you can see me very much better within your own minds.
+
+"I am not here as an invader in any sense, but only as a citizen of the
+First Galaxy of this, our common universe. I have attuned my mind to
+each of yours in order to give you a message from the United Galaxian
+Societies.
+
+"There are four of us Galaxians in this Exploration Team. As Galaxians
+it is our purpose here and our duty here to open your minds to certain
+basic truths, to be of help to you in clearing your minds of fallacies,
+of lies, and of undefensible prejudices; to the end that you will more
+rapidly become Galaxians yourselves...."
+
+"Okay. This will go on and on. That's enough to give you an idea of what
+a trained and polished performer can do. What do you think of _them_
+comfits, Chief?" Belle deliberately knocked the Secret Service man out
+of his Lola-induced mood.
+
+"Huh? Oh, yes." Avengord was still groggy. "She's phenomenal--good--I
+don't mean goody-goody, but sincere and really...."
+
+"Yeah, but don't fall in love with her. Everybody does and it doesn't do
+any of them a bit of good. That's her specialty and she's _very_ good at
+it. I told you she's a smooth, smooth worker."
+
+"You can say _that_ again." Avengord did not know that he was repeating
+himself. "But it isn't an act. She means it and it's true."
+
+"Of course she means it and of course it's true. Otherwise even she,
+with all her training, couldn't sell such a big bill of goods." Then, in
+answer to the man's unspoken question, "Yes, we're all different. She's
+the contactor, the spreader of the good old oil, the shining example of
+purity and sweetness and light--in short, the Greaser of the Ways. I'm a
+fighter, myself. Do you think she could actually have de-handed those
+men? Uh-uh. At the last minute she would have weakened and brought them
+in whole. My job in this operation is to knock hell out of the ones Lola
+can't convince, such as those spies you and I are going to interview
+pretty quick."
+
+"Even they ought to be convinced. I don't see how anybody could help but
+be."
+
+"Uh-uh. It'll bounce off like hailstones off of a tin roof. The only
+thing to do to that kind of scum is kill them. If you'll give me a
+thought as to where your office is we'll hop over and...."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Belle and Avengord disappeared from the stand; and, such was Lola's
+hold, no one on the platform or in the throng even noticed that they
+were gone. They materialized in Avengord's private office; he sitting as
+usual at his desk, she reclining in legs-crossed ease in a big leather
+chair.
+
+"... get to work." Belle's thought had not been interrupted by any
+passage of time whatever. "What do you want to do first?"
+
+"But I thought you were covering Miss Montandon?"
+
+"I am. Like a blanket. Just as well here as anywhere. I will be, until
+she gets back to the _Pleiades_. What first?"
+
+"Oh. Well, since I don't know what your limits are--if you have any--you
+might as well do whatever you think best and I'll watch you do it."
+
+"That's the way to talk. You're going to get a shock when you see who
+the Head Man is. George T. Basil."
+
+"_Basil_! I'll say it's a shock!" Avengord steadied, frowned in
+concentration. "Could be, though. _He_ would _never_ be suspected--but
+they're very good at that."
+
+"Yeah. His name used to be Baslovkowitz. He was trained for years, then
+planted. None of this can be proved, as his record is perfect. Born
+citizen, highest standing in business and social circles. Unlimited
+entry and top security clearance. Right?"
+
+"Right ... and getting enough evidence, in such cases as that, is pure,
+unadulterated hell."
+
+"I suppose I could kill him, after we've recorded everything he knows,"
+Belle suggested.
+
+"No!" He snapped. "Too many people think of us as a strong-arm squad
+now. Anyway, I'd rather kill him myself than wish the job off onto--you
+don't _like_ killing, do you?"
+
+"That's the understatement of the century. No civilized person does. In
+a hot fight, yes; but killing anyone who is helpless to fight back--in
+cold blood--ugh! It makes me sick in my stomach even to think of it."
+
+"With the way you can read minds, we can get evidence enough to send
+them all to jail, and that we'll have to do."
+
+"How about this?" Belle grinned as another solution came to mind. "From
+those first eight top men, we'll find out a lot of others lower down,
+and so on, until we have 'em all locked up here. We'll announce that
+exactly so many spies and agents--giving names, addresses, and facts, of
+course--got panicky after Lola's address. They fired up their hidden
+planes and flew back behind the Curtain. Then, when we've scanned their
+minds and recorded everything you want, I'll pack them all, very snugly
+and carefully, into Sovig's private office. With the world situation
+what it then will be, he won't dare kill them--he simply won't know what
+to do when faced with it."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Avengord agreed happily. He reached out and flipped the switch of his
+intercom. "Miss Kimling, come in, please."
+
+The door burst open. "Why, it _is_ you! But you were on the rostrum just
+a minute.... Oh!" She saw Belle, and backed, eyes wide, toward the door
+she had just entered. "_She_ was there, too, and it's fifteen
+_miles_...."
+
+"Steady, Fram. I'd like to present you to Prime Operator Belle Bellamy,
+who is cleaning out the entire Curtain organization for us."
+
+"But how did you...."
+
+"Never mind that. Teleportation. It took her half an hour to pound it
+into me, and we can't take time to explain anything now. I'll tell
+everybody everything I know as soon as I can. In the meantime, don't be
+surprised at anything that happens, and by that I mean _anything_. Such
+as solid people appearing on this carpet--on that spot right
+there--instantaneously. I want you to pay close attention to everything
+your mind receives, put your phenomenal memory into high gear, listen to
+everything I record, stop me any time I'm wrong, and be _sure_ I get
+everything we need."
+
+"I don't know exactly what you're talking about, sir, but I'll try."
+
+"Frankly, I don't, either--we'll just have to roll it as we go along.
+We're ready for George T. Basil now, Miss Bellamy--I hope. Don't jump,
+Fram."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Basil appeared and Fram jumped. She did not scream, however, and did not
+run out of the office. The master spy was a big, self-assured, affluent
+type. He had not the slightest idea of how he had been spirited out of
+his ultra-secret sub-basement and into this room; but he knew where he
+was and, after one glance at Belle, he knew why. He decided instantly
+what to do about it.
+
+"This is an outrage!" he bellowed, hammering with his fist on Avengord's
+desk. "A stupid, high-handed violation of the rights...."
+
+Belle silenced him and straightened him up.
+
+"High-handed? Yes," she admitted quite seriously. "However, from the
+Galaxian standpoint, you have no rights at all and you are going to be
+extremely surprised at just how high-handed I am going to be. I am going
+to read your mind to its very bottom--layer by layer, like peeling an
+onion--and everything you know and everything you think is going down in
+Mr. Avengord's Big Black Book."
+
+Belle linked all four minds together and directed the search, making
+sure that no item, however small, was missed. Avengord recorded every
+pertinent item. Fram Kimling memorized and correlated and
+double-checked.
+
+Soon it was done, and Basil, shouting even louder about this last and
+worst violation of his rights--those of his own private mind--was led
+away by two men and "put away where he would keep."
+
+"But this _is_ a flagrant violation of law...." Miss Kimling began.
+
+"You can say _that_ again!" her boss gloated. "And if you only knew how
+tickled I am to do it, after the way they've been kicking _me_ around!
+
+"But I wonder ... are you sure we can get away with it?"
+
+"Certainly," Belle put in. "We Galaxians are doing it, not your
+government or your Secret Service. We'll start you clean--but it'll be
+up to you to keep it clean, and that will be no easy job."
+
+"No, it won't; but we'll do it. Come around again, say in five or six
+years, and see."
+
+"You know, I might take you up on that? Maybe not this same team, but
+I've got a notion to tape a recommendation for a re-visit, just to see
+how you get along. It'd be interesting."
+
+"I wish you would. It might help, too, if everybody thought you'd come
+back to check. Suppose you could?"
+
+"I've no idea, really. I'd like to, though, and I'll see what I can do.
+But let's get on with the job. They're all in what you call the 'tank'
+now. Which one do you want next?"
+
+The work went on. That evening there was of course a reception; and then
+a ball. And Belle's feet did hurt when she got back to the _Pleiades_,
+but of course she would not admit the fact--most especially not to
+Garlock.
+
+Exactly at the expiration of the stipulated seventy-two hours, the
+Galaxians began to destroy military atomic plants; and, shortly
+thereafter, the starship's crew was again ready to go.
+
+And James rammed home the red button that would send them--all four
+wondered--_where_?
+
+It turned out to be another Hodell-type world; and, even with the
+high-speed comparator, it took longer to check the charts than it did to
+make them.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The next planet was similar. So was the next, and the next. The time
+required for checking grew longer and longer.
+
+"How about cutting out this checking entirely, Clee?" James asked then.
+"What good does it do? Even if we find a similarity, what could we do
+about it? We've got enough stuff now to keep a crew of astronomers busy
+for five years making a tank of it."
+
+"Okay. We probably are so far away now, anyway, that the chance of
+finding a similarity is vanishingly small. Keep on taking the shots,
+though; they'll prove, I think, that the universe is one whole hell of a
+lot bigger than anybody has ever thought it was. That reminds me--are
+you getting anywhere on that N-problem? I'm not."
+
+"I'm getting nowhere, fast. You should have been a math prof in a grad
+school, Clee. You could flunk every advanced student you had with that
+one. Belle and I together can't feed it to Compy in such shape as to get
+a definite answer. We think, though, that your guess was right--if we
+ever stabilize anywhere it will probably be relative to Hodell, not to
+Tellus. But the cold fact of how far away we must be by this time just
+scares the pants off of me."
+
+"You and me both, my ripe and old. We're a _long_ ways from home."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Jumping went on; and, two or three planets later, they encountered an
+Arpalone Inspector who did not test them for compatibility with the
+humanity of his world.
+
+"Do not land," the creature said, mournfully. "This world is dying, and
+if you leave the protection of your ship, you too will die."
+
+"But _worlds_ don't die, surely?" Garlock protested. "People, yes--but
+worlds?"
+
+"Worlds die. It is the Dilipic. The humans die, too, of course, but it
+is the world itself that is attacked, not the people. Some of them, in
+fact, will live through it."
+
+Garlock drove his attention downward and scanned.
+
+"You Arpalones are doing what looks like a mighty good job of fighting.
+Can't you win?"
+
+"No, it is too late. It was already too late when they first appeared,
+two days ago. When the Dilipics strike in such small force that none of
+their--agents?--devices?--whatever they are?--can land against our
+beaming, a world can be saved; but such cases are very few."
+
+"But this thought, 'Dilipic'?" Garlock asked, impatiently. "It is merely
+a symbol--it doesn't _mean_ anything--to me, at least. What are they?
+Where do they come from?"
+
+"No one knows anything about them," came the surprising answer. "Not
+even their physical shape--if they have any. Nor where they come from,
+or how they do what they do."
+
+"They can't be very common," Garlock pondered. "We have never heard of
+them before."
+
+"Fortunately, they are not," the Inspector agreed. "Scarcely one world
+in five hundred is ever attacked by them--this is the first Dilipic
+invasion I have seen."
+
+"Oh, you Arpalones don't die with your worlds, then?" Lola asked. She
+was badly shaken. "But I suppose the Arpales do, of course."
+
+"Practically all of the Arpales will die, of course. Most of us
+Arpalones will also die, in the battles now going on. Those of us who
+survive, however, will stay aloft until the rehabilitation fleet
+arrives, then we will continue our regular work."
+
+"Rehab?" Belle exclaimed. "You mean you can _restore_ planets so badly
+ruined that all the people die?"
+
+"Oh, yes. It is a long and difficult work, but the planet is always
+re-peopled."
+
+"Let's go down," Garlock said. "I want to get all of this on tape."
+
+They went down, over what had been one of that world's largest cities.
+The air, the stratosphere, and all nearby space were full of battling
+vessels of all shapes and sizes; ranging from the tremendous globular
+spaceships of the invaders down to the tiny, one-man jet-fighters of the
+Arpalones.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The Dilipics were using projectile weapons only--ranging in size,
+with the size of the vessels, from heavy machine guns up to
+seventy-five-millimeter quick-firing rifles. They were also launching
+thousands of guided missiles of fantastic speed and of tremendous
+explosive power.
+
+The Arpalones were not using anything solid at all. Each defending
+vessel, depending upon its type and class, carried from four up to a
+hundred or so burnished-metal reflectors some four feet in diameter;
+each with a small black device at its optical center and each pouring
+out a tight beam of highly effective energy. It was at these reflectors,
+and particularly at these tiny devices, that the small-arms fire was
+directed, and the marksmanship of the Dilipics was very good indeed.
+However, each projector was oscillating irregularly and each
+fighter-plane was taking evasive action; and, since a few bullet-holes
+in any reflector did not reduce its efficiency very much, and since the
+central mechanisms were so small and were moving so erratically, a good
+three-quarters of the Arpalonian beams were still in action.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+There was no doubt at all that those beams were highly effective.
+Invisible for the most part, whenever one struck a Dilipic ship or plane
+everything in its path flared almost instantly into vapor and the beam
+glared incandescently, blindingly white or violet or high blue--never
+anything lower than blue. Almost everything material, that is; for guns,
+ammunition, and missiles were not affected. They did not even explode.
+When whatever fabric it was that supported them was blasted away, all
+such things simply dropped; simply fell through thousands or hundreds of
+thousands of feet of air to crash unheeded upon whatever happened to be
+below.
+
+The invading task force was arranged in a whirling, swirling, almost
+cylindrical cone, more or less like an Earthly tornado. The largest
+vessels were high above the stratosphere; the smallest fighters were
+hedge-hoppingly close to ground. Each Dilipic unit seemed madly,
+suicidally determined that nothing would get through that furious wall
+to interfere with whatever it was that was coming down from space to the
+ground through--along?--the relatively quiet "eye" of the
+pseudo-hurricane.
+
+On the other hand, the Arpalones were madly, suicidally determined to
+break through that vortex wall, to get into the "eye," to wreak all
+possible damage there. Group after group after group of five
+jet-fighters each came driving in; and, occasionally, the combined
+blasts of all five made enough of opening in the wall so that the center
+fighter could get through. Once inside, each pilot stood his little,
+stubby-winged craft squarely on her tail, opened his projectors to
+absolute maximum of power and of spread, and climbed straight up the
+spout until he was shot down.
+
+And the Arpalones were winning the battle. Larger and larger gaps were
+being opened in the vortex wall; gaps which it became increasingly
+difficult for the Dilipics to fill. More and more Arpalone fighters were
+getting inside. They were lasting longer and doing more damage all the
+time. The tube was growing narrower and narrower.
+
+All four Galaxians perceived all this in seconds. Garlock weighed out
+and detonated a terrific matter-conversion bomb in the exact center of
+one of the largest vessels of the attacking fleet. It had no effect.
+Then a larger one. Then another, still heavier. Finally, at over a
+hundred megatons equivalent, he did get results--of a sort. The
+invaders' guns, ammunition, and missiles were blown out of the ship and
+scattered outward for miles in all directions; but the structure of the
+Dilipic ship itself was not harmed.
+
+Belle had been studying, analyzing, probing the things that were coming
+down through that hellish tube.
+
+"Clee!" She drove a thought. "Cut out the monkey-business with those
+damn firecrackers of yours and look here--pure, solid force, like ball
+lightning or our Op field, but entirely different--see if you can
+analyze the stuff!"
+
+"Alive?" Garlock asked, as he drove a probe into one of the things--they
+were furiously-radiating spheres some seven feet in diameter--and began
+to tune to it.
+
+"I don't know--don't think so--if they are, they're a form of life that
+no sane human being could even imagine!"
+
+"Let's see what they actually do," Garlock suggested, still trying to
+tune in with the thing, whatever it was, and still following it down.
+
+This particular force-ball happened to hit the top of a six-story
+building. It was not going very fast--fifteen or twenty miles an
+hour--but when it struck the roof it did not even slow down. Without any
+effort at all, apparently, it continued downward through the concrete
+and steel and glass of the building; and everything in its path became
+monstrously, sickeningly, revoltingly changed.
+
+"I simply can't stand any more of this," Lola gasped. "If you don't
+mind, I'm going to my room, set all the Gunther blocks it has, and bury
+my head under a pillow."
+
+"Go ahead, Brownie," James said. "This is too tough for _anybody_ to
+watch. I'd do the same, except I've got to run these cameras."
+
+Lola disappeared.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Garlock and Belle kept on studying. Neither had paid any attention at
+all to either Lola or James.
+
+Instead of the structural material it had once been, the bore that the
+thing had traversed was now full of a sparkling, bubbling, writhing,
+partly-fluid-partly-viscous, obscenely repulsive mass of something
+unknown and unknowable on Earth; a something which, Garlock now
+recalled, had been thought of by the Arpalone Inspector as "golop."
+
+As that unstoppable globe descended through office after office, it
+neither sought out people nor avoided them. Walls, doors, windows,
+ceilings, floors and rugs, office furniture and office personnel; all
+alike were absorbed into and made a part of that indescribably horrid
+brew.
+
+Nor did the track of that hellishly wanton globe remain a bore. Instead,
+it spread. That devil's brew ate into and dissolved everything it
+touched like a stream of boiling water being poured into a
+loosely-heaped pile of granulated sugar. By the time the ravening sphere
+had reached the second floor, the entire roof of the building was gone
+and the writhing, racing flood of corruption had flowed down the outer
+walls and across the street, engulfing and transforming sidewalks,
+people, pavement, poles, wires, automobiles, people-anything and
+everything it touched.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The globe went on down, through basement and sub-basement, until it
+reached solid, natural ground. Then, with its top a few inches below the
+level of natural ground, it came to a full stop and--apparently--did
+nothing at all. By this time, the ravening flood outside had eaten far
+into the lower floors of the buildings across the street, as well as
+along all four sides of the block, and tremendous masses of masonry and
+steel, their supporting structures devoured, were subsiding, crumbling,
+and crashing down into the noisome flood of golop--and were being
+transformed almost as fast as they could fall.
+
+One tremendous mass, weighing hundreds or perhaps thousands of tons,
+toppled almost as a whole; splashing the stuff in all directions for
+hundreds of yards. Wherever each splash struck, however, a new center of
+attack came into being, and the peculiarly disgusting, abhorrent
+liquidation went on.
+
+"Can you do anything with it, Clee?" Belle demanded.
+
+"Not too much--it's a mess," Garlock replied. "Besides, it wouldn't get
+us far, I don't think. It'll be more productive to analyze the beams the
+Arpalones are using to break them up, don't you think?"
+
+Then, for twenty solid minutes, the two Prime Operators worked on those
+enigmatic beams.
+
+"We can't assemble _that_ kind of stuff with our minds," Belle decided
+then.
+
+"I'll say we can't," Garlock agreed. "Ten megacycles, and cycling only
+twenty per second." He whistled raucously through his teeth. "My guess
+is it'd take four months to design and build a generator to put out that
+kind of stuff. It's worse than our Op field."
+
+"I'm not sure I could _ever_ design one," Belle said, thoughtfully, "but
+of course I'm not the engineer you are...." Then, she could not help
+adding, "... yet."
+
+"No, and you never will be," he said, flatly.
+
+"No? That's what _you_ think!" Even in such circumstances as those,
+Belle Bellamy was eager to carry on her warfare with her Project Chief.
+
+"That's _exactly_ what I think--and I'm so close to knowing it for a
+fact that the difference is indetectible."
+
+Belle almost--but not quite--blew up. "Well, what _are_ you going to
+do?"
+
+"Unless and until I can figure out something effective to do, I'm not
+going to try to do anything. If you, with your vaunted and flaunted
+belief in the inherent superiority of the female over the male, can dope
+out something useful before I do, I'll eat crow and help you do it. As
+for arguing with you, I'm all done for the moment."
+
+Belle gritted her teeth, flounced away, and plumped herself down into a
+chair. She shut her eyes and put every iota of her mind to work on the
+problem of finding something--_anything_--that could be done to help
+this doomed world and to show that big, overbearing jerk of a Garlock
+that she was a better man than he was. Which of the two objectives
+loomed more important, she herself could not have told, to save her
+life.
+
+And Garlock looked around. The air and the sky over the now-vanished
+city were both clear of Dilipic craft. The surviving Arpalone fighters
+and other small craft were making no attempt to land, anywhere on the
+world's surface. Instead, they were flying upward toward, and were being
+drawn one by one into the bowels of, huge Arpalonian space-freighters.
+When each such vessel was filled to capacity, it flew upward and set
+itself into a more-or-less-circular orbit around the planet.
+
+Around and around and around the ruined world the _Pleiades_ went;
+recording, observing, charting. Fifty-eight of those atrocious Dilipic
+vortices had been driven to ground. Every large land-mass surrounded by
+large bodies of water had been struck once, and only once; from the
+tremendous area of the largest continent down to the relatively tiny
+expanses of the largest islands. One land-mass, one vortex. One only.
+
+"What d'you suppose _that_ means?" James asked. "Afraid of water?"
+
+"Damfino. Could be. Let's check ... mountains, too. Skip us back to
+where we started--oceans and mountains both fairly close there."
+
+The city had disappeared long since; for hundreds of almost-level square
+miles there extended a sparkling, seething, writhing expanse of--of
+what? The edge of that devouring flood had almost reached the
+foot-hills, and over that gnawing, dissolving edge the _Pleiades_
+paused.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Small lakes and ordinary rivers bothered the golop very little if at
+all. There was perhaps a slightly increased sparkling, a slight
+stiffening, a little darkening, some freezing and breaking off of solid
+blocks; but the thing's forward motion was not noticeably slowed down.
+It drank a fairly large river and a lake one mile wide by ten miles long
+while the two men watched.
+
+The golop made no attempt to climb either foot-hills or mountains. It
+leveled them. It ate into their bases at its own level; the undermined
+masses, small and large, collapsed into the foul, corrosive semi-liquid
+and were consumed. Nor was there much raising of the golop's level, even
+when the highest mountains were reached and miles-high masses of solid
+rock broke off and toppled. There was some raising, of course; but the
+stuff was fluid enough so that its slope was not apparent to the eye.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Then the _Pleiades_ went back, over the place where the city had been
+and on to what had once been an ocean beach. The original wave of
+degradation had reached that shore long since, had attacked its sands
+out into deep water, and there it had been stopped. The corrupt flood
+was now being reinforced, however, by an ever-rising tide of material
+that had once been mountains. And the slope, which had not been even
+noticeable at the mountains or over the plain, was here very evident.
+
+As the rapidly-flowing golop struck water, the water shivered, came to a
+weirdly unforgettable cold boil, and exploded into drops and streamers
+and jagged-edged chunks of something that was neither water nor land; or
+rock or soil or sand or Satan's unholy brew. Nevertheless, the water
+won. There was _so_ much of it! Each barrel of water that was destroyed
+was replaced instantly and enthusiastically; with no lowering of level
+or of pressure.
+
+And when water struck the golop, the golop also shivered violently, then
+sparkled even more violently, then stopped sparkling and turned dark,
+then froze solid. The frozen surface, however, was neither thick enough
+nor strong enough to form an effective wall.
+
+Again and again the wave of golop built up high enough to crack and to
+shatter that feeble wall; again and again golop and water met in
+ultimately furious, if insensate, battle. Inch by inch the ocean's
+shoreline was driven backward toward ocean's depths; but every inch the
+ocean lost was to its tactical advantage, since the advancing front was
+by now practically filled with hard, solid, dead blocks of its own
+substance which it could neither assimilate nor remove from the scene of
+conflict.
+
+Hence the wall grew ever thicker and solider; the advance became slower
+and slower.
+
+Then, finally, ocean waves of ever-increasing height and violence rolled
+in against the new-formed shore. What caused those tremendous
+waves--earthquakes, perhaps, due to the shifting of the mountains'
+masses?--no Tellurian ever surely knew. Whatever the cause, however,
+those waves operated to pin the golop down. Whenever and wherever one of
+those monstrous waves whitecapped in, hurling hundreds of thousands of
+tons of water inland for hundreds of yards, the battle-front stabilized
+then and there.
+
+All over that world the story was the same. Wherever there was water
+enough, the water won. And the total quantity of water in that world's
+oceans remained practically unchanged.
+
+"Good. A lot of people escaped," James said, expelling a long-held
+breath. "Everybody who lives on or could be flown to all the islands
+smaller than the biggest ones ... if they can find enough to eat and if
+the air isn't poisoned."
+
+"Air's okay--so's the water--and they'll get food," Garlock said. "The
+Arpalones will handle things, including distribution. What I'm thinking
+about is how they're going to rehabilitate it. That, as an engineering
+project, is a feat to end all feats."
+
+"_Brother!_ You can play _that_ in spades!" James agreed. "Except that
+it'll take too many months before they can even start the job, I'd like
+to stick around and see how they go about it. How does this kind of
+stuff fit into that theory you're not admitting is a theory?"
+
+"Not worth a damn. However, it's a datum--and, as I've said before and
+may say again, if we can get _enough_ data we can build a theory out of
+it."
+
+Then it began to rain. For many minutes the clouds had been piling
+up--black, far-flung, thick and high. Immense bolts of lightning flashed
+and snapped and crackled; thunder crashed and rolled and rumbled; rain
+fell, and continued to fall, like a cloud-burst in Colorado. And shortly
+thereafter--first by square feet and then by acres and then by square
+miles--the surface of the golop began to die. To die, that is, if it had
+ever been even partially alive. At least it stopped sparkling, darkened,
+and froze into thick skins; which broke up into blocks; which in turn
+sank--thus exposing an ever-renewed surface to the driving, pelting,
+relentlessly cascading rain.
+
+"Well, I don't know that there's anything to hold us here any longer,"
+Garlock said, finally. "Shall we go?"
+
+They went; but it was several days before any of the wanderers really
+felt like smiling; and Lola did not recover from her depression for over
+a week.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5
+
+
+Supper was over, but the four were still at the table, sipping coffee
+and smoking. During a pause in the casual conversation, James suddenly
+straightened up.
+
+"I want an official decision, Clee," he said, abruptly. "While we're out
+of touch with United Worlds you, as captain of the ship and director of
+the project, are Boss, with a capital B. The Lord of Justice, High and
+Low. The Works. Check?"
+
+"On paper, yes; with my decisions subject to appeal and/or review when
+we get back to Base. In practice, I didn't expect to have to make any
+very gravid rulings."
+
+"I never thought you'd have to, either, but Belle fed me one with a bone
+in it, so...."
+
+"Just a minute. How official do you want it? Full formal, screens down
+and recorded?"
+
+"Not unless we have to. Let's explore it first. As of right now, are we
+under the Code or not?"
+
+"Of course we are."
+
+"Not necessarily," Belle put in, sharply. "Not slavishly to the letter.
+We're so far away and our chance of getting back is so slight that it
+should be interpreted in the light of common sense."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Garlock stared at Belle and she stared back, her eyes as clear and
+innocent as a baby's.
+
+"The Code is neither long enough nor complicated enough to require
+interpretation," Garlock stated, finally. "It either applies in full and
+exactly or not at all. My ruling is that the Code applies, strictly,
+until I declare the state of Ultimate Contingency. Are you ready, Belle,
+to abandon the project, find an uninhabited Tellurian world, and begin
+to populate it?"
+
+"Well, not quite, perhaps."
+
+"Yes or no, please."
+
+"No."
+
+"We are under the Code, then. Go ahead, Jim."
+
+"I broke pairing with Belle and she refused to confirm."
+
+"Certainly I refused. He had no reason to break with me."
+
+"I had plenty of reason!" James snapped. "I'm fed up to here--" he drew
+his right forefinger across his forehead, "--with making so-called love
+to a woman who can never think of anything except cutting another man's
+throat. She's a heartless conniver."
+
+"You both know that reasons are unnecessary and are not discussed in
+public," Garlock said, flatly. "Now as to confirmation of a break. In
+simple pairing there is no marriage, no registration, no declaration of
+intent or of permanence. Thus, legally or logically, there is no
+obligation. Morally, however, there is always some obligation. Hence, as
+a matter of urbanity, in cases where no injury exists except as concerns
+chastity, the Code calls for agreement without rancor. If either party
+persists in refusal to confirm, and cannot show injury, that party's
+behavior is declared inurbane. Confirmation is declared and the
+offending party is ignored."
+
+"Just how would you go about ignoring Prime Operator Belle Bellamy?"
+
+"You've got a point there, Jim. However, she hasn't persisted very long
+in her refusal. As a matter of information, Belle, why did you take Jim
+in the first place?"
+
+"I didn't." She shrugged her shoulders. "It was pure chance. You saw me
+flip the tenth-piece."
+
+"Am I to ignore the fact that you are one of the best telekineticists
+living?"
+
+"I don't _have_ to control things unless I want to!" She stamped her
+foot. "Can't you conceive of me flipping a coin honestly?"
+
+"No. However, since this is not a screens-down inquiry, I'll give
+you--orally, at least--the benefit of the doubt. The next step, I
+presume, is for Lola to break with me. Lola?"
+
+"Well ... I hate to say this, Clee.... I thought that mutual consent
+would be better, but...." Lola paused, flushing in embarrassment.
+
+"She feels," James said, steadily, "as I do, that there should be much
+more to the sexual relation than merely releasing the biological
+tensions of two pieces of human machinery. That's hardly civilized."
+
+"I confirm, Lola, of course," Garlock said; then went on, partly
+thinking aloud, partly addressing the group at large. "Ha. Reasons
+again, and very well put--not off the cuff. Evasions. Flat lies.
+Something very unfunny here--as queer as a nine-credit bill. In sum,
+indefensible actions based upon unwarranted conclusions drawn from
+erroneous assumptions. The pattern is not clear ... but I won't order
+screens down until I have to ... if the reason had come from Belle...."
+
+"_Me_?" Belle flared. "Why from me?"
