1 files changed, 2437 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/29146.txt b/29146.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..720ebdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/29146.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,2437 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Equation of Doom, by Gerald Vance
+
+
+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: Equation of Doom
+
+
+Author: Gerald Vance
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 17, 2009  [eBook #29146]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EQUATION OF DOOM***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Greg Weeks, David Wilson, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+  |                                                              |
+  | Transcriber's note:                                          |
+  |                                                              |
+  | This story was published in _Amazing Stories_, February      |
+  | 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that   |
+  | the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.          |
+  |                                                              |
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: equation of doom
+
+  His agony of soul at being unable to save Margot was
+  far greater than physical torture.]
+
+
+
+    _They grounded Ramsey's ship on a hostile planet hoping he would
+    starve to death, so the first thing he did was give most of his
+    money away and lose the rest gambling. Then he picked a fight
+    with the Chief of Police and joined forces with a half-naked
+    dream-chick who was seemingly bent on self-destruction. The
+    stakes were big--a planet or two--but it all added up to an----_
+
+
+
+EQUATION OF DOOM
+
+by
+
+GERALD VANCE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Your name ith Jathon Ramthey?" the Port Security Officer lisped
+politely.
+
+Jason Ramsey, who wore the uniform of Interstellar Transfer Service and
+was the only Earthman in the Service here on Irwadi, smiled and said:
+"Take three guesses. You know darn well I'm Ramsey." He was a big man
+even by Earth standards, which meant he towered over the Irwadian's
+green, scaly head. He was fair of skin and had hair the color of copper.
+It was rumored on Irwadi and elsewhere that he couldn't return to Earth
+because of some crime he had committed.
+
+"Alwayth the chip on the shoulder," the Port Security Officer said.
+"Won't you Earthmen ever learn?" The splay-tongued reptile-humanoids of
+Irwadi always spoke Interstellar _Coine_ with a pronounced lisp which
+Ramsey found annoying, especially since it went so well with the
+officious and underhanded behavior for which the Irwadians were famous
+the galaxy over.
+
+"Get to the point," Ramsey said harshly. "I have a ship to take through
+hyper-space."
+
+"No. You have no ship."
+
+"No? Then what's this?" His irritation mounting, Ramsey pulled out the
+Interstellar Transfer Service authorization form and showed it to the
+Security Officer. "A tip-sheet for the weightless races at Fomalhaut
+VI?"
+
+The Security Officer said: "Ha, ha, ha." He could not laugh; he merely
+uttered the phonetic equivalent of laughter. On harsh Irwadi, laughter
+would have been a cultural anomaly. "You make joketh. Well,
+nevertheleth, you have no ship." He expanded his scaly green barrel
+chest and declaimed: "At 0400 hours thith morning, the government of
+Irwadi hath planetarithed the Irwadi Tranthfer Thervith."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Planetarized the Transfer Service!" gasped Ramsey in surprise. He knew
+the Irwadians had been contemplating the move in theory for many years,
+but he also knew that transferring a starship from normal space through
+hyper-space back to normal space again was a tremendously difficult and
+technical task. He doubted if half a dozen Irwadians had mastered it,
+yet the Irwadi branch of Interstellar Transfer Service was made up of
+seventy-five hyper-space pilots of divers planetalities.
+
+"Ecthactly," said the Security Officer, as amused as an Irwadian could
+be by the amazement in Ramsey's frank green eyes. "Tho if you will
+kindly thurrender your permit?"
+
+"Let's see it in writing, huh?"
+
+The Security Officer complied. Ramsey read the official document,
+scowled, and handed over his Irwadi pilot license. "What about the
+_Polaris_?" he wanted to know. The _Polaris_ was a Centaurian ship he'd
+been scheduled to take through hyper-space on the run from Irwadi to
+Centauri III.
+
+"Temporarily grounded, captain. Or should I thay, ecth-captain?"
+
+"Temporarily my foot," said Ramsey. "It'll be months before you
+Irwadians can get even a fraction of the ships into hyper. You must be
+out of your minds."
+
+"Our problem, captain. Not yourth."
+
+That was true enough. Ramsey shrugged.
+
+"Your problem," the Security Officer went on blandly, "will be to find a
+meanth of thelf-thupport until you and all other ecthra-planetarieth can
+be removed from Irwadi. We owe you ecthra-planetarieth nothing. Ethpect
+no charity from uth."
+
+Ramsey shrugged. Like all extra-planetaries on a bleak, friendless world
+like Irwadi, he'd regularly gambled away and drank away his monthly
+paycheck in the interstellar settlement which the Irwadians had
+established in the Old Quarter of Irwadi City. But last month he'd
+managed to come out even at the gaming tables, so he had a few hundred
+credits to his name. That would be enough, he told himself, to tide him
+over until Interstellar Transfer Service came to the rescue of its
+stranded pilots.
+
+Ramsey went up the gangway and got his gear from the _Polaris_. When he
+returned down the gangway, the late afternoon wind was blowing across
+the spacefield tarmac, a wet, bone-chilling wind which only the
+reptile-humanoid Irwadians didn't seem to mind.
+
+Ramsey fastened the toggles of his cold-weather cape, put his head down
+and hunched his shoulders, and walked into the teeth of the wind. He did
+not look back at the _Polaris_, marooned indefinitely on Irwadi despite
+anything the Centaurian owners or anyone else for that matter could do
+about it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Irwadi Security Officer, whose name was Chind Ramar, walked up the
+gangway and ordered the ship's Centaurian first officer to assemble his
+crew and passengers. Chind Ramar allowed himself the rare luxury of a
+fleeting smile. He could imagine this scene being duplicated on fifty
+ships here on his native planet today, fifty outworld ships which had no
+business at all on Irwadi. Of course, Irwadi was an important
+planet-of-call in the Galactic Federation because the vital metal
+titanium was found as abundantly in Irwadian soil as aluminum is found
+in the soil of an Earth-style planet. Titanium, in alloy with steel and
+manganese, was the only element which could withstand the tremendous
+heat generated in the drive-chambers of interstellar ships during
+transfer. In the future, Chind Ramar told himself with a kind of cold
+pride, only Irwadian pilots, piloting Irwadian ships through
+hyper-space, would bring titanium to the waiting galaxy. At Irwadi
+prices.
+
+With great relish, Chind Ramar announced the facts of planetarization
+and told the Centaurians and their passengers that they would be
+stranded for an indefinite period on Irwadi. Amazement, anger, bluster,
+debate, and finally resignation--the reactions were the expected ones,
+in the expected order. It was easy, Chind Ramar thought, with all but
+the interstellar soldiers of fortune like Jason Ramsey. Ramsey, of
+course, would need watching. As for these others....
+
+One of the others, an Earthgirl whose beauty was entirely missed by
+Chind Ramar, left the _Polaris_ in a hurry. She either had no luggage or
+left her luggage aboard. Jason Ramsey, she thought. She had read Chind
+Ramar's mind; a feat growing less rare although by no means common yet
+among the offspring of those who had spent a great deal of time
+bombarded by cosmic radiation between the stars. She hurried through the
+chilling wind toward the Old Quarter of Irwadi City. Panic, she thought.
+You've got to avoid panic. If you panic, you're finished....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"So that's about the size of it," Ramsey finished.
+
+Stu Englander nodded. Like Ramsey he was a hyper-space pilot, but
+although he had an Earth-style name and had been born of Earth parents,
+he was not an Earthman. He had been born on Capella VII, and had spent
+most of his life on that tropical planet. The result was not an uncommon
+one for outworlders who spent any amount of time on Irwadi: Stu
+Englander had a nagging bronchial condition which had kept him off the
+pilot-bridge for some months now.
+
+Englander nodded again, dourly. He was a short, very slender man a few
+years older than Ramsey, who was thirty-one. He said: "That ties it. And
+I mean ties it, brother. You're looking at the brokest Capellan-earthman
+who ever got himself stuck on an outworld."
+
+"You mean it?"
+
+"Dead broke, Jase."
+
+"What about Sally and the kids?"
+
+Englander had an Arcturan-earthian wife and twin boys four years old. "I
+don't know what about Sally and the kids," he told Ramsey glumly. "I
+guess I'll go over to the New Quarter and try to get some kind of a
+job."
+
+"They wouldn't hire an outworlder to shine their shoes with his own
+spit, Stu. They have got the planetarization bug, and they've got it
+bad."
+
+Sally Englander called from the kitchen of the small flat: "Will Jase be
+staying for supper?"
+
+Englander stared at Ramsey, who shook his head. "Not today, Sally,"
+Englander said, looking at Ramsey gratefully.
+
+"Listen," Ramsey lied, "I've been lucky as all get out the last couple
+of months."
+
+"You old pro!" grinned Englander.
+
+"So I've got a few hundred credits just burning a hole in my pocket,"
+Ramsey went on. "How's about taking them?"
+
+"But I haven't the slightest idea when I could pay back."
+
+"I didn't say anything about paying me back."
+
+"I couldn't accept charity, Jase."
+
+"O.K. Pay me back when you get a chance. There are plenty of hyper-space
+jobs waiting for us all over the galaxy, you know that."
+
+"Yeah, all we have to do is get off Irwadi and go after them. But the
+Irwadians are keeping us right here."
+
+"Sure, but it won't last. Not when the folks back in Capella and Deneb
+and Sol System hear about it."
+
+"Six months," said Englander bleakly. "It'll take at least that long."
+
+"Six months I can wait. What d'you say?"
+
+Englander coughed wrackingly, his eyes watering. He got off the bed and
+shook Ramsey's hand solemnly. Ramsey gave him three hundred and
+seventy-five credits and said: "Just see you make that go a long way
+supporting Sally and the kids. I don't want to see you dropping any of
+it at the gaming tables. I'll knock your block off if I see you there."
