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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aa06c6f --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63942 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63942) diff --git a/old/63942-h.zip b/old/63942-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 3c91476..0000000 --- a/old/63942-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/63942-h/63942-h.htm b/old/63942-h/63942-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index ed7d66e..0000000 --- a/old/63942-h/63942-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3487 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=us-ascii" /> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Man the Tech-men Made, by Fox B. Holden. - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - - <style type="text/css"> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -/* Images */ -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; -} - -div.titlepage { - text-align: center; - page-break-before: always; - page-break-after: always; -} - -div.titlepage p { - text-align: center; - text-indent: 0em; - font-weight: bold; - line-height: 1.5; - margin-top: 3em; -} - -.ph1 { text-align: center; text-indent: 0em; } -.ph1 { font-size: medium; margin: .83em auto; } - - </style> - </head> -<body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Man the Tech-Men Made, by Fox B. Holden - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Man the Tech-Men Made - -Author: Fox B. Holden - -Release Date: December 2, 2020 [EBook #63942] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN THE TECH-MEN MADE *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<h1>THE MAN THE TECH-MEN MADE</h1> - -<h2>By FOX B. HOLDEN</h2> - -<p><i>He was a man of a hundred planets, drawn<br /> -from the blackness of space to save a<br /> -tech-galaxy from disintegration. He was Kane,<br /> -the warrior-mechanic ... memory-king of<br /> -knowledgeless worlds ... savior to<br /> -millions ... maniac to the ruling few—so<br /> -they threw a dragnet over the<br /> -stars to stop the heretic.</i></p> - -<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br /> -Planet Stories March 1954.<br /> -Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br /> -the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p> - -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>The relentless heat of yellow-white twin suns boiled the thin desert -air and it seared his laboring lungs, and he knew why this was called -the Desert of One Thousand Mirages. The Desert of One Thousand Hells -would have been a better name.</p> - -<p>They said a man could go mad here. If not from the crazily twisting, -undulating heat shapes themselves, then from the pain-tortured vagaries -of his own brain. But mad or not, Jonny Kane knew he must somehow -stay in the saddle that was not fashioned for human buttocks; stay -astride the silver skinned, hairless beast never bred for human -transportation, and ride.</p> - -<p>They could be all around him, of course, and he might never know until -it was too late to wheel his fleet qharaak and dash again for freedom -in yet another direction across the shifting, low-duned wastes. They -could be but yards behind him but there was not the strength to look -back, only to grip the thick reins twined about his bleeding wrists, -to keep his cramped legs stiff about the qharaak's sloping flanks. And -ride, and choke on the smoking sand.</p> - -<p>His brain bubbled inside his head, and he shut his eyes.</p> - -<p>He would tire and lose his grip, and so lose his mount, and fry to -death on the blinding whiteness of the sand. Or he would go crashing -into them, and they would lead him back to the outpost village, and -his death would be of their making. What chance, after all, had an -Earth-descendant against the copper skinned native police of a Procyon -planet, who rode its deserts as if they were the cool, green fields of -the mother world of which his father had so often spoken? What chance?</p> - -<p>There was flame in his lungs, and fire was burning the insides of his -half naked, once strong young body into crumbling, blackened ash. Ride—</p> - -<p>"Hold! Hold, or there's a barb through your evil heart!"</p> - -<p>The booming command was from the left. And he wheeled the qharaak so -sharply it reared and nearly lost its sextuple footing in the shifting -sand. A sudden thrummm went past one ear. He tried to loose his legs -enough for a kick in the lunging animal's flanks, but the muscles in -them were like steel clamps. They would not move.</p> - -<p>The reins about his wrists were slippery and stinging with sweat and -sand as both mixed with his blood, and were pulled easily enough from -his grasp by the vicious, sudden tug from one side.</p> - -<p>And then the overpowering odor of the other lathered qharaaks flooded -his nostrils as the Dep-Troopers closed in upon him. He retched with -it, and was sick.</p> - -<p>"Come on, you! You're lucky our orders were dead <i>or</i> alive! Straighten -up in that saddle or you'll go back dragged from it!"</p> - -<p>A uyja-wood quirt split the skin across his back and somehow brought -him nearly erect in the saddle. He let his eyes open a little at a time -against the searing blaze of the desert. They had him ringed with their -bows and barb shafts, already had his qharaak tethered to one of their -own.</p> - -<p>And then they were taking him back. Back to the shimmering thing at -the horizon that was the outpost village; back to the place where the -gear box of his track-car had stalled for want of proper lubricant, and -where the chase had begun.</p> - -<p>But he would not think about that. He knew about that, knew about the -crime of it, and now he must try to think about the answers for the -Dep-Court magistrate. They would be the same answers he had given -the other times. There could be no new answers. New or old, none -would be understood, or believed, for that matter. But he must think -about something, or the half-visions in his mind would bring certain -insanity now; the half-visions, the things to see that did not exist -to be seen, the glaring white-yellow eyes of Procyon herself and her -satellite star, the cruel black-gold eyes of the bearded, iron muscled -Dep-Troopers that had caught him.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>"Make the prisoner stand straight before this court, Trooper!"</p> - -<p>The flesh splitting lash of pain wrenched him into a sort of -pseudo-consciousness. He struggled to rise from the rough wooden floor -on which he'd been thrown, and brought sound back to his ears, fuzzy -sight to his eyes. The sound was of the crowd. A muffled crowd sound; -they would still be outside, still struggling for a look at his broken -down track despite the heavy trooper cordons that were around it, -awaiting a qharaak team of sufficient size to haul it away.</p> - -<p>And the sight was of a windowless, thin-walled cubicle, sole court of -this narrow, desert fringe Department, and of the Prokyman judge, and -the Troopers standing idly with their stinging quirts at either side -and just behind him.</p> - -<p>But he had been before Prokyman judges before. Once, even, there had -been a jury of the local peasantry, and he had won an easy acquittal -then because of his youth—it had been a full five Terrayears ago, -when he had been barely 12 years old.</p> - -<p>He struggled unaided to his feet, faced the wooden throne like -structure upon which the magistrate, girdled in coarse ruuk hide, -sat toying with his polished mace of office. Beside him stood his -Stenosmith. The Stenosmith held a slender scroll in one hand, but -for the moment his legal superior let it go unnoticed, and fixed the -Court's prisoner with a gaze as hard as Terrestrial diamonds.</p> - -<p>"Jon Kane, aged 17 Sol III years, second generation Sol III descendant, -renegade colonial resident of the Sol III agricultural Department of -J'iira-IX: do you understand the charges against you?"</p> - -<p>He struggled to make his tongue move to form the clipped syllables of -the Interplanetary. It was an old language, but he had never spoken it -as easily as the one which his father had taught him, the one which he -said had come from Terra. But he must learn the Interplanetary, his -father had said for some day, he might venture beyond the blue fields -of the Department where he lived; someday, perhaps, even use it to -speak with the starmen of the great ITA, who landed on Procyon V every -seven cycles. Some day, perhaps, and the work of the language tutors -would not have gone in vain.</p> - -<p>"Charges? These men have uttered no charges, Senior. They have pursued -and threatened—"</p> - -<p>"Silence! Civil use of your tongue, or no tongue at all! The law -prescribes trial even for heretics under the age of eleven cycles, -or you would not be so fortunate as to be standing where you are! -Stenosmith, your scroll!"</p> - -<p>In a quick motion the slender scroll was in the magistrate's hands, and -in another it was spread before him.</p> - -<p>"You are accused of entering this Department in a tracked vehicle being -driven by its own power. The vehicle is of a type no longer receiving -maintenance by the Intergalactic Technical Alliance, and therefore -could no longer function."</p> - -<p>"But, Senior, my vehicle is one which had, by chance, been so well -constructed that it never suffered breakdown until—"</p> - -<p>"Prisoner, you are lying, and you know the penalty for perjury! -Stenosmith, make note of the prisoner's falsehood to the Court. The -charges continue: You, Jon Kane, have been apprehended in neighboring -Departments within the last two and one-half cycles, on various -occasions, at the practice of making tools, and on one occasion at -least, of using such tools in the attempted repair of malfunctioning -facilities awaiting the legally prescribed maintenance of the ITA. Do -you deny this?"</p> - -<p>"I—"</p> - -<p>"It is therefore the conclusion of this Court that the vehicle in which -you rode into this Department was repaired and set into motion by -yourself! Do you deny that?"</p> - -<p>And suddenly Kane felt something stir inside him; felt it through the -fatigue, through the pain, through the torture that threatened to be -all-consuming. He stood straight.</p> - -<p>"No, Senior! No, I do not deny it! And I not only repaired the -track-car, I built it! I built it from parts I stole at night from -abandoned scrap heaps! And I made it run!"</p> - -<p>The words had barely left his lips before the Troopers who had kept the -prescribed distance from him during interrogation by the Court were -closed in upon him, their muscular hands on his arms and shoulders like -so many vises.</p> - -<p>The Prokyman judge had suddenly ceased toying with his mace, and then -only the Stenosmith was moving, furiously recording Kane's unthinkable -admission.</p> - -<p>Then again the magistrate's voice; a slow, measured thing now, of sound -without movement, of Death itself.</p> - -<p>"Prisoner Jon Kane, I hereby grant you your right to admit insanity. -Speak."</p> - -<p>He could feel the magistrate's eyes burning into his own, could almost -see the subtle turnings of the unrelenting brain behind them.</p> - -<p>"I do not so admit!"</p> - -<p>"Then it is the sentence of this Court that, at Meridian tomorrow, -you shall be taken before a bow detachment of the Department Martial -Patrol, and shot in the body until dead! Take him away!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He had thought that the sleep of exhaustion that must come would be -dreamless, yet it was not; he had thought the pain in him that was so -little relieved by stretching prone on the rough wooden floor of his -tiny cell would keep the past beyond all thought and memory, but it did -not. And on the instant before waking from his tortured sleep on the -hot morning of his execution, the two mingled to flash again across his -numbed brain; there was a split second of it, and it was all his life.</p> - -<p>There were the yellow books he had found. Yellow with age, yet somehow -intact when they should have been ashes from the flames that had -consumed all the rest, or disintegrated with the rot of forgetfulness -and two centuries of time.</p> - -<p>And there was his father, who had caught him in the act of reading -them; his father, a quiet man who spoke little, as though many thoughts -were forever kept at the threshold of his lips by the force of sheer -will.</p> - -<p>"Burn them, boy," he had said. "Burn them after you have finished. And -your life shall depend on how silent you keep about what you have read -in them. Your life, boy. When you have finished burn them!"</p> - -<p>That had been all. He had expected a sound thrashing; he had expected -to see the forbidden books torn to bits before his eyes. But that had -been all.</p> - -<p>And he had remembered. He had kept his silence as his father had said, -as if his life depended on it, yet something had subtly grown in him -that would not be repressed. He had fought it, he had lain awake in his -rude cot and listened long hours to the night-sounds that wafted gently -across the rolling blue fields of his father's farmland, and he had -fought the thoughts, and had failed. But it was at that point in his -life that Jonny Kane learned that ideas could not be burned.</p> - -<p>He remembered how he had fashioned his first tool. With it, he had -shaped better shoes for his father's qharaak teams. And then there had -been other tools which he had learned to link together, and his share -of the day's planting had been done long before the other men returned -from the fields at sunset.</p> - -<p>That was the time he had first been caught.</p> - -<p>The tools had been destroyed. And then—</p> - -<p>Then he had measured the dimensions of a new plot of land without -moving from the spot where he had made his computations with a stone -in the soft loam, and that time—</p> - -<p>Oh, the magistrate had not exaggerated. There had been many such crimes -that he had committed, and he had not been able to help himself. -Something within him would not let him stop—something that cried <i>why</i> -and would not let him rest.</p> - -<p>But when he had unearthed the rusted scrap heap of metal forged in -strange shapes, he had not told his father. Nor did his father know -when he had made the new tools, or when, a full cycle after that day, -he had completed the thing of old metal for which the tools had been -used. By stealth he had stolen the crude oil which fueled the lamps in -his father's house, and after that—</p> - -<p>After that, he knew only that it <i>ran</i>!</p> - -<p>Until this village. Until yesterday. Until the day before he was to die.</p> - -<p>And then Jonny Kane came awake at last.</p> - -<p>He had barely opened his eyes, and had not yet risen to his feet when -the sound of chains rattled noisily on the other side of the narrow -cell door. Not so soon—not so soon; he had slept too long!</p> - -<p>The narrow door was flung open, and his eyes hurt with the sudden burst -of sunlight. But he saw the Prokyman jailer who had thrown him in here, -and there was another. A somewhat shorter, more broad-shouldered man -with skin the color of his own, who did not wear the crude tunic of the -Dep-Troopers. His body was clothed in a silver-black uniform the like -of which he had never seen before. And his face—</p> - -<p>Jonny studied the face, shadowed though it was by the bright light that -limned it.</p> - -<p>It had to be a Terraman's face.</p> - -<p>"You are the youth—Jonny Kane?" The Terraman spoke the Interplanetary -fluidly but with a strange accent, and slowly, the only possible truth -was bursting upon him. But why—here—? "Answer me!"</p> - -<p>"Yes—yes, Senior, Jonny Kane."</p> - -<p>"You are of interest to the Intergalactic Technical Alliance."</p> - -<p>"I am to pay for my crime—"</p> - -<p>"I have secured your release. My name is B-Haaq; you will address me -by my rank, which is Majtech. You will come with me. Your crime will -only be paid for if you prove unworthy of your recruitment for cadet -training. Do you understand?"</p> - -<p>Dazedly, Kane stumbled to his feet. Perhaps, after all, he had not -awakened. He managed a feeble nod to the question which the Majtech had -put to him.</p> - -<p>"Very well then. Come along."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">II</p> - -<p>The gently curved metal walls of the room gleamed softly in the pale, -shadowless light, and for a moment the silent chamber seemed as huge -and merciless as the infinity of Space which surrounded the great ship -of which it was a part. The aged man who sat in full Alliance dress -uniform before him, the Director Gentech himself, might for the moment -have been a statue, and the panel of officers which flanked him hewn -from the same stone.</p> - -<p>He could feel the eyes of fully a third of the ship's huge complement, -twelve hundred labortechs strong, boring steadily into his back as he -stood, alone in the moment's awful silence, between them and these -statue-men whose swift minds were, he knew, coldly weighing the -accusations against him.</p> - -<p>And then the silence was broken. Majtech B-Haaq was speaking again, his -still-young face red with the heat of impressively realistic outrage.</p> - -<p>"Sires, I have laid this man's record for the last eight years as a -cadet technician before you plainly, with no embellishment. And his -thanks to you for selecting him from among thousands of other less -fortunate youths on his planet for training as an officer of the -Intergalactic Technical Alliance has been—what other word can describe -it—but mutiny?" And then Cadtech Jon Kane felt the full force of his -accuser's glance upon him.</p> - -<p>"You were taken from death itself in some hell town on a cinder -of a planet in Canis Major. And in repayment for eight years of -instruction that most men would gladly risk their lives to obtain -you have compounded your long list of wrongdoings with this ultimate -insult—refusal to accept your commission as Lenantech unless you -are allowed to perform an experiment which is not only preposterous -but which has had fair evaluation by your superiors and been found -worthless." B-Haaq paused for a quick breath. "Sires, I admit that -perhaps the error has been ours from the first, and that the Prokymen -who intended death for this young heretic knew whereof they spoke! As -Cadtech Jon Kane's Section Overseer, I recommend his reduction, both -mental and physical, to mineslave, and subsequent dispatch to one of -the mine worlds of the star system from which he was recruited!"</p> - -<p>It seemed suddenly to Kane that here was a crazy kind of irony—doubly -crazy, doubly ironic because for the second time in his young life he -was standing trial for things he had done which were not wrong! Had it -been wrong in that other time, that other part of his life when he had -built a vehicle that would move under its own power, with his own bare -hands? Had that been so great an offense—and if so, against whom? The -simple peasant folk of his planet? Against the ITA itself? If so, how?</p> - -<p>And now again. After eight diligent years of trying to learn all that -had been darkly forbidden to him before, and to thousands of others -like him—after the happening of some miracle that had plucked him from -a Proky death cell and placed him where he was encouraged to learn -secrets that had once nearly cost him his life—after all that, now -again, somehow, he had offended.</p> - -<p>These men were not cruel men. Nor were the instructors overbearing -taskmasters, nor the labortechs the arrogant men whom the planet-bound -guardedly cursed with their derisive oaths "Space Tinker!" Yet they -were bound to their ideas; ideas which must be clung to for dear life -lest they become exposed to the risk of change. Kane had often enough -been reminded of why that was so. The ideas, the techniques, the -procedures, they'd been savior to an entire segment of a once great -civilization in a half forgotten past which the ITA stubbornly called -its "history." And so they must be preserved at all costs. And that was -why it was wrong to question; wrong to challenge the refusal of a new -idea.</p> - -<p>And that was why he was in trouble. Because these men were, in the last -analysis, so little different from those who had surrounded him those -eight years ago in the desert with their long bows.</p> - -<p>Guardians of two star systems, they were.</p> - -<p>The spine of civilization for over a hundred planets. Without which, -the civilizations of each would surely backslide a second, and last, -time. Implements of wood and stone would not support their ancient -and infinitely complex structures for long, and before the evil but -necessary secrets of the past could be faced with sufficient courage -and re-learned, there would be only mouldering ruin.</p> - -<p>Thus taught his instructors.</p> - -<p>Therefore, this procedure and that technique are to be protected and -held inviolate if men are to be kept from savagery! Remember the -Holocaust, Cadet! <i>This</i> is the proven way!</p> - -<p>But the something in him that he had never been able to -suppress—whatever it was that had made him build his vehicle despite -his father's warnings to silence—that "something" was again to be his -downfall, even among those who had been his rescuers.</p> - -<p>"A point of final clarification, if I may, Majtech B-Haaq." A uniformed -Coltech of the Director Gentech's panel had spoken without rising from -his seat. "You have charged that past difficulties with the accused -have involved actual <i>challenge</i> of the instructorship under which he -was assigned?"</p> - -<p>"At times, Sire, challenge that has been tantamount to outright refusal -to accept certain standard procedures of operation, accompanied in each -instance with the claim by the accused that his own would be a superior -procedure! There was, you may recall, the affair of the burned out -variable thrust transformer, a standard instructional problem. Cadtech -Kane argued that replacement of a specific fuse in a specific circuit -was ample solution, rather than replacement of the entire complement of -fuses, which has of course been standard procedure in such an instance -for two full centuries. And again—"</p> - -<p>"That quite fully answers my question, Majtech, thank you."</p> - -<p>Then another moment of awful silence—the awful timelessness of -deliberation.</p> - -<p>Jon Kane could feel the cold perspiration that made his well cut cadet -uniform tunic damp and clinging. He tried to repress a shiver, to stand -as completely motionless as the men before him sat.</p> - -<p>"Majtech B-Haaq." It was the Director Gentech himself who spoke. His -words were slow, measured, and spoken in a voice which might have -been that of a man twenty years his junior. Gentech Starn, at the age -of ninety, was still a strong man and a strong leader, and his name -had been synonymous with the three letters ITA and the interstellar -authority for which they stood for every one of the sixty years since -his father, Director Gentech before him, had met death on one of Sol -System's cold, hostile outplanets.</p> - -<p>"Sire."</p> - -<p>"You have prosecuted with excellence. However, may I suggest that I -am yet to be wholly satisfied in this matter. Your accused must have -admirable potentialities as a technical officer, or he would not have -been selected for training, nor would such effort have been expended to -obtain him, at the very outset. Whatever challenges, as you charge he -has made, could not, then, have been totally irresponsible ones. And -it has been a long time since there has been technological challenge -of the Intergalactic Technical Alliance!" A hardly discernible smile -touched the faded, withering lips, and Kane thought he had detected a -momentary lightness in the last words they had spoken. "So it is my -suggestion, Majtech—and gentlemen of this panel, that final decision -hinge upon the success or failure of the experiment which the accused -is held to have proposed, and which he so adamantly refuses to desert!"</p> - -<p>"But—Sire, I submit that Cadtech Kane has admitted, by his own words -as well as his actions, his guilt in this matter! He has freely -confessed to each of the charges; has defiantly and openly held that -his experiment will succeed, and has refused retraction of his stand in -this very council chamber—"</p> - -<p>"Our decision, Majtech B-Haaq, in cognizance of the folly of unduly -wasting an otherwise competent cadet technician on the mining planets -unless justified to our complete satisfaction, is that the experiment -be allowed to proceed! This hearing is therefore adjourned!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>There were no others in the workshop to which he had been assigned. He -was to work on his drive unit alone, Majtech B-Haaq had ordered, and -of course the reason was obvious. One young heretic was enough.</p> - -<p>But what if the glittering, finely-tooled object that rested on the -long workbench before him was wrong and would not work? Yet he knew -that it would! Mounted in a standard model spacetender, the drive unit -which he'd devised would easily produce five times the speed and power, -would consume less than half as much atomic fuel, would quadruple -range, last twice as long.</p> - -<p>It had taken slightly over a month to build; B-Haaq had grudgingly -granted him all the time he estimated he'd need, but he'd hurried -nonetheless—sixteen, sometimes eighteen hours at a stretch.</p> - -<p>Yet the work had not been difficult. As he'd tooled and formed the -simple, compact parts and watched his creation grow steadily from one -day to the next, he had marvelled that certain self-evident innovations -of design had not been adopted years before. It was not, he knew, that -he was so much cleverer than they! Rather, it was almost as though such -improvement had been deliberately avoided. And ITA space drives had -remained cumbersome, overly-complex and unwieldy.</p> - -<p>He straightened from his work. It was done, and the ships of the -Intergalactic Technical Alliance would be caught up a solid century at -least! He had now only to request an installation crew of labortechs, -supervise for a few hours, and then—</p> - -<p>"Master Kane!"</p> - -<p>The startled cadtech snapped to immediate attention. It was B-Haaq. He -had entered the workshop without signalling.</p> - -<p>"Yes Sire!"</p> - -<p>"I must make a report of your progress to the Gentech's headquarters." -He spoke levelly, but Kane could feel the resentment in his voice.</p> - -<p>"My work is completed, sire. I was at this moment preparing to summon a -labortech installation crew, and to supervise—"</p> - -<p>"I'll do the summoning, Master Kane! And the supervision! I don't -believe it necessary to remind you that even if you have refused your -commission, I accepted my own quite some time ago! This mechanism is -completed, you say?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sire. I hope that I shall be permitted to pilot—"</p> - -<p>B-Haaq was bending over the gleaming unit, his face expressionless. "No -one is to pilot the craft, Master Kane," he said without looking up. -"We of the ITA still know something of remote radio control, I assure -you. You will work from Navigation Information Center, at controls -already set up there for the purpose."</p> - -<p>Kane kept his silence, and tried to keep his disappointment from -showing in his face.</p> - -<p>"Tell me, Master Kane—" and the Section Overseer had straightened and -was now facing him squarely again, "—have you ever been told why you -were picked—I believe a better word is rescued—from that hell planet -of yours in Procyon for the ITA?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, sire, I was, during basic indoctrination," Kane answered.</p> - -<p>"That is fortunate, then. You know, at least, that we thought we -could make a technician out of you! Report to the NIC room in one -hour, Master Kane! Your little show will be all ready by then. You're -dismissed!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Director Gentech Starn himself, flanked by three of his closest aides, -entered the NIC room.</p> - -<p>They took standing positions behind Kane. And behind them, at the -prescribed distance of respect, were grouped the ship's full complement -of Section Overseers and instructors. Kane stood before the central -nav-screen and its compact banks of controls.</p> - -<p>Suddenly a red blinker flashed, dully reflected from the myriad tiers -of sensitive mechanism which lined the room's curving bulkheads. He -pressed a stud, and the screen before him came alive. Blackness, -studded with the tiny white-hot sparks that were the suns of the Milky -Way. And then suddenly a larger one which moved swiftly.</p> - -<p>And then he was no longer aware of the electric silence that engulfed -him, and there was no sensation, no thought but the singular sensation -and thought which co-ordinated nerve and sensitively disciplined -muscle; which directed his fingers unerringly across the studded -control-banks and guided the streaking spacetender as surely as though -they reached into Space and touched it, holding it by their own -strength to its wide, curving course.</p> - -<p>Relay gauges hummed and clicked softly; velocity and power readings -registered, and nav-grid traced the fleet craft's path through the void.</p> - -<p>Then Kane spoke. "Sires, as you can see, the spacetender in which my -drive unit has been installed is now proceeding at what is usually -considered to be topmost velocity and with what would normally be -maximum power output for such a craft." He could feel his voice waver -at first, and then with the sound of it and the reassuring feeling -of the control studs beneath his fingertips, it strengthened, became -firm. And he knew they were listening. Listening as though it were the -Gentech himself who spoke. Then he summoned up all his courage. "I will -now," he said, "accelerate the tender to treble its present speed, -while increasing power output by approximately six-fold. If you will -watch the central group of gauges carefully, please."</p> - -<p>He jammed his finger down on a white, diamond shaped stud, and his -breath clogged in his throat.</p> - -<p>The screen followed the tender's course faithfully. The gauges chuckled -and hummed.</p> - -<p>And then the blackness was torn open with a coruscating, soundless -flash, and the tender was in an instant nothing but a white cloud of -rapidly dissipating atoms!</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>No!... No!... No!</p> - -<p>There was no sound from behind him, but he knew that the huge chamber -was quickly and silently emptying.</p> - -<p>He did not turn from the screen. It was black again, now, relieved only -by the tiny sparks that were the stars.</p> - -<p>He did not know how long he stood there or how long he watched. -Minutes—or even hours, perhaps. He knew only that there was an -uncontrollable thing of rage and disbelief and helpless frustration -seething bitterly inside him that would not abate, and with it was a -crazy jumble of thoughts that made no sense at all.</p> - -<p>He heard a man behind him then. It was B-Haaq.</p> - -<p>"A pity you've learned your lesson so late," he heard the Majtech say, -"<i>Mine slave!</i>"</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">III</p> - -<p>Jon Kane's compact quarters seemed more restricted than ever; the -curved bulkheads closed in upon him, and he was an animal in a trap. -Waiting, he thought, for the slaughter. He knew it would be that. He -would not have a chance when his trial resumed. There would be no way -of tricking B-Haaq into admitting the thing he'd done, and no matter -how the charge were uttered, it would be the charge of a prisoner, and -would fall on less than unsympathetic ears. And of course with the -spacetender so many blasted atoms adrift in Infinity, there could be no -proof.</p> - -<p>Why did B-Haaq hate him so? This was more than an officer simply doing -his duty as he saw it—this was singular, personal hatred! But why?</p> - -<p>He glanced for the tenth time in thirty minutes at his wristime; the -sleeping-period was half over, and he knew he would probably be awake -for the remaining half. And the remaining half was so slow in going. If -only there were something he could <i>do</i>. If he could only build another -unit and install it himself! If—</p> - -<p>Fully clothed, he sat up in his bunk. Hesitated only a moment, then -crossed the small cubicle to its single narrow hatch. The simple -time-lock that secured it was all that held him prisoner—a traditional -matter of form, since any skillful mastertech could, with a length of -slender wire, applied in the right places....</p> - -<p>The plan took shape in his mind in the few moments it took him to -render the sensitive mechanism useless; it had been rigged for alarm, -but the alarm never sounded. In a moment he was on the catwalk.</p> - -<p>He strode swiftly and silently, the fine length of wire still in one -hand. He almost passed the seldom used hatch when he came to it, so -cleanly was it hinged into its bulkhead. But he knew what was beyond -it, and the knowledge seemed to hasten his skillful fingers. Within -moments, the hatch opened soundlessly, and he was inside the chamber. -The Flagship's armory.</p> - -<p>Were it not for the labortech articifers, the neatly stacked weapons -would have been rusted, useless things long since. "For use ONLY on -alien, unknown and possibly hostile planets" the ITA regulations read. -It was a rule that applied throughout the entire fleet, and as far as -he knew, had been all but forgotten. For within the scope of the ITA's -interest there no longer were any "alien, unknown and possibly hostile -planets," and on the rest, arms had been unnecessary to the ITA for -centuries. For it had a far more powerful weapon than any it could -devise of metal. It had merely to refuse its services for awhile.</p> - -<p>A smile spread slowly across Jon's face as he began a selective -examination of the weapons. Maybe he'd even find a longbow! Lord, -here was even a device that propelled small projectiles by means of -explosive cartridges! These things had been unnecessary for centuries!</p> - -<p>But slowly, the smile changed to a worried frown. First one weapon and -then another he discarded, and then another.</p> - -<p>But he must find one! And then he could make B-Haaq admit what he'd -done.</p> - -<p>It was a muffled, metallic sound but it registered on his consciousness -and he whirled. Even as he came erect the lights glared suddenly at -full strength; whoever had so silently stepped in behind him had lost -no time in finding the bulkhead transformer stud.</p> - -<p>It was the sleep period duty officer, and a hastily snatched hand gun -was levelled at him.</p> - -<p>And even in the sudden brilliance of the lights, he recognized her. -Lenantech Deanne Starn, the Gentech's niece, herself!</p> - -<p>"Get your hands up, Cadet!"</p> - -<p>"Why? The thing you've got in your hand hasn't held a charge since -Hanna grew teeveeyes." He grinned. Even in the white glare, she wasn't -hard to look at. There were a number of stories that had circulated -their way through the cadet quarters, but then. Most rumors had it that -B-Haaq himself was the lucky man, and there were few others that held -differently. Those of the ship's women who didn't have the slender -figure, the crisp cut pale blonde hair or the wide blue eyes and fine -features and quick, alert mind that so typified the family of Starn -were never too badly off, for that reason. For to the men aboard, she -was B-Haaq's, and that was the end of it!