+
+"... instead of Jim...." Ignoring Belle's interruption, Garlock frowned
+in thought. After a minute or so his face cleared.
+
+"Jim," he said, sharply, "have you been consciously aware of Belle's
+manipulation?"
+
+"Why, no, of course not. She _couldn't_!"
+
+"That's _really_ a brainstorm, Clee," Belle sneered. "You'd better turn
+yourself in for an overhaul."
+
+"Nice scheme, Belle," Garlock said. "I underestimated--at least, didn't
+consider carefully enough--your power; and overestimated your ethics and
+urbanity."
+
+"What are you talking about, Chief?" James asked. "You lost me ten
+parsecs back."
+
+"Just this. Belle is behind this whole operation; working under a
+perfectly beautiful smokescreen."
+
+"I'm afraid the boss is cracking up, kids," Belle said. "Listen to him,
+if you like, but use your own judgment."
+
+"But nobody could make Jim and me really love each other," Lola argued,
+"and we really do. It's real love."
+
+"Admitted," Garlock said. "But she could have helped it along; and she's
+all set to take every possible advantage of the situation thus created."
+
+"I still don't see it," James objected. "Why, she wouldn't even confirm
+our break. She hasn't yet."
+
+"She would have, at the exactly correct psychological moment; after
+holding out long enough to put you both under obligation to her. There
+would have, also, been certain strings attached. Her plan was, after
+switching the pairings...."
+
+"I wouldn't pair with you," Belle broke in viciously, "if you were the
+only man left in the macrocosmic universe!"
+
+"Part of the smokescreen," Garlock explained. "The re-pairings would
+give her two lines of attack on me, to be used simultaneously. First, to
+work on me in bed...."
+
+"See?" Belle interrupted. "He doesn't think I've got any heart at all."
+
+"Oh, you may have one, but it's no softer than your head, and that could
+scratch a diamond. Second, to work on you two, with no holds barred, to
+form a three-unit team against me. Her charges that I am losing my grip
+made a very smart opening lead."
+
+"Do you think I'd _let_ her work on me?" James demanded.
+
+"She's a Prime--you wouldn't know anything about it. However, nothing
+will happen. Nor am I going to let her confuse the real issue. Belle,
+you are either inside the Code or a free agent outside it. Which?"
+
+"I have made my position clear."
+
+"To me, yes. To Jim and Lola, decidedly unclear."
+
+"Unclear, then. You can _not_ coerce me!"
+
+"If you follow the Code, no. If you don't, I can and will. If you make
+any kind of a pass at Jim James from now on, I'll lock you into your
+room with a Gunther block."
+
+"_You wouldn't dare_!" she breathed. "Besides, you couldn't, not to
+another prime."
+
+"Don't bet on it," he advised.
+
+After a full minute of silence Garlock's attitude changed suddenly to
+his usual one of casual friendliness. "Why not let this one drop right
+here, Belle? I can marry them, with all the official trimmings. Why not
+let 'em really enjoy their honeymoon?"
+
+"Why not?" Belle's manner changed to match Garlock's and she smiled
+warmly. "I confirm, Jim. You two are really serious, aren't you?
+Marriage, declarations, registration, and everything? I wish--I
+sincerely and really wish you--every happiness possible."
+
+"We really _are_ serious," James said, putting his arm around Lola's
+waist. "And you won't ... won't interfere?"
+
+"Not a bit. I couldn't, now, even if I wanted to." Belle grinned wryly.
+"You see, you kids missed the main feature of the show, since you can't
+know exactly what a Prime Operator is. Especially you can't know what
+Cleander Simmsworth Garlock really is--he's an out-and-out tiger on
+wheels. The three of us could have smacked him bow-legged, but of course
+all chance of that blew up just now. So if you two want to take the big
+jump you can do it with my blessing as well as Clee's. I'll clear the
+table."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+That small chore taken care of--a quick folding-up of everything into
+the tablecloth and a heave into the chute did it--Belle set up the
+recorder.
+
+"Are you both fully certain that you want the full treatment?" Garlock
+asked.
+
+Both were certain, and Garlock read the brief but solemn marriage lines.
+
+As the newlyweds left the room, Belle turned to Garlock with a quizzical
+smile. "Are you going to ask me to pair with you, Clee?"
+
+"I certainly am." He grinned back at her. "I owe you that much revenge,
+at least. But seriously, I'd like it immensely and we fit like Grace and
+Poise. Look at that mirror. Did you ever see a better-matched couple?
+Will you give me a try, Belle?"
+
+"I will not," she said, emphatically. I'll take back what I said a while
+ago--if you were really the only man left, I would--but as it is, the
+answer is a definite, resounding, and final '_No_'."
+
+"'Definite' and 'resounding,' yes. 'Final,' I won't accept. I'll wait."
+
+"You'll wait a long time, Buster. My door will be locked from now on.
+Good night, Doctor Garlock, I'm going to bed."
+
+"So am I." He walked with her along the corridor to their rooms, the
+doors of which were opposite each other. "In view of the Code, locking
+your door is a meaningless gesture. Mine will remain unlocked. I invite
+you to come in whenever you like, and assure you formally that no such
+entry will be regarded as an invasion of privacy."
+
+Without a word she went into her room and closed the door with a
+firmness just short of violence. Her lock clicked sharply.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The next morning, after breakfast, James followed Garlock into his room
+and shut the door.
+
+"Clee, I want to tell you.... I don't want to get sloppy but...."
+
+"Want to lep it?"
+
+"Hell, no!"
+
+"It's about Brownie, then."
+
+"Uh-huh. I've always liked you immensely. Admired you. Hero, sort
+of...."
+
+"Yeah. I quote. 'Harder than Pharaoh's heart.' 'Colder than frozen
+helium,' and all the rest. But this thing about Brownie...." He reached
+out; two hard hands met in a crushing grip. "How could you possibly lay
+off? Just the strain, if nothing else."
+
+"A little strain doesn't hurt a man unless he lets it. I've done without
+for months at a stretch, with it running around loose on all sides of
+me."
+
+"But she's so ... she's got _everything_!"
+
+"There speaketh the ensorcelled bridegroom. For my taste, she hasn't.
+She told you, I suppose, when explaining a certain fact, that I told her
+she wasn't my type?"
+
+"Yes, but...."
+
+"She still isn't. She's a very fine person, with a very fine
+personality. She is one of the two most nearly perfect young women of
+her race. Her face is beautiful. Her body is an artist's dream. Her mind
+is one of the very best. Besides all that, she's a very good egg and a
+mighty tasty dish. But put yourself in my place.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Here's this paragon we have just described. She has extremely high
+ideals and she's a virgin; never really aroused. Also, she's so full of
+this sickening crap they've been pouring into us--propaganda,
+rocket-oil, prop-wash, and psychological gobbledygook--that it's running
+out of her ears. She's so stuffed with it that she's going to pair with
+you, ideals and virginity be damned, even if it kills her; even though
+she's shaking, clear down to her shoes--scared yellow. Also, she is and
+always will be scared half to death of you--she thinks you're some kind
+of robot. She's a starry-eyed, soft-headed sissy. A sapadilla. A sucker
+for a smooth line of balloon-juice and flapdoodle. No spine; no bottom.
+A gutless doll-baby. Strictly a pet--you could no more love her, ever,
+than you could a half-grown kitten...."
+
+"That's a _hell_ of a picture!" James broke in savagely. "Even with your
+cold-blooded reputation."
+
+"People in love can't be objective, is all. If I saw her through the
+same set of filters you do, I'd be in love with her, too. So let's see
+if you can use your brain instead of your outraged sensibilities to
+answer a hypothetical question. If the foregoing were true, what would
+_you_ do, Junior?"
+
+"I'd pass, I guess. I'd have to, if I wanted to look at myself in the
+mirror next morning. But that's such an _ungodly_ cockeyed picture,
+Clee.... But if that's actually your picture of Brownie--and you're no
+part of a liar--just what kind of a woman could you love? If any?"
+
+"Belle."
+
+"_Belle_! Belle _Bellamy_? Hell's flaming furies! That iceberg? That
+egomaniac? That Jezebel? She's the hardest-boiled babe that ever went
+unhung."
+
+"Right, on all counts. Also she's crooked and treacherous. She's a
+ground-and-lofty liar by instinct and training. I could add a lot more.
+But she's got brains, ability, and guts--guts enough to supply the
+Women's Army Corps. She's got the spine and the bottom and the drive. So
+just imagine her thawed out and really shoveling on the coal--blasting
+wide open on all forty torches. Back to back with you when you're
+surrounded; she wouldn't cave and she wouldn't give. Or wing and
+wing--holding the beam come hell or space-warps. Roll that one around on
+your tongue, Jim, and give your taste-buds a treat."
+
+"Well, maybe ... if I've got that much imagination ... that's a tough
+blueprint to read. I can't quite visualize the finished article.
+However, you're as hard as she is--even harder. You've got more of what
+it takes. Maybe _you_ can make a Christian out of her. If so, you might
+have something; but I'm damned if I can see exactly what. Whatever it
+turned out to be, I wouldn't care for any part of it. You could have it
+all."
+
+"Exactly; and you can have your Brownie."
+
+"I'm beginning to see. I didn't think you had anything like that in your
+chilled-steel carcass. And I want to apolo...."
+
+"Don't do it, boy. If the time ever comes when _you_ go so soft on me as
+to quit laying it on the line and start sifting out your language...."
+Garlock paused. For one of the very few times in his life, he was at a
+loss for words. He thrust his hands into his pockets and shrugged his
+shoulders. "Hell, I don't want to get maudlin, either ... so ... well,
+how many men, do you think, could have gone the route with me on this
+hellish job without killing me or me killing them?"
+
+"Oh, that's not...."
+
+"Lay it on the line, Jim. I know what I am. Just one. You. One man in
+six thousand million. Okay; how many women could live with me for a year
+without going crazy?"
+
+"Lots of 'em; but, being masochists, they'd probably drive _you_ nuts.
+And you can't stand 'stupidity'; which, by definition, lets _everybody_
+out. Nope, it's a tough order to fill."
+
+"Check. She'd have to be strong enough and hard enough not to be afraid
+of me, by any trace. Able and eager to stand up to me and slug it out.
+To pin my ears back flat against my skull whenever she thinks I'm off
+the beam. Do it with skill and precision and nicety, with power and
+control; yet without doing herself any damage and without changing her
+basic feeling for me. In short, a female Jim James Nine."
+
+"Huh? Hell's blowtorches! You think _I'm_ like Belle Bellamy?"
+
+"Not by nine thousand megacycles. Like Belle Bellamy could be and should
+be. Like I hope she will be. I'd have to give, too, of course--maybe we
+can make Christians out of each other. It's quite a dream, I admit, but
+it'll be Belle or nobody. But I'm not used to slopping over this
+way--let's go."
+
+"I'm glad you did, big fellow--once in a lifetime is good for the soul.
+I'd say you were in love with her right now--except that if you were,
+you couldn't possibly dissect her like a specimen on the table, the way
+you've just been doing. Are you or aren't you?"
+
+"I'll be damned if I know. You and Brownie believe that the poets'
+concept of love is valid. In fact, you make a case for its validity. I
+never have, and don't now ... but under certain conditions ... I simply
+don't know. Ask me again sometime; say in about a month?"
+
+"That's the surest thing you know. Oh, _brother! This_ is a thing I'm
+going to watch with my eyes out on stalks!"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+For the next week, Belle locked her door every night. For another few
+nights, she did not lock it. Then, one night, she left it ajar. The
+following evening, the two again walked together to their doors.
+
+"I left my door open last night."
+
+"I know you did."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And have you scream to high heaven that I opened it? And put me on a
+tape for willful inurbanity? For deliberate intersexual invasion of
+privacy?"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Blast and damn! You know perfectly well, Clee Garlock, I wouldn't pull
+such a dirty, lousy trick as that."
+
+"Maybe I should apologize, then, but as a matter of fact I have no idea
+whatever as to what you wouldn't do." He stared at her, his face hard in
+thought. "As you probably know, I have had very little to do with women.
+That little has always been on a logical level. You are such a
+completely new experience that I can't figure out what makes you tick."
+
+"So you're afraid of me," she sneered. "Is that it?"
+
+"Close enough."
+
+"And I suppose it's you that cartoonist what's-his-name is using as a
+model for 'Timorous Timmy'?"
+
+"Since you've guessed it, yes."
+
+"You ... you _weasel_!" She took three quick steps up the corridor, then
+back. "You say my logic is cockeyed. What system are you using now?"
+
+"I'm trying to develop one to match yours."
+
+"Oh ... I invited that one, I guess, since I know you aren't afraid of
+God, man, woman, or devil ... and you're big enough so you don't have to
+be proving it all the time." She laughed suddenly, her face softening
+markedly. "Listen, you big lug. Why don't you ever knock me into an
+outside loop? If I were you and you were me, I'd've busted me loose from
+my front teeth long ago."
+
+"I'm not sure whether I know better or am afraid to. Anyway, I'm not
+rocking any boat so far from shore."
+
+"Says you. You're wonderful, Clee--simply priceless. Do you know you're
+the only man I ever met that I couldn't make fall for me like a rock
+falling down a cliff? And that the falling is altogether too apt to be
+the other way?"
+
+"The first, I have suspected. The second is chemically-pure rocket-oil."
+
+"I _hope_ it is.... I wish I could be as certain of it as you are....
+You see, Clee, I really expected you to come in, last night, and there
+really _wasn't_ any bone in it. Surely, you don't think I'm going to
+_invite_ you into my room, do you?"
+
+"I can't see why not. However, since no valid system of logic seems to
+apply, I accept your decision as a fact. By the same reasoning--however
+invalid--if I ask you again you will again refuse. So all that's left, I
+guess, is for me to drag you into my room by force."
+
+He put his left arm around her and applied a tiny pressure against her
+side; under which she began to move slowly toward his door.
+
+"You admit that you're using force?" she asked. Her face was unreadable;
+her mental block was at its fullest force. "That I'm being coerced?
+Definitely?"
+
+"Definitely," he agreed. "At least ten dynes of sheer brute force. Not
+enough to affect a tape, but enough, I hope, to affect you. If it isn't,
+I'll use more."
+
+"Oh, ten dynes is enough. Just so it's force."
+
+She raised her face toward his and threw both arms around his neck. His
+right arm went into action with his left, and Cleander Garlock forgot
+all about dynes and tapes.
+
+After a time she disengaged one arm; reached out; opened his door. He
+gathered her up and, lips still locked to lips, carried her over the
+threshold.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+A few jumps later they met their first really old Arpalone. This
+Inspector was so old that his skin, instead of the usual bright, clear
+cobalt blue, was dull and tending toward gray. The old fellow was
+strangely garrulous, for a Guardian; he wanted them to pause a while and
+gossip.
+
+"Yes, I am lonesome," he admitted. "It has been a long time since I
+exchanged thoughts with anyone. You see, nobody has visited this
+planet--Groobe, its name is--since almost all our humanity was killed, a
+few periods ago...."
+
+"Killed? How?" Garlock asked sharply. "Not Dilipic?"
+
+"Oh, you have seen them? I never have, myself. No, nothing nearly that
+bad. Merely the Ozobes. The world itself was scarcely harmed at all.
+Rehabilitation will be a simple matter, so there's no real reason why
+some of those Engineers...."
+
+"The beast!" Lola shot a tight-beam thought at her husband. "Who cares
+anything about the rock and dirt of a _planet_? It's the people that
+count and his are dead and he's perfectly _complaisant_ about it--just
+_lonesome_!"
+
+"Don't let it throw you, pet," James soothed. "He's an Arpalone, you
+know; not a sociological anthropologist."
+
+"... shouldn't come out here and spend a few hours once in a while, but
+they don't. Too busy with their own business, they say. But while you
+are physically human, mentally you are not. You're all too ... too ... I
+can't put my thought exactly on it, but ... more as though you were
+human fighters, if such a thing could be possible."
+
+"We are fighters. Where we come from, most human beings are fighters."
+
+"Oh? I never heard of such a thing. Where can you be from?"
+
+This took much explanation, since the Arpalone had never heard of
+inter-galactic travel. "You are willing, then, to fight side by side
+with us Arpalones against the enemies of humanity? You have actually
+done so, at times, and won?"
+
+"We certainly have."
+
+"I am glad. I am expecting a call for help any time now. Will you please
+give me enough of your mental pattern, Doctor Garlock, so that I can
+call you in case of need? Thank you."
+
+"What makes you think you're going to get an S.O.S. so soon? Where
+from?"
+
+"Because these Ozobe invasions come in cycles, years apart, but there
+are always several planets attacked at very nearly the same time. We
+were the first, this time; so there will be one or two others very
+shortly."
+
+"Do they always ... kill all the people?" Lola asked.
+
+"Oh, no. Scarcely half of the time. Depends on how many fighters the
+planet has, and how much outside help can get there soon enough."
+
+"Your call could come from any of the other solar systems in this
+neighborhood, then?" Garlock asked.
+
+"Yes. There are fifteen inhabited planets within about six light-years
+of us, and we form a close-knit group."
+
+"What are these Ozobes?"
+
+"Animals. Warm-blooded, but egg-layers, not mammals. Like this," and the
+Inspector spread in their minds a picture of a creature somewhat like
+the flying tigers of Hodell, except that the color was black, shading
+off to iridescent green at the extremities. Also, it was armed with a
+short and heavy, but very sharp, sting.
+
+"They say that they come from space, but I don't believe it," the old
+fellow went on. "What would a warm-blood be doing out in space? Besides,
+they couldn't find anybody to lay their eggs in out there. No, sir, I
+think they live right here on Groobe somewhere, maybe holed up in caves
+or something for ten or thirteen years ... but that wouldn't make sense,
+either, would it? I just don't know...."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Garlock finally broke away from the lonesome Inspector and the
+_Pleiades_ started down.
+
+"That's the most utterly _horrible_ thing I ever heard of in my life!"
+Lola burst out. "Like wasps--only worse--_people_ aren't bugs! Why don't
+all the planets get together and develop something to kill every Ozobe
+in every system of the group?"
+
+"That one has got too many bones in it for me to answer," James said.
+
+"I'm going to get hold of that Engineer as soon as we land," Lola said,
+darkly, "and stick a pin into him."
+
+They found the Engineering Office easily enough, in a snug camp well
+outside a large city. They grounded the starship and went out on foot;
+enjoying contact with solid ground. The Head Engineer was an Arpalone,
+too--Engineers were not a separate race, but dwellers on a planet of
+extremely high technology--but he did know anything about space-drives.
+His specialty was rehabilitation; he was top boss of a rehab crew....
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Then Lola pushed Garlock aside. Yes, the Ozobes came from space. He was
+sure of it. Yes, they laid eggs in human bodies. Yes, they probably
+stayed alive quite a while--or might, except for the rehab crew. No, he
+didn't _know_ what would hatch out--he'd never let one live that long,
+but what the hell else _could_ hatch except Ozobes? No, not one. Not one
+single damn one. If just one ever did, on any world where he bossed the
+job, he'd lose his job as boss and go to the mines for half a year....
+
+"Ridiculous!" Lola snapped. "If Ozobes hatched, they couldn't possibly
+have come from space. If they _did_ come from space, the adult form
+would have to be something able to get back into space, some way or
+other. _That_ is simple elementary biology. Don't you see that?"
+
+He didn't see it. He didn't give a damn, either. It was none of his
+business; he was a rehab man.
+
+Lola ran back to the ship in disgust.
+
+"Something else is even more ridiculous, and _is_ your business," James
+told the Head Engineer. "Garlock and I are both engineers--top ones. We
+know definitely that a one-hundred-percent clean-up on such a job as
+this--millions--simply can't be done. Ever. Under any conditions. Are
+you lying in your teeth or are you dumb enough to believe it yourself?"
+
+"Neither one," the Engineer insisted, stubbornly. "I've wondered,
+myself, at how I could get 'em all, but I always do--every time so far.
+That's why they give me the big job. I'm good at it."
+
+"Oh--Lola's right, Jim," Garlock said. "It's the adult form that
+hatches; something so different they don't even recognize it. Something
+able to get into space. Enough survivors to produce the next
+generation."
+
+"Sure. I'll tell Brownie--she'll be tickled."
+
+"She'll be more than tickled--she'll want to hunt up somebody around
+here with three brain cells working and give 'em an earful." Then, to
+the Engineer, "Do you know how they rehab a planet that's been leveled
+flat by the golop?"
+
+"You've _seen_ one? I never have, but of course I've studied it. Slow,
+but not too difficult. After killing, the stuff weathers down in a few
+years--wonderful soil it makes--what makes it slow is that you have to
+wait fifty or a hundred years for the mountains to get built up again
+and for the earthquakes to quit...."
+
+"Excuse me, please--I've got a call--we have to leave, right now."
+
+The call was from the Inspector. The nearest planet, Clamer, was being
+invaded by the Ozobes and needed all the help they could get.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+In seconds the _Pleiades_ was at the Port of Entry.
+
+"Where is this Clamer?" Garlock asked.
+
+The Inspector pointed a thought; all four followed it.
+
+"Let's go, Jim. Maybe...."
+
+"Just a minute!" Lola snapped. She was breathing hard, her eyes were
+almost shooting sparks as she turned to the old Arpalone and drove a
+thought so forcibly that he winced.
+
+"Do you so-called 'Guardians of Humanity' care at all about the humanity
+you're supposed to be protecting?" she demanded viciously, the thought
+boring in and twisting, "or are you just loafing on the job and doing as
+little as you possibly can without getting fired?"
+
+Belle and Garlock looked at each other and grinned. James was surprised
+and shocked. This woman blowing her top was no Brownie Montandon any of
+them knew.
+
+"We do everything we possibly can," the Inspector was not only shocked,
+but injured and abused. "If there's any one possible thing we haven't
+done, even the tiniest...."
+
+"There's plenty!" she snapped. "Plain, dumb stupidity, then, it must be.
+There must be _somebody_ around here who has been at least exposed to
+elementary biology! You should have exterminated these Ozobe vermin ages
+ago. All you have to do is find out what its life cycle is. How many
+stages and what they are. How the adults get into space and where they
+go," and she went on, in flashing thoughts, to explain in full detail.
+
+"Are you smart enough to understand that?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Your thought may be the truth, at that."
+
+"And are you interested enough to find out whose business it would be,
+and follow through on it?"
+
+"Yes, of course. If it works, I'll be quite famous for suggesting it.
+I'll give you part of the credit...."
+
+"Keep the credit--just see to it that it gets _done_!" She whirled on
+James. "This loss of human life is so _appallingly_ unnecessary! This
+time we're going to Clamer, and nowhere else. Push the button, Jim."
+
+"All I can do is set up for it, pet. Whether we...."
+
+"We'll get there!" she blazed. "It's high time we got a break. _Punch_
+it! _This_ time the ship's going to _Clamer_, if we have to all get out
+and _push_ it there! Now punch that button!"
+
+James pushed the button, glanced into his scanner, and froze; eyes
+staring. He did not even whistle. Belle, however, did; with
+ear-shattering volume. Garlock's mouth fell open in the biggest surprise
+of his life. They were in the same galaxy!
+
+All three had studied charts of nebular configurations so long and so
+intensely that recognition of a full-sphere identity was automatic and
+instantaneous.
+
+Lola, head buried in scanner, had already checked in with the Port
+Inspector.
+
+"It _is_ Clamer!" she shrieked aloud. "I _told_ you it was time for our
+luck to change, if we pulled hard enough! They are being invaded by
+Ozobes and they did call for help and they didn't think we could
+possibly get here this fast and we don't need to be inspected because
+we're compatible or we couldn't have landed on Groobe!"
+
+For five long minutes Garlock held the starship motionless while he
+studied the entire situation. Then he drove a probe through the mental
+shield of the general in charge of the whole defense operation.
+
+"Battle-Cruiser _Pleiades_, Captain Garlock commanding, reporting for
+duty in response to your S.O.S. received on Groobe."
+
+The general, furiously busy as he was, dropped all other business. "But
+you're _human_! You can't fight!"
+
+"Watch us. You don't know, apparently, that the Ozobe bases are on the
+far side of your moon. They're bringing their fighters in most of the
+way in transports."
+
+"Why, they can't be! They're coming in from all directions from deep
+space!"
+
+"That's what they want you to think. They're built to stand many hours
+of zero pressure and almost absolute zero cold. Question: if we destroy
+all their transport, say in three hours, can you handle all the fighters
+who will be in the air or in nearby space at that time?"
+
+"Very easily. They've hardly started yet. I appoint you Admiral-pro-tem
+Garlock, in command of Space Operations, and will refer to you any other
+space-fighters who may come. I thank you, sir. Good luck."
+
+The general returned his attention to his boiling office. His mind was
+seething with questions as to what these not-human beings were, how or
+if they knew so much, and so on; but he forced them out of his mind and
+went, fast and efficient, back to work. James shot the _Pleiades_ up to
+within a thousand miles or so of the moon.
+
+"How long does it take to learn this bombing business, Jim?" Lola asked.
+
+"About fifteen seconds. All you have to do is _want_ to. Do you,
+really?"
+
+"I really do. If I don't do something to help these people," it did not
+occur to her that she had already done a tremendous job, "I'll never
+forgive myself."
+
+James showed her; and, much to her surprise, she found it very easy to
+do.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The vessels transporting the invading forces were huge, spherical shells
+equipped with short-range drives--and with nothing else. No
+accommodations, no facilities, no food, no water, not even any air. Each
+transport, when filled to the bursting-point with as-yet-docile cargo,
+darted away; swinging around to approach Clamer from some
+previously-assigned direction. It did not, however, approach the
+planet's surface. At about two thousand miles out, great ports opened
+and the load was dumped out into space, to fall the rest of the way by
+gravity. Then the empty shell, with only its one pilot aboard, rushed
+back for another load.
+
+"How heavy shots, Clee?" James asked. He and Lola were getting into
+their scanners. "Wouldn't take as much as a kiloton equivalent, would
+it?"
+
+"Half a kilo is plenty, but no use being too fussy about precision out
+here."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Garlock and Belle were already bombing; James and Lola began. Slow and
+awkward at first, Lola soon picked up the technique and was firing blast
+for blast with the others. No more loaded transport vessels left the
+moon. No empty one, returning toward the moon, reached there. In much
+less than the three hours Garlock had mentioned, every Ozobian transport
+craft had been destroyed.
+
+"And now the real job begins," Garlock said, as James dropped the
+starship down to within a few miles of the moon's surface.
+
+That surface was cratered and jagged, exactly like that of the half
+always facing Clamer. No sign of activity could be seen by eye, nor
+anything unusual. Even the immense trap-doors, all closed now, matched
+exactly their surroundings. Underground, however, activity was violently
+intense; and, now, confused in the extreme.
+
+"Why, there isn't a single adult anywhere!" Lola exclaimed. "I thought
+the whole place would be full of 'em!"
+
+"So did I," Belle said. "However, by hindsight, it's plain enough. Their
+job done, they were killed and eaten. Last meal, perhaps."
+
+"I'm afraid so. Whatever they were, they had hands and brains. Just
+_look_ at those shops and machines!"
+
+"What do we do, boss?" James asked. "Run a search pattern first?"
+
+"We'll have to, I guess, before we can lay the job out."
+
+It was run and Garlock frowned in thought. "Almost half the moon
+covered--honeycombed. We'll have to fine-tooth it. Around the periphery
+first, then spiral into the center. This moon isn't very big, but even
+so this is going to be a hell of a long job. Any suggestions, anybody?
+Jim?"
+
+"The only way, I guess. You can't do it hit-or-miss. I'm _damn_ glad
+we've got plenty of stuff in our Op field and plenty of hydride for the
+engines. The horses will all know they've been at work before they get
+the field filled up again."
+
+"So will you, Junior, believe me.... Ready, all? Start blasting."
+
+Then, for three hours, the _Pleiades_ moved slowly--for her--along a
+plotted and automatically-controlled course. It was very easy to tell
+where she had been; the sharply-cut, evenly-spaced, symmetrical pits
+left by the Galaxian's full-conversion blasts were entirely different
+from the irregularly-cratered, ages-old original surface.
+
+"Knock off, Brownie," Garlock said then. "Go eat all you can hold and
+get some sleep. Come back in three hours. Jim, cut our speed to
+seventy-five percent."
+
+Lola shed her scanner, heaved a tremendous sigh of relief, and
+disappeared.
+
+Three silent hours later--all three were too intensely busy to think of
+anything except the work in hand--Lola came back.
+
+"Take Belle's swath, Brownie. Okay, Belle, you can lay off. Three
+hours."
+
+"I'll stay," Belle declared. "Go yourself; or send Jim."
+
+"Don't be any more of a damn fool than you have to. I said beat it."
+
+"And I said I wouldn't. I'm just as good...."
+
+"Chop it off!" Garlock snapped. "It isn't a case of being just as good
+as. It's a matter of physical reserves. Jim and I have more to draw on
+for the long shifts than you have. So get the hell out of here or I'll
+stop the ship and slap you even sillier than you are now."
+
+Belle threw up her head, tossing her shoulder-length green mop in her
+characteristic gesture of defiance; but after holding Garlock's hard
+stare for a moment she relaxed and smiled.
+
+"Okay, Clee--and thanks for the kind words."
+
+She disappeared and the work went on.
+
+And finally, when all four were so groggy that they could scarcely
+think, the job was done and checked. Clamer's moon was as devoid of life
+as any moon had ever been.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Lola pitched her scanner at its rack and threw herself face-down on a
+davenport, sobbing uncontrollably. James sat down beside her and soothed
+her until she quieted down.