+
+"I'll knock my own block off if I see me there. Jase, I don't know how
+to thank--"
+
+"Don't is right. Forget it."
+
+"Do you have enough--"
+
+"Me? Plenty. Don't worry about old Jase." Ramsey went to the door.
+"Well, see you."
+
+Englander walked quickly to him and shook his hand again. On the way
+out, Ramsey played for a moment or two with the twins, who were rolling
+a couple of toy spaceships marked hyper-one and hyper-two across the
+floor and making anachronistic machine-gun noises with their lips. Sally
+Englander, a plump, young-home-maker type, beamed at Ramsey from the
+kitchen. Then he went out into the gathering dusk.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As usual on Irwadi, and particularly with the coming of night, it was
+bitterly cold. Sucker, Ramsey told himself. But he grinned. He felt good
+about what he'd done. With Stu sick, and with Sally and the kids, he'd
+done the only thing he could do. He still had almost twenty-five credits
+left. Maybe he really would have a lucky night at the tables. Maybe ...
+heck, he'd been down-and-out before. A fugitive from Earth didn't have
+much choice sometimes....
+
+"Red sixteen," the croupier said indifferently. He was a short,
+heavy-set Sirian with a shock of scarlet hair, albino skin, and red
+eyes.
+
+Ramsey watched his money being raked across the table. It wasn't his
+night, he told himself with a grim smile. He had only three credits
+left. If he risked them now, there wouldn't even be the temporary
+physical relief and release of a bottle of Irwadian brandy before
+hitting the sack.
+
+Which was another thing, Ramsey thought. Hitting the sack. Ah yes, you
+filthy outworlder capitalist, hitting the sack. You owe that fish-eyed,
+scale-skinned Irwadian landlady the rent money, so you'd better wait
+until later, until much later, before sneaking back to your room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He watched the gambling for another hour or so without risking his few
+remaining credits. After a while a well-dressed Irwadian, drunk and
+obviously slumming here in the Old Quarter, made his way over to the
+table. His body scales were a glossy dark green and he wore glittering,
+be-jeweled straps across his chest and an equally glittering, be-jeweled
+weapons belt. Aside from these, in the approved Irwadian fashion, he was
+quite naked. An anthropologist friend had once told Ramsey that once the
+Irwadians had worn clothing, but since the coming in great number of the
+outworlders they had stripped down, as though to prove how tough they
+were in being able to withstand the freezing climate of their native
+world. Actually, the Irwadian body-scales were superb insulation,
+whether from heat or from cold.
+
+"... Earthman watching me," the Irwadian in the be-jeweled straps said
+arrogantly, placing a fat roll of credits on the table.
+
+"I'm sorry," Ramsey said. "Were you talking to me?"
+
+"I thertainly wath," lisped the Irwadian, his eyes blazing with drunken
+hatred. "I thaid I won't have any Earthman thnooping over my thoulder
+while I gamble, not unleth he'th gambling too."
+
+"Better tell that to your Security Police," Ramsey said coldly but not
+angrily. "I'm out of a job, so I don't have money to throw around. Go
+ahead and tell me--" with a little smile--"you think it was my idea."
+
+The Irwadian looked up haughtily. Evidently he was looking for trouble,
+or could not hold his liquor, or both. The frenzy of planetarization,
+Ramsey knew from bitter experience on other worlds, made irrational
+behavior like this typical. He studied the drunken Irwadian carefully.
+In all the time he'd spent on Irwadi, he'd never been able to tell a
+native's age by his green, scale-skinned, fish-eyed poker-face. But the
+glossy green scales covering face and body told Ramsey, along with the
+sturdy muscles revealed by the lack of clothing, that the Irwadian was
+in his prime, shorter than Ramsey by far, but wider across the shoulders
+and thicker through the barrel chest.
+
+"You outworlderth have been deprething the thandard of living on Irwadi
+ever thince you came here," the Irwadian said. "All you ever brought
+wath poverty and your ditheath germth and more trouble than you could
+handle. I don't want your thtink near me. I'm trying to enjoy mythelf.
+Get out of here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was abruptly silent in the little gambling hall. Since the
+establishment catered to outworlders and was full of them, the silence,
+Ramsey thought, should have been both ominous and in his favor. He
+looked around. Outworlders, yes. But not another Earthman present. He
+wondered if he was in for a fight. He shrugged, hardly caring. Maybe a
+fight was just what he needed, the way he felt.
+
+"Get out of here," the Irwadian repeated. "You thtink."
+
+Just then a Vegan girl, blue-skinned and fantastically wasp-waisted like
+all her kind, drifted over to Ramsey. He'd seen her around. He thought
+he recognized her. Maybe he'd even danced with her in the unit-a-dance
+halls reserved for humanoid outworlders.
+
+"Are you nuts?" she said, hissing the words through her teeth and
+grabbing Ramsey's elbow. "Don't you know who that guy is?"
+
+"No. Who?"
+
+"He's Garr Symm, that's who."
+
+Ramsey smiled at her without mirth. "Do I bow down in awe or run from
+here screaming? I never heard of Garr Symm."
+
+"Oh you fool!" she whispered furiously. "Garr Symm is the brand new
+number one man of the Irwadi Security Police. Don't you read the
+'casts?"
+
+Before Ramsey could answer or adjust to his surprise, the Irwadian
+repeated:
+
+"I'm telling you for the third time. Get out."
+
+Ostentatiously, Ramsey reached into his cloak-pocket for a single credit
+bill and tossed it on the table.
+
+"The denomination is not sufficient, sir," the albino Sirian croupier
+said indifferently. Ramsey had known it was not.
+
+Garr Symm's face turned a darker green. The Vegan girl retreated from
+Ramsey's side in fright. Symm raised his hand and an Irwadian waiter
+brought over a drink in a purple stem glass with a filigree pattern of
+titanium, bowing obsequiously. Symm lurched with the glass toward
+Ramsey. "I'm telling you to go," he said in a loud voice.
+
+Ramsey picked up his credit note but stood there. With a little sigh of
+drunken contentment, Garr Symm sloshed the contents of his stem glass in
+Ramsey's face.
+
+The liquor stung Ramsey's eyes. Many of the other outworlders, neither
+Irwadian nor Earthmen, laughed nervously.
+
+Ramsey wiped his eyes but otherwise did not move. He was in a rough spot
+and he knew it. The fact that their new Security Chief went out drunk at
+night with a chip on his shoulder was the Irwadian government's affair,
+not Ramsey's. He'd been insulted before. An Earthman in the outworlds,
+particularly an Earthman fugitive who knew he dared not get into the
+kind of trouble that could bring the Earth consul to investigate, was
+used to insults. For Earth was the leading economic and military power
+of the galaxy, and the fact that Earth really tried to deal fairly with
+its galactic neighbors meant nothing. Earth, being top dog, was
+resented.
+
+The thing which got Ramsey, though, was this Garr Symm. He had never
+heard of Garr Symm, and he thought he knew most of the big shots in the
+Irwadian Security Police by name. But there must have been a reason for
+his appointment. A government throwing off outworld influence had a
+reason for everything. So, why Garr Symm?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You, Mith Vegan!" Garr Symm called suddenly. "You whithpered to the
+Earthman. What did you tell him?"
+
+"Not to look for trouble," the Vegan girl said in a frightened voice.
+
+"But what elth?"
+
+"Honest, that's all."
+
+"Come here, pleath."
+
+Her blue skin all at once very pale, the Vegan girl walked back toward
+Garr Symm. He leered at her quite drunkenly and took hold of her slender
+arm. "What did you tell him? For the latht time."
+
+The girl whimpered: "You are hurting my arm."
+
+Thoughts raced through Ramsey's mind. As an administrator, as an
+Irwadian public servant in a touchy job, Garr Symm, a drunkard, was
+obviously grossly incompetent. What other qualifications did he have
+which gave him the top Irwadian Security job? Ramsey didn't know. He
+sighed. The Vegan girl's mouth formed a rictus of pain. Ramsey had a
+hunch he was going to find out.
+
+He said curtly: "Let go of her, Symm. She told me nothing that would
+interest you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Garr Symm ignored him. The blue-skinned girl cried.
+
+Ramsey grimaced and hit Garr Symm in the belly as hard as he could.
+
+Symm thudded back against the table. It overturned with a crash and the
+Security Chief crashed down on top of it. There wasn't a sound in the
+gambling hall except Ramsey's sudden hard breathing, the Vegan girl's
+sniffling, and Garr Symm's noisy attempts to get air into his lungs.
+Then Garr Symm gagged and was sick. He writhed in pain, still unable to
+breathe. His hands fluttered near his weapons belt.
+
+"Come on," Ramsey told the Vegan girl. "We'd better get out of here." He
+took her arm. Dumbly she went with him. None of the outworlders there
+tried to stop them. Ramsey looked back at Garr Symm. The Irwadian was
+shaking his fist. He had finally managed to draw his m.g. gun, but the
+crowd of outworlders closed between them and there was no chance he
+could hit Ramsey or the girl. Retching, he had dirtied the glossy green
+scales of his chest.
+
+"I'll get you," he vowed. "I'll get you."
+
+Ramsey took the girl outside. It was very cold. "I'm so afraid," she
+said. "What will I do? What can I do?" She shook with fear.
+
+"You got a place to sleep?"
+
+"Y-yes, but I'm the only Vegan girl in Irwadi City. He'll find me. He'll
+find me when he's ready."
+
+"O.K. Then come home with me."
+
+"I--"
+
+"For crying out loud, I don't look that lecherous, do I? We can't just
+stand here."
+
+"I--I'm sorry. I'll go with you of course."