</p> - -<p>She seemed not to have heard what he said.</p> - -<p>"You're Cadtech Kane, aren't you? Do you think this additional charge -of attempted unlawful procurement of arms is going to help your case to -any extent?"</p> - -<p>"I did think so, yes."</p> - -<p>"You're as good as in the mines now. And I don't follow your logic. -Don't move a muscle!"</p> - -<p>"You might as well throw that thing away, Lenantech, it's no good. I'm -still looking for one that is, myself. And if you're going to report -me, I'm certainly not going to try to stop you. That'd just get me in -even deeper, wouldn't it?"</p> - -<p>Her features were white, motionless. Only her wrist moved; she -deflected the muzzle of her weapon but a fraction of an inch and -squeezed the trigger.</p> - -<p>The gun clicked emptily, and that was all it did.</p> - -<p>"You—"</p> - -<p>"I nothing. Just told you. Look, Lenantech, people have shot at me with -longbows, hauled me almost naked through the deserts of Prokyfive, beat -me with lashes, and sabotaged me. Now I've had enough."</p> - -<p>"You're not making any sense to me, Master Kane. You have just one -minute to get out of here, or—"</p> - -<p>"You mean you wouldn't report me if I did?"</p> - -<p>She flushed. "I didn't say that. But since you're already as good as—"</p> - -<p>"That's just it. But if I can find what I'm after here, I just might -be able to change that a little. That spacetender of mine didn't fall -apart out there because it wouldn't work! Not by a damn sight it -didn't!"</p> - -<p>"Be careful what you say, Master Kane!"</p> - -<p>"Truth's the truth, isn't it? Even if I can't prove a certain Majtech -wanted to see me flop and get thrown out of here badly enough to ruin -my experiment? Maybe I asked too many questions; or answered too many -the wrong way. Your guess is as good as mine. But instead of logical -explanations or fair evaluations, I got a court-martial instead. Maybe -you can tell me, Lenantech—why replace an entire distributor head -assembly on a farm tractor when replacement of the rotor may be all -that's necessary? Why a new spark plug when all that is required is -the resetting of its points? Why stick to a logarithm with a base of 10 -when other bases could often make an entire mathematical operation far -more simple? And if a man can build you a better drive unit, why smash -it for him and discredit him?"</p> - -<p>"I think the court took ample cognizance of those questions, Master -Kane." She had lowered the weapon, and had even come a step closer to -him. And for a moment, he thought that he had seen a flash of interest -in her eyes.</p> - -<p>"I know what the court did. But you can think as well as anybody else, -can't you? What are your answers, ma'am?"</p> - -<p>"This is hardly the place for a history lecture, Master Kane. But the -ITA was formed of those few technicians who managed to escape the wrath -of the war weary civilizations who turned upon them and upon men called -scientists, whatever they were, as those to blame for system-wide -destruction and wholesale death. You have been taught that. Many of -their methods and much of their knowledge was lost. You have been -taught that also. But it was those methods and that knowledge which -saved them from destruction once, and made the ITA possible. What was -not lost is sacred knowledge, Master Kane, and for only a few to know, -and for those few to guard militantly lest one jot more of it become -lost!"</p> - -<p>"You're right. I've been taught all that. But you still haven't -answered my questions! Suppose I told you I could do a Project AA in -less than an hour's time, and guarantee it good for five hundred years. -What would you say to that?"</p> - -<p>He saw her eyes widen. "That is sheer nonsense and you know it, cadet! -A double-A takes six solid months except in event of emergency, and -is good for fifty years at maximum! Why, even the geniuses of those -ancient war years who were forced to conceive and devise the Project -could not have done better—"</p> - -<p>Jon grinned again. "Some day maybe I'll show you, Lenantech! Me and the -planets and you! But you better get going and report me before you get -yourself in a jam—"</p> - -<p>"Yes, indeed she had!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The girl blanched, and Jon felt sick. It was B-Haaq. It was always -B-Haaq. Standing now in the hatchway, black eyes blazing.</p> - -<p>Suddenly Jon felt something snap inside him; suddenly the delicate -mechanisms of his brain which had kept reason and desire on a tautly -balanced plane of stability failed him, and frustrated rage was in his -throat again, and the blinding white of the exploding spacetender swam -again before his eyes. He felt his right arm sweeping up over his head, -felt the weight of something at its end, and then felt the arm go down, -relieved suddenly of the weight.</p> - -<p>The heavy hand gun flew straight at B-Haaq, and glanced from his head.</p> - -<p>The man slumped, fell almost soundlessly.</p> - -<p>And for a full second, it seemed to Jon that time had stopped. The girl -was motionless, the look of disbelief frozen on her features, and there -was a numbing paralysis gripping his own body.</p> - -<p>Then he was in motion, and it was an automatic thing, his arms and legs -moving swiftly as though fully independent of his brain. Within seconds -he had pulled the unconscious B-Haaq into a far corner of the armory -and covered him with his own cloak of office. He pulled a double rack -of neuro-rifles in front of the shapeless heap, and then before she -could pull away from him he had the girl by one arm and was propelling -her toward the hatchway.</p> - -<p>"Kane, what do you think—"</p> - -<p>"No time to talk, ma'am. These lights have been on too long—somebody's -going to notice the energy consumption in General Control any minute -now. Besides which, B-Haaq saw you with me, and heard me telling you to -get going and report me. So if I didn't kill him—"</p> - -<p>"You're crazy! He wouldn't—"</p> - -<p>Jon tightened his grip, looked straight into her eyes. "You know he -would, ma'am. If only because he hated me so much, and he found you -with me. We've got to get going."</p> - -<p>"You let me go!" With a quick wrench, she twisted free of him. "You're -forgetting, aren't you, that no matter where in the ship you go it will -be only a matter of time before you're found? And if they can give you -anything worse than the mines—"</p> - -<p>"All right then, stay if you want to! Go ahead and gamble that -our friend's either dead or has a forgiving nature hidden away -somewhere—the only thing I'm sure about is that he didn't blow up -<i>all</i> the ship's spacetenders."</p> - -<p>"You'll be overhauled in no time!"</p> - -<p>"Ten minutes' work and I can triple the speed of any one of those -buckets. You coming, or not?"</p> - -<p>He turned from her, ducked swiftly through the hatchway and chose a -port-side ramp that would carry him up to the Maintenance deck. There -would be at least one tender berthed there in good working condition.</p> - -<p>He flattened himself against the ramp wall as he neared its end; -listened. Nothing. Maintenance was just sitting around as usual, and -during the sleep period, there'd be only a skeleton crew.</p> - -<p>In the semi-darkness, he reached up, felt his fingers brush along -the curved, smooth ceiling of the gently inclined passage. There; an -emergency pressure duct, designed to open automatically in the event of -malfunction of the ship's atmospheric regulators. Emergency pressure -could be built up through the ducts in the event of any sudden fall of -more than eight ounces per square inch; and would be instantly released -should it mount more than three pounds above. All he had to do was jam -this single duct to the "excess" position and hold his breath.</p> - -<p>It was like picking a lock with his bare fingers, and they felt like -fat sausages. And then he had it.</p> - -<p>There was a sudden scream of escaping air about him, and he plunged -forward.</p> - -<p>Somewhere an alarm clanged, and he knew that within moments the -skeleton maintenance crew would be suited and pouring in on the ramp -with everything it had, from Geiger counters to baling wire. Already, -even above the near deafening alarms, he could hear the pounding of -their feet.</p> - -<p>He dashed for it.</p> - -<p>Reached the berth, and there was a tender snuggled into it, ready and -waiting.</p> - -<p>He had the small craft's outer lock opened within seconds.</p> - -<p>"KANE!"</p> - -<p>He whirled, even as the inner lock was sliding open. It was Deanne -Starn. And she was running toward him.</p> - -<p>The inner lock was open, and Jon pushed her through it, and then had -himself strapped before the miniature control console almost before -the blinker winked to signal that the outer and inner lock ports were -sealed.</p> - -<p>He waited a nerve wracking twenty seconds before the Flagship's -flank yawned open, and then jammed the firing studs down with his -accelerators full open.</p> - -<p>The tender leaped from its berth like a wounded thing, and for a moment -Space spun sickeningly, and Jon's eyes blurred from the unprecedented -take-off acceleration. Might as well break all the rules in the book.</p> - -<p>Then the stabilizers were taking over, and things began to straighten -out. He flipped the craft's automatics in, unbuckled his straps and got -weightlessly underway toward the tender's aft-section.</p> - -<p>"Kane, where are you going? Where are we going?"</p> - -<p>"I'm going to diddle with this tub until that big barge back there -can't pick us up for Spacedust. And we're going to a little backwater -planetoid that the ITA only gets to once every thirty years or so. They -used to call it Titan."</p> - -<p>"A satellite of one of the Sol planets, isn't it?"</p> - -<p>"You're coming up with a lot of smart answers all of a sudden."</p> - -<p>"Can you—can you find it? All by yourself?"</p> - -<p>"My father was born right next door. I can find it."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">IV</p> - -<p>Earth trembled.</p> - -<p>She shook like a palsied animal, and great fissures rent her thick hide -as tidal waves lashed like gigantic hammers at the coastlines of her -continents and mercilessly overran a host of the jewel-like islets that -studded her vast oceans.</p> - -<p>Her artificial satellites had long since come crashing down, and her -natural moon teetered threateningly in its age-old course. Great, -jagged chunks broke loose as the barren mass of rock circled perilously -close to de Roche's Limit.</p> - -<p>Some of the lower, sturdier buildings in the cities which dotted her -wide continents were yet intact, and in the largest, the capital city -itself, a number of the broad, deep-laid malls and thoroughfares were -still at least partially passable.</p> - -<p>But Senator Martin Stine, Conservative Socialist representing the state -of Penn-York, had trouble keeping his temper in check nonetheless. -It was temper aroused as much from the anxiety of deep rooted fear -as from the irritation of trying to guide his pneumo-car through the -debris-littered avenue leading to the capitol, and the thought jittered -again through his mind that he should have taken one of the overheads -even though some of them were sagging dangerously in places.</p> - -<p>But he hadn't taken one, and there was less than a quarter-mile to go. -If he hadn't been adding so indiscriminately of late to his normally -195-pound, six-foot two-inch frame he could've parked the damn car and -run the rest of the way. Only a block or so yet.</p> - -<p>And at this session, the fur was going to fly for sure if the planet -hung together long enough for it to even get underway. He'd warned them -the last time about the Tinkers. Deaf. Everybody.</p> - -<p>His heavy face was red when he at length arrived in front of the -capitol mainramp. He didn't wait for a robotparker to come and take -over, but simply stopped his vehicle in its tracks and abandoned it -where it stood. And despite the extra pounds he'd recently put on, he -moved with an almost feline grace up the broad, inclining ramp, the -anger steadily mounting in him.</p> - -<p>He entered the vast chamber and took his seat, just as the muted roar -of private, nervous conversation was broken by the tri-diannouncer.</p> - -<p>"Gentlemen, the President-General of the United Earth Republics!"</p> - -<p>Silence. Then the crashing noise of a thousand men getting to their -feet. A small, gray-looking man with a prematurely bald head crossed -the front of the great chamber flanked by his Secretaries of State and -Defense, then mounted the podium alone.</p> - -<p>And the emergency session of the Senior Congress of the United Earth -Republics was begun.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Senator Martin Stine was the tenth man to be recognized.</p> - -<p>He rose quickly and plucked the jeepmike from its recessed spot in his -desktop.</p> - -<p>"So far," he began, omitting even to begin his remarks with the -traditional salutation to the President and the group as a whole, "I -have heard ten recommendations for procedure in the present crisis, and -each one has been about as jelly-kneed as the one before it! There's -one solution to this thing and only one. If we don't want this planet -to be scattered to the four corners of Space within the next 72 hours -we must get Project AA underway and damn quick! I've been informed that -there is a Tinker ship within thirty hours' flight of this system. If -we act now, and call them in as we should've, on an ESR, five years -ago, we still might be able to get out of this one with whole skins. -Some of us, anyway. Gentlemen, the casualty lists as of an hour ago -weren't very encouraging."</p> - -<p>"Will the Senator from Penn-York yield for a question?"</p> - -<p>Stine's cold blue eyes snapped. "Yield for one minute to the Senator -from Texamerica."</p> - -<p>"The ITA effected a Project AA for this system about eleven years -ago, did they not? And have answered exactly seven Emergency Service -Requests in the last one hundred twenty years, have they not? In view -of such frequent assistance, it would seem—"</p> - -<p>"What the Senator from Texamerica really means is that if the ITA had -to do a double-A for the second time in eleven years, the reflection on -their prestige would make things a little gummy in some quarters—isn't -it?" A gavel rapped sharply. Stine threw a quick glance at the section -reserved for native Earth political representatives of the ITA, and he -saw that one was already on his feet demanding recognition.</p> - -<p>"I yield for all the time you need! Go ahead!" Stine sat down, his -youthful looking face mottled with tension.</p> - -<p>"I may remind the Senator from Penn-York that the ITA has some one -hundred twelve other worlds in addition to this planet to look after! -And as far as it is concerned, nuisance planets are better off dead! If -our torsion screens were inoperable; if there were no other way to hold -the planet together until the next scheduled visit nine years from -now, then perhaps an ESR would be in order. But since it is obvious -that this system's Gravity-Justifier is only in temporary disorder, and -was designed to be self repairing, an ESR for a double-A is simply out -of the question. I repeat. As far as the ITA is concerned, a nuisance -planet—"</p> - -<p>"Yes, and that's just the stranglehold you've got on all of your -hundred and thirteen worlds!" Stine had leapt to his feet, and the -President-General's gavel banged furiously, but he paid it no heed at -all. "'Be good boys and do what we tell you and leave us alone while -we're busy playing God or we'll let you go back to stone axes and -caves'—that's what you're trying to say, isn't it?" The gavel clamored -deafeningly through the President-General's lectern-mike, and the gray, -bald man was now standing himself. But there was a sudden surge of -voices and a scattered applause throughout the entire chamber that had -begun quickly to swell, drowning out even Stine's own voice. Then died -slowly, so that his words could be heard again. "Playing God might be -all right if you can prove all the time to all the people that you've -got all the answers to all the problems! But it might not be so easy if -you begin to lose your touch; lose some of the answers! I hope the ITA -representative isn't trying to tell us that the organization for which -he works is no longer capable of repairing a Gravity-Justifier so that -it will keep the planets in their orbits where they belong! Or am I -right?"</p> - -<p>"That is a preposterous accusation and—" The gavel thundered. "—and I -demand its retraction immediately!"</p> - -<p>"Friend, I was born on this planet the same as you were but I work for -it. I'm not standing idly by to see it destroyed because your buddies -are afraid to admit they might be slipping a little and don't want -it to show! I—" Thunderous applause. Half the chamber was on its -feet, now, and even without the jeepmikes the cheers would have been -deafening. "I say, Mr. President, if we're to believe the ITA is what -it pretends to be—a technological service organization dedicated to -the galactic welfare—it be called in immediately for a Project AA, -and, if it refuses, that it be publicly denounced by this government -as no longer competent in that capacity!"</p> - -<p>When Stine sat down this time, the ovation that followed his words left -the chief executive little choice.</p> - -<p>A vote was called, and Stine realized that somehow, his laborious weeks -and months of propagandizing and mass proselytization had at last taken -root.</p> - -<p>It had been comforting to know, at least, that had he failed, there was -a well-appointed, powerful space-cruiser waiting for him at a secret -place in the mountains to the north. It was still comforting to know. -Because the Tinkers would have to come, now, if only to save face. And, -of course, they wouldn't be able to deliver.</p> - -<p>And then—</p> - -<p>He stirred restlessly in his seat as the vote was being tallied, -was nearly thrown from it once as a great tremor shook the massive -building; excited knots of men who had begun crowding the aisles were -bowled in scrambled confusion to the floor. And Stine smiled a tight, -small smile to himself. Even Nature was doing her bit.</p> - -<p>A hurrying page boy brushed past his desk in the crowded aisle, and he -suddenly felt something small and hard pressed into his palm. He knew -what it was by the feel of it, but it would have to wait until he could -leave.</p> - -<p>He did not have to wait long. The President-General himself announced -the result of the vote, and within the next half hour an ESR would -be on its way to the nearest Tinker ship. There were a few cries of -"Railroad!" and "—demand a recount!" amid the noisy babble of the -adjourning session, but Stine was already on his way.</p> - -<p>A second tremor brought him to his knees at the main exit of the -great chamber; it stopped the post-mortems cold, and sent the august -body of Senior Congressmen scurrying for other exits themselves, and -Stine's early departure went unnoticed, even by waiting newsmen who had -themselves been scattered unceremoniously half the length of the wide -exit corridor.</p> - -<p>The pressurelift lowered him quickly to his basement offices.</p> - -<p>A panel slid silently from his impressive Martian drokii-wood desk. -Then it was but a matter of slipping the tiny microfilm spool from -the flat, coin-sized container that the page boy had so carefully -delivered to him and inserting it in the compact projector long enough -to completely memorize the coded symbols.</p> - -<p>Then he destroyed the strip and container together.</p> - -<p>Almost casually he plucked the comphone from its cradle, but nicked a -tiny stud that would keep the televideo blank.</p> - -<p>He dialed, waited.</p> - -<p>"Newton? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The -answer is yes."</p> - -<p>He hung up.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">V</p> - -<p>Saturn pulsed palely in the void before them as though painted in three -dimensions by a master artist. Kane pointed through the duraglass -conning bubble at the spectacle. Ringed planets were rare, even in the -wide fastnesses of Space which the ITA commanded with its far-flung -fleet. And off to the huge, banded planet's lee swung the largest of -its satellites, long since made livable by the now forgotten cleverness -of the Solmen.</p> - -<p>"Titan?" Deanne asked.</p> - -<p>"It is," Jon said.</p> - -<p>"May I ask you why you decided on it? There seem to be others. Full -sized planets, even." She was standing close to him now, watching the -silent beauty of the Spacescape as though, for the moment, she had -forgotten all else. Jon looked at her, and wondered. Why, really, had -she come with him.</p> - -<p>"Before the Wars," he began, "Solmen made of that satellite their first -project in conversion; battled it from a dead, frozen wasteland to a -fertile, life sustaining oasis in Space. Back in the days before the -Scientists were eliminated and the technicians shot down where they -stood. Back when spaceships didn't even look like spaceships—clumsy, -triple-sphered affairs—but they worked. I don't think the Solmen left -on Titan ever quite forgot how it felt that day their last link with -Sol III was severed; their last ship destroyed by the mobs that came -from the mother planet despite the feeble resistance they were able -to put up. Last link except for the ITA, that is, but of course they -didn't know there'd even be an ITA in those days. Things were pretty -rough for awhile."</p> - -<p>"How do you know all this? According to what is taught in the history -classes—" She let her sentence trail off and suddenly looked him full -in the face. And comprehension stirred in her eyes. "You're not—not -some erratic, mutant genius, then, as B-Haaq told my uncle."</p> - -<p>"Hardly, Deanne, hardly. You've guessed right, I think. I got ahold of -some old books once. That's all. In some ways, I know more than the -ITA has forgotten in two hundred years. And that's why I picked Titan. -I could be wrong, of course. But of all places where resentment might -still smoulder, even after so long a time, Titan seemed like the place. -The Solmen there knew what science and technology could accomplish for -men's benefit; they knew best of all because they had helped accomplish -the miracle of creating a living planet out of a hunk of sterile rock. -And because they had, many of them were slaughtered, as were the other -technicians and scientists in the dark days following the Holocaust. -Somehow I don't think they've forgotten. And that's why I think they'll -help us."</p> - -<p>"You mean there's—you mean the ITA is actually resented? That's -impossible! There are great welcomes for us wherever one of our ships -lands! Why, were it not for us, civilization would—"</p> - -<p>"You're forgetting, Deanne, that those technicians that were able to -save their hides during the dark days, and who later became the ITA, -were running away; beating a hasty retreat, a strategic withdrawal, -whatever you want to call it. They withdrew into a pretty impregnable -shell of their own, from which, I might add, they've never even tried -to come out. The Space Tinkers, they're occasionally called—"</p> - -<p>"Space Tinkers!"</p> - -<p>"Sure. Descendants of armorers of the past. Be glad you're not called -gypsies! You're getting the benefit of the doubt. At least it's -pretty well realized that the ITA can trace its ancestry to <i>real</i> -technicians!" Kane grinned at her, and fleetingly thought how much the -quick flush of anger added to the beauty of her patrician features. -"Anyway, for Tinker eyes and ears, there's never been anything but -welcome and praise wherever they've landed. Nothing but, and very -militantly so, too, I'll tell you. Nobody wants to die when Tinker -medicine can save them, to freeze when Tinker repaired heating plants -can keep them warm in Winter. But underneath—underneath, the power the -ITA holds over the very livelihood of civilization is pretty painfully -felt."</p> - -<p>"But—but we are not dictators, Kane! That is a lie! We have never -taken advantage—"</p> - -<p>"True enough, and that's all on the credit side. I don't think the ITA -has ever had any other motive than keeping itself safe. Making sure -that it would never suffer the near-extinction that its forbears did. -But in so doing, you see, they've had to work themselves into a pretty -commanding position. And they've succeeded. They've denied technical -learning and training to all the planets, under penalty of forfeiture -of the very necessary periodic technical service upon which the planets -depend to retain the comforts of civilized living—"</p> - -<p>"I realize all that. Where, after all, would any of the planets be if -the Gravity-Justifiers finally gave out for lack of proper maintenance? -At least the history that I was taught said that during the Wars, -planetesimals and even whole planets were annihilated in an effort to -so upset a system's gravitational balance that the resulting upheavals -would mean death to every living thing in that system. But there were -some technicians—"</p> - -<p>"Scientists, Deanne."</p> - -<p>"Well, whatever they were, who were able to devise mechanisms to float -in orbits of their own, warping Space in such a way as to create an -artificial balance. Those Geejays saved billions of lives, and after -the bloody reaction from the Wars and the men who invented them were -killed, who else was left to keep them in working order? I should think -people would—"</p> - -<p>"Thank the ITA?"</p> - -<p>"Well, yes, of course." There was a defiant look on her face, but Jon -Kane was grinning. Saturn hulked far to their starboard side, now, -and the ship's automatics were bringing them in dead on Titan. The -planetoid was growing visibly bigger by the minute, and the other Ring -of its primary was casting the interior of the spacetender in weird, -vari-colored shadow.</p> - -<p>"If you were out there in a suit and somebody else was holding your -oxytank, controlling just how much air you could have, how would you -feel about him? Would you feel like thanking him for letting you have -air to breathe?"</p> - -<p>"Well, I—"</p> - -<p>"You'd keep a damned close eye on him. And if he started telling you -what to do and when to do it or he'd suffocate you, you'd get to hating -his guts even if he behaved like the spirit of Christ Himself!"</p> - -<p>"Who taught you all this, Master Kane? Who is this Christ?"</p> - -<p>"Look, Deanne, a grown man should be capable of thinking for himself! -But before you go getting sore at me again, just answer this one about -the guy holding your oxytank—suppose, somehow, he forgot, little by -little, how to work the valve—and realized that there was a chance you -might find out about it? He wouldn't be in the pilot's seat anymore, -would he?"</p> - -<p>"He wouldn't be able to shut me off, if that's what you mean," she said -quickly, going along now with his analogy. "But he wouldn't be able to -give me more air in a hurry if I needed it, either!"</p> - -<p>"And so then what happens?"</p> - -<p>The girl's face was suddenly grim. For a long moment, Kane could see, -she was thinking, and thinking hard. And then she said at length, "Is -that where you come in?"</p> - -<p>"If I can give you back your tank of air, I guess it is."</p> - -<p>"And if you can't?"</p> - -<p>"Then I'm afraid the one in the worst trouble will be the guy who's -holding it," Jon answered.</p> - -<p>And then he turned from her, reseated himself before the control panels -and kicked out the automatics.</p> - -<p>In minutes, he had the tender swung to, and was climbing down his jet -to one of Titan's largest spaceports.</p> - -<p>It was still a bright planet, and its artificial atmosphere, islands -and great lakes were as his father had described them. Titan was, -indeed, an oasis in the cruel coldness of the void.</p> - -<p>He landed the tender with scarcely a jar, and then wordlessly, he and -Deanne opened the small craft's locks and stepped out on the tarmac to -greet the landing party that had been alerted to receive them.</p> - -<p>Two tall, cloaked men strode forward.</p> - -<p>"Jon Kane and Deanne Starn?"</p> - -<p>"Greetings—" Kane began.</p> - -<p>"You will come with us," one of them said. His short red beard seemed -to glisten in the sun-like atmospheric light. "You are under arrest!"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The small, air-conditioned cell was clean, at least, and a far cry from -those on Procyon V. There was even a low tablet on which to lie, and -Jon sprawled himself out upon it. He wished, vaguely, that they hadn't -separated him from the girl. She was a pretty thing—and, had brains. -Between the two of them they might've figured a way out, but alone it -was like beating your head against a carbonite wall.</p> - -<p>He'd been as wrong as a man could get about the Solmen on Titan, all -right. The security police who'd booked them and brought them here -hadn't said much, but it took little enough intelligence to reason that -the Tinker Flagship, having discovered that the tender wasn't to be -overtaken, had simply broadcast an all-planets bulletin. He'd been a -fool to put down at a regular spaceport. He'd just walked straight into -it. And now it was simply a matter of waiting for either another tender -or the Flagship itself to come and get them. He wasn't sure what would -happen to Deanne, but for himself, a murder charge, surely.</p> - -<p>That accounted for the cell they'd assigned him to. It was unlike the -Proky jails in more ways than one; as escape-proof as the tomb itself. -Kane even had the feeling that the cell was watching him.</p> - -<p>He rolled over on his back, examined the rivetless steel ceiling with -his eyes. And all the walls and the floor were the same, save for the -tiny vents at the far edge of the ceiling for air circulation, and the -almost microscopically fine lines in the near wall that outlined the -foot-thick cell door.</p> - -<p>He surveyed the walls, ceiling and floor again, and the only opening -was the air duct, far too small for a man to crawl through, even -without its solid looking louvres.</p> - -<p>Suddenly, Kane remembered the ruse he had employed aboard the -Flagship. Instantly he was on his feet. He hauled the pallet beneath -the tiny grilled spot in the ceiling, and standing on it, was barely -able to touch the louvres. The Solmen of Titan grew taller than those -of Terra. He had stripped himself to the waist, and folded the firm -fabric of his Cadtech tunic into a solid wad. Then held it against the -air vent with all the strength of his fingers until his arms ached!</p> - -<p>The cubicle grew stuffy, and sweat trickled maddeningly down across his -bared ribs.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>He relaxed the muscles of his arms just as a faint draft flitted across -his back. The door was sliding silently open behind him!</p> - -<p>He was through it almost before the wadded tunic he had dropped hit the -floor behind him.</p> - -<p>He kept moving with all the strength that was in him down the long, -wide corridor.</p> - -<p>But there were no guards. Peculiar.</p> - -<p>Suddenly a strange vibration shook the corridor floor. Probably -something in the planetoid's artificial gravity rectifier that needed -looking after. Lord, if the ITA took care of the rectifier the way it -did the air conditioner alarm, everybody'd soon be floundering in the -normal, unpleasantly-slight gravitation of the tiny planetoid. A man -would be lucky if he weighed forty pounds!</p> - -<p>The corridor trembled again, this time more violently; it threw him -momentarily off balance, and he could not regain it before the next one -hit and sent him sprawling.</p> - -<p>He struggled to his knees, and there was a terrible rending sound above -him. He looked up. A jagged rent was splitting the corridor even as he -watched! A 'quake of some kind.</p> - -<p>He paused for a moment, catching his breath, trying to think. And then -suddenly there was the sound of running feet and a guard commander's -voice booming in a resounding echo down the smooth corridor sides.</p> - -<p>"Man the control boards. Let 'em out!"</p> - -<p>Doors slid open at every side of him; some were already buckled and -opened only partially, but the men inside got out, and within seconds -the corridor was full of running, howling humanity from every colony in -the system.</p> - -<p>Jon almost bowled a guard off his feet. He grabbed the man at the -shoulder, thumbs digging in at the painful points.</p> - -<p>"Talk! What the seven hells is going on?"</p> - -<p>"Run, you fool! Let go! The Rings are coming in on us! The whole damn -planetoid is starting to break up! Ow—damn you! It's the Geejay. -Earth's been going to hell for over an hour now!"</p> - -<p>"And they let it hit here without warning? ANSWER ME!"</p> - -<p>"You crazy? Warp beams are only for the ITA. Old fashioned radio's all -we've got, and it takes eighty minutes—"</p> - -<p>"Thanks!" Jon released the desperate man and thrust him aside, fought -his way back into the crowded corridor.</p> - -<p>He had to get out of the building but he was trapped in this crazy mob.</p> - -<p>Another tremor, this one worse than any of the rest, sent the choked -corridor into a maelstrom of kicking, clawing confusion. And Jon was -the first to see the small panel now blinking EMERGENCY EXIT, sliding -slowly, grudgingly back against a bent frame.</p> - -<p>He was through it first. He broke into an open prison yard where the -squat, streamlined form of a jetgiro was parked. Crazy thing, jetgiro -sitting that way in a prison yard, as though it were just waiting for -somebody who'd be coming out the emergency exit. He bolted for it. Had -to hurry—the others weren't far behind, and if they caught up he'd -never get the thing into the air. They'd claw him down.</p> - -<p>He took a quick look upward at the sky, and it seemed to be on fire. -Even in the brightness of Titan's artificial daylight the hurtling -particles from the disturbed rings flamed blindingly. Saturn itself -filled half the sky, and even to the naked eye the great rings were -flaring dangerously at the edges.</p> - -<p>He got behind the controls of the giro just as the mob broke through -the exit.</p> - -<p>He prayed that the engines weren't too cold, and even as the durastone -floor of the yard split jarringly beneath him and swallowed a dozen -men, he punched the Lift stud and the small vehicle rose heavily into -the air.</p> - -<p>Cold, of course. No ... engine-heat almost normal. Then—</p> - -<p>"Sorry, Master Kane."</p> - -<p>And that was all he heard. There was an awful, sudden pain in his head -and then he felt nothing else.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VI</p> - -<p>Deanne saw the panel blinking EMERGENCY EXIT too late, and her -momentary hesitation at the cross corridor spelled an abrupt finis to -her desperate attempt. The lone guard who otherwise would never have -seen her brought his springbow up with a look of dazed astonishment on -his bearded features, and she froze.</p> - -<p>"Don't—please!"</p> - -<p>"How did you escape?" He moved closer, springbow was cocked taut.</p> - -<p>"My—my cell door. For some reason it failed to shut properly, and -I—I—"</p> - -<p>"That is a likely story indeed, pretty one! Escapes are not made from -this prison quite so easily! You come along with me ... come on!"