+
+"You'd better eat something, sweetheart, and then for a good, long
+sleep."
+
+"Eat? Why, I couldn't, Jim, not possibly."
+
+"Let her sleep first, I think, Jim," Belle said, and followed with her
+eyes as Jim picked his wife up and carried her into the corridor.
+
+"We'd better eat _something_, I suppose," Belle said, thoughtfully. "I
+don't feel like eating, either, but I never realized until this minute
+just how much this has taken out of me and I'd better start putting it
+back in.... She did a wonderful job, Clee, even if she couldn't take it
+full shift toward the last."
+
+"I'll say she did. I hated like the devil to let her work that way, but
+... you knew I was scared witless every second until we topped off."
+
+Exhausted and haggard as she was, Belle laughed. "I know damn-blasted
+well you weren't; but I know what you mean. Fighting something you don't
+know anything about, and can't guess what may happen next, is tough.
+Seconds count." Side by side, they strolled toward the alcove.
+
+"I simply didn't think she had it in her," Belle marveled.
+
+"She didn't. She hasn't. It'll take her a week to get back into shape."
+
+"Right. She was going on pure nerve at the last--nothing else ... but
+she did a job, and she's so sweet and fine.... I wonder, Clee, if ... if
+I've been missing the boat...."
+
+"You have not." Garlock sent the thought so solidly that Belle jumped.
+"If you'd just let yourself be, you'd be worth a million of her, just as
+you stand."
+
+"Yes? You lie in your teeth, Cleander, but I love it.... Oh, I don't
+know what I want to eat--if anything."
+
+"I'll think up yours, too, along with mine."
+
+"Please. Something light, and just a little."
+
+"Yeah. Sit down. Just a light snack--a two-pound steak, rare; a bowl of
+mushrooms fried in butter; French fries, french dips, salad, and a quart
+of coffee. The same for me, except more of each. Here we are."
+
+"Why, Clee, I couldn't _possibly_ eat half of that...." Then, after a
+quarter of it was gone, "I _am_ hungry, at that--simply ravenous. I
+could eat a horse and saddle, and chase the rider."
+
+"That's what I thought. I knew I could, and figured you accordingly."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+They ate those tremendous meals slowly, enjoying every bite and sip; in
+an atmosphere of friendliness and good fellowship; chatting on a wide
+variety of subjects as they ate. Neither was aware of the fact that this
+was the first time they had ever been on _really_ friendly terms. And
+finally every dish and container was empty, almost polished clean.
+
+"One hundred percent capacity--can chew but can't swallow," Garlock said
+then, lighting two cigarettes and giving Belle one. "How's that for a
+masterly job of calibration?"
+
+"Me, too. It'll pass." Belle sighed in repletion. "Your ability to
+estimate the exact capacity of containers is exceeded only by your good
+looks and by the size of your feet. And now to hit the good old sack for
+an indefinite but very long period of time."
+
+"You chirped it, birdie." Still eminently friendly, the two walked
+together to their doors. Belle put up a solid block and paused,
+irresolute, twisting the toe of one slipper into the carpet.
+
+"Clee, I ... I wonder ... if...." Her voice died away.
+
+"I know what you mean." He put his arms around her gently, tenderly, and
+looked deep into her eyes. "I want to tell you something, Belle. You're
+a woman, not in seven thousand million women, but in that many planets
+full of women. What it takes, you very definitely and very abundantly
+have got. And you aren't the only one that's pooped. I don't need
+company tonight, either. I'm going to sleep until I wake up, if it takes
+all day. Or say, if you wake up first, why not punch me and we'll have
+breakfast together?"
+
+"That's a thought. Do the same for me. Good night, Clee."
+
+"Good night, ace." He kissed her, as gently as he had been holding her,
+opened her door, closed it after her, and stepped across the corridor
+into his own room.
+
+"_What_ a man!" Belle breathed to herself, behind the solid screens of
+her room. "He thought I was too tired, not just scared to death too.
+What a _man_! Belle Bellamy, you ought to be kicked from here to
+Tellus...." Then she threw back her head, drove a hard little fist into
+a pillow, and spoke aloud through clenched teeth. "No, damn and blast
+it, I _won't_ give in. I _won't_ love him. I'll take the Project away
+from him if it's the last thing I ever do in this life!"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+She woke up the next morning--not morning, either, since it was well
+after noon--a little before Garlock did, but not much. When she went
+into his room he was shaved and fully dressed except for one shoe, which
+he was putting on.
+
+"Hi, boss! Better we eat, huh? Not only am I starving by inches, but if
+we don't eat pretty quick we'll get only one meal today instead of
+three. Did you eat your candy bar?"
+
+"I sure did, ace."
+
+"Oh, I'm still 'ace'? You can kiss me, then," and she raised her face
+toward his.
+
+He kissed her, still tenderly, and they strolled to and through the Main
+and into the alcove. James and Lola, the latter looking terribly
+strained and worn, had already eaten, but joined them in their
+after-breakfast coffee and cigarettes.
+
+"You've checked, of course," Garlock said. "Everything on the beam?"
+
+"Dead center. Even to Lola and her biologists. Everybody's full of joy
+and gratitude and stuff--as well as information. And we managed to pry
+ourselves loose without waking you two trumpet-of-doom sleepers up. So
+we're ready to jump again. I wonder where in _hell_ we'll wind up _this_
+time."
+
+"I'm glad you said that, Jim." Garlock said. "It gives me the nerve to
+spring a thing on you that I've been mulling around in my mind ever
+since we landed here."
+
+"Nerve? You?" James asked, incredulously. "Pass the coffee-pot around
+again, Brownie. If that character there said what I heard him say,
+this'll make your hair stand straight up on end."
+
+"On our jumps we've had altogether too much power and no control
+whatever...." Garlock paused in thought.
+
+"Like a rookie pitcher," Belle suggested.
+
+"Uh-uh," Lola objected. "It _couldn't_ be that wild. He'd have to stand
+with his back to the plate and pitch the ball over the center-field
+stands and seven blocks down-town."
+
+"Cut the persiflage, you two," Garlock ordered. "Consider three things.
+First, as you all know, I've been trying to figure out a generator that
+would give us intrinsic control, but I haven't got any farther with it
+than we did back on Tellus. Second, consider all the jumps we've made
+except this last one. Every time we've taken off, none of us has had his
+shield really up. You, Jim, were concentrating on the drive, and so were
+wide open to it. The rest of us were at least thinking about it, and so
+were more or less open to it. Not one of us has ever ordered it to take
+us to any definite place; in fact, I don't believe that anyone of us has
+ever even suggested a destination. Each one of us has been thinking, at
+the instant of energization of the fields, exactly what you just said,
+and with exactly the same emphasis.
+
+"Third, consider this last jump all by itself. It's the first time we've
+ever stayed in the same galaxy. It's the first time we've ever gone
+where we wanted to. And it's the first time--here's the crux, as I see
+it--that any of us has been concentrating on any destination at the
+moment of firing the charge. Brownie was willing the _Pleiades_ to this
+planet so hard that we all could taste it. The rest of us, if not really
+pushing to get here, were at least not opposed to the idea. Check?"
+
+"Check." "That's right." "Yes, I was pushing with all my might," came
+from the three listeners, and James went on:
+
+"Are you saying the damn thing's _alive_?"
+
+"No. I'm saying I don't believe in miracles. I don't believe in
+coincidence--that concept is as meaningless as that of paradox. I
+certainly do _not_ believe that we hit this planet by chance against
+odds of almost infinity to one. So I've been looking for a reason. I
+found one. It goes against my grain--against everything I've ever
+believed--but, since it's the only possible explanation, it must be
+true. The only possible director of the Gunther Drive _must_ be the
+mind."
+
+"Hell's blowtorches--Now you're _insisting_ that the damn thing's
+alive."
+
+"Far from it. It's Brownie who's alive. It was Brownie who got us here.
+Nothing else--repeat, _nothing_ else--makes sense."
+
+James pondered for a full minute. "I wouldn't buy it except for one
+thing. If you, the hardest-boiled skeptic that ever went unhung, can
+feed yourself the whole bowl of such a mess as that, I can at least take
+a taste of it. Shoot."
+
+"Okay. You know that we don't know anything really fundamental about
+either teleportation or the drive. I'm sure now that the drive is simply
+mechanical teleportation. If you tried to 'port yourself without any
+idea of where you wanted to go, where do you think you'd land?"
+
+"You might scatter yourself all over space--no, you wouldn't. You
+wouldn't move, because it wouldn't be teleportation at all. Destination
+is an integral part of the concept."
+
+"Exactly so--but only because you've been conditioned to it all your
+life. This thing hasn't been conditioned to anything."
+
+"Like a new-born baby," Lola suggested.
+
+"Life again," James said. "I can't see it--too many bones in it. Pure
+luck, even at those odds, makes a lot more sense."
+
+"And to make matters worse," Garlock went on as though neither of them
+had spoken. "Just suppose that a man had four minds instead of one and
+they weren't working together. Then where would he go?"
+
+This time, James simply whistled; the girls stared, speechless.
+
+"I think we've proved that my school of mathematics was right--the thing
+was built to operate purely at random. Fotheringham was wrong. However,
+I missed the point that if control is possible, the controller must be a
+mind. Such a possibility never occurred to me or anyone working with me.
+Or to Fotheringham or to anybody else."
+
+"I can't say I'm sold, but it's easy to test and the results can't be
+any worse. Let's go."
+
+"How would you test it?"
+
+"Same way you would. Only way. First, each one of us alone. Then pairs
+and threes. Then all four together. Fifteen tests in all. No. Three
+destinations for each set-up; near, medium, and far. Except Tellus, of
+course; we'd better save that shot until we learn all we can find out.
+Everybody not in the set should screen up as solidly as they can set
+their blocks--eyes shut, even, and concentrating on something else.
+Check?"
+
+James did not express the thought that Tellus must by now be so far away
+that no possible effort could reach it; but he could not repress the
+implication.
+
+"Check. I'll concentrate on a series of transfinite numbers. Belle, you
+work on the possible number of shades of the color green. Lola, on how
+many different perfumes you can identify by smell. Jim, hit the button."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6
+
+
+Since the tests took much time, and were strictly routine in nature,
+there is no need to go into them in detail. At their conclusion, Garlock
+said:
+
+"First: either Jim alone, or Lola alone, or Jim and Lola together, can
+hit any destination within any galaxy, but can't go from one galaxy to
+another.
+
+"Second: either Belle or I, or any combination containing either of us
+without the other, has no control at all.
+
+"Third: Belle and I together, or any combination containing both of us,
+can go intergalactic under control.
+
+"In spite of confession being supposed to be good for the soul, I don't
+like to admit that we've put gravel in the gear-box--do you, Belle?"
+Garlock's smile was both rueful and forced.
+
+"You can play _that_ in spades." Belle licked her lips; for the first
+time since boarding the starship she was acutely embarrassed. "We'll
+have to, of course. It was all my fault--it makes me look like a damned
+stupid juvenile delinquent."
+
+"Not by nineteen thousand kilocycles, since neither of us had any idea.
+I'll be glad to settle for half the blame."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Will you please stop talking Sanskrit?" James asked. "Or lep it, so we
+two innocent bystanders can understand it?"
+
+"Will do," and Garlock went on in thought. "Remember what I said about
+this drive not being conditioned to anything? I was wrong. Belle and I
+have conditioned it, but badly. We've been fighting so much that
+something or other in that mess down there has become conditioned to
+her; something else to me. My part will play along with anyone except
+Belle; hers with anybody except me. Anti-conditioning, you might call
+it. Anyway, they lay back their ears and balk."
+
+"Oh, hell!" James snorted. "Talk about gobbledygook! You are still
+saying that that conglomeration of copper and silver and steel and
+insulation that we built ourselves has got intelligence, and I still
+won't buy it."
+
+"By no means. Remember, Jim, that this concept of mechanical
+teleportation, and that the mind is the only possible controller, are
+absolutely new. We've got to throw out all previous ideas and start new
+from scratch. I postulate, as a working hypothesis drawn from original
+data as modified by these tests, that that particular conglomeration of
+materials generates at least two fields about the properties of which we
+know nothing at all. That one of those properties is the tendency to
+become preferentially resonant with one mind and preferentially
+non-resonant with another. Clear so far?"
+
+"As mud. It's a mighty tough blueprint to read." James scowled in
+thought. "However, it's no harder to swallow than Sanderson's Theory of
+Teleportation. Or, for that matter, the actual basic coupling between
+mind and ordinary muscular action. Does that mean we'll have to rebuild
+half a million credits' worth of ... no, you and Belle can work it,
+together."
+
+"I don't know." Garlock paced the floor. "I simply can't see any
+_possible_. mechanism of coupling."
+
+"Subconscious, perhaps," Belle suggested.
+
+"For my money that whole concept is invalid," Garlock said. "It merely
+changes 'I don't know' to 'I can't know' and I don't want any part of
+that. However, 'unconscious' could be the answer ... if so, we may have
+a lever.... Belle, are you willing to bury your hatchet for about five
+minutes--work with me like a partner ought to?"
+
+"I certainly am, Clee. Honestly. Screens down flat, if you say so."
+
+"Half-way's enough, I think--you'll know when we get down there." Her
+mind joined his and he went on, "Ignore the machines themselves
+completely. Consider only the fields. Feel around with me--keep
+tuned!--see if there's anything at all here that we can grab hold of and
+manipulate, like an Op field except probably very much finer. I'll be
+completely damned if I can see how this type of Gunther generator can
+put out a manipulable field, but it must. That's the only--O-W-R-C-H-H!"
+
+This last was a yell of pure mental agony. Both hands flew to his head,
+his face turned white, sweat poured, and he slumped down unconscious.
+
+He came to, however, as the other three were stretching him out on a
+davenport. Belle was mopping his face with a handkerchief.
+
+"What happened, Clee?" All three were exclaiming at once.
+
+"I found my manipulable field, but a bomb went off in my brain when I
+straightened it out." He searched his mind anxiously, then smiled. "But
+no damage done--just the opposite. It opened up a Gunther cell I didn't
+know I had. Didn't it sock you, too, Belle?"
+
+"Uh-uh," she said, more than half bitterly. "I must not have one. That
+makes you a Super-Prime, if I may name a new classification."
+
+"Nonsense! Of course you've got it. Unconscious, of course, like me, but
+without it you couldn't have conditioned the field. But why.... Oh, what
+bit me was the one conditioned to me."
+
+"Oh, nice!" Belle exclaimed. "Come on, Clee--let's go get mine!"
+
+"Do you want a bit of knowledge _that_ badly, Belle?" Lola asked.
+"Besides, wait, he isn't strong enough yet."
+
+"Of course he's strong enough. A little knock like that? _Want_ it! I'd
+give my right leg and ... and almost _anything_ for it. It didn't kill
+him, so it won't kill me."
+
+"There may be an easier way," Garlock said. "I wouldn't wish a jolt like
+that onto my worst enemy. But that had two hundred kilovolts and four
+hundred kilogunts behind it. Since I know now where and what the cell
+is, I think I can open it up for you without being quite so rough."
+
+"Oh, lovely. Come in, quick! I'm ready now."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Garlock went in; and wrought. It took longer--half an hour, in fact--but
+it was very much easier to take.
+
+"What did it feel like, Belle?" Lola asked, eagerly. "You winced like he
+was drilling teeth and struck a couple of nerves."
+
+"Uh-uh. More like being stretched all out of shape. Like having a child,
+maybe, in a small way. Let's go, Clee!"
+
+They joined up and went.
+
+"Ha, _there_ you are, you cantankerous little fabrication of nothings!"
+Belle said aloud, in a low, throaty, gloating voice. "Take _that_--and
+_that_! And now behave yourself. If you don't, mama spank--but _good_!"
+Then, breaking connection, "Thanks a million, Clee; you're tall, solid
+gold. Do you want to run some more tests, to see which of us is the
+intergalactic transporter?"
+
+"Not unless you do."
+
+"Who, me? I'll be tickled to death not to; just like I'd swallowed an
+ostrich feather. Back to Tellus, then?"
+
+"Tellus, here we come," Garlock said. "Jim, what are the Tellurian
+figures for exactly five hundred miles up?"
+
+"I'll punch 'em--got 'em in my head." James did so. "Shall Brownie and I
+set our blocks?"
+
+"No," Belle said. "Nothing can interfere with us now."
+
+"Ready." Garlock sat down in the pilot's seat. "Cluster 'round, chum."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Belle leaned against the back of the chair and put both arms around
+Garlock's neck. "I'm clustered."
+
+"The spot we're shooting at is exactly over the exact center of the
+middle blast-pit at Port Gunther. In sync?"
+
+"To a skillionth of a whillionth of a microphase. I'm _exactly_ on and
+locked. Shoot."
+
+"Now, you sheet-iron bucket of nuts and bolts, _jump_!" and Garlock
+snapped the red switch.
+
+Earth lay beneath them. So did Port Gunther.
+
+"Hu-u-u-uh!" Garlock's huge sigh held much more of relief than of
+triumph.
+
+"They did it! We're home!" Lola shrieked; and, breaking into unashamed
+and unrestrained tears, went into her husband's extended arms.
+
+"Cry ahead, sweet. I'd bawl myself if Garlock wasn't looking. Maybe I
+will, anyway," James said. Then, extending his right arm to Garlock and
+to Belle, "I was scared to death you couldn't make it except by back
+tracking. Good going, you two Primes," but his thoughts said vastly more
+than his words.
+
+Belle's eyes, too, were wet; Garlock's own were not quite dry.
+
+"You weren't as sure as you looked, then, that we could do it the hard
+way," Belle said. "All inside, I was one quivering mass of jelly."
+
+"Afterward, you mean. You were solid as Gibraltar when I fired the
+charge. You're the kind of woman a man wants with him when the going's
+tough. Slide around here a little, so I can get hold of you."
+
+Garlock released Belle--finally--and turned to the pilot, who was just
+pulling a data-sheet from Compy the Computer. "How far did we miss
+target, Jim?"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+James held up his right hand, thumb and forefinger forming a circle.
+"You're one point eight seven inches high, and off center point five
+three inches to the north northeast by east. I hereby award each of you
+the bronze medal of Marksman First. Shall I take her down now or do you
+want to check in from here first?"
+
+"Neither ... I think. What do you think, Belle?"
+
+"Right. Not until you-know-what."
+
+"Check. Until we decide whether or not to let them know just yet that we
+can handle the ship. If we do, how many of our taped reports we turn in
+and how many we toss down the chute."
+
+"I get it!" James exclaimed, with a spreading grin. "_That_, my dear
+people, is something I never expected to live long enough to see--our
+straight-laced Doctor Garlock applying the Bugger Factor to a research
+problem!"
+
+"I prefer the term 'Monk's Coefficient,' myself," Garlock said, "from
+the standpoint of mathematical rigor."
+
+"At Polytech we called it 'Finagle's Formula'," Belle commented. "The
+most widely applicable operator known."
+
+"Have you three lost your minds?" Lola demanded. "That's nothing to joke
+about--you wouldn't destroy official reports! All that astronomy and
+anthropology that nobody ever even dreamed of before? You _couldn't_!
+Not _possibly_!"
+
+"Each of us knows just as well as you do how much data we have, exactly
+how new and startling it is; but we've thought ahead farther than you
+have. None of us likes the idea of destroying it a bit better than you
+do. We won't, either, without your full, unreserved, wholehearted
+consent, nor without your fixed, iron-clad, unshakable determination
+never to reveal any least bit of it."
+
+"That language is far too strong for me. I'd like to be able to go along
+with you, but on those terms, I simply can't."
+
+"I think you can, when you've thought it through. You've met Alonzo P.
+Ferber, haven't you? Read him?"
+
+"One glimpse; that was all I could stand. He pawed me mentally and
+wanted to paw me physically, the first time I ever saw him."
+
+"Check. So I'm going to ask you two questions, which you may answer as
+an anthropologist, as Lola Montandon, as Mrs. James James James the
+Ninth, as a member of our team, or as any other character you choose to
+assume. Remembering that Ferber's a Gunther First--and pretends to be an
+Operator whenever he can get away with it--should he, or anyone like
+him, _ever_ be allowed to visit Hodell? Second question: if there is any
+possible way for him to get there, can he be made to stay away?"
+
+"Oh ... Grand Lady Neldine and that perfectly stunning Grand Lady Lemphi
+they picked out for Jim ... they're such _nice_ people ... and the
+Gunther genes...." As Lola thought on, her expressive face showed a
+variety of conflicting emotions before it hardened into decision. "The
+answer to both questions--the only possible answer--is no. I subscribe;
+on the exact terms you stipulated. And you don't believe, Clee, that my
+thesis had anything to do with my holding out at first?"
+
+"Certainly I don't. Besides...."
+
+"What thesis?" Belle asked.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"For my Ph.D. in anthropology. I thought I had it made, but it just went
+down the chute. And I don't know if any of you realize just how nearly
+impossible it is to make a really worthwhile original contribution to
+science in that field."
+
+"As I started to tell you, Brownie," Garlock said, "I don't think you've
+lost a thing. There's a bigger and better one coming up."
+
+"_What_?"
+
+"Sh-h-h-h," Belle stage-whispered. "He's got a theory--such a weirdie
+that he won't talk about it to anybody."
+
+"It isn't a theory yet--at least, not ripe enough to pick--but it's
+something more than a hunch," Garlock said.
+
+"But what could _possibly_ make as good a thesis as those extra-galactic
+tapes?" Lola wailed. "They would have made my thesis a summer breeze."
+
+"More like a hurricane--the hottest thing since doctorate disputations
+first started," Garlock said. "However, as I started to say twice
+before, it still will be. Intra-galactic tapes will be just as good. In
+this case, better."
+
+"W-e-l-l ... possibly. But we haven't any."
+
+"That is what this conference is about. We can't destroy the stuff we
+have unless we can replace it with something better. My idea is that we
+should visit a few--say fifty--Tellus-type planets in this galaxy; the
+ones closest to Tellus. I'm pretty sure they'll be inhabited by _Homo
+Sapiens_. There's a chance, of course, that they'll be like Hodell and
+the others we've seen; in which case I don't see how we can keep Gunther
+genes confined to Earth. However, I'm pretty sure in my own mind that
+we'll find them all very much like Tellus, Gunther and all. What would
+you think of _that_ for a thesis, Lola?"
+
+"Oh, wonderful!"
+
+"Okay. Now to get back to whether we want to check in or not. I don't
+like to duck out without letting them know we can handle this
+heap--after a fashion, that is; they don't need to know we can really
+handle it--but we've got nothing we can report and Fatso will blow his
+stack--Oh-oh! Should've remembered Tellus isn't Hodell; the tri-di's
+setting up! Belle, you take it. She'd give me Fatso, because he wants to
+chew me out, but she won't put him on for you. Cut her throat, but good!
+Brownie, hide somewhere! Jim, set up for Beta Centauri--not Alpha, but
+Beta--and fast! Give her hell, Belle!" Garlock sent this last thought
+from behind a davenport, from which hiding-place he could see the tri-di
+screen and both Belle and James; but anyone on the screen could not see
+him.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Miss Foster's likeness appeared upon the screen. Chancellor Ferber's
+secretary was a big woman, but not fat; middle-aged, gray-haired,
+wearing consciously the aura and the domineering, overbearing expression
+of a woman who has great power and an even greater drive to exert her
+authority.
+
+"Why haven't you reported in?" Miss Foster snapped, with a glare that
+was pure frost. "You arrived thirteen minutes ago. Such delay is
+inexcusable. Get Garlock."
+
+"Captain Garlock is off-watch; asleep. I, Commander Bellamy, am in
+command." Standing stiffly at attention, Belle paused to exchange glares
+with the woman across the big desk. If Miss Foster's was frost,
+Commander Bellamy's was helium ice.
+
+"Ready to go, Jim?" Belle flashed the thought.
+
+"Half a minute yet."
+
+"Any time after I sign off. Pick your own spot." Then aloud into the
+screen: "I will report to Chancellor Ferber. I will not report to
+Chancellor Ferber's secretary."
+
+"Doctor James!" Miss Foster's voice was neither as cold nor as steady as
+it had been. "Bring that ship down at once!"
+
+James made no sign that he had heard the order. Belle stood changelessly
+stiff. She had not for an instant taken her coldly competent eyes from
+those of the woman on the ground. Her emotionless, ultra-refrigerated
+voice went, as ever, directly into the screen.
+
+"I trust that this conversation is being recorded?"
+
+"It certainly is!"
+
+"Good. I want it on record that we, the personnel of the starship
+_Pleiades_, are not subject to the verbal orders of the Chancellor's
+secretary. You will now connect me with Chancellor Ferber, please."
+
+"The Chancellor is in conference and is not to be disturbed. I _have_
+authority to act for him. You will report to me, and do it right now."
+Foster's voice rose almost to a scream.
+
+"That ground has been covered. Since you have taken it upon yourself to
+exceed your authority to such an extent as to refuse to connect the
+officer in command of the _Pleiades_ with the Chancellor, I cannot
+report to him either the reasons why we are not landing at this time or
+when we expect to return to Tellus. You are advised that we may leave at
+any instant, just like that!" Belle snapped her finger under the imaged
+nose. "You may inform the Chancellor, or not inform him if you prefer,
+that our control of the starship _Pleiades_ is something less than
+perfect. I do not know exactly how many seconds longer we will be here.
+Commander Bellamy signing off. Over and out."
+
+"_Commander_ Bellamy, indeed! Commander my left foot!" Miss Foster was
+screaming now, in thwarted fury. "You're no more a commander than my
+lowest office-girl is! Just wait 'till you get down here, you
+green-haired hussy, you shameless notor...." The set went
+instantaneously from full volume to zero sound as James drove the red
+button home.
+
+"Belle, you honey!" Garlock scrambled out from behind the davenport,
+seized her around the waist, and swung her, feet high in air, through
+four full circles before he let her down and kissed her vigorously. "You
+little _sweetheart_! You're the first living human being ever to really
+pull Foster's cork!"
+
+"_What_ a goat-getting!" James applauded. "That will go down in history
+as the star-spangled act of the century."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Belle was, however, unusually diffident. "I stuck my neck out a
+mile--worse, Clee's. I'm sorry, Clee. I had to have some weight to throw
+around, and I had only a second to think, and that was the first thing I
+thought of, and after half a minute she made me so _damn_ mad that I
+went entirely too far."
+
+"Uh-uh. Just far enough. That was a _perfect_ job."
+
+"But she'll never forget that, and she'll crucify you, as well as me,
+when we land. She knows I'm not a commander."
+
+"She just thinks you ain't. The official log will show, though, that
+after only one day out I discovered that we should all be officers--one
+captain and three commanders--with pay and perquisites of rank. I'll
+think up good and sufficient reasons for it between now and when I make
+up the log."
+
+"But you can't! Or can you, really?"
+
+"Well, nobody told me I couldn't, so I assumed the right. Besides, you
+didn't tell her commander of what, so I'll make it stick, too--see if I
+don't. Or else I'll tear two or three offices apart finding out why I
+can't. You can be sure of that."
+
+"All that may not be necessary," Lola said. "That tape will never be
+heard. I'll bet she's erased it already."
+
+"Perhaps; but ours isn't going to be erased--it will be heard exactly
+where it will do the most good."
+
+"I'm awfully glad you don't think we're on the hook. All that's left,
+then, is that second-in-command business. Both of you know, of course,
+that that was just window-dressing."
+
+"You were telling the truth and didn't know it," James said, cheerfully.
+"You have actually been second-in-command ever since the drive tests."
+
+"I haven't, and I won't. Surely you don't think I'm enough of a heel,
+Jim, to step on your toes like that?"
+
+"Nothing like that involved. You tell her, Clee."
+
+"Gunther ability is what counts. You're a Prime, Jim's an Operator; so,
+now that we can handle the heap, you'll have to be second-in-command
+whether you like it or not. Any time you can out-Gunther me we'll trade
+places. And you won't have to take the job away from me--I'll give it to
+you."
+
+"But ... no hard feelings, Jim? No reservations? Screens down?"
+
+"None whatever. In fact, I'm relieved. I'm Gunthered for this board
+here--for that one I'm not. Come in and look; and shake on it."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Belle looked; and while they were shaking hands, she flashed a thought
+at Lola. "Do you know that we've got two of the finest men that ever
+lived?"
+
+"I've known that for a long time," Lola flashed back, "but you've hardly
+started to realize what they _really_ are."
+
+"Well, shall we start earning our pay and perquisites by getting to work
+on this planet, that we haven't even looked--wait a minute! We're just
+about to open up the galaxy, aren't we?"
+
+They were.
+
+"Then there'll have to be some kind of a unifying and correlating
+authority--a Galactic Council or something--and the quicker it's set up
+the better; the less confusion and turmoil and jockeying-for-position
+there will be. Question: should this authority be political?"
+
+"It should _not_!" James declared. "It takes United Worlds seven solid
+days of debate to decide whether or not to buy one lead pencil."
+
+"Military--or naval, I suppose it'd be--that's what Clee's driving at,"
+Belle said. "You're wonderful, Clee--simply priceless! We're officers of
+the brand-new Galactic Navy. Subject to civilian control, of course, but
+the civilians will be the United Galaxian Societies of the Galaxy, and
+nobody else. _Beautiful_, Clee! There are ten Operators, Jim. Right?"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Check. Brownie and I are here; the other eight are running the Galaxian
+Society under Clee. And the whole Society eats out of his hand."
+
+"I don't know about that, but Belle and I together could swing it, I
+think."
+
+"I'll say we could," Belle breathed. "And I simply can't wait to see you
+kick Fatso's teeth in with _this_ one!"