+
+Ramsey took her hand again and they ran. The cold black Irwadian night
+swallowed them.
+
+"So you live in the Old Quarter too," the Vegan girl said.
+
+"Heck yeah. Did you expect a palace?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ramsey had a room, rent one Irwadi month in arrears, in a cold-water
+tenement near the river which demarked the Old and the New Quarters. The
+facade of the old building was dark now. His landlady was probably
+asleep, although you never could tell with that old witch. Ramsey knew
+it wouldn't be the first time she stayed up through half the night to
+await a delinquent tenant.
+
+"I--I never went to a man's room before," the blue-skinned Vegan girl
+said. She was rather pretty in a slender, muscleless, big-eyed,
+female-helpless mode.
+
+"You're a dance-hall girl, aren't you?"
+
+"Still, I never spent the night in a man's--"
+
+"What's the matter with you? You think we're going to spend the night
+here? Somebody over at those gaming tables will be able to identify me.
+Garr Symm'll be on his way before long."
+
+"Then what are we going to do?" The girl was shivering with cold.
+
+"Hide," Jason Ramsey said. "Somewhere. I just came back to get my
+things. There isn't much, but there's an old m.g. gun which we might
+need."
+
+"But they'll find us, and--"
+
+"You coming upstairs or will you wait out here and freeze to death in
+the cold?"
+
+"I'm coming."
+
+They went upstairs together, on tip-toe. Ramsey's room was on the third
+floor, with a besooted view of the industrial complex on the river by
+day. The narrow hall was dark and silent. Behind one of the closed doors
+an outworlder cried out in his sleep. Ramsey had to cup a hand over the
+Vegan girl's mouth so she wouldn't scream in empathic fear. He opened
+the door of his room, surprised that it was not locked. He thought he
+had left it locked.
+
+At once he was wary. It was dark in the hall, just as dark in the room.
+He could see nothing. The door hinges squeaked.
+
+"Come in, Captain Ramsey," a voice said. "I thought you would never get
+here."
+
+He stood on the threshold, uncertain. The voice had spoken not
+Interstellar _Coine_, but English. It had spoken English, without a
+foreign accent.
+
+And it was a girl's voice.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still, it could have been an elaborate trick. It was unlikely, but not
+impossible, that Garr Symm had learned Ramsey's identity already and had
+sent an operative here to await him. Ramsey and the Vegan girl had come
+on foot. It was a long walk.
+
+"I'm armed," Ramsey lied. "Come over here. Slowly. Don't put any lights
+on." He could feel the Vegan girl trembling next to him. Not able to
+understand English, she didn't know what was going on.
+
+"You're armed," the unseen girl's voice said in crisp, amused English,
+"like I'm a six-legged Antarean spider-man. You have an m.g. gun,
+Ramsey. It's in this room. I have it. That's all you have. No, don't try
+to lie to me. I'm a telepath. I can read you. Come in and put the light
+on and shut the door. You may bring the girl with you if you want.
+Brother, is she ever radiating fear! It's practically drowning your own
+mind out."
+
+The unseen girl wasn't kidding, Ramsey knew. She could read minds. She
+had proved it to him. Which left him this choice: he could grab the
+Vegan girl's arm again and get the heck out of there, or do what the
+unseen Earth girl told him to do. He wanted that m.g. gun. He took the
+Vegan girl's hand and advanced over the threshold and closed the door
+and switched on the light.
+
+The girl was sitting on the bed. She was an Earthgirl, all right. She
+had come in a toggle-cloak of green Irwadian fur, which was folded
+neatly at her side on the bed. Under it she wore a daring net halter of
+the type then fashionable on Earth but which had not yet taken over the
+outworlds. It left her shoulders bare and exposed a great deal of
+smooth, tawny skin through the net. Her firm breasts were cupped in two
+solid cones of black growing out of the net. Her midriff was bare to an
+inch or two below the navel. Her loins were covered by an abrevitog
+which formed a triangle in front and, Ramsey knew, would form one in
+back. Her long, well-formed legs were bare down to the mid-calf boots
+she wore. She had a beautiful body and had dressed so Ramsey couldn't
+miss it. Her face was so provocatively beautiful that Ramsey just stood
+there staring at it--after he had taken in the rest of her. She wore her
+hair quite long. She seemed perfectly composed. In her right hand she
+held Ramsey's m.g. gun, but she wasn't pointing it at them.
+
+She looked at the timid Vegan girl and smiled. "Oh, I am sorry, Captain
+Ramsey," she said. "I couldn't know, of course, you'd be coming home
+with--company."
+
+"It isn't what you think it is," Ramsey said, surprised to find himself
+on the defensive. "The girl's in trouble. So'm I."
+
+The Earthgirl laughed. "Already? You looked the type, but I thought it
+would take a little time."
+
+"What do you want?" Ramsey said. They were speaking in English. The
+Vegan girl tugged at Ramsey's arm. She wanted to get out of there and
+hoped Ramsey would go with her. Abruptly the Earthgirl burst out
+laughing.
+
+"What's so funny?" Ramsey demanded.
+
+"Your little Vegan friend. I read her mind, Ramsey. She thinks I'm your
+wife. She thinks I'm mad at you for bringing her home."
+
+"Then why don't you talk in _Coine_," Ramsey said in the interstellar
+language, "and make her feel better? She might as well know I never saw
+you before in my life." He was annoyed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Vegan girl smiled timidly, taking hope.
+
+"But you did," the beautiful Earthgirl said. "I was on the _Polaris_
+today, Captain. You were to be the pilot, until Interstellar Transfer
+here on Irwadi was planetarized."
+
+"I didn't see you. Dressed like that I wouldn't have forgotten you."
+
+"I wasn't dressed like this." The girl smiled, very sure of herself. "I
+read your mind when you came in. The costume's had the desired effect, I
+see. But you needn't broadcast your animal desires so blatantly."
+
+"Nobody asked you to read my mind. Besides, you needn't broadcast your
+physical assets so blatantly."
+
+"Touche," said the Earthgirl.
+
+"Listen," Ramsey began. "We're in a jam. We're in a hurry."
+
+"So you told me. I couldn't have wished for more. It looks like I didn't
+need this costume and its obvious inducements at all, if you're really
+in a jam."
+
+"What the devil is that supposed to mean?"
+
+"My name is Margot Dennison, Captain Ramsey. I have managed to buy an
+old starship, small and held together by spit and string and whatever
+the Irwadians use for prayer--"
+
+"They're atheists," Ramsey said a little pointlessly. It was the girl.
+Darn her hide, she was beautiful! What did she expect? Looking at her,
+how could a man concentrate.... "Hey!" Ramsey blurted suddenly. "Did you
+say Margot Dennison? The tri-di star?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Margot Dennison smiled. "That's right," she said. "Stranded five hundred
+light years from nowhere, Captain Ramsey. With a ship. With money. In
+need of a hyper-space pilot. That's why I'm here, or didn't you guess?"
+
+"I'm listening."
+
+"Isn't it clear? I'll pay you to take me away from here."
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"Through hyper-space to Earth. Well?"
+
+"I've been grounded. If I take you through hyper-space, I lose my
+license."
+
+"You really don't believe that, do you? After the Irwadians grounded all
+of you without warning, and grounded all ships until they can train a
+few more pilots. You don't really think I.T.S. would take your license
+away if you took a ship up and through hyper, do you? Under the
+circumstances? Especially since you're in a jam with a totalitarian
+government gone wild? Do you?"
+
+Ramsey said abruptly: "I'm sorry. I can't take you to Sol System."
+
+Margot Dennison smiled. It wasn't the kind of smile designed to make a
+man roll over on his back and wave all fours in the breeze. Margot
+Dennison didn't need that kind of smile.
+
+"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "I read your mind, you see. Very well,
+Captain. If you're a fugitive from Earth--I assume Ramsey isn't your
+real name, by the way--you may take me through hyper to Centauri. That
+will be quite satisfactory. I will make my way from Centauri. Well?"
+
+"Give me the gun," Ramsey said.
+
+"My goodness, of course. I'm not trying to hold you up. Here." She got
+up from the bed for the first time and walked toward them. She had firm,
+long legs, and used them well. She was utterly lovely and although part
+of it was probably her professional know-how, she made you forget that.
+She was the most attractive girl, Earth or outworld, Ramsey had seen in
+years.
+
+Ramsey took the gun. Their hands met. Ramsey leaned forward quickly and
+kissed her on the lips. He was still holding the Vegan girl's slender
+arm, though. She tried to run away but couldn't. Margot Dennison
+returned the kiss for an instant, to show Ramsey that when she really
+wanted to return it, if she ever really would, she would pack the same
+kind of libidinal vitality in her responses as she did in her
+appearance; then she stood coldly, no longer responsive, until Ramsey
+stepped back.
+
+"Maybe I was asking for it," she said. "I was prepared for that--and
+more. But it isn't necessary now, is it? My gosh, Ramsey! Will you
+please close that mind of yours? You make a girl blush."
+
+"Then put on your cloak," Ramsey said, and, really blushing this time,
+she did so.
+
+She said: "I'm prepared to pay you one thousand credits; what do you
+say?"
+
+"I say it must be a pretty important appointment you have on Centauri."
+
+"Earth, Captain Ramsey. I'm settling for Centauri. Well?"
+
+"I'll take you," Ramsey said, "if this girl comes too."
+
+Margot Dennison looked at the frightened Vegan girl and smiled. "So it's
+like that," she said.
+
+"It isn't like anything."
+
+Ramsey packed a few things in an expanduffle and the three of them
+hurried through the doorway and down stairs. The cold dark night
+awaiting them with a fierce howling wind and the first flurries of snow
+from the north.
+
+"Where to?" Ramsey hollered above the wind.