</p> - -<p>His command ended in a sharp yell of surprise. The springbow clattered -from his grasp as the corridor suddenly rocked crazily, and Deanne felt -herself thrown bodily against the exit panel!</p> - -<p>It slid back at her touch, and she was through it, and then thrown -headlong as a second tremor wrenched her from her feet. The whole world -seemed to be disintegrating around her.</p> - -<p>She found strength somehow and ran again, trying vainly to keep her -balance, to keep the pitching corridor floor beneath her feet. And then -running toward her—God, another guard—</p> - -<p>No! No, it was no guard! <i>And it couldn't be—</i></p> - -<p>He caught her, held her without a word.</p> - -<p>"B-Haaq! B-Haaq—how—"</p> - -<p>"Majtech B-Haaq to you from now on! Just on my way to your cell to take -you back where you belong! And that upstart Kane! Only this might save -me the trouble—"</p> - -<p>He hauled her roughly after him into the open rampway which dipped -gently into the wide parking yards. The ramp trembled, bucked beneath -them but she somehow kept from falling.</p> - -<p>"I—I thought you—Kane—"</p> - -<p>"Thought he killed me, did you? He came close enough, and he'll pay -for it! Come along...."</p> - -<p>They crossed the yards at a half run.</p> - -<p>B-Haaq was hauling her up on the fin-step, and then the outer lock was -opening, and they were inside.</p> - -<p>The small space craft rocked sickeningly on its mounts.</p> - -<p>B-Haaq barked to his waiting pilot. "Up-ship, you fool! Do you want us -wrecked before we're even underway?"</p> - -<p>The grim faced labortech punched his studs almost before Deanne had -secured herself in an ackseat, and then with a dangerous overload of -power, the tender jumped free of the shuddering planetoid.</p> - -<p>"B-Haaq—for the love of Pluto, what's happening—"</p> - -<p>"Haven't you learned yet what it's like when a Geejay breaks down? -Sol III has been taking this for over an hour. Fortunately for -you planetary imbalance doesn't affect all bodies in a system -simultaneously, or that piece of rock back there would be rubble by -now...."</p> - -<p>"Is there a Project AA underway yet?"</p> - -<p>"Of course there is. The Flagship received a warp-beam ESR from Sol -III, and of course we dispatched a crew to take care of those nuisances -immediately. One of our duties, after all...."</p> - -<p>The girl unbuckled her ackseat straps and sat up straight. "You mean -they had to <i>call</i>?"</p> - -<p>"What do you expect, that we keep a constant watch on all these -backwater planets—"</p> - -<p>"According to Regulations—"</p> - -<p>"A lot you know of Regulations, young woman! Do you realize what the -charge against you is? And that the lives of two men were risked to -bring you back in one piece?"</p> - -<p>"All I know is that this system's Geejay was serviced only eleven -Periods ago, and was supposed to be good for at least—"</p> - -<p>"That will be enough of that, or you'll find yourself facing more than -just loss of rank!"</p> - -<p>She reddened. "What of the man Kane?" she asked.</p> - -<p>"He's lucky," B-Haaq answered, grinning slowly. "He'll be killed down -there before they finish the double-A job."</p> - -<p>An alarm clanged in the ship, and it veered sharply on its automatics, -dodging the hurtling masses of debris that were still being flung -into Space from the Outer Ring of Saturn. Minutes passed before the -labortech at the controls, face drained of color with the tension of -watching for the first sign of failure of the automatics, was able to -relax and set course outward toward the looming hulk that was Director -Gentech Starn's Flagship, drifting slowly at the system's rim.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Deanne paused on the catwalk, blended herself with its shadows. She -had heard nothing. She knew every inch of the great Flagship as she -knew the limited dimensions of her own quarters; knew the main traffic -corridors and the hours of each cycle when traffic was at its height -and at its ebb. And she knew the mazed web of maintenance catwalks as -well.</p> - -<p>Her orders had read "Confined to quarters pending disposition of the -following charges—" but her Section Commander knew nothing of men like -Kane, knew nothing of the fire that could touch a man's soul and ignite -the rebellion that now blazed so brightly in her own. The chances -were few that it would even occur to Coltech Q-Jaax that she could be -anywhere but in her quarters. At any rate, that was her gamble, and it -was far less desperate a one than that which Kane had taken for what he -believed.</p> - -<p>The conference chamber loomed below her in the gloom of the ship's -cavernous mid-section, and it would not be difficult to locate one of -the many pressure duct leads. But she would need to remove a small -transition piece, and—no! What would Kane have done—simply extract a -single, strategic machine screw, and <i>swing</i> the piece aside! It would -save minutes. Hearing the men below would then be as simple as though -she stood in the chamber with them.</p> - -<p>And she must hear, must know what they planned. So that somehow, Jon, -if he still lived, could know.</p> - -<p>Within seconds she had swung from the narrow walk and dropped -soundlessly atop the wide expanse of the chamber's metal ceiling. -Quickly she estimated the area beneath which the main council table -lay, then sought the duct nearest the spot. In only seconds more, she -was lying prone in the deep shadows, able to hear.</p> - -<p>"—and to be quite blunt about it, I am genuinely worried...." It was -her uncle. "My niece's extraordinary behavior can be discussed later, -gentlemen. Right now this matter of the Gravity-Justifiers is of the -most importance. First of all, Captech D-Yun, why was I not immediately -notified of the perilous difficulty in Sol system? These people depend -upon us for their very lives! Well?"</p> - -<p>"There is no excuse, Sire."</p> - -<p>"Yes, I think perhaps there is! If not excuse, then reason, at least! -If my memory serves me correctly, it has been a scant eleven Periods -since the Sol Gravity-Justifier was last serviced, a piece of work, -gentlemen, that has in the past been valid for fifty at minimum! Was I, -perhaps, to be kept from knowing that what work was performed eleven -Periods ago was a failure?"</p> - -<p>A tight pause. And then, "Certainly not, Sire," in a soft tone from -D-Yun. "But these people have been such—well, nuisances. We have -given them so much more than their share of service that sabotage of -some sort naturally suggested itself. We had been in the process of -analytical survey—"</p> - -<p>"I'll have none of that, not from any of you! Sabotage indeed. Why, -it is a matter of record that Sol is not the only system in which -breakdown has occurred far ahead of schedule tolerance! Yes, I know -that, too, gentlemen! There is another thing I know as well. I know -that there is no sabotage. I know that my personal staff of copytechs -has been overworked for a full period in an effort to keep the peoples -of over twenty different star systems unaware of the major technical -difficulties which have been increasingly frequent in each of the -others! I know that propaganda, instead of technical skill, has been -keeping the prestige of the Alliance intact! The fault cannot be laid -to Captech D-Yun's saboteurs! It must be laid squarely at our own door -step, gentlemen! For some reason which I would like to know, we have -simply not been able to keep up. We are not the technicians our fathers -were, and careful study will show that they were not technicians to -match their fathers, nor they their fathers before them! Slowly but too -surely, we are losing something! Why?"</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Deanne breathed shallowly, straining to hear every word.</p> - -<p>"Perhaps, Sire, the efficiency of our Cad tech recruiting system could -be improved. Although I admit, the planets have not been producing -youths of the caliber of—"</p> - -<p>"Bah! If anything, they're getting quicker-witted all the time! And -we have had little trouble, from among twenty-one star systems in -two galaxies, in obtaining the necessary periodic quota! Yet our new -ships are not as good! Our number increases, but that is all! And mere -number, by itself, is worthless!"</p> - -<p>Another voice replied, but she could not identify it. "That might be -traced, Sire, to the poorer quality of raw materials which the planets -are obliged by law to furnish us at the scheduled intervals in return -for our service—"</p> - -<p>"That is starwash, and you know it! If anything, quality has improved, -since the discovery of new mining planets. I can still read records, -young man! Perhaps you are not fully acquainted with the Director whom -you're attempting to deceive!"</p> - -<p>"If, Sire, I may hark back for a moment to the question of -sabotage...." A curious chill coursed the length of Deanne's slender -back. That was B-Haaq speaking. "I suggest that in this particular -instance, Captech D-Yun may well be correct. I speak in light of -the renegade, Cadtech Kane. Prior to his capture on Titan, there is -little telling to what lengths he may have gone for revenge, Sire. -As a Fourth Period Cadtech, he knew Geejay co-ordinates for at -least twelve systems, and he knew also upon what the power of the -ITA depends—technical efficiency. If that were to be flagrantly -misrepresented through such sabotage, ITA prestige and power would of -course suffer, and Kane's thirst for revenge slaked. I think perhaps -it is of paramount importance that we seek to discover where he might -strike next! If, that is, he survived the disintegration of Titan."</p> - -<p>A murmur went up, grew noisier, and Deanne felt herself holding her -breath. Then there was her uncle's voice again—</p> - -<p>"You use the word 'power' strangely, Majtech."</p> - -<p>"Not at all strangely, Sire! Our technical excellence has made all -planets completely dependent upon us! You may say that it is not -revenge that we seek, but only safety. You may say that if we do have -power and prestige, it is only for self protection, so that what -happened to our ancestors centuries ago may never again be repeated. -All these things are true. But also true is the fact that power is -power. We have it, for two galaxies depend upon us for the very life -of their civilizations! It is Kane who would threaten it! To give it -up, or to let it be so easily taken from us, is to make of ourselves -the fools that Kane so confidently assumes us to be! Centuries of work -and progress hang in the balance, gentlemen! If this Kane has escaped -Titan, we must find him! And if he has not, then we must undo his work! -We must, in short, show these planets who holds the whip-hand, first, -last and always!"</p> - -<p>There was a moment of silence. Then suddenly a swelling flow of voices -lifted in approval, and there was scattered applause. And it did not -quiet immediately when the Director Gentech spoke.</p> - -<p>"Gentlemen! Gentlemen. You must know that I thoroughly disapprove of -the views that Majtech B-Haaq has just expressed, and I am certain -that, upon a moment's self-examination, you will feel as I do. I have -thought often of the man Kane, and have as often wondered how close -he may have been to many truths which we have either overlooked or -forgotten! However, in all fairness to the Majtech I will call for a -vote. Those in favor of the Majtech's proposals to comb the Sol system -for Cadtech Kane, and to assert the prestige of the ITA will ballot -'yea.' Those opposed will cast blank ballots."</p> - -<p>Silence, then, and Deanne counted her heart beats, thought surely they -must be loud enough now to be heard the length and breadth of the ship.</p> - -<p>"—the ballots have been counted, gentlemen...." The deep voice was -slow and deliberate as it always was—yet it seemed, somehow, too slow -now, too deep. "Majtech B-Haaq's proposals are approved by a majority -of—of one vote. We will therefore begin our search immediately, and -will trust that I was also incorrect in my evaluation of our present -technological efficiency. This session is now adjourned."</p> - -<p>Director Gentech Starn had suffered the first overruling of his long -career.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VII</p> - -<p>There were hard, stinging sensations in his face. They pierced the -infinity of darkness until somewhere in it they touched his naked -nerves and the darkness receded, slowly and became a blinding light.</p> - -<p>A space-suited figure was standing over him, and it held the limp form -of an empty suit in one hand, and a hand-weapon in the other, and the -weapon was extended toward him, butt first!</p> - -<p>He could see the hard, beetle-browed face behind the sealed face piece -of the helmet. The mouth was moving rapidly, but he could not hear.</p> - -<p>Jon's head hurt, and the pain spread throughout his body when he moved -to get his feet beneath him, stood up. Subconsciously he knew he was -aboard a ship in Space; there was the subtle, rippling vibration so -familiar to any man with Spacelegs, and there was the smell of pumped -atmosphere and the curious feeling of artificial gravity.</p> - -<p>He tried to think even as he took the suit shoved into his arms by -the man who had brought him back to consciousness, and began climbing -dazedly into it. A suit, inside a ship in which the atmosphere was -perfectly breathable? A <i>ship</i>! Tinker? No—no ITA craft, even the -newest, had such thick-looking bulkheads, or was equipped with suits of -such peculiar design—hard to get into the thing, nothing was in its -right place. But if not an ITA craft, then—but that was not possible!</p> - -<p>He had no sooner gotten the helmet adjusted than the radiophones in it -crackled.</p> - -<p>"Snap it up, get that face plate sealed! Here, you may need this—" He -had taken care of the face plate, and now the curiously fashioned hand -weapon was pushed into his right hand.</p> - -<p>"What—"</p> - -<p>"There's half a hundred Tinkers out fumbling around with a Project AA. -Things are letting up on the planets, but they still haven't got the -damn thing fixed the way it should be ... found us, though...."</p> - -<p>"Us?" His tongue was still thick in his mouth and it was difficult to -talk, or even think of words to say.</p> - -<p>"You'll find out about us later. But in about a minute more they'll -be in range, and those Space cannons of theirs'll be whaling away at -us for all they're worth. They'd be dead ducks if this bucket was -equipped the way it should be...." The man cursed. "... but there's not -enough E-blasters to go around yet, or I-drives either, and that's why -we're going to be a big sieve in less time than it takes to tell it. I -suppose it ain't your fault—"</p> - -<p>"My fault? Last I knew—"</p> - -<p>"Sorry if I slugged you too hard, but the boss said to be sure. Be -sure, he says, and he sends us out in one of the first tanks we made -instead of one of the new jobs! Sometimes, I—"</p> - -<p>"No escape craft? No—"</p> - -<p>"You kidding? We sit here and take it! We could take to the ports, but -the power packs on these suits are no match for those space tenders of -theirs. They'd pick us up sure. Me, I'd die ten times first!"</p> - -<p>Jon tried to assimilate the information, tried to take it all in even -as he struggled to gain back his full consciousness.</p> - -<p>"Mind telling me where we are? Where we're headed? Why in hell I was -shanghaied?"</p> - -<p>"Right now, about two points spherical north-northwest of Jupiter, -minus about twelve to the ecliptic. Where we're headed you'll find out, -if we live through this. And you weren't shanghaied. Not all the way, -anyway. You didn't think that alarm system stayed quiet all by itself, -did you? Or that the jetgiro flew itself to where you found it? The -boss is still going to be sore. We were supposed to put the net over -two of you—"</p> - -<p>So it <i>had</i> been too easy! Of course the 'quake hadn't been counted on -and that had disrupted the plan, but at least there had been a plan, -and that meant that there was someone who wanted him away from the ITA.</p> - -<p>"You weren't on Titan five minutes before we knew."</p> - -<p>"But what about the girl? The Lenantech arrested with me?" Something -cold was suddenly eating away inside him, and the memory of the awful -quakes came back to him in a rush, and he could visualize Deanne, -lying lifeless somewhere.</p> - -<p>"Don't know. As it was, we almost missed you after the quake started. -Plans went completely haywire as far as she was concerned. But no more -damn fool questions. I was supposed to get you oriented before they -were on top of us and you've got it all, except for—"</p> - -<p>There was a sudden lurch and Jon was thrown sprawling, was suddenly -picked up as though by some gigantic hand and thrown bodily toward a -self-sealing hatch that closed just as he crashed heavily into it. The -chamber was now all but airless. They'd been hit by a Tinker missile, -and there was a gaping, ragged hole somewhere in this ship's hide.</p> - -<p>He struggled to his feet. Then saw the other man, not moving, crumpled -to the deck. A jagged fragment of metal was embedded in his chest. -There was another sickening lurch and another. They were being -clobbered with everything the Tinker-ship had.</p> - -<p>But somehow he got to the wounded man's side. The hard eyes opened -for but a moment, and the lips moved. The sounds they made were but a -whisper in his earphones.</p> - -<p>"Six ... nine-X. Point ... oh one-Y. Eight six. Z—"</p> - -<p>And then the eyes opened wide, and the lips closed, and the man was -dead.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The ship shuddered again, and through his helmet Kane heard a dull, -booming explosion, and he knew the craft had been fatally hit. Another -second and it would be pulling apart at the seams. All Tinker guns were -on-target and firing at will.</p> - -<p>The locks! Where the hell would the locks be on this strangely designed -ship?</p> - -<p>He breathed again when the hatch popped open because of the dwindling -air pressure. He was aware of the conglomeration of noises in his -earphones. Somewhere a man was screaming. There had been men screaming -for the last full minute, but only now were the sounds beginning to -register on his taut brain.</p> - -<p>"Where in hell is Zetterman?"</p> - -<p>"Don't know—aft with the guy we were sent for I guess. Oh God."</p> - -<p>"Then he's within twenty feet of a lock if he's still alive. But he -hasn't answered us. So what d'you want to do? We're all that's left and -they're almost alongside."</p> - -<p>"They'd get us either way. If only we could get aft that lock's on the -port side, away from 'em—"</p> - -<p>Jon let the words make sense. Port side. Twenty feet away—THERE!</p> - -<p>In seconds the inner port was open, and then he was waiting for the -outer one, not even bothering to cycle the lock down. He'd be blown a -little, but a running start out would help. He wanted to communicate -with the men he'd heard talking, find out what the numbers meant that -the dead man Zetterman had mouthed, but the Tinkers would be monitoring -everything, and they'd pick up even a helmet set at this range.</p> - -<p>The outer lock cracked slowly open, and what little pressure there -still was in the lock held him gently against the widening opening -as it dissipated entirely with a low howl into the black infinity -of space. He popped out, and it was like stepping from an invisible -mountainside into a night that was too dark, with stars that looked too -close. Only crazily, you didn't fall—</p> - -<p>He drifted on the slight momentum the spent air pressure in the lock -had given him, the telltale flicker of his power pack this close to the -huge gray shape that loomed less than a hundred yards to the other side -of the broken ship he was leaving would mean the end of him. He thought -at top speed. Of course their screens would pick him up but he gambled -that he'd be discounted as simply another chunk of wreckage smashed by -the Tinker guns.</p> - -<p>Jove loomed hugely, fantastically, slightly above him. Soon his drift -would become free-fall, but he must wait until the last possible moment -to use the pack. Yet if he waited too long—</p> - -<p>He clenched his teeth until they hurt, willed his arms to his sides, -his hands away from the pack controls. The multi-hued bands of the -great planet were alternately dark and bright, undulating slowly, as -though readying to seize him, devour him, freeze him. The Gargantuan -mass seemed but yards away rather than well over a million miles. Yet -it was too close, and it was slowly moving in upon him.</p> - -<p>He turned his body, tried to watch the Tinker ship. It had closed with -the shattered wreck which he'd escaped, grappled to it. A port opened, -and there was a pinprick of fiery light from the dark maw. Boarding -in suits. But there was no orange-violet flash of a spacetender's -exhausts, so perhaps, then, he had been unnoticed.</p> - -<p>But he must still drift and he knew now that he had started to fall. -Ever so slightly, but he was heading straight for the great mass of -Jupiter, and his initial direction had been almost tangent to its -orbit. The massive orb seemed even more flattened at its poles than -usual, and its satellites were orbiting erratically, due, he knew, to -the Geejay failure that had rocked the whole system.</p> - -<p>Yet even as he watched, and as slowly as they swung, Jon Kane's -practiced eye and mind detected retrograde movements, and realized -that the tiny moons were slowly falling back in what he knew were -approximately their former orbits. The Tinkers were somehow succeeding.</p> - -<p>But the suit was getting cold. Its insulation was surprisingly -efficient, but it was still only an emergency feature of the rig, to -keep a man alive for a short period in the event of heater failure. -And using the heater meant radiation, yet he'd have to risk it now. -And soon, the pack itself. But it would be of little avail if he -wandered aimlessly, and that, he had to gamble, was where the numbers -came in. With the three letter combinations, they could be spherical -co-ordinates. For his life, they would have to be.</p> - -<p>69-X. .01-Y. 86-Z. With planes of reference calculated to the median -plane of planetary ecliptics relative to the Sun. Then.</p> - -<p>Swiftly, his brain analyzed the values, gave him an approximation. And -it would be a point—</p> - -<p>And where he looked there was only blackness. It was the damn time -factor, of course, that was lacking. Yet Zetterman would not have given -him figures for yesterday or next month. They'd have to be figures for -now, or for expected time of arrival at destination, but where? How -far? Near Jove? The satellites? One of them? That would make the time -factor next to zero. And—</p> - -<p>Of course! The figures would no longer be completely valid; margin of -error would be wide after the gravitational imbalance that was only now -beginning to be righted! If he scanned several hundred thousand miles -to either side of his point of dead reckoning.</p> - -<p>And there it was! Callisto. He was almost astride its orbit, and -because it was nearer to his reckoned point than any of the rest, it -would have to be the most probable destination.</p> - -<p>If, of course, he was right about the time factor. If the co-ordinates -referred to the location of bodies in the ship's immediate vicinity -when it was attacked.</p> - -<p>He was numb from the cold, and to wait longer with his powerpack would -mean to become ensnared in Jove's awful gravity field before he could -make the necessary right angle break in direction and set course for -the barren planetoid.</p> - -<p>His arms ached as he drew them up inside his suit, and his fingers were -clumsy, senseless things groping for the power and heat toggles.</p> - -<p>Then he found them. In moments there was warmth, and then the gray -satellite toward which he headed began getting larger with each passing -second.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The ragged circle of the plain was unbroken for almost as far as he -could see in the dim reflected light of the satellite's primary, save -for recent fissures in its surface that had been caused by wrenching -quakes during the failure of the Geejay, and occasional pockmarks left -by the wandering bits of cosmic flotsam that had been ensnared by -the surprisingly slight Callistan gravity. The plain on which he had -touched down was ringed with low mountain chains that looked like giant -dragon's teeth poised to impale him at any moment. And Jove itself -looked weirdly tilted with its atmospheric bands now inclined steeply -away from the horizontal. Its pale light cast eerie shadows across the -plain; made the cracks in its surface and miniature craters deceptively -large and small.</p> - -<p>And there was no sign of human habitation, no artificial structure -shone against the dark horizon, and it meant he would have to -waste precious fuel, blasting in great leaps across the moon's not -inconsiderable surface, looking. He was not even certain for what.</p> - -<p>If Zetterman had intended to have him find this particular one of -eleven satellites, then why had he not included grid co-ordinates -of latitude and longitude? Or had the man been about to when death -intervened?</p> - -<p>Unless ... whatever artificial installation existed on the planet could -be located with the same co-ordinates! It would be ingenious....</p> - -<p>Rapidly, Jon envisioned a standard tri-dimensional system grid in -his mind's eye; applied it to the satellite upon which he stood, -substituting its ecliptic-apparent north-south axis and solar-apparent -X and Y equatorial axes for the Z, X and Y axes of the standard -celestial sphere. Applying Zetterman's co-ordinates, then, his -direction would be generally north-northwest, to a point below the -satellite's surface!</p> - -<p>For a moment the thought sent his mind spinning back into confusion, -and then he realized that by the standard spherical method of point -determination, his chances would have been one in a theoretical -infinity of arriving at a point exactly on the planetoid's surface.</p> - -<p>The installation was subterranean, then, which was logical, but which -made matters all the more difficult. Unless, of course, there would be -some slight surface indication. God, if only Zetterman had lived an -instant longer.</p> - -<p>With a muttered prayer that his deductions and dead reckoning -calculations were substantially more than empty rationalizations of -desperation, Jon thumbed the power toggles of his suit pack and leapt -lightly off across the planetoid's hostile surface. He would, of -course, have to be right. For there was only a limited amount of oxygen -left in his tanks, and his power would certainly not last forever.</p> - -<p>He kept track of his position by the most primitive way Man knew; the -orb that was the Sun. And mentally, superimposed that orb against -the tri-di grid that seemed now to be stamped imperishably upon his -brain, simultaneously allowing for orbital speed differential and solar -parallax.</p> - -<p>He fell back gently to the planetoid's volcanic terrain for a final -time, and knew that the spot he sought, if it existed at all, was now -within scant yards of him. Mighty Jupiter was now at zenith, yet even -in its directly mirrored, undulating illumination it was more difficult -to see than before, and each step was an experiment. Pumice spattered -over his spaceboots, solid looking stuff which could be but a shifting -overlay for some bottomless fissure or yawning crevasse. And above him -and down to the horizon to every side, stars gleamed tauntingly, coldly -in the blackness, as though to remind him that a man could not live -forever.</p> - -<p>He began walking in ever widening circles. Something would show.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">VIII</p> - -<p>Deanne was never certain whether her decision had been wholly a product -of her own mind, seething as it had been with the awful conflict -between her life's learning and what she knew to be right, or if it had -been made for her by the clanging of the ship's alarm intercom unit in -her quarters.</p> - -<p>She had been lucky. She had succeeded in getting back undetected from -her breach of arrest; return from her vantage point atop the conference -chamber had been as uneventful as her stealthy escape through the -catwalk maze to it, and once safely back in her quarters she had tried -to rest, to get her mind in order and to think.</p> - -<p>Her uncle, the Director Gentech himself, had been beaten by B-Haaq, and -B-Haaq was not a man to let an advantage be wasted. It would be only a -matter of time, now. A matter of time, and the Majtech would be giving -the orders, and her own fate would be in his hands. She had to decide. -To stay and try to help a faltering old man or to make an outright -attempt to escape even as Kane had done, and then somehow to find him! -For Kane had been right! Oh, yes, Kane had been right. For power was -not an end in itself, and in the last analysis, the end did not justify -the means! The ITA, right or wrong ... no! The ITA was wrong!</p> - -<p>The alarm clanged, and then the speaker squawked raucously.</p> - -<p>"Attention all officers and techpersonnel! Man your combat stations! -An unidentified spacecraft lies nine point three points starboard -ecliptic minus twelve oh three at three hundred thousand and we -are overhauling. Presence of the fugitive Kane aboard is strong -probability, therefore orders are to fire to destroy. Repeating, all -officers and techpersonnel, man your combat stations! An—"</p> - -<p>Deanne snapped the communicator into silence with a force that nearly -tore the toggle from its socket. The stupid fools! Enemies had always -been destroyed in the past, and so now this enemy was to be destroyed! -Regardless of the fact that they would never find Kane, alive or -otherwise, if every ship aboard which he might be were blasted to bits!</p> - -<p>In moments, the corridors and catwalks would be alive with scurrying -Cadtechs, officers and labortechs, rushing pell-mell to half forgotten -battle stations, trying desperately as they did to remember precisely -how the Flagship's long silent cannon were operated. There would be no -eyes for a shapeless, space-suited figure.</p> - -<p>She waited tensely until the clamor outside her cubicle was at its -height, then swiftly opened the narrow bulkhead hatch, stepped through -it and into the milling chaos of men and women, and let herself be -swept toward the suit lockers, and the bank or lock ports near them.</p> - -<p>The corridor lights were blazing, now, and the white faces that bobbed -beneath them were strained. Deanne found a suit and donned it even as -the first of the craft's spacecannon was fired. The deck shuddered -beneath her feet, and she was nearly knocked off balance by a trio of -guntechs who had not yet found their posts. But there was more order -now, and she would have to hurry. The other ship must be close, for the -guns had already begun firing barrages, and that was only done when the -target was in naked-eye view.</p> - -<p>Swiftly, she slipped into an air lock, flattened herself against a -narrow bulkhead as its inner port slid shut, and remained immobile as -its automatic pumps cycled down to zero pressure. Now she would wait, -watch and pray that no one looked into the lock in passing. It was a -crazy gamble, and if Jon were not aboard....</p> - -<p>She watched the star strewn blackness, narrowed her eyelids against -the awful glare in it each time a battery fired, and there was a -sudden little catch in her throat as the limn of mighty Jupiter swung -majestically into her field of vision. Somewhere, out there, in that -awful infinity—there!</p> - -<p>Ice seemed to form in a lump inside her. The alien ship was a perfect -target, silhouetted against the huge shining disc of Jove! <i>And it was -breaking up!</i></p> - -<p>Great gouts of fire were bursting from its engine housings, molten -fragments of jagged metal glowed as they gyrated crazily from it -in great showers of white-hot flame, and she could feel the awful -vibration of the Flagship's guns as they continued firing mercilessly -on target.</p> - -<p>A tiny pinpoint of fire.</p> - -<p>She saw it, and in the eye searing holocaust it did not at once -register on her reeling brain.</p> - -<p>A tiny pinpoint of blue-white fire that had not emanated from the -stricken alien, but had suddenly appeared for a mere fraction of a -second at a considerable distance from it! A suit pack!</p> - -<p>With the silent prayer at her lips that it had escaped the eyes of the -others, Deanne triggered open the outer lock port and launched herself -into Space.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>Somehow she knew the man was Jon Kane, even as she knew she had found -him too late. She stood, rooted to the spot in the deep shadow of -the ragged crag beneath which she had landed, unable even to warn -him of the man who had suddenly appeared behind him. A man with a -weapon in one hand, aimed straight at the Cadtech's back! To use her -radio at such a distance would mean a power output that would bring a -spacetender down upon her within minutes.</p> - -<p>Helplessly, she watched. Watched as the other touched Jon with his -weapon, forced him over the lip of a wide crater—</p> - -<p>"No—!"</p> - -<p>Her choked scream all but deafened her inside her helmet.</p> - -<p>Then she saw that the other followed over the lip, and realized that -their destination was somewhere inside the depression itself.</p> - -<p>For long, silent moments she stood in maddening frustration, watching -the two men disappear into the crater, as powerless to act as she had -been to warn. She could not go back, now, nor could she go further.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">IX</p> - -<p>The crater walls had been moderately magnetized with a thin coating of -metallic spray, and Kane walked before his captor down their sloping -incline with greater ease than he had been able to negotiate the -planetoid's natural surface. He hesitated as the crater bottom suddenly -began to yawn slowly open, and there was the prodding in his back again.</p> - -<p>"Keep moving, mister. There's a ladder, and you're first!"</p> - -<p>Kane moved carefully, looked over the smooth lip of the now fully -opened shaft. The ladder was a thin, tubular affair with narrow rungs. -He dropped to his knees, swung one leg over; held with his elbows, -groped with the other foot for the next lower rung. Then felt with one -hand, found the top rung, and started down.</p> - -<p>"I can't cover you on the way down," the man above him said. "But I -have a fresh supply of oxygen, and I don't think you have. And I've got -both guns!"</p> - -<p>The shaft closed silently above them, and then there was sudden -illumination, and Jon blinked after the half-light of the bleak world -outside. The folds of his suit began to feel loose, and he knew that -the shaft must also function as an air lock, and was cycling up to -pressure as they descended.</p> - -<p>When they at length reached bottom, his captor gestured at him with a -hand weapon.</p> - -<p>"Get your suit off. It stays with me. Whether you get it back again or -not'll be up to you. Move!"</p> - -<p>Jon fumbled with unfamiliarly placed dogs and buckles, then surrendered -the suit, and took deep lungsfull of air.