+
+"I don't like the word 'Navy'," Garlock said. "It's tied definitely to
+warfare. How about calling it the 'Galactic Service'? Applicable to
+either war or peace. Brass Hats will think of us in terms of war, even
+though we will actually work for peace. Any objections?"
+
+There were no objections.
+
+"About the uniforms," Lola said, eagerly. "Space-black and star-white,
+with chromium comets and things on the shoulders...."
+
+"To hell with uniforms," Garlock broke in. "Why do women have to go off
+the deep end on clothes?"
+
+"She's right--you're wrong, Clee," James said. "Without a uniform you
+won't get off the ground, not even with the Society. And you'll be
+talking to Top Planetary Brass. Also, they're Gunthered plenty--you can
+feel their Op field clear out here."
+
+"Could be," Garlock conceded. "Okay, you girls dope it out to suit
+yourselves. But think you can stand it, Belle, to wear more than twelve
+square inches of clothes?"
+
+"Wait 'til you see it, chum. I've been designing a uniform for myself
+for positively _years_."
+
+"I can't wait. And you're a captain, of course."
+
+"Huh? You can't have two cap.... Oh, I see. Primes. I appreciate that,
+Clee. Thanks."
+
+"Hold on, both of you," James said. "You haven't thought this through
+far enough. Suppose we meet forces already organized? Better start high
+than low. You've got to be top admiral, Clee."
+
+"Rocket-oil! Suppose we don't find anything at all?"
+
+"You're right, Jim," Belle said. "Clee, you talk like a man with a paper
+nose. It's _you_ who's been yowling for two solid years about being
+ready for _anything_. We've got to do just that."
+
+"Correction accepted. Brief me."
+
+"Ranks should be different from those of United Worlds. They should be
+descriptive, but impressive. Tops could be Galactic Admiral. That's you.
+Vice Galactic Admiral; me...."
+
+"Galactic Vice Admiral would be better," Lola said.
+
+"Accepted. Those two we'll make stick come hell or space-warps. Right?"
+
+Garlock did not reply immediately. "Up to either one of two points," he
+agreed, finally.
+
+"What points?"
+
+"War, or being out-Gunthered. Top Gunther takes top place; man, woman,
+bird, beast, fish, or bug-eyed monster."
+
+"Oh." Belle was staggered for a moment. "No war, of course. As to the
+other ... I hadn't thought of that."
+
+"There are a lot of things none of us has thought of, but as amended
+I'll buy it."
+
+"Then several Regional Admirals, each with his Regional Vice Admiral.
+Then System Admirals and Vices, and World or Planetary--naming the
+planet, you know--Admirals and Vices. Let the various Galaxian Societies
+take over from there down. How do you like _them_ potatoes, Buster?"
+
+"Nice. And formal address, intra-ship, will be Mister and Miss. Jim and
+Brownie?"
+
+They liked it. "Where do we fit in?" James asked.
+
+"Pick your own spots," Garlock said.
+
+"If we stick to the Solar System we aren't so apt to get bumped by
+Primes. So make me Solar System Admiral and Brownie my Vice."
+
+"Okay. How long will it take you, Belle, to materialize those uniforms?"
+
+"Fifteen seconds longer than it takes the converter to scan us. Lola's
+color scheme is right, and I've got everything else down to the last
+curlicue of chrome. Let's go."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+They went: and came back into the Main in uniform. Belle had really done
+a job.
+
+That of the men, while something on the spectacular side, was more or
+less conventional, with stiff-visored, screened, heavily-chromed caps;
+but the women's! Slippers, overseas caps, shorts and jackets--but what
+jackets!
+
+"Well...." Garlock said, after examining the two girls speechlessly for
+a good half minute. "It doesn't look _exactly_ like a spray-on job; but
+if you ever take a deep breath it'll split from here to there. Fly
+off--leave you naked as a jay-bird."
+
+"Oh, no. The fabric stretches a little. See? Nothing like a sweater, but
+a similar effect--perhaps a bit more so."
+
+"Quite a bit more so, I'd say. However, since Operators and Primes are
+automatically stacked like Tennick Towers, I don't suppose your recruits
+will be unduly perturbed at, or will squawk too much about,
+overexposure. Are we finally ready to go down and get to work?"
+
+"I am," James said. "How do you want to handle it?"
+
+"Run a search pattern. Belle and I will center their Op field and check
+on Ops and Primes. You two probe at will."
+
+Around and around the planet, in brief bursts of completely
+incomprehensible speed, the huge ship darted; the biggest, solidest, yet
+most elusive and fantastic "flying saucer" ever to visit that world. The
+tremendous oceans and six great continents were traversed; the ice-caps;
+the frigid, the temperate, and the torrid zones. Wherever she went,
+powerful and efficient radar scanned and tracked her; wherever she went,
+excitement seethed.
+
+"Beta Centauri Five," Garlock reported, after a few minutes. "Margonia,
+they call it. Biggest continent and nation named Nargoda. Capital city
+Margon; Margon Base on coast nearby. Lots of Gunther Firsts. All the
+real Gunther, though, is clear across the continent. They're building a
+starship. Fourteen Ops and two Primes--man and woman. Deggi Delcamp's a
+big bruiser, with a God-awful lot of stuff. Ugly as hell, though. He's a
+bossy type."
+
+"I'm amazed," James played it straight. "I thought all male Primes would
+be just like you. Timorous Timmies."
+
+"Huh? Oh...." Garlock was taken slightly aback, but went on quickly,
+"What do you think of your opposite number, Belle?" He whistled a
+wolf-call and made hour-glass motions with his hands. "I'd thought of
+trading you in on a new model, but Fao Talaho is no bargain, either--and
+_nobody's_ push-over."
+
+"_Trade_! You _tomcat_!" Belle's nostrils flared. "You know what that
+bleached-blonde tried to do? High-hat _me!_"
+
+"I noticed. When we four get down to business, face to face, there
+should be some interesting by-products."
+
+"You chirped it, boss. Primes seem to be such _nice_ people." James
+rolled his eyes upward and steepled his hands. "If you've got all the
+dope, no use finishing this search pattern."
+
+"Go ahead. Window dressing. The Brass hasn't any idea of what's going
+on, any more than ours did."
+
+The search went on until, "This is it," James reported. "Where? Over
+Margon Base?"
+
+"Check. Kick us over there, ten or twelve hundred miles up."
+
+"On the way, boss. Looks like your theory is about ready to pick."
+
+"It isn't much of a theory yet; just that cultural and evolutionary
+patterns should be more or less homogeneous within galaxies. Until it
+can explain why so many out-galaxies are just alike it doesn't amount to
+much. By the way, I'm glad you people insisted on organization and rank
+and uniforms. The Brass is going to take a certain amount of convincing.
+Take over, Brownie--this is your dish."
+
+"I was afraid of that."
+
+The others watched Lola drive her probe--a diamond-clear, razor-sharp
+bolt of thought that no Gunther First could possibly either wield or
+stop--down into the innermost private office of that immense and
+far-flung base. Through Lola's inner eyes they saw a tall, trim,
+handsome, fiftyish man in a resplendent uniform of purple and gold; they
+watched her brush aside that officer's hard-held mental block.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"I greet you, Supreme Grand Marshal Entlore, Highest Commander of the
+Armed Forces of Nargoda. This is the starship _Pleiades_, of System Sol,
+Planet Tellus. I am Sol-System Vice-Admiral Lola Montandon. I have with
+me as guests three of my superior officers of the Galactic Service,
+including the Galactic Admiral himself. We are making a good-will tour
+of the Tellus-Type planets of this region of space. I request permission
+to land and information as to your landing conventions. The landing
+pad--bottom--of the _Pleiades_ is flat; sixty feet wide by one hundred
+twenty feet long. Area loading is approximately eight tons per square
+foot. Solid, dry ground is perfectly satisfactory. While we land
+vertically, with little or no shock impact, I prefer not to risk
+damaging your pavement."
+
+They all felt the Marshal's thoughts race. "Starship! Tellus--Sol, that
+insignificant Type G dwarf! Interstellar travel a commonplace! A ship
+_that_ size and weight--an organized, uniformed, functioning Galaxy-wide
+Navy and they don't want to _damage_ my _pavement_! My God!"
+
+"Good going, Brownie! Kiss her for me, Jim." Garlock flashed the
+thought.
+
+Entlore, realizing that his every thought was being read, pulled himself
+together. "I admit that I was shocked, Admiral Montandon. But
+landing--really, I have nothing to do with landings. They are handled
+by...."
+
+"I realize that, sir; but you realize that no underling could possibly
+authorize my landing. That is why I always start at the top. Besides, I
+do not like to waste time on officers of much lower rank than my own,
+and," Lola allowed a strong tinge of good humor to creep into her
+thought, "the bigger they are, the less apt they are to pass the
+well-known buck."
+
+"You have had experience, I see," the Marshal laughed. He _did_ have a
+sense of humor. "While landing here is forbidden--top secret, you
+know--would my refusal mean much to you?"
+
+"Having made satisfactory contact, I introduce you to Galactic Admiral
+Garlock. Take over, sir, please."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Entlore winced, for the probe Garlock used then compared to Lola's very
+much as a diamond drill compares to a piece of soft brass pipe.
+
+"It would mean everything to us," Garlock assured him. "Our mission is a
+perfectly friendly one. We will have a friendly visit or none. If you do
+not care for our friendship, another nation will."
+
+"That wouldn't do, either, of course." Entlore paused in thought. "It
+boils down to this: I must either welcome you or destroy you."
+
+"You may try." Garlock grinned in frankly self-satisfied amusement.
+"However, the best you can do is lithium-hydride fusion missiles in the
+hundreds-of-megatons range. Firecrackers. Every once in a while a planet
+has to try a few such things on us before it will believe that we are
+powerful as well as friendly. Would you like to test our defenses? If
+so, I will neither take offense nor retaliate."
+
+Supreme Grand Marshal Entlore was floored. "Why ... er ... not at all. I
+read in your mind...." He broke off, to quell an invasion into his own
+private office. "Damn it, keep _still_!" all four "heard" him yell. "I
+know they ran a search pattern. I know _that_, too. I know _everything_
+about it, I tell you! I'm in full rapport with their Supreme Grand
+Admiral. There's only the one ship, they're friendly, and I'm inviting
+them to land here on Margon Base. Give that to the press. Say also that
+entrance restrictions to Margon Base will not be relaxed at present.
+Grand Marshal Holson and ComOff Flurnoy, stay here and tune in. The rest
+of you get out and _stay_ out! Throw all reports about any alien vessel
+or flying saucer or what-have-you into the waste-basket!"
+
+"Resume command, please, Miss Montandon," Garlock directed; and withdrew
+his probe from Entlore's mind.
+
+"I thank you, Supreme Grand Marshal Entlore, for your welcome," Lola
+sent. "I'm sorry that our visits cause so much disturbance, but I
+suppose it can't be helped. Our Gunther blocks are down. Would you and
+your two assistants like to teleport out here to us, and con us down
+yourselves?" Lola knew instantly that they could not, and covered deftly
+for them. "But of course you can't, without knowing a focus spot here in
+the Main. Shall I teleport you aboard?"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+ComOff Flurnoy's face--she was an attractive, nicely-built red-head
+wearing throat-mike, earphone, and recorder--turned so pale that a faint
+line of freckles stood out across the bridge of her nose. She very
+evidently wanted to scream a protest, but would not. Both men, strangely
+enough, were eager to go. Instantly all three were standing in line on
+the deep-piled rug of the Main, facing the four Tellurians. Seven bodies
+came rigidly to attention, seven right hands snapped into two varieties
+of formal salute. Standing thus, each party studied the other for a
+couple of seconds.
+
+There was no doubt at all as to which two of the visitors the two
+Nargodian men were studying; but neither of them could quite make up his
+mind as to which of the black-and-white-clad women to study first or
+most. The red-head's glance, too, flickered between Belle and
+Garlock--incredulous envy and equally incredulous admiration lit her
+eyes.
+
+"At rest, please, fellow-officers," Garlock said, and Lola performed the
+necessary introductions, adding, "We do not, however, use titles aboard
+ship. Mister and Miss are customary and sufficient."
+
+Behind each row of officers a long davenport appeared; between them a
+table loaded with sandwiches, olives, pickles, relishes, fruits, nuts,
+soft drinks, cigars, and cigarettes.
+
+"Help yourselves," Garlock invited. "We serve neither intoxicants nor
+drugs, but you should find something there to your taste."
+
+"Indeed we shall, and thank you," Entlore said. "Is there any objection,
+Mr. Garlock, to Miss Flurnoy transmitting information of this meeting
+and of this ship to our base?"
+
+"None whatever. Send as you please, Miss Flurnoy, or as Mr. Entlore
+directs."
+
+"I'm glad I didn't quite scare myself out of coming up here," the
+Communications Officer said. "This is the biggest and nicest thrill I
+ever had. Such a thrill that I don't know just where to begin." She
+cocked an eyebrow at her commanding officer.
+
+"As usual. Whatever you think should be sent." Entlore sent her a
+steadying thought. Then, as the girl settled back with a sandwich in one
+hand and a tall glass of ginger-ale in the other, he went on, to
+Garlock, "She is a very fine and very strong telepath--by our standards,
+at least."
+
+"By galactic standards also." Garlock had of course been checking.
+"Accurate, sharp, wide-range, clear-thinking, and fast. Not one of us
+four could do it any better."
+
+"I thank you, Mr. Garlock," the girl said, with a blush of pleasure--and
+with scarcely a perceptible pause in her work.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+A tour of the ship followed; and as it progressed, the more confused and
+dismayed the two Nargodian commanders became.
+
+"But no crew at _all_?" Holson demanded incredulously. "How can a thing
+like this _possibly_ work?"
+
+"It's fully Gunthered," Lola explained. "It works itself. That is,
+almost all the time. Whenever we land on any planet for the first time,
+one of us has to control it. Or for any other special job not in its
+memory banks. When you're ready for us to land I'll show you--it's my
+turn to work."
+
+"Miss Flurnoy, have they cleared the air over Pylon Six?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Clearance came through five minutes ago. They are holding it
+clear for us."
+
+"Thank you. Miss Montandon, you may land at your convenience."
+
+"Thank you, sir." Lola took the pilot's chair. "This is the scanner. I
+pull it over my face and head, so. Since I am always in tune with the
+field...."
+
+"What does _that_ mean?" Entlore asked, dark foreboding in his mind.
+
+"I was afraid of that. You can't feel an Operator Field. I'm sorry, sir,
+but that means you can't handle these forces and never will be able to.
+Certain Gunther areas of your brain are inoperative. On our scale you
+are a Gunther First...."
+
+"On ours, I'm an Esper Ten, the highest rating in the world--except for
+a few theoretical crackpots who.... Excuse me, please, I shouldn't have
+said that, in view of what I see happening here."
+
+"No offense taken, sir. Those who developed the Gunther Drive were
+crackpots until they got the first starship out into space. But with
+this scanner on, I think of where I want to look and I can see it. I
+then think the ship a few miles sidewise--so--and we are now directly
+over your Pylon Six. I'm starting down, but I won't go into free fall."
+
+Apparent weight grew less and less, until: "This is about enough for
+you, Miss Flurnoy?"
+
+"Just," the ComOff agreed, with a gulp. "One pound less and I'm afraid
+I'll upchuck that lovely lunch I just ate."
+
+"We're going fast enough now. Everyone sitting down? Brace yourselves,
+please. You'll be about fifty percent overweight for a while."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+As bodies settled deeper into cushions Entlore sent Garlock a
+thought. "We three weigh about five hundred pounds. You lifted
+us--instantaneously or nearly so, but I'll pass the question of
+acceleration for the moment--eleven hundred miles straight up. How did
+you repeal the Law of Conservation?"
+
+"We didn't. We have fusion engines of twenty million horsepower. Our
+Operator Field, which has a radius of fifteen thousand miles and is
+charged to an electrogravitic potential of one hundred thousand gunts,
+stores energy. Its action is not exactly like that of an electrical
+condenser or of a storage battery, but is more or less analogous to
+both. Thus, the energy required to lift you three came from the field,
+but the amount was so small that it did not lower the potential of the
+field by any measurable amount. Setting this ship down--call it sixty
+thousand tons for a thousand miles at one gravity--will increase the
+field's potential by approximately one-tenth of one gunt. Have you
+studied paraphysics?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It wasn't practical, eh?" Garlock smiled. "Then I can't make even a
+stab at explaining instantaneous translation to you. I'll just say that
+there is no acceleration involved, no time lapse. There is no violation
+of the Law of Conservation since departure and arrival points are
+equi-Guntherial. But what I am really interested in is that small group
+of high espers you mentioned."
+
+"Yes, I inferred that from Miss Montandon's comments." Entlore fell
+silent and Garlock watched his somber thoughts picture Margon Base and
+his nation's capital being attacked and destroyed by a fleet of
+invincible and invulnerable starships like this _Pleiades_.
+
+"You are wrong, sir," Garlock put in, quietly. "The Galactic Service has
+not had, does not and will not have, anything to do with intra-planetary
+affairs. We have no connection with, and no responsibility to, any world
+or any group of worlds. We are an arm of the United Galaxian Societies
+of the Galaxy. Our function is to control space. To forbid, to prevent,
+to rectify any interplanetary or interstellar aggression. Above all, to
+prevent, by means of procedures up to and including total destruction of
+planets if necessary, any attempt whatever to form any multi-world
+empire."
+
+The three Nargodians gasped as one, as much at the scope of the thing as
+at the calmly cold certainty of ability carried by the thought.
+
+"You are transmitting this precisely, Miss Flurnoy?" Entlore asked.
+
+"Precisely, sir; including background, fringes, connotations, and
+implications; just as he is giving it to us."
+
+"Let us assume that your Nargodian government decides to conquer all the
+other nations of your planet Margonia. Assume farther that it succeeds.
+We will not object; in fact, we will, as a usual thing, not even be
+informed of it. If then, however, your government decides that one world
+is not enough for it to rule and prepares to conquer, or take aggressive
+action against, any other world, we will be informed and we will step
+in. First, warning will be given. Second, any and all vessels dispatched
+on such a mission will be annihilated. Third, if the offense is
+continued or repeated, trial will be held before the Galactic Council
+and any sentence imposed will be carried out."
+
+In spite of Garlock's manner and message, both marshals were highly
+relieved. "You're in plenty of time, with us, sir," Entlore said. "We
+have just sent our first rocket to our nearer moon ... that is, unless
+that group of--of espers gets their ship off the ground."
+
+"How far along are they?"
+
+"The ship itself is built, but they are having trouble with their drive.
+The hull is spherical, and much smaller than this one. It has atomic
+engines, but no blasts or ion-plates ... but neither has this one!"
+
+"Exactly; they may be pretty well along. I'd like to get in touch with
+them as soon as possible. May I borrow a 'talker' like Miss Flurnoy for
+a few days? You have others, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, but I'll let you have her; it is of the essence that you have the
+best one available. Miss Flurnoy?"
+
+"Yes, sir?" Besides reporting, she had been conversing busily with James
+and Belle.
+
+"Would you like to be assigned to Mr. Garlock for the duration of his
+stay on Margonia?"
+
+"Oh, _yes_, sir!" she replied, excitedly.
+
+"You are so assigned. Take orders from him or from any designate as
+though I myself were issuing them."
+
+"Thank you, sir ... but what limits? And do I transmit to and/or record
+for you, sir?"
+
+"No limit. These four Galaxians are hereby granted nation-wide top
+clearance. Transmit as usual whatever is permitted."
+
+"Full reporting is not only permitted, but urged," Garlock said. "There
+is nothing secret about our mission."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+As the _Pleiades_ landed: "If you will give us your focus spot, Mr.
+Entlore, we can all 'port to your office and save calling staff cars."
+
+"And cause a revolution?" Entlore laughed. "Apparently you haven't been
+checking outside."
+
+"Afraid I haven't. I've been thinking."
+
+"Take a look. I got orders from the Cabinet to put guards wherever
+people absolutely must not go, and open everything else to the public. I
+_hope_ there are enough guards to keep a lane open for us, but I
+wouldn't bet on it." Garlock was very glad that the military men's stiff
+formality had disappeared. "You Galaxians took this whole planet by
+storm while you were still above the stratosphere."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+There is no need to go into detail concerning the reception and
+celebration. On Earth, one inauguration of a president and one
+coronation of a monarch were each almost as well covered by
+broadcasters, if not as turbulently and enthusiastically prolonged. From
+the _Pleiades_ they went to the Administration Building, where an
+informal reception was held. Thence to the Capitol, where the reception
+was very formal indeed. Thence to the Grand Ballroom of the city's
+largest hotel, where a tremendous--and long-winded--banquet was served.
+
+At Garlock's request, all sixteen members of the "crackpot" group--the
+most active members of the Deep Space Club--had been invited to the
+banquet. And, even though Garlock was a very busy man, his talker tuned
+in to each one of the sixteen, tuned them all to the Galactic Admiral,
+and in odd moments a great deal of business was done.
+
+After being told most of the story--in tight-beamed thoughts that ComOff
+Flurnoy could not receive--the whole group was wildly enthusiastic. They
+would change the name of their club forthwith to The Galaxian Society Of
+Margonia. They laid plans for a world-wide organization which would have
+tremendous prestige and tremendous income. They already had a
+field--Garlock knew about their ship--they wanted the _Pleiades_ to move
+over to it as soon as possible--Yes, Garlock thought he could do it the
+following day--if not, as soon as he could....
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The _Pleiades_ had landed at ten o'clock in the forenoon, local time;
+the banquet did not come to an end until long after midnight. Throughout
+all this time the four Galaxians carried on, without a slip, the act
+that all this was, to them, old stuff.
+
+It was just a little before daylight when they returned, exhausted, to
+the ship. ComOff Flurnoy went with them. She was still agog at the
+wonder of it all as Belle and Brownie showed her to her quarters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7
+
+
+Since everyone, including the ebullient ComOff, slept late the following
+morning, they all had brunch instead of breakfast and lunch. All during
+the meal Garlock was preoccupied and stern.
+
+"Hold everything for a while, Jim," he said, when everyone had eaten.
+"Before we move, Belle and I have got to have a conference."
+
+"Not a Fatso Ferber nine-o'clock type, I hope." James frowned in mock
+reproach and ComOff Flurnoy cocked an eyebrow in surprise.
+"Monkey-business on company time is only for Big Shots like him; not for
+small fry such as you."
+
+"Well, it won't be exclusively monkey-business, anyway. While we're gone
+you might clear with the control tower and take us up into take-off
+position. Come on, Belle." He took her by one elbow and led her away.
+
+"Why, _Doctor Garlock_." Mincing along beside him, pretending high
+reluctance, she looked up at him wide-eyed. "I'm _surprised_, I really
+am. I'm _shocked_, too. I'm _not_ that kind of a _girl_, and if I wasn't
+_afraid_ of losing my _job_ I would _scream_. I _never_ even _suspected_
+that _you_ would use your _position_ as my _boss_ to _force_ your
+_unwelcome attentions_ on a _poor_ and _young_ and _innocent_ and
+_suffering_...."
+
+    [Illustration:
+
+    In an unparalleled blast of Gunther power the primes of
+    many worlds head toward the meeting on Tellus.]
+
+Inside his room Garlock, who had been grinning, sobered down and checked
+every Gunther block--a most unusual proceeding.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Belle stopped joking in the middle of the sentence.
+
+"Yeah, _how_ you suffer," he said. "I was just checking to be sure we're
+prime-proof. I'm not ready for Deggi Delcamp yet. That guy, Belle, as
+you probably noticed, has got one God-awful load of stuff."
+
+"Not as much as you have, Clee. Nor as much push behind what he has got.
+And his shield wouldn't make patches for yours."
+
+"Huh? How sure are you of that?"
+
+"I'm positive. I'm the one who is going to get bumped, I'm afraid. That
+Fao Talaho is a hard-hitting, hard-boiled hellcat on wheels."
+
+"I'll be damned. You're wrong. I checked her from stem to gudgeon and
+you lay over her like a circus tent. What's the answer?"
+
+"Oh? Do I? I'm mighty glad ... funny, both of us being wrong ... it must
+be, Clee, that it's sex-based differences. We're used to each other, but
+neither of us has ever felt a Prime of the same sex before, and there
+must be more difference between Ops and Primes than we realized.
+Suppose?"
+
+"Could be--I hope. But that doesn't change the fact that we aren't
+ready. We haven't got enough data. If we start out with this grandiose
+Galactic Service thing and find only two or three planets Gunthered, we
+make jackasses of ourselves. On the other hand, if we start out with a
+small organization or none, and find a lot of planets, it'll be one
+continuous cat-fight. On the third hand...."
+
+"Three hands, Clee? What are you, an octopussy or an Arpalone?"
+
+"Keep your beautiful trap shut a minute. On the third hand, we've _got_
+to start somewhere. Any ideas?"
+
+"I never thought of it that way.... Hm-m-m-m ... I see." She thought for
+a minute, then went on, "We'll have to start without starting, then ...
+quite a trick.... But how about this? Suppose we take a fast tour, with
+you and I taking quick peeks, without the peekees ever knowing we've
+been peeking?"
+
+"That's using the brain, Belle. Let's go." Then, out in the Main, "Jim,
+we want to hit a few high spots, as far out as you can reach without
+losing orientation. Beta Centauri here is pretty bright, Rigel and
+Canopus are real lanterns. With those three as a grid, you could reach
+fifteen hundred or two thousand light-years, couldn't you?"
+
+"More than that. That many parsecs, at least."
+
+"Good. Belle and I want to make a fast, random-sampling check of Primes
+and Ops around here. We'll need five minutes at each planet--quite a
+ways out. So set up as big a globe as you can and still be dead sure of
+your locations; then sample it."
+
+"Not enough data. How many samples do you want?"
+
+"As many as we can get in the rest of today. Six or seven hours,
+say--eight hours max."
+
+"Call it seven.... Brownie on the guns, me on Compy.... Five minutes for
+you.... I should be able to lock down the next shot in five ... one
+minute extra, say, for safety factor ... that'd be ten an hour. Seventy
+planets enough?"
+
+"That'll be fine."
+
+"Okay. We're practically at Number One now," and James and Lola donned
+their scanners, ready for the job.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Miss Flurnoy," Garlock said, "you might tell Mr. Entlore that
+we're...."
+
+"Oh, I already have, sir."
+
+"You don't have to come along, of course, if you'd rather stay here."
+
+"Stay here, sir? Why, he'd _kill_ me! I'm off the air for a minute,"
+this last thought was a conspiratorial whisper. "Besides, do you think
+I'd miss a chance to be the first person--and just a girl, too--of a
+whole world to see other planets of other suns? Unless, of course, you
+invite Mr. Entlore and Mr. Holson along. They're both simply dying to
+go, I know, but of course won't admit it."
+
+"You'd be just as well pleased if I didn't?"
+
+"What do you think, sir?"
+
+"We'll be working at top speed and they'd be very much in the way, so
+they'll get theirs later--after you've licked the cream off the top of
+the...."
+
+"Ready to roll, Clee," James announced.
+
+"Roll."
+
+"Why, I lost contact!" Miss Flurnoy exclaimed.
+
+"Naturally," Garlock said. "Did you expect to cover a distance it takes
+light thousands of years to cross? You can record anything you see in
+the plates. You can talk to Jim or Lola any time they'll let you. Don't
+bother Miss Bellamy or me from now on."
+
+Garlock and Belle went to work. All four Galaxians worked all day, with
+half an hour off for lunch. They visited seventy planets and got back to
+Margonia in time for a very late dinner. ComOff Flurnoy had less than a
+quarter of one roll of recorder-tape left unused, and the Primes had
+enough information to start the project they had in mind.
+
+And shortly after dinner, all five retired.
+
+"In one way, Clee, I'm relieved," Belle pondered, "but I can't figure
+out why all the Primes--the grown-up ones, I mean--on all the worlds are
+just about the same cantankerous, you-be-damned, out-and-out stinkers as
+you and I are. How does _that_ fit into your theory?"
+
+"It doesn't. Too fine a detail. My guess is--at least it seems to me to
+make sense--it's because we haven't had any competition strong enough to
+smack us down and make Christians out of us. I don't know what a
+psychologist would say...."
+
+"And I know _exactly_ what you'd think of whatever he did say, so you
+don't need to tell me." Belle laughed and presented her lips to be
+kissed. "Good night, Clee."
+
+"Good night, ace."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+And the next morning, early, Garlock and Belle teleported themselves--by
+arrangement and appointment, of course--across almost the full width of
+a nation and into the private office in which Deggi Delcamp and Fao
+Talaho awaited them.
+
+For a time which would not have been considered polite in Tellurian
+social circles the four Primes stood still, each couple facing the other
+with blocks set tight, studying each other with their eyes. Delcamp was,
+as Garlock had said, a big bruiser. He was shorter and heavier than the
+Tellurian. Heavily muscled, splendidly proportioned, he was a man of
+tremendous physical as well as mental strength. His hair, clipped close
+all over his head, was blonde; his eyes were a clear, keen, cold dark
+blue.
+
+Fao Talaho was a couple of inches shorter than Belle; and a good fifteen
+pounds heavier. She was in no sense fat, however, or even
+plump--actually, she was almost lean. She was wider and thicker than was
+the Earthwoman; with heavier bones forming a wider and deeper frame.
+She, too, was beautifully--yes, spectacularly--built. Her hair, fully as
+thick as Belle's own and worn in a free-falling bob three or four inches
+longer than Belle's, was bleached almost white. Her eyes were not really
+speckled, nor really mottled, but were regularly _patterned_ in lighter
+and darker shades of hazel. She was, Garlock decided, a really
+remarkable hunk of woman.