+
+"My place," Margot Dennison told him, and they ran.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Margot Dennison had a large apartment in Irwadi City's New Quarter. This
+surprised Ramsey, for not many outworlders lived there. That night,
+though, he was too tired to think about it. He vaguely remembered a
+couch for himself, a separate room for the Vegan girl, another for
+Margot Dennison. He slept like a log without dreaming.
+
+He awoke with anxious hands fluttering at his shoulder. Opening one
+sleepy eye, he saw the Vegan girl. He saw daylight through a window but
+said, "Gmph! Middle of the night."
+
+The Vegan girl said: "She's gone."
+
+Ramsey came awake all at once, springing to his feet fully dressed and
+flinging aside his cloak, which he'd used as a blanket. "Margot!" he
+called.
+
+"She's gone," the Vegan girl repeated. "When I awoke she wasn't here.
+The door--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ramsey ran to the door. It was a heavy plastic irising door. It was
+locked and naturally would not respond to the whorl patterns of Ramsey's
+thumb.
+
+"So now we're prisoners," Ramsey said. "I don't get it."
+
+"At least there's food in the kitchen."
+
+"All right. Let's eat."
+
+There were two windows in the room, but when Ramsey looked out he saw
+they were at least four stories up. They'd just have to wait for Margot
+Dennison.
+
+It took the Vegan girl some time to prepare the unfamiliar Earth-style
+food with which Margot Dennison's kitchen was stocked. Ramsey used the
+time to prowl around the apartment. It was furnished in Sirian-archaic,
+a mode of furniture too feminine to suit Ramsey's tastes. But then, the
+uni-sexual Sirians, of course, often catered to their own feminine
+taste.
+
+Ramsey found nothing in Margot Dennison's apartment which indicated she
+had done any acting on Irwadi, and that surprised him, for he'd assumed
+she had plied her trade here as elsewhere. He felt a little guilty about
+his snooping, then changed his mind when he remembered that Margot had
+locked them in.
+
+In one of the slide compartments of what passed for a bureau in
+Sirian-archaic, he found a letter. Since it was the only piece of
+correspondence in the apartment, it might be important to Margot
+Dennison, thought Ramsey. And if it were important to her....
+
+Ramsey opened the letter and read it. Dated five Earth months before, it
+ran:
+
+    _My darling Margot: By the time you read this I shall be dead.
+    Ironical, isn't it? Coming so close--with death in the form of
+    an incurable cancer intervening._
+
+    _As you know, Margot, I always wished for a son but never had
+    one. You'll have to play that role, I'm afraid, as you always
+    have. Here is the information I told you I would write down.
+    Naturally, if you intend to do anything about it, you'll guard
+    it with your life._
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _Apparently the hyper-space pattern from Irwadi to Earth is the
+    one I was looking for. The proto-men, if I may be bold enough to
+    call them that, first left hyper-space at that point, perhaps a
+    million, perhaps five million, Earth years ago. I don't have to
+    tell you what this means, my child. I've already indicated it to
+    you previously. It suffices to remind you that, in what science
+    has regarded as the most amazing coincidence in the history of
+    the galaxy, humanoid types sprang up on some three thousand
+    stellar worlds simultaneously between one and five million years
+    ago. I say simultaneously although there is the possibility of a
+    four million year lag: indications are, however, that one date
+    would do quite well for all the worlds._
+
+    _Proto-man was tremendously ahead of us in certain sciences,
+    naturally. For example, each humanoid type admirably fits the
+    evolutionary pattern on its particular planet. The important
+    point, Margot, is the simultaneity of the events: it means that
+    proto-man left hyper-space, his birth-place, and peopled the
+    man-habitable worlds of the galaxy at a single absolute instance
+    in time. This would clearly be impossible if the thousands of
+    journeys involved any duration. Therefore, it can only be
+    concluded that they were journeys which somehow negated the
+    temporal dimension. In other words, instant travel across the
+    length and breadth of the galaxy!_
+
+    _Whoever re-discovers proto-man's secret, needless to say, will
+    be the most influential, the most powerful, man in the galaxy.
+    Margot, I thought that man would be me. It won't be now._
+
+    _But it can be you, Margot. It is my dying wish that you
+    continue my work. Let nothing stop you. Nothing. Remember this,
+    though: I cannot tell you what to expect when you reach the
+    original home of proto-man. In all probability the whole race
+    has perished, or we'd have heard of them since. But I can't be
+    sure of that. I can't be sure of anything. Perhaps proto-man,
+    like some deistic god, became disinterested in the Milky Way
+    Galaxy for reasons we'll never understand. Perhaps he still
+    exists, in hyper-space._
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _Finally, Margot, remember this. If you presented this letter to
+    the evolutionary scientists on any of the worlds, they'd laugh
+    at you. It is as if unbelief of the proto-man legend were
+    ingrained in all the planetary people, perhaps somehow
+    fantastically carried from generation to generation in their
+    genes because proto-man a million years ago decided that each
+    stellar world must work out its own destiny independently of the
+    others and independent of their common heritage. But in my own
+    case, there are apparently two unique factors at work. In the
+    first place, as you know, I deciphered--after discovering it
+    quite by accident--what was probably a proto-man's dying message
+    to his children, left a million years ago in the ruins on
+    Arcturus II. In the second place, isn't it quite possible that
+    my genes have changed, that I have mutated and therefore do not
+    have as an essential part of my make-up the unbelief of the
+    proto-man legend?_
+
+    _Good luck to you, Margot. I hope you're willing to give up your
+    career to carry out your dying father's wish. If you do, and if
+    you succeed, more power will be yours than a human being has
+    ever before had in the galaxy. I won't presume to tell you how
+    to use it._
+
+    _Oh, yes. One more thing. Since Earth and Alpha Centauri are on
+    a direct line from Irwadi, Centauri will do quite well as your
+    outbound destination if for some reason you can't make Earth.
+    Again, good luck, my child. With all my love, Dad._
+
+Ramsey frowned at the letter. He did not know what to make of it. As far
+as he knew, there was no such thing as a proto-man myth in wide currency
+around the galaxy. He had never heard of proto-man. Unless, he thought
+suddenly, the dying man could have simply meant all the myths of human
+creation, hypothecating a first man who, somehow, had developed
+independently of the beasts of the field although he seemed to fit their
+evolutionary pattern....
+
+But what the devil would hyper-space have to do with such a myth?
+Proto-man, whatever proto-man was, couldn't have lived in hyper-space.
+Not in that bleak, ugly, faceless infinity....
+
+Unless, Ramsey thought, more perplexed than ever, it was the very bleak,
+ugly, faceless infinity which made proto-man leave.
+
+"Breakfast!" the Vegan girl called. Ramsey joined her in the kitchen,
+and they ate without talking. When they were drinking their coffee, an
+Earth-style beverage which the Vegan girl admitted liking, the apartment
+door irised and Margot Dennison came in.
+
+Ramsey, who had replaced the letter where he'd found it, said: "Just
+what the devil did you think you were doing, locking us in?"
+
+"For your own protection, silly," Margot told him smoothly. "I always
+lock my door when I go out, so I locked it today. Naturally, we won't
+have a chance to apply for a new lock. Besides, why arouse suspicion?"
+
+"Where'd you go?"
+
+"I don't see where that's any of your business."
+
+"Believe it or not," Ramsey said caustically, "I've seen a thousand
+credits before. I've turned down a thousand credits before, in jobs I
+didn't like. As for being stranded here on Irwadi, it's all the same to
+me whether I'm on Irwadi or elsewhere."
+
+"What does all that mean, Captain Ramsey?"
+
+"It means keep us informed. It means don't get uppity."
+
+Margot laughed and dropped a vidcast tape on the table in front of
+Ramsey. He read it and did not look up. There was a description of
+himself, a description of the Vegan girl, and a wanted bulletin issued
+on them. For assaulting the Chief of Irwadi Security, the bulletin said.
+For assaulting a drunken fool, Ramsey thought.
+
+"Well?" Margot asked. This morning she wore a man-tailored jumper which,
+Ramsey observed, clashed with the Sirian-archaic furniture. She looked
+cool and completely poised and no less beautiful, if less provocatively
+dressed, than last night.
+
+Ramsey returned question for question. "What about the ship?"
+
+"In a Spacer Graveyard, of course. There isn't a landing field on the
+planet we could go to."
+
+"You mean we'll take off from a Graveyard? From a junk-heap of battered
+old derelict ships?"
+
+"Of course. It has some advantages, believe it or not. We'll work on the
+ship nights. It needs plenty of work, let me tell you. But then the
+Graveyard is a kind of parts department, isn't it?"
+
+Ramsey couldn't argue with that.
+
+They spent the next three days sleeping and slowly going stir-crazy.
+They slipped out each night, though, and walked the two miles to the
+Spacer Graveyard down near the river. It was on the other side of the
+river, which meant they had to boat across. Risky, but there was no help
+for it. Each night they worked on the ship, which Ramsey found to be a
+fifty-year old Canopusian freighter in even worse condition than Margot
+had indicated. The night was usually divided into three sections. First,
+reviewing the work which had been done and planning the evening's
+activities. Then, looking for the parts they would need in the jungle of
+interstellar wrecks all about them. Finally, going to work with the
+parts they had found and with the tools which Ramsey had discovered on
+the old Canopusian freighter the first night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As they made their way back across the river the first night, Ramsey
+paddling slowly, quietly, Margot said:
+
+"Ramsey, I--I think we're being watched."
+
+"I haven't seen or heard a thing. You, Vardin?" Vardin was the Vegan
+girl's name.
+
+Vardin shook her head.
+
+Ramsey was anxious all at once, though. Things had gone too smoothly.