</p> - -<p>"Where now?" But the other couldn't hear. His helmet was still in -place, and Jon knew that whoever wanted him wasn't taking any more -chances than necessary. But as if in answer to his question, a concave -panel in the shaft wall was suddenly sliding open, and the stockily -built man who stepped in it covered him almost casually with a strange -looking two-handed weapon. He signaled to the other, then looked at Jon -as if noticing him for the first time.</p> - -<p>He stepped aside, motioned toward the open panel with the ugly snout of -the gun he carried. "After you, mister. And step along. You've kept the -boss-man waiting a little!"</p> - -<p>Both men had spoken in the language of Terra, yet it sounded strangely -distorted to Jon. He had known the language almost all his life, but -his father had taught him the words as they were said in a part of -the planet that had once been called Vermont, and he noticed an odd -difference in the other's speech. He wondered, idly, if any of them -spoke the Universal. But at least, now, he knew who they were. Solmen -of Earth, who had somehow learned to build space ships and weapons; who -had somehow escaped the alert eye of Earth's Tinker spies. But he did -not feel the surprise he had expected. There were legends about the men -of Earth.</p> - -<p>The heavy footfalls of the stocky, heavily muscled man behind him -echoed hollowly in the narrow corridor. The passageway curved gently, -sloping downward, then came to an abrupt end.</p> - -<p>"Turn to your right."</p> - -<p>He did, and a panel similar to the first was opening for him. He -stepped through it, and his second captor followed.</p> - -<p>"O.K., hold it."</p> - -<p>They were in a compact room, and it was not empty. There were about -ten men in it, Jon estimated at first glance, all similarly dressed -in the green leatheroid coveralls that his captors wore, and barren -of any insignia of rank. They looked up from their places around the -paper-littered conference table, and a big man at its head half rose -from his chair.</p> - -<p>"Haine! I thought I told you—oh, is this the man?"</p> - -<p>"Darwin be with us, sir, it is."</p> - -<p>The big man's face changed expression quickly. He resumed his seat, and -suddenly the room was quiet, and others were turning in their chairs, -fixing Jon with their eyes. The big man gave no signal for him to be -seated in one of the empty chairs, but spoke to him as though he had -been placed under arrest.</p> - -<p>"You are Kane? The Tinkerman arrested on Titan?"</p> - -<p>"I am," Jon answered, trying to keep self confidence strong in his -voice. "But I don't—"</p> - -<p>"Just answer my questions, Master Kane. My name is Stine—Martin Stine. -On Earth I'm a Senator. My men got you out of the lockup on Titan. -Apparently you and the Tinkerwoman escaped them afterward—"</p> - -<p>"I don't know what happened to the Lenantech, but as for myself, I'd -have tried!" Jon said, rankling slightly at the smug tone of the man's -voice. "Apparently you haven't heard of what happened to the ship you -sent to pick me up. You won't see it again. And the only reason I'm -here is that I elected to come, following the directions of one of your -men that was dying."</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The Senator glanced quickly at the men surrounding him. Then, "You can -tell me that part of the story later, Kane. I understand you're sort of -a—renegade Tinkerman, is that right?"</p> - -<p>"That's right, but how did you learn—"</p> - -<p>"My organization has many men in many places. I understand that you're -a rather out of the ordinary technician, Kane, and that at this minute -the ITA is after your hide. So I've a proposition for you. We can use -technicians." Stine was leaning back in his chair, now, relaxed, sure -of himself. The others did not look so relaxed, and to Jon, seemed far -from being as certain.</p> - -<p>"First of all, I want to know who you are," Jon said, speaking Stine's -Terra dialect to the best of his ability. "Earth is no different a -planet than the rest."</p> - -<p>"I said I would ask the questions, Kane! But for your information, this -organization is made up of men much like yourself. I'm assuming that -you achieved your technological proficiency by obtaining certain books -for yourself; books the Tinkers ordered destroyed, and no longer have -themselves. Well, your case is not exactly unique. The difference is, -you were trapped into selection for training by the ITA. My men were -not. We are, in the respect that we're free, in better position than -you are to break the ITA. And certainly you did not hope to do the job -single-handed."</p> - -<p>"Break the ITA?" Jon asked. He felt a peculiar note of discord. These -men were not hiding. Not just hiding.</p> - -<p>"Why of course." The big man shifted in his seat, again glanced around -at the others. Their eyes were still fastened on Jon as though they -had never seen a Tinkerman before. "They may not be dictators in the -true sense of the word, but they wield a tremendous political power -over more than a hundred planets, Kane. You know that. They have only -to refuse a planet its scheduled service visits, and the economy -and civilization of that planet is suddenly faced with collapse. -Ultimately, such a set-up is going to mean ruin anyway. Someday, there -is bound to be rebellion, and not on any single planet, but on many. -It will free men from the ITA perhaps, but it will also mean quick -retrogression; civilization will, because of its complexity, backslide -faster than men can regain what the Wars destroyed, or re-learn what -the Tinkers have kept from them.</p> - -<p>"It might have worked if the ITA had not become sloppy. But it -can no longer even do a decent Project AA! It imperils the lives -of two galaxies, yet refuses to give men the knowledge to protect -themselves! Therefore, we are going to destroy the Tinkers, Kane. Our -propaganda machinery is gaining momentum daily, and this most recent -Geejay breakdown in Sol system is grist for our mill. Our technical -achievements are improving daily despite the fact that they have been -carried out under the handicap of utmost secrecy over a long period of -extremely difficult years.</p> - -<p>"When I learned of your captivity by warp-beam from Titan and was told -about you and the woman and was asked if I wanted you, I said yes. I -spared you, Kane, and went to great trouble to obtain you, because -you know the Tinkers as we could never hope to know them. And, more -importantly, you can handle technology far better than either we or -they. Is that true?"</p> - -<p>Jon hesitated, looked at the faces up-turned to him, saw the cold -bitterness in their eyes.</p> - -<p>"I can make a double-A good for five hundred years."</p> - -<p>"Just as we thought. You're dangerous to them, Kane, because for some -reason you know more than they do. People would start looking to you, -rather than to them, for their needs, and they're scared stiff you'll -go around blabbing all you know, ruining their hold. Well, that is just -the chance we want to give you. Help us, and later, you'll be able to -name your own price. Go back to the Tinkers, and you're a dead man."</p> - -<p>The room was silent again, but their eyes were still upon him. He tried -to think, tried to evaluate what the big man had said. It all seemed so -logical, yet—yet there was something wrong. There was something they -did not understand. Or, perhaps, understood too well.</p> - -<p>"I—I agree with you about the tremendous power they wield," Jon said -slowly, "but you're wrong about destroying them. It's true they're not -the technicians they once were. They have polluted logic with belief -and historical fact with legend; they do know <i>how</i>, but they don't -know <i>why</i>, and that's affecting their know-how, if you see what I -mean. They use belief more and more and reason less and less—"</p> - -<p>Stine nodded. "Precisely. If knowledge is not given room to grow, it -deteriorates, and finally is nothing more than half understood pseudo -truths. Therefore I fail to see—"</p> - -<p>"If you destroy them," Jon interrupted, "you suddenly remove the -last recognized seat of technical knowledge that exists in our two -galaxies. Recognized, you understand. And that'd mean real chaos, -Senator. The people would be so scared and helpless at the prospect -of being helpless that they'd revert to savages even faster than the -way in which you described. They'd panic for certain—panic as panic -hasn't been known since the Wars themselves." Jon let the sentence -trail off, half wondering as he spoke why he was suddenly championing a -system which he hated, defending a reactionary philosophy of existence -which stunted men's minds at every turn. For Stine was at least half -right—the Tinkers did threaten the very essence of intellectual -freedom. Yet at the same time he knew that to destroy them would be to -cause even worse harm.</p> - -<p>It was as though the others around the table and the man who was his -captor did not exist, now. It had become a quiet, tense drama between -two minds, and Jon knew he had not been brought here to do Stine's -thinking for him.</p> - -<p>"You know, Kane," Stine was saying then, his voice suddenly smooth and -soft, his big face relaxing into a studied grin, "they got their hooks -into you more deeply than I'd thought. You're still half-Tinker, aren't -you?"</p> - -<p>"But I'm not speaking from loyalty! Only from logic—" The big man -waved a meaty hand deprecatingly, interrupted easily.</p> - -<p>"Master Kane, the Space Tinkers must be forced to give up their books -and charts. They must be forced to relinquish this semi-intellectual, -semi-religious hold they have on over a hundred planets; their -monopoly, in short, must be broken!" A huge fist slammed emphatically -down on the littered table top. "My organization has worked long and -hard and preserved its secrets at great risk toward that end! We have -the ships, we have the weapons—some better, we believe, than those -of the ITA—and we have the men! And you, sir, are either with us or -against us!" His face had become florid, and Jon knew now that Stine -was playing for effect on the others; knew suddenly that his own logic -was right, and that it was again recognized as a threat, even as B-Haaq -had recognized it. A threat to personal power!</p> - -<p>And suddenly words were coming in heated torrents from his own lips. -"Secrecy! It is all you and the ITA can think of! Whatever it is you -know or learn, it must be kept from others! Yes, even while you speak -of breaking the ITA monopoly of knowledge and power, you seek to form -an identical one yourself! Can't you understand that where there is -secrecy, peace and progress cannot exist? Can't you understand that in -the realm of science and technology, there are no secrets? The facts of -nature are everywhere in Creation, Senator! You cannot hide them! For -awhile you may blind people to them, but they cannot be hidden, they -are for everyone to see and use as he will, regardless of which side -he is on! The Tinkers have kept people blind to them for a few years, -but it has become increasingly difficult; and they are learning the -hard way that the worst of keeping secrets is the forgetting of them -yourself!"</p> - -<p>Stine's face was becoming white and tense, and the others gave uneasy -glances in his direction, but he did not interrupt, and Jon kept going, -unleashing the whole torrent of thoughts that had tormented his soul -for so long, so very long.</p> - -<p>"You speak of monopoly, Senator, but you're forming one yourself! You, -and your organization, have been fortunate enough, as I was, to have -found some of the old books, to have learned some of the old knowledge -with which the armament for the Wars was built, and against which, when -their horror was finally over, people everywhere rebelled. It was they -who burned the books, Senator! Not the ITA! It was they who wanted done -with all that seemed to them responsible for the carnage which they -had somehow survived! It was they—on a hundred planets—who without -thinking, ran down their scientists, their technicians; murdered them -for possessing the knowledge which they had misused! And the few -technicians who escaped were bitter and frightened men. They managed to -salvage a few of the old ships and escape. And theirs was the natural -error of assuming that if they were not to suffer what their murdered -companions had, they must think in terms of using what they alone knew -as a weapon against those who did not and would not be allowed to have -that knowledge!</p> - -<p>"But—and listen to me, gentlemen!—even as the Senator has said, if -knowledge is not given room to grow, it deteriorates! And by keeping -their well guarded secrets to themselves, entrusting them only to -specially selected personnel whom they recruited year after year for -training from the planets so that their organization could grow more -rapidly in numbers, and by keeping those 'secrets' sacrosanct and -unchallangeable, they became at length outmoded, and finally half -forgotten and adulterated with pompous nonsense! And if you are to -do the same, then the same will happen to you!" He paused quickly -for fresh breath, then plunged on headlong. "The solution is not in -fighting and battle—for that is what precipitated the whole stupid -situation in the first place, as it always will. I told you I could do -a double-A that would last five hundred years, and I can! And I will do -it! And I will show you how to do it! But only on the condition that -your propaganda machine gives the Tinkers the entire credit for it!"</p> - -<p>"Master Kane, that is enough!"</p> - -<p>"I'm not finished yet! Can't you see the effect such a move will -have? The Tinkers will be grateful, first of all, because they're in -desperate straits right now. Secondly, they will realize that there -is superior knowledge to their own, and that it can be a beneficial -thing, rather than a threat to their well being. From that point they -might be convinced that their 'secrets' should no longer be kept, but -instead given back to the very people who once destroyed them in anger. -And thirdly, the people will have new faith in the ITA and its ability; -new respect for the technical knowledge which they now fear and covet -so dangerously! In such a way, gentlemen, you can get civilization -climbing again in such a way that the Tinkers will be eliminated, but -of their own volition, because they will at length have no more to -fear, and no further defensive purpose to serve.</p> - -<p>"Unless—" and Jon paused for a long breath, "Unless, Senator, you -simply want the power the Tinkers now enjoy, for yourself!"</p> - -<p>Stine looked at him for a long moment.</p> - -<p>And then he smiled, but there was Winter in his eyes.</p> - -<p>"We all make mistakes," he said softly. "Sorry. Haine! Take him away!"</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">X</p> - -<p>Stealthily Deanne picked her way from shadow to shadow toward the -smooth walled depression, her feet scarcely touching the planetoid's -riven surface in the slight gravity. Yards from it, she got to her -stomach and crawled to the lip, peered over.</p> - -<p>Every muscle in her body went tense as she saw the hidden hatch at the -crater's bottom sliding soundlessly closed.</p> - -<p>As she had thought, the crater wall was artificially magnetized, and -in a half crouch, clinging to the deepest shadow cast by the grotesque -ball of Jupiter above her, she edged her way downward. She reached the -spot where the camouflaged hatch had closed, and, again prone, waited.</p> - -<p>There was only the space of seconds before the round slab of metal -began opening! She tensed, and with her helmet touching the ground, -heard the sound of heavy footsteps climbing upward, making the hollow, -clanging sounds of space boots on metallic ladder rungs.</p> - -<p>A space helmet suddenly thrust itself above the opening, and for a -frozen second, she could see the man's face. It was not Jon's! There -was a look of stunned surprise upon it for that timeless moment, and -Deanne knew even as she moved that it was this space between seconds or -never at all.</p> - -<p>With all the strength in her body she swung her right leg, swung the -heavy toe of her spaceboot straight at the man's face plate!</p> - -<p>He tried vainly to dodge, to drop downward to safety. Had Deanne waited -a heartbeat longer she would have missed. She felt the terrible impact -as her boot hit squarely, shattered the thin plastiglass of the helmet, -went through it to strike flesh and bone.</p> - -<p>Instinctively her eyes went shut tight as the man inside the ruptured -suit virtually exploded.</p> - -<p>But there was no time to think of what she'd done, to wonder if this -was murder or the duty of warfare: the man was dead. Half in, half out -of the yawning hatchway, sprawled like a bloody puppet, his weapons -still in their holsters at his sides. She took them. And even in the -light gravity of Callisto, it took nearly all the strength she could -summon and all her courage to haul the limp thing that had been a -man all the way out of the gaping shaft and then push it, over and -over, away from her, away from the hatch that had already begun to -automatically swing downward.</p> - -<p>She squirmed quickly beneath it, found the ladder rungs with her boots, -and then clung to the slender ladder in the sudden darkness without -moving, her muscles trembling at the edge of panic. To misjudge now was -to fall hideously through blackness to certain destruction only God -knew how abysmally far below.</p> - -<p>Then somehow she steeled herself. Made her legs move mechanically; -found the next rung below. And then the next and the next.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The red blindness of exhaustion under the blaze of desert suns flooded -over his numbed brain in a dark backwash of pain, and with it were all -the past tortures of Prokyman stockades and the hopeless defeat that -had lain at the fringe of every movement of his life; Jon Kane could -not see and could hear only weirdly distorted sounds for he was, if not -yet dead, then close to death, and only through some freak of neural -reaction, not quite beyond the threshold of consciousness. But he had -not spoken. And now that power was quite lost to him.</p> - -<p>But he could still somehow feel the animal presence of his torturers, -ringed tight around him yet in the tiny, glaring cubicle of polished -steel; there was new pain in his shattered face, and he knew it was -the freezing carbon dioxide spray designed to shock him back to full -consciousness. But now it was only a new pain.</p> - -<p>There was the voice of Haine.</p> - -<p>"Hurry up, get him around. If he cashes in before we get anything out -of him Stine'll blow a connection. That's a man who hates to lose on an -investment."</p> - -<p>"Didn't invest much. Didn't risk much either, if you ask me. What else -was that broken down tank good for anyway? I say kill the—"</p> - -<p>"Get him around and shut up."</p> - -<p>The freezing pain again. But the darkness held.</p> - -<p>New sounds. Stine.</p> - -<p>"What have you been trying to do, kill him outright? How much have you -gotten?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing yet, sir. He's either the craziest man in the universe or the -toughest. Or else he doesn't know anything."</p> - -<p>"Nonsense! The things this man knows can put us all in the shade, and -don't you forget it! But if we don't find out just how much his people -still know—or don't know—it'll be your necks as well as mine! They -realize there's somebody else besides themselves in Space, now."</p> - -<p>The darkness seemed to be lifting a little; the numbness seemed to be -thawing from his brain, and the pain became more agonizingly acute.</p> - -<p>"We'll try again, sir—"</p> - -<p>"Never mind. There's a better use for this fellow than killing him by -inches. Perhaps he places little value on his own life, but when it -comes to those of a few billion people. Yes. Haine, do you think you -could wreck a Geejay?"</p> - -<p>"Wreck a—" There was the sound of hoarse breathing from a half dozen -men, and Jon felt something stir inside him, but it was as though he -were a thing disconnected from his physical body; that he no longer had -power of decision over it. "—sure, I guess so. A double-A in reverse! -Haw! Where?"</p> - -<p>"Canis Major, Proky system, if that's where he's from."</p> - -<p>"Don't look like a Prokyman to me."</p> - -<p>"Never mind that. Could you do the job so that the ITA couldn't repair -it? And I mean NOT AT ALL?"</p> - -<p>"Hell, sir, one of our E-blasters would do that much—"</p> - -<p>"I have a feeling that one very simple way to gain our end, Haine, -would be through the use of our E-blasters against every ship the ITA -possesses—and just what do you suppose that would leave us? This -fellow here wasn't so far wrong, you know, when he pointed out what -would happen in the event the ITA were suddenly destroyed. We'd be left -with a universe full of the screaming meemies. We'd be on top, but -on top of the biggest booby hatch you ever saw! If we're going to do -ourselves any good, we leave the ITA in one piece. The only difference -being, we tell them what to do!"</p> - -<p>"Now ain't that nice of us, to just walk in like that without firing a -charge—"</p> - -<p>"I'm doing the thinking around here, Johnson!"</p> - -<p>"It's a cinch you ain't doing much of the shooting! Letting -fancy-brains, here, tell you—"</p> - -<p>Jon heard the sudden sound of bone crunching against bone; there was a -choked yelp of pain, and the sound of a man falling heavily. Then Stine -was talking again, softly.</p> - -<p>"Anyone else here who prefers muscle to brain power?"</p> - -<p>"Sir—Johnson's—you—"</p> - -<p>"Bury him later, and listen to me now! I want the Gravity-Justifier in -Procyon smashed so that the Tinkers can't do a thing with it—but so -that <i>he can</i>! Do you understand, Haine?"</p> - -<p>"I can smash it up so that <i>we</i> couldn't put it back together in a -million years."</p> - -<p>"You'll be responsible. Let's get this man aboard the <i>New World</i> and -be ready to up-ship within an hour. We're going to have our cake, -gentlemen, and eat it, too! Unless, of course, our friend Kane, here, -will be able to watch ten billion people die as an entire planetary -system breaks up, and do nothing about it! All right, let's get going!"</p> - -<p>And then there was the sound of another man coming into the already -crowded cubicle.</p> - -<p>"Senator Stine, sir! Look what we found coming down the ladder! And in -a shooting mood, too! I'll need a new space rig—"</p> - -<p>"JON!"</p> - -<p>"Well! The ITA hasn't lost much time! She looks a little bit white, -doesn't she, Thurston? And seems to know our friend, here! Gentlemen, I -think things are going to work out rather well...."</p> - -<p>And that was the moment that Jon Kane returned to full consciousness, -and full pain.</p> - -<p>But he kept his eyes shut, his voice silent.</p> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<p>The banks of viewscreens in the <i>New World's</i> NIC room reflected a -kaleidoscope of horror as no man had seen horror before, and as only a -man of Kane's century could understand it. To the uninitiated observer -of an earlier time whose entire life experience had been within the -narrow confines of a single planet, the softly glowing spheres in the -screens would have seemed remote things; untouchable, and of only -speculative interest. The interest may have been heightened slightly -by the sudden rifts that appeared in the surfaces of some, or by the -peculiarly undulating ocean masses that seemed bent on erasing the land -masses of others.</p> - -<p>But to Jon, securely shackled to an ackseat as was Deanne beside him, -the screens showed an impending wave of death and destruction on a -scale that bordered on the unthinkable.</p> - -<p>Procyon I and II were already torn near the point of total break-up; -III, IV and V, because of their greater masses, were trembling with a -slower rhythm, but the close-up screens showed their largest cities had -already begun to crumble. Their streets were clogged with both dead -and living, and the gaping mouths of panic stricken faces were eerily -silent.</p> - -<p>The six outer planets had not yet felt their first tremors, but they -had begun to enter subtly-altered orbital paths, and whole continents -were unnaturally bathed in the hellish light of twin suns that spewed -great, flaming masses of their life-stuff with unchecked abandon into -the infinite well of the void.</p> - -<p>The largest screen showed a wide, wafer-thin disc floating with an -inhuman serenity in the blackness, its flat plane tipped gently to the -ecliptic, its surface crawling with tiny ant-like creatures that were -men. Hovering above it was a glistening, pencil-shaped object from -which more men came, their tiny forms followed by irregularly shaped -masses, weightless on the invisible tow-lines.</p> - -<p>"Not doing much good, are they, Kane?"</p> - -<p>The big man hulked above him, beefy face florid but split with a -relaxed, confident grin. Jon broke his long silence.</p> - -<p>"Starn has told you he would surrender! Why can't you accept it, and -then I promise you I'll—"</p> - -<p>"You'll do what? You'd pull everything in the book and you know it, -Kane, and we'd end up having to kill you or be killed ourselves. And if -you were to die." Jon turned his glance toward Deanne, saw her shudder, -then turn her eyes away from the screens, bitter defeat mingled tightly -with the tears in them. "And anyway," Stine was saying, "Starn's not -the boss anymore! And what good d'you think it's going to do me to push -over a has-been? B-Haaq is the one who's calling their plays now, Kane. -And B-Haaq is the boy who wants to fight! Too bad you didn't kill him -when you had the chance! Look at him out there! Trying to tell me he -can fix it, or anything I can do to it! Telling me if I move this ship -in a mile closer he'll blow me out of Space! Oh, brother—"</p> - -<p>"He could, Stine," Jon said. And the big man whirled.</p> - -<p>"With those antiquated pop guns he carries? Don't try to make me angry, -Kane. He's going to sweat it out there until he and his whole damn crew -drops. And then I'm sending you in! By that time things'll be so bad -I'll <i>know</i> I can trust you. You're the type, Kane! Fight like hell up -to the last second, and then comes the noble, heroic sacrifice part. -Oh, you'll do the job, all night after you've sat here watching long -enough!"</p> - -<p>Jon bit his lip, watched the big man stalk back and forth before the -wide banks of screens.</p> - -<p>"I could beat him in less time than it takes to tell it with -E-blasters!" Stine was saying. "But they say there's a better way of -winning arguments than with guns, don't they, Master Kane? Slaves are -always more valuable than corpses, for one thing, and for another, I -think people ought to know that Martin Stine has more to his string -than guns alone! Yes...." His broad back was to both Jon and Deanne, -now, and he was staring out through a wide port into the gem-studded -blackness, and his words were for his own ears. "They will know who is -a technician and who is not! The ITA is weak with age—and the weak -become the slaves, and the strong become the masters! They shall see."</p> - -<p>"Stine, you're a fool!"</p> - -<p>The big man turned, faced Jon, and his big face blanched in sudden -anger, and then the color flooded back to it and he laughed.</p> - -<p>"Stine, do you know what B-Haaq will do when he realizes that he has -failed? When he realizes that the woman who spurned him and the man -who deserted his ranks are aboard this ship? Do you know what he'll do -rather than knuckle under to you? He's the same kind of man you are, -Stine. He'll come gunning with everything he's got! You'll be a seive -before you know what hit you ... and for once I'll be glad to see -B-Haaq take a trick!"</p> - -<p>He heard Deanne gasp, could almost feel the trembling of her body.</p> - -<p>"That's enough out of you, Kane, or there'll be a couple dozen more -bandages on that honest face of yours! If that puppy even turns his -nose toward me, I'll show him what real guns are! And let him sweat out -there without his engines for awhile!"</p> - -<p>"You only think you will! You haven't the faintest idea of what alloy -the Tinkers build their ships, and you know it! And it's going to be -fun watching you find out."</p> - -<p>"If they use the tin they use to fix everything else."</p> - -<p>"They may be stupid, Stine, but they've been around quite awhile."</p> - -<p>"All right, so you know what alloy their hulls are built of! So my -batteries of electro-cannon will—"</p> - -<p>"Bounce off like a flashlantern beam, Stine. But I guess you'll want to -wait and see for yourself. And if I know B-Haaq, you'll get the chance!"</p> - -<p>And suddenly Stine was towering over him again. Jon winced at the -vicious slap that landed squarely on his misshapen face.</p> - -<p>"You'll tell me the alloy! Do you hear me?" A slap harder than the -first. "Do you understand, Kane?"</p> - -<p>Jon felt blood trickle down his chin.</p> - -<p>"I'll not tell you a thing, Stine. Not about the alloy, or even how to -rig your guns to beat it."</p> - -<p>The next blow was with Stine's closed fist. Jon's head snapped back -viciously, and he held on by sheer will to consciousness. He tensed for -another blow. It did not come. And suddenly, Stine's voice was a calm, -almost silky thing, barely loud enough for Jon to hear.</p> - -<p>"A pity," he was saying, "that your man is so defiant a fellow, -Lenantech. I almost imagine that even after the risk you took to save -his hide, he'd watch your pretty face be beaten to a pulp rather than -tell me the things I'd like to know! That's the way with these noble -fellows, you know. Of course, a girl's face isn't everything. But, I -suppose that he'd even—"</p> - -<p>"Stine, you wouldn't dare!"</p> - -<p>"Care to try me, Master Kane?"</p> - -<p>"Damn you, Stine—"</p> - -<p>The big man clenched his right fist, raised it, and Jon watched -Deanne's face whiten, saw the silent plea in her eyes in the quick -glance she gave him. But her taut lips did not move.</p> - -<p>"You had better speak, Kane—"</p> - -<p>"All right! All right, I'll rig your guns for you!"</p> - -<p>"And you'd better hurry! Unless my screens are out of order, your -precious ten billion Prokymen haven't too much time left."</p> - -<p>Jon looked at the screens again, and he knew his horror was reflected -in his swollen face. Something writhed sickeningly inside him and he -looked at the screen in which the Geejay swung. B-Haaq and his men -were at last leaving it! Leaving it, giving up.</p> - -<p>But he said nothing as Stine summoned Haine from in-ship, and kept his -silence as the squat, burly man unshackled him while Stine held a hand -weapon at Deanne's head.</p> - -<p>"I'll need her to help," he bit out then. "On your guns, as well as on -the Justifier. She's worked on double-A's before."</p> - -<p>"She stays, Kane!"</p> - -<p>"Very well, she stays. But if this outfit can't get the Geejay fixed -either, people won't be too impressed, will they. I say I need her, -Stine. That thing out there is too badly wrecked even for me, now, -alone. But it's up to you. I'll rig your guns."</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"> - <img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/> -</div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p>"All right, Kane! All right. The woman goes with you. But she stays -right here until you've done a job on my batteries!"</p> - -<p>"You win, I'm not arguing. Let's get it over with."</p> - -<p>Haine led him out of the NIC room, and he could feel Deanne's accusing -eyes at his back. She hated him now. He knew it.</p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<p class="ph1">XI</p> - -<p>The thin disc shown weirdly in the light of the tortured binary, and -Jon guided Deanne's suit-bloated figure up over its lip, then clambered -to its sleek metal surface himself. It was a tricky business, without -weight, and without sufficient handling knowledge of the alien-built -power pack to attempt the delicate maneuvering required with it.</p> - -<p>Together, wordlessly, they reeled in the cylindrical capsule which -contained their tools.</p> - -<p>A scant ten thousand miles off, B-Haaq waited in the Flagship. Waiting, -Jon knew, for an element of Tinker ships to arrive and form about him -in battle formation. And when they came. Yes, he knew what B-Haaq would -do.</p> - -<p>He looked back, and could barely discern the dark mass of Stine's great -craft as it blotted out the myriad of stars behind it. Power against -power. They would have to hurry.</p> - -<p>He moved toward Deanne, and she moved away. He grabbed her wrist, -pulled her to him, touched her helmet with his, and spoke rapidly.</p> - -<p>"Keep your radio off, and we'll talk this way! Now do just as I say, -and before you put me down for a sellout, work like you've never worked -before! We may have thirty minutes—an hour maybe, before this whole -system goes to pieces! And less than that before the other fireworks -start!"</p> - -<p>Then he was busy getting at the tools, getting at the heart of the -Justifier.</p> - -<p>Stine's men had messed it up pretty badly. B-Haaq's men had not made -matters any better. The operation itself was a simple one, but there -was so much to be undone.</p> - -<p>Wordlessly, Deanne worked with him in the awful silence. He thought as -he worked how ridiculous it must seem to whoever watched—two pygmies -on the face of a mechanism hardly a hundred yards across, pitting their -wits against a Nature gone mad—two pygmies, attempting to come to -grips with an entire solar system! Working alone, in the cold and the -dark, with only their helmlanterns to guide their eyes and hands.</p> - -<p>Deanne worked smoothly where she recognized the few standard procedures -that Jon employed, fumbled a little as he took shortcuts that she had -never imagined possible. Yet somehow, he noticed, she managed almost -to keep up with him, seemed to be following his thinking almost by -instinct.</p> - -<p>And that was about all it was that differentiated him from the standard -ITA technician. Instinct; imagination coupled with it, and the -knowledge that could only be learned by an ever-inquiring mind. Jon -Kane. Scientist.</p> - -<p>Finally, he touched her helmet again.</p> - -<p>"That does it, girl. She's going. Within twenty hours the storm'll -be over; within less than one, things will start taming down on the -planets. And then we'll get your uncle to take us back to Sol system, -and do a real job on the one there."</p> - -<p>He saw her eyes widen. "My—uncle?"</p> - -<p>"Yeah. Now keep quiet a minute. I—"</p> - -<p>"Turn around, both of you! I want to see your faces just once more!"</p> - -<p>Jon whirled. He saw Deanne shriek inside her helmet. At the lip of the -great disc, B-Haaq stood, a hand-weapon in each gauntlet!</p> - -<p>"I knew who they'd send, Master Kane! Did you think I would leave this -little project all to you, and give away all the credit to boot? Stand -still!"</p> - -<p>"It's Director Gentech Starn who gets the credit for this one, B-Haaq! -And I'm pretty sure, after seeing you in action, that he'll know, this -time how to use it! Because he knows now that you can't do today's -business with yesterday's tools and be in business tomorrow!"</p> - -<p>"Damn pretty, lover boy! Is that the way you take other men's women, -too?"</p> - -<p>Damn him, Jon thought. Time's running out now. Running out.