+
+Both Nargodians wore sandals without either socks or stockings. Both
+were dressed--insofar as they were dressed at all--in yellow. Fao's
+single garment was of a thin, closely-knitted fabric, elastic and sleek.
+Above the waist it was neckless, backless, and almost frontless; below,
+it was a very short, very tight and clinging skirt. Delcamp wore a
+sleeveless jersey and a pair of almost legless shorts.
+
+Garlock lowered his shield enough to send and to receive a thin layer of
+superficial thought; Delcamp did the same.
+
+"So far, I like what I see," Garlock said then. "We are well ahead of
+you, hence I can help you a lot if you want me to and if you want to be
+friendly about it. If you don't, on either count, we leave now. Fair
+enough?"
+
+"Fair enough. I, too, like what I have seen so far. We need help, and I
+appreciate your offer. Thanks, immensely. I can promise full cooperation
+and friendship for myself and for most of our group; and I assure you
+that I can and will handle any non-cooperation that may come up."
+
+"Nicely put, Deggi." Garlock smiled broadly and let his guard down to a
+comfortable lepping level. "I was going to bring that up--the faster
+it's cleared the better. Belle and I are paired. Some day--unless we
+kill each other first--we may marry. However, I'm no bargain and she's
+one-third wildcat, one-third vixen, and one-third cobra. How do you two
+stand?"
+
+"You took the thought right out of my own mind. Your custom of pairing
+is not what you call 'urbane' on this world. Nevertheless, Fao and I are
+paired. We had to. No one else has ever interested either of us; no one
+else ever will. We should not fight, but we do, furiously. But no matter
+how vigorously we fly apart, we inevitably fly together again just as
+fast. No one understands it, but you two are pretty much the same."
+
+"Check. Just one more condition, then, and we can pull those women of
+ours apart." Belle and Fao were still staring at each other, both still
+sealed tight. "The first time Fao Talaho starts throwing her weight at
+me, I'm not going to wait for you to take care of her--I'm going to give
+her the surprise of her life."
+
+"It'd tickle me silly if it could be done," Delcamp smiled and was
+perfectly frank, "But the man doesn't live that can do it. How would you
+go about trying it?"
+
+"Set your block solid."
+
+Delcamp did so, and through that block--the supposedly impenetrable
+shield of a Prime Operator--Garlock insinuated a probe. He did not crack
+the screen or break it down by force; he neutralized and counter-phased,
+painlessly and almost imperceptibly, its every component and layer.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Like this," Garlock said, in the depths of the Margonian's mind.
+
+"My God! You can do _that_?"
+
+"If I tell her, this deep, to play ball or else, do you think she'd need
+two treatments?"
+
+"She certainly oughtn't to. This makes you Galactic Admiral, no
+question. I'd thought, of course, of trying you out for Top Gunther, but
+this settles that. We will support you, sir, wholeheartedly--and my
+heartfelt thanks for coming here."
+
+"I have your permission, then, to give Fao a little discipline when she
+starts rocking the boat?"
+
+"I wish you would, sir. I'm not too easy to get along with, I admit, but
+I've tried to meet her a lot more than half-way. She's just too damned
+cocky for _anybody's_ good."
+
+"Check. I wish somebody would come along who could knock hell out of
+Belle." Then, aloud, "Belle, Delcamp and I have the thing going. Do you
+want in on it?"
+
+Delcamp spoke to Fao, and the two women slowly, reluctantly, lowered
+their shields to match those of the men.
+
+"Your Galaxian shaking of the hands--handshake, I mean--is very good,"
+Delcamp said, and he and Garlock shook vigorously.
+
+Then the crossed pairs, and lastly the two girls--although neither put
+much effort into the gesture.
+
+"Snap out of it, Belle!" Garlock sent a tight-beamed thought. "She isn't
+going to bite you!"
+
+"She's been trying to, damn her, and I'm going to bite her right
+back--see if I don't."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Garlock called the meeting to order and all four sat down. The
+Tellurians lighted cigarettes and the others--who, to the Earthlings'
+surprise, also smoked--assembled and lit two peculiar-looking things
+half-way between pipe and cigarette. And both pairs of smokers, after a
+few tentative tests, agreed in not liking at all the other's taste in
+tobacco.
+
+"You know, of course, of the trip we took yesterday?" Garlock asked.
+
+"Yes," Delcamp admitted. "We read ComOff Flurnoy. We know of the seventy
+planets, but nothing of what you found."
+
+"Okay. Of the seventy planets, all have Op fields and all have two or
+more Operators; one planet has forty-four of them. Only sixty-one of the
+planets, however, have Primes old enough for us to detect. Each of these
+worlds has two, and only two, Primes--one male and one female--and on
+each world the two Primes are of approximately the same age. On fifteen
+of these worlds the Primes are not yet adult. On the forty-six remaining
+worlds, the Primes are young adults, from pretty much like us four down
+to considerably younger. None of these couples is married-for-family.
+None of the girls has as yet had a child or is now pregnant.
+
+"Now as to the information circulating all over this planet about us.
+Part of it is false. Part of it is misleading--to impress the military
+mind. Thus, the fact is that the _Pleiades_, as far as we know, is the
+only starship in the whole galaxy. Also, the information is very
+incomplete, especially as to the all-important fact that we were lost in
+space for some time before we discovered that the only possible
+controller of the Gunther Drive is the human mind...."
+
+"_What!!!!_" and argument raged until Garlock stopped it by declaring
+that he would prove it in the Margonians' own ship.
+
+Then Garlock and Belle together went on to explain and to describe--not
+even hinting, of course, that they had ever been outside the galaxy or
+had even thought of trying to do so--their concept of what the Galaxian
+Societies of the Galaxy would and should do; or what the Galaxian
+Service could, should, and _would_ become--the Service to which they
+both intended to devote their lives. It wasn't even in existence yet, of
+course. Fao and Deggi were the only other Primes they had ever talked to
+in their lives. That was why they were so eager to help the Margonians
+get their ship built. The more starships there were at work, the faster
+the Service would grow into a really tremendous....
+
+"_Fao's getting ready to blow her top_," Delcamp flashed Garlock a
+tight-beamed thought. "_If I were doing it I'd have to start right
+now._"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"_I'll let her work up a full head of steam, then smack her
+bow-legged._"
+
+"_Cheers, brother! I hope you can handle her!_"
+
+... organization. Then, when enough ships were working and enough
+Galaxian Societies were rolling, there would be the Regional
+organizations and the Galactic Council....
+
+"So, on a one-planet basis and right out of your own little fat head,"
+Fao sneered, "you have set yourself up as Grand High Chief Mogul, and
+all the rest of us are to crawl up to you on our bellies and kiss your
+feet?"
+
+"If that's the way you want to express it, yes. However, I don't know
+how long I personally will be in the pilot's bucket. As I told you, I
+will enforce the basic tenet that top Gunther is top boss--man, woman,
+snake, fish, or monster."
+
+"Top Gunther be damned!" Fao blazed. "I don't and won't take orders from
+_any_ man--in hell or in heaven or on this Earth or on any planet of
+any...."
+
+"Fao!" Delcamp exclaimed, "Please keep still--_please_!"
+
+"Let her rave," Garlock said, coldly. "This is just a three-year-old
+baby's tantrum. If she keeps it up, I'll give her the damnedest jolt she
+ever got in all her spoiled life."
+
+Belle whistled sharply to call Fao's attention, then tight-beamed a
+thought. "If you've got any part of a brain, slick chick, you'd better
+start using it. The boy friend not only plays rough, but he doesn't
+bluff."
+
+"To hell with all that!" Fao rushed on. "We don't have anything to do
+with your organization--go on back home or anywhere else you want to.
+We'll finish our own ship and build our own organization and run it to
+suit ourselves. We'll...."
+
+"That's enough of that." Garlock penetrated her shield as easily as he
+had the man's, and held her in lock. "You are _not_ going to wreck this
+project. You will start behaving yourself right now or I'll spread your
+mind wide open for Belle and Deggi to look at and see exactly what kind
+of a half-baked jerk you are. If that doesn't work, I'll put you into a
+Gunther-blocked cell aboard the _Pleiades_ and keep you there until the
+ship is finished and we leave Margonia. How do you want it?"
+
+Fao was shocked as she had never been shocked before. At first she tried
+viciously to fight; but, finding that useless against the appalling
+power of the mind holding hers, she stopped struggling and began really
+to think.
+
+"That's better. You've got what it takes to think with. Go ahead and do
+it."
+
+And Fao Talaho did have it. Plenty of it. She learned.
+
+"I'll be good," she said, finally. "Honestly. I'm ashamed, really, but
+after I got started I couldn't stop. But I can now, I'm sure."
+
+"I'm sure you can, too. I know exactly how it is. All us Primes have to
+get hell knocked out of us before we amount to a whoop in Hades. Deggi
+got his one way, I got mine another, you got yours this way. No, neither
+of the others knows anything about this conversation and they won't.
+This is strictly between you and me."
+
+"I'm awfully glad of that. And I think I ... yes, damn you, thanks!"
+
+Garlock released her and, after a few sobs, a couple of gulps, and a
+dabbing at her eyes with an inadequate handkerchief, she said: "I'm
+sorry, Deggi, and you, too, Belle. I'll try not to act like such a fool
+any more."
+
+Delcamp and Belle both stared at Garlock; Belle licked her lips.
+
+"No comment," he thought at the man; and, to Belle, "She just took a
+beating. Will you sheathe your claws and take a lot of pains to be extra
+nice to her the rest of the day?"
+
+"Why, surely. I'm _always_ nice to anybody who is nice to me."
+
+"Says you," Garlock replied, skeptically, and all four went to work as
+though nothing had happened.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+They went through the shops and the almost-finished ship. They studied
+blueprints. They met all the Operators and discussed generators and
+fields of force and mathematics and paraphysics and Guntherics. They
+argued so hotly about mental control that Garlock had James bring the
+_Pleiades_ over to new-christened Galaxian Field so that he could prove
+his point then and there.
+
+Entlore and Holson came along this time, as well as the ComOff; and all
+three were nonplussed and surprised to see each member of the "crackpot"
+group hurl the huge starship from one solar system to any other one
+desired, apparently merely by thinking about it. And the "crackpots"
+were extremely surprised to find themselves hopelessly lost in uncharted
+galactic wildernesses every time they did not think, definitely and
+positively, of one specific destination. Then Garlock took a chance. He
+had to take it sometime; he might just as well do it now.
+
+"See if you can hit Andromeda, Deggi," he suggested.
+
+While Belle, James, and Lola held their breaths, Delcamp tried. The
+starship went toward the huge nebula, but stopped at the last suitable
+planet on the galaxy's rim.
+
+"Can _you_ hit Andromeda?" Delcamp asked, more than half jealously, and
+Belle tensed her muscles.
+
+"Never tried it," Garlock said, easily. "I suppose, though, since you
+couldn't kick the old girl out of our good old home galaxy, she'll just
+sit right here for me, too."
+
+He went through the motions and the _Pleiades_ did sit right
+there--which was exactly what he had told her to do. And everybody--even
+the "crackpots"--breathed more easily.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+And Belle was "nice" to Fao; she didn't use her claws, even once, all
+day. And, just before quitting time--
+
+"Does he ... I mean, did he ever ... well, sort of knock you around?"
+Fao asked.
+
+"I'll say he hasn't!" Belle's nostrils flared slightly at the mere
+thought. "I'd stick a knife into him, the big jerk."
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean physically...."
+
+"Through my blocks? A _Prime's_ blocks? Don't be ridiculous, Fao!"
+
+"What do you mean, 'ridiculous'?" Fao snapped. "You tried _my_ blocks.
+What did they feel like to you--mosquito netting? What I thought was....
+Oh, all he really said was that all Primes had to have hell knocked out
+of them before they could be any good. That he had had it one way, Deggi
+another, and me a third. I see--you haven't had yours yet."
+
+"I certainly haven't. And if he ever tries it, I'll...."
+
+"Oh, he won't. He couldn't, very well, because after you're married, it
+would...."
+
+"Did the big lug tell you I was going to marry him?"
+
+"Of course not. No fringes, even. But who else are you going to marry?
+If the whole universe was clear full of the finest men imaginable--pure
+dreamboats, no less--can you even conceive of you marrying any one of
+them except him?"
+
+"I'm not going to marry anybody. Ever."
+
+"No? You, with your Prime's mind and your Prime's body, not have any
+children? And you tell _me_ not to be ridiculous?"
+
+That stopped Belle cold, but she wouldn't admit it. Instead--"I don't
+get it. What did he _do_ to you, anyway?"
+
+Fao's block set itself so tight that it took her a full minute to soften
+it down enough for even the thinnest thought to get through. "That's
+something nobody will ever know. But anyway, unless ... unless you find
+another Prime as strong as Clee is--and I don't really think there are
+any, do you?"
+
+"Of course there aren't. There's only one of his class, anywhere. He's
+it," Belle said, with profound conviction.
+
+"That makes it tough for you. You'll have the toughest job imaginable.
+The _very_ toughest. I know."
+
+"Huh? What job?"
+
+"Since Clee won't do it for you, and since nobody else can, you'll have
+to just simply knock hell out of yourself."
+
+And in Garlock's room that night, getting ready for bed, Belle asked
+suddenly, "Clee, what in hell did you do to Fao Talaho?"
+
+"Nothing much. She's a mighty good egg, really."
+
+"Could you do it, whatever it was, to me?"
+
+"I don't know; I never tried it."
+
+"_Would_ you, then, if I asked you to?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Answer that yourself."
+
+"And it was 'nothing much,' it says here in fine print. But I think I
+know just about what it was. Don't I?"
+
+"I wouldn't be surprised."
+
+"You knocked hell out of yourself, didn't you?"
+
+"I lied to her about that. I'm still trying to."
+
+"So I've got to do it to myself. And I haven't started yet?"
+
+"Check. But you're several years younger than I am, you know."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Belle thought it over for a minute, then stubbed out her cigarette and
+shrugged her shoulders. "No sale. Put it back on the shelf. I like me
+better the way I am. That is, I _think_ I do.... In a way, though, I'm
+sorry, Clee darling."
+
+"Darling? Something new has been added. I wish you really meant that,
+ace."
+
+"I'm still 'ace' after what I just said? I'm glad, Clee. 'Ace' is ever
+so much nicer than 'chum.'"
+
+"Ace. The top of the deck. You are, and always will be."
+
+"As for meaning it, I wish I didn't." Ready for bed, Belle was much more
+completely and much less revealingly dressed than during her working
+hours. She slid into bed beside him, pulled the covers up to her chin,
+and turned off the light by glancing at the switch. "If I thought
+anything could ever come of it, though, I'd do it if I had to pound
+myself unconscious with a club. But I wouldn't be here, then,
+either--I'd scoot into my own room so fast my head would spin."
+
+"You wouldn't have to. You wouldn't be here."
+
+"I wouldn't, at that. That's one of the things I like so much about you.
+But honestly, Clee--seriously, screens-down honestly--can you see any
+possible future in it?"
+
+"No. Neither of us would give that much. Neither of us can. And there's
+nothing one-sided about it; I'm no more fit to be a husband than you are
+to be a wife. And God help our children--they'd certainly need it."
+
+"We'd never have any. I can't picture us living in marriage for nine
+months without committing at least mayhem. Why, in just the little time
+we've been paired, how many times have you thrown me out of this very
+room, with the fervent hope that I'd drown in deep space before you ever
+saw me again?"
+
+"At a guess, about the same number of times as you have stormed out
+under your own power, slamming the door so hard it sprung half the seams
+of the ship and swearing you'd slice me up into sandwich meat if I ever
+so much as looked at you again."
+
+"That's what I mean. But how come we got off on _this_ subject, I
+wonder? Because when we aren't fighting, like now, it's purely
+wonderful. So I'll say it again. Good night, Clee, darling."
+
+"Good night, ace." In the dark his lips sought hers and found them.
+
+The fervor of her kiss was not only much more intense than any he had
+ever felt before. It was much, very much more intense than Belle Bellamy
+had either wanted it or intended it to be.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Next morning, at the workman's hour of eight o'clock, the four
+Tellurians appeared in the office of Margonia's Galaxian Field.
+
+"The first thing to do, Deggi, is to go over in detail your blueprints
+for the generators and the drive," Garlock said.
+
+"I suppose so. The funny pictures, eh?" Delcamp had learned much, the
+previous day; his own performance with the _Pleiades_ had humbled him
+markedly.
+
+"By no means, my friend," Garlock said, cheerfully. "While your stuff
+isn't exactly like ours--it couldn't be, hardly; the field is so big and
+so new--that alone is no reason for it not to work. James can tell you.
+He's the Solar System's top engineer. What do you think, Jim?"
+
+"What I saw in the ship yesterday will work. What few of the prints I
+saw yesterday will fabricate, and the fabrications will work. The main
+trouble with this project, it seems to me, is that nobody's building the
+ship."
+
+"What do you mean by _that_ crack?" Fao blazed.
+
+"Just that. You're a bunch of prima donnas; each doing exactly as he
+pleases. So some of the stuff is getting done three or four times, in
+three or four different ways, while a lot of it isn't getting done at
+all."
+
+"Such as?" Delcamp demanded, and--
+
+"Well, if you don't like the way we are doing things you can...." Fao
+began.
+
+"Just a minute, everybody." Lola came in, with a disarming grin. "How
+much of that is hindsight, Jim? You've built one, you know--and from all
+accounts, progress wasn't nearly as smooth as your story can be taken to
+indicate."
+
+"You've got a point there, Lola," Garlock agreed. "We slid back two
+steps for every three we took forward."
+
+"Well ... maybe," James admitted.
+
+"So why don't you, Fao and Deggi, put Jim in charge of construction?"
+
+Fao threw back her silvery head and glared, but Delcamp jumped at the
+chance. "Would you, Jim?"
+
+"Sure--unless Miss Talaho objects."
+
+"She won't." Delcamp's eyes locked with Fao's, and Fao kept still.
+"Thanks immensely, Jim. And I know what you mean." He went over to a
+cabinet of wide, flat drawers and brought back a sheaf of drawings. Not
+blueprints, but original drawings in pencil. "Such as this. I haven't
+even got it designed yet, to say nothing of building it."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+James began to leaf through the stack of drawings. They were full of
+erasures, re-drawings, and such notations as "See sheets 17-B, 21-A, and
+27-F." Halfway through the pile he paused, turned backward three sheets,
+and studied for minutes. Then, holding that one sheet by a corner, he
+went rapidly through the rest of the stack.
+
+"This is it," he said then, pulling the one sheet out and spreading it
+flat. "What we call Unit Eight--the heart of the drive." Then,
+tight-beamed to Garlock:
+
+"This is the thing that you designed _in toto_ and that I never could
+understand any part of. All I did was build it. It must generate those
+Prime fields."
+
+"Probably," Garlock flashed back. "I didn't understand it any too well
+myself. How does it look?"
+
+"He isn't even close. He's got only half of the constants down, and half
+of the ones he has got down are wrong. Look at this mess here...."
+
+"I'll take your word for it. I haven't your affinity for blueprints, you
+know, or your eidetic memory for them."
+
+"Do you want me to give him the whole works?"
+
+"We'll have to, I think. Or the ship might not work at all."
+
+"Could be--but how about intergalactic hops?"
+
+"He couldn't do it with the _Pleiades_, so he won't be able to with
+this. Besides, if we change it in any particular he _might_. You see, I
+don't know very much more about Unit Eight than you do."
+
+"_That_ could be, too." Then, as though just emerging from his
+concentration on the drawings, James thought at Delcamp and Fao, but on
+the open, general band.
+
+"A good many errors and a lot of blanks, but in general you're on the
+right track. I can finish up this drawing in a couple of hours, and we
+can build the unit in a couple of days. With that in place, the rest of
+the ship will go fast.
+
+"_If_ Miss Talaho wants me to," he concluded, pointedly.
+
+"Oh, I do, Jim--really I do!" At long last, stiff-backed Fao softened
+and bent. She seized both his hands. "If you can, it'd be too wonderful
+for words!"
+
+"Okay. One question. Why are you building your ship so small?"
+
+"Why, it's plenty big enough for two," Delcamp said. "For four, in a
+pinch. Why did you make yours so big? Your Main is big enough almost for
+a convention hall."
+
+"That's what we figured it might have to be, at times," Garlock said.
+"But that's a very minor point. With yours so nearly ready to flit, no
+change in size is indicated now. But Belle and I have got to have
+another conference with the legal eagle. So if you and Brownie, Jim,
+will 'port whatever you need out of the _Pleiades_, we'll be on our way.
+
+"So long--see you in a few days," he added, and the _Pleiades_ vanished;
+to appear instantaneously high above the stratosphere over what was to
+become the Galaxian Field of Earth.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Got a minute, Gene?" he sent a thought.
+
+"For you two Primes, as many as you like. We haven't started building or
+fencing yet, as you suggested, but we have bought all the real estate.
+So land the ship anywhere out there and I'll send a jeep out after you."
+
+"Thanks, but no jeep. Nobody but you knows that we've really got control
+of the _Pleiades_, and I want everybody else to keep on thinking it's
+strictly for the birds. We'll 'port in to your office whenever you say."
+
+"I say now."
+
+In no time at all the two Primes were seated in the private office of
+Eugene Evans, Head of the Legal Department of the newly re-incorporated
+Galaxian Society of Sol, Inc. Evans was a tall man, slightly thin,
+slightly stooped, whose thick tri-focals did nothing whatever to hide
+the keenness of his steel-gray eyes.
+
+"The first thing, Gene," Garlock said, "is this employment contract
+thing. Have you figured out a way to break it?"
+
+"It can't be broken." The lawyer shook his head.
+
+"Huh? I thought you top-bracket legal eagles could break anything, if
+you really tried."
+
+"A good many things, yes, especially if they're long and complicated.
+The Standard Employment Contract, however, is short, explicit, and
+iron-clad. The employer can discharge the employee for any one of a
+number of offenses, including insubordination; which, as a matter of
+fact, the employer himself is allowed to define. On the other hand, the
+employee cannot quit except for some such fantastic reason as the
+non-tendering--not non-payment, mind you, but non-_tendering_--of
+salary."
+
+"I didn't expect that--it kicks us in the teeth before we get started."
+Garlock got up, lighted a cigarette, and prowled about the big room.
+"Okay. Jim and I will have to get ourselves fired, then."
+
+"Fired!" Belle snorted. "Clee, you talk like a man with a paper nose!
+Who else could run the Project? That is," her whole manner changed; "he
+doesn't know I can run it as well as you can--or better--but I could
+tell him--and maybe you think I wouldn't!"
+
+"You won't have to. Gene, you can start spreading the news that Belle
+Bellamy is a real, honest-to-God Prime Operator in every respect. That
+she knows more about Project Gunther than I do and could run it better.
+Ferber undoubtedly knows that Belle and I have been at loggerheads ever
+since we first met--spread it thick that we're fighting worse than ever.
+Which, by the way, is the truth."
+
+"Fighting? Why, you seemed friendly enough...."
+
+"Yeah, we can be friendly for about fifteen minutes if we try real hard,
+as now. The cold fact is, though, that she's just as much three-quarters
+hellcat and one-quarter potassium cyanide as she...."
+
+"I like _that!_" Belle stormed. She leaped to her feet, her eyes
+shooting sparks. "All _my_ fault! Why, you self-centered, egotistical,
+domineering jerk, I could write a book...."
+
+"That's enough--let it go--_please!_" Evans pleaded. He jumped up, took
+each of the combatants by a shoulder, sat them down into the chairs they
+had vacated, and resumed his own seat. "The demonstration was eminently
+successful. I will spread the word, through several channels. Chancellor
+Ferber will get it all, rest assured."
+
+"And _I'll_ get the job!" Belle snapped. "And maybe you think I won't
+take it!"
+
+"Yeah?" came Garlock's searing thought. "You'd do anything to get it and
+to keep it. Yeah. I _do_ think."
+
+"Oh?" Belle's body stiffened, her face hardened. "I've heard stories, of
+course, but I couldn't quite ... but surely, he can't be _that_
+stupid--to think he can buy me like so many pounds of calf-liver?"
+
+"He surely is. He does. And it works. That is, if he's ever missed,
+nobody ever heard of it."
+
+"But how could a man in such a big job _possibly_ get away with such
+foul stuff as that?"
+
+"Because all the SSE is interested in is money, and Alonzo P. Ferber is
+a tremendously able top executive. In the big black-and-red money books
+he's always 'way, 'way up in the black, and nobody cares about his
+conduct."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Belle, even though she was already convinced, glanced questioningly at
+Evans.
+
+"That's it, Miss Bellamy. That's it, in a precise, if somewhat crude,
+nutshell."
+
+"That's that, then. But just how, Clee--if he's as smart as you say he
+is--do you think you can make him fire you?"
+
+"I don't know--haven't thought about it yet. But I could be pretty
+insubordinate if I really tried."
+
+"That's the understatement of the century."
+
+"I'll devote the imponderable force of the intellect to the problem and
+check with you later. Now, Gene, about the proposed Galactic Service,
+the Council, and so on. What is the reaction? Yours, personally, and
+others?"
+
+"My personal reaction is immensely favorable; I think it the greatest
+advance that humanity has ever made. I have been very cautious, of
+course, in discussing, or even mentioning the matter, but the reaction
+of everyone I have sounded--good men; big men in their respective
+fields--has been as enthusiastic as my own."
+
+"Good. It won't surprise you, probably, to be told that you are to be
+this system's councillor and--if we can swing it and I think we can--the
+first President of the Galactic Council?"
+
+Evans was so surprised that it was almost a minute before he could reply
+coherently. Then: "I _am_ surprised--very much so. I thought, of course,
+that you yourself would...."
+
+"Far from it!" Garlock said, positively. "I'm not the type. You are.
+You're better than anyone else of the Galaxians--which means than anyone
+else period. With the possible exception of Lola, and she fits better on
+our exploration team. Check, Belle?"
+
+"Check. For once, I agree with you without reservation. _That's_ a job
+we can work at all the rest of our lives, and scarcely start it."
+
+"True--indubitably true. I appreciate your confidence in me, and if the
+vote so falls I will do whatever I can."
+
+"We know you will, and thank _you_. How long will it take to organize? A
+couple of weeks? And is there anything else we have to cover now?"
+
+"A couple of _weeks!_" Evans was shocked. "You are naive indeed, young
+man, to think anything of this magnitude can even be started in such a
+short time as that. And yes, there are dozens of matters--hundreds--that
+should be discussed before I can even start to work intelligently."
+
+Hence discussions went on and on and on. It was three days before
+Garlock and Belle 'ported themselves up into the _Pleiades_ and the
+starship displaced itself instantaneously to Margonia.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Meanwhile, on Margonia, James James James the Ninth went directly to the
+heart of his job by leading Lola and Fao into Delcamp's office and
+setting up its Gunther blocks.
+
+"You said you want me to build your starship. Okay, but I want you
+both--Fao especially--to realize exactly what that means. I know what to
+do and how to do it. I can handle your Operators and get the job done.
+However, I can't handle either of you, since you both out-Gunther me,
+and I'm not going to try to. But there can't be two bosses on any one
+job, to say nothing of three or seventeen. So either I run the job or I
+don't. If either of you steps in, I step out and don't come back in. And
+remember that you're not doing us any favors--it's strictly vice versa."
+
+"Jim!" Lola protested. Fao's hackles were very evidently on the rise;
+Delcamp's face was hardening. "Don't be so rough, Jim, _please_. That's
+no way to...."
+
+"If you can pretty this up, pet, I'll be glad to have you say it for me.
+Here's what you have to work on. If I do the job they'll have their
+starship in a few weeks. The way they've been going, they won't have it
+in twenty-five years. And the only way to get that bunch out there to
+really work is to tell each one of them to cooperate or else--and
+enforce the 'or else.'"
+
+"But they'd quit!" Delcamp protested. "They'll _all_ quit!"
+
+"With suspension or expulsion from the Society the consequences?
+Hardly." James said.
+
+"But you wouldn't do that--you couldn't."
+
+"I wouldn't?"
+
+"Of course he wouldn't," Lola put in, soothingly, "except as a very last
+resort. And, even at worst, Jim could build it almost as easily with
+common labor. You Primes don't really _have_ to have any Operators at
+all, you know; but all your Operators together would be perfectly
+helpless without at least one Prime."
+
+"How come?" and "In what way?" Delcamp and Fao demanded together.
+
+"Oh, didn't you know? After the ship is built and the fields are charged
+and so on, everything has to be activated--the hundred and one things
+that make it so nearly alive--and that is strictly a Prime's job. Even
+Jim can't do it."
+
+"I see ... or, rather, I don't see at all," Fao said, thoughtfully. She
+was no longer either excited or angry. "A few weeks against twenty-five
+years ... what do you think of his time estimate, Deg my dear?"
+
+"I hadn't thought it would take nearly that long; but this 'activation'
+thing scares me. Nothing in my theory even hints at any such thing.
+So--if there's so much I don't know yet, even in theory, it would take a
+long time. Maybe I'd never get it."
+
+"Well, anyway, I want our _Celestial Queen_ done in weeks, not years,"
+Fao said, extending her hand to James and shaking his vigorously. "So I
+promise not to interfere a bit. If I feel any such urge coming on, I'll
+dash home and lock myself up in a closet until it dies. Fair enough?"
+
+Since Fao really meant it, that was fair enough.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+For a whole day James did nothing except study blueprints; going over in
+detail and practically memorizing every drawing that had been made. He
+then went over the ship, studying minutely every part, plate, member,
+machine and instrument that had been installed. He noted what each man
+and woman was doing and what they intended to do. He went over material
+on hand and material on order, paying particular attention to times of
+delivery. He then sent a few--surprisingly few--telegrams.