+They had not been interfered with at all. Personally, things hadn't gone
+smoothly with Ramsey, but that was another story. He found himself
+liking Margot Dennison too much. He found himself trying to hide it
+because he knew she could read minds. Just how do you hide your thoughts
+from a mind reader? Ramsey didn't know, but whenever his thoughts
+drifted in that direction he tried thinking of something else--anything
+else, except the proto-man letter.
+
+"Yes, that's just what I was thinking," Margot said in the boat. "I can
+read minds, so I'd know best if we were being watched. To get a clear
+reading I have to aim my thoughts specifically, but I can pick up
+free-floating thoughts as a kind of emotional tone rather than words.
+Does that make sense?"
+
+"If you say so. What else did you read in my mind?"
+
+Margot smiled at him mysteriously and said nothing.
+
+Ramsey felt thoughts of proto-man nibbling at his consciousness. He
+tried to fight them down purely rationally, and knew he wouldn't
+succeed. He grabbed Margot and pulled her close to him, seeking her
+lips with his, letting his thoughts wander into a fantasy of desire.
+
+Margot slapped his face and sat stiffly in her cloak while he paddled to
+the other side of the river. Vardin sat like a statue. Ramsey had come
+to a conclusion: he did not like letting Margot know how he felt about
+her, but it was mostly on a straight physical level and he preferred her
+discovering it to her learning that he'd read the proto-man letter from
+her father. In his thoughts, though, he never designated it as the
+proto-man letter from her father. He designated it as X.
+
+When they reached the bank, Margot said: "I'm sorry for slapping you."
+
+"I'm sorry for making a pass."
+
+"Ramsey, tell me, what is X?"
+
+Ramsey laughed harshly and said nothing. That gave Margot something to
+think about. Maybe it would keep her thoughts out of his mind, keep her
+from reading....
+
+X marks the spot, thought Ramsey. XXX marks the spot-spot-spot. X is a
+spot in a pot or a lot of rot....
+
+"Oh, stop it!" Margot cried irritably. "You're thinking nonsense."
+
+"Then get the heck out of my mind," Ramsey told her.
+
+Vardin walked on without speaking. If she had any inkling of what they
+were talking about, she never mentioned it.
+
+Margot said: "I still get the impression."
+
+"What impression?"
+
+"That we're being followed. That we're being watched. Every step of the
+way."
+
+Wind and cold and darkness. The hairs on the back of Ramsey's neck
+prickled. They walked on, bent against the wind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Security Officer Second Class Ramar Chind reported to his Chief in the
+Hall of Retribution the following morning. Chind, a career man with the
+Irwadi Security Forces, did not like his new boss. Garr Symm was no
+career man. He knew nothing of police procedure. It was even
+rumored--probably based upon solid fact--that Garr Symm liked his brandy
+excessively and often found himself under its influence. Worst of
+all--after all, a man could understand a desire for drink, even if,
+sometimes, it interfered with work--worst of all, Garr Symm was a
+scientist, a dome-top in the Irwadi vernacular. And hard-headed Ramar
+Chind lost no love on dome-tops.
+
+He saluted crisply and said: "You wanted to see me, sir?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Garr Symm leaned forward over his desk, making a tent of his scaly green
+fingers and peering over it. He said three words. He said: "The
+Earthgirl Dennison."
+
+"The Spacer Graveyard," Ramar Chind said promptly. That was an easy one.
+His agents had been following the Dennison girl, at Garr Symm's orders.
+Ramar Chind did not know why.
+
+"And?" Garr Symm asked.
+
+"The Earthman Ramsey, the Vegan Vardin, both are with her. We can close
+in and arrest the lot, sir, any time you wish."
+
+"Fool," Garr Symm said softly, without malice. "That is the last thing I
+want. Don't you understand that? No, I guess you don't."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Their ship?"
+
+"Every morning after they leave we go over it. Still two or three nights
+away from completion, sir. Also--" Ramar Chind smiled.
+
+"Yes, what is it?"
+
+"Two or three nights away from completion, except for one thing. They'll
+need a fuel supply. Two U-235 capsules rigged for slow implosion, sir.
+The hopper of their ship is empty."
+
+"Is there such a fuel supply in the Graveyard?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"But could there be?"
+
+"Usually, no. Naturally, the junkers drain out spaceship hoppers before
+scrapping them. U-235 in any form brings--"
+
+"I know the value of U-235. Proceed."
+
+"Well, there could be. If they were lucky enough to find such a fuel
+supply in one of the wrecks in the Graveyard, they wouldn't be
+suspicious. Naturally, we won't put one there."
+
+"But you're wrong, my dear Ramar Chind. You'll load the hopper of one of
+those wrecks with enough U-235 for their purposes, and you'll do it
+today."
+
+"But sir--"
+
+"We're going to follow them, Chind. You and I. We want them to escape.
+If they don't escape, how can we follow them?"
+
+Ramar Chind shrugged resignedly and lisped: "How much fuel will they
+need for their purposes, sir, whatever their purposes are?" Naturally,
+his lisping sounded perfectly normal to Garr Symm, who also spoke in
+the sibilantless Irwadi manner.
+
+"You'd really like to know, wouldn't you?" Garr Symm said.
+
+"Yes, sir. To put me in a position in which I could better do my--"
+
+"To satisfy your curiosity, you mean!"
+
+"But sir--"
+
+"I am a scientist, Chind."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Didn't it strike you as odd that a scientist should be elevated to the
+top post in your department?"
+
+"Of course, sir. I didn't question it, though."
+
+"As you know, Chind, when it was decided to planetarize Irwadi as a
+first step toward driving away the outworlders, the quarters of every
+outworlder on Irwadi were thoroughly searched."
+
+"I participated in the--uh, program, sir."
+
+"Good. Then I needn't tell you. Something was found in Margot Dennison's
+apartment. Something of immense importance. Something so important that,
+if used properly, it can assure Irwadi the dominant place in the galaxy
+for all time to come."
+
+"But I thought Irwadi craved isolation--"
+
+"Isolation, Chind? To be sure, if intercourse with the other galactic
+powers saw us at the bottom of the heap. But at the top--who would crave
+isolation at the top?"
+
+"I see, sir. And the something that was found needed a scientist?"
+
+"Very perceptive of you, Chind. Precisely. It was a letter. We copied
+it. Of course, Margot Dennison knows more than what is in the letter;
+the letter alludes to previous information. We need Dennison and Ramsey.
+We have to let them go ahead with their plans. Then we follow them,
+Chind. You understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You're a good policeman, Chind. The best we have, I understand. You'll
+be going with me--on the most important assignment you or any Irwadian
+ever had."
+
+"I am grateful, sir, that you consider me--"
+
+"Now, see about that U-235 slow-implosion capsule."
+
+"At once, sir."
+
+Saluting smartly, Ramar Chind left Garr Symm's office. Symm smiled and
+sat perfectly still for some minutes. For Irwadi, yes, he was thinking.
+Certainly for Irwadi. For Irwadi absolutely. To make Irwadi the most
+important planet in the galaxy. But important planets--in the way that
+Irwadi would be important--couldn't maintain the status quo. For
+example, Irwadi's form of government might have to be changed. At
+present, an autocratic bureaucracy with no one man at the top.
+Ultimately, after the rediscovery of proto-man's secret--rule by one
+man.
+
+Garr Symm, absolute dictator of the galaxy, if he played his hand right.
+
+Garr Symm sat there for a long time, dreaming of power as no man before
+him on any world had ever dreamed of power....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Vardin rushed into the airlock of the Canopusian freighter in a state of
+excitement. At last they had given her something to do, and she had been
+successful at the outset. Specifically, Ramsey and the beautiful woman
+had given her a scintillation-counter and told her to prowl among the
+wrecks with it while they worked on the control board of the freighter,
+which the beautiful woman had named _Enterprise_.
+
+"I found it!" Vardin cried. "I found it!"
+
+She led a sceptical Margot Dennison outside while Ramsey continued
+working on the _Enterprise_. The two girls walked swiftly through the
+darkness between the wrecks. By this time they knew every foot of the
+Graveyard.
+
+"There," Vardin said. "You see?"
+
+The scintillation counter was clicking and blinking. Margot smiled and
+went to work with a portable mechanical arm and a leaded bottle. In ten
+minutes, she had the slow-implosion capsule out of the hopper of a
+battered old Aldebaranese cargo ship.
+
+"I never saw one of those mechanical arms working before," Vardin said.
+
+Margot smiled. She was delighted with the timid Vegan girl, with the
+cold night, with the way the wind blew across the Graveyard, with
+everything. They had their fuel. Tomorrow night the _Enterprise_ would
+be ready for its dash into hyper-space. In thirty-six hours she might
+have her hands on the most valuable find in the history of mankind....
+
+When they returned to the _Enterprise_, she let Ramsey kiss her and
+tried to slip the telepathic tentacles of her mind behind his guard--
+
+Lewd libidinous fantasies, X stands for nothing for nothing for nothing,
+XXX--she got nowhere.
+
+What was X? What was Ramsey's secret? Margot did not know, and wondered
+if she would ever find out.
+
+She smiled, reading Vardin's mind. For Vardin was thinking: it must be
+so wonderful to have beauty such as she has, to melt the wills of strong
+handsome men such as Ramsey. It must be truly wonderful.
+
+For the first twenty-eight years of her life, Margot Dennison would have
+agreed, would have delighted in her own beauty. She still did, to a
+point. But beyond that point, she could dream only of proto-man and his
+secret.
+
+Beauty or power?
+
+She had beauty.
+
+She wanted power.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the early hours of the following morning, behind the cover of what
+appeared to be a dense early morning fog but what actually was an
+artificially produced fog, a team of Irwadi technicians swarmed all over
+a battered Procyonian cruiser of three thousand tons. By mid-morning,
+working swiftly and with all the tools and spare parts they would need,
+they made the ship, called _Dog Star_, space-worthy.