</p> - -<p>"Suit yourself on that! I think I trimmed you good!" And with that -Jon kicked viciously against the ponderous mass of the tool cylinder, -launched himself straight at B-Haaq!</p> - -<p>Two guns flared!</p> - -<p>The twin beams flashed straight into Jon's flying figure, then bounced -harmlessly into Space!</p> - -<p>And then the two of them were drifting in the void, fighting silently -and desperately for a death hold.</p> - -<p>The universe wheeled crazily as Jon fended off the other's gauntlets -as they grabbed for his tank hoses, and then he struck with all the -strength he could at the fragile face plate. And was parried.</p> - -<p>Then for a moment their helmets touched.</p> - -<p>"You're a real jerk, Majtech! Why do you think I didn't take any of -those guns with me from the Flagship's arsenal? Hell, there wasn't one -in there that worked!"</p> - -<p>B-Haaq made a desperate grab for the side-dog on Jon's helmet; caught -it, began to twist!</p> - -<p>Jon clamped the suited arm, held it ... held it, twisted his body. Then -fingered the suit pack into blazing life, melting a horrible, gaping -hole in the Majtech's suit!</p> - -<p>For the merest fraction of a second he saw the terror stricken grimace -of hatred and disbelief on B-Haaq's thin face, and then the interior of -the helmet was a mass of exploding flesh and blood.</p> - -<p>He whirled. Blasted recklessly back to the Justifier, almost missed; -back-blasted, slid.</p> - -<p>He grabbed Deanne about the waist of her suit, and then flicked on his -space radio.</p> - -<p>"This is Kane calling Stine! Kane, calling Stine! Do you hear me, -Stine?"</p> - -<p>His earphones crackled. "What the blue Jupiter is going on out there, -Kane? Have you—"</p> - -<p>"Stine, you're a real dumbhead! A real Prokyman bat brain! You should -have learned better who to trust by this time! The girl and I have -done a job for you out here. You'll never get it fixed now, not in ten -million years! Sure, a system dies; it gives its life, but so that -people like you can't make other people think you're God and enslave -others like it! You're through, Stine!"</p> - -<p>"Kane, you're going to die where you stand!" The earphones almost shook -from their connections.</p> - -<p>And Jon pulled at Deanne, pulled her prone beside him on the smooth -metal of the nearly-flat disc!</p> - -<p>"Shield your eyes!"</p> - -<p>Every gun in Stine's batteries blazed. Blazed, and smashed inward in a -blinding, coruscating sea of blue-white flame that for a moment seemed -to rival Procyon herself! For silent seconds, the great ship seemed to -devour itself in the pent up energies suddenly unleashed in a single -hell-spawned torrent of fire from its erupting bowels, then it was no -longer matter but a great wraith of superhot gasses fast dissipating -into the dark of Infinity.</p> - -<p>"Jon! Jon, darling—"</p> - -<p>"It's O.K., princess. It's O.K. now."</p> - -<p>"But you—"</p> - -<p>"I fixed his guns for him. He made me do it, remember? Oh, I fixed 'em -good!"</p> - -<p>And then they both laughed. Laughed until the tears came, two pygmies -in Space, two pygmies against a solar system of planets with a whole -universe to hear them.</p> - -<p>Then slowly, two fine trails of fire started toward a slender, -streamlined shape that hovered ten thousand miles off.</p> - -<p>Somewhere high above them, a Cepheid winked. Knowingly.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Man the Tech-Men Made, by Fox B. 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Holden - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Man the Tech-Men Made - -Author: Fox B. Holden - -Release Date: December 2, 2020 [EBook #63942] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN THE TECH-MEN MADE *** - - - - -Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - - THE MAN THE TECH-MEN MADE - - By FOX B. HOLDEN - - _He was a man of a hundred planets, drawn - from the blackness of space to save a - tech-galaxy from disintegration. He was Kane, - the warrior-mechanic ... memory-king of - knowledgeless worlds ... savior to - millions ... maniac to the ruling few--so - they threw a dragnet over the - stars to stop the heretic._ - - [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from - Planet Stories March 1954. - Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that - the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] - - -The relentless heat of yellow-white twin suns boiled the thin desert -air and it seared his laboring lungs, and he knew why this was called -the Desert of One Thousand Mirages. The Desert of One Thousand Hells -would have been a better name. - -They said a man could go mad here. If not from the crazily twisting, -undulating heat shapes themselves, then from the pain-tortured vagaries -of his own brain. But mad or not, Jonny Kane knew he must somehow -stay in the saddle that was not fashioned for human buttocks; stay -astride the silver skinned, hairless beast never bred for human -transportation, and ride. - -They could be all around him, of course, and he might never know until -it was too late to wheel his fleet qharaak and dash again for freedom -in yet another direction across the shifting, low-duned wastes. They -could be but yards behind him but there was not the strength to look -back, only to grip the thick reins twined about his bleeding wrists, -to keep his cramped legs stiff about the qharaak's sloping flanks. And -ride, and choke on the smoking sand. - -His brain bubbled inside his head, and he shut his eyes. - -He would tire and lose his grip, and so lose his mount, and fry to -death on the blinding whiteness of the sand. Or he would go crashing -into them, and they would lead him back to the outpost village, and -his death would be of their making. What chance, after all, had an -Earth-descendant against the copper skinned native police of a Procyon -planet, who rode its deserts as if they were the cool, green fields of -the mother world of which his father had so often spoken? What chance? - -There was flame in his lungs, and fire was burning the insides of his -half naked, once strong young body into crumbling, blackened ash. Ride-- - -"Hold! Hold, or there's a barb through your evil heart!" - -The booming command was from the left. And he wheeled the qharaak so -sharply it reared and nearly lost its sextuple footing in the shifting -sand. A sudden thrummm went past one ear. He tried to loose his legs -enough for a kick in the lunging animal's flanks, but the muscles in -them were like steel clamps. They would not move. - -The reins about his wrists were slippery and stinging with sweat and -sand as both mixed with his blood, and were pulled easily enough from -his grasp by the vicious, sudden tug from one side. - -And then the overpowering odor of the other lathered qharaaks flooded -his nostrils as the Dep-Troopers closed in upon him. He retched with -it, and was sick. - -"Come on, you! You're lucky our orders were dead _or_ alive! Straighten -up in that saddle or you'll go back dragged from it!" - -A uyja-wood quirt split the skin across his back and somehow brought -him nearly erect in the saddle. He let his eyes open a little at a time -against the searing blaze of the desert. They had him ringed with their -bows and barb shafts, already had his qharaak tethered to one of their -own. - -And then they were taking him back. Back to the shimmering thing at -the horizon that was the outpost village; back to the place where the -gear box of his track-car had stalled for want of proper lubricant, and -where the chase had begun. - -But he would not think about that. He knew about that, knew about the -crime of it, and now he must try to think about the answers for the -Dep-Court magistrate. They would be the same answers he had given -the other times. There could be no new answers. New or old, none -would be understood, or believed, for that matter. But he must think -about something, or the half-visions in his mind would bring certain -insanity now; the half-visions, the things to see that did not exist -to be seen, the glaring white-yellow eyes of Procyon herself and her -satellite star, the cruel black-gold eyes of the bearded, iron muscled -Dep-Troopers that had caught him. - - * * * * * - -"Make the prisoner stand straight before this court, Trooper!" - -The flesh splitting lash of pain wrenched him into a sort of -pseudo-consciousness. He struggled to rise from the rough wooden floor -on which he'd been thrown, and brought sound back to his ears, fuzzy -sight to his eyes. The sound was of the crowd. A muffled crowd sound; -they would still be outside, still struggling for a look at his broken -down track despite the heavy trooper cordons that were around it, -awaiting a qharaak team of sufficient size to haul it away. - -And the sight was of a windowless, thin-walled cubicle, sole court of -this narrow, desert fringe Department, and of the Prokyman judge, and -the Troopers standing idly with their stinging quirts at either side -and just behind him. - -But he had been before Prokyman judges before. Once, even, there had -been a jury of the local peasantry, and he had won an easy acquittal -then because of his youth--it had been a full five Terrayears ago, -when he had been barely 12 years old. - -He struggled unaided to his feet, faced the wooden throne like -structure upon which the magistrate, girdled in coarse ruuk hide, -sat toying with his polished mace of office. Beside him stood his -Stenosmith. The Stenosmith held a slender scroll in one hand, but -for the moment his legal superior let it go unnoticed, and fixed the -Court's prisoner with a gaze as hard as Terrestrial diamonds. - -"Jon Kane, aged 17 Sol III years, second generation Sol III descendant, -renegade colonial resident of the Sol III agricultural Department of -J'iira-IX: do you understand the charges against you?" - -He struggled to make his tongue move to form the clipped syllables of -the Interplanetary. It was an old language, but he had never spoken it -as easily as the one which his father had taught him, the one which he -said had come from Terra. But he must learn the Interplanetary, his -father had said for some day, he might venture beyond the blue fields -of the Department where he lived; someday, perhaps, even use it to -speak with the starmen of the great ITA, who landed on Procyon V every -seven cycles. Some day, perhaps, and the work of the language tutors -would not have gone in vain. - -"Charges? These men have uttered no charges, Senior. They have pursued -and threatened--" - -"Silence! Civil use of your tongue, or no tongue at all! The law -prescribes trial even for heretics under the age of eleven cycles, -or you would not be so fortunate as to be standing where you are! -Stenosmith, your scroll!" - -In a quick motion the slender scroll was in the magistrate's hands, and -in another it was spread before him. - -"You are accused of entering this Department in a tracked vehicle being -driven by its own power. The vehicle is of a type no longer receiving -maintenance by the Intergalactic Technical Alliance, and therefore -could no longer function." - -"But, Senior, my vehicle is one which had, by chance, been so well -constructed that it never suffered breakdown until--" - -"Prisoner, you are lying, and you know the penalty for perjury! -Stenosmith, make note of the prisoner's falsehood to the Court. The -charges continue: You, Jon Kane, have been apprehended in neighboring -Departments within the last two and one-half cycles, on various -occasions, at the practice of making tools, and on one occasion at -least, of using such tools in the attempted repair of malfunctioning -facilities awaiting the legally prescribed maintenance of the ITA. Do -you deny this?" - -"I--" - -"It is therefore the conclusion of this Court that the vehicle in which -you rode into this Department was repaired and set into motion by -yourself! Do you deny that?" - -And suddenly Kane felt something stir inside him; felt it through the -fatigue, through the pain, through the torture that threatened to be -all-consuming. He stood straight. - -"No, Senior! No, I do not deny it! And I not only repaired the -track-car, I built it! I built it from parts I stole at night from -abandoned scrap heaps! And I made it run!" - -The words had barely left his lips before the Troopers who had kept the -prescribed distance from him during interrogation by the Court were -closed in upon him, their muscular hands on his arms and shoulders like -so many vises. - -The Prokyman judge had suddenly ceased toying with his mace, and then -only the Stenosmith was moving, furiously recording Kane's unthinkable -admission. - -Then again the magistrate's voice; a slow, measured thing now, of sound -without movement, of Death itself. - -"Prisoner Jon Kane, I hereby grant you your right to admit insanity. -Speak." - -He could feel the magistrate's eyes burning into his own, could almost -see the subtle turnings of the unrelenting brain behind them. - -"I do not so admit!" - -"Then it is the sentence of this Court that, at Meridian tomorrow, -you shall be taken before a bow detachment of the Department Martial -Patrol, and shot in the body until dead! Take him away!" - - * * * * * - -He had thought that the sleep of exhaustion that must come would be -dreamless, yet it was not; he had thought the pain in him that was so -little relieved by stretching prone on the rough wooden floor of his -tiny cell would keep the past beyond all thought and memory, but it did -not. And on the instant before waking from his tortured sleep on the -hot morning of his execution, the two mingled to flash again across his -numbed brain; there was a split second of it, and it was all his life. - -There were the yellow books he had found. Yellow with age, yet somehow -intact when they should have been ashes from the flames that had -consumed all the rest, or disintegrated with the rot of forgetfulness -and two centuries of time. - -And there was his father, who had caught him in the act of reading -them; his father, a quiet man who spoke little, as though many thoughts -were forever kept at the threshold of his lips by the force of sheer -will. - -"Burn them, boy," he had said. "Burn them after you have finished. And -your life shall depend on how silent you keep about what you have read -in them. Your life, boy. When you have finished burn them!" - -That had been all. He had expected a sound thrashing; he had expected -to see the forbidden books torn to bits before his eyes. But that had -been all. - -And he had remembered. He had kept his silence as his father had said, -as if his life depended on it, yet something had subtly grown in him -that would not be repressed. He had fought it, he had lain awake in his -rude cot and listened long hours to the night-sounds that wafted gently -across the rolling blue fields of his father's farmland, and he had -fought the thoughts, and had failed. But it was at that point in his -life that Jonny Kane learned that ideas could not be burned. - -He remembered how he had fashioned his first tool. With it, he had -shaped better shoes for his father's qharaak teams. And then there had -been other tools which he had learned to link together, and his share -of the day's planting had been done long before the other men returned -from the fields at sunset. - -That was the time he had first been caught. - -The tools had been destroyed. And then-- - -Then he had measured the dimensions of a new plot of land without -moving from the spot where he had made his computations with a stone -in the soft loam, and that time-- - -Oh, the magistrate had not exaggerated. There had been many such crimes -that he had committed, and he had not been able to help himself. -Something within him would not let him stop--something that cried _why_ -and would not let him rest. - -But when he had unearthed the rusted scrap heap of metal forged in -strange shapes, he had not told his father. Nor did his father know -when he had made the new tools, or when, a full cycle after that day, -he had completed the thing of old metal for which the tools had been -used. By stealth he had stolen the crude oil which fueled the lamps in -his father's house, and after that-- - -After that, he knew only that it _ran_! - -Until this village. Until yesterday. Until the day before he was to die. - -And then Jonny Kane came awake at last. - -He had barely opened his eyes, and had not yet risen to his feet when -the sound of chains rattled noisily on the other side of the narrow -cell door. Not so soon--not so soon; he had slept too long! - -The narrow door was flung open, and his eyes hurt with the sudden burst -of sunlight. But he saw the Prokyman jailer who had thrown him in here, -and there was another. A somewhat shorter, more broad-shouldered man -with skin the color of his own, who did not wear the crude tunic of the -Dep-Troopers. His body was clothed in a silver-black uniform the like -of which he had never seen before. And his face-- - -Jonny studied the face, shadowed though it was by the bright light that -limned it. - -It had to be a Terraman's face. - -"You are the youth--Jonny Kane?" The Terraman spoke the Interplanetary -fluidly but with a strange accent, and slowly, the only possible truth -was bursting upon him. But why--here--? "Answer me!" - -"Yes--yes, Senior, Jonny Kane." - -"You are of interest to the Intergalactic Technical Alliance." - -"I am to pay for my crime--" - -"I have secured your release. My name is B-Haaq; you will address me -by my rank, which is Majtech. You will come with me. Your crime will -only be paid for if you prove unworthy of your recruitment for cadet -training. Do you understand?" - -Dazedly, Kane stumbled to his feet. Perhaps, after all, he had not -awakened. He managed a feeble nod to the question which the Majtech had -put to him. - -"Very well then. Come along." - - - II - -The gently curved metal walls of the room gleamed softly in the pale, -shadowless light, and for a moment the silent chamber seemed as huge -and merciless as the infinity of Space which surrounded the great ship -of which it was a part. The aged man who sat in full Alliance dress -uniform before him, the Director Gentech himself, might for the moment -have been a statue, and the panel of officers which flanked him hewn -from the same stone. - -He could feel the eyes of fully a third of the ship's huge complement, -twelve hundred labortechs strong, boring steadily into his back as he -stood, alone in the moment's awful silence, between them and these -statue-men whose swift minds were, he knew, coldly weighing the -accusations against him. - -And then the silence was broken. Majtech B-Haaq was speaking again, his -still-young face red with the heat of impressively realistic outrage. - -"Sires, I have laid this man's record for the last eight years as a -cadet technician before you plainly, with no embellishment. And his -thanks to you for selecting him from among thousands of other less -fortunate youths on his planet for training as an officer of the -Intergalactic Technical Alliance has been--what other word can describe -it--but mutiny?" And then Cadtech Jon Kane felt the full force of his -accuser's glance upon him. - -"You were taken from death itself in some hell town on a cinder -of a planet in Canis Major. And in repayment for eight years of -instruction that most men would gladly risk their lives to obtain -you have compounded your long list of wrongdoings with this ultimate -insult--refusal to accept your commission as Lenantech unless you -are allowed to perform an experiment which is not only preposterous -but which has had fair evaluation by your superiors and been found -worthless." B-Haaq paused for a quick breath. "Sires, I admit that -perhaps the error has been ours from the first, and that the Prokymen -who intended death for this young heretic knew whereof they spoke! As -Cadtech Jon Kane's Section Overseer, I recommend his reduction, both -mental and physical, to mineslave, and subsequent dispatch to one of -the mine worlds of the star system from which he was recruited!" - -It seemed suddenly to Kane that here was a crazy kind of irony--doubly -crazy, doubly ironic because for the second time in his young life he -was standing trial for things he had done which were not wrong! Had it -been wrong in that other time, that other part of his life when he had -built a vehicle that would move under its own power, with his own bare -hands? Had that been so great an offense--and if so, against whom? The -simple peasant folk of his planet? Against the ITA itself? If so, how? - -And now again. After eight diligent years of trying to learn all that -had been darkly forbidden to him before, and to thousands of others -like him--after the happening of some miracle that had plucked him from -a Proky death cell and placed him where he was encouraged to learn -secrets that had once nearly cost him his life--after all that, now -again, somehow, he had offended. - -These men were not cruel men. Nor were the instructors overbearing -taskmasters, nor the labortechs the arrogant men whom the planet-bound -guardedly cursed with their derisive oaths "Space Tinker!" Yet they -were bound to their ideas; ideas which must be clung to for dear life -lest they become exposed to the risk of change. Kane had often enough -been reminded of why that was so. The ideas, the techniques, the -procedures, they'd been savior to an entire segment of a once great -civilization in a half forgotten past which the ITA stubbornly called -its "history." And so they must be preserved at all costs. And that was -why it was wrong to question; wrong to challenge the refusal of a new -idea. - -And that was why he was in trouble. Because these men were, in the last -analysis, so little different from those who had surrounded him those -eight years ago in the desert with their long bows. - -Guardians of two star systems, they were. - -The spine of civilization for over a hundred planets. Without which, -the civilizations of each would surely backslide a second, and last, -time. Implements of wood and stone would not support their ancient -and infinitely complex structures for long, and before the evil but -necessary secrets of the past could be faced with sufficient courage -and re-learned, there would be only mouldering ruin. - -Thus taught his instructors. - -Therefore, this procedure and that technique are to be protected and -held inviolate if men are to be kept from savagery! Remember the -Holocaust, Cadet! _This_ is the proven way! - -But the something in him that he had never been able to -suppress--whatever it was that had made him build his vehicle despite -his father's warnings to silence--that "something" was again to be his -downfall, even among those who had been his rescuers. - -"A point of final clarification, if I may, Majtech B-Haaq." A uniformed -Coltech of the Director Gentech's panel had spoken without rising from -his seat. "You have charged that past difficulties with the accused -have involved actual _challenge_ of the instructorship under which he -was assigned?" - -"At times, Sire, challenge that has been tantamount to outright refusal -to accept certain standard procedures of operation, accompanied in each -instance with the claim by the accused that his own would be a superior -procedure! There was, you may recall, the affair of the burned out -variable thrust transformer, a standard instructional problem. Cadtech -Kane argued that replacement of a specific fuse in a specific circuit -was ample solution, rather than replacement of the entire complement of -fuses, which has of course been standard procedure in such an instance -for two full centuries. And again--" - -"That quite fully answers my question, Majtech, thank you." - -Then another moment of awful silence--the awful timelessness of -deliberation. - -Jon Kane could feel the cold perspiration that made his well cut cadet -uniform tunic damp and clinging. He tried to repress a shiver, to stand -as completely motionless as the men before him sat. - -"Majtech B-Haaq." It was the Director Gentech himself who spoke. His -words were slow, measured, and spoken in a voice which might have -been that of a man twenty years his junior. Gentech Starn, at the age -of ninety, was still a strong man and a strong leader, and his name -had been synonymous with the three letters ITA and the interstellar -authority for which they stood for every one of the sixty years since -his father, Director Gentech before him, had met death on one of Sol -System's cold, hostile outplanets. - -"Sire." - -"You have prosecuted with excellence. However, may I suggest that I -am yet to be wholly satisfied in this matter. Your accused must have -admirable potentialities as a technical officer, or he would not have -been selected for training, nor would such effort have been expended to -obtain him, at the very outset. Whatever challenges, as you charge he -has made, could not, then, have been totally irresponsible ones. And -it has been a long time since there has been technological challenge -of the Intergalactic Technical Alliance!" A hardly discernible smile -touched the faded, withering lips, and Kane thought he had detected a -momentary lightness in the last words they had spoken. "So it is my -suggestion, Majtech--and gentlemen of this panel, that final decision -hinge upon the success or failure of the experiment which the accused -is held to have proposed, and which he so adamantly refuses to desert!" - -"But--Sire, I submit that Cadtech Kane has admitted, by his own words -as well as his actions, his guilt in this matter! He has freely -confessed to each of the charges; has defiantly and openly held that -his experiment will succeed, and has refused retraction of his stand in -this very council chamber--" - -"Our decision, Majtech B-Haaq, in cognizance of the folly of unduly -wasting an otherwise competent cadet technician on the mining planets -unless justified to our complete satisfaction, is that the experiment -be allowed to proceed! This hearing is therefore adjourned!" - - * * * * * - -There were no others in the workshop to which he had been assigned. He -was to work on his drive unit alone, Majtech B-Haaq had ordered, and -of course the reason was obvious. One young heretic was enough. - -But what if the glittering, finely-tooled object that rested on the -long workbench before him was wrong and would not work? Yet he knew -that it would! Mounted in a standard model spacetender, the drive unit -which he'd devised would easily produce five times the speed and power, -would consume less than half as much atomic fuel, would quadruple -range, last twice as long. - -It had taken slightly over a month to build; B-Haaq had grudgingly -granted him all the time he estimated he'd need, but he'd hurried -nonetheless--sixteen, sometimes eighteen hours at a stretch. - -Yet the work had not been difficult. As he'd tooled and formed the -simple, compact parts and watched his creation grow steadily from one -day to the next, he had marvelled that certain self-evident innovations -of design had not been adopted years before. It was not, he knew, that -he was so much cleverer than they! Rather, it was almost as though such -improvement had been deliberately avoided. And ITA space drives had -remained cumbersome, overly-complex and unwieldy. - -He straightened from his work. It was done, and the ships of the -Intergalactic Technical Alliance would be caught up a solid century at -least! He had now only to request an installation crew of labortechs, -supervise for a few hours, and then-- - -"Master Kane!" - -The startled cadtech snapped to immediate attention. It was B-Haaq. He -had entered the workshop without signalling. - -"Yes Sire!" - -"I must make a report of your progress to the Gentech's headquarters." -He spoke levelly, but Kane could feel the resentment in his voice. - -"My work is completed, sire. I was at this moment preparing to summon a -labortech installation crew, and to supervise--" - -"I'll do the summoning, Master Kane! And the supervision! I don't -believe it necessary to remind you that even if you have refused your -commission, I accepted my own quite some time ago! This mechanism is -completed, you say?" - -"Yes, sire. I hope that I shall be permitted to pilot--" - -B-Haaq was bending over the gleaming unit, his face expressionless. "No -one is to pilot the craft, Master Kane," he said without looking up. -"We of the ITA still know something of remote radio control, I assure -you. You will work from Navigation Information Center, at controls -already set up there for the purpose." - -Kane kept his silence, and tried to keep his disappointment from -showing in his face. - -"Tell me, Master Kane--" and the Section Overseer had straightened and -was now facing him squarely again, "--have you ever been told why you -were picked--I believe a better word is rescued--from that hell planet -of yours in Procyon for the ITA?" - -"Yes, sire, I was, during basic indoctrination," Kane answered. - -"That is fortunate, then. You know, at least, that we thought we -could make a technician out of you! Report to the NIC room in one -hour, Master Kane! Your little show will be all ready by then. You're -dismissed!" - - * * * * * - -Director Gentech Starn himself, flanked by three of his closest aides, -entered the NIC room. - -They took standing positions behind Kane. And behind them, at the -prescribed distance of respect, were grouped the ship's full complement -of Section Overseers and instructors. Kane stood before the central -nav-screen and its compact banks of controls. - -Suddenly a red blinker flashed, dully reflected from the myriad tiers -of sensitive mechanism which lined the room's curving bulkheads. He -pressed a stud, and the screen before him came alive. Blackness, -studded with the tiny white-hot sparks that were the suns of the Milky -Way. And then suddenly a larger one which moved swiftly. - -And then he was no longer aware of the electric silence that engulfed -him, and there was no sensation, no thought but the singular sensation -and thought which co-ordinated nerve and sensitively disciplined -muscle; which directed his fingers unerringly across the studded -control-banks and guided the streaking spacetender as surely as though -they reached into Space and touched it, holding it by their own -strength to its wide, curving course. - -Relay gauges hummed and clicked softly; velocity and power readings -registered, and nav-grid traced the fleet craft's path through the void. - -Then Kane spoke. "Sires, as you can see, the spacetender in which my -drive unit has been installed is now proceeding at what is usually -considered to be topmost velocity and with what would normally be -maximum power output for such a craft." He could feel his voice waver -at first, and then with the sound of it and the reassuring feeling -of the control studs beneath his fingertips, it strengthened, became -firm. And he knew they were listening. Listening as though it were the -Gentech himself who spoke. Then he summoned up all his courage. "I will -now," he said, "accelerate the tender to treble its present speed, -while increasing power output by approximately six-fold. If you will -watch the central group of gauges carefully, please." - -He jammed his finger down on a white, diamond shaped stud, and his -breath clogged in his throat. - -The screen followed the tender's course faithfully. The gauges chuckled -and hummed. - -And then the blackness was torn open with a coruscating, soundless -flash, and the tender was in an instant nothing but a white cloud of -rapidly dissipating atoms! - -No!... No!... No! - -There was no sound from behind him, but he knew that the huge chamber -was quickly and silently emptying. - -He did not turn from the screen. It was black again, now, relieved only -by the tiny sparks that were the stars. - -He did not know how long he stood there or how long he watched. -Minutes--or even hours, perhaps. He knew only that there was an -uncontrollable thing of rage and disbelief and helpless frustration -seething bitterly inside him that would not abate, and with it was a -crazy jumble of thoughts that made no sense at all. - -He heard a man behind him then. It was B-Haaq. - -"A pity you've learned your lesson so late," he heard the Majtech say, -"_Mine slave!