+
+Finally he called all fourteen Operators together. He told them exactly
+what the revised situation was and exactly what he was going to do about
+it. He invited comments.
+
+There was of course a riot of protest; but--in view of what James had
+said anent suspensions and expulsions from the Galaxian Society--not one
+of them actually did quit. Four of them, however, did appeal to Delcamp,
+considerably to his surprise, to oust the interloper and to put things
+back where they had been; but they did not get much satisfaction.
+
+"James says that he can finish building this starship in a few weeks,"
+Delcamp told them, flatly. "Specifically, three weeks, if we can get the
+special stuff made fast enough. Fao and I believe him. Therefore, we
+have put him in full charge. He will remain in charge unless and until
+he fails in performance. You are all good friends of Fao's and mine, and
+we hope that all of you will stay with the project. If, however, we must
+choose now between you--any one of you or all of you--and James, there
+is no need to tell you what the choice will be."
+
+Wherefore all fourteen went back to work; grudgingly at first and
+dragging their feet. In a very few hours, however, it became evident to
+all that James did in fact know what he was doing and that the work was
+going faster and smoother than ever before; whereupon all opposition and
+all malingering disappeared. They were Operators, and they were all
+intensely interested in their ship. Morale was at a high.
+
+Thus, when the _Pleiades_ landed beside the now seething _Celestial
+Queen_, Garlock found James with feet on desk, hands in pockets, and
+scanner on head; doing--apparently--nothing at all. Nevertheless, he was
+a very busy man.
+
+"Hey, Jim!" A soprano shriek of thought emanated from a gorgeous
+seventeen-year-old blonde. "I can't read this funny-picture, it's been
+folded too many times. Where does this lead go to?"
+
+"Data insufficient. Careful, Vingie; I'd hate to have to send you back
+to school."
+
+"'Scuse, please, Junior. Unit Six, Sub-Assembly Tee Dash Ni-yun.
+Terminal Fo-wer. From said terminal, there's a lead--Bee Sub
+something-or-other--goes somewhere. Where?"
+
+"B sub Four. It goes to Unit Seven, Sub-Assembly Q dash Three, Terminal
+Two. And watch your insulation--that's a mighty hot lead."
+
+"Uh-huh, I got that. Double Sink Mill Mill; Class Albert Dog Kittens.
+Thanks, boss!"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Hi, Jim," Garlock said. Then, to Delcamp. "I see you're rolling."
+
+"_He's_ rolling, you mean." Delcamp had not yet recovered fully from a
+state of near-shock. "So _that's_ what an eidetic memory is? He knows
+every nut, bolt, lead, and coil in the ship!"
+
+"More than that. He's checking every move everybody makes. When they're
+done, you won't have to just hope everything was put together
+right--you'll _know_ it was."
+
+Jim was their man.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+And Fao sidled over toward Belle. There was something new about the
+silver-haired girl, Belle decided instantly. The difference was
+slight--Belle couldn't put her finger on it at first. She
+seemed--quieter? Softer? More subdued? No, definitely. More feminine?
+No; that would be impossible. More ... more adult? Belle hated to admit
+it, even to herself, but that was what it was.
+
+"Deg and I got married day before yesterday," Fao confided, via tight
+beam.
+
+"Oh--so you're _pregnant!_"
+
+"Of course. I saw to that the first thing. I knew you'd want to be the
+first one to know. Oh, isn't it _wonderful_?" She seized Belle's arm and
+hugged it ecstatically against her side. "Just too perfectly marvelous
+for _anything_?"
+
+"Oh, I'm sure it is; and I'm so happy for you, Fao!" And it would have
+taken the mind of a Garlock to perceive anything either false or forced
+in thought or bearing.
+
+Nevertheless, when Belle went into Garlock's room that night, storm
+signals were flying high in her almost-topaz eyes.
+
+"Fao Talaho-Delcamp is _pregnant_!" she stormed, "and it's all _your_
+fault!"
+
+"Uh-huh," he demurred, trying to snap her out of her obviously savage
+mood. "Not me, ace. Not a chance in the world. It was Deggi."
+
+"You ... you _weasel_! You know very well, Clee Garlock, what I meant.
+If you hadn't given her that treatment she'd have kept on fighting with
+him and they wouldn't have been married and had any children for
+positively _years_. So now she'll have the first double-Prime baby and
+it ought to be _mine_. I'm older than she is--our group is 'way ahead of
+theirs--we have the first and _only_ starship--and then you do _that_.
+And you wouldn't give _me_ that treatment. Oh, no--just to _her_, that
+bleached-blonde! I'd like to strangle you to death with my own bare
+hands!"
+
+"What a hell of a logic!" Garlock had been trying to keep his own temper
+in leash, but the leash was slipping. "Assume I tried to work on
+you--assume I succeeded--what would you be? What would I have? What age
+do you think this is--that of the Vikings? When SOP in getting a wife
+was to beat her unconscious with a club and drag her into the longboat
+by her hair? Hardly! I do not want and will not have a conquered woman.
+Nor a spoiled-rotten, mentally-retarded brat...."
+
+"You unbearable, conceited, overbearing jerk! Why, I'd rather...."
+
+"Get out! And _this_ time, _stay_ out!"
+
+Belle got out--and if door and frame had not been built of super-steel,
+both would have been wrecked by the blast of energy she loosed in
+closing the door behind her.
+
+In her own room, with Gunther blocks full on, she threw herself face
+down on the bed and cried as she had not cried since she was a child.
+
+And finally, without even taking off her clothes, she cried herself to
+sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 8
+
+
+Next morning, early, Belle tapped lightly on Garlock's door.
+
+"Come in."
+
+She did so. "Have you had your coffee?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"So have I."
+
+Neither Belle nor Garlock had recovered; both faces showed strain and
+drain.
+
+"I think we'd better break this up," Belle said, quietly.
+
+"Check. We'll have to, if we expect to get any work done."
+
+Belle could not conceal her surprise.
+
+"Oh, not for the reason you think," Garlock went on, quickly. "Your
+record as a man-killer is still one hundred point zero zero zero
+percent. I've been in love with you ever since we paired. Before that,
+even."
+
+"Flapdoodle!" she snorted, inelegantly. "Why, I...."
+
+"Keep still a minute. And I'm not going to fight with you again. Ever.
+I'm not going to touch you again until I can control myself a lot better
+than I could last night."
+
+"Oh? That was mostly my fault, of course. But in love? Uh-uh, I've seen
+men in love. You aren't. I couldn't make you be, not with the best I
+could do. Not even in bed. You aren't, Clee--if you are, I'm an
+Australian bushman."
+
+"Perhaps I'm an atypical case. I'm not raving about your perfect
+body--you know what that is like already. Nor about your mind, which is
+the only one I know of as good as my own. Maybe I'm in love with what I
+think you ought to be ... or what I hope you will be. Anyway, I'm in
+love with _something_ connected with you--and with no other woman alive.
+Shall we go eat?"
+
+"Uh-huh--let's."
+
+They joined Lola and James at the table; and if Lola noticed anything
+out of the ordinary, she made no sign.
+
+And after breakfast, in the Main--
+
+"About three weeks, Jim, you think?" Garlock asked.
+
+"Give or take a couple of days, yes."
+
+"And Belle and I would just be in the way--at least until time to show
+Deggi about the activation ... and all those Primes to organize ... we'd
+better leave you here, don't you think, and get going?"
+
+"I'll buy that. We'll finish as soon as possible."
+
+Lola and James moved a few personal belongings planetside; Garlock and
+Belle shot the _Pleiades_ across a vast gulf of space to one of the
+planets they had scanned so fleetingly on their preliminary survey. Its
+name was, both remembered, Lizoria; its two Primes were named Rezdo
+Semolo and Mirea Mitala--male and female, respectively.
+
+After sending down a very brief and perfunctory request for
+audience--which was in effect a declaration of intent and nothing
+else--Garlock and Belle teleported themselves down into Semolo's office,
+where both Lizorian Primes were.
+
+Both got up out of peculiar-looking chairs to face their visitors. Both
+were tall; both were peculiarly thin. Not the thinness of emaciation,
+but that of bodily structure.
+
+"On them it looks good," Belle tight-beamed a thought to Garlock.
+
+Both moved fast and with exquisite control; both were extraordinarily
+graceful. "Snaky" was Belle's thought of the woman; "sinuous" was
+Garlock's of the man. Both were completely hairless, of body and of
+head--not by nature, but via electric-shaver clipping. Both wore
+sandals. The man wore shorts and a shirt-like garment of nylon or its
+like; the woman wore just enough ribbons and bands to hold a hundred
+thousand credits' worth of jewels in place. She appeared to be about
+twenty years--Tellurian equivalent--old; he was probably twenty-three or
+twenty-four.
+
+"We did not invite you in and we do not want you here," Semolo said,
+coldly. "So get out, both of you. If you don't, when I count three I'll
+throw you out, and I won't be too careful about how many of your bones I
+break. One.... Two...."
+
+"Pipe down, Rezdo!" the girl exclaimed. "They have something we haven't,
+or they wouldn't be here. Whatever it is, we want it."
+
+"Oh, let him try, Miss Mitala," Garlock said, through her hard-held
+block, in the depth of her mind. "He won't hurt us a bit and it may do
+him some good. While he's wasting effort I'll compare notes with my
+partner here, Galactic Vice-Admiral Belle Bellamy. I'm glad to see that
+one of you has at least a part of a brain."
+
+"... Three!" Semolo did his best, with everything he had, without even
+attracting Garlock's attention. He then tried to leap at the intruder
+physically, despite the latter's tremendous advantage in weight and
+muscle, but found that he could not move.
+
+Then, through Belle's solidly-set blocks, "How are you doing, ace?
+Getting anywhere?"
+
+"My God!" came Belle's mental shriek. "What--how can--but no, you
+_didn't_ give _that_ to Fao, surely!"
+
+"I'll say I didn't--nor to Delcamp. But you're going to need it, I'm
+thinking."
+
+"But _can_ you? Even if you _would_--and I'm just beginning to realize
+how big a man you really are--can that kind of stuff be taught? I
+probably haven't got the brain-cells it takes to handle it."
+
+"I'm not sure, but I've reworked our Prime Fields into one and made a
+couple of other changes. Theoretically, it ought to work. Shall I come
+in and try it?"
+
+"Don't be an idiot, darling. _Of course!_"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+As impersonally as a surgeon exploring an organ, Garlock went into
+Belle's mind. "Tune to the field ... that's it--fine! Then--I'll do it
+real slow, and watch me close--you do like so ... get it?"
+
+"Uh-huh!" Belle breathed, excitedly. "Got it!"
+
+"Then this ... and this ... and there you are. You can try it on me, if
+you like."
+
+"Uh-uh. No sale. I don't need practice and I'd like to preserve the
+beautiful illusion that maybe I _could_ crack your shield if I wanted
+to. I'll work on Miss Snake-Hips here, the serpentine charmer--but say,
+I'll bet there's a bone in it. _You_ can block it, can't you?"
+
+"Yes. It goes like this." He showed her. "It takes full mastery of the
+Prime Field, but you've got that."
+
+"Oh, wonderful! Thanks, Clee darling. But do you mean to actually say I
+can now completely block you or any other Prime out?"
+
+"You're going too far, ace. Me, yes--but don't forget that there very
+well may be people--or things--as far ahead of us as we are ahead of
+pointer pups."
+
+"Huh! Balloon-juice and prop-wash! I just _know_, Clee, that you're the
+absolute tops of the whole, entire, macrocosmic universe."
+
+"Well, we can dream, of course." Garlock withdrew his mind from Belle's
+and turned his attention to the now quiet Semolo. "Well, my
+over-confident and contumacious young squirt; are you done horsing
+around or do you want to keep it up until you addle completely what few
+brains you have?"
+
+The Lizorian made no reply; but merely glared.
+
+"The trouble with you half-baked, juvenile--I almost added 'delinquent'
+to that, and perhaps I should have--Primes is that you know too damned
+much that isn't true. As an old Tellurian saying hath it, 'you're
+altogether too big for your britches.'
+
+"Thus, simply because you have lived a few years on one single planet
+and haven't encountered anyone able to stand up to you, you've sold
+yourself on the idea that there's nobody, anywhere, who can. You're
+wrong--you couldn't be more so if you had an army to help you.
+
+"What, actually, have you done? What, actually, have you got?
+Practically nothing. You haven't even started a starship; you've
+scarcely started making plans. You realize dimly that the theory is not
+in any of the books, that you'll have to slug it out for yourself, but
+that is _work_. So you're still just posing and throwing your weight
+around.
+
+"As a matter of fact, you're merely a drop in a lake. There are
+thousands of millions of planets, and thousands of millions of Prime
+Operators. Most of them are probably a lot stronger than you are; many
+of them may be stronger than my partner and I are. I am not at all
+certain that you will pass even the first screening; but since you are
+without question a Prime Operator, I will deliver the message we came to
+deliver. Miss Mitala, do you want to listen or shall we drive it into
+you, too?"
+
+"I want to listen to anyone or anything who has a working starship and
+who can do what you have just done."
+
+"Very well," and Garlock told the general-distribution version of the
+story of the Galactic Service.
+
+"Quite interesting," Semolo said loftily, at its end. "Whether or not I
+would be interested depends, of course, on whether there's a position
+high enough for...."
+
+"I doubt very much if there's one low enough," Garlock cut in sharply.
+"However, since it's part of my job, I'll get in touch with you later.
+Okay, Belle."
+
+And in the Main--"What a jerk!" Belle exclaimed. "What a half-cooked,
+half-digested _pill_! I simply marvel at your forbearance, Clee. You
+should have turned him inside out and hung him up to dry--especially
+behind the ears!" Then, suddenly, she giggled. "But do you know what I
+did?"
+
+"I can guess. A couple of shots in the arm?"
+
+"Uh-huh. Next time he pitches into her she'll slap his ears right off.
+Oh, _brother_!"
+
+"Check and double-check. But let's hop to Number Two.... Here it is."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Oh, yes," came a smooth, clear, diamond-sharp thought in reply to
+Garlock's introductory call. "This world, as you have perceived, is
+Falne. I am indeed Baver 14WD27, my companion Prime is indeed Glarre
+12WD91. You are, we perceive, Bearers of the Truth; of great skill and
+of high advancement. Your visit here will, I am sure, be of immense
+benefit to us and possibly, I hope, of some small benefit to you. We
+will both be delighted to have you both 'port yourselves to us at once."
+
+The Tellurians did so--and in the very instant of appearance Garlock was
+met by a blast of force the like of which he had never even imagined.
+The two Falnian Primes, capable operators both, had built up their
+highest possible potentials and had launched both terrific bolts without
+any hint of warning.
+
+Belle's mind, however, was already fused with Garlock's. Their combined
+blocks were instantaneous in action; their counter-thrust was nearly so.
+Both Falnians staggered backward until they were stopped by the room's
+wall.
+
+"Ah, yes," Garlock said, then. "You are indeed, in a small and feeble
+way, Seekers after the Truth; of which we are indeed Bearers. Lesser
+Bearers, perhaps, but still Bearers. You will indeed profit greatly from
+our visit. You err, however, in thinking that we may in any respect
+profit from you. You have nothing whatever that we have not had for
+long. Now let us, if you please, take a few seconds of time to get
+acquainted, each with the other."
+
+"That, indeed, is the logical and seemly thing to do." Both Falnians
+straightened up and stepped forward; neither arrogantly nor
+apologetically, but simply as though nothing at all out of the ordinary
+had taken place.
+
+Each pair studied the other. Physically, the two pairs were surprisingly
+alike. Baver was almost as big as Garlock; almost as heavily muscled.
+Glarre could have been cast in Belle's own mold.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+With that, however, all resemblance ceased.
+
+Both Falnians were naked. The man wore only a belt and pouch in lieu of
+pockets; the woman only a leather carryall slung from one shoulder--big
+enough, Garlock thought, to hold a week's supplies for an Explorer
+Scout.
+
+His hair was thick, bushy, unkempt; sun-bleached to a nondescript blend
+of pale colors. Hers--long, heavy, meticulously middle-parted and
+dressed--was a startling two-tone job. To the right of the part it was a
+searingly brilliant red; to the left, an equally brilliant royal blue.
+
+His skin was deeply tanned. The color of hers was completely masked by a
+bizarrely spectacular overlay of designs done in semi-indelible,
+multi-colored dyes.
+
+"Ah, you are worthy indeed of receiving an increment of Truth. Hear,
+then, the message we bring," and again Garlock told the story.
+
+"We thank you, sir and madam, from our hearts. We will accept with joy
+your help in finishing our ship; we will do all that in us lies to
+further the cause of the Galactic Service. Until a day, then?"
+
+"Until a day." Then, to Belle, "Okay, ace. Ready? Go!"
+
+And up in the Main--"Sweet Sin!" Belle exclaimed. "What a pair _they_
+turned out to be! Clee, that simply scared me witless."
+
+"You can play that in spades." Garlock jammed his hands into his pockets
+and prowled about the room, his face a black scowl of concentration.
+
+Until, finally, he pulled himself out of the brown study and said: "I've
+been trying to think if there's any other thing, however slight, that I
+have and you haven't. There isn't. You've got it all. You're just as
+fast as I am, just as sharp and as accurate--and, since we now draw on
+the same field, just as strong."
+
+"Why Clee! You're worrying about _me_? You've done altogether too much
+for me, already."
+
+"Anything I can do, I've got to do ... well, shall we go?"
+
+"We shall."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+They visited four more planets that day. And after supper that night,
+standing in the corridor between their doors, Belle began to soften her
+shield, as though to send a thought. Almost instantly, however, she
+changed her mind and snapped it back to full on.
+
+"Good night, Clee," she said.
+
+"Good night, Belle," and each went into his own room.
+
+The next day they worked nine planets, and the day after that they
+worked ten. They ate supper in friendly fashion; then strolled together
+across the Main, to a davenport.
+
+"It's funny," Belle said thoughtfully, "having this tremendous ship all
+to ourselves. To have a private conference right out here in the Main
+... or is it?"
+
+He triggered the shields, she watched him do it. "It is now," he assured
+her.
+
+"Prime-proof? Not ordinary Gunther blocks?"
+
+"Uh-huh. Two hundred kilovolts and four hundred kilogunts. Backed by
+all the force of the Prime and Op fields and the full power of the
+engines. I told you I'd made some changes in the set-up."
+
+"Private enough, I guess ... what a mess those Primes are! And we'll
+have to make the rounds twice more--when we alert 'em and when we pick
+'em up."
+
+"Not necessarily. This new set-up ought to give us a galaxy-wide reach.
+Let's try Semolo, on Lizoria, shall we?"
+
+"Uh-huh--Let's."
+
+"Tune in, then ace."
+
+"_Ace_, darling?"
+
+"Ace, _Darling_?"
+
+"Darling. You said you weren't going to fight with me any more.
+Okay--I'm not going to try any more to lick you until after I've licked
+myself. I'm tuned--you may fire when ready, Gridley."
+
+They fired--and hit the mark dead center. Top-lofty and arrogant and
+belligerent as ever, the Lizorian Prime took the call. "I thought all
+the time you wanted something. Well, I neither want nor need...."
+
+"Cut it, you unlicked cub, until you can begin to use that half-liter of
+golop you call a brain," Garlock said, harshly. "We're just trying out a
+new ultra-communicator. Thanks for your help."
+
+On the fourth day they worked eleven planets; the fifth day saw the
+forty-sixth planet done and the immediate job finished. All during
+supper, it was very evident that Belle had something on her mind.
+
+After eating, she went out into the Main and slumped down on a
+davenport. Garlock followed her. A cigarette leaped out of a closed box
+and into place between her lips. It came alight. She smoked it slowly,
+without relish; almost as though she did not know that she was smoking.
+
+"Might as well get it out of your system, Belle," Garlock said aloud.
+"What are you thinking about at the moment?"
+
+Belle exhaled; the half-smoked butt vanished. "At the moment I was
+thinking about Gunther blocks. Specifically, their total inability to
+cope with that new Prime probe of yours." She stared at him,
+narrow-eyed. "It goes through them just like nothing at all." She
+paused; eyed him questioningly.
+
+"No comment."
+
+"And yet you gave it to me. Freely, of your own accord. Even before I
+needed it. Why?"
+
+"Still no comment."
+
+"You'd better comment, Buster, before I blow my top."
+
+"There is such a thing as urbanity."
+
+"I've heard of it, yes; even though you never did believe I ever had
+any. You _talk_ a good game of urbanity, but your brand of it would
+never carry you _that_ far...."
+
+She paused. He remained silent. She went on.
+
+"Of course, it does put a lot of pressure on me to develop myself."
+
+"I'm glad you used the word 'develop' instead of 'treat.'"
+
+"Oh, sometimes--at rare intervals--I'm not exactly dumb. But you
+knew--you _must_ have known--what a horrible risk you took in making me
+as tremendously powerful as you are."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Some, perhaps, but very definitely less risky than not doing it."
+
+"Getting information out of you is harder than pulling teeth. Clee
+Garlock, I want you to tell me _why!_"
+
+"Very well." Garlock's jaw set. "You've had it in mind all along that
+this is some kind of a lark; that you and I are Gunther Tops of the
+universe. Or did that belief weaken a bit when we met Baver 14WD27?"
+
+"Well, perhaps--a little. However, the probability is becoming greater
+with every planet we visit. After all, _some_ race has to be tops. Why
+_shouldn't_ it be us?"
+
+"_What_ a logic--excuse me, skip it...."
+
+"Oh, you really _meant_ it when you said you weren't going to fight with
+me any more?"
+
+"I'm going to try not to. Now, remembering that I don't consider your
+premise valid, just suppose that when we visit some planet some day, you
+get your mind burned out and I don't--solely because I had something I
+could have given you and wouldn't. What then?"
+
+"Oh. I thought that was what you ... but suppose I can't...."
+
+"We won't suppose anything of the kind. But that wasn't all that was on
+your mind. Nor most."
+
+"How true. Those Primes. The women. Honestly, Clee, I never saw--never
+imagined--such a bunch of exhibitionistic, obstreperous, obnoxious,
+swell-headed, hussies in my whole life. And every day it was borne in on
+me more and more that I was--am--exactly like the rest of them."
+
+Garlock was wise enough to say nothing, and Belle went on: "I've been
+talking a good game of licking myself, but this time I'm going to _do_
+it."
+
+She jumped up and doubled her fists. "If you can do it, I can," she
+declared. "Like the ancient ballad--'Anything you can do I can do
+better.'" She tried to be jaunty, but the jauntiness did not ring quite
+true.
+
+"That's an unfortunate quotation, I'm afraid. The trouble is, I
+haven't."
+
+"Huh? Don't be an idiot, Clee. You certainly have--what else do _you_
+suppose put me so far down into the dumps?"
+
+"In that case, you _certainly_ will. So come on up out of the dumps."
+
+"Wilco--and I certainly will. But for a woman who has been talking so
+big, I feel low in my mind. A good-night kiss, Clee, darling? Just
+one--and just a little one, at that?"
+
+"Sweetheart!"
+
+There were more than one, and none of them was little. Eventually,
+however, the two stood, arms still around each other, in the corridor
+between their doors.
+
+"But kissing's as far as it goes, isn't it," Belle said. The remark was
+not a question; nor was it quite a statement.
+
+"That's right."
+
+"So good night, darling."
+
+"Good night, ace."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+And when they next saw each other, at the breakfast table, Belle was
+apparently her usual dauntless self.
+
+"Hi, darling--sit down," she said, gaily. "Your breakfast is on the
+table. Bacon, eggs, toast, strawberry jam, and a liter of coffee."
+
+"Nice! Thanks, ace."
+
+They ate in silence for a few minutes; then her hand crept tentatively
+across the table. He pressed it warmly. "You look a million, Belle. Out
+of the dumps?"
+
+"Pretty much--in most ways. One way, though, I'm in deeper than ever.
+You see, I know exactly what you did to Fao Talaho; and why neither you
+or anybody else could do it to me. Or if they could, what would happen
+if they did."
+
+"I was hoping you would. I couldn't very well tell you, before, but...."
+
+"Of course not. I see that."
+
+"... the fact is that Fao, and all the others we've met, are young
+enough, unformed enough--plastic enough--yes, damn it, _weak_ enough--to
+bend. But you are tremendously strong, and twelve Rockwell numbers
+harder than a diamond. You wouldn't bend. If enough stress could be
+applied--and that's decidedly questionable--you wouldn't bend. You'd
+break, and I can't figure it. You're a little older, of course, but not
+enough to...."
+
+"How about the fact that I've been banging myself for eight years
+against Cleander Garlock, the top Prime of the universe and the hardest?
+That might have something to do with it, don't you think?"
+
+Garlock said, "Indefensible conclusions drawn from insufficient data.
+That's just what I've been talking about. No matter how we got the way
+we are, though, the fact is that you and I have got to fight our own
+battles and bury our own dead."
+
+"Check. Like having a baby, but worse. There's nothing anybody else can
+do--even you--except maybe hold my hand, like now."
+
+"That's about it. But speaking of holding hands, would it help if we
+paired again?"
+
+Belle studied the question for two full minutes; her fine eyes clouded.
+"No," she said, finally. "I would enjoy it too much, and you'd ... well,
+you wouldn't...."
+
+"Huh?" he demanded.
+
+"Oh, physically, of course; but that isn't enough, or good enough, now.
+You see, I know what your personal code is. It's unbelievable, almost--I
+never heard of one like it, except maybe a priest or two--but I admire
+you tremendously for it. You would never, willingly, pair with a woman
+you really loved. That was why you were so glad to break ours off. You
+can't deny it."
+
+"I won't try to deny it. But you can't bluff me, Belle, so please quit
+trying. Basically, your code is the same as mine. Why else did you
+initiate our break?"
+
+Belle's block went solid, and Garlock said hastily, aloud, "Excuse it,
+please. Cancel. I've just said, and know as an empirical fact, that
+you've got to do the job alone--but I can't seem to help putting my big,
+flat foot in it by blundering in anyway. Let's get to work, shall we?"
+
+"What at? Interview the Primes, I'd say--tell them to hold themselves in
+readiness to attend...."
+
+"On very short notice...."
+
+"Yes. To attend the big meeting on Tellus. We'll have to make a
+schedule. It shouldn't be held until after Fao and Deggi get their ship
+built--it _can't_ be held, of course, until after you and Jim are out of
+SSE. Have you got _that_ figured out yet?"
+
+"Pretty much." He told her his plan.
+
+Belle giggled, then burst into laughter. "So _I'm_ in it, too?
+_Wonderful!_"
+
+"You have to be. If we make him mad enough, he'll fire you, too."
+
+"Without hiring me first? He couldn't."
+
+"He could, very easily. He doesn't know one-tenth of one percent of his
+people. If we work it right he'll assume that you're one of us
+wage-slaves, too. Lola, too, for that matter."
+
+"Careful, Clee. You and I think this is funny, but Lola wouldn't. She'd
+be shocked to her sweet little core, and she'd louse up the whole deal.
+So be very sure she doesn't get in on it."
+
+"I guess you're right ... well, shall we go out and insult our touchy
+young friend Semolo? Ready.... Go!"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Oh, it's _you_ again. I tell you...." the Lizorian began.
+
+"You will tell me nothing. You will listen. Link your mind to Mitala's,"
+and the linked Tellurian minds enforced the order. "In about two weeks
+the Primes of many worlds will meet in person on Tellus. Arrange your
+affairs so that on ten minutes' notice you both can leave Lizoria for
+Tellus aboard our starship, the _Pleiades_. That is all."
+
+"He'll come, too," Belle chortled. "He'll writhe and scream, but he'll
+come."
+
+"You couldn't keep him away," Garlock agreed.
+
+On the next planet, Falne, the procedure was a little different. The
+information was the same, but--"One word of warning," Garlock added. "It
+is to be a meeting of minds; not a contest to set up a pecking-order. If
+you try any such business you will be disciplined; sharply and in
+public."
+
+"Suppose that, under such conditions, we refuse to attend the meeting?"
+
+"That is your right. There is no coercion whatever. Whether or not you
+come will depend upon whether or not you two are in reality Seekers
+after Truth. Until a day."
+
+And so it went. Planet after planet. On not one of those worlds had any
+Prime changed his thinking. Not one was really interested in the
+Galactic Service as an instrument for the good of all mankind. There
+were almost as many attitudes as there were Primes; but all were
+essentially self-centered and selfish.
+
+"That tears it, Belle--busts it wide open. I can--I mean we together can
+do either job. That is, either be top boss and run the thing or put in
+full time beating some sense into those hard skulls. We can't do both."
+
+"On paper, we should," Belle said, thoughtfully. "You're Galactic
+Admiral; I'm your Vice. One job apiece. But we're _not_ going to be
+separated. Besides...."
+
+"Two (minds) (brains) are much better than one," both said, except for
+one word, in unison.
+
+Belle laughed. "That settles that. The Garlock-Bellamy fusion is
+Galactic Admiral--so we need a good Vice. Who? Deggi and Fao? They're
+cooperative and idealistic enough, but.... Oh, I don't know exactly what
+it is they lack. Do you?"
+
+"No; I can't put it into words or thoughts. Probably the concept is too
+new for pigeon-holing. It isn't exactly strength or hardness or
+toughness or resilience or brisance--maybe a combination of all five.
+What we need is a pair like us but better."
+
+"There _aren't_ any."