+
+Later that day, but still two hours before nightfall, Ramar Chind
+arrived with a small crew of three Security Police. He had selected his
+men carefully: they knew how to handle a spaceship, they knew how to
+fight, they were quite ruthless. He thought Garr Symm would be pleased.
+
+Symm did not arrive until just before nightfall. He was very agitated
+when he came. Ramar Chind, too, was eager. What would happen within the
+next several hours, he realized, might be beyond his ken, but he still
+recognized its importance. And, being an opportunist, he would pounce on
+whatever he found of value to himself....
+
+Several hours after the setting of the Irwadi primary had ushered in the
+cold night, Margot Dennison, Ramsey and Vardin arrived at the Graveyard
+and made their way at once to the _Enterprise_. They went inside swiftly
+and in a very few minutes prepared the thousand-tonner for blastoff.
+Ramsey's mouth was dry. He could barely keep the thoughts of proto-man
+from his mind. If Margot read them....
+
+"Centauri here we come," he said, just to talk.
+
+"Centauri," said Margot.
+
+But of course, she had another destination in mind.
+
+Several hundred yards across the Graveyard, watching, waiting, the
+occupants of _Dog Star_ were armed to the teeth.
+
+Ramsey sat at the controls. Vardin stood behind him nervously. The space
+trip from Vega to Irwadi was probably the only one she had ever taken.
+Margot sat, quite relaxed, in the co-pilot's chair.
+
+"I still can't believe we're not going to feel anything," Vardin said in
+her soft, shy voice.
+
+"Haven't you ever been through hyper-space before?" Margot asked the
+Vegan girl.
+
+"Just once."
+
+"In normal space," Ramsey explained, "we feel acceleration and
+deceleration because the increase or decrease in velocity is experienced
+at different micro-instants by all the cells of our body. In hyper-space
+the velocity is felt simultaneously in all parts of the ship, including
+all parts of us. We become weightless, of course, but the change is
+instant and we feel no pressure, no pain."
+
+Ramsey was waiting until 0134:57 on the ship chronometer. At that
+precise instant in time, and at that instant only, blastoff would place
+them on the proper hyper-space orbit. And, before they could feel the
+mounting pressure of blastoff, the timelessness of hyper-space would
+intervene.
+
+"0130:15," Margot read the chronometer for Ramsey. "It won't be long
+now. 30:20--"
+
+"All right," Ramsey said suddenly. "All right. I can read the
+chronometer."
+
+"Why, Ramsey! I do believe you're nervous."
+
+"Anxious, Margot. A hyper-pilot is always anxious just before crossover.
+You've got to be, because the slightest miscalculation can send you
+fifty thousand light years off course."
+
+"So? All you'd have to do is re-enter hyper-space and go back."
+
+Ramsey shook his head. "Hyper-space can only be entered from certain
+points in space. We've never been able to figure out why."
+
+"What certain points?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ramsey looked at her steadily. "Points which vary with the orbits of the
+three thousand humanoid worlds, Margot," he said slowly. He watched her
+for a reaction, knowing that strange fact about hyper-space--perfectly
+true and never understood--dovetailed with her father's letter about
+proto-man, an unknown pre-human ancestor of all the humanoid races in
+the galaxy, who had discovered hyper-space, bred variations to colonize
+all the inhabitable worlds, found or created the three thousand
+crossover points in space, and used them.
+
+Margot showed no response, but then, Ramsey told himself, she was a
+tri-di actress. She could feign an emotion--or hide one. She merely
+asked: "Is it true that there's no such thing as time in hyper-space?"
+
+"That's right. That's why you can travel scores or hundreds or thousands
+of light years through hyper-space in hours. Hyper-space is a continuum
+of only three dimensions. There is no fourth dimension, no dimension of
+duration."
+
+"Then why aren't trips through hyper-space instantaneous? They take
+several hours, don't they?"
+
+"Sure, but the way scientists have it figured, that's subjective time.
+No objective time passes at all. It can't. There isn't any--in
+hyper-space."
+
+"Then you mean--"
+
+Ramsey shook his head. "0134:02," he said. "It's almost time."
+
+The seconds ticked away. Even Margot did not seem relaxed now. She
+stared nervously at the chronometer, or watched Ramsey's lips as he
+silently read away the seconds. A place where time did not exist, an
+under-stratum of extension sans duration. An idea suddenly entered her
+mind, and she was afraid.
+
+If proto-man had colonized the galactic worlds between one and four or
+five million years ago, but if time did not exist for proto-man, then
+wasn't the super-race which had engendered all mankind still waiting in
+its timeless home, waiting perhaps grimly amused to see which of their
+progeny first discovered their secret? Or must proto-man, like humans
+everywhere, fall victim to subjective time if objective time did not
+matter for him?
+
+Ramsey was saying softly: "Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five,
+fifty-six ... blastoff!"
+
+His hand slammed down on the activating key.
+
+An instant later, having felt no sensation of acceleration, they were
+floating weightlessly in the cabin of the little _Enterprise_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The qualities of radar," Garr Symm said, "exist in their totality in a
+universe of extension. Time, actually is a drawback to radar,
+necessitating a duration-lag between sending and receiving. Therefore,
+Ramar Chind, radar behaves perfectly in hyper-space, as you see."
+
+"Yes," Ramar Chind said, floating near the radar screen aboard the _Dog
+Star_. At its precise center was a bright little pip of light.
+
+_The Enterprise_....
+
+"But don't we do anything except follow them?" Ramar Chind said after a
+long silence.
+
+Garr Symm smiled. "Does it really matter? You see, Chind, time actually
+stands still for us here. Duration is purely subjective, so what's your
+hurry?"
+
+Ramar Chind licked his lips nervously and stared fascinated at the
+little pip of bright light.
+
+Which suddenly dipped and swung erratically.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What is it?" Margot asked. "What's the matter?"
+
+"Take it easy," Ramsey told her.
+
+"But the ship's swooping. I can feel it. I thought you weren't supposed
+to feel movement in hyper-space!"
+
+"Relax, will you? There are eddies in hyper-space, that's all. If you
+want an analogy in terms of our own universe, think of shoals in an
+ocean--unmarked by buoys or lights."
+
+"You mean they have to be avoided?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But this particular shoal--it's midway between Irwadi and Earth?"
+
+"There isn't any 'midway,' Margot. That's the paradox of hyper-space."
+
+"I--I don't understand."
+
+"Look. In the normal universe, extension is measured by time. That is,
+it takes a certain amount of time to get from point A to point B.
+Conversely, time is measured by extension in space. On Earth, a day of
+time passes when Earth moves through space on an arc one
+three-hundred-sixty-fifth of its orbit around the sun in length. Since
+there isn't any time to measure extension with in hyper-space, since
+time doesn't exist here, you can't speak of mid-points."
+
+"But this--shoal. It's always encountered in hyper-space between Earth
+and Irwadi?"
+
+Ramsey nodded. "Yes, that is right."
+
+Margot smiled.
+
+The smile suddenly froze on her face.
+
+The _Enterprise_ lurched as if an unseen giant hand had slapped it.
+
+At that moment Ramsey leaned forward over the controls, battling to
+bring the _Enterprise_ back on course.
+
+And let down his mental guard.
+
+_... precise place in hyper-space her father must have meant ... home of
+proto-man ... thinks I'm going to stop there, she's crazy ... heck, I'm
+no mystic, but there are things not meant to be meddled with ..._
+
+The ship swooped again. Ramsey went forward against the control panel
+head-first and fell dazed from the pilot chair. His head whirled, his
+arms and legs were suddenly weak and rubbery. He tried to stand up and
+make his way back to the controls again, but collapsed and went down to
+his knees. He crouched there, trying to shake the fog from his brain.
+
+With a cry of triumph, Margot Dennison leaped at him and bore him down
+to the floor with her weight. He was still too dazed from the blow on
+his head to offer any resistance when her strong hands tugged at his
+belt and withdrew the m.g. gun. She got up with it, backing away from
+him quickly toward the rear bulkhead as the ship seemed to go into a
+smooth glide which could be felt within it. Vardin stood alongside
+Ramsey, a hand to her mouth in horror. Ramsey got up slowly.
+
+"Stay where you are!" Margot cried, pointing the m.g. gun at him. "I'll
+kill you if I have to. I'll kill you, Ramsey, I mean it."
+
+Ramsey did not move.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"So you knew about my father," Margot challenged him.
+
+"Yeah. So what?"
+
+"And this shoal in hyper-space is a world, isn't it?"
+
+Ramsey nodded. "I think so."
+
+"O.K. Sit down at the controls, Ramsey. That's right. Don't try
+anything."
+
+Ramsey was seated in the pilot chair again. His head was still whirling
+but his strength had returned. He wondered if he could chance rushing
+her but told himself she meant what she said. She would kill him in cold
+blood if she had to.
+
+"Bring the _Enterprise_ down on that world, Ramsey."
+
+He sat there and stubbornly shook his head. "Margot, you'll be meddling
+with a power beyond human understanding."
+
+"Rubbish! You read my father's letter, didn't you? That fear's been
+implanted in your genes. It's part of the heredity of our people. It's
+rubbish. Bring the ship down."
+
+Still Ramsey did not move. Vardin looked from him to Margot Dennison and
+back again with horror in her eyes.
+
+"I'll count three," Margot said. "Then I'll shoot the Vegan girl. Do you
+understand?"
+
+Ramsey's face went white.
+
+"One," Margot said.
+
+Vardin stared at him beseechingly.
+
+Ramsey said: "All right, Margot. All right."