_" - - - III - -Jon Kane's compact quarters seemed more restricted than ever; the -curved bulkheads closed in upon him, and he was an animal in a trap. -Waiting, he thought, for the slaughter. He knew it would be that. He -would not have a chance when his trial resumed. There would be no way -of tricking B-Haaq into admitting the thing he'd done, and no matter -how the charge were uttered, it would be the charge of a prisoner, and -would fall on less than unsympathetic ears. And of course with the -spacetender so many blasted atoms adrift in Infinity, there could be no -proof. - -Why did B-Haaq hate him so? This was more than an officer simply doing -his duty as he saw it--this was singular, personal hatred! But why? - -He glanced for the tenth time in thirty minutes at his wristime; the -sleeping-period was half over, and he knew he would probably be awake -for the remaining half. And the remaining half was so slow in going. If -only there were something he could _do_. If he could only build another -unit and install it himself! If-- - -Fully clothed, he sat up in his bunk. Hesitated only a moment, then -crossed the small cubicle to its single narrow hatch. The simple -time-lock that secured it was all that held him prisoner--a traditional -matter of form, since any skillful mastertech could, with a length of -slender wire, applied in the right places.... - -The plan took shape in his mind in the few moments it took him to -render the sensitive mechanism useless; it had been rigged for alarm, -but the alarm never sounded. In a moment he was on the catwalk. - -He strode swiftly and silently, the fine length of wire still in one -hand. He almost passed the seldom used hatch when he came to it, so -cleanly was it hinged into its bulkhead. But he knew what was beyond -it, and the knowledge seemed to hasten his skillful fingers. Within -moments, the hatch opened soundlessly, and he was inside the chamber. -The Flagship's armory. - -Were it not for the labortech articifers, the neatly stacked weapons -would have been rusted, useless things long since. "For use ONLY on -alien, unknown and possibly hostile planets" the ITA regulations read. -It was a rule that applied throughout the entire fleet, and as far as -he knew, had been all but forgotten. For within the scope of the ITA's -interest there no longer were any "alien, unknown and possibly hostile -planets," and on the rest, arms had been unnecessary to the ITA for -centuries. For it had a far more powerful weapon than any it could -devise of metal. It had merely to refuse its services for awhile. - -A smile spread slowly across Jon's face as he began a selective -examination of the weapons. Maybe he'd even find a longbow! Lord, -here was even a device that propelled small projectiles by means of -explosive cartridges! These things had been unnecessary for centuries! - -But slowly, the smile changed to a worried frown. First one weapon and -then another he discarded, and then another. - -But he must find one! And then he could make B-Haaq admit what he'd -done. - -It was a muffled, metallic sound but it registered on his consciousness -and he whirled. Even as he came erect the lights glared suddenly at -full strength; whoever had so silently stepped in behind him had lost -no time in finding the bulkhead transformer stud. - -It was the sleep period duty officer, and a hastily snatched hand gun -was levelled at him. - -And even in the sudden brilliance of the lights, he recognized her. -Lenantech Deanne Starn, the Gentech's niece, herself! - -"Get your hands up, Cadet!" - -"Why? The thing you've got in your hand hasn't held a charge since -Hanna grew teeveeyes." He grinned. Even in the white glare, she wasn't -hard to look at. There were a number of stories that had circulated -their way through the cadet quarters, but then. Most rumors had it that -B-Haaq himself was the lucky man, and there were few others that held -differently. Those of the ship's women who didn't have the slender -figure, the crisp cut pale blonde hair or the wide blue eyes and fine -features and quick, alert mind that so typified the family of Starn -were never too badly off, for that reason. For to the men aboard, she -was B-Haaq's, and that was the end of it! - -She seemed not to have heard what he said. - -"You're Cadtech Kane, aren't you? Do you think this additional charge -of attempted unlawful procurement of arms is going to help your case to -any extent?" - -"I did think so, yes." - -"You're as good as in the mines now. And I don't follow your logic. -Don't move a muscle!" - -"You might as well throw that thing away, Lenantech, it's no good. I'm -still looking for one that is, myself. And if you're going to report -me, I'm certainly not going to try to stop you. That'd just get me in -even deeper, wouldn't it?" - -Her features were white, motionless. Only her wrist moved; she -deflected the muzzle of her weapon but a fraction of an inch and -squeezed the trigger. - -The gun clicked emptily, and that was all it did. - -"You--" - -"I nothing. Just told you. Look, Lenantech, people have shot at me with -longbows, hauled me almost naked through the deserts of Prokyfive, beat -me with lashes, and sabotaged me. Now I've had enough." - -"You're not making any sense to me, Master Kane. You have just one -minute to get out of here, or--" - -"You mean you wouldn't report me if I did?" - -She flushed. "I didn't say that. But since you're already as good as--" - -"That's just it. But if I can find what I'm after here, I just might -be able to change that a little. That spacetender of mine didn't fall -apart out there because it wouldn't work! Not by a damn sight it -didn't!" - -"Be careful what you say, Master Kane!" - -"Truth's the truth, isn't it? Even if I can't prove a certain Majtech -wanted to see me flop and get thrown out of here badly enough to ruin -my experiment? Maybe I asked too many questions; or answered too many -the wrong way. Your guess is as good as mine. But instead of logical -explanations or fair evaluations, I got a court-martial instead. Maybe -you can tell me, Lenantech--why replace an entire distributor head -assembly on a farm tractor when replacement of the rotor may be all -that's necessary? Why a new spark plug when all that is required is -the resetting of its points? Why stick to a logarithm with a base of 10 -when other bases could often make an entire mathematical operation far -more simple? And if a man can build you a better drive unit, why smash -it for him and discredit him?" - -"I think the court took ample cognizance of those questions, Master -Kane." She had lowered the weapon, and had even come a step closer to -him. And for a moment, he thought that he had seen a flash of interest -in her eyes. - -"I know what the court did. But you can think as well as anybody else, -can't you? What are your answers, ma'am?" - -"This is hardly the place for a history lecture, Master Kane. But the -ITA was formed of those few technicians who managed to escape the wrath -of the war weary civilizations who turned upon them and upon men called -scientists, whatever they were, as those to blame for system-wide -destruction and wholesale death. You have been taught that. Many of -their methods and much of their knowledge was lost. You have been -taught that also. But it was those methods and that knowledge which -saved them from destruction once, and made the ITA possible. What was -not lost is sacred knowledge, Master Kane, and for only a few to know, -and for those few to guard militantly lest one jot more of it become -lost!" - -"You're right. I've been taught all that. But you still haven't -answered my questions! Suppose I told you I could do a Project AA in -less than an hour's time, and guarantee it good for five hundred years. -What would you say to that?" - -He saw her eyes widen. "That is sheer nonsense and you know it, cadet! -A double-A takes six solid months except in event of emergency, and -is good for fifty years at maximum! Why, even the geniuses of those -ancient war years who were forced to conceive and devise the Project -could not have done better--" - -Jon grinned again. "Some day maybe I'll show you, Lenantech! Me and the -planets and you! But you better get going and report me before you get -yourself in a jam--" - -"Yes, indeed she had!" - - * * * * * - -The girl blanched, and Jon felt sick. It was B-Haaq. It was always -B-Haaq. Standing now in the hatchway, black eyes blazing. - -Suddenly Jon felt something snap inside him; suddenly the delicate -mechanisms of his brain which had kept reason and desire on a tautly -balanced plane of stability failed him, and frustrated rage was in his -throat again, and the blinding white of the exploding spacetender swam -again before his eyes. He felt his right arm sweeping up over his head, -felt the weight of something at its end, and then felt the arm go down, -relieved suddenly of the weight. - -The heavy hand gun flew straight at B-Haaq, and glanced from his head. - -The man slumped, fell almost soundlessly. - -And for a full second, it seemed to Jon that time had stopped. The girl -was motionless, the look of disbelief frozen on her features, and there -was a numbing paralysis gripping his own body. - -Then he was in motion, and it was an automatic thing, his arms and legs -moving swiftly as though fully independent of his brain. Within seconds -he had pulled the unconscious B-Haaq into a far corner of the armory -and covered him with his own cloak of office. He pulled a double rack -of neuro-rifles in front of the shapeless heap, and then before she -could pull away from him he had the girl by one arm and was propelling -her toward the hatchway. - -"Kane, what do you think--" - -"No time to talk, ma'am. These lights have been on too long--somebody's -going to notice the energy consumption in General Control any minute -now. Besides which, B-Haaq saw you with me, and heard me telling you to -get going and report me. So if I didn't kill him--" - -"You're crazy! He wouldn't--" - -Jon tightened his grip, looked straight into her eyes. "You know he -would, ma'am. If only because he hated me so much, and he found you -with me. We've got to get going." - -"You let me go!" With a quick wrench, she twisted free of him. "You're -forgetting, aren't you, that no matter where in the ship you go it will -be only a matter of time before you're found? And if they can give you -anything worse than the mines--" - -"All right then, stay if you want to! Go ahead and gamble that -our friend's either dead or has a forgiving nature hidden away -somewhere--the only thing I'm sure about is that he didn't blow up -_all_ the ship's spacetenders." - -"You'll be overhauled in no time!" - -"Ten minutes' work and I can triple the speed of any one of those -buckets. You coming, or not?" - -He turned from her, ducked swiftly through the hatchway and chose a -port-side ramp that would carry him up to the Maintenance deck. There -would be at least one tender berthed there in good working condition. - -He flattened himself against the ramp wall as he neared its end; -listened. Nothing. Maintenance was just sitting around as usual, and -during the sleep period, there'd be only a skeleton crew. - -In the semi-darkness, he reached up, felt his fingers brush along -the curved, smooth ceiling of the gently inclined passage. There; an -emergency pressure duct, designed to open automatically in the event of -malfunction of the ship's atmospheric regulators. Emergency pressure -could be built up through the ducts in the event of any sudden fall of -more than eight ounces per square inch; and would be instantly released -should it mount more than three pounds above. All he had to do was jam -this single duct to the "excess" position and hold his breath. - -It was like picking a lock with his bare fingers, and they felt like -fat sausages. And then he had it. - -There was a sudden scream of escaping air about him, and he plunged -forward. - -Somewhere an alarm clanged, and he knew that within moments the -skeleton maintenance crew would be suited and pouring in on the ramp -with everything it had, from Geiger counters to baling wire. Already, -even above the near deafening alarms, he could hear the pounding of -their feet. - -He dashed for it. - -Reached the berth, and there was a tender snuggled into it, ready and -waiting. - -He had the small craft's outer lock opened within seconds. - -"KANE!" - -He whirled, even as the inner lock was sliding open. It was Deanne -Starn. And she was running toward him. - -The inner lock was open, and Jon pushed her through it, and then had -himself strapped before the miniature control console almost before -the blinker winked to signal that the outer and inner lock ports were -sealed. - -He waited a nerve wracking twenty seconds before the Flagship's -flank yawned open, and then jammed the firing studs down with his -accelerators full open. - -The tender leaped from its berth like a wounded thing, and for a moment -Space spun sickeningly, and Jon's eyes blurred from the unprecedented -take-off acceleration. Might as well break all the rules in the book. - -Then the stabilizers were taking over, and things began to straighten -out. He flipped the craft's automatics in, unbuckled his straps and got -weightlessly underway toward the tender's aft-section. - -"Kane, where are you going? Where are we going?" - -"I'm going to diddle with this tub until that big barge back there -can't pick us up for Spacedust. And we're going to a little backwater -planetoid that the ITA only gets to once every thirty years or so. They -used to call it Titan." - -"A satellite of one of the Sol planets, isn't it?" - -"You're coming up with a lot of smart answers all of a sudden." - -"Can you--can you find it? All by yourself?" - -"My father was born right next door. I can find it." - - - IV - -Earth trembled. - -She shook like a palsied animal, and great fissures rent her thick hide -as tidal waves lashed like gigantic hammers at the coastlines of her -continents and mercilessly overran a host of the jewel-like islets that -studded her vast oceans. - -Her artificial satellites had long since come crashing down, and her -natural moon teetered threateningly in its age-old course. Great, -jagged chunks broke loose as the barren mass of rock circled perilously -close to de Roche's Limit. - -Some of the lower, sturdier buildings in the cities which dotted her -wide continents were yet intact, and in the largest, the capital city -itself, a number of the broad, deep-laid malls and thoroughfares were -still at least partially passable. - -But Senator Martin Stine, Conservative Socialist representing the state -of Penn-York, had trouble keeping his temper in check nonetheless. -It was temper aroused as much from the anxiety of deep rooted fear -as from the irritation of trying to guide his pneumo-car through the -debris-littered avenue leading to the capitol, and the thought jittered -again through his mind that he should have taken one of the overheads -even though some of them were sagging dangerously in places. - -But he hadn't taken one, and there was less than a quarter-mile to go. -If he hadn't been adding so indiscriminately of late to his normally -195-pound, six-foot two-inch frame he could've parked the damn car and -run the rest of the way. Only a block or so yet. - -And at this session, the fur was going to fly for sure if the planet -hung together long enough for it to even get underway. He'd warned them -the last time about the Tinkers. Deaf. Everybody. - -His heavy face was red when he at length arrived in front of the -capitol mainramp. He didn't wait for a robotparker to come and take -over, but simply stopped his vehicle in its tracks and abandoned it -where it stood. And despite the extra pounds he'd recently put on, he -moved with an almost feline grace up the broad, inclining ramp, the -anger steadily mounting in him. - -He entered the vast chamber and took his seat, just as the muted roar -of private, nervous conversation was broken by the tri-diannouncer. - -"Gentlemen, the President-General of the United Earth Republics!" - -Silence. Then the crashing noise of a thousand men getting to their -feet. A small, gray-looking man with a prematurely bald head crossed -the front of the great chamber flanked by his Secretaries of State and -Defense, then mounted the podium alone. - -And the emergency session of the Senior Congress of the United Earth -Republics was begun. - - * * * * * - -Senator Martin Stine was the tenth man to be recognized. - -He rose quickly and plucked the jeepmike from its recessed spot in his -desktop. - -"So far," he began, omitting even to begin his remarks with the -traditional salutation to the President and the group as a whole, "I -have heard ten recommendations for procedure in the present crisis, and -each one has been about as jelly-kneed as the one before it! There's -one solution to this thing and only one. If we don't want this planet -to be scattered to the four corners of Space within the next 72 hours -we must get Project AA underway and damn quick! I've been informed that -there is a Tinker ship within thirty hours' flight of this system. If -we act now, and call them in as we should've, on an ESR, five years -ago, we still might be able to get out of this one with whole skins. -Some of us, anyway. Gentlemen, the casualty lists as of an hour ago -weren't very encouraging." - -"Will the Senator from Penn-York yield for a question?" - -Stine's cold blue eyes snapped. "Yield for one minute to the Senator -from Texamerica." - -"The ITA effected a Project AA for this system about eleven years -ago, did they not? And have answered exactly seven Emergency Service -Requests in the last one hundred twenty years, have they not? In view -of such frequent assistance, it would seem--" - -"What the Senator from Texamerica really means is that if the ITA had -to do a double-A for the second time in eleven years, the reflection on -their prestige would make things a little gummy in some quarters--isn't -it?" A gavel rapped sharply. Stine threw a quick glance at the section -reserved for native Earth political representatives of the ITA, and he -saw that one was already on his feet demanding recognition. - -"I yield for all the time you need! Go ahead!" Stine sat down, his -youthful looking face mottled with tension. - -"I may remind the Senator from Penn-York that the ITA has some one -hundred twelve other worlds in addition to this planet to look after! -And as far as it is concerned, nuisance planets are better off dead! If -our torsion screens were inoperable; if there were no other way to hold -the planet together until the next scheduled visit nine years from -now, then perhaps an ESR would be in order. But since it is obvious -that this system's Gravity-Justifier is only in temporary disorder, and -was designed to be self repairing, an ESR for a double-A is simply out -of the question. I repeat. As far as the ITA is concerned, a nuisance -planet--" - -"Yes, and that's just the stranglehold you've got on all of your -hundred and thirteen worlds!" Stine had leapt to his feet, and the -President-General's gavel banged furiously, but he paid it no heed at -all. "'Be good boys and do what we tell you and leave us alone while -we're busy playing God or we'll let you go back to stone axes and -caves'--that's what you're trying to say, isn't it?" The gavel clamored -deafeningly through the President-General's lectern-mike, and the gray, -bald man was now standing himself. But there was a sudden surge of -voices and a scattered applause throughout the entire chamber that had -begun quickly to swell, drowning out even Stine's own voice. Then died -slowly, so that his words could be heard again. "Playing God might be -all right if you can prove all the time to all the people that you've -got all the answers to all the problems! But it might not be so easy if -you begin to lose your touch; lose some of the answers! I hope the ITA -representative isn't trying to tell us that the organization for which -he works is no longer capable of repairing a Gravity-Justifier so that -it will keep the planets in their orbits where they belong! Or am I -right?" - -"That is a preposterous accusation and--" The gavel thundered. "--and I -demand its retraction immediately!" - -"Friend, I was born on this planet the same as you were but I work for -it. I'm not standing idly by to see it destroyed because your buddies -are afraid to admit they might be slipping a little and don't want -it to show! I--" Thunderous applause. Half the chamber was on its -feet, now, and even without the jeepmikes the cheers would have been -deafening. "I say, Mr. President, if we're to believe the ITA is what -it pretends to be--a technological service organization dedicated to -the galactic welfare--it be called in immediately for a Project AA, -and, if it refuses, that it be publicly denounced by this government -as no longer competent in that capacity!" - -When Stine sat down this time, the ovation that followed his words left -the chief executive little choice. - -A vote was called, and Stine realized that somehow, his laborious weeks -and months of propagandizing and mass proselytization had at last taken -root. - -It had been comforting to know, at least, that had he failed, there was -a well-appointed, powerful space-cruiser waiting for him at a secret -place in the mountains to the north. It was still comforting to know. -Because the Tinkers would have to come, now, if only to save face. And, -of course, they wouldn't be able to deliver. - -And then-- - -He stirred restlessly in his seat as the vote was being tallied, -was nearly thrown from it once as a great tremor shook the massive -building; excited knots of men who had begun crowding the aisles were -bowled in scrambled confusion to the floor. And Stine smiled a tight, -small smile to himself. Even Nature was doing her bit. - -A hurrying page boy brushed past his desk in the crowded aisle, and he -suddenly felt something small and hard pressed into his palm. He knew -what it was by the feel of it, but it would have to wait until he could -leave. - -He did not have to wait long. The President-General himself announced -the result of the vote, and within the next half hour an ESR would -be on its way to the nearest Tinker ship. There were a few cries of -"Railroad!" and "--demand a recount!" amid the noisy babble of the -adjourning session, but Stine was already on his way. - -A second tremor brought him to his knees at the main exit of the -great chamber; it stopped the post-mortems cold, and sent the august -body of Senior Congressmen scurrying for other exits themselves, and -Stine's early departure went unnoticed, even by waiting newsmen who had -themselves been scattered unceremoniously half the length of the wide -exit corridor. - -The pressurelift lowered him quickly to his basement offices. - -A panel slid silently from his impressive Martian drokii-wood desk. -Then it was but a matter of slipping the tiny microfilm spool from -the flat, coin-sized container that the page boy had so carefully -delivered to him and inserting it in the compact projector long enough -to completely memorize the coded symbols. - -Then he destroyed the strip and container together. - -Almost casually he plucked the comphone from its cradle, but nicked a -tiny stud that would keep the televideo blank. - -He dialed, waited. - -"Newton? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The -answer is yes." - -He hung up. - - - V - -Saturn pulsed palely in the void before them as though painted in three -dimensions by a master artist. Kane pointed through the duraglass -conning bubble at the spectacle. Ringed planets were rare, even in the -wide fastnesses of Space which the ITA commanded with its far-flung -fleet. And off to the huge, banded planet's lee swung the largest of -its satellites, long since made livable by the now forgotten cleverness -of the Solmen. - -"Titan?" Deanne asked. - -"It is," Jon said. - -"May I ask you why you decided on it? There seem to be others. Full -sized planets, even." She was standing close to him now, watching the -silent beauty of the Spacescape as though, for the moment, she had -forgotten all else. Jon looked at her, and wondered. Why, really, had -she come with him. - -"Before the Wars," he began, "Solmen made of that satellite their first -project in conversion; battled it from a dead, frozen wasteland to a -fertile, life sustaining oasis in Space. Back in the days before the -Scientists were eliminated and the technicians shot down where they -stood. Back when spaceships didn't even look like spaceships--clumsy, -triple-sphered affairs--but they worked. I don't think the Solmen left -on Titan ever quite forgot how it felt that day their last link with -Sol III was severed; their last ship destroyed by the mobs that came -from the mother planet despite the feeble resistance they were able -to put up. Last link except for the ITA, that is, but of course they -didn't know there'd even be an ITA in those days. Things were pretty -rough for awhile." - -"How do you know all this? According to what is taught in the history -classes--" She let her sentence trail off and suddenly looked him full -in the face. And comprehension stirred in her eyes. "You're not--not -some erratic, mutant genius, then, as B-Haaq told my uncle." - -"Hardly, Deanne, hardly. You've guessed right, I think. I got ahold of -some old books once. That's all. In some ways, I know more than the -ITA has forgotten in two hundred years. And that's why I picked Titan. -I could be wrong, of course. But of all places where resentment might -still smoulder, even after so long a time, Titan seemed like the place. -The Solmen there knew what science and technology could accomplish for -men's benefit; they knew best of all because they had helped accomplish -the miracle of creating a living planet out of a hunk of sterile rock. -And because they had, many of them were slaughtered, as were the other -technicians and scientists in the dark days following the Holocaust. -Somehow I don't think they've forgotten. And that's why I think they'll -help us." - -"You mean there's--you mean the ITA is actually resented? That's -impossible! There are great welcomes for us wherever one of our ships -lands! Why, were it not for us, civilization would--" - -"You're forgetting, Deanne, that those technicians that were able to -save their hides during the dark days, and who later became the ITA, -were running away; beating a hasty retreat, a strategic withdrawal, -whatever you want to call it. They withdrew into a pretty impregnable -shell of their own, from which, I might add, they've never even tried -to come out. The Space Tinkers, they're occasionally called--" - -"Space Tinkers!" - -"Sure. Descendants of armorers of the past. Be glad you're not called -gypsies! You're getting the benefit of the doubt. At least it's -pretty well realized that the ITA can trace its ancestry to _real_ -technicians!" Kane grinned at her, and fleetingly thought how much the -quick flush of anger added to the beauty of her patrician features. -"Anyway, for Tinker eyes and ears, there's never been anything but -welcome and praise wherever they've landed. Nothing but, and very -militantly so, too, I'll tell you. Nobody wants to die when Tinker -medicine can save them, to freeze when Tinker repaired heating plants -can keep them warm in Winter. But underneath--underneath, the power the -ITA holds over the very livelihood of civilization is pretty painfully -felt." - -"But--but we are not dictators, Kane! That is a lie! We have never -taken advantage--" - -"True enough, and that's all on the credit side. I don't think the ITA -has ever had any other motive than keeping itself safe. Making sure -that it would never suffer the near-extinction that its forbears did. -But in so doing, you see, they've had to work themselves into a pretty -commanding position. And they've succeeded. They've denied technical -learning and training to all the planets, under penalty of forfeiture -of the very necessary periodic technical service upon which the planets -depend to retain the comforts of civilized living--" - -"I realize all that. Where, after all, would any of the planets be if -the Gravity-Justifiers finally gave out for lack of proper maintenance? -At least the history that I was taught said that during the Wars, -planetesimals and even whole planets were annihilated in an effort to -so upset a system's gravitational balance that the resulting upheavals -would mean death to every living thing in that system. But there were -some technicians--" - -"Scientists, Deanne." - -"Well, whatever they were, who were able to devise mechanisms to float -in orbits of their own, warping Space in such a way as to create an -artificial balance. Those Geejays saved billions of lives, and after -the bloody reaction from the Wars and the men who invented them were -killed, who else was left to keep them in working order? I should think -people would--" - -"Thank the ITA?" - -"Well, yes, of course." There was a defiant look on her face, but Jon -Kane was grinning. Saturn hulked far to their starboard side, now, -and the ship's automatics were bringing them in dead on Titan. The -planetoid was growing visibly bigger by the minute, and the other Ring -of its primary was casting the interior of the spacetender in weird, -vari-colored shadow. - -"If you were out there in a suit and somebody else was holding your -oxytank, controlling just how much air you could have, how would you -feel about him? Would you feel like thanking him for letting you have -air to breathe?" - -"Well, I--" - -"You'd keep a damned close eye on him. And if he started telling you -what to do and when to do it or he'd suffocate you, you'd get to hating -his guts even if he behaved like the spirit of Christ Himself!" - -"Who taught you all this, Master Kane? Who is this Christ?" - -"Look, Deanne, a grown man should be capable of thinking for himself! -But before you go getting sore at me again, just answer this one about -the guy holding your oxytank--suppose, somehow, he forgot, little by -little, how to work the valve--and realized that there was a chance you -might find out about it? He wouldn't be in the pilot's seat anymore, -would he?" - -"He wouldn't be able to shut me off, if that's what you mean," she said -quickly, going along now with his analogy. "But he wouldn't be able to -give me more air in a hurry if I needed it, either!" - -"And so then what happens?" - -The girl's face was suddenly grim. For a long moment, Kane could see, -she was thinking, and thinking hard. And then she said at length, "Is -that where you come in?" - -"If I can give you back your tank of air, I guess it is." - -"And if you can't?" - -"Then I'm afraid the one in the worst trouble will be the guy who's -holding it," Jon answered. - -And then he turned from her, reseated himself before the control panels -and kicked out the automatics. - -In minutes, he had the tender swung to, and was climbing down his jet -to one of Titan's largest spaceports. - -It was still a bright planet, and its artificial atmosphere, islands -and great lakes were as his father had described them. Titan was, -indeed, an oasis in the cruel coldness of the void. - -He landed the tender with scarcely a jar, and then wordlessly, he and -Deanne opened the small craft's locks and stepped out on the tarmac to -greet the landing party that had been alerted to receive them. - -Two tall, cloaked men strode forward. - -"Jon Kane and Deanne Starn?" - -"Greetings--" Kane began. - -"You will come with us," one of them said. His short red beard seemed -to glisten in the sun-like atmospheric light. "You are under arrest!" - - * * * * * - -The small, air-conditioned cell was clean, at least, and a far cry from -those on Procyon V. There was even a low tablet on which to lie, and -Jon sprawled himself out upon it. He wished, vaguely, that they hadn't -separated him from the girl. She was a pretty thing--and, had brains. -Between the two of them they might've figured a way out, but alone it -was like beating your head against a carbonite wall. - -He'd been as wrong as a man could get about the Solmen on Titan, all -right. The security police who'd booked them and brought them here -hadn't said much, but it took little enough intelligence to reason that -the Tinker Flagship, having discovered that the tender wasn't to be -overtaken, had simply broadcast an all-planets bulletin. He'd been a -fool to put down at a regular spaceport. He'd just walked straight into -it. And now it was simply a matter of waiting for either another tender -or the Flagship itself to come and get them. He wasn't sure what would -happen to Deanne, but for himself, a murder charge, surely. - -That accounted for the cell they'd assigned him to. It was unlike the -Proky jails in more ways than one; as escape-proof as the tomb itself. -Kane even had the feeling that the cell was watching him. - -He rolled over on his back, examined the rivetless steel ceiling with -his eyes. And all the walls and the floor were the same, save for the -tiny vents at the far edge of the ceiling for air circulation, and the -almost microscopically fine lines in the near wall that outlined the -foot-thick cell door. - -He surveyed the walls, ceiling and floor again, and the only opening -was the air duct, far too small for a man to crawl through, even -without its solid looking louvres. - -Suddenly, Kane remembered the ruse he had employed aboard the -Flagship. Instantly he was on his feet. He hauled the pallet beneath -the tiny grilled spot in the ceiling, and standing on it, was barely -able to touch the louvres. The Solmen of Titan grew taller than those -of Terra. He had stripped himself to the waist, and folded the firm -fabric of his Cadtech tunic into a solid wad. Then held it against the -air vent with all the strength of his fingers until his arms ached! - -The cubicle grew stuffy, and sweat trickled maddeningly down across his -bared ribs. - - * * * * * - -He relaxed the muscles of his arms just as a faint draft flitted across -his back. The door was sliding silently open behind him! - -He was through it almost before the wadded tunic he had dropped hit the -floor behind him. - -He kept moving with all the strength that was in him down the long, -wide corridor. - -But there were no guards. Peculiar. - -Suddenly a strange vibration shook the corridor floor. Probably -something in the planetoid's artificial gravity rectifier that needed -looking after. Lord, if the ITA took care of the rectifier the way it -did the air conditioner alarm, everybody'd soon be floundering in the -normal, unpleasantly-slight gravitation of the tiny planetoid. A man -would be lucky if he weighed forty pounds! - -The corridor trembled again, this time more violently; it threw him -momentarily off balance, and he could not regain it before the next one -hit and sent him sprawling. - -He struggled to his knees, and there was a terrible rending sound above -him. He looked up. A jagged rent was splitting the corridor even as he -watched! A 'quake of some kind. - -He paused for a moment, catching his breath, trying to think. And then -suddenly there was the sound of running feet and a guard commander's -voice booming in a resounding echo down the smooth corridor sides. - -"Man the control boards. Let 'em out!" - -Doors slid open at every side of him; some were already buckled and -opened only partially, but the men inside got out, and within seconds -the corridor was full of running, howling humanity from every colony in -the system. - -Jon almost bowled a guard off his feet. He grabbed the man at the -shoulder, thumbs digging in at the painful points. - -"Talk! What the seven hells is going on?" - -"Run, you fool! Let go! The Rings are coming in on us! The whole damn -planetoid is starting to break up! Ow--damn you! It's the Geejay. -Earth's been going to hell for over an hour now!" - -"And they let it hit here without warning? ANSWER ME!" - -"You crazy? Warp beams are only for the ITA. Old fashioned radio's all -we've got, and it takes eighty minutes--" - -"Thanks!" Jon released the desperate man and thrust him aside, fought -his way back into the crowded corridor. - -He had to get out of the building but he was trapped in this crazy mob. - -Another tremor, this one worse than any of the rest, sent the choked -corridor into a maelstrom of kicking, clawing confusion. And Jon was -the first to see the small panel now blinking EMERGENCY EXIT, sliding -slowly, grudgingly back against a bent frame. - -He was through it first. He broke into an open prison yard where the -squat, streamlined form of a jetgiro was parked. Crazy thing, jetgiro -sitting that way in a prison yard, as though it were just waiting for -somebody who'd be coming out the emergency exit. He bolted for it. Had -to hurry--the others weren't far behind, and if they caught up he'd -never get the thing into the air. They'd claw him down. - -He took a quick look upward at the sky, and it seemed to be on fire. -Even in the brightness of Titan's artificial daylight the hurtling -particles from the disturbed rings flamed blindingly. Saturn itself -filled half the sky, and even to the naked eye the great rings were -flaring dangerously at the edges. - -He got behind the controls of the giro just as the mob broke through -the exit. - -He prayed that the engines weren't too cold, and even as the durastone -floor of the yard split jarringly beneath him and swallowed a dozen -men, he punched the Lift stud and the small vehicle rose heavily into -the air. - -Cold, of course. No ... engine-heat almost normal. Then-- - -"Sorry, Master Kane." - -And that was all he heard. There was an awful, sudden pain in his head -and then he felt nothing else. - - - VI - -Deanne saw the panel blinking EMERGENCY EXIT too late, and her -momentary hesitation at the cross corridor spelled an abrupt finis to -her desperate attempt. The lone guard who otherwise would never have -seen her brought his springbow up with a look of dazed astonishment on -his bearded features, and she froze. - -"Don't--please!" - -"How did you escape?" He moved closer, springbow was cocked taut. - -"My--my cell door. For some reason it failed to shut properly, and -I--I--" - -"That is a likely story indeed, pretty one! Escapes are not made from -this prison quite so easily! You come along with me ... come on!" - -His command ended in a sharp yell of surprise. The springbow clattered -from his grasp as the corridor suddenly rocked crazily, and Deanne felt -herself thrown bodily against the exit panel! - -It slid back at her touch, and she was through it, and then thrown -headlong as a second tremor wrenched her from her feet. The whole world -seemed to be disintegrating around her. - -She found strength somehow and ran again, trying vainly to keep her -balance, to keep the pitching corridor floor beneath her feet. And then -running toward her--God, another guard-- - -No! No, it