+
+"Don't be too sure." Belle glanced at him in surprise and he went on:
+"Not that we've seen, no. But each of those worlds centers a volume of
+space containing thousands of planets. Including the Tellurian and the
+Margonian, we now have forty-eight regions defined. Let's run a very
+fast search-pattern of Region Forty-nine and see what we come up with."
+
+"All right ... but suppose we do find somebody who out-Gunthers us?"
+
+"I'd a lot rather have it that way than the way it is now. I'll do the
+hopping, you the checking. Here's the first one--what do you read?"
+
+"N. G."
+
+"And this one?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"And this?"
+
+"Ditto."
+
+Until, finally: "Clee, just how long are you going to keep this up?"
+
+"Until we find something or run out of time for the meeting. Belle, I
+really _want_ to find somebody who amounts to something."
+
+"So do I, really, so go ahead."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+But they did not run out of time. At planet number four-hundred-something,
+Belle suddenly emitted a shriek--vocally as well as mentally. "Clee!
+Hold it! Here's something, I think!"
+
+"I'm sure there is, and I'm gladder to see you two people than can
+possibly be expressed."
+
+Belle whirled; so did Garlock. A man stood in the middle of the Main; a
+man shaped very much like Garlock, but with long, badly-tousled hair and
+a bushy wilderness of fiery-red whiskers.
+
+"Please excuse this intrusion, Admiral--or should it be plural? Improper
+address, I'm sure, but your joint tenure is a concept so new and so vast
+that I am not yet able to grasp it fully--but you are working at such
+high speed that I had to do something drastic. You will, I trust, remain
+here long enough to discuss certain matters with my wife and me?"
+
+"We'll be very glad to."
+
+"Thank you. I will return, then, more decorously, and bring her. One
+moment." He disappeared.
+
+"_Wife!_" Belle exclaimed, more than half in dismay. "They must be,
+then...."
+
+"Yeah." The thought of a wife did not bother Garlock at all. "Talk about
+_power!_ And _speed!_ To get all that stuff and 'port up here in the
+millisecond or so we had the screens open? Baby Doll, there's a guy who
+is what a Prime Operator _ought_ to be!"
+
+In less than a minute the man reappeared, accompanied by a woman who was
+very obviously pregnant--eight months or so. Like the man, she was
+dressed in tight-fitting coveralls. Her hair, however--it was a natural
+red, too--was cut to a uniform length of eight inches, and each hair
+individually stood out, perfectly straight and perfectly perpendicular
+to the element of the scalp from which it sprang.
+
+"Friends Belle and Clee of Tellus, I present Therea, my wife; and
+Alsyne, myself; of this planet Thaker. We have numbers, too, but they
+are never used among friends."
+
+Acknowledgments were made and a few minutes of conversation ensued,
+during which the two couples studied each other.
+
+"This looks mighty good to me," Garlock said then. "Shall we go screens
+half-down, Alsyne, and cry in each other's beer?"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+In thirty seconds of flashing communication each became thoroughly
+informed. Those minds could send, and could receive, an incredibly vast
+amount of information in an incredibly brief space of time.
+
+"Your ship should work and doesn't," Garlock said. "Show me; in detail."
+
+Alsyne showed him.
+
+"Oh, I see. You didn't work out quite all the theory. It has to be
+activated. Like this...." Garlock showed Alsyne.
+
+"I see. Thanks." Alsyne disappeared and was gone for some ten minutes.
+He reappeared, grinning hugely behind his flaming wilderness of beard.
+"It works perfectly; for which our heartfelt thanks. And now that my
+mind is at complete peace with the universe, we will consider the
+utterly fascinating subject of your proposed Galactic Service. You two
+Tellurians, immature although you are, have made two tremendous
+contributions to the advancement of the Scheme of Things--three, if you
+count the starship, which is comparatively unimportant--each of such
+import that no human mind can foresee any fraction of its consequences.
+First, your Prime Field, the probe and its screen...."
+
+"Clee!" Belle drove the thought. "You _didn't_ give him _that_, surely!"
+
+"Tut-tut, my child," Therea soothed her. "You are alarming yourself
+about nothing."
+
+"The only trouble with you two youngsters is that you aren't quite--very
+nearly, of course, but very definitely not quite--grown up." Alsyne
+smiled again; not only with mouth and eyes, but with his whole hairy
+face. "To the mature mind there is no such thing as status. Each knows
+what he can do best and does it as a matter of course. Rank is not
+necessary.
+
+"Second, the unimaginably important contribution of the ability to
+combine two dissimilar but intimately compatible minds into one
+tremendously effective fusion. While Therea and I have had only a few
+moments to play with it, we realize some of its possibilities. Thus,
+since she is a Doctor of Humanities...."
+
+"Oh," Belle interrupted. "_That's_ why you knew what I was thinking
+about, even though I tight-beamed the thought and my screens were
+tight?"
+
+"Exactly so. But to continue. With her sympathy and empathy, and my
+driving force and so on, the job of licking these young Primes into
+shape is, as your idiom has it, 'strictly our dish.' It is a truly
+delicious thought.
+
+"You two, on the other hand, have much that we lack. Breadth and depth
+and scope of imagination and of vision; yet almost incredible will-power
+and stamina and resolve...."
+
+"_That's the word I was trying to think of--will-power_," Belle flashed
+a thought at Garlock.
+
+"... qualities virtually always mutually exclusive; but the combination
+of which makes your fusion uniquely qualified to lead and direct this
+new and magnificent movement. But Therea and I have been idle and
+frustrated far too long. We can be of most use, at the moment, on
+Margonia; working with the Fao-Deggi unit. Therefore, with renewed deep
+thanks, we go."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Man and wife disappeared; and, ten seconds later, the Thakern starship
+vanished from its world.
+
+"Well, _what_ do you think of _that_?" Belle gasped. "I was actually
+afraid to think, even behind a Prime screen. I don't know _yet_ whether
+I want to kiss 'em or kill 'em."
+
+"I do. That guy is really a Prime, Belle. He's older, bigger, and a lot
+better than I am."
+
+"Uh-uh," she demurred, positively. "Older, yes. More mature--you _baby_,
+you!" She snickered gleefully. "If he hadn't included you in that crack
+I'd've stabbed him, so help me, even though it wasn't true. He said
+himself it's _you_ who has got what it takes to lead and direct, not
+him."
+
+"Us. We, I mean," he corrected, absently.
+
+"Uh-huh; us-we. One, now and forever. Hot Dog! Anyway, he wants us to
+and we want to so everything's lovely and so let's get to work on Fatso
+and his Foster. I think we ought to have some fun for a change and
+that'll be a lot. When do we want to hit him?"
+
+"Any day Monday through Friday. Nine-fifteen A.M. Eastern Daylight time.
+Plus or minus one minute."
+
+"Nice! Catch him _in flagrante delicto_. Lovely--shovel on the coal, my
+intrepid engineer!"
+
+On a Wednesday morning, then, at twelve minutes past nine EDT, the
+_Pleiades_ hung poised, high over the Chancellery of Solar System
+Enterprises, Incorporated.
+
+"Remember, Belle!" Garlock was pacing the Main. "To keep 'em staggering
+we'll have to land slugging and beat 'em to every punch. You did a
+wonderful job on her last time, and it's been eating on her ever since.
+She's probably been rehearsing in front of a mirror just how she's going
+to tear you apart next time and just how she's going to spit out the
+pieces. Last time, you were cold, stiff, rigidly formal, and polite. So
+this time it'll be me, and I'll be hot and bothered, dirty, low, coarse,
+lewd, and very, very rough."
+
+Belle threw back her head and laughed. "Rough? Yes. Vicious,
+contemptuous, or ugly; yes. A master of fluent, biting, and pyrotechnic
+profanity; yes. But low or dirty or coarse or lewd, Clee? Or any one of
+the four, to say nothing of them all? Uh-uh. Ferber's a filthy beast, of
+course; but even he knows you're one of the cleanest men that ever
+lived. They'd _know_ it was an act."
+
+"Not unless I give 'em time to think--or unless you do, before he fires
+Jim--in which case we'll lose the game anyway. But how about you? If I
+can knock 'em too groggy to think, will you carry on and keep 'em that
+way?"
+
+"Watch my blasts!" Belle giggled gleefully. "I never tried anything like
+that--any more than you have--but I'll guarantee to be just as low,
+dirty, coarse, lewd, and crude as you are. Probably more so, because in
+this particular case it'll be fun. You see, you're a man--you can't
+possibly despise and detest that slimy stinker either in the same way or
+as much as I do."
+
+"This ought to be good. Cut the rope, Jim."
+
+Even before the starship came to rest, Garlock drove a probe into the
+_sanctum sanctorum_ of the Chancellery--an utterly unheard-of act of
+insolence.
+
+"Foster! This is the _Pleiades_ coming in. Garlock calling. Hot up the
+tri-di and the recorder, Toots. Put Fatso on, and snap into it.... I
+said shake a leg!"
+
+"Why, I.... You...."
+
+"Stop stuttering and come to life, you half-witted bag! Gimme Ferber and
+hurry it up--this ship's tricky."
+
+"Why, you ... I never...." Ferber's outraged First Secretary could
+scarcely talk. "He ... he is...."
+
+"I know, Babe, I know--I could set that to music and sing it, with
+gestures. 'Chancellor Ferber is in conference and cannot be disturbed,'"
+he mimicked, savagely. "Put him on now--but _quick_!"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The tri-di tank brightened up; Chancellor Ferber's image appeared. He
+was disheveled, surprised and angry, but Garlock gave him no chance to
+speak.
+
+"Well, Fatso--at last! Where the _hell_ have you been all morning? I
+want some stuff, just as fast as God will let you get it together," and
+he began to read off, as fast as he could talk, a long list of highly
+technical items.
+
+Ferber tried for many seconds to break in, and Garlock finally allowed
+him to do so.
+
+"Are you crazy, Garlock?" he shouted. "What in hell's name are you
+bothering _me_ with _that_ stuff for? You know better than that--make
+out your requisitions and send them through channels!"
+
+"Channels, hell!" Garlock shouted back. "Hasn't it got through your
+four-inch-thick skull into your idiot's brain yet that I'm in a hurry? I
+don't want this stuff today; I want it day before yesterday--this damned
+junk-heap is apt to fall apart any minute. So quit goggling and
+slobbering at me, you wall-eyed, slimy, fat toad. Get that three hundred
+weight of suet into action. _Hump_ yourself!"
+
+"You ... you ... Why, I was never so insulted...."
+
+"Insulted? You?" Garlock out-roared him. "Listen, Fatso. If I ever set
+out to really insult you, you'll know it--it'll blister all the paint
+off the walls. All I'm trying to do now is get you off that fat butt of
+yours and get some action."
+
+Ferber became purple and pounded his desk in consuming anger.
+
+Garlock yelled louder and pounded harder. "Start rounding up this
+stuff--but _fast_--or I'll come down there and take your job away from
+you and do it myself--and for your own greasy hide's sake you'd better
+believe I'm not just chomping my choppers, either."
+
+"You'll _What?_" Ferber screamed. "_You're fired!_"
+
+"_You_ fire _me_?" Garlock mimicked the scream. "And make it stick?
+You'd better write that one up for the funnies. Why, you lard-brain, you
+couldn't fire a cap-pistol."
+
+"Foster!" Ferber yelled. "Terminate Garlock as of now. Insubordination,
+and misconduct, abuse of position, incompetence, malfeasance--everything
+else you can think of. Blacklist him all over the System!"
+
+At the word "fired" Belle, had leaped to her feet and had stopped
+laughing.
+
+"Miss Bellamy!" Ferber snapped.
+
+"Yes, sir?" she answered, sweetly.
+
+"You are hereby promoted to be Head of the...."
+
+"Oh, yeah?" Belle sneered, her voice cutting like a knife. "You
+unprincipled, lascivious, lecherous _Hitler!_ Have you got the
+unmitigated gall to take _me_ for a floozie? To think you can add _me_
+to your collection of bootlicking, round-heeled tramps?"
+
+"You're fired and blacklisted too!"
+
+"How nice! You know, I don't know of _anything_ I'd rather have happen
+to me?"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Get James on there--you, James...."
+
+"You don't need to fire me, you fat-headed old goat," James said,
+contemptuously. "I've already quit--the exact second you fired Clee."
+
+"No you didn't!" Ferber screamed. "Resignation not accepted. You're
+_Fired_! Dishonorably discharged--blacklisted everywhere--you'll _never_
+get another job--_anywhere_! And here's your slip, too!" Miss Foster was
+very fast on the machines.
+
+James 'ported his slip up into the _Pleiades_, just as Garlock and Belle
+had done with theirs, and disappeared with it as they had; reappearing
+almost instantly.
+
+"Montandon!"
+
+"Chancellor Ferber, are you completely out of your mind? You can't
+discharge either Miss Bellamy or me."
+
+"I can't?" he gloated. "Why not?"
+
+"Because neither of us is employed. By anybody."
+
+"That's right, Fatso," Belle said. "We just came along. Just to keep the
+boys company. It's lonesome, you know, 'way out in deep space."
+
+Miss Foster ripped a half-filled-out termination form out of her machine
+and hurled it into a waste-basket. Ferber's jaw dropped and his eyes
+stared glassily, but he rallied quickly.
+
+"I can blacklist her, though, and maybe you think I won't. Belle Bellamy
+will never get another job in this whole solar system as long as she
+lives, except through me! Maybe I'll hire her some day, for something,
+and maybe I won't. Are you listening, Bellamy?"
+
+"Not only listening, I'm reveling in every word." Belle laughed
+derisively. "I hate to shatter such wonderful dreams--or do I? You see,
+the _Pleiades_ really works, and the Galaxians own her; lock, stock, and
+barrel. You wouldn't have any part of her, remember? Insisted on payment
+for every nut, wire, and service? Now, they want to hire us four for a
+big operation with this starship. Since you only loaned Garlock and
+James to them, you might have made some legal trouble on that score, but
+now that you've fired them both--and in such _conclusive_
+language!--we're all set. So when you blacklist us with the Society,
+_please_ let me know--I want to take a tri-di in technicolor of you
+doing it. How do you like _them_ parsnips, Your Royal Fatness?"
+
+"I'll see about that!" Ferber stormed. "We'll have an injunction out in
+an hour!"
+
+"Go ahead," Garlock said, with a wide grin. "Have fun--the Galaxians
+have legal eagles too, you know. One thing Belle forgot. Just in case
+you recover consciousness some time and want to steal our termination
+papers back--especially Belle's; what a howler _that_ was!--don't try
+it. They're in a Gunther-blocked safe."
+
+Then, as comprehension began to dawn on Ferber's face:
+
+"S-u-c-k-e-r," Garlock drawled.
+
+The _Pleiades_ disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 9
+
+
+The _Pleiades_ landed on Margonia's Galaxian Field, where the Tellurians
+found the project running smoothly, a little ahead of schedule. Delcamp
+and Fao were working at their fast and efficient pace, but the hairy
+pair from Thaker seemed to be, literally, everywhere at once.
+
+"Hi, Belle." Fao 'ported up and shook hands warmly. "I thought I was
+going to have the first double-Prime baby, until _she_ appeared on the
+scene."
+
+"Didn't it make you mad? I'd've been furious."
+
+"Maybe a little at first, but not after I'd talked with her for half a
+minute. She'd never even thought of that angle. Besides, she thinks the
+whole galaxy is fairly crawling with double-Primes."
+
+"That's funny--so does Clee. But there are other things--strictly not
+angles--that she hasn't thought of, too. If those coveralls were half an
+inch tighter they'd choke her to death. You'd think she'd...."
+
+"Huh?" Fao interrupted. "_You_ should scream--oh, that ridiculous
+Tellurian prud...."
+
+"It _isn't_ ridiculous!" Belle snapped. "And it isn't prudishness,
+either--not with me, anyway. It's just that," she ran an indicative
+glance over Fao's lean, trim flanks and hard, flat abdomen, "it spoils
+your figure. It's only temporary, of course, but...."
+
+"_Spoils_ it! Why, how _utterly_ idiotic! Why, it's magnificent! Just as
+soon as it starts to show on me, Belle, I'm going to start wearing only
+half as many clothes as I've got on now."
+
+"You couldn't." Belle eyed the other girl's bathing-suit-like garment.
+Except for being blue instead of yellow, it was the same as the one she
+had worn before. "Not without the League for Public Decency sending the
+wagon out after you."
+
+"Oh, Miss Experience? Well, three-quarters, maybe...."
+
+"Hey, you two!" came Delcamp's hail. "How about cutting the gab and
+getting some work done?"
+
+"Coming, boss! 'Scuse it, please!" and two fast and skillful women went
+efficiently to work.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+With six Prime Operators on the job the work went on very rapidly, yet
+without error. The _Celestial Queen_ was finished, tested, and found
+perfect, one full day ahead of James' most optimistic estimate for
+construction alone. The six Primes conferred.
+
+"Do you want us to help you pick up the other Primes?" Delcamp asked.
+"Your Main, big as it is, will be crowded, and we have three ships here
+now instead of one."
+
+"I don't think so ... no," Garlock decided. "We told 'em we'd do it, and
+in the _Pleiades_, so we'd better. Unless, Alsyne, you don't agree?"
+
+"I agree. The point, while of course minor, is very well taken. We and
+our Operators--we brought six along; experts in their various
+fields--can serve best by working on Tellus with its Galaxian Society in
+getting ready for the meeting."
+
+"Oh, of course," Fao said. "Probably Deg and I should do the same
+thing?"
+
+"That would be our thought." The two Thakerns were thinking--and
+lepping--in fusion. "However," they went on carefully, "it must not be
+and is not our intent to sway you in any action or decision. While not
+all of you four, perhaps, are as yet fully mature, not one of you should
+be subjected to any additional exterior stresses."
+
+"I hope you don't think that way about _all_ Primes," Garlock said,
+grimly. "I'm going to smack some of those kids down so hard that their
+shirt-tails will roll up their backs like window shades."
+
+"If you find such action either necessary or desirable, we will join you
+quite happily in it. We go."
+
+The four remaining Primes looked at each other in puzzled surprise.
+
+"_What_ do you think about _that_?" Garlock asked finally, of no one in
+particular.
+
+"I don't understand them," Fao said, "but they're mighty nice people."
+
+"Do you suppose, Clee," Belle nibbled at her lower lip, "that we're
+getting off on the wrong foot with uniforms and admirals and things?
+That with really adult Primes running things the Galactic Service would
+run itself? No bosses or anything?"
+
+"Umnngk." Garlock grunted as though Belle had slugged him. "I hope not.
+Or do I? Anyway, not enough data yet to make speculation profitable. But
+I wonder, Miss Bellamy, if it would be considered an unjustifiable
+attempt to sway you in any action or decision if I were to suggest--Oh,
+ever so diffidently!--that if we're going to saddle up our bronks and
+ride out on roundup tomorrow morning we ought to be logging some
+sack-time right now?"
+
+"Considering the source, as well as and/or in connection with the
+admittedly extreme provocation," Belle straightened up into a regal
+pose, "You may say, Mister Garlock, without fear of successful
+contradiction, that in this instance no umbrage will be taken, at least
+for the moment." She broke the pose and giggled infectiously. "'Night,
+you two lovely people!"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Belle was still sunny and gay when the _Pleiades_ reached Lizoria;
+Garlock was inwardly happy and outwardly content. Semolo, however, was
+his usual intransigent self. In fact, if it had not been for Mirea
+Mitala, and the fact that she--metaphorically--did pin Semolo's ears
+back, Garlock would not have taken him aboard at all.
+
+Thus, after loading on only one pair of Primes, that
+auspiciously-beginning day had lost some of its luster; and as the day
+wore on it got no better fast. Baver of Falne had not learned anything,
+either--only Garlock's intervention saved the cocky and obstreperous
+Semolo from a mental blast that would have knocked him out cold.
+
+Then there were Onthave and Lerthe of Crenna; Korl and Kirl of Gleer;
+Parleof and Ginseona of Pasquerone; Atnim and Sotara of Flandoon, and
+eighty others. Very few of them were as bad as Semolo; some of them,
+particularly the Pasqueronians and the Gleerans, were almost as good as
+Delcamp and Fao.
+
+This was the first time that any pair of them had ever come physically
+close to any other Prime. Many of them had not really believed that any
+Primes abler than themselves existed. The _Pleiades_ was crowded, and
+Garlock and Belle were not giving to any of them the deference and
+consideration and submissive respect which each considered his unique
+due.
+
+Wherefore the undertaking was neither easy nor pleasant; and both
+Tellurians were tremendously relieved when, the last pair picked up,
+they flashed the starship back to Tellus and Delcamp, Fao, and the
+Thakerns 'ported themselves aboard.
+
+"Give me your attention, please," Garlock said, crisply. Then, after a
+moment, "Any and all who are not tuned to me in five seconds will be
+returned immediately to their home planets and will lose all contact
+with this group....
+
+"That's better. For some of you this has been a very long day. For all
+of you it has been a very trying day. You were all informed previously
+as to what we had in mind. However, since you are young and callow, and
+were thoroughly convinced of your own omniscience and omnipotence, it is
+natural enough that you derived little or no benefit from that
+information. You are now facing reality, not your own fantasies.
+
+"Each pair of you has been assigned a suite of rooms in Galaxian Hall.
+Each suite is furnished appropriately; each is fully Gunthered for
+self-service.
+
+"This meeting has not been announced to the public and, at least for the
+present, will not be. Therefore none of you will attempt to communicate
+with anyone outside Galaxian Hall. Anyone making any such attempt will
+be surprised.
+
+"The meeting will open at eight o'clock tomorrow morning in the
+auditorium. The Thakerns and the Margonians will now inform you as to
+your quarters." There was a moment of flashing thought. "Dismissed."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+At one second before eight o'clock the auditorium was empty. At eight
+o'clock, ninety-eight human beings appeared in it; six on the stage, the
+rest occupying the first few rows of seats.
+
+"Good morning, everybody," Garlock said, pleasantly. "Everyone being
+rested, fed, and having had some time in which to consider the changed
+reality faced by us all, I hope and am inclined to believe that we can
+attain friendship and accord. We will spend the next hour in becoming
+acquainted with each other. We will walk around, not teleport. We will
+meet each other physically, as well as mentally. We will learn each
+other's forms of greeting and we will use them. This meeting is
+adjourned until nine o'clock--or, rather, the meeting will begin then."
+
+For several minutes no one moved. All blocks were locked at maximum.
+Each Prime used only his eyes.
+
+Physically, it was a scene of almost overpowering perfection. The men
+were, without exception, handsome, strong, and magnificently male. The
+women, from heroically-framed Fao Talaho up--or down?--to surprisingly
+slender Mirea Mitala, all were arrestingly beautiful; breathtakingly
+proportioned; spectacularly female.
+
+Clothing varied from complete absence to almost complete coverage, with
+a bewildering variety of intermediate conditions. Color was rampant.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Hair--or lack of it--was also an individual and highly variant matter.
+Some of the women, like Belle and Fao, were content with one solid but
+unnatural shade. One shaven head--Mirea Mitala's--was deeply tanned, but
+unadorned, even though the rest of her body was almost covered by
+precious stones. Another was decorated with geometrical and esoteric
+designs in eye-searing colors. A third supported a structure--it could
+not possibly be called a hat--of spun metal and gems.
+
+Among the medium-and long-hairs there were two-, three-, and multi-toned
+jobs galore. Some of the color-combinations were harmonious; some were
+sharply contrasting, such as black and white; some looked as though
+their wearers had used the most violently-clashing colors they could
+find.
+
+The prize-winner, however, was Therea of Thaker's enormous, inexplicable
+mop; and it was that phenomenon that first broke the ice.
+
+The girl with the decorated scalp had been glancing questioningly at
+neighbor after neighbor, only to be met by uncompromising stares.
+Finally, however, her gaze met another, as interested as her own. This
+second girl, whose coiffure was a high-piled confection of black, white,
+yellow, red, blue, and green, half-masted her screen and said:
+
+"Oh, thanks, Jethay of Lodie-Yann. I'm glad everybody isn't going to
+stay locked up all day. I'm Ginseona of Pasquerone. They call me 'Jin'
+whenever they want to call me anything printable. And _this_," she dug a
+knuckle into her companion's short ribs, whereupon he jumped, whirled
+around, lowered his screen, and grinned, "is my ... the boy friend,
+Parleof. Also of Pasquerone, of course. Par, both Jethay and I...."
+
+"Call me 'Jet'--everybody does," Jethay said: almost shyly, for a Prime.
+
+"Both Jet and I have been wondering about that woman's hair--over there.
+How could you _possibly_ give a head of hair a static charge of fifty or
+a hundred kilovolts and not have it leak off?"
+
+"You couldn't, unless it was a perfectly-insulated wig ... but it looks
+as though she did, at that...." and Parleof paused in thought.
+
+"Maybe Byuk would have an idea or two," and Jet uttered aloud a dozen or
+so crackling syllables that sounded as though they could have been
+ladylike profanity. Whatever they were, Byuk jumped, too, and tuned in
+with the other three.
+
+"Oh, it's quite easy, really," Therea said then. "Look." Her mass of
+hair cascaded gracefully down around her neck and shoulders. "Look
+again." Each hair stood fiercely out all by itself, exactly as before.
+"All you young people will learn much more difficult and much more
+important things before this meeting is over. I cannot tell you how glad
+I am that so many of you are here."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+And so it went, all over the auditorium. Once cracked, the ice broke up
+fast.
+
+Fao and Delcamp worked hard; so did Belle and Garlock. Alsyne was a
+potent force indeed--his abounding vitality and his tremendous smile
+broke down barriers that logic could not affect. And Therea worked
+near-miracles; did more than the other five combined. Her sympathy, her
+empathy, her understanding and feeling, were as great as Lola's own; her
+operative ability was as much greater than Lola's as Lola's was greater
+than that of a bobby-soxed babysitter.
+
+Thus, when half of the hour was gone, Garlock heaved a profound sigh of
+relief. He wouldn't have half the trouble he had expected--it was not
+going to be a riot. And when he called the meeting to order he was
+pleasanter and friendlier than Belle had ever before seen him.
+
+"While I am calling this meeting to order, it is only in the widest
+possible sense that I am its presiding officer, for we have as yet no
+organization by the delegated authority of which any man or any woman
+has any right to preside. Yesterday I ruled by force; simply because I
+am stronger than any one of you or any pair of you. Today, in the light
+of the developments of the last hour, that rule is done; except,
+perhaps, for one or two isolated and non-representative cases which may
+develop today. By this time tomorrow, I hope that we will be forever
+done with the law of claw and fang. For, as a much abler man has
+said--'To the really mature mind, the concept of status is completely
+invalid.'"
+
+"_He's putting that as a direct quote, Alsyne, and it isn't._" Belle
+lanced the thought.
+
+"_He thinks it is_," Alsyne flashed back. "_That is the way his
+mathematician's mind recorded it._"
+
+"This meeting is informal, preliminary and exploratory. A meeting of
+minds from which, we hope, a useful and workable organization can be
+developed. Since you all know what we think it basically should be,
+there is no need to repeat it.
+
+"I must now say something that a few of you will construe as a threat.
+You are all Prime Operators. Each pair of you is the highest development
+of a planet, perhaps of a solar system. You can learn if you will. You
+can cooperate if you will. Any couple here who refuses to learn, and
+hence to cooperate, will be returned to its native planet and will have
+no further contact with this group.
+
+"I now turn this meeting over to our first moderators, Alsyne and Therea
+of Thaker; the oldest and ablest Prime Operators of us all."
+
+"Thank you, Garlock of Tellus. One correction, however, if you please. I
+who speak am neither this man nor this woman standing here, but both. I
+am the Prime Unit of Thaker. For brevity, and for the purposes of this
+meeting only, I could be called simply 'Thaker.' Before calling for
+general discussion I wish to call particular attention to two points,
+neither of which has been sufficiently emphasized.
+
+"First, the purpose of a Prime Operator is to serve, not to rule. Thus,
+no Prime should be or will be 'boss' of anything, except possibly of his
+own starship.
+
+"Second, since we have no data we do not know what form the proposed
+Galactic Service will assume. One thing, however, is sure. Whatever
+power of enforcement or of punishment it may have will derive, not from
+its Primes, but from the fact that it will be an arm of the Galactic
+Council, which will be composed of Operators only. No Prime will be
+eligible for membership."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Thaker went on to explain how each pair could obtain instruction and
+assistance in many projects, including starships. How each pair would,
+when they were mature enough, be coached in the use of certain abilities
+they did not as yet have. He suggested procedures and techniques to be
+employed in the opening up of each pair's volume of space. He then asked
+for questions and comments.
+
+Semolo was the first. "If I'm a good little boy," he sneered, "and do
+exactly as I'm told, and take over the region you tell me to and not the
+one I want to, what assurance have I that some other Prime, just because
+he's a year older than I am, won't come along and take it away from me?"
+
+"Your question is meaningless," Thaker replied. "Since you will not
+'take over,' or 'have,' or 'own,' any region, it cannot be 'taken away
+from you.'"
+
+"Then I will...." Semolo began.
+
+"You will keep still!" came a clear, incisive thought, just as Garlock
+was getting ready to intervene. Miss Mitala then switched from thought,
+which everyone there could understand, and launched a ten-second blast
+of furious speech. Semolo wilted and the girl went on in thought: "He'll
+be good--or else."
+
+A girl demanded recognition and got it. "Semolo's right. What's the use
+of being Primes if we can't get any good out of it? We're the strongest
+people of our respective worlds. I say we're bosses and should keep on
+being bosses."
+
+Garlock got ready to shut her up, then paused; holding his fire.
+
+"Ah, yes, friend Garlock, you are maturing fast," came Thaker's thought
+and, in answer to Garlock's surprise, it went on, "This situation will,
+I think, be self-adjusting; just as will be those in the as yet
+unexplored regions of space."