+
+Five minutes later, subjective time, the _Enterprise_ landed with a
+lurch.
+
+That they had reached a world in hyper-space there could be no doubt.
+But outside the portholes of the little freighter was only the murky
+grayness of the timeless hyper-space continuum.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"They've gone down, sir!" Ramar Chind cried.
+
+Garr Symm nodded. For the first time he was really nervous. He wondered
+about the Dennison letter. Could his fear be attributed to ancestral
+memory, as Dennison had indicated? Was it really baseless--this
+crawling, cold-fingered hand of fear on his spine?
+
+There was no physical barrier. The _Enterprise_ had established that
+fact. Then was there a barrier which Garr Symm, along with all
+humanoids, had somehow inherited?
+
+A barrier of stark terror, subjective and unfounded on fact?
+
+And beyond it--what?
+
+Power to chain the universe....
+
+Think, Garr Symm told himself. You've got to be rational. You're a
+scientist. You've been trained as a scientist. This is their barrier,
+erected against you, against all humanoids, a million years ago. It
+isn't real. It's all in your mind.
+
+"Do you want me to follow them down?" Ramar Chind asked.
+
+Garr Symm envied the policeman. Naturally, Ramar Chind did not share his
+terror. You didn't know the terror until you learned about proto-man;
+then the response seemed to be triggered in your brain, as if it had
+been passed to you through the genes of your ancestors, waiting a
+million years for release....
+
+Fear, a guardian.
+
+Of what? Garr Symm asked himself. Think of that, fool. Think of what it
+guards.
+
+Power--
+
+Teleportation or its equivalent.
+
+Gone the subjective passage of hours in hyper-space.
+
+Earned--if you were strong enough or brave enough to earn it--the
+ability to travel instantly from one humanoid world to another.
+Instantly. Perhaps from any one point on any humanoid world to any one
+point, precise, specific, exact, on another world.
+
+To plunder.
+
+Or assassinate.
+
+Or control the lives of men, everywhere.
+
+_Sans_ ship.
+
+_Sans_ fear.
+
+_Sans_ the possibility of being caught or stopped.
+
+Sweating, Garr Symm said: "Bring the _Dog Star_ down after them, Ramar
+Chind."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ramsey smiled without humor. "What now, little lady?" he said mockingly.
+
+"Shut up. Oh, shut up!"
+
+"What are you going to do now?"
+
+"I told you to shut up. I have to think."
+
+"I didn't know a gorgeous tri-di actress ever had to think."
+
+"Let me see those figures again," Margot said.
+
+Ramsey handed her the tapes from the _Enterprise's_ environment-checker.
+
+Temperature: minus two hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit.
+
+Atmosphere: none.
+
+Gravity: eight-tenths Earth-norm.
+
+"And we don't have a spacesuit aboard," Ramsey said.
+
+"But it can't be. It can't. This is the home of proto-man. I know it is.
+But if I went out there I'd perish from cold in seconds and lack of air
+in minutes."
+
+"That's right," Ramsey said almost cheerfully. "So do I take the ship
+back up?"
+
+"I hate you, Jason Ramsey. Oh, I hate you!" Margot cried. Then suddenly:
+"Wait! Wait a minute! What was that you were thinking? Tell me! You must
+tell me--"
+
+Ramsey shook his head and tried to force the thoughts from his mind with
+doggerel. Ben Adam, he thought. Abou Ben Adam, Humpty Dumpty, hurry,
+hurry, hurry, the only two headed get yours here the sum of the square
+of the sides is equal to the square of the hyper-space, no, mustn't
+think that mimsy were the borogroves and the momraths now what the heck
+did the momraths do anyhow absolute zero is the temperature at which
+all molecular activity....
+
+"What were you thinking, Ramsey?"
+
+His mind was a labyrinth. There were thousands of discrete thoughts, of
+course. Millions of them, collected over a lifetime. But all at once he
+did not know his way through that labyrinth and his thoughts kept
+whirling back to the one Margot Dennison wanted as if, somehow, she
+could pluck it from his mind.
+
+She stood before him, her brow furrowed, sweat beading her pretty face.
+
+And she was winning, forcing the thought to take shape in Ramsey's
+mind--
+
+_But if I went out there I'd perish from cold in seconds and lack of air
+in minutes._
+
+_Cold_, came the known and unbidden thoughts to Ramsey's struggling
+mind. _And lack of air. Attributes of extension, of space_, but measured
+by duration, by time. _And since time does not exist in hyper-space, the
+vacuum out there and the terrible, killing cold, could have no effect on
+you. You could go out there perfectly protected from the lethal
+environment by the absence of the time dimension._
+
+Margot smiled at him. "Thank you," she said. "Thank you, Ramsey."
+
+He was about to speak, but she added: "And don't give me that stuff
+about a power we shouldn't tamper with. I'm going out there. Now."
+
+Ramsey nodded slowly. "I won't stop you."
+
+"But just so you don't get any ideas of stranding me here--Vardin.
+Vardin's going with me."
+
+The Vegan girl looked at Ramsey mutely.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ramsey said: "What makes you think I'll let you take her?"
+
+Margot smiled again. "The m.g. gun makes me think so."
+
+"The heck of it is, you're not really bad, Margot. This thing's got you,
+is all. You're not essentially evil."
+
+"Thank you for the thrilling compliment. I'm delighted," Margot said
+sarcastically.
+
+"Vardin stays with me."
+
+Margot reminded him of the lethal m.g. gun by showing it to him,
+muzzle-first.
+
+He laughed in her face. "Go ahead and shoot."
+
+She stared at him.
+
+"There isn't a lethal weapon'd do you any good here in a timeless
+continuum. Take an m.g. gun. It induces an artificial breakdown of
+radioactive fuel in its chamber, firing an instantly lethal dose of
+radiation. But in order for radioactive breakdown to occur, time must
+pass. Even if it's only milliseconds, as in the case of an m.g. gun.
+There aren't any milliseconds on this world, Margot. There isn't any
+time. So go ahead and pull the trigger."
+
+Margot frowned and pointed the gun to one side and fired.
+
+Nothing happened. Margot almost looked as if her hard shell had been
+sundered by the impotence of the m.g. gun. She pouted. Her eyes gleamed
+moistly.
+
+Then Ramsey said: "O.K. Let's go."
+
+"What--what do you mean?"
+
+"Out there. All of us."
+
+"But I thought you said--"
+
+"Sure, I'm scared stiff. A normal man would be. It's in our genes,
+according to your father. But I'm also a man. What the devil d'you think
+it was first got man out of his cave and started along the road to
+civilization and the stars? It was curiosity. Fear restraining him, and
+curiosity egging him on. Which do you think won in the end?"
+
+"Oh, Ramsey, I could kiss you!"
+
+"Go right ahead," Ramsey said, and she did.
+
+They opened the airlock. They went outside smiling.
+
+But Vardin, who went with them, wasn't smiling. There was sadness
+instead.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In cumbersome spacesuits, the five Irwadians made their way from the
+_Dog Star_ to the _Enterprise_. Ramar Chind and his three policemen
+carried m.g. guns; Garr Symm was unarmed. Chind used a whorl-neutralizer
+to force the pattern of the lock on the outer door of the _Enterprise's_
+airlock. Then the five of them plunged inside the ship.
+
+The inner door was not closed.
+
+The _Enterprise_ was empty.
+
+Garr Symm looked doubtfully at the gray murkiness behind them. Although
+the _Dog Star_ stood out there less than a quarter of a mile away, they
+couldn't see it through the murk.
+
+"Where did they go?" Ramar Chind asked.
+
+Symm waved vaguely behind them.
+
+Chind and his men turned around.
+
+Gritting his teeth against the fear which welled up like nausea from the
+pit of his stomach, Garr Symm went with them.
+
+At that moment they all heard the music.
+
+"You hear it?" Ramsey asked softly. His voice did not carry on the
+airless world, of course. But he spoke, and the words were understood,
+not merely by Margot, who could read his mind, but by Vardin as well.
+
+"Music," said Margot. "Isn't it--beautiful?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ramsey nodded slowly. He could barely see Margot, although he held her
+hand. He could barely see Vardin although they stood hand in hand too.
+The music was un-Earthly, incapable of repetition, indescribably the
+loveliest sound he had ever heard. He wanted to sink down into the
+obscuring gray murk and weep and listen to the haunting, sad, lovely
+strains of sound forever.
+
+"What can it possibly be?" Margot asked.
+
+Surprisingly, it was Vardin who answered. "Music of the Spheres," she
+said. "It's a legend on Vega III, my world."
+
+"And on Earth," Ramsey said.
+
+Vardin told them: "On all worlds. And, like all such legends, it has a
+basis in reality. This is the basis."
+
+That didn't sound like timid little Vardin at all. Ramsey listened in
+amazement. He thought he heard Vardin laugh.
+
+Music. But didn't the notes need the medium of time in which to be
+heard? How could they hear music here at all? Or were they hearing it?
+Perhaps it merely impinged on their minds, their souls, just as they
+were able to hear one another's thoughts as words....
+
+They'd never understand fully, Ramsey knew suddenly. Perhaps they could
+grasp a little of the nature of this place, a shadow here, the
+half-suggestion of the substance of reality there, a stillborn thought
+here, a note of celestial music there, the timeless legacy of proto-man,
+whatever proto-man was....
+
+"The fog is lifting!" Vardin cried.
+
+The fog was not lifting.
+
+Then it was.
+
+Ramsey would never forget that. Vardin had spoken while the dense gray
+murk enveloped them completely.
+
+Then it began to grow tenuous.
+
+As if Vardin's words had made it so. Little Vardin, shy, frightened
+Vardin, suddenly, inexplicably, the strongest, surest one among them....