was no guard! _And it couldn't be--_ - -He caught her, held her without a word. - -"B-Haaq! B-Haaq--how--" - -"Majtech B-Haaq to you from now on! Just on my way to your cell to take -you back where you belong! And that upstart Kane! Only this might save -me the trouble--" - -He hauled her roughly after him into the open rampway which dipped -gently into the wide parking yards. The ramp trembled, bucked beneath -them but she somehow kept from falling. - -"I--I thought you--Kane--" - -"Thought he killed me, did you? He came close enough, and he'll pay -for it! Come along...." - -They crossed the yards at a half run. - -B-Haaq was hauling her up on the fin-step, and then the outer lock was -opening, and they were inside. - -The small space craft rocked sickeningly on its mounts. - -B-Haaq barked to his waiting pilot. "Up-ship, you fool! Do you want us -wrecked before we're even underway?" - -The grim faced labortech punched his studs almost before Deanne had -secured herself in an ackseat, and then with a dangerous overload of -power, the tender jumped free of the shuddering planetoid. - -"B-Haaq--for the love of Pluto, what's happening--" - -"Haven't you learned yet what it's like when a Geejay breaks down? -Sol III has been taking this for over an hour. Fortunately for -you planetary imbalance doesn't affect all bodies in a system -simultaneously, or that piece of rock back there would be rubble by -now...." - -"Is there a Project AA underway yet?" - -"Of course there is. The Flagship received a warp-beam ESR from Sol -III, and of course we dispatched a crew to take care of those nuisances -immediately. One of our duties, after all...." - -The girl unbuckled her ackseat straps and sat up straight. "You mean -they had to _call_?" - -"What do you expect, that we keep a constant watch on all these -backwater planets--" - -"According to Regulations--" - -"A lot you know of Regulations, young woman! Do you realize what the -charge against you is? And that the lives of two men were risked to -bring you back in one piece?" - -"All I know is that this system's Geejay was serviced only eleven -Periods ago, and was supposed to be good for at least--" - -"That will be enough of that, or you'll find yourself facing more than -just loss of rank!" - -She reddened. "What of the man Kane?" she asked. - -"He's lucky," B-Haaq answered, grinning slowly. "He'll be killed down -there before they finish the double-A job." - -An alarm clanged in the ship, and it veered sharply on its automatics, -dodging the hurtling masses of debris that were still being flung -into Space from the Outer Ring of Saturn. Minutes passed before the -labortech at the controls, face drained of color with the tension of -watching for the first sign of failure of the automatics, was able to -relax and set course outward toward the looming hulk that was Director -Gentech Starn's Flagship, drifting slowly at the system's rim. - - * * * * * - -Deanne paused on the catwalk, blended herself with its shadows. She -had heard nothing. She knew every inch of the great Flagship as she -knew the limited dimensions of her own quarters; knew the main traffic -corridors and the hours of each cycle when traffic was at its height -and at its ebb. And she knew the mazed web of maintenance catwalks as -well. - -Her orders had read "Confined to quarters pending disposition of the -following charges--" but her Section Commander knew nothing of men like -Kane, knew nothing of the fire that could touch a man's soul and ignite -the rebellion that now blazed so brightly in her own. The chances -were few that it would even occur to Coltech Q-Jaax that she could be -anywhere but in her quarters. At any rate, that was her gamble, and it -was far less desperate a one than that which Kane had taken for what he -believed. - -The conference chamber loomed below her in the gloom of the ship's -cavernous mid-section, and it would not be difficult to locate one of -the many pressure duct leads. But she would need to remove a small -transition piece, and--no! What would Kane have done--simply extract a -single, strategic machine screw, and _swing_ the piece aside! It would -save minutes. Hearing the men below would then be as simple as though -she stood in the chamber with them. - -And she must hear, must know what they planned. So that somehow, Jon, -if he still lived, could know. - -Within seconds she had swung from the narrow walk and dropped -soundlessly atop the wide expanse of the chamber's metal ceiling. -Quickly she estimated the area beneath which the main council table -lay, then sought the duct nearest the spot. In only seconds more, she -was lying prone in the deep shadows, able to hear. - -"--and to be quite blunt about it, I am genuinely worried...." It was -her uncle. "My niece's extraordinary behavior can be discussed later, -gentlemen. Right now this matter of the Gravity-Justifiers is of the -most importance. First of all, Captech D-Yun, why was I not immediately -notified of the perilous difficulty in Sol system? These people depend -upon us for their very lives! Well?" - -"There is no excuse, Sire." - -"Yes, I think perhaps there is! If not excuse, then reason, at least! -If my memory serves me correctly, it has been a scant eleven Periods -since the Sol Gravity-Justifier was last serviced, a piece of work, -gentlemen, that has in the past been valid for fifty at minimum! Was I, -perhaps, to be kept from knowing that what work was performed eleven -Periods ago was a failure?" - -A tight pause. And then, "Certainly not, Sire," in a soft tone from -D-Yun. "But these people have been such--well, nuisances. We have -given them so much more than their share of service that sabotage of -some sort naturally suggested itself. We had been in the process of -analytical survey--" - -"I'll have none of that, not from any of you! Sabotage indeed. Why, -it is a matter of record that Sol is not the only system in which -breakdown has occurred far ahead of schedule tolerance! Yes, I know -that, too, gentlemen! There is another thing I know as well. I know -that there is no sabotage. I know that my personal staff of copytechs -has been overworked for a full period in an effort to keep the peoples -of over twenty different star systems unaware of the major technical -difficulties which have been increasingly frequent in each of the -others! I know that propaganda, instead of technical skill, has been -keeping the prestige of the Alliance intact! The fault cannot be laid -to Captech D-Yun's saboteurs! It must be laid squarely at our own door -step, gentlemen! For some reason which I would like to know, we have -simply not been able to keep up. We are not the technicians our fathers -were, and careful study will show that they were not technicians to -match their fathers, nor they their fathers before them! Slowly but too -surely, we are losing something! Why?" - - * * * * * - -Deanne breathed shallowly, straining to hear every word. - -"Perhaps, Sire, the efficiency of our Cad tech recruiting system could -be improved. Although I admit, the planets have not been producing -youths of the caliber of--" - -"Bah! If anything, they're getting quicker-witted all the time! And -we have had little trouble, from among twenty-one star systems in -two galaxies, in obtaining the necessary periodic quota! Yet our new -ships are not as good! Our number increases, but that is all! And mere -number, by itself, is worthless!" - -Another voice replied, but she could not identify it. "That might be -traced, Sire, to the poorer quality of raw materials which the planets -are obliged by law to furnish us at the scheduled intervals in return -for our service--" - -"That is starwash, and you know it! If anything, quality has improved, -since the discovery of new mining planets. I can still read records, -young man! Perhaps you are not fully acquainted with the Director whom -you're attempting to deceive!" - -"If, Sire, I may hark back for a moment to the question of -sabotage...." A curious chill coursed the length of Deanne's slender -back. That was B-Haaq speaking. "I suggest that in this particular -instance, Captech D-Yun may well be correct. I speak in light of -the renegade, Cadtech Kane. Prior to his capture on Titan, there is -little telling to what lengths he may have gone for revenge, Sire. -As a Fourth Period Cadtech, he knew Geejay co-ordinates for at -least twelve systems, and he knew also upon what the power of the -ITA depends--technical efficiency. If that were to be flagrantly -misrepresented through such sabotage, ITA prestige and power would of -course suffer, and Kane's thirst for revenge slaked. I think perhaps -it is of paramount importance that we seek to discover where he might -strike next! If, that is, he survived the disintegration of Titan." - -A murmur went up, grew noisier, and Deanne felt herself holding her -breath. Then there was her uncle's voice again-- - -"You use the word 'power' strangely, Majtech." - -"Not at all strangely, Sire! Our technical excellence has made all -planets completely dependent upon us! You may say that it is not -revenge that we seek, but only safety. You may say that if we do have -power and prestige, it is only for self protection, so that what -happened to our ancestors centuries ago may never again be repeated. -All these things are true. But also true is the fact that power is -power. We have it, for two galaxies depend upon us for the very life -of their civilizations! It is Kane who would threaten it! To give it -up, or to let it be so easily taken from us, is to make of ourselves -the fools that Kane so confidently assumes us to be! Centuries of work -and progress hang in the balance, gentlemen! If this Kane has escaped -Titan, we must find him! And if he has not, then we must undo his work! -We must, in short, show these planets who holds the whip-hand, first, -last and always!" - -There was a moment of silence. Then suddenly a swelling flow of voices -lifted in approval, and there was scattered applause. And it did not -quiet immediately when the Director Gentech spoke. - -"Gentlemen! Gentlemen. You must know that I thoroughly disapprove of -the views that Majtech B-Haaq has just expressed, and I am certain -that, upon a moment's self-examination, you will feel as I do. I have -thought often of the man Kane, and have as often wondered how close -he may have been to many truths which we have either overlooked or -forgotten! However, in all fairness to the Majtech I will call for a -vote. Those in favor of the Majtech's proposals to comb the Sol system -for Cadtech Kane, and to assert the prestige of the ITA will ballot -'yea.' Those opposed will cast blank ballots." - -Silence, then, and Deanne counted her heart beats, thought surely they -must be loud enough now to be heard the length and breadth of the ship. - -"--the ballots have been counted, gentlemen...." The deep voice was -slow and deliberate as it always was--yet it seemed, somehow, too slow -now, too deep. "Majtech B-Haaq's proposals are approved by a majority -of--of one vote. We will therefore begin our search immediately, and -will trust that I was also incorrect in my evaluation of our present -technological efficiency. This session is now adjourned." - -Director Gentech Starn had suffered the first overruling of his long -career. - - - VII - -There were hard, stinging sensations in his face. They pierced the -infinity of darkness until somewhere in it they touched his naked -nerves and the darkness receded, slowly and became a blinding light. - -A space-suited figure was standing over him, and it held the limp form -of an empty suit in one hand, and a hand-weapon in the other, and the -weapon was extended toward him, butt first! - -He could see the hard, beetle-browed face behind the sealed face piece -of the helmet. The mouth was moving rapidly, but he could not hear. - -Jon's head hurt, and the pain spread throughout his body when he moved -to get his feet beneath him, stood up. Subconsciously he knew he was -aboard a ship in Space; there was the subtle, rippling vibration so -familiar to any man with Spacelegs, and there was the smell of pumped -atmosphere and the curious feeling of artificial gravity. - -He tried to think even as he took the suit shoved into his arms by -the man who had brought him back to consciousness, and began climbing -dazedly into it. A suit, inside a ship in which the atmosphere was -perfectly breathable? A _ship_! Tinker? No--no ITA craft, even the -newest, had such thick-looking bulkheads, or was equipped with suits of -such peculiar design--hard to get into the thing, nothing was in its -right place. But if not an ITA craft, then--but that was not possible! - -He had no sooner gotten the helmet adjusted than the radiophones in it -crackled. - -"Snap it up, get that face plate sealed! Here, you may need this--" He -had taken care of the face plate, and now the curiously fashioned hand -weapon was pushed into his right hand. - -"What--" - -"There's half a hundred Tinkers out fumbling around with a Project AA. -Things are letting up on the planets, but they still haven't got the -damn thing fixed the way it should be ... found us, though...." - -"Us?" His tongue was still thick in his mouth and it was difficult to -talk, or even think of words to say. - -"You'll find out about us later. But in about a minute more they'll -be in range, and those Space cannons of theirs'll be whaling away at -us for all they're worth. They'd be dead ducks if this bucket was -equipped the way it should be...." The man cursed. "... but there's not -enough E-blasters to go around yet, or I-drives either, and that's why -we're going to be a big sieve in less time than it takes to tell it. I -suppose it ain't your fault--" - -"My fault? Last I knew--" - -"Sorry if I slugged you too hard, but the boss said to be sure. Be -sure, he says, and he sends us out in one of the first tanks we made -instead of one of the new jobs! Sometimes, I--" - -"No escape craft? No--" - -"You kidding? We sit here and take it! We could take to the ports, but -the power packs on these suits are no match for those space tenders of -theirs. They'd pick us up sure. Me, I'd die ten times first!" - -Jon tried to assimilate the information, tried to take it all in even -as he struggled to gain back his full consciousness. - -"Mind telling me where we are? Where we're headed? Why in hell I was -shanghaied?" - -"Right now, about two points spherical north-northwest of Jupiter, -minus about twelve to the ecliptic. Where we're headed you'll find out, -if we live through this. And you weren't shanghaied. Not all the way, -anyway. You didn't think that alarm system stayed quiet all by itself, -did you? Or that the jetgiro flew itself to where you found it? The -boss is still going to be sore. We were supposed to put the net over -two of you--" - -So it _had_ been too easy! Of course the 'quake hadn't been counted on -and that had disrupted the plan, but at least there had been a plan, -and that meant that there was someone who wanted him away from the ITA. - -"You weren't on Titan five minutes before we knew." - -"But what about the girl? The Lenantech arrested with me?" Something -cold was suddenly eating away inside him, and the memory of the awful -quakes came back to him in a rush, and he could visualize Deanne, -lying lifeless somewhere. - -"Don't know. As it was, we almost missed you after the quake started. -Plans went completely haywire as far as she was concerned. But no more -damn fool questions. I was supposed to get you oriented before they -were on top of us and you've got it all, except for--" - -There was a sudden lurch and Jon was thrown sprawling, was suddenly -picked up as though by some gigantic hand and thrown bodily toward a -self-sealing hatch that closed just as he crashed heavily into it. The -chamber was now all but airless. They'd been hit by a Tinker missile, -and there was a gaping, ragged hole somewhere in this ship's hide. - -He struggled to his feet. Then saw the other man, not moving, crumpled -to the deck. A jagged fragment of metal was embedded in his chest. -There was another sickening lurch and another. They were being -clobbered with everything the Tinker-ship had. - -But somehow he got to the wounded man's side. The hard eyes opened -for but a moment, and the lips moved. The sounds they made were but a -whisper in his earphones. - -"Six ... nine-X. Point ... oh one-Y. Eight six. Z--" - -And then the eyes opened wide, and the lips closed, and the man was -dead. - - * * * * * - -The ship shuddered again, and through his helmet Kane heard a dull, -booming explosion, and he knew the craft had been fatally hit. Another -second and it would be pulling apart at the seams. All Tinker guns were -on-target and firing at will. - -The locks! Where the hell would the locks be on this strangely designed -ship? - -He breathed again when the hatch popped open because of the dwindling -air pressure. He was aware of the conglomeration of noises in his -earphones. Somewhere a man was screaming. There had been men screaming -for the last full minute, but only now were the sounds beginning to -register on his taut brain. - -"Where in hell is Zetterman?" - -"Don't know--aft with the guy we were sent for I guess. Oh God." - -"Then he's within twenty feet of a lock if he's still alive. But he -hasn't answered us. So what d'you want to do? We're all that's left and -they're almost alongside." - -"They'd get us either way. If only we could get aft that lock's on the -port side, away from 'em--" - -Jon let the words make sense. Port side. Twenty feet away--THERE! - -In seconds the inner port was open, and then he was waiting for the -outer one, not even bothering to cycle the lock down. He'd be blown a -little, but a running start out would help. He wanted to communicate -with the men he'd heard talking, find out what the numbers meant that -the dead man Zetterman had mouthed, but the Tinkers would be monitoring -everything, and they'd pick up even a helmet set at this range. - -The outer lock cracked slowly open, and what little pressure there -still was in the lock held him gently against the widening opening -as it dissipated entirely with a low howl into the black infinity -of space. He popped out, and it was like stepping from an invisible -mountainside into a night that was too dark, with stars that looked too -close. Only crazily, you didn't fall-- - -He drifted on the slight momentum the spent air pressure in the lock -had given him, the telltale flicker of his power pack this close to the -huge gray shape that loomed less than a hundred yards to the other side -of the broken ship he was leaving would mean the end of him. He thought -at top speed. Of course their screens would pick him up but he gambled -that he'd be discounted as simply another chunk of wreckage smashed by -the Tinker guns. - -Jove loomed hugely, fantastically, slightly above him. Soon his drift -would become free-fall, but he must wait until the last possible moment -to use the pack. Yet if he waited too long-- - -He clenched his teeth until they hurt, willed his arms to his sides, -his hands away from the pack controls. The multi-hued bands of the -great planet were alternately dark and bright, undulating slowly, as -though readying to seize him, devour him, freeze him. The Gargantuan -mass seemed but yards away rather than well over a million miles. Yet -it was too close, and it was slowly moving in upon him. - -He turned his body, tried to watch the Tinker ship. It had closed with -the shattered wreck which he'd escaped, grappled to it. A port opened, -and there was a pinprick of fiery light from the dark maw. Boarding -in suits. But there was no orange-violet flash of a spacetender's -exhausts, so perhaps, then, he had been unnoticed. - -But he must still drift and he knew now that he had started to fall. -Ever so slightly, but he was heading straight for the great mass of -Jupiter, and his initial direction had been almost tangent to its -orbit. The massive orb seemed even more flattened at its poles than -usual, and its satellites were orbiting erratically, due, he knew, to -the Geejay failure that had rocked the whole system. - -Yet even as he watched, and as slowly as they swung, Jon Kane's -practiced eye and mind detected retrograde movements, and realized -that the tiny moons were slowly falling back in what he knew were -approximately their former orbits. The Tinkers were somehow succeeding. - -But the suit was getting cold. Its insulation was surprisingly -efficient, but it was still only an emergency feature of the rig, to -keep a man alive for a short period in the event of heater failure. -And using the heater meant radiation, yet he'd have to risk it now. -And soon, the pack itself. But it would be of little avail if he -wandered aimlessly, and that, he had to gamble, was where the numbers -came in. With the three letter combinations, they could be spherical -co-ordinates. For his life, they would have to be. - -69-X. .01-Y. 86-Z. With planes of reference calculated to the median -plane of planetary ecliptics relative to the Sun. Then. - -Swiftly, his brain analyzed the values, gave him an approximation. And -it would be a point-- - -And where he looked there was only blackness. It was the damn time -factor, of course, that was lacking. Yet Zetterman would not have given -him figures for yesterday or next month. They'd have to be figures for -now, or for expected time of arrival at destination, but where? How -far? Near Jove? The satellites? One of them? That would make the time -factor next to zero. And-- - -Of course! The figures would no longer be completely valid; margin of -error would be wide after the gravitational imbalance that was only now -beginning to be righted! If he scanned several hundred thousand miles -to either side of his point of dead reckoning. - -And there it was! Callisto. He was almost astride its orbit, and -because it was nearer to his reckoned point than any of the rest, it -would have to be the most probable destination. - -If, of course, he was right about the time factor. If the co-ordinates -referred to the location of bodies in the ship's immediate vicinity -when it was attacked. - -He was numb from the cold, and to wait longer with his powerpack would -mean to become ensnared in Jove's awful gravity field before he could -make the necessary right angle break in direction and set course for -the barren planetoid. - -His arms ached as he drew them up inside his suit, and his fingers were -clumsy, senseless things groping for the power and heat toggles. - -Then he found them. In moments there was warmth, and then the gray -satellite toward which he headed began getting larger with each passing -second. - - * * * * * - -The ragged circle of the plain was unbroken for almost as far as he -could see in the dim reflected light of the satellite's primary, save -for recent fissures in its surface that had been caused by wrenching -quakes during the failure of the Geejay, and occasional pockmarks left -by the wandering bits of cosmic flotsam that had been ensnared by -the surprisingly slight Callistan gravity. The plain on which he had -touched down was ringed with low mountain chains that looked like giant -dragon's teeth poised to impale him at any moment. And Jove itself -looked weirdly tilted with its atmospheric bands now inclined steeply -away from the horizontal. Its pale light cast eerie shadows across the -plain; made the cracks in its surface and miniature craters deceptively -large and small. - -And there was no sign of human habitation, no artificial structure -shone against the dark horizon, and it meant he would have to -waste precious fuel, blasting in great leaps across the moon's not -inconsiderable surface, looking. He was not even certain for what. - -If Zetterman had intended to have him find this particular one of -eleven satellites, then why had he not included grid co-ordinates -of latitude and longitude? Or had the man been about to when death -intervened? - -Unless ... whatever artificial installation existed on the planet could -be located with the same co-ordinates! It would be ingenious.... - -Rapidly, Jon envisioned a standard tri-dimensional system grid in -his mind's eye; applied it to the satellite upon which he stood, -substituting its ecliptic-apparent north-south axis and solar-apparent -X and Y equatorial axes for the Z, X and Y axes of the standard -celestial sphere. Applying Zetterman's co-ordinates, then, his -direction would be generally north-northwest, to a point below the -satellite's surface! - -For a moment the thought sent his mind spinning back into confusion, -and then he realized that by the standard spherical method of point -determination, his chances would have been one in a theoretical -infinity of arriving at a point exactly on the planetoid's surface. - -The installation was subterranean, then, which was logical, but which -made matters all the more difficult. Unless, of course, there would be -some slight surface indication. God, if only Zetterman had lived an -instant longer. - -With a muttered prayer that his deductions and dead reckoning -calculations were substantially more than empty rationalizations of -desperation, Jon thumbed the power toggles of his suit pack and leapt -lightly off across the planetoid's hostile surface. He would, of -course, have to be right. For there was only a limited amount of oxygen -left in his tanks, and his power would certainly not last forever. - -He kept track of his position by the most primitive way Man knew; the -orb that was the Sun. And mentally, superimposed that orb against -the tri-di grid that seemed now to be stamped imperishably upon his -brain, simultaneously allowing for orbital speed differential and solar -parallax. - -He fell back gently to the planetoid's volcanic terrain for a final -time, and knew that the spot he sought, if it existed at all, was now -within scant yards of him. Mighty Jupiter was now at zenith, yet even -in its directly mirrored, undulating illumination it was more difficult -to see than before, and each step was an experiment. Pumice spattered -over his spaceboots, solid looking stuff which could be but a shifting -overlay for some bottomless fissure or yawning crevasse. And above him -and down to the horizon to every side, stars gleamed tauntingly, coldly -in the blackness, as though to remind him that a man could not live -forever. - -He began walking in ever widening circles. Something would show. - - - VIII - -Deanne was never certain whether her decision had been wholly a product -of her own mind, seething as it had been with the awful conflict -between her life's learning and what she knew to be right, or if it had -been made for her by the clanging of the ship's alarm intercom unit in -her quarters. - -She had been lucky. She had succeeded in getting back undetected from -her breach of arrest; return from her vantage point atop the conference -chamber had been as uneventful as her stealthy escape through the -catwalk maze to it, and once safely back in her quarters she had tried -to rest, to get her mind in order and to think. - -Her uncle, the Director Gentech himself, had been beaten by B-Haaq, and -B-Haaq was not a man to let an advantage be wasted. It would be only a -matter of time, now. A matter of time, and the Majtech would be giving -the orders, and her own fate would be in his hands. She had to decide. -To stay and try to help a faltering old man or to make an outright -attempt to escape even as Kane had done, and then somehow to find him! -For Kane had been right! Oh, yes, Kane had been right. For power was -not an end in itself, and in the last analysis, the end did not justify -the means! The ITA, right or wrong ... no! The ITA was wrong! - -The alarm clanged, and then the speaker squawked raucously. - -"Attention all officers and techpersonnel! Man your combat stations! -An unidentified spacecraft lies nine point three points starboard -ecliptic minus twelve oh three at three hundred thousand and we -are overhauling. Presence of the fugitive Kane aboard is strong -probability, therefore orders are to fire to destroy. Repeating, all -officers and techpersonnel, man your combat stations! An--" - -Deanne snapped the communicator into silence with a force that nearly -tore the toggle from its socket. The stupid fools! Enemies had always -been destroyed in the past, and so now this enemy was to be destroyed! -Regardless of the fact that they would never find Kane, alive or -otherwise, if every ship aboard which he might be were blasted to bits! - -In moments, the corridors and catwalks would be alive with scurrying -Cadtechs, officers and labortechs, rushing pell-mell to half forgotten -battle stations, trying desperately as they did to remember precisely -how the Flagship's long silent cannon were operated. There would be no -eyes for a shapeless, space-suited figure. - -She waited tensely until the clamor outside her cubicle was at its -height, then swiftly opened the narrow bulkhead hatch, stepped through -it and into the milling chaos of men and women, and let herself be -swept toward the suit lockers, and the bank or lock ports near them. - -The corridor lights were blazing, now, and the white faces that bobbed -beneath them were strained. Deanne found a suit and donned it even as -the first of the craft's spacecannon was fired. The deck shuddered -beneath her feet, and she was nearly knocked off balance by a trio of -guntechs who had not yet found their posts. But there was more order -now, and she would have to hurry. The other ship must be close, for the -guns had already begun firing barrages, and that was only done when the -target was in naked-eye view. - -Swiftly, she slipped into an air lock, flattened herself against a -narrow bulkhead as its inner port slid shut, and remained immobile as -its automatic pumps cycled down to zero pressure. Now she would wait, -watch and pray that no one looked into the lock in passing. It was a -crazy gamble, and if Jon were not aboard.... - -She watched the star strewn blackness, narrowed her eyelids against -the awful glare in it each time a battery fired, and there was a -sudden little catch in her throat as the limn of mighty Jupiter swung -majestically into her field of vision. Somewhere, out there, in that -awful infinity--there! - -Ice seemed to form in a lump inside her. The alien ship was a perfect -target, silhouetted against the huge shining disc of Jove! _And it was -breaking up!