+
+The girl kept on. "I, at least, am going to keep on bossing my own
+planet, milking it just as I...."
+
+Her companion had been trying to crack her shield. Failing in that, he
+stepped in close and tapped her--solidly, but with carefully-measured
+force--behind the ear. Before she could fall, he 'ported her back up
+into their quarters. "This happens all the time," he explained to the
+group at large. "Carry on."
+
+Discussion went on, with less and less acrimony, all the rest of the
+day. And the next day, and the next. Then, argument having reached the
+point of diminishing returns, the three starships took the forty-six
+couples home.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+The six Primes went into Evans' office, where the lawyer was deeply
+engaged with Gerald Banks, the Galaxians' Public Relations Chief. Banks
+was holding his head in both hands.
+
+"Garlock, maybe _you_ can tell me," Banks demanded. "How much of this
+stuff, if any, can I publish? And if so, _how_?"
+
+"Nothing," Garlock said, flatly.
+
+"What do you think, Thaker?" Belle asked. "You're smarter than we are."
+
+"What Thaker thinks has no bearing," Garlock said.
+
+Belle, Fao, and Delcamp all began to protest at once, but they were
+silenced by Thaker himself.
+
+"Garlock is right. My people are not your people; I know not at all how
+your people think or what they will or will not believe. I go."
+
+"That lets Deg and me out too; then, double-plus," Fao said with a grin,
+"so we'll leave that baby on your laps. We go, too."
+
+"Well, little Miss Weisenheimer," Garlock smiled quizzically at Belle,
+"You grabbed the ball--what are you going to do with it?"
+
+"Nothing, I guess...." Belle thought for a minute. "We couldn't stuff
+any part of that down the throat of a simple-minded six-year-old. We
+haven't really _got_ anything, anyway. Time enough, I think, when we
+have six or seven hundred planets in each region, instead of only one
+planet. Maybe we'll know something by then. Does that make sense?"
+
+"It does to me," Garlock said, and the others agreed.
+
+"That Thakern 'we go' business sounds rough at first, but it's
+contagious. Fao and Deggi caught it, and I feel like I'm coming down
+with it myself. How about you, Clee?"
+
+"We go," Belle and Garlock said in unison, and vanished.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Aboard the _Pleiades_, the next few days passed quietly enough. James
+set up, in the starship's memory banks, a sequence to mass-produce
+instruction tapes and blueprints. Garlock and Belle began systematically
+to explore the Tellurian Region. Now, however, their technique was
+different. If either Prime of any world was not enthusiastic about the
+project--
+
+"Very well. Think it over," they would say. "We will get in touch with
+you again in about a year," and the starship would go on to the next
+planet.
+
+On Earth, however, things became less and less tranquil with every day
+that passed. For, in deciding not to publish anything, Garlock had not
+considered at all the basic function and the tremendous ability, power,
+and scope of _The Press_. And Galaxian Hall had never before been closed
+to the public; not for any hour of any day of any year of its existence.
+A non-profit organization, dependent upon the public for its tremendous
+income, the Galaxian Society had always courted that public in every
+possible ethical way.
+
+Thus, in the first hour of closure, a bored reporter came out, read the
+smoothly-phrased notice, and lepped it in to the desk. It might be
+worth, he thought, half an inch.
+
+Later in the day, however, the world's most sensitive news-nose began to
+itch. Did, or did not, this quiet, unannounced closing smell
+ever-so-slightly of cheese? Wherefore, Benjamin Bundy, the newscaster
+who had covered the starship's maiden flight, went out himself to look
+the thing over. He found the whole field closed. Not only closed, but
+Gunther-blocked impenetrably tight. He studied the announcement, his
+sixth sense--the born newsman's sense for news--probing every word.
+
+"Regret ... research ... of such extreme delicacy ... vibration ...
+temperature control ... one one-hundredth of one degree Centigrade...."
+
+He sought out his long-time acquaintance Banks; finding him in a
+temporary office half a block away from the Hall. "What's the story,
+Jerry?" he asked. "The _real_ story, I mean?"
+
+"You know, as much about it as I do, Ben. Garlock and James don't waste
+time trying to detail me on that kind of business, you know."
+
+This should have satisfied any newshawk, but Bundy's nose still itched.
+He mulled things over for a minute, then probed, finding that he could
+read nothing except Banks' outermost, most superficial thoughts.
+
+"Well ... maybe ... but...." Then Bundy plunged. "All you have to do,
+Jerry, is tell me screens-half-down that your damn story is true."
+
+"And that's the one thing I can't do," Banks admitted; and Bundy could
+not detect that any part of his sheepishness was feigned. "You're just
+too damned smart, Ben."
+
+"Oh--one of _those_ things? So that's it?"
+
+"Yup. I told Evans it might not work."
+
+That should have satisfied the reporter, but it didn't. "Now it doesn't
+smell just a trifle cheesy; it stinks like rotten fish. You won't go
+screens down on that one, either."
+
+"No comment."
+
+"Oh, joy!" Bundy exulted. "So big that Gerald Banks, the top press-agent
+of all time, actually doesn't _want_ publicity! The starship works--this
+lack-of-control stuff is the bunk--from here to another star in nothing
+flat--Garlock's back, and he's brought--what _have_ you got in there,
+Jerry?"
+
+"The only way I can tell you is in confidence, for Evans' release. I'd
+like to, Ben, believe me, but I can't."
+
+"Confidence, hell! Do you think we won't get it?"
+
+"In that case, no comment." The interview ended and the siege began.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Newshounds and detectives questioned and peered and probed. They dug
+into morgues, tabulating and classifying. They recalled and taped and
+sifted all the gossip they had heard. They got a picture of sorts, but
+it was maddeningly confusing and incomplete. And, since it was certain
+that inter-systemic matters were involved, they could not
+extrapolate--any guess was far too apt to be wrong. Thus nothing went on
+the air or appeared in print; and, although the surface remained calm,
+all newsdom seethed to its depths.
+
+Wherefore haggard Banks and harried Evans greeted Garlock with shouts of
+joy when the four wanderers came back to spend the week end on Earth.
+
+"I'll talk to 'em," Garlock decided, after the long story had been told.
+"Have somebody get hold of Bundy and ask him to come out."
+
+"Get _hold_ of him!" Banks snorted. "He's here. Twenty-four hours a day.
+Eating sandwiches and cat-napping on chairs in the lobby. All you have
+to do is unseal that door."
+
+Garlock flung the door wide. Bundy rushed in, followed by a more-or-less
+steady stream of some fifty other top-bracket newspeople, both men and
+women.
+
+"Well, Garlock, perhaps _you_ will give us some screens-down facts?"
+Bundy asked, angrily.
+
+"I'll give you _all_ the screens-down...."
+
+"Clee!" "You're crazy!" "You can't!" "Don't!" Belle and all the
+Operators protested at once.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Ignoring the objections, Garlock cut his shield to half and gave the
+whole group a true account of everything that had happened in the
+galaxy. Then, while they were all too stunned to speak, a grin of
+saturnine amusement spread over his dark, five-o'clock-shadowed face.
+
+"You pestiferous gnats insisted on grabbing the ball," he sneered. "Now
+let's see you run with it."
+
+Bundy came out of his trance. "_What_ a story!" he yelled. "We'll
+plaster it...."
+
+"Yeah," Garlock said, dryly. "_What_ a story. Exactly."
+
+"Oh." Bundy deflated suddenly. "You'll have to prove it--demonstrate
+it--of course."
+
+"Of course? You tickle me. Not only do I not have to prove it, I won't.
+I won't even confirm it."
+
+Bundy glared at Garlock, then whirled on Banks. "If you don't give me
+this in shape to use, you'll never get another line or mention
+anywhere!"
+
+"Oh, no?" For the first time in his professional life Banks gloated,
+openly and avidly. "From now on, my friend, who is in the saddle? Who is
+going to come to whom? Oh, _brother_!"
+
+When the fuming newsmen had gone, Garlock said, "It'll leak, of course."
+
+"Of course," Banks agreed. "'It is rumored ...' 'from a usually reliable
+source ...' and so on. Nothing definite, but each one of them will want
+to put out the first and biggest."
+
+"That's what I figured. It'll have to break sometime and I thought
+easing it out would be best ... but wait a minute...." he thought for
+two solid minutes. "But we're going to need a lot of money, and we're
+just about broke, aren't we?" This thought was addressed to Frank Macey,
+the Galaxians' treasurer.
+
+"Worse than broke--much worse."
+
+"I could loan you a couple of credits, Frank," Belle said, brightly.
+"But go ahead, Clee."
+
+"People like to be sidewalk superintendents. Suppose they could watch
+the construction of an outpost so far away that nobody ever dreamed of
+ever getting there. Could you do anything with that, Jerry?"
+
+"_Could I! Just!_" and Banks, went into a rhapsody.
+
+"That's the first good idea any one of you crackpots has had for five
+years," Macey said, suddenly. "But wouldn't transportation of material
+and so on present problems?"
+
+"No; just buying it," Garlock said, soberly. "Oh, rather, paying for
+it."
+
+"No trouble there...."
+
+"What?" Belle exclaimed. "'No trouble,' it says here in fine print? How
+the old skinflint has changed--instead of screaming his head off about
+spending money he's actually _offering_ to. Frank, I'll loan you _three_
+credits!"
+
+"Hush, honey-chile, the men-folks are talking man-business. Look, Clee.
+We'll use the _Pleiades_ at first, while we're building a regular
+transport. A hundred passengers per trip, one thousand credits one
+way...."
+
+"Wow!" Belle put in. "Our ex-skinflint is now a bare-faced,
+legally-protected robber."
+
+"By no means, Belle," Evans said. "How much would that be per mile?"
+
+"Say ten round trips per day. That would be twenty million a day gross
+for a small ship not intended for passenger service. When we get ships
+built ... and the extras...." The money-man went into a financial revel
+of his own.
+
+"Lots of extras," Banks agreed. "And oh, _brother_, what a
+public-relations dream of heaven!"
+
+"Maybe I'm dumb," Garlock broke in, "but just what are you going to use
+for money to get started?"
+
+"The minute we confirm any part of the story, the credit of the Galaxian
+Society will jump from X-O to AA-A1."
+
+"Oh. So Belle and I will have to lose our _Pleiades_ for a while. I
+don't like that, but we do need the money ... but we can have her for
+this coming week?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"So maybe we'd better break the story now, instead of letting it leak."
+
+"Can you, after what you just told them?"
+
+"Sure I can." He set his mind and searched. "Bundy, this is Garlock...."
+
+"So what am I supposed to do--burst into tears of joy?"
+
+"Save it. I changed my mind. You can break it as fast and as hard as you
+like. I'll play along."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Yeah? Why the switch? What's the angle?"
+
+"Strictly commercial. Get it from Banks."
+
+"And you'll--personally--go on my hour with it?"
+
+"Yes. Also, we'll demonstrate--take you to any star-system in the
+galaxy. You and all the rest of the newshawks who were here and any
+fifty VIP's you want to invite. Tomorrow morning all right with you?"
+
+"You, personally, in the _Pleiades_?" Bundy insisted.
+
+"Better than that. The other two starships, too. You've got
+them--particularly those four Primes--clearly in mind?"
+
+"Not exactly, there was so much of it. Spread it on me now, huh?"
+Garlock did so. "Thanks, pal, for the scoop. I'll crash it right now,
+and follow up with Banks. 'Bye!"
+
+"Think you can deliver on that, Clee?" Banks asked.
+
+"Sure. Both Deggi and Alsyne will need a lot of extra money, fast.
+They'll play along."
+
+They did; and that three-starship tour--which visited twenty solar
+systems instead of one--was the most sensational thing old Earth had
+ever spawned.
+
+Belle and Garlock did not spend that week end on Earth. "We go," they
+said, as soon as the _Pleiades_ was empty of pressmen, and they took
+James and Lola along. "If we _never_ see another such brawl as this is
+going to be," Belle told Banks, who was basking in glory and entreating
+them to stay on for the show, "it will be exactly twenty minutes too
+soon."
+
+Thus it came about that Earth's first four deep-spacemen were completely
+out of reach when unexpected developments began.
+
+        *           *           *
+
+Alonzo P. Ferber was one of the VIP's on Bundy's personally-conducted
+tour of the stars. As has been said, he was a very able executive. He
+had an extremely keen profit-sense. This new thing smelled--simply
+reeked--of money. SSE would _have_ to get in on it.
+
+Ferber was not thin-skinned; where money was concerned it would never
+even occur to him to cherish grudges or to retain animosities. Wherefore
+SSE's purchasing department suggested to the Galaxian Society that
+negotiations be opened concerning licenses, franchises, royalties, and
+so on. These suggestions were politely but firmly brushed off. Then
+emissaries were sent, of ever-increasing caliber and weight. Next,
+Ferber himself tried the tri-di; and finally, he came in person.
+
+Rebuffed, he made such legally-sound threats that Evans and Macey agreed
+to a meeting; stating flatly, however, that no commitments could
+possibly be made without the knowledge and approval of the Society's
+president, Cleander Garlock. Thus, at the meeting, the Galaxians made
+only two statements that were even approximately definite. One was that
+Garlock would probably return to Earth during the afternoon or evening
+of the following Friday; the other that they would take the matter up
+with Garlock as soon as they could.
+
+After that meeting Macey was unperturbed, but Evans was a deeply worried
+man.
+
+"You see," he explained, "the real crux was not even mentioned."
+
+"No? What is it, then?"
+
+"Operators, Primes, and the practically non-existent laws pertaining to
+their ... what? Labor? Skill? Genius? For instance, could Garlock be
+forced to do whatever it is that he does? On the other hand, if Ferber
+offered Belle Bellamy five million credits a year to 'work' for SSE, is
+there anything we could do about it?"
+
+"Oh. I thought all there was to it was that you'd delay 'em for a year
+or so and that'd be it."
+
+"Far from it. To date I have listed fifty-eight points for which, as far
+as we can learn, there are no precedents," and the lawyer called a
+meeting of his staff.
+
+For Belle and Garlock, the week went fast. On Friday afternoon, high
+above Earth's Galaxian Field, Garlock said, more than half regretfully,
+"No more fun. Back to the desk. Back to the salt-mines."
+
+"I weep for you," Belle snickered. "Sob, sob. Shed him a tear, Lola."
+
+"One tear coming up. Oh, woe; oh, woe...."
+
+"Oh, whoa!" James snorted. "Why the sob-and-moan routine, Clee, from a
+guy who's going to be monarch of all he surveys?"
+
+"His conscience aches him," Belle explained. "This monarching business
+is tough if you haven't thought about how to monarch, and he hasn't.
+Have you, Clee?"
+
+"Not a lick." Garlock smiled slightly. "I been busy."
+
+"You better start to," she advised, darkly. "You aren't busy now and we
+have an hour. We better confer--I'll make like a slave-driver."
+
+They 'ported into his room and he set the blocks. His attitude changed
+instantly. "Nice act, Belle. What was it all about?"
+
+"That theory of yours. Your predictions are too uncannily accurate to be
+guesswork, and the more times you dead-center the bullseye the worse
+scared I get. I really want to know, Clee."
+
+"Okay. It isn't complete--I need a lot more data--but I'll show you what
+I have. It's fairly strong medicine and it comes in big chunks."
+
+"It would have to--it covers the whole macrocosmic universe, doesn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes. I'll start with the striking fact that, on every out-galaxy planet
+we visited, the human beings were _Homo sapiens_ to N decimal places.
+Fertile with each other and, according to expert testimony, with us. All
+planets had humanoid 'guardians,' the Arpalones and Arpales. Some, but
+not all, had one or more non-human, more-or-less-intelligent races, such
+as the Fumapties, the Lemarts, the Sencors, and so on. These other races
+never seemed to fight each other, but both races of Guardians fought any
+and all of them, on sight and to the death. What do those facts mean to
+you?"
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Nothing beyond face value. I've thought about them but I haven't been
+able to come up with anything."
+
+"I have." He unrolled a sheet of drafting paper covered with diagrams,
+symbols, and equations. "But before I go into this stuff, consider the
+human body. How many red cells are there in your blood stream?"
+
+"Billions, I suppose."
+
+"And there are billions of human beings on billions of planets; each
+having red blood cells identical, as far as we know, with yours and
+mine. Also white cells. Also, sometimes, various kinds of pathogenic
+micro-organisms, such as staphs, streps, viruses, spiros, and so on.
+
+"Okay. My thought is that the Lemarts, Ozobes, and the like are
+analogous to disease-producing organisms. We saw the full range of
+effects--from none at all up to death itself."
+
+"But they--the Ozobes and so on--died, too."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"How long do disease germs live in a human body after they've killed
+it?"
+
+"But that horrible Dilipic--the golop. They don't seem to fit."
+
+"Try that on for size as cancer. Also, the Arpalones typed us before
+they'd let us land on any planet. Why didn't we blast them out of the
+way and land anyway?"
+
+"Why, we didn't want to. It wasn't worth while."
+
+"We couldn't. Psychic block. And if we had, we would have died.
+Different blood-types don't mix."
+
+"So you and I are merely two red cells in the bloodstream of a
+super-dooper-galactic super-monster? Phooie!" she jeered. "That chestnut
+was propounded a thousand years ago. Are you trying to take me for a
+ride on _that_ old sawhorse?"
+
+"That's the attitude I had at first. So now we're ready for the chart."
+He pointed to a group of symbols. "We start with symbolic logic;
+manipulating like so to get this." There was a long mathematical
+dissertation; a mind-to-mind, rigorous, point-by-point proof.
+
+"Q. E. D." Garlock concluded.
+
+"I see your math, and if I believed half of it I'd be scared witless.
+Those few pieces fit, but they're scattered around in vast areas of
+blankness and you're jumping around like the Swiss miss leaping from Alp
+to Alp. And how about our own galaxy, the most important piece of all?
+It's different, and we're different, mentally. That wrecks your whole
+theory."
+
+"No. I told you I need a lot more data. Also, beyond a certain point the
+analogy appears to get looser."
+
+"_Appears_ to! It's as loose as a goose!"
+
+"Think a minute. Is it actually loose, or are we getting up into
+concepts that no human mind can grasp? That might be the case, you
+know."
+
+"Oh.... You're quite a salesman, Clee, but I'm still not buying."
+
+"Our galaxy is a bit of specialized tissue--part of a ganglion, maybe.
+Over here, see? I'll have to leave it dangling until we find some more
+like it."
+
+"I see. But anyway, you haven't a tenth's worth of real material on that
+whole sheet. Feed everything you have there into a computer and it'd
+just laugh at you."
+
+"Sure it would. The great advantage of the human brain is its ability to
+arrive at valid conclusions from incomplete data. For instance, what
+would your computer do with the figures you shot at me the day we
+started out? 'Thirty-nine, twenty-two, thirty-nine. Five seven. One
+thirty-five.' Yet they're completely informative."
+
+"To anyone interested in that kind of figures, yes."
+
+"Which includes practically all adults. Then take the figure three point
+one four one five nine. Compy would still be baffled; but, unlike the
+first set, most people would be, too."
+
+"Yes. Perhaps two out of ten would get your message."
+
+"Now take something really new, like the original work on gravitation or
+relativity. No possible computer would be of any use. That takes a
+_brain_!"
+
+"The brain of a Newton or an Einstein, yes." Belle thought for a minute,
+then grinned at him impishly. "Now watch the brain of a Bellamy perform.
+Get into high gear, brain.... I wish I knew something about biochemical
+embryology; but I read somewhere that ova are sterile, so our galaxy is
+an ovum. Therefore our super-galooper is a gal--which incontrovertible
+fact accounts for and explains rigorously the long-known truth that
+women always have been, are now, and always will be vastly superior to
+men in every quality, aspect, and...."
+
+"Hold it!" Garlock snapped. His face hardened into intense
+concentration. Then: "Do you think you're kidding, Belle?"
+
+"Why, of _course_ I'm kidding, you big...."
+
+"Look here, then." He picked up a pencil and filled in blank after blank
+after blank. "I'm making one unjustifiable assumption--that the
+_Pleiades_ is the first intergalactic starship. The super-being is a
+female, and she is just becoming pregnant...."
+
+"Flapdoodle! There are no blood cells in a sperm, and I don't think
+there are any in an ovum."
+
+"I didn't mention either sperm or ovum. The analogy is so loose here
+that it holds only in the broadest, most general terms. The actual
+process of reproduction is unknowable. But wherever we went, we changed
+things. Not only by what we actually did, but also as a
+catalyst--no...."
+
+"No, not a catalyst. A hormone."
+
+"Exactly. Each of these changes would cause others, and so on. An
+infinite series. Calling the first three terms alpha, beta, and gamma,
+we operate like this...." Garlock's pencil was flying now. "Following
+me?"
+
+"On your tail." Belle was breathing hard; as the blank spaces became
+fewer and fewer her face began to turn white.
+
+"From this we get that ... and _that_ makes the whole bracket tie into
+the same conclusion I had before. So, except for that one assumption,
+it's solid."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"My Lord, Clee!" Belle studied the chart. "I mentioned Newton and
+Einstein ... add to that 'the brain of a Garlock, better than either.'"
+Then, seeing his reaction, "You're blushing. I didn't think...."
+
+"Cut the comedy. You know I couldn't carry either of their hats to a
+dog-fight."
+
+"And I would _never_ have believed that you are basically modest."
+
+"I said cut out the kidding, Belle."
+
+"I'm deadly serious. A brain that could do _that_," she waved at the
+chart, "... well, even I am not enough of a heel to belittle one of the
+most tremendous intuitions ever achieved by man. Not that I like it.
+It's horrible. It denies mankind everything that made him come up from
+the slime--everything that made him man."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+"Not at all. Nothing is changed, in man's own frame of reference. It
+merely takes our thinking one step farther. That step, of course, isn't
+easy."
+
+"_That_ is the understatement of all time. What it will _do_, though, is
+set up an inferiority complex that would wipe out the whole human race."
+
+"There might be some slight tendency. Also, since my basic assumption
+can't be justified, the whole thing may be fallacious. So I'm not going
+to publish it." He glanced at the chart and it vanished.
+
+"Clee!" Belle stared, almost goggle-eyed. "With your name? The
+tremendous splash ... I see. You're really grown up."
+
+"Not all the way, probably; but pretty nearly--I hope."
+
+"But some of the ... not exactly corollaries, but...." Belle's face,
+which had regained some of its color, began again to pale.
+
+"Which one of the many?"
+
+"The most shattering one, to me, concerns intelligence. If it is true
+that our vaunted mentality is only that of one blood cell compared to
+that of a whole brain ... and that intelligence is banked, level upon
+level ... well, it's simply mind-wrecking. I've been trying madly not to
+think of that concept, at all, but I can't put it off much longer."
+
+"Now's as good a time as any. I'll hold your hand."
+
+"You'd better hold more of me than that, I think."
+
+"I'll do even that, in a good cause." He put his arms around her; held
+her close. "Go ahead. Face it. All the way down and all the way up.
+You've got what it takes. You'll come back sane and it'll never bother
+you again."
+
+She closed her eyes, put her head on his shoulder. Her every muscle went
+tense.
+
+Neither of them ever knew how long they stood there, close-clasped and
+motionless in silence; but finally her muscles loosened. She lifted her
+head; raised her brimming eyes.
+
+"All the way down?" he asked.
+
+"To almost a geometrical point."
+
+"And all the way up?"
+
+"I touched the fringe of infinity."
+
+"Intelligence all the way?"
+
+"All the way. I couldn't understand any of them, of course, but I looked
+each one squarely in the eye."
+
+"Good girl. And you're still sane."
+
+"As much so as ever ... more so, maybe." She disengaged herself, sat
+down on the bed, lighted a cigarette, and smoked half of it. Then she
+stood up. "Clee, if anything in the whole universe ever knocked hell out
+of anything, that did out of me. I'm going to do something that will
+take about ten minutes. Will you wait right here?"
+
+"Of course. Take all the time you want."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+When she came back Garlock leaped to his feet and stared speechlessly.
+He could not even whistle. Belle's hair was now its natural deep, rich
+chestnut, her lipstick was red, her nails were bare, and she wore a
+white shirt and an almost-knee-length crimson skirt.
+
+"Here's what I'm going to do," she said, quietly. "I'm going to be a
+plain, ordinary brownette. I'm going to marry you as soon as we land;
+registered permanent family. I'm going to have six kids and spoil them
+rotten. In short, I have grown up--partly up, at least--too."
+
+"Plain?" he managed, finally. "Ordinary? You? Yes--like a super-nova
+going off under a man's feet!" With a visible effort, Garlock pulled
+himself together. "I don't need to tell you what a surprise this is, and
+can't tell you what it means to me. But you never have said you love me.
+Hadn't you better?"
+
+"I'm afraid to. Our next kiss will be different. I'd spoil all this nice
+new make-up." She tried to grin in her old-time fashion, but failed. She
+sobered, then, and went on with a completely new intensity. "Listen,
+Clee. I'm all done--forever--lying and pretending to you. I love you so
+much that ... well, there simply aren't any thoughts. And when I think
+of how I acted, it hurts--Lord, how it hurts! I don't see how you can
+love me at all. It'd take a miracle."
+
+"Miracles happen, then." He put both arms around her, very gently. "For
+the first time in my life I'm cutting my screens to zero. Come in."
+
+"What?" For a moment she was unable to believe the thought. Then,
+cutting her own shield, she went fully into his mind. "Oh, I didn't dare
+hope you could _possibly_ feel.... Oh, this is wonderful, Clee--simply
+_wonderful_!"
+
+As the two fully-opened minds met and joined she threw both arms around
+him and their embrace tightened as though their bodies were trying to
+become as nearly one as were their minds. Finally she pulled herself
+away and put up a solid block.
+
+"What a mess!" she said, shakily. "Lipstick all _over_ you."
+
+"Why words, sweetheart? That was perfect."
+
+"Oh, it was ... but wide open, with such a mind as yours...." she
+paused, then came back to normal almost with a snap. "... but say; I'll
+bet that's what Therea and Alsyne were doing. That 'fusion' thing. We'll
+practise it tonight."
+
+He pondered briefly. "Sure it was."
+
+"But he said they learned it from us. How could he have, when we.... Oh,
+we did, of course, in moments of high stress ... but we didn't actually
+_know_ it...." She paused.
+
+"We wouldn't admit it, you mean, even to ourselves."
+
+"Maybe; and of course it never occurred to us--callow youngsters we were
+then, weren't we?--that it could be done for more than a microsecond at
+a time. Or that two people could ever, possibly, _live_ that way."
+
+"Or what a life it would be. So let's chop this and get back to you and
+me."
+
+"Uh-huh, let's," she agreed, but in a severely practical tone. "You've
+got lipstick even on your shirt. So change it and I'll go put on a new
+face and bring over some stuff and clean you up."
+
+While she cleaned, she talked. "I told you our next kiss would be
+different, but I had no idea ... wow! _That_ will be as much different,
+too, I'm sure.... Hm-h-h-nh?" Again she pressed herself against him;
+this time in a somewhat different fashion.
+
+"Stop that, you little devil, or I'll...." His arms came up of
+themselves, but he forced them back down. "... No, I won't. We'll save
+that for tonight, too."
+
+"I'll behave myself!" She laughed, pure joy in voice, eyes, and smile.
+"I bet myself you wouldn't and I won! You're tall, solid gold, Clee
+darling--the absolute top."
+
+"Thanks, sweetheart. I wish that were true," he said, soberly. "But I
+can't help wondering if two such hellions as you and I are can make a go
+of marriage--no, cancel that. We'll do it--all we have to figure out is
+how."
+
+"I know what you mean. Not at first--it'll be purely wonderful then.
+After five years, say, when the glamor has worn off and I've had three
+of our six children and two of them are in bed with the epizootic and
+I'm all frazzled out and you're strung up tight as a bowstring with
+overwork and...."
+
+"Hold it! Uh-uh. No. If we can live together six months--or even six
+weeks--without killing each other, we'll have it made. It's at first
+that it'll be rugged. No matter how rugged it gets, though, we'll know
+one thing for certain sure. We _couldn't_ live apart. That'll give us
+enough leverage. Check?"
+
+"And double check." She giggled sunnily. "I'll take care of any and all
+situations, whatever they are, that arise in the first six months.
+You'll be responsible for the next sixty years. That's a perfectly fair
+and equitable division of responsibility. Now kiss me and we'll go."
+
+        *           *           *
+
+When Garlock cut the Gunther blocks, however, James' thought came
+instantly in. "Been trying to get you for twenty minutes," and in a
+couple of seconds he brought Garlock and Belle up to date. "So Fatso's
+been waiting in Evans' office. He's throwing fits all over the place and
+Evans and Macey are going quietly mad."
+
+"He'll have to wait," Garlock decided instantly. "No matter how many
+fits he has, no such decision is going to be made until there's enough
+of a Galactic Council to make it."
+
+"Well, you'll have to tell him that yourself. In person."
+
+"I'll do just that, and tell him so he'll stay told."
+
+"Okay, but shake a...."
+
+Belle and Garlock 'ported out into the Main, arms around each other like
+a couple of college freshmen.
+
+"... leg-g--ug--gug...." James gurgled.
+
+"_Belle!_" Lola shrieked. "_Why--Belle--Bellamy!_"
+
+"_What_ goes _on_ here?" James demanded.
+
+"Nothing much," Garlock replied, although he blushed almost as deeply as
+Belle did. "We just decided to quit fighting, is all. Cut the rope,
+Junior, and let the old bucket drop."
+
+
+    THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy Primes, by Edward Elmer Smith
+
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