+
+The sky, white and dazzling, glistened. The gray murk glistened too, a
+hundred yards off in all directions, like a wall of polished glass
+surrounding them.
+
+In the very middle of the bell-jar of visibility granted them all at
+once, stood a black rectangular object.
+
+"The teleporter!" Margot cried. "The matter-transmitter! I know it is. I
+_know_ it is!"
+
+Ramsey stood waiting breathlessly.
+
+No, he realized abruptly, not breathlessly. You couldn't say
+breathlessly.
+
+For Ramsey had not breathed, not once, since they left the _Enterprise_.
+
+You didn't breathe on a timeless world. You merely--somehow--existed.
+
+"It's opening!" Margot cried.
+
+The black rectangle, ominously coffin-shaped, was indeed opening.
+
+"The matter transmitter," Margot said a second time. "The secret of
+proto-man, of our ancestors who colonized all the worlds of space with
+it, instantly, at the same cosmic moment. Think of what it means,
+Ramsey, can you? Instantaneous travel, anywhere, without the need for
+energy since energy cannot be used here, without the passage of time
+since time does not exist here." She stood transfixed, looking at the
+black box. The lid had lifted at right angles to the rest of the box.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Margot said, in the whisper of an awed thought: "Who controls it
+controls the galaxy...."
+
+And she walked toward the box.
+
+At that moment Ramsey had a vision. He saw--or thought he saw--Margot
+Dennison in the costume she had worn when they first met. She stood,
+eyes wide, fearful, expectant, before a chess-board. The pieces seemed
+to be spaceships. It was a perfectly clear vision, but it was the only
+such vision Ramsey had ever been vouchsafed in his life. He was no
+mystic. He did not know what to make of it.
+
+Playing chess with Margot was--proto-man.
+
+Ramsey only saw his hand.
+
+A hand perhaps five million years old.
+
+He blinked. The vision persisted, superimposed over Margot's figure as
+she walked toward the box.
+
+A game, he thought. Because we don't understand it. Not that kind of
+power. Not the power a matter-transmitter would give. A cosmic game on
+a chess-board which wasn't quite a chess-board, with a creature who had
+never lived as we know life and so could never die....
+
+With the future of the galaxy hanging in the balance. Life or death for
+man hanging on a slim thread, because man wasn't ready for
+matter-transmission, couldn't hope to use it wisely, would use it
+perhaps for war, transmitting lethal weapons, thermonuclear,
+world-destroying weapons, instantly through space, for delivery
+anywhere, negating time....
+
+Death hovered.
+
+"Wait!" Ramsey called, and ran forward.
+
+Just then five new figures, space-suited, appeared under the gleaming
+dome.
+
+"Stop that woman!" a voice which Ramsey should not have been able to
+hear but which he somehow heard perfectly cried. "Stop her!"
+
+M.g. guns were raised, fired.
+
+Without effect.
+
+Three of the spacesuited figures ran after Margot as the voice repeated:
+"Stop her! The box is mine, mine!"
+
+It was Garr Symm's voice.
+
+Ramsey did not know if he should stop Margot himself, or fight Symm's
+men. Although they couldn't use their weapons on this world, they could
+still hurt--possibly even kill--Margot. Ramsey turned and waited for
+them.
+
+The strange, mystic vision was gone. He saw only three space-suited
+figures, saw Margot walking steadily toward the box. Either she was
+moving very slowly or the box retreated or it was further away than it
+had looked at first. For she hadn't reached it yet.
+
+Ramsey met the space-suited figures head-on.
+
+There were three of them, but they were awkward in their suits,
+cumbersome, incapable of quick responses.
+
+Ramsey hit the first one in the belly and darted back. His fist felt
+contact with the soft bulk of the insulined suit, then with the harder
+bulk of the man. He struck again, harder this time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The scaly green face of the Irwadi within the space-suit grimaced with
+pain. He doubled over and fell, his helmet shattering against the ground
+at Ramsey's feet.
+
+Then an incredible thing happened. The Irwadi opened his mouth to
+scream. His face froze. He lost his air. His face bloated.
+
+And he died.
+
+Ramsey couldn't believe his eyes.
+
+It was not possible to die from lack of air or from cold on a world
+without the time continuum. Ramsey, Vardin and Margot had proved that by
+venturing out without protection.
+
+But the Irwadi had died.
+
+Mental suggestion?
+
+Because he thought he would die?
+
+Because that was the only way you could perish on a world lacking in the
+time dimension--by your own thoughts?
+
+The second space-suited figure closed with Ramsey awkwardly. Ramsey hit
+him. The man of Irwadi fell, his helmet cracked, he tried to scream--and
+died.
+
+The third man fled.
+
+Ramsey ran after Margot. "Wait!" he cried. He couldn't talk to her about
+his fantastic vision. It was personal. She wouldn't understand. Mystic
+experience always is like that. And yet, with the conviction that only a
+mystic can have--although he certainly was no mystic--Ramsey knew the
+galaxy would be in grave trouble if mankind were given the secret of
+matter-transmission.
+
+A voice said: "You are right."
+
+It was Vardin's voice, and Vardin went on:
+
+"Ramsey, stop her. I can't stop her. It is only granted that I
+observe--and convince, if I can. I am not a Vegan girl. I am--"
+
+Ramsey said it. "Proto-man!"
+
+"There aren't many of us left. We discovered matter-transmission. We
+used it once, to people the worlds of the galaxy. It was our final
+creative effort. We merely observe now, unable to destroy our creation,
+trying to keep it out of mankind's hands. You see--"
+
+"Then back on Irwadi you knew all along we would come here!"
+
+"I was vouchsafed the vision, yes. Even as you--stop her, Ramsey. You
+must stop her!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ramsey sprinted forward. Margot was nearing the black coffin now.
+
+Ramsey ran at her, and tackled her.
+
+They went down together, the girl fighting like a tigress, tooth and
+nail, wildly, sobbing, striking out at Ramsey with small impotent fists,
+until he subdued her. Panting, they glared at each other.
+
+And could not stop Garr Symm from running past them, eyes rapt behind
+the plastiglass of his helmet, and jumping into the black box.
+
+"To the end of the universe and back!" he cried. "Take me there and
+back. Instantly. Prove to me that you work! Now...." His voice trailed
+off. He had addressed the black rectangle almost as if it were something
+alive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ramsey thought he heard a growl from the box. He stood before it,
+looking in. The hackles rose on his neck.
+
+"You see," Vardin said. "My ancestors and yours discovered the power of
+a god--and did not understand it. We were incorporeal. We created
+life--your ancestors. We patterned it to fit the evolution of the three
+thousand worlds. Human life. Millions of them, colonists for the worlds
+of normal space. We were tampering in our tragic pride, Ramsey, with
+forces we would never comprehend.
+
+"We colonized the worlds, deciding that physical existence, along with
+the mental prowess we had, was the ideal state. A few of us, like
+myself, or my ancestors if you wish, although the purely mental lives
+continuously--a few of us stayed behind and saw--the loss of a million
+years!"
+
+Ramsey's eyes still could not pierce the darkness inside the box.
+
+"What do you mean?" he asked in an awed voice.
+
+"We sent out god-like men. We did not understand our discovery. The
+god-like men--but look at Garr Symm."
+
+The spacesuited figure got up slowly. It blinked at Ramsey. It growled.
+It had a recognizably green, scale-skinned face. But it was not the face
+of Garr Symm. It was the face of Garr Symm's caveman ancestors, a
+million years ago....
+
+"This is what happened to my people," Vardin said.
+
+She looked at Ramar Chind and Chind, responding, went to Garr Symm and
+led him quietly back toward the _Dog Star_. Chind never said a word.
+Garr Symm growled.
+
+"Take the Earthgirl and go," Vardin told Ramsey.
+
+"But I--you--aren't you coming?"
+
+"My work is finished," Vardin told him. "For now."
+
+"For now?"
+
+"I am a guardian. When I am needed again--" She shrugged her slim blue
+shoulders.
+
+"But Margot will never be content now," Ramsey protested. "Not when
+she's come so close."
+
+"She'll understand. Just as you understand. You'll be good for each
+other, Ramsey, you and the girl. She's had only her fierce pride and her
+dreams of power. She has room for love. She needs love."
+
+"But you--"
+
+"I? I am nothing. I am the end-product of an equation our ancestors
+found a million years ago. An equation to give them god-like power.
+Instead it made them savages and I have had to watch their slow climb
+back to the stars. An equation, Ramsey. Almost an equation of doom. Now
+go."
+
+Vardin flickered, became insubstantial. Her body seemed to melt into the
+gray mists.
+
+The gleaming walls were gone. The black box was gone. Vardin was gone.
+
+Ramsey led Margot back to the _Enterprise_.
+
+Moments later--although the elapsed time was subjective--they blasted
+off.
+
+Margot opened her eyes. She had been sleeping. She smiled at Ramsey
+tremulously. "I love you," she said. Her words seemed to surprise her.
+
+"I can't go back to Earth," Ramsey said.
+
+"Who wants to go back to Earth--if you can't?"
+
+They had, Ramsey knew, all of space and the life-span of mortal man to
+enjoy together.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+  |                                                              |
+  | Transcriber's note:                                          |
+  |                                                              |
+  | Inconsistent hyphenation (matter-transmitter/matter          |
+  | transmitter, scintillation-counter/scintillation counter,    |
+  | space-suit/spacesuit) has been retained.                     |
+  |                                                              |
+  | Deliberate mis-spellings (borogroves, momraths; plus all the |
+  | lithping) have been retained. Minor changes to punctuation   |
+  | were made without comment.                                   |
+  |                                                              |
+  +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EQUATION OF DOOM***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 29146.txt or 29146.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/9/1/4/29146
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+