_ - -Great gouts of fire were bursting from its engine housings, molten -fragments of jagged metal glowed as they gyrated crazily from it -in great showers of white-hot flame, and she could feel the awful -vibration of the Flagship's guns as they continued firing mercilessly -on target. - -A tiny pinpoint of fire. - -She saw it, and in the eye searing holocaust it did not at once -register on her reeling brain. - -A tiny pinpoint of blue-white fire that had not emanated from the -stricken alien, but had suddenly appeared for a mere fraction of a -second at a considerable distance from it! A suit pack! - -With the silent prayer at her lips that it had escaped the eyes of the -others, Deanne triggered open the outer lock port and launched herself -into Space. - - * * * * * - -Somehow she knew the man was Jon Kane, even as she knew she had found -him too late. She stood, rooted to the spot in the deep shadow of -the ragged crag beneath which she had landed, unable even to warn -him of the man who had suddenly appeared behind him. A man with a -weapon in one hand, aimed straight at the Cadtech's back! To use her -radio at such a distance would mean a power output that would bring a -spacetender down upon her within minutes. - -Helplessly, she watched. Watched as the other touched Jon with his -weapon, forced him over the lip of a wide crater-- - -"No--!" - -Her choked scream all but deafened her inside her helmet. - -Then she saw that the other followed over the lip, and realized that -their destination was somewhere inside the depression itself. - -For long, silent moments she stood in maddening frustration, watching -the two men disappear into the crater, as powerless to act as she had -been to warn. She could not go back, now, nor could she go further. - - - IX - -The crater walls had been moderately magnetized with a thin coating of -metallic spray, and Kane walked before his captor down their sloping -incline with greater ease than he had been able to negotiate the -planetoid's natural surface. He hesitated as the crater bottom suddenly -began to yawn slowly open, and there was the prodding in his back again. - -"Keep moving, mister. There's a ladder, and you're first!" - -Kane moved carefully, looked over the smooth lip of the now fully -opened shaft. The ladder was a thin, tubular affair with narrow rungs. -He dropped to his knees, swung one leg over; held with his elbows, -groped with the other foot for the next lower rung. Then felt with one -hand, found the top rung, and started down. - -"I can't cover you on the way down," the man above him said. "But I -have a fresh supply of oxygen, and I don't think you have. And I've got -both guns!" - -The shaft closed silently above them, and then there was sudden -illumination, and Jon blinked after the half-light of the bleak world -outside. The folds of his suit began to feel loose, and he knew that -the shaft must also function as an air lock, and was cycling up to -pressure as they descended. - -When they at length reached bottom, his captor gestured at him with a -hand weapon. - -"Get your suit off. It stays with me. Whether you get it back again or -not'll be up to you. Move!" - -Jon fumbled with unfamiliarly placed dogs and buckles, then surrendered -the suit, and took deep lungsfull of air. - -"Where now?" But the other couldn't hear. His helmet was still in -place, and Jon knew that whoever wanted him wasn't taking any more -chances than necessary. But as if in answer to his question, a concave -panel in the shaft wall was suddenly sliding open, and the stockily -built man who stepped in it covered him almost casually with a strange -looking two-handed weapon. He signaled to the other, then looked at Jon -as if noticing him for the first time. - -He stepped aside, motioned toward the open panel with the ugly snout of -the gun he carried. "After you, mister. And step along. You've kept the -boss-man waiting a little!" - -Both men had spoken in the language of Terra, yet it sounded strangely -distorted to Jon. He had known the language almost all his life, but -his father had taught him the words as they were said in a part of -the planet that had once been called Vermont, and he noticed an odd -difference in the other's speech. He wondered, idly, if any of them -spoke the Universal. But at least, now, he knew who they were. Solmen -of Earth, who had somehow learned to build space ships and weapons; who -had somehow escaped the alert eye of Earth's Tinker spies. But he did -not feel the surprise he had expected. There were legends about the men -of Earth. - -The heavy footfalls of the stocky, heavily muscled man behind him -echoed hollowly in the narrow corridor. The passageway curved gently, -sloping downward, then came to an abrupt end. - -"Turn to your right." - -He did, and a panel similar to the first was opening for him. He -stepped through it, and his second captor followed. - -"O.K., hold it." - -They were in a compact room, and it was not empty. There were about -ten men in it, Jon estimated at first glance, all similarly dressed -in the green leatheroid coveralls that his captors wore, and barren -of any insignia of rank. They looked up from their places around the -paper-littered conference table, and a big man at its head half rose -from his chair. - -"Haine! I thought I told you--oh, is this the man?" - -"Darwin be with us, sir, it is." - -The big man's face changed expression quickly. He resumed his seat, and -suddenly the room was quiet, and others were turning in their chairs, -fixing Jon with their eyes. The big man gave no signal for him to be -seated in one of the empty chairs, but spoke to him as though he had -been placed under arrest. - -"You are Kane? The Tinkerman arrested on Titan?" - -"I am," Jon answered, trying to keep self confidence strong in his -voice. "But I don't--" - -"Just answer my questions, Master Kane. My name is Stine--Martin Stine. -On Earth I'm a Senator. My men got you out of the lockup on Titan. -Apparently you and the Tinkerwoman escaped them afterward--" - -"I don't know what happened to the Lenantech, but as for myself, I'd -have tried!" Jon said, rankling slightly at the smug tone of the man's -voice. "Apparently you haven't heard of what happened to the ship you -sent to pick me up. You won't see it again. And the only reason I'm -here is that I elected to come, following the directions of one of your -men that was dying." - - * * * * * - -The Senator glanced quickly at the men surrounding him. Then, "You can -tell me that part of the story later, Kane. I understand you're sort of -a--renegade Tinkerman, is that right?" - -"That's right, but how did you learn--" - -"My organization has many men in many places. I understand that you're -a rather out of the ordinary technician, Kane, and that at this minute -the ITA is after your hide. So I've a proposition for you. We can use -technicians." Stine was leaning back in his chair, now, relaxed, sure -of himself. The others did not look so relaxed, and to Jon, seemed far -from being as certain. - -"First of all, I want to know who you are," Jon said, speaking Stine's -Terra dialect to the best of his ability. "Earth is no different a -planet than the rest." - -"I said I would ask the questions, Kane! But for your information, this -organization is made up of men much like yourself. I'm assuming that -you achieved your technological proficiency by obtaining certain books -for yourself; books the Tinkers ordered destroyed, and no longer have -themselves. Well, your case is not exactly unique. The difference is, -you were trapped into selection for training by the ITA. My men were -not. We are, in the respect that we're free, in better position than -you are to break the ITA. And certainly you did not hope to do the job -single-handed." - -"Break the ITA?" Jon asked. He felt a peculiar note of discord. These -men were not hiding. Not just hiding. - -"Why of course." The big man shifted in his seat, again glanced around -at the others. Their eyes were still fastened on Jon as though they -had never seen a Tinkerman before. "They may not be dictators in the -true sense of the word, but they wield a tremendous political power -over more than a hundred planets, Kane. You know that. They have only -to refuse a planet its scheduled service visits, and the economy -and civilization of that planet is suddenly faced with collapse. -Ultimately, such a set-up is going to mean ruin anyway. Someday, there -is bound to be rebellion, and not on any single planet, but on many. -It will free men from the ITA perhaps, but it will also mean quick -retrogression; civilization will, because of its complexity, backslide -faster than men can regain what the Wars destroyed, or re-learn what -the Tinkers have kept from them. - -"It might have worked if the ITA had not become sloppy. But it -can no longer even do a decent Project AA! It imperils the lives -of two galaxies, yet refuses to give men the knowledge to protect -themselves! Therefore, we are going to destroy the Tinkers, Kane. Our -propaganda machinery is gaining momentum daily, and this most recent -Geejay breakdown in Sol system is grist for our mill. Our technical -achievements are improving daily despite the fact that they have been -carried out under the handicap of utmost secrecy over a long period of -extremely difficult years. - -"When I learned of your captivity by warp-beam from Titan and was told -about you and the woman and was asked if I wanted you, I said yes. I -spared you, Kane, and went to great trouble to obtain you, because -you know the Tinkers as we could never hope to know them. And, more -importantly, you can handle technology far better than either we or -they. Is that true?" - -Jon hesitated, looked at the faces up-turned to him, saw the cold -bitterness in their eyes. - -"I can make a double-A good for five hundred years." - -"Just as we thought. You're dangerous to them, Kane, because for some -reason you know more than they do. People would start looking to you, -rather than to them, for their needs, and they're scared stiff you'll -go around blabbing all you know, ruining their hold. Well, that is just -the chance we want to give you. Help us, and later, you'll be able to -name your own price. Go back to the Tinkers, and you're a dead man." - -The room was silent again, but their eyes were still upon him. He tried -to think, tried to evaluate what the big man had said. It all seemed so -logical, yet--yet there was something wrong. There was something they -did not understand. Or, perhaps, understood too well. - -"I--I agree with you about the tremendous power they wield," Jon said -slowly, "but you're wrong about destroying them. It's true they're not -the technicians they once were. They have polluted logic with belief -and historical fact with legend; they do know _how_, but they don't -know _why_, and that's affecting their know-how, if you see what I -mean. They use belief more and more and reason less and less--" - -Stine nodded. "Precisely. If knowledge is not given room to grow, it -deteriorates, and finally is nothing more than half understood pseudo -truths. Therefore I fail to see--" - -"If you destroy them," Jon interrupted, "you suddenly remove the -last recognized seat of technical knowledge that exists in our two -galaxies. Recognized, you understand. And that'd mean real chaos, -Senator. The people would be so scared and helpless at the prospect -of being helpless that they'd revert to savages even faster than the -way in which you described. They'd panic for certain--panic as panic -hasn't been known since the Wars themselves." Jon let the sentence -trail off, half wondering as he spoke why he was suddenly championing a -system which he hated, defending a reactionary philosophy of existence -which stunted men's minds at every turn. For Stine was at least half -right--the Tinkers did threaten the very essence of intellectual -freedom. Yet at the same time he knew that to destroy them would be to -cause even worse harm. - -It was as though the others around the table and the man who was his -captor did not exist, now. It had become a quiet, tense drama between -two minds, and Jon knew he had not been brought here to do Stine's -thinking for him. - -"You know, Kane," Stine was saying then, his voice suddenly smooth and -soft, his big face relaxing into a studied grin, "they got their hooks -into you more deeply than I'd thought. You're still half-Tinker, aren't -you?" - -"But I'm not speaking from loyalty! Only from logic--" The big man -waved a meaty hand deprecatingly, interrupted easily. - -"Master Kane, the Space Tinkers must be forced to give up their books -and charts. They must be forced to relinquish this semi-intellectual, -semi-religious hold they have on over a hundred planets; their -monopoly, in short, must be broken!" A huge fist slammed emphatically -down on the littered table top. "My organization has worked long and -hard and preserved its secrets at great risk toward that end! We have -the ships, we have the weapons--some better, we believe, than those -of the ITA--and we have the men! And you, sir, are either with us or -against us!" His face had become florid, and Jon knew now that Stine -was playing for effect on the others; knew suddenly that his own logic -was right, and that it was again recognized as a threat, even as B-Haaq -had recognized it. A threat to personal power! - -And suddenly words were coming in heated torrents from his own lips. -"Secrecy! It is all you and the ITA can think of! Whatever it is you -know or learn, it must be kept from others! Yes, even while you speak -of breaking the ITA monopoly of knowledge and power, you seek to form -an identical one yourself! Can't you understand that where there is -secrecy, peace and progress cannot exist? Can't you understand that in -the realm of science and technology, there are no secrets? The facts of -nature are everywhere in Creation, Senator! You cannot hide them! For -awhile you may blind people to them, but they cannot be hidden, they -are for everyone to see and use as he will, regardless of which side -he is on! The Tinkers have kept people blind to them for a few years, -but it has become increasingly difficult; and they are learning the -hard way that the worst of keeping secrets is the forgetting of them -yourself!" - -Stine's face was becoming white and tense, and the others gave uneasy -glances in his direction, but he did not interrupt, and Jon kept going, -unleashing the whole torrent of thoughts that had tormented his soul -for so long, so very long. - -"You speak of monopoly, Senator, but you're forming one yourself! You, -and your organization, have been fortunate enough, as I was, to have -found some of the old books, to have learned some of the old knowledge -with which the armament for the Wars was built, and against which, when -their horror was finally over, people everywhere rebelled. It was they -who burned the books, Senator! Not the ITA! It was they who wanted done -with all that seemed to them responsible for the carnage which they -had somehow survived! It was they--on a hundred planets--who without -thinking, ran down their scientists, their technicians; murdered them -for possessing the knowledge which they had misused! And the few -technicians who escaped were bitter and frightened men. They managed to -salvage a few of the old ships and escape. And theirs was the natural -error of assuming that if they were not to suffer what their murdered -companions had, they must think in terms of using what they alone knew -as a weapon against those who did not and would not be allowed to have -that knowledge! - -"But--and listen to me, gentlemen!--even as the Senator has said, if -knowledge is not given room to grow, it deteriorates! And by keeping -their well guarded secrets to themselves, entrusting them only to -specially selected personnel whom they recruited year after year for -training from the planets so that their organization could grow more -rapidly in numbers, and by keeping those 'secrets' sacrosanct and -unchallangeable, they became at length outmoded, and finally half -forgotten and adulterated with pompous nonsense! And if you are to -do the same, then the same will happen to you!" He paused quickly -for fresh breath, then plunged on headlong. "The solution is not in -fighting and battle--for that is what precipitated the whole stupid -situation in the first place, as it always will. I told you I could do -a double-A that would last five hundred years, and I can! And I will do -it! And I will show you how to do it! But only on the condition that -your propaganda machine gives the Tinkers the entire credit for it!" - -"Master Kane, that is enough!" - -"I'm not finished yet! Can't you see the effect such a move will -have? The Tinkers will be grateful, first of all, because they're in -desperate straits right now. Secondly, they will realize that there -is superior knowledge to their own, and that it can be a beneficial -thing, rather than a threat to their well being. From that point they -might be convinced that their 'secrets' should no longer be kept, but -instead given back to the very people who once destroyed them in anger. -And thirdly, the people will have new faith in the ITA and its ability; -new respect for the technical knowledge which they now fear and covet -so dangerously! In such a way, gentlemen, you can get civilization -climbing again in such a way that the Tinkers will be eliminated, but -of their own volition, because they will at length have no more to -fear, and no further defensive purpose to serve. - -"Unless--" and Jon paused for a long breath, "Unless, Senator, you -simply want the power the Tinkers now enjoy, for yourself!" - -Stine looked at him for a long moment. - -And then he smiled, but there was Winter in his eyes. - -"We all make mistakes," he said softly. "Sorry. Haine! Take him away!" - - - X - -Stealthily Deanne picked her way from shadow to shadow toward the -smooth walled depression, her feet scarcely touching the planetoid's -riven surface in the slight gravity. Yards from it, she got to her -stomach and crawled to the lip, peered over. - -Every muscle in her body went tense as she saw the hidden hatch at the -crater's bottom sliding soundlessly closed. - -As she had thought, the crater wall was artificially magnetized, and -in a half crouch, clinging to the deepest shadow cast by the grotesque -ball of Jupiter above her, she edged her way downward. She reached the -spot where the camouflaged hatch had closed, and, again prone, waited. - -There was only the space of seconds before the round slab of metal -began opening! She tensed, and with her helmet touching the ground, -heard the sound of heavy footsteps climbing upward, making the hollow, -clanging sounds of space boots on metallic ladder rungs. - -A space helmet suddenly thrust itself above the opening, and for a -frozen second, she could see the man's face. It was not Jon's! There -was a look of stunned surprise upon it for that timeless moment, and -Deanne knew even as she moved that it was this space between seconds or -never at all. - -With all the strength in her body she swung her right leg, swung the -heavy toe of her spaceboot straight at the man's face plate! - -He tried vainly to dodge, to drop downward to safety. Had Deanne waited -a heartbeat longer she would have missed. She felt the terrible impact -as her boot hit squarely, shattered the thin plastiglass of the helmet, -went through it to strike flesh and bone. - -Instinctively her eyes went shut tight as the man inside the ruptured -suit virtually exploded. - -But there was no time to think of what she'd done, to wonder if this -was murder or the duty of warfare: the man was dead. Half in, half out -of the yawning hatchway, sprawled like a bloody puppet, his weapons -still in their holsters at his sides. She took them. And even in the -light gravity of Callisto, it took nearly all the strength she could -summon and all her courage to haul the limp thing that had been a -man all the way out of the gaping shaft and then push it, over and -over, away from her, away from the hatch that had already begun to -automatically swing downward. - -She squirmed quickly beneath it, found the ladder rungs with her boots, -and then clung to the slender ladder in the sudden darkness without -moving, her muscles trembling at the edge of panic. To misjudge now was -to fall hideously through blackness to certain destruction only God -knew how abysmally far below. - -Then somehow she steeled herself. Made her legs move mechanically; -found the next rung below. And then the next and the next. - - * * * * * - -The red blindness of exhaustion under the blaze of desert suns flooded -over his numbed brain in a dark backwash of pain, and with it were all -the past tortures of Prokyman stockades and the hopeless defeat that -had lain at the fringe of every movement of his life; Jon Kane could -not see and could hear only weirdly distorted sounds for he was, if not -yet dead, then close to death, and only through some freak of neural -reaction, not quite beyond the threshold of consciousness. But he had -not spoken. And now that power was quite lost to him. - -But he could still somehow feel the animal presence of his torturers, -ringed tight around him yet in the tiny, glaring cubicle of polished -steel; there was new pain in his shattered face, and he knew it was -the freezing carbon dioxide spray designed to shock him back to full -consciousness. But now it was only a new pain. - -There was the voice of Haine. - -"Hurry up, get him around. If he cashes in before we get anything out -of him Stine'll blow a connection. That's a man who hates to lose on an -investment." - -"Didn't invest much. Didn't risk much either, if you ask me. What else -was that broken down tank good for anyway? I say kill the--" - -"Get him around and shut up." - -The freezing pain again. But the darkness held. - -New sounds. Stine. - -"What have you been trying to do, kill him outright? How much have you -gotten?" - -"Nothing yet, sir. He's either the craziest man in the universe or the -toughest. Or else he doesn't know anything." - -"Nonsense! The things this man knows can put us all in the shade, and -don't you forget it! But if we don't find out just how much his people -still know--or don't know--it'll be your necks as well as mine! They -realize there's somebody else besides themselves in Space, now." - -The darkness seemed to be lifting a little; the numbness seemed to be -thawing from his brain, and the pain became more agonizingly acute. - -"We'll try again, sir--" - -"Never mind. There's a better use for this fellow than killing him by -inches. Perhaps he places little value on his own life, but when it -comes to those of a few billion people. Yes. Haine, do you think you -could wreck a Geejay?" - -"Wreck a--" There was the sound of hoarse breathing from a half dozen -men, and Jon felt something stir inside him, but it was as though he -were a thing disconnected from his physical body; that he no longer had -power of decision over it. "--sure, I guess so. A double-A in reverse! -Haw! Where?" - -"Canis Major, Proky system, if that's where he's from." - -"Don't look like a Prokyman to me." - -"Never mind that. Could you do the job so that the ITA couldn't repair -it? And I mean NOT AT ALL?" - -"Hell, sir, one of our E-blasters would do that much--" - -"I have a feeling that one very simple way to gain our end, Haine, -would be through the use of our E-blasters against every ship the ITA -possesses--and just what do you suppose that would leave us? This -fellow here wasn't so far wrong, you know, when he pointed out what -would happen in the event the ITA were suddenly destroyed. We'd be left -with a universe full of the screaming meemies. We'd be on top, but -on top of the biggest booby hatch you ever saw! If we're going to do -ourselves any good, we leave the ITA in one piece. The only difference -being, we tell them what to do!" - -"Now ain't that nice of us, to just walk in like that without firing a -charge--" - -"I'm doing the thinking around here, Johnson!" - -"It's a cinch you ain't doing much of the shooting! Letting -fancy-brains, here, tell you--" - -Jon heard the sudden sound of bone crunching against bone; there was a -choked yelp of pain, and the sound of a man falling heavily. Then Stine -was talking again, softly. - -"Anyone else here who prefers muscle to brain power?" - -"Sir--Johnson's--you--" - -"Bury him later, and listen to me now! I want the Gravity-Justifier in -Procyon smashed so that the Tinkers can't do a thing with it--but so -that _he can_! Do you understand, Haine?" - -"I can smash it up so that _we_ couldn't put it back together in a -million years." - -"You'll be responsible. Let's get this man aboard the _New World_ and -be ready to up-ship within an hour. We're going to have our cake, -gentlemen, and eat it, too! Unless, of course, our friend Kane, here, -will be able to watch ten billion people die as an entire planetary -system breaks up, and do nothing about it! All right, let's get going!" - -And then there was the sound of another man coming into the already -crowded cubicle. - -"Senator Stine, sir! Look what we found coming down the ladder! And in -a shooting mood, too! I'll need a new space rig--" - -"JON!" - -"Well! The ITA hasn't lost much time! She looks a little bit white, -doesn't she, Thurston? And seems to know our friend, here! Gentlemen, I -think things are going to work out rather well...." - -And that was the moment that Jon Kane returned to full consciousness, -and full pain. - -But he kept his eyes shut, his voice silent. - - * * * * * - -The banks of viewscreens in the _New World's_ NIC room reflected a -kaleidoscope of horror as no man had seen horror before, and as only a -man of Kane's century could understand it. To the uninitiated observer -of an earlier time whose entire life experience had been within the -narrow confines of a single planet, the softly glowing spheres in the -screens would have seemed remote things; untouchable, and of only -speculative interest. The interest may have been heightened slightly -by the sudden rifts that appeared in the surfaces of some, or by the -peculiarly undulating ocean masses that seemed bent on erasing the land -masses of others. - -But to Jon, securely shackled to an ackseat as was Deanne beside him, -the screens showed an impending wave of death and destruction on a -scale that bordered on the unthinkable. - -Procyon I and II were already torn near the point of total break-up; -III, IV and V, because of their greater masses, were trembling with a -slower rhythm, but the close-up screens showed their largest cities had -already begun to crumble. Their streets were clogged with both dead -and living, and the gaping mouths of panic stricken faces were eerily -silent. - -The six outer planets had not yet felt their first tremors, but they -had begun to enter subtly-altered orbital paths, and whole continents -were unnaturally bathed in the hellish light of twin suns that spewed -great, flaming masses of their life-stuff with unchecked abandon into -the infinite well of the void. - -The largest screen showed a wide, wafer-thin disc floating with an -inhuman serenity in the blackness, its flat plane tipped gently to the -ecliptic, its surface crawling with tiny ant-like creatures that were -men. Hovering above it was a glistening, pencil-shaped object from -which more men came, their tiny forms followed by irregularly shaped -masses, weightless on the invisible tow-lines. - -"Not doing much good, are they, Kane?" - -The big man hulked above him, beefy face florid but split with a -relaxed, confident grin. Jon broke his long silence. - -"Starn has told you he would surrender! Why can't you accept it, and -then I promise you I'll--" - -"You'll do what? You'd pull everything in the book and you know it, -Kane, and we'd end up having to kill you or be killed ourselves. And if -you were to die." Jon turned his glance toward Deanne, saw her shudder, -then turn her eyes away from the screens, bitter defeat mingled tightly -with the tears in them. "And anyway," Stine was saying, "Starn's not -the boss anymore! And what good d'you think it's going to do me to push -over a has-been? B-Haaq is the one who's calling their plays now, Kane. -And B-Haaq is the boy who wants to fight! Too bad you didn't kill him -when you had the chance! Look at him out there! Trying to tell me he -can fix it, or anything I can do to it! Telling me if I move this ship -in a mile closer he'll blow me out of Space! Oh, brother--" - -"He could, Stine," Jon said. And the big man whirled. - -"With those antiquated pop guns he carries? Don't try to make me angry, -Kane. He's going to sweat it out there until he and his whole damn crew -drops. And then I'm sending you in! By that time things'll be so bad -I'll _know_ I can trust you. You're the type, Kane! Fight like hell up -to the last second, and then comes the noble, heroic sacrifice part. -Oh, you'll do the job, all night after you've sat here watching long -enough!" - -Jon bit his lip, watched the big man stalk back and forth before the -wide banks of screens. - -"I could beat him in less time than it takes to tell it with -E-blasters!" Stine was saying. "But they say there's a better way of -winning arguments than with guns, don't they, Master Kane? Slaves are -always more valuable than corpses, for one thing, and for another, I -think people ought to know that Martin Stine has more to his string -than guns alone! Yes...." His broad back was to both Jon and Deanne, -now, and he was staring out through a wide port into the gem-studded -blackness, and his words were for his own ears. "They will know who is -a technician and who is not! The ITA is weak with age--and the weak -become the slaves, and the strong become the masters! They shall see." - -"Stine, you're a fool!" - -The big man turned, faced Jon, and his big face blanched in sudden -anger, and then the color flooded back to it and he laughed. - -"Stine, do you know what B-Haaq will do when he realizes that he has -failed? When he realizes that the woman who spurned him and the man -who deserted his ranks are aboard this ship? Do you know what he'll do -rather than knuckle under to you? He's the same kind of man you are, -Stine. He'll come gunning with everything he's got! You'll be a seive -before you know what hit you ... and for once I'll be glad to see -B-Haaq take a trick!" - -He heard Deanne gasp, could almost feel the trembling of her body. - -"That's enough out of you, Kane, or there'll be a couple dozen more -bandages on that honest face of yours! If that puppy even turns his -nose toward me, I'll show him what real guns are! And let him sweat out -there without his engines for awhile!" - -"You only think you will! You haven't the faintest idea of what alloy -the Tinkers build their ships, and you know it! And it's going to be -fun watching you find out." - -"If they use the tin they use to fix everything else." - -"They may be stupid, Stine, but they've been around quite awhile." - -"All right, so you know what alloy their hulls are built of! So my -batteries of electro-cannon will--" - -"Bounce off like a flashlantern beam, Stine. But I guess you'll want to -wait and see for yourself. And if I know B-Haaq, you'll get the chance!" - -And suddenly Stine was towering over him again. Jon winced at the -vicious slap that landed squarely on his misshapen face. - -"You'll tell me the alloy! Do you hear me?" A slap harder than the -first. "Do you understand, Kane?" - -Jon felt blood trickle down his chin. - -"I'll not tell you a thing, Stine. Not about the alloy, or even how to -rig your guns to beat it." - -The next blow was with Stine's closed fist. Jon's head snapped back -viciously, and he held on by sheer will to consciousness. He tensed for -another blow. It did not come. And suddenly, Stine's voice was a calm, -almost silky thing, barely loud enough for Jon to hear. - -"A pity," he was saying, "that your man is so defiant a fellow, -Lenantech. I almost imagine that even after the risk you took to save -his hide, he'd watch your pretty face be beaten to a pulp rather than -tell me the things I'd like to know! That's the way with these noble -fellows, you know. Of course, a girl's face isn't everything. But, I -suppose that he'd even--" - -"Stine, you wouldn't dare!" - -"Care to try me, Master Kane?" - -"Damn you, Stine--" - -The big man clenched his right fist, raised it, and Jon watched -Deanne's face whiten, saw the silent plea in her eyes in the quick -glance she gave him. But her taut lips did not move. - -"You had better speak, Kane--" - -"All right! All right, I'll rig your guns for you!" - -"And you'd better hurry! Unless my screens are out of order, your -precious ten billion Prokymen haven't too much time left." - -Jon looked at the screens again, and he knew his horror was reflected -in his swollen face. Something writhed sickeningly inside him and he -looked at the screen in which the Geejay swung. B-Haaq and his men -were at last leaving it! Leaving it, giving up. - -But he said nothing as Stine summoned Haine from in-ship, and kept his -silence as the squat, burly man unshackled him while Stine held a hand -weapon at Deanne's head. - -"I'll need her to help," he bit out then. "On your guns, as well as on -the Justifier. She's worked on double-A's before." - -"She stays, Kane!" - -"Very well, she stays. But if this outfit can't get the Geejay fixed -either, people won't be too impressed, will they. I say I need her, -Stine. That thing out there is too badly wrecked even for me, now, -alone. But it's up to you. I'll rig your guns." - -"All right, Kane! All right. The woman goes with you. But she stays -right here until you've done a job on my batteries!" - -"You win, I'm not arguing. Let's get it over with." - -Haine led him out of the NIC room, and he could feel Deanne's accusing -eyes at his back. She hated him now. He knew it. - - - XI - -The thin disc shown weirdly in the light of the tortured binary, and -Jon guided Deanne's suit-bloated figure up over its lip, then clambered -to its sleek metal surface himself. It was a tricky business, without -weight, and without sufficient handling knowledge of the alien-built -power pack to attempt the delicate maneuvering required with it. - -Together, wordlessly, they reeled in the cylindrical capsule which -contained their tools. - -A scant ten thousand miles off, B-Haaq waited in the Flagship. Waiting, -Jon knew, for an element of Tinker ships to arrive and form about him -in battle formation. And when they came. Yes, he knew what B-Haaq would -do. - -He looked back, and could barely discern the dark mass of Stine's great -craft as it blotted out the myriad of stars behind it. Power against -power. They would have to hurry. - -He moved toward Deanne, and she moved away. He grabbed her wrist, -pulled her to him, touched her helmet with his, and spoke rapidly. - -"Keep your radio off, and we'll talk this way! Now do just as I say, -and before you put me down for a sellout, work like you've never worked -before! We may have thirty minutes--an hour maybe, before this whole -system goes to pieces! And less than that before the other fireworks -start!" - -Then he was busy getting at the tools, getting at the heart of the -Justifier. - -Stine's men had messed it up pretty badly. B-Haaq's men had not made -matters any better. The operation itself was a simple one, but there -was so much to be undone. - -Wordlessly, Deanne worked with him in the awful silence. He thought as -he worked how ridiculous it must seem to whoever watched--two pygmies -on the face of a mechanism hardly a hundred yards across, pitting their -wits against a Nature gone mad--two pygmies, attempting to come to -grips with an entire solar system! Working alone, in the cold and the -dark, with only their helmlanterns to guide their eyes and hands. - -Deanne worked smoothly where she recognized the few standard procedures -that Jon employed, fumbled a little as he took shortcuts that she had -never imagined possible. Yet somehow, he noticed, she managed almost -to keep up with him, seemed to be following his thinking almost by -instinct. - -And that was about all it was that differentiated him from the standard -ITA technician. Instinct; imagination coupled with it, and the -knowledge that could only be learned by an ever-inquiring mind. Jon -Kane. Scientist. - -Finally, he touched her helmet again. - -"That does it, girl. She's going. Within twenty hours the storm'll -be over; within less than one, things will start taming down on the -planets. And then we'll get your uncle to take us back to Sol system, -and do a real job on the one there." - -He saw her eyes widen. "My--uncle?" - -"Yeah. Now keep quiet a minute. I--" - -"Turn around, both of you! I want to see your faces just once more!" - -Jon whirled. He saw Deanne shriek inside her helmet. At the lip of the -great disc, B-Haaq stood, a hand-weapon in each gauntlet! - -"I knew who they'd send, Master Kane! Did you think I would leave this -little project all to you, and give away all the credit to boot? Stand -still!" - -"It's Director Gentech Starn who gets the credit for this one, B-Haaq! -And I'm pretty sure, after seeing you in action, that he'll know, this -time how to use it! Because he knows now that you can't do today's -business with yesterday's tools and be in business tomorrow!" - -"Damn pretty, lover boy! Is that the way you take other men's women, -too?" - -Damn him, Jon thought. Time's running out now. Running out. - -"Suit yourself on that! I think I trimmed you good!" And with that -Jon kicked viciously against the ponderous mass of the tool cylinder, -launched himself straight at B-Haaq! - -Two guns flared! - -The twin beams flashed straight into Jon's flying figure, then bounced -harmlessly into Space! - -And then the two of them were drifting in the void, fighting silently -and desperately for a death hold. - -The universe wheeled crazily as Jon fended off the other's gauntlets -as they grabbed for his tank hoses, and then he struck with all the -strength he could at the fragile face plate. And was parried. - -Then for a moment their helmets touched. - -"You're a real jerk, Majtech! Why do you think I didn't take any of -those guns with me from the Flagship's arsenal? Hell, there wasn't one -in there that worked!" - -B-Haaq made a desperate grab for the side-dog on Jon's helmet; caught -it, began to twist! - -Jon clamped the suited arm, held it ... held it, twisted his body. Then -fingered the suit pack into blazing life, melting a horrible, gaping -hole in the Majtech's suit! - -For the merest fraction of a second he saw the terror stricken grimace -of hatred and disbelief on B-Haaq's thin face, and then the interior of -the helmet was a mass of exploding flesh and blood. - -He whirled. Blasted recklessly back to the Justifier, almost missed; -back-blasted, slid. - -He grabbed Deanne about the waist of her suit, and then flicked on his -space radio. - -"This is Kane calling Stine! Kane, calling Stine! Do you hear me, -Stine?" - -His earphones crackled. "What the blue Jupiter is going on out there, -Kane? Have you--" - -"Stine, you're a real dumbhead! A real Prokyman bat brain! You should -have learned better who to trust by this time! The girl and I have -done a job for you out here. You'll never get it fixed now, not in ten -million years! Sure, a system dies; it gives its life, but so that -people like you can't make other people think you're God and enslave -others like it! You're through, Stine!" - -"Kane, you're going to die where you stand!" The earphones almost shook -from their connections. - -And Jon pulled at Deanne, pulled her prone beside him on the smooth -metal of the nearly-flat disc! - -"Shield your eyes!" - -Every gun in Stine's batteries blazed. Blazed, and smashed inward in a -blinding, coruscating sea of blue-white flame that for a moment seemed -to rival Procyon herself! For silent seconds, the great ship seemed to -devour itself in the pent up energies suddenly unleashed in a single -hell-spawned torrent of fire from its erupting bowels, then it was no -longer matter but a great wraith of superhot gasses fast dissipating -into the dark of Infinity. - -"Jon! Jon, darling--" - -"It's O.K., princess. It's O.K. now." - -"But you--" - -"I fixed his guns for him. He made me do it, remember? Oh, I fixed 'em -good!" - -And then they both laughed. Laughed until the tears came, two pygmies -in Space, two pygmies against a solar system of planets with a whole -universe to hear them. - -Then slowly, two fine trails of fire started toward a slender, -streamlined shape that hovered ten thousand miles off. - -Somewhere high above them, a Cepheid winked. Knowingly. - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Man the Tech-Men Made